15894	----	by the Kentuckiana Digital Library (http://kdl.kyvl.org/) Note: Images of the original pages are available through the Kentuckiana Digital Library. See http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=kyetexts;cc= kyetexts;xc=1&idno=B92-165-30098685&view=toc THE LIFTED BANDAGE by MARY RAYMOND SHIPMAN ANDREWS Author of "The Perfect Tribute," etc. New York Charles Scribner's Sons 1910 The man let himself into his front door and, staggering lightly, like a drunken man, as he closed it, walked to the hall table, and mechanically laid down his hat, but still wearing his overcoat turned and went into his library, and dropped on the edge of a divan and stared out through the leaded panes of glass across the room facing him. The grayish skin of his face seemed to fall in diagonal furrows, from the eyes, from the nose, from the mouth. He sat, still to his finger-tips, staring. He was sitting so when a servant slipped in and stood motionless a minute, and went to the wide window where the west light glared through leafless branches outside, and drew the shades lower, and went to the fireplace and touched a match. Wood caught and crackled and a cheerful orange flame flew noisily up the chimney, but the man sitting on the divan did not notice. The butler waited a moment, watching, hesitating, and then: "Have you had lunch, sir?" he asked in a tentative, gentle voice. The staring eyes moved with an effort and rested on the servant's face. "Lunch?" he repeated, apparently trying to focus on the meaning of the word. "Lunch? I don't know, Miller. But don't bring anything." With a great anxiety in his face Miller regarded his master. "Would you let me take your overcoat, Judge?--you'll be too warm," he said. He spoke in a suppressed tone as if waiting for, fearing something, as if longing to show sympathy, and the man stood and let himself be cared for, and then sat down again in the same unrestful, fixed attitude, gazing out again through the glittering panes into the stormy, tawny west sky. Miller came back and stood quiet, patient; in a few minutes the man seemed to become aware of him. "I forgot, Miller. You'll want to know," he said in a tone which went to show an old bond between the two. "You'll be sorry to hear, Miller," he said--and the dull eyes moved difficultly to the anxious ones, and his voice was uninflected--"you'll be sorry to know that the coroner's jury decided that Master Jack was a murderer." The word came more horribly because of an air of detachment from the man's mind. It was like a soulless, evil mechanism, running unguided. Miller caught at a chair. "I don't believe it, sir," he gasped. "No lawyer shall make me. I've known him since he was ten, Judge, and they're mistaken. It's not any mere lawyers can make me believe that awful thing, sir, of our Master Jack." The servant was shaking from head to foot with intense rejection, and the man put up his hand as if to ward off his emotion. "I wish I could agree with you," he said quietly, and then added, "Thank you, Miller." And the old butler, walking as if struck with a sickness, was gone. The man sat on the edge of the divan staring out of the window, minute after minute; the November wind tossed the clean, black lines of the branches backward and forward against the copper sky, as if a giant hand moved a fan of sea-weed before a fire. The man sat still and stared. The sky dulled; the delicate, wild branches melted together; the diamond lines in the window blurred; yet, unmoved, unseeing, the eyes stared through them. The burr of an electric bell sounded; some one came in at the front door and came to the door of the library, but the fixed figure did not stir. The newcomer stood silent a minute, two minutes; a young man in clerical dress, boyish, with gray, serious eyes. At length he spoke. "May I come in? It's Dick." The man's head turned slowly and his look rested inquiringly on his nephew. It was a minute before he said, as if recognizing him, "Dick. Yes." And set himself as before to the persistent gazing through the window. "I lost you at the court-house," the younger man said. "I didn't mean to let you come home alone." "Thank you, Dick." It seemed as if neither joy nor sorrow would find a way into the quiet voice again. The wind roared; the boughs rustled against the glass; the fire, soberly settled to work, steamed and crackled; the clock ticked indifferently; there was no other sound in the room; the two men were silent, the one staring always before him, the other sitting with a hand on the older man's hand, waiting. Minutes they sat so, and the wintry sky outside darkened and lay sullenly in bands of gray and orange against the windows; the light of the logs was stronger than the daylight; it flickered carelessly across the ashiness of the emotionless face. The young man, watching the face, bent forward and gripped his other hand on the unresponsive one in his clasp. "Uncle," he asked, "will it make things worse if I talk to you?" "No, Dick." Nothing made a difference, it seemed. Silence or words must simply fall without effect on the rock bottom of despair. The young man halted, as if dismayed, before this overpowering inertia of hopelessness; he drew a quick breath. "A coroner's jury isn't infallible. I don't believe it of Jack--a lot of people don't believe it," he said. The older man looked at him heavily. "You'd say that. Jack's friends will. I've been trained to weigh evidence--I must believe it." "Listen," the young man urged. "Don't shut down the gates like that. I'm not a lawyer, but I've been trained to think, too, and I believe you're not thinking squarely. There's other evidence that counts besides this. There's Jack--his personality." "It has been taken into consideration." "It can't be taken into consideration by strangers--it needs years of intimacy to weigh that evidence as I can weigh it--as you--You know best of all," he cried out impulsively, "if you'll let yourself know, how impossible it was. That Jack should have bought that pistol and taken it to Ben Armstrong's rooms to kill him--it was impossible--impossible!" The clinched fist came down on the black broadcloth knee with the conviction of the man behind it. The words rushed like melted metal, hot, stinging, not to be stopped. The judge quivered as if they had stung through the callousness, touched a nerve. A faint color crawled to his cheeks; for the first time he spoke quickly, as if his thoughts connected with something more than gray matter. "You talk about my not allowing myself to believe in Jack. You seem not to realize that such a belief would--might--stand between me and madness. I've been trying to adjust myself to a possible scheme of living--getting through the years till I go into nothingness. I can't. All I can grasp is the feeling that a man might have if dropped from a balloon and forced to stay gasping in the air, with no place in it, nothing to hold to, no breath to draw, no earth to rest on, no end to hope for. There is nothing beyond." "Everything is beyond," the young man cried triumphantly. "'The end,' as you call it, is an end to hope for--it is the beginning. The beginning of more than you have ever had--with them, with the people you care about." The judge turned a ghastly look upon the impetuous, bright face. "If I believed that, I should be even now perfectly happy. I don't see how you Christians can ever be sorry when your friends die--it's childish; anybody ought to be able to wait a few years. But I don't believe it," he said heavily, and went on again as if an inertia of speech were carrying him as an inertia of silence had held him a few minutes before. "When my wife died a year ago it ended my personal life, but I could live Jack's life. I was glad in the success and honor of it. Now the success--" he made a gesture. "And the honor--if I had that, only the honor of Jack's life left, I think I could finish the years with dignity. I've not been a bad man--I've done my part and lived as seemed right. Before I'm old the joy is wiped out and long years left. Why? It's not reasonable--not logical. With one thing to hold to, with Jack's good name, I might live. How can I, now? What can I do? A life must have a _raison d'être._" "Listen," the clergyman cried again. "You are not judging Jack as fairly as you would judge a common criminal. You know better than I how often juries make mistakes--why should you trust this jury to have made none?" "I didn't trust the jury. I watched as I have never before known how to watch a case. I felt my mind more clear and alert than common." "Alert!" he caught at the word. "But alert on the side of terror--abnormally clear to see what you dreaded. Because you are fair-minded, because it has been the habit of your life to correct at once any conscious prejudice in your judgment, you have swayed to the side of unfairness to yourself, to Jack. Uncle," he flashed out, "would it tear your soul to have me state the case as I see it? I might, you know--I might bring out something that would make it look different." Almost a smile touched the gray lines of his face. "If you wish." The young man drew himself into his chair and clasped his hands around his knee. "Here it is. Mr. Newbold, on the seventh floor of the Bruzon bachelor apartments, heard a shot at one in the morning, next his bedroom, in Ben Armstrong's room. He hurried into the public hall, saw the door wide open into Ben's apartment, went in and found Ben shot dead. Trying to use the telephone to call help, he found it was out of order. So he rushed again into the hall toward the elevator with the idea of getting Dr. Avery, who lived below on the second floor. The elevator door was open also, and a man's opera-hat lay near it on the floor; he saw, just in time, that the car was at the bottom of the shaft, almost stepping inside, in his excitement, before he noticed this. Then he ran down the stairs with Jack's hat in his hand, and got Dr. Avery, and they found Jack at the foot of the elevator shaft. It was known that Ben Armstrong and Jack had quarrelled the day before; it was known that Jack was quick-tempered; it is known that he bought that evening the pistol which was found on the floor by Ben, loaded, with one empty shell. That's the story." The steady voice stopped a moment and the young man shivered slightly; his look was strained. Steadily he went on. "That's the story. From that the coroner's jury have found that Jack killed Ben Armstrong--that he bought the pistol to kill him, and went to his rooms with that purpose; that in his haste to escape, he missed seeing that the elevator was down, as Mr. Newbold all but missed seeing it later, and jumped into the shaft and was killed instantly himself. That's what the jury get from the facts, but it seems to me they're begging the question. There are a hundred hypotheses that would fit the case of Jack's innocence--why is it reasonable to settle on the one that means his guilt? This is my idea. Jack and Ben Armstrong had been friends since boyhood and Jack, quick-tempered as he was, was warm-hearted and loyal. It was like him to decide suddenly to go to Ben and make friends. He had been to a play in the evening which had more or less that _motif_; he was open to such influences. It was like the pair of them, after the reconciliation, to set to work looking at Jack's new toy, the pistol. It was a brand-new sort, and the two have been interested always in guns--I remember how I, as a youngster, was impressed when Ben and Jack bought their first shot-guns together. Jack had got the pistol at Mellingham's that evening, you know--he was likely to be keen about it still, and then--it went off. There are plenty of other cases where a man has shot his friend by accident--why shouldn't poor Jack be given the benefit of the doubt? The telephone wouldn't work; Jack rushed out with the same idea which struck Mr. Newbold later, of getting Dr. Avery--and fell down the shaft. "For me there is no doubt. I never knew him to hold malice. He was violent sometimes, but that he could have gone about for hours with a pistol in his pocket and murder in his heart; that he could have planned Ben Armstrong's death and carried it out deliberately--it's a contradiction in terms. It's impossible, being Jack. You must know this--you know your son--you know human nature." The rapid _résumé_ was but an impassioned appeal. Its answer came after a minute; to the torrent of eager words, three words: "Thank you, Dick." The absolute lack of impression on the man's judgment was plain. "Ah!" The clergyman sprang to his feet and stood, his eyes blazing, despairing, looking down at the bent, listless figure. How could he let a human being suffer as this one was suffering? Quickly his thoughts shifted their basis. He could not affect the mind of the lawyer; might he reach now, perhaps, the soul of the man? He knew the difficulty, for before this his belief had crossed swords with the agnosticism of his uncle, an agnosticism shared by his father, in which he had been trained, from which he had broken free only five years before. He had faced the batteries of the two older brains at that time, and come out with the brightness of his new-found faith untarnished, but without, he remembered, scratching the armor of their profound doubt in everything. One could see, looking at the slender black figure, at the visionary gaze of the gray wide eyes, at the shape of the face, broad-browed, ovalled, that this man's psychic make-up must lift him like wings into an atmosphere outside a material, outside even an intellectual world. He could breathe freely only in a spiritual air, and things hard to believe to most human beings were, perhaps, his every-day thoughts. He caught a quick breath of excitement as it flashed to his brain that now, possibly, was coming the moment when he might justify his life, might help this man whom he loved, to peace. The breath he caught was a prayer; his strong, nervous fingers trembled. He spoke in a tone whose concentration lifted the eyes below him, that brooded, stared. "I can't bear it to stand by and see you go under, when there's help close. You said that if you could believe that they were living, that you would have them again, you would be perfectly happy no matter how many years you must wait. They are living as sure as I am here, and as sure as Jack was here, and Jack's mother. They are living still. Perhaps they're close to you now. You've bound a bandage over your eyes, you've covered the vision of your spirit, so that you can't see; but that doesn't make nothingness of God's world. It's there--here--close, maybe. A more real world than this--this little thing." With a boyish gesture he thrust behind him the universe. "What do we know about the earth, except effects upon our consciousness? It's all a matter of inference--you know that better than I. The thing we do know beyond doubt is that we are each of us a something that suffers and is happy. How is that something the same as the body--the body that gets old and dies--how can it be? You can't change thought into matter--not conceivably--everybody acknowledges that. Why should the thinking part die then, because the material part dies? When the organ is broken is the organist dead? The body is the hull, the covering, and when it has grown useless it will fall away and the live seed in it will stand free to sunlight and air--just at the beginning of life, as a plant is when it breaks through earth in the spring. It's the seed in the ground, and it's the flower in the sunlight, but it's the same thing--the same life--it is--it _is_." The boy's intensity of conviction shot like a flame across the quiet room. "It is the same thing with us too. The same spirit-substance underlies both worlds and there is no separation in space, only in view-point. Life goes on--it's just transfigured. It's as if a bandage should be lifted from our eyes and we should suddenly see things in whose presence we had been always." The rushing, eager voice stopped. He bent and laid his hand on the older man's and stared at his face, half hidden now in the shadows of the lowering fire. There was no response. The heavy head did not lift and the attitude was unstirred, hopeless. As if struck by a blow he sprang erect and his fingers shut hard. He spoke as if to himself, brokenly. "He does not believe--a single word--I say. I can't help him--I _can't_ help him." Suddenly the clinched fists flung out as if of a power not their own, and his voice rang across the room. "God!" The word shot from him as if a thunderbolt fell with it. "God! Lift the bandage!" A log fell with a crash into the fire; great battling shadows blurred all the air; he was gone. The man, startled, drew up his bent shoulders, and pushed back a lock of gray hair and stared about, shaking, bewildered. The ringing voice, the word that had flashed as if out of a larger atmosphere--the place was yet full of these, and the shock of it added a keenness to his misery. His figure swung sideways; he fell on the cushions of the sofa and his arms stretched across them, his gray head lying heedless; sobs that tore roots came painfully; it was the last depth. Out of it, without his volition, he spoke aloud. "God, God, God!" his voice said, not prayerfully, but repeating the sound that had shocked his torture. The word wailed, mocked, reproached, defied--and yet it was a prayer. Out of a soul in mortal stress that word comes sometimes driven by a force of the spirit like the force of the lungs fighting for breath--and it is a prayer. "God, God, God!" the broken voice repeated, and sobs cut the words. And again. Over and over, and again the sobbing broke it. As suddenly as if a knife had stopped the life inside the body, all sound stopped. A movement shook the man as he lay face down, arms stretched. Then for a minute, two minutes, he was quiet, with a quiet that meant muscles stretched, nerves alert. Slowly, slowly the tightened muscles of the arms pushed the shoulders backward and upward; the head lifted; the face turned outward, and if an observer had been there he might have seen by the glow of the firelight that the features wet, distorted, wore, more than all at this moment, a look of amazement. Slowly, slowly, moving as if afraid to disturb something--a dream--a presence--the man sat erect as he had been sitting before, only that the rigidity was in some way gone. He sat alert, his eyes wide, filled with astonishment, gazing before him eagerly--a look different from the dull stare of an hour ago by the difference between hope and despair. His hands caught at the stuff of the divan on either side and clutched it. All the time the look of his face changed; all the time, not at once, but by fast, startling degrees, the gray misery which had bound eyes and mouth and brow in iron dropped as if a cover were being torn off and a light set free. Amazement, doubting, incredulous came first, and with that eagerness, trembling and afraid. And then hope--and then the fear to hope. And hunger. He bent forward, his eyes peered into the quiet emptiness, his fingers gripped the cloth as if to anchor him to a wonder, to an unbelievable something; his body leaned--to something--and his face now was the face of a starved man, of a man dying from thirst, who sees food, water, salvation. And his face changed; a quality incredible was coming into it--joy. He was transformed. Lines softened by magic; color came, and light in the eyes; the first unbelief, the amazement, shifted surely, swiftly, and in a flash the whole man shone, shook with rapture. He threw out before him his arms, reaching, clasping, and from his radiant look the arms might have held all happiness. A minute he stayed so with his hands stretched out, with face glowing, then slowly, his eyes straining as if perhaps they followed a vision which faded from them--slowly his arms fell and the expectancy went from his look. Yet not the light, not the joy. His body quivered; his breath came unevenly, as of one just gone through a crisis; every sense seemed still alive to catch a faintest note of something exquisite which vanished; and with that the spell, rapidly as it had come, was gone. And the man sat there quiet, as he had sat an hour before, and the face which had been leaden was brilliant. He stirred and glanced about the room as if trying to adjust himself, and his eyes smiled as they rested on the familiar objects, as if for love of them, for pleasure in them. One might have said that this man had been given back at a blow youth and happiness. Movement seemed beyond him yet--he was yet dazed with the newness of a marvel--but he turned his head and saw the fire and at that put out his hand to it as if to a friend. The electric bell burred softly again through the house, and the man heard it, and his eyes rested inquiringly on the door of the library. In a moment another man stood there, of his own age, iron-gray, strong-featured. "Dick told me I might come," he said. "Shall I trouble you? May I stay with you awhile?" The judge put out his hand friendlily, a little vaguely, much as he had put it out to the fire. "Surely," he said, and the newcomer was all at once aware of his look. He started. "You're not well," he said. "You must take something--whiskey--Miller----" The butler moved in the room making lights here and there, and he came quickly. "No," the judge said. "I don't want anything--I don't need anything. It's not as you think. I'll tell you about it." Miller was gone; Dick's father waited, his gaze fixed on the judge's face anxiously, and for moments no word was spoken. The judge gazed into the fire with the rapt, smiling look which had so startled his brother-in-law. At length: "I don't know how to tell you," he said. "There seem no words. Something has happened, yet it's difficult to explain." "Something happened?" the other repeated, bewildered but guarded. "I don't understand. Has some one been here? Is it about--the trial?" "No." A slight spasm twisted the smiling lines of the man's mouth, but it was gone and the mouth smiled still. A horror-struck expression gleamed for a second from the anxious eyes of the brother-in-law, but he controlled it quickly. He spoke gently. "Tell me about it--it will do you good to talk." The judge turned from the fire, and at sight of his flushed cheeks and lighted eyes the other shrank back, and the judge saw it. "You needn't be alarmed," he said quietly. "Nothing is wrong with me. But something has happened, as I told you, and everything--is changed." His eyes lifted as he spoke and strayed about the room as if considering a change which had come also to the accustomed setting. A shock of pity flashed from the other, and was mastered at once. "Can you tell me what has happened?" he urged. The judge, his face bright with a brightness that was dreadful to the man who watched him, held his hand to the fire, turning it about as if enjoying the warmth. The other shivered. There was silence for a minute. The judge broke it, speaking thoughtfully: "Suppose you had been born blind, Ned," he began, "and no one had ever given you a hint of the sense of vision, and your imagination had never presented such a power to your mind. Can you suppose that?" "I think so--yes," the brother-in-law answered, with careful gentleness, watching always the illumined countenance. "Yes, I can suppose it." "Then fancy if you will that all at once sight came, and the world flashed before you. Do you think you'd be able to describe such an experience?" The voice was normal, reflective. Many a time the two had talked together of such things in this very room, and the naturalness of the scene, and of the judge's manner, made the brother-in-law for a second forget the tragedy in which they were living. "Why, of course," he answered. "If one had never heard of such a power one's vocabulary wouldn't take in the words to describe it." "Exactly," the judge agreed. "That's the point I'm making. Perhaps now I may tell you what it is that has happened. Or rather, I may make you understand how a definite and concrete event has come to pass, which I can't tell you." Alarm suddenly expressed itself beyond control in the brother-in-law's face. "John, what do you mean? Do you see that you distress me? Can't you tell clearly if some one has been here--what it is, in plain English, that has happened?" The judge turned his dreamy, bright look toward the frightened man. "I do see--I do see," he brought out affectionately. "I'll try to tell, as you say, in plain English. But it is like the case I put--it is a question of lack of vocabulary. A remarkable experience has occurred in this room within an hour. I can no more describe it than the man born blind could describe sight. I can only call it by one name, which may startle you. A revelation." "A revelation!" the tone expressed incredulity, scarcely veiled scorn. The judge's brilliant gaze rested undisturbed on the speaker. "I understand--none better. A day ago, two hours ago, I should have answered in that tone. We have been trained in the same school, and have thought alike. Dick was here a while ago and said things--you know what Dick would say. You know how you and I have been sorry for the lad--been indulgent to him--with his keen, broad mind and that inspired self-forgetfulness of his--how we've been sorry to have such qualities wasted on a parson, a religion machine. We've thought he'd come around in time, that he was too large a personality to be tied to a treadmill. We've thought that all along, haven't we? Well, Dick was here, and out of the hell where I was I thought that again. When he talked I thought in a way--for I couldn't think much--that after a consistent voyage of agnosticism, I wouldn't be whipped into snivelling belief at the end, by shipwreck. I would at least go down without surrendering. In a dim way I thought that. And all that I thought then, and have thought through my life, is nothing. Reasoning doesn't weigh against experience. Dick is right." The other man sat before him, bent forward, his hands on his knees, listening, dazed. There was a quality in the speaker's tone which made it necessary to take his words seriously. Yet--the other sighed and relaxed a bit as he waited, watched. The calm voice went on. "The largest event of my life has happened in the last hour, in this room. It was this way. When Dick went out I--went utterly to pieces. It was the farthest depth. Out of it I called on God, not knowing what I did. And he answered. That's what happened. As if--as if a bandage had been lifted from my eyes, I was--I was in the presence of things--indescribable. There was no change, only that where I was blind before I now saw. I don't mean vision. I haven't words to explain what I mean. But a world was about me as real as this; it had perhaps always been there; in that moment I was first aware of it. I knew, as if a door had been opened, what heaven means--a condition of being. And I knew another thing more personal--that, without question, it was right with those I thought I had lost and that the horror which seemed blackest I have no need to dread. I cannot say that I saw them or heard or touched them, but I was with them. I understand, but I can't make you understand. I told Dick an hour ago that if I could believe they were living, that I should ever have them again, I should be perfectly happy. That's true now. I believe it, and I am--perfectly happy." The listener groaned uncontrollably. "I know your thought," the judge answered the sound, and his eyes were like lamps as he turned them toward the man. "But you're wrong--my mind is not unhinged. You'll see. After what I've gone through, after facing eternity without hope, what are mere years? I can wait. I know. I am--perfectly happy." Then the man who listened rose from his chair and came and put a hand gently on the shoulder of the judge, looking down at him gravely. "I don't understand you very well, John," he said, "but I'm glad of anything--of anything"--his voice went suddenly. "Will you wait for me here a few minutes? I'm going home and I'll be back. I think I'll spend the night with you if you don't object." "Object! Wait!" The judge looked up in surprise, and with that he smiled. "I see. Surely. I'd like to have you here. Yes, I'll certainly wait." Outside in the hall one might have heard the brother-in-law say a low word or two to Miller as the man helped him on with his coat; then the front door shut softly, and he was gone, and the judge sat alone, his head thrown back against his chair, his face luminous. The other man swung down the dark street, rushing, agitated. As he came to the corner an electric light shone full on him and a figure crossing down toward him halted. "Father! I was coming to find you. Something extraordinary has happened. I was coming to find you." "Yes, Dick." The older man waited. "I've just left Charley Owen at the house--you remember Charley Owen?" "No." "Oh, yes, you do--he's been here with--Jack. He was in Jack's class in college--in Jack's and Ben Armstrong's. He used to go on shooting trips with them both--often." "I remember now." "Yes, I knew you would." The young voice rushed on. "He has been away just now--down in Florida shooting--away from civilization. He got all his mail for a month in one lump--just now--two days ago. In it was a letter from Jack and Ben Armstrong, written that night, written together. Do you see what that means?" "What!" The word was not a question, but an exclamation. "What--Dick!" "Yes--yes. There were newspapers, too, which gave an account of the trial--the first he'd heard of it--he was away in the Everglades. He started instantly, and came on here when he had read the papers, and realized the bearing his letter would have on the trial. He has travelled day and night. He hoped to get here in time. Jack and Ben thought he was in New York. They wrote to ask him to go duck-shooting--with them. And, father--here's the most startling point of it all." As the man waited, watching his son's face, he groaned suddenly and made a gesture of despair. "Don't, father--don't take it that way. It's good--it's glorious--it clears Jack. My uncle will be almost happy. But I wouldn't tell him at once--I'd be careful," he warned the other. "What was it--the startling point you spoke of?" "Oh--surely--this. The letter to Charley Owen spoke of Jack's new pistol--that pistol. Jack said they would have target-shooting with it in camp. They were all crack shots, you know. He said he had bought it that evening, and that Ben thought well of it. Ben signed the letter after Jack, and then added a postscript. It clears Jack--it clears him. Doesn't it, father? But I wouldn't tell my uncle just yet. He's not fit to take it in for a few hours--don't you think so?" "No, I won't tell him--just yet." The young man's wide glance concentrated with a flash on his father's face. "What is it? You speak queerly. You've just come from there. How is he--how is my uncle?" There was a letterbox at the corner, a foot from the older man's shoulder. He put out his hand and held to the lid a moment before he answered. His voice was harsh. "Your uncle is--perfectly happy," he said. "He's gone mad." 
33661	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) THE AFFECTING CASE OF THE UNFORTUNATE _THOMAS DANIELS_. _LONDON_ _Thomas Daniels_, the person named in the Pamphlet hereunto annexed, Intitled, "_The Affecting Case of the unfortunate Thomas Daniels_ &c." maketh Oath and saith that the said Pamphlet (containing twenty-four pages) is a just and faithful Narrative of his Case; and that the same is published at his particular desire of having the Public truly informed of the whole and every circumstance of his case, with a view to the removing all unfavourable prejudices against him. _THOMAS DANIELLS._ Sworn this 23d of _November_, 1761, before me _W. ALEXANDER._ THE AFFECTING CASE OF THE UNFORTUNATE _THOMAS DANIELS_, WHO WAS Tried at the SESSIONS held at the OLD BAILEY, _September_, 1761, FOR THE Supposed MURDER of his WIFE; By casting her out of a CHAMBER WINDOW: And for which he was sentenced to die, but received his MAJESTY'S most GRACIOUS and FREE PARDON. IN WHICH IS CONTAINED, A circumstantial Account of the Behaviour of that unhappy Woman, from her Husband's first Acquaintance with her, to the Day of her Death. Drawn up and authenticated by the said DANIELS himself; And faithfully prepared for the PRESS, by An IMPARTIAL HAND. LONDON: Printed for E. CABE, in _Ave-Mary-Lane_. MDCCLXI. THE AFFECTING CASE OF THE UNFORTUNATE _THOMAS DANIELS_. The calamitous circumstance of having been condemned to death by the laws of his country, for the most hateful of all crimes; and his most extraordinary deliverance from an ignominious fate, and being restored to liberty unconditionally and free! will naturally render the case of _Thomas Daniels_ a subject of eager curiosity and warm debate. That persons in the superior stations of life should sometimes find means to evade the punishments incurred by infringing the laws of their country, and by disturbing the order of society, does not greatly excite our wonder; an experience of the manners and customs of the world, occasions our hearing such instances as things of course; we make a natural reflection or two on the occasions, and think no more of them. But when a person in one of the lowest classes of mankind, by a fatal accident, appears before a court of justice with apparent evidences of guilt, sufficient to influence a jury of his impartial countrymen to sentence him to the most severe penalty the law can inflict; when this man, meerly from the advantage of a good character in the narrow circle of his acquaintance, and from a re-examination into the probability of the fact, for which he was condemned, shall have the inferences drawn from the depositions on his trial, totally invalidated, so that the sentence passed on him is freely remitted! it is _such a sanction_ of his innocence, that it would be cruel and unjust, in particulars, afterward to retain any suspicions injurious to him. It ought to be principally attended to in this affair, that his Majesty, whose regal virtues are so generally known and acknowledged, cannot appear in a more amiable view, than in the attention with which he is said to have endeavoured to discover the merits of the intercession made for this poor convict. An instance which, as it may be deemed too trivial to engage any particular share of princely consideration, yet is certainly one of the truly parental duties of a Monarch, and will endear him in the hearts of many of his useful subjects, who are beneath caring for the retention of _Guadalupe_ or _Canada_. And it is doing justice to the poor fellow, to own, that he seems to retain a grateful, if not a politely expressed, sensibility of the great obligation he owes to the royal parent of this his second period of existence. But as an imputation of so base a nature, confirmed by a court of justice, would naturally prejudice female minds universally against him, too strongly for any after testimony in his favour easily to efface; and as Mr. _Daniels_ is not yet old enough to relinquish all thoughts of matrimony, and seems to possess too happy a share of vivacity to be totally depressed by his past misfortunes, however severe they have been; it is probable he may be hardy enough yet to venture on a second trial of that state, can he find any good girl candid enough _to venture on him_: but however this may be, from many important considerations the poor man is willing to give the world all the satisfaction in his power, relating to the unhappy woman who was lately his wife, and on whose account he has gone through so much trouble and anxiety from his first connexion with her: and it is charitably hoped, that, as he has so solemnly authenticated the particulars of it, the same degree of credibility will be allowed _him_, which would be granted to any other person of fair character and good estimation. The following particulars concerning this unfortunate couple, were penned by _Thomas Daniels_ himself, since his enlargement; and are faithfully exhibited with no other alterations than what were absolutely necessary, with regard to spelling, style, and disposition, to render the narrative in some measure clear and fit for perusal. This dressing was not intended to give any undue colouring to facts, but simply to supply the deficiencies of the writer; whose laborious situation in life has denied him those literary advantages indispensable to the writing his story with tolerable propriety. Thus much being premised, it is time to let the principal offer his plea, as candidate for the favourable opinion of his readers. "It was in the year 1757 that I first became acquainted with _Sarah Carridine_, by living in the same neighbourhood. She was a very pretty girl; and I had a great affection for her, as I imagined her to be a good industrious person. I made my friends acquainted with my regard for her, but they were entirely against my having her, because of her living in a public-house: but I was obstinate, and told them I loved her and would marry her at all adventures, as I believed she would make a good wife: upon this they said I might have another far preferable to her, but that if I was resolved not to listen to their advice, they would have nothing more to say to me, and I should never come near them more. Finding therefore it was in vain to hope for my father's consent in this affair, I consulted with her what to do, and at her desire I agreed that she should take a lodging for us both, and her mother took one accordingly. I then left my former lodging and lived with her; but as I still worked with my father as before, he soon found that I had changed my lodging, and upon what account. This discovery made him very angry, and we had a quarrel about it, which made me resolve not to work with him any more. This laid me under a necessity of seeking for business elsewhere; and in my walks for this purpose, I met with some acquaintance, who told me they had entered on board the _Britannia_ privateer, and that she was a fine ship. By their encouragement I entered myself also. I went home, and told _Sarah Carridine_ what I had done; she cried sadly, but I begged her to make herself easy, for that the cruize was but for six months, that we were going to make our fortunes, and that I would marry her when I came back; and in the mean time would advise her to go to service. This pacified her, and she promised so to do. "We sailed on the 30th of _August_, on our cruize, but had very bad luck, and I returned home in _April_, 1758. As soon as I came to _London_, I went to my master, Mr. _Archer_, who keeps the sign of the _White Bear_, the corner of _Barbican_ in _Aldersgate Street_; there I sent for my father and mother, and we spent the evening together very agreeably, much rejoiced at our meeting again. I enquired of my mistress where I could find _Sarah Carridine_? She referred me to Mr. _John Jones_ the founder, who she said could inform me. _Jones_ took me over the water to an alehouse at the bridge foot, where I saw her. I used in the evenings to go and sup with her, at her mother's, after my day's work; and Mr. _Jones_, lodging in the same house with me, frequently went with me. _Jones_ and I had been old acquaintance for some years; he pretended great friendship for me and _Sarah Carridine_, and offered to be father to her and give her away. This was very agreeable to me, and I fixed upon _St. James's_ day for our marriage. I informed my friends of my intention, but I could not obtain their consent. I asked my master to lend me a guinea to defray the wedding charges; but being refused, _Jones_ advised me not to be beholden to any of them, but to raise some money upon my watch: I therefore put it in his hands, and he pawned it for me. This will serve to shew how officious he was in this transaction. "We lived for some time after our marriage in ready-furnished lodgings, until my wife's mother persuaded us to come and lodge with her; she lived in _Catharine-Wheel Alley, Whitechapel_. This we did until I procured some goods of my own. While we lived there, she used to be frequently abroad when I came home from my work. I cannot but take notice in this place, that, however wrong it may be esteemed by others, and however disagreeable to me, to speak ill of the dead; yet the peculiarity of my situation will, I hope, excuse the obligation I am under of declaring the truth, this being now the discharge of a duty I owe to myself. Whenever I asked her mother where she was gone? she would tell me she was gone to see some young women in _Spital Fields_. When she came home she was often in liquor, and I would then say, '_Sally_, what makes you drink so much?' her mother would reply, 'Lord, a little matter gets in her head, for she is a poor drinker.' I then resolved to take a little shop to employ her: I did so, and put her in a little shop in the _Minories_, to sell pork, greens, and other articles; and she might have done very well there if she had minded her business, and not have gone to see the young women so often as she pretended. At last however I went to see where these young women lived, but they had not seen her a long time. As I was returning back, I saw my wife with Mr. _Jones_, going before me, whom I followed until I saw they turned into a public-house. On this I went back to her mother, and enquired whether she was returned? she replied, 'Lord, I suppose they will not let her come yet.' With that I said, it is very odd, but I believe I know where she is; I will go and see. When I went back there they were both together. So, said I, this is your going to see _Bett Reed_! She replied, I am but just come back. Pray, said I, how came Mr. _Jones_ here? She answered, she found him there, and believed he came to see me. I then said, I rather believe he came to see you; I saw you both come in, arm in arm. She was then drunk, which made me send her home. I told him he had no business to keep my wife from me; but if he was a man he would come out, and try who had the best right to her. He would not, but went away. "When I came home, my wife and her mother and I, quarelled, and I had them both upon me at once: she then ran away, and staid all night. The next day by her mother's persuasions we made it up, and agreed that she should go and mind her shop, and never go into _Jones_'s company more. After this he did not come near us until the next Lord Mayor's Day, when he knew, I suppose, that I was gone to my master's hall. My shopmate and I went to carry my master's great coat; my master gave us a bottle of wine, and we went into the kitchin and got some victuals to it; this we carried home to my wife, thinking to enjoy it quietly there. I asked her mother where _Sally_ was? She said she was gone to the _Three Kings_, and bid me go and call her. Before I went I heard a noise upon the stairs, and, upon taking a candle to see what was the matter, there stood my wife; and hearing somebody going down to the cellar, there stood _John Jones_! "My wife and I had a great quarrel on this occasion; she pretended that he came only to give her some ribbons, as he had been a whiffler in the procession. Perceiving what a loose disposition she was of, I resolved she should keep shop no more; I therefore shut it up. There are people enough in that neighbourhood sufficiently acquainted with these transactions; and with my wife's general behaviour. "I then thought we should be rather more quiet if I moved her from her mother's, for we were always quarrelling. I got some goods of my own, and my wife and _my_ mother took a room for me in the _Little Minories_, when for some time we lived more loving than before. However she quickly began her old irregularities again, which occasioned fresh quarrels, to the great uneasiness of our landlady, for the people of the house were very good sort of people. She would often talk to my wife, and give her wholesome advice, but all to no purpose; which determined me to leave her. I again entered on board the _Britannia_ privateer as carpenter's mate, without acquainting any body with my intention, and went down to _Greenhithe_ where the ship lay, to work on board her. Before I had been there many days, to my great surprize down came my wife with _John Jones_! They staid on board all night, my wife crying bitterly to persuade me to come home again, promising an entire reformation in her conduct. I said I could not come back now, because I had entered myself; but she lamenting and behaving like a mad woman, I was persuaded to return home with her. To do this, I obtained leave of our lieutenant to go to _London_, to bring my tools down, when my wife prevailed on me to stay at home. I then went to work again in town, and my wife said if I would try her once more, by putting her in a shop, she would be very good. Then it was I took a house, at the corner of _Hare Court, Aldersgate Street_, where, for some time, she managed very well, but soon returned to her old ways again. By our frequent quarrels the neighbours were at first inclined to think I used her ill, but had they then known how affairs were circumstanced, they would not have blamed me; for her temper grew so unaccountable, that she would frequently come after me, where ever I happened to be at work, or at the alehouse, and abuse me for nothing. When I came home at nights from my work, thinking to pass the evenings comfortably with her, she would constantly find some pretence to quarrel with me, and to render my life uneasy. One time, in particular, when I came home, she threw the pewter quart pot, she had been drinking out of, at my head; and then running out of the house, she, in the violence of her rage, dashed her elbow through the glass window of our shop, and then ran up to my master _Archer_ with her bloody arm, crying out,----'See here what your rogue has done'--Thus she endeavoured to prejudice me in the minds of all my friends and acquaintance; when afterward she confessed to Mr. _Moses Owen_, a barber in _Old Street_, who compleated the cure of her arm, _that she did it herself purposely_. "Another time, when I worked at _St. Mary Axe_, she, and one of her acquaintance, having been to _Billingsgate_ to buy oysters for her shop, came to me to the _Crown_ alehouse in _Camomile Street_, where I was then at dinner with my shopmates: there she wanted me to treat her with drink, which, as I observed her to be already in liquor, I refused, and would have gone back quietly to my work; she then snatched off my hat and wig to detain me, but finding that not to answer her intention, she abused me in a most vile manner, and with a small cod which she had with the oysters, beat me in a most ridiculous manner about my head and face; and, as all my brother journeymen may well remember, obliged me to go back to my labour bareheaded! "One day, when my business carried me to the other end of the town for the whole day, my wife gave _Jones_ notice of it, and quickly after I was gone dressed herself, shut up her shop, and went out with him to spend the day. He was that day dressed in a new suit of cloaths. At night when I came home, not being able to get into my house, I went to her mother's in _Whitechapel_, expecting to meet with her there. By the way as I was coming back, who should I see before me but my wife and _John Jones_! I followed them into an alehouse, where I quarrelled with them both, and in my passion threw some beer in her face, on which she ran out to her mother's. I challenged _Jones_ to fight me, but he would not. But meeting with him afterward, he then challenged me, for reporting the familiarity between him and my wife. On this we stripped, and had two or three blows; he fell against a table, and, as he says, broke two of his ribs, for which he took me up, but I was bailed out by my mistress. As my wife thought proper not to come nigh me, I lett the shop which she kept and lodged at my master's. She continued away about seven weeks, only calling upon me now and then to abuse me; and going home to my house to scold and threaten my lodgers, whom I had admitted upon her deserting me. "At length she and her mother came together to me; her mother threatened, if I would not take my wife home again, to arrest me for her board; upon this I urged her bad treatment of me while she was at home, her neglect of her family affairs, and her scandalous attachment to this _John Jones_; and lastly, her voluntary elopement. However we entered into a treaty of pacification, in the course of which, she confessed her intimacy with _Jones_, and the terms on which it had subsisted. It seems their connexion began while I was on my cruize in the _Britannia_ privateer; he promised to marry her if I should not return, and if I did, that he would still continue his kindness to her, and that in case he was to die, to leave her all his goods, and all his interest in the capital of a box-club, of which he was a member. This confession, though it was an odd one for me to hear, yet, as it was accompanied with what appeared to me sincere promises of amendment, I, in an evil hour, agreed to live with her once more. Accordingly I moved my bed into the two pair of stairs room, which one of my lodgers then quitted; this was about nine months before her unhappy death. "When she came home again, though I believe she did not continue her acquaintance with _Jones_, yet her behaviour was otherwise so disorderly as rendered me very unhappy. For at times, when I came from work, expecting my breakfast, dinner, or supper, I frequently found the door locked, and so was drove to the necessity of eating my meals at an alehouse; a very disagreeable resource to a man, who, having a wife and a home, naturally expected the comforts resulting from such seeming advantages. But this was not all; she sometimes coming home in the interim, would seek me through all the public-houses in the neighbourhood, and when she found me, would strike me with whatever lay next her, raving at me for not coming home, and denying her having been out. Once, in particular, having bought a piece of veal for my _Sunday's_ dinner, when the morning came, truly she would not dine at home, she would go to her mother's, though I convinced her that the weather, being hot, would spoil the meat by the next day. I then went to my shoemaker to fetch me a pair of shoes, and they in friendship asked me to eat, as I found them at dinner; I was soon followed by my wife, who, finding me eating, was hardly withheld from stabbing me, first with a knife, and afterward with a fork. "One _Sunday_, with a view to entertain her, I took her down to _Ilford_, that we might spend the day agreeably. We dined at the _White-Horse_ there, and after dinner she drank very freely. When the reckoning came to be paid, she threw herself in a great passion with the landlord, on account of his charge; and I unluckily attempting to moderate matters between them, drew all her rage upon myself. She was so violent in her resentment, that she declared she would not go home with me, but would go with the first person who should ask her, or even with the next man who went by. Just at this time, a man dressed like an officer stopped in a chaise to drink; my wife soon entered into discourse with him, and asked him to let her ride home in his chaise: the man agreed, and away they drove together! This now was a measure she was not under any necessity of taking, because, not believing she would be able to walk home, I had offered her a place in the stage, which was quickly to pass the door. "Thus abandoned by her, I walked home, and after waiting due time went to bed. About two o'clock in the morning I was roused by a knocking at the door: there was my wife so drunk as hardly to be able to stand, attended by her mother! The mother made what excuses she could for her daughter, to induce me to let her in, pleading, for the lateness of the hour, that, after the man had carried her a long way out of her road on the forest, he, at last, left her to walk home alone. I let her in, but her mother was obliged to stay and put her to bed, as she was entirely incapable of undressing herself. "Though her intimacy with _Jones_ was discontinued, yet she was not destitute of a gallant: one _William Charlton_, a man of my own business, was now her paramour; but as he was a married man, I had the additional mortification of having his wife come to scold me for suffering my wife to decoy away her husband! After having been with this _Charlton_, about a fortnight before her death, she came home very drunk, and abused me sadly. She beat me over the shoulder with a pair of tongs; I wrested them from her, and, as I purpose to speak the truth, I will confess, that, in my passion, as she ran down stairs, I followed her and gave her a blow with them on the head. Upon this she ran directly to Mr. _Clark_ the constable, the same who since apprehended me on the occasion of her death, to get me taken into custody. Mrs. _Clark_ kindly wiped her forehead where the skin was broke, and advised her to go home peaceably, and make up the difference between us. This enraged her so that she gave Mrs. _Clark_ many foul words, so that Mr. _Clark_ came to expostulate with me, not on the blow I had given my wife, but on the ill language she had bestowed on his wife! Mr. _Clark_ and I talked the matter over a tankard of beer, but I saw no more of my wife that night. "There was also one _Stroud_, a _Smith_, in the number of her intimates, but I knew little of their concerns, more than what I understood from his wife, who came frequently to me, enquiring after him, and complaining greatly of my wife, for enticing him away from his family and his work. "These few instances I have been able to recollect, may, in some measure, serve to give the reader of my unhappy tale, an idea of my wife's character and conduct, which I solemnly declare, I am not solicitous to expose, as the poor creature is dead, more than is absolutely needful, to shew what sort of person she was, and as it may tend to clear me in the opinion of the world. So quarrelsome was she by nature, that we never went out together, but she would find some occasion to abuse either me, some of the company, or even passengers in the street; if any one casually happened to brush her in passing, she would give them a blow in the face, and then call upon me to stand kick and cuff for her, while she having stirred up the mischief, ran away, unconcerned at my fate in the mob: and in our private disputes, I have been beat by her, her mother, and a servant girl of her mother's, all at one time. Nay, she has frequently threatened both to destroy herself, and to murder me. A threat, she has since very nearly accomplished. "The night before this melancholy accident, I came home, to be sure not entirely sober: where not finding my wife, I went directly to her mother's, where I found her very drunk. It being night, her mother said it would not be proper to attempt taking her home in that condition; and therefore advised me to lie there that night, while she and her girl would go and sleep at my lodging. We did so. "Being now come to the unlucky day of my wife's death, I propose to be as particular in all my actions that day as recollection will enable me. "In the morning, after my wife's mother came back, we all breakfasted together at her lodgings. After breakfast, I went to Mr. _Clark_, Timber Merchant, in _St. Mary Axe_, to solicit for some _India Company's_ work: from whence I went to the _Mansion House_ alehouse, and drank a pint of beer. I then intended to go to work at Mr. _Perry's_ in _Noble-street_, but it being near dinner time, I stopped at the _Bell_, opposite his house, for another pint of beer, where meeting some acquaintance eating beef-stakes, I dined with them. As I was eating, in came my wife and her mother; she at first abused me for being at the alehouse, but they afterward, in great seeming good humour, drank with me, and as they wanted money, I gave my wife two shillings, and lent her mother a six and ninepenny piece, which I had just received in change for half a guinea, from the master of the public house. As the day was now far spent, and as I was pleased with the prospect of working for the _East-India Company_, I thought it not worth while to begin a day's work so late. I therefore went to _Smithfield_, to see how the horse-market went. From thence I went to _Warwick-lane_, to see for a young man, whom I had promised to get to work for the company also. I took him to Mr. _Clark_, in _St. Mary Axe_; and afterward went with him to two or three places more, the last place was the _Nagg's Head_ in _Hounsditch_; and about half an hour after nine o'clock went home. "When I came there, I went in at the back door, which is under the gateway; and which used to be only on a single latch, for the conveniency of my lodgers: I went up to my room door, but finding it fast, came down stairs again. There was then some disturbance over the way in _Aldersgate-street_, which I walked over to see the meaning of, imagining my wife might chance to be engaged in it. Not finding her in the croud, I returned, and went up stairs again; while I was on the stairs, I heard my wife cough, by which I knew she was at home. Finding my door still fast, I knocked and called again; still she would not answer. I then said "_Sally_, I know you are at home, and I desire you would open the door, if you will not I will burst it open." Nobody yet answering, I set my back against the door, and forced it open. Upon this she jumped out of bed; I immediately began to undress me, by slipping off my coat and waistcoat, saying at the same time "_Sally_, what makes you use me so? you follow me wherever I go to abuse me, and then lock me out of my lodging; I never serve you so." On this she flew upon me, called me a scoundrel dog, said she supposed I had been with some of my whores; and so saying, tore my shirt down from the bosom: on this, I pushed her down. She then ran to the chimney corner, and snatched up several things, which I successively wrested from her: in the skuffle a table and a screen tumbled down. At length she struck me several blows with a hand-brush; and while I was struggling to get it from her, she cried out several times----"Indeed, indeed, I will do so no more."----When I got the brush from her, which I did with some difficulty, I gave her a blow with it, and then concluded she would be easy. She sat down on the floor by the cupboard door, tearing her shift from her back, which had been rent in the skirmish; I sat down on the opposite side of the bed, with my back towards her, preparing to go into it; and seeing her fling the remnants of her shift about in so mad a manner, I said, '_Sally_, you are a silly girl, why don't you be easy?' On that she suddenly rose up, and with something gave me a blow on the head, which struck me down. I fell on the bedstead with my head against the folding doors of it. I imagine she was then afraid she had killed me, for I heard her cry two or three times----_O save me, save me, save me!_ How she went out of the window it is impossible for me to say, in the condition she left me in; but from her cries I supposed her gone that way; and in my consternation when I rose, I ran down one pair of stairs, where, not knowing how to behave, I went up again, and sat me down on the bed from whence I rose. In this position Mr. _Clark_, the constable, and the numbers who followed him, found me. He said, _Daniels you have stabbed your wife, and flung her out of the window_. I replied, _No, Mr. Clark, I have not, she threw herself out_. Mr. _Clark_ took a candle, and examined all the room in search of blood, but found none; and lucky it was for me that neither of our noses happened to bleed in the fray, though mine was subject to bleed on any trifling occasion. He then went to the window, where he found a broken piece of a saucer, and asked what it was? I said, I did not know; but recollected afterward, that it was what I fed my squirrel in; though I know not how it came broke; it was whole that day. "From thence I was taken to the _Compter_, and the public are already acquainted with the proceedings on my trial: when I was condemned for the supposed fact. "I am informed that the next morning they found a pair of small watchmaker's plyers bloody in the window, which were then considered as a great proof of my guilt. These plyers were what I have mended my squirrel's chain with whenever he broke loose, which was sometimes the case. How they should be bloody, as God is my Saviour, I cannot answer; but as no wound was perceived on the body, they were not produced as evidence against me. However, when my wife was brought up from the street, it is said she was blooded, and that the bason was put in the window where these plyers were found. It is therefore possible that, in such confusion, a drop or two might accidentally be spilt upon them; more especially when we consider the tumult of a morning's exhibition of the dead body, for penny gratuities, by the unprincipled mother of it. "In the course of my trial, the coroner laid some stress on the absence of _Charles Hilliard_, the lodger under my room; but Mr. _Hilliard_ appeared however before the sessions were concluded, to save his recognizances: he then deposed before the judges, all he knew relative to the accident; which being materially the same with the evidence he gave at the coroner's inquest, and as I have no reason to wish it suppressed, I made it my business to request Mr. _Hilliard_ to recollect the whole of it, which he was kind enough to give me in writing; and here it is. "_Charles Hilliard_ gave evidence before the coroner as follows. "That Mrs. _Daniels_ came into his apartment about eight o'clock in the evening to light her candle, and then went up to bed: that about ten Mr. _Daniels_ came home, and knocked at the door, calling _Sally_, two or three times: that not being admitted, he broke the door open: that then he thought he heard a knocking to make good the breach, after which some words ensued between the parties, and blows followed: that he heard Mrs. _Daniels_ ask forgiveness, saying, she would never do the like again: that _Daniels_ should say--_Damn my breeches, what do you shut me out for? don't I pay my rent?_ after which he heard a rumbling in the room, but did not distinguish any thing more, to the best of his knowledge, till Mrs. _Daniels_ fell from the window. "I lived in Mr. _Daniel's_ apartment but little time, in which I heard many quarrels and debates between them, which frequently happened by her aggravation and ill-treatment of him." "I was sentenced to be executed on _Monday, September 21_; the coronation-day was to be the day following, which led some persons into a conjecture, that this august solemnity was the cause of the first respite, which made way for my pardon. This however was a mistaken opinion, for I owed the redemption from my hard fate entirely to the kind Christian offices of my friends who, from a persuasion of my innocence, applied to the worthy magistrates of _London_; from whom, the circumstances of my situation were represented to his Majesty. The gracious condescension of this best of Kings, in attending to the representations made to him on my account, will never be forgotten, while I enjoy that remnant of life I now owe to his goodness! "I was condemned on the _Friday_; on the _Saturday_ I was comforted with the news of a respite until the _Friday_ following: I then heard of a farther respite, and was appointed to die with _Campbel_ and _Gurnet_; before the execution of whom, I was again granted a longer time: and then my execution was to be forborn until farther orders. I received my pardon on _Thursday, October 28_, and was discharged from confinement _Sunday, November 1_. "From the time of receiving sentence, to the time of my receiving a full pardon was six weeks close confinement in the cells of _Newgate_; where, by the terms of sentence, I was to be subsisted on bread and water only. I can however affirm with truth, that, conscious of my own integrity, not all the terrors of so ignominious a death, and the stamp of infamy attending it, ever could depress my spirits from the first to the last. I relied on the justice of God, who could penetrate beyond the ken of short-sighted man; and with the utmost reverence would I acknowledge the extension of his providence toward me, in protecting me in this life, from the consequences of premature judgment. I have been frail in common with the rest of mankind; and I have severely suffered. However, as my misfortunes in marriage drove me into carelessness and excesses, which, together with them, have been the ruin of me; I hope that so remarkable a deliverance from the brink of the precipice of eternity, has called home my scattered thoughts, and will make me more sober and industrious than I have heretofore been. I now conclude this narrative with the most thankful acknowledgments to all whose kindness has been instrumental in my deliverance, from the awful fate from which I so hardly escaped." The reader has now seen what the poor fellow had to offer for his own justification. It may not be improper just to add a few remarks, first, on the probabilities and improbabilities of the alledged fact, and then to compare the fair result of such examination with the tenor of the depositions on his trial; these will tend greatly to clear our conceptions with regard to the man. The window of _Daniels's_ room has two casements folding against each other, with garden pots before them. One of these casements only, used to be opened; the other being in general kept shut. These casements were each about sixteen or seventeen inches wide, and the window was about a yard and a quarter high. When this accident happened, one casement was open, the other shut, as usual; consequently the opening _then_ through the window, was about sixteen or seventeen inches wide, and a yard and quarter high. Through this space a man was to thrust a woman nearly as strong as himself! If such a thing had been attempted, the following consequences must be incontestably allowed to ensue. I. The woman would resist the attempt. II. When persons struggle to avoid imminent danger, and are driven to despair, they are capable of a surprising degree of exertion, beyond their ordinary abilities. III. This woman would therefore have continued in so narrow a gap a very considerable while before she could have been forced through, and would all that time have uttered cries, intreaties, and exclamations, too expressive of her situation to have been mistaken by the neighbours and spectators. IV. Her resistance would have overturned the before-mentioned garden-pots, and would have shattered the glass of the casement that was shut, and even forced open, or broke the casement itself, which obstructed her passage. V. In breaking the glass of the window, her skin must have been greatly scratched and torn, and her limbs, naked as she was, have been otherwise greatly maimed and bruised. VI. The man who undertook to force her out, as he must have been greatly agitated himself by his passions; as he was very closely employed, on no very easy job; and as the actions of the suffering party cannot be supposed to be meerly defensive through the whole course of the fray; he must probably have been observed by some of the spectators at the instant of his effecting his purpose; and must positively have borne some very conspicuous marks of his helpmate's reciprocal assaults. The two first of these propositions will be universally granted. The third is contradicted by all the evidence on the trial, who unanimously agree, that the moment the woman was seen, she came through the window? and was only then heard to use expressions which _Daniels_ accounts for better than any one else. In reply to the fourth, the pots were not discomposed, nor the window broke, except one pane; and it does not appear that even that pane might not have been broke before. In answer to the fifth; the body, by the evidence of the surgeon, did not appear to have received any other damage than the natural consequences of so great a fall. As to the last; the man was not seen at the window at all: and as to any wounds or bruises sustained by him, the constable, when asked, whether he saw the blow on his head, which he affirmed to be given him by his wife? declared he did not. But he was not asked whether he looked for it; a question, it may be presumed, he would have answered in the negative. In such a situation, it is to be concluded, the poor fellow was little heard and less regarded, concerning whatever he might alledge in his own behalf. A man may be stunned by a blow that might not perhaps exhibit any remarkable appearance; and had it been seen, his account of it would have weighed but little. It is not even probable, had he knocked this woman on the head first, that he could have sent the body through the window so compleatly, as either by fright, or design, she accomplished, herself. But that she came there living, is past doubt. To conclude: The evidence against this unfortunate man, was only presumptive at most; and upon clear scrutiny is really presumptive of _nothing_: so that as he is discharged by royal authority, so has he also a just claim to an acquittal in the minds of all judicious and candid people. _FINIS._ 
61133	----	_THE HAPPY HOMICIDE_ BY FRANK BANTA It's not so bad, being on trial for murder. Of course, it's a little embarrassing--when the principal witness is the corpse! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Attendants pushing an ambulance cot wheeled what was left of murdered Fannie Bork into the center of the courtroom. The body was covered with a white sheet, except for the long, slim feet which were sticking out. Her toenails were painted red. Forty-year-old John Bork listened while the prosecutor read the indictment against him: "--and the same John Bork did on the twelfth day of March, 1986, fire a pistol at his wife, having then and there a long preconceived desire to kill her, and then and there did achieve his felonious intent, and did murder the same Fannie Bork." "John Bork, you have heard the indictment," stated the judge formally. "How do you wish to plead: Not guilty, no contest, or wait and see?" "I'll wait and see, your honor." "I thought you would," sighed the judge. "We haven't had a straight not-guilty plea in ages. Proceed, Mr. Prosecutor." "Roll in the Very Complicated Monstrous Proximilator machine," commanded the prosecutor. Two burly laborers, panting, rolled the machine on its creaky casters across the court room floor to Fannie's head. The machine was six feet tall, three feet wide, and twelve inches deep; on its face were forty-three meters and an on/off switch. The laborers plugged the machine's line cord into an outlet and got out of the way. * * * * * The prosecutor flipped the switch from off to on. Then he folded his arms and waited until all the forty-three meters ceased their dancing and went back to zero. That done, he turned to the jury. "In this machine rests the proof of the crime charged against the defendant," he said dramatically, patting the smooth gray side of the machine. "This machine will tell you _all_ you need to know about the murder. Oh, to be sure, I shall show you the corpus delicti presently; but _why_ and _how_ this crime was committed shall be revealed only by this machine's stimulation of the deceased's brain. _She will herself relate who her killer was!_" There was a shocked gasp from the jurors and the spectators in the court room when the prosecutor pulled back the sheet from the body, uncovering her head and chest. "The jury will note that the government has removed her skull down to her eyebrows so that we could contact her brain's recordings with the machine's probe. The jury will also note the four bullet holes in the deceased's chest, which we intend to prove were put there by John Bork." "I missed twice," said John Bork, nodding. "Silence!" shouted the suddenly enraged judge. "This court depends entirely on the Very Complicated Monstrous Proximilator machine for its evidence." He turned to the jury, still seething. "The jury will completely disregard the defendant's utterly uncalled-for admission. Proceed, Mr. Prosecutor." The prosecutor fastened the ground cable of the machine to Fannie's big toe by means of an immense alligator clamp. Then taking the bulbous radio-frequency probe in his hand he said portentously, "Now we shall search for the memory-recording of Fannie Bork's moment of death!" He touched her brain lightly with the probe. Those seeing it for the first time were chilled by the dead body's sudden animation. "Oh, Winston!" cooed dead Fannie Bork, her aims raising from the cot to embrace an invisible something. She kissed. "You tastes good!" The prosecutor moved the probe. "George?" called Fannie, her slim arms searching at the side of her cot. "I didn't hear you leave, George." She relaxed. "Oh, I hope he found his shoes." "He didn't though," contributed John Bork. The prosecutor moved the probe, hurrying on by emotion-stirred quavers: Angelo, Moose, Maudie, Deacon and Quasimodo. "Speed, darlin', what's your _hurry_?" asked Fannie in her plaintive, metallic voice as she held out her hands beseechingly. "I never got to know him very well," interjected John Bork. "His visits were all so short." The prosecutor moved his probe. "Bork! Bork!" "Ah," said the prosecutor. "Now we are getting down to cases. I shall try that spot again." "Bork! Bork!" "She's not calling for me," advised Bork. "She just had a cold that week." * * * * * The prosecutor moved his probe. At each touch, the body broke into quaking action: Ferdinand, Frenchy, Yacob; Peyton, Rebel, Young foo Yum; and John. "Ah!" said the prosecutor. "Here we are now." "John!" whispered Fannie. "John, John, John! Oh, Johnny Johnson, my love! _Stay_ here forever!" "Wife's other John," said John Bork succinctly. The prosecutor moved his probe: Sinclair, Henrik, Sitting Duck, Oscar, Kenny, and Aqueduct. "That Aqueduct is Sitting Duck's educated brother," confided John Bork. "Before he went to Princeton his name was Wet Duck." The prosecutor moved his probe: Pease, Reese and Meese, Acuff, Eyolf and Beowulf; Bork! Bork! "That cough again?" muttered the prosecutor, ready to move on. "No, she's calling for me that time," corrected Bork. "How can you tell?" "It has more of a snarl in it than her cough has." The prosecutor tried the spot once more. "Bork! Bork! Why are you pointing that at me, Bork? What are you going to _do_, Bork?" She held out her hands to ward him off. "Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!" Then she dropped her hands. "I missed twice," John said, nodding. "The defendant will keep his lousy confessions to himself!" shrieked the judge. "I will not have the importance of our Very Complicated Monstrous Proximilator machine vitiated by these unwanted confessions!" Bork shrugged. "I just wanted to clear up a couple of details, your honor. I just like to be tidy." "We don't _need_ your help," responded the judge crushingly. "The Very Complicated Monstrous Proximilator machine tells us _all_ we want to know." He turned to the prosecutor. "You may proceed." "The state rests." * * * * * Bork's lawyer advised the court that no defense would be presented. The prosecutor exhorted the jury that its duty was plain. The judge gave final instructions, and the jury filed out. It returned in four minutes. "Gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict in such a gratifyingly short space of time?" the judge asked, beaming. The foreman arose. "We have, your honor." "Just for the record, what is your verdict?" twinkled the judge. "Not guilty, your honor." The prosecutor jumped up. "Why, that can't be!" he shouted. "It's a _prima facie_ case, unrefuted and therefore patent. What else do you _need_?" "Yeah!" agreed the judge, outraged. "We need some plain, old-fashioned evidence of a crime," answered the juryman, unperturbed. "Old-fashioned?" The fuming prosecutor rejected the heresy, pushing it away from him with both hands. "This is all unscientific now," he warned. "The Very Complicated Monstrous Proximilator machine--especially the new model with the forty-three meters which replaces the old thirty-nine meter machine--is the _ne plus ultra_ of justice!" "Oh, no, it isn't," dissented the foreman. "Did your evidence place the deadly weapon in the defendant's hand? Did your evidence even tend to show the holes in the woman's chest were _made_ by a gun? She said nothing about a weapon, if you will recall. She merely said, 'Why are you pointing that at me, Bork? What are you going to do, Bork?'" "But he had plenty of motive," pleaded the prosecutor. "Oh, we'll go along with _that_," assented the foreman. "And the defendant admitted it!" pursued the prosecutor triumphantly. The foreman shook his head. "Admissions don't count. The judge said so himself." "So even though you know he's guilty," the prosecutor said hollowly, "you're going to let him go?" "That's right," agreed the foreman happily, and cleared his throat. "We, the jury," he pronounced, "find this fellow innocent of what he did!" 
33207	----	produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) THE PERFUME OF EROS By Mr Saltus IMPERIAL PURPLE THE POMPS OF SATAN MARY MAGDALEN A TRANSACTION IN HEARTS THE PHILOSOPHY OF DISENCHANTMENT THE PACE THAT KILLS THE ANATOMY OF NEGATION PURPLE AND FINE WOMEN MR. INCONT'S MISADVENTURE THE TRUTH ABOUT TRISTOEM VARICK LOVE AND LORE THE STORY WITHOUT A NAME EDEN In Preparation SCAFFOLDS AND ALTARS The Perfume of Eros A FIFTH AVENUE INCIDENT By EDGAR SALTUS New York A. WESSELS COMPANY 1905 Copyrighted 1905 by EDGAR SALTUS Printed October, 1905 PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS BROOKLYN, N. Y. THE FACTS IN THE CASE TABLE OF CONTENTS THE FACTS IN THE CASE CHAPTER PAGE I. A MAN OF FASHION 9 II. THE POCKET VENUS 19 III. THE EX-FIRST LADY 32 IV. ENCHANTMENT 44 V. MARIE CHANGES HER NAME 52 VI. THE YELLOW FAY 63 VII. SWEET-AND-TWENTY 71 VIII. TWO IN A TURRET 80 IX. FANNY CHANGES HER CLOTHES 89 X. A VICTIM 101 THE GENERAL SESSIONS CHAPTER PAGE I. DISENCHANTMENT 111 II. THE MOTE IN THE EYE 121 III. THE GATES OF LIFE 133 IV. THE RETURN OF THE YELLOW FAY 144 V. EXIT FANNY 156 VI. WHAT THE PAPERS SAID 166 VII. HELD WITHOUT BAIL 177 VIII. THE DEFENDANT TO THE BAR 191 IX. THE TWELFTH JUROR 202 X. THE VERDICT 219 THE PERFUME OF EROS CHAPTER I A MAN OF FASHION "Royal," said the man's mother that evening, "are you still thinking of Fanny Price?" It was in Gramercy Park. As you may or may not know, Gramercy Park is the least noisy spot in the metropolitan Bedlam. Without being unreasonably aristocratic it is sedate and what agents call exclusive. The park itself is essentially that. Its design is rather English. The use is restricted to adjoining residents. About it is a fence of high iron. Within are trees, paths, grasses, benches, great vases and a fountain. But none of the usual loungers, none of the leprous men, rancid women, and epileptic children that swarm in other New York squares. Yet these squares are open to all. To enter this park you must have a key. By day it is a playground. Nurse-maids come there with little boys and girls, the subdued, undemonstrative, beautifully dressed children of the rich. At night it is empty as a vacant bier. In a house that fronted the north side Royal Loftus lived with his mother, a proud, arrogant woman socially known to all, but who socially knew but few. Behind her, in the shade of the family tree, was her dead lord, Royal's father and, more impressively still, the latter's relatives, the entire Loftus contingent, a set of people super-respectable, supernally rich. She too was rich. She wore a wig, walked with a staff, spoke with a Mayfair intonation in a high-pitched voice, and, in the amplitudes of widowhood and wealth, entertained frequently but cared only for her son. On this evening the two were seated together in a drawing-room that faced the park. The walls, after a fashion of long ago, were frescoed. The ceiling too was frescoed. The furniture belonged also to an earlier day. The modern note in the room was the absence of chandeliers and the appearance of Royal Loftus, who, in a Paris shirt and London clothes, was contemplating his painted nails. At his feet was an Ardebil rug which originally had cost a small fortune and now was worth a big one. In allusion to it a girl to whom he had handed out the usual "You don't care for me," had retorted, "Not care for you! Why, Royal, I worship the rug you tread on." That girl was Fanny Price. "No," he answered in reply to his mother's question. The answer was strangely truthful. Fanny Price had tantalized him greatly. Semi-continuously he had thought of her for a long time. But not matrimonially. To him matrimony meant always one woman more and usually one man less. He had no wish to dwindle. When he was fifty he might, perhaps, to make a finish, marry some girl who wanted to begin. But that unselfishness was remote. He was quite young; what is worse, he was abominably good-looking. Fancy Aramis in a Piccadilly coat. That was the way he looked. His features were chiseled. On his lip was a mustache so slight that it might have been made with a crayon. His hair was black. His eyes were blue. Where they were not blue they were white, very white. They were wonderful eyes. With them he had done a great deal of execution. At the time they rather haunted a young woman who moved in another sphere and whose acquaintance he had made quite adventurously. The name of this young woman was Marie Durand. It was of the latter, not of Fanny Price, that he was thinking. "No," he repeated. "But was it for Annandale that you asked her for tonight?" "How perfectly absurd of you, Royal. Have you forgotten that he is in love with Sylvia? I asked her partly for you, partly for Orr." "Is he coming too! Good Lord! it is going to be ghastly." But at the side of the room a portière was being drawn and a servant announced: "Miss Waldron." With the charming manner of the thoroughbred New York girl a young woman entered. She was tall, willowy, with a face such as those one used to see in keepsakes--delightful things which now, like so many other delightful things, are seen no more. As she approached Mrs. Loftus, who had risen to greet her, she made a little courtesy. "Sylvia, this is so dear of you. And is your mother very well?" Again the portière was drawn. A voice announced: "Miss Price." Then there appeared a girl adorably constructed--constructed, too, to be adored. She was slight and very fair. Her mouth resembled the red pulp of some flower of flesh. Her eyes were pools of purple, her hair a turban of gold. Cannibalistically Loftus looked the delicious apparition up and down. He could have eaten it. "Mr. Annandale," the voice announced. A man, big and blond, with a cavalry mustache and an amiable, aimless air, strolled in. "Mr. Melanchthon Orr." On the heels of Annandale came a cousin of Miss Waldron, a lawyer by trade, a man with a bulldog face that was positively attractive. There were more how-do-you-do's, the usual platitudes, interrupted by the opening of doors at the further end of the room, where a butler, a squad of lackeys behind him, disclosed himself in silent announcement of dinner. After the general move which then ensued and hosts and guests were seated at table, Orr created an immediate diversion by calling to Fanny Price and telling her that shortly she was to marry. "Yes," he continued, "and my cousin Sylvia is to marry also, though not so soon; but either Annandale or Royal will never marry at all." Bombarded by sudden questions Orr gazed calmly about. "How do I know? Miranda told me. Miranda the spook. She charged five dollars for the information. If you like to make it up to me, I shall not mind in the least. On the contrary. You see, Mrs. Loftus," Orr added, turning to his hostess, "I happened, when I went to her, to have your very kind invitation for this evening in my pocket, and, as she wanted something to psychometrize, I gave her that. She held it to her forehead and said, 'I see you in the house of an elegant lady'--that is you, Mrs. Loftus; yes, there is no doubt about it--'and there are present two young ladies, one fair, one dark, and two gentlemen; one of the gentlemen will never marry, but the dark young lady will marry in two years and the fair young lady in one. Five dollars. Thank you. Next.'" "Did she say nothing about me except that I am an 'elegant lady'?" Mrs. Loftus, with a pained laugh and a high voice, inquired. "Did she say whom I am to marry?" Fanny Price asked, smiling, as she spoke, at Royal. "But, Melanchthon, surely you do not believe in these things?" said Sylvia gravely. "Of course he does not," Loftus exclaimed. "He does not believe in anything. Do you, Orr?" "I believe in a great many things," the lawyer replied. "I have precisely three hundred and sixty-five beliefs--one for every day in the year." "When the twenty-ninth of February comes around how do you manage then?" said Fanny. "Yes," said Annandale, "and how about April first?" Orr raised a finger. "Jest if you will. But beliefs are a great comfort, or would be among people like you who have none except in fashion, and there is the oddity of it, for belief in this sort of thing is very fashionable now, particularly in London. Yes, indeed, Lady Cloden--you remember her, she was Clara Hastings--well, she went to a spook in Tottenham Court Road, and the spook told her that she would have twins. Immediately she had herself insured. In London, you know, you can be insured against anything. The twins appeared and she got £5,000. Belief in this sort of thing is therefore not merely fashionable but convenient." In the ripple of laughter which followed the logic, Orr turned to Mrs. Loftus, Annandale to Miss Waldron, Loftus to Fanny Price. "You take very kindly to snubbing, don't you?" said the latter. "I?" "Oh, pooh! The other day I saw Mr. Royal Loftus trying to scrape acquaintance with a young person in the street. I never laughed more in my life. She would not look at you. Is that sort of thing amusing? Why don't you take a girl of your size?" Loftus looked into Fanny's eyes. "If you want to know, because you are all so deuced prim." "Ah!" and Fanny made a tantalizing little face, showing, as she did so, the point of her tongue. "Now tell me, what makes you think so?" Across the table Annandale was talking to Sylvia Waldron. His manner was rather earnest, but his utterance had become a trifle thick. "Oh, Arthur," the girl at last interrupted him. "Don't drink any more. You have had five glasses of champagne already." Heroically Annandale put his glass down. "Since you wish it, I won't. But it does not hurt me. I can stand anything." "I am afraid it may grow on you." Annandale laughed. "Grow on me," he repeated. "I like that. Why, I am cultivating it." Miss Waldron laughed too. "Yes, but you know you must not. I won't let you." Then at once, with that tact which was part of her, she changed the subject. "Doesn't Fanny look well tonight?" "Very. She is the prettiest girl in New York. But you are the best and the dearest. What is more, you are an angel." "To you I want to try to be." "Only," resumed Annandale with a spark of the wit which is born of champagne, "don't try to be a saint--it is a step backward." "Yes, Mrs. Loftus," Orr was saying, "Miranda is fat, very fat. All mediums are. The fatter they are the more confidence you may have." Then there was more small talk. Courses succeeded each other. Sweets came and went. Presently Mrs. Loftus looked circuitously about and slowly arose. When she and the girls had gone and the men were reseated Loftus turned to Orr. "Did the spook say anything else?" Orr was selecting a cigar from a cabinet on wheels which a servant trundled about. He chose and lighted one before he replied. Then he looked at Loftus. "Yes, she told me that she saw--" Orr paused. The cigar had gone out. He lighted it again. "She told me that she saw death hereabouts." Loftus was also lighting a cigar. "Then I too am a spook," he replied. "I foretold that you would say something ghastly." "But, my dear fellow," Orr rejoined, "truth is always that. People fancy that it is made of lace and pearls like a girl on her wedding day. It is not that at all. It is just what you call it. It is ghastly. Read history. Any reliable work is but a succession of groans. The more reliable it is the more groans there will be." Annandale, who had been helping himself to brandy, interrupted. "Talking of reading things, I saw somewhere that after some dinner or other, when the women had gone, a chap began on a rather--well, don't you know, a sort of barnyard story and the host, who could not quite stomach it, said: 'Suppose we continue the conversation in the drawing-room?' So, Royal, what do you say? If Orr is going to shock us, suppose we do." Loftus with a painted finger-tip flipped the ashes from his cigar. "I fear that I have lost the ability to be shocked, but not the ability to be bored." Yet presently, after another cigar and conscious perhaps that Fanny Price, though often exasperating, never bored, he returned with his guests to the drawing-room. CHAPTER II THE POCKET VENUS "How do you like my hat?" said Fanny to Sylvia. Since the dinner a week had gone. The two girls were in Irving Place. Irving Place is south of Gramercy Park. To the west are the multiple atrocities of Union Square, to the east are the nameless shames of Third avenue. Between the two Irving Place lies, a survival of the peace of old New York. At the lower end are the encroaching menaces of trade, but at the upper end, from which you enter Gramercy Park, there is a quiet, pervasive and almost provincial. It was here that Sylvia Waldron lived. People take a house for six months or an apartment for a year and call it a home. That is a base use for a sacred word. A home is a place in which you are born, in which your people die and your progeny emerge. A home predicates the present, but particularly the past and with it the future. Any other variety of residence may be agreeable or the reverse, but it is not a home. In Irving Place there are homes. Among them was the house in which Sylvia Waldron lived. It had been in her family for sixty years. In London a tenure such as that is common. In New York it is phenomenal. To Sylvia the phenomenon was a matter of course. What amazed her were the migrations of others. Of Fanny, for instance. Each autumn Sylvia would say to her, "Where are you to be?" And Fanny, who at the time might be lodged in a hotel, or camping with a relative, or visiting at Tuxedo, or stopping in Westchester, never could tell. But by December the girl and her mother would find quarters somewhere and there remain until that acrobat, summer, turned handsprings into town and frightened them off. Summer had not yet come. But May had and, with it, an eager glitter, skies of silk, all the caresses and surrenders of spring. The season was becoming to Fanny. She fitted in it. She was a young Venus in Paris clothes--Aphrodite a maiden, touched up by Doucet. In her manner was a charm quite incandescent. In her voice were intonations that conveyed the sensation of a kiss. Her eyes were very loquacious. She could, when she chose, flood them with languors. She could, too, charge them with rebuke. You never knew, though, just what she would do. But you always did know what Sylvia would not. Sylvia suggested the immateriality that the painters of long ago gave to certain figures which they wished to represent as floating from the canvas into space. You felt that her mind was clean as wholesome fruit, that her speech could no more weary than could a star, that her heart, like her house, was a home. She detained, but Fanny allured. In spite of which or perhaps precisely because of their sheer dissimilarity the two girls were friends. But association weaves mysterious ties. It unites people who otherwise would come to blows. Fanny and Sylvia had been brought up together. The mesh woven in younger days was about them still, and on this particular noon in May they made a picture which, while contrasting, was charmful. "You really like my hat?" The hat was gray. The girl's dress was gray. The skirt was of the variety known as trotabout. The whole thing was severely plain, yet astonishingly smart. Sylvia was also in street dress. The latter was black. They were in the parlor. For in New York there are still parlors. And why not? A parlor--or parloir--is a talking-place. Yet in this instance not a gay place. It was spacious, sombre, severe. "And now," said Fanny, after the hat had been properly praised, "tell me when it is to be?" "When is what to be?" "You and Arthur?" "Next autumn." "I shall send a fish knife," said Fanny, savorously. "A fish knife always looks so big and costs so little. Though if I could I would give you a diamond crown." "Give me your promise to be bridesmaid, and you will have given me what I want from you most." "But what am I to wear? And oh, Sylvia, how am I to get it? I don't dare any more to so much as look in on Annette, or Juliette, or Marguerite. There are streets into which I can no longer go. I told Loftus that, and he said--so sympathetically too--'Ah, is it memories that prevent you?' 'Rubbish,' I told him, 'it's bills.'" "Fanny! How could you? He might have offered to pay them." "If he had only offered to owe them!" Fanny laughed as she spoke and patted her perfect skirt. "But he has other fish to fry. Do you know the other day I saw him--" But what Fanny had seen was never told, or at least not then. Annandale was invading the parlor. "Conquering hero!" cried Fanny. "I am here congratulating Sylvia." "I congratulate myself that you are. I have a motor at the door, and I propose to take you both to Sherry's, afterward, if you like, to the races. There you may congratulate me." "What is this about Sherry's?" Again the parlor was invaded. This time by Sylvia's mother. She had bright cheeks, bright eyes, bright hair. In her voice was indulgence, in her manner ease. She gave a hand to Fanny, the other to Annandale. "In my day," she resumed, "girls did not go lunching without someone to look after them." "They certainly did not go to Sherry's," said Annandale. "There was no Sherry's to go to. But why won't you come with us?" "Thank you, Arthur. It is not because Fanny or Sylvia needs looking after. But when I was their age anything of the sort would have been thought so common. Yet then, what was common at that time seems to have been accepted since. Now, there is a chance to call me old-fashioned." "I can do better than that," said Annandale, "I can call you grande dame." "Yes," Fanny threw in, "and that, don't you think, is so superior to being merely--ahem--demned grand." "Why, Fanny!" And Mrs. Waldron, at once amused at the jest and startled at the expression, shook her finger at her. But Annandale hastened to her rescue. "Fanny is quite right, Mrs. Waldron. You meet women nowadays whose grandfathers, if they had any, were paving the streets while your own were governing the country and who, just because they happen to be beastly rich, put on airs that would be comical in an empress. Now, won't you change your mind and come with us? At Sherry's there are always some choice selections on view." "You are not very tempting, Arthur. But if the girls think otherwise, take them. And don't forget. You dine with us tonight." Thereat, presently, after a scurry through sunshine and streets, Sherry's was reached. There Annandale wanted to order a châteaubriand. The girls rebelled. A maitre d'hôtel suggested melons and a suprème with a bombe to follow. Annandale turned to him severely. "Ferdinand, I object to your telling me what you want me to eat." "Let me order," said Sylvia. "Fanny, what would you like?" "Cucumbers, asparagus, strawberries." "Chicken?" Fanny nodded. "Yes," said Annandale to the chastened waiter, "order that and some moselle, and I want a Scotch and soda. There's Orr," he interrupted himself to announce. "I wonder what he is doing uptown? And there's Loftus." At the mention of Orr, Fanny, who had been eying an adjacent gown, evinced no interest. But at the mention of Loftus she glanced about the room. It was large, high-ceiled, peopled with actresses and men-about-town, smart women and stupid boys, young girls and old beaux. From a balcony there dripped the twang of mandolins. In the air was the savor of pineapple, the smell of orris, the odor of food and flowers. On entering Sylvia had stopped to say a word at one table, Fanny had loitered at another. Then in their trip to a table already reserved, a trip conducted by the maitre d'hôtel whom Annandale had rebuked, murmurs trailed after them, the echo of their names, observations profoundly analytical. "That's Fanny Price, the great beauty." "That's Miss Waldron, who is engaged to Arthur Annandale." "That is Annandale there"--the usual subtleties of the small people of a big city. Now, at the entrance, Orr and Loftus appeared. "Shall I ask them to join us?" Annandale asked. "Yes, do," said Fanny. "I like Mr. Orr so much." But Loftus, who, with his hands in his pockets, a monocle in his eye, had been looking about with an air of great contempt for everybody, already with Orr was approaching. On reaching the table very little urging was required to induce them to sit, and, when seated they were, Loftus was next to Fanny. "What are you doing uptown at this hour?" Annandale asked Orr, who had got between Loftus and Sylvia. "I thought you lawyers were all so infernally busy." "Everybody ought to be," Orr replied. "Although an anarchist who had managed to get himself locked up, and whom I succeeded in getting out, confided to me that only imbeciles work. By way of exchange I had to confide to him that it is only imbeciles that do not." "Now that," said Annandale, who had never done a stroke of work in his life, "is what I call a very dangerous theory." "A theory that is not dangerous," Orr retorted, "can hardly be called a theory at all." With superior tact Sylvia intervened. "But what is anarchy, Melanchthon? Socialism I know about, but anarchy--?" "To put it vulgarly, I drink and you pay." "But suppose I am an anarchist?" "Then Sherry pays." "But supposing he is an anarchist?" "Then there is a row. And there will be one. The country is drifting that way. It will, I think, be bloody, but I think, too, it will be brief. Anarchists, you know, maintain that of all prejudices capital and matrimony are the stupidest. What they demand is the free circulation of money and women. As a nation, we are great at entertaining, but we will never entertain that." "Why, then, did you not let the beggar rot where he was?" Annandale swiftly and severely inquired. "Oh, you know, if I had not got him out someone else would have, and I thought it better that the circulation of money should proceed directly from his pocket to mine." "You haven't any stupid prejudices yourself, that's clear," said Annandale, helping himself as he spoke to more Scotch. "Sylvia," he continued, "if I am ever up for murder I will retain Melanchthon Orr." Orr laughed. "That retainer will never reach me. You would not hurt a fly." "Wouldn't I?" And Annandale assumed an expression of great ferocity. "You don't know me. I can imagine circumstances in which I could wade in gore. By the way, I have ordered a revolver." "What!" "Yes, a burglar got in my place the night before last and woke me up. If he comes back and wakes me up again I'll blow his head off." Sylvia looked at him much as she might at a boastful child. "Yes, yes, Arthur, but please don't take so much of that whisky." "I think I will have a drop of it, if I may," said Loftus, who meanwhile had been talking to Fanny. In a moment he turned to her anew. "Where are you going this summer?" "To Narragansett. It is cool and cheap. Why don't you come?" "It is such a beastly hole." "Well, perhaps. But do you think you would think so if I were there?" "That would rather depend on how you treated me." "You mean, don't you, that it would rather depend on how I let you treat me?" Fanny, as she spoke, looked Loftus in the eyes and made a face at him. That face, Loftus, after a momentary interlude with knife and fork, tried to mimic. "If a chap gave you the chance you would drive him to the devil." On Fanny's lips a smile bubbled. She shook her pretty head. "No, not half so far. Not even so far as the other end of Fifth avenue, where I saw you trying to scrape acquaintance with that girl. Apropos. You might tell me. How are matters progressing? Has the castle capitulated?" "I haven't an idea what you are talking about." "That's right. Assume a virtue though you have it not. It's a good plan." "It does not appear to be yours." "Appearances may be deceptive." "And even may not be." Sylvia interrupted them. "What are you two quarreling about?" "Mr. Loftus does not like my hat. Don't you like it, Mr. Orr?" "I like everything about you, everything, from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet." "There!" exclaimed Fanny. "That is the way I like to have a man talk." "It is dreadfully difficult," Loftus threw in. "You seem to find it so," Fanny threw back. Sylvia raised a finger. "Mr. Loftus, if you do not stop quarreling with Fanny I will make you come and sit by me." "If I am to look upon that as a punishment, Miss Waldron," Loftus with negligent gallantry replied, "what would you have me regard as a reward?" "Arthur! Arthur!" Fanny cried. "Did you hear that? This man is making up to Sylvia." But Annandale did not seem in the least alarmed. He was looking about for Ferdinand. "Here," he began, when at last the waiter appeared. "You neglect us shamefully. We want some more moselle and more Scotch." "None for me," said Loftus rising. "I have an appointment." "Appointment," Fanny announced, "is very good English for _rendezvous_." "And _taisez-vous, mademoiselle_, is very good French for I wish it were with yourself." "I have not a doubt of it." "Fanny!" Sylvia objected. "You are impossible." "Yes," Fanny indolently replied. "Yet then, to be impossible and seem the reverse is the proper caper for a debutante. Heigho! I wish girls smoked here. I would give a little of my small change for a cigarette. Are you really off, Royal. Well, my love to the lady." CHAPTER III THE EX-FIRST LADY Loftus, letting himself into a hansom, sailed away. At Morris Park that afternoon there were to be races, and up the maelstrom of Fifth avenue came scudding motors, fleeting traps. As the hansom descended the current Loftus nodded to this acquaintance and to that, occasionally raising his hat as women smiled and bowed. Occasionally, too, he contemplated what he could of himself in the little mirror at the side of the cab. He looked triumphant and treacherous. Fanny, he reflected, was ideal. But exacting, ambitious even. She had a perfect mania for matrimony. There was another girl that he had in mind whom he fancied more reasonable. This other was Marie Durand. In just what way he had met her was never quite clear. Fanny, who had witnessed the preliminary skirmish, always believed that he had picked her up. Afterward, at the time of the trial, it was so reported. The report was false in addition to being vulgar. Marie Durand was not of that sort. There was nothing fast or flirtatious about her. But she was a human being. She had eyes. She had a heart. By nature she was sensitive. Moreover, she was but nineteen. Being human, sensitive, and not very old, having eyes to see and a heart that throbbed, she was impressionable and, to her misfortune, Loftus impressed her. Loftus was rather used to impressing people. He saw the girl on Fifth avenue, followed her home, learned her name--or thought he did--and sent her flowers every day until he saw her again, when he presumed to accost her. At that impertinence Marie tilted her nose and trotted on, distant, disdainful, demure. But not indifferent. Not oblivious either. Often she had seen him. Occasionally on a high drag behind a piebald four-in-hand. In crowded Fifth avenue, drags, with or without piebalds, are infrequent. This drag Marie had seen not merely tooling along the street but pictured in the press. With, of course, full accounts of the driver. As a consequence she knew who he was, knew that he was one of the rich young men of New York and that he moved and had his being in the upper circles. Marie's own sphere of life was obscure. She lived with her father in Gay street. Her father, a tailor by trade, was a naturalized Frenchman, a gaunt Gaul, who had a sallow face, walked with a stoop, complained of his heart and adored his daughter. To him she was a pearl, a _perle_, rather. For though he had been long in New York and spoke English well, he had never quite acquired the accent. Marie spoke English without any accent whatever. She also spoke French, sang in it, too, sang in Italian and, with a view to the lyric stage, or, more exactly, with the hope of studying for it abroad, was, at the time when this drama begins, taking lessons in what is termed the _bel canto_. But her aspirations, in so far as they concerned Europe, her father was unable to gratify. He could not let her go alone and he could not afford to throw up what he called his beesness. Here, then, was this girl, pretty as a picture, with a lovely contralto voice, with aspirations entirely worldly, with wings, you might say, cooped in Gay street, spiritually and mentally starved there. Gay street lies back of Jefferson Market. In shape a crescent, it curves briefly in a lost and dismal way through a region which, though but a block or two from Fifth avenue, is almost squalid. At one end of its short curve is a saloon, at the other an apothecary. It was from this apothecary that Loftus learned Marie's name--or thought he did. For inadvertently the man got things mixed as his drugs and supplied Loftus with the name of a young woman who lived in a house next to the one in which Loftus had seen the girl enter. What is more interesting is the fact that, though, while he was following her there, she had looked neither to the right nor to the left, or anywhere save straight ahead, she had been fully aware that he was behind her. How? We cannot tell. It is one of the mysteries of femininity. But once safely in, boldly she peeked out. Loftus was crossing the street. Presently he entered the shop. For what, it did not take Marie more than a minute to conjecture. Later in the day a motor van appeared in that street. On it was the name of a Broadway florist. Since the memory of man never before had such a thing happened. From the van a groom had hopped and, if you please, with roses. That, too, was phenomenal. Yet thereafter every day for a week there was the motor, the groom and flowers at a dollar and a half apiece. The recipient of these attentions was Miss Rebecca Cohen, the daughter of Mr. Abraham Cohen, who also, like Marie's father, was a tailor. Marie saw the van, divined the mistake, and, being as full of fun as a kitten, greatly enjoyed the continued humor of it. For still into that sordid street the flowers poured. Every day, to the unhallowed surprise of Mr. Cohen and to the equal bewilderment of his offspring, a box of radiant roses was handed out. In that surprise and bewilderment the neighborhood joined. Scandalized at the scandal Cohen questioned the groom, questioned the chauffeur. He might have saved himself the trouble. Then he inquired at the florist's. But there no one could be found who knew anything at all about anything whatever. Already he had questioned Rebecca. It seemed to him that in spite of her protests she must be engaged in some fathomless intrigue. But Rebecca, whose commercial instinct was beautifully developed, not only protested but appeased. She told her father that the roses were worth money. Furthermore, that which is worth money can be sold. Thereupon sold they were. But quite as inexplicably as the van had appeared so did its visits cease. When that happened Mr. Cohen felt and declared that he was robbed. He had come to regard the roses as assets. Marie meanwhile, whom the humor of the situation had amused, ended by worrying over it. She was a good girl, as such conscientious, and it troubled her, at first only a little and then very much, to think that Loftus must believe that she was knowingly accepting his flowers. Moreover, her father had commented upon them; in commenting he had wondered. Marie began to fear that Loftus might discover the mistake and turn in and inundate her. She did not know quite what to do. She thought of writing to him, very distantly, in the third person, or else anonymously. But the letter did not seem to get itself framed. Then, from thinking of that, she fell to thinking of him. To see him she had only to close her eyes. Once he visited her in dream. He came accompanied by butterflies that fluttered about her and changed into kisses on her lips. Again she fancied him much sought after by ladies and became hotly and unaccountably vexed at the idea. It would be so lovely to really know him, she always decided. But she did not see at all how that ever could come about. Yet, of course, it did come about. It came about, moreover, in a fashion as sordid as the street she lived in. That street, though sordid, is relatively silent. It is beyond, in Sixth avenue, that you get a sample of real New York noise. The slam-bang of the trains overhead, the grinding grunt of the surface cars, the demon draymen, the clanging motors, the ceaseless crowds, collaborate in an uproar beside which a bombardment is restful. But though the entire thoroughfare is appalling, Jefferson Market, behind which Gay street squats, is infernal. Loftus loathed it. Until he pursued the girl into its horrors never before had he been there. Nor, save for her, would he have returned. But return he did. For recompense he beheld her. She was strolling along, a roll of music under her arm, in the direction of Fifth avenue. It was there he attempted to accost her. Without deigning to seem even aware that he had presumed to do so, she passed on and, in passing, turned into Washington Square, where, ascending the steps of a house, she vanished. It was then three by the clock of a beautiful day in April. Loftus was as well able as another to put two and two together. He knew that young girls do not stroll about with a music roll under their arm for the fun of it. A music roll predicates lessons, and there where lessons are must also be a teacher. From that teacher he was unaware of any good and valid reason why he should not himself take lessons. But fate is not unrelenting. Of such toil he was spared. He spared himself too any further toil that day. He felt that he had done enough. He had quarried the girl again, stalked her to what was obviously a boarding-house. He turned on his heel. The next day he was back at that house, inquiring at the door. As a result he was shown into a shabby back parlor where he made the acquaintance of Mme. Machin, a tired old Frenchwoman, who, with rouge on her yellow cheeks, powder on her pointed nose, confided to him that she had been prima donna, though whether _assoluta_ or _dissoluta_ she omitted to state. But her antecedents, her possibilities as well, Loftus divined at a glance and, while he was at it, divining too, that, personally, she was no better, and, financially, no better off than the law allows, asked point-blank about the Miss Cohen who had come there at three the day before. Learning then from the ex-first lady that the girl's name was not Cohen but Durand, he damned the apothecary and offered a hundred dollars to be introduced. Poverty is not a crime. But it is rumored to be an incentive. The crime which Loftus proposed to Mme. Machin is one which the code does not specify and the law cannot reach. Knowing which, the woman may have been guilty of it before and, the opportunity occurring, was guilty again--salving her conscience, if she had a conscience, with the convenient, "Mon Dieu, il faut vivre!" Anyway, at the offer she did not so much as blink. She smiled very receptively and declared that she would be charmed. When, therefore, two days later Marie re-entered that shabby back parlor she found Loftus there. Generally the girl and the ex-first lady got to work at once, sometimes with the brindisi from "Lucrezia Borgia," sometimes with arias from "Aïda." Save themselves no one was ever present. Now at the unexpected spectacle of the man the cream of the girl's delicate skin suffused. It was as though there were claret in it. She had not an idea what to do and, before she could decide, ceremoniously, with due regard for the pomps of etiquette, Loftus had been introduced. If abrupt, the introduction was at least conventional, and Marie, who had not the remotest suspicion that it was all bought and paid for and who, if consciously startled, subconsciously was pleased, attributing the whole thing to accident and, flushing still, smiled and sat down. "I think," said Loftus, "that I have had the pleasure of seeing you before." At this inanity Marie looked first at him, then at the carpet. She did not know at all what he was saying. But in his voice was a deference, in his manner a sorcery and in his bearing and appearance something that went to her head. It was all very novel and delightful, and she flushed again. "Yes," Loftus resumed, "and when I did see you I committed a very grave offense. Can you forgive me?" For countenance sake the girl turned to Mme. Machin. But the ex-first lady, pretexting a pretext, had gone. "Can you?" Loftus requested. "Can you forgive?" Forgive indeed! Had she not so forgiven that she had almost wished a renewal of that grave offense? She did not answer. It was her face that spoke for her. But the silence Loftus affected to misconstrue. "Couldn't you try?" "Yes." The monosyllable fell from her softly, almost inaudibly. Yet for his purpose it sufficed. "Thank you. I hoped that you would. But will you let me tell you now how I came to behave as I did?" To this, timorously, with the slightest movement of her pretty head, the girl assented. "Because I could not help myself. Because at the first sight of you I knew that I loved you. Because I felt that I could never love anyone else." Marie started. She was crimson. Starting, she half got from her seat. Loftus caught at her hand. She disengaged it. But he caught at it again. "I love you," he continued, burning her with his words, with the contact of his fingers, that had intertwisted with hers. "Look at me, I love your eyes. Speak to me, I love your voice." But the door opened. Preceded by a precautionary roulade, the ex-first lady reappeared. "Allons!" she remarked to the ceiling. "Et maintenant, mademoiselle, au travail." Loftus stood up, took Marie's hand again, held it a second, nodded at the woman. In a moment he had gone. "Au revoir," the ex-first lady called after him. She turned to the girl. "A gallant monsieur. And good to look at." Then seating herself at the piano she attacked the brindisi from "Lucrezia." "Ah! the segreto!" she interrupted herself to exclaim, "il segreto per esser felice--the secret of happiness! Mais! There is but one! C'est l'amour! And with a gallant monsieur like that! And rich! C'est le rêve! N'est ce pas, mon enfant?" "Je vous en prie, madame," said Marie severely, or rather as severely as she could, for she was trembling with emotion, saturated with the love that had been thrown at her head, drenched with it, frightened too at the apperception of the secret which the aria that her teacher was strumming revealed. CHAPTER IV ENCHANTMENT Sailing in the hansom down Fifth avenue, Loftus thought of that first interview with the girl, of the den in which it had occurred and of his subsequent visits there. Since the introduction he had seen her three times, seen, too, of course, that she was not up to Fanny, but he had seen also that she was less ambitious, more tractable in every way. Besides, one is not loved every afternoon. To him that was the main point, and of that point he was now tolerably sure. Suddenly the hansom tacked, veered and landed him at the ex-first lady's door. "Bonjour, mon beau seigneur," the woman began when, presently, he reached her lair. "The little one will not delay." "And then?" "Be tranquil. I have other cats to whip." Mme. Machin was hatted and gloved. Loftus stuck his hand in his pocket. Mme. Machin was too genteel to notice. From the pocket he drew a roll of yellow bills. Mme. Machin affected entire unconcern. The bills he put in her paw. Mme. Machin was so entirely unconscious of the liberty that she turned to the mantel, picked up a bag of bead, opened it, took from it a little puff with which she dusted her nose. Then the puff went back into the bag. With it went the bills. "I run," she announced. She moved to the door. There, looking at Loftus over her shoulder, she stopped. "You come again?" For reply Loftus made a gesture. "Yes," said the woman. "Naturally. It depends. But let me know. It is more commodious. Pas de scandale, eh?" To this Loftus made no reply whatever. But his expression was translatable into "what do you take me for?" "Allez!" the ex-first lady resumed. "I have confidence." She opened the door and through it vanished. Loftus removed his gloves, seated himself at the piano, ran his fingers over the keys, struck a note which suggested another and attacked the waltz from "Faust." The appropriateness of it appealed to him. As he played he hummed. Then, passing upward with the score, he reached the "Salve Dimora," Faust's salute to Marguerite's home. But in the den where he sat the aria did not fit. He went back again to the waltz. Then, precisely as on the stage Marguerite appears, Marie entered. Loftus jumped up, went to her, took her hand. It was trembling. He led her to a sofa, seating himself at her side, her hand still in his. He looked at her. She had the prettiness and timidity of a kitten, a kitten's grace as well. Like a kitten, she could not have been vulgar or awkward had she tried. But association and environment had wrapped about her one of the invisible yet obvious mantles that differentiate class from class. Loftus was quite aware of that. He was, though, equally aware that love is a famous costumer. There are few mantles that it cannot remove and remake. That the girl loved him he knew. The tremor of her hand assured him more surely than words. None the less he asked her. It seemed to him only civil. But she did not answer. The dinginess of the den oppressed him. It occurred to him that it might be oppressing her. Again he inquired. Only the tremor of the hand replied. "Tell me," he repeated. The girl disengaged her hand. She looked down and away. "Won't you?" he insisted. "I ought not to," she said at last. "But why?" With her parasol the girl poked at the carpet. "Because it is not right. It is not right that I should." But at once, with a little convulsive intake of the breath, she added, "Yet I do." Then it seemed to her that the room was turning around, that the walls had receded, that there was but blankness. His lips were on hers. In their contact everything ceased to be save the consciousness of something so poignant, so new, that to still the pain of the joy of it she struggled to be free. Kissing her again Loftus let her go. Dizzily she got from the sofa. The parasol had fallen. Her hat was awry. To straighten it she moved to a mirror. Her face was scarlet. Instantly fear possessed her, fear not of him but of herself. With uncertain fingers she tried to adjust the hat. "I must go." But Loftus came to her. Bending a bit he whispered in her ear: "Don't go--don't go ever." Do what she might she could not manage with her hat. In the glass it was no longer that which she saw, nor her face, but an abyss, suddenly precipitate, that had opened there. "No, don't go," Loftus was saying. "I love you and you love me." It was, though, not love that was emotionalizing her then. It was fear. A fear of that abyss and of the lower depths beneath. "Don't go," Loftus reiterated. "Don't, that is, if you do love me; and if you do, tell me, will you be my wife?" At this, before her, in abrupt enchantment, the abyss disappeared. Where its depths had been were parterres of gems, slopes of asphodel, the gleam and brilliance of the gates of paradise. "Your wife!" The wonder of it was in her voice and marveling eyes. "Come." Taking her hand, Loftus led her to their former seat. "But----" "But what?" "How can I be your wife? I am nobody." "You are perfect. There is only one thing I fear--" Loftus hesitated. Nervously the girl looked at him. "Only one," he continued. "I am not and never shall be half good enough for you." "Oh!" "Never half enough." "Oh! How can you say that? It is not true. Could I care for you if it were?" "And you do?" "Don't you know it?" "Then don't go, don't go from me ever." "But----" "Yes, I know. You are thinking of your father, of whom you have told me; perhaps, too, of my mother, of whom I told you. When she knows you and learns to love you, as she will, we can be married before all the world. We could now were I not dependent on her. Yet then, am I not dependent too on you? Come with me, and afterward----" "I cannot," the girl cried; "it would kill my father." "You have but to wire him that you have gone to be married, and it will be the truth." "I cannot," the girl repeated. "Oh, what are you asking me to do?" "I am asking you to be my wife. What is the ceremony to you? What are a few words mumbled by a hired priest? Love, love alone, is marriage." "No, no. To you perhaps. But not to me." "And the ceremony shall follow as soon as we can manage. Can you not trust me for that?" "But----" "Will you not trust me? If you are to put your whole life into my keeping you should at least begin by doing that." The girl looked at the man and then away, at vistas he could not see, the winding slopes of asphodel, the sudden and precipitate abyss. Yet he spoke so fair, she told herself. Surely it was to the slopes he meant to take her, not to that blackening pit. "Yet if you won't," Loftus continued, "it is best for both that we should part." "For--for always?" "Yes." Just why he omitted to explain. But then there are explanations that explain nothing. Yet to her, for a moment, the threat was like a flash in darkness. For a moment she thought that she could not let him go. About her swarmed her dreams. Through them his kisses pierced. For a moment only. The flash had passed. She was in darkness again. Before her was the precipitate abyss. Shudderingly she drew from it. But Loftus was very resolute. "If you will you have my promise." For answer she looked at him, looked into his eyes, peered into them, deep down, striving to see what was there, trying to mirror her soul in his own. "Before God and man I swear you shall be my wife." At that, suddenly within her, fear melted away. If she had not seen his soul she had heard it. Where fear had been was faith. Dumb with the enchantment of a dream come true, she half arose. But his arms went about her and in them she lay like seaweed in the tide. CHAPTER V MARIE CHANGES HER NAME Gay Street knew Marie no more. Twenty-second street made her acquaintance. There, in the Arundel, an apartment house which is just around the corner from Gramercy Park, Loftus secured quarters for her. These quarters, convenient for him, to her were temporary. She regarded them as a tent on the road to the slopes. Even in that light they were attractive. Though small, they were fastidiously furnished and formed what agents call a "bijou." Loftus, who had whims which the girl thought poetic, preferred "aviary." He preferred, too, that she should change her name. Durand seemed to him extremely plebeian. Mentally he cast about. Leroy suggested itself. It had in it an echo of France and also of old New York. As such it appealed to him and, therefore, to her. There and then Marie became known as Miss Leroy and, incidentally, very busy. Every day Annette, Juliette and Marguerite had frocks for her to try on. There were hats to go with those frocks. There was lingerie to be selected, stuffs immaterial as moonbeams, cambrics that could be drawn through a ring. In addition, there was Signor Tambourini, who was to teach her how to handle her voice, and Baron Mesnilmontant, who was to teach her to handle a horse. When she so desired she had but to telephone and in five minutes there was a victoria at the door. For her sitting-room the florist who had so disturbed Mr. Cohen fetched flowers every other day. In the flowers there were thorns, of course. Marie worried about many things, yet mainly because Mrs. Loftus had not yet "seen and learned to love her." Against that, though, there were difficulties. At first Mrs. Loftus had a dreadful cold. Then she had gone out of town to recuperate. This was very unfortunate, but like the quarters, only temporary. Loftus assured her of that. What he said was gospel. The position in which the girl was placed worried her nevertheless. She knew it was wrong. But always she consoled herself with the belief that shortly it would be righted. On that belief she would have staked her soul. Had he not sworn it? Precisely how she would have acted had she realized that he had lied like a thief one may surmise and never know. The misery of life is the necessity of becoming accustomed to certain things. There are natures that adapt themselves more readily than others. There are also natures that cannot adapt themselves at all. Had Marie realized the truth it may be that she would have beaten her head against the walls. Yet it may also be that in the end adaptability would have come. But not happiness. Happiness consists, if it consists in anything, in being on good terms with oneself. Had Marie known the truth never could she have been that. In the circumstances it was considerate of Loftus to withhold it from her. But Loftus was a very considerate person. He hated tears, and scenes he frankly abominated. Loftus, though considerate, was vain. It was regrettable to him that he could not parade Marie about. But social New York is severe. Among its members it refuses to countenance any open disregard for what's what. Though what occurs behind its back it is too high-bred to notice. Loftus, unable to parade Marie about, paraded her in. To the aviary he brought men, some of whom having otherwise nothing to do with this drama need not delay its recital, but, among others, he brought Annandale and Orr. Annandale, who could not keep a thing from Sylvia, told her about it. The story so shocked her that she first made a point of his not going there again and then debated whether she ought to recognize Loftus any more. In the process she confided the story to Fanny Price, who got suddenly red--a phenomenon rare with her and which annoyed her very much, so much that she bit her lip, desisting only through fear of making it bleed. What is the use of spoiling one's looks? Marie, meanwhile, rather liked Annandale. She also rather liked Orr. One evening both were bidden to the aviary. At the bidding Annandale had hesitated. He did not wish to offend Sylvia. But reflecting that she need never know, that, anyway, it was none of her business and, besides, what the deuce! he was not tied to her apron strings, was he? he concluded to go. To that conclusion he was assisted by a cocktail. At the time he was in Madison Square, where on a ground floor he occupied a set of chambers, a suite of long, large rooms, sumptuously but soberly furnished with things massive and plain. Here he lived in much luxury and entire peace, save recently when he had lost a retainer and found a burglar. The memory of that intrusion recurring, he touched a bell. A man appeared, smug and solemn, a new valet that he had got in to replace an old family servant whom an accident had eliminated. "Harris, I forgot to ask. Did you get the revolver I told you to buy?" "Yes, sir. A 32 calibre. It is in the pantry, sir." "Put it in the drawer of my dressing-table." "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." "And Harris, make me another cocktail." As the man was leaving Annandale called after him, "Make two." It was these that assisted Annandale to his decision. A man of means, without immediate relatives, without ponderable cares, under their influence he felt rather free to do as he saw fit. The bidding to the aviary, telephoned for him to Harris, was for that evening. Yet that evening he was also expected in Irving Place. But Marie's invitation was for dinner, whereas he was not due at Sylvia's until later on. It was not necessary, he told himself, to be in two places at once. He could dovetail one with another. Then presently, having dressed, he issued forth. But he had omitted to look at the evening papers. He was interested in certain stocks, and to learn what they were doing he stopped in at a neighboring club. There encountering men who asked him to drink, he accepted--though how much he was on the morrow unable to recall. Yet at the time the effect of the stuff, while insidious, was not apparent. When ultimately he reached the aviary he was feeling merely fit, a feeling which the dinner increased. The dinner, perfect in itself, was perfectly served. The appointments were superior and the table a delight. Loftus when he did things did them well. Marie, in a creation of Paquin, imported by Annette, was a pleasure to behold. She had Orr at her right, Annandale at her left. Between them and Loftus were half a dozen other men. All were decorous and beautifully behaved. Except for the absence of feminine guests and one thing else, there was nothing to denote that they were not at the house of some smart young married woman. There was not a word uttered that could not have been bawled through a ballroom. There was not a suggestion not eminently discreet. In this respect only did the dinner differ from any other at which you might assist in the upper circles of New York life. During the preliminary courses stocks were the sole topic. There was a boom on in the Street. Everybody was making money, including Marie, for whom Loftus had bought a few hundred A. O. T. Orr alone had sold. "You are all mad," he declared. "The whole city is crazy. The country is on a debauch. Bulls cannot live forever. The corridas of the Street are just like those of Spain. It is the climax that differs. There the ring is swept by a supe, here it is struck by a crisis. That crisis may come next week, next month, next year. But it will come. It can no more desert the heavens of political economy than the stars can deviate from their course. It is not here yet, the bull is very lively, he is tossing everything sky high, but just when he is at his best and fiercest, just when you are shouting yourselves hoarse, the great espada, whose name is Time, with one swift thrust will transfix him. That is the fate of bulls." "We are to be transfixed, are we?" said Annandale. Marie looked over at Loftus. "Had I not better sell?" Orr turned to her. "No; hold on and lose. A loss, particularly a fist loss, is always a good investment. Besides, if you will permit me to say, you should have no heed of such things. No, Miss Leroy. You should content yourself with continuing to be. A woman who does only that acquires a charm almost supernatural. This was the occupation of the young goddesses of old Greece. How delightful they were! The rose was their model. They had learned the secret of its witchery. They charmed and did nothing. To charm is never easy, but to do nothing is the most difficult of all things, as it is, too, the most intellectual. Yes," Orr added after a moment, "it is also a thing which the rest of us sadly neglect." "Oh, I say," Loftus threw in. "It is not so long ago that I heard you maintaining that only imbeciles were idle, that everybody should have something to do. You are rather contradictory, don't you think?" "No, not a bit; and for the reason that then I was speaking of the generality of people, and now of the exceptional few. The idleness of the imbecile is always imbecilic, but the dreams of a poet have spells that enthrall. Try to fancy a busy poet. You cannot. It is an anomaly at which the imagination balks. By the same token you cannot fancy a useful Venus. You cannot fancy Psyche occupied with anything but love. Love is--or rather, should be--woman's sole occupation. The perfume of Eros should be about them all." "The perfume of Eros!" muttered Annandale, to whom the phrase appealed. "The perfume of Eros!" he repeated and helped himself to wine. "I say, Orr, what the dickens is that?" "Only the motor force of the universe." "What?" "Yes, indeed. It is the sublimate of love. And love is the source of human activity. It has no other. Without it civilization would retrograde and society return to the woods. Love is the basis of tragedy, the woof of romance, the incentive of commerce, of crime too, of heroism as well." "My!" said Marie, whom the brief deluge of words amazed. "My!" "I must get that off," Annandale muttered. In the _sotto voce_ of thought he added, "to Sylvia." Obviously, he had had his fill. He stood up, making an excuse, imperceptibility lurching as he did so. It was after ten. Long since coffee had been served. Orr, too, got up. He thanked his hostess. The other men imitated him. Loftus and Marie were alone. Loftus went to a window. Then he turned. "Put on your hat, little girl, and we will go out; though, after all, I do not see that you need bother with a hat, unless you prefer." "I will do as you wish, dear." Presently they were in Lexington avenue, a moment more, in Gramercy Park. Loftus, after fumbling for his key, opened one of the little gates. Within was silence. Occasionally, from the pavement without came the sound of footsteps. Loftus and Marie seated themselves on a bench near the gate through which they had entered. Loftus was smoking. A boy passed; stopped, and sticking his nose through the railings, called: "Hi, mister, will you give me a light?" Loftus made no answer. The boy called again. "Will you? And a cigar with it?" Then he laughed and passed on. The silence increased. In the air was a fragrance, the clinging odor of the honeysuckle, the clean smell of fresh turf. Beyond, the great dim houses that front the park gave the place and the hour an accent of their own. "I like it here," said Marie, "it is so elegant." "Never let me hear you use that word again. It is provincial, suburban and, worse, it is shopgirl." "Yes, dear." "This evening I saw you eat an ice with a spoon. Never do that. Use a fork." "Yes, dear." Appeased by this docility, Loftus condescended to agree in turn with her. He, too, liked the park. At night, when the weather was decent, always he sat there a bit quite by himself. He had done so for years. He told her this, adding confidentially, "It is a habit." To Marie the habit seemed most poetic. She said so, explaining that she was very fond of poetry. Loftus looked up at the stars. "The only real poetry is there. By the way, do you believe in God?" Marie, uncertain of her lover's creeds, hesitatingly glanced at him. "Yes--in a way. But I won't, if you object." This self-abnegation pleased Loftus. He twisted his mustache and smiled. "But no, you little goose, I don't object in the least. On the contrary. It is right and proper that you should." Gratified at this encouraging indulgence the girl's hand stole into his. Then for awhile they sat and talked about nothing whatever, which, of all subjects, is, perhaps, the least disagreeable. Wearying at last even of that, they got up to go. At the gate Marie drew back. A man was passing, swaying uncertainly, arguing with himself. "Why! it is Mr. Annandale," the girl in a frightened whisper murmured. "I wonder where he got all that liquor?" Loftus queried. "Not at Sylvia Waldron's, I'll wager." "Sylvia Waldron! What a sweet name," said Marie. "Who is she?" "The girl he is engaged to." "Is she pretty?" "Oh, tall and dark, don't you know. Not at all my style." But now night had swallowed Annandale. Loftus and Marie passed on. CHAPTER VI THE YELLOW FAY At noon the next day Annandale was not awake nor was he asleep. Through spaces in which memories met, entangled and sank, he was groping in search of himself. In these spaces there were things, some formless, others half-formed, that got between consciousness and interfered with the search. These things pulled at him, tripped him, shoved him down to the memories that were sinking below. The spaces themselves were very dark. But, in the deeper depths, where memories swooned, the darkness was punctuated by slender flames the size of pins. They burned him. Up and away he tried to rise. When he nearly succeeded, the things above, the things half-formed and formless that were waiting there, pushed him back. Again he tried. But the darkness was thick, the depths were thunderous, the things above pounded on his head, the thin flames lapped at him. A force took and lifted him high, very high, and suddenly dropped him. In the abrupt descent he clutched at the things, but he was whirled through them to receding plains and up again, higher, still higher. There a ray filtered, in the light of which a memory staggered. He saw himself drinking in the rooms of that girl of Loftus. From there he passed into blankness at the end of which stood Sylvia, her face white and drawn. The vision vanished. Then it seemed to him that he was drinking with a fat man who had prominent teeth which he took from his mouth and changed into dice. But where? In hell, perhaps. Annandale was uncertain. He knew merely that he had been beastly drunk and that his head was simply splitting. It continued to split. Hours later, sedatives and his servant aiding, the splitting ceased. But the blanks did not fill and though behind them he could not look, yet the subconscious self that registers and retains everything we do and hear and say prompted him dumbly that behind the blanks there lurked the dismal and, perhaps, the dire. This foreboding he attributed to his nerves. As a matter of fact they were rather shaky. But inaction was intolerable. He tried to write a note to Sylvia, but his hand was insufficiently steady. Failing in that he told Harris to get some flowers, take them to Miss Waldron, and say that he would call that evening. When later the man returned he brought no answer to the message. "Was Miss Waldron out?" Annandale asked. "I could not say, sir. I gave the flowers to the maid, and said as how you would call this evening, sir. The maid came back and said Miss Waldron would not be at 'ome." At this Annandale flushed. It is true he was flushed already. But the affront was a little more than he could stand. Was he not engaged to her? What did she mean? Yet, then, too, what had he done? He wished to the devil he could tell. Try, though, as he might, he could not recall a thing except a vision of the girl's face, white, drawn and angered. The rest was not blurred, it was blank. It was extremely unfortunate, and Annandale decided that he was both unhappy and misused. These meditations Harris interrupted. "Mr. Orr, sir." Annandale, who had been far away, looked up. Then he nodded. A moment and Orr entered, eying Annandale curiously as he came. "What a deuce of a chap you are," he began. "Who? I? Why? Why do you say that?" Orr looked about the room, contemplated a wide lounge of black leather, selected a straight-backed chair instead and seated himself, his hat and stick in his hand. "You know well enough," he answered. "But there," he added at a protest from Annandale, "I don't propose to scold you. My visit is purely official. Sylvia has asked me to inform you that the engagement is at an end." Had any little dog which Annandale did not possess run out from nowhere and bit him fiercely on the leg, he could not have started more. He stared at Orr, who stared at him. "But! It is impossible! What have I done?" "It would be more to the point," Orr cheerfully replied, "to ask what you have not done. Though just what you did do Sylvia omitted to state. She said she could not." "Could not tell you?" "Could not or would not." "Then I can't," said Annandale helplessly. "I went there last evening, I remember that. I remember, too, that she was angry. But why I do not know. Though, to be candid, she had cause to be. I was drunk." "You seemed all right at the Arundel," Orr objected. "At all events, drunk or sober, I cannot recall a thing. I have tried. I have tried hard. It has gone." "Does it happen to you often?" "What?" "To forget like that?" Annandale shook his head. He stood up and stalked about. Orr eyed him. He saw he was not shamming. "You know, Annandale," he said at last, "you could not get many to accept that. But I can and do. I have seen cases of the kind before. Will you permit me to advise you?" "Advise me? I wish to God you would." "Littré, who was the wisest and ugliest of men, stated that Hippocrates recommended everybody to get tight once a month, asserting that it was hygienic, good for the system, that it relaxed the nerves. Littré must have known what he was talking about. He put Hippocrates in French, into ten volumes at that! But what is good for everybody is bad for you. Don't drink, Annandale. It will get you into mischief." "As if it had not? Look at the box I am in. But could you not get Sylvia to reconsider the matter? If she will, I pledge my word never to touch another drop. Of course, I apologize for everything I did. I am only too anxious to. You must understand that I am profoundly humiliated at the idea that I could have done anything she did not like. Certainly I did not intend to. Won't you say that to her?" "Oh, I appreciate your position," said Orr. "To me the essence of crime is the intent. But, then, you see, I am a man. Now girls are different, and my cousin is very different even from most girls. Her views are very strict. Even otherwise, to any decent girl, a man in his cups is not agreeable. But then, you know, it is not merely a question of that. It is a question of matrimony. Matrimony generally means children. It is on them that the sins of the father are visited. There is the rub. Sylvia, I have not a doubt, will in the end forgive you, but were she to marry you and her children have your sins visited on them, never would she forgive herself. That I am sure you can realize. Anyway, for the moment argument with her would be futile. Besides, she has gone from town." "Gone?" "Yes, she left for Newport today. If I were you I would not attempt to follow. But I will write. I will tell her what you say, and I will tell you her reply." Orr stood up. As he did so Annandale sat down. He cared for Sylvia Waldron, absolutely, uniquely. He felt, too, that she had cared for him. But while Orr had been speaking he told himself that her caring had ceased. Had any affection remained she could not have gone. It was his fault, though. He had shocked it out of existence. At the thought of that he felt unutterably miserable. What he felt he looked. Orr saw his dejection. "Annandale," he said, "I hardly suppose that it will console you now to have me tell you that nothing earthly is of any consequence, but, if you let the idea permeate you, ultimately perhaps it may. By the way, that is a new man you have, isn't it?" In the wreckage amid which Annandale was floundering the question was like a rope; he caught at it and swam up. "Who? Harris? Yes, the other poor devil I had was run over and died in an ambulance." Orr tapped at his foot with his stick. "I may be in error," he said, "but I think I have seen him before." "Then it must have been in London. He has been here only a short time. He tells me he used to be with Catty." Catty was a relative of Annandale, a New York girl who had married the Duke of Kincardine. "Possibly," said Orr. "Well," he added, reverting to the episode that had brought him there, "I am sorry for all this. I know you are. I will write to Sylvia and tell her so." "Please do." Annandale stood up and accompanied him to the door. When he turned life seemed blank as the blanks of the night. CHAPTER VII SWEET-AND-TWENTY What Sylvia replied to Orr's communication, whether indeed she replied at all, Annandale was not informed. He himself wrote to her. The letter was long; it was also abject. But he got no answer. He wrote again. The result was the same. Then both at her and at himself he rebelled. He had supped on humiliations. He had no appetite for more. With some bravery, yet without bravado, he tore a leaf from his life and on it wrote Finis. The epitaph was figurative, but he thought it final. He thought that he could dictate to Fate. It is a mistake that many make. Presently it surprised him to find how laborious is the task of putting people out of your life. If you have cared for them they will come back. In the pages of a book, in the pauses of speech, suddenly you behold them. In sleep they will not let you be. When you awake, there they are. However detestable their behavior may have been, in dream they visit and caress you. It takes time and vigilance; it takes more, it takes other faces to disperse them. In spite of the Finis, Sylvia Waldron declined to be dismissed. She haunted Annandale. To memories of her he could not always show the door. Sometimes they were masked. Occasionally they reproached him. Again they seemed to say that did he but find out how, all might yet be well between them. But usually they came and stood gazing at him in love and grief eternal. Then he would start. But what could he do? Besides, there was the Finis. June meanwhile had come and gone. Summer with a frenzy quasi-maniacal had battened on the town. It is said that the hottest place in the world is a port on the Persian Gulf. But it is wrong to believe everything we hear. When New York decides to be hot, the temperature of the Persian port must be agreeable by comparison. One fetid noon Annandale fled. When he stopped it was at Narragansett. Before August comes and with it the mob, Narragansett is charming. There is a mile of empty hotels, a stretch of sand fine as face powder, a heaving, heavenly desert of blue and an atmosphere charged with ozone and desire. In August the hotels are packed. The stretch of sand is a stage. Every day a ballet is given there. The coryphées are the prettiest girls in the world--girls from Baltimore, girls from Philadelphia, girls from everywhere, girls with the Occident in their eyes and lips that say "Drink me." At high noon, from the greenroom of the bath-houses, Sweet-and-twenty floats down, clasps the sea to the hum of harps, breasts the waves to the laugh of brass and re-emerges to the sound of trumpets. After the dip, other diversions. Primarily flirtations on the lawns; later, polo at the Country Club; at night, dancing in the ballrooms, more flirtations on the galleries of the Casino, supper on the terrace below. The terrace resembles, or, more exactly, on this particular summer did resemble, a roof garden on the ground floor. From a kiosk a band of Hungarians distributed selections of popular rot, sometimes their own delirious czardas. There, circled by variegated lights, fanned by the violins, girls and men sat beneath the high, wide, flowerful umbrellas of Japan. Sometimes some of them, wearying of that, wandered into silences and shadows and lingered there, occupied with the crops, with strikes and other subjects of national interest which young people always discuss when holding hands in the dark. To Newport, which squats disdainfully over the way, this is all too free and easy. To Annandale, it was distressing. Everywhere there was love, yet none for him. He had come to the Pier, as Narragansett is locally termed, because of Newport's propinquity. If Sylvia so much as signaled he could join her at once. As yet no signaling was apparent. In its place was an influx of a reflection of fashion. The influx made Annandale swear. He hated to be seen stalking moodily about. He hated still more to have the rupture of his engagement discussed. The ballet on the beach irritated him. He told himself that he had come to the wrong shop. One day he thought of joining friends in Canada. The next he thought of joining friends who had gone abroad. The day after he thought that still he might be signaled. In these uncertainties he loitered, annoyed but sober. Since the visit from Orr he had not touched a drop. Then, it so fell about that one evening he looked in at a dance at the Casino. Madness was in the air. The savors of the sea, the tonic of the dip, the stare of the harvest moon, go to the head, stir the heart, excite the pulse in a manner really Boccaccian. Madness is contagious. It seemed particularly catching that night. The hall was filled, the gallery flushed. On a stage, at the end of the ballroom, musicians were tossing out in trailing rhythm the sorcery of "Il Bacio," the invitation of the "Cent Vierges," the muffled riot of "El Capitan." To these incentives couples turned. Beneath the gallery where Annandale stood there was a vision of white arms, bare necks, slender waists circled by the blackness of men's sleeves. Three hundred girls and men were waltzing together, interchanging partners, clasping hands, gazing into each other's eyes. Behind Annandale a group had gathered. They were talking, yet of what he did not heed. But, presently, into the conversation filtered the freshness of another voice. "I quite believe, you know," the voice was saying, "that a girl who stops here this summer will stop at nothing next." At the jest Annandale turned. There, pretty as a peach but rather more amusing, stood Fanny Price. "Hamlet!" she exclaimed. Annandale resembled the Dane as little as he did the devil. He was fully aware of that. But he was equally aware that he must seem blue. He straightened himself and smiled. Then at once it occurred to him that Fanny might be a signal bearer. "How do you do?" he said. "Don't you want to come and sit on the terrace? When did you get here?" "Just now. I am over from Newport. They told me there that I ought to come in disguise. They call it slumming." "Yes," Annandale inanely and eagerly replied. Of the little speech he had caught but one word--Newport. "Now, if I go with you, will you give me something pink, something with raspberries in it?" Fanny, as she spoke, disengaged herself from the people with whom she had come. "You saw Sylvia, didn't you?" he asked, when at last through coils of girls and men they reached the terrace below. Fanny nodded. "Suppose we sit here," she said, indicating a table from which grew a big parasol. "Did she say anything?" Fanny sat down. Annandale seated himself by her. "You know? Don't you----?" "Oh, yes," Fanny interrupted. "But then----" "Then what?" "Nothing. Only it is so much better so, don't you think?" "Better!" Annandale fiercely repeated. "Why, yes. You and Sylvia were totally unsuited for each other. She is the best and dearest girl in the world. But--here is the waiter. Will you tell him to fetch me a lemon squash?" Annandale gave the order. "With raspberries in it," Fanny called at the waiter's retreating back. "Aren't you going to take anything?" In deep gloom Annandale shook his head. Fanny laughed. "Drink delights you not; no, nor woman either." "You see----" "Yes, yes, yes. Of course I see. But why cannot you? Why can't you see that you and Sylvia stood as much chance of hitting it off as though you both spoke a different language? A break was bound to come." But now the man appeared with the squash. Fanny looked at it. "Only two raspberries," she cried. "And such little ones." "Bring a dish of them," said Annandale. "I suppose," he resumed as the waiter again retreated, "I suppose she will find somebody with whom she can hit it off." "Yes, of course. There is me and there are other girls. But the men will be few. They will be elderly, I think, and I think, too, tame enough to eat out of her hand." "You think, then, that I am out of the running?" Fanny did not answer. She was drinking the squash. When she put it down she put with it the subject. It bored her. "Are you going to be here long?" she asked. Until a moment before Annandale had been wavering. But now his mind was made up. Or he thought it was. "No. I am off tomorrow." "Where to?" "The North Woods, perhaps. I am not sure." "If you are not sure, you cannot be in any very tearing haste. Why not stop a day or two longer and take me about?" Annandale looked at her. In the look was surprise; inquiry, too. "Yes. Why not?" Annandale's look deepened into a stare. "Now, don't be stupid," said Fanny, to whom such stares were familiar. "I am not trying to get up a flirtation with you. But I must have someone to talk to." "I like to hear you talk." "Yes; men always like nonsense." "Only from a pretty girl, though." "Do you know," said Fanny, rising from beneath the big parasol, "the waiter didn't bring the raspberries. No matter now, though. I must go and find mother. This is no place for her to be out alone." CHAPTER VIII TWO IN A TURRET From a back gallery of the Casino a narrow stair leads to a tower. Up that stair Annandale one afternoon invited Fanny Price. A fortnight had gone, two weeks of dressing and undressing, of dinners, dances and dips; a succession of mellow mornings; long, green afternoons, dusks stabbed by sudden stars and nights lit by a moon that painted the ocean, penetrated the shadows, checkered the underbrush with silver spots. But now, though the mornings were as mellow and the afternoons as green, though in the air the same madness subsisted and the nights were as languid as before, verandas were emptying, there were wide spaces where once were thick crowds. The end of the season had come. In the procession of these things Annandale had put the North Woods from him; he had put, too, the thought of journeying abroad. With them he had put also any hope that Sylvia would signal him back. For awhile the hope had persisted, as the light of a candle persists. Then it had dwindled, flickered and sunk. That is the way with hope. Though sometimes it is snuffed. You are in darkness. But through that darkness occasionally another light will be upheld. It may not, perhaps, be intended for you, but it may enable you to see. Aided by another light, Annandale had begun to discern his way. He should, of course, have remained in darkness. To darkness, were this fiction, he would be condemned. But this is not fiction. The drama with which these pages deal is documented from life. It was Fanny who held the light. During the month that had gone he had been almost constantly at her side. The fact that one light may be replaced by another had not at first occurred to him. Presently the ease with which such substitution can be effected had mystified him very much. He was not prepared for anything of the kind. He had arranged to be a gloomy, disappointed man. He kept telling himself that if Sylvia had stuck to him he would have been true to her his whole life through. But she had not stuck to him, and the withdrawal of herself had left existence so empty that, unknown even to him, Nature had been filling the vacuum which she abhors. In this, Nature had been greatly aided. Fanny Price was a remarkably fetching young girl. To a man out of court and consequently out of sorts the companionship of a pocket Venus is tonifying in the extreme. It is not merely that, it is recuperative. It banishes the blues. It establishes a new court, and with it a new code of its own. The censorious allege that this is all wrong. It may be that they are right. But Nature is not censorious. Nature is not even ethical. She has no standards of right, no canons of wrong. What she does have is her way. A saint may defy her. Annandale was not that by a long shot. He was simply a human being, one that had been punished, and, as he thought, unjustly punished, for that which might have been condoned. Injustice humiliates. Saints may welcome humiliation, but human beings resent it. Over the emptiness which Sylvia had created there brooded therefore two things. One was darkness, the other pique. In the light which Fanny upheld it seemed to Annandale that they might be dispersed. This idea, which he regarded as his very own, and consequently as highly original, was not his in the least. It was Nature prompting him to fill the vacuum which she so dislikes. Instigated by her, Annandale invited Fanny up a stair and into a tower, a place remote, aloof, furnished with seats for just two. Fanny had not been there before. She had heard, though, of its aloofness; it was regarded as a dangerous spot. But Fanny was a brave girl. Besides, Annandale was at his worst, and even at his best was not very alarming. The ascent effected, Fanny peeped from a casement. "Why," she exclaimed, "you can see everywhere!" She looked about. "But no one can see you." Assured of that, she produced a little gold box. On the back were her initials in jewels. She opened it, took a cigarette and lit it. "Will you have one?" she asked. "This is a deuced nice case," said Annandale. Fanny puffed and smiled. "A present, I suppose." "Yes. But you must not ask from whom." Annandale looked out at the landscape, then in at the girl. "There is something else I want to ask." So grave was his tone that Fanny deployed for action. "Will you marry me?" Though Fanny had deployed, the shot bowled her over. Into one of the chairs she dropped. Already Annandale had captured the other. "Will you?" But Fanny was recovering. With an air of vexation in which there was amusement, she puffed at her cigarette and then at him. "Now, honestly, have I ever given you the slightest encouragement to ask me that?" She hesitated a moment, puffed again and added: "We have been friends, I think; let us remain so." Annandale, who was in loose white flannels, contemplated his tight white shoes. Then his eyes sought hers. "Are you interested in Loftus?" "That is none of your business," Fanny proudly and promptly replied. As she spoke she got from her seat, approached the casement, gazed out and away. "I do not believe you are," Annandale announced to her slender waist. "But if I am wrong, it is hardly disloyalty to him to say that he is not good enough for you." Beneath the tower was a tennis court. Fanny made a face at it. But the face must have been insufficient. Looking over her shoulder at Annandale, she showed her teeth. "Do you fancy a girl cares for a man because he is or is not good enough? When a girl cares she cares because she cannot help herself." "I know that is the way with a man, or at least with me. I cannot help caring for you." "Nor could you help caring for Sylvia." "She is so different." "Yes," said Fanny dreamily, "and so are you." Though to whom she referred she did not say, nor did Annandale ask. She gave him no chance. "Next month you will not be able to help caring for some other girl." "Not if you would take me." "But, you see, I don't care for you." "But couldn't you?" Annandale persisted. "Couldn't you if you tried? Of course, in saying that Loftus is not good enough for you I don't mean that I am. But if you could try I would." At this program Fanny laughed. "We should be a pair of Christian Endeavorers, shouldn't we?" To the levity of that Annandale found no immediate reply. Yet presently, with an irrelevance more obvious than real, he threw out: "He has gone abroad, you know." "Who? Loftus?" "Yes, for a year, I believe." Fanny turned to the tennis court again. It was, though, not that which she saw, but a hope that was slipping away, sinking away, sinking down into death dishonored. For a moment she was very still. A movement of Annandale's aroused her. "Come," she said. "It is hot here. Let us go." Gathering a fold of her skirt, Fanny descended the stair. Annandale filed after. On a balcony below a lady with faded hair and gimlet eyes pounced at her. "I have been hunting for you everywhere," the lady exclaimed. "Aren't you going to dress?" Then she nodded to Annandale. Annandale touched his cap. "How do you do, Mrs. Price?" He would have lingered, but Fanny dismissed him. "Good-bye," she said. "I may see you this evening." As he ambled off Mrs. Price returned to the charge. "Where have you been?" Fanny patted a yawn. "Listening to sweet nothings." "From him? Why, he hasn't anything, has he? What did you do?" Fanny patted another yawn or else another sigh. "I fell on his neck and sobbed for joy." "Nonsense. Has he anything, tell me?" "Not enough to entertain on. Twenty-five thousand a year, I think." "The impertinence of it!" said the lady. Had her daughter been an heiress a duke would hardly have satisfied her. As things were, or more exactly, since the girl began to grow in beauty she had dreamed for her but one dream--a brilliant match. To Mrs. Price there could be no brilliance if the party of the second part had a dollar less than ten million. "You might have had Loftus," she declared at last. "Where is he, do you know?" "Abroad, I hear." "With that creature?" Mrs. Price in common with many others had heard of Marie Leroy. But though others in hearing had not heeded, Mrs. Price took it as a personal affront. "Then it is your fault," she snarled. "You could have had him if you had wanted. Don't tell me. He was in love with you. I could see it." Fanny was looking at the ocean. A white sail was fainting in the distance. Like it, a hope she had had was fading away. She watched it go. It had been very fair, very dear, more dear and fair than any she had known. But it was going. It was out of reach and now out of sight. She could not beckon to it. "What are you staring at?" Mrs. Price asked. "A sail out there," the girl answered. Then presently mother and daughter passed into an adjoining corridor where they had rooms. CHAPTER IX FANNY CHANGES HER CLOTHES Fanny did not appear that evening. In search of her Annandale prowled vainly around. But on the morrow he ran into her on the beach. It was still as fine as powder. To have found elbow room there a few days previous you would have had to go out to sea. Now, in and on it children were making hillocks and holes. Near them a few groups of older people loitered. But the coryphées that had danced there were migrating. Already the Rockingham, a big hotel which faced the beach, had closed. Sweet-and-twenty was packing her trunk. The morning itself was of the quality which Lowell has catalogued as from the Gulf adrift. In the air was a caress. Fanny, in a frock the color of pale pastel pink, a wide hat in which that color was repeated, her eyes blue as the sea and bluer, added to its charm. As Annandale approached she smiled and gave him a finger. But at once the smile fell from her. With the finger which he had released she pointed at the big hotel. Annandale turned. Other people were turning. Some were running. A child that had been at play in the sand jumped and clapped his hands. About one side of the hotel a sheet of flame was climbing, crackling in and out. A cry of "Fire!" caught up and renewed, mounted in the crystalline air. "Damn!" said Annandale. "If that goes----" Fanny said nothing. Her eyes widened. Through the windows that front the beach more flames were leaping. From the side the first flames passed to shops over the way, passed back with fresh ones created and joined the others beyond. Above was smoke. Higher yet the tender blue of the sky. But below was a whirlwind of ochre, scarlet and gamboge, a fierce yet compact tornado of oscillant hues, shot with green and shuttled with black. Then suddenly, with a roar, the tornado doubled, the roof had fallen. The child that had jumped and clapped his hands, feebly now was beginning to cry. "It is glorious," said Fanny. "I am afraid--" Annandale muttered. Fanny glanced at him. Yet at once she understood. On the other side of the hotel, across the road, the Casino stood. Her mother, of course, would be safe. But her clothes! At thought of them her hand went to her throat. "Do you think the Casino will catch?" she gasped. Annandale nodded. "Oh," she continued, "I shan't have a stitch, not one." "Yes, you shall," Annandale heroically retorted. "I will see to them. But I must run. Find your mother if you can and take her to the Inn." The Inn, a hotel half a mile away, was where Annandale lodged. At once he was off. Shortly, by a detour, he got to the other side of the fire. As he swung about he saw that the Casino's ballroom had caught. But that part of the place was of wood. The other end, where Fanny lodged, was of wood also, but it was also partly of stone. To this part as yet the flames had not reached. As Annandale ran he told himself that he would have time to get in and get out, but he told himself too that it was a ridiculous job. Fanny's clothes a stroke of his pen could replace. But now the crowd impeded him. Lines had formed. Buckets were being passed. There were throngs of natives and resorters. Through them he pushed. At the further entrance to the Casino, above which he knew the Prices lodged, a fat policeman stood, blocking the way. Annandale shoved him aside, sprang up the stairs, reached the room, fumbled with the door. It was locked. Annandale swore deeply, tried the door with his shoulder, kicked at it till it cracked, kicked again, throwing himself against it with all his weight, then, not the door, but the fastenings of the lock broke and he went sprawling in. Through the open window he could see the flames, he could hear them, he could hear too the cries of the crowd. But he had no time to waste. He tore around the room. In one corner was a deep closet, full of clothes. He took them and threw them in armfuls on the bed. In another corner was a bureau, the drawers packed with scented lingerie. These on the bed he emptied also. What else did women wear? he wondered. Oh, yes, he remembered; hats certainly and probably shoes. Around the room he tore again. But already the bed was mountainous. He turned it all over on the floor, gathered up as much as the coverlid would hold and made a hasty bundle of it. Beneath was a blanket; he filled that, made a bundle of it also, repeated the operation with a sheet. Into another sheet he threw hats which meanwhile had loomed in boxes on a shelf, and dragging a curtain down filled that with shoes which also he had found, changed his mind and stuffed them into a pillow case, tossing in after them articles from a dressing-table, brushes and combs, odds and ends, helter skelter. But in dragging the curtain from the window he had noticed a writing-desk. After he had finished with the pillow case he returned to it. Like the door it was locked. He kicked at it, kicked it open, discovered in it loose money and trinkets, stuck them in his pockets, grabbed at the bundles and dashed from the room just as with a roar the flames leaped in. In the corridor he tripped, but he was up again with the tightly tied bundles and down the stair before the flames and the smoke of them could catch him. Once on the road without he turned to look, but the flames pirouetting in increasing size made it too hot to linger. Down the road he went, not overweighted but impeded by the awkward bundles, and staggered first into an engulfing, shouting crowd, then into a convenient hack, in which he reached the Inn, minus his cap and perspiring profusely. The Prices as yet had not turned up. Annandale secured rooms for them, had the bundles taken there, went to his own quarters, re-emerged shortly fresh as paint, hungry as a wolf. It was high noon. From beyond drifted the sound of cries, the smell of smoke, the commotion of flight. The Rockingham had gone, the adjacent shops and bath houses with it; the Casino had fallen. Hurrying to the railway station beyond came people with handbags, wagons with trunks. From the air the caress had passed. There was panic in it. But presently the flames showed less voluminous. After devouring all that they conveniently could they were subsiding. It was apparent that the worst was over. Then at last Fanny and her mother drove up. From the veranda where he stood Annandale ran down to meet them. "I have your things," he cried. "I have rooms for you also." "Hobson is not in it with you," said Fanny, when the tale of the bundles had been told. "I could kiss you. I would if mamma were not here." For that, ordinarily, Fanny would have been promptly sat upon. But here was the exceptional. Mrs. Price recognized it or appeared to. Instead of rebuking the girl and snubbing the man, Mrs. Price condescended to tell Annandale that he was "too good." This was very nice. Annandale felt over-rewarded. Then, shortly, the midday meal ensuing, he conducted mother and daughter to the restaurant, sat with them at table, ordered Ruinart cup and assumed family airs. Later, in a motor, he took Fanny to view the ruins, hummed her over the country and later still procured for her a lemon squash with plenty of raspberries in it, which she consumed on the porch, to the sound of the waves, by the light of the stars. Meanwhile she had changed her pastel frock for another, which, if a bit rumpled in transit, became her wonderfully well. Annandale commented on it. "By the way," he suddenly interrupted himself to remark, "I have more of your things. I stuffed them in my pocket and forgot them entirely. I will go and fetch them now." "Don't bother. Tomorrow will do. What are they, do you remember?" "Money and jewelry. Rings and pins, I think. I am sure there were pins. One of them stuck in me." "Any clothes?" "Clothes!" Annandale echoed in surprise. "Why, no, are any missing?" "My mother's. They were in the room next to mine." "The Lord forgive me, I never thought of it." "It does not really matter. Only we will have to go to town tomorrow. Mamma has not a stitch." "The devil!" muttered Annandale in fierce self-reprobation. "Hang my stupidity. I am a fool." "You are nothing of the kind. If it were not for you I would not have a stitch either." "That is all very well. But I have bungled matters dreadfully. I don't know what your mother can think of me. I do know, though, that I wish she would let me replace the things which she has lost through my fault." In the sky a star was falling, swiftly, silently, like a drop of water on a window-pane. Fanny watched it. She had been lolling back in a chair. But at Annandale's suggestion she sat up. "That is absurd," she announced. "Well, then, it would be only nice and fair of you to put me in a position where, without offense, I could do so." But Fanny was rising. "It is late," she announced. "I must go." Annandale caught at her. "Say 'Yes,'" he implored. "Or at least don't say 'No.' Say something." "Something, then. There, let me be." At that Annandale, who still held her, held her yet tighter. "You are the dearest girl in all the world." Fanny gave him a little shove. "Don't do that, anyone might see you." "Yes, and see too that you belong to me." "I am not so sure." "You shan't go then till you are." Annandale, as he spoke, planted himself uncircuitously before her. "Oh," said Fanny, in a little sugary, demure voice, "if you are going to use brute force----" "I am." "Then I give in." "For keeps?" "Don't, there's my mother." In the doorway beyond, Mrs. Price had loomed. Fanny joined her. Annandale followed, denouncing himself to the lady for the oversight that noon. Yet, whether because of that oversight of his or because of some foresight of her own, so grim was Mrs. Price that Annandale, concluding that it would be more cheerful elsewhere, turned tail, ambled out to the road and across it to the sea wall, where he sat and kicked his heels and told himself that he was engaged. In the telling he lost himself in impossibilities and wondered how it would fare with him and how with Sylvia could the past be mended and the old plans mature. For though Fanny allured, Sylvia enchained. Fanny was delicious. But he fancied that other men had found her so. He fancied that her heart had been an inn, and he knew that Sylvia's was a home. Yet from that he was barred. To those that lack homes hotels are convenient. Across the way meanwhile Mrs. Price was very busy. In looming on the veranda it had seemed to her that her daughter and that man were occupied with certain ceremonies. Regarding them she attacked the girl at once. "You have not taken him?" she began by way of reconnaissance. That afternoon Fanny had visited ruins. There were others more personal that she was viewing then, the ruins of fair things not dead but destroyed. "Answer me," Mrs. Price commanded. The girl started. But she had been far away--in that lovely land where dreams come true and then, it may be, turn into nightmares. Through the dreams hand in hand with Loftus she had been strolling. Now she must put them all away. "Answer me," Mrs. Price repeated. "I am afraid so." Into a misty and deserted parlor of the Inn Mrs. Price pulled the girl and there let fire. "Afraid! You ought to be! What will your father say?" The father here projected was a gentleman who resided abroad and who seldom opened his mouth except to put something in it. "And Fred!" Fred was Fanny's brother, a young chap whose opinions were of no value to anyone, himself included. "And everybody!" Everybody was the upper current of social life. "And Sylvia!" The earlier shots had not inflicted any visible damage, but this must have told. "I shall have to write to her," Fanny with unusual meekness replied. "Yes, do. Do by all means. Tell her you have taken her leavings. And why? Merciful heavens, why? If you were as staid and stiff as she I could understand. But a girl like you, with your tastes, your extravagances, a girl with a national reputation for beauty, to go and accept twenty-five thousand a year is--is--sinful, that's what it is. Your own father has that, and on it we are out at elbows. It is just about enough for you to dress on. Oh, Fanny, Fanny!" Hysterically the old lady waved her hands. "Oh, Fanny, I have so prayed that you would make a brilliant match. I have scrimped and saved that you might, and you go and take a blond beast of a pauper. It is too cruel!" Fanny winced. It was cruel. But the cruelty was not hers. It was Fate's. She too had hoped for the very marriage her mother had so ardently desired. But Loftus had not cared. Occupied elsewhere he had sailed away. As well then Annandale as another. "You see, you know," she said in a wretched effort at smoothing things over, "he is quite a hero." But this was too much. Mrs. Price shook her head like a battle horse and fairly neighed. "Because he saved your clothes? If it had been your life and you had said 'Thank you' it would have been ample. But your clothes! Not mine; the beast had not sense enough for that, but yours! I do hope you will give that as an excuse to Sylvia!" CHAPTER X A VICTIM Sylvia had gone from Newport. She was then at Lenox. It was there the previous autumn that her interest in Annandale had begun. The interest had so deepened that she gave him her heart. Never before had she given that to anyone. Annandale had taken it and then, one night, he had so bruised it that she thought it broken. He had written that he had not meant to. His letter had been full of regrets, of protestations, of bad grammar. Such things may palliate, but they do not cure. Only time can do that. Time is a strange emollient. In its mysterious potency it softens without our knowledge. Suddenly a whisper, a breeze that passes, shows that it has done its work. With Sylvia time was having its will. Furtively she had found herself wondering, as Annandale had wondered, how it should fare with her, and how with him, could the past be effaced and the old days renewed. But those days were gone, she decided. Though into that decision a doubt would creep, not indeed concerning the departure, but concerning her attitude and the justice of it. Annandale had sinned. He had sinned wantonly, grievously. From an atmosphere of vice--an atmosphere from which, under pain of her displeasure, she had distinctly warned him--he had staggered to her, its pollution about him, reeking with drink, talking abundantly about nothing imaginable, and at her just remonstrance had become instantly irritable, refusing almost to leave the house. So had his condition and the spectacle of it shocked her that, for awhile, memory of him and of it was repellent. In her own eyes she felt degraded. That men drank, she knew. But in her sphere of life they drank either moderately or else in haunts invisible to her. And it was precisely from such a haunt he had come, a shameless haunt, one that sullied her even to know of. Yes, he had sinned, wantonly, grievously, almost unforgivably. Almost, she reflected, but perhaps not quite. In his letter of protest and regret he had told her that he remembered nothing, nothing whatever, absolutely nothing at all, save one vague, brief vision of herself. The rest, the beginning, the end, the inter-spaces were, he assured her, blank. At first she had thought that sheer nonsense. But, later, the earnest way in which it was put impressed her. Then on the heels of that communication there had followed one from Orr, indorsing what Annandale said, declaring that it was all quite possible, adding that, in certain temperaments, memory when influenced by toxics will play tricks stranger than the average mind can comfortably credit. These letters she had not answered. Logically she could not admit the validity of the statements which they contained. But the heart has logic which logic does not know. Then, too, is there not that within us that prompts us to believe less what we should than what we wish? Sylvia's reason, guided by her inexperience, refused at first to accept the idea that any sane man could act as Annandale had and afterward be oblivious of it. That remorse there should be was only natural, but that there should be no memory of anything whatever seemed to her absurd. But there was her cousin's assurance to the contrary. Then imperceptibly, little by little, that assurance, filtering through the saddened girl, took possession of her, insisting on recognition, telling her that, though her lover had erred, yet, in erring, he was more to be pitied than condemned. Dominated by drink, which, Orr added, he had promised to renounce, he had gone to that haunt and, contaminated there, knew not what he did. But she, instead of realizing that, she who was to have been his in sickness and health, for better, for worse, she, in her pride, had dismissed him. He had erred, Sylvia told herself, deeply, grievously, but so, too, had she. She had condemned when she should have condoned; she had spurned him when it was her solicitude that he needed. At the sure cognition of that, it was as though from her eyes a bandage had fallen. Then at once in her tender conscience she beheld herself, detestable in pride, a girl without a heart, one of whom he, no doubt, was well rid of. It was during the process of this awakening that the conflagration at Narragansett Pier occurred. Sylvia read of it. She read, too, of certain prowesses which the dismissed had displayed. The account, very inexact as such accounts always are, was also highly colored, spun out for space purposes for much more than the space was worth. Had you not known better you would have taken it for granted that the heroism of Annandale was on a par with that of Leonidas at Thermopylæ and even of Roosevelt at San Juan. It quite stirred you. It stirred Sylvia. The paper fell from her. But the past returned. At once it seemed to her that it might be mended and the old days renewed. The hero of whom the paper told she knew now that she had wholly loved, and she knew, too, that wholly she still loved him. Time had done its work ridiculously, inopportunely, yet effectively at last. But the gates of life are double. On one stands written "Too Soon." On the other "Too Late." It is unfortunate to get wedged between them. Of that fact Sylvia became rapidly aware. On the morrow she began a letter to Annandale. Before it was finished there came one from Fanny, announcing that she was to be Annandale's wife. In certain crises of the emotions there is a certain sense of unreality. Even as Sylvia read what Fanny said she could not grasp it. When presently she did, she could not believe it. But there it was. Then immediately she experienced the agony which comes when we battle in dream with the intangible and the dread, when we know it is dream and yet feel it is death. "It is all my fault," she cried. She found but that. At the moment she was in that condition which precedes the great commotion of tears, when the strangulation of agony is subsiding and contracted nerves distend. But the tears did not come. The pain was infinite. There was a weight which she felt not without but within, a weight so heavy that she thought she could not bear it. It racked her. Only her mind was active. "It is my fault," she repeated. Then she added, "And my cross." From a crisis such as this, in a nature such as hers, the soul issues as from an orgy. It has supped on sorrow. It is fed. It ceases to look back. It looks forward, marveling indeed that it should look at all, yet looking. Life's burdens are more bearable than the despairful think. Until the eyes are closed and the heart no longer beats, in some way, somehow, they can be carried. Sylvia took up her cross. It was leaden. But in the effort she was aided. Pride helped her. The assistance of pride may be poor, yet is it not better than none? To Sylvia it was useful. It enabled her to answer Fanny's letter. "You have my congratulations, Fanny dear," she wrote, "all of them, my best and warmest, and so has Arthur too. Please say so to him and tell him that, in marrying by dearest friend, he and I must be dear friends also." Then the tears did come, swiftly, like the ripple of the rain. On the table where she sat she put her head down and sobbed, paroxysmally, as sobs a child. THE GENERAL SESSIONS CHAPTER I DISENCHANTMENT "_Il segreto_----" Marie's voice rang out, clear and fluid, scattering notes through the room, filling it with them, charging the air with melody, then, like a chorus entering a crypt, it sank in diminishing accords and, sinking, died slowly away. The _segreto_ indeed! The secret of happiness was remoter now than when, under the teaching of the ex-first lady, she had first attacked the score. But her voice had improved. It was fuller, more resonant and ample. Marie, too, had improved. In face and figure beauty had developed. Her manner was securer, her eyes more grave, her smile less frequent. The bud had blossomed. In the process a year had gone. From high Norman downs she had watched the summer pass. Autumn had met her in the Elysian Fields. There the wolfish winter had approached. At the first bite there had been a flight to Havre, the return to New York. Now it was spring again. Through the open windows of the Arundel came the city's hum and with it the subtleties and enticements of May. A year had gone. But there are years that count double. There are others so vast that in them you may have evolved a world, seen it glow and subside. The solitudes of space appal. The solitudes of the heart may be as endless as they. In those where Marie loitered a world had had its birth and subsidence, a world with gem-like hopes for stars, a world lighted by a sun so eager that its rays had made her blind. There had been aspirations, gorgeous and tangental as comets are. There had been the colorless ether of which dreams are made. For cosmic matter there was love. A year had gone. In it, these wonders had formed and fled. Marie got from the piano. It had no secret to tell. But there was another which the year had revealed, a secret which, at first opaque and obscure, little by little had taken shape and changed from an impossibility into a monstrous fact. Marie had begun by disavowing it. She had disowned it, would have none of it. But disavowals cease. In certain conditions we get used to monsters. The soul makes itself at home with what it must. The monster to which Marie was accustoming herself was the knowledge that her lover had lied. In departing with him from the den of the ex-first lady it was not merely with faith and trust, but with absolute certainty that marriage, if delayed, was only postponed; that a week, a month at the furthest, would see her his wife. On the way she had stopped and wired to Gay street, telling her father not to worry, that she had gone to be married, that she would write to him soon. Whether he had worried she could only surmise. But soon she had written, inclosing a photograph of Loftus, one which she had colored, an excellent likeness that displayed his chiseled features, wonderful eyes and thin, black mustache with a perfection of precision that was lifelike. Above it she wrote: "Marie's Husband." It would please her father, she was sure, and in the letter she told him prettily, in a little, cajoling way which he loved, that while, for the moment, he must not know where she was, yet shortly she was planning to come and surprise him--to surprise him more than he could ever imagine, and show him that he could be very, very proud of her, but prouder still, much, much prouder of the man she had married. The plan, delightful to her, first the illness of her lover's mother, then the lady's absence from town, prevented her from at once effecting. Then, greatly to her uneasiness, she found that the plan must be yet further delayed. Mrs. Loftus had gone to her manor on the Hudson, where, her son declared, he could not take Marie "like that." Financially it was stupid to rush things. Gradually his mother must be prepared. Moreover, as preparation could be decently managed only in town, to which she would not now return until autumn, it would be a good idea to run over to Europe. So spoke Royal Loftus. It was all false as an obituary. Financially he was entirely independent of his mother, who, at the time, was not at her manor, but just around the corner and never better in her life. But Marie, wholly infatuated, quite willing to believe that the moon was made of green cheese if only he took the trouble to so inform her, accepted it all for gospel. The delay, of course, was a deep disappointment. She felt it, and felt it acutely. But in Europe she supposed that people would not know, and would not care a rap if they did, Loftus hastened to assure her. To his project, therefore, she yielded. Presently she was glad that she had. The journey itself was a joy. At the Arundel he had come and gone. Often she had been lonely. Often she had sat through hours that limped themselves away, waiting for him, waiting fruitlessly. But during the journey and after it, on the high Norman downs, always she had him with her. Therein was the joy. The places, new to her and fragrant, to which he took her interested her very much, but very much, too, as accessories might. It was from him that their real charm emanated. He also enjoyed himself, but less rapturously, in a fashion more detached. He found time to busy himself with the news of the world, with menus, with wines--occupations which to her were extraordinary. Marie did not know what she ate; as for the world, it was sublimated in him, a fact which she confided to him--of which, if she had not, he would have been perfectly aware and which he accepted at first as but a proper tribute to himself, but which ended by boring him distinctly. An excess of anything disagrees with the best. The first symptoms of indigestion declared themselves in Paris. They had there a large suite in a big hotel. So large was the suite that frequently Marie could not find Loftus in it. He was off, returning when he saw fit, refusing to be questioned, yawning at reproaches, but otherwise perfectly civil, agreeing with her that it was not nice to be left alone, yet leaving her alone whenever he felt like it. On the Norman downs the fresh fragrance of life had put a higher color on her cheeks, marking them with the flush of happiness and health. But in this game of hide and nowhere to seek her face became pallid as the curious white sky which in autumn stretches itself over Paris. Then stealthily, like a wolf, winter approached. The cheerlessness of it Loftus hated, as all New Yorkers do. To Marie, however, it was welcome. It meant a return to the Arundel, where she felt that the marriage so long delayed could not be further postponed. The illusion was pleasant but not permanent. On re-emerging in the noise and sunshine of New York Loftus ceased to bother himself with the invention of excuses. He told Marie that his mother would not listen to anything of the kind, a statement which, while frank, was not exact. Mrs. Loftus had never heard of it, or for that matter, of the girl, and Loftus saw no reason whatever why she should. Yet if not frank, he was patient. Marie, on the other hand, took it all very hard. Humiliation possessed her. By day it confronted her, spectrally. At night it came to her, sat by her side, plucked at her sleeve, awoke her. It was a thing she could not get away from, could not forget; what is worse, she could not understand. It tortured her, and concerning it she tormented him constantly, displaying a persistence that was annoying and pathetic--the persistence of a child. It was as such that he treated it with yawning indifference, quite as though it were but a whim which, other things intervening, she would forget. Other things did intervene. Among them was an adventure in Central Park. One afternoon a brougham in which she was driving crossed a victoria where sat a remarkably pretty woman with Loftus at her side. Marie's eyes filled. Had he struck her he would have hurt her far less. When next she saw him she told him so. The idea amused him. He was not a ruffian, only a cad. Like the whim, he waved the little tragedy away. "That was Mrs. Annandale," he announced unabashedly, "a very old friend of mine. I have known her all my life." "Mrs. Annandale!" Marie exclaimed. "Not the wife of the Mr. Annandale whom you brought here last year?" Loftus stared at her. He did not understand. Yet then, neither did she. "Why," she continued, "you told me he was to marry a dark young lady." "Yes," said Loftus, fumbling as he spoke for a cigarette. "But I told you also not to use that expression. Say girl or young woman. If you want to be fantastic, say young gentlewoman, but never young lady. You are right, though. Annandale was to have married a Miss Waldron, but she threw him over and he married somebody else." To Marie all this was inexplicable. She did not understand how a man thrown over by one girl could so speedily marry another. She did not understand, either, what Loftus could be doing with her. To her mind driving presupposed an intimacy which acquaintance might explain but did not excuse. The matter perplexed her, and not unnaturally. It is only through our own heart that it is possible to attempt to read the heart of another. In her heart Marie knew that nothing earthly could induce her to appear as intimate with a man as Loftus had with that woman. Yet, though she knew that, she knew also that many of her views, like many of her expressions, were not in tune with the tone of the set in which Loftus moved. None the less a fact remained. To her other men did not exist. To him other women existed. However she tried to console herself with difference in breeding, that fact, remaining, pricked. It pricked perhaps the harder because of this particular woman's looks. The woman herself was hateful. How, she wondered, could Loftus drive about with her when, with herself, he would barely be seen. And why wouldn't he? In those days Marie's whys were many. But at the end of every one of them the answer which she always found was that it was all because she was not his wife. Yet there always another why recurred. Why was she not what he had sworn she should be? The possible disinheritance which hitherto he had imaginatively displayed had no terrors of any kind for her. On bread and kisses she would have lived with him joyfully in a slum. To luxury she was unused. That with which she was surrounded she would not have missed in the least. On the contrary, it had grown odious to her; it suggested a form of compensation the very thought of which was sickening. It was not for this that she had left Gay street, but for him and an honest name. In the prolonged absence of the latter there were times when her soul seemed to slink into the obscurities of her being and swoon there for shame. There were times when she could not look at herself in the glass. Quite as often she had found it difficult to look at her servants. After the episode in Central Park the increasing sense of degradation affected her so deeply that with a weary idea of preserving such self-respect as she might, summoning those servants she dismissed them--securing, meanwhile, from an agency a woman able to do what little was essential, a negress named Blanche who talked Irish. When Loftus discovered what she had done he was for having the servants immediately back. He liked to have the girl entertain for him. He liked to have his friends come to the aviary and hear the bird sing. But Marie, with an air of determination that was new to him, refused. "They do not respect me," she said. "I don't blame them for that. Nor can you. When we are married it will be different. "When we are," she added with slow scorn. CHAPTER II THE MOTE IN THE EYE A philosopher has noted that at certain periods a great many stupid people have a good deal of stupid money. This condition, describable as plethora, is succeeded by another catalogued as panic. The number of stupid people who at this time stalked the streets unchecked was phenomenal. Among them was Annandale. It was not a beggarly twenty-five thousand a year that he had, but fifty, with, in addition, more to come. This, though measurably satisfactory, was not brilliant. Not brilliant, that is, as Mrs. Price used that term. Still it was sufficient to remove him from the menagerie of paupers in which she had classed him. Assured whereof, Mrs. Price, pocketing further objections, gave in. Two months by the clock after the episodes at Narragansett she assisted at his marriage to her daughter. A little later Annandale took a house in Gramercy Park. This house, leased fully furnished from November to June, Fanny selected. She liked the neighborhood. Annandale, whose bachelor quarters had, of course, been given up, liked it too. It was convenient. He had got an idea that he ought to have something to do. The something which he hit on consisted in going downtown every day and standing, in a broker's office, over a ticker. Such were the quantities of stupid money afloat that the ticker was very loquacious. It talked and talked, generally in jumps. As it jumped Annandale bought. As it continued to jump, he made. Whereupon he regarded himself as a born financier. It was an illusion which that year very many men shared. But the illusion was agreeable to him. It was equally so to Fanny. It took him out of the way and induced pleasant dreams. He talked of drags and yachts. On fifty thousand a year these things are impossibilities. But Annandale, believing himself a born financier, believed, too, that the day was not remote when they would solidify into facts. Pending which, Fanny, from her own carriage, distributed to Annette, Juliette and the rest of them such orders as she liked. It was in this carriage that Marie had seen her with Loftus. Others also saw her. Fanny being a little more than a bride and Loftus a good deal more than a beau, the spectacle caused comment. There were, though, other things that the future had in charge which were to cause more. But among those who beheld the particular spectacle was Fanny's husband. Annandale was in a hansom with Mr. Skitt, the broker in whose office he looked over the tape. As Fanny drove by, Annandale raised his hat, then, with a mimic which he meant to be humorously indignant, he shook his stick at Loftus much as though he were saying, "Aha! making up to my wife!" Loftus entering into the spirit of the jest, ducked his head in feigned alarm. "That's a deuced pretty woman," remarked Mr. Skitt when the carriage had passed. "It is Mrs. Annandale," his client returned with some hauteur. "Oh, beg pardon, I didn't know." "Yes," Annandale resumed, "and that was Loftus, an old friend of mine." "Any relation to _the_ Loftus?" Mr. Skitt, glad that the subject was out of the way, inquired. "He is _the_ Loftus," Annandale, now entirely mollified, replied. Others, however, took the spectacle less lightly. To Marie it was distressing. To Mrs. Price it was absurd. Mrs. Price had not seen it, but she heard of it. To air a few views on the subject she pounced in on Fanny the very next day. Loftus, however, was there at the time. She had to wait until he was gone. Then she let drive. "Do you fancy," she asked fiercely, "that this is London? Do you?" she repeated and menacingly pulled off a glove. "Don't you know that you cannot have men hanging about you, and of all men that man? Great heavens, if you wanted him you should have taken him at the start." Fanny lit a cigarette, made a ring of smoke, poked a finger through it and in a sugary, demure little way which she sometimes affected, answered serenely: "At the finish perhaps I may yet." "What!" cried Mrs. Price. But from the door a servant was announcing Miss Waldron. The girl swam in. Necessarily, for the time being, the subject was dropped. Later Mrs. Price got back to it, but without notable result, without obtaining either any elucidation of Fanny's rather curious remark. That though, with graver things, the future had in charge. Meanwhile Fanny, with nine servants and a housekeeper to run them, led the life of any other young society woman, the life of an _objet de luxe_. This form of existence would have been quite to her liking if--Yet is there not always an If? A poet declaimed on the subject two thousand years ago. Times have changed, customs with them, but not the human heart. Barring great wealth and its fanfares and accompaniments, Fanny had enough to throw the average woman into stupors of envy, enough also to even satisfy her, if only instead of one man she had married another. Annandale was very nice. He had but one defect. But that defect was fatal. He did not happen to be somebody else. This defect Fanny had fancied that she could overlook. She was young, therefore ignorant, and, in fancying that she could ignore that fatal defect, fancied also that she had the ability to order herself about, to command her nature and dictate to her heart. The fallacy is common. Many of us have entertained it and kept at it too until the discovery is made that the heart is a force which we must yield to or break. Fanny became aware of this shortly after Loftus returned. There in her existence was the If. As a consequence, although Annandale was quite perfect to her, his perfection was as nothing to his one defect. Of this defect Annandale was wholly unconscious. Yet, though he could not see the mote in his own eye, there was one in Fanny's which, though he saw, he was unable to define. It is true on the mote question he was not an expert. A husband, particularly when he happens to be big and blond, seldom is. Then, too, the effect of the mote was odd. It affected Fanny's disposition. When he approached her he could not but notice that she became elusive. He could not but perceive that she was as afraid of a kiss as of a bee. "What is the matter with you?" he inquired on one occasion when she appeared even more tantalizingly intangible than he had seen her yet. "Women are the very devil," he muttered as, without answering, she moved yet further away. The question, though, was very unreasonable. So at least Mrs. Price, whom he tried to take into his confidence, assured him with fine scorn. "The idea of a man asking his wife what is the matter with her!" she exclaimed. "A man ought to know. If he doesn't, how in the world can he expect her to?" But that was before the episode with Loftus in the Park. Had Annandale gone to Mrs. Price then she would have been quite capable of putting a flea in his ear. That opportunity he neglected. Stocks were soaring. On paper he was making money hand over fist. He had no time to bother with women's whims. When men do have time for such things the time has passed. Even then it had gone. One night early in May Fanny had a few people in, among whom were Loftus and Sylvia Waldron. Sylvia, who long since had let bygones be bygones, was now as sisterly as ever with Fanny, and with Annandale on terms friendly and frank, an attitude which, as Fanny put it, "made it so easy, don't you know, all around." Yet then in putting it in that way Fanny may have been actuated by the fellow-feeling which makes us all so wondrous kind. With Loftus she was rather friendly herself. That, however, by the way. During the dinner a telegram was brought to Annandale. It concerned the morrow's market and interested him considerably. As soon as he decently could he got away to confer with Skitt. Later the other guests began to go. But Loftus lingered. Presently he and Fanny were alone. "How is the lady?" Fanny negligently inquired. Her arms and neck were bare. Her dress, immaterial as cobwebs, was of starbeams' restful hue. About her throat was a string of opals. They were colorful, though less so than her eyes and mouth. She was seated on a sofa. Loftus was standing. As always, he was superiorly sent out. Other men who got their things at the same places that he got his never succeeded, however they tried, in appearing half so well. "Do you know," Fanny continued, "she has improved vastly since that day when I saw you trying to pick her up. How did you ever manage? Tell me." Loftus, his hands in his pockets, shrugged a shoulder. "And she is so delightfully disdainful," Fanny ran on. "In Central Park this afternoon she turned up her nose at me. It is a very pretty nose, Royal, did you know that?" "I know that it is a bit out of joint," Loftus condescended at last to reply. "Dear me! Fancy that! But then the course of true love never did run smooth." Loftus assumed an air of great weariness. "Do drop it," he said. "You know very well that I have never cared for anyone but you." "Oh, of course," Fanny promptly and pleasantly retorted. "I may have had a doubt or two about it. But when you put this lady in a flat around the corner, then, naturally, you convinced me. It was a rather circuitous way, though, to go at it, don't you think?" Beside her on the sofa Loftus flopped. "Why do you always go back to that?" he asked, with the same affectation of weariness. Fanny turned from him. "I don't seem to be able to get away from it," she answered, but less promptly and pleasantly than before. Her fair face had grown serious. From her eyes the bantering look had gone. "Besides," she added after a moment, "you took her to Europe, and that did seem a trifle steep." "Would you like her to go back there?" Loftus tentatively inquired. In and out from Fanny's skirt a white slipper, butterflied with gold, moved restlessly. "I should have preferred that you had let her alone. It was not nice of you. It was not nice at all." From him she had turned to the carpet. She was looking at it still. "I wonder," she presently resumed, "if you ever suspected how it hurt me." Pausing a bit she looked up. "But you have been so dense, Royal." Loftus was about to interrupt. She checked him. "The first time I saw you I was just fifteen. That is eight years ago. Since then I can honestly say that until I accepted Arthur I had never thought of anyone but you. Never. Not once. Can you realize now how this affair of yours affected me? It hurt. If it had not been for that, do you suppose I would have taken the prince in the fairy tale? You were my prince." "But," Loftus protested, "this affair, as you call it, came about only _faute de mieux, faute de toi_. Why cannot I--why cannot we----?" Fanny checked him again. "No, we cannot. Two years ago you said the same thing to me. I forgave you then because I loved you. For the same reason I forgive you now. But, however I care for you, never will I be your mistress." "Fanny----" "No, never. If, as again and again you have told me during the past few months, you still care for me, either you must love me openly or I will not permit you to love me at all." At the sudden horizon Loftus bent to her. "Let us go, then. In Europe we can love before all the world." Fanny drew back. "Particularly before all the half-world," she answered with a sniff. "No. You misunderstand me. Perhaps, too, I misunderstand you. Let my hand be." "Fanny, I will do anything----" "It is rather late to say that. But if I were free now, what would you do? Would you repeat the invitation you have made?" Loftus, his wonderful eyes looking deep into hers, answered quickly and sweetly, "I would beg you to be my wife." Fanny straightened herself. "Then give that girl her congé, give her a dot too, send her abroad and let her marry some count." "Very good, I will do so." "When you have," said Fanny, "I will ask Arthur for a divorce." "What?" And Loftus, with those wonderful eyes, stared in surprise. He was in for it, let in for it, was his first impression. Yet at once, on looking back, he realized that Fanny was incapable of trick of any kind. "But," he objected, "supposing he refuses?" "Then I will apply." "But you can't, you see. He is good as gold." "Oh, I don't mean here. I mean out West." For a moment Loftus said nothing. Even in the West, he reflected, divorce took time. Yet then, reflecting, too, that it would be very gentlemanly of Annandale were he to go there and leave the coast free for him, he smiled and remarked, with what seemed astounding inappositeness, "I have been selling short." "Ah!" said Fanny longly. "And what of it?" "Unless the market turns I shall be out, God knows how much!" "But what of it?" Yet even as she spoke she understood. "Fiddlesticks!" she exclaimed with a gesture of annoyance. "I sha'n't care if you haven't two cents." To this Loftus had no chance to reply. Annandale came lounging in. "Do you know what I have done?" he collectively and blandly inquired. "I told Skitt to buy me, at the opening, 1,000 Atchison and 1,000 Steel. Now I would like a quiet drink." Loftus stood up. "I am going in the Park for a quiet smoke. But I thought you had sworn off." Annandale tugged at his cavalry mustache and laughed. "I haven't touched a thing for nearly a year. But on a night like this, when the whole town is mad, I think I might have a drop. Stop, dear boy, won't you, and have one with me? No? Well--" And, accompanying Loftus to the door, he whispered to him there, "My compliments to Miss Leroy." "Don't forget, Royal," Fanny called after him, "that you dine with us on the ninth." CHAPTER III THE GATES OF LIFE In her sitting-room at the Arundel Marie sat. It was nearly midnight. Hours before she had dined. Since then she had wandered from one room to another, from one chair to another, wondering would Loftus come. Sometimes he did. More often he did not. She never knew beforehand. It was as it pleased him. Always the uncertainty irked her. But on this evening it was particularly enervating. She had reached the gates of her endurance. She could stand no more. She must pass through them, pass or fall back, where she did not know, but somewhere, to some plane, in which, though life forsook her, at least its degradation would be foregone. At first, in the old days, when he met her in the ex-first lady's den, it had seemed to her that life would be incomplete without him. Then it had seemed that with him it would be fulfilled to the tips. Subsequently the long train of disenchantments had ensued. In Paris he had pained her greatly. There, after a series of those things, little in themselves, but which, when massed, become mountainous, she had been forced to consider not her love for him but the nature of such love as he had for her. In him there was a reticence which perplexed, depths which she could not reach. At times his silence was that of one to whom something has happened, who is suffering from some constraint, from some pressure or from some long illness of which traces remain. At others, it had exasperated her, it made her feel like a piano, on which, a piece played, the cover is shut. She had seemed to serve as a pastime, nothing more; a toy which now and then he took up, but only because it was there, beneath his feet. Yet even then she was not quite unhappy. Even then she had faith. She believed in him still. Hope had not gone. Hope has its braveries. Its outposts patrol our lives. Until death annihilates it and us, always beyond is a sentry. The sentry which she still discerned was the promise he had made. Latterly it had not been much of a sentry. It had far more resembled a straw. But it was all she had. She had clung to it. Hope indeed has its braveries, but it has its cowardices as well. This hope, ultimate and forlorn, she knew now was craven, mated to her degradation, born of her shame. If it were to be realized the realization must delay no more. She was at the gates. She must pass through. On that she had decided. When Loftus came she would tell him so. She would tell him that she would work for him, slave for him, envelop him with her love, pillow him on her heart. Though he lost his wretched money what would it matter to her and how should it matter to him? She could sing him if not into affluence at least into ease. Tambourini, with whom until recently she had studied, had told her not once, out of politeness merely, but again and again that in her throat was a volcano of gold. With Italian exaggeration he had called her Pasta, Alboni, Malibran, predicting their triumphs for her. If Loftus would make an honest woman of her those triumphs would be for him. But as she told herself that she told herself too that such triumphs he would prefer to avoid. He should have, though, the chance. If he rejected it she would go. And of its rejection she had little manner of doubt. But the chance he should have, yes, even though she knew beforehand that with his usual civility--a civility which she had learned to hate--he would hand it back. She could see him at it. She could see his negligent smile. That smile she had learned too to hate. Always she loved him to distraction, but sometime she hated him to the death. From Loftus for a moment her thoughts veered to Tambourini. The week previous suddenly, without warning, he had told her torrentially that he adored her. He was a good teacher. Yet, of course, after that she had been obliged to let him go. But now her thoughts were interrupted. At the table where she sat she started, her head drawn abruptly in that attitude which deers have when surprised. In the door without had come the fumble of a key and, in the hall, she caught the almost noiseless tread of her lover. As he entered she got from her seat. Loftus had his hat on. He took it off, put it down on the table and taking a cigar from his pocket lit it at the chimney of a lamp that was there. At the conclusion of the operation he looked at her. Her dress was canary. From the short loose sleeves lace fell that was repeated at the neck. There a yellow sapphire had been pinned. As he looked at her, she looked at him. "I have something to say to you, Marie," he began. With an uplift of the chin she answered: "And I, Royal, have something to say to you." "The usual thing, I suppose. Well, shy a teacup at me if you like, but spare me a scene." As he spoke he seated himself. "Marie," he at once resumed, "I shall have to take my mother up the Hudson shortly----" The girl interrupted him. "Does Mrs. Annandale go too?" The man's cigar had gone out. He relighted it. "No," he replied, "the last time I saw her she said something about going West." "Ah!" Marie exclaimed, and immediately with that curious intuition which women that really love possess she added, "to Dakota?" "Perhaps," replied Loftus with a puff. The surety of the shot amazed him, but of the amazement he gave no sign. "Perhaps, though I do not remember that she said just where she did intend to go." He drew in a large mouthful of smoke, which leisurely he blew forth. It circled about her. She moved away. "Oh, excuse me," he said, "I did not mean--" The girl made a gesture of indifference. "You see," he began again, "the point is just here. My mother is not well. She rather wants me with her this summer. In the circumstances I thought you might like to go abroad." Marie, through half-closed eyes, cautiously peered at him. "Without you?" she asked. Loftus nodded. "For good?" To this Loftus made no answer. Provided she went, though it were for bad, he did not much care. Marie, who had been standing, crossed the room and recrossed it. A year before she had suggested the kitten. Where that had been the leopard had come. In her movements were the same supple ease, the same grace and alertness. Suddenly at the table where he sat she stopped, rested a hand on it and bending a little looked him in the face. "Liar," she muttered. "Liar! I know and so do you. Yes, I knew it almost from the first, but, though I knew it, I tried as hard to deceive myself as you did to deceive me. You never intended to marry me, not for a moment, not even at the moment when you called God to witness that you would." Her hand had gone from the table, from it and him she turned away. Loftus, who at the arraignment had retreated a full inch in his chair, called after her. "It is untrue; what I said, I meant." Marie turned back. "Then if you meant it, marry me this night. If you have any honor, any whatever, a spark of it, you will; if not----" She paused and looked at him. It was not this at all she had meant to say. She had meant to entreat him, to picture what their life might be, to tell him of her enveloping love, and that failing, to go, but to go without words, without reproaches, without suffering that which had been between them to be marred by vituperation and, so marred, to descend to the level of some coarse intrigue. But something, his manner, the manifest lie about his mother, the apparition of that other woman, battening on nerves overwrought had irritated her into entire forgetfulness of what she had meant to do and say. The pause Loftus noticed. What was behind it he misconstrued. "Don't mind me," he encouragingly interjected. "Threaten away. It is so nice and well-bred. Yet I must be allowed to say that while I did intend to marry you, the intention has been rather weakened through just such scenes as this. Though, to be frank, it is not so much that I object to scenes as it is that, if scenes there must be, I prefer to make them myself." At the humor of that Marie ran her nails into her hands, dug them in. Without some such moxa it seemed to her that she might take and hurl the lamp at him, fire the place and, fate favoring, be calcinated with him there. "And now that I have been frank," he went on, "let me be franker. You and I have ceased to be able to hit it off. The blame for that I will, if you like, assume." Then he too paused. But not at all because he did not fully know what he meant to do and say. "Marie," he continued, putting a hand in a pocket as he spoke, "in the past year we have been more than friends. Friends at least let us remain. Friends do part, and for awhile we must. Your voice, like yourself, is charming. If I may advise, go and study abroad. Though if you prefer remain here. But, of course, whatever you do you will need money. I have brought some." In his hand now was a card case which he offered her. She took it, looked at it, opened it, then moving to a window she raised the sash and threw the card case into the night, yet so quickly and unexpectedly that Loftus had no time to interfere. "That is an agreeable way of getting rid of twelve thousand dollars," he remarked. Yet, however lightly he affected to speak, the action annoyed him. Like all men of large means he was close. It seemed to him beastly to lose such a sum. He got up, went to the window and looked down. He could not see the case and he much wanted to go and look for it. But that for the moment Marie prevented. "If it were twelve times twelve million," she exclaimed, "I would do the same! Oh, Royal," she cried, "don't you know it is not your money I want; don't you know it is you?" Loftus did know, but he did not care. The flinging away of the money was all he could think of. It was an act which he could not properly qualify as plebeian, but which seemed to him crazily courtesanesque. He returned to the table and picked up his hat. "I am going," he announced. Marie sprang at him. "Is that your answer?" He brushed her aside. She saw that he was going, saw too, or thought she saw, that he was going never to return, saw also that now at last she was at the gates. "My God!" she cried. "My God!" So resonant was the cry that Loftus turned, not to her but to the window. He closed it. But already the cry had passed elsewhere. From regions beyond a fat negress waddled hurriedly in. Her eyes rolled whitely from the girl to Loftus and then again to the girl. "Are you sick, miss?" "Go away," said Loftus, "there is nothing the matter." "Nothing?" exclaimed Marie. "Nothing!" she repeated in a higher key. "Nothing!" Then, visibly, anger enveloped her. "Do you call it nothing to be cheated and decoyed? Nothing to have faith and love and be gammoned of them by a living lie, by a perjury in flesh and blood? Is that what you call nothing? Is it? Then tell me what something is?" At the moment she stared at Loftus, her lips still moving, her breast heaving, her small hands clenched, her face very white. And Loftus stared at her. In the vehemence and contempt of her anger he did not recognize at all the kitten of the year before. But it was very vulgar, he decided. That vulgarity Blanche complicated at once. "What has he done, miss?" she asked, her hands on her hips. "Done?" Marie echoed. "He has made me drink of shame. Now, tired of that, he is going." "Not to leave you, miss?" "To leave me for another woman." "Then hanging is too good for him." Loftus gestured at the negress. "I say," he called. "Did you hear what I told you? Go away and hold your tongue." Blanche's eyes that had rolled whitely before were rolling now not merely whitely but wildly. "I won't go away, sir. I won't hold my tongue, sir. I am as good as you, sir. I have a son that's better nor you, sir. He wouldn't treat a lady as you have her, sir. Staying away from her as you have, sir. Making her eat her heart out, sir. No, sir, I won't hold my tongue, sir." And Blanche, mounting in paroxysms of indignation, shouted: "For the Lord's sake, sir. Hanging is too good for you, sir. You ought to have your ghost kicked. Yes, sir." "Oh, hell!" muttered Loftus between his teeth, and turning on his heel, he stalked out, flecking from his sleeve as he went an imaginary speck. CHAPTER IV THE RETURN OF THE YELLOW FAY In Fanny's drawing-room the next evening, at six minutes after eight, Loftus appeared. Although tolerably punctual, others had preceded him. On a sofa with Fanny was Sylvia Waldron. On another sofa were Mrs. Waldron and Melanchthon Orr. Annandale, who seemed to have lost flesh, was standing in the middle of the floor. "How are you?" he asked as Loftus entered. "And you?" "They did me," Annandale answered. "Atch., U. P., St. Paul, Steel, I had the list." As he spoke he mopped himself. Then in confidential aside, he added, "It has affected my stomach. It is as though I had a hole there. Will you have a sherry and bitters?" Loftus moved forward to where Sylvia and Fanny sat. Fanny gave him a finger; Sylvia, a little distant nod. She was dressed in white. About her neck was a string of pearls. Fanny was in a frock of tender asparagus green fluttered with lace, very cool to the eye and cut rather low. "I hope Arthur isn't hurt much," said Loftus. "Are you?" Fanny asked. "No. I have been selling. Today I covered. It was not easy, though. Everybody was crazy. I have never seen a panic before." "It will be a generation before you see another," Orr, from across the room, called out. At the further end of the room Harris, Annandale's former valet, since promoted to the position of butler, appeared, smug-faced and solemn, in silent announcement of dinner. For the time being the subject was abandoned, but presently when at table all were seated it was resumed. "It will cost the country $50,000,000," said Orr. He was at Fanny's left. At her right was Loftus. "Well," said Annandale, emptying a glass of Ruinart, "I am glad I don't have to produce it." Emptying another glass he added, "I have produced all I could." "I think I do not quite understand," said Mrs. Waldron, who led a highly unspeculative life and seldom saw the evening papers. Orr and Annandale both hastened to enlighten her. Ever since the Presidential election there had been a boom in the Street, a soaring market in which the whole community, down to and including messenger boys and chorus girls, had joined. On this, the ninth of May, it had, in the slang of the Street, just "busted." Since the great black day of a generation previous, never had there been such a crash, so many landed gentry, so much paper profit sunk into such absolute loss. In the flow of talk Fanny turned to Loftus. "How is the lady?" Loftus, whose mouth was full of jellied consommé, did not answer for a moment. Then he made a slight gesture. "She has gone." "Already?" "I had your orders!" Fanny looked at him wonderingly. "How did she take it?" "What difference does it make? She has gone. Is not that sufficient?" "For you, no doubt. But for her! No; really I am sorry. When you told her that you loved her I am sure she thought you meant forever. I am sure, too, that you meant for a week. It is a shame to treat a girl like that and then turn her loose." Loftus had begun to busy himself with some fish. He put his fork down. "But, confound it, you told me to." "Did I? I forgot. Besides, you are not usually so obedient." Loftus turned to his fish. "It seems to me that there is rather a change in the temperature. Isn't there?" he asked. "But, Royal, I cannot help feeling sorry for that girl. I cannot help feeling, too, that if you can get rid of her in this lively fashion you might do the same with me." "In that case it only shows what a simpleton you are. If I have had anything to do with her at all it was only because I couldn't have anything to do with you." "Well, hardly in that way. But you could have asked me to marry you." "I have since." "Say, rather, I asked you." "Anyway, the other evening it was settled. If now you have changed your mind----" "Regarding you my mind will never change. I shall speak to Arthur tonight." "What's that?" called Annandale who, from the other end of the table, had caught the mention of his name. "What's that?" "We were talking stocks," Loftus answered. "Do you know how money was today?" "I know it was beastly tight." "And that seems to me," Fanny with one of her limpid smiles remarked, "such a vulgar condition for money to be in." "Did I hear you ask," Orr inquired, "how money was today? It was sixty per cent." "Dear me, Melanchthon," Mrs. Waldron exclaimed. "I think I must get you to speak to the Trust Company. They only give me three. A mouse could not live in New York on that." "The time is not distant," said Orr, "when the population of New York will be exclusively composed of mice and millionaires. Nobody but plutocrats and paupers will be able to live here. Already it is little more than a sordid hell with a blue sky. I can remember----" Orr ran on. He had the table. In the impromptu which ensued other conversation was swamped. But during it, for a second, Loftus had Fanny's hand in his. It clasped it and in clasping thrilled. It was the first time in her life that she had permitted herself--or him--such a thing. It was the last. Sylvia, happening at the moment to turn that way, could not help seeing what was going on. She colored and looked at Annandale. During Orr's impromptu he had been attempting with plentiful champagne to fill the hole of which he had complained. Later, the dinner at an end, the women gone, the hole still unfilled, he called for whisky and soda and monologued plaintively on the disasters of the day. As he talked he drank. But the monologue, which was becoming tedious, Harris interrupted. Mrs. Waldron had sent in to say that she and Miss Waldron were going, and would Mr. Orr be so good as to see them home. At this Annandale got up. With the others he made for the room beyond. There, shortly, the guests of the evening departed; husband and wife were alone. "Do you know, Fanny, how much I have lost today?" that husband began. "No, Arthur," that wife replied. "Nor do I know that I particularly care. There is something more important to me than money just now. I want a divorce." "Eh?" Annandale had been walking up and down the room, but at this he stopped short. He did not seem to have heard aright. "Eh?" "Eh?" Fanny repeated in open mimic. "Yes, I want a divorce." "A divorce?" Munching the syllables of the word, Annandale put a hand to his shirt front. "From me?" Had Fanny asked him to make good the fifty million loss to the country which Orr had mentioned his bewilderment could not have been more sheer. He stared at Fanny. She was nodding at him. Influenced by that motion of her head, slowly, almost laboriously, he sat down. There the disasters of the day fusing with the alcohol of the night blent with the demand and bewildered him still more. "What an odd thing to want," he said at last. Then rallying he added, "You must be j-joking. Yes--really, for you know you can't tell me why." To this, Fanny who had been eyeing him narrowly, retorted severely: "I wonder are you in a condition to have me tell you anything at all?" At the imputation the poor chap, after the fashion of poor chaps in similar shape, flared indignantly. "There is nothing the matter with me," he protested. Though very much mixed, he managed for the moment not to appear so. "Nothing," he reiterated. "Then Arthur, to be quite frank, we are not suited to each other. If you will give me a divorce it will be nice of you. If not I shall go to Dakota and get one." Annandale passed a hand over his forehead. He did not in the least understand what all this was about. Then suddenly the fumes of wine disclosed a retrospect of incidents garnered unconsciously, memories of Fanny and Loftus, the sense of her increasing aloofness, the knowledge of his constant presence. These things made pictures which he saw and, seeing, inflamed. At once, in answer not to her but to them, he got from his seat, pounded violently on an étagère and cried with the viciousness of drink: "I'll shoot him! I'll shoot Royal Loftus for the dog that he is!" "Beg pardon, sir." Through the lateral entrance to the drawing-room Harris emerged, a tray in his hand. "A necklace, sir. It was under the dining-room table where Miss Waldron sat, sir." Annandale strangled an oath. He glared at Fanny, glared at the man, glared at the pearls, took the latter, thrust them in his pocket, motioned to Harris, strode from the room, went upstairs, then down and out from the house, slamming the door after him with a noise in which there was the clatter of musketry and the din of oaths. The night was black yet full of stars, the hour homicidal and serene. Annandale strode on. Before him was the park, about it a fence of high iron and within phantasmal peace. He did not notice it. He was wondering angrily what he would do, how he should act. Had he been sober he would have known at once. When in his sphere of life a woman wants to go, it is a man's mere duty to open the doors, open the windows, run ahead, get a divorce and bring it back to her on a salver. Had he been sober he would have realized that. He would have recognized too the propriety of Fanny's frank request. After little more than five months of marriage it was perhaps precipitate. Yet considered simply as a request it was, in the world in which he moved, more common than the reverse. Ordinarily he would have realized that. What is more, he would have realized that what Fanny had said was true. They were not suited for each other. When people are not so suited it is best that they should separate. But people that have bowed when they met might just as well bow when they part. In the life known as polite big words and little threats have long since gone out of fashion. All of which ordinarily Annandale would have known. He was essentially urbane, of a nature far more inclined to inaction than anger. Ordinarily, he would have accepted the situation, without joy, no doubt, but certainly without raising the roof. Whereupon, having so accepted it, he would have turned in and gone to bed. But alcohol plays strange tricks. It affects manners and memories. It affects, too, the imagination. Annandale was drunk. The Yellow Fay that lurks in liquor awoke in him the manger dog. He told himself that he was being robbed. And of what? The wife of his bosom! And by whom? His nearest friend! The outrage and the villainy of that loomed, or rather, the Yellow Fay aiding, seemed to loom so monstrously, that, beside it, the disasters of the Street dwindled into nothing, lost in the sense of this wrong. It was damnable, he decided. Putting a hand in a pocket his fingers encountered a string of pearls. It was not that which he was seeking. Besides, he had forgotten them. But finding them there it occurred to him that he ought to restore them at once. Circling the park he entered Irving Place and rang at Sylvia's door. There, instead of the usual if brief delay, the door opened at once. Orr was coming out. Beyond in the hall Sylvia stood. Orr looked at Annandale, wondering what the dickens he was after. But Annandale brushed by. Orr passed on. Annandale entered the hall. As the door closed the light revealed to Sylvia what Orr in the semi-obscurity of the stoop had not observed and which, had he observed, would, in view of an anterior episode, have induced his return. But Sylvia saw. In face and manner his excitement was obvious. Mindful of that episode she feared that he was again in his cups. Yet immediately, though for a moment, a question which he asked reassured her. She understood, or thought she did, why he had come. "Did you know that you had lost your pearls?" Instinctively the girl's hand went to her throat. "Here they are. They were found somewhere. In the hall, I think." "Thank you, Arthur. This is very good of you. But tomorrow would have done." She did not ask him in and this omission he did not appear to notice. He looked about the hall and then at the girl. At the look her fear returned. "Did you know about Fanny and Loftus?" he suddenly asked. "They're going to elope." As he spoke he leaned back heavily against the door. "I shall kill him," he added thickly. Sylvia wrung her hands. "Oh, Arthur, you have been drinking again. You promised that you never would." "I shall kill him," Annandale stubbornly repeated. "Oh, don't say such things," the girl pleaded. "Don't say them. Go home." Annandale turned sullenly, opened the door and looking back, muttered, "I have no home." Closing the door after him he started down the steps. They were few and wide, easy of descent. But they had become unaccountably steep. He caught at a rail. It steadied him. He stood there a moment. Then, a bit uncertainly, he zigzagged on. CHAPTER V EXIT FANNY "Murder!" On the morrow, through the thick streets newsboys were shouting the word engagingly, as though it were something nice. For further temptation they bawled, "In Gramercy Park!" Orr was leaving his office. It was four o'clock. He was on his way home. But the name detained him. Murder in Gramercy Park was a novelty which no one aware of its sedateness could comfortably resist. He bought an extra. There, for his penny, in leaded type it stood. In ink, appropriately red, meagre details followed. As these sprang at him, mentally he bolted. Other purchasers were absorbing them pleasurably. A good old-fashioned crime is so rare! Then, too, of all crimes murder in Gramercy Park is rarest. Yet when in addition the victim is a man of fashion what more would you have for a cent? To Orr the information was excessive. It concerned Royal Loftus, who, the paper stated, had been found early that morning, near a bench in the park, doubled in a heap, a bullet through his handsome head. No clues, no arrests. That was all. But was it not enough? To Orr, while excessive it was also incredible. Mechanically he read the account again. On his way uptown he bought other papers, less colorful but equally clear. Loftus had been identified. There was no mistake. But the incredibility of it persisted. A man young, rich, handsome, without apparently an enemy in the world or an idea in his head, to be done for like that was a matter which Orr could not immediately digest. He tried, however. In the effort he reached his house. There a telephone message awaited him. It asked would he please come to Irving Place. Presumably it concerned the murder. He went at once. In the sombre parlor Sylvia stood. "You know, I suppose," he began. Seeing that she did he added, "It is very odd." Sylvia interrupted him. "There is worse." "How worse? What do you mean?" "Fanny was going to run off with him." "With Loftus?" Sylvia nodded. Her face, always pale, now was white. "But," Orr expostulated, "you don't fancy that Annandale----?" "No." The monosyllable fell longly from the girl. "No," she repeated. "But others may." "I don't see why. There is nothing to go on. Is there though?" Sylvia did not directly reply. She looked down at her hands and then at her cousin. "I think," she presently said, "that he must have learned of it last evening after we went away. At dinner I am sure he had no suspicions." "Had you any?" Sylvia raised her eyebrows. "I don't know," she remarked, "whether when you were going from here you noticed him particularly, but in the hall he had told her that he would shoot him." Orr sniffed. "That is rather awkward." "Then almost at once he went. But where?" "Have you heard from him since?" "No, and it is for that reason I sent for you. Won't you go to him and let me know?" But Orr did not like the errand. It seemed to him that Annandale might be the man. "That, too, is rather awkward," he objected. Against the objection Sylvia pleaded. Manifestly she was nervous. "If you won't go," she said at last, "I shall." "Oh, well, if you put it in that way," Orr reluctantly replied, "I suppose I must." "And you will come back?" "As quickly as I can." There is a line of Hugo descriptive of the earnestness with which people gape at a wall behind which something has occurred. Orr recalled it when he reached Gramercy Park. At one end of the park was a great crowd staring at the high fence of iron. It was behind the fence that Loftus had been found. The place itself was directly in front of Annandale's house. On entering that house Orr was shown into the drawing-room. Shortly, from a room beyond, Annandale appeared. "You have heard, have you not?" he asked. "But come in here." Orr followed him to the other room. In it was a sideboard on which decanters stood. "Will you have something?" Orr thanked him. Annandale helped himself to a liquor. As he did so the decanter clicked against the glass and, as he raised the glass, Orr saw that his hand shook. "It is very strange," said Annandale, repeating almost the words which Orr had used to Sylvia. "I had no cause to love the man, but----" "I know," Orr interrupted. "My cousin told me. But if I were you I would not talk of it. She seemed worried lest you might." Annandale put down the glass. He was quite flushed. "But," he exclaimed, "she does not suspect me!" "Of course not. On the contrary. But then the fact suggests a motive which, coupled with any threat you may have made, might, in the absence of other clues, made a prima facie case, which to say the least, don't you see, would be nasty." "Damnably so!" Annandale muttered dumbly. Then, raising the glass again, he threw out: "But what nonsense! A little after you had all gone from here I went to your cousin's----" "Yes. I know you did. I met you on the stoop." "Did you?" said Annandale with marked surprise. "Why, yes. Don't you remember?" Annandale passed a hand across his face and sat down. "Don't you remember?" Orr reiterated. Annandale shook his head. "But you remember where you went afterward, don't you? Did you come directly here?" Annandale made no answer. "Can't you tell me?" Orr asked. "Or is it that you don't wish to?" On a mantel opposite the sideboard a clock was ticking. For awhile in the room only that ticking could be heard. "Can't you?" Orr asked again. Annandale stood up. It was as though the question had prodded him. He moved to the sideboard. But Orr got in his way. "Don't drink any more. Try to think." "I can't," said Annandale. He moved back and sat down. In his face the flush had deepened. It looked mottled. He himself looked ill. Orr, a hand extended on the sideboard, beat on it a brief tattoo. "This is rather tedious," he said at last. "It is only a little less than a year ago that you had a similar lapse. Oddly enough, it began as this has, at my cousin's house. But we must try to keep her out of the matter. Were she asked what you said it might be embarrassing, don't you think?" "What I said? What did I say?" Annandale as he spoke looked so abject that Orr feared that he might go to pieces there and then. Humanely he changed the subject. "Of course, whoever did it will be nabbed. Meanwhile, it is only to prevent any stupid suspicions that I venture to advise. By the way, have you any idea who could have done it?" Annandale again ran his hand across his eyes; then, looking up at Orr, he replied: "Not one--unless he did it himself." "H'm. Well, yes. That might be. But what does Mrs. Annandale think?" "She does not know. Or, at least, she did not at noon. I heard it then from Harris. I told him not to say anything to her. Shortly after, as I understood, she went out, to her mother's, I believe, though, of course, since then----" The sentence was not completed. Fanny was entering the room. Orr had always admired her very much, but never so much as then. She was dressed in black, which is becoming to blonds, and richly dressed, he afterward thought, he could not be sure for he lacked the huckster's eye. But his admiration was not on this occasion induced by her looks, though a woman's looks, when she has any, are always notable if unnoticed factors. His admiration was caused by the way she took things. With the air of one inquiring the time of day she glanced at Annandale and asked, almost with a lisp: "Why didn't you shoot me?" Orr turned to Annandale. He was rising. From his face the flush had gone. He was lurid. The word lurid is used because it is more dramatic than its synonym, ghastly. And here was drama, real drama, in real life. "Fanny, you don't think that I----" Drama, real drama, is an enjoyable rarity. Orr longed to stay and see it out. But, obviously, anything of the kind would have been worse than indiscreet. He picked up his hat. "Fanny," Annandale repeated, "you can't think----" "Oh," she interrupted, "you see you made it quite unnecessary for me to think at all. You told me beforehand. Wasn't it considerate?" she added, turning to Orr. "But I did not mean it," cried Annandale. "As God is my witness----" "I am a witness," Fanny interjected, interrupting him again. But the interruption was effected without abruptness, without apparent emotion, sweetly, almost lispingly, with a modulation of the voice that was restful to the ear. "And," she added, in the same sugary, leisurely way, but raising now a slender finger gloved in white, "I will swear to what you said." At this Orr swam, or tried to swim, to the rescue. "Surely," he protested, "you would not do that?" "Wouldn't I?" she answered, addressing Orr and speaking in the same smiling, seductive fashion that she had to Annandale. "Wouldn't I, indeed! Really, believe me, you are quite in error." Annandale fell back in the chair from which he had arisen. "Fanny," he gasped, "I did not know a woman could hate like that." Fanny smiled afresh. "No? Is it possible? But, then, perhaps, you never knew how a woman could love." She gave a little nod. It was as though she were adding, "Take that." Orr was buttoning a glove, preparing to retreat. She turned to him: "Don't go. Stay and have a drink with Arthur. He looks as though he needed one." She moved back. "Yes, stay," she continued. "I am going." Once more the slender finger gloved in white was raised. "Arthur Annandale, never willingly will I see you again--except in court. For to court I shall go, if only to see you sentenced." At that, at the splendid ferocity of it, Orr looked at Annandale. When he turned to look at Fanny, silently, no doubt smilingly, she had gone. CHAPTER VI WHAT THE PAPERS SAID There are occasions when speech is an intrusion and sympathy an affront. An occasion of this kind coincided with Fanny's exit. On the mantel the clock still ticked. Otherwise there was silence in that room. Orr, finishing with his glove, made for the door. "If I can be of use," he said, "let me know." Annandale stood up. "You can," he answered. For a moment he hesitated. He seemed lost and dizzy. Then, with an effort, he got himself together. "Tell Sylvia it is not true." Orr passed out. But instead of returning at once to Irving Place he went up the steps of an adjoining house. There he was told that Mrs. Loftus could see no one. He had not expected to be received. But he felt for her, felt, too, how she must feel. That a Loftus should die would, he knew, be enough. But that a Loftus should be murdered, and that Loftus be her son, there was something which, Orr thought, might perhaps overwhelm her. And, as Orr afterward learned, Mrs. Loftus was then sitting, her attendants about her, absently and ceaselessly shaking her head. Nor did the motion of it ever cease. She was palsied. Before Orr learned of that other things supervened, primarily fresh extras. These of course were indicated. The imagination of the public had been stirred. Of all things mystery affects the imagination most. Here was one agreeably heightened by subsequent editions announcing the projection of the eternal feminine. Then those that read these sheets felt that they were getting their money's worth. But the feeling was accentuated when one of the papers gratified them with a picture of a girl who they saw was an exceedingly fetching young woman and who they were informed had vanished from her residence, the Arundel, where she was known as Miss Leroy. Her connection with Loftus, a connection which the neighborhood generally understood, was shown with reportorial ease. With the same ease it was established that he had been with her the evening preceding the night of his death. Bag and baggage the next morning she had flown. That fact in itself was prodigiously interesting. A young and pretty assassin, what! It was quite like fiction. It was almost too good or too bad to be true. Besides, the picture displayed a girl not merely pretty but quasi-ideal, a face infinitely delicate, disdainful yet sad. Orr saw the picture and saw too that, while perhaps rather flattering, it did not resemble Marie in the least. As a matter of fact it was an art editor's fake. But that, of course, the public did not know and being fed on fakes would not have cared if it had known. Then more mystery followed. What were her antecedents? Who were her people? Whence had she come? No one could say. What alone could be said was that a year previous Loftus had taken for her an apartment at the Arundel, where she had resided in a manner otherwise genteel, though with, latterly, but one servant, a negress named Blanche. At the time the police were as much interested in the servant as the public in the girl. The latter in departing had had the forethought to leave the former behind, and, from her, information relevant and irrelevant was obtained. To Mr. Peacock for instance, one of the district attorneys, Blanche related that at dinner her mistress liked sweetbreads and sorrel with, now and then, a chocolate souffle. Mr. Peacock was a florid man with the face of a cupid, the guile of a fox and the voice of an ogre. "I don't care for that," he told her. "Nor I," Blanche agreeably replied. "I mean," said Mr. Peacock, "that I don't care about her victuals. She was in love with the dead man, wasn't she?" "I guess so," Blanche with profound if unconscious psychology replied. "She was always scrapping with him. She----" "Tell me," Peacock interrupted, "what happened the last night he was there." "It was awful. He was trying to get rid of her. He wasn't much and I told him so, but he was all she had. When I first came to her she said she was an orphan, that she hadn't anybody anywhere, that they were all dead." "She may have meant," Peacock with even profounder psychology interjected, "that she was dead to them." But this insinuation Blanche resented. "She could be lively enough when she liked." "Who came to see her?" "Mr. L." "No one else?" Blanche shook her head. "Whom did she write to?" "How do I know?" "Didn't you ever see her write to anyone?" "Well, the last night, after he had gone, she did write a letter and gave it to me to post. When I came back----" "Whom was it addressed to?" Blanche shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know, I can't read. When I came back she was crying and getting a few duds together and I helped her." "Did she tell you where she was going?" "Sure. To Europe. I saw her off the next day. She went in the sewerage." "In the steerage, do you mean?" asked Peacock. "But she hadn't any money? Didn't Loftus give her any?" "She wouldn't take his money, she threw it back at him. She would not take anything he had given her. She left a room full of dresses and jewelry. They are at the Arundel now. She told me----" "Did you see her on board?" Blanche nodded. "Mightn't she have left the ship before it sailed?" "Yes, if she had wanted. I wouldn't have stopped her. But I stood there and as the ship went out she waved her little hand at me and--and----" "Do you remember the ship's name?" But now Blanche was weeping profusely. "No matter," said Peacock. "I can find out." He did. He found out, too, that when Loftus was shot Marie Leroy was on the high seas. And there he was without a clue. What is worse, there was the eager public quite as deficient. Yet though the clue which the girl represented was necessarily abandoned, there remained a theory. There remained even two theories. The first was robbery. Loftus, when found, had about him not so much as a five-cent piece. The wad of bills which men of means are supposed to carry, and which, having credit everywhere, they never do, was absent. Absent too was the customary watch. The precise use which a man of means and particularly of leisure can have for a watch the police and press did not stop to consider. The absence of watch and money suggested a theory. That was enough. The theory, however, like all theories, had its defects. Loftus had been found within the park, a few feet from the fence. The shooting might have occurred from without, but unless the assassin had a key or a ladder or a balloon or wings he could not possibly have got in to go through him. Eliminating ladder, balloon and wings, a key the assassin could not have had unless he were a resident in the neighborhood, the agent of a resident, or a caretaker of the park itself. People of this order are as eliminable as balloons and wings. The theory therefore had its defects. It had, though, this in its favor--the lock of one of the gates might have been picked. It had something else in its favor. It suited the Loftus clan. Mrs. Loftus, though childless now, was not otherwise alone. Behind her were all the Loftuses, a contingent of relatives socially eminent, ponderable politically, super-respectable, synonymous with the best. To them the death of Royal, however dismal, was not disgraceful--not disgraceful, that is, assuming that it was a footpad's work. On their escutcheon it put a mourning band but not a blackening blot. That blot they feared. They had cause to. The dark, donjuanesque story about Marie Leroy might have been followed by other stories darker still, dirtier if possible, that would begrime them all. The footpad theory they accepted therefore at once. Had they been able, had circumstances favored them, had the man, for instance, been shot in some way or in some place unknowable to the police, they would have arranged to have had him die decorously, if suddenly, of some genteel complaint, of appendicitis or pleuro-pneumonia. Then there would have been no stories, no extras, no pictures, no notoriety, no fear of that blot. The fear subsisting, they accepted the footpad theory, glad to find it ready-made, declining to consider any other, desisting from further effort, hushing the matter as well as they could, refusing, though urged, to offer a reward. Yet, though the theory suited them it did not satisfy the public. It was too tame. They demanded something else. That demand the press, as was its duty, attempted to supply. Through methods unfathomably vidocqesque, the young gentleman connected with the _Chronicle_--one of the most enterprising sheets--discovered more about Loftus dead than Loftus living could himself have known. They discovered that in the panic he had dropped a bagatelle of five millions, and announced that he had committed suicide. But while at the autopsy it was not demonstrated that Loftus could not have shot himself, at the inquest it was shown that the obligatory instrument had not been found. Even to vidocqesque young gentlemen the suicide theory ceased then to appeal. But that only deepened the mystery. To dissipate it and, at the same time, to display an endearing pro bono publicanism, the _Chronicle_ offered a reward of five thousand dollars for such information as would lead to the arrest and conviction of the assassin. Immediately there was a clue. It was Harris who produced it. Under the guidance of a reporter he was led to the office of the _Chronicle_, where the young gentleman turned him over to the managing editor quite as though the clue were his own. "Here, Mr. Digby, is a party that knows who shot Loftus." Mr. Digby was a small man with a big beard, very well dressed, remarkably civil. "Yes," he said. "And who did?" "Mr. Arthur Annandale." Mr. Digby smiled. He did not believe it. But it stirred him pleasurably. The _Chronicle_ stood for the people. Annandale represented the predatory rich. Besides, it was in front of Annandale's house that Loftus had been found. At once he saw scoops, extras, headlines. Also the possible libel. Meanwhile at a glance he had taken Harris in. "You are in his employment?" "Yes, sir," Harris, amazed at such perspicacity, replied. "I am the butler." "And you saw him do it?" "No, sir, but I heard him say he would." "When?" "The night Mr. Loftus was shot." "To whom did he say it? To you?" "To Mrs. Annandale, sir." "Oho! How was that?" "It was after dinner, sir. I was in the dining-room. The second man was with me cleaning up. On the floor under the table he found a necklace. I took it in through the hall to the drawing-room. Mrs. Annandale was there with Mr. Annandale. When I was just at the door I heard him say, 'I'll kill Loftus.' I went in and gave him the necklace." "But why?" Mr. Digby interrupted. "What was he going to kill him for? What was the motive?" "Mr. Loftus had just gone, sir. He had been dining with us. He and several others." "Well?" "Well, sir, when I was in the hall I heard Mrs. Annandale say as how she wanted a divorce." "Aha!" exclaimed Mr. Digby. "The plot thickens. Was she in love with Loftus?" "She was that, sir. Anyone could see it." "Then what?" "Mr. Annandale went upstairs, came down again and went out." "Did you attach any importance to his going upstairs?" "He went to get his pistol, sir." "Oho! He had a pistol, had he?" "Yes, sir. A 32-calibre. I bought it for him myself." "That is a very good story," said Mr. Digby, who was a judge. CHAPTER VII HELD WITHOUT BAIL The theories and clues in the now celebrated case Orr related to Sylvia one after another as they reached him through different channels. To the story of Marie Leroy she listened, her face averted, without a word. The footpad theory she dismissed. It was absurd. But the suicide theory impressed her. Even to her mind it was not logical. Loftus was too cavalier, too supremely indifferent, to make it plausible. On the other hand, it disposed of the whole matter. Moreover, as she put it to Orr, what is suicide but the sinful end of a sinful life? "Who knows," she asked, "what sudden remorse he may have experienced that last night when he was alone there in the park?" "Suicide," Orr had replied, "is assassination driven in. It is the crisis of a pre-existing condition, a condition wholly pathological, one which remorse may complicate but which it cannot directly induce. There was nothing whatever the matter with Loftus. He may have been sinful, as you express it, but he was sound. Besides, the man had no more conscience than a tom cat." Nevertheless Sylvia clung to the theory. She had no other. Hopelessly she hoped that time would verify it. But she suffered acutely. Orr's account of Fanny's attitude frightened her. What frightened her most was the tale that Harris told. The latter she learned from the press. Meanwhile she had gone to Mrs. Loftus. The old lady had not recognized her, or, rather, had mistaken her for someone else. "My boy is away, Fanny," she said, her head shaking as she spoke. "He is away. I don't know where." She began to whimper. Sylvia, too, had wept. It was pitiful. The proud, arrogant woman Fate had reduced to a cowering crone. Meanwhile also Sylvia had tried to see Fanny. But at the hotel where Mrs. Price had been stopping she was informed that both were away. An address was given her to which she wrote. For a time no answer came. Finally from a different address Mrs. Price replied saying that Fanny was ill and asking that their whereabouts be a secret. In spite of the little threat Fanny was not anxious to be subpoenaed. But that was much later, long after Harris had told the story which Mr. Digby declared to be very good. This opinion, editorial and offhand though it was, was immediately and officially indorsed. For the story had a double merit. It supplied not merely a clue but a case. A very clear case, too. There was the antecedent threat, the opportunity, the instrument, everything even to the motive which was reasonable enough. The inevitable ensued. Annandale, arrested, was held without bail. At the news of that Sylvia shuddered. Time touched her. Her eyes ringed themselves with sudden circles. The shuddering passed, but the rings remained. She became whiter, harder, more resolute, divining dimly that somewhere, somehow, there was a duty to be performed. What the duty was to be the press disclosed. Against Annandale was public opinion. There he was convicted instanter. At the injustice, or what seemed to her the injustice, of that she revolted. But Orr, whom Annandale had immediately retained, dosed her with a platitude. "Public opinion be hanged," he said. "What is it but the stupidity of one multiplied by the stupidity of all. _Vox populi, vox stulti._ The majority is always cocksure and dead wrong." In spite, though, of general stupidity there were people sufficiently indulgent to accord Annandale the benefit of extenuating circumstances. The reputation of Loftus, which left rather a little to be desired; the coupling of his name with that of Annandale's wife; the report that for his sake the latter had been preparing to leave her husband; the further report that for the convenience of both Marie Leroy had been shipped abroad; these things reduced the case in the minds of the indulgent to what the French call a _crime passionnel_, and which, as such, is psychologically and even legally defensible. But French views are not our views. Besides, admitting their validity, that validity was impaired by the attitude which Annandale assumed. He omitted to admit, and thereby for the time being waived the right to plead, the circumstances advanced in his justification. When charged had he said, "Oh, yes, I did it, and so would you or any other man," there, don't you see, might have been an excuse. But not a bit of it. Up and down he denied that he was the culprit. A denial such as that has, though, its merits. It puts on the prosecution the burden of proof. Moreover, if you have done anything you should not have it is only common sense to say that you have not done it, to say it in spite of facts, in spite of evidence, in spite of everything and everybody. For if you own up, there you are, while if you don't then no matter what is advanced you may succeed in raising a doubt and in planting it among the jury. But in this case the denial was more serviceable than ordinarily it might have been for the reason that thus far no one had been produced who could say they had been about while Annandale was at it. These points Orr set before Sylvia. The sophistry of them displeased her. She did not like it, and said so. "It will get him off, though," Orr confidently replied. "Unless," he hastened to add, "a witness to the act itself should pop up. Then, barring a miracle, he is a goner. But otherwise I will get him off. It may take a year or two, but I'll do it." "I don't want you to get him off," Sylvia scornfully retorted. "I want him vindicated." "You see, though," Orr with unruffleable calm continued, "if a witness should pop up, a witness, let us say, whom I cannot discredit, vindication will be difficult. It will be difficult to make twelve imbeciles in a pen believe that when Annandale shot Loftus----" "He never shot him," Sylvia cried. "My dear cousin," Orr with the same unruffleable calm pursued, "the beauty of your faith is wonderful. You must come to court and inject it among the jury. Faith that used to move mountains may yet move men. But I doubt it. I doubt that it could make them credit the incredible, the fact patent to me as it should be to you, that though Annandale shot Loftus he was, and for that matter still is, totally unconscious of it." "He never shot him." "My dear Sylvia, forgive me. He did. Though what I can say for him and, if needful, I shall say, is that he did not mean to. The intent is the essence of crime. There was no intent here. Of his own free will the man would not hurt a fly. But that night he was not a free agent. He was not even a conscious agent. Of all the cells of his brain but one was awake. In that cell was an incitement inciting him to kill. When the other cells awoke that one cell fell asleep. It has been dormant since then. Only through hypnosis could it awaken. In the interim he knew no more than a somnambulist what he was about. His condition, though, was not somnambulistic, it was a case of psychical epilepsy, a malady superinducible in certain natures by various poisons, of which anger is one and alcohol another." Orr paused. He looked at his cousin. Incredulity, something else besides, was in her face. He affected not to notice it. "Now," he ran on, "go with a story like that to the average jury. Of course, if need be, I shall have experts, the very best experts, to substantiate it. But the prosecution will have other experts, experts who will be just as good, to deny the possibility of any such thing. In that event it will be only a pleasure to mix them up a bit and to show by their own testimony that they know no more than the law--I don't say allows but--pays them for. Do you mind if I smoke?" They were seated in the sombre parlor in Irving Place. Meditatively Orr lit a cigarette. Meditatively Sylvia contemplated him. "Would it not be better," she presently asked, "to show that Loftus committed suicide?" "Yes, in the event that the pistol is found. It is rather late, though, for that." Sylvia bent forward. "Melanchthon," she said, "I have heard you say--have I not--that everything is possible?" "Indeed you have and you will hear me again." "Then why not ask Miranda?" Orr looked about for a _cendrier_; finding one he put his cigarette in it. "You mean the medium. Do you know, I would in a minute, were it not that it will be a long time, perhaps years, before she or any other spook could call Loftus up. When a man is snuffed out as abruptly as he was, he is so stunned and confused that it is quite a while before he can sufficiently collect his wits to reply to any communications from these latitudes. It is tedious that it should be so. The spirit world needs remodeling. But there you are. By the way, where are you to be this summer?" Sylvia made a gesture. She did not know. It was then June. Fashion had fled. Fifth avenue was empty. The town was an oven. In that oven the girl would have preferred to remain. But at the preference her mother had rebelled. Against Newport Sylvia had rebelled also. She was in no mood for its gaiety. Finally a little place on Long Island suggested itself. Ultimately there they went. It was in this place that Sylvia heard from Mrs. Price of Fanny's illness. Fanny had disappointed her exceedingly. That she could have so much as contemplated the step which she had in view seemed to Sylvia unspeakable. Her threat, too, in regard to testifying against her husband was in the circumstances but a flagrant avowal of love for the other man. Yet, for that love, how had she been punished! Perhaps now she repented of it. Perhaps now in her illness she needed someone to whom she could unburden her heart. At the thought of that Sylvia wrote at once to Mrs. Price asking might she not come to her. But to this Mrs. Price replied that Fanny after an attack of nervous prostration was now down with typhoid, though with every prospect and assurance of recovery. When she was up again, then, if Sylvia would come, it would, Mrs. Price added, be nice of her. There is a saying trite yet true that we should hasten to cherish those whom we love lest they leave us forever before we have loved them enough. There is another saying less true and more trite that of those that do leave only good should be said. To Sylvia presently these sayings recurred. Two days after the receipt of the letter from Mrs. Price she read in the papers that Fanny was dead. The paper fell from her. For an hour, which passed as only such hours do pass, incomprehensibly, without consciousness of time, she sat, still and stricken. Through raveled skeins of thought of which the tangled threads refused to wholly straighten, she blamed herself for all that had occurred. Not indeed for Loftus. The man, his life, his death, everything concerning him was abhorrent to her. Of him, other than that pity which can mingle with disgust, she had no concern whatever. But when she should have stood most steadfastly by Annandale she had turned from him. Had he not implored her forgiveness, and did she not know that all that God requires is that forgiveness be asked? But no. She had been too proud and that pride she had nursed until it was too late, until Annandale had married, with this double tragedy for climax. It was all her fault, Sylvia told herself. All her own. Had she not abandoned Annandale he would have had no cause to threaten, Fanny would have lived, there would have been no shock to debilitate her and leave her a prey to disease. Fanny's death was at her door. Companioned by these thoughts for an hour she sat, still and stricken. When she aroused herself it seemed as though before her two figures stood. One said "I am Duty," the other, "I am Grief." A message from the latter she imparted to Mrs. Price. Many messages not similar but cognate that lady received. Fanny had been very popular. Her popularity the rumor connecting her with Loftus had necessarily impaired. The arrest of her husband for shooting the man, and for shooting him, as it was generally understood, on her account, impaired it still more. In the upper circles the scandalous may be relished, but it is not indorsed. Had Fanny lived, those circles would have visited their displeasure in not visiting her at all. But death is a peacemaker. It comes and where there was war is a truce. By the worldly Fanny was immediately forgiven and by them as quickly forgot. It was in July that she died. In September Sylvia returned to town. At once she asked Orr to arrange for her a visit to Annandale in the Tombs. To that he objected. "You know," he said, "that you will have to testify against him." "Against him!" Sylvia repeated with an air of utter surprise. "Why, yes. He was here that night. He has admitted it. You will be asked to tell what he said." In Sylvia's eyes both disdain and acquiescence surged. "And what of it?" "But," Orr exclaimed, "there is the threat. He made it in the presence of Harris and repeated it in yours." "He did nothing of the kind." "But you told me so." "You are mistaken. I know nothing of any threat whatever." "Oh," said Orr with a bow, "this is magnificent." But he meant heroic. In view of the girl's nature it was certainly that. What is more, it was helpful. With Fanny out of the way, the only one left that could testify to any threat was Harris, and Annandale's word was quite as good as his, better even, for the value of the servant's testimony would be weighed in scales in one of which would be the _Chronicle's_ dollars. Orr said as much to Sylvia, but apparently his views did not seem to her very novel. It became obvious to him that she had thought it all out for herself. "Besides," she presently and irrelevantly continued, "I am to blame. If I had not been stupid with him, there would have been nothing to threaten about." That, Orr thought, was rather putting the dots on the i's. But he did not mind. He was pleased with her. His respect for her had increased. Had she been the kind of a cousin to permit such a thing there and then he would have kissed her. Yet some reward he felt was her due. As a result the interview which she asked he presently arranged. Under conditions which to her were as tragic as they were humiliating she saw Annandale in the visitors' room at the Tombs. The room itself was not absolutely appalling, and though there was a keeper present, he was quite out of earshot, very oblivious, extremely civil and, parenthetically, handsomely paid. Orr awaited her at the door. When she rejoined him her eyes were wet. Orr looked at her. A little tune occurred to him. "Sylvia, Sylvia, I'm a-thinking--" But after all, he reflected, Fanny is dead. Instantly the girl reddened and very distantly, her head in the air, announced, "We are betrothed." "Ah," said Orr, "ah, indeed! The engagement will be rather long, I fear." "Oh, Melanchthon, don't say that. Arthur is as innocent as you are. I know you don't believe it, but----" Orr interrupted her. "It is not a question of what I believe. Independent of your interest in the man he is my client. I owe him a duty. That duty is to get him off, or to do my best to." "I know you will," Sylvia fervently replied; "I feel it. So does Arthur. Besides, the only one we have to fear is Harris." Orr smiled grimly. "Harris, I understand, is not very well." "Not well? What do you mean?" the girl wonderingly inquired. "I mean," he enigmatically answered, "that next week when I have him on the stand I propose to give him a little medicine." Then he smiled again, grimly as before, with an air of personal satisfaction. CHAPTER VIII THE DEFENDANT TO THE BAR "Hats off!" Through the great white room the cry vibrated, followed instantly by another: "Hear ye, hear ye, all ye having business with the Court of the General Sessions of the City and County of New York, draw near, give attention and ye shall be heard." Within the Bar, restless as hyenas awaiting their prey, roamed the district attorneys. Against that Bar, crouching there, were Orr and his associate counsel, restless too, but prepared to spring. To the rear were reporters, the flower of newspaperdom, handsome young men dressed to the ears in resplendent collars and astounding cravats. Back of them were the spectators, a solid mass, ladies of every degree except the high one and, with or without them, men whom you would recognize as first-nighters, others whom you would not recognize at all. To the right of the Bar were witnesses for the prosecution, experts in various matters of which gastronomy evidently was one. To the left was the jury, and above, beneath the amber panoply of the Bench, the Recorder sat, an ascetic Solon. The atmosphere of the room, high ceiled, close packed, was Senegambian. Without you could see, within you could feel, the heat and eagerness of the autumnal sun. "Arthur Annandale to the Bar!" Into the court, as though it were a theatre, the defendant strolled, perfectly groomed, the Tombs pallor on his face but none of its dust on his coat, an air of tranquil boredom about him. At his heels was a keeper. He shook hands with Orr, sat down beside him, turned and gave his hat to the keeper, turned again and looked over to a gated inclosure at the right of the Bench where, in a sort of proscenium box, Sylvia sat with her mother. The entire settings were those of a play. With this difference, it was real, a drama of mud and blood without orchestral accompaniment. After months of preparation, after days of talesmen baiting, on this Indian Summer forenoon the curtain was rising. The jury it had been a job to get. A full hundred were examined, cross-questioned, challenged and rejected before the dozen were boxed. When the last, the twelfth, a cadaverous individual, was accepted the stage was set. "May it please the Court; Mr. Foreman and gentlemen of the jury." With three bows and these rituals, Peacock opened for the State, outlining the case of the People, describing the crime, detailing the motive, summarizing the evidence, expressing the wish that the jury would believe the defendant innocent until his guilt had been proved, but declaring that, personally, for his own part, of that guilt he was thoroughly convinced. Before he had finished Orr was at him. "I object to the District Attorney prejudicing the jury against this gentleman, my client." That gentleman did not appear to heed. From Sylvia and her mother he had turned to look at the spectators, from them to fabulous beasts that climbed the fluted columns on the walls. The objection was not sustained. "And I object to Your Honor's ruling," Orr with a bulldog look threw up at the Bench. Peacock proceeded. "There, gentlemen, is the crime, there too, the motive. To finish the picture evidence will be adduced." He sat down. Then getting up, he called the first witness for the People, the Gramercy Park caretaker, who had found the body. The witness was succeeded by others, by the policeman on the beat, by the coroner's physician, by experts and servants. By turn Orr took them in hand. With some he was curiously perfunctory. Of the caretaker, a meagre old man, with shifty eyes, who appeared very uncomfortable, he asked but four questions. "When you found the body what did you do?" "Ran and got the policeman, sir." "Where did you get him?" "On Lexington avenue and Twenty-third street, sir." "Did you find him at once?" "No, sir, I had to hunt a bit." "Between the time you found the body and the time you got back how many minutes would you say had elapsed?" "About ten or fifteen minutes, sir." "That's all," said Orr. It was not much. Yet with the policeman, a fat man with a red face and a blue nose, he was even briefer. "When you reached the park with the last witness, how did you get in?" "Walked in, sir," the man answered with a grin. "The gate was open was it?" "Yes, sir." "That will do," said Orr. It was not much either. But with other witnesses, notably with the experts, he fought, he fought with them, fought with Peacock, fought with the Court, would have fought with more had there been more to fight, fought pertinaciously, step by step, reducing testimony to nothing. Meanwhile the court-room shimmered with silks. Wanderers from Fifth avenue who never in their lives had been in the General Sessions before begged and badgered their way there. It is great fun to see a man tried for his life. But when you have known him, when in addition elements supersensational blend like a halo about him, what more could be decently asked? Yet one thing disappointed. It was regrettable that the prisoner was not in chains, that he could sit there and yawn with every appearance of being at a matinee, a keeper for lackey behind him. Otherwise the fun, if not fast, was furious. Peacock would ask a question, the lips of a witness would part but before more than a fraction of a syllable could issue Orr would hold him up, hold up the prosecution, hold up the Court. Generally he was overruled. But no overruling abashed him. He arose from opposition refreshing. There were times when Sylvia thought him bowed to the earth, utterly routed, hushed for good. But not a bit of it. At the moment when his ammunition seemed exhausted and his defeat assured, from an arsenal of books before him he pulled weapons wherewith not merely to renew the fight but to win. In the course of one objection he was commanded by the Bench to sit down. He protested. The Recorder declined to listen to him further, reiterating the order that he be seated. Then with the air and manner of a little boy sent for misbehavior from the room, Orr half turned, hesitated, turned back, and through the exercise of guile unique and his own, succeeded in re-engaging the Court in conversation, protesting his respect, denying his contumacy and presently he was continuing the very objection because of which he had been told to sit down. He did sit down, but long after, when he was ready, when he had succeeded in having his say and his way. Then when at last he did sit down it was with an air of mastery that would have become Napoleon at Marengo. At the moment he was not a lawyer merely, he was an actor, quasi-Shakespearian, a compound of irony and good humor, Falstaff and Mercutio in one. All this, however, was, to vary the metaphor, but the preliminary canter. That Loftus had been killed was shown and admitted. But it had not been shown nor was it admitted that the defendant was the man. This defect a star witness was to repair. The star was Harris. Yet, though a star, he looked ghastly. Whether ill or not, he was at least ill at ease. The smug, household-servant air had gone. He seemed to have come from turmoils in Tatterdemalia. He was bruised, dirty, unshorn. But the story which he had brought to the _Chronicle_ he repeated, with embellishments at that. After retailing the tale, precising the motive and elaborating on it, he declared that the love of the defendant's wife for Loftus was common talk--evidence which, though hearsay, Orr indifferently let pass. Then, after identifying a pistol as the property of Annandale--an exhibit marked A which Peacock had already tried but, held up by Orr, had not wholly succeeded in fitting to the crime--Harris swore that on the night of the murder, at five minutes after twelve, in the room which he occupied at the top of Annandale's house and which overlooked Gramercy Park, he heard a shot; that going to the window he looked out, that he could distinguish nothing, but that going then to the hall he heard someone coming in the house and looking down saw the defendant enter. "Ha!" said Orr, taking him in hand, or rather, by the throat. For he made no attempt at ordinary amenities. He questioned him ferociously, with an air of personal hatred, with an air of saying, "Damn you, I have got it in for you now." "What is your name?" he asked. "Richard Harris, sir." Orr pounded on the table in front of him. "Your name! Your name! I want your name, not something that you have made up like the rest of your rubbish. How many times have you been in jail? You were once employed in Hill street, Berkeley Square, by the Duchess of Kincardine. When you absconded from there, where was it that the police caught you? Answer me." From behind the rail objections exploded like shell. But through the running fire of them Orr held his own, sandbagging the man with one charge after another, charge of theft, charge of forgery, but particularly of boasting the week before, in a Sixth avenue saloon where grooms and footmen congregate, that he could testify to anything that he was paid for. From ghastly Harris turned vermilion. The flush retreating left him livid. Had the fluted columns with their fabulous beasts fallen on him he could not have been more limp. At one question he swayed like an animal hit on the head. At another he hissed like a snake. There were times when he tried to hide from view. It was a curious example of the biter bit. "That's all," said Orr with tigerish cheerfulness at last. He had done him. He had given him the medicine. He had more in reserve. Peacock meanwhile had once jumped at Orr, his fist raised. Once he gave him the lie direct. Once he accused him of suborning. But Orr in sandbagging the witness with one hand, had another free for the prosecution. He was gluttonish, giving as good as was sent, very often better. The Recorder, dismayed at the slugging, protested. "A human being is on trial for his life. I cannot try a case where only counsel are heard." Immediately Orr supplied him with a diversion. One after another witness for the defense scaled the stand, sleuths from over seas, experts and servants. In his corner before them Orr prowled. At the witnesses for the prosecution he had roared, sometimes he had bounded at the Bar, sometimes when a move of his succeeded he raised his right hand and looked at it as though surprised that it was not blood red. But now with his own witnesses he was serene, entirely calm, refreshingly civil. That civility awoke in Peacock the hyena. The first witness Orr produced, a man who, as it afterward appeared, had had a rough and tumble with Harris that morning in the corridor, he partly devoured. What was left of him he sent to the Tombs. As fast as witnesses could be produced he ate them up. It was terrific. You could not help feeling that there are safer places than the witness stand in a murder trial, that you ran the risk of being killed yourself, talked to death if nothing worse. "Don't go at him like a common scold," Orr engagingly pleaded at one stage of the game. "Why browbeat and bully a witness as you do?" he expostulated at another. "That's all, my friend," he said to one witness, "and let me apologize for the District Attorney's remarks." From his tone and manner never in the world would you have thought him the man who, but a little before, had so thoroughly sandbagged Harris. Meanwhile questions coarse as oaths, answers frank as sword thrusts, clashed and resounded. One and all Orr's charges were substantiated. The testimony was damning to Harris, infecting everything he had said. From behind the rail Peacock volleyed and thundered. But truth when you get at it is a stubborn thing. So far as Harris was concerned there it stood and there too, during the production of it, Orr stood, quite like an Angora lapping milk. You could hear him purr. The eyes of Sylvia glistened like mica. Now and again Annandale laughed outright. It is always insufficient to be innocent of a given charge. You must appear so. Annandale did not. Alternately he was bored and buoyant. But not dejected, never depressed. He did not seem to feel that his life was at stake. That is the attitude of the habitual ruffian. But sentiment was veering. Public opinion is a wave that thinks, thinks again, changes its mind, volatile as a woman. At the opening everybody knew that Annandale was guilty. Now nobody was quite so sure. The Recorder caressed his beard. "I think," he announced, "that I will give the jury a recess." CHAPTER IX THE TWELFTH JUROR Tumultuously the session was resumed. At the door was a riot. There a squad of police fought back surging nondescripts clamoring for admission, fighting for entrance to the continuous show. A woman fainted. Another had her gown torn off. One man retired with a blackened eye. During the recess Orr got for a moment with Sylvia and Mrs. Waldron. "Aren't you hungry?" he asked. Sylvia took his hand and pressed it. In her eyes was victory, in her face delight. "I never knew before how Protean you are. You have won." Orr tossed his head. "Not by a long shot. Besides, there is the jury. Eleven look imbecile and the twelfth looks ill. There is no telling at all what they will do or will not. But aren't you to eat anything?" He turned to Mrs. Waldron. "Aren't you hungry?" "Very," said the lady, "but I can't do a thing with Sylvia. I----" She would have said more, but the jury had filed in. The judge was entering, preceded by the cry "Hats off!" Orr slipped back to his corner, to which Annandale, with his matinee air and the keeper for usher, had already returned. For a moment Orr bent to him, then to his associates but briefly. Bending again to Annandale he told him to take the stand. The move, wholly unexpected, unusual, almost exceptional in murder cases, created an impression that was excellent, a sense of admiration for the fearlessness of the defense. From the prosecution came low growls of content. They were to be fed at last. In anticipation they licked their chops. But the excellence of the impression dwindled. In the direct, Annandale denied, of course, that he had committed the murder, denied that he had ever contemplated it, swearing that to the best of his recollection he had made no threat at all. "To the best of your recollection," Orr repeated after him. "Now please tell me, had anything occurred that night to impair your memory in any way?" "Well--er--yes. Yes. I had been drinking." "Had you any animosity toward the deceased?" "Toward Loftus? None whatever. On the contrary, he was my best friend." Peacock jumped. "I ask that that be stricken out." Quietly Orr continued: "Had you known Loftus long?" "All my life." "Was he a friend of yours?" "An intimate friend." Orr turned to Peacock. "Your witness." Peacock jumped again. "You say that on the night of the murder you had been drinking. Were you drunk?" Paternally the Recorder looked over and down. "The witness need not answer that unless----" Annandale interrupted him. "I am much obliged to Your Honor, but really I have nothing to conceal. I was drunk, deplorably so." "Habit of yours, is it?" Peacock snapped. Annandale took a monocle from a pocket, screwed it in his eye, looked through it at Peacock, smiled at him, with an air of fathomless good fellowship, answered: "Dear me, no. Is it one of yours?" "Oho!" cried Peacock, pocketing the insult but pouncing at the point, "you were drunk on this occasion only. Got drunk for it, did you?" "No," Annandale blandly and confidentially replied. "You see, don't you know, it was the day of the panic. I had dropped a good lot of money--a good lot, I mean, for me--and, as the saying is, I tried to drown my sorrows." "But you found that they could swim, didn't you? Now, tell me, among these sorrows was not the greatest the one to which your former butler has testified, your late wife's desire for a divorce in order that she might marry Loftus? Is it not a fact that she told you so, and that you then said, 'I'll kill him, I'll kill Royal Loftus like the dog that he is'?" "I recall no such conversation." "What, then, was the nature of the conversation that passed between you and your wife on this particular evening?" "I don't remember." "The conversation and the threat to which your butler has sworn may therefore have occurred without your now recalling it. Is that not so?" "Everything is possible, you know," Annandale answered with a phrase unconsciously borrowed of Orr. "But I doubt it very much for the reason----" "Here," interrupted Peacock. "I don't want your doubts or your reasons or your haha airs. I want answers from you, direct answers. Where did you go and what did you do after your threat?" To this Orr objected. A wrangle ensued. Orr was sustained. Peacock reconstructed his question. Annandale answered that he had gone to Miss Waldron's, but that he remembered nothing else. "Is this yours?" Peacock suddenly asked, producing the pistol marked exhibit A. "Probably," said Annandale, looking, not at it, but at the ceiling. "That's all." Annandale got from the stand. Others succeeded him there, experts for the defense, men who recited their qualities and degrees as though they were eating truffles to the sound of trumpets. One after another they testified that liquor can ablate memory partially, wholly; can ablate it regarding events antecedent and subsequent to a rememorated point between; can, moreover, leave the subject in a condition apparently normal yet actually in a state of trance. "Do you really regard these people as experts?" Peacock with pitying contempt asked of Orr. Then at once in rebuttal were other experts, equally pleased with themselves, humorously disposing of psychical epilepsy, affecting to regard it as a medicolegal myth. Among the spectators the usual jest circulated. The mendacious were subdivided into liars, damned liars, expert witnesses. Yet there you were. But not Orr. Tortuously he involved the deponents in helpful contradictions, smiling at them, at Peacock and the jury, smiling with an air of saying "You see what confounded idiots these imbeciles are." But the session was closing. One more witness remained to be called. "Miss Waldron, will you take the stand?" With the charming manner of the thoroughbred New York girl Sylvia circled the room. It was refreshing to see her, refreshing to hear the way in which she corroborated what Annandale had said. "But," objected Peacock, "you had just gone from his house; what did he go to yours for?" "To restore a string of pearls." "Did he repeat to you anything that he had said to his wife?" "Had he attempted to I should have refused to listen." "Was he drunk?" "I cannot say. I have never seen anyone in that condition." "Did he make any threats regarding Loftus?" "A gentleman does not make threats." "Miss Waldron, I will thank you to answer me directly. Did he or did he not?" "He did not." "You swear to that?" "I do." It was perjury, of course. Yet if a girl may not perjure herself like a lady for the man she loves things have come to a pretty pass. That idea apparently struck Peacock. "Prior to the defendant's marriage you were engaged to him, were you not?" "I was." "Are you engaged to him now?" Very prettily and gracefully, without embarrassment, rather with pride, Sylvia answered: "I am." "That's all," said Peacock. "The State rests." But as he said it he looked at the jury and sighed, sighed audibly, much as were he adding, "You may judge the value of her testimony from that." The resting, however, was but figurative. In a moment the summing up began, a summing which, at first passionless as algebra, dealt with technical points. "Gentlemen," said Peacock turning again to the jury, "the evidence in this case is of the kind known to you perhaps as circumstantial. Evidence of this nature can lead and often does lead to a conclusion more satisfactory than direct evidence can produce. Circumstances cannot lie any more than facts can. Unless we resort to them it is in vain that we attempt to detect and to punish crime. Crime shuns the light of day. It seeks darkness. It courts secrecy. The assassin moves stealthily. He calls no witness to see him shoot his victim down. If you wait for an eye-witness you grant impunity to crime. It is true, and probably you will be so told by counsel for the defense, that there are cases in which the innocent have been convicted. Yet if men have been erroneously convicted on circumstantial evidence, so have they been convicted on direct testimony also. That is not, though, a reason for declining to accept such testimony. The possibility of error exists alike. But because men may err do they refuse to act? Because wheat may be blighted does the farmer refuse to sow? No, gentlemen. Until we have means of knowledge beyond our present faculties we must accept this kind of evidence or grant practical immunity to crime." The exordium concluded, Peacock warmed to his work. What he said he seemed to literally tear from his mouth. It was an arraignment not delivered but hurled, headlong, with the force and rush of a cavalry charge. Before it Orr's points sank overwhelmed. To replace them with others of his own Peacock made new ones, evolving them with a fire and lucidity that was pyrotechnic. They were like bombs exploding before the jury's eyes. He arraigned the defendant, arraigned the defense, stampeded their tactics, denounced Annandale's manner, which he declared to be that of a hardened criminal, and pictured him as a jealous husband who, in accordance with a plot long premeditated, had first lured his victim to his house, then following him thence had murdered him in the darkness, but who now swore that he was drunk and remembered nothing. "Assuming that he was drunk," Peacock shouted, "his intoxication was a feigned disguise, assumed for the purpose and legally an aggravation of his dastard crime." Beneath, in the unlovely street, an organ was tossing a jig. The jolts of it mounted to the court, fusing with Peacock's voice, adding their vulgarity to his own, and it was to the wretchedness of them that he said at last: "My duty is done." He had scored points by the dozen. In as many seconds Orr had their heads off by half. "Harris, gentlemen, is the rock of the People's case. His hand fashioned it. Without him it crumbles. Let me array for you Harris against Harris." Leisurely Orr began, showing the man's hand for what it was, not dirty and disreputable merely, but discredited. "Apart from that hand where is the promised evidence? Where is it? Where is that evidence? Gentlemen, not a bit of evidence have you had, not a molecule, not a minim, not a mite. At best or at worst any evidence producible against this defendant would be circumstantial. In telling you the value of such testimony the District Attorney has been good enough to leave it to me to explain that testimony of this character must, to be conclusive, exclude every other reasonable hypothesis. The District Attorney has further told you that circumstances cannot lie. Of all his statements that one and that one alone is correct. Circumstances cannot lie. But witnesses can. It is from them that circumstances are obtained. And though they furnish a million circumstances, what are these circumstances worth if they themselves are unsound? How unsound that reptile Harris is, you have, I believe, been enabled to judge. But even otherwise, even though the testimony of that saurian seem to you probable, I may remind you that the most probable things often prove false, for the reason that if they were exempt from falsity they would cease to be probable; they would be certain. "Now what certainty has the District Attorney brought you? Instead of excluding every other reasonable hypothesis, he has opened the door to a dozen hypotheses infinitely more reasonable than his own. Except that the obligatory instrument does not appear to have been found, he has adduced nothing to show that the deceased did not commit suicide. He has adduced nothing to show that he was not robbed. The caretaker has testified that he was away from the park ten or fifteen minutes. The policeman who returned with him has testified that when he got there the gate was open. In the interim anyone may have entered, gone through the suicide, bagged his pistol for further booty and away. "No, the District Attorney has not excluded these hypotheses, he has confined himself to picturing this defendant as a husband jealous of the deceased. But assuming that he was, how many other husbands may not have been jealous of him also? The bullet in evidence, the bullet extracted from the brain of the deceased, is one which, from a calculation of its lands and grooves, may or may not have come from a thirty-two calibre pistol. Anyway a thirty-two calibre pistol is among the exhibits. But how many more such pistols are there in this great city? The ownership of one is not a proof of crime. Nor is the fact that the body of the deceased was found in front of this defendant's residence proof either. On the contrary. The park wherein it lay is a parallelogram, and a body in it would be practically in front of every other house in the square. How many jealous husbands reside in these houses I am not competent to say, but I am competent to tell you that the prosecution might just as well have arraigned any other resident there as this defendant; yes, and better, were it not for Harris." Orr paused. "Reptile," he cried. "Knave, fraud, thief, liar----" But the Court admonished him that his time was up. Without a murmur, in the middle of a sentence, he sat down. It was another point that he had scored. "Gentlemen----" The Recorder's charge to the jury followed, a charge clear, undeclamatory, without literature or bias, in which they were instructed regarding the law and left to determine the facts. The jury filed out. The Recorder evaporated. Annandale sauntered away. Into adjacent corridors the great room emptied itself. Orr, stationing associates on guard, went over to Sylvia, urging her to go. But Sylvia refused at first to budge. The jury, she declared, would be back in five minutes. "It may be five hours," said Orr. "You had far better go home. No? Well then I will take you to my offices and have something brought in." "Is it far?" Sylvia warily asked. But presently she assented, stipulating however that Annandale should be brought there the moment he was freed. Orr tossed his head. "That may not be for years, until after an appeal. I have not an idea what the jury will do. But I know one thing: the last of the lot, the twelfth, looked at me during my summing up with something that was a cross between a sneer and a scowl." "Yes," Mrs. Waldron interjected, "I noticed him. But it seemed to me that he was not listening. It seemed to me that he was in pain. But do, Sylvia, let us go. It is cruel of you. I am starving." In Orr's neighborly offices shortly the lady was fed. Sylvia too ate something. Orr himself would have bolted a bite, but he had to hurry away, though promising as he did so everything that Sylvia asked, promising to stand on his head if she wished it. Once back in the court he found it still empty. In the corridors reporters and idlers lounged, speculating on the verdict, prophesying that the deliberations of the jury would be brief. But time limped. An hour passed, two hours, three. Enervated and empty Orr went down and out to a little restaurant across the street. Presently it was reported that the jury were coming in. Orr hurried back, but however he hurried, he was late. The court had refilled. As he entered he heard someone say: "Not guilty." Abruptly the room hummed like a wasps' nest. There were raps for order, commands for silence, threatened punishments for contempt. The hubbub subsided, the Recorder thanked and dismissed the jury. He turned to Peacock. "Are there any further charges against the prisoner?" "There are none, Your Honor." The Recorder nodded at Annandale. "You are discharged." Orr tried to get at him. But at that moment the crowd interfered. In making a circuit to reach Annandale, he found himself among the departing jury. They had all left the box, all save the twelfth, who apparently had stumbled. About them reporters circled. The foreman was relating that they had been practically unanimous for conviction, but that one of them, the twelfth, had insisted so obstinately on the poverty of the evidence that with him finally they had voted to acquit. "But where is he?" the foreman interrupted himself to ask. "Where is the twelfth juror? Where is Durand?" Then only was it seen that he was still in the box, crouching there, his face ashen where it was not violet, a hand held to his side. In a moment he was surrounded. To those nearest he looked and gasped. "Give him some brandy," a reporter suggested. But now into the little group Peacock had forced his way. Orr edged nearer. The juror gasped again. "I am dying," he groaned. "It is my heart. Send for a priest. I killed him. I am the man." Skeptically Peacock sniffed. "You killed whom?" "He is delirious," the reporter exclaimed. "I killed him," Durand repeated. "But whom? And why?" Peacock, bending a bit, impressed in spite of himself, inquired. Slowly, laboriously, painfully at that, Durand from a pocket drew a picture. "Curse him," he muttered. "There he is. He disgraced my _perle_, my daughter Marie, but she wrote me where to find him and I did; I found him in the park and I shot him there, through the head, through the h-head," he stammered and clutched at his heart. From his hand the picture had slipped. Orr edged closer, stooped for it, recovered it, then in heightening wonder stared. The picture was a colored photograph that displayed the chiseled features, wonderful eyes and thin black mustache of one whom he had known. Above it was written "Marie's Husband." "It is Loftus," he exclaimed. Peacock wheeled. "Loftus," he cried. Instantly to question further, he turned to the juror again. But even as he turned he saw that the trial was over. Spasmodically the man's mouth had twitched, his head had fallen; before a higher court he had gone. Peacock, the marvel of it upon him, turned anew to Orr. Foes while the battle was raging, the two men now were like the commandants of opposing forces who, the conflict ended, meet and embrace. Peacock rubbed his eyes. "What this confession means, Orr, you as well as I appreciate." Instinctively his voice had sunk into that undertone which Death, when it comes, exacts. "Yes," he continued, "Annandale is not merely acquitted, he is cleared. For that, believe me, I am glad. As for Loftus, he got from that dead father only what he deserved." To this Orr, about whom the marvel of it all still also clung, assented. "Justice," he replied, "is rarely human, but sometimes it is divine." He would have said more perhaps, but Annandale was approaching. Obviously the latter was as yet wholly unaware of this new climax to his case. He was looking doubtfully around. "I can't find my hat," he announced. Then at once, detecting the unusual in the attitude of those that stood about, his eyes followed theirs to the box from which court officers, long trained to the lugubrious, swiftly and silently were removing the corpse. A keeper appeared. In his hand was the hat. Annandale took it, his eyes still following the body that was being removed. "There," said Orr abruptly, "there is the man that killed Loftus. But come," he added. "Sylvia is waiting. Good-bye, Peacock. We have both had a lesson in presumptive proof." Astonishment lifted Annandale visibly like a flash. "What!" he exclaimed. "What! What's all this?" Then Orr, a hand on his arm, led him away, and as they passed from the General Sessions, told him what had occurred. CHAPTER X THE VERDICT In the days of the Doges there was a Gold Book in which the First Families of Venice shone. In New York there is also a Gold Book, unprinted but otherwise familiar. The names that appear there have earned the cataloguing not from medieval prowess, but from money's more modish might. At the Metropolitan Opera House, two years and a fraction after the trial, the Gold Bookers were on view--men who could have married the Adriatic, dowered her too, whose signatures were potenter than kings. There also were women fairer than the young empresses of old Rome, maidens in thousand-dollar frocks, matrons coroneted and tiaraed. On the grand tier they sat, a family-party air about them, nodding to each other, exhaling orris, talking animatedly about nothing at all. Into their boxes young men strolled, lolled awhile, sauntered away. In one of these boxes was Sylvia, looking like an angel, only, of course, much better dressed. Behind her was Annandale. They were quite an old couple. They had been married fully a year. In the box with them was Orr. On the stage a festival was in progress, a festival for ear and eye, the apogee of Italian art, a production of "Aïda." A quarter of a century and more ago when that opera was first given in Cairo, there was an accompanying splendor more lavish than it, or any other opera, has had since. But it was difficult to fancy that even then there was a better cast. Before the tenor had completed the opening romanza he had enthralled the house. Good-looking, as tenors should be, stout as tenors are, he suggested Mario resurrected and returned. "Celeste Aïda!" he sang, and it was celestial. Then at once Amneris, enacted by a debutante, appeared and the house was treated to what it had not had since Scalchi was in her prime, a voice with a conservatory in the upper register, a cavern in the lower and, strewn between, rich loops of light, of opals, flowers, kisses and stars. Princess she was and looked, yet, despite the glory of her raiment, rather a princess in a drawing-room than the daughter of a Pharaoh in a Memphian crypt. She seemed pleased, sure of her charm, and she pleased and charmed at sight. The house, the most apathetic--save Covent Garden--in the world, and, musically, the most ignorant as well, rose to her. Sylvia turned to Orr. In his gloved hand was a program. "What a dear!" she murmured. "Who is she?" Orr, before answering, looked at Annandale. The latter's eyes were on the roof. He may have been drinking the song, unconscious of the singer. But it is more probable that his thoughts were elsewhere, though hardly in the Tombs, where, during his relatively brief sojourn, he had lived at the relatively reasonable rate of a hundred dollars a day. "A debutante," Orr answered. "She is billed as Dellarandi." The curtain fell. The box was invaded. Men indebted to Mrs. Annandale for dinner, or who hoped to be, dropped in. Orr got up and went out. The second act began. There was an alternating chorus. During it Amneris sat mirroring her beauty in a glass. Presently her voice mounted, mounting as mounts a bird and higher. She was joining in the incomparable duo that ensues. It passed. A march, blown from Egyptian trumpets, followed, preluding the dance of priestesses which precedes the tenor's return. As that progressed the leader of the orchestra shook like an epileptic. From his own musicians, from those on the stage, from chorus and singers, he drew wave after wave of melody, a full sea of transcendent accords that bathed Sylvia with harmony, filtered through her, penetrating blissfully from fingertips to spine. Delightedly she turned to Annandale. The visitors had gone. Orr was entering. In his bulldog face was an expression vatic and amused. "Yes," he resumed, seating himself at Sylvia's side, "she is billed as Dellarandi, but I knew her as Marie Leroy." Sylvia started, her lips half parted, her eyes dilated with surprise. Annandale bent forward. "What is it?" he asked. "Amneris, the contralto. Do you know who she is?" "I know she is a devilish pretty woman. What about her?" "She is the girl whose father was the twelfth juror in your case." Annandale, who had been standing, literally dropped with astonishment in a chair. But Sylvia was insatiable. She could not ask enough, she could not get the answers quickly enough in reply. Orr, however, knew very little, odds and ends merely that he gathered in the lobby, summarily that the girl had married Tambourini, the music teacher, and was regarded as destined to be one of the great queens of song. So interested were all three that the third act was barely noticed. It took the melting beauty of the final duo to distract them from the debutante. But the witchery of that aria would distract a moribund. It was with the bewildering loveliness of it in their ears that they moved out from the box. "Terra addio!" Orr repeated from it as they descended the stair. "No, not addio," said Sylvia; "that poor girl may have said farewell to many hopes, but there are other and better ones for her now. I feel that she must have suffered terribly, and because of that suffering we should acquit her of what she did." "That is the verdict, is it?" said Orr. "That is my verdict," Sylvia answered. Then touching Annandale's arm she looked up at him and added, "It is yours, too, dear, is it not?" THE END. PUBLISHERS' NOTE The publishers beg leave to state that The Perfume of Eros, in serial form, was entitled The Yellow Fay. Transcriber's Note: Punctuation has been standardised. Changes have been made to the original publication as follows: Page 40 sometimes with arias from "Aida." _changed to_ sometimes with arias from "Aïda." Page 131 on looking back, her realized that _changed to_ on looking back, he realized that Page 150 Had Fanny asked him to made _changed to_ Had Fanny asked him to make Page 171 means are suppose to carry _changed to_ means are supposed to carry 
12640	----	Project Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 12640-h.htm or 12640-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/1/2/6/4/12640/12640-h/12640-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/1/2/6/4/12640/12640-h.zip) TRIAL OF MARY BLANDY Edited By WILLIAM ROUGHEAD Author of "Twelve Scots Trials," "The Riddle of the Ruthvens," "Glengarry's Way," &c. ILLUSTRATED 1914 [Illustration: Miss Blandy in her cell in Oxford Castle. (_From an unpublished Sepia Drawing in the Collection of Mr. Horace Bleackley_.)] TO LORD DUNSANY THIS RECORD OF GRIM REALITY IN EXCHANGE FOR HIS BEAUTIFUL DREAMS PREFACE In undertaking to prepare an account of this celebrated trial, the Editor at the outset fondly trusted that the conviction of "the unfortunate Miss Blandy" might, upon due inquiry, be found to have been, as the phrase is, a miscarriage of justice. To the entertainment of this chivalrous if unlively hope he was moved as well by the youth, the sex, and the traditional charms of that lady, as by the doubts expressed by divers wiseacres concerning her guilt; but a more intimate knowledge of the facts upon which the adverse verdict rested, speedily disposed of his inconfident expectation. Though the evidence sheds but a partial light upon the hidden springs of the dark business in which she was engaged, and much that should be known in order perfectly to appreciate her symbolic value remains obscure, we can rest assured that Mary Blandy, whatever she may have been, was no victim of judicial error. We watch, perforce, the tragedy from the front; never, despite the excellence of the official "book," do we get a glimpse of what is going on behind the scenes, nor see beneath the immobile and formal mask, the living face; but, when the spectacle of _The Fair Parricide_ is over, we at least are satisfied that justice, legal and poetic, has been done. Few cases in our criminal annals have occasioned a literature so extensive. The bibliography, compiled by Mr. Horace Bleackley in connection with his striking study, "The Love Philtre" (_Some Distinguished Victims of the Scaffold_, London, 1905),--which, by his courteous permission, is reprinted in the Appendix, enumerates no fewer than thirty contemporary tracts, while the references to the case by later writers would of themselves form a considerable list. To this substantial cairn a further stone or two are here contributed. There will be found in the Appendix copies of original MSS. in the British Museum and the Public Record Office, not hitherto published, relating to the case. These comprise the correspondence of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, Mr. Secretary Newcastle, the Solicitor to the Treasury, and other Government officials, regarding the conduct of the prosecution and the steps taken for the apprehension of Miss Blandy's accomplice, the Hon. William Henry Cranstoun; a petition of "The Noblemen and Gentlemen in the Neighbourhood of Henley-upon-Thames" as to the issuing of a proclamation for his arrest, with the opinion thereon of the Attorney-General, Sir Dudley Ryder; and the deposition of the person by whose means Cranstoun's flight from justice was successfully effected. This deposition is important as disclosing the true story of his escape, of which the published accounts are, as appears, erroneous. Among other matter now printed for the first time may be mentioned a letter from the War Office to the Paymaster-General, directing Cranstoun's name to be struck off the half-pay list; and a letter from John Riddell, the Scots genealogist, to James Maidment, giving some account of the descendants of Cranstoun. For permission to publish these documents the Editor is indebted to the courtesy of Mr. A.M. Broadley and Mr. John A. Fairley, the respective owners. The iconography of Mary Blandy has been made a feature of the present volume, all the portraits of her known to the Editor being reproduced. A description of the curious satirical print, "The Scotch Triumvirate," will be found in the Appendix. Of special interest is the facsimile of Miss Blandy's last letter to Captain Cranstoun, of which the interception, like that of Mrs. Maybrick's letter to Brierley, was fraught with such fateful consequences. The photograph is taken from the original letter in the Record Office, where the papers connected with the memorable Assizes in question have but recently been lodged. For the account of the case contained in the Introduction, the Editor has read practically all the contemporaneous pamphlets--a tedious and often fruitless task--and has consulted such other sources of information as are now available. He has, however, thought well (esteeming the comfort of his readers above his own reputation for research) to present the product as a plain narrative, unencumbered by the frequent footnotes which citation of so many authorities would otherwise require--the rather that any references not furnished by the bibliography are sufficiently indicated in the text. Finally, the Editor would express his gratitude to Mr. Horace Bleackley and Mr. A.M. Broadley for their kindness in affording him access to their collections of _Blandyana_, including rarities (to quote an old title-page) "nowhere to be found but in the Closets of the Curious," greatly to the lightening of his labours and the enrichment of the result. W.R. 8 OXFORD TERRACE, EDINBURGH, April, 1914. CONTENTS. Introduction Table of Dates The Trial-- TUESDAY, 3RD MARCH, 1752. The Indictment Opening Speeches for the Prosecution. Hon. Mr. Bathurst Mr. Serjeant Hayward Evidence for the Prosecution. 1. Dr. Addington 2. Dr. Lewis 3. Dr. Addington (recalled) 4. Benjamin Norton 5. Mrs. Mary Mounteney 6. Susannah Gunnell 7. Elizabeth Binfield 8. Dr. Addington (recalled) 9. Alice Emmet 10. Robert Littleton 11. Robert Harmon 12. Richard Fisher 13. Mrs. Lane 14. Mr. Lane The Prisoner's Defence Evidence for the Defence. 1. Ann James 2. Elizabeth Binfield (recalled) 3. Mary Banks 4. Edward Herne 5. Thomas Cawley 6. Thomas Staverton 7. Mary Davis 8. Robert Stoke Motion by Mr. Ford to call another witness refused Hon. Mr. Bathurst's Closing Speech for the Prosecution Statement by the Prisoner Mr. Baron Legge's Charge to the Jury The Verdict The Sentence APPENDICES. I. Proceedings before the Coroner relative to the Death of Mr. Francis Blandy II. Copies of Original Letters in the British Museum and Public Record Office, relating to the Case of Mary Blandy III. A Letter from a Clergyman to Miss Mary Blandy, now a prisoner in Oxford Castle, with her Answer thereto; as also Miss Blandy's own narrative of the crime for which she is condemned to die IV. Miss Mary Blandy's own account of the affair between her and Mr. Cranstoun, from the commencement of their acquaintance in the year 1746 to the death of her father in August, 1751, with all the circumstances leading to that unhappy event V. Letter from Miss Blandy to a Clergyman in Henley VI. Contemporary Advertisement of a Love Philtre VII. Contemporary Account of the Execution of Mary Blandy VIII. Letter from the War Office to the Paymaster-General, striking Cranstoun's name off the Half-Pay List IX. The Confessions of Cranstoun-- 1. Cranstoun's own version of the facts 2. Captain Cranstoun's account of the Poisoning of the late Mr. Francis Blandy X. Extract from a Letter from Dunkirk anent the death of Cranstoun XI. Letter from John Biddell, the Scots genealogist, to James Maidment, regarding the descendants of Cranstoun XII. Bibliography of the Blandy Case XIII. Description of the satirical print "The Scotch Triumvirate" LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Miss Blandy in her Cell in Oxford Castle Frontispiece _From an unpublished Sepia Drawing in the Collection of Mr. Horace Bleackley._ Facsimile of the Intercepted Letter to Cranstoun written by Mary Blandy _From the original MS. in the Public Record Office._ Miss Blandy _From a Mezzotint by T. Ryley, after L. Wilson, in the Collection of Mr. A.M. Broadley._ Miss Mary Blandy in Oxford Castle Gaol _From an Engraving in the British Museum._ Captain Cranstoun and Miss Blandy _From an Engraving in the British Museum._ Miss Mary Blandy _From an Engraving by B. Cole, after a Drawing for which she sat in Oxford Castle._ Miss Molly Blandy, taken from the life in Oxford Castle _From an Engraving in the Collection of Mr. A.M. Broadley._ Miss Mary Blandy, with scene of her Execution _From an Engraving by B. Cole, after an original Painting._ Captain William Henry Cranstoun, with his pompous funeral procession in Flanders _From an Engraving by B. Cole._ The Scotch Triumvirate _From a satirical Print in the Collection of Mr. Horace Bleackley._ MARY BLANDY. INTRODUCTION. In the earlier half of the eighteenth century there lived in the pleasant town of Henley-upon-Thames, in Oxfordshire, one Francis Blandy, gentleman, attorney-at-law. His wife, née Mary Stevens, sister to Mr. Serjeant Stevens of Culham Court, Henley, and of Doctors' Commons, a lady described as "an emblem of chastity and virtue; graceful in person, in mind elevated," had, it was thought, transmitted these amiable qualities to the only child of the marriage, a daughter Mary, baptised in the parish church of Henley on 15th July, 1720. Mr. Blandy, as a man of old family and a busy and prosperous practitioner, had become a person of some importance in the county. His professional skill was much appreciated by a large circle of clients, he acted as steward for most of the neighbouring gentry, and he had held efficiently for many years the office of town-clerk. But above the public respect which his performance of these varied duties had secured him, Mr. Blandy prized his reputation as a man of wealth. The legend had grown with his practice and kept pace with his social advancement. The Blandys' door was open to all; their table, "whether filled with company or not, was every day plenteously supplied"; and a profuse if somewhat ostentatious hospitality was the "note" of the house, a comfortable mansion on the London road, close to Henley Bridge. Burn, in his _History of Henley_, describes it as "an old-fashioned house near the White Hart, represented in the view of the town facing the title-page" of his volume, and "now [1861] rebuilt." The White Hart still survives in Hart Street, with its courtyard and gallery, where of yore the town's folk were wont to watch the bear-baiting; one of those fine old country inns which one naturally associates with Pickwickian adventure. In such surroundings the little Mary, idolised by her parents and spoiled by their disinterested guests, passed her girlhood. She is said to have been a clever, intelligent child, and of ways so winning as to "rapture" all with whom she came in contact. She was educated at home by her mother, who "instructed her in the principles of religion and piety, according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England." To what extent she benefited by the good dame's teaching will appear later, but at any rate she was fond of reading--a taste sufficiently remarkable in a girl of her day. At fourteen, we learn, she was mistress of those accomplishments which others of like station and opportunities rarely achieve until they are twenty, "if at all"; but her biographers, while exhausting their superlatives on her moral beauties, are significantly silent regarding her physical attractions. Like many a contemporary "toast," she had suffered the indignity of the smallpox; yet her figure was fine, and her brilliant black eyes and abundant hair redeemed a face otherwise rather ordinary. When to such mental gifts and charm of manner was added the prospect of a dower of ten thousand pounds--such was the figure at which public opinion put it, and her father did not deny that gossip for once spoke true--little wonder that Mary was considered a "catch" as well by the "smarts" of the place as by the military gentlemen who at that time were the high ornaments of Henley society. Mr. Blandy, business-like in all things, wanted full value for his money; as none of Mary's local conquests appeared to promise him an adequate return, he reluctantly quitted the pen and, with his wife and daughter, spent a season at Bath, then the great market-place of matrimonial bargains. "As for Bath," Thackeray writes of this period, "all history went and bathed and drank there. George II. and his Queen, Prince Frederick and his Court, scarce a character one can mention of the early last century but was seen in that famous Pump Room, where Beau Nash presided, and his picture hung between the busts of Newton and Pope." Here was famous company indeed for an ambitious little country attorney to rub shoulders with in his hunt for a son-in-law. It is claimed for Miss Blandy by one of her biographers that her vivacity, wit, and good nature were such as to win for her an immediate social success; and she entered into all the gaieties of the season with a heart unburdened by the "business" which her father sought to combine with pleasures so expensive. She is even said to have had the honour of dancing with the Prince of Wales. Meanwhile, the old gentleman, appearing "genteel in dress" and keeping a plentiful table, lay in wait for such eligible visitors as should enter his parlour. The first to do so with matrimonial intent was a thriving young apothecary, but Mr. Blandy quickly made it plain that Mary and her £10,000 were not to be had by any drug-compounding knave who might make sheep's eyes at her, and the apothecary returned to his gallipots for healing of his bruised affections. His place was taken by Mr. H----, a gentleman grateful to the young lady and personally desirable, but of means too limited to satisfy her parents' views, a fact conveyed by them to the wooer "in a friendly and elegant manner," which must have gone far to assuage his disappointment. The next suitor for "this blooming virgin," as her biographer names her, had the recommendation of being a soldier. Mr. T----, too, found favour with the damsel. His fine address was much appreciated by her mamma, who, being a devotee of fashion, heartily espoused his cause; but again the course of true love was barred by the question of settlements as broached by the old lawyer, and the man of war "retired with some resentment." There was, however, no lack of candidates for Mary's hand and dower. Captain D---- at once stepped into the breach and gallantly laid siege to the fair fortress. At last, it seemed Cupid's troublesome business was done; the captain's suit was agreeable to all parties, and the couple became engaged. Mary's walks with her lover in the fields of Henley gave her, we read, such exquisite delight that she frequently thought herself in heaven. But, alas, the stern summons of duty broke in upon her temporary Eden: the captain was ordered abroad with his regiment on active service, and the unlucky girl could but sit at home with her parents and patiently abide the issue. Among Mr. Blandy's grand acquaintances was General Lord Mark Kerr, uncle of Lady Jane Douglas, the famous heroine of the great Douglas Cause. His lordship had taken at Henley a place named "The Paradise," probably through the agency of the obsequious attorney, whose family appear to have had the _entrée_ to that patrician abode. Dining with her parents at Lord Mark's house in the summer of 1746, Mary Blandy encountered her fate. That fate from the first bore but a sinister aspect. Among the guests was one Captain the Hon. William Henry Cranstoun, a soldier and a Scot, whose appearance, according to a diurnal writer, was unprepossessing. "In his person he is remarkably ordinary, his stature is low, his face freckled and pitted with the smallpox, his eyes small and weak, his eyebrows sandy, and his shape no ways genteel; his legs are clumsy, and he has nothing in the least elegant in his manner." The moral attributes of this ugly little fellow were only less attractive than his physical imperfections. "He has a turn for gallantry, but Nature has denied him the proper gifts; he is fond of play, but his cunning always renders him suspected." He was at this time thirty-two years of age, and, as the phrase goes, a man of pleasure, but his militant prowess had hitherto been more conspicuous in the courts of Venus than in the field of Mars. The man was typical of his day and generation: should you desire his closer acquaintance you will find a lively sketch of him in _Joseph Andrews_, under the name of Beau Didapper. If Mary was the Eve of this Henley "Paradise," the captain clearly possessed many characteristics of the serpent. As First-Lieutenant of Sir Andrew Agnew's regiment of marines, he had been "out"--on the wrong side, for a Scot--in the '45, and the butcher Cumberland having finally killed the cause at Culloden on 16th April, this warrior was now in Henley beating up recruits to fill the vacancies in the Hanoverian lines caused by the valour of the "rebels." Such a figure was a commonplace of the time, and Mr. Blandy would not have looked twice at him but for the fact that it appeared Lord Mark was his grand-uncle. The old lawyer, following up this aristocratic scent, found to his surprise and joy that the little lieutenant, with his courtesy style of captain, was no less a person than the fifth son of a Scots peer, William, fifth Lord Cranstoun, and his wife, Lady Jane Kerr, eldest daughter of William, second Marquis of Lothian. True, he learned the noble union had been blessed with seven sons and five daughters; my Lord Cranstoun had died in 1727, and his eldest son, James, reigned in his stead. The captain, a very much "younger" son, probably had little more than his pay and a fine assortment of debts; still, one cannot have everything. The rights of absent Captain D---- were forgotten, now that there was a chance to marry his daughter to a man who called the daughter of an Earl grandmother, and could claim kinship with half the aristocracy of Scotland; and Mr. Blandy frowned as he called to mind the presumption of the Bath apothecary. How far matters went at this time we do not know, for Cranstoun left Henley in the autumn and did not revisit "The Paradise" till the following summer. Meanwhile Captain D---- returned from abroad, but unaccountably failed to communicate with the girl he had the year before so reluctantly left behind him. Mary's uncles, "desirous of renewing a courtship which they thought would turn much to the honour and benefit of their niece," intervened; but Captain D----, though "polite and candid," declined to renew his pretensions, and the affair fell through. Whether or not he had heard anything of the Cranstoun business does not appear. According to Miss Blandy's _Own Account_, it was not until their second meeting at Lord Mark Kerr's in the summer of 1747 that the patrician but unattractive Cranstoun declared his passion. She also states that in doing so he referred to an illicit entanglement with a Scottish lady, falsely claiming to be his wedded wife, and that she (Mary) accepted him provisionally, "till the invalidity of the pretended marriage appeared to the whole world." But here, as we shall presently see, the fair authoress rather antedates the fact. Next day Cranstoun, formally proposing to the old folks for their daughter's hand, was received by them literally with open arms, henceforth to be treated as a son; and when, after a six weeks' visit to Bath in company with his gouty kinsman, the captain returned to Henley, it was as the guest of his future father-in-law, of whose "pious fraud" in the matter of the £10,000 dowry; despite his shrewdness, he was unaware. Though the sycophantic attorney would probably as lief have housed a monkey of lineage so distinguished, old Mrs. Blandy seems really to have adored the foxy little captain for his _beaux yeux_. Doubtless he fooled the dame to the top of her bent. For a time things went pleasantly enough in the old house by the bridge. The town-clerk boasted of his noble quarry, the mother enjoyed for the first time the company and conversation of a man of fashion, and Mary renewed amid the Henley meadows those paradisiacal experiences which formerly she had shared with faithless Captain D----. But once more her happiness received an unexpected check. Lord Mark Kerr, a soldier and a gentleman, becoming aware of the footing upon which his graceless grand-nephew was enjoying the Blandys' hospitality, wrote to the attorney the amazing news that his daughter's lover already had a wife and child living in Scotland. The facts, so far as we know them, were these. On 22nd May, 1744, William Henry Cranstoun was privately married at Edinburgh to Anne, daughter of David Murray, merchant in Leith, a son of the late Sir David Murray of Stanhope, Baronet. As the lady and her family were Jacobite and Roman Catholic, the fact of the marriage was not published at the time for fear of prejudicing the gallant bridegroom's chances of promotion. The couple lived together "in a private manner" for some months, and in November the bride returned to her family, while the captain went to London to resume his regimental duties. They corresponded regularly by letter. Cranstoun wrote to his own and the lady's relatives, acknowledging that she had been his wife since May, but insisting that the marriage should still be kept secret; and on learning that he was likely to become a father, he communicated this fact to my Lord, his brother. Lady Cranstoun invited her daughter-in-law to Nether Crailing, the family seat in Roxburghshire, there to await the interesting event, but the young wife, fearing that Presbyterian influences would be brought to bear upon her, unfortunately declined, which gave offence to Lady Cranstoun and aroused some suspicion regarding the fact of the marriage. At Edinburgh, on 19th February, 1745, Mrs. Cranstoun gave birth to a daughter, who was baptised by a minister of the kirk in Newbattle, according to one account, in presence of members of both parents' families; and, by the father's request, one of his brothers held her during the ceremony. In view of these facts it must have required no common effrontery on the part of Cranstoun to disown his wife and child, as he did in the following year. The country being then in the throes of the last Jacobite rising, and his wife's family having cast in their lot with Prince Charlie, our gallant captain perceived in these circumstances a unique opportunity for ridding himself of his marital ties. The lady was a niece of John Murray of Broughton, the Prince's secretary who served the cause so ill; her brother, the reigning baronet, was taken prisoner at Culloden, tried at Carlisle, and sentenced to death, but owing to his youth, was reprieved and transported instead; so Cranstoun thought the course comparatively clear. His position was that Miss Murray had been his mistress, and that although he had promised to marry her if she would change her religion for his own purer Presbyterian faith, and as the lady refused to do so, he was entirely freed from his engagement. With cynical impudence he explained his previous admission of the marriage as due to a desire to "amuse" her relatives and save her honour. In October, 1746, his wife, by the advice of her friends and in accordance with Scots practice, raised in the Commissary Court at Edinburgh an action of declarator of marriage against her perfidious spouse, and the case was still pending before the Commissaries when Lord Mark Kerr, as we have seen, "gave away" his grand-nephew to the Blandys. The old attorney was justly incensed at the unworthy trick of which he had been the victim. He had designed, indeed, on his own account, a little surprise for his son-in-law in the matter of the mythical dower, but that was another matter; so, in all the majesty of outraged fatherhood, he sought an interview with his treacherous guest. That gentleman, whose acquaintance with "tight corners" was, doubtless, like Mr. Waller's knowledge of London, extensive and peculiar, rose gallantly to the occasion. A firm believer in the £10,000 _dot_, he could not, of course, fully appreciate the moral beauty of Mr. Blandy's insistence on the unprofitableness of deceit; but, taxed with being a married man, "As I have a soul to be saved," swore he, "I am not, nor ever was!" The lady had wilfully misrepresented their equivocal relations, and the proceedings in the Scottish Courts meant, vulgarly, blackmail. Both families knew the true facts, and Lord Mark's interference was the result of an old quarrel between them, long since by him buried in oblivion, but on account of which his lordship, as appeared, still bore him a grudge. The action would certainly be decided in his favour, when nothing more would be heard of Miss Murray and her fraudulent claims. The affair was, no doubt, annoying, but such incidents were not viewed too seriously by people of fashion--here the captain would delicately take a pinch, and offer his snuff-box (with the Cranstoun arms: _gules_, three cranes _argent_) to the baffled attorney. On the receipt of Lord Mark's letter, Mrs. Blandy, womanlike, believed the worst: "her poor Polly was ruined." But her sympathies were so far enlisted on behalf of the fascinating intended that she eagerly clutched at any explanation, however lame, which would put things upon the old footing. She proved a powerful advocate; and, in the end, Mr. Blandy, accepting his guest's word, allowed the engagement to continue in the meantime, until the result of the legal proceedings should be known. He was as loath to forego the chance of such an aristocratic connection as was his wife to part from so "genteel" a friend; while Mary Blandy--well, the damsels of her day were not morbidly nice in such matters, more than once had the nuptial cup eluded her expectant lips, _enfin_, she was nearing her thirtieth year: such an opportunity, as Mr. Bunthorne has it, might not occur again. With the proverbial blindness of those unwilling to see, the old man did nothing further in regard to Lord Mark Kerr's communication; that nobleman, annoyed at the indifference with which his well-meant warning had been received, forbade his kinsman the house, and the Blandys were thus deprived of their only means of knowledge as to the doings of their ambiguous guest. For the movements of that gentleman from this time until the first "date" in the case, August, 1750, we must rely mainly upon the narrative given by his fair fiancée in her _Own Account_, and, unfortunately, after the manner of her sex, she is somewhat careless of dates. This first visit of Cranstoun lasted "five or six months"--from the autumn of 1747 till the spring of 1748--when he went to London on the footing that Mary, with her father's permission, should "stay for him" till the "unhappy affair" with his _soi-disant_ spouse was legally determined. Pending this desired result, the lovers maintained a vigorous correspondence. Sometime after his departure, Mrs. Blandy and her daughter went on a visit to Turville Court, the house of a friend named Mrs. Pocock, of whom we shall hear again. While there, the old lady became suddenly, and as was at first feared fatally, ill. Her constant cry, according to Mary, was, "Let Cranstoun be sent for," and no sooner had that insignificant warrior posted from Southampton to the sick-room than the patient began to mend. She declared, now that he had come, she would soon be well, and refused to take her medicines from any hand but his. Mr. Blandy, also summoned in haste, was much out of humour at "the great expense" incurred, and proposed forthwith to take his wife home, where "neither the physician's fees nor the apothecary's journeys could be so expensive"; and whenever the invalid was able to travel, the whole party, including the indispensable captain, returned to Henley. On the strength of the old lady's continued illness, Cranstoun contrived to "put in" another six months' free board and lodging under the Blandys' hospitable roof, until his regiment was "broke" at Southampton, when he set out for London. During this visit, says Mary, her father was sometimes "very rude" to his guest, which, in the circumstances, is not surprising. Meanwhile, on 1st March, 1748, the Commissary Court had decreed William Henry Cranstoun and Anne Murray to be man and wife and the child of the marriage to be their lawful issue, and had decerned the captain to pay the lady an annuity of £40 sterling for her own aliment and £10 for their daughter's, so long as she should be maintained by her mother, and further had found him liable in expenses, amounting to £100. The proceedings disclose a very ugly incident. Shortly after leaving his wife, as before narrated, Cranstoun wrote to her that his sole chance of promotion in the Army depended on his appearing unmarried, and with much persuasion he at length prevailed upon her to copy a letter, framed by him, to the effect that she had never been his wife. Once possessed of this document in her handwriting, the little scoundrel sent copies of it to his own and his wife's relatives in Scotland, whereby she suffered much obloquy and neglect, and when that unhappy lady raised her action of declarator, with peculiar baseness he lodged the letter in process. Fortunately, she had preserved the original draft, together with her faithless husband's letters thereanent. This judgment was, for the gallant defender, now on half-pay, a veritable _débâcle_, and we may be sure that the confiding Blandys would have heard no word of it from him; but Mrs. Cranstoun, having learned something of the game her spouse was playing at Henley, herself wrote to Mr. Blandy, announcing the decision of the Commissaries and sending for his information a copy of the decree in her favour. This, surely, should have opened the eyes even of a provincial attorney, but Cranstoun, while admitting the fact, induced him to believe, the wish being father to the thought, that the Court of first instance, as was not unprecedented, had erred, and that he was advised, with good hope of success, to appeal against the judgment to the Court of Session. Finally to dispose of the captain's legal business, it may now be said that the appeal was in due course of time dismissed, and the decision of the Commissaries affirmed. Thus the marriage was as valid as Scots law could make it. True, as is pointed out by one of his biographers, he might have appealed to the House of Lords, "but did not, as it seldom happens that they reverse a decree of the Lords of Session!" Nowadays, we may assume, Cranstoun would have taken the risk. The result of this protracted litigation was never known to Mr. Blandy. In the spring of 1749, "a few months" after Cranstoun's departure, Miss Blandy and her mother went to London for the purpose of taking medical advice as to the old lady's health, which was still unsatisfactory. They lived while in town with Mrs. Blandy's brother, Henry Stevens, the Serjeant, in Doctors' Commons. Cranstoun, with whom Mary had been in constant correspondence, waited upon the ladies the morning after their arrival, and came daily during their visit. On one occasion, Mary states, he brought his elder brother, the reigning baron, to call upon them. This gentleman was James, sixth Lord Cranstoun, who had succeeded to the title on the death of his father in 1727. What was his lordship's attitude regarding the "perplexing affair" in Scotland she does not inform us; but Mr. Serjeant Stevens refused to countenance the attentions of the entangled captain. Mrs. Blandy wept because her brother would not invite Cranstoun to dinner, and it was arranged that, to avoid "affronts," she should receive the captain's visits in her own room. But her friend Mrs. Pocock of Turville Court had a house in St. James's Square. "Hither Mr. Cranstoun perpetually came," says Mary, "when he understood that I was there;" so they were able to dispense with the Serjeant's hospitality. One day she and her mother were bidden to dine at Mrs. Pocock's, to meet my Lord Garnock (the future Lord Crauford). Cranstoun and their hostess called for them in a coach, and in the Strand whom should the party encounter but Mr. Blandy, come to town on business. "For God's sake, Mrs. Pocock, what do you with this rubbish?" cried the attorney, stopping the coach. "Rubbish!" quoth the lady, "Your wife, your daughter, and one who may be your son?" "Ay," replied the old man, "They are very well matched; 'tis a pity they should ever be asunder!" "God grant they never may," simpered the ugly lover; "don't you say amen, papa?" But amen, as appears, stuck in Mr. Blandy's throat: he declined Mrs. Pocock's invitation to join them, and shortly thereafter returned to Henley. During this visit to town Mary Blandy states that Cranstoun proposed a secret marriage "according to the usage of the Church of England"--apparently with the view of testing the relative strength of the nuptial knot as tied by their respective Churches. Mary, with hereditary caution, refused to make the experiment unless an opinion of counsel were first obtained, and Cranstoun undertook to submit the point to Mr. Murray, the Solicitor-General for Scotland. Whatever view, if any, that learned authority expressed regarding so remarkable an expedient, Mary heard no more of the matter; but in Cranstoun's _Account_ the marriage is said to have taken place at her own request, "lest he should prove ungrateful to her after so material an intimacy." How "material" in fact was the intimacy between them at this time we can only conjecture. Mrs. Blandy seems to have made the most of her visit to the metropolis, for, according to her daughter, she had contracted debts amounting to forty pounds, and as she "durst not" inform Mr. Blandy, she borrowed that sum from her obliging future son-in-law. By what means the captain, in the then state of his finances, came by the money Mary fails to explain. Being thus, in a pecuniary sense, once more afloat, the ladies, taking grateful leave of Cranstoun, went home to Henley. We hear nothing further of their doings until some six months after their return, when on Thursday, 28th September 1749, Mrs. Blandy became seriously ill. Mr. Norton, the Henley apothecary who attended the family, was sent for, and her brother, the Rev. John Stevens, of Fawley, who, "with other country gentlemen meeting to bowl at the Bell Inn," chanced then to be in the town, was also summoned. It was at first hoped that the old lady would rally as on the former occasion but she gradually grew worse, notwithstanding the attentions of the eminent Dr. Addington, brought from Reading to consult upon the case. Her husband, her daughter, and her two brothers were with her until the end, which came on Saturday, 30th September. To the last the dying woman clung to her belief in the good faith of her noble captain: "Mary has set her heart upon Cranstoun; when I am gone, let no one set you against the match," were her last words to her husband. He replied that they must wait till the "unhappy affair in Scotland" was decided. The complaint of which Mrs. Blandy died was, as appears, intestinal inflammation, but, as we shall see later, her daughter was popularly believed to have poisoned her. However wicked Mary Blandy may have been, she well knew that by her mother's death she and Cranstoun lost their best friend. An old acquaintance and neighbour of Mrs. Blandy, one Mrs. Mounteney, of whom we shall hear again, came upon a visit to the bereaved family. Mrs. Blandy, on her deathbed, had commended this lady to her husband, in case he should "discover an inclination to marry her"--she already was Mary's godmother; but Mrs. Mounteney was destined to play another part in the subsequent drama. Miss Blandy broke the sad news by letter to her lover in London, and pressed him to come immediately to Henley; but the gallant officer replied that he was confined to the house for fear of the bailiffs, and suggested the propriety of a remittance from the mistress of his heart. Mary promptly borrowed forty pounds from Mrs. Mounteney, fifteen of which she forwarded for the enlargement of the captain, who, on regaining his freedom, came to Henley, where he remained some weeks. Francis Blandy was much affected by the loss of his wife. At first he seems to have raised no objection to Cranstoun's visit, but soon Mary had to complain of the "unkind things" which her father said both to her lover and herself. There was still no word from Scotland, except a "very civil" letter of condolence from my Lady Cranstoun, accompanied by a present of kippered salmon--apparently intended as an antidote to grief; but though the old man was gratified by such polite attentions, his mind was far from easy. He was fast losing all faith in the vision of that splendid alliance by which he had been so long deluded, and did not care to conceal his disappointment from the person mainly responsible. On this visit mention was first made by Cranstoun of the fatal powder of which we shall hear so much. Miss Blandy states that, _apropos_ to her father's unpropitious attitude, her lover "acquainted her of the great skill of the famous Mrs. Morgan," a cunning woman known to him in Scotland, from whom he had received a certain powder, "which she called love-powders"--being, as appears, the Scottish equivalent to the _poculum amatorium_ or love philtre of the Romans. Mary said she had no faith in such things, but Cranstoun assured her of its efficacy, having once taken some himself, and immediately forgiven a friend to whom he had intended never to speak again. "If I had any of these powders," said he, "I would put them into something Mr. Blandy should drink." Such is Mary's account of the inception of the design upon her father's love--or life. There for the time matters rested. "Before he left Henley for the last time," writes Lady Russell, to whose interesting account we shall later refer, "Captain Cranstoun made an assignation with Miss Blandy to meet her in the grounds of Park Place, which had long been their trysting-place; and here it was that in a walk which still goes by the name of 'Blandy's Walk,' he first broached his diabolical plan." Park Place, according to the same authority, had shortly before been purchased by General Conway and Lady Ailesbury from Mr. Blandy, as "trustee" of the property. A "dunning" letter following the impecunious captain to his peaceful retreat alarmed the lovers, for the appearance of a bailiff in the respectable house in Hart Street would, for Mr. Blandy, have been, as the phrase goes, the last straw. Fortunately, Mary had retained against such a contingency the balance of Mrs. Mounteney's loan; and with another fifteen pounds of that lady's in his pocket, the captain left for London to liquidate his debt. From that time till August, 1750, the shadow of his sinister guest did not darken the attorney's door. On the first of that month Cranstoun wrote that he proposed to wait upon him. "He must come, I suppose," sighed the old man, and allowed Mary to write that the visitor would be received. Doubtless, he faintly hoped that the Scottish difficulty was at last removed. But the captain, when he came, brought nothing better than the old empty assurances, and his host did not conceal how little weight he now attached to such professions. The visit was an unpleasant one for all parties, and the situation was rapidly becoming impossible. Mary "seldom rose from the table without tears." Her father spent his evenings at "the coffee-house," that he might see as little as possible of the unwelcome guest. One morning, Mary states, Cranstoun put some of the magic powder in the old gentleman's tea, when, _mirabile dictu_, Mr. Blandy, who at breakfast had been very cross, appeared at dinner in the best of humours, and continued so "all the time Mr. Cranstoun stayed with him"! After this, who could doubt the beneficent efficacy of the wise woman's drug? During one of their daily walks this singular lover informed his betrothed that he had a secret to communicate, to wit, that over and above the Scottish complication, "he had a daughter by one Miss Capel" a year before he met the present object of his desires. Miss Blandy, with much philosophy, replied that she hoped he now saw his follies and would not repeat them. "If I do," said Cranstoun, "I must be a villain; you alone can make me happy in this world; and by following your example, I hope I shall be happy in the next." A day or two afterwards, when Cranstoun was abroad, Mary, so far anticipating her wifely duties, entered his room in order to look out his things for the wash. She found more "dirty linen" than she expected. In an unlocked trunk was a letter of recent date, addressed to the gallant captain by a lady then enjoying his protection in town. Even Miss Blandy's robust affection was not, for the moment, able to overlook a treachery so base. She locked the trunk, put the key in her pocket, and at the first opportunity handed it to Cranstoun, with the remark that he should in future be more careful of his private correspondence. A disgusting scene ensued. For two hours the wretched little captain wept and raved, imploring her forgiveness. On his knees, clinging to the skirts of her gown, he swore he would not live till night unless she pardoned his offence. Mary asked him to leave Henley at once; she would not expose him, and their engagement "might seem to go off by degrees." But the miserable creature conjured her by her mother's dying words not to give him up, vowing never to repeat "the same provocations." In the end Mary foolishly yielded; one wonders at the strength of that abnormal passion by which she was driven to accept a position so impossible for a decent and intelligent girl. Soon after this incident Cranstoun was summoned to Scotland, where his mother, Lady Cranstoun, was "extremely ill." "Good God!" cried this admirable son, "what shall I do? I have no money to carry me thither, and all my fortune is seized on but my half-pay!" For the third time Miss Blandy came to the rescue, even giving him back a miniature of his ugly countenance with which he had formerly presented her. At six o'clock next morning he set out for the North in a post-chaise. The old attorney rose early with good heart to speed the parting guest, and furnished him with a half-pint bottle of rum for the journey. Mary says they "all shed tears"; if so, hers were the only genuine tokens of regret. As she waved good-bye to her lover and watched the departing chaise till it was lost to view along the London road, she little thought that, although his sinister influence would remain with her to the end, his graceless person had passed from her sight for ever. It was the month of November, 1750, when Cranstoun took final leave of Henley. In October, a year after Mrs. Blandy's death, divers curious phenomena had been observed in the old house by the bridge. Cranstoun professed that he could get no sleep o' nights, in his room "over the great parlour," by reason of unearthly music sounding through the chamber after midnight, for two hours at a time. On his informing his host of the circumstance, Mr. Blandy caustically observed, "It was Scotch music, I suppose?" from which Miss Blandy inferred that he was not in a good humour--though the inference seems somewhat strained. This manifestation was varied by rappings, rustlings, banging of doors, footfalls on the stairs, and other eerie sounds, "which greatly terrified Mr. Cranstoun." The old man was plainly annoyed by these stories, though he merely expressed the opinion that his guest was "light-headed." But when Cranstoun one morning announced that he had been visited in the night, as the clock struck two, by the old gentleman's wraith, "with his white stockings, his coat on, and a cap on his head," Mr. Blandy "did not seem pleased with the discourse," and the subject was dropped. But Mary, mentioning these strange matters to the maids, expressed the fear that such happenings boded no good to her father, and told how Mr. Cranstoun had learned from a cunning woman in Scotland that they were the messengers of death, and that her father would die within the year. Whatever weight might attach to these gloomy prognostications of the mysterious Mrs. Morgan, it became obvious that from about that date Francis Blandy's health began to fail. He was in the sixty-second year of his age, and he suffered the combined assault of gout, gravel, and heartburn. The state of irritation and suspense consequent upon his daughter's relations with her lover must greatly have aggravated his troubles. It was assumed by the prosecution, on the ground of Mr. Blandy losing his teeth through decay, that he had begun to manifest the effects of poison soon after Cranstoun left Henley in November, 1750, but from the evidence given at the trial it seems improbable that anything injurious was administered to him until the receipt in the following April of that deadly present from Scotland, "The powder to clean the pebbles with." Mr. Norton, the medical man who attended him for several years, stated that the last illness Mr. Blandy had before the fatal one of August, 1751, was in July, 1750. The stuff that Cranstoun had put into the old gentleman's tea in August could, therefore, have no reference to the illness of the previous month, and certainly was not the genuine preparation of Mrs. Morgan. If Mary Blandy were not in fact his accomplice later, it may have been sifted sugar or something equally simple, to induce her to believe the magic powder harmless. Having at length got his would-be son-in-law out of the house, Mr. Blandy determined to be fooled no further; he ordered Mary to write to Cranstoun telling him on no account to show his face again at Henley until his matrimonial difficulties were "quite decided." Tears and entreaties were of no avail; like all weak characters, Mr. Blandy, having for once put down his foot, was obdurate. This ultimatum she duly communicated to her lover in the North; if we could know in what terms and how replied to by him, we should solve the riddle. Hitherto they seem to have trusted to time and the old man's continued credulity to effect their respective ends, but now, if Miss Blandy were to secure a "husband" and Cranstoun lay hands upon her £10,000, some definite step must be taken. Both knew, what was as yet unknown to Mr. Blandy, that the appeal had long since been dismissed, and that while his wife lived Cranstoun could never marry Mary. At any moment her father might learn the truth and alter, by the stroke of a pen, the disposition of his fortune. That they openly agreed to remove by murder the obstacle to their mutual desires is unlikely. Cranstoun, as appears from all the circumstances, was the instigator, as he continued throughout the guiding spirit, of the plot; probably nothing more definite was said between them than that the "love powder" would counteract the old man's opposition; but from her subsequent conduct, as proved by the evidence, it is incredible that Mary acted in ignorance of the true purpose of the wise woman's prescription. In April, or the beginning of May, 1751, by Miss Blandy's statement, she received from her lover a letter informing her that he had seen his old friend Mrs. Morgan, who was to oblige him with a fresh supply of her proprietary article, which he would send along with some "Scotch pebbles" for his betrothed's acceptance. "Ornaments of Scotch pebbles," says Lady Russell, "were the extreme of fashion in the year 1750." According to the opening speech for the Crown, both powder and pebbles arrived at Henley in April; Mary says they did not reach her hands till June. Susan Gunnell, one of the maidservants, stated at the trial that there were two consignments of pebbles from Scotland; one "in a large box of table linen," which came "early in the spring," and another in "a small box," some three months before her master's death. Cranstoun's instructions were "to mix the powder in tea." While professing to doubt "such efficacy could be lodged in any powder whatsoever," and expressing the fear "lest it should impair her father's health," Mary consented to give the love philtre a fair trial. "This some mornings after I did," she says in her _Own Account_. Of the earlier phases of Francis Blandy's fatal illness, which began in this month of June, the evidence tells us nothing more definite than that he suffered much internal pain and frequently was sick; but two incidents occurring at that time throw some light upon the cause of his complaint. It was the habit of the old man to have his tea served "in a different dish from the rest of the family." One morning Susan Gunnell, finding that her master had left his tea untasted, drank it; for three days she was violently sick and continued unwell for a week. On another occasion Mr. Blandy's tea being again untouched by him, it was given to an old charwoman named Ann Emmet, often employed about the house. She shortly was seized with sickness so severe as to endanger her life. That Mary knew of both these mysterious attacks is proved; she was much concerned at the illness of the charwoman, who was a favourite of hers, and she sent white wine, whey, and broth for the invalid's use. It is singular that such experiences failed to shake Miss Blandy's faith in the harmless nature of Mrs. Morgan's nostrum, but they at least made her realise that tea was an unsuitable vehicle for its exhibition, and she communicated the fact to Cranstoun. Her bloodthirsty adviser, however, was able to meet the difficulty. On 18th July he wrote to her, "in an allegorical manner," as follows:--"I am sorry there are such occasions to clean your pebbles; you must make use of the powder to them by putting it in anything of substance wherein it will not swim a-top of the water, of which I wrote to you in one of my last. I am afraid it will be too weak to take off their rust, or at least it will take too long a time." As a further inducement to her to hasten the work in hand, he described the beauties of Scotland, and mentioned that his mother, Lady Cranstoun, was having an apartment specially fitted up at Lennel House for Mary's use. The text of this letter was quoted by Bathurst in his opening speech for the Crown, but the report of the trial does not bear that the document itself was produced, or that it was proved to be in Cranstoun's handwriting. The letter is quoted in the _Secret History_ and referred to in other contemporary tracts, and the fact of its existence appears to have been well known at the time. Further, Miss Blandy in her _Own Account_ distinctly alludes to its receipt, and no objection was taken by her or her counsel to the reading of it at the trial. The point is of importance for two reasons. Firstly, this letter, if written by Cranstoun and received by Mary affords the strongest presumptive proof of their mutual guilt. Had their design been, as she asserted, innocent, what need to adopt in a private letter this "allegorical" and guarded language? Secondly, Mary, as we shall see, found means before her arrest to destroy the half of the Cranstoun correspondence in her keeping, and it would have been more satisfactory if the prosecution had shown how this particular letter escaped to fall into their hands. That she herself fabricated it in order to inculpate her accomplice is highly improbable; had she done so, as Mr. Bleackley has pointed out, its contents would have been more consistent with her defence. On the evening of Sunday, 4th August, Susan Gunnell, by order of her mistress, made in a pan a quantity of water gruel for her master's use. On Monday, the 5th, Miss Blandy was seen by the maids at mid-day stirring the gruel with a spoon in the pantry. She remarked that she had been eating the oatmeal from the bottom of the pan, "and taking some up in the spoon, put it between her fingers and rubbed it." That night some of the gruel was sent up in a half-pint mug by Mary for her father's supper. When doing so, she repeated her curious action of the morning, taking a little in a spoon and rubbing it. On Tuesday, the 6th, the whole house was in confusion: Mr. Blandy had become seriously ill in the night, with symptoms of violent pain, vomiting, and purging. Mr. Norton, the Henley apothecary who attended the family, was summoned--at whose instance does not appear--and on arriving at the house he found the patient suffering, as he thought, from "a fit of colic." He asked him if he had eaten anything that could have disagreed with him; and Mary, who was in the bedroom, replied "that her papa had had nothing that she knew of, except some peas on the Saturday night before." Not a word was said about the gruel; and Mr. Norton had no reason to suspect poison. He prescribed, and himself brought certain remedies, promising to call next day. In the afternoon Miss Blandy, in the kitchen, asked Elizabeth Binfield, the cook, this strange question: "Betty, if one thing should happen, will you go with me to Scotland?" to which Betty cautiously replied, "If I should go there and not like it, it would be expensive travelling back again." That evening Susan was told to warm some of the gruel for her master's supper; she did so, and Mary herself carried it to him in the parlour. On going upstairs to bed, he was repeatedly sick, and called to Susan to bring him a basin. Next morning, Wednesday, the 7th, Betty Binfield brought down from the bedroom the remains of Mr. Blandy's supper. Old Ann Emmet, the charwoman, chanced, unhappily for herself, to be in the kitchen. Susan told her she might eat what had been left, which she did, with the result that she too became violently ill, with symptoms similar to those of Mr. Blandy, and even by the following spring had not sufficiently recovered to be able to attend the trial of her benefactress. When Susan, at nine o'clock, went up to dress her mistress and informed her of her protegee's seizure, Miss Blandy feelingly remarked that she was glad she had not been downstairs, as it would have shocked her to see "her poor dame" so ill. The doctor called in the forenoon and found his patient easier. Later in the day Mary said to Susan that as her master had taken physic, he would require more gruel, but as there was still some left, she need not make it fresh "as she was ironing." Susan replied that the gruel was stale, being then four days old, and, further, that having herself tasted it, she felt very ill, upon which facts Mary made no comment. She thoughtfully warned the cook, however, that if Susan ate more of the gruel "she might do for herself--a person of her age," from which we must infer that Susan was much her master's senior; how, otherwise, was the old man to take it daily with impunity? The strange circumstances attending this gruel aroused the maids' suspicions. They examined the remanent contents of the pan--the aged but adventurous Susan again tasting the fatal mixture was sick for many days--and found a white, gritty "settlement" at the bottom. They prudently put the pan in a locked closet overnight. Next day, Thursday, the 8th, Susan carried it to their neighbour, Mrs. Mounteney, who sent for Mr. Norton, the apothecary, by whom the contents were removed for subsequent examination, the result of which will in due course appear. Meanwhile, Mary's uncle, the Rev. Mr. Stevens, of Fawley, having heard of his brother-in-law's illness, arrived on Friday, the 9th. To him Susan communicated the suspicious circumstances already mentioned, and he advised her to tell her master what she knew. Accordingly, at seven o'clock the following morning (Saturday, the 10th), Susan entered her master's bedroom, and broke to him the fearful news that his illness was suspected to be due to poison, administered to him by his own daughter. So soon as he had recovered from the first shock of this terrible intelligence, the old attorney asked her where Mary could have obtained the poison--he does not seem to have questioned the fact of its administration--and Susan could suggest no other source than Cranstoun. "Oh, that villain!" cried the sick man, realising in a flash the horrid plot of which he was the victim, "that ever he came to my house! I remember he mentioned a particular poison that they had in their country." Susan told him that Mr. Norton advised that Miss Blandy's papers be seized forthwith, but to this Mr. Blandy would not agree. "I never in all my life read a letter that came to my daughter," said the scrupulous old man; but he asked Susan to secure any of the powder she could find. Determined at once to satisfy himself of the truth, Mr. Blandy rose and went downstairs to breakfast. There was present at that meal, besides himself and Mary, one Robert Littleton, his clerk, who had returned the night before from a holiday in Warwickshire. The old man appeared to him "in great agony, and complained very much." Mary handed her father his tea in his "particular dish." He tasted it, and, fixing his eyes upon her, remarked that it had a bad, gritty taste, and asked if she had put anything into it. The girl trembled and changed countenance, muttering that it was made as usual; to hide her confusion she hurried from the room. Mr. Blandy poured his tea into "the cat's basin" and sent for a fresh supply. After breakfast, Mary asked Littleton what had become of the tea, and, being told, seemed to him much upset by the occurrence. When the old man had finished his meal, he went into the kitchen to shave. While there he observed to his daughter, in presence of Betty Binfield, "I had like to have been poisoned once," referring to an occasion when he and two friends drank something hurtful at the coffee house. "One of these gentlemen died immediately, the other is dead now," said he; "I have survived them both, and it is my fortune to be poisoned at last," and, looking "very hard" at her, he turned away. Miss Blandy must have been blind indeed had she failed to see the significance of these incidents. Anything but obtuse, she at once decided to take instant measures for her own protection. She went up to her room, and collecting Cranstoun's correspondence and what remained of the fatal powder, she returned to the kitchen; standing before the fire on pretence of drying the superscription of a letter, she threw the whole bundle into the grate and "stirred it down with a stick." The cook at the moment, whether by chance or design, put on some coals, which preserved the papers from flaming up, and as soon as their mistress had left the kitchen, the maids, now thoroughly on the alert, took off the coal. The letters were consumed, but they drew out almost uninjured a folded paper packet, bearing in Cranstoun's hand the suggestive words, "The powder to clean the pebbles with," and still containing a small quantity of white powder, which they delivered to Mr. Norton when he called later in the day. The apothecary found his patient worse, and stated his opinion to Mary, who asked him to bring from Reading the great Dr. Anthony Addington (father of Lord Sidmouth). Did she at the eleventh hour, pausing upon her dreadful path, seek yet to save her father's life, or was this merely a move to show her "innocence," as Dr. Pritchard, in similar circumstances, invited an eminent colleague to visit his dying victims? Both in her _Narrative_ and her _Own Account_ Mary takes full credit for calling in Dr. Addington, but she is unable to allude to the episodes of the parlour and the kitchen. Dr. Addington arrived at midnight. From the condition of the patient, coupled with what he learned from him and Mr. Norton, the doctor had no doubt Mr. Blandy was suffering from the effects of poison. He at once informed the daughter, and inquired if her father had any enemies. "It is impossible!" she replied. "He is at peace with all the world and all the world is at peace with him." She added that her father had long suffered from colic and heartburn, to which his present indisposition was doubtless due. Dr. Addington remained in the sick-room until Sunday morning (the 11th), when he left, promising to return next day. He took with him the sediment from the pan and the packet rescued from the fire, both of which were delivered to him by Mr. Norton. At this time neither physician nor apothecary knew the precise nature of the powder. Before he quitted the house, Dr. Addington warned Mary that if her father died she would inevitably be ruined. Her position was now, one would think, sufficiently precarious; but the infatuated woman took a further fatal step. Her "love" for her murderous little gallant moved her to warn him of their common danger. She wrote to him at Lennel House, Coldstream, and asked Littleton, who had been in the habit of directing her letters to Cranstoun, to seal, address, and post the missive as usual. But Littleton, aware of the dark cloud of suspicion that had settled upon his master's daughter, opened it and read as follows:--"Dear Willy,--My father is so bad that I have only time to tell you that if you do not hear from me soon again, don't be frightened. I am better myself. Lest any accident should happen to your letters, take care what you write. My sincere compliments. I am ever yours." Littleton at once showed the letter to Mr. Norton, and afterwards read it to Mr. Blandy: "He said very little. He smiled and said, 'Poor love-sick girl! What won't a girl do for a man she loves?'" There was then in the house Mary's uncle, Mr. Blandy, of Kingston, who had come to see his brother, and it was prudently decided, in view of all the circumstances, to refuse her access to the sick-room. But on the following morning (Monday, the 12th) Mr. Blandy sent by Susan Gunnell a message to his daughter "that he was ready to forgive her if she would but endeavour to bring that villain to justice." In accordance with the dying man's request, Mary was admitted to his room in presence of Susan and Mr. Norton. Unaware of the recovery of the powder and the interception of her letter, "she thanked God that she was much better, and said her mind was more at ease than it had been"; but, being informed of these damning discoveries, she fell on her knees by her father's bed and implored his forgiveness, vowing that she would never see or write to Cranstoun again. "I forgive thee, my dear," said the old man, "and I hope God will forgive thee; but thou shouldst have considered better than to have attempted anything against thy father." To which she answered, "Sir, as for your illness, I am entirely innocent." She admitted having put the powder into the gruel, "but," said she, "it was given me with another intent." Her father, "turning himself in his bed," exclaimed, "Oh, such a villain! To come to my house, eat and drink of the best my house could afford, and then to take away my life and ruin my daughter! Oh, my dear, thou must hate that man, must hate the ground he treads on, thou canst not help it!" "Sir," said Mary, "your tenderness towards me is like a sword piercing my heart--much worse than if you were ever so angry. I must down on my knees and beg you will not curse me." "I curse thee, my daughter," he rejoined, "how canst thou think I could curse thee? Nay, I bless thee, and hope God will bless thee also and amend thy life. Do, my dear, go out of my room and say no more, lest thou shouldst say anything to thine own prejudice"; whereupon, says Susan, who reports what passed, "she went directly out." Thus Mary and her father parted for the last time. It appears from this pathetic interview that the old man purposely treated her as Cranstoun's innocent dupe, to shield her, if possible, from the consequences of her guilt, of which, in the circumstances, he could have entertained no doubt. [Illustration: Facsimile of the Intercepted Letter to Cranstoun written by Mary Blandy (_From the original MS. in the Public Record Office_.)] Meanwhile Dr. Addington had applied to the mysterious powder the tests prescribed by the scientific knowledge of the time, which, if less delicate and reliable than the processes of Reinsch and Marsh--a red-hot poker was the principal agent--yielded results then deemed sufficiently conclusive. Judged by these experiments, Mrs. Morgan's mystic philtre was composed of nothing more recondite than white arsenic. When Dr. Addington called on Monday he found the patient much worse, and sent for Dr. Lewis, of Oxford, as he "apprehended Mr. Blandy to be in the utmost danger, and that this affair might come before a Court of judicature." He asked the dying man whether he himself knew if he had "taken poison often." Mr. Blandy said he believed he had, and in reply to the further question, whom he suspected to be the giver of the poison? "the tears stood in his eyes, yet he forced a smile, and said, 'A poor love-sick girl--I forgive her. I always thought there was mischief in those cursed Scotch pebbles.'" Dr. Lewis came, and confirmed Dr. Addington's diagnosis; by their orders Mary was that evening confined to her chamber, a guard was placed over her, and her keys, papers, "and all instruments wherewith she could hurt either herself or any other person" were taken from her. Dr. Addington graphically describes the scene when the guilty woman realised that all was lost. She protested that from the first she had been basely deceived by Cranstoun, that she had never put powder in anything her father swallowed, excepting the gruel drunk by him on the Monday and Tuesday nights, that she believed it "would make him kind to him [Cranstoun] and her," and that she did not know it to be poison "_till she had seen its effects_." She declined to assist in bringing her lover to justice--she considered him as her husband, "though the ceremony had not passed between them." In reply to further pertinent questions, e.g., whether she really pretended to believe in the childish business of the "love philtre"? why Cranstoun described it, if innoxious, as "powder to clean the pebbles with"? why, in view of her father's grave condition, she failed sooner to call in medical aid? and why she had concealed from him (Addington) what she knew to be the true cause of the illness? her answers were not such, says Dr. Addington, as gave him any satisfaction. She made, however, the highly damaging admission that, about six weeks before, she had put some of the powder into her father's tea, which Susan Gunnell drank and was ill for a week after. This was said in presence of Betty Binfield. Thus, it will be observed, Mary Blandy, on her own showing knew, long before she operated upon, the gruel at all, the baneful effects of the powder. Her statement that the motive for administering it was to make her father "kind" both to _herself_ and Cranstoun should also be, in view of her subsequent defence, remembered. On Tuesday, the 13th, the doctors found their patient delirious and "excessively weak." He grew worse throughout the day; but next morning he regained consciousness for an hour, and spoke of making his will in a day or two--a characteristic touch. He soon relapsed, however, and rapidly sinking, died at two o'clock in the afternoon of Wednesday, 14th August, 1751. So the end for which, trampling upon the common instincts of her kind and hardening her heart against the cry of Nature, she had so persistently and horribly striven, was at last attained--with what contentment to "The Fair Parricide," in her guarded chamber, may be left to the speculation of the curious. The servants had access to their mistress's room. That afternoon Miss Blandy asked Robert Harman, the footman, to go away with her immediately--to France, says one account--and offered him £500 if he would do so. He refused. At night, by her request, the cook, Betty Binfield, sat up with her. "Betty, will you go away with me?" she cried, so soon as they were alone. "If you will go to the Lion or the Bell and hire a post-chaise, I will give you fifteen guineas when you get into it, and ten guineas more when we come to London!" "Where will you go--into the North?" inquired the cautious cook; "Shall you go by sea?" and learning that the proposed excursion would include a voyage, Betty, being, as appears, a bad sailor, declined the offer. Her mistress then "burst into laughter," and said she was only joking! In the _Narrative_, written after her condemnation, Mary boldly denies that these significant incidents occurred; in her more elaborate _Account_ she makes no reference to the subject. Those who saw her at this time testify to her extreme anxiety regarding her own situation, but say she showed no sign of sorrow, compassion, or remorse for her father's death. The person charged with the duty of warding Mary in her chamber was Edward Herne, parish clerk of Henley, who some twelve years before had been employed in Mr. Blandy's office, and had since remained on intimate terms with the family. It would appear, from an allusion in a contemporary tract, that Herne was that "Mr. H----" whose pretensions to the hand of the attorney's daughter had once been politely rejected. If so, probably he still preserved sufficient of his former feeling to sympathise with her position and wink at her escape. Be the fact as it may, at ten o'clock next morning, Thursday, 15th August, Ned Herne, as Mary names him, leaving his fair charge unguarded, went off to dig a grave for his old master. So soon as the coast was clear, Mary, with "nothing on but a half-sack and petticoat without a hoop," ran out of the house into the street and over Henley bridge, in a last wild attempt to cheat her fate. Her distraught air and strange array attracted instant notice. She was quickly recognised and surrounded by an angry crowd--for the circumstances of Mr. Blandy's death were now common knowledge, and the Coroner's jury was to sit that day. Alarmed by her hostile reception, she sought refuge at the sign of the Angel, on the other side of the bridge, and Mrs. Davis, the landlady, shut the door upon the mob. There chanced then to be in the alehouse one Mr. Lane, who, with his wife, were interested spectators of these unwonted proceedings. Miss Blandy, having "called for a pint of wine and a toast," thus addressed the stranger--"Sir, you look like a gentleman; what do you think they will do to me?" Mr. Lane told her that she would be committed to the county gaol for trial at the Assizes, when, if her innocence appeared, she would be acquitted; if not, she would suffer accordingly. On receiving this cold comfort Mary "stamped her foot upon the ground," and cried, "Oh, that damned villain! But why should I blame him? I am more to blame than he, for I gave it him [her father] and knew the consequence." On cross-examination at a later stage, the witnesses were unable to swear whether the word she used was "knew" or "know." The distinction is obvious; but looking to the other evidence on the point, it is not of much importance. Mr. Alderman Fisher, a friend of Mr. Blandy and one of the jury summoned upon the inquest, came to the Angel and persuaded the fugitive to return. Though the distance was inconsiderable, Mr. Fisher had to convey her in a "close" post-chaise "to preserve her from the resentment of the populace." Welcomed home by the sergeant and mace-bearer sent by the Corporation of Henley to take her in charge, Mary asked Mr. Fisher how it would go with her. He told her, "very hard," unless she could support her story by the production of Cranstoun's letters. "Dear Mr. Fisher," said she, "I am afraid I have burnt some that would have brought him to justice. My honour to him will prove my ruin." If the letters afforded sufficient proof of Cranstoun's criminous intent, it hardly appears how the fact rhymes to Mary's innocence. That day a post-mortem examination of Mr. Blandy's remains was made by Dr. Addington and others, and in the afternoon "at the house of John Gale, Richard Miles, Gent., Mayor and Coroner of the said town," opened his inquiry into the cause of death. An account of the proceedings at the inquest is printed in the Appendix. The medical witnesses examined were Drs. Addington and Lewis; Mr. Nicholson, surgeon in Henley; and the apothecary, Mr. Norton, who severally spoke to the symptoms exhibited by the deceased during life, the appearances presented by his body, and the result of the analysis of the powder. They were of opinion that Mr. Blandy died of poison, and that the powder was a poison capable of causing his death. The maids, Gunnell and Binfield, Harman the footman, and Mary's old flame, Ned Herne, were the other witnesses whose depositions were taken. Having heard the evidence, the jury found that Francis Blandy was poisoned, and that Mary Blandy "did poison and murder" him; and on Friday, 16th August, the mayor and coroner issued to the constables his warrant to convey the prisoner to the county gaol of Oxford, there to be detained until discharged by due course of law. That night Mr. Blandy's body was buried in the parish church at Henley. None of his relatives were present, Norton, his apothecary; Littleton, his clerk; and Harman, his footman, being the only mourners. Miss Blandy was not removed to Oxford Castle till the following day, to enable her to make the arrangements necessary for a lengthy visit. By her request, one Mrs. Dean, a former servant of the family, accompanied her as her maid. Her tea caddy--"the cannisters were all most full of fine Hyson"--was not forgotten. At four o'clock on Saturday morning the ladies, attended by two constables, set out "very privately" in a landau and four, and, eluding the attention of the mob, reached Oxford about eleven. Mary's first question on arriving at the gaol was, "Am I to be fettered?" and, learning that she would not be put in irons so long as she behaved well, she remarked, "I have wore them all this morning in my mind in the coach." At first, we are told, "her imprisonment was indeed rather like a retirement from the world than the confinement of a criminal." She had her maid to attend her, the best, apartments in the keeper's house were placed at her disposal, she drank tea--her favourite Hyson--twice a day, walked at her pleasure in the keeper's garden, and of an evening enjoyed her game of cards. Her privacy was strictly respected; no one was allowed to "see her without her consent," though very extraordinary sums were daily offered for that purpose. What treatment more considerate could a sensitive gentlewoman desire? But the rude breath of the outer world was not so easily excluded. One day the interesting prisoner learned from a visitor the startling news that her father's fortune, of which, as he had left no will, she was sole heiress, had been found to amount to less than four thousand pounds! With what feelings would she recall the old attorney's boastful references to her £10,000 dower, the fame of which had first attracted her "lover," Cranstoun, and so led to results already sufficiently regrettable, the end of which she shuddered to foresee. How passionately the fierce woman must have cursed the irony of her fate! But to this mental torment were soon to be added physical discomfort and indignity. A rumour reached the authorities in London that a scheme was afoot to effect her rescue. On Friday, 25th October, the Secretary of State having instructed the Sheriff of the county "to take more particular care of her," the felon's fetters she had before feared were riveted upon her slender ankles; and there was an end to the daily walks amid the pleasant alleys of the keeper's garden. This broad hint as to her real position induced a different state of mind. The chapel services, hitherto somewhat neglected, were substituted for the mundane pastimes of tea-drinkings and cards, and the prison chaplain, the Rev. John Swinton, became her only visitor. To the pious attentions of that gentleman she may now be left while we see what happened beyond the narrow circuit of her cell. We are enabled to throw some fresh light upon the doings of the powers in whose high hands lay the prisoner's life from certain correspondence, hitherto unpublished, relating to her case. These documents, here printed for the first time from the original MSS. in the British Museum and Public Record Office, will be found in the Appendix. On 27th September, 1751, Lord Chancellor Hardwicke wrote to the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State, advising that, if upon the examinations there appeared to be sufficient grounds to proceed against Mary Blandy for her father's murder, the prosecution should be carried on at the expense of the Crown, an unusual but not unprecedented practice; and that Mr. Sharpe, Solicitor to the Treasury, be ordered to take the necessary steps, under direction of the Attorney-General; otherwise it would be a reproach to the King's justice should so flagrant a crime escape punishment, as might, if the prosecution were left in the hands of the prisoner's own relatives, occur. As it was thought that Susan Gunnell and the old charwoman, Ann Emmet, material witnesses, "could not long survive the effects of the poison they partook of," and might "dye" before the trial, which in ordinary course would not be held until the Lent Assizes, his lordship suggested that a special commission be sent into Berkshire to find a bill of indictment there, so that the trial could be had at the King's Bench Bar within the next term. It appears from the correspondence that one Richard Lowe, the Mayor of Henley's messenger, had, shortly after Miss Blandy's committal, been despatched to Scotland with the view of apprehending the Hon. William Henry Cranstoun as accessory to the murder. From the address on Mary's intercepted letter, Cranstoun was believed to be in Berwick, and Lowe applied to Mr. Carre, the Sheriff-Depute of Berwickshire, who seems to have made some difficulty in granting a warrant in terms of the application, though ultimately he did so. By that time, however, the bird had flown; and Lowe and Carre each blamed the other for the failure to effect the fugitive's arrest. His lordship accordingly recommended that the Lord Justice-Clerk of Scotland be requested to hold an inquiry into the facts. Lord Hardwicke, in a private letter to the Duke of the same date, commented on the "extraordinary method" taken to apprehend Cranstoun, pointing out that a messenger ought to have been sent with the Secretary of State's warrant, "which runs equally over the whole kingdom"; _that_ might have been executed with secrecy, whereas by the course adopted "so many persons must be apprized of it, that he could hardly fail of getting notice." On receipt of these letters, Newcastle wrote to Sir Dudley Ryder, the Attorney-General, that His Majesty would be pleased to give orders for the prosecution of Mary Blandy, and instructing him to take the requisite steps for that purpose. The result of the Justice-Clerk's inquiry, as appears from the further correspondence, was completely to exonerate Mr. Carre from the charges of negligence and delay made against him by the Mayor's messenger. On 4th October the Chancellor wrote to the Secretary regarding a petition by the "Noblemen and Gentlemen in the Neighbourhood of Henley-upon-Thames, and the Mayor and principal Magistrates of that Town, to the Duke of Newcastle," thanking his grace for King George's "Paternal Goodness" in directing that the prisoner should be prosecuted at "His Majesty's Expence," stating that no endeavour would be wanting on their part to render that prosecution successful, and praying that, in order to bring to justice "the Wicked Contriver and Instigator of this Villainous Scheme," His Majesty might be pleased to offer by proclamation a reward for Cranstoun's apprehension. The signatories included the Mayor and Rector of Henley, divers county magnates, and also the local magistrates, Lords Macclesfield and Cadogan, whose "indefatigable diligence" in getting up the Crown case was specially commended by Bathurst at the trial. By Lord Hardwicke's instructions the Duke submitted the petition to the Attorney-General, with the query, whether it would be advisable to issue such a proclamation? And Sir Dudley Ryder, while of opinion that the matter was one "of mere discretion in His Majesty" and generally approving the measure, thought it probable that the person in question might even then "be gone beyond sea." Mr. Attorney's conjecture was, as we shall find, correct. There is an interesting letter from one Mr. Wise to Mr. Sharpe, Solicitor to the Treasury, giving us a glimpse of Miss Blandy in prison. The writer describes a visit paid by him to Oxford Castle and the condition in which he found her, tells how he impressed upon the keeper and Mrs. Dean the dire results to themselves of allowing her to escape, and mentions the annoyance of Parson Swinton, "a great favourite of Miss Blandy's," at the "freedom" taken with his name by some anonymous scribbler. This was not the first time that reverend gentleman had to complain of the "liberty" of the Press, as we learn from certain curious pamphlets of 1739, from which it would seem that his reputation had no very sweet savour in contemporary nostrils. Mr. Sharpe, writing to Mr. Wise on 6th December, alludes to a threatening letter sent to Betty Binfield, purporting to be written by Cranstoun, from which it was inferred that the fugitive was lying concealed "either here in London or in the North." A similar "menacing letter" signed W.H.C. had been received by Dr. Lewis on 23rd November, which, like the other, was probably a hoax. Cranstoun, being then safe in France, would not so commit himself. The last document of the series, "The Examination of Francis Gropptty," dated 3rd February, 1752, tells for the first time the story of the fugitive's escape. This was the man employed by the Cranstoun family to get their disreputable relative quietly out of England. The delicate negotiation was conducted by the Rev. Mr. Home, brother of Lord Home, and a certain Captain Alexander Hamilton. It was represented to Gropptty, who had "lived with Lord Home several years" and then "did business for him," that such a service would "very much, oblige Lord Cranstoun, Lord Home, and all the Family," and that, as there were no orders to stop Cranstoun at Dover, by complying with their request he, personally, ran no risk; accordingly he consented to see the interesting exile as far as Calais. On 2nd September Captain Hamilton produced Cranstoun at Gropptty's house in Mount Street. Our old acquaintance characteristically explained that he was without funds for the journey, having been "rob'd" of his money and portmanteau on his way to town. Gropptty was induced to purchase for the traveller "such, necessaries as he wanted," and Captain Hamilton went to solicit from Lord Ancrum a loan of twenty pounds for expenses. His lordship having unaccountably refused the advance, the guileless Gropptty agreed to lend ten guineas upon Captain Hamilton's note of hand, which, as he in his examination complained, was still "unsatisfied." He and Cranstoun then set out in a post-chaise for Dover, where they arrived next morning at nine o'clock. On 4th September they embarked in the packet for Calais, paying a guinea for their passage; and Gropptty, having seen his charge safely bestowed in lodgings "at the Rate of Fifty Livres a Month," returned to London. Informed of the successful issue of the adventure, the Rev. Mr. Home evinced a holy joy, and, in the name of his noble kinsman and of Lord Cranstoun, promised Gropptty a handsome reward for his trouble. That gentleman, however, said he had acted solely out of gratitude to Lord Home, and wanted nothing but his outlays; so he made out an "Acct. of the Expences he had been at," amounting, with the sum advanced by him, to eighteen pounds, for which Captain Hamilton obligingly gave him a bill upon my Lord Cranstoun. By a singular coincidence this document of debt also remained "unsatisfied"; his lordship, after keeping it for six weeks, "returned it unpaid, and the Examt. has not yet recd. the money"! Thus, in common with all who had any dealings with the Hon. William Henry Cranstoun, Gropptty in the end got the worse of the bargain. While her gallant accomplice, having successfully stolen a march upon the hangman, was breathing the free air of the French seaport, Miss Blandy, in her cell in Oxford Castle, was preparing for her trial. She had at first entrusted her defence to one Mr. Newell, an attorney of Henley, who had succeeded her late father in the office of town-clerk; but the lawyer, at one of their consultations, untactfully expressing astonishment that she should have got herself into trouble over such "a mean-looking little ugly fellow" as Cranstoun, his client took umbrage at this observation as reflecting upon her taste in lovers, dispensed with his further services, and employed in his stead one Mr. Rivers of Woodstock. From the day of her arrest all sorts of rumours had been rife regarding so sensational a case. She had poisoned her mother; she had poisoned her friend Mrs. Pocock--how and when that lady in fact died we do not know; she was still in correspondence with Cranstoun; she was secretly married to the keeper's son, a step to which the circumstances of their acquaintance left her no alternative; her fortune was being employed to bribe the authorities; the principal witnesses against her had been got out of the way; she had (repeatedly and in divers ways) escaped; finally, as she herself, with reference to these reports, complained--"It has been said that I am a wretched drunkard, a prophane swearer, that I never went to chapel, contemned all holy ordinances, and in short gave myself up to all kinds of immorality." The depositions of the witnesses before the coroner were published "by some of the Friends and Relations of the Family, in order to prevent the Publick from being any longer imposed on with fictitious Stories," but both Miss Blandy and Mr. Ford, her counsel, took great exception to this at the trial. Pamphlets, as we shall presently see, poured from the press, and even before she appeared at the bar the first instalments of a formidable library of _Blandyana_, had come into being. On Monday, 2nd March, 1752, the grand jury for the county of Oxford found a true bill against Mary Blandy. The Town Hall, where the Assizes were usually held, was "then rebuilding," and as the University authorities had refused the use of the Sheldonian Theatre, the trial was appointed to take place next morning in the beautiful hall of the Divinity School. Owing to the insertion overnight--by a mischievous undergraduate or other sympathiser with the day's heroine--of some obstacle in the keyhole, the door could not be opened, and the lock had to be forced, which delayed the proceedings for an hour. The judges meanwhile returned to their lodgings. This initial difficulty surmounted, at eight o'clock on Tuesday, 3rd March, Mary Blandy was placed at the bar to answer the grave charges made against her. There appeared for the Crown the Hon. Mr. Bathurst and Mr. Serjeant Hayward, assisted by the Hon. Mr. Barrington and Messrs. Hayes, Nares, and Ambler. The prisoner was defended by Mr. Ford, with whom were Messrs. Morton and Aston. The judges were the Hon. Heneage Legge and Sir Sidney Stafford Smythe, two of the Barons of His Majesty's Court of Exchequer. As the following pages contain a verbatim reprint of the official report of the trial, published by permission of the judges, it is only necessary here briefly to refer to the proceedings. The trial lasted thirteen hours. It is, says Mr. Ainsworth Mitchell, in his _Science and the Criminal_, "remarkable as being the first one of which there is any detailed record, in which convincing scientific proof of poisoning was given." The indictment charged the prisoner with the wilful murder of Francis Blandy by administering to him white arsenic at divers times (1) between 10th November, 1750, and 5th August, 1751, in tea, and (2) between 5th and 14th August, 1751, in water gruel. The prisoner pleaded not guilty, a jury was duly sworn, and the indictment having been opened by Mr. Barrington, Bathurst began his address for the Crown. Though promoted later to the highest judicial office, he has been described as "the least efficient Lord Chancellor of the eighteenth century." Lord Campbell, in his _Lives of the Chancellors_, says that Bathurst's address was much praised for its eloquence, and "as it certainly contains proof of good feeling, if not of high talent and refined taste," his lordship transcribes for the benefit of his readers certain of its purpler passages. It was deemed worthy, at the time, of publication in separate form, with highly eulogistic notes, wherein we read that by its eloquent appeal both judges and counsel "were moved to mourn, nay, to weep like tenderest infants." The prisoner, however, heard it dry-eyed, nor will its effect be more melting for the modern reader. At the outset the learned counsel observed, with reference to the heinous nature of the crime, that he was not surprised "at this vast concourse of people collected together," from which it appears there were few vacant seats that morning in the Divinity School. Space will not permit us to accompany the future Lord Chancellor through his "most affecting oration," which presents the case for the Crown with moderation and fairness, and concludes with a tribute to the "indefatigable diligence" of the Earl of Macclesfield and Lord Cadogan "in inquiring into this hidden work of darkness." He was followed by Serjeant Hayward, who, employing a more rhetorical and florid style, was probably better appreciated by the audience, but added little to the jury's knowledge of the facts. In an "improving" passage he besought "the young gentlemen of this University," who seem to have been well represented, to guard against the first insidious approaches of vice. "See here," said he, "the dreadful consequences of disobedience to a parent." We need not examine in detail the evidence led for the prosecution; from the foregoing narrative the reader already knows its main outlines and may study it at large in the following report. The Crown case opened with the medical witnesses, Drs. Addington and Lewis, and Mr. Norton, who clearly established the fact that arsenic was the cause of Mr. Blandy's death, that arsenic was present in the remains of his gruel, and that arsenic was the powder which the prisoner had attempted to destroy. The appearance of Mrs. Mounteney in the witness-box occasioned the only display of feeling exhibited by the accused throughout the whole trial. This lady was her godmother, and as she left the Court after giving her evidence, she clasped her god-child by the hand, exclaiming "God bless you!" For the moment Mary's brilliant black eyes filled with tears, but after drinking a glass of wine and water, she resumed her air of stoical indifference. Susan Gunnell, "wore down to a Skelliton" by the effects of her curiosity, but sufficiently recovered to come into Court, was the principal witness for the prosecution. In addition to the material facts which we have before narrated, Susan deposed that the prisoner often spoke of her father as "an old villain," and wished for his death, and had complained that she was "very awkward," for, if he were dead, "she would go to Scotland and live with Lady Cranstoun." Susan gave her evidence with perfect fairness, and showed no animus against her former mistress. Equal in importance was the testimony of Betty Binfield, which, perhaps, is more open to Miss Blandy's objection as being "inspired with vindictive sentiments." When communicating to the maids Mrs. Morgan's prophecy regarding the duration of their master's life, the prisoner, said witness, expressed herself glad, "for that then she would soon be released from all her fatigues, and be happy." She was wont to curse her father, calling him "rascal and villain," and on one occasion had remarked, "Who would grudge to send an old father to hell for £10,000?" "Exactly them words," added the scrupulous cook, though in this instance her zeal had probably got the better of her memory. In cross-examination Betty was asked whether she had any ill-will against her mistress. "I always told her I wished her very well," was the diplomatic reply. "Did you," continued the prisoner's counsel, "ever say, 'Damn her for a black bitch! I should be glad to see her go up the ladder and be hanged'"? but Betty indignantly denied the utterance of any such ungenteel expressions. The account given by this witness of the admissions made by her mistress to Dr. Addington in her presence led to the recall of that gentleman, who, in his former evidence, had not referred to the matter. The prisoner's counsel invited Dr. Addington to say that Miss Blandy's anxiety proceeded solely from concern for her father; the doctor excused himself from expressing any opinion, but, being indiscreetly pressed to do so, said that her agitation struck him as due entirely to fears for herself: he saw no tokens of grief for her father. On re-examination, it appeared that the doctor had attended professionally both Susan Gunnell and Ann Emmet; their symptoms, in his opinion, were those of arsenical poisoning. Alice Emmet was next called to speak to her mother's illness, the old charwoman herself being in no condition to come to Court. Littleton, old Blandy's clerk, gave his evidence with manifest regret, but had to admit that he frequently heard Miss Blandy curse her parent by the unfilial names of rogue, villain, and "toothless old dog." Harman, the footman, to whom Mary had offered the £500 bribe, and Mr. Fisher and Mr. and Mrs. Lane, who spoke to the incidents at the Angel Inn on the day of her attempted flight, were the other witnesses examined; the intercepted letter to Cranstoun was put in, and the Crown case closed. According to the practice of the time, the prisoner's counsel, while allowed to examine their own, and cross-examine the prosecutor's witnesses, were not permitted to address the jury. Mary Blandy therefore now rose to make the speech in her own defence. Probably prepared for her beforehand, it merely enumerates the various injustices and misrepresentations of which she considered herself the victim. She made little attempt to refute the damning evidence against her, and concluded by protesting her innocence of her father's death; that she thought the powder "an inoffensive thing," and gave it to procure his love. In this she was well advised, for she was shrewd enough to see that upon the question of her knowledge of the quality and effect of the powder the verdict would turn. [Illustration: Miss Blandy (_From a Mezzotint by T. Ryley after L. Wilson, in the Collection of Mr. A.M. Broadley_.)] Eight witnesses were called for the defence. Ann James, who washed for the family, stated that before Mr. Blandy's illness there was "a difference between Elizabeth Binfield and Miss Blandy, and Binfield was to go away." After Mary's removal to Oxford gaol (Saturday, 17th August), the witness heard Betty one day in the kitchen make use of the unparliamentary language already quoted. Mary Banks deposed that she was present at the time, and heard the words spoken. "It was the night Mr. Blandy was opened" (Thursday, 15th August); she was sure of that; Miss Blandy was then in the house. Betty Binfield, recalled and confronted with this evidence, persisted in her denial, but admitted the existence of "a little quarrel" with her mistress. Edward Herne, Mary's old admirer, gave her a high character as an affectionate, dutiful daughter. He was in the house as often as four times a week and never heard her swear an oath or speak a disrespectful word of her father. In cross-examination the witness admitted that in August, 1750, Miss Blandy told him that Cranstoun had put powder in her father's tea. He had visited her in prison, and on one occasion, a report having reached her that "the Captain was taken," she wrung her hands and said, "I hope in God it is true, that he may be brought to justice as well as I, and that he may suffer the punishment due to his crime, as I shall do for mine." Here for the first time the prisoner intervened. Her questions were directed to bring out that she had told Herne on the occasion mentioned that no "damage" resulted upon Cranstoun's use of the powder, from which fact she inferred its effects harmless, and that the "suffering" spoken of by her had reference to her imprisonment, though guiltless. For the rest, Thomas Cawley and Thomas Staverton, friends of Mr. Blandy for upwards of twenty years, spoke to the happy relations which to their knowledge subsisted between father and daughter. On her last visit to Staverton's house, Mary had remarked that, although her father "had many wives laid out for him," he would not marry till she was "settled." Mrs. Davis, the landlady of the Angel, and Robert Stoke, the officer who took the prisoner into custody, said that Miss Blandy did not then appear to them to be attempting night. This concluded the exculpatory evidence. For the defence, Mr. Ford protested against the "unjustifiable and illegal methods" used to prejudice his client, such as the publication of the proceedings at the inquest, and, particularly, the "very scandalous reports" concerning her, circulated since her commitment, to refute which he proposed to call "the reverend gentleman who had attended her," Parson Swinton. The Court, however, held that there was no need to do so, as the jury would entirely disregard anything not deposed to in Court. Mr. Bathurst replying for the Crown, maintained that it was proved to demonstration that Francis Blandy died of poison, put in his gruel upon the 5th of August by the prisoner's hand, as appeared not only from her own confession, but from all the evidence adduced. "Examine then, gentlemen," said the learned counsel, "whether it is possible she could do it ignorantly." In view of the great affection with which it was proved the dying man behaved to her, the prisoner's assertion that she gave him the powder "to make him love her" was incredible. She knew what effects the poisoned gruel produced upon him on the Monday and Tuesday, yet she would have given him more of it on the Wednesday. Having pointed out that, when she must have known the nature of the powder, she endeavoured to destroy it, instead of telling the physicians what she had given her father, which might have been the means of saving his life, counsel commented on the terms of the intercepted letter to Cranstoun as wholly inconsistent with her innocence. Further, he remarked on the contradiction as to dates in the evidence of the witnesses who reported Betty Binfield's forcible phrase, which, he contended, was in fact never uttered by her. Finally, he endorsed the censure of the prisoner's counsel upon the spreaders of the scandalous reports, which he asked the jury totally to disregard. On the conclusion of Bathurst's reply, the prisoner made the following statement:--"It is said I gave it [the powder] my father to make him fond of me: there was no occasion for that--but to make him fond of Cranstoun." Mr. Baron Legge then proceeded to charge the jury. The manner in which his lordship reviewed the evidence and his exposition of its import and effect, indeed his whole conduct of the trial, have been well described as affording a favourable impression of his ability, impartiality, and humanity. He proceeded in the good old fashion, going carefully over the whole ground of the evidence, of which his notes appear to have been excellent; and after some general remarks upon the atrocity of the crime charged, and the nature and weight of circumstantial evidence--"more convincing and satisfactory than any other kind of evidence, because facts cannot lie"--observed that it was undeniable that Mr. Blandy died by poison administered to him by the prisoner at the bar: "What you are to try is reduced to this single question, whether the prisoner, at the time she gave it to her father, knew that it was poison, and what effect it would have?" If they believed that she did know, they must find her guilty; if, in view of her general character, the evidence led for the defence, and what she herself had said, they were not satisfied that she knew, then they would acquit her. The jury, without retiring, consulted for five minutes and returned a verdict of guilty. Mr. Baron Legge, having in dignified and moving terms exhorted the unhappy woman to repentance, then pronounced the inevitable sentence of the law--"That you are to be carried to the place of execution and there hanged by the neck until you are dead; and may God, of His infinite mercy, receive your soul." It was nine o'clock at night; for thirteen mortal hours Mary Blandy had watched unflinchingly the "interesting game played by counsel with her life for stakes"; the "game" was over, and hers was the losing side; yet no sign of fear or agitation was manifested by that strange woman as she rose for the last time to address her judge. "My lord," said she, "as your lordship has been so good to show so much candour and impartiality in the course of my trial, I have one favour more to beg; which is, that your lordship would please to allow me a little time till I can settle my affairs and make my peace with God"; to which Mr. Baron Legge feelingly replied, "To be sure, you shall have a proper time allowed you." So, amid the tense stillness of the crowded "house," the curtain fell upon the great fourth act of the tragedy of "The Fair Parricide." On leaving the hall to be taken back to prison, Mary Blandy, we read, "stepped into the Coach with as little Concern as if she had been going to a Ball"--the eighteenth century reporter anticipating by a hundred years his journalistic successor's phrase as to the demeanour of Madeleine Smith in similar trying circumstances. The result of the trial had preceded her to Oxford Castle, where she found the keeper's family "in some Disorder, the Children being all in Tears" at the fatal news. "Don't mind it," said their indomitable guest, "What does it signify? I am very hungry; pray, let me have something for supper as speedily as possible"; and our reporter proceeds to spoil his admirable picture by condescending upon "Mutton Chops and an Apple Pye." The six weeks allowed her to prepare for death were all too short for the correspondence and literary labours in which she presently became involved. On 7th March "a Reverend Divine of Henley-upon-Thames," probably, from other evidence, the Rev. William Stockwood, rector of the parish, addressed to her a letter, exhorting her to confession and repentance. To this Miss Blandy replied on the 9th, maintaining that she had acted innocently. "There is an Account," she tells him, "as well as I was able to write, which I sent to my Uncle in London, that I here send you." Copies of these letters, and of the narrative referred to, are printed in the Appendix. She sends her "tenderest wishes" to her god-mother, Mrs. Mounteney, and trusts that she will be able to "serve" her with the Bishop of Winchester, apparently in the matter of a reprieve, of which Mary is said to have had good hope, by reason that she had once the honour of dancing with the late Prince of Wales--"Fred, who was alive and is dead." "Pray comfort poor Ned Herne," she writes, "and tell him I have the same friendship for him as ever." She asks that her letter and its enclosure be returned, as, being in her own handwriting, they may be of service to her character after her death. The object of this request was speedily apparent; on 20th March the whole documents were published under the title of _A Letter from a Clergyman, to Miss Mary Blandy, &c._, with a note by the publisher intimating that, for the satisfaction of the public, the original MS. was left with him. The fair authoress having thus fired the first shot, a fusilade of pamphlets began--the spent bullets are collected in the Bibliography--which, for volume and verbosity, is entitled to honourable mention in the annals of tractarian strife. _An Answer to Miss Blandy's Narrative_ quickly followed upon the other side, in which, it is claimed, "all the Arguments she has advanc'd in Justification of her Innocence are fully refuted, and her Guilt clearly and undeniably prov'd." This was promptly met by _The Case of Miss Blandy considered, as a Daughter, as a Gentlewoman, and as a Christian_, with particular reference to her own _Narrative_, the author of which is better versed in classical analogies than in the facts of the case. Mary herself mentions a pamphlet, which she cites as _The Life of Miss Mary Blandy_, and attributes to "a French usher." This may have been one of the 1751 tracts containing accounts "of that most horrid Parricide," the title of which she deemed too indelicate for exact citation, or, perhaps, an earlier edition of _A Genuine and Impartial Account of the Life of Miss Mary Blandy_, &c., the copy of which in the Editor's possession, including an account of the execution, was published on 9th April, three days after the completion of that ceremony. The last literary effort of Mary Blandy was an expansion of her _Narrative_, re-written in more detail and at much greater length, the revised version appearing on 18th April under the title of _Miss Mary Blandy's Own Account of the Affair between her and Mr. Cranstoun_, "from the commencement of their Acquaintance in the year 1746 to the Death of her Father in August, 1751, with all the Circumstances leading to that unhappy Event." This ingenious, rather than ingenuous, compilation was, it is said, prepared with the assistance of Parson Swinton, who had some previous experience of pamphleteering on his own account in 1739. Mr. Horace Bleackley has happily described it as "The most famous apologia in criminal literature," and as such it is reprinted in the present volume. Even this _tour de force_ failed to convince a sceptical world, and on 15th April was published _A Candid Appeal to the Publick_ concerning her case, by "a Gentleman of Oxford," wherein "All the ridiculous and false Assertions" contained in Miss Blandy's _Own Account_ "are exploded, and the Whole of that Mysterious Affair set in a True Light." But by this time the fair disputant was beyond the reach of controversy, and the Oxford gentleman had it all his own way; though the pamphleteers kept the discussion alive a year longer than its subject. An instructive feature of Mary's literary activities during her last days is her correspondence with Elizabeth Jeffries. "That unsavoury person" was, with her paramour, John Swan, convicted at Chelmsford Assizes on 12th March, 1752, of the murder at Walthamstow, on 3rd July, of one Joseph Jeffries, respectively uncle and master to his slayers. Elizabeth induced John to kill the old gentleman, who, aware of their intrigue, had threatened, as the Crown counsel neatly phrased it, "to alter his will, if she did not alter her conduct." This unpleasant case, as was, perhaps, in the circumstances, natural, attracted the attention of Miss Blandy. She read with much interest the report of the trial. "It is barbarous," was her comment--for, in truth, the murder was a sordid business, and sadly lacking in "style"--"but I am sorry for her, and hope she will have a good divine to attend her in her last moments, if possible a second Swinton, for, poor unhappy girl, I pity her." These sentiments shocked a lady visitor then present, who, expressing the opinion that all such inhuman wretches should suffer as they deserved, withdrew in dudgeon. Mary smilingly remarked, "I can't bear with these over-virtuous women. I believe if ever the devil picks a bone, it is one of theirs!" But the murderess of Walthamstow had somehow struck her fancy, and she wrote to her fellow-convict to express her sympathy. That young lady suitably replied, and the ensuing correspondence (7th January-19th March, 1752), published under the title of _Genuine Letters between Miss Blandy and Miss Jeffries_, if we may believe the description, is highly remarkable. At first Elizabeth asserted her innocence as stoutly as did Mary herself, but afterwards she acknowledged her guilt. Whereupon Mary, more in sorrow than in anger, wrote to her on 16th March for the last time. "Your deceiving of me was a small crime; it was deceiving yourself: for no retreat, tho' ever so pleasant, no diversions, no company, no, not Heaven itself, could have made you happy with those crimes unrepented of in your breast." So, with the promise to be "a suitor for her at the Throne of Mercy," Miss Blandy intimated that the correspondence must close; and on the 28th Miss Jeffries duly paid the penalty of her crime. In _A Book of Scoundrels_, that improving and delightful work, Mr. Charles Whibley has, well observed: "A stern test of artistry is the gallows. Perfect behaviour at an enforced and public scrutiny may properly be esteemed an effect of talent--an effect which has not too often been rehearsed." This high standard, the hall-mark of the artist in crime, Mary Blandy admittedly attained. The execution, originally fixed for Saturday, 4th April, was postponed until Monday, the 6th, by request of the University authorities, who represented that to conduct such a ceremony during Holy Week "would be improper and unprecedented." The night before her end the doomed woman asked to see the scene of the morrow's tragedy, and looked out from one of the upper windows upon the gibbet, "opposite the door of the gaol, and made by laying a poll across upon the arms of two trees"--in her case "the fatal tree" had a new and very real significance; then she turned away, remarking only that it was "very high." At nine o'clock on Monday morning, attended by Parson Swinton, and "dress'd in a black crape sack, with her arms and hands ty'd with black paduasoy ribbons," Mary Blandy was led out to her death. About the two trees with, their ominous "poll" a crowd of silent spectators was assembled on the Castle Green, to whom, in accordance with the etiquette of the day, she made her "dying declaration"--to wit, that she was guiltless of her father's blood, though the innocent cause of his death, and that she did not "in the least contribute" to that of her mother or of Mrs. Pocock. This she swore upon her salvation; which only shows, says Lord Campbell, who was convinced of her guilt, "the worthlessness of the dying declarations of criminals, and the absurdity of the practice of trying to induce them to confess." We shall not dwell upon the shocking spectacle--the curious will find a contemporary account in the Appendix--but one characteristic detail may be mentioned. As she was climbing the fatal ladder, covered, for the occasion, with black cloth, she stopped, and addressing the celebrants of that grim ritual, "Gentlemen," said she, "do not hang me high, for the sake of decency." Mary Blandy was but just in time to make so "genteel" an end. That very year (1752), owing to the alarming increase of murders, an Act was passed (25 Geo. II. c. 37) "for better preventing the Horrid Crime of Murder," whereby persons condemned therefor should be executed on the next day but one after sentence, and their bodies be given to the Surgeons' Company at their Hall with a view to dissection, and also, in the discretion of the judge, be hanged in chains. The first person to benefit by the provisions of the new Act did so on 1st July. But although Mary Blandy's body escaped these legal indignities, as neither coffin nor hearse had been prepared for its reception, it was carried through the crowd on the shoulders of one of the Sheriff's men, and deposited for some hours in his house. There suitable arrangements were made, and at one o'clock in the morning of Tuesday, 7th April, 1752, the body, by her own request, was buried in the chancel of Henley Parish Church, between those of her father and mother, when, notwithstanding the untimely hour, "there was assembled the greatest concourse of people ever known upon such an occasion." Henley Church has been "restored" since Mary's day, and there is now no indication of the grave, which, as the present rector courteously informs the Editor, is believed to be beneath the organ, in the north choir aisle. _Apropos_ to Mary Blandy's death, "Elia" has a quaint anecdote of Samuel Salt, one of the "Old Benchers of the Inner Temple." This gentleman, notable for his maladroit remarks, was bidden to dine with a relative of hers (doubtless Mr. Serjeant Stevens) on the day of the execution--not, one would think, a suitable occasion for festivity. Salt was warned beforehand by his valet to avoid all allusion to the subject, and promised to be specially careful. During the pause preliminary to the announcing of dinner, however, "he got up, looked out of window, and pulling down his ruffles--an ordinary motion with him--observed, 'it was a gloomy day,' and added, 'I suppose Miss Blandy must be hanged by this time.'" The reader may care to know what became of Cranstoun. That "unspeakable Scot," it has regretfully to be recorded, was never made amenable to earthly justice. He was, indeed, the subject of at least four biographies, but human retribution followed him no further. Extracts from one of these "Lives" are, for what they are worth, printed in the Appendix, together with his posthumous _Account of the Poisoning of the late Mr. Francis Blandy_, a counterblast to Mary's masterpiece. This tract includes the text of three letters, alleged to have been written by her to her lover, and dated respectively 30th June, 16th July, and 1st August, 1751; but as, after his death, all his papers were, by order of Lord Cranstoun, sealed up and sent to his lordship in Scotland, who, in the circumstances, was little likely to part with them, it does not appear how these particular manuscripts came into the "editor's" possession. But, in that age of literary marvels, nothing need surprise us: a publisher actually issued as genuine the _Original Letters to and from Miss Blandy and C---- C----_, though the fact that Cranstoun's half of the correspondence had been destroyed by Mary Blandy was then a matter of common knowledge. In all these pamphlets, Cranstoun, while admitting his complicity in her crime, with, characteristic gallantry casts most of the blame upon his dead mistress. For the rest, he seems to have passed the brief remainder of his days in cheating as many of his fellow-sinners as, in the short time at his disposal, could reasonably be expected. A hitherto unpublished letter from Henry Fox at the War Office, to Mr. Pitt, then Paymaster General, dated 14th March, 1752, is, by kind permission of Mr. A.M. Broadley, printed in the Appendix. After referring to Mary's conviction, the writer intimates that Cranstoun, "a reduc'd first Lieut. of Sir Andrew Agnew's late Regt. of Marines, now on the British Establishment of Half-Pay, was charged with contriving the manner of sd. Miss Blandy's Poisoning her Father and being an Abettor therein; and he having absconded from the time of her being comitted for the above Fact, I am commanded to signify to you it is His Majesty's Pleasure that the sd. Lieutenant Wm. Henry Cranstoune be struck off the sd. Establishment of Half-Pay, and that you do not issue any Moneys remaining in your Hands due to the sd. Lieut. Cranstoune." This shows the view taken by the Government of the part played by Cranstoun in the tragedy of Henley. There will also be found in the Appendix an extract from, a letter from Dunkirk, published in the _London Magazine_ for February, 1753, containing what appears to be a reliable account of the last days of Mary Blandy's lover; the particulars given are in general agreement with those contained in the various "Lives" above mentioned. Obliged to fly from France, where he had been harboured by one Mrs. Ross, his kinswoman, whose maiden name of Dunbar he had prudently assumed, he sought refuge in Flanders. Furnes, "a town belonging to the Queen of Hungary," had the dubious distinction of being selected by him as an asylum. There, on 2nd December, 1752, "at the sign of the Burgundy Cross," after a short illness, accompanied, it is satisfactory to note, with "great agonies," the Hon. William Henry Cranstoun finally ceased from troubling in the thirty-ninth year of his age. His personal belongings, "consisting chiefly of Laced and Embroidered Waistcoats," were sold to pay his debts. On his deathbed he was received into the Roman Catholic Church. The occasion of so notable a conversion was fittingly marked by the magnificence of his obsequies. "He was buried," we read, "in great solemnity, the Corporation attending the funeral; and a grand Mass was said over the corpse in the Cathedral Church, which, was finely illuminated." The impressive ceremonial would have gratified vainglorious Mr. Blandy had circumstances permitted his presence. Some account of the descendants of Cranstoun is given in a letter by John Riddell, the Scots genealogist, hitherto unpublished, which is printed in the Appendix. George Cranstoun, Lord Corehouse, Cranstoun's nephew, was afterwards an eminent Scottish judge. A word as to the guilt of Mary Blandy and her accomplice, which, in the opinion of some writers, is not beyond dispute. The question of motive in such cases is generally a puzzling one, and in the commission of many murders the end to be gained, always inadequate, often remains obscure. Barely does the motive--unlike the punishment which it was the sublime object of Mr. Gilbert's "Mikado" equitably to adjust--"fit the crime." Mary was well aware that she could not be Cranstoun's lawful wife, but hers was not a nature to shrink from the less regular union. Her passion for him was irresistible; she had ample proof of his chronic infidelity, but, in her blind infatuation, such "spots" upon the sun of her affection, were disregarded. She knew that, but for the £10,000 bait, her crafty lover would surely play her false; her father was sick of the whole affair, and if she went off with the captain, would doubtless disinherit her. As for that "honourable" gentleman himself, the inducement to get possession of her £10,000, the beginning and end of his connection with the Blandys, sufficiently explains his purpose. Was not the spirit of his family motto, "Thou shalt want ere I want," ever his guiding light and principle, and would such a man so circumstanced hesitate to resort to a crime which he could induce another to commit and, if necessary, suffer for, while he himself reaped the benefit in safety? Had he succeeded in securing both his mistress and her fortune, Mary's last state would, not improbably, have been worse than her first. So much for the "motive," which presents little difficulty. Then, with regard to the question whether, on the assumption of his guilt, Mary Blandy was the intelligent agent of Cranstoun or his innocent dupe, no one who has studied the evidence against her can entertain a reasonable doubt. Apart from the threatening and abusive language which she applied to her father, her whole attitude towards his last illness shows how false were her subsequent professions of affection. She herself has disposed of the suggestion that she really believed in the love-compelling properties of the magic powder, though such a belief was not inconceivable, as appears from the contemporary advertisement of a "Love Philtre," of which a copy is printed in the Appendix. She told her dying father that if he were injured by the powder, she was not to blame, as "it was given her with another intent." What that "intent" was she did not then explain, but later she informed Dr. Addington that it was to "make him [her father] kind" to Cranstoun and herself. In the speech which she delivered in her own defence she said, "I gave it to procure his love"; and again, on the conclusion of Bathurst's reply, "It is said I gave it my father to make him fond of me: there was no occasion for that--but to make him fond of Cranstoun." In her _Narrative_ she repeats this statement; but in her _Own Account_, written and revised by herself, she says, "I gave it to my poor father innocent of the effects it afterwards produced, God knows; _not so stupid as to believe it would have that desired, to make him kind to us_; but in obedience to Mr. Cranstoun, who ever seemed superstitious to the last degree." Here we have an entirely fresh (if no less false) reason assigned for the exhibition of the wise woman's drug; only, of course, another lie, but one which, disposes of her previous defence. Of the true qualities of the powder she had ample proof; she warned the maid that the gruel "might do for her," she saw its virulent effects upon Gunnell and Emmet, as well as on her father from its first administration, while her concealment of its use from the physician, and her destruction of the remanent portion, are equally incompatible with belief either in its innocence or her own. Finally, her burning of Cranstoun's letters, which, if her story was true, were her only means of confirming it, her attempts to bribe the servants, and her statements to Fisher and the Lanes at the Angel, afford, in Mr. Baron Legge's phrase, "a violent presumption" of her guilt. Cranstoun, even at the time, did not lack apologists, who held that Miss Blandy, herself the solo criminal, cunningly sought to involve her guileless lover in order to lessen her own guilt. This view has been endorsed by later authorities. Anderson, in his _Scottish Nation_, remarks, "There does not appear to have been any grounds for supposing that the captain was in any way accessory to the murder"; and Mr. T.F. Henderson, in his article on Cranstoun in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, observes, "Apart from her [Mary Blandy's] statement there was nothing to connect him with the murder." These writers seem to have overlooked the following important facts:--The letter written by Cranstoun to Mary, read by Bathurst in his opening speech, the terms of which plainly prove the writer's complicity; and the packet rescued from the fire, bearing in his autograph the words, "The powder to clean the pebbles with," which, when we remember the nature of its contents, leaves small doubt of the sender's guilt. "A supposition," says Mr. Bleackley, "that does not explain [these] two damning circumstances must be baseless." The nocturnal manifestations experienced by Cranstoun, and interpreted by his friend Mrs. Morgan as presaging Mr. Blandy's death, must also be explained. Further, it would be interesting to know how the defenders of Cranstoun account for the warning given him by Mary in the intercepted letter--"Lest any accident should happen to your letters, _take care what you write_." That this was part of a subtle scheme to inculpate her lover will, in the circumstances, hardly be maintained. As Mr. Andrew Lang once remarked of a hypothesis equally untenable, "That cock won't fight." Would Cranstoun have fled as he did from justice, and gone into voluntary exile for life, when, if innocent, he had only to produce Mary's letters to him in proof of the blameless character of their correspondence? and why, when on his death those letters passed into Lord Cranstoun's custody, did not that nobleman publish them in vindication of his brother's honour, as he was directly challenged to do by a pamphleteer of the day? The Crown authorities, at any rate, as we have seen, did not share the opinion expressed by the writers above cited; and from what was said by Mr. Justice Buller, in the case of _George Barrington_ (Mich. 30 Geo. III., reported Term Rep. 499), it appears that Cranstoun, for his concern in the murder of Mr. Blandy, was prosecuted to outlawry, the learned judge observing with reference to the form adopted on that occasion, "It was natural to suppose groat care had been taken in settling it, because some of the most eminent gentlemen in the profession were employed in it." "Alas! the record of her page will tell That one thus madden'd, lov'd, and guilty fell. Who hath not heard of Blandy's fatal fame, Deplor'd her fate, and sorrow'd o'er her shame?" Thus the author of _Henley_: A Poem (Hickman & Stapledon, 1827); and, indeed, the frequent references to the case in the "literary remains" of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries bear witness to the justice of that poetic observation. The inimitable _Letters_ of Horace Walpole contain, as might be expected, more than one mention of this _cause célèbre_. Writing on 23rd March, 1752, to Horace Mann, he says, "There are two wretched women that just now are as much talked of [as the two Miss Gunnings], a Miss Jefferies and a Miss Blandy; the one condemned for murdering her uncle, the other her father. Both their stories have horrid circumstances; the first having been debauched by her uncle; the other had so tender a parent, that his whole concern while he was expiring, and knew her for his murderess, was to save her life. It is shocking to think what shambles this country is grown! Seventeen were executed this morning, after having murdered the turnkey on Friday night, and almost forced open Newgate. One is forced to travel, even at noon, as if one was going to battle." And again, on 13th May, "Miss Blandy died with a coolness of courage that is astonishing, and denying the fact, which has made a kind of party in her favour; as if a woman who would not stick at parricide would scruple a lie! We have made a law for immediate execution on conviction of murder: it will appear extraordinary to me if it has any effect; for I can't help believing that the terrible part of death must be the preparation for it." The "law" regarding summary executions to which Walpole refers is the Act already mentioned. To Henry Seymour Conway, on 23rd June, he writes, "Since the two Misses [Blandy and Jefferies] were hanged, and the two Misses [the beautiful Gunnings] were married, there is nothing at all talked of." On 28th August he writes to George Montague, "I have since been with Mr. Conway at Park Place, where I saw the individual Mr. Cooper, a banker, and lord of the manor of Henley, who had those two extraordinary forfeitures from the executions of the Misses Blandy and Jefferies, two fields from the former, and a malthouse from the latter. I had scarce credited the story, and was pleased to hear it confirmed by the very person: though it was not quite so remarkable as it was reported, for both forfeitures were in the same manor." This circumstance is noted in the _Annual Register_ for 1768, in connection with the death of Mr. Cooper, at the age of eighty. From the following references it would appear that the empty old house in Hart Street had acquired a sinister reputation. On 8th November Walpole writes to Conway, "Have the Coopers seen Miss Blandy's ghost, or have they made Mr. Cranston poison a dozen or two more private gentlewomen?"--the allusion being to the deaths of Mrs. Blandy and Mrs. Pocock; and again, on 4th August, 1753, to John Chute. "The town of Henley has been extremely disturbed with an engagement between the ghosts of Miss Blandy and her father, which continued so violent, that some bold persons, to prevent further bloodshed broke in, and found it was two jackasses which had got into the kitchen." [Illustration: Miss Mary Blandy in Oxford Castle Gaol (_From an Engraving in the British Museum_.)] Walpole barely exaggerates the wholesale legal butcheries by which the streets of London were then disgraced. "Many cartloads of our fellow-creatures are once in six weeks carried to slaughter," says Henry Fielding, in his _Enquiry_ (1751); and well has Mr. Whibley described the period as "Newgate's golden age." As for Tyburn Tree, we read in its _Annals_, for example, "1752. July 13. Eleven executed at Tyburn." We can only glance at one or two further instances of the diffusion of "Blandy's fatal fame." None of the varied forms of the _Newgate Calendar_--that criminous _Who's Who?_--fails to accord her suitable if inaccurate notice. With other letter-writers of the time than the genial Horace the case forms a topical subject. James Granger reports to a reverend correspondent that "the principal subject of conversation in these parts is the tragical affair transacted at Henley.... It is supposed, as there is no direct and absolute proof that she was guilty, and her friends are rich and have great interest, that she will escape punishment." To Mrs. Delany, writing the day after the execution, the popular heroine "appeared very guilty by her trial," but we learn that Lady Huntingdon had written a letter to Miss Blandy after her conviction. On 22nd April, 1752, Miss Talbot writes to Mrs. Carter, who thought Mary had been "too severely judged," that "her hardiness in guilt" was shocking to think of. "Let me tell you one fact that young Goosetree, the lawyer, told to the Bishop of Gloucester," she writes, with reference to Miss Blandy's repeated statement that she never believed her father a rich man. "This Goosetree visited her in jail as an old acquaintance. She expressed to him great amazement at her father's being no richer, and said she had no notion but he must have been worth £10,000. Mr. Goosetree prudently told her the less she said about that the better, and she never said it afterwards, but the contrary." Miss Talbot adds that certain letters in Lord Macclesfield's hands "falsify others of her affirmations." By 5th May, 1753, Mrs. Delany writes, "We are now very full of talk about Eliza Canning." As time goes on the tragedy of Henley, though gradually becoming a tradition, is still susceptible of current allusion. John Wilkes, writing from Bath to his daughter on 3rd January, 1779, regarding a lady of their acquaintance who proposed to keep house for a certain doctor, remarks "that he is sure it could not have lasted long, for she would have poisoned him, as Miss Blandy did her father, and forged a will in her own favour"; but Tate Wilkinson, in his _Memoirs_, observes, "Elizabeth Canning, Mary Squires, the gipsy, and Miss Blandy were such universal topics in 1752 that you would have supposed it the business of mankind to talk only of them; yet now, in 1790, ask a young man of twenty-five or thirty a question relative to these extraordinary personages, and he will be puzzled to answer, and will say, 'What mean you by enquiring? I do not understand you,'" So quickly had the "smarts" of the new generation forgotten the "fair Blandy" of their fathers' toasts. To make an end of such quotations, which might indefinitely be multiplied, we shall only refer the reader to Lady Russell's _Three Generations of Fascinating Women_ (London: 1901), for good reading _passim_, and with special reference to her account of the interest taken in the case by Lady Ailesbury of Park Place, who "was related to the instigator of the crime," and, believing in Mary's innocence, used all her influence to obtain a pardon. To Mr. Horace Bleackley's brilliant study of the case we have already in the Preface referred. It may, in closing, be worth while to remind the student of such matters that the year with which we have had so much concern was in other respects an important one in the annals of crime. On 14th May, 1752, the "Red Fox," Glenure, fell by an assassin's bullet in the wood of Lettermore, which fact resulted in the hanging of a guiltless gentleman and, in after years, more happily inspired an immortal tale; while on 1st January, 1753, occurred the disappearance of Elizabeth Canning, that bewildering damsel whose mission it was to baffle her contemporaries and to set at nought the skill of subsequent inquirers. Well, we have learned all that history and tradition has to tell us about Mary Blandy; but what do we really know of that sombre soul that sinned and suffered and passed to its appointed place so long ago? A few "facts," some "circumstances"--which, if we may believe the dictum of Mr. Baron Legge, cannot lie; and yet she remains for us dark and inscrutable as in her portrait, where she sits calmly in her cell, preparing her false _Account_ for the misleading of future generations. Like her French "parallel," Marie-Madeleine de Brinvilliers, like that other Madeleine of Scottish fame, she leaves us but a catalogue of ambiguous acts; her secret is still her own. If only she had been the creature of some great novelist's fancy, how intimately should we then have known all that is hidden from us now; imagine her made visible for us through the exquisite medium of Mr. Henry James's incomparable art--the subtle individual threads all cunningly combined, the pattern wondrously wrought, the colours delicately and exactly shaded, until, in the rich texture of the finished tapestry, the figure of the woman as she lived stood perfectly revealed. Leading Dates In the Blandy Case. 1744. 22 May--Marriage of Cranstoun and Anne Murray. 1745. 19 February--Birth of their daughter. 1746. August--Cranstoun meets Mary Blandy at Lord Mark Kerr's. October--Mrs. Cranstoun takes proceedings in Commissary Court. 1747. August--Second meeting of Cranstoun and Mary. Cranstoun visits the Blandys and stays six months. 1748. January--Cranstoun returns to London. 1 March--Cranstoun's marriage upheld by the Commissary Court. May--Mrs. Blandy's illness at Turville Court. Cranstoun pays a second six-months' visit to the Blandys. December--Cranstoun's regiment "broke" at Southampton. He returns to London. 1749. March--Mrs. Blandy and Mary visit Mr. Sergeant Stevens in Doctors' Commons. 28 September--Mrs. Blandy taken ill after her return home. 30 September--Death of Mrs. Blandy. 1750. August--Cranstoun returns to Henley. Puts powder in Mr. Blandy's tea. October--Cranstoun professes to hear nocturnal music, &c. November--Cranstoun leaves Henley for the last time. 1751. April--Cranstoun writes from Scotland to Mary that he has seen Mrs. Morgan and will send powder with pebbles. June--Powder and pebbles received by Mary, with directions to put the powder in tea. Mr. Blandy becomes unwell. Gunnell and Emmet ill after drinking his tea. 18 July--Cranstoun writes to Mary suggesting she should put the powder in gruel. 4 August--Gunnell makes gruel in pan by Mary's orders. 5 August--Mary seen stirring gruel in pantry. Mr. Blandy taken seriously ill in the night. 6 August--Mr. Norton, the apothecary, called in. Gruel warmed for Mr. Blandy's supper. 7 August--Emmet eats what was left the night before, and is taken ill. Mary orders the remains of the gruel to be warmed. Gunnell and Binfield notice white sediment in pan and lock it up. 8 August--Gunnell and Binfield take pan to Mrs. Mounteney, who delivers it to Mr. Norton. 9 August--Mr. Stevens, of Fawley, arrives and hears suspicions. 10 August--Gunnell tells Mr. Blandy of suspicions. Mary burns papers and packet. Dr. Addington called in. 11 August--Pan and packet given to Dr. Addington. He warns Mary. Her letter to Cranstoun intercepted. 12 August--Last interview between Mary and her father. 13 August--Mr. Blandy worse. Dr. Lewis called in. Mary confined to her room. 14 August--Death of Mr. Blandy. Mary attempts to bribe Harmon and Binfield to effect her escape. 15 August--Flight of Mary. Coroner's inquest. Mary apprehended. 17 August--Mary removed to Oxford Castle. 4 September--Cranstoun escapes to Calais. 1752. 2 March--Grand Jury find a True Bill against Mary Blandy. 3 March--Trial at Oxford Assizes. Prisoner convicted and sentenced to death. 6 March--Execution of Mary Blandy. 2 December--Death of Cranstoun. THE TRIAL AT THE ASSIZES HELD AT OXFORD FOR THE COUNTY OF OXFORD. TUESDAY, 3RD MARCH, 1752. _Judges_-- THE HONOURABLE HENEAGE LEGGE, ESQ., AND SIR SYDNEY STAFFORD SMYTHE, KNT., Two of the Barons of His Majesty's Court of Exchequer. _Counsel for the Crown_-- The Honourable Mr. BATHURST. Mr. Serjeant HAYWARD. The Honourable Mr. BARRINGTON. Mr. HAYES. Mr. NARES. Mr. AMBLER. _Counsel for the Prisoner_-- Mr. FORD. Mr. MORTON. Mr. ASTON. The Indictment. On Monday, the 2nd of March, 1752, a bill of indictment was found by the grand inquest for the county of Oxford against Mary Blandy, spinster, for the murder of Francis Blandy, late of the parish of Henley-upon-Thames, in the said county, gentleman. On Tuesday, the 3rd of March, 1752, the Court being met, the prisoner Mary Blandy was set to the bar, when the Court proceeded thus-- CLERK OF THE ARRAIGNS--Mary Blandy, hold up thy hand. [Which she did.] You stand indicted by the name of Mary Blandy, late of the parish of Henley-upon-Thames, in the county of Oxford, spinster, daughter of Francis Blandy, late of the same place, gentleman, deceased, for that you, not having the fear of God before your eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil, and of your malice aforethought, contriving and intending, him the said Francis Blandy, your said late father, in his lifetime, to deprive of his life, and him feloniously to kill and murder on the 10th day of November, in the twenty-third year of the reign of our sovereign lord George the Second, now King of Great Britain, and on divers days and times between the said 10th day of November and the 5th day of August, in the twenty-fifth year of the reign of His said Majesty, with force and arms, at the parish of Henley-upon-Thames aforesaid, in the county aforesaid, did knowingly, wilfully, and feloniously, and of your malice aforethought, mix and mingle certain deadly poison, to wit, white arsenic, in certain tea, which had been at divers times during the time above specified prepared for the use of the said Francis Blandy to be drank by him; you, the said Mary, then and there well knowing that the said tea, with which you did so mix and mingle the said deadly poison as aforesaid, was then and there prepared for the use of the said Francis Blandy, with intent to be then and there administered to him for his drinking the same; and the said tea with which the said poison was so mixed as aforesaid, afterwards, to wit, on the said 10th day of November and on the divers days and times aforesaid, at Henley-upon-Thames aforesaid, was delivered to the said Francis, to be then and there drank by him; and the said Francis Blandy, not knowing the said poison to have been mixed with the said tea, did afterwards, to wit, on the said 10th day of November and on the said divers days and times aforesaid, there drink and swallow several quantities of the said poison so mixed as aforesaid with the said tea; and that you the said Mary Blandy might more speedily kill and murder the said Francis Blandy, you the said Mary Blandy, on the said 5th day of August and at divers other days and times between the said 5th day of August and the 14th day of August, in the twenty-fifth year of the reign of our said sovereign lord George the Second, now King of Great Britain, &c., with force and arms, at the parish of Henley-upon-Thames aforesaid, in the county aforesaid, did knowingly, wilfully, feloniously, and of your malice aforethought, mix and mingle certain deadly poisons, to wit, white arsenic, with certain water gruel, which had been made and prepared for the use of your said then father, the said Francis Blandy, to be drank by him, you the said Mary then and there well knowing that the said water gruel, with which you did so mix and mingle the said deadly poison as aforesaid, was then and there made for the use of the said Francis Blandy, with intent to be then and there administered to him for his drinking the same; and the same water gruel, with which the said poison was so mixed as aforesaid, afterwards, to wit, on the same day and year, at Henley-upon-Thames aforesaid, was delivered to the said Francis, to be then and there drank by him; and the said Francis Blandy, not knowing the said poison to have been mixed with the said water gruel, did afterwards, to wit, on the said 5th day of August and on the next day following, and on divers other days and times afterwards, and before the said 14th day of August, there drink and swallow several quantities of the said poison, so mixed as aforesaid with the said water gruel, and the said Francis Blandy, of the poison aforesaid and by the operation thereof, became sick and greatly distempered in his body, and from the several times aforesaid until the 14th day of the same month of August, in the twenty-fifth year aforesaid, at the parish aforesaid, in the county aforesaid, did languish, on which said 14th day of August, in the twenty-fifth year aforesaid, the said Francis Blandy, at the parish aforesaid, in the county aforesaid, of that poison died; and so you, the said Mary Blandy, him the aforesaid Francis Blandy, at Henley-upon-Thames aforesaid, in manner and form aforesaid, feloniously, wilfully, and of your malice aforethought, did poison, kill, and murder, against the peace of our said lord the King, his crown and dignity. CLERK OF THE ARRAIGNS--How sayest thou, Mary Blandy, art thou guilty of the felony and murder whereof thou standest indicted, or not guilty? PRISONER--Not guilty. CLERK OF THE ARRAIGNS--Culprit, how wilt thou be tried? PRISONER--By God and my country. CLERK OF THE ARRAIGNS--God send thee a good deliverance. CLERK OF THE ARRAIGNS--Cryer, make a proclamation for silence. CRYER--Oyez, oyez, oyez! My lords the King's justices strictly charge and command all manner of persons to keep silence, upon pain of imprisonment. CRYER--Oyez! You good men, that are impanelled to try between our sovereign lord the King and the prisoner at the bar, answer to your names and save your fines. The jury were called over and appeared. CLERK OF THE ARRAIGNS--You, the prisoner at the bar, these men which were last called and do now appear are those who are to pass between our sovereign lord the King and you upon the trial of your life and death. If therefore you will challenge them, or any of them, you must challenge them as they come to the book to be sworn, before they are sworn; and you shall be heard. CLERK OF THE ARRAIGNS--Anthony Woodward. CRYER--Anthony Woodward, look upon the prisoner. You shall well and truly try and true deliverance make between our sovereign lord the King and the prisoner at the bar, whom you shall have in charge, and a true verdict give, according to the evidence. So help you God. And the same oath was administered to the rest (which were sworn), and their names are as follow:-- Anthony Woodward, sworn; Charles Harrison, sworn; Samuel George Glaze, sworn; William Farebrother, sworn; William Haynes, sworn; Thomas Crutch, sworn; Henry Swell, challenged; John Clarke, sworn; William Read, challenged; Harford Dobson, challenged; William Stone, challenged; William Hawkins, sworn; John Hayes, the elder, sworn; Samuel Badger, sworn; Samuel Bradley, sworn; William Brooks, challenged; Joseph Jagger, sworn. CLERK OF THE ARRAIGNS--Cryer, count these. Jury--Anthony Woodward, Charles Harrison, Samuel George Glaze, William Farebrother, William Haynes, Thomas Crutch, John Clarke, William Hawkins, John Haynes, sen., Samuel Badger, Samuel Bradley, Joseph Jagger. CRYER--Gentlemen, are ye all sworn? CLERK OF THE ARRAIGNS--Cryer, make proclamation. CRYER--Oyez, oyez, oyez! If any one can inform my lords the King's justices, the King's serjeant, the King's attorney-general, or this inquest now to be taken of any treasons, murders, felonies, or misdemeanours committed or done by the prisoner at the bar let him come forth and he shall be heard, for the prisoner stands now at the bar upon her deliverance; and all persons that are bound by recognisance to give evidence against the prisoner at the bar let them come forth and give their evidence, or they will forfeit their recognisances. CLERK OF THE ARRAIGNS--Mary Blandy, hold up thy hand. Gentlemen of the jury, look upon the prisoner and hearken to her charge. She stands indicted by the name of Mary Blandy, of the parish of Henley-upon-Thames, in the county of Oxford, spinster, daughter of Francis Blandy, late of the same place, gentleman, deceased, for that she not having [as in the indictment before set forth]. Upon this indictment she has been arraigned, and upon her arraignment has pleaded not guilty, and for her trial has put herself upon God and her country, which country you are. Your charge therefore is to inquire whether she be guilty of the felony and murder whereof she stands indicted, or not guilty. If you find her guilty you shall inquire what goods or chattels, lands or tenements she had at the time of the felony committed, or at any time since. If you find her not guilty you shall inquire whether she fled for the same. If you find that she did fly for the same you shall inquire of her goods and chattels as if you had found her guilty. If you find her not guilty, and that she did not fly for the same, say so, and no more; and hear your evidence. The Hon. Mr. Barrington then opened the indictment. After which, [Sidenote: Mr. Bathurst] The Hon. Mr. BATHURST[1] spoke as follows:-- May it please your lordships and you gentlemen of the jury, I am counsel in this case for the King, in whose name and at whose expense this prosecution is carried on against the prisoner at the bar, in order to bring her to justice for a crime of so black a dye that I am not at all surprised at this vast concourse of people collected together to hear and to see the trial and catastrophe of so execrable an offender as she is supposed to be. For, gentlemen, the prisoner at the bar, Miss Mary Blandy, a gentlewoman by birth and education, stands indicted for no less a crime than that of murder, and not only for murder, but for the murder of her own father, and for the murder of a father passionately fond of her, undertaken with the utmost deliberation, carried on with an unvaried continuation of intention, and at last accomplished by a frequent repetition of the baneful dose, administered with her own hands. A crime so shocking in its own nature and so aggravated in all its circumstances as will (if she is proved to be guilty of it) justly render her infamous to the latest posterity, and make our children's children, when they read the horrid tale of this day, blush to think that such an inhuman creature ever had an existence. I need not, gentlemen, paint to you the heinousness of the crime of murder. You have but to consult your own breasts, and you will know it. Has a murder been committed? Who ever beheld the ghastly corpse of the murdered innocent weltering in its blood and did not feel his own blood run slow and cold through all his veins? Has the murderer escaped? With what eagerness do we pursue? With what zeal do we apprehend? With what joy do we bring to justice? And when the dreadful sentence of death is pronounced upon him, everybody hears it with satisfaction, and acknowledges the justice of the divine denunciation that, "By whom man's blood is shed, by man shall his blood be shed." If this, then, is the case of every common murderer, what will be thought of one who has murdered her own father? who has designedly done the greatest of all human injuries to him from whom she received the first and greatest of all human benefits? who has wickedly taken away his life to whom she stands indebted for life? who has deliberately destroyed, in his old age, him by whose care and tenderness she was protected in her helpless infancy? who has impiously shut her ears against the loud voice of nature and of God, which bid her honour her father, and, instead of honouring him, has murdered him? It becomes us, gentlemen, who appear here as counsel for the Crown, shortly to open the history of this whole affair, that you may be better able to attend to and understand the evidence we have to lay before you. And though, in doing this, I will endeavour rather to extenuate than to aggravate, yet I trust I have such a history to open as will shock the ears of all who hear me. Mr. Francis Blandy, the unfortunate deceased, was an attorney at law, who lived at Henley, in this county. A man of character and reputation, he had one only child, a daughter--the darling of his soul, the comfort of his age. He took the utmost care of her education, and had the satisfaction to see his care was not ill-bestowed, for she was genteel, agreeable, sprightly, sensible. His whole thoughts were bent to settle her advantageously in the world. In order to do that he made use of a pious fraud (if I may be allowed the expression), pretending he could give her £10,000 for her fortune. This he did in hopes that some of the neighbouring gentlemen would pay their addresses to her, for out of regard to him she was from her earliest youth received into the best company, and her own behaviour made her afterwards acceptable to them. But how short-sighted is human prudence? What was intended for her promotion, proved his death and her destruction. For, gentlemen, about six years ago, one Captain William Henry Cranstoun, a gentleman then in the army, happened to come to Henley to recruit. He soon got acquainted with the prisoner, and, hearing she was to have £10,000, fell in love--not with her, but with her fortune. Children he had before; married he was at that time, yet, concealing it from her, he insinuated himself into her good graces, and obtained her consent for marriage. The father, who had heard a bad character of him, and who had reason to believe, what was afterwards confirmed, that he was at that very time married, you will easily imagine was averse to the proposal. Upon this Captain Cranstoun and the prisoner determined to remove that obstacle out of their way, and resolved to get as soon as possible into possession of the £10,000 that the poor man had unfortunately said he was worth. In order for this, the captain being at Mr. Blandy's house in August, 1750, they both agreed upon this horrid deed. And that people might be less surprised at Mr. Blandy's death, they began by giving out that they heard music in the house--a certain sign (as Mr. Cranstoun had learned from a wise woman, one Mrs. Morgan, in Scotland) that the father would die in less than twelve months. The captain, too, pretended he was endowed with the gift of second sight, and affirmed that he had seen Mr. Blandy's apparition. This was another certain sign of his death, as she told the servants, to whom she frequently said her father would not live long. Nay, she went farther, and told them he would not live till the October following. When it was she first began to mix poison with his victuals it is impossible for us to ascertain, but probably it was not long after November, 1750, when Mr. Cranstoun left Henley. The effects of the poison were soon perceived. You will hear Dr. Addington, his physician, tell you Mr. Blandy had for many months felt the dreadful effects of it. One of the effects was the teeth dropping out of his head whole from their sockets. Yet what do you think, gentlemen, the daughter did when she perceived it? "She damned him for a toothless old rogue, and wished him at hell." The poor man frequently complained of pains in his bowels, had frequent reachings and sickness; yet, instead of desisting, she wanted more poison to effect her purpose. And Mr. Cranstoun did accordingly in the April following send her a fresh supply; under the pretence of a present of Scotch pebbles, he enclosed a paper of white arsenic. This she frequently administered in his tea; and we shall prove to you that in June, having put some of it into a dish of tea, Mr. Blandy disliking the taste, left half in the cup. Unfortunately, a poor old charwoman (by name Ann Emmet), glad to get a breakfast, drank the remainder, together with a dish or two more out of the pot, and ate what bread and butter had been left. The consequence was that she was taken violently ill with purging and vomiting, and was in imminent danger of her life. The poor woman's daughter came and told Miss Blandy how ill her mother was; she, sorry that the poison was misapplied, said, "Do not let your mother be uneasy, I will send her what is proper for her." And, accordingly, sent her great quantities of sack whey and thin mutton broth, than which no physician could have prescribed better, and thus drenched the poor woman for ten days together, till she grew tired of her medicines, and sent her daughter again to Miss Blandy to beg a little small beer. "No, no small beer," the prisoner said, "that was not proper for her." Most plainly, then, she knew what it was the woman had taken in her father's tea. She knew its effect. She knew the proper antidotes. Having now experienced the strength of the poison, she grew more open and undaunted, was heard to say, "Who would grudge to send an old father to hell for £10,000?" I will make no remark upon such a horrid expression--it needs none. After this she continued to mix the poison with her father's tea as often as she had an opportunity. Soon afterwards Susan Gunnell, another witness we shall call, happened to drink some which her master had left; she was taken ill upon it, and continued so for three weeks. This second accident alarmed the prisoner. She was afraid of being discovered. She found it would not mix well with tea. Accordingly, she wrote to Mr. Cranstoun for further instructions. In answer to it, he bids her "put it into some liquid of a more thickish substance." The father being ill, frequently took water gruel. This was a proper vehicle for the powder. Therefore from this time you will find her always busy about her father's gruel. But lest Susan Gunnell, who had been ill, should eat any of it, she cautioned her particularly against it, saying, "Susan, as you have been so ill, you had better not eat any of your master's water gruel; I have been told water gruel has done me harm, and perhaps it may have the same effect upon you." And lest this caution should not be sufficient, she spoke to Betty Binfield, the other maidservant, and asked her whether Susan ever ate any of her father's gruel, adding, "She had better not, for if she does it may do for her, you may tell her." Evidently, then, she knew what were the effects of the powder she put into her father's gruel; for if it would "do for" the servant, it would "do for" her father. But the time approached beyond which she had foretold her father would not live. It was the middle of July, and the father still living. At this Mr. Cranstoun grows impatient. Upon the 18th of July he writes to her, and, expressing himself in an allegorical manner, which, however, you will easily understand, he says, "I am sorry there are such occasions to clean your pebbles; you must make use of the powder to them by putting it in anything of substance, wherein it will not swim a-top of the water, of which I wrote to you of in one of my last. I am afraid it will be too weak to take off their rust, or at least it will take too long a time."[2] Here he is encouraging her to double the dose; says, he is afraid it will be too weak, and will take up too much time. And, as a further incitement to her to make haste, describes the beauties of Scotland, and tells her that his mother, Lady Cranstoun, had employed workmen to fit up an apartment for her at Lennel House. Soon after the receipt of this letter she followed the advice. And you will accordingly find the dose doubled. Her father grew worse, and, as she herself told the servants, complained of a fireball in his stomach, saying, "He never will be well till he has got rid of it." And yet you will find she herself, fearful lest he should get rid of it, was continually adding fuel to the fire, till it had consumed her father's entrails. Gentlemen, I will not detain you by going through every particular, but bring you to the fatal period. Upon the 3rd of August, being Saturday, Susan Gunnell made a large pan of water gruel for her master. Upon Monday, the 5th, the prisoner will be proved to go into the pantry where it was kept, and, after having, according to Mr. Cranstoun's advice, put in a double dose of the powder, she stirred it about, for a considerable time, in order to make it mix the better. When, fearing she should have been observed, she went immediately into the laundry, to the maids, and told them that "she had been in the pantry, and, after stirring her papa's water gruel, had ate the oatmeal at the bottom," saying that, "if she was ever to take to the eating anything in particular, it would be oatmeal." Strange inconsistence! She who had cautioned the maid against it not above a fortnight before, who had declared that it had been prejudicial to her own health, is on a sudden grown mighty fond of it. But the pretence is easily to be seen through. That afternoon some of the water gruel was taken out of the pan and prepared for her father's supper. She again in the kitchen takes care to stir it sufficiently, looks at the spoon, rubs some between her fingers, and then sends it up to the poor old man her father. He scarce had swallowed it when he was taken violently ill, and continued so all the next day, with a griping, purging, and vomiting. Yet she herself orders a second mess of the same gruel for her father's supper on the Tuesday, and was herself the person who carried it up to her father and administered it to him as nourishment. The poor old man, grown weak with the frequent repetition, had not drank half the mess before he was seized, from head to foot, with the most violent pricking pains, continual reaching and vomiting, and was obliged to go to bed without finishing it. The next morning the poor charwoman, coming again to the house, unfortunately ate the remainder of the gruel, and was instantly affected in so violent a manner that for two hours together it was thought she would have died in Mr. Blandy's house. The prisoner at this time was in bed; but the maid, going up to her room, told her how ill dame Emmet had been, at the same time saying she had ate nothing but the remainder of her father's water gruel. The prisoner's answer was, "Poor woman! I am glad I was not up, I should have been shocked to have seen her"--should have been shocked to have seen the poor charwoman eat what was prepared for her father, but was never shocked at her father's eating it, or at his sufferings! Gentlemen, in the afternoon of the Wednesday, notwithstanding the poor man, her father, had suffered so much for two days together, yet she again endeavours to give him more of the same gruel. "No," says the maid, "it has an odd taste; it is grown stale, I will make fresh." "It is not worth while to make fresh now, it will take you from your ironing; this will do," was the prisoner's answer. However, Susan made fresh, after which wanting the pan to put it in, she went to throw away what was before in it. Upon tilting the pan, she perceived a white powder at the bottom, which she knew could not be oatmeal. She showed it her fellow-servant, when, feeling it, they found it gritty. They then too plainly perceived what it was had made their poor master ill. What was to be done? Susan immediately carried the pan with the gruel and powder in it to Mrs. Mounteney, a neighbour and friend of the deceased. Mrs. Mounteney kept it till it was delivered to the apothecary, the apothecary delivered it to the physician, and he will tell you that upon trying it he found it to be white arsenic. Mr. Blandy continued from day to day to grow worse. At last, upon the Saturday morning, Susan Gunnell, an old honest, maidservant, uneasy to see how her poor master had been treated, went to his bedside, and, in the most prudent and gentlest manner, broke to him what had been the cause of his illness, and the strong ground there was to suspect that his daughter was the occasion of it. The father, with a fondness greater than ever a father felt before, cried out, "Poor love-sick girl! What will not a woman do for the man she loves? But who do you think gave her the powder?" She answered, "She could not tell, unless it was sent by Mr. Cranstoun." "I believe so too," says the master, "for I remember he has talked learnedly of poisons. I always thought there was mischief in those cursed Scotch pebbles." Soon afterwards he got up and came to breakfast in his parlour, where his daughter and Mr. Littleton, his clerk, then were. A dish of tea, in the usual manner, was ready poured out for him. He just tasted it and said, "This tea has a bad taste," looked at the cup, then looked hard at his daughter. She was, for the first time, shocked, burst into tears, and ran out of the room. The poor father, more shocked than the daughter, poured the tea into the cat's basin, and went to the window to recover himself. She soon came again into the room. Mr. Littleton said, "Madam, I fear your father is very ill, for he has flung away his tea." Upon this news she trembled, and the tears again stood in her eyes. She again withdraws. Soon afterwards the father came into the kitchen, and, addressing himself to her, said, "Molly, I had like to have been poisoned twenty years ago, and now I find I shall die by poison at last." This was warning sufficient. She immediately went upstairs, brought down Mr. Cranstoun's letters, together with the remainder of the poison, and threw them (as she thought unobserved) into the fire. Thinking she had now cleared herself from the suspicious appearances of poison, her spirits mend, "she thanked God that she was much better, and said her mind was more at ease than it had been." Alas! how often does that which we fondly imagine will save us become our destruction? So it was in the present instance. For providentially, though the letters were destroyed, the paper with the poison in it was not burnt. One of the maids having immediately flung some fresh coals upon the fire, Miss Blandy went well satisfied out of the room. Upon her going out, Susan Gunnell said to her fellow-servants, "I saw Miss Blandy throw some papers in the fire, let us see whether we can discover what they were." They removed the coals, and found a paper with white powder in it, wrote upon, in Mr. Cranstoun's hands, "Powder to clean the pebbles."[3] This powder they preserved, and the doctor will tell you that it was white arsenic, the same which had been found in the pan of gruel. Having now (as she imagined) concealed her own being concerned, you will find her the next day endeavouring to prevent her lover from being discovered. Mr. Blandy of Kingston having come the night before to see her father, on Sunday morning she sent Mr. Littleton with him to church; while they were there she sat down and wrote this letter to her beloved Cranstoun-- Dear Willy,--My father is so bad, that I have only time to tell you, that if you do not hear from me soon again, don't be frightened. I am better myself. Lest any accident should happen to your letters, take care what you write. My sincere compliments. I am ever yours. "My father is so bad." Who had made him so? Yet does she say she was sorry for it? No; she knew her father was then dying by that powder that he had sent her, yet could acquaint him she was herself better. Under those circumstances could caution him to take care what he wrote, lest his letters should be discovered! What can speak more strongly their mutual guilt? This letter she sealed with no less than five wafers. When Mr. Littleton came from church she privately gave it to him, desiring it might be directed as usual, and put into the post. Mr. Littleton was at that time too well apprised of this black transaction to obey her commands. He opened the letter, took a copy of it. Upon further recollection, carried the original to the father, who bid him open and read it. He did so. What do you think, gentlemen, was all the poor old man said upon this discovery? He only again dropped these words, "Poor love-sick girl! What will not a woman do for the man she loves?" Upon the Monday morning, after having been kept for two days without seeing her father, by the order of the physicians, her conscience, or rather fear, began to trouble her; she told the maid she should go distracted if she did not see her father, and sent a message to beg to see him. Accordingly she was admitted. The conversation between them was this--"Papa, how do you do?" "My dear, I am very ill." She immediately fell upon her knees and said, "Dear sir, banish me where you will; do with me what you please, so you do but pardon and forgive me. And as to Mr. Cranstoun, I never will see, write, or speak to him again." He answered, "I do forgive you, but you should, my dear, have considered that I was your own father." Upon this the prisoner said, "Sir, as to your illness I am innocent." Susan Gunnell, who was present, interrupted her at this expression, and told her she was astonished to hear her say she was innocent, when they had the poison to produce against her that she had put into her father's water gruel, and had preserved the paper she had thrown into the fire. The father, whose love and tenderness for his daughter exceeded expression, could not bear to hear her thus accused; therefore, turning himself in his bed, cried out, "Oh that villain! that hath eat of the best, and drank of the best my house could afford, to take away my life and ruin my daughter!" Upon hearing this the daughter ran to the other side of the bed to him; upon which he added, "My dear, you must hate that man, you must hate the very ground he treads on." Struck with this, the prisoner said, "Dear sir, your kindness towards me is worse than swords to my heart. I must down upon my knees and beg you not to curse me." Hear the father's answer, a father then dying by poison given by her hand--"I curse thee, my dear! No, I bless you, and will pray to God to bless you, and to amend your life"; then added, "So do, my dear, go out of the room lest you should say anything to accuse yourself." Was ever such tenderness from a parent to a child! She was prudent enough to follow his advice, and went out of the room without speaking. His kindness was swords to her heart for near half an hour. Going downstairs she met Betty Binfield, and, whilst she was thus affected, owned to her she had put some powder into her father's gruel, and that Susan and she, for their honesty to their master, deserved half her fortune. Gentlemen, not to tire you with the particulars of every day, upon Wednesday, in the afternoon, the father died. Upon his death the prisoner, finding herself discovered, endeavoured to persuade the manservant to go off with her; but he was too honest to be tempted by a reward to assist her in going off, though she told him it would be £500 in his way. That night she refused to go to bed. Not out of grief for her father's death, for you will be told by the maid who sat up with her that she never during the whole night showed the least sorrow, compassion, or remorse upon his account. But in the middle of the night she proposed to get a post-chaise in order to go to London, and offered the maid twenty-five guineas to go with her. "A post-chaise! and go to London! God forbid, madam, I should do such a thing." The prisoner, finding the maid not proper for her purpose, immediately put a smile upon her face--"I was only joking." Only joking! Good God! would she now have it thought she was only joking? Her father just dead by poison: she suspected of having poisoned him; accused of being a parricide; and would she have it thought she was capable of joking? When I see the assistance she now has (and I am glad to see she has the assistance of three as able gentlemen as any in the profession) I am sure she will not be now advised to say she was then joking. But it will appear very plainly to you, gentlemen, that she was not joking, for the next morning she dressed herself in a proper habit for a journey, and, while the people put to take care of her were absent, stole out of the house and went over Henley Bridge. But the mob, who had heard of what she had done, followed her so close that she was forced to take shelter in a little alehouse, the Angel. Mr. Fisher, a gentleman who was afterwards one of the jury upon the coroner's inquisition, came there, and prevailed with her (or in other words forced her) to return home. Upon her return, the inquest sitting, she sends for Mr. Fisher into another room and said, "Dear Mr. Fisher, what do you think they will do with me? Will they send me to Oxford gaol?" "Madam," said he, "I am afraid it will go hard with you. But if you have any of Mr. Cranstoun's letters, and produce them, they may be of some service to you." Upon hearing this she cried out, "Dear Mr. Fisher, what have I done? I had letters that would have hanged that villain, but I have burnt them. My honour to that villain has brought me to my destruction." And she spoke the truth. This, gentlemen, is in substance the history of this black affair. But, my lords, though this is the history in order of time, yet it is not the order in which we shall lay the evidence before your lordships and the jury. It will be proper for us to begin by establishing the fact that Mr. Francis Blandy did die of poison. When the physicians have proved that, we will then proceed to show that he died of the poison put into the water gruel on the 5th of August. After this we will call witnesses who from a number of circumstances, as well as from her own confession, will prove she put it into her father's water gruel, knowing it was for her father, and knowing it to be poison. Having done this, we will conclude with a piece of evidence which I forgot to mention before, and that is the conversation between her and Mr. Lane at the Angel. Mr. Lane and his wife happening to be walking at that time, finding a mob about the door, stepped into the alehouse to see the prisoner. The moment she saw a gentleman, though it was one she did not know, she accosted him, "Sir, you appear to be a gentleman; for heaven's sake, what will become of me?" "Madam!" said he, "you will be sent to Oxford gaol; you will there be tried for your life. If you are innocent, you will be acquitted; if you are guilty, you will suffer death." The prisoner upon hearing this stamped with her foot, and said, "Oh! that damned villain!" Then pausing, "But why do I blame him? I am most blame myself, for I gave it, and I knew the consequence." If she knew the consequence, I am sure there are none of you gentlemen but who will think she deserves to suffer the consequence. And let me here observe how evidently the hand of Providence has interposed to bring her to this day's trial that she may suffer the consequence. For what but the hand of Providence could have preserved the paper thrown by her into the fire, and have snatched it unburnt from the devouring flame! Good God! how wonderful are all Thy ways, and how miraculously hast Thou preserved this paper to be this day produced in evidence against the prisoner in order that she may suffer the punishment due to her crime, and be a dreadful example to all others who may be tempted in like manner to offend Thy divine majesty! Let me add that, next to Providence, the public are obliged to the two noble lords[4] whose indefatigable diligence in inquiring into this hidden work of darkness has enabled us to lay before you upon this occasion the clearest and strongest proof that such a dark transaction will admit of. For poisoning is done in secret and alone. It is not like other murders, neither can it be proved with equal perspicuity. However, the evidence we have in this case is as clear and direct as possible, and if it comes up to what I have opened to you I make no doubt but you will do that justice to your country which the oath you have taken requires of you. [Sidenote: Mr. Serjeant Hayward] Mr. SERJEANT HAYWARD--May it please your lordships and you gentlemen of the jury, I likewise am appointed to assist the Crown on this occasion, but His Majesty's learned counsel having laid before you so faithful a narrative of this dismal transaction, it seems almost unnecessary for me to take up any more of your time in repeating anything that has been before said; and, indeed, my own inclinations would lead me to cast a veil over the guilty scene--a scene so black and so horrid that if my duty did not call me to it I could rather wish it might be for ever concealed from human eyes. But as we are now making inquisition for blood it is absolutely necessary for me to make some observations upon that chain of circumstances that attended this bloody contrivance and detested murder. [Illustration: Captain Cranstoun and Miss Blandy (_From an Engraving in the British Museum_.)] Experience has taught us that in many cases a single fact may be supported by false testimony, but where it is attended with a train of circumstances that cannot be invented (had they never happened), such a fact will always be made out to the satisfaction of a jury by the concurring assistance of circumstantial evidence. Because circumstances that tally one with another are above human contrivance. And especially such as naturally arise in their order from the first contrivance of a scheme to the fatal execution of it. Having suggested this much, I shall now proceed to lay before you those sort of circumstances that seem to me to arise through this whole affair, and leave it to your judgment whether they do not amount to too convincing a proof that the prisoner at the bar has knowingly been the cause of her own father's death, for upon the prisoner's knowledge of what she did will depend her fate. Of all kinds of murders that by poison is the most dreadful, as it takes a man unguarded, and gives him no opportunity to defend himself, much more so when administered by the hand of a child, whom one could least suspect, and from whom one might naturally look for assistance and comfort. Could a father entertain any suspicion of a child to whom, under God, he had been the second cause of life? No, sure, and yet this is the case now before you. The unfortunate deceased has received his death by poison, and that undoubtedly administered by the hand of his own--his only--his beloved child. Spare me, gentlemen, to pay the tribute of one tear to the memory of a person with whom I was most intimately acquainted, and to the excellency of whose disposition and integrity of heart I can safely bear faithful testimony. Oh! were he now living, and to see his daughter there, the severest tortures that poison could give would be nothing to what he would suffer from such a sight. And since the bitterest agonies must at this time surround the heart of the prisoner if she does but think of what a father she has lost, I can readily join with her in her severest afflictions upon this occasion, and shall never blame myself for weeping with those that weep, nor can I make the least question but my learned assistants in this prosecution will with me rejoice likewise, if the prisoner, by making her innocence appear, shall upon the conclusion of this inquiry find occasion to rejoice. But, alas! too strong I fear will the charge against her be proved, too convincing are the circumstances that attend it. What those are, and what may be collected from them, is my next business to offer to your consideration. But before I enter thereupon I must beg leave to address myself to this numerous and crowded assembly, whom curiosity hath led hither to hear the event of this solemn trial, hoping that whatever may be the consequence of it to the prisoner her present melancholy situation may turn to our advantage, and reduce our minds to seriousness and attention. Solemn, indeed, I may well call it as being a tribunal truly awful, for this method of trial before two of His Majesty's learned judges has scarce ever been known upon a circuit; judges of undoubted virtue, integrity, and learning, who undergo this laborious and important work, not only for the sake of bringing guilt to punishment, but to guard and protect innocence whenever it appears. But you, young gentleman of this University, I particularly beg your attention, earnestly beseeching you to guard against the first approaches of and temptations to vice. See here the dreadful consequences of disobedience to a parent. Who could have thought that Miss Blandy, a young lady virtuously brought up, distinguished for her good behaviour and prudent conduct in life, till her unfortunate acquaintance with the wicked Cranstoun, should ever be brought to a trial for her life, and that for the most desperate and bloodiest kind of murder, committed by her own hand, upon her own father? Had she listened to his admonitions this calamity never had befallen her. Learn hence the dreadful consequences of disobedience to parents; and know also that the same mischief in all probability may happen to such who obstinately disregard, neglect, and despise the advice of those persons who have the charge and care of their education; of governors likewise, and of magistrates, and of all others who are put in authority over them. Let this fix in your mind the excellent maxim of the good physician, "Venienti occurrite morbo." Let us defend ourselves against the first temptations to sin, and guard our innocence as we would our lives; for if once we yield, though but a little, in whose power is it to say, hitherto will I go, and no further? And now, gentlemen of the jury, those observations I had before mentioned, I shall attempt to lay before you in order to assist you in making a true judgment of the matter committed to your charge. The author and contriver of this bloody affair is not at present here. I sincerely wish that he was, because we should be able to convince him that such crimes as his cannot escape unpunished. The unhappy prisoner, ruined and undone by the treacherous flattery and pernicious advice of that abandoned, insidious, and execrable wretch, who had found means of introducing himself into her father's family, and whilst there, by false pretences of love, gained the affection of his only daughter and child. Love! did I call it? It deserves not the name; if it was love of anything it was of the £10,000 supposed to be the young lady's fortune. Could a man that had a wife of his own, and children, be really in love with another woman? Such a thing cannot be supposed, and therefore I beg leave to call it avarice and lust only; but be it what it will, the life of the father becomes an obstacle to the criminal proceedings that were intended and designed to be carried on between them, and therefore he must be removed before that imaginary state of felicity could be obtained according to their projected scheme. Mark how the destruction of this poor man is ushered into the world--apparitions, noises, voices, music, reported to be heard from time to time in the deceased's house. Even his days are numbered out, and his own child limits the space of his life but till the following month of October. What could be the meaning of this, but to prepare the world for a death that was predetermined? Who could limit the days of a man's life but a person who knew what was intended to be done towards the shortening of it? In order to bring this about Cranstoun sends presents of pebbles, as also a powder to clean them, and this powder, gentlemen, you will find is the dreadful poison that accomplished this abominable scheme. From time to time mention is made of the pebbles, but not a syllable of the powder. Why not of the one as well as of the other, if there had not been a mystery concealed in it? Preparation is made for an experiment of its power before Cranstoun's departure. He mixes the deadly draught, but the prisoner's conscience, not yet hardened, forced her to turn away her eyes, and she durst not venture to behold the cup prepared that was to send the father into another world. Soon after this Cranstoun quits the family (having, no question, left instructions how to proceed further in completing the scheme he had laid for taking off the old man), and this you'll find by letters under his own hand, that the powder, whatever it was, must not be mixed in too thin a liquid, because it might be discovered, and therefore water gruel is thought fitter for the purpose. By the frequent mixtures that were made upon these occasions the unfortunate servant and charwoman accidentally drank part of the deadly composition. When complaint is made of their sickness, how does the prisoner behave? Does she not administer to them with as much art and skill as a physician could? Does she not prescribe proper liquids and draughts to absorb and take off the edge of the corroding poison? If she knew not what it was how could she administer so successfully to prevent the fatal consequences of it both in the maid and the charwoman? During this transaction the unhappy father finds himself afflicted with torturing pains immediately after receiving the composition from his daughter. Is there any care taken of him? Any physician sent for to attend him? Any healing draughts prepared to quiet the racks and tortures that he inwardly felt? None at all that I can find. He is left to take care of himself, and undergo those miseries that his own child had brought upon him, and yet had not the heart to give him any assistance. What could this proceed from, but guilty only? Would not an innocent child have made the strictest inquiry how her own father came to be out of order? Would she not have sought the world over for advice and assistance? But instead of that you hear the bitterest expressions proceed from her, expressions sufficient to shock human nature. They have been all mentioned already by my learned leader, and I will not again repeat them. Observe, as things come nearer the crisis, whether her behaviour towards her father carries any better appearance. When it began to be suspected that Mr. Blandy's disorder was owing to poison, and strongly, from circumstances, that the prisoner was privy to it, the poor man, now too far gone, being informed that there was great reason to suspect his own child, what expressions does he make use of? No harsher than in the gentlest method saying, "Poor love-sick girl! I always thought there was mischief in those Scotch pebbles. Oh, that damned villain Cranstoun, that has ate of the best and drank of the best my house afforded, to serve me thus and ruin my poor love-sick girl!" An incontestable proof that he knew the cause of his disorder and the authors of it. The report spread about the house of the father's suspicions soon alarmed the prisoner; what does she do upon this occasion? Can any other interpretation be put upon her actions than that they proceeded from a manifest intention to conceal her guilt? Why is the paper of powder thrown into the fire? From whence, as my learned leader most elegantly observes, it is miraculously preserved. What occasion for concealment had she not been conscious of something that was wrong? If she had not known what had been in the paper, for what purpose was it committed to the flames? And what really was contained in that paper will appear to you to be deadly poison. The long-wished-for and fatal hour at last arrives, and but a little before a letter is sent by the prisoner to Cranstoun that her father was extremely ill, begging him to be cautious what he writes, lest any accident should happen to his letters. Do the circumstances, the language, or the time of writing this letter leave any room to suppose the prisoner could be innocent? They seem to me rather to be the fullest proof of her knowing what she had done. What accidents could befall Cranstoun's letters? Why is he to take care what he writes, if nothing but the effects of innocency were to be contained in those letters? In a very short time after this the strength of the poison carries the father out of the world. Do but hear how the prisoner behaved thereupon. The father's corpse was not yet cold when she makes application to the footman, with a temptation of large sums of money as a reward, if he would go off with her; but the fidelity and virtue of the servant was proof against the temptation even of four or five hundred pounds. The next proposal is to the maid to procure a chaise, with the offer of a reward for so doing, and to go along with her to London; but this project likewise failed, through the honesty of the servant. The next morning, in the absence of Edward Herne (the guard that was set over her), she makes her escape from her father's house, and, dressed as if going to take a journey, walked down the street; but the mob was soon aware of her, and forced her to take shelter in a public-house over the bridge. Do these proceedings look as if they were the effects of innocence? Far otherwise, I am afraid. Would an innocent person have quitted a deceased parent's house at a time when she was most wanting to make proper and decent preparations for his funeral? Would an innocent person, at such a time as this, offer money for assistance to make an escape? I think not; and I wish she may find a satisfactory cause to assign for such amazing behaviour. Let us put innocence and guilt in the scale together, and observe to which side the prisoner's actions are most applicable. Innocence, celestial virgin, always has her guard about her; she dares look the frowns, the resentments, and the persecutions of the world in the face; is able to stand the test of the strictest inquiry; and the more we behold her, still the more shall we be in love with her charms. But it is not so with guilt. The baneful fiend makes use of unjustifiable means to conceal her wicked designs and prevent discovery. Artifice and cunning are her supporters, bribery and corruption the defenders of her cause; she flies before the face of law and justice, and shuns the probation of a candid and impartial inquiry. Upon the whole matter, you, gentlemen, are to judge; and judge as favourably as you can for the prisoner. If this were not sufficient to convince us of the prisoner's guilt, I think the last transaction of all will leave not the least room to doubt. When in discourse with persons that came to her at the house where she had taken shelter, what but self-conviction could have drawn such expressions from her? In her discourse with Mr. Fisher about Cranstoun you will find she declared she had letters and papers that would have hanged that villain; and, again, says, "My honour, Mr. Fisher, to that villain has brought me to destruction"; and, again, in her inquiry of Mr. Lane, what they would do with her, she bursts out into this bitter exclamation, "Oh, that damned villain!" Then after a short pause, "But why should I blame him? I am more to blame than he is, for I gave it him." How could she be to blame for giving it if she knew not what it was? And, as it is said, went yet farther, and declared, "That she knew the consequence." If she did know it, she must expect to suffer the consequence of it too. Thus, gentlemen, have I endeavoured to lay before you some observations upon this transaction, and I hope you will think them not unworthy of your consideration. I trust I have said nothing that relates to the fact that is not in my instructions; should it be otherwise, I assure you it was not with design. And whatever is not supported by legal evidence you will totally disregard. If any other interpretation than what I have offered can be put upon these several transactions, and the circumstances attending them, I doubt not but you will always incline on the merciful side where there is room for so doing. We shall now proceed to call our evidence. The other gentlemen, of counsel for the King, were Mr. Hayes, Mr. Wares, and Mr. Ambler. The counsel for the prisoner were Mr. Ford, Mr. Morton, and Mr. Aston.[5] Evidence for the Prosecution. [Sidenote: Dr. Addington] Dr. ANTHONY ADDINGTON[6] examined--I attended Mr. Blandy in his last illness. When were you called to him the first time?--On Saturday evening, August the 10th. In what condition did you find him?--He was in bed, and told me that, after drinking some gruel on Monday night, August the 5th, he had perceived an extraordinary grittiness in his mouth, attended with a very painful burning and pricking in his tongue, throat, stomach, and bowels, and with sickness and gripings, which symptoms had been relieved by fits of vomiting and purging. Were those fits owing to any physic he had taken or to the gruel?--Not to any physic; they came on very soon after drinking the gruel. Had he taken no physic that day?--No. Did he make any further complaints?--He said that, after drinking more gruel on Tuesday night, August the 6th, he had felt the grittiness in his mouth again, and that the burning and pricking in his tongue, throat, stomach, and bowels had returned with double violence, and had been aggravated by a prodigious swelling of his belly, and exquisite pains and prickings in every external as well as internal part of his body, which prickings he compared to an infinite number of needles darting into him all at once. How soon after drinking the gruel?--Almost immediately. He told me likewise that at the same time he had had cold sweats, hiccup, extreme restlessness and anxiety, but that then, viz., on Saturday night, August the 10th, having had a great many stools, and some bloody ones, he was pretty easy everywhere, except in his mouth, lips, nose, eyes, and fundament, and except some transient gripings in his bowels. I asked him to what he imputed those uneasy sensations in his mouth, lips, nose, and eyes? He said, to the fumes of something that he had taken in his gruel on Monday night, August the 5th, and Tuesday night, August the 6th. On inspection I found his tongue swelled and his throat slightly inflamed and excoriated. His lips, especially the upper one, were dry and rough, and had angry pimples on them. The inside of his nostrils was in the same condition. His eyes were a little bloodshot. Besides these appearances, I observed that he had a low, trembling, intermitting pulse; a difficult, unequal respiration; a yellowish complexion; a difficulty in the utterance of his words; and an inability of swallowing even a teaspoonful of the thinnest liquor at a time. As I suspected that these appearances and symptoms were the effect of poison, I asked Miss Blandy whether Mr. Blandy had lately given offence to either of his servants or clients, or any other person? She answered, "That he was at peace with all the world, and that all the world was at peace with him." I then asked her whether he had ever been subject to complaints of this kind before? She said that he had often been subject to the colic and heartburn, and that she supposed this was only a fit of that sort, and would soon go off, as usual. I told Mr. Blandy that I asked these questions because I suspected that by some means or other he had taken poison. He replied, "It might be so," or in words to that effect; but Miss Blandy said, "It was impossible." On Sunday morning, August the 11th, he seemed much relieved; his pulse, breath, complexion, and power of swallowing were greatly mended. He had had several stools in the night without any blood in them. The complaints which he had made of his mouth, lips, nose, and eyes were lessened; but he said the pain in his fundament continued, and that he still felt some pinchings in his bowels. On viewing his fundament, I found it almost surrounded with gleety excoriations and ulcers. About eight o'clock that morning I took my leave of him; but before I quitted his room Miss Blandy desired I would visit him again the next day. When I got downstairs one of the maids put a paper into my hands, which she said Miss Blandy had thrown into the kitchen fire. Several holes were burnt in the paper, but not a letter of the superscription was effaced. The superscription was "The powder to clean the pebbles with." What is the maid's name that gave you that paper?--I cannot recollect which of the maids it was that gave it me. I opened the paper very carefully, and found in it a whiteish powder, like white arsenic in taste, but slightly discoloured by a little burnt paper mixed with it. I cannot swear this powder was arsenic, or any other poison, because the quantity was too small to make any experiment with that could be depended on. What do you really suspect it to be?--I really suspect it to be white arsenic. Please to proceed, sir.--As soon as the maid had left me, Mr. Norton, the apothecary, produced a powder that, he said, had been found at the bottom of that mess of gruel, which, as was supposed, had poisoned Mr. Blandy. He gave me some of this powder, and I examined it at my leisure, and believed it to be white arsenic. On Monday morning, August the 12th, I found Mr. Blandy much worse than I had left him the day before. His complexion was very bad, his pulse intermitted, and he breathed and swallowed with great difficulty. He complained more of his fundament than he had done before. His bowels were still in pain. I now desired that another physician might be called in, as I apprehended Mr. Blandy to be in the utmost danger, and that this affair might come before a Court of judicature. Dr. Lewis was then sent for from Oxford. I stayed with Mr. Blandy all this day. I asked him more than once whether he really thought he had taken poison? He answered each time that he believed he had. I asked him whether he thought he had taken poison often? He answered in the affirmative. His reasons for thinking so were because some of his teeth had decayed much faster than was natural, and because he had frequently for some months past, especially after his daughter had received a present of Scotch pebbles from Mr. Cranstoun, been affected with very violent and unaccountable prickings and heats in his tongue and throat, and with almost intolerable burnings and pains in his stomach and bowels, which used to go off in vomitings and purgings. I asked him whom he suspected to be the giver of the poison? The tears stood in his eyes, yet he forced a smile, and said--"A poor love-sick girl--I forgive her--I always thought there was mischief in those cursed Scotch pebbles." Dr. Lewis came about eight o'clock in the evening. Before he came Mr. Blandy's complexion, pulse, breath, and faculty of swallowing were much better again; but he complained more of pain in his fundament. This evening Miss Blandy was confined to her chamber, a guard was placed over her, and her keys, papers, and all instruments wherewith she could hurt either herself or any other person were taken from her. How came that?--I proposed it to Dr. Lewis, and we both thought it proper, because we had great reason to suspect her as the author of Mr. Blandy's illness, and because this suspicion was not yet publicly known, and therefore no magistrate had Dr. Addington taken any notice of her. Please to go on, Dr. Addington, with your account of Mr. Blandy. On Tuesday morning, August the 13th, we found him worse again, His countenance, pulse, breath, and power of swallowing were extremely bad. He was excessively weak. His hands trembled. Both they and his face were cold and clammy. The pain was entirely gone from his bowels, but not from his fundament. He was now and then a little delirious. He had frequently a short cough and a very extraordinary elevation of his chest in fetching his breath, on which occasions an ulcerous matter generally issued from his fundament. Yet in his sensible intervals he was cheerful and jocose; he said, "he was like a person bit by a mad dog; for that he should be glad to drink, but could not swallow." About noon this day his speech faltered more and more. He was sometimes very restless, at others very sleepy. His face was quite ghastly. This night was a terrible one. On Wednesday morning, August the 14th, he recovered his senses for an hour or more. He told me he would make his will in two or three days; but he soon grew delirious again, and sinking every moment, died about two o'clock in the afternoon. Upon the whole, did you then think, from the symptoms you have described and the observations you made, that Mr. Blandy died by poison?--Indeed I did. And is it your present opinion?--It is; and I have never had the least occasion to alter it. His case was so particular, that he had not a symptom of any consequence but what other persons have had who have taken white arsenic, and after death had no appearance in his body but what other persons have had who have been destroyed by white arsenic.[7] When was his body opened?--On Thursday, in the afternoon, August the 15th. What appeared on opening it?--I committed the appearances to writing, and should be glad to read them, if the Court will give me leave. [Then the doctor, on leave given by the Court, read as follows:--] "Mr. Blandy's back and the hinder part of his arms, thighs, and legs were livid. That fat which lay on the muscles of his belly was of a loose texture, inclining to a state of fluidity. The muscles of his belly were very pale and flaccid. The cawl was yellower than is natural, and the side next the stomach and intestines looked brownish. The heart was variegated with purple spots. There was no water in the pericardium. The lungs resembled bladders half filled with air, and blotted in some places with pale, but in most with black, ink. The liver and spleen were much discoloured; the former looked as if it had been boiled, but that part of it which covered the stomach was particularly dark. A stone was found in the gall bladder. The bile was very fluid and of a dirty yellow colour, inclining to red. The kidneys were all over stained with livid spots. The stomach and bowels were inflated, and appeared before any incision was made into them as if they had been pinched, and extravasated blood had stagnated between their membranes. They contained nothing, as far as we examined, but a slimy bloody froth. Their coats were remarkably smooth, thin, and flabby. The wrinkles of the stomach were totally obliterated. The internal coat of the stomach and duodenum, especially about the orifices of the former, was prodigiously inflamed and excoriated. The redness of the white of the eye in a violent inflammation of that part, or rather the white of the eye just brushed and bleeding with the beards of barley, may serve to give some idea how this coat had been wounded. There was no schirrus in any gland of the abdomen, no adhesion of the lungs to the pleura, nor indeed the least trace of a natural decay in any part whatever." [Sidenote: Dr. Lewis] Dr. WILLIAM LEWIS[8] examined--Did you, Dr. Lewis, observe that Mr. Blandy had the symptoms which Dr. Addington has mentioned?--I did. Did you observe that there were the same appearances on opening his body which Dr. Addington has described?--I observed and remember them all, except the spots on his heart. Is it your real opinion that those symptoms and those appearances were owing to poison?--Yes. And that he died of poison?--Absolutely. [Sidenote: Dr. Addington] Dr. ADDINGTON, cross-examined--Did you first intimate to Mr. Blandy, or he to you, that he had been poisoned?--He first intimated it to me. Did you ask him whether he was certain that he had been poisoned by the gruel that he took on Monday night, August the 5th, and on Tuesday night, August the 6th?--I do not recollect that I did. Are you sure that he said he was disordered after drinking the gruel on Monday night, the 5th of August?--Yes. Did you over ask him why he drank more gruel on Tuesday night, August the 6th?--I believe I did not. When did you make experiments on the powder delivered to you by Mr. Norton?--I made some the next day; but many more some time afterwards. How long afterwards?--I cannot just say; it might be a month or more. How often had you powder given you?--Twice. Did you make experiments with both parcels?--Yes; but I gave the greatest part of the first to Mr. King, an experienced chemist in Reading, and desired that he would examine it, which he did, and he told me that it was white arsenic. The second parcel was used in trials made by myself. Who had the second parcel in keeping till you tried it?--I had it, and kept it either in my pocket or under lock and key. Did you never show it to anybody?--Yes, to several persons; but trusted nobody with it out of my sight. Why do you believe it to be white arsenic?--For the following reasons:--(1) This powder has a milky whiteness; so has white arsenic. (2) This is gritty and almost insipid; so is white arsenic. (3) Part of it swims on the surface of cold water, like a pale sulphurous film, but the greatest part sinks to the bottom, and remains there undissolved; the same is true of white arsenic. (4) This thrown on red-hot iron does not flame, but rises entirely in thick white fumes, which have the stench of garlic, and cover cold iron held just over them with white flowers; white arsenic does the same. (5) I boiled 10 grains of this powder in 4 ounces of clean water, and then, passing the decoction through a filter, divided it into five equal parts, which were put into as many glasses--into one glass I poured a few drops of spirit of sal ammoniac, into another some of the lixivium of tartar, into the third some strong spirit of vitriol, into the fourth some spirit of salt, and into the last some syrup of violets. The spirit of sal ammoniac threw down a few particles of pale sediment. The lixivium of tartar gave a white cloud, which hung a little above the middle of the glass. The spirits of vitriol and salt made a considerable precipitation of lightish coloured substance, which, in the former hardened into glittering crystals, sticking to the sides and bottom of the glass. Syrup of violets produced a beautiful pale green tincture. Having washed the sauce pan, funnel, and glasses used in the foregoing experiments very clean, and provided a fresh filter, I boiled 10 grains of white arsenic, bought of Mr. Wilcock, druggist in Reading, in 4 ounces of clean water, and, filtering and dividing it into five equal parts, proceeded with them just as I had done with the former decoctions. There was an exact similitude between the experiments made on the two decoctions. They corresponded so nicely in each trial that I declare I never saw any two things in Nature more alike the decoction made with the powder found in Mr. Blandy's gruel and that made with white arsenic. From these experiments, and others which I am ready to produce if desired, I believe that powder to be white arsenic. Did any person make these experiments with you?--No, but Mr. Wilcock, the druggist, was present while I made them; and he weighed both the powder and the white arsenic. When did Mr. Blandy first take medicines by your order?--As soon as he could swallow, on Saturday night, the 10th August. Before that time he was under the care of Mr. Norton. [Sidenote: B. Norton] BENJAMIN NORTON, examined--I live at Henley; I remember being sent for to Mrs. Mounteney's, in Henley, on Thursday, the 8th August, in order to show me the powder. There was with her Susan Gunnell, the servant maid. She brought in a pan. I looked at it and endeavoured to take it out that I might give a better account of it, for as it lay it was not possible to see what it was; then I laid it on white paper and delivered it to Mrs. Mounteney to take care of till it dried. She kept it till Sunday morning, then I had it to show to Dr. Addington. I saw the doctor try it once at my house upon a red-hot poker, upon which I did imagine it was of the arsenic kind. Did you attend the deceased while he was ill?--I did. I went on the 6th of August. He told me he was ill, as he imagined, of a fit of the colic. He complained of a violent pain in his stomach, attended with great reachings, and swelled, and a great purging. I carried him physic, which he took on the Wednesday morning; he was then better. On the Thursday morning, as I was going, I met the maid. She told me he was not up, so I went about twelve. He was then with a client in the study. He told me the physic had done him a great deal of service, and desired more. I sent him some to take on Friday morning; I was not with him after Thursday.[9] Had you used to attend him?--I had for several years. The last illness he had before was in July, 1750. I used to attend him. Did you ever hear Miss Blandy talk of music?--I did. She said she had heard it in the house, and she feared something would happen in the family. She did not say anything particular, because I made very light of it. Did she say anything of apparitions?--She said Mr. Cranstoun saw her father's apparition one night. How long before his death was it that she talked about music?--It might be about three or four months before. Was the powder you delivered to Dr. Addington the self-same powder you received of Mrs. Mounteney?--It was the very same; it had not been out of my custody. Should you know it again?--I have some of the same now in my pocket. [He produces a paper sealed up with the Earl of Macclesfield's and Lord Cadogan's seals upon it.] This is some of the same that I delivered to Dr. Addington. Cross-examined--Who sent for you to the house?--I cannot tell that. When you came, did you see Miss Blandy?--I did. She and Mr. Blandy were both together. What conversation had you then?--I asked Mr. Blandy whether or no he had eaten anything that he thought disagreed with him? Miss Blandy made answer, and said her papa had had nothing that she knew of except some peas on the Saturday night before. Did you hear anything of water gruel?--I knew nothing of that till it was brought to me. Had you any suspicion of poison then?--I had not, nor Mr. Blandy had not mentioned anything of being poisoned by having taken water gruel. What did Miss Blandy say to you?--She desired me to be careful of her father in his illness. Did she show any dislike to his having physic?--No, none at all. She desired, when I saw any danger, I would let her know it, that she might have the advice of a physician. When was this?--This was on Saturday, the 10th. When he grew worse, did she advise a physician might be called in?--Yes, she did, after I said he was worse. She then begged that Dr. Addington might be sent for. Mr. Blandy was for deferring it till next day, but when I came down she asked if I thought him in danger. I said, "He is," then she said, "Though he seems to be against it, I will send for a doctor directly," and sent away a man unknown to him. Was he for delaying?--He was, till the next morning. How had she behaved to him in any other illness of her father's?--I never saw but at such times she behaved with true affection and regard. Had she used to be much with him?--She used to be backwards and forwards with him in the room. Did you give any intimation to Miss Blandy after the powder was tried?--I did not, but went up to acquaint her uncle. He was so affected he could not come down to apprise Mr. Blandy of it. When did she first know that you knew of it?--I never knew she knew of it till the Monday. How came you to suspect that at the bottom of the pan to be poison?--I found it very gritty, and had no smell. When I went down and saw the old washerwoman, that she had tasted of the water gruel and was affected with the same symptoms as Mr. Blandy, I then suspected he was poisoned, and said I was afraid Mr. Blandy had had foul play; but I did not tell either him or Miss Blandy so, because I found by the maid that Miss Blandy was suspected. Whom did you suspect might do it?--I had suspicion it was Miss Blandy. KING'S COUNSEL--When was Dr. Addington sent for?--On the Saturday night. [Sidenote: Mrs. Mary Mounteney] Mrs. MARY MOUNTENEY[10] examined--Susan Gunnell brought a pan to my house on the 8th of August with water gruel in it and powder at the bottom, and desired me to look at it. I sent for Mr. Norton. He took the powder out on a piece of white paper which I gave him. He delivered the same powder to me, and I took care of it and locked it up. Cross-examined--Did you ever see any behaviour of Miss Blandy otherwise than that of an affectionate daughter?--I never did. She was always dutiful to her father, as far as I saw, when her father was present. To whom did you first mention that this powder was put into the paper?--To the best of my remembrance, I never made mention of it to anybody till Mr. Norton fetched it away, which was on the 11th of August, the Sunday morning after, to be shown to Dr. Addington. Between the time of its being brought to your house and the time it was fetched away, were you ever at Mr. Blandy's house?--No, I was not in that time, but was there on Sunday in the afternoon. Had you not showed it at any other place during that time?--I had not, sir. Did you, on the Sunday, in the afternoon, mention it to Mr. or Miss Blandy?--No, not to either of them. [Sidenote: S. Gunnell] SUSANNAH GUNNELL, examined--I carried the water gruel in a pan to Mrs. Mounteney's house. Whose use was it made for?--It was made for Mr. Blandy's use, on the Sunday seven-night before his death. Who made it?--I made it. Where did you put it after you had made it?--I put it into the common pantry, where all the family used to go. Did you observe any particular person busy about there afterwards?--No, nobody; Miss Blandy told me on the Monday she had been in the pantry (I did not see her) stirring her father's water gruel, and eating the oatmeal out of the bottom of it. What time of the Monday was this?--This was some time about the middle of the day. Did Mr. Blandy take any of that water gruel?--I gave him a half-pint mug of it on Monday evening for him to take before he went to bed. Did you observe anybody meddle with that half-pint mug afterwards?--I saw Miss Blandy take the teaspoon that was in the mug and stir the water gruel, and after put her finger to the spoon, and then rubbed her fingers. Did Mr. Blandy drink any of that water gruel?--Mr. Blandy drank some of it, and on the Tuesday morning, when he came downstairs, he did not come through the kitchen as usual, but went the back way into his study. Did you see him come down?--I did not. When was the first time you saw him that day?--It was betwixt nine and ten. Miss Blandy and he were together; he was not well, and going to lie down on the bed. Did you see him in the evening?--In the evening Robert Harman came to me as I was coming downstairs and told me I must warm some water gruel, for my master was in haste for supper. Did you warm some?--I warmed some of that out of the pan, of which he had some the night before, and Miss Blandy carried it to him into the parlour. Did he drink it?--I believe he did; there seemed to be about half of it left the next morning. How did he seem to be after?--I met him soon after he had ate the water gruel going upstairs to bed. I lighted him up. As soon as he was got into the room he called for a basin to reach; he seemed to be very sick by his reaching a considerable time. How was he next morning?--About six o'clock I went up the next morning to carry him his physic. He said he had had a pretty good night, and was much better. Had he reached much overnight?--He had, for the basin was half-full, which I left clean overnight. Was any order given you to give him any more water gruel?--On the Wednesday Miss Blandy came into the kitchen and said, "Susan, as your master has taken physic, he may want more water gruel, and, as there is some in the house, you need not make fresh, as you are ironing." I told her it was stale, if there was enough, and it would not hinder much to make fresh; so I made fresh accordingly, and I went into the pantry to put some in for my master's dinner. Then I brought out the pan (the evening before I thought it had an odd taste), so I was willing to taste it again to see if I was mistaken or not. I put it to my mouth and drank some, and, taking it from my mouth, I observed some whiteness at the bottom. What did you do upon that?--I went immediately to the kitchen and told Betty Binfield there was a white settlement, and I did not remember I ever had seen oatmeal so white before. Betty said, "Let me see it." I carried it to her. She said, "What oatmeal is this? I think it looks as white as flour." We both took the pan and turned it about, and strictly observed it, and concluded it could be nothing but oatmeal. I then took it out of doors into the light and saw it plainer; then I put my finger to it and found it gritty at the bottom of the pan. I then recollected I had heard say poison was white and gritty, which made me afraid it was poison. What did you do with the pan?--I carried it back again and set it down on the dresser in the kitchen; it stood there a short time, then I locked it up in the closet, and on the Thursday morning carried it to Mrs. Mounteney, and Mr. Norton came there and saw it. Do you remember Miss Blandy saying anything to you about eating her papa's water gruel?--About six weeks before his death I went into the parlour. Miss Blandy said, "Susan, what is the matter with you? You do not look well." I said, "I do not know what is the matter; I am not well, but I do not know what is the matter." She said, "What have you ate or drank?" upon which I said, "Nothing more than the rest of the family." She said, "Susan, have you eaten any water gruel? for I am told water gruel hurts me, and it may hurt you." I said, "It cannot affect me, madam, for I have not eaten any." What was it Betty Binfield[11] said to you about water gruel?--Betty Binfield said Miss Blandy asked if I had eaten any of her papa's water gruel, saying, if I did, I might do for myself, a person of my age. What time was this?--I cannot say whether it was just after or just before the time she had spoken to me herself. On the Wednesday morning, as I was coming downstairs from giving my master his physic, I met Elizabeth Binfield with the water gruel in a basin which he had left. I said to the charwoman, Ann Emmet, "Dame, you used to be fond of water gruel; here is a very fine mess my master left last night, and I believe it will do you good." The woman soon sat down on a bench in the kitchen and ate some of it, I cannot say all. [Illustration: Miss Mary Blandy (_From an Engraving by B. Cole, after a Drawing for which she sat in Oxford Castle_.)] How was she afterwards?--She said the house smelt of physic, and everything tasted of physic; she went out, I believe into the wash-house, to reach, before she could finish it. Did you follow her?--No, I did not; but about twenty minutes or half an hour after that I went to the necessary house and found her there vomiting and reaching, and, as she said, purging. How long did she abide there?--She was there an hour and a half, during which time I went divers times to her. At first I carried her some surfeit water; she then desired to have some fair water. The next time I went to see how she did she said she was no better. I desired her to come indoors, hoping she would be better by the fire. She said she was not able to come in. I said I would lead her in. I did, and set her down in a chair by the fire. She was vomiting and reaching continually. She sat there about half an hour, or something more, during which time she grew much worse, and I thought her to be in a fit or seized with death. Did you acquaint Miss Blandy with the illness and symptoms of this poor woman?--I told Miss Blandy when I went into the room to dress her, about nine o'clock, that Dame (the name we used to call her by) had been very ill that morning; that she had complained that the smell of her master's physic had made her sick; and that she had eaten nothing but a little of her master's water gruel which he had left last night, which could not hurt her. What did she say to that?--She said she was very glad she was not below stairs, for she would have been shocked to have seen her poor Dame so ill. As you have lived servant in the house, how did you observe Miss Blandy behave towards her father, and in what manner did she use to talk of him, three or four months before his death?--Sometimes she would talk very affectionately, and sometimes but middling. What do you mean by "middling"?--Sometimes she would say he was an old villain for using an only child in such a manner. Did she wish him to live?--Sometimes she wished for him long life, sometimes for his death. When she wished for his death, in what manner did she express herself?--She often said she was very awkward, and that if he was dead she would go to Scotland and live with Lady Cranstoun. Did she ever say how long she thought her father might live?--Sometimes she would say, for his constitution, he might live these twenty years; sometimes she would say he looked ill and poorly. Do you remember when Dr. Addington was sent for on the Saturday?--I do. Had Miss Blandy used to go into her father's room after that time?--She did as often as she pleased till Sunday night; then Mr. Norton took Miss Blandy downstairs and desired me not to let anybody go into the room except myself to wait on him. Did she come in afterwards?--She came into the room on Monday morning, soon after Mr. Norton came in, or with him. I went in about ten o'clock again. What conversation passed between Miss Blandy and her father?--She fell down on her knees, and said to him, "Banish me, or send me to any remote part of the world; do what you please, so you forgive me; and as to Mr. Cranstoun, I will never see him, speak to him, nor write to him more so long as I live, so you will forgive me." What answer did he make?--He said, "I forgive thee, my dear, and I hope God will forgive thee; but thee shouldst have considered better than to have attempted anything against thy father; thee shouldst have considered I was thy own father." What said she to this?--She answered, "Sir, as for your illness, I am entirely innocent." I said, "Madam, I believe you must not say you are entirely innocent, for the powder that was taken out of the water gruel, and the paper of powder that was taken out of the fire, are now in such hands that they must be publicly produced." I told her I believed I had one dose prepared for my master in a dish of tea about six weeks ago. Did you tell her this before her father?--I did. What answer did she make?--She said, "I have put no powder into tea. I have put powder into water gruel, and if you are injured I am entirely innocent, for it was given me with another intent." What said Mr. Blandy to this?--My master turned himself in his bed and said to her, "Oh, such a villain! come to my house, ate of the best, and drank of the best that my house could afford, to take away my life and ruin my daughter." What else passed?--He said, "Oh, my dear! Thee must hate that man, thee must hate the ground he treads on, thee canst not help it." The daughter said "Oh, sir, your tenderness towards me is like a sword to my heart; every word you say is like swords piercing my heart--much worse than if you were to be ever so angry. I must down on my knees and beg you will not curse me." What said the father?--He said, "I curse thee! my dear, how couldst thou think I could curse thee? No, I bless thee, and hope God will bless thee and amend thy life;" and said further, "Do, my dear, go out of my room, say no more, lest thou shouldst say anything to thy own prejudice; go to thy uncle Stevens, take him for thy friend; poor man! I am sorry for him." Upon this she directly went out of the room. Give an account of the paper you mentioned to her, how it was found?--On the Saturday before my master died I was in the kitchen. Miss Blandy had wrote a direction on a letter to go to her uncle Stevens. Going to the fire to dry it, I saw her put a paper into the fire, or two papers, I cannot say whether. I went to the fire and saw her stir it down with a stick. Elizabeth Binfield then put on fresh coals, which I believe kept the paper from being consumed. Soon after Miss Blandy had put it in she left the kitchen; I said to Elizabeth Binfield, "Betty, Miss Blandy has been burning something"; she asked, "Where?" I pointed to the grate and said, "At that corner"; upon which Betty Binfield moved a coal and took from thence a paper. I stood by and saw her. She gave it into my hand; it was a small piece of paper, with some writing on it, folded up about 3 inches long. The writing was, "The powder to clean the pebbles," to the best of my remembrance. Did you read it?--I did not, Elizabeth Binfield read it to me. [Produced in Court, part of it burnt, scaled up with the Earl of Macclesfield and Lord Cadogan's seals.] This is the paper, I believe, by the look of it; but I did not see it unfolded. I delivered it into Elizabeth Binfield's hand on Saturday night between eleven and twelve o'clock. From the time it was taken out of the fire it had not been out of my pocket, or anything done to it, from that time till I gave it her. I went into my master's room about seven o'clock in the morning to carry him something to drink. When he had drank it, I said, "I have something to say to you concerning your health and concerning your family; I must beg you will not put yourself in a passion, but hear me what I have to say." Then I told him, "I believe, sir, you have got something in your water gruel that has done you some injury, and I believe Miss Blandy put it in, by her coming into the washhouse on Monday and saying she had been stirring her papa's water gruel and eating the oatmeal out from the bottom." He said, "I find I have something not right; my head is not right as it used to be, nor has been for some time." I had before told him I had found the powder in the gruel. He said, "Dost thou know anything of this powder? Didst thee ever see any of it?" I said, "No, sir, I never saw any but what I saw in the water gruel." He said, "Dost know where she had this powder, nor canst not thee guess?" I said, "I cannot tell, except she had it of Mr. Cranstoun." My reason for suspecting that was, Miss Blandy had letters oftener than usual. My master said, "And, now thee mention'st it, I remember when he was at my house he mentioned a particular poison that they had in their country," saying, "Oh, that villain! that ever he came to my house!" I told him likewise that I had showed the powder to Mr. Norton; he asked what Mr. Norton said to it; I told him Mr. Norton could not say what it was, as it was wet, but said, "Let it be what it will, it ought not to be there"; and said he was fearful there was foul play somewhere. My master said, "What, Norton not know! that is strange, and so much used to drugs." Then I told him Mr. Norton thought proper he should search her pockets, and take away her keys and papers. He said, "I cannot do it, I cannot shock her so much; canst not thee, when thou goest into her room, take out a letter or two, that she may think she dropped them by chance?" I told him, "I had no right to do it; she is your daughter, and you have a right to do it, and nobody else." He said, "I never in all my life read a letter that came to my daughter from any person." He desired, if possible, if I could meet with any powder anywhere that I would secure it. Do you remember when Ann Emmet was sick (the charwoman)?--I do, but cannot say how long or how little a time before this; I remember she was ill some time before my master's death. What did the prisoner order the old woman to eat at that time?--She sent her some sack whey and some broth, I believe, to the value of a quart or three pints at twice, about once a day, or every other day, for four or five days. Have you been ill from what you ate yourself?--I was ill after drinking a dish of tea one Sunday morning, which I thought was not well relished, and I believed somebody had been taking salts in the cup before. Who was it poured out for?--I believe it was poured out for my master. Why do you believe that?--Because he used to drink in a different dish from the rest of the family, and it was out of his dish. When was this?--This was about six weeks and three days before his death. How did you find yourself after drinking it?--I found no ill-effects till after dinner; I then had a hardness in my stomach, and apprehended it was from eating plentifully of beans for dinner. What symptoms had you afterwards?--My stomach seemed to have something in it that could not digest, and I had remarkable trembling for three days, and after that for three mornings was seized with a reaching. Have you since that time been ill from what you ate or drank?--I tasted the water gruel twice--once on the Tuesday evening when I was mixing it for my master, and on Wednesday, when I was going to pour it away, I put the pan to my mouth and drank a little of it. How did you find yourself after that?--I did not find any remarkable disorder till the Wednesday morning about two o'clock, before my master's death; then I was seemingly seized with convulsions. My throat was very troublesome for five or six weeks after, and seemed a little soreish and a little swelled. I continued very ill for three weeks and upwards after my master's death, which was on the Wednesday. I went to bed sick at two that morning, and applied to Dr. Addington. Do you remember anything besides letters coming from Mr. Cranstoun?--I remember she had once a large box of table linen and some Scotch pebbles in it; she said they came from him. What time was this?--This was early in the spring, before my master's death. Had she more than one box sent to her?--She had a small box sent afterwards of Scotch pebbles; that might be about three months before his death, or less, I cannot say. Did she use to show the pebbles to anybody?--She used to show them to any person of her acquaintance; but I never heard of any powder to clean them. Cross-examined--For a year before the 5th of August last had anything ailed your master so as to call in the apothecary?--About a year before he had had a violent cold. Was he, or was he not, in good health for a year before?--He was frequently complaining of the gravel and heartburn, which he was subject to for years. Did he make any other complaints?--He used to have little fits of the gout. Was there any other complaint for seven, eight, nine, or ten years?--Nothing particular, but that of the heartburn, which I cannot tell whether I ever heard him complain of before or not. Can you take upon you to say that he made any particular complaint of the heartburn more than he had done at any other time?--I cannot say positively, because I have not continued these things in my memory. He ordered me to give him some dry oatmeal and water for the heartburn. Is that good for the heartburn?--I have been told it is very good for it. How was her behaviour to her father?--Her general behaviour was dutiful, except upon any passion or a hasty word from her father. When did she call her father "old villain"?--She would use expressions of that kind when she was in a passion. Upon what account?--For using her ill. KING'S COUNSEL--Were these expressions made use of before his face or behind his back?--I have heard her before his face and behind his back. PRISONER'S COUNSEL--When have you heard it?--I believe in the last twelve months, but cannot be sure. KING'S COUNSEL--Recollect on what occasion?--It has been, I believe, on little passions on both sides, and that generally from trifles. PRISONER'S COUNSEL--When did you first communicate your suspicion to Mr. Blandy about his being poisoned?--On the Saturday morning before his death, from what I saw on the Wednesday before. Why did you keep this suspicion of yours from Wednesday to Saturday?--The reason I did not tell my suspicions to Mr. Blandy sooner than Saturday was because I stayed for Mr. Stevens, the prisoner's uncle, who did not come till Friday night; I told him then, and he desired me to tell Mr. Blandy of it. Did you ever say anything of it to Miss Blandy?--No, I did not. Pray, what conversation passed between her father and her down upon her knees, &c.?--She said, "Sir, how do you do?" He said, "I am very ill." Was anything said about Mr. Cranstoun's addresses to her?--Yes, there was. That conversation was occasioned by a message that Mr. Blandy had sent to his daughter by me on Monday morning. What was that message?--That he was ready to forgive her if she would but endeavour to bring that villain to justice. Did she say with what intent the powder was given to her?--She said it was given her with another intent. Did she say upon what intent?--She did not say that. He did not ask that. Was not that explained?--It was no ways explained. Did he treat her as if she herself was innocent?--He did, sir. Then all he said afterwards was as thinking his daughter very innocent?--It was, sir. As to the ruin of his daughter, did he think it was entirely owing to Cranstoun?--Mr. Blandy said he believed his daughter entirely innocent of what had happened. By what he said to you, do you think that the father thought his daughter was imposed upon by Cranstoun when he used that expression, "She must hate the man," &c.?--I do think so; he said, "Where is Polly?" I answered, "In her room." He said, "Poor, unfortunate girl! That ever she should be imposed upon and led away by such a villain to do such a thing!" Do you imagine, from the whole conversation that passed between her father and her, that she was entirely innocent of the fact of the powder being given?--I do not think so; she said she was innocent. What was your opinion? Did the father think her wholly unacquainted with the effect of the powder?--I believe he thought so; that is as much as I can say. When you told Miss Blandy that the washerwoman was extremely ill, having ate some water gruel, was anything more said with relation to the father's having ate some of the same water gruel before?--I don't remember there was a word said about the father's having ate any of it. During the time of his illness was not Miss Blandy's behaviour to her father with as much care and tenderness as any daughter could show?--She seemed to direct everything as she could have done for herself, or any other person that was sick. Do you know that she was guilty of any neglect in this respect?--No, I do not, sir. KING'S COUNSEL--What did he mean when he said, "Poor, unfortunate girl! That ever she should be imposed upon and led away by such a villain to do such a thing!" What do you imagine he meant by such a thing?--By giving him that which she did not know what it was. COURT--When she told you that water gruel would serve for her father on the Wednesday did she know that her father had been ill by taking water gruel on the Monday and Tuesday nights?--She knew he was ill, but I cannot tell whether she knew the cause of it; and knew that the charwoman was ill before she proposed my giving him the same gruel, but did not oppose my making fresh for any other reason than that it would hinder my ironing. [Sidenote: E. Binfield] ELIZABETH BINFIELD, examined--I was a servant to Mr. Francis Blandy at Henley, and had been almost three years. When did you first discover his illness and hear him complain of unusual prickings in has stomach?--About a fortnight before he died. Did you ever hear Miss Blandy talk of something in the house which she said presaged his death, or something like it?--I have often heard her talk of walkings and music in the house that she had heard. She said she thought it to be her mother, saying the music foretold her father's death. Whom has she said so to?--She has told me so. How long ago?--For some time before her father's death; I believe for three-quarters of a year. How long did she continue talking in this manner?--She did till his death. I have often heard her say he would die before October. What reasons did she give for that?--By the music, saying she had been informed that music foretells deaths within a twelvemonth. Who did she say had informed her so?--She said Mr. Cranstoun had been to some famous woman who had informed him so, and named one Mrs. Morgan, who lived either in Scotland or London, I cannot say which. Did she express herself glad or sorry?--Glad, for that then she should soon be released from all her fatigues, and soon be happy. Did she talk of the state of health in which he was?--Sometimes she has said he has been very well, sometimes ill. I remember I heard her say that my master complained of a ball of fire in his guts. I believe it was before the Monday he ate the water gruel. I cannot particularly say. I believe a fortnight before he died, then she said, Mr. Cranstoun had told her of that famous woman's opinion about music. Do you remember the first time one Ann Emmet was taken ill?--It was about a month or six weeks before. Do you know what Miss Blandy ordered her in that illness?--I do. She ordered her some white wine whey, and broth several times. I made it two or three times, two quarts at a time. Do you remember a paper being taken out of the fire?--I do. It was on the Saturday before my master died. I took it out myself. Should you know it again if you see it?--I believe I should. (She is shown a paper.) I really believe this is it, which I took out of the fire and delivered it to Susan Gunnell, after which I had it again from her, and I delivered it to Dr. Addington and Mr. Norton. Do you remember Miss Blandy's saying anything about Susan Gunnel's eating the water gruel?--I do. When Susan was ill she asked me how Susan did. I said, "Very ill." Said she, "Do you remember her ever drinking her master's water gruel?" I said, "Not as I know of." She said, "If she does she may do for herself, may I tell you." Did she bid you tell Susan so?--She did not bid me tell Susan, but I did tell her. What time was this?--It might be about a month or six weeks before Mr. Blandy's death. Do you remember any expressions she made use of about her father?--I heard her say, "Who would grudge to send an old father to hell for £10,000?" Exactly them words. When was this?--It was about a month before his death, or it may be more; I cannot justly tell. How was this conversation introduced?--She was speaking of young girls being kept out of their fortunes. Who was with you at this time?--It was to me, and nobody else. Have you heard her abuse him with bad language?--I have heard her curse him, call him rascal and villain. What was she so angry with her father about?--Mr. Cranstoun was at our house about three-quarters of a year before Mr. Blandy's death. He came in August, 1750, and stayed there till near Christmas. It was not agreeable to my master. We used to think by his temper that he did not approve of his being so much with his daughter, but I do not believe he debarred his daughter from keeping his company. Did you ever hear him say anything to her of his having been once like to be poisoned?--I was in the kitchen when my master came in to be shaved. I stayed there till he went out again. Miss Blandy was there, and he said that once he had like to have been poisoned. When was it that he said so?--It was on the 10th of August, saying he was once at the coffee-house or the Lion, and he and two other gentlemen had like to have been poisoned by what they had drank. Miss Blandy said, "Sir, I remember it very well." She said it was at one of those places, and he said no, it was the other. He said, "One of the gentlemen died immediately, the other is dead now, and I have survived them both; but it is my fortune to be poisoned at last." He looked very hard at her during the time he was talking. What did he say was put into the wine?--I remember he said it was white arsenic. When he looked hard at her how did she look?--She looked in great confusion and all in a tremble. Did you sit up with Miss Blandy the night after her father died?--I did till three o'clock. She went to bed about one. She said to me, "Betty, will you go away with me? If you will go to the Lion or the Bell and hire a post-chaise I will give you fifteen guineas when you get into it and ten guineas more when we came to London." I said, "Where will you go then? Into the north?" She said, "I shall go into the west of England." I said, "Shall you go by sea?" She said, "I believe some part of the way." I said, "I will not go." Then she burst into laughter, and said, "I was only in a joke. Did you think I was in earnest?" "Yes," said I. "No," said she, "I was only joking." Did you ever hear Miss Blandy tell Dr. Addington that she had given your master some of that powder?--I heard Miss Blandy tell the doctor she had given my master some of that powder before in a dish of tea, which, she said, he did not drink, and she threw it into the street out of the window, fearing she should be discovered, and filled the cup again, and that Susan Gunnell drank it, and was ill for a week after. When was this?--This was on the Monday before my master died. Do you remember what happened on Monday, the 5th of August?--Yes. On that day I and two washerwomen were in the wash-house. Miss Blandy came in, and said, "Betty, I have been in the pantry eating some of the oatmeal out of your master's water gruel." I took no notice of it, but the same day, in the afternoon, I went into the pantry, and Miss Blandy followed me, and took a spoon and stirred the water gruel, and, taking some up in the spoon, put it between her fingers and rubbed it. What was it in?--It was in a pan. When my master was taken ill on the Tuesday in the afternoon Miss Blandy came into the kitchen, and said, "Betty, if one thing should happen, will you go with me to Scotland?" I said, "Madam, I do not know." "What," says she, "you are unwilling to leave your friends?" Said I, "If I should go there, and not like it, it will be expensive travelling back again." Did she say, "If one thing should happen"? What thing?--I took no further notice of it then, but those were the words. On the Monday morning before he died she said to me, "Betty, go up to your master and give my duty to him, and tell him I beg to speak one word with him." I did. She went up. I met her when she came out of the room from him. She clasped me round the neck, and burst out a-crying, and said, "Susan and you are the two honestest servants in the world; you ought to be imaged in gold for your honesty; half my fortune will not make you amends for your honesty to my father." Cross-examined--Had Mr. Blandy at any time, and when, previous to the 5th of August been ill?--About a twelvemonth before he had been ill some time, but I cannot tell how long. What was his illness?--He had a great cold. Did he take any physic?--I believe he did once or twice. Can you tell the time?--I believe it was the latter end of July or beginning of August. Who made the whey and broth that were sent to the washerwoman?--My fellow-servant made the whey; I made the broth. Was she a kind mistress to the washerwoman?--She was. She had a greater regard for her than any other woman that came about the house. About this music, who did she say heard it?--She mostly mentioned herself hearing that. Was this talk when Cranstoun was there?--I heard her talk so when he was there and in his absence. Was it when she was in an angry temper only that she used those words to her father?--I have heard her in the best of times curse her father. Was Susan Gunnell very ill after drinking that tea?--She was, and continued so for a week. KING'S COUNSEL--Was it at the time Susan was ill from drinking of the tea that Miss Blandy asked you about her taking the gruel and said it would do for her? And did she say anything else?--Miss Blandy said she poured it out for my master, but he went to church and left it. PRISONER'S COUNSEL--Have you had any ill-will against her?--I always told her I wished her very well. Did you ever say, "Damn her for a black bitch; I should be glad to see her go up the ladder and be hanged"?--No, sir, I never did in my life. KING'S COUNSEL--Did you and the rest of the family observe that Mr. Blandy's looks were as well the last six months as before?--Miss Blandy has said to me, "Don't you think my father looks faint?" Sometimes I have said, "He is," sometimes not. I never observed any alteration at all. [Here Dr. Addington is appealed to by the counsel for the prisoner.] PRISONER'S COUNSEL--Do you, Dr. Addington, remember Miss Blandy telling you on Monday night, the 12th August, that she had on a Sunday morning, about six weeks before, when her father was absent from the parlour, mixed a powder with his tea, and that Susan Gunnell had drank that tea?--I remember her telling me that Monday night that she had on a Sunday morning, about six weeks before, when her father was absent from the parlour, mixed a powder with his tea, but do not remember her saying that Susan Gunnell had drank that tea. I have several times heard Susan Gunnell say that she was sure she had been poisoned by drinking tea out of Mr. Blandy's cup that Sunday morning. Did not Miss Blandy declare to you that she had always thought the powder innocent?--Yes. Did she not always declare the same?--Yes. [The KING'S COUNSEL then interposed, and said that he had not intended to mention what had passed in discourse between the prisoner and Dr. Addington; but that now, as her own counsel had been pleased to call for part of it, he desired the whole might be laid before the Court.] [Sidenote: Dr. Addington] Dr. ADDINGTON--On Monday night, the 12th August, after Miss Blandy had been secured, and her papers, keys, &c., taken from her, she threw herself on the bed and groaned, then raised herself and wrung her hands, and said that it was impossible for any words to describe the horrors and agonies in her breast; that Mr. Cranstoun had ruined her; that she had ever, till now, believed him a man of the strictest honour; that she had mixed a powder with the gruel, which her father had drank on the foregoing Monday and Tuesday nights; that she was the cause of his death, and that she desired life for no end but to go through a painful penance for her sin. She protested at the same time that she had never mixed the powder with anything else that he had swallowed, and that she did not know it to be poison till she had seen its effects. She said that she had received the powder from Mr. Cranstoun with a present of Scotch pebbles; that he had written on the paper that held it, "The powder to clean the pebbles with"; that he had assured her it was harmless; that he had often taken it himself; that if she would give her father some of it now and then, a little and a little at a time, in any liquid, it would make him kind to him and her; that accordingly, about six weeks before, at breakfast-time, her father being out of the room, she had put a little of it into his cup of tea, but that he never drank it; that, part of the powder swimming at top of the tea, and part sinking to the bottom, she had poured it out of the window and filled up the cup with fresh tea; that then she wrote to Mr. Cranstoun to let him know that she could not give it in tea without being discovered; and that in his answer he had advised her to give it in water gruel for the future, or in any other thickish fluid. I asked her whether she would endeavour to bring Mr. Cranstoun to justice. After a short pause she answered that she was fully conscious of her own guilt, and was unwilling to add guilt to guilt, which she thought she should do if she took any step to the prejudice of Mr. Cranstoun, whom she considered as her husband though the ceremony had not passed between them. KING'S COUNSEL--Was anything more said by the prisoner or you?--I asked her whether she had been so weak as to believe the powder that she had put into her father's tea and gruel so harmless as Mr. Cranstoun had represented it; why Mr. Cranstoun had called it a powder to clean pebbles if it was intended only to make Mr. Blandy kind; why she had not tried it on herself before she ventured to try it on her father; why she had flung it into the fire; why, if she had really thought it innocent, she had been fearful of a discovery when part of it swam on the top of the tea; why, when she had found it hurtful to her father, she had neglected so many days to call proper assistance to him; and why, when I was called at last, she had endeavoured to keep me in the dark and hide the true cause of his illness. What answers did she make to these questions?--I cannot justly say, but very well remember that they were not such as gave me any satisfaction. PRISONER'S COUNSEL--She said then that she was entirely ignorant of the effects of the powder. She said that she did not know it to be poison till she had seen its effects. Let me ask you, Dr. Addington, this single question, whether the horrors and agonies which Miss Blandy was in at this time were not, in your opinion, owing solely to a hearty concern for her father?--I beg, sir, that you will excuse my giving an answer to this question. It is not easy, you know, to form a true judgment of the heart, and I hope a witness need not deliver his opinion of it. I do not speak of the heart; you are only desired to say whether those agitations of body and mind which Miss Blandy showed at this time did not seem to you to arise entirely from a tender concern for her father?--Since you oblige me, sir, to speak to this particular, I must say that all the agitation of body and mind which Miss Blandy showed at this time, or any other, when I was with her, seemed to me to arise more from the apprehension of unhappy consequences to herself than from a tender and hearty concern for her father. Did you never, then, observe in her any evident tokens of grief for her father?--I never thought I did. Did she never wish for his recovery?--Often. Did not you think that those wishes implied a concern for him?--I did not, because I had before told her that if he died soon she would inevitably be ruined. When did you tell her this?--On Sunday morning, the 11th August, just before I left Henley. Did not she desire you that morning, before you quitted his room, to visit him again the next day?--Yes. And was she not very solicitous that you should do him all the service in your power?--I cannot say that I discovered any solicitude in her on this score till Monday night, the 12th August, after she was confined, and her keys and other things had been taken from her. KING'S COUNSEL--Did you, Dr. Addington, attend Susan Gunnell in her illness?--Yes, sir, but I took no minutes of her case. Did her symptoms agree with Mr. Blandy's?--They differed from his in some respects, but the most material were manifestly of the same kind with his, though in a much less degree. Did you think them owing to poison?--Yes. Did you attend Ann Emmet?--Yes, sir. To what cause did you ascribe her disorder?--To poison, for she told me that, on Wednesday morning, the 7th August, very soon after drinking some gruel at Mr. Blandy's, she had been seized with prickings and burnings in her tongue, throat, and stomach, which had been followed by severe fits of vomiting and purging; and I observed that she had many other symptoms which agreed with Mr. Blandy's. Did she say that she thought she had ever taken poison before?--On my telling her that I ascribed her complaints to poison, which she had taken in gruel at Mr. Blandy's on the 7th August, she said that, if she had been poisoned by drinking that gruel at Mr. Blandy's, she was sure that she had been poisoned there the haytime before by drinking something else. [Sidenote: Alice Emmet] ALICE EMMET, examined--My mother is now very ill, and cannot attend; she was charwoman at Mr. Blandy's in June last; she was taken very ill in the night with a vomiting and reaching, upwards and downwards. I went to Miss Blandy in the morning, by her desire, to see if she would send her something, as she wanted something to drink, saying she was very dry. Miss said she would send something, which she did in about two hours. Did you tell her what your mother had ate or drank?--No, I did not, only said my mother was very ill and very dry, and desired something to drink. [Sidenote: R. Littleton] ROBERT LITTLETON, examined--I was clerk to Mr. Blandy almost two years. The latter end of July last I went to my father's, in Warwickshire, and returned again on the 9th August, and breakfasted with Mr. Blandy and his daughter the next morning, which was on a Saturday. He was in great agony, and complained very much. He had a particular dish to drink his tea in. He tasted his tea, and did not drink it, saying it had a gritty, bad taste, and asked Miss whether she had not put too much of the black stuff in it, meaning Bohea tea. She answered it was as usual. He tasted it again and said it had a bad taste. She seemed to be in some sort of a tremor. He looked particular at her, and she looked very much confused and hurried, and went out of the room. Soon after my master poured it out into the cat's basin, and set it to be filled again. After this, when he was not there, Miss asked me what he did with the tea. I said he had not drunk it, but put it into the cat's basin in the window; then she looked a good deal confused and flurried. The next day Mr. Blandy, of Kingston, came about half an hour after nine in the morning. They walked into the parlour, and left me to breakfast by myself in the kitchen. I went to church. When I returned, the prisoner desired me to walk with her cousin into the garden; she delivered a letter to me, and desired me to seal and direct it as usual, and put it into the post. Had you ever directed any letter for her before?--I have, a great many. I used to direct her letters to Mr. Cranstoun. [He is shown a letter.] This is one. Did you put it into the post?--I did not. I opened it, having just before heard Mr. Blandy was poisoned by his own daughter. I transcribed it, and took it to Mr. Norton, the apothecary at Henley, and after that I showed it and read it to Mr. Blandy. What did he say?--He said very little. He smiled and said, "Poor, love-sick girl! What won't a girl do for a man she loves?" (or to that effect). Have you ever seen her write?--I have, very often. Look at this letter; is it her own handwriting?--I cannot tell. It is written worse than she used to write, but it is the same she gave me. Do you remember Mr. Cranstoun coming there in August, 1750?--I do. It was either the latter end of July or the beginning of August. Did you hear any talk about music about that time?--After he was gone I heard the prisoner say she heard music in the house; this I heard her say very often, and that it denoted a death in the family. Sometimes she said she believed it would be herself; at other times it might be her father, by reason of his being so much broken. I heard her say once she thought she heard her mother. Did she say when that death would happen?--She said that death would happen before October, meaning the death of her father, seeming to me. Have you heard her curse her father?--I have heard her several times, for a rogue, a villain, a toothless old dog. How long was this before her father's death?--I cannot justly tell that, but I have heard her a great many times within two months of his death, and a great while before. I used to tell her he was much broken latterly, and would not live long. She would say she thought so too, and that the music portended his death. Cross-examined--When you breakfasted with them in the parlour who was there first?--She was. Did you see the tea made?--No, sir. Did you see it poured out?--No; but he desired me to taste the tea. I did mine, and said I fancied his mouth was out of taste. Did not this hurry you say Miss Blandy was in arise from the displeasure of her father because the tea was not made to his mind?--I cannot say that, or what it was from. What became of that he threw into the cat's basin?--He left it there. [Sidenote: R. Harman] ROBERT HARMAN, examined--I was servant to Mr. Blandy at the time of his death. That night he died the prisoner asked me where I should live next. I said I did not know. She asked me to go with her. I asked her where she was going? She said it would be £500 in my way, and no hurt to me if I would. I told her I did not choose to go. Did she tell you to what place she was going?--She did not. Did she want to go away at that time of night?--Then, immediately. Cross-examined--Did she give any reason why she desired to go away?--No, she gave none. How long had you lived there?--A twelvemonth. What has been her general behaviour to her father during the time you were there?--She behaved very well, so far as ever I saw, and to all the family. Did you ever hear her swear about her father?--No, I never did. [Sidenote: R. Fisher] RICHARD FISHER, examined--I was one of the jury on the coroner's inquest that sat on Mr. Blandy's body on Thursday, 15th of August. As I was going up street to go to market I was told Miss Blandy was gone over the bridge. I went and found her at the sign of the Angel, on the other side of the bridge. I told her I was very sorry for her misfortune, and asked her what she could think of herself to come from home, and if she would be glad to go home again? She said, "Yes, but what must I do to get there for the mob?" I said I would endeavour to get a close post-chaise and carry her home. I went out through the mob and got one, and carried her home. She asked me whether she was to go to Oxford that night or not. I said I believed not. When I came to her father's house I delivered her up to the constables. When we were upon the inquiry before the coroner a gentleman was asking for some letters which came in the time of Mr. Blandy's illness. I went to her uncle, Stevens, to see for them. She then asked me again what the gentlemen intended to do with her, or how it would go. I said I was afraid very hard, unless she could produce some letters to bring Mr. Cranstoun to justice. She said, "Dear Mr. Fisher, I am afraid I have burnt some that would have brought him to justice." She took a key out of her pocket, and said, "Take this key and see if you can find such letters in such a drawer." There was one Mrs. Minn stood by. I desired her to go with the key, which she did. But no letters were found there. Then Miss Blandy said, "My honour to him will prove my ruin." What did she mean by the word "him"?--Mr. Cranstoun--when she found there were no letters of consequence to be found. [Sidenote: Mrs. Lane] Mrs. LANE, examined--I was with my husband at Henley at the sign of the Angel on the other side of the bridge. There was Miss Blandy. The first word I heard Mr. Lane, my husband, say was, if she was found guilty she would suffer according to law, upon which she stamped her foot upon the ground, and said, "O that damned villain!" then paused a little, and said "But why should I blame him, for I am more to blame than he, for I gave it him, and knew the consequence?" Did she say I knew or I know?--I really cannot say, sir, for I did not expect to be called for to be examined here, and will not take upon me to swear positively to a word. She was in a sort of agony, in a very great fright. [Sidenote: Mr. Lane] Mr. LANE, examined--I went into the room where the prisoner was before my wife the day after Mr. Blandy's death. She arose from her chair, and met me, and looked hard at me. She said, "Sir, I have not the pleasure of knowing you." Said I, "No, I am a stranger to you." She said, "Sir, you look like a gentleman. What do you think they will do with me?" Said I, "You will be committed to the county gaol, and be tried at the assizes, and if your innocence appears you will be acquitted; if not, you will suffer accordingly." She stamped with her foot, and said, "O! that damned villain! But why do I blame him? I am more to blame." Then Mr. Littleton came in, which took off my attention from her that I did not hear so as to give an account of the whole. [The letter which Littleton opened, read in Court.] Directed to the hon. William Henry Cranstoun, Esq.-- Dear Willy,--My father is so bad, that I have only time to tell you, that if you do not hear from me soon again, do not be frightened. I am better myself; and lest any accident should happen to your letters take care what you write. My sincere compliments. I am ever, yours. The Prisoner's Defence.[12] [Sidenote: Mary Blandy] My lords, it is morally impossible for me to lay down the hardships I have received--I have been aspersed in my character. In the first place, it has been said that I have spoken ill of my father, that I have cursed him, and wished him at hell, which is extremely false. Sometimes little family affairs have happened, and he did not speak to me so kind as I could wish. I own I am passionate, my lords, and in those passions some hasty expressions might have dropped; but great care has been taken to recollect every word I have spoken at different times, and to apply them to such particular purposes as my enemies knew would do me the greatest injury. These are hardships, my lords, extreme hardships, such as you yourselves must allow to be so. It is said, too, my lords, that I endeavoured to make my escape. Your lordships will judge from the difficulties I laboured under. I had lost my father--I was accused of being his murderer--I was not permitted to go near him--I was forsaken by my friends--affronted by the mob--insulted by my servants. Although I begged to have the liberty to listen at the door where he died I was not allowed it. My keys were taken from me, my shoe buckles and garters, too--to prevent me from making away with myself, as though I was the most abandoned creature. What could I do, my lords? I verily believe I must have been out of my senses. When I heard my father was dead, and the door open, I ran out of the house and over the bridge, and had nothing on but a half-sack and petticoat without a hoop--my petticoats hanging about me--the mob gathered about me. Was this a condition, my lords, to make my escape in? A good woman beyond the bridge seeing me in this distress desired me to walk in till the mob was dispersed. The town serjeant was there. I begged he would take me under his protection to have me home. The woman said it was not proper; the mob was very great, and that I had better stay a little. When I came home they said I used the constable ill. I was locked up for fifteen hours, with only an odd servant of the family to attend me. I was not allowed a maid for the common decencies of my sex. I was sent to gaol, and was in hopes there, at least, this usage would have ended. But was told it was reported I was frequently drunk; that I attempted to make my escape; that I never attended the chapel. A more abstemious woman, my lords, I believe does not live. Upon the report of my making my escape the gentleman who was High Sheriff last year (not the present) came and told me, by order of the higher powers, he must put an iron on me. I submitted, as I always do to the higher powers. Some time after he came again, and said he must put a heavier upon me, which I have worn, my lords, till I came hither. I asked the Sheriff why I was so ironed. He said he did it by the command of some noble peer on his hearing that I intended to make my escape. I told them I never had such a thought, and I would bear it with the other cruel usage I had received on my character. The Rev. Mr. Swinton, the worthy clergyman who attended me in prison, can testify that I was very regular at the chapel whenever I was well. Sometimes I really was not able to come out, and then he attended me in my room. They likewise have published papers and depositions which ought not to have been published in order to represent me as the most abandoned of my sex and to prejudice the world against me. I submit myself to your lordships and to the worthy jury. I can assure your lordships, as I am to answer it before that grand tribunal, where I must appear, I am as innocent as the child unborn of the death of my father. I would not endeavour to save my life at the expense of truth. I really thought the powder an innocent, inoffensive thing, and I gave it to procure his love. It has been mentioned, I should say I was ruined. My lords, when a young woman loses her character is not that her ruin? Why, then, should this expression be construed in so wide a sense? Is it not ruining my character to have such a thing laid to my charge? And whatever may be the event of this trial I am ruined most effectually. Evidence for the Defence. [Sidenote: Ann James] ANN JAMES, examined--I live at Henley, and had use to wash for Mr. Blandy. I remember the time Mr. Blandy grew ill. Before he was ill there was a difference between Elizabeth Binfield and Miss Blandy, and Binfield was to go away. How long before Mr. Blandy's death?--It might be pretty near a quarter of a year before. I have heard her curse Miss Blandy, and damn her for a bitch, and said she would not stay. Since this affair happened I heard her say, "Damn her for a black bitch. I shall be glad to see her go up the ladder and swing." How long after?--It was after Miss Blandy was sent away to gaol. Cross-examined--What was this quarrel about?--I do not know. I heard her say she had a quarrel, and was to go away several times. Who was by at this time?--Mary Banks was by, and Nurse Edwards, and Mary Seymour, and I am not sure whether Robert Harman was there or not. How was it introduced?--It happened in Mr. Blandy's kitchen; she was always talking about Miss. Were you there on the 5th of August?--I cannot say I was. Do you remember the prisoner's coming into the washhouse and saying she had been doing something with her father's water gruel?--No, I do not remember it. [Sidenote: E. Binfield] ELIZABETH BINFIELD, recalled--Did you, Elizabeth Binfield, ever make use of such an expression as this witness has mentioned?--I never said such words. Did you ever tell this witness Miss and you had quarrelled?--To the best of my knowledge, I never told her about a quarrel. Have you ever had a quarrel?--We had a little quarrel sometime before. Did you ever declare you were to go away?--I did. [Sidenote: Mary Banks] MARY BANKS, examined--I remember being in Mr. Blandy's kitchen in company with Ann James. COUNSEL--Who was in company?--I do not remember. Do you remember a conversation between Elizabeth Binfield and Ann James?--I do not remember anything of it. Do you remember her aspersing Miss Blandy's character?--I do not recollect. Did you hear her say, "She should be glad to see the black bitch go up the ladder to be hanged"?--She did say, "She should be glad to see the black bitch go up the ladder to be hanged." When was this?--It was the night Mr. Blandy was opened. Are you sure it was that day?--I am sure it was. Where was Miss Blandy then?--She was then in the house. [Sidenote: E. Herne] EDWARD HERNE, examined--I formerly was a servant in Mr. Blandy's family; I went there eighteen years ago, and left them about twelve years ago last November, but have been frequently at the house ever since, that is, may be once, twice, thrice, or four times in a week. What was Miss's general behaviour to her father and in the family?--She behaved, according to what I always observed, as well to her father and the family as anybody could do, an affectionate, dutiful daughter. Did you see her during the time of Mr. Blandy's illness?--I did. The first time I went into the room she was not able to speak to me nor I to her for ten minutes. What was that owing to?--It was owing to the greatness of her grief. When was this?--It was the 12th of August, at night. How did her father seem to be satisfied with her behaviour and conduct?--She was put into my custody that night; when I went into the room (upon hearing the groans of her father) she said, at my return, "Pray, Ned, how does he do?" Did you ever hear her speak ill of her father?--I never heard her swear an oath all the time I have known her, or speak a disrespectful word of her father. Cross-examined--What are you?--I am sexton of the parish. On what night did Mr. Blandy die?--On the Wednesday night. How came you, as she was put under your care, to let her get away?--I was gone to dig a grave, and was sent for home; they told me she was gone over the bridge. Had you any talk with her about this affair?--She declared to me that Captain Cranstoun put some powder into tea one morning for Mr. Blandy, and she turned herself about he was stirring it in the cup. When did she tell you this?--In August, 1750. Have you seen her since she has been in Oxford Gaol?--I have. When the report was spread that the captain was taken I was with her in the gaol; a gentleman came in and said he was taken; she wrung her hands and said, "I hope in God it is true, that he may be brought to justice as well as I, and that he may suffer the punishment due to his crime as she should do for hers." PRISONER--Give me leave to ask the last witness some questions. COURT--You had better tell your questions to your counsel, for you may do yourself harm by asking questions. PRISONER'S COUNSEL--Did not the prisoner at the same time declare that as to herself she was totally innocent, and had no design to hurt her father?--At that time she declared that when Cranstoun put the powder into the tea, upon which no damage at all came, and when she put powder afterwards herself, she apprehended no damage could come to her father. When she spoke of her own suffering did she not mean the same misfortune that she then laboured under?--She said she should be glad Cranstoun should be taken and brought to justice; she thought it would bring the whole to light, he being the occasion of it all, for she suffered (by being in prison) and was innocent, and knew nothing that it was poison no more than I or any one person in the house. [Sidenote: T. Cawley] THOMAS CAWLEY, examined--I have known Miss Blandy twenty years and upwards, and her father likewise; I was intimate in the family, and have frequently drunk tea there. What was her behaviour to her father during your knowledge of her?--I never saw any other than dutiful. [Sidenote: T. Staverton] THOMAS STAVERTON, examined--I have lived near them five or six and twenty years and upwards, and was always intimate with them; I always thought they were two happy people, he happy in a daughter and she in a father, as any in the world. The last time she was at our house she expressed her father had had many wives laid out for him, but she was satisfied he never would marry till she was settled. Cross-examined--Did you observe for the last three or four months before his death that he declined in his health?--I observed he did; I do not say as to his health, but he seemed to shrink, and I have often told my wife my old friend Blandy was going. Had he lost any teeth latterly?--I do not know as to that; he was a good-looking man. PRISONER'S COUNSEL--How old was he?--I think he was sixty-two. [Sidenote: Mary Davis] MARY DAVIS, examined--I live at the Angel at Henley Bridge; I remember Miss Blandy coming over the bridge the day that Mr. Blandy was opened; she was walking along, and a great crowd of people after her. I, seeing that, went and asked what was the matter; I asked her where she was going? She said, "To take a walk for a little air, for they were going to open her father, and she could not bear the house." The mob followed her so fast was the reason I asked her to go to my house, which she accepted. Did she walk fast or slowly?--She was walking as softly as foot could be laid to the ground; it had not the least appearance of her going to make her escape. [Sidenote: R. Stoke] ROBERT STOKE, examined--I saw the prisoner with Mrs. Davis the day her father was opened; I told her I had orders from the Mayor to detain her. She said she was very glad, because the mob was about. Did you think, from her dress and behaviour, she was about to attempt to make her escape?--No, it did not appear to me at all. Cross-examined--Were you there when Mr. and Mrs. Lane came in?--I was. Did you hear the words she said to Mr. Lane?--I heard nothing at all. [Sidenote: Mr. Ford] Mr. FORD--As very unjustifiable and illegal methods have been used to prejudice the world against Miss Blandy, such as it is to be hoped, no man will have the boldness to repeat--I mean the printing and publishing the examination of witnesses before her trial--and as very scandalous reports have been spread concerning her behaviour ever since her imprisonment, it is desired that the reverend gentleman who has attended her as a clergyman may give an account of her conduct whilst in gaol, that she may at least be delivered of some of the infamy she at present lies under. To which he was answered by the Court that it was needless to call a witness to that, as the jury was only to regard what was deposed in Court, and entirely to disregard what papers had been printed and spread about, or any report whatsoever. [Sidenote: Mr. Bathurst] Mr. BATHURST--Your lordships will, I hope, indulge me in a very few words by way of reply, and after the length of evidence which has been laid before the jury I will take up but little of your lordships' time. Gentlemen, you observe it has been proved to a demonstration that Mr. Francis Blandy did die of poison. It is as clearly proved that he died of the poison put into his water gruel upon the 5th of August, and that the prisoner at the bar put it in. For so much appears, not only from her own confession, but from a variety of other evidence. The single question, therefore, for your consideration is, whether she did it knowingly or ignorantly? [Illustration: Miss Molly Blandy, taken from the life in Oxford Castle (_From an Engraving in the Collection of Mr. A.M. Broadley_.)] I admit that in some of the conversations which she has had at different times with different persons she has said she did it without knowing it to be poison, or believing it to be so. At the same time I beg leave to observe (as you will find when their lordships sum up the evidence to you) that she did not always make the same pretence. Examine then, gentlemen, whether it is possible she could do it ignorantly. It has appeared in evidence that she owned she saw Mr. Cranstoun put some powder into her father's tea in the month of August preceding, that she had herself afterwards done the same; but she said she saw no ill-effect from it, and therefore concluded it was not hurtful. Her own witness, Thomas Staverton, says that for the past year Mr. Blandy used to shrink in his clothes, that he made the observation to his wife and told her his friend Blandy was going. Our witnesses have said that she herself made the same observation, told them her father looked very ill, as though he would not live, and said he would not live till October. And here let me observe one thing. She says she gave her father this powder to make him love her. After having heard the great affection with which the poor dying man behaved towards her, can you think she wanted any charm for that purpose? After having heard what her own witnesses have said of the father's fondness for the daughter, can you believe she had occasion for any love powder? But one thing more. She knew her father had taken this powder in his water gruel upon the Monday night, and upon the Tuesday night; saw how violently he was affected by it, and yet would have had more of the same gruel given to him upon the Wednesday. Yet one thing more. When she must have been fully satisfied that it was poison, and that it would probably be the occasion of his death, she endeavoured to burn the paper in which the rest of the powder was contained, without ever acquainting the physicians what she had given him, which might have been the means for them to have prescribed what was proper for his relief. Still one thing more. She is accused upon the Saturday; she attempts to burn the powder upon the Saturday; and yet upon the Sunday she stays from church in order to write a letter to Mr. Cranstoun. In that letter she styles him her "dear Willy," acquaints him her father is so bad that he must not be frightened if he does not soon hear from her again; says she is herself better; then cautions him to take care what he writes lest his letters should fall into a wrong hand. Was this such a letter as she would have wrote if she had been innocent? if she had not known the quality of the powder? if she had been imposed upon by Mr. Cranstoun? I will only make one other observation, which is that of all our witnesses she has attempted to discredit only one. She called two persons to contradict Elizabeth Binfield in regard to a scandalous expression (which she was charged with, but which she positively denied ever to have made use of) in saying "she should be glad to see the prisoner go up the ladder and swing." They first called Ann James; she swore to the expression, and said it was after Miss Blandy was sent to Oxford gaol. The next witness, Mary Banks, who at first did not remember the conversation, and at last did not remember who were present, said (upon being asked about the time) that she was sure the conversation happened upon the Thursday night on which Mr. Blandy was opened, and during the time that Miss Blandy was in the house. These two witnesses, therefore, grossly contradict one another, consequently ought not to take away the credit of Elizabeth Binfield. And let me observe that Elizabeth Binfield proved nothing (besides some few expressions used by Miss Blandy) but what was confirmed by the other maidservant, Susan Gunnell. I will, in justice to the prisoner, add (what has already been observed by Mr. Ford) that the printing which was given in evidence before the coroner, drawing odious comparisons between her and former parricides, and spreading scandalous reports in regard to her manner of demeaning herself in prison, was a shameful behaviour towards her, and a gross offence against public justice. But you, gentlemen, are men of sense, and upon your oaths; you will therefore totally disregard whatever you have heard out of this place. You are sworn to give a true verdict between the king and the prisoner at the bar, according to the evidence now laid before you. It is upon that we (who appear for the public) rest our cause. If, upon that evidence, she appears to be innocent, in God's name let her be acquitted; but if, upon that evidence, she appears to be guilty, I am sure you will do justice to the public, and acquit your own consciences. PRISONER--It is said I gave it my father to make him fond of me. There was no occasion for that--but to make him fond of Cranstoun. Charge to the Jury. [Sidenote: Mr. Baron Legge] MR. BARON LEGGE[13]--Gentlemen of the jury, Mary Blandy, the prisoner at the bar, stands indicted before you for the murder of Francis Blandy, her late father, by mixing poison in tea and water gruel, which she had prepared for him, to which she has pleaded that she is not guilty. In the first place, gentlemen, I would take notice to you of a very improper and a very scandalous behaviour towards the prisoner by certain people who have taken upon themselves very unjustifiably to publish in print what they call depositions, taken before the coroner, in relation to this very affair which is now brought before you to determine. I hope you have not seen them; but if you have, I must tell you, as you are men of sense and probity, that you must divest yourselves of every prejudice that can arise from thence and attend merely to the evidence that has now been given before you in Court, which I shall endeavour to repeat to you as exactly as I am able after so great a length of examination. In support of the indictment, the counsel for the Crown have called a great number of witnesses. In order to establish, in the first place, the fact that Mr. Blandy died of poison, they begin with Dr. Addington, who tells you that he did attend Mr. Blandy in his last illness; that he was first called in upon Saturday evening, the 10th of August last; that the deceased complained that after drinking some water gruel on Monday night, the 5th of August, he perceived a grittiness in his mouth, attended with a pricking-burning, especially about his tongue and throat; that he had a pricking and burning in his stomach, accompanied with sickness; a pricking and griping in his bowels; but that afterwards he purged and vomited a good deal, which had lessened those symptoms he had complained of; that on Tuesday night, the 6th of August, he took more gruel, and had immediately a return of the same symptoms, but more aggravated; that he had besides hiccups, cold sweats, great anxieties, prickings in every external as well as internal part of his body, which he compared to so many needles darting at the same time into all parts of him; but the doctor tells you at the time he saw him he said he was easy, except in his mouth, his nose, lips, eyes, and fundament, and some transient pinchings in his bowels, which the doctor then imputed to the purgings and vomitings, for he had had some bloody stools; that he imputed the sensations upwards to the fumes of something he had taken the Monday and Tuesday before; that he inspected the parts affected, and found his tongue swelled, his throat excoriated and a little swelled, his lips dry, and pimples on them, pimples on the inside of his nostrils, and his eyes bloodshot; that next morning he examined his fundament, which he found surrounded with ulcers; his pulse trembled and intermitted, his breath was interrupted and laborious, his complexion yellowish, and he could not without the greatest difficulty swallow a teaspoonful of the thinnest liquid; that he then asked him if he had given offence to any person whatever. His daughter the prisoner was then present, and she made answer that her father was at peace with all the world, and all the world with him. He then asked if he had been subject to this kind of complaint before. The prisoner said that he was subject to the heartburn and colic, and she supposed this would go off as it used to do; that he then told them that he suspected that by some means or other he had taken poison, to which the deceased replied he did not know but he might, or words to that effect; but the prisoner said it was impossible. He returned to visit him on Sunday morning, and found him something relieved; that he had some stools, but none bloody, which he took for a spasm; that afterwards Norton, the apothecary, gave him some powder, which he said had been taken out of gruel, which the deceased had drank on Monday and Tuesday; this powder he examined at leisure, and believed it to be white arsenic; that the same morning a paper was put into his hands by one of the maids, which she said had been taken out of the fire, and which she saw Miss Blandy throw in. There was a superscription on the paper, "powder to clean the pebbles." There was so little of it that he cannot say positively what it was, but suspects it to be arsenic, for he put it on his tongue and it felt like arsenic, but some burnt paper mixed with it had discoloured and softened it. He tells you that on Monday morning the deceased was worse; all the symptoms returned, and he complained more of his fundament than before. He then desired the assistance of some skilful physician, because he looked upon him to be in the utmost danger, and apprehended this affair might come before a court of judicature. He asked the deceased if he really thought he was poisoned, to which he answered that he really believed so, and thought he had taken it often, because his teeth rotted faster than usual; he had frequent prickings and burnings in his tongue and throat, violent heartburn, and frequent stools, that carried it off again by unaccountable fits of vomiting and purging; that he had had these symptoms, especially after his daughter had received a present of Scotch pebbles from Mr. Cranstoun. He then asked the deceased who he suspected had given the poison to him; the tears then stood in his eyes, but he forced a smile and said, "A poor love-sick girl! I forgive her; I always thought there was mischief in those cursed Scotch pebbles." Dr. Lewis came that evening, and Miss Blandy was sent into her chamber, under a guard, and all papers in her pocket, and all instruments with which she might hurt herself, or any other person, and her keys, were taken from her, that nothing might be secreted; for it was not then publicly known that Mr. Blandy was poisoned, and they thought themselves accountable for her forthcoming. On Monday night the deceased mended again, and grew better and worse, unaccountably, as long as he lived. On Tuesday morning everything growing worse, he became excessively weak, rambled in his discourse, and grew delirious, had cold, clammy sweats, short cough, and a deep way of fetching his breath; and he observed upon these occasions that an ulcerous matter issued from his fundament. In the midst of all this, whenever he recovered his senses he said he was better, and seemed quite serene, and told him he thought himself like a man bit by a mad dog. "I should be glad to drink, but I can't swallow." About noon his speech faltered more than before; he grew ghastly, was a shocking sight, and had a very bad night. On Wednesday morning he recovered his senses a little and said he would make his will in a few days; but soon grew delirious again, sunk every minute, and about two in the afternoon he died. The doctor tells you he then thought, and still thinks, that he died of poison; that he had no symptoms while he lived, nor after he was dead, but what are common in people who have taken white arsenic. He then read some observations which he had made on the appearances of his body after he was dead; that his back and the parts he lay on were livid; the fat on the muscles of his belly was loose in texture and, approached fluidity; the muscles of the belly were pale and flaccid; the cawl yellower than natural; the side next the stomach and intestines brownish; the heart variegated with purple spots; there was no water in the pericardium; the lungs resembled bladders filled with air, blotted with black, like ink; the liver and spleen were discoloured, and the former looked as if it had been boiled; a stone was found in the gall-bladder; the bile was very fluid and of a dirty yellow colour inclining to red; the kidneys were stained with livid spots; the stomach and bowels were inflated, and looked liked they had been pinched, and blood stagnated in the membranes; they contained slimy, bloody froth; their coats were thin, smooth, and flabby; the inside of the stomach was quite smooth, and, about the orifices, inflamed, and appeared stabbed and wounded, like the white of an eye just brushed by the beards of barley; that there was no appearance of any natural decay at all in him, and therefore he has no doubt of his dying by poison; and believes that poison to have been white arsenic; that the deceased never gave him any reason why he took the same sort of gruel a second time, nor did he ask him. He tells you, as to the powder that was given him by Norton, he made some experiments with it the next day, and some part of it he gave to Mr. King, an experienced chemist in Reading, who, upon trial, found it to be arsenic, as he told him; that he twice had powder from Norton, and that what he had the second time he kept entirely in his own custody and made experiments with it a month afterwards; that he never was out of the room while those experiments were making, and he observed them to tally exactly with other arsenic which he tried at the same time. I need not mis-spend your time in repeating the several experiments which the doctor has told you he made of it; he has been very minute and particular in his account of them, and, upon the whole, concludes the same to have been arsenic. Dr. Lewis, the other physician, who has likewise been sworn, stood by all the while, and confirms Dr. Addington's evidence, tells you he observed the same symptoms, and gives it absolutely as his opinion that Mr. Blandy died by poison, of which he has not the least doubt. The next witness that is called on the part of the Crown is Benjamin Norton, who is an apothecary at Henley. He tells you he was sent for to Mrs. Mounteney's, in Henley, on Thursday morning, the 8th of August; that there was a pan brought thither by Susan Gunnel, Mr. Blandy's maidservant, with some water gruel in it; that he was asked what that powder was in the bottom of the pan, to which he replied that it was impossible to say whilst it was wet in the gruel, but that he would take it out; that accordingly he did take it out and laid it upon paper, and gave it to Mrs. Mounteney to keep, which she did till the Sunday following, when it was delivered to him, and he showed it to Dr. Addington, to whom he gave some of it twice, and, by the experiment made upon it with a hot poker, he apprehended it to be of the arsenic kind; that the powder he gave Dr. Addington was the same that he received from Mrs. Mounteney; that he has some of it still by him, which, he now produces in Court. He tells you that he was sent for to Mr. Blandy on Tuesday, the 6th of August; that he was very ill, as he imagined, of colic, and complained of a violent pain in his stomach, attended with reaching and purging and swelling of the bowels; that he took physic on Wednesday morning, from which he found himself better; that on Thursday he went there in the morning, but did not then see him, but went again about twelve o'clock, and then saw him; he desired to have more physic, which he sent him to take on the Friday morning; that he has been used to attend Mr. Blandy, but that he never saw him thus out of order; that the last illness that he had had was thirteen months before. He tells you that he has heard the prisoner say that she had heard music in the house, which portended something, and that Cranstoun had seen her father's apparition, and this was some months before her father's death; he says that he cannot tell who it was sent for him, but that when he came he found Mr. Blandy and the prisoner together; that he asked if he had eaten anything that had disagreed with him, to which the prisoner made answer, nothing that she knew of, except some peas on the Saturday night before; that at that time he did not apprehend anything of poison, nor did Mr. Blandy mention anything of taking the gruel to him; that on Saturday the prisoner desired he would take care of her father, and if there were any danger, call for help; he told her he thought he was in great danger, and then she begged Dr. Addington might be sent for. Mr. Blandy himself would have deferred it till the next day, but she, notwithstanding, sent for him immediately. He tells you that as to the powder he found it to be gritty, and had no smell; at first he could not tell what it was till he took notice of the old woman's symptoms to be the same as Mr. Blandy's; then he suspected foul play, and from what he heard in the family suspected Miss Blandy. Mrs. Mounteney is then called, who tells you that she remembers Susan Gunnell bringing a pan to her house with water gruel and powder at the bottom of it on Thursday; that she sent for Norton, the apothecary, who took the powder out, and laid it on white paper, which he gave to her to keep till it was called for; that she locked it up, and delivered the same to Norton on the Sunday following; she tells you that the prisoner always behaved dutifully to her father, as far as ever she saw, when in his presence; that she did not mention the paper left with her to anybody till it was fetched away on Sunday morning, the 11th of August; that she was not at Mr. Blandy's in that time, and neither saw him nor the prisoner, but she was there on the Sunday afternoon, though she did not then mention anything of it. The next witness is Susan Gunnell, who tells you that she carried the pan of water gruel to Mrs. Mounteney's from Mr. Blandy's, which had been made at his house the Sunday seven-night before his death by himself; that she set it in the common pantry, where all the family used to go, and observed nobody to be busy there afterwards; but on Monday the prisoner told her she had been stirring her papa's water gruel and eating the oatmeal out of the bottom; that she gave him a half-pint mug of it that Monday night before he went to bed; that she saw the prisoner take the teaspoon that was in the mug, stir it about, and then put her fingers to the spoon, and rub them together, and then he drank some part of it; that on Tuesday morning she did not see him when first he came downstairs, and the first time she saw him was between nine and ten o'clock, when Miss Blandy and he were together; that he then said he was not well, and going to lie down; that on Tuesday evening Robert Harman bid her warm her master some water gruel, for he was in haste for supper; that she warmed him some of the same, which Miss Blandy carried into the parlour, and she believes he ate of it, for there was about half left in the morning; that she met him that night, after the water gruel, as he was going up to bed; as soon as he got into the room he called for a basin to reach, and seemed to be very sick by reaching several times; the next morning about six o'clock she carries him up his physic, when he told her he had had a pretty good night, and was better; but he had vomited in the night, as she judges by the basin, which she had left clean, and was then about half-full; that on Wednesday the prisoner came into the kitchen and said to her that as her master had taken physic he might want water gruel, therefore she might give him the same again, and not leave her work to make fresh, as she was busy ironing; to which she answered that it was stale, if there was enough of it; that it would not take much time, and she would make fresh, and accordingly did so; that she had the evening before taken up the pan, and disliked the taste, and thought it stale, but was now willing to taste it again; that she put the pan to her mouth and drank some of it, and then observed some whiteness at the bottom, and told Betty Binfield that she never saw any oatmeal settlement so white before, whereupon Betty Binfield looked at it, and said "Oatmeal this! I think it looks as white as flour"; she then took it out of doors, where there was more light, and putting her finger to the bottom of the pan, found it gritty, upon which she recollected that she had heard that poison was white and gritty, which made her fear this might be poison; she therefore locked it up in a closet, and on Thursday morning carried it to Mrs. Mounteney's, where Mr. Norton saw it. She tells you that about six weeks before Mr. Blandy's death she was not very well herself, and Miss Blandy then asked her what was the matter with her, and what she had eaten or drank; to which she answered that she knew not what ailed her, but she had taken nothing more than the rest of the family; upon which the prisoner said to her, "Susan, have you eaten any water gruel? For I am told it hurts me, and may hurt you." To which she answered, "Madam, it cannot affect me, for I have eaten none." She then mentions a conversation that Betty Binfield told her she had with the prisoner on the same subject, but that you will hear from Betty Binfield herself. She then tells you that on the Wednesday morning, after she had given her master his physic, she saw Ann Emmet, the charwoman, and said to her, "Dame, you used to be fond of water gruel; here's a fine mess for you which my master left last night"; and thereupon warmed it, and gave it her; that the woman sat down on a bench in the kitchen and drank some of it, but not all, and said the house smelt of physic, and everything tasted of physic, and she must go out and reach before she could finish it; that she went out to the wash-house, as she believes; that in about half an hour she followed her, and then found her in the necessary-house reaching, and, as she said, purging; that the old woman stayed there an hour and a half, during which time she went frequently to her, and carried her surfeit water; she said she was no better, and desired some fair water, upon which she persuaded her to come into the house, but she said she was not able without help; that then she led her in and put her in a chair by the fire, where the coughing and reaching continued; that she stayed in the house half an hour, and grew worse, and she thought her in a fit or seized with death; that about nine of the clock that morning she went up to Miss Blandy and acquainted her that her dame had been very ill and complained that the smell of physic had made her sick, and at the same time told her that she had eaten nothing but a little of her master's water gruel, which could not hurt her, to which the prisoner said, "That she was glad she was not below stairs, for she should have been shocked to have seen her poor dame so ill." She tells you that sometimes the prisoner talked affectionately of her father, and at other times but middling, and called him an old villain for using an only child so. Sometimes she wished for his long life, and sometimes for his death, and would often say, "That she was very awkward, and that if her father was dead she would go to Scotland and live with Lady Cranstoun; that by her father's constitution he might live twenty years, but sometimes would say she did not think he looked so well." She remembers Dr. Addington being sent for on Saturday evening, and tells you that the prisoner was not debarred going into her father's room till Sunday night, when Mr. Norton brought her down with him, and told this witness not to suffer any person to go into her master's room except herself, who looked after him. That about ten of the clock on Monday morning the prisoner came into the room after Mr. Norton; that she then fell on her knees to her father, and said, "Sir, banish me where you please; do with me what you please, so you do, but forgive me; and as for Cranstoun, I will never see him, speak to him, or write to him more as long as I live if you will forgive me." To which the deceased made answer, "I forgive thee, my dear, and I hope God will forgive thee; but thee shouldst have considered better before thee attemptedst anything against thy father; thee shouldst have considered I was thy own father." That the prisoner then said, "Sir, as to your illness I am entirely innocent." To which the witness replied, "Madam, I believe you must not say you are entirely innocent, for the powder left in the water gruel and the paper of powder taken out of the fire are now in such hands that they must be publicly produced." The witness then told her that she believed she had herself taken, about six weeks before, a dose in tea that was prepared for her master. To which the prisoner answered, "I have put no powder in tea; I have put powder in water gruel. If you have received any injury I am entirely innocent; it was given me with another intent." The deceased hearing this turned himself in his bed, and said, "Oh, such a villain! Come to my house, eat of the best and drink of the best my house could afford, should take away my life and ruin my daughter. Oh! my dear, thee must hate that man; thee must hate the ground he goes on; thee can'st not help it." That the prisoner replied, "Sir, your tenderness to me is like a sword to my heart. Every word you say is like swords piercing my heart, much worse than if you were to be ever so angry. I must down on my knees and beg you will not curse me." To which her father answered, "I curse thee, my dear! How shouldst think I could curse thee? No; I bless thee, and hope God will bless thee, and amend thy life. Do, my dear, go out of the room; say no more lest thee shouldst say anything to thy own prejudice. Go to thy Uncle Stevens; take him for thy friend. Poor man, I am sorry for him." And that then the prisoner went directly out of the room. This witness further tells you that on the Saturday before she was in the kitchen about twelve o'clock at noon, when the prisoner having wrote the direction of a letter to her uncle Stevens and going to the fire to dry it, she observed her put a paper or two into the fire, and saw her thrust them down with a stick; that Elizabeth Binfield, then putting some fresh coals on, she believes kept the paper from being consumed, soon after which the prisoner left the kitchen, and she herself acquainted Betty Binfield that the prisoner had been burning something; that Betty Binfield asked where, and the witness pointed to the corner of the grate, whereupon Betty Binfield moved a large coal and took out a paper and gave it to her; that it was a small piece of paper with writing upon it, viz., "The powder to clean the pebbles," to the best of her remembrance. She did not read it herself, but Betty Binfield did, and told her what it was; that about eleven or twelve o'clock that night she delivered this paper to Betty Binfield again, but it had never been out of her pocket till that time. She tells you that before this, upon the same Saturday morning, she had been in her master's room about seven o'clock to carry him something to drink, and when he had drank it she said to him, "Sir, I have something to communicate to you which nearly concerns your health and your family, I believe you have got something in your water gruel that I am afraid has hurt you, and I believe Miss Blandy put it in by her coming into the wash-house on Monday and saying that she had been stirring her papa's water gruel and eating the oatmeal out of it." Upon which he said, "I find I have something not right. My head is not right as it used to be, nor has been for some time." This witness told him that she had found a powder in the pan, upon which he said to her, "Dost thee know anything of this powder? Didst thee ever see any of it?" To which she answered, "No, none but what she saw in the water gruel." He then asked her, "Dost know where she had this powder, or canst guess?" To which she replied, "I cannot guess anywhere, except from Mr. Cranstoun. My reason to suspect that is, Miss Blandy has lately had letters oftener than usual." Her master then said, "Now you mention it, I remember when he was at my house he talked of a particular poison they had in his country. Oh! that villain, that ever he came into my house." She likewise told him that she had shown the powder to Mr. Norton, but he could not tell what it was, as it was wet, but whatever it was it ought not to be there. Her master expressed some surprise, and said, "Mr. Norton not know! That's strange. A person so much used to drugs." She told him Mr. Norton thought it would be proper for him (her father) to seize her pockets with her keys and papers. To which he said, "I cannot do it; I cannot shock her so much. But canst not thee take out a letter or two which she may think she has dropped by chance?" The witness told him, "No, sir, I have no right; she is your daughter. You may do it, and nobody else." She tells you she cannot say how long before this it was that Ann Emmet had been sick with the tea; that Miss Blandy then sent her whey and broth, a quart or three pints at a time, once a day or every other day; that she herself once drank a dish of tea on a Sunday morning out of her master's dish, which was not well relished, and she thought somebody had been taking salts in that cup; and this was about six weeks and three days before her master's death; that she found no ill effect from it till after dinner that day; she had then a hardness at her stomach, which she apprehended was from eating plentifully of beans at dinner; that afterwards she seemed to have some indigestion, and had a remarkable trembling upon her; that she had no other symptoms for three days, but afterwards, for about three days more, she was troubled with a reaching every morning. She says she tasted the water gruel twice, once on the Tuesday, when she was mixing it for her master, and again on the Wednesday, but found no remarkable disorder till about two o'clock on the Wednesday morning before her master's death, when she was seized with convulsions. She says that her throat continued troublesome for six or seven weeks after she had drank the tea, and continued ill for three weeks after her master's death. She remembered once that the prisoner had a large box of linen and some pebbles from Mr. Cranstoun in the spring, before her master's death, and a small box of Scotch pebbles afterwards, about three months before his death; that the prisoner showed the pebbles to many of her acquaintance, but the witness never heard of powder to clean them; she tells you that about a year before his death her master had a cold, but she does not remember he was so ill as to send for the apothecary; that he used to be equally complaining of the gravel, gout, and heartburn for twelve years; knows nothing particular of any complaint but the heartburn, and that he may have complained of all the time she has lived in the house, but she is not positive. She says the prisoner's behaviour to her father, in general, seemed to be dutiful, but she used undutiful expressions in her passions; that there had been no conversation between her master and the prisoner before her asking forgiveness, but a message sent by him to her that he was willing to forgive her if she would bring that villain to justice; in all he said afterwards he seemed to speak of his daughter as if he believed her innocent of any intention to hurt him, and looked on Cranstoun as the first mover and contriver of all, and had said, "Poor, unfortunate girl, that ever she should be led away by such a villain to do such a thing!" She believes he thought his daughter unacquainted with the effects of the powder; that the prisoner during his illness kept him company and directed everything for him as for herself; the prisoner knew her father was ill on Monday and Tuesday nights, but would not take upon her to say that she knew what was the cause of it, but she knew that the charwoman had been ill on the Wednesday morning before she told the witness that the old water gruel would serve for her father. The next witness is Elizabeth Binfield, who tells you that she was a servant to the deceased almost three years before his death; that he first complained of unusual pains and prickings about a fortnight before his death; that she has often heard the prisoner mention walking and music that she had heard in the house; that she thought it to be her mother; and three-quarters of a year before her master's death the prisoner told her that the music presaged his death, and continued talking in the same way to the time of it; that she has often heard her say he would die before October; that the prisoner told her that Mr. Cranstoun had informed her that a famous woman, one Mrs. Morgan, who lived in Scotland or London, but which the witness cannot say, had said so; that the prisoner used to appear glad when she spoke of the prospect of her father's death, for that then she should be released from all her fatigues and be happy. She tells you she heard the prisoner say that her father complained of a ball of fire in his guts before the Monday on which he took the water gruel; she tells you that she remembers that Ann Emmet, the charwoman, was ill about five or six weeks before this time, and that the prisoner ordered her white wine, whey, and broth; that she herself made the broth two or three times, two quarts at a time. She says that on Saturday, the 10th of August, the paper was taken out of the fire by herself, which she looks upon, and says she really believes it to be the same which she gave to Susan Gunnell, had again from her, and then delivered to Dr. Addington and Mr. Norton. She tells you that, when Susan Gunnell was ill, the prisoner asked this witness if Susan had taken any of her father's water gruel, and upon her answering, "Not that I know," the prisoner said, "If she does, she may do for herself, may I tell you." With this conversation she acquainted Susan Gunnell about a month or six weeks before her master's death, in which particular she is confirmed by Susan Gunnell. She says, further, that she heard the prisoner say, "Who would grudge to send an old father to hell for £10,000?" And this she introduced by talking of young girls being kept out of their fortunes. She has heard the prisoner often curse her father and call him rascal and villain. She says that Mr. Cranstoun had been at her master's about three-quarters of a year before his death, and she believes her master did not approve of his being so much with his daughter, as she judged by his temper; but she does not believe he debarred his daughter from keeping him company. She says that, upon Saturday, the 10th of August, she was in the kitchen when her master was shaving, and the prisoner was there, and her master said he had once like to have been poisoned at a public-house; to which the prisoner answered that she remembered it very well. Her master said that one of the company died immediately, the other is now dead, but it was his fortune to be poisoned at last; and then looked hard at the prisoner, who appeared in great confusion, and seemed all in a tremble. Her master said further that it was white arsenic that was put into their wine. This witness then tells you that she sat up with the prisoner the night her father died till three o'clock, but the prisoner went to bed about one; that they had no discourse at all of her father. But the prisoner asked her if she would go away with her, and offered, if she would go to the Bell or the Lion and hire a post-chaise, she would give her fifteen guineas at getting into the chaise and ten guineas more when they got to London; that, on the witness refusing to comply with this request, the prisoner burst into laughter and said she was only joking. She tells you further that she heard the prisoner tell Dr. Addington that she had given the powder to her father before, and then it was in tea; that she was afraid of a discovery, so flung it away, and filled the cup up again, which Susan Gunnell drank, and was ill for a week after. She says that upon Monday, the 5th of August, the prisoner came into the wash-house and said that she had been in the pantry eating oatmeal out of her father's gruel, which she little regarded then. But the same day, in the afternoon, she saw the prisoner in the pantry, take a teaspoon, and stir the water gruel, which was in a pan, and then rubbed it between her fingers; that on the Tuesday evening the prisoner came into the kitchen to her and said, "Betty, if one thing should happen, will you go into Scotland with me?" To which she said, "Madam, I do not know." "What," says the prisoner, "you are unwilling to leave your friends?" To which the witness replied that, if she should go there and not like it, it would be expensive travelling. She says that on Monday morning, the 12th of August, she went on a message from the prisoner to beg of her father that she might speak one word with him, which, being granted, the prisoner went up; and that she afterwards met the prisoner coming out of her father's room, when she clasped the witness round the neck, burst out a-crying, and said to her, "Susan and you are the two honestest servants in the world; you deserve to be imaged in gold for your honesty; half my fortune will not make you amends for your honesty to my father." She tells you that her master had been out of order about twelve months before this time, and that it was at the time when Susan Gunnell was ill by drinking the tea that the prisoner cautioned her about Susan's drinking her father's water gruel. Dr. Addington having been appealed to by the last witness, in the course of her evidence, is again called up, and confirms all that this witness has said, except he does not remember the circumstance of Susan Gunnell's being ill with the tea. He says that the prisoner always told him she thought it an innocent powder, but said it was impossible to express her horror that she was the cause of her father's death, though she protested that she thought it innocent when she gave it, for Mr. Cranstoun had assured her that he used to take it himself, and called it a love-powder; that she had a letter from him directing her to give it in gruel, as she had informed him it did not mix in tea; that "for her own part she desired life for no other purpose than only to go through a severe penance for her sins"; that, on her being pressed by him to discover all she knew relating to Cranstoun, her answer was that "she was fully conscious of her own guilt, and would not add guilt to guilt, for she looked on Cranstoun as her husband, though the ceremony had not passed between them." He tells you further that he does not remember that she gave him any satisfactory answer to any of the questions which he put to her, which he has repeated to you, and which are very material ones, but always persisted that she was entirely ignorant of the effects of the powder till she saw them on her father; and often said, "Pray God send it may not kill him," after he had told her, and her father too, the danger of her father, and that he apprehended her to be undone. He then tells you he attended Susan Gunnell, who had the same symptoms with the deceased, but in a less degree. He also attended Ann Emmet, who had the same symptoms, and told her that she was poisoned. Alice Emmet is then called, who is daughter to Ann Emmet, the old charwoman, who gives you an account that her mother was charwoman at Mr. Blandy's in June last, in the time of hay harvest; that she was then taken sick, was seized in the night-time with a vomiting and purging, and this witness went in the morning to the prisoner, by her mother's desire, and acquainted her with the condition she was in; that the prisoner said she was sorry, and would send her something to drink, which she did in about an hour or two afterwards. The next witness is Mr. Littleton, who had been clerk to the deceased about two years, and tells you he came home from his father's, in Warwickshire, upon the 9th of August last; that the next morning the prisoner, her father, and himself were at breakfast together; that they stayed for the deceased some time; that when he came he appeared to be ill and in great agony; that he had always a particular cup to himself; that he tasted his tea and did not like it, but said it had a gritty, bad taste, and asked the prisoner if she had not put too much of the black stuff in it (meaning Bohea tea). The prisoner said it was as usual. He then tasted it again and said it had a bad taste, and looked very particularly at her. She seemed in a flurry, and walked out of the room. The deceased then poured the tea into the oat's basin and went away. Soon after the prisoner came into the room again, when he told her that he thought the deceased was very ill, for that he could not eat his breakfast; on which she asked what he had done with it, and, upon his acquainting her that it was poured into the cat's basin, she seemed a good deal confused; that the next day, being Sunday, Mr. Blandy, of Kingston, came to their house, and went to church along with him; that after they returned from church the prisoner desired this witness to walk with her and Mr. Blandy in the garden, when she put a letter into his hand and bid him direct it as usual, which he understood to be to Mr. Cranstoun (having been used to direct others before), to seal it, and put it in the post. He tells you he had then heard so much that he opened the letter, transcribed it, carried it to Mr. Norton, and read it to the deceased, who only said, "Poor, love-sick girl! what won't a girl do for a man she loves?" This letter he has now looked at, tells you that it is written worse than usual, therefore he cannot swear whether it is her hand or no, but he can swear it is the same she gave him. The letter itself has been read to you, and I will make no remarks upon it. He tells you that after Mr. Cranstoun was gone from Henley, in August 1750, he has often heard the prisoner say that she heard music, which portended death in the family, and sometimes thought it might be herself, sometimes her father, because he was so much broken; that he has heard her say death would happen before October; that he has often heard her curse her father, damn him for a rogue and a toothless old dog, within two months of his death and a great while before; that he has told her himself that he thought Mr. Blandy seemed broken, upon which she said she thought so too, and that the music portended his death. Robert Harman is called next, who tells you that he was servant to Mr. Blandy at the time of his death; that the night his master died the prisoner asked him where he should live next, on which he told her he did not know; and she then asked him if he would go away with her, and, upon his saying he did not care to do so, she told him no hurt would come to him, but it would be £500 in his way, and wanted him to go away then immediately. He says the prisoner behaved well to her father and all the family, as far as he knows, and never heard her swear about her father. The next witness is Richard Fisher, who was one of the jury on inspection of the body of the deceased. On Thursday, the 15th of August, he was informed that Miss Blandy was gone over Henley Bridge, and went to her at the Angel. When he came into the room he told her he was sorry for her misfortune, and asked her if she would not be glad to go home again. She said she should, but could not get through the mob, upon which he got a covered post-chaise and carried her home. As they were going she asked him if she was to go to Oxford that night; that he told her he believed not. When he brought her to her father's house he delivered her up to the constable; that after this he was upon the jury, and when he went to her again she asked him how it was likely to go with her, upon which he told her he was afraid very hardly, unless she could produce letters or papers of consequence to bring Cranstoun to justice. Upon which she said, "Dear Mr. Fisher, I have burnt those letters that would have brought him to justice," and gave a key out of her pocket to search a drawer for letters; but none being found, she said, "My honour to him (meaning Cranstoun) will prove my ruin." Mrs. Lane is then called, who says she went to the Angel along with her husband, when the prisoner was there. The first word she heard her husband say was, if she was guilty she would suffer according to law; upon which the prisoner stamped on the ground, and the first thing she heard her say was, "O that damned villain!" then paused a little and went on again, "But why do I blame him? I am more to blame myself, for it was I gave it him, and know the consequence." Upon being asked whether she said "I knew" or "I know," the witness tells you that she will not be positive which, but the prisoner was in a sort of agony; whichever way it was, it may make some little difference, but nothing material. Mr. Lane, the husband of the last witness, is then called, and tells you that he went into the room before his wife; that the prisoner rose and met him, told him he was a stranger to her, but, as he appeared like a gentleman, she asked him what they would do with her; that he told her she would be committed to the county gaol, and tried at the assizes; if her innocence appeared she would be acquitted, if not, she would suffer accordingly. Upon which she stamped with her foot and said, "O that damned villain! But why do I blame him? I am more to blame"; that then Mr. Littleton came in, which took off his attention; that he did not hear what followed so as to be able to give an account of it. The letter from the prisoner to Captain Cranstoun, without any date to it, which was opened by Littleton, has, then, been read to you, and with that the counsel for the Crown conclude their evidence. The prisoner in her defence complains of hard usage she has met with, denies her ever speaking ill of her father, owns herself to be passionate, and complains that words of heat upon family affairs have been misconstrued and applied to an ill intention in her; that she was not in her senses when she lost her father, nor in a proper dress to make her escape when she went over Henley Bridge; that she was taken in at the Angel by the woman of the house out of more compassion, and was then desirous to put herself under the protection of the town sergeant; that, during her confinement, she was not suffered to have decent attendance for a woman; that she was affronted by her own servants, cruelly traduced, and heavily ironed, without any reasonable cause; that she thought the powder innocent, and never had a thought of hurting her father; but her own ruin is effected by such an imputation upon her, and her appearance here, without her being convicted. She then calls her witnesses, and the first is Ann James, who tells you she lives at Henley, and used to wash at Mr. Blandy's house; that she remembers that some time before Mr. Blandy's illness there was a difference between the prisoner and Elizabeth Binfield, and that the latter was to go away; and that she has heard Elizabeth Binfield curse the prisoner and damn her for a bitch, and say she would not stay; that since this affair happened she heard her say (speaking of the prisoner), "Damn her for a black bitch; she should be glad to see her go up the ladder and swing." She tells you that, when this conversation happened, the prisoner was gone to gaol, that it was in Mr. Blandy's kitchen, and that Nurse Edwards, Mary Seymour, and Mary Banks were present. Elizabeth Binfield is then called up again, and absolutely denies the words she is charged with; she says she never acquainted the witness with any quarrel she had had, to the best of her remembrance, but that she had some few words of difference with the prisoner, who had said that she was to go away. Mary Banks is then called, who says that she was in Mr. Blandy's kitchen while he was dead in the house; but she does not remember who was in company, nor any conversation that passed between Elizabeth Binfield and Ann James till the words are directly put into her mouth, and then she recollects that Elizabeth Binfield said "she should be glad to see Miss Blandy, that black bitch, go up the ladder to be hanged;" but she tells you this was on the night that Mr. Blandy was opened, and that the prisoner was then in the house. Those two witnesses are called to impeach the credit of Elizabeth Binfield as having a prejudice against the prisoner; but I see no great stress to be laid on their evidence, for they manifestly contradict one another, but do not falsify her in any one thing she has said. The next witness that she calls is Edward Herne, who was a servant to Mr. Blandy eighteen years ago, and has left his place about twelve years; but he has been very seldom without going three or four days a week to his house ever since; that the prisoner's general behaviour to her father and the family was as well as anybody could do, with affection and duty, as far as ever he saw; that on the Monday night before Mr. Blandy died he went to the house, and that neither the prisoner nor he could speak for some minutes, which he attributed to her great concern; that she was put into his custody that night; that on hearing the groans of her father he went into him, at her desire, to inquire how he did; that he never heard her swear or speak disrespectfully of her father. He says he was not in the way when she went over Henley Bridge (being sent to dig a grave, he being sexton); that he has seen her since her confinement at Oxford, and she told him that Captain Cranstoun had before put some powder in her father's tea; that she turned about, and when she turned again he was stirring it in; that on a report that Captain Cranstoun was taken, she wrung her hands and said, "She hoped in God it was true, that he might be brought to justice as well as herself; that as she was to suffer the punishment due to her crime, he might do so too;" but at the same time she declared that when Cranstoun put the powder into the tea, and she herself did so afterwards, she saw no ill effects of it, or saw any harm from it; but if he were taken it would bring the whole to light, for she was innocent, and knew no more of its being poison than any person there. [Illustration: Miss Mary Blandy, with scene of her Execution (_From an Engraving by B. Cole, after an original Painting_.)] Thomas Cawley, the next witness, says that he has known the prisoner for twenty years and upwards; that he was intimate in the family, and never saw any other than the behaviour of a dutiful daughter from her. Thomas Staverton, that he has known the prisoner five- or six-and-twenty years; that he has lived near the family, and always thought that her father and she were very happy in each other. He has observed that Mr. Blandy was declining in his health; for four years or more he seemed to shrink, and believes he was about sixty-two years of age. Mary Davis is the next witness. She lives at the Angel, by Henley Bridge, and remembers the prisoner coming over the day her father was opened; that she was walking along with a great crowd after her; that she went to her and asked her what was the matter, and where she was going. The prisoner said she was going to walk for the air, for that they were going to open her father, and that she could not bear the house. The mob followed so close that she invited the prisoner into her house, which she accepted, and was walking gently, and had not the appearance of making an escape. Robert Stoke tells you he knows the last witness, Mrs. Davis, and saw the prisoner with her in her house the day her father was opened; that he was ordered by the mayor to take care of the prisoner, which she said she was very glad of, because the mob was about; and he did not observe any inclination or attempt whatsoever to make an escape. This, gentlemen, is the substance of the evidence on both sides, as nearly as I can recollect it. I have not wilfully omitted or misstated any part of it; but if I have, I hope the gentlemen who are of counsel on either side will be so kind as to set me right. A very tragical story it is, gentlemen, that you have heard, and upon which you are now to form your judgment and give your verdict. The crime with which the prisoner stands charged is of the most heinous nature and blackest dye, attended with considerations that shock human nature, being not only murder, but parricide--the murder of her own father. But the more atrocious, the more flagrant the crime is, the more clearly and satisfactory you will expect that it should be made out to you. In all cases of murder it is of necessity that there should be malice aforethought, which is the essence of and constitutes the offence; but that malice may be either express or implied by the law. Express malice must arise from the previous acts or declarations of the party offending, but implied malice may arise from numbers of circumstances relating either to the nature of the act itself, the manner of executing it, the person killing, or the person killed, from, which the law will as certainly infer malice as where it is express. Poison in particular is in its nature so secret, and withal so deliberate, that wherever that is knowingly given, and death ensues, the so putting to death can be no other than wilful and malicious. In the present case, which is to be made out by circumstances, great part of the evidence must rest upon presumption, in which the law makes a distinction. A slight or probable presumption only has little or no weight, but a violent presumption amounts in law to full proof, that is, where circumstances speak so strongly that to suppose the contrary would be absurd. I mention this to you that you may fix your attention on the several circumstances that have been laid before you, and consider whether you can collect from them such a presumption as the law calls a violent presumption, and from which you must conclude the prisoner to be guilty. I would observe further that where that presumption necessarily arises from circumstances they are more convincing and satisfactory than any other kind of evidence, because facts cannot lie. I cannot now go through the evidence again, but you will consider the whole together, and from thence determine what you think it amounts to. Thus far is undeniably true, and agreed on all sides, that Mr. Blandy died by poison, and that that poison was administered to him by his daughter, the prisoner at the bar. What you are to try is reduced to this single question--whether the prisoner, at the time she gave it to her father, knew that it was poison, and what effect it would have? If you believe that she knew it to be poison, the other part, viz., that she knew the effect, is consequential, and you must find her guilty. On the other hand, if you are satisfied, from her general character, from what has been said by the evidence on her part, and from what she has said herself, that she did not know it to be poison, nor had any malicious intention against her father, you ought to acquit her. But if you think she knowingly gave poison to her father, you can do no other than find her guilty. The jury consulted together about five minutes and then turned to the Court. CLERK OF ARRAIGNS--Gentlemen, are you all agreed on your verdict? JURY--Yes. CLERK OF ARRAIGNS--Who shall say for you? JURY--Our foreman. CLERK OF ARRAIGNS--Mary Blandy, hold up thy hand (which she did). Gentlemen of the jury, look upon the prisoner. How say you, is Mary Blandy guilty of the felony and murder whereof she stands indicted or not guilty? JURY--Guilty. CLERK OF ARRAIGNS--What goods or chattels, lands or tenements, had she at the time of the same felony and murder committed, or at any time since to your knowledge? JURY--None. CLERK OF ARRAIGNS--Hearken, to your verdict as the Court hath recorded it. You say that Mary Blandy is guilty of the felony and murder whereof she stands indicted, and that she has not any goods or chattels, lands or tenements, at the time of the said felony and murder committed, or at any time since, to your knowledge, and so you say all. CLERK OF ARRAIGNS--Mary Blandy, hold up thy hand. You have been indicted of felony and murder. You have been thereupon arraigned, and pleaded thereto not guilty, and for your trial you have put yourself upon God and your country, which country have found you guilty. What have you now to say for yourself why the Court should not proceed to give judgment of death upon you according to law? CRYER--Oyez! My lords the King's justices do strictly charge and command all manner of persons to keep silence whilst sentence of death is passing on the prisoner at the bar, upon pain of imprisonment. Mr. Baron Legge--Mary Blandy, you have been indicted for the murder of your father, and for your trial have put yourself upon God and your country. That country has found you guilty. You have had a long and a fair trial, and sorry I am that it falls to my lot to acquaint you that I am now no more at liberty to suppose you innocent than I was before to presume you guilty. You are convicted of a crime so dreadful, so horrid in itself, that human nature shudders at it--the wilful murder of your own father! A father by all accounts the most fond, the most tender, the most indulgent that ever lived. That father with his dying breath forgave you. May your heavenly Father do so too! It is hard to conceive that anything could induce you to perpetrate an act so shocking, so impossible to reconcile to nature or reason. One should have thought your own sense, your education, and even the natural softness of your sex, might have secured you from an attempt so barbarous and so wicked. What views you had, or what was your intention, is best known to yourself. With God and your conscience be it. At this bar we can judge only from appearances and from the evidence produced to us. But do not deceive yourself; remember you are very shortly to appear before a much more awful tribunal, where no subterfuge can avail, no art, no disguise can screen you from the Searcher of all hearts--"He revealeth the deep and secret things, He knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with Him." Let me advise you to make the best and wisest use of the little time you are likely to continue in this world. Apply to the throne of grace, and endeavour to make your peace with that Power whose justice and mercy are both infinite. Nothing now remains but to pronounce the sentence of the law upon you, which is-- "That you are to be carried to the place of execution and there hanged by the neck until you are dead; and may God of His infinite mercy receive your soul." The prisoner then addressed herself to the judge in this manner-- "My lord, as your lordship has been so good to show so much candour and impartiality in the course of my trial, I have one favour more to beg, which is, that your lordship would please to allow me a little time till I can settle my affairs, and make my peace with God." To which his lordship replied--"To be sure, you shall have a proper time allowed you." On Monday, the 6th of April following, the prisoner was executed at Oxford, according to the sentence pronounced against her. APPENDICES. APPENDIX I. Proceedings before the Coroner relative to the Death of Mr. Francis Blandy. (From No. 2 of Bibliography, Appendix XII.) _I.--Depositions of Witnesses._ Town of Henley-on-Thames in the County of Oxford. To wit, DEPOSITIONS OF WITNESSES AND EXAMINATIONS taken on oath the 15th day of August 1751, before Richard Miles, Gent. Mayor and Coroner of the said town; and also before the jury impannelled to inquire into the cause of the death of Francis Blandy, Gent. now lying dead. ANTHONY ADDINGTON of Reading, in the County of Berkshire, Doctor of Physick, maketh oath and saith, That Mary Blandy, daughter of Francis Blandy, Gent. deceased, acknowledged to this deponent, that she received of the Hon. William Henry Cranstoun, a powder which was called a powder to clean the stones or pebbles, which were sent to her at the same time as a present; and that Monday, the 5th instant, she mixed part of the said powder in a mess of water gruel; but said, that, she did not know that it was poison, till she found the effects of it on her father; for that the said Mr. Cranstoun had assured her, that if she gave her father now and then of the said powder in gruel, or any other thin liquor, it would make him kind to her: And that the said Mr. Cranstoun assured her, that it was innocent, and that he frequently took of it himself; and that this deponent received from Mr. Benjamin Norton, who was apothecary to the said Francis Blandy, some small portion of a powder, which Mr. Norton said was found at the bottom of the above-mentioned mess of gruel given to the said Francis Blandy on the 5th instant, and that this deponent, after examination of the said powder, suspects the same to be poison. A. ADDINGTON. Taken on oath, the 15th day of August, 1751, before me RICHARD MILES. WILLIAM LEWIS, of the University of Oxford, Doctor of Physick, maketh oath and saith, that Mary Blandy, daughter of Francis Blandy, Gent. deceased, acknowledged to this deponent, that she had frequently given to her said father, the powder which she had received from the Hon. William Henry Cranstoun called the powder to clean the stones or pebbles, which she had received from him, but that she did not know that the said powder was poison, but that it was intended to make her father kind to her. W. LEWIS. Taken on oath, the 15th day of August, 1751, before me RICHARD MILES. EDWARD NICHOLAS of Henley upon Thames, in the County of Oxford, surgeon, upon his oath saith, that he has examined the body of Francis Blandy, Gent. deceased, and saith, that he found that the fat on the abdomen was near a state of fluidity, and that the muscles and membranes were extremely pale; and that the omentum, was preternaturally yellow, and that part which covered the stomach was brownish; that the external part of the stomach was extremely discoloured with livid spots; the internal part was extremely inflamed, and covered almost entirely with extravasated blood; the intestines were very pale and flabby, and in some parts especially, which were near the stomach, there was much extravasated blood; the liver was likewise sphacelated, in those parts particularly which were contiguous to the stomach; the bile was of a very deep yellow; in the gall bladder was found a stone about the size of a large filbert; the lungs were covered in every point with black spots; the kidneys, spleen and heart were likewise greatly spotted; there was found no water in the pericardium; in short, he never found or beheld a body in which the viscera were so universally inflamed and mortified. EDW. NICHOLAS. Taken on oath the 15th day of August, 1751, before me RICHARD MILES. THE DEPOSITIONS AND EXAMINATIONS of A. Addington and William Lewis, doctors of physick, taken on their respective oaths, the 15th day of August, 1751, before me RICHARD MILES, Mayor and Coroner. The fat on the abdomen was observed to be near a state of fluidity. The muscles and membranes were extremely pale. The omentum was preternaturally yellow, and that part which covered the stomach was brownish. The external part of the stomach was extremely discoloured with livid spots; the internal part was extremely inflamed, and covered almost entirely with extravasated blood. The intestines were very pale and flabby, and in those parts especially which were near the stomach, there was much extravasated blood. The liver was likewise sphacelated, in those parts particularly which were contiguous to the stomach. The bile was of a very deep yellow; in the gall bladder we found a stone about the size of a large filbert. The lungs were covered in every part with black spots. The kidneys, spleen and heart were likewise greatly spotted; there was found no water in the pericardium. In short, we never beheld a body in which the viscera were so universally inflamed and mortified. It is our real opinion, that the cause of Mr. Blandy's death was poison. A. ADDINGTON. W. LEWIS. SUSANNAH GUNNELL, servant to Francis Blandy, Gent. deceased, upon her oath saith, that some time last week, she this examinant, gave to the said Francis Blandy some water gruel, and saith, that she observed that there was some settlement at the bottom of the pan, wherein the said water gruel was; and saith, that the same was white and gritty, and settled at the bottom of the pan; and saith, that this deponent, delivered the said pan, with the gruel and powder settled at the bottom thereof to Mr. Benjamin Norton, who was apothecary to the said Francis Blandy. The mark X of the said SUSANNAH GUNNELL. Taken on oath the 15th day of August, 1751, before me RICHARD MILES. ROBERT HARMAN, servant to Francis Blandy, Gent. deceas'd upon his oath saith, that Miss Mary Blandy, told this examinant, that it was love-powder which she put into her father's gruel, on Monday 5th day of August last, but that she was innocent of the consequence of it. ROB. HARMAN. Taken on oath the 15th day of August, 1751, before me RICHARD MILES. BENJAMIN NORTON of Henley upon Thames, in the County of Oxon, apothecary, upon his oath saith, that on Tuesday the 6th Day of August instant, he this examinant was sent to Mr. Francis Blandy, deceased, who then complained of a violent pain in his stomach and bowels, attended with a violent vomiting and purging; and saith that on the Thursday morning following, Susannah Gunnell, servant to the said Mr. Blandy, sent to this examinant, to ask his opinion concerning some powder she had found in some water gruel, part of which her master had drunk; that he took out of the said gruel the said powder, and that he has examined the same, and suspects the same to be poison, and imagines the powder which was given to the said Francis Blandy, might be the occasion of his death, for that this examinant believes he was poisoned. BEN. NORTON. Taken on oath the 15th day of August, 1751, before me RICHARD MILES. ELIZABETH BINFIELD, late servant to Mr. Francis Blandy, deceased, upon her oath saith, that about two months ago she heard Miss Mary Blandy his daughter say, Who would grudge to send an old father to hell for £10,000, and saith, that she hath heard her often wish her father dead and at hell; and that he would die next October: and saith that the said Mary Blandy a few days since declared to this examinant, that on Monday the 5th day of August instant, she the said Mary Blandy put some powder, which she called love powder, into some water gruel, which was given to and eat by her said father: And further saith, that on the said Monday her said master drank some of the said water gruel, and saith, that the said Mary Blandy declared to this examinant, that her said father had told her he had a ball of fire in his stomach, and that he should not be well till the same was out; and saith, that on the next day, being Tuesday, her said master continued very ill, and in the evening he drank some more of the said water gruel, and was immediately afterwards taken very ill, and reached violently, and went to bed. On the Wednesday, he the said Francis Blandy took physick, and about two of the clock the same day, the said Mary Blandy would have had her said father taken the remainder of the said water gruel, but the other servant would not let him take it, and was going to throw it away, when she espied at the bottom of the basen some white stuff, and called to this examinant to look at it, which she did, and the same was very white and gritty; and saith, that she heard the said Mary Blandy, declare to Doctor Addington, that she never attempted to give her said father any powder but once before, and that she then put it into his tea, which he did not drink, as it would not mix well. ELIZ. BINFIELD. Taken on oath the 15th day of August, 1751, before me RICHARD MILES, Mayor and Coroner. EDWARD HERNE on his oath saith, that he was a servant or writer to Francis Blandy, Gentleman, deceased; and saith, that during the time of the illness of the said Francis Blandy, he, this examinant, heard Mary Blandy, the daughter of the said Francis Blandy, deceased, declare that she had received some powder, with some pebbles from Captain Cranstoun, which she said were Love-Powders; and further saith, that she told him when she received the same from the said Captain Cranstoun, that he desired that she would administer the same to her father. EDW. HERNE. Taken on oath the 15th day of August, 1751, before me RICHARD MILES, Mayor and Coroner. _II.--Verdict of Jury._ Town of Henley upon Thames in the County of Oxford. To Wit, AN INQUISITION indented, taken at the house of John Gale, within the town of Henley upon Thames aforesaid, the 15th day of August, in the 25th year of the reign of King George the Second, and in the year of our Lord 1751. Before Richard Miles, gentleman, Mayor and Coroner of the said town, upon view of the body of Francis Blandy, gentleman, deceased, now lying dead, upon the oaths of James Fisher, William Toovey, Benjamin Sarney, Peter Sarney, William Norman, Richard Beach, L. Nicholas, Thomas Mason, Tho. Staverton, John Blackman, J. Skinner, James Lambden, and Richard Fisher, good and lawful men of the said town, who having been sworn and charged to enquire for our Sovereign Lord the King, when, where, and by what means and after what fashion the said Francis Blandy came by his death upon their oaths say, that the said Francis Blandy was poisoned; and that they have a strong suspicion, from the depositions of the witnesses, that Mary Blandy, daughter of the said Francis Blandy, did poison and murder her said father Francis Blandy, against the peace of our said Lord the King, his Crown and Dignity. In witness of which act and things, as well the Coroner aforesaid, as the jurors aforesaid, have to this inquisition set their hands and seals, the day and year first above written. This Inquisition was taken the 15th day of August, 1751, before me R. Miles, Mayor and Coroner. JAMES FISHER. THOMAS MASON. WILLIAM TOOVEY. THO. STAVERTON. BENJAMIN SARNEY. JOHN BLACKMAN. PETER SARNEY. J. SKINNER. WILLIAM NORMAN. JAMES LAMBDEN. RICHARD BEACH. RICHARD FISHER. L. NICHOLAS. _III.--Warrant for Committal of Mary Blandy._ Town of Henley upon Thames in the County of Oxford. To Wit, To the Constables of the said town, and to each and every of them, and also to the Keeper of his Majesty's Gaol, in and for the said county of Oxford. WHEREAS Mary Blandy, of Henley upon Thames, aforesaid, spinster, stands charged upon oath before me, with a violent suspicion of poisoning and murdering Francis Blandy, gentleman, her late father, deceased: These are in his Majesty's name to require and command the said Constables, that you, some or one of you, do forthwith convey the said Mary Blandy to his Majesty's said gaol in and for the said county, and deliver her to the Keeper thereof: Hereby also requiring you the said Keeper to receive into the said gaol the body of the said Mary Blandy, and her there safely to keep until she shall be from thence discharged by due course of law, and hereof fail not at your perils. Given under my hand and seal this 16th day of August, 1751. RICHARD MILES, Mayor and Coroner. APPENDIX II. COPIES OF ORIGINAL LETTERS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM AND PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, RELATING TO THE CASE OF MARY BLANDY. (_Hitherto Unpublished._) I. LORD HARDWICKE TO DUKE OF NEWCASTLE. (B.M. Add. MS. 32,725, f. 216.) Wimple, Sept. 27th, 1751. My Dear Lord,--I received from Mr. Jones, by your Grace's directions, the inclosed papers relating to the Murder of Mr. Blandy of Henley. I apprehend, by his letter, that the Question, upon which your Grace desires my Opinion is, whether it is proper that the Prosecution should be carried on by the order, and at the expense, of the Crown? Your Grace observes by Mr. Pauncefort's letter, who is a Gentleman of Character & writes like a man of sense, that, as the Relations of the Deceased (who must necessarily be also relations to the Daughter) are circumstanced, & seem at present disposed, no effectual Prosecution can be expected from them; and therefore I am clearly of opinion that, if upon Examinations there appears sufficient ground to proceed, it is necessary & will be for the honour of the Government, that the Prosecution should be carried on at the expense of the Crown, & that Mr. Sharpe should be forthwith ordered to take the proper steps for that purpose under the direction of Mr. Attorney General. There have been several Instances of such flagrant offences having been prosecuted at the Government's expence. I remember two when I was Solicitor & Attorney General; one against two Welshmen, Athowe by name, for a Murder in Pembrokeshire; the other against a Woman in Oxford Road, who, in concert with her Gallant, murdered her Husband privately, & afterwards cut his body in pieces, & packed it up in a Basket.[14] The reason which prevailed for both these orders, was that there was ground to apprehend that the Criminals might have escaped Justice without such an extraordinary Interposition; and that Interposition was much applauded by the Public. In the present case it would be a Reproach to the King's Justice, and I am sure would create the justest concern & Indignation in His Majesty's own mind, if such an atrocious Crime of Poisoning & Parricide should escape unpunished, by means of the Prosecution being left in the hands of the Prisoner's own Relations. There is one circumstance in Mr. Pauncefort's letter, which deserves particular attention. He says it is thought the Maid and Charwoman (who I presume are two material Witnesses) cannot long survive the effects of ye Poison they partook of. If that be so, my opinion would carry me so far as to think, that a special commission should be sent into Berkshire, some days before the next Term, to find a Bill of Indictment there, & then the Trial may be had at the King's Bench Bar within the next Term; for otherwise no Trial can be till the next Spring Assizes, before which time these Witnesses may probably dye, if what is repeated be true. I have said all this upon a supposition that the Informations & Examinations lay a sufficient foundation for a Prosecution, for I have not seen any Copies of them. If they do not, _id neo dictum esto_. But there your Grace will be pleased to refer to Mr. Attorney or Mr. Solicitor. There is another matter arising upon the enclosed Papers, which ought not to pass without some notice; and that is the behaviour of Mr. Carre, the Sheriff-Depute of Berwickshire,[15] and of Richard Lowe, the Mayor of Henley's Messenger. The Sheriff-Depute's letter contains a strong Charge against Lowe, & Lowe in his examination, swears several odd circumstances relating to the Sheriff-Depute, & to some relating to himself. Mr. Carre is a Gentleman of good Character, but this matter deserves to be enquired into; and I submit it to your Grace whether it may not be advisable to transmit copies of Lowe's Examination, & of these Letters to my Lord Justice Clerk,[16] that he may, in a proper manner enquire into the facts, & take such Examinations upon Oath, as he shall think fit. This will tend to Mr. Carre's Vindication, if he has done his Duty. If there are any material circumstances against Lieut. Cranstoun, some further enquiry should be made after him. Forgive me for adding one thing more--that it should be pointed out to Mr. Attorney to consider whether the crime of the Daughter, who, as I apprehend, lived with & was maintained by her Father, may not be Petty Treason. I am, always, etc., HARDWICKE. II. LORD HARDWICKE TO DUKE OF NEWCASTLE. (B.M. Add. MS. 32,725, f. 218.) _Private_. Wimple, Sept. 27th, 1751. My Dear Lord,--I have reserved for this private letter a few words relating to Dr. Rooke's affair.... But before I enter into that, permit me to make an observation upon the extraordinary method, which was taken to apprehend Lieut. Cranstoun. I see, by the dates, that the Informations must have been sent up to the Office when Your Grace was in Sussex, & therefore the affair did not come before you. But surely the right way would have been to have sent a Messenger, with the Secretary of State's Warrant. That might have been executed with Secrecy, whereas, in the other method, so many persons must be apprized of it, that he could hardly fail of getting notice. Tho' the Crime was not Treason, nor what is usually called an offence concerning the Government; yet being of so black a nature, & the Fact committed within the Jurisdiction of England, & the Person charged being then within the Jurisdiction of Scotland, it was a very proper case for bringing him up by a Secretary's Warrant, which runs equally over the whole Kingdom. I say this to Your Grace only, & beg it may not be mentioned to anybody. But the circumstances may be worth your enquiring into; for I have heard the thing spoken of accidently in conversation; & if Cranstoun got off at the time Lowe supposes, it may create some clamour. May not this be a further reason for the Government shewing a more than ordinary attention to ye Prosecution? I am, etc., HARDWICKE. Duke of Newcastle. III. DUKE OF NEWCASTLE TO SIR DUDLEY RYDER. (State Papers, Dom. Entry Books, George II., vol. 134, f. 90.) Whitehall, Sept. 27th, 1751. Mr. Attorney General, Sir,--It having been represented to the King, that the Relations of Mary Blandy, who is confined in the Castle at Oxford, upon suspicion of having poisoned her Father, the late Mr. Blandy, of Henley upon Thames, do not intend to prosecute her for that crime, and application having been made, that His Majesty would be pleased to give Orders for the Prosecution of the said Mary Blandy; I am commanded to signify to you the King's Pleasure, That you should immediately enquire into this Affair; and that, in case you should find that the relations of the said Mary Blandy do not propose to prosecute her for the Murder of her Father, you should forthwith take the necessary steps for that Purpose; That so wicked and henious a Crime may not go unpunished. I am, etc., HOLLES NEWCASTLE. IV. PETITION OF THE NOBLEMEN AND GENTLEMEN IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF HENLEY-UPON-THAMES TO DUKE OF NEWCASTLE, WITH THE OPINION OF THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL THEREON. (State Papers, Dom. (George II.), Bundle 117, No. 45.) Henley upon Thames, 4th Oct., 1751. My Lord,--We the Noblemen and Gentlemen in the Neighbourhood of Henley upon Thames, and the Mayor and Principal Magistrates of that Town, having met there together this day to make farther enquiries in relation to the inhuman Murder of the late Mr. Blandy, have unanimously agreed to return our sincere thanks to Your Grace for your great readiness in promoting all proper measures for bringing to Justice the persons concerned in that Horrid and Shocking Transaction. And we take this Opportunity of expressing the just Sense we have of his Majesty's Paternal Goodness to his people, in directing that the person, who is now in Custody, and with the greatest reason supposed to be chiefly instrumental in that Uncommon scene of Iniquity, should be prosecuted at His Majesty's Expence: And we beg leave to assure Your Grace, that no endeavours shall be wanting on our part, to render that prosecution successful, and to bring to condign punishment not only the Unnatural Daughter of that Unhappy Gentleman, but also the Wicked Contriver and Instigator of this Cruel Design. But at the same time we take the Liberty of representing to Your Grace, as our humble Opinion, that there will be little Room to hope that the Original Author & Promoter of this Villainous Scheme can be brought to Justice, unless His Majesty will further be graciously pleased to offer by Proclamation a proper Reward for apprehending Mr. William Henry Cranstoun formerly a Lieutenant of Marines, but now an Officer in a Scotch Regiment in the Service of the States General; And we Earnestly request Your Grace to recommend to His Majesty the Issueing out such a Proclamation. We are with the greatest respect, Your Grace's Most Obedient And Most Humble Servants. MACCLESFIELD.[17] GISM. COOPER. CADOGAN.[18] EDWD. PAUNCEFORT. JAMES LAMBORN, Mayor. FRANCIS MASON. THO. PARKER. RICHD. MILES. GEO. LANE PARKER. EDWD. PRASSEY. JOHN FREEMAN. JOHN CLARKE. SAMBROOKE FREEMAN. THOS. HALL. WILLIAM STOCKWOOD, Rectr. [Annexed to this petition is a copy of the same, with the names of the petitioners, also copied, and underneath them is written--] Mr. Sharpe received this additional paper from the Duke of Newcastle with directions from His Grace to lay the same before Mr. Attorney General and to desire his opinion. _Qu._ Whether it may be advisable to Issue a Proclamation with the Offer of a Reward for apprehending Lieut. Cranstoun. This is a matter of mere discretion in His Majesty, and as there is no objection in point of Law to the Issueing such a Proclamation, so if there is any prospect of success in apprehending Cranstoun by that means I should think it an advisable measure. But as he has certainly notice of an Intent to apprehend him it is probable he may be gone beyond sea, to his service. If so the most probable means would be to get him seized by the order of the States General or any other State where he may be found to be. D. RYDER, 14 Oct., 1751. [Endorsed] The Noblemen & Gentlemen in the Neighbourhood of Henley upon Thames, and the Mayor & principal Magistrates of that Town to the Duke of Newcastle. Oct. 14th, 1751. For your Opinion hereon. Mr. Attorney General. 3 Gs. Sharpe. V. LORD HARDWICKE TO THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE. (B.M. Add. MS. 32,725, f. 259.) Wimple, Oct. 9th, 1751. 4 o'clock p.m. Dear Cousin,-- ... I enclose the Representation of the Noblemen etc., in the Neighbourhood of Henley relating to the issueing a Proclamation for the apprehending of Lieut. Cranstoun. It is impossible for me to judge whether this is a proper Case for issueing such a Proclamation, without seeing the Examinations & proofs of his Guilt, & of the probability of his having fled for it. But, if there is proper Evidence of his Guilt, & a probable one of his Flight, I think it is a just foundation to issue such a proclamation in so flagrant a Case. I submit to My Lord Duke whether he will not think it proper to refer the Papers to Mr. Attorney General.... I am, etc., HARDWICKE. VI. EARL OF MARCHMONT TO DUKE OF NEWCASTLE. (B.M. Add. MS. 32,725, f. 291.) Redbraes Castle, 15th Oct., 1751. My Lord,--In obedience to your Grace's commands to the Lord Justice Clerk, informing him it was His Majesty's pleasure, he should enquire upon oath into the conduct of Mr. Carre of Nisbet advocate, our Sheriff, in relation to the apprehending of Mr. Cranstoun; I yesterday waited on his Lordship at Duns; & gave him an account of what I knew of that matter upon oath. I heard some other examinations taken at the same time, & have the pleasure to see that your Grace will receive entire satisfaction from this Inquiry. I cannot omitt My Lord, upon this occasion expressing to your Grace the grateful sense all his Majesty's faithful subjects here have of your goodness in ordering this enquiry to be made, without which the misrepresentations contained in Lowe's affidavit, with the Justice of peace's Commentary, might have lurkt & crept about unobserved in the South of England, & his Majesty's subjects here could have had no opportunity of removing the injurious imputations cast upon them. My Lord Justice Clerk has spared no pains to make the account compleat, and it gives me particular pleasure My Lord that your Grace will thereby be enabled to form a character of Mr. Carre from vouchers free from all suspicion of that partiality which perhaps might be thought to attend my recommendations of a friend & relation. Your Grace will see that Mr. Carre came from his own house with the Lord Justice Clerk, in his Lordship's post-chaise, to dine, by a previous appointment, at my house, which is only distant from his own half an hours driving; & this in order to have the advice & assistance of the Lord Justice Clerk. I am persuaded your Grace will think, you could not have wished him to choose a more judicious adviser, or a more sagacious Inspector into his conduct. Upon examination your Grace will find, that the Lawyers here will reckon Mr. Carre rather to have stretched a point to get over the provision in our Act of Parliament, in order to grant his Warrant, than to have affected any doubt, or dilatoriness upon the occasion. And that those Scots Lawyers who have not studied our Law with the same superiority of capacity & genius that Mr. Carre has, would hardly have consented to give a Warrant, upon the grounds Mr. Carre granted it.... I am, etc., MARCHMONT. Duke of Newcastle. VII. DUKE OF NEWCASTLE TO MR. PAUNCEFORT. (Sate Papers, Dom. Entry Books (George II.), vol. 134, f. 97.) Whitehall, Oct. 31st, 1751. Mr. Pauncefort, Sir,--Having by His Majesty's Command, directed an Enquiry to be made into the Conduct of Mr. Carre, the Sheriff of Berwickshire, upon the application that was made to him for causing Lieut. Cranstoun to be apprehended; and such an Enquiry having been accordingly made by the Lord Justice Clerk; I send you inclosed a Letter, which I have received from His Lordship together with the several Examinations that have been taken upon that occasion.--I am, etc., HOLLES NEWCASTLE. _P.S._--I send you the original Papers above mentioned, which you will be pleased to return to me as soon as may be. VIII. MR. PAUNCEFORT TO DUKE OF NEWCASTLE. (B.M. Add. MS. 32,725, f. 380.) Early Court, Nov. 7th, 1751. My Lord,--I have had the honour to receive from your Grace, the Lord Justice Clerk's Letter, and the Examinations that have been taken in persuance of an Enquiry made into the conduct of Mr. Carre the Sheriff of Berwickshire, upon the application that was made to him for causing Lieutenant Cranstoun to be apprehended, & I should have acknowledged the receipt of them by the last Post, but I did not return from a Commission of the Navigations, held at a remote part of the county, till Wednesday. I have in consequence sent an Express to the Earl of Macclesfield, to desire a meeting of the Corporation & the neighbouring Gentlemen of the County of Oxford at Henley; in order to lay before them the several Examinations; and its a particular Happiness to me that I am in this instance employed to represent to the Gentlemen of the County the Watchfulness & unwearied attention of the Crown to the vigorous Execution of the Laws, by having ordered this strict & immediate Enquiry to be made into the suspected Neglects & Delays of the Sheriff, tho' grounded upon a single Information; as likewise that I am made instrumental in the justifying as well as accusing the Conduct of the Sheriff; That the complaints of the Messenger were without any foundation; & that every thing was done by the Sheriff that was consistent with a cautious Magistrate. I shall in obedience to your Grace's commands return the Examinations to you. I am, etc., EDWD. PAUNCEFORT. IX. MR. WISE TO MR. SHARPE, SOLICITOR TO THE TREASURY. (State Papers, Dom. (George II.) Bundle 116, No. 36.) [No date.] Sir,--I was favoured with yr two last letters, and also with yr answer to my letter of the 24th Novr. last, wch I acknowledged in another letter wch I wrote to you from Mr. Aldworths at Stanlake, wherein I gave you an Acct. of a Threatening Letter from Cranstoun to Betty Binfield, and wch I find you had sent up to you by Lord Macclesfield. On Receipt of your last I set out yesterday morning to Ld. Macclesfields, where I lay, and came this day to Oxford, and immediately on my arrival went to the Castle where I found Miss Blandy with the very same Iron on her Leg wch I saw rivetted on myself when last here, and wch I now believe has never been off since, for her leg is considerably swelled, and the Red Cloth wch was round the Iron before has been cut off to give her room, but it is still so close, as renders it impossible to be slipt over her Heel. I also find by what I saw myself and by the Report of a Gentleman or two in whom I can confide, that Wisdom has kept a much stricter Guard over Miss Blandy ever since I was here before than he used to do, and that she has not been permitted to walk in the Garden once since. However I repeated the contents of your letter to him, and remonstrated how very absurd it wd be in him now, not to continue ye strictest watch over a person whose Trial will be made a Matter of so great Consequence to the Publick, and on whose safe custody, for that purpose, his future character & Livelihood would intirely depend. I also sent for Mrs. Deane (the person who is with Miss Blandy) into the Room with Wisdom, and told her that it would be impossible for Miss Blandy to make an Escape without her Privity & Assistance, and that if such a thing shd happen, not only the Goaler wd be answerable for what ever Act she did towards it, But that she herself wd also be imprisoned for Life etc, so that upon the whole I dont imagine there is now any fear of her making her escape. Parson Swinton is very angry wth the Freedom the letter writer has taken with (his) name, and is endeavouring to find out the Author of that and many other Reports of the same kind. It is owing to his Credulity of her Innocence, that these Jokes have been spread, and I find that he is a great favourite of Miss Blandy's. I will endeavour to get the Briefs settled in the best manner I am able and as soon as I have done, will send you a copy, and am--wishing you many happy years. Sir, Yr Obliged humble Servt. EDWD. WISE. _P.S._--I promised to write to Ld. Cadogan who went to Town yesterday, but as the Post is this instant going, must beg you to acquaint his Lordship all is safe. [Addressed] To John Sharpe Esq. Solicitor to the Treasury at his Chambers in Lincolns Inn, London. X. MR. SHARPE TO MR. WISE. (State Papers, Dom. (George II.) Bundle 117, No. 90.) Dear Sir,--I beg leave to trouble you with another Lre I have reced from Lord Macclesfield by last night's Post, and which shews pretty plainly that the threatning Lre I gave you yesterday was wrote and sent by Cranstoun and that there is great Reason to believe that Cranstoun is lying concealed either here in London or in the North--I beg you will lay the enclosed before his Grace with my most dutifull Respects--and believe me to be with the most real truth and esteem, Dr Sir, Your most obliged and ever faithfull hble Servt., JN. SHARPE. Friday morning, 6th Decr., 1751. XI. EXAMINATION OF FRANCIS GROPPTTY. (State Papers, Dom. (George II.), Bundle 118, No. 22.) The Examination upon Oath of Francis Gropptty of Mount Street, in the Parish of St. George Hanover Square taken this 3rd Day of Febry 1752. The Examt says that upon the First Day of September last he was sent for by the Revd. Mr. Home to his lodgings in the Haymarket, who told the Examt. that a Gentleman of his, Mr. Homes, acquaintance, was going to Calais, & as he spoke no French, desired the Examt. to go with him. The Examt. asked who it was, & after some hesitation Mr. Home told him it was Capt. Cranston Bror. to Lord Cranston who was accused of having sent poison to a Miss Blandy, who was suspected to have poison'd her Father; but that he was inocent, & only wanted to get out of the way till his Tryal came on, when he would surrender himself. The Examt. says he made an objection to going & told Mr. Home, that as he had expectations, from the Recommendations of Lord Home[19] and Sir Walter Blacket, to the Duke of Grafton, of being made one of the King's Messengers he was afraid it might hurt him, but Mr. Home assured him that he could not be brought into the least trouble, and added that he would oblige him, Mr. Home, Ld. Home & all the family & that for his satisfaction he would give him a note to Capt. Alexander Hamilton, who would assure him of the same. That the Examt. went to Capt. Hamilton, who told him that he knew where Capt. Cranston was & that if the Examt. would see him safe at Calais, he would very much oblige Lord Cranston, Ld. Home & all the Family. The Examt. asked Capt. Hamilton if there had been any proceedings against Capt. Cranston or if any orders were given to stop him at Dover? Capt. Hamilton said he would enquire, & the next day Sepr. 2nd told the Examt. he had enquired & that there had not been any proceedings against Capt. Cranston nor were there any Orders to stop him at Dover. The Examt. says that he lived with Lord Home several years & now does business for him; that he was willing to oblige his Lordship & not doubting from the assurances of Mr. Home yt he was doing a right thing, consented to go to Calais with Capt. Cranston. That upon the said 2nd of September Capt. Hamilton brought Capt. Cranston to the Examt's. House; that Capt. Cranston said he had been rob'd in his way to town of his Money & Portmanteau & seem'd in great distress. That the Examt. by the Direction of Capt. Hamilton bought for Capt. Cranston such necessaries as he wanted & Capt. Hamilton went to Lord Ancrum[20] to borrow Twenty pounds to defray the expence of the Journey & repay the Examt. the money he had expended. That upon his return he told Capt. Cranston that Lord Ancrum wd not lend him the money; says, that Capt. Cranston cried very much & said for God's sake dear Hamilton get Money somewhere & get me abroad. That the Examt. seeing the great distress both of Capt. Hamilton & Capt. Cranston, said that if ten Guineas wd. be of service he wd. lend Capt. Hamilton that sum, which he accordingly did & took Capt. Hamilton's Note of Hand, which is still unsatisfied. That he set out with Capt. Cranston in a Post Chaise for Dover, where they arrived the next morning Sept. 3rd about 9 o'clock. That they went to bed at the Post House about 4 o'clock in the afternoon in the same room, & about half an hour afterwards the Capt. of the Packet came into the Room & said he was informed they were going to Calais & desired they would go with him, which they agreed to & the next morning went with him to Calais & paid a Guinea for their passage.--Says they had no discourse at all with the Capt. of the Packet during the Passage. The Examt. says he took Lodgings & agreed for Board for Capt. Cranston at Calais at the Rate of Fifty Livres a Month & upon the 6th Sept. returned in the same Packet to Dover. That upon his passage back the Capt. of the Packet said he believed the person who went with the Examt. to Calais was very glad to be landed, for that he seemed very uneasy; The Examt. answered may be so, & no other discourse happened upon the subject. That the Capt. of the Packet observed that he thought he had seen the Examt. at Harwych, the Examt. said very likely for that he had passed from thence to Holland with his master Lord Home during the War. The Examt. absolutely denies that he passed or attempted to pass for a King's Messenger, or that he mentioned the name of his Grace the Duke of Newcastle, nor was his Grace's name mentioned; nor did any Discourse what so ever pass about Messengers. That upon his return to London he waited upon Mr. Home to acquaint him that he had landed Capt. Cranston safe at Calais. Mr. Home expressed himself very much obliged & assured the Examt. he would represent to his Brother & Lord Cranston the trouble he had had, & did not doubt but they would be equally obliged & reward him very well. The Examt. said he did not expect any reward, that what he had done was out of gratitude to Lord Home & his family & was very glad he had had it in his power to oblige them: & the Examt. said the same to Capt. Hamilton & never kept it a secret from any body, but talked of his having gone over with Capt. Cranston in common discourse & before anybody. That the Examt. made out an Acct. of the Expences he had been at & delivered it to Capt. Hamilton, which amounted, with the money lent, to eighteen pounds, for which sum Capt. Hamilton gave him a Bill of exchange upon Ld. Cranston, which Bill the Examt. sent to Scotland to Lord Cranston, who having kept it near six weeks return'd it unpaid; and the Examt. has not yet recd. the money. And lastly the Examt. says that he arrived in England with his Master at the end of the late War, & has not been out of England since that time except to Calais with Capt. Cranston as aforesaid. FRANCIS GROPPTTY this 3rd Feb., 1752. Taken upon Oath; before L. Stanhope. APPENDIX III. A LETTER FROM A CLERGYMAN TO MISS MARY BLANDY, NOW A PRISONER IN OXFORD CASTLE; WITH HER ANSWER THERETO. AS ALSO MISS BLANDY'S OWN NARRATIVE OF THE CRIME FOR WHICH SHE IS CONDEMNED TO DIE. (No. 3 of Bibliography, Appendix XII.) (The original copy of this letter, in Miss Blandy's own handwriting, for the satisfaction of the public, is left with the publisher.) March 14, 1752. Reader,--Condemn no person rashly. Thou has already, perhaps, passed sentence upon this unfortunate. But remember, that God alone knows the secrets of the heart; and that circumstances spring many times from motives which it is impossible for man to discover. The following letter was written to this unhappy lady by a clergyman,[21] after her receiving sentence of death. A LETTER TO MISS BLANDY. March 7, 1752. Dear Miss,--Had it been at my own option, I never would have chose to be the least concerned in your unhappy affair; but since divine providence, without my own seeking, has thought fit to order it otherwise, I shall, from obligations of compassion and humanity, offer some things to your serious consideration. Your power of receiving benefit from my advice, is but of short duration; may God grant that you may rightly use this. That you believe in God, in the immortal nature of the soul, in Jesus Christ, and in a future state of rewards and punishments, I am willing to persuade myself. As to the unworthy man who has tempted you to your ruin, I have good grounds to believe him to be an infidel. If he has communicated such principles to you, to render you more capable of executing his wicked purposes, your persisting therein will ruin your poor soul for ever. The moment you enter into that awful state of separation, you will be eternally convinced of your error. The very devils believe a God, and tremble. You will, perhaps, express surprise at my entertaining a doubt of this nature. What? You that have been so constant at public worship, that have so frequently participated of the most sacred rite of the Christian religion, to be thought an infidel? Alas! Miss, externals are but the husks of piety; they are easy to the hypocrite. The body may bow down in the house of God, yet the soul do homage to Belial. God forbid, that this should touch you. And indeed to be sincere, when on the one hand I view the arguments of your guilt, and, on the other, behold your strong assertions of innocence, to the hazarding of the soul, if untrue, I am greatly perplexed, I know not what to say or believe. The alternative, I presume, is, you are either a believer and innocent, or an infidel and guilty. But that holy religion which I profess, obliging me, in all cases of doubt, to incline to the most charitable construction; I say, that I am willingly persuaded, that you believe in the above mentioned truths, and are in some degree innocent. You have, dear Miss, applied to temporal counsel, with regard to the determination of your body. They have failed. Your life is forfeited to justice. You are already dead in the eye of the law. Oh! Miss, the counsels which my poor understanding gives, is spiritual; may they be more successful: May God grant that the fate of your soul may not resemble the fate of your body! May it not perish and die for ever! Now, Miss, you must necessarily be in one of these two situations; you must either be innocent, by not designing to hurt your father; or you designed to kill your father, and are guilty, and conceal your guilt for private reasons. Permit me to offer something upon each of these heads. If it should be the case, that you are innocently the cause of Mr. Blandy's death, which Heaven grant! if you harboured not a thought of injuring your unhappy father, you have the greatest of all comforts to support you. You may think upon that last and awful tribunal, before which all the sons of Adam shall appear, and from which no secret is hid. There will be no injustice. Innocence will be vindicated. The scheme of Providence will be then unfolded. There your patience under your sufferings and resignation to the decrees of Heaven will be rewarded. Your errors and failings God will pity and have mercy upon; for he remembers whereof we are made. You may face the ignominious tree with calmness. Death has no stings to wound innocence. Guilt alone clothes him with terrors (to the guilty wretch he is terrible indeed!). And at the resurrection, and at the last day, you will joyfully behold Jesus Christ your Saviour, join the triumphant multitudes of the blessed, and follow them into the everlasting mansions of glory. The other point I am about to speak to, is upon a supposition of your guilt. God direct me what to say! If you repent, you will be saved. But what repentance can be adequate to such crimes? O Miss! your infamous end is a satisfaction due to human laws. But there is another satisfaction which God expects to be made for such a dreadful violation of laws divine. Once, Miss, you had two fathers to provide for and protect you; one by the ties of Nature, the other by the bonds of grace and religion. And now your earthly parent is your accuser, and your heavenly one your judge. Both are become your enemies. Good God! what deep distress is this! where can misery like this find comfort and relief? O Miss! the only anchor which can preserve your soul from perishing, is your blessed Saviour. Believe in Him; whatsoever you ask in His name, believing, God will grant. For to them that believe, all things are possible. Unburthen your whole soul. Pour out your fervent prayers to God. Remember, that infinite mercy is glorified in the vilest sinners. If there are any accessaries to this horrid crime, discover them. Make all possible reparation for injuries you have done. Heartily forgive, and pray for your enemies and more particularly for all concerned in the Prosecution against you. Detest your sins truly, and resolve to do so for the time to come, and be in charity with all men. If you perform these things truly and sincerely, your life, which sets in gloomy clouds, shame and darkness, may, by the mercies of God, rise in glory, honour and brightness. But perhaps, Miss, to your everlasting hazard, you will not confess your guilt, for some private reasons. And what must these be? You may possibly then imagine, that if you confess your crime to God, you are not obliged to confess to the world. Generally speaking God is the sole confessor of mankind; but your case is a particular exception to this rule. You will want the assistance of God's ministers. But how is it possible for you to receive any benefit from them, if you do not represent to them the true state of your soul without any disguise? A secret of this nature, smothered in the breast, is a fire which preys upon, and consumes all quietness and repose. Consider too the imminent danger of a lie of this nature; consider the justice due to your accusers, to your judges, and to the world. But you will say, confession of my crime cuts off all hope of Royal Mercy. Dear Miss, do not indulge yourself in such a thought. Prepare for the worst. Consider how pernicious flattery of this nature is. Remember that God is only a God of mercy in this; in another life, he is a God of justice. I can hardly think that shame has any share in the concealment of your guilt; for no shame can exceed that which you have already suffered. Besides, confession is all the amends you can make; and mankind know experimentally how frail and imperfect human nature is, and will allow for it accordingly. And thus, dear Miss, have I wrote to you, with a sincere view to your everlasting happiness. If during this dismal twilight, this interval between life and death, I can serve you, command me. The world generally flies the unfortunate, rejoices in evil, triumphs over distress; believe me glad to deviate from such inhumanity. As the offices of friendship which you can receive from me are confined to such a short period, let them be such as concern your everlasting welfare. The greatest pleasure I can receive (if pleasure can arise from such sad potions), will be to hear that you entertain a comfortable assurance of being happy for ever. Which that you may be, is the fervent prayer of, etc. Whether or no this gentleman, in the above letter, has not urged the matter home to Miss Blandy, is submitted to the judgment of the public. Here follows _verbatim_ her answer. Monday, March 9, 1752. Reverend Sir,--I did not receive your's till Sunday night late; and now so ill in body, that nothing but my gratitude to you for all your goodness could have enabled me to write. I have with great care and thought often read over your kind advice; and will, as well as the sad condition I am in will give me leave, speak the truth. The first and most material to my poor soul is, that I believe in God the Father, and in His blessed Son Jesus Christ, who, I verily believe, came into the world to save sinners; and that He will come again to judge the world; and that we must all give an account in our own bodies, and receive the reward of a good or ill spent life; that God is a God of Justice, but of mercy too; and that by repentance all may be saved. As to the unworthy man you mention, I never heard finer lessons come from any one. Had he, Sir, shewn really what he may be (an infidel), I never should have been so deceived; for of all crimes, that ever shocked me most. No, Sir, I owe all my miseries to the appearances of virtue; by that deceived and ruined in this world, but hope through Christ to be pardoned. I was, and never denied it, the fatal instrument; but knew not the nature of, nor had a thought those powders could hurt. Had I not destroyed his letters, all must have been convinced; but, like all the rest, he commanded, and I obeyed and burnt them. There is an account, as well as I was able to write, which I sent to my Uncle in London. That I here send you. God knows never poor soul wrote in more pain, and I now am not able hardly to hold my pen. But will not conclude this without explaining the true state of my mind. As I did not give this fatal powder to kill or hurt my poor father; I hope God will forgive me, with repentance for the ill use I have made of that sense he gave me, and not be for ever angry with me. Death I deserve, for not being better on my guard against my grand enemy; for loving and relying too much on the human part. I hope (when all is done that friends can do for me to save that life which God has given me, and which if to last these hundred years, would be too short for me to repent, and make amends for the follies I have committed) I shall have such help from my God, as to convince my poor friends I die a Christian, and with hopes of forgiveness through the merits of our Advocate and Mediator Jesus Christ. I beg, my dear sir, you will excuse my writing more, and will believe I am truly sensible of your goodness to me. May God bless you, sir, and send you happiness here and hereafter. I beg my duty to my poor uncle; pray him to forgive, and pity, and pray for me. I beg my tenderest wishes to Mrs. Mounteney; and if she can serve me with the Bishop of W----[22] or any other, I know she will do it. Pray comfort poor Ned Hearne, and tell him I have the same friendship for him as ever. And pray, sir, continue your friendship and good wishes to, Reverend Sir, Your truly affected, Much obliged humble Servant, MARY BLANDY. _P.S._--I beg, for very just reasons to myself and friends, that this letter and papers may soon be returned to me; that is, as soon as you have done with them. You will oblige me, if you keep a copy of the letter; but the real letter I would have back, and the real papers, as being my own handwriting, and may be of service to me, to my character after my death, and to my family. There is no occasion of hinting to the judicious reader that in this letter it is plain that Miss Blandy twice solemnly declares her innocence. But let us now proceed to Miss Blandy's own relation of an affair which has so much engrossed the attention of the public. Miss Blandy's narrative referred to in the foregoing letter:-- O! Christian Reader! My misfortunes have been, and are such, as never woman felt before. O! let the tears of the wretched move human minds to pity, and give ear to my sad case, here wrote with greatest truth. It is impossible indeed, in my unhappy circumstances, to recollect half of my misfortunes, so as to place them in a proper light. Let some generous breast then do that for the miserable, and God will reward goodness towards an unhappy, deceived, ruined woman. Think what power man has over our sex, when we truly love! And what woman, let her have what sense she will, can stand the arguments and persuasions men will make use of? Don't think that by this I mean, that I ever was, or could have been persuaded to hurt one hair of my poor father's head. No; what I mean is Cranstoun's baseness and art, in making me believe that those powders were innocent, and would make my father love him. He gave my father some himself more than a year before he died, and said, when he gave it him, that he (Cranstoun) had took several papers of it himself. I saw nothing of any ill effects from these powders on my father; nor did he complain of any one disorder, more than what he has ever been subject to above these ten years, the gravel and the heartburn; but never complained of the heartburn, except when he had the gravel coming on him; and he never was less afflicted with those disorders than during the last year of his life, in which he never took one medicine from his apothecary, as he made oath in Court. Mr. Cranstoun, soon after he gave these powders to my father, said to me, do you not see that your father is kinder to me? I now will venture to tell him, that I cannot get the appeal lodged this Sessions (meaning his affair in Scotland); upon which he went to my father's study, and told him. They both came out together in great good humour, and my father said not one word against my waiting another Sessions. Mr. Cranstoun came to our house in the beginning of August, or latter end of July, staid with us some months, and then he said he was obliged to go for Scotland. My father seemed not pleased with him at first, but they parted in great friendship, I thought; and I received a letter from Cranstoun (which is now among my papers) full of respect and tenderness for my father. But soon after he was gone my father, who had either heard some ill of him, or was tired of so long an affair, told me to let Mr. Cranstoun know, that I should wait the next Sessions; but he must not come to his house till his affairs in Scotland were settled. I obeyed his commands, and had a letter full of love, and seeming misery, back in answer to mine; that he found that he had lost my father's love, and feared he should mine too. He got his mother and sisters to write to my father, and seemed to do all in his power to force him to love him. Some time after this he sent me word, that he had met with his old friend Mrs. Morgan in Scotland, and that he would get some of those powders he had before; and begged of me, if I loved him, to give them to my father; for that they would make him kind to us again in this affair, and make him stay with patience till the next Sessions; when, upon his word, the appeal should be lodged. I wrote him back word, I did not care for doing it, lest it should hurt my father's health. He wrote me word, that it was quite innocent, and could not hurt him; and how could I think that he would send any thing to hurt a father of mine? and that self-interest would be reason enough lor him to take care of his health. Now, in this place, I must beg to clear up one thing, that I imagined my poor father rich, and that Mr. Cranstoun did the same. As to myself, it is, by all that's good, false. I have often told Mr. Cranstoun, I knew my father was not worth what the world said; but that if he lived I did not doubt but he would provide for us and ours, as his business was so great, and life retired. I then supposed that Mr. Cranstoun meant, by saying, that his own interests would make him careful, to refer to such discourse. Mr. Cranstoun's having then such strong reasons to know how necessary my father's life must be, and I believing his honour to be so great, and that his love was still greater; these were the reasons of my not mistrusting that the powder would hurt my father, if I mixed it with his tea. It not mixing well, I threw it away, and wrote him word, I would not try it again, for it would be discovered. This they bring against me. But is it not, reasonable to imagine, that if any person was to discover that a powder had been given them, to force them to love anyone, would not a discovery of this nature produce a very different effect? Would it not fix resentment? This would have been, at that time death to me; such was my opinion of Cranstoun, and for this reason I used the aforesaid words. But to proceed. On my writing to Mr. Cranstoun, that it would not mix in tea, he told me to mix it in gruel. I received the powders in June; but did not put any into his gruel till the 5th of August; when I fatally obeyed Mr. Cranstoun's orders, and was innocently the instrument of death, as they say, to the best of fathers; brought disgrace to my family, and shameful death to myself, unless my hard case, here truly repented, recommends me to Royal pity, clemency and compassion. And as I here declare, and as I look upon myself as a dying woman, I never did design to hurt my father, but thought the powder innocent, as Cranstoun told me it was. Let me be punished for my follies, but not lose my life. Sure, it is hard to die for ignorance, and too good an opinion of a villain! Must the falsities and malice which I have been pursued with, prevail so far as to take away my life? O consider my misfortunes, and indeed it will fill your eyes with tears; you must pity me, and say, never was poor soul so hardly used. But peace, my heart. I gave my father the powder on Monday night; on Tuesday he complained. I sent for the apothecary; who came, and said he would send him some physic. In the evening my father said he would have some water gruel. I never went out to order this, and knew not whether it was the same or no as he had on Monday, as that he drank on Monday was made either on Saturday or Sunday. However, on the Wednesday my father took physic, and was better; came all Thursday down into the parlour, as also on Friday; Mr. Norton, by my desire, all this time attending him very often. And Mr. Norton did in the Court declare, that I was the person that did send for a physician, and would have sent before, if thought necessary. When I found my father so ill, I sent, unknown to him, for Dr. Addington. The doctor said, he believed he was in great danger. I desired Dr. Addington to attend him, and come the next day; which he did. On Monday morning going into my father's room early (for though I never from his first disorder left him long in the day, yet his tenderness would not let me sit up all night with him), I was denied to see him. This so surprised and frightened me, that I cried out, What? Not see my father? On which I heard my father reply, My dear Polly, you shall presently; and some time after I did. That meeting and parting, and the mutual love, sorrow, and grief, is truly described by Susanna Gunnel; though poor soul she is mistaken in some other respects. I was after this confined in my room by Dr. Addington's own orders; during which confinement, as I am informed, my father wanted to see some body, and it was imagined to be me. But, alas! I was not suffered. The night before he died, my father sent his blessing to me, with his commands to bring that villain to justice. I sent him answer back, I would do all in my power to hang that villain, as he rightly called him. But the usage which I received in my father's house, unknown to him I am sure, is shocking to relate. My going to listen at his door, the only comfort left me, to hear if he was asleep was denied me. All my keys were taken from, me--my letters--my very garters. My maid-servant never came near me, helpless as I was by grief and fits. This I bore patiently, being fearful of disturbing my father, as our rooms joined. The man who was with me can witness to my sufferings, how often I wished for instant death to take me, and spare my dear father, whom never child loved better; whose death alone, unattended with these misfortunes, would have been an excessive shock to me. When Dr. Addington, and Dr. Lewis (who was called in it seems) came into the room, and told me, that nothing could save my ever dear father; for a considerable time I sat like a stone image; and then told them, that I had given my poor father some powders which Cranstoun had given me, and feared those had hurt my father, though Cranstoun assured me that they would not. It is not in human nature to declare what I suffered at that time. God grant that no one ever may again. When my father was dead, though mistress of myself, my keys, servants, two horses in the stable, all my own; yet I never quitted my room. Though none dared to molest me, I never stirred. They say, that I walked about my room for hours; but I hardly remember anything. Much is now said of my trying to bribe my servants. How contrary to truth! As for bribing Betty my cook; of all my servants she was my greatest enemy throughout my misfortunes; and an attempt to bribe her must surely be the strongest instance of lunacy, of one not in her right mind. I own I should have been glad not to have gone to jail; as who would not? But then I would with pleasure have resigned myself up at the Assizes, and stood the chance of life or death. I did not at that time imagine, that I had such enemies, or that human nature could be so wicked and abandoned. On the Thursday my father was to be opened. In the morning Suzanna Gunnel sent for me, being indisposed: When I saw her, she begged that I would bring Mr. Cranstoun to justice, which was the request and command of her dying master; and that if anything gave him concern in his last moments, it was an apprehension of his escaping, being a man of quality, and interest among the great. I replied that I would do all in my power, and went down into my room again. Soon after Dr. Lewis came into my room, and I found by him that my poor father's body was to be opened as that morning. As soon as he was gone, I could not bear to stay in the house, but walked out. Let reason judge whether I intended an escape. My dress was an half-sack and petticoat, made for a hoop, and the sides very long; neither man nor horse to assist me; and, as they say, I walked as slow as foot could fall; half the town at my heels; and but for the mercy of a woman, who sheltered me in her house, had perhaps lost my life. When I was sent for back by the Justices, the gentlemen who conveyed me to my house, witnessed that I thanked him. Surely this cannot be interpreted an attempt to escape. In consequence then of the words which, during these melancholy and distracting scenes, I had spoke to Dr. Addington, that I was innocent of the nature of the powders, but had given them to my father, I was sent to prison, where I was till my trial, and am now in safe custody. The untruths which have been told of me, the messengers sent after me, to see if I was safe, the putting me in Irons (though so weak and ill, that my own body was too much to carry about), the baseness and wickedness of printing the depositions to hurt me with the jury; under all this I bore up from knowing my innocence. But give me leave to mention what happened at my trial. I was brought to the Bar; and must do the judges, and all the gentlemen of the law, that justice, that they used me as a gentlewoman should be, though unfortunate. I must, however, observe, that when the judges read and summed up the evidence, or indeed when anything was said in Court, there was such a noise, that the jury, I am sure, could not hear the evidence; and I hope I shall be forgiven, if I say, that some of them seemed not to give that attention I think they ought. Nay, the judges were often obliged to speak for silence in the Court, and bid them for shame let the jury hear and attend. When all the witnesses were examined on both sides, the judge gave his charge like a man fit to hold the sword of justice; and my council and friends were in great hopes for me. But, most surprising treatment! without going out of the Court, without being any time consulting, their verdict was, Guilty! God's will be done. My behaviour at my trial, and when sentence was passed, I leave to the world. My enemies, as they have done all along, may misinterpret it, and call innocence and Christian courage hardened guilt. But let them know, that nothing but innocency could stand the shock of such repeated misfortunes, and prospect of death. O Christian reader! remember what blessings will attend you for defending the orphan, the injured, and the deceived. And if the dead are sensible what the living do; what prayers must not dear parents pour out before the throne of mercy for such charity, for endeavouring to rescue their only child and much-loved daughter from a shameful death. Drop pen; my spirits, harrassed out with sorrow, fail. God Almighty preserve you and yours from such misfortunes, and receive my poor soul into the arms of his mercy, through Jesus Christ. Amen. Whosoever thou art, whose eyes drink in this sad and moving tale, indulge one tear. Remember the instability of sublunary things, and judge no man happy till he dies. APPENDIX IV. MISS MARY BLAND'S OWN ACCOUNT OF THE AFFAIR BETWEEN HER AND MR. CRANSTOUN, FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THEIR ACQUAINTANCE IN THE YEAR 1746 TO THE DEATH OF HER FATHER IN AUGUST, 1751, WITH ALL THE CIRCUMSTANCES LEADING TO THAT UNHAPPY EVENT. (No. 8 of Bibliography, Appendix XII.) My acquaintance with Mr. Cranstoun, who was lieutenant of a regiment of marines, commenced at Lord Mark Kerr's,[23] in one of the summer months, as I at present apprehend, of the year 1746. At first we entertained of each other only sentiments of friendship, I being upon the point of marrying another gentleman; which, for some prudential reasons, was soon put off, and at last came to nothing. Some months after our first interview, Mr. Cranstoun left Henley; and, about the following summer, returned to his uncle, Lord Mark Kerr, who lived at a house he had hired in that town, called Paradise. After his arrival at Henley, our friendship continued for some time; in one part of which I told him, as a friend that wished me well, of another advantageous match that had been proposed to me; but at the same time declared to him, that I was afraid the gentleman was not formed to make me happy. Upon this, he asked me, "whether or not I preferred mutual love to the grandeur of life?" To which I replied, "I preferred the man I loved and esteemed to all others." This induced him to make a proposal to me in the following terms: "Miss Blandy, I have upon my hands an unhappy affair, which to you I have made no secret of; I can assure you, before I speak what follows, I am not now married, nor never was; tho' by the nature of the Laws of Scotland, I am involved in some difficulties brought upon me by that affair, out of which it will be some time before I can extricate myself. Do you think you could love a man well enough to stay till this affair be brought to a determination? I have, added he, wished such a proposal might take effect from the very first moment that I saw you; but my honour would not permit me to make it in form, till the invalidity of my pretended marriage did appear to the whole world." To this I made no reply, as Lord Mark Kerr at that instant came into the garden; Mr. Cranstoun and I being then at his house. The next day Mr. Cranstoun came to my father's, and renewed the discourse; on which I told him, that "if my Papa and Mamma would approve of my staying for him, I readily consented thereto." After this he took the first opportunity of speaking to my Mamma upon the same subject; and he received from her the following answer: "Sir, you do my daughter an honour; but I have understood, that you have a perplexing affair upon your hands, and it is reported that you are married." He then made answer, "Madam, as I have a soul to be saved, I am not, nor ever was." To which she replied: "Very well, Mr. Cranstoun, I will take your word as to that; but I have many more reasons to give you why I disapprove of your proposal. In the first place, you are a man of fashion., and I believe your fortune small; my daughter has been brought up with great rare and tenderness, and as neither of you seem to me cut out to live upon a small fortune, you would both like to live in a manner suitable to your station." To which she added, "I can assure you, Mr. Cranstoun, had my daughter £10,000 and in my disposal, I would give her to you with the greatest pleasure. There is one thing, continued she, I think, Mr. Cranstoun, I ought to inform you of. Notwithstanding the world reports Mr. Blandy to be able to give his daughter down a handsome fortune, I am sure he cannot do it; tho' I was ever made a stranger to his circumstances." To which he replied, "If Mr. Blandy will give me his daughter, I shall not trouble him about that." This, as far as I can recollect, is the substance of what passed on Mr. Cranstoun's first making his addresses to me. After the last conference, my mamma and Mr. Cranstoun had several others to the same effect; the last of which was followed by Mr. Cranstoun's journey to Bath. He attended his uncle. Lord Mark Kerr, thither; but before he left Henley, he obtained my father's leave to correspond with me. He went to Bath, if my memory fails me not, in the latter season of the year 1747; after I had been above a year acquainted with him. He staid at Bath about five or six weeks; and, after his return to Henley, lived at our house, with my father's and mother's approbation, five or six months. At the end of this term, he went up to town; and, within a few days after his arrival there, wrote to my father, to beg; the favour of him to comply with his request, that I might be permitted to stay for him till his unhappy affair with Miss Murray (for so was his supposed wife called) was finally determined. This, he said, he was assured, by the best judges, must end in a little time with certain success: which, as he added, would make him the happiest man living; and he doubted not but he should communicate the same degree of happiness to me, by the tender treatment I should meet with from him. My father gave the letter to me with a smile, and told me, "that was a letter which he believed I should read with some pleasure." After I had read it, I said, "What will you answer it, sir?"' To which he replied, "Not at all." Upon this, looking earnestly at him, said, "Not at all, papa?" "No," replied he, "you shall answer it yourself." "In what manner, sir?" subjoined I. "As," returned he, "is most agreeable to you." To which, however, he thought fit to add, "Tho' I give you leave in this manner, yet if you are prudent you will not think of having a man of quality without any fortune, when you may marry a man with a very ample one, of as good a gentleman's family as any in England: But, continued he, if you can be contented, I'll do what I can to make you happy with him. I believe he loves you, and mutual love must make the marriage-state happy." Mr. Blunt, the owner or proprietor of Paradise, the house inhabited by Lord Mark Kerr, was then at my father's, and knew, if I am not mistaken, from whom the letter came. Be that as it will, no more passed on this subject at that time. The next post I informed Mr. Cranstoun, that "My papa had given me leave to write to him whatever I pleased; in consequence of which I should take the liberty to assure him, that I would stay for him, and accept of no other offer till his affair was brought to a decision; and that if it was not determined in his favour, I doubted whether I should accept of any ever after." Tho' I did not see Mr. Cranstoun for several months, our correspondence still continued; letters passing and repassing between us almost every post. During this interval, my mamma went to a place called Turville Court, to the house of one Mrs. Pocock; where she was seized with a disorder, that it was thought would have proved fatal to her. Through the whole course of her illness, when in her senses, she constantly cried out, "Let Cranstoun be sent for:" On which, I at last sent for him. He was then at Southampton; which, by the miscarriage of one of his letters, I was ignorant of. But the very night he reached London, he set out for Turville Court, and arrived there about ten o'clock at night. As soon as he came to Mrs. Pocock's house, he was instantly taken up into my mother's chamber, which greatly refreshed and revived her; for she immediately raised herself up in bed, took him about the neck, and kissed him in the most affectionate manner. At the same time, she said, "My dear Cranstoun, I am glad you are come; I now shall grow well soon." Nor would she take any medicines, but from his hand, saying, "My poor nurse must not be jealous (meaning her daughter) since loving him I knew is pleasing her." The next day she got up, and sent for Mr. Cranstoun into her room; saying, "This I owe to you, my dear Cranstoun; your coming has given me new health and fresh spirits: I was fearful lest I should die, and you not here to comfort that poor girl, how like death she looks!" My father came thither that day to see his spouse, and took Mr. Cranstoun, who met him in the hall, up in his arms, saying, "I am glad to see you here, how does my wife?" Upon Mr. Cranstoun's telling him, "she was much better, and up," he said, smiling, "I suppose they will both of them (meaning his wife and daughter) be much better, now you are come." My father seemed in great good humour all that day. The next time he came (for he returned home at night) he appeared much out of humour at the great expence incurred by my mother on the foregoing occasion, and desired her to think of removing to her own house; since in that case, neither the physician's fees nor the apothecary's journeys could be so expensive. But she was too weak to be removed immediately. However, in a short time, she returned home, in company with myself and Mr. Cranstoun, who, with my father and mother's approbation, resided with us above six months. During which interval, my father was sometimes extremely kind, and sometimes very rude to Mr. Cranstoun, as well as very harsh, to his daughter. I observed, that this rudeness and harshness generally appeared after he had been in company with some persons, and particularly one hereafter mentioned, who were known not to approve of my marriage with Mr. Cranstoun. My father also frequently made my mother very uneasy, on account of her approbation of that marriage; tho' he always declared, that he thought Mr. Cranstoun a most agreeable man. Whilst he was last at my father's house, the regiment of marines to which he belonged was broke at Southampton; which obliged him to go thither: But he did not stay there above two or three days; and upon his return to Henley, was received by my father with great tenderness, who told him, that "as he was now broke, he supposed his cash, would run low; and that therefore he was welcome to stay with him." This happening in my presence, I went up to my father kissed him, and said, "Sir, I shall never forget this goodness." Mr. Cranstoun having lost his post in the regiment of marines, did not remain long in Henley; but set out soon for London, where he made a pretty, considerable stay. We kept up, however, our correspondence, as usual in times of absence, he writing to me almost every post. A few months after Mr. Cranstoun's return from Southampton, my mother went up to London, in order to ask advice for a complaint in her breast, and took me along with her. Upon our arrival there, we went to her brother's, Mr. Henry Steven's, in Doctors' Commons, where we resided all the time we remained in town. I had before apprized Mr Cranstoun of our intended journey; and he waited upon me the next morning after our arrival at my uncle's. Hither he came every day to visit me, whilst we stayed in London. Once he brought his brother, the Lord Cranstoun, with him, who was then just married. One of Mr. Cranstoun's visits happening a little before dinner, my mother asked her brother, Mr. Henry Stevens, to invite him to dinner; but this favour was refused her: On which, coming into the dining-room, whore she found me and Mr. Cranstoun, she took him by the hand, and burst into tears, saying, "My dear Mr. Cranstoun, I am sorry you should be so affronted by any of my family, but I dare not ask you to stay to dinner. However, continued she, come to me as often as you can in my own apartment; in a morning I am always alone." To this Mr. Cranstoun made answer, "My dear mamma, don't be uneasy--I don't come for the sake of them, but of you and your daughter. And let him put on never so terrible a face, he shall not keep me from you." At this time Mrs. Focock was in town, and had a house in St. James's Square, to which I used to go most days. Hither Mr. Cranstoun perpetually came, when he understood that I was here; and that with my father's, who arrived in town after we had reached it, and mother's consent. Mrs. Pocock often asked my father, whilst in London, to make one of the party. But he answered her, "You keep such quality hours, as neither agree with my health, nor suit my business; however, you will have two parts of me, my wife and my daughter." "Yes," replied Mrs. Pocock, "and not only these two, but likewise another bit of you, which will be coming soon." At this he smiled, and said, "What, Cranstoun! a little bit, indeed, I think! They are very well matched--I was surprised not to find him here--I thought they could not have been so long asunder." My father went away and left his family there. The next day my mother and I were invited to dine at Mrs. Pocock's, in order to meet the present Lord Crauford,[24] then Lord Garnock, and Mr. Cranstoun. The latter attended Mrs. Pocock in a coach she had hired to fetch me and my mother into her house. My father met us in the Strand, and stopped the coach, crying out, "For God's sake, Mrs. Pocock, what do you with this rubbish every day?" "Rubbish, do you call them," replied she, "your wife, your daughter, and one who may be your son?" "Aye, aye," said he, "they are very well matched; 'tis pity they should ever be asunder." On which, Mr. Cranstoun took hold of my father's hand, and cried out, "God grant they never may; don't you say Amen, papa." At this my father smiled, and said, "Make her these fine speeches seven years hence." He then took his leave of them, saying, "He had so much business upon his hands, that he could not stand idling there"; bidding the coachman to drive on, and crying out, "God bless you, I wish you merry." Mrs. Pocock then asked him, "If he could not contrive to come to them?" To which he made answer, alluding to the distance of her house, "God bless you, do you think I can come down now to Henley?" Then our coachman drove on to St. James's Square; and soon after my father left the town, in order to return home. Whilst I was now in London, Mr. Cranstoun proposed a private marriage to me, saying, "It might help us with regard to the affair in Scotland; since a real marriage, according to the usage of the Church of England, if matters went hard, might possibly invalidate a contract that arose only from cohabitation." In order to understand which, it must be observed, that Mr. Cranstoun had before cohabitated with one Miss Murray, by whom he had had a child then living; and was consequently considered, by the Laws of Scotland, as her husband. This, he said, was the only thing that intituled her to him, as he never was married by any priest. To Mr. Cranstoun's proposal I answered, "I won't, Cranstoun, do you so much injury, as well as myself; for my father never will forgive it, nor give me a farthing." To which he replied, "There will be no occasion to discover it, but upon such an interesting event; and then surely, if you love me, you will suffer anything rather than part with me. What would I not suffer for you!" To this I made answer, "I would do nothing in the affair without he could procure the advice of the best council, and be certainly informed by this that such a marriage would be valid. Consider with Yourself," said I, "Cranstoun, what a condition I should be in, if I should lose my character, my friends, and yourself?--And you I must lose, if your former supposed marriage should be declared valid, and in honour we must never see each other more." He then said, "He would go and lay the case immediately before the best council, particularly Mr. Murray, the Solicitor-General." But I heard no more of this affair whilst we staid in town, excepting that it was laid before the said council; nor did I receive any more solicitations from him on this head. About this time my mother being distressed for money, was very uneasy, as well as in a bad state of health; which gave me great concern. Being one day, therefore, alone, and in tears, Mr. Cranstoun came unexpectedly into the room, and insisted upon knowing the reason of my grief; which at last, after many tender persuasions on his part, I discovered to him. I told him my mother owed forty pounds, and as she durst not inform my father of it, did not know which way to get it. To this he replied, "I only wish I had as many hundreds: I will get it for you, my dear, to-morrow. Poor woman, how can her husband use her so!" On which, my mother coming in, no more was at that time said. Mr. Cranstoun stayed but a little while; and when he went away, he told me, "He would see about it." After he was gone, I took my mother in my arms, and said, "My dear mamma, you may be easy about this money, for Mr. Cranstoun will get it for you to-morrow." At this my mother burst into tears, and cried, "Why will Mr. Blandy expose himself and me so? How can the poor soul get it? But he shall have my watch if he ever wants it, and I cannot pay him in money." To this I made answer, "As to paying him in money, mamma, that you never can; having never been mistress of such a sum, nor likely ever to be so; but make yourself easy, if we meet, you will never be asked for it." The next day she and I went to see her sister, Mrs. Frances Stevens, who then lived with her uncle, Mr. Cary, in Watling Street; where Mr. Cranstoun and his cousin, Mr. Edmonstoun, took their leave of us, we being to set out for Henley the day following. Mr. Cranstoun brought the money with him, which he delivered into my mother's own hand; on which, not being able to speak, she squeezed his hand and burst into tears. He then kissed her, and said, "Remember, 'tis a son, and therefore don't make yourself uneasy; you can't lie under any obligation to me." Then he took me by the hand, and led me into another room. Here I was going to return him thanks for his goodness to my mother: but this he prevented, by kissing me, and saying, "That was all he desired in return." Then he gave me five guineas, and desired me to keep them by me; since, in case the council should think a private marriage proper, they should enable me to come up in a post-chaise to London, and meet him there, with all possible expedition. After a little farther discourse, we parted in a very moving manner. I paid ten pounds for my mother, out of the forty pounds she had been supplied with by Mr. Cranstoun, that very night. The next morning we set out for Henley, where we arrived in due time. The day following, being Sunday, I wrote to Mr. Cranstoun, as he had requested me to do; giving him an account of our safe arrival, and thanking him in the strongest terms, for his late extraordinary favour. The next day, being Monday, the other thirty pounds, being the remaining part of the money my mother had borrowed of Mr. Cranstoun, she paid to the footman, for fowls, butter, eggs, wine, and other provisions, brought into the house, chiefly on account of entertainments, by him. From this time to Sept. 28th, 1749, my mother continued in a good state of health. But on that day, which was about half a year after her last departure from London, at one o'clock in the morning, she was taken very ill. This giving me, who always lay with her, great uneasiness, I immediately got up, and called her maid., who instantly appeared; and then she got out of bed, and retired. When she came into bed again, she said, "My dear Molly, don't fright yourself: You know there is now no danger." In order to understand which words, it will be proper to observe, that, when my mother was in labour of me, she received a hurt; which made me apprehensive of ill consequences, which either the cholick, which was her present disorder, or any obstructions in the parts contiguous to those which are the seat of that distemper, happened. She lay pretty easy till six, when I dispatched a messenger for Mr. Norton, the apothecary to the family, who lived in Henley. When he came, she complained of a pain in her bowels; upon which he took some blood from her, and ordered her some gentle physic. She seemed better after this, but nothing passed through her. It being Friday, and many country gentlemen meeting to bowl at the Bell Inn, the Rev. Mr. Stevens of Fawley, my mother's brother, came thither that day, paid a visit to his sister, and found her greatly indisposed. When he left the room, in which she lay, for she kept her bed, I followed him out, and asked him, if he thought there was any danger; telling him how she then was, the manner in which she was first seized, and what had been prescribed her. As she before had had several such fits of cholick, Mr. Stevens did not apprehend any immediate danger. I said, "If my mamma was not better soon, I would send for a physician." To which he replied, "You are much in the right of it; but stay a little, and see what effects the physic will have." He called again in the evening, and found her better, tho' nothing had yet passed through her. About twelve o'clock at night my mother obliged me, who was then myself indisposed, to get into another bed; and promised to send to me, if she found herself worse. Soon after this, she grew much worse; but would not send to her daughter, saying, "She would know her fate too soon." She farther said in Mr. Norton, who was then with her, "My daughter loves me so well, that I wish my decease may not be the death of her." Between five and six o'clock in the morning, on Saturday Sept. 30th, 1749, my mother's maid came up to me, and told me, that, "If I would see my mother alive, I must come immediately into her chamber." I leaped out of bed, put on my shoes, and one petticoat only, and ran thither in the greatest confusion imaginable. When my mother saw me, she put out her hand, and said, "Now, Molly, shew yourself a Christian, and submit to what God is pleased to order. I must die, my dear: God will enable you to bear it, if you pray to Him." On which I turned about in a state of distraction, ran to my father's room, and said to him, "For God's sake, sir, come to my mother's room: she is this instant dying." Then I ran, with great inquietude, into the kitchen, where I found my footman, and sent him immediately to Fawley for the Rev. Mr. Stevens, my uncle, and his brother, Mr. Henry Stevens, of Doctors Commons, who was then at his house in Henley. I also, at the same time, dispatched a messenger to Dr. Addington, who lived at Reading. After which I went upstairs, and found my father sitting by my mother's bedside. She took him and me both by the hand, joining our hands together, and saying to him, "Be both a father and a mother to her: I have long tried and known her temper, Mr. Blandy. She is all your heart can wish for, and has been the best of daughters to me. Use her with a generous confidence, and she will never abuse it. She has set her heart upon Cranstoun; when I am gone, let no one set you against this match." To these last words Mr. Blandy immediately made answer, "It shall not be my fault, if this does not take place; but they must stay, you know, till the unhappy affair in Scotland is decided." "God bless you," replied she, "and thank you for that promise; God bless you, Mr. Blandy, for all your kindnesses to me and my girl. God grant that you may both live long, that you may be a blessing to each other. Whatever little unkindnesses may have passed I freely forgive you. Now, if you please to go down, Mr. Blandy, for my spirits fail me." My father then kissed her, and retired in tears, saying, as he went, "The doctor still may think of something that may be of service to you." At this she smiled and said, "Not without you can give me a new inside." When my father was gone, my mother took hold of my hand, drew me to her, and kissed me. Taking notice that I had no cloaths on, she ordered my maid to bring 'em down, and dress me. This being done, she ordered her servants out of the room; and told me, "she had many things, if her strength would permit, to say to me. Be sure then," said she, "Molly, when I am gone, to remember the lessons I have taught you. Be dutiful to your father; and if you think I have been sometimes a little hardly used, do not remember it in wrath; but defend my character if aspersed. I owe some more money, Molly, God knows how you will get it paid. I wish your uncles would stand your friends. If your father should know it, I am only fearful for you. Indeed, my dear, I never spent it in extravagancies. I was in hopes you would have been married; I then would have told your father all, as I could have come to you till his passion had been over." On my being drowned In tears, she catched me in her arms, and cried, "I leave the world with the greatest pleasure, only thee makes me sorry to go. Oh that I could but take you along with me!--But then what would poor Cranstoun do? Be sure, child, you behave with honour in that affair; don't, either thro' interest or terror, violate the promises you have made." To this I reply'd, "You may be sure, madam, I never will. I will do all I can to act as you would wish your daughter to do. Oh mamma, you have been the best of mothers to me! How can I survive you, and go thro' all the miseries I must meet with after your death, without a friend to advise with on any emergency or occasion." "My dear," returned she, "your uncle John, in things you cannot speak to your papa about, will help and advise you in the tenderest manner; and you may repose an absolute confidence in him." Soon after Mr. Stevens of Fawley came, and I conducted him into my mother's chamber. At his approach to her, he was so overwhelmed with grief, that he could not speak a word. She took him by the hand, and said, "I am glad to see you, my dear brother. You must help to comfort your poor niece, who will stand in need of your assistance. Never forsake her, my dear brother. All that gives me pain in death is the leaving of her behind me." Then turning to me, "Your uncle Jack, my dear, will take care of you, and look on you as his own," At which Mr. Stevens took hold of his sister's and niece's hands, and, with tears, told 'em both he would. Then turning about, he asked me if the physician was not yet come? My mother said, "They would send for him, but he could be of no service to her"; giving her brother at the same time such reasons for her despondency as convinced him, that there were little or no hopes of her recovery. He found himself so moved at this, that he was obliged to go down stairs, and retire to my father and Mr. Henry Stevens, who were at that time both in the parlour. The physician, Dr. Addington, of Reading, soon arrived, and went directly to my mother's room. When he came in, she showed him the inflammation and swelling on her bowels. He prescribed her some physic, to be taken once in every two hours, and ordered her to be blooded immediately. Her bowels also, according to his direction, were to be fomented and poulticed once in every four hours. This operation I took upon myself, and punctually performed it. I also gave her every medicine she took till she was at the point of death, and I myself was forced to be carried out of the room in a fit. Dr. Addington, before he prescribed anything, went with me out of the room, and told me he was afraid he could do nothing for her; repeating the same afterwards both to my father and my two uncles. Notwithstanding which, he thought fit to order the above mentioned poultices and fomentations; which, according to his direction, were applied, tho' without producing any good effect. In fine, my dear mother died Sept. 30, 1749, about nine o'clock at night. For six months preceding her sickness, or thereabouts, being the interval between her last departure from London and the time her indisposition seized her, my mother never saw Mr. Cranstoun; tho' I constantly, and even almost every post, corresponded with him. It must here be observed, that Lady Cranstoun had wrote to my mother some time before, to return her thanks for the civilities her son had received from her. It must also be remembered, that a little before my mother went last to town, I and my father both received letters from Miss Murray, signed "N. Cranstoun," to inform us, that she was his lawful wife. The decree of the Court of Scotland in her favour was sent with these letters. When I received them, I carried them to my father. After he had read them, I asked him "what I was to do." His answer was, "I do not trouble my head about it." On which I went to my mother, and consulted with her about what was to be done; and, by her advice, wrote to Mr. Cranstoun, begging him, as he was a man of honour, to let me know the truth. At the same time, I sent him the letters that came from Scotland, and occasioned this epistle. In answer to this, he said, "It was certainly her hand; but that she never was his wife, nor has any right to the name": And, in order to gain credit to his assertion, he made the strongest protestations. Before my mother wrote last to him, and that a considerable time, he had sent me a solemn Contract of Marriage, wherein he declared he never had been married before, and stiled me therein "Mrs. Cranstoun." But to put an end to this digression, and proceed to what happened after my mother's death. On the day following her decease, which was Sunday, Mr. Stevens of Fawley was desired to write Mr. Cranstoun word of this sorrowful event; which he did, I being incapable of either knowing or doing any thing. Mrs. Stevens, the Rev. Mr. Stevens's wife, staid with me from Saturday night, when my mother died, till the Sunday night following. Then Mrs. Mounteney, a friend of my late mother's, came to me, and staid with me some time. My mother, on her deathbed, had begged me not to oppose the match between my father and this Mrs. Mounteney, if, after her death, he discovered an inclination to marry her; as she was a woman of honour, and would use me well for her sake. On the Tuesday following my mother's death Mr. Cranstoun sent his footman express to Henley, with letters to me and my father. When my father opened his letter and read it, the tears ran down his checks, and he cried out, "How tenderly does he write!" Then he gave Mrs. Mounteney the letter to read, who, after having read it, said it was as pretty a letter as could have been wrote on such an occasion; "He has lost a friend indeed," said she, "but I don't doubt," speaking to my father, "but you will make up her loss to them both." Then, my father said to me, "Pray read your letter to us." This I did, and the letter contained an earnest desire, that if I could not write myself, I would let his footman see me, that he might know how I really was; since he was almost distracted for fear of my being ill after so great a shock. He also begged me to remember, "That there was one left still, who loved me as tenderly as my mother could do, and whose whole happiness in this world depended upon my life." My father told me, tho' my mother was to be buried that night, "I must write a line to him, in order to ease the poor soul as much as I could; and let him know that he was as welcome to my father's house, whenever he would please to come, as he was before." On this I wrote to him, and shewed the letter to my father. The footman set out with it for London the same night, or very early the next morning. Mr. Cranstoun not coming down so soon as was expected, my father one day, being alone with me, seemed to express himself as if he thought it wrong; upon which I wrote a very pressing letter to him, to come immediately to Henley. To this he in a letter replied, that he was not able to go out at that time for debt, and was fearful if he should come, the Bailiffs might follow him; his fortune being seized in Scotland, for the maintenance of Miss Murray and her child. The debt that occasioned this perplexity, he said, was near fifteen guineas. I having borrowed forty pounds of Mrs. Mounteney, to pay off part of my mother's debts, sent him up fifteen guineas out of this sum; on which he came down to Henley, and staid some weeks with my father, who received him with great marks of affection and esteem. During this interval, he acquainted me with the great skill of the famous Mrs. Morgan, who had described me and my father, tho' she had never seen us, in the most perfect and surprising manner possible. He further acquainted me, that she had given him some powders to take, which she called Love-powders. Some time after this conversation, my father seemed much out of humour, and said several unkind things, both to Mr. Cranstoun and me. This induced Mr. Cranstoun, when alone with me not long after, to say, "I wish I could give your father some of the love-powders." "For what?" said I. "Because," replied he, "they would make him love me." "Are you weak enough," said I, "to think that there is such a power in any powders?" "Yes, I really do," replied he, "for I took them myself, and forgave a friend soon after; tho' I never intended to have spoke to him again." This subject dropped for some days, and no more said of it: but on my father's being very much out of humour one night, Mr. Cranstoun said, "If I had any of these powders, I would put them into something that Mr. Blandy should drink." To which I answered, "I am glad you have not, for I have no faith in such things." "But I have," replied he. Just before he returned to London, he received a dunning letter. This was on a Sunday, when my father was at church. I perceiving him to look dull, begged to know the reason. He said he must leave me the next day. On which I asked him what could occasion such a sudden departure? He then told me he had received a letter, concerning a debt he owed, that he had no money to pay; and that if he staid in Henley, the bailiffs might come down in quest of him thither; and you know your father's temper, said he, if that should happen. This induced me to desire a sight of the letter; which having perused, I immediately gave him the money he wanted on this occasion, winch amounted to fifteen pounds, and was part of the sum I had before borrowed of Mrs. Mounteney. This, with the other fifteen pounds sent him from Henley, made up thirty of the forty pounds he had formerly lent my mother. As soon as he had received this money, he wrote a letter to his creditor in London, informing him, that he would pay him on a day therein mentioned. A few days after this, he set out for London, and kept up his correspondence with me for several months, not returning to Henley till August 1750. The morning he left Henley, my father parted with him with the greatest tenderness; yet the moment he was gone, he used me very cruelly on his account. This had such an effect upon me, that it threw me into hysteric fits. His conduct for some time was very uncertain; sometimes extremely tender, and at other times the reverse; he on certain occasions saying very bitter and cruel things to me. During this interval, my father received a present of some dried salmon from Lady Cranstoun in Scotland, and a very civil letter, which he did not answer, tho' he seemed pleased with the contents of it. The first of August 1750, as I apprehend, Mr. Cranstoun wrote to my father, that he would wait upon him, and I carried the letter up to him, he then being in his bed-chamber. After he had opened and read it, he made no manner of answer. I then asked him what answer I should write. To which he replied, "He must come, I suppose." On this I wrote to him, giving him to understand, that I should be glad to see him. This produced an answer from him, wherein he told me, he would be with me on the Monday following; but he came on Sunday, whilst we were at dinner. My father received him with great tenderness seemingly, and said, "He was sorry he had not seen him half an hour sooner, for he was afraid the dinner was quite cold." My father after dinner went to church, and left Mr. Cranstoun and me together: after church was over, my father returned, drank tea with us, and seemed to be in perfect good humour; and so he remained for several weeks; but afterwards changed so much in his temper, that I seldom arose from table without tears. This gave Mr. Cranstoun great pain; so that he one time said to me, "Why will you not permit me to give your father some of the powders which I formerly mentioned? If I was to give him them," continued he, "they are quite innocent, and will do him no harm, if they did not produce the desired effect." He had no sooner spoke those words than my father came in; upon which a profound silence ensued. Next morning I went into my father's study, and found him very much out of humour: he had spent the evening at the coffee-house, as he frequently did, and generally came home in a bad humour from thence. I went from him into the parlour where I found Mr. Cranstoun: he insisted upon knowing what was the matter, I appearing to him to have been lately in tears: I told him the whole affair. He replied, "I hate he should go to that house, he always comes home from thence in a very ill humour." I had made the tea, and got up to fetch some sugar, which was in a glass scrutore at the farther end of the room; and when I rose up, Mr. Cranstoun said to me, "I will now put in some of the powder--upon my soul it will not hurt him." My father was in his study at the time these words were spoken. I made answer, "Don't do it, Cranstoun; it will make me uneasy, and can do you no good." To this he replied, "It can do no hurt, and therefore I will mix it." After I had got the sugar, I returned to the tea-table, and was going to throw away the tea, in which Mr. Cranstoun had put some of the powder; but my father came in that moment, and prevented me from executing my design. My father seemed very much out of humour all breakfast-time; and, soon after breakfast was over, retired to his study. Mr. Cranstoun and I then took a walk. At dinner my father appeared in the best of humours, and continued so all the time Mr. Cranstoun stayed with him. Mr. Cranstoun and I used to walk out every day. On one of those days, Mr. Cranstoun told me he had a secret to impart to me, and begg'd me not to be angry with him for it; adding, he knew I had too much good sense to be so. The secret in short was this: he had had a daughter by one Miss Capel, a year before he knew me; and, as he pretended, all his friends had insisted upon his telling me of it. To this I replied, "Your follies, Cranstoun, have been very great; but I hope you see them." "That I do," said he, "with penitence and shame." "Then, sir," replied I, "I freely forgive you; but never shall, if you repeat these follies now after our acquaintance." "If I do," said he, "I must be a villain; you alone can make me happy in this world; and, by following your example, I hope I shall be happy in the next." Mr. Cranstoun gave my father the powder in August 1750, and stayed with him in Henley, as I believe, till some day in the beginning of November, the same year. A day or two after the preceding dialogue, one morning I got, up, and asked my maid, "How Mr. Cranstoun did?" Who answered, "He is gone out a walking, Madam." Upon this, I, as soon as I was drest, went up into Mr. Cranstoun's room, to look out his linnen for my maid to mend. I could not find it on the table, where it used to lie; and seeing a key in his trunk, I opened it. The first thing I found there was a letter from a hand I knew not, tho' he used always to give me his letters to open, and that unasked by me. This I opened to read, and found it to come from a woman he kept. Having read it, I shut the trunk, locked it fast, and put the key in my pocket. The letter I left in the same place where I found it. I then went down to my father in his study, and asked him to come to breakfast. He said, "No, not till Cranstoun returns home;" on which I retired into the parlour. A few minutes after, Mr. Cranstoun and Mr. Littleton, my father's clerk, both came in together. We all of us then went to breakfast. My father said to me, soon after we sat down, "You look very pale, Molly; what is the matter with you?" "I am not very well, sir," replied I. After we had breakfasted, my father and his clerk went out of the room. I then gave Mr. Cranstoun the keys of his trunk, and bade him be more careful for the future, and not leave his letters so much exposed. At these words he almost fainted away. He got up, and retired to his room immediately. I was going to my own room, when he called to me, and begged me, for God's sake, to come to him: which I instantly did. He then fell down on his knees before me, and begged me, for God's sake, to forgive him; if I was resolved to see him no more. On this I told him I forgave him, but intreated him to make some excuse to leave Henley the next day: "For I will not," said I, "expose you, if I can help it; and our affair may scorn to go off by degrees." The last words, seemingly so confounded him, that he made me no answer, but threw himself on the bed, crying out, "I am ruined, I am ruined. Oh Molly, you never loved me!" I then was upon the point of going out of the room, without giving him any answer. Upon which he got hold of my gown, and swore, "He would not live till night, if I did not forgive him." He bad me, "Remember my mother's last dying commands, and reflect upon the pain it would give his mother." He protested "that he could never forgive himself, if I did; and that he never would repeat the same provocations." He kept me then two hours, before he could prevail upon me to declare, that I would not break off my acquaintance with him. Mr. Cranstoun pretended to be sick two or three days upon this unlucky event; but I cannot help thinking this now to have been only a delusion. Some time after this Mr. Cranstoun had a letter from his brother, the Lord Cranstoun, to desire him to come immediately to Scotland, in order to settle some of his own affairs there, and to see his mother, the Lady Cranstoun, who was then extremely ill. Upon the arrival of this letter Mr. Cranstoun said to me, "Good God, what shall I do! I have no money to carry me thither and all my fortune is seized on, but my half-pay!" This made me very uneasy. He then said, "He would part with his watch, in order to enable him to raise a sum sufficient to defray the expence of his journey to Scotland." I told him, "I had no money to give him, but would freely make him a present of my own watch; as I could not bear to see him without one." Then I took a picture of himself, which he had some time before given me, off my watch, and freely made him a present of it. Two days after this he departed for Scotland, and I never afterwards saw him. He set out about six o'clock in the morning. My father got up early that morning to take leave of him before his departure, at which he seemed vastly uneasy. He took him in his arms, and said, "God bless you, my dear Cranstoun, when you come next, I hope your unhappy affair will be decided to our mutual satisfaction." To this Mr. Cranstoun replied, "Yes, sir, I hope in my favour; or if this should fail that you should hear of my death. Be tender to," continued he, "and comfort this poor thing," turning towards me, "whom I love better than myself." Then my father look Mr. Cranstoun and myself in his arms, and we all three shed tears. This was a very moving scene. My father afterwards went out of the room, and fetched a silver dram-bottle, holding near half a pint, filled it with rum, and made a present of both to Mr. Cranstoun; bidding him keep the dram-bottle for his sake, and drink the liquor on the road; assuring him, that if he found himself sick or cold, the latter would prove a cordial to him. Mr. Cranstoun then got into the post-chaise, and took his leave of Henley. It will be proper to take notice in this place, by way of digression, of a very remarkable event, or rather series of events, that happened before Mr. Cranstoun's last departure for Scotland. One day whilst my mother and I were last in London, we were talking of the immortality of the soul; and the subject we were then upon led us insensibly to a discourse of apparitions; and that again to a promise we made each other, that the first of us who died should appear to the survivor, after death, if permitted so to do. My mother dying first, in the manner already related, I sometimes retired into the room where she died, in hopes of seeing her. Here I lay near half a year, earnestly desiring to see my mother, without being able either to see or hear any thing. After this, my father lay in that room; but for some time neither saw nor heard any thing. Afterwards, one night, he taxed me with being at his chamber door, rapping at it, rushing with my silk-gown, and refusing to answer him when he called to me. My chamber was at a small distance from his, and into it he came the next morning: demanding for what reason I had so frighted him. To this I replied, "I had never been at his door, nor out of my bed the whole night." He then inquired of all the maids, who only lay in the house, whether any of them disturbed him; to which they all answered in the negative. Soon after this, Mr. Cranstoun came to Henley, as has been already observed, and was put into a room, called the hall-chamber, over the great parlour; which was reckoned the best in the house. Here he was shut out from the rest of the family. Till October 1750, above a year after my mother's death, no noise at all was heard, excepting that at Mr. Blandy's chamber-door above mentioned. But one morning in the beginning of that month, Mr. Cranstoun being in the parlour, I asked him, "What made him look so pale, and to seem so uneasy?" "I have met," said he, "with the oddest accident this night that ever befel me: the moment I got into bed, I heard the finest music that can possibly be imagined. I sat up in my bed upon this, to hear from whence it came; and it seemed to me to come from the middle of the stairs. It continued, as I believe, at least above two hours." At this I laughed, and said, "O Cranstoun, how can you be so whimsical?" "Tis no whim," replied he, "for I really heard it; nor had I been asleep; for it began soon after I got into bed." I then said, "Don't make yourself uneasy, if it was so; since nothing ill, sure, can be presaged by music." When my father came into the parlour, this topic of conversation was instantly dropped. The next night, I, who lay quite at the other end of the house, being awake, heard music, that seemed to me to be in the yard, exceeding plainly. Upon this, I got up and looked out of the window that faced the yard, but saw nothing. The music, however, continued till near morning, when I fell asleep, and heard no more of it. My mother's maid coming into my chamber, as usual, to call me, I told her what I heard. This drew from her the following saucy answer: "You see and hear, Madam, with Mr. Cranstoun's eyes and ears." To which I made no other reply than, "Go, and send me my own maid". As soon as I was dressed, I went into Mr. Cranstoun's room, whom I found sitting therein by the fire. I asked him, at first coming into the room, "How he had spent the night, and whether he had heard the music?" To which he replied, "Yes, all night long; I could not sleep a wink for it; nay, I got out of my bed, and followed it into the great parlour, where it left me. I then returned into my own room, and heard such odd noises in the parlour under me, as greatly discomposed me." "I wish," added he, "you would send me up a bason of tea." To which I replied, "Pray come down, as you are now up; for you know my papa is better tempered when you are by, than when I am with him alone." We then both went down to breakfast, but said nothing to my father of what had happened. A little while after this, Susannah Gunnel, my mother's maid, who had before given me the impertinent answer, came into my bedchamber before I was up, and told me she had heard the music. She also begged my pardon for not believing me, when I had formerly averted the same thing. Mr. Cranstoun, myself, and this maid then talked all together about this surprising event. Mr. Cranstoun declared he had heard noises, as well as music, which the other two at that time never heard. The music generally began about twelve o'clock at night. My father obliging the family to be in bed about eleven, I told the aforesaid maid, who was an old servant in the family, "That she and I would go together up into Mr. Cranstoun's room at twelve o'clock, and try if we could find out what these noises were." According to agreement, therefore, we went up into that room at the hour proposed; and heard very clearly and most distinctly the music. The maid fell asleep about three o'clock in the morning; but was soon waked with an uncommon noise, heard both by Mr. Cranstoun and myself. This noise resembled thumping or knocking at a door, which greatly terrified Mr. Cranstoun, and the maid. In less than a minute after this, we all three heard plainly the footsteps of my mother, as I then apprehended, by which she seemed to be going down stairs towards the kitchen door, which soon after seemed to be opened. We all three sat silent, and heard the same invisible being come up stairs again. Upon this, I took the candle, they still sitting by the fire, and was going to open the chamber door, saying, "Surely it must be one of the maids." Mr. Cranstoun observing this, cried out, "Perhaps it may be your father, don't let him see you here." Then he took the candle, opened the door, and looked down the stairs himself; but could perceive nothing at all. In less than three minutes after this I said, "I will now go into my room to bed, being fatigued and frightened almost to death." "I believe," continued I, "it is near four." These words were no sooner uttered than we all heard the former footsteps, as tho' some person had been coming directly to the room where we were, but stopped short at the door. Upon this I immediately catched up the candle, went to the door and open'd it; but saw nothing, tho' I heard something plainly go down the stairs. Then I went to the maid, who was half asleep, and did not perfectly hear the last footsteps. But Mr. Cranstoun heard them, and seemed greatly surprised. Then I bad the maid go with me instantly to bed, not being able to keep up my spirits any longer. Soon after this, Mr. Cranstoun and I went up to Fawley, to pay a visit to the Rev. Mr. Stevens; and whilst we were there, I gave my uncle an account of this surprising affair. But he laughed at me, and called me little fool, for my pains. Then Mr. Cranstoun said, "Sir, I myself heard it." To which Mr. Stevens made no other reply than, "Sir, I don't doubt you think you heard it; but don't you believe there is a great deal in fancy? May it not be some trick of the servants?" To which I made answer, "No, Sir, that is impossible; since if they could make the noise, they could not the music." Mr. Stevens not giving much credit to what we affirmed, we immediately changed the subject of discourse. By this time all the servants that lay in the house had heard both the music and noise; and one morning at breakfast, Mr. Cranstoun ventured to tell my father of the music. At such a strange report, my father stared at him, and cried, "Are yon light-headed?" In answer to which Mr. Cranstoun reply'd, "Your daughter, sir, has heard the same, and so have all your servants." To this my father, smiling, returned, "It was Scotch music, I suppose;" and said some other things that shewed he was not in good humour. Upon which it was thought fit immediately to drop the discourse. Some few days after this, on a Sunday in the afternoon, Mr. Cranstoun and I being alone in the parlour, Betty Binfield, the cook-maid, came running into the room, and said, "There is such a noise in the room over my master's study, for God's sake come into the yard and hear it." But when we came, we could hear nothing. However, returning into the parlour through the hall, we heard a noise over our heads, like that of some heavy person walking. The room over the hall was once my mother's dressing-room, tho' it then had a bed in it: but now, it was my dressing-room, it had none at all. Hearing the noise, we both went up into the room; but then, notwithstanding the late noise, could see nothing at all. After which, we went down and drank tea with my father. About a fortnight before Mr. Cranstoun's last departure for Scotland, Susannah Gunnel one morning going into his room with some vinegar and water to wash his eyes, he asked her, "If ever her master walked in his sleep?" She replied, "Not that she ever knew of." "It is very odd," said he, "he was in my room to-night, dressed with his white stockings, his coat on, and a cap on his head. I had never," continued he, "been asleep, and the clock had just struck two. I heard him walk up my stairs, open the door, and come into the room: upon which I moved my curtain, and seeing him, I cried, 'Aha! old friend, what did you come to fright me? I have not been asleep since I came to bed, and heard you come up.' But he went on, he would not answer me one word. However, he walked quite across my room, then turned back, and as he approached my bed-side, kissed his hand, bowed, and went out of the room. Then I heard him go down stairs. It was, certainly," continued he, "your master, sleeping or waking; but which, I cannot tell." Susan greatly surprised at this story, then came running down to me, who was getting up, and told me what Mr. Cranstoun had said. To this I made no answer, but went up immediately into his room, and asked him what he meant by this story Susan had told me. In answer to which, he repeated the same story, and declared it to be true in every particular. He then said, "He supposed Mr. Blandy came to see whether he was in bed or not." When he went down to breakfast, he asked my father, "What made him fright him so last night?" My father being surprised at this, and staring on him, asked him, "What he meant?" Mr. Cranstoun then told the same story over again. To which my father replied, "It must have been a dream, for I went to bed at eleven o'clock, and did not rise out of it till seven this morning. Besides, I could not have appeared in my coat, as you pretend, since the maid had it to put a button upon it." My father did not seem pleased with the discourse; which induced me to put an end to it as soon as possible. The surprising facts here mentioned, of the reality of which I cannot entertain the least doubt, made a deep and lasting impression upon my mind. Since, therefore, in my opinion, they were too slightly touched upon at my trial, notwithstanding the incredulity of the present age as to facts of this nature, I could by no means think it improper to give so particular and distinct a relation of them here. Mr. Cranstoun, soon after this, taking his leave of Henley, set out for Scotland, as has been already observed. A day or two after his departure, Mr. Cranstoun wrote me a letter on the road, wherein he begged me to make acceptable to my father his most grateful acknowledgements for his late goodness to him. "This," he said, "had made such an impression upon him, that he never should forget it as long as he lived; and that he should always entertain the same tender sentiments for him as for his father, the late Lord Cranstoun,[25] himself, had he been then alive." In the same letter, he also desired me to permit my letters to be directed by some body who wrote a more masculine hand than mine; since otherwise they might be intercepted by some one or other of Miss Murray's family, as they were jealous of the affair carried on between us two. He likewise therein insisted upon my subscribing myself "M.C." instead of "M.B." tho' he did not discover to me the real view he had therein. Soon after he arrived at his mother's, he wrote me another letter, wherein he informed me, that he told his mother[26] we were married, and had been so for some time: and that she would write to me, as her daughter, by the very next post. This she did; and her letter came accompanied with one from her son, wherein he desired me, if I loved him, to answer his mother's by the return of the post, and sign myself "Mary Cranstoun" at length, as I knew before God I was, by a solemn contract, entitled to that name. This, he pretended, would make his mother stir more in the Scotch affair. On the supposition that I was her daughter, she wrote many tender letters to me, always directing to me by the name of "Mary Cranstoun," and sent me some very handsome presents of Scotch linen. He also obliged his eldest sister, Mrs. Selby,[27] and her husband, to write to me as their sister. Lady Cranstoun likewise wrote to my father in a very complaisant style, thanking him for the civilities he had shewn her son; and hinting, that she hoped it would be in her power to return them to me, when she should have the pleasure of seeing me in Scotland, which she begged might be soon. Lord Cranstoun, his brother, also wrote to my father, and returned him thanks in the same polite manner. During this whole period, my father's behaviour to me was very uncertain; but always good after he had received any of these letters. In a few months, however, after Mr. Cranstoun's departure, my father's temper was much altered for the worse. He upbraided me with having rejected much better offers than any that had come from Scotland; and at last ordered me to write to Mr. Cranstoun not to return to Henley, till his affair with Miss Murray was quite decided. I complied with this order, writing to him in the terms prescribed me. To this I received an answer full of tenderness, grief, and despair. He said, "He found my father loved him no longer, and was afraid he would inspire me with the same sentiments. He saw," he said, "a coolness throughout my whole letter; but conjured me to remember the sacred promises and engagements that had passed between us." After this, I received several other letters from him, filled with the same sort of expostulation; and penned in the same desponding and disconsolate strain. I likewise received several letters from his mother, the old Lady Cranstoun, and Mrs. Selby, his sister, wrote in a most affectionate style. In April, or the beginning of May, 1751, as I apprehend, I had another letter from Mr. Cranstoun, wherein he acquainted me, that he had seen his old friend, Mrs. Morgan; and that if he could procure any more of her powder, he would send it with the Scotch pebbles he intended to make me a present of. In answer to this, I told him, "I was surprised that a man of his sense could believe such efficacy to be lodged in any powder whatsoever; and that I would not give it my father, lest it should impair his health." To this, in his next letter, he replied, "That he was extremely surprised I should believe he would send any thing that might prove prejudicial to my father, when his own interest was so apparently concerned in his preservation." I took this as referring to a conversation we had had a little before he set out for Scotland; wherein I told him, "I was sure my father was not a man of a very considerable fortune; but that if he lived, I was persuaded he would provide very handsomely for us and ours, as he lived so retired, and his business was every day increasing." So far was I from imagining, that I should be a gainer by my father's death, as has been so maliciously and uncharitably suggested! Mr. Cranstoun also seemed most cordially and sincerely to join with me in the same notion. Soon after this, in another letter, he informed me, "That some of the aforesaid powder should be sent with the Scotch pebbles he intended me; and that he should write upon the paper in which the powder was contained, 'powder to clean Scotch pebbles,' lest, if he gave it its true name, the box should be opened, and he be laughed at by the person opening it, and taken for a superstitious fool, as he had been by me before." In June 1751, the box with the powder and pebbles arrived at Henley, and a letter came to me the next day, wherein he ordered me to mix the powder in tea. This some mornings after I did; but finding that it would not mix well with tea, I flung the liquor into which it had been thrown out of the window. I farther declare, that looking into the cup, I saw nothing adhere to the sides of it; nor was such an adhesion probable, as the powder swam on the top of the liquor. My father drank two cups of tea out of that cup, before I threw the powder into it: nor did he drink any more out of it that morning, it being Sunday, and he fearing to drink a third cup, lest he should be too late for church. It has been said by Susan Gunnel, at my Trial, that she drank out of the aforesaid cup, and was very ill after it. In answer to which, I must beg leave to observe, that she never before would drink out of any other cup, than one which she called her own, different from this, and which I drank out of on that and most other mornings. It has been farther said, that Dame Emmet, a charwoman, was likewise hurt by drinking tea at my father's house: be pleased to remember, Reader, that I mixed it but in one cup, and then threw it away. Susan said, she drank out of the cup and was ill, what then could hurt this woman, who to my knowledge was not at our house that day? Mr. Nicholas, an apothecary, attended this old woman in the first sickness they talk of, which, by Susan, I understood was a weakness common to her, viz. fainting fits and purging; and I know, that she had had fainting fits many times before. When I heard she was ill, I ordered Susan to send her whey, broth, or any thing that she thought would be proper for her. She had long served the family, would joke and divert me, and I loved her extremely. Nor can my enemies themselves (let them paint me how they please) deny that from my heart I pitied the poor. I never felt more pleasure, than when I fed the hungry, cloathed the naked, and supplied the wants of those in distress. Had God blessed me with a more plentiful fortune, I should have exerted myself in this more; and I flatter myself, that the poor and indigent of our town will do me justice in this particular, and own that I was not wanting in my duty towards them. But to proceed in my account: I would not fix on any other charwoman; and Susan said, that Dame Emmet would, she thought, by my goodness, soon get strength to work again. I told her, was it ever so long I would stay for her. I mixed the powder, as was said before, on the Sunday, and on the Tuesday wrote to Mr. Cranstoun, that it would not mix in tea, and that I would not try it any more, lest my father should find it out. This has been brought against me by many: but let any one consider, if the discovery of such a procedure as this, would not have excited anger, and consequently have been followed by resentment in my father. This might have occasioned a total separation of me from Mr. Cranstoun, a thing I at that time dreaded more than even death itself. In answer to this letter, I had one from him to assure me the powder was innocent, and to beg I would give it in gruel, or something thicker than tea. Many more letters to the same effect I received, before I would give it again; but most fatally, on the 5th August, I gave it to my poor father, innocent of the effects it afterwards produced, God knows; not so stupid as to believe it would have that desired, to make him kind to us; but in obedience to Mr. Cranstoun, who ever seemed superstitions to the last degree, and had, as I thought, and have declared before, all the just notions of the necessity of my father's life for him, me, and ours. On the Monday the 5th, as has been said, I mixed the powder in his gruel, and at night it was in a half-pint mug, set ready for him to carry to bed with him. It had no taste. The next morning, as he had done at dinner the day before, he complained of a pain in his stomach, and the heart-burn; which he ever did before he had the gravel. I went for Mr. Norton at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, who said, that a little physick would be right for my father to take on Wednesday. At night he ordered some water gruel for his supper, which his footman went for. When it came, my father said, "Taste it, Molly, has it not an odd taste?" I tasted it, but found no taste different from what is to be found in all good water gruel. After this he went up to bed, and my father found himself sick, and reached; after which he said he was better, and I went up to bed. Susan gave him his physick in the morning, and I went into his bed-chamber about eight o'clock; then I found him charming well. Susan says that on my father's wanting gruel on the Wednesday, I said, as they were busy at ironing, they might give him some of the same he had before. I do not remember this; but if I did, it was impossible I should know that the gruel he had on Tuesday was the same he had on Monday; as that he drank on Monday was made on Saturday or Sunday, I believe on Saturday night; much less imagine that she whoever made it, and managed it as she pleased, would pretend to keep such stale gruel for her master. Thursday and Friday he came down stairs. I often asked Mr. Norton, "If he thought him in danger; if he did, I would send for Dr. Addington." On Saturday Mr. Norton told me, "he thought my father in danger." I said, "I would send for the doctor;" but he replied, "I had better ask my father's leave." I bid him speak to my father about it, which he did; but my father replied, "Stay till to-morrow, and if I am not better then, send for him." As soon as I was told this, I said, "That would not satisfy me; I would send immediately, which I did; and Mr. Norton, the apothecary, attested this in Court." On the same night, being Saturday, the doctor came, I believe it was near twelve o'clock. He saw my father, and wrote for him: he did not then apprehend his case to be desperate. I have been by this gentleman blamed, for not telling then what I had given my father. I was in hopes that he would have lived, and that my folly would never have been known: in order the more effectually to conceal which, the remainder of the powder I had, the Wednesday before, thrown away, and burnt Mr. Cranstoun's letter: so I had nothing to evince the innocence of my intention, and was moreover frightened out of my wits. Let the good-natured part of the world put themselves in my place, and then condemn me if they can for this. On Sunday my father said, "He was better"; but found himself obliged to keep his bed that day. Mr. Blandy, of Kingston, a relation of ours, came to visit us, stayed with me to breakfast, and then went to church with Mr. Littleton, my father's clerk. I went, after they had gone to my father, and found him seemingly inclined to sleep; so let him, retired into the parlour, and wrote to Mr. Cranstoun, as I did almost every post. I had, on the Friday before, a letter from him; wherein some secrets of his family were disclosed. As I wrote in a hurry, I only advised him to take care what he wrote; which, as my unhappy affairs turned out, my enemies dressed up greatly to my disadvantage at my trial. I gave this letter, as I did all of them, to Mr. Littleton to direct, who opened it, carried it to a friend of his for advice on the occasion, and conveyed it to a French usher; who, by the help of it, published a pamphlet entitled, _The Life of Miss Mary Blandy_. On Sunday in the afternoon, Mrs. Mounteney and her sister came to see my father; who told them, "He hoped he should soon be able to meet them in his parlour; since he thought himself better then." Susan was to sit up with her master that night. The Rev. Mr. Stockwood, Rector of the parish, came in the evening to visit him; the apothecary was there likewise; and he desired the room might be quite still; so that only Susan, the old maid, was to be with him. After this I went up to my father's bedside; upon which he took me in his arms and kissed me: I went out of the room with Mr. Stockwood and Mr. Norton, the apothecary, almost dead, and begg'd of the latter to tell me if he thought my father still in danger. He said "he was better, and hoped he would still mend. To-morrow," said he, "we shall judge better, and you will hear what Dr. Addington will say." While Mr. Stockwood staid, Mr. Littleton and Betty, my father's cook-maid, behaved tolerably well; but as soon as he was gone they altered their conduct; however, upon Mr. Norton's speaking to him, Mr. Littleton became much more civil; and Betty followed his example. I took a candle, and went up into my own room; but in the way I listened at my father's door, and found everything still there; this induced me to hope that he was asleep. On Monday morning, I went to his door, in order to go in: his tenderness would not let me stay up a-nights; but I was seldom from him in the daytime. I was deprived access to him; which so surprised and frightened me, that I cried out, "What, not see my father!" Upon which, I heard him reply, "My dear Polly, you shall presently;" and some time after I did. This scene was inexpressibly moving. The mutual love, sorrow, and grief, that then appeared, are truly described by Susannah Gunnel; tho', poor soul, she is much mistaken in many other respects. I was, as soon as Dr. Addington came, by his orders, confined to my own room; and not suffered to go near my father, or even so much as to listen at his door; all the comfort I then could have had, would have been to know whether he slept or no; but this was likewise refused me. A man was put into my room night and day; no woman suffer'd to attend me. My garters, keys, and letters were taken away from me, by Dr. Addington himself. Dr. Lewis, who it seems was called in, was at this time with him; but he behaved perfectly like a gentleman to me. During this confinement I had hardly any thing to eat or drink: and once I staid from five in the afternoon till the same hour the next day without any sustenance at all, as the man with me can witness, except a single dish of tea; which, I believe, I owed to the humanity of Dr. Lewis. I had frequently very bad fits, and my head was never quite clear; yet I was sensible the person who gave these orders had no right to confine me in such a manner. But I bore it patiently, as my room was very near my father's, and I was fearful of disturbing him. Dr. Addington and Dr. Lewis then came into my room, and told me "Nothing could save my dear father." For some time I sat like an image; and then told them, that I had given him some powders, which I received from Cranstoun, and feared they might have hurt him, tho' that villain assured me they were of a very innocent nature. At my trial, it appeared, that Dr. Addington had wrote down the questions he put to me, but none of my answers to them. The Judge asked him the reason of this. He said, "They were not satisfactory to him." To which his lordship replied, "They might have been so to the Court." The questions were these. Why I did not send for him sooner? In answer to which, I told him, that I did send for him as soon as they would let me know that my father was in the least danger. And that even at last I sent for him against my father's consent. This, I added, he could not but know, by what my father said, when he first came on Saturday night into his room. The next question was, why I did not take some of the powders myself, if I thought them so innocent? To this I answered, I never was desired by Mr. Cranstoun to take them; and that if they could produce such an effect as was ascribed to them, I was sure I had no need of them, but that had he desired this, I should most certainly have done it. It is impossible to repeat half the miseries I went thro', unknown, I am sure, to my poor father. The man that was set over me as my guard had been an old servant in the family: which I at first thought was done out of kindness; but am now convinced it was not. When Dr. Addington was asked, "If I express'd a desire to preserve my father's life, and on this account desired him to come again the next day, and do all he could to save him," he said, "I did." He then was asked his sentiments of that matter; to which he replied, "She seemed to me more concerned for the consequences to herself than to her father." However, the Doctor owned that my behaviour shewed me to be anxious for my poor father's life. Could I paint the restless nights and days I went through, the prayers I made to God to take me and spare my father, whose death alone, unattended with other misfortunes, would have greatly shocked me, the heart of every person who has any bowels at all would undoubtedly bleed for me. What is here advanced, the man that attended me knows to be true also, who cannot be suspected of partiality. Susan Gunnel can attest the same. She observed at this juncture several instances between us both of filial duty and paternal affection. On Wednesday, about two o'clock in the afternoon, by my father's death, I was left one of the most wretched orphans that ever lived. Not only indifferent and dispassionate persons, but even some of the most cruel of mine enemies themselves, seem to have had at least some small compassion for me. Soon after my father's death I had all his keys, except that of his study, which I had before committed to the care of the Rev. Mr. Stevens of Fawley, my dear unhappy uncle, delivered to me. This gentleman and another of my uncles visited me that fatal afternoon. This occasioned such a moving scene, as is impossible for any human pen to describe. After their departure, I walked like a frantic distracted person. Mr. Skinner, a schoolmaster in Henley, who came to see me, as I have been since informed, declared that he did not take me to be in my senses. So that no stress ought to be laid on any part of my conduct at this time. Nor will this at all surprise the candid reader, if he will but dispassionately consider the whole case, and put himself in my place. I had lost mine only parent, whose untimely death was then imputed to me. Tho' I had no intention to hurt him, and consequently in that respect was innocent; yet there was great reason to fear, that I had been made the fatal instrument of his death--and that by listening to the man I loved above all others, and even better than life itself. I had depended upon his, as I imagined, superior honour; but found myself deceived and deluded by him. The people about me were apprized, that I entertained, and not without just reason, a very bad opinion of them; which could not but inspire them with vindictive sentiments, and a firm resolution to hurt me, if ever they had it in their power. My cook-maid was more inflamed against me than any of the rest; and yet, for very good reasons, I was absolutely obliged to keep her. My mother's maid was disagreeable to me; but yet, on account of money due to her, which I could not pay, it was not then in my power to dismiss her. But this most melancholy subject I shall not now chuse any farther to expatiate upon. I have brought down the preceding narrative to my father's death, where I at first intended it should end. Besides, I have now not many days to live, and matters of infinitely greater moment to think upon. May God forgive me my follies, and my enemies theirs! May he likewise take my poor soul into his protection, and receive me to mercy, through the merits of my Mediator and Redeemer, Jesus Christ, who died to save sinners! Amen. The foregoing narrative, which I most earnestly desire may be published, was partly dictated and partly wrote by me, whilst under sentence of death; and is strictly agreeable to truth in every particular. MARY BLANDY. Witness my hand. Signed by Miss Mary Blandy, in the Castle at Oxford, April 4, 1752, in presence of two Clergymen, members of the University of Oxford. APPENDIX V. LETTER FROM MISS BLANDY TO A CLERGYMAN IN HENLEY. (From No. 8 of Bibliography, Appendix XII.) The following is an answer to a letter sent Miss Blandy by a worthy clergyman in Henley, upon a very extraordinary subject, and highly deserves a place here:-- Rev. Sir,--I received yours, and at first felt all the horror innocence so belied could do; but now, Sir, I look on it as a blessing from God, both to wean me from this world, and make the near approach of death less dreadful to me. You desire me, in your letter, if innocent of my poor mother's death and that of Mrs. Pocock, to make a solemn declaration, and have it witnessed; which I here do. I declare before God, at whose dread Tribunal I must shortly appear, that as I hope for mercy there, I never did buy any poison, knowingly, whatever of Mr. Prince, who did live at Henley, and now lives at Reading, or of Mr. Pottinger, an apothecary and surgeon in Henley; nor did I ever buy any poison in Henley, or anywhere else in all my life; that as for mother's and Mrs. Pocock's death, I am as innocent of it as the child unborn, so help me God in my last moments, and at the great Day of Judgment. If ever I did hurt their lives, may God condemn me. This, Sir, I hope, will convince you of my innocency. And if the world will not believe what even I dying swear, God forgive them, and turn their hearts. One day all must appear together at one bar. There no prompting of witnesses, no lies, no little arts of law will do. There, I doubt not, I shall meet my poor father and mother, and my much loved friend (through the mercies of Jesus Christ, who died for sinners) forgiven and in bliss. There the tears that cannot move man's heart shall be by God dried up. Farewell, Sir, God bless you, and believe me, while I live, ever Your much obliged humble Servant, M. BLANDY. (_N.B._--This letter was attested to be M. Blandy's, &c., Apr. 4th, 1752.) APPENDIX VI. CONTEMPORARY ADVERTISEMENT OF A LOVE PHILTRE.[28] (From No. 17 of Bibliography, Appendix XII.) (Here follows an exact copy of a most wicked advertisement, publickly distributed in the streets of London, and dispersed in the neighbouring Towns and villages; without any notice taken of such an enormity by the Magistrates, or any measures pursued to punish the miscreants who disperse them, according to their desserts. However, the wretches who thus impose on the world, finding their account therein, as they certainly do, is a proof of multitudes being as credulous in this affair as Miss Blandy, and account for her being imposed on, in the manner she declares she was, by Cranstoun.) THE FAMOUS LOVE-POWDER, OR LOVE-DROPS. Sold for Five Shillings a bottle, at the Golden-Ball, in Stone-Cutters-Street, Fleet-Market. Any person that is in love with a man, and he won't return it, let her come to me, and I'll make him glad of her, and thank ye to boot, by only giving him a little of these love drops, it will make him that he can't rest without her. And the like, if a man is in love with a young woman, and she won't comply, let him give her a little of this liquor of love, and she will not be able to rest without him. If a woman has got a husband that goes astray, let her give him a few of these drops, and it will make him, rest at home, and never desire to go no more. And the like with a man if his wife goes astray, it will make her that she will never desire no other man. This liquor is the study of a Jesuit, one Mr. Delore, and is sold by his nephew, Mr. John Delore, and I promise very fair, if it don't perform all I say, I'll have nothing for my pains; and if any young master has debauched a servant, and after won't have her, let her give him a little of this liquor, and if he don't marry her, I'll have nothing for it; therefore, I promise very fair, no performance no pay. APPENDIX VII. CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNT OF THE EXECUTION OF MARY BLANDY. (From No. 7 of Bibliography, Appendix XII.) She was attended daily by the Rev. Mr. Swinton, before whom, there is no doubt, she behaved properly (though in his absence seemed not under the least concern) as appears From Mr. Swinton, himself, whose veracity I don't in the least scruple, who has at various times declared, that whenever he was with Miss Blandy after her condemnation, she behaved in a becoming manner for a person under such circumstances; but I am afraid she had too much art for that gentleman, and that he was rather too credulous, and often imposed upon by her; she made him believe, 'tis certain, that after her mother's death, her apparition frequently appear'd; that there was musick hoard in the house night and day; yet all the performers were invisible. The reader will be surprised that stories of this kind should prevail at this time of day, and still more so, that Mr. Swinton should listen to them; but I am well informed that this gentleman himself is apt, to give credit to things of this sort. Some days before her execution, she said that she intended to speak at the tree, if she had spirits when she came there, but that she was afraid the sudden shock of seeing the gallows might be too much for her to withstand, and that her spirits might fail her, unless she had an opportunity of seeing it beforehand, which she did, as the reader will find hereafter. We are now arrived at the verge of this unfortunate's life; the day before her execution she receiv'd the Holy Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and sign'd and deliver'd the following paper, in order to convince the world how much she had been imposed on and seduc'd. I, Mary Blandy, do declare, that I die in a full persuasion of the truth and excellency of the Christian religion, and a sincere, though unworthy, member of the Church of England. I do likewise hope for a pardon and remission of my sins, by the mercy of God, through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, my most blessed Lord and Saviour. I do also further declare, that I did not know or believe that the powder, to which the death of my dear father has been ascribed, had any noxious or poisonous quality lodged in it; and that I had no intention to hurt, and much less to destroy him, by giving him that powder; All this is true, as I hope for eternal salvation, and mercy from Almighty God, in whose most awful and immediate presence I must soon appear. I die in perfect peace and charity with all mankind, and do from the bottom of my soul forgive all my enemies, and particularly those who have in any manner contributed to, or been instrumental in bringing me to the ignominous death I am so soon to suffer. This is my last declaration, as to the points therein contained; and I do most earnestly desire, that it may be published after my decease. Witness my hand, MARY BLANDY. It has been before intimated that Miss often declared to the Rev. Mr. Swinton that since the death of her mother she had frequently in the night, and sometimes in the day been entertained with musick, performed, as she imagined, by invisible spirits; and since her conviction, has often been amused in the same manner; but in the night before her execution, the musick was more heavenly than ever she had heard it before; and this she declared in the morning before she was executed. As a report had been universally spread that she would be executed on the Friday before, a very great concourse of people were got together upon the Castle Green, to be spectators of the execution. Miss went up several times into the room facing the Green, where she could view the great crowd of people about it; which she did with all the calmness and unconcern imaginable; and only said that she would not balk their expectations, tho' her execution might be deferred a day or two longer. About ten o'clock on Sunday night, being informed that the Sheriff was come to town, she sent a messenger to him, to request that she might not be disturbed till right in the morning, and that as soon after as he pleased she would be ready for the great task she had to undergo. Accordingly, about half an hour after eight, the Sheriff, with her attorney, and the Rev. Mr. Swinton, went to the Goal, and after half an hour's private prayers with the clergyman, she came down into the Goal yard, where the Sheriff's men were, and held two guineas in her hands for the executioner, which she took with her to the fatal tree. The night before her execution, she spent the chief of her time in prayers. She went to bed about the usual hour, and had little rest in the fore part of the night, but was at prayers in bed between three and four o'clock; after ending of which, she got up and dress'd herself; and some time after this, went up into the upper rooms of the house to look upon the gallows, which is opposite the door of the goal, and made by laying a poll across upon the arms of two trees, when she observed that it was very high. She went out of the Castle about nine o'clock, attended by the Rev. Mr. Swinton, dress'd in a black crape sack, with her arms and hands ty'd with black paduasoy ribbons, and her whole dress extremely neat; her countenance was solemn, and her behaviour well suited to her deplorable circumstances; but she bore up under her misfortunes with amazing fortitude. When she came to the gallows Mr. Swinton read several select prayers suitable to the occasion, and then asked her if she had anything to say to the populace? to which she answered, yes. She then begged the prayers of all the spectators, and declared herself guilty of administering the powder to her father, but without knowing that it had the least poisonous quality in it, or intending to do him any injury, as she hoped to meet with mercy at that great Tribunal before whom she should very shortly appear. And as it had likewise been rumoured that she was instrumental in the death of her mother in like manner as her father, and also of Mrs. Pocock, she declared herself not even the innocent cause of either of their deaths (if she was the innocent cause of that of her father) as she hoped for salvation in a future state. As she ascended the ladder, after she had got _up_ about five steps, she said, "Gentlemen, do not hang me high, for the sake of decency;" and then being desired to step up a little higher, she did two stops, and then turning herself about, she trembled, and said, "I am afraid I shall fall." After this, the halter was put about her neck, and she pulled down her handkerchief over her face, without shedding one tear all the time. In this manner she prayed a little while upon the ladder, then gave the signal, by holding out a little book which she had in her hands. There was not a large concourse of people at the execution, but the most thinking part of them were so affected with her behaviour and deplorable circumstances, that they were in tears. After hanging above half an hour the Sheriff gave orders for her being cut down. Thus far the utmost decorum was observed, but for want of some proper person to take care of her body, this melancholy scene became still more shocking to human nature. There was neither coffin to put her body in, nor hearse to carry it away; nor was it taken back into the Castle, which was only a few yards, but upon being cut down was carried through the crowd upon the shoulders of one of the Sheriff's men in the most beastly manner, with her legs exposed very indecently for several hundred yards, and then deposited in the Sheriff's man's house, 'till about half an hour past five o'clock, when the body was put in a hearse, and carried to Henley, where she was interred about one o'clock the next morning in the church, between her father and mother, where was assembled the greatest concourse of people ever known upon such an occasion. The funeral service was performed by the same clergyman as wrote the letter, dated the 7th of March (as before inserted)[29] to whom, among seven guineas which she left for seven rings, she bequeathed one of them. APPENDIX VIII. LETTER FROM THE WAR OFFICE TO THE PAYMASTER-GENERAL, STRIKING CRANSTOUN'S NAME OFF THE HALF PAY LIST. (From the original MS. in the possession of Mr. A.M. Broadley.) War Office, 14th March, 1752. Sir,--On Tuesday the 3d instant came on at Oxford, before the Honble. Mr. Baron Legge & Mr. Baron Smythe, the Tryal of Miss Mary Blandy for Poisoning her late Father; when first Lieutenant Wm. Henry Cranstoune, a reduc'd first Lieut. of Sir Andrew Agnew's late Regt. of Marines, now on the British Establishment of Half-Pay, was charg'd with contriving the manner of sd. Miss Blandy's Poisoning her Father and being an Abettor therein: And he having absconded from the time of her being comitted for the above Fact:--I am comanded to signify to you it is His Majesty's Pleasure that the sd. Lieutenant Wm. Henry Cranstoune be struck off the sd. Establishment of Half Pay, and that you do not issue any Moneys remaining in your Hands, due to the sd. Lieut. Cranstoune.--I am, Sr. your most obedient & most humble Servant, H. FOX Rt. Honble. Mr. Pitt, Paymaster-General. [Endorsed] War Office, 14th March, 1752. Mr. Fox to Mr. Pitt directing the Half Pay of Lieut. Willm. Henry Cranstoun to be Stopt. Ent. No. 1 W.P. Fo. 11. APPENDIX IX. THE CONFESSIONS OF CRANSTOUN. _I.--Cranstoun's Own Version of the Facts._ (From No. 19 of Bibliography, Appendix XII.) Let us now return to Capt. Cranstoun, who as soon as he heard Miss was committed to Oxford Jail, secreted himself from the Publick, so that when Messengers were dispatched with Warrants to apprehend him, he was not to be found. In this concealment (either in Scotland, or the North of England) he lay for six months, that is from the middle of August, till a few days before Miss's Trial, which, came on the 2nd of March, when being well informed of the dangerous Situation she was in, and that his own Fate depended upon hers, his thought it high time to take care of himself; which he did by transporting himself to Bologn in France. [Illustration: Captain William Henry Cranstoun, with his pompous funeral procession in Flanders (_From an Engraving by B. Cole_.)] On his Arrival at Bologn, he found out one Mrs. Ross, whose Maiden Name was Dunbar and a distant relation to his family. To this woman he made his Application, told her the Troubles in which he was involved and entreated her to have so much compassion on him as to protect and conceal him till the storm was a little blown over, and to screen him from the Dangers he had just Reason to apprehend. Mrs. Ross was so affected by his disastrous condition, that in regard to the noble Family of which he was an unhappy Branch, she promised to serve him in the best Manner she could; but advised him to change his name, and to take that of Dunbar, which had been that of her own. Here the Captain thought himself secure from the Pursuit of his Enemies; but, unluckily for him, some of his Wife's Relations, who were Officers in some French Troops residing there, got Scent of him, and knowing in what a base & treacherous manner he had used that unhappy Woman, and being inform'd, that, to escape the Hand of Justice, he had fled thither for Refuge, threatened Vengeance if ever they should light on him, for his inhuman Usage of his Wife. The Captain hearing of their Menaces, and not doubling but they would be as good as their Words, kept very close in his Lodging. In this obscurity he continued to the 26th of July, not daring to speak to any Body, or even to stir out of doors. But being at length, weary of his Confinement, and under dreadful Apprehensions that he should one day fall a Sacrifice to the Resentment of his Persecutors, consulted with Mrs. Ross, what course he should take to avoid the Dangers he was then exposed to. After mature Deliberation, it was agreed, that he and his two companions who went over with him, should take a trip to Paris; and in order to secure a place of retreat, upon any Emergency, Mrs. Ross should go to Furnes, a town in Flanders, in the Jurisdiction of the Queen of Hungary, where they would come to her on their return. Accordingly the next Morning before Day, they set out on their Journey, not in a Postchaise, or any Publick Vehicle, for fear of a Discovery, but on Foot; and lodging every Night at some obscure Village, till their Arrival at Paris. The Subject of their Conversation on the Road generally turned upon the Captain's Amours and the Intrigues he had been engaged in with the Fair Sex, but more particularly his affair with Miss Blandy. They expressed their surprize that he should make his addresses to a young Lady of her Character and Fortune, with a view of marrying her, when the Conjugal Obligations he was already under, rendered the Accomplishment impossible: Nothing, answered the Captain, seems impossible to Men of undaunted Courage and heroic Spirits.... Now, as to Miss Blandy, with whom you are surprized I should enter into such deep engagements, attend to my Reasons, and your Wonder I believe will soon cease. I am, you know, the Son of a Nobleman, and, consequently have those high Thoughts and ambitious Desires which are inherent to those of a noble Extraction. As a younger Son, my Patrimony was too small to gratify my Passion for those Pleasures enjoyed by my Equals. This put me on contriving Schemes to answer the Extent of my Ambition. On my coming to Henley, my first Enquiry was, what Ladies were the Toasts among the Men of Pleasure & Gaiety. Miss Blandy was named as the chief of them, and famed for a great Fortune. Accident soon gave me an Interview with her; I visited, and was well received by the whole Family, and soon insinuated myself into her good Graces, and I quickly perceived that she had swallowed the Bait. The Father entertained me at Bed and Board, and the Daughter obliged me with her Company, and supplyed my Wants of Money upon every Emergency, nor was the Mother less fond of me than the Daughter. But no human Bliss is permanent; it was not long before a Discovery was made that I was a married Man. Here I had Occasion for the Exercise of all my Cunning. To deny it, I knew was to no purpose, because it would be proved; and to own it, might be the means of ruining my Design. Now, in order to steer safely between Scilla and Charibdis, I fairly owned the Charge; but at the same Time intimated, that the Noose was not tyed so fast, but that it might be easily undone, and that I was then in a Fair Way of setting that Marriage aside; and to gain belief to my Assertion, I persuaded my poor credulous Wife to disown me for her Husband, whose Letter restored me to the good opinion of the Family, but especially of my Mistress and her Mother. The old Gentleman, however, was not so easy of Belief; he was afraid there was a Snake in the Grass and tho' he seemed to give Credit to my Protestations, that the Cause would quickly be decided, yet I could easily perceive a Coldness in his Behaviour, which was an evident Proof to me that I had lost ground in his favour; nor was I less sensible that the event of my Trial in Scotland, would not contribute anything to replace me in his good Opinion. I found myself in such a situation, that I must very shortly, either lose my Mistress, and, what was more valuable to me, her Fortune, or make one desperate Push to recover both. Several schemes for this purpose were offered to my Thoughts; but none seemed so feasible as dispatching the Old Man into the other World: For if he was but once Dead, I was well assured I should soon be in Possession of his Estate. I had however, one Difficulty to surmount, which was, to make my Mistress a Party concerned in the Execution of my Project. I knew she was greatly provoked at her Father's late unkind Behaviour to me; which I took care to aggravate all I could, which produced the Effects I desired; and she declared she was ready to embrace any scheme I could propose to release us from our Embarrassments; nay, I convinced her, that we should never have her Father's consent, and therefore it would be in vain to wait for it. And, in order to fix her entirely in my Interest, I used all my Rhetorick to persuade her to a private Marriage, which however for good Reasons she did not think proper to agree to; yet she gave me her solemn Vow, that no other Man but myself should call her Wife, and that in the mean Time, she should reckon herself in Duty bound to have the utmost Regard to my Will & Pleasure. What I now speak of, was after Judgment was given against me in Scotland, and a Decree, confirming the Validity of my Marriage, had been pronounced. This Decree, I assured Mr. Blandy, his Wife and Daughter, I should be able to vacate by an Appeal to the next Sessions. After several pretended Delays in the Proceedings, finding Mr. Blandy's temper very much soured against me, I thought it necessary to hasten my Project to a Conclusion. To this end I had several private conferences with my Mistress; wherein I observed to her the visible decay of her Father's Affections to me, and the Improbability of his ever giving his consent to our marriage, and therefore that other measures must be taken to accomplish our Happiness, which otherwise would be very precarious. I told her I was possessed of a Drug, produced no where but in Scotland, of such rare Qualities, that by a proper Application, it would procure Love where there never was any, or restore it when absolutely lost and gone. Of this Drug, or Powder, I would give some to her Father, and she would soon be convinced of its Efficacy by its benevolent Effects. Accordingly I mixed some with his Tea several times, But in such small quantities as I knew would not immediately effect him; and I assured her, that tho' it did not produce a visible Alteration at present, its Operations being slow and internal, yet in the end it would effectually do its Work. I likewise pretended there was an absolute Necessity for my going into Scotland in order to bring on the Appeal, but in reality to carry on my Design against old Blandy with the greater secrecy and security. But before I went, I took care to infuse such notions into her Head as tended to lessen the Guilt of destroying the Life of a Father, who obstructed the Happiness of his only Child; and strenuously argued, that the froward humours of old Age ought not to put a restraint on the Pleasures of Youth, and that when they did so, there was no sin in removing the Obstacle out of the way. But to prevail with her to come more heartily into my Measures, I played another Stratagem upon her.... Having thus persuaded her into a Belief of an Event, which I had good Grounds to be assured would certainly happen, I found no great difficulty in bringing her to use the Means to accomplish it. I told her I was then going to Scotland, for the Purposes she knew; that I would thence send her a Quantity of the Powder; and to prevent a Discovery, would send her a Parcel of Scots Pebbles, with Directions to use it in cleaning them, but really in the Manner as she had seen me use it, & as often as she had Opportunity. Miss, I find, in the Narrative she has published of her Case, solemnly declares, she was perfectly ignorant of the noxious Quality of the Powder: but had she suffered the Publick to have seen my Letters, the World would have known that she was privy to the Design, and equally concerned in the Plot, as I can convince you even to Demonstration by her Answers to my Letters, under her own Hand, which I will show you when we return to our Lodgings. However, I do not blame her for denying it, because it was the only means she had left of persuading the World to believe her innocent. Perhaps, Gentlemen, you will suppose I am guilty of a great deal of Vanity, in imagining myself capable of so grossly imposing on the Understanding of a Lady of such refined sense as Miss Blandy was acknowledged to be. In answer to which I can only say, that when Love has taken possession of the Heart, it leaves but very little Room for Reflection. That this was Miss Blandy's case, I will give you some few instances of the violence of her Passion, and then leave you to judge to what extravagant Lengths that might carry her. As my small Income afforded me but slender Supplies, I was frequently in Debt, and as often at a loss how to come off with Honour. Miss was my constant Friend on such Occasions; and when her own Purse could not do it, she had recourse to her Servant, Susan Gunnel, who having scraped together about 90l. Miss borrowed near 80l. of it for the relief of my Wants. Again; at the Death of the Prince of Wales,[30] her Father gave her twenty Guineas to buy her Mourning, of which she laid out about 51. for that Purpose, and the Remainder she remitted to me, being then in Scotland. Another Instance of the Extravagance of her Passion was this: You must know, that during the Course of our mutual Love and Tenderness, some envious female Sprite whispered in her Ear, that I had at that very time a Bastard, and was obliged to maintain both Mother and Child. To this Charge I pleaded guilty, but told her, that it was a piece of Gallantry that was never imputed to a Soldier as a Crime, and hoped I might plead the general Practice in Excuse. In short, she not only forgave me, but contributed all in her Power to the Support of both. Miss however, was not so easily pacified on another Occasion, when she happened to spring a Mine that had like to have blown up all my works. When I lodged in the House, some Occasion or other calling me suddenly into the Town, I forgot to take out the Key of my Trunk. Miss coming into the Room soon afterwards, sees the Key, and opens the Repository, when the first thing she cast her Eyes upon, was a Letter, which I had lately received from a Mistress I kept in _Petto_. This opened such a scene of Ingratitude and Perfidy, that when she charged me with it, I was scarce able to stand the Shock, and was so thunderstruck, that for some time I had not a word to say for myself. But when I had a little recollected my scattered Spirits, I had Address enough to pacify her Wrath, even in an Instance of such a notorious Breach of my Fidelity. These you will allow, were uncommon Instances of Affection for a Man so circumstanced as I was; after which, can you suppose her capable of denying me anything within the Compass of her Power? Can you any longer wonder that she should join with me in compassing the Death of her Father, when I had convinced her that our Happiness could no otherwise be accomplished? In this manner the Captain entertained his Companions on their Journey to Paris. Where being arrived, they took a Lodging in a By-street.... Every day for a fortnight, they spent in visiting the most remarkable places in Paris.... But finding their Exchequer pretty near exhausted, they began seriously to think of returning home to their good Landlady. Accordingly they set out on their journey and on the third day reached Furnes, where they again met with a kind reception. Mr. Ross, their Landlord, was likewise then just returned from England, where the Captain had sent him to receive Money for a Bill of 60l. which was the only Remittance that was sent him from his Arrival in France to the Time of his Death. Not long after his return to Fumes he was taken with a severe Fit of Illness, from which however he recovered.... In this miserable condition he languished till he bethought himself that possibly he might receive some spiritual Belief from a Father famed for his Piety in a neighbouring Convent. To him he addresses himself and entreats his assistance & advice. The good Father having probed the wounds of his Conscience, and brought him to a due sense of his Sins, applyed the healing remedy of Absolution, on the Penitent's declaring himself reconciled to the Church of Rome. After this, Cranstoun seemed to be pretty easy in his mind, but e'er long was seized with a terrible desease in his body, which was swoln to that Degree that it was apprehended he would have burst, & felt such Torments in every Limb & Joint, as made him wish for Death for some days before he died, which was Nov. 30, 1752.... After the Funeral was over, a Letter was sent to his Mother, the Lady Dowager Cranstoun; to which an answer was soon returned with an Order, to secure & seal up all his Papers of every kind, & transmit them to his Brother the Lord Cranstoun in Scotland and his cloathes, consisting chiefly of Laced & Embroidered Waistcoats, to be sold for the Discharge of his Debts; All this was punctually complied with. I shall only add, that by the Captain's Death, his wife came to enjoy the 75l. a year, the Interest of the 1500l. which was his Paternal Fortune; and by his Will, Heir to the Principal, to support her and her Daughter; which was some Recompense for the Troubles and Vexations he had occasioned her. _II.--Captain Cranstoun's Account of the Poisoning of the Late Mr. Francis Blandy._ (No. 20 of Bibliography, Appendix XII.) PREFACE TO THE PUBLICK. As the Publick are in great Doubts concerning the Truth of the cruel, and almost unparalleled Murder of the late Mr. Blandy, of HENLEY UPON THAMES, in Oxfordshire, by Reason of the mysterious Accounts published as the Confession of his Daughter, who was executed for that cruel Parricide, and which were done by her own Desire and Direction: the following Pages are thought necessary to be made publick, by which the World may be satisfied concerning that tragical Affair: which is from the Words of Captain WILLIAM-HENRY CRANSTOUN, hitherto supposed, but now out of Doubt, to have been concerned with her in that black Crime: and also from original Letters of hers, and papers found immediately after his Decease, in his Portmanteau-Trunk in his Room in the House of Mons. MAULSET, the Sign of the BURGUNDY CROSS, in the Town of FURNES, in the AUSTRIAN NETHERLANDS, where he died on THURSDAY, the 30th of NOVEMBER last, and was buried in the Cathedral Church there, in great Funeral Pomp, on the second of DECEMBER. It is thought needless to premise any more, only to assure the Publick that what is contained in the following short Tract is authentick, and gives an account of the Vicissitudes of Fortune, which attended Captain CRANSTOUN, from the Time of his absconding for Prevention of his being apprehended, to the Time of his Death, which was attended with great Torments. Miss Mary Blandy, being suspected of poisoning her Father, Mr. Francis Blandy, who died in great Agonies, on the 14th of August, 1751, was examined by the Mayor and Coroner of Henley upon Thames: and there appearing, upon the Oaths of the Servants to the Deceased, and others, sufficient Grounds to think that Miss Blandy, with the Assistance and Advice of Capt. William Henry Cranstoun, was the Parracide, she was accordingly committed to Oxford Castle: and a proper Warrant and Messenger was sent, in order to apprehend the said Capt. Cranstoun, who was then supposed to be either in Northumberland or Scotland, with his Mother: but the Affair being in the News-Papers, it reached the Knowledge of a certain Person of Distinction, who was a relation of the Captain's, before the Messenger and Warrant got down, who informed him thereof: upon which the Captain thought it most advisable to abscond: And being secreted from that Time, in England, till the Beginning of March, 1752, when Miss was tried at Oxford Assizes, and found guilty, it was then thought proper for him to get out of the Kingdom: as upon her Trial it appeared, beyond all Doubt, that he was principally concerned in that Murder, and furnished her with the Powders that compleated the vile Deed. On the eighteenth Day of March, at which Time she lay under Sentence of Death, he embarked in a Vessel for Bologne in France, and went by the name of Dunbar, a Female distant relation of his, of that name, being there at the time: who was married to one R----[31], and who was there on Account of some Debts he had contracted in Great Britain. Cranstoun arrived at Bologne on the 27th Day of the Month of March, which soon being known, he was obliged to be kept secret in that Town; as some of the Relations of his Wife who were Officers in one of the Scotch Regiments in the French Service, upon hearing of his being there, declared they would destroy him, not only for his cruel and villainous Usage to his Wife and Child, but also as being a Murderer: and went purposely to Bologne. He continued at Bologne in Secret till the 20th of July last, when he absconded privately in the Morning early, with the said R----, and his Wife who were obliged to fly, on Account of an Arret of the Parliament of Paris, which had ordered him to pay 1000 Livres, and Cost of a Law-Suit, to the famous or, more properly, infamous Captain P-----w,[32] so well known here: And as that Affair was something remarkable, I shall here give the reader a brief Relation of it, notwithstanding it is foreign to Mr. Cranstoun's Affair, which, as it will take up but little Room, I am almost persuaded will not be disagreeable to the Reader. A certain Irish Nobleman being at Bologna, on Account of Debts he owed in England, Capt. P----w being there at the same Time, got acquainted with the above-named Irish Lord. At this Time Mr. R----, who was married to Mr. Cranstoun's Relation, as above-named, was a Merchant in that Town, and who, together with many more of the Merchants of the Place, was taken in very considerably by the said Irish Lord. The above-nam'd Lord having got as deep in Debt as he possibly could, and his being so intimately acquainted with the Captain, who lived very profusely with my Lord, on the Money he had got upon Credit: this R----, with the Rest of that Nobleman's Creditors, began to press his Lordship for their Money, and his Lordship finding it impossible to weather the Storm off much longer, having told them, from Time to Time, that he was to have great Remittances from his Steward: and P----w puffing his Lordship off greatly to the Creditors, his Lordship secretly got away from Bologne, in a Vessel that was bound for Ireland. His Lordship being gone, the Creditors all agreed (affirming that P----w was concerned in facilitating his Escape, and cheating them) to apply to the Magistrates of the City of Bologne for a Process against P----w, for their several Debts due to them from his Lordship, as he was not only concerned in helping him to make his Escape, but had partaken largely of the Money. Upon their application P----w was arrested, and cast by the Magistrates of Bologne afterwards in the Law-Suit: who appealing to the Parliament of Paris, against the Decree and Judgment of the Magistrates of Bologne: they on hearing the Cause on both sides, reversed the Decree of the Magistrates of Bologne, and issued in May last an Arret, that his Lordship's Creditors should pay to the Captain, as Damages for his false Imprisonment, Costs and Scandal he had sustained by the Prosecution of their Suit, 3000 Livres, besides all his costs in both Courts, and also that they should be at the Expence of Printing and Paper, for 1500 Copies of the said Arret, which were to be stuck up on the Exchanges, and other Publick Places, in the several Cities and great Towns in France; which was accordingly done, the latter End of the said Month of May, pursuant to the said Arret. Mr. Cranstoun about this time received a Bill of £60 from Scotland, payable in London, which Mr. R---- went privately to London with, and got the Money for: which was all the Remittances Cranstoun ever had to the Time of his Death, from Great Britain. Mr. R---- being returned to Bologne with the Cash in July, and not being able to satisfy his Part of the Arret of the Parliament of Paris, to the Captain, and dreading the fatal Consequence thereof, privately absconded, as is related before, with his Wife and Cranstoun, to Ostend in the Queen of Hungary's Territories, as a Sanctuary from the Arret of the French Parliament: where they continued only about fourteen Days, and then removed to Furnes, and took up their Abode at the House known by the Sign of the Burgundy Cross, where Mr. R---- died in September, and Cranstoun the 30th of November following. During the Time of his living at Furnes, he always went by the Name of Dunbar, and first Cousin to Mrs. R----. Capt. P----w, on the Credit of this Arret of Parliament, put up for a great Man: who being known too well at Bologne to live there, either with Respect or Honour, removed to a Town in France, call'd Somers, nine Miles from Bologne, in the Road to Paris, where he took the grandest House in the Place: but his Fortune being only outside Shew, as it was when in England, in September he absconded from thence: and was obliged to fly into the Queen of Hungary's Country for Protection, having contracted large Debts in France. The Captain now began his old Tricks; for at Brussels, going for a London Merchant, he obtained a Parcel of fine Lace, some Pieces of Velvets, and other Things, to the Amount of near £200, for which he gave the Gentleman of Brussels a pretended Bill for £321 8s. 6d. of a Banker's in London: and on the Payment of the said Bill, he was to have another large Parcel of Goods. The Bill was sent to England for Payment, but the Captain had fled before the Return of a Letter, which informed the Tradesman that it was a counterfeit Bill: whereupon they pursued him, and soon found that the Goods he had obtained were shipped on Board a Vessel for England, at Flushing, a Sea-Port in Zealand, belonging to the States of Holland, from which Place the Captain had been gone three Days: that was the last Account that Mrs. R---- and Cranstoun ever heard of him. I shall now proceed to the Account given by Captain Cranstoun, concerning the poisoning of Mr. Blandy: in which I shall insert three Letters, bearing Date the 30th of June, the 16th of July, and the 18th of August, 1751: all directed for the Honourable William Henry Cranstoun, Esq., which were found among his Papers at his Death: all being judged by the near Similitude of the Writings to have been wrote by one Person: and tho' no Name was subscribed at the Bottom of either, yet, by their Contents, they plainly shew from whom they were sent. Mr. Cranstoun, at his first Coming into France, talked very little concerning the Affair of Mr. Blandy's Death: but some Time after, having read the Account published in London (by the Divine that attended Miss Blandy in her Confinement) as her own Confession, and at her desire: which was brought him by Mr. R----, when he came from London, from receiving the £60 Bill before-mentioned, he began to be more open upon that Head to Mr. R----, particularly in vindicating himself, and blaming her for Ingratitude, for he said, she was as much the Occasion of the unfortunate Deed as himself: which will more fully appear from the following Relation which he gave of it himself. That they having contracted so great a Friendship and mutual Love, which was absolutely strengthened by a private Marriage of her own proposing, lest he should prove ungrateful to her (which he said were her own Words) after so material an Intimacy, and leave her, and go and live with his real Wife, and her Mother being dead, she and he, the first Time they met after her Mother's Decease (which he believed was about 9 or 10 months before Mr. Blandy died, and which was the last Time he was at Henley) began to consult how they should get the old Gentleman out of the Way, she proposing, as soon as they could get Possession of the Effects of the Father, to go both into Northumberland, and live upon it with his Mother: That he did propose the Method that was afterwards put in Practice, and she very readily came into it, and the whole Affair was settled between them, when he left Henley the last Time, and never before. He frequently declared, that he believed her Mother was a very virtuous Woman, and blamed her much, for giving such a ludicrous, as well as foreign Account, of some Transactions between him and her Mother, in her Narrative: and hoped, he said, that what was published as her solemn Declaration, That she did not know (_sic_) that the Powder which he had sent her, with some Peebles, and which she had administered to her Father, were of a poisonous Quality, was a falsehood, and published without her Knowledge, as it appeared to him the same was not done till after she was dead: for that she was sensible of what Quality they were, and for what purpose sent, and particularly by the effect they had on a Woman, who was a Servant in her Father's Family, sometime before, as she had wrote him Word. It will not be improper, in this Place, to insert the Letters, as they tend to the Confirmation of what Mr. Cranstoun had declared. LETTER I. Dear Willy,--These, I hope, will find you in Health, as they leave me, but not in so much Perplexity: for I have endeavoured to do as directed by yours, with the Contents of your Presents, and they will not mix properly. The old Woman that chars sometimes in the House, having drank a little Liquor in which I had put some is very bad: and I am conscious of the Affair being discovered, without you can put me into some better, or more proper Method of using them. When you write, let it be as mystically as you please, lest an Interception should happen to your Letter, for I shall easily understand it. When I think of the Affair in Hand, I am in great Distress of Mind, and endeavour to bear up under it as well as I can: but should be glad if you was near me, to help to support my fleeting Spirits: But why should I say so, or desire any such Thing, when I consider your cogent Reasons for being at a Distance: as it might, as soon as the Affair is compleated, be the Occasion of a bad Consequence to us both. I have nothing more to add, but only desire you would not be long before you send me your Answer. Yours affectionately, &c. June 30, 1751. (The superscription of this letter, and the next following, was almost rubbed out, so could not be exactly seen: but as the word Berwick was quite plain, as well as his name, it is supposed they were directed as the third letter was.) LETTER. II. Dear Willy,--I received yours safe on the 11th Instant, and I am glad to hear you are well. I particularly understand what you mean, and I'll polish, the Peebles as well as I can, for there shall not be wanting any Thing in my Power, to do the Business effectually. They begin to come brighter by the new Method I have taken: and as soon as I find the good Effects of the Scheme, you shall have Intelligence with all convenient Speed. Adieu, for this Time, my Spirits damping much: but pray God keep us in Health, till we have the Happiness of seeing each other. Yours affectionately, &c. July 16, 1751. LETTER III. Dear Willy,--I have been in great Anxiety of Mind since last Post-Day, by not hearing from you. Your letter of the 24th of last Month, I received safe Yesterday, and am somewhat enlivened in my Spirits by understanding you are well. I am going forward with all convenient Speed in the Business: and have not only a fatiguing Time of it, but am sometimes in the greatest Frights, there being constantly about me so many to be kept insensible of the Affair. You may expect to hear again from me soon: and rest yourself assured, that tho' I suffer more Horrors of Mind than I do at this Time, which I think is impossible, I will pursue that, which is the only Method, I am sensible, left, of ever being happy together. I hope, by my next, to inform you that the Business is compleated. Yours affectionately, &c. August 1, 1751. Directed for the Honourable Mr. William Henry Cranstoun, to be left at the Post-House, at Berwick. By these Letters, and the account which Cranstoun himself had given, it plainly appears that the Murder of Mr. Blandy had been consulted some Time: and that it must be supposed that the Powders had been attempted, if not absolutely given him in his Victuals, or Liquor, before the Time they were put into his Gruel, as was discovered by the Maid-Servant, and which proved the Cause of his Death. Also by these Letters it is most reasonable to believe that what was meant in the last by the words, "Tho' I suffer more Horrors of Mind than I do at this Time, I will pursue": that it came from the unfortunate and infatuated Miss Blandy, and that poisoning her Father was then fully resolved on by her: which reasonable Supposition is much strengthened by the subsequent Words in the same Letter, viz., "I hope in my next to inform you that the Business is compleated." And I really think it can admit of no Doubt, as the administring the Powders to him in his Water-Gruel, which was the Cause of his Death, was but four days after the Date of this Letter, for it appears by its Date to be sent on Thursday the first of August, and Monday the fifth of the same Month, she acknowledged she put the Powders into the Gruel: which was proved by Dr. Addington and Dr. Lewis, on her Trial, to be the Cause of Mr. Blandy's Death, who languished till the 14th of the same Month, when he expired. That other Part of the same Letter, where 'tis said, "I am going forward with, all convenient Speed in the Business, and have not only a fatiguing Time of it, but am sometimes in the greatest Fright: there being so many constantly about me, to be kept insensible of the Affair," is plain enough meant that when she thought of the wicked Deed she was about to perform, it brought her Conscience to fly in her Face, as she advanced: and that the Servants of the House were the great Obstacles in her Way. I shall not takes up the Reader's Time any longer, in making Observations on the Letters, only observe in general that they all shew that the Writer was sensibly touched, at such Times as they were endeavouring to practice the hellish Device, to destroy the old Gentleman; and also, that sometimes their Consciences led them to think of what the Consequences of such an enormous Crime must be. I shall now return to Mr. Cranstoun. While he was at Furnes he was very thoughtful, and was never observed to be once in a merry Humour: frequently staying in his Room all Day, except Meal-Times: and praying very devoutly. On his finding himself once very ill, tho' it was six Weeks before he died (for he recovered and went abroad after that Illness), he made a Will, all which he wrote with his own Hand: in which he left, after paying his Debts, at Furnes, to M. Malsot, where he lived, and his Funeral Charges, all his paternal Fortune, of £1500, to his Daughter by his Wife, who lives with her Relations, at Hexham, in Northumberland. This £1500 which he left in his Will to his Child, was what was left him on the Death of his Father: and the Estate of his elder Brother, the Lord Cranstoun, was charged with the Payment of it: and he received £75 per Annum, in Lieu of the Principal Sum, £50 per Annum of which was settled by Order of the Lords of Sessions, in Scotland, on his Wife, at the Time when he had Villainy sufficient to bring a Cause before the Court of Sessions, to set aside his Marriage: and from that Time she has received it, for the Support of her and her Child. The Gentlewoman he had married, and was wicked enough to deny,[33] was the Daughter of the late Sir David Murray, Baronet, and Sister of the present Sir David Murray, who is now in the Service of the King of France, in the East Indies: This young Gentleman was unfortunate enough to take Part with the young Pretender in the late Rebellion, being Nephew to Mr. Murray, of Broughton, the Pretender's then Secretary: and after the Battle of Culloden was taken Prisoner, and tried at Carlisle, where he received Sentence of Death as a Rebel: but for his Youth, not being then above eighteen Years of Age, he was reprieved and transported. One Circumstance that appeared on the Trial of the Legality of his Marriage with Miss Murray was very particular, as he had the Folly, as well as the Wickedness, to deny the same: and that was, a Marriage-Settlement of £50 per Annum, which he had made on her in his own Hand-Writing, was produced and proved: which was confirmed by the Lords of Sessions. After the Burial of Mr. Cranstoun, at Furnes, a Letter was sent to his Wife, at Hexham, to inform her of it, and another was sent to the Lady Dowager Cranstoun, his Mother: to the last of which an Answer was soon returned, which was to desire, that all his Papers and Will might be sealed up, and sent to his Brother, Lord Cranstoun, in Scotland, with an Account of what was owing, and to whom, in Order for their being paid, but his Cloaths, which consisted of some very rich Waistcoats, were desired to be sold at Furnes: which was done accordingly. He frequently declared his Life was a Burthen to him, and in his Death he suffered great Torments: for his body was so much swoln, that it was expected he would have bursted for several Days before he died. As Miss Blandy had given an Account in her Narrative, that it was him who first proposed a private Marriage with each other, he solemnly declared, just before he died, that he could not be positive which of them proposed it first: but that he was certain, that it was Miss Blandy that desired and insisted it should be so, and was very pressing till it was done: And he often called upon God Almighty to forgive both his Crimes, and those of Miss Blandy, particularly, he said hers, as she had died with asserting so many enormous Falsities contained in that Account, said to be published by her Orders and Inspection. APPENDIX X. EXTRACT FROM A LETTER FROM DUNKIRK ANENT THE DEATH OF CRANSTOUN. (From the _London Magazine_, February, 1753.) On Dec. 2 last died at the sign of the Burgundy-cross in Furness, a town belonging to the Queen of Hungary, about 15 English miles East of this place, Capt. William Henry Cranstoun, aged forty-six. His illness did not continue above 9 days, but the last three his pains were so very great, and he was swelled to such a degree, that it was thought by the physician and apothecary that attended him, that he would have burst, and by the great agonies he expired in, he was thought to be raving mad. As he had just before his death embraced the Roman Catholick religion, he was buried in great solemnity, the corporation attending the funeral, and a grand mass was said over the corpse in the cathedral church, which was finely illuminated, and in which he was buried. Some little time before he died he made a will, which was sealed up in the presence of one Mrs. Ross (whose maiden name was Dunbar, and which name he went by) and two other persons who were also his acquaintance. The will he signed with his own name, and gave all his fortune which was in his brother's hands to his child, who is now living at Hexham in Northumberland, with her mother, to whom he had so villainously denied being married, and for which he often said, a curse had attended him for injuring the character of so good a wife. When he was asked concerning Mr. Blandy's murder, he often reflected on himself greatly, yet said, that Miss Blandy ought not to have blamed him so much as she did, but the particulars of which he said should never be known till his death. He first made his escape out of England the latter end of last February to Bologne; but as soon as he was known to be there, was obliged to be kept concealed by Mrs. Ross, some relations of his wife's, who were in that country, threatening revenge for his base usage to her; so that Miss Ross and he were obliged at last to fly from Bologne by night, which was on the 26th of July last, and lived in Furnes from that time. The fortune in his Brother's hands, which he has left to his child, by his will, is £1500, his patrimony which he formerly received 5 per cent. for, but on his being cast before the Lords of Session in Scotland, in the cause concerning the validity of his marriage, which was confirmed, £50 out of the £75 was ordered by their lordships to be paid the wife annually for the support of her and the child, which she received, and has lived ever since with some of her relations in Hexham aforementioned. It was further said that before he died he declared that he and Miss Blandy were privately married before the death of her mother, which was near two years before Mr. Blandy was poisoned. APPENDIX XI. LETTER FROM JOHN RIDDELL, THE SCOTS GENEALOGIST, TO JAMES MAIDMENT, REGARDING THE DESCENDANTS OF CRANSTOUN. (From the original MS. in the possession of Mr. John A. Fairley.) Edinburgh, April 16th, 1843. 57 Melville Street, My Dear Sir,--I herewith return your Blandy and Cranstoun collections, with many thanks. I certainly understood from the late James Rutherford, Esqr., of the Customs, Edinburgh, a cadet of the Rutherfords of Edgerston, and through his mother, a female descendant--one of the nearest--of the Edmonstones of Corehouse, that it was in consequence of the great exertions of an Edmonstone of Corehouse that the guilty Cranston was first concealed, and afterwards enabled to escape abroad. I think he said that the Edmonstones of Corehouse were descended, or relatives, of the Cranstons, but that the latter were not descended of the former, or could be in any respect their heirs. A greater intimacy, however, subsequently arose between the two families, owing to the friendly exertions of the Edmonstone as above, that ended in a superannuated lady, the late Miss Edmonstone of Corehouse, entailing or settling her estate upon the present George Cranstoun of Corehouse,[34] nephew of the poisoner, to the exclusion of the late Roger Ayton, and her other heirs at law. In this manner the Cranston family may be said to have benefitted by his atrocity, and advantage to have resulted from evil; the friendship or kindness of the Edmonstones having been rivetted and increased towards the relatives of him they had rescued, and whom, on that account, they additionally cherished--this I learnt from the previous authority referred to. Nay, the old lady wished above all things that the _ci-devant_ judge should marry and continue his line, a thing that for some special reason he did not desire, and found it difficult to stave off to her. This also from the same authority. Though very old, no legal ground could be found on enquiry by which her settlement could be voided. The following excerpt from the Statement of the Evidence submitted to the jury, on the occasion of the present Admiral Sir Thomas Livingstone of Westquarter, Baronet, being served heir-male of James, first Earl of Calender in 1821, in which I was professionally engaged, shews what became of the issue of William Henry Cranstoun, the poisoner. Alexander (Livingstone) of Bedlormie and Ogilface, afterwards Sir Alexander Livingstone, Bart., having succeeded to the Scottish Baronetage of Westquarter and to the estates of that branch of the house of Livingstone, was twice married; first to Anne Atkinson, daughter of John Atkinson of London, and secondly to Jane Cranston, daughter of the Honourable William Henry Cranston, fifth son of the Lord Cranston. By his first marriage he had seven sons, Alexander, William, Thomas, the claimant (still alive), John, Thurstanus, James and George, and one daughter, Anne, married to the Rev. John Fenton of Torpenhow, in the County of Cumberland. By his second marriage he had two sons, Francis and David, both dead unmarried, and one daughter, Elizabeth, married to James Kirsopp, Esquire, of the Spital, Northumberland. I remain, Yours sincerely, JOHN RIDDELL. APPENDIX XII. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE BLANDY CASE. (Compiled by Mr. Horace Bleackley.) I. CONTEMPORARY TRACTS. 1. _An Authentic Narrative of that most Horrid Parricide_. (Printed in the year 1751. Name of publisher in second edition, M. Cooper.) 2. _A Genuine and full Account of the Parricide_ committed by Mary Blandy. Oxford: Printed for and sold by C. Goddard in the High St., and sold by R. Walker in the little Old Bailey, and by all booksellers and pamphlet Shops. (Published November 9, 1751.) 3. _A Letter from a Clergyman to Miss Mary Blandy with her answer thereto_. ... As also Miss Blandy's Own Narrative. London; Printed for M. Cooper at the Globe in Paternoster Row. 1752. Price Six-pence. Brit. Mus. (March 20, 1752.) 4. _An Answer to Miss Blandy's Narrative_. London; Printed for W. Owen, near Temple Bar. 1752. Price 3d. Brit. Mus. (March 27, 1752.) 5. _The Case of Miss Blandy considered_ as a Daughter, as a Gentlewoman, and as a Christian. Oxford; Printed for R. Baldwin, at the Rose in Paternoster Row. Brit. Mus. (April 6, 1752.) 6. _Original Letters to and from Miss Blandy and C---- C----_, London. Printed for S. Johnson, near the Haymarket, Charing Cross. 1752. Brit. Mus. (April 8, 1752.) 7. _A Genuine and impartial Account of the Life of Miss M. Blandy_. W. Jackson and R. Walker. (April 9, 1752.) 8. _Miss Mary Blandy's Own Account_. London: Printed for A. Millar in the Strand. 1752 (price one shilling and sixpence). N.B. The Original Account authenticated by Miss Blandy in a proper manner may be seen at the above A. Millar's. Brit. Mus. (April 10, 1752. The most famous apologia in criminal literature.) 9. _A Candid Appeal to the Public, by a Gentleman of Oxford_. London. Printed for J. Clifford in the Old Bailey, and sold at the Pamphleteer Shops. 1752. Price 6d. Brit. Mus. (April 15, 1752.) 10. _The Tryal of Mary Blandy_. Published by Permission of the Judges. London: Printed for John and James Rivington at the Bible and Crown and in St. Paul's Churchyard. 1752. In folio price two shillings. 8vo. one shilling. Brit. Mus. (April 24, 1752.) 11. _The Genuine Histories_ of the Life and Transactions of John Swan and Eliz Jeffries, ... and Miss Mary Blandy. London: Printed and sold by T. Bailey opposite the Pewter-Pot-Inn in Leadenhall Street. (Published after April 10, 1752.) 12. _An Authentic and full History of all the Circumstances of the Cruel Poisoning of Mr. Francis Blandy_, printed only for Mr. Wm. Owen, Bookseller at Temple Bar, London, and R. Goadby in Sherborne. Brit. Mus. (Without date. From pp. 113-132 the pamphlet resembles the "Answer to Miss Blandy's Narrative," published also by Wm. Owen.) 13. _The Authentic Trials of John Swan and Elizabeth Jeffryes_.... With the Tryal of Miss Mary Blandy. London: Printed by R. Walker for W. Richards, near the East Gate, Oxford. 1752. Brit. Mus. (Published later than the "Candid Appeal.") 14. _The Fair Parricide_. A Tragedy in three Acts. Founded on a late melancholy event. London. Printed for T. Waller, opposite Fetter Lane. Fleet Street (price 1/-). Brit. Mus. (May 5, 1752.) 15. _The Genuine Speech of the Hon Mr. ----_, at the late trial of Miss Blandy. London: Printed for J. Roberts in Warwick Lane. 1752. (Price sixpence.) Brit. Mus. (May 15, 1752.) 16. _The x x x x Packet Broke open_, or a letter from Miss Blandy in the Shades below to Capt. Cranstoun in his exile above. London. Printed for M. Cooper at the Globe in Paternoster Row. 1752. Price 6d. Brit. Mus. (May 16, 1752.) 17. _The Secret History of Miss Blandy_. London. Printed for Henry Williams, and sold by the booksellers at the Exchange, in Ludgate St., at Charing Cross, and St. James. Price 1s. 6d. Brit. Mus. (June 11, 1752. A sane and well-written account of the whole story.) 18. _Memories of the Life of Wm. Henry Cranstoun, Esqre_. London. Printed for J. Bouquet, at the White Hart, in Paternoster Row. 1752. Price one shilling. Brit. Mus. (June 18, 1752.) 19. _The Genuine Lives of Capt. Cranstoun and Miss Mary Blandy_. London. Printed for M. Cooper, Paternoster Row, and C. Sympson at the Bible Warehouse, Chancery Lane. 1753. Price one shilling. Brit. Mus. 20. _Capt. Cranstoun's Account of the Poisoning of the Late Mr. Francis Blandy_. London: Printed for R. Richards, the Corner of Bernard's-Inn, near the Black Swan, Holborn. Brit. Mus. (March 1-3, 1753.) 21. _Memories of the life and most remarkable transactions of Capt. William Henry Cranstoun_. Containing an account of his conduct in his younger years. His letter to his wife to persuade her to disown him as her husband. His trial in Scotland, and the Court's decree thereto. His courtship of Miss Blandy; his success therein, and the tragical issue of that affair. His voluntary exile abroad with the several accidents that befel him from his flight to his death. His reconciliation to the Church of Rome, with the Conversation he had with a Rev. Father of the Church at the time of his conversion. His miserable death, and pompous funeral. Printed for M. Cooper in Paternoster Row; W. Reeve in Fleet Street; and C. Sympson in Chancery Lane. Price 6d. With a curious print of Capt. Cranstoun. Brit. Mus. (March 10-13, 1753. As the title-page of this pamphlet is torn out of the copy in the Brit. Mus., it is given in full. From pp. 3-21 the tract is identical with "The Genuine Lives," also published by M. Cooper.) 22. _Parricides!_ The trial of Philip Stansfield, Gt., for the murder of his father in Scotland, 1688. Also the trial of Miss Mary Blandy, for the murder of her Father, at Oxford, 1752. London (1810). Printed by J. Dean, 57 Wardour St., Soho for T. Brown, 154 Drury Lane and W. Evans, 14 Market St., St. James's. Brit. Mus. 23. _The Female Parricide_, or the History of Mary-Margaret d'Aubray, Marchioness of Brinvillier.... In which a parallel is drawn between the Marchioness and Miss Blandy. C. Micklewright, Reading. Sold by J. Newbery. Price 1/-. (March 5, 1752.) Lowndes mentions also:-- 24. _An Impartial Inquiry into the Case of Miss Blandy_. With reflections on her Trial, Defence, Bepentance, Denial, Death. 1753. 8vo. 25. _The Female Parricide_. A Tragedy, by Edward Crane, of Manchester. 1761. 8vo. 26. _A Letter from a Gentleman to Miss Blandy_ with her answer thereto. 1752. 8vo. (Possibly the same as "A Letter from a Clergyman.") The two following are advertised in the newspapers of the day:-- 27. _Case of Miss Blandy and Miss Jeffries_ fairly stated, and compared.... R. Robinson, Golden Lion, Ludgate Street. (March 26, 1752.) 28. _Genuine Letters between Miss Blandy and Miss Jeffries_ before and after their Conviction. J. Scott, Exchange Alley; W. Owen, Temple Bar; G. Woodfall, Charing Cross. (April 21, 1752.) 29. Broadside. _Execution of Miss Blandy_. Pitts, Printer, Toy and Marble Warehouse, 6 Great St. Andrew's St., Seven Dials. Brit. Mus. 30. _The Addl. MSS._, 15930. Manuscript Department in the Brit. Mus. II. CONTEMPORARY NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES. 1. _Read's Weekly Journal_, March and April (1752), February 3 (1753). 2. _The General Advertiser_, August-November (1751), March and April (1752). 3. _The London Evening Post_, March and April (1752). 4. _The Covent Garden Journal_ (Sir Alexander Drawcansir), February, March, and April (1752). 5. _The London Morning Penny Post_, August and September (1751). 6. _Gentleman's Magazine_, pp. 396, 486-88 (1751), pp. 108-17, 152, 188, 195 (1752), pp. 47, 151 (1753), p. 803, pt. II (1783). 7. _Universal Magazine_, pp 114-124, 187, 281 (1752). 8. _London Magazine_, pp. 379, 475, 512 (1751), pp. 127, 180, 189 (1752), p. 89 (1753). [In addition to the two London editions of the authorised report of the trial specified in No. 10 of the Bibliography, it may be noted that the trial was reprinted at length in the same year at Dublin, and in an abridged form at London and Edinburgh, all 8vo.--ED.] [Illustration: The Scotch Triumvirate (_From a satirical Print in the Collection of Mr. Horace Bleackley_.)] APPENDIX XIII. DESCRIPTION OF SATIRICAL PRINT, "THE SCOTCH TRIUMVIRATE." (From Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, Vol. III., Part ii., p. 847.) "THE SCOTCH TRIUMVIRATE." Sr ***g sc. (? Strange, W.) Ram**y Pix'd.* [1752]. *These signatures were, doubtless, used with a satirical intention. This engraving displays a stage, as if erected for an execution. The above title is inscribed on a gallows, under which is James Lowry, with a rope about his neck, and in one hand a cudgel, inscribed "The Royal Oke Fore Mast," see below; a label in his mouth is inscribed, "_Lowry; the Laird of the Land; Sung by Sr. W----m. Lawther._" At his feet rises the ghost of Hossack, saying, "_You suffered justly, for Wipping me to Death. K. Hossack._" At one side stands Mr. William Henry Cranstoun, with a rope round his neck, and crossing his body like a riband of knighthood; in his pocket is "_Powder to Clean Pebbels_" in his mouth a label, "_Jammy will save me._" Before him rises the ghost of Miss Mary Blandy, saying, "My Honour, Cra----s ruin'd me." The ghost of her mother rising at the side of the platform, and wringing her hands in pain, replies, "Child he's Married!" At Cranstoun's feet is an advertisement of "_Scotch Powder to cure the Itch._" At the other side is Major James Macdonald, with a halter round his neck & crossing his body, as above; in his hand is a paper inscribed "_S. Sea Anuities D-am my School Master._" In his mouth is a label, bearing, "_I have Escaped Hanging I own I'm a Highland Villain._" In front is what is intended for a mock shield of Scotland. The shield is perforated with holes for eyes and a mouth so as to represent a mask, and it is charged with a crowned thistle; the supporters are an ass's head, plaided and wearing a Scotch bonnet, and a peacock. Motto, "_Impudent, Rebellious, Lazy and Proud._" Beneath is engraved:-- "Proud Scot, Beggarly Scot, witness keen, Old England has made you all Gentlemen." James Lowry, who had commanded the "Molly" merchantman, was tried February 18, 1752, for the murder of Kenrich Hossack, by whipping him to death; after a trial of eight hours he was found guilty. "The Royal Oak Foremast" was the name he gave to a stick used in his manner of enforcing naval discipline. On the 25th of March he was hanged at Execution Dock, and his body was hung in chains at Blackball. Other acts of cruelty involving the deaths of the victims were charged on him. (See _The Gentleman's Magazine_, 1751, p. 234; 1752, pp. 89, 94, 140.) The exclamation of Miss Blandy referring to Cranstoun is nearly the same as that uttered by the speaker, as deposed by Mrs. Lane, a witness at the trial, when she was arrested during a wandering flight between the death of her father and the returning of the verdict of "Wilfull Murder." The witness declared Miss Blandy said "The damned villain, Cranstoun!--my honour to him will be my ruin," etc. The exclamation of the ghost of Mrs. Blandy refers to the fact that Cranstoun had been married in 1745, according to the Scotch process, to Anne, daughter of Sir David Murray, whom he repudiated two years after. Cranstoun was brother of James, afterwards sixth Lord Cranstoun, probably the "Jammy" refered to in his speech as above quoted. Footnotes: [1] Henry Bathurst (1714-1794), Solicitor-General to the Prince of Wales, 1745; Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, 1751; Lord Chancellor, 1771; succeeded his father as Earl Bathurst, 1775; and in the following year presided as Lord High Steward at the trial of the Duchess of Kingston. He resigned the Seal in 1778.--ED. [2] This quotation is the only reference made during the trial to this important letter, which, from the report, does not appear to have been formally "put in." See Introduction.--ED. [3] So far as appears from the report of the trial, no proof was offered that these words were in the handwriting of Cranstoun. See Introduction.--ED. [4] The Earl of Macclesfield and Lord Cadogan, the local magistrates who undertook the preliminary work of getting up the case for the prosecution.--ED. [5] Afterwards Sir Richard Aston, and one of the Commissioners of the Great Seal on the death of Lord Chancellor Yorke in 1770.--ED. [6] Born, 1713; died, 1790. Practised as a physician at Reading until 1754, when he removed to London. Chatham was one of his patients. As a specialist in mental diseases he was called in to attend George III. in 1788. He was the father of Henry Addington, first Viscount Sidmouth.--ED. [7] The doctor intended to have excepted the stone found in Mr. Blandy's gall-bladder.--_Original Note_. [8] Born, 1714; died, 1781. Practised in London till 1745, when he removed to Kingston-on-Thames. He was eminent for his writings on the Pharmacopoaeia.--ED. [9] Saturday. See _infra_.--ED. [10] This lady was Mary Blandy's godmother. She died in 1781 at the age of 86. It is remarkable that the prisoner's fortitude remained unshaken throughout the trial except when Mrs. Mounteney was in the box.--ED. [11] The counsel for the prisoner waived the objection to this as hearsay evidence, because the counsel for the Crown assured them they would call Betty Binfield herself next.--_Original Note_. [12] According to the practice then in use, counsel for the defence were not permitted to address the jury.--ED. [13] Heneage Legge (1703-1759), second son of William, first Earl of Dartmouth, was called to the Bar, 1728, took silk in 1739, and was appointed one of the Barons of Exchequer in 1747.--ED. [14] The celebrated Catherine Hayes, heroine of the _Newgate Calendar_ and Thackeray's _Catherine_.--ED. [15] George Carre of Nisbet, son of John Carre of Cavers, admitted Advocate 9th June, 1752. He became Sheriff of Berwick in 1748, and wasraised to the Bench as Lord Nisbet, 31st July, 1755. He died at Edinburgh, 21st February, 1760.--ED. [16] Charles Erskine, Lord Tinwald.--ED. [17] George Parker, second Earl of Macclesfield, son of Lord Chancellor Macclesfield, was a famous philosopher and President of the Royal Society. He had the principal share in preparing the Act of Parliament for the introduction of the change in the Calendar in 1751, known as the "New Style."--ED. [18] Charles, second Baron Cadogan of Oakley, died 1776. His wife was a daughter of Sir Hans Sloane.--ED. [19] William, eighth Earl of Home, first cousin of the Hon. William Henry Cranstoun, died 1761. Their mothers were Lady Anne and Lady Jean Kerr, daughters of the second Marquess of Lothian, and their daughter Lady Mary married Alexander Hamilton of Ballincrieff.--ED. [20] Afterwards fourth Marquess of Lothian, first cousin of the Hon. William Henry Cranstoun. He died in 1775.--ED. [21] Probably the Rev. William Stockwood, Rector of Henley.--ED. [22] Winchester. [23] Son of Robert, first Marquis of Lothian and grand-uncle of the Hon. Wm. Henry Cranstoun. Born, 1676. He followed a career of arms, and died unmarried 2nd February, 1752. His natural son, Captain John Kerr, courted his "cousin," Lady Jane Douglas of the "Douglas Cause," and was killed in 1725 by her brother Archibald, Duke of Douglas. Lord Mark was not friendly with his niece, Lady Jane.--ED. [24] George, 21st Earl of Crauford, born 1729. Succeeded to that title, 1749; died 1781.--ED. [25] William, fifth Lord Cranstoun, married, 1703, Lady Jean Kerr, and died in January 7, 1726-7.--ED. [26] _Née_ Lady Jean Kerr, died March, 1768.--ED. [27] The Hon. Anne Cranstoun married Gabriel Selby of Paston, Northumberland, died 1769.--ED. [28] Mr. C.J.S. Thompson, in his _Mystery and Romance of Alchemy and Pharmacy_, remarks, "About the sixteenth century philtres came to be compounded and sold by the apothecaries, who doubtless derived from them a lucrative profit. Favourite ingredients with these later practitioners were mandragora, cantharides, and vervain, which were supposed to have Satanic properties. They were mixed with other herbs said to have an aphrodisiac effect; also man's gall, the eyes of a black cat, and the blood of a lapwing, bat, or goat." The same authority states that in the seventeenth century "Hoffman's Water of Magnanimity," compounded of winged ants, was a popular specific.--ED. [29] Appendix III. [30] Frederick, Prince of Wales, died 20th March, 1751.--ED. [31] Ross. [32] Plaistow. [33] This denial is the more odd as the Murrays of Stanhope and the Kerrs of Lothian (Captain Cranstoun's maternal relatives) had already a marriage tie. Lord Charles Kerr of Cramond (died 1735), had married Janet, eldest daughter of Sir David Murray of Stanhope, and her daughter Jean Janet, born 1712, was the second wife of William, third Marquess of Lothian, Captain Cranstoun's uncle.--ED. [34] Later, Lord Corehouse, one of the Senators of the College of Justice.--ED. 
53085	----	Web Archive (The Library of Congress) Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: https://archive.org/details/nineofheartsnove00farj (The Library of Congress) 2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe]. _No. 107_ HARPER'S HANDY SERIES Issued Weekly ------------------------------------ Copyright,1885, by Harper & Brothers December 17, 1886 Subscription Price per Year, 52 Numbers, $15 ------------------------------------ Entered at the Post-Office at New York, as Second-class Mail Matter THE NINE OF HEARTS A Novel By B. L. FARJEON AUTHOR OF "GREAT PORTER SQUARE" "THE BRIGHT STAR OF LIFE" "GRIF" ETC. ------------------------------------ _Books you may hold readily in your hand are the most useful, after all_ Dr. Johnson NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 1886 CONTENTS Part the First The Trial of Edward Layton. I. A Strange Decision. II. The Evidence of James Moorhouse, Coachman. III. The Evidence of Adolf Wolfstein, Waiter. IV. The Evidence of Lumley Rich, Detective Officer--The Nine of Hearts. V. The Evidence of Ida White, Lady's Maid. VI. Description of the Last Day's Proceedings--Extracted from a Daily Paper. Part the Second The Cable Message from America. Part the Third The Mystery of the Nine of Hearts. I. II. III. IV. V. VI. The Day after the Derby. VII. THE NINE OF HEARTS. PART THE FIRST. THE TRIAL OF EDWARD LAYTON. I. A STRANGE DECISION. This morning, at the Central Criminal Court, Mr. Justice Fenmore resumed the trial of Edward Layton for the wilful murder of his wife, Agnes Layton, on the morning of the 26th of March, by the administration of poisonous narcotics in such quantities as to produce death. Extraordinary as was the excitement caused by yesterday's proceedings, the public interest in this mysterious murder was intensified by the strange decision arrived at by the prisoner on this the third day of his trial. The Attorney-general, Mr. J. Protheroe, Q.C., and Mr. Standing conducted the case on behalf of the Crown. The widely spread rumor that an episode of a startling character was impending, received confirmation immediately upon the entrance of the prisoner in the dock. He presented a care-worn appearance, and while the usual formalities were in progress, it was observed that he and his counsel (Mr. Bainbridge, Q.C.) were in earnest consultation, and it appeared as if the learned gentleman were endeavoring to overcome some resolution which the prisoner had formed. At the termination of this conversation Mr. Bainbridge, turning to the Bench, said, "I have to claim your lordship's indulgence for a statement which I find it necessary to make. It is in the remembrance of your lordship that on the first day of this trial the prisoner was undefended, being, as it appeared, resolutely determined to defend himself. Yesterday morning--that is, upon the second day of the trial--I informed your lordship that the prisoner had been prevailed upon by his friends to intrust his defence to me. Being satisfied in my own mind that nothing would occur to disturb this arrangement--which I venture to say was an advisable one--I did not feel called upon to mention that the prisoner's consent to accept legal aid was very reluctantly given. That this was so, however, is proved by what has since transpired. Both in writing and by word of mouth the prisoner now insists upon conducting his own case, and has distinctly informed me that he will not permit me to act for him. I am empowered to say that his decision is not in any sense personal to myself. It is simply, and regrettably, that he has resolved not to be defended or represented by counsel. In these circumstances I have no option but to place myself in your lordship's hands." Prisoner. "My lord--" Mr. Justice Fenmore. "Silence. Your counsel will speak for you." Prisoner. "My lord, I have no counsel. I am defending myself, and no person shall speak for me." Mr. Justice Fenmore. "Prisoner at the bar, it is my duty to tell you that the decision at which you have arrived is grave and unwise." Prisoner. "Of that, my lord, I am the best judge." Mr. Justice Fenmore. "You may not be. It is scarcely necessary for me to point out to you, a man of intelligence and good education, that there are points in every case, and especially in a case so momentous as this, which an unjudicial, or, to speak more correctly, a mind not legally trained, is almost certain to overlook." Prisoner. "I understand your lordship, and I thank you but if my acquittal of the terrible crime for which I am now being tried is to be brought about by legal technicalities, I shall prefer not to owe my release to those means. I, better than any man here--unless, indeed, the actual murderer be present--know whether I am innocent or guilty, and in the course I have determined to pursue I am acting in what I believe to be my best interests. Your lordship has referred to me as a man of intelligence and good education. These qualifications will sufficiently serve me, but I do not rely upon them alone. I have really had some sort of legal training, and as I assuredly know that I shall conduct my own defence in a manner which will recommend itself to my heart and my conscience, so do I believe that, if I choose to exercise it--and I suppose most men in my position would so choose--I have legal knowledge sufficient for my needs. The learned counsel who has addressed your lordship has put the matter most fairly. My consent that he should defend me was reluctantly given, and I reserved to myself the right to withdraw it. He has mentioned that this withdrawal is not personal to himself. It is true. To him, above all others, would I intrust my defence, were it not that I have cogent and imperative reasons for trusting no man. I shall not displease one so earnest and high-minded as he when I state that he once gave me his friendship, and that I felt honored by it. Your lordship will pardon me for this statement, the admission of which I feel to be unusual in such a case. I have made it only for the purpose of emphasizing his correct view. My lord, I stand upon my rights. I will conduct my own defence." The trial was then proceeded with. II. THE EVIDENCE OF JAMES MOORHOUSE, COACHMAN. The first witness called was James Moorhouse, whose examination was looked forward to with great interest, as likely to tell heavily either for or against the prisoner. He is a sturdy man, of middle age, with an expression of intense earnestness in his face, and although he gave his evidence in a perfectly straightforward manner, it was apparent that his sympathies were with the prisoner. The Attorney general. "Your name is James Moorhouse?" Witness. "It is, sir." The Attorney-general. "Were you in the prisoner's employment?" Witness. "Yes, sir." The Attorney-general. "In what capacity?" Witness. "As his coachman." The Attorney-general. "For how long were you so employed?" Witness. "For a matter of three years." The Attorney-general. "Are you a teetotaler?" Witness. "Yes, sir." The Attorney-general. "During the three years you worked for the prisoner were you in the habit of driving him out regularly?" Witness. "Yes, sir pretty nearly every day." The Attorney-general. "Were you the only coachman on the establishment?" Witness. "I was, sir." The Attorney-general. "Being in his employment so long, you are, I suppose, perfectly familiar with his figure?" Witness. "I am, sir without hearing his voice, I should know him in the dark." The Attorney-general. "You are sure of that?" Witness. "Quite sure, sir." The Attorney-general. "Is your eyesight good?" Witness. "It is very strong. I can see a longish way." The Attorney-general. "You have been in the habit of driving the prisoner often at night?" Witness. "Yes, sir." The Attorney-general. "And your eyes, therefore, have got trained to his figure, as it were?" Witness. "Yes, sir." The Attorney-general. "You have had to look out for him on dark nights from a distance?" Witness. "I have had to do that, sir." The Attorney-general. "When the people were coming out of a theatre, for instance?" Witness. "Yes, sir; and at other places as well." The Attorney-general. "Therefore, it is not likely you could be mistaken in him?" Witness. "It is hardly possible, sir." The Attorney-general. "You remember the night of the 25th of March?" Witness. "Yes, sir, and the day too." The Attorney-general. "Why do you include the day in your answer?" Witness. "Because it was the hardest day's work I have done for many a year." The Attorney-general. "The hardest day's driving, do you mean?" Witness. "Yes, sir. I was on the box from eleven o'clock in the morning till an hour past midnight." The Attorney-general. "Driving your master, the prisoner?" Witness. "Yes, sir." The Attorney-general. "And no other person?" Witness. "Not till evening, sir. It was about--" The Attorney-general. "We will come to the particulars presently. You were not driving all the time?" Witness. "No, sir; the horses couldn't have stood it." The Attorney-general. "Do you mean that there were stoppages?" Witness. "Yes, sir." The Attorney-general. "Did the prisoner usually work his horses so hard?" Witness. "Not at all, sir. He was a good master to man and beast." The Attorney-general. "Why do you look so frequently at the prisoner?" Witness. "I can't tell you, sir, except that I shouldn't like to say anything to hurt him." The Attorney-general. "But you are here to speak the truth." Witness. "I intend to speak it, sir." The Attorney-general. "For reasons which you have given, your remembrance of what occurred on the 25th of March is likely to be exceptionally faithful?" Witness. "For those and other reasons, sir." The Attorney-general. "Now, commence on the morning of that day. What were your first instructions?" Witness. "To be ready with the carriage at eleven o'clock." The Attorney-general. "You were ready?" Witness. "Yes, sir." The Attorney-general. "In what way did you fix the time? By guessing?" Witness. "By my watch, sir--the best time-keeper in London." The Attorney-general. "At eleven o'clock, then, you were on the box, waiting for your master?" Witness. "Yes, sir." The Attorney-general. "He came out to you?" Witness. "Yes, sir." The Attorney-general. "Did he tell you immediately where to drive to?" Witness. "Not immediately, sir. He stood with his hand on the carriage door, and seemed to be considering." The Attorney-general. "Did he remain long considering?" Witness. "For three or four minutes, sir--which seemed a longish time." The Attorney-general. "And then?" Witness. "Then he told me to drive to Finchley." The Attorney-general. "What address did he give you?" Witness. "None in particular, sir. He said, 'Drive to Finchley, on the road to High Barnet. I will tell you when to stop." The Attorney-general. "Well?" Witness. "I drove as directed, and when we were about midway between Finchley and High Barnet he called to me to stop." The Attorney-general. "Were you then at the gate, or in the front of any house?" Witness. "No, sir. We were on the high-road, and there was no house within twenty yards of us." The Attorney-general. "Are you familiar with the locality?" Witness. "No, sir, I am not." The Attorney-general. "You had never driven your master there before?" Witness. "Never, sir." The Attorney-general. "Would you be able to mark the point of stoppage on a map of the road between Finchley and High Barnet?" Witness. "I will try, sir, but I shouldn't like to be positive." (A map was here handed to the witness, who, after a careful study of it, made a mark upon it with a pencil.) The Attorney-general. "You will not swear that this is the exact spot?" Witness. "No, sir." The Attorney-general. "But to the best of your knowledge it is?" Witness. "Yes, sir, to the best of my knowledge." The Attorney-general. "The prisoner called to you to stop. What then?" Witness. "I drew up immediately, and he got out." The Attorney-general. "What were his next instructions?" Witness. "He told me to wait for him, and to turn the horses' heads." The Attorney-general. "Towards London?" Witness. "Yes, sir." The Attorney-general. "Did he say how long he would be away?" Witness. "About five or ten minutes, he said." The Attorney-general. "In point of fact, how long was it before he returned?" Witness. "Thirty-two minutes by my watch." The Attorney-general. "You always time yourself?" Witness. "Yes, sir, always it's a habit." The Attorney-general. "Did he make any remark upon his return, about his being away longer than he expected?" Witness. "No, sir. He seemed to be occupied with something." The Attorney-general. "Occupied in thinking of something?" Witness. "Yes, sir." The Attorney-general. "When he left you, in which direction did he go?" Witness. "He walked on towards High Barnet till he came to a bend in the road. He went round that and I lost sight of him." The Attorney-general. "Did he return the same way?" Witness. "No, sir he startled me a bit." The Attorney-general. "How?" Witness. "I was looking out for him in the direction he had taken, when I suddenly heard him speak at my elbow." The Attorney-general. "How do you account for it?" Witness. "He must have taken a short cut back across some fields. If I had been on my box I might have seen him, but I was standing in the road, and there was a hedge, more than man high, on the side he came back to me." The Attorney-general. "What did you do when he reappeared?" Witness. "I prepared to start." The Attorney-general. "Did he tell you immediately where to drive to?" Witness. "No, sir. He stood considering, just as he did when we first set out." The Attorney-general. "And then?" Witness. "He told me to drive back the way we had come, but not to drive too quickly." The Attorney-general. "You did so?" Witness. "Yes, sir." The Attorney-general. "Where did you next stop?" Witness. "Midway between Finchley and Crouch End." The Attorney-general. "At a house?" Witness. "No, sir; at a part of the road where there were no houses." The Attorney-general. "He called to you, as before, to stop?" Witness. "Yes, sir. He got out, and said, 'Moorhouse, meet me here in about an hour or an hour and a quarter.' I said, 'Yes, sir,' and I asked him whether I should bait the horses at an inn we had passed half a mile down the road. He did not answer me, but walked quickly away." The Attorney-general. "Can you say why he did not answer you?" Witness. "No, sir, except that he did not hear me." The Attorney-general. "You spoke distinctly?" Witness. "Yes, sir." The Attorney-general. "Have you observed, at any time during your employment, that he was at all deaf?" Witness. "No, sir; but he seemed, the whole of that day, to have something on his mind which kept him from thinking of anything else, or attending to it." The Attorney-general. "After he walked quickly away, what did you do?" Witness. "As I had more than an hour to spare I drove back to the inn I spoke of, and baited my horses, and had a bite of bread-and-cheese myself." The Attorney-general. "Anything to drink?" Witness. "A bottle of ginger-beer." The Attorney-general. "Timing yourself as usual, were you back on the spot you left the prisoner at the end of the hour and a quarter?" Witness. "To the minute." The Attorney-general. "Was he waiting for you?" Witness. "No, sir. I saw nothing of him for another two hours." The Attorney-general. "Did he return by the road he quitted you?" Witness. "No, sir. He came back another way." The Attorney-general. "As before?" Witness. "Yes, sir, as before." The Attorney-general. "What time was it then?" Witness. "Seven o'clock." The Attorney-general. "Was it getting dark?" Witness. "It was already dark, sir, and beginning to drizzle." The Attorney-general. "What were the next instructions?" Witness. "To drive to the Metropolitan Music Hall, Edgeware Road." The Attorney-general. "You drove there?" Witness. "Yes, sir, and my master got out." The Attorney-general "Saying what?" Witness. "Moorhouse,' he said, 'I don't know how long I shall remain here. It may be an hour or only a few minutes. Keep near.'" The Attorney-general. "You obeyed his instructions?" Witness. "Yes, sir. I kept within hail, and my master came out at half-past nine." The Attorney-general. "Alone?" Witness. "No, sir. He was accompanied by a man." The Attorney-general. "A young or an old man?" Witness. "I can't say." The Attorney-general. "But you saw him?" Witness. "Only his back. They walked away from the carriage." The Attorney-general. "There is generally something in the gait of a man which, within limits, denotes his age--that is to say, as whether he is young or old? Cannot you be guided by that fact?" Witness. "No, sir. I paid no particular attention to him. It was my master I was chiefly observing." The Attorney-general. "You have not the slightest idea as to the age of the man who came out of the Metropolitan Music Hall with the prisoner?" Witness. "Not the slightest, sir." The Attorney-general. "Did you observe nothing particular as to his dress? Was there any peculiarity about it?" Witness. "I observed nothing particular about him. Whatever I might say of the man, paying such little attention to him, wouldn't be worth much." The Attorney-general. "I recognize that you are giving your evidence in a very fair manner, and if I press you upon any point it is for the purpose of assisting your memory. You recollect that the prisoner on that night wore a coat of a distinct pattern?" Witness. "Yes, sir. He had on an ulster with a Scotch check, which couldn't be mistaken." The Attorney-general. "What was it lined with?" Witness. "With blue cloth." The Attorney-general. "He wore this ulster when he entered the music hall?" Witness. "Yes, sir, and when he came out of the music hall." The Attorney-general. "It is this which makes me think it likely you might have observed some distinguishing mark in the dress of the man who came out with him?" Witness. "I have nothing in my mind, sir, respecting his dress." The Attorney-general. "Very well, I will no longer press it. As to his height?" Witness. "As well as I can remember, he was about the same height as my master." The Attorney-general. "Did you notice the color of his hair, or whether it was long or short?" Witness. "No, sir." The Attorney-general. "If it had been long white hair, you would most likely have noticed it?" Witness. "In that case, yes, sir." The Attorney-general. "We may assume, then, that he had not long white hair?" Witness. "I think I am safe in saying that much." The Attorney-general. "Or white hair at all?" Witness. "I shouldn't like to commit myself there, sir. If his hair had been white and short, I don't think it would have struck me." The Attorney-general. "Did he and the prisoner walk out of sight?" Witness. "No, sir. They walked to the corner of a street, and stood there talking for a little while--I should say for fifteen or twenty minutes. Then the man went away, down the street, which hid him from me, and my master returned to the carriage." The Attorney-general. "While they were talking, their backs were still turned to you?" Witness. "Yes, sir." The Attorney-general. "Was there anything observable in their manner of conversing? Were they calm? Did they remain perfectly still?" Witness. "No, sir. My master was calm enough, but his companion appeared to be very excited. My master seemed to be trying to persuade him to do something." The Attorney-general. "From their attitude, should you have assumed that his arguments prevailed?" Witness. "I can't possibly say, sir." The Attorney-general. "Well, then, the man went away and the prisoner returned to you. What were his next directions?" Witness. "To drive to Bloomsbury Square, and stop where he directed me." The Attorney-general. "You did so?" Witness. "Yes, sir. When we reached the square in Queen Street he pulled the check-string, and I stopped there. He got out of the carriage and looked about him." The Attorney-general. "As if in search of some person?" Witness. "Yes, sir." The Attorney-general. "Did he make any remark to you?" Witness. "He said, 'If you see a young lady in a gray cloak pass by, you can tell her I am in the square.'" The Attorney-general. "Did he remain with you after that?" Witness. "No, sir; he walked right round the square. When he came up to me he asked if I had seen a young lady dressed as he had described. I. told him no, I hadn't, and he bade me keep a sharp lookout, and left me again." The Attorney-general. "To walk round the square again?" Witness. "Yes, sir. He walked round three or four times, I should say, and every time he came up to me he asked me if I was sure I had not seen the young lady; if I was sure she had not passed me. I gave him the same answer as I did before, and he left me again. He could not have been more than half-way round when I saw a lady in a gray cloak coming my way. She was walking hurriedly, and looking about her. I advanced to speak to her, but she started back the moment I made a step towards her, and ran to the other side of the road, and crossed into the square at a distance from me. I should have gone up to her had I not been afraid to leave my horses; but seeing that she began to walk round the square in the opposite direction my master had taken, I was satisfied that they must meet." The Attorney-general. "In point of fact, did they meet? Relate what you saw that bears upon it." Witness. "A little while afterwards I saw them together, talking to each other. They did not walk on the pavement close to the houses, but on the other side, close to the railings. I don't know how many times they made the circle of the square, but they must have been away about twenty minutes or so. Then they came up to me together, and my master opened the door of the carriage, and the lady got in. When she was inside, he said to me that there was no occasion for me to mention what I had seen or that he had spoken to me about the lady." The Attorney-general. "All this time was it raining?" Witness. "Yes, sir." The Attorney-general. "Did they have umbrellas?" Witness. "Neither of them, sir." The Attorney-general. "They must have got wet?" Witness. "They couldn't help getting wet." The Attorney-general. "Did they seem to mind it?" Witness. "They didn't say anything about it." The Attorney-general. "While they were walking round the square, did they meet any persons?" Witness. "A few passed them, and they got out of their way, it seemed to me." The Attorney-general. "As if they desired to avoid observation?" Witness. "Yes, sir." The Attorney-general. "That would be a reasonable construction to put upon the circumstance of their walking, during their conversation, on the least-frequented side of the square, near the railings?" Witness. "Yes, I think so." The Attorney-general. "Although the neighborhood is a fairly busy one during the day, are there many people passing through Bloomsbury Square at night?" Witness. "Not many, I should say." The Attorney-general. "The square is not very well lighted up?" Witness. "Not very." The Attorney-general. "Did you see a policeman while you were waiting?" Witness. "One, and only once." The Attorney-general. "Did he speak to you?" Witness. "No, sir." The Attorney-general. "He passed on through the square?" Witness. "Yes, sir." The Attorney-general. "Reference has been made to an ulster of a peculiar pattern which the prisoner was in the habit of wearing. You said it was an ulster which could not be mistaken. Are you certain of that?" Witness. "Quite certain." The Attorney-general. "Is it within your recollection how long the prisoner has worn this ulster?" Witness. "He had it made last year." The Attorney-general. "Would you recognize it if you saw it?" Witness. "Oh yes." The Attorney-general. "Is this it?" (Ulster produced.) Witness. "Yes, that is it." The Attorney-general. "You swear to it?" Witness. "I do." The Attorney-general. "You have said that the prisoner came out of his house wearing this ulster. Now, on the occasions you have described, when the prisoner left his carriage and returned to it, was this ulster ever off his back?" Witness. "He wore it all the time." The Attorney-general. "You are positive he did not at any time leave you with this ulster on, and return wearing another?" Witness. "I am positive of it." The Attorney-general. "After the lady got into the carriage, and the prisoner told you there was no occasion for you to mention what you had seen, or that he had spoken to you about the lady, what did he do?" Witness. "He told me to drive to Prevost's Restaurant, in Church Street, Soho, and then he got into the carriage." The Attorney-general. "At any time during the night did you see the lady's face?" Witness. "Not at any time." The Attorney-general. "Were you familiar with Prevost's Restaurant?" Witness. "No, I had never been there, and I was in doubt where Church Street was. I had to inquire my way." The Attorney-general. "Could not the prisoner tell you?" Witness. "I asked him, and he said he could not direct me." The Attorney-general. "However, you found the restaurant?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "And then?" Witness. "My master and the lady entered the restaurant." The Attorney-general. "What did your master say to you?" Witness. "He told me to wait near the door." The Attorney-general. "Did you know what time it was when you drew up at the restaurant?" Witness. "It was ten minutes to eleven." The Attorney-general. "How long were you kept waiting?" Witness. "Exactly an hour and five minutes." The Attorney-general. "That will bring it to five minutes to twelve?" Witness. "Yes, sir." The Attorney-general. "Did the prisoner then come from the restaurant?" Witness. "Yes, accompanied by the lady." The Attorney-general. "It was still raining?" Witness. "Raining hard now." The Attorney-general. "Did he appear flurried? Was he excited?" Witness. "His movements were very hurried, which I thought was due to the rain, and perhaps to his having had a little too much wine. He opened the door of the carriage quickly, and the lady jumped in, to avoid the rain, I suppose. My master got in quickly after her." The Attorney-general. "But he gave you instructions?" Witness. "All he said was, 'Home!'" The Attorney-general. "Calmly?" Witness. "No, sir. Although he only said one word, I noticed that his voice was thick. It was because of that I suspected he had taken a little too much wine." The Attorney-general. "Did you observe that he had his ulster on?" Witness. "Yes, he had it on." The Attorney-general. "You drove home--and then?" Witness. "My master got out, helped the lady out--no, I am making a mistake." The Attorney-general. "Commence again." Witness. "My master got out, opened the street door with his latch-key, then returned to the carriage and helped the lady out, and they both passed into the house." The Attorney-general. "Were his actions steady?" Witness. "They were not, sir. He seemed to be in a strange hurry." The Attorney-general. "Did he say nothing to you?" Witness. "Nothing. And thinking my day's work was over, I took the horses to the stable. I was glad enough." The Attorney-general. "The prisoner was in the habit of carrying a latch-key?" Witness. "Yes, and always let himself into the house." The Attorney-general. "Did you observe whether the gas in the hall was lighted?" Witness. "It was. It was always kept on when my master was out. His habit was to turn it off himself, the servants sometimes being abed." The Attorney-general. "Now, during the time you were in the prisoner's employment, had you ever passed such a day as this you have described?" Witness. "Never." The Attorney-general. "Did you ever know him to come home with a lady, alone, at that hour of the night?" Witness. "Never." The Attorney-general. "All the incidents of the day were unusual?" Witness. "Very unusual. I thought them very strange." The Attorney-general. "The question I am about to put is, in another form, partly a repetition of one you have already answered. Did you ever know the prisoner to come home in the carriage late at night with a strange lady--that is, with any other lady than his wife?" Witness. "Never. With a gentleman sometimes, and sometimes with more than one gentleman; but never with a strange lady." The Attorney-general. "He occasionally came home late with friends?" Witness. "Oh yes; but then his wife was always with him." The Attorney-general. "During the last few months was this usual?" Witness. "No. Mrs. Layton was an invalid, and seldom drove out--not once during the last three or four months at night." The Attorney-general. "On the day we have gone through--the 25th of March did you see anything of Mrs. Layton?" Witness. "No, sir, she was seriously ill." The Attorney-general. "That, however, is not within your personal observation?" Witness. "No, sir. My duties were outside the house." The Attorney-general. "The lady whom he brought home on the night of the 25th of March was not his wife?" Witness. "No, sir. Mrs. Layton had been confined to her room for several weeks." The Attorney-general. "You are quite positive on this point?" Witness. "Quite positive, sir." The Attorney-general. "That will do." (To the surprise of every person in court, who expected that the witness would be subjected to a long cross-examination, the prisoner asked but few questions.) Prisoner. "You say that at five minutes to twelve I came out of Prevost's Restaurant?" Witness. "You and the lady, sir." Prisoner. "It was a dark night?" Witness. "It was, sir." Prisoner. "Did I call for you?" Witness. "No, sir. I saw you come out of the restaurant with the lady, and I drew up at once. I was within half a dozen yards of the door." Prisoner. "When the lady and I got into the carriage, as you say, and I called out, Home!' you observed that my voice was thick and my manner flurried?" Witness. "Yes, sir." Prisoner. "Did it occur to you then, or does it occur to you now, that the voice which uttered that word was not my voice?" Witness. "No, sir." Prisoner. "You are certain it was my voice?" Witness. "Yes, sir." Prisoner. "I wore my ulster?" Witness. "Yes, sir." Prisoner. "You drove home, and you saw me open the street door with a latch-key and pass into the house with the lady?" Witness. "Yes, sir." Prisoner. "Still with my ulster on?" Witness. "Yes, sir." Prisoner. "Did I turn my face towards you?" Witness. "No, sir." Prisoner. "If I had done so, could you have recognized my features in the darkness?" Witness. "Scarcely, sir." Prisoner. "You know nothing more?" Witness. "Nothing more, sir." Prisoner. "I do not put the question offensively--you have been a good servant, and I have never had occasion to find fault with you--but you are positive that the version you have given of my later movements is correct?" Witness (who appeared much distressed). "I am positive, sir." Prisoner. "I have nothing more to ask, Moorhouse." Witness. "Thank you, sir." Re-examined. "You are a strict teetotaler?" Witness. "Yes, sir." The Attorney-general. "Did you take any ale or spirits during the day?" Witness. "No, sir. I have touched neither for years." The Attorney-general. "The prisoner's figure being familiar to you, and your eyesight being so strong that you could distinguish him in the darkness, is it likely that you could be mistaken in him on this night?" Witness (reluctantly). "It is not likely, sir." The Attorney-general. "Scarcely possible?" Witness. "Scarcely possible, sir." III. THE EVIDENCE OF ADOLF WOLFSTEIN, WAITER. The next witness called was Adolf Wolfstein, a waiter in Prevost's Restaurant. The Attorney-general. "Your name is Adolf Wolfstein?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "What is your trade?" Witness. "I am a waiter." The Attorney-general. "Where are you employed?" Witness. "At Prevost's, in Church Street, Soho." The Attorney-general. "How long have you been in employment there?" Witness. "A little more than seven weeks." The Attorney-general. "Do you remember the date on which you entered your present service?" Witness. "Yes, it was the 25th of March." The Attorney-general. "So that the 25th of March is impressed upon your memory?" Witness. "It is for another reason impressed upon my memory." The Attorney-general. "Simply answer the questions I put to you. You are a German?" Witness. "No, I am French." The Attorney-general. "But your name is German, is it not?" Witness. "Wolfstein is. It was my father's name, who settled in France when he was a young man." The Attorney-general. "You understand English perfectly?" Witness. "Oh yes; perfectly. I spoke it when I was a boy." The Attorney-general. "Look at the prisoner. Do you recognize him?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "Did you see him on the 25th of March?" Witness. "Yes. Monsieur came to the restaurant on that day." The-Attorney-general. "At what hour?" Witness. "At eleven o'clock at night." The Attorney-general. "Was he alone?" Witness. "No; monsieur had a lady with him." The Attorney-general. "Did he occupy a private room? If you wish to explain yourself on this matter you can do so." Witness. "I was coming down-stairs when I saw monsieur enter from the street with a lady. He looked about him, and seeing me, asked if he could have supper in a private room. I showed monsieur and madame up-stairs to a room in which I served." The Attorney-general. "What occurred then?" Witness. "I handed monsieur the _menu_." The Attorney-general. "In English, the bill of fare?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "What did he order?" Witness. "Tortue claire." The Attorney-general. "In English, clear turtle soup?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "Did he consult the lady?" Witness. "No." The Attorney-general. "Was he long in selecting the kind of soup he ordered?" Witness. "No. It was on the instant." The Attorney-general. "He merely glanced at the bill of fare?" Witness. "That is so." The Attorney-general. "Did you get the soup and place it before him?" Witness. "I first asked monsieur, For two?' He said, quickly, 'Yes, for two.' Then I served it." The Attorney-general. "In a tureen?" Witness. "Yes, in a tureen." The Attorney-general. "When you placed the soup before him, did he order any wine?" Witness. "I handed monsieur the wine-list, and he said, 'Champagne.' I asked him of what kind. He said, 'The best.'" The Attorney-general. "You brought the best?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "That is, the most expensive?" Witness. "Of necessity." The Attorney-general. "When you placed the wine before him, did you observe anything that struck you as unusual?" Witness. "Yes; it was that, like other people, they should have been drinking their soup, or have finished it; but they had not drunk it." The Attorney-general. "Had it been served from the tureen into their plates?" Witness. "No, not a spoonful. It was as I brought it--not touched." The Attorney-general. "As they were not eating, what were they doing?" Witness. "They were engaged in conversation." The Attorney-general. "Very earnestly?" Witness. "Very earnestly." The Attorney-general. "And speaking very low?" Witness. "Very low." The Attorney-general. "Did you hear anything they said?" Witness. "Not a word." The Attorney-general. "Upon observing that they had not commenced their soup, did you make any remark?" Witness. "Yes. I said, 'Does not monsieur like the soup?'" The Attorney-general. "What was his answer?" Witness. "He answered, 'Oh yes, it is very good,' and slightly pushed the tureen away with his hand." The Attorney-general. "Indicating that he had done with it?" Witness. "I regarded it so, and I removed it." The Attorney-general. "Did he object to its being removed?" Witness. "No, not at all." The Attorney-general. "Did the lady object--did she seem surprised?" Witness. "No; she said not a word, nor did she look surprised." The Attorney-general. "Your answer to the last question causes me to ask whether the lady was old or young?" Witness. "But I do not know." The Attorney-general. "You said she did not look surprised?" Witness. "It is that she did not appear surprised. She did not look up. In truth, she had her veil down." The Attorney general. "Had she removed her cloak?" Witness. "No." The Attorney-general. "Did she keep it on all the time she was in the room?" Witness. "Yes; all the time." The Attorney-general. "Now, when you asked the prisoner if he liked the soup, and he answered, 'Oh yes, it is very good,' you were surprised to find that they had not drunk a spoonful?" Witness. "Why, yes, it was surprising." The Attorney-general. "Did the prisoner pour out the champagne?" Witness. "I filled a glass for madame and one for monsieur." The Attorney-general. "Did the prisoner order another dish?" Witness. "I asked monsieur, 'What will you have to follow?' and handed him the _menu_--the bill of fare. He said, 'Salmon cutlets.' 'For two, monsieur?' I asked. 'For two,' he said. I served them." The Attorney-general. "Did he at any time summon you by ringing the bell?" Witness. "No. It appeared to me that monsieur did not wish to be disturbed therefore I did not disturb him, but I noticed--" The Attorney-general. "You noticed what?" Witness. "That, as with the soup, monsieur ate nothing, and helped madame to nothing. I waited till I thought it was time, and then I went to the table and asked whether he did not like the salmon cutlets. Monsieur answered, 'Oh yes, they are very good,' and pushed them away as before. I removed them, as with the soup. What will monsieur have to follow?' I asked. 'Ices,' he said. 'Vanille?' I asked. 'Yes,' he said, 'Vanille.' I brought them. They were not eaten." The Attorney-general. "Did they drink the wine?" Witness. "Monsieur once raised his glass to his lips, but tasted it only, and as if he had no heart in it." The Attorney-general. "Did he order anything else?" Witness. "No. When I asked him, he said, 'The bill.' I brought it." The Attorney-general. "What did it amount to?" Witness. "One pound four shillings." The Attorney-general. "How much of the champagne was drunk?" Witness. "Half a glass--not more." The Attorney-general. "Did not the lady drink any of hers?" Witness. "Not any." The Attorney-general. "Did the prisoner make any remark as to the amount of the bill?" Witness. "Oh no; he gave me a sovereign and a half-sovereign, and said, 'That will do.'" The Attorney-general. "Meaning that you could keep the change?" Witness. "I took it so, and he said nothing." The Attorney-general. "A good customer?" Witness. "A very good customer. Not many such." The Attorney-general. "Without a murmur or a remark, the prisoner paid you thirty shillings for half a glass of champagne?" Witness. "That is so. It was, as I say, surprising. I did not forget it." The Attorney-general. "It was not a circumstance to forget. You say that the lady who accompanied the prisoner did not remove her cloak or veil. Was that the case the whole of the time she was in the room?" Witness. "The whole of the time." The Attorney-general. "Her gloves--did she wear those the whole of the time?" Witness. "But, no. I remember once seeing her hand ungloved." The Attorney-general. "Her right or left hand? Be particular in your answer, and think before you speak, if it is necessary. My object is to ascertain whether the lady was married, and wore a wedding-ring." Witness (smiling). "But a wedding-ring matters not. Those wear them who are not married." The Attorney-general. "Reply to my question. Was it her right or her left hand which you saw ungloved?" Witness. "I cannot remember." The Attorney-general. "Try." Witness. "It is of no use. I cannot remember." The Attorney-general. "Can you remember whether it was a small or a large hand?" Witness. "It was a small white hand." The Attorney-general. "The hand, presumably, of a lady?" Witness. "Or of a member of the theatre. Who can tell? We have many such." The Attorney-general. "Were there rings upon her fingers?" Witness. "I observed one of turquoises and diamonds." The Attorney-general. "Was it a ring with any particular setting by which it could be identified?" Witness. "A ring set with diamonds and turquoises. That is all I know." The Attorney-general. "Would you recognize it again if you saw it?" Witness. "I cannot say. I think not. I did not particularly remark it." The Attorney-general. "Did you remark the color of her gloves?" Witness. "They were black gloves." The Attorney-general. "Of kid?" Witness. "Yes, of kid." The Attorney-general. "At what time did the prisoner and his companion leave the restaurant?" Witness. "It must have been about twelve." The Attorney-general. "Why do you say 'It must have been about twelve?'" Witness. "Because I did not see them leave the room." The Attorney-general. "You can, however, fix the time within a few minutes?" Witness. "Oh yes. At a quarter to twelve, as near as I can remember, I had occasion to go down-stairs. When I returned, after three or four minutes, monsieur and madame were gone." The Attorney-general. "Were you aware that they had a carriage waiting for them?" Witness. "Only that I heard so. I did not see it." (The witness was then briefly cross-examined by the prisoner.) Prisoner. "You say that you saw me enter the restaurant from the street, and that I asked you if I could have supper in a private room?" Witness. "That is so." Prisoner. "Did you show me into a private room?" Witness. "Yes." Prisoner. "Where other persons could not enter?" Witness. "Oh no; it was a room for six or eight persons." Prisoner. "During the time I was there, did you attend to other persons besides me?" Witness. "Yes." Prisoner. "The room was not strictly private?" Witness. "As private as I have said." Prisoner. "What was the first thing I did when I went to the table you pointed out to me?" Witness. "You removed your overcoat. It was wet with rain; and it surprised me that madame did not remove hers, which was also wet with rain." Mr. Justice Fenmore. "Do not make remarks. Simply answer the questions put to you." Witness. "Yes, my lord." Prisoner. "What did I do with the overcoat when I had taken it off?" Witness. "You hung it up behind you." Prisoner. "On a peg in the wall?" Witness. "Yes." Prisoner. "Was this peg quite close to the table at which I sat?" Witness. "No, it was at a little distance." Prisoner. "At the back of me?" Witness. "Yes." Prisoner. "Did I put the overcoat on before I left the room?" Witness. "Yes." Mr. Justice Fenmore. "You have said in examination that you did not see the prisoner and his companion leave the room." Witness. "But when I returned, after being away for three or four minutes, monsieur was gone, and the coat was also gone." Prisoner. "Then you did not see me put on the overcoat?" Witness. "No." Prisoner. "I have nothing more to ask you." Re-examined. "Would you be able to recognize the overcoat which the prisoner wore?" Witness. "Oh yes; it was remarkable." The Attorney-general. "Is this it?" (Ulster produced.) Witness. "Yes; it is the same." At this stage the court adjourned for luncheon. IV. THE EVIDENCE OF LUMLEY RICH, DETECTIVE OFFICER.--THE NINE OF HEARTS. Upon the reassembling of the court, the first witness called was Lumley Rich. The Attorney-general. "You belong to the detective force?" Witness. "I do." The Attorney-general. "On the 26th of March were you called to the prisoner's house?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "At what hour of the morning?" Witness. "At seven o'clock." The Attorney-general. "Was the prisoner in the house at the time?" Witness. "He was not." The Attorney-general. "Whom did you see for the purpose of information?" Witness. "The prisoner's coachman, James Moorhouse, and Ida White, lady's-maid, and other servants." The Attorney-general. "What passed between you and the coachman?" Witness. "I asked him at what time on the previous night the prisoner returned home. He said at about twenty minutes past twelve, and that the prisoner entered his house accompanied by a lady, opening the street door with his latch-key. I asked him if he had seen the prisoner since, and he replied that he had not. I asked him from what part of his dress the prisoner took the latch-key, and he replied, from the pocket of the ulster he wore." The Attorney-general. "Although the prisoner was not at home, was this ulster in his house?" Witness. "Yes, it was hanging on the coat-rack in the hall." The Attorney-general. "Did you take possession of it?" Witness. "I did." The Attorney-general. "Did you search the pockets?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "What did you find in them?" Witness. "The latch-key of the street door and a playing-card." The Attorney-general. "Nothing else?" Witness. "Nothing else." The Attorney-general. "Is this the latch-key?" (Latch-key produced.) Witness. "It is." The Attorney-general. "Is this the playing-card?" (Playing-card, the Nine of Hearts, produced.) Witness. "It is." The Attorney-general. "How do you recognize it?" Witness. "By a private mark I put in the corner." The Attorney-general. "There was absolutely nothing else in the pockets of the ulster?" Witness. "Nothing else." The Attorney-general. "Did you see the prisoner before you left the house?" Witness. "I did." The Attorney-general. "Describe what passed." Witness. "The prisoner suddenly made his appearance while I was questioning the servants, and inquired my business there. I told him I was an officer, and that I was there because of his wife being found dead in her bed. 'Dead!' he cried; 'my wife!' and he rushed to her room. I followed him. He looked at her and sunk into a chair. He seemed stupefied. I had his ulster coat hanging on my arm, and I told him I had taken possession of it. He nodded vacantly. A moment or two afterwards he laid his hand upon the ulster, and demanded to know where I had obtained it. I informed him from the coat-rack in the hall. He cried, 'Impossible!' and as it seemed to me he was about to speak again, I informed him that anything he said might be used in evidence against him. 'In evidence!' he cried, 'against me!' 'Yes,' I replied; there has been murder done here.' 'Murder!' he cried; 'and I am suspected!' To that remark I did not reply, but repeated my caution. He said, 'Thank you,' and did not utter another word." The prisoner did not cross-examine the witness; and this was the more surprising as it was remarked by all in court that upon the production of the playing-card, the Nine of Hearts, he was greatly agitated. V. THE EVIDENCE OF IDA WHITE, LADY'S-MAID. The next witness called was Ida White, an attractive-looking woman about thirty years of age. The Attorney-general. "What is your name?" Witness. "Ida White." The Attorney-general. "Do you know the prisoner?" Witness. "Yes; he was my master." The Attorney-general. "In what capacity were you employed?" Witness. "I was lady's-maid to his wife, my poor dead mistress." The Attorney-general. "Were you in her service before she was married?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "What was her maiden name?" Witness. "Agnes Beach." The Attorney-general. "When you first entered her service were her parents alive?" Witness. "Both of them." The Attorney-general. "Do they still live?" Witness. "No. Mrs. Beach died on my mistress's wedding-day; Mr. Beach died in February of this year." The Attorney-general. "Was your late mistress very much affected at her mother's death?" Witness. "She almost lost her reason. She fell into a fever, and was scarcely expected to live. It was weeks before she recovered." The Attorney-general. "Have you any knowledge of the circumstances of your mistress's engagement with the prisoner?" Witness. "She was very much in love with him." The Attorney-general. "And he with her?" Witness. "I don't think so." The Attorney-general. "And according to your observation, not being in love with her, he engaged himself to her?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "Was she a good-looking woman?" Witness. "She would not generally be considered so." The Attorney-general. "Is this a fairly good likeness of her?" (Photograph of the deceased produced, which, after the witness had examined it, was handed to the jury. It represented a woman, very plain, with a face which seemed to lack intelligence.) Witness. "It is very like her." The Attorney-general. "Was she strong-minded?" Witness. "No, she was not but she was very obstinate when she took it into her head." The Attorney-general. "How old was she at the time of her engagement with the prisoner?" Witness. "Twenty-eight." The Attorney-general. "Do you know the prisoner's age at the time?" Witness. "My mistress told me he was twenty-four." The Attorney-general. "Was she well-formed?" Witness. "No." The Attorney-general. "Had she a good figure?" Witness. "No." The Attorney-general. "Many plain women have some peculiar attraction, either in manners or features. Had she anything of this kind to distinguish her?" Witness. "I cannot say she had." The Attorney-general. "But there might have been other attractions. Was she brilliant in conversation?" Witness. "On the contrary. She had very little to say for herself upon general subjects." The Attorney-general. "But she was passionately in love with the prisoner?" Witness. "Passionately." The Attorney-general. "Did she limp?" Witness. "Yes. One leg was shorter than the other." The Attorney-general. "Had she known the prisoner for any length of time before the engagement?" Witness. "For a few weeks only, I believe." The Attorney-general. "In what way did he make her acquaintance?" Witness. "He came to the house." The Attorney-general. "In a friendly way?" Witness. "He came first upon business." The Attorney-general. "To see whom?" Witness. "My mistress's father, Mr. Beach." The Attorney-general. "Upon what business?" Witness. "Upon betting business, my mistress said." The Attorney-general. "What was Mr. Beach's occupation?" Witness. "He was a book-maker." The Attorney-general. "A betting man?" Witness. "Yes. He used to make large books." The Attorney-general. "On racing?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "Was he an educated man?" Witness. "No." The Attorney-general. "Would you call him a vulgar man?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "Did he move in good society?" Witness. "He did not." The Attorney-general. "But he was rich?" Witness. "Very rich. He drank a great deal of champagne." The Attorney-general. "You say the prisoner first came to the house upon business. Do you know upon what particular business?" Witness. "It was something about horses, and bets he had made upon them." The Attorney-general. "Bets which he had lost?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "How was it that your mistress became acquainted with him on that occasion, when the fact was that he came upon business?" Witness. "He was asked by Mr. Beach to stay to dinner, and he stayed." The Attorney-general. "Mr. Beach, you say, was not in good society. Had he any desire to get into it?" Witness: "He was crazy about it." The Attorney-general. "Upon the first occasion of the prisoner dining at Mr. Beach's house, did your mistress make any remark with reference to the prisoner?" Witness. "She never ceased speaking about him. She said she had seen the handsomest man in the world." The Attorney-general. "Narrate as briefly as you can what occurred between your mistress and the prisoner up to the time they were engaged." Witness. "He came five or six times to the house, and every time he came my mistress was more and more in love with him. I understood from what she told me that he was in difficulties, and that he had lost a great deal of money at horse-racing." The Attorney-general. "Did he keep racing horses?" Witness. "I did not understand that, but that he had been betting upon horses. There was money owing not only to Mr. Beach, but to other book-makers as well, and the prisoner wished Mr. Beach to arrange the whole matter. 'Those things are easily arranged,' I said to my mistress; 'all you have to do is to pay.' 'But supposing you haven't the money to pay?' asked my mistress. 'I thought Mr. Layton was a gentleman,' I said. 'There are poor gentlemen as well as rich gentlemen,' my mistress said, 'and my papa gets a lot of money out of all sorts of people.' That was true enough; I have heard him and his friends chuckling over it many times, and Mr. Beach used to call them a lot of something fools. I heard a great deal about 'swells,' as Mr. Beach called them, being ruined by backing horses, and I knew that that was the way he had grown rich. He used to say that he had got a lot of stuck-up swells under his thumb. '_I_ can arrange Mr. Layton's business with papa,' my mistress said; and when I found her practising songs at the piano, out of time and out of tune--for she had no ear for music--I knew that she was making up to him. It came about as she wished, and one night she told me she was the happiest woman in the world--that Mr. Layton had proposed and she had accepted him." The Attorney-general. "Were there rejoicings in the house?" Witness. "A good many big dinners were given, but I can't say much for the company. My mistress was sometimes very happy, and sometimes very miserable. To-day she complained that he was cold to her, to-morrow she would go on in the most ridiculous way because he gave her a flower, as though it was better than a big diamond." The Attorney-general. "Did he seem to be wanting in attention to her during the courtship?" Witness. "He wasn't a very warm lover, as far as I could see. But my mistress was so much in love that she put up with anything. He had only to give her a smile or a pleasant word, and you would think she was in heaven." The Attorney-general. "How did the prisoner get along with Mr. Beach?" Witness. "I know they had words on two or three occasions." The Attorney-general. "About what?" Witness. "About the settlements. My mistress told me, and she said her father was a screw." The Attorney-general. "A screw! What was meant by the word?" Witness. "That he was mean and sharp, that was what she meant." The Attorney-general. "Go on. That her father was a screw--" Witness. "And wanted to bind Mr. Layton down too tight. He had conversations with her about it." The Attorney-general. "He! Who?" Witness. "Mr. Layton." The Attorney-general. "Did he seek these conversations?" Witness. "Oh no; they were of her seeking. She was afraid that something might occur to break off the engagement. She said to me more than once, 'If anything goes wrong, I sha'n't care to live.' I never in all my life saw a woman so madly in love as she was." The Attorney-general. "Do you know the result of those conversations about the settlements between the prisoner and your mistress?" Witness. "Both Mr. Beach and Mr. Layton stood out, and I don't believe either of them would have given way if my mistress had not taken it up. She and her father had some warm scenes." The Attorney-general. "By 'warm' do you mean 'angry?'" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "Whose money was it that was in dispute?" Witness. "Mr. Beach's. He was rich; Mr. Layton had no money to settle. My mistress used to say, 'I know that I am not very handsome, but I can make Mr. Layton comfortable all his life, and I am sure we shall get along very well together. Papa shall do whatever I want.'" The Attorney-general. "Then is it your impression that the prisoner paid court to her for her money?" Witness. "I don't think he would have looked at her else." The Attorney-general. "And that your mistress was aware of it?" Witness. "She must have had some notion of it, but it couldn't have been a pleasant thing for her to talk much about, and it seemed to me that she was glad to avoid it. She didn't think she was as plain as she was. No woman does." The Attorney-general. "How was the matter finally arranged?" Witness. "The money was settled upon my mistress, and after her death it was to go to Mr. Layton." The Attorney-general. "Do you know what the amount was?" Witness. "My mistress told me it was £20,000." The Attorney-general. "Which would come absolutely into the prisoner's possession when his wife died?" Witness. "I understood so. My mistress did say something else about the settlement. 'There's one thing I would like put in about the money,' she said, 'and that is, that it shouldn't be his if he married again; but I would not dare to mention it.'" The Attorney-general. "Did she give you a reason for not daring to mention it?" Witness. "Yes; that he would break the engagement." The Attorney-general. "Now, about the wedding. Was it a private or public wedding?" Witness. "Not private--oh no, not at all! there were at least a hundred at the wedding breakfast, and any amount of champagne was opened." The Attorney-general. "What kind of company?" Witness. "Mixed--very much mixed." The Attorney-general. "Be more explicit. Were there many of Mr. Beach's set there?" Witness. "They were all of his set." The Attorney-general. "But some of the prisoner's friends were there as well?" Witness. "Not one. There were words about it." The Attorney-general. "On the wedding-day?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "Words between whom?" Witness. "Between Mr. Beach and Mr. Layton. I heard Mr. Beach say, I gave you thirty invitations to fill up and Mr. Layton answered, didn't fill up one of them. I didn't intend that a friend of mine should meet such a crew as I knew you would get together.' 'Not good enough for you, I suppose?' said Mr. Beach. 'No,' said Mr. Layton, 'decidedly not good enough,' and then he walked away." The Attorney-general. "Did your mistress make any remark on the subject?" Witness. "No she was too happy to find fault with anything. She was delighted, too, with the wedding presents. There was nearly a room full of them." The Attorney-general. "Many of them from the prisoner's friends?" Witness. "Not one." The Attorney-general. "Do you mean to inform the court that not a single friend or relative of the prisoner's was present, and that among the wedding presents there was not a single token from his connections?" Witness. "Not a single one." The Attorney-general. "Well, they were married, and they went away?" Witness. "Yes; they took the night train to Paris." The Attorney-general. "Did you accompany them?" Witness. "No." The Attorney-general. "Did your mistress's mother die before they left?" Witness. "No; some hours afterwards, and a telegram was sent on to them in Paris, at the Hotel Bristol." The Attorney-general. "What is the next thing you remember?" Witness. "A telegram arrived from Mr. Layton, requesting me to come to Paris immediately. We received the telegram at about two o'clock on the day after the wedding, and I went by the night train." The Attorney-general. "Did any person meet you?" Witness. "Yes; Mr. Layton. He said my mistress was very ill, and he took me to the hotel. She was in bed, and she remained there for several weeks. I attended her the whole of the time." The Attorney-general. "Did she have good doctors?" Witness. "The best that could be got." The Attorney-general. "Was the prisoner attentive to her?" Witness. "Pretty well; _I_ shouldn't have liked it." The Attorney-general. "What do you mean by that?" Witness. "Well, he never sat by her bedside for any length of time; he never held her hand; he never kissed her. Oh, it is easy to tell when a man loves a woman!" The Attorney-general. "How long was it before she was able to get about?" Witness. "Quite three months." The Attorney-general. "Did she then return to England with her husband?" Witness. "Not for another month. They went to Italy, and I went with them." The Attorney-general. "Did the prisoner's attentions to his wife undergo any marked change after her convalescence? Was he more affectionate--more lovingly attentive?" Witness. "Not that I saw. All he seemed to crave for was excitement. It was nothing but rushing here and rushing there. Every night some theatre or entertainment to go to; every day riding about, and dining out at different places." The Attorney-general. "So that there was not much of home life?" Witness. "None at all." The Attorney-general. "Was this state of things agreeable to your mistress?" Witness. "I am not sure. Sometimes she suggested to her husband that they should spend a quiet evening at home, but he always replied that he had tickets, or had taken seats, for some place of entertainment. When she spoke to me of the life they were leading, she used to say how attentive her husband was to her, and how he was always looking out for something to amuse her. But I did not regard it in that light; I thought it was more for himself than for her that he kept up such a round of excitement. It helped him to forget." The Attorney-general. "To forget what?" Witness. "That he was a married man." The Attorney-general. "During those early days were there any quarrels between them?" Witness. "No, not what you can call quarrels. Sometimes she complained, or found fault, but he seldom at that time answered her in any way to cause a quarrel--that is, so far as he was concerned. It was different afterwards. There were occasions during their honey-moon--if you can call it a honey-moon--and at first when they were settled at home, when his silence provoked my mistress, and made her madder than an open row would have done. But the more she stormed the quieter he was, and these scenes always ended in one way: Mr. Layton would leave the house, and remain absent for a good many hours. Then my poor mistress would torment herself dreadfully, and would cry her eyes out, and rave and stamp about like a distracted creature. 'He will never come back!' she would say. 'I have driven him from me! He will make away with himself! What a wretch I am!' A ring at the bell or a knock at the door would send her flying down-stairs to see if it was her husband. I was really afraid sometimes that she would go quite out of her mind. Then, when he came back, she would rush up to him and throw her arms round his neck, and sob, and fall upon her knees to ask forgiveness. It was a dreadful life to lead." The Attorney-general. "In what way would the prisoner receive these tokens of penitence on the part of your mistress?" Witness. "In just the same way as he received her scoldings. The one remark I heard him make to her in those days--not always in the same words, but always to the same effect--was, 'You should have more control over yourself.' I used to wonder that a man could be so provoked and keep so cool. But a person may be cold outside and hot inside." The Attorney-general. "Do you think that was the case with the prisoner?" Witness. "Yes, I do think so." The Attorney-general. "Well, they came home and settled down?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "Now about the home they occupied? Did they rent it, or was it their own property?" Witness. "It was their own property. My mistress said it was purchased partly with her own money, and that it was included in the settlements." The Attorney-general. "What do you mean by 'partly with her own money?' money she had saved or inherited?" Witness. "No money she won upon races." The Attorney-general. "Was she, then, in the habit of betting?" Witness. "She used often to put money on a horse. She would say, 'Papa has given me a good tip, and I am going to put twenty or thirty pounds on. If you like, Ida, you can have half a sovereign with me.'" The Attorney-general. "And did you?" Witness. "Yes, because she wished me, and because I knew I was safe. Mr. Beach was a very knowing man. My mistress would back a tip he gave her at twenty-five to one. I have known her back it at fifty to one. She would do this sometimes before the weights appeared. Then her father would say, 'Aggie' (that is what he called her)--'Aggie, your horse is at ten or twelve to one. I am going to hedge part of your money for you.' As my half-sovereign was in my mistress's bet, of course I went with her and I more often won than lost." The Attorney-general. "Without going minutely into the technicalities of horse racing and betting, may we take it that the principle of the hedging you have spoken of is wise, from a gambling point of view?" Witness. "Oh yes. By backing a likely horse at a long price, as my mistress had the opportunity of doing through her father, and by laying against it if it comes to a short price, you reduce the chances of losing. That is good hedging." The Attorney-general. "Can anybody do that?" Witness. "Well, not exactly. Those who are behind the scenes have the best advantage. As a rule the people who back horses are gulls. That is why the book-makers make fortunes. They are playing at a game they know nine out of ten who bet with them are playing at a game they don't know. That is how it is. I have heard Mr. Beach say, 'The devil is on our side.'" The Attorney-general. "Meaning on the side of the book-makers?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "Were you fond of betting yourself?" Witness. "I hated it. I only did what my mistress advised me to do, to please her." The Attorney-general. "To return to the house which was partly paid for with the money your mistress won. Did the prisoner take an active part in the selection of the furniture?" Witness. "He did nothing whatever. Everything was done by my mistress, and she was disappointed because he would not go with her to the different establishments she visited. But in the end she argued as she always did when he was in question. He was quite right, she said; she could not expect him to trouble himself about such things; it was a woman's business, and, by leaving everything to her, it showed that he believed she had good taste." The Attorney-general. "When they were settled in London what kind of society did they keep?" Witness. "At first the same as used to come to Mr. Beach's house. Mr. Beach brought them, but Mr. Layton was rude and uncivil to them, and after a time they stopped away. I must say, if he was rude and uncivil to them, they were quite as rude and uncivil to him, and if he had met them with the temper they displayed, nothing could have prevented the occurrence of disgraceful scenes. He behaved to them in exactly the same way he behaved to my mistress when they disagreed. He left the house, and did not return till they were all gone." The Attorney-general. "Were they in the habit of coming to the house without receiving an invitation from its master?" Witness. "I believe so. My mistress would say, 'Papa is going to bring three or four friends to dinner.' He would look at her and say nothing; and when the dinner was served Mr. Layton would be absent. Mr. Beach would then take the head of the table, and I have heard him, when he was filled with champagne--he scarcely ever drank anything else but champagne and whiskey--speak very angrily about 'the stuck-up pride of his fine gentleman son-in-law.' The other guests were not behindhand in abusing him." The Attorney-general. "Although they were eating at his table and drinking his wine?" Witness. "Yes. At other times in the evening, when Mr. Layton was at home with my mistress, Mr. Beach would make his appearance unexpectedly with his friends but Mr. Layton would never remain in their company. It seemed to me that Mr. Beach did these things to vex Mr. Layton, and that it was a kind of battle between them as to who should be master." The Attorney-general. "A battle, however, in which the prisoner did not take any violent part?" Witness. "But it ended in his being left the master of the field." The Attorney-general. "Explain." Witness. "After twelve months or so Mr. Beach's friends ceased entirely to come to the house. Then, when Mr. Beach came, he came alone." The Attorney-general. "On those occasions did the prisoner remain at home?" Witness. "Yes, whenever Mr. Beach was alone Mr. Layton remained in." The Attorney-general. "How did they pass the time?" Witness. "Playing billiards generally." The Attorney-general. "Now, in all the questions I have asked and you have answered, there are two subjects upon which no definite information has been forth-coming. Give your best attention to them. Are you aware that before or at the time of the prisoner's engagement with your mistress he had been or was engaged to another lady? Take time. You have said that you were in the confidence of your mistress, and that she used to speak freely to you. At any period during these communications did she refer to another engagement?" Witness. "It was in this way, and I can't answer the question in any other." The Attorney-general. "Answer it as best you can." Witness. "At one time my mistress said, 'I wonder if Mr. Layton, before he saw me, was ever in love?' That was the way it was first introduced. I did not know how to answer her without running the risk of hurting her feelings, but she pressed me, and I was forced to say I thought it very unlikely that a gentleman as good-looking as he was should not have had his fancies. She pressed me further until I said there were very few men of his age who had not been in love. She appeared distressed at this, but soon brightened up, and said, 'What is that to me so long as he is mine?' But it weighed upon her mind, as was proved by her telling me at another time that she had asked Mr. Layton whether he had ever been in love, and that he would not give her any satisfaction--which, to my mind, was quite as good as his confessing that he had been. These conversations between my mistress and me took place in the early days, and for some time after her marriage she did not say anything more about it. But when she was laid on a sick-bed--I mean within a few months of her being murdered--" The Attorney-general. "Do not say that. It is for the jury to decide. Say within a few months of her death." Witness. "Well, within a few months of her death she told me at least half a dozen times that she had discovered he had been in love with another lady, and that she believed he was so when he married her. She said it was wicked and abominable, and that if she saw 'the creature' she would kill her." The Attorney-general. "Supposing this to be true, your mistress never discovered who this other lady was?" Witness. "Never to my knowledge." The Attorney-general. "As to your mistress's attachment to her husband, did it ever, in your knowledge, grow weaker?" Witness. "I don't exactly know how to describe it. She loved and hated him all at once. She was torn to pieces with love and jealousy." The Attorney-general. "Is that all you can tell us upon this subject?" Witness. "That is all." The Attorney-general. "I come now to the second subject. It is concerning the prisoner's family. You have informed us that not one was present at the wedding, and that not one recognized the union by sending a wedding present. Now, are you aware whether he had parents, or brothers or sisters?" Witness. "All that I heard was that he had a father living. But I did not hear that till more than a year after the marriage." The Attorney-general. "Who told you then?" Witness. "My mistress. Although she confided nearly everything to me, she kept this to herself for a long time." The Attorney-general. "Did not her father, Mr. Beach, speak about it?" Witness. "I never heard him; I had very little to do with him. I had understood, at the time of the marriage, that Mr. Layton's father was abroad, but I had reason to believe afterwards that this was not so--that he was in England." The Attorney-general. "Did the prisoner ever speak of it?" Witness. "I never heard him." The Attorney-general. "Did the prisoner's father never come to the house?" Witness. "Never." The Attorney-general. "Do you know whether he is alive at the present time?" Witness. "I heard that he was dead. My mistress said so." The Attorney-general. "Did the prisoner go into mourning?" Witness. "He wore crape upon his hat for several weeks." The Attorney-general. "Now, concentrate your attention upon the day and the night of the 25th of March. I wish you to narrate, concisely, all that passed, within your own knowledge, concerning the prisoner and his wife from the morning of the 25th of March until the morning of the 26th." Witness. "At ten o'clock in the morning of the 25th my mistress's bell rang, and I went to her room. My instructions were, never to enter her room in the morning until she rang for me. There were two bell-ropes, one on each side of the bed, so that on whichever side she was lying one of them was within reach of her hand." The Attorney-general. "Stop a moment. Did the prisoner and his wife occupy one room?" Witness. "No." The Attorney-general. "For how long had this been the case?" Witness. "For a good many months. Ever since things began to get worse between them." The Attorney-general. "Proceed. You heard your mistress's bell ring, and you entered her room at ten o'clock." Witness. "She said that she had passed a very bad night, that she had had dreadful dreams, and that she was afraid something terrible was going to happen to her. She asked me if her husband was up, and I told her that he had just entered the breakfast-room, that I had met him on the stairs, and that he inquired whether she were awake, as he wished to speak to her before he went out. My mistress said that she also wished to speak to him, and she asked me if I knew where he was going. Of course I did not know, and I told her so. She often asked me questions which she must have known very well were not possible for me to answer. I washed her, and tidied up the room, and then she desired me to go and tell my master to come to her. I knocked at the door of the breakfast-room three or four times, and receiving no answer, I opened it. My master was sitting at the table, and he started up when I entered, just as if I had aroused him from a dream. His face was very pale, and he held a letter in his hand. I noticed that he had not touched the breakfast. I gave him my mistress's message. He nodded, and went to her room at once. The moment he entered my poor mistress began to talk, but he stopped her and ordered me out. 'Keep in the next room,' my mistress said to me--'I may want you.' I went into the next room, and remained there quite half an hour, until my mistress's bell rang again. My master rushed past me as I opened the door, and I saw that my mistress was dreadfully agitated. She was sitting up in bed, and--" The Attorney-general. "Stop! While you were in the adjoining room did you hear anything?" Witness. "Not distinctly." The Attorney-general. "Do you mean by that that you could not distinguish the words that were spoken by your master and mistress?" Witness. "I could not distinguish the words. I could only hear their voices when they spoke loudly." The Attorney-general. "Did they speak loudly on this occasion?" Witness. "Very loudly." The Attorney-general. "In merriment?" Witness. "Quite the contrary. They were quarrelling." The Attorney-general. "That is your understanding of their voices?" Witness. "I could not be mistaken. Nearly the whole of the time their voices were raised to a high pitch." The Attorney-general. "Which of the two voices made the stronger impression upon you?" Witness. "My master's. I am certain he was threatening her, as he had done many times during the last few months." The Attorney-general. "That is an improper remark for you to make. Confine yourself strictly to the matter in hand, and to the time you are giving evidence upon. When you entered your mistress's room she was sitting up in bed, dreadfully agitated, and your master rushed past you?" Witness. "Yes, and she called out after him, 'Never, while I am alive! You wish I were dead, don't you, so that you may be free to marry again? But I sha'n't die yet, unless you kill me!" The Attorney-general. "You are positive she made use of these words?" Witness. "Quite positive." The Attorney-general. "Did the prisoner make any reply?" Witness. "None; and his silence appeared to infuriate my mistress. She cried out after him, 'You are a villain! you are a villain!'" The Attorney-general. "Did you see the prisoner again during the morning?" Witness. "No. In a few minutes I heard the street door open and close, and my mistress told me to run and see whether it was her husband going out. I went to the front-room window, and saw him enter the carriage and drive away. I returned to my mistress and informed her of it. She was in a furious state, and if she had had the strength she would have dressed herself and followed him; but she was too weak, unassisted, to get out of bed." The Attorney-general. "Upon that point you are also positive?" Witness. "Quite positive." The Attorney-general. "Did your mistress make you acquainted with the cause of the quarrel between her and the prisoner?" Witness. "She told me a good deal. She said that when she married him it was the worst day's work she had ever done, and that he had deceived her from first to last. All he wanted was for her to die but although he had treated her so vilely, she had him in her power." The Attorney-general. "What did she mean by that? Did she explain?" Witness. "Not clearly. She spoke vaguely about papers and acceptances for money which she had, and which he wanted to get hold of. 'He should have them, every one,' she said, 'and do whatever he liked, if he would be true to me. But he is false, he is false, and I will be revenged upon him!'" The Attorney-general. "Did you acquire this knowledge all at one time?" Witness. "No. My mistress spoke at odd times during the day, when I went in and out of her room." The Attorney-general. "Nothing else said?" Witness. "Nothing that I can remember." The Attorney-general. "Did the prisoner return to the house during the day?" Witness. "No." The Attorney-general. "Did you leave the house during the day?" Witness. "No." The Attorney-general. "Or night?" Witness. "No." The Attorney-general. "You remained in attendance upon your mistress?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "Did she make any inquiries about her husband?" Witness. "Oh yes. In the afternoon and evening she asked me a dozen times at least whether he had come home." The Attorney-general. "At what time on the night of this day did you cease attendance upon your mistress?" Witness. "At nine o'clock. She told me I need not come into the room again unless she rang." The Attorney-general. "What then did you do?" Witness. "I went to my own room to do some sewing." The Attorney-general. "When you left your mistress's room was there a table by her side?" Witness. "Yes; it was always there." The Attorney-general. "There were certain things upon it?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "What things?" Witness. "A decanter of water, a tumbler, and a bottle of lozenges." The Attorney-general. "Was there a label on this bottle?" Witness. "Yes; it was labelled 'poison.'" The Attorney-general. "Were those the sleeping-lozenges your mistress was in the habit of taking?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "What was their color?" Witness. "White." The Attorney-general. "How many of the lozenges were in the bottle?" Witness. "I am not sure. Ten or a dozen, I should say." The Attorney-general. "Being labelled poison, it could not be mistaken that they were dangerous to life?" Witness. "There could be no mistake. My mistress had told me that if a person took three or four of them at once he would go to sleep and never wake again." The Attorney-general. "Was it considered safe to leave such dangerous narcotics within her reach?" Witness. "She was a very prudent woman. She was fond of life; she dreaded the idea of death." The Attorney-general. "Were there any other articles on the table?" Witness. "Pen, ink, and paper, and a book." The Attorney-general. "At what time did you go to bed?" Witness. "I can't be quite exact as to the time, but it was about twelve o'clock." The Attorney-general. "Where was your bedroom situated?" Witness. "On the second floor." The Attorney-general. "And your mistress's?" Witness. "On the first floor." The Attorney-general. "By going out of your bedroom door into the passage and leaning over the balustrade, could you see down to the ground-floor?" Witness. "Yes, pretty clearly. It was a straight view." The Attorney-general. "You went to bed, you say, at about twelve o'clock. Before you retired had your master returned home?" Witness. "Yes. I was undressing when I heard the street door open and close. Then I heard a carriage drive away. I stepped out of my room softly and looked over the balustrade to make sure that it was my master. At the moment I looked down I saw him turning off the gas in the hall." The Attorney-general. "And you saw nothing more?" Witness. "No." The Attorney-general. "And heard nothing more?" Witness. "Yes, I heard something. I remained in the passage on the second floor, bending over the balustrade, and it seemed to me to be a very long time before my master made any movement. I should say five or six minutes passed before I heard him, very, very softly, ascend the stairs to the first floor. Perhaps I was fanciful, through being alone so long in my own room; but the silence in the house, and then the sound of my master coming up the stairs much more quietly than was usual with him, made me nervous, I don't know why. I fancied all sorts of things." The Attorney-general. "Never mind your fancies. Did you hear any other footsteps besides those of your master?" Witness. "I am not sure. I can't say. It never entered my mind that anybody could be with him, and yet I could not help fancying things. To speak the truth, I was so upset that I went into my own room and locked the door. I listened with my ear at the bedroom door, and I heard the handle of my mistress's room being turned." The Attorney-general. "And then?" Witness. "I was already partially undressed, and I went to bed." The Attorney-general. "Did you sleep soundly?" Witness. "No. I woke up suddenly with the idea that the street door had been opened and closed again. I lay in bed, frightened, but hearing nothing more, presently fell asleep again." The Attorney-general. "There were no cries, no voices loudly raised?" Witness. "I heard none." The Attorney-general. "Did you sleep soundly after that?" Witness. "No. I was dozing off and waking up the whole of the night--a hundred times, it seemed to me. How I have reproached myself since that when I saw my master put out the gas in the hall I did not have the courage to go down to him!" The Attorney-general. "At what time in the morning did you usually rise?" Witness. "At half-past seven, unless my mistress required me earlier." The Attorney-general. "Was that the hour at which you rose on the morning of the 26th of March?" Witness. "No; I rose much earlier--at six or a quarter past six I can't say exactly to a minute, because I did not look at my watch." The Attorney-general. "Then, after dressing, did you go down-stairs?" Witness. "Yes, with a candle in my hand It was dark." The Attorney-general. "Any sound in the house?" Witness. "None." The Attorney-general. "Did you listen at your mistress's bedroom door?" Witness. "I stood there for a moment, but I heard nothing." The Attorney-general. "After that, what did you do?" Witness. "I went down to the hall." The Attorney-general. "To the street door?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "On which side of the hall was the coat-rack?" Witness. "On the left from the house, on the right from the street." The Attorney-general. "Did you look at it?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "What did you observe?" Witness. "That my master's ulster was hanging up in its usual place." The Attorney-general. "You are positive that it was in its usual place?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "Would you recognize the ulster again?" Witness. "Most certainly it is a coat of a very peculiar pattern." The Attorney-general. "Is this it?" (Ulster produced.) Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "Was the prisoner's hat hanging in its usual place?" Witness. "No, it was not there." The Attorney-general. "Did you look at the street door?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "Did you observe anything?" Witness. "Yes, something surprising." The Attorney-general. "What?" Witness. "That the chain was not up, and that it was not locked, as was always done by my master himself when he returned home late. On other occasions it was done by a servant. Then, I thought, it could have been no fancy of mine that I heard the street door open and shut in the middle of the night." The Attorney-general. "Proceed with an account of your movements after the discovery." Witness. "I was alarmed, and I considered for a little while what I ought to do. Then it suddenly occurred to me that the door of the bedroom my master occupied was not quite closed when I had passed it on my way down-stairs. I went up quietly to convince myself, and I saw it was not shut. I touched it with my hand very gently and timidly, and it swung open. Thinking it my duty to acquaint my master with the circumstance of the street door chain not being up, I ventured to step into the bedroom and to call, 'Sir!' I held the candle above my head, and to my astonishment saw that there was no one in the room, and that the bed had not been occupied during the night. I went boldly into the room and convinced myself. No one was there, no one had been there. The bed was just as it had been made on the previous day. Now really alarmed, I hurried to my mistress's bedroom, and knocked at her door. There was no answer. I knocked again and again, and still there was no answer. I opened the door and entered. My mistress was lying quite still in bed. I stepped quietly to her side and bent over. My heart almost stopped beating as I looked at her face, there was something so awful in it. 'Madam! madam!' I cried, softly, and I ventured to push her by the shoulder. She made no movement; she did not speak. I cried to her again, and pushed her again, and then a suspicion of the horrible truth flashed upon me. I raised her in my arms, and she fell back upon the bed. I scarcely know what happened after that. I began to scream, and I think I became hysterical. The next thing I remember was the servants rushing into the room and me pointing to the dead body of my mistress." The Attorney-general. "Do you remember saying anything to the effect that your master had murdered her?" Witness. "I should not like to swear to it; but it may have been in my mind because of the cruel life they had led together, and because of what had passed between them on the previous morning." The Attorney-general. "After a time you became calmer and more collected?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "Had one of the servants gone for a policeman?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "Shortly afterwards a detective officer, Lumley Rich, entered the room?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "What was his first question when he had convinced himself that your mistress was dead?" Witness. "He asked if anything in the room had been touched or disturbed, and I said, 'No, nothing had been touched or disturbed.'" The Attorney-general. "In consequence of the officer's question upon this point, was your attention directed to the table by the bedside?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "Was everything upon the table as you had left it at nine o'clock on the night before, when you ceased attendance upon your mistress?" Witness. "The pen, ink, and paper were there. The decanter was there, with very little water in it, and I was horror-struck to see that the bottle of sleeping-lozenges was quite empty. I made a remark to that effect to the detective. Turning to the mantle-shelf, I saw upon it the tumbler which, when I left my mistress's room the night before, had been on the table by her side." The Attorney-general. "You say that during the day of the 25th of March your mistress spoke vaguely about papers and acceptances for money which she held, and of which the prisoner desired to obtain possession. Do you know anything further concerning those papers and acceptances?" Witness. "Nothing." The Attorney-general. "Do you know if any were found after your mistress's death?" Witness. "I do not know." The Attorney-general. "You saw your master when he entered the house at seven o'clock in the morning?" Witness. "Yes." The Attorney-general. "Was he wearing an overcoat on that occasion?" Witness. "No." The Attorney-general. "What was his appearance?" Witness. "Very haggard; as though he had had no sleep--as though he had passed a dreadful night." The Attorney-general. "That will do." (In accordance with the plan of defence which the prisoner seemed to have laid down for himself, his cross-examination of this witness was very brief.) Prisoner. "You say that when you were in the room adjoining my wife's bedroom, during my interview with her on the Morning of the 25th of March, you heard our voices raised to a high pitch, and that of the two voices mine made the stronger impression upon you?" Witness. "Yes, I did say so." Prisoner. "You mean, of course, by that, that I was speaking loudly and violently?" Witness. "Yes, I do mean it." Prisoner. "Do you adhere to that statement?" Witness. "Yes, I adhere to it." Prisoner. "And to your conviction that I was threatening my wife?" Witness. "Yes." Prisoner. "As I had threatened her many times before?" Witness. "Yes." Prisoner. "You have heard me threaten her many times during the last few months?" Witness. "Yes." Prisoner. "In as loud and violent a tone as you say I used on this occasion?" Witness. "No, not so loudly and violently as on this occasion; but that did not make it less dreadful." Mr. Justice Fenmore. "We do not want your opinions. Confine yourself to the statement of facts." Prisoner. "Are you aware that my life is at stake?" Witness. "Yes." Prisoner. "And that the evidence you have given is almost, if not quite, fatal against me?" Witness. "I do not know anything about that. I have said only what is true." Prisoner. "Is it not possible that, having a prejudice against me, you may have allowed your imagination to warp your reason?" Witness. "If by that you mean that I am inventing things against you, it is not true. I have only told what I heard." Prisoner. "And you heard my wife, when I left the room, call after me the words you have already given in evidence, to the effect that she believed I wished her dead, but that she would not die yet, unless I killed her?" Witness. "I heard her say so." Prisoner. "And that she called after me that I was a villain?" Witness. "I heard her say so." Prisoner. "In the description you have given of your movements on the night of this fatal day, you say that, upon hearing the street door open and close, you came out of your bedroom, and leaning over the balustrade, looked down into the hall?" Witness. "Yes, that is true." Prisoner. "And that you saw me putting out the gas in the hall?" Witness. "Yes." Prisoner. "You are certain it was I?" Witness. "Yes. You had your ulster on, and as you had to stand on tiptoe to put out the gas, your face was raised to the light, and I saw it plainly." Prisoner. "You saw my face plainly?" Witness. "As plainly as I see it now." Prisoner (with a movement of impatience). "I have no further questions to ask you." The Court then adjourned. VI. DESCRIPTION OF THE LAST DAY'S PROCEEDINGS--EXTRACTED FROM A DAILY PAPER. "The trial of Edward Layton for the murder of his wife came to a singular and unsatisfactory termination late last night. That the public interest in the case had reached an almost unprecedented height was proved by the large number of persons who were unable to obtain admission to the court. "On the previous evening the evidence for the prosecution had closed, and there was a painful and eager expectancy in the minds of all present as to the line of defence which the prisoner intended to adopt. This line of defence--if, indeed, it can be called a defence--was as surprising as it was brief. "The prisoner, addressing the judge and the jury, intimated that it was not his intention to call witnesses on his behalf. Most of the witnesses for the prosecution, he said, had given their evidence fairly, and if they had committed themselves to misstatements and discrepancies, it was more because they were either misled or mistaken--in the case of one witness, Ida White, because she was strangely prejudiced against him--than that they had a desire to make the case against him even blacker than it was. It had happened before, and would doubtless happen again, that a man found himself thrust into such an unhappy position as he himself stood through no fault of his own, and that he was unable to say or do anything to prove his innocence. Sometimes it was with such a man a matter of honor, sometimes a matter of conscience. In his own case it sprung from both his honor and his conscience that his lips were sealed, and the utmost he could say for himself was that he was an innocent man, with so dark an array of evidence against him as to almost incontestably prove him to be guilty. All that he could do was to declare most solemnly that the accusation upon which he was being tried was false, and that he stood before them as unstained by crime as they were themselves. What could be said truly in his favor was that his character, and to some extent his blameless life, were a refutation of the charge. Evidence of character was generally called in mitigation of impending punishment. He did not intend to call such evidence, because, by so doing, it would be a half-admission that he stood there a guilty instead of an innocent man. He knew perfectly well how lame and impotent these weak words must sound in the ears of those who were sitting in judgment upon him; but this he could not help. It was but part of the fatal web in which he was entangled. That he and his wife had lived unhappily together was not to be disputed; but even in this most serious crisis of his life he denied the right arrogated by the legal profession to rip open a man's private affairs and expose to the vulgar gaze what he desired should be hidden from it. The last thing he would do, even if he were in ten times the peril in which he then stood, was to drag other persons into the case, and to allow them to be blackened and vilified as he had been. 'I can scarcely doubt,' said the prisoner, 'what your verdict will be. Were I in your place, I should most likely decide as you will decide; but none the less will it be a solemn fact that though you are legally right, you are morally wrong. I must be content to let the case rest as it has been presented to you, and to abide the issue, though it may cost me my life.' "Never in a criminal court, in the case of a man arraigned upon so grave a charge, has there been heard a defence so weak and strange; but it is nevertheless a fact that the prisoner's earnest and, to all appearance, ingenuous manner produced a deep impression upon all who heard him; and when he ceased speaking there was, in the murmurs of astonishment that followed, an unmistakable note of sympathy. "After a slight pause the Attorney-general rose to sum up the case against the prisoner, and his incisive judicial utterances soon dispelled the impression which the prisoner's earnestness had produced. He said that in the circumstances of the case his speech would be briefer than it otherwise would have been. He had a duty to perform, and he would perform it, without, he hoped, any undue severity or harshness. Unhappily the evidence was only too clear against the prisoner, and unhappily the prisoner had strengthened the case against himself. This was not a matter of sentiment it was a matter of justice, and justice must be done. With slight limitations, around which the prisoner threw a veil of silence, contenting himself to cast suspicion upon them by some kind of mysterious implication which no person could understand, and not venturing to give them a distinct and indignant denial--with slight limitations, then, the prisoner had admitted the truthfulness of the evidence brought against him. As the prisoner had not directly referred to these doubtful points in the evidence, he would himself do so, and endeavor to clear away any latent doubt--if such existed--in the minds of the jury. First, with respect to the ulster. The prisoner did not deny that he wore this ulster on the whole of the day his coachman, James Moorhouse, was driving him to various places, and it was only upon his arrival home at midnight that he endeavored to shake the coachman's evidence as to whether, when he entered the carriage, upon leaving Prevost's Restaurant, and upon his issuing from the carriage when the coachman drew up at his house, he still had this ulster on. What his motive was in endeavoring to shake the coachman's testimony upon this point it was impossible to say. He (the learned counsel) had most carefully considered the matter, and the only conclusion he could arrive at was that the prisoner was anxious to instil a doubt into the minds of the jury, that it was not he who left the restaurant at ten minutes to twelve and entered his carriage, and that it was not he who alighted from the carriage and opened his street door. But supposing, for instance, that this argument had a foundation in fact, was it not easy for the prisoner to prove what he had done with himself between ten minutes to twelve on the night of the 25th of March and seven o'clock on the morning of the 26th? Surely some person or persons must have seen him, and had he produced those persons there would have been a reasonable _alibi_ set up, which it would be the duty of every one engaged in this case seriously to consider. Indeed, he would go so far as to say that, admitting such evidence to be brought forward and established, there could not be found a jury who would convict the prisoner of the charge brought against him. It would then have been proved that the prisoner had not seen his wife from eleven o'clock on the morning of the 25th of March until seven o'clock on the morning of the 26th, and as it was during the night of those days that the unhappy lady met her death, it would have been impossible to bring the prisoner in guilty. But, easy as this evidence must have been to produce, there is not only no attempt to produce it, but in his lamentably impotent speech the prisoner does not even refer to it. In his mind, then, and in the minds of all reasonable men, there could not be a doubt that this was the case of one who, in despair, was catching at a straw to save himself. The learned counsel touched briefly but incisively upon every point in the evidence concerning which the prisoner had maintained silence, and had made no endeavor to confute. For instance, there was the lady whom he had met in Bloomsbury Square, whom he took to Prevost's Restaurant, whom he regaled with a supper which neither he nor she touched--a distinct proof that they were otherwise momentously occupied. The evidence with respect to this lady is irrefragable. She was no shadow, no myth, no creation of the imagination; she was a veritable being of flesh and blood. All the efforts of the prosecution had failed to trace her, and the just deduction was that she was somewhere in biding, afraid to come forward lest she should be incriminated and placed side by side with the prisoner in the dock. The prisoner did not deny her existence, nor that she and he were for several hours in company with each other. Were he innocent, what possible doubt could exist that he would bring her forward to establish his innocence? Were both innocent, would not she of her own accord step forward to prove it? The prisoner, in his address, made certain allusions to honor and conscience, by which he would make it appear that he was guided by his honor and his conscience in the singular method of his defence; and it may be that there existed in him some mistaken sense of chivalry which induced him to do all in his power to screen the partner in his crime. It would have been better for him had he brought his honor and his conscience to bear in the unhappy engagement into which he entered with the unfortunate lady who afterwards became his wife; but it had been amply proved that the marriage was not, on his side at least, a marriage of affection. Distinctly he married her for her money, and distinctly he would be a great gainer by her death. Thus, then, there existed a motive, and not a novel one--for the tragedy has been played many times in the history of crime--for his getting rid of her. He (the counsel for the prosecution) did not wish to press hardly upon the prisoner, who was a man of culture and education, and must feel keenly the position in which he stood, whatever might be his outward demeanor. But it devolved upon him to impress upon the jury not to allow any false sentiment to cause them to swerve from the straight path of duty. They must decide by the evidence which had been presented to them, and it was with a feeling the reverse of satisfactory that he pointed out to them that this evidence could lead to but one result. "The summing up of the learned judge (which, with the Attorney-general's speech, will be found fully reported in other columns) was a masterly analysis of the evidence which had been adduced. He impressed upon the jury the necessity of calm deliberation, and of absolute conviction before they pronounced their verdict. Circumstantial evidence was, of all evidence, the most perplexing and dangerous. It had, in some rare instances, erred but these exceptions were, happily, few and far between. It had, on the other hand, led to the detection of great criminals, and without its aid many heinous aggressors against the law would slip through the hands of justice. He dismissed the jury to their duty, and he prayed that wisdom might attend their deliberations. "At half-past three o'clock the jury retired, and it was the general impression that the case would be ended within the hour. The prisoner sat in the dock, shading his eyes with his hand. Not once did he look up to the court. He seemed to be preparing himself for his impending fate. But four o'clock, five o'clock, six o'clock passed, and the suspense grew painful. It was clear that there was not that agreement between the jury which all in court, including even the prisoner, had expected. At twenty minutes past six the foreman of the jury entered the court, and informed the judge that there was no chance of the jury agreeing upon a verdict. "The Judge. 'Is there any point of law upon which you desire information?' "The Foreman of the Jury. 'None, my lord.' "The Judge. 'Is there any discrepancy in the evidence which the jury wish cleared?' "The Foreman of the Jury. 'No, my lord. It is simply that we cannot agree.' "The learned judge then intimated that, after so long and patient a trial, he could not lightly dismiss the jury from their duties, and he bade the foreman again retire to a further consideration of the case. The court, he said, would sit late to receive the verdict. "Seven o'clock, eight o'clock, nine o'clock passed, and then the learned judge sent for the foreman of the jury, and inquired whether any progress had been made towards an agreement. "The Foreman of the Jury. 'None, my lord. There is no possible chance of the jury agreeing upon a verdict.' "It was remarked that no person in court appeared to be more surprised than the prisoner, and when the jury were called in and dismissed by the judge from their duties, Edward Layton, before he was removed from the dock by the jailers, leaned eagerly forward to scan their countenances. "Nothing further transpired, and this unexpected chapter in the Layton mystery was closed." PART THE SECOND. THE CABLE MESSAGE FROM AMERICA. At ten o'clock on the night following this exciting day, Mr. Bainbridge, Q.C., and his friend, Dr. Daincourt, were chatting together in the dining-room of the lawyer's house. They had met by appointment, and were now conversing over the strange incidents of the Layton trial. "Its termination," said Dr. Daincourt, "is in harmony with the whole of the proceedings. I am afraid, when Layton is put again upon his trial, that there will be no further disagreement on the part of the jury, and that his conviction is certain." "With the evidence as it stands at present," said Mr. Bainbridge, thoughtfully, "you are right in your conclusion. But there is here a mystery to be brought to light which, discovered, may lead to a different result. Almost unfathomable as this mystery now appears to be, its unravelment may, after all, depend upon a very slender thread. Fortunately, Layton's second trial cannot take place for a month. Before that month expires I hope to be able to lay my hand upon evidence which will prove him innocent of the charge." "To judge from his attitude," said Dr. Daincourt, "he is indifferent as to the result." "You are mistaken," said the lawyer; "it is only that he will not owe his release to certain means which I believe it to be in his power to disclose. Has it not occurred to you that he has been anxious all through to keep something in the background?" "Yes," replied Dr. Daincourt, "that has been my impression; but it might be something which would more firmly fix his guilt. Is it your intention to follow up the case?" "To the last link in the chain." "The chain, if there be one, is safely hidden, and I cannot for the life of me see a single link." Mr. Bainbridge, leaning back in his chair, did not reply for a few moments, and then he said, "I have two links to commence with. One of these is shadowy; the other is certain and tangible." And then, with the air of a man whose thoughts were engaged upon an important subject, he exclaimed, "If I could only discover its meaning!" "The meaning of what?" The lawyer took a pack of cards from a drawer and selected a card, which he handed to Dr. Daincourt. "The Nine of Hearts," said the doctor. "The card," said the lawyer, "that was found in the pocket of Layton's ulster." "Is this your tangible link?" asked Dr. Daincourt, turning the card over in his hand. "It is my tangible link," replied the lawyer. Dr. Daincourt shrugged his shoulders. "You are adding mystery to mystery." "I think not," said the lawyer. "You were not in the court when the Nine of Hearts was produced." "No." "That and the latch-key of Layton's street door were the only articles found in the pockets of the ulster. When the evidence relating to these articles was being given, I closely observed Layton's face. I knew, but he did not, that these two articles were all that were discovered in the pockets of the incriminating coat. When the latch-key was held up he smiled faintly; he was not surprised. But when the Nine of Hearts was produced there flashed into his eyes a startled look--a look of bewilderment and astonishment; indeed, there was something of horror in his face. I needed no further sign to make me positive that he had no previous knowledge of the card, and that it was the first time he had seen it." "Something of horror, you say." "It was my impression, and I cannot account for it. Not so with his bewilderment and astonishment. To my mind they are easily explained." "He asked no questions concerning the card?" remarked Dr. Daincourt. "He asked no questions," said the lawyer, somewhat irritably, "concerning a hundred matters upon which the witnesses should have been hardly pressed. Can you not see that this accentuates my conviction that the Nine of Hearts is a link in the chain?" "Yes, supposing you had not already arrived at a false conclusion with respect to poor Layton's knowledge of the possession of the card." "I will stake my life and reputation," said the lawyer, earnestly, "upon the correctness of my conclusion. I will stake my life and reputation that, until that moment, Edward Layton did not know that the card was in his pocket." "Then somebody must have placed it there." "As you say, somebody must have placed it there." "But in the name of all that is reasonable," exclaimed Dr. Daincourt, "what possible connection can you trace between a playing-card, whether it be the ace of clubs, or the king of spades, or the nine of hearts--it matters not which--what possible connection can you find between _any_ playing-card and the awful charge brought against Layton?" "That," said the lawyer, drumming upon the table with his fingers, "is what I have to discover. You do not know, doctor, upon what slight threads the most important issues hang." "I think I do," said Dr. Daincourt, with a smile. "I do not refer to the general issues of human life," said the lawyer, in explanation; "I refer to legal matters, especially to criminal cases the solution of which rests upon circumstantial evidence. Circumstances the most remote, and apparently absolutely worthless and trivial, have been woven by a legal mind into a strand strong and firm enough to drag a prisoner out of the very jaws of death." "And this Nine of Hearts is one of those slender threads?" said Dr. Daincourt, in a tone of incredulous inquiry. "Very likely. You may depend I shall not lose sight of it." "You spoke of two links," said Dr. Daincourt, "and you have shown me that which you believe to be a tangible one. What is the link which you say is shadowy and less dependable?" "I will explain. The jury were discharged, being unable to agree upon their verdict. It may leak out through the press by-and-by--pretty much everything _does_ leak out through the press nowadays--but it is not known at present to the public how many of the jury were for pronouncing the prisoner guilty, and how many for pronouncing him innocent." "I have heard rumors," said Dr. Daincourt. "I," said the lawyer, "have positive information. Eleven of them declared him guilty, one only held out that he was innocent. Arguments, persuasions, logical inferences and deductions, the recapitulation of the evidence against him--all were of no avail in this one juryman's eyes. He would _not_ be convinced; he would _not_ yield. He had made up his mind that the prisoner was innocent, and that he, at least, would not be instrumental in sending him from the dock a felon." "I can see nothing in that," said Dr. Daincourt. "There are," continued the lawyer, "in civil and criminal records, instances of a like nature, some of which have been privately sifted, with strange results, after the cases have been finally settled. I recollect one case which may bear upon this of Layton's. I do not say it does, but it may. It occurred many years ago, and the jury were locked up a barbarous length of time without being able to come to an agreement. There was no possible doubt, circumstantially, of the prisoner's guilt; the evidence was conclusive enough to convict twenty men. One person, however, would not give in, and that person was on the jury. The prisoner was tried again, and unhesitatingly acquitted. During the time that had elapsed between the first and second trials additional evidence was found which proved the prisoner to be innocent. The juryman who held out on the first trial happened to have been some years before a friend of the prisoner, a fact, of course, which was not known when the jury were empanelled. After the result of the second trial he publicly declared that he had been guided by his feelings and not by the evidence." "And you think that something of the sort may have happened in this case?" "Had you been on the jury, what would have been your verdict?" "Guilty." "Had _I_ been on the jury, what would have been _my_ verdict? Despite my firm conviction that Layton is an innocent man, I should have brought him in guilty. It was not my opinion I had to be guided by, it was the evidence and the evidence in Layton's case, as it was presented to the court and appears in the papers, indisputably proclaims him to be a guilty man. Again, when the verdict was pronounced I watched his face; again I saw there a startled look of wonder and astonishment; to his own mind the evidence against him was conclusive. Then it was that I observed him for the first time gaze upon the jury with some kind of interest and attention. Not once during the trial had he looked at them in any but a casual way, and I should not be surprised to learn that he was ignorant of their names. This is most unusual. Ordinarily a prisoner pays great attention to the jury upon whose verdict his fate hangs. He gazes upon them with deepest anxiety, he notes every change in their countenances, is despondent when he believes it to be against him, is hopeful when he 'believes it to be in his favor. Not so with Layton. When the jury were empanelled, and their names called over, he paid not the slightest attention to them he did not turn his eyes towards them; he might have been both deaf and blind for all the interest he evinced." "Perhaps you are not aware," said the doctor, "that he is very short-sighted, and that without his glasses it would have been impossible for him to distinguish their features." "I am quite aware of it," said the lawyer "but he had his glasses hanging round his neck, and it is remarkable that not once during the trial did he put them to his eyes. I have here," and the lawyer tapped his pocket-book, "a list of the names, social standing, and businesses or professions of the jurymen engaged on this Layton mystery. As regards only one of them is my information incomplete. I know their ages, whether they are married or single, whether they have families, etc. I know something more--I know the name of the one man who would not subscribe to the verdict of guilty which the other eleven, almost without leaving the box, were ready to pronounce. Curiously enough, this dissentient is the person respecting whom I have not yet complete particulars. I am acquainted with his name, but have not been supplied with his address. I shall, however, obtain it easily, if I require it." "What is his name?" asked Dr. Daincourt. "James Rutland," replied the lawyer. At this moment there was a knock at the door, and a man-servant made his appearance. "A telegraph lad, sir," said the servant, "has brought this message, and is waiting to know whether it is correct, and whether there is any answer. He says he has been to your rooms in the Temple, and was directed on here to your private address, the instructions being that the message was to be delivered immediately, either at your professional or private residence." Mr. Bainbridge opened the telegram and read it. It was unusually lengthy, and from the expression of his face appeared to cause him great surprise. "Let the lad wait in the hall," he said to his servant, "and you come up the moment I ring." "Very well, sir," said the servant, and he left the room, closing the door softly behind him. "I have been taking a leaf out of your book," said Dr. Daincourt. "You seem to learn so much from observing the faces of people, that I have been rude enough to watch your face while you were perusing the telegram." "What have you learned?" asked the lawyer. "Nothing," replied Dr. Daincourt, smiling, "except that it appears almost as long as a letter, and that it has caused you surprise." "It has caused me something more than that--it has absolutely startled me." "You must forgive my rudeness. I spoke lightly, not seriously. If you have anything particular to attend to, don't mind me I will go." "No," said the lawyer, "I want you, and I think you will be as startled as I am myself. This is a cable message from Pittsburg, America, and, as you judged, it is more like a letter than a telegram. See, it covers three sides of paper I will read it to you: "'_From Archibald Laing, Box_ 1236, _P. 0., Pittsburg, U. S., to Mr. Bainbridge, Q. C., London_. "'Reports of the result of Edward Layton's trial for the murder of his wife have been cabled here and published in the papers. There will, of course, be a new trial. If at or before that new trial you establish Layton's innocence, I hold myself accountable to you for a fee of twenty-five thousand dollars. If you will employ yourself to that end, I have cabled to Messrs. Morgan & Co., bankers, Threadneedle Street, to pay upon your demand the sum of ten thousand dollars, five thousand dollars of which are your retaining fee, the other five thousand being an instalment towards any preliminary expenses you may incur. This sum of ten thousand dollars is independent of the twenty-five thousand mentioned above, and of course your own professional bill of costs will be paid in addition. Messrs. Morgan & Co. are empowered to advance you any further sums that may be necessary for your investigations. Set every engine afoot to obtain the acquittal of Edward Layton spare no expense. If a million dollars is necessary, it is at your command. Send to me by every mail full and detailed accounts of your movements and proceedings; omit nothing, and make your own charge for this and for everything else you perform in the task I ask you as a favor to undertake. Your reply immediately by cable will oblige, and, up to one hundred words, is prepaid. I do not wish Edward Layton to know that I have requested your mediation on his behalf. It is a matter entirely and confidentially between you and me. I write to you by the outgoing mail. Perhaps you may obtain some useful information from a Mr. James Rutland I cannot furnish you with the gentleman's address, but Edward Layton and he were once friends.'" Dr. Daincourt drew a deep breath. "Startling indeed," he said. "This Archibald Laing must be the man of whom we have heard as making an immense fortune by speculating at the right moment in the silver-mines. If so, he is good for millions. Do you know anything of him?" "Not personally," replied the lawyer; "only from report and hearsay. He is an Englishman, and must be an amazingly shrewd fellow; and that he is in earnest is partly proved by this cable, in which no words are spared to make his meaning clear." While he was speaking to his friend, the lawyer was busily engaged writing upon a blank telegraph form, which was enclosed in the envelope delivered by the messenger. "What will you do in the matter?" asked Dr. Daincourt. "Here is my reply," said the lawyer, and he read it aloud: "_From Mr. Bainbridge, Q.C., Harley Street, London, to Archibald Laing, Box_ 1236, _P. 0., Pittsburg, U. S_. "'Your cable received. I undertake the commission, and will use every effort to establish Layton's innocence, in which I firmly believe. There is a mystery in the matter, and I will do my best to get at the heart of it. I will write to you as you desire.'" He touched the bell and the servant appeared. "Give this to the telegraph boy," he said, "and pay his cab fare to the telegraph office, in order that there shall be no delay." When the servant had departed, the lawyer rose from his chair and paced the room slowly in deep thought, and it was during the intervals in his reflections that the conversation between him and Dr. Daincourt was carried on. "Is it not very strange," said the lawyer, "that I am advised in this cable message to seek information from the one juryman who pronounced Layton innocent, and whose address I have not obtained?" "Yes, it is, indeed," replied Dr. Daincourt, "very strange." "Of course I shall find him; there will not be the least difficulty in that respect. Tell me, doctor. It was proved at the trial that Mrs. Layton's death was caused by an overdose of morphia, taken in the form of effervescing lozenges. It was established that she was occasionally in the habit of taking one of these lozenges at night to produce sleep, and her maid swore that her mistress never took more than one, being aware of the danger of an overdose. The usual mode of administering these noxious opiates is by placing one in the mouth and allowing it to dissolve; but they will dissolve in water, and the medical evidence proved that at least eight or ten of the poisonous lozenges must have been administered in this way, in one dose, to the unfortunate lady. The glass from which the liquid was drunk was round, not by her bedside, but on the mantle-shelf, which is at some distance from the bed. It is a natural inference, if the unfortunate woman had administered the dose to herself, that the glass would have been found on the table by her bedside. It was not so found, and the maid declares that her mistress was too weak to get out of bed and return to it unaided. These facts, if they be facts, circumstantially prove that the cause of death lay outside the actions of the invalid herself. The maid states that when she left her mistress the bottle containing about a dozen lozenges was on the table by her mistress's bedside, and also a glass, and a decanter of water; and that when she visited her mistress at between six and seven o'clock in the morning there were no lozenges left in the bottle, and the glass from which they were supposed to be taken, dissolved in water, was on the mantle-shelf. Now, in my view, this circumstance is in favor of the prisoner." "I cannot see that," observed Dr. Daincourt. "Yet it is very simple," said the lawyer. "Let us suppose, in illustration, that I am this lady's husband. For reasons into which it is not necessary here to enter, I resolve to make away with my wife by administering to her an overdose of these poisonous narcotics, and naturally I resolve that her death shall be accomplished in such a manner as to avert, to some reasonable extent, suspicion from myself. I go into her bedroom at midnight. Our relations, as has been proved, are not of the most amiable kind. We are not in love with each other--quite the reverse--and have been living, from the first day of our marriage, an unhappy life. Indeed, my unhappy life, in relation to the lady, commenced when I was engaged to her. Well, I go into her room at midnight, resolved to bring about her death. She complains that she cannot sleep, and she asks me to give her a morphia lozenge from the bottle. I suggest that it may more readily produce sleep if, instead of allowing it to dissolve slowly in her mouth, she will drink it off at once, dissolved in water. She consents. I take from the table the bottle, the decanter of water, and the glass I empty secretly into the glass the eight or ten or dozen lozenges which the bottle contains; I pour the water from the decanter into the glass, and I tell my wife to drink it off immediately. She does so, and sinks into slumber, overpowered by a sleep from which she will never awake. Perhaps she struggles against the effects of the terrible dose I have administered to her, but her struggles are vain. She lies before me in sure approaching death, and both she and I have escaped from the life which has been a continual source of misery to us. The deed being accomplished, what do I, the murderer, do? There are no evidences of a struggle; there have been no cries to alarm the house; what has been accomplished has been well and skilfully accomplished, and I am the only actual living witness against myself. What then, I repeat, is my course of action? Before I killed her I removed the bottle, the glass, and the decanter from the table by the bedside. I wish it to be understood that she herself, in a fit of delirium, caused her own death. This theory would be utterly destroyed if I allowed the glass from which the poison was taken to be found at some distance from the unfortunate lady's bedside. Very carefully, therefore, I place not only that, but the decanter which contained the water, and the bottle which contained the lozenges, within reach of her living hand. To omit that precaution would be suicidal, and, to my mind, absolutely untenable in rational action under such circumstances. Do you see, now, why the circumstance of the glass being found on the mantle-shelf is a proof of my innocence?" "Yes," replied Dr. Daincourt, "I recognize the strength of your theory--unless, indeed, you had in your mind the idea that it would be better to throw suspicion upon a third person; say, for the sake of argument, upon the maid." "That view," said the lawyer, "demolishes itself, for what _I_ would naturally do to divert suspicion from myself, a third person would naturally do to avert suspicion from him or herself." "True," said Dr. Daincourt; "you seize vital points more readily than I. Have you any theory about the strange lady who accompanied Layton home from Prevost's Restaurant?" "I have a theory upon the point," replied the lawyer, "which, however, at present is so vague and unsatisfactory that it would be folly to disclose it." "And the Nine of Hearts," said Dr. Daincourt, "you have not mentioned that lately--have you forgotten it?" "No," said the lawyer, "it is my firm opinion that round that Nine of Hearts the whole of the mystery revolves." PART THE THIRD. THE MYSTERY OF THE NINE OF HEARTS. "_From Mr. Bainbridge, Q. C., to Archibald Laing, Esq_. "Dear Sir,--Last night I received your cable from Pittsburg, and sent you a message in reply, accepting the commission with which you have been pleased to intrust me. This morning I called upon Messrs. Morgan & Co., Bankers, Threadneedle Street, and learned from them that they were prepared to advance me the ten thousand dollars of which you advised me. I drew upon them for that amount, and received from them a notification that they would honor my further drafts upon them the moment they were drawn. I asked them whether, in the event of my desiring to draw say five thousand pounds, I was at liberty to do so. They said yes, for even a larger amount if I required it. I did not explain to them the reason of my asking the question, but I will do so to you. It has happened, in difficult cases, that information has had to be purchased, and that a bribe more or less tempting has had to be held out to some person or persons to unlock their tongues. I have no reason to suppose that anything of the sort will be necessary in this case, but I wish to feel myself perfectly free in the matter. I am satisfied with your bankers' replies, and I shall spare neither money nor exertion in the endeavor to unravel the mystery which surrounds the death of Mrs. Edward Layton. "It is scarcely possible you can be aware of it, but it is nevertheless a fact that, apart from my professional position in this matter, I take in it an interest which is purely personal, and that my sympathies are in unison with your own. Were it not that I have had some knowledge of Mr. Layton, and that I esteem him, and were it not that I firmly believe in his innocence, I should, perhaps, have hesitated to engage myself in his case, and you will excuse my saying that your liberal views upon the subject of funds might have failed to impress me. It is, therefore, a matter of congratulation that I enlist myself on Mr. Layton's side as much upon personal as upon professional grounds. The time has been too short for anything yet to be done, but it will be a satisfaction to you to learn that I have a slight clew to work upon. It is very slight, very frail, but it may lead to something important. Your desire for a full and complete recital of my movements shall be complied with, and I propose, to this end, and for the purpose of coherence and explicitness, to forward the particulars to you from time to time, not in the form of letters, but in narrative shape. This mode of giving you information will keep me more strictly to the subject-matter, and will be the means of avoiding digression. After the receipt, therefore, of this letter, what I have to say will go forth under numbered headings, not in my own writing, but in that of a short-hand reporter, whom I shall specially employ. I could not myself undertake such a detailed and circumstantial account as I understand it is your desire to obtain. Besides, it will save time, which may be of great value in the elucidation of this mystery. "I am, dear sir, faithfully yours, "HORACE BAINBRIDGE." I. What struck me particularly in your cable message was that portion of it in which you made reference to a Mr. James Rutland. It happens, singularly enough, that this Mr. James Rutland was on the jury, and that he was the one juryman who held out in Mr. Layton's favor, and through whose unconquerable determination not to bring him in guilty has arisen the necessity for a new trial. Eleven of the jury were for a conviction, one only for an acquittal--this one, Mr. Rutland. The first thing to ascertain was his address, which you could not give me. However, we have engines at our hand whereby such small matters are easily arrived at, and on the evening of the day after the arrival of your cable message I was put in possession of the fact that Mr. Rutland lives in Wimpole Street. I drove there immediately, and sent up my card. "I have called upon you, Mr. Rutland," I said, "with respect to Mr. Edward Layton's case, in the hope that you may be able to give me some information by which he may be benefited." Mr. Rutland is a gentleman of about sixty years of age. He has a benevolent face, and I judged him, and I think judged him correctly, to be a man of a kindly nature. Looking upon him, there was no indication in his appearance of a dogged disposition, and I lost sight for a moment of the invincible tenacity with which he had adhered to his opinion when he was engaged upon the trial with his fellow-jurymen. However, his conduct during this interview brought it to my mind. "It is a thousand pities," he said, in response to my opening words, "that Mr. Layton refused to accept professional assistance and advice. I was not the only one upon the jury who failed to understand his reason for so doing." "It is indeed," I observed, "inexplicable, and I am in hopes that you may be able to throw some light upon it. I have come to you for assistance." "I can give you no information," was his reply; "I cannot assist you." "May I speak to you in confidence?" I asked. "Yes," he said, "although I have nothing to tell. To any but a gentleman of position I should refuse to enter into conversation upon this lamentable affair; and, indeed, it will be useless for us to converse upon it. As I have already said, I have nothing to tell you." This iteration of having nothing to say and nothing to tell was to me suspicions, not so much from the words in which the determination was conveyed as from the tone in which they were spoken. It was flurried, anxious, uneasy; a plain indication that Mr. James Rutland could say something if he chose. "Speaking in confidence," I said, taking no outward notice of his evident reluctance to assist me, "I think I am right in my conjecture that you believe in Mr. Layton's innocence." "I decline to say anything upon the matter," was his rejoinder to this remark. "We live in an age of publicity," I observed, without irritation; "it is difficult to keep even one's private affairs to one's self. What used to be hidden from public gaze and knowledge is now exposed and freely discussed by strangers. You are doubtless aware that it is known that there were eleven of the jury who pronounced Mr. Layton guilty, and only one who pronounced him innocent." "I was not," he said, "and am not aware that it is known." "It is nevertheless a fact," I said, "and it is also known that you, Mr. Rutland, are the juryman who held out in Mr. Layton's favor." "These matters should not be revealed," he muttered. "Perhaps not," I said, "but we must go with the age in which we live. Mr. Layton's case has excited the greatest interest. The singular methods he adopted during so momentous a crisis in his life, and the unusual termination of the judicial inquiry, have intensified that interest, and I have not the slightest doubt that there will be a great deal said and written upon the subject." "Which should not be said and written," muttered Mr. Rutland. "Neither have I the slightest doubt," I continued, "that your name will be freely used, and your motives for not waiving your opinion when eleven men were against you freely discussed. We are speaking here, if you will allow me to say so, as friends of the unfortunate man, and I have no hesitation in declaring to you that I myself believe in his innocence." He interrupted me. "Then, if you had been on the jury, you would not have yielded to the opinions of eleven, or of eleven hundred men?" He spoke eagerly, and I saw that it would be a satisfaction to him to obtain support in his view of the case. "I am not so sure," I said "our private opinion of a man when he is placed before his country charged with a crime has nothing whatever to do with the evidence brought against him. Let us suppose, for instance, that you have been at some time or other, under more fortunate circumstances, acquainted with Mr. Layton." "Who asserts that?" he cried, much disturbed. "No person that I am aware of," I replied. "I am merely putting a case, and I will prove to you presently that I have a reason for doing so. Say, I repeat, that under more fortunate circumstances you were acquainted with Mr. Layton, and that you had grown to esteem him. What has that purely personal view to do with your functions as a juryman?" "Mr. Bainbridge," he said, "I do not wish to be discourteous, but I cannot continue this conversation." "Nay," I urged, "a gentleman's life and honor are at stake, and I am endeavoring to befriend him. I am not the only one who is interested in him. There are others, thousands of miles away across the seas, who are desirous and anxious to make a sacrifice, if by that sacrifice they can clear the honor of a friend. See, Mr. Rutland, I will place implicit confidence in you. Last night I received a cable from America, from Mr. Archibald Laing." "Mr. Archibald Laing!" he cried, taken by surprise. "Why, he and Mr. Layton were--" But he suddenly stopped, as though fearful of committing himself. "Were once friends," I said, finishing the sentence for him, and, I was certain, finishing it aright. "Yes, I should certainly say so. Read the cable I received." And I handed it to him. At first he seemed as if he were disinclined, but he could not master his curiosity, and after a slight hesitation he read the message but he handed it back to me without remark. "Mr. Archibald Laing," I said, "as I dare say you have heard or read, is one of fortune's favorites. He left this country three or four years ago, and settled in America--where, I believe, he has taken out letters of naturalization--and plunged into speculation which has made him a millionaire. No further evidence than his cable message is needed to prove that he is a man of vast means. Why does he ask me to apply to you for information concerning Mr. Layton which I may probably turn to that unhappy gentleman's advantage?" "I was but slightly acquainted with Mr. Laing," said Mr. Rutland. "He and I were never friends. I repeat once more that I have nothing to tell you." I recognized then that I was in the presence of a man who, whether rightly or wrongly, was not to be moved from any decision at which he had arrived, and I understood thoroughly the impossible task set before eleven jurymen to win him over to their convictions. "Can I urge nothing," I said, "to induce you to speak freely to me "Nothing," he replied. I spent quite another quarter of an hour endeavoring to prevail upon him, but in the result I left his house no wiser than I had entered it, except that I was convinced he knew something which he was doggedly concealing from me. I did not think it was anything of very great importance, but it might at least be a clew that I could work upon, and I was both discouraged and annoyed by his determined attitude. On the following morning, having paved the way to further access to Mr. Edward Layton, I visited the unhappy man in his prison. He was unaffectedly glad to see me, and he took the opportunity of expressing his cordial thanks for the friendliness I had evinced towards him. I felt it necessary to be on my guard with him, and I did not, thus early, make any endeavor to prevail upon him to accept me as his counsel in the new trial which awaited him. There were one or two points upon which I wished to assure myself, and I approached them gradually and cautiously. "Are you aware," I said, "of the extent of the disagreement among the jury?" "Well," he replied, "we hear something even within these stone walls. I am told that eleven were against me and one for me." "Yes," I said, "that is so." "A bad lookout for me when I am tried again. Mr. Bainbridge," he said, "it is very kind of you to visit me here, and I think you do so with friendly intent." "Indeed," I said, "it _is_ with friendly intent." "Is it of any use," he then said, "for me to declare to you that I am innocent of the horrible charge brought against me?" "I don't know," I said, "whether it is of any use or not, because of the stand you have taken, and seem determined to take." "Yes," he said, "upon my next trial I shall defend myself, as I did on my last. I will accept no legal assistance whatever. Still, as a matter of interest and curiosity--looking upon myself as if I were somebody else--tell me frankly your own opinion." "Frankly and honestly," I replied, "I believe you to be an innocent man." "Thank you," he said, and I saw the tears rising in his eyes. "Do you happen," I said, presently, "to know the name of the juryman who was in your favor?" "No," he replied, "I am quite ignorant of the names of the jurymen." "But they were called over before the trial commenced." "Yes, that is the usual course, I believe, but I did not hear their names. Indeed, I paid no heed to them. Of what interest would they have been to me? Twelve strangers were twelve strangers; one was no different from the other." "They were all strangers to you?" I asked, assuming a purposed carelessness of tone. "Yes, every one of them." "And you to them?" "I suppose so. How could it have been otherwise?" "But when they finally came back into court, and the foreman of the jury stated that they could not agree, you seemed surprised." "Were you watching me?" he asked, suspiciously. "Do you not think it natural," I said, in reply, "that every person's eyes at that moment should be turned upon you?" "Of course," he said, recovering himself--"quite natural. I should have done the same myself had I been in a better place than the dock. Well, I _was_ surprised; I fully anticipated a verdict of guilty." "And," I continued, "although you may not remember it, you leaned forward and gazed at the jury with an appearance of eagerness." "I remember that I did so," he said; "it was an impulsive movement on my part." "Did you recognize any among them whose face was familiar to you?" "No; to tell you the truth, I could not distinguish their faces, I am so short-sighted." "But you had your glasses hanging round your neck. Why did you not use them?" It amazed me to hear him laugh at this question. It was a gentle, kindly laugh, but none the less was I astonished at it. "You lawyers are so sharp," he said, "that there is scarcely hiding anything from you. Be careful what questions you ask me, or I shall be compelled"--and here his voice grew sad--"to beg of you not to come again." I held myself well within control, although his admonition startled me, for I had it in my mind to ask him something concerning the surprise he had evinced when the Nine of Hearts was produced from the pocket of his ulster; and I had it also in my mind to ask him whether he was acquainted, either directly or indirectly, with Mr. James Rutland. His caution made me cautious; his wariness made me wary; I seemed to be pitted against him in a friendly contest in which I was engaged in his interests and he was engaged against them. "I will be careful," I said; "you must not close your door against me, although it is, unhappily, a prison door. I am here truly as a sympathizing friend. Look upon me in that light, and not in the light of a professional man." "You comfort me," he said. "Although I may appear to you careless and indifferent, you know well enough it is impossible that I can be so; you know that I must be tearing my heart out in the terrible position in which I have been forced by ruthless circumstance. Make no mistake I am myself greatly to blame for what has occurred. It has been folioed upon me by my sense of honor and right and truth. Why, life once spread itself before me with a prospect so glad, so beautiful, that it almost awed me! But, after all, if a man bears within him the assurance that he is doing what he is in honor bound to do, surely that should be something! There--you see what you have forced from me. Yes, I _did_ look eagerly forward when I heard that the jury could not agree. At least there was one man there who believed me to be innocent, and without the slightest knowledge of him I blessed him for the belief." He gazed round with the air of a man who was fearful that every movement he made was watched and observed by enemies, and then he said, in a low tone, "I need a friend." I replied, instantly, following the tone that he had used, "I am here; I will be your friend." "It is a simple service I require," he said; "I have a letter about me which I wish to be posted. What it contains concerns no one whom you know. It is my affair and mine only, and rather than make it another man's I would be burned at the stake, though we don't live in such barbarous times;" and then he added, with a sigh, "But they are barbarous enough." "I will post the letter for you," I said. He looked me in the face, a long, searching, wistful look, and as he gazed, I saw in his eyes a nobility of spirit which drew me as close to him in sympathy and admiration as I had sever been drawn in my life to any man. "Dare I trust you?" he said, still preserving his low tone. "But if not you, whom can I trust?" "You may trust me," I said; "I will post the letter for you faithfully." "Not close to the prison," he said. "Not in this district. Put it into a pillar-box at some distance from this spot." "I will do as you desire." "Honestly and honorably?" he said. "Honestly," I responded, "and honorably, as between man and man." "You are a good fellow," he said, "I will trust you. I can never hope to repay yon, but one day, perhaps, you may live to be glad that you did me even this slight service." And he slipped the letter into my hand, which I as secretly slipped into my pocket. Then I said, "May I come to see you again?" "Do. You have lightened the day for me--and many a day in addition to this!" Soon afterwards I left him. I was honorably careful in the carrying out of his directions. I did not take the letter from my pocket until I was quite three miles from the prison, and then I put it into a pillar-box but before I deposited it there, I looked at the address. Layton had not extracted a promise from me that I should not do so, and I will not say, therefore, whether, if he had, I should have violated it. I was engaged, against his will and wish, in his vital interests, and I might have broken such a promise however that may be, my surprise was overwhelming when I saw that his letter was addressed to "Miss Mabel Rutland, 32 Lavender Terrace, South Kensington." Rutland! Why, that was the name of the one juryman who had held out upon Layton's trial, and from whom I had vainly endeavored to obtain some useful information! Of all the cases I have been engaged in, this promised to be not only the most momentous, but the most pregnant and interesting. Rutland! Rutland! Had it been a common name, such as Smith or Jones, I might not have been so stirred. It was no chance coincidence. I was on the track, and with all the powers of my intellect I determined to carry it to a successful issue. ------------ _Cable message from Mr. Bainbridge, London, to Mr. Archibald Laing, U. S_. "Who is Miss Mabel Rutland, and is there any relationship between her and Mr. James Rutland? Also, in what relation does she stand to Edward Layton? Can you give me any information respecting the Nine of Hearts?" _Cable message from Mr. Archibald Laing, U S., to Mr. Bainbridge, London_. "Miss Mabel Rutland is the niece of Mr. James Rutland. She and Mr. Edward Layton were once engaged to be married. The breaking off of the engagement caused great surprise, as they were deeply in love with each other. I do not understand your reference to the Nine of Hearts." _Cable message from Mr. Bainbridge to Mr. Archibald Laing_. "The Nine of Hearts I refer to is a playing-card. I have reasons for asking." _Cable message from Mr. Archibald Laing to Mr. Bainbridge_. "I know nothing whatever concerning the Nine of Hearts." II. The information you give me in your cable that Miss Mabel Rutland and Edward Layton were once engaged to be married is of the utmost interest to me. You will doubtless in your letters explain more fully what you know, but I do not wait for letters from you. Time is too precious for me to lose an hour, a moment. I feel confident, before you enlighten me upon this point, that I shall ferret out something of importance which may lead to the end we both desire. I may confess to you at once that the case has taken complete hold of me, and that, without any prospect of monetary compensation, I should devote myself to it. That Edward Layton is bent upon sacrificing himself in some person's interests seems to me to be certain. It would take something in the shape of a miracle to convince me that he is guilty of the crime of which he is charged. I have elected myself his champion, and if it be in the power of man to bring him out of his desperate strait with honor, I resolve, with all the earnestness of my heart and with all the strength of my intellect, to accomplish it. The intelligence that Mr. James Rutland is uncle to the young lady to whom Edward Layton was engaged may be of use to me. I do not yet despair of obtaining useful information from him. My inquiry respecting the Nine of Hearts was not idly made. This particular playing-card, which was found in the pocket of Layton's ulster, and of which he had no knowledge, is, I am convinced, an important feature in the case. I have already enlisted the services of three or four agents, and as I intend to spare no expense, it may be that I shall call upon your bankers for a further sum of money, which I feel assured you will not begrudge. Certain events are working in my favor. Of those that do not immediately bear upon the matter I shall make no mention, but those that do shall find a record here. For some portion of the day after my interview with Edward Layton in prison, I was, apart from my practical work, engaged upon the consideration of the question whether I should call upon Miss Mabel Rutland, at 32 Lavender Terrace, South Kensington. I went there in a cab, and reconnoitred the house outside, but I did not venture to enter it. It is one of a terrace of fourteen mansions, built in the Elizabethan style. No person could afford to reside there who was not in a position to spend a couple of thousand a year. The natural conclusion, therefore, is that Miss Rutland's people are wealthy. That in the absence of some distinct guide or clew or information I should have been compelled to present myself at the address, for the purpose of seeking an interview with the young lady to whom Edward Layton's letter was addressed, was certain; but chance or destiny came here to my assistance. Dr. Daincourt called upon me at between ten and eleven o'clock in the night. "I make no apology for this late visit," he said; "I have something of importance to communicate. "When you spoke to me last night about the jury, you gave me the list of names to look over. I glanced at them casually, and gathered nothing from them, until Mr. Laing's cable message arrived from America. That incident, of course, impressed upon my mind the name of Mr. James Rutland. It was strange to me; I was not acquainted with any person hearing it. But it is most singular that this afternoon I was unexpectedly called into consultation upon a serious case--a young lady, Miss Mabel Rutland, who has been for some time in a bad state. The diagnosis presents features sufficiently familiar to a specialist, and also sufficiently perplexing. Her nerves are shattered; she is suffering mentally, and there is decided danger." "Miss Mabel Rutland," I said, mechanically, "living at 32 Lavender Terrace, South Kensington." "You know her?" exclaimed Dr. Daincourt, in astonishment. "I have never seen her," I said, "but I know where she lives." "Is she related," inquired Dr. Daincourt, "to the one juryman who held out upon Edward Layton's trial?" "There is no need for secrets between us," I replied; "but it will be as well to keep certain matters to ourselves." "Certainly. I will not speak of them to any one. It is agreed that what passes between us is in confidence." "Miss Mabel Rutland is niece to the Mr. James Rutland who was on the jury." "That is strange," exclaimed Dr. Daincourt. "Very strange," I said; "but I shall be surprised if, before we come to the end of this affair, we do not meet with even stranger circumstances than that. Proceed, I beg, with what you have to tell me concerning Miss Rutland." "Well," said Dr. Daincourt, "her parents are in great distress about her. I saw and examined her, and I am much puzzled. There is nothing radically wrong with her. There is no confirmed disease; her lungs are sufficiently strong; she is not in a consumption, and yet it may be that she will die. It is not her body that is suffering, it is her mind. Of course I was very particular in making the fullest inquiries, and indeed she interested me. Although her features are wasted, she is very beautiful, and there _rests_ upon her face an expression of suffering exaltation and self-sacrifice which deeply impressed me. In saying that this expression rests upon her face, I am speaking with exactness. It is not transient; it does not come and go. It is always there, and to my experienced eyes it appears to denote some strong trouble which has oppressed her for a considerable time, and under the pressure of which she has at length broken down. I could readily believe what her parents told me, that there were times when she was delirious for many hours." "Has she been long ill?" I inquired. "She has been confined to her bed," replied Dr. Daincourt, "since the 26th of March." "The 26th of March," I repeated; "the day on which Mrs. Edward Layton was found dead." Dr. Daincourt started. "I did not give that a thought," he said. "Why should you?" I remarked. "I may confess to you, doctor, that I apply almost everything I hear to the case upon which I am engaged. I shall surprise you even more when I ask you whether, during the time you were in 32 Lavender Terrace, you heard the name of Edward Layton mentioned?" "No," replied Dr. Daincourt; "his name was not mentioned. Bainbridge, I know that you are not given to idle talk; there is always some meaning in what you say." "Assuredly," I said, "I am not in the mood for idle talk just now. Events are marching on, doctor, and I am inclined to think that we are on the brink of a discovery. You have not yet told me all I wish to know concerning Miss Mabel Rutland. What members of the family did you see?" "Her mother, her father, and herself," replied Dr. Daincourt. "Do those comprise the whole of the family?" "I do not know; I did not inquire." "Give me some description of her parents." "Her father," said Dr. Daincourt, "is a gentleman of about sixty years of age." "Is there any doubt in your mind that he is a gentleman?" "Not the slightest." "Attached to his daughter--entertaining an affection for her?" "I should certainly say so, but at the same time not given to sentimental demonstration." "As to character, now?" I asked. "What impression did he leave upon you?" "That he was stern, self-willed, unbending. Hard to turn, I suspect, when once he is resolved." "Like his brother," I observed, "Mr. James Rutland, who was on Layton's trial. Those traits evidently run in the family. Now, as to his wife?" "A gentle and amiable lady," said Dr. Daincourt, "some eight or ten years younger than her husband; but her hair is already grayer than his; it is almost white." "She and her daughter resemble each other," I remarked. "Yes; and there is also on the mother's face an expression of devotion and self-sacrifice. Her eyes continually overflowed when we were speaking of her daughter." "Not so the father's eyes?" "No; but he showed no want of feeling." "Still, doctor," I said, "you gather from your one visit to the house that he is the master of it--in every sense, I mean." "Most certainly the master." "Ruling," I remarked, "with a rod of iron." "You put ideas into my head," said Dr. Daincourt, in a somewhat helpless tone. "If they clash with your own, say so." "They do not clash with my own, but I am not prone so suddenly to take such decided views. I should say you are right, Bainbridge, and that in his house Mr. Rutland's will is law." "Would that be likely," I asked, "to account in any way for the expression of self-sacrifice you observed on the faces of mother and daughter?" "It might be so," said Dr. Daincourt, thoughtfully. "Proceed, now," I said, "and tell me all that passed." "But little remains to tell," said Dr. Daincourt. "I informed the parents that their daughter was suffering more from mental than from physical causes; that it was clear to me that there was a heavy trouble upon her mind, and that, until her trouble was removed, there was but faint hope of her getting well and strong. 'I am speaking in the dark,' I said to the parents, 'and while I remain in ignorance of the cause, it is almost impossible for me to prescribe salutary remedies.' 'Can you do nothing for her?' asked the father. 'Can you not give her some medicine?' 'Yes, I can give her medicine,' I replied, 'but nothing that would be likely to be of benefit to her. Indeed, the medicine already in her room is such as would be ordinarily prescribed by a medical man who had not reached the core of the patient's disease.' 'If she goes on as she is going on now,' said the father, what will be the result?' 'Her strength is failing fast,' I replied; 'what little reserve she has to draw upon will soon be exhausted. If she goes on as she is going on now, I am afraid there will be but one result.' The mother burst into tears; the father fixed his steady gaze upon me, but I saw his lips quiver. 'We have called you in, Dr. Daincourt,' he said, 'because we have heard of wonderful cures you have effected in patients who have suffered from weak nerves.' 'I have been happily successful,' I said, in effecting cures, but I have never yet succeeded where a secret has been hidden from me.' At these words the mother raised her hands imploringly to her husband. 'Do you think that a secret is being hidden from you in this case?' asked the father. 'It is not for me to say,' I replied; 'it is simply my duty to acquaint you with the fact that your daughter's disease is mental, and that her condition is critical. Until I learn the cause of her grief, I am powerless to aid her.' 'Will you oblige me by calling to-morrow?' asked the father, after a slight pause. 'Yes,' I said, preparing to depart, 'I will call in the afternoon, and, if you wish, will see your daughter again.' He expressed his thanks in courteous terms, and I took my leave. I should have come here earlier, Bainbridge, to relate this to you, but I have had other serious cases to attend to. A doctor's time is not his own, you know." "I have something to tell you, doctor," I said, "with reference to your new patient, which will interest you. Mabel Rutland was once engaged to be married to Edward Layton, and I believe there was a deep and profound attachment between them." "You startle me," he said, "and have given me food for thought." When he bade me good-night, it was with the determination to extract, if possible, from Mabel Rutland's parents some information respecting her mental condition which might be used to her benefit. For my part, I must confess to the hope, unreasonable as it may appear, that he may also be successful in obtaining some information which will assist me in the elucidation of the mystery upon which I am employed. _Cable message from Mr. Bainbridge, London, to Archibald Laing, U. S_. "Give me what particulars you can of Miss Mabel Rutland and her parents, and of her brothers and sisters, if she has any." _Cable message from Air. Archibald Laing, U. S to Mr. Bainbridge, London_. "Miss Mabel Rutland has no sisters. She has only a twin-brother, Eustace, to whom she was passionately attached and devoted. This brother and sister and their parents comprise the family. Mr. Rutland is of an implacable and relentless disposition, impatient of contradiction, and obstinate to a degree. These qualities were exercised in my favor some years ago, when I paid court to Miss Rutland, in the hope of making her my wife. Her father would have forced her into a marriage with me, but when I could no longer doubt that she loved Edward Layton, I preferred to retire rather than render her unhappy. By so doing, I think I won her esteem, and it is for her sake I wish Layton to be cleared of the charge brought against him. It is my belief that she still loves him, and she must be suffering terribly. If Layton is convicted, it will break her heart. I know very little of her brother Eustace. He was at Oxford when I was in London, and I met him only once or twice. Mrs. Rutland is a sweet lady, gentle-mannered, kindly-hearted, and I fear domineered over by her husband." III. I thank you for the information contained in your last cable. It gives me an insight into the generous motives which have prompted you to step forward on Edward Layton's behalf, and I am gratified in being associated with you in the cause. When a counsel finds himself _en rapport_ with his client, it is generally of assistance to him he works with a better spirit. Three days have passed since I wrote and despatched to you the second portion of the narrative of my proceedings and progress. I was waiting anxiously for something to occur--I could not exactly say what--which would serve as an absolute stepping-stone. Something _has_ occurred which, although I have not yet discovered the key to it, will, I believe, prove to be of the utmost importance. You will understand later on what I mean by my use of the word "key;" and when I tell you that this which I call the stepping-stone is nothing more or less than the Nine of Hearts, you will give me credit for my prescience on the first production of that card in the Criminal Court. I felt convinced that it would be no insignificant factor in the elucidation of the Layton mystery. I may say here that the progress we have made is entirely due to Dr. Daincourt. What I should have done had he not been unexpectedly called in to our assistance, it is difficult to say. I should not have been idle, but it is scarcely likely that, within so short a time, my actions would have led to the point we have now reached. Dr. Daincourt has allowed himself to be prompted by me to a certain extent, and his interest in his beautiful patient has been intensified by the friendship existing between us, and by the esteem we both entertain for Edward Layton. In accordance with the promise Dr. Daincourt gave to Mr. Rutland, he called upon, that gentleman on the day following his first visit to the house. During the interval Miss Rutland's condition had not improved; it had, indeed, grown worse. There was an aggravation of the feverish symptoms, and her speech was wild and incoherent. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that it was wild and incoherent to those who were assembled at her bedside. I hold to the theory that there is a method in dreams, and I also hold to the theory that there is a method in the wildest utterances produced by the wildest delirium. I speak, of course, as a lawyer. Dr. Daincourt's position with respect to Miss Rutland was that of a physician. Had _I_ heard the words uttered by Miss Rutland in her fevered state, I do not doubt that my legal training would have enabled me to detect what was hidden from Dr. Daincourt and the young lady's parents. During this second visit to Miss Rutland, her father requested Dr. Daincourt to give him a private interview, in the course of which he elicited from the doctor an accentuation of the views which Dr. Daincourt had expressed on the previous day. Mr. Rutland made a vain attempt to combat these views. He would have been glad to be assured that his daughter was suffering from a physical, and not from a mental malady; but Dr. Daincourt was positive, and was not to be moved from his conviction. He emphasized his inability to treat the case with any hope of success, and he repeated his belief, if Miss Rutland were allowed to continue in her present condition without any effort being made to arrive at the cause of her mental suffering, that there could be but one result--death before the end of the year. At the commencement of this interview between Mr. Rutland and Dr. Daincourt, Mrs. Rutland was not present; but after it had lasted some twenty minutes or so, her anxiety became so overpowering that she knocked at the door of the room in which the conversation was taking place, and begged to be admitted. The issue at stake was so grave that Mr. Rutland could not refuse, and thus it was that she was present when Dr. Daincourt spoke in plain terms of the serious condition of his beautiful patient. The mother's distress was pitiable, but it appeared to produce no impression upon her husband. "And yet," said Dr. Daincourt, in narrating the affair to me, "I am sure that Mr. Rutland was inwardly suffering, and I am also sure that he has a sincere affection for his daughter." The interview terminated by Mr. Rutland requesting Dr. Daincourt to call again the next day, to which request the doctor gave a reluctant assent. He called on the following day, with the same result. Again he saw the patient; again he had an interview with Mr. Rutland, at which Mrs. Rutland was present; again he emphasized his view of the young lady's condition; and again Mr. Rutland requested him to pay another visit upon his daughter. Dr. Daincourt objected. He told Mr. Rutland that, as matters stood, his visits were useless, and that in the absence of necessary information it was his distinct wish to be relieved from them. "And I feel it my duty," he said to the father, "to inform you that if you intend to do nothing further than it seems to me is your present intention, you are playing with your daughter's life." These were grave words to use, but Dr. Daincourt is no ordinary man. His knowledge and experience lead him intuitively to correct conclusions, and in his professional capacity be will not be trifled with. "In these circumstances," he said to Mr. Rutland, "I must beg of you to summon some other physician in whom you have greater confidence." "I have the fullest confidence in you," said Mr. Rutland. "You have not shown it," was Dr. Daincourt's rejoinder. "It is as though you have determined that you, and not I, shall be your daughter's physician." However, he allowed himself to be prevailed upon to pay Miss Rutland yet another visit. But he gave his consent only upon the express stipulation that it should be his last, unless Mr. Rutland placed him in possession of information which would enable him to fully understand the case. I come now to this fourth interview, which was pregnant with results. Upon presenting himself at the house he was received by Mrs. Rutland, who said to him, "My husband has consented that I should tell you all you desire to know with respect to our dear child." "You have prevailed upon him to consent," said Dr. Daincourt. "Yes," replied Mrs. Rutland, "I have, thank God! prevailed upon him to consent. Dear doctor, you will save my child, will you not?" "I will do all that lies in my power," said Dr. Daincourt. "What is it you wish to know?" asked Mrs. Rutland. "Everything that concerns your daughter," said Dr. Daincourt, "with respect to her disposition, habits, likings, and affections. She has a terrible weight upon her mind, and you must certainly have some suspicion of the cause. You may have more than a suspicion, you may have a positive knowledge. You must hide nothing from me. Unless you are prepared to be absolutely and entirely frank in your disclosures, I cannot undertake to continue my visits. You are her mother--you love her tenderly?" "I love her with all my heart and soul," said Mrs. Rutland, weeping. "If my daughter is taken from me, I shall not care to live!" "In deep sincerity, then," said Dr. Daincourt, "I declare to you that you may be acting as your daughter's enemy instead of her friend if you do not open your heart and mind to me freely and without restraint. Relate as briefly as you can, without omitting important points, the story of her life." It was a simple, touching story which Mrs. Rutland disclosed, fragrant with all that is sweetest in woman. The Rutlands have but two children, Mabel and Eustace, who came into the world within a few minutes of each other. Between these children existed a most profound and devoted love, and to tear Eustace away from Mabel was like tearing the girl's heartstrings. The lad's love was the weaker of the two, as is usually the case, but he nevertheless adored his sister, who repaid him tenfold for all the affection he lavished upon her. They grew up together, shared each other's pleasures, had secret and innocent methods of communicating with each other which afforded them intense delight, and were inseparable until they reached the age of eighteen, when Eustace went to college. Hitherto his studies had been conducted at home, a home of peace and harmony and love; for, stern and implacable as Mr. Rutland was, he loved his children and his wife; but he loved something else equally well--his honor and his good name. While Eustace was absent at college, he and Mabel corresponded regularly. "But," said the mother, "neither my husband nor myself was ever able to understand Eustace's letters to his sister. They were always written in the form of mystery-letters. It had been their favorite amusement when they were children to discover and invent new methods of corresponding with each other, of which only they possessed the secret. 'There, mamma,' Mabel would say, with a laugh, giving me one of my dear Eustace's letters from college, 'read that!' But it might as well have been written in Greek for anything that I could make of it. Words and figures were jumbled together, without any meaning in them that I could discover, and the entire page was a perfect puzzle. Then Mabel would take the letter from me, and read it off as easily as possible; and I remember her saying once, 'If Eustace and I ever have any real secrets, mamma, we shall be able to tell them to each other through the post, without any person in the world being one bit the wiser.' Little did I think that the time would arrive when her words would bear a fatal meaning." Eustace, then, being at college, and Mabel at home, it unfortunately happened that the lad fell into evil ways. He got mixed up with bad companions. The hours that should have been employed in study were wasted in gambling and dissipation, and his career at college was by no means creditable. His father had set his heart upon Eustace obtaining honors at Oxford, and he was sorely and bitterly disappointed when the reports of his son's proceedings reached him. Unfortunately these reports did not come to his ears until much mischief had been done, and it was at about this time that Eustace returned home, declaring that he would never go back to college. At about this time, also, momentous events were occurring in Mabel's life. A beautiful girl, with an amiable and sweet disposition, with most winning ways, and with a wealthy father moving in a good social position, it was not to be wondered at that she had suitors for her hand; but there were only two whose affection for her was regarded seriously by the family. One of these was Mr. Edward Layton, the other Mr. Archibald Laing. Mabel's father favored the suit of Archibald Laing; Mabel's uncle, the gentleman who was upon the jury in the trial, favored the suit of Edward Layton. He was never weary of sounding the young man's praises, and it may be that this rather strengthened Mabel's father against Edward Layton. However, the young lady had decided for herself. She had given her heart to Edward Layton, and there grew between them an absorbing and devoted attachment. While these matters were in progress, both Archibald Laing and Edward Layton were admitted freely to the house, and thus they had equal chances. But when the lady whom two men are in love with makes up her mind, the chances are no longer equal. It was not without a struggle that Archibald Laing abandoned his pretensions. From what afterwards transpired, he could not have loved Mabel with less strength than Edward Layton did. It was no small sacrifice on his part to relinquish his hopes of winning Mabel for his wife, more especially when her father was on his side. There were interviews of an affecting nature between him and Mabel. There were interviews, also, between him and Edward Layton. The two men had been friends long before they came into association with Mabel Rutland, and it speaks well for the generosity and nobility of their natures that this affair of the heart--the like of which has been the cause of bitter feuds from time immemorial--did not turn their friendship into enmity. In the estimate of their characters at this period Archibald Laing showed the higher nobility, for the reason that it devolved upon him to make a voluntary and heart-rending sacrifice. He informed the young lady's parents that he gave up all hope of obtaining their daughter's hand, and at the same time he declared that if it ever lay in his power to render Mabel or Edward Layton a service, he would not hesitate to render it, whatever might be the cost. Nobly has he redeemed this pledge. He suffered much--to such an extent, indeed, that he determined to leave the country, and find a home in another land. He bade the Rutlands farewell by letter, and sailed for America, where he settled, and realized an amazing fortune. The field was thus left free for Mabel and Edward. Mr. Rutland was seriously displeased. He had been thwarted in a wish that was very dear to him, and he was not the kind of man to forget the defeat. Although Edward Layton was allowed to come to the house, Mr. Rutland received him without favor, and it was only upon the imploring and repeated solicitations of his wife and daughter that he consented to an engagement between the young people. It was a half-hearted consent, and caused them some unhappiness. More than once he declared in their presence, and in the presence of his wife, that if anything ever occurred which would cast the slightest shadow of doubt or dishonor upon Edward Layton, no power on earth should induce him to allow the marriage to take place. It was not necessary for him to impress upon them that, above everything else in the world, he was jealous of his good name. They knew this well enough, and were in a certain sense proud in the knowledge, because the stainless reputation he bore reflected honor upon themselves. But they did not see the cloud that was hanging above them. It gathered surely and steadily, and brought with it terrible events, in the whirlpool of which the happiness of Mabel and Edward was fated to be ingulfed. The cause lay not in themselves. It lay in Eustace Rutland. It was he who was responsible for all. He was in London, in partial disgrace with his father. He was without a career; he had already contracted vicious and idle habits; he was frequently from home; and although his father questioned him severely, he would give no truthful account of his movements and proceedings. Some accounts he did give, but his father knew instinctively that they were false or evasive. As he could obtain no satisfaction from his son, Mr. Rutland, aware of the perfect confidence which existed between Eustace and Mabel, applied to her for information; but she would not utter one word to her brother's hurt. Her father could extract nothing from her, and there gradually grew within him an idea that there was a conspiracy against him in his own home, a conspiracy in which Edward Layton was the principal agent. It was natural, perhaps, that he should think more hardly of this stranger than of his own children. Had he set a watch upon his son, he might have made discoveries which would have been of service to all, and which might have averted terrible consequences. But proud and self-willed as he was, it did not occur to him to do anything which in his view savored of meanness. His son Eustace went his way, therefore, to sure and certain ruin. When he was absent from home he corresponded regularly with his sister, and Mr. Rutland sometimes demanded to see this correspondence. "You can make nothing of it, papa," said Mabel. "Eustace and I do not correspond like other people." He insisted, nevertheless, upon seeing these letters, and Mabel showed them to him. As he could not understand them, he demanded that she should read them intelligibly to him; but it being a fact that there was always something in Eustace's correspondence which would deepen his father's anger against him, the young girl refused to read them. This, as may be supposed, did not tend to pacify Mr. Rutland. It intensified the bitterness of his heart towards those whom he believed were conspiring against him. He applied to Edward Layton. "You are in my daughter's confidence," he said to the young man, "and as you have wrung from me a reluctant consent to an engagement with her, I must ask you to give me the information which she withholds from me." He met with another rebuff. Edward Layton declared that he would it violate the confidence which Mabel had reposed in him. At one time Mr. Rutland said to Edward Layton, "My son has been absent from home for several days. Have you seen him?" "Yes, sir," replied Edward, "I have seen him." But he would say nothing further. He was in a most painful position. Mabel had extracted from him a solemn promise that he would reveal nothing without her consent, and he was steadfastly loyal to her. He had another reason for his silence, and, in the light of that reason, and of the feelings which Mr. Rutland harbored towards him, he felt that the happiness he hoped would be his was slipping from him. The explanation of this other reason, which unhappily was a personal one, brings upon the scene a person who played a brief but pregnant part in this drama of real life, and who is now in his grave. This person was Edward Layton's father. "What was the nature of the relations," said Mrs. Rutland, "between this gentleman and my dear son Eustace I do not know. All that I do know is that they were in association with each other, and, I am afraid, not to a good end. It came, also, by some strange means, to the knowledge of my husband, and a frightful scene occurred between him and Edward Layton, in which Mabel's lover was dismissed from the house. My husband withdrew the consent he had given to the engagement, and used words which, often since when I have thought of them, have made me shudder, they were so unnecessarily cruel and severe. 'If from this day,' my husband said to the young gentleman, 'you pursue my daughter with your attentions, you will be playing a base and dishonorable part. If you wish me to turn my daughter from my house, you can by your actions bring about this result. But bear in mind, should it come to pass, that she will go from my presence with my curse upon her--a beggar! I am not ignorant my duties with respect to my children. I have not been sparing of love towards them. Hard I may be when my feelings are strongly roused, but I am ever just. In the secrets that are being hidden from me there is, I am convinced, some degrading and shameful element otherwise, it is not possible that you should conspire to keep them from me. If the matter upon which you are engaged were honorable, there would be no occasion to keep it from my knowledge. Do not forget that you have it in your power to wreck not only my daughter's happiness, but her mother's and mine, if that consideration will have any weight with you.' There was much more than this, to which Mr. Edward Layton listened with a sad patience, which deepened my pity for him. He bore, without remonstrance, all the obloquies that were heaped upon him by my unhappy husband, who soon afterwards left the room with the injunction that Mr. Layton was on no account to be allowed an interview with my daughter. Then Mr. Layton said to me, 'I must bear it. If the happiness of my life is lost it will be through the deep, the sacred love I bear for your child. I devote not only the dearest hopes of my life, but my life itself, to her cause. Fate is against us. A man can do no more than his duty.'" From that day to this Mabel's mother has never seen Edward Layton. When she heard of his marriage into a family whose position in society was to say the least equivocal, she was in great distress, fearing the effect the news would have upon her dear daughter. Mabel Rutland suffered deeply, but during that time of anguish she appeared to summon to her aid a certain fortitude and resignation which served her in good stead. It astonished her mother, one day, to hear her say, "Do not blame Edward, mamma he is all that is good and noble. Although he is another lady's husband, and although our lives can never be united, as we had once hoped, I shall ever love and honor him." "Time will bring comfort to you, my darling," said the mother, "and it may be that there is still a happy fate in store for you. You may meet with another man, around whom no mystery hangs, to whom your heart will be drawn." "Never, mamma," replied Mabel. "I shall never marry now." What most grievously disturbed Mrs. Rutland was the circumstance that, even within a few weeks of Edward Layton's marriage, he corresponded with her daughter. Her father was not aware of this. He usually rose late in the morning, and it devolved upon Mrs. Rutland to receive the correspondence which came by the first post. The letters that Edward Layton wrote to Mabel were invariably posted at night, from which it would appear that the young man was aware that they would fall into the hands of Mabel's mother, and that Mr. Rutland, unless he were made acquainted with the fact, was not likely otherwise to discover it. When Mrs. Rutland gave her daughter the first letter from Mr. Layton, Mabel said to her, "Do not be alarmed, mamma. This letter is in reply to one I wrote to Mr. Layton. I may have other letters from him which I beg you to give me without papa's knowing. It may appear wrong to you, but it is really not so. Everything is being done for the best, as perhaps you will one day learn." Sad at heart as Mrs. Rutland was, she had too firm a trust in her daughter's innate purity and sense of self-respect not to believe what she said, both in its letter and in its spirit, and thus it was that the secret of this correspondence was also kept from Mr. Rutland. By pursuing the course she did, Mrs. Rutland preserved, to some extent, peace in the household. Thus matters went on for two years, until Eustace Rutland's wild conduct produced a terrible disturbance. His absences from home had grown more frequent and prolonged; he became dreadfully involved, and Mr. Rutland received letters and visits from money-lenders (a class of men that he abhorred) in connection with his son's proceedings. Incensed beyond endurance, he banished Eustace from the house, and forbade him ever again to enter his doors. "It seemed to be fated," said Mrs. Rutland, "that there should be always something in our family that it was necessary to conceal from my husband's knowledge. He banished Eustace from home, but that did not weaken my love for our dear lad. Three times during the past year I have seen Eustace, and I have not made my husband acquainted with the fact. What could I do? Had I asked his permission he would have sternly refused it, and had I told him that I could not resist the impulse of my heart to fold my dear boy in my arms, it would only have made matters worse for all of us." She related to Dr. Daincourt a circumstance which had deeply angered her husband. Among the presents the father had given to his daughter was a very costly one, a diamond bracelet of great value, for which Mr. Rutland had paid no less than five hundred guineas. One evening a dinner-party was given at the house, and Mr. Rutland particularly desired that Mabel should look her best on the occasion. He said as much to his daughter, and expressed a desire that she should wear certain articles of jewellery, and most especially her diamond bracelet. He noticed at the dinner-table that this bracelet was not upon Mabel's arm; he made no remark before his guests, but when they had departed he asked Mabel why she had not worn it. "I have so many other things, papa," she replied, "that you have given me. It was not necessary." "But," said her father, "I desired you particularly to wear the bracelet. Is it broken? If so, it can be easily repaired. Let me see it." Then the mother saw trouble in her daughter's face. Mabel endeavored, to evade her father's request, and strove to turn the conversation into another channel. But he insisted so determinedly upon seeing the bracelet that she was at length compelled to confess that it was not in her possession. Upon this Mr. Rutland questioned her more closely, but he could obtain from her no satisfactory information as to what had become of it. Suddenly he inquired if her purse was in her room. She answered yes, and he desired her to bring it down to him. She obeyed; and when he opened the purse he found only three or four shillings in it. "Is this all you have?" he inquired. "Yes, papa," she said, "this is all." "But it was only yesterday," said Mr. Rutland, "that you asked me for twenty pounds, and I gave it to you. What have you done with the money?" Upon this point, also, he could obtain no satisfactory information. He was greatly angered. "I thought," he said "when Mr. Layton married into the family of a professional sharp--a fit connection for him--that the conspiracy in my house against my peace of mind, and, it seems to me, against my honor, would come to an end. It was not so. I perceive that I am regarded here as an enemy by my own family, not as a man who has endeavored all through life to perform his duties in an honorable and straightforward way. Go to your room, and let me see the diamond bracelet before this month is ended, or let me know what you have done with it. If you have lost it," he added, gazing sternly upon his daughter, "find it." Before the month was ended Mabel showed him the diamond bracelet; but her mother was aware that there were other articles missing from among her daughter's jewellery. Mrs. Rutland having come to the end of her narrative, Dr. Daincourt began to question her. "Your daughter," he said, "was taken ill on the 26th of March, and I understand that she has been confined to her bed since that day. Were there any premonitory symptoms of a serious illness, or was the seizure a sudden one?" "It was quite sudden," replied Mrs. Rutland. "I went into her room early in the morning, and found her in a high state of fever." "Has she been sensible at all since that time?" "No." "Not sufficiently sensible to recognize any one who attended her?" "No; she does not even know me, her own mother." "What did the physician whom you first called in say about the case?" "He said that she had brain-fever, and that it had been accelerated by her having caught a violent cold through wearing damp clothing." "Do you think she wore that clothing in the house?" "No." (Dr. Daincourt has certain ways and methods of his own. He is in the habit of keeping in his pocket-book a tablet of the weather from day to day.) "If your daughter did not wear damp clothes in the house," he said, "she must have worn them out of the house." He took his pocket-book from his pocket and consulted his weather-tablet. "I see," he said to Mrs. Rutland, "that from the 12th till the 25th of March there was no rain. The weather was mild and unusually warm during those days, but on the evening of the 25th of March it began to rain, and rained during the night. Your daughter must have been out during those hours in the bad weather. What were her movements on that evening? Remember, you must keep nothing from me if you wish me to do my best to restore your child to health." Still, it was with some difficulty that he extracted from Mrs. Rutland the information he desired to obtain. Obtain it, however, he did. Mrs. Rutland informed him that Mabel had gone out on the evening of the 25th of March, and did not return home until nearly one o'clock in the morning. Mr. Rutland was not aware of this. Mrs. Rutland had stopped up for her daughter, and had let her in quietly and secretly. The young girl was pale and greatly agitated, but she said nothing to her mother. She kissed her hurriedly, went to her bedroom, and was found the next morning in the condition Mrs. Rutland had described. "Being in a fever from that day," said Dr. Daincourt to the mother, "your daughter has seen no newspapers?" "No." "And she is ignorant of the peril through which her former lover, Edward Layton, has passed, and in which he still stands?" "She is ignorant of it," said Mrs. Rutland. "Have any letters arrived for her during her illness?" "Yes, two. One in the handwriting of Mr. Layton, the other from my dear boy Eustace." "Have you those letters?" "Yes." "Have you opened them?" "No. My daughter made me give her a solemn promise that I would never open one of her letters, and I have not done so." "But," said Dr. Daincourt, "this is a matter of life and death. I must ask you to give me those letters, and I will take upon myself the responsibility of opening them. I must ask you for something more. Your daughter has a desk?" "Yes." "The key of which is in her room?" "Yes." "Bring down the desk and the key. Ask me no questions concerning my motives. I am in hopes that I shall be able to discover the true cause of your daughter's illness, and that will enable me to adopt towards her the only treatment by which it is possible she can recover." Mrs. Rutland brought down the desk and the key. In the mother's presence Dr. Daincourt opened the desk. There were in it no letters from Edward Layton, but it contained two of what Mrs. Rutland called the mystery-letters which Eustace was in the habit of writing to his sister. These letters were in their envelopes, the post-marks upon which indicated their order of delivery. Dr. Daincourt could make nothing of them, and Mrs. Rutland could not assist him. They were written upon small single sheets of note-paper, and appeared to be a perfect jumble of incomprehensible words; around the margin of these words were a number of figures and alphabetical letters as incomprehensible as themselves. Searching further in the desk, he made a startling discovery--three playing-cards, each of them being the Nine of Hearts. He asked Mrs. Rutland--who appeared to be almost as startled as he was himself by the discovery--whether she could give him any explanation of the cards, and she said that she could not. Then Dr. Daincourt said that he would take the playing-cards and the letters away with him. "At the same time," he observed to Mrs. Rutland, "if it is any consolation to you, I undertake your daughter's case, and will do the best for her that lies within my skill and power." He then went to see Miss Rutland in her bed, wrote out a prescription, gave certain instructions, and left the house. "I have come to you," said Dr. Daincourt to me, "with these letters and the playing-cards; I will leave them with you. You said that the Nine of Hearts was a tangible link in the chain of Edward Layton's innocence. Is it not most mysterious and strange that three of these identical cards should be found in Miss Rutland's desk, and that one should be found in the pocket of Edward Layton's ulster which he wore on the 25th of March? Does not this circumstance, in conjunction with what you now know of Mabel Rutland's movements on that night, go far to prove that the lady whom Edward Layton met in Bloomsbury Square was none other than his old sweetheart? Heaven knows what conclusions are to be drawn from the coincidence. I will make no comments indeed, I almost tremble to think of the matter. Your legal mind will, perhaps, enable you to deduce something from Eustace's letter to his sister which may be of service to you and Edward Layton. To me they are simply incomprehensible. Before I visit Miss Rutland to-morrow I will call on you. You may have something to say to me. I sincerely trust I shall not be the means of bringing fresh trouble upon her and hers." With that he wished me good-night, and I was left alone. I set myself sedulously to the task of discovering the key to these mysterious letters. Dr. Daincourt had not opened the two sealed letters which had arrived during Miss Rutland's illness, and I did not immediately do so. I felt a delicacy with respect to Edward Layton's letter to the young lady which he had given me in prison to post for him. I put them aside, and selecting the first of the two letters from Eustace Rutland which had been found in Mabel's desk (judging from the post-marks on their envelopes which of the two she had first received, for they bore no date), I devoted myself to a study of it. This is an exact copy of the singular communication, the size of the paper and the arrangement of the words, and of the figures and alphabetical letters, being faithfully followed: T 20 X 2 C 14 H 7 E 3 17 D B face birds the stares 9 6 in runs back got I F M 10 in your hundred send 11 J trees the money won are A 1 8 death river diamond gayly me K T 19 on bracelet four singing 18 R instantly cherry the the W 12 13 B 5 N 16 P 15 V 4 U It appeared to me that the first thing I had to consider was the relation, if any, that the alphabetical letters and figures bore to the words to which they formed a frame. I did not lose sight of the suggestion which immediately arose that this framework of figures and alphabetical letters might be placed there as a blind, although the evident care and pains which had been bestowed upon them was opposed to the suggestion. But then, again, the care thus exercised might be intended to more deeply mystify any strange person into whose hands the missive might fall. In order not to deface or mutilate the original, I made two exact copies of it for my own purposes, using as a kind of ruler one of the playing-cards which Dr. Daincourt had also found in Mabel Rutland's desk. There were two words in the missive which soon attracted me. These were the third word, "diamond," in the fifth line, and the second word, "bracelet," in the sixth line. "Diamond bracelet." I did not doubt that this was the diamond bracelet which Mr. Rutland had presented to his daughter, and which she could not wear at the dinner-party because it was not at that time in her possession. Here, then, was a clew, but here I stopped. No ingenuity that I could bring to bear enabled me to connect other words with "diamond bracelet." I cudgelled my brains for at least half an hour. Then all at once it occurred to me (what in the excitement of my pursuit I may very well be excused for not having thought of before) that the playing-card, the Nine of Hearts, must bear some relation to the missive. I placed it upon the paper. Every word was hidden by the surface of the card; only the figures and the alphabetical letters were visible. "Doubtless," thought I, "if I cut out the pips of a Nine of Hearts, and place it upon the paper, I shall see certain words which will form the subject-matter upon which Eustace Rutland wrote to his sister." In that case the mystery was confined to nine words which, whatever their arrangement, would not be too difficult to intelligibly arrange. I would not mutilate Miss Rutland's playing-cards. I had packs of my own in the house, and from these I selected the Nine of Hearts and cut out the pips. It was not an easy matter, and in my eagerness I pretty effectually destroyed the surface of my table; but that did not trouble me. My interest was now thoroughly aroused, and grew keener when, placing the Nine of Hearts upon Eustace Rutland's mystery-letter, I found these words disclosed: Face--stares--in--send--money--death me--instantly--the. Here, then, in these nine words, was the communication which Eustace Rutland intended his sister to understand. I copied them on a separate sheet of paper, and arranged them in different ways until I arrived at their correct solution: "Death stares me in the face send money instantly." Congratulating myself upon my cleverness, I came to the conclusion that Eustace Rutland, being banished from his father's house, and not being able to obtain from his father the funds necessary for his disreputable career, was taking advantage of his sister's devoted affection for him, and was in the habit of calling upon her to supply him with money--which, no doubt, the young lady did to the best of her ability. Curiosity led me to the task of endeavoring to discover whether the alphabetical letters and the figures in the framework bore any relation to this communication. With only the nine words exposed through the pips of the Nine of Hearts which I had cut away, I saw that the first word, "death," was the sixth, and the second word, "stares," was the second, and the third word, "me," was the seventh. The sequence of the figures, therefore, was 6, 2, 7. Now, how were these three figures arranged in the framework? The figure 6 came after the letter M, the figure 2 came after the letter X, the figure 7 came after the letter H. Satisfied that I had found the key, I began to study how these figures from 1 to 9, representing the nine words in the communication and the Nine of Hearts in the playing-card, were arranged in the framework in such a manner as to lead an informed person at once to the solution. There must be a starting-point with which both Eustace and his sister Mabel were acquainted. What was this starting-point? One of the letters of The Alphabet. What letter? A. Starting, then, from A in the framework, I found that the figures from 1 to 9 ran thus: 6, 2, 7, 3, 9, 1, 4, 5, 8. Upon following, in this order, the course of The words which were exposed by the playing-card with the nine pips cut out, I came to the conclusion that I had correctly interpreted this first mystery-letter. I was very pleased, believing that the key I had discovered would lead me to a correct reading of Eustace's second and third letter to his sister. So absorbed had I been in the unravelling of this mystery-letter, which occupied me a good hour and a half, that I had lost sight during the whole of that time of the two words which had at first enchained my attention--"diamond bracelet." "Death stares me in the face send money instantly" had appeared to me so reasonable a construction to be placed upon the communication of a man who must often have been in a desperate strait for want of funds, that the thought did not obtrude itself that these words might be merely a blind, and that, in the words that remained after the obliteration of this sentence, the correct solution was to be found. The longer I considered, the stronger became my doubts: with "diamond bracelet" staring me in the face, I felt that I had been following a Will-o'-the-wisp. I had asked Dr. Daincourt the date of the dinner-party at which Mr. Rutland had detected the absence of the diamond bracelet on his daughter's arm. That date was the 8th of September. I examined the post-mark on the envelope of Eustace Rutland's first communication; it was the 26th of September. Mr. Rutland had laid upon his daughter the injunction that the diamond bracelet was to be shown to him before the end of the month. What month? September. She had produced it in time, and her brother's missive must have conveyed to her some information respecting the missing article of jewellery. The elation of spirits in which I had indulged took flight; I had _not_ discovered the clew. I set myself again to work. I felt now as a man feels who is hunting out a great mystery or a great criminal, and upon the success of whose endeavor his own safety depends. It seemed to me as if it were not so much Edward Layton's case as my own in which I was engaged. Never in the course of my career have I been so interested. I determined to set aside the words, "Death stares me in the face, send money instantly," and to search, in the words that remained, for the true meaning of Eustace Rutland's first communication. I copied them in the order in which they were arranged, and they ran as follows: T 20 X 2 C 14 H 7 E 3 17 D B birds the 9 6 in runs back got I F M 10 your hundred 11 J trees the won are A 1 8 river diamond gayly K T 19 on bracelet four singing 18 R cherry the W 12 13 B 5 N 16 P 15 V 4 U I counted the number of words; there were twenty-two. Now, was the true reading of the communication contained in the whole of these twenty-two words, or in only a portion of them, and if in only a portion, in what portion? In how many words? There lay the difficulty. The words "diamond bracelet" gave me a distinct satisfaction, but there were other words which I could not by any exercise of ingenuity connect them with, such as "birds"--"trees"--"river"--"gayly"--"cherry"--"singing." Undoubtedly the communication was a serious one, and these words seemed to be inimical to all ideas of seriousness. How to select? What to select? How to arrange the mystery? What was the notation? Ah, the notation! I had discovered the notation of the sentence I had set aside for the time. What if the same notation would lead me to the clew I was in search of? The arrangement of the figures from 1 to 9 was arbitrated by the first letter in the alphabet, A. I would try whether that arrangement would afford any satisfaction in the twenty-two words that remained. It would be an affectation of vanity on my part if I say that this idea occurred to me instantly. It did not do so. It was only after long and concentrated attention and consideration that it came to me, and then I set it immediately into practical operation. The first figure in the sentence I had discovered was 6. I counted six in the present arrangement of the words. It ended with the word "Got." Crossing out the word "Got," and placing it upon a separate sheet of paper, I proceeded. The second figure in the sentence I had discarded was 2. I counted two on from the word "Got," and arrived at "Your." I crossed out this word "Your" and proceeded. The third figure in the sentence I had discarded was 7. I counted seven words on from "Your," and came to "Diamond." I treated this word in a similar way to the last two, and continued the process. "Got your diamond." Now for "Bracelet." The next figure was 3. I counted on three words from "Diamond" and came to "Bracelet." I was more excited than I can describe. There is scarcely anything in the world that fills a man with such exultation as success, and I was on the track of success: "Got your diamond bracelet." The following figure was 9. I counted on nine and came to the word "Back." "Got your diamond bracelet back." I continued. The next figure was 1. This was represented by the word "I." The next figure was 4, represented by the word "Won." The next figure was 5, represented by the word "Four." The next figure was 8, represented by the word "Hundred." I continued the same process and came back to the figure 6, represented by the word "On." The next figure was 2, represented by the word "Cherry." I stopped here, for a reason, and I read the words I had crossed out and written on a separate sheet of paper. They ran thus: "Got your diamond bracelet back I won four hundred on Cherry." It was not without a distinct reason that I paused here. Mixing with the world, and moving in all shades and classes of society, I must confess--as I have no doubt other men would confess if they were thoroughly ingenuous--to certain weaknesses, one of which is to put a sovereign or two (seldom more) upon every classic horse-race, and upon every important handicap during the year. I nearly always lose--and serve me right. But it happened, strangely enough, that in this very month of September, during which Eustace Rutland sent his mysterious communications to his sister Mabel, one of the most celebrated handicaps of the year was won by a horse named Cherry, and that I had two sovereigns on that very horse. It started at long odds. I remembered that the bet I made was two sovereigns to a hundred, and that I had won what is often called a century upon the race. I was convinced that I had come to the legitimate end of Eustace Rutland's letter: "Got your diamond bracelet back. I won four hundred on Cherry." This young reprobate, then, was indulging in horse-racing. His sister Mabel had written to him an account of the scene between herself and her father at the dinner-party. She had given him her diamond bracelet to extricate him from some scrape, and he had been luckily enabled, by his investment on the horse Cherry, to redeem it most likely from the pawnbroker--in time for his sister to exhibit it to her father. So as to be certain that I had got the proper clew, and had arrived at the gist of Eustace's communication, I wrote down the words that remained, which were, "Birds--the--the--in--are the trees--runs--rivers--gayly--singing." It was an easy task now for me to apply the same test to these remaining words, and I found that they formulated themselves in this fashion: "The river runs gayly. The birds are singing in the trees." I was curious to ascertain whether there were any special sign in the framework of Eustace Rutland's communication by which the person engaged with him in the mystery-letter could be guided. I counted the words in each sentence. The words in the first sentence were nine--the Nine of Hearts. The number of words in the second sentence was eleven. The number of words in the third sentence was eleven. After the alphabetical letter A in the framework I saw the figure 11, and I was satisfied, the last eleven words being meaningless, that it was the second sentence of eleven words, referring to the diamond bracelet and to his winning on Cherry, that Eustace wished his sister Mabel to understand. At the same time I was satisfied in my own mind that, without the Nine of Hearts to guide him, a man might spend days over the cryptograph without arriving at the correct solution. I had taken no count of the passing time. Engrossed and absorbed in my occupation, I was surprised, when it had reached what I believed to be a successful termination, to find that it was nearly six o'clock in the morning. IV. Dr. Daincourt called while I was dressing, after a few hours' sleep. I am not usually a dreamer, but I had a dream so strange that I awoke with the memory of it in my mind. It was of hands--ladies' hands--every finger of which was covered with rings. Holding the theory, as I have already explained, that the imagination during sleep is not creative, but invariably works upon a foundation of fact, I was endeavoring to trace the connection between my singular dream and some occurrence or circumstance within my knowledge, when Dr. Daincourt entered. "Well," were his first words, "have you made anything of the letters which I left with you last night?" "I was employed only upon one," I said, "which kept me up until six o'clock this morning. I don't begrudge the time or the labor, because I have discovered the clew to Master Eustace Rutland's communications to his sister." "That means," said Dr. Daincourt, excitedly, "that you have discovered the mystery of the Nine of Hearts." "In so far," I replied, "as respects the playing-cards found in Miss Rutland's desk--yes, I have discovered that part of the mystery; but I have not yet discovered the mystery of the particular Nine of Hearts which was found in the pocket of Edward Layton's ulster." I showed Dr. Daincourt the result of my labors on the previous night, and he was delighted and very much interested, but presently his face became clouded. "I am still disturbed," he said, "by the dread that the task you are engaged upon may bring Miss Rutland into serious trouble." "I hope not," was my rejoinder to the remark, "but I shall not allow considerations of any kind to stop me. Edward Layton is an innocent man, and I intend to prove him so." "If he is innocent," said Dr. Daincourt, "then Miss Rutland must also be innocent." "Undoubtedly," I said, with a cheerful smile, which did much to reassure the worthy doctor. "Have you opened the two sealed letters," asked Dr. Daincourt, "which I brought from Mrs. Rutland's house?" "No," I replied. "I have devoted myself only to the first of the opened letters found in Miss Rutland's desk. I shall proceed immediately with the second, and then I shall feel myself warranted in opening and reading the letters which arrived for Miss Rutland during her illness. By-the-way, doctor, I have had a singular dream, and upon your entrance I was endeavoring to track it. It was a dream of ladies' hands, covered with rings." "Any bodies attached to the hands?" inquired Dr. Daincourt, jocosely. "No; simply hands. They seemed to pass before my vision, and to rise up in unexpected places pretty, shapely hands. But it was not so much the hands that struck me as being singular as the fact that they were covered with rings of one particular kind." "What kind?" "I must have seen thousands of rings upon the shapely fingers, and there was not one that was not set with diamonds and turquoises." A light came into Dr. Daincourt's face. "And you mean to tell me that you can't discover the connection?" "No I can't for the life of me discover it." "That proves," said Dr. Daincourt, "how easy it is for a man engaged upon a serious task to overlook important facts which are as plain as the noonday sun." "What facts have I overlooked, doctor?" "Have you the newspapers in the room containing the reports of the trial?" "Give me the one containing the report of the third day's proceedings?" I handed it to him, and he ran his eyes down the column in which the evidence of the waiter in Prevost's Restaurant was reported. "The waiter was asked," said Dr. Daincourt, "whether the lady who accompanied Edward Layton were married, and whether there were rings upon the lingers of her ungloved hand?" "Yes, yes," I cried, "I remember! And the waiter answered that she wore a ring of turquoises and diamonds. Of course--of course. That explains my dream." "Yes," said Dr. Daincourt, "that explains it." "I need no further assurance," I said, "to prove that it was Miss Rutland who was in Edward Layton's company on the night of the 25th of March, but I wish you to ask her mother whether the young lady possesses such a ring, and is in the habit of wearing it. Your face is clouded again, doctor. You fear that I am really about to bring trouble upon Miss Rutland. You are mistaken I am working in the cause of justice. If I prove Edward Layton to be innocent, no shadow of suspicion can rest upon Miss Rutland. You must trust entirely to me. Can you not now understand why Edward Layton refused to be defended by a shrewd legal mind? He would not permit a cross-examination of any of the witnesses which would bring the name of Mabel Rutland before the public. To save her honor, to protect her from scandal and calumny, he is ready to sacrifice himself. He shall not do so. I will prevent it. Your patient is in a state of delirium, you tell me. She knows nothing of what passes around her, she recognizes no one, she has not heard of the peril in which Edward Layton stands. Say that she remains in this state of ignorance until Edward Layton is sentenced and hanged for a crime which he did not commit--say, then, that she recovers and hears of it--reads of it--why, she will go mad! It would be impossible for her to preserve her reason in circumstances so terrible. There is a clear duty before us, Dr. Daincourt, and we must not shrink from it. I need not urge upon you to use your utmost skill to restore Mabel Rutland to health, and to the consciousness of what is passing around her. If before Edward Layton is put again upon his trial I do not clear him, I shall not hesitate to make some kind of appeal to Miss Rutland which, even should she remain delirious, shall result in favor of the man who is so nobly and rashly protecting her good name." "Remember," said Dr. Daincourt, gravely, "that she is in great danger." "You man that she may die soon?" "Yes." "But not suddenly?" I asked, in alarm. "I think not suddenly." "Still," I said, "there is a chance of her being restored to health?" "Yes, there is a chance of it." "If the worst happens," I said, "is it likely that she would recover consciousness before her death?" "It is almost certain that she would." "Then it would be necessary," I said, "to take her dying deposition. Doctor, it is my firm conviction that the man and the woman who entered Edward Layton's house after midnight on the 25th of March were not Edward Layton and Mabel Rutland." "But the coachman drove them home!" exclaimed Dr. Daincourt. "So he said." "And took them from Prevost's Restaurant." "So he said. Recall that part of the coachman's evidence bearing upon it. He says that Edward Layton, accompanied by a lady, issued from the restaurant at five minutes to twelve; that Layton appeared excited; which he, the coachman, attributed to the fact of his having taken too much wine. To rebut this we have the evidence of the waiter, who declared that Layton simply tasted the wine that was ordered. He could not have drunk half a glass. The man and the woman who came from the restaurant jumped quickly into the carriage, and but one word, 'Home!' was uttered in a thick voice. Now, Layton, in his ridiculously weak cross-examination, put two questions to the witness. 'Did it occur to you,' he asked, 'or does it occur to you now, that the voice which uttered that word was not my voice?' The witness replied that it had not occurred to him. Then Layton said, 'You are certain it was my voice?' And the witness replied, 'Yes, sir.' To me, these two questions put by Layton are convincing proof that it was not he who entered the carriage from Prevost's Restaurant." "But he wore his ulster," said Dr. Daincourt. "Here, again," I said, "we have evidence which, to my mind, is favorable. The waiter testifies that when Layton entered the room in which the supper was ordered he took off his ulster and hung it on a peg in the wall, at some distance from the table at which he sat. Moreover, he sat with his back to the coat. Layton, in his cross-examination, asked the waiter, 'Did I put the overcoat on before I left the room?' The waiter replied, 'Yes.' The judge intervened with the rebuke, 'You have said in examination that you did not see the prisoner and his companion leave the room.' And the witness replied, 'But when I returned, after being away for three or four minutes, monsieur was gone, and the coat was also gone.' The prisoner put his last question to the waiter, 'You did not see me put on the overcoat?' And the witness answered, 'No.' Doctor, I see light. Bring me news of the ring set with turquoises and diamonds. I shall be at home the whole of the evening." After Dr. Daincourt's departure I made a hurried breakfast, went through my correspondence, and resumed my task of examining Eustace Rutland's letters to his sister. The second opened communication was exactly of the same shape and form as the first which I had deciphered. I give here an exact copy of it: K 10 N 17 D 6 L 13 C 1 3 R A of to distraction start 19 12 awfully yours an till I E X at love hard night 5 7 W F up angel chester power my 11 14 corner her ida all o'clock G 2 S is death in will T 20 nine I do Tuesday 15 M H 8 J 16 V 4 B 18 P 9 The notation of the nine figures, representing the nine pips in the playing-card, in Eustace's first communication, was 6, 2, 7, 3, 9, 1, 4, 5, 8. Taking as my guide the alphabetical letter A, I found that the notation in Eustace Rutland's second communication was 3, 6, 1, 5, 2, 9, 4, 8, 7. I placed the playing-card, with its pips cut out, over the paper, and the following was revealed: "Of--street--at--night--chester corner o'clock--nine--Tuesday." Arranging these words according to the new notation of figures, they formed this sentence: "At corner of Chester Street Tuesday night nine o'clock." "Now," thought I, "this may have been an appointment." If so--and nothing was more likely--I could derive no assistance from it. It conveyed no information, and contained nothing which would assist me in my inquiries. It was very likely that I should light upon something further, and I proceeded with my task. The figure immediately following the alphabetical letter A was 12, which meant, if I were on the right track, that the second sentence in this communication was composed of twelve words. I followed the same process I had previously employed, and the twelve words formed themselves thus: "Awfully hard up ida is an angel I love her to distraction." So as to finish this communication, I unravelled the last ten words, and found them to be, "I will do all in my power yours till death." This I set aside as being intended to convey no meaning. The first sentence, making an appointment at the corner of Chester Street, was, whether correct or not, of little importance. I concentrated my attention upon the second sentence of twelve words: "Awfully hard up ida is an angel I love her to distraction." So the young scamp was hard up again, and knew that his sister would respond to his appeal. And he was in love, too, and ida was an angel. Ida, of course, with a capital I. I jumped to my feet as if I had been shot. Ida! What was the name of Mrs. Layton's maid who had given such damning evidence against the man I meant to set free? Ida White! Not a common name. An unusual one. I walked about the room in a state of great excitement. Ida White, the angel, and Eustace Rutland, the scamp. But the woman must be at least eight or ten years older than Eustace. What mattered that? All the more likely her hold upon him. Young fools frequently fall in love with women much older than themselves, and when the women get the chance they don't let the youngsters escape easily. Yes, opposite to each other stood two men--one a worthless ne'er-do-well, the other a martyr! Opposite to each other stood two women--one a scheming woman of the world, the other a suffering, heart-broken girl! I would save the noble ones. Yes, I would save them! The chain was forming link by link. * * * * * * I broke off here to despatch telegrams to two of my confidential agents. My instructions to them were to employ themselves immediately in discovering where Ida White, the maid who had given evidence against her master at the trial, was living, and having found it, not to lose sight of her for a single moment, but to set a strict watch upon her, and to take note of her proceedings and movements, however trivial they might be. These telegrams being despatched, I returned to my task. The two sealed letters which Dr. Daincourt had received from Mrs. Rutland lay before me. I took up the first, which I knew to be in Eustace's handwriting. I opened it. It was of a similar nature to the two I had already examined and interpreted. There is no need here to repeat the details of the process by means of which I read this third communication, a copy of which I also append: C 11 S 2 J 11 A 7 N 13 8 G H know am I me address 1 16 I I be an D M me awful me the 19 4 L X innocent laid to that guilty 15 20 find do against you R K not charge am not desert 9 14 old swear may where B V 10 3 F 17 P 6 W 12 E 5 T I will simply say that the notation was 7,1, 9, 5, 6, 3, 4, 8, 2, and that the words resolved themselves into the following: "Yon know where to find me. The old address." "An awful charge may be laid against me. I am not guilty." "Do not desert me. I swear that I am innocent." I decided that the whole of this was intended to be conveyed to Mabel Rutland's understanding, and that in the last of Eustace's communications to his sister there was not one idle word. "An awful charge may be laid against me." That charge, undoubtedly, was the murder of Mrs. Layton. "I am not guilty. I swear that I am innocent." But all guilty men are ready to swear that they are innocent. Not a moment was to be lost in setting my agents to work to discover Eustace Rutland's address as well as the address of Ida White. I quickly opened the letter which Edward Layton had written in prison to Mabel Rutland, and which I had posted. It was very short, to the following effect: "Dear Miss Rutland,--All is well. Have no fear. Do not write to me until you hear from me again. Believe me, faithfully yours, "Edward Layton." Thus it was that he endeavored to keep from the woman he loved the true knowledge of the peril in which he stood. To save her good name, he was ready to go cheerfully to his death. V. I rose early this morning in the expectation of a busy day. Dr. Daincourt called on Saturday evening, as I had expected, and narrated to me the result of his inquiries respecting Mabel Rutland's jewellery. Among it there was a ring set with turquoises and diamonds which had been given to her by her mother, and which she wore constantly. Dr. Daincourt had received from Mrs. Rutland further instances of the profound attachment which Mabel bore for her twin-brother. "Deep as was her love," Mrs. Rutland had said, "for Mr. Layton, there is in her love for her brother an element so absorbing that she would not hesitate to make the most terrible sacrifices for his sake. My poor Eustace! It is weeks since I saw him, and I have no idea where he is. He is not altogether to blame, doctor he has been led away by bad companions. Ah, when I think of him and Mabel as little children, and see them, as I often do, playing their innocent games together--when I think of the exquisite joy we drew from them, and of the heavenly happiness they were to us, it seems to me that I must be under the influence of some horrible dream, that things have changed so!" At half-past nine o'clock one of my confidential agents, Fowler by name, made his appearance. "Found, sir," was the first thing he said to me. "Who?" I quickly asked. "Ida White. Living at Brixton. The drawing-rooms. Quite a swell in her way, sir." "Is she living alone?" "So far as we can make out. There are two men now on the watch, one to relieve the other." "And Mr. Eustace Rutland?" I asked. "Haven't got track of him yet, sir. The week is rather against us." "What do you mean by that?" "Why, sir, you don't forget that it is Derby week, do you? I suppose you backed one, but I can give you the straight tip if you want it." "I backed Paradox for a couple of sovereigns," I said. (Where is the man who does not take an interest in the Derby?) "Not in it, sir. There is only one horse will win, and that is Melton." "But," I said, coming back to the all-engrossing subject I was engaged upon, "what difference will the Derby week make to you?" "Well, you see, sir, London is so full. There is too much rushing about for calm, steady work. In such a task as ours a man wants a double set of eyes this week. Suppose my lady takes it into her head to go to the Derby? It will be all a job not to lose sight of her." "What lady do you refer to?" "Ida White, to be sure. She's a bit of a blood, sir, and the result of the Derby may mean a lot to her." "Does she bet, then?" "There is not much doubt of that, sir." "How did you discover it?" "Oh, easily enough. We have ways of our own. Why, sir, when I found out last night where she lives, what did I do an hour afterwards but present myself to the landlady of the house and ask her whether she could let me have a room for a week or two? I didn't tell you that there was a bill in her window, 'A Bedroom to Let to a Single Young Man.' Well, if I ain't a single young man, what is that to do with anybody--except my wife? I'm a soft-spoken chap when I like, and before the landlady and me are together five minutes I'm hand-and-glove with, her, and already a bit of a favorite. So I take her room and sleep there last night, and the first thing this morning down-stairs I am at the street door when the postman comes with the letters. Well, sir, would you believe it, he delivers five letters, and every one of them for Miss Ida White? I, opening the door for the postman, take the letters from him, and hand them one by one to the landlady, who comes puffing and panting up from the basement she weighs fourteen stone if she weighs an ounce. 'Miss Ida White,' says I, giving her the first letter. 'Miss Ida White,' says I, giving her the second letter. 'Miss Ida White,' says I, giving her the other three, one by one. 'Why, it is quite a correspondence!' All these letters are from Boulogne, sir, from betting firms. I know them by their outsides; I believe I should know them by the smell. Then, sir, there's something else. My lady is fond of newspapers. What kind of newspapers? Why, the sporting ones, to be sure. The _Sportsman_, _Sporting Life_, _Sporting Times_, _Referee_, and the like. Put this and that together, and what do you make of it, sir?" "You are progressing, Fowler," I said. "Yes, sir, we're moving. The landlady, bless her heart, she doesn't suspect what the letters from Boulogne are, but in less than a brace of shakes I worm out of her that Miss Ida White has received any number of them since she came to live in the house." "Have you an idea what horse she has backed?" "I have an idea that she has backed half a dozen, and that neither of the favorites is among them. When a woman bets, she wants fifty to one as a rule, and as a rule she gets it, and has to part." I debated a moment or two, and then I showed Fowler one of the envelopes addressed by Eustace Rutland to his sister. "Are you certain that none of the envelopes you saw this morning were addressed in this handwriting?" "Quite certain, sir." "I should like to see the house that Miss Ida White lives in, Fowler." "Nothing easier but I shouldn't go as I am, if I were you." "Why not?" "Well, you see, she had a pretty long examination in court at the Layton trial, and you were there all the time. She has sharp eyes in her head, has Miss Ida White, and she might recognize you, and smell a rat." "You are right. I had better not go." "I don't see why you shouldn't, if you let me fix you up." "Fix me up?" "Yes, sir." He took from his pocket a small box of paints, and two or three sets of wigs and whiskers and mustaches. "I always travel with them, sir. I can make myself into another man in five minutes or so, and as for a change of clothes, any handy cheap-clothes shop will serve my turn. Put on these sandy whiskers and mustaches--always hide your mouth, sir--and this sandy wig, and let me touch you up a bit, and your own mother wouldn't know you." I doubted whether she would when I looked at myself in the glass after carrying out Fowler's instructions, and in less than a quarter of an hour we were riding in a four-wheeled cab to Brixton. We alighted within a couple of hundred yards of Miss Ida White's lodgings, and Fowler took me boldly into the house, requesting me on the way thither to try and discover the men working under him who were keeping watch upon the lady's-maid's movements. To his gratification, I failed to discover them. "Then you didn't see me give the office to them?" he asked. "No," I replied. "I did, though, under your very nose. That is a guarantee to you, sir, that the thing is being neatly done. Miss White is in the house. If she were not, my men wouldn't be in the street. Did you hear the snapping of a lock down-stairs?" "No." We were sitting at the window of Fowler's room, which was situated on the second floor. It was the front room, and we could therefore see into the street. "It was the key turning in my lady's room. She is going out. There's the street door slamming. You heard that, of course?" "Yes, I heard that." "And there is Miss Ida White crossing the road to the opposite side of the way, and there, sir, are my men following her, without her having the slightest suspicion that she is being tracked." My sight is strong, and I had a clear view of Ida White. She was stylishly dressed, and was certainly good-looking. "It is my opinion," said Fowler, "that she feathered her nest when she was in Mrs. Layton's service but I don't care how much money she may have saved or filched, if she goes on betting on horses the book-makers will have every penny of it." There was nothing more to be done, and feeling somewhat ill at ease in my disguise, I prepared to leave. "I will see you out of the street, sir," said Fowler. "It happens often enough that watchers are watched, without their being aware of it." Before I bade Fowler good-day I impressed upon him that no money was to be spared in the business had intrusted to him, and that he had better engage two or three more men, to be ready for any emergency that might occur. He promised to do so, and I made my way home. VI. THE DAY AFTER THE DERBY. Before commencing an account of what has been done, and what discovered, I cannot refrain from writing one sentence. Success has crowned our efforts. There is no need here to minutely describe our proceedings on Monday and Tuesday. Sufficient to say that I was in constant communication with Fowler--who As a most trustworthy fellow, and shrewd to the tips of his nails--and that I had occasion on Tuesday to again assume my disguise. On Tuesday night I saw Dr. Daincourt, and was glad to learn from him that there was an improvement in Miss Rutland's condition. "Due," he observed, "in a great measure to certain assurances I imparted to her in a voice so distinct and cheerful as to impress itself upon her fevered imagination." "That is good news," I said. "You are administering what she requires--medicine for the mind." I come now at once to the account of one of the most exciting days--the Derby Day of 1885--I have ever passed through. Fowler was in my house at seven o'clock in the morning, and brought with him a suit of clothes which he wished me to wear. He had forewarned me that he intended to make a change in his own appearance, and I was therefore not surprised when he presented himself in the guise of a well-to-do farmer who had come to London to see the Derby. "Miss White is going, sir," he said, "and we are going, too. I have been living in the house with her these last two days, and it is important that she should not recognize me. I have a piece of satisfactory information for you. It is an even bet that before this day is out I bring you face to face with Mr. Eustace Rutland." "If you do," said I, "you will lose nothing by it. Bring me into the same room as that young man, and I will wring from him what I desire to know." "Don't get excited, sir," said Fowler. "Keep cool. You have had a good night's rest, I hope?" "Yes, I slept well." "That's right. Make a hearty breakfast, as I am going to do. We shall need all our strength. It is going to be a heavy day for us." "Where does Ida White start from?" I asked. "I can't tell you, sir. I pumped the landlady of the house, but she knew nothing except that a new bonnet had arrived for our lady-bird. Miss White is as close as wax, but that new bonnet means the Derby, if it means anything. She can't very well start before nine o'clock, and we shall be on the watch for her not later than half-past eight. I have six men engaged in the affair, sir. It will cost something." "Never mind the cost," I said "it is the last thing to be considered." "That is the way to work to success. Many a ship is spoiled for a ha'porth of tar. We shall come out of this triumphant, or my name is not Fowler." His confident, hopeful manner inspired me with confidence, and after partaking of a substantial breakfast we both set out for Brixton. Fowler had hired a cab by the hour, with a promise of double fare to the driver, to whom he gave explicit instructions. We did not enter the house; we lingered at the corner of a street at some distance from it, and at twenty minutes to ten Miss Ida White closed the street door behind her. Secret signals passed between Fowler and his men, and we followed the lady's-maid, the cab which Fowler had engaged crawling in our rear without attracting attention. Miss White sauntered on until she came to a cab-stand, and entering a cab, was driven away. We were after her like a shot. Two other cabs started at the same time, and I learned from Fowler that they were hired by his men. "Don't think I have drawn off all my forces, sir," he said. "Although Miss White has left the house, there are two men on watch, who will remain there the whole of the day. She has started early. It will make it all the easier for us." Miss White's cab stopped at Victoria Station, and we stopped also. "She's a smart-looking woman, sir," whispered Fowler to me. "She has a splendid complexion," I remarked. "Put on, sir," said Fowler, smiling.--"put on. Leave a lady's-maid alone to learn the tricks of the face." Ida White purchased a first-class ticket for Epsom Downs, and we did the same. Had I followed my own judgment I should have avoided the carriage in which Miss White travelled, but Fowler pushed me in before him, and got in afterwards, and being under his command, I did not hesitate. He had purchased a number of newspapers, and shortly after we started he surprised me by opening a conversation with a stranger. He spoke with a Lancashire accent, and I should have been deceived by his voice had he not been sitting by my side. The subject, of course, was the Derby, and he appeared to be eager to obtain information as to the merits and chances of the various runners. Meanwhile, Miss White, who had also purchased every sporting paper she saw, had taken from her pocket a Racing Guide, in which the performances of the horses were recorded. She studied this Guide with great seriousness, and was continually consulting the newspapers to ascertain how far the opinions of the sporting prophets agreed with the information of the authority with which she had provided herself. "So," thought I, "this young woman, whose whole soul seems wrapped up in racing matters, is the same young woman who in court declared that she hated races and betting men." Before we were half an hour on our journey I felt perfectly at ease in her presence. It was clear that she considered herself safe, and among strangers. The conversation between Fowler and the gentleman became more animated; others joined in, and I observed that Miss White's attention was attracted to their utterances, Every now and then she made a memorandum in a small metallic book, and before we arrived at Epsom Downs she allowed herself to be drawn into conversation, and freely expressed her opinions upon the horses that were to run for the blue ribbon of the turf. I did not venture to address her, but Fowler had no fear, and extracted from her the names of the horses she believed to have the best chances. He slapped his thigh, and declared that he should back them. We alighted at Epsom Downs, and rode to the race-course. The great rush of the day had not yet set in, but although the Grand Stand was scarcely a third part filled, there were already many there who had taken up a favorable position from which to see the principal race of the day. Fowler improved upon his acquaintance with Miss White, and I obeyed the instructions he managed to convey to me not to stick too close to him. I did not lose sight of him, however, and presently he came and said to me, in an undertone, "It's all right, sir; I'm making headway. I've told her where I come from in Lancashire, and that I am a single man with a goodish bit of property which has just fallen to me through the death of my father. I've given her my card--I had some printed yesterday in case they might be wanted. We are going up-stairs to have a bit of luncheon before the races commence." Up-stairs we went to the luncheon-room, where Fowler called for a bottle of dry champagne, in which we drank good-luck to each other. It was only by great exertions that we managed, after lunch, to squeeze ourselves into the Grand Stand. The crush was terrific up the narrow stairs, and Miss Ida White would have fared badly had it not been for Fowler's gallant attentions. I have no intention to describe the race. It presented all the usual features of a Derby, to which I paid but little heed, my attention being concentrated upon Miss Ida White. She was greatly excited. There were some book-makers on the Grand Stand shouting out the odds, and she must have invested at least a dozen sovereigns on different horses, the odds against which ranged from 40 to 60 to 1. The race was over. Melton was hailed the winner. I knew that Miss White had not backed Melton for a shilling, and I watched the effect the result of the race had upon her. Her lips quivered, her eyes glared furiously about. "Ida is an angel, is she?" thought I. "Ah! not much of the angel there." A stampede commenced to the lower ground. The Grand Stand was half empty. Then it was that I saw a man who had just come up give a secret look of intelligence to Fowler, after which he strolled a few paces away, and stood with his back towards Miss White. Fowler joined him with a negligent air, and very soon returned. "I am very sorry you lost," he said to Miss White, "and quite as sorry that I must wish you good-by." He took her aside, and had a brief conversation with her, in the course of which he slipped something into her palm, upon which her fingers instantly closed. Shaking hands with her, he beckoned to me, and we left the Grand Stand. "What did you give her?" I asked. "Only a card," he said, "with an address in London, to which she could write to me if she felt inclined. I told her that I had never seen a lady I admired so much, and that I hoped she would give me the opportunity of becoming friends with her. In an honorable way--oh, quite in an honorable way!" he added, with a laugh. "And what are you leaving her for now?" I inquired. "Because I know where Mr. Eustace Rutland is to be found," he replied. "It will take two or three hours to get to the place, and I suppose it is best to lose no time." "Decidedly the best," I said "but how about Ida White?" "She is safe enough. My men are all around her. She won't be left for an instant, wherever she may go. The gentleman I entered into conversation with in the train was one of my fellows. You are a great lawyer, sir, but I think I could teach you something." "I have no doubt you could. Where does Eustace Rutland live?" "In Croydon, at some distance from the station." We did not reach Croydon until past six o'clock, and it was nearly another hour before we arrived at the address which Fowler had received. "That is the house, sir," he said, pointing to it. "It doesn't look very flourishing." It was one of a terrace of eight sad-looking tenements, two stories in height, and evidently occupied by people in a humble station of life. "Before we go in, sir," said Fowler, "I must put you in possession of the information I have gained. Mr. Eustace Rutland does not live there"--I started--"but Mr. Fenwick does. The young gentleman has thought fit to change his name that is suspicious. He has lived there the last two weeks, having come probably from some better-known locality, the whereabouts of which I shall learn by-and-by. When I say he _came_ from some better-known locality I am not quite exact it will be more correct to say that he was _brought_ from some better-known locality. He was very ill, scarcely able to walk, and is still very weak, I am given to understand. Now, sir, what do you propose to do? Do you wish me to go in with you, or will you see this young gentleman alone, without witnesses?" "You are the soul of discretion, Fowler," I said, "and of shrewdness. I must see the young gentleman alone, and without witnesses. Meanwhile you can remain in the house, ready at my call, if I should require you. Keep all strangers from the room while I am closeted with him." I knocked at the door, and inquired of the woman who opened it for Mr. Fenwick. She asked me what I wanted, and who Mr. Fenwick was. "Mr. Fenwick lodges here," I said. "I am a friend of his, and I wish to see him." "How do you know he lodges here?" asked the woman. "Simply," replied Fowler, "because we happen to have received a letter from him with this address on it. What's your little game, eh, that you want to deny him to us?" As he spoke he pushed his way into the passage, and I followed. The woman looked helplessly at us, and when Fowler said, with forefinger uplifted warningly, "Take care what you are about," she replied, "I don't know what to do; I am only following out my instructions." "Your instructions," said Fowler, "were not to prevent Mr. Fenwick's friends from seeing him." "I was told to admit no one," the woman said. "And pray who told you?" demanded Fowler. "The lady?" "Yes, sir," said the woman. "Miss Porter." "Oh, Miss Porter," exclaimed Fowler. "A friend of ours also. Dark-skinned. Black hair. Black eyes. Red lips. White hands. Rather slim. About five foot four." "Yes, sir," said the woman. Fowler had given a pretty faithful description of Miss Ida White. "Well, then," said Fowler, whose ready wit compelled my admiration, "there is no occasion to announce us to Mr. Fenwick. Show this gentleman the room, and while they're chatting together I will have a little chat with you." "It is on the first floor," said the woman. "Of course it is," said Fowler; "the first floor front, the room with the blind pulled down. Do you think I don't know it? How is the young gentleman?" "Not at all well, sir." I heard this reply as I ascended the stairs, in compliance with a motion of Fowler's head. When I arrived at the door of the room occupied by Fenwick, otherwise Eustace Rutland, I did not knock, but I turned the handle and entered. A young gentleman who had been lying on the sofa jumped up upon my entrance, and cried, "Who are you? What do you want?" I closed the door, and turned the key in the lock. "What do you do that for?" he exclaimed. "You will very soon know," I replied. "I am here for the purpose of having a few minutes' conversation with Mr.--shall I say Fenwick?" "It is my name." "If I did not come as a friend I should dispute it, and even as a friend I shall venture to dispute it. Your proper name is Eustace Rutland." He fell back upon the sofa, white and trembling. "What do you mean? Why are you here?" he gasped. "I will tell you," I said. "The time for evasion and concealment is past. Your sister--" "My sister!" interrupted Eustace. "I do not understand you." "You do understand me. You have a sister--a twin-sister--whose name is Mabel. She lies at the point of death, and you have brought her to it." He covered his face with his hands, and I judged intuitively that there sat before me a young man who, weak-minded and easily led for evil as he might be, was not devoid of the true instincts of affection. "Did you know of her condition?" I asked. "No," he replied, in a trembling voice. "Is it true? Is it true?" "It is unhappily true, and it may be that it lies in your power to rescue from the grave the innocent young girl who has devoted her life and happiness to you." "My God! my God!" "I will not deceive you. Such happiness cannot come to pass if you are guilty." "I am not guilty!" he cried, starting to his feet. "God knows I am not guilty!" "Swear it," I exclaimed, sternly. "By all my hopes of happiness," he exclaimed, falling upon his knees--"by my dear Mabel's life, by my dear mother's life--I swear that I am innocent!" He was grovelling on the floor, and 1 assisted him to rise. "And being not guilty," I said, solemnly, "you were content to remain in hiding while another man was accused of the crime which neither he nor you committed! And being not guilty, you would have waited until he was done to death before you emerged once more into the light of day! I believe you when you say you did not know of your sister's peril, but you knew of the peril in which Edward Layton stood. Don't deny it. Remember, the time of evasion has passed." "Yes," he murmured, "I knew it." "Why did you not come forward," I said, indignantly, rushing as if by an inspiration of reasoning to the truth, "to affirm that you and Ida White were in Prevost's Restaurant, in the very room in which Edward Layton and your sister entered, on the night of the 25th of March? Why did you not come forward to affirm that it was you who--by a devilish prompting--took Edward Layton's ulster, unknown to him, from the peg upon which it was hanging, and went out with your paramour to the carriage in which he and your sister had arrived? Answer me. Why did you not do this, to prevent a noble and innocent man from being condemned for a murder which he did not commit?" "It was no murder!" cried Eustace. "It was no murder! She died by her own hand!" "She died by her own hand!" I echoed, bewildered by this sudden turn in the complexion of the case. "Yes," said Eustace, "by her own hand. Upon the table by her bedside there was written evidence of it." "Which you removed!" I cried. "No, not I, not. I! Of which _she_ took possession!" "Speak plainly. Whom do you mean by she--Ida White?" "Yes." I paused. Truth to tell, I was overwhelmed by these disclosures. "Bear this steadfastly in mind," I said, presently, in a calm, judicial tone. "You are in the presence of a man who has sworn to rescue the innocent. You are in the presence of a man who has sworn to bring the guilty to justice. Upon me depends your fate. I can save or destroy you. If by a hair's-breadth of duplicity and evasion you attempt to deceive me, your destruction is certain. This is the turning-point of your life. Upon your truthfulness rests your fate. Open your heart to me, not as to your enemy, but as to your friend, and relate to me, without equivocation, the true story of your life, from the time you commenced to plunge into dissipation and disgrace." Awed and conscience-stricken, he told me the story. In the course of his narration I was compelled frequently to prompt and encourage him, but that, in the result, it was truthfully told I have not a shadow of doubt. His career at college ended, he came to London. There he made the acquaintance of Edward Layton's father, a man who, although well on in years, was as weak-minded as he was himself. They entered into a kind of partnership, in which, no doubt, the elder man, now in his grave, was the leader and prompter. From Eustace's description of Edward Layton's father I recognized a man weak-minded as Eustace himself was, and whose inherent honor and honesty were warped by his fatal passion for gambling. Old Mr. Layton, for a long time, kept his infatuation from the knowledge of his son, and it was not until he was actually involved in crime and disgrace that Edward became aware of it. Long before this Edward had, through his engagement with Mabel Rutland, been employed in the helpless task of endeavoring to save her beloved brother, but when the knowledge of his own father's disgrace was forced upon him, he knew that all hope of Mabel's father consenting to his marriage was irretrievably gone. It was not only that the young and the old man had lost money in betting--it was that they had actually been guilty of forging bills, which Mr. Beach, the father of the woman whom Edward Layton afterwards married, held in his possession. It was this that first took Edward Layton to Mr. Beach's house. Mabel had implored him to save her darling brother, against whom Mr. Beach had threatened to take criminal proceedings. I do not at this moment know whether Edward Layton had revealed to Mabel the disgrace which hung also above his father but that is immaterial. Agnes Beach, Mr. Beach's only child, saw and fell in love with Edward Layton, and her father, disreputable as he was, being devoted to his daughter, was guided by her in all that subsequently transpired. The bills he held he determinedly refused to part with, unless Edward Layton married his child. In the terrible position in which he was placed, knowing that Mabel Rutland was lost to him forever--knowing how deeply and devotedly she loved her brother Eustace--knowing the disgrace which hung over his own name, he saw no other way to prevent utter ruin than to enter into this fatal engagement, and to marry a woman whom he did not love. But, with a full consciousness of the disreputable connection he was about to form, he laid no pressing injunction upon his father to recognize the unhappy union; and, indeed, old Mr. Layton, aware that he was in Mr. Beach's power, was by no means desirous to meet him. Love lost, honor lost, the sword hanging over his head, Edward Layton submitted to the sacrifice. There was no duplicity on his part. Agnes Beach knew full well that he did not love her. He received, as he believed, the whole of the forged bills which Mr. Beach held, and it was not until some time after his marriage that he discovered that three of these fatal acceptances had been withheld from him. At the time he made this discovery he was leading a most unhappy life with his wife, and on more than one occasion she taunted him with the power she held over him. It was shortly after the marriage that weak-minded Eustace made the acquaintance of Ida White. She was an attractive woman, well versed in the wiles of her sex, and she played upon him and entangled him to such an extent that there was no escape for him. It is unnecessary here to enter into the details of this connection. It is sufficient to say that Ida White held Eustace Rutland completely in her power, with a firm conviction that if she could induce him to marry her, she could, after the marriage, obtain the forgiveness of Eustace's father--which would insure her a life of ease and luxury. But there was still a certain firmness in the young man. "Marry me," she said. "I will marry you," Eustace replied, "when I get back the forged acceptances." Where were they? In Mrs. Layton's possession. Close as was the intimacy which existed between the unhappy lady and her maid, Mrs. Layton retained so jealous a possession of these incriminating documents that Ida White was not able to lay her hands upon them. In the company of Eustace Rutland she was supping in Prevost's Restaurant on the night of the 25th of March. She had slipped away from Mrs. Layton's house, as she had often done before, to meet her young and foolish lover. She saw her master and Mabel enter the room, and observed Layton taking off his ulster. Then the idea suddenly entered her head that Eustace and she should personate her master and the young lady--with a full knowledge how deeply those two were compromised by their being together and arrive home before them, by which time, doubtless, Mrs. Layton would be asleep. She knew that under her pillow Mrs. Layton kept the documents which Eustace frantically desired to obtain, and the possession of which would make her, Ida White, his wife. If Mrs. Layton awoke and resisted while the forged bills were being abstracted, Eustace would be at hand to use force, if necessary; and it was principally from the wish to compromise her lover so deeply that he would not dare to break his promise to marry her that she determined to put her idea into execution. She knew that ordinarily Edward Layton kept the latch-key of the street door in the pocket of his ulster. She disclosed the scheme to Eustace, and threatened him with exposure if he did not do as she desired. It was she who took the ulster from the wall of the restaurant, and it was she who, secretly and expeditiously, assisted Eustace to put it on; then they stole out together and entered the carriage. Before acquainting Eustace with her design she had ascertained that Edward Layton's carriage was waiting for him and for Mabel. She trusted to her own resources to keep her master out of his house after she and Eustace had entered it. Here a word is necessary as to the true meaning of Edward Layton's proceedings during the day and night of the 25th of March. Abandoned as were the hopes in which he and Mabel had once fondly indulged, she still relied upon his efforts to save her brother from harm. Eustace had lost heavily upon certain races. He had made a despairing appeal to her, and she called upon Layton to assist the erring lad. It was in the endeavor to discover Eustace that Edward Layton had driven from place to place to obtain from him the information necessary to rescue him from his peril. Mabel had, by letter, engaged to meet Edward Layton in Bloomsbury Square at ten o'clock on the night of that day, in order that he might relieve her anxiety with respect to her brother. How they met, and what transpired after they met, have been already sufficiently detailed. Ida White's man[oe]uvres were successful up to a certain point. She and Eustace entered the carriage, were driven home, and, unsuspected, obtained entrance into the house. The correspondence between Eustace and Mabel had been for some time conducted through the medium of the system of the Nine of Hearts, and it was either by an oversight or by accident that Eustace, during the drive from Prevost's Restaurant to Edward Layton's house, took from his own pocket one of these cards and let it drop into the pocket of the ulster. But when they were safely in Layton's house, and crept stealthily and noiselessly into Mrs. Layton's bedroom, they made the horrible discovery that Mrs. Layton, in a moment of frenzy, had emptied the bottle of poisonous narcotics, and had by her own will destroyed herself. The proof was at her bedside: When she had swallowed the fatal pills, the horror of the deed overwhelmed her. She summoned up sufficient strength to rise in her bed, to take paper and the pen from the inkstand, and before the death-agony commenced in her sleep, to write upon that paper the confession which fixed upon her the crime of suicide. Having reached this point of the strange story, I demanded to know from Eustace Rutland what had become of that confession. "Ida took possession of it," he said, "and I have not seen it from that moment to this." "Why did you not come forward and make this public?" I cried. "Because," was his reply, "Ida told me that, if what we had done became known, nothing could save us from the hangman." "Did she obtain possession of the forged acceptances?" "Yes." "How was it that the tumbler from which the fatal draught was taken was on the mantle-shelf?" "Ida placed it there." It was enough. The entire facts of this mysterious case were clear to me. I required nothing more to prove Edward Layton's innocence than the possession of the document written almost in her death-throes by his unhappy wife. I unlocked the door and called up Fowler. Briefly and swiftly I told him what was necessary, and said it was not at all improbable that this document was in Ida White's lodgings at Brixton; and I had scarcely uttered the words before a rat-tat-tat came at the street door. "It is she!" cried Eustace. "Who?" I asked, in great excitement. "Ida," he replied. "It serves our turn exactly, sir," muttered Fowler to me, and then addressing Eustace, he said, "Is that your bedroom?" pointing to a communicating door. "We will go in there. Let the lady come up." We disappeared, leaving the communicating door partially open, and the next minute I heard Ida White's voice. "Cursed luck!" she cried. "I've lost eighty-five pounds to-day. I tell you what it is, Eustace--if we can't wheedle your old governor into forgiving us after we are married, we shall have to turn book-makers ourselves. You shall take the bets, and I will do the clerking. It will be a novelty, and we shall make pots of money." Eustace did not reply. "Why don't you speak?" she continued. "Are you struck dumb?" Then came Eustace's voice, like the cry of a despairing soul: "You are a devil! Why have you driven me to this? I hate you, hate you, hate you! You fiend, you have killed my sister!" Fowler did not wait for me to act. He seized me by the arm, and pulled me after him into the room. "What!" screamed Ida "you two!" "Yes," said Fowler--and in the midst of my own excitement I could not avoid observing the expression of calm satisfaction on his face--"we two." "What are you here for?" "For reasons, Ida White," replied Fowler, "which may or may not be fatal to yourself. Follow what I am about to say. We have here a confession from this young gentleman which, if true--that is, if it can be proved by documentary evidence--will bring undoubted disgrace upon you, but neither death by the hangman's hands nor penal servitude for life." She recoiled, and echoed, "Death! Penal servitude for life!" "It is exactly as I have said. Death by the hangman's hands or penal servitude for life. All is known. Your theft of the ulster at Prevost's Restaurant, and everything else. Your liberty at this moment rests upon a written document. If it never existed, or if you have destroyed it, you are doomed. If it exists, you are saved." "You are a madman!" she cried, but her face was blanched, and her figure expressed the most abject terror. "I am an officer of the law," said Fowler. "Now do you understand? If the confession written by Mrs. Edward Layton, and which, after her death, you took from the table by her bedside, is in existence, you have nothing to fear. If it is not, you are a lost woman. No words, no parleying! It is life or death for you! The moment has come. Decide. Which way?" Utterly overpowered, Ida White replied, with hands tremblingly raised, as if for mercy, "I have the paper." "Where?" Her hands wandered to her pocket, and she took a purse from it. "Here!" "There is something else, lady-bird." "What?" "The papers you stole from underneath your mistress's pillow. Ah! you have those also! Hand them over. Thank you, lady-bird. Very satisfactory --very satisfactory indeed. A happy termination to a most remarkable case!" VII. "August 27, 1885. "Dear Mr. Laing, My intermediate letters will have placed you in possession of all that has occurred. Edward Layton is released with honor, and it has been the subject of hundreds of leading articles that the obstinacy of one juryman, who refused to be guided by circumstantial evidence, saved a noble young fellow from an unjust death. A great blow has been struck against the jury system. Eleven men wrong, and one man right!--people could hardly believe it. But it was so in this instance, and I have no doubt it has been so in others. You being now a married man, domestically happy and contented, the news I have to impart will give you pleasure. Edward Layton is in Switzerland. He has gone upon a long summer and autumn tour. Alone? No. Mabel Rutland, restored to health, is with him. Well, but that is not enough? I take a satisfaction in prolonging the interest. I could almost fancy myself a novelist. Mr. and Mrs. Rutland are also of the company, and it is Mr. Rutland himself who invited Edward Layton to travel with them. In less than a year from this date the lovers will be united, and faith and self-sacrifice will be rewarded. Mr. James Rutland, Mabel's uncle, to whose obstinacy Edward Layton undoubtedly owes his life, and before whose obstinacy Justice should bow, is also travelling with them. No one else? Yes. Mabel's brother, Eustace, repentant, humbled, reformed. "I have had painted for me a very simple picture on a large canvas. It is the Nine of Hearts, which I intend shall always occupy the place of honor in my house. It cannot fail to attract attention, and when inquiries are made about it I shall have a story to tell. "With a full appreciation of your rare generosity, I remain, dear sir, "Yours faithfully, "Horace Bainbridge." THE END. 
26133	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) TRIAL OF DUNCAN TERIG ALIAS CLERK, AND ALEXANDER BANE MACDONALD, FOR THE MURDER OF ARTHUR DAVIS, SERGEANT IN GENERAL GUISE'S REGIMENT OF FOOT. JUNE, A.D. M.DCC.LIV. EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY. 1831. TO THE MEMBERS OF THE BANNATYNE CLUB, THIS COPY OF A TRIAL, INVOLVING A CURIOUS POINT OF EVIDENCE, IS PRESENTED BY WALTER SCOTT. FEBRUARY, M.DCCC.XXXI. Transcriber's Note: Letters that are printed as superscript are indicated by being preceeded by a caret (^). THE BANNATYNE CLUB. M.DCCC.XXXI. SIR WALTER SCOTT, BAR^T. [PRESIDENT.] THE EARL OF ABERDEEN, K.T. RIGHT HON. WILLIAM ADAM, LORD CHIEF COMMISSIONER OF THE JURY COURT. JAMES BALLANTYNE, ESQ. SIR WILLIAM MACLEOD BANNATYNE. 5 LORD BELHAVEN AND STENTON. GEORGE JOSEPH BELL, ESQ. ROBERT BELL, ESQ. WILLIAM BELL, ESQ. JOHN BORTHWICK, ESQ. 10 WILLIAM BLAIR, ESQ. THE REV. PHILIP BLISS, D.C.L. GEORGE BRODIE, ESQ. CHARLES DASHWOOD BRUCE, ESQ. THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH AND QUEENSBERRY. 15 JOHN CALEY, ESQ. JAMES CAMPBELL, ESQ. HON. JOHN CLERK, LORD ELDIN. WILLIAM CLERK, ESQ. HENRY COCKBURN, ESQ. 20 DAVID CONSTABLE, ESQ. ANDREW COVENTRY, ESQ. JAMES T. GIBSON CRAIG, ESQ. WILLIAM GIBSON CRAIG, ESQ. HON. GEORGE CRANSTOUN, LORD COREHOUSE. 25 THE EARL OF DALHOUSIE. JAMES DENNISTOUN, ESQ. ROBERT DUNDAS, ESQ. RIGHT HON. W. DUNDAS, LORD CLERK REGISTER. CHARLES FERGUSSON, ESQ. 30 ROBERT FERGUSON, ESQ. LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR RONALD C. FERGUSON. THE COUNT DE FLAHAULT. HON. JOHN FULLERTON, LORD FULLERTON. LORD GLENORCHY. 35 THE DUKE OF GORDON. WILLIAM GOTT, ESQ. SIR JAMES R. G. GRAHAM, BAR^T. ROBERT GRAHAM, ESQ. LORD GRAY. 40 RIGHT HON. THOMAS GRENVILLE. THE EARL OF HADDINGTON. THE DUKE OF HAMILTON AND BRANDON. E. W. A. DRUMMOND HAY, ESQ. JAMES M. HOG, ESQ. 45 JOHN HOPE, ESQ. COSMO INNES, ESQ. DAVID IRVING, LL.D. JAMES IVORY, ESQ. THE REV. JOHN JAMIESON, D.D. 50 ROBERT JAMESON, ESQ. SIR HENRY JARDINE. FRANCIS JEFFREY, ESQ. LORD ADVOCATE. JAMES KEAY, ESQ. THOMAS FRANCIS KENNEDY, ESQ. 55 JOHN G. KINNEAR, ESQ. [TREASURER.] THE EARL OF KINNOULL. DAVID LAING, ESQ. [SECRETARY.] THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE, K.T. THE REV. JOHN LEE, D.D. 60 THE MARQUIS OF LOTHIAN. HON. J. H. MACKENZIE, LORD MACKENZIE. JAMES MACKENZIE, ESQ. JAMES MAIDMENT, ESQ. THOMAS MAITLAND, ESQ. 65 THE HON. WILLIAM MAULE. GILBERT LAING MEASON, ESQ. VISCOUNT MELVILLE, K.T. WILLIAM HENRY MILLER, ESQ. THE EARL OF MINTO. 70 HON. SIR J. W. MONCREIFF, LORD MONCREIFF. JOHN ARCHIBALD MURRAY, ESQ. WILLIAM MURRAY, ESQ. JAMES NAIRNE, ESQ. MACVEY NAPIER, ESQ. 75 FRANCIS PALGRAVE, ESQ. HENRY PETRIE, ESQ. ROBERT PITCAIRN, ESQ. ALEXANDER PRINGLE, ESQ. JOHN RICHARDSON, ESQ. 80 THE EARL OF ROSSLYN. ANDREW RUTHERFURD, ESQ. THE EARL OF SELKIRK. RIGHT HON. SIR SAMUEL SHEPHERD. ANDREW SKENE, ESQ. 85 JAMES SKENE, ESQ. GEORGE SMYTHE, ESQ. EARL SPENCER, K.G. JOHN SPOTTISWOODE, ESQ. THE MARQUIS OF STAFFORD, K.G. 90 MAJOR-GENERAL STRATON. SIR JOHN ARCHIBALD STEWART, BAR^T. THE HON. CHARLES FRANCIS STUART. ALEXANDER THOMSON, ESQ. THOMAS THOMSON, ESQ. [VICE-PRESIDENT.] 95 W. C. TREVELYAN, ESQ. PATRICK FRASER TYTLER, ESQ. ADAM URQUHART, ESQ. RIGHT HON. SIR GEORGE WARRENDER BAR^T. THE VENERABLE ARCHDEACON WRANGHAM. 100 TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR SAMUEL SHEPHERD, THIS CURIOUS TRACT, RESPECTING PERHAPS THE ONLY SUBJECT OF LEGAL ENQUIRY WHICH HAS ESCAPED BEING INVESTIGATED BY HIS SKILL, AND ILLUSTRATED BY HIS GENIUS, IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED, BY HIS AFFECTIONATE FRIEND, AND MUCH OBLIGED HUMBLE SERVANT, WALTER SCOTT. 15TH FEB., 1831. INTRODUCTION. Although the giving information concerning the unfair manner in which they were dismissed from life, is popularly alleged to have been a frequent reason why departed spirits revisit the nether world, it is yet only in a play of the witty comedian, Foote, that the reader will find their appearance become the subject of formal and very ingenious pleadings. In his farce called the Orators, the celebrated Cocklane Ghost is indicted by the name of Fanny the Phantom, for that, contrary to the King's peace, it did annoy, assault, and terrify divers persons residing in Cocklane and elsewhere, in the county of Middlesex. The senior counsel objects to his client pleading to the indictment, unless she is tried by her equals in rank, and therefore he moves the indictment be quashed, unless a jury of ghosts be first had and obtained. To this it is replied, that although Fanny the Phantom had originally a right to a jury of ghosts, yet in taking upon her to knock, to flutter, and to scratch, she did, by condescending to operations proper to humanity, wave her privileges as a ghost, and must consent to be tried in the ordinary manner. It occurs to the Justice who tries the case, that there will be difficulty in impanelling a jury of ghosts, and he doubts how twelve spirits who have no body at all, can be said to take a corporal oath, as required by law, unless, indeed, as in the case of the Peerage, the prisoner may be tried upon her honour. At length the counsel for the prosecution furnishes the list of ghosts for the selection of the jury, being the most celebrated apparitions of modern times, namely, Sir George Villiers, the evil genius of Brutus, the Ghost of Banquo, and the phantom of Mrs Veal. The counsel for the prosecution objects to a woman, and the court dissolves, under the facetious order, that if the Phantom should plead pregnancy, Mrs Veal will be admitted upon the jury of matrons. This admirable foolery is carried by the English Aristophanes nearly as far as it will go; yet it is very contrary to the belief of those, who conceive that injured spirits are often the means of procuring redress for wrongs committed upon their mortal frames, to find how seldom in any country an allusion hath been made to such evidence in a court of justice, although, according to their belief, such instances must have frequently occurred. One or two cases of such apparition-evidence our researches have detected. It is a popular story, that an evidence for the Crown began to tell the substance of an alleged conversation with the ghost of a murdered man, in which he laid his death to the accused person at the bar. "Stop," said the judge, with becoming gravity, "this will not do; the evidence of the ghost is excellent, none can speak with a clearer cause of knowledge to any thing which befell him during life. But he must be sworn in usual form. Call the ghost in open court, and if he appears, the jury and I will give all weight to his evidence; but in case he does not come forward, he cannot be heard, as now proposed, through the medium of a third party." It will readily be conceived that the ghost failed to appear, and the accusation was dismissed. In the French _Causes Célèbres et Interessantes_, is one entitled, _Le Spectre, ou l'Illusion Réprouvé_, reported by Guyot de Pittaval [vol. xii. edition La Haye, 1749], in which a countryman prosecutes a tradesman named Auguier for about twenty thousand francs, said to have been lent to the tradesman. It was pretended, that the loan was to account of the proceeds of a treasure which Mirabel, the peasant, had discovered by means of a ghost or spirit, and had transferred to the said Auguier, that he might convert it into cash for him. The case had some resemblance to that of Fanny the Phantom. The defendant urged the impossibility of the original discovery of the treasure by the spirit to the prosecutor; but the defence was repelled by the influence of the principal judge, and on a charge so ridiculous, Auguier narrowly escaped the torture. At length, though with hesitation, the prosecutor was nonsuited, upon the ground, that if his own story was true, the treasure, by the ancient laws of France, belonged to the Crown. So that the ghost-seer, though he had nearly occasioned the defendant to be put to the question, profited in the end nothing by his motion. This is something like a decision of the great Frederick of Prussia. One of his soldiers, a Catholic, pretended peculiar sanctity, and an especial devotion to a particular image of the Virgin Mary, which, richly decorated with ornaments by the zeal of her worshippers, was placed in a chapel in one of the churches of the city where her votary was quartered. The soldier acquired such familiarity with the object of his devotion, and was so much confided in by the priests, that he watched for and found an opportunity of possessing himself of a valuable diamond necklace belonging to the Madonna. Although the defendant was taken in the manner, he had the impudence, knowing the case was to be heard by the King, to say that the Madonna herself had voluntarily presented him with her necklace, observing that, as her good and faithful votary, he had better apply it to his necessities, than that it should remain useless in her custody. The King, happy of the opportunity of tormenting the priests, demanded of them, whether there was a possibility that the soldier's defence might be true. Their faith obliged them to grant that the story was possible, while they exhausted themselves on the improbabilities which attended it. "Nevertheless," said the King, "since it is possible, we must, in absence of proof, receive it as true, in the first instance. All I can do to check an imprudent generosity of the saints in future, is to publish an edict, or public order, that all soldiers in my service, who shall accept any gift from the Virgin, or any saint whatever, shall, _eo ipso_, incur the penalty of death." Amongst English trials, there is only mention of a ghost in a very incidental manner, in that of John Cole, fourth year of William and Mary, State Trials, vol. xii. The case is a species of supplement to that of the well-known trial of Henry Harrison, which precedes it in the same collection, of which the following is the summary. A respectable doctor of medicine, Clenche, had the misfortune to offend a haughty, violent, and imperious woman of indifferent character, named Vanwinckle, to whom he had lent money, and who he wished to repay it. A hackney-coach, with two men in it, took up the physician by night, as they pretended, to carry him to visit a patient. But on the road they strangled him with a handkerchief, having a coal, or some such hard substance, placed against their victim's windpipe, and escaped from the coach. One Henry Harrison, a man of loose life, connected with this Mrs Vanwinckle, the borrower of the money, was tried, convicted, and executed, on pretty clear evidence, yet he died denying the crime charged. The case being of a shocking nature, of course interested the feelings of the common people, and another person was accused as an accessory, the principal evidence against whom was founded on this story. A woman, called Millward, pretended that she had seen the ghost of her deceased husband, who told her that one John Cole had assisted him, the ghost, in the murder of Dr Clenche. Cole was brought to trial accordingly; but the charge was totally despised, both by judge and jury, and produced no effect whatever in obtaining conviction. Such being the general case with respect to apparitions, really alluded to or quoted in formal evidence in courts of justice, an evidence of that kind gravely given and received in the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland, has some title to be considered as a curiosity. The Editor's connexion with it is of an old standing, since, shortly after he was called to the bar in 1792, it was pointed out to him by Robert M'Intosh, Esq., one of the counsel in the case, then and long after remarkable for the interest which he took, and the management which he possessed, in the prolix and complicated affairs of the York Building Company. The cause of the trial, bloody and sad enough in its own nature, was one of the acts of violence which were the natural consequences of the Civil War in 1745. It was about three years after the battle of Culloden that this poor man, Sergeant Davis, was quartered, with a small military party, in an uncommonly wild part of the Highlands, near the country of the Farquharsons, as it is called, and adjacent to that which is now the property of the Earl of Fife. A more waste tract of mountain and bog, rocks and ravines, extending from Dubrach to Glenshee, without habitations of any kind until you reach Glenclunie, is scarce to be met with in Scotland. A more fit locality, therefore, for a deed of murder, could hardly be pointed out, nor one which could tend more to agitate superstitious feelings. The hill of Christie, on which the murder was actually committed, is a local name, which is probably known in the country, though the Editor has been unable to discover it more specially, but it certainly forms part of the ridge to which the general description applies. Davis was attached to the country where he had his residence, by the great plenty of sport which it afforded, and, when dispatched upon duty across these mountains, he usually went at some distance from his men, and followed his game without regarding the hints thrown out about danger from the country people. To this he was exposed, not only from his being intrusted with the odious office of depriving the people of their arms and national dress, but still more from his usually carrying about with him a stock of money and valuables, considerable for the time and period, and enough of itself to be a temptation to his murder. On the 28th day of September, the Sergeant set forth, along with a party, which was to communicate with a separate party of English soldiers at Glenshee; but when Davis's men came to the place of rendezvous, their commander was not with them, and the privates could only say that they had heard the report of his gun after he had parted from them on his solitary sport. In short, Sergeant Arthur Davis was seen no more in this life, and his remains were long sought for in vain. At length a native of the country, named M'Pherson, made it known to more than one person that the spirit of the unfortunate huntsman had appeared to him, and told him he had been murdered by two Highlanders, natives of the country, named Duncan Terig alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald. Proofs accumulated, and a person was even found to bear witness, that lying in concealment upon the hill of Christie, the spot where poor Davis was killed, he and another man, now dead, saw the crime committed with their own eyes. A girl whom Clerk afterwards married, was, nearly at the same time, seen in possession of two valuable rings which the Sergeant used to have about his person. Lastly, the counsel and agent of the prisoners were convinced of their guilt. Yet, notwithstanding all these suspicious circumstances, the panels were ultimately acquitted by the jury. This was chiefly owing to the ridicule thrown upon the story by the incident of the ghost, which was enhanced seemingly, if not in reality, by the ghost-seer stating the spirit to have spoken as good Gaelic as he had ever heard in Lochaber.--"Pretty well," answered Mr M'Intosh, "for the ghost of an English sergeant!" This was indeed no sound jest, for there was nothing more ridiculous, in a ghost speaking a language which he did not understand when in the body, than there was in his appearing at all. But still the counsel had a right to seize upon whatever could benefit his clients, and there is no doubt that this observation rendered the evidence of the spectre yet more ridiculous. In short, it is probable that the ghost of Sergeant Davis, had he actually been to devise how to prevent these two men from being executed for his own murder, could hardly have contrived a better mode than by the apparition in the manner which was sworn to. The most rational supposition seems to be, that the crime had come to M'Pherson, the ghost-seer's knowledge, by ordinary means, of which there is some evidence, but desiring to have a reason for communicating it, which could not be objected to by the people of the country, he had invented this machinery of the ghost, whose commands, according to Highland belief, were not to be disobeyed. If such were his motives, his legend, though it seemed to set his own tongue at liberty upon the subject, yet it impressed on his evidence the fate of Cassandra's prophecies, that, however true, it should not have the fortune to be believed. ABBOTSFORD, 18th March, 1830. TRIAL OF DUNCAN TERIG ALIAS CLERK, AND ALEXANDER BAIN MACDONALD, FOR THE MURDER OF ARTHUR DAVIES, SERJEANT IN GENERAL GUISE'S REGIMENT OF FOOT. JUNE, A.D. MDCC.LIV. TRIAL OF DUNCAN TERIG ALIAS CLERK, AND ALEXANDER BAIN MACDONALD. _CURIA JUSTICIARIA S. D. N. Regis tenta in Nova Sessionis Domo Burgi de Edinburgh, Decimo die Mensis Junij 1754, per honorabiles viros Carolum Areskine de Alva, Justiciarij Clericum, Magistros Alexandrum Fraser de Strichen, Patricium Grant de Elchies, et Hugonem Dalrymple de Drummore, et Dominum Jacobum Ferguson de Killkerran, Commissionarios Justiciarij dicti S. D. N. Regis._ _Curia legittime affirmata_, INTRAN. DUNCAN TERIG _alias_ CLERK, and ALEXANDER BAIN MACDONALD, both now prisoners in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, Pannels, Indicted and accused at the instance of William Grant of Prestongrange, Esq., His Majesties Advocate, for His Majesties interest, for the crime of murder committed by them in manner at length mentioned in the indictment raised against them thereanent, which indictment maketh mention, THAT WHEREAS, by the laws of God, and of this and all other well governed realms, Murder or Homicide is a most atrocious crime, and severely punishable, especially committed with an intent to rob the person murdered, and that by persons of bad fame and character, who are habite and repute thieves, YET TRUE IT IS, and of verity, that they, and each of them, or one or other of them, are guilty, actors, or art and part, of the foresaid crime, aggravated as aforesaid, in so far as the deceast Arthur Davies, serjeant in the regiment of foot commanded by General Guise, being in the year one thousand seven hundred and forty-nine, quartered or lodged alongst with a party of men or soldiers belonging to the said regiment in Dubrach, or Glendee, in Braemar, in the parish of ---- and sheriffdom of Aberdeen, he, the said Arthur Davies, did, upon the twenty-eighth day September, one thousand seven hundred and forty-nine, or upon one or other of the days of that month, or of the month of August immediately preceding, or October immediately following, go from thence to a hill in Braemar, commonly called Christie, at the head of Glenconie, in the parish of ---- and sheriffdom aforesaid. As also that same day, both of them, the said Duncan Terig alias Clerk, and Alexander Bain Macdonald, went from the house of John Grant, in Altalaat, armed with guns and muskets, pretending when they went from thence that they were going to shoot or hunt deer upon the said hill, to which place both of them having accordingly gone, and there meeting with the said Arthur Davies, each, or one or other of them, did, on the said twenty-eighth of September, 1749, or upon one or other of the days of that month, or of the months aforesaid, cruelly and barbarously fire a loaded gun or guns at him, which were in their hands, whereby he was mortally wounded, and of which wounds he died on the said hill, immediately or soon thereafter, where his dead body remained concealed for sometime, and was afterwards found, together with a hat, having a silver button on it, with the letters A. R. D. marked on it. LIKEAS, soon after the said Arthur Davies was murdered, each of the said two panels, being persons of bad fame and character, and who were habite and repute thieves, were, by the general voice of the country, reputed to have perpetrated the said murder, and to have robbed and taken from him a silver watch, two gold rings and a purse of gold, which it was known or believed in the country he generally wore or carried about him, which said opinion or belief of the neighbourhood, that both of them had been guilty of the said murder and robbery, has been since that time rendered the more credible, particularly with respect to him, the said Duncan Clerk, in so far as, although he was not possesst of any visible funds or effects which could enable him to stock a farm before the period of the said murder, yet soon thereafter he took and obtained a lease from Lord Bracco, of a farm called the Craggan, for which he was bound to pay thirty pounds Scots of yearly rent; as also thereafter he obtained a lease of the farm of Gleney, from ---- Farquharson of Inverey, for which at present he was bound to pay a yearly rent, or tack duty, of one hundred and five merks Scots, as appears from the judicial declaration of him, the said Duncan Clerk, to be hereafter more particularly taken notice of; and both of the said panels having been apprehended in the year one thousand seven hundred and fifty-three, for being guilty of the foresaid murder, and upon the twenty-third day of January last, one thousand seven hundred and fifty-four years, brought into the presence of the Right Honourable Alexander Fraser of Strichen and Hugh Dalrymple of Drummore, two of the Lords Commissioners of Justiciary each of them gave different and contradictory accounts of themselves, in so far as the said Duncan Clerk did then acknowledge, in presence of the said Judges, that he was on the hill of Gleneye, alongst with the said Alexander Bain Macdonald, both armed as above set forth, on the day the said Arthur Davies was amissing; that the said Alexander Macdonald fired a shot at some deer, but that about ten o'clock the said Duncan Clerk parted with him on the hill, and came back to his father's house, to which likewise the said Alexander Macdonald came the same evening, where he lodged or stayed all night; as also a paper containing a list of debts, beginning with the words, "I, Duncan Clerk, in Gleneye, was put in Perth Jail," and ending, "Angus Macdonald, 12 sh.," now marked on the back with the name and sirname of the said Lord Drummore, being exhibited to him the said Duncan Clerk, he acknowledged the same to be his handwriting, and that it contains a list of debts due to him when he was imprisoned, as is at more length to be seen in his said confession or declaration, signed by him and the said Lord Drummore. LIKEAS he the said Alexander Bain Macdonald did, upon the twenty-third day of January last, one thousand seven hundred and fifty-four years, in presence of the said Judges, acknowledge and declare, that one year, while he was Lord Bracco's forrester, he went with the said Duncan Clerk to the Hill of Gleneye, to search for deer, where he fired at them, but that about nine or ten o'clock in the forenoon, Duncan Clerk went home to his father's house, and thereafter the said Alexander Macdonald returned to his own house in Allanquoich, where he staid all that night, not seeing the said Duncan Clerk more that day, as is at more length to be seen in his said confession or declaration, signed by the said Lord Drummore, he having declared he could not write; both which confessions or declarations, with the list of debts above specified, said to be due to him, the said Duncan Clerk, as also, the hat mentioned to be found in summer one thousand seven hundred and fifty in the hill of Gleneye, are all now lodged in the hands of the Clerk to the Court of Justiciary, before which they are to be tried, that they may see the same: AT LEAST time and place aforesaid, the said Arthur Davies was murdered or bereaved of his life, and they, and each of them, or one or other of them, are guilty, actor or art and part of the said murder, aggravated as above set furth; all which, or part thereof, being found proven by the verdict of an Assize, before the Lords Justice General, Justice Clerk, and Commissioners of Justiciary, he, the said Duncan Terig alias Clerk, and Alexander Bain Macdonald, ought to be punished with the pains of law, to the terror of others to commit the like in time coming. (Signed) ALEX. HOME, A.D. PURSUERS. WILLIAM GRANT, of Prestongrange, Esq., His Majesties Advocate. Mr PATRICK HALDANE, and Mr ALEXANDER HOME, both His Majesties Solicitors. Mr ROBERT DUNDAS, Advocate. PROCURATORS in defence. Mr ALEXANDER LOCKHART, Mr ROBERT M'INTOSH, Advocates. The Libel being openly read in Court, and the panels interrogate thereupon, they both denied the same, and referred their defences to their Lawiers. LOCKHART, &c., for the panel, denying the libel, or any guilt or accession of the panels to the murder charged, pled that the panels were persons of good fame and reputation, and that as no cause of malice in them against Serjeant Davies was alleged, so the circumstances founded on in the indictment, though they were true, were not in any sort sufficient to infer a proof of the panels' guilt. And further, the panels would be able to prove a true and warrantable cause for going to the hill libelled on in arms, and that they went openly and avowedly; and that in the circumstances they were in, it was impossible they could have any wicked design against, or expect to have an opportunity of executing such a design against Serjeant Davies: That they were not so much as suspected of murdering him at the time of his being amissing, or for several months thereafter, when many different accounts were given, and suspicions raised and entertained concerning that matter. THEY also objected and alleged for the panels, that as murder was the only crime charged against them in this indictment, no vague or general allegation of robbery, or other crime or accusation against their characters, could be allowed to go to the knowledge of an assize, though they were noways apprehensive of the consequences of it, other than from the false and malicious reports, raised and propagated against them, since their commitment for the foresaid crime; and the panels had great reason to complain of the undue delays in bringing them to trial for this offence: In so far as, after they were committed for the same in September last, and had taken out letters of intimation, and upon expiry of the days, had also obtained letters of liberation, they were again committed upon a new warrant for alleged theft, upon which new commitment they raised new letters of intimation, and when the sixty days were just expiring, they were served with an indictment for the theft, which was fixed to within a few days of the expiry of the forty days allowed by law, and then allowed to drop; and after all, there was again a new warrant of commitment obtained against them for wearing the Highland dress; and last of all they were served with this indictment; all which steps plainly show the oppression they have met with, which the panels do by no means lay to the charge of the prosecutor, but are willing to allow the same to be owing to the malicious information of some private informer, which they hope to be able to make appear if they were allowed an exculpatory proof, and that very undue means had been used both before and since the citation of the witnesses to influence them to give evidence against the panels in this matter; and the panels, amongst many other things for their exculpation, would be able to prove, that after they returned from the hill upon the day upon which the Serjeant is said to have been murdered, he, the Serjeant, was seen with his party in that hill. So that it is impossible the panels could be the perpetrators of the murder. LORD ADVOCATE, &c., answered, that as the defence resolved altogether into a denial of the libel, it was sufficient for him to say, that according to the information he had received, such facts and circumstances would come out upon proof as would be sufficient to convince the Jury of the panels' guilt: That it was not meant that the circumstances libelled were sufficient without others to connect with them, the only intention of libelling upon these circumstances being to show the panels what written evidence was to be adduced against them: That he does not oppose the panels being allowed a proof of every fact and circumstance that may tend to their exculpation: That as to the delay complained of, the prosecutor can for himself say, that it is owing to no intention of his to oppress the panels; he had early information of the murder charged upon, and was very willing and desirous it might come to light. The panels were at last accused and committed for it, by the general voice of the country; and though at first the proof against them did not appear so pregnant, yet it was hoped, and was the general expectation of all in that part, that the murder would be brought to light. This was the reason of continuing the panels in confinement. And now that the prosecutor was ready to go on to trial, he hoped their Lordships would find the indictment relevant, and remit the panels to the knowledge of an assize, allowing them at the same time a proof of every circumstance that may appear necessary for their exculpation. THE LORDS Justice Clerk and Commissioners of Justiciary, having considered the indictment pursued at the instance of William Grant of Prestongrange, Esq., His Majesties Advocate for his Majesties interest, against Duncan Terig _alias_ Clerk, and Alexander Bain Macdonald, both now prisoners in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, panels, with the foresaid debate thereupon: They find the said indictment relevant to infer the pains of law; but allow the panels to prove all facts and circumstances that may tend to elide the indictment, or exculpate them, or either of them, from the guilt of the crime therein libelled: And remit the panels, with the indictment as found relevant, to the knowledge of an assize. (Signed) CH. ARESKINE, I.P.D. The Lords continue the diet at the instance of his Majesties Advocate, against the said two panels, till to-morrow at seven o'clock in the morning, and witnesses and assizers then to attend, each under the pain of law, and the panels to be carried back to prison. _CURIA JUSTICIARIA S. D. N. Regis tenta in Nova Sessionis Domo Burgi de Edinburgh undecimo die mensis Junij 1754, per honorabiles viros Carolum Areskine de Alva, Justiciarium Clericum, Dominum Gilbertum Elliot de Minto, Magistros Alexandrum Fraser de Strichen, Patricium Grant de Elchies, et Hugonem Dalrymple de Drummore, et Dominum Jacobum Ferguson de Killkerran, Commissionarios Justiciarios dict. S. D. N. Regis._ _Curia legittime affirmata_, INTRAN. DUNCAN TERIG _alias_ CLERK, and ALEXANDER BAIN MACDONALD, both prisoners in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, panels indicted and accused as in the former Sederunt. The Lords proceeded to make choice of the following persons to pass upon the assize of the said Duncan Terig alias Clerk, and Alexander Bain Macdonald; to wit,-- Archibald Wallace, merchant in Edinburgh. William Tod, senior, merchant there. Andrew Bonnar, merchant there. Robert Forrester, merchant there. Walter Hogg, merchant there. Alexander Crawford, baker in Edinburgh. John Heriot, candlemaker there. John Sword, merchant there. William Ormiston, bookbinder there. William Braidwood, candlemaker. William Sands, bookseller in Edinburgh. John Dalgleish, watchmaker there. George Gray, merchant there. John Welsh, goldsmith there. James Gilliland, goldsmith there. The above assize all lawfully sworn, and no objection to the contrary-- The panels and their procurators admitted the two judicial declarations libelled on, were emitted by them, before the two Judges therein named; and the said panels both now judicially adhere to the same, with this variation for Alexander Bain Macdonald, that it was a mistake in his said declaration, where it is said, that he went home to the house in Allanquoich, where he staid that night, and did not see Duncan Clerk any more that day after they parted on the hill, the true fact being, that he did not go home to the house in Allanquoich where he resided, till the night thereafter, and in the evening of that night went to the house of Duncan Clerk's father, where he found Duncan Clerk, and staid all night, and that the reason of his former mistake was, that he by himself went again to the hills upon the twenty-ninth in quest of the deer which he had wounded the preceding day, and returned to his own house the evening of the said twenty-ninth; and this admission is signed by the said Duncan Clerk, and by Mr Alexander Lockhart, procurator for the other panel, who declares he cannot write. (Signed) DUNCAN CLERK. ALEX. LOCKHART. Thereafter, His Majesty's Advocate for proof adduced the following witnesses; viz.-- JEAN GHENT, relict of Arthur Davies, serjeant in the regiment commanded by Lieutenant-General Guise, aged about thirty-three years, who being solemnly sworn, purged of malice and partial council, and interrogate: Depones, That she was married for the space of ten months to Serjeant Davies the day he was missing, and that in summer seventeen hundred and forty-nine, her husband, with eight private men under his command, marched from Aberdeen to Dubrach in Braemar, in the shire of Aberdeen, which was assigned to him as his station; and that there was another party of the same regiment whose head-quarters was at Aberdeen, stationed at the Spittle of Glenlee, within eight miles of Dubrach, under the command of a corporal: That the two parties did meet twice a-week in patrol, about half way between the foresaid two places: That her husband was a keen sportsman, and used to go out a-shooting or fishing generally every day; and when he went along with the party on patrol, sent the men home and followed his sport; and on other occasions went out a-shooting by himself alone: That her husband was a sober man, a good manager, and had saved money to the value of about fifteen guineas and a half, which he had in gold, and kept in a green silk purse, which he inclosed within a leather purse along with any silver he had: That besides this gold, he generally wore a silver watch in his pocket, and two gold rings upon one of his fingers, one of which was of pale yellow gold, and had a little lump of gold raised upon it in the form of a seal, with a gold stamp on the inside of the ring, and a weaved line like a worm round the upper side of the plate: That the other was a plain gold ring, which the deponent had got from David Holland, her first husband, with the letters D. H. on the inside, and had this posie on it, "When this you see remember me:" That the said David Holland was paymaster-serjeant in General Guise's regiment: And further depones, That the said Serjeant Davies commonly wore a pair of large silver buckles in his shoes, marked also with the same letters D. H. in the inside, which likewise had belonged to her said former husband, as also wore silver knee-buckles, and had two dozen silver buttons upon a double-breasted vest, made of stript lutstring: That he frequently had about him a folding penknife, that had a brown tortoise-shell handle, and a plate upon the end of it, on which was cut a naked boy, or some such device, with which he often sealed his letters: That one day when he was dressing some hooks while the deponent was by, she observed that he was cutting his hat with his penknife, and she went towards him, and asked him what he meant by cutting his hat? To which he answered, that he was cutting his name upon it: To which the deponent replied, she could not see what he could mean by putting his name upon a thing of no value, and pulled it out of his hand in a jocular way, but he followed her, and took the hat from her, and she observed that the A. was then cut out in the hat; and after he got it, she saw him cut out the letter D., which he did in a hurry, and which the deponent believed was occasioned by the toying that was between them concerning this matter, for when she observed it, she said to him you have made a pretty sort of work of it, by having misplaced the letters: To which he answered, that it was her fault, having caused him do it in a hurry. And the hat now upon the table, and which is lying in the clerk's hands, and referred to in the indictment, being shown to her, Depones, That to the best of her judgment and belief, that is the hat above mentioned: Depones, That she never has seen neither the said Serjeant, the gold purse, or silver purse, above mentioned, nor the buckles for his shoes and knees, watch, or penknife, since he marched from his quarters with the party at the time at which he is supposed to have been murdered: Depones, That on Thursday, being the day immediately preceding Michaelmas, being the twenty-eighth of September, one thousand seven hundred and forty-nine, her husband went out very early in the morning from Dubrach, and that four men of the party under his command soon after followed him, in order to meet the patrol from Glenshye, and in the afternoon before four o'clock, the four men returned to Dubrach, and acquainted the deponent that they had seen and heard him fire a shot, as they believed, at Tarmatans, but that he did not join company with them: That at the place appointed they met with a corporal and a party from Glenshee, and then retired home: Depones, That her husband never returned; that she has never met with any body that saw him after the party returned from the foresaid place, excepting the corporal that that day commanded the party from Glenshee, who told her that, after the forementioned party from Dubrach had gone away from the foresaid appointed place, Serjeant Davies came up to him all alone, upon which the corporal told him, he thought it was very unreasonable in him to venture upon the hill by himself, as for his part he was not without fear even when he had his party of four men along with him; to which Serjeant Davies answered, that when he had his arms and ammunition about him, he did not fear any body he could meet: Depones, That her husband, Serjeant Davies, made no secret of his having the gold above mentioned, but upon the many different occasions he had to pay and receive money, he used to take out his purse and show the gold; and that even when he was playing with children, he would frequently take out his purse and rattle it for their diversion, from which it was generally known by all the neighbourhood that the serjeant was worth money, and carried it about him: Depones, That from the second day after the serjeant and party went from Dubrach as aforesaid, when the deponent found he did not return, she did believe, and does believe at this day, that he was murdered; for that he and she lived together in as great amity and love as any couple could do that ever were married, and that he never was in use to stay away a night from her, and that it was not possible he could be under any temptation to desert, as he was much esteemed and beloved by all his officers, and had good reason to believe he would have been promoted to the rank of serjeant-major upon the first vacancy: Depones, That when her husband went away from Dubrach on the morning of the twenty-eighth of September aforesaid, he was dressed in a blue surtout coat, with a stripped silk vest, and teiken breeches and brown stockings: That he had in his purse fifteen guineas and a half in gold, a crown piece and three shillings in silver, his silver watch in his pocket, with a silver seal at it, his silver buckles in his shoes, and his silver buttons on his waistcoat, and the above mentioned rings on his fingers; and being asked how she came to know all these things were on him or about him when he went away as aforesaid? Depones, That she was privy and knew every thing that related to his money; and the night before the said twenty-eighth of September, the serjeant from Braemar had come to Dubrach, and in the deponent's presence had given some money which was gold to Serjeant Davies, who gave him silver that he had by him for it, to pay the party; and upon occasion of this, she saw the quantity of gold above mentioned, which was in her husband's possession, and that she saw the vest with the buttons and rings on his fingers, and also the watch, before he went away, he having in her presence put on the teiken drawers above mentioned, desired from her somewhat to keep the watch dry, upon which she gave him a piece of cloth, the said drawers being a little damp, in which he wrapt it, and put it into his pocket: Depones, That he had dark mouse-coloured hair, tied up with a black silk ribband behind, and wore a hat with a silver lace and silver button, marked with the letters D. A. on the outside of the crown of the hat: And the deponent verily believes, that the hat now shown to her, and above referred to, is the hat he took out with him: Depones, That he wore that day a pair of brogues which he had bespoke to be made so as they could fit buckles, and not to be tied with latches, conform to the common use of that country: That these brogues the deponent saw when they were first brought home from Glenshee: Depones, That a gun now exhibited and shown to the deponent, is the gun which her husband, Serjeant Davies, received in a present from Lieutenant Brydon, of the same regiment with him, and the gun which he always used when he went a-shooting, and which he carried out with him in the morning of the twenty-eighth of September, one thousand seven hundred and forty-nine aforesaid: That the stock of the gun is altered about the butt, and a plate that was on the butt-end is taken away, and the wood pared, but that she knows the barrel by a cross rent that is in it a little above the middle, and which her husband told her had been occasioned by his firing a shot when the gun was overloaded and the ball had stuck at that part of the barrel when he was loading her: Depones, That from the time her husband was quartered at Dubrach in the month of June to the foresaid twenty-eighth of September one thousand seven hundred and forty-nine, he was never absent a night from his command at Dubrach except one, that he went to the doctor of the regiment to take his advice about a strain, and he returned next morning: Depones, That upon the Monday after the Serjeant was believed to be murdered, the country was raised to make search for the body, but it was not found; and that she spoke to one of the prisoners, Clerk, whom she took to be a particular friend, to try if he could find the body, but it was not found: That afterwards the deponent went to the garrison in Braemar, and from that to the regiment: And being interrogate for the panels, whether her husband had received any information before the party marched out upon the day above mentioned that there were people in arms in that country where he was stationed? Depones, That her husband was stationed there, as she believes, because it was said that severals of the Highlanders had not delivered up their arms since the Rebellion, and wore the highland garb; but that she knows nothing of any particular information he had about that time, except that about the beginning of harvest, on a Sunday afternoon, a woman, who said she had been in the hill, came in where the Serjeant and the deponent were sitting at dinner, and said, that she had seen two men in highland clothes, and armed, lying at the mouth of a cave, who seemed to be herding two cows which she saw, and upon her coming near them, consulted among themselves whether they should not bind her lest she should return and advertise Serjeant Davies and his party; but however, she had got away, and had come immediately to give notice to the Serjeant and his party, whereupon he and a party of six men went up in quest of them, but found nobody, neither did the deponent hear any more of that matter afterwards, _Causa scientiæ patet_: And this is truth, as she shall answer to God; and declares she cannot write. (Signed) CH. ARESKINE. DONALD FARQUHARSON, in Glendee, married man, who being solemnly sworn, purged of malice and partial council, and interrogate, depones, That in summer one thousand seven hundred and forty-nine, Arthur Davies, late serjeant in General Guise's regiment, was with a serjeant's command of soldiers stationed in Dubrach, in Glendee, in Braemar, in Aberdeenshire; and the Serjeant, with his wife, the preceding witness, stayed in the house of Michael Farquharson, the deponent's father, where the deponent also stayed: Depones, That the Serjeant was a sober well behaving man, very civil to the country, and, so far as the deponent knew, had the good-will of the country: That he was a good manager of his money; and the deponent has seen with him a good deal of gold, which he commonly kept in a long purse, either blue or green, the deponent does not remember which, and he had also another purse, in which he kept his silver: That he had a silver watch, with a seal hanging at it, and silver buckles in his shoes, and knees of his breeches: That the deponent has seen two vests with him, one with a white stripe, and the other of a roe's skin; and that he had a set of silver buttons for a vest, which he used with the one or other as he had occasion: That he had also two rings, which he told the deponent were gold, the one of them a large coarse ring, with a knob on the one side of it, either of the shape of a seal or a heart, the deponent does not remember which: Depones, That when Serjeant Davies went a-shooting or fishing, he was commonly dressed in one of the above vests, and a blue meet upper coat, or surtout, with highland brogues, which he had purchased for the purpose, and had caused to be made so as to be tied with silver buckles: Depones, That on the above gold ring with the knob, there was upon the upper side of the knob some scores that the deponent did not understand the meaning of: Depones, That the Serjeant was wont frequently to take out his purse, either in paying or receiving money, or some time even in playing with children; and that when he went a-hunting or shooting, he always wore a laced hat, with a silver button: Depones, That the last time the deponent saw him was on Wednesday the twenty-seventh day of September, one thousand seven hundred and forty-nine, the deponent having gone that day to the fair at Kirkmichael, eighteen miles from his father's house, and did not return till Saturday thereafter: Depones, That at his return, passing by the house where the soldiers were quartered, one of them named Patrick Ogilvie, asked the deponent whether he had seen Serjeant Davies at the fair? and the deponent having answerd that he did not see him, and that certainly he had not been there, or he would have seen him, Ogilvie then said he was afraid of him, for that he had gone away upon the Thursday to meet a patrol from Glenshee, and had not yet returned; that they supposed he had gone with that patrol to the fair, but that since he was not there, he suspected he had been murdered; and the deponent never saw him alive since that time: Depones, That the captain of that command to whom the Serjeant belonged, hearing that he was amissing, sent a party of men on the Sunday to Dubrach to search for his body, and went with them for three or four following days, but without any success: Depones, That in the month of June seventeen hundred and fifty, the deponent was told by the people in his father's house, that Alexander Macpherson, alias M'Gillas, had been there inquiring for him, and wanted much to see him, and desired the deponent would go to his master's sheilling in Glenconie, about two miles' distance from Dubrach, and that he wanted much to speak to him: That after some days the deponent went to him, when Macpherson told him that he was greatly troubled with an apparition, the ghost of the deceased Serjeant Davies, who insisted that he should bury his bones; and that he having declined to bury them, the ghost insisted that he should apply to the deponent, saying that he was sure Donald Farquharson would help to bury his bones: That the deponent could not believe that he had seen such an apparition, upon which Macpherson desired him to go along with him, and he would show him the bones, and the place where he had found them: That the deponent went along with him, which he did the rather that he thought it might possibly be true, and if it was, he did not know but the apparition might trouble himself: Depones, That they accordingly found the bones in a peat-moss, where peats had been casten above ground, and near to the top of a hill: That the place was distant from Dubrach between two and three miles, between Glenchristie and Glenconie, and about half a mile from the road the patroling parties commonly take from Dubrach to Glenshee: That the spot where the body was lying had the surface of the ground entire, and no peats had been casten there: That the flesh had been mostly consumed from the bones, and the head separated from the body, and the hair lying by itself, separated from the head; and depones, that the hair was of the same colour with the Serjeant's hair, a mouse colour: That they also found some blue cloth, all torn in rags, some of it under the body, and some of it lying by the body; and it appeared to the deponent to be of the same kind of cloth with that of the blue coat that the Serjeant commonly wore when he went a-shooting: Depones, That the bones were not all lying together, but were scattered asunder, particularly some of the joints of his arms, and one of his legs; and that some of them were scattered at the distance of several yards: Depones, That Macpherson told him that when he first found the bones, which was about eight days before, that they were lying farther off, under a bank, and he drew them out with his staff: Depones, That they also found a pair of brogues, which appeared to the deponent to be of the same kind with what the Serjeant wore, only with this difference, that the taggs for the buckles were cut away, which seemed to have been done with a knife: Depones, That he asked Macpherson whether the apparition had told him by whom he had been murdered: That Macpherson said he had asked the question, and the apparition answered, that if he had not asked him, he would have power to have told him: That the deponent also asked him if the apparition had given him any orders about carrying his bones to a churchyard: Depones, That Macpherson said he had given no answer, and thereupon they agreed to bury him in that place; and accordingly they dug a hole in the moss, with the shaft of a shovel that Macpherson had, and buried the bones there, and laid a part of the blue cloth under the bones, and a part of it above it, and covered all with some turfs that they had tore up from the moss; and being showed a fusee, depones, that one day the Serjeant and the deponent went out a-deer-hunting, and the Serjeant, in loading his gun, which was either a French or a Spanish piece, happened to put in a ball that was too large for the bore, so that he could not, with the ram-rod, drive it down to the powder: That the deponent advised him to go to his father's sheilling to get a stronger ram-rod; but the Serjeant, being impatient to go about his diversion, fired the fusee, and cracked the barrel about the middle; and having examined the fusee now produced, observed that the barrel is cracked about the same place, and, so far as appears to him, may be the same barrel: Depones, That there appears to be some alterations made upon the stock since the Serjeant had it: That the but was thicker than it is now, and clad with iron at the end; and there was also another ring for the keeping of the ram-rod, other than that now shown him: Depones, That the gun was shown to the deponent on Wednesday last by James Growar, son to Donald Growar in Glendee, who told him that he found it in the hill in sight of Glenconie: Depones, That after Serjeant Davies was killed or amissing as aforesaid, he saw yellow rings on Elizabeth Downie's fingers, spouse to the prisoner, Duncan Terig alias Clerk, one of which had a knob upon it, as Serjeant Davies's ring also had, but does not remember the shape of either of these knobs: Depones, That he asked her whether it was gold, and she said it was: Depones, That he saw this ring upon Elizabeth Downie's finger before she was married to the prisoner; but it was then reported in the country that he was in suit of her for marriage, and has at several times, before and since Serjeant Davies was amissing, seen other yellow rings upon her fingers, but never saw the ring with the knob upon her finger till after the Serjeant was amissing, nor never saw it on her finger after she was married; and being asked whether it did not strike him, when he saw the ring with the knob on it upon Elizabeth Downie's hand, that it was Serjeant Davies's ring, Depones, that it did not; and further depones, that he has known Elizabeth Downie change her rings every other year: Depones, That after she was married, the deponent asked her if she had a gold ring, and she answered she never had one but one which was her mother's, which made the deponent suppose that the said ring with the knob had been her mother's; and depones, that the panel, her husband, was in prison when he asked her this question: Depones, That at first there was a report in the country that Serjeant Davies had deserted, then it was supposed that he had been killed by the thieves, but last of all, the report was, that he had been killed by the prisoners, and that has continued to be the report of the country for these three years: And being asked what he took to be the grounds of that report, Depones, that he took it to be, that Macdonald, as Lord Bracco's forrester, had a warrant for carrying guns for killing of deer, and he carried Clerk alongst with him, and none other of the country had any warrant to carry arms; but he heard that some of the people in the country suspected that the ring with the knob that he had seen on Elizabeth Downie's finger was Serjeant Davies's ring; and being interrogate as to the character of the two panels, depones, that he has heard Clerk habite and repute a sheep-stealer, but that he never heard any thing of Macdonald, but that he once broke the chest of one Corbie, and took some money out of it: Depones, That he never heard Clerk get the character of a good deer-stalker, though he could shoot wild fowl: Depones, That Alexander Macpherson, before mentioned, once served the deponent's father, and is accounted an honest lad; but on the panel's interrogatory, Depones, that he has been charged with telling of stories, and that all is not to be believed that he says; though that is the general character, the deponent knows no reason for it: Depones, That Duncan Clerk once pursued his accusers before a Sheriff Court at Braemar, and freed himself at that time, and, as he heard, got some mends of his accusers, but what it was he knows not: That the only particular act of theft he heard him accused of, was the stealing of a parcel of sheep from Alexander Farquharson in Inverey, and which was the ground of the process before mentioned before the Sheriff: Depones, That the Sabbath before the Serjeant was amissing, a woman came to the deponent's father's house, and told them that, coming through the hills, she had seen four thieves in arms, who had separated fourteen of his father's cattle, upon which the Serjeant, with a party, went in quest of them immediately, but could find none of them, they having, it seems, gone off and left the cattle: Depones, That upon the Friday, the twenty-ninth of September, the corporal stationed at Glenshee met with the deponent at the fair of Kirkmichael, while the deponent was buying a pair of shoes, and he told the corporal that they were for Serjeant Davies, and the corporal told him that he had parted with the Serjeant the day before at the Water of Benow; the Serjeant, after that, was going to the hill to get a shot of the deer; which Water of Benow is about half a mile's distance from the place where the patrolling parties used to meet: Depones, That the prisoner Clerk was a common dealer in buying of sheep and cattle; and the deponent has seen him both buying and paying the price, and his father was reputed one of the richest tenants in Inverey's grounds. _Causa scientiæ patet_; and this is truth, as he shall answer to God. (Signed) DONALD FARQUHARSON. P. GRANT. ALEXANDER M'PHERSON _alias_ M^CGILLAS, in Inverey, being solemnly sworn, purged of malice and partial council, and interrogate, aged twenty-six years, unmarried, Depones, That in summer one thousand seven hundred and fifty, he found lying in a moss bank in the hill of Christie, a human body, at least the bones of a human body, of which the flesh was mostly consumed, and he believed it to be the body of Serjeant Davies, because it was reported in the country that he had been murdered in that hill the year before. That when he first found this body, there was a bit of blue cloth upon it pretty entire, which he took to be what is called English cloth; he also found the hair of the deceased, which was of a dark mouse colour, and tied about with a black ribbon: That he also observed some pieces of a stripped stuff, and found also lying there a pair of brogues, which had been made with latches for buckles, which had been cut away by a knife: That he, by help of his staff, brought out the body, and laid it upon plain ground, in doing whereof some of the bones were separated one from another: Depones, That for some days he was in a doubt what to do, but meeting with John Growar in the moss, he told John what he had found, and John bid him tell nothing of it, otherways he would complain of the deponent to John Shaw of Daldownie, upon which the deponent resolved to prevent Growar's complaint, and go and tell Daldownie of it himself; and which having accordingly done, Daldownie desired him to conceal the matter, and go and bury the body privately, as it would not be carried to a kirk unkent, and that the same might hurt the country, being under the suspicion of being a rebel country: Depones, That some few days thereafter, he acquainted Donald Farquharson, the preceding witness, of his having seen the body of a dead man in the hill, which he took to be the body of Serjeant Davies: That Farquharson at first doubted the truth of his information, till the deponent having told him that a few nights before when he was in bed, a vision appeared to him as of a man clad in blue, who told the deponent, "I am Serjeant Davies;" but that before he told him so, the deponent had taken the said vision at first appearance to be a real living man, a brother of Donald Farquharson's: That the deponent rose from his bed, and followed him to the door, and then it was, as has been told, that he said he was Serjeant Davies who had been murdered in the Hill of Christie, about near a year before, and desired the deponent to go to the place he pointed at, where he would find his bones, and that he might go to Donald Farquharson, and take his assistance to the burying of him: That upon giving Donald Farquharson this information, Donald went along with him, and finding the bones as he informed Donald, and having then buried it with the help of a spade which he the deponent had alongst with him: And for putting what is above deponed upon out of doubt, Depones, that the above vision was the occasion of his going by himself to see the dead body, and which he did before he either spoke to John Growar, Daldownie, or any other body: And further Depones, that while he was in bed another night after he had first seen the body by himself, but had not buried it, the vision again appeared naked, and minded him to bury the body; and after that he spoke to the other folks above mentioned, and at last complied, and buried the bones above mentioned: Depones, That upon the vision's first appearance to the deponent in his bed, and after going out of the door, and being told by it he was Serjeant Davies, the deponent asked him who it was that had murdered him, to which it made this answer, that if the deponent had not asked him, he might have told him, but as he had asked him, he said he either could not or would not, but which of the two expressions the deponent cannot say; but at the second time the vision made its appearance to him, the deponent renewed the same question, and then the vision answered, that it was the two men now in the panel that had murdered him: And being further interrogate in what manner the vision disappeared from him first and last, Depones, That after the short interviews above mentioned, the vision at both times disappeared and vanished out of his sight in the twinkling of an eye; and that in describing the panels by the vision above mentioned as his murderers, his words were, Duncan Clerk and Alexander Macdonald: Depones, That the conversation betwixt the deponent and the vision was in the Irish language: Depones, That several times in the harvest before the Martinmas after seeing the said vision, he was applied to by Duncan Clerk, the panel, then to enter home to his service at that time, which accordingly he did, and staid in his service just a year, and he being in the hill together with Duncan Clerk, spying a young cow, desired the deponent to shoot it; and tho Duncan did not bid him carry it home after it should be shot, yet the deponent understood that to be the purpose, when Duncan desired him to shoot it, and which the deponent refused to do, adding, that it was such thoughts as these were in his head when he murdered Serjeant Davies, upon which some angry expressions happened between Duncan and the deponent; but when the deponent insisted upon it that he could not deny the murder, Duncan fell calm, and desired the deponent to say nothing of that matter, and that he would be a brother to him, and give him every thing he stood in need of, and particularly would help him to stock a farm when he took one; and the time of deponing, the deponent exhibited a paper, which is marked on the back by the Lord Examiner, the deponent averring he cannot write: And depones, That the said paper was put in his hands by the said Duncan Clerk, who at the time told him it was a premium of twenty pounds Scots to hold his tongue of what he knew of Serjeant Davies: Depones, That while the deponent was in the panel Duncan Clerk's service, and about Lammas seventeen hundred and fifty-one, he showed to the deponent a long green silk purse, and that he showed also to the deponent the contents which were in it, _viz._ sixteen guineas in gold, and some silver: And being interrogate what was the occasion of showing this purse and money to the deponent, Depones, it was one of two which he does not remember, either he had come from Aberdeen with money, which he had got for his wool, or was going to Badenoch to buy sheep: Depones, That he saw upon the finger of Elizabeth Downie, the panel Duncan Clerk's wife, a yellow ring, which she told him was gold, with a plate on the outside of it, in the form of a seal, and that he saw it on her finger six or eight weeks before her marriage; and that after her marriage, she having one day taken it off her finger, he saw upon the inside of it a stamp, but what that stamp is he does not know. And being interrogate, Depones, That he had a suspicion that this ring was Serjeant Davies's ring, having heard it reported in the country that Serjeant Davies had such a ring upon his finger when he was murdered, but does not remember his having told his suspicion to any body; and being further interrogate, depones, That since the panel Duncan's imprisonment, the deponent was solicited by Donald Clerk, the panel Duncan's brother, to conceal what he knew when he came to give evidence; but this was after his having first solicited the deponent to leave the country, that he might not give evidence, and upon the deponent's saying he offered him nothing to leave the country with; but then it was that Donald proposed his not giving true evidence, adding, that of every penny Donald was worth, the deponent should have the half; and being interrogate, at the desire of the Jury, if ever he had asked payment of the twenty pounds contained in the above-mentioned paper produced by him, Depones, That he once did, shortly after the term of payment, to which Duncan answered, that it would be as well to let it ly in his hands, to which he was satisfied, and that he never asked payment of the annual rent; and being further interrogate, Depones, that before the deponent went home to the panel's service at Martinmas one thousand seven hundred and fifty, it was well known and reported in the country that the bones of the dead body found upon the above mentioned hill had been buried by the deponent and Donald Farquharson, as also was the story of the vision or apparition whereof the deponent had told Donald Farquharson; and being interrogate for the panel, Depones, that he not only told the story of the vision or apparition to Donald Farquharson, as above mentioned, but that he also told it to John Growar and Daldownie before he mentioned it to Donald Farquharson: Depones, That there were folks living with him at the sheilling the time the vision appeared to him as above, but that he told it to none of them; and adds, that Isobel M'Hardie, in Inveray, a woman then in the sheilling with him, has told him since, that she saw such a vision as the deponent has above described, and has told him herself so much; and upon the panel's interrogatory, depones, that upon the vision's appearing to him, it described the place where he would find the bones so exactly, that he went within a yard of the place where they lay upon his first going out: And this is the truth, as he shall answer to God; and depones he cannot write. (Signed) JA. FERGUSON. Compeared Duncan Campbell, one of the captains of the City Guard of Edinburgh, and was solemnly sworn, as he should answer to God, that he should interrogate in the Irish language such of the witnesses as should be afterwards adduced in this trial, as could not speak or understand the English language, and reduce the depositions, as they should emit the same, faithfully in the English language into writing. (Signed) DUNCAN CAMPBELL. JA. FERGUSON. ISOBEL M'HARDIE in Inverey, who being solemnly sworn, purged of malice and partial council, aged forty and upwards, married, examined and interrogate: Depones, That one night about four years ago, when the deponent was lying in one end of the shealling, and Alexander M'Pherson, who was then her servant, lying in the other, she saw something naked come in at the door, which frighted her so much that she drew the clothes over her head: That when it appeared, it came in in a bowing posture, and that next morning she asked M'Pherson what it was that had troubled them the night before? to which he answered, she might be easy, for that it would not trouble them any more. _Causa scientiæ patet._ And this is truth, as she shall answer to God. And this deposition is subscribed by the said sworn interpreter. (Signed) DUNCAN CAMPBELL. JA. FERGUSON. Compeared, JAMES MACDONALD in Allanquoich, solemnly sworn, purged of malice and partial council, aged thirty-one years, married, examined and interrogate: Depones, That it is about two or three years since Clerk, the panel, was married to Elizabeth Downie, Alexander Downie's daughter, and hearing it reported in the country, that he should have said, that if his son-in-law had not killed Serjeant Davies, Serjeant Davies would have killed him: That the deponent asked of Alexander Downie, about lentron last, whether he had said so? and Alexander Downie acknowledged to him that he had said so: And the deponent heard that the occasion of this report in the country was, that Alexander Downie being at a miln, some of the people there upbraided Alexander Downie with his son-in-law Clerk, the panel, his having killed the said Serjeant: And Downie said, as the deponent heard, what could his son-in-law do, since it was in his own defence: Depones further, That he saw upon Elizabeth Downie, Clerk's wife, her thumb, a yellow ring, which he took to be gold; and this he saw after her marriage, having a little knap upon it like into a seal, having scores or lines round about it, and this he saw frequently upon her hand, which ring the deponent suspected to be Serjeant Davies's ring, and it was so suspected in the country. _Causa scientiæ patet._ And this is the truth: And says further, That Clerk the panel, was reputed to be guilty of thieving in the country, but that he heard nothing to the prejudice of M'Donald's character: And being interrogate for the panel, depones, That he never heard Clerk the panel, guilty of any particular theft except one of a parcel of sheep, from one Alexander Farquharson in Inverey, about nine or ten years ago. All which is truth, as he shall answer to God; and depones he cannot write. (Signed) ALEX^R FRASER. Compeared PETER M'NAB in Wester Micras, aged fifty-seven years, solemnly sworn, purged of malice and partial council, examined and interrogate: Depones, That it is now about four years ago, since he heard it reported in the country, that the two men, Clerk and Macdonald, the panels, were the people who murdered Serjeant Davies, and a little time after Elizabeth Downie was married to Clerk the panel: The deponent happened to be in Alexander Downie her father's house, and then saw upon her finger a ring, pretty massy, having a lump upon it pretty large; and the deponent got the ring into his hand, and the lump appeared to the deponent to be something in the shape of a heart: And the deponent asked Elizabeth Downie how she came by that ring? to which she answered, that she had bought it from one James Lauder, a merchant: The deponent replied, that he thought it was cheap and worth more money, and that it was reported in the country, that the said Elizabeth Downie was wearing rings of Serjeant Davies's, but he never saw her have any but that one: And further adds, that he never heard any other suspected of the murder of Serjeant Davies but the panels, except once, that it was suspected to have been done by caterers; and he also heard, for a twelvemonth after Serjeant Davies was amissing, that he had deserted; nevertheless the general report or belief of the country was, that the two panels had murdered him. _Causa scientiæ patet._ And this is the truth, as he shall answer to God. (Signed) PETER MACNAB. ALEX^R FRASER. Compeared ISOBEL EGO, in Teantoul, aged eighteen years, or thereby, solemnly sworn, purged of malice and partial council, examined and interrogate by the sworn interpreter aforesaid, Depones, That about four years ago she found upon the Hill of Christie a silver-laced hat, with a silver-button on it; which hat she carried home to her master, Alexander Macdonald in Inverey, and delivered it to him. _Causa scientiæ patet._ And this is the truth, as she shall answer to God; and depones she cannot write. And this deposition is subscribed by the foresaid sworn interpreter. (Signed) DUNCAN CAMPBELL. ALEX^R FRASER. Compeared ALEXANDER MACDONALD, in Inverey, aged thirty years and upwards, married; solemnly sworn, purged of malice and partial council, examined and interrogate, Depones, That about four or five years ago, after Serjeant Davies was amissing, his servant-maid, Isobel Ego, the immediate preceding witness, being sent to the hills of Inverey to look for some horses, when the said servant-maid returned, she told the deponent's wife, as she told him, that she had come home richer than she went out, having found in the hill a silver-laced hat: That his wife, upon seeing the said hat, had no peace of mind, believing it to be Serjeant Davies's hat, and desired it might be put out of her sight: That the deponent, who was abroad, having come home, took the hat and put it below a stone near to a burn which run by his shealling, where his wife then was: That the hat was carried away from under the said stone, but who it was that carried it off the deponent knows not. _Causa scientiæ patet._ And this is the truth, as he shall answer to God; and depones he cannot write. And this deposition is signed by the said sworn interpreter. (Signed) DUNCAN CAMPBELL. ALEX^R FRASER. DONALD DOWNIE, at the miln of Inverey, aged thirty years or thereby; solemnly sworn, purged of malice and partial council, by the sworn interpreter aforesaid, and by him interrogate, Depones, That he was loading his horse with corn, to be carried into the barnyeard at the miln of Inverey, upon that day that Serjeant Davies was amissing: That between the midday and sunset he heard three gunshots, but cannot tell from what particular place the sound came: That the three shots were pretty near one another, and all within less than a quarter of an hour. Depones, That the Hill of Christie, libelled, is about a mile's distance to the entrance thereof from the place where he then was, and that it will be at least three miles from there to the place where the bones were found. Depones, That he was told that Isobel Ego, a preceding witness, found a hat in the Hill of Christie, which she brought home and delivered to her master: That he heard her master hid it at the Burnside, under a stone: That some time thereafter some of the bairns of Inverey found the said hat, and brought it to his the deponent's father's house, where he saw it; and the hat libelled being shown to him, depones, he having inspected it, That it is the same hat which was so brought to his father's house, and pointed out the letters D. A. thereon at deponing, and that he himself delivered the said hat to James Small, factor on the estate of Strowan. _Causa scientiæ patet._ And this is the truth, as he shall answer to God. (Signed) DONALD DOWNIE. ALEX^R FRASER. JOHN COOK, barrackmaster at Braemar Castle, aged thirty years and upwards, _solutus_, solemnly sworn, purged of malice and partial council, examined and interrogate, Depones, That the hat libelled now shown to him, was delivered by Donald Downie, the preceding witness, to James Small, before designed, at the house of one Charles, in Castletown of Braemar, and was delivered to the said deponent by Mr Small, to be kept by him till it should be called for; and that he brought it along with him to town, and he knows it to be the same by the letters D. A. which he often observed thereon, and now at deponing: Depones, That after Serjeant Davies was amissing, a report sprung up, that one Levingston, a soldier, having a prejudice at him, had murdered him; but, upon enquiry, it being found, who had had leave of absence, returned to the garrison the afternoon of that day on which the Serjeant was amissing; the report thereon ceased, and about ten days thereafter it was reported that the Serjeant had been murdered by two young men about Inverey. And about a year and a half after the Serjeant had been amissing, he heard Duncan Clerk the panel named as one of them, but never heard any thing of Alexander Macdonald, the other panel, till he was committed prisoner to the Castle of Braemar in September last. _Causa scientiæ patet._ And this is the truth, as he shall answer to God. (Signed) JOHN COOK. HEW DALRYMPLE. Compeared JOHN GRANT, in Altalaat, aged forty years and upwards, married, solemnly sworn, purged of malice and partial council, examined and interrogate: Depones, That both the panels lodged in his house upon the night of the twenty-seventh of September, one thousand seven hundred and forty-nine: That next morning they breakfasted, after the sun rising, with him; and as he was going to a Michaelmas fair, when he came out of his house, he looked and saw the two panels at his door, each having a gun in his hand, and they told him that they intended to go a deer hunting, but did not mention to what place: That the deponent accordingly went to the fair, and returned in about four days home, and then heard that a soldier who had been upon some of the hills was amissing, and in a very short time heard it was Serjeant Davies: That at first it was rumoured that some of the Serjeant's own men had killed him; and afterwards that he had been killed by some outlaws; and after that it was clattered that the panels had killed him: Depones, That the night the panels lodged with him as above, one of them talked of going the next morning in quest of horses for leading in corn, without mentioning from where. _Causa scientiæ patet._ And this is the truth, as he shall answer to God. This deposition signed by Duncan Campbell, sworn interpreter. (Signed) DUNCAN CAMPBELL. HEW DALRYMPLE. JOHN GRANT, son to the said John Grant in Altalaat, aged twenty years, solemnly sworn, purged of malice and partial council, by the sworn interpreter aforesaid, and by him interrogate: Depones, That he knows the panels, and that they lodged with his father the night of the twenty-seventh of September, one thousand seven hundred and forty-nine: That next morning the panels, each of them having a gun, and Duncan Clerk a grey plaid about him, went up the water to the hill of Gleneye, which is about a mile and a half distant from the hill of Christie: That the road they took was not the direct road to the hill last named; and before they went they said they were going a deer hunting and for horses to lead in their corns: That three or four days after this, they heard that Serjeant Davies was amissing, and that he was killed in the hill of Christie; but the last part of this he did not hear till some time, a year or two thereafter. _Causa scientiæ patet._ And this is truth, as he shall answer to God. (Signed) DUNCAN CAMPBELL. HEW DALRYMPLE. ELSPETH MACARA, in Inverey, late servant to Duncan Clerk, one of the panels, aged thirty-two years; solemnly sworn, purged of malice and partial council, as aforesaid, and interrogate, Depones, That she was fellow-servant, about three years ago, with Alexander Macgillies, a preceding witness, in Duncan Clerk, the panel's house: That she once saw in the said Alexander's hands a yellow ring, but knows not if it was gold, with a knob upon it of the same metal; which ring she frequently observed on the finger of the wife of the said Duncan Clerk. And further depones, That the said knob was bigger above and smaller below, and shaped something like a heart. _Causa scientiæ patet._ And this is truth, as she shall answer to God. This deposition signed by the above interpreter. (Signed) DUNCAN CAMPBELL. HEW DALRYMPLE. JOHN GROWAR, in Inverey, aged fifty years and upwards, a widower; who being solemnly sworn, purged of partial council, and interrogate, Depones, That upon the 28th of September, 1749, the deponent having gone to a glen called Glenconie, to bring home his horses to lead in the corns, he met with Serjeant Davies, of whom he had some acquaintance before; and he had at that time a good deal of conversation with him, particularly with relation to a tartan coat which the Serjeant had observed the deponent to drop, and after strictly enjoining him not to use it again, dismissed him, instead of making him prisoner: That the deponent went home with his horses, and saw no more of the Serjeant, who was alone; and that their meeting was about an hour after sunrising, to the best of the deponent's knowledge: That some time thereafter, about four years ago, he was told by Alexander Macpherson _alias_ M'Gillies, a former witness, that the Serjeant's ghost had appeared to him, M'Gillies, and had desired him to bury his, the Serjeant's, bones, and to bring Donald Farquharson, also a former witness, along with him; but M'Gillies at that time did not mention the place where the bones were to be found, but afterwards told the deponent that the Serjeant's bones were found in the place to which the ghost had directed him; and one day the said M'Gillies and the deponent being in the hill together, he, M'Gillies, pointed to him the place where they were found, which was not far from the place in which he had formerly met Serjeant Davies, upon the 28th of September aforesaid; and that two years ago, in labouring time, the said M'Gillies told him that the said ghost came to M'Gillies's master's house, and the door flung open, and took M'Gillies out of the house, and told him that the panels had been his murderers. Depones, That about two years ago he had a conversation with M'Gillies, who told him, that one day coming from the hill with Duncan Clerk, the panel, then his master, and another time when in bed, he had a conversation with the said Duncan concerning Serjeant Davies's murder, and all the answer Duncan made was, What can you say of an unfortunate man? Depones, That about ten or eleven years ago, Duncan Clerk, the panel, was said to have stolen some sheep from one Alexander Farquharson, in Inverey, and there was a Sheriff-court held upon that matter at the Mill of Achindryne, in which nothing was found against the said Duncan, but John Ewes alias M'Donald was fined, and the deponent became cautioner for him, that he should never speak about it again. _Causa scientiæ patet._ And this is the truth, as he shall answer to God. (Signed) JOHN GREWER. HEW DALRYMPLE. ANGUS CAMERON, in Easter Finart, Rannach, aged thirty years and upwards, solemnly sworn, purged of malice and partial council, by Duncan Campbell, sworn interpreter, and by him interrogate, Depones, That he was in Braemaar four years past at Michaelmas last; that is, in the year 1749: That about an hour and a half before sun-set on the 28th of September, he being on the hill of Galcharn, on the side thereof, saw a man in a blue coat, with a gun in his hand, with a hat which had a white edging about it, he knows not whether it was silver or not; and saw other two men, one of whom was the panel Duncan Clerk, who he had seen upon former occasions, and another man of a lower stature than the said Duncan Clerk, coming up the hill towards the first mentioned man, who was distant from him, the deponent, about a gunshot, upon, or near the top of a hill opposite to him, the deponent, the name of which he does not know, he being a stranger in that country; that there was another man along with him, the deponent, named Duncan Cameron, and that they were waiting there for other travellers, and his said companion is dead about three years ago: Depones, That he saw Duncan Clerk, the panel, and his companion, whom he did not, nor does not know, meet with the man clad in blue, as aforesaid; and after they had stood for some time together, he saw Duncan Clerk, the panel, strike at the man in blue, as he thought, with his naked hand only, upon the breast; but, upon the stroke, he heard the man struck cry out, and clap his hand upon the place struck, turn about, and go off: That the panel Duncan Clerk and the other man stood still for a little, and then followed after the man in blue, and saw him, the said Duncan and the other man, each of whom had a gun, fire at the man in blue: That the two shots were very near one another; and immediately upon them, the man in blue fell: That Duncan Clerk, the panel, had upon him a grey plaid, with some red in it, whom he saw that same day, and his companion along with him, (but spoke to none of them,) about mid-day, and that they passed him as he was lying upon the same hill; and that both times that same day, that he had occasion to see the said Duncan Clerk and his companion, he was lying in a little hollow upon the side of the said hill of Galcharn, in such a manner, as he thinks, neither the said Duncan Clerk, or his companion did see him: And depones, That there was no long heather in the said hollow where he was lying: Depones, That after the man in blue fell, in manner above mentioned, the panel Duncan Clerk, and his companion, went up to him; and as it was the deponent's opinion the man was dead, he saw them stoop down, and handle his body; and while they were so employed, he, the deponent, and his companion, got up, and made off: Depones, That he did not mention any thing of the premises to any body for nine months or a twelve month, and then he spoke of it to one Donald Cameron, and to Duncan Cameron, a different man from him above mentioned, who advised him to say nothing of it, as it might get ill-will to himself, and bring trouble on the country; some people that he told it to said, that people would not believe him, but rather think he was telling lies: That it was six months after what he saw, and has deponed upon, that he heard that Serjeant Davies was amissing. And being interrogate for the panels, depones, That he came to the said hill of Galcharn, and lay down in the hollow about two hours after sun-rising; and depones, That he and his companion were, the night before the twenty-eighth of September aforesaid, in Glenbruar Braes, which is about ten miles distant from the hill of Galcharn; and that he left these braes about the end of said night; and that the travellers that he expected to pass that day were Donald Cameron, who was afterwards hanged, together with some of the said Donald's companions from Lochaber. _Causa scientiæ patet._ And this is the truth, as he shall answer to God. This deposition signed by the sworn interpreter aforesaid. (Signed) DUNCAN CAMPBELL. HEW DALRYMPLE. DUNCAN CAMERON, in Dunan, aged twenty-eight years, unmarried, solemnly sworn, purged of malice and partial council, examined and interrogate, Depones, That in the summer after he had heard that one Serjeant Davies was amissing, Angus Cameron, a preceding witness, told the deponent that he saw Duncan Clerk, and another person unknown, shoot a man in Braemaar, whom the said Angus, by his dress, believed to be a serjeant or officer; upon which the deponent said he did not want to hear any more on that subject. _Causa scientiæ patet._ And this is the truth, as he shall answer to God. (Signed) DUNCAN CAMERON. GILB. ELLIOT. DONALD DOW CAMERON, in Milntown of Ashintilly, Strathardle, aged forty-four years, married; who being solemnly sworn, and purged of partial council, by Duncan Campbell, sworn interpreter aforesaid, and by him interrogate, Depones, That in the summer after he heard that a serjeant in Braemaar was amissing, whose name he thinks was Davidson, or something like that, Angus Cameron, a preceding witness, told the deponent that he had seen Duncan Clerk the panel, and another man along with him, shoot a man, like a gentleman or an officer, upon a hill in Braemaar: That upon this the deponent told the said Angus Cameron that he did not want to hear more any such stories, nor to have such a report raised of the country; and the deponent at the same time advised Angus to keep the thing secret, and to speak no more on the subject. _Causa scientiæ patet._ And this is the truth, as he shall answer to God. This deposition signed by the sworn interpreter aforesaid. (Signed) DUNCAN CAMPBELL. GILB. ELLIOT. LAUCHLAN M'INTOSH, in Inverey, aged near thirty years, unmarried, solemnly sworn, purged of malice and partial council, examined and interrogate by the sworn interpreter aforesaid, Depones, That the panel, Duncan Clerk's father, his house is within less than a quarter of a mile of the deponent's house: That upon the afternoon of that day in which Serjeant Davies was amissing, as he thinks, or at least the afternoon of the day following, he cannot be altogether positive which, he saw Duncan Clerk, panel, come from the hill to his father's house, with a gun in his hand, and a sort of grey plaid about him: That he does not remember that he saw him about his father's house before that time in the afternoon of that day. _Causa scientiæ patet._ And this is the truth, as he shall answer to God. (Signed) LAUCHLAN M'INTOSH. GILB. ELLIOT. JEAN DAVIDSON, spouse to Gregor Keir, in Inverey, aged thirty years, married; who being solemnly sworn, and purged of malice and partial council, by the sworn interpreter aforesaid, Depones, That she lived in the same town with Duncan Clerk, the panel's father, who is now dead: That the evening of the day upon which Serjeant Davies was first amissing, she saw Duncan Clerk, the panel, return from the hill to his father's house about sun-setting, having a plaid upon him, with a good deal of red in it, but whether he had a gun in his hand the deponent did not observe: That Duncan Clerk's father was that day working among his corns; and the deponent did not see the said Duncan about the town till the evening, as above deponed upon. And further depones, being interrogate for the panel, That when she first saw Duncan Clerk, she was among the corns with his father a little below the town, and that Duncan was about a gun-shot from her, coming towards his father's house from the hill, and that he came near to the place where she was with his father. _Causa scientiæ patet._ And this is the truth, as she shall answer to God. And this deposition is signed by the foresaid sworn interpreter. (Signed) DUNCAN CAMPBELL. ALEX^R FRASER. LAUCHLAN M'INTOSH, servant to William Grant of Burnside, aged twenty-one years, solemnly sworn, purged of malice and partial council, examined and interrogate, Depones, That he was a servant to Michael Farquharson in Dubrach, in whose house Serjeant Davies quartered: That he saw the Serjeant have a little pen-knife, upon the end of the haft of which there was a seal for sealing of letters, and he heard the Serjeant say that was the use he made of the said seal: That he saw Serjeant Davies leave his master's house about sun-rising that day upon which he was amissing; that he never saw him since: That about two years thereafter, being on the hill with Alexander Macdonald the panel, and the said Alexander Macdonald had in his hand a pen-knife, which the deponent saw, very like the pen-knife which Serjeant Davies had above mentioned: That the deponent, upon seeing that pen-knife, told Macdonald that the pen-knife he then had was very like Serjeant Davies's pen-knife, and Macdonald made answer that there were many siclikes: And further depones, That he saw the Serjeant have a green silk purse, in which he saw the Serjeant put in and take out several pieces of gold: The deponent does not remember what the handle of the Serjeant's knife was made of, nor does he remember what was engraven on the end of the handle of the pen-knife which the Serjeant had, nor the end of the handle of the pen-knife which Macdonald had, but that both seals were white. _Causa scientiæ patet._ And this is the truth, as he shall answer to God. And depones he cannot write. (Signed) ALEX^R FRASER. JOHN BROWN in Drumcraggan, aged sixty years, or thereby, solemnly sworn, purged of malice and partial council by the sworn interpreter aforesaid, and by him interrogate, Depones, That he was ground-officer for the lands of Inverey, and was so at the time when Serjeant Davies's body was amissing: That he was ordered by the Chamberlain of Inverey, to call out the country people in search for Serjeant Davies's body, which accordingly he did search for with the country people for two days, without finding it: That the last of the two days, as the deponent and the country people were returning home, and had given over the search, the panel, Duncan Clerk, challenged the deponent for troubling the country people with such an errand, and upon this the deponent and the said Duncan Clerk had some scolding words. _Causa scientiæ patet._ And this is the truth, as he shall answer to God. And depones he cannot write. And this disposition is signed by the foresaid sworn interpreter. (Signed) DUNCAN CAMPBELL. ALEX^R FRASER. _Follows the Witnesses adduced by the Panels in exculpation._ Captain JOHN FORBES of New, aged forty-five years, married, who being solemnly sworn, purged of malice and partial council, examined and interrogate, Depones, That James Small having suggested to the deponent that it might be proper that Duncan Clerk the panel's wife, should be examined upon what rings she had in her possession, and that some other witnesses in relation thereto, might be precognosced, presented a petition to the deponent, as the next Justice of Peace to where she lived, craving, to the purpose above mentioned: That the deponent went for that end to Braemaar; and she being summoned to appear at the Castletown of Braemaar, appeared before the deponent, and declared, in substance, as follows: That since she was married, a small brass ring, which she then presented to the deponent, and a gold ring which she got from her mother, and wore sometimes, were the only rings that she had since her marriage; and that before her marriage she got a copper ring from one Allan M'Donald, brother to James Macdonald, in Allanquoich, with a round knot of the same metal raised upon it, which, the summer before she was married, she gave to Alexander M'Intosh alias Rioch, then a glen-herd, and now servant to Thomas Gordon in Fetherletter, in Strathaven, and that she was married to the said Duncan Clerk, panel, in harvest 1751. _Causa scientiæ patet._ And this is the truth, as he shall answer to God. (Signed) JOHN FORBES. HEW DALRYMPLE. DUNCAN KEIR, in Glenmuick, aged twenty and upwards, unmarried, solemnly sworn, purged and interrogate, Depones, That the day that the Braemaar men were going to the Michaelmas fair in Strathaven, which was the day before the said fair held, he saw Duncan Clerk, the panel, at Gleney, where the deponent then lived, before he and the other shearers there had got their dinner, and that they dined sometimes later and sometimes more early, and cannot tell at what time they dined that day, but the sun was a good while high when he saw him: That he had on a plaid, which he thinks was grey: That Gleney is a mile farther up the water than Inverey towards the hill; and the next day, after he saw the said Duncan Clerk as above, he heard that Serjeant Davies was amissing. _Causa scientiæ patet._ And this is the truth, as he shall answer to God. And depones he cannot write. (Signed) HEW DALRYMPLE. ELIZABETH MACDONALD, in Tulloch of Invercauld, aged twenty-eight years, unmarried, solemnly sworn, purged and interrogate by the sworn interpreter aforesaid, Depones, That the day before she heard Serjeant Davies was amissing, she saw Duncan Clerk, the panel, at the shearers of Gleney, but did not observe from whence he came: That she does not remember that he had either a gun or a plaid, but thinks that he had a short blue coat upon him, and that Gleney is a mile farther up the water towards the hill than Inverey: That when she saw the said panel it was before dinner, which they took early that day, being betwixt twelve and one; and that Duncan Keir, the preceding witness, was one of the said shearers; and that Gleney is about a mile from Glenconie. _Causa scientiæ patet._ And this is the truth, as she shall answer to God. This deposition signed by the said sworn interpreter. (Signed) DUNCAN CAMPBELL. HEW DALRYMPLE. The Lords Commissioners of Justiciary fine and amerciate Ronald Macdonald, brother to James Macdonald in Allanquoich, and Alexander Macintosh _alias_ Reoch, now servant to Thomas Gordon of Fetterletter, in Strathaven, and each of them, in the sum of one hundred merks Scots money, for their not appearing this day and place, to bear leal and soothfast witnessing, in so far as they knew, or should be asked at them, anent the said panels, Duncan Terig _alias_ Clerk, and Alexander Bain Macdonald, their guiltiness of the crime of murder mentioned in the said indictment, raised at the instance of his Majesty's advocate against them thereanent, as they, who were lawfully cited for that effect, thrice called, and not compearing. (Signed) GILB. ELLIOT, I.P.D. The Lords ordain the assize forthwith to inclose in the Exchequer-Room, and to return their verdict against six o'clock in the afternoon to-morrow, in this place; and ordain the haill fifteen then to be present, and the panels to be carried back to prison. _CURIA JUSTICIARIA S. D. N. Regis tenta in Nova Sessionis Domo Burgi de Edinburgh, Duodecimo die Mensis Junij, 1754, per honorabiles viros Carolum Areskine de Alva, Justiciarium Clericum, Dominum Gilbertum Elliot de Minto, Magistros Alexandrum Fraser de Strichen, Patricium Grant de Elchies, et Hugonem Dalrymple de Drummore, Commissionarios Justiciarios dict. S. D. N. Regis._ _Curia legittime affirmata._ INTRAN. DUNCAN TERIG _alias_ CLERK, and ALEXANDER BAIN MACDONALD,--Panels. Indicted and accused as in the former Sederunt. The persons who past upon the assize of the said panels, returned their verdict, in presence of the saids Lords, whereof the tenor follows: AT EDINBURGH, the twelfth day of June, one thousand seven hundred and fifty-four years. THE ABOVE ASSIZE having inclosed, and having made choice of Robert Forrester to be their chancellor, and William Sands to be their clerk; and having considered the criminal indictment pursued at the instance of William Grant of Prestongrange, Esq., his Majestie's Advocate, for his Majestie's interest, against Duncan Terig alias Clerk, and Alexander Bain Macdonald, both now prisoners in the tolbooth of Edinburgh, panels, with the Lords Justice-Clerk and Commissioners of Justiciary, their interlocutor thereupon; together with the depositions of the witnesses adduced for proving thereof; and the depositions of the witnesses adduced for the exculpation of the panels, they all, in one voice, find the above-named panels not guilty of the crimes libelled. In witness whereof, their said chancellor and clerk, in their names, have subscribed thir presents, place and date foresaid. (Signed) ROB^T FORRESTER, _Chanl^r_. WILLIAM SANDS, _Clerk_. THE LORDS JUSTICE-CLERK AND COMMISSIONERS OF JUSTICIARY, in respect of the foresaid verdict of assize returned against the said Duncan Terig _alias_ Clerk, and Alexander Bain Macdonald, panels, ASSOILZIE them simpliciter, and dismiss them from the bar. (Signed) CH. ARESKINE, I.P.D. 
55420	----	Internet Archive (University of California Libraries) Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/fordefense00humeiala (University of California Libraries) [Illustration: Front_Cover] CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE MAJOR AND HIS HOUSEHOLD. II. THE ASHANTEE DEVIL-STICK. III. DIDO. IV. VOODOO! VOODOO! V. DR. ETWALD'S WARNING. VI. A STRANGE OCCURRENCE. VII. THE RIVALS. VIII. A CRY IN THE NIGHT. IX. AFTER THE DEED. X. FURTHER MYSTERY. XI. MAJOR JEN, DETECTIVE. XII. THE STRANGE PERFUME. XIII. ISABELLA. XIV. LADY MEG. XV. CROSS-EXAMINATION. XVI. THE EVIDENCE OF JAGGARD. XVII. THE STORY OF THE NIGHT. XVIII. THE DEVIL-STICK THIEF. XIX. FURTHER EVIDENCE. XX. A STRANGE REQUEST. XXI. A NINE DAY'S WONDER. XXII. FOR THE DEFENSE. XXIII. THE RESULT OF THE TRIAL. XXIV. A FINAL SURPRISE. XXV. THREE LETTERS. FOR THE DEFENCE BY FERGUS HUME AUTHOR OF "MYSTERY OF A HANSOM CAB," "HARLEQUIN OPAL," ETC. CHICAGO AND NEW YORK: RAND, McNALLY & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS. Copyright 1897, by Fergus Hume. Copyright, 1898, by Rand McNally & Co. FOR THE DEFENCE. CHAPTER I. THE MAJOR AND HIS HOUSEHOLD. Laurence Jen was a retired major, a bachelor, and the proprietor of a small estate at Hurstleigh, in Surrey. On leaving the service, he decided--not unwisely--that it was better to be a Triton in the country than a minnow in town; and acting upon this theory he purchased "Ashantee" from a ruined squire. Formerly the place had been called Sarbylands, after its original owners; but Jen had changed the name, in honor of the one campaign in which he had participated. He had been present at the downfall of King Koffee; he had contracted during the expedition an ague which tormented him greatly during his later life, and he had received a wound and a medal. In gratitude, it is to be presumed, for these gifts of fortune, the major, with some irony, had converted the name Sarbylands into the barbaric appellation of a West African kingdom; and here, for many years, he lived with his two boys. These lads, named respectively Maurice Alymer and David Sarby, were in no way related to the major, who, as has been stated before, was a bachelor; but they had entered into his life in rather an odd fashion. Alymer was the son of a beautiful girl with whom Jen had been passionately in love, but she did not return his affection, and married one of his brother officers, who was afterward killed in the Ashantee war. On returning to England Jen cherished a hope that she would reward his love by a second marriage, but the shock of her husband's death proved too much for the fragile widow. She died within a week after receiving the terrible news, and left behind her a wailing infant, which was consigned to the cold charity of indifferent relatives. It was then that the major displayed the goodness of his heart and the nobility of his character. Forgetting his own sorrows, he obtained permission from the relatives to adopt the child, and to take charge of the trifle of property coming to the lad. Then he bought Sarbylands; set estate and house in order under the name "Ashantee," and devoted his life to cherishing and training the lad, in whose blue eyes he saw a look of his dead love. This Platonic affection begotten by the deathless memory of the one passion of his life, filled his existence completely and rendered him entirely happy. With regard to David Sarby, he had passed with the estate to Jen. The boy's father, a libertine, a drunkard and a confirmed gambler, had been forced, through his vices, to sell his ancestral home; and within a year of the sale he had dissipated the purchase money in debauchery. Afterward, like the sordid and pitiful coward he had always proved himself to be, he committed suicide, leaving his only son, whose mother had long since been worried into her grave, a pauper and an orphan. The collateral branches of the old Sarby family had died out; the relatives on the mother's side refused to have anything to do with a child who, if heredity went for anything, might prove to be a chip of the old block; and little David might have found himself thrown on the parish, but that Major Jen, pitying the forlorn condition of the child, saved him from so ignominious a fate. His heart and his house were large enough to receive another pensioner, so he took David back to the old deserted mansion, and presented him to Maurice as a new playfellow. Henceforth the two boys grew to manhood under the devoted care of the cheerful old bachelor, who had protected their helpless infancy. The major was fairly well-to-do, having, besides his pension, considerable private property, and he determined in the goodness of his heart, that "the boys," as he fondly called them, should have every advantage in starting life. He sent them both to Harrow, and when they left that school, he called upon them to choose their professions. Maurice, more of an athlete than a scholar, selected the army, and the delighted major, who highly approved of his choice, entered him at Sandhurst. Of a more reflective nature and studious mind, David wished to become a lawyer, with a possible idea of ending as Lord Chancellor; and accordingly his guardian sent him to Oxford. Both lads proved themselves worthy of Jen's goodness, and were soon in active exercise of the professions which they had chosen. Maurice joined a cavalry regiment and David was admitted to the bar. Then the major was thankful. His boys were provided for, and it only remained that each should marry some charming girl, and bring their families to gladden an old bachelor's heart at "Ashantee." The major had many day dreams of this sort; but alas! they were destined never to be fulfilled. In the summer of '95 Fate began her work of casting into dire confusion the hitherto placid lives of the two young men. Frequently the young barrister and the soldier came to visit their guardian, for whom they both cherished a deep affection. On the occasion of each visit Jen was accustomed to celebrate their presence by a small festival, to which he would ask two or three friends. With simple craft, the old man would invite also pretty girls, with their mothers; in the hope that his lads might be lured into matrimony. The major, owing to circumstances heretofore related, was a confirmed bachelor, but he did not intend that his boys should follow so bad an example. He wished Maurice to marry Miss Isabella Dallas, a charming blonde from the West Indies; and David he designed as the husband of Lady Meg Brance, daughter of Lord Seamere. But Jen was mistaken in thinking that he could guide the erratic affections of youth, as will hereafter be proved. Sure enough, the lads fell in love, but both with the same woman, a state of things not anticipated by the major, who was too simple to be a matchmaker. On this special occasion, however, no ladies were present at the little dinner, and besides Jen and his two boys. Dr. Etwald was the only guest. About this man with the strange name there is something to be said. He was tall, he was thin, with a dark, lean face, and fiery watchful dark eyes. For three years he had been wasting his talents in the neighboring town of Deanminster; when, if intellect were in question, he should have been shouldering his way above the crowd of mediocrities in London. The man was dispassionate, brilliant and persevering; he had in him the makings not only of a great physician, but of a great man; and he was wasting his gifts in a dull provincial town. He was unpopular in Deanminster, owing to the absence of what is termed "a good bedside manner," and the invalids of the cathedral city and Hurstleigh, for he had patients in both places, resented his brusque ways and avoidance of their scandal-mongering tea parties. Also he was a mystery; than which there can be no greater sin in provincial eyes. No one knew who Etwald was, or whence he came, or why he wasted his talents in the desert of Deanminster; and such secret past which he declined to yield up to the most persistent questioner, accentuated the distrust caused by his sombre looks and curt speeches. Provincial society is intolerant of originality. Etwald had become acquainted with Jen professionally, and having cured the major of one of his frequent attacks of ague, he had passed from being a mere medical attendant into the closer relationship of a friend. The boys had met him once or twice, but neither of them cared much for his sombre personality, and they were not overpleased to find that the major had invited the man to meet them on the occasion of this special dinner. But Jen, good, simple soul, was rather taken with Etwald's mysticism, and, moreover, pitied his loneliness. Therefore he welcomed this intellectual pariah to his house and board; and on this fine June evening Etwald was enjoying an excellent dinner in the company of three cheerful companions. Outside, the peaceful landscape was filled with a warm amber light, and this poured into the oak-paneled dining-room through three French windows which opened onto a close-shaven lawn. Dinner was at an end; Jaggard, the major's valet, butler and general factotum, had placed the wines before his master, and was now handing around cigars and cigarettes. All being concluded to his satisfaction--no easy attainment, for Jaggard, trained in military fashion, was very precise--he departed, closing the door after him. The warm light of the evening flashed on the polished table--Major Jen was sufficiently old-fashioned to have the cloth removed for desert--and lighted up the four faces around it with pale splendor. This quartette of countenances is not unworthy of a detailed description. Major Jen's calls for least. His face was round and red, with a terrific blonde mustache fiercely curled. He had merry blue eyes, sparse hair, more than touched with gray, and an expression of good-humor which was the index to his character. Man, woman and child trusted Jen on the spot, nor was it ever said that such trust was misplaced. Even the most censorious could find no fault with the frank and kindly major, and he had more friends and more pensioners and fewer enemies than any man in the shire. Can any further explanation be required of so simple and easily understood a character? Lieutenant Maurice Alymer was also blonde, and also had blue eyes and a jaunty mustache, somewhat smaller than his senior's. His hair was yellow and curly, his features were boldly cut, and his six foot of flesh and muscle was straight and lithe. Athlete was stamped strongly on his appearance, and if not clever, he was at least sufficiently good-looking and good-natured to make him almost as popular as the major. Jen always maintained that Maurice was the living image of himself when a dashing young officer, out in Ashantee; but as the good major was considerably under the middle height and Maurice considerably over it, this statement must be accepted with some reserve. It passed as one of Jen's jokes, for a mild quality of which he was noted. The other two men had dark and strong faces, which differed entirely from the Saxon simplicity and good looks of the major and Maurice. David was clean-shaven and almost as swart as Etwald, and his expression was that of a being with powerful passions, held in check by sheer force of will. He was broad and strongly built; and his smooth black hair, parted in the middle, was brushed carefully from a bold and rather protuberant forehead. The young barrister was somewhat of a dandy, but no one who once looked at his face thought of his dress affectations or dapper appearance. They saw intellect, pride and resolute will stamped upon the pale countenance. Men with such faces end usually in greatness; and it seemed unlikely that David Sarby, barrister and ambitious youth, would prove an exception to the rule. Lastly Etwald. It is difficult to describe the indescribable. He was austere in face, like Dante, with hollow cheeks, and a pallid hue which told of midnight studies. If he had passions, they could not be discerned in his features. Eye and mouth and general expression were like a mask. What actually lay behind that mask no one ever knew, for it was never off. His slightly hollow chest, his lean and nervous hands, and a shock of rather long, curling hair, tossed from a high forehead, gave Etwald the air of a student. But there was something sinister and menacing in his regard. He looked dangerous and more than a trifle uncanny. Physically, mentally, morally he was an enigma to the bovine inhabitants of Deanminster and Hurstleigh. Major Jen sustained the burden of conversation, for Maurice was absent-minded, and David, physiognomically inclined, was silently attempting to read the inscrutable countenance of Etwald. As for this latter, he sat smoking, with his brilliant eyes steadily fixed upon Maurice. The young man felt uneasy under the mesmeric gaze of the doctor, and kept twisting and turning in his seat. Finally he broke out impatiently in the midst of the major's babble, and asked Etwald a direct question. "Does my face remind you of anyone?" he demanded rather sharply. "Yes, Mr. Alymer," replied Etwald, deliberately, "it reminds me of a man who died." "Dear me!" said Jen, with a sympathetic look. "Was he a friend of yours, doctor?" "Well, no, major, I can't say that he was. In fact," added Etwald, with the air of a man making a simple statement, "I hated him!" "I hope you don't hate me?" said Maurice, rather annoyed. "No, Mr. Alymer, I don't hate you," replied the doctor, in a colorless tone. "Do you believe in palmistry?" he asked, suddenly. "No!" said Maurice, promptly, "All rubbish!" added the major, selecting a fresh cigar. "What do you say, Mr. Sarby?" asked Etwald, turning to the lawyer. "I am a skeptic, also," said David, with a laugh. "And you?" "I am a believer." Here Etwald rose and crossed over to where Maurice was sitting. The young man, guessing his errand, held out his left hand with a smile. Etwald scrutinized it closely, and returned to his seat. "Life in death!" he said calmly. "Read that riddle, Mr. Alymer. Life in death." CHAPTER II. THE ASHANTEE DEVIL-STICK. "Life in death!" repeated Maurice, in puzzled tones. "And what do you mean by that mystical jargon, doctor?" "Ah, my friend, there comes in the riddle." "Paralysis?" suggested David, in a jesting manner, but with some seriousness. "No; that is not the answer." "Catalepsy?" guessed Major Jen, giving his mustache a nervous twist. "Nor that, either." Maurice, whose nerves were proof against such fantasies, laughed disbelievingly. "I don't believe you know the answer to your own riddle," he said calmly. Etwald shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know for certain, Mr. Alymer, but I can guess." "Tell us your guess, doctor; as it interests me so nearly, I have a right to know." "Bad news comes quickly enough in the telling," said the doctor, judicially, "so I shall say nothing more. Life in death is your fate, Mr. Alymer; unless," he added, with a swift and penetrating glance, "you choose to avert the calamity." "Can I do so?" "Yes, and in an easy manner. Never get married." Maurice flushed crimson, and, resenting the mocking tone of Etwald, half rose from his seat; but without moving a finger, Etwald continued in a cold tone: "You are in love with a young lady, and you wish to marry her!" "Quite right, quite right!" broke in Major Jen, heartily. "I want Maurice to marry." "Then you want him to meet his fate of life in death!" said Etwald, curtly. The others stared at him, and with the skepticism of thoroughly healthy minds refused to attach much importance to Etwald's mysticism. Jen was the first to speak, and he did so in rather a stiff way, quite different from his usual jovial style of conversation. "My dear Etwald, if I did not know you so well, I should take you for a charlatan." "I am no charlatan, major," rejoined Etwald, coolly. "I ask no money for my performance." "So it is a performance, after all?" said David, carelessly. "If you choose to call it so. Only I repeat my warning to Mr. Alymer. Never get married." Maurice laughed. "I am afraid it is too late for me to take your advice, doctor," he said, merrily. "I am in love." "I know you are, and I admire your taste." "Pardon me, doctor," said Maurice, stiffly. "I mention no names." "Neither do I, but I think of one name, my friend." Here David, who had been fidgeting with his cigar, broke in impatiently. "Now you are making a mystery out of a plain, common-sense question," he said, irritably. "We all know that Maurice is in love," here he raised his eyes suddenly, and looked keenly at his friend, "with Lady Meg Brance." Major Jen chuckled and rubbed his hands together in a satisfied manner. Etwald bent his sombre looks on Maurice, and that young man, biting his lip, took up the implied challenge in Sarby's remark, and answered plainly: "I am not in love with Lady Meg, my dear fellow," said he, sharply; "but if you must know, I admire"--this with emphasis--"Miss Dallas." The brow of Sarby grew black, and in his turn he rose to his feet. "I am glad to hear it is only 'admire,'" he remarked, slowly, "for had the word been any other I should have resented it." "You! And upon what grounds?" cried Alymer, flushing out in a rage. "That is my business." "And mine, too," said Maurice, hotly. "Isabella is--" "I forbid you to call Miss Dallas by that name," declared David, in an overbearing manner. "You--you--you forbid me!" "Come, come, boys!" said Jen, annoyed at this scene between two hot-headed young men, who were not yet gifted with the self-restraint of experience. "Don't talk like this. You are at my table. There is a stranger" (here he bowed ceremoniously to Etwald) "or shall I say a friend, present!" "Say a friend," observed Etwald, calmly, "although I am about to say that which may cause these two young gentlemen to look upon me as an enemy." "What do you mean?" asked Maurice, turning his still frowning face toward this strange and enigmatic man. "What I say, Mr. Alymer! You--admire Miss Dallas?" "Why bring her name into the question? Yes, I admire Miss Dallas." "And you, Mr. Sarby, I can tell from your attitude, from your look; you love Miss Dallas." David was taken aback by this strange speaking. "Yes. I--I--I do love Miss Dallas." "I guessed as much," resumed Etwald, with a cold smile. "Now, it is strange--" "It is strange that a lady's name should be thus introduced," said Jen, annoyed at the tone of the conversation. "Let us drop the subject. Another cigar, Maurice. David, the wine is with you. Dr. Etwald--" "One moment, major. I wish we three to understand one another"--here the doctor hesitated, then went on in an impressive voice--"about Miss Dallas!" "Why do you speak of her?" asked Maurice, fiercely, while David looked loweringly at Etwald. "Because I love her!" "You love her!" The two young men burst out simultaneously with the speech in tones of sheer astonishment, and stared at Etwald as at some strangle animal. That this elderly man--Etwald was midway between thirty and forty, but that looked elderly to these boys of twenty-five--should dare to love Isabella Dallas, was a thing unheard of. She so young, so beautiful, so full of divine youth and diviner womanhood; he so sombre, pale and worn with intellectual vigils; with a mysterious past, a doubtful present and a problematic future. Maurice and David, divided one against the other by their passion for the same woman, united in a feeling of rage and contempt against this interloper, who dared to make a third in their worship of Isabella. They looked at Etwald, they looked at one another, and finally both began to laugh. Jen frowned at the sound of their mirth, but Etwald, in nowise discomposed, sat unsmiling in his seat waiting for further developments. "Oh, it is too absurd!" said Maurice, resuming his seat. "Why?" Etwald put the question with the greatest calmness, stared steadily at the young man, and waited for the reply, which he knew would be difficult to make. "Oh, because--because--" "Never mind explaining, Mr. Alymer. I can guess your objection. I am too old, too plain, too poor for this charming young lady. You, on the contrary, are young, passing well off, and handsome--all the gifts of fortune are on your side. Decidedly," added the doctor, "you hold the best hand. Well, we shall see who will win this game--as we may call it." "And what about me?" said David. "You forget that I am a third player. Come, Etwald, you have prophesied about Maurice; now read my fate." "No," said Etwald, rising. "We have talked long enough on this subject. It is plain that we three men are in love with the same woman. You can't blame me, nor I you. Miss Dallas is a sufficiently beautiful excuse for our madness. I spoke out simply because I want you both to understand the position. You are warned, and we can now do battle for the smiles of this charming lady. Let the best man win!" "Nothing could be fairer than that," said Jen, quickly; "but I agree with you, doctor, that the subject has been sufficiently discussed; but, indeed, if you will pardon me saying so, it should have never been begun. Let us go to the smoking-room." Thither the three young men went in the wake of the major. It was a comfortable room, with one wide window, which at the present moment was open. Outside, the light of the newly-risen moon bathed lawn and trees and flowers in a flood of cold silver; and the warm radiance of the lamp poured out rays of gold into the wonderful white world without. The three men sat down in comfortable chairs, and the major went to get out a particular brand of cigars which he offered to favored guests. Self-contained as ever, Etwald looked up at the wall near him, and seemed to be considering a decoration of savage arms, which looked barbaric and wild, between two oil-paintings. When Jen came back with the cigars, his gaze followed that of his guest, and he made a remark about the weapons. "All those came from Ashantee and the West Coast of Africa," said he, touching a vicious-looking axe. "This is a sacrificial axe; this murderous looking blade is the sword of the executioner of King Koffee; and this," here he laid his fingers lightly upon a slender stick of green wood, with a golden top set roughly with large turquoise stones, "is a poison-wand!" "A poison-wand!" echoed Etwald, a sudden light showing in his cold eyes. "I never heard of such a thing." David, who was watching him, felt an instinctive feeling that Etwald was telling a lie. He saw that the man could hardly keep his seat for his eagerness to examine and handle the strange weapon. However, he said nothing, but watched and watched, when Maurice made a remark about the stick. "Oh, that is Uncle Jen's greatest treasure," he said, smiling. "He can tell twenty stories about that innocent-looking cane." "Innocent-looking!" echoed Jen, taking down the green wand. "How can you say such a thing? Look here, Etwald," and he laid the stick on the table. "No, don't touch it, man," he added, hastily, "there is plenty of venom in it yet. 'Tis as dangerous as a snake bite. If you touch this slender iron spike projecting from the end, you die!" Again David noted that the tigerish light leaped up in the eyes of Etwald, but he had sufficient control of his features to preserve a look of courteous curiosity. He carefully handled and examined the instrument of death. It was a little over a foot long, of a hard-looking green wood; the handle of gold was coarsely molded in a barbaric fashion round the turquoise stones, and these, of all hues, from green to the palest of blue, were imbedded like lumps of quartz in the rough gold. Round this strange implement there lingered a rich and heavy perfume, sickly and sensuous. "See here!" said Jen, pressing or rather squeezing the handle. "I tighten my grip upon this, and the sting of the serpent shows itself!" Whereupon Etwald glanced at the end of the wood and saw a tiny needle of iron push itself out. When Jen relaxed his pressure on the gold handle, this iron tongue slipped back and disappeared entirely. "I got this at Kumassie," explained Jen, when he had fully exhibited the gruesome mechanism of the devil-stick. "It belonged to the high priest. Whenever he or the king disliked any man who was too powerful to be openly slain, they used this wand. What excuse they made I don't know, but I suppose it had something to do with fetish worship. However, the slightest touch of this needle produces death." "It is poisoned at the tip?" "Not exactly. The needle within is hollow, and a store of poison is contained in the handle up here. When squeezed these turquoise stones press a bag within and the poison runs down to the point of the needle. In fact, the whole infernal contrivance is modeled upon a serpent's fang." "But it is quite harmless now," said David, as Jen replaced the wand in its old place on the wall. "Else you wouldn't have it there." "Well, no doubt the poison has dried up," said Jen, with a nod. "All the same, I shouldn't like to prick myself with that needle. I might die," finished the major, with the naive simplicity of a child. "You may break, you may shatter the vase as you will, But the scent of the roses will cling round it still"-- quoted Maurice, with a laugh. "No doubt the devil-stick can still do harm. Ugh! What a gruesome idea. I'd remove it from so conspicuous a position if I were you, Uncle Jen; someone might come to grief over it." "Rubbish, my boy. It has been hanging on the wall for years, and has never hurt anyone yet!" Etwald said nothing. With his eyes fixed upon the devil-stick, he meditated deeply. The barrister, whose belief was that Etwald knew more about the wand than he chose to say, watched him closely. He noticed that the doctor eyed the stick, then, after a pause, let his gaze wander to the face of Maurice. Another pause, and he was looking at David, who received the fire of this strange man's eyes without blanching. There was something so mesmeric in the gaze that David felt uncomfortable and as though he were enveloped in an evil atmosphere. To his surprise he found that his eyes also were attracted to the devil-stick, and a longing to handle it began to possess him. Clearly Etwald was trying to hypnotize him for some evil purpose. By an effort of will David broke through these nightmare chains and rose to his feet. The next moment he was in the open air, in the cold moonlight, breathing hard and fast. Within, Maurice and the major were talking gaily, and the sound of their voices and laughter came clearly to the ears of David. But silent in his deep chair sat Etwald, and the burning glance of his eyes seemed to beam menacingly through the air and compel the young man to evil thoughts. David looked at Etwald, dark and voiceless; and over his head, in the yellow lamplight, he saw the glittering golden handle of the devil-stick. CHAPTER III. DIDO. Some little distance from the major's abode stood a long, low rambling house on a slight rise. Surrounded by deep verandas, it was placed in the middle of emerald green lawns, smoothly clipped; and these, lower down, were girdled by a belt of ash and sycamores and poplars, which shut out the house from the high road. The mansion, with its flat roof and wide verandas, had a tropical look, and indeed it had been built by a retired Indian nabob at the beginning of this century. When he died the house had been sold, and now it was occupied by Mrs. Dallas, who leased it because of its suggestion of tropical habitation. She came from the West Indies, and had lived in "The Wigwam," as the house was called, for over ten years. Mrs. Dallas was a large, fat and eminently lazy woman, who passed most of her time in knitting or sleeping or eating. Her husband had died before she had come to England, and it was the desire to preserve her daughter's health which had brought her so far from the sun-baked islands which her soul loved. Her languid Creole nature and lethargic habits were unsuited to brisk, practical England, and she hated the gray skies, the frequent absence of sunlight and the lack of rich and sensuous coloring. Often she threatened to return to Barbadoes, but she was too lazy to make the effort of again settling herself in life. With all her longings for the fairy islands of the West, it seemed as though she would end her days in gray and misty England. But she was out of place in this northern land, and so was Dido. This latter was a tall and massively framed negro woman, with very little of the traditional merry nature of the black about her. She looked rather like a priestess, with her stern face and stately mien; and, indeed, in the West Indies, it was known among the negroes that Dido was high in power among the votaries of Obi. She could charm, she could slay by means of vegetable poisons, and she could--as the negroes firmly believed--cause a human being to dwindle, peak and pine, by means of incantations. This black Canidia had left a terrible reputation behind her in Barbadoes; and though in skeptical England her powers were unknown, and if they had been made manifest, would have been flouted at, yet her looks, the tragic tones of her voice, inspired the white servants of Mrs. Dallas with distrust. Dido was not a favorite in the servants' part of The Wigwam, but for this unpopularity she cared little, being devoted to Isabella Dallas. She adored her nursling. The girl was about twenty years of age, tall and straight, with dark hair and darker eyes, with a mouth veritably like Cupid's bow, and a figure matchless in contour. With her rich southern coloring and passionate temperament--she was of Irish blood on the paternal side--Miss Dallas looked more like an Andalusian lady than a native of the English-speaking race. She had all the sensuous loveliness of a Creole woman; and bloomed like a rich tropical flower with poison in its perfume amid the English briar roses of Surrey maidenhood. If Mrs. Dallas was a bore--and her friends said she was--the daughter was divine, and many young men came to The Wigwam to be spellbound by her dark beauty. More men than the three who had dined at "Ashantee" were in love with Isabella. Upon her Dido exercised a powerful, and it must be confessed, malignant influence. She had fed the quick brain of the girl with weird tales of African witchcraft and fanciful notions of terrestrial and sidereal influences. Isabella's nature was warped by this domestic necromancy, and had she continued to dwell in the West Indies, she might almost have become a witch herself. Certainly Dido did her best to make her one, and taught her nursling spells and incantations, to which the girl would listen fearfully, half-believing, half-doubting. But her residence in England, her contact with practical English folk, with the sunny side of life, saved her from falling into the terrible abyss of African superstition; and how terrible it is only the initiated can declare. It only needed that she should be removed from the bad influence of the barbaric Sybil to render her nature healthy and fill her life with pleasure. But Dido was like a upas tree, and the moral atmosphere with which she surrounded Isabella was slowly but surely making the girl morbid and unnatural. Mrs. Dallas, versed in the negro character, half-guessed this, but she was too indolent to have Dido removed. Moreover, strange as it may appear, she was more than a trifle afraid of the negress and her unholy arts. Maurice had met with and had fallen in love with Isabella, and she returned his affection with all the ardor of her passionate nature. His handsome and frank face, his sunny nature and optimistic ideas appealed strongly to the girl who had been environed from her earliest infancy by the pessimism of Dido. Maurice saw well how Isabella had deteriorated under the bad influence of the negress, and he did his best to counteract her insidious morality and morbid teachings. He laughed at Isabella's stories and superstitions, and succeeded in making her ashamed of her weakness in placing faith in such degraded rubbish. While with him Isabella was a bright and laughing girl; quite another sort of being to the grave and nervous creature she was while in the presence of Dido. She felt that if she married Maurice his bright strong nature would save her from a lamentable and melancholy existence; and as all her affections and instincts inclined to the young man, she hoped to become his wife. Dido saw her thoughts, and hating Maurice as one who scoffed at Obi, she did her best to put evil ideas in the girl's head concerning the young man. But as yet she had failed to sow dissension between the lovers. On the day after the major's dinner party, Isabella was sitting in the veranda with a book open on her lap and Dido standing gravely near her. Mrs. Dallas, in the cool depths of the drawing-room, was indulging in an after-luncheon siesta. The sunlight poured itself over the velvet lawns, drew forth the perfumes from the flower-beds, and made the earth languorous with heat. In the veranda all was cool and restful and pleasingly silent. Isabella, in her white dress, looked beautiful and pensive; while Dido, in a reddish-hued robe, with a crimson 'kerchief twisted round her stately head, gleamed in the semi-gloom like some gorgeous tropical bird astray in our northern climes. Both mistress and maid were silent. It was Dido who spoke first. She noticed that the eyes of her mistress constantly strayed in the direction of "Ashantee," and with the jealousy begotten of deep affection, she guessed that the girl's thoughts were fixed upon the much-hated Maurice. At once she spoke reproachfully, and in the grotesque negro dialect, which, however, coming from Dido's mouth, inspired no one with merriment. "Aha, missy," said she, in deep, guttural tones, "you tink ob dat yaller-ha'r'd man!" "Maurice! Yes, I am thinking about him; and you know why." Dido's fierce black eyes flashed out a gleam of rage, and she cursed Maurice audibly in some barbaric tongue which Isabella seemed to understand. At all events she interrupted the woman's speech with an imperious gesture. "No more of that. Dido. You know that I love Maurice; I wish to marry him. Why are you so bitter against him?" "He take you from me." "Well, if I marry anyone the same thing will happen," responded Isabella, lightly; "and surely. Dido; you do not want me to remain a spinster all my life." "No, missy, no. You marry, an' ole Dido am berry pleased. But dat yaller-ha'r'd man, I no like him; if he marry you, he take you away. He a fool--a big fool!" "Oh, you say that because he does not believe in Obi or Voodoo!" Dido threw up one dark hand with an ejaculation. "Not in de sunlight; dose am de names for de darkness, honey. In de night dey--" "No, no!" cried Isabella, with a shudder. "Don't tell me any more of those horrible things." "Aha, dat de yaller-ha'r who makes you fear!" cried Dido, bitterly. "He hate Obi an' me. He will not marry you, missy!" "Yes he will; we are engaged." "Your mudder, she say no!" "Nonsense! She likes Maurice herself," replied Isabella, uneasily. "Maurice wants our engagement kept quiet for the present, but when I do tell Major Jen and my mother, I am sure neither of them will object." "H'm, we see, missy, we see," said Dido, darkly. "But why you marry dis man I no like?" "Because I marry to please myself, not you," said Isabella, sharply. "Oh, I know your thoughts, Dido; you would like me to marry David Sarby. The idea; as if he can compare with Maurice!" "Wrong, missy. I no wish dat man." "Then Dr. Etwald--that horrid, gloomy creature!" "Him great man!" said Dido, solemnly. "Him berry--berry great!" "I don't think so," retorted Isabella, rising. "Of course, I know that he is clever, but as to being great, he isn't known beyond this place." She walked to the end of the veranda, and stood for a moment in the glare of the sunshine. Suddenly an idea seemed to strike her, and she turned toward the negress. "Dido, you wouldn't like to see me the wife of Dr. Etwald?" "Yes, missy. Him berry big great man!" "But I hate him!" "Um! He lub you. He told ole Dido so." "He seems to have been very confidential," said Isabella, scornfully, "and from what I have seen, Dido, he has some influence over you." "No," said the negress. But while her tongue uttered the denial, her eyes rolled uneasily around the lawn, as though dreading some invisible presence. "No, missy. Dido a great one, you know. She no 'fraid ob dat doctor; but him big man, missy; you marry him." "No, no, no! I would rather die. I love Maurice." "You nebber marry him, missy. Nebber, nebber!" "How do you know?" "I make de spell. I know. De spell say dat doctor, he marry you!" This time Isabella burst out into a girlish laugh of genuine amusement. "The spell seems to know more about me than I do myself," said she, contemptuously. "I don't believe in your spells, Dido. I know from Maurice that they are nonsense!" "You take care, missy! Obi! dat not nonsense!" said Dido, in a threatening tone. "What does Dr. Etwald say about it?" Dido looked sullenly at the fire. "I no hear him say anytink about Obi," she replied; "but de spell; it say you marry dat man and no de yaller-ha'r." "Well, Dido, we shall see. And now--" She never finished what she was about to say, for at that moment Dido stretched out one arm, and uttered one name, "Batt'sea!" Across the lawn there crept a wizen, gray-haired little man, with a cringing manner. He was white, but darkish in the skin, and there was something negroid about his face. This dwarfish little creature was a tramp, who had become a pensioner of Isabella's. He had attached himself to her like some faithful dog, and rarely failed to present himself at least once a day. What his real name was nobody knew, but he said that he was called Battersea, after the parish in which he had been reared as a foundling. Battersea was cringing, dirty, and altogether an unpleasant object to look upon; but Isabella was sorry for the creature, and aided him with food and a trifle of money. It may be here mentioned that Battersea, although he knew nothing of Obi, was terribly afraid of Dido. Perhaps some instinct in the negro blood--for he undoubtedly had something African in his veins--made him fear this unknown priestess of fetish worship. "Well, Battersea," said Isabella, kindly, "how are you to-day?" "Very well, lady, very well, indeed. I met Mr. Alymer, and he gave me half a crown." "That was generous of him. But why?" "Because I said that a certain lady was--" "Now, now," laughed Isabella, "no more of that nonsense, Battersea." She turned and ran along the veranda into the house. The tramp and the negress were alone. "What de doctor say?" asked Dido, in a low-voiced whisper. "Two words. The devil-stick!" The negress started and threw up her hands in surprise. CHAPTER IV. VOODOO! VOODOO! Evidently there was an understanding between these two strange creatures, and thereby an occult connection with the ideas and doings of Dr. Etwald. What the trio were plotting against Isabella and her lover remains to be seen; but it can be guessed easily that the message of the devil-stick carried by Battersea to Dido was of some significance. Battersea himself knew nothing of its esoteric meaning, but to the negress the mention of the emblem conveyed a distinct understanding. She let her arms fall listlessly by her side, and, with an unseeing gaze, she stared at the green trees bathed in hot sunshine. After a moment or so she muttered to herself in negro jargon and clenched her hands. "Baal! the wand of sleep! the bringer of death!" "What are you saying, Dido?" asked Battersea, his feeble intellect scared by the fierce gestures and the unknown tongue. "I say deep things which you no understan'. Look at ole Dido, you white man." Battersea whimpered, and, rubbing one dirty hand over the other, did as he was requested with manifest unwillingness. With an intensity of gaze, Dido glared at him steadily, and swept her hands twice or thrice across his face. In a moment or so the tramp was in a state of catalepsy, and she made use of his spellbound intelligence to gain knowledge. There was something terrible in her infernal powers being thus exercised in the full sunlight, in the incongruous setting of a homely English landscape. "De debble-stick! Whar is it?" "In the house of Major Jen. In a little room, on the wall, with swords and axes." As he said this in a monotonous tone, Dido looked across the tree-tops to where the red roofs of "Ashantee" showed themselves against a blue July sky. She shook her fist at the distant house, and again addressed herself imperiously to Battersea, commanding: "Tell ole Dido ob de debble-stick." "It is green, with a handle of gold, and blue stones set into the gold." Dido bent forward and touched the tramp on his temples. "See widin dat stick," she muttered, eagerly. "I wish to see." "There is a bag in the handle," repeated Battersea, with an effort. "Under the bag a long needle;" then after a pause, "the needle is hollow." "Is dere poison in de bag, white man?" "No, the poison is dried up." "Is dere poison in de hollow ob de needle?" "No," said Battersea again. "The poison is dried up." At this moment a noise in the house disturbed Dido, and with a pass or two she released Battersea from the hypnotic spell. He started, rubbed his eyes, and looked drowsily at the tall negress, who had resumed her impassive attitude. "What have you been doing. Dido?" he asked, stupidly. "Obi!" was the brief reply. "You hab told ole Dido what she wish about de debble-stick." "The devil-stick," repeated the tramp, in wide-eyed surprise. "S'elp me, I don't know anything of it. Dr. Etwald met me, and ses he: 'You go to Miss Dallas?' and I ses, 'I does;' and he ses, 'You'll see Dido,' and I ses, 'I will;' and he ses, 'Say to her "Devil-stick,"' an' I ses, 'Right y'are, sir.' But es to knowing--" "Dat nuffin!" said Dido, with a lordly wave of her hand. "I black; you hab de black blood in youse also. I mek you do Obi. Um!" "What's Obi? What's you torkin of?" asked Battersea, rather nervously. "An' ow does yeou know I hev black blood?" "Obi say dat to me. Your mudder black." "Yah!" cried Battersea, derisively. "You're out of it. My mother white; but my father--" here he hesitated, and then resumed: "Yes, you're right. Dido; my father was a negro! A Seedee boy, who was a fireman on a P. and O. liner." "I hab seen dat," replied Dido, nodding her head. "Black blood in youse, an' I can do Obi on you. I send your spirit to de house of Massa Jen. You tell me ob de debble-stick." Battersea drew back and began to whimper again. "I knows es you wor at that devilry," he said, nervously. "When you claps your eyes on me I gets afeard." "Dat's so. But I take care ob you. Now get to de kitchen; dere am food for you." The old man's eyes brightened in anticipation of a feast, and he shuffled off round the corner as quickly as his age would allow him. Dido looked after him for a moment, considering the message he had brought from Dr. Etwald, and then began to think of the devil-stick. She knew very well what it was, for her grandmother had been carried off as a slave from the west coast of Africa, and knew all about Ashantee sorcery and fetish rites. These she had repeated to her granddaughter Dido, with the result that Dido, cherishing these recollections, knew exactly how to use the wand of sleep. She had spoken about it to Dr. Etwald, quite ignorant that Jen kept one as a curiosity, and now Etwald had intimated through Battersea that he wished her to do something in connection with the stick. What that something might be Dido at the present moment could not guess. She had exerted her magnetic and hypnotic influence over Battersea, not that she wished for a detailed description of the wand, for already she knew its appearance, but because it might happen that it would be necessary to use the tramp for certain purposes connected with the discovery of secrets. Dido exercised a strong influence over this weak old creature, partially on account of his half negro blood and partially because she had terrified his feeble brain by her dark hints of Obi worship. Battersea was supposed to be a Christian; but the barbaric fluid in his veins inclined him to the terrible grotesqueness of African witchcraft, and Dido and her words stirred some dim instinct in his mind. The negress saw that accident had placed in her way a helpless creature who might be of use in her necromantic business; therefore, by hypnotizing him once or twice, she contrived to keep him within her power. All of which fantasy would have been denied by the average British newspaper reader, who can not imagine such things taking place in what he calls euphoniously a Christian land. But this happened, for all his denial. Having dismissed Battersea, the negress turned to seek Isabella. She was so devoted to her nursling that she could hardly bear to be away from her, and since her infancy Isabella had scarcely been absent an hour from her strange attendant. The girl had gone into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Dallas was still sleeping; and there, relieved for the moment from the prying eyes of the negress, she took a letter out of her pocket. It was from Maurice, stating that he was coming to see her that afternoon at three o'clock, as he had something particular to say. It was now close upon the hour, and Isabella was wondering how she could get rid of Dido, whom she did not wish to be present at the coming interview. The inborn jealousy of the woman, and her advocacy of Dr. Etwald's suit, made her an unpleasant third at such a meeting. Moreover, Maurice instinctively disliked this sullen creature, and was never quite easy in her presence. Finally, Isabella decided to slip round by the back of the house and meet Maurice at the gate. Dido was occupied in questioning Battersea about the devil-stick on the verandah. So, after a glance to assure herself that the pair were in earnest conversation, Isabella put on a straw hat and ran lightly away to see her lover. She passed out by a side door, danced like a fairy across the intervening space of lawn, and slipped laughingly into the narrow path which wound through the wood to the avenue near the gates. Just as she emerged into the open she heard a sharp click, and saw Maurice approaching. He was dressed in his flannels, and looked particularly handsome, she thought; the more so when she beheld his face lighting up at her unexpected appearance. The magnetism of love drew them irresistibly together, and in less time than it takes to write, Isabella was lying on the broad breast of her lover and he was fondly kissing her lips. "My own dear love," he murmured, softly. "How good of you to meet me." "I came down here to escape Dido," explained Isabella, slipping her hand within his. "You don't like her to be with us." "I don't like her in any case, my darling. She is like a black shadow of evil always at your heels. I must get your mother to forbid her trespassing upon our meetings." "My dear Maurice, how can you possibly do that, when you refuse to tell my mother of our engagement?" "Oh, I had a reason for keeping our engagement secret, but it is no longer necessary, and to-day--at this moment--I am going straight to ask your mother to give me this dear hand in marriage. If she consents, we will soon get rid of Dido." "But my mother may not consent," said Isabella, a trifle nervously. "Why not? I have a profession and a small property. We love one another dearly, so I don't see what grounds she has for refusal." "Dido!" "Well, Dido can do nothing," said Maurice, in a jesting tone, "unless you want her to forbid the banns." "She may even be able to do that," replied Isabella, seriously. "My mother is afraid of her, and is often influenced in her decisions by Dido." "What, the black witch? Bah! She is only a servant." "She is something more than that in Barbadoes." "Oh, you mean that Obi rubbish, my dearest," said Maurice, slipping his arm round the slender waist of the girl. "It is on that very account that I wish to tell your mother of our engagement, for I must rescue you from the influence of that dark Jezebel. She is dangerous." "I know she is; but she hates you." "I don't care for her hate," replied Maurice, carelessly. "It is a poor thing, and can not possibly harm me. But I mean to extricate you from her toils, and I don't care how she attempts to prevent our marriage. Surely Mrs. Dallas will not let herself be guided in so important a business by the will and feelings of that black wench." "My mother is weak where Dido is concerned," said Isabella, shaking her head. "And so are you, my dear," responded Maurice, kissing her. "Both of you are weak and have yielded up your wills to that woman. But the announcement of our engagement will give me some influence in the house and do away with all that. It will be a fight between white and black magic, and I, as a civilized wizard, intend to win." "Why do you particularly wish to announce our engagement to-day?" Maurice grew serious, and paused at the top of the drive, just out of sight of the house, to reply to this question. "My dear child," he said slowly, "I kept our engagement secret on account of David. I have seen for a long time that he loves you, and knowing his fiery temper, I did not wish to provoke a quarrel by telling him that you had promised to be my wife. But last night the truth was forced from me at dinner, and David declared that he intended to ask you to marry him." "But I don't love him. I love you!" "I knew that, but he didn't. He knows now that we love one another, but he is ignorant that we are engaged. When the fact is publicly announced, he may give up his idea of marrying you, and so a quarrel may be averted." "Are you afraid of quarreling with him?" "Yes. Not on my account, but it distresses our good major to see us at variance. We nearly quarreled over you last night, though, upon my word," added the young man half to himself, "I believe Etwald promoted the row." "Etwald!" repeated Isabella. "Dr. Etwald?" "Yes; he is in love with you." "I know he is," replied the girl, quietly. "But, of course, I could never be his wife; the more so, as I fear him. But Dido wishes me to marry him." "Oh, hang Dido!" cried Maurice, vigorously. "I wish she would mind her own business." At this moment, as if summoned by his remark, Dido appeared round the bend of the path. She looked straight before her, turning neither to right nor left, and passed the pair like one in a sleeping fit. The negress seemed to be under the influence of some strange excitement, and ran stumbling down to the gate. "Voodoo! Voodoo!" she cried, hoarsely. "Oh," said Isabella, nervously, "Dr. Etwald must be at hand. When Dido says 'Voodoo' he comes." CHAPTER V. DR. ETWALD'S WARNING. "When Dido says 'Voodoo' he comes," repeated Maurice, greatly puzzled. "Are you talking of Dr. Etwald?" "Yes. He seems to possess some strange power over Dido, for she always knows when he is approaching. See, Maurice, Dido is waiting at the gate; in a few moments you will see Dr. Etwald enter it." The two young people looked steadfastly at the brilliantly-colored figure of the negress, standing in a statuesque attitude near the great iron gate. On either side of her waved the summer foliage of the trees; overhead the sun, like a burning eye, looked down from a cloudless sky, and beyond, the dusty white road showed distinctly through the slender bars of the gate. All was bright and cheerful and English, but in that sinister red figure, with its black face and hands, there was a suggestion of evil which seemed to dominate and poison the whole beautiful scene. Maurice felt Isabella shudder with nervous dread as she pressed closely to his side. "Dearest, you must not be afraid," said he, glancing down anxiously at her face. "You must throw off the terror you have of this woman. If the law--" At this moment he broke off his speech with an ejaculation of surprise, for, true to the prognostication of Isabella--in answer to the expectant attitude of the negress--Dr. Etwald turned in at the gate. "Ho! ho!" murmured Maurice, rather taken back. "So the art of devil-raising is not a lost one after all. Dido can still call spirits from the vasty deep." "She has called flesh and blood," said Isabella, with a shiver. "But there is nothing strange about Dr. Etwald's appearance just now. Dido did not call him; she simply felt that he was at hand, and went to meet him at the gate." They continued to watch the pair, and saw Dido throw herself at the feet of Etwald, who raised his hand over her in a threatening manner. He pointed into the wood with an imperious gesture, and in a slinking attitude the usually stately Dido passed out of sight into the little path down which Isabella had come to meet Maurice. When the gleam of her red dress disappeared Etwald wiped his face and walked briskly up the avenue toward the young couple. "Shall we go on or wait for him here?" asked Isabella in a whisper. "Wait," replied Maurice, in the same tone. "I shall not let him think that either of us is afraid of his charlatan tricks." Dr. Etwald approached, with what was meant for a smile on his usually sombre face, and took off his hat to Miss Dallas. But he did not speak as he made his salutation, so the girl was forced, by reason of this uncomfortable silence, to make the first observation. "Good-morning, doctor," she said, as he replaced his hat; "I suppose you have come to see my mother." "Partly, Miss Dallas, and partly to see you; also this gentleman." "To see me!" said Maurice, looking at his rival. "Then why did you not go to 'Ashantee?'" Etwald shrugged his shoulders. "I never give myself unnecessary trouble," he answered, calmly, "and, of course, I knew that I should find you here." "By what right do you say that?" demanded Maurice, sharply. "By the right of our conversation last night, Mr. Alymer. You have forestalled me, I see. No matter," added Etwald, with a sneer. "To-day to you; to-morrow to me." All this was quite unintelligible to Isabella, who looked from one to the other of her companions in bewilderment, not guessing for the moment that she was the bone of contention between them. She saw the suppressed mockery on Etwald's face, and noted also that Maurice, roused by the quiet insistence of the doctor, had much difficulty in keeping his temper. Knowing how her lover disliked Etwald, and fearing lest there should be a quarrel between the two men, she cut the Gordian knot by hastily proposing that they should go up to the house. At the same time she was afraid lest further trouble should occur therein, for it seemed to her that Etwald had paid this visit for the express purpose of making himself disagreeable. However, he did not say anything further at the moment, but walked beside Isabella toward The Wigwam. Behind them Maurice strolled slowly, fuming and fretting at the attitude assumed by Etwald by the side of Isabella. She cast a backward glance at his frowning face, and to avert possible trouble she began hastily to question the doctor about the strange conduct of Dido. "What was the matter with my nurse, doctor?" she asked. "What have you been doing to her?" "She was agitated, my dear young lady, and I have calmed that agitation." "After having previously caused it," said Maurice, in a significant tone. The doctor looked at the young man calmly. "What possible reason have you to make such an accusation?" he demanded. "I think it is my fault," said Isabella, hastily. "I remarked that Dido was always agitated when you came to this house." "I can explain that in a measure, Miss Dallas. If you remember I cured Dido of a bad nervous headache by hypnotic suggestion. Her mind, therefore, became habituated in responding to mine, and doubtless she feels a kind of impression which tells her that I am near." "In other words," said Maurice, pointedly, "you have obtained an influence over her." "It is not improbable," rejoined Etwald, in measured tones. "I am one of those people, Mr. Alymer, who can, by strength of will and power of character, obtain power over anyone I wish." As he spoke, Etwald cast a sudden glance at Isabella. The girl was looking toward the house, out of which her mother had just emerged, and did not see the menace in his regard; but Maurice noted the gaze, and felt enraged at all it implied. In plain words, Etwald intimated in a veiled manner that Isabella was a nervous subject, over whom he could obtain influence, if he so chose, by the unlawful means of hypnotism. This power Maurice was determined he should not gain, and by asking a direct question he tried to force Etwald into a confession of illegitimate practices. By this he hoped to warn Isabella, and make her afraid of trusting herself too much in the doctor's company. "You have been in the West Indies, doctor?" asked Maurice, bluntly. "I have been all over the world, Mr. Alymer," parried Etwald, dexterously. "Do you know anything of Voodoo worship?" "I know something of most things," assented the doctor. "But I confess I take but little interest in African barbarities." "Oh, what about Dido and her meeting you?" "I have explained that to the best of my ability," responded Etwald, coldly, "and now, Mr. Alymer, as our hostess is approaching you must excuse my replying to any further questions. If you want further insight into my character, call upon me at Deanminster." "That I shall certainly do," said Maurice, for he was resolved to learn all he could about this strange man, so that he could protect Isabella from his arts. "Ah," said the doctor, with irony, "we shall see if you will venture so far." Before Maurice could take up the implied challenge, which threw doubts upon his moral courage, Mrs. Dallas advanced heavily to meet her visitors. Isabella had already flitted like a white butterfly into the drawing-room, and her mother received the two young men alone. Her reception was, as usual, ponderous and vague. "So pleased to see you, Mr. Alymer. Dr. Etwald, I am charmed. It is a delightful day, is it not? Reminds one of Barbadoes." "I have never been in Barbadoes," said Maurice, toward whom her languid gaze was directed. "But Dr. Etwald may be able to answer your question, Mrs. Dallas." "I know the West Indian islands," observed Etwald as they walked into the house, "and this day does remind me a little of the climate there; but it is scarcely hot enough." "No," murmured Mrs. Dallas, sinking into a large chair. "You are right. I have been in the sun all the morning, and only now am I beginning to feel warm, I shall certainly go back to Barbadoes." Mrs. Dallas had made this threat so many times that nobody paid any attention to it, and, not expecting an answer, she began to fan herself slowly. Through her half-closed eyes she looked anxiously at the subtle face of Etwald. With the instinct of a woman she guessed that something important had brought the doctor to see her; he was not a man to waste his time on visits of ceremony. Now Mrs. Dallas was secretly afraid of Etwald, as she had received hints from Dido, in whose truth she implicitly believed--that the doctor knew more about secret things than most people. She dreaded lest his visit should portend harm, and so, in some trepidation, she waited for him to speak. But Etwald, guessing her frame of mind, took his time and it was only when Isabella approached with some tea for her mother that he broke the silence. "Don't go away, Miss Dallas," he said, entreatingly. "I have something to say to your mother which concerns you." Isabella turned pale, for she guessed what was coming. As Etwald had raised his voice purposely, Maurice, who was standing by the tea-table, also pricked up his ears. Mrs. Dallas, with some curiosity, raised herself to look closer at Etwald and he, seeing that his auditory was attentive, prepared to launch his thunderbolt. "My dear Mrs. Dallas," he said, in a soft voice, "you must have seen for a long time that my visits here have not been made without an object. To-day I come to ask you and your sweet daughter a question." "What is it?" asked the mother, devoured by curiosity. "Pray don't ask it," said Isabella, better informed by Etwald's glance as to his purpose. "It will only give you pain." "I must risk that," said the doctor, slowly, "Mrs. Dallas, I love your daughter, and I wish to marry her. Miss Isabella, will you be my wife?" Here Maurice set down his cup with a crash, and strode across the room, where he faced Etwald in no very pleasant frame of mind. "I shall answer that question. Dr. Etwald," he said, loudly. "Miss Dallas shall not and can not marry you. She has promised to be my wife." "Isabella!" said Mrs. Dallas, in an aggrieved tone. "Is this true?" "Perfectly true," assented Isabella. "I love Maurice. I wish to marry him." And slipping her arm within that of her lover, she prepared to face the storm. "You are a disobedient girl," cried Mrs. Dallas, making no attempt to control her temper. "You shall not marry without my permission. Mr. Alymer, I am astonished at you; I am disappointed in you. It is not the act of a gentleman to steal away the affections of my daughter without informing me of your intentions." "I had my reasons for not doing so, Mrs. Dallas," replied Maurice, quickly. "But I was about to tell you of our engagement when Dr. Etwald forestalled me by making his unexpected offer." "Unexpected, Mr. Alymer!" smiled Etwald. "After my statement last night?" "Unexpected so far as time and place are concerned," said Maurice, firmly. "But as you have asked Miss Dallas to marry you, take her refusal from her own lips." "Miss Dallas!" said Etwald, in no wise moved by this speech. "Isabella!" cried her mother in an angry tone. Isabella looked calmly at them both. "I love Maurice. I intend to marry him," she repeated, and an obstinate expression came over her face. "In that case," said Etwald, rising, "I must take my leave, and shall be content with that answer until such time as you are free; then," he added, coolly, "I shall ask you again." "I shall never be free," said Isabella, proudly. "Oh, yes, you will; when Mr. Alymer is dead." "Dead!" shrieked Mrs. Dallas, all her superstition roused by the word. "Come away from that man, Isabella." "Maurice dead!" repeated the girl, with a pale cheek. The young man shrugged his shoulders. "Pooh! pooh! some nonsense that Dr. Etwald was talking about last night," he added, contemptuously. "He says if I marry, it will be a case of life in death, whatever that means." Etwald rose to his feet and stretched out a menacing hand. "I have warned you, Alymer," he said, sternly. "Your marriage, after or before it, means life in death. Take care! Ladies," he added, with a bow, "I take my departure." Outside Etwald found Dido waiting for him. He looked at her significantly. "I have failed," he said. "There is nothing left but the devil-stick." CHAPTER VI. A STRANGE OCCURRENCE. Maurice returned home after a somewhat stormy interview with Mrs. Dallas. For once the mother of Isabella was roused out of her habitual indifference, and she refused absolutely to accept Alymer as her son-in-law. In vain the lovers implored her to give some reason for her strange refusal, but beyond expressing a personal dislike for Maurice she declined to explain her conduct. The young man saw in this uncalled for behavior the hostile influence of Dido. "It is because that black woman distrusts me that you object," he said, when Mrs. Dallas had talked herself hoarse. "I wonder that an English lady, a Christian and an educated person should be dominated by that uncivilized creature." "Dido has nothing to do with my refusal," said the widow, coldly, "and although I take her advice in some things I do not in this. I do not wish Isabella to marry you, and I request you to leave my house--" "Mother!" cried Isabella, with a pale face. "And never come back to it again!" finished Mrs. Dallas, sharply. Maurice went to the window of the room which opened on to the veranda and put on his hat. "As a gentleman, I must accept your dismissal," he said, quietly; "but I decline to give up Isabella." "And I," cried the girl, "swear to remain true to Maurice." "You'll do nothing of the sort," said her mother, violently. "I forbid you even to think of that young man. You shall marry whom I choose." "Dr. Etwald, I suppose?" "No. Mr. Sarby." "David!" ejaculated Maurice, in an astonished tone. "You wish Isabella to marry him?" "Yes. He loves Isabella much more than you do, and he asked permission--which you didn't--to pay his addresses to her. I consented, and so," Mrs. Dallas raised her voice, "he shall marry her." "I refuse to marry Mr. Sarby," said Isabella, vehemently. "I hate him!" "That is no matter," replied her mother, coldly. "You must marry him." "Must!" repeated Maurice, with great indignation. "Yes, Mr. Alymer. Must! Must! Must! If you want an explanation of that you can ask--" Here Mrs. Dallas paused with a strange smile and added slowly: "Major Jen." "The major! My guardian!" cried Alymer, quite thunderstruck. "Is he against me?" "Ask him." "I don't believe it." "Ask him," repeated Mrs. Dallas. "Nor I," said Isabella. "The major is a kind man, and he wants to see me happy. He is--" "That is enough," interrupted Mrs. Dallas, rising in a cold fury. "I want no further speeches from you. Go to your room, Isabella. Mr. Alymer, your way lies yonder," and with a swift gesture she pointed to the window. Resigning himself to the inevitable, Maurice gave one glance at Isabella, and went outside with a heavy heart. Dido was standing upon the veranda with her eyes glowing like two coals. Yet there was an ill-concealed expression of triumph in her gaze, which Maurice, in his then disturbed and angered state of mind, could ill brook. He paused abruptly as he passed by her, and asked a direct question: "Why do you hate me. Dido?" The negress glared savagely at him. "Voodoo!" said she, in a harsh voice. "What do you mean by that jargon?" he demanded, in angry tones. "Voodoo!" said Dido again, and showed her teeth in anything but a pleasant fashion. "Bah! you black parrot!" muttered Maurice scornfully and turned upon his heel. As he vanished down the walk Dido clapped her hands together with great satisfaction and began to sing in low tones. Her song was barbaric in words and strange beyond all telling in the music. It rose and fell, and moaned and drawled, in a curiously painful manner. In the drawing-room Mrs. Dallas had risen to her feet at the first deep contralto note, and now stood rocking herself to and fro with an expression of alarm on her face. Isabella was terrified in her turn by Dido's song and her mother's strange conduct, though by this time she should have been used to these eccentricities. "Mother, what is it? What does Dido sing?" Mrs. Dallas, closing her eyes, continued rocking herself to and fro, saying but one word in answer. "Voodoo!" she said, and that was all. But it was enough for Isabella. She shrieked and ran out of the room. Then Dido, still singing, appeared at the window, and looked at Mrs. Dallas with an expression of triumph. "Why do you sing the death song?" asked Mrs. Dallas, opening her eyes, "Because de master hab doomed dat yaller-ha'r," said Dido, and continued her song. In the meantime Maurice walked slowly homeward, puzzling out in his own mind as to what could be the meaning of these strange things. He could not understand why Mrs. Dallas objected to him as a son-in-law; nor could he surmise the meaning of the mysterious word, "Voodoo," pronounced so significantly by Dido, However, he saw plainly that the negress was the disturbing element in the Dallas household, and by a half-hypnotic control over the weak will of her mistress, she could act as she pleased. The widow had been born and brought up in the Barbadoes. She was a half-educated woman of feeble intellect, and having been left during the time her mind and character were being formed solely to the society of black servants, she had imbibed--not unnaturally--many of the debased superstitions of Africa. Dido knew this, and by means of her claims to a knowledge of Obi, she was enabled to rule Mrs. Dallas, and also, as has been stated, to exercise a powerful influence over the plastic mind of Isabella. "But I'll spoil her designs in that quarter," muttered Maurice, as his thoughts led him to this conclusion. "Isabella shall not be dragged down to the level of her mother. I shall marry her, and so destroy the influence of that vile negress." This was easier said than done, as Maurice, simple and upright in conduct and character, was no match for the unscrupulous machinations of Dido. She hated the young man, and was determined that he should not marry her nursling. But whether she had, like Mrs. Dallas, a preference for David over Etwald, Maurice could not determine. The more he thought over affairs, the more incoherent and complicated did they become; so Alymer gave up the task in despair. Then it occurred to him that Mrs. Dallas had referred him to Major Jen; so to his guardian Maurice went the moment he arrived at the big house. But to his surprise, the major was not to be found. "Major gone out, sir," explained Jaggard, to whom Maurice applied for information. "He got a message from Dr. Etwald, and went to see him. Be back to dinner, sir, I b'lieve." "Where is Mr. Sarby?" "Gone over to Brance Hall, sir." "Ho, ho!" thought Maurice, as he turned away. "So David has gone to see Lady Meg and the countess. Now, if he is in love with Isabella, and Mrs. Dallas favors his suit, I wonder why he acts in that way?" The question he could not answer, so dismissing it from his memory, he retired to the smoking-room with a pipe and a novel. When Jen and David returned he intended to question both, and, if possible, get to the bottom of these thickening mysteries. "Hang it!" soliloquized Maurice over his book, "since yesterday everything seems to have gone wrong. That negress and Dr. Etwald are at the bottom of affairs. But I can't see their reasons for mixing things up so." Then he laid aside his book to think, and through the smoke curling from his pipe he stared idly at the opposite wall. It chanced to be that upon which the barbaric weapons before alluded to were arranged, and conspicuous among them glittered the golden handle of the devil-stick. Recalling the mention of Voodoo, and Etwald's reference to African witchcraft, Maurice connected in his own mind the devil-stick with those barbarisms, and on the impulse of the moment he rose to examine the magic wand. Handling it carefully--for he dreaded the poison, although it was said to be dried up--he wondered if Dido could make use of it were it in her possession. "I heard Mrs. Dallas say that Dido's people came from Ashantee," soliloquized Maurice, "so I have no doubt she can work the infernal thing. Perhaps she knows enough to fill the bag with fresh poison. If she did so, I wouldn't trust myself near her. She would be sure to experiment on me." At this moment Major Jen, looking slightly worried, entered the room, and seeing the devil-stick in the hand of Maurice, he stopped short with an ejaculation of surprise. "You are looking at that thing, Maurice?" said he, wonderingly. "Now that is strange." "Why should it be strange?" "Because I have just been talking about it with Dr. Etwald." "Oh!" said Maurice, his thoughts flying back to the mysterious influence which he had seen Etwald exercise over Dido. "And what was the doctor saying?" Major Jen threw himself into a chair and frowned. "A great deal. He saw the devil-stick the other night--" "Last night?" "Yes, last night, and to-day he sent a note asking if I would ride over and see him this afternoon. I did so, and he then explained that he wished to buy that thing." "The devil-stick? Why?" "I can't say. He explained that he had been in the Barbadoes, and that he took a great interest in the subject of African fetish worship. He had heard of these 'wands of sleep,' as they are called, and greatly wished to obtain one, but he was unable to do so. Since seeing mine he has been seized with a desire to possess it." "Why?" said Maurice again. "As a curiosity, I suppose. I've told you all he told me. But I refused to sell it to him, and he seemed greatly vexed, a display of irritation which in its turn vexed me. I was quite annoyed when I left him." "Why don't you wish to sell it, Uncle Jen?" "Because it is a dangerous thing to handle. Although the poison is dried up, yet there may be enough in it to kill a man. If I parted with it and anyone was injured by it I should never forgive myself. Pray put it up, Maurice; I dislike to see you touch it. To-night, after dinner, I shall lock it up in a safe place. David is right; it should not be on the wall there." "David has gone over to see Lady Meg." "Yes. I don't think he will be back until after dinner," said Jen, rising. "So you and I had better sit down as soon as we are dressed. I am very hungry." "Uncle Jen, I want to ask you something." "What is it?" asked the major, pausing at the door. "Do you wish David to marry Isabella Dallas?" Jen hesitated. "I really can't say," he said. "That is a matter which lies in the hands of the girl herself. If she likes you better than David--" "She does." "What! Have you spoken to her?" "I have, and to Mrs. Dallas, who declines to sanction our engagement. She wants Isabella to marry David, and said--" "I can guess what she said," interrupted Jen, hastily. "No more of this till after dinner, my dear lad. Then I'll explain all." "Explain what?" "Why Mrs. Dallas wants Isabella to marry David." Not another word would the major say on the subject at that moment, so Maurice was forced to seek his room in a very unsatisfied frame of mind. However, as he thought, here was one mystery about to be explained, and that was a comfort. As Jen prophesied, David did not return to dinner, and Maurice had a tête-à-tête with his guardian. But they talked of indifferent things, and it was not until they were once more in the smoking-room with cigars and coffee that the major consented to speak on the subject of Mrs. Dallas' strange conduct. "Now, my boy, I'm ready to tell--" Here Jen stopped and looked blankly at the wall. "What is the matter?" asked Maurice, in surprise. "The devil-stick!" gasped Jen, pointing a shaking finger at the wall. "The devil-stick!" Maurice looked--the devil-stick was gone! CHAPTER VII. THE RIVALS. For some moments the two men looked at one another; and then Major Jen, seeing the necessity for prompt action, rang the bell. Jaggard entered with military swiftness, and stared blankly at his master, who was pointing at the wall; an action inexplicable to the servant at that moment. "Where is the devil-stick?" demanded Jen, wrathfully. "The what, sir?" asked Jaggard, doubtfully. "The green stick with the gold handle which was placed among the weapons here. It is gone. What has become of it?" Jaggard advanced to the trophy of weapons, and examined them with some deliberation, after which he turned to face the irate major. "It's gone sure enough, sir, but I don't know where." "Find out if any of the servants have taken it." Jaggard saluted and vanished, while his master walked up and down the room, fuming at the loss of the curiosity. He had all the talk to himself, for Maurice, whose mind was busy with conjectures as to Dido or Dr. Etwald being the thief, did not think it necessary to speak. In a few minutes Jaggard returned with the news that none of the servants had been in the smoking-room that evening. "Who lighted the lamp?" demanded Jen, sharply. "I did, sir." "We found the window open when we came in," said Maurice. "Did you open it?" "Yes, sir. The major told me to always air the room during dinner." "Do you think that someone has stolen the stick, Maurice?" said the major. "Someone from outside, I mean." "I am sure of it," replied Alymer, with decision. "Jaggard, did you notice that negress of Mrs. Dallas' about the grounds, since five o'clock?" "Why no, Mr. Maurice, I can't say as I did." "The tramp then; Battersea?" "No, sir. Haven't set eyes on him for a week." "When you lighted the lamp it was eight o'clock?" "About that, sir. I lighted it just after dinner, while you and the major were over your wine, so to speak, sir." "And the room was in darkness--that is, comparative darkness--before then," mused Maurice. "I don't think anyone could have seen the devil-stick unless the lamp was lighted. Was it gone when you lighted up?" "I didn't observe, sir!" "Very good, Jaggard," broke in the major, "you can go. Maurice!" he turned to the young man when Jaggard left the room, "what do you mean by all these questions and examinations? Do you suspect anyone?" "Yes," replied Maurice, deliberately. "I suspect Dido, the negress." "Why?" asked Jen, with military brevity. "It's a long story," returned Maurice, lighting a fresh cigar. "Look here, Uncle Jen, I went to dress at half-past six; you did also. When we left the devil-stick was in the room on the wall. Now we are here again at half-past eight, the devil-stick is gone. In these two hours Dido has had time to cross the lawn yonder and steal it." "But why do you suspect Dido?" "Because the room was in darkness, as you heard Jaggard say. To steal that stick the thief must have known its position on the wall." "Well, Dido didn't know that; she was never in this room." "No, but Dr. Etwald was." "Dr. Etwald! Do you think he has anything to do with it?" queried Jen, perplexed and a trifled startled. "I am certain of it," replied Maurice. "He employed Dido to steal it from you, as you refused to sell it. Listen, uncle, and I'll give you my reasons for this belief," and then Maurice told succinctly all that had taken place at The Wigwam during the afternoon. Major Jen listened quietly, and waited until Maurice ended his story before he spoke. The information about Mrs. Dallas and her reference to himself did not surprise him so much as Alymer expected it would do. In fact he only made one brief remark upon this point. "I am sorry Mrs. Dallas said that," he remarked, when Maurice paused in his narrative. "But what does she mean by it. Uncle Jen? Didn't you wish me to marry Isabella?" "I am neither for nor against," replied Jen, enigmatically. "As I said before, let the girl marry who she loves best." "She loves me best." "In that case I am sorry for David," retorted the major. "So am I," rejoined Maurice, promptly. "All the same, you can hardly expect me to give up to David the girl I love, and who loves me. But why does Mrs. Dallas support David's suit?" "Ask her to explain that, my dear lad." "I did so, and she referred me to you." Major Jen wriggled uneasily in his seat, and carefully knocked the ash off his cigar. He disliked telling what appeared to him to be a silly story, but as such story bore strongly upon the present position of things, and as Maurice was impatiently waiting to be enlightened, Jen was forced to put his scruples on one side and speak out. "If what I relate appears impossible don't blame me," he said, abruptly, "and I feel certain that you will laugh when I tell you about Voodoo!" "That word again!" cried Maurice, in a puzzled voice. "Dido used it when we met Etwald; she repeated it to me before I left. Voodoo! Voodoo! What does it mean, Uncle Jen?" "African witchcraft! Obi! Fetish worship! The adoration of the bad spirit who catches mortals by the hair. Any one of these things explains the meaning of the term." "H'm!" said Maurice. "It is devil-worship, pure and simple." "Yes, and Mrs. Dallas knows more about it than is good for her." "But you don't mean to say that she believes in it!" "My boy," Jen laid his hand upon the arm of the young man, "when you reach my age you will find that there is no limit to the credulity and folly of human beings. When I was stationed in the Barbadoes many years ago I met Mrs. Dallas." "Oh! so she is an old friend of yours?" "Yes. I knew her in the West Indies shortly before Isabella was born. It was through knowing me," explained the major, "that she came to this neighborhood and rented The Wigwam. You see, Maurice, I was one of the few people she knew in England, and she remained near me for company's sake, and"--here the major hesitated--"and because she was afraid of herself," he finished significantly. "I don't quite understand." "I shall explain, and it is lucky for you that Mrs. Dallas gave you permission to ask me for an explanation, otherwise I should have been forced, from a sense of honor, to hold my tongue. As it is, I can tell you; Mrs. Dallas fears that if Isabella marries anyone but David her death will take place." "Whose death? Isabella's or Mrs. Dallas'?" "The latter. You must know, Maurice," continued the major, "that Mrs. Dallas, though well born and well married, is an extremely ignorant woman. She was brought up mostly by Dido's grandmother, who was the most accursed old witch in Barbadoes, or out of it for the matter of that. This old hag instilled into the mind of Mrs. Dallas all kinds of superstitions in which she really believes. When the grandmother died Dido became nurse to Isabella, and private witch of the Dallas household. She is clever--wonderfully clever--and she has continued her grandmother's system of terrorizing both Mrs. Dallas and Isabella." "Yes; I can see that. Uncle Jen, and it is for that reason I want to marry Isabella, and take her away before her mind is degraded further by that old fury." "Well, the old fury sees what you want, my dear lad, and so she is determined that Isabella shall marry David and not you. To accomplish her aims she went through some hocus-pocus of devilry, or fortune-telling, or incantation, and discovered that if Isabella marries you, Mrs. Dallas will die." "And does Mrs. Dallas believe that rubbish?" asked Maurice, incredulously. "Implicitly! I tell you she is ignorant and superstitious. Come what may, she is convinced that your marriage with Isabella means her own death; so you may rest assured, Maurice, that she will never, never accept you as her son-in-law." "I understand," said Maurice, with a shrug. "It seems hopeless to contest this decision of a diseased and feeble mind. I can understand Dido stopping my marriage, as she wants to retain her sinful influence over Isabella; I can understand Mrs. Dallas, weak and silly, being dominated by this negro Jezebel; but I can't understand why David is chosen as the future son-in-law. If he marries Isabella, he will no more put up with Dido than I should have done." "Of course not; I can't explain the reason," repeated Jen, shaking his head. "But you know all that I know, Maurice; and you can see that it is hopeless for you to attempt to marry the girl." "I'm not so sure of that," retorted Maurice; "I love Isabella, and come what may I intend to make her my wife." "But what about me?" said a voice outside the open window; "what about me?" And a moment later David, in dusty riding-dress, stepped into the room. He looked disturbed and angry, and his strongly marked face bore traces of agitation and haunting thoughts. Disturbed by the unexpected appearance of David, and seeing from his expression that he was bent upon making himself disagreeable, Jen hastily interposed to prevent a quarrel between the two young men. "What, David, back again!" he said, ignoring the question asked by Sarby. "So you did not stay to dinner?" "No," replied David, shortly. "I didn't!" He flung himself into a chair and resumed in a significant tone, "Lady Seamere didn't ask me, and if she had I couldn't have accepted in this dress. Besides, I am not the man whom she delights to honor. Now if Maurice had been there, Lady Meg--" "For heaven's sake don't couple my name with Lady Meg's," interrupted Maurice, sharply. "You know quite well--" "Yes I do," rejoined David, interrupting in his turn. "And so does she!" "What do you mean?" "What I say. It's no use your assuming that innocent air, Maurice. You have not treated Lady Meg well!" "I have! How dare you say such a thing? Lady Meg knew that I was in love with Isabella." "Oh!" said David, with a sneer. "I overheard you arrange to marry her. But you'll never do that while I am alive, or Mrs. Dallas either." "I know that Mrs. Dallas is on your side, and I know the reason." "Then you know more than I do," retorted Sarby. "I told Mrs. Dallas that I loved Isabella and she said that nothing would give her greater pleasure than to see us married." "You shan't marry her!" cried Maurice, angrily rising. "I shall!" said David, and rose also. "Boys! boys!" said Jen, annoyed at this quarrel, "do not be so positive. If you are both in love with the same woman, let the woman decide." "She has decided!" said Alymer, sharply. "She loves me." "I don't care two straws about that," said David, coldly. "I have not spoken to her yet, but all the same I intend her to become my wife. I give you fair warning, Maurice, that you are not to poach upon my preserves." "Your preserves. Confound your insolence!" "Upon my word, David," said Jen, seeing that Maurice could hardly speak for rage, "you go too far. The girl loves Maurice and not you; and it would be much more honorable for you not to press your suit." "I don't care two pins for honor, major! I love Isabella, and I intend to marry her. But become the wife of Maurice she never shall; I'd rather see her married to Etwald." "The third Richmond who is in the field," scoffed Maurice. "Well, he has as good a chance as you. Dido supports his pretensions; Mrs. Dallas is your champion. As for me, I have the love of Isabella, so I'm afraid of nothing." "Are you not?" said Sarby, with a peculiar smile. "Remember what Etwald said about your life-in-death!" "I don't believe in that rubbish, David, and I should be very sorry to think you did." "As to that, I don't care about discussing the point," was the reply. "Our own beliefs are our own business. But I must say that Etwald is a dangerous man, both to you and to me." "I daresay," replied Maurice, coolly. "The more so, as I believe he has stolen the devil-stick." "What!" David made a step forward and stared at the wall. His face was quite pale, and his hands trembled in spite of his efforts to control himself. "The devil-stick gone!" he said, turning on his heel. "Both you and I must be careful, Maurice." CHAPTER VIII. A CRY IN THE NIGHT. So far the reader may wonder at the constituent elements of this story. African witchcraft, mysterious strangers, and barbaric women seem to be out of place when set in the sober framework of an English provincial town. But romance is not dependent upon landscape or on surroundings for its occurrence: it is to be found everywhere, and very often in the most unlikely places. Here, for instance, by some trick of Fate, certain people had come together, certain passions had been aroused, and now that the drama had been set in motion, it seemed likely that it would play itself out to a tragical conclusion. Tragical, certainly; for herein the elements of comedy seem to be wanting. But then Fate is so pessimistic. For a whole week after the events already related, nothing new took place likely to alter the situation. Maurice and David remained coldly polite, and very watchful of one another; neither mentioned the name of Isabella, nor did the one or the other see the girl. Mrs. Dallas took care of that. Acting, no doubt, under the advice of Dido (for she had no will of her own), she kept Isabella within doors, and refused to allow her to communicate with Maurice. But, on the other hand, she did not force her to see David; and Isabella was thankful for the consideration. But there was one visitor to The Wigwam whom Isabella would gladly have avoided--no less an individual than Dr. Etwald. After the violent scene with Maurice, the widow so overtaxed her strength that she became ill, and the doctor was sent for. His mere presence appeared to soothe Mrs. Dallas, and he came frequently. When she could, Isabella absented herself; but this she was not able to do on all occasions, and so she had to endure his complimentary speeches, and the mesmeric quality of his gaze. This last, especially, was a trial to one of her sensitive organization, and one day she felt so uncomfortable that she remonstrated with Etwald. "You make me afraid, doctor," she said, impetuously. "Your gaze is disagreeable to me." "My dear young lady," replied the man, blandly, "I must look at you when I address you." "Then don't address me!" "Isabella, do not be rude!" cried Mrs. Dallas, who had overheard this passage at arms; whereupon the girl, with a defiant glance at her tormentor, left the room. "I'm sure I don't know what I'll do with Isabella," sighed Mrs. Dallas; "she is getting so disobedient." "Perhaps I can assist you." Mrs. Dallas looked uneasily at her medical attendant. "No," she said, quietly "I may persuade her into doing what I want." "Which is, to marry Mr. David Sarby," said Etwald coolly. "In that case I can only hope that the young lady will continue obstinate, as I wish to marry her myself." "I know--I know! But I don't want her to marry you, doctor. Mr. Sarby is the man for my daughter. He is good-looking and clever and--" "And poor!" finished Etwald. "Well, yes," assented Mrs. Dallas, "there is that objection. But it is not much of an obstacle, as Isabella has money. The young couple can live on three thousand a year." Dr. Etwald went home with this sum running in his head, and more than ever he resolved to marry Isabella. He was in love with her, and would have taken her without a penny; but all the same, if she was an heiress in a small way, it was all the better. The doctor was clever but poor, and with an income like that he could move to London and do great things. There were many schemes in Etwald's head, and certain of these he determined to put into execution at once, in order to secure Isabella to wife. Some time previously Major Jen had asked Etwald about the devil-stick, but only to be informed that the doctor knew nothing of the missing article. "I have not set eyes on it since that night you showed it to me," declared Etwald, coolly. "You refused to sell it to me, so of course I gave up all idea of possessing it. All the same," finished he, politely, "I am sorry that it is lost." "Lost! Stolen, you mean," growled Jen, tartly. "That negress--" "Dido! Well, I admit that such a barbaric treasure would tempt her, the more particularly as she knows about such wizard instruments. Ask her if she took it." "I have done so, and I have asked Mrs. Dallas also," replied Jen; "but it seems that Dido wasn't out of the house on that night. She was ill--and, oddly enough, I hear, Etwald, that it was you who made her ill." "Really!" said Etwald, quite self-possessed. "I suppose Mr. Alymer told you so. I thought as much," he continued, as Jen nodded. "He saw me calming Dido's agitation when I arrived to ask Mrs. Dallas for her daughter's hand. This negress is hysterical, and on that day she happened to be so. I quieted her, yet Mr. Alymer accuses me of having caused her illness." "I don't know anything about it, Etwald; but truth to tell, Maurice does not like you!" "Because I prophesied ill concerning him!" "Oh, that was rubbish," said Jen, contemptuously. "You didn't mean it." "Didn't I! Wait and see!" After which Etwald bowed his visitor politely to the door of the gloomy old house which he occupied in Deanminster, and Jen returned home, quite baffled as to what could have become of the devil-stick. All his inquiries proved futile, and he was unable even to conjecture how it had disappeared; yet knowing its fatal qualities, he was in constant dread lest it should reappear in connection with a tragedy. Maurice still held to his idea that Dido had taken the wand, but Jen's inquiries proved that the negress had not been out of the house the night in question. "Then it must have been Battersea!" said Maurice, decidedly. "He is a friend of Dido's, and a pensioner of Isabella's. I'll find out if he stole the stick for the negress or for Dr. Etwald." This was easier said than done, as Mrs. Dallas would not allow Maurice to set foot in the house. Still Maurice hoped to learn the truth from the tramp himself, a hope that proved futile also, Battersea had gone on one of his begging excursions, and for quite a week was not seen in the neighborhood of "Ashantee." Then he suddenly made his appearance at the house, and asked to see Maurice. On being led into the hall, Alymer came out to speak with him, and after a few words he took the old man into the library. Jen, who was rather curious to know what Maurice might learn from the disreputable old scamp, waited patiently for the termination of the interview. As Alymer did not reappear, he sought the library, and found the young man alone. "Where is Battersea?" asked Jen, glancing round. "Oh, he has gone away!" "What did he wish to see you about?" "He had heard that I accused him of taking the devil-stick," explained Maurice, "and came here to exculpate himself." "Well! And did he do so?" "Yes, he is quite innocent. He did not take the devil-stick." "Then who did?" Maurice paused, reflected, and looked anxiously at Jen. "I'll tell you that to-morrow," he said, after a pause. "Why not to-night?" asked Jen, sharply. "Because I have a suspicion, which I can not prove at present. Battersea gave me a hint, upon which I am determined to work. To-night I may learn the truth." "From whom?" "Don't ask me. Uncle Jen; I can't answer you yet." Jen frowned, then laughed. "Well, just as you please," he said, raising his eyebrows, "but you are as mysterious as David." "Why, what about David?" "Only this, that he has gone up to town without bidding me good-by, save in this short note. I can't understand such conduct." "Nor I," said Maurice, stretching out his hand. "Please let me read the note. Uncle Jen. I wish to see precisely how it is worded." The note which the major handed over was curt to the verge of rudeness. It merely stated that the writer had gone to London for a couple of days on business, and would be back as soon as possible. No explanation of what the business might be was given. Maurice did not wonder than Jen was annoyed at receiving such a missive from one whom he regarded in the light of a son; but in handing it back to the major he excused the writer. "The fact is David has not been quite himself since this trouble about Isabella," he said, gravely, "and he thinks it best to go away for a time. You know how he tortures himself over trifles." "Egad, this love business of you two young men is getting to be anything but a trifle," said Jen, testily. "What between the lot of you and Etwald, there seems to be nothing but trouble. I wish you'd marry the girl, Maurice, and have done with it." "Perhaps I may settle affairs sooner than you think," said Alymer, rising. "Uncle Jen, I won't be back to dinner to-night, as I have to go into Deanminster." "What about?" "Business connected with the devil-stick and Isabella." "H'm! You are pleased to be mysterious. Why not tell me your business?" "Because I may fail," said Maurice. "Here, Uncle Jen, don't be cross; I'll tell you all about it to-morrow, and then you will see and approve of my silence to-night." "Well," said Jen, with a shrug, "you are old enough to guide your own actions. But I must say that I don't like to be shut out of the confidence of my two boys in this way." "You'll know everything to-morrow.' "About David also?" "Perhaps I can even promise you that!" said Maurice, with a smile. "What!" cried Jen, "do you know why David has gone to town?" "Not for certain; but I can guess. Now, Uncle Jen, I shan't answer another question just now, as I must go into Deanminster." "Will you take the dogcart?" "No; I'll walk." "Walk--in evening dress?" "I'm not going to put on evening dress," said Maurice, impatiently. "I'll get some dinner in Deanminster, and then go about my business." It was useless to ask further questions, as Jen saw that the young man was getting irritated; so, in no very pleasant temper himself, the major went up to his dressing-room. He was of a peace-loving and easy-going nature, fond of quietness, so it annoyed him not a little that all this disturbance should take place on account of a woman. "The sex is at the bottom of everything," said the major, uttering the old truth with conviction. David and Maurice both being absent, the one in London, and the other at Deanminster, Major Jen was compelled to dine alone. This he disliked doing, so hurrying over his dinner with all speed, he betook himself to the smoking-room, with a book. Here he lighted a cigar, chose a comfortable chair near the open window, and attempted to read; but the somnolent influence of the evening was upon him, and before his cigar was half done the good major was sound asleep. Outside a warm wind was blowing, and the air was filled with the perfume of flowers. In the dark blue sky hardly a cloud could be seen, and the moon, just showing her orb above the tree-tops, flooded the still loveliness of the night with wave after wave of cold light. All was full of charm, spellbound, as it were, by the magic of moonlight, when suddenly a long, wild cry struck shuddering through the silence. Accustomed as an old campaigner to sleep lightly. Major Jen was on his feet in an instant, and again heard that terrible shriek. It seemed to come from the direction of the high-road, and thinking that some evil was being done, Jen, without loss of time, raced across the lawn and into the avenue. In a few minutes he arrived at the gate, and stepped out into the white and dusty road: a black mass was lying some distance down, and toward this ran Jen with an indefinable sense of evil clutching at his heartstrings. The black mass proved to be the body of a man, cold and still. Jen turned the corpse over and recoiled. The dead man was Maurice Alymer. CHAPTER IX. AFTER THE DEED. While the major, hardly able to credit his own eyes, was staring at the dead body of his dear lad, Jaggard, attracted also by the strange cry, came running up. "What is it, sir?" he asked, saluting Jen even in that moment of anxiety. "I heard an awful cry, sir, and came arter you." Jen pointed to the corpse but said nothing. Jaggard, ignorant of the truth, bent down to place a hand upon the dead man's heart. Then he saw and recognized the face. "Mr. Maurice! God, sir, what does this mean?" he cried, aghast with sudden horror. "It means murder, Jaggard!" replied Jen in a hollow voice which he hardly recognized as his own. "Mr. Maurice went to Deanminster before dinner, and now--" the major pointed again to the remains. "Murder!" echoed Jaggard, his ruddy face growing pale. "And who, sir--" "I don't know--I can't say!" interrupted his master, impatiently. "Go and get the men to bring down a stretcher for the body, and send the groom for Dr. Etwald." "Ain't it too late, sir?" "Do as I tell you," said Jen, so fiercely that Jaggard did not dare to disobey, but ran off, leaving the major alone with his dead. The road which ran past "Ashantee" toward The Wigwam was lonely even in the daytime, and at this hour of the night--for it was close upon nine o'clock--it was quite deserted. Not a person was in sight, although the major could see up and down the road for a considerable distance, owing to the bright moonlight. He raised Maurice--or rather all that remained of Maurice--in his arms, and placed the body on the soft grass by the wayside. Then he sat down and began to think out the reason for the committal of this cowardly crime. That it was a crime he was certain, for there was no reasonable idea to suppose that Maurice had committed suicide. He had left for Deanminster hardly three hours before, full of health and spirits; and now he was dead. A dead body, a lonely road--all the evidence of an atrocious assassination having been committed, and not one trace of the assassin. Undoubtedly the twice-uttered cry had come from Maurice, and as Jen had raced out of the house after the first time he heard it, he must have reached his boy almost immediately after he died; before, so to speak, the body had time to grow cold. Yet the strange part of the affair was that the body was cold, and that there did not seem to be any wound whereby the murder could have been achieved. "I am taking too much for granted," muttered Major Jen, passing his hand across his brow, "Maurice may not have been killed after all. It is Etwald and his horrible prophecies which have put the idea into my head. Let me have a look at the poor lad's body." In the bright moonlight he carefully examined the body, but could find no trace of any wound, until he came to the right hand. Here, in the palm, he saw a ragged rent clotted with blood, but it was a mere scratch not likely to have caused death, unless poison were--. Here Major Jen uttered an oath, and rose to his feet with a new and terrible idea in his brain. "The devil-stick, by heaven!" he said aloud. Again he bent down and examined the face and hands. Both were swollen and discolored; he tore open the shirt at the neck, and saw that the young man's breast was all distended and bloated. Undoubtedly the cause of death was blood-poisoning, and the devil-stick had been the instrument used to effect the deed. But here the problem proposed itself: Who had killed Maurice? The person who had stolen the devil-stick! Who had stolen the devil-stick? The person who--Major Jen came to an abrupt pause. He could think for the moment of no answer to that question; but it is only fair to say that, dazed by the terrible occurrence of his dear lad's death, Jen had not his wits about him. While he was still considering the affair in a confused manner Jaggard reappeared with the men from "Ashantee" carrying a stretcher. While they placed the body of Maurice thereon, the groom bound for Deanminster passed them driving the dogcart, and Major Jen stopped the man to tell him that at all risk he was to bring back Dr. Etwald with him. Jaggard wondered at this, for Maurice--poor lad--was beyond all earthly aid--but Jen was thinking of a certain person who might have committed the crime, and he wished for the aid of Dr. Etwald to capture that person. In the meantime the necessities of the case called for the immediate removal of the body to "Ashantee." It was a melancholy procession which bore the body up to the house. Four men carried the bier--for it was nothing else since it bore the dead body of a young man--and behind came Major Jen bowed to the ground with sorrow. He could hardly believe that Maurice was dead--that he had perished upon a lonely country road by an unknown hand. But that was the question! Jen began to think the assassin was not unknown; that he had a clew to find the guilty one; and he waited the coming of Dr. Etwald with great impatience to see what his opinion was regarding the course to be pursued. In due time Etwald arrived, for the groom had been fortunate enough to find him at home. On hearing of the affair he expressed the deepest concern, and putting all other business on one side he came back to "Ashantee" in the dogcart. Before seeing Jen, he went up to Alymer's room, and examined the body of the unfortunate young man. Having satisfied himself so far as he was able, without making a post-mortem examination, he came down to the library where Jen awaited him. "Well, Etwald," cried the major, when he saw the tall form of the doctor at the door, "have you seen him?" "I have seen it," corrected Etwald, with professional calmness, "the poor fellow is dead, major--dead from blood-poisoning." "I knew it; I guessed it--the devil-stick." "That may be," rejoined Etwald, taking a seat, "but I can not be sure. You see neither you nor I know anything of the poison which was in the handle of that African instrument. It--" "But what are you talking of?" broke in Jen, impetuously. "You say that my poor boy died from blood-poisoning. How else could he have come by that, save through being touched or struck with the devil-stick? No one in the neighborhood was likely to possess any weapon likely to corrupt the blood. If Maurice had been stabbed, or shot, or if his head had been smashed in, I could understand the crime--or rather the motive for the crime--better; but as it is, the person who stole the devil-stick must have killed him." "And who stole the devil-stick?" asked Etwald, coolly. "If I forget not, major, you asked me the other day if I did." "Yes, but I was wrong; I made a mistake." "A mistake that under the present dispensation of things might prove awkward for me," said Etwald. "I was no friend to the dead man; I did not like him, nor he me. We both loved the same woman--we were rivals. What then so easy as for you to say--for a jury to believe--that I had stolen the devil-stick and killed Mr. Alymer, so as to get him out of my way." "I never thought of such a thing," protested Jen. "I do not suspect you." "Then whom do you suspect?" asked Etwald, fixing his dark eyes on the major. "Dido--the negress, of Mrs. Dallas!" Etwald shook his head and smiled. "But that is ridiculous," said he. "The commission of a crime presupposes a motive. Now what motive had Dido to kill your friend?" "She hated Maurice, and she did not want him to marry Miss Dallas." "Neither did I, if I remember rightly," said Etwald, dryly, "Besides, Dido--as you proved--did not steal the devil-stick. However, if you are suspicious of her, go over to-morrow and see Mrs. Dallas. It will be as well to be sure of your ground before making a public affair of it. By the way, I suppose you will have a detective down from London, to sift the affair to the bottom?" "I don't know; I'm not sure." "I should if I were you. Mr. Sarby is in London. Why not wire up to him to bring down a clever man from Scotland Yard?" "If I thought that--. But," added Jen, breaking off, "how did you know that David was in London?" "Oh!" rejoined Etwald, quietly, "Mr. Alymer told me so to-night." "To-night!" echoed Jen, starting up. "You saw Maurice to-night?" "Certainly! About an hour and a half before he was murdered." "At Deanminster?" "At my house at Deanminster," replied the doctor with great deliberation. "So it was you whom he went to see on business to-night?" Etwald shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know if you call it business," he said, after a pause. "I asked Mr. Alymer to call and see me, and sent the message by that tramp named Battersea." "I remember his coming. Go on, please." "Mr. Alymer called, as I said," continued Etwald, "And then I told him that Miss Dallas was ill from being prevented by her mother from seeing him. That I was sorry for the poor young lady, and that I gave up my position as a rival. In fact," added the doctor, "I advised Mr. Alymer to see Miss Dallas and marry her as soon as he could." "But why did you wish to act in this generous manner?" "For the very simple reason that Miss Dallas is of a delicate and nervous constitution," said Etwald. "If she does not marry Mr. Alymer, with whom she is in love, she may die. I quite forget that I should speak in the past tense now, major. Mr. Alymer is dead, and Miss Dallas may pine away of grief. It was to prevent such a catastrophe from occurring that I surrendered my claim to her hand." "Very generous of you indeed," said Jen, ironically; "but I do not see why you should behave in such a noble manner when you were so much in love with the girl." "It is for that reason that I changed my mind. As you know I have been attending upon Mrs. Dallas this week, and I saw plainly enough that my case was hopeless; that the girl was dying to marry Alymer. Besides," added Etwald, carelessly, "the mother was not on my side." "She wants Isabella to marry David." "So I hear; and he is in town, as Mr. Alymer told me to-night. But what are you going to do about the matter, major?" "Give notice to the police." "There will be a post-mortem, of course," said Etwald, carelessly. "No, no! I hope not," cried Jen, horrified at the idea. "But there must be," insisted Etwald, cruelly. "Alymer died of poison, and it must be proved that such was the case. Then we may learn if he perished from the poison of the devil-stick. Afterward you must get a detective to search for the person who stole it from your smoking-room. Once he or she is found, and the assassin of your poor friend will be in custody." "'He or she,'" repeated Jen, slowly. "Dido I mentioned; but 'he!' who is 'he?'" "Ah, that is what we wish to find out," said the doctor, gravely. "But how do I know? Battersea may be the thief." "The thief and the murderer!" "Well, no, major. On second thought I do not think it is wise to couple those two words as yet. The thief may not be the murderer, and--but what can I say?" broke off Etwald, suddenly. "As yet we know nothing. It is late, now, major, and I must get back. Shall I give information to the police?" "If you will be so kind," said the major, listlessly, and he let the doctor go away without another word. All through that long night he knelt beside the bed upon which lay the corpse of the man whom he had loved as a son. The bedroom of Maurice was on the ground floor and the windows looked out onto a little lawn, which was girdled by thick trees in which the nightingales were singing. The sorrowful songs of the birds, flitting in the moonlight and amid the cloistral dusk of the trees, seemed to Jen like a requiem over the young life which had passed away. The major was broken-hearted by the sorrow which had come upon him, and when he issued from the chamber of death he looked years older than when he entered it. It seemed to his big loving heart as though the woman he loved had died anew in the person of her son. Fortunately he was not forced to sorrow alone; toward midday David arrived from town, filled with grief and surprise at the untimely end of Maurice. He found the major in the library, and grasped him by the hand with genuine sorrow. "My poor uncle," he said in a low voice. "I cannot tell you what I feel. Etwald telegraphed to me the first thing in the morning, and I came down by the earliest train there was. Poor Maurice!--and we parted in anger." "More's the pity," sighed Jen, leaning upon the shoulder of Sarby; "but you cherish no anger in your heart now?" "God forbid, sir!" David spoke so fervidly that Jen saw plainly he meant what he said. The massive face of the young man looked worn and haggard in the searching light of the morning, and whatever enmity the love of the same woman had sown between him and the dead, it was not to be denied that he was suffering cruelly from remorse at their unhappy difference. Jen was sorry, but even in his own grief he could not forbear a stab. "You can marry Isabella now," he said, bitterly. "No!" said David, faintly, turning his face away. "At least not yet." The major looked at him for a moment or two, then, with a new idea in his head, he took David by the hand and led him into the chamber of death. "Swear," said he, "that you will not marry Isabella Dallas until you have discovered and punished the murderer of Maurice." David swore. CHAPTER X. FURTHER MYSTERY. Great was the dismay throughout the countryside when it became known that Maurice Alymer had been murdered. The dead man was well known in drawing-room and in hunting-field, so that there was hardly a person of consequence in the county who could not claim at least a bowing acquaintance with him. Moreover, Maurice was one of those men who are always popular, and much sympathy was manifested for his untimely death. Also the mysterious way in which he had come to his end, the absence of any known motive, and the knowledge that the deceased had no enemies--all these thing's combined to raise public curiosity to the highest pitch. The inquest on the dead body was awaited with much anxiety. Crowds of people came from all parts of the country to view the scene of the crime, and, if possible, to gain a glimpse of Jen and David, who as relatives--as it might be said--of the deceased were notorious for the time being; but thanks to the presence of the police and the vigilance of Jaggard, the morbid crowd of sight-seers were unable to gratify their curiosity. The two men remained in seclusion, and saw no one save Dr. Etwald. A sympathetic message arrived from Mrs. Dallas, which, considering the way she had behaved toward Maurice, the major regarded as a gratuitous insult. "Can't she let the poor man rest in his grave?" said Jen, wrathfully. "It is all through her opposition to the match that this has come about!" "Oh, you can't say that, Uncle Jen," remonstrated David. "Yes, I can, sir. If Maurice had not been prevented from seeing Isabella, there would have been no necessity for him to call on Etwald at Deanminster; and if he had not done that he would not have been on the high road in the night to meet with his death. Mrs. Dallas and her infernal negress are at the bottom of the whole accursed business." Of course this was mere raving on the part of Jen, who had no reason to connect either woman with the crime; but the poor man was beside himself with grief at the loss of Maurice, and hardly knew what he was saying. Being in this frame of mind he was by no means pleased when shortly after the delivery of Mrs. Dallas' message Dido made her appearance with a request for a personal interview. "I shan't see that black witch," cried the poor major. "David--Etwald, send her away." "I wouldn't if I were you, major!" said Etwald, judiciously; "she might be the bearer of valuable information, likely to lead to the detection of Alymer's assassin." "Then let her see the police, sir, although I don't agree with you. She is not the woman to put a rope round her own neck--black as it is." "But surely, Uncle Jen, you don't look upon her as the guilty person!" "How do I know who is guilty?" snapped Jen. "I wish I did! I'd hang him or her. But this black wretch and her confounded mistress have to do with the death of my poor boy, I am certain." "I doubt it. But will you see Dido or shall I send her away?" "Yes--no--yes. That is, I don't wish to see her. Ask her what she wants, David." David left the room and remained absent for some time. On his return he stated that Dido had come with a message from Isabella, and that she refused to deliver it to anyone save the major. Seeing that the negress was thus insistent, and wondering what Miss Dallas might want with him at so painful a time, Jen yielded, and Dido was admitted into the library. She looked taller, more massive, and more sullen than ever, and though she trembled at the sight of Dr. Etwald--who, by the way, kept his dark eyes studiously fixed on her--she was fairly composed when she addressed the major. "My lil missy want you, sar," said Dido, going straight to the point. "What does she want to see me about?" asked Jen, coldly. "I no know, massa. She weep! She ill! She make terrible bobbery, dat poo' girl. Massa, come an' see my lil missy dis day." "I can't at present. The police are in the house; there is a lot to be attended to. Tell your mistress, Dido, that I will see her to-morrow." "She want you to-day," insisted Dido, obstinately. "I have given you the message," said Jen, sharply. "Tell her I'll see her to-morrow. And now, Dido, I want to know what you have to do with this crime?" "I, massa! Ole Dido she do nuffin. Massa Maurice he die Voodoo! Oh, yes." "By that devil-stick poison?" "Me don't know what debble-stick is. I no touch him." It was clearly impossible to learn anything from so obstinate a creature, so Jen repeated that he would call upon Isabella on the morrow, and dismissed the negress. As she left the room Dr. Etwald followed her, and on his return mentioned casually that he had been giving Dido some instructions as to what was to be done with Isabella. "The girl is nervously excited," he explained; "and now that she has sustained this shock of Mr. Alymer's death there is no knowing what complications may ensue." "You don't think her life is in danger?" asked David, in a faltering tone. "No; but I fancy her reason is." Here Jen looked suddenly at Etwald, and recalled the dinner at which the doctor had read the dead man's hand. Then he had prophesied ill of Maurice--an ill which it would seem had been fulfilled. Now, with equal curtness, he was prognosticating evil for Isabella. Vexed at such croakings, Jen spoke abruptly: "You are a prophet of evil, Etwald," said he. "First my poor Maurice, now Miss Dallas." "As to that," replied Etwald, with deliberation, "I foretell that Miss Dallas may get ill from perfectly natural signs. She was in love with Alymer; she is of a highly excitable and nervous character, so it is easy to know that unless great care is exercised her brain may be affected." "But with regard to Maurice?" "Quite a different thing. I read in his hand that he would be subject to a state of life in death." "Which, as we guessed, meant paralysis or catalepsy," said David. "But, as you see, poor Maurice is dead. Your prophecy was false." Etwald shrugged his shoulders. "It would seem so," he assented. "Mr. Aylmer is dead, as you say; so the term life in death can not be applied to his present state of non-existence. But you will admit that I foretold that evil would happen to him if he decided to marry Miss Dallas. It has turned out as I thought." "True, doctor," remarked Jen, keeping his eyes fixed upon the swart face of the other, "and is that all you have to say?" "All? What else do you expect me to say?" demanded Etwald, coldly. "Say who you think killed Maurice." "That is beyond my powers." "Then who stole the devil-stick?" "I can't answer that question either," said the doctor, taking up his hat. "A detective may be able to assist you on those points. Engage one." "No," said Jen, linking David by the arm, "we don't need aid from the law to learn who killed Maurice and avenge his death. David and myself will find the guilty person." "Really! I hope you will succeed. But a case like this requires a trained intelligence such as you will find in a detective. Of course you may command my services, major, but I am afraid you will not succeed." "We shall see," replied Jen, who was as obstinate as a mule on some points. "I am no fool." "Certainly not," rejoined Etwald, with something like a sneer; "but you are also no detective." "That we shall see," retorted the major, vexed by the sarcasm, and thereupon gave Etwald to understand by look and manner that he wished to be alone with David. When the doctor had taken himself off, and was walking past the library windows toward the curve of the avenue where it ran into the woods, Jen looked after him with a lowering face, and laid an inquiring finger on David's arm. "Do you trust that man, my boy?" he asked, gravely. "No," returned Sarby, after a pause. "I think he is a bad lot." "I am sure of it, and what's more," added Jen, nodding, "it is my opinion that he knows who killed Maurice, if indeed he did not do it himself." David shook his head. "I don't think so," said he, with conviction. "Why should he kill Maurice?" "The lad was his rival." "Mine also, major. Yet you don't suspect me of the deed." "God forbid that my heart should harbor so ill a thought," cried Jen, with natural horror. "But I tell you what, David. We must sift this affair to the bottom. Maurice is dead, his assassin is at large, so we must catch him." "Him, Uncle Jen?" "Or her," added the major. "For all I know that black witch may have something to do with the crime. Likely enough, if she knows how to manipulate the devil-stick." "But she denied knowledge of the devil-stick." "Lies, lies, lies!" said Jen, scornfully. "If I could only--but enough of this for the time being," he added, abruptly. "We will talk of these things on a more fitting occasion." The hours dragged heavily along in that house of mourning. The body of the dead man lay in the little chamber which looked out upon the laurel-encircled lawn. It was covered with a white sheet, the hands were folded upon the breast, and flowers had been laid thereon by the major. Over the face a handkerchief had been thrown, as the once handsome features were so discolored as to be absolutely repulsive to the sight. There was something terrible in the rigidity of the long form, stretched out so stiffly under the sheet. In the chamber candles were burning, and Jaggard was watching near the corpse. He was to watch throughout the night. On the morrow the post-mortem examination was to take place, and the inspector of police at Deanminster had left a man in the house to look after the interests of justice. As yet the inspector--no very gifted man at the most--was doubtful of the proper course to pursue. A crime had been committed; the victim was a well-known gentleman; so here, if anywhere, was a chance of his covering himself with glory by discovering the assassin. But Arkel--the inspector in question--had only experience in bucolic crimes of the rick-burning order, or, at the worst, the poker murders of laborers. The subtlety with which this deed had been accomplished baffled him. He could not grasp the idea of the devil-stick, or even take in the mode of the death. If Arkel were to be the avenger of Alymer's death the assassin ran an excellent chance of getting off scot free. David retired early to bed, as he was quite worn out with the anxieties of the day; but Jen was too grieved to sleep. He remained in the library, thinking over his great loss and wondering what wretch could have taken that young life. Toward twelve o'clock he went to the kitchen and had a short conversation with the policeman, who was a stupid, bucolic youth with no more brains than a pumpkin. Afterward he sought the chamber of death to see that Jaggard was not sleeping at his post. Finally, like the good old soldier he was, Jen went round the house to satisfy himself that the windows and doors were bolted and barred. All these things done, he returned to the library. At first he read and smoked, then he paced up and down, thinking of his dead lad, and finally, as the hands of the clock drew to midnight, he threw himself into a chair, and worn out in body and in mind, the old man slept profoundly. Hour after hour passed in silence; the moon set and the night grew darker, as the wind rose and moaned through the woods round the house. Save the muttering of the breeze and the ticking of the clock not a sound was to be heard in that silent room wherein Jen slept heavily. Suddenly he woke with a start. Somebody was rapping gently on the shutters of the middle window. Glancing at the clock, Jen saw that it was three in the morning, and wondering who could be outside at so untimely an hour, he rose to open the window. With care, begotten by old experience, he picked up his revolver and held it ready while unbolting the window shutters. When they were thrown open he saw a white figure with outstretched hands standing before the window. "Good Lord, Miss Dallas! You here? At this hour!" "Yes, yes," whispered the girl, stepping into the room. "I got out of my bedroom window and escaped from my mother and Dido. I want to see Maurice." "But if you--" "Maurice! Maurice!" interrupted the girl, wildly. "Take me to the dead chamber." Seeing from her looks that she was too distraught to be argued with, Jen led her out of the library and into the dead man's room. Then he uttered a cry, which was echoed by a wild shriek from the girl. The bed was empty--the corpse was gone. CHAPTER XI. MAJOR JEN, DETECTIVE. Astounded and horrified, the major, with Isabella Dallas clinging to his arm, stood staring at the empty bed. The candles were still burning, but Jaggard had fallen from his chair and was lying, a huddled heap, upon the floor. The one window of the room was wide open, and the wind--now blowing freely--was shaking a loose shutter to and fro. The shock of the discovery was so terrific that Jen for once in his life lost his presence of mind. He was recalled to his senses by the wild voice of Isabella. "Maurice! Maurice! Where is he?" she cried, leaving the major and rushing toward the empty bed. "You said he was here--my poor dead love; but I can't see him. Where is he? Where is he?" "God knows!" stammered Jen, turning his horrified gaze on the poor girl. He did not know what to do. Isabella was in a dangerous state of hysteria. She had on but a loose white dressing-gown, and her presence in the house at three o'clock in the morning was enough to overpower Jen's sense of the reasonable, independent of the crowning horror of the missing corpse. At this juncture the much-needed aid came from without. David Sarby rushed into the room. He was half-clothed, pale as the white dress of Isabella Dallas, and evidently, from the wild look in his eyes and the quivering of his nether lip, badly scared. Stopping short a few paces from the door, he held up the lamp which he carried, to survey the astonishing scene before him. The sight of Jen tongue-tied and immovable, of Isabella weeping on her knees by the bedside, of the bed itself vacant of its dead occupant--all these things were calculated to shock even stronger nerves than those of David Sarby. Nevertheless, after a pause of sheer astonishment, he managed to stammer out a question: "Did--did she cry out?" he asked, nodding toward the girl. "I heard a shriek." His presence and question unlocked the major's tongue. "Yes," he replied, in a hesitating manner, as of one unused to speech. "She came to the library window ten minutes ago, having escaped from the custody of her mother and Dido. Quite hysterical, as you see, and bent upon seeing our poor dead lad. To pacify her I brought her, but as you see--" "The body is gone!" cried David, hurrying toward the bed. "Gone! gone!" moaned Isabella, rising. "Oh, my dear, dead lover." "Jaggard!" "There," said Jen, pointing to the inanimate form of his old servant. "He is asleep or dead." "Dead!" wailed Isabella, catching at the word, "Maurice dead!" "We must alarm the house," cried Sarby, in a horrified tone, and thereupon walked swiftly toward the door. But before he could reach it the major, having recovered his presence of mind, seized him by the arm. "No, no!" said Jen, hastily. "Do not bring any one here as yet, David. We must think of this poor girl. Take her home at once. When you are both out of the house I shall give the alarm. You understand--no one must know that Miss Dallas has been in my house at this hour." "I quite agree with you," said David, simply, and, turning to Isabella, he took her gently by the hand. "Come, Miss Dallas. This is no place for you." "Maurice!" muttered Isabella, looking piteously at him. "Maurice is not here. Come, Miss Dallas, let me take you back to your mother." "My mother is so cruel," said Isabella in a low tone, "and I feel so ill," she continued, raising her hand to her loose hair. "Yes, yes; I must go home. But Maurice--my dear Maurice." "I shall tell you all about it to-morrow," answered Jen, soothingly, and led her out of the room. "At the present moment you must go home with Mr. Sarby. David, there is a loose cloak of mine in the hall. Wrap it round her and come into the library. It is best that she should leave in the way she came." David did as he was told, and snatched up his own ulster after wrapping up Isabella. In the library they found the major reopening the shutters of the window, which he had closed on the girl's entry. When he flung them aside a gust of wind blew inward, sprinkling him with moisture. "Rain," said Jen, drawing back, "All the better; there will be no spies about, and you can take Miss Dallas home without being observed." Taking the girl by the hand, David led her toward the window. She was in a half-dazed condition, the result of the strong excitement which had impelled her to make this midnight visit, and her nerves being thus dulled, she surrendered herself passively to the guidance of David. Only at the window did she pause and look steadfastly at the major. "You must find out what has become of my dear Maurice's body," she said, quietly. "I promise you," replied Jen, with a look of stern determination in his face. "And you will let me know?" "I promise you," said Jen again. "Please go. Miss Dallas. There is no time to be lost, and you must not be found here." Thus entreated, Isabella stepped out into the night, and in a moment or so she was swallowed up in the darkness with her companion. Left alone, the major closed the window, bolted and barred the shutters, and then hastened back to the death chamber, where he rang the bell. In a few minutes the footman, half-dressed and half-asleep, made his appearance; then came the policeman hastily from the kitchen; finally, as the bell still continued ringing, all the other servants, male and female, poured into the room. A single glance showed them what had occurred--the insensible Jaggard, the empty bed, the open window. A babel of voices ensued. "Silence, all of you," cried Jen, authoritatively. "We must act, not talk. Two of you take Jaggard to his room. Tell the groom to ride at once to Deanminster for Dr. Etwald and Inspector Arkel. Sampson," he added, turning to the policeman, who was stolidly staring at the empty bed, "rouse yourself. Take lanterns and search for footmarks. There must have been more than one person to carry off a dead body." These directions were obeyed at once. The house, the grounds, the whole wild night with its driving tempest became radiant with lights and alive with terrified men. That a human being should be murdered was sufficiently ghastly without this crowning horror of a missing body coming after. Every man looked on his fellow with suspicion; in the yellow light of the lanterns, dimly through the steady downpour of rain, could be seen pallid faces and scared expressions. And while the men folk scoured the house, the park, and the adjacent lanes environing "Ashantee," the female servants, unnerved and hysterical, crowded together in the kitchen, whispering over hastily prepared tea. It was a wild night, and full of the vague horrors of death and mystery. Etwald came immediately from Deanminster in company with Arkel, whom this last extraordinary event took entirely by surprise. He questioned Sampson--the young policeman left in charge--he searched the chamber of death, stepped out of the window and across the lawn toward the belt of laurels which divided the lawn from a winding and tortuous lane. This, a tenebrous pathway even in the noonday, slipped eel-like through darkling trees to emerge into the high road a quarter of a mile away. Arkel was so long absent that Jen could only surmise that he had gone into this outward darkness, and on the inspector's return it appeared that the major was right in his conjecture. Furthermore Arkel brought back certain news. "Without doubt the body was taken out through the window," he said to Jen. "The flower-bed beneath the lattice is trampled down. It was carried across the lawn--for I could see by the light of the lantern the footmarks of four feet--and through the bushes into the lane. The way can be traced easily enough to that point; but it is too dark to note any further sign." "Nothing more can be done to-night," said Jen, gloomily. "The men have returned dead tired, but they have seen nothing and no one." "Where were you when the body was stolen?" "Sleeping in the library. I saw that all was safe about midnight, and then sat down over a book and fell asleep. I woke somewhere about three--" "You are sure it was that hour?" "Certain. I heard the hall clock strike. On waking I went into the room where the dead body was laid out to assure myself that all was well. I found the bed empty, the window open, and Jaggard insensible." "Did you hear any noise?" "None at all. But the wind and rain were wild outside, so that they may have drowned the noise made by those who broke in." "We must question your servant," said Arkel, having noted the major's answers in his pocket-book. "He was stunned, I believe?" "I can't say. I haven't examined him. Stunned or drugged, I suppose." "And where is Mr. Sarby?" asked the inspector, as they turned to leave the room. The major was prepared for this question, and as he did not intend that the visit of Isabella to the house should become known to the police, he answered it in a guarded fashion. "Mr. Sarby went out as soon as we discovered the loss, and he has not yet returned." "Was he with you when you made the discovery?" "No. He had retired to bed," rejoined Jen. "But as soon as I saw what had taken place I called him up, and he jumped through the window to see if he could espy any traces of the robbers. Then the servants came, and I sent for you." Inspector Arkel, who could not see one inch beyond his nose, was quite satisfied with this explanation, and nodded in reply. He left the room with the major to seek out Jaggard, and, if possible, to learn from him what had occurred. But this they were unable to do. The man had been stunned by a blow on the head, and was quite insensible. "And yet he was a strong man," said Etwald, when he conveyed this intelligence. "He must have been taken by surprise." "Undoubtedly," asserted Jen, readily. "But he must also have been asleep, else he would have called out as the men burst through the window." "How do you know there were more than one?" asked Etwald, in a jesting tone. "Because Maurice was an unusually heavy man," replied the major, "and he could not have been carried off--that is, his body could not have been carried off," he corrected, with a sigh, "unless by two men. There may have been three, for all I know. But what is the meaning of it all?" cried Jen, in bewildered dismay. "Why was the poor lad's body stolen?" "Resurrectionists!" suggested Arkel; whereupon Major Jen shuddered. "For God's sake, don't even hint at such a thing," he cried, vehemently. "It would be too terrible; and, as it happens, quite unbelievable. It is incredible that such a thing could occur nowadays." "It is incredible that such a thing as the theft of a body should occur," said Etwald, dryly. "Yet it has taken place. But where is Mr. Sarby? I should think that he would be present to aid you." Jen was just about to repeat his feigned explanation regarding David's absence, when the door opened, and the young man, wet and exhausted, entered the room. To give him his cue, the major spoke to him at once. "You are just in time, David, as I was telling these gentlemen about your hunt after those wretches. Did you see anyone?" "I saw nothing," said David, wearily. "God knows what has become of the body!" "Have you any theory, Mr. Sarby?" "No, doctor! I am too weary to frame theories at this hour of the night. But, no doubt, Mr. Inspector yonder, can--" "Certainly not," interrupted Arkel, sharply. "I can prove nothing. I am quite puzzled." "And no wonder," said Etwald, counting off events on his fingers. "The devil-stick, the murder, the theft of the body. This is a catalogue of horrors. A man might do worse than write a story on these things." "I agree with you!" remarked the major, sharply. "A man might make a jest of these horrors--as you are doing." "I assure you I never felt less like jesting in my life," replied Etwald, coldly. "But it is no use discussing such a thing at five in the morning. If you can do without me, major, I shall return to Deanminster. I am tired." "But Jaggard?" asked David, rising stiffly from his chair. "He is all right for the time being. I have detailed a housemaid as nurse, and she knows what to do. I'll come back again in the morning and see if he has recovered his senses." When Etwald took his departure, Major Jen sent David to bed, in spite of the young man's remonstrances, but remained up himself to talk to Arkel. For a long time Jen discussed the matter with the inspector, but the conversation proved extremely unsatisfactory. Arkel was not a clever detective, or even a keen-witted man, and in a case like the present--difficult and involved--he was quite at a loss how to proceed. Finally, Major Jen dismissed him in despair, and while Arkel went to see his men, who were posted round the house--a clear case of shutting the stable-door after the steed was stolen--Jen remained alone to think of what he should do. "I must be my own detective," he thought, pacing the library. "This man is a fool. He will find out nothing, and I won't have even the satisfaction of burying the body of my poor lad. I must do the work myself, with the assistance of David. To find out who stole the devil-stick; that is the first step. To discover who killed Maurice; that is the second step. To learn who carried away his body; that is the third step. Three very difficult things to find out, and I don't see where to begin. I must learn all I can about Maurice's past life, for he may have enemies of whom I know nothing. Once I learn who his enemies are--if he had any--and I may discover the truth. I shall go and sleep, and when I awaken I shall set to work to solve these mysteries." As he spoke the major unbarred the shutters of the window. The rain had ceased, the dawn was breaking, and the terrible night was at an end. "It is an omen!" said the major, "an omen of good!" CHAPTER XII. THE STRANGE PERFUME. The sensation caused by the news that the dead body of Maurice Alymer had been stolen was even greater than that occasioned by the discovery of the murder. Even the London papers took up the matter, and sent down reporters to make investigations and build up theories as to the reason of this strange disappearance. Everywhere people were talking of the matter, and giving their opinions as to the proper course to be pursued in recovering the corpse. Would-be detectives haunted the roads and lanes around "Ashantee"; they would have penetrated into the park itself but for the vigilance of Major Jen. His attitude at this moment was rather displeasing to his friends. He refused to permit anyone to see the chamber whence the body had been stolen, and even declined to discuss the matter or accept advice as to the best thing to be done. To all who spoke to him--and these were many--he had but one reply. "I know what I am doing," he would say, a trifle tartly, "and I prefer to keep my own counsel. If the murderer of my dear boy can be found, he or she will be found by me. If the wretch who stole his body can be discovered, I am the man to make that discovery. How I intend to set about it is my own affair." Of course, busybodies, who saw their well-meant but meddlesome advice thus rejected, were by no means pleased, and some even went so far as to say that the shock of death and disappearance had unsettled Jen's reason. They spoke to David and counseled him to look well after his guardian, and said also that the major, if he had his senses about him, which was doubtful, should engage a smart London detective to investigate the case. But, as has been before stated, Jen had concluded to be his own detective. It must be conceded that for an amateur, the major set about his unaccustomed task in a very methodical manner. He offered a reward of five hundred pounds for the detection of the murderer, and a further sum of the like amount to anyone who should discover the thief who had desecrated the chamber of death. These munificent rewards set everybody on the alert, and Jen, without putting down actual money, thus became possessed of some hundreds of spies who would bring him any information likely to assist him in his investigation. Also, the major examined all the servants in the house. He questioned Sampson, the young policeman who had been in the kitchen on the night when the body had been stolen, and finally he paid a visit to the police office at Deanminster, where he saw Mr. Inspector Arkel. "Well, Arkel," said Jen, after the first greetings were over, "have you any clew?" "No, major," replied Arkel, rather gruffly, for disappointment was beginning to tell on his temper, "nor are we likely to find any until that servant of yours regains his senses. How is he now?" "In a state of high fever, poor soul," said Jen, with a depressed look. "He does nothing but rave. Yet, in all his wild talk he never lets slip a single word likely to help us." "That's a pity, major. By the way, I questioned Dr. Etwald about the matter, and he is of opinion that the man was stunned by a blow on the head." "I know that. I can only suppose that Jaggard fell asleep at his post and woke up in time to see the men getting in by the window. A struggle would then ensue, and he would be struck on the head, as Etwald supposes." "I don't agree with that theory. There are flaws in it." "Yes?" queried Jen, eagerly. "I am open to correction. Please go on." "We will proceed on the questions and answers system," said Arkel, precisely, "and thrash out the matter in that way. You were in the library on that night?" "Yes, I saw all was right in the house at twelve o' clock, and I slept on in my chair from that hour until three." "Good, Then between twelve and three the body must have been stolen. You are a light sleeper, I heard you say, major?" "Well, yes," returned Jen, with a thought upon the rapping of Isabella upon the window. "It does not take much to waken me." "You would have heard Jaggard call out, I suppose?" "Certainly. The bedroom is no great distance from the library, and the door of the latter was open. But then Jaggard didn't cry out!" "Precisely," said Arkel, laying his forefinger on Jen's chest with an air of triumph. "He did not cry out. Had he been asleep and woke up in time to see the robbers get in by the window, he would have called out at once for assistance." "True enough," rejoined the major, struck by this sensible deduction. "Still, he might not have heard them forcing the window." "I doubt that, I doubt that. Jaggard, like yourself, is an old campaigner, and no doubt an alert sleeper; that is," explained Arkel, "he would wake up at the least sound." "Yes, I think he would. But what does all this tend to?" "Simply to a theory I have in my head. Jaggard was drugged, sir." "But the wound at the back of the head which stunned him?" "There you have it," cried Arkel, with a nod. "The wound at the back of the head was caused by his falling like a log when he was drugged." "H'm! This is all building on sand," said Jen, doubtfully. "Even to drug him, these men must have entered by the window." "No. Do you not remember when we examined the window that it was opened from the inside?" "Egad, you are right. Then you think that someone must have been concealed in the room, and sprung out from hiding to drug Jaggard." "No," said Arkel again, "no one was concealed in the room." "Confound it, man, you don't mean to say that Jaggard opened the window?" cried Jen, starting from his seat with some show of temper. "Ay, but I do, major. Jaggard helped to steal the body of Mr. Alymer. He opened the window to admit his accomplices. When they fulfilled their task and got the body out of the room they turned on Jaggard and betrayed him. That is, they drugged him and knocked him down." "I don't agree with you at all, Arkel. Jaggard is perfectly honest and was as devoted to Maurice as he is to me. Besides, even granting the possibility of such a thing, which I do not in the least, why should Jaggard's accomplices betray him?" "I can't say," returned Arkel, shrugging his shoulders. "They may have been bribed to steal the body, and on accomplishing their task did not want to share the bribe with Jaggard." "Rubbish!" said Jen, tartly. "They must have known that he would betray them when he recovered his senses!" "No doubt. But in the meantime they would make themselves scarce. Jaggard has been insensible or raving for over a week, major. The scoundrels counted on that!" "I say again that I believe in Jaggard's honesty, and I do not agree with you," said Jen, putting on his hat, "and after all, I do not see how you deduce this drugging theory!" "Oh, as to that, I was once a bit of a chemist," explained Arkel; "and when you took me to see Jaggard I smelt a curious perfume which seemed to be hanging about him. As a servant is not likely to use perfumes, I thought it curious." "What kind of a perfume?" "I can't exactly describe it. A rich, heavy, deadly sort of thing, likely, I should think, to dull the sharpest senses." "Did Etwald notice it?" asked Jen, thoughtfully. "Yes; but he professes his inability to explain it. He thinks the man was stunned and not drugged. I think, on the grounds I have explained, that he was first drugged and then stunned." "H'm; it's queer! I'll have to think it over. But when the body was taken out of the window, Arkel?" "The thieves carried it across the lawn!" "Then down through the bushes to that winding lane, I suppose?" said Jen. "I know all that; but afterward?" "They put it into a cart and took it away." "How do you know that?" asked the major, all on the alert. "Why," said Arkel, fingering his fat chin, "it was raining, as you may remember on that night." "Not until after the body had been stolen," returned Jen, mindful that Isabella had come into the library dry-shod. "How do you know that?" asked the inspector sharply. Jen was rather taken aback by the quickness of this query, and saw that if he wished to preserve the secret of Isabella, upon which depended her reputation, it behooved him to be careful. "Well," said he cautiously, "I looked out at the night when the hour was twelve, and--" "It might have rained between that time and three," said Arkel, with swift interruption; "and I believe it did rain, for you see, major, we found the mark of wheels in the lane, which would not have been left had not a considerable amount of rain fallen." "Did you follow the trail?" asked the major, waiving the question of rain or no rain. Arkel made a gesture of disappointment. "To the high road only," said he; "and there the wheel marks became mixed up with those of other vehicles. Lord knows where they took the body to, for once on the high road they had the wide, wide world to choose from. It's the devil's own mystery," he said, biting his finger. "I never met the like of it before, and am fairly puzzled. Why should these wretches steal the mortal remains of a murdered man?" "True," said Jen; "and why should these wretches have murdered that man?" Arkel looked up sharply. "As to that," he said, "we are by no means certain that they are the same." "I don't follow you." "No? And yet it is easy enough. If those who slew Mr. Alymer wanted his body, they could have stolen it on the high road, where they struck him down. It was mere foolishness to venture liberty and life in a raid upon the house." "It may have been an afterthought." "People don't have afterthoughts in grim matters of this kind," said Arkel, rising. "Well, major, good-by, good-by. Should I learn anything else I shall let you know; but depend upon it, the truth of the matter is to come from Jaggard." "He is honest. Honest!" cried Jen. "I'll stake my existence upon that." When riding homeward after this interesting conversation, the major could not but admit to himself that Arkel had brightened up wonderfully in his intellects since first taking charge of the case. The man was not brilliant, not even clever; yet in the present instance he displayed more readiness of resource than Jen would have given him credit for. The theory of the drugging was worthy of investigation, and the major determined to see if anything could be discovered likely to support this view of the matter. He still held to his belief in Jaggard's honesty, for it was incredible that an old servant of thirty years' standing should turn traitor at once; but he thought it probable that someone might have taken him by surprise and drugged him. But as the window was closed the person in question must have been concealed in the room. Here Jen's train of thought became confused. "I don't see how anybody can have been in the room," he reflected, as he entered his house. "I saw that all was safe myself at midnight. The servants were abed, Sampson keeping vigil in the kitchen, and Jaggard sentry in the death-room. Moreover, I left the library door open, and the sound of footsteps stealing to the door of my poor lad would have wakened me out of the deepest sleep. Isabella's raps were light enough, yet I was up on the instant. No, I can't see myself that the devil who drugged the man could have been in the house; and yet the window opened from the inside. H'm! it is strange; very strange. I wish Jaggard were able to talk sensibly." But Jaggard was far from the condition of connected thought or coherent words. He turned and tossed upon his poor bed with bright eyes, burning skin and babbling tongue. His head was swathed in bandages, and the housemaid who watched beside him had frequently to replace the clothes he tossed off in his violent movements. This nurse was a sickly, dark-eyed creature, who was strongly attached to Jaggard; and it was her love for him that made her proffer her services to look after him, and that chained her to his bedside. She reported to her master that Dr. Etwald had been in that morning, and was coming again in the afternoon, but that there was nothing to be done until the delirium had expended itself. "Ay," thought Jen, as he stood by the bed, "or until the man dies. If he dies without regaining his senses, we will never know the truth." He bent down to replace the bedclothes which the sick man had thrown off, and as he did so, a faint perfume, sickly and rich, struck his nostrils. It seemed to come from the bandages at the back of the head, and on bending down for a closer inspection, Jen saw that one of these--it was the merest corner which peeped out--was of finer linen than the rest. The fabric was cambric, and with a start which made the blood turn to ice in his veins, Jen realized that it was a woman's handkerchief--its delicacy and border-embroideries assured him of this. "How came this here?" he asked the housemaid, pointing to the scrap of linen. "Oh, that was on the first night, sir," she hastened to explain. "It was put on his head when in the room where he fell, sir. The doctor, sir, says as it ain't safe to take it away yet." A curtain interposed between the head of the patient and the light of the window. This Jen drew aside, and lightly removed the outside wrappings of the wound. The housemaid looked on in horror, for she did not dare to prevent her master from meddling, yet she felt sure that he was doing wrong. But Jen was bent on making the discovery as to whom the handkerchief belonged; and in a few minutes he had the outside bandages removed, and saw the handkerchief discolored with dry blood lying over the wound. With deft fingers he lightly touched the four corners. In one of them were the initials "M. D." "M. D.!" said the major to himself. "Margaret Dallas, the mother of Isabella. How did her handkerchief come into the room on that night? And the perfume?" It struck his sense of smell with the belief that he had smelt it before. Nothing is so strong to awaken memory as odor, and in less than half a minute the mind of the major leaped back to where he had smelt it before. It was the perfume of the dried poison of the devil-stick. CHAPTER XIII. ISABELLA. This discovery at once irritated, amazed and perplexed the major. That the handkerchief of Mrs. Dallas should be bound around the head of Jaggard was strange, but that it should be perfumed with the deadly scent which impregnated the devil-stick was stranger still. Had Mrs. Dallas found the wand of sleep? Had Mrs. Dallas perfumed the handkerchief with its cruel poison? Had Mrs. Dallas drugged or stupefied Jaggard on that fatal night by means of that saturated handkerchief? These were the vital questions which presented themselves to the puzzled major, and which he found himself unable to answer. And here, at this point, the personality of Dr. Etwald intruded itself into the affair. It was Etwald who had bound up the wound with the handkerchief in question, and who, according to the housemaid, had forbidden its removal. The question was, had he received it from Mrs. Dallas, or had he found it on that night by the side of the insensible man. If the first, Mrs. Dallas must have perfumed it designedly with the poison, and Etwald, knowing that it was so impregnated, must have used it advisedly as a bandage. If the second, Mrs. Dallas must have been in the room on the night in question, and have used the handkerchief to render Jaggard insensible. And in either case, as the major very sensibly concluded, Mrs. Dallas must be in possession of the devil-stick. Otherwise, how could she have obtained the deadly scent? "And the plain conclusion of the whole affair," soliloquized Jen, "is that Mrs. Dallas must have stolen the devil-stick, must have murdered Maurice, and must have drugged Jaggard for the purpose of completing her devilish work by stealing my poor boy's body. But her reason?" That she did not desire Maurice for a son-in-law was an insufficient motive for the commission of a triple crime. She had declined to sanction the engagement; she had forbidden Maurice the house; and, assisted upon all points by social rules, she had ample power to prevent the match, which, as she averred, was distasteful to her. Why, then, with this power, should she jeopardize liberty and life by thieving the devil-stick and killing the man? In his perplexity, Jen sought out David and asked his opinion. The young lawyer gave a very decided verdict in favor of Mrs. Dallas. "I don't believe Mrs. Dallas has anything to do with the matter," he said, in a decisive voice. "She had no motive to commit these three crimes, each one of which is more terrible than the other. Nor, major, do I think that she has nerve or brain enough to design or accomplish assassination or theft." "But I assure you, David, the handkerchief is hers." "Granted; but you forget that Isabella was in the room on that night. She might have dropped the handkerchief." "Well," said Jen, after a pause, "that is not improbable. But the perfume?" "Oh," replied David, with a shrug, "we know that the scent is an Ashantee preparation. Dido's grandmother came from Ashantee, so it is just probable that Dido herself, knowing the secret, might have prepared a dose of the poison." "Even so. Why should she have perfumed the handkerchief?" "I can't say, major. You had better ask her." "Egad, I shall," cried Jen, starting from his chair. "And also I'll find out why she needed to prepare the poison at all. In my opinion, David, that black Jezebel is at the bottom of the whole affair. She thieved the devil-stick, she prepared the poison, murdered Maurice, and stole his body." "You accused Mrs. Dallas of all these things five minutes ago," said David, ironically, "and now you think--" "I don't know what to think," cried Jen, in desperation. "Dido or Mrs. Dallas, I don't know which, but one of them, must be guilty. I'll go over to The Wigwam at once." "To accuse them upon insufficient evidence?" "No. I'll see Isabella, and hear what she has to say. She loved Maurice, and will aid me to avenge his death." "That is improbable, if to do so she has to betray her mother or her nurse. I don't think you'll learn much in that quarter, major." "I'll learn what I can, at all events," retorted Jen; and in this unsatisfactory manner the conversation concluded. David retired to his room, and Jen went off to interview Isabella at The Wigwam. He walked meditatively down to the gates, and here, on the high-road, his thoughts led him to a sudden conclusion respecting the coming conversation with Miss Dallas. Without much consideration he retraced his steps rapidly, and sought out David in his room. Then and there he asked him a question which was of vital importance. "David," said he abruptly, "owing to the coming of Etwald and Arkel on that night--the night upon which the body was stolen, I mean--I forgot to ask you what reception Miss Dallas met with on her return home. Who received her?" "Mrs. Dallas. She had missed her daughter and had been seeking for her in a state of terror, surely natural under the circumstances. I found her pacing the veranda, wondering what had become of Isabella." "Pacing the veranda?" echoed Jen, thoughtfully. "Was she fully dressed?" "Well, yes, so far as my memory serves me, I think she was." "And Dido?" "I saw nothing or heard nothing of Dido. When I found Mrs. Dallas, I simply performed my mission, and delivered Isabella into her hands. The poor girl was quite distraught with the horror of the night, and was led unresistingly to bed by her mother." "Mrs. Dallas dressed! Dido missing!" said the major. "Thank you, David, you have told me all I want to know," and with a nod Major Jen set off for the second time to The Wigwam. The major was rather inclined to agree with David that it would be difficult to learn anything of material value from Isabella. On the night she had visited the house at three o'clock in the morning her brain had been unsettled for the time being by the terrible death which had overtaken her lover, and she had been thrown into a frenzy by the mysterious theft of his body. The question which the major wished answered was, whether she had been sufficiently herself to remember the events of that night, and especially those which had taken place prior to her escape from The Wigwam. But the only way to decide this doubt was to see the girl personally, and Major Jen feared lest he should find Mrs. Dallas and Dido obstacles to his accomplishment of this object. However, fortune favored him, and to state the truth, fortune rather astonished him; for upon arriving within the grounds of Mrs. Dallas, the major met with Isabella herself. In a light-colored dress, with sunshade and straw hat, she was strolling down the walk which led to the gate. On coming up with Jen, he was surprised to see that her manner was calm and collected; in all respects different from that displayed during the frenzy of the midnight visit. He could hardly believe that she was the same girl. "I am glad to see you, major," said she, holding out her hand. "You have saved me the trouble of a journey, as I was on my way to your house." "To see me, Miss Dallas?" "Yes, to see you," she replied, with a serious face. "In order to talk with you about my last visit--on that terrible night." "My dear young lady," he remonstrated, "why distress yourself with recollections of these things?" "Because it is necessary that I should do so, major. It is my intention to aid you in your search for the assassin of Maurice. Oh, yes, you may look doubtful as to my ability to help you, but I can and will. I am not the mad woman who burst into your library at three in the morning. I am cool and calm and bent upon revenge. Maurice is dead. I loved him. And I intend to devote myself to avenging his death. Come, major, sit upon this seat beside me, and relate all you have heard, all you have discovered. With my woman's wit I may be able to help you in the way the mouse aided the lion. Begin!" Jen was astonished, both at her peremptory tone and her quiet manner. Whatever influence had been at work, it was certainly wonderful how she had calmed down from the nervous, hysterical girl into the reasonable and cool-headed woman. Isabella noted the amazement of the major, and guessing its cause, she explained the reason of the change in her looks, manner and nervous system. "Dr. Etwald cured me, major," she said quietly. "He has preserved my sanity, and I owe him a debt of gratitude." "You certainly do," said Jen, dryly. "Will you repay it by marrying him?" "No. I shall marry no one; not even Mr. Sarby, much as my mother wishes me to do so. I live only to avenge the death of Maurice, to recover his body from those who have stolen it. Come, major, tell me what you know." Thus adjured, and feeling that he could not do without her assistance, Jen related all that he had heard from Arkel, and also his own personal experience with regard to the finding of the handkerchief marked "M. D." Isabella heard him to the end in silence, her large and shining eyes fixed upon his face. When he paused, she pondered and finally spoke out. "It would seem that you suspect Dido or my mother of having something to do with the matter," she remarked coldly. Major Jen equivocated. "No," he replied. "I don't say that exactly, but you must admit that the finding of the handkerchief bound round Jaggard's head is strange." "Not at all. Dr. Etwald used it as a bandage." "So I understand; but did Dr. Etwald bring it to the house with him?" "No. He picked it up in the bedroom." "Precisely," assented Jen, eagerly. "Therefore your mother--" "Had nothing to do with it," interrupted Isabella. "I dropped the handkerchief in the room. Is there anything so very extraordinary in that?" she added, impatiently. "The matter is very simple. I brought with me one of my mother's handkerchiefs instead of my own. In the agitation of finding the body gone I dropped it, and Dr. Etwald found it to use as a bandage. That is quite plain, I think." "Quite plain," agreed the major, "saving the presence of the perfume similar to that of the devil-stick." "I don't know anything about the devil-stick. I never saw it; but with regard to the perfume I can explain. I was ill on that night, as you know, and Dido applied some of her negro remedies; among them the perfume with which that handkerchief of my mother's was saturated. It was bound across my forehead to soothe the nerves. During my journey to your house I snatched it off, and--" "I can understand all that," interrupted Jen, "but the similarity of the perfumes? I must have that point cleared up." "I daresay it can be," said Isabella, quietly. "Come up to the house, major, and speak to Dido. I feel sure she can explain." "Very good," said Jen, as they turned their steps toward the house. "If her explanation is only as clear as your own, I shall have nothing to say. By the way, Miss Dallas, how did you escape from your room that night?" "So far as I can remember, I left by my bedroom window. I had only to step out through it like a door, as it is a French window and opens onto the lawn." "H'm!" said Jen. "But seeing that you were so ill, was no one watching beside you?" "Yes, my mother was. So you see, major, she could not have dropped the handkerchief in the bedroom of poor dear Maurice." "No; I understand. You have explained the affair of the handkerchief clearly. All the points have been elucidated save that dealing with the perfume." "You will now be satisfied on that point," said Miss Dallas, rather dryly, "for here is Dido. She prepared the drug and perfumed the handkerchief, and for all I know," added the girl, ironically, "she may have taken the hint from your wand of sleep." CHAPTER XIV. LADY MEG. "One moment!" said Jen, as they approached the veranda, whereon Dido was waiting them. "How do you know Etwald picked up the handkerchief in the room?" "Because I overheard his apology to my mother for having put her handkerchief to such use," replied Isabella, with suspicious promptitude. "Humph! Didn't the doctor think it strange that he should find it there?" "I don't know, major. He made no remark." "Rather peculiar, don't you think, seeing that he must necessarily have been ignorant of your visit on that night?" The color of Isabella rose in her cheeks. "He was not ignorant of that!" she said in a low voice. "To account for the fever which seized me, my mother explained all that took place to Dr. Etwald. He quite understood that I had dropped the handkerchief." "Did he apologize for his use of it before or after the explanation?" was Jen's final question. "After!" replied Isabella, with some hesitation; then abruptly left the major's side to exchange a few words with Dido. Jen, as was natural, looked after her with a glance full of doubt and suspicion. Notwithstanding her love for Maurice and her expressed desire to avenge his death by hunting down the assassin, she appeared to be anything but frank in the matter. In plain words, her conduct suggested to Jen's mind an idea that she knew more than she cared to talk about; and that such half-hinted knowledge implicated her mother. In which case--but here Dido interrupted Jen's meditations. "My missy tell me you wish to hear my Obi," she said, abruptly, fixing her eyes on the face of the visitor. "Why you wish? You laugh at Obi." "I don't particularly wish to learn your Voodoo secrets," answered Jen carelessly. "All I desire to know is why you manufactured that scent with which you saturated a certain handkerchief of your mistress." "Mother's handkerchief, Dido," explained Isabella, interrupting. "The one you bound round my head." "Oh, dat a Voodoo smell to drib away de evil spirit," said Dido, solemnly addressing herself more particularly to the major. "My witch-mudder, she learn to make dat in her own land--" "In Ashantee?" "Ho! yis. It berry strong, dat smell. Too much of it kill--kill--kill!" "By means of its odor?" "No, dat only drib away bad debbils. But you scratch de skin with one leetle bit of it, and you die, die, die!" "And the scratch is made by means of the wand of sleep?" "Yis. Dat so," said Dido, with pretended surprise, turning on him sharply. "But you no b'lieve in Obi, massa. What you know of de wand of sleep--de debble-stick?" "Because I had one, Dido." The negress laughed with scornful doubt. "Ho, dat one big lie. Der ain't de debble-stick but in de king's palace at Kumassi." "You are wrong. I had one, and it was stolen by--" "Why, of course," interrupted Isabella again. "Don't you remember. Dido, you were asked if you had taken it?" "Ho, yis. Now I do tink," said Dido. "Ah, massa, you say I took de debble-stick and made de new smell to fill him. Den dat I kill wid him massa, who lubbed lil missy, and dat I made spells in your house to steal de body. Heh, dat not so?" "It certainly is so," assented Jen, astonished to hear her put his suspicions into such plain words. "Mr. Alymer was killed by means of this poison. It was used again to render my servant insensible while the body was stolen. So I thought--" "I know, I know!" broke in Dido, impatiently. "But dat not to do wid me. De poison in your debble-stick." "There was; but it was all dried up." "No! Dat nossin. If you pour wather in dat stick de poison come alive. Well, dat stick taken, but I no take it. Dat poo' young massa killed wid it--I no kill him. But de udder ting, sah. Dat smell! I mek it for missy, dat all!" And having made this explanation, Dido folded her arms, and waited in scornful silence to hear what her accuser had to say. He considered the absolute absurdity of her story, which, on the face of it, was a manifest invention, and one which, it would seem, was supported by the testimony of Isabella. "You are satisfied now, I think," said this latter, seeing that the major did not speak. "Well, yes. Miss Dallas," returned he, with much deliberation. "I am' satisfied, for the time being." "Does Dido's explanation give you any clew?" she asked quickly. Major Jen considered again, and looked her straightly in the eyes. "Yes," he replied, with point and some dryness. "It gives me a clew in a direction for which I should not have looked for it. Thank you, Miss Dallas, and you, Dido. I shall now say good-day." "When will you return?" "When I have followed to its end the clew of which we have been speaking," replied Jen, and taking off his hat he walked swiftly away from the house. Swiftly, as he was afraid lest Isabella would ask him indoors, and for certain reasons not unconnected with the late conversation, he did not wish to face Mrs. Dallas at the present moment. There were large issues at stake. When he vanished round the curve of the drive, Isabella, with a very pale face, turned toward Dido. "I have told all the lies you wished me to tell," she said, hurriedly. "I have hidden from the sharp eyes of Major Jen those things which you wished hidden, and all at the cost of my honor and honesty." "Der noting wrong, missy," said Dido, eagerly. "I swear--" "Don't," cried Isabella, with a shudder. "You have done enough evil. Do not add perjury to your other sins." She ran hastily into the house, as though to escape further conversation on a distasteful subject, while Dido, with her eyes on the ground, remained in deep thought. The old negress knew that she was placed in a perilous position, which might be rendered even more so should Isabella speak freely. But of this she had little fear, as by her conversation with Major Jen the girl had gone forward on a path of concealment whence there was now no retreat. Yet Dido was not satisfied. She did not trust those around her, and she was uneasy as to what might be the result of Jen's pertinacity in investigating both the death of Maurice and the disappearance of the body. Thus perplexed it occurred to her to seek out and consult with Dr. Etwald. "I shall tell the master all!" she muttered in her own barbaric dialect, "and he will tell me what to do. The spirit in the Voodoo stone will tell him." Having come to this resolution she went into the house to ask, or rather to demand, permission to visit Deanminster. That she was about to call upon Etwald, the negress did not think it necessary to tell Mrs. Dallas. There were matters between her and the doctor of which Mrs. Dallas knew nothing, which she would not have understood if she had known. When she inquired, Dido merely hinted that such secrets had to do with Obi, when the superstitious nature of Mrs. Dallas immediately shrank from pursuing an inquiry into what were, even to this civilized so-called Christian woman, secret mysteries. But while Dido goes on her dark path and takes her way toward Etwald in his gloomy house at Deanminster, it is necessary to return to the doings of Major Jen. On leaving The Wigwam he returned forthwith to his own house with the intention of repeating to David the conversation which had taken place between himself. Dido and Isabella. On his arrival, however, he learned that David had gone out for a walk, and that Lady Meg Brance was waiting for him in the library. At once the ever-courteous major hastened to apologize to his visitor. "My dear Lady Meg, I am so sorry to have been absent when you called. I hope you have not been waiting long!" "Only half an hour," replied Lady Meg, in a low, grave voice. "I should have waited in any case until your return, as I have something important to say to you." The major looked inquiringly at his visitor. She was a tall and stately woman, with a fair complexion, steady blue eyes and hair of a deep red shade. Although close on twenty-five years of age, she was still a spinster, as much to the annoyance of her mother--a match-making matron--she had hitherto declined the most eligible offers for her hand. Her reasons for such refusals she would not state, but Jen, from certain observations, had long since guessed the truth. Lady Meg was deeply in love with Maurice Alymer, and it was for his sake that she remained single. Whether she knew that the young man loved Isabella Dallas it is impossible to say; but at all events she showed him very plainly the drift of her desires. The very indifference of Alymer had rendered her passion more violent and persistent. What would have been the conclusion of this one-sided love it is difficult to conjecture; but the death of Maurice had brought this and all other things to an abrupt conclusion. Lady Meg was dressed in black out of regard for the dead man, and she looked worn, red-eyed and very dejected. But in coming forward to greet the major, her fine blue eyes lighted up with the fire of hope, and it was with something of her old impetuosity--quenched since the death of Maurice--that she gave him her hand and repeated her last remark. "I have something to say to you," she said, quickly. "Something likely to help you in your investigations." "Concerning the theft of the body?" asked Jen, eagerly. "No, with regard to the murder." "What is it?" "I will inform you in a few minutes," replied Lady Meg. "But first tell me if you have found out anything likely to reveal the truth." "No." Jen shook his head mournfully. "I am completely in the dark, and so is Inspector Arkel. The whole case is a profound mystery." "Well, mysteries, even the most profound, have been cleared up before now, major. Come, tell me precisely how the matter stands, and I may be able to help you." "You know something?" "Yes, I do; and it is to tell that something that I have driven over to-day. Well, now, major, let me know all about the matter from the beginning. I have heard nothing but the most garbled accounts, and it is necessary, for the sake of the information which I am about to impart, that I should know the exact truth." "I shall tell it to you," replied Jen, with some hesitation; "but I am afraid I shall give you pain." "I guess what you mean--Miss Dallas." Jen bent his head gravely. "Maurice wanted to marry her." "I know, I know," replied Lady Meg, while a wave of color passed over her fair face. "You do!" cried Jen, in surprise, "And who told you?" "Mr. Sarby." "Oh!" The major considered a moment, and his thoughts were anything but benevolent toward David. "I can guess why he told you." "What do you mean, major?" "Never mind at present," said Jen, evasively. "I'll tell you that later on. In the meantime, let me state the case. Maurice was killed on the high road by means, as I verily believe, of the devil-stick. You know about that, of course." "Yes, I read the report of the inquest, and I have heard rumors. I agree with you, major, that Mr. Alymer was killed by the poison of the devil-stick. Go on." "On the night that the body was stolen," continued Jen, deliberately, "Jaggard was drugged." "By whom?" "I can't say. If I knew that I'd know who stole the body. But he was drugged by means of a perfume which is the same as that impregnating the devil-stick." "How do you know?" Jen was about to explain when he remembered the necessity of keeping silent concerning the visit of Isabella to the house. "I can't tell you that just now," he said, in a hesitating manner. "But I know it for certain." "Well," said Lady Meg, "it would seem that the devil-stick is the center of this mystery." "I fancy it is." "If you found the devil-stick you would know the truth?" "I don't go so far as that," protested Jen. "If we found the person who stole the devil-stick from my smoking-room I might guess the truth." "In that case, major, look at this," said Lady Meg, and produced an article from her pocket, an article which she held up triumphantly before the astonished eyes of the old man. "The devil-stick!" he cried. "By all that is wonderful, the devil-stick!" "Yes, the devil-stick. I got it from the assassin of Mr. Alymer!" "The assassin--you know the assassin? Who is he or she?" "It is not a woman, but a man. Battersea!" CHAPTER XV. CROSS-EXAMINATION. Major Jen sprang to his feet with a loud cry. This information that Battersea was the criminal took him so utterly by surprise that for the moment he was tongue-tied. Then, when he recalled the feeble and emaciated form of the old tramp, when he recollected his weak intelligence, he altogether declined to believe that such a creature, one so wanting in activity, could have conceived and executed a triple crime--the theft of the devil-stick, the murder of Maurice, the stealing of the body. Battersea had not sufficient craft or strength to do such things. With a shrug of his shoulders the major resumed his seat. "You must be mistaken, Lady Meg," he said in a quiet voice. "Whosoever may be guilty, Battersea, for physical and mental reasons, must be innocent." "That you must prove," replied Lady Meg, dryly. "And in accusing Battersea I go only on your own premises. You said that the man who stole the devil-stick, who had it in his possession, must be the guilty person. You see the devil-stick there." She pointed to the table. "Well, I obtained that from Battersea." "How did you obtain it?" "Knowing that I collected curiosities, he came to sell it to me." "A proof of his innocence," cried Jen, promptly. "If the man had been guilty, he certainly would not offer the evidence of his guilt for sale. Where did he obtain this devil-stick?" "Out of your smoking-room, I presume," said Lady Meg, "But I have not questioned him, as I thought it best that you should examine him yourself." "Certainly, when I can find him. Where is he now?" "Round at your stables with my groom. I brought him over with me." "Thank you, Lady Meg," said Jen, cordially. "I congratulate you on your presence of mind, and on your courage." "There is no necessity to congratulate me at all," replied the other, coloring. "I knew that it would not be wise to let him out of sight after I saw the devil-stick in his possession. And as to my courage," she added carelessly, "the poor old creature is so feeble that even I, a woman, could overpower him. But ring the bell, major, and have him in. I may be wrong. He may be innocent, but if you force him to confess how he obtained possession of the devil-stick you may get at the truth, and perhaps at the name of the murderer." "It won't be the name of Battersea," said Jen, touching the button of the bell. "He had no motive to steal my devil-stick or to kill Maurice, nor could he have any reason to take possession of a dead body. Besides," added Jen, returning to his seat, "if this tramp were guilty, he would scarcely put his neck in danger by offering you the devil-stick for sale." At this moment the footman appeared in answer to the bell, and in obedience to his master's peremptory order left the room again for the purpose of bringing in old Battersea for examination. While waiting, neither Lady Meg nor the major spoke, as they both considered, and truly, that nothing further could be said until the truth was forced from the tramp. Then the present aspect of the case might change, and an important step might be taken toward the solution of the mystery. As dirty and disreputable as ever, Battersea, rolling his cap in his dirty hands, made his appearance on the threshold of the library, conducted by the disgusted footman. When the door was closed behind him, and he stood alone before those who were about to examine him, he shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, blinked his bleared eyes, and blushed as with the shame of guilt through the sallow darkness of his skin. Jen, with the military instinct of command fully awakened within him, looked sternly at the feeble old creature, and questioned him sharply, as though he were talking to a soldier who had done wrong. On her part, Lady Meg left the most part of the examination to the major; but she listened with anxious looks and parted lips to every word which fell from the tramp's lips. The death of the man whom she had loved so deeply had inflicted terrible anguish upon her loving heart, and, as a tribute to his memory, she was anxious to punish his assassin. But at present, influenced by the views of the major, she began to waver in her opinion regarding the guilt of the weak-brained creature who stood trembling nervously at the doorway. "What is your name, man?" demanded Jen, commencing in the orthodox manner. "Battersea, sir." "What else?" "Nothin' else," retorted the tramp sullenly. "My father was black, an' my mother she was white; an' they weren't married. I was brought up in Battersea parish, so I took that name, I did, not havin' any right to another name." "How do you get your living?" "I begs!" said Battersea, candidly. "And when I can't get nuffin I steals." "I am sure of that," remarked Jen, taking the devil-stick off the table. "And you stole this, I'll be bound." "I didn't. I found it." "Oh!" said the major, in a satirical tone. "You found it? Where?" "At Missus Dallas' place." Jen started, and looked sharply at the old man, who, to all appearances, was answering his questions with all possible candor. "Be more explicit, man," he said sternly. "What do you mean by Mrs. Dallas' place? The house or the grounds?" "The groun's, near the gate." "When did you find it?" "The day arter th' young gen'man was killed." "And why didn't you give it up to the police?" Battersea scowled. "I wanted money for it, I did," he said huskily, "an' they wouldn't give no tin to me fur findin' it. She," pointing to Lady Meg, "is fond of pretty things, so I guv it her for five shillin'; but she didn't pay me for it." "No," said Lady Meg, speaking for the first time, "because I did not know if you had come by it honestly." "I tell 'ee I found it, I did," growled Battersea, becoming restive under the constant questioning. "Found it near the gate of Missus Dallas' place." "Inside the gate," asked Jen, "or outside, on the road?" "Inside; jus' among the grass. I was comin' up to get some food from missy, and I sowr that 'andle shinin' in the sun. I goes an' I looks, an' I fin's it. I knowed as the perlice wanted it, 'cause I 'eard talk of it doin' murder; but as perlice wouldn't give me tin, I wouldn't guv it to they," added Battersea, cunningly, "so I keeps it for 'er, but she ain't paid me yit," he concluded, with the whine of a mendicant. For the moment Major Jen did not ask any more questions, for the very simple reason that he did not exactly know what course to take. Undoubtedly the tramp was telling the truth. He had no reason to conceal it; for in his own mind Jen quite acquitted him of any complicity in the crime. That so feeble and elderly a creature, debauched by intemperance, weak from insufficient food, should attack a vigorous young athlete like Maurice, was out of the question, even though he had the advantage of possessing the devil-stick. But here the question of the dried-up poison occurred to Jen. If the poison had evaporated by the lapse of time, the devil-stick must have been innocuous and incapable of inflicting death. Therefore, upon the evidence of the saturated handkerchief, the bag concealed in the turquoise-studded handle must have been refilled by Dido!--Dido, for the significant reason that she, inheriting the traditions of her Ashantee grandmother, alone must have been capable of manufacturing the deadly drug. To prove this assumption, a feasible one, the devil-stick was close at hand. Jen picked it up and slightly pressed the handle. At once the turquoise gems indented the concealed bag; at once the iron fang protruded from the end of the stick, and on looking closely the major at the end of the spike observed an oblong drop of greenish hue. The evidence of his own eyes was enough, and Jen replaced the devil-stick upon the table, with the full conviction that the bag had been filled with a fresh preparation of its original venom. This discovery, to the major's mind, confirmed the guilt of the negress. "What is the matter?" asked Lady Meg, as she saw the major's face grow dark with his thought. "Is anything wrong?" "Yes, Dido is wrong," he said. "I always thought that black witch was at the bottom of everything. I am sure of it now." "Dido!" repeated Lady Meg, thoughtfully. "I have heard Mr. Alymer and Mr. Sarby talking about her. A negress, is she not?" "Yes, and a murderess!" "Major! Do you think--" "Certainly I do. I believe she killed Maurice; but the evidence is as yet too slight upon which to accuse her. If I thought that she--" here the major checked himself and resumed in an altered tone--"but I must think of these things later on. In the meantime I must conclude my examination of this man." "Do you think he knows anything?" "No. I believe he found the devil-stick as he says. Within the grounds of Mrs. Dallas, mind you!" "Well, and what does that prove?" "Prove!" retorted Jen sharply, "simply that it was dropped there by that black fiend after she had killed Maurice." "Do you really think she killed him?" asked Lady Meg, her face growing pale with the intensity of her excitement. "I do," replied Jen, decisively. "But the evidence--ah, the evidence. Well," he added, after a pause, "I have something to go on, in this refilled devil-stick, and the saturated handkerchief." "But I don't understand--" "Never mind, my dear lady, you will later on," retorted Jen, with a nod. Then turning to Battersea, he resumed his examination. "You know the negress. Dido, who is in the employment of Mrs. Dallas?" he asked, mildly. "Yes, sir, an' hawful female she is!" "How so?" "Well, sir." Battersea scratched his shock head. "She knows things as ain't good for 'er. 'Bout that devil-stick es you talks of." "Oh," cried Jen, recalling Dido's denial, "she knows of that, does she?" "Yes, sir, she do. Arsked me 'bout it, but I knowed nuffin, I didn't." "What did she say to you concerning it?" "Well, sir, when I brought a message from Dr. Etwald 'bout that devil-stick--" "What!" cried Jen, interrupting sharply. "Did Dr. Etwald know about it also?" "He did, sir. Leastways he arsked me to arsk Dido 'bout it." "I thought as much," said Jen, in an excited tone. Then after a pause, he added: "Battersea, would you like free quarters and plenty of food and drink for a week?" "I ain't a fool, sir," said the tramp, with a sheepish grin. "I should, you bet." "In that case go down to the kitchen and tell my servants from me that you are to stay there. Later on I'll see you." "Thankee, sir. I'll get free quarters and grub for a week," cried Battersea, rubbing his grimy hands. "My eye, 'ere's oppolance. Can I go now, sir?" "At once," replied Jen, and pointed to the door. Battersea bowed awkwardly to Lady Meg and his benefactor; then he went out of the room and left the major alone with his visitor. "What does all this mean?" asked Meg, quite surprised at Jen's excitement. "Mean!" cried Jen, in a tone of conviction. "Why! that Etwald is mixed up in this business also!" CHAPTER XVI. THE EVIDENCE OF JAGGARD. "Etwald!" repeated Lady Meg, thoughtfully. "Is he not the doctor of whom you have made so great a friend?" "Yes. I took a viper to my bosom, and it stung me," replied Jen, who, in his excitement, was pacing backward and forward with hasty steps. "But I shall be even with him. In some way or another I believe it is possible to bring home to him this triple crime." "Do you think he is guilty?" "I am certain of it. Etwald prophesied to my poor lad, in his charlatan way, that if he wed Miss Dallas, or even announced his engagement with her, his fate would be of life in death." "What did that mean?" "Mean? Death without the addition of life. That word was brought in solely to render the prophecy--if it may be called so--confusing. Etwald was in love with Miss Dallas. He found in Maurice a formidable rival. He warned him by his pretended prophecy that he should slay him if he persisted standing in his path. Maurice announced his engagement upon the very day when Etwald, the designing scoundrel, went to pay his addresses to the girl. From that moment he doomed Maurice to death. Yes, I truly believe that such was his design, and that he offered to buy the devil-stick in order to carry out his criminal intention." "Did he ask to buy the devil-stick?" demanded Lady Meg, in surprise. "Twice; and both times I refused to part with it. Failing to get it honestly, he stole it." "You have no proof of that." "I don't know so much about that," retorted Jen sharply. "You heard what Battersea confessed, that he had taken a message from Etwald to Dido about the devil-stick. Well, this doctor has some mysterious, influence over this negress--what sort of influence I do not know, but she appears to be afraid of him. I believe he incited her to steal the devil-stick, and that by his directions she filled it with a fresh poison." "But could she prepare the special kind of poison required?" "Assuredly. She confessed as much. Her grandmother came from Ashantee, where this devil-stick is used for the purpose of destroying people. Dido inherits a knowledge of the family secrets, and knows how to make this poison. It cures nervous headaches--that is, the perfume of it does--and Dido made some with which she saturated a handkerchief to bind round the head of her young mistress." "How do you know that the poisons are the same?" "From the peculiar, sickly, heavy odor," explained Jen, promptly; and continued: "Well, you can see the rest for yourself. Dido filled that devil-stick with the poison," he pointed to the article on the table, "some of it remains in the wand yet. Etwald used the devil-stick to kill Maurice, and on going back to tell Dido of his success I have no doubt he dropped it inside the gates of Mrs. Dallas' grounds, where, as you have heard, it was found by Battersea. Oh, it is as plain as day to me," cried Jen, vehemently. "Etwald killed Maurice and stole the devil-stick to accomplish the murder." "You have certainly made out a strong case against this man," said Meg, after a pause, "but it is all theory. Your proofs?" "I shall find them." "That will be difficult." "Doubtless. I hardly anticipated an easy task when I undertook to learn who killed my dear lad. Besides, David will help me." Lady Meg sighed, and rising to her feet, she drew her cloak round her tall form. "I shall help you also," she said sadly. "That is, if you will accept of my help." "Assuredly. You loved Maurice--" "To my cost, major; but he did not love me. This girl--this Miss Dallas," she added in a faltering voice, "she must be very lovely, for Mr. Sarby loves her also. A woman who has three men at her feet must be wonderful." Jen shrugged his shoulders. "She is certainly beautiful," said he, indifferently, "but she is not clever, and her weak nature is enslaved by the gross superstitions of Dido." "I should not think from your description that she was likely to attract Maurice," said Lady Meg, in a low voice; "but undoubtedly he loved her dearly; and I--" She made a gesture of despair and moved toward the door. On the threshold she paused and held out her hand. "Good-by, major; should I hear anything further I shall let you know. But the tramp?" "I shall keep him here." "Be careful lest he goes away." "Oh, there is no fear of that," said Jen, in a confident tone. "Free quarters and plenty of food will keep Battersea in my kitchen. If he were guilty of the crime, he would not stay, but as it is he will remain under my eye. I intend to question him further about the connection between Dido and Etwald; I wonder what power the doctor holds over the negress." "You can learn that only from the woman herself." "Or from Etwald," rejoined Jen. "If I can only succeed in having him arrested he may confess all." "Let us hope he will," replied Lady Meg, and after shaking hands again with Jen, she took her departure. When the major had seen her carriage drive away he returned to look after the devil-stick, and examined it long and carefully. Undoubtedly it had been filled with fresh poison, and undoubtedly the poison, from the evidence heretofore set forth, had been prepared by Dido. Jen was more certain than ever that Etwald and the negress had stolen the devil-stick and had slain Maurice with it. But the theft of the body! It was that which puzzled him. He could understand why Etwald wanted Maurice removed from his path. He could explain, on those grounds, why the devil-stick had been stolen. But what reason could the pair have for the removal of the body? The poor boy had died, and his corpse could be of no use to those who had murdered him. Yet it had disappeared, and the only person who could give any evidence as to who had entered the room on that fatal night was Jaggard. But up to the present moment Jaggard had remained incapable of giving any clear evidence. Absolutely certain that Etwald was guilty, that Dido was an accomplice, Jen could not see his way to proving his case without the assistance of Jaggard. At first he thought of going into Deanminster for the purpose of speaking with Inspector Arkel about the discovery of the devil-stick; but upon reflection he deemed it wiser not to do so, at all events for the present. Arkel could come only to the same conclusion as himself--namely, that Battersea, innocent of the crime, had picked up the devil-stick on the grounds of Mrs. Dallas. Regarding his suspicions of Etwald, the major determined to keep these to himself until he was in a position to prove them; for if Etwald were guilty, the slightest hint that the police were on his track would be sufficient to put him on his guard. Against so clever a man as the doctor, Arkel, with his clumsy methods, could do nothing. For the present, therefore, Jen decided to hold his tongue. While the major was thus considering what step he should take, David, returning from a long and solitary walk, entered the room. Of late the young man had indulged in these lonely excursions, whence he always returned more melancholy than ever. His fine face was lean and worn, there were dark circles under his eyes, and his manner, formerly noted for its composure, was now nervous and hesitating. On approaching his guardian he saw the devil-stick on the table, and at once his pale face grew yet paler. "Where did you find it?" he asked, pointing a trembling finger at the terrible piece of evidence. "I did not find it at all," rejoined the major, gloomily; "Lady Meg brought it to me." "And she--she----" "She has nothing to do with the matter," replied Jen, surprised at the agitation of the young man. "It was Battersea who found it. He offered it for sale to Lady Meg, and she brought it and the tramp to me." "Battersea!" said David, repeating the name in a puzzled tone. "How did he become possessed of it? Has he anything to do with the crime?" "No. He found the devil-stick within the grounds of Mrs. Dallas, near the gates." "Who lost it there?" asked Sarby, abruptly. "Ah!" replied Jen, in a meaning tone. "Tell me that and I'll have the assassin of our dear Maurice within the walls of Deanminster jail before the year is twenty-four hours older." David looked at Jen in astonishment. "Have you any idea as to the guilty person?" he asked, in a hurried tone. "I think so; it is my belief, David, that Dr. Etwald killed Maurice!" "Impossible! For what reason?" "Because he wants to marry Isabella Dallas." "In that case he should rather have killed me than poor Maurice, for, as my suit to Isabella was supported by Mrs. Dallas, I was the more formidable rival of the two." "I don't think so, my boy. Isabella loved Maurice, and to marry him she would have rebelled against her mother. But I daresay if you become engaged to her, Etwald will remove you also from his path." "There will be no need for him to do that," replied David, coldly. "I shall never marry Isabella." "What do you say? I thought you loved the girl?" "I do love her," cried David, vehemently. "I have always loved her, and shall continue to do so until the day of my death. All the same, I shall never become her husband." "Why?" "For certain reasons!" said Sarby, evasively. "What are those reasons?" "I can't tell you." "Have they anything to do with the death of Maurice?" "Don't ask me, major. I would tell you if I could, but it is impossible." Jen rose to leave the room, more wounded than he chose to confess. "Of course, my boy," he said rather bitterly, "if you choose to withhold your confidence from me, I have no right to force you to speak. All the same as I have been a second father to you, I think you should be more open with me." "I would tell you if I could," said David again, but in rather a sullen manner; "but I have reasons, strong reasons, for not doing so. Later on--" he paused nervously. "Well?" demanded Jen, coldly, seeing the hesitation of the man. "Later on, I may tell you all I know." "All you know!" repeated Jen, in a startled tone. "About this crime?" "Yes. I know something, but what it is I dare not tell you now, Uncle Jen," he added, gravely looking at the elder. "If you are wise, you will not pursue your inquiry." "And why not, may I ask, David?" "Ah!" said Sarby, walking toward the door, "you will know the reason when you learn the truth!" After this enigmatical remark he hurriedly left the room, for the purpose, without doubt, of escaping further questioning. His demeanor completely puzzled Jen, who could not make out the meaning of his conversation. Evidently David knew something which he was unwilling to reveal--something which might lead to the solution of the profound mystery which enwrapped the death of Maurice and the extraordinary disappearance of his body. The more Jen thought about the matter the more perplexed did he become. The recovered devil-stick, found in the grounds of Mrs. Dallas, the saturated handkerchief found in the bedroom of the dead man; and now the unaccountable hints of David that he knew something likely to throw a light upon these mysteries, joined with an equally unaccountable refusal to afford such revelation, all these things puzzled him; but as it was impossible in the absence of actual knowledge, to come to any reasonable decision, Jen determined to see Jaggard and see how he was. If Jaggard could only recover his senses, argued the major, he would be able to say who had stolen the body. Moreover, in Jen's opinion, the person who committed the second crime would most probably, by the force of analogous reasoning, have committed the first. To the major's surprise, he found that Jaggard had recovered his senses, and although still weak from his accident and long insensibility, he was able to talk fairly well. Jen was puzzled by this sudden--that is, this comparatively sudden--recovery; and he expressed himself somewhat forcibly to the housemaid Anne, who had been watching for so long by the bedside of the sick man. The woman, with the shrewdness of her class, gave her opinion as to its reason. "Ever since that handkerchief has been removed sir," said she, earnestly, "Jaggard has got well. I do believe, sir, that the scent on it kept the poor dear stupid." Another light was let in on Jen's mind. Here was the handkerchief again--perfumed with the devil-stick decoction of poison by Dido, applied by the hand of Etwald, and its design was evidently to keep Jaggard in a state of stupor and prevent him from, making dangerous disclosures. Dido and Etwald once more in partnership. Jen was more convinced than ever that the pair were at the bottom of the whole terrible affair. "I am glad to see that you are better, Jaggard," he said, while standing by the bed. "Yes, sir, thank you, sir," replied the man, in a weak voice. "I'm sorry, sir, but I couldn't help myself. I was drugged, sir." "I guessed as much," said Jen, grimly. "And who drugged you?" "That black devil, Dido, sir," replied Jaggard, faintly. "I guessed as much," said the major once more. CHAPTER XVII. THE STORY OF THE NIGHT. Exhausted by the few words which he had spoken, Jaggard fell back on his pillows in a dead faint. Seeing that further conversation was impossible at the present moment, Jen left the patient to the tender attention of Anne, and withdrew to seek David. He found him in a melancholy mood, pacing up and down the lawn before the window of the smoking-room. On perceiving his guardian, Sarby turned pale, for he thought that Jen had come to continue their previous conversation, and so force his confidence. But the first words of the major at once undeceived him. "Well, David!" said the newcomer, with significance, "I have made one discovery without your help." "A discovery. What is it?" "I know who drugged Jaggard. I have learned who stole the body of Maurice!" "Then you know more than I do," replied David, with all the appearance of truth. "My knowledge extends only to the death; not to the seizure of the body." "And you refuse to aid me," said the major, reproachfully; "well, keep your secret, I may be able to do without your help. But," added Jen, fixing a piercing glance on the young man, "I notice that you do not ask me the name of the person who drugged Jaggard." "Because I guess the name." "Ah!" "Mrs. Dallas," said David, faintly. "It was Mrs. Dallas." Jen drew back a step and looked at his ward with marked surprise. "No," he said, at length. "Mrs. Dallas has had nothing to do with it." "But I thought from what you said of the handkerchief dropped in the room--" "That being the property of Mrs. Dallas, she had lost it there," interrupted Jen, smartly. "No. I told you also that Isabella had confessed to having dropped it at the time of her midnight visit. But now I know that she told me a lie!" "Isabella! A lie! Impossible!" "Not at all," rejoined Jen, coldly. "I can understand her reason for telling the lie. She wanted to shield--" "Her mother!" cried David, quickly interrupting in his turn. "Your mind seems to run on the mother, David," said Jen, looking again at Sarby with keen inquisitiveness. "Can you prove by any chance that she committed the crime?" Sarby flushed and drew back with cold reserve. "No, Uncle Jen, I can't. I have my suspicions." "Against Mrs. Dallas?" "Well, yes; but I can prove nothing against her." "It pleases you to be mysterious, David. Shortly I shall insist upon an explanation." "Insist!" repeated the young man, annoyed by the peremptory tone of his guardian. "Yes. You owe it to me--your second father--to tell the truth. You owe it to your dead brother's memory--for assuredly Maurice was your brother." David stared sullenly at the ground, but in a moment or two he lifted his head in a defiant manner. "I owe you much more than I can ever repay," said he, in harsh tones. "All the same, Uncle Jen, I cannot reveal, even to you, what I know. If I did so, you would be the first to blame me." "I don't understand you." "I don't understand myself," said the young man, despondently, "save that I am the most miserable man alive." "You must be, if you know who killed Maurice, yet refuse to confess," retorted Jen, with some heat. "Will you tell me the truth? I ask you for the last time." "And I answer for the last time that the truth is not mine to tell," replied David, coldly. "If you doubt me question Etwald." "What! that criminal?" David looked up quickly. "How do you know he is a criminal?" "I can't give you my reasons. They would take too long to explain. But I believe that out of jealousy he killed Maurice." "Oh," said Sarby, ironically; "and out of jealousy he stole the body?" "No. Dido did that." "Dido?" An expression of surprise appeared on the pale face of the younger man. "Yes, Dido!" repeated Jen, firmly. "Jaggard has just informed me that it was Dido who drugged him. Why did she drug him? To steal the body of my poor lad. Why did she steal the body! To conceal the crime committed by Etwald." "I don't quite understand." "Listen, then, and I shall explain," resumed the major, with growing excitement. "I firmly believe that Etwald stole the devil-stick, and with it killed Maurice." "From a motive of jealousy?" "Precisely. As you know the body was stolen before the post-mortem examination could be made. Why was this? Does not your own reason find an answer to that question?" "No," replied David, still obstinately unconvinced. "Why," said Jen, with a nod, "if a post-mortem examination had been made, traces of poison would have been discovered. The poison would have been proved as identical with that of the devil-stick. Thus, beyond all doubt, we should have learned that Maurice had been killed by the devil-stick." "Well?" "Well!" repeated Jen, in an irritated tone, "can you not rouse that dull brain of yours to some understanding? To avert the discovery, and to prevent the analysis of the poison in the body. Dido, under the direction of Dr. Etwald, committed the third crime." "But why should Dido act so under Etwald?" "Because the man has some power over her. What that power may be, I know no more than you do. Although," added Jen, with an afterthought, "you may be able to explain." "No. I have no idea why Dido should serve Etwald." Evidently it was impossible to extract information from so impenetrable a man. Jen was thoroughly enraged by this display of obstinacy in a quarter where he least expected to find it. Usually sweet-tempered--especially toward his boys--the major quite lost control of his passion at the moment. "Take care, David," he said, in an angry manner. "You are forcing me to believe that you are acting in this way from an unworthy motive. It is your duty to aid me in discovering and punishing the murderer of Maurice. Yet you leave me to do all the work and refuse your assistance in any way. Unless you alter your manner, and take me into your confidence regarding the reason of this strange behavior, a breach not easily mended may occur between us." He paused, waiting for his ward to make some reply in defense of his conduct. The young man neither moved nor spoke, but, paler than usual, he stood before the major with his eyes on the ground. More in sorrow than in anger, Jen looked at him, then turned on his heel with a shrug, and walked into the house. David looked after him with quivering lips. "If he only knew the truth," said he, wiping the perspiration from his face, "what would he say? What would he do? He blames me now; would he blame me then?" In the meantime, while Sarby was indulging in this enigmatical soliloquy. Major Jen was pursuing his way toward the room of Jaggard. Despairing of obtaining information from David he thought it possible to learn the truth--at all events of that fatal night--from Jaggard. Honestly speaking the major was puzzled by the conduct of his ward. Hitherto, he had always considered David to be an honest man, but at the present time his conduct savored of duplicity. Did he know of anything relative to the triple crime which had been committed? If so, why did he not speak? Finally, was David also under the fatal influence of Dr. Etwald--the man who, Jen verily believed, was the source of all these woes? To none of these questions could the major find feasible answers; therefore for the time being--i.e., pending the narration of Jaggard--he dismissed them from his mind. It was possible that the story of the invalid might throw light on the darkness which overshadowed the case. As Jen anticipated, he found that Jaggard had recovered from his faint, and having had a sleep during the long absence of his master, was much better. As usual, Anne, the ill-favored housemaid, was watching by his bedside; but on a sign from Jen, she left the room. Finding himself alone with his servant, Jen addressed himself immediately to the business in hand. "Do you feel stronger, Jaggard?" he asked. "Much stronger, sir." "Are you able to talk?" "I think so, major--for half-an-hour, at least!" "Half-an-hour will be sufficient," said the major, in a serious voice. "I wish you to tell me what took place on the night you were drugged." "About Dido, sir?" "Yes, Jaggard, about Dido." The invalid remained silent for a time, then began to speak slowly and with some little difficulty. "After you left me, sir," he said in a weak voice, "I remained seated in my chair beside the bedside of my poor young master. If you remember there was only one candle in the room, which was placed on the table, some little distance away. I examined the window and found it closed." "You are sure of that?" demanded Jen, anxiously. "Quite sure, sir. It was bolted and barred. The door was simply closed, for I never thought of locking it, as I fancied, sir, that you might return after midnight to see if all was right." "I did not, however, Jaggard. I fell asleep in the library, after Mr. Sarby had gone to bed; and, of course, I had every confidence in you." "Please don't say that, major," said Jaggard, imploringly, "as I did my best. It was not my fault that Dido drugged me. I'm sure I don't know why she did so," continued Jaggard, half to himself. "I never did her any harm." The major looked fixedly at the man. "Do you not know what occurred during the time you were insensible?" he asked, gravely. "No, sir. I've only got my wits about me now." "Has not Anne told you?" "She hasn't told me anything, sir." "Well," said Jen, seeing that the man spoke in all good faith, "the body of Mr. Maurice was stolen on that night." "The body stolen!" repeated Jaggard, in amazement. "For why, sir?" "I can't tell, nor can anybody else. All we know is that at three o'clock in the morning we entered Mr. Maurice's room and found the window open, the body gone, and you insensible." "The window open," said Jaggard, thoughtfully. "Then it must have been opened from the inside, sir." "By Dido, no doubt." "I'm certain of it, major; and it was that black witch who stole the body." "How did she get into the room?" "She was hidden under the bed, sir." "Under the bed! Are you sure?" said Jen, greatly startled by this information. "Yes, major. It was this way. I was seated by the bed, at the foot of it, with my face to the door. The window, as I said, was locked. She could not have got in at the window, and had she entered by the door I should have seen her. Besides," added Jaggard, in a faint voice, "she grabbed me from behind." "From behind?" "Yes, sir. I was not quite asleep, but a kind of dozing in my chair. I don't know what it was made me sleepy, as I was wideawake when you left, sir. But there was a kind of heavy, sleepy smell about." "I know, I know--the devil-stick perfume." "Well, sir, the smell made me sleepy; and though I heard a noise behind me I could not turn my head. I was just as if in a nightmare, sir. Then the black arm of that witch came from behind me and grabbed at my throat, and she held a handkerchief with that stuff on it to my nose." "Ah," said Jen, to himself, "I knew that Isabella was speaking falsely. Go on, Jaggard," he added aloud. "Why did you not call out?" "I couldn't, sir. I felt as in a dream; but I turned and tried to fight her. She pushed me over, and I fell like a log. I think I must have hit my head on a corner of the bed, for I felt a cruel pain at the back of it." "You did wound your head, Jaggard; and after that fall you remembered no more?" "No, sir, not till to-day. I don't know what it all means, sir, but I'm sure I know how Dido got into the room." "Ah! That is what I wish to learn. Well?" "If you remember, sir. Dido called to see you that day." "Yes. To ask if I would see her mistress; a most unnecessary question." "It was a blind, sir; and when she left the room I don't believe she left the house." "What makes you think so?" "Sir, I took Dido out to the door, and while I was telling her to go away. Dr. Etwald came out. He told me he would see after her, and I left them alone. Now, sir," said Jaggard, with emphasis, "I do believe as Dr. Etwald took that black jade to the room of Mr. Maurice and hid her under the bed." CHAPTER XVIII. THE DEVIL-STICK THIEF. This long conversation had somewhat exhausted Jaggard, who was yet weak, so, telling him to cease from talking, Jen recalled the housemaid, and left the room to think over all that he had learned. The story of Jaggard convinced him more than ever that Dr. Etwald was the cause of all the terrible events which had occurred within the last few weeks. Without doubt it was he who had treacherously hidden Dido in the chamber of death. After drugging Jaggard, the negress no doubt had opened the window to admit Etwald, and between them this precious pair had carried off the dead body. But for what reason? This Jen could not determine. To learn the truth, he thought it advisable to call at "The Wigwam" and interrogate Dido. With the evidence of Jaggard to go on, the major felt satisfied that he could by threatening her with arrest, force her into confessing the whole nefarious plot. Who had thieved the devil-stick? Who had slain Maurice? Who had stolen the body? Undoubtedly, Etwald was the villain who was guilty of all three crimes, and the evidence of Dido would be sufficient to convict him of the deeds. "Yes," said Jen to himself that night, as he retired to bed, "to-day I have learned sufficient to implicate Etwald; to-morrow I shall be able to convict him. Dido must confess or go to prison." Angered by the selfish way in which David had acted, Jen did not communicate his discoveries to the young man. During the night he took counsel with himself, and the next morning he acted upon the plans which he had formed. These were, to see Dido and force the truth from her, to send Battersea to Deanminster to fetch both Arkel and Dr. Etwald to "Ashantee," and finally to communicate his discoveries to the inspector and get him to arrest Etwald. Once in prison, and the doctor, intimidated by a fear of death at the hands of justice, might confess his crimes, and his reasons for committing them. This straightforward course was the only one to pursue. After breakfast, therefore, the major wrote two notes. One for Arkel, asking him to be at "Ashantee" by noon, as the writer had important matters to discuss; the other for Etwald, requesting him to call and see Jaggard, who, added Jen, significantly in the letter, had recovered his senses. Having thus prepared his trap for the doctor to walk into, Jen delivered the letters to Battersea, with instructions to set off at once for Deanminster. The tramp, anxious to keep in favor with Jen for cupboard reasons, lost no time in departing, and when the major had seen him safely out of the gates, he took his way toward "The Wigwam" for the all-important interview with Dido. Before his departure he had left a message for David, who had not made his appearance at breakfast, requesting the young man to be in the library at noon. "If I can force the truth out of Dido," thought Jen, strolling slowly along in the hot sunshine, "I may get the better of Etwald. Then, when David sees that the doctor is in the trap, and in danger of arrest for murder, he may relate what he knows. Though upon my word," considered the major, frowning, "I don't see what information he can possibly add to what I have obtained from Jaggard, or what I am likely to wring from the unwilling lips of Dido. Etwald is the guilty person. David can tell me no more than that." On arriving at "The Wigwam," Jen presented his card, and was shown into the drawing-room, there to wait the arrival of Mrs. Dallas. Although it was nearly eleven o'clock the indolent Creole was not yet out of bed, but on hearing that the major had called to see her, she sent Dido to inform him that she would shortly accord him an interview. The negress, as gloomy and sullen as ever, delivered this message with folded arms and bent head. Then, without even a look at him, she turned to leave the room, when Jen placed himself between her and the door. "Not yet. Dido," he said, in a cold voice. "It is true that I called to see your mistress; but I wish to speak to you also." Dido started, and cast an inquiring look at the impassive face of the white man. "What you wish, sah?" she said, in a grave voice, as emotionless as that of Jen's. "To ask you a few questions about the devil-stick." "Massa, I say all I know ob de debble-stick!" "Indeed, you did not. Dido. You did not inform me that by Dr. Etwald's directions you filled the devil-stick with poison, or that you steeped the handkerchief found in the room of Mr. Alymer in the same poison for the purpose of drugging my servant; or again, that you concealed yourself under the bed, and afterward drugged him." A kind of terror showed itself in the dilated eyes of the negress. She could not understand how Jen had become possessed of a knowledge of her crimes, and at first was struck with stupor by the recital. Speedily, however, she recovered herself, and with a dark smile of contempt and pity she was about to deny all, when Jen brought out his last accusation. "Nor," said he, fixing his eyes on the woman, "did you confess that you opened the window of Mr. Alymer's room, and aided Dr. Etwald to carry away the dead body?" "De--de--dead--dead!" she stammered, shrinking back. "Yes, the dead body of Mr. Alymer, which you and Dr. Etwald took to his house at Deanminster. No denial, woman," said Jen, raising his voice, as she was about to speak. "I see by your face that you are guilty." Dido trembled all over, whether from rage or fear Jen could not determine, and opened her mouth to give the lie to her accuser. Then she shut it again, as a heavy step was heard outside the door. A moment later and Mrs. Dallas, with a face expressive of astonishment, was standing on the threshold of the room; and Dido at her feet was making the room resound like a jungle with howlings like those of a wild beast. All the savage nature of the woman was now on the surface, and had broken through the sullen restraint of her impassive demeanor. "What is the meaning of this?" demanded Mrs. Dallas, with an uneasy glance at the frantic negress. "I shall explain when Dido stops her howling," said Jen, quite undisturbed. "Dido! Dido!" remonstrated Mrs. Dallas, shaking the woman. "Rise; stop." "Oh, missy! missy!" wept the negress, getting onto her feet. "It all am a lie, what dat massa say. Poo' ole Dido know nuffin'--do nuffin'. Lordy! Lordy! de big lie." Major Jen took Dido by the shoulder, and giving her a good shake, commanded her to be silent. At once the negress--who was evidently acting a part--ceased her outcries, and after casting her eyes significantly at her mistress, stared sullenly at the floor. Mrs. Dallas turned pale at this rapid glance, and was obliged to take a seat to prevent herself from falling. Not a detail of this by-play was lost upon Jen, who saw in the conduct of mistress and servant a confirmation of his suspicions. However, he added nothing to his previous speech, but merely recapitulated--for the benefit of Mrs. Dallas--the points of his accusation against the negress. Dido heard him in silence, but this time she made neither outcry nor denial. Mrs. Dallas appeared to be horrified by the recital. Every now and then she cast a look of terror at Dido, while passing her handkerchief over her white lips. When the major concluded she could only shake her head and stammer a few words. "It can not be true," she murmured. "It is impossible." "It is a fact," insisted Jen. "I have the evidence of Jaggard to prove that Dido was in the room on that night." "Dido," cried Mrs. Dallas, in a trembling voice, "is this true?" The negress raised her wild eyes slowly to the face of her mistress. What she saw therein evidently determined her reply. Without a word she bent her head. "Ah," cried Jen, "you admit your guilt?" "No," said Dido, bluntly, "I say dat I in de room, but I no kill dat man." "But you filled the devil-stick with fresh poison?" "No," said Dido again. "I saw no debble-stick." "It was found in these grounds." "Dat so; but I not see dat debble-stick." "Woman," cried Jen, with energy, "no one but you could manufacture the poison with which the devil-stick was filled." "Dat I know; but I no fill de debble-stick." "Then who did?" Dido hesitated, looked at Mrs. Dallas, and came out with a lie. "I don't know," she said, in a stolid tone. Her mistress rose to her feet and approached the major. "Do you mean to say that Dido killed Mr. Alymer?" she asked, nervously. "No; but she supplied the means to the man who did." "The man who did!" "Yes; Dr. Etwald." "Dr. Etwald!" repeated Mrs. Dallas, in what seemed to Jen to be a tone of relief. "Why do you think he killed Mr. Alymer?" "Because Maurice was engaged to your daughter, whom he wished to marry. Etwald killed my poor lad, so as to remove a dangerous rival from his path." "Impossible." "By no means; and Dido manufactured the poison which was used." Mrs. Dallas considered. "I know to what you allude," she said, after a pause. "Dido does manufacture the drug, but only for the cure of nervous headaches." "Or to kill men with," rejoined Jen, ironically; "or to drug the watchers of the dead." "The watchers of the dead!" echoed Mrs. Dallas, with a start. "Well, let us say my servant, Jaggard. He was drugged by Dido, and she stole the body, or rather she aided Etwald to do so." "Dido, is this true?" "Yis," said the negress, coldly; "de great massa told me to do dat." "The great master," repeated Jen; "you mean Dr. Etwald?" "Yis. Dat so." "He took away the body of Mr. Alymer, and you helped him?" "Yis." "Why did you steal the body?" Dido shrugged her shoulders. "Ask de great massa." "Where did you take it to?" demanded Jen, baffled in one direction and trying another. "Ask de great massa," said Dido once more. "The law will do that." "The law, Major Jen?" said Mrs. Dallas, alarmed. "Yes. I intend to have Dr. Etwald arrested." "You dare not. Why?" "On three charges. First, that he thieved the devil-stick; second, that he killed Maurice; and third, that he stole the lad's body." Mrs. Dallas fell back on the sofa, with a white face. Dido laughed in a guttural fashion, and shrugged her shoulders contemptuously. "Voodoo!" she said, and laughed again. The major guessed that she meant that African witchcraft would avert disaster from Etwald, and at once flung the word back in her face. "Voodoo will not help the doctor," said he, quietly. "This is a civilized country, and we who inhabit it are above being influenced by such degrading superstitions. You believe in Voodoo; in Obi; let us see if such things will protect you." "Do you mean that Dido is in danger of arrest?" cried Mrs. Dallas, in a terrified tone. "Certainly, as the accomplice of Etwald." "But she did not kill Mr. Alymer." "She filled the devil-stick with the poison which was used to kill him," retorted the major, coldly, "and she confesses to having aided him in stealing the body." "Ah!" murmured Mrs. Dallas, casting a haggard look around. "All is lost." "Are you alluding to Dido?" demanded Jen, rather surprised at her tone. Mrs. Dallas was about to speak, when the negress silenced her with a look, and raised her head proudly. "Yis. It ole Dido," she said. "But ole Dido not lost. Dat great massa, he look after ole Dido." "If you mean Dr. Etwald, he will have enough to do to look after himself. Well, Mrs. Dallas, as I have learned what I wished to know, I shall now take my leave." "You go to ruin us," wept Mrs. Dallas. "No," said Jen, in an inflexible voice. "I go to punish the man who killed my boy." Without another word he left the room. His last glance showed that Dido had gathered her sobbing mistress in her arms, and was staring after him in a defiant manner. At the front door Jen heard his name called softly, and Isabella, with a rich color in her usually pale cheeks, came flying after him. "Major, major, I have heard all! I have been listening at the window." "Then you know that I am aware of your deception about the handkerchief?" "Yes. I did not speak truly," stammered Isabella, "but I could not act otherwise. It was to save a certain person." "Dr. Etwald?" "No, not Dr. Etwald, but the person who stole the devil-stick." "Ah! you know who committed the first of the crimes," cried Jen, seizing the young girl's arm. "Confess. It was Dr. Etwald who stole the wand of sleep." "No! no! It was--it was--" "Dido?" "Not Dido. Oh!" cried Isabella, in a tone of anguish, "it was my mother." CHAPTER XIX. FURTHER EVIDENCE. Major Jen recoiled from the young girl in amazement. "Your mother," he muttered, hardly believing the evidence of his own senses. "Your mother stole the devil-stick?" "Yes; but she did not know what she was doing!" Jen frowned. "That is impossible!" he said, positively. "Quite impossible!" "No! no! Wait! Listen!" said Isabella, much agitated. "I told you falsehoods before to shield my mother. Now that I know that you have discovered so much, that you are bent on punishing Dr. Etwald, I must tell you the truth, so that she may not be dragged down to ruin. But not here--not here: my mother may see us--and Dido," the girl shuddered. "Dido, of whom I am afraid. Come with me, major. Quickly!" Without glancing toward the house Isabella ran down a secluded path which led through a kind of shrubbery to the flower-garden, and then disappeared into a light cane summer-house, constructed in the Chinese fashion, and which was overgrown with greenery. Major Jen followed her as rapidly as his more mature age would permit him; and as he hastened, he felt a wild thrill of delight that at last he was about to hear the truth. That it should be told to him by so unexpected a person as Isabella Dallas, was not the least strange part of this strange affair. "Major," she said, when somewhat out of breath he had taken his seat beside her in the summer-house, "although I relate what inculpates my mother, it is to save her that I do so. Both she and I are in a net woven by Dido." "Ah! poor Maurice always mistrusted that negress!" "He was right to do so. Oh, you do not know what a terrible woman she is. For years both I and my mother have been under her influence; and have submitted to her will. Now, I see her in her true colors, and I am determined to speak the truth. Save myself and my mother, major; for we are innocent. Dr. Etwald and Dido are the guilty persons." "They killed Maurice!" "Yes. I am sure of it." "They stole the body?" "I can swear they did," said Isabella, with emotion. "Why did you not tell me of this before?" asked the major. "I have only been certain of these things since our last interview. I lied to you then because Dido said if I told the truth she would accuse my mother of the murder." "I see," said Jen, thoughtfully, "and I can understand their motives. Dido wished you to marry Etwald." "Yes; and it was to force my mother into compliance with that desire that the whole of these crimes were committed. Dido--" "One moment, Miss Dallas. What influence has Etwald over the negress?" Isabella shuddered. "He is the possessor of the Voodoo stone," she said in a low voice. "The Voodoo stone," echoed Jen, much puzzled. "And what may that be?" "It is a small black pebble of a peculiar shape," explained the girl, "and it was brought from Africa to Barbadoes over a hundred years ago. The negroes believe that a spirit dwells in this stone, and that when it is worshiped the indwelling devil can work woe to those against whom the possessor of the stone bears malice. You can have no idea how this talisman is venerated by all the blacks; they will go miles to look on it, to adore it; they would burn down a city to possess it; to gain it they would murder a hundred human beings. Well, Dr. Etwald was in Barbadoes some years ago, and he gained possession of this Voodoo stone. He has used it while here to intimidate Dido. While he holds it she will not dare to disobey him, and all this plotting and assassination designed to bring about my marriage with Dr. Etwald, has been designed by him, and carried out by Dido, solely on account of his ownership of the Voodoo stone. You know that she calls him the 'great master!' Well--now you can guess the reason for her service worship of this man." "Yes," assented Jen, turning his sharp eyes on Isabella, "and you--do you believe in this Voodoo stone also?" "No. When I was a child I did, and I fancy that my mother also had some belief in it. Brought up among the negroes of Barbadoes both she and I imbibed the superstitions of the black race; but now we have no faith in such follies. For my part," added the girl, anxiously, "I should be glad to get rid of Dido, seeing that with Dr. Etwald and his malignant influence of the Voodoo stone, she is dragging us toward disgrace; but my mother still clings to her as an old servant, and will not let her go." "I see. And about the theft of this devil-stick?" "Oh, on the night it was stolen, I was seated on the veranda after dinner, and I saw my mother come out with Dido. They did not know I was there, as I sat in the shade. I saw Dido speak to my mother and point toward your house. Then she waved her hands before my mother's face, whereupon my mother turned and walked swiftly past where I was seated. I saw her face; it was quite white, and her eyes were open and glassy. She--" "In a word," interrupted Jen, "this black witch had hypnotized Mrs. Dallas." "Yes; but I did not know that until later on. When my mother disappeared Dido re-entered the house. At once--terrified by my mother's action--I ran down the little path which leads to the gate and followed her out onto the road. She went into your grounds by the postern in the wall. I saw her cross the lawn, and enter the smoking-room, wherein a lamp was burning. When she came out it was with the devil-stick in her hand. I recognized it by the golden handle. I reached home before she did, and again hid on the veranda. Dido reappeared as my mother came up the walk, and took the devil-stick from her. Then she led her indoors." "And what did you do?" asked Jen, much interested in this strange history. "I went in later on, and found that my mother had gone to bed. I said nothing at the time as I was afraid of Dido. Afterward, when Maurice was killed, and you said that the devil-stick had killed him, I went to Dido and accused her of the crime. "She was fearfully angry and warned me that if I said a word about the theft of the devil-stick I would be in danger of hanging my own mother." "What!" cried Jen, jumping up, "did Dido accuse your mother of the crime?" "To me, yes. To my mother, no. Afraid lest such an accusation should kill my mother, who is not strong as you know, I said nothing to her, or indeed to anyone. I told a lie to you to save my mother; what else could I do? But now I tell you the truth, and I wish you to protect us both against the evil of Dido and Dr. Etwald." "You believe that Dr. Etwald killed Maurice?" "I am sure of it. When I became ill through the terror of the secret which I possessed. Dido prepared that poison under the pretense of curing me, but I now know that she did so to refill the devil-stick. She then sent it to Etwald, and he killed Maurice. Also he stole the body with the assistance of Dido." "Why should this pair of wretches steal the body?" "I know no more than you do," said Isabella, with great despondency. "But now. Major Jen, you can understand my not speaking the truth at our last interview." "Yes, and I honor you for it," said Jen, kissing her hand. "But tell me one thing. Why did you make that midnight visit?" "Well, I was not quite myself, major, in the first place; and in the second I missed Dido!" "On that night?" asked Jen, eagerly. "Yes. I was ill, as I have said, and my mother was watching by my bedside. Usually it is Dido who does so. I asked my mother about Dido, and she said that Dido had asked permission to go out for the evening." "To see Dr. Etwald, I suppose?" "No. I thought so at first, but one of the servants who brought me a cup of tea late at night told me that Dido had gone to your house to offer her services in laying out the body of my dear Maurice." "Oh!" said the major, suddenly recollecting what had taken place. "I remember her visit; but she gave as her excuse that you wanted to see me." "One of her lies," said Isabella, vehemently. "I did not know she had gone to your house until the servant told me. Then when I remembered how the devil-stick had been stolen I was afraid lest Dido should be contriving further mischief. Although it was late I could not rest in my bed. I tossed and turned with my brain burning with the fever. I felt that I must learn what was taking place at your house. My mother left me about two o'clock in the morning quite worn out with her watching. Then I rose, put on a dressing-gown, and escaped by the window. I reached your library at three o'clock. You know the rest." "Yes," assented the major, with a nod, "and I know that, as you imagined. Dido was up to some mischief. She stole the body with Etwald; but why? why?" muttered Jen, in perplexed tones. "I cannot guess," said Isabella, for the second time. "But now that I have told you all, major, what do you intend to do?" "Return to my house and see Etwald!" "Is he there?" "I expect him at noon along with Inspector Arkel. Then I may force the truth out of him. Certainly I shall have him arrested on suspicion of murder." "And Dido!" "I shall take no steps concerning her at present," said Jen, glancing at his watch, "especially as there is no fear of her leaving the neighborhood." "No!" replied Isabella, interpreting the major's thought. "While the Voodoo stone is with Dr. Etwald she will not leave the place where he is staying." "In that case, she will have to live in Deanminster jail; for there---as sure as I am a living man--Etwald shall find himself before another twelve hours are over his head. And now, my dear young lady," added Jen, rising, "I must leave you, to keep my appointment with the scoundrel. Do not speak of our conversation to anyone!" "You can depend upon my silence," said Isabella, who held out her hand. Major Jen shook it in his usual kindly manner, and moved a step toward the door of the summer-house. All at once he paused and looked back. "One moment, Miss Dallas!" he said, quickly. "Does David know about the theft of the devil-stick? That is," he added more precisely, "does he know that your mother stole it?" Isabella considered. "I cannot be quite certain if he does!" she said, after a pause, "but I fancy he has some idea of it. When he has seen me of late he has always been so nervous and silent. At our last meeting, also, he told me that we were to fear nothing." "H'm!" said Jen, reflectively. "Undoubtedly you are right. Miss Dallas. David must have learned the truth in some way; but I cannot imagine how. Well, good-by, good-by. I shall see you later on when we have this scoundrel under lock and key." The major hurried off, leaving Isabella alone in the summer-house. He walked on slowly, notwithstanding that it was past the hour he had appointed to meet Arkel and Etwald. His thoughts were busy with what Isabella had said concerning David's knowledge of the trick. "Undoubtedly he believes that Mrs. Dallas killed Maurice," thought Jen, "and that is why he refuses to confess to me. He said that I would be the first to blame him for telling all he knew, and as he is under the delusion that Mrs. Dallas is guilty, I understand now the reason of his silence. Also he said that he would never marry Isabella; which shows that he is afraid of becoming the husband of a woman whose mother has committed a crime. Poor boy, how he must suffer; and after all I must say that I approve of his honorable silence. But!" added the major to himself, "when he knows that Mrs. Dallas is innocent and that Etwald is guilty, he will then be able to marry Isabella!" On consideration Jen thought it would be best to say nothing definite to David about his discovery. If the young man, from a feeling of honor toward an unhappy woman, kept silent, the major was the last person in the world to tempt him to break it. Jen decided to merely hint to David that he knew the truth, and let the arrest of Etwald tell its own tale, and unseal the lad's lips, by showing that Mrs. Dallas was innocent. As Jen came to this conclusion, he entered his own gates, and rather to his surprise, he saw David, considerably agitated, advancing to meet him. "Inspector Arkel and Dr. Etwald are waiting for you in the library," said Sarby, rapidly. "I know it. I sent for them." "You sent for them?" "Well, why not? I wish the first to arrest the second." "Arrest Dr. Etwald! On what grounds?" "On the grounds of having murdered Maurice," said Jen, coldly. "Yes, you may look astonished, David, but it is the truth. Without your assistance I have discovered that Etwald is guilty. Also," added the major, in a kindly tone, "I know the reason of your silence." "Of ray silence?" echoed David. "You know the reason?" "Yes, and I honor you for it." "Who--who--told you?" stammered the young man, as pale as death. "Miss Dallas." "Isabella! My God!" David looked terrified. CHAPTER XX. A STRANGE REQUEST. Before Jen had time to inquire the meaning of David's strange exclamation, the young man had turned on his heel and was walking rapidly back to the house. Surprised by this behavior, and suspicious of its reason, the major called out to him to stop; but without taking any notice the young man increased his pace, and was soon lost to sight. Still marveling, Jen went after him, and on entering the library found that only Arkel was present. "Where is Dr. Etwald?" demanded the major, anxiously. "He went upstairs a few minutes ago to see your servant," replied the inspector, rising. "Alone, Mr. Arkel?" "Why no, major. Mr. Sarby was with him." Jen started. Evidently David had returned before him in order to see Etwald, and to gain private speech with the doctor, had conducted him to Jaggard's sick-room. For the moment Jen--still suspicious of Sarby's behavior--had it in his mind to follow; but a few minutes of reflection convinced him that this was unnecessary. David did not know all the conversation which had taken place between himself and Isabella, therefore he could inform Etwald of nothing new. But, indeed, the major wondered why David wished to speak privately with the doctor. It looked, to his mind, as though the two men were in league. "I'll find out what it all means after I have had speech with Arkel," said Jen to himself. "The doctor cannot escape me, and if David has an understanding with him, I'll force them both to confess. There can be no harm in leaving them together for a few minutes." In this Jen was wrong, but, as he was only an amateur detective, he cannot be blamed very severely for his negligence at this particular moment. He acted--as he thought--for the best, and therefore hastened to explain to Arkel the position of affairs before the return of Dr. Etwald. Afterward, when the matter of the accusation and arrest were settled, he intended to have speech with David, and insist upon an explanation of the young man's mysterious behavior. Thus did the situation present itself to his inexperienced eyes. "Well, never mind Dr. Etwald just now," he said aloud, pointing to a chair. "He has his duties to perform, and I have mine. Sit down, Mr. Arkel. I suppose you wonder why I have sent for you?" "Well; no, major. I presume it is in connection with the case." "You are right. I wish to know if you have discovered anything new." "Yes. Your messenger, Battersea, was wandering about your grounds on that night." "Battersea!" cried Jen, thunderstruck. "Did he see the body carried off?" "He did not see it taken out of the house," explained Arkel, referring to some notes which he held in his hand, "but he saw it put into the carriage." "A carriage?" "Yes, which was waiting in the winding lane at the foot of your grounds. Two people carried the body between them--a man and a woman--but Battersea cannot give me their names." "I can, however," said Jen, grimly. "Oh, it is just as I thought." "What are the names, major?" asked Arkel, anxiously. "I'll give you the names later on, Mr. Inspector. In the meantime, be good enough to conclude your report of Battersea's confession. It interests me deeply." "I thought it would," replied Arkel, with a look of satisfaction. "Well, Battersea wondered at the body being put into the carriage--" "Did he know that it was Alymer's corpse?" interrupted Jen, sharply. "He guessed as much from the circumstance that the body was carried through your grounds to the lane where the carriage was waiting. You know, major, that this tramp is rather stupid, and it is not an easy thing for him to put two and two together." "On this occasion, however, he discovered that they made four," replied the major, dryly. "Well, the man and the woman put the body into the carriage--a closed carriage, I suppose?" "Yes," assented Arkel, with a nod, "a brougham." "A doctor's brougham?" "What," cried the inspector, with a look of surprise, "has the scamp told you?" "He has told me nothing. Please go on." "Well," said Arkel, making his invariable beginning, "when the body was placed in the carriage and the door closed, the woman went away." "In what direction?" "She returned through your grounds, but where she went Battersea does not know." "I do, however," muttered Jen, divining that Dido had taken the usual route back to "The Wigwam." "And the man?" "He mounted the carriage-box and drove off. It appears that there was no coachman." "I don't wonder at that," rejoined the major. "This precious pair were afraid to trust their infernal secret to a third party. No doubt the horse, being quiet, was left to stand in the deep shadow of the lane, while the robbers stole the corpse. However, I understand. The woman went away, the man mounted the box, and I suppose, drove off with the corpse." "Also with Battersea," added Arkel, with a significant smile. "It seems that the tramp wished to see the end of this singular adventure, or, no doubt, he wished to make money out of it." "By blackmailing? I see. I suppose he hung on behind." "Yes; like a street arab. He was one, once, you know, major, and has not forgotten his early habits. Well, he was driven with the carriage to Deanminster." "Quite so, and into that gloomy courtyard which surrounds the house of Dr. Etwald," added Major Jen, with a satisfied smile, "Battersea saw the doctor take the body out of the carriage and carry it into the house. Then, on his return--Etwald's I mean--he unharnessed the horse and put it into the stable; also the carriage into the coach-house. Is that not so, Mr. Arkel?" "Battersea told you," stammered Arkel, amazed at his insight. "I assure you he told me nothing. But I am as clever as Battersea, and can put two and two together. Next day Battersea went to Etwald, did he not, and tried to blackmail him, but this clever doctor compelled him to keep silent." "It's all quite true," assented the inspector, thunderstruck; "though how you guessed it all I cannot say. But, as you know so much, perhaps you can tell me one thing more, which bothers me not a little. How did Dr. Etwald compel Battersea to keep silence?" "Very easily," said Jen, with a shrug. "Battersea is half negro. The black race adore the Voodoo stone, of which Dr. Etwald is the possessor. Etwald simply threatened Battersea with the vengeance of the Voodoo stone if he spoke. Therefore, he held his tongue, and was forced to confess all this only by your threatening to have him arrested as the murderer of Mr. Alymer. "I did threaten him; but how you know--" "I know a great many things, Mr. Inspector. For instance, I know that the woman who assisted Dr. Etwald to steal the body is Dido, the negress of Mrs. Dallas; also that Dr. Etwald is a murderer as well as a thief." "Heavens! If I had only known that I would have had the warrant altered." "What!" cried Jen, with an expression of ferocious joy lighting up his face, "you have a warrant for the arrest of Etwald?" "Yes, but on the charge of stealing the body only. I took it out after hearing the evidence of the tramp, Battersea." "Very good. Then you can take out a warrant for his arrest as a murderer, after hearing my evidence." "Can you prove him guilty?" Jen rose to his feet and stretched out one hand toward Arkel. "I swear, on my sacred honor, that Maurice Alymer was killed by Max Etwald!" At this moment the door of the library opened slowly, and Dr. Etwald, calm and composed, appeared on the threshold. Behind him, over his shoulder, peered the pale countenance of David. From the ironical look on the doctor's face it would appear that he had overheard the accusation of the major, and was prepared to treat it with contempt. That such was the case appeared by the first words which issued from his mouth as he faced his accuser. "I hear the name of Max Etwald coupled with the crime of murder. Is this the way you treat your guests, major?" "You are not my guest," retorted Jen, furiously. "No; rather your victim, seeing that you have lured me into a trap. It was not to see Jaggard that you asked me here; but rather to force me--if you can--into confessing that I am guilty of a triple crime." "You make one slight mistake, sir," said Jen, coldly. "I accuse you of two crimes, not of three." "Ah, you are lenient," replied Etwald, a shade of surprise passing over his features, a surprise which was reflected in the agitated face of David Sarby. "Well, sir, let me hear of what I am accused." With the utmost coolness he entered the room and sat down in a chair near Arkel. The inspector, with his hand in his breast-pocket, fingered the warrant, but did not deem it wise to execute it until he had heard what proof the major possessed against Etwald for the murder of Maurice Alymer. David sat down near the door, and followed every movement of the scene which ensued with keen eyes. Thus, three of the occupants of the room were seated--Sarby, Arkel, and Etwald. Only one man stood up--Major Jen--and he stood as the accuser. "Dr. Etwald," said the major, with great calmness and deliberation, "you are a clever and ambitious man, who wishes to make his way in the world, but has hitherto failed to do so for lack of money. To procure money for your experiments in chemistry, you would do anything--even marry a rich woman!" "Or murder the man formerly engaged to her," retorted Etwald, with a pale smile. "Go on. Major Jen, I see the mark you are aiming at." "You found this rich match here," resumed Jen, without noticing the interruption, "in the person of Miss Dallas, already engaged to the late Mr. Alymer." "And also loved by Mr. Sarby," said the doctor, coolly. "We will come to that later on, if you please," said the major, making a gesture to David to be silent. "You loved her and wanted your rival, Mr. Alymer, out of the way. To do so you had my devil-stick stolen." "Ho, ho; and by whom?" "By Mrs. Dallas!" "Mrs. Dallas?" cried David, starting from his seat. "Did she steal the devil-stick?" "It would seem so from this veracious history the major is telling us, said Etwald, with irony. "Mrs. Dallas stole the devil-stick," resumed Jen, imperturbably, "and gave it to Dido, who, by your directions, filled it with fresh poison. Dido gave the newly-prepared weapon of death to you, and with it you killed my poor boy at the very gates of the girl he loved." "Really!" said Etwald, with pointed satire. "Was I as cruel as that!" "Afterward you stole the body of the man you murdered. Dido helped you to do so, and drugged my servant, Jaggard, with the perfume of the devil-stick poison, in order that the theft might be carried out with safety." "It would seem that Dido has a great deal to do with these matters," said Etwald, looking up to the roof. "She has everything to do with them. She will be brought up against you as a witness." "Indeed! Then it appears that I am to be arrested." "I can answer that," broke in Arkel, amazed at the self-possession of the man. "I have here a warrant to arrest you for stealing the body of Maurice Alymer." Etwald glanced over the warrant and smiled. "How can you prove that I did so?" he demanded. "By the evidence of the tramp Battersea." "Battersea!" repeated the doctor, and for the first time he frowned. "Yes. He saw you place the body in your brougham, with the assistance of Dido. He followed you to Deanminster, and saw you take the body into your house." "Really! But all this evidence is circumstantial. Have you searched my house?" "We intend doing so." "I am afraid you will have your trouble for nothing," rejoined Etwald, coolly. "Moreover, you can't arrest me without actual proof." "I can arrest you on suspicion," said Arkel, rising with his warrant, "and I arrest you now in the Queen's name." "On what charge?" "On the charge of stealing the body of Maurice Alymer." "Oh, then," said Etwald, turning toward Jen, "I am not to be accused of the murder." "Later on, my friend Cain," said the major, grimly. "You will have quite enough to do to save your neck from the halter." "I am afraid so, indeed, major, therefore I must have assistance. There is nothing like being provided in time with counsel for the defense; therefore, I must ask Mr. David Sarby to defend me from these absurd charges." "I!" cried David, starting up with pale cheeks. "I defend you!" "Assuredly," replied Etwald, fixing a piercing glance on the young man. "Do you refuse?" "Of course he does," cried Jen, wrathfully. David raised his head and looked at the major, at the doctor, at the inspector. "No," he said in a firm voice to all three. "I accept. I shall defend Max Etwald." CHAPTER XXI. A NINE DAYS' WONDER. Great was the astonishment throughout the neighborhood when it became known that Dr. Etwald, the clever physician of Deanminster, had been arrested on a double charge of murder and theft of a dead body. Those who did not like him--and they were the majority--rejoiced openly that the assassin of Maurice Alymer had been found in Etwald's person; but there were some that regretted that so brilliant a man should be consigned to a felon's cell, and--possibly in the hereafter--to a felon's doom. But whatever opinions, for or against the prisoner, were held by the good people of Deanminster and the surrounding neighborhood, there was no doubt of one thing: The trial of Max Etwald at the assizes would be the great sensation of the year. Major Jen worked hard to procure evidence against the prisoner, and David Sarby worked just as hard to obtain materials for the defense. The attitude taken up by the young barrister astonished everybody and was universally condemned. That he--who might almost be called the brother of the dead man--should defend the assassin of such brother was almost incredible of belief. People were astonished and angered by the very idea, and when that idea became known to be an actual fact the conduct of David was disapproved of on every side. Only one man said nothing, and that man was the very person who had the best right to speak. While all talked, Major Jen remained silent. His reticence on the subject caused almost as much scandal as David's inexplicable conduct. Yet Jen knew what he was about, and he was acting merely in accordance with an agreement he had made with Sarby. After that memorable interview in the library, when Etwald was accused and arrested, Arkel took away his prisoner in custody by virtue of the warrant, and left Major Jen alone with the counsel for the defense. The assassin--so-called--and Inspector Arkel left the room; they left the house. When the sound of Etwald's carriage--for he went to Deanminster jail in his own brougham--had died away in the distance, Jen, who had hitherto kept silence, raised his head and looked at David. "Well, sir!" he said in an icy tone to his adopted son, "I am waiting for you to explain this very extraordinary conduct." David replied in equally as cold a manner. "Major Jen, I have no explanation to give you." "What!" cried his guardian, rising. "Do you dare to sit there and tell me that you are a traitor, a coward, and an ungrateful man?" "A traitor?" echoed David, with a flush rising in his pale cheeks. "Yes, sir. A traitor to your foster-brother, who was your rival. It is because Maurice loved the woman who hates you that you act the unworthy part of defending his murderer." "Very good, major; I understand why I am a traitor. But a coward?" "You are a coward in submitting yourself to the influence of this base assassin," cried Jen, enraged by the calmness of the young man. "And as an ungrateful man--do you want an explanation of that term?--you whom I have loved and brought up as my own son?" "No. I can understand your anger from your point of view." "My point of view! My point of view!" raged Jen, stamping. "From the point of view of the world, sir! What will everyone say when they learn that you intend to defend Etwald?" "They will say almost as cruel things as you have said," returned David, still composed. "But I do not care for the opinion of the public. I act according to the dictates of my own conscience." Jen drew back and stared at the young man in angry surprise. "Your own conscience!" he repeated, in disdain. "How can you talk in that manner? What excuse can you--" "I have an excellent excuse," interrupted David, rising. "What is it, if I may be so bold as to ask?" "I refuse to tell you--at present." "Indeed! And am I ever to learn the reason of your extraordinary behavior?" David considered. "Yes, major," said he at length. "You shall learn my reason--at the trial." "At the trial?" "I shall explain it when I make my speech for the defense." "What do you mean?" cried Jen, his curiosity getting the better of his anger. "Is it possible that you believe in the innocence of this man?" "As counsel for the defense you can hardly expect me to answer that." "As your adopted father, I demand an answer." "You shall have it, sir--at the trial." The obstinacy and marvelous composure of the young man were not without their due effect on Major Jen. He drew back, and after a few moments' consideration, he spoke in all seriousness. "David," said he, quietly, "there is something very extraordinary in your behavior, and you refuse to give me your reasons therefor. If I wait until the trial, will you explain?" "Yes. I have already told you so. In my speech for the defense you will be fully satisfied that I have good cause to act as I am doing." "Very good," said Jen, calmly. "Then I shall say nothing to any one about your very curious behavior. I shall work hard to secure the condemnation of this scoundrel. You can do your best to save him. But against you, or for you, I shall not open my mouth. At the trial I shall expect an explanation." "You shall have it." "But," added Jen, raising his head, "as until that explanation we are enemies--although not openly so--I shall require you to leave my house." "I expected that you would do so," rejoined David, bowing his head. "Indeed, you can act in no other way. To-day I shall take lodgings in Deanminster and wait for the trial. I shall defend Etwald to the best of my ability, and then you can decide whether I am fit to re-enter this house." "I can't understand you, sir," said Jen, with a sigh. "Whatever your reasons may be, I feel sure that I shall not approve of them." "You approved of my reasons before, major. You shall approve of them again. In the meantime, until the trial, let us remain strangers." He bowed, and without offering his hand--which it is very probable Major Jen would have refused to take--he left the room. When the door closed the older man sank into a chair and passed his hand across a brow moist with perspiration. "There can be only one explanation," he muttered. "David is mad." The result of this conversation was that David took up his residence in Deanminster near the jail, and saw Etwald frequently about his defense. The doctor assured him that he possessed sufficient power over Dido, by reason of owning the Voodoo stone, to prevent her from becoming a witness against him. Sarby was satisfied that if Dido did not appear to give evidence the case for the prosecution would fall through. She was the only witness of whom the barrister and the prisoner had any fear. On his part, Major Jen, together with Arkel, built up a strong case against the man whom they fully believed to be the culprit. Search had been made in Etwald's house, but no traces of the dead body could be found. Its disappearance was almost as profound a mystery as the reason which had induced Etwald to steal it. The reasons for the theft of the devil-stick, for the murder of Maurice, were plain enough; but what had induced the doctor to make away with the corpse no one could discover. Etwald himself, even to his counsel, was silent on the subject. Arkel had sought out as witnesses against Etwald seven persons. First, Mrs. Dallas, who was to prove that she was hypnotized frequently by Dido. Second, Isabella, who was to depose that before the murder her mother had been sent by Dido to "Ashantee" to steal the devil-stick, while under the influence of hypnotism. Third, Battersea, who was to give evidence that he had found the devil-stick within the grounds of Mrs. Dallas. Fourth, Lady Meg, who was to prove the offer of Battersea to sell her the stick. Fifth, Major Jen, who could explain the engagement of the dead man to Miss Dallas and the rivalry of his assassin. Sixth, Jaggard, whose evidence would tend to show that Dido had drugged him for the purpose of stealing the body. And seventh, the most important witness of all. Dido, who was to depose to the manufacture of the poison, the refilling of the devil-stick, and the giving of it to Dr. Etwald, so that he might perpetrate the crime. With these seven witnesses Jen did not see how Etwald could escape the gallows. "Are you certain that all these people will speak out?" asked the major of Arkel when the list was submitted to him. "I am certain of all save one," replied Arkel, in a dissatisfied tone, "and the worst of it is that Dido is the one." "Does she refuse to give evidence against Etwald?" "I should think so. Simply because he is the holder of the Voodoo stone." "Can we force her by threats to give evidence?" said Jen, angrily. "I don't think so; it wouldn't be legal," answered Arkel. "The only chance of getting the negress to confess to the whole truth is for either you or I to gain possession of that stone." "Where is it?" "Etwald carries it on his watch chain. I saw him the other day in prison and he showed it to me. A common little black stone it is, but Dido would kill him with pleasure to get it." "Kill Etwald!" ejaculated Jen. Then, after a pause, he added: "I believe you are right, Arkel, for it is not the man himself she cares about, but the stone. However. I'll see Isabella and make her persuade Dido to speak against Etwald." The major went at once to "The Wigwam," but, notwithstanding all his eloquence, in spite of the tears and implorings of Isabella, the negress positively declined to say a word against the Great Master. "While dat big man hab de Voodoo stone I do notin'--notin'," she said. And from this obstinate position they all failed to move her. When Major Jen departed both Isabella and her mother were in despair. Failing the proving of the crime against Etwald, accusations might be made against Mrs. Dallas. And this result could be brought about by Dido, did she choose; but the spell of the Voodoo stone was on her, and she refused to say anything likely to inculpate its master. "Why don't you get the Voodoo stone yourself, if you adore it so much?" cried Mrs. Dallas, exasperated by this obstinacy. Dido opened and shut her hand convulsively. "Ah, if I hab dat Voodoo stone I be great; great--de queen ob de debbles. But he no let it go." "Go and see Dr. Etwald and tell him you will give evidence against him unless he gives you the stone." This suggestion came from Isabella, but of it Dido took no notice. Without a word to mother or daughter, who were both in tears, she left the room. In the afternoon she was nowhere to be found, and both Mrs. Dallas and Isabella came to the conclusion that she had fled to avoid being forced into giving incriminating evidence. They fell into one another's arms and were beside themselves with terror. All the evil done by Dido and Etwald seemed likely to fall upon their innocent heads. "Still there is hope," said Isabella, recognizing the occasion for prompt action. "We shall speak to Major Jen and ask him to send the police after this wretched woman." This opinion was at once acted upon, and a messenger was sent to "Ashantee," but Major Jen was from home, and it was not until six o'clock that he presented himself at "The Wigwam" and heard the story of Dido's flight. "But she can't be very far away," said Jen, hopefully. "I saw her in Deanminster, and thought she had gone there with a message from you." "No, no," cried Mrs. Dallas, wringing her hands. "She will catch the train there and go to London. Oh, why didn't you stop her?" "I wish I had known," said Jen, rather dismayed to find his fine case against Etwald breaking down. "But even if we had forced her into court she would not have given evidence against the holder of the Voodoo stone." "Dat so?" said a hoarse voice at the door. The three people turned and saw Dido, with an expression of triumph on her dark face, enter the room. "Dido!" cried Isabella. "You did not run away?" "No, missy. I tell de truth against dat man." "But the Voodoo stone?" said Jen, wondering what she meant. Dido opened her clenched fist. The Voodoo stone lay in the palm of her hand. CHAPTER XXII. FOR THE DEFENSE. How she became possessed of the Voodoo stone Dido refused to say. Jen had learned from Inspector Arkel that Etwald wore the talisman on his watch chain, and he wondered in what fashion Dido had contrived to penetrate into the prison and to obtain it from the doctor. The whole result of the trial depended upon the transfer of the stone. If Etwald kept it, Dido would not dare to give evidence against him, and so, in the absence of the incriminating details, he would go free. As it was, the stone was now in the possession of Dido, and for some reason, which Jen was unable to fathom, she was quite content to betray her share in the plot. By changing hands, the Voodoo stone had transformed Dido into a traitress. However, as the advantage derived from the transfer was all on the side of the prosecution, Jen did not think it wise to inquire too closely into the means which Dido had employed to regain the talisman. He saw nothing of David, who pointedly kept out of his way. He made no inquiries of Dido, and simply informed the inspector that the negress was ready to explain Etwald's secrets, without telling him why she was willing to do so. Her Majesty's judges on circuit came to Deanminster, the court was formally opened, and after some trivial cases had been disposed of, the trial of Regina v. Etwald was announced. The hall in which the court sat was crowded with people from far and near. There were even reporters from London, sent down by the great dailies, for the case had obtained more than a local celebrity. Inspector Arkel, with his seven witnesses on behalf of the crown, was at the table before the judges, and with Major Jen had held several conversations with the public prosecutor. David, calm and composed, but paler than a corpse, was in his place glancing over his brief and exchanging curt sentences with Etwald's solicitor. Lastly, Etwald himself, the terrible criminal who, in the eyes of the public, was a hardened and bloodthirsty monster, stepped into the dock. Suave and smiling, he pleaded not guilty to the indictment, and the trial commenced. The public prosecutor stated the case in all its fullness. The prisoner, said he, was a medical man practicing in Deanminster. He had seen Miss Isabella Dallas, and had fallen in love with the lady, and also--which was more important--with the fortune of the lady. Evidently he had made up his mind that no obstacle should stand in the way of his marriage with Miss Dallas. But it so happened that there was one obstacle--the young lady was in love with Mr. Maurice Alymer, a young gentleman of position, who held a commission in Her Majesty's army. Her love was returned, and the young people were engaged. Interruption by the prisoner's counsel: "But without the consent of the mother." The public prosecutor thought that the interruption of his learned friend was out of place; as the refusal of Mrs. Dallas--"mother, gentlemen of the jury, to the young lady engaged to the deceased gentleman, Mr. Maurice Alymer"--had nothing to do with the actual facts of the case. The prisoner, seeing that while Mr. Alymer lived, he could never marry Miss Dallas, determined to rid himself of a rival. The prisoner had been in Barbadoes, and while there he had learned many things concerning African witchcraft, and had become possessor of the Voodoo stone, a talisman which the black race held in peculiar reverence. On his return to England the prisoner had become acquainted with Mrs. Dallas, with the daughter, whom he designed to marry, and with a negress called Dido, the servant of the aforesaid Mrs. Dallas. By means of the Voodoo stone, the prisoner made an absolute slave of the negress, and could command her services at any time, even to the extent of crime. The counsel for the defense objected to the use of the word crime. Nothing, he submitted, had yet been proved. Counsel for the prosecution accepted the correction of his learned friend, and withdrew the obnoxious word crime--if not altogether, at all events for the time being. He would resume his explanation of the case. Major Jen, the adopted father of the deceased, possessed a barbaric curiosity called by civilized people the devil-stick; by barbarians the wand of sleep. This he had obtained from Ashantee, where it was used to kill people inimical to the king by the injection of poison. There was no need to describe the devil-stick, as it was on the table, and would be shown to the jury. This devil-stick-- With some impatience prisoner's counsel admitted that the devil-stick had been used to kill the deceased, and requested the prosecutor to pass on to more important details. The counsel for the crown thanked his learned friend for the admission, and would continue. The devil-stick was stolen by Mrs. Dallas, who committed the theft under the hypnotic influence of the negress Dido. By the direction of Dr. Etwald, Dido refilled the stick with fresh poison, being enabled to manufacture the same from a recipe of her grandmother's--said grandmother having come from Ashantee, where the stick--the devil-stick, be it understood--had been constructed and used. She had given this terrible weapon to the prisoner, who with it had killed Mr. Alymer, his rival. Counsel for the defense submitted that the crime had yet to be proved. His learned friend was assuming too much. The public prosecutor said that he asserted no more than he could prove to their lordships and the gentlemen of the jury. The prisoner had killed Mr. Alymer, and it was for this offense that he stood in yonder dock. As regards the theft of the body--- The lesser offense, said prisoner's counsel, was swallowed up and merged in the greater; therefore, he protested against the introduction of the theft of the body. The judge thought that the two crimes were, judicially speaking, one and the same. It was right that the crown prosecutor should place before him the whole facts of the case. One part might neutralize or enhance or explain the other. The crown prosecutor was quite in order. Counsel for the prosecution accepted his lordship's ruling and would proceed. The body of Mr. Alymer was taken to the residence of his adopted father. Major Jen. There it was placed in the bedroom which had formerly belonged to the living man. Thence it was stolen by the prisoner. Counsel for the prisoner: "All this has yet to be proved." Counsel for the crown: "I shall prove it and at once. The jury are now in possession of all the facts of this very interesting case, and every detail will be confirmed by the most responsible witnesses. Call Major Jen." Evidence--in brief--of Major Jen: "I was the guardian of the deceased Maurice Alymer. I adopted him as my son. He was in love with, and engaged to, Miss Dallas, but the mother did not approve of the engagement. Dr. Etwald, the prisoner, also loved Miss Dallas, but she refused to marry him. I showed the prisoner the devil-stick and explained its use, whereupon he wished to purchase it. I declined to part with it, and afterward it was stolen. After its disappearance, Mr. Alymer was killed by means of the devil-stick poison. His hand was but slightly scratched, and he could not have died from so trivial a cause had not the weapon used been poisoned. Moreover, I recognized the perfume which emanated from the body as that of the devil-stick poison. Dr. Etwald had threatened the deceased once or twice. Afterward the body of deceased disappeared, and the drug used to stupefy the watcher of the dead was the poison of the devil-stick." Miss Dallas deposed that she had been engaged to deceased. Prisoner wished to marry her, and was jealous of the late Mr. Alymer. Once or twice he had threatened him. The negress, Dido, was accustomed to hypnotize Mrs. Dallas for nervous headaches. While under the influence of hypnotism Mrs. Dallas would act according to the dictates of Dido. On the night that the devil-stick was stolen from the house of Major Jen, Mrs. Dallas had been hypnotized by Dido. Witness had followed her, and had seen the theft of the stick. Afterward Mrs. Dallas had delivered it into the hands of Dido. Witness never saw the devil-stick again. She had seen Mr. Alymer on the night he was murdered, as he had called to see her. Witness had parted with him at the gates, and had seen him go down the road toward "Ashantee." It was the last time witness saw him. It was well known to witness that Dido was under the influence of Dr. Etwald, on account of the latter possessing the Voodoo stone charm. Dido had manufactured the fresh poison of the devil-stick as a panacea for nervous headache, from which witness suffered. So far as witness knew, deceased was in the best of spirits at the time of his death, and had no intention of putting an end to his life. Witness could swear that prisoner was a bitter and jealous enemy of deceased. Mrs. Dallas declared that she suffered--like her daughter--from nervous headaches. To cure these she submitted frequently to hypnotic treatment at the hands of Dido, who was gifted with a strong will. On the night the devil-stick was stolen she had been hypnotized, but she did not know what she did while under the influence. While in the trance--as it may be called--she never knew what she did, and she had hitherto had every confidence in Dido, as an old and faithful servant, that she--Dido--would not induce her to do wrong things while hypnotized. She had never seen the devil-stick, either at the house of Major Jen or in her own. The negress had prepared a drug for the cure of headaches, which witness believed was similar--as was judged from the perfume--to the poison contained in the devil-stick. She knew that her daughter wished to marry the deceased, but for certain reasons--not pertinent to the case--she had declined to sanction the engagement. She would not have permitted her daughter to marry Dr. Etwald, as she did not like him or approve of the influence which he exercised over Dido. She knew that prisoner possessed the Voodoo stone, and by means of it could make any member of the black race do his will. Prisoner was a declared enemy of the deceased, as a jealousy existed between them on account of her daughter. In presence of witnesses prisoner had threatened deceased. She knew nothing of the theft of the body. Lady Meg Brance was called by the prosecution to prove that a certain mendicant, by name Battersea, had offered her the devil-stick for sale as a curiosity. Knowing that it was the weapon with which Mr. Alymer had been killed--according to the reports which were current at the time--she had brought it to Major Jen, along with the tramp. Battersea entered the witness-box and deposed that he was of mixed negro blood, and by reason of his superstition, under the influence of Dido. At times she hypnotized him, but he did not know when she did it; he thought it was Obi--African witchcraft. Sometimes he carried messages between her and the prisoner. Dr. Etwald had told him to say one single word to Dido--that was "devil-stick." He did not know what it meant. Afterward the devil-stick--as he was told--had disappeared, and Mr. Alymer was murdered. He found the devil-stick on the grass, near the bushes, within the gates of "The Wigwam." Not knowing what it was, he took it to Lady Meg Brance, who sometimes gave him money. She took witness and the devil-stick to Major Jen, who now possessed it. With regard to the stealing of the body, witness said that he saw it placed in a carriage, and by clinging on behind he had traced the carriage to the house of Dr. Etwald, in Deanminster. Prisoner drove the carriage himself. Witness tried to get money out of prisoner by telling what he had seen; but Dr. Etwald had forced him to hold his tongue by threatening him with the vengeance of the Voodoo stone. Being half an African, witness was very much afraid of the charm. In his turn Jaggard, but lately recovered from his illness, related how he had been drugged by Dido, and how she had been concealed under the bed. After his evidence, which did not take long, had been given, the principal witness for the prosecution was called, and the negress Dido, whose name had been so often mentioned, entered the witness-box. In brief, her evidence was as follows: "I am a full-blooded negress, born in Barbadoes. My grandmother came from 'Ashantee,' and knew all about the wand of sleep. She taught me how to manufacture the poison. I came to England with my mistress and met with prisoner, who called at the house. He knew a great deal about Obi and showed me the Voodoo stone. A spirit dances in the stone, and I was bound to do what the spirit told me. It said I was to obey prisoner. Dr. Etwald wanted to marry my young mistress, but she was engaged to Mr. Alymer. Prisoner told me that Mr. Alymer must be got out of the way, and suggested the use of the devil-stick, which he had seen in the smoking-room of Major Jen. I agreed to help him, and by hypnotizing my mistress I made her steal the devil-stick. She brought it to me, all unconscious of having done so, and I filled it with fresh poison. On the night of the murder Mr. Alymer called to see my mistress, also Dr. Etwald. When Mr. Alymer left I gave the stick to prisoner, and he followed deceased to kill him. Next day I heard that Mr. Alymer was dead. After a time prisoner told me that we must steal the body, so that traces of poison should not be found when a post-mortem examination was made. I agreed to help him, and gaining admission into the chamber of death I hid under the bed. When Jaggard fell asleep I drugged him with the poison of the devil-stick and opened the window, outside of which prisoner was waiting. I assisted him to carry the body to his carriage, and then left him. That is all I know." This evidence closed the case for the prosecution, and--as may be guessed--it caused a profound sensation in court. Everyone without exception looked upon the prisoner as guilty, and they considered it futile when David Sarby rose to deliver his speech for the defense. The young man was even paler than usual, and when he rose laid down the devil-stick, at which he had been looking. When on his feet he glanced round the court and caught the gaze of Isabella, who was staring eagerly at him. Then he turned to his client. Dr. Etwald, still composed--even after the frightful evidence which had been given--smiled coldly on his counsel. David shuddered, and picking up the devil-stick spoke sharply and to the point. "My lord and gentlemen of the jury, you have heard the evidence of the crown, which makes out that my client is guilty. That evidence is wrong, as can be proved by one witness. I am the witness. In my rooms there is lying a confession, signed and witnessed, which sets forth that I am the guilty person. It was I, not Dr. Etwald, who murdered Maurice Alymer." (Sensation in the court.) "Yes. I was in love with Miss Dallas, and therefore was jealous of Maurice. I knew that Dido possessed the devil-stick--how, it does not matter--and I bribed her to give it to me. I pretended to go to London on the night of the murder, but instead of doing so I remained in the grounds of Mrs. Dallas, where I obtained the devil-stick from Dido. I saw Maurice meet with Miss Dallas. I saw them kiss and part. Inflamed by jealousy, I rushed after him and met him on the road. He turned in surprise, and flung out his arms to keep me off. The devil-stick, with its poison fang protruding, was in my grasp, and in throwing out his arm I wounded him in the palm of the hand, thus--" David took the devil-stick firmly in his grasp and compressed the handle. At once the iron tongue with its drop of venom appeared. With the sharp point he made an irregular wound on the palm of his hand, and cast the devil-stick on the table before him. A moment afterward, amid the silent horror of the crowded court, he fell down--dead. CHAPTER XXIII. THE RESULT OF THE TRIAL. Naturally the tragic end of the counsel for the defense created a great sensation. The trial was brought to an abrupt conclusion, the court was cleared, and the body of the dead man taken to the residence of Major Jen. In his rooms at Deanminster was found the confession signed by him, and which was substantially the same as that which he had made in court. At once--after the formalities of the law had been observed--Dr. Etwald was set at liberty on the charge of murder. Whereupon he returned to his house as though nothing had happened. Mrs. Dallas and Isabella came back to "The Wigwam," but without Dido. On the day when the trial terminated in so tragic a manner the negress disappeared, and with her the famous Voodoo stone. "I wish I could have caught her," said Arkel to Major Jen. "She committed perjury in order to get Dr. Etwald hanged, and she ought to have been punished for her wickedness. It has been a terrible affair, major." Jen, who was now looking old and broken down, agreed with a sad shake of his gray head. "My poor lads," said he, in a voice full of pathos. "First one and then the other--to lose them both in this awful fashion." "What!" cried Arkel, in surprise. "Do you pity Mr. Sarby?" "Why not?" answered the major, quietly. "To my mind, he needs more pity than poor Maurice. The lad was driven mad by jealousy, and he was worked on by Dido to commit the crime. The cause of all these troubles, Mr. Inspector, is not Dr. Etwald, but that black witch. I wish she could be caught." "She may be, major. There is a warrant out against her for perjury." Arkel spoke too hopefully, for Dido was never caught. She was too clever to give the police a chance of laying hands on her. Like a stone cast into a wide ocean, she disappeared from Deanminster--from England, no doubt, and possessed of the Voodoo stone, possibly took her way back to her native "Ashantee," there to become the high priestess in the horrible fetish worship of Africa. For the next two days Major Jen stayed in his house and watched over the corpse of David. It was laid out in what had been the young man's bedchamber, surrounded by burning candles, and with pale flowers of virginal whiteness scattered on the bed. The whole scene was but a repetition of that which had taken place when Maurice had died. Both young men had perished from the effects of the infernal African poison. Both had perished in the bloom of youth; and on the right hand of each was the fatal wound which had corrupted the blood. But the corpse of David was here. The corpse of Maurice, where? Only Dr. Etwald could answer the question, and he, released on the charge of murder, was now out on bail for the theft of the corpse. While the major was wondering what would be the outcome of all the terrible events which had filled the past few weeks, Jaggard--who, with his recovered health, had resumed his duties--entered the library and announced that Mrs. Dallas and her daughter wished to see him. Although he was unwilling to speak to those who had caused these troubles, Jen had no reasonable grounds for refusing an interview. Therefore, he gave orders that the ladies should be shown into the drawing-room. When he repaired thither, however, he found to his surprise that Mrs. Dallas only was waiting for him. "I could not get Isabella further than the door of your house," exclaimed Mrs. Dallas, who was in deep mourning, whether for Maurice or David, or for the loss of Dido, it was impossible to say. "Why did she not come in?" asked Jen, coldly, for he did not feel very amiably disposed toward the widow. "I don't know. She is a strange girl, major, and the events of the last few weeks have shaken her nerves." "They have shaken mine," retorted Jen, grimly. "But we need not discuss these things, Mrs. Dallas. May I ask why you have paid me this visit?" "To tell you that we are going away." "Going away, and where, may I ask?" "Back to Barbadoes," replied Mrs. Dallas, with a sigh. "Yes, major, after what has taken place here, I can stay no longer in England. I shall sell my house and leave for the West Indies with my daughter within the month." "I think it is the best thing you can do," said Jen, brusquely. "By the way, what has become of Dido?" "She has left me in the most ungrateful manner. Since she obtained the Voodoo stone and gave evidence at the trial she has not been seen. I believe," added Mrs. Dallas, in a confidential manner, "that Dido has gone to Barbadoes also." "To be queen of the black witches of Obi, no doubt. Faugh!" "I am disgusted with her, too," said Mrs. Dallas, indorsing the major's exclamation. "So you ought to be, Mrs. Dallas, for Dido has been your evil genius. If you had not submitted to her will, she would not have dared to hypnotize you. If you had not been hypnotized on that night, you would not have taken the devil-stick, consequently both David and Maurice would still be alive. Your negress has been a perfect Até, Mrs. Dallas." "Major, major! Do not be too hard on me. I suffer--oh, how I suffer!" "And I also. Both my boys are dead, one by the hand of the other, and that other by his own hand. It is you and your daughter and Dido who have brought about these things. Go to Barbadoes, Mrs. Dallas, by all means. You and yours have done quite sufficient mischief in England." Just as Jen ended his speech and Mrs. Dallas was about to reply, the door opened to admit--Dr. Etwald. Both the major and the Creole stared at him in surprise, as neither for the moment could grasp the idea that he had been bold enough to present himself before those whom he had so deeply wronged. "Ah," said Etwald, as complacently as ever, "I thought I should find you here, major, but I hardly expected to see Mrs. Dallas." "You villain!" cried that lady, starting from her seat. "Do you think I want to see you after all the misery you have caused? Why, I refuse even to remain in the same room with you." And with a furious gesture the Creole swept past Etwald and out of the door, which she banged loudly. Etwald looked at the door, shrugged his shoulders, and turned politely to the major. "It is just as well she is gone," said he, quietly. "It is better that our conversation should be private." "I wish to hold no conversation with a scoundrel, sir," cried Jen, purple with rage. "Follow the example of Mrs. Dallas, if you please." Etwald looked round for a chair, selected the most comfortable, and sat down with great deliberation. "I never follow any one's example, major," he said, dryly. "It is always my custom to act independently." "I'll have you turned out of the house." "In that case you'll never hear what I have come to tell you." "What is that, sir?" demanded Jen, in a calmer tone. "The truth!" "Bah! I heard that in court." "Indeed you did no such thing," retorted Etwald, coolly. "My story is quite different to that of Dido." "David's was different also." "I know it. But my story--the true story, mind you--differs even from David's. Will you hear it, major, or shall I leave your house before I suffer the disgrace of being kicked out?" The major considered for a few moments before replying. There was a hinted mystery in the manner of Etwald which puzzled him not a little, and what this demeanor might mean he was anxious to learn. Moreover, he wished to know the actual facts of the case, and now that Dido had fled Etwald was the only one who could tell them. Acting upon these considerations, Jen sat down again in his chair and sulkily gave Etwald permission to remain and explain. This the doctor proceeded to do at once. "As you are aware," said he, calmly, "I escaped the charge of murder, and very right, too, seeing that I was innocent of the crime. But as to the stealing of the body, I am guilty, and I do not--" "Where is the body, you wretch?" "Pardon me," said Etwald, raising his hand in protest. "If you interrupt or call me names, I shall tell you nothing. To proceed," he added, seeing the major held his peace. "I am out on bail, and must come up for trial soon on the charge I spoke of. However, I am not afraid, as I can defend myself in a manner you little dream of. But being out on bail, I came to see you." "To tell me more lies?" "To tell you the truth, my dear major, and I assure you that the truth will surprise you not a little." "What is it?" demanded Jen, in a fever of excitement. "Patience! Patience! I shall tell you when the time comes. But, by the way, major--Dido?" "She has fled." "I know it. She was afraid of me." "Hardly," replied Jen, a trifle spitefully. "You have lost the Voodoo stone, remember." "Yes. I was taken advantage of for once in my life. A cunning woman, that Dido. She got permission to see me in prison, and to talk to me alone, under the pretense of telling me about her evidence. Knowing that I could compel her to do what I wished by means of the Voodoo stone, I saw her with pleasure, as it was my intention to put the words likely to get me off--to prove my innocence--into her mouth. However, while I was talking to her, she suddenly produced a phial of the devil-stick poison and threw it in my face. Of course, I instantly became unconscious, and it was then that she wrenched the talisman off my watch-chain." "Is the poison so quick in its effects then?" "I should think so," said Etwald, coldly. "You saw how David fell in court, after wounding his hand. I fell in prison quite as quickly, but as my skin was not scratched, and the drug took effect only through the nostrils, I recovered." "And when you recovered?" "The jailer told me that Dido had called him in, saying that I had fainted. While they were getting me round--which took an hour--Dido went off with the Voodoo stone. Those about the prison had no reason to detain her, so she left. When I found the Voodoo stone gone," added Etwald, impressively. "I knew that the black wretch would give evidence against me, and that the game was at an end." "You expected to be hanged?" suggested Jen. "Well, no!" replied the doctor, with wonderful coolness, "I did not expect that. If the worst came to the worst, I knew that I could protect myself; but I must admit that the confession of my counsel, Mr. Sarby, took me somewhat by surprise." "Poor David!" sighed Jen, thinking of the young man cut off in the bloom of his youth. "Poor David!" echoed Etwald, with a sneer. "Foolish David, you might say, to die for the sake of a woman." "Yet you risked death for the same woman." "I risked danger for the woman's fortune," retorted Etwald, with revolting candor. "It was the money I wanted. But death--no, I did not risk that." "I am not so sure of that, Etwald. How did you know that David would confess in so dramatic a fashion?" "I did not know it, major. As I said before, his confession took me by surprise. Still, as I was innocent, I knew that I could not be hanged." "Well," said Jen, growing weary of this long-continued conversation, which seemed to lead to nothing, "at all events you'll not escape a long term of imprisonment." "Why?" said Etwald, with an agreeable smile. "There are two opinions about that. Mine is that I shall go free. Then," he added, coolly, "I intend to seek Barbadoes and search for that black witch in order to recover the Voodoo stone." "I hope you'll get the chance of going, but I doubt it. However, if you do get as far as the West Indies you'll find friends there." "Really! Any particular friends?" "I don't know if you'll consider them so; but Mrs. Dallas and her daughter go back to their estates in Barbadoes within the month." "Really!" said Etwald again, "Then I may marry her after all." "She won't have you." "Oh, I think so. I have a means of compelling her to marry me." Jen jumped up with a scowl. "I'm tired of your enigmas," he cried, angrily. "What is it you wish to tell me?" "The name of the person who committed the murder." "I know it. David Sarby!" "Not at all. He accused himself to shield the real person." "To shield the assassin?" gasped Jen, thunderstruck. "And who is the assassin?" "Can't you guess from his self-accusation? Why, the woman he loved." "Isabella?" "Exactly. Isabella Dallas, and none other, killed your boy Maurice." CHAPTER XXIV. A FINAL SURPRISE. "Isabella killed Maurice!" said Jen, pushing back his chair. "Impossible, doctor. You must be mistaken." "I don't think so," replied Etwald, dryly. "I saw her do it. So did David." "You must be mistaken," insisted the major once more. "David was in London on the night when the crime was committed." "By his own confession in court, David was in the grounds of Mrs. Dallas on that night." "Yes, yes. You are right!" said Jen, in a bewildered tone. "Still, I cannot believe that Isabella killed Maurice. She loved him dearly, and had no reason to murder him." "None in the world. Yet she certainly took his life." "Why not?" said Etwald, coolly. "Mrs. Dallas had no reason to steal the devil-stick, yet--" "Without a reason! I don't believe it." "Ah, but she was hypnotized. She did not act of her own free will." "Precisely the case with Isabella," said the doctor, nodding. "Come, major, I won't worry you any longer with inquiries. Dido hypnotized the daughter to commit the crime, as she had willed the mother to steal the devil-stick. Isabella is absolutely ignorant of what she did, and firmly believed that I was the guilty person. Now, of course, she thinks David--by his own confession--is the assassin." "But David confessed himself guilty, to save her?" "Of course; but Isabella does not know that. She thinks--and on the face of it, with reason--that David killed Maurice out of jealousy." "How was it David saw the crime committed?" "I shall explain," said Etwald. "David found out that Maurice was going to meet Isabella that night secretly in the grounds of Mrs. Dallas near the gates. Determined to see the meeting, and to learn if there was any hope for him, he feigned a journey to London in order to lull any suspicions which Maurice might have that he was being watched. Instead of going, however, he concealed himself at a spot where he could see the gates which opened onto the highway. Now," added Etwald, with a side glance at the major, "it so happened that I also wished to see that meeting." "How did you know it was about to take place?" "I learned the fact from Dido, who advised me of all which went on in the Dallas household, as you may guess. Well, I saw David in his place of concealment and guessed his reason for coming. Maurice appeared at the rendezvous, and shortly afterward Isabella, under the hypnotic influence, came down the avenue. In her hand she held the devil-stick, and came swiftly toward Maurice. He, not understanding the deadly weapon with which she was armed, came to meet her with outstretched arms. She thrust the devil-stick before her, and wounded him in the palm of the hand. With a cry he fell--dead!" "Within the gates?" asked the major, much agitated. "Yes, within the gates," responded Etwald. "When Isabella had struck the blow she dropped the devil-stick in the grass, where, if you remember, it was afterward found by Battersea. Then she returned to the house by the little path which leads thereto through the surrounding trees. The body lay in the bright moonlight, full in the center of the path, not a stonethrow from the high road. David and I rushed simultaneously from our hiding-places, and I explained hurriedly that the body must not be found in the grounds. He understood, and we carried the body onto the road. Before we had time to deliberate what was to be done we heard the noise of approaching footsteps, and afraid--both of us--of being accused of the crime, we fled. Then you came down the road and discovered the corpse." "Yes. I heard the poor lad's cry," said Jen, simply, "and I ran down at once. You must have been very quick in your movements." "There was ample necessity for prompt action," replied Etwald, with some dryness, "as neither David nor I wished to be arrested. But now you can understand how it was that David refused to reply to your questions and agreed to defend me." "I understand. He said, poor lad, that I would approve of his reasons when I knew them, and now that you have explained his motives I quite agree with his saying. To protect that poor girl, to save you from suffering for a crime which you did not commit, he could have acted in no other fashion. Still, I wish both of you had been more open with me." "I am afraid that would have been impossible, major," said Etwald, rising. "You were so distracted over the death of Maurice, and so unjust in your hatred of me, that it would have been dangerous to trust you." "Am I unjust in my hatred of you?" demanded Jen, getting on his feet. "I think not. Dr. Etwald. Your desire to marry Isabella, or rather her fortune, has been the cause of all these ills. Dido was only your instrument, whom you compelled to work by means of the Voodoo stone. That she betrayed you in the end was your punishment. I do not blame her so much as I do you. You alone are responsible for the death of those two poor lads of mine." "Well, have it your own way," said Etwald, carelessly. "I am a scoundrel in your eyes, I dare say; but if you will permit me to see you to-morrow at eleven o'clock I shall be able to prove that this particular devil--meaning myself, major--is not quite so black as you have painted him." "I never want to set eyes on you again," said Jen, bluntly. "Nor will you--after midday to-morrow. But you will regret if you do not grant me this interview." "What do you wish to say?" "I'll tell you to-morrow." "Can't you say it now?" "No, Major Jen, I can't, and I shan't," retorted Etwald, tartly. "If you are wise you will arrange to let me come here to-morrow at eleven, and meet Mrs. Dallas and her daughter." "Both of them will refuse to meet you. You saw Mrs. Dallas to-day, how she behaved." "Like the fool she is," said the doctor, putting on his hat. "Well, I am going. Will you see me to-morrow morning?" "Yes. I don't know what possible things you can find to say to me after this interview; but, as you make such a point of it, I'll see you." "And ask Mrs. Dallas and her daughter to be present?" "Yes. I'll try and get them to come." "Very good." Etwald walked toward the door, but there, struck by a sudden thought, he looked back. "Of course you will not tell Isabella that she killed Mr. Alymer?" he said, hurriedly. "Not at present," said Jen, after a moment's thought. "But, later on, I shall, in order to clear the memory of David." "And condemn the poor girl to eternal misery," said Etwald. "Well, I do not agree with you. But, at least, keep silent until after our interview to-morrow." "Yes. I promise you I'll say nothing." "Thank you, major. Good-by for the present." "Good-by," said Jen, and as the door closed behind the doctor he muttered, "and may the devil go with you, for a greater scoundrel does not exist." Later on in the day Jen sent a letter to "The Wigwam," asking Mrs. Dallas to come with her daughter the next morning at eleven o'clock. He did not explain that Dr. Etwald would be present, as he knew the temper of Mrs. Dallas. Whatever might be at stake, even if it was to her own interest, she would refuse to meet the man toward whom she bore so strong a hatred. Therefore, Jen decided to be diplomatic, and keep silent as to the visit of Etwald. During the afternoon a note was brought to Jen, in which Mrs. Dallas promised to come and to bring Isabella. "Very good," said Jen to himself. "That matter is settled, and Etwald--confound him!--will obtain his desire. I wonder what he wants to see us all about." In spite of all his conjecturing, the major found himself unable to answer this question. Therefore, like a wise man, he possessed himself in patience until the next morning. Most of the night he passed in the room where poor David was laid out, for he was determined that this time the body should not be stolen. As he pondered during the long and silent hours, he reflected that he had lost the opportunity of forcing Dr. Etwald to say what he had done with the body of Maurice. It had not been found in his house, and, notwithstanding all questioning, Etwald--with his changeless smile--had refused to state where it was. "I should have wrung the truth from the villain to-day," thought Jen, as he paced the room. "But to-morrow! To-morrow! He shan't leave this house until he confesses what he has done with the remains of my poor boy. Ghoul that he is, wretch and scoundrel." Toward the morning Jen slept for an hour or so, and when he rose and had taken his bath he felt much refreshed, and ready to face Etwald at this final interview. At eleven o'clock Mrs. Dallas arrived with Isabella, the latter looking wan and ill. Even had the major not promised to be silent, he could not have brought himself to tell the poor girl the truth at that moment. After all, she was perfectly innocent, and had committed the crime unwittingly. Dido was the culprit, not Isabella; and the major felt a profound pity for the miserable girl, who had been made a tool of by the unscrupulous negress and the evil-minded Etwald. "Well, major," said Mrs. Dallas, after the first greetings were over, "what did that wicked man say to you yesterday?" "He explained how my poor Maurice was killed." "Ah," said Isabella, clasping her hands, "I am sure that it was that terrible man who made David kill Maurice. Oh, if I had only met Maurice on that night, I might have prevented the quarrel." "Did you not meet Maurice, my dear?" "Of course not," replied Isabella, in the most truthful manner. "I did not leave the house, and Dido was with me all the time. I expect Maurice was waiting for me, and that David saw him. No doubt they quarreled, and then the death took place." From this speech it was quite evident that the girl was absolutely ignorant of the part which she had played in the affair. Still, to make certain, Jen asked why she had not kept the appointment. "I had a nervous headache," she said, quickly, "and Dido hypnotized me. When I woke up it was too late to see Maurice." This remark put the matter beyond all doubt. The girl, by her own admission, had been hypnotized by the negress, and, while in the trance state, with her will at the mercy of the other woman, she had killed her lover. Morally speaking, it was Dido, in the person of Isabella, who was the assassin. However, the major had learned all that he wished to know, and not wishing to pursue the subject, turned the conversation by explaining that Etwald was coming in a few minutes. Mrs. Dallas rose up in a cold fury. "Did you ask me here to insult me, major?" "I asked you here at the particular request of Dr. Etwald." "Why? What can he have to say to my mother?" cried Isabella, in surprise. "Miss Dallas, I know no more than you do; but he evidently desires to make a clean breast of this whole miserable business." "I have heard quite enough about it," said Mrs. Dallas, marching toward the door, "and I refuse to meet that monster of iniquity!" But she was too late, for, before she could escape from the room, Dr. Etwald--as smiling and composed as ever--entered the door. He placed himself quietly before the enraged Mrs. Dallas. "Do not go, madam," said he, quietly. "I have something to show you." "What is it?" asked Mrs. Dallas, her curiosity--like that of the major--getting the better of her rage. "You will see in a few minutes. Miss Dallas, you look pale. I hope soon to bring back the roses to your cheeks. Major--" "Don't speak to me, you scoundrel, until you tell me what you have done with the body of my boy." "You shall know in a few minutes, major. Indeed, I think it is about time that this comedy should end!" "Comedy!" echoed Mrs. Dallas, in scorn. "You mean tragedy!" "I mean no such thing," retorted Etwald, opening the door. "All true comedies end in the meeting of lovers." "Good heavens!" cried Jen, recoiling. "What do you mean?" Etwald pointed to the open door. "There is my explanation," said he, coolly. The three people gave a simultaneous cry of amazement and delight, for there, on the threshold of the room, alive and well, stood--Maurice Alymer. CHAPTER XXV. THREE LETTERS. THE FIRST LETTER OF DR. ETWALD. "Deanminster. "My dear Major Jen: "In the joy with which you and Miss Dallas hailed the appearance of the man whom you thought dead, I was--for the time being--quite forgotten; and very naturally too. Profiting by the occasion, I left the room and went to the bedroom where Mr. Sarby lay in a trance, similar to that into which Mr. Alymer had fallen, both trances being caused by the poison of the devil-stick. As you have learned from his own lips, I revived him, as I revived his friend; so now, my good Jen, you have your two boys with you again, alive and well. The comedy is finished; and was I not right in denying to these past events the misleading name of tragedy? "Naturally, you wish to know how the dead came to be alive, and for what reason I behaved as I did. Well, here you shall find the whole explanation, so fully given that there will be no necessity for you to seek me at Deanminster. Indeed, if you do so, you will not find me, as by the time you receive this letter I shall be well on my way to London. Thence it is my intention to go abroad, and--as I told you at our last meeting--you will never see me again. When you finish this letter, you will, no doubt, be glad of this; and it is just as well that I should remain beyond your reach. You are a virtuous man, I am not--but our natures would prevent our ever assimilating, the one with the other. As to my promised explanation, here it is, and much good may it do you. "I am--as you know--a physician, but I am also what you may not know--a man of genius. I have brains, but no money; and for experiments in chemistry, money, I regret to say, is extremely necessary. This being the case, I have needed money, and that in large quantities, all my life. As I could not make it for myself--not having the mercantile instinct--I resolved to gain it by making a rich marriage. For many years I have traveled the world. Like Ulysses, I have known men and cities, and some years ago, Chance--a deity at whose shrine I always pay my devotions--led me to Barbadoes. While there I was attracted, as I always am, by the weird and mysterious, by the superstitions of the African race. I studied the cult of Obi, the belief of the Voodoo stone, and by a strange train of circumstances, which I need not relate, I gained possession of that powerful talisman which is known to all negroid America. With this stone in my possession, I was king--so to speak--of all the black race. This power I determined to use to my own advantage, and through it to make a rich marriage. "I discovered that Mrs. Dallas was the richest woman in the West Indies, that she had one fair and marriageable daughter, and that mother and daughter were under the influence of a negress called Dido, who was a profound believer in the cult of Obi. I determined, therefore, to bend the negress to my will by means of the Voodoo stone, and to marry the daughter. Unfortunately, Mrs. Dallas and her child were in England. So thither I went in order to prosecute my suit, and obtain a rich wife in the person of Miss Isabella Dallas. From information obtained in Barbadoes I found that they were living near Deanminster, so to that town I repaired, and established myself as a physician. I made the acquaintance of yourself, of Mr. Alymer, and Mr. Sarby, and also of Mrs. Dallas and her daughter, the young and charming girl whom I intended to make my wife. "But here, as you may guess, I found an unexpected obstacle. The young lady was in love with Mr. Alymer, and would have nothing to do with an elderly bachelor like myself. I determined to remove that obstacle; not by death, but by gentler means which would do away with all risk, and place Miss Dallas in my power. Need I say that I allude to the devil-stick? "I knew that you possessed it, my dear major, as I had been informed of its existence and of its owner by Dido. Over this negress, by means of the Voodoo stone, I possessed complete power. She was ready to do whatever I wanted, and I employed her in forwarding my schemes. Her grandmother had come from 'Ashantee,' the native country of the wand of sleep, and knew all about it; also she knew how to prepare the poison. These secrets she transmitted to Dido, and I resolved to obtain the devil-stick, to make Dido prepare fresh poison, and to use the devil-stick against my rival, Mr. Alymer. "And now a word about this poison. It does not kill, but merely places its victim in a trance state, which so closely resembles death that not even the most expert doctor can tell the difference. If the trance continues the victim dies; but there is an antidote--which, by the way, I obtained from Dido--and this antidote, if used in time, can restore the victim from a state of catalepsy to his pristine vigor. I had made up my mind to use the devil-stick, and so, as I was anxious to give Mr. Alymer a chance to escape, I prophesied to him a state of life-in-death. This phrase describes exactly the trance state of those wounded by the devil-stick--impregnated with its poison. "However, Mr. Alymer did not take my warning and leave off courting Miss Dallas. On the contrary, he announced his engagement, and carried off the young lady in triumph. As you may guess, from what I have said before, I doomed him from that hour. I made Dido hypnotize Mrs. Dallas in order to have the devil-stick stolen. If you remember, major, I offered to buy it, but as you refused, I had to have it stolen. In order to compromise the mother, I arranged that she should steal it. She did, and without having the slightest notion that she was committing the crime. When Dido obtained the devil-stick she filled it with the poison. Then she--by my directions--hypnotized Miss Dallas, put the devil-stick into her hand, and sent her forth to kill Mr. Alymer. But I should not say kill--as you know the devil-stick cannot kill--let us say, to cast Mr. Alymer into a trance. By this ingenious plot--you must admit, major, that it is ingenious--I got rid of the lover, and obtained a hold over mother and daughter. "But to make a long story short, I had the body of Mr. Alymer stolen, with the aid of Dido, in order to revive my rival. I did not wish him to die, so I took away his body, and kept him in the trance for some weeks, feeding him in the meantime, so as to preserve life. While I was in prison. Dido attended him by my orders. Mr. Alymer was not concealed in my house; so that is why the police had a useless search for the body. Where was he concealed? Ah, that is my secret. "After the trial, seeing that Mr. Sarby had behaved so foolishly, I decided to abandon the game. Evidently there was no chance of my winning the hand of Miss Dallas; and also I did not wish Sarby to die. But if I revived him, I would have to revive Maurice also, the more so as I did not want to stand my trial for stealing his body. The rest of my story you know. I revived Maurice and brought him to you; so I suppose he will now marry Miss Dallas. I also revived David to have the satisfaction of seeing the woman he loved in the arms of another. In both cases the antidote was efficacious. So now, my dear major, as I said before, you have your two dear boys once more in the flesh, and I hope you are satisfied. Did I not tell you that the devil is not so black as he is painted? "Well, my plot has failed, and now I am departing to look anew for a rich wife. Also to find Dido, and get back the Voodoo stone, of which she robbed me. You will never meet me again, and I dare say you won't be sorry to see the back of me. And now, my dear major, I fancy I have told you all, and you know the meaning of the many mysteries which have puzzled you for so long. There remains only to say adieu, and remain your evil genius (now resigned), Max Etwald." THE SECOND LETTER OF DR. ETWALD. "Barbadoes. "My dear Major Jen: "It is over a year since I wrote you my explanatory letter from Deanminster, and I little thought that it would be necessary for me to write to you again, least of all from this place. But here I came in search of Dido; and here I found Mrs. Dallas, and to my profound astonishment her daughter--still Miss Dallas. I sought an explanation. They would not give me one. In despair--having received the most uncivil reception--I left them. Then, to my surprise, I ran across Mr. David Sarby. "He was glad to see me, and thanked me for bringing him back from the grave. I, on my side, complimented him for saving my neck from the hangman's noose. The first greetings thus being over, he told me the news which concerned those who where implicated in our little Deanminster comedy. I confess that the news surprised me; and I write to you for an explanation. "In the first place, I learned from Mr. Sarby that Isabella Dallas refused to marry Mr. Alymer, and that, far from being offended, he appeared to be glad of the release from his engagement. I also learned that he has since married Lady Meg Brance, who has always been so deeply in love with him. Will you be so kind, my dear major, as to explain this sudden misplacing of Mr. Alymer's affections? "I learned, also, from Mr. Sarby, that he has prevailed upon Miss Dallas, the deserted Ariadne of Mr. Alymer, to reward his long devotion by giving him her hand. I hear that they are to be married within the month, and that the match is one which meets with the full approbation of Mrs. Dallas. Under these circumstances I am afraid that there is no chance of my marrying Miss Dallas; so I must content myself with searching for another wife. "I found in my brief interview with Miss Dallas that she had learned how she had tried to kill Mr. Alymer while under the hypnotic influence of Dido. Perhaps this knowledge broke off the match, and the young couple took a dislike to one another from the peculiar circumstances of that night. Certainly--hypnotism or not--one would not care to marry a woman who had attempted one's life; so that, I conjecture, is the reason of Mr. Alymer's withdrawal. "Also, Miss Dallas must have had a horror of seeing constantly before her the man whom--innocently enough--she tried to kill. Hence her refusal to marry your dear Maurice. Am I wrong in these ideas? I think not. Still I should like an explanation from you. As I shall be here for some months--searching for the Voodoo stone and Dido--please send your letter to Barbadoes, directed to your anxious inquirer, Max Etwald." THE THIRD LETTER OF DR. ETWALD. "Barbadoes. "My dear Major Jen: "It is now some months since I wrote you, making certain inquiries, yet you have not been courteous enough to gratify my curiosity. That is cruel of you! Miss Dallas is now Mrs. Sarby, the other lady is now Lady Meg Alymer; yet you will not tell me how this strange transfer of wives came about. Never mind, I am sure the explanation I fancied in my last letter is the correct one. But you are a rude correspondent. Fie, major. Fie! Fie! Fie! "I shall return good for evil, and tell you that I have regained possession of the Voodoo stone. Dido is dead; killed by her own excitement at an Obi orgie. I am now the King of the Black Race throughout the world, by possession of the stone, but to you I shall remain, for the last time, my dear major, Max Etwald." THE END. 
30910	----	THE QUEEN AGAINST OWEN BY ALLEN UPWARD AUTHOR OF 'THE PRINCE OF BALKISTAN' _A NEW EDITION_ London CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1895 _OPINIONS OF THE PRESS_ ON THE QUEEN AGAINST OWEN. 'An unmistakable success. Regarded simply as a story, we have not for a long while read anything more intensely dramatic. It would compel notice for the mere manner of its telling. Not often has an author who has boldly departed from the traditional lines of the writer of fiction so completely vindicated his method. There is high quality in this book, with its vivid glimpses of life, and its clever characterization.... Altogether, a notable book; and if its popularity be at all commensurate with its merits, it will have a great vogue.'--_Sun._ 'The narrative never flags.... A realistic representation of a criminal trial.'--_Athenæum._ 'Lovers of exciting fiction, powerful, original, and dramatic, should read "The Queen against Owen." Narrative after narrative, somewhat in the Wilkie Collins manner, draws you on until the mystery that surrounds the crime--which remains a mystery almost to the very end--disappears, and then you draw a breath of relief, but not before.'--_Sporting Life._ To CLEMENT HARLEY DOWNS ESQUIRE THIS SLIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HIS KIND SERVICES IS TENDERED BY THE AUTHOR NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION. I take the opportunity of a second edition of this little sketch to point out a rather curious fact in connection with the numerous comments which were made in the press on the evidence presented against the heroine. My object in writing the story was, naturally, to so balance the evidence as to leave it open to my jury to return either verdict, and thus keep the reader in a state of mild suspense during the progress of the trial. How far I succeeded may be gathered from the following extracts: _'A jury that required to deliberate at all in such a case ought to have been hanged.'_--BRIEF. _'The way in which the feeblest of cases is worked up to a verdict of guilty is a trifle ridiculous, and a slander on judge, bar, and even jury.'_--LEEDS MERCURY. _'It is absurd to suppose that upon such evidence any judge and jury could have convicted her of murder.'_--VANITY FAIR. _'A tangle of circumstantial evidence which is supposed to be conclusive, but on which we feel confident that no English jury would convict.'_--NEW ZEALAND MAIL. _'The prisoner is found guilty on what seems to us most insufficient evidence.'_--DAILY CHRONICLE. _'It is difficult to believe that the jury on the evidence could have brought in a verdict of guilty.'_--DAILY NEWS. _'The evidence being purely circumstantial, as well as flimsy.'_--ACADEMY. [N.B.--Several of the above reviewers were friendly to the book on other points.] _'In Scotland the verdict would certainly have been "Not Proven."'_--GLASGOW HERALD. _'Though the evidence is purely circumstantial, it seems at first sight so strong that no magistrate could fail to commit.'_--SATURDAY REVIEW. _'The evidence of guilt is very strong.'_--MONMOUTHSHIRE BEACON. _'Certainly the evidence, purely circumstantial, is very strong.'_--PUBLISHER'S CIRCULAR. _'A case of circumstantial evidence which all seemed to point one way, and to fix a horrible crime upon a young girl.'_--WEEKLY SUN. _'The evidence against her is damning, though purely circumstantial.'_--LITERARY WORLD. These extracts, taken together, seem to me to throw a most interesting light upon the subject of trial by jury--the object of a sneer in one of the above quotations. When it is possible for a number of educated minds, engaged in highly intellectual pursuits, to take such opposite views of the same set of facts, it may surely be urged that, if miscarriages of justice occasionally take place, they are due, not so much to any defects in our judicial system, as to those native diversities of the human mind which no legislation can remove. A change is fast coming over our legal procedure in the direction of dispensing with juries, and leaving everything to the decision of a single trained lawyer. Whether this change is certain to ensure greater correctness of decision is, perhaps, more open to argument than is generally supposed. In conclusion, I have only to express my thanks for the many cordial notices--some of them, I fear, hardly deserved--which this rather slight work received on its first appearance. The kindness of his reviewers has at all events encouraged the author to strive that his future work may be a little better worth their attention. A. U. _May_, 1895. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE INDICTMENT 1 II. THE BRIEF FOR THE PROSECUTION 2 III. COUNSEL FOR THE DEFENCE 23 IV. THE ASSIZES 44 V. THE CASE FOR THE CROWN 68 VI. THE WITNESSES 85 VII. HALF AN HOUR 113 VIII. THE DEFENCE 127 IX. THE JUDGE 154 X. THE VERDICT 175 XI. THE PRISONER'S STATEMENT 192 XII. THE C.C.R. 212 XIII. UNDER THE GREAT SEAL 229 THE QUEEN AGAINST OWEN CHAPTER I. THE INDICTMENT. 'MYNYDDSHIRE TO WIT.--The jurors for our lady the Queen upon their oath present that Eleanor Margaret Owen, upon the first day of June in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and eighty-nine, feloniously, wilfully, and of her malice aforethought did kill and murder one Ann Elizabeth Lewis against the peace of our lady the Queen, her crown and dignity.' CHAPTER II. THE BRIEF FOR THE PROSECUTION. 'A brief for you, sir, for the assizes at Abertaff. The great murder case.' Mr. Prescott looked up as his clerk entered, and heard these words. Then he silently put out his hand and took the brief, while the clerk retired into the outer room of the chambers to make a note of the fee. Everyone had heard of the great Porthstone murder. Mr. Prescott had followed the papers pretty closely in their accounts of it--the discovery, the proceedings at the inquest, before the magistrates, and so on. The brief did not take him altogether by surprise. He had been entrusted with several important prosecutions before this, and the solicitor representing the Crown in the present case was a personal friend of his own. He had, therefore, all along had expectations of appearing in the case, and his only doubt had been whether, on account of its unusual importance, a Queen's Counsel would be engaged along with him, or whether he would have the charge of the case himself. It need hardly be added that Mr. Prescott was still a member of the 'Junior Bar,' that is to say, he had not arrived at the dignity of a Queen's Counsel. But he had been some ten years in the practice of his profession, and occupied a foremost position among the members of the Southern Circuit. Tall, thin, and auburn-haired, with a ruddy complexion, his appearance was rather remarkable among the brethren of the long robe. But he had a pattern lawyer's face, with the firm decided chin, the pronounced nose and strongly-marked eyebrows characteristic of the race. Before opening the document in his hand, he took a hasty glance at the outside. It bore the usual endorsement. At the head were the words 'MYNYDDSHIRE SUMMER ASSIZES, _Holden at_ ABERTAFF, 29th July, 1889.' Then followed the name of the case: 'REGINA, _on the Prosecution of Sergeant Evans_, against ELEANOR MARGARET OWEN,' and the description of the offence: _'For Wilful Murder.'_ Next came the word 'Brief' in very large letters. _'For the Prosecution_: Mr. Chas. Prescott, 20 guineas.' And a little below, on one side, 'With you, Mr. F. J. Pollard.' This was a younger man, who was to act as junior to Prescott. Last of all came the solicitors' name at the foot, 'Pollard and Pollard, Abertaff.' They were, as may be surmised, relations of the young gentleman who had been favoured with the junior brief. Mr. Prescott smiled pleasantly at the number of guineas, and sardonically at the name of the counsel whose assistance he was to receive. Then, pulling off the tape, he unfolded the document, and settled down to a study of its contents. It was headed inside by the same words as appeared in the endorsement, down to 'wilful murder.' After that it went on to give a copy of the indictment. Then came the narrative itself: 'CASE FOR THE PROSECUTION. 'In this case the prisoner, Eleanor Margaret Owen, is charged with the wilful murder of Ann Elizabeth Lewis. 'The facts of the case are as follows: 'The deceased, Miss Ann Lewis, was a maiden lady, living at Porthstone, in Mynyddshire, a quiet little seaside place about twenty miles from the county town, Abertaff. 'Her only surviving relative was a nephew, John Lewis, who had been for a considerable time in Australia, but, having made some money, returned to England, and arrived at Porthstone on the evening of the first of June. 'The accused, Eleanor Margaret Owen, is an orphan, her father, the late Rector of Porthstone having died two years ago.' ('Poor old Owen! I remember him well,' murmured the barrister. 'It's well for the poor old chap that he is gone.') 'Immediately on her father's death she went to reside with Miss Lewis, with whom her father and herself had been on friendly terms, in the capacity of a paid companion. 'She was paid £24 a year, and had no other means of support; but Rebecca, a servant in the house, will say that she has heard Miss Lewis promise to remember the accused in her will. 'Deceased was rather eccentric in money matters, and invested a large portion of her savings in valuable jewels. No one ever saw the collection; but William Williams, a jeweller, of Abertaff, will swear that he supplied deceased with something like a thousand pounds' worth of jewels annually for several years past. 'It will be seen below that these jewels have entirely disappeared since the night of the murder. 'Counsel will observe that a motive is here suggested for the crime. 'On the night of the first of June last Mr. Lewis, deceased's nephew, left the house about 10 o'clock and did not return that night. 'Shortly after he was gone deceased was heard to retire by the servants. These are four in number, and consist of a butler or general man, cook, housemaid, and parlourmaid. 'The three women servants went to rest at a quarter past ten, and the butler at half-past. 'All this time prisoner was downstairs in the drawing-room, where she had spent the evening with deceased and Mr. Lewis. 'About eleven the butler thinks he heard her come upstairs to her bedroom, which adjoined deceased's, with a door of communication between. This door was never locked or bolted. 'An hour afterwards Rebecca, the parlourmaid, woke from sleep, and heard a stifled groan somewhere below. Apparently it proceeded from Miss Lewis's room. She did not waken the housemaid, who sleeps in the same room. She attributed the sound at the time to troubled sleep. 'Shortly afterwards she heard a subdued sound, as if of footsteps going downstairs. She was not alarmed, as she thought she recognised Miss Owen's tread. She therefore roused no one, but, inspired by curiosity, got up herself, put on some things, and crept downstairs. 'All the doors were closed as she passed. She listened outside Miss Owen's room, but heard nothing. Just then she thought she heard the front-door pulled gently to. She went cautiously down, and discovered that all the bolts had been undone, and the door was fastened simply by the latch. 'Three persons carried a latchkey--Miss Lewis, the butler, and Miss Owen. One of the three had, therefore, gone out. Having ascertained this, she retired to her room.' ('Now we're coming to something like evidence,' remarked Mr. Prescott, as he made copious interlineations with a blue pencil. 'That's the worst of Pollard; he always will write in this florid style. His brother's speeches are just the same.') 'She did not go to sleep, however. She lay awake listening for some time, and then she heard footsteps ascending and going into one of the bedrooms below. Her room was immediately above that of deceased. 'In about ten minutes more, to employ the witness's own expression, the footsteps came out again and descended to the hall for the second time. The parlourmaid now awaked the housemaid, Lucy, who slept in the room with her, and they both sat up and listened. 'The footsteps sounded heavier this time; the witnesses describe them as "thumpy." Counsel will see that this would be the natural result of someone carrying a heavy load. 'This time neither of the servants made any attempt to follow or observe what was taking place. They say they heard the hall door softly pulled to, but nothing more. 'Shortly afterwards they both fell asleep. 'The same night, about 12 o'clock, a fisherman of the place, named Evan Thomas, was coming up from the beach. He had been doing some night fishing. 'As he got on to the esplanade he observed the figure of a woman walking swiftly away from him in the direction of Newton Bay. He knows prisoner well, and believes it was she he saw. 'There is no further evidence as to what occurred that night. 'In the morning the housemaid Lucy was the first down, as was usually the case. _She found the hall door locked and bolted, as the butler left it at half-past ten the night before._ 'One of the household, therefore, must have been out, and returned after the witness Rebecca had gone back to her room. 'Putting these facts together, it is clear that the only possible authors of the crime subsequently discovered must have been the butler, who had a latchkey, and prisoner. 'At eight o'clock the witness Rebecca came down and took two jugs of hot water to the ladies' doors. She knocked at each. She heard a faint reply from prisoner, but none from deceased's room. 'At half-past eight prisoner usually came down, and deceased was generally seen a few minutes after. 'On this morning, the second of June, neither of them had appeared by nine o'clock. 'The witness Rebecca then remembered that Miss Lewis had not answered when called, and feared that she had failed to waken her. She therefore went upstairs and knocked again. 'There was no answer. Becoming alarmed, because her mistress was old and had once suffered from some seizure, she went to Miss Owen's door and knocked impatiently. 'Prisoner at once came and opened it. She was completely dressed, and apparently ready to come down. 'The following conversation, or something near it, then took place: 'The witness Rebecca began by saying that she had knocked at Miss Lewis's door, but could get no answer. "Do you know if any thing's the matter?" she said. 'Prisoner heard her without any appearance of surprise, and merely answered: '"No; we had better call to her, and if she doesn't answer, I'll go in." 'They then went together to the door on the landing, and prisoner called out loudly: "Miss Lewis! May I come in?" 'There was again no answer. Prisoner then put her hand to the door and turned the handle. The door, however, would not open. It was locked, and the key was inside. 'The only possible access, therefore, was through prisoner's own room. 'It is unnecessary to draw counsel's attention to the gravity of this circumstance.' ('Quite unnecessary,' said Prescott sarcastically to himself. 'Bless my soul, how he piles on the agony!') 'By this time the other servants in the house had taken the alarm. The butler, John Simons, came on the scene, followed by the cook and housemaid. It was he who now addressed prisoner: '"We must get in through your room, miss," he said. 'It may be well to state here that Simons had lived with the deceased for fifteen years, and was greatly trusted. 'He now went straight into prisoner's bedroom. Prisoner now seemed thoroughly alarmed, and ran in after him, the three women coming next. 'As he was about to take hold of the handle of the door opening into Miss Lewis's room, he suddenly beheld a sight that made him reel back. This was a smear of blood on the china handle. The witness Rebecca caught sight of it at the same time, and uttered a loud scream. 'No one noticed the demeanour of the prisoner at the moment of this discovery. But when they had recovered sufficiently to take notice, she was leaning against a chest of drawers, deathly pale.' ('Confound the man!' exclaimed the reader, as he came to this sentence. 'How he does go on against her! It's enough to make me think her innocent. Poor little Eleanor! It's five years since I saw her. She was a pretty little thing of fifteen then. I wonder what sort of woman she has turned out. Well, well, I must stick to business.') 'Simons quickly recovered his presence of mind. Taking hold of the handle so as to avoid touching the smear, he burst open the door, and rushed in towards the bed. 'The bed was empty. 'It seemed to have been slept in the night before, and the clothes were not much disarranged; but on the lower sheet, close to the bolster, was a large stain of blood. 'The stain was about the size of a cheese-plate, dark in the centre, and fainter round the edge. There was no other trace of violence. 'The room was then searched. All present took part in the search except prisoner, who sat in a chair looking on. 'Deceased's clothes, worn by her the day before, were found in their proper places, thus negativing the idea that she could have gone away herself. Her nightdress, on the other hand, was missing. This would point to the prisoner's having killed her in her sleep and disposed of the body as it was. 'No further trace of violence was discovered in the room. The butler then got them all out, and locked both doors on the outside. He then went for the police. 'This was about half-past nine. On his way to the police-station he met Mr. Lewis, deceased's nephew. He stopped him and related the circumstances. 'Mr. Lewis was greatly upset. As soon as he was able to speak he pointed out that the only possible author of the crime was Miss Owen. He turned and accompanied Simons to the police-station. 'At the police-station they found Sergeant James Evans. To him Simons detailed the incidents already described. Mr. Lewis then stepped forward and said: '"I charge Eleanor Owen with the murder of my aunt, Ann Elizabeth Lewis. I have made some money, and, please God, I'll spend every penny of it rather than my poor aunt shall remain unavenged."' ('All this is not evidence,' muttered the barrister, impatiently scoring out the paragraph with his pencil. 'Why does Pollard put in things like this? Perhaps it supplies a clue, though, to his enthusiasm,' added Mr. Prescott thoughtfully. 'I dare say he's got this Lewis behind him, and is bleeding him pretty freely. That accounts for the figures on my brief, so I oughtn't to complain. But I wish to goodness it were anybody but old Owen's daughter. Why, I can remember kissing her when she was only six years old.') 'Sergeant Evans, who will be called as a witness, now proceeded to the house and made a thorough search. Two important facts were now discovered. 'The butler had left the house by the back door, but on returning with Mr. Lewis the party entered by the front. Simons stepped forward with his latchkey to open the door, but found the latch already lifted, and stuck fast in its raised position. 'This was a thing which always occurred if the latch was lifted too high. The keyhole is shaped like an inverted T, and the members of the household who carried keys were generally careful not to push them too far upward, lest this result should occur. 'Counsel will probably be inclined to see a sufficient explanation of the incident in the agitation and haste by which a criminal would naturally be overcome just after the commission of such a crime.' ('Yes; I suppose so.' The barrister paused for some time, knitted his brows, and tried to think the matter out. 'Yes, it would be a natural result,' he admitted at length, and resumed his reading.) 'The next discovery was equally important. 'Miss Lewis's bedroom window looked over the front garden. Immediately below it, under the dining-room window, was a grating over a window, which gave light to an underground scullery. This grating was surrounded by a bed of shrubs, which concealed it from the eye of visitors. 'Sergeant Evans's first move was to proceed to this spot. He was rewarded by finding blood-stains on the grating. The nearest shrubs had been roughly handled, and some of their leaves lay scattered about. 'The inference which counsel is asked to draw is that the body--or a portion of it--was lowered down through the window, and thence carried away. 'This would evidently be much easier for a young woman like the prisoner to do than to carry it downstairs. 'Her second journey down, when she appears to have been bearing a load of some kind, may be accounted for by supposing that she returned for the jewels. These, as already stated, have disappeared. 'During deceased's lifetime she maintained great secrecy about these jewels. No one, not even the servants who had been with her longest, seems to have known anything as to their whereabouts. 'It is suggested, therefore, that they were kept by deceased in a secret hiding-place. This secret must have been disclosed to prisoner, or found out by her. 'Probably, had deceased's nephew been home longer, he would have learnt something about the matter. 'Counsel will doubtless have noticed the coincidence of the crime being committed on the very night of Mr. Lewis's return. Probably this was to anticipate any communications between aunt and nephew which might have resulted in his obtaining access to the treasure hoard.' ('Coincidence, indeed! Some people might think it a d---- suspicious circumstance,' said the reader. Then, shrugging his shoulders, he added: 'Of course, she's guilty, and it's my duty to get a conviction; but, upon my word, I never had a job to do that I liked less. It's all Pollard's fault for writing up the brief so desperately. He and his Lewis!') 'Sergeant Evans now proceeded to arrest the prisoner. When he charged her with the crime she turned pale, and cried out that it was impossible. But she shed no tears, and showed but little emotion after the first surprise.' ('Pooh! What difference does that make? This sort of thing simply depends on the person's character, not on whether he is guilty or not.' And the blue pencil did some more scoring out.) 'The only remaining circumstance of the case is the disposal of the body. 'In the afternoon of the same day, the second of June, a visitor staying in Porthstone, named Wilfrid Meredith, was walking out to Newton Bay. Just as he rounded the corner and came into the bay he discovered on the edge of the waves a human hand. 'Although somewhat bruised and discoloured, this hand has been identified as the deceased's by her nephew and the servants. 'On the fingers were several valuable rings, which deceased constantly wore. About the identity, therefore, there can be no reasonable doubt. 'No other portion of the body has yet been found. For this reason the Treasury have declined to take up the case, which is in the nature of a private prosecution on the part of Mr. Lewis. _'Call John Lewis.'_ At this point Mr. Prescott laid down his brief and leant back in his chair. The remainder of the document consisted of the proofs or statements of the evidence which each witness was prepared to give. Much of it would, of course, be merely a repetition of the narrative contained in the first part. It could therefore be looked at some other time. He laid down his brief and began to think over its contents. It was a case of circumstantial evidence, evidence which all seemed to point one way, and to fix a horrible crime upon a young girl whom he remembered as a pretty child. Though not a native of Mynyddshire, Charles Prescott was familiar with the district. He had, in fact, been educated at a grammar school in the next county, and it was while he was there that he had made the acquaintance of the Owens. His favourite schoolfellow, a boy a few years younger than himself, came from the little watering-place, and a summer seldom passed without Prescott spending some part of his holiday at his friend's home. There it was that he had seen old Owen, the parish rector, and had caught a few passing glimpses of the little Eleanor. Hence his interest in the present case, and the unusual feeling of reluctance with which he approached his task. He had not been to Porthstone for five years now. The schoolfellows were still friendly--in fact, they saw a good deal of each other still, having taken up the same profession and joined the same circuit. But Prescott had got on much better than his friend. He had had five years' start to begin with, and his was that firm, persevering temperament which ensures success to the lawyer. He had therefore risen steadily, and was already making an income of twelve or fifteen hundred a year, while his younger and erratic friend had but gained a precarious foothold in the profession by dint of a few brilliant speeches, which covered a very superficial acquaintance with the law. 'I wonder who will have the defence!' meditated Prescott. 'It will surely run to something more than a docker!' A docker, it should be explained, is the name for a retainer which is handed direct from a prisoner in the dock to a counsel, without the intervention of a solicitor. It is the resource of the poorer class of offenders, who can scrape together that single guinea, but no more. 'I have it. I'll go and see Tressamer about this. He goes there still, and ought to know all about it.' Tressamer was the name of his old friend. His chambers were in an adjoining court of the Temple. Prescott put on his hat, told his clerk where he was to be found, and strolled forth. CHAPTER III. COUNSEL FOR THE DEFENCE. 'Mr. Tressamer is inside, sir. Will you walk in?' Thus said the clerk at Mr. Tressamer's chambers as soon as he saw Mr. Prescott. Then, stepping to the door, he rapped and opened it, saying the visitor's name. 'Well, Tressamer, where have you been this age?' The speaker stopped, startled at the sight that presented itself, for there, lying on his face on the hearthrug, with his hands clutching at his thick black curls, lay George Tressamer, the very picture of one in mortal despair. He sprang to his feet as his friend entered, and made an awkward attempt to behave as if he had not been seen. 'Why, Prescott, where do you come from, pray? More excursions to the County Court, with the solicitors on opposite sides racing to you to see which can get his brief into your hands first?' Prescott thought it best to take the hint, and not remark on his friend's trouble. He quietly answered: 'No; I've not been anywhere. Been in town, preparing for the assizes. By-the-bye----' He paused to look for a chair, and was surprised to find every one in the room littered with books. He proceeded to clear the nearest to him, lifting the books on to the floor. 'I've just had a brief to prosecute--Hullo! "Hawkins' Pleas of the Crown"! I had no idea you were such a student--in that Porthstone case--the murder----' Again he stopped short. A look of anguish had come into his friend's face. 'What is it, old man? I can see something's gone wrong.' 'Charlie,' was the reply, spoken in a tone hardly above a whisper, 'are you prosecuting Eleanor Owen?' Prescott nodded. 'And have you read your brief?' 'I've just come from it.' 'Then you can understand how I feel. I am defending her--and I love her!' He threw all the energy of his passionate nature into the last sentence, and then sank down upon the window seat and hid his face with his hands. For several minutes neither spoke. Prescott hardly knew what course to take. To offer to resign his brief might be to let it pass into the hands of one who would share Mr. Pollard's prejudice against the accused. On the other hand, to retain it, unless he were prepared to bring the case fully home to the prisoner, would be alike a breach of professional honour and an act of dishonesty. He resolved at last to leave the choice to his friend. 'George,' he said. The other slowly lifted his head. Looking upon that face, his friend could see the marks of the terrible experience he was passing through. Tressamer had always been a youth of wild and stormy emotions; no man less calm and steadfast than Prescott could have maintained a friendship so long with such a nature. But now he was struggling with passions compared with which the emotions of schoolboys were as nothing. 'George, what shall I do? I want you to decide. You know me too well to think I care about the little benefit to myself when it's a case of life and death with a friend like you. Shall I chuck up the case?' Tressamer gazed at him gratefully at first, and then with a hesitating, pondering look. Finally he said: 'You have read your brief, and, of course, you know the worst. Tell me, what do you think, honestly?' 'Honestly, George, I see no defence. There is no doubt the old woman has been murdered. I don't see how it could have been done by anyone outside the house; and then there is the blood on the door-handle. I may tell you that, even before I knew how you stood, in reading the brief I felt a sort of hesitation--that is, I couldn't get that feeling of confidence that one generally has in one's case when the evidence is clear. I felt as if I shouldn't put much heart into the prosecution. But, still, I don't see what defence there is.' Tressamer listened in silence, and let a moment or two go by before he gave his decision. 'I would rather you kept your brief. I would rather you did it. After all, you have merely a mechanical part to perform; it is only routine. Suppose I were to have a limb amputated, I should like it to be done by a man I knew. And this is something of the same sort. The evidence is there, and you will not make it any worse--or better.' The other was shocked at the gloomy, resigned way in which he spoke. 'Good heavens! you don't mean that you too believe----' 'No, Charles. I believe she is innocent. But I do not expect her innocence will ever be proved in this world.' 'Oh, come, you mustn't give up now! All sorts of things may happen. The trial may go differently to what you expect. Half the time these witnesses don't swear up to their proofs.' 'They have given their evidence twice already--at the inquest and before the magistrates.' 'Yes; but then they weren't cross-examined. It is very different when they have a man like you to turn them inside out. You're not nervous about it, are you?' 'Nervous!' He smiled grimly. 'No; it was at my own request I received this brief. A breach of etiquette, you see'--with another heavy smile. 'If she can be saved, I shall save her. Shall I tell you my defence?' 'No, don't; I would rather be taken by surprise. I don't want to shine in this case, Heaven knows! Take every advantage I can fairly give you. I know you don't expect more.' 'Thank you,' was the answer. There was a little pause, during which neither spoke. At last, returning to the only topic in either mind, Tressamer observed: 'I have been deep in this ever since it occurred. I have been running up and down to Porthstone. I was at the inquest and in the police-court, but I thought it best to do nothing, and let the public think she was undefended. It may soften their feeling towards her. All these little things have to be thought of.' 'Yes; don't you remember that famous Shepherdsbury case? The man who acted for the prisoner--the solicitor, I think it was--made such a brilliant fight in the police-court that the magistrates hesitated to commit; but the result was that the Crown knew all about the defence, and when the real trial came, the man hadn't a chance. Always reserve your defence.' 'Yes; but you forget, the solicitor has got a splendid practice through it,' was the bitter answer. 'Few men in the West of England are doing better in that class of business. Did you know--but of course you didn't--that I was down at Porthstone only two days before the thing happened?' 'No; were you?' 'Yes; and I was staying in Abertaff that very night. I intended coming up to town the first thing in the morning, but something detained me, and in a few hours the news arrived. So I went down at once, saw Eleanor at the police-station, and advised her what to do before any of those meddling Pollards got at her.' 'Pollards? Why, they are briefing me for the prosecution!' 'Yes, I know. Pollard conducted it in the police-court. At the inquest he represented that man Lewis, the nephew, and very bitter he was, too. But I made Eleanor choke him off before that. Wouldn't have him at any price. I have got a quiet old chap in Abertaff now who won't interfere--old Morgan.' 'Do you know, I thought he was trying to press the case rather in my brief. This accounts for it. But what sort of a man is this Lewis?' 'Oh, a big, coarse-looking fellow. Came back from Australia just before it happened. A brute! He's egging on the Crown. She left him all her money--about twenty thousand--but the jewels are supposed to be worth nearly as much more, and he's lost them, and so he's savage.' 'I say, George, I don't know that I ought to say it, but has it occurred to you as at all curious that he should have returned the very night it was done?' A gleam of furtive joy crossed the other's face, and instantly vanished again. _'Has that struck you_?' he said, and seemed about to add something more. But he restrained himself, and merely added: 'The less you and I talk about it the better, perhaps. Coming out?' And they left the chambers together. But though Tressamer ceased to discuss the subject with his friend, he could not dismiss it from his mind. The sparkling wit, the wild, extravagant humour, for which he had been famous, seemed to have withered up in the furnace of his terrible grief. He lunched with Prescott in almost dead silence, and as soon as it was over got up hurriedly and disappeared. He had truthfully described himself as having been deep in the case from its commencement. When the news of what had happened at Porthstone reached the town of Abertaff he was walking in the High Street alone. He saw the unusual excitement, and meeting an acquaintance, learned from him that Miss Lewis had been murdered. 'And they say it was done by her companion, a girl named Owen,' added the man. Tressamer turned white, gasped for breath, and cried out loudly: 'It's a lie! I swear she is innocent!' In another moment he had darted off to a cab-stand, and was on his way to the station. There he had one of those sickening waits for a train which are inevitable on such occasions. Twice he was on the point of ordering a special, but each time he restrained himself by the thought that by the time it was ready the ordinary train would be nearly due. He shunned the gloomy waiting-room, and strode up and down the narrow platform with swift, excited strides. The porters and newspaper-boys stared as he rushed to and fro, hardly heeding the piles of luggage with which railway servants seek to break the dull monotony of a platform promenade. There was French blood in Tressamer: short, dark, thick-necked, yet far from stout in figure, he possessed the strain of sombre passion which runs through the blood of the Celtic races. He could no more control himself in deference to the officials of Abertaff Station than a madman when his frenzy is on him can conceal it from his keepers. At last the train drew up. He sprang into a carriage, and impatiently endured the journey down to the seaside. Arrived there, he proceeded instantly to the police-station and demanded an interview with Miss Owen. At first there was some difficulty, but Tressamer was not to be checked. 'I am her legal adviser,' he announced. 'I am a member of the Bar, and I consider it of vital importance that I should see the prisoner at once. If you refuse, I shall wire straight to the Home Office.' This threat produced its natural effect. The police, in doubt as to their powers, gave way, and he was taken into the cell where Eleanor had been secured. If Eleanor had not wept when she was accused of the terrible crime, neither was she weeping now. She was sitting in a dull, stony apathy, from which she was hardly aroused by the sound of the barrister's familiar name. She looked up, it is true, and gazed at him with lack-lustre eyes. But she uttered no word. He, on his part, waited till the constable had withdrawn. Then he advanced a step from the door, and said: 'Eleanor, you are innocent. Will you let me save you?' Then at last the light came into her eyes. Then at last the unnatural stiffness faded out of her frame. Then at last the awful coldness loosed its hold of her heart, and answering, 'George, I do not deserve your help,' she gave way to a tempest of tears. He waited till the storm had spent its first fury. Every shade of anguish passed across his face meanwhile. But he strove to master his feelings, and to put a commonplace expression into his voice, as he said at length: 'I have been in Abertaff the last two days--since I left you.' His voice trembled an instant, but he went on: 'I heard the news this morning, and came down at once. I want to defend you. I want you to accept my services as a token that you still look on me as a friend, in spite of all that has happened.' 'I don't know how to answer you,' she murmured. 'The more generous you are, the more ashamed I feel. I ought not to take your help. And yet you are the only creature in the world who has not forsaken me.' 'Don't say that, Eleanor. No one else knows you as I do. No one else feels to you---- but I won't say anything about that. One stipulation I must make. You are not to thank me--not one word.' And with a stern gesture he waved her off, as she made a movement as if to throw herself at his feet. 'But you must forgive me,' she said. 'Whether I am as wicked as you told me I was when we parted or not, you must tell me that you take me for what I am, that you expect no change in me.' She paused a moment, and then cried out with sudden vehemence: 'Oh, I have done you injustice! I didn't know how noble you could be! But it is too late; I cannot alter now.' An angry throb convulsed the man during her first words. At the end he ground his teeth and clenched his hands together. 'Silence, Eleanor! If you speak to me like that again, I shall go. There are to be no thanks, no praises. Never refer to the past. I know you and understand. If I cannot tear all hope out of my heart, what is that to you? I ask nothing, and will take nothing unless it is freely given.' He ceased, and she looked at him with a mixture of gratitude and fear. Then he referred to her dreadful situation. 'I needn't tell you, Eleanor, that as your counsel you must confide in me fully. I have heard the story so far as it is public, and up to now I may tell you that, as a matter of law, you are in no real danger.' Eleanor stared at him. 'In no danger? What do you mean? Is the murderer discovered?' 'No, and never may be. But neither is the body.' 'Why, what difference does that make?' 'Don't you know?' answered the barrister. 'I thought most people knew that till the body was discovered no one could be convicted of murder.' A ray of hope shone out in the prisoner's face. 'Then do you mean that Miss Lewis may be alive still?' she asked quickly. 'No, no. Nobody doubts that she is dead, nor that someone has killed her. But the point is this, that you cannot be legally tried and convicted. The body has disappeared.' The heavy shade of despair settled down once more. 'What good is that?' she answered reproachfully. 'If they believe me guilty it makes it worse for me, because I can never be acquitted. I shall be suspected till I die. Oh, I would rather suffer death, I think.' 'Hush, hush!' he exclaimed, shocked and agitated. 'Listen to me, and try to bear it as best you can. The evidence against you is simply overwhelming. Probably I am the only man in the world who believes in your innocence.' 'Except the murderer,' she interrupted. 'Except the murderer, of course. But what I want to say is this--as things stand now no jury that ever breathed would acquit you. Only a miracle can reveal the truth. But what I can do, and mean to do, for you is to save you on the ground I have told you of. You must expect nothing more.' 'George, it will kill me! Alone, hated, abhorred, what use would my life be to me when the whole world believed me guilty? No, I will pray for a miracle; but if not----' She stopped and panted in anguish of soul. Her suffering was reflected on the man's face. 'Don't--don't talk like that!' he cried. 'Remember, there will be always one who trusts you, one who reveres you, loves you! I don't mean to ask anything. I would not speak to you like this if I could help it; but remember, if the worst comes to the worst, you have always one friend to turn to, one man who asks no higher joy than to pass his life with you, whether here or in some far-off country, and devote himself to soothing your distress.' While he was unfolding these views a sudden misgiving entered Eleanor's mind. Rising up, she crossed the cell to where he sat, and, laying her hands on his shoulders, she gazed full into his eyes. 'George,' she uttered in solemn tones, 'I adjure you to tell me the truth. Do you really believe me innocent?' 'Before God, I do!' burst out his answer, as he looked her in the face. She was satisfied, and returned to her seat. 'And now,' said Tressamer, assuming a more lawyer-like tone, 'tell me all that occurred that night.' A long conversation followed, of which the barrister took copious notes in his pocket-book. It was late in the afternoon when he came out of the cell and went to secure accommodation in Porthstone for the night. His step was slow, his head drooping, as he came along the esplanade. Suddenly he saw in front of him a concourse of people following a policeman, who held something in his hand, and a gentleman dressed in the unmistakable garb which proclaims the seaside visitor. As the crowd came on, Tressamer noticed that this gentleman appeared much agitated. Even the constable's face betrayed an excitement unusual among his kind. But it never occurred to the barrister that this excitement could be connected in any way with the case in which he was so deeply concerned. He took a closer glance at what the policeman was carrying, and then, to his horror, perceived that it was a human hand, the fingers still gay with precious rings. The next moment they all came up to where he was, and he heard someone in the crowd saying: 'That's the hand of the woman that was murdered. A gentleman has just found it in Newton Bay.' The fearful truth burst on him like a thunder-clap. The blood forsook his veins; he staggered helplessly to the nearest seat and sank down upon it, moaning to himself: 'Lost! She is lost!' The firm ground on which he had been standing had crumbled all at once. The law point on which he had relied to save Eleanor's life, in spite of the crushing weight of evidence against her, was robbed by this accidental discovery of more than half its strength. Who could any longer pretend to doubt whether a murder had been committed? Hence Tressamer's despair. Coupled with what Eleanor had said to him in their interview, however, it drove him to seek more earnestly than he would otherwise have done for some theory of defence upon the facts, some means whereby, if possible, to force a doubt into the minds of the jury, and wring from them a verdict of acquittal. To this task he now devoted himself. He assumed the part of a detective rather than a barrister. In the case of an ordinary client conduct such as this would not have been tolerated for a moment by the rigid etiquette of the Bar; but where a case is of such a nature that the barrister is personally concerned, and where he acts as a private individual pursuing his own interests, etiquette has nothing to say. In joining the Bar a man does not cease to be a citizen and to enjoy the rights and privileges of ordinary mortals. It is only in his professional character that his acts come under that rigid supervision which is at once the dread and envy of inferior professions. But, in any event, George Tressamer's present mood would not have let him give much weight to considerations of such a character. Too much was at stake. He had to keep in constant communication with Eleanor, to encourage her in face of the ordeals of the coroner and the magistrates, and to protect her from the zeal of the various graduates of the Incorporated Law Society who were thirsting to win glory in her defence. As a blind to the public, he caused the rumour to be spread that she was without professional advice. This idea was confirmed when it got to be known that she had refused the services of Messrs. Pollard and other gentlemen of the neighbourhood. Meanwhile Tressamer was enabled to go about with less publicity and to pursue his inquiries. Eleanor was disposed to wonder at him for not employing a detective. But he soon explained that. 'I know detectives,' he said to her. 'I have seen them in the witness-box and out of it. They are admirable men in their own groove. Give them an ordinary crime--a robbery or a forgery--and they can grapple with it. They will track the defaulting cashier to America for you, or run down the absconding broker in the depths of the Australian Bush. But there their usefulness ends. They are no good in the face of a real mystery like this. This is not a question of clever detection; it is a case of reading the human heart and penetrating its motives. A genius could help us, but I know of no genius in Scotland Yard. No, I will do what I can; and if I come to anything in the way of ordinary detective work I will send for Sergeant Wright.' So he continued to work alone. He had by this time seen and talked with every witness whose name appeared in the brief for the Crown. He had been present, with the air of a casual spectator, at the inquest, and afterwards at the inquiry before the magistrates, which ended in the committal of Eleanor to the assizes to take her trial for wilful murder. He did not tell Eleanor much as to the results of his inquiries. He would simply mention that he had been talking to Simons, or that he had had a game of billiards with John Lewis, and she had to form her own idea of what had passed between them. Finally, he went up to London and plunged into that minute study of Hale and Hawkins which had awakened the surprise of his friend Prescott. He was thus kept occupied till both he and his friend were summoned down from town by the approach of the assizes. CHAPTER IV. THE ASSIZES. On a certain day in the month of July our lady the Queen, probably clad in ermine, and wearing on her head that gorgeous specimen of the jeweller's art which, when not in use, may be viewed at the Tower of London for the absurdly moderate sum of sixpence--our lady the Queen, I say, was reminded by her faithful Chancellor that various prisoners were awaiting trial in different parts of England and Wales, and among other places in Mynyddshire. Whereupon her Majesty, with that constant attention to the welfare of her people which befits a sovereign, at once sat down and wrote, or possibly only signed, a stately document requiring and empowering Sir Daniel Buller, Knight, one of the judges of her High Court; Sir John Wiseman, Knight, another of the aforesaid judges; Walter Reynold Davies, Esquire, one of her counsel learned in the law; Joseph Robert Pollington, Esquire, another of her counsel learned in the law; and Henry Jones, Esquire, yet a further specimen of her counsel learned in the law, to proceed to Mynyddshire, and there and then open the gaols and try such prisoners as were inside them. In a similar and not less elaborate document she thoughtfully went on to provide for their hearing and deciding, at the same time, any disputes over civil matters which might possibly have arisen among the population of that remote locality since it was last honoured by the presence of such bright visitants. This considerate act on her Majesty's part was, of course, intended to save her emissaries a second journey. Even a monarch, in the administration of justice, need not be above killing two birds with one stone. In proceeding to Mynyddshire, however, a very invidious distinction was drawn between the gentlemen named in the Royal Commission. The two first named, simply because they were knights and judges, went down in state, were met at the station by the high-sheriff of the county, and escorted by twenty javelin-men in gay attire to the comfortable lodgings prepared for them. The other three, for no other earthly reason than because their position was less exalted, had to get down as best they might, scramble into cabs with their portmanteaus, and put up at a common hotel. How true is the venerable saying, 'To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath'! Having thus got an unfair start, the two judges preserved it to the end. They tried all the cases themselves, and their unfortunate colleagues had to be content with what crumbs they could pick up by appearing in court as common advocates. The Southern Circuit has long been popular with judges. There is a great difference in circuits. The two northern ones, with their vast populations and immense amount of work, are the bugbear of the puisne judge. The scenery of some of the other circuits is flat, and there is not much amusement going on in the assize towns. But the Southern combines several advantages. It is far from heavy as regards work, the country in many parts is beautiful, and the train-service between the county towns is fairly good. For these reasons the old stagers on the Bench are in the habit of trying to get the Southern Circuit. On the present occasion they had been successful. Sir Daniel Buller and Sir John Wiseman may not have been extremely popular with the Bar, but they were very popular with each other. They came down to Abertaff feeling in good form, Sir John to preside over the civil court, and Sir Daniel to mete out justice to the inmates of the county gaol. Not for many years had there been such excitement at assize time in the city. This excitement was due to two causes--the javelin-men and the society murder. Javelin-men are dying out. In former times, when the office of sheriff was a mark of high social dignity, and before the new-fangled post of lord-lieutenant had usurped so much of its splendour, the shrievalty was an epoch in a county gentleman's career. It was considered almost worth being ruined for. A heavy mortgage was not grudged as a consequence of the lavish splendour with which the office was surrounded. In those days javelin-men were a reality. Clad in semi-military uniforms modelled on the master's family livery, and armed with weapons of an extinct fashion, they simulated the state of vice-royalty. Many a German princelet has enjoyed a less imposing body-guard than an English sheriff of the olden time. But the railways have killed all that. Everyone now seeks distinction in the Metropolis. County society has become a byword for the old-fashioned and the humdrum, for bad living, bad manners, and bad taste. No one would now dream of embarrassing his estate to secure a merely local renown. Hence the decay of the shrievalty. The modern high-sheriff looks upon his obligatory office as a duty rather than an honour. He contents himself with the cheap services of the county police force for his retinue, and foregoes the expensive luxury of the javelin-men. There are a few brilliant exceptions, however. The present sheriff of Mynyddshire was one. In the first place, he was master of what in the country is regarded as a colossal fortune. In the second place, he was the founder of his family. Money, therefore, was not an object to Mr. Simon Reynolds. Glory was. His office gave him just the chance he wanted, and he revived its mediæval honours with a willing hand. Two-and-twenty men, counting the buglers, in gorgeous clothing of pink and yellow hue, accordingly gladdened the eyes of the Abertaffians as they paraded the streets and hung about the court-house. Each man of the rank and file carried a weapon the like of which had not often been looked upon. It resembled an axe with an exaggerated handle, only the back of the blade was prolonged into a formidable spike, while the handle extended beyond into a species of spear-point. Armed with these truly terrific weapons, Mr. Reynolds's faithful henchmen might well strike awe into the heart of the boldest boy in Abertaff. It was felt that they were the principal feature of the assize. The judges, by common consent, took a secondary place. Their robes were fine, no doubt, but their rather ill-fitting wigs formed a poor substitute for the gleaming steel of their rivals. The sober charms of justice cannot successfully compete with the dazzling splendour of arms. As for the high-sheriff himself, in his black velvet coat and frilled shirt-front, he was a very inferior attraction, while his chaplain was simply nowhere. He had his innings for one brief hour in the cathedral, where the judges were compelled to sit as meekly as so many jurymen under a lengthy summing-up; but after that one bright flash he sank into insignificance, and dragged out the remainder of the assize like the stick of a burnt-out rocket, unpitied by all. Yet even the javelin-men were cast into the shade by the other great feature of the assize week. The crime of murder remains, after all is said and done, the one thing which most fascinates the public mind. And when to murder is added mystery, and when that mystery centres round the figure of a woman, and when that woman is young and beautiful, and in a social position which does away with the presence of squalid details or coarse motives, the public may be pardoned if they take the very fullest interest in her fate. Indeed, the case of 'The Queen against Owen,' to give it its legal designation, was of more than local interest. The whole kingdom was excited about the position of the unhappy girl who lay in one of the cells of Abertaff Gaol. Every eye was watching eagerly for the unfolding of the tragic drama in which she was about to play the leading part. All the great London dailies had their representatives down at the assize town to gather every detail of the forthcoming trial. Already the names of the counsel on both sides were being wired from one end of the country to the other, while in Mynyddshire and in the county town itself the excitement was so great that not the smallest attention was bestowed on any other case that was to come before the courts. Even the judges themselves were infected with the excitement all around them. Mr. Justice Buller had read the depositions taken before the magistrates prior to leaving town. He had discussed little else with his brother Wiseman in the train. In all their experience, they agreed, they had never met with a case so clear upon the evidence, and yet so unsatisfactory to the mind. In the presence of the sheriff, of course, the subject was dropped. Nor could it be resumed after dinner. Later on the judge of the criminal court sat down to make notes for his charge to the grand jury on the morrow. In this he dealt with several other serious cases that appeared in the calendar. But his gravest attention was devoted to the one that dwarfed all the others. This disposed of, he soon retired to rest. The formal business of opening the assizes had been gone through on the afternoon the judges arrived. Sir Daniel Buller had been trumpeted off to the Court-house, and had sat with as much patience as he could command--and that was not a great deal--while a rather short-sighted and very fidgety clerk of arraigns, afflicted, moreover, with a severe cough, stumbled his way through the important documents already described. This proceeding was necessary in order to inform the loyal inhabitants of Mynyddshire, chiefly represented by errand-boys and loafers from the neighbouring taps, who their red-robed visitors really were, and what they had come to do. On the following morning, therefore, the judges were free to proceed to work. They drove down to the court at half-past ten, accompanied by the swelling Reynolds and the visibly crestfallen chaplain, and escorted by the inevitable javelin-men, who swarmed about the place all day under the pretext of keeping order. Sir John Wiseman went quietly off to his own court, and began at once at the unexciting work of trying whether the drippings from a wholesale piano warehouseman's spout had or had not damaged the hats in a neighbouring hat store, and, if so, whether the wholesale piano warehouseman was to blame, and if to blame, how much he ought to pay to the aggrieved hatter. Two of the gentlemen so unfairly deprived of seats upon the bench were engaged in this important case, and it occupied more than half the day. But it had a rather poor audience. The crowd had rushed into the other court, where the gentlemen of the grand jury were answering to their names as often as the infirmities of the clerk of arraigns would allow them to discover whom he was calling. As soon as the necessary twenty-three were sworn, Mr. Justice Buller began his charge. After a few civil remarks on the state of the county as regarded crime generally, and brief references to some of the other cases, he came to the all-absorbing topic. And now the reporters, who had sat listlessly under the infliction of the previous remarks, woke to sudden life, and every word of his lordship was caught and taken down as eagerly as if it had dropped from the lips of Shakespeare. And this is what he said: 'And now I come to what is by far the gravest case in the calendar--one of the gravest cases that has ever come before me in my judicial experience. The prisoner, Eleanor Owen, is accused of the most serious crime, short of treason, known to our law. Gentlemen, it is not for you to try whether she is guilty. You have to hear the witnesses who will be sent in before you on behalf of the Crown, and if you are satisfied that they are speaking the truth, and the effect of their evidence on your minds is such as, if uncontradicted, to raise a fair presumption of the prisoner's guilt, then it is your duty to find a true bill against her. From the depositions taken by the magistrates, which have been put before me, I do not anticipate that you will have much hesitation in coming to your decision. The case is entirely one of what is called circumstantial evidence, as such cases most generally are, and must be from the nature of things. Doubtless there are difficulties in the case--many and grave difficulties--with which it will be the duty of this tribunal to deal when the prisoner comes, if she does come, before us. The fact that the prisoner is charged with the deliberate murder of her friend--I may almost say her benefactress--with whom she had been living on terms of intimacy for a considerable time, and for no motive that has yet been suggested except a low and mercenary one, is calculated to arouse a natural repulsion in the mind, and to indispose it to believe that the charge is well-founded. But, gentlemen, these things, as they come before you, are matters of evidence. If the witnesses you are about to hear satisfy you that there is a _primâ facie_ case made out against Eleanor Owen, that there are grounds for suspicion which she ought fairly to be called upon to answer and explain away if she can, then it is your duty not to hesitate, but to bring in a true bill for murder. And I must tell you, gentlemen, that so far as my reading of the depositions has guided me, this is not a case in which the crime admits of being reduced to any lesser charge. There are none of the elements present which may, and often do, justify a jury in reducing the charge of murder to that of manslaughter. There is no question, so far as I have been able to discover, of sudden provocation, of accident, or anything of that sort. Whoever committed this crime must, if you believe the evidence, have done so knowingly, designedly, and with premeditation, and therefore your finding, if you find against the prisoner must be one of wilful murder. Gentlemen, I leave you to your deliberations.' With these words his Lordship dismissed the grand jury; and the barristers, in their wigs and gowns, some of them with briefs and a good many with none, came streaming into the well of the court, filling up the seats specially reserved for them, and overflowing into those occupied by their colleagues of the 'lower branch.' It seems rather hard on the Bar that some mysterious rule of etiquette, which they themselves probably do not understand, should forbid them to enter the assize court till this particular stage in the proceedings. Or can it be that this rule had its origin in the wisdom of their remote predecessors, devising artful means to escape the infliction of a tedious charge without appearing disrespectful to the Bench? A lull followed. The judge, accustomed to have the eyes of men upon him, calmly betook himself to letter-writing. The high-sheriff, not so accustomed, fidgeted in his seat, looked round and counted the javelin-men in court, wondered how long the grand jury would be, and remembered, let us hope with remorse, the time when he was a grand juryman himself and wasted the time of the county by unnecessary questions to the witnesses. The fact is that the grand jury is played out. Everything for which they originally existed is now done by somebody else. Every case that comes before them now has already been investigated once by the committing magistrates. Their duty is simply to accuse the prisoner, nothing more; and it would be quite sufficient if they would just read the depositions and sign the indictment. But man, brief man, placed on a grand jury, and shut into a room without the interference of a legal authority, delights to show himself off by vain and superfluous inquiry. And hence it was that more than half an hour elapsed before the foreman was seen returning into the court with a trumpery indictment for larceny. The interval had been usefully employed by the clerk of arraigns in compiling a petty jury, something in this fashion: The Clerk of Arraigns (_taking up a ticket, rather larger than a visiting-card, from a heap before him_): 'John Henry Mullerall!' (_To his clerk, a humble person in plebeian attire, who is popularly believed to know a great deal more about the procedure than the judge and the whole court put together_): 'Did he answer?' (_The clerk hasn't heard him._) 'John--Henry' (_very loudly_) 'Mull---- Oh! I see it's Muggle'--(_at the top of his voice_) 'Mugglewrath!' (_testily_) 'Are you there?' John Henry Mugglewrath (_from a seat close by_): 'Here!' The Clerk of Arraigns: 'Oh! there you are. Why _don't_ you gentlemen answer when you hear your names? Go into the box, please.' After about ten minutes of this sort of thing, twelve respectable inhabitants of Mynyddshire were collected in the jury-box. Then they all had to stand up while their names were read over a second time. Then the clerk of arraigns counted his tickets to make sure he had used up twelve, while his clerk counted the jurymen to see that they came to the same number. Then all was ready to begin. Meanwhile, those gentlemen at the counsel's table who rejoiced in the possession of briefs made a great show of reading them, and making copious notes and interlineations with pencils of different colours--red, blue, and black. The public were greatly impressed as they watched these young giants of intellect at their work. There they were, mastering the most knotty points with ease, and constructing ingenious arguments, doubtless, as they went along. One gentleman excited the greatest interest, and quite threw his brethren into the shade, by pushing aside his brief and drawing towards him one of the loose sheets of foolscap which the kind forethought of the authorities had provided, and beginning to write on it in an abstracted manner. The onlookers deemed him to be wrestling with an opinion on some weighty question bristling with legal difficulties. They little guessed that he was addressing congratulations to a maiden aunt on the occasion of her approaching birthday. But what really occupied the minds of the spectators, and kept their lips moving in subdued conversation, was the ending of the judge's charge. 'He has made up his mind that she is guilty,' whispered Mr. Jenkins, the stationer from Queen Street, who had come to the court in the capacity of a common juryman, but had not been among the names first selected. 'And I don't wonder at it,' replied his neighbour, a farmer from near Porthstone, who had been summoned in the same way. 'A bad lot, I'll be bound. Wouldn't say nothing when her was before the magistrates. That looks bad, don't it?' 'Silence!' bawled a javelin-man just behind them, a rebuke which the worthy farmer at first thought was meant for himself. But the word was repeated instantly by other javelin-men, and then he perceived that the grand jury had at last achieved a stroke of work, and that the satellites of justice were merely drawing attention to that fact in their usual impressive manner. The clerk of arraigns now received the document, and proceeded to expound its contents in this manner: 'Gentlemen of the Grand Jury, you find a'--here he stopped and turned it over to read what was on the back, a task which occupied several seconds; but he completed the sentence as if no break had occurred--'true bill against'--another pause, he was looking for the name concealed amid the mazes of technical phraseology. This time the foreman rashly attempted to help him out by murmuring, 'Joseph Hall.' The clerk of arraigns turned round and glared at him, then resumed his investigation, and finally brought out the name in a tone of triumph, as of one who gloried in overcoming obstacles, and was not to be baffled by any indictment in the power of man to draw--'Joseph Hall, for stealing a coat of the value of thirty shillings; also for receiving the same, knowing it to be stolen.' He then turned again, and bestowed an impatient nod on the waiting foreman, who withdrew, a crushed and miserable man. 'Put up Joseph Hall,' was the next command. The governor of the gaol leant forward and repeated the order to a warder, who had already heard it perfectly and dived below, apparently through the solid floor of the court. The next moment Mr. Hall appeared, with easy nonchalance, and leant forward in a graceful attitude on the bar of the dock, while the clerk of arraigns proceeded to acquaint him with the crime of which he was accused. Exhibiting no surprise at this piece of information, which, considering he had been lying under the accusation for two months, was perhaps hardly to be wondered at, Mr. Hall in emphatic tones pronounced himself innocent. 'What?' said the clerk of arraigns, stretching anxiously forward. Mr. Hall repeated his sentiments. 'What does he say?' exclaimed the clerk of arraigns, appealing to the court generally for assistance. The response was a loud but confused roar of voices from the Junior Bar, out of which the only clear sound that penetrated to the unfortunate man's brain was the word 'guilty.' 'He says he's guilty!' he remarked to his clerk, in what he intended for an aside, but which was perfectly audible over the whole building. At this point the judge, becoming impatient, leant over and tapped the clerk of arraigns on the shoulder. He turned round. 'He pleads guilty, my lord,' he said, thinking that the judge wished for information. 'No, he doesn't, Mr. Hughes. He said "Not guilty,"' answered the judge. Mr. Hughes was nearly beside himself by this time. Leaning forward in the direction of the prisoner, he shouted fiercely: 'What _do_ you say? Are you guilty or not?' 'No,' came in tones loud enough for him to hear at last. 'Then _why_ can't you speak distinctly? The names you are about to hear called are those of the jurors who are to try you if you have any objection to them or any of them you shall make it as they come to the book to be sworn and before they are sworn and you shall be heard. John Henry Mugglewrath, stand up.' And, leaving this overwhelming communication to gradually make itself clear to the prisoner's mind, the clerk of arraigns went on swearing in the jury as hard as he could go, with the assistance of the judge's clerk (who recited the oath) and his own clerk (who handed the Testament, as it is called, though really containing only the works of the four Evangelists). It need scarcely be observed that the jurors never came to the book at all. The book came to them. A rather flighty young counsel, who seemed to consider the whole thing somewhat in the light of a joke, or a species of amateur theatricals on a large scale, having presented the case for the prosecution, Mr. Hall was called upon for his defence. It then came out that the poor man, than whom no more honest creature ever walked the earth, had been made the victim of a truly diabolical hoax. He was sitting reading the newspaper in a public-house, the Three Hens--he had not even been drinking, mind, simply reading the newspaper--when a perfect stranger, whom he had never seen before nor since, but whom he should know anywhere, came in, with an overcoat (the one produced in court) over his arm. The stranger, with a craft for which an innocent being like Mr. Hall was no match, began by offering refreshments. These consumed, he asked Mr. Hall to do him the favour of pawning his overcoat for him. Mr. Hall naturally put the question, Why didn't he pawn it himself? The stranger replied that he was unfamiliar with pawnshops, that he doubted his ability to make a good bargain, and that he was willing to pay his new acquaintance a commission on the proceeds. This last offer Mr. Hall had magnanimously refused, but out of mere good-nature he went forth to do the stranger's bidding. The pawnbroker, however, with a distrust in human nature which stamped him as having an evil mind, called in a passing policeman, and gave this victim of his own kindly disposition into custody. The sequel was inevitable. The constable was led by the unsuspicious Hall to the bar of the Three Hens, but the mysterious stranger had gone and left no trace. Poor, humble, with nothing but his good character to rely on, Mr. Hall now cast himself with confidence on the discernment of the gentlemen before him. The gentlemen had made up their minds already. But they could not give their verdict till the judge had had his turn. Mr. Justice Buller set to and occupied exactly fourteen minutes in telling the jury that there was not much evidence of stealing, but there was strong evidence of the receiving. The jury then occupied exactly fourteen seconds in deciding that the prisoner was guilty of stealing. It then transpired that this was not the first time Mr. Hall had been the victim of appearances. His trusting nature had led him on six previous occasions to incur the censure of the law. He was, therefore, now bidden to take up his abode where no such temptations could assail him for the next five years. By this time several other bills had come in from the grand jury, and it had become apparent that the all-absorbing murder would not be tried that day. The audience gradually drifted off, and the remainder of the day's performance took place before a half-empty house. CHAPTER V. THE CASE FOR THE CROWN. 'May it please your Lordship, 'Gentlemen of the jury, I am merely repeating a commonplace when I say that I rise to address you under a very heavy sense of responsibility. As you have heard, the prisoner at the bar is charged with the crime of wilful murder. It is now my duty, acting on behalf of the Crown, to tell you how that crime was committed, according to the view which I have to ask you to take; and to bring before you the witnesses whose evidence, if you believe it, goes to establish the guilt of the accused.' Thus Mr. Prescott. It was the third day of the assizes. On the Tuesday afternoon, after a true bill had been found, Mr. Justice Buller had announced that he should set apart this day for the trial of the great case. The court had opened at ten o'clock. It was crammed to suffocation. The intensest excitement, whetted by the interval of delay, reigned supreme. All eyes were strained towards the dock as the words were uttered: 'Put up Eleanor Margaret Owen.' Another moment and she stood before them. Clothed in black from head to foot, pale as a lily, and trembling in every limb, she sank upon the chair behind her, and covered her face with her hands. A great throb of sympathy shook the court. Sobs were heard. The most prejudiced of those who had bandied her name about for the past few weeks felt a dim sense of shame. Only a few out of all those present were unmoved: the judge, schooled to conceal all trace of emotion, nay, schooled to stifle it as it rose; the jury, too overcome by the duty thrust upon them to be just then alive to what was happening; the counsel on both sides, who, for different reasons, forbore as long as they could from looking at the dock. She was beautiful. All the suffering she had gone through had not been able to affect that, unless to render her beauty more spiritual and delicate. Her hair of that light glistening brown which is best known as golden; her drooping eyes of deepest blue; her wide, square forehead, unshaded by that device of ugliness, the artificial fringe of hair; the full, open lips; the rounded chin--every mark of a certain order of loveliness was there. And she wore no veil. Some of the women present condemned her for that. The matron of the prison had besought her to use one. Her answer was decisive. She had never put a veil on since childhood, and she would not wear one now. She would not shrink beneath a false charge. She would show her face to them all. She spoke bravely; but she had not realized all that was before her. And when she came up the dark winding stairs from the underground cells, and found herself in that--great God! was it some crowded theatre, or a solemn court of justice?--her physical strength gave way, and she scarce knew what happened for some moments. Then her will asserted itself again. She stood up. She faced the judge, the jury, the crowded bar, the fashionable dames in the gallery, and showed no more signs of fear. Her name was called, the hideous accusation was made. She answered it out loud. Her counsel, dreading another scene like that already recorded, had bent across the table and warned the clerk of arraigns beforehand of what the plea would be. The jury were sworn, including in their number the two onlookers whose remarks on the previous day had been so suddenly cut short. The last formula had been recited by the clerk. 'Gentlemen of the jury, the prisoner at the bar stands indicted for that she did wilfully murder one Ann Elizabeth Lewis. To that she has pleaded that she is not guilty. Now, you are to try the issue, and to say whether she is guilty or not.' And now the counsel for the prosecution had begun his speech. 'Two years ago the prisoner was left an orphan by the death of her father, the Rector of Porthstone. She went to live in the house of a lady who had known her from a child, and who lived in the same place. With that lady she remained down to the first of last June, and it is that lady with whose murder she now stands charged. 'Miss Lewis, the deceased, may be described as eccentric. She was in the habit for some years before her death of making very large purchases of jewels----' 'I beg your pardon.' It was the counsel for the prisoner who rose to his feet and interrupted. 'My lord, I am sorry to interrupt my learned friend at this early stage, but may I ask him if he has any evidence that the prisoner knew of the existence of these jewels. If not, my lord, I submit he is not entitled to refer to them at all.' The Judge: 'What do you say, Mr. Prescott?' 'My lord, I am entirely in your lordship's hands. This is the first time it has been suggested to me that the fact of the deceased's having this jewellery was not a matter of common knowledge in the household. I therefore can't say at this stage whether I shall be able to distinctly fix the prisoner with such knowledge.' The Judge: 'Of course you mean to bring this in as motive?' Mr. Prescott: 'Yes, my lord.' The Judge: 'It is a very important matter. If the jury were satisfied that the prisoner did not know of these purchases, and if there were no other motive suggested, it might have a very great effect on their minds.' [At this point the jury tried to look as if something were having a great effect on their minds, and did not altogether succeed.] 'Perhaps you had better not say anything about the jewels now. You will have another opportunity after you see what your evidence is.' Mr. Prescott: 'If your lordship pleases. Well, then, gentlemen, I will come at once to the night when this crime was committed.' Here Mr. Pollard was observed to write something on a slip of paper and hand it to his leader. Mr. Prescott stopped to glance at it, and then went on: 'I may, however, mention one thing before leaving the question of motive, and it is this. I shall be able to prove to you that the deceased on one occasion, in the presence of a witness, made some promise or offer to the prisoner as to remembering her in her will. It is, of course, for you to say what weight you will attach to that circumstance.' Here the jury tried to look as if they knew what weight to attach to it, and again utterly failed. 'On the first of June a nephew of Miss Lewis's, and her only surviving relative, as I am instructed, and who will be called before you, arrived at Porthstone. He had just returned from Australia, and went to see his relative. He dined there, and spent the evening. At 10 o'clock he came away to his hotel and at once retired to bed. 'The deceased lady had also retired to her room, and from the evidence there can be no doubt that she undressed and got into bed. She was last seen alive a few minutes after ten. The murder was discovered the next morning at nine. Between those hours the crime must have been committed. 'The female servants followed their mistress. At half-past ten the butler fastened the front-door. He will describe the fastenings to you, and he will also tell you of a peculiarity in the latch, about which I shall have something to say presently.' The counsel then went on to detail the events narrated in his brief, only throwing in an observation now and then as he went along. When he had described the evidence of the removal of the body by the window, he said: 'And now we come to one of the difficulties in the case. If the prisoner lowered the body out of the window in the first instance, why did she afterwards return to the house, and take a second journey, carrying a burden of some kind? I am hardly at liberty, after what has fallen from his lordship, to suggest to you that this second exit was in order to remove something which the murderer wanted to steal, something with the object of stealing which she committed the graver crime. But, gentlemen, there is another explanation, a terrible way of accounting for that second journey, so terrible and horrible that I wish it were not my bounden duty to put it before you. And it is this: 'Only a portion of the victim's body has been recovered. That portion is a hand. Now, in the absence of anything to make us think that the cutting off of the hand was a solitary mutilation, we are forced to the probable conclusion that whoever killed this poor woman mutilated her in a very dreadful manner. It is possible, therefore, that after lowering one portion of her victim's remains through the bedroom window, she returned upstairs to bring down some other part or parts of the body.' As the counsel with evident reluctance brought out these horrid points, a shudder ran through the court. The prisoner had borne it all with tolerable firmness up to now, but she was completely overcome by this part of the speech, and cowered down into her chair, again concealing her emotions by putting her hands before her face. If Mr. Prescott had any idea of making the jury revolt at the thought of associating such shocking brutalities with the prisoner, his speech produced the very opposite effect to what he intended. The jury saw in it nothing but the natural reluctance of a man at making such a charge, overborne by the counsel's conviction of the prisoner's guilt. Their faces assumed an aspect of stony horror as they turned their eyes upon the shrinking girl. A slight frown crossed Tressamer's countenance, followed by a look of contempt. 'The second difficulty in the case,' resumed Prescott, 'is as to the latchkey. As I have explained, there were only three keys in existence so far as the prosecution have been able to discover. These will all be produced before you. One was found in the pocket of the deceased's dress, the other was never out of the possession of the witness Simons, the third was on the prisoner's person when she was arrested. One of these keys, therefore, must have been used in the latch that night, and must have been used with such carelessness or ignorance--it is for you to say which'--[again the jury tried to look as if they were prepared to say which, and again they broke down]--'that the latch was raised too high, and stuck. Now, here I must draw your attention to a very important circumstance. The person who entered the house last, whether the prisoner or anyone else, and who fastened up the front-door as it was found by the witness Lucy Jones the following morning, that person must, for some reason or other, have failed to notice the condition of the latch. She, if we assume it was the prisoner, must be supposed to have been so agitated from some cause that she failed to notice what she was doing when she raised the latch with her key, and failed again to notice how the latch was caught when she proceeded to fasten the door inside. 'Gentlemen, it is for you to ask yourselves whether a reasonable explanation, an explanation that will justify you in coming to an adverse verdict in this case, is furnished by the suggestion that the prisoner's mind was excited by the crime she had just committed to such an extent as to deprive her of the power of observing these things.' At this point Mr. F. J. Pollard began to be aware that his leader was not pressing the case very vigorously. He looked round at his brother in the solicitors' seat behind. That gentleman looked extremely angry. He had noticed something curious in his counsel's manner from the first. He now leant over and whispered to his brother: 'What's the matter with Prescott? I can't make him out. He talks as if he were the judge summing up, instead of the counsel for the prosecution.' Mr. Pollard, the barrister, shrugged his shoulders and bit his lip. He could do nothing. It was not for him to offer advice to his leader. A man of Mr. Prescott's standing was not likely to tolerate any interference from a young fellow just called. But the offender proceeded to cap his misdeeds by a new suggestion, which had never occurred to either of the Pollards. It had been noted down long ago by Tressamer, though. 'The third difficulty in this case, gentlemen, is one which has doubtless been present to your minds all the time I have been speaking.' This time the jury made a desperate effort to conceal their astonishment, and to look as if they perfectly well knew what was coming. But no one was deceived. 'I refer to the disposal of the body. On this point we have exactly two pieces of evidence. A young woman like the prisoner was seen walking in the direction of Newton Bay, about midnight, by the witness Evan Thomas. On the following afternoon the severed hand was discovered on the beach of Newton Bay by a visitor. 'How did it get there? It is for you to say. On behalf of the Crown, it is my duty to suggest to you that the prisoner in the dock may have carried the result of her crime to that distant spot, in several journeys, one of which happened to be seen. I must put it to you that piece by piece she accomplished her revolting task, and that she sought to hide the traces of her guilt in the sea. If you think that a rational and likely course of circumstances, no doubt you will say so. 'Gentlemen, I have done. I trust I have not detained you at undue length over this case, which must strike you as one of the most grave and difficult that could well come before a court of justice. I shall now, with the assistance of my learned friend, put the evidence before you. If you are left in any doubt after hearing it, and, after hearing the prisoner's defence, if you feel that there are mysteries in the case which have not been properly explained, and difficulties which have not been fully met, then you will, I feel sure, be only too glad to acquit the prisoner of this dreadful charge. But if, on the other hand, you are fully and entirely satisfied, if you feel no doubt whatever--of course, I mean no reasonable doubt--you will, I am equally sure, do your painful duty by returning a verdict of guilty.' The barrister sat down, and his junior, who had listened impatiently to the close of the speech, at once started up, and called out: 'John Lewis!' And now, for the first time, Charles Prescott ventured to look towards the dock. After the first involuntary glance at Eleanor's entrance, he had steadily kept his eyes averted. During the whole of his address, which took up nearly an hour, he never once looked round. He was afraid to trust himself. That one brief glance had revived the memories of old with an added force which almost overwhelmed him. Yet he was not what would be called an emotional man. His was one of those natures which maintain a seeming coldness under all circumstances, but which often conceal in their depths a strength of passion and devotion compared to which the fiery outbreaks of others are mere 'sound and fury, signifying nothing.' And now this hidden force was stirred. It held him in its grasp, and his whole being shook and quivered to its centre. Not love at first sight, for he had seen her before. Yet love, awakening suddenly as he looked upon her in the full bloom of opening womanhood, surrounded by a halo of suffering, and peril, and mystery, the fated victim of an accusation which he would not believe and could not disprove. This it was that overpowered him; this it was that led to that feeble, halting advocacy which surprised all who heard it. They could not recognise the keen, trenchant Prescott who had made such a name for himself on the circuit. The Pollards were the only ones there who resented it, but they were by no means the only ones to be puzzled at the change. But Prescott did not easily give way to his feelings. The sense of duty was sufficiently strong in him to keep him from absolute abandonment of his cause. He had gone faithfully through the case, and he was now preparing to take his part in examining the witnesses. Pride and professional training asserted themselves, and he stood firm. At this moment, however, and when he was suffering most acutely, one of those happy accidents which men call good fortune or Providence, according to their dispositions, came to his aid. A solicitor's clerk hurriedly came into the court and made his way to the barrister's side. An unforeseen event had occurred. A case in the other court which had been expected to last all day had suddenly come to a settlement by agreement between the parties. The next case on the list was one in which Mr. Prescott was engaged, and engaged by himself, and his immediate presence was called for. Breathing an ejaculation of thankfulness, he got up, and quickly withdrew, leaving young Pollard to manage the witnesses as best he could. The judge looked annoyed, and the solicitor Pollard somewhat dismayed, at this sudden disappearance of the leader for the Crown. But young Pollard himself was only too pleased. At last he was to have his chance. He was left captain of the ship. If all went well he might hope to get through the evidence, and have the concluding speech in Prescott's absence. And his satisfaction was shared by Tressamer. Tressamer knew his man. For the first time that morning a look of satisfaction crossed his face, and he settled his wig firmly on his head as he prepared to encounter the moving spirit of the prosecution. And Eleanor? She did not altogether understand what had happened. But she saw that the man who had put the case against her so mildly had now gone out of it altogether, and her heart gave a great beat of joy for the first time since she had parted with George Tressamer two days before the memorable first of June. CHAPTER VI. THE WITNESSES. 'John Lewis!' A dark, big man stepped into the box, frowning heavily around him. The oath was administered, and then Mr. Pollard commenced in the approved style. 'Your name is John Lewis, and you are now living at The Shrubbery, Porthstone?' 'Yes.' 'That's where the murder was committed?' interrupted the judge. 'Yes, my lord. The witness inherited it under Miss Lewis's will.' The Judge: 'Have you lived there ever since?' Witness: 'Yes, my lord.' The Judge (after a pause, during which Mr. Pollard waits impatiently): 'Go on, Mr. Pollard. What are you keeping us for?' Mr. Pollard: 'I beg your lordship's pardon.' To witness: 'You are the nephew of the deceased, and have just returned from Australia?' 'Yes; I came back to my aunt.' 'After making some money out there, I believe?' _'I object!'_ This interruption, it need not be said, came from Tressamer. He had risen to his feet, and put on that scowl of scornful indignation with which an experienced counsel knows how to daunt a young beginner and make him feel he has committed himself. 'My lord, my friend cannot prove that, and if he could it cannot possibly be evidence against the prisoner. It is a most improper question.' The Judge looked a little puzzled. 'It is irrelevant,' he said, 'and I won't allow it if you object. In a case like this we can't be too strict, of course.' Mr. Pollard began to realize that greatness has its snares as well as its triumphs. He tried to get back on to the track. 'You went to see the deceased on the first of June?' 'I did.' 'And you came away----' Here the barrister's brother leant over and handed him a slip of paper. He took it and read it, turned red, and, trying to appear as if he had not been prompted, put the question contained in the slip of paper: 'Was anything said about the jewels?' The judge stared. Tressamer started to his feet in a transport of fury. 'My lord, my friend is deliberately leading the witness. In a case of murder it is disgraceful!' 'I agree with you, Mr. Tressamer. Don't answer that question, sir.' Thus the judge. Poor young Pollard turned as red as the judge's robe, and stammered out some apology. His brother mentally swore at him, and every solicitor in court resolved never to give him another brief. 'Go on, Mr. Pollard; you mustn't keep us waiting.' The wretched young man gave a last look at his brief, and closed the examination. 'And you left about ten o'clock?' ('Leading again!' ejaculated his opponent.) 'Yes. My lord, may I say----' 'No!' snapped the judge. 'Say nothing unless you're asked.' The witness looked angry, and frowned savagely at his counsel. But the latter had now sat down, and the cross-examination was about to begin. Tressamer had been studying the witness, with a view of ascertaining his weak point. This was evidently his temper. Accordingly he avoided irritating him till he had obtained as much as he could from him. He began: 'Had you any other relatives living besides Miss Lewis?' The witness was thoroughly thrown out. He could not see what was coming. In a sullen voice he responded: 'Yes, I've a sister in the North.' 'Did you go to see her before your aunt?' 'No.--My lord, may I explain?' The Judge: 'You had better confine yourself to the questions now. You will have an opportunity of explaining afterwards.' 'You went straight to your aunt. Was she pleased to see you?' 'Yes, she seemed very pleased.' 'And yet she let you stay at a hotel?' 'That was only the first night. It was arranged that I was to occupy a bedroom in her house afterwards.' 'Oh!' Type cannot do justice to the peculiar intonation with which the barrister uttered this exclamation. The whole court was aroused to suspect something beneath the surface. Then he turned round to the jury with a mysterious expression, and slowly repeated the answer: 'It was arranged that you were to occupy a room in her house after that night?' The jury roused themselves for a grand effort, and succeeded in imparting a distinct air of suspicion to their countenances. At last Mr. Lewis's temper came into play. He cried out: 'Yes; and if I had been there the first night, I might have prevented this murder.' 'Silence, sir!' said the Judge. And now Tressamer brought out the question for which he had been preparing the way all along: 'When this arrangement was made about your living in the house, did your aunt (remember you are on your oath, sir!)--_did she happen--to--furnish--you--with--a--LATCHKEY?'_ The effect was electrical. He had brought out the last words of the question slowly one by one, and then he suddenly hurled the final word at the witness like a weapon. John Lewis instantly realized the situation. The question was tantamount to an accusation. The whole court took it in that sense, and gazed at him in deadly earnestness. He turned livid. For a moment he could hardly bring his lips to frame a syllable. At length he recovered his self-command, and thundered out: 'No, sir. May God strike me dead if she did!' The fierce earnestness of his denial produced a revulsion of feeling in the court. The jury felt that the counsel had been guilty of unfairness in making such a charge so suddenly, and, as it seemed, with such absence of grounds. The Judge was annoyed, too. Sir Daniel Buller hated sensationalism. In fact, he did not like anything which threw his own dignity into the shade. He liked to feel that he was in the star part, and that everybody else in court was merely playing up to his grand effects. He therefore refrained from rebuking the witness, and from this stage he showed himself less favourable to the counsel for the defence. But Tressamer had anticipated something of this sort, and he had a card in reserve. He went on with his cross-examination as if nothing had happened. 'You gave the prisoner into custody, I think?' 'I did.' 'You made up your mind that she was guilty, I suppose, without much thinking?' 'I thought there was absolute proof of it.' 'That's what I mean. You were anxious that she should be convicted, were you not?' 'I was anxious that she should be tried. I thought it my duty to see that this crime was punished.' 'By the conviction of the prisoner?' 'If she was guilty.' 'But you felt sure she was guilty? You were the one to accuse her, you know.' Mr. Lewis was getting irritated again. He made no answer to this suggestion, and the barrister forbore to press it, contenting himself with a meaning glance at the jury. 'You were represented at the inquest, were you not, by Messrs. Pollard?' 'Yes.' 'The gentlemen who are now conducting this prosecution--nominally on behalf of the Crown?' And with this parting shot he resumed his seat. Young Pollard instantly rose. 'My lord, the witness was anxious to explain one of his answers to my learned friend. Would your lordship allow him to do so now?' 'Yes, yes,' was his lordship's answer. The witness instantly took advantage of the permission. 'I wished to say, my lord, that the reason why I went first to see my aunt, instead of going to my sister's, was because she had befriended me when I was young. She furnished the money to start me with in Australia, and I felt it only right, in common gratitude, to come straight and thank her on my return.' Another revulsion of feeling swept over the court. The effect of Tressamer's last suggestion was obliterated. Lewis was once more in favour. Pollard had scored. His brother twitched him by the gown from behind as a hint to sit down. But the unfortunate young man must needs try and improve on his lucky shot. He summoned up a very tragic demeanour, and put the fatal question: 'And is there the smallest ground for suggesting that you were near the house or out of your hotel after ten that night?' The witness showed confusion. Instead of answering in the prompt, decided style he had hitherto shown, he hesitated for some seconds, and then said with visible embarrassment: 'No, there is none.' Pollard hastily sat down. The rules which govern the production of evidence did not permit Tressamer to put a further question to the witness, but he was skilful enough to do what accomplished the same result. He called across the barristers' table, in a perfectly audible voice: 'Is anyone from the hotel here, Mr. Pollard?' 'Not that I know of,' was the sullen answer. And now it was the judge's turn, and he proceeded to put to the witness that question which was in the mind of every person in court, but which neither of the counsel had dared to put, each fearing the answer might be unfavourable to himself. 'Tell me, Mr. Lewis, had you any special reasons--don't tell me what your reasons were--but had you any reason apart from what you were told by others for accusing the prisoner of this murder?' 'I had, my lord.' 'Did that reason arise in your mind as a consequence of anything which you saw the prisoner do, or which took place in her presence?' 'Not exactly, my lord. My aunt said to me----' The judge swiftly raised his hand with a forbidding gesture, and pursed up his lips. 'That will do. You can go.' Mr. Lewis retired, and the jury were left to wonder what the mysterious reason could be, the result on most of their minds being far more unfavourable to the prisoner than if the rules of evidence had allowed the witness to speak freely. The next witness was the butler, John Simons, who deposed to having fastened up the door at half-past ten on the night in question, and to having found the latch stuck on the following day. He further described the finding of the blood-stains on the bedroom door-handle. His cross-examination was listened to with interest. 'Has it ever occurred to you yourself to accidentally raise the latch too far in the same way?' 'Oh yes, I've often done it, sir.' 'Were you out on the evening of the first of June?' The butler, a good-natured-looking man, with a pleasant smile, but whose mind was evidently rather unhinged by the position he found himself in, looked bewildered at this, and rather frightened. The barrister hastened to reassure him. 'What I mean is this. If you had been out some time during the evening, before half-past ten, would it not have been possible for you to have accidentally left the latch in this position?' The witness looked relieved, and hastened to answer. 'Yes, of course, I might have.' Tressamer turned round to the jury to see if they appreciated his point. Then he resumed. 'You have known Miss Owen some time, I think. Tell me, have you ever noticed that she was liable to nervous headaches?' 'I have heard her say she had a headache.' 'What was the last time you heard her say so?' The witness looked puzzled, and seemed to be trying to remember. 'Perhaps I can help you,' said the barrister. 'About this very time, now; just before this happened?' 'Ah, yes, sir, now you remind me, I remember. When she didn't come down that morning, I said to Rebecca, "Very likely she's had another bad night."' '_Another_ bad night? Then she was liable to insomnia?' The witness stared. 'I beg your pardon. I mean, she sometimes did suffer from want of sleep?' 'She sometimes had bad nights, sir.' 'Exactly. And you remembered she had been having them just before this?' 'Well, no, sir; I can't say as I do remember that.' The barrister frowned impatiently. 'Well, tell me this,' he said: 'do you know what she was in the habit of doing on these occasions, when she couldn't get to sleep?' 'No, sir.' 'Did you ever hear of her going out for a walk at night?' The whole court was eagerly following this cross-examination, as the defence now began to be visible. But the answer of the witness fell like lead: 'No.' Tressamer looked deeply disappointed. He had been baffled just where he had evidently built upon success. He only put one more question. 'You had a good many opportunities of seeing your mistress and Miss Owen together. Did they always seem to you to be on friendly, affectionate terms?' 'Yes, sir, always.' 'Thank you.' This finished the butler's evidence, as Mr. Pollard wisely abstained from any re-examination. He next proceeded to call the parlourmaid, Rebecca Rees. A pretty, vain, pert-looking girl stepped into the box, and took hold of the Testament. 'Take off your glove,' said the clerk. She did so with some difficulty, as the thing had about half a dozen buttons to unfasten. Then she was sworn and proceeded to tell her story. In a shrill voice, which visibly irritated the judge, she went on, and described how she had gone to bed, how she awoke at midnight and heard a sound proceeding from below. 'What was the nature of the sound?' asked the counsel who was examining her. 'It was a groan,' was the reply, 'like as if somebody was being hurt.' The prisoner's counsel here hurriedly turned over the pages of his brief till he came to a certain place, where he made a note in the margin. 'What did you hear next?' 'I heard the prisoner going downstairs.' The Judge: 'What do you mean? Could you see her?' Witness: 'No, sir. I heard her.' Mr. Pollard: 'She means she recognised the footsteps, my lord.' The Judge: 'Don't interrupt me, please.' (_To witness_) 'Young woman, be careful. That is not the way to give evidence, as you know perfectly well. You mustn't tell us that you heard the prisoner. You heard footsteps; that's all.' (_A pause._) 'Now, Mr. Pollard, you can go on.' Mr. Pollard: 'Did you recognise the footsteps?' His lordship frowned and shrugged his shoulders. Witness: 'I thought it was Miss Owen.' Mr. Pollard: 'Well, now tell us what you did.' The girl proceeded to describe how she had got up and gone down to the front-door. 'How was it fastened?' was the next question. 'It was on the latch. The bolts were drawn back, and it wasn't locked nor yet chained.' 'Did you see whether the latch was up or down?' 'I object!' Mr. Tressamer had risen in a fresh burst of indignation. 'My lord, my friend has distinctly suggested the answer to the witness. I object to her being allowed to say anything about the latch after such a question as that.' 'I didn't intend to lead her, my lord,' said Pollard. The judge hesitated for awhile between his natural desire to hear the answer and his fear that the witness was not wholly impartial. Perhaps a slight prejudice against Tressamer's hectoring manner had something to do with his decision. 'You should have asked her whether she noticed anything about the latch,' he said at length. 'Did you?' he added, turning to the witness. 'It was _down_, sir,' she returned, answering Pollard's question rather than the judge's. The importance of the answer was chiefly in its disposing of Tressamer's suggestion that the butler might have forced the latch up. He turned round to the jury, and assumed the air of one who is being unfairly treated. But of course he could not help their seeing that the prosecution had scored a point. Rebecca's evidence was continued till she came to where she heard footsteps ascending the stairs. 'How long was this afterwards?' asked Pollard. 'About ten minutes,' 'Did you recognise those footsteps?' 'No, I didn't notice them; but I think they must have been Miss Owen's, or else I should have noticed the difference.' Tressamer ground his teeth. He was afraid to interrupt again, for fear of the effect on the minds of the jury. They are apt to think a man is losing when he interrupts too often. 'What happened next?' 'She went into the bedroom below.' 'What bedroom?' 'Her own, I suppose, or Miss Lewis's.' 'You couldn't tell which?' 'No.' 'Well, and how long was the person, whoever it was, inside?' 'About a quarter of an hour, I should think. I thought she had come in for good, and gone to bed.' The Judge (_suddenly looking up from his notes_): 'Look here, don't let me have to stop you again, or I shall do something you won't like. It's not for you to tell us what you thought. Confine yourself to answering the questions.' Mr. Pollard (_thinking the judge has finished_): 'And then what did you----' The Judge (_superbly indifferent to Mr. Pollard_): 'Do you realize that you are giving evidence in a court of justice? You must be extremely careful--extremely careful.' (_A long pause; Mr. Pollard afraid to begin again._) 'Well, do you ask her anything more?' Mr. Pollard: 'I beg your lordship's pardon. If your lordship pleases.' (_To witness_) 'After the quarter of an hour, did you hear anything more?' Witness (_now thoroughly frightened_): 'Yes.' 'What did you hear?' 'I heard her come out.' At this point the judge threw down his pen, and threw himself back in his chair. Mr. Pollard hastened to take off the edge of his lordship's wrath by reprimanding the witness himself. 'You mustn't tell us that. You don't know it was the prisoner. What was it you actually heard?' The girl now felt and looked ready to resort to tears. She really did not know what answer was safe, and prudently adopted a strictly non-committal form. 'I heard a noise below.' 'What was the noise like?' 'Like someone going downstairs.' 'Well, why didn't you say that? You heard footsteps going down?' 'Yes.' The judge took up his pen again and took down the answer. 'And did you notice the footsteps this time?' 'Yes; they were----' 'Stop! Not so fast. Answer my questions.' Mr. Pollard was by this time little less nervous than the witness. He was really utterly at a loss how to frame his next question without incurring Tressamer's wrath or the rebuke of the Bench. At last he blurted out: 'Was there anything different about the footsteps this time?' Tressamer opened his mouth, but the judge was before him this time: 'Don't answer. Really, Mr. Pollard, you are as bad as the witness. You know you ought not to put a question like that.' Then, seeing that the poor young man was quite unequal to extracting the desired evidence, his lordship quietly took over the examination himself: 'Did you notice the footsteps this time when they were going downstairs?' 'Yes, sir--my lord.' 'Did anything strike you about them?' 'Yes, my lord.' 'What?' 'They were heavier, sir, and thumpy.' 'Had you ever heard anything like it before? I mean, did they or did they not sound familiar in spite of this heaviness?' 'No, my lord; I don't remember.' 'Did you go downstairs again?' 'No, sir.' The judge turned round to the jury with complacency, and smiled as if to say, 'You see, gentlemen, how it can be done by one who knows how.' Then he asked the counsel: 'Now, Mr. Pollard, do you want anything more from this witness?' 'No, my lord, thank you.' He sat down, feeling considerably the worse for his experience, and Tressamer got up. He looked severely at the young woman for some seconds, and then suddenly asked her: 'Why do you dislike Miss Owen?' At once the court was all ears. It was one of those strokes of brilliant advocacy which few men care to venture on. It was dangerous, but in the present case it was completely successful. The witness lost countenance, stammered, and with difficulty got out a lame denial. 'I don't dislike her particular.' 'Do you like her?' 'No.' 'Did you ever have any complaint against her when you were her servant?' (He intentionally chose a phrase calculated to irritate.) 'I wasn't her servant,' was the angry reply. 'I should be very sorry to be.' 'I thought so. Tell me, you said to my learned friend that the first sound you heard on this night was like somebody being hurt, didn't you?' 'Yes, sir.' 'When did you discover that?' 'When did I discover that?' 'Yes, woman; don't echo me like that. You know what I mean.' 'I thought so at the time.' _'What!'_ The barrister assumed an expression of amaze. 'I thought so all along.' 'Then why didn't you say so all along? When you were before the magistrates, did you say anything about somebody being hurt?' 'Yes, I think so.' 'You think so! Remember you are on your oath, please, and that I have a copy before me of what you actually did say before the magistrates. When you were before them, did you say a syllable about a sound as if somebody were being hurt?' 'I don't know whether I did or not.' 'I thought so. Did you tell the magistrate that you thought it was the sound of someone in troubled sleep?' Here the barrister read from his brief. 'Yes, sir.' 'And that you thought'--here he turned over the page at which he was looking and glanced at the top of the next, so as to give the impression that he was still reading her exact words--'that the sound came from Miss Owen's room?' The witness fell into the trap. 'I dare say I did,' she answered. The judge was equally taken in. He had read the depositions, but had not remembered their contents clearly enough to check the barrister. Tressamer went to another point. Taking out his watch, he said: 'I want to test your notion of ten minutes. Will you turn round, with your back to the clock, and tell me when one minute has passed, after I have said the word "Now."' All the jurymen and most of the other persons in court took out their watches to check this experiment. The girl turned round, and Tressamer gave the word, 'Now!' 'Tick--tick--tick--tick--tick----' 'Now!' said the witness, turning quickly round. A general smile passed over the court. 'Seventeen seconds exactly, my lord,' observed Tressamer. 'The witness's ten minutes may therefore be put down as three. You have told his lordship that the last set of footsteps you heard sounded heavy when they went downstairs. Will you swear that they did not sound equally heavy coming up?' 'I didn't notice.' 'I didn't ask you if you had noticed. Don't try and shirk my question, please. Will you pledge your oath that they weren't equally heavy coming upstairs?' 'No, I won't swear it.' 'Have you any reason, except your dislike of the prisoner, for suggesting that those footsteps were hers?' The judge interposed. 'Really, Mr. Tressamer, you mustn't put it like that. She says that she didn't dislike the prisoner, and you must take her answer. I allow great latitude to counsel in your situation, but you must treat the witness fairly.' 'As your lordship pleases.' Tressamer sat down, rather glad to leave his question unanswered, as the effect thereby produced on the jury's mind would be better than if the witness had had a chance of offering her grounds for suspicion. 'Lucy Griffiths.' This was the housemaid, and her evidence contained nothing of importance. In cross-examination she admitted that she had detected no likeness between the descending footsteps heard by her and Miss Owen's. In fact, she had at first thought they sounded like a man's. The next witness was the fisherman, who stated to Mr. Pollard that he had met a female about midnight on the eventful first of June, whom he at the time believed to be the prisoner. He thought so still. His cross-examination elicited two facts: First, that he had once met Miss Owen at the same late hour before; secondly, that he had met other persons going in the same direction the same night at or about the same time. Tressamer chose to emphasize this point. 'Could you tell those gentlemen,' he said, indicating the jury, who instantly tried to look as if they had been attending, and had not long ago given up the task in despair, 'what the other people were like whom you saw?' 'Well, one of them was a man.' 'Come, that's something; but it's not much. Can't you tell us what sort of a man? Was he tall?' The jury instantly looked at Lewis. 'No; I didn't notice as how he was particular tall. Middlin' short, I should say.' 'About my height?' 'Yes; about that. Summat about your size.' Tressamer laughed, and a smile went round the court at the serious way in which the witness gave his answer. 'Well, who else did you see?' 'I see another man afore then.' 'Ah! Was he tall?' 'Why, yes; I think he was.' The jury again looked at Lewis. But that gentleman's face revealed no emotion, except a sort of sullen wrath which had overhung it ever since his appearance in the witness-box. At last, when all the other witnesses had been disposed of, the policeman was called and gave the usual routine evidence. Mr. Pollard was rash enough to ask him: 'Who came to the station to inform the police?' But his opponent at once objected, and the judge ruled the question out. Mr. Lewis's indignant declaration, therefore, which Prescott had struck out of his brief with such prompt disdain, fared equally ill in court, and was not allowed to get to the ear of the judge or jury. At last the evidence was gone through, and then the prosecuting counsel stood up and made the final announcement: 'That is the case for the Crown, my lord.' 'I will adjourn for half an hour,' observed the judge, getting on his feet. The whole court rose with him, and in a few minutes the entire place was empty. CHAPTER VII. HALF AN HOUR. Scrambling, rushing, hurrying, squeezing, talking, laughing, and sighing, the great throng poured out of the building and dispersed down the streets of Abertaff. One topic was on every tongue. The fate of the prisoner was the sole thing discussed. They weighed the evidence, they repeated it, they distorted it. Some were violently in favour of the prisoner, and considered half the witnesses to be committing perjury. Others were violently against her, and could not see, so they professed, a shadow of doubt in the case from first to last. Others, again, in complete doubt as to how the case would end, wisely declined to commit themselves till they had heard more of the defence. Then, again, these parties were subdivided into groups. There was the ignorant group, who knew nothing about the case, and went about asking questions of their wiser neighbours. There was the mysterious group, who suspected many things, but said nothing, contenting themselves with shaking their heads in corners, and suggesting that not half the real motives of the parties to the affair had come out at all. And there was the well-informed group of those who had watched the whole thing from first to last, and knew more, far more, about it than the counsel on either side, or the criminal either, for that matter. And they were not churlish in bestowing their information, either. There were the Lewisite partisans, who knew exactly the value of the jewels to a halfpenny, and how they were kept in a box under the bed, and how the prisoner had carried them off by stealth, and buried them somewhere in the sands of Newton Bay. Some of these, the more charitably disposed, could go even further than this. They explained how it was that the prisoner had never meant to commit the murder at all, but simply to steal the jewels, but had been interrupted in the act by the unexpected waking of the deceased woman. They grew impressive as they pictured the elder woman suddenly roused from sleep by the midnight robber, and the emotions of that robber detected in the act of guilt. They could tell you how she started back in terror, and then, realizing that ruin was upon her, succumbed to temporary frenzy, and with the weapon which she had brought to open the jewel-chest dealt the fatal blow to her unhappy victim. Others, less lenient in their views, had obtained quite different details. They could relate numerous previous attempts of the prisoner on the life of her benefactress. They knew how she had sought to introduce poison into her food, from which she was only saved by a miraculous chance, which caused her to be summoned from the table just as she was about to taste the fatal dish. Also how she had on one occasion led her victim along the cliff with the well-formed purpose of pushing her over the edge; only the curate happened to come along and meet them, and accompanied them till the opportunity was gone. The Owenite section, on the other hand, had their account, equally authentic, and, if possible, more minute and graphic than the other. They would tell you more about their villain, Lewis, than he himself could possibly have remembered. They took you back to his childhood. They started you with the well-known story of his beating his little sister, the sister in the North whom he had refused to go and see. They explained the causes which led to his expulsion from school after school. They tracked him to Australia, and unearthed dark secrets in his life out there which would have made the bushranger Kelly reject him from his historic gang. Finally, they brought him back to England a ruined desperado, intent on getting at his relative's wealth by fair means or foul. The robbery of her jewels was only part of his scheme. By killing her he obtained the whole of her wealth at once. Then a victim became necessary--a stalking-horse to mislead the minions of justice, and whose punishment would ensure his own safety. He was thus a double murderer. So the tongues wagged. Meanwhile the object of these rumours had made his way round in a towering passion to the seat from which his solicitor was trying to get away. 'What does this mean?' he cried, as soon as he got near enough to speak without being heard by others. 'Are you playing me false? Where is Mr. Prescott?' 'He was called away into the other court,' said Mr. James Pollard, the barrister's brother, who was a partner with his father in the Porthstone firm. 'He ought not to have gone. Your brother managed the case wretchedly. I wasn't allowed to say the most important thing of all.' 'My brother did the best he could. No one could dream that Prescott would desert us like this. I shall never give him another brief, I promise you.' By this time they had got outside the door of the court-house. They turned towards a hotel close by, where a general luncheon was put on the table for the convenience of people having business in the assize-courts. The civil court had risen a few minutes before the other, and the place was crowded with solicitors, witnesses, jurymen, and the general public. 'Look here, Mr. Pollard,' Lewis said, as they fought their way into the room, 'I could have proved that about the jewels up to the hilt if I had been allowed. Why, my aunt was speaking to me about them that very night, and she said Miss Owen knew of them.' 'And why on earth didn't you tell me all this before?' retorted the solicitor. 'I thought I had.' 'Thought you had! Goodness me! that's just like you laymen. You keep back the chief points in a case, and then you're angry with us because we don't guess them by instinct. Why didn't you tell the judge this when he was examining you?' 'Because it wasn't said in the prisoner's presence.' 'Pooh! Why, it was evidence of motive. But there, it's no good trying to explain the law of evidence to you. If any thing's gone wrong, you have yourself to thank for it--a good deal, that's all. What shall you take?' And they fell to on the refreshments before them. Meanwhile the barristers, whose self-imposed code forbade them to enter a public hotel room in a town where the assizes were being held, had straggled off, some to the County Club, and others to the common-room reserved for their especial use in the chief hotel of the place. Among the latter was Tressamer, who found Prescott awaiting him anxiously, and trying, with poor success, to get through the wing of a fowl. He (Prescott) looked pale and dejected; but Tressamer rushed into the place in a state of exaggerated buoyancy, and loudly called for a bottle of champagne. 'George, how goes it?' cried his friend. 'All went merry as a marriage-bell,' returned the other. 'Have no fear; keep up your heart, old man. Leave it to me; I'll get her off. Much obliged to you for going away, though. Young Pollard did come some croppers, I can tell you. Buller's against us, of course, on the evidence; but what do I care? I'll get the jury, see if I don't. I'll make a speech this afternoon the like of which hasn't often been heard in this dead-and-alive hole. Lewis, beware! Here's confusion to the guilty, and safety to the innocent!' He had rattled on in a jerky, excited, nervous manner, and he wound up by drinking off nearly a tumblerful of champagne. Prescott could hardly make him out. He feared the strain of the last few weeks was unhinging his friend's mind. 'Gently,' he said, remonstrating; 'you must keep cool, or you will spoil everything. Beware of old Buller. When he is giving you the most rope, he is getting ready to come down on you most heavily at the end. I think you'll find it a weak jury. They will do pretty well as the judge tells them.' 'Don't you be afraid, Charlie,' retorted the other in the same unnaturally careless strain; 'it's my case, and I know how to manage it. I've sworn to save her, and, by God! I'll do it, if I have to declare I did the thing myself! By Jove, didn't I touch up that scoundrel in the witness-box, though! You saw me, Beltrope?' He called to another barrister, who had been present in court the whole morning. 'Yes, I know,' answered Beltrope; 'but you'd better be awfully careful, Tressamer. So far as I could see, your line of defence is that Lewis must have done it. Now, unless you're prepared with some very strong evidence against him, you'd far better change that tack before it's too late. You'll have old Buller dead against you, as Prescott says, and, I dare say, the jury too. Whatever you do, don't leave it in such a way that they must convict one or the other.' 'Rubbish! You don't understand,' replied Tressamer. 'Wait till you've heard my speech, that's all. Well, I must be off.' He drank some more champagne. 'I want to have a wash just to cool my head.' And he darted out of the room to go upstairs. The other barristers looked at each other and exchanged meaning glances. They did not like to say much out loud before Prescott, who was known to be Tressamer's friend; but they whispered together, and the tenor of their whispers was precisely that of Prescott's own reflections. Tressamer, they agreed, had lost his head through over-excitement, and would probably create a scene in court that afternoon. So anxious did Prescott feel, that he at last resolved to bare his own feelings to his friend in the hope of thereby sobering him. He accordingly went up to his bedroom, where he found him with his head in a basin of water, and addressed him in very grave accents: 'George, you must listen to me. You have told me that you love Eleanor Owen, and I suppose, as she has you to defend her, that she returns your love. Now, I have a confession to make to you. I love her, too.' 'What! You, Charles!' He was certainly sobered for the moment. 'Yes. You know I saw something of her as a child. I was fond of her then, I recollect. But to-day, when I saw her, so beautiful, so innocent, in that dreadful place, I found another feeling overmastering me. Oh, do not be afraid! She shall never know it. I shall not try to take her from you. I am not the sort of man to rob his friend. But, George, let me say this to you: that if anything--oh, the thought is horrible!--if any miscarriage of justice should occur, I shall blame you. I shall never forgive you if she comes to harm through your means. Be careful. Oh, great Heaven, man, do your best, your very best! It is the crisis of our lives--of all our lives. Beware how you fail to prove yourself worthy of your trust.' And without waiting for an answer he turned away, and hastened back to his own work in the Nisi Prius Court. In spite of the confident opinions expressed by the barristers, the judge's mind was less firmly settled than they supposed. Sir Daniel Buller was in the judges' private room at the court-house, sharing a dish of cutlets with Sir John Wiseman. And, of course, they were discussing the case. 'I tell you what it is, Wiseman,' the first judge was saying, 'there is something in this case that hasn't come out yet. So far, there has been absolutely no real defence. Waiter!' The waiter darted into the room. 'Look at this cutlet! It's burnt to a cinder. Take it away. And tell your cook, with my compliments, that it's always better to have a thing underdone than overdone, because if it's not cooked enough you can always do it more, but if it's cooked too much you can't do it less. D'you hear?' The waiter bowed low and retired, deeply impressed with the profound wisdom displayed in these observations. 'You know, if that man who's defending her--what's his name: Tressamer?--thinks he's going to get her off by attacking Lewis, he makes a mistake. I shall go for him if he tries it on.' 'Most improper--most improper,' assented Sir John. 'I don't know what the Bar's coming to, I don't indeed! These young men are throwing over all the old traditions. The judges will really have to do something.' 'You see, Lewis has acted a perfectly natural and straightforward part. He was bound to do what he did.' 'What sort of a girl is she? because that will make a good deal of difference with the jury.' 'I don't quite agree with you,' answered Sir Daniel. 'My experience is that in a case of this kind the jury are sobered by their sense of responsibility too much to be influenced by a thing like that. It's the outside public afterwards who get up petitions and kick up a row in the press about a pretty woman.' 'Then she is pretty?' said the other. 'You old sinner!' retorted Sir Daniel playfully. 'It's well for the interests of justice that you're not on the jury. Yes, begad! Wiseman, she's one of the loveliest creatures I've ever tried. Waiter! Where are those tomatoes?' The tomatoes were brought in and hurriedly partaken of, as the time was running out. 'I suppose you'll sum up for a conviction, then?' questioned the other judge, as he rose and put on his wig. 'No, I shan't,' said Sir Daniel, helping his brother on with the purple-coloured garment which is worn in presiding over the civil court. 'I shall just leave it to the jury. I don't feel a bit satisfied, and I'm very glad, for once in my life, that I have got a jury to take the decision off my shoulders.' And with these words he drew his own scarlet gown around him and, grasping a small square piece of silk in his left hand, strode back to his seat in court. At his entrance the whole assemblage rose, including the prisoner, who had been brought back a minute before. Then a start of horror ran through them, and Eleanor's calmness for a moment gave way in a faint gasp. For the object which the judge had just laid on the desk beside him was--the Black Cap. CHAPTER VIII. THE DEFENCE. 'May it please your lordship. Before I go into the case for the prisoner, I have to submit that the Crown has not produced sufficient evidence to warrant a conviction. 'It has been laid down by the authority of Lord Hale, which your lordship will find quoted on page 276 of _Archbold_ that no man should ever be convicted of murder or manslaughter on circumstantial evidence alone, unless the body has been found; and in a comparatively recent case--_Regina v. Hopkins_----' 'Yes, I know that is the law, Mr. Tressamer,' said the judge, interrupting him; 'but how do you say the body has not been found? The prosecution have identified the hand.' 'I submit that is not sufficient, my lord.' 'The coroner's inquest was held upon it,' called out the counsel for the prosecution, who was decidedly taken by surprise at this unusual objection. Tressamer treated the interruption with contempt. 'The coroner is hardly an authority to quote to this court. Your lordship sees my point is this. Of course the finding of the hand is some evidence of some crime. But it is nowise decisive. The deceased, or, rather, the person said to be deceased, might have cut off her own hand. We have no _conclusive_ evidence that she is really dead.' 'But what do you want? Do you mean that in every case the entire body should be found?' 'Oh no, my lord. If some vital part were discovered, and sufficiently identified, I should say that was enough to go upon. But what Lord Hale means, I take it, is this: that where you are going upon circumstantial evidence--as in this case--where no one saw the crime committed at all, then you must have conclusive evidence from some other source, namely, the dead body.' 'But that is not conclusive. That might be the result of suicide.' 'Still, it affords a very strong presumption. In any case, there is the rule, laid down by Lord Hale, and acted upon ever since.' 'I know, Mr. Tressamer; I am not disputing the law. The only question in my mind is whether this case is not taken out of it by the production of what is part of the body. Of course, I will leave it to the jury to say whether they are satisfied that this is the deceased's hand, if that is any use to you.' 'No, my lord, I don't know that I can hope to contest that. But this is a case of life and death, and I certainly would strongly urge your lordship to consider my point.' The judge got up. 'I will just go and ask my brother Wiseman what he thinks,' he said. 'Personally, I am afraid I cannot go with you.' He went out, and Tressamer sat down in a state of intense agitation. He dared not look round at the dock; but others did, and saw, to their surprise, that the prisoner seemed indifferent to what had just passed. Eleanor did not want to get off on a law point. Without a real, full acquittal her life, as she had told Tressamer, would be too wretched to be worth preserving. And even an acquittal would not be enough while the mystery of her friend's death was left unexplained. Only the full clearing up of the whole story, only the exposure of the real criminal, could bring peace back into her life. She showed no disappointment, therefore, when the judge returned, with a grave face, and took his seat, saying: 'The trial must proceed. My brother Wiseman inclines to your view, but I am dead against it. I will, of course, reserve the point for the Court for Crown Cases, if you desire.' 'If your lordship pleases,' said Tressamer. This was exactly what he had wanted. He now had the chance of getting an acquittal from the jury before him, and, if that failed, of succeeding on the point reserved in the court above. He rose and said: 'I have one witness to call as to the state of the prisoner's health. I shall, therefore, say nothing now, but call my witness, and address the jury after. Alfred Benjamin James.' A respectably-dressed man stepped into the witness-box. 'You are a chemist, carrying on business at Porthstone. And you have known the prisoner some time?' 'All her life, sir.' 'Now, have you advised her recently as to the state of her health?' 'I have.' 'Will you just tell us briefly what she has spoken to you about?' 'For some time before the day of the murder she had been unwell. She came to me and asked me to give her something to make her sleep at night. I persuaded her to do without anything, and to take a walk before going to bed instead.' 'Yes, and what else?' 'The last night but one before the murder she came to me complaining of nervous headache. I gave her something for it and advised her to go for long walks, two or three miles or more, so as to tire herself out before going to bed. She said she had mislaid her latchkey lately, but would ask Miss Lewis to let her have another, as she thought Miss Lewis had a spare one.' This statement caused the jury to prick up their ears. Even they had realized by this time that something in the case turned upon a latchkey. No further questions were put to the witness by Tressamer, and Pollard saw no opening for cross-examination. The former, therefore, at once began his speech. 'May it please your lordship: Gentlemen of the jury----' The counsel paused a moment, shook his robe out of his way, clenched his fists upon the table in front of him, and bent forward towards the jury with stern and solemn brow. 'I shall not weary you with the platitudes usual on occasions like this. I shall say nothing to you about banishing from your minds all you may have heard or read in the newspapers about this case, for I am sure it is unnecessary. 'Nor shall I say anything about the weight of responsibility which rests upon my shoulders, because, after all, what is my responsibility to yours? If I make any mistake, if I fail after doing my best, I shall have the consolation of knowing that I am in no way to blame, I have not to answer for the result. 'But you have! In your hands are life and death! The hangman is your instrument; the judge upon the bench is but your assistant. Seek not to shirk your liability; do not trust to others to shield you. On the way in which you discharge your duty to-day depends the most solemn and awful of all considerations--a human life. If you by any prejudice, by any weakness, by any deference to superstition or authority, give an innocent fellow-creature to the tomb, it had been better for you that you had never been born!' The twelve men in the box shifted themselves uneasily under this indignant apostrophe. They had expected to be cajoled. They found themselves threatened. The rest of those present looked on amazed, and held their breath to listen. The speaker seemed perfectly indifferent to the impression he was creating around him. He glanced at neither the judge nor the prisoner, but fixed his searching eye upon the dozen men he was addressing. 'You know your duty as well as I do. You know you must not give a verdict upon suspicion, no, not though that suspicion were as dark as Erebus, as heavy as lead. You must have proof. You must have certainty. You must know how this crime was done, and why and wherefore, or you must acquit the prisoner.' It is only under great provocation that a judge will interrupt the counsel for the defence in a case of life and death, but Sir Daniel Buller frowned and fidgeted as he listened to this extreme view of a jury's duties. However, he reflected that he would have the last word. He could afford to wait till the summing-up. Meanwhile he took up his pen and made a note. 'Now, gentlemen, let me say this to you, and let me enforce it with all the earnestness I can command--the fact that a murder has been committed is no evidence whatever against the prisoner at the bar. 'No one denies that the crime has been committed. To do so were absurd. Elderly ladies do not disappear mysteriously in the night like this unless somebody has an interest in making them disappear. The whole question for you is this--had the prisoner any such interest? 'Something has been said in this case about jewels. A question--a shamefully leading and improper question--was put by the counsel for the prosecution, the junior counsel--who seems to have brought to his work a bitterness and an amount of prejudice against the unhappy prisoner which is fortunately rarely met with in a case of this kind; a demeanour which presents a contrast, indeed, to the moderate and judicious tone adopted by my learned friend Mr. Prescott, whom I was sorry to see summoned elsewhere--a question, as I was saying, was put to the prosecutor Lewis, who was only too ready to take a sinister hint, with a view of making him swear that the prisoner knew something about those jewels, about which so much prejudice had been imported into this case. Gentlemen, you know nothing about jewels. No evidence has been put before you to-day as to anything of the sort. So far as you or I can tell, the prisoner was never aware of the existence of such things. We are bound to assume--you are bound by your oaths to assume--that there was no such motive to operate upon the prisoner's mind. What motive was there, then? 'Gentlemen, from the beginning to the end of this case not one motive has been suggested, not one syllable has been uttered from first to last, to account for the theory which you are asked to accept, that a young, beautiful, well-cared-for, and well-brought-up girl has suddenly, without the smallest provocation, developed the instincts of a cannibal, and committed a shocking and ferocious murder under circumstances which would revolt the most bloodthirsty of savages.' Every word was emphasized by look and gesture. Every word went home to those who heard it. The crowded Bar stared in astonishment: they had not believed their colleague to possess such force. But he went on with hardly a pause. 'You have been told that this is a prosecution on behalf of the Crown. I deny it. Technically it is so, of course; but who is the real prosecutor? Who has been the moving spirit all along--if not the prosecutor, then the persecutor? Who has lost, or professes to have lost, his wretched jewels? Who, the moment he heard that the crime was discovered, turned round and hurled his brutal accusation at this helpless girl? Who rushed off to lodge his information, so as to be beforehand in case any information were to be lodged against him? Who instructed the solicitors at the inquest? Who gave evidence there and at the police-court? Who has been hand in glove with the prosecuting solicitors all along? Who is sitting by their side at this moment, without a particle of decent shame?' This furious burst of invective seemed to fairly overwhelm the subject of it. He made a movement to go away, but the solicitor restrained him by a whisper in his ear. 'Gentlemen, I am here to defend the prisoner. I am not here to attack anyone else. I do not wish to do so. Would to God that I could shut my eyes to the fact that a terrible murder has been done! But I cannot, and you cannot. Someone did that deed. Someone who had a motive for his act treacherously murdered and brutally mangled that old, feeble, defenceless woman. I ask you to say it was not the prisoner. I ask no more. 'In the old days it would have been different. It was once the law that when a prisoner was accused of murder by a coroner's inquest, then the jury in this court were not entitled to bring in a verdict of acquittal unless they at the same time, and by the same verdict, indicated the person who was really guilty. If that were still the law--and I am glad it is not--but if it were, I should not hesitate for one moment in pointing out to you at least one person who is more likely to have been guilty of this crime than Eleanor Owen. 'I should ask you, in the famous Ciceronian phrase, _Cui bono_? For whose profit was this murder? You have been told by a spiteful servant-girl, whom you may believe for aught I care, that Miss Lewis once promised to remember the prisoner in her will. But did she? In the will which has been proved--and if there was any other will it has been destroyed by the same criminal hands that dyed themselves in blood--in a will dated two years ago, there is not one stiver, not one half-farthing left to Eleanor Owen. But the whole of the testatrix's property, amounting, I believe, to between twenty and forty thousand pounds, is given unconditionally to her beloved nephew, John Lewis!' What a depth of sarcasm on the word 'beloved' as the barrister brought it out! The object of this terrible attack fairly writhed in his seat. 'Mind,' resumed the speaker, 'I am not responsible for the suggestion that this crime was committed for the sake of profiting under this poor woman's will. That suggestion came from the other side, prompted, I dare say, by the man Lewis himself. What applies to the prisoner applies to him. As far as motive is concerned--and I am now dealing solely with the question of motive--everything is against the prosecutor, and everything is in favour of his victim. 'And now to examine more closely the evidence, such as it is, of the way in which this crime was brought about. It must have been done after ten that night. So far I agree with the prosecution. Now, where is the evidence as to the prisoner's doings that night? 'We know--we have it from the witnesses for the Crown, and from the respectable chemist, James--that she had been unwell, and had been in the habit of taking midnight walks for some time previously. She took one on this particular night. I do not deny it--I admit it. I demand of you to believe it. She went out at twelve, or rather before, let us say, just as the spiteful servant-girl told you. She went out, leaving the door latched, but not bolted, and she walked in an easterly direction along the shore, where the fisherman met her. 'And I want you to note here for a moment how the evidence for the prosecution has been coloured even in small things. As you have heard, the body, or rather the hand, was found next day at the entrance of Newton Bay. Now, as most of you know, Newton Bay lies to the east of Porthstone, some two miles further along the coast. When the fisherman, Evan Thomas, met the prisoner, she was nowhere near Newton Bay, and she had not the smallest intention, so far as we know, of going there. She was simply strolling up and down the Porthstone Esplanade, and her face happened to be turned towards the east when she was met by him. Yet, how is his evidence put before you? "I met her. She was going in the direction of Newton Bay." Gentlemen, I say that is a poisoned answer. It is a poisonous suggestion to your minds that the prisoner was actually going to Newton Bay--was making for it at the time. Why didn't they say that she was going towards the tennis-ground, or the Grand Hotel, or the bathing-place? All those lay in the same direction, and there is not a tittle of evidence to show, there is not the smallest reason to suppose, that she ever went a yard beyond those places. 'That is how the prosecution has been conducted throughout. That wicked servant, who practically admitted that she nursed a dislike to her young mistress, got into that box, I put it to you, for the deliberate purpose of making the case against her as black as she could. In reality her evidence was strongly in the prisoner's favour, as I shall point out to you. But she, too, was instructed, or was taught by her own evil nature, to so distort the facts as to make them bear an appearance against the unhappy girl who is on trial for her life. 'First, we have the incident of the groan. On that subject I ask you to accept her first story, that it was a mere troubled exclamation in sleep, if it was really heard at all, which I may be permitted to doubt. For when a witness exhibits such recklessness and malice and wilful perversion of the truth in a case of this solemn character, I cannot willingly believe that any jury of Englishmen will consent to take away a human life on such testimony. 'Then we come to the incident of prisoner's going out. Good heavens! what colouring is put into a simple incident like that! The prisoner, as we now know, and as this wretched woman doubtless knew perfectly well, often went out at night. She suffered from some nervous attack, accompanied by insomnia, and the chemist, Mr. James, whom the counsel on the other side, with all his bitterness, dared not cross-examine--Mr. James told you that he had himself advised her to take these walks at night. Do you believe him? Do you think a respectable tradesman--I may almost call him a professional man--would come into the box and perjure himself on such a subject? Hardly. It would be too much to expect. I do not think that even my learned friend will ask you to say that Mr. James has committed perjury, though I have no doubt at all that Lewis would like to have it suggested.' There was an intense bitterness in the way in which he brought out Lewis's name. Unconsciously the jury began to be influenced by it, and to look at Lewis each time he was referred to with undisguised aversion. 'Yet how this simple incident is magnified and invested with importance and mystery by the other side--by Lewis and his friends! They tell you how the servant awoke at midnight--you know it is an absurd trifle, but the word "midnight" sounds so much more solemn and dreadful than the words "twelve o'clock p.m."--how she woke at midnight and heard a door open--as if people didn't always open doors when they wanted to go out! How she got up quietly--perhaps you may be inclined to say treacherously--and stole downstairs. How she had recognised the footsteps as those of Miss Owen. How she heard the front-door go, and finally found it unfastened, except for the latch. And all as if something very dreadful had taken place, instead of the ordinary incident of a young lady going out for an hour to walk off a headache! 'And, after all, what does it come to? Why, it sounds ridiculous, but the whole end and result of all this is to prove the very thing which I am most anxious to have proved on behalf of the prisoner--namely, that she was out of the house when this murder was committed. They have tried to incriminate the prisoner, and they have ended in proving an unimpeachable alibi!' He stopped to let his words sink into the minds of the jury, and everyone in court took advantage of the break to change their positions and breathe more freely. Whispers were exchanged, and the feeling began to prevail that a good point had been made, and the prisoner might very likely get off. 'With what happened after that the prisoner has nothing to do. Mr. Lewis and his friends do not seem to realize, what I hope you will realize, that the fact of footsteps being heard a few minutes after is the strongest point in the prisoner's favour. Why, if no one else had been heard to enter the house on that night, it would have looked bad for her. But that is just what the prosecution, in their blind mismanagement, have proved. They have shown out of the mouth of their own witness that someone did come in; someone who had been waiting outside ready to come in, and who took advantage of Miss Owen's exit to slip in by means of a latchkey which he had found, or stolen, or borrowed from the deceased. 'Now you have the clue. This girl, who stated that ten minutes had elapsed, when it must have been only three, to judge by her notions of time in other matters, this same girl wanted to insinuate that the footsteps she heard the second time were the prisoner's. Gentlemen, I ask you frankly not to believe it. I ask you to discount her evidence by the evident ill-feeling she manifested. I ask you to believe that the last footsteps were those of the murderer, and that they were heavier because they were a man's. 'What else is there against the prisoner? I ask, what else? She came down late the next morning, forsooth! That is the reason why you are asked to send her in her youth and beauty to a felon's doom. Incredible! Monstrous! As if we all did not constantly get up late, for some reason or another. As if a person who had been out late the night before would not naturally oversleep herself. Why, if she had committed a crime she would have taken particular care to be down early. She would have tried to throw off suspicion by acting in her ordinary way. I am ashamed of answering such arguments. 'The latchkey incident is dead in her favour.' Here the jury, who had shown signs of weariness after their long sitting, brightened up again. They had made up their minds that this was the real point in the case, and were honestly anxious for light upon it. 'Two things are clear--first, that the person who last came into the house, and did up the fastenings, was the prisoner; second, that the prisoner had a latchkey, whether her own one found again or one which she borrowed from Miss Lewis. Now, if the prisoner had committed this murder, let us see what she would naturally have done in trying to throw suspicion off herself. 'In the first place, I say she would not have fastened up the front-door. To do so was practically saying that the crime was not the work of an outsider. No, she would have left the door wide open, as if the criminal were some common robber who had carried off his booty and run away. In the second place, she would have thrown away her latchkey, so as to make it appear that she had not been outside. These points are so important that, with your permission, I will repeat them again.' Anyone who has had experience of juries knows how difficult it is to get into their minds a process of logical reasoning. To the trained lawyer such a thing is not so hard, but even to him it is far easier to master reasoning from a book than by word of mouth. Oral teaching has its advantages, doubtless, but few things are harder than to convey ideas of any subtlety by means of speech to an audience. Tressamer patiently set to work, and for twenty minutes he repeated and explained all that he had been saying. When he thought that the jury really understood him he returned to where he had started from, and re-directed their suspicions on Lewis. 'Before I sit down I think I ought to suggest to you how this crime really was done. You have heard the story of the prosecution. Now let me put to you my story on behalf of the prisoner. 'The deceased woman was wealthy. About her jewels we know nothing, and I do not refer to them, but she had other property to a large extent. The whole of this was to go at her death to a nephew. For two years she lived in this house alone night after night with the prisoner, and nothing happened. At last the nephew who was to inherit her wealth suddenly returned from the other end of the world. That night she met her death. 'At twelve o'clock her companion, who suffered from sleeplessness, went out for a long walk. Hardly had she closed the door behind her than the murderer stole up to it and made his way in. Probably he had a latchkey. We know that Miss Owen had mislaid hers. It may have been that. We also know that Miss Lewis had a spare one, and that her nephew was to take up his residence in the house on the very next morning. So that, mark this, if the murder had been deferred for one more day he would have fallen under the same suspicion as Miss Owen, and probably a good deal more. 'The murderer entered, as I said, by means of his latchkey. But it was the first time he had used it. He did not know the peculiarity of the latch. He raised it too high, and it stuck. 'Not staying to notice this, in his wickedness, he passed into the house and upstairs. He tried the door of his aunt's--I mean the deceased's--room. It was, of course, locked, as it was found the following morning. He went into the next, Miss Owen's, which he knew to be empty, having seen her leave the house. Through this he passed into the adjoining chamber. Beneath the bed, in all probability, lay a chest of valuables. Charity would fain suggest that his first intention was merely to steal these, and that the blacker crime was, in a sense, forced upon him by the awakening of the sleeper. The secrets of that terrible night will never be known. We cannot say what passed in that room between that strong, evil man and that weak old woman. We only know the result. A blow was struck, perhaps blows. A life was taken, and the robber became a murderer as well. 'The next step was to remove the body. For what reason it matters not. It is an impulse with all murderers to conceal the traces of their guilt. They dig holes in the earth and bury it, they carry it into the wilderness and hide it, they sink it in the depths of the sea. But the earth will not contain it, the wilderness betrays the ghastly secret, the waves cast up the horror.' His voice rang through the crowded court like that of one possessed, and every man trembled. 'He lowered it through the window, where the traces were found next day. Then, clutching up his booty, and forgetting, it may be, that all would be his erelong, or possibly not feeling sufficiently sure of his heirship, he hurried down, with agitated tread, so that even the half-sleeping girl in the room above could discern a something strange about his walk. 'Then he carried off the body, mutilated for some mysterious and terrible reason which may never be revealed--possibly to lighten his hideous load; but let me spare you these shocking considerations. (All this, remember, Lewis asks you to think was done by a young girl not twenty years of age.) 'You know the rest. You know how the fisherman saw others that night, one of them a tall man, going in the direction of the bay where the remains were washed ashore within twenty-four hours. One only point I have to notice. Whether in carelessness, or whether in hellish malice, that man left a damning stain upon the door-handle in the prisoner's room. I say I know not whether he did this in his haste and guilty dread, or whether he did this with a deliberate and diabolical intention of throwing suspicion upon a hapless, innocent girl, whom he has since pursued through every stage of this history, and under every form of law, with the persistence of a machine, and the passion of a bloodhound!' The speaker's voice vibrated with the fury which he threw into this denunciation. The jury trembled under his eye, as he rolled it fiercely from face to face. As for the object of these fearful invectives, he turned red and white by turns, and would have interrupted over and over again if he had not been almost forcibly restrained by the solicitor for the prosecution. Tressamer went on, after a moment's pause to recover from his exhaustion: 'And Eleanor Owen, what of her? What was she doing meanwhile? Pacing the shore, and trying to soothe her throbbing head with the medicine of the sea breezes. At last she returns, tired and abstracted. She puts her key into the latch, the door yields before her; she notices nothing, but comes in, closes and fastens the door behind her, and retires to rest. And there she sleeps the sleep of innocence, knowing nothing, dreaming nothing, of the dark shadow which hangs over her head, nothing of the foul deed which has so recently been perpetrated under that roof, nothing of the frightful stain upon the empty bed next door, nothing of that yet more appalling stain which will meet her eyes when she attempts to pass out of her own room into that. 'The next morning she awakes. Just as she is dressed, the servants rush up; the whole horror bursts upon her. She is stunned. She does not realise what has happened, or how it concerns her. She finds herself seized and dragged away by this devoted nephew and his creatures. And thus, gentlemen, in that state of darkness and bewilderment, has she rested ever since, and must rest till your just verdict sends her forth once more into the light of day, and the verdict of another jury, not less courageous and righteous than yourselves, sends the real author of this hidden tragedy to the doom he has now doubly deserved.' He sat down. But there was no applause in court, as happens so often at the end of a speech on the prisoner's behalf. All present felt that they had listened not so much to a plea for Eleanor Owen as to an accusation against John Lewis. The barrister had put it too plainly for any man to be deceived. It was not a mere question of guilt or innocence. The issue now before the jury was--which of these two is guilty? CHAPTER IX. THE JUDGE. When evidence is called on behalf of the prisoner, counsel for the prosecution enjoys the right of reply. This right young Pollard rose to exercise, and, as is often the case with beginners at the Bar, he did much better as a speaker than he had done as an examiner. As soon as he was fairly on his feet, his leader came into court and took his seat. The other case in which he had been engaged had come to an end shortly before this, but Prescott had purposely lingered outside, so as to avoid the duty of replying, which would have been assigned to him had he returned in time. As he had heard nothing of the case, nor of Tressamer's defence, the course he adopted was the best even for the interests of the prosecution--in fact, it was the course usually followed under parallel circumstances. The first part of Pollard's reply was simply a recapitulation of the evidence. Afterwards he made an attempt to answer the attack on Lewis. 'Gentlemen,' he said, 'my learned friend has practically charged Mr. Lewis with this murder. On what grounds has he done so? What evidence has he brought against Mr. Lewis? Mr. Lewis is the heir of the deceased, it is true, but then he is her nephew. When he came back from Australia, he went at once to see her. He has told you, in answer to my questions, that this was out of gratitude to her for her kindness to him when he was a young man. There is nothing suspicious, therefore, in his going to her before his sister, who lived in the North of England, moreover, probably a long way off. 'Then my learned friend has laid stress on the fact that this crime occurred the night of his arrival. But I submit, gentlemen, that it would have been more natural if he had abstained from it the first night, and done it some time after, if he did it at all. I might suggest to you that the prisoner did it the night Mr. Lewis arrived on purpose to throw suspicion on him.' And so on. Finally he closed in a form of words which even the most inexperienced prosecutor has by heart. 'In conclusion, gentlemen, I ask you to banish from your minds every trace of prejudice, and to forget everything which you have read elsewhere about this case, and to determine it solely on what has passed here to-day. If the evidence you have heard leaves a fair and reasonable doubt in your minds as to the prisoner's guilt, no doubt you will acquit her; but if that evidence is so strong and convincing that you are morally satisfied that the deceased woman met her death at the prisoner's hands, then it is your duty to return a verdict of guilty.' With this he sat down, and his brother leant over and congratulated him, while the other solicitors began to consider whether there might not be something in the young man after all. And now it was Sir Daniel Buller's turn, and all eyes were directed upon him as he settled himself in his chair, with his face towards the jury, who strove to catch his lordship's eye, and conveyed as much appreciation as possible into their faces. 'Gentlemen of the jury, it now becomes my duty to recall your attention to the facts of this case, and to give you what assistance I can towards finding your verdict. You have been told by counsel on both sides that this is a grave and important case. Gentlemen, every case which comes before a criminal court is grave and important. In this case, it is true, the life of a fellow creature is at stake, but that consideration ought not to affect you one way or the other in bringing to bear upon the evidence before you that impartiality and cautious discrimination which it is the duty of a jury to apply indifferently to every matter that may come before them.' A slight sensation of relief in the jury-box. Among the audience an impression that his lordship is going against the prisoner. 'The duties of a jury in a case like this are exceedingly simple, but perhaps it may be advisable that I should briefly remind you in what they consist. And, first of all, it is, I am sure, unnecessary for me to insist on the absolute necessity of your resolutely putting out of your minds every particle of knowledge, and every impression of whatever kind, which you may have collected in regard to this case from sources external to the inquiry conducted here to-day. It is, I feel, equally superfluous for me to caution you against attaching the smallest weight to any evidence which I was compelled in the course of this case to exclude. The law of evidence is the accumulated experience of the ablest intellects that have adorned that Bench of which I am so unworthy an occupant.' (Strong impulse on part of jury to murmur 'No,' manfully suppressed.) 'And in applying it I can only say that I have never personally laboured under any hesitation as to its general soundness, though I may occasionally doubt as to its applicability to particular instances. 'You will remember that allusion was made by the prosecution in their opening to the supposed existence of certain valuables, the property of the deceased. It is my duty to tell you, speaking as judge in this case, with all the evidence before me, that there is not sufficient evidence that any such valuables were in the deceased's possession at the time when she came to her unhappy end, and that in any case there is not a particle of evidence that the prisoner had ever heard, or was even remotely aware, of the existence of the articles in question. 'Whether they were there or no is, of course, immaterial to the case. The jeweller, whose name, I believe, was John--Thomas--no----' 'William Williams, my lord,' called out Pollard. 'Ah, thank you, Mr. Pollard! But it is of no consequence, because, as I am explaining to you, gentlemen, his evidence really ought not to affect your minds one way or the other. Even if deceased bought these things, there is no evidence that she kept them by her. She may have disposed of them in some manner of which we know nothing. The fact that they have been missing since her decease affords in itself some ground for supposing that she did so part with the control over this property. But, as I must repeat, what became of it is perfectly immaterial, because there is absolutely nothing in the whole of the evidence before us, and by which we must be guided, to fix the prisoner with knowledge that these valuables existed at all. 'You will observe, gentlemen, how important this becomes when we come to consider the question of motive. I agree with Mr. Tressamer, about whose general line of defence I shall have something to say presently'--(Tressamer frowned, the rest of the Bar looked nervous)--'in saying that the apparent absence of motive is the most inexplicable feature in the case for the prosecution. You will, of course, have fresh in your minds the evidence of the servant on this point.' (The jury found it quite hopeless to even pretend that they had anything of the sort.) 'I refer to her statement, which I will read to you presently'--(visible depression in the jury-box and throughout the court)--'that deceased promised the prisoner on one occasion to leave her a legacy, or something of that sort. Gentlemen, that is peculiarly and emphatically a matter for you to deal with, and on which it would be out of place for me to offer you any guidance whatever.' (Dismay among several jurymen, stolid pride among others.) 'If you believe that evidence, and I confess I am wholly unable to follow the prisoner's counsel in some of his comments upon the general demeanour of the witnesses, most of whom appeared to me to give their evidence with every appearance of impartiality, and in a manner which showed that they realised their responsibility--but all that, again, is rather a matter for you than for me--if, I say, you believe that evidence as to the legacy, you must consider for yourselves what weight you ought fairly to attach to it, and how far in your opinion it furnishes a motive adequate to inspire the very heinous crime into which we are now inquiring.' The jury by this time were fairly at sea. They could not for the life of them make out which side his lordship was taking, and, of course, it never once occurred to them that he was trying to avoid taking any side at all. 'And now, gentlemen, to consider the evidence against the prisoner more in detail.' (Suppressed sighs from the gentlemen.) 'This is one of those cases which depend entirely on what is commonly known as circumstantial evidence. Well, gentlemen, the evidence of circumstances is just as good as any other evidence, and very often it is far more reliable and far less subject to be vitiated by improper influences than ocular and oral testimony. In cases of this kind it is seldom that we can get anything but circumstantial evidence. When a man is going to do a wicked and criminal act he does not call witnesses around him. No, he avoids all human sight, he perpetrates his deed in secrecy, and all that we can do is to seek to penetrate the mystery by such means as are at our disposal.' Impression confirmed that judge is against the prisoner. Tressamer looking slightly anxious. 'The question for us, therefore, or rather for you, gentlemen'--(the jury look important)--'is not whether the evidence is circumstantial or not, but whether it is sufficient to convict the prisoner. Sufficient, that is, in your opinion, as men of intelligence and firmness, bringing to bear on this case the same qualities of mind which you bring to bear from day to day upon your ordinary avocations, whatever those may be. That the evidence is sufficient in law I am reluctantly compelled to decide. Whether the court which deals with points of this description will confirm my judgment or overrule it I cannot say. In the meantime, you must take it from me that you are legally justified in convicting the prisoner. Whether you are really justified on the facts is, of course, a very different question.' Impression among many that judge is going for acquittal. Jury still in doubt. 'This is one of those cases which make a judge congratulate himself on the existence of trial by jury. It is one of those peculiarly difficult cases in which the mind is perplexed between its desire to mete out punishment for a singularly atrocious crime, and its inability to disentangle the knotted skein of mystery which shrouds the whole circumstances of the affair. I rejoice unaffectedly that the responsibility of discharging this delicate and dangerous task is thrown not upon my shoulders, but upon yours.' Undisguised dismay of jury. They cast appealing looks round the court and meet nothing but contempt. The general feeling now is that the judge is in the prisoner's favour. By this time the majority of those present share the same view. Then Sir Daniel proceeded to go into the evidence at great length, reading passages here and there from his notes. When he came to the evidence of the servant Rees, he threw out a suggestion which struck doubt into many a mind which had till then believed in the prisoner's innocence. 'A very great deal in this case undoubtedly turns on this evidence as to footsteps. You may, I think, take it as admitted on all hands, by the prisoner's counsel as well as by the prosecution, that the witness is correct in saying that she heard the prisoner leave the house. That she recognised her walk correctly that time there can be no manner of doubt. Then we come to the second time, when she heard footsteps ascending the stairs. And I may pause here to remark that I think a quite exaggerated importance has been attached to the discrepancy between the witness's ideas of time and the correct idea. Gentlemen, we should all of us fail if we strove to indicate with accuracy the length of a given interval of time. We use the expressions "five minutes" and "ten minutes" in ordinary conversation, without attaching any very definite meaning to them, and, therefore, I cannot see that the witness is in any way discredited if she mistook a period of three minutes for one of ten, or _vice versâ_.' The jury nodded approval. Now they were on firm ground. 'But it is her answer to Mr. Pollard, when he asked her as to the second set of footsteps, that I wish to draw your attention to. She said, as I took it, "I did not notice them"--that is, the footsteps--"but I think they must have been Miss Owen's, or else I should have noticed the difference." Now, I think you will see the importance of that.' (The jury try to see it, and, failing in that, try to look as if they saw it, and fail a second time.) 'Remember the state of things is this: the witness is wide awake; she has just been down to the front-door and up again, and ten minutes after, or three minutes only according to Mr. Tressamer, she hears someone come in and walk upstairs. Now, gentlemen, under those circumstances, one would naturally expect the witness to be on the alert to distinguish any difference, if difference there were, between the footsteps. And if the person entering the second time were not the prisoner, to whose tread she was accustomed, and which she was expecting to hear, but if it were someone else--a man, let us say, with an entirely different tread, and a tread to which she was wholly unaccustomed--I say one would naturally expect the witness to note the difference instantly, to wonder who it was that had entered, to feel alarm when she heard the unknown stranger proceeding upstairs and into the bedroom; and, in short, one would expect her to get up and rouse the whole household to discover the robber, as she would naturally assume him to be.' The jury were much impressed. A feeling of gravity spread all over the court. In the prisoner's mind there was a sensation as if the sun had retired behind a cloud, leaving a leaden atmosphere all round her. 'Leaving you to attach much or little importance, as you please, to that observation' (jury puzzled again), 'I will pass on to the point about which so much has been said--namely, the latch.' (Jury bend forward with straining ears. They have felt this to be the difficulty all along, and are anxiously desiring to be told what it all means, and what bearing it has on the case.) 'This latch, or rather lock, appears to have been of peculiar, though not unusual, construction. As you doubtless know, gentlemen, locks do differ very much from one another, and it is essential to their usefulness that they should do so. If all the locks on our doors were of the same pattern, one key would open them all, and consequently the locks would be rendered useless for the purpose for which they were designed. In ancient times, before such articles had come into common use, it was no doubt the custom to have a rude species of door-fastening, calculated rather to keep the door fixed in its place as against the violence of the weather, than to furnish any obstacle against the ingress of undesired visitors. But, gentlemen, we are not living in those times, but in our own; and we are here to administer justice, not with regard to the ideas prevalent among our remote ancestors, but with regard to the ordinary and reasonable practices of everyday life around us.' This last part appeals to the jury. They nod their heads in approval, and wait for further enlightenment. 'Law, gentlemen, it has often been said, is common-sense; and though there may be a sense in which that maxim is not strictly verifiable, yet in a broad and general way its applicability has never been and cannot be disputed. And, therefore, gentlemen, your common-sense will agree with me when I say that it is a lawful presumption--a presumption which the law warrants you in drawing and in holding till you have some satisfactory evidence to rebut it--that the person who obtains access to a house or any other building secured by a lock of this description must have in his or her possession a key which is capable of opening that lock.' Continued approval of the jury. They find his lordship a little tedious perhaps, but sound. At last there seems a fair prospect of light being thrown upon the case. 'Now, that there were in existence keys which fitted this particular lock cannot, I think, be seriously doubted by anyone who has listened carefully to the evidence which has been put forward both by the prosecution and by the defence in this case.' (Gratification of jury. How simple it all seems when a master-mind is at work upon the apparent mystery!) 'The only question left for you to decide, so far as I can discover, and if I am wrong it is not for want of careful consideration, is this: whether on that night into which we are inquiring the prisoner had or had not a latchkey, and, if so, whether she used it, and in either case, whether any other person had a similar key, which he also employed in opening the door of this house.' (Jury getting slightly fogged again. But they no longer sorrow as one who hath no hope. They rely on his lordship to pull them through.) 'It is perhaps a circumstance worth noting, though the explanation may be very simple, that neither side has produced a latchkey purporting to be one of those belonging to the latch in question.' (The explanation _was_ simple. Neither side had thought of it.) 'But in the absence of any ocular demonstration one way or the other, we are, I think, justified in assuming that the keys in question were small, portable articles, such as could conveniently be carried in the pocket. In saying this I merely appeal to your own experience as men of business and householders, who are most of you probably in the constant habit of carrying articles of this kind yourselves.' (Jury in smooth water again. How could they ever have thought this matter presented difficulties?) 'There, gentlemen, I must leave you. I can throw no farther light upon the hidden circumstances of that night, and must leave you to decide for yourselves on a calm and deliberate review of the evidence whether, in your opinion, such a key as I have indicated was, or was not, in the possession of the prisoner at the bar, or of any other individual whose name has or has not transpired in the course of this trial, and if so, whether the prisoner, or that other person, or both of them, did or did not obtain access to the house by means of that nature.' Collapse of jury. Dashed in a moment from their height of fancied security, they lie helpless at the bottom of the abyss. The summing-up was nearly over. Tressamer had begun to hope the judge had forgotten him. But Sir Daniel had reserved his melodramatic effects to the last, as all orators know they ought to do. 'And now a few words as to the unusual, I may say, I hope, the extraordinary, though unhappily not quite unprecedented, line of defence which has been adopted in this case. The prisoner's counsel has not contented himself with merely defending the prisoner; he has gone far beyond that, far beyond the necessities, so far as they present themselves to my mind, of his position, and has distinctly and deliberately brought an accusation against one who is not on trial before you, and has, therefore, no means of rebutting the attack. For such a course there is, in my opinion, not a shadow of excuse. I have listened with great patience to the evidence in this case from the beginning to the end, and I have not detected anywhere anything that casts one particle of suspicion upon Mr. Lewis. 'He was attacked for having come so promptly to visit his relative on his return. But his explanation was straightforward, and such as to commend itself to everyone who heard him. I shall not trouble you with any defence of Mr. Lewis, however'--(gratitude of the whole court)--'but I must condemn in the gravest and strongest manner the way in which Mr. Tressamer has abused his privilege as an advocate to spring a charge of this deadly character upon one who is, so far as we can see, a perfectly innocent man. If this sort of thing is to be indulged in, the honour of the Bar--that noble profession to which it is my glory to have belonged--will be dragged in the dust, and its formidable immunities will have to be sharply and summarily curtailed. It has been well said that no assassin is so terrible to the community as the assassin of reputations, and in my opinion the man who is capable of taking advantage of a technical immunity from punishment to lie in wait for and destroy in cold blood the whole character and career of another, reveals a blackness of disposition which fits him for the commission of any crime, aye, though it were as heinous as that of which he has accused his victim.' It was a crushing rebuke. The crowded bar turned and looked at their comrade as though they expected him to sink through the floor. But he sat pale and rigid, tearing off the feather of a quill with his teeth, but showing no other sign that he had heard the judge. 'It is the prisoner who must suffer most by such a line of defence.' (Here Eleanor looked up suddenly, as if she had only just begun to pay attention to what was going on.) 'Its natural effect on your minds must be to induce you to ask yourselves not the real question before you, namely, is Eleanor Owen guilty or not? But this other question: which is guilty, Eleanor Owen or John Lewis? And to that you could, as conscientious men, give only one answer. 'But that is what I want, if possible, to avoid. My principal reason for making the remarks I have made about Mr. Tressamer's speech is that I do not want you to confuse the issues, as he has confused them, but to return your verdict freely and impartially, having regard solely to the bearing of the evidence which has been given upon the guilt or innocence of the prisoner.' Here his lordship abruptly came to an end, just when the long-suffering jury were expecting that he was at last going to give them a hint as to his own leaning in the case. It was now the part of the clerk of arraigns to rise and request the jury to consider their verdict. But that functionary had taken advantage of the charge to fall into a light and pleasant slumber, from which it became necessary to rouse him. One of the Bar, therefore, put out his hand and pulled the clerk of arraigns by the sleeve. He started awake, and, hastily stumbling on to his feet, looked wildly round for information. The day before this incident would have provoked mirth. To-day it caused nothing but impatient annoyance, except to a few junior barristers, who thought it professional to show callous indifference to what was going on. At last, however, the clerk of arraigns was made to realise what stage had been reached, and he called the bailiff of the court and gave the jury over to his charge, with the following form of words: 'You shall take this jury to some convenient place, where you shall lock them up without meat, fire, or light; you shall suffer no man to speak to them, neither shall you speak to them yourself, except to ask them if they have agreed upon their verdict; so help you God.' The oath was taken, and the twelve men filed slowly out. CHAPTER X. THE VERDICT. The secrets of the jury-room are little understood. Doubtless this is because all the more intellectual classes are exempted, by a beautiful provision of our law, from serving on juries, and the remainder have not yet produced a man competent to chronicle his experiences. The Mynyddshire jurymen were very much like their brethren all over the country. They had sworn a solemn oath to well and truly try, and true deliverance make, between our sovereign lady the Queen and the prisoner at the bar, and they honestly tried to act up to their obligation. Mr. Jenkins, the Queen Street stationer, was among them, and his first words, after the door was closed on them, were: 'Well, I don't know what you think, sir, but I couldn't make out whether he was for her or against her.' The person addressed was the foreman, a rich building contractor from a large seaport at the end of the county. He was a man of judicial mind, a model foreman, and wisely abstained from committing himself at this early stage. He turned round and asked his next neighbour, who happened to be the farmer from near Porthstone, whose remarks to Mr. Jenkins were given in the fourth chapter: 'How did it strike you, sir?' 'I thought he was against her,' was the answer. 'Didn't you hear him say, "The prisoner must suffer by that line of defence"? And then he didn't say nothing about reasonable doubts.' 'No; but the young barrister did--the one that prosecuted,' observed a tall, thin man, a tailor by trade. 'He's got nothing to do with it,' said the farmer. 'I thought him a fool all along. I know his whole family, and they're all alike.' 'What a terrible speech Mr. Tressamer made!' ventured a fifth juryman, a short, stumpy watchmaker from Porthstone itself. 'I believe he's her lover.' 'What!' cried the foreman, losing his calm demeanour in the presence of this interesting revelation. 'How d'ye know that?' 'Oh, it was common talk in Porthstone,' was the answer. 'They knew each other ever since they was children, and he used to come down every summer and go about with her. That's what made him so fierce against Mr. Lewis, you may depend.' 'And did you know her?' 'What was she like, really?' 'What do you think of her?' broke from several voices as the whole jury clustered round the little man. But he drew in his horns at once. 'Don't ask me anything,' he said. 'I've mended her watch, and I always thought she was all right up to this, but the Lord only knows whether she did it.' He paused, and then, as if there were some vague connection in his mind between this charge and a general disposition towards acts of dishonesty, he added: 'She always paid me regular.' Perhaps the jury scented an underlying distrust in this. At any rate, one of them said: 'I watched the judge carefully all through, and I saw him frown at her several times. To my mind he meant us to say guilty.' The word came with a little shock to the men. They instinctively realized its terrible gravity as falling from their lips. The tall, thin tailor put in his word again: 'Anyhow, he said there was no evidence of motive.' 'Except they jewels,' corrected the farmer. 'Ah, but there was nothing came out about them.' 'Phoo! that there was. Didn't you see how her counsel was fighting to keep it back? You may depend she knew all about them, and could tell us where they are now if she liked.' 'You seem to have made up your mind,' said another man, who had been talking aside to a little knot of three; 'but for the life of me I couldn't make it out one way or the other. What did you think he meant about that latchkey?' This was offensive. It was reminding them of their weak point. It threw the whole room into confusion. Eight or nine of the jury all began to speak at once, and four or five could find no listeners. When the hubbub had a little subsided, the foreman said: 'Gentlemen, it's no use talking it over in this way. We must argue it out one at a time. I propose that we all sit round the table, and the one that has anything to say stands up and says it properly.' This suggestion was well received, but it had a fatal effect on three of the jury, who were wholly unable to attempt anything so much like a set speech as this course involved. As soon as all were seated the foreman commenced: 'Gentlemen this is a doubtful case, a very doubtful case. Talk of reasonable doubts, there's nothing but reasonable doubts, so far as I can see, from beginning to end. Now, it would have been a great help to us if the judge had showed us which way he thought we ought to go, but I must confess I couldn't tell which side he meant to lean. If any other gentleman thinks otherwise, we shall be glad to hear him.' But no other gentleman thought otherwise. The man who had thrown out the suggestion about the latchkey, and who was a fishing-boat proprietor from a seaside suburb of Abertaff, murmured from his seat: 'I call it a shame. I should like to know what a judge is for. We might as well try the case ourselves as this.' 'So we are trying it, aren't we?' rebuked the man who had been the first to blurt out the fatal word, and who was a farmer from near the same place. 'You may be, Mr. Rees,' returned the boat proprietor, with what was intended for biting sarcasm. 'Come, gentlemen, gentlemen,' said the foreman impressively, 'let us remember that we are engaged on a case of life and death. We have got to come at the truth somehow, and we must do what we can by ourselves.' 'They should have give us more evidence,' objected Mr. Jenkins. 'What did they want to make so much fuss about those jewels for?' 'Aye, and there was another thing,' said the Porthstone farmer; 'did you notice that when Mr. Lewis wanted to say why he suspected her, the judge wouldn't let un?' 'Well, she's an orphan,' said the tailor, 'and her father was Rector of Porthstone for thirty years, and I say we ought to let her off.' 'For shame, John,' said the watchmaker, who happened to be his next-door neighbour; 'don't you know we've got to decide according to the evidence?' The tailor hung his head. Then the foreman interposed again. 'Really, gentlemen, I think it will save time if we go round the table, and let each man express his opinion in turn. Of course, I don't say his final opinion, but just any remarks that strike him on the evidence. Will you begin, sir?' Mr. Jenkins rose from his seat on the foreman's right and cleared his throat. 'Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, I think this is, as our foreman has told us, a case of very great doubt. At the same time, it is our duty to punish the guilty, and not let the prisoner off simply because she is a woman and good-looking, and that sort of thing.' (Subdued applause. The foreman raises his hand for silence.) 'Now, what I look at in this case is the motive, and that is, I take it, the jewels. I don't believe she would have done it simply on the chance of getting something under the will. I don't know whether you remember, but the judge said Miss Lewis might have parted with the jewels, because they weren't found after her death. Now, it seems to me that that points just the other way. I mean, it looks as if she had been murdered for the sake of them. It seems to me the only question is, Who murdered her? Was it Mr. Lewis or was it Miss Owen? That's my difficulty.' He sat down. The farmer, who sat next him, stood up in turn. 'I say what the judge said; let us decide according to the evidence. Now, what evidence is there against Mr. Lewis? Why, you say the judge didn't speak out clearly, but he did say there wasn't any evidence against him. All the evidence is against her, and we ought to act upon it.' The next speaker was a rather young man, who occupied a position of superintendence in a large millinery establishment, exclusively patronised by ladies. With such associations he was naturally disposed to be chivalrous. He said: 'I know a lady when I see her. Miss Owen's a lady; anyone can see that with half an eye. As for Lewis, I didn't like the looks of him at all. You know they're a wild lot out in Australia. I heard that he came back for good reasons, if the truth was known. Then look how he lost his temper in the witness-box! And then, as Mr. Tressamer said, the very night he got there the murder happened. That looks as if he did it. He said she didn't give him a latchkey, but I believe she very likely did, else why did the barrister ask him? And then look at the hand being cut off. No young lady would go and do such a thing as that, surely!' The jury were impressed. The next man was of a shy and gentle disposition. He did not venture to get on his feet, but threw out a suggestion as he sat: 'I suppose it must have been one of the two. There couldn't have been somebody else, could there?' A withering look from eleven faces rewarded this disconcerting query. The foreman expressed the general feeling: 'Really, sir, I can't think what ground you have for suggesting such a thing. The case is difficult enough as it is, without having fresh doubts raised.' 'Ah, there should ought to have been a London detective brought down,' muttered another juryman, who had taken little part hitherto. 'One of them would have puzzled it out, you may depend.' 'Well, I don't see what more you would have,' said the other farmer, Rees, rising in his turn. 'Here is this young woman, sleeping in the next room, going out at night secretly, under some pretence of headaches--why didn't she tell other people about them beside that chemist?--and here you have her mistress murdered, and the blood found on the door of her own room the next morning. What more do you want?' He sat down. It was now the tailor's turn. 'And how do you know Lewis didn't put the blood there?' he asked. 'I believe it's Lewis myself. Anyway, one of them must have done it, that's clear.' But this was felt to be a weak defence, and the next two jurymen shook their heads, and professed themselves unable to throw any light upon the question. Then it was the turn of the boat proprietor. 'Look here,' he said, 'what's the good of our trying to come to a verdict when we're none of us sure which of them did it? Better give it up, and tell the judge we can't agree.' But the foreman would not hear of this. 'No, sir,' he said, 'we are here sworn to do justice between man and man and mete out punishment to the guilty, and we must not shrink from our task. We have heard the case through, and if we are not competent to give a verdict on it, who is?' This was felt to be unanswerable. Not only were the foreman's words worthy of attention in themselves, but he was a great man, the reputed possessor of twelve thousand a year; he wore a frock coat and a white waistcoat as well, and his word was, therefore, practically equivalent to law. There remained only the watchmaker. He felt a friendly feeling towards the prisoner, but he was troubled by real misgivings as to her innocence. 'The judge said we oughtn't to go against Mr. Lewis,' he said, 'and I stand by what the judge says. Besides, I look at what he said when he gave her in charge.' 'What was that?' said the foreman eagerly. 'I'll tell you, sir. It was in the paper at the time, and I happened to keep it by me, and so when I was summoned as a juror, thinks I to myself, "This may come in useful if I should happen to be on the jury that's to try her," so I just cuts it out and brings it in my pocket.' The other men looked on keenly, as he slowly drew out his pocket-book and extracted a newspaper cutting, embracing some two and a half columns of the _Southern Daily News_. Everyone hoped that something of a decisive character would now be forthcoming. The watchmaker ran his finger down the columns. 'Here it is!' he exclaimed, and read it aloud. '"On reaching the police-station, of which Constable Smithies was then in charge, Mr. Lewis said: 'I charge Eleanor Owen with the murder of my aunt, Ann Elizabeth Lewis. I have made some money, and, please God, I'll spend every penny of it rather than my poor aunt shall remain unavenged.' '"Constable Smithies at once summoned Sergeant--" that's it,' concluded the watchmaker, looking up from his extract. A murmur and shaking of heads followed, and the foreman again felicitously voiced the general feeling: '_That_ doesn't sound like guilt,' he said, with emphasis. 'May I see that paper? Perhaps it has some other things which we have forgotten.' 'Certainly, sir. But I don't know whether we ought to be reading this,' hazarded its owner, handing the slip across. 'Why not? We're only doing it to refresh our memory.' This reply was again felt to be worthy of its author. It had a fine flavour of legality about it too, which gave confidence to the other jurymen. They realized that they were fortunate in their foreman. That gentleman meanwhile proceeded to glance down the document before him. Presently he stopped, frowned, pursed up his lips, and breathed a stern sigh. The others watched with anxiety. He proceeded to enlighten them. 'Gentlemen, listen to this, and tell me what effect it has on your minds. Sergeant Evans said, "I arrested the prisoner on the morning of the second. I told her she was charged with the wilful murder of Ann Elizabeth Lewis. She turned pale and said, 'It is impossible.' I cautioned her. She said nothing more, and _shed no tears_." Gentlemen, is that like innocence?' He laid down the paper. The prisoner's doom was sealed. The waverers among the jury went over at once, and even the friends of the prisoner no longer dared to hold out. The tailor would have resisted if he had dared, but his sense of social inferiority was too much for him. What was he, a humble little tradesman, to set himself against eleven men, headed by a wealthy contractor who wore three spade guineas on his watch-chain? Then a solemn awe settled down over the faces of the twelve men. They did not hesitate in doing what they believed was their duty, but they felt some natural horror of the result. At last the foreman said: 'Gentlemen, are we all agreed?' And, as there was no reply, he led them back into court. They had not been out quite an hour, but the interval seemed terribly long to those they left behind. When they came in one by one, with drooping heads and set faces, the verdict was read before it was heard. Only the prisoner still held out, with that obstinate unbelief in the worst which is a part of strong natures. Only the prisoner and the prisoner's counsel. He manifested no sorrow and no surprise. Prescott put his stoical calmness down to over-exhaustion, others of the Bar attributed it to his confidence in the point reserved. The public hardly noticed him. Their eyes were fixed upon the dock. The clerk of arraigns stood up, and went as best he could through the tedious process of calling each juryman by name. Then followed the routine question, followed by the awful word, heavy with issues of death, pealing forth through the hushed, agitated hall: _'Guilty!'_ The prisoner neither moved nor answered, as the clerk formally summoned her to declare if there were any reasons why sentence should not be passed upon her. Some of the women whispered that she had gone mad, or that she was going to faint. The judge covered his wig with the sombre square of silk. Suddenly she looked up, cast her eyes rapidly round the court, and fixing them full on Prescott, who was attentively watching her, she exclaimed: 'I am _not_ guilty.' 'Eleanor Margaret Owen, the jury, after a long and patient hearing, and after taking time for careful deliberation, have found you guilty of the crime of wilful murder. What motive inspired you to commit such a crime I cannot say, and it may, perhaps, never be known. It only remains for me to discharge my very painful duty, which I do by declaring that the sentence of the court upon you is----' The details followed. The words are too familiar to need setting forth. They sounded in unconscious ears. Eleanor Owen had fainted at last, and was carried helpless and lifeless away from the scene of her long martyrdom. CHAPTER XI. THE PRISONER'S STATEMENT. The day after the trial Tressamer went with confident mien to the prison for the purpose of having an interview with Eleanor as to the appeal of which he had given notice. The governor at first hesitated about permitting this. The prison regulations forbid intercourse with a convict, except under certain rigorous limitations. But the name and function of counsel prevailed, and a warder was sent to fetch the prisoner. Presently he returned alone, with the startling message that Eleanor positively refused to hold any communication whatever with her late advocate. Tressamer left the gaol with the air of a beaten man. In his dismay he bethought himself of Prescott, and hurried to the court-house to find him and get his advice. He was there, but he was busy in a case then before the Nisi Prius Court, and it was not till late in the afternoon that Tressamer could get a word with him. The case had been decided in favour of Prescott's client, and he strode into the robing-room with a little natural elation. But no sooner did he catch sight of his friend, who was waiting for him there, than his whole manner changed, and a stern expression settled round the corners of his mouth. It was their first meeting since the result of Eleanor's trial. They were alone in the room, and Prescott at once addressed the other: 'Tressamer, what have you to say for yourself? I told you yesterday that I should hold you responsible. You disobeyed my advice, and that of everybody else. You set the judge and jury against you, and the result is what you were told it would be. I gave you fair warning, and I tell you now that, unless you have some reason for your conduct of which I know nothing, I cannot look upon you as a friend.' Tressamer pinched in his lips hard as he listened to this. 'I might have expected it,' he said. 'We all know that love is stronger than friendship. The first woman that likes can break up the strongest attachments of some men.' 'Silence!' cried Prescott. 'I am not going to bandy retorts with you. Ever since we were boys I have liked you and befriended you, and borne with your waywardness. You have outraged all your other friends long ago, but I bore with everything till now. But this is too much. Where a life is at stake, to indulge in your freaks of eccentricity! It is murder morally. What are you better than the man who killed that wretched woman?' Tressamer shook with anger. 'Be careful, Prescott! I will stand a great deal from you, but you are going too far now. You know as well as I do that her life is in no danger. What is old Buller's opinion worth on a criminal case? Wiseman is worth ten of him, and he is in our favour. The C.C.R. will save her.' 'Wretched man! Have you no heart, no moral sense, that you talk like that? As if a mere escape on a technical point could give any comfort to a woman like her! One would think you were wanting in some ingredient of human nature. What does Eleanor herself say?' 'I haven't seen her,' was the muttered reply. 'Haven't seen her! Then go at once, and get her authority to appear.' 'I have been to the prison, but she won't see me. I suppose she is ill.' A look of positive pleasure crossed the face of the elder man. 'Ill--no, but innocent!' he exclaimed. 'I can understand her refusing to see you. You have played with her life for the prize of infamy, and you deserve that she should discard you. This is the best thing I have heard yet. Why, I could almost forgive you now for telling me. I will go this instant and offer my services: they will be those of a plain, honest man.' And, flinging off his wig and gown, he rushed out of the place in a very unwonted state of excitement. Tressamer was left, bewildered and enraged, to curse his own folly in betraying his defeat to a rival. * * * * * When Eleanor was summoned by the gaoler to see Mr. Prescott, she at first thought there must be some mistake. 'Are you sure you don't mean Mr. Tressamer?' she asked. 'No; he said Prescott.' A faint smile rose in her face. She eagerly assented to the interview, and in a couple of minutes the two were closeted together. At first there was a brief, awkward silence. Then Prescott broke it by speaking in calm, precise words: 'It is nearly five years since we met, Miss Owen, but I hope you have not quite forgotten me.' 'No, indeed,' she answered; 'but you should have forgotten me. I know I ought to thank you for this visit, and for dealing so leniently with the case yesterday, but I cannot find the right words. It is all so strange--so terrible and so strange.' Prescott was afraid to look at her, lest the tears should come into his eyes. 'Don't thank me, please. I wish I could forgive myself for taking that wretched brief at all. I can only say I did so for fear it might fall into the hands of some abler and bitterer prosecutor. The solicitors were your enemies.' 'Yes; I refused their services. I have wondered since if I was wise. It was Mr. Tressamer who advised me.' 'And why? Why did you trust yourself so entirely to that man? But I forgot. I believe you are or were engaged.' Eleanor raised her eyes, and looked long and searchingly at her questioner. Suddenly she said: 'Before I tell you, why did you come here--for any special object, I mean?' 'Yes. I came, hearing you had refused--and in my opinion rightly refused--to see Mr. Tressamer. I came, taking the privilege of an old friend of your father's and your own, to ask if I might appear for you in the court to which your case is being taken.' 'Ah, then there is a Providence. I am not quite deserted!' She spoke in half irony, and then all at once broke down, and began sobbing as if her heart would break. 'Miss Owen!--don't, Eleanor!' cried her friend in alarm and distress. 'Do try and be calm. All will end happily yet, believe me. I swear to you I will never rest till your innocence is established by the discovery of the real criminal!' For some time she wept on without replying. At last the sobs grew feebler, and she lifted her head. 'Oh, if you knew,' she said, 'what I have gone through these last two months--no, I ought to say these last two years, since my father died, and that you are the first to speak to me in tones that I can trust, you would not wonder that I weep. Sometimes I have felt it too much to bear, and I have actually thought before now of writing to you to tell you all my troubles.' 'To me! Why, do you--are you----' She checked him gently. 'To you, as to my oldest friend, whose memory I could recall with trust and confidence. I am speaking now of a time that has passed. Now I shall never consent to claim anyone as my friend--if I live--until this horrible stain has been wiped off my name.' 'I will wipe it off. Only trust me fully meanwhile, and if you won't claim my friendship, at least so far rely on it as to unburden yourself to me freely. Tell me all, because I feel that you may hold in some way the clue to this mystery. I cannot think that all the circumstances piled up against you were purely accidental, and I must know everything before I can see my way clearly.' She shook her head doubtfully. 'I am afraid that my story will not throw much light on the murder. Indeed, I fear I am abusing your kindness in troubling you with my affairs. It is a father-confessor I want, not a lawyer.' And she smiled faintly. But Prescott was in earnest, and at length he persuaded her to speak. Making allowance for some repetitions and some slips of memory, her story was something like this: 'When my father died I was only seventeen. In spite of his being rector, we had lived a very retired life and seen few visitors. The only people I knew at all intimately were Miss Lewis and the Tressamers. 'Miss Lewis had been in the habit of inviting me to her house ever since I can remember. She used to give me valuable presents, too. In fact, she treated me more like a niece or some near relation than a mere acquaintance. I can never forget her kindness--never, never!' She had to stop a moment or two to overcome her emotion. 'I dare say you remember as much about the Tressamers as I could tell you. You know that I was constantly at their house. George Tressamer and I were always friends, and he showed me great kindness when I was a mere child. I remember I used to look forward to his coming home for the holidays. Neither of us had any brothers or sisters, and so we were more ready to seek each other's company, I suppose. 'But I never quite understood him. I could see, even at an early age, that there was something in his feeling towards me quite different from ordinary friendship. And yet it was only friendship that I felt for him--yes, even to the very last, I assure you. I never felt for him any warmer feeling than gratitude and affection. 'When my dear father died, I was at first in despair. Only two people would I listen to--my aunt Lewis, as she liked me to call her, and George. My own relations were all far away. I had never seen them, and they were too poor to do anything for me. So when Miss Lewis offered me a home, I had no choice but to accept. And I was very, very grateful for it. 'But in the meantime George had shown me a great deal of kindness. He came down from London on purpose directly he heard of my father's death. He made all the arrangements for the funeral, and wound up all my father's affairs. I believe he must have paid some money out of his own pocket, as I know my poor father always spent every penny of his income, and was often hard pressed for money. But there were no demands ever made on me. All the things I expressed a wish for were saved, and after the rest were sold, and all debts settled, George brought me a sum of two hundred pounds, which he said was mine.' Prescott frowned thoughtfully, and drummed with the toe of his boot on the floor. 'I suppose he didn't give you any accounts?' he said. 'No; I never asked for any. I felt sure that my father couldn't really have left me so much as that, and I told Miss Lewis I thought so. But she seemed to think it was all right, and I was really too distressed at his death to think much about money matters, one way or the other. 'Well, that wasn't all. Not only did he see to these business affairs for me, but he did everything he could to console me besides. He brought me books to read, he persuaded me to come out walks, and, in fact, he succeeded in making me get over my first grief sooner than I had thought it possible. The result was that I came to rely on him very much. I looked for him constantly, and felt a disappointment if a day passed without bringing him to see me. 'This was in the vacation time. At last he had to go up to London, and left me, feeling very lonely. He offered to write to me, and I was glad to accept. We corresponded the whole term, nearly every week, and at Christmas he came down again. 'By this time some months had gone by since my father's loss, and I was beginning to recover my ordinary spirits. George saw this; he gave me more of his company than ever, and finally, before the Christmas holidays were over, he told me that he loved me. 'You will think I ought to have been prepared for this. Perhaps another girl would have been, but I can only say that it took me completely by surprise. You see, I had never known any other young man at all intimately, and George I had looked upon more as a brother than anything else. When he spoke of love, my first feeling was one of annoyance and fear. I shrank from answering, and when he pressed me I asked him to let me have time to think it over. He wisely dropped the subject, and before we got home he was chatting to me as familiarly as ever. 'The result was that I began to think that the love which he offered me was nothing very deep, but only a warm friendship like what I felt for him. Then I reflected on my own position, as an orphan, dependent on one who was no relation and might cast me adrift at any moment. I realised what a loss it would be to be deprived of George's friendship. I had never really felt anything that I could call love for anyone else, and, in short, I reconciled myself by degrees to the idea. At Easter of that year I accepted him. 'In all this I had made one great mistake. I thought George's feeling towards me was a mild one. The moment we were engaged I found the very opposite. 'When I first uttered the words which gave him the right to do so, he clasped me to him with a transport which frightened me. It was actually fierce in its intensity. He lost all that studied control which he had maintained for so long, and fairly gave himself up to the intoxication of his passion. Had I dreamed what his state of feeling really was, I don't believe that I should ever have promised myself to him. But it was too late to draw back. He had obtained a power over me, from which I shrank, but of which I had no right to complain. I became in a sense his slave, and he did with me what he chose. 'From that moment, unhappily, my own feelings towards him underwent a rapid change. I ceased to look forward to his coming. I got in time to actually dread it. Instead of taking pleasure in his society, I feared him. I disliked the little tokens of proprietorship which are common in the case of an engaged couple. I did not even tell Miss Lewis that we were engaged, though I believe she looked upon it as an understood thing. In fact, I suppose it would not have done for me to see so much of George otherwise. Neither did I dare to tell her of the aversion which had begun to replace my former feelings towards him. To tell the truth, I was ashamed of it. In common gratitude, after all George had done for me, I ought not to have allowed myself to feel so. I did try to check it. I told myself of all his good qualities. I recalled how long I had known him, and how friendly we had always been. But it was no use. 'Sometimes he seemed to realise that I was alienated by his passionate displays. Then he would return for awhile to his old manner, and be cheerful and cynical with me. Then my confidence in him returned, and I enjoyed his company. But this would not last long. When I was least expecting it, he would break into a strain of what I can only call love-frenzy, and disturb me more than ever. 'It was impossible for me to hide what was going on in my mind from him always. He began to find out that I avoided him. Instead of openly coming and calling for me to go out with him, he took to lying in wait as it were, and joining me when I was out by myself. Of course nothing was said between us. I did not complain of his stratagems, and he did not complain of my excuses. But I think we understood each other. 'Then he managed to get Miss Lewis on his side. He used to come into the room where we both were and give me an invitation for a walk or sail or other excursion in his company. And if I tried to get out of it, he appealed to Miss Lewis to give me leave, and, of course, she then urged me to go. The way in which he went to work inspired me with a queer sort of admiration for him. I thought that he showed powers of intrigue that would have made him a great man if he had been able to apply them on some vast stage.' 'Yes, yes,' said Prescott, as she paused a few moments for breath; 'he has great ability, strange powers in many things, but----' He shrugged his shoulders, and turned a pitying eye on Eleanor. He had known Tressamer well enough to be able to understand her experience. She went on again. 'Strange to say, you were the cause of our first open quarrel, about six months ago.' 'I? How?' 'You know you had not been to Rivermouth for some four years or more. But I remembered you perfectly, and used always to ask George about you when he came down from London. At last, on this occasion, he happened to say he had a recent photograph of you. I got him to show it to me, and then I wanted to keep it. He objected; I persisted, and finally his jealousy was aroused. '"You always liked Prescott better than me," he said. '"I haven't even seen him for five years," I said. "I remember him as an old friend, and I don't see why you should mind my taking an interest in him." '"Taking an interest!" he scoffed back. "I wish you would take an interest in me. You have never asked me for my photograph, that I recollect." 'But I needn't tell you all that we said. It ended in his accusing me of not loving him, and in my saying that he was at liberty to find someone else, if he was dissatisfied with me. 'But he--he would not take the release. He altered his tone all at once and fell at my feet, protesting that he loved me above all others, and that nothing should ever separate us. 'So things went on, he alternately courting me and threatening me, I turning from coldness to dislike, and from dislike to detestation. But I hadn't the courage to break my bondage, intolerable as I sometimes felt it. Perhaps I should never have shaken myself free but for his own action in bringing things to a crisis. Our letters had been friendly for some time, and, at last, in the month of May, he threw out a suggestion in one that it was time to think of our marriage. 'I took no notice of this. He repeated it more distinctly. Then I wrote, objecting that I was far too young to think of such a thing for some time to come. He took the alarm, came down by the next train, and sought me out. We went together to a lonely part of the shore, and there we came to a full explanation. 'Don't ask me what passed between us. He may be able to tell you. I never can. Enough, that after four hours' agonized entreaty and storm on his part, and agonized endurance on mine, we parted. I told him I could never hold intercourse with him again on any footing, and left him apparently resigned. That was just two days before my friend was murdered. 'He left the place next day, and I did not see him again till after I had been lodged in prison. 'There he came to me, asking no return to the old relations, but simply the privilege of befriending and defending me in my fearful trouble. I was crushed by his generosity, and freely gave myself to his guidance. 'But even in that first interview he threw out a suggestion which shocked and repelled me. He seemed to take it for granted that the jury would convict me, and to rely upon getting me off on a law point. I told him that life would not be worth anything to me under such conditions, and in reply he hinted that his devotion would still be mine, if I cared for it. 'Since then you have seen how it has happened exactly as he foretold. Now, it seems a dreadful thing to say, but the suspicion has forced itself into my mind, and I cannot get rid of it, that he wished all along that I might be blighted in my reputation, and just be saved at the last from actual condemnation, so that I might be driven to take refuge with him.' She spoke these last sentences in a whisper, as if afraid to hear such suggestions even from her own lips. Prescott gave a groan. 'Would to Heaven I could contradict you!' he said, 'but I believe it myself.' And he related to her what had passed between his friend of old and himself. Then he went on to ask: 'By the way, can you can tell me anything more about that night than what came out in court? It was you who went out the first time, I take it?' 'Yes. I had been quite unwell for some time, owing to my trouble with George Tressamer. After our final meeting I had a terrible headache, and could not sleep at all. I went out each night about the same hour, but I haven't the faintest idea where I wandered to or how long I was gone. I got a little sleep after I came in, towards the morning.' 'And what do you think yourself of this man, Lewis?' 'I can hardly say. He has shown himself my enemy, and, of course, I cannot like him.' 'But as to suspecting him?' 'Oh dear no! I suspect no one.' 'Not one of the servants? Rebecca, for instance?' 'No. I haven't any inkling whatever as to who committed the crime.' 'Well, I suppose I must leave you. I will do whatever is in my power for your deliverance, not merely from danger, but from disgrace, and if I fail I will never venture in your sight again.' CHAPTER XII. THE C.C.R. The Court for Crown Cases Reserved is a modern institution, whose workings are not always quite understood by the public. In every case which is tried before a jury there are two questions to be decided. The first is whether the evidence produced by the plaintiff alone is sufficient in point of law to justify a verdict. The second is whether the balance of evidence at the end of the trial is in favour of the plaintiff or the defendant. The first of these questions is for the judge, the second for the jury. From the verdict of the jury there is, strictly speaking, no appeal. From the decision of the judge an appeal may be carried right up to the House of Lords. But in criminal cases, where the Queen is treated as plaintiff, there was anciently no such method of reviewing the judge's decision. Now a special court has been established, embracing all the common law judges of the High Court, who sit in a body to decide these questions. It was to this tribunal that Tressamer had intended to resort. But though the prisoner's legal advisers, both her former and her present one, looked to this court for their client's deliverance from the extreme penalty of the law, the general public turned to a very different remedy, that of agitation, to be exerted upon a very different authority, an impressionable politician in the Home Office. Up to the hour of her conviction public opinion had run strongly against Eleanor. Whether this was deliberately aimed at by Tressamer or not, it was the consequence of the policy adopted by him. But no sooner had the law pronounced her doom than the tide turned with startling rapidity, and a gigantic agitation was at once set on foot for a reprieve. Clergymen of mild manners and susceptible hearts went round canvassing their parishioners for signatures to petitions. Legal gentlemen, whose practice did not yet correspond to their own opinion of their deserts, rushed into print with gratuitous opinions on the evidence and the various points in the case. Newspaper reporters, sensitively alive to the first symptoms of a 'boom,' wrote up the tragic situation with graphic pens. They described the youth and beauty of the prisoner, her gentle bringing up, her desolate condition. Even her relations with the counsel for the defence, of which some inkling had transpired, were freely glanced at, and the reader was invited to sympathize with the despair of the lover as well as of the beloved. Then the illustrated journals took it up. They had already given pictures of the scene of the crime, of the deceased, and of other characters, including the prisoner. But they now threw away the blocks representing Eleanor, and which had originally done service in America, where they represented a female temperance lecturer of moderate attractiveness, and came out with full-page illustrations, taken in one case from the portrait of the most charming actress on the Parisian stage, and all calculated to feed the growing flame of sympathy with the victim of what was now boldly referred to as a 'miscarriage of justice.' The sporting fraternity, too, rallied round Eleanor almost to a man. A tremendous number of wagers had been made as to her fate, and those whose success was involved in her escape neglected no means of bringing about the desired end. And as public sentiment has not yet sunk quite so low as to tolerate petitions and meetings against clemency, the natural effect of all this was to make it appear that the suffrages of the whole community were on one side. Even the jurymen began to repent their verdict. Several of them allowed themselves to be interviewed by pressmen, and went so far as to state that they had given their verdict with much misgiving, and hoped that a commutation of sentence would follow. Petitions flowed in upon the Home Secretary. Meetings were held, not only in Porthstone and the neighbouring towns, but all over the country. Finally the excitement culminated in a monster meeting in London itself, in one of the largest public halls of the Metropolis, at which the chair was taken by a nobleman, and the speakers included a canon of the Church of England, a Roman cardinal, a leading light of the Wesleyan denomination, a major-general (on half-pay), and an ex-colonial judge. The office of Home Secretary happened to be held at this time by an experienced member of the legal profession, and it is well known that trained lawyers are far more cautious in condemning, and usually milder in punishing, than laymen. The Home Secretary wavered. He sent for the judge who had presided at the trial, and Sir Daniel Buller, who had had time to recover from his little pique against the prisoner's counsel, infused his own doubt into the Home Secretary's mind. At last the Minister issued a decision. It was a thorough specimen of the not-guilty-but-don't-do-it-again order of judgment. It stated that the Home Secretary saw no reason to doubt the substantial guilt of Eleanor Owen, but that as, in his opinion, the evidence was of an imperfect character, and failed to throw a clear light upon all the circumstances of the case, including the motive for the crime, he had advised her Majesty to commute the sentence to one of imprisonment for life. The very day that this unsatisfactory announcement appeared, thirteen judges sat side by side at the Royal Law Courts to consider the point reserved. Charles Prescott represented the prisoner. If the judges felt any surprise at this change of sides they were careful not to express it. Young Mr. Pollard appeared on behalf of the Crown, but he was led by the great Appleby, Q.C., and, as a matter of fact, was not allowed to open his lips once during the proceedings. Prescott's argument was long and elaborate. A crowded bar were present to hear the celebrated case, and the feeling was universal among them that he had never shone so conspicuously on any former occasion. He took up the history of the law of murder from its earliest stages, and along with it he traced the gradual evolution of circumstantial evidence. He showed with what suspicion and reluctance the latter had been gradually admitted into our courts, and how succeeding judges had been careful to fence it in and restrain its application. Then he turned to the particular rule of law which Tressamer had relied on in the Assize Court, and repeated and emphasized the arguments made use of by him. He wound up with an impressive appeal to the judges to lean in the prisoner's favour, reminding them of the old maxim that a statute must be construed in favour of life, and asking them to apply the same principle in expounding the common law. Then Appleby, Q.C., addressed the court. In reply to Prescott's last observations, he said that imperfection of evidence was a good ground for commutation of sentence, but none for releasing the prisoner altogether. This was, of course, a reminder to the judges of the Home Secretary's decision, announced that morning. Then he proceeded to argue the case on general lines. He began by stigmatizing Hale's precept as a mere piece of advice to juries, rather than a maxim of law. He went on to say: 'The most serious difficulty in following this rule is to know how far to apply it. How much of the deceased's body is it necessary to produce in order to justify a conviction? If the head had been discovered, surely my learned friend would not venture to argue that that was not sufficient. It seems clear that it must be a question of fact in each case, and a question of fact is eminently one for the jury, and where they are satisfied that a death has taken place, it would be the height of folly for their verdict to be set aside because there was not exactly what would enable a coroner to hold an inquest. 'In the present case, however, as a matter of fact, an inquest has been held. The proceedings have gone on all along on the assumption which every reasonable man must have formed, namely, that the body of the deceased had been committed to the waves. To set aside the conviction under such circumstances is simply to encourage crime, and to hold out a guarantee of safety to every murderer who will take a little trouble to conceal the remains of his victim.' When Appleby had finished, Prescott made a brief reply. He confined himself to saying that this was a case of interpreting the law, and not of framing it anew on the ground of expediency. But, he added, even if the court had to decide without reference to authority, he should still be prepared to urge that the danger of convicting one innocent person must always outweigh that of granting immunity to any number of felons, and he reminded their lordships how very rarely such a circumstance as the present occurred in actual experience. When the judges came to give their opinions it was at once evident that the court was divided. In accordance with old etiquette, the youngest judge delivered himself first, and he, with some hesitation, declared in favour of the prisoner. But the next three all took the opposite side, and did so with great firmness. After them came another who supported Prescott's view, and then one who sided against him. Sir Daniel Buller repeated his decision at the trial, and Sir John Wiseman dwelt with elaboration on the reasons which swayed his cautious mind to the opposite view. But the member of the court who was listened to with most attention by his brethren was Sir Stephen James, who had made a European reputation by his studies in criminal law. His works on the subject were in every library, and his mere dictum carried almost as much weight as a decided case. When it began to be evident that he was going in the prisoner's favour, Prescott took courage again. His lordship's decision was brief, and to the point. 'When I am asked to apply a rule of law to a state of facts,' he said, 'and it appears doubtful whether or no the facts are included in the strict wording of the rule, I think it rational to look behind the words to the meaning, and to ask whether the reason for the rule applies with equal force to the facts now before me. Now, the reason I am able to discover for Sir Matthew Hale's rule is the danger of condemning anyone on a capital charge when you cannot be quite sure that a capital crime has been committed. It is no use to say to me that the jury believe this, that, or the other. The jury may believe it will be a fine day to-morrow, but that does not justify me in condemning a man to death on the assumption that it will be a fine day. The question is whether the jury are justified in coming to their verdict by cogent and decisive evidence. In this case I can see nothing of the sort. An eccentric old lady, with a mania for hoarding jewels, has disappeared in the night, carrying her jewels with her. A hand, identified as hers, because of the rings on it, was found on the beach next day. On those grounds, practically, we are asked to say that she is dead. I can only say that I decline to come to any such conclusion, and furthermore, I am quite satisfied that if Sir Matthew Hale were sitting on this bench to-day he would be in favour of quashing this conviction.' Two other judges at once subscribed this judgment, and finally, when all but the Chief Justice had spoken, it appeared that the court so far was evenly divided, and that Lord Christobel held the fate of the prisoner in his hands. Possibly his lordship was not ill-pleased at this. He was a past master of dramatic effect, and in his hands the ancient dignity of Lord Chief Justice of England lost nothing of its imposing character. It may be added that it lost nothing of that higher dignity conferred upon it by the Gascoignes of another age. Lord Christobel had shown on more than one occasion that all ranks, even the highest, were equal in the eye of the law as administered by him. He was the scourge of truckling magistrates, and a thorn in the side of those petty tyrants whom our peculiar system allows to flourish in rural districts in the degraded robes of justice. He did not long keep the court in suspense. In a gracefully-worded judgment he endorsed the arguments of the prisoner's counsel, and pronounced the conviction of Eleanor Owen to be void in law. The prisoner was to be discharged forthwith. Hardly did Prescott wait for the closing words of the judgment before rushing out to the telegraph office at the entrance to the Law Courts, and despatching a message to Eleanor, who was still in Abertaff gaol. He followed this up by thrusting a few things into a bag, cashing a cheque, and hurrying to Paddington, where he caught an express for the county town. Within four hours he was in Eleanor's presence. She had waited for him in the prison, and now put on some outdoor things. He led her to the door, where the governor took a courteous leave of them, and they passed through the gates. When she found herself for the first time in the open air, Eleanor's limbs shook beneath her. She looked wildly round, as if fearing to behold some disagreeable object, and then begged Prescott to take her to a seat. They had emerged into a wide, dirty street, formed by the prison wall on one side and a row of shabby little houses and shops on the other. A few boys were playing marbles on the path, and Eleanor never saw the game afterwards without remembering that evening. The sun was about to set as they took their way by the quietest route to a little public garden in the neighbourhood, where was a grass plot and some seats. There they stopped, and sat down for a short time to decide on Eleanor's future steps. Eleanor's first words struck heavily in the ears of her companion. 'I almost wish myself back again. Where am I to go now?' And she shivered slightly. 'Oh, Eleanor, don't say that! To-night you must go to some hotel in the town, but to-morrow we will go up to town together, and I will find you lodgings for a time.' She turned and looked at him sorrowfully, not reproachfully, and shook her head. 'No, no. You forget what I said to you before. I have accepted your friendship, and I need not tell you how grateful I am for it, and for your efforts in obtaining my release. But I am still where I was, as far as the world is concerned. They will go on believing me guilty, and while they do I cannot let you associate with me.' 'Oh, why not? Surely you know by this time what you are to me? Need I tell you, Eleanor----' She put up her hand. 'Hush, Charles!' The word sent a thrill through him. He looked round. Some children were engrossed in a game a hundred yards and more away. The sunlight was fading from gold to crimson across the roofs and chimneys beyond. The whole scene was still and Sabbath-like. A great peace seemed to speak to him, and bid him take courage and hope for better things. He turned again to Eleanor. 'Thank you,' he said, in acknowledgment of her tacit confession. 'But oh! if I am satisfied, what need you care for others? Listen: I have some money--more than enough to keep us for some years. We will go to Australia, where they have not heard of us; or, if they have, we will change our names. I can join the bar there, and do as well as here. Are you not my only happiness? What are other things compared to that?' Again she looked at him sorrowfully. Again she shook her head. Then she turned and gazed into the green and crimson of the sunset while she spoke. 'You would not speak like that if you knew me. Do you suppose I have not thought of all these things during my weary prison hours? I have done nothing else since I saw you, since I saw you and knew you loved me, Charles. But I must be strong where you are weak. I must decide in this matter without heeding your wishes. I must decide as your mother would, if you asked her. Would she wish you to marry a convicted murderess? I have to speak plainly, because I want you to understand me at once, Charles, and spare me the pain of further talk like this. I shall go to London by myself, and I shall let you have my address on the strict condition that you are never to come and see me till my character stands clear again. You may write to me sometimes, not often, but if you break the condition and come to me, I shall move somewhere else and hide myself from you altogether. Now let us go and find a hotel for me, different from yours.' She made a movement to rise. Charles looked round once more. The children had finished their game and disappeared. The brilliancy of the sunset was dropping into dusk and gray. They were alone in the twilight, beneath the faded trees. 'Eleanor, one pledge that you will not forsake me!' She turned. Their eyes met; then their lips. The silent, close embrace lasted but a minute, though to both of them it seemed longer than the whole of their previous life. Then they arose and went forth out of their poor paradise, like Adam and Eve, with the world lying empty and desolate in front of them. CHAPTER XIII. UNDER THE GREAT SEAL. Shortly after Prescott had returned to town, he was surprised to get a letter from Tressamer to this effect: 'I want you to give me Eleanor's address. I must see her once more, as I have something of importance to say to her.' Without an instant's hesitation he sat down and wrote an answer, in which he said: 'You have no further claim on my friendship, nor on Miss Owen's. Fortunately, she is now under my protection, and in a place where you are not likely to find her. Do not expect for one moment that I shall do anything to bring her again within the reach of your dangerous character. Only the memory of our old kindness restrains me from writing in a very much stronger way. I am sorry that I must ask you never to hold communication with me again.' Meanwhile Prescott had been doing his utmost to obtain some further light upon the mystery. But neither his inquiries nor those of the skilled detective whom he sent down at his own expense to investigate had resulted so far in finding the smallest clue to what had happened on the night of the first of June. He had not seen Eleanor since they parted at Abertaff. He now received a letter from her, in which she fulfilled her promise of letting him know her address. But her letter was so despondent, and showed her to feel her situation so deeply, that Prescott was greatly shocked and grieved. Two days after he was roused by seeing in the papers this announcement: 'THE PORTHSTONE MURDER: DISCOVERY OF THE LOST JEWELS.--Last night, while dragging for fish along the shore of Newton Bay, some fishermen brought to land in their net a chest which had evidently been in the water some time. On being opened, it was found to be full of valuable gems. The police were at once communicated with, it being supposed that they were those missing since the night of the murder. They sent for Mr. Lewis, but as he was unable to speak to their identity, Mr. Williams, of Abertaff, who had supplied deceased with jewellery, was wired for, and he came down by the next train and identified the contents of the chest as the missing jewels. It will be remembered that a part of the body was discovered at or about the same place. 'The importance of the discovery is in negativing the theory that the crime was committed for the sake of robbery. But it cannot be said that the mystery which has enshrouded this murder from first to last is in any degree dispelled by this new incident.' While Prescott was still pondering over this discovery, and its bearing on the position of Eleanor and the facts in the case, he received a second letter from Tressamer. His first impulse was to return it unopened, but he thought this might be doing an injustice, as the letter might contain some explanation, though hardly any excuse for his strange conduct. He therefore opened it. The letter was a long one, taking up many sheets of paper. After the opening words, it went on: 'I know not what opinion you have formed of me and of my conduct towards Eleanor Owen. Neither do I write in any hope of excusing myself. I am past that now, and I shall soon be past the reach of your anger and of hers. 'Let me begin at the beginning. You remember our childhood, and you know, none better, the bonds between Eleanor and myself. But you do not know that, as children, we were united by those pledges which children sometimes make in imitation of the serious engagements of later life. Of course, as we grew older that passed more or less out of sight, but the memory of it remained--at least, with me. 'I think it was you who first came between us, even at that early age. I used to think she liked you better than me. But why dwell on these things? Let me come on to a later time, the time of her father's death, when I had passed into manhood, and she was passing into young womanhood. 'That was my first opportunity of showing her my devotion, and I did so. I paid off her father's debts, and by the time I had settled everything, and handed over a little sum to her, I had spent some hundreds of pounds of my own. 'Eleanor was grateful. Whether she had any warmer feeling for me at that time, I cannot say. But I thought then that she had, and that she returned my love--not in the degree that I gave it; no, that could not be. Still, the pleasure she took in my company, the trust with which she seemed to lean on me, certainly filled me with the hope of some day winning her. 'I went to work cautiously. I dreaded her being afraid of my passion if I let her see its whole force. I never did. I chained it up when I was with her, and played a mild and cheerful part. I had my reward. At last, the Christmas after her father's death, I ventured to speak. She heard me with no delight, but yet, it seemed, with no great repugnance. Time soon reconciled her to the idea, and before long, I had the rapture of hearing her consent to be mine. 'Then it was that I betrayed myself. I let my mad passion peep forth for an instant, and in that instant I was undone. I saw I had terrified and shocked her. I would have given worlds to recall that volcanic outburst, but it was too late. Her feelings, mild hitherto, were soured by the lightning of my intense love. From that hour she turned from me with deeper and deeper aversion, and from that hour my passion grew and grew upon me with the force of mania, till it usurped the functions of reason, morality, prudence, and every motive that guides and controls the life of man, and left me with but one dominating, desperate idea, that I must possess Eleanor Owen, or perish. 'I need not dwell on what happened during the next year. How I saw her turning from me, with a sickening heart; how I hungered for the tokens of even that mild friendship she had shown me of old, and how even that was denied; how I brooded upon my wrongs till I scarce knew whether I loved or hated her, whether it was passion or revenge that inspired my mad resolve to kill her rather than forfeit my right to her. 'You, yes, you, came between us again. God help me, I sometimes think she must have loved you all along, unconsciously. She asked me for your portrait; I refused. She persisted. Then my wrath broke out in an ungovernable transport of jealousy, and I showed--I must have shown--something of the black stuff that was working in my heart. I saw her lose colour. I saw her tremble, and I rushed away to calm myself if I could. 'From that moment I could see that all friendly feeling was at an end between us. She hated me and I hated her. But I would not give her up. The very animosity between us seemed only to feed my fierce desire to have her and make her my slave. Am I writing wildly? Do you start back and shudder at all this? Go on; you have not yet come to a glimmering of the worst! 'I began to grow impatient for a final end to this state of things, and I pressed her to name a day for the marriage. She replied, putting me off. I went down by the next train to have it out with her. And then at last we spoke freely. 'I accused her of having ceased to love me. She said she had never really felt love for me, but only affection, and that I had extinguished that by my own behaviour. 'I asked her what behaviour. She was silent. Then the flood-gates of my wrath broke loose, and I put all her weakness and wickedness before her. Ah, how I spoke! You may think you have heard me eloquent. But you never have. I was that afternoon as one inspired. I stood there on the bare sands, alone with her, with the wind rushing past us, and the sea roaring in front, and the wild seabirds wheeling and screaming far away. Oh, it was a grand hour for me! The frenzy mounted to my brain. I felt like a destroying angel. I took her miserable girl's heart in my hands and rent it in twain, and cast its miserable pretences to the earth. I showed her myself, my manhood, my ardour, my passion, my devotion. I terrified her, awed her, fascinated her. For a time I think I had almost won upon her to yield. 'But my power forsook me. No sooner did I see the first symptom of returning tenderness in her, or what I mistook for it, than my hatred and rage departed; I was melted in a moment; I flung myself in front of her on my face, and implored her with sobs and tears to give me one little spark of love. Fool that I was! Fool! Fool! 'She took advantage of my weakness. Doubtless she despised me for it. She made me one of those mincing, lying answers that women know how to make to us in our madness, and she took courage at last to rise and leave me lying there--lying there with my face upon the wet sand, and the wet rain beating down upon my head, and the moaning tempest rising over me in the heavens, like the awful eruption of maniacal hatred that was working its way into my being within. 'I got up at night and came away. I suppose I still looked and acted as if I were sane. At all events, the people I passed said nothing to me. I packed up and left for Abertaff that night. 'With me I took an object which I had picked up on the sands where Eleanor had sat. It was the key of the house where she lived. When I caught sight of it it seemed like an inspiration. In an instant I resolved to make use of it to execute my vengeance. Since I could not marry Eleanor, I would kill her. 'But in the train a more subtle scheme presented itself. If I killed her, she would be lost to me for ever, and I still longed for her as madly as at any time. The new idea which I had got was this. I would kill, not Eleanor, but her friend and benefactress, and I would do it in such a way as to cast the stain of guilt on Eleanor herself. You see the plot. Her life was to be in no real danger. The body was to disappear, and hence she was to escape a trial. But the horror and condemnation of the whole world were to be turned upon her, and then, in her hour of blackest misery, I was to come forward and say: "I love you still. I believe in your innocence. Come with me to a foreign land as my wife, and I will make you happy." 'I need not tell you much more. I came back by road for greater secrecy, and did not arrive in Porthstone till eleven at night. I was not tired. Some superhuman power had taken possession of me, and in all I did I felt as if I were but a passive instrument in its hands. 'I approached the house at twelve, expecting all its inmates to be asleep. Just as I was about to enter it the door opened, and to my astonishment Eleanor herself emerged. I gazed at her retreating figure with a sort of stupid fascination for some time, and then recovered myself, and went in. I had taken off my boots outside, and hence, I suppose my footsteps sounded light as I went upstairs. 'Well, do you want more? Do you care to hear how I killed her; how I stabbed her in her sleep, lowered her through the window, and came down with the jewel-chest in my arms? I had to mutilate the corpse; the weight would have been too great for me at once. As it was, I made three journeys before I had disposed of all, and thrown everything, including the latchkey, into the sea. 'Then I walked back to Abertaff--twenty miles it was, and I got there before ten the next morning. I had breakfast, and was still walking the streets when the news came that the murder was discovered. 'It overwhelmed me. I assure you, Charles Prescott, on the oath of a dying man, that I knew not what I did, till that moment. I was possessed as surely as any of the Galilean sufferers of old. Madness, your modern science calls it. It is all the same. I passed out of it into my ordinary state with a terrible shock, and then I set about playing the part I had looked forward to, of delivering Eleanor, and carrying her off. 'But it was not to be. I had forgotten that she was not mad, too; I had made no allowance for her, and now I found that my protection, my confidence, was of no value to her, when she had lost the good opinion of the world. 'Of the world, do I say? Verily, I believe it was you; I believe you unconsciously thwarted me then, as before. 'I gave way to my frenzy again in secret. Again the demon came back and resumed his sway. He has held me ever since. He holds me now. 'Yet I can act my part. I deceive all. I just rang for my clerk, and told him I should want him to carry this to your chambers. Fool! He had no suspicion that he was never going to hear me speak again. 'Good-bye. 'Twere folly to ask you to forgive. I do not wish it. Yet, Eleanor--Eleanor----' The letter ended abruptly at this point. The reader put on his hat and rushed round to Tressamer's chambers. It was too late. He found him sitting in a chair, stark and dead, with a dagger driven through his heart. * * * * * When a year had elapsed, a quiet wedding took place, in an out-of-the-way city church, between Charles Prescott and Eleanor Owen. The only dowry brought by the bride was her restored beauty, and a parchment under the Great Seal of England, pardoning her from all accusations that had been or might be raised against her on account of the tragedy which had so nearly involved her in a felon's doom. THE END. * * * * * BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD. TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author's words and intent. 
39826	----	Transcriber's Note: Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. Detailed transcriber's notes are to be found at the end of the text. THE TRIAL OF _Callista Blake_ EDGAR PANGBORN There is no ethical absolute that does not arise from error and illusion. --GEORGE GAYLORD SIMPSON, _The meaning of Evolution_. St Martin's Press New York _Copyright_ © _Edgar Pangborn 1961_ _Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 61-13391_ _Manufactured in the United States of America_ _by H. Wolff, New York_ _The author wishes to express his thanks to William Morrow & Company, Inc., for permission to use an excerpt from_ THE COURT OF LAST RESORT _by Erle Stanley Gardner, Copyright 1952 by Erle Stanley Gardner; to Yale University Press for permission to use a quotation from G. G. Simpson's_ THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION; _and to Charles Scribner's Sons for permission to use a passage from_ THE STORY OF MY LIFE _by Clarence Darrow._ To the Memory of My Father NOTE: All characters in this novel are fictitious, not intended to resemble any actual persons living or dead. The locale is semifictitious: for "New Essex" read "almost any of the northeastern States within a 300-mile radius of New York City." E.P. THE TRIAL OF CALLISTA BLAKE 1 Now laws maintain their credit not because they are just, but because they are laws. That is the mystic foundation of their authority: they have no other. MONTAIGNE, _Of Experience_ I Doves wheeled above the city's winter morning, vanishing by a turn of wings, reappearing in a silent explosion of light. Judge Terence Mann saw smoke rising through windless cold from a thousand chimneys, and saw, beyond a bleak acreage of city roofs, the apartment house that contained his bachelor burrow; further on, the Veterans Hospital shone not as a temple of sickness but a shaft of splendor in the sun. His eyes smarted as he turned away from the brightness. That was partly from a lack of sleep. The Judge remembered that, like this robing-room, the detention cells also looked up across the long rise of land where, for something like three hundred years, the city had been haphazardly expanding, fattening on river commerce, and becoming--in the American sense--old. Some day, should the small gods in the state capital approve, the city of Winchester would own a Civic Center near that hospital, with a new county courthouse. Judge Mann had seen an architect's dream picture in the Egypto-lavatory style, a kind of streamlined cake of soap--optimistic in a time when Winchester's population of 80,000 was remaining constant while suburbs oozed in heedless growth over the once magnificent countryside. In any case this late-Victorian-Gothic firetrap downtown would have to serve for the ordeal of _The People vs. Blake_. He shoved the black sleeve clear of his wrist watch: 10:10. Short, slight, his temples silvering at forty-seven; few wrinkles yet; a thin flexible mouth suggesting kindness; in his square forehead the pucker of certain chronic doubts. He checked his pockets for reading glasses and aspirin while his attendant Joe Bass brushed at imaginary lint. "Mr. Delehanty says there's quite a crowd, Judge." "Do they need more bailiffs out there?" "I wouldn't think so--just noisy. They all want in." Pink-faced, lightly wrinkled, Joe could shift at will from a glorified valet to a literate old man. "Maybe the rumors about the girl's deformity make them curious, same as if she were a Hollywood dish." "Oh, I understand her deformity's pretty slight. It's just the radio and papers--sensationalism--public wants a circus. Well, I'm late." "Technically, sir, you are. But after three years on the bench, you know it isn't ten o'clock till you pass through that door." "Uh-huh--Joshua never had it so good. Well, here we go ..." "All rise!" Mr. Delehanty's tenor burbled the lusciousness of a clarinet. "The Honorable Judge of the Court of General Sessions in and for the County of Winchester!" Judge Mann saw them rise, for what the tradition said he must be and therefore was. "All persons having business before this honorable court draw near, give your attention, and you shall be heard!" Seating himself with a twinge of annoyance at pomp and circumstance, Mann observed a virgin scratch-pad beside his minute-book. He suspected Mr. Delehanty of rescuing judicial doodles from the wastebasket: to Mr. Delehanty any new judge was a potential Great Man till the bloom wore off. "This court is now in session." Three years a judge, less than a year in General Sessions--it had been sure to come, the first case overshadowed by the death penalty. He had faced the certainty and argued it out with himself, well before those scrambled days of the election campaign two years ago which had settled him securely in office after the uncertainty of an interim appointment. He had supposed the answers he arrived at then were still valid: _The law is man-made, therefore imperfect: as its servant, my function is simply to interpret, trusting that time and natural process will permit the law to continue growing, not petrifying, as men gradually become a little wiser (if they do)._ And so on--respectable answers, unoriginal but having the sanction of history, of just and generous minds. Yet last night, after a final reading of the grand jury minutes in the Blake case, he could not sleep. And this morning, so far, he was merely insisting to himself that those answers had better stay valid, since the sovereign state of New Essex was stuck with him for another twelve years. Perhaps, he thought, his uneasiness was not so much at the ethical position as at the Blake case itself--too one-sided. He saw at present no good prospects for defense counsel Cecil Warner except in delaying actions, skirmishes, the unpredictable chances of courtroom drama, and the doctrine of reasonable doubt--which is, to be sure, a doctrine broad enough to take in the whole expanse of human affairs, philosophically and not legally speaking. He surveyed the arena, wiping his reading glasses, hoping his eyes didn't look too bloodshot. The prospective talesmen spilled into the rows beyond the press tables. Then the anonymous; and from outside, a beehive snarl of the disappointed, who might dwindle away presently, unless the papers had succeeded at blowing the case up into a sexual circus. Portraits of the dead woman showed a pretty face, but Ann Doherty had after all been a respectable suburban housewife, not a glamor girl. Catering to the perennial hunger for a scapegoat, most of the papers were writing of Callista Blake on a note of hate just inside libel--Crippled Teen-Age Intellectual, Prodigy Girl in the Monkshood Case. But that carried a phony note, for Callista Blake had managed to remain so essentially unknown that so far there was really no one to hate but a paper image. Some voices dissented, too. One sob sister had declared Callista was a woman, with human needs, feelings, a tragic childhood. That writer might have read an article on psychiatry--even two articles. There were certain letters, from Callista Blake to her lover James Doherty, the last one written about a week before Doherty's wife was found dead--poisoned and drowned. If those letters arrived in evidence over the protests of Cecil Warner, they would demonstrate Callista Blake's humanity more intensely than any journalistic gulping. Judge Mann had read them, Cecil Warner and District Attorney Lamson present. James Doherty, Lamson said, had handed over the first three voluntarily. The fourth, found in Callista Blake's possession, had not been mailed to Doherty. For Mann, to read them had been like blundering into a private room where lovers clung together with locked loins and tortured faces; like being compelled to watch, afterward, when the woman was alone and wounded with loss. He had skimmed, his mind wincing aside, knowing it was not possible to understand the letters under those conditions. They had not been read to the grand jury. Some passages in them might be construed as admissions of guilt--or not, as you pleased. Warner evidently felt that this notion could be demolished. As for beauty and glamor, the prosecution would introduce other photographs of Ann Doherty that were no pretty portraits. Old Warner would object routinely and be overruled; the jury would then meet the unmitigated spectacle of a death by drowning. When Ophelia perishes offstage you don't think of post-mortem lividity or foam on the mouth. "Mr. District Attorney?" Assistant District Attorney Talbot J. Hunter nodded briskly but solemnly: he was being the man who profoundly regrets what he must do. That had not been altogether predictable. Dealing with professional crooks, T. J. could act downright jolly in a ferocious give-nothing way, often sweeping a jury along. With a tiger's grace, handsome in spite of too much chin and early frontal baldness, Hunter could have been athlete, actor, singer. He was a near-professional with the Winchester Choral Society, having once gone splendidly through the baritone solo in the Brahms _German Requiem_ when the guest artist turned up with laryngitis. Mann, himself a serious pianist, had heard that achievement, and remembered it at times when Hunter's courtroom personality annoyed him: the man could hardly have sung that well unless there was in him, somewhere, the element of compassion. In the law, Mann supposed, Hunter could use and enjoy his musical and histrionic abilities and at the same time make a living. "Call the Blake case!" The voice, Mann observed, was in top form, rich, melodious, and acceptably stern. "Mr. Warner?" "The defense is ready." Cecil Warner was standing also, heavy and old, a man listening to other voices though capable of employing his own heavy thunder. The other voices were conscience, tradition, books; overtones of what witnesses and lawyers don't say. The seamed ancient face was fat, the kindness obvious but not the strength. Mann wondered occasionally whether Warner had ever, like Darrow, faced all the implications of a certain pessimism that colored most of his opinions. A fracture imperfectly set had crippled Cecil Warner's left arm in childhood; he could not bend the elbow beyond a ninety-degree angle. And Warner's mind, the Judge speculated, might suffer a similar limitation, never hitting with quite all its power. He would need it all in the next few days. "The People of the State of New Essex against Callista Blake." Reasonable words; but as Mr. Delehanty intoned them, the Judge's mind perversely visualized an army of five or six million, uniformed, with rifles, tanks, flame-throwers, advancing in ponderous wrath against one cornered chipmunk with tinfoil helmet and paper sword. Foolish, he knew: the individual was not alone, and faced not the People roaring and multitudinous but merely their representative, who might be no more powerful a champion than his own counsel. Yet the image had pestered Judge Mann before now, and faded in the style of the Cheshire Cat. At other times he could not avoid the impression that the adversary system was too distressingly close in nature as well as origin to the absurdities of medieval justice, in which truth could be determined by the beef of a hired champion. Were prosecutor and defender today any more concerned with truth than those bumbling muscle-men? Were juries? And judges? "Counsel to the bench, please." They approached, Hunter light on his feet, Warner slow and carrying too much weight in the middle. "When we get started, gentlemen, I intend to bear down on the formalities, some. I think it's that kind of case. Anything more we should discuss now?" Warner's hand rested on the bench. Mann noticed the pale freckles, the frailty of deep-crinkled flesh, blurred rims of the irises of Warner's melancholy brown eyes. Cecil Warner was sixty-eight. "Don't think so, Judge, unless T. J.'s got some load on his mind." Hunter murmured: "Can't imagine a plea--poison and drowning." "My God, do you imagine us taking one?" Mann frowned; Warner's anger was rumbling too loudly. "We're here for acquittal. My girl didn't do it. It's that simple, and that's where we stand." Hunter nodded gravely, courteously, unmoved. In the night, Terence Mann had felt he was not asking himself the right questions. If as prosecutor he could frame them, allowing rational objections from himself as defender, perhaps as witness (or accused?) he might find answers acceptable to himself as judge, jury, and appellate court. But under torment of insomnia the many selves of the mind may abandon the congress of reason and start a rat-race. And now--well, this was full tide; he could not let counsel stand there wondering what ailed him. "That's it, then. Let the defendant be brought in." As they returned to their places he sketched on the doodle-pad two egg-shaped boxers: tangled eyebrows for Cecil Warner, for Hunter too much forehead and shovel chin. A police matron appeared, and a court officer. A hush, then a murmur, each voice swelling but slightly, the crescendo joining others in one uproar that expresses no more than the human need to make a noise under stress. Heads turned, weeds under water. Mann heard the s-whispers, water over sand: _Callista Blake--Callissssta_ ... She walked with a barely noticeable limp--polio in childhood, Mann recalled from the record. She was also very slightly hunchbacked, her thin pale arms seeming too long. As Warner escorted her to the defense section, Judge Mann saw she wore no make-up, though powder might have hidden the narrow scar that ran from her left ear to her jaw. Dark blue suit and white blouse were neat, unobtrusive, severe. A natural curl held her black hair in lines of grace above a skin of porcelain white. She was ignoring Warner's arm, and walked alone. She was nineteen. Her eyes were the blue of undersea. Mann searched for other compensating beauty--hard to find. High cheekbones, large nose, small abrupt chin, high forehead modified by the curls but still too high. The extreme whiteness of skin made one think of marble, or heart disease. The medical report declared that apart from the unimportant deformity she was quite healthy. And the State's psychiatrist was prepared to testify, following the quaint barbarism of the once useful McNaughton Rule, that Callista Blake was legally sane. As the jargon had it, she knew the difference between right and wrong, the nature and consequences of her acts. With no word yet, Callista Blake rejected sympathy, dared the world to pity her, indicated a readiness to spit in its eye. Warner said: "Give the clerk your name for the record." Mann heard a strong contralto drawl; it might have sounded warm and pleasant at other times: "Which is the clerk?" Some idiot woman in the back row giggled. Warner spoke quickly: "Up there, my dear, that's Mr. Delehanty." The girl glanced casually at the clerk's dapper dignity, and resumed her level examination of Judge Mann. "I am Callista Blake." Judge Mann opened the record book and wrote: _State vs. Blake, Dec. 7, 1959_. Eighteen days to Christmas and he still hadn't bought that Diesel train for David, his brother Jack's youngest.... The Blake girl sat down, Warner on her other side where his bulk might partly shield her from the assault of eyes. She moved with grace, the deformity a nothing; the disturbing grace of a wild thing--a cat, a snake, a soaring bird, who makes never one waste motion but appears to flow with no instant of transition known. On the scratch-pad Mann's pencil labored through the fussiness of Old English script: Which is the Clerk? He said: "If you're ready, Mr. Hunter, we can choose a jury." The squirrel-cage squeaked. Mr. Delehanty called: "Peter Anson." The bald stubby man waddling forward looked neither calloused nor hypersensitive. Thirtyish; young enough not to be too congealed in acquired prejudices, old enough to have rubbed off some of the certainties the young must use in place of experience. Mann imagined for him a cute pink-and-white wife, two kids, mortgage, Chevvy. Anson might do. As Mr. Delehanty called more names, Mann ripped off the top sheet of the doodle-pad, to bury it in the minute-book instead of the wastebasket. Never mind Mr. Delehanty's feelings. Some later page might show only cats, mermaids, stripteasers--he could have that one. Relaxed and genial, T. J. Hunter spoke to the potential jurors as well as to those first called: "I'm Talbot Hunter, assistant district attorney who will try this case. Judge Terence Mann is presiding. At the other table is Mr. Cecil Warner, defense counsel, and beside him is the defendant Callista Blake. She's not a resident of Shanesville, by the way, though she lived there till about a year ago. I don't think any of you come from Shanesville--very nice town, about three miles beyond the city line." Mann drew a lightning sketch of the Governor's mansion, and wrote: _Nice town, but alas, T. J., wrong county!_ "Callista Blake is the daughter, by an earlier marriage, of Mrs. Herbert Chalmers of Shanesville. Callista's father, Kramer Blake, died in 1947. In 1951 her mother married Dr. Herbert Chalmers, Associate Professor of English at our own Winchester College. Miss Blake lived in Shanesville until July of last year, when she took an apartment by herself here in Winchester--21 Covent Street. Then, and up to the time of her arrest, she was employed by a portrait photographer, Miss Edith Nolan--" "Still is," said a thin red-haired woman among the spectators. Mann's rap with the gavel was reflex action. "That can't be permitted." The redhead sat frozen in evident astonishment at herself. It would be Edith Nolan, Mann guessed; he could feel no genuine annoyance. "The Court assumes the impulsive remark just made by a spectator was inadvertent, an accident. Disciplinary action will be necessary if anything like that happens again. All relevant statements will be made properly, at the proper time. Go ahead, Mr. Hunter." A blush flooded the woman's keen homely face; she nodded, no doubt a promise to behave. In the early thirties, tense, intelligent, explosive, but without the look of a crackpot; Mann expected no further trouble there. Hunter said: "Please search your memories. Are any of those names familiar? Blake? Chalmers? Nolan?... Don't worry if you've read or heard of Mr. Warner. He's a very distinguished attorney. It'd be more surprising if you hadn't heard of him. That's not the sort of familiarity I mean--wouldn't disqualify you." Mann noted the purloined Warner special. Now if the Old Man tossed his opponent verbal violets he would appear imitative and absurd. "Other names--Nathaniel Judd, senior partner in the real estate and insurance firm of Judd and Doherty. Ann Doherty--that is, Mrs. James Doherty.... Welsh? Jason? No familiarity? Good." Hunter swept on his reading glasses, which were perhaps clear glass. "This paper I'm holding charges that on the evening of Sunday, the 16th of last August, Callista Blake, at her apartment at 21 Covent Street, Winchester, gave to Ann Doherty, who was about to leave that apartment after a short visit and return to her home in Shanesville, a drink of brandy containing the poison aconite. It charges that within the half-hour thereafter Callista Blake followed Ann Doherty to Shanesville, and found her near a small pond which lies at the edge of the Dohertys' property. It charges that Callista Blake, willfully, with malice aforethought, drowned Ann Doherty in this pond. The State will ask for the verdict of murder in the first degree." Under spreading silence, words moved sluggishly in Judge Mann's mind--words remembered from the hours when he could not sleep. He had lurched sandy-eyed out of bed, prowled at the bookshelves, settled by the chilling fireplace with a volume of the _Britannica_ and a shot glass of brandy. "_The cerebrum is totally unaffected by aconite, consciousness and the intelligence remaining normal to the last._" His diaphragm twisted in a spasmodic yawn. He covered it swiftly, but the reporters would have seen it. He thought: _Let them!_ But he must not start woolgathering. Plump Mr. Anson had folded his arms and declared that he was a plumber by trade. T. J. Hunter was asking: "Have newspaper or radio accounts caused you to give any advance opinion?" "No, sir, I b'lieve I can honestly say they haven't." "Have you read the editorials in the Winchester _Courier_ or the morning _Sentinel_ on this case?" "Well, no, I kind of let the wife do the heavy reading." Crowd laughter mildly rumbled; Anson evidently didn't mind it. "Have you ever been the victim of a robbery or burglary?" "No, sir, never was." Routine questions continued a while, Hunter relaxed and casual yet really wasting no time.... "Mr. Anson, my next question has been under a good deal of discussion in recent years. Like any good citizen, you must have given it thought. Have you, sir, any conscientious objection to the death penalty?" "Well ..." The man was unhappy. "I been asking myself that, ever since I got called. All's I can say, if I was certain-sure about the guilt, I mean the first-degree thing, I wouldn't hesitate to vote for the ch--for the death penalty--if I was certain-sure, that's what I'd have to do." "And you would do it?" "I would," said Mr. Anson. "Seems--seems only right." Another yawn assailed the Judge. He groped for causes of his weariness other than lack of sleep. "_The world is too much with us_--" if too much for Wordsworth long ago, what about now? A tractor-trailer answered the thought, groaning through the street three stories below, a Cyclops in anguish, rattling windows, sending elderly foundations into a sympathetic shudder. Judge Mann wondered if he might be coming down with a cold. II Edith Nolan studied eleven faces, and the twelfth now giving the prosecutor stiffly reasonable answers. She wondered if Cecil Warner would dislike, as she did, Mr. Francis Fielding's buttoned-in upper lip. A statistician in the records office of Winchester's biggest department store, forty, consciously literate, rather too good to be true. Edith sensed the fanatic, the acrid mind that must be always right. But such a disposition might harden in favor of acquittal instead of conviction. Since her tasteless sandwich luncheon, the afternoon had been for Edith a desert of echoes, all voices unfamiliar except Cecil Warner's. Fast work, she supposed, to have a jury almost complete, and the hour not quite four. The heat had been turned higher after the noon recess, the courtroom growing sickly with a mustiness of flesh, disinfectant, dust. Edith's head ached, a dull frontal throb. The hard seat nagged at thin buttocks, unpadded backbone. When Callista looked her way, Edith wriggled and grimaced, trying to add a mild humor to her silent message: _Head up, Cal! We're going to win._ Briefly, Callista smiled. Imaginary pressure of eyes at the back of her neck was a misery. Callista's mother and stepfather were two or three rows behind. At the noon recess they had been unwillingly jammed against her in the corridor outside. Mrs. Chalmers would have liked to cut her then, Edith thought, but washed together so in the loud human tide, that hadn't been quite possible even for Victoria Chalmers. The Pale Professor might even have rebelled at it--he was bravely friendly, pleased to stoop in his weedy tallness and shake hands, keeping haunted uncourageous eyes obstinately turned away from the great stone face. And so the Face had talked, pronouncing deadly commonplaces in Victoria's public manner, which always suggested the need of an organ obligato--a spate of commonplaces, all of them somehow conveying the implication that Edith Nolan was at the very least a Bad Influence. Edith had never discovered much resemblance between Victoria and her daughter, except for prominent cheekbones and uncommonly white skin. Victoria's nose was classically straight, without the irregularity that gave Callista's features an almost Indian cast. Victoria's smoky-pale hyperthyroid eyes somehow lacked alertness, as though she could not be bothered with anything so simple as direct observation. Her hands were stodgy, unalive--nothing there of Callista, and nothing of Callista in her mother's rugged frame and Madam-Chairman chestiness. Edith could picture that bust inflating for voice projection when Victoria was about to read a paper before the Thursday Society of Shanesville--they "did" book reviews and current events. She had met Victoria on her home grounds twice, when Callista had invited her out to Shanesville with wry warnings. At home, Victoria was invincible, a conversational Juggernaut riding over a crumpled evening with every adverb in place. And yet now, Edith thought, Victoria was probably suffering, in her fashion. She would be regarding Callista's trouble as an unwarranted attack of the universe against Mrs. Victoria Johnson Blake Chalmers; but with whatever strength of emotion remained, with whatever capability of love may exist in a person who must be always right, Victoria would be feeling a genuine distress for her maverick daughter, perhaps also for dead Ann Doherty, even for Jim Doherty. Maybe. Or maybe Callista had been right in the quick, casual, bitter remark that Edith remembered from many months ago: "Something was left out when Mother's chromosomes got slung together--I believe it was humanity." Or the truth could lie as usual somewhere in the middle. In the noon recess, it had seemed to Edith that she glimpsed flickerings of real pain in Victoria--some kind of pain; under such conditions it might be hard to tell the difference between grief and the pinch of a tight girdle. Then the crowd had thinned enough to let them escape, and Victoria, still resonantly talking nothings, had marched Professor Herbert Chalmers away, a trainer jerking the leash on a shambling mournful Great Dane. The electric clock behind Mr. Delehanty clicked and twitched, another scrap of eternity chipped off as Mr. Fielding declared: "I have no objection to the death penalty, and would make no exception for a woman." The bald athlete Talbot J. Hunter stepped aside, and Cecil Warner, wilted and ancient, took over. The Old Man was tired, his questions a mere mopping up of areas Hunter had ignored: Fielding's newspaper reading, length of residence in Winchester; perhaps he just wanted to hear a few more overtones. In this case Cecil Warner--(Edith understood it fully today for the first time)--was not interested in the fee, the publicity, or the abstraction of justice. He was there because, with the curious devotion of an old man, he loved Callista. To use one of his own worn phrases, it was that simple. Since a woman of thirty-one does not live in the world of a battle-worn man of sixty-eight, Edith knew she could grasp the quality of that love from the outside only, with the mind only: enough, to accept the fact. But didn't a defense counsel need some inner coldness to sustain him? She studied the twelve faces, their names already carved into her memory. She would retain the look of them as vividly as though each juror had sat in her studio under the clever lights while she examined the faults, planes, good points, chatted with them to let self-consciousness and vanity subside, searched for the portrait they wouldn't see, and at last finished her shots--one to please the customer if possible; one, if lucky, to please herself as a frozen instant of relative truth. Peter Anson--oh, if he were furry instead of bald you could use color film and get a pink panda. That notion was not quite her own, but like something Callista might have said in one of her fantastic moods, more impudent than funny, more funny than spiteful. Anson's chubbiness would be deceptive, his good nature not the kind that he would maintain under serious pressure. His kindness would be limited to what he understood. Beyond that limit, Anson could be cruel. Dora Lagovski, twenty-four, mammal, housewife. Dora would want to be photographed with a big mouthful of teeth, and you better do it. Emerson Lake, newsdealer, sixty-five. If not born in a cool pocket of the White Mountains, he should have been. Humanity gleamed in him like an ember under the crust of a clotted briar pipe. Emma Beales, forty, housewife. Smooth round conscientious face, all hell on civic duty. Never plagued with an original idea, capable of talking both arms off at the deltoids, but not a bad old girl. Edith estimated that she must have made about twenty portraits of Emma every year; it was only in the bad moods that they all looked alike. Stella Wainwright, thirty-seven, grade school teacher. Her brown hair curved in what Edith decided was a natural wave, not helped by her dowdy muddy-brown dress. The kids probably liked her; she would not be expected to teach them much about the passion and confusion of the world: not for Stella the sweat and garbage, the sunrises and the music of moon-drenched nights, the labors of love, the fields of cornflowers, the screaming in the disturbed ward. They had people to take care of all that stuff while Stella taught social studies. But on this jury Stella would do her best, and it might be good enough. Elizabeth Grant, twenty-six, housewife. How could life write on a face of dough? Unfair, maybe; nevertheless Edith distrusted Mrs. Grant, reflecting what atrocious cruelty can be accomplished by well-meaning souls devoid of humor and imagination. The woman was opaque, her simplest answers under voir dire examination sounding like quotations from a wholesome family magazine. Ralph LaSalle, thirty-one, shoe-store clerk. Cecil Warner and Hunter, Edith supposed, would both have recognized the minority he represented. His mask was good, the too-long blond hair and somewhat mannered accent betraying it. Cecil Warner might be counting on LaSalle to show fairness toward a white crow of another sort; Hunter possibly expected him to be hostile toward all women. Both lawyers could be wrong; Edith expected LaSalle to act and think simply as a human being with a good intelligence and rational sympathies. Rachel Kleinman, housewife, forty-eight. They would be needing Mother Rachel at home; Edith hoped there was a daughter old enough to cook. But Rachel would stay with it; warmth and gentleness were in her; she would not knowingly burn another woman for a witch. And when Edith took the stand, she might look for this woman Rachel to understand why Callista Blake had smashed the heater and poured ice-water into her tank of tropical fish when she knew she was to be arrested. Emmet Hoag, hardware salesman, twenty-nine. A little bit handsome, Edith noted--like a healthy pig. He would consider himself hell on the women until snared and housebroken by some broad-beamed breeder who knew what she wanted. A born No. 12 sure to go along with the majority: what else could he do? Well, Edith thought in a gust of weariness, he could drop dead. Dolores Acevedo, secretary, twenty-nine--and actually not over thirty-five. Hair midnight black and skin of honey brown, born to be beautiful and surely knowing it with a simplicity too placid for vanity. By rights Dolores should be a rich man's mistress, maybe was. Edith also guessed that anywhere outside the region of sexual competition Dolores might be generous and kind, even very kind--and admitted that it was no more than a guess. For that matter, would a woman as outrageously lovely as Dolores ever get far enough from the sex arena for other elements of her nature to dominate? Nothing cold or contrived about _that_ kind of beauty--warm as tropic night, Dolores. Yet she might also think, and reason, and be kind--she just might. Helen Butler, fifty-two, gift-shop proprietor. And a Sunday painter, Edith doubtfully remembered. She had met Miss Butler a few months ago, when prowling the gift shop for book ends. Callista had not gone along, and Edith recalled she had not given Miss Butler her name, though they enjoyed a quarter-hour of small talk. Books mostly; some deprecating mention by Miss Butler of her landscape painting, or was it still life? Nothing in that to make the lady disqualify herself from the jury, if she remembered. A salty spirit with independent opinions, laughter wrinkles at the eyes, unmalicious wit. A bit old-maidish, maybe no great force of character. But intelligent, moderate, good. They were the Twelve. Edith looked again at the slight and silver-templed man in black. No schoolmastery fuss from him at that bad moment of the morning when impulse had betrayed her into speaking out of turn. Even a kind of friendliness behind the rebuke he had been forced to make. He would be harder to photograph than any of the jury, or ambitious Hunter. Harder than anyone present except Callista herself, and Cecil Warner who had posed for Edith in actuality a year ago. And Cal had drawn one of her three-minute cartoons of Warner, which delighted the Old Man--their first meeting. Had he adored her then? Why, then, a year ago, Cal's ordeal of love with Jim Doherty had not even begun. It occurred to Edith that for the human race a magic power of foresight would be a burden unendurable. Fair enough to guess, and plan within limits, but no one should ever know to a certainty what will happen in the next hour, or day, or year. The time might arrive when Callista would be forced to know that--or perhaps almost know it, and be tortured by a series of meaningless reprieves. In Salem, less than three hundred years ago, they had crushed Giles Corey to death by gradually adding rocks to the pile on his breast. Edith warned herself sharply: _Stop that!_ Cecil Warner was moving away from the jury box, straightening his round shoulders with a tired twist. "Thank you, Mr. Fielding. May it please the Court, the defense is satisfied with this jury." Mr. Delehanty announced: "The jury will rise." In Mr. Delehanty's pocket a gleaming triangle of handkerchief shone, still perfect, spotless at the weary end of the day. And the jury was standing. Graceless in the group and clumsy, they mutely apologized to each other for their elbows, raised their hands for the burbling of Mr. Delehanty of the perfect handkerchief. They swore. Too much finality. A true verdict render?--but what is truth? No, too much. Behind the half-comic front, too vast a thing for the Hoags, Lagovskis, Kleinmans. But, Edith thought, that's how it's done. And we persuade ourselves that what we wish to call truth may emerge from it. We accept the ludicrous fancy that you multiply wisdom when you multiply one by twelve. Mr. Delehanty laid down the Bible. Flushed, important, the jury took their seats. The prosecutor stood. Edith's stomach twisted. She bent forward, covering her face. Too much. She thought: But I _know_ Callista! Frail, damaged, miraculous body; wild, difficult, exasperating, wholly irreplaceable brain that understood, needed, desired so much--everything that was Callista could be and might be charred to rubbish, to satisfy the mythology of a still vengeful and superstitious race. Surely not even guilty; but if she were-- Edith knew then that the same emotional storm would have struck her if she had believed Callista Blake guilty of this and a thousand other crimes. A storm including personal shame and horror at taking part, if only by silent presence, in an act of barbarism. _What are we doing here?_ III Cecil Warner turned toward the cold gleam of the courtroom window; an eastern window, the winter sunshine long gone. In the morning he had watched a glint of the sun on Callista's black hair, and on the polished bleakness of the table where her arm rested. The daily journey and decline of the sun affected him more deeply now than in past years, left him irrationally disappointed on the gray days, less willing to accept the approach and arrival of night. On such days, or at the tired conclusions of winter afternoons, the age of his body oppressed him--as now, when he turned his heavy head and felt a wobbling sag of cheeks, unwilling droop of eyelids, slight but irritating deafness, uncertainty of his powers. And in all activities between foggy waking and not quite desired sleep, a fading, a knowledge of relinquishment. If his eyes sought and cherished (as now) the delicate swell of Callista's breast, his mind said: _My hand will not follow that curve, not ever._ Or it said: _Even the inner and almost hidden love that keeps the spirit alive and sometimes strong and sometimes angry--even that is only for a little while._ T. J. Hunter was up on his feet being stately and important. Warner advised himself: he must not, would not fall into the dangerous error of hating or even disliking T. J. Enact hostility, yes, whenever it might have a useful effect on the jury--enact anything at all, from sputtering rage to glacial contempt--_but don't feel it_! He could not afford to feel it, without a far more flexible control of his private emotions than he now possessed: much too easy for an angry man to look like a fool. And yet not hating T. J. was going to be intolerably difficult at times; for Callista could die, and T. J. was after all a good deal of a bloody bastard. Hunter said: "Your Honor, I see it's getting on to four. My opening will be brief. If agreeable to the Court and Mr. Warner, may I make it now?" Behind his mask Warner felt flustered and unready. He could protest; Terence Mann would obligingly call an early adjournment; Callista would have some rest, if you could give that name to her unknowable hours in the detention cell. The advantage T. J. probably hoped for, in having the jury sleep on his opening masterpiece, might be no advantage at all--a jury can forget impressions as well as facts.... Startled, he realized that Terence with his curious courtesy was deferring, looking down from the bench with harmless reminders of a ten-year friendship in his face, waiting for the defense to speak first. He said: "My client is very tired. However, I assume from what Mr. Hunter says that his opening will not run much past five o'clock--is that correct?" "I'm sure it won't, sir. I only intend to summarize, to outline what the State expects to prove." _Sir from you?--gah!_ "In that case, the defense has no objection." "Members of the jury, Callista Blake is the daughter of an artist, by all accounts a loving father, who died when she was seven, and a lady who is known to a wide circle of acquaintance as a devoted wife and mother. This lady, and Callista's father and stepfather, gave the girl a careful, decent upbringing. Callista's stepfather Dr. Herbert Chalmers of Winchester College is a distinguished man, author of a textbook in English widely used in the secondary schools. Her mother is active in the Presbyterian Church, past president of the Shanesville P.T.A.--in short I know of nothing in this girl's history or family surroundings to account for her present situation unless you attach more importance than I do to certain childhood accidents. As a baby she got a nitric acid burn, later repaired by plastic surgery. She had polio, which left her slightly lame, very slightly--as you can see, Miss Blake is not disfigured, and not at all unattractive. And don't we all know of cases where ugly accidents have happened to children without turning them against the human race? "What are the origins of crime? Does anyone know? Psychiatrists? Well, the State is prepared to offer psychiatric testimony, if the defense elects to do so. I can't see the necessity myself. I can't imagine an insanity defense being made here. I think it's a case where the individual must be held clearly responsible for a wanton and cruel act, the one act that strikes most dangerously against the welfare and security of human society: namely murder. It was, and the State will prove it, a murder motivated by sex jealousy, but obviously not in any gust of passion. No, it was coldly premeditated, planned, and heartless." Warner fought down the perilous anger. This was simply Hunter's opening barrage. _I can roar, too._ Yet he wished that without disturbing her by a touch he could will Callista to look toward him for comfort. He checked an impulsive motion of his hand. Still-faced, she was watching a spot on the wall above the gaunt grim skull of the juror Emerson Lake. She would turn to him and listen if he whispered, maybe even smile. But it might be that she needed those withdrawals, a kind of rest. "In 1950, Mrs. Blake and her daughter Callista moved from New York City where Callista was born, to Winchester. Mrs. Blake was employed in the Registrar's office of Winchester College, and there met Dr. Herbert Chalmers; they were married in 1951. Dr. Chalmers had bought a Shanesville property a few years before--1946, I think. Callista lived there till she graduated from the Shanesville High School, Class of 1958--with high honors by the way. Dr. Chalmers wished to send her to college. She is a girl of exceptional intelligence, and don't forget it." (_So, T. J.? She's on trial for unauthorized possession of a brain?_) "But immediately after graduation, Callista Blake preferred to seek employment, and found it as an assistant in a photographic studio--Nolan's, on Hallam Street here in Winchester. Well, Dr. and Mrs. Chalmers have always wanted to satisfy any reasonable wish of Callista's." (_Have they?_) "They offered no objection to her taking this job. In fact for her eighteenth birthday, July of last year, Dr. Chalmers bought her a car of her own, a Volkswagen--it will be important in the evidence." Important enough, Warner admitted. If there were any way to deny or even cast doubt on Callista's presence out there in Shanesville that night--but there was not. Callista herself would not have it so. On the stand, he knew, she would tell the truth so far as she knew it--the whole impossible clouded story that left her no defense except a reasonable doubt as to criminal intent. And if she did not take the stand, there was no defense at all. "In that same month last year, July, Callista took an apartment in Winchester, at 21 Covent Street. Again her family indulged her and made the best of it." _Indulged, you fool?_ It had been Callista's own money from her father's estate, plus her salary from Edith. Warner felt some wry pleasure, although it meant nothing, really, except an opportunity to rub Hunter's nose in a minor blunder. "There was no break in the family relation, members of the jury--so far as we know. We assume that like many parents, they simply wanted the child to have what _she_ wanted." (_And now, T. J., do you think you can transform her from a child into a woman fit for burning?_) "Another family is involved, a family now broken up by murder. When James Doherty, originally from Massachusetts, met and married Ann Pierce in Philadelphia, he was twenty-seven. He had served in Korea, finishing college on his return. They were married in 1955, and moved to this neighborhood. Mr. Nathaniel Judd of Winchester is the father of a friend of James Doherty's killed in Korea. Mr. Judd grew acquainted with Doherty through correspondence, and in '55 offered him a partnership in his real estate and insurance firm, now Judd and Doherty. In the spring of '55 the Dohertys purchased a house and land in Shanesville township adjoining the Chalmers place. I think Ann Doherty was a happy young wife that year. She started a flower garden." _Callista had a garden too; she poured ice-water in it._ Warner glanced up to the spectators' benches, looking for Edith Nolan, feeling a warmth for her that puzzled him by its sudden increase. He supposed one got the habit of taking Edith too much for granted, of turning to her in trouble or weariness (Callista had done it too) without remembering that Edith also was vulnerable, quite as likely to be in the grip of fatigue or sorrow. Edith would be remembering that magical water garden, the emerald illusion of infinity, the darting, shifting arrows of living light that could not move without grace. His first sight of it had been about a year ago, an invitation to the little apartment at Covent Street soon after Edith had done his portrait and Callista's rapid pen had drawn that strangely affectionate cartoon of him, comedy without spite; as if at eighteen the girl could incredibly glimpse the quality of sixty-seven and find something there for the unhurtful entertainment of both of them--and of Edith, who had remarked laconically: "What the hell good is a camera?" Well, he thought, many thanks to the human species for Red Nolan, and he would send her flowers tonight and take her out to dinner like a boy with a date and why not? Never mind the boy--he was dead long ago: take her out like an old man still capable of friendship with a lively, tender, witty woman who understood friendship herself.... Edith met and acknowledged his look across the anonymous crowd--yes, she would be remembering that water garden, and its end, untouchable beauty transformed to a pathetic mess for the janitor to remove. Two rows behind Edith he saw without pleasure the angular haunted features of James Doherty, and the opaque calm of the black-clad man on Doherty's left. It would be Father Bland's habit, Warner supposed, to show at all times that careful benignity smooth as quartz. Without pleasure, without much interest, he wondered in passing how it felt to be certain of one's own serene rightness. Hunter's noise--oh, geography. Giving them the lie of the land. "Those properties are on the outskirts of Shanesville proper. You go out Walton Road about three miles beyond the city line. There's a fork, and the right branch, Summer Avenue, reaches the village limits of Shanesville in a mile; Walton Road runs on south to Emmetville, Pritchett, other towns at the south end of the county. The Doherty place is near that right-angle fork of Summer and Walton, back from the road, its drive opening north on Summer Avenue. The house itself stands about a hundred yards west of the fork. The Chalmers house is south of Dohertys'--entrance on Walton Road about the same distance from the fork. Except for not very heavy traffic, the region's isolated. Peaceful. Closest neighbor is about a quarter-mile down Summer Avenue from Dohertys', a Mrs. Phelps Jason, who manages her twenty-acre place as a wild-life sanctuary. The back land behind it is unused pasture and woods belonging to the Chalmers property, which used to be operated as a farm. "The Chalmers and Doherty houses are separated by a grove of trees that reaches all the way to Walton Road. On the west side of Dohertys' the woods are continuous, except for Mrs. Jason's place, to Shanesville. You can think of the Doherty place as a pocket cut out of woodland. The two families used a winding footpath through the grove for visiting back and forth. And you must imagine the region as it is in summer, leafed out so that the two houses are quite hidden from each other. Maple, pine, hemlock, oak--some very big pines at the edge of Walton Road.... In the grove near the property line there's a natural pond, fed by a brook from the Chalmers back land. Its outlet runs through the grove, into a culvert near the fork of the highway. The pond is small, oval, fifteen feet across at the widest, less than five feet deep last August because of several weeks of drouth. "From the spur path or the pond, you can't see either house in summer. On the night Ann Doherty died there, it might have been possible to catch a glint of light from the Chalmers house, through the leaves. A hazy night, hot, a nearly full moon shining through the overcast. A still and oppressive night." And that night, Warner remembered, the night of Ann Doherty's death and of Callista's longer and stranger ordeal, he had been at Mrs. Willoughby's discreet establishment on River Street, sharing a well-perfumed sheet with one of her young professionals. The memory remained clear because there had been no more such nights since August; the many other nights of hired love stretching back across thirty-odd years tended to blur and run together--here and there a face remembered, a word, a special instant of intensity, annoyance, amusement. The night in August had been delightful; relaxed, no attempt to achieve a counterfeit of youth, and no wish for it. Leisure of a sort was possible--it ought to be, at Mrs. Willoughby's rates!--and the girl, small, brown-eyed, pert, had been convincingly friendly; more so, once she understood that the Old Man, in spite of being sixty-eight and too fat, didn't care for elaborate variations but wanted only the bread-and-butter-steak-and-potatoes of natural intercourse. They had talked a while, he recalled, she comfortably smoking, braced up prettily naked on a thin elbow and chattering--perceptive enough, by the way, not to call him Daddy.... There might be no more such nights: a final recession of the need, or perhaps a suddenly yielding blood-vessel, a cancer taking over, a tumble in a slippery bathtub--_never mind_.... He could almost remember walking home from River Street (thinking very likely of Callista), but it must have been after the moon was down. A hazy night--"_Out of the cradle endlessly rocking_--" T. J. Hunter was still pausing over a drink of water. Warner remembered--old things mainly, their intensity dissolved by distance in time; remembered, under the illusion of detachment that can make existence appear truly like a river, yourself able to look back upstream at nearly forgotten vistas: trees, meadow and town, eddies, dubious shoreline, floating trash. Warner shielded his face with his hand, closing away even Callista, as he had found he must sometimes do. Boyhood was the sound of ocean, medicinal reek of kelp washed in on the night tide to wait for bare feet and a poking stick. It was the breakers, green ridges advancing out of the ever-distressed Atlantic and growing a snowy froth, never pausing yet seeming to pause when the froth spilled over the crest. Then a toppling, crash, inward flow. A receding; a mysterious acceptance of an end, soft hiss and sigh and aftermath, swirl of light water become thin and harmless on the sand. Boyhood was fishing boats and Montauk Light, gravely busy clam-diggers, Manuelo whom Cecil wasn't supposed to play with. It was the unseen journey of hollow-voiced titans in the fog; pressure and majestic riot of storm. It was an afternoon of watching the disappearance of an unknown sail over the southern curve of the earth. School, too. Helpless rage at long division; Papa's dry-goods store that was always going to do a little better next year; Manuelo in the empty boathouse showing off how many times he could do it in half an hour; Great-aunt Harriet who turned up every Thanksgiving, who liked to announce abruptly out of her world of deafness that she'd been in Ford's Theatre when Lincoln was shot--then she would read lips a minute while the company hollered how wonderful that was, and then, eating loudly and cheerfully, she would slip back contented into the mist of ancient times. Boyhood was windy nights, and surf hammering the muffled drums of sand a quarter-mile away; stillness also in the dark, and moonlight pouring into another midnight of black water. Tide inexorably rising to clean away the dead jellyfish and driftwood, blotting out barefoot stories written on the low-tide beach; clear sunshine over the whitecaps; and long gray days. _Out of the cradle endlessly rocking, Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle, Out of the Ninth-month midnight, Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where the child, leaving his bed, wander'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot ..._ He had been twelve--anyway it was soon after Mother died--when he discovered Whitman. One of the volumes chastely silent behind glass, in the parlor over the store, undoubtedly a book of Mother's. Carried off to his room and secretly saved from disaster when his stepmother dismissed all the books in the parlor that didn't have pretty red or brown bindings. The fury of that ancient wound stirred. At sixty-eight, Cecil Warner smiled slightly, unknowingly, and shifted in the disagreeable courtroom chair to ease a discomfort in his defective left arm. So much, so many million other images, reflections, happenings, accidents, in the forty-nine years of the river's journey before Callista Blake was born, the nineteen years since then! None of it (said the doctors) totally forgotten. "_I, Cecil, take thee, Ellen...._" He remembered making the necessary uproar about his bad arm's disqualifying him for military service; most of it sincere enough too, in spite of a deep private happiness with his young wife. He remembered damning the Kaiser. The murky spooks of Stalin and Hitler bulked so much larger in the years between, in front of them the mushroom cloud--hard to reconstruct true images of 1917. Then 1918, and influenza, and Ellen dead. She couldn't be--not abruptly, incomprehensibly _gone_ like that; but she was. He returned half willingly to a winter day of 1959. At sixty-eight it is possible to look ahead--some; to form a purpose, with caution, remembering that if you don't make it, they'll say charitably: "Think of that! Sort of getting on, wasn't he?" He would not drink tonight. Well--dinner with Edith, maybe (and flowers), so maybe a glass or two of wine, nothing more-- _Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations, Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me, Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there, in the night, By the sea, under the yellow and sagging moon, The messenger there aroused--the fire, the sweet hell within, The unknown want, the destiny of me...._ T. J. Hunter dropped the folder of notes he had been studying, possibly for effect, and turned back to the jury. "In May of this year--the State will prove it--an illicit relation developed between Callista Blake and James Doherty, the husband of that Ann Doherty whose death, as you know, is the reason for this trial. Not to mince matters, the word is adultery, and I must remind you now, members of the jury, that Callista Blake is not here on trial for adultery. She is on trial for murder, nothing else. The State will prove the fact of adultery to establish motive--which, as you may also know, is not legally required, yet I think a rational mind is bound to demand it. How can we reasonably condemn anyone without at least some understanding of what made him act as the factual evidence says he did? "I want to make one thing clear. In a case of this sort the husband is automatically suspect, the chance of conspiracy so obvious that the police would be derelict in duty if they didn't examine it to the last scrap of a clue. That's been done. If anything at all had been uncovered involving James Doherty in this crime, you know he would not be at liberty. Nothing of the sort has been found; everything points the other way. He decisively broke off the affair more than a month before the murder. He tried to make amends for his folly. The State is convinced that in the death of Ann Doherty, Callista Blake, consumed by hatred and jealousy--and by a certain fear for herself, since she was pregnant--acted entirely alone. "I am sorry for her--who wouldn't be? You will be. Her difficulty was great, her position tragic. But as the State's representative, I remind you that instead of the many fair and decent solutions for her trouble that she might have chosen, the one she did choose was premeditated murder. "On the evening of Sunday, August 16th, Ann Doherty called at Callista Blake's apartment, 21 Covent Street, leaving at 8:30. No third person was present, no one knew she was going there except Callista Blake who, by her own admission, had telephoned and asked her to come. James Doherty had gone to New York City by train the morning of that Sunday and did not return until Monday evening.... Before leaving Callista's apartment, Ann had a little drink of brandy for the road. It was poisoned, with aconite. "On her way home, Ann was stopped by a state trooper because her driving was a bit erratic. The trooper dismissed her with a warning, and then followed her home because he thought she might be ill, felt uneasy about her welfare till he saw her drive in safely at her house on Summer Avenue--8:43 by his notebook. This trooper, Carlo San Giorgio, is the last person known to have spoken with Ann Doherty before her death. He will testify. "At 9:10, less than half an hour after Ann reached home, Callista Blake's Volkswagen was parked on Walton Road, between the fork and the Chalmers house, hidden by the trees. At 9:40, another half-hour later, Callista Blake drove that car part way into the Chalmers drive, backed out and drove off in the direction of Winchester--no stop, no visit to her mother's house, just in and out and away. "Ann Doherty died, by drowning in that pond in the woods, between quarter to nine and quarter to ten; this we know from medical evidence. We have excellent circumstantial evidence for most of Ann's actions after San Giorgio saw her reach home. She stopped her car in the driveway, off the gravel, almost colliding with the front porch. She turned off headlights and motor but left the car door open. Her key ring, with house and car keys, fell by the porch steps. She dropped her handbag on the path leading through the woods to the Chalmers house. Aconite causes numbness of the extremities, nausea, thirst, general muscular collapse, but usually no impairment of the intelligence. Evidently Ann's mind was at least clear enough to remember her husband was away, and the nearest help in her sudden sickness would be at the Chalmers house. She probably couldn't recover the key ring after her numb fingers dropped it, and that's why she couldn't get into the house and reach the telephone. She had locked up when she left, her custom whenever Jim was away. "Coming down that path, Ann fell several times, she vomited, she lost one of her shoes. She fell again, half-way down the spur path leading to the pond. Why did she go that way, and not straight on to the Chalmers house? We don't know, for certain. Took the wrong turn in the moonlight, being sick and confused?--possible. She was found in the water, drowned. Stumbled and fell in, couldn't get out?--that also is possible, remotely possible. Admittedly the circumstantial evidence is imperfect at this point, and it's one of the questions of fact that you, members of the jury, will be called on to decide." Grim, slow, brooding, Hunter returned to the prosecution's table for another sip of water, and Warner's gaze wandered to the face of Judge Terence Mann. _What are you going to do to us, Terence?_ In a sense, the Judge would do nothing. Warner assumed without reservations that the quiet introspective man up there would try his best to preserve an ideal impartiality. It seemed to Warner that Mann was almost devoid of vanity, incredible as that might seem in a judge. No fanaticism in Terence Mann, no insistence on the rightness of a view because it was his own, no false identification of self with idea. Incredible until you remembered that Terence was a judge more or less by accident, an interim appointment later confirmed by an election in which he had peacefully refused to do any serious campaigning. Warner recalled their first meeting ten years ago, soon after Mann had been appointed special prosecutor for an investigation into county road construction frauds. The rats were running, and Terence, a youngish thirty-seven, appeared to be enjoying it. In the book-leather and walnut surroundings of Mann and Wheatley, Terence had looked at first like a revised version of his uncle Norden Mann who had died the year before. A superficial resemblance. Old Norden had been a born pettifogger, loving legal labyrinths for their own sake. Terence, skeptical, a bit sharp, would look for the simplest way to pass through a labyrinth and come out on the other side. Terence had served his apprenticeship in Norden's firm, re-entering it after his discharge from the Army. Until that graft-hunting appointment no one had heard much of him. Warner had gone to the office on Wilson Place off Main Street--"Lawyers' Hollow"--for a luncheon engagement with Joe Wheatley. Terence had been halted for a handshake, and Warner had fallen into a pose he could not always avoid: the aging lion. Terence wasn't scared. "Do you intend to be a famous prosecutor? Scourge of the unrighteous, huh?" The loaded questions--they came out too, Grandfather roaring. Terence hadn't minded. "No, sir, I don't exactly see that ahead of me." No word of what he did see. Later they met at the University Club and began a more relaxed acquaintance over a few drinks. Then an invitation to Terence's apartment that became an evening of Chopin and Bach. Music was an aspect of Mann's life unsuspected, discovered by Warner with the abruptness of an opened door. The lawyer vanished; the hands were "beyond technique"; the keyboard voice spoke with the authority of intense feeling governed by insight. And Warner recalled another meeting with someone else, in an almost empty bar, a few days after the election that confirmed Terence Mann in office. Idle for the afternoon and in a cool beery mood, he had glanced down the damp mahogany and noticed a sagging red-veined blob, the face of Boss Timmy Flack of the Third Ward--who, in a way, _was_ the politics of Winchester, the half-submerged and partly useful human force, neither honest nor demonstrably a crook, The Man You Went To See. Himself honored and ancient, professionally secure, in any case seldom giving a damn what others said of him or of the company he kept, Warner had moved down the bar and bought Timmy another drink before The Man could buy him one. "Hear tell we got a new judge." "Uh-huh." "Happy, Timmy? Civic virtue and so on?" "Shit." "If not happy, what are you going to do about it?" "You needling me, Counselor?" "Little bit." "What the hell's anybody going to do, now he's in? The son of a bitch doesn't _want_ anything!" Which was certainly not true, but just as certainly true in Timmy's sense. And Cecil Warner understood that he now feared Terence Mann only because Terence's mind demanded demonstration, when a demonstration of relative truth may be more arduous than any labors of the gods. "Yes, she might have stumbled and fallen in. The State contends this is not probable. You will of course hear all the evidence that has led us to this conclusion. The State contends that Callista Blake followed Ann Doherty, searched her out, found her there helpless on the path, dragged her the rest of the way into the water. Perhaps even held her under, the way you might drown an unwanted kitten." Chilled by the voice in spite of forty courtroom years, Warner saw Callista gazing down at her fingertips, frowning slightly as if bothered in the midst of concentration by an irrelevant uproar in another room. "On Monday, August 17th, Detective Sergeant Lloyd Rankin of the Winchester Police was sent to Callista Blake's apartment, acting on information received from the State Police at Shanesville. The poison aconitine was found there, in two forms--in an opened bottle of brandy, and in a canister that held chopped-up monkshood roots, the source of aconitine, steeping in brandy. The State will prove Callista's opportunity to secure monkshood roots ten days earlier, from her mother's flower garden in Shanesville. "The State contends that Ann Doherty could not have received that poison by accident. The State contends that Callista Blake gave it to her with malice aforethought, with full intent to cause her death. The State contends that the final act, the drowning, was done by Callista Blake, and that she is guilty of murder in the first degree." Hunter was sitting down and mopping his face. Warner discovered that he himself had risen, for now his body was wavering in vertigo and he must grab the back of his chair and wait. The clock hands stood at three minutes past five. The Judge was gazing distantly down the slant of an unmoving pencil. "Your Honor, a word before adjournment if I may?" Terence's voice was soft and friendly. "Certainly, Mr. Warner." "The defense will waive the opening. At this time, before evidence, before the jury has had opportunity to learn the truth, I have nothing to say except that my client is innocent." _Whereto answering, the sea, Delaying not, hurrying not, Whispered me through the night, and very plainly before daybreak, Lisp'd to me the low and delicious word DEATH ..._ IV Judge Mann followed Joe Bass to the elevator that clanked them gravely to the relative holiness of the sixth floor, where Mann's chambers occupied a corner with a north view. The windows were dark, under a windy spatter of unexpected rain. Mann glimpsed gold blurs of downtown windows, white hurry of headlights, a flow of them two blocks away at the corner of Main and Court, Winchester going home to suburban bedrooms. "Nasty night," said Joe Bass. The red eye closed, the green eye opened; a file of wet bugs poured up the Court Street hill. "Going home directly, sir?" "I think so. You were in court, weren't you, Joe?" "Yes. I ducked out before the end of Mr. Hunter's speech. Did Mr. Warner waive the opening?" "More or less...." Joe Bass never hovered, or clucked. A sure instinct had told him Judge Mann preferred to light his own cigarettes. But he did not like to be dismissed before the Judge went home, preferring to read or meditate in the anteroom until any hour of the night. He had not much to go home to--a boarding-house bedroom uptown, his wife dead, children married and gone. "I wish Mr. Warner would cut down that belly. Too much work for the heart at sixty-eight." "Sixty-eight, Judge?--I hadn't realized." Joe chuckled faintly in the shadows. "I'm sixty-seven. Apropos of old age, I took the liberty of browsing through your Thucydides a while ago--have the same paperback edition at home, and very good, I'd say--may I?" He was already drifting to the bookshelves. For Joe, there was always a quotation. It seemed to Judge Mann that this was at least the magpie instinct at its noblest, for Joe did not gather them as random bright beads, but for personal use and to be shared. "It's from a speech of Pericles at the funeral of those who first died in the war--and I wonder sometimes if the Peloponnesian War wasn't as great a disaster as the latest? If the Greece of Pericles could have survived--well.... Here it is: 'As for those of you who are too old to have children, I would ask you to count as gain the greater part of your life, in which you have been happy, and remember that what remains is not long, and let your hearts be lifted up at the thought of the fair fame of the dead. One's sense of honor is the only thing that does not grow old.'" Judge Mann thought: What of one who dies young?--a child hit by a car? Ann Doherty? What of one who dies young by act of the State, with no fair fame? "I think, Joe, we've become a more complex people." "Aren't the essentials much the same?" "Not quite. I think there's even a new humanitarianism, new in the last hundred and fifty years. In the time of, say, Edmund Burke, there was still officially approved slavery even in England, where they got rid of it before we did. Hangings as public entertainments. Cats burnt alive for fun on Guy Fawkes Day. The modern stomach pukes up that sort of thing. Alongside the mushroom cloud, the decade of insanity that was Hitler's bloom, the damned impersonal devices for butchering unseen millions by throwing a switch, you try setting up the way people actually live, or try to live, from day to day: there's a difference. If the difference means as much as I think it does, if we get through another hundred years without blowing up the planet, modern medicine should have a great share of the credit." Joe looked puzzled. "In a time when any bad sickness or injury was probably a death sentence, a general fatalism would be almost unavoidable, don't you think?" "Mm, yes." "Cruelty and beastliness got taken for granted. If we value life more now, it's because we know more about maintaining it and reducing its miseries. It doesn't have to be 'nasty, brutish and short.'" "'One's sense of honor'--I liked that part." "Other things don't grow old. Knowledge. What you learned as a child is with you at sixty-seven. Some kinds of love remain young, so long as the body can support our curious brains where love is born." 2 It is extraordinary that a system hoary with age, extravagant and wasteful to the highest degree, should not be supplanted by some method of getting at facts directly, and having them passed on by men who understand the controversies that they seek to solve. CLARENCE DARROW, _The Story of My Life_ I The wolves sat on their haunches, or stood, or crouched belly to earth with snouts on forepaws, while others maneuvered in the shadow beyond the tree-border of the clearing. On the other side of that border spread such a blackness as the mind imagines for the sea a mile down, yet here and there it was relieved by the gray of stone; everywhere, also, a coldness. Grayness in the clearing too; no flowers, nothing of the sun, but phallic-bodied toadstools and a ground-vine twisting a serpentine life among scattered rocks. Callista remembered being told that someone had died in there, in the blackness where no one could see it happen. The wolves would have eaten the body. The wolves were old, possibly several thousand years old. "A geeolawgical malformation," said the child in her lap, speaking with precocious insight. Callista moved her hand with its dangling bracelet over the fine black hair, tiny ear, bony shoulder, indistinct body. Her intention was a caress; likely the child knew it. She grew interested, not urgently, in learning the child's sex. What was the difficulty?--not a diaper. Apparently the little thing possessed only a negative pink blank between skinny thighs, like the crotch of a plastic doll. "The Merican Ideal," said the brat, rolling china-white eyes. "See?" "Well, shut up, darlin'," Callista said. The wolves had crept closer during her preoccupation. Such was their habit (she had been told) if you neglected to look them straight in the eye. She watched them in contemplative pain resembling fear, and they continued moving, slowly, a stirring and gliding that seemed aimless until Callista understood one of them was being pursued, a thin bitch wolf, scar-faced, nearly black, with a crooked leg, devil-eyed but in her demoniac way pathetic. Callista was moved to remark: "Hasn't a chance." And yet, poor beast, her own wickedness was plain. You could see the drip of poisonous saliva from her mouth, and the fetuslike thing impaled on a lower tooth--it couldn't be her own, so she must have stolen it somewhere. No wonder they were after her. Serve her right! (Or if the fetus was her own she ought to have taken better care of it)--therefore one could understand the primitive justice of it as the gray jaw of a pursuer hooked over her narrow rump. His hind legs massively firmed themselves. Callista could observe the sudden scarlet erection, sense the weight of the one lifted gray indifferent paw; but he did not swing about to rear up and clamp her loins, he merely held her in the angle of his jawbone and under that paw while others closed in to slit her throat--she womanly now lying on her back as a clean white fang thrust out of a surgical mask to run deftly down from the throat along the mid-line of the body, opening up the internal apparatus not for eating but for a better clinical view. "Like a theater Oh-doctor," said the child's intelligent profile in Callista's arms. Someone said: "Gentlemen, this is the pancreas--a remarkably pancreative bitch to be sure, aware of nature and consequences. Notice the inadequate uterus, a primipara yes yes, but evidence of miscarriage early in term--and by the way, Potter's Field is bungfull of that type." "I resent that," Callista said. Able now to pick up the child and walk away with her through the woods where all light was granite-gray, she did so, seeking her father to show him a long overdue report card on progress in pancreation. The little girl--naturally, a little girl, with that lyre waist and tumbling hair and dainty genital groove--said to her: "I am so sorry, Callista Johnson Blake, I have to stop here and paint a picture. Can I look at that thing?" "I got my paw stuck in it." "Irrelevant," said the little girl. "Incompetent Callista." "All right," Callista said, and walked away from her through the grayness, uncertain whether she could find her father. He sat (she thought) behind a gray screen, by a lighted window. "_Daddy, please!_--" Now the bracelet on her wrist had caught, snarled itself in a tangle of black vines, and Callista called: "Daddy, I can't seem to fix it. Can I go now?" She could not go, because in front of her beyond the vines were the two doors, so very nearly alike, and someone--NOT Daddy, because Daddy NEVER said anything so unkind--someone said: "It's one or the other." Callista tried then to scream with all her power: "_Daddy! My back hurts_--" nothing in her throat but a mumble, hardly even that, a scream in silence without breath: "Daddy! _Please_ come--my back hurts--" Callista sat up drenched in sweat that soaked her pajamas, and shivering. No relief at first, rather a frustrated anger, since in another moment her father might have been able to hear and answer. Comprehension then; reorientation; qualified relief--_Is waking any better?_ It was, of course. Steadier, anyway. The familiar exchange of selves: What I was in the dream, I am not; what I am, I was and was not in the dream. The grayness before her eyes yielded the image of a cross, and a second horizontal bar grew visible--there all the time. A window, the same one through which yesterday, by straining on tiptoe to the limit of pain, she had succeeded in watching the wheeling of doves. The same effort now would give her the field of winter sky before dawn. If the rain had stopped, a few stars incorruptible, indifferent. She did not rise, but pulled her feet under her for warmth and drew closer the scratchy antiseptic-smelling blanket. At this hour the cells were quiet. Another prisoner snored, probably the old woman who had been brought in drunk last night, her high defiant monotone of obscenities temporarily hushed. A few months ago Callista would have reached for the notebook by her bed to write down what she could recapture of the dream. Edith had wondered if all that intensive reading in psychology wasn't too one-sided, introspective-making. "Maybe, Cal, you ought to be meeting people more and thinking less about their insides." But to meet one person is to meet a thousand selves; and it seemed to Callista that she had remained critical, as Edith probably feared she wouldn't. "Cal, I wish you had more counterbalance, too, for those psychologists in print. I've read them. They don't look out of the windows enough. Why not contrast them with the exact scientists?--who often have the same fault but in a different style?" Something in that.... "There isn't one of those boys, going back to Papa Freud himself, who wouldn't be improved by a refresher course in first-year biology." And Edith had gone on to urge her, once more, to go to college next year--Callista, inwardly, very nearly ready to agree. She recalled the crystal April afternoon, and Edith standing, her back turned, looking out the studio's north window, the light a clear perfection on her red hair--why must Edith imagine herself homely? "Here--may I say it?--you're not quite far enough away from your Mom." "A million light years." "Of course, darling, but not in the flesh. And I keep thinking that right now maybe you ought to be farther from me." Edith shrugged and sighed. "For your sake, that is, certainly not for mine. Right now I could be a little too rich for your blood." "No. If not for your sake, then not for mine." Edith had come back to her then, standing with the great cool light at her back, looking down in one of her sudden moods of softness and gravity. "All right, Cal. But think about college for next fall?" In agreement more than half sincere, Callista said: "I will--I'll think about it. You ought to marry, Edith." "Narrow pelvis, distaste for an overpopulated world. I don't think it's my dish. I like men. The few that I've thought I'd like for keeps turned out to be guys who didn't want me, or at least not that way...." But as for the reading in psychology, Edith's opinion remembered was still not quite acceptable. Freud and his successors still seemed to Callista like the best available guides into the nearest and most tormenting section of the jungle. One could rule out those who had fallen into worship of the sofa-pillow god Adjustment, and in doing so lost sight of the individual self or never noticed it. One could also remain critical of any guide, since the self must learn the sound of its own voice and discover its own country. Yes--but all that was before Ann Doherty drank poison. Once more laboriously, appearing to herself rather like a high school child hungry for a good mark, Callista attempted to review her knowledge of that night last August. Not only as it would be presented when she took the stand (as she must do whether Cecil thought best or not) but as it would be declared to the court of her own intelligence before that court could grant any acquittal. The face of Judge Mann intruded, however, again and once again, when her toiling revery reached the Blank, the lost moment, the miserable blur of amnesia where the crucial thing, the one answer Callista must have, was surely lying hidden. A quiet face, probably wise and certainly not vain, with the small chronic frown, the sense of cleanness and good health, the gentleness that Callista believed no face could wear if it were functioning as a mask--very well then: admit the face of Judge Terence Mann to this lonely privacy and make use of it. Let the empty wall beside the barred door dissolve a little. Blur the flat plaster, doubtless reinforced within; it looks like stone and by daylight shows a few sad scribblings of the last tenant, not quite scrubbed away: _Why can't they let me read what the wench wrote and criticize her bit of a drawing that might now be either a baby or a phallus?_--blur that, and let the high walnut bench stand there. Give him the gown--_black, please!_--and the pencil, and the look, startled but not unkind, that he wore when the spiteful child said: "_Which is the Clerk?_" He would be less ghostly if now and then, there in the foggy opening of the wall, he could move his thin hand in the writing--could it possibly be drawing?--up there in the dignified isolation where even Mr. Delehanty, the Clerk-which-is-the-Clerk, couldn't watch it. _All right now? Go ahead!_ Begin with the talk, the flustered moment when Ann came into the apartment a little fogged up with wondering what it was all about. If she was wondering--hard to be sure, since dewy-eyed confusion was one of Ann's best faces: look-how-cute-I-am-when-I'm-thinking-about-something. Not that a talk with Nancy could ever decide anything except that she would continue certain of her own placid rightness. _Your Honor, it had a bearing on my state of mind--and by the way, my cantankerous cattiness and unfairness are duly noted and admitted. I couldn't stand her. I never could stand her, even before--before Jim. I can't stand people who cuddle continually inside one ready-made idea like babies growing old in the crib. Yes--granted--they can't help it._ _YOU ARE ADMITTING YOU HATED YOUR LOVER'S WIFE?_ _No, I'm not. I said I couldn't stand her. It's not the same thing._ Wasn't that correct? A difficult point, but not too difficult for Judge Mann--he with his calm face, his busy pencil: without the black robe, in ordinary clothes, what would you take him for? Doctor? Scientist? Teacher? _Besides, your Honor, on that night he was no longer my lover. That was the night of the 16th of August, with a hazy moon. He had been my lover from the first of May to the sixth day of July._ _DO YOU WISH TO TESTIFY ABOUT THAT?_ _I think I should like to have the hazy moon admitted in evidence._ _CALLISTA, WILL YOU NEVER UNDERSTAND THAT MOST HUMAN CREATURES ARE AFRAID OF LAUGHTER? GET TO THE POINT._ _All right._ She could skim over the first half-hour of that talk. It had been mere sparring, Ann vaguely friendly on the surface, chattery, perhaps sensing just enough of trouble to want to hold it away. Then Callista had made a stumbling approach of blurted hints, Ann gradually comprehending because she had to, gradually perching nearer the edge of her chair, hands not in their usual flutter but folded and tightening in her lap, her lovely face abnormally attentive; listening--she had to, that once!--watchful and still. Not openly resentful or hating, never entirely distorted out of beauty. Incredible, but it must be that Ann had never guessed, and Jim had been a better actor than Callista dreamed. Ann had not even been hurt, really; not inside. Too secure. And then--"Poor Callie!" _Your Honor, I then said: "Oh, for Christ's sake!" and was sick to my stomach._ She lived again (nearly forgetting the ghostly, not unkindly seated figure in the blurred wall) her blundering rush for the bathroom with a handkerchief at her mouth. Ann had followed, of course. Callista had not quite slammed the door. Ann was out there, bleating, and then inside. "Callie, you mustn't feel so bad! Don't you see? God will forgive you. If you'll only take the right attitude!" _Yes, your Honor, I retract the word "bleating." "Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman"--Lear, Act Five, last scene, I forget the number of the scene, do you mind? She also put her arm around me while I was heaving, and_-- "_Let me alone!_" "_Poor Callie! It's all right. Let me get you something._" "_God damn it, Ann, go away!_" Ann had not gone away, not then. Callista remembered running from her again, into the bedroom, slamming that door and locking it, dropping on the bed unable for a while to move or cry out. The beginning of the blank, probably. A mental door slammed, but surely not locked. But mind is continuing action: it doesn't have doors, levels, thresholds. _I know, your Honor, I know; I'm tired out, therefore thinking in stupid terms, because I wish I could go back to sleep. The blanket stinks, but I do wish_-- _WHY DID YOU ASK HER TO COME AT ALL, MISS BLAKE?_ _I believe I thought we might be able to talk of it like adults, but I never even got as far as telling her I was pregnant. When half the truth was out I saw it was no good. I'd forgotten her God had a blueprint for all these little difficulties. I goofed.... This business about doors: admittedly Freudian slanguage is treacherously pictorial, deceptively so, as Edith pointed out once, only, damn it, it FEELS like a slammed door. Not quite locked. Now may I--please_-- Once upon a time there was an orange-gold-brindle kitten named Bonnie who lived (happily ever afterward) at Aunt Cora Winwood's flat in Greenwich Village, and she was sentimentally tame, small enough to curl up in two human palms. Which Aunt Cora liked to demonstrate, transferring the sleepy morsel to Callista's hands. They had called it "pouring the kitten." After Papa died, reason after reason why she mustn't go visit the Winwoods. Only three subway stops away, and Papa's own sister. "Tom Winwood drinks, dear, and is not reliable. I do not intend to have My Little Girl exposed to Anything Like That. Nor do I wish to be reminded, Callista, that your father approved of your going there. His judgment was not _always--entirely--sound_. Mr. Winwood was in fact largely responsible for certain aspects of your father's Condition. Now I think I need say no more." _Yes, Mother, and No, Mother. Yes, Mother, now and forever you need say no more._ Eyes closed, cheek wincing at the blanket--but twitching over to the left side would be no better--Callista resolved not to remember nor count the days since she had last drawn down her lover's face to her, seen gaunt cheekbones grown large beyond vision above her, accepted the pressure of his desire and her own. And therefore, inevitably, remembered and counted the days. Sometimes his hands sweated and were cold. Not the first time, that May-Day afternoon in the woods--why, then (at first) Jim had been almost pagan, natural, free, coming on her suddenly in the damp green hollow where spring growth was riotous. Startled and--yes, temporarily set free. He must have been, or he could not have acted with such quick certainty, tenderness and aggression blended for once in a most invincible rightness. In the very first moment, when he pushed aside the hemlock branch and saw her, his face had been comically legible as his mind abruptly discovered a woman in place of Homely-Blake-Girl-Who-Used-to-Live-Next-Door. To the best of her memory, Callista had not smiled; only sat waiting where spring sunlight lay scattered, random gold; waiting and looking up, needing words no more than a grown-up Bonnie would have needed them at the first cruel-kind approach of a yellow-eyed lover across a back fence. Still she had used words, a few, standing up, leaning back against the rough gray body of an oak, something foolish: "Oh--I'm afraid you've started up a dryad." He might not even have heard that, his hands pressing the tree on either side of her face, his growing need as obvious as the sunlight. _I think he never so desired Ann. Such hungers (I know he thought this) are not for good women._ His first kiss had fallen in the thin hollow of her shoulder. He had carried her to a softness of hemlock needles. _I think I helped him a little with my shorts._ Pain of course, the wrench of the torn hymen a required crash of dissonance in the symphonic flow. _I suppose I screamed--had my teeth in his shoulder for a minute--he understood that. Drowsy exhaustion afterward deeper than his_-- _Soles occidere et redire possunt: Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux, Nox est perpetua una dormienda...._ "_What, Cal? What did you say? Was that Italian?_" "_Latin. Thing--happened to remember._" "_Oh._" She had come wide awake then: no Kotex of course, tiresome clinical necessity of a handkerchief for the unimportant bleeding--and had presently given him some sort of English translation that stumbled along on two left feet: "Suns may set and rise, but when our brief light is gone, the night is an eternal sleep." Jim hadn't liked any of that, much. The Latin, or the bleeding. That must have been the first time that the worry-wart crinkle appeared between his thick black eyebrows, the first time the poor guy had said: "Cal, darling, what the devil are we going to do?" _I think I laughed at him, a bit. Not inside me of course._ _SHOULDN'T WE (MY DEAR) GET BACK TO THE PEOPLE VS. BLAKE?_ _Very well, Your Honor, but I don't admit that the episode of adultery (terminology by T. J. Hunter) is irrelevant._ _NOT IRRELEVANT (MY DEAR)--BUT WEREN'T WE DISCUSSING THE DEATH BY VIOLENCE OF ANN PIERCE DOHERTY?_ _All right. I lay frozen in my bedroom wishing the good little bitch would go away, and I DO NOT KNOW whether or not I heard what she was up to in the kitchenette. You're not helping, Judge. You're not helping me remember._ Eyes wide, she saw the dull wall had grown a little brighter with dawn, and wished that the man on the bench might appear as a genuine visual hallucination: it would be interesting. But he lived in the brain only; her outer eyes would not create him. _I did hear her knock on my bedroom door, call my name, say something else stupid, go away with a tap of little high heels. Get it, Judge? This is the Blank, this is the thing you're not helping me remember:_ _If I did hear her take that brandy bottle out, if I wasn't too hysterical to remember what was in it and why, then_-- (_Spot of soup on Cecil's coat sleeve. Old, half-sick, drinking too much, his wife dead long ago and nobody to look after him--when he's dead who'll even remember what he was, the courage and the kindness? Cesspool known as the world--people are already forgetting Darrow, aren't they? and every other who's tried to clean it out, dig channels to drain away the filth of human stupidity?_) _If I heard her and remembered what was in the bottle, then I murdered her. If I didn't, then as a potential but incompetent suicide I was merely maintaining a public nuisance. As a good man well known to you would say, it's that simple. But that is the Blank, Judge, and you're not helping me._ _I therefore address my closing remarks to other gentlemen of Winchester County, specifically District Attorney Lamson and his subordinate Talbot Jesus-wept Hunter. I wish to apologize to them for laughing, being convinced that the noise just heard in my apartment was laughter and not rats. I have no wish to laugh and hurt your feelings, but it IS funny. Honest, isn't it funny how the judge and jury inside me (with some inconsequential imaginary help from that rather nice joe Judge Mann) can make me squirm and whimper like a gut-shot rabbit, while YOU CAN'T?_ II Edith Nolan watched the cherries wobbling on Maud Welsh's hat as the woman perched in the witness chair, a sparrow ready for flight. T. J. Hunter purred and soothed. "Your occupation, Miss Welsh?" "Guess you could say housekeeper." The voice was dry, brittle as the woman's skin. Merciless morning light played on Maud's wrinkles; bad judgment had tricked her into using dabs of make-up. On her two visits to the Shanesville house, Edith had been aware of Maud as not much more than a background flutter and squeak; Callista had filled Edith in on the family history that explained her. Long ago, long before Herb Chalmers and Callista's mother were married and while Herb's father Malachi Chalmers was still alive, Cousin Maud had been asked to come and keep house. She stayed. Father Malachi had been a Full Professor, also a sort of _fin de siècle_ Great Man who wrote a book (or something) and whose memory, Edith gathered, served as a squashy but invincible paperweight holding down the remainder of Herb's polite life. Maud Welsh had evidently done much to keep that memory functional. By the power of the meek, and because she _was_ useful _and_ a cousin, she just stayed, a small household tyrant given to vigorous church attendance and good works, enlarging on the time when the Professor was alive as a golden age to keep his degenerate son in line, dusting and sweeping intensely at unseasonable hours, putting up interminable preserves, and carrying on a picayune war with Victoria Chalmers, a war of sniffles and grievances which (Callista said) both of them enjoyed so much that there was never any serious question of sending Maud on her way. In the cellar, said Callista, there were five six-foot shelves of plum jam alone--Maud's atomic reserve. Anyhow, she raised quiet Presbyterian hell if any of it was used. And Callista in the studio had drawn a pen-and-ink of Maud lurking all alone underground in a desolated world, grown obese (in garments meant for a thin woman) on a thick diet of plum jam. Edith had said: "Oh, damn it, Cal, after all!" and kept the sketch. "Where are you employed at present, Miss Welsh?" "Well, see, I'm kin to--" T. J. Hunter showed half-amused worry wrinkles. "Just my question, please. You know, limit your answers to the question." "Oh, you did tell me that, didn't you? Well, I live in with the Chalmerses, I mean Dr. and Mrs. Herbert Chalmers of Shanesville." "Doctor--that's an academic degree, isn't it?" "Uh--oh yes. A Ph. D." Her voice made it an ailment. Hunter's morning sleekness annoyed Edith, who felt dowdy and unkempt after a bad night. Aspirin, insomnia, a dripping faucet in the bathroom, meaningless noises in the studio--probably mice. "Is there a street number on the Chalmers house?" "No, just Walton Road. Same's when The Professor was alive and we lived in Winchester, all you had to say--" "Yes, I understand. Just limit your answers, please." "I'm sorry. I'll try." Judge Mann also was dark under the eyes, as if his sleep had been poor. He was not busy with his pencil. His ignoring of Hunter's wry glance was perhaps a way of saying: She's your chicken. Callista, drooping and still-faced, was again partly hidden by Cecil Warner, who looked a little better this morning with a fresh shave. The flowers last night, the rather elaborate too-expensive dining out, the antique gallantry--very sweet of him, Edith thought, and in his idiom not at all strange. He had wanted of course to talk about Callista, but at dinner and later, after toiling upstairs to the studio for drinks and quiet, he had hardly been able to, seeming happier when Edith carried the conversation away to more impersonal regions. Edith twisted in her seat, winning a timid nod from Herb Chalmers, a calm glare from Victoria. Back of them was Jim Doherty, again with Father Bland. Jim did not acknowledge her glance either, but probably because he didn't see it, a man alone on an island and hurt, trying to interpret contradictory voices in the wind. Edith twitched her skirt back into place and settled herself to endure the first day of testimony. "Are your duties as housekeeper fairly general, Miss Welsh?" "Might say so. I do everything but heavy cleaning, we have a woman on Tuesdays for that. I cook, see to things." "You go away on vacations?" "Visit my sister in Maine two weeks every summer, two in the fall." "You did so this year?" "In June, not the fall. Because of the trouble, I thought I should stay, couldn't do less." "Were you in Shanesville on Friday, August 7th of this year?" "The 7th--oh, the picnic. Yes, I was." "No, limit your answers, _please_. I just want to verify your presence on certain dates. Were you at Shanesville all day Sunday and Monday, August 16th and 17th?" Arthritic claws clenched on her handbag. "Yes, I was." "At about 10:30 Monday morning, August 17th, who beside yourself was present, to your knowledge, at the Chalmers house or on the grounds?" "Just Herb, I mean Dr. Chalmers. I think Mrs. Chalmers'd gone to the supermarket in Shanesville, anyhow she wasn't home at 10:30." "Where exactly were you at that time?" "On the back porch fixing snap beans for lunch." "What part of the grounds could you see from that spot?" "Well, part of the lawn runs around the north side of the house, between it and the grove, and there's the vegetable garden in back." "Is there a path through the grove?" "Yes, from our house to Dohertys' place." "Will you describe that path, please?" "Just a footpath, tramped ground, pine needles." Maud Welsh swallowed. "Goes near a pond that's right about on the Dohertys' line." "From the back porch could you see the opening of that path?" "Yes." "Did you see Dr. Chalmers at 10:30 or thereabouts?" "Yes, he came out on the porch and we talked some. Weather mostly I guess. It was a scorcher, and real humid." "What did he do after your conversation?" "Went to look at the vegetable garden, then into the grove--not by that path though: he went into it at a place beyond the garden, where our brook goes under the trees. We were watching that brook on account of the drouth." "When did you next see him?" "A few minutes later. He came out of the woods, by the path that time, stumbled, shouted to me. I dropped the beans and went to him. I saw his clothes were wringin' wet, and he looked awful white. I helped him into the shade on the back porch. He talked kind of--" "Just the substance of the conversation, please. That is, if he explained what had happened to upset him--did he?" "Not--not to say explain, exactly. He said--" "I think we'll just omit the conversation and go on to what you did next. Just what you did, you understand. After helping him into the shade, what did you yourself do?" Clearly the biddy was already giving T. J. Hunter a case of jitters. Cecil Warner's crooked half-smile underlined the fact for Edith. Would he now be able to bring out poor Herb's first addled words, whatever they were, in cross examination? Would they help, if he did? And if he testified for the defense, what would Herb himself do about them? Last night Cecil had said, into the bright depth of his second Martini: "First law of the courtroom: never count on a jury's respecting logic." "Well, sir, I went to the pond. His clothes wet, I knew it--" "Just what you did, not what you thought. You went to the pond--wait a minute. We'll go back a little at this point, Miss Welsh. You were well acquainted with Ann Doherty--Mrs. James Doherty?" "Well, I sh'd hope--I'm sorry, sir. Yes, I was." "When did you first meet her?" "In 1956. They moved in that year. Good neighbors, her anyway." Edith saw the Old Man rising, and steady too, monumental. "May it please the Court, the defense is not concerned with the character of James Doherty, but I object in principle to that kind of innuendo." "Sustained." The Judge's voice was cool. "The witness's last remark beginning with the words 'good neighbors' will be stricken." Edith relaxed, aware of the primitive quality of her gratification: one for our side. Not that Jim belonged to the defense--Jim was lost, or trapped. All the same, the defense had spoken. She also recalled unhappily other words Cecil had spoken to that Martini: "Why did I order that thing? I was going to make it wine. Will you slap my fat wrist if I do it again?" He had made it wine, at the studio, and gone home sober. After, of all things, kissing her hand. "Miss Welsh, was your relation to Mrs. Doherty one of close acquaintance? Casual? Just what was it?" "Kind of close. We'd--oh, visit back and forth." "When was the last time you saw Mrs. Doherty alive?" "Two days before--I mean Saturday, August 15th. She came over for some bacon. She'd forgot it in shopping." "Did you, for instance, call each other by your first names?" "Ayah, did, matter of fact. I'm a mite old-fashioned, but we did." "All right. Now back to the Monday morning. You went to the pond. What if anything did you find there?" "She--in the water--I couldn't reach--" "Miss Welsh, try to be impersonal, won't you? Remember the jury never knew these people. Now: when you came to the pond, just describing things impersonally, what did you see?" "I saw--the body of a woman in the water." "How was she dressed?" "White blouse. Powder-blue skirt, blue jacket to match." "Any head covering?" "No. I saw her hair, that real pretty reddy-gold--auburn--" "Could you reach the body from the bank?" "No. I went in a few steps. A mud bottom--I--" "Do you feel all right?" "I'm all right. I touched her, the whole body turned--" "We can spare you those details, I think. You turned the body until you could see the face, right? And knew positively that it was--?" "It was Ann--Mrs. Doherty. I couldn't lift her out, anyway she was--cold. I went and called the state police, thought I should--" "Did you talk again with Dr. Chalmers?" "Yes, he was still on the back porch. I just said I'd called the police, said I'd go back to the pond, way they told me. So I did." Maud Welsh, Edith thought, might have loved Ann in whatever flustered way she was capable of loving. For Edith the memory of Ann, met only three or four times, hung suspended in the past like an antique picture: something by Fragonard, say, in a frame of fussy gilt. Dainty, a bit undernourished--Ann pestered herself with diets now and then--and insipid. You couldn't quite imagine the angelic face distorted or transfigured by extremes of passion, or wrinkled by thought. With no overtone of spite, Callista had said once: "Ann isn't vain. I think she likes to share her prettiness in a nice way, the way you'd share a box of candy. She feels it was very pleasant of God to make her so pretty, and so going to Mass and keeping confession up to date like a good bank account, that's a matter of genuine gratitude as well as a sort of spiritual hygiene." "While you waited for the police you didn't move or change anything?" "No, sir, I just sat there and prayed for her." Most of the jurors looked vaguely gratified. The faces of Terence Mann and Cecil Warner were politely blank as a church door on Monday morning. Edith could not see Callista, for Warner leaning forward at that moment shut her away. And T. J. Hunter at the prosecution's table was fumbling at a plastic bag. "Miss Welsh, do you identify these garments as those that Ann Doherty was wearing when you found her body in the pond at Shanesville?" "Yes, I--let me see the blouse again--yes, sir, I do." "These stockings: can you identify them as the ones Mrs. Doherty was wearing?" "Well, I suppose--I mean, that type, they look so alike." "I'm putting my hand in this one, the right. Here's the heel. Now as near as I can manage it, my wrist is about where an anklebone would come--does that help you?" "Oh, the hole! Yes, it's the same." "When you lifted the body part-way from the water, you saw a hole like this one in the right stocking, correct?" "Yes, I did." "As a housekeeper, you know dressmaking and such things?" "You could say so." "Does anything about this hole strike you as unusual, peculiar?" "It's not where you'd get a run. I can't see how you'd get it unless you bumped or scraped your ankle across something." "When you found the body, was this hole visible above the line of a shoe, do you recall?" "Oh--the right shoe was missing." "Only the right one, you're sure?" "Yes, she was wearing the left." "This blue left slipper I'm now holding. Do you identify it?" "Yes," said Maud Welsh, and fumbled at her face with a sodden handkerchief, while Edith's gaze swung in futile desperation to study the jury. Mrs. Kleinman was crying and, rather surprisingly, the cool black-haired beauty Dolores Acevedo. _So could I._ Instead, Edith looked down. She held away the irrelevant pathos of those garments on the State's table, the mud-spotted frilly blouse, crumpled blue skirt and jacket, the single water-streaked shoe, by contemplating the dark green tweed suit that she herself was wearing. Less than perfect. Needed pressing. A small spot, maybe watercolor paint, near the bottom of the skirt (_well, hell!_)--but having thought of it this morning, she could wear no other costume, for once last winter at the studio, in March or February, Callista had glanced up and remarked apropos of nothing: "Fact, I love that thing on you. Makes your thatch a sort of bonfire off in the green woods." And seeing it when she entered the courtroom, Callista had smiled. "Miss Welsh, we'll go back to the evening of Sunday, August 16th, about nine o'clock. Where were you then and what were you doing?" "Setting out on the front porch. It was dark enough so I'd put my sewing things aside some time before. I'd gone out there about eight, I guess, when the light was still good. Usually do." "Did you see or hear anything you particularly remember?" "Didn't see anything special. Heard a car stop, on Walton Road, out of sight of me behind the pines." "Did you notice any glow from its headlights?" "I don't think I did." "Anything distinctive about the sound of that car?" "Well, a buzzy thing, and of course I--" "Was the motor shut off?" "Not right away--oh, I remember something. A rattle, while the motor was running, loose metal, like a license-plate or something." Edith saw Callista lean to Warner for a quick whispered conference; Cal seemed unexcited, but the Old Man was pleased. His back turned, Hunter would have missed it. "Motor not shut off right away--how long did it run?" "A minute, maybe, before the car door opened and shut." "Can you establish the time you heard that car stop?" "Yes; ten minutes past nine. Looked at my watch. You see, I wondered if the Chalmerses were expecting anyone, didn't think they were. Anyhow, all the talk you hear about juvenile delinquents in parked cars, naturally I--" her voice dwindled and came alive again briskly: "My watch runs good." "Did you hear any other sounds beyond the pines, or maybe in the grove, after you heard that car door close?" "No, not for half an hour." "Is there an outside light on the Chalmers' front porch?" "Yes, shines right down the driveway." "Was it turned on that evening, and if so, when?" "It was, about 9:40." "Half an hour after the car stopped. Did you turn it on?" "No. Herb, I mean Dr. Chalmers, came out on the porch about half past nine. He was the one turned it on--not right away though." "Well--the car door closed at 9:10, then no sounds from that direction for half an hour. You did hear something then? If so, what?" "Car door again, motor started, same buzzy noise, and then the car came into the driveway--it had just the dimmer lights on, I remember--and that's when Herb turned on the porch light. It was that little German car of hers, and she--" "A moment. You're positive of the car? You read the license plate, or something like that?" "No, sir, I never memorized her license number, but I knew the car, the shape, and the maroon color. Anyhow C'lista herself was driving it, I could see her face in the porch light, just as plain. Alone, she was." "Did she call to you, or wave?" "No, sir, just backed for the turn and scooted off again, direction of Winchester." "Was Dr. Chalmers standing in the porch light?" "We were both in plain sight, Mr. Hunter. That porch light, it's real bright, lights up everything." "When had you last seen Callista Blake before that appearance in the driveway Sunday evening?" "Evening before. Saturday. She came out to the house, about 8:30." "An ordinary visit?" "You never knew what was ordinary for Callista." "Your Honor, I must object--the patience of the defense is not everlasting." Warner had risen; Edith could see the heavy tremor of his thick hand on the back of his chair. "This kind of spiteful side-remark--inexcusable." "The witness's entire last remark will be stricken. Mr. Hunter?" "Miss Welsh, just state briefly the circumstances of Callista Blake's visit to Shanesville Saturday evening." "Well, I was on the porch same as the other time. Mrs. Doherty'd come over for some bacon--guess I said that. I wrapped some for her, then I remembered I wanted to show her an embroidery piece I was doing. I'd already taken my things out to the porch before she came. We went out there, were setting there when C'lista drove up to the house alone, walked right by us, not a word except to ask kind of sharp where her mother was. Ann had spoken--you know, 'Hello, Callie!' or something like that, but I don't believe C'lista answered her. Anyhow I told her, I said I thought her mother was upstairs somewhere, and she went on in. Slamming the door." The defense can't object, Edith thought, because those are facts. That was Callista, no use denying it: the often needlessly cruel abruptness, indifference to social necessities, inability to suffer a fool with patience. On that black evening Maud Welsh and Ann had not even been fools, just harmless little people acting as usual at a time when Callista was burning, a tigress with an arrow festering in her side. And today, in smouldering cherished resentment, Maud Welsh was not harmless. "Did you see Callista Blake again that evening?" "No, went to my room before she left. I did hear her, talking to her mother upstairs in a wild sort of way." "Wild? Do you mean quarreling? Loud?" "No, sir, I give C'lista credit, she was never one to raise her voice, anyhow I wasn't eavesdropping, only Mrs. Chalmers' bedroom happens to be right over the porch where I was. Ann had gone home then and I couldn't help but hear her crying, Mrs. Chalmers I mean, and the stuff C'lista was saying about forgive me this my virtue." "Miss Welsh--" "Which didn't make any sense, besides being no sort of way to talk to her mother, only I wasn't eavesdropping." Edith winced at the courtroom laughter. At any rate the nervous uproar, quickly subdued by Judge Mann's gavel, was probably directed more at Maud Welsh than Callista. "Miss Welsh, we established that you were at the Chalmers house on August 7th, ten days before Mrs. Doherty's death. Does any particular event fix that date in your memory?" "Picnic. The Chalmerses gave a picnic that afternoon." "Informal?" "Ayah. We do it three-four times every summer. Mostly friends of Herb's from the college, but that one was more for Shanesville folks. Hot dogs, hamburgers and like that. Croquet, pitching horse-shoes, badminton. Real informal." "Do you recall who was present, August 7th?" "Yes. Mrs. Phelps Jason--she's our nearest neighbor except the Dohertys. Mr. and Mrs. Wayne of Shanesville and their two kids Billy and Doris. Billy's nine, Doris going-on-twelve. Mr. and Mrs. Doherty of course. Mr. Judd drove out from Winchester. And C'lista did too." "What time was the picnic?" "From two in the afternoon to about five, five-thirty." "Do you know when Callista Blake arrived?" "Early, near two I think." "When did she leave?" "Didn't see her go. Noticed her car was gone at four-thirty." "How was she dressed, if you recall?" "Green blouse, brown skirt I think. Anyway I'm sure of the green blouse, she was partial to it for some reason." "Any special accessories that you recall?" "Big shoulder-strap bag. I remember thinking how those things are sort of out of style, but C'lista liked that one because it was roomy, she could carry her field glasses in it. Partial to Nature and stuff like that--bird watching." "Did she have her field glasses that day?" "Didn't see them, Mr. Hunter. Just the bag." "Are there bushes, scrubs, likely places for birds or nests, near the part of the grounds where you had that picnic?" "Yes. Back of the lawn there's a flower garden, and beyond that a sort of half-wild area. Things planted there that more or less take care of themselves--ground-cover, perennials. Pair of catbirds nested there last summer, likely others." "Are you familiar with the perennials in that wild spot?" "With some of them." Maud Welsh cleared her throat and swallowed. "Day-lilies, myrtle--monkshood." "You have seen monkshood growing there, with your own eyes?" "Yes. Mrs. Chalmers pointed it out to me once, wondering if she ought to keep it, spite of the pretty flower it has. Yes, it grows there--I mean it did last August. Of course the police--" "Yes, never mind that. On the afternoon of August 7th, did you see Callista go into that wild garden?" "I did." "Was she then wearing that shoulder-strap bag?" "She was." "Was she alone?" "Yes." "How long did she remain there?" "I don't know for certain. Half an hour later Mrs. Chalmers wanted her to lend a hand with the grill. I called her. When she came--which she didn't right away--it was from there." "Was she still alone?" Edith thought: _She is always alone, Mr. Hunter. Clinging to that fool Jim Doherty, she was alone. The one time when she cried in my arms, she was alone._ "She was alone." "Your witness, Mr. Warner." III Judge Mann watched Cecil Warner approach the witness chair like an old bull: heavy step, flaring nostrils, lowered head, eyes communicating nothing but a brooding truculence. He halted ponderously, an old bull arriving at the dubious barrier of a fence, and--just stood there. Judge Mann's pencil drifted across the scratch pad in a rapid script not much like his normal writing: Forgive me this my virtue; For in the fatness of these pursy times Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg, Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good. He grew fully aware of the writing with a partly pleased astonishment: almost a true dissociation. His brother Jack might be interested; he would save the page. It must have been three years since he had last read _Hamlet_. He understood also, waiting out the darkness of Warner's silence, how his own self might become a battleground. Why fool himself? It had already become one. The deeper occasions of the battle, the relative wrong and right, his true position within it, not clear. _More light!_ He had been assuming two nights ago, and less certainly last night, a mental clarity he had not yet won. Then look at it this way: the assumption had been a folly and a vanity and a failure in self-appraisal; therefore dismiss it. Accept for the moment simply the fact of inner conflict; and then what? His pencil hand stirred and advanced: Sit you down, And let me wring your heart: for so I shall, If it be made of penetrable stuff.... The conflict itself was no illusion. He could oblige his mind to draw somewhat apart and provide illusive imagery for what was no illusion; an imagery, sharp enough, from happenings fourteen years ago that had been (in their time) no illusion. Northern Luzon, 1945: all they'd done that night was drop a few daisy-cutters. Why should he remember that night and not some of the livelier ones? Perhaps because his mind had been rather detached then too, his body not much scared, not much concerned. A darkened earth, flares, smoky glimpses more deceiving than dark, thunder of .75's and mad red flight of tracers; long drone overhead of the angry bug evading crossed searchlight swords, or trying to--too high for flak; we hadn't got the poor bastard. And a sudden sense in Sergeant Terence Mann of the medics, who shortly before had been annoyed mostly at the interruption of a poker game with himself three bucks ahead, of the humanly vast forces involved, the courage and hate and fear and death and love with which the stars are not concerned at all. Trying for the supply dump near Dagupan, all Joe had got was the backside of a church and two buffalos. Above, behind, including all, a sense of the flow of time that renders every victory and every defeat a part of eternity. And every moment of compromise ... "Miss Welsh, were you with the Chalmers family in 1951 when Dr. Herbert Chalmers married Victoria Johnson Blake?" "Yes." "Did you attend the wedding?" "I did." She was biting her words now, not chattering. "In what month were they married?" "July." "When did you first meet the defendant, Callista Blake?" "Guess it was August that year, 1951." Warner studied his shoes. "Well, I _know_ it was, because C'lista was away in girls' camp while they went on a honeymoon, me with the house on my hands--" she clamped her mouth shut, glaring. Mann found it possible to be sorry for the woman. Warner's massive pauses were tough on any witness. Warner said at last, mildly: "Thank you." The back row idiot briefly giggled. "Callista was not present at her mother's wedding?" "Certainly wasn't." "Why 'certainly,' Miss Welsh? She was eleven that year." "Because you never knew when she'd throw a tantrum." "You consider that unhappy children should not have tantrums?" Hunter declared: "Improper question, if I ever heard one." Mann thought: _Sorry, Bud!_ "The Court will rule it admissible in cross-examination. Answer the question, Miss Welsh." "Well, I don't know what she had to be unhappy about, with--" "Miss Welsh, may I have a responsive answer to my question?" "Haven't a notion what the question was all about." "It may be too difficult. I withdraw it. You have known Miss Blake, by sight that is, for eight years. During that time, has your relation with her ever been cordial?" "Naturally I tried to put up with--" "I will repeat the question. During the eight years since 1951, has your relation with Callista Blake ever been cordial?" On the doodle-pad a freshly drawn bull contemplated a tiny spinster--angular long skirt, hat with cherries, defensive umbrella. No fence between her and the beast. Mann drew one, post-and-rail, the top rail fallen. He felt rather proud of the bull: a fine solidity in the foreshortened barrel body; grandeur and melancholy. He sketched in grass and bending daisies to answer the curves of huge elongated scrotum and ponderous sheath. In the right foreground he added a miniature rabbit bundled up in a black gown. Cecil might enjoy the damned thing, on some relaxed evening far in time from the present hour. "I don't--I don't understand the question." "Very well--I withdraw it. Is that wrist watch the one you were wearing on the evening of last August 16th?" "Yes." "Does it have a luminous dial?" "No, I don't want radium and things in my system." "But last August 16th, in the deep twilight after nine o'clock, you could easily read it?" She smirked, recovering. "Lights were on in the living-room." Judge Mann watched Hunter's faint smile appear and fade. "Thank you for remembering that now, Miss Welsh. Is it your custom to look at your watch when anything captures your interest?" "I explained why I did that when I heard the car." "Yes, you were concerned about juvenile delinquency." "I didn't say that!" "Why, I thought I heard a reference to the menace of juvenile delinquents in parked cars." "Oh, that--dare say I was thinking out loud." "I see. Thank you. Had you other reasons to check the time?" "Well, I wondered if the family was expecting C'lista, so I--" "Miss Welsh, in direct testimony you said you wondered if the family was expecting _anyone_, no names mentioned. Then you admitted this deep concern about juvenile delinquents in parked cars. Now we learn the family might have been expecting Callista. All three statements true?" "Oh, what's all the fuss? I knew it was her car." "But preferred not to say so in direct testimony. All right--how did you know it was her car?" "I _explained_ that. Loose license plate, and that buzzy noise." "You did testify to hearing something like a loose license plate. You didn't say Miss Blake's car had one." "Well, it did, and I heard it." "Miss Welsh, a hypothetical question. If, when the defense opens, you learn that Miss Blake's Volkswagen had a garage check-up on Friday, August 14th, and that the license-plate holder was repaired at that time, would you, if recalled under oath, still claim you heard that plate rattling on Sunday evening, August 16th?" The passion of resentment simmering behind the woman's blinking eyes was a kind of sickness. Once or twice she opened her lips without sound; then: "All I got to say, it wasn't natural how men went crazy for her--not even pretty--any man, garage man, anything in pants--" Mann thought sharply: _Okay, that's torn it._ He saw Warner turn slowly, facing the bench. "Your Honor, I respectfully request that this witness be held in contempt of court." Mann flipped the doodle-pad face down. He said: "There will be a ten-minute recess. Counsel in chambers, please. The jury will remain." Entering the dingy retreat off the courtroom, he was aware of T. J. Hunter standing aside to let Warner precede him. "You don't want to toil up to the sixth floor, do you? I suppose I could locate a nip of something." Warner said: "No, Judge, I'm too fat to ride that thing you call an elevator. It busts, I'm liable for have-his-carcass." "All right--shouldn't anyway. We'll settle for a smoke." Warner sat down, an old man and weary, impersonally accepting the impersonal courtesy when Hunter snapped a lighter for his cigarette. His fat hand waved aside the curling fantasy of smoke between him and his enemy. "Okay, T. J., I think you asked for it. Why couldn't you establish _corpus delecti_ with Herb Chalmers? Could've, no sweat." "Grab off a natural defense witness when I don't have to?" "What makes you think I want Herb?" Hunter chuckled and strolled to the window. "Just fishing." Mann asked: "What's your view, T. J.?" The back of Hunter's neck was calm. "Just among us girls, Welsh certainly goofed. Honest, I sweated blood trying to give her the rudiments of courtroom behavior. Seems it was mostly hooting down a rain-barrel." Warner said: "They goofed the same way over Joan of Arc." Hunter swung around and exclaimed: "After all, Cecil!" "No comparison between the principals," Warner said, "except age and sex. You admire Joan? I don't, much. But there's an obvious parallel between twentieth- and fifteenth-century attitudes toward the accused maverick. Takes more than five hundred years for the human race to learn anything important." His slow voice was acquiring a snarl. "You know, T. J.--you know what the newspapers have been doing. Far as Welsh is concerned, I don't care a fractionated brass-bound tinker's fart whether she's held in contempt or not. I do care about keeping this thing from turning into a witchcraft trial. I'm not sitting peaceful on my fat ass, understand, while they turn my girl into a succubus." Hunter said stiffly: "I think you could trust me to prevent any nonsense of that kind." Warner studied him, dark eyes searching and sad in their slightly yellowed and bloodshot fields of white. Hunter went on: "Your hypothetical was a dilly, by the way. The defense introduces testimony at this point? You want the State to pack up and go home?" "Why wouldn't I?" "Fine! You going to claim the Volkswagen wasn't there?" Warner shook his head indifferently. Mann said: "T. J., I still want your view, on Welsh. I'd be half minded to throw the book, only I'm not sure Welsh is that important." "Well, I don't think she is, Judge. But I'm sort of indifferent. The facts of her testimony will remain with the jury, and that's all that concerns me. The contempt thing--important to the Court, and to me as a lawyer, but not so important to _People vs. Blake_." "For a prosecutor," said Warner, "you're curiously frank, T. J. Now that she's squeezed in her 'anything-in-pants' remark, you're content, you can go fishing--that's what you're saying." "Look here--" Judge Mann struck the desk lightly with the flat of his hand. "Cecil, do you have many more questions for her?" "Not many, Judge. Ought to be done in a few minutes, before one o'clock anyhow." "Hope so--I'm unjudicially hungry and I'll be glad to see the last of her. I'm not holding her in contempt, Cecil, unless she pulls another one. It's not quite justified, I'm not even too sure of the ground, and--" he rubbed out his cigarette, glancing at the somewhat frozen face of T. J. Hunter--"I particularly don't want to make a martyr out of her. Let's get back on the job." Maud Welsh's rigid face told him the ten minutes of anticipation might have been punishment enough. He had not intended that: merely a courtroom happen-so. "Miss Welsh, contempt of court is a serious thing. It must be, to preserve respect for law. For willfully disregarding the instructions given you about limiting your answers and avoiding prejudicial comments, you could, if this court so ordered, be severely punished." _There she goes sniffling, and to some of the jury she'll have the face of Mom._ "It is not the present intention of the Court to hold you in contempt. You are being let off with a warning, for the last time. Consider yourself fortunate. Mr. Warner?" "Miss Welsh, I quote to you certain words: 'Assume a virtue if you have it not.' Are those words familiar to you?" Her streaked face glowing, perhaps with relief, Maud Welsh also looked bewildered. "No--no, sir, I don't think so." "Have you ever read Shakespeare's play _Hamlet_?" "I'm sure we had it in school, but--" she smiled placatingly--"that's quite a while. I never get the time to read much." "Here are some other famous lines from the same source: 'Forgive me this my virtue; for in the fatness of these pursy times virtue itself of vice must pardon beg'--familiar?" "That's what I heard C'lista say to her mother." "Did you overhear anything else?" "I wasn't eavesdropping, sir." "You're not accused of it." Warner was speaking gently. "We're only concerned with what you heard. Was there anything else?" "Well, like I said, I heard Mrs. Chalmers crying." "Can you be certain it wasn't her daughter you heard?" "Yes. Their voices are mighty different." "You had heard Mrs. Chalmers cry before?" "Yes, sir, now and then." "And Callista?" "She never cried." "Not even as a child, having tantrums?" "No, she'd just go white and--walk away, or--is it all right to say this?" "Go ahead." "Walk away, or sort of run away sometimes, I mean off into the woods or like that, and practically have to be dragged home. I thought it was--can I say this?--I don't want to say anything wrong, I--" "Go ahead, Miss Welsh." "Well, just--I thought it was real unnatural, that I never heard Callista cry." "No further questions." IV Callista sampled and pushed aside the inoffensive meal. The state of New Essex was feeding her well. Treating her well too--a star prisoner. A room of her own and, now that the trial had begun, meals in private, on a tray no less. No utensils of course except a spoon. She rose and performed the infinite journey of three steps from the barred door to the barred window a few times: shorten stride and you could make it come out to four steps. _Best room in the hotel, southwest exposure 'n' everything--gee!_ She adjusted the blanket on her cot to sharp military precision: it would make Matron Flannery happy. A pity to sit down now and spoil all that wonderful work. Anyway Biddy Flannery would be along in a minute for the tray, with her usual not unfriendly clash of keys; then back to the courtroom for the afternoon. Callista gazed at the flat-faced wall where smears of old writing had been not quite obliterated--for everything in this building was more than a little tired, peevish, ineffectual. Indifferent mop or washrag took a swipe at the graffiti, to keep busy; the law took a swipe, the best it could manage, at the perennial smears of human confusion, dishonesty, violence. High up--the woman must have been tall--enough remained of a lipstick inscription to indicate a heart symbol enclosing a pair of names: DAVY & ----: the other name had defied Callista's months-long effort to decipher it. She tried again now, bemused, and once more gave it up, although somehow this time she did feel a bit nearer success. It was exasperating as a sore tooth. She gave up also another effort to interpret the almost destroyed black-pencil picture below the heart, probably someone else's contribution. A thick phallus not quite erect, a baby with the facial features gone, perhaps just a round-petaled flower or geometric design? No use. Call it a Rorschach blot--but even for that, the months of seeing it had made it impossible to see it at all. Callista turned away, glancing with an amusement that held the warmth of gratitude at the third and last writing--off in the corner, tiny and squeezed, it had almost escaped the washrag's faint assault, and still transmitted a cocky, not too cryptic message: WE DID IT IN A SNOBANK ON LINCAN'S BIRTHDAY 1957. In the death house too they would feed her well and treat her very kindly, within the meaning of the statute. Callista examined this, perplexed, trying to recall what form of the auxiliary verb her thought had used. _Did the gray cells say WILL or WOULD?_ She journeyed again, to the window that for all its cramped ugliness was a friend, because of its messages of night and day, cloud, sunlight, and the wheeling of doves. And returning, she made a discovery, with the suddenness of sunshine. She could read the red writing up there on the wall, the other name. Amazing that it could have eluded her so long: DAVY & ME. Bewildering too the quick starting of tears to her eyes. _Why, I never cry. Well--once, when Edith helped me talk._ DAVY & ME. "This helps too, dear." She must have said that aloud, for the cell was alive with the memory of a private sound. _They couldn't take away the Me, could they? Shoplifter, whore, drunk, another murderer maybe? Doesn't matter. Went out of here to die, get drunk, go back to work in a cathouse or pushing dope--I don't care. They couldn't quite do it to you._ Down the corridor, keys rattled. _They couldn't take away the Me. Ever._ 3 Once a trial judge or jury has determined, on conflicting evidence, a question of fact, that determination is final. It is binding upon the appellate courts. If there has been an error of law the defendant has a remedy by appeal. If there has been an erroneous finding of fact the defendant has no remedy. He is forever bound by the finding of the trial judge or of the jury. Now it should be obvious that trial judges and juries aren't that good. ERLE STANLEY GARDNER, _The Court of Last Resort_ I Cecil Warner remembered the night, a corridor of hours, a windy darkness of winter streets, a homecoming to solitude and too much thought and the uncertain consolation of sleep. After leaving Edith's studio a whim had urged him to walk home instead of calling a taxi. By that time the rain had stopped, the winter pavements were damp and harmless. It would have been pleasant to drive alone out of the city on quiet side roads, perhaps winding up in a suburban bar for an hour's casual amusement. Not so long ago he would have done it, but last year, after a few near-disasters, he had ruled out driving as too great a hazard for aging faculties, and sold his car: from there on the world could wait on him a little, a good enough arrangement so long as you can pay for it. Walking was good for you, they said--in moderation, of course. Ten blocks, say half a mile and none of it uphill, from Edith's studio to the small old house on Midland Avenue that for the last twenty-five years had grown wrinkled and out of date along with him, dignity and seediness of antiquity together; maybe you couldn't have one without the other. Yes, a nice walk, colored by a grudging admission that there was no great harm in doing what they said was good for you, so long as you did it in moderation. A winter wind has many voices, not all of them edged by grief. The best part of that walk was the long block past Trinity Church and its tiny cemetery where time had pushed many headstones aslant and long since worn down all grief to a stillness. No large extent of time really: Trinity was built in 1761, said its cornerstone: a mere two centuries, enough to give the more respectable ghosts the privilege of wearing three-cornered hats. In Trinity churchyard they were bound to be respectable and, through no fault of their own, quaint, like George Washington's wooden false teeth. Leaving there, crossing Quire Street, you passed too suddenly into a splash of gaudy twentieth-century glare, the uptown movie house. Cecil had gone by it last night when the theater was about to close, a late crowd spilling away presumably cheered by a long gulp of Bardot bosom and eye and flank. Then two decent residential blocks, other detached houses like his own yet virtually unknown to him, keeping their own counsel in the quiet street. And the three front steps that needed paint, the key, the cantankerous welcome from the squeak of the front door which could have been fixed in a minute by the drop of oil it wasn't going to get. There was the not quite musty flavor of the little front hall: Cecil didn't like it but would have disliked its absence. At every homecoming there was the confidence, as he stumped into the shabby living-room, that Mrs. Wilks would have left everything just so before retiring to her world upstairs, except that of course she'd never learn not to put match-cards in ash trays. Some time the long sorrow that Mrs. Wilks lived with upstairs--a husband paralyzed for twenty years, unable to walk or feed himself, not quite able to die--would arrive at an end. Like all sorrow. Cecil had not gone up last night for his usual visit and chess game with Tom Wilks. Too late; too tired. Now in the bleak courtroom remembering the night, relaxing in his chair beside Callista, still feeling thirty cents' worth of virtue for having resisted the siren voice of mince pie for lunch, Cecil Warner remembered--suddenly, like a reward of effort--one of the answers his mind had given him during the hours before he could sleep. Perhaps it was the only answer worth remembering out of many. There had been many, some no better than mumblings of fatigue. That one had come to him by the mind's magic when the night beyond his window was in a moment of supreme clarity and peace, and Trinity's delicate chimes had struck the morning hour of two o'clock, and the wind died: _The defense never rests._ The air was still today, pure and sharp, the sky a clean splendor above the smear of the city. Something of it could be felt through the high eastern window behind them. Callista would have looked upward into that strong blue of infinity through the detention cell bars. She liked the brilliant days. They would enrich her artist's vision, he supposed, revealing depth and detail that duller eyes saw without seeing. A pleasant day, a good (light) lunch, and T. J. Hunter at the moment engaged in nothing more harmful than getting a police technician's map of the Shanesville properties admitted in evidence. A fine map, laboriously honest. Nothing required right now except an outward appearance of grumpy indifference suitable to the Old Man. His gaze passed over the Twelve, the ordinary, respectable, appalling faces, and turned aside. He studied his blunt, unskillful hands, examining the blur of an old scar. A small racing unthinking motion of Terence Mann's fingers up yonder reminded him of the last occasion when he had spent an evening at Terence's apartment. Quite a while ago--July, he thought, anyway some time before Callista's trouble. A hot evening, Terence reviewing some of his Army habits of speech when the old building's air-conditioning unit goofed. Terence that night had been in a Chopin mood; temporarily fed up with Mozart, he said, the weather too hot for Brahms. In passing Cecil wondered what the little guy would be working on these days. Something certainly; Terence liked to keep two or three compositions currently at concert pitch--no reason, he claimed, except that it satisfied a whim. The reason could lie deeper than that. With only a listener's knowledge, Cecil felt that music might have lost something important when Terence Mann went into the law. Something held back, possibly some old unhappiness or inhibition, when Terence said his keyboard ability--and he would have to call it that, instead of talent or spark or musicianship!--fell far enough short of the top so that it wasn't worth exploiting for more than private enjoyment. _Get with it, Old Man!_ Spotless law and order was taking the oath. Sergeant Shields of the State Police would never allow any dust on the sparkle of his shoes; undoubtedly he could dissect his .32 and reassemble it in the dark. Yet he was also young, and human. A sidelong glance gave Warner Callista's face, composed, neutral. As usual, too remote. During the police testimony, the jury might not resent that too much, might vaguely understand her need for self-control. Later on he must make another attempt to persuade her that you can't just brush off the human race--not when it's after you. "Your full name and occupation, please?" "Samuel Arthur Shields, Sergeant, New Essex State Police. I have been stationed at Emmetville Barracks for general duty since January of last year." "How were you employed on Monday morning, August 17th last?" The Sergeant's notebook rested in his hand; Warner guessed he was not likely to need it. "I was operating State Police Car No. 48 on highway patrol between Shanesville and East Walton." "Is Car 48 equipped with two-way radio?" "Yes, sir." "In your own words--I believe you don't need any coaching in the requirements of legal testimony--in your own words, Sergeant, please state what you did and what you observed, in line of duty, at or about 10:30 and subsequently, that Monday morning, August 17th." "At 10:36 I received a radio call directing me to proceed to the house of Dr. Herbert Chalmers on Walton Road south of the junction with Summer Avenue, in Shanesville township. I was informed that the body of a woman, apparently drowned, had been discovered in a pond near that house. No further particulars were given me by radio. I drove to the site immediately, arriving at the Chalmers house at 10:40. I knocked, received no answer, saw no one until I walked around to the back. There I found Dr. Herbert Chalmers, who is and was then known to me by sight as a member of the Shanesville Presbyterian Church, to which I belong. He was sitting on the top step of the back porch, and appeared to be ill or in shock: white, breathing with difficulty, leaning against the porch rail with his eyes shut. When I spoke to him he roused, recognized me. I learned from him that he had found the body of a woman, whom he named as his neighbor Mrs. James Doherty, in a pond in the woods bordering his land. He pointed out a path into the woods." "Will you indicate it on this map for the jury, Sergeant?" "Yes, sir. Here it is." Warner watched him from under the famous lowered brows. A good boy, decently ambitious, standing by the map's tall frame, a brisk young schoolteacher interested in facts. He stayed there erect and impressive as he went on talking: "Dr. Chalmers mentioned a heart condition, saying he didn't feel able to go with me to the pond; afraid of blacking out, or words to that effect. He told me his housekeeper, Miss Maud Welsh, had also seen the body and had gone back to the pond after telephoning my headquarters. I followed the path to this spot here, where you see a short spur path leading to the water. There Miss Welsh saw me, from the pond-side, and called to me. I asked her to stay where she was, since I had noticed footprints and other marks that ought not to be disturbed until examined. These marks were all in this area here, along the spur path; none on the main footpath where the ground was quite hard and dry." He stepped back to the witness chair. And nothing, Warner thought, would ever influence or shake the boy except more facts, the sharp and tangible truths that you can weigh or photograph or look up in a textbook. And yet the continuing actions of the mind, the swift and dark events gone in a moment, misunderstood or "forgotten" or never glimpsed at all: _Those are facts too, Sergeant: did you know?_ "Go on, please." "I went to the pond along the undisturbed ground at the side of the spur path. In the pond, submerged, I saw the body of a woman dressed in a light blue skirt and jacket and white blouse. Later in the day I measured the pond and found the maximum depth to be forty-two inches; a high-water line on the banks indicated that when full the greatest depth would be about five feet. On August 17th, however, the inlet was a mere trickle, the outlet practically dry--there's probably some underground drainage. Before stepping into the water I saw that the woman's arms were somewhat extended, and the hands were not clenched as I have seen them in other drowning cases." "You have seen a number of them, Sergeant?" "I have, sir. Boating, swimming accidents, a few suicides." "You stepped into the pond?" "I did. On lifting the body I found that rigor was complete, and post-mortem lividity noticeable in the face and hands." "Please explain those terms for the jury, will you?" "Rigor mortis is the stiffening that takes place, usually from two to six hours after death, and may continue from twelve to forty-eight hours. Post-mortem lividity is a discoloration caused by the settling of the blood to whatever parts of the body are lowest when the heart action ceases." "Did that trickle into the pond create any current?" "No, sir, hardly a ripple. Too small." "Later on did you check the temperature of the water?" "Yes--evening after dark. The weather that Monday evening was about like the evening before. The pond water at 9 P.M. Monday was at 68 degrees Fahrenheit." "Was the water clear?" "Some roiling, before I stepped in. The bottom has a layer of dead leaves and silt. Miss Welsh told me she had gone into the pond--her skirt was wet. I'd also noticed (I forgot to say) that Dr. Chalmers' slacks were quite wet, consistent with what he told me. The body was that of a woman in the early twenties, of slight build, about five feet two. Since there was no question of life remaining, I let it back into the water, to disturb the situation as little as possible before examination by my superiors. The foam on the lips was noticeable, but less than one expects to see in a drowning." "What is the significance of foam on the lips, in a drowning?" "Well, sir, a medical expert--" "Just drawing on your own experience and police training." "Well, it means a struggle for air. Air and water mix with the secretions of nose and throat." "So, if a body not breathing enters the water, you won't see foam?" "That's correct, sir." "And in this case there was some, but less than normal?" "Sir, I don't think I'm qualified to say what would be normal." "Well, again, Sergeant, I just want to draw on your police experience. You said, I think, 'less than one expects to see'--correct?" "Yes, sir, I can go that far, but it's only a--a layman's opinion. I've been with the state police only three years altogether. In that time I haven't seen any _large_ number of drowning cases." Warner suppressed a smile. T.J. should have known better than to push this man. His retreat was quick and graceful. "Quite right, Sergeant, and maybe I was a bit out of line. Would you now please describe the elevations of the ground in that area? I notice our map omits that." The Sergeant looked pleased to be on his feet again; he might have been happier still with a pointer and a blackboard. "Here, where the spur path begins, the main footpath is going over a rise of ground. The spur itself runs level for about half its distance, then there's a ten-foot slope to the pond, rather steep." Hunter seemed bothered, perhaps getting more than he wanted. "That slope is the only one in the area you could call steep. Elsewhere the ground slopes toward the pond more gradually." Yes, it was steep. Falling there, in the hazy night, sick with a cruel poison, Ann Doherty could easily have rolled down that short slope into the water. In cross-examination, this level-minded fact-lover would willingly say so. _Sick_--Warner's body involuntarily shuddered. He felt suffocated, and as though he too were falling in a darkness, nothing upholding him but a single thread of belief: _Callista had no criminal intent._ A belief that could never be demonstrated as a truth; never at least by the sort of demonstration that would be rightly, intelligently demanded by such a man as Sergeant Shields. _No criminal intent: how do I know?_ No answer except the legally unacceptable and meaningless answer of trust, friendship, insight, love: _I know because I know._ Sergeant Shields cheerfully continued: "The Chalmers house is on another moderate rise of ground, and going toward Dohertys' on the main footpath from the beginning of the spur, there's a gradual slope as far as the place where the pond's outlet crosses the path--just a little ditch you step over; then another slight rise to the Doherty house. The outlet runs fairly straight through the grove--just barely enough drop of the ground level to carry it into the culvert near the fork." "Thank you." Much pleasanter for T.J., Warner guessed, to have the blocky sandy-haired athlete sitting down. "After letting the body back in the water, what did you do next, Sergeant?" "I made a superficial examination of the ground. Then with Miss Welsh I went back to the main path, and requested her to stay there in sight of the pond while I went to report. After doing so, I returned to the edge of the woods and remained with Miss Welsh, in sight of the pond, until others arrived: Lieutenant Kovacs, the photographer Sergeant Peterson, Trooper Walter Curtis who brought equipment for making plaster casts, and Trooper Morris. The coroner's physician Dr. Devens arrived soon, and the undertaker's vehicle from Shanesville. However, Dr. Devens directed that the body be taken to the Winchester City morgue, where I understand there are better facilities. Trooper Morris and I lifted the body from the water, and Dr. Devens made a brief examination at the scene. We then placed the body in the vehicle, Dr. Devens gave his car keys to Trooper Morris, and went himself in the undertaker's vehicle. Trooper Morris followed with the doctor's car." Smart and careful boy. It might still be necessary for T.J. to soothe down little Dr. Devens if he got snippy about testifying to the same technicality. Common sense says: Who's going to switch bodies on the doctor? The law says: All right, but let's just make sure nobody does. Not for the first time, Warner thought: _Granted, the law is an ass; but better listen when it brays. Sometimes it's right._ "Go on, Sergeant." "Under Lieutenant Kovacs' orders, I examined the pond's banks and the immediate area, with Peterson and Curtis. Eliminating the marks made by Dr. Chalmers, Miss Welsh and myself, only two sets of footprints were found near the pond. Mrs. Doherty's were identifiable by the high-heeled print of one shoe, and the stocking print of the other foot. The second set was size six, low-heeled, blunt-toed, the right shoe showing a slightly different sole-pattern from the left. I assisted Trooper Curtis in making casts of the prints, and initialed them as he did. Mrs. Doherty's footprints ended on the spur path, at the top of that slope I mentioned. Where they ended, a blurred mark on the fairly soft ground suggested that someone had fallen. It was not a very clear mark; all it really indicated was some recent disturbance of the earth. And from my experience of woodcraft and trail-reading--I think I can honestly claim a bit of expert knowledge there, by the way--I would say that all the marks from the beginning of the slope to the edge of the water were quite indefinite; that is, I think they could be interpreted in several different ways, all except one." "And that one?" "A heel-print belonging to the second set, the low-heeled set, superimposed on the blurred mark where someone had apparently fallen. And this mark told nothing except that whoever made it set her heel--that is, the heel of a low shoe, size six--on top of the other mark." "Only one heel-mark?" "Only one. The sole, and the other foot, must have rested on the hemlock needles and other loose stuff. The ground was only partly bare." "Could you tell whether the person was standing or squatting?" "Not for certain. I'd say standing, but I could be wrong." "Where else were the footprints of that second set?" "On the left bank of the pond--that is, left as you approached by the spur path. Two fairly clear imprints, left and right, pointed toward the water. The ground was somewhat moist there. We found a few other, partial prints of the size six shoes in that area, all partly obliterated by other footsteps. That left bank is the place where access to the water is easiest. That's where Miss Welsh had stepped in and out, and Dr. Chalmers had stumbled out on the left bank, slipping once by the way, although he had approached the pond from the other side." "You say the marks on the slope of the spur path were indefinite. But would you describe them a little more, Sergeant?" "They just weren't readable, Mr. Hunter. Mere disturbances of the earth. Let me put it this way, sir: simply on the basis of the trailmarks, Mrs. Doherty might have fallen and rolled into the water--it's just about steep enough for that; or she might have been pushed after she had fallen; or she might even have crawled or dragged herself into the pond. At the bottom of that slope, by the water's edge, the top of a wide flat boulder is exposed. Most of it's under water, but the top is bare, a shelf of rock that would show no marks if a person slipped over the edge into the water. And the water there is almost as deep as in the middle of the pond." "Did you extend your search beyond the pond area?" "Yes, sir, with Sergeant Peterson. We went to the Doherty house, examining the footpath. In the brush by the path, we found two marks of falling; at one of these places, evidence of vomiting. At the ditch where the pond's outlet intersects the path, I found a blue shoe, a right, matching the left one on the body. The footpath ends at a gravel turning circle in front of the Doherty house. There we found a blue and white four-door Pontiac sedan, later identified as belonging to Mr. James Doherty. The front bumper was almost in contact with a pillar of the porch. Tire gouges on the gravel indicated the brakes had been slammed on at the last minute. The front door on the driver's side was open. The ignition had been turned off and the key removed; because of the open door, the inside light was still burning." "Does the gravel drive extend to Summer Avenue?" "Yes, sir. We examined it for signs of another car, but found none. That drive would take no mark when dry except the kind the Pontiac made." "Did you find anything else by the house?" "A key ring, on the porch by the door. After the leather case of the key-holder had been checked for fingerprints, I tried the keys. They fitted the Pontiac and the outside doors of the Doherty house--those doors were all locked at that time, when Sergeant Peterson and I arrived there. On the driveway, near the opening of the path into the woods, I found a woman's blue handbag, monogrammed A.P.D. Its catch was open, and a lipstick pencil and compact had tumbled out." "Did you check the other contents of the handbag?" "Yes, sir." Sergeant Shields at last opened his notebook. "Lipstick pencil of a light shade, gold compact monogrammed A.P.D., one handkerchief unused, three Kleenex folded, engagement book of red imitation leather, mechanical pencil with chromium finish, single stub from motion picture theater, fifteen dollars in bills, one dollar and fourteen cents in coin in change purse, page torn from a memorandum pad with date August 15, 1959 and with writing evidently a grocery list, four bobby pins, a scrap of green rayon possibly a dressgoods sample, identification card belonging with handbag but not filled out, a--a paper clip." Warner watched the histrionic tenderness of T. J. Hunter's hands. They moved over the already identified garments, not quite touching but with the sense of a caress. Corn, of course, but how marvelously served up! Gently the hands lifted a plastic bag. "Sergeant, this bag has a tag with your initials--is this your identifying mark?" "Yes, sir." "And do you identify what I show you here, a woman's blue slipper, size five?" "That is the slipper I found on the path in the woods, between the pond and the Doherty house, the morning of last August 17th." _Sit still, Old Man!_ No protest possible that the jury would not resent. How can you make legal protest against the gentleness of a pair of hands? Against a voice that by its very restraint compels the subject to cry aloud? Ann's garments, her poor fallen possessions, needed no advocate: four bobby pins, a paper clip. Best to sit still, the face a little hidden, as Callista was still, and hidden. And to wait, because the defense never rests. "Your witness, Mr. Warner." He wondered whether it was worth the trouble of rising. Maybe. As a fact-lover, the Sergeant understood the existence of grays between black and white. One dim blur of gray across the clarity of Shields' testimony might stir a slight wonder in a few jurors. "Sergeant, when you found Dr. Chalmers on the back porch, did you speak first?" "Yes, sir." Quite as polite as he had been to the prosecution. "He roused at once and answered you?" "He did, sir." Yes, polite, and well aware of what was coming. Mildness and indifference were needed here: "What did he say?" Then the expected noise: "Objection! This conversation wasn't introduced in direct examination." Mildness, indifference? "Your Honor, I submit that the substance of the conversation was introduced." "Yes--admissible in cross examination. Objection overruled." T. J. Hunter shrugged and let it go. A masterly shrug. "Well, Sergeant, what did Dr. Chalmers say?" Sergeant Shields also was mild. Not indifferent; on the contrary, the level fact-loving eyes were kind. A contemplative kindness that could do the defense no service even if the jury were able to glimpse it and grope at the meaning of it. "Dr. Chalmers said to me: 'Sam? My God, Sam, I can't believe it.' I said: 'I just got here. What's happened?' And he said: 'Ann--Ann Doherty--she's killed herself.'" II Weariness had grown like an external pressure, the encroachment of a rising tide, the waters of darkness. Callista had supposed that when Cecil walked over there to cross-examine the tide might recede, even release her entirely. It had not, not entirely, but it might be no longer rising; maybe this was the turn. She had heard Cecil speak, and had listened. Listening, she had felt within the weariness that hint of inarticulate continuing surprise which is an element in any manifestation of love. It did not seem to her that she had actually understood what he said, or what the Sergeant said. "Ann Doherty--killed herself." _What?_ Oh--he was repeating what poor Herb had said to him. Herb could always be trusted to say something idiotic. _Important as testimony?--nobody thinks she killed herself._ But the tide might very well be turning. Her eyes were no longer blurred. She could discover the thousand crow's-foot wrinkles in Cecil's face over yonder. Callista understood that she would not faint, nor collapse, nor die for some little time to come. Threescore and ten is also a short time. Long enough to wear down a rugged boy's splendor to a burden of exhausted flesh--Cecil must have been a magnificent youth. Hardly long enough (Edith suggested once) to comprehend the pattern of a May-fly's wing, since for that you'd have to comprehend the protein molecule. When we can do that, Edith said, we shall still be ignorant, learning all new things with reluctance, initial rejection, stubborn retention of obsolete notions, superstitions, cruelties. Maybe, Edith said, the sickly bromide "at the last analysis" is the most arrogant verbalism human beings ever slung together. _What?_ Cecil's voice had spoken something more. With effort and a little panic, Callista recaptured it out of the counterpoint of thought. It was very simple. He said: "No further questions." Edith had gone on to wonder how the coming centuries would handle their heretics. Burn and hang them like the seventeenth and earlier centuries? Listen to them a little, unwillingly, like the nineteenth, until revolution stiffened into respectability, congealed in half-truths? Wall them off, like the twentieth, with the soft barrier of democratic smugness or a steel barrier such as Marxian demonology? Maybe, Edith grumbled, the twenty-first century would return to punishing dissenters with open savagery: they'd be locked in delightful rooms with plastic food dispensers, ingenious mechanical attention to all the body's other needs (sure, all of 'em) and not a God-damned thing to do except watch television. Cecil was coming back to her. Cecil would agree with Edith; and in agreeing would not remind her how much farther his own life had ranged within the threescore and ten, how much of wonder and experience, speculation, pleasure, suffering had burgeoned in him during the half-century that spread between his age and her own: for he was kind. Surely if now she cautiously turned her eyes toward the wall clock, the hands would have struggled a little nearer to five. The Old Man was sitting down by her, covering her hand briefly, his own heavy and hot. The clock hands had pushed a small weary way beyond two. "Are you all right, Cal? You don't look good." "I'm all right. What's happening now?" "Looks as if T.J. was going to try a bit of redirect. Sore too. Nothing makes a prosecutor madder than an impartial policeman." To Callista the suave gentleman in the gray suit didn't look mad. "Sergeant, when you first saw Dr. Chalmers he was in a state of shock?" "He appeared so. Color and breathing bad. Spoke brokenly, with difficulty. And as I said, later he mentioned a heart condition." "In other words he was in a state where you'd hardly expect him to make a clear interpretation of anything he'd seen?" "I can't answer that, sir, because I've noticed some people can think pretty straight in spite of a bad shock. I don't know Dr. Chalmers well enough to say whether he could or not." She heard the Old Man exclaim under his breath: "Brother! good thing I didn't bother to object." But after Hunter's leading question Callista had seen the smooth jowls of juror Emma Beales bobbing with gratification at the way nice Mr. Hunter had gone straight to the point. "Has Dr. Chalmers, in any later conversation with you, again brought up the theory that Mrs. Doherty might have committed suicide?" "No, sir, he has not." Hunter dropped it there. Callista was aware of the Sergeant rising, meeting her glance for an instant with something in his own not at all unkind. It was not understanding, perhaps not really compassion. He had never spoken to her. She thought she remembered his face among others at District Attorney Lamson's office during her worst time of questioning. He had said nothing then; would have given Mr. Lamson his information at some other time; maybe he had turned up there (if he really did) just to have a look at her. What she read in him now might be a simple adult refusal to condemn, by a busy man, not involved, not personally much excited or concerned, his thought and daily life filled with a thousand other matters. And now he was marching away. With nothing of the sarcasm that would have distorted the words if she had spoken aloud, Callista thought: _Good-bye--nice to have known you._ The next witness, Sergeant Peterson the photographer, unwound his scrawniness from some part of the outer blur and strode into the arena to take the oath. Dark hair, a pallor as if bleached in his own hypo. Unexpectedly Callista's fingers itched for a pencil, to draw Peterson's lank face as an expanded kodak. She could ask Cecil for a pencil--no, he was getting up. Hunter had rather lovingly produced a big Manila folder, and now came Cecil's sonorous: "May it please the Court--" Those would be the photographs of Ann Doherty dead, and Cecil would try to keep out the most lurid ones. Over Callista swept a weight of memory. Even the smell of the District Attorney's office--tobacco, book leather, a peculiarly penetrating shaving-lotion stink. She saw again the half-star shape of a spot on the wall behind Mr. Lamson's shoulder, an imperfection in the paint like a chip flaked off the man's pinkish face; and the face itself in all detail, slightly ascetic in spite of that healthy glow, under carefully theatrical gray hair. She saw his manicured hand, womanish except for a scattering of black hairs, reaching across the desk to her, in a reek of too much hygiene and primping, presenting a Manila folder like the one Hunter now cherished, possibly the same one. "By the way, Miss Blake--" tone polite, fruity, luscious with some kind of enjoyment that perhaps the man himself did not recognize--"you might glance at this folder, if you will." _So I held her in my hand._ Ann's arms reached upward in rigor out of the shadow of earth, for in that first photograph they had let the drowned girl lie on her back while the camera peered impersonally at wet skirt tumbled down from flexed thigh (the knee discolored), and soaked white underpants, the position pointlessly (accidentally?) erotic: _Death, my lover_. Accidental surely, for the camera had given a sharper focus to the bedabbled mouth, darkened cheeks, empty eyes. Why must the small breasts push up so urgently? Why, a happen-so: she was drifting face down, arms and bent knee probably holding her up a little from the pond's bottom, when rigor began--_all right, I understand_. The lifted hands were a blur, foreshortened, ghostly; innocently acquisitive hands transformed to shadows incapable of holding fast to anything, even pity. The second picture was an enlargement of the face to life size, no detail spared. Drops of pond water blurred the eyes; a black twig was caught in water-soaked hair. Discoloration, and foam. The third picture was one taken at the morgue, after rigor had passed off, and though the face was still a comment on the brevity, the insecurity of beauty and warmth, Ann's no longer vulnerable nakedness conveyed no great sorrow. It was just a portrait of death; apart from the drowned face, not unlovely. Callista remembered that in Mr. Lamson's office she had very nearly remarked aloud: "Never knew she'd had an appendectomy." The lividity, yes; but one could think of that as simply the shadow of death. This photograph, Callista supposed, would hardly go to the jury, for in the morgue nobody had bothered to toss a prudish towel over the innocent little triangle. Maybe they had fixed up another one for the purpose, that wouldn't distress the sensibilities of Mr. Emmet Hoag. Yes, granted, certainly, that Ann had been very pretty and desirable, a long time ago. Callista recalled what it was she actually said aloud in Mr. Lamson's office: "I'd like to be sure I understand. If these pictures shock me, that's evidence of remorse, in other words guilt. If I don't display any shock, that means unnatural coldness; in other words, guilt. Is that correct?" Someone behind the chair in Lamson's office where she sat facing the desk light had made a noise. Not T. J. Hunter; Sergeant Rankin maybe; or could it have been that young Sergeant, Samuel Arthur Shields? An indistinct word or suppressed grumble; not significant, but Mr. Lamson's cool gaze had flicked upward at the sound, not liking it. "No, Miss Blake, I don't think you have it quite correct. A girl of your intelligence and background ought not to be taking that world-is-all-against-me attitude. One expects it from common criminals--we look for it--but surely not from you." "I've never thought the world was all against me. I used to think it was a place where you could get by fairly well by telling the truth, minding your own business, trying not to hurt anyone." "You don't think so now?" She herself had heard the wiry unpleasant note of pain in her voice: "No comment." And Mr. Lamson had heard it, and could not quite hide a brief flare of gratification, a thin spear of flame shooting up from an ember behind his eyes. Oh, he was doubtless a decent and respectable man, father of a family, pillar of the church. It would be only her sickened imagination that made him something with a whip out of Krafft-Ebing. "Miss Blake, you ought to understand that what we are trying to do here is to discover the truth." "What is truth?" "No comment." "Mr. Lamson, since she must have got the poison in my apartment, and since I shouldn't have had it there, I do feel remorse. But I am not breaking down and screaming at sight of these pictures, because that is not my way." "Oh, now, the pictures aren't all that important, Miss Blake. No occasion to make such an issue of the pictures. I thought it might be to your interest to look at them, since a jury will. The whole point, my dear girl--the whole point is we just don't believe your story." Cecil Warner came back from the side-bar discussion, looking rather blind. He murmured: "Couldn't do much, Cal. They're all going in. An open protest would just antagonize the jury." "Does it really matter? She'd look the same whether she fell in or was pushed." "Dear--I'll be saying that of course. But it assumes that twelve minds can respect logic." Hunter and Sergeant Peterson were being immensely fair. Finished now with the portraits of death, they were showing a photograph of a blunt-toed shoe superimposed on another mark. Peterson was even wordy and boring, explaining unnecessarily how you could tell that the footprint was made later. Then came photographs of the disturbed areas at other parts of the bank, and of the flat rock by the water's edge that would take no sign. The rock. Cecil ought not to be looking so distressed for her. Behind her hand she whispered: "Peterson must have held his camera right where I stood. If the moon hadn't come out of a cloud--I wonder, Cecil--would I have refused to understand she was there? It was a small cloud but deep, suddenly come, suddenly gone. The rock--I used to sit there for hours when I was a little girl, and dabble my feet. It was the first thing I saw, and suddenly, you understand?--because of the moon." "The moon--" "Yes, 'the moon, the inconstant moon'--don't you remember I told you? The way the light strengthened in that gap of the hemlocks, and there was my rock, and then the whiteness in the water. Her arm, or that blouse--no, her jacket hid the blouse, she was face down. It must have been her arm, that whiteness, don't you think?" "I suppose. Cal, this isn't the time--" "I know. Hunter will ask: 'Why didn't you go into the pond, if your story is true? Why, Callista? She might have been alive.'" "We'll deal with that in direct examination." "He'll come back to it, though. 'How could you know, Callista? How could you _know_ she was dead?' And then I say: 'Sir, dead or not, she was so quiet I couldn't disturb her rest.'" "Cal, please!" "Are you going to cross-examine Sergeant Peterson?" "I don't think so--nothing to gain." "Ah, I was hoping you'd ask him why his damned silly face looks like a camera bellows." "Hush! Shall I come to see you this evening?" "Oh--no--no, I am unwell. I mean--that is, I would so like to have two candles, one for you and one for--I'm sorry ... I'm all right now. I'll be quiet. But don't come tonight--I did mean that. It's something--I can't explain it." "All right, my dear. Maybe tomorrow evening." "Yes, without fail. Let me tell you one thing more?" "What?" "I think I'm discovering that I want to live." III Sergeant Peterson had droned his last and had been succeeded on the stand by Trooper Curtis, brisk and dry, with his plaster casts and fingerprints. Both men, Edith Nolan understood, were competent, honest, not deliberately wasting time. Hunter himself was not really unduly slow at this business of hammering home what was already clear and established: Callista had been there. The fingerprint evidence at Shanesville was quite negative: no prints except Ann's on handbag or key case, none but hers and Jim's on the Pontiac or the Dohertys' front porch. All right and so what? It was half past three before Hunter and Curtis were solemnly finished with that apparent futility. It had never occurred to Edith that any part of this ordeal could be a bore. But it was. Then in a brief cross examination Warner brought out the fact that a police search of the grove between the pond and Walton Road had produced nothing at all. It could not matter. Curtis and Peterson had both acted rather pleased with their casts and photographs of the Volkswagen's tire marks on the shoulder of Walton Road. They liked things complete, well wrapped. But it couldn't matter, for in her statement to District Attorney Lamson Callista had admitted taking the Volkswagen first into the Dohertys' driveway, following the footpath, seeing Ann's body in the pond. She had admitted leaving then, driving around to Walton Road, parking there out of sight of her mother's house. And the prosecution would surely not trouble to deny or even question Callista's story of what happened then, in that half hour. She had stumbled off into the thick second-growth woods on the other side of Walton Road, a tangle of saplings, briers, poison ivy, wiry bushes, and young locust trees thorny in the dark, to get through a miscarriage in secret like a wounded animal and have done with it. To Edith, on the first occasion when with Warner's help Edith had broken through the barriers and won a visit with Callista in the detention cell, Callista had said tersely, in haste to change the subject: "The brambles were the worst of it." And that visit was not a time when she would accept any word of consolation. Something held back, Edith knew, some private tormenting reason why, even to her, Callista could not speak freely about that agony in the woods. Later, maybe. Everything now must be qualified with such words: "later"--"some time"--"after all this is over, Cal, and you are free." Curtis was gone. Something smart and bright-eyed was down there swearing to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. "Your full name and occupation, sir?" "Sutherland R. Clipp. I own and manage Clipp's Garage on Duke Street, uptown--you know, repairs, gas, body work, matter of fact we do everything, you'd be surprised." In startled disgust Edith thought: _Everything? How lovely for you, Mr. Clipp!_ With the utmost geniality, Mr. Clipp went on to testify that on the evening of Sunday, August 16th, he had been driving home to Winchester by Walton Road, after delivering a 1956 Buick in the nicest condition you could imagine to a customer in Emmetville. He wanted to emphasize that the Buick was a dish, in spite of--well, low mileage. He had practically robbed himself, but that was his way, the customer came first, and it paid off--oh--yes, he'd been watching the time that evening because he had to pick up his wife after a church supper; got talking with that (completely satisfied) Emmetville client, and besides, the car he'd taken in exchange was kind of a sad heap that wouldn't safely do anything over forty, and you know how women are if you keep them waiting, not that she--yes, he had passed the junction of Summer Avenue and Walton Road between 9:10 and 9:15, no later. He had seen a maroon Volkswagen parked under the pines, not too well off the road either, careless parking, one reason why he'd noticed it, although he always did notice them cheap foreign cars, which weren't too bad if all you wanted was economical transportation, like, however--what?--no, there wasn't anybody in the Volks or near it, unless somebody was scrouched down back of the dashboard when his headlights got there, but you couldn't hardly do anything like that in them foreign cheapies--"Your witness, Mr. Warner." Mr. Clipp's hurt, astonished look inquired: _Is that all?_ Without rising, Warner asked: "You do front end alignment?" "Well, no, sir, that calls for pretty tricky machinery. Still, the way we're growing all the time--" "Interior finish?" "No, sir, that's mostly factory. Of course, in a pinch--" Edith heard Hunter begin snarling: "What possible bearing--" "None, sir. I just wanted to make sure Mr. Clipp hadn't left out anything. No further questions." During the short courtroom roar, checked by the gavel, Edith thought she could read exasperated forgiveness in the face of Judge Terence Mann. But foreman Peter Anson, she saw, was not amused, nor Hoag, nor Francis Fielding. Business is serious: to make fun of a man when he's advertising is something like interrupting him in the men's room. State Trooper Carlo San Giorgio, solemn, deceptively fresh-faced and young, followed Mr. Clipp. He had stopped a blue and white Pontiac, license JD1081, on Walton Road two miles beyond the city line, at 8:34 P.M., Sunday, August 16th. The driver was a young woman who gave her name as Mrs. James Doherty, which agreed with her driver's license. Her driving had been unsteady, with some wavering over the white line. "Was she driving fast, exceeding the limit?" "No, sir, rather slow. Just unsteady." "Did she seem in good command of herself when you spoke to her?" "Yes, but I did ask if she'd been drinking a little." "Was her response satisfactory to you as a police officer?" "Well--yes, sir, it was." "Did you notice any smell of alcohol on her breath?" "A trifle." San Giorgio fidgeted. "Just barely noticeable." "But according to your observation, she wasn't what you'd call drunk, is that right?" "No, sir, she certainly wasn't. Spoke coherently, understood what I said--real polite and--and nice." "Did anything in her appearance suggest she might be ill?" "She was slightly hoarse. I'd stopped her car where there was a pretty good light from a house across the road, and I thought her eyes looked very slightly inflamed. Enough to suggest she might be--oh, perhaps coming down with a cold. You understand, sir, these were very slight things, otherwise I couldn't have let her drive on." Back of all that, Edith knew--back of the hedging, the slowly chosen words, back of Hunter's questions blunted by the hearsay rule--was the thing that San Giorgio knew and keenly remembered and could not say. Warner's dark eyes had narrowed to cold watchfulness, and Judge Mann's pencil was still. There wasn't any hearsay rule in Mr. Lamson's office. But here in the arena, Carlo San Giorgio couldn't say: "_She said she'd had one little shot of brandy. And I said: 'Oh well, Miss, I guess we won't throw the book at you for that.'_" Last night at dinner, Cecil Warner had done some thinking out loud about Trooper San Giorgio, who would have in his own young mind no reasonable doubt. San Giorgio could not repeat Ann's words on the stand. And yet if he could, the Old Man said, it ought (if juries were logical) to make no essential difference. For there was no defense, he said, except a reasonable doubt as to criminal intent. "Reasonable doubt!" he said, and set down his glass because his fat hand was shaking. "You see it, Red? T.J. can say that criminal intent and premeditation are proved up to the hilt by the mere presence of the poison in Cal's apartment. He will. He'll rub their noses in it. Against that and a flock of other circumstantial facts, we've got just one fact, the fact of something that happened in Cal's mind. Is it a fact?" "You and I both know it, don't we? She had no intent to kill." But instead of answering directly, the Old Man had said: "Red, do you understand she's not certain of it herself?" Edith had not quite understood it, until then. "Did you give her a ticket, Trooper?" "No, sir. From the address on her driving license I knew she had only about a mile to go. I told her she'd better head straight for home, and I told her I'd follow along behind till she got there, which I did." The youth was reliving it, Edith saw, and perhaps painfully. A pretty girl, hot night and hazy moon--had he hoped to be invited into the house for a quick check on burglars and a little drink? Oh, probably not. Ann had carried an obvious flag of conventional virtue. San Giorgio would have recognized and respected it, and done no more than a bit of summer's-night dreaming. "You drove behind her car, as far as the house on Summer Avenue?" "I did, sir. I saw her turn in at the driveway, and since she made it all right, I drove on." "Did you note the time?" "Yes, sir: 8:43." "Mr. Warner?" "No questions." Later last night, up at her studio, watching the fire in the grate through the prism of his wineglass, the Old Man said: "Who started the legend that the law court is a place devoted to search for truth? Answer, lawyers of course. But not counsel for the defense, Red. We know our function is to persuade. The prosecution may fool itself now and then, and kick the word 'truth' around; we can't afford to." Edith had said flatly: "The system stinks." He wasn't startled; he only grumbled: "I agree. The adversary system stinks. But working inside of it, my own position has logic enough to satisfy me. I get it out of a hypothesis, Red--not abstract truth, but working hypothesis. I say a human being once born has a right to live, if the word 'right' is going to mean anything--or let's say, a right not to be murdered, judicially or any other way. In other words, I'd defend Cal if I thought she was guilty as hell." Crew-cut gray hair and dignity marched to the stand, the face under the gray brush unknown to Edith but carrying a nearly unmistakable professional stamp. This would be bad. _Look towards me, Cal! I'll wear this old green suit tomorrow, too._ "Arthur J. Devens, M.D." _Look toward me!_ But telepathy is like other kinds of magic, she knew: fun to play with as a notion; if it worked, we'd run screaming. "A.B. Columbia, 1930, M.D. from College of Physicians and Surgeons." And maybe soon, another century or so, there'll be no such thing as privacy on earth except in the dark center of a few minds not quite overwhelmed. The desert shall blossom like the rose: distilled sea water, atomic-power pumps, sure, nothing to it, but no room for roses, and no hiding place--"active as Coroner's physician for Winchester County, New Essex, since 1952." _But friend, if something happens inside the mind I don't know, to make you remember me, to turn your head toward me, I will smile. I'll say with my lips: "We're going to win."_ "--preliminary examination made on the scene. The body was that of a young white woman in the middle twenties, of slight build, height five feet two. Rigor was complete, a light reddish post-mortem lividity noticeable, the face not markedly cyanotic. A moderate quantity of white cohesive foam adhered to nose and mouth. The hands, though stiffened in rigor, were not clenched as one often finds them in drowning cases. The conjunctivae were congested. Cutis anserina--gooseflesh--was pronounced on the thighs and upper arms. Gooseflesh," said Dr. Devens politely and patiently to the jury, "is frequently evident after death by drowning, if the water is far enough below body temperature, as it ordinarily is even in the tropics. To sum up that preliminary, superficial examination: it suggested, but did not prove, that death had occurred with less struggle than is usual in a drowning. It did prove that life was not extinct when the body entered the water. There was at least some breathing, possibly the shallow breathing of unconsciousness, but enough inhaling and exhaling and choking reflex to cause that foam." "Doctor, a hypothetical question: if a person were stunned, I mean knocked entirely unconscious, before falling or being thrown into the water, and then perished by drowning, would you expect to find the body, after twelve to thirteen hours of submersion, more or less in the condition of Mrs. Doherty's at the time you made that first examination?" Edith saw Callista start as if struck in the face. Her dark brows gathered in that quick frown of hers, and she was leaning to Cecil Warner, whispering. She looked, Edith thought, more disgusted than angry. Cecil's poker face remained in control. He only listened, shook his head, patted her hand. "Oh, hypothetical--well.... I dare say the findings wouldn't be inconsistent. Of course, Mr. Hunter, I looked for any sign of head injury, a matter of routine, and found nothing of the kind." "Isn't it possible, Doctor, to receive a head injury, perhaps from a padded thing like a sandbag, that won't leave any marks?" "No superficial marks, maybe. I think you'd find post-mortem evidence, likely subdural hemorrhage." "Even from a blow that merely stunned?" With some acid and faraway amusement Dr. Devens remarked: "Even as Coroner's physician, I'm not too versed in the lore of sandbags. But I think that a blow heavy enough to stun, followed very soon by death from another cause, would leave some internal evidence." "Did you look for such evidence?" "I did." "Is that standard procedure, by the way, when there's convincing evidence of drowning?" "I can't say that I lean very much on standard procedure. So far as I'm concerned, any case that reaches the Coroner's office is unique. When there's any possibility of homicide, I try to think of everything, including the apparently far-fetched. Yes, I examined the head: cranial section--well, I don't suppose you want those details. Head, neck vertebrae, all perfectly normal, uninjured. In fact the one and only injury on the entire body surface was a trifling abrasion on the right anklebone, which could have been caused in any number of ways--a fall, or the anklebone scraping against something: impossible to say. I also examined the palms for earth marks, such as she might have got if she'd fallen forward and tried to break the fall with her hands. There weren't any, but I dare say several hours' immersion would have removed them if they were ever there. The skin of the palms was perfectly clear." "I see. Go on, please." "The body was placed in the mortuary wagon from Shanesville, and at my suggestion was taken to the Winchester morgue. I accompanied it there; it was at no time out of my sight. I began the post-mortem at about 1:30 P.M., assisted by Dr. Miles Dennison and with the authorization of Mr. District Attorney Lamson. I think I should say at this point that shortly before I began the post-mortem, I was notified by Winchester Chief of Police Morgan Collins that there was a possibility Mrs. Doherty had drunk poison, thought to be aconitine. I therefore had this in mind before beginning the examination, and I consulted by telephone with the toxicologist Dr. Walter Ginsberg, and prepared the organs, blood samples and so on, that he told me he would need for his study. The body weight was one hundred and ten pounds, slightly undernourished. There was an appendectomy scar, old; no other scars, no evidence of chronic illness or disorder, no marks of violence; the subject had never given birth. The nasal cavities and bronchi contained some stiff foam and a few dark brown and black specks identified by microscopic examination as fragments of dead leaves. No algae were found. Some water was in the lungs, but very little. The heart, not markedly distended, contained fluid blood, but that is not diagnostic: clotted blood may appear in a drowning case. The viscera were quite noticeably congested." "That is diagnostic?--congestion of the viscera?" "No, sir--may appear in many other conditions." "Including some kinds of poisoning?" "Yes, Mr. Hunter." "For example poisoning by aconitine?" "Yes." "Did you employ the Gettler test?" "Yes--inconclusive. The blood in the left side of the heart had a slightly lower concentration of sodium chloride than the blood on the right. If that difference had been pronounced, you could call it fair evidence of inhalation of fresh water, but it was too slight. I don't attach any significance to it." "Could the _lack_ of a positive finding be significant?" "I don't think so. It's a good test, but plenty of things may confuse it. For instance, a drowning may occur from pharyngeal shock--a spasmodic throat contraction that causes asphyxia before much water is inhaled. Logically still a drowning death, but no water to speak of, so there goes your Gettler test." "You looked of course for evidence of aconitine poisoning?" "Only in a limited sense, sir. Aconitine doesn't leave gross traces for post-mortem, it's a job for the toxicologist, a chemical job. Since I knew Dr. Ginsberg would be working on it, I simply bore it in mind, prepared what he needed, and kept my eyes open. I can say under oath that I found nothing inconsistent with aconite poisoning having occurred shortly before the drowning. But the actual immediate cause of death was, in my opinion, asphyxia due to immersion, in other words drowning." "Doctor, will you give the jury a description of the effects of aconitine in a lethal or near-lethal dose?" "Frankly, sir, I'll be drawing on textbook knowledge, because this is the only case I ever encountered. Homicide by aconite is decidedly rare. So is suicide." Callista looked up, not to the doctor who dutifully faced the jury and would not look at her, but searching the rows of spectators. "Aconitine will cause numbness, tingling in the mouth, also in the fingers, possibly cramps in arms and legs. There's marked salivation, nausea, burning sensation in stomach and throat." Edith moved in her seat, and smiled, and tried to call in silence: _I'm here._ But Callista's eyes, searching, immense, drowned, passed over her. "A slow, irregular, weak pulse is characteristic, with rapid shallow breathing, muscular weakness, a general collapse. Nausea and vomiting are usual; sometimes there are convulsions. The poison depresses the medullary centers of the brain, but the cerebrum is hardly affected, which means the mind stays pretty clear until the coma that may supervene at the end." Callista's eyes found what they were seeking. It would not be her mother, Edith knew: Victoria Chalmers sat over at Edith's left. "Those symptoms I've described begin soon after aconite is taken. I believe death, when it occurs, usually comes in about four hours--but it can happen in a matter of minutes." Edith wished not to turn her head; she felt instead an unwillingness, distaste, reluctance to learn what would be written in the face of Jim Doherty. But she could not help it. Knowing where he was seated, she was forced to turn until a sidelong look gave her the image of him, completing at that instant the sign of the cross, his eyes lowered, his lips moving. But the man beside him was watchful, interested, attentive, probably missing none of the testimony. "What is the minimum lethal dose, Dr. Devens?" "About a milligram. Some individuals might take up to five or six, and recover. More than six milligrams would likely finish anyone, unless there was immediate medical attention--you understand, those figures refer to a pure concentration of the drug." Callista's lips were moving also. As Edith looked to her again, she saw them shape unmistakable words: "_Go away!_" There would be no sound, Edith thought, even for Cecil Warner, who had taken hold of her hand and was showing the beginning of alarm. "_Go away!_" "Is the drug readily soluble in alcohol?" "Yes, Mr. Hunter." _Callista, be quiet! He can't hear you. He can't hear anyone._ "Assuming a person had taken four to five milligrams of the poison, Dr. Devens, he could still be saved by immediate medical attention?" The girl said something to Cecil Warner, quick and possibly sharp; Edith caught the faint note of her voice under the dry dominating noise of Dr. Devens, the words indistinguishable, blotted out by his: "Certainly, sir, the patient could probably be saved. Stomach pump. Tannic acid I imagine, to render the poison inert. You'd give heart stimulants, say digitalis. A healthy patient would have a pretty good chance." "Thank you, Dr. Devens. Cross examination, Mr. Warner?" "No cross examination." But Warner was up, for once urgently quick-spoken. "Your Honor, in view of my client's exhaustion, may we have adjournment at this time?" In the abrupt hush that followed Warner's question, Callista's voice, not loud, not really a cry, was surely heard by everyone, even by Jim Doherty. "Go away, my love!" The Judge winced, speaking hastily: "The Court stands adjourned until ten A.M. tomorrow." Edith also observed the press tables, and the jolly excited scramble for the telephones. IV The pavements throbbed with a golden, sometimes iridescent flame, which could not deceive Cecil Warner, for he was not drunk. The time hadn't come and never would when two bourbons on top of an average dinner could make a fool of him. The dancing fire was nothing in the world but the reflection of headlights on sidewalks wet with the return of winter rain. On his left a separate darkness kept pace with him, blotting out the fire-ballet as he moved. _I cast a shadow. It is the nature of a man to cast a shadow. This is done even by a few of the dead._ _No. 'Their works do follow after them'; but that's not shadow, except by ill-advised figure of speech. That is what I shall term--(BAR AND GRILL twenty paces ahead)--shall term the immortality of consequences, of continuing events. Shadow's different. Shadow is the occlusion of light rays by an impermeable mass, me for instance. Avoid all ill-advised figures of speech. Go away, my love!_ He observed it was Hanlon's Bar and Grill, corner of Main and Willard, damned if it wasn't--interesting, since he'd thought he was three blocks further west. He advanced through the logical absurdity of a revolving door. Quiet here tonight. He read the others at the bar in a practiced glance: four nondescript males and a large platinum wench, all unknown. He fumbled past his damp overcoat, drawing forth and consulting his thin and ancient pocket watch of yellow gold. His inner vision recorded, as always, the florid inscription he would see if his thumbnail opened the hinged back of the case: _Ezra Allen Warner, 1880_. A gift from his grandfather to his father, on the boy Ezra's graduation from college at twenty-one. For the last thirty-odd years Cecil had not been able to look on this delicate artifact without some dark stirring of the thought: _I have no children._ The fantastically graceful hands declared the present hour to be ten-thirty; they had been truth-tellers for eighty years. "Evening, Tom. Bourbon and water." "Sure enough, Mr. Warner. Raining again, isn't it?" "A sprinkle. A certain piddling effort. Possibly the tears of the gods are running thin in this latter age." Tom's patient face was acknowledging him as a Character. "You could be right." Tom would have absorbed every word on the Blake case that the evening _Courier_ had to offer; adult, seasoned, sensitive, he wouldn't mention it unless Warner did. He had even spoken Warner's name in a soft tone that would not carry down the bar. He poured the bourbon, gave the mahogany a needless swipe or two for friendship's sake in case the Old Man wanted to talk, and drifted back to his post of command. Two men, blurred by Warner's preoccupation, were discussing space flight across the intervening blonde. Beyond them two others carried on an argument that rose to audibility only now and then. The Old Man heard and did not hear them; heard and did not hear the deeper counterpoint within him. Tomorrow, assuming tomorrow came, the attack would follow a different line. Callista's adultery and deception, illustrative details by courtesy of the neighbors and Nathaniel Judd, plus T.J.'s dreary assertions and reassertions that the girl was being tried for nothing but murder--perhaps T.J. could even manage to believe that himself, for the duration. Callista's atheism; yes, almost certainly some one of the State's witnesses would most casually drop in the word "atheist." Protest, uproar, the Old Man scolding, T.J. doing a baritone solo on religious tolerance; then the mockery (Terence himself would hate it) of striking an answer from the record when no means existed to strike it from the jurors' minds. "It don't push against atmosphere up there, account there _isn't_ any." "All right, I know that, but how _does_ it push, 's what I don't get?" "No she didn't! She said, her exact words, 'you never knew what was ordinary for Callista'--exact words." "Were you there?" "Hell no, like I told you, I couldn't get off from work, but the _Courier_'s printing every word, so all you got to do is put two and two--" "--pushes against itself, see? The satellite _itself_ is the God-damn resistance, like you're shooting a pistol, and the recoil--you ever shoot a pistol?" "Hate 'em. Sure way to get hurt." Platinum said: "'S like this, Buck, what Sam's try'n'a tell you, you get up 'ere in shpace, you just be'r not fart." "Now, June," said bartender Tom, "you want to watch the talk." "I di'n' say single thing." "O_kay_, June baby, just watch it is all." "What I mean is, everybody figures the girl is nuts, that old woman Welsh and everybody. So what you're going to see, you're going to see an insanity defense. It always happens--" "No sumbishn barkeep's telling me how talk." "June baby, I keep telling you--" "Happens every time. She'll be put away a few years, and then let out, do it all over again, like--" "Only thing I'm try'n'a find out, what does it push against _behind_?" "I'm beginning to think it's no use try'n'a explain it to you." "Tom!" "Hell, like a poisoner _always_ does! You want to bet? Happened a million times. I read a book--" "Tom!" "Yeah? You better not have any more, June." "Don't _want_ any more--not why I called you. Just wanted say, 'm sorry 'f anything I said gave 'fense. None 'tended. All's I want's everybody be happy." _But the defense_-- "Sure, June, that's okay." "'S my whole life right 'ere, see? Ask anybody knows me." "O_kay_, June!" _The defense never rests._ "Okay he says, he keeps saying okay, Jesus Christ, you ought to listen I'm telling you, not just keep saying okay, okay. Ever since I was little girl, honest, all's I ever wanted was everybody be happy." 4 ... O how can Love's eye be true, That is so vex'd with watching and with tears? SHAKESPEARE, _Sonnet CXLVIII_ I Thought of work had halted Edith's aimless wandering on the Christmas-spattered evening streets downtown. Now the drawing table and empty chair in her studio brought Callista poignantly close in absence. How arrogantly, like a beloved child, Callista had captured her life! Window-shopping with no heart for it, necessary gifts already bought, she had become fed up with Winchester, noise, people, sidewalk grit flung by the wind; with gaudy lights desperately imitating good cheer, drizzle-nosed bell-ringers and Santa Clauses, carols once pretty now done to death, fed up with crowd faces till she recoiled from them as from a rat-race of tragic masks. Getting off the bus--she seldom used her car downtown, hating the struggle of searching out a parking space--her skirt was twitched up by the breeze for the lech of a pair of whistling teen-agers. Edith had been dourly amused. _Try looking at the face some time, kids!_--and the mood kept with her as far as her third floor walkup on Hallam Street. The hour was nine-thirty, Papa Doorn just closing his delicatessen on the ground floor, giving her a gentle "Good night, Miss Nolan!" No mail but a swatch of ads drenched in the season's gladness, and the janitor would never provide a wastebasket in the entry. She dumped the mess in the studio trash-box, glancing at the cameras, screens, props, at the dim end of the studio. A fantastic way to earn a living, close to the mainstream of human vanity. But at this end, with the north light, wall-shelves, drawing table, work could be done after survival was taken care of. Callista's work for a year, and Edith's own. The bread-and-butter end of the studio was already dusty. Edith had canceled portrait engagements for the duration of the trial, disinclined to hire a temporary helper: why knock oneself out immortalizing the fish-faced? She touched the table, symbolic touching of a hardness-without-coldness that was one element of Callista Blake. _Stop it, Red! She's not here._ She took down a folder of Callista's drawings--some careful, some swift, all begotten of a mind that could see, laugh, pity, understand. Also in that folder was a letter Callista had written after Edith's last visit to the detention cell, Saturday, three days ago. Edith knew the drawings. She would find nothing new in them now, when she was out of temper and moved by a wish to start some work of her own. Glance at that abandoned wagon in long grass? Or the supermarket clerk, homely day's end weariness caught in a dozen lines with that compassion of Callista's (at nineteen!) which she could almost never convey in spoken words? Not now. Edith glanced at a watercolor on the wall, one she had taken from Cal's apartment for safety with Herb Chalmers' distracted consent and after the police had given leave. A mountain slope, a wind-ravished pine, shouting deep color against a storm sky intense with the power of two worlds, the world of life and growth and dying before Callista's eyes, and the world of Callista's most observing self. Off in her living-room the telephone rang. Edith ran for it. The voice was slurred, uncertain. "Miss Nolan--Edith--all evening trying to get you. Jim Doherty--now please don't hang up." "Of course I won't." She tried not to snap. "What is it?" "Had to ask you something." He was rather drunk. "May seem unreason'ble, guess you hate me anyhow, but--" "I won't hang up. I don't hate you. What is it, Jim?" "Maybe wouldn't blame you. You feel I let her down. Feel I'm an enemy or something--sorry--not what I'm trying to say--" She waited, watching her thin white fingers play with a pencil from the telephone table, a pinpoint of perception somehow important, as if it kept her distressed and startled mind from swirling away down the telephone mouthpiece like water down the hole of a handbasin. She heard a beat of mechanical music; Jim would be in a bar, the booth shut against a squalling of radio or television. The large-boned, dark-Irish face would be pale with alcohol, filmed with sweat, black hair disordered, wide mouth talking against its own unwillingness. Dark eyes rigid, unfocused, behind them Jim's own image of a crackpot redhead who was Callista's friend. He was a tall man; the stingy crannies of the booth would bother his legs. An impressive young stallion: any woman felt that much, and one could (sometimes) see why Callista--"Edith, what happened there, before adjournment? I've got to know. I sort of lost track, then they were taking her away. What--" "You didn't hear what she said?" "No, that's it, I didn't. I was praying--well, for her, though I suppose that doesn't mean anything to you, no offense, anyway I--" "Didn't your friend hear what she said?" "My--oh, you mean Father Bland. No, he didn't." "Is he deaf?" "Yes, a little." She heard the righteous reproach; it must have done Jim good to put her in the wrong. "What did she say?" "She said: 'Go away, my love!'" He would be still there. She heard breathing, and the background noise, a hot trumpet squeaking up the summits of banality. She said: "Jim, do you still love her at all?" But how could she know the color of the word in his language? How was he to glimpse the meanings of it in her own? If even Sam Grainger couldn't quite admit that divergence of language long ago (_my own language far simpler then!_) if not even Sam (_where are you?_) then how could poor Jim Doherty who had no wish to think for himself? "What else did she say?" Hadn't Jim heard the idiot question? It seemed to her the question had been divided, an echo-voice asking of another with another name: _Sam (where are you?) do you still love her (the name was Red-Top, remember?) or think of her at all?_ Meanwhile--"She said nothing else, Jim, nothing I heard." "Oh. I--look, I never told her--I mean--oh, _I_ don't know. I--" Edith held the receiver further away with its wiry babble of misery: "I tried to make her understand--that part, all in her head--she--" "She fell in love with what she wanted you to be." "What? No, you're wrong, she _wasn't_ in love with me." "That's what I meant, Jim. She loved an image, not a man. Only, there was a--" (_Edith, stop! Don't say it!_)--"a tangible male involved in it too, who happened to get her pregnant." "I--can't go for that psychological stuff. She's over eighteen. Well, I know, you can beat me over the head with the pregnancy if you want to, but since it wasn't God's will that it should live, what can I do?" "What she said, perhaps." She heard her own voice electric, hurting in her ears. "If she were still carrying it, what _would_ you do? That would be wages of sin, I guess? The way it was God's will you should try out a virgin for variety, or kicks? Or did you just feel that if an unconventional, unreligious girl wasn't a whore she ought to be?" "I shouldn't have called. God forgive you." Edith set the instrument down. The trembling would presently stop. Overcharge of adrenalin, stupid physical need to slash again, with claws. She fumbled a cigarette from the box by the telephone. Anyway Jim would not call back. He'd rest on the dignity of his last word, which Father Bland would have approved. Sam Grainger was in the world, somewhere. Married probably, with one of the symphonies, teaching. His myriad hours of violin and oboe practice, piano, harmony, counterpoint, all had been aiming at that. The violin for preference, oboe because good violinists are numerous. With affection that had never perished, Edith thought: _What Sam wants, Sam earns and gets._ She noticed she was thinking in the present tense. Fair enough: it would still be true. Sam Grainger would still be a man dedicated and absorbed, immune to discouragement, too big for distractions. He had not been too seriously distracted by an affair with a redheaded art student. So what has become of the old brownstone front, shabby-sacred rooms, thready hole in the rug, genially silly print of "The Storm"--Mrs. Cardle considered that one real nice for anyone that was artistic-like--and the bed that mysteriously didn't squeak if you lay across it instead of lengthwise? What stills the music, and where are the green shadows of Arcadia? The rooms would have accepted the whispering and secret laughter of a crowd of lovers in seven years, all giggling at sad, vague, moral Mrs. Cardle and that grayish lump of dough, her husband, whose thick delirium of hate for the antique coal furnace in the basement was very nearly a form of love. You saw the Cardles dealing with an ebb and flow of Boston lodgers world without end. But they could have been human and mortal; the brownstone could have yielded to a flat-faced office building. If it had not, though, the center flagstone of the rear yard would look the same in a sluice of rain, the crack in it like the junction of Ohio and Mississippi, seen by young eyes from the window of the third floor back. One gray afternoon--Edith's room dim, the curtains adequate--they had stood naked near that window to watch Mrs. Cardle trying to teach her old round-bellied bulldog to roll over and play dead. Behind closed eyes and seven years, Edith felt again Sam's chin at her shoulder, shiver of held-in laughter at the dog's patient refusal to understand and its resemblance to Mr. Cardle; Sam's arm under her breasts moving, she turning then, clutching his black curls in mimic savagery, twisting free of him, racing him to the bed, caught with welcome violence and sudden entering thrust, violently held through a long course of love, an animal riot of pleasure carrying them together to the height, to the moment when the heart must break and die a little, the explosion of not-pain, the blindness and the quiet. And the quiet: summit of a hillside, also homely truth of two bodies in the aftermath of orgasm, each comic-serious detail of throbbing and subsiding organs felt, known, recorded in the mind's continuing life history with acceptance, tenderness, satisfaction, relief, amusement, wonder. Kissing him slowly in the quiet, kissing the hard-tipped fingers of his left hand, fine bony rib cage and knotty shoulders, the lifetime red mark printed under his jawbone by the violin, his other love. And--"_Time I should get back to work, Red-Top._" Edith had been jealous, in a way, yet she had never knowingly desired to cut him down to size or usurp the government of his private world. And surely there had been cause to resent his indifference toward her own work, ambition, oriented dreaming. Not indifference: call it lack of awareness. As on that heartbreak evening when she had taken down Mrs. Cardle's "Storm" and replaced it with a darktoned watercolor, a Nolan original and, in her judgment, good. He never saw it. When he slipped into her room he had not seemed much preoccupied with his own studies; he just looked at the watercolor and didn't see it. Cheerful, until her darkening hopelessly unreasonable mood infected him. When the quarrel began, over something else, some damned side issue now blanked out of memory, he still didn't see the picture. That quarrel was patched up the next night, in bed. There were others. The essential trust of two-against-the-world was gone: in the darkness behind daily perception two strangers still winced and glared, astonished at the wounds. Drift then, from radiance to near-commonplace, above the organ-point of things unsaid. In the summer after the school year, Sam had written, once; Edith had answered, twice. End of affair. Yielding to a long assault of cancer, Edith's mother died that summer. An emptiness then, plus discouragement with art school that kept her from going back. Instead she had taken a commercial course in photography, her dazed but practical father approving and footing the bill. The following summer, a purposeful wandering in Amy the Model A (a cantankerously good little heap even now in 1959), remembering more clearly than any other conversation what her father had said before she left: "Look, Skinnay, you marry or work at something you like, or just loaf a while and raise hell, but don't turn into a dutiful daughter taking care of the old man." Shoving aside a heap of paper work brought home--the old man was a C.P.A. and a good one--and turning up to her the bald head, moon face, tenderly sarcastic eyes. "Don't do that, or I will turn you over my knee, and your fanny, dearest, is not fat enough to sustain the impact. The old man takes care of himself." A purposeful wandering, for that summer she had surely been looking for something more than a place that would do for a photographic studio; looking for maturity perhaps. Then Winchester, the investment paying off in adequate survival, plus a bit of freedom. No more letters to Sam: end of affair, diminuendo to an imperfect cadence dissonant with the organ-point, the only resolution silence. _What did we think we were doing? I was fighting to be a person? Or just to make Sam admit I must sometimes be person first, sweetheart second? A lot of the time I was just damn well fighting ..._ Deep inside, very likely, the daughter of earth had been weighing consequences, a simpler Eve murmuring of home, nest, security, advantages of snaring a good man when there was one to be had. _My first, my only, which for a warmblooded redhead is absurd, gentlemen, no argument._ What happens? Why this other drift that for some of us, many of us, extends from months into years of accepting dullness and the erosion of daily demands, waiting for the rainbow blaze that may never appear, the heart knowing all the time that there's only one life and not much time to live it? Edith fidgeted, angry at the introspection itself, at the fatigue or laziness that held her in this armchair when some other part of her honestly wanted to get up and go to work. _O wind-sweet valley of Arcadia--remember me?_ She noticed the chill, and got up then with a flounce of irritation. Caught by Jim's telephone call, she had not yet turned up the heat for the Burrow. Maybe she wouldn't bother. Turn it up in the studio, leave the Burrow cool for bedtime. _Get to work! Or try to._ Dust filmed the fireplace mantel. In a half-light beyond the bedroom doorway, yesterday's panties gaped lewdly from the seat of a chair. She must have been seduced by some clever idea when she was on the point of tossing them in the laundry bag. At least she had made the bed. _Too much alone, small Edith._ She remembered with a wrench of pain that early last August Cal had just about agreed to give up her apartment and come share this one. _August_--Edith carried her coat into the bedroom, hung it properly, stuffed the offending panties away. If Callista and Jim could have spoken each other's languages? _Proposition absurd._ Callista groping out of the jungle of an ugly childhood, Jim living (till Ann died anyway) according to surface impulses and ready-made directives of social and religious authority--no, there could have been no conversation. _What ailed her, going overboard for that bundle of bad luck?_ Call it chance. Swept away by need, nearness, charm of a prepossessing male; maybe unknowingly goaded in spite of herself by the dithering emphasis of American culture on sexual activity as the end, cure, meaning for everything: luv-luv-luv. And Jim no more "to blame" than she. As much an accident as falling downstairs. A gust rattled the bedroom window and hummed across chimney-tops and died. _Go away, my love!_ Edith changed out of the green suit into a cherished dingy blue bathrobe. In the bureau mirror she glimpsed her own color and motion. Clear sky-blue eyes would hold that color a lifetime, though the irises would some day blur at the rims, the vision would not remain 20-20, lids would crinkle, brows turn sandy-gray, then white. Grooves in the forehead would deepen, and the brackets at nose and mouth. Red hair must whiten--quickly, one could hope, without streaks. That smoothness from small chin down a slim neck to the collar of Venus with no sag or wrinkle at thirty-one--well. Already crowding her luck a bit there; pretty Ann Doherty, for all her needless dieting, had been starting a tiny double chin at twenty-six. The bathrobe unbelted allowed a gleam of small breasts neat and high, jaunty and delicate, red-tipped like white peonies. _Fun for somebody, going to waste--are you listening, bitch in the manger?_ Her finger tapped the unsmiling woman in the glass, and she was stricken by thought of another face, also far from the conventional norms of beauty. They used a hood, didn't they, electrodes concealed by an intolerable obscenity of black rubber? _No thought is finished until the thinker dies, then only blotted out, the death rattle a throat-clearing for what's not to be said. Mother, the morphine not helping yet, certain she'd left something on the stove to boil over, couldn't convince her. For thought is action. What's this, Edith? Philosophy A, Radcliffe, Class of '48 and all that?_ All the same, she reflected, it _is_ action, and the hell with Plato the Father of Half-Truths. So why wonder that an earlier self becomes a creature of mystery? Where was the cross thin woman who talked sharply to Jim Doherty a few minutes ago? You say: It was one I who thought and acted thus and so; now I am not what I was, but I inherit any continuing good and bad and all responsibility: if I don't clean up after the person I left behind, nobody else will. That was the thorny passage, the truth too easily blurred. Yet only a few, she thought, could endure the concept of mind-as-motion. By contrast, how apparently solid and comfortable are the absolutes, static symbols, devices of everyday talk to create the illusion of a stillness in time, so that we can draw breath and feel for a moment that we know who we are! In a ship you can stay below, avoid the portholes, ignore the long rise and fall as the vessel encounters a rolling of the sea, and pretend your cabin is a landside thing: fine woodwork, carpet, all that, and if now and then you do feel a throb of engines or tilting of the world, why, Captain God's on the bridge and will see to everything. And yet it doesn't take too much courage to go stand at the bow and discover the wind in your face: a child can do it; a grown-up can recognize the captain as skilled but humanly mortal. Edith crossed the hall to the studio, where cool light on the drawing table waited like a reminder of courage. She took out Callista's letter, carefully as though the pages were drawings, and the large light handwriting did have some of that quality, Callista's hand refusing to waver at any disturbance of her thought: Dear Edith: It was good to be with you, though I was unpleasant, ridding myself of accumulated venom. I can't safely talk in my worst way to anyone else--Cecil is too vulnerable. And I miscalculated, thought we had more time, was about to shut up and hear you (what I wanted above all) but then time up, opportunity gone. Don't try to cut the red tape for another visit after the trial opens. When I see you now I think too much, in spite of you, of what I may lose. The work, freedom, gaiety, good talk I never heard till I met you. I'd better keep my shell until this is over, I seem to need it. Stay away just because I do cherish you. Dear Edith, I'm sickened to remember how I talked this afternoon--but maybe it won't end the way my present mood says it will. A mood is only part of a journey--you said that to me once, now I keep the words with me. Cecil came to see me after you left--he looks ill, Edith. Does poor old Mrs. Wilks really do enough about looking after him? Look--I tried to tell him more about Mother and Herb, and the Saturday night uproar with Mother that I described to you. Give him more of that, will you? I made a botch of telling him, I suppose because I love him, my mind wouldn't focus on my own mess. How does it happen (C. let it slip) that Herb is meeting so many of the incidental expenses when I said so damn plain it was to come out of my money from Father's estate? Please try to find out, will you? I can't think straight any more tonight. I slop off into self-pity, lose track altogether. I don't believe human beings are _adequate_ for this kind of thing, Edith, I know I'm not anyway. You heard me whimper once, only once. Alone, I do a good deal of that, friend, I can't help it--hermit crab's a soft blob of nothing-much inside the borrowed shell. I'm no Latimer sticking his hand in the fire. Not even jailed for a Cause, just want to live. I don't know what love is either, but now and then I wonder if anyone ever knew more about it than I do. My love to you, Callista II Terence Mann stopped playing, tense with a dissonance of perplexity. A wrong time and mood for Chopin: his hands had been dull in the C-sharp Minor Impromptu. No music now, but an impulsive sorrow of December wind leaning against the building in the dark. "_Callista never cried._" To Maud Welsh, that had been "real unnatural." Judge Mann did not find it so. Self-pity was not evident as a quality of Callista Blake. He understood with almost amused distress that he _liked_ the girl. That, plus old dislike for the representative of her accuser the State: how far can you go with such a bias before the judicial lid blows off? He remembered doubtfully a talk with Joe Bass the evening before--anything more than a flurry of wishful thinking? Increase of humanitarianism in the last century and a half? Well, social history agreed, if you read it with some detachment from the immediate terrors of the decade. And the increase could hardly be ignored or dismissed except by someone bitterly in love with his own pessimism. Modern postwar pessimism, although a cult like any other, was persuasive, deceptively articulate. Something contagious in a comprehensive the-hell-with-it. Social history made it clear that capital punishment had dwindled in frequency from a common public entertainment to something almost rare. The states still practicing it gave evidence of official shame, or at least of a schizophrenic need to serve two contraries, to appease the recurrent vengefulness of their multitudes but also to hide the dirty thing, tacitly apologize, soften its most visible nastiness in the hope that conscience would shut up and sleep again. Such a condition would be preliminary to change. Like tuberculosis and venereal disease, capital punishment was on the way out but going out in the manner of things legal, with dreary and creeping slowness. Wasn't that how he had reasoned two years ago, when his name was up in the election more or less unopposed? Or had he honestly faced it at all? Hadn't he simply regarded a judgeship as mostly useful work and $18,000 a year? And hadn't he accepted, without enough examination, the doctrine that a judge is only an instrument of something greater than himself? An instrument of _what_ something, greater than himself _in what way_? The questions projected themselves beyond the cloud-curtain of mysticism. But it seemed to Judge Mann that unless they could receive a daylight answer, the doctrine itself was solemn nonsense. Imagining Society with a capital S to be greater than the individual--no answer there, only a more opaque mysticism. The mental construction "Society" is an achievement of the individual brain, an organ that had better not be too dazzled by products of its own authorship. The issue of capital punishment had been bound to arise. _I knew the laws. I knew that New Essex was no more free than any other state from crime and the balancing crime of punishment._ From an unseeing stare at the carpet, his head jerked up as if at the entrance of another. _Balancing crime of punishment_: he had been thinking in specific words, talking to a half-personalized projection of the self, and the words had power to startle him. It was a commonplace to Terence Mann that punishment itself is an archaic evil in the law. As special prosecutor, as defense lawyer on a few occasions, in the relatively clean region of civil law, he had tried to favor any reorientation of thought and action that might discredit punishment as a respected motivation and replace it by efforts at healing and reclamation. As a judge, familiar with the endless parade of minor offenders (most of them with no chance of redemption, for where in the modern state was there a sufficient will to redeem even the young, or the time, patience, money, wisdom, to implement it?), Judge Mann had been aware of no impulse in himself to punish, only of a desire to lessen disorder, and try for the long view. And then, Callista Blake. But--_balancing crime of punishment_: well, there it was simply his own unexpected rephrasing of the issue that had startled him. Apart from that, if that was significant, this self-castigation probably served no purpose. Fashionable but without merit, to wail that we are all guilty. So we are, in a sense, and (unless one intends to do something about it) so what? Breast-beating is as solitary as any other form of masturbation. The modern spirit, he thought, for a long time before Hiroshima, had grown too fond of the wail, the masochistic acceptance of futility that ended in a downright enjoyment of it, a perversion as sterile as the antics of the louse-eaten monks of the Thebaid. Admit that two years ago he might not have been completely honest with himself. All right: what mattered now was that a slow broadening of reform might look very fine in the armchair perspective of a history book, but was no use at all to Callista Blake, nineteen years old. Capital punishment was on the way out, taking her along with it. Therefore in the very present specific instance: _What to do?_ Wandering to the other side of the room, fingering the stacks of sheet music and the bound volumes, Judge Mann reflected that a judgeship is a very damned comfortable thing, to the nerves of pocketbook and of vanity, until a moment of self-appraisal brings you the image of a bewildered monkey in a black gown. An image caught as though in multiple mirrors. No good turning your head aside: a mirror in every wall, and the monkey, poor puzzled well-meaning bastard, in every mirror. He did not want now the fury or grief or laughter of Beethoven; not now the lofty tenderness or robust passion of Johannes Brahms. He took down his one-volume edition of the _Well-Tempered Clavichord_ and glanced at a memory-stirring litter of pencil marks made long ago in the curly script of his teacher Michael Brooks. Mr. Brooks had died before the war, very old and partly blind. He might live another hundred years in these marks, far longer in the spreading influence of his fifty years of teaching, the impetus he gave to other lives continuing beyond any knowledge or measuring. _Very good, Terence!... More slow trill practice absolutely essential!! Andante does not mean Adagio. In this Prelude schmaltz is possible but I do not like it. Excellent but you could do better. Bring out the inner voices._ Mr. Brooks grew vivid in memory, speaking with difficulty and panting breath because of age and the burden of fat that seemed (till you learned better) as though it might block his pudgy improbable hands away from the keyboard entirely. He had been seventy when Terence at age eight began lessons; he went on teaching twelve years thereafter. Terence remembered the gray eyes, tiny-appearing, sometimes inflamed, in folds of drooping lids and fat, the completely hairless skull rising to a peak, the wondrously ugly features that after the first impact of astonishment left the word "ugly" without meaning. "You think the Fugues are dry, Terence? Bring out the inner voices.... See, Terence, all the composers have something for you. But when you are unhappy--" blinking, sighing, coughing; and Terence recalled a child's botheration, dread of giggles, at an old man's prolonged throat-clearing, guttural noises, conversational spray, habit of patting forlornly at the air when a needed word was gone from him--"or when you have discovered that happiness is only a sometime thing at best, not too important, then try Bach, Terence, try Bach. Because he will let you enter a place where you become bigger than sadness or happiness. And bring out the inner voices." He set the old book on the piano. Hands and brain were tired, the hour late, though the neighboring apartment-dwellers were tolerant and often kept their mechanical music perking until after midnight. For a while he was in that place: _Well, Mr. Brooks, "container and thing contained": aren't we always bigger than what stirs within us? All the same it was a good way to talk to a child._ But the very facility of his hands betrayed him, leaving his mind too free. Good at first, to continue private thought while Bach was speaking, but then only another troublesome dividing of the self. Terence's father, not a patient man, would have said at this point or sooner: "God-sake, Terry, make up your mind!" He would have said that, before 1928. In that year Father changed. And maybe the gray and harassed man could have entertained doubts earlier in his life on such an issue as capital punishment. He didn't have a closed or ungenerous mind; he couldn't afford to, a small-town doctor with two skittish growing boys and a wife who came to believe herself in deep other-worldly communication with Mary Queen of Scots. But many of Father's opinions were formed when he was a young man in the era of Teddy Roosevelt, and he didn't always remember to speak softly. Unlike his older brother Uncle Norden, who must have early learned the advantages of speaking softly at great length--anyhow Uncle Nord built up that accomplishment into a thundering good law practice. Father (before 1928) would likely have said if you asked him that criminals so hardened as to commit murder--oh, put 'em out. For the good of society. Human failures: the unfit--odd word much loved by the nineteenth century, used apparently in a sort of gentleman's agreement that no one was going to ask: unfit for what? Father would not have spoken so out of vindictiveness or lack of human feeling: just the impatient judgment of a busy man with troubles of his own, who accepted a number of antique notions because he grew up with them. That few hardened criminals ever commit murder, that most murderers have acted on a blinding impulse unlikely to recur--such facts would have been outside his mental territory, and unacceptable. Knowledge of what Father would have said was for Terence a bloodstream thing, no longer traceable to any remembered words. Like most people including doctors, Dr. Carl Mann had never witnessed an execution, nor known anyone well who wound up in jail. Gentlemen don't. After Elinor Mann's final breakdown and commitment, Father no longer announced his views with much positiveness. In that year 1928 the bottom fell out; Dr. Mann couldn't even get positive about Al Smith, in spite of a long-standing rage at the imbecilities of Prohibition. When not meeting the heavy demands of a country medical practice, he was beating out heart and brain in a private crucifixion, asking himself the wrong questions: _What could I have done differently? Where did I fail her?_ As though a clarification of his own past might even then help to restore Elinor's mind, that had never really tolerated the difficulties of living before it made permanent retreat into the smoke of paranoid fantasy. Terence's hands fell away from the piano, leaving the third Fugue unfinished. How had he arrived at contemplation of that time-eroded grief? The subject was Callista Blake, not Elinor Mann. Who still lived, if you could call it that, in the curiously ordered world of yellow brick and manicured lawns that was Claiborne Hospital. She was seventy-eight this year, clouded by senility along with the psychosis. She recognized Terence on his visits, listening or seeming to, usually with patiently closed eyes, as he toiled to create a conversation. Jack, successful in his own psychiatric practice, had more difficulty when he drove or flew from Boston to see her. Thirty-one years ago the cobwebs of her delusions had wrapped themselves inextricably around the life of the elder son, four years older than Terence and at that time in his Junior year at Harvard. Her voices (many others along with that of Mary Queen of Scots) had informed her that Jack was increasingly involved with gangsters and women of ill fame. The college authorities and, for some never-explained reason, Mayor Jimmy Walker, were all in it together. When she was on the point of going up to Cambridge to deal with all that, Dr. Carl Mann, goaded at last into understanding, said no. She flung an inkwell in his face and gouged it with a pair of scissors; though he was fairly muscular and she was not, it required the help of his office nurse to restrain her. Most of that was over, the dust settling, when Terence, sixteen years old, got home from school. Now in her antiquity the sorrows, fantasies, and angers of the past were still preserved for her by the specialized, selective memory of the schizophrenic, flies in amber. A year ago, Terence and Jack visiting her together, she told Terence that she could easily have forgiven poor Jack if he had lived. Then it came out, in a natural, pleasantly quiet conversation, that the slim gray-haired man sitting over there was nothing but a body, stolen for no good purpose by the unclean spirit of Henry VIII. Later, at the airport, Jack remarked: "Psychiatrically speaking it may be a poor symptom, but don't mind it, Terry. I'll make out all right as hell-fire Harry Tudor. Less of a strain than some of my other roles." "Beyond psychiatry, isn't it?" "If you mean beyond effective therapy, yes, boy." "Boy" from Jack was acceptable--always had been. "It was beyond existing therapy thirty years ago." Jack also counted years. "We just don't know the score on paranoid schizophrenia. We know approximately what to expect, which is something maybe. Mental disease could be the last holdout among medical enigmas, Terry. We may be sweating out cases like Mother's when there's a pill or a shot for cancer. It's the--oh, the inaccessibility of mental action." Jack had been tired, but not remote; fatigue never dulled a shining quality of his alertness. "Wait till you get some big case in court with a borderline paranoid as a star performer." That conversation of a year ago had been hampered, Jack waiting on the start of his plane flight back to Boston; no leisure, bustling strangers, time pressure, uproar of loudspeakers and warming engines. Was it relevant now? Callista Blake a borderline paranoid? Rather urgently and emphatically, Judge Mann thought: _No, she's not._ Psychiatry more or less stood in the wings, in _People vs. Blake_. The State's man called her legally sane. If he hadn't, the State would have had no trouble shopping around for someone who did. Warner had had the girl examined by a Dr. Coburn, who might or might not testify; so far Warner had dropped no hint suggesting an insanity defense. Inaccessibility of mental action: that was relevant. Dominantly. For wasn't that the very essence of the principle of "reasonable doubt"? And was there any rational formula anywhere in the law, except the principle of reasonable doubt, at all likely to save Callista Blake? _Must see Jack again, soon._ He looked out on the city's darkness past a false curtain of window-glass reflection; a city of magic under a lens of illusion, as long ago in the creaky white-pillared house in Emmetville where he grew up he used to look out from the bedroom he shared with Jack, at images that would not live by day. Especially on rainy nights the vacant lot on the other side of Maple Street became for the boy transfigured, a garden of living shadows; sometimes, under the lash of wet wind, even the sea as Conrad and Melville had given the sea to him. In winter, leaves fallen, one could look past the few naked trees at the back of the lot, to a gleam of water a mile away, Walton Pond reflecting the motion and glitter of the railroad yard on its far side. Every night at 9:25, the ghostly passage of a fourteen-car express (to Terence and Jack, The Express)--one of the great trains that couldn't be imagined as stopping at Emmetville. You did not hear its thunder, only saw the silent gliding of windows; then thirty seconds after the vanishing came the desolate splendor of the whistle crying for a grade crossing, the night imperfect until that music had fulfilled its mission and died. _See him again; and bring out the inner voices._ The once vacant lot was now occupied in front by a filling station, in the rear by a drive-in theater; as a passion-pit, that probably served on a mass-production basis the same purpose once served by the vacant lot, where he and Jack occasionally discovered and snickered at the discarded rubber, stained handkerchiefs, and other detritus of hasty lechery. As for the gracious white house, where Terence had once known every spot, every squeaky board and dim hideaway in closets and under the eaves, it now belonged to someone who had made it a Tourist Home with noxious plastic animals on the front lawn, and called it Tumble Inn. So perish treasures of the spirit, to be born elsewhere in other guise, perhaps. And he remembered the evening after his mother's commitment was made definite. Jack had been home for several days, his presence helpful in the confusion, the curious desolation like and not like a death; Jack would be returning to college in the morning. Terence had gone to bed; Jack was about to, lazily delaying. "How honest shall we get, Terry? Are you, inside of you, relieved? I am." Half undressed, Jack stood over Terence's bed, smoking, in ever-observant kindness. "I guess I am." "Bad, the last few months?" "Each day a bit stickier. The moods. No--no way of _talking_ to her. Every remark turned upside down. Like trying to see a room in a twisty mirror.... Jack--" "What, kid?" "Does it mean we shouldn't marry?" "No." His brother's quiet hand waved away smoke from between them, and the question too. "It's probably not hereditary. Anyway your children get half the endowment from _their_ mother. Marry a mattress type, Terry, brains optional. No, come to think, you couldn't get along with a clothhead. Make it a mattress type _with_ gray cells; they do exist. Might have to hunt around a little. Testing mattresses." Jack sat down and spread his left hand light and warm on Terence's chest, frowning off at the window, saying to it: "Got a kid brother with social conscience yet." It was, at sixteen, the first time Terence had encountered the full revelation of love for another, seeing that other as a complete human being all the more beloved for his separateness. He said only: "Not hereditary--how can you be sure, Jack?" "Nobody's sure--just the best educated guess. I saw this coming more than a year ago. Had to study into the thing for my own sake, Terry: books, talk with one of the Psycho faculty up there who seems to be able to tell his ass from a barrel of flour, useful accomplishment. I had to answer that question you asked, and others. Like for instance asking a character I saw in the mirror: How about you, Jack, you going that way too one of these days? Studying it seemed to be the only method of meeting it head on." "That why you switched to premed courses this year?" "Partly. Would've anyhow, I think. Mother's brains began to get hurt and kicked around when she was small, I think--but not by the genes. Wish we'd known Grandpa and Grandma Kane. They seem to have been a lovely pair of pious frauds, probably started raping her wits as soon as she could talk. Uh-huh, Terry, I've got every intention of marrying and plowing a few seeds into that interesting furrow. You will too, my guess." Terence had felt then a hunger to talk bawdy and blow the lid off in words; wondered also if he would cry, because of the secret inner fire that held no name in the language: happiness was not the name, and the new-discovered love for his brother was only a part of it, an opening of a door. "Got something all lined up?" "Nope--playing the field. A premarriage elective. Technical studies, how to tease down the most drawers with the least squawk." He said that with no leer but a mild pagan amusement already far removed from the idiom of Emmetville. (As it turned out, Jack went on playing the field quite a while, not marrying till he was thirty-nine; in his terms that probably made sense too.) "You haven't tried it yet, Terry?" The sixteen-year-old Terence flushed unhappily and shook his head on the pillow, wishing there had been a hundred experiences, suppressing an impulse to invent a few. But Jack wasn't dismissing him back to childhood. Jack said: "I hear tell, and ancient memories within this senile bosom do confirm, that in every well-conducted high school there is at least one--how shall I put it with utmost delicacy?--at least one kitty with an available pussy. Or two, or three." He grinned and took his hand away. "Relax, boy. There's no rush." As he finished undressing with his unfussy neatness, he asked: "Remember Cassie Ferguson, in my class?" "Cassie--black hair, skinny, lot of eyebrow. Well well." "Did the quiet, you-be-damn manner fool you? The ones who put out for the joy of it don't make much noise about it. Cassie was very very good for me. More tricks than a monkey on a greased flagpole." Jack turned out the light and sat on his own bed for a final cigarette; he said softly, recalling childhood: "We missed The Express. Did she blow?" "She blew, she blew ..." "Good night, Terence Mann." He turned from the window, from the lights of Winchester. He ran the blunted tip of a thin finger along the edge of the piano's raised leaf, a motion of affection: another friend. A friend not exactly left behind when he went to law school, but-- It seemed to Judge Mann that his present way of existence, compared to that of, say, Michael Brooks, was not very successful, important, or useful to others. A majority of his countrymen would assess it differently of course: Mr. Brooks, never a concert performer even when young--poor health, no presence, no glamor--why, the old boy probably did well to make three thousand a year, if that. Obviously the bitch goddess wouldn't have looked twice. He wondered (not long) why the thought of another face, familiar and vigorously detested, should have crowded away the cherished ugly features of Mr. Brooks. This face was a handsomely carved block of chilly pink meat under white hair. High falcon nose, flexible lips that squeezed a manifest delight out of elaborately precise diction. Words did not simply pass through the lips of Judge Cleever: they were escorted out, by a pair of busy pale red snakes, the only organs of the man's face that ever knew emotion. The lips writhed, twisted, enjoyed, were sickly passionate: "that you be taken hence to the place from which you came, and thence, at the appointed time, to the place of execution, where--" but give the dreary old cannibal credit, the apparatus under that raptorial beak would squirm with the same enthusiasm when it was ordering a poached egg. The pallid blue eyes of this pillar of society were astonishingly dull. Cleever was an earnest prohibitionist: no drink, no smoking, no cussing, likely hadn't been laid in thirty years, yet you could observe similar eyes whenever the drunk tank yielded its human load to the courts and hospitals. To learn of an original thought behind those soggy irises would be nearly as incredible as to learn of a generous one. Cleever had been a judge since the days of the political machine preceding Timmy Flack's, into his present miasmic twilight of senility. Automatically, in a new trial, if Terence Mann were for any reason disqualified, he would sit in judgment on the life of Callista Blake. _Thanks, Judge, thanks to your obscene simulacrum for reminding me of several things I must not do._ Terence Mann flexed his hands to relieve a tension; then he played the third Fugue, to completion this time, and well enough. Mr. Brooks would have rubbed his fleshy nose and said: "Mmm." Then he was compulsively searching through a pile of long unused material, until he unearthed the beginner's book, the first-grade instruction prescribed by Michael Brooks. He remembered insisting, eight years old, that he must pick out the book personally, so off to Simms' Music Store in Winchester with the tickled, slightly bumbling Doctor, who knew everybody and took occasion to introduce him to the lantern jaw and slow-motion smile of Hubert Q. Simms; and embarrassed the toe-twisting bejesus out of the boy with some well-meant cockadoodle about "latest threat to Josef Hofmann." Then four blocks down Court Street to (Terence hadn't quite believed it) Judson's Piano Store. This same piano now standing here thirty-nine years later, rather old as such things go but good as new. The Doctor's way, taking such a plunge out of nothing but faith in a small boy's dream. Probably that year he'd been just barely able to afford it. _He should have lived another forty._ But Dr. Carl Mann, in the early winter of 1930, not drunk for he never was, a blue ugliness of ink still visible in the long seam of scar tissue across his face, his financial affairs well in order--in fact very little hurt by the smash of 1929, for country people still got sick and still paid for it as well as they could--and the night cloudy, yes, but no rain or ice on the roads, happened somehow to drive his car into the concrete abutment of the railroad overpass at Pritchett. His only unkindness the matter of uncertainty. It could easily have been a syncope as the coroner decided, or a mechanical failure of the car concealed by the total smash. Or the Doctor might have been uncertain himself, up to the last blind instant of no return. Here anyway was the instruction book, pages gone brown at the rims, and with the script of Michael Brooks. _Eyes on the notes! Get rid of that shoulder-arm tension!!_ Judge Mann carried it to the armchair, with a go-to-bed glass of brandy. Not all those careful fingerings had been written in by Mr. Brooks. The last half of the manual (he had forgotten) had quite a few figures in an eight-or nine-year-old hand (correct too!) placed there after he had got by the first few hurdles with his enthusiasm still afire. The book would be more or less out of date, Judge Mann reflected: modern pedagogy had new notions, some good, some not. He wondered if he was examining this relic from a middle-aged need to get nearer somehow in time to the mind of Callista Blake. Partly, maybe. Certainly the dignified black notes before his eyes, the passages of the third Fugue remembered, The Express, the first discovery of _Huck Finn_, _Moby Dick_, Beethoven Opus 57, the embrace of a Filipino girl whose body was a little golden candle flame--certainly none of all that had the effect of shutting away Callista Blake. She was very present. ("_Which is the Clerk?_") But more than anything else, here at the frayed, tired, lonely end of the evening, he was wondering--practically too, and with the special fascination of such practical problems--how he would go about helping a child beginner to free the fourth finger, strengthen the fifth, accomplish the small-immense passage from the five-finger cage to the wide-open country of the octave. And he found that he meant just that: how _he_ would do it, he, Terence Mann, age forty-seven, not merely Judge of the Court of General Sessions in and for the County of Winchester, but also a pianist of more than decent competence. If in the habit of speaking aloud in loneliness, he supposed he could have said reasonably to the imagined presence of Callista beyond the bright amber of the brandy: _Not now, not while your life is proposed for burning, Callista. But afterward, maybe. Afterward. Possibly a letter to the New Essex Bar Association, explaining how for me the law has been an interlude of a quarter-century, and interesting, but now I would rather attempt something that I find more important. Which would annoy the holy hell out of them, Callista, but all the same I may write it._ A curious thought which he took to bed; sleeping quite soon, to encounter the inner voices of sleep, with moments of tranquillity. III She saw it behind her eyelids, a small cloud but deep, suddenly come, suddenly gone. The light strengthened; there was the rock, and a whiteness in the water. _How could you know, Callista, that she was dead?_ She had, as usual, dared to move her cot nearer the wall with the barred door and the graffiti, so that if she crouched at that end of the cot a triangle of shadow protected her from the glare of the naked bulb in the corridor. Matron Kowalski on night duty had a habit of turning that light off and on at chancy intervals after midnight. Regulations probably said it should burn steadily, but Kowalski was a zealous screw when not deep in a comic book, and doubtless hoped to catch her charges in bottomless wickedness by playing cute with the switch. Short-sighted as well as thick-witted, Kowalski had apparently never caught on to Callista's crime of moving the cot. Callista generally tried to retrieve the sin before Matron Flannery came on in the morning, though whenever she forgot, Flannery just looked sad and grumbled: "Now dearie, we gotta put that back where it belongs or it's my arse." And sometimes even shoved it back herself with a heave of a massive thigh. Interesting but maybe unprofitable, to contrast that kindness with the satisfaction Flannery had shown a week ago in disciplining a shouting and clawing wench who didn't want to go downstairs. Flannery had caught the girl from behind with an arm like a side of beef, in the pattern of rape, a stiff block of finger jabbing at nerve clusters here and there, leaving no mark. And if Callista Blake the Weird Woman, Cold Callie the Monkshood Girl, were to create a disturbance, Flannery would be ready, would spread her flat feet and grunt in the same way, like a boar in rut, in the interest of law and order. "I want more heat, I want more foodibles. I want more heat, I want more foodibles." The old woman down the corridor had been silent a while, the interval like the recession of a toothache. Hearing her resume, Callista dropped her face on her knees, listening more or less. Listening is an act of living. Listening, the human unit can at least say: I am not dead, I am here, I can prove it, the current of life is dancing in the delicate nerves, the brain recording, comparing, remembering--understand, I am not dead! "I want more heat, I want more foodibles." She sounded plaintive at the moment, harping on a single string, a note in it much resembling enjoyment. The name was Watson; the nearly baritone voice brought the image of a body shriveled and small, crowding seventy perhaps. "I want more heat, I want more foodibles." Watson must have been picked up Sunday as a D&D, Callista supposed, raising hell somewhere in the chilly streets until somebody called the wagon. She couldn't be drunk now, two nights later, but the noise continued unchanged. She didn't belong here of course. "Ya-_hoo_! Kiss my cold aching ass, you dirty-dirty-dirty--all rise! All rise! I want more heat, I want more foodibles." Sooner or later the fumbling dustmop of the law would pick her up, shake her out into a different sort of institution. Or back to the streets and whatever dim hole of a room she lived in--with small possessions? Old photographs? Sewing-basket? Rocking-chair? "All rise!" "You Watson, you shaddap." The voice of Kowalski. "Fuck you, Polack, I want more heat, I want more foodibles." "Listen here, you don't shaddap, I'm coming in there again." "Yah!" Weary, diminuendo, but not actually a sound of yielding. Silence followed, as dust settles after an eddy of wind. Callista tried to review the course of the day, long in retrospect. Maud Welsh all morning. Sergeant Shields, sober, exact, not unkind: four bobby pins and a paper clip. Sergeant Peterson a bleached mechanism for the production of not very good photographs, including one of the rock and the pond by daylight, not the light of a troubled and hazy moon. Trooper Curtis, plaster casts and fingerprints and so what? Sutherland R. Clipp who did everything. Trooper Carlo San Giorgio the nice boy. And Dr. Devens. None of them except Maud Welsh had remained very long on the stand; Cecil who understood the nature of the conflict had let most of them pass by with little or no questioning. Callista found she was remembering too mechanically; names and faces would not coalesce to any rationally useful larger pattern. Yet at some point--she thought it was during the testimony of Cousin Maud--something had been done or said that had lessened the opacity of the Blank, like a hint of dawn or false dawn beyond a dirty window. Or was it anything done or said? Cousin Maud of the Plum Jam understood nothing of the interview with Ann at Covent Street, a happening far outside the cage where the life of Cousin Maud fluttered and squeaked. Perhaps this was the way of it: during the examination of Cousin Maud the Blank had thinned temporarily, of itself; a coincidence in time, maybe nothing to do with any word spoken. Probably during the cross-examination, when Cecil was questioning Maud about the Saturday night, the bedroom scene--_A sorry Hamlet I made!_ "Fuck your stinking jail too! We got rights, Polack. You ain't saving the taxpayers nothing, we all die of pee-neumo-nia, they gotta pay for a box. Listen, I been flang out of better jails before you was old enough to shove a finger up it. I want more heat, I want--" Callista winced at the smack of Kowalski's feet passing her cell. She heard the clash of keys, clang of the iron door, high anticipatory whimpering (still that note of enjoyment?) broken off by the crack of a flat hand against flesh, repeated and repeated, Callista's body clenching in misery at each repetition of the sound, her scream of protest choked into silence by a bitten lip. _They can't! Stop it!_ But it had happened the same way last night, would happen again and again, maybe always, here and there in the world, throughout the extent of foreseeable time: how long is that? Callista's fingernails were hurting her legs. Her mind held firm somewhere, listening. Watson wasn't yelling much. She hadn't last night either, only a small rhythmic outcry. Mouse in a trap. "You gonna quiet down now?" "Uh-huh. I'm sorry, Kowalski." "Mrs. Kowalski." "I'm sorry, Mrs. Kowalski. Gi' me a butt." "This ain't no charity ward." Anger spent, Kowalski probably just wanted to get back to her comic book. "Nor you ain't no psycho, you're putting on to get attention, beat the rap for what you done wit' your busted bottle. All the jerks on Mullen Street, you had to stick it into plain-clo'es cop. That was crazy, but now you're crazy like a fox. You know that t'ing punt'red his intestyne? Still in hospital, and that ain't good news for you, Crazy-like-a-fox." Watson giggled. "Couldn't he'p it, he wasn't nothing head to foot on'y one big turd. Gi' me a butt. Just one, huh, please?" "God give me patience!" That noise of Kowalski's was mechanical, a kind of breathing, blurred by the iron clang. Callista was standing by her own cell door. "Matron--" Kowalski's square bulk swung about, her flat face slipping into shadow as her head turned from the light. "You, huh?" "Will you take her a pack of mine? I don't use 'em much." "Got plenty, huh?" "Yes." Callista held the pack through the bars. Kowalski made no move to take it. "I'd like her to have it." "You'd like.... You feel pretty big, don't you, _Miss_ Blake? You feel real big wit' them cigarettes. I t'ought we was just dirt, now everyt'ing's okay, you can bend low 'n' give an old woman a pack of your butts." She held her voice down; Watson was mumbling and crooning to herself, perhaps not listening. "Maybe it wouldn't occur to you, _Miss_ Blake, but that old trot's got pride. She ain't lickin' up no at'eist prisoner's dirty leavings. Me neither. Miss Blake, I wouldn't touch you not by a ten-foot pole." Callista saw thumb and forefinger of the woman's hand pinched in a circle at the shelf of her breasts. Her soft tones had lost distinctness, slipping back into the vaguer argot of a South Winchester childhood. "Ain't comin' in 'ere, not 'less Sheriff or somebody gives me direc' order, you can drop dead. You ain't human, you're a stinkin' t'ing, you can hang yourself I won't go in, leave you for Flannery to find by the morning." Callista put the cigarettes away and sat on her cot gazing at interlaced fingers, trying (as if the time allowed were not short but the need urgent) to grasp the nature of hatred, especially in this new guise. Kowalski had not displayed it before, had seemed only an indifferent mechanism busy with her job. It occurred to Callista that she herself must have been shamefully unobservant. Did others unsuspectedly ache with this kind of loathing for her? T. J. Hunter? Cousin Maud? Jim? _Why?_ "I guess you don't talk, you can't be bod'ered." "No, Mrs. Kowalski, I'd rather not talk." "Oh, you'd rather not. Much too good to talk to a dumb Polack. Let me tell you somet'ing, Miss Blake, what they do after they pull the switch in that little room--what they do, they take out the heart, doing the oddopsy, understand? No matter you got lots of money, 'r' gonna be buried fancy somewheres, they take out the heart. They got a reason. All right, you don't talk." Kowalski stood there a while longer, exercising great courage perhaps, or having faith in the cold iron of the bars. Then Callista sensed that the woman had gone away. _I will think about the night of Saturday, the 15th of August._ Cousin Maud must have been telling the truth about that episode on the front porch. Callista could not remember seeing or hearing Ann then, but Cousin Maud would not have lied. How unmistakably the bedroom was Mother's! Nothing there of Herb, who slept at the far end of the upstairs hall in a room Mother indulgently called "his den," as one might refer to a cat's favorite basket. Well, the entire house merely tolerated Herb Chalmers, who after all did nothing except own it, pay taxes and upkeep, and exist there. _Poor Herb! If only he wasn't so inclined to agree with that estimate himself!_ By contrast, the spook of The Professor, the great Malachi Chalmers so respectably dead, was quite at home. Cousin Maud liked to behave as though all major directives were announced jointly by The Professor and Victoria. The room smelled of Victoria, a scent resembling dilute vinegar now and then penetrating the ordinary flavor of sachet and face powder. That night, without asking, Callista knew her mother had been sitting for some time at the antique secretary desk, dealing with correspondence of the Thursday Society of Shanesville. And Victoria, after her absent-minded greeting, would go on sitting there preoccupied, long enough to make the point. "I'm sorry I didn't know you planned to come out tonight, dear." "No plan--impulse. I wanted to talk to you, Mother." "Oh, something terribly important? Well, dear, just make yourself comfortable till I'm through here and we'll have a nice little visit." Callista stood near the desk, where Victoria must at least be aware of her. "I wish you would sit down, Callista. It is a little trying to be stared at when one is attempting to concentrate." "Sorry. But I wasn't staring at you, Mother." That was true. Her mind, too swiftly to be caught in the act, had generated an image perhaps well worth staring at: a thing approximately sixty days old (for it must have been conceived in the deep middle days of June) possessing a bent head larger than the blob of body, stubs with a blind intent to become legs and arms; a thing charged with the strain and pressure of life, and yet finger and thumb (if they could reach it) might pinch it out of existence like a soft bug: _Mrs. Chalmers' grandchild_. Callista's hand, driven by involuntary thought, dropped to rest at the level of her womb where the thing sheltered inaccessible--whether a motion of hostility or protectiveness or both, impossible to say; and Mother would never notice. "I was staring at something that happened a long time ago. You may not remember it. I wanted to find out if you did." Resignedly, Victoria capped her pen and laid it on the unfinished letter; took off her amber-rimmed reading glasses and retired them deliberately to their case. "Callista, I must say that for anyone so young this habit of mulling over past events is not healthy, not the way to become adjusted to reality." "I know, Mother. I'm not in tune with the times, am I?" "If you realize it, I dare say that's a step in advance." "What," said Callista, "is the virtue of being in tune with the times when the times are corrupt?" "Callista, I am rather tired. Must we have one of your--your rather naïve philosophical discussions? All part of the process of adjustment I dare say, but frankly I am not up to it." The big questions, Callista thought, always break the line and swim away. Too big, and a weak line; who wants the great dangerous things anyhow? Not Mrs. Chalmers nor the Thursday Society. "Mother, do you happen to remember the time I spilled that nitric acid?" "Happen to remember! Callista, that passes belief." Large gray upturned eyes filled with tears. "I am not a monster. Am I?" "I'm sorry, I spoke clumsily. I meant, do you remember the details? I was going-on-five--it's difficult--" "What details? Naturally I remember them all perfectly. What do you want to know?" The sharpness was excusable; yet Callista wondered whether she truly regretted the cruelty of that blurted question. Hamlet, Act III, Scene 4--she had reread the play in the afternoon. A catalytic action, although it had been a seemingly random choice, a turning to Shakespeare for relief, illumination, distraction, and something more, in a time of trouble, as another might have turned to music, or physical exertion, or the warmth of a friend. Her thought still rang with it, reverberated, and she understood now that the choice had not been random at all: "_Let me be cruel, not unnatural: I will speak daggers to her, but use none._" "Your father was drunk, Callista, otherwise I don't suppose even he could have been so heedless as to leave that bottle where a child could knock it over. Is that what you wanted to know?" "No. That's only what you've told me before. Drunk?" "Of course." "It keeps coming back to me that his face was burning." "What?" "His face was burning. It was the malaria. Wasn't it? You've told me yourself, he brought that home from New Guinea, latent but never cured." "Oh, he had that, yes. A mild form." "Mother, malaria is not mild if it gives you recurrent fevers and collapse. I've read up on it. I had to, trying to understand." "You're very full of book knowledge, certainly." "I've found more truth in books than in people. A mild form--why, two years later he _died_ of it, didn't he?" "Now, my dear, your father died, and I think you know this perfectly well, of pneumonia. The doctor informed me that the malaria was at most a--a complicating factor. The pneumonia was induced by exposure, and that in turn was caused by his passing out, as they call it, on a January night, in a drunken stupor, on his way home from a bar." "A drunken stupor, or a blinding fever. I was seven; I remember hearing you answer the telephone--the hospital, I suppose it was, where they'd taken him. I'd been put to bed long before, but wasn't sleeping. You were having drinks or something with Cousin Trent, after Aunt Cora and Uncle Tom Winwood left. I even remember hearing Aunt Cora say good night, and then your voice going on a long time, to Cousin Trent. I don't suppose I heard many of the words, but I knew the tone, the one you always used when you were explaining Father's shortcomings." "Callista!" "Wait! I must tell you what I remember, but not about this; I mean the earlier time, two years earlier. Let me tell you what I remember of that, and then I'll go. I remember running into the studio, dragging my red fire-engine. Father was on the couch. He'd been working, the big table was littered with his things. He sat up and smiled and held out his arms to me. I climbed into his lap. When he kissed me his face was burning, his hands shaking. I know he talked to me, but the words won't come back. Except 'Draw me a big horse and a little horse.' Then I remember lying belly-down on the floor, working with crayons--the horses, I suppose. And he went out of the room, for quinine probably--he had an allergic reaction to atabrine in the Army, didn't he?" "Something like that. Callista, I can't see--" "It was morning, Mother. Sunlight in that east window. Shining aslant across the things on his work-table. From what I've learned, what I can remember and piece together, I don't believe my father would have been drunk in the morning." "Callista, is this your time of the month?" "No, God damn it." "Really! Callista, I must ask you to control yourself." "I was never colder. I think I must have a fuller memory than most. It comes back, how serious I was about the drawing, at going-on-five. Precocious. I still possess some talent that way." "Callista, as you know, you have a quite considerable talent that way, if you would learn to discipline it, and--well, and outgrow your taste for the unpleasantly morbid and erotic subjects that seem to attract you so much. I have never understood in fact why you chose to be so childishly disagreeable a year ago when I ventured to show some of your--your less controversial drawings to the Thursday Society. Very well, I should have asked your consent, being merely your mother. Now Mrs. Wilberforce, who is after all an art teacher of somewhat wider experience than yours, to say nothing of having written and illustrated a number of altogether charming children's books, Mrs. Wilberforce felt that one or two of those drawings showed distinct promise. Distinct promise." "Yes, Mrs. W.'s a nice lady. O Mother, so much comes back! Spring of 1945--he was invalided home a whole year before then, wasn't he? 1944? Didn't I have him a whole year before my face was burned? Why are you crying? Wasn't it 1944?" "1944? Yes, he came home that year. And to think, she even offered to let you try some illustrations for one of her own books, was willing to instruct you, help you in every possible way!" "Who?--oh, Wilberforce. Yes, she's nice--what a pity the books are garbage. Why are you crying? Cousin Trent? That little man?" "Trent--why, I never--Callista, you are hysterical." "I was never colder. 'Mother, you have my father much offended.'" "What? What are you saying?" "I'm not thinking of Cousin Trent--that doesn't matter. It couldn't matter if you sneaked into the sheets with him a hundred times--" "Callista!" "It doesn't matter, I said. The real infidelity was in the way you treated my father, day to day, the nagging, belittlement, the wearing down, little needles of disparagement, mental castration--but I don't think you ever managed that, I think he stayed a man. I was seven when he died--you think I couldn't feel what you were doing to him, and can't remember it? I do. Even more I think of how you've gone on since then, trying to destroy him for me--why, in your view nothing he ever did was good, or wise, or even honorable. Isn't that why you cut me off from Aunt Cora Winwood--because she knew better? Mother, he was one of the gentle ones--a fault if you like--is that what you held against him? That he couldn't black your eye when you needed it? Mother, I have three paintings he did to please himself, escape from commercial work. Just three. He must have done a great deal that was never sold. There must have been sketches, unfinished things, portfolios put aside. I never asked you this before, afraid of the answer I think: what became of that work?" "I simply will not endure any more of this." "What became of my father's work?" "Oh, if you mean--well, when we moved here from New York, and there was so much--" "I was right then. You threw it away?" "If you will control yourself and listen reasonably: yes, your father did leave certain drawings and paintings which were very obviously done to please himself, as you put it. They were--I am sorry, Callista--they were vile. No one could call me a prude, but there are certain limits--" "Now it's out." "Callista, I must ask--" "They were all destroyed, all his visions? Everything beyond the level of, say, the Thursday Society--destroyed? Everything? You didn't save one charcoal sketch, one line drawing, one bit of a doodle on scratch paper? If you did I'll stay, to beg you for it--or steal it if I can. I want nothing else from you, ever, but for one scrap of my father's work I'd go on my knees." "Callista, you are out of your mind." "'Mother, for love of grace, lay not that flattering unction to your soul, that not your trespass but my madness speaks.'" "Oh, this morbid dramatizing, this neurotic--quoting 'Hamlet' at me as if I--are you _laughing_?" "Not very much. I was thinking how neither poor Herb nor Cousin Trent fits the picture very well--it doesn't matter. There's more than one way to pour poison in the ear of a king. You did it with words, millions of little nibbling words, all the years he lived with you and--and for a final dirty joke of the fates, begot me--but I think he knew I loved him, as much as a child's capable of loving, maybe it gave him something, after all he couldn't see ahead. And I was thinking: I must write to Aunt Cora, I think she'd remember the crazy brat who adored her and then couldn't come to see her any more, because Tom Winwood d-r-rinks! She might have some of his work, and might send me to friends of his, people you never knew. I was thinking, Mother, how differently you'd feel if his work could be recognized, now that he's been safely dead for twelve years. What a change! Then you'd be--what, his inspiration?" "Callista, don't! Stop it! Do you have to break my heart completely? What have I done?" "'Such an act'--oh, poor Mother, nothing, nothing at all. Maybe that's the worst of it. You've done nothing, just lived inside the shell of your own vanity--as everyone does, I suppose. I'm sorry, Mother. It's all right, I'm going, and I won't come back. My own vanity tricked me into saying too much, but you'll forget, and go on in your own way. I haven't changed anything. 'Assume a virtue if you have it not'--remember? 'Forgive me this my virtue, for in the fatness of these pursy times'--you don't have one little scrap, a three-line scrawl on the back of an envelope?" Callista's mother, weeping with her head on her arms, did not answer that. To Callista, standing in the doorway not yet able to turn and go, it seemed as though all hatred and resentment had drained away suddenly from within her; including the old dark aching hatred for herself, which until then had seldom released her except at certain times in the warm presence of Edith Nolan. She would have liked to cross the room, try for some physical contact implying comfort and forgiveness with that stranger over there who still made strangled sounds of self-pity and other kinds of pain, all of them real. But having no confidence in her skill at such gestures, no illusion that a relation thus broken could ever be repaired, and fearing to lose the new-found inner quiet, Callista only said: "Good night, Mother." Downstairs then, pausing on the landing, her hand tightening on the rail as she waited on the passing of a curious nausea. Too early for the sickness of pregnancy, wasn't it? Nothing else wrong, and the nausea did pass. "_My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time._" She wondered, standing there still faintly sick, how the self of a week before could possibly have knelt in that wild garden, pulled up those innocently wicked plants, broken off the roots to be dropped in her handbag, and thought: _This way would solve everything and hardly hurt at all._ Yet the self of a week before had done that; the self of a few hours past had glanced at the brandy bottle, death dissolved and waiting, and had thought: _Have it out with Mother--there could be some of his work, maybe buried in the attic where my searching never uncovered it--and then, then probably_-- The self pausing on the landing, hand letting go the rail and moving again softly, shelteringly, over the secret life in the womb, had thought practically and sensibly: _Throw away that stunk-up mess as soon as you get home._ And the self of twenty minutes later, arriving at the apartment with a burden of abnormal fatigue and drowsiness, had forgotten--(_is there any true forgetting this side of death?_)--forgotten all about bottle and canister, everything except bed. The self on the landing thought: _It's all right, Funny Thing, look, it's all right, I'm going to bear you. I'm going to take care of you. I can do that. I will._ Had wondered, incidentally, if the small bra wasn't already a bit tight. The girl on the landing ran a finger lightly along the column of her neck--wasn't there slightly more fullness, softness? _Should go to a dentist too--and--oh, lots of little chores. Never mind anyhow, Funny Thing, never mind the details, it's going to be all right for you and me._ The self seated on the cot where Kowalski had left her stood up uncertainly, with a sense of listening, although she knew Kowalski was gone, Watson was keeping quiet, the night also was in a deep hush with no longer that occasional whine of wind beyond the barred glass. No one had spoken. _Unless I did._ She glanced at the window, uneasy as though the blank of winter night beyond it had paled, and might show again some light or color if she stared patiently enough. No. Not that window. Not that blank. And no true sound of speech. She stood with eyes closed and hands pressed over her ears. Waiting; and hearing at least the dull noise--muffled, as it ought to be on the other side of a closed door--of a bottle, heavy glass, drawn across resonant wood from the back of a shelf. Faint pop of a cork and clink of glass, and tap of high heels: "Callie, come on now! I poured a little drink for you." And that fool lying frozen on the bed down there--why, how long had that fool held herself frozen, knowing everything? How long before that fool was telling herself: _I didn't really hear her, I couldn't make out what she said_--how long? Whining maybe before the Blank shut down complete: _It wasn't anything I did, I wasn't there, I couldn't move, anyway how could I know she'd drink it herself?_ Saying later (O the Blank!) in righteous innocence to Mr. Lamson: "I don't know, I can't remember." Screaming in the secret heart where not even Cecil could hear it and understand: _I don't want to know! I don't want to remember!_ Eyes open, hands fallen, she noticed by the cot the handful of trifling possessions allowed her. She fumbled through it, unsure what she sought until her fingers held the lipstick pencil. To the wall then, dizzy and obliged to lean against the cool plaster while her hand labored, but the effort was interesting; she could feel wryly, justifiably certain that no hand had ever written _these_ words on _this_ wall, ever before. She stood back, dizziness gone, and saw how the red letters in the dim light took on a magnificence, a glory like tranquillity: I AM GUILTY. IV Edith Nolan pressed her fingertips over eyes grown tired from work. Possibly when she opened them and looked again at the broad sheet of drawing paper on the table, she would know whether her curious urgency of the last hour, the sense of good achievement that had driven her to this exhaustion, had been something more than self-deception. A glance at her wrist watch before she closed away vision had told her it was past one in the morning. Time to quit, if she was not to arrive for the next courtroom session hopelessly unintelligent from weariness and lack of sleep. She lowered her hands, looking very briefly down. The faces, hands, shadows of the big drawing did leap astonishingly into life; but she said half-aloud: "Not yet." She got up without another look at it and crossed the room to stand, huddling in the blue bathrobe stiff and a little cold, before Callista's watercolor of a pine tree on a windy hill. She could not quite see Callista's vision, or not as much of it as she wished; she resisted a while longer the pull of what waited for her back at the drawing table. _It may be_, she thought. _This once I just may have done it._ In the past, no work of her own had ever pleased Edith Nolan enough to give her a complete sense of belonging by natural right in that small company who can now and then draw from the confusion of the world's raw material a new synthesis, a work of disciplined imagination worthy to last a while. She knew the company, in books, music, painting; and in at least one other person: Callista, who belonged there so inevitably that the girl had probably never even wondered whether she had a "right" to call herself an artist. In need of hard work and long study, yes, but Callista knew it, and while she had struggled and learned and enjoyed the struggle, she had still been drawing and painting as naturally as a robin sings in the morning. Sam Grainger had considered that he did not belong. "I'm a performer," he said once, "so I may get well-to-do some day; and a performer, as of course you've noticed, Red-Top, can be an awful nice guy, _but_ ... but God damn it, I can't compose, and I have a most un-American impulse to get down and lick the boots of anyone who can." She remembered saying: "Why, you're creative." Sam had just grunted, inarticulately annoyed. In those days Edith had not been fully aware of the dismal condition rapidly overtaking that once honorable word, and Sam had been surprisingly insensitive to words and the rich changeable life of words, as if he could hear only one kind of music, or believed other kinds irrelevant. Nowadays Edith's skin crawled when the corpse of the word "creative" was being kicked around. It gave off a squashy noise; was almost as offensively decayed as the corpse of "heritage." Today everything's creative, including beauty culture, business letters, and the application of new superlatives to old laxatives. There was, Edith had heard, an operation known as "creative selling." We wait perhaps, she thought, for the day when the market will offer a creative toilet as an aid to positive thinking. Reluctant, not quite frightened, Edith returned to the drawing table and looked down at twelve pen-and-ink faces. They returned the gaze, with intensity, with the force, savor, complexity of an authentic life that no exploration could ever exhaust. _But--my hand--My hand?_ Certainly no other. Technique of course; that much, after long effort of years, Edith could take for granted. But this--wasn't it beyond technique? For the first time that evening--it had been nowhere near her while she was deep in work--Edith recalled Daumier's "The Jury." She took down the volume of his work, not trusting memory. After the comparison she could say _No_: a round, unworried, satisfying _No_. This curious thing of her own, this hating-fearing-loving-pitying distillation of the jury in _People vs. Blake_, owed no more to Daumier (or to Callista) than any work should honestly owe to whatever the artist has encountered in the past. Conception, development, fulfillment--unmistakably a Nolan original. Perhaps the first. The drawing frightened her then in a different way, grown temporarily larger than her mind's resistance. These people were all looking at her, as the twelve faces of flesh and blood had seemed to for a moment in the afternoon, when someone in the row behind her had a loud coughing spell. They looked at her now, bloated Hoag and ancient Emerson Lake and cloth-brained Emma Beales and kindly Helen Butler, and by a trick of her exhausted mind they made her no longer Edith Nolan but a woman at the defense table, whose life would end or begin afresh somehow according to the will of those twelve imperfect beings. Who meant well; who wanted to "do the right thing," whatever that was; who (except maybe Hoag) wouldn't dream of turpentining a dog or pulling the wings off flies or starving a child. She forced herself out of that illusion. Well, the illusion was at least fair evidence of power in the work. She warned herself: _Discount everything: tired; the illusion is strong because of personal involvement in People vs. Blake; by morning the pen-and-ink may be ashes._ But leaving it, turning out the light, Edith almost knew that it would not. And she marveled, with something like the wonder of a child to whom all discovery is fresh and nothing worn down to the stale and bromidic, at the stubborn power of life to draw out of mold and decay an oak tree or a flower; out of confusion or sorrow a work of enduring good. 5 It is indeed some Excuse to be mad with the greater Part of Mankind. ERASMUS, _Colloquies_ I Answering T. J. Hunter's inquiry about her occupation, Mrs. Phelps Jason of Shanesville replied in her own time and manner: "I am a widow with a limited private income, not employed in the usual sense, certainly not unemployed in the sense of idle. I manage my Shanesville property as a wild life sanctuary, and am Secretary of the Winchester County Anti-Vivisection League." Judge Mann exhaled. One of those; human, however. In the minute-book, belatedly, he entered the date, December 9, and the witness's name. On the pad he sketched a dour bluejay cuddling field glasses. "Mrs. Jason, how did you spend the afternoon of Friday, August 7th?" She made no fussy business of verifying the date. "On that day I attended a picnic given by my neighbors, Dr. and Mrs. Herbert Chalmers." "Who were the others present, if you recall?" "Besides Dr. and Mrs. Chalmers, there were Mr. and Mrs. James Doherty, Mr. Nathaniel Judd, and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Wayne of Shanesville with their two children. Also Miss Maud Welsh and Callista Blake." "Are you well acquainted with the defendant, Callista Blake?" "Reasonably well. I met her first in 1951, when she was eleven. That is eight years." Mann sighed and relaxed. Eight years ago, law practice at Mann and Wheatley already routine: 1951 was the Forman will case; and spare-time reading in constitutional law with old Joe Wheatley, Uncle Norden a dusty memory; and creeping up on forty. "You've been continuously acquainted with Miss Blake all that time?" "Yes. Of course I saw less of her after she moved to Winchester." "At that picnic, August 7th, did you have any talk with her?" "No. We waved or nodded I suppose, when I arrived. Those picnics are quite informal. The fact that I had no talk with her was accidental; I was engaged with the other guests, and she was spending her time with the Wayne children." "All her time?" "Why, yes, until about 3:30 anyhow." "Did anything noteworthy happen then?" "I don't know if I can judge what's noteworthy, Mr. Hunter." Mann's attention sharpened at the hint of hostility. Was this State's witness by any chance intending to pull the rug out from under Hunter? "I'll rephrase my question. At 3:30, did anything happen important enough so that you now remember it and wish to tell it under oath?" "It's not a question of my wishing to tell it, Mr. Hunter. I do not. If I may use an old-fashioned and unpopular word, it's a matter of duty. At 3:30 Callista went alone into a wild garden back of the lawn." "Are you yourself familiar with that wild garden?" "Yes." "I ask you to show the jury, on this map, the location and extent of the wild garden. And describe it in your own words, if you will." Tense but self-contained, Mrs. Jason stood by the map, her hands moving intelligently, her voice firm and rather pleasant. Mann recalled that she had given her age as forty-seven; his own age; more weathered than himself in the face, but an outdoor type, possibly better preserved, her figure attractive and graceful. "The wild garden area is roughly square, about a hundred feet on a side. It's closed away from the lawn by a mixed hedge of forsythia and lilac. There's only one break in that hedge, an angled passage about two feet wide. It's marked here--" "Angled--you mean the opening is on a slant?" "Double slant, zigzag. The hedge is ten or twelve feet thick--that forsythia will take over everything. I understand the little passage has to be pruned out fresh every year." "If it's a zigzag, then you can't look through from the lawn area into the wild garden--is that correct?" "Correct. From the lawn it looks like an unbroken hedge. Well, the wild garden itself is just a patch where everything's been left more or less natural. There's an old paper birch. Hardy perennials." "In earlier testimony, the plant monkshood was mentioned in connection with that wild garden. Have you seen it growing there?" "Yes." She spoke reluctantly, returning to the witness chair. "After 3:30, when did you next see Callista Blake?" "About quarter past four, getting into her Volkswagen." "You didn't see her come out of that wild garden?" "No, I didn't happen to. I think I'd gone indoors for a while." "You're quite certain she went into the wild garden alone? The children couldn't have gone with her, or perhaps ahead of her?" "No, they didn't. Shortly before 3:30 Doris Wayne--she's ten--started an argument with her younger brother Billy. Mrs. Wayne reproved them, told them to sit by the picnic table and restrain their voices. They did." Mrs. Jason glacially smiled. "The origin of the argument--" "Well, that might lead us too far afield. Just--" "If the Court please--" Cecil Warner cleared his throat with sudden but stately sonority--"I submit that, to appease the curiosity of all present including myself, the _casus belli_ between Doris and William Wayne, though doubtless not part of the _res gestae_, should be made known." Cecil was even standing, making a production of it, announcing with eyebrows and twinkle that all he wanted was to have a bit of ponderous fun and relieve the tension: what could be more innocent? Risky, but Mann wanted to play along. He said: "Mm, yes. The rules of evidence should not debar us from ascertaining the gravamen of this ancillary conflict." _How'm I doing, Cecil? Gravamen, ancillary, each five dollars, please._ Hunter looked uneasy, not prepared with any elephantine humor of his own. "Well, your Honor, Callista had been showing Doris Wayne how to make a squeak by blowing across a grass-blade held between the thumbs. The effect on neighboring eardrums is impressive. The argument I mentioned arose when Billy wished to perfect himself in the same peculiar art and was informed by his sister that he was not old enough." Mann let the courtroom rumble while Cecil Warner sat down poker-faced. Now the jury could never quite forget that this was a girl who could play with children; that the children must have liked her; that children are often "judges of character" and so--maybe-- Callista this morning was looking different. Since she first appeared Judge Mann's gaze had been repeatedly drawn to her as he tried to discover the nature of the change. No make-up, dressed the same, the white blouse more wilted. But her cheeks showed faint color; her mouth was not set in such a bitter line. Once or twice when Warner whispered to her she smiled, a flash of light almost shocking in its unexpected sweetness. And when her thin face was relaxed, perhaps the only word for it this morning was--peacefulness. With no change in the circumstances, with the troubled honest woman on the stand obviously about to do a little more toward destroying her from a sense of duty, what had Callista Blake to do with peacefulness? He noticed also that redheaded Edith Nolan had managed to get a seat one row nearer the arena, and her candid blue eyes seldom left the face of her friend. "Mrs. Jason, did you notice Callista Blake talking with anyone but the children that afternoon?" "When she was leaving, I saw Dr. Chalmers standing by her car talking with her, and the children ran over to say good-bye." "No one else?" Mrs. Jason shrugged. "Everything informal--acquaintances of long standing, no occasion for formal gestures." "How was Miss Blake dressed that day?" "Brown skirt, green blouse, very nice with her color." "Did you notice a shoulder-strap bag?" "Yes." "Were you aware of any constraint, or hostility, between Callista Blake and any of the guests at that picnic?" "Conclusions of the witness." Mann said: "I'll rule it admissible. But limit yourself to the single question, Mrs. Jason." "The answer is no, I wasn't aware of any such thing." "Early this year, before the first of May, did you learn--by direct observation--of anything unusual about the relation existing between Callista Blake and James Doherty?" "Objection! Leading the witness. No relevance established." "The relevance is direct, to the question of motive." "Objection overruled." "Exception." "Shall I repeat my question, Mrs. Jason?" "You needn't. The answer is no." "What about after the first of May?" "I learned on the 12th of May that there was a love affair between Callista Blake and Jim Doherty." Her brusque answer, shoving aside legal caution, came on a note of regret that Mann thought could not be false. Her mind precise, somewhat fanatic, Mrs. Jason would be a truth-teller at any cost. Never knowingly unjust according to her own standards, she might wish to temper duty with kindness, but her habits of self-rule would not allow much of that. "Shall I tell of this in my own words?" "Yes, please." "Very early on the morning of May 12th, about two o'clock, I was walking up Summer Avenue toward the junction with Walton Road. I take walks at night sometimes, to observe the activities of wild things, also because I sleep poorly. A short walk is sometimes helpful. I knew Mrs. Doherty was away for a visit of a few days with her parents in Philadelphia, by the way. As I walked down the road toward the Doherty house there were no lights in it. I was wearing tennis shoes, walking quietly. Near the Dohertys' driveway I heard the voices of Jim Doherty and Callista, both very individual voices and of course familiar to me. They were standing together in the drive. Jim's car was there, pointed toward the road. Moonlight--I was partly hidden by roadside bushes--I'm sure they didn't see or hear me. As I was about to retreat, they sat down on the grass near the car and were then turned more toward me, would almost certainly have seen me if I had moved. The--the situation was such that I could not let them know I was there--too painful for all three of us." "But I must now ask what if anything you saw or overheard." "Oh--Jim said: 'What are we going to do?' And Callista said: 'There aren't so many solutions, Jimmy. Find a little strength anyway, it isn't the end of the world.' And he--I did not hear his answer." "What else was said?" "Callista said: 'The only real solution is one I'm not ready to face, Jimmy.' I heard nothing else that she said." "They were just sitting there on the grass?" She frowned. Judge Mann saw her lips move. "I'm afraid the jury didn't hear you, Mrs. Jason." "I said, she was holding his head to her breast." "Your witness, Mr. Warner." Warner stood by the defense table, one hand maintaining contact with it. "In that overheard conversation, Mrs. Jason, the name of Ann--Mrs. Doherty--was not mentioned by either of them?" "No, sir. I've repeated everything I heard." "Did they learn of your presence there?" "No. I slipped away. I saw the car--well, if it matters--" "Go ahead." "When I was nearly to my house, I saw the car come out of the drive and go toward the Walton Road junction." "All you learned, actually, was that some sort of love relation had evidently developed between these two?" "Yes, sir, that's all I learned." "Mrs. Jason, I take you to be a literate person and a lover of truth. As such, I ask you to consider the thing you've quoted Callista as saying: 'The only real solution is one I'm not ready to face.' Would you agree that such a remark, made under the conditions you have described, could be interpreted in many different ways?" "Yes, certainly." "For example, whatever it was she referred to may have seemed, at the time, to a nineteen-year-old girl, like 'the only real solution,' and yet the words don't give another person any actual clue as to what she meant?" "That's true." "As a lover of truth, would you also agree that you do not know, at first hand, one single fact, or group of facts, which would justify an inference that the love relation between these two people was responsible for the death two months later of Ann Doherty?" T. J. Hunter was examining his fingernails with labored disgust. Mrs. Jason said at last: "That is true. I know they were in love with each other for a while; I know Ann died. So far as genuine knowledge is concerned, that's all I do know, Mr. Warner." "Thank you. No further questions." If he had been defense counsel, Mann was thinking, he would probably have gone too far with the woman, perhaps losing everything in the hope of winning a little more. _For a lawyer I'm not the damn type._ And Mann reminded himself that there is no type. You recognize a few general patterns, but the simplest human individual is not to be duplicated in a billion centuries. A ruddy gray-haired man was being sworn in. Paunchy, scant of breath, his prominent eyes had the directionless belligerency of a man in some habitual dread of being laughed at. "Nathaniel Judd, sir, senior partner in the firm of Judd and Doherty." "The junior partner is Mr. James Doherty, correct?" "Yes, sir. Since 1955." "Your business is real estate and general insurance?" "Yes, sir." Judd spoke breathily on a while about that. Overweight, poor and changeable color, slow motions when his body's natural habit should have been a jerky aggressiveness--maybe what he feared was not only laughter. Jack, with his comprehensive doctor's glance, might have seen Nathaniel Judd as a candidate for a coronary, if the man hadn't already suffered one. Judd was telling how his only son, killed in action in Korea, had been a close friend of James Doherty's overseas. Doherty had written when the boy died, and had looked up Judd after his discharge. "Much as anyone could," said short-breathed Judd, "he's been like another son to me. Took him into the firm, 1955. Fine head for business. Good boy. Sixty-one myself, not too active nowadays." "Did you meet Mrs. Doherty also that year--1955?" "Yes, sir, soon after they settled in Shanesville, they invited my wife and me to dinner. Very nice. Met her then. Played bridge." "Did you meet the Chalmers family then too? And Miss Blake?" "That summer anyhow. Miss Blake was fifteen." For a lumpily modeled face, Judd's was expressive. When he mentioned her, the blobby features sagged. "You went to a picnic at the Chalmerses', 7th of August, this year?" "Yes. Can't add anything to what Ella Jason testified." But Hunter fussed at it a while. Mann's attention wandered. No individual like another, no one replaceable, not vague soft Judd for instance or any other. A commonplace: why go on worrying at it, insisting that no one is expendable? _Expendable_--the stink of that word lingered from a war already part forgotten, obscured by a more vast and quiet terror. Under the new terror the politics of 1959 had been squirming in a fantastic display of the passions of a disturbed ant hill. _Expendable_: well, the first to express this obscenity must have been some thick-browed operator of prehistory, who found his fellows could be manipulated by appropriate grunts and chest-thumpings into doing a concerted job of skull-busting and rape on those Bad People with a better campsite and interesting females. As the original inventor of advertising was the one (man or woman?) who first got the idea of tying a rag on the genitals. Mann remembered how in the war years most people, having gagged a bit at the gnat of that word _expendable_, had then swallowed the camel of the fact with no great strain. _How does it happen that a man who transferred to the Medics mostly out of distaste for carrying a rifle is now a judge of General Sessions, in a state that keeps the death penalty on the books?_ "Have you met Miss Blake often since she moved to Winchester?" "No, sir, hardly at all. We--hadn't much in common." "I see. No ill feeling between you, was there?" "No, sir, not that. I get along with people--try to." Judd looked more unhappy; perhaps he felt the prosecutor's silence pushing him. "Well--when I thought about it at all--guess I supposed she'd outgrow that cynical attitude, atheism, all that stuff." "I object!" Warner spoke quietly and, for once, coldly. "Again the prosecution allows a witness to express loose, incompetent opinions." "Objection sustained." Hunter elaborated a patient smile. Judd looked bewildered and dismayed: what had _he_ done? Warner said: "My thanks to the Court. I will express the hope that religious bias will not again be injected." Hunter's face flamed. "There's no religious issue injected!" "The witness has chosen to call my client an atheist. The statement is incompetent: Mr. Judd has never actually learned Miss Blake's opinions on religious matters. Why should he? And since the question of religion is totally irrelevant here, what was the purpose of that remark if not to inflame prejudice? What was the purpose?" Callista Blake--white, cool, unreasonably peaceful--did not look up, remaining in the country of her own thoughts. Mann said: "Mr. Warner's objection has been sustained, because the Court agrees that the witness's remark was out of order. But Mr. Warner, you are out of line too in suggesting an intent to prejudice the jury. The witness spoke carelessly, as he should have been instructed not to do. It must not be supposed that he did so with malice. If it should later appear that a religious issue _is_ relevant, then let discussion of it be carried out in the closing arguments of prosecution and defense, not in the course of testimony, which must deal with facts. Counsel to the bench a moment, please." Callista Blake did look up then, as Warner left her side. Mann felt the puzzled study of her eyes as the lawyers leaned to him, T. J. Hunter starting to whisper some comment on the clash, which Mann shut off with a wave of his hand. "Not that. T.J., your witness isn't looking good. Has he ever had a coronary, do you know?" Hunter was startled. "Don't think so. Never said so." "Was he that short of breath the last time you talked with him?" "Sure. Just out of condition, I think, Judge." Warner unobtrusively appraised Judd, and said nothing. "All right. Watch it, both of you. Can't have him conking out." "Mr. Judd, as a friend and business partner of James Doherty, have you often visited at his house in Shanesville?" "Oh yes. Real often. Pretty near every month." "Did Miss Blake ever call there when you were present?" "No. Wait--I do remember one time. Before she moved to Winchester. Not a call exactly. Mrs. Judd and I had stayed with the Dohertys overnight, the weekend. Remember now, the girl came over Sunday morning when the four of us were getting into Jim's car to go to Mass. The Chalmerses wanted to give Jim and Ann some maple syrup they'd made on the place, and it was Miss Blake who brought it over. Spring of last year. Come to think, that was the last time I saw Miss Blake before she moved to Winchester." "And after that, you say, you saw her hardly at all?" Judd flushed and paled. "To be exact, sir, just once." "Can you give us the exact date?" "Friday, June 19th." "And the place, and the time of day?" "My office in Winchester. About ten in the evening." "Please describe this occasion in your own way." "Well, my secretary Miss Anderson had been out sick several days, so Jim and I were swamped with work. I left the office my usual time, took home some stuff. Jim said he'd stay and work late. Evening, found I'd forgotten something, drove back for it, near ten o'clock. Light on in Jim's office, door of the outer office braced open way I'd left it, for fresh air--guess that's how I came to go in so quiet, wasn't trying to, certainly. Passed doorway of Jim's office, saw Miss Blake was--in there." Judd swallowed and coughed. "Compromising situation." "Do you mean they were embracing, something like that?" "Call it that. Divan. Jim's office. Wouldn't've believed it." "Was an innocent interpretation possible? She'd felt faint, or--" "Nothing like that, sir. Slacks, underthings, arm of divan." "Are you saying Miss Blake was nude?" "Wearing a--a blouse." The listeners were too intent to snigger. "Was Doherty also undressed?" "Part--partly." "Were they, to your knowledge, engaged in sexual intercourse?" "They--yes, they were." Short of breath, the courtroom sighed. "What did you do, Mr. Judd?" "Stepped back--got papers I wanted--left." "They didn't learn of your presence, so far as you know?" "No," he said, his breath still a burden to him. "No." "You can be certain they didn't see you in the doorway--how?" "Their eyes were closed." "Your witness, Mr. Warner." Warner remained by the defense table, standing, his hands pressing heavily on the back of his chair. Callista looked as though she had heard some dull distasteful gossip about a neighbor. "Mr. Judd, did you speak of this episode later to James Doherty--or to anyone?" "To Jim, yes." Judd's face showed unhealthy mottling. "Following Monday. Only right, I thought--had to have it out." "You told him what you had inadvertently seen?" "Yes. Felt I owed him that. Said--you want what I said?" "I think you might give the substance of the conversation." "Well, I--said it wouldn't do. Said, what about Ann? Jim was perfectly frank, honest. Told me he realized--whole affair--terrible mistake, shouldn't've started. Said he was breaking it off. Of course I--only too glad to leave it at that, trust Jim's conscience, religious upbringing and so on. Least said, soonest--and so on." "There was no question of dissolving your partnership with him?" "Dissolving--heavens no! Never entered my head." "You could find it in your heart to forgive him?" "Not the way I'd put it, sir. You just can't condemn a man for--for one moral lapse. Could happen to any hotblooded young man." "You are describing James Doherty as hotblooded?" Callista Blake lowered her face in her hands. She was not weeping; her breathing was slow and regular. Perhaps, Judge Mann thought, she needed to shut away the voices, the faces, the nearness of her accusers. He noticed the newsmen scribbling busily a moment, and heard among the spectators a rustling, shifting, sighing, as if they were in some manner bound to her and could not move till her motion released them. "I don't know. Jim's a good boy. Just sort of slipped." "The woman tempted him?" Hunter protested: "Counsel has strayed far from the matter of direct examination, and is trying to put words in the witness's mouth." "Rephrase your question, Mr. Warner." "I'll withdraw it." Warner was speaking gently, absently. "Mr. Judd, you were deeply concerned for James Doherty?" "Of course. Terrible thing, specially if Ann--" "Yes, you were concerned for Mrs. Doherty too, weren't you?" "Of course." "For anyone else?" "What? Why, if you mean myself, I suppose--oh, I don't know." "You weren't concerned for anyone else?" "I don't get your drift." "If you don't understand that question, I have no others." "I--I--" "I have no other questions, Mr. Judd." Disturbed, not immediately certain of the cause, Judge Mann asked: "Do you wish to make a redirect examination, Mr. Hunter?" "No, your Honor, not necessary. I--" Judd's right hand groped toward his left arm and sagged away. He looked not exactly frightened, more as though shocked by some astonishing news. He said: "I wish I--" As if meekly, apologetically, he tumbled out of the witness chair in a slow sprawl. II The clock said half past one. Callista watched Judge Mann hurry into the courtroom, all business, dark pucker of a frown, the black robe too priestlike. It seemed to her that all present including herself were distorted by the magnifying power of ritual. As Father Bland, in the back row beside (_my late acquaintance_) James Mulhouse Doherty, would appear deceptively beyond life-size if he were wearing his magic vestments and saying a Mass. "This Court is now in session." _Mr.-Delehanty-which-is-the-clerk._ _When did judges start wearing black robes, and why black? How long has the office of judge existed at all? How about the wig--(O the opportunity for mice!) and why did the American States do away with it?--unfair to bald American lawyers. Subject for a thesis--relation judiciary to priesthood--ecclesiastical courts--modern veneration for office of judge--has judiciary ever become really secular? In fact could it, ever? My ignorance_-- "Members of the jury," said Judge Mann, "your attention, please. I have just been talking on the telephone with Dr. Garcia at St. Michael's Hospital, where Mr. Judd was taken after his collapse this morning when he had finished testifying." (_Talking-to-Edith, compare ignorance to an unplowed field._) "It was a heart attack, as you probably realized, and the outlook for him may not be good. In Dr. Garcia's opinion, Mr. Judd's condition has probably been developing for quite a long time." (_The soil itself is ready, indifferent, to produce flowers, nice fat potatoes, or stinking weeds._) "The attack occurred, please remember, when his testimony was done. Legally the situation is this: Mr. Judd's collapse has no bearing on the case you must deal with. He had completed what he had to say; Mr. Hunter had announced he didn't intend to make a redirect examination. During this long noon recess I have talked with both counsel; neither side felt there would have been any occasion to recall Mr. Judd. While he testified, I think you'll agree, Mr. Judd was in full command of his faculties, so far as anyone can tell. Give his testimony the same weight, no more and no less, that you would if his breakdown had not happened; simply try to shut it out of your minds. To my certain knowledge, neither counsel was aware of the bad state of Mr. Judd's health. Both counsel believed him as well able to stand the emotional strain of giving testimony as any other witness. Mr. Judd undoubtedly believed this himself. Dr. Garcia tells me Mr. Judd had neglected medical attention for a long time and was unaware of his heart weakness. I charge you now, and will again: remember this thing happened outside of the trial." The Judge was laboring, Callista understood, laboring too much perhaps, to defend Cecil Warner and through Warner herself, against the chill poison of unspoken words, illogical notions. If Nathaniel Judd died, no one would blame Mr. Hunter for summoning him, but many would recall Cecil Warner's words: "If you do not understand that question, I have no others." For certain minds it would be no strain to argue: _Judd died, therefore the Blake girl is guilty._ It could be true that Warner's words might have helped to topple old Judd, by making Judd sense for an instant some failure of charity and of perception in himself. Ill, embarrassed, he might not have rallied self-justifications quickly enough, so Warner's words might have caused a brief stab of conscience, enough to send him over the edge. _But if he dies the chief fault is mine. I am guilty. To live is to destroy--true or false? I am small; my only real quarrel with Hunter is that if he has his way I shall never grow. How stubborn the life that can't desire to die!_ Last August she had desired it, or thought she had, until a moment of that Saturday night, on the stairs, her mother weeping in a room left behind, her mind visited strangely by Victoria's grandchild the Funny Thing. She had begun to desire death earlier--in July, after Jim's letter, the only one he ever wrote. Stilted, timid; needless doubletalk; the awkwardness and misspelled words not endearing or funny but rather shocking, evidence of the blindness of her love. _I will not say part of me died when I read that dismal thing. We die and regenerate with every breath. All that happened (I-would-say-to-Edith) was that my journey had taken me beyond the region where I met Jimmy and learned some aspects (not all) of a passion called love._ _Notice also (am-I-still-talking-to-Edith?) how the laughing-crying devil-angel that Jimmy woke up in me has not died, but rouses me even in the prison night, stinking bare-light-bulb night, starved for the pressure, the almost-anger, furious crescendo, meteoric release. Oh, in an enlightened society I could have been a splendid high-class whore!_ "You may call your next witness, Mr. Hunter." "Sergeant Lloyd Rankin!" Callista heard Cecil Warner's short involuntary sigh, felt his hostile stiffening and alertness. Detective Sergeant Lloyd Rankin of the Winchester Police came down the aisle and held up a flat hand for the oath, the slab-faced sober man. His gray hair under the cold light glinted like dull steel, his eyes a lighter gray but opaque, oyster gray. _Draw him as a bulldozer--Cecil might like it._ She ran her fingers softly over the wrinkled hand, lifted away the idle pencil and drew his scratch pad toward her. A bulldozer has its own squat dignity. If it's directed to knock over some little house loved by generations, that's no fault of the dozer. The blade advances, the Diesel bellow swells to the roar of a caged hurricane. Old timbers--nobody wants them--crumble like dry cheese. And look!--the picture grew in swift lines and leaping shadows--look, a doll! Left behind maybe under the eaves years ago. It had tumbled into brief light in front of the caterpillar treads, which would of course move on. Too bad, but no time to stop. She knew idly that the small brilliant drawing was good. Light lived in that doll, the rest a melancholy gray, a darkness. And turning the sketch face down, she wondered if she had done right in telling Cecil Warner of Sergeant Rankin's curious lapse on that afternoon last August when the world fell apart. In the Old Man's steady glare at Rankin--maybe he hadn't even felt her take the pencil--she glimpsed a blaze that would have suited the eyes of a male tiger about to drive another way from his mate and if possible gut him to ribbons. Her own half-welcomed excitement, private elemental anguish akin to the neural riot of approaching orgasm, was just as irrelevant, just as far from any notion of discovering truth--in a courtroom, of all places! For what after all did Rankin's moment of rutty brutality have to do with the truth or falsehood of her story? Accused of it--(_he will be!_)--Rankin would flatly deny it, the word of a respectable policeman against that of the Monkshood Girl. Gravely, to the prosecutor, he was admitting twenty-two years of service with the Winchester Police, twelve of them with the Detective Division. An honest policeman, Rankin, an up-to-standard product of what must be a tight, hard school; a product chipped at the surfaces but wearing well. _And what is honesty?_ She supposed that for Lloyd Rankin it would mean being no more dishonest than a majority of his peers. It would mean: don't take _big_ bribes, and don't be an unpopular holy joe about the percentages from bookies and pimps and what-not: that's sort of like a tax, see? No compromise with major crime, but don't stick your neck too far out except in the obvious line of duty. There, in that clear line of duty, be ready to risk your life all the way and maybe lose it. Certainly give him that, she thought. He had all the earmarks of what is called a brave man, who could probably say with a bullet lodged in the bone: "It's the job." To Sergeant Rankin honesty would mean that obeying orders comes first; the top brass is paid to think, so when in doubt follow the rules. And Sergeant Rankin would believe (this she knew) that all criminals once caught are somewhat outside the human race, no longer protected by the common laws of charity and fair play. The professionals among them are The Enemy; the nonprofessionals, the one-shot wife-stabbers and other grown-up first offenders--his mind would balk at those, fretful and baffled: why couldn't they act like other people? Or perhaps he would be wedded to some one of the superficial formulas, substitutes for thought, derived from religion or popular psychology. Sensing no contradiction, Rankin would also believe in his heart that the world is more or less a God-damn jungle where every man (including this man Rankin) has his price. "What is your present assignment, Sergeant?" "Attached to Homicide Bureau, sir, the last four years." "I ask you to recall the events of Monday, the 17th of last August. Did anything happen that day in the line of duty that had to do with the defendant Callista Blake?" "Yes, sir." "Give your own account of it, please." Sergeant Rankin slipped on his reading glasses, appearing in that owlishness no less a cop, and consulted his notebook. "Late on the morning of August 17th of this year, Chief of Detectives Daniel Gage directed me to go to the apartment of a Miss Callista Blake at No. 21 Covent Street, this city, in response to a telephone call that Miss Blake had made to the local precinct station. The station had passed on the substance of her call to our headquarters, and Chief Gage relayed it to me. Miss Blake had told the desk sergeant she wished to give information to someone in authority concerning the death of a Mrs. James Doherty in Shanesville the previous night. She had said further that she was ill, and gave this as the reason why she did not wish to come to the police station herself. Chief Gage had communicated with the State Police, and he passed on to me what he learned from them about the death of this Mrs. Doherty, who had been found, apparently drowned, in a pond at Shanesville." "All the persons involved--Miss Blake, Mrs. Doherty, and others you may have heard about later--were at that time unknown to you?" "Yes, sir. Routine assignment to follow up information received." "Go on, please." "I reached Covent Street around noontime. I was in plain clothes of course. Miss Blake admitted me, and before looking at my identification remarked: 'Fast work! I've only been waiting an hour.' I don't know if this was sarcasm. There had been no unnecessary delay." Wanting to soften the intensity of Cecil's glare, she whispered: "It was a noise to crack the silence. He stood in the door like a zombi, the dear man, so's to make me speak first." She won from the Old Man only a start, and a drowned look. He wasn't quite with her. "Go on, Sergeant." "I asked for her name, gave her mine, entered the apartment at her invitation after showing my credentials. I inquired how she came to know of Mrs. Doherty's death, and she said, first, that her stepfather had telephoned her about it, but then immediately, and without questioning from me, she said: 'Oh, I knew it, I knew it last night.'" "Did you inquire what she meant by that?" "Not right away. I first asked about her stepfather's call. I wanted to get the identification and relations of these people clear in my mind. She gave me the name Dr. Herbert Chalmers, said he had called her about eleven o'clock and told her Mrs. Doherty's body had been found in the pond. I engaged her in some general talk: who Dr. Chalmers was, and what was her connection with Shanesville, with Mrs. Doherty, how long she had lived there at Covent Street, things like that. She said she had called the precinct station right after her stepfather hung up--which checked, as to time. That first remark of hers--" "I think we'll come back to that later. You say that in her call to the precinct station Miss Blake had said she was too ill to go there. Did she appear to be ill when you saw her?" Rankin frowned. "I wouldn't say so. Dark under the eyes. I noticed a tremor in her hands. Nothing that couldn't be explained by--oh, nervousness perhaps." "In that general talk, were her answers clear and satisfactory?" "I learned nothing later to contradict them." "I see. Well, did she then tell you what information it was she wished to give--what she had in mind when she called the precinct?" "Yes, sir. When I inquired, she said Mrs. Doherty had come to the apartment the evening before. I asked what time; Miss Blake said Mrs. Doherty had come at about quarter to eight and left at eight-thirty." "Did she give the occasion, the reason for Mrs. Doherty's visit?" "Miss Blake said she had telephoned to Ann Doherty, asking her to come. I inquired the reason for this, what it was she wanted to see Mrs. Doherty about, and she refused to tell me." "Did Miss Blake explain her refusal?" "No, sir. Just said: 'I won't tell you that.' I didn't press it. I wanted to get on to other facts, facts she was willing to tell me." "And she did give you other information?" "She did, sir, freely enough." "Just summarize it, please." "She began by saying that since some time in July she had been under the influence of what she called a suicidal depression, that she had some poison in the apartment, and that she was afraid Mrs. Doherty might have drunk some of it by accident. Miss Blake said she had become ill during Mrs. Doherty's visit, had gone into her bedroom and shut the door--'to get away from her,' as Miss Blake put it--and that while she was there, in the bedroom, Mrs. Doherty must have poured a drink from the brandy bottle which contained the poison. Miss Blake said she had been still in the bedroom with the door shut--locked, in fact--when Mrs. Doherty left the apartment. Then, according to her account, Miss Blake came out, found the bottle had been moved, and became alarmed for Mrs. Doherty's safety." The slight drawl and falling cadence of Sergeant Rankin's voice was effective, Callista noted; good theater; something to admire as a work of art. "She got her car out of the garage and drove to Shanesville, to the Doherty house, found the Dohertys' car in the driveway, found Mrs. Doherty's handbag fallen in the path, house dark and door locked. Miss Blake said she then followed the path toward her mother's house, assuming that Ann Doherty must have gone that way, and presently discovered her, dead, in that pond. At that point, Miss Blake said, she panicked, and was also ill again, and--drove home. You understand, sir, I am merely summarizing, as you requested. Actually in that preliminary talk with her, a summary was all I got--with, as I later learned, some omissions. As soon as I had a general idea of the situation, I called Chief Gage, using Miss Blake's telephone. Chief Gage himself arrived at Covent Street at about ten of one, with a fingerprint man--Sergeant Zane I think it was--a photographer, and yourself, Mr. Hunter." "Did you inquire, before others arrived, about this poison Miss Blake said she had?" "Yes, sir. She said it was aconitine, and said she had prepared it a week before, by steeping monkshood roots in alcohol--brandy. I asked where she got the roots. From her mother's garden in Shanesville, she said. I asked whether she still had the stuff on hand. She said: 'Of course.' Mr. Hunter, maybe I ought to say at this point that up to then Miss Blake appeared to have no idea at all that she might be accused of anything. I don't pretend to understand it, but that was my distinct impression. Well, she took me out to the kitchenette, and showed me a half-full bottle labeled brandy, which she said contained the poison, and also an ordinary kitchen canister with some chopped-up mess that she told me was monkshood roots. She herself remarked that the brandy bottle probably had Mrs. Doherty's fingerprints. I took these items back to the living-room later, and from then on they weren't out of my sight until Chief Gage arrived and had them sent safe-hand to the Department's toxicologist Dr. Walter Ginsberg, after a fingerprint check. Miss Blake was very composed, I'd say sort of indifferent, about all this. When she had shown me the brandy bottle and the canister in the kitchenette, I asked her: 'Miss Blake, what did you have against this Mrs. Doherty?--you might as well tell me.' She didn't answer, just looked at me as if the question was--well, foolish or surprising. I said: 'Why did you do it?'" Sergeant Rankin turned over a leaf of his notebook. "She replied: 'That's how it is? I've told you the truth, but it's going to be like that?' I told her yes, of course it would be like that, and I asked her who she thought would believe the kind of story she'd given me. Miss Blake then said: 'Who knows what anyone believes?' And she asked: 'Are you going to arrest me?' I said that would be a decision of my superiors. Then I--told her to go back to the living-room and remain in my sight while I used her telephone. She did so." Callista felt the Old Man lean close. He was muttering at his mouth-corner: "Is that when he--?" She nodded. "He's deleted five rather long minutes. Why not let it go? My word against his, nothing much happened anyway, and it hasn't any bearing." Warner growled indecisively. "Partly my fault too--should've remembered my skirt might be transparent against that sun." Warner's hand tightened and fell slack. She noticed Rankin's oyster-gray glance flick her lightly and pass on, for the first time since he had taken the stand. "Before Chief Gage and others arrived, did Miss Blake do or say anything else you remember as significant?" "Well--one thing--I don't know how significant. There was a fancy aquarium thing in her living-room, with fish, tropical fish I guess. When I'd finished my call to Chief Gage--well--should I take up the Court's time with this?--I don't know if it's relevant at all." Surprisingly to Callista, it was Judge Mann who said: "I think, having started, you may as well tell it, Sergeant. We can stop you if it's too far afield." "Well--when I'd finished my call, Miss Blake said: 'I'm getting something from the kitchen, I suppose you want to come with me?' I did so, and stood by while she got a pitcher and emptied the ice-cube trays from the refrigerator into it. I inquired about it, and she said: 'Don't worry, it's just ice.' She carried the pitcher back to the living-room. She pointed out where an electric cord from the aquarium was plugged into a wall socket and asked me to disconnect it. I did so, mostly to humor her, saw no harm in it--I don't know anything about aquariums, nice hobby I guess. Anyhow before I knew what she intended she had poured the whole pitcher-full of ice cubes into the tank, and lifted out a gadget--a heating-coil in a glass cover--and rapped it real sharp against the leg of the table so that the glass broke and scattered over the carpet. I asked her what on earth she did that for, but she didn't explain the action--that is, she said the fish were beautiful, said it as if that explained something, but I don't know what she meant. Then she just stood by the aquarium watching them die. Two or three of them were dead almost right away, anyhow a matter of a few minutes. She pointed one of them out to me, a very small red fish, said it was a--a live-bearer I think she called it, and she gave me the scientific name of it too, but I don't remember that--platy-something. She said that one was a female ready to give birth. I'd thought all fish laid eggs, but seems not. I asked her again what she wanted to go and do a thing like that for. She said: 'They were beautiful and I loved them. Now watch them die.'" Again it was Judge Mann who asked: "Those were her exact words?" "Yes, your Honor. I asked her then if she took pleasure from killing beautiful things, and she looked at me--rather strangely, I must say--and said: 'No, Sergeant, this is the only time I ever killed anything beautiful, or anything I loved.' I don't know why a person would do a thing like that." Tight-voiced, dubious, like a man groping through uncertain country, Judge Mann asked: "Was she, in your opinion, overexcited--exalted--anything like that, Sergeant?" Hunter just watched. Callista thought: _Hunter isn't liking this._ Sergeant Rankin's voice echoed something of Judge Mann's perplexity; a true echo probably, for Callista sensed that Sergeant Rankin had never until this moment entertained the notion that the Monkshood Girl might be of unsound mind. And the notion might be, to Sergeant Rankin, interesting, without regard to the tender feelings of the District Attorney's office. For an accusation of physical coercion and threat of rape would be far less convincing from a psychopath. Cecil would be noticing the Sergeant's tentative nibbling at the idea. Cecil might be wishing that the Judge would make more inquiry along that line--for to Cecil, she knew, an insanity defense might still be a sort of last-ditch possibility in spite of her total refusal to go along with it. While she herself rather hoped the little man in the too priestlike gown would shut up and mind his own business. _What's it to him? Perhaps it will be to him, and not to Cecil whom I love, that I'll find the courage to say: I am guilty._ Sergeant Rankin picked his way among words like a man stepping from hummock to hummock through a marsh. "I would say, your Honor, that there was, maybe, something like that about her--general behavior. But--a vague sort of thing--I don't know if I should express an opinion, just a--a layman's opinion anyhow--" "Well," said the Judge crisply, "did Miss Blake become abusive, or scream, cry, talk irrationally or too loud or too fast, anything like that?" "No, your Honor, none of those things, not at all." "Did she seem confused, inattentive to what you said or unable to understand it?" "No, your Honor. Very cool and self-possessed, really. I had--if I might put it this way--I had an impression that she was deliberately talking over my head--that I didn't understand some of the things she said because I wasn't meant to." "Do you mean her answers were unresponsive, unconnected with the questions you asked?" "No, not quite that, your Honor. Well, I recall one thing, after she broke the aquarium heater and we exchanged those remarks about--about killing beautiful things. I said to her: 'Look, Miss Blake, if they decide to arrest you, surely you've got some friend who would have looked after that aquarium for you while you're away.' Now it's my recollection that I said that in a perfectly friendly, kindly way--I certainly had no wish to make things hard for her--but Miss Blake said: 'A spring morning can't be warmed up in the oven.' Well, I wouldn't know whether a head--whether a psychiatrist would call that an irrational reply or not. I just didn't think it made much sense." "I see. Go on, Mr. Hunter." "Did anything else significant happen before Chief Gage arrived?" "I think not, sir. Nothing I remember. I didn't think I was getting anywhere trying to talk with her, so for the last five or ten minutes we just sat there waiting for the others to come." "Yeah," Callista said under her breath, "we just sat there." She leaned a little against Cecil's shoulder, weary, suddenly desiring sleep above all things, yet touched and curiously disturbed by the Old Man's harmless, rather pleasant smell of shaving lotion, soap, tobacco. Drowsily she thought: _He's really nothing like my father._ "What happened, in your presence, after Chief Gage and the others arrived at Miss Blake's apartment?" "Well, Miss Blake was briefly questioned by Chief Gage and yourself. It covered the same things I'd talked about with her. She was asked by Chief Gage about a photograph and a couple of letters that I found in a desk in her bedroom." "She was not at that time under arrest, was she?" "No, sir, she was not. I recall that Chief Gage quite formally asked her permission to look around the apartment, and she gave it." "Please describe those items, the photograph and the letters." "The photograph was a snapshot of a man in swimming trunks, taken at some beach or other, and the name 'Jimmy' was written on the back--just the name, nothing else. One of the letters, dated July 5, 1959, was signed 'J', and Miss Blake, when shown it, identified it as one written to her by Mr. James Doherty of Shanesville. The other one, bearing no date and not signed--in fact not finished--was identified by Miss Blake as one that she had started to write to Mr. Doherty, but had never mailed." "Was Miss Blake questioned about those letters, there at her apartment?" "Not much then, sir. She identified Mr. Doherty as the husband of the Mrs. Doherty who had been found dead in Shanesville. Chief Gage asked her to explain the relation between herself and Mr. Doherty, and she said without any show of emotion--with a shrug, as a matter of fact--she said: 'Oh, he was my sweetheart for a little while, a summertime amusement.'" She saw T. J. Hunter, relaxed and thoughtful, walk to the prosecution's table and spend a weary time standing there, brooding at the small papers he had taken up. Callista closed her eyes. "If it please the Court, I will offer these two letters and photograph for admission in evidence, but, if they are accepted, I will have the letters read to the jury somewhat later, to make a more orderly presentation. For the present I merely wish to establish their identification by Sergeant Rankin." The deep voice by her shoulder remarked: "I will ask to see them." _Do you have to go over there, Cecil?_ Then Callista was aware of a small but unaccountable lapse of time, for Cecil was already by the prosecution's table glaring morosely at little scraps of paper, his bushed eyebrows in a clench, while T. J. Hunter stood by politely, hands in his pockets. Had she fallen asleep sitting up? Was it possible for an accused witch to do that in a court of law? _Oh, likely had something to attend to, and took off on my broomstick--well, sure, a mission, three times around the Shanesville house casting a spell to curdle Cousin Maud's plum jam, and high time too--it merely slipped my mind--how'd I manage without a cat?_ She saw the Old Man's shoulder sag and stiffen. It was cut and dried, he had told her: the letters would go in, mostly because he hoped to gain more than lose by them, when there was a chance for the defense to interpret them. This present show of examining them was what he called legal window-dressing. She saw him make some quick _sotto voce_ comment, his face savagely disgusted, an aside that no one but T. J. Hunter could hear. Hunter flushed all the way up his bald forehead; the flush passed, leaving no sign of anger. Then Cecil spoke in his courtroom voice, smoothly, a tone of indifference close to contempt: "The defense will not protest the admission of these documents." _How could I have slept?_ Cecil was returning. _Apparently no one noticed--a minor accomplishment of necromancy--I just toss these things off, you know._ Some mumbling and talking over yonder, as she felt the return of Cecil's warmth, and took hold of his hand, though he was really nothing like her father. Yes, Rankin, identifying the silly things. _Poor Jim, spelled "relinquish" r-e-l-i-n-q-u-e-s-h. E for effort._ "Cecil, what did you say to the rising young lawyer that turned him pink?" He looked at her doubtfully, not smiling. "I said the prosecution must be running out of keyholes." "Maybe you touched a childhood trauma." "His childhood be damned," the Old Man grumbled. "He's still a snotnose pulling the wings off flies, as a profession." "I decline to be compared to a house-fly." "Shut up, dear. I've got to listen again." "Sergeant, after Miss Blake's admission that James Doherty had been her lover, was she questioned any further, there at her apartment?" "No, sir. Chief Gage informed her that she would be detained for questioning. She made no protest. Accompanied by yourself, Mr. Hunter, I took her in a police car direct to Mr. Lamson's office, in this building." "Was she questioned there, in your presence?" "Yes, sir, mainly by Mr. Lamson. My recollection is that the others present were yourself, Chief Gage, Miss Wallingford--that's Mr. Lamson's secretary--who made a stenographic record of the interrogation, and Sergeant Shields of the State Police, who was present only a part of the time, a few minutes." "Did Miss Blake sign anything during that interview at Mr. Lamson's office, while you were present?" "She did, sir. The stenographic record of the interrogation was typed by Miss Wallingford. Miss Blake then read it, and signed it--signed the written statement that the answers given by her and recorded in the transcript were true to the best of her knowledge and belief. Her signature was witnessed by Mr. Lamson and yourself, and Mr. Lamson requested me to read and initial the pages of the typescript, which I did." "If it please the Court--" and Cecil was gone again, looming over yonder, examining the pages, large ones this time, impressive legal size. More window-dressing. But discussion was longer; she grew inattentive in her drowsiness. She heard Hunter remark that the transcript would be read after cross-examination of Sergeant Rankin--if, said the bald polite man with the shovel chin, Mr. Warner elected to cross-examine. Cecil grunted. A side-bar huddle followed that. Some of the time she knew her eyelids had drooped, hiding her in a murmurous partial darkness; some of the time she was watching, with an abstract friendliness and faraway approval, the thoughtful and still puzzled features of Judge Terence Mann. _I can't explain it either, Judge. According to my own biased notions, I'm not mad, at least no more than my old buddy Hamlet, who also had a mother. Gets complicated there, because Hamlet was decidedly male, I think, any side up, while I'm every inch a wench. Ask Rankin. You see_-- It disturbed her, to reflect how little any of those present would ever know about her. They looked at her; anyway their eyes did. In a few days they would hear her talk from that dizzy isolation of the witness stand; anyway their ears would register certain sounds. Already through the testimony their mental vision (imperfect, cloudy, variously preoccupied) had watched her squeaking grass-blades with the Wayne kids, snapping at poor Cousin Maud on the front porch. They had seen her (through the fogs and excitements of their own scrambled sexual histories) caught in that slow frenzy--(_wearing a blouse_)--on the divan in Jim's office, under the glazed smirk of an "art"-calendar nude. _Who were you then, Callista?--what were you then?_ They had seen her, guilty or innocent, standing by black water, under hemlocks, under a hazy moon. But they did not know her. They could not communicate with the inner spectator-participator. It had needed nineteen years to create the Monkshood Girl, a short time, yet to the jurors, the Judge, Cecil, even to Edith, the nineteen years amounted to an infinite complexity never to be explored. They could not watch the golden kitten Bonnie, nor Aunt Cora. They could not learn of the young discoveries: language, music; endless expansion of the visible world as her hand acquired certain powers of dealing with line and color and mass or began to acquire it. They had no vision for the dreams of her sleep, or the waking dreams. Ann Doherty, inarticulate Jim, mysteries quite as obscure. _What do you think you know about Ann, gentlemen? Cute, blonde, and married: isn't that about as far as you go?_ _We are not what you see, we people who look at you out of clever photographs in the paper at your breakfast tables. When you burn the image you have created you burn the true self also, but you cannot know that self. I am here with you, and captured, and maybe you ought to fear me as you do, but I am not what you suppose._ III He met the flat patient stare of Sergeant Lloyd Rankin, which indicated a readiness like that of a dog who will not attack unless provoked. Say a Boxer: Rankin was built like that, and would fight in a Boxer's style, with single-minded courage closely akin to stupidity. He saw T. J. Hunter seated at the prosecution's table and turned partly away from the witness chair, making a show of rereading that transcript of Callista's ordeal. T.J. would be listening to the cross-examination, and sharply; but Cecil Warner had to admit that the show of bored indifference was quite as expert as anything he could have managed himself. This silence had lasted long enough, or too long; he heard fidgeting in the back rows; he could not spend any more time gloomily viewing Rankin's Boxer jaws. "Sergeant Rankin, when Miss Blake realized she would be under suspicion, you asked her--I think these were your words--you asked her who she thought would believe a story like hers. Correct?--that's your recollection of what you said?" "Yes, sir, I think I put it that way." "Meaning, I suppose, that you didn't believe her story yourself?" "No, sir--I mean no, I didn't believe it." "Did you suggest that she ought to change her story?" "Oh, I told her--more than once, I guess--that she ought to tell the truth about it, that she'd get a better break if she did." "A better break. Those were your words, 'a better break'?" He noticed a dim flush on Rankin's heavy cheeks, some flicker of doubt or uneasiness in chilly gray eyes. Rankin could have no way of knowing how much Callista might have told. "Yes, I think that was how I put it, Mr. Warner. She seemed to be expecting me to believe it, and--" "But she replied: 'Who knows what anyone believes?'" "Yes." "And asked then if you were going to arrest her?" "She did, and I told her that would be up to my superiors, not me." "This conversation took place in the kitchenette, after she had taken you out there and shown you the brandy bottle, and volunteered her account which you preferred not to believe?" "It wasn't a case of preference, Mr. Warner. I--" "All right, never mind that. The conversation took place in the kitchenette?" "Yes." "And you told her to go back to the living-room, and she did so?" "Yes." "She went ahead of you?" "Ahead of me?" "My words are plain, aren't they?" _Give him no time--Boxer hates to be pushed._ "She stepped out of the kitchenette and walked ahead of you down that little hallway toward the living-room, did she not?" "Really I don't remember. I suppose--" "Don't _remember_! In direct examination you showed an excellent memory for details. Let me just check your memory a little. What way does the front of that apartment house face, 21 Covent Street? East?" "Why--yes, east, or south-east anyway." "Was it a bright day, August 17th?" "Yes, bright sunny day." "Hot?" "Very hot." "Sunlight in the living-room windows, was there? Remember?" "Yes." "In the hallway?" "I guess so." "Good memory. Let me check it just a little more. What was Miss Blake wearing that day?" "A--oh, just a dress, I don't know what a dressmaker would call it." "Well--color?" "White." "Good. A simple white dress. Now look, Sergeant, I think you can remember whether she went ahead of you into the living-room. I'll help you out--you wouldn't have left her alone with that brandy bottle when you'd as good as told her she was under suspicion, would you?" "Oh--well, that. Yes, if it matters, I remember she went first." "Did you again tell her she ought to change her story?" "I may have." "Sergeant, I point out to you again, your memory under direct examination was excellent. You referred to your notebook, you repeated several remarks verbatim--to some of which the defense might have justifiably objected, if I had seen fit. Now--did you tell her a second time that she would get a better break if she changed this story which you say you didn't believe? Did you, Sergeant?" "Yes, it's my recollection that I did." "Did you suggest any other thing she might do that would, in your words, give her a better break?" "Any other--I don't know what you mean." "Then let me help your memory again. This conversation, when you repeated that she ought to change her story--did this conversation take place while you were going back to the living-room?" "I--oh, I guess so." "I'm asking for testimony, not guesswork. Did it, or not?" "Yes." "What did Miss Blake say?" "It's my recollection that she--I don't think she said anything." "She didn't? You remember how she _looked_, don't you?" "Of course." "Of course. Simple white dress, you said--correct?" "Yes." "Walking down the hall, between you and the sunlight in the living-room. Didn't she say, or rather cry out: 'Take your ugly hands off me, you fool!'--have you forgotten that?" He heard Hunter jump up, and waited motionless for the angry blast: "Objection! This is outrageous. There has been nothing--" Judge Terence Mann said: "There has been a good deal." Warner looked up quickly then; if his astonishment showed for a second, probably no one but Terence saw it. There was time to wonder how much of a surprise it was to T.J.--complete, very likely. And Terence Mann himself looked astonished at the swiftness and sharpness of his own words. "If there is any suspicion that a police officer has acted in that manner toward the defendant, the defense is well within its rights to pursue this line of questioning. The objection is overruled." _But Terry must know we can't prove it._ "Answer the question, Sergeant." Staring at the Judge, T. J. Hunter said slowly: "Exception." "Answer the question, Sergeant Rankin." Rankin too had gone quiet, no visible motion in him except a rhythmic twitch at the corners of his Boxer jaws. "Will you repeat the question, Counselor?" "I will. I ask whether Callista Blake said to you: 'Take your ugly hands off me, you fool!'" "She did not." "I quote to you these words: 'Look, I can give you a lot of breaks if you'll put out.' Did you say that to Callista Blake?" "Objection." "Overruled." "I did not." "You have no recollection of that?" "It didn't happen, that's all. I never touched her." "No? You didn't, a few minutes later, strike her across the face with the flat of your hand?" "Objection!" "Overruled." "I certainly did not. The whole thing is imaginary." "Did Callista Blake, while you had hold of her, tell you that she was ill, that she had had a miscarriage the night before?" "Objection!" "Overruled." _So Terry sticks his own neck way out, his own feelings involved, his judgment slipping, and where does that take us?_ "Exception." "She did not tell me that, Counselor. She had no occasion to tell me that. I say again, the whole thing is imaginary. I know my duties, and my position as a police officer. Nothing like that happened, and if the defendant says it did, she is lying." Except for that twitch, and the high tension of his blocky hands gripping the witness chair, nothing in Rankin's solid front suggested he might himself be lying. "You say the whole thing is imaginary. Really! Is it imaginary, just a bad dream cooked up by the defense--what do you take us for, Sergeant?--is it imaginary that you shoved Callista Blake down on the couch in the living-room, that she then told you she was ill, that in spite of that you went on trying to force her, that you exposed yourself, that she then said a certain thing which frightened you, so that you let her go, after first striking her across the face with the flat of your hand?" "Objection of course. Whole question improper and fantastic." "Overruled." _Terry, I don't know_-- "Exception." "Nothing like that happened. I deny it absolutely." "In that view of it, I won't question you further about this, or anything else, I think, since the only thing of service to my client is the truth. I dare say, in redirect examination, you'll have opportunity to repeat your virtuous denials--" "That's outrageous." Warner swung around. "Something else is outrageous--" "Mr. Warner!" But that was Terry, and he must listen. "We cannot have this. Please control yourself." "I am sorry, your Honor. My apologies to the Court, and to Mr. Hunter--who, I am sure, knew nothing about any improper conduct on the part of his witness. That's all." Warner sat down, with a sudden breaking out of sweat on his face, a dizziness and blurring of vision. Callista's hand slipped over his, easing his fingers out of their involuntary clench. She was repeating his name softly: "Cecil--Cecil--are you all right?" "Yes." He covered his mouth to speak to her. "I couldn't break him. I thought I could break the bastard." "Never mind. Relax. You bent him, but good." "Not enough. You'll have to take the stand, maybe." "But I must anyway. Relax." _Concerned for me._ He noticed the courtroom was quiet, Hunter delaying. Judge Mann's gaze was on him too, worried and speculative. _Do they think I'm going to fold like Judd? Judd--I said to that man Judd: 'If you do not understand that question--'_ He wiped his forehead. Maybe Callista had helped him get that handkerchief out of his pocket. He would not fold. Let them take their eyes off him. _Let them get on with it._ Hunter was getting on with it--neutrally it seemed. "Sergeant Rankin, I'll merely ask you: is there any foundation in fact, anything at all, to support this suggestion of misconduct on your part with the defendant Callista Blake?" "None whatever, sir. None whatever." Hunter was pausing another long time. Warner now helplessly understood that he was giving Rankin time to think, time for the man's rather slow wits to come up with the obvious countercharge. Hunter said at last: "In summary, then, you simply questioned Miss Blake about the story she had told you, you took charge of the brandy bottle and so on, you called Chief Gage, and then there was this episode of the fish-tank--when Miss Blake, you say, was composed, sort of philosophical and all that, hardly the way a girl would act, I guess, if she'd just been threatened and pushed around. That's a correct summary?" "Yes, sir, I think that about sums it up. Well--" It was comic enough, to observe the slow grimace as Rankin caught on to what Hunter would like him to say. Hunter asked mildly: "Something you wish to add?" "Well--I guess not. Of course I'm very much surprised that the defense should see fit to make a charge like that against me, but there seems to be no way of proving anything--Miss Blake's word against mine--and if I say anything about--about her own conduct in that respect, it's the same situation, so I would rather ignore it, let it go." Warner sickened inwardly with self-blame. _I underestimated the brains in the son of a bitch_--no, hardly even that, for a cub lawyer should have seen it coming, the obvious countercharge by innuendo. Rankin had done it cleverly, though; he could hardly have said anything better calculated to make Callista seem a whore. _I should sell apples on a streetcorner._ A sober workman driving in finishing nails, T. J. Hunter said: "I understand your reluctance, Sergeant, and I think we might as well leave it at that. Recross, Mr. Warner?" Cecil Warner remembered how, long ago, on childhood occasions when he had been goaded into fighting, he had often been struck by a crying spell in the midst of battle. It had become a sort of distinction: "_Cecil's all right till he goes to bawling--then watch out!_" It would not happen now. But he knew his voice was shouting, too loudly, and cracking absurdly in the shout: "Are you being humorous, Mr. District Attorney? I am concerned with establishing the truth, and questioning that man will not serve any such purpose." Judge Mann started to speak but checked himself, watching Sergeant Rankin step down and stride away. _Terry will not look at me. Take my hand, Callista._ Hardly wondering at the coincidence, he felt the cool pressure of her fingers renewed. _I shall not survive the conclusion, win or lose, but that hardly matters, Old Man_-- "If it please the Court, the prosecution is ready to read the transcript of the interrogation of Callista Blake on August 17th, which has been admitted in evidence and which I have here." Judge Mann said drily: "It will be read by the clerk of court." Something accomplished anyway, in that side-bar huddle before Rankin's cross-examination: the transcript would not be read with baritone sound effects. Hunter passed the pages to Mr. Delehanty with good enough grace, having no choice. To the hearers, Warner knew, much of it would be dull, a repetition of what had already been said. A welcome dullness, allowing time to rest. Mr. Delehanty would begin smartly, then fall to droning as the question-and-answer rhythm caught hold of him. The duller the better. _Keep my hand, Callista._ Cecil Warner drifted into bewilderment, a sense that at some point there had been an illogical reversal of roles. Must he draw on the strength of this girl who in a few months might be butchered by the State, as if there remained in him no power at all, not even the power of wisdom? As if it were natural, and right, that in her danger and misery, in her green youth too, it should be Callista who possessed a power to heal and save? _The defense never rests, but_-- _Can anyone save another? Maybe, with good fortune._ _Or help another? The heart says yes. Keep my hand, Callista._ He came alert with a frightened start. Mr. Delehanty's voice had already sagged into a singsong monotony, and might have been burbling on a long time. QUESTION (by Mr. Lamson): Can anyone support your statement that you were experiencing what you call a suicidal depression for a month or more, from early July to the middle of August? ANSWER: No, I never spoke of it to anyone. _Why not to me? I might have_-- Near his eyes, Callista's face took on a momentary immensity, like a great image on a softly brilliant screen. She must have had her teeth clamped a while on her underlip. It looked swollen as though from a bout of love. QUESTION: Was anyone aware of your taking those monkshood roots? ANSWER: No one. QUESTION: Not even James Doherty? ANSWER: I have had no communication with James Doherty since receiving that letter of his you took from my desk. In that time I've seen him only once--at the picnic when I got the monkshood. I didn't talk with him then, he did not talk with me, he knew nothing of what I was doing. "You'll come to see me tonight, Cecil?" "Yes." "Something I must tell you." "What, dear?" "Not now. Tonight." QUESTION: You had these roots, this poison, a week ago Friday. What about the suicidal depression?--change your mind? ANSWER: I don't know how the mind works. QUESTION: Now, Miss Blake! Anybody knows if he's changed his mind. ANSWER: Does he? QUESTION: All right. I can assume you gave up the notion of suicide? ANSWER: Not a notion. An uncompleted decision, perhaps. Which did lose its importance after a while. QUESTION: Did you, or you and James Doherty acting together, intend that poison for Mrs. Doherty? ANSWER: Must I answer that again? James Doherty knew nothing about any poison, or my possession of it. I intended it only for myself. QUESTION: But kept it there more than a week, where I suppose anyone might have stumbled on it? ANSWER: Not exactly. Back of a shelf. Nobody visiting me was likely to go get a drink from a back shelf without invitation. QUESTION: But you say that's just what Mrs. Doherty did. ANSWER: Why, I think her idea was to get the drink for me. Then I guess she understood I'd locked myself into the bedroom. With the drink in her hand, and upset by what I'd been saying, I suppose she just tossed it off, maybe not even knowing she did. It would be natural. QUESTION: Didn't she knock? Call to you? Try the door? ANSWER: I don't know, Mr. Lamson. QUESTION: Don't know. I can't accept that. ANSWER: It's the truth, and all I can say. Partial amnesia. QUESTION: Do you have any idea how many professional criminals try that amnesia thing? Everything went black--yeah. You're not a professional criminal, you're a very intelligent girl. How do you think that amnesia stuff is going to sound in court? ANSWER: Bad. QUESTION: Well? Don't you care? ANSWER: I can't invent for you. I don't know. I can't remember. QUESTION: All right. Mrs. Doherty was upset by what you'd been saying. What had you been saying? ANSWER: I told her about my affair with her husband. QUESTION: Just like that? ANSWER: Yes. I think I was very stupid. I hoped to persuade her to allow a separation. I knew her church doesn't allow divorce, but I thought she might permit us that much. I wanted my baby to have a father, married or not. It's bad, trying to grow up without a father. Mine died when I was seven. I wanted mine to have a father. QUESTION: Yes, that was in the letter you wrote him. ANSWER: Wrote but never mailed. I should have destroyed it. QUESTION: Why didn't you mail it? ANSWER: I'm not sure I can explain that. An obsession is a strange thing, and so is suicidal depression--and so's pregnancy. You don't just sit quiet and work out the mathematics. Your mind shifts and struggles like a thing in a web, tries to decide what matters most. The answers don't always stay the same. The day after I started that letter, I didn't go on with it because then I didn't even want Jimmy to know I was pregnant. I saw it wouldn't work out even if he were entirely free. Too different. We couldn't possibly have lived together. Then later I was trying again to think it might work--and so on. QUESTION: Go on, please. ANSWER: How? Mr. Lamson, I know ten million more things about myself than you ever could, but you're asking me to explain things that even I don't know. How can I? Well, the night before Ann came to see me, Saturday, I had a time when everything looked possible. I wanted to have the baby, I was almost happy, I wasn't thinking of suicide--I even forgot about that poison. Next day, Sunday, I was imagining again that Ann might permit a separation so that he could be with me. Crazy, but that's how I had it lined up that day, that's why I telephoned her, that's how it looked right up until I began to talk with her. Then--card-house fell down. QUESTION: You told her you were pregnant? ANSWER: No, I didn't even get that far. I saw it was no use, waste of time. We had not enough words in common. QUESTION: Not enough words? ANSWER: Oh--oh--whatever I said meant something else in her mind, the way everything I say now means something else to you, heaven knows what. No such thing as a common language. We all talk in the dark. If a bit of light breaks we're frightened and try to blot it out. QUESTION: I don't follow you. ANSWER: Don't try. I'm not going your way. QUESTION: This isn't an occasion for humor, is it? ANSWER: People will tell you I laugh at the damnedest things. QUESTION: If you didn't say you were pregnant, how much did you say? ANSWER: All she understood was that we'd had an affair. QUESTION: Did you quarrel? ANSWER: No. QUESTION: She wasn't angry? ANSWER: No, very forgiving. That's when I was sick to my stomach. QUESTION: Really, Miss Blake! Are you saying-- ANSWER: I don't know what I'm saying any more. QUESTION: Yes, I realize you're having a bad time. I'm not intentionally cruel, it's merely my job to enforce the laws of this community. Naturally your pregnancy entitles you to every consideration, but-- ANSWER: Mr. Lamson, didn't I say I _was_ pregnant? I had a miscarriage last night. QUESTION: Oh. I'm sorry, I don't think you did tell us that. When did it happen? ANSWER: Out there, after I'd found her in the pond. QUESTION: A result of shock, or--exertion? ANSWER: Shock maybe. Is this the fourth time I've told you I didn't push her in the water? I found her, I knew she was dead, I came away. QUESTION: The miscarriage--I'm sorry, but I must ask-- ANSWER: Why, frankly, Mr. Lamson, it hurts. QUESTION: You know very well that's not what I meant. Where exactly were you when it happened? ANSWER: First pain, there by the pond. I went back to my car because I thought I might be able to drive home somehow-- QUESTION: You mean to your mother's house? ANSWER: I do not, I mean my apartment. But it was getting worse, and at the junction I did turn that way on Walton, because I remembered the woods across the road. I left the car by the pines, and got over there, into the woods. It was over pretty soon. QUESTION: You must have a good deal of courage, Miss Blake. ANSWER: Enough, I hope. QUESTION: I hope so too. By the way, Miss Blake, you might glance at this folder, if you will. "That's where he flashed the morgue pictures at you, Cal?" "Uh-huh. I was a--what's the term?--a cool customer. Oh yes--he's reading my intelligent comments now. Not bad for a beginner, don't you think? Like Lizzie Borden." "Hush, dear." "Well, Lizzie was a beginner too. What's more she had to operate on a breakfast of mutton broth." Cecil Warner could wonder then whether it had been Callista's wry and thorny humor that saved her during the moments last August--there must have been such moments--when she had drawn that dark bottle forward on the shelf and perhaps set out a single glass. IV As Joe Bass emptied the ash tray and made gentle needless motions with a dustrag at the bookshelves, Judge Terence Mann glanced at the handful of doodle scraps he had taken out of their temporary shelter in the minute book at the close of the day. None of them pleased him now, except possibly his sketch of the fingerprint technician Sergeant Zane scratching the lens he wore in place of a head. Drawing the toxicologist Dr. Ginsberg with his smooth face modified into a chemical retort had not turned out well. There was no comedy in solemn Dr. Ginsberg, unless it might be in his very self-conscious aloofness, his volunteered declaration on the stand that he never listened to anything about a criminal case except the facts immediately pertinent to his specialty. He had said in effect: "_That_ for your emotional involvements!"--but it was a valid attitude if you happened to be Dr. Ginsberg, and not very funny. "Did you stick it out, Joe?" "No, I wanted to tidy up in here, so I slipped out after Mr. Delehanty finished reading that statement. Did I miss anything important?" "Not much. Fingerprints. Mrs. Doherty's and Callista Blake's on the brandy bottle. It should even help the defense slightly, showing that Mrs. Doherty handled the bottle and that no attempt was made to wipe it or dispose of it. Callista Blake had all night and next morning to get rid of anything incriminating, if she'd been so minded. Then we had Dr. Ginsberg. Nothing new, he just made it official. Four milligrams of aconitine in the organs he studied, and they say one milligram is enough to kill. Wound up the day with Mr. Lamson; he testified to receiving those three other letters of Miss Blake's, direct from James Doherty. It seems Doherty simply walked in and dumped them on Lamson's desk, following the advice of his priest. I hadn't known it was quite like that. Lamson seemed to imply it was an example of civic virtue. No comment, Joe. I'm unhappy. Well, Lamson identified the letters, and they went in without protest, but won't be read till tomorrow, which will wind up for the State, I guess. Defense ought to open tomorrow afternoon, or sooner. Oh--you would have liked this. When Mr. Hunter asked if Mr. Warner wanted to cross-examine Lamson, the Old Man said: 'I believe I will decline the privilege.' But nobody laughed." "Do you think Mr. Hunter will put James Doherty on the stand?" "No. Not needed, and too likely to blow up in his face. Doherty couldn't testify to anything but the affair, so far as I know, and that's been proved and admitted." "I was watching Mr. Doherty a little this afternoon, Judge. One of his knuckles is bloody, from biting it." "Another casualty of the case. Nobody will be the same after it, not even you and I." "I, Judge? I'm too old to change much. I already knew the world's full of sadness according to where you stand." "I suppose I knew it too," said Judge Mann, and watched Joe's small crinkled hands spread out on the other side of the desk resting on the fingertips, and felt not only uncertain but immature. _Bring out the inner voices._ _I should have taken another road, Mr. Brooks--other roads. I should have married, maybe._ _Where does anyone find the vanity to become a judge? No, that's not it. I have vanity enough, or too much. But in me, I suppose other forces balance the native vanity, cancel it out. There was never anything in Judge Cleever to make him doubt he's God's own right hand man._ Exercising a privilege of age and kindness, Joe said softly: "Relax, boy." "Yes, when it's over, I must do that. Do we ever know where we're going?" "Not to say know, maybe. Just the present road, and good or bad guesswork." "And crossroads?" "Same thing, Judge. You try to make the right guess, with whatever good judgment you've got at the time. I've always been alone at my crossroads--I guess everyone is. Or if there was a crowd, I didn't see how they could know where I was going. I was better off trying to puzzle out the signposts myself." 6 Nox est perpetua una dormienda. CATULLUS I "In the prison house are many mansions. This one looks very nice--thank the good Sheriff for me, for us, Cecil. Is it wired for sound?" "No, dear, it's just an office. Sheriff's working late down the hall--records room--and said we could have this. Nobody'll bother us." "May I sit at the desk and judge humanity?" "Why not?" "Or I'll be a lady of the Abbey of Theleme, where the law was 'Do what thou wilt.' No--can't have anything like that going on in the Sheriff's own office. And still--flowers on the desk?" "The explanation is anticlimax. Sheriff's good-looking, has a devoted secretary, her brother-in-law runs a florist's shop." "Like that. Never mind, I hereby make-believe the flowers are for me, the blood-red roses and the little white ones, sweet hot-house children. Not quite real, are they?--no black-spot, no bitten leaves, sheltered children, I guess they don't understand. But I'll make-believe. Am I occasionally beautiful, Cecil?" "To me, always." "I've always loved words, you know. It amounts to a fault. I can't make them do as I wish. I could never write. I don't know enough about people, maybe never shall. But I know the power of words. You say I'm beautiful to you, and that makes me so, I believe it, the words shut away everything foreign to the Abbey of Theleme--no, that's not where we are. But isn't it strange what words can do? Comfort and terrify, heal and kill. Make out of nothing, something, and another word can send the something back to a nothing. It was my father's gift, that love of words. I was reading precociously at least a year before he died. Mother (who is definitely literate and past president of the local PTA, no kidding) felt it wasn't quite right at such an age." "What's that paper? Are you tearing it?" "Just a blank sheet the good Sheriff left on his desk. I hope he won't miss it. Not tearing, love, building. It's my crown, Cecil. I need a pin. Is that a pin in your lapel?" "Yes--here." "Thanks. That'll do it. Ouch! Well, nothing created without pain. How does it look?" "Royal." "Does it suit my complexion?" "White and ivory--yes, not bad." "Is it all right for a queen to suck a pin-pricked finger?" "Rank has its privileges." "Good. So, not a lady of Theleme but a mere queen, I'll do my best while I have authority. This object shaped like a ruler is my scepter, and this apparent ink-bottle--no, if rank has its privileges, we'll omit the orb and you give me a cigarette. You may light it for me, and remember you have the right at any time to be seated in my presence. My lord, do you have any defense to set forth in favor of this mewling monster, this three-billion-headed lurching mooncalf humanity?" "Your Majesty, I must first know what specific charges have been made." "Item, he stinks of shrewd stupidity like his father Caliban." "A fault that might be remedied by going to school a few thousand years more; at least there's manifest intelligence." "Latent, you mean, don't you?" "Mostly latent, but a good deal of it overt, liberated." "Item, his fears are inconsistent: he's afraid of the dark but quite ready to play with matches." "Another trait of childhood." "Also of masturbating monkeys. Item, he talks a great deal about truth, but in the end, what he believes is what he wishes to believe." "At that point I must draw your Majesty's attention to an essential point in the original indictment, namely the admission that this monster possesses roughly three billion heads. And three billion bodies. In that view of it, it's good law as well as necessary charity to insist that each head-and-body unit of the monster be tried separately." "There isn't time, sir, there isn't time. Are you implying that not everyone is snotty?" "Something like that." "But then we can have no trial. No trial, no justice, no fun. Ah, damn it, I was looking forward to a hanging, with a bang-up speech from the platform and not a dry eye in the entire public square except for a few pickpockets and sellers of soft drinks." "Callista--" "Sir! No--fair enough. I'll put my scepter down. Maybe I'm tired of being queen. But may I keep my crown a while?" "You've always worn it." "No. No. Bring your chair--no, take this one, Cecil. I'd like to sit on the floor with my head on your knee--not that you're like my father at all. My crown--oh, put it away somewhere, keep it, I don't care. I don't hear that wind any more. Is it turning cold?" "Yes, it's quite cold tonight. Callista, the prosecution will finish tomorrow, with the reading of those letters. We'll probably open after the noon recess.... Is there anything, anything at all, you haven't told me?" "Yes." "You said, in court today, you said there was something." "Yes. Why did you stop moving your hand over my hair? I loved it. That's better. Cecil, I am guilty." "The--blank?" "Yes. Haven't you almost known it all along?" "No. But I've been afraid you might remember something, or convince yourself that you've remembered it, and so come to believe yourself guilty." "Oh, Cecil, this isn't belief, this is knowledge. You're trying to give me a way out before you even hear. It's like this: it came back as a clear auditory memory, the dull noise of that bottle being pulled forward on the shelf, and the cork, and a clink of glass, then the tap of her little high heels outside the bedroom door. I remembered what she said, each word very clear in that high sweet voice of hers: 'Callie, come on now!--I poured a little drink for you.' That's how it was, Cecil. And I lay still. I didn't speak. Knowing what might happen. I won't say, wishing for it to happen, but knowing, Cecil. Oh, sure enough, my mind squirmed around a bit trying to imagine the drink was from an innocent bourbon bottle, but knew all the time that the bourbon had been emptied the week before and the bottle thrown away. I'm no split personality, Cecil. Call it a paralysis from conflicting drives, if you want to. The self that had no wish to murder was the same self that--that hated her guts and wished she was dead. So I lay still. And my brain began generating the smoke-screen, first the useless fraud about a bourbon bottle that wasn't there, then the amnesia." "I don't believe you hated her guts, Callista. She was a frustration, someone in the way, as T.J. would insist on saying, has said in fact. But I don't think you hated her as a person." "Not for long, but long enough. I killed her." "That was a thing that happened. You did not will it to happen. You were sick, bewildered, temporarily unable to prevent it from happening. If you'd been out in the living-room with her--do you remember that bronze paper-knife you kept on the table, a handsome thing with a sharp point? She was small, slight, your arms are strong. You know you could never in the world have taken it up against her." "Why, dear apologist, you're only saying that I'm a coward about physical violence. I killed her by lying still. She's as dead as if I'd taken that knife to her. I say the guilt is greater. Seeing red might have excused me, or so most people would say. My very cowardice, weakness, retreat--that's what killed her. Cecil, I killed her by a failure in simple decency and common sense. If I'd been decent, sensible, I'd have run out there the moment I heard that bottle move on the shelf." "Callista, if the good, the righteous, the respectable were half as stern in self-judgment as you are--" "Oh, there'd be no living with them at all. Mother's a Colonial something-or-other because some worm-eaten ancestor was a Saint in the Bay Colony. I think Father must have laughed at it, but I was too young to get the point. The Puritan in me gives many a squirm. But the point is, my self-judgment serves no one now--she's dead. Well, it seems to be a jury of the righteous and respectable, more or less, who are stern enough in judging others, I've noticed. Cecil, will you give me a sharp honest answer to a question you don't want me to ask?" "I'll try." "Do you think we have a chance?" "Of course we have a chance. Today was bad. They'll go on feeling Judd's collapse, in spite of common sense, in spite of everything. The poor guy couldn't have done us more harm if he'd been trying. T.J. will manage to drop in some apparently inadvertent reminder of it, no doubt in his closing speech when I'm done talking--hell, mere mention of Judd's name in a baritone tremolo would be enough, and there's no legal barrier against that. Terence will charge the jury again to forget it, and most of them will honestly try to, which would mean something only if people knew how to watch their own minds. And today was bad because this was the day when they laid out the heavy circumstantial stuff, proving your episode with Jim, making it official on the aconite, all that. But now, dear, so far as evidence is concerned, T.J. has finished, done his worst. Those letters to be read tomorrow aren't evidence. T.J. just thinks they are. He'll try to interpret them as indicating premeditation as well as motive; I know better, and I think I can make that fly up and hit him in the face, in my own closing speech or sooner. I'm not painting it bright for you, Callista. It's not bright. But we have a chance. There is this: with your story clearly told--as it has been already, really, in that Lamson interrogation--it passes my understanding how anyone in his right mind could find first degree." "Mr. Lamson had the answer. Remember?--'the fact is, my dear girl, we just don't believe your story.'" "Hell with Butch Lamson--he's not the jury." "You think they might find second degree?" "That could happen. The only just verdict would be involuntary man-slaughter." "My love, can't you hear me? I've told you, I am guilty. Twenty to life. What do people feel when they cry out 'O God! O God!'--does the sound do something for them?" "I don't know, Callista. I was never religious. Were you, ever?" "Not for real, I guess. Away back, soon after Father died, I think the fluff and tinsel mythology of Sunday school had some hold on me for a short while. But I kept remembering a few of Father's comments, spoken when I was too young to get the point. They fell into place finally, made sense. When I was thirteen I told Mother I wasn't going to make the motions any more. Stuck it out, too, with a bit of surprising help from Herb. One of the rare times I've seen him lose his temper--popped half-way out of the armchair while Mother was lecturing, and said: 'God damn it, Vic, let the kid do her own thinking! She will anyway.' I could've loved him for that, if he hadn't lapsed back into being Herb Chalmers--if he wasn't a stepfather--if I wasn't a crossgrained bitch who never knows how to make advances at the right time. Well, that time Mother was so startled the artillery just didn't function. She went meek, maybe to see what Herb would do next--which was nothing. But also she never bothered me about it again, much. I suppose because her own religion is pure social conformity. If she'd had any serious convictions I might have had a battle on my hands. Twenty to life. What happens tomorrow?" "The letters first. We sit quiet and hear them. I can't ask you to display anything you don't feel, Callista--as an actress, my dear, you're nowhere. But if you feel--well, indifferent about those letters; if it seems all far away and irrelevant, don't let your face shout to the jury that you feel that way." "I'll be thinking of the briers. They'll read no indifference in me then, I think." "The briers--" "Where I lost my baby, Cecil. Some little tree whipped me across the face when I was leaving there--a birch, I think. I remember I was superstitiously grateful, glad of the sting. A primitive game, Cecil, the mind snatching at notions of punishment and atonement. We're still savages, and I suppose some of the time there's no harm in it. As if the birch tree--the whole dark place, and the thorns--had accomplished enough of the punishment so that I could meet the rest well enough. And maybe the savage, the poor greasy primordial Eve down inside, would say that I have, so far. After the letters, the State rests?" "I expect it. Hunter doesn't bother much with surprises--not his method. The State rests, and I move they dismiss the case, and Terence will deny the motion because he must." "Part of the ritual?" "In a way. We open then, probably after an early noon recess. The defense is going to be brief, Callista. It's better that way. We have only a few things to say. Reiterating them too much might turn the jury against us. They've heard the essence of the defense already, in my remarks, the cross-examinations, the Lamson interrogation. We mustn't repeat ourselves too much, because--well, heaven help any defendant if the jury is bored. What's happened is that, in effect, we're required to prove a negative. In the sense of tangible proof, on the same level as--oh, say Peterson's photographs--the thing is impossible. Proving a negative usually is, and that's fairly common knowledge among people who think at all. I'll bear down on it when I talk to them in closing, and before then. We must also insist on the element of reasonable doubt. I can see that Terence is very much aware of that aspect, and you must have noticed how he's given us every break he possibly could. Including some that surprised me. I shall open the defense by calling Edith. She's prepared to say anything at all that might help you, and if T.J. tries to get tough with her in cross-examination I'm sorry for him, that's all. She'll make a monkey out of him, and I believe she'll remember the jury every minute while she does it. In her direct testimony, the thing that will help most will be her emphasis on that suicidal depression." "Haven't I already told Mr. Lamson that no one else knew of it?" "Yes, but Edith did know, don't you think?" "She knew I was unhappy." "She's told me that you gave her the story about Jim, after that damn letter of his." "Yes, I went to pieces too, that once. But at that time I wasn't even quite certain yet about the pregnancy. As for the suicide thing, why, I wasn't consciously thinking in those terms until the day of the picnic. It was all over, you know, but I'm female enough so I didn't enjoy watching Jim the tender husband and Ann acting like a new bride, Jim all braced to speak to me politely but hoping to God he wouldn't have to--and also wanting to--yes, I could feel that. So I wandered off into that part of the garden. It wasn't till I noticed the monkshood plants that I started telling myself how that way wouldn't hurt. Then I was digging up two or three, just to look at them. I nibbled at one, and spat it out." "You saw Edith every day that week, didn't you? Went to the studio as usual?" "Yes." "Oh, she knew you were in the depths. She loves you. Your moods aren't the mystery to her that they are to most people, Callista. As for her factual knowledge--well, you might as well be prepared to hear her exaggerate that a little, even lie some about how much she knew if she thinks it will help you." "I'm strangely rich and fortunate. I have two friends." "I wish we were stronger. Well, after Edith testifies, then you, if you will promise me one thing--two things." "One, that I shall not say I am guilty." "Yes. The other is that when Hunter is attacking you, as he will, without mercy and with every trick he knows, you'll remember that you, and your friends, desire you to live." "That I can promise. The other--" "Callista, look up at me." "Not yet. In a moment." "Tell me this: is there any virtue, any rational good, in declaring a literal truth when misinterpretation is inevitable, when you know to a certainty that your hearers cannot grasp the whole truth nor keep the partial truth in proportion, nor even guess at the background, the related truths?" "Virtue--rational good--I'm too confused, Cecil. Other thoughts. I don't know. I suppose not." "You call yourself guilty--of a momentary lapse that happened to end in disaster. But if you say that much, the jury will inevitably charge you with a different sort of guilt. They will say: she brooded and planned to murder her lover's wife, the old story--let her burn! But is it right, reasonable, is it anything but insane, that for such a lapse, when you were sick in mind and body, you should be strapped in a chair and the life burned out of you?" "You can frighten me, Cecil. It's strange. I don't think the brute fact has really frightened me before, not completely. It wasn't real." "It's real. I was trying to frighten you. You must not say on the stand what you've said to me tonight. I know it to be truth, because you've said it to me. Telling it to the jury will not serve truth, because their minds will make a lie of it. Look up at me now." "I'll promise it, I think--for a bargain. I'll lie by silence, in return for a promise from you." "A promise--what is it, Callista?" "Promise me that if I am acquitted, I may come to you, live with you--in marriage or not, it doesn't matter--love you and care for you so long as I can have you. Give me that, and then I will lie, I'll swear anything to save my life, I'll be such an actress--" "Callista, I'm sixty-eight, old and fat and ugly and tired." "Hush. Understand. It's you, you, you--the self in you, not old nor young nor anything but _you_. Promise me. My promise for yours. No other terms." "I promise it." "Now I can look up at you. Now I know that what Edith said is true: living is journeying, and love's a region we can enter for a while." "Yes, a region that changes if only because we do ourselves. Some try to prevent that, I suppose. They want it to be a closed room thick with perfume and curtains drawn against all weather, against night and day." "But when I come to you--you've promised it--I'll make it a region of summer, of morning and summer evening and every star at night." II COURT OF GENERAL SESSIONS OF WINCHESTER COUNTY, NEW ESSEX December 10, 1959 Action: _People vs. Callista Blake_; Justice Terence Mann presiding. Court in session at 0956. JUDGE MANN: Do I understand, Mr. Hunter, that you wish to have read to the jury the letters that were admitted in evidence before adjournment yesterday? MR. HUNTER: Yes, your Honor. I am prepared to read--to go ahead with that right away. JUDGE MANN: Let them be read by the clerk of the court. MR. DELEHANTY: Your Honor, I have a--not laryngitis exactly, but a sort of cold. I'm perfectly ready to do as the Court directs, only I'm afraid that with this cold or whatever it is, maybe my voice won't be too clear to the jury. JUDGE MANN: Well ... Yes, Mr. Warner? MR. WARNER: Your Honor, the defense will not object to a reading of these letters by Mr. Hunter himself. I am certain my learned colleague would never take any improper advantage of his dramatic ability, admittedly great. Very often, however, written words are capable of conveying different meanings according to where the emphasis is placed, not because of any willful misconstruction, but simply because our language is not always a precise instrument. Therefore I would only stipulate, request rather, that if there should be any doubt in my mind, or in my client's mind, that the meaning of the letters is being correctly conveyed, we may have the privilege of interrupting the reading at that point, to indicate what we believe is the right interpretation. JUDGE MANN: Is that agreeable to you, Mr. Hunter? MR. HUNTER: Yes, your Honor, so long as the interruptions have to do with important points, not trivialities. MR. WARNER: Sir, there are no trivialities in this case. MR. HUNTER: Subject to the limitation I mentioned, the request of the defense appears reasonable, and I will not argue it. JUDGE MANN: You may proceed, Mr. Hunter. MR. HUNTER: The first of these letters, acknowledged by the defense to have been written by Callista Blake to James Doherty, is dated the 10th of May, 1959. Members of the jury, my dramatic ability is not, as Mr. Warner has described it, great. Any drama here is provided by the force of events, not by me. I must simply ask you to remember, while you hear these letters, that they (that is, the first three and the fifth) were written by a girl nineteen years of age, in the summer of this year, under the influence of a love affair which the testimony of witnesses has established and the defense has not denied. The first letter reads as follows: "Jimmy-- "Tonight I cannot see you--that was really all I understood over the telephone, though I know you gave me the decent sensible reasons why you cannot come--something about work at the office, wasn't it?--for as soon as I heard you say that, I thought, Oh, bang goes the whole batch of cookies. You see, I was going to be domestic for you tonight, and I had just taken some cookies from the oven when you phoned--the airy egg-white kind, a sort of culinary idiocy because no damn good the next day, like letting air out of a tire. Therefore if I were a weeping wench they would now be soaked in brine and serve you right. But I never weep, Jimmy. Never. Remember that. So, since you cannot come, I will only count over the times I've had you with me, a miser adoring the sparkle and fall of jewels through her fingers. While you are submerged in the honest dreadfulness of whatever you do at the office--what the devil is it anyhow?--do you convey subtle conveyances and do dark deeds (these are puns) or just sit with your feet up and brood over Deals?--think of me playing with my pretties and having a better time than yourself, because this is all I can wish to do when you're away from me. Because I love you. "It occurs to me, I never wrote to you before. You may not like me on paper. I sprawl and ramble, Dearest. Don't mind my doodling either--see the border I drew around your true name while I daydreamed and my pen was thinking for me? I'm only surprised it wasn't a tangle of Cupids, an out-of-season Valentine, and maybe it will be yet. In my here-and-now mood I would draw them saucy, I think (most of them), strutting and romping and showing off their little male apostrophes--all, I suppose, with a sneaking resemblance to you. Because I love you. "No, don't say it's reckless and foolish of me to write at all--I know it. I can't care, not now. I tell you, Jimmy, what we have (is it possible it's only ten days?) is something that could not happen with Ann. Or anywhere in her world. I tell myself, I am not she, she is not me, my love (you know it) is nothing like what could happen for you with anyone but me. And there's my cure for jealousy--if I could apply it, if I could make my head rule me a little more, my crazy heart a little less. I want you, I'm empty and dull in your absence, tonight this is the only way I can talk to you. So let me talk, and think me foolish and reckless, and destroy this scrawled thing if you think best. It's me, though. Remember when you throw it away, it's me. And perhaps (because I love you) I wouldn't like you to burn me. "More than you have already. "Yes, I will type the envelope and mark it PERSONAL, lest the chaste eyes of Miss Anderson be stricken unto confusion and dismay. Damn 'em, why hasn't the Postoffice a Bureau of Hollow Oaks? Ooh--now I think of it, there is--not an oak, but a big maple with a hole in the trunk about seven feet above ground, on the path between your house and Mother's, near the pond. I saw a squirrel in residence there last year, stuck his head out and told me with the usual fuss that it was his'n. No good, I guess, because he's probably still there, and would think poorly of anyone dropping a letter into his living-room. He'd eat it or use it for nest-lining. That's how Nature is, you know, not a bit cooperative with the frills of romance, only with the essentials--but there, how cooperative indeed! As if, so far as Nature cares, every atom, every motion of life were aimed at nothing but the mounting of female by male and the begetting of young. Well, it comes to me that you with your long legs could reach that hole in the maple, though I'd have to stand on something. It comes to me that a letter could be squirrel-proofed in a metal box. Let us reflect on this." Members of the jury, I might say in passing that because of this mention in the letter, the maple tree in question was examined. It does have a hole in it, nearer eight feet above ground than seven. Nothing was found there except an abandoned squirrel's nest; no sign of any previous disturbance by a human agency. [_Laughter by the defendant._] I see Miss Blake is amused, which is her privilege I suppose. [_Disturbance at rear of room, a man (James Doherty) leaving his seat for the exit; Mr. Hunter waiting for quiet._] The letter resumes: "I love you as a sleeping seed in the earth must love the rains of spring, blindly, thoughtlessly, responding because it must--the shell breaks underground from the inward pressure, the outer warmth and fertile moisture. Shall I one day become a flower for you and know the sun? I am still in the dark, and rather blind, and yet happy to be living. You my awakener, it seems to me you're finding no such happiness. Am I too much for you, Jimmy? Too weird and different? Poor Jimmy, did you want only that May-day moment, and then discover the dryad had caught you fast and would not let go? There are thorns in my branches, I suppose. I never wanted them to wound. Oh, I must write no more like this, or I'll be needing you too much to sleep. "Don't look distressed, as you did last night, and ask me, what are we to do? I don't know yet, Jimmy. There's an answer and we'll find it somehow. Likely it will be you that finds it, and not myself. I don't know. Maybe I'd never try to tell you what to do, even if I were inwardly certain what was best. May-day, it seemed ridiculous to me that anything about this could be a solemn Problem--no more a problem than the romping of animals. It is, of course--I merely had to shove that aside (without regrets) for the sake of May-day. It is, and I--(here comes a truth, my darling, that may be unwelcome or distressing; if it is, just set it down to my weirdness and forgive me for it)--I am, in many important ways, a much more civilized human creature than you. So civilized--so wide a gap between the cool life of the mind and the violence of that primitive part which never grows civilized in anyone--that I can never hope to explain myself, or be anything but a stranger to the easy routines of existence. My mind looks down on both of us, Jimmy, sees well enough that we are foolish lovers running into the jungle blind--(running, I will not say driven)--and inviting disaster in everything we do. But if now I only glimpsed you or heard your voice--why, away with all thought, the self you roused up on our May-day would be mad for you, throw away all sober knowledge, bite your throat, dance like a maynad and burn your flesh in a blaze of love." DEFENDANT: The word is "maenad," if it matters. MR. HUNTER: I stand corrected, I suppose. May it please the Court, my understanding was that any interruption of this reading would be made by counsel, in an orderly manner, not by the accused who is not at present under oath. JUDGE MANN: It must be so ordered. I hope you understand the legal necessity, Miss Blake. If any other point comes up, please draw your counsel's attention and let him deal with it. That is the method required of us here. Incidentally, if anything during this reading makes it desirable for you to confer at any length with Mr. Warner, a short recess can always be requested, and the Court stands ready to allow it. Go ahead, Mr. Hunter. MR. HUNTER: Well, the first letter is nearly finished. It concludes with these words: "Understand, Jimmy, that I fit no pattern. No one can own me, no one can make me over. I was born a heretic and so live. No one can catch me except if I will. "I love you. "Callista." The second letter, also from Callista Blake to James Doherty, bears no date except Thursday, but it is in an envelope marked PERSONAL, addressed in typing to Mr. Doherty at his office at Judd and Doherty, 12 Somerset Street, Winchester. The postmark on this envelope is June 18th. It reads as follows: "Dear-- "More than a month ago I wrote you a letter, and I remember that although you didn't say so, you weren't exactly pleased at my doing it. So I am reckless, but look, love, the heavens didn't fall, the grass is still green and soft (as we should know) and so here I go again, because I want to take advantage of an evening when I seem to be fairly clear-headed, or as near it as I ever am. Anyway, darling, you told me Miss Anderson is out with a cold, so this is sure to pass through no hands but yours, isn't it? "Jimmy, I can almost wish that Ann did know. Don't blow your top--caution will prevail. I'm just wishing. The fact of secrecy I don't particularly mind--what business of anyone else is it that I love you? I don't care about parading you before the world in a proper woman's look-what-I-caught manner--that's nothing, to me there's even a kind of indecency in public possessiveness. But I do mind the limitations and humiliations of secrecy, the haunting by social fears, enforced furtiveness--can't go alone into a restaurant with you, where some friend of yours and Ann's might notice you together with that screwball broad with the limp. That I hate. It's a spoiling thing. I wonder more and more whether we are big enough to stand much more of it. And yet if you tire of me, or if the dreary social pressure forces you away from me--I swear the world's turning into one big God-damned suburb--I don't know what will happen to me. I don't know if I'm big enough to take it. I suppose I am. I just don't know. "Please tell me: is your own religious feeling so strong that you do actually feel sinful when you're with me? I hardly dared write that. Do you realize how badly you hedged when I asked you almost the same thing two nights ago? I wasn't asking about Ann's views, blast you--I know she'd condemn the whole thing without a moment's pause for thought--I wanted to find out how it was with you, but all you could talk about was how Ann would feel. Well, I picked the wrong time of course. A real feminine trick, to cross-examine you with your head on my breast and only a few minutes after the little death. Bitchy of me, I suppose I was going by instinct, and when I do that, bitchy is my middle name. But see, dear, everything's calm now, I'm not whispering in your ear, I'm only fumbling for words on paper. I suppose you do know, don't you, that if you had to be free of me I would let you go? The dryad's thorns would scratch some--that I couldn't help, couldn't help your bleeding a bit--but they couldn't hold you, and would not. I don't want you as a prisoner. You are already a prisoner, and I wish I might set you free. MR. WARNER: I will call the jury's attention to the fact that there is no actual break in the letter at the point where Mr. Hunter stopped reading. The thought there is incomplete, and Miss Blake went on to complete it in the same paragraph. MR. HUNTER: I will call the jury's attention to the fact that I have been reading a rather difficult handwriting for several minutes, and am slightly hoarse. I would also point out that it is the end of a page, and the indentation at the beginning of the next page looks to me very much like the beginning of a paragraph. MR. WARNER: Mr. District Attorney, you must have noticed that Miss Blake's writing does not make a very precise left-hand margin, but the paragraph indentations are characteristically quite deep. MR. HUNTER: Very well--I don't want to argue a point like this--it's all one paragraph if you like. May I continue? MR. WARNER: By all means, finish the paragraph. MR. HUNTER (reading): "... No, I don't hate Ann, I was not thinking only of Ann when I wrote that. "Another thing, by the way, that I hardly dared to write. "Jimmy, I need to know: if Ann would allow a separation, and if we went somewhere--no matter where, so it's a long way off--would you be mentally, emotionally _able_ to live with me? Look into yourself. Tell me, if you can, what would happen inside you, supposing the situation was like that. Make it far away--Arizona, Tahiti, island of Capri, who cares?--and I am with you, in your bed at night and with you in all the long bright days. Would you see me still as a human woman who loves you and who would be happy to bear you children?--that could be, you know; a doctor assured me of it a couple of years ago, the little deformity is no obstacle. Or would I become the whore who 'led you astray' and 'wrecked your life'? "You know, Jimmy, it hasn't seemed to me (but I could be so damned wrong!) that religion goes very deep with you. Isn't it mostly a matter of being brought up in a certain way that automatically shuts out other views without seriously examining them? I'm trying to suggest that unlike Ann, you're really not embedded in religion like a fly in amber. I've made no secret of my own agnosticism with you--wouldn't have occurred to me to do so--and that hasn't appeared to trouble you particularly. You do shy away, you don't like the topic, I suppose you feel the way so many people do nowadays, that religion is all right but talking about it is not quite nice. But I can't imagine that you condemn me in your heart (do you?) for relying on my own reason, being unafraid of doubt, interested in proof, critical of all self-appointed authority? "So I'll even dare ask you: just where is the mercy, the rationale, the loving-kindness, in an ethical-religious system that makes me a whore bound for hell because I love you and welcome intercourse with you and want to live with you? "I want to see you tomorrow, Jimmy. You spoke of having to work late because of Miss Anderson's being out sick--may I come there in the evening, just to see you for a few minutes? I'll be well-behaved (I hope). There are one or two other things--things even I don't care to scrawl on paper. If you call and say I mustn't come, of course I won't, but--please? "For the first time in our experience I shall be listening for the phone and hoping you don't call. 'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways'--I can't, I can't. "Callista." The third letter, members of the jury, is again from Callista Blake to James Doherty. It is dated June 25th, just a week later than the one I last read, and was addressed, like the other two, to Mr. Doherty at his office. It reads as follows: "Jimmy-- "Didn't you say you would call me Monday evening? What happened? I remember you said you would be tied up over the week end--if only my silly hungry arms had been the rope to tie you!--well, so I counted the hours to Monday evening, and glued myself to the phone, but no Jimmy. I know I mustn't call your house--you needn't have reminded me of that, last Friday! Tuesday, though, I did try to call you at the office--I'm sorry, Jimmy, I know you didn't want me to, but I was miserable, I had to try to reach you somehow--but you were out, anyway Mr. Judd answered the phone and said you were, and he sounded so chilly--am I a black cat across his path or something?--I didn't know he disliked me. What's happening, Jimmy? Could be purely my nerved-up imagination. But all week, no Jimmy. Couldn't you at least have got as far as a phone booth? Oh hell, I'm writing like a sniveling brat. "Lately I've been having too many morbid thoughts. I know I behaved badly Friday evening--you didn't want anything to get started, and I had to act like a whining bitch in heat. You should know there's more to me than that--I guess you do, I guess you do. Well, since that evening I've now and then thought of us--I even dreamed something of the kind--as if we were no wiser than a pair of kids slipping out behind the barn to study the difference between a boy and a girl--with peevish grown-ups likely to come around the corner of the building any minute. I've lost some of the dream--I think we did get caught and stood there frozen waiting for the wrath. Only the boy in the dream wasn't quite you. Be jealous, damn you. "Are we so terribly far apart? I'm beginning to understand there's plenty about me you don't even like. It's not strange. Didn't I tell you at the start, or try to, that I'm not easy to get along with? I often have a bad enough time trying to get along with myself. But Jimmy, Dearest, _all_ people are far apart in a lot of important ways. No exceptions. And all people have elements in common too, things they can share, use to bridge the gulf between self and self, if they only knew it. Don't you think we have enough in common so that if we both tried hard and honestly and lovingly, we could live happily together? "I know, I know--I wrote that as if I were assuming that Ann would set you free. Oh, I like you and don't like you, for not wanting to talk about her with me. Like you for it because I know it's loyalty, you're trying to be fair to her, spare her pain, you still love her in many ways--and somehow I know about all of them, and respect every one of them whether you believe that or not. And dislike it, it hurts, because--well, because I happen to be the one under the gun, Jimmy, and I keep thinking if I knew more about her I might see my own way better. I love you in ways she never imagined, couldn't imagine. She's not a passionate woman, Jimmy--as I don't suppose you need to be told. She's sweet, possessive, domestic, good to you so far as she knows how to be, loves you in her fashion so long as you conform to what she wants you to be. Undoubtedly it troubles her that you haven't happened to have children yet. Loves you in her fashion--oh, Jimmy, to my thinking, and I'm not a fool, loving an image of what you'd like another person to be, that's not love at all, just self-love and arrogance. "Am I doing it too? Am I in love with what I wish you were? I mustn't _always_ shy away from that thought--I'll have to look at it straight some time, can't now somehow, not now, not now. I don't think it's true. Anyway I will assure you, pretty Ann never woke up at night whimpering your name and tasting blood on her lip. "There's no solution that won't hurt somebody. I'm selfish too--like you, like Ann if she knew and understood, I don't want to be hurt any more than I have been. I don't hate Ann, I don't want to hate her. I don't want anything except to get away somewhere with you--are we savages to be held in line by magic words mumbled in the mouth of a priest?--because I love you best and need you. "Silence is the cruelest of a coward's weapons. It's not like you to use it against me. Please write, or call me. Please come to me. "Callista." The fourth letter is typed, dated July 5th, 1959, and signed only with a typed capital J. You remember yesterday Mr. Lamson testified that James Doherty himself, as well as Miss Blake, acknowledged his authorship of this letter. It reads: "Dear Callista: "I meant to write to you sooner, but have been very busy, so am afraid the time has slipped by, besides I do not know just how to say what I ought to, except that we must relinquish the prospect we have discussed and that you mention in your letter, as it would not work out for the best but am afraid would have bad consequences to all concerned. I consider myself very much to blame having given you a wrong idea of the situation, although that certainly was not my intention. I think all we can do is try to forget about it, because that is what we must do, unless the situation changes some time. I am sorry to have to say it as you may feel disappointed and that I have let you down, as a matter of fact I feel that myself, am afraid I may have treated you rather badly letting you take things for granted when I ought not to have done so, although that was not my intention, and am very sorry if it is so. I feel you are not to blame in any way but I am, I know, and the only thing we can do is sort of forget the whole thing and hope you can forgive me for letting you down. "Sincerely, "J." "P.S. I feel we ought not to get in touch again about this for a while as there is nothing we can do. Please read between the lines and don't be angry." Since the defendant appears to find this letter amusing, I can only say that her sense of humor has not much in common with mine. MR. WARNER: Is the defendant on trial for changes in facial expression? I did not know that an unhappy smile was an indictable offense. JUDGE MANN: The comments of both counsel are out of order. Continue, please. MR. HUNTER: As you have already heard, members of the jury, the last letter we have here was not mailed, but found in Miss Blake's possession. During her interrogation by Mr. Lamson, she stated certain reasons for not mailing it--part of the testimony which you have heard, to which you will give whatever weight you believe it deserves. This last letter is dated August 8th, 1959, more than a month after Miss Blake received that letter from James Doherty. I would remind you too that August 8th was the day after the picnic which has been mentioned several times in the testimony. The letter reads: "Dear Jimmy: "Understand, before you start reading this, that you need not answer it unless you wish. I will wait a while, and then take silence for your answer if that is how it must be. I had almost accepted silence already, or thought I had, most of the time this last month. But I saw you yesterday--might have stayed away, meant to, could not--with all the fog of company manners between us, and discovered what I should have known: I am not cured of you. I wish I were, and I shall be after a while. I've wished I could hate or despise you--can't do that, but I'll be able to forget you sometime, and if there's no happiness at least there will be peace, of one sort or another. "I have gone by two periods, Jimmy. In those good days of June--yes, they were good--we evidently managed to start a certain arrogant little Blake-Doherty thing which now lives in me as if he belonged there. And he does. What does this knowledge do to you? Sorry? Scared? Maybe a little bit happy, or proud? Or just angry with me? I'm shocked to realize I don't know you well enough to guess the answer. "One thing I will not do--and your religion would approve my decision, I believe (at the same time that it provides some cruel obstacles in the way of carrying it out). I will not, Jimmy--I will _not_ creep off on the wrong side of our idiot laws and have an abortion. I want this child. Crazy of me it may be, but I already love it, while it's just a blob of almost-nothing that'll soon be making me sick and physically scared. I want it. "And I want the child to have a father. From the start. I've seen too much of petticoat government--it reeks. I don't trust my own self to bring up a child alone. In spite of all the best knowledge I have, sooner or later I'd have some damned uprush of maternity to the brain and start making a lot of the mistakes all mothers make--including some my own mother made with me, no doubt--and nobody to check me, nobody to fill the father's place that must not be empty if a child is to grow up straight and good. I won't have my baby crippled that way. "He's yours too, Jimmy. It's your seed in me, the life-package from all your grandfathers and grandmothers. He's from Ireland, dear, he's from Italy where my father's mother was born, he's from one of the embraces when your sweet strong body could not free itself until I was willing to let you go. I frightened you sometimes, didn't I? I will again, or at least I dream of it. "All right, let's be sober. For religious reasons, Ann will never even consider a divorce. There is such a thing as separation, that would allow you to provide for her but live with me. The legal formula is not too important to me--I wish we might have it, but it would not hurt me to live without it, and we could educate the child so that his understanding would be too big to care for such cretinous words as 'illegitimate.' With your training you could find work anywhere in the States--or abroad for that matter, Canada, England, Australia. So could I. I understand the kind of art work that makes money, as well as photography. I also know shorthand and typing. We'd make out wherever we went, and be the same as married. It only needs your will for it, Jimmy, and an amount of courage that isn't abnormal. Others faced with the same difficulty have done it. "Granted, Ann would be hurt badly, for a while. She'd consider us both lost in sin. (Do you?) Her pride would be hurt, and her love for you, which may be strong--I don't know that, yes or no. Jimmy, you and Ann don't have children. You and I do have a child. Granted also that Ann is good and sweet and conventionally right. Does that give her the right-- Members of the jury, three words are crossed out here, but not illegible. It is my understanding that these letters will be available for the inspection of the jury; the purpose of reading them is to save time and to make sure of the correct interpretation, as Mr. Warner pointed out. Now I think I should read these crossed-out words, but will not do so if the defense has any objection. Do you wish to look at the page again, Mr. Warner? MR. WARNER: Not necessary, but wait a moment, please. [_Conferring with defendant._] The crossed-out words may be read, so long as the jury is given the whole picture. The words are still legible, it's true, but not clearly, and it was evidently not Miss Blake's intention that they should be legible, if she had ever mailed the letter. MR. HUNTER: Thank you, Counselor. The words crossed out are "to destroy us"--"Does that give her the right to destroy us"--but with those words crossed out, the letter reads thus: "Does that give her the right to keep you and me apart and prevent my child from having a father? "Living seems to be full of situations where you can't do a good thing without an accompanying evil. I suppose it's questions of this kind that make people give up trying to solve their own ethical problems and ask some supernatural authority to do it for them. And yet I would think that the only answer in any such dilemma is to decide which is greater, the evil or the good. If they seem to balance, doubtless inaction is better than trying to perform your good act. But if one is clearly greater than the other, isn't the answer plain? I know this goes contrary to your religious views, but Jimmy, this once, think whether I may not be right and yourself mistaken. "I am trying to think straight, about the years ahead, the child, about living with you, the difficulties we'd face. I'm trying not to remember that you did look at me yesterday once or twice as a lover might, and with the sunlight falling across your cheekbones, before I quit playing with the Wayne kids and wandered off. Maybe some time I'll tell you where I went and what I did. "I can't think of Ann as anything but an innocent bystander. She needs you in the common ways, but I--" Members of the jury, the letter ends there. The State rests. JUDGE MANN: The Court will hear any motions. MR. WARNER: Your Honor, I move that the case of the People against Callista Blake be dismissed on the following grounds: one, that the prosecution has not demonstrated that the death of Ann Doherty resulted from a criminal action; two, that the prosecution has not, by witnesses, connected the defendant Callista Blake with the death of Ann Doherty beyond a reasonable doubt. JUDGE MANN: The motion is denied, Mr. Warner. Are there other motions? MR. WARNER: No, your Honor, not at this time. JUDGE MANN: The Court stands adjourned until 1 P.M. 7 Upon this, by us has she been required to voluntarily declare herself to be, and to have always been, a demon of the nature of a Succubus, which is a female devil whose business it is to corrupt Christians by the blandishments and flagitious delights of love. To this the speaker has replied that the affirmation would be an abominable falsehood, seeing that she had always felt herself to be a most natural woman. Then her irons being struck off by the torturer, the aforesaid has removed her dress, and has maliciously and with evil design bewildered and attacked our understanding with the sight of her body, the which, for a fact, exercises upon a man supernatural coercion. BALZAC, _The Succubus_ I In the robing room after the noon recess, Judge Mann was assailed by a feeling of being out of place, ludicrously so, dismayingly. The village atheist blundering into a crowd of churchgoers to retrieve his hat; or an explorer required to take part in a tribal ritual without a briefing on the rules. Innocent oversight, by the way, on the part of local chieftains and witchdoctors, for why wouldn't they assume that everybody knew the rules from infancy as they did? _What am I doing here?_ He could ask the question of Joe Bass and receive an intelligent answer. No good. No use making Joe uneasy about the Judge's state of mind. Even the door to the courtroom looked unfamiliar. Why had he never before noticed that the swirling grain of the oak resembled the smoke lines of a bonfire? He stood with his hand on the knob, reflecting also that technique is not enough: he should spend several months, say a year, in a special kind of discipline, before it would be right to start taking piano pupils--supposing he had any such intention. He turned the knob, hearing the muted uproar of a hundred conversations in the dull room beyond; opened the door a crack, and the noise became a sonorous flow; opened it then all the way, and the roar was shut off by the action, since every talker had been watching that door, impatient for the continuation of ritual. _For example, I would have to learn much more about children_-- "All rise!" He walked to the Judge's bench a stranger. Why the devil must they stand up? Settling their damn lunches? Seated, noticing how quickly today the rustle and throat-clearing subsided, his eyes were annoyed by shabbiness. Old stains, scratches on the woodwork, in every corner a pinch of dust; on every face--Callista Blake's, Hunter's, even Mr. Delehanty's--the marks of that peculiarly human strain that people experience in the presence of the heavy institutions they themselves have made. Maybe his eyes were exaggerating the dust, to support the bias of his mind, which insisted on pointing up the dirt, cracks, awkwardly mended spots and general bad housekeeping of the law itself. _Well, there are certain things to do before I go._ "Are you ready for your opening, Mr. Warner?" "Yes, your Honor." The Old Man could hardly say that no one is ever ready to send his love into the bonfire. "Members of the jury, I don't think you want to hear any elaborate opening speech from me. A great part of the defense of Callista Blake has already been brought out by testimony for the prosecution. I am not referring only to the transcript of the interrogation of Miss Blake by District Attorney Lamson, in the course of which she told practically everything that she can tell if I put her on the witness stand. I am thinking, for example, of the testimony of a very honest and impartial State policeman, concerning footprints and other evidence by that pond in Shanesville. I'll revert to his testimony in my closing words. I'm thinking of the testimony of Mrs. Jason." Anyway, Mann thought, Cecil Warner's voice was in good shape; he was slow, and calm, and steady on his feet. "And I am thinking, of course, of those letters written by Callista Blake which the District Attorney by some process of reasoning utterly beyond me--I suppose it's reasoning--appears to regard as evidence of guilt. "We're confronted here, ladies and gentlemen, by a case in which the most vital elements are intangible, subjective. Now, the law doesn't like intangibles. That's natural. If we're dealing with clear, everyday facts of observation we know where we are, we're used to thinking in those terms, we can manage as well as if we were manipulating a solid object in the hand. Take a common sort of case for an example: a man falls in getting off a bus, is injured, and sues the traction company. All right: you've got eyewitnesses, medical testimony, and a few fairly simple questions to decide: did he fall? was he injured, and if so how badly? was the bus company at fault, and if so what's a just compensation for the injuries? A jury will have minor difficulties in a case like that: there's the possibility that the man's a clever fraud, and since most people are not good observers, the eyewitnesses may contradict each other a little, but on the whole juries don't have too hard a time in reaching a fair verdict in such cases. "Here it's not so. In this case the tangible facts are hardly in dispute, the vital problem is the interpretation of those facts. There was aconitine in Callista Blake's apartment; the defense has not denied it. I know, and Callista Blake knows, why it was there; the State will try to tell you it was there because of a deep-laid premeditated plot to kill Ann Doherty. Ann Doherty did drink the poison there, undoubtedly; we know it happened accidentally, the State will say she was intended to drink it. The State has demonstrated an affair between Callista Blake and James Doherty; we have not denied it nor thought of denying it. And the State, by inference, supplies Callista Blake with the motive of common jealousy and argues that this led to premeditated murder. Now Callista herself knows that isn't so; I know it, and so do a few others really well acquainted with her: they're aware that no degree of sexual jealousy would ever drive her to perform such an act. But how in the world is she to prove it to twelve honest jurors who never saw her before the trial? It's just not in the field of tangible proof. I could put her on the stand, and if she talked to you all day long, what could she say on that subject that isn't already said in the traditional words she's already spoken when she was indicted?--'I am not guilty.' Finally, the defense does not deny that Callista Blake drove out to Shanesville soon after Ann Doherty left. The State will have it that she went out there in a sort of pursuit of Ann Doherty, to make sure Ann died. We know she did it because she had just discovered that Ann might have got some of that stuff; we know she went out there in an attempt to reach Ann before it was too late and save her life; and it was too late, and Ann Doherty was dead. So there you have state and prosecution asserting precise contraries. We cannot, by tangible evidence, prove the intentions, motives, ideas of Callista Blake; neither can the State. In this connection I'll merely remind you for the present that the State's own witness Sergeant Shields very clearly and carefully said there was no way of telling how Ann's body got into the pond; he made it clear there isn't a scrap of that precious tangible evidence to show that Callista Blake did anything except stand there and look down, as she told Mr. Lamson she did. "Because of the nature of the case, the primary questions of reasonable doubt and criminal intent or absence of it, I am intending to call only two witnesses for the defense. As a prosecutor, and taking it for granted that he has somehow honestly convinced himself of Callista Blake's guilt, it was unavoidable that my able adversary should have piled up all that mass of circumstantial evidence, even though hardly any of it was in dispute. As a prosecutor, he had to do it; trying to your patience as well as mine, but that's how the law works. Yet when the dust of argument has settled and you've gone into that jury room, I think you'll see--or more likely you do already--how the whole thing comes down to the question whether or not you believe Callista's word. The two witnesses I mean to call are the two who can come nearer than any others to telling you, showing you, convincing you, what kind of girl, what kind of human being Callista Blake really is. And I have no more to say by way of argument until after they have been heard. Miss Edith Nolan, please!" She came forward not briskly but with poise, her thin face showing the gravity of concentration. She wore the same green tweed suit, in some need of pressing, that she had worn all through the trial. The dark shade, nearly the green of hemlock, set off her red hair pleasantly, the Judge thought, but did not belong too well with light blue eyes; and to wear the same costume four days running was maybe a little odd. He noticed also, and hoped the jury would not, her moment's hesitation as Mr. Delehanty recited the oath and held out the Bible for her. Probably she would prefer to affirm but had decided against such action to avoid offending the jury, accepting what to her might be a distasteful absurdity for the sake of her friend. Edith Nolan would not be, like Mrs. Jason, a truth-teller at any cost, though the Judge supposed that whatever she said would be in the service of truth as she saw it. And what would Callista Blake do if and when it was time for her to take the oath? If Callista had learned anything yet about the grown-up necessities of compromise, it did not appear in the evidence nor in her own actions thus far. The girl who made the responses in the Lamson interrogation seemed too young, too sharply earnest to understand flexibility or the art of yielding minor issues for the sake of great ones. He thought: _Let her learn it quickly!_ And instructed himself irritably to quit borrowing trouble ahead of time. Miss Nolan also took care to make no open demonstration of the friendship which the Judge knew existed between herself and Cecil Warner. One swift eloquent glance he saw, a silent declaration: "_I'm with you and will do whatever I can._" Then she was in the witness chair, private tensions skillfully hidden, giving routine information: age thirty-one, unmarried, portrait and free-lance photographer, A.B. Radcliffe plus a year of art school, studio and residence at 96 Hallam Street, Winchester. "Is that address near to 21 Covent Street, Miss Nolan?" "Yes, four of those long uptown blocks." "How long have you known the defendant Callista Blake?" "It's almost a year and a half now. She's been my assistant at the studio since July of last year. She answered an advertisement of mine, I employed her, and we very soon became close friends." "Did she take her apartment at Covent Street soon after she began to work for you?" "I think it was the same week. I helped her look for it." "The close friendship you speak of--tell us more of that, will you? For instance, you're familiar with the details of Callista's life--past history, opinions, tastes, temperament, things of that sort?" "Yes, Mr. Warner. A year and a half isn't a long time, but I think I know Callista as well as I could know my own younger sister if I had one, or better. Interests in common, a natural sympathy I suppose it might be called. We agree on many things, and when we differ we know how to talk, get our ideas across to each other." "Your shared interest in artistic work has been a large part of that bond of friendship, hasn't it?" "Yes, it has." "Do you at present do any artistic work yourself, besides photography?" "Not just at present. I have in the past. Illustrations for a children's book a couple of years ago. Nothing grand, but I hear the kids liked them. A few things like that." "In any case you do have professional training and professional standing. I'm going to ask you for what the law calls an expert opinion. Miss Nolan, if you were not personally acquainted with Callista Blake, and if you were called on to judge her work, say in an exhibition of good serious modern painters, how would you rate it?" Judge Mann saw T. J. Hunter consider an objection and settle for a somewhat elaborate bored look. The red-haired woman smiled, for the first time. Mann's pencil on the doodle-pad rather angrily crossed out its attempt to draw her face, not in cartoon but in a portrait sketch. It had escaped him altogether. _I haven't got it._ He laid the pencil down. "It's hard to imagine myself not acquainted with Callista. But I think I can do it, Mr. Warner, for that one question. If I knew nothing about her, if I were seeing her painting or drawing for the first time under those conditions, I think it would be likely to outshine anything else in the show." "If it were like this, for instance?" Intent on Edith Nolan's face, Mann had not been aware of Warner's drawing from his pocket a folded cover paper. Now it was in the red-haired woman's hands, and she was taking from it a page, evidently from a small scratch-pad, gazing at it and steadying it with her other hand because her fingers had started to shake. He thought in distress: _Damn it, we do have to have some rules_-- "Oh! When did she do this, Mr. Warner?" "This morning, in court. Scratch paper. Before the reading of the letters, when Mr. Hunter and I were in side-bar conference and nothing else was happening." "She was remembering little Doris Wayne." "May it please the Court, is Mr. Warner introducing some of the defendant's art work as an exhibit for the defense, or is this just a love feast?" "Mr. Hunter, I think your sarcasm may be distasteful to the jury as well as to the Court." _But it isn't, and Terence, for Christ's sake hold your water! That was too strong._ "May I see the sketch, Miss Nolan?" Warner handed it up. Turned away from the jury, his round sagging face showed nothing of triumph, looked only tired and frightened. Another face confronted the Judge, with the arrogance and pathos and curious vulnerable mirth of childhood. Doris would be about ten, said Callista's affectionate unsentimental lines, and she was amused about something: perky, uncertain, lovable, maybe a bit dangerous. He thought: _Now I know. And though I know it, she still could die. Judge Cleever_--"I don't suppose it would qualify as an exhibit, Mr. Warner, since it isn't directly relevant to any of the legal issues. However, if you wish the jury to see it, the Court has no objection." Hunter said quietly: "But I object. I haven't seen it, but I consider the introduction of it an unwarranted attempt to influence the jury's sympathies with irrelevant matters, and by an improper method." "I will overrule your objection, Mr. Hunter. The defense is privileged to question Miss Nolan as a character witness. Miss Blake's artistic ability is an aspect of her character that it would be absurd to ignore. No objection was made by you when Mr. Warner asked Miss Nolan for an expert opinion in the field of art, in which she's evidently qualified to speak. The introduction of this sketch is merely a natural means of supplementing and demonstrating what Miss Nolan has to say." Reluctantly, for it was loss of contact with something valued and not yet understood, he watched the drawing pass into the lumpy hands of Peter Anson, foreman, hands that held it briefly under bothered eyes and passed it on. Casually, and perhaps to cover the intentness with which he was watching the jury, Cecil Warner said: "Being older, more experienced, art school and all that, you've taught Callista to some extent, haven't you?" The drawing escaped from the blank glance of Emma Beales into the hands of LaSalle, which held it for some time, and gently. Edith Nolan said slowly: "About technique, handling materials, things like that, yes, Mr. Warner, but ..." The drawing rested in Mrs. Kleinman's lap while she changed to reading glasses; probably the good lady couldn't get used to bifocals. "Her ability is very much greater than anything I have, so it would be truer to say, Mr. Warner, that she has taught me." Mr. Fielding looked at the face of Doris Wayne with lifted brows that might mean indifference or annoyance, and passed the drawing to Helen Butler. "You see, aside from her own talent, Callista has that faculty of searching out whatever's best in anyone, and--" _Why must Helen Butler look at me? I am not Callista's accuser!_--"and making it better if she can." _Don't get too rich for their blood, Miss Nolan! Hide a little the fact that you love her, or they'll begin to discount what you say._ And yet, the Judge reflected, she could hardly be expected to dissemble; there would be a false note if she did. And how softly the woman was speaking!--as if they were here not to consider Callista Blake's life or death but only to talk about her as friends might talk affectionately of another in absence. He looked again at the jury. Miss Butler had relinquished the drawing to a hand from the back row and was frowning into the distance, her mild intelligent face more disturbed than he had seen it at any time during the trial. A Sunday painter, wasn't she?--he tried to remember her answers during voir dire examination, but they had gone vague: a rather mousy personality, good and pleasant but not strong. The foreman Peter Anson fidgeted irritably, and settled into a glumness. Something wrong there. Judge Mann felt a kind of pain, in its beginning hardly distinguishable from a twisted muscle or the first warning of nausea. Anson's blunt face had become readable; at any rate Judge Mann's interpretation of its look came to him with such force that it was difficult for him to doubt his own insight: the blobby features were saying that to Mr. Peter Anson long-hairs and especially long-hair intellectual women were one big pain in the ass. You could understand it. Anson was a man who liked things simple and comfortable; he wanted larger issues settled by authority and formula, and you could say the wish derived from an honest humility, inarticulate awareness of his own mental limitations; unfortunately it meant that anything not covered by authority and formula must be brushed aside, or ignored--or hated. Confronted by a manifestly human Callista Blake or Edith Nolan--well, Anson was a good little joe and would try to be fair about it; BUT ... Only later did the Judge admit that his sense of unease, so much resembling obscure physical pain, could be the beginning of despair. The drawing came back to Warner from the hands of Peter Anson but without another glance from him; for a moment his stubby hands were eloquent, saying: "_This paper has nothing to do with me._" "It's true, isn't it, Miss Nolan, that although you're naturally fond of Callista and loyal to her, the fondness and loyalty are based on understanding? I mean, you know your friend's faults and weaknesses too. You have, maybe, something of an older sister's detachment?" "Yes, I think it's fair to say that. Mr. Warner, if that drawing isn't to be used further, as an exhibit or anything--may I have it?" "Well ..." The moment was a long one, Cecil Warner turning to look at Callista Blake with something more than inquiry, Edith and Callista gazing at each other directly, unsmiling, yet the Judge wished the moment might be prolonged for the sake of his own understanding. A kind of brilliance and a hush; the courtroom no more present than the ocean is present at some moment of wind and shining sand and sunlight: only the three of them; the three of them, and himself somehow more than a simple observer. Callista smiled: climax of a moment that could have lasted no longer. Warner was saying quickly: "Of course, my dear--" and giving the drawing to Edith, who put it away in her handbag and shut the clasp with care. "Now would you, as an observant friend, say that Callista is moodier than most people? Subject to depressions?" Hunter bayed: "I suggest Miss Nolan's qualifications as a psychiatrist have not exactly been established." "My question refers to a simple observation anyone might make." "Is that a formal objection, Mr. Hunter?" "No, your Honor. But I hope the testimony isn't going to stray into fields where only a psychiatrist would be competent to speak." "Let your mind be at rest on that point, Mr. District Attorney. Is Callista Blake subject to periods of depression, Miss Nolan?" "Yes, decidedly." Judge Mann considered the possibility of exaggeration, not falsehood exactly but close to it. Surely Callista Blake was not what his brother Jack would call a depressive type, if that word was still favored in the jargon. "However, Mr. Warner, I think Callista's depressions are generally related to some external cause. Related to things that happen to her." _Yes, Redhead, that helps--some._ "Were you at all acquainted with Mrs. James Doherty?" "By sight, hardly more. I believe I met her three times in all, when I was visiting Callista's family in Shanesville." "Have you met Mr. James Doherty any more often than that?" "I don't think so. Same occasions, and then one or two times since Mrs. Doherty's death, in connection with this case." "Callista never told you much about the Dohertys, either of them?" "No, not much, until last July. Then she took me into her confidence about the episode with Doherty, which had ended then, or so she hoped." "She said that? That she hoped the affair was ended?" "Just that, as I recall. She showed me that letter from Doherty, the thing that was read in court, and then later--well, next morning in fact, she said: 'I hope it's over. I hope I'm done with the fever and the blindness.'" It could be despair, that dullness in him like a bodily ache. The Judge found he was again studying faces on the jury. Emmet Hoag bored, half asleep by the look of him. Ancient Emerson Lake neither bored nor hostile, his gaze rigid, vaguely vulturine, apparently hypnotized by the swell of Edith Nolan's breast, under the tweed suit hardly more than hints of fullness and softness, but evidently enough to set an old man dreaming in his rank and lonely antiquity; would he be hearing what she said at all? Young LaSalle seemed indecisively friendly, Mr. Fielding remote behind an unreadable pallid front. The Beales woman studied Edith Nolan's green handbag, possibly wondering if it was a style that would suit herself. Mrs. Grant appeared grumpy; likely her bony frame was uncomfortable in the graceless seat of the jury box. The only faces of the entire jury that showed any positive liking for Edith Nolan were those of Helen Butler and Rachel Kleinman. He saw Dora Lagovski apparently submerged in moist daydream; recalled that when Callista's drawing had reached her he had seen the damp lips form (in merciful silence) the word "cute." Emerson Lake's jaw was now moving slightly, approximately in time with the mild rise and fall of Edith Nolan's breathing--damn the old buzzard. But what about himself, aged forty-seven and for the last few minutes intensely aware of Edith Nolan as a desirable woman? Weren't his own wits wandering? So far as the Judge could see, Edith Nolan was doing nothing to flaunt her personal attractiveness. Probably to many eyes she would have none. Her make-up was not prominent, the tweed suit practically dowdy, her manner consistently simple and direct. If his wandering middle-aged eye wanted a tickling, why not choose an obvious pin-up type like the juror Dolores Acevedo? He forced himself to glance in that direction once again. The black-haired beauty was showing no more emotion at present than Mr. Fielding. Very lovely indeed; made more so by her position next to the sallow weediness of the schoolteacher Stella Wainwright. Lovely like a conventional painting, Acevedo--and no more disturbing. Her face blurred; the instant's involuntary motion of his eyes transformed it to another, also under black hair: but these were close-set curls, the face altogether different, not beautiful at all by common standards but rather homely, big-nosed, small-chinned, the eyes sea-blue and, not for the first time, frightening. "_It wasn't natural how men went crazy for her--not even pretty--any man, garage man, anything in pants...._" That peevish outbreak from Maud Welsh had puzzled the Judge at the time. Now he could sense the quality in Callista that Maud Welsh had meant. Earlier perhaps he had been too intensely preoccupied with other aspects of the case and with his own situation as Judge, the lawyer and judge dominant, the male animal quiescent or at least temporarily locked up in the cellar. Yes, she had it, the quality sensed but not understood because understanding is a verbalizing process and there aren't any words for the electric something-or-other that will make men turn in desire toward one particular woman in a crowd, ignoring others who may be in a dozen ways prettier, more agreeable, more available. Callista had it. Edith Nolan, in her own totally different way, had it, at least for himself, perhaps not for most others. No: Maud Welsh wouldn't have been likely to make that remark about Miss Nolan. _Yes, they are wandering._ "Do you recall, Miss Nolan, what day it was that this conversation took place, about Doherty's letter?" "Yes, it was the evening of Monday, July 6th, the same day Callista had received that letter." "I'll ask you to tell the circumstances more fully in your own way." "She telephoned me, that evening, soon after going home from my studio. Asked me to come over to Covent Street. Her voice sounded as it might if she'd been in physical pain. I went at once, and found her--well, dazed, sick, in shock you could call it. She'd been in one of her blue moods all week, I didn't know why. She held out that letter to me. I read the thing. I remember I told her she'd feel better if she could cry, or smash dishes, anything to break the tension that was making her sick. She did cry, the only time I've known her to do so. And told me about it. Everything, I think. Except at that time she didn't know she was pregnant--a few days past the period, not enough to signify. When she was able to talk she was much better, got things in proportion, summed it up quite realistically herself without my saying much. She'd loved him a while, the kind of infatuation any lonely and imaginative girl might experience; then when she most needed him he'd broken it off, and that was that." "Objection! Irrelevant opinions." "Objection overruled." Judge Mann reflected dourly on the legal unwisdom of what he was about to add, and added it: "It appears to the Court that the witness is concerned with matters of fact as she saw them, speaking to the best of her knowledge and belief." _Old buzzard, pint-size Emerson Lake in a black silk nightie, you wanted that startled blue-eyed glance, the warmth of it and the friendliness, and you knew you'd get it: consider whether that was why you spoke._ "Exception." "Did Callista say anything to suggest she was thinking of suicide?" "Two things, Mr. Warner, which I didn't understand at the time as I should have. When she was crying and hysterical, she said: 'I want my father, my father, I can't find out how to live without him.' Well, I knew he'd died away back when she was seven years old. Then later she said, twice I think: 'I wish I was dead.' That--oh, I took it to be simply an unthinking expression of grief and exhaustion. It seems to be a thing people say without considering quite what it means. I took it that way: alarming but not to be understood literally. But I think now, she meant it literally." "You stayed with her a while, I suppose?" "Yes, took her back to my place and made her go to bed there, gave her a sleeping pill. I played some hi-fi records, things she liked, until she fell asleep. In the morning she seemed to be in good command of herself, sense of humor restored anyway. That's when she said she hoped she was cured, and for a while I stopped worrying about other things she'd said." "But only for a while?" "Only for a while. During the following month, the rest of July, it was clear that things weren't right for her. Not herself. Deep abstractions for instance, when she wouldn't answer because she really didn't hear. Normally with me she's completely courteous, wouldn't dream of ignoring a question if she heard it. In July she was slipping down into the bluest of blue moods, and I couldn't reach her. I wondered about pregnancy because of what she'd told me, and asked her about it, I guess a week after she'd first told me the situation. She said: 'Oh, I'm all right.' Mistakenly, I took that to mean she'd had the delayed period. Either she answered evasively, which isn't like her, or she didn't understand my question. The last, I think. I think she was in such a faraway mood it was hard for her to get hold of what people said." "Did she say any more, that month, about suicide?" "Indirectly, yes. One evening we got into a sort of general talk, just kicking ideas around. She said some individuals are deficient in the will to live; living is desiring, she said, and such people don't desire strongly enough for a complete effort to stay alive. Well--something in it if you're speaking of certain pathological cases--catatonics I think the doctors call them--patients who just lie around, won't eat or even move, a kind of death in life. But that's so far from anything in Callista's make-up, I couldn't believe she was talking indirectly about herself. She said not all zombis are in the psychopathic hospitals. Later--this did alarm me--she remarked that she'd have no problems worth mentioning if she could discover any purpose in existence. A depressive remark, certainly. She wouldn't have said it if she hadn't felt she was losing her hold on things, losing her interest in living--and if I understand it correctly, Mr. Warner, that loss of interest is the danger sign. People can talk a lot about killing themselves, and nothing happens. But if the interest in living goes--" "Objection! This is exactly the sort of thing I was afraid of, your Honor. I don't care what she calls it, Miss Nolan is now lecturing us like a professional psychiatrist, and I object." "Overruled." _I believe I snapped; the rumble on the left is the noise of calf-bound law books revolving in the grave._ "The Court has not received the impression that the witness is claiming any professional standing in psychiatry. The remark you object to, Mr. Hunter, was a general one, to be sure; but she was speaking of matters that are either common knowledge or ought to be. I must rule that the defense is within its rights to let her follow this line, to help clarify her testimony on matters of fact." _And where in the pluperfect hell do I dig up a precedent on that one?_ "Exception." "Yes. You may complete what you were saying, Miss Nolan." "If the interest in living is gone--I mean the simple wish to stay alive and see what will happen next--then I think there's real danger of a suicide. And as the Judge said, Mr. Warner, I guess that's pretty much common knowledge. Callista herself was certainly aware of it, from her reading, her general education. Well, that remark about discovering any purpose in existence--I caught Callista up on that, I remember. I reminded her that we make and choose our own purposes--" (_Watch it, Red!_)--"so far as we know them." She understood the danger, probably, the risk of touching on any questions that, for most of the jury, were settled on Sunday morning and decently ignored the rest of the week. "She--thought about that, I'm sure, and for a while I think she came part way out of her depression. Not all the way." "Summing up then, Miss Nolan: knowing her as you do, and seeing her, I suppose, every week-day during last July--you're convinced that most of that time she was behaving like one in the grip of a serious depression with the possibility of suicide?" "I don't have any doubt of it, Mr. Warner--now. I ought not to have been in doubt at the time. If anyone is guilty in this case it's myself, because I ought to have stayed with her just about every minute until she won her way out of that mood. Then there would have been no chance for the horrible accident that makes it possible to charge her with--" "Objection!" "Objection sustained." She looked up with understanding and no reproach. The man in private applauded her doubtless intentional violation of rules, while the Judge must condemn. "The witness's answer will have to be stricken." _It comes to me, I did not add that the jury is to disregard it. That all right, Red?_ "Miss Nolan, I understand you weren't present at a certain picnic in Shanesville last August 7th. Did you know about it at the time?" "Yes. I closed the studio that afternoon--the weather was impossibly hot. Cal said her mother was having one of her picnics, and thought she might go. Cal didn't ordinarily care for that sort of thing, but I--oh, I guess I just told her to run along and have a good time." "Did Callista speak later of seeing the Dohertys at that picnic?" "Yes, Monday. All she said was that they were there, and she hadn't talked with either of them. I asked if she was--cured, and she said: 'Oh, Edith, I can't talk about it yet, I can't.' I had to let it go at that. All that week she was very blue. She was working hard--too hard; volunteered to straighten out some of my records. Afraid to relax, maybe." "When did you last see Callista before her arrest?" "Friday, August 14th, when she left the studio after work." "What did her mood seem to be at that time?" "Tired, unhappy, withdrawn--but maybe a little more composed. I knew that, left to herself and barring unforeseeable accidents, she'd find good and reasonable answers to her troubles, but--Mr. Warner, it's strangely difficult to help anyone you love." "Did you talk to her on the phone that week end any time?" "Yes, late Sunday afternoon, the 16th. My father was in town that day, a flying visit, unexpected. Callista had never met him. I wanted her to. I called her late in the afternoon, past 5:30 I think--to ask if she'd like to come over in the evening. She said she might, but there was something she had engaged to do first. She sounded very much better. Not happy, but--calm anyhow. She didn't say what the engagement was, and didn't make it sound like anything too important. It could have been a reference to Mrs. Doherty's coming to see her--I mean, nothing Callista said was inconsistent with that. She could hardly have talked to me as calmly, almost cheerfully, as she did, if she'd still been overwrought or--or had known she was heading toward something disastrous." "When she didn't come to meet your father, did you call her?" "Tried to, a little after nine--that would have been when she was out in Shanesville, according to what she told the District Attorney. I wasn't worried when she didn't show up, just supposed that something had delayed her until too late, and that she'd bring me up to date when I saw her Monday." "What was her usual time for coming to work in the morning?" "Any time before ten was all right with me. That Monday, August 17th, she telephoned me at about ten and said she was sick. Her voice was completely changed: flat, dead. I asked of course what was wrong. She said in the same tone, without hesitation: 'I've been pregnant since June and last night I had a miscarriage.' I told her I'd come over as soon as I could get rid of a client who was waiting in the studio. She said then in a very distressed way: 'No no, Edith, please don't!' She insisted she was all right, and then for a moment or two she was almost incoherent, saying she--oh, refused to drag me into her troubles, things like that. I said nonsense, I was her friend and that's what friends are for. Finally I asked if there was anyone with her, and she said no, but there would be presently. I thought she meant her mother or maybe her stepfather or both--she didn't say so, it was just one of those mistaken impressions you get under stress." "You didn't go over?" "No, sir. I thought that if Mrs. Chalmers was there I'd likely just be crashing in and doing more harm than good. I called again, later. Busy signals. When I finally got through, about one-thirty, the phone was answered by some policeman who asked me a few dozen questions and was finally willing to tell me that Miss Blake had been detained for questioning on a certain matter, as he called it, and was at the courthouse, at Mr. Lamson's office." "Who was that policeman, if you recall?" "Gage or some such name." _One for the Chief of Detectives. The Judge will not smile. There is no reason to smile._ "Did you then go to the District Attorney's office, Miss Nolan?" "Yes." "Were you given any information about your friend?" "No, sir, just a brush-off from some clerk. That's when I started trying to call you, Mr. Warner." "Yes. I have only one or two more questions, Miss Nolan. Did Callista ever express to you any hostility toward Ann Doherty?" "Never. I recall that she spoke of her several times, but never with hostility or resentment or anything suggesting jealousy. No exaggerated friendliness either. I got the impression they were--acquaintances." "Well, for that matter, did you ever hear Callista speak maliciously about anyone?" "Never." II "Your witness, Mr. Hunter." Edith Nolan thought with an edge of panic: _Is that all, Cecil?_ The Old Man's face was saying a kind of good-bye to her, turning away, not apparently displeased or disappointed--satisfied rather, so far as one could hope to read a face that must also be presenting a front to the gaze of the jury. But there was so much more that ought to have been said! The intimate truths of personality, relation, individual quality, that become no longer small once your vision is clear enough to separate the general from the specific, to see the primary core of self and the universe its matrix at one and the same time, neither too much distorted. It seemed to Edith that she had hardly begun to talk to those twelve, who were certainly not all dull, not all hostile. Was there, for example, no way at all to explain that Callista had a comic brown mole near her navel, that when she was absorbed in reading her left forefinger twisted a black curl above her ear, always the same curl, the same small motion--and that these facts, alone and of themselves, were reasons as great, valid, finally convincing, as any of the other reasons why she must not be slain? Still it was not, ultimately, a question of explaining anything, of offering facts to twelve other minds with the assumption that they could view them as you did. They could not. If it isn't in nature for two pairs of eyes ever to observe a simple physical object in quite the same manner, how grotesque to expect twelve minds to agree, or even approximate agreement, in the consideration of an abstract idea! What was needed, she thought, was that twelve minds should learn (here and now and very quickly) a type of humility in the face of the unknown that even the strongest and best schooled intelligences found it hard to achieve with study and leisure and every advantage of the past's accumulated resources. Unknown indeed--these people knew nothing of Callista Blake. They never could, in the nature of things, know much, never acquire more than a brief distorted glimpse of her, and that under conditions so outrageously far from the daily norm that her actual self appeared to them as no more than the flicker of a shadow. The kindly and badly troubled little man up there on the bench knew far more about her than they did, simply because he was trained to observation and the disciplines of independent thought; and he knew only a trifle. _How little I know myself, or ever will know!_ She controlled her face to the semblance of tranquillity. The long-jawed man had arrived with his athletic grace, a foot raised comfortably on the platform that elevated the witness chair, his charcoal-gray suit just right for the occasion, neat and grave like a uniform. At close range, Edith noticed his expression was not particularly cold or severe. His eyes were thoughtful, his features betrayed no ugly tension. What is cruelty anyway, and how do you read it in another? It seemed to be present like an occasional tic (but might not really be) in the vacuous face of that oaf Hoag in the front row of the jury box. But in T. J. Hunter? At the moment he looked like a solemn salesman about to give her a well-spoken pitch, say on insurance or a middle-priced car. "You would do virtually anything, would you not, for your friend Callista Blake?" "The best thing I can do for her is tell the truth about her and about these events, so far as I know it, and that I've done." "Your answer is not quite responsive, Miss Nolan." "I think it is, but I'll be more specific if you wish. I would not commit crimes for Callista Blake or any other friend, if only because in the long run you do your friend no service that way--compounding wrong things instead of lessening them. And I would not lie for her on any important matter, because it happens the truth is best for her as well as for me." "That's quite a pragmatic attitude, isn't it?" _My, the high intellectual plane!_ "Naturalistic might be a better word, Mr. District Attorney, but pragmatic if you like. If an ethical principle isn't at least theoretically practical in human affairs, I'd rather leave it in the books." "I see your point." _If only you did!_ "You wouldn't kill in defense of Callista Blake?" "Why, I might. If it's a clear case of protecting a friend's life, the law generally calls it justifiable homicide, doesn't it?" "But for you it would have to be a clear case, is that right? I mean, you're referring to something on the level of shooting a burglar to protect the household, something like that?" "I suppose so. I've never encountered any situation like that, so I really can't predict how I'd behave." "Let me make sure I understand your position, Miss Nolan. You do not believe in absolute ethical principles?" "Before I can answer that I must have your personal definition of the word 'absolute'." "You must be familiar with the term, are you not?" "Yes, but there would be at least five or six definitions of it in any unabridged dictionary, and I can't know which one you have in mind unless you tell me." "Well, I had in mind the meaning which I think is generally used in philosophical discussions: self-contained, self-dependent, ultimate, in other words free from the limitations of human error, human perception." "Thank you." _He is a shade tougher than I thought._ "In that case the answer would have to be that ethical principles are human achievements, human ways of thinking and acting, and I don't see how a human activity can ever be free from the limitations of human error and human perception." "Very plausible. I see you've done quite a bit of thinking along these lines. That is what you mean by what you called a--a naturalistic attitude, I think that was your term?" "In part, yes." "Oh, there's more?" "As a well-read man, Mr. Hunter, you must know that the conception of naturalistic ethics is at least as old as Confucius, that libraries have been filled with it, and that we could talk here on the subject until the end of next year with a great deal left unsaid." "Well, I'm afraid there might be a fatigue factor." "There might indeed." _Was I quick enough to steal some of that applause of witless laughter?_ "It would take quite a while just to find a little agreement on definitions and first premises." "Maybe." He looked downright friendly, she thought, until you noticed the rigid watchfulness. His smile was comfortable; he probably felt that the rumble of amusement was, on the whole, one for his side. It probably was. She risked a glance toward the jury. Most of them looked puzzled, but none really irritated except little Mr. Anson; Flint-face Fielding seemed coldly interested, but whether in a favorable or hostile way there was no telling. In Helen Butler Edith saw a tiny flicker, surely friendliness, as their eyes met for an instant. It might mean recognition and memory, but if Miss Butler had any thought of disqualifying herself because of a trivial meeting months ago when they had not even exchanged names, she would surely have done it already. _Best not look at her again._ "I think, Miss Nolan, I'd better go back to my original question. I gave you my definition of 'absolute,' you remember, and you said--which sounded reasonable to me--that human activity can't very well be free from human error. Now, may I take that as a positive no to my earlier question: you do not believe in absolute ethical principles?" "Not quite, Mr. Hunter. Some ethical principles take on the apparent quality of absolutes, or of universal law, simply because virtually all the members of a society endorse them. In other words we act as if those principles were absolutes, whether we can justify it logically or not. So let me put it this way: I believe in following certain ethical principles as strictly as though they had the nature of universal law, so long as my own conscience, my own intelligence, can agree to it." "I see. But that means, doesn't it, that your conscience is actually, to you, the supreme judge?" "In a sense it has to be." "For example," said Judge Mann suddenly, and Edith turned to him feeling as though he had reached out a hand to aid her in crossing slippery rocks above a torrent--"for example, if an individual accepts the orders or doctrines of an external authority, would you agree, Miss Nolan, that his acceptance is itself an act of his own conscience, or will, or intelligence?" "Yes, your Honor, that expresses what I had in mind." The Judge said: "In fact the individual can have no dealings, no contact with ideas or doctrines or even with simple observation of the physical world, unless there is first a positive action of his own intelligence. Is this still in line with your thought, Miss Nolan?" "Yes, your Honor." "And--I'll be done in a moment, Mr. Hunter--and finally, would you agree, Miss Nolan, that this decidedly elementary fact is often overlooked in our everyday thinking, perhaps because it's so obvious that we aren't willing to give it a second glance or work out its implications?" "I believe so. We accept the fact the way animals accept the air they breathe, and with no more thought." "Yes," said Judge Mann, his gaze leaving her, maybe reluctantly, as he scribbled something on his note-pad, "life was breathing air a good many million years before a fairly advanced science noticed that air was a mixture of different gases, had weight and mass, other properties. Well, go on, Mr. Hunter." Edith thought: _Maybe that'll larn him._ And over there beside her friend, the Old Man's dark eyes were watching, saying as plainly as eyes could say it that he was pleased with her, and that he was profoundly frightened. "I've enjoyed this little excursion into philosophy, Miss Nolan, and I'm glad his Honor lent us a hand with it--'way over my depth, I'm afraid--but now I suppose we'd better get back to the facts. Well, one thing first: am I right in supposing that in your view, this--this act of acceptance, I think you called it, has to happen first before one is even allowed to believe in a Supreme Being?" She could not help glancing toward the Judge, who was watching the prosecutor, coldly intent and unjudicially angry. The corner of her eye gave her the solemn approving nod of the juror Emma Beales, the sudden relaxation--_everything's all right, boys_--in the foreman Peter Anson. She understood that Judge Mann was waiting for her. "Mr. Hunter, I also enjoyed that excursion into philosophy, but unless the Court rules it's relevant, I will not discuss my views on religion with you." "They are not relevant to the case," said Judge Mann, "and the witness is not required to answer." Hunter nodded politely. "I've certainly no wish to press the point. But may I ask--and by the way, I won't urge you to respond to this question either if you'd rather not--may I ask, Miss Nolan, whether you're willing to state the reasons for your refusal to answer?" "Quite willing. Religion is a topic that too easily stirs up a lot of emotion if there's any serious discussion or conflict of opinion. I assume the members of the jury belong to more than one religious faith. Some of them might share my views, others might be offended by them--I can't tell. But since religion, so far as I can see, has absolutely nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of my friend, I think it would make no sense anyhow for me to get into the subject." The Old Man over there nodded slightly, maybe a kind of cheering, a way of saying his gal Red could take care of herself. _But can I?_ "That's reasonable," said T. J. Hunter almost affectionately. "You're right it's a touchy topic, right also that it has no direct bearing on the question of guilt or innocence; and I'm as anxious as you are to avoid stirring up needless emotions or side issues. The only thing I do wish I could get at along this line--my only reason for speaking of it at all--well, Miss Nolan, if you have no unqualified belief in absolute ethical principles, and if a question about belief in God is merely distasteful to you, don't you think that might have some slight bearing on your credibility as a witness in a murder trial?" The Old Man was standing up, his voice slow in coming, slow-moving when it came as if each word must force its way past an obstacle in his throat: "Mr. Hunter, that is vicious and contemptible." And before stage anger took control of the handsome mask with the shovel chin, Edith glimpsed the fact that T. J. Hunter was at last genuinely pleased about something. "I must ask you to watch your choice of language, Counselor." "No more of this," said Judge Mann. "The attention of both counsel, please. Your question, Mr. Hunter, was entirely out of order, because it implied that a person with independent views on religion has a lower regard for the truth than others--an implication with no slightest basis in fact or logic. From her answers, her manner, her educational background, there is every reason to suppose that Miss Nolan has quite as high a regard for the truth as anyone else who has testified in this case. You will withdraw your question. Mr. Warner, your remark to the prosecutor was ill-chosen and unparliamentary. It calls for an apology to him, I think." Hunter spoke gently: "I withdraw my question." "Mr. Hunter," said the Old Man wearily, "I was influenced by personal feeling as I should not have been, and my words were ill-chosen. My apology, sir, if you can find it acceptable." Very gently, Hunter said: "Why, of course, Cecil." And more gently still: "I will ask no further questions of this witness." She stood up, dizzy. Some passage of words between Cecil and the Judge. Redirect examination--there would be none. She heard the Judge say after an impatient throat-clearing that she was excused, and through a sudden maddening colorless blur she saw or imagined that Cecil was achieving a sort of smile for her. She stepped down carefully, concentrated on preventing her fingers from reaching after a handkerchief or rising toward her face. If she could keep her head turned away from the jury, they might not see. Her seat was over there somewhere, beyond the bald skull of the fattest reporter at the press tables. Cecil was still smiling, more or less. _But I lost. I lost._ _Callista, what have I done to you?_ III Callista thought: _I am stronger than she is, and never knew it before. Why is she crying, after she was so wonderful?_ It was no trick of vision; no mistaking the intrusive brilliant glitter on her cheeks as Edith stepped down and walked rather clumsily--but head high--toward her seat. She would not retire in any sniffling droop: rather, Callista knew, she would be furious at the weakness, and maybe not reach for a handkerchief even when she was clear of the arena but keep her head high and angrily observant, let the sparkle dry on her face and stay there, the hell with it. _But I am much stronger. I can hold up too, even better. I won't let hunter-Hunter trick me into saying anything he can use. I'll play the act to the limit. For Cecil. For Edith. For myself. And isn't it time now?_ Yes, it was time. Cecil was whispering to her. Watching Edith still, ready with a smile if Edith would only look her way, Callista lost his words and had to ask him to repeat. "I'm putting you on now. Feeling all right, Cal? Steady?" "I'm fine, Bud. Steady. Let 'em all come." It occurred to her that she really did feel in excellent condition. This was the end of the long affliction of waiting, mute listening, anticipation: now at least she could attempt to do something. Cecil rose and moved away; he was up there near the witness stand, calling her name, smiling a little--_Himself, not like my father. It is time. First to Mr.-Delehanty-which-is-the-Clerk._ At close range Mr. Delehanty's eyes appeared curiously vacant. She found a moment's fantastic pleasure in proposing to herself that the poor guy might actually have died long ago, leaving a fruity voice, a magnificent suit of clothes, and some structure (partly plastic?) designed to hold the two together world without end. The arm mechanism must be especially clever, to carry on that Bible routine. She held her hands at her sides, and before the melodious rumble (a concealed recording?) could start, she spoke quickly as she had rehearsed herself last night while Matron Kowalski was playing the usual games with that light bulb in the corridor: "I affirm that I will tell the truth, the whole truth so far as I know it, and nothing but the truth." At the corner of her eye she glimpsed Cecil's stricken look, and thought: _Oh yes yes, I should have warned him._ Her thought continued with an irritation which love somehow magnified instead of diminishing: _What's the matter anyhow? Must we be so timid? They're not going to condemn me for such a thing as that. Are they?_ Mr. Delehanty made an indeterminate fogbound noise. Judge Mann said evenly: "The oath is binding in that form--should there be a question in anyone's mind. The witness is exercising a constitutional privilege which ought to be familiar to everyone." She felt he would have liked to speak to her directly, humanly. Instead he turned to the still faintly resonating Delehanty and remarked in a casual undertone too low for the jury's hearing but not for hers: "You might be interested to know, Mr. Delehanty, that I chose to affirm when I took the oath as a justice." _You were not actually speaking to that-which-is-the-Clerk--I heard and I'm grateful._ "You may take the stand now, Miss Blake." They were trying to help her. Cecil, Edith, now Judge Mann who, as Cecil said, had tried all along to give her every break--tried too much for his own good, maybe, and hers too. She understood that he not only desired to help her: he _saw_ her. Her mind grew dizzy, shifted, retreated, sought to steady itself, reason and unreason quarreling within. Were they, the three of them, treating her as they might treat a difficult child? She fought down the illogical resentment, despising it, conquering it--almost. She was seated, the ungainly witness chair still warm from Edith's body. How different the courtroom looked from up here! A whole new orientation. Just look, for instance, at that big slob in the back row smuggling a candy bar up to the pink slot in his shiny face. Had that operation been going on since Monday morning? _Look, Daddy! Is he s'posed to eat in here, Daddy, is he s'posed to, huh, Daddy?_ The jury too. (_Where's Jimmy?_) The jury was closer, much closer. She could smell them. One of the females gave off a powerful tuberose reek, variable as drafts in the large room stirred it about. (_Where's Jimmy, if it matters?_) Callista decided the smell was generated by the Lagovski, probably in heat. Any minute now--well, Emerson Lake was the biggest, but pretty old; maybe one of the more vigorous younger males-- "Callista--" _Please stand near me always!_--"you're a resident of Winchester, aren't you?" "Yes, sir. 21 Covent Street." "You've kept that apartment?" "Oh yes. Edith Nolan is taking care of it for me." "Ought to be back there in a few days." _How do you do it, Cecil, that casualness? You're hurting inside worse than I am. I feel fine._ "You were attentive to all of Miss Nolan's testimony, weren't you?" "Yes, I was, Mr. Warner." "Before we go on to other things, is there anything in that testimony that you want to comment on, or add to, maybe?" _You told me, give them modesty. "Every one of them knows, Cal, that you're in their power. Think what that does to twelve human egos, and show them the respect they believe they deserve. In fact don't just show it: try to make yourself feel it." I will give them modesty, Cecil._ "I think she overrated me as an artist, Mr. Warner. It's her honest view, I know, but I'm not that good." _Who knows for sure? Maybe I am._ "Well, as you know, I set a very high value on your work myself." His quick relaxed smile was including the jury somehow. _Wish I could do that._ Or some of the jury: his glance had been directed, she thought, toward the crinkle-faced middle-aged lady. _Name?--Butler, Miss Helen Butler._ Callista ventured to meet the woman's eyes, did so, and was frightened to realize that for the instant's duration she was not certain what her own facial muscles were doing. _What did I actually do?--make a face?_ Surely there had been a gleam like friendliness in Helen Butler; just as surely, the woman was now looking down at her hands, and away across the room, troubled but otherwise communicating nothing at all. "However, Callista, I was thinking chiefly of other things Miss Nolan said--for instance her belief that you might have been experiencing a serious depression, perhaps suicidal, last July and part of August. Was she right, Callista? Were you at that time, or any part of that time, actually contemplating doing away with yourself?" "Yes, I--yes, I was." "It was a definite intention, my dear?" "For a while, yes. It wasn't so until I happened to see those plants in my mother's garden. Maybe not too definite even then. I only thought: this would be one way. Then I was thinking, why not take a few, have them on hand if things got worse? Then I was actually taking them, breaking off the tops and shoving them away in the tall grass, keeping the roots." "But I presume you must have been working up to that state of mind for quite a while?" "Yes, I had been. It was like a progressive illness--well, I suppose that's what it really is. Each day a little emptier than the one before, a little harder to care about anything." "You made that infusion of the roots in brandy?" "Yes, the next day." "Do you recall the circumstances--what part of the day it was, say?" "It was evening, after I'd stopped trying to write that letter--the one I didn't finish, didn't mail." "You gave up entirely on that letter, didn't you?--I mean, you decided it couldn't do any good?" "Oh, that's true. I was imagining communication when--when in the nature of things there just couldn't be any. Jimmy--Jim Doherty and I never really--never _saw_ each other, never heard--" "Callista, I'm not sure the jury--it's a difficult thing to express." "I know, Mr. Warner, and I'm doing it badly. Well--sometimes a person can get rid of the self-preoccupation long enough to really _know_ someone else, without illusion or pretense. It's like that with Edith Nolan and me. We--communicate. But with Jimmy--with Jim Doherty and me it was all illusion. On both sides. And I gave up on that letter because I realized rather suddenly that I was--talking to someone who wasn't there." (_And he isn't here in the courtroom--he is--it doesn't matter._) "You asked something else--oh, about the monkshood. Yes, I made the infusion that night, and then pushed it away to the back of the shelf. I don't know how to tell this either, Mr. Warner. There's a fascination about an ugly and foolish thing like that. I don't understand it: it takes hold of you in spite of yourself. I remember I almost poured out a drink from it, that night, simply from a sort of curiosity, and then I thought--this is going to sound idiotic--" "Never mind, just tell it as it comes to you." "Well, I thought: Look, Callista, if you can be interested and curious about a miserable thing like this, maybe you could be interested in better things. After a while if not now. So don't drink it. And I didn't of course--I just pushed it to the back of the shelf and--oh, I read that evening, I think. Some book or other. It didn't hold me, I wasn't quite alive, but it was something to do. That Saturday evening after the picnic was probably the time I came nearest to actually drinking the stuff." "I see. A week later, Callista--I mean Sunday, August 16th--did you telephone to Ann Doherty?" "Yes, early in the afternoon." "You wanted to reach her and not Jim, is that right?" "Yes. If Jimmy had answered the phone, I don't know--I suppose everything would be different, wouldn't it? I wasn't prepared to talk to him then. Maybe I'd've hung up without speaking. Anyway Ann did answer, and I--asked her over." "Did you say why you wanted to see her?" "No, I--hadn't quite braced myself up to telling her the situation. I kept it to small talk, on the phone. She sounded very friendly--well, she always did. She happened to mention that Jimmy had gone to New York for overnight, and that's when I asked if she'd come over--said I wanted to talk to her about something. I don't suppose I made it sound important--as I say, I hadn't fully made up my mind about telling her anything." "Were you in a different mood that day, Callista?" "Very different. Some other things--nothing to do with Jimmy, or with Ann--had been sort of cleaned up for me, the night before." As she spoke, Callista was meeting her mother's gaze across the courtroom for the first time that day. Her words had no visible effect on the fixed pose of sad quiet, the dignity of the rejected Mother deeply wronged. Callista deduced that the Face of The Mother was saying: "_You see how it is: I her Mother am not even allowed to testify._" "I'm not sure, Mr. Warner, if it's what you call relevant." "Well, Callista, your mood, your state of mind at that time, is certainly relevant in the ordinary sense. Legally, the question of relevance gets difficult when we're dealing with subjective matters. If I correctly understand the rulings during previous testimony, the Court is taking a generous and realistic attitude on this question. The nature of the case demands it, since, as I said in my opening words, we are not contesting most of the circumstantial evidence. Subject to correction by the Court, Callista, I'll leave it to you whether you think that a mention of what happened the night before would help the jury understand your situation. If you feel it would, go ahead and tell it, and we can check you if it seems to be going too far afield." "I think it might help to explain things. But I'll leave out the details--they don't matter." _By the way, Mrs. Chalmers, I'm your daughter--remember? They tell me I'm on trial for murder._ "It had to do with my relation to my mother, Mr. Warner. There had been some--tensions between us for quite a while, and that Saturday evening--it was the 15th, wasn't it?--yes--we sort of cleared it up. In a way." _Mrs. Chalmers, Mrs. Herbert Chalmers, I am about to smile at you, toward you anyway. Will it make any difference?_ "You remember, sir--Miss Welsh testified about my going out to Shanesville that Saturday evening, and how bad-mannered I was--and I don't doubt I was too, I can be pretty stupid--call it a one-track mind. Though it's a fact I just didn't know Ann Doherty was there on the porch, until Miss Welsh testified to it. She must have been back in the shadows, I suppose, and I was thinking so hard about what I wanted to talk over with my mother that I didn't hear her speak." Callista felt her lips curve. It was surely a smile; she meant it for a smile. "I guess I was in a fog." Yes, fog--as inexorably as deepening fog, the realization came over Callista that Mrs. Victoria Johnson Blake Chalmers was quite simply not listening. Present in the courtroom, knowing at least as well as most of the other spectators the general story of what was going on down here in the arena; but not listening. Mrs. Chalmers was maintaining a Face; a very necessary thing to do. She would have been perfectly willing to smile back, Callista guessed, if she could have divided her attention, listened just enough to understand that it might be appropriate, right now, for the Face to smile. "So I went indoors to--see my mother, and we--talked." Fog--words pushed into fog move sluggishly, as if through pain. "Miss Welsh also testified to overhearing a few things. Was that testimony accurate, Callista?" "Oh, reasonably, so far as Miss Welsh knew, I'm sure. Mother was crying a little at one time, and I guess I did quote something or other from Shakespeare. I was sort of making a fool of myself." _Ten minutes from now, Mother, will it dawn on you what I said? You see, I haven't a notion what I'll be saying ten minutes from now. By the way, Mama, I don't see Cousin Maud. Is she home with the Plum Jam?_ "What Miss Welsh didn't hear, couldn't very well know, Mr. Warner, was that at the end we did get things sort of cleared up." _All right, stranger--no smile, just sad maternal forgiveness. One of Callie's little emotional upsets, you know--children are SO difficult!_ "And--here's why I thought it might not be out of place to mention it--that evening, that's when the suicidal depression left me. I wanted to live again. After I'd--said good-night to Mother." _Mama darling, why don't you lean over the rail, ask that fat guy at the press table, the bald one who looks intelligent--I think he'll tell you this is a murder trial. They're trying the funny-looking broad with the gimp leg._ "It left you suddenly, Callista, the depression? Like the end of a sickness?" "Yes." _Cecil, I love you._ "Yes, it was very much like that, Mr. Warner. Like coming out of a fever, or pain all at once ending. There was--too much upswing also, I guess you might call it. I was back with some of my illusions. I mean the illusions about Jimmy. I'd once more talked myself into imagining there might be--you know, a separation, what I'd been trying to write Jimmy about in that letter I never mailed. Most of the day, and even while I was talking with Ann on the phone, I was able to fool myself with that. Self-deception, it's like walking a tightrope, I guess: so long as you don't look down at the _fact_ of the ground a long way below, you can truly believe there's no danger, you're just walking. I think that all that day, until Ann came, I was--living inside of that illusion. Wanting something so much I couldn't see how ridiculous it was to expect it." _Look, Mother: I know I hurt you plenty of times. I was always nasty and hellishly difficult until I escaped from Shanesville and from you--but I never hurt you THAT much._ "I think now, Callista, you might go ahead and tell, in your own way, everything that happened that Sunday evening and night. I realize you'll be mostly repeating what you told Mr. Lamson last August, but I believe the jury wants to hear it direct from you, so--so just go ahead, my dear--take your time, try to remember everything important." _Don't be scared, Cecil. Yes, I know: this is it._ "Ann came to my apartment about quarter to eight, Mr. Warner. I can't bring back the early part of the conversation too well, except I know it was nothing important. Just usual comments on the weather, I guess--it was a very hot evening, sticky hot. Her suit--the powder-blue--it was summer weight of course, but I remember it looked sort of warm, I think I asked something silly about how could she stand wearing even the jacket in such weather, and--Mr. Warner, do I understand it right, that I shouldn't repeat any of the things she said? It seems reasonable that I shouldn't--after all, Ann's not here to set me right if I misquoted her." "That's how it is, Callista. I'm sure you understand it. Just tell your own side of it--what you did, what you observed, what happened." "Yes, I'll try. There was that small talk for ten minutes or so, and then I was going ahead, very clumsily I guess, telling her about--Jimmy and me. Oh, wait, one thing--I remember that at the start, when she'd just arrived, I was going to offer her a drink, and I didn't because I had a sort of half-memory that she didn't take alcohol. A mistaken memory--likely had her tastes confused with someone else's--but I know that was in my mind, that's why I didn't offer her one." _Cecil, I just invented this: is it any damn good?_ Apparently he was not displeased. "You didn't offer her a drink then or any time, is that right?" "That's right. You see, I--Ann Doherty and I were never really very well acquainted. I knew the Dohertys as neighbors of course, from the time they moved in there, but my mother and stepfather saw much more of them than I ever did. I can't say I really knew Jimmy, either, I--" (_Cecil, please give me a lift with this one_)--"well, I said something like that before, didn't I?" "The episode with him was--really no more than that, an episode?" "Midsummer madness. I must have been ready to go overboard for someone. It was chance we happened to meet, that May-day." _Handkerchief back in the sleeve, girl--let the palms stay wet, wouldn't look good to be wiping them._ "And things got out of control. So far as the affair is concerned, Mr. Warner, if there's any question of blame or responsibility, I'll take it. Nothing could have started if I hadn't allowed it. And Jimmy--well, I can't speak for him, but I know he didn't realize until much later how terribly important I'd let it become to me, for a while. He just slipped, but I went all the way over, head over heels, for a while, and nobody to blame but myself." (_Give me that look, won't you?--the Cecil Warner special. Tell me I'm doing all right._) "Then later when he did understand how I was making such a thing of it--well, poor Jimmy, he's not an unkind person and never would be, he was in a spot, I think. He couldn't bear to hurt Ann or me either, and couldn't do anything at all without hurting one of us. I don't know what he could possibly have done except what he did--break off the relation and let time take care of it." (_Did the jury see him go? I didn't. Here at the start of the day, that I know._) "Do I need to say any more about this, Mr. Warner?" "I don't think so. You're free to of course, if anything else occurs to you later. Do you want to get back to the Sunday evening now?" "Yes." _Mother's gone too, behind the Face--but that happened a long time ago. And Cousin Maud with the Plum Jam, I hope. What's the matter, you nice people--isn't the Monkshood Girl putting on a good show? Herb--shall I project the voice at you, Herb?_ "Where was I?" "You'd spoken of starting to tell Ann Doherty about it." "Yes. I tried to do it reasonably, but I think all I did was blurt one hint after another until she--understood. She did, I know--that is, she understood what had been happening. As I think I told Mr. Lamson, I didn't get as far as telling her I was pregnant. I got the other facts said, somehow or other, and she--said something that showed she understood, and then I was suddenly sick to my stomach." "She didn't appear angry?" "No, Mr. Warner. I believe--I believe what I said could have been taken to mean that the thing was completely ended. Of course I've no way of knowing if that's what she thought. She wasn't angry. And then my sickness, coming like that, confused everything else. I ran for the bathroom. I know Ann was sorry for me, trying to help. I was--call it hysterical. I yelled at her, couldn't stand the idea of her touching me while I was sick, only wanted her to go away. But she wouldn't, so I ran from her again, into my bedroom, and I locked the door." (_Help me now!_) "Yes, I know I locked the door." "That part is a perfectly clear memory, Callista? The physical act of turning the key or throwing the latch or whatever it was?" "Yes. Old-fashioned key--why, I probably never had used it before, no occasion to. But I did then. I threw myself down on the bed. My throat was still raw and sour from vomiting, I remember that." "Now you told Mr. Lamson that there's a stretch of a few minutes, in the bedroom, that won't quite come back. I take it for granted that since then you've been trying to fill in that gap in memory. Suppose I put it this way, Callista: is it possible now for you to add anything to what you told Mr. Lamson that day in his office?" _Not quite a direct lie required--thanks, friend. Not that it matters, direct or indirect. The letter killeth--inner Puritan, drop dead, drop dead!_ "No, Mr. Warner--as you say, I've tried ever since to clear up that part in my mind, but--I can't add anything now." _I don't dare look toward a certain flinty intelligent face--the name is Francis Fielding--and yet I'll do it._ He was very quiet, Mr. Fielding, alert, interested; no change or wavering in his smart bird-like eyes as she met their probing and tried briefly, unavailingly, to win a glimpse of the self behind them. _Once I watched a heron in my famous field glasses, motionless at the edge of a stream. Motionless, hunting motionless._ That had been only the summer before last, a trip alone in the Volks to the hill country. More of the day came back, a good day and the summer hush. Eighteen. The heron had remained a somber painted image until the frog returned to the bank; then he got his meal: too large a frog to swallow whole, so he knocked it to pieces against a rock and resumed his stillness. But Cecil was speaking. "I'll make a suggestion, Callista--a sort of hypothetical question, though I won't try to phrase it in precisely that form. Before you broke away and went into your bedroom you'd been, as you say, hysterical, sick, nauseated: too early for ordinary morning sickness I suppose, but the pregnancy must have had at least some influence on your condition. And you had undergone, were still undergoing, an intense emotional strain: the anticipation, the build-up to your interview with Mrs. Doherty, then sudden realization that it was wasted effort. Now I suggest that all those things coming together at once might have produced a plain old-fashioned fainting spell, a blackout from exhaustion. And I'll ask: is everything you remember about those moments consistent with that? It makes sense to you, that this could be what happened?" _Again the aid and comfort to the idiot Puritan: don't know why it should help to avoid the phrasing of a direct lie--superstition--somehow it does though and he knows it--my love is wiser than other men_--"Yes, it could have been like that, Mr. Warner." A half-seen glimpse of something kind in black-haired Dolores Acevedo might mean feminine sympathy, fellow-feeling--or something else, or nothing at all. The experts say, Callista remembered, that a person with an obsessive notion never actually performs the fantastic act he imagines performing--like for instance leaning forward in this chair and saying: "Dolly, I bet you know how it feels to go nuts for a good lay." "After going into the bedroom, what is the next thing that you remember positively?" "The next thing--the next thing I am really certain about is hearing Ann walk across the living-room--her high heels--to the front door. I heard the door close, heard her car start up and drive away. It somehow--released me--I can't think of a better word. I unlocked the bedroom, came out, got myself a drink of water. I went into the kitchenette to get that instead of to the bathroom. Then--not right away but very soon--I saw the brandy bottle had been pulled forward on the shelf, and there was a glass with a few drops in the bottom, and I knew what must have happened. It brought me out of my fog anyway. I knew I had to get to her at once if I could, and I wasn't able to think beyond that. What I ought to have done--I know it now--was call the police and tell them the emergency. They might have got to her in time and done something for her. But I was shocked silly, I couldn't think of anything except going after her myself, and that's what I did--tried to do." "Well, you didn't lose any time, I'm sure." "No, just grabbed my handbag off the living-room table and ran down to the garage. It's back of the apartment--overhead door always sticks, I remember I had to struggle with it as usual but it didn't hold me up long." _Nice old Em Lake, you had such a time yearning after my friend's mammaries--how will these do? Not big, but I bet anything you've seen worse. Drool, old boy, drool all you like if it makes a difference. Will I twitch my jacket back a little? Better, huh? Besides, away up there, sixty-five or whatever it is, doesn't it seem too bad to die at nineteen?_ "Can you judge about what time elapsed, from hearing Ann's car start to getting your own out on the road?" "It could have been as much as ten minutes. Until I saw that brandy bottle I was just dazed and stupid, not hurrying about anything. I don't know how long I was, coming out of the bedroom, getting that drink of water. I didn't look at the clock or anything, no reason to." "To be sure. Well--you drove on out to Shanesville?" "Yes, fast as I could. Wasn't delayed on the road. I pulled into the Dohertys' driveway, alongside the Pontiac--it was just as Sergeant Shields described it. The house was dark. My headlights picked up her handbag lying in the path, so I knew at once she must have gone that way." "Did you take the flashlight from your car?" "No, didn't think of it till I'd started down the path. The moon was hazed over, but still pretty strong light." _The Monkshood Girl will now look at the Foreman of the Jury._ "I supposed she must have gone to my mother's house, but when I came to that spur path I--thought--" Peter Anson would not look at her; she was certain he had been doing so, and intently, the instant before her own eyes shifted. "Take your time, Callista--by the way, would you like a sip of water?" "Yes, please. Thank you." _Thank you for more than that._ The water was cool and perfect; she held and turned the crystal of the glass until it gave her the excellent diminished star of the ceiling chandelier. Had it been burning all day? She couldn't remember. Probably; a gray series of hours, this Thursday, with a whimpering of December wind. _I'm sorry, Cecil, I know I'm stumbling, not doing very well--keep thinking about twenty-to-life--it wouldn't let me come to you._ "When I came to the spur path it was--oh, just a sort of sick feeling that I ought to look at the pond and make sure she hadn't--it was only a few steps, the light fairly good through the trees. I saw something in the water. It was white, some part of her white blouse." "You went down that steep path to your left, Callista? Stood on the path first and then over on the left side of the pond?" "Yes. I could see--enough to know. Then the pains began. I knew she was dead, and I knew what was happening to me. I guess I said, didn't I, that I'd wanted the baby, I wanted to bear it? Did I say that?" "Yes, my dear, you told Mr. Lamson that--I believe it's not been mentioned here until now. You really did want it, didn't you?" "Yes." "You needn't say any more about that now unless you wish." "All right. I ... well, I don't quite remember getting back to my car. I did it though, and when I reached the junction I remembered that thick second-growth woods across the road from my mother's house. So I parked by the pines, got over there--" _Don't do it, Mrs. Kleinman: Mr. Fielding wouldn't like it, anyway crying is just the glands going into an uproar. I'm not crying--see? Of course, if it means you don't want to burn me_-- "About that also, Callista, you needn't say any more than you want to. The fact of the miscarriage is enough, and I haven't heard the prosecution contesting it. Did you happen to have your wrist watch on, by the way?" "No, the sticky hot weather, it was chafing my wrist--I'd taken it off at my apartment. Well, when it was over I got back to my car, made the turn in my mother's driveway--" _Sorry, Herb, manner of speaking: she's a very important lady, you know how 'tis_--"and I guess that was the way Miss Welsh described it." "Do you recall seeing Dr. Chalmers on the porch, turning on the light?" "I think so. I was clumsy with the gears, backing and turning. Then I held up all right till I got home." "And then?" "I found I'd left the apartment door open. I remember closing it and leaning back against it. Then I was on my knees--I don't mean I fainted, I don't think I did. I think--does this sound possible?--I think I just fell asleep. Remember being on my knees, dropping forward on my hands, thinking how soft the rug would be if I could hitch over to it, and I must have done so, because when I came out of--it seemed like a sleep--I was there on the rug with my handbag for a pillow. After I got up I couldn't stop shaking for a long while. I wanted a shower, but couldn't make my fingers take hold of my clothes. The shoes were the worst. Did finally, had the shower too I think, and dozed off again. I didn't see the sun come up--it was in my eyes when I woke. By ten o'clock I'd pulled myself together somehow, got dressed. I called Edith. I knew I'd have to call the police." "You hadn't done anything with the brandy bottle after you first saw it had been moved?" "No, I hadn't, and I did nothing with it that morning--just left everything as it was. I supposed that was the right thing to do. But I didn't get up my courage to call the police until after my stepfather had telephoned me, and told me about finding Ann's body. I think it was about eleven o'clock that he called." "And when you did call the police, what you got was Sergeant Rankin." "Yes." _When we get this one over with we're done, aren't we, Cecil? Except for--except for_--"He turned up about twelve o'clock." "You recall his testimony on the stand?" "Yes. It was accurate except for what it left out, and his denials to you in cross-examination." "Before we go into that, do you want to tell your side of that thing about the aquarium, Callista?" "I might as well. It was a foolish impulse. I loved the things, and I had a picture of them going hungry and dying off with the apartment closed. If I'd stopped to think, I'd have known of course that Edith would take care of them for me." _I can't look across the room at you right now, Edith; I don't dare._ "After all she gave them to me herself. It was an impulse of--despair, I think. You see, until Sergeant Rankin made it plain to me, I actually hadn't understood how things were going to look for me. I wasn't thinking clearly at all until then. What he said--and did--showed me how it would be, that I'd be accused of murder and there'd be nothing to disprove it except my word--no tangible evidence in my favor, no one else with any first-hand knowledge of what happened. Naturally as a police officer, Rankin saw that aspect of it right away. Well, the aquarium--I wanted the little tropicals to die quick and easy, that was all." "I see. You said Rankin's testimony was accurate except for what it left out, and those denials. Will you fill in that blank? Just tell what Rankin did, to the best of your recollection." "When we were going back to the living-room after I had shown him the brandy bottle, he grabbed hold of me from behind. I was still feeling sick and confused, and startled by what he'd said a minute before--something to the effect that no one would believe my story. I wasn't expecting any physical approach like that. I guess I was aware that he'd started to get excited, but I supposed that being a policeman, he'd at least control himself. I said: 'Take your hands off me!'--something like that--or stronger, I guess--'Take your ugly hands off me, you fool!' He didn't let go. He said he could 'give me a lot of breaks,' as he put it, if I would--'put out.' I tried to break free of him, but couldn't. A sort of stupid wrestling match across the living-room. I couldn't get my wrist free. He forced me down on the couch. I tried to tell him then that I was ill, but it's possible he really didn't hear that. He was in a state of violent excitement--had opened his trousers and was trying to swing my legs up on the couch without letting go my wrist. I told him the Police Department would smash him for it and he'd wind up in jail no matter what happened to me. He managed to say: 'The hell with that--who's going to take your word against mine?' I said that anyhow I could testify he was circumcised, and since he wasn't Jewish that ought to give my word a little weight. It got through to him, and scared him. He gave me an open-handed slap across the face--just a nervous explosion, I guess, hardly knew what he was doing--and let go my wrist, stepped away from me across the room, got himself under control. When he turned back to me he was well behaved. He apologized, said there was something about me that made him lose his head. I think he spoke of having a wife and children, and then something more about it's being my word against his. I don't believe I was able to say anything except that I'd make him no promises about telling or not telling of it. He made his call to headquarters, and the aquarium thing was after that, I guess--yes, it was. What he testified about just sitting there till the others came--that was true. I don't think he looked at me once after that remark I made--something about a spring morning warmed up in the oven." "Yes, that seems to have made an impression on him." _And yet after all, Cecil, wouldn't we have done better to show Rankin as just one more creature caught in a drift of confusion, half ape, half civilized, like the rest of us?--or maybe we did succeed in doing that--I wouldn't know. LaSalle and Miss Wainwright look quite angry on my behalf. The Face of the Hoag expresses a certain disappointment: 'Wha'd he give up so easy for, and him a cop?' The Face of Fielding says quite truthfully that it hasn't a damn thing to do with the death of Ann Doherty._ "Well, Callista, I suppose Gage and the others arrived quite soon, as he testified. Do you want to add anything about that?" "No, I don't think of anything important. It was all about as Rankin told it, and then I was taken to Mr. Lamson's office." "And questioned there--do you happen to remember how long?" "I think, from about two o'clock until seven in the evening, when I signed that transcript." "Callista, I will ask you: was there ever any genuine hostility between you and Ann Doherty?" "When two women want the same man, there's bound to be, Mr. Warner. As a person--if it were possible for me to think of her apart from Jimmy--I had nothing against her. It's true to say I hardly knew her. We had nothing in common. She was a sweet, harmless girl who never did the slightest thing to rouse any hostility in me." "And I'll ask you, Callista: did you ever, at any time at all, entertain any sort of intention of doing away with her, or in fact of doing her any kind of harm?" "No. No, Mr. Warner. The worst I ever wished against her was that she would--let Jimmy go." "Callista, after signing that transcript in Mr. Lamson's office, did you receive medical attention?" "Oh--yes, I did. I sort of blacked out, after signing it. Came to in some kind of infirmary room--in this building, I guess it is. The police doctor was--all right." "Do you recall seeing me that evening?" "Yes, you were there at the infirmary, soon after I came to myself." "You remember my explanation of why I couldn't be there sooner?" "Yes, you told me you'd been out of town, and Edith couldn't get word to you until after six o'clock." "Did you see your mother or your stepfather that day?" "No. They came, I understand, but weren't allowed to see me." "So it adds up this way--correct me if I'm wrong: you had a miscarriage about nine o'clock Sunday evening, were in a state of partial or total collapse the greater part of the night. Then official questioning, briefly interrupted by attempted rape, from noon Monday until seven in the evening. Then medical attention. Do you think of anything you want to add at this time, Callista?" "No, I--" _There must be something. I am not ready_--"No, I don't think so, Mr. Warner." "You may cross-examine, Mr. District Attorney." _The Hunter is coming forward_-- 8 Whosoever now, Ananda, or after my departure, shall be to himself his own light, his own refuge, and seek no other refuge, will henceforth be my true disciple and walk in the right path. Reputed saying of GAUTAMA BUDDHA I "The chips are down now, aren't they, Callista?" _She'll understand that the best answer for that one is no answer. But I might_--Cecil Warner remained on his feet by the defense table until he could reassure himself that Callista did understand. She was watching the prosecutor with outward calm, her hands folded--white hands, actually strong, now seeming small and frail. "Mr. District Attorney, I have one or two old-fashioned quirks. It was natural for Mr. Warner to use my first name because he is a friend as well as my attorney. From you I would prefer a reasonable formality, do you mind?" _Yes--good--perhaps. Too highbrow for the jury, but it may upset his pace a little._ Warner sat down, forcing upon himself once more the resolution that he would not intervene except as strategy required it. She was, within obvious limits, on her own, and must fight in her own way. He must protect her to the full extent of his position and powers, but the jury must not feel that she was being overprotected. His own words must have the force of economy, and not be wasted merely to relieve his own anguish. T. J. Hunter was brooding over it. The hour was 4:15, the sky beyond the high windows altogether dark. The day would end with whatever Callista was able to say now, and perhaps in some short redirect examination after Hunter had finished. Closing arguments tomorrow, and probably Terence's summing up: T.J. was not likely to call rebuttal witnesses, and his method did not call for long-winded oratory at the end. The case was likely to go to the jury tomorrow afternoon or evening. _I am not ready._ "Very well, Miss Blake. I'm a plain man myself with only a commonplace education, and I'm afraid I'm a little bit given to plain speech. Did you kill Ann Doherty?" "No." "Why--she died of aconite poisoning, didn't she? And drowning? We've all heard that testimony." "Yes." "Are you saying someone else gave her the poison?" "She found the poisoned brandy in my apartment without my knowledge, she drank it without my knowledge. When she drowned in that pond, I was not there. I found her too late." "That is still your story, Miss Blake?" "Objection!" "Sustained." Except for silence, his graceful body stooped slightly forward as though setting itself for a predatory leap, Hunter gave no sign of noticing the interruption. "Do you wish to take an exception, Mr. Hunter?" "No, your Honor. Miss Blake, in your direct testimony I recall that you chose to qualify one of the remarks made by your friend Edith Nolan, a remark concerning your artistic ability. I believe you said she overrated you. Does that mean that in your estimation, your own estimation, you are really not much of an artist?" "No, that isn't what I said." "Then you do consider yourself an artist?" "Yes, but with less ability than Miss Nolan gives me credit for." "I see. In how many lines, Miss Blake?" "Drawing and painting. Nothing else worth mentioning." "Not in fiction?" "Objection! The question is wholly improper." "Sustained." "Exception. I was using the word in the purely literary sense--literature, fiction-writing, is surely one of the arts." "Mr. Hunter, since the question of Miss Blake's literary ability has never been introduced at any time in this trial until you mentioned it just now, the Court does not find your explanation altogether acceptable. You may have your exception of course. As you continue, you will avoid sarcasm and innuendo. Miss Blake is entitled to the same respect as any other witness." "I regret it very much, your Honor, if anything I said had the sound of sarcasm. It was not so intended. Miss Blake, as an artist, in your own estimation, do you share the attitude which I understand is fairly common in some quarters, that an artist is--well, a sort of privileged character? Not to be judged by the standards we apply to ordinary mortals?" "I do not, and I never knew any artist who held that attitude." "Have you met a great many of them?" "No. A few." "But never met one who felt that he was, let's say, a special sort of being? Someone apart?" "Special perhaps, or apart, but not specially privileged." "Not even the beatniks?" "I don't know anything about the beatniks." A swift small worm of pain ran down Cecil Warner's left arm, puzzling him. He said with care for the sound of his voice: "Is all this leading anywhere? Does it have any possible relevancy?" "If the Court please," said T. J. Hunter melodiously, "there has been a great deal said about Miss Blake's state of mind at various times. I have not objected to it. This is in many ways an uncommon case. I am inclined to agree with a remark made by my very honored adversary a little while ago in his opening, when he pointed out how much depends on whether we can or cannot believe Miss Blake's word. He is naturally convinced that she is telling the truth. I am not. She is now on the stand, having affirmed that she will speak truthfully. It is my necessary task to test her credibility in any proper manner that is open to me, and my present line of inquiry is directed to that end." "The point is well taken," said Judge Mann. Warner heard or imagined a note of weariness or doubt. "Are you making a formal objection, Mr. Warner?" "No, your Honor. I only wish the prosecutor would get to the point, if there is one." _A mistake; he'll catch me up on it too._ "There is one," said Hunter mildly. "Perhaps I can make it clearer to counsel later on. Miss Blake, you must have believed--did you not?--that something--maybe not your position as an artist if you say it wasn't that--but something excused you, made it appear all right to you to enter blithely on an adulterous relation with James Doherty." "I did not enter on it blithely, nor make excuses for myself. I was aware that such a relation is contrary to the principles we give lip-service to in this part of the world." _She can't--she mustn't_-- "And also contrary to law?" "Mr. Hunter, I'm afraid I never stopped to find out whether this is one of the states where adultery is listed as a crime." With deepening terror Warner understood that she was already becoming raw and recklessly angry, though Hunter had scarcely begun. _I must be heard._ "I take that to mean that you hold yourself above the law?" "I object, your Honor. I submit that in his opening Mr. Hunter laid considerable polite stress on the fact that the indictment charges murder and nothing else. If now he has elected himself some kind of guardian of public morals, if Callista Blake is to be tried after all for a violation of sex conventions--" "Sir, that's uncalled-for and unjust. My question was phrased in general terms. I think nothing could bear more directly on the credibility of the witness than her respect for law, or lack of it." "You were asking," said Judge Mann, "in general terms, whether or not the witness considers herself above the law? That was the meaning of your question and the extent of it?" "It was, your Honor." "I must overrule your objection, Mr. Warner." "Exception." "Yes, certainly. Answer the question, Miss Blake." "I do not consider myself above the law." _At least she's quieter; her hands not shaking._ "Like everyone, I've probably broken a number of minor laws without even knowing it. As for the matter the prosecutor specifically mentioned, adultery, I don't know, as I said, how the state of New Essex technically regards that action. If it's a crime, then I'm a criminal--on that charge." _No more, Callista! LOOK AT ME!_ "I'm quite aware you can't have a human society without laws. I try to respect them so far as I'm able--I--" "Miss Blake," said Judge Mann, "there is no need to go beyond the question. For your own sake I must instruct you not to do so. Limit your answers to what Mr. Hunter asks, so far as you can." _He may have saved her--I don't know--I don't know._ "You respect the laws so far as you are able--now what does that mean, Miss Blake? At what point, please, does it become impossible for you to respect the laws?" "No one could answer that exactly. As a lawyer, you certainly know that many laws are obsolete or foolish. Dead-letter laws--Sunday blue laws--that sort of thing. I would never willingly break any law that the majority considers important." "I see. You have decided then that the majority doesn't consider the law against adultery important?" "I don't know--I've already said I don't even know what laws New Essex has about that. If people are ever prosecuted for it--I suppose they are--I never heard of it." "Your answer isn't quite responsive. Do you mean you believe that in breaking the seventh commandment you were merely doing what everyone does more or less?" "I didn't say that. I--" Warner let his voice go: "I will inquire again whether the District Attorney believes he is trying a case of adultery." "I will reply again that I wish to discover Miss Blake's attitude toward law itself, as it bears on the reliability of her statements." Judge Mann spoke with acid: "Gentlemen ... Mr. Hunter, your point may be still defensible, but I think you're going too far afield. I suggest you bring your inquiry back to factual evidence and the material of direct testimony." "Very well, your Honor. Miss Blake, do you have a clear recollection of those letters of yours which were read in court this morning?" "Very clear." Warner saw him take them up from among the exhibits; fought back his surge of resentment that those hands, clean, excellently shaped, well manicured, should be handling them at all. "I recall, Miss Blake, that before these letters were read, quite a point was made about seeing to it that the jury heard a correct interpretation. This seems like a good opportunity to clear up one or two points and give the jury your own views on what they mean--that is, I take it you have no objection?" "You needn't make such a production of stage politeness." _Callista, don't!_ "I'm prepared to answer any legitimate questions as well as I can." Hunter's eyebrows rose and fell. He read to himself, slipped the first page under and read on. "Well--'my love (you know it) is nothing like what could happen for you with anyone but me. And there's my cure for jealousy--if I could apply it, if I could make my head rule a little more, my crazy heart a little less.' That appears, Miss Blake, to be among other things an admission that you did experience what's usually called jealousy. 'Something that could not happen with Ann. Or anywhere in her world.' That's jealousy, isn't it?" "I did experience it. I haven't denied it." "No? Now I thought that in direct testimony you said something to the effect that you had nothing against her. I think that--in direct testimony under oath--you called her a 'sweet and harmless girl'--something like that." "I think I said--apart from Jimmy--meaning--apart from the fact that she was his wife--oh, it's perfectly clear what I meant." "That is, you had nothing against her except that she was in the way?" "I never said that--never put it that way, even to myself." "I'm sorry, Miss Blake, I think you did." He turned pages slowly. "Not in those exact words perhaps. 'Granted also that Ann is good and sweet and conventionally right. Does that give her the right--' and then the crossed-out words that I think you remember, and then--'to keep you and me apart and prevent my child from having a father?' Miss Blake, how much nearer could you come to saying that she was in the way without actually using the words?" "The marriage--the fact of their marriage was in the way. I never thought of her as a--a person to be removed--oh, I'm not saying it clearly--I never wanted to--do away with her. My letter says--my letter simply asks him to do something about a separation. And that's the letter I never even mailed." "All right--it sounds a little involved--the letter doesn't sound to me as if you were writing about the 'fact of their marriage,' but let that go for the present. This is from the first one, a letter you did mail: 'I fit no pattern. No one can own me, no one can make me over. I was born a heretic and so live. No one can catch me except if I will.' This time I am frankly puzzled, Miss Blake. It is by chance a quotation from something?" "No." "You had been writing affectionately--and poetically, I must say--and then all of a sudden you throw this at him: 'No one can own me--born a heretic and so live.' I'm simply puzzled, Miss Blake. Why in the world were you moved to say to James Doherty: 'No one can catch me except if I will'--why?" Warner saw the violent tension and forced relaxation of her folded hands. She said: "It must be--it must be it never occurred to me the letter would be examined by a district attorney." "What?--you mean it's a form of doubletalk? Hidden significance, something that might be damaging if it came to the eyes of that lowest form of life, a district attorney?" "No--no--no hidden significance." She was turning her head from side to side as if in search of physical escape. "I don't know how you dissect a love-letter. Do it yourself--do it yourself--" "'No one can catch me except if I will.' And then you were caught, weren't you?" "Objection!" "Sustained--sustained. You know better than that, Mr. Hunter. And step back from the stand a little. I will not have the witness abused." "My regrets, your Honor. I had no such intention." _Throws it like a bone to a dog--Terry's no dog--but_--"Miss Blake, I will read to you from the second letter. You had been asking about Doherty's religious views, and then you wrote: 'I wasn't asking about _Ann's_ views, blast you--I know she'd condemn the whole thing without a moment's pause for thought.' Miss Blake, by what reasoning it is possible to reconcile that remark with your alleged intention of asking Mrs. Doherty to agree to a separation? How could you write that about her, and then in the very same letter talk about her meekly agreeing to a separation?" "I suppose--I suppose the remark about her condemning us--I suppose I wrote that in a moment of exasperation, and was calmer later on. I don't know--must a love-letter be consistent like a dictionary?" "All right, I see what you mean, but on that point the inconsistency is really glaring, isn't it? You knew--elsewhere in the letters you even grudgingly admit--that Mrs. Doherty loved her husband. You knew, and you specifically said, that she would regard your adulterous relation with him as sinful--of course, how could you doubt it, what wife in her right mind wouldn't regard it so? Yet in almost the same breath you're talking about a separation, as if you expected Ann Doherty to throw away her marriage, violate her deepest religious convictions, humbly agree to letting her husband go live in sin with his ... with you. Consistent?" "I suppose it's inconsistent, if you make no allowance for the other things I said." "Oh--there is something else in the letter that makes it consistent?" "I don't know--I don't know." "Miss Blake, on the basis of these letters, and your testimony, I will ask you: weren't you, in all this talk of a separation, simply proposing an impossibility, knowing it was one, to--well, what? See what Jimmy would do? To feel him out maybe, find out if he'd go along with you on some much more direct method of--eliminating the woman who was in the way?" "That's idiotic." "Well, if I'm an idiot you should have no trouble defending yourself." "Witness and counsel will both confine themselves to the issues. No more of that sort of thing." "My apologies, your Honor. All right, Miss Blake, we'll let that stand. But in my--simple way, I keep trying to understand. Now for example in the rest of this second letter, where you attack Doherty's religious faith--" "I never attacked it! In that letter I was _asking_ about his beliefs, and stating some of my own ideas, nothing more." "Oh? I must have misunderstood. Let's see--you wrote here, speaking of his religion: 'Isn't it mostly a matter of being brought up in a certain way that automatically shuts out other views without seriously examining them? I'm trying to suggest that unlike Ann, you're really not embedded in religion like a fly in amber.' That's not an attack?" "No, it is not." "I see--the fault's with my understanding. And further on you wrote: 'just where is the mercy, the rationale, the loving-kindness in an ethical-religious system that makes me a whore bound for hell because I love you and welcome intercourse with you and want to live with you?' But you're telling me seriously now that this isn't to be called an attack on the man's most vital and deeply cherished religious convictions?" Callista said: "Mr. Hunter, I think your A is a little bit flat." One giggle sounded, in the back row, probably the same adenoidal snigger that had punctuated the trial from the start. There was no other laughter. Only a hush. The same kind of hush, Warner thought, that might have held the crowd in shock and incredulity, hundreds of years ago, if some candidate for an Inquisition bonfire had ventured to poke a little fun at the officiating priest. And T.J. was in fact performing certain priestly functions. _So what am I then? Advocatus diaboli?_ He saw Terence Mann's hand clench spasmodically and fall in a droop. Hunter said somberly, when the moment was right: "I have no objection to your odd sense of humor, Miss Blake, if you are enjoying it. But I would like a responsive answer." "Mr. Hunter, I did not think of James Doherty as a child. At any rate I tried not to. Apparently I rated his intelligence more highly than you do. I did not think that his religious beliefs had to be coddled and protected, or avoided the way you might avoid too much comment on a child's make-believe. Therefore in that letter to him I asked him about his beliefs, as one might ask any adult, and I wrote a little about my own ideas. It can't be called an attack unless you feel that the mere mention of an unreligious idea is an attack on religion. I'm aware that a lot of people do feel that way. They take all dissent as if it were an unkind criticism of themselves. Maybe Doherty did too, but I didn't think so at the time." Could she have won that round, or partly won it? It seemed to Cecil Warner that her voice had recovered some steadiness and coolness. Fielding looked somewhat impressed, as well as Helen Butler, LaSalle, and maybe Miss Wainwright. But the others were annoyed, or puzzled, or not listening. And about Fielding it was never possible to be sure. "He's 'Doherty' to you now? Not 'Jimmy' any more, just 'Doherty'?" She turned her face to the Judge with a look of blindness. "Must I answer that?" "You need not," said Judge Mann. "I think you might withdraw the question, Mr. Hunter." But even at that moment--the Judge manifestly friendly, Hunter showing up badly as his antagonism became too obviously personal and overdramatized--even at that more or less favorable moment Warner felt a change in Callista, a retreat or a weakening, as though before his eyes she had slipped further away from him, almost out of sight and hearing. He might, he supposed, be exaggerating her look of increased exhaustion, a fault in his own powers of observation. The pain slid down his arm again, compelling some part of his mind to mumble: _Heart?--and irrelevant?_ Callista was not necessarily in flight, not necessarily losing her desire to live. A better part of his mind recalled a better voice, speaking with a nearly incomprehensible sweetness: "_Living is journeying, and love's a region we can enter for a while._" "I withdraw my question. Miss Blake, as the author of these letters, I take it you are the one person best qualified to explain this sentence: 'You are already a prisoner, and I wish I might set you free.'" "Oh--oh--explain it by what follows, can't you? I think when I wrote that I wasn't referring to Ann." "Well, not exactly, Miss Blake. The words I see on this page are: 'No, I don't hate Ann, I was not thinking only of Ann when I wrote that.' _Only_, Miss Blake--that seems to say pretty plainly that you're at least including Ann Doherty in what you wrote about your Jimmy being a prisoner. Doesn't it?" "All right--if you wish." "It's no question of what I wish, Miss Blake." "I think it is--I think you--no, never mind, I don't mean that. Go ahead and ask your question--what do you want to know?" "I am asking for your interpretation of that sentence: 'You are already a prisoner, and I wish I might set you free'--insofar as it does refer to Ann Doherty." Her voice had gone dull and flat, hard to hear from Warner's place: "No interpretation except the obvious one. His marriage trapped him, confined him." Warner's ears had begun a faint ringing; he undid the top button of his shirt--a little better. "I suppose marriage does that for anyone, man or woman, and usually the restrictions are voluntarily accepted, welcomed, or so people like to think. I suppose that's all I meant." "But the rest of the sentence, Miss Blake--'I wish I might set you free'--what did you mean by that?" "Why, the--the separation--what I've said repeatedly--I think I wrote about that in the very next paragraph, didn't I?" "Yes, you did," said Hunter in a dull and abstracted voice that curiously echoed her own. "So you did. 'You are already a prisoner, and I wish I might set you free.'" He came out of his abstraction briskly. "Well--no more about that? Nothing you wish to add?" "Nothing." "I see. 'Are we savages to be held in line by magic words mumbled in the mouth of a priest?'--do you want to comment on that sentence from your letter, Miss Blake? Explain, perhaps, why it's not to be taken as an attack on James Doherty's religion?" "Genuine faith can't be attacked, Mr. Hunter, because it hasn't anything to do with reason. Religious people sometimes admit that themselves, if they've done any thinking about it. I remember hoping rather foolishly that he would be able to see my side of the question. As for what I wrote there, it's a--a comment on superstition. If you heard it in ordinary conversation it wouldn't trouble you much. It's important now only because you've decided to try me for irreligion as well as murder." "No, Miss Blake, I am still concerned with your attitude toward law, as it bears on your credibility and on the issues of this trial. Now I hear that the marriage sacrament to you is a superstition proper to savages--that's what you meant, isn't it?" "Marriage is a legal status. A marriage certificate is a legal document. When you talk about the sacrament of marriage you're expressing a religious view that has no legal meaning." "Oh, well--" "Ask any lawyer." "Why, as an amateur lawyer, Miss Blake, you happen to be perfectly right. But that isn't quite the point, is it? It seems to me that in tossing off a comment like that to James Doherty on the subject of his marriage to Ann Doherty you were placing yourself pretty far above the law as well as above religion. Heard now, under these circumstances, doesn't it sound pretty arrogant even to you?" "Not nearly as arrogant as the first premises of a true believer or a prosecuting attorney--" The break in her voice had been unmistakable. Warner knew that if he stood up then and spoke, he would only be compounding disaster by drawing more attention to it. _When did I lose her? When did she go away? A little while ago she still desired to live._ He tried to recast the outline of his closing speech--more emphasis here, less there. And perhaps in redirect some of the damage could be repaired. _The defense never rests._ "I suppose I must leave it at that," Hunter said. "But maybe I ought to remind you, Miss Blake, that I could have no interest in making any personal attack against you, as you seem to feel I'm doing. I am simply a servant of the State, with a duty to perform." "No," she said emptily, "that's not quite true. Impartiality isn't any part of the system. You hate and fear me because--" "Miss Blake," said Judge Mann sharply, "for your own sake there must be no such expressions of personal feeling. It's perfectly true that impartiality is hard to achieve, because we're all human. But in a law court we do try to achieve it. This procedure, this sometimes clumsy mechanism of a trial--it's an attempt at fairness, objectivity, the best we can do under the present conditions of society. Now I must warn you, and very urgently: simply answer the prosecutor's questions as plainly as you can, unless the Court rules you need not answer, and don't try to go beyond those questions. That rule--in fact the whole procedure--is for your own protection." Directly to the Judge, and quietly, but also as though she had not really taken in his words at all, Callista said: "I never wanted her to die." Warner saw Judge Mann turn to him, distress momentarily plain to read, as though the Judge and not the defense were most in need of help. "Mr. Warner, if you wish a recess--" "No!" said Callista, and that was a cry. "I want this to be finished. I'm perfectly able to answer the questions, but I can't go away and come back to it, I can't do that. No recess now, please!" "Your Honor, I think--so long as my client feels able to continue and wishes to--but--reserving the privilege of asking for a recess later if--" "Yes, certainly, Mr. Warner. Whenever you want to request it." Hunter said, gently and mildly, no longer half-crouched like a man readying himself to rape, but standing some distance from the witness stand, almost careless in his quiet--"You never wanted her to die, Callista?" "No, I--yes, when--nobody ever answered Pilate." "Yes some of the time, no some of the time--that would be natural, perfectly human, wouldn't it, Callista?" "I suppose...." "Does it mean, Callista, that you've remembered what happened in that lapse of memory--the thing you couldn't tell Mr. Lamson?" "Yes." Warner understood he had risen. But there were no words. She must know that he would come to her if he could; but she would not look at him now--only at Hunter, and without hostility, but with somber recognition, as if suddenly after much bewilderment she understood why he was there and what purposes he might serve. "What happened, Callista?" "I heard her take the bottle from the shelf, and the sound of a glass. I heard her come to my door, and knock, and say that she'd poured a drink for me. I lay still. I deceived myself a little, I think--I tried to imagine it was not the poison, then I tried to tell myself she would not drink it. But for a few seconds or minutes the strongest part of me was the part that held me there, willing that she should drink it. When she was gone, and I knew what had happened, that self, that part of me, was no longer in command. Then I became--whatever else I am, and have been since then. Now I'll answer no more questions, even from those I love." II The courtroom had gone into a silence where voices were remembered with uncertainty, like the dead. The judge's chair was empty. Three reporters talked in small murmurs at the press table, waiting it out, and a few spectators remained. Edith watched Mr. Delehanty appear from the small side door at her left, take up with quiet importance a manila folder from his idle desk, mutter inaudibly to one of the bailiffs, glance first at an old-fashioned gold watch from his pocket and then toward the door on the right through which the jury had disappeared three hours ago; then he tiptoed in dignity away. It was nine o'clock in the evening of Friday, December 11th. Closing speeches, the judge's summing up and charge to the jury--done, and anticlimactic all of them, for it seemed to Edith that it was Callista herself who had closed the trial, yesterday. "_I'll answer no more questions_--" standing up then, even before she was dismissed, but waiting with the politeness of a tired guest until Hunter murmured something that Edith did not hear; and she stepped down, took hold of Cecil Warner's hand, and walked with him drowsily to the defense table, and sat leaning her head back against his arm, eyes closed, until the Judge announced adjournment for the day. No part of the courtroom ritual now remained--except one. The long finger of the electric wall clock jerked, and was still a while. After today's ordeal of listening--anticlimactic, yes, the Judge's voice roughened at the end of his summing-up, at moments not plainly audible, running down like a mechanism with a used-up spring--after the jury had retired, Edith had seen Victoria Chalmers press her hand to her broad pale forehead, rise, accept with sad patience the Associate Professor's fumbling courtesy with her coat, and move away. She would be having one of her headaches. No nod for Edith--Herb Chalmers gave her one--and no backward look at the arena; but as Victoria turned her head the light washed coldly across her face, and Edith saw plainly that even Victoria was a little changed. A sag of the mouth, a droop of shoulders and sturdy frame, a slowness and uncertainty in the hands adjusting her coat that suggested old age, although she was still in the early forties. She seemed doubtful of her steps, an unsteady hand undecided whether to grasp her handbag or tuck it under her arm. At the exit she did look backward once, with vagueness, as though there might be something she wished to say; or even someone she wished to find. Then like an old lady she rested her arm on Herb's clumsy hand, and was gone. Edith found it was now natural, inevitable, to pity Victoria Chalmers--whatever pity might be worth. Earlier, until the jury went out through that doorway, there had somehow not been time. There was time now for every sort of thought, regret and fear and wonder, time for a swarm of thoughts crowding for attention, pity the least of them--time for anything the mind could do except for the discoveries of happiness and peace. Pity, maybe, was no more than a private vice, with varied by-products, some good, some bad. Herb Chalmers had come back an hour later, alone. He made as though to sit down by himself, but seeing her look his way, he shambled to her, side-stepping along a row of vacant seats, and let himself down by her in a long-legged sprawl. "I suppose nothing's happened yet?" "Nothing. Is Mrs. Chalmers all right?" "I don't know," he said, his weariness lending the force of truth to the absent reply. He yawned convulsively, apologizing for it in a mumble. "She's pretty used up of course. Felt she couldn't stay, and I thought that was sensible. I took her home, and maybe she can sleep. It's not as if we could do anything now. For a while. You see, I feel sure that they--" he rubbed large hands over his face and shook his head--"no, God knows I don't feel sure of anything any more. Anything at all." Herb also had aged. More deeply sunken lines, more gray in the thinning hair. He had evidently cut himself shaving that morning; the scab at the edge of his gaunt jawbone was overlaid by the day's growth of silvery bristle, making a sort of Skid Row shadow across his wan, weak, intelligent face. "They can't find first degree," Edith said. "It's not possible." Yet she might be only trying to convince herself; she heard no strength in her own voice. "The Judge's summing-up--oh, he had to define all the possible verdicts, but the way he did it, the stress he laid on reasonable doubt--and then even the very fact that she said what she did, at the end--they can't do that." He mumbled what might have been agreement, then turned to her suddenly, large-eyed, wounded, ineffectual. "They could though, Miss Nolan. Juries ... we have to face the fact, anything's possible from acquittal to--first degree. Law tries to go by logic, but never quite succeeds." More than one way, she thought inconsequently, of facing facts: walk up to a fact and spit in its eye, Callista's way; or, like Herb Chalmers, just stand there. And you could make out a pretty good case for Herb's way, sometimes. _My way--my way..._ "Why didn't he call me, Miss Nolan?" "Well, he--I think he felt that character witnesses--and that's all I amounted to--couldn't help much. Any more of that would have pointed up the lack of any other kind of evidence. I suppose juries discount the word of friends and relatives; it's natural." He wasn't listening much. "I would have done anything. I failed her somehow, somewhere along the line. From the start, I guess." He sighed and fidgeted. "But maybe she'd have resented anyone situated in her father's place. I remember when I first met her, a kid of eleven, I said: 'Look, Callie, I'm not your father and couldn't try to be anything like him. I'm just me, a person, and I'd like us to be friends.' Eleven--it never got across, you know? Infantile glowering, and then a kind of frozen politeness that I never could break through." He sat quiet, perhaps aware of her as a listener, gazing aimlessly at the broad knuckles of his bony hands. He said with curious humility and no resentment: "She's always had a good deal of contempt for me, I think. Children grow up so fast, and we grow old so fast. You know, Miss Nolan, a while ago I started something, a piece of writing--nothing very much, but it might prove interesting. A study of the Cavalier and Courtier Lyrists. I want to relate them to certain trends in modern poetry. You know, it's never been done. Oh, I suppose it'll turn out to be just another trifle of academic stuff. But the curious thing--look, I'm afraid I'm boring you or getting on your nerves at a bad time--" "No, you're not, not in the least." Her impulse toward callous and hopeless laughter ceased of itself, no need to fight it down. Abruptly, there was nothing funny at all about stringy Herb Chalmers having an affair with the saucy music and tenderness of the Lyrists. He was a scholar; he knew his subject; he might even have something to say. "Well, the curious thing--" he blushed briefly like a schoolboy, and blew his nose, and sighed--"curious thing, when I was getting together some of my notes for it the other day, I kept thinking--imagining Callista reading it. Escape psychology, I suppose." "Why call it that? 'Escape' is just another one of those two-for-a-nickel derogatory noises that people use in place of thinking. Why not escape from ugliness toward something better? Escaping doesn't mean you've forgotten the ugliness is there." "Something in that. Is Warner with her, do you know?" "I think so. He wouldn't leave her unless she asked to be alone." "He surprised me this morning, that closing speech. Two and a half hours. I never thought he'd take all morning, and repeat himself so much. It was--effective, maybe, but it scared me too. I couldn't help thinking it was effective only for people who already _know_ Callista. I tried to think myself into the position of a juryman, a mind totally alien to Callista's. Everything he said was good, but he said too much. Trying to ram it through a stone wall.... I suppose you saw how once or twice he lost the thread of what he was saying and just stood there. Looking lost." "Yes. He's not just a defense lawyer in this thing. He loves her." "I've felt that, yes. And so did the jury, I'm afraid--more than he should have let them feel it. It even gave Hunter his cue, I think. After all that thunder and pleading, he could afford to be quiet and cold, and make the mere contrast seem like a virtue. Taking it off now and then to abstract principles the way Warner did--that was good, for us. I can't believe more than two or three of the jury went along with it. 'The defense never rests'--yes, but what can that plumber foreman make out of it? Ah, I don't know...." The intelligent professor faded, leaving a collapsed and tired old man. He shrugged, looked at his watch, gathered his legs under him. "I'm going out for a smoke. Want to?" "No, I'd better stay, Dr. Chalmers. She'll be coming back when the jury returns, if it does return tonight. She's always looked for me when she first comes in. I've got to be here." "Yes, I--of course." He blundered away a few steps and turned back to her. "Miss Nolan, I thought you were quite wonderful on the stand--said a number of things I would have liked to say." Edith winced inwardly, wishing he would go. "In the jury's view I wasn't good. Another maverick." "Oh, I don't know." He rubbed his sagging face. "Shouldn't underestimate their intelligence, I suppose. It's--democracy in action, you might say--something like that." "Democracy be God-damned," Edith said. "It's a human life." "Well, I--see what you mean of course." He stood tall and drooping near her, so that she must bend her neck awkwardly to see his face as he went on, driven by some compulsion to talk when perhaps he had no real wish to do so: "Strange thing--had a dream a while ago, possibly an echo of my reading--Huck Finn likely. Lost in a fog, on a raft, watching the river stream past me--sometimes the water'd slop up between chinks in the logs. All under a milky fog, no landmarks, but I could see the river all the time, the dark flow of it, now and then trash and broken things sliding past. It went on, you know, years, a hundred years, who could say? And I thought I was motionless, nothing more than a pair of eyes, brain somewhere back of them. Well, but--here was the nightmare, you see--I suddenly understood that I was drifting too, had been all the time. Doesn't sound like anything in the telling, but it was horrible--I can't tell you. Drifting all the time when I thought only the river was in motion. The sleeping brain's comment on myself, you see?--myself as summing up all human stupidity. Or blindness--much kinder word, isn't it? 'So may you, when the music's done, awake and see the rising sun'--that's from Thomas Carew, I think, died 1639 or around there. My head is an attic, you know, full of little facts with dust on them. They were so concerned, those poets, with treating love itself as a work of art, you'd think to read them superficially they had nothing else on their minds. But there was a depth, Miss Nolan, something you don't discover right away. All that polish, glitter, gracefulness, word-play, that was something they produced _after_ accepting the squalor and danger and confusion of seventeenth-century living. They knew what they were doing. Reading the avant-garde stuff of nowadays, usually the contrast is merely grotesque, still I keep finding parallels. Here and there. It keeps an old man interested. Well, I'm babbling like second childhood. Telling dreams, at my age! Look, can I get you anything? I think I'll take a walk around the block, can't sit still. Coke? Sandwich?" "I guess not, thanks all the same. Jumpy stomach." "Mm, I know." Her neck ached. _Please go!_ He was leaning down, a remote, remotely friendly ghost, a friend of Thomas Carew, also a human being in distress. "A thing like this--you know, Miss Nolan, I believe the very worst of it is that we _forget_. Because we have to, maybe. We're beaten down somehow, used up, licked in the end by the daily littleness--head colds, weakening eyesight, the brush-your-teeth-and-put-out-the-milk-bottles sort of thing, and there's no defense." At any other time, Edith thought, she would have enjoyed listening to this particular Herb Chalmers. "My God, littleness steals everything, including the last breath. And before then, you see, no matter what we resolve, what we hope for--we forget." "I sha'n't forget." "I'm fifty, Miss Nolan. You're still very young. Thirty years from now, d'you think you'll know just as clearly what's been happening here, what will happen when those people come back through that door? Ah, I don't know, I'm talking like a fool--who's going to see thirty years ahead? Jim Doherty's already forgetting. In a bar." "What? Did you see him?" "Last night he was anyway, and it looked as if he was laying the foundation for a long one. After I took Vic home last night I came back to town, to the college--had to make some kind of pass at the week's work that's piled up on me--they've been very nice, leave of absence and so on, but I notice things pile up anyway, letters, term papers, what not. On the way home I stopped at Judson's--that's uptown, bar where I used to go sometimes with Jim and--Ann, before all this. He was there, tight as a tick, must have been working on it all afternoon. Not here today, I notice. Last night I tried to get him to go home with me, but he'd made friends with some character who looked respectable, capable of putting him to bed right side up." Edith said absently: "Someone will always be around to put him to bed." "Know what you mean. Democracy in action." _I can't smile, Herb._ "Well--go for a walk, I guess. Can't sit still. 'Bye." He stumbled off, a weary progress with a slow grab at every chair-back along the awkward route... Cecil Warner came through the doorway at the left, alone, his broad face sallow, all ruddiness washed away. He passed the press table with a shake of the head and no other answer to some tactless and poorly timed question. He came up the aisle, and sank with slow motion into the seat beside Edith, relaxing his bulk all at once with the suddenness of an old man's muscles letting go. "Tell me," she said. "A message. She wanted me to come to you with a message. 'Tell my friend Edith I'll sleep well tonight, and ask her whether she'd like me to try Doris Wayne in oil or watercolor.'" He would not quite look at her. "She was smiling, Edith. It seemed to be a little flash of happiness, like a breeze on a still day." "It's good if she can think ahead. I've been trying to, but I can't. Herb Chalmers was here, wandered off--good Lord, half an hour ago! I've just been sitting like a vegetable." She saw his eyes were held by the clock, against his will. "Cecil, does it necessarily mean anything at all, when they stay out this long?" He looked at her then, studying her face as if from a distance, deeply aware of her and certainly no less aware of the girl in the detention cell. He said: "It's not good." "It's what would happen if there was a disagreement, isn't it?" "Yes. A disagreement would not be good. A new trial very likely wouldn't come before Terence Mann. And I wouldn't be competent, physically competent, to go through it again. I'm getting pains down the left arm, other things--" he waved his hand quickly and irritably to dismiss the concern in her face. "Couldn't risk conking out in the middle of a trial. That would make a mistrial, then another wait, a third trial with some other attorney, quite likely some other judge--Hangman Cleever for instance. No good, no good. Oh, I shouldn't have taken it on this time. Or I should have got someone younger to work in court with me. That's only one mistake I made. I've made hundreds. Vanity, vanity, thinking myself better able to defend her than anyone else, and blundering all the time--" "No." "Don't waste your breath comforting me now. I can see it, Edith, I can see it. My last mistake was talking too long this morning. I couldn't let go, even when I knew I wasn't getting through to them. Some kind of idiot compulsion to hold off the moment when T.J. would start--as if that could make any difference. A cub fresh out of law school wouldn't make such an error--I've been at it forty years." "Cecil, stop whipping yourself. You did everything possible." "Everything I could, yes. But everything I could do wasn't enough, and a lot of it was done wrong. A stronger man could have done more, done it better. Why, there's the big evil of the adversary system, Edith, right under our noses. Should the life or freedom of a human being depend on the perfectly irrelevant strength or weakness of opposing counsel? What in hell do my skill and brains, or T.J.'s, have to do with Callista's innocence or any of the other facts? What could be more medieval? But we accept it, have accepted it for hundreds of years, meekly, stupidly, as if no other method were possible or worth a thought. I've spent my life inside the propositions of a vicious fallacy, and discovered it at sixty-eight." "One man couldn't do away with the fallacy. It's too heavily established, and maybe there isn't enough wisdom in the world yet to develop a better way. You had to work inside of what you found, and it's not wasted effort. Within the system, you've saved a good many lives from public vengeance--and never mind whether they've been good lives like Callista's, or the lives of crooks and psychopaths, that's not the point. Each time you've set your face against public vengeance, you've brought some minds that much nearer to learning that the whole notion of vengeance and punishment is wrong. You've done your share. You've been on the side of mercy. How many can say that?" "Well, my dear, you're good for me. Maybe I should have been a doctor. I remember thinking of it for a while, when I was in college--but I felt that the wish wasn't enough, that I didn't have the other qualities it needs." "I think a defense lawyer--your kind of defense lawyer, Cecil--is in something like a doctor's position, but without any adequate sciences to support him. A doctor can draw on chemistry, physiology, pharmacology, a dozen other disciplines, and rely pretty solidly on what he gets from them. A lawyer trying to be useful according to rational ethics--what is there to help him? An infant science of human behavior, full of errors and contradictions and blank spots, hardly more advanced than physiology was in the eighteenth century; and haunted by the crackpots and manipulators too, so that it's sometimes hell's own job to separate the science from the special pleading. So I think, Cecil, that anyone who defends a life against the crowd's desire for a victim, who shows up the flaws in the system by bucking it--he's pioneering, he's taking a part in bringing law nearer to reality. I'll set Clarence Darrow in the same company with Semmelweiss and Pasteur, any time, no strain. And you." He covered his face quickly with his hands; said after a while: "I wish I were a younger man, to hear that." Edith looked away at the clock. Her mind was caught in a brief paralysis of waiting for the next twitch of the minute hand. "I drew something the other night, Cecil, a memory sketch of that jury. It's curiously good." She heard his breathing slow and become quiet. "My own style, but the kind of thing I was never able to do before. I want you to see it. Come over soon anyway--I need my friends too, you know. We try, Cecil, oddballs like you and Callista and me, others here and there. Herb Chalmers told me he's having a thing with the Cavalier and Courtier Lyrists. I started laughing inside--just started because it seemed so damn far away from everything--and then stopped laughing. It's Herb's way of trying, using his brains in his own style on what's nearest to his reach." "Callista and I put the human race on trial the other night. We came to no conclusion, no verdict." "Well, I think there's an obvious verdict in that case, and maybe only one possible at the present stage." "So? You tell me." "Not proven." "I should have thought of that. Cal would like it. I'll remember to tell her." Beyond the melancholy and desolation of his face she saw Herb Chalmers returning along the row of empty seats. Warner nodded to him morosely. "Herb. All by yourself?" "I took Vic home." Herb Chalmers showed the dubious tension of a news-bringer. "Cecil, what way does the jury-room face?" "What way?" The Old Man's eyebrows bunched aggressively in perplexity. "The Court Street side. Why, Herb?" "They're yawping a _Courier_ extra on the street. Judd died in the hospital a couple of hours ago." He pulled a smeary paper from his overcoat and handed it to Warner, who stared at the splash of black ink and let the thing slither to the floor. "A brass-lunged newsboy, Cecil: 'Blake Case Witness Dies ree aw abowit!'" "Some fool," Warner said--"some fool in the jury-room is bound to open a window, to let the smoke out." "He was shouting pretty plain. I could make out the words a block away. Any legal significance, you think?" "I doubt it, Herb." Warner looked up hopelessly. "Anyway she gains nothing from a mistrial. Likely it wouldn't even go before the same judge, a second time. Everything that could happen," he said. "Malice, chance, blind circumstance, human frailty. Even the malice nobody's fault really--not even T.J.'s. He's something worked by strings." "They can't find first degree," Edith said, and hated the querulous shake in her voice, its jaded insistence on what she could not know. "Twenty to life," said Warner. "She's young," Edith said. "She's very young." Herb asked: "Wouldn't actually be twenty, would it? Don't they--" "She's young," said Warner, his voice all bitterness, "and it wouldn't actually be twenty years." The door on the right opened for a court officer, who spoke to someone over his shoulder. Warner stood up, breathing carefully. Edith caught his arm; he looked down almost angrily. "Cecil, tell her I'd like her to try it in watercolor." "Oh. Yes. I'll go with her now." He was hurrying down the aisle. Herb said: "What--he meant to say he'd go to her, I suppose." "He knew what he was saying. Sit here. Stay with me, please." She watched the courtroom coming alive. Knowledge of the jury's returning had spread as if by a spark of telepathy. A group of the last-ditch curious straggled back from the corridors, and newsmen who must have been waiting at some point of vantage outside, and Mr. Delehanty--gravely ready at his desk before the Twelve filed in. Judge Terence Mann came in and took his place without delay, moving for once not easily but with a suggestion of middle age. He did not reach as usual for his note-pad and pencil; he dropped his thin rugged hands on the desk and stared at the space between them until his eyes must turn, like all the others, to the door on the left. She was with Cecil Warner. She looked at once for Edith, and seeing her stepfather also she smiled once, quickly and warmly--a new thing to remember. She held closely to Warner's arm until they reached the defense section; then she stood alone, not troubling to seat herself. No doubt someone, the Judge or Mr. Delehanty, should have told her to sit down; but she remained standing until the jury, at Judge Mann's word, self-consciously rose. Mr. Francis Fielding looked tired and for the first time regretful. "Members of the jury, have you reached a verdict in the case now before you?" Peter Anson said: "We have." Callista looked on the jury as Edith had never seen her look on others before. It was a look of patience resembling friendliness, a look that one might naturally give to strangers who were confronted by a painful difficulty and not quite able to understand its nature. "What is your verdict?" "We find the defendant, Callista Blake, guilty of murder in the first degree, without recommendation of mercy." III _From a letter written by Terence Mann, formerly Justice of the Court of General Sessions of Winchester County, New Essex, July 17, 1960, to Dr. John Sever Mann, of Boston_: ... For that matter, I can hardly understand that more than a week has passed since Callista died. My sense of time seems to be still slightly distorted. For many days and months, too much to endure and understand, hope for and relinquish; then quiet, aftermath. Finished. The new things that begin, some of them surely good, are not yet clear in my mind, nor in Edith's--we're tired, Jack. Last night I finished and mailed that letter I told you about, to the president of the New Essex Bar Association, setting out in writing my reasons for resigning from the bench. Mr. Paulus, president of the B.A., is a very pleasant character, a successful gentleman but also mellow and moderately philosophical, capable of filling that position with no sense of strain, and yet able to see quite a distance into a stone wall. In him, I'd say that intellectual compromise rises to the level of a fine art, a hedonistic achievement which I respect, though I can't imitate it--my own hedonism requires its ethical frame of reference to be in plain sight, accessible, subject to change if reason demands. You might understand Paulus better than I do, since in your work compromise (though a very different kind) has to be the order of the day. You try to help your patients live in the jungle, which must mean plenty of yielding here to gain a little there. Well, what I started to say--Paulus is a good joe. It was Paulus who kindly suggested, away back at the time of my resignation, that I should write such a letter, and he gave me advance permission to send copies to newspapers if I cared to--which I've done. Perhaps some of them will allow my cerebral verbiage to rub for a moment against Miss Americas and Russian face-making. I wasn't able to start that letter at the time of my resignation. I kept putting it off. For a while--April and most of May--Edith and I were in a suspended mental state, waiting out the appellate decision. I couldn't say it to Edith--(especially since we knew by that time that she was pregnant, your first nephew apparently aiming for next February)--I couldn't say it to her, but after the appeal was denied I never had any hope of the Governor. I know him, a cultured nothing, mentally gelded by the modern political rule, never stick your neck out. Even his fishing trip last week was perfectly predictable. I began my letter to Paulus after the appeal was denied, and it may be worth something, for the record, but not very much. The memory of newspaper readers is remarkably short, I think. Last week there was the inevitable frenzy over the execution here in Winchester, and I guess elsewhere--I haven't looked at the out-of-town papers. Mostly pointless--all of it, so far as saving Callista's life was concerned--the few reasonable voices drowned out by the crackpots petting their emotions in public. This week--oh, in the houses and bars and restaurants this week I doubt if there's very much talk about Callista Blake. And if a few newspapers publish my letter, or as much of it as will fit comfortably in half a column, most readers will be honestly puzzled: Terence Mann, who the devil's he? It's natural, you needn't tell me, Jack. We aren't geared to endure sustained high tension very long--though didn't I hear you say once that some patients have surprised you in that respect? The week of the trial was enough to kill Cecil Warner--understandable of course, he must have been ill before it began. I wish you could have met him. I saw him only once after his collapse the night of the verdict. He got home--I think I never told you this--by himself, walked home I believe. His housekeeper called me in the morning because he was asking to see me. His doctor wouldn't let me stay very long--he grew too distressed by the effort to tell me something when words wouldn't come. It was mostly about Callista's letters, something he wanted me to understand, as if I were capable of sitting in judgment--but I was not then, Jack, and never have been. Edith was there too--the first time I'd met her outside the courtroom. Warner said, so far as I can bring back the words: "I couldn't believe the letters wouldn't get through to them. I thought they _had_ to hear the truth in them, the reason and the sweetness--but I was only sending a child into a snake pit." He said: "The guilt's mine, Judge--I've killed her, by trusting human nature." That's when his doctor told me I had to go, but he let Edith stay, easy to see why. She has that ability--I think you've felt it yourself--of sharing her own steadiness. It's a personal magic--I'll never know how she does it. I have, myself, achieved enough tranquillity, mental security, to see me through, especially since our marriage and my resignation from the bench. But I seldom seem able to give others the benefit of it; they are most likely to be irritated because I don't share their excitements of the moment. You have a good deal of her kind of magic yourself. Well, there at Warner's house she came out to me later, told me how he'd talked more quietly a while, forgetting much of the present, and taking pleasure in the sound of ocean, which no one else would hear in this inland town, but he could hear it out of childhood. He died that night. My letter to Paulus was, as I said, too cerebral, and that's why it has left me discontented, aware of much that still ought to be said. In that letter I marshalled all the familiar arguments against capital punishment, for the sake of logic and completeness. Paulus has heard them all, and so have most citizens above the moron level. Capital punishment does not deter, nor have any effect on the crime rate one way or another--repeatedly demonstrated by statistical study long before the time of Warden Lawes; vengeance does not restore life, but only adds another evil, namely murder by the state; there can never be complete assurance that the innocent will not be punished and the guilty go free; punishment itself serves no purpose except to excite the self-deceptive emotions of the punisher; and so on, Jack. While I listed and discussed these and lesser arguments in my letter, I grew increasingly discouraged, mostly by realization that it has all been said before, more persuasively than I know how to say it, that the arguments on the other side seem (at least to my best understanding) monstrously shabby, unrealistic, archaic, some of them plain sadism with its nakedness barely hidden by doubletalk, and yet the laws remain on the books. You're a headshrinker, Jack--why do so many minds cling to unreason with such a sullen fury? I am thinking of people like Judge Cleever, or people who can read the entire transcript of the Sacco-Vanzetti trial and still declare briskly and earnestly that the innocent are never punished. How do they do it? What's the faculty of the mind that makes it possible for an intelligent being to look directly on a glaring fact and somehow will it out of sight? For my part I _cannot_, from sheer physical inability, believe a lie when the demonstration is before me. And so finally, when I had done all I could with the clear, sensible, familiar arguments that have beaten on Paulus' head for forty-odd years without ever moving him to act on them, I found that I was closing my discourse with nothing more nor less than a plea for humility. This was perhaps a little different, a little new--or would have been if I had not felt obliged to write my letter in academic and parliamentary language. I think no one ever said to Mr. Paulus: "You, sir, although an exceptionally decent and clever sample of _Homo quasi-sapiens_, are much too stupid and ignorant to decide whether another human being shall live or die; and so am I, and so are all your colleagues, and all policemen, all Governors, and all juries." I did say, in terms not obscure, that my reason for resigning the judgeship was that I felt my own self incompetent to decide a question of that magnitude. Since he knows I am not a fool, not badly educated as such things go, not grossly inferior to others in my profession, and not given to false modesty, maybe the implications were clear enough to exert some force. Then having gone so far, it was necessary for the sake of honesty as well as politeness to say what I could for the law on the credit side. You can't (as Callista Blake said) have a human society without laws. The civil law, and with many reservations the criminal law, stumbles and bumbles through a vast amount of necessary work, and not too badly. Concepts broaden, eventually. The law in these years begins to listen more intelligently to your (very young and new) profession, Jack; I predict that quite soon the dear old McNaughton Rule will find its proper place--in historical textbooks. And so long as there are laws, why, the function of a judge is probably required at certain times, and if the judge has intelligence it is a potential means of serving order and human approximations of justice. On the personal level, I admitted to Mr. Paulus that if I had remained in office I could have done much useful work for many years, doing at the same time no more harm than most judges do, and less than some. But I did not retreat into the formula of declaring that my decision was purely a matter of private conscience. Mr. Paulus may so describe and pigeonhole it, but I did not say that. What is so private about a conscience if it directs the life and actions of a man? I could not soften the implication that any judge who opposes capital punishment and yet remains in office in a state which keeps that on the books is obliged to justify such compromise before the bar of his own reason. He can do that: he can say that his compromise enables him in the long run to do more good than harm. That is honest; that I can respect. But I say, let him remember that it is still a compromise with evil. And I say also that it cannot be my way. I think that in the end all honest reasoning does arrive at the necessity of humility. In effect you say to all your patients: "I don't know much about you, you don't know much about yourself; let's try to find out more, and make what use of it we can, and remember then that we still don't know very much." Or as my own dearest teacher used to say to me: "Bring out the inner voices." No one ever knew all he was capable of learning, or all he needed to learn. The individual self is the heart of everything we understand, the world's endless complexity being the product of all individual selves living and dead. About the self of another we know one thing for certain and only one: it exists. Therefore, not as a supernatural dictum but as the command of a human being to himself: Thou shalt not kill. Therefore, more light! Therefore, humility. I am one of the fortunate of course. I think, Jack, that by next September I can decently start teaching music--with humility, at least something of the strength and humility that I felt in my teacher Michael Brooks but was too much of a child to understand. I shall write books and articles--I told Callista that; or rather I agreed, for it was the first thing she thought of when she learned of my resignation from the bench, and all I had to say was yes. I have a redheaded wife who doesn't allow dull moments, though we have many peaceful ones, and we shall have children who will undoubtedly teach me a good deal about humility, if only through the slow and touchy business of learning it themselves. But Edith and I will not turn smug and insulated with our good fortune, I think--we know and remember too much for that. I was able to see Callista several times in the death house. I remember I wrote you a little about some of those visits, probably not too well. The first time was right after my resignation. I felt I had to see her and talk to her, if only for my own sake. It was no crawling search for "forgiveness"--she would have thought that absurd and contemptible; she knew (I think) as well as I know, that during the trial I was partly a mechanism on the bench, partly a bewildered and rather inexperienced man who liked her and did not want her to die. But I was undeniably in search of understanding. She was someone who had gone into regions I had never known--not all of them dark and fearful either, for surely her brilliance, insight, humor, daydreams, were quite as meaningful as her suffering. She was also someone who was articulate, observant, wise, and could therefore tell me something of those regions, if she was willing. In meeting Callista you somehow by-passed "forgiveness" and other vanities. I think it was because, when she was not too unhappy, she was often able to speak from mind and heart at the same time. She had no acidulous interest in puncturing sham for the sake of puncturing it. It was simply that, once friendship and communication were established, she was so straightforward and clear-minded that one's own shams and self-deceptions showed themselves up as abominations, and one could only wish to be rid of them, and to exist for a while on her level. She would never have thought of asking a friend to be honest; she merely took it for granted that he would be, took it for granted with an innocence and uncalculated kindness that even Edith says she can't understand. Never suppose that Callista wanted to die. She wanted life, and all it might have brought her. She followed closely and hopefully everything that we were trying to do, the appeal, the later efforts. She was happy and intensely _interested_ when she learned that Edith and I had become close friends and then lovers; it was Callista who urged us to marry without too much waiting. She wanted to know everything about this Emmetville house we've bought--yes, I listen for The Express, though it's always a Diesel now and doesn't sound quite right to you and me--and she seemed to get a wholly relaxed, natural fun out of telling us how to fix the guest room where she would sometimes be staying. When I told her of Edith's pregnancy (not even sure that I ought to) she was happy--I swear there was not one moment in the little time I had with her that day when I could see any shadow on her face, any hint that she was comparing Edith's lot with her own. Later of course, after I was gone--but no one will ever know about that. And in spite of all this, her manifest interest in living, I think she sensed all the time that the appeal would probably fail, and the appeal for executive clemency. Once or twice--only once or twice--she was bitter and miserable. I will not make a saint of her, and so lose what she really was. She was greater in many ways than most of us; she was also a nineteen-year-old girl, unfortunate, frequently sharp-tongued and hasty; loving beyond measure to her friends but incapable of suffering a fool with patience. Once, only once, I saw her truly angry. Well, she had said to Warden Sharpe himself that she wanted no visits from the chaplain, and then after respecting her wish for quite a long time he had come in anyhow, poor earnest man, and prayed at her--just unable, in his good intentions, to understand that there really are those who prefer to employ their minds in other ways, especially when the time is short. But I found out on talking with her, after her anger had given way to amusement, that what had chiefly exasperated her was her inability to recall chapter and verse numbers for the quotation from Exodus she wanted to cite to him: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." (It's XXII, 18, if you're curious.) She said: "I did want to give him just the numbers so he'd have the fun of looking it up himself." Later, unsmiling, she asked me: "Will it accomplish something, do you think, if I'm able to demonstrate with what peace a freethinker can die?" She was like that. She could say that, and saying it, compel me to answer straightforwardly instead of with a mere desperate insistence that I didn't think she would die. I said: "Yes." Then of course I was driven to say the other thing too, because, like Edith and Cecil, I loved her and I could not look at the thought of her death. But the yes was what she wanted and what she remembered. She would not permit me to be present at the execution. She said I must stay with Edith at that hour, and that was right, and I did so. We lived through the time--I don't care to remember any of it except that Edith took hold of my hand and held it above the life growing in her body, until the minute hand had gone past that mark. Warden Sharpe has told me there was "no confusion." Callista walked alone--of course. Sharpe says she smiled suddenly at the chaplain, patted his arm, said: "It's all right. Come with us if you want to." When they strapped her in the chair she said only: "You people here are not responsible for any of this. I'd like you to know I understand that." Then the hood was over her face, and an employee of the sovereign state moved the switch to perform on her body the ultimate indecency. She was one of the lonely and strange. Though we destroy them, they give us a light that can become our own. THE TRIAL OF CALLISTA BLAKE EDGAR PANGBORN In 1959, in the state of New Essex, a witch was on trial. Or so she seemed to many of the jurors who would ultimately decide her fate, and to the people who thronged the crowded courtroom, many of them friends of the murdered woman. On trial for poisoning her former lover's wife, she would--if found guilty--be executed. Callista Blake is nineteen years old at the time of her trial. She has a very slight physical deformity, and the much greater mental ones of apparent aloofness, fierce independence of mind, a laconic and sometimes sarcastic wit, marked but unconventional artistic talent, avowed atheism, and a complete inability to compromise. Added to all this, although she is not beautiful by any of the usual criteria, men find her overwhelmingly attractive. No wonder the good people of Winchester and Shanesville dislike her, fear her, and, subconsciously, at least, think she is a witch. No wonder they do not believe Callista's story that she had mixed the deadly potion of Monkshood and brandy for herself at a moment of suicidal depression, and had been prevented by a miscarriage from saving Nancy Doherty, who had drunk the stuff accidentally. The circumstantial evidence against Callista could not be more damning, yet there are one or two people unshakeably convinced of her innocence. This is the story of their struggle in the courtroom to save her. On her side are one witness--Edith Nolan, her friend and former employer--her defending counsel--Cecil Warner, a sick, aging man who loves her--and Terence Mann, who in his role as judge is obliged to attempt impartiality but, trying his first case carrying the death penalty, is appalled that the fate of a human being can be at the mercy of anything so haphazard as the adversary system and the whim of a jury. We see Callista's ordeal and the events that brought her to it from the viewpoints of all these people, as well as that of Callista herself. We see T. J. Hunter, the formidable District Attorney (they call him hunter Hunter), Jim Doherty, only too willing to accept his confessor's view that he was an innocent ensnared by a temptress of whom he is now happily free, Callista's well-meaning stepfather, hopelessly dominated by her overbearing, histrionic mother, the perfect Gertrude to Callista's Hamlet, and many others who indirectly hold Callista's life in their hands. We gradually learn the history of Callista's passionate affair with Jim, told with a compassion and insight which contrast poignantly with the chilling ritual of the courtroom. Edgar Pangborn knows and understands the people he writes about. And with irresistible force he shows that no one is good enough or wise enough to hold the power of life and death. Mr. Pangborn, who lives at Vorheesville, New York, attended Harvard and the New England Conservatory of Music. He is the author of three previous novels: _West of the Sun_, (1952), _A Mirror for Observers_ (1953), and _Wilderness of Spring_ (1958). He has also contributed short stories to various magazines. _Jacket design by Paul Bacon_ _ST MARTIN'S PRESS_ * * * * * Transcriber's Note, continued: In general every effort has been made to replicate the original text as faithfully as possible, including some instances of non-standard spelling and punctuation (for example, ellipses spacing and size). Hyphenation has been standardized. The transcriber notes that one of the main characters, "Ann Doherty," is anomalously referred to as "Nancy" once on p. 43, and again in the jacket flap notes; this has not been altered. Another main character is often referred to by his initials, "T. J."; on p. 79 and beyond this becomes "T.J."; this has also not been altered. The following changes were made to repair apparently typographical errors: copyright statement below title page "for permisison to use a" permisison changed to permission p. 28 "eatingly loudly and cheerfully" eatingly changed to eating p. 68 "There she goes snifflling" snifflling changed to sniffling p. 94 "Walton Road betwen 9:10" betwen changed to between p. 111 "my own langugage far simpler" langugage changed to language p. 121 "solitary as as any other" as as changed to as p. 121 "instance: What do do?" first do changed to to p. 122 "Adante does not mean Adagio" Adante changed to Andante p. 206 "I'll be such an actesss" actesss changed to actress p. 228 "doddle-pad rather angrily crossed" doddle changed to doodle p. 246 "a fairly advanced science notice" notice changed to noticed p. 275 "and then--"to keep you and me" --"to changed to --'to jacket flap text "her defending council" council changed to counsel 
29569	----	images generously made available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library. THE MYSTERIOUS MURDER OF Pearl Bryan, OR: THE HEADLESS HORROR. A FULL ACCOUNT OF THE MYSTERIOUS MURDER KNOWN AS THE Fort Thomas Tragedy, FROM BEGINNING TO END. Full Particulars of all Detective and Police Investigations. Dialogues of the Interviews between Mayor Caldwell, Chief Deitsch and the Prisoners. Copyright by BARCLAY & CO. Illustration: PEARL BRYAN. Engraved after the only Photograph that she ever had taken during her life-time. THE MYSTERIOUS MURDER OF PEARL BRYAN, OR: THE HEADLESS HORROR Fort Thomas, Kentucky, is most beautifully located near the banks of the Ohio river, on the Highlands, just above and on the opposite side from Cincinnati, Ohio. Although a comparatively new U. S. Military Post, it has long been a historical point, and in the early days of the Corncracker State, and while yet a portion of the County of Kentucky in the State of Virginia, was the home of the red men. There are persons yet living whose parents fought bloody battles with the Indians on the ground now occupied as a U. S. Fort, and that adjacent thereto; a picturesque portion of which is the scene of this true narrative of one of the most terrible tragedies of the nineteenth Century. The tragedy referred to was committed at the dead of night in a lonely spot near the Fort, January 31st, 1896. By the manner in which it was committed, it re-called the days of old, when tyrants beheaded their victims, and the murderer at heart, who was yet too cowardly to commit the deed, hired some one to do it, requiring in evidence that the deed had been done, that the head should be severed from the body and returned to the employer. To re-call such deeds of horror to the minds of the people of a highly civilized nation at the close of the nineteenth Century by the actual commission of a similar deed, struck horror to the hearts of the people, and they were worked up to a pitch that had never been witnessed in this country before. Telephones and telegraph were called into service, and the finding of the headless body of a young and doubtless beautiful woman in a sequestered spot near Fort Thomas, was flashed around the world. So shocked was the country over this ghastly find that the metropolitan papers from one end of this country to the other informed their representatives in the Queen City to wire full particulars of the horrible deed, without any limit to the words to be used. It was the most diabolical cold-blooded premediated outrage ever committed in a civilized community. The entire surrounding country, including the three cities, Cincinnati, O., Covington and Newport, Ky., were startled from center to circumference and aroused as it never had been before. The Sixth Regiment U. S. Infantry, commanded by Col. Cochran, which is stationed at Fort Thomas, was astounded that such an outrage should be committed almost within the guard lines of the Fort. Aged and battle-scarred veterans who had gone through the great civil war, only a generation before, when brother stood in battle array against brother, father against son, neighbor against neighbor, flocked to the spot where the headless body lay, and stood with blanched faces, struck dumb with amazement, at the boldness of the deed and horrible manner in which it had been committed. In an old orchard in the confines proper of the Fort, about midway between the Highland and Alexandria pikes, on the farm of James Lock, and near the fence which acts as a boundary line for Mr. Lock's farm, was found by James Hewling, a young man, on Saturday morning, Feb. 1., 1896, the decapitated body of a young woman of venus-like form, the headless body lying with the neck in a pool of blood. From the position of the body it was evident that the woman had been thrown down violently and then her head deliberately severed with a dull knife. The severance was made below the fifth vertebra. Judging by the pool of blood, life had been extinct from four to eight hours when the body was found. The clothing of the woman was of poor quality. The dress was light blue and white, small pattern check, of cotton, worn tight across the back and loose in front. She also wore a dark blue skirt and a union suit of underwear. On her hands was a pair of tan kid gloves, well worn. The black, cloth-topped shoes were of fine quality, in contrast to the other clothing, and were marked within "Louis & Hays, Greencastle, Ind., 22-11. 62,458." Her stockings were black and blue, new. The rubbers were old and worn at the heels. The corset had evidently been ripped open and torn from her body during a struggle which took place near where it was found. Close by was a piece of the dress, also with blood on it. In an almost incredible short time after Hewling gave the alarm, the soldiers from the Fort, the citizens surrounding it, and hundreds from the city near-by gathered at the spot and were awe stricken by the sight which met their eyes. Who was the murdered woman and who could have committed the horrible atrocity? These were questions which were on the lips of every one, and for the answer of which a most thorough and searching investigation was at once begun. The best detective talent was immediately put to work. The people were thoroughly aroused and determined upon having the headless body identified and the cruel, heartless murderer or murderers brought to swift justice. Leaving the investigation of the deed, we will now go with the reader to a happy home of a happy family, ranking among the oldest and best connected families in the state of Indiana, and living on the father's farm near Greencastle, Putnam County, Indiana. Alexander S. Bryan, and his wife who had lived to honorable old age, respected and loved by all who knew them, owned this happy home and were the parents of twelve children, of which at the time of this writing, seven were living, Pearl being the youngest, of a fine, voluptuous form, with a sweet, lovely disposition and manners, popular with all who were acquainted with her, cheerful and happy at all times and was first entering her twenty-second year. The Bryan family, taking all the relations into account, is the largest in the state of Indiana, and its standing of the very highest. Pearl the baby of the family, petted and feted, had graduated from the Greencastle High School in 1892, with the highest honors and was the special favorite of her graduating class. Beautiful in form and features, highly accomplished, well educated, with a doting father and mother, well provided with this world's goods, and with whom she was a favorite daughter, Pearl Bryan had much to live for. From the time she left school, aye, even before her graduating year arrived, she had many admirers, and to look on her was to love, to love was to lose. She counted her admirers by the score, but to none did she give her heart, or encourage them in any serious intentions. She was liked by all, but while she was of a lovable, affectionate disposition, she allowed none to go beyond the line of admiration, and cupid's swift and seldom erring shafts, fell harmless by her side. Three long years had passed since Pearl had bade "good bye" to her studies in the Greencastle High School, and although a leader in society, a guest of honor where-ever she visited, none of her ardent admirers had made a deeper impression upon her, and her heart was still her own. Men of high moral character, well supplied with this world's goods and standing well in business and social circles, would have eagerly jumped at the opportunity to claim her as their wife. Their protestations of love however seemed to have no affect upon the mind or heart of Miss Pearl Bryan. Money and position did not have any effect upon her favors, the young man, struggling hard to make his way in life, was as graciously received and as well treated by her as the young swell, rolling in luxury and wealth. Will Wood, a second cousin of Pearl Bryan, was one of her ardent admirers, but was treated as one of the family and in no sense as a lover. He was treated rather as a favorite brother by Miss Pearl, who made a confidant of him. Wood's father who was a good old Minister lived only a half mile distant from the Bryan's, and Will spent much of his time at Pearl's home, and was in her company a great deal. Nothing was thought of this, at the time, although evil tongues wagged rapidly afterwards, and many were ready to lay at the door of Will Wood in less than a year thereafter, direct connection and complicity with a crime unparallelled in the criminal history of the Nineteenth Century. Along in the latter part of 1894, Scott Jackson with his mother moved to Greencastle, Ind., from Jersey City, N. J. One of Mrs. Jackson's daughters, the wife of Dr. Edwin Post, of Depauw University, had lived at Greencastle for many years, and Mrs. Jackson moved there to get near her daughter. Scott Jackson belonged to a good family, his father being Commodore Jackson, who commanded many vessels and who stood high in social circles in New Jersey. Scott cut quite a prominent figure in both the social and business world. He went to Jersey City with splendid recommendations. His career there was considerably checkered however, and he only escaped a long sentence to the penitentiary, which his partner Alexander Letts is now serving, by turning State's evidence in a case of embezzlement in which Jackson and Letts had embezzled a large amount, said to have been $32,000 from the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Jackson and Letts, it appears, obtained employment of the Pennsylvania Railroad company, in the Jersey City offices. One of Jackson's duties was to receive and open the mails. BIG EMBEZZLEMENTS. After a few months extensive robberies in the railroad office were discovered. They were said to amount to nearly $32,000. They were traced to Jackson and Letts. It was found, according to testimony during the two trials that followed, that Jackson abstracted checks from the mail, and that Letts, to whom he handed them, had them cashed. Meanwhile the saloon which they kept had become notorious. They were acknowledged high flyers in sporting circles. Both had become "plungers" on the race tracks. It was reported that they made much money, owing to their lavish expenditures. They "entertained" liberally in their own particular way, and for a time were looked upon as "good fellows" among the sporting fraternity, who sought the privilege of their acquaintance. Jackson was a prominent member of the Entre Nous, an exclusive social club. Suddenly, the Pennsylvania Railroad officials discovered that these two young men were "sporting" at the expense of the company. Their arrest followed. At the first trial the jury disagreed. HE TURNED STATE'S EVIDENCE. Before the second trial took place the railroad company discovered such proof of Jackson's guilt that he found it healthy to turn state's evidence against Letts. The latter was sentenced to a long term in the State Prison. Jackson went free and also went away from Jersey. News of this escapade and his career in Jersey City never reached Greencastle and his family there ranking among the best. He was at once given an entree into society which might well be envied by any young man. Will Wood, who lived a near neighbor to Mrs. Jackson, and who as stated was a particular favorite with Pearl Bryan, took a great liking to Scott Jackson. They were very intimate, in fact became chums. Jackson entered the dental college at Indianapolis, and Wood being of a rather reckless disposition would go to Indianapolis to see Jackson, and together they would have a big time in the city. Both being fond of ladies' company, they spent much of their time together in the company of women of loose moral character and were in several very unsavory escapades, escaping notoriety however under assumed names, which prevented their families and friends at Greencastle from hearing of them. With no knowledge of his former career and ignorant of his escapades while at college at Indianapolis, it is no wonder that he was a favorite in society when at home. Belonging to an exellent family, he was outwardly a man whom any father would be proud to have his daughter associate with. With dimples on his chin and cheeks, a childish smile on his lips, frank, beautiful, pale violet-blue eyes, he had a most winsome countenance. But behind the angelic front was hidden a very demon. Jackson was a monstrosity if you will, a whited sepulchre, and one of the unaccountable freaks of nature. To those not knowing his habits, a handsome, affable, pleasing man of fine form and features; to those who knew him truly, a villain of the deepest dye, a very demon in human shape. Illustration: The Home of Pearl Bryan at Greencastle, Ind.--Drawn by our special Artist. Notwithstanding Will Wood knew him as he did, and that Pearl Bryan was Wood's second cousin the same blood coursing through their veins, Wood introduced Jackson into the Bryan family in the spring of 1895. It was a case of love at first sight. From the first meeting between Scott Jackson and Pearl Bryan, at the colonial mansion of the Bryans on the hill, Pearl showed that she was most favorably impressed with him. She who had refused to listen to the wooing whispers of men in high rank and station in life by the scores, fell at once a victim to the darts from cupid's shafts sent from Jackson's lips, for after occurrences proved conclusively that the honeyed words and winsome smiles, which won their way so easily into the heart of Pearl Bryan, came only from the lips and never from the heart of him who lent his every effort to win the heart of the belle of Putnam County, as Pearl Bryan was known, but with no manly or honorable purpose. Scott Jackson was void of moral principle and honor, and never did anything with a manly purpose, he was incapable of such action. THE RESULT OF AN EXAMINATION OF JACKSON, BY THE BERTILLION SYSTEM, AFTER HIS ARREST FOR THE MURDER OF PEARL BRYAN. After the arrest of Jackson for the crime, he was turned over to Sergeant Kiffmeyer, of the Cincinnati police force, who has charge of the Bertillion system of measuring and identifying criminals for the local Police Department, and who is recognized as an authority on criminals. After he had completed the measurement of Jackson he said, "Every man's head tells its own story. Jackson is another H. H. Holmes. "Jackson has the cunning to plot and plan, and to conceal. "Jackson is a mind far beyond the ordinary. He has a head such as Napoleon would have. PICKED OUT OF A THOUSAND. "Jackson knew fully and realized what lay before him in the murder of Pearl Bryan. "Jackson is absolutely incapable of any expression of remorse. "The only appeal that can be made to Jackson is through his fear of punishment. "Jackson's skull is abnormal, and unusually long in proportion to its breadth. It is abnormally developed on the right side in front and on the left side in the rear of the head. "Jackson is a natural monster, or monstrosity, which ever you will. Look at his portrait," and the Sergeant held up his photograph. "Is that the face of a criminal? "Jackson has other peculiarities. His fingers are disproportionately long to his height. "Jackson has all the characteristics of a criminal by nature." WAS IT FATE OR WAS IT DESTINE? Was it cruel fate which led pure, beautiful, innocent and attractive Pearl Bryan into the toils of such a fiend in human shape? Or was it the blind Goddess of Justice that led Jackson to meet Miss Pearl and sacrifice her life that the demon Jackson might be exposed to the world, his deeds of evil and misdoings brought to light, and he expatiate the many crimes which he had committed on the gallows or by serving a life sentence in the penitentiary? Be that as it may they met through the intimate acquaintance and friendship of each with Will Wood, who little thought when he brought this pure spotless virgin in contact with the hypocrite and demon, Jackson, that he was committing a sin, which he would regret to his dying day, and which would bring disgrace, dishonor and ruin on two highly respected families and also upon his own head and that of his aged respected and christian father, who was at the time the Presiding Elder of a church for the Greencastle District. The acquaintance of Jackson and Miss Pearl soon ripened into friendship and that friendship into trusting confiding love on the Part of Miss Bryan, and the accomplishment of the deep, villainous designs upon the part of Jackson. As Will Wood said in a talk afterward, "Pearl was stuck on Jackson from the first time they met, Jackson would come and get my horse and buggy and drive over to Pearl's house, when they would often go out driving together. Pearl was pretty and ambitious, but I never thought she would do wrong. Now I can see she was perfectly infatuated with Jackson from the start; so much that I am firmly convinced, she was completely in his power, and he took advantage of his influence over her." Through Jackson's cunning to plot and plan as well as to conceal, the relations of criminal intimacy between him and Pearl, were never even suspected by anyone. Jackson was not in Greencastle a great deal, and this fact enabled him to carry on his illicit relations with her more boldly than he would otherwise have been able to do. The parents of the erring girl never for a moment suspected anything wrong. Pearl was their favorite, the daughter of their old age, had been raised with every care and precaution, had always moved in the very best of society, and Jackson to them was a gentleman, a member of one of the best families of the country, well-thought of and respected in the community in which they moved, and was not looked upon as a lover, although they were aware of the fact that Pearl was more seriously smitten with his charms than she ever had been with those of any of the other many admirers and friends who had visited their home as the company of Pearl. Without hesitancy they permitted their favorite daughter to accept the attentions of Jackson, go out with him when he was visiting home, and remain alone with him in their parlor until late hours in the night. They had every confidence in Pearl, and no suspicion of the villainous intentions of Jackson, or the evil influence he possessed over her. With Pearl Bryan, it was the oft told tale, "She loved not wisely but too well." Jackson, "a criminal by nature" with his "angelic front", behind which was hidden a demon, with his low moral character, so well concealed from the public, and with a set design to ruin the pure and innocent girl, which had been thrown in his way, was not slow to take advantage of his opportunities and the influence and power, which he could easily see he held over the unsuspecting girl. Loving and trusting Jackson as she had never before loved any man, and being of a sanguine nervous temperament, with her likes and dislikes of the strongest possible, with a great deal of animal nature, cheerful and talkative, yet lacking in force, by nature kind and benevolent to a fault, and her development of individuality and self-reliance small, she was one who could be easily persuaded but never driven. Jackson was not slow to learn this, and with honeyed words and protestations of love, he won Pearl Bryan's heart. This won, the accomplishment of his devilish designs, her ruin, was easy. She fell a victim to his lustful desire, and in a short time discovered that she would soon become a mother. Almost crazed at this discovery she knew not what to do or which way to turn. It was the first blot that had ever come on the name of a member of the proud Bryan family. In her desperation she confided her condition to her cousin, Will Wood. As Wood claimed, no one else in Greencastle knew or even suspected anything of the true condition of affairs between Pearl Bryan and Scott Jackson. They had been keeping company with each other whenever Jackson was in Greencastle, from the early spring of 1895 until September of the same year, when she discovered her condition, no one except Will Wood knowing anything wrong about them. The discovery of Pearl Bryan that she was in a delicate condition, and Jackson being the cause of her trouble, and as he said in a letter to Wood wishing to get clear of the scandal, brings us to the third, and possibly the most important suspect in the dreadful tragedy near Fort Thomas, Ky. Alonzo Walling, nineteen years of age, was born on a farm near Mt. Carmel, Ind. His father died when he was but three years old, leaving his mother in moderate circumstances with two other boys, Clint and Charles. When Alonzo was thirteen she moved to Greencastle where she kept boarders and Alonzo commenced at once to work in a glass factory to help support his mother. He worked there four years, and was thrown out of work when the factory was closed. Then his mother, by self-sacrifice, sent him to the Indianapolis Dental college, paying all his expenses, and it is learned that he worked hard and was one of the formost in his class. He returned home every evening, and on Saturdays assisted Dr. Sparks, at Greenfield, in his dental parlors. His term expired in March, 1895, when his mother moved to Oxford and made her home with her sister, Mrs. James Faucett. Having very poor health, her only thought was to try and give him a good education. It was at the Indianapolis Dental College that he first met Jackson and became acquainted with him. By some strange and uncontrollable fatallity Walling was thrown with Jackson again in Cincinnati. Here is his own statement made Wednesday, Feb. 5., 1896, regarding their acquaintance and friendship: "I met Jackson in Indianapolis, a little more than a year ago. We attended the Indiana Dental College together. I did not know him intimately there, although we attended the same class. When the school season was over, I had no idea of meeting him again here in Cincinnati." "How did you come to room together here?" "Well, I was standing on the doorstep of our boarding-house, at 222 West Ninth Street, the second day of our school term here in October, when Scott came along Ninth Street and recognized me. On the strength of our being acquainted in Indianapolis we roomed together at 222 Ninth Street and took our meals out." Walling had no unsavory record, although he did not stand well at Greenfield, while living there. That he was directly connected with the Fort Thomas tragedy there can be no doubt. Sergeant Kiffmeyer, who has charge of the Bertillion System, and who is quoted regarding Scott Jackson, said of Alonzo Walling, after taking his measurement. "Walling's head is that of a commonplace criminal, he is just the opposite of Scott Jackson, at the same time Walling is utterly void of any ability or cunning to plot and plan and to conceal. Jackson knew fully and realized what lay before him in the murder of Pearl Bryan. Walling had not realized the enormity of the crime, and is supremely indifferent to the consequences and to the crime committed. No appeal, not even the fear of punishment, will have any impression on Walling." The History of the Tragedy. Never in the history of the crimes committed in this section of the country has the same interest or the same deep feeling been aroused as has been in the Ft. Thomas (Ky.) murder. The fact that the head was removed from the body and secreted or destroyed, and the developments which followed fast upon each other, adding day by day new evidence to show the cold-bloodedness of the crime, the preparations which had been made for its successful carrying out and the covering up of all traces of the identity of the murderer and the murdered. The mystery that still surrounds the hiding place of the dismembered head, have led to this result. A murder so horrible and revolting as to appear to place it beyond the civilization of to-day, had been committed within ear shot of one of the most popular U. S. Military Posts of this country, and within a few miles of the center of population of this the greatest and most highly civilized nation on earth. The murderer had hacked the head from the body of his victim, and carried it away with him. Whether from pure savagory and demon spirit or to prevent the identification of his victim was not known. The body was found in an orchard at Ft. Thomas on Saturday, February 1., at 8 o'clock in the morning. The neck, where it had been severed from the body, lay in a pool of blood, and from evidences on the body and in the bush under which it lay, a fierce struggle had taken place before the victim received her death stroke. BUT SLIGHT CLEW TO WORK ON. Upon the body or in the clothing there was nothing by which the woman could be identified, excepting the dealers' names in the shoe, and the murder or murderers had left no other clew behind by which they could be identified. Without the head, the mystery seemed unsolvable, and every effort was made to find it in the vicinity. The remaining details of the crime, as far as circumstantial evidence revealed them, told a story which was truly horrifying. The dumb evidence given by foot prints, blood-stains, broken tree branches, was terrible to reflect upon. The body was lying upon the bank with the feet higher than the body, and the clothing so disarranged that the officers were at first led to believe that the woman had been outraged before she was murdered. The clothing could easily have been as much disarranged in the struggle which had evidently taken place and when the murderer threw his victim to the ground. The upper part of the woman's dress was open as was the garment beneath, and her bosom was bare. The skirt-band was unloosed, and the skirt of the dress was gathered up about the waist. Beneath the stump of the neck there was a huge pool of blood, and blood was scattered about on the grass and the leaves of the overhanging bushes. One glove lay in the bushes and a piece torn from the woman's dress was hanging to a bit of brushwood several yards from the body. The officers carefully examined the footprints leading to the spot where the body lay, and they found that the man and the woman had walked side by side for a short distance when, for some reason, the woman had attempted to flee and the man had followed and overtaken her. The tracks were especially distinct here, for the woman had run through a very muddy spot, which she would have avoided had she had time to pick her way. The murderer overtook his victim before she had screamed more than once or twice. He choked her into silence and dragged her toward the bushy bank. She struggled desperately, and he tore a handful of cloth from her dress. He threw her to the ground and slid over the bank with her. He must have drawn his knife after the struggle began; otherwise he would have used it sooner. He slashed at her throat. She clutched the knife with the one hand she had free--her left--and three times the blade laid her palm or fingers open to the bone. Her struggle was useless, and in a moment her life blood was pouring from a gaping wound in her throat. When she was dead, or, at least, powerless to resist, the assassin searched for some article concealed on her person. He tore off her corset, leaving the marks of his bloody fingers on the garment, which he threw a yard or two from him, and then unbuttoned the under garment beneath her corset, where a letter might have been concealed. Whether he found something which aroused him to jealous rage, or whether he finished his awful work in the hope of concealing the identity of his victim, no one knows. The murder must have been committed Friday night for the clothing of the dead woman was not wet and the rain Friday night had kept up until near ten o'clock. The struggle between the murderer and his victim was a most desperate one. Half of a man's shirt sleeve was found near the dead body, soaked in blood. The woman had evidently torn it from her murderers arm in her desperate struggle for her life. The lad Hewling upon discovering the body of the murdered woman, was horror stricken by the sight and ran towards Mr. Lock's house, badly frightened and calling lustily for help. Mr. Lock, his son Wilbert and Mike Noonan, an employ, came running from the house. When they had seen the body, Mr. Lock went direct to Fort Thomas, telephoned the news of the ghastly find to the Newport police headquarters, and notified Col. Cochran the Commander at the Fort. Jule Plummer, Sheriff of Campbell County, Kentucky, Coroner Tingley and a number of the other County and City officials respondet the telephone summons at once and hurried to the scene. The body had not been touched nor had any one been in touching distance of it when these officers arrived and viewed it. The body was ordered to be taken to undertaker W. H. Whites in Newport, by Coroner Tingley, at once after he had examined it. Upon this examination he said that there was no evidence whatever that the woman's person had been outraged. The work of identifying the victim and running down her murderers was at once begun. The entire detective and police force of Cincinnati, Covington and Newport, was put to work to unravel the mystery, identify the remains and capture her murderers. There was little or no clew to work on. Detectives Crim and McDermott, of Cincinnati, were assigned to work actively on the case, and sent to the scene at once by Col. Philip Deitsch, Superintendent of Police of Cincinnati. Before these sleuth-hounds of the law, Crim and McDermott, reached the place where the headless body had been found, hundreds of persons from the three cities, and every soldier stationed at Fort Thomas, who could possibly get away, had preceded them. The grass and bushes were trampled down by the crowds of visitors who had come to satisfy their curiosity, but who, through their eagerness to see and learn everything possible, had destroyed so nearly every particle of evidence the murderer had left behind him. The foot prints and other evidences of the desperate struggle were all destroyed and but little was left for them to work on. Relic hunters were out in great numbers and they almost demolished the bush under which the body was discovered, breaking off branches upon which blood spots could be seen. They peered closely into the ground for blood-spotted leaves, stones and even saturated clay. Anything that had a blood stain upon it was seized upon eagerly, and hairs of the unfortunate woman were at a premium, men and boys, and even young women, examining every branch and twig of the bush in the midst of which the struggle took place, in the hope of finding one. The inherent, morbid love of the horrible the mass of humanity possesses was well illustrated in the scenes witnessed. The heavy rain which fell nearly all afternoon was not deterrent to these relic hunters' zeal. AT THE UNDERTAKER. The scene at Undertaker White's establishment, on Fourth Street, in Newport, where the body was taken to, was one of activity. All day long and up to a late hour at night the place was besieged with people anxious to get a look at the remains of the unfortunate woman. The crowd was composed mostly of men, but there was quite a number of women to be seen among them. Several persons came in and gave descriptions of missing friends, and, if they tallied in any way with the corpse, they were permitted to view it. Owing to the close proximity to Fort Thomas, where the body was found, and the well-known fact that a number of the "women on the town" in Cincinnati were in the habit of visiting the soldiers at the Fort, many suspected that some one of the soldiers had committed the crime, and as the clothes on the body were of the cheapest kind, they thought the victim was one of these lowe women. Col. Cochran, the commander of the Fort, would not allow such a stigma to rest upon his post. He instituted a most thorough investigation, and invited the civil officials to aid him in his investigation. It did not take long to convince those working on the case that the soldiers were in no way involved in the terrible tragedy. On Saturday night, not many hours after the discovery of the headless body, Arthur Carter, of Seymour Ind., arrived with his trio of famous bloodhounds, Jack, Wheeler and Stonewall. The hounds are the same animals that tracked Bud Stone, the colored murderer of the Wratten family, at Washington, Ind., to his home. Stone was later arrested, and when charged with the crime made a full confession, for which he was afterward hanged. Mr. Carter said during his brief stop at the Grand Central Depot that over 20 criminals are now serving time in the penitentiaries of Indiana and Illinois as a result of the work of the hounds. Before being taken to the scene of the murder the dogs were taken to White's undertaking establishment and given a scent of the unfortunate woman's clothing. Carter expressed a doubt as to the dogs ability to do any work in striking a trail by the scent from the clothing, as it had been freely handled by a half hundred of persons. The dogs, with noses close to the ground, ran hither and thither in a confused manner. It was evident that the dogs were useless, as all tracks left by the murderer and his victim had been obliterated by the thousands of people who had crossed over the place where the body was found. DRAINING THE RESERVOIR. They followed the scent as far as the Covington reservoir, when they lost it, and were unable to gain it again. In the hope that the head might be found in this body of water the reservoir was drained on Monday, involving an expense of about $2,000, but the head was not discovered, and the hard-working, earnest detectives and Sheriff Plummer were apparently baffled. Clew after clew was followed up only to be abandoned as fruitless. A large number of young women were reported missing from various parts of the country, but when traced up and pursued to its end, each clew proved to be without any tangible basis. There was nothing to work on, but the officers of the law, kept up the search for the head and the identification of the remains with most commandable persistency. Every Suggestion was received and considered, nothing was left undone that could be done. THE SHOES. The authorities then turned their attention to the only tangible clew, the shoes. Sheriff Plummer, of Campbell County, accompanied by Detectives Crim and McDermott, of this city, proceeded on Monday night to Greencastle, Ind., to interview the dealers from whom the shoes had evidently been purchased. They also took along the dead girls clothing. At the store of Louis & Hayes it was found that the entire lot of shoes, one dozen pairs, had been purchased by them from Portsmouth. Nine of these pairs had been sold, and all but two purchasers were readily accounted for. Then an attempt was made to locate these two pairs, one of which had, without doubt, been worn by the murdered girl. This seemed impossible for a time. In the meanwhile every girl who had left the Depauw Seminary, near Greencastle, was traced down, and found each time. In the meantime every thing possible was being done at the scene of the murder. Two tramps were arrested at Ludlow, Ky., as suspects, but were afterwards released for lack of evidence. Crowds flocked to the morgue in Newport, where the headless body lay; it being identified a number of times as the body of some one who after the identification would turn out to be alive and well. Probably the strongest case of identification, which did not identify, was that of Mrs. Hart, of Cincinnati, who identified the remains as those of her daughter, Ella Markland. Emil Eshler, a friend of Mrs. Hart, and William Hess, a saloon-keeper, both thought it was the body of Mrs. Markland, and were so strongly convinced of it, that they told the mother of their opinion. She and her husband then went to Newport, where she made a very careful examination, which resulted in her declaring that beyond a reasonable doubt the body was that of her daughter. The woman called at the Cincinnati headquarters and in a long talk with Chief Deitsch declared that she was fully convinced the body was that of Ella Markland. Her story of the identification was told at considerable length and between many sobs. She said she had been allowed to thoroughly examine the body at Newport and that she identified it by the peculiar shape of the legs from the knee down and by the general contour of the breast, waist and limbs. In talking to the chief she was asked when she had last seen her daughter and replied that it was New Year's Eve that she last saw her alive. Mrs. Markland was afterwards found on Ninth Street in Cincinnati, where she was working as a domestic. Without question the most sensational clew upon which the detectives had to work, was the unearthing of a true life story, in which passion and crime were involved, and which for days promised to bear fruit of a most sensational character. This clew was, that the headless body, was that of Francisca Engelhardt, who had not long ago been married to a Dr. Kettner, who deserted his first wife in Dakota, and whom she had never seen until he came to Cincinnati, to marry her, the acquaintance and engagement having been made through a correspondence advertisement in a Cincinnati newspaper. The pair were married by Squire Winkler, the girl never knowing that her husband was a bigamist. Three months afterward the first wife, at Mitchell, S. D., heard that her husband had married a woman in Cincinnati. She wrote but received no answer, then came on to Cincinnati, and on finding that the report of her husband being again married was true, she sued for divorce. FLED TO LOUISVILLE. Meanwhile Kettner fled to Louisville with his second wife, then to points in Indiana, where he was located from time to time. When his first wife sued for divorce he was traced to Batesville, Ind. He never replied to her petition for divorce, and she would have won her suit had she not been forced to abandon it on account of lack of money. She was determined, however, to prosecute him for bigamy. Mrs. Anna Burkhardt, of No. 1317 Vine Street, with whom the Engelhardt girl had boarded, called at the Cincinnati police headquarters and told her story. She furnished Chief Deitsch and Mayor Caldwell with pictures of both Kettner and Francisca Engelhardt. The whole story at once impressed itself so fully upon both the Mayor and Chief Deitsch that work was immediately begun. Telegrams of a private nature were sent to points in Indiana and the West. One from Evansville states that Kettner and his second wife left that town for parts unknown about a month before. He was then traced through various cities and towns until on the same day on which the arrest of Jackson and Walling was made. In response to telegrams from Greencastle, Ind., Dr. Kettner and wife, were located at Marquette Mich., he having had a shady record, at every point he had been traced to. Superintendent of Police Deitsch and Mayor Caldwell, of Cincinnati, considered this the best clew on which the detectives could work. As soon as the intelligence was imparted to Chief Deitsch, he ordered renewed activity in the case and in the afternoon went over to Campbell County to personally supervise the work of his detectives. IDENTIFIED THE BODY. Chief Deitsch interviewed both Mrs. Burkhardt and her daughter at their home. Mrs. Anna Burkhardt said: "I went to Newport Tuesday morning to view the corpse, and can say almost positively that it is that of Francisca Engelhardt, who married Dr. Kettner. I could recognize her hand out of hundreds. She had remarkably beautiful hands, and always held up the right one in a peculiar position when speaking. When I saw the body at the Morgue I took her hand and placed it in that position, and the resemblance strongly confirmed my first conclusion. The size of the body also corresponds with the stature of the girl I knew. "When she lived with us I slept with her, and, therefore, know her peculiarities. She had a very pretty foot, of which she was exceedingly proud. She would often hold it up to view and speak about it. The toes were peculiarly shaped, and I immediately recognized them on the corpse. "Before I entered the room with Detective Keating to look at the body, I fully described her peculiar foot to him. He had never seen the body, either, and was also immediately struck with the resemblance of the foot to my description. "She came to my house in September, 1893, but she took a position that same fall in Dr. Reamy's hospital, on Walnut Hills, as telephone girl. She visited us frequently, however, and often stayed all night with us. BEFORE SHE MARRIED KETTNER, she received letters from Mitchell, S. D., and told us that they were from a Dr. Kettner. On April 13, 1894, he came to see her at my house, and the next day--it was Saturday, April 14--she gave up her position at the hospital and was married to Kettner by Squire Winkler. My daughter was a witness to the ceremony. They lived here for ten days after the marriage, and since that time I have seen neither of them. The woman also stated a very important fact. She says that the girl wore a corset having two inside pockets, and was in the habit of carrying everything of value, such as money and articles that she prized, in these pockets. When she married Kettner Mrs. Burkhardt warned her in a friendly way that perhaps he was not honest. In answer to this the girl drew the marriage certificate from her bosom, displaying it and saying that she would never part with it, but would carry it in her corset. The couple made frequent trips to Ft. Thomas, which seemed to be a favorite resort with them." Illustration: Her struggle was useless, the life-blood was pouring from a gaping wound in her throat. KETTNER HAD A MOTIVE. Dr. Kettner had a motive, which made this clew seem the right one for such a deed as committed at Fort Thomas. Being a bigamist and fearing that his first wife, who followed him so many miles, would prosecute him, his only hope was to secure the marriage certificate and other evidence against him. The Engelhardt girl always carried the marriage certificate in her bosom, beneath the corset, and more than once said she would never part with it. POST-MORTEM EXAMINATION HELD ON THE BODY OF THE UNKNOWN VICTIM. At 3 o'clock Monday afternoon Dr. Robert Carothers, of Newport, made a post-mortem examination of the body at White's undertaking establishment. It was made in the presence of Dr. J. O. Jenkins, Drs. J. L. and C. T. Phythian, Dr. J. W. Fishback and Coroner W. S. Tingley. The examination occupied over an hour, and was very thorough. The result was the finding of a foetus of between four or five months' gestation. The doctors also came to the conclusion that the woman was not over 20 years of age, and that she had never before been pregnant. The foetus was removed and taken to A. F. Goetze's pharmacy, corner of Fifth and York Streets, where it was placed in alcohol for preservation. The stomach was taken out and turned over to Dr. W. H. Crane, of the Medical College of Ohio, in Cincinnati, and he made all the known tests for the various poisons that might have been administered. This was done to ascertain, if possible, whether the woman was drugged before being taken to the place where the crime was committed. Dr. Carothers, who was at the time a professor at the Ohio Medical College, had been an interne in the Cincinnati Hospital, and his experience qualified him to judge accurately of other details than those pertaining only to professional matters. "I am satisfied that the girl was not outraged," said he. "The man had a reason to kill her, and the result of the post mortem shows it. I judge that it was a premediated and cold-blooded murder. The girl, in my opinion, was from the country and was comparatively innocent. She was brought to Cincinnati to submit to a criminal operation. Once here she was taken to F. Thomas and murdered. Her head was taken away, horrible as it may seem, merely to prevent the identification of her body." A NEWPORT SHOE DEALER DOES SOME DETECTIVE WORK. L. D. Poock, a leading shoe merchant of Newport, who took a most decidedly active interest in the case from the start, claiming as was proven true afterwards that the marks in the shoes would certainly identify the remains, did some valuable detective work under the direction of Sheriff Plummer. Mr. Poock was struck by the narrowness of the shoes worn by the dead girl, and opened them to discover the size and width. He recognized the fact that 11 and 22 in the shoe would give him the information desired if he had but the key. While at one of the Cincinnati factories, a salesman stepped forward and recognized the shoe as one manufactured by Drew, Selby & Co., of Portsmouth, Ohio. Upon this information Mr. Poock, determined upon seeing the whole thing out, took a train for Portsmouth, and, arriving at the factory of Drew, Selby & Co., established in 10 minutes that Louis & Hays had given an order for 12 pairs of black cloth top button shoes April 18, 1895, for fall delivery. The shipment was made September the 3., 1895, and among the lot there was but one pair of shoes numbered 22-11. This clew so thoroughly worked up by Mr. Poock, who kept Sheriff Plummer and the detectives, who had gone to Greencastle, Ind., posted as to the result of his investigation regarding the shoes, proved to be the correct one, the one by which the body of the murdered woman was positively identified and by the investigation of which the arrest of the murderers was secured. THE DETECTIVES AND SHERIFF PLUMMER AT GREENCASTLE, IND. Sheriff Jule Plummer of Campbell County, Kentucky, and Detectives Crim and McDermott of Cincinnati, who had gone to Greencastle, were kept thoroughly posted as to the work being done on the Cincinnati or rather Fort Thomas tragedy. Not a clew or theory with the least resemblance to truth was neglected. The first persons seen were Messrs. Louis & Hays, the shoe dealers from whom the shoes worn by the victim were supposed to have been purchased. Mr. Hays said that the shoes were manufactured by Drew, Selby & Co., of Portsmouth, Ohio, and showed Sheriff Plummer a telegram from the latter firm which was received that morning. In this it was stated that in the entire lot of shoes which had been especially made to order for Louis & Hays, but one pair was numbered 22-11, which is the Portsmouth firm's mark for size three. This pair was found upon the unfortunate girl. Upon this theory Sheriff Plummer and Detectives Crim and McDermott went to work. Of that whole lot of shoes made for Louis & Hays by the Portsmouth firm, the officers located seven pairs, leaving but two unaccounted for. The clerks in the shoe store were shown the muddy shoe taken from the girl's foot. They all recognized it at a glance. The articles of wearing apparel which were also brought along were shown to nearly all of the leading dry goods merchants. None of them were able to recognize even one of the articles. An effort was also made to identify the gloves worn by the murdered woman. In none of the stores could a similar pair be found. The officers were not discouraged however. The proof was positive almost beyond a doubt that the shoes worn by the murdered girl had been sold to her by Louis & Hays in their store at Greencastle. This was the only tangible clew they had to work on and with it properly run down, they were perfectly satisfied, they would secure the identification of the beheaded woman, if not fix the guilt of the crime on some one in the immediate vicinity. Another visit was made to Louis & Hays store at night, the books of the firm were carefully gone over again and again. Only seven of the nine pairs of the Drew, Selby & Co., shoes sold by Louis & Hays could be accounted for, and none of those were the ones worn by the murdered woman. The Fort Thomas tragedy, and the coming of Sheriff Plummer, Detectives Crim and McDermott to Greencastle, in search of the identification of the shoes had aroused the people at that place, especially so, the suspicion of a Mr. A. W. Early, Manager of the Western Union, to whose noble work, the officers owe nearly all their success and information. The description of the body of the dead girl, especially that part, which described her fingers as resembling those of a seamstress, and the little wart on the finger, aroused the suspicion of Mrs. Alexander S. Bryan, whose daughter Pearl, was, as the mother thought, visiting friends in Indianapolis, Ind. Nothing was mentioned of these suspicions outside the immediate family, but so strong were the suspicions with them, that Fred Bryan a brother of Pearl telegraphed to Indianapolis to Pearl's friends, asking if she was there. The answer came that Pearl had not been in Indianapolis, although she had left for that city, Jan., 28. A. W. Early, the manager for the Western Union Telegraph Company at Greencastle, saw the telegram and answer from Indianapolis. It was then, he knew, that he possessed positive information, not only as to the identification of the headless body at the Morgue in Newport, but also to the fixing of the guilt on one or more persons, one of whom at least was Early's intimate friend. Realizing this and awe-stricken with the horribleness of the deed in which his friend was, to say the least, indirectly implicated, he rushed at once to the hotel and in an excited manner called the officers out to tell them his story. After a very hurried conference with Early the officers all left the hotel to go with Early to his office where he gave the first real clew to the victim and upon which information, three men Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling, students at the Ohio Dental College, in Cincinnati, and William Wood, a medical student who was with his uncle in South Bend, Ind., were on that same night arrested, charged with the murder and complicity in the murder of Pearl Bryan, whose headless body lay at Undertaker White's Establishment in Newport, Ky. Early's story was that he came to Greencastle Oct. 4., 1895. "Soon after my arrival at Greencastle I made the acquaintance of Will Wood, a student at Depauw University. This acquaintance soon ripened into a friendship which brought us together a great deal and made us confide to each other much more than is ordinary among young men. "So fast did the friendship between Will Wood and myself become that he would show me his letters. Among those he showed, I remember one from Scott Jackson, a young man from Greencastle, who is in Cincinnati attending a dental college. "In this letter Jackson confided to his chum, Will Wood, that he, Jackson and Pearl Bryan had been too intimate, that she had loved not wisely, but too well, and as a result he had betrayed her, that Pearl would soon become a mother, and asked Wood's help in this matter. "He admitted his intimacy with Pearl, and his responsibility for her present condition. He quoted recipes calculated to prevent the evil results of their indiscretion, and asked Wood to get them and give them to Pearl. "Wood did this, as he said he was willing to do anything he could for Jackson and especially for Pearl, who was Wood's second cousin. "These drugs however did not have the desired effect of reversing the laws of nature. "One letter, I remember was in answer to one which Wood had written to Jackson, informing him that Pearl Bryan was showing the effects of her indiscretion and intimacy with Jackson, and telling him that the recipes sent by him had been furnished by Wood. "Jackson regretted that his recipes had failed but said something must be done and suggested that the girl be sent to Cincinnati, stating that he could arrange to have an abortion performed on her. "Wood told me afterward that Pearl had gone to Cincinnati to have a criminal operation performed, and had told her parents she was going to Indianapolis to visit friends. She had money with her, sufficient to cover any expenses she might incur in such an undertaking." He then told of Fred Bryan the brother of Pearl, telegraphing to Indianapolis inquiring about Pearl and receiving an answer that she had not been there. It was midnight when the detectives heard of this and went to the house of Mr. Spivy, of Louis & Hays, and got him to go to the shoe store with them. On arriving there the books of the firm were again examined and the name of Pearl Bryan was found on them, and the fact that she had bought a pair of No. 3 shoes was found. In all their scrutiny of the books this fact had escaped the detectives and shoe dealers. IDENTIFIED THE CLOTHING. This settled the fact that Pearl Bryan had purchased the shoes, and at two o'clock Wednesday morning the officers visited the home of the Bryans, taking with them the clothes found on the murdered woman. Here an awful climax came. The mother of Pearl was shown the clothes and one by one she positively identified them between her sobs and cries of "My Pearl, my Pearl." The dress was one which had been made over for Pearl out of one which had belonged to a dead sister. The bloody undershirt was at once recognized. The family sought to find something upon which to base a hope that it might not be their loved one, and argued that she might have given her clothes to some one else, but this has positively been disproven. The murdered woman was Pearl Bryan. The blow to their hopes came when the officers told them that the murdered woman had webbed or deformed toes, and described them to her. Her sister exclaimed: "My God, it is Pearl! We used to tease her about those when she was little." The scar on the right hand was then told of and added a link to the identification. Even the hairpins were positively identified as belonging to Pearl. There were two gold-plated and two rubber ones of an auburn hue. There remained no doubt as to whom the missing woman was, and there was but one thing to do--pursue her murderer. The whole thing became plain to the officers. They at once determined to secure the arrest of both Jackson and Wood. They knew that Jackson was in Cincinnati so they decided to wire Chief of Police Deitsch and have Jackson arrested and to go in person to South Bend, Ind., for which place Wood had left on the Thursday previous, for the purpose of studying medicine with his uncle, and place Wood under arrest. They at once sent the following telegram: "GREENCASTLE, IND., FEBRUARY 5, 1896. PHILIP DEITSCH, Superintendent of Police, Cincinnati, Ohio: Arrest and charge with murder of Pearl Bryan, one Scott Jackson, student at Dental College, about 24 years old, 5 feet 7 or 8 inches high, weighs about 136 pounds, blonde, nearly sandy mustache, light complexion, may have beard of about six months growth, effeminate in appearance. Positive identification of clothing by family. Arrest if in Cincinnati, William Wood, friend of Jackson. Charge as accomplice. About 20 years, 5 feet 11 inches, light blonde hair, smooth face, rather slender, weighs 165 pounds. We go from here to South Bend after Wood as he left here for that place. CRIM MCDERMOTT AND PLUMMER." Immediately on receipt of the telegram Colonel Deitsch detailed Detectives Witte, Bulmer and Jackson to look after Jackson. It was learned that he roomed at the house of Mrs. McNevin, at 222 West Ninth, next door to Robinson's Opera House. Detective Jackson was stationed in the house and Witte and Bulmer in the saloon opposite. Just when it seemed as though their intended game had discovered the fact that the officers were after him and had left for parts unknown he was captured. It was after nine o'clock, when almost the last ray of hope had died out of the officers breasts, that Chief of Police Deitsch received word that Jackson had just been seen at the Palace Hotel. The chief started out and ran into a man answering Jackson's description. He informed the detectives of the fact, the fellow was watched and was seen to walk slowly down Ninth Street, and on reaching 222 he looked up at the windows. He strolled slowly to Plum Street and stopped and again looked back at the house. He then walked rapidly north on Plum Street toward Court. When he had traversed part of the square Detective Bulmer stepped up to him, saying: "Your name is Jackson, isn't it?" The man turned perfectly livid and trembled like an aspen, and as the detective continued to say, "I want you," he exclaimed, "My God! what is this for?" At the same time the start was made for the Mayor's Office. At Ninth Street Colonel Deitsch met the prisoner and said: "Well, 'Dusty' (Jackson's nickname), we have got you." "Yes," responded the prisoner, "it looks like it." AT THE MAYOR'S OFFICE. When the Mayor's office was reached the prisoner was hustled into the presence of Mayor Caldwell. The scene in the private office of Mayor Caldwell in the City Hall was undoubtedly the most remarkable ever witnessed there. The Mayor was sitting in his office with his Chief Clerk, Cliff Lakeman, when Jackson was ushered into his presence by the officers, at the head of whom was Chief of Police Deitsch. A few minutes later the room was thronged with representatives of the newspapers and detectives. Coroner Haerr was also there waiting for possible developments. Jackson, the prisoner, sat in the center of a long sofa on the east side of the room. On the side of him was Chief Deitsch. The latter conducted the examination, while the Mayor sat in his chair, smoked a cigar and listened. THE EXAMINATION. "Is this Mayor Caldwell?" asked Jackson. "It is," responded His Honor. "The officers say you want to see me." "Yes, I want to talk with you." "What is your name?" "Scott Jackson." "You are also known as Dusty?" "Yes, sometimes." "Where is your home?" "My home is in Greencastle, Ind." "Do you know Pearl Bryan?" "I do." "Where did you last see her?" "It was during the hollidays. I think on January 2." "Have you seen her since?" "I have not." "Do you know William Wood?" "I do." "What is his business?" "I don't know. He used to be connected with the school at Greencastle. Saw him last about January 6." Chief Deitsch here read the dispatch under which the arrest was made. "What have you to say to that?" "The charge is entirely false. I don't know anything about that." "That's what everybody says who is arrested," said Chief Deitsch, "but the identification of the clothes and other facts point to you as the man who took Pearl Bryan or her body to Ft. Thomas. Where were you last Friday evening?" "I must have been in my room." "What time did you go to your room?" "I think I had supper about 7 o'clock and went home about 7:30." "What did you do?" "I studied in my room." "Was your roommate there?" "I think he was." "Where were you Thursday night?" "I was home, I think. My roommate was out that evening. When he came in I had retired." "How about Saturday evening?" "I went out with a friend and went to the theater." "Who took supper with you Friday evening?" "I think I was alone." "Where did you eat?" "At Heider's." "Ever stay there over night?" "I did not." "Did your roommate?" "Yes, I think he did last Wednesday night." "You have not been home to-day?" "Yes, I left there about 10 o'clock this morning." "Where did you go?" "I went to see a young lady, and took her to dinner, I was with her all afternoon." "Where were you?" "At the Emery Hotel." "Where did you go in the evening?" "The young lady went to her place of business, and later I put her on the car. Then I went to Heiders for supper." "Where then?" "Oh, I was just walking around the streets." "Who was with you?" "I stopped in a barber shop about 9 o'clock and walked a piece with one of the barbers." "Did you meet any one else you knew?" "I did not." "Where were you going when you were arrested?" "I was going to the college to see if the boys were dissecting." "Why did you pass the house and look up at it?" "Well, I don't know. I am turned around now." "What have you to say to the telegram?" "I don't know what to say. I can't imagine why they mention me in it." "Did you read of the murder?" "Part of it. It made me sick to my stomach." "Were you in Newport lately?" "No sir; I was not." "Didn't you take an interest in the murder when you read of Greencastle being the probable home of the murdered girl?" "I spoke to several people in the house about it." "You left the lady this evening and went to supper, and then walked around town?" "I did." "Did you meet any one else you knew?" "I met Walling, I think, after supper." "Where did you see him?" "Now, I think of it. It was in the barber shop, where I was waiting." "See any one else?" "No, sir." "How long have you been at the dental college?" "Since October 14., last." "Did you come from Greencastle?" "I did." "Where else have you roomed?" "On Carlisle avenue." "When was Miss Bryan up to Cincinnati?" "Don't know. Didn't know she was here." "Where did you last see her?" "On January 2., at her home while I was at Greencastle spending the holidays." "Were you friends?" "Only friendly." "Does she live at home?" "She does." "What do her parents do?" "Her father is a farmer and keeps a dairy." "What kind of a looking girl is Pearl?" "Rather slender. I am a poor judge of height. She was not as tall as I am--almost, though. She was light complexioned." "What will she weigh?" "Suppose about 105 or 110 pounds." "Did she ever live out?" "I don't know, but I don't think so." "You were in the habit of paying your respects to her?" "I called on her a few times." "Did you ever go out with her?" "Once, I guess." "She was not a farmhand?" "No, she worked around the house." "Was she of a quiet disposition?" "As far as I know she was." "Do you know of any other men she kept company with?" "Yes, but she never kept company with me." "Who then?" "Well, she gave a party some time ago. I saw a number of gentlemen there." "Well, Jackson, this is a serious charge. I will have to hold on to you." "I don't see why they accuse me of this." "What is your roommate's name?" "Alonzo Walling." "Did you ever correspond with Pearl Bryan?" "Once or twice." "Ever since January 22?" "I think not." "Have you talked about the murder?" "Yes; at the house. I don't know how the subject was brought up. I was very much interested in the case." "Did you read of the girl probably being from Greencastle?" "Yes." Colonel Deitsch at this point reviewed the evidence against the prisoner and the Greencastle part of it, and said: "And you didn't inquire about it?" "I read that the Sheriff of Newport was in Greencastle, and that the shoes found on the dead woman had been purchased from Louis & Hayes--that they had accounted for nearly all the shoes they sold." "Didn't you think the girl would be heard from?" "There were so many theories that I didn't know what to think." "Do you remember leaving a valise in Legner's saloon last Saturday night?" "I do." "Didn't you take it away Monday morning and leave another?" "No, sir." "Why did you leave the valise at the saloon?" "I was just going as far as the corner and I didn't want to carry it." "Did you take it away the same day?" "Yes, I think I did." "What was in it?" "Nothing." "How far was it from your room?" "Just across the street." "You say there was nothing in the valise?" "I don't think there was." "Where did you get it?" "I bought it in Indianapolis." "How did you happen to take it out Saturday night?" "I don't recollect just now." "Where is it now?" "I loaned it to a student of the name of Hackelman." "What did he want with it?" "I didn't ask him. I took it to him to the college." "What kind of valise was it?" "Tan colored." "Strap or handbag?" "Handbag." "Has it been returned?" "No, sir." "What is Hackelman's first name?" "I don't know." "Have you seen him since?" "I have not." "Where does he live?" "I don't know." "How did you come to take that valise to the saloon?" "I just left it there." "Did you have it with you in the evening?" "Yes, but I don't see why I took it down town." "Was it heavy?" "No, only bothersome." "You had two valises, didn't you?" "No, only one." "Didn't you leave one over at Legner's saloon Saturday, and a different one Monday?" "No, I did not." "Why don't you tell the truth about this?" "I did tell the truth, all but about the valise. I got that back." The prisoner persisted in his story that he knows nothing about the murder, and after a little further examination he was taken down stairs and locked up on the charge of murder. LOCKED UP AT THE STATION. Jackson was taken from the Mayor's office through the long corridor on the Eighth-Street side of the City Hall by Detective Bill Bulmer, who walked on the right side of him and held his arm. Employes of the waterworks, janitors and other attaches of the big building followed in the wake of the couple until Central Police Station was reached. At the station house the receiving room was thronged with curious ones who had heard of the arrest of the dental student. Lieutenant Sam Corbin and Sergeant Billy Borck were behind the desk. Bulmer took his prisoner up to the desk, and immediately a big crowd swarmed in to see how Jackson would act while being registered. Lieutenant Corbin registered the prisoner. The questions and answers were as follows: "What is your name?" "Scott Jackson." "Where do you live?" "I live here now." "Whereabouts?" "No. 222 West Ninth Street." "Old or new number?" "I don't know; it's next door to Robinson's Opera House." "What is your occupation?" "Dental student." "How old are you?" "Twenty-six." "Married or single?" "Single." "Where were you born?" "In Maine." "What's the charge against this man?" "Murder," replied Bulmer. "Is that right?" asked Corbin, looking the prisoner in the eye. "I believe that's what they say," replied Jackson. Illustration: Between sobs and cries of "My Pearl, my Pearl," Mrs. Bryan identified the clothing. Among other things found in Jackson's pockets were two carriage tickets on the Central Newport Bridge. The tickets may prove to be of a great importance in the case, as it shows that the prisoner was in the habit of crossing the bridge. After Jackson had been searched he was led back to his cellroom by Detective Bulmer and Officer Jake Bernhart. Jackson had been locked in his cell but a few moments when Detectives Bulmer and Witte walked into the station and suggested to Lieutenant Corbin that the prisoner be taken into the room behind the receiving desk and thoroughly searched. The suggestion was acted upon at once, and what may prove to be most startling evidence was discovered. The clothing of the prisoner was all removed and two scratches were found on his right arm. One scratch begins just below the elbow and extends almost to the wrist. It is almost three inches long. The other scratch is much shorter and is on the wrist. Spots of blood were also noticed on the right sleeve of the prisoner's undershirt. From the appearance of the sleeve attempts had been made to remove the blood from the shirt. "Where did that blood come from?" asked Lieutenant Corbin. "I was bothered with bugs the other night and I scratched myself," answered the prisoner. Jackson then said he had been troubled with some sort of a skin eruption for some time past, and he pointed to some abrasions on his breast to confirm his story. Nothing was discovered in neither garments of the man that would show that he had attempted to conceal any papers or other evidence after his arrest. WALLING ARRESTED Alonzo Walling, Jackson's roommate, was arrested, at 3:30 Thursday morning, by Lieutenant Corbin, and locked up at Central Station. It was thought when Jackson was arrested that night that Walling had no connection with the matter, but later developments went to show that he knew far more than either had admitted. It was ascertained that the two men had been very intimate, and that they were together on the night of the murder. It was also discovered that Walling had been intimate with a girl in Louisville with whom Jackson was on more than friendly terms, and that both men had corresponded with her. The cause for Wallings arrest was a chance remark made by Jackson about two o'clock in the morning. Shortly after being locked up Jackson called Turnkey Curren to him and said: "I want you to get a chair and sit in front of my cell all night," said Jackson, who then exhibited the first sign of appreciating his position. "Are you afraid of getting lynched?" asked the turnkey. "Well, never mind that, I prefer to be well guarded whether I'm in danger or not." After ordering his cell watched, Jackson lay down on the bunk in his cell and tried to go to sleep, but he was exceedingly restless and rolled around on his couch for a long time without getting any rest. About two o'clock Jackson entered into a conversation with the turnkey in which almost his first question was: "Hasn't Walling been arrested yet?" "Why should he be arrested?" was asked. Jackson refused to answer this question, and his actions showed that he did not care to talk further about his roommate. When Lieutenant Corbin heard of Jackson's actions he at once went to 222 West Ninth Street and arrested Walling, when he was subjected to a rigid examination by the officer. "Were you in Wallingford's saloon with Jackson and a girl last Friday night?" was asked. "Yes, I was," replied Walling. "Who was the girl whom you were with?" was asked. "I don't know who she was," he replied. "Well you had better tell all you know about this matter," said the officer. "Now tell me who all were in the party at Wallingford's last Friday night." "I don't know anything more about it," said Walling. "Well, you may consider yourself under arrest, then," said Lieutenant Corbin. Walling was taken to police headquarters and locked up, but Jackson was not informed of his arrest until the next day. At 6.30 the same morning a telegram was received from the Cincinnati Detectives who had gone to South-Bend, Ind., bringing the startling information that Will Wood was arrested there, and confessed to the responsibility for the death of Pearl Bryan, whose headless body was found in the Kentucky Highlands. He said that he had arranged for Pearl Bryan to come to Cincinnati for the purpose of having a criminal operation performed, and that such an operation was performed, resulting in the death of the girl. Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling were both concerned in it. The body of the woman was taken to the spot where it was found and the head removed to prevent identification. Investigations were still being made at Greencastle Ind., and the wires between Cincinnati and that staid old Methodist town, were kept hot. Excitement was at a fever heat at both points. Evidence was accumulating at each end and it seemed the nooses were rapidly tightening around the necks of Jackson, Walling and Wood. The investigation showed that Scott Jackson had met Pearl Bryan at her home in the early spring of 1895. He left shortly afterward to attend the dental college at Indianapolis and his visits to Greencastle, while not frequent, were always to see Miss Bryan. In September he returned to Greencastle and entered the office of a local dentist. It was then the criminal intimacy between the two began. He became attentive, and with a veneering of the usages of polite society managed to fascinate the farmer's daughter. His power over her seemed almost hypnotic. So great was his control over her that she is said to have kept appointments with him in the dental office where he was serving his apprenticeship. He sought to get rid of her and left the town. Jackson left Greencastle on October 3, and returned to spend the holidays. He seems to have allowed his love to grow cold, for he paid no attention to the girl whom he had robbed of all that a woman holds dear. In vain did Pearl send for him to come to see her. He answered none of her entreaties, and left the town without seeing her except when by chance he met her on the street. When it became apparent that she could not much longer conceal her shame, she told her parents she was going to Indianapolis to visit a friend. NEVER PARALLELED WERE THE SCENES ABOUT POLICE HEADQUARTERS. The scenes enacted at police headquarters early in the day, following the arrest of Jackson and Walling, were never paralleled in Cincinnati. Hundreds of persons thronged the corridors in the immediate vicinity of the offices of the department, while a vast crowd was assembled on the outside of the building. Upon the arrival of Supt. Deitsch he at once repaired to Mayor Caldwell's office, where a star chamber session of some length was held. In the meantime the crowd continued to increase, and it became necessary to call for a detail of policemen to drive back the curious people. In the Mayor's office were Detectives Crim and McDermott with the Mayor and Chief of Police, who for nearly two hours held a seance with the accused men in their effort to reach the truth. The examination of Walling by the mayor was severe to a remarkable degree. WALLING'S DAMAGING STATEMENT. He told a long story of his acquaintance with Jackson, but the most startling points were when he came down to a conversation held in their room last Christmas day. Then he said: "Jackson took me into a corner of the room and told me that he and Billy Woods had gotten Pearl Bryan into trouble and that he must get rid of her. He suggested two ways in which it might be done. One of the plans he suggested was to take her to a room and kill her there and leave her. Then he spoke up quickly and said: 'No, I have a sudden thought as something often tells me when I am on the wrong idea. It would not do to leave her there, so I will instead cut her to pieces and drop the pieces in different vaults around town.'" A few days afterward Walling says that he and Jackson were in Wallingford's saloon with a number of medical students, and there Jackson made inquiries as to the poison that would kill the quickest. He was told that hydrocyanic or prussic acid was the quickest, but that cocaine was about the next and most deadly. JACKSON PURCHASED COCAINE. Shortly after that Jackson bought cocaine at Koelble's drug store, on Sixth Street, between Plum and Elm. "Do you know where he was going to take her?" "Yes; he said he was going to take her to Ft. Thomas. "About two weeks ago he asked me if I would help the girl out of trouble, and I said I would. He said she was coming here in about a week, and he would take me to where she was shopping. Last Monday night he told me the girl would be here that night. The next day Jackson told me the girl was at the Indiana House, and asked me to go down there. I went with him, and he went to her room while I waited down stairs. The next day he told me he had an engagement with the girl at Fourth and Plum Streets, and for me to go there and tell her he would meet her in the evening. That is the last I ever saw of the girl." "When did he kill her?" "I guess he did it Friday night." "How did he do it?" "Well, if you will go to our room you will find a hypodermic syringe, which I think will tell the whole story." "What do you mean?" "Well, he had a bottle of white stuff in the room, and I asked him what it was. He said it was arsenic and cocaine. I asked him what he was going to do with it, and he said he was going to give it to the girl." "Did he give it to her?" "Well, I guess he used the cocaine. I don't think it killed her at once, and that she tried to fight him off when he went to cut off her head." "Where do you think he was on the Wednesday night before the murder?" MET THE GIRL AT WALLINGFORD'S. "I think he went to see the girl at Wallingford's saloon. I was there, but I did not go into the back room, where she was." "What time did he get home that night?" "I think it was after midnight. He came in with a valise, and I saw him open it and say, 'You are a beaut, you are.' He thought I was asleep." "How about Thursday night?" "I saw him that night, and I was afraid to stay home and I went to Heider's Hotel." "When did he take the girl to Ft. Thomas?" "This was on Friday night. I was in Heider's restaurant eating my supper, and Jackson called me out and told me to go to Fountain Square and wait with the girl until he came back. He said he would not be gone over 10 or 15 minutes. He came back, and I left them. I believe he went to the room and got the hypodermic syringe and the poison." "What do you think he did with the head?" "Well, in my opinion he buried it." "Where do you think it is buried?" "I think it is in this neighborhood." "What makes you think so?" "Well, last Monday night I was standing on Ninth and Plum and Jackson came along. He had a valise, and asked me to go with him. I told him I didn't care to, and he left. He had the same valise which is now in the possession of the police with the blood stains in it." "What do you think became of her jacket?" "Why, she didn't wear a jacket. It was a long fur cape. I don't think he could get it in the valise with the head." "What do you think became of it?" "Well, I can't say as to that. These things have all come to me, and I may recollect something else after awhile." A DECOY LETTER SENT BY JACKSON TO THE MURDERED GIRL'S MOTHER. In less than a half hour after making the confession Walling again sent for the Chief of Police and said: "I want to see you about another thing that may have a big bearing on this case," said the prisoner. "What is it?" "Well, yesterday afternoon Jackson got some paper and envelopes and told me he was going to the Palace Hotel to write some letters. I asked him who he was going to write to and he said to Wood. He said he was going to inclose a letter purporting to be from Pearl Bryan to her mother and that he was going to have Wood sent it, I think, to Geneva and have it mailed from that point to Mrs. Bryan. He said he was going to do this to throw Mrs. Bryan off the track." "Do you know that he sent the letter?" "He told me on the evening he was arrested that he had sent it." This information was given to Mayor Caldwell, and the following dispatch was sent: CINCINNATI, OHIO, February 6, 1896. POSTMASTER, South Bend, Ind.: Kindly sent all mail addressed to Wm. Wood from this city to me. JOHN A. CALDWELL, Mayor. Young Wood, who was present, said he had got a letter from Jackson yesterday, which he had torn up. It went on to ask him to stick to him, and not to say too much. Young Wood was perfectly satisfied to have the mail sent back here. Chief Deitsch after sending the information to Mayor Caldwell continued his investigation with: "I have just talked with Jackson, and he puts all the blame upon you. He says you performed the abortion somewhere across the river." "I don't know a thing about it, except what he told me." "Well, now, did you do it or did Jackson? He says you did it." "He's putting it all on me now, is he? Well, he's the one who is guilty. I know nothing of it." "What did he tell you had become of the head?" "I understand that he threw it in the Ohio River." "Do you know where the operation was performed?" "No, I don't. If I did, it would make it much easier for me to clear myself. As it is, I can prove where I was Friday night. It will all come out in a little while." "Jackson says that you threw the head into the river, and that the next day you told him to get rid of anything lying around loose at the boarding house by throwing it into the river." "I never saw the head, and he told me that he threw it into a sewer." "Didn't you throw the girl's stockings, skirt and other things, which were covered with blood, into the river Saturday morning from the Suspension Bridge?" "No, he did this himself." "Then he says the skull was cut up and thrown over piecemeal by you." "I don't know about the cutting up part, but deny the other." JACKSON TELLS CHIEF DEITSCH THAT WALLING COMMITTED THE DEED. Scott Jackson spent a sleepless night at the Central Police Station, and early next morning was taken to Chief Deitsch's private office. He had a haggard, restless look, and when asked to make a confession, sought to throw the blame upon Wood, and subsequently upon Walling. His story was: Wood was the author of Pearl Bryan's ruin. When Jackson went home to spend the hollidays, Wood told him that Miss Bryan was in a delicate condition, and, knowing Jackson to be studying medicine, asked him what could be done in the matter. Jackson said he could do nothing in the matter, but Wood insisted that he help in an attempted abortion, as this was the only thing which would save him (Wood) and the girl from disgrace. Jackson refused to do this. "What have you to say regarding the information now in the possession of the authorities that you and Walling were seen in the vicinity of Fort Thomas last Friday night in a hack drawn by a gray horse?" "That information is erroneous. I was not there, and can establish the fact." "Who do you think murdered the girl?" "Alonzo Walling." "Do you think the murdered girl is Pearl Bryan?" "Oh, there is no question about that. It is her." "How, and where was she killed?" "I do not know." "For what purpose?" "To cover up previous wrong doings." "And to shield who?" "William Wood." "Was Wood supposed to be Miss Bryan's sweetheart?" "Yes sir; he was." "And how was the affair planned?" "Wood wrote to me, telling me of the trouble, and asking me to assist him out of it. I showed the letter to Walling, and he volunteered to undertake the job. It was then planned to bring the girl here. She arrived on Tuesday of last week, and what I saw and know of her after her arrival here, I have told." "How do you account for the condition of your trousers, which have been found and are now in the possession of the authorities?" "Well, the only way I can account for that, is that they were in our room and Walling put them on the night of the crime. I have not seen them since, and did not know that there was blood and mud on them." WILL WOOD'S ARRIVAL. It was 9 o'clock Thursday night when Sheriff Plummer and Detectives Crim and McDermott arrived in Cincinnati with William Wood, the third man in the terrible tragedy. Nothing else had been talked of during the day. Both in Newport and Cincinnati the excitement was intense. When early in the morning it was learned that the two men who were undoubtedly implicated in the horrible murder had been arrested in Cincinnati and an accessory to the crime arrested in Indiana and on his way to Cincinnati under guard, expressions of satisfaction at the arrests were heard on all sides. The subject of lynching the fiends,--Walling and Jackson--was freely discussed. That ominious appearance of suppressed excitement, which shows the keen determination of a mob and which they seek to hide as much as possible, was seen everywhere in the crowds gathered in knots all over the two cities. All that was needed in Cincinnati was a few good, trusty, fearless leaders. In Newport it was different. Determination and decision were seen on the blanched faces of men everywhere. Even Chief of Police Stricker and Lieutenant Smith, said it would be a very risky matter to bring the prisoners to Newport. There is no telling what would be done. Excitement has reached a very high pitch. "We will be well prepared for any outbreak of mob violence," said they, "and upon the slightest indication of any will arrest everybody concerned in the least with it." WOOD EXAMINED. SAYS JACKSON BETRAYED THE GIRL. HE IS RELEASED WITHOUT BOND. It was just 11:30 o'clock when Wood was subjected to an examination in the Mayor's private office. The father and uncle of the young man were present. The examination was as follows: "What is your name?" "William Wood." "How old are you?" "Twenty years old." "Where do you live?" "Greencastle Ind." "You knew Pearl Bryan?" "Yes sir." "Very well?" "Yes. She was a second cousin of mine." "Does your family visit the Bryans?" "Yes sir." "Where you intimate with the girl?" "No, sir." "Did you know that she had been betrayed?" "Yes sir." "How did you find that out?" "Jackson told me." "What did he say?" "He told me that he betrayed her in September." "Did he tell any one else that?" "Yes sir, he did. A young man in Greencastle." "He will substantiate your statement then?" "Yes sir." "Did you receive any letters from Jackson about the condition of Miss Bryan?" "Yes sir." "When?" "About the 10th of January, I think." "What did he say?" "He said that he was going to have an operation performed on her if he could get hold of enough money." "Did the girl know of that at that time?" "Yes sir." "How did she find that out?" "I told her myself." "Why did you do that?" "Because I wanted to shield her." "Was the letter you received from Jackson the only way that you knew that the girl had been betrayed?" "No, she told me herself when I was out at the house several weeks ago." "What did you say to that?" "I told her to wait until I heard from Jackson." "You took a great deal of interest in the case, did you not?" "Yes, I would have done the same if she had been my own sister." "What arrangement did Jackson say he had made when he wrote to you?" "He said he had procured a room in Cincinnati, and that she would be taken care of by an old woman." "What else did he say?" "He said that the operation would be performed by a doctor and chemist who was an old hand at that kind of business." "Did he mention the name of the doctor?" "No, he said the party was a friend of Walling." "Did the plan suit you?" "Yes, I thought it was just the thing." "What did you tell her?" "I told her that I thought it would be best for her to go." "At that time you thought you would accompany her?" "Yes, sir." "Why did you change your mind?" "Because my father requested my staying at home." "But you met the girl at the depot when she came to Cincinnati?" "Yes, sir." "What day was that?" "Monday, January 27." "Did you have a long talk with the girl?" "Well, I talked with her." "About the operation?" "Yes, sir." "Did she seem pleased?" "I never saw her so happy in my life." "Did you have any other business at the train?" "Yes, sir, I came to meet my father." "Where had your father been?" "To a quarterly meeting at Terra Haute." "Then Miss Bryan left on the same train that your father came home on?" "Yes, sir." "Were you over in Cincinnati before?" "No, sir." "When did you see Jackson last?" "When he was at home. It was on a Sunday. I think about the 5th or 6th of January." "Where you with him very long?" "Yes, nearly all day." "Where did Jackson go when he left Greencastle?" "He came to Cincinnati on an evening train." "Do you know Walling?" "No, sir." "Never saw him?" "Never in my life." "Ever see a picture of him?" "Yes, I saw a tin-type of him when Jackson was at home." "Would you recognize that picture if you were to see it?" "I think I would." At this juncture of the examination Chief Deitsch went to get a picture of Walling but failed to find it. Wood was taken down to Central Station and registered. He gave his name as William Wood, aged 20, residence South Bend, Ind. After registering he went to the Grand Hotel with his father. Excitement was running high by this time. The crowds in and around the City Hall, where the prisoners were, steadily increased, and the gravest fears were entertained by the officers. Cordon's of police lined the passage-ways from the Mayor's and Superintendent's offices to the cell-rooms below where the prisoners were confined, and every movement was guarded with the most jealous care. A BLOODY VALISE. IT HAD CONTAINED THE GIRL'S HEAD, AND WAS LEFT IN A SALOON. There were all kinds of rumors floating about the City Hall when John Kugel, the saloon-keeper at Ninth Street and Central avenue, walked into Clerk Vickers office and told him that he thought he had a valise belonging to Jackson. "Then get it quick," said Vickers. Kugel hurried over and in a few minutes returned with a brown leather hand-satchel about 15 inches long. It was taken to Chief Deitsch, who made an examination. There was nothing in it, but the sides were heavily stained with blood. Chief Deitsch closed the valise and asked Kugel who gave it to him. Kugel said that last Monday night about 8 o'clock a young man with a blonde mustache walked in his place and asked him to take care of the valise, saying he would call for it the next day. After Kugel's arrival at headquarters Jackson was ordered brought up-stairs and a dramatic scene followed. Jackson was seated facing Chief Deitsch with the valise at the Chief's feet. Standing around were many persons at work on the case. "Pick up that valise," said the Chief. Jackson picked it up and held it in his lap. "Open it." He did so. "What is in there?" "Nothing that I can see, except that it is stained." "What is it stained with?" "It looks like blood?" "Don't you know it is blood?" Jackson's face flushed and his eyes twitched. He pulled his mustache and ran his fingers through his hair. He was only a moment answering, but it appeared to be an hour to those who were waiting for a reply. He finally moistened his lips with his tongue and said: "I think it is blood, but I have not examined it carefully." "Well, then, examine it carefully." Jackson picked up the valise and held it close to his face. He peered down the blood-stained bag and his eyes rolled around his head. He put his hand to his forehead and slowly said: "Yes, that is blood." "Isn't that the valise in which you carried the head?" "I guess it is, but I did not carry it." "Well, who did?" "Walling." "Well, then, where is the head?" "I guess it is in the river." Kugel then identified Jackson as the man who had left the valise in the saloon. "What did you leave it in Kugel's saloon for?" asked the Chief. "I wasn't going to leave it there. I was going to get it and do away with it." "Why did you want to get rid of it?" "Well, it was better out of the way." "Why?" "Well, I wanted to shield myself of all those things." "What were you so anxious to get rid of them for?" persisted the Chief. "I just didn't want them about," was the prisoner's non-committal answer. "What was in it first?" "A lot of clothing and such things." "Whose clothing was it?" "Miss Bryan's, I think." "What did it consist of?" "Well, there was a skirt, a petticoat, some stockings and other things." "Where are they?" "I guess they are in the river, too." Illustration: Jackson put his hand to his forehead and slowly said: "Yes, that is blood." Night Chief Renkert then produced a small alligator valise that he had found in Lawrence's barber shop, 133 West Sixth Street, where Walling and Jackson often went. Jackson identified it as Pearl Bryan's. He said that the blood-stained one was also the property of the murdered girl. AT WALLINGFORD'S. FRIDAY NIGHT, WITH PEARL BRYAN, JACKSON LEFT THERE IN A HACK. David Wallingford, the proprietor of the saloon at Longworth and Plum, which Jackson and Waling frequented, and his colored porter Allen Johnson were brought in by the officers and questioned in the presence of Jackson and Walling by Chief Deitsch as follows: "You knew Jackson pretty well, eh?" "Oh, yes; he came into my saloon every night. He frequently brought his lady friends along, too." "Was he in your saloon on Friday night last?" "Yes, he brought a lady in with him and went back into the sitting-room." "Do you know who the lady was?" "Well, I didn't then. Of course I do now." "Who was she?" "Why, she was Miss Pearl Bryan. I saw Pearl Bryan's picture since, and haven't the slightest doubt it was her. They were back in the sitting-room." "Did Jackson act queer that night?" "No; I can't say that he did. But one thing that looked rather queer was that he came in a carriage and brought a new satchel in the saloon with him." "Did Jackson order any drinks?" "Not after he had ordered whiskey for himself and sarsaparilla for the girl, they then went away in the carriage." "What time was that?" "Oh, about 7 o'clock, I think." "Did you see him any more that night?" "No; he came in the next night (Saturday night), though." "Did he bring a satchel with him on Saturday night?" "Yes, he brought in the same satchel and put it on the table. I noticed that he sat it down rather heavily and I asked him what was in it. He said: 'Oh, some underclothes,' and we both laughed." "Was Jackson as merry as usual?" "No, he was rather depressed. He said his head hurt him devilish bad and he looked worried." Johnson played an important part in the affair. He persisted in the statement that Jackson, Walling and the girl, Miss Bryan, were at Wallingford's place on Friday night, and moreover that Albin the barber who shaved the two chums, was on the box and drove the cab in which they departed. "I tell you I am not mistaken," persisted Johnson. "Let Albin put a cap on and I can recognize him; he wore a cap that night." "Why are you so sure of the night?" was asked. "Cause I had an engagement with my girl on that same night, and I remember distinctly." Johnson said that he saw Walling on the outside and saw the woman get into the cab and drive away. All of this Walling denied. Once Walling admitted that he was at the place, but he changed it again and declared that he was not there until Saturday night, when he saw Jackson borrow a dollar of the bartender. Johnson stood in front of Walling and said: "I don't want to get you into trouble, but you know you were there Friday night, and there is no use of you denying it." Walling however, still refused any admission. Once during the talk Jackson shook his finger in the face of Walling and said: "Be careful; do not go too far." Again he said: "You lie, and you know you are lying." To which Walling answered: "You show in your eyes that you are lying." The colored porter persisted in all the statements made to the authorities that Albin, the barber, was driving the cab. ALBIN, THE BARBER. SAYS HE DID NOT DRIVE THE MYSTERIOUS CAB FRIDAY NIGHT. Detectives Witte and Jackson were at once sent for Fred Albin the barber, and were not long in bringing him in. He and Johnson, the porter, were seated on the same lounge in the Mayor's office and Albin was examined by Chief Deitsch when he told the following story: "I have known Alonzo Walling for about two years. He lived across the street from my home in Hamilton, O. Last fall he concluded to come to this city and study dentistry. He told me this and I offered to come to this city with him. I saw him nearly every evening, and in fact, we chummed together. "About four months ago he introduced me to Jackson. Jackson came to the shop where I was employed and got shaved about twice a week. "He was always considered a peculiar fellow--rather eccentric. I know little concerning him. "I do not know whether it was Friday or Saturday morning that Jackson came into my shop and had me shave his whiskers off. On that day he had a grip when he entered, and I asked him what he had in it. He replied that he would tell me some other day." Johnson then repeated his statement regarding Albin's connection with the crime, after which Chief Deitsch said: "What have you got to say about the statement made by Johnson which implicates you with the murder?" "There is no truth in that. I think I wore a cap on Friday night, but I was not in Wallingford's saloon, as Johnson says. I went home with Walling about fifteen minutes after 9. Jackson came into the barber shop several times with the grip. I naturally had some curiosity to know what it contained but he never would tell me anything definite. "One day this week I picked up a paper while Jackson was in the shop and read an item about the shoes bought at Greencastle. I knew that Greencastle was the home of Jackson, and I asked him if he had heard about the shoes coming from his town. He said that he had, but that he did not believe it. I suggested that he and I go over and look at the body, but Jackson said that he did not want to see it, as he felt sure that he could not identify it. During this conversation I noticed that Jackson acted somewhat peculiar, but I never dreamed what caused it at the time." Col. Deitsch and Mayor Caldwell had a long talk with Albin. He persisted in the statement that he knew nothing of the murder. Clew after clew was run down. Everything reported to the police regarding the murder, no matter of how little importance was thoroughly investigated and the officers were kept continually on the run. Satisfied that Jackson and Walling were the murderers, and that the identification of the victim was complete the whole energy of the entire detective and police force was turned to the finding of the head, and the identity of the man who drove the cab and the securing of positive evidence on which the murderers could be convicted. JACKSON'S LETTER TO WOOD. In response to Mayor Caldwell's notice to the postmaster at South Bend, Ind., the Mayor on Saturday, Feb. 8., received from that city a letter written by Scott Jackson to William Wood, South Bend, Ind. As soon as he received it the Mayor sent for D. D. Woodmansee the attorney for Jackson, and with his consent opened the communication. It was dated Feb. 5., the day on which Jackson was arrested. It was marked 8:30 p. m., less than two hours before his arrest. It was written on letter-heads of the Palace Hotel, while the envelope bore the style of Al Heider's Hotel, on Fifth Street. The letter says: "2-5-96. "Hello, Bill-- "Write a letter home signed by Berts name telling the folks that he is somewhere & going to Chicago or some other place--has a position etc--and that they will advise later about it--Say tired of living at home or anything you want. You know about the way he writes. Send it to some one you can trust--How will Smith at La Fayette--tell the folks that he has not been at I but at La Fayette and travelling about the country get the letter off without one seconds delay--and burn this at once. Stick by your old chum Bill--And I will help you out the same way--some times. Am glad you are having a good time-- D. "Be careful what you write to me." "Bert" in the letter means Pearl. In that portion of the communication which explains that "he has not been at "I." "I" evidently stands for Indianapolis. After the letter from Jackson to Wood was opened and read, a reporter went to Jackson and asked him if he wrote the letter. "Yes, sir, I did." "What does that signature, the letter D., mean?" "Why, he called me 'Dusty,' and I signed it for that." "Who is meant by Bert?" "That is a nickname we had for Pearl. We always called her Bert." "Then Bert means Miss Bryan?" "Yes, sir." "Now, why did you write that letter?" "Walling told me to write it. He said that something had to be done, and I did it." "Did he dictate it?" "Oh, no, I wrote it Wednesday evening after supper." "Why did you tell Wood to be careful what he wrote?" "Because he was writing vulgar letters. He wrote me two postals to the college that were awful." "What did you do with them?" "I tore them right away. Besides all this, I din't know at what time I might be arrested." Walling was then visited and told of the story of Jackson. "No, I didn't tell him to write it. "I met him on the street Wednesday afternoon, and he told me that he was going to write." JACKSON'S COAT FOUND IN A SEWER. As a result of one of the lengthy cross-examinations to which Walling was subjected in which he said that the coat worn by Jackson when he committed the deed had been deposited by himself at Jackson's request in the sewer hole at the corner of Richmond and John Streets. Detective Witte was at once sent to the scene, and, found a bundle wrapped in a newspaper in the mud. It was drawn out and found to be a black coat. On the lining of the sleeves were found blood stains, and in one of the pockets a lot of tansy flower, which, made into tea, is used to produce miscarriages. After a thorough cleaning, it was placed in a box and removed to headquarters, where an examination was made. Blood spots were found on the sleeves and front. The coat was of a blue black material, similar to the clothing worn by Jackson at the time of his arrest. Walling was told of the finding of the coat. He displayed no surprise, but remarked: "Well, I knew they would find it. I told them not long ago where it was; that I had put it there myself." "Whose coat is it?" "Jackson's." "Why did you put it there?" "Because he asked me to." "Did you know for what purpose?" "Yes; to get rid of it. It was bloody." "And you knew this?" "Yes, he told me so." "Then you know more about the crime than you have admitted?" "No, I don't. I have told everything I know." In a locker at the Ohio Dental College--Jackson's individual locker--were found by the police a pair of trousers. Upon the knees were dried mud and blood, and upon the legs were other blood stains. Jackson and Walling each claim the trousers belong to the other. JACKSON'S AND WALLING'S PICTURES TAKEN FOR THE ROGUES GALLERY. Mayor Caldwell and Col. Deitsch Friday morning had a private consultation at which it was decided to hold all examinations of the prisoners in the Bertillion room, behind the iron bars of the Place of Detention. No one but Col. Deitsch and the Mayor were allowed to be present. It was about 9 o'clock when both Jackson and Walling were brought into the Bertillon room and turned over to Superintendent Kiffmeyer. Both were photographed and had their measure taken according to the rules governing the Bertillon system. The questioning of the prisoners while in the Bertillon room, related to the disposition made of Pearl Bryan's clothes. It was found that Pearl Bryan's clothes had been conveniently wrapped into five bundles and brought to Jackson and Walling's room at 222 West Ninth Street. Jackson took two of the bundles and threw them into the sewer on Sycamore street. Walling put the other three under his arm and went down Plum Street with the purpose of throwing into the river the evidences of the bloody and brutal crime in the muddy depths of the Ohio. Jackson says Walling afterwards told him he had disposed of them. ANOTHER CONFESSION. When Turnkey Henry Underwood was passing Jackson's cell yesterday morning Jackson said: "Well, I'm going to see the Mayor and tell him about the clothing." "What did you do with the clothing?" "Well, there were three bundles. I threw them in a sewer on Richmond Street." "Where on Richmond Street?" "I don't know exactly, but west of Central avenue." "Was the head in the lot?" "I don't know where the head is now." "Why don't you tell where the head is and it will save you a good deal of trouble." "Well, Walling told me that he threw it overboard." "What do you mean by throwing it overboard?" "Why, in the river, and that is the truth." As soon as the Chief could be seen Turnkey Underwood reported to him the talks he had with the prisoners. Walling was taken before Mayor Caldwell and Chief Deitsch, Detectives Crim and McDermott. Walling was asked what he had to say. "Well, I'll tell you how Jackson killed Pearl Bryan. "For several days before the murder Jackson would sit about our room and read a medical dictionary to try and learn all about the effect of poisons. He finally selected cocaine as the most suitable for his purpose. At last he took four grains of cocaine and put in sixteen drops of water. He told me that he was going to give the cocaine solution to Pearl and make her drink it, and that it would kill the vocal powers. She would be unable to scream or talk and then he was going to cut her head off." "Do you think he did that?" "Yes, I am almost sure that was the way he killed her." "I don't know how he gave her the poison, but think she took it before getting into the cab, so that it would have its full effect by the time she was driven over to Ft. Thomas." "Well, what became of the head? You know where it is." "I do not. If I did I would tell." Jackson was then sent for. He appeared to be worried, and when Mayor Caldwell asked him if he had bought any cocaine he said: "Yes, I bought some cocaine." "When?" "Last Wednesday night." "What did you do with it?" "I gave it to Walling." "Now Jackson I want you to tell me where the head is. You know where it is, and for the sake of the poor old mother I think you ought to tell." "Well, I can't tell you where the head is. I don't know." Walling and Jackson were then brought together again. They eyed each other and then the questions were put to them, but like in every other interview they denied the charges made by each other. Walling finally said: "Why don't you tell where the head is, Jackson? You know they will find it sooner or later." "I don't know where it is." "Why don't you tell? You know where it is." "I do not." TWO POST-MORTEMS. There were two post-mortems held by Coroner Tingley, of Newport over the remains of the headless body of Pearl Bryan. The first held on the Monday following the finding of the body and the second, which was ordered for the purpose of deciding whether the murder was committed where the body was found or the head cut off after death had been caused by the administering of anaesthetics. Dr. Charles S. Phythian of Newport, conducted both post-mortems assisted by Drs. Robert Carothers, J. L. Phythian, J. O. Jenkins, W. S. Tingley, C. B. Schoolfield and J. H. Fishbach. The unanimity of opinion was that life was not extinct when the wounds from which the blood found egress were inflicted. Dr. Charles Phythian said: "The post-mortem shows beyond a doubt that Pearl Bryan died by the knife and was conscious when she was killed." "Had she been dead when she was taken to the Highlands the blood in her body would have been somewhat coagulated no matter how soon after dissolution she was taken there, and while there would have been a great flow of it if she had been placed there within a short time after death there must have been a slight coagulation which would have caused at least a small quantity of blood to remain in the body." "The cut on the left hand shows that she fought with her murderer. The cut goes clear to the bone and proves that she did not receive it by making the weak attempt at defense that a person in a semi-comatose condition would have made." As was brought out at the first post-mortem there was absolutely not a drop of blood in the body of the woman; all of it had flowed from her. Not a drop of blood was found in the veins nor was any found in the arteries or heart. Every organ of the body was found in perfect and healthy condition. The blood vessels were entirely devoid of any blood, and all the surgeons gave as their opinion that the girl had bled to death, for had life been extinct before bleeding began the blood vessels would not have been emptied. A microscopic observation was made of the body in hope of discovering a puncture that might be construed as the place where the needle of the hypodermic-syringe had been inserted, but no such puncture had been discovered, though subjected to the most careful examination with the strongest glasses. Fred Bryan a brother of the murdered woman and Mrs. Stanley, a sister, together with a number of friends from Greencastle, Ind., arrived in Cincinnati Friday, for the purpose of fully identifying the remains, and having them removed from the Newport morgue to Greencastle for interment. The identification was complete, and permission having been obtained from the authorities, the headless body was prepared for interment and removed to the undertaking establishment of John P. Epply, in Cincinnati. The body was clothed in a cream white silk dress, the same that the girl had worn when she graduated from the high school in 1892 at Greencastle. The feet were incased in dainty satin slippers. The casket was one of the most beautiful of its kind made. It was white cloth-covered, and trimmed with cord and tassel. The handles were of burnished silver. In the center of the casket lid, on a silver plate, was the name "Pearl." Inside the casket was full-satin-lined, and handsomely trimmed. The absence of the head was made scarcely noticeable the placing of a square satin pillow in the head on the casket down to the shoulders of the corpse. THE HEADLESS BODY DISPLAYED TO THE MURDERERS. The authorities resolved on a plan which they hoped might make the prisoners weaken. It was to have them look upon their murdered victim and have the crime recalled in all its hideousness. Mayor Caldwell Chief Deitsch and Sheriff Plummer went to Epply's morgue, where the remains lay. In a short time Detectives Crim and McDermott arrived with the prisoners. Crim had Walling in charge and McDermott Jackson. The latter was placed at the head of the coffin and Walling near the foot. Both faced the brother and sister of the murdered girl, who were on the other side of the casket. Jackson was terribly excited and nervously clasped and unclasped his hands. His eyes roved from one end of the body to the other and he shook his head and sighed deeply. His face was terribly flushed, and he looked as though he might break down every second. On the other hand Walling was to all appearance the coolest man in the room. He gazed at the corpse without a shiver and looked around on the faces of those present. His only noticeable display of agitation was to tap his foot nervously on the floor. Not a word was said until Chief Deitsch, at the other end asked: "Walling do you recognize the corpse?" "I do not." "Do you know who it is?" "I believe it is Pearl Bryan." "What reason have you for this belief?" "What Jackson has told me." "Jackson, do you recognize the corpse?" "I do not." "Do you know that it is the body of Pearl Bryan?" "I have not taken a close and careful look at the body." "Would you recognize it if you did?" "I think I would." "Walling did you kill this woman?" "I did not." "Jackson did you kill this woman?" "I did not." "And do you deny, in the presence of the corpse, that you killed her?" "I do." "Who did kill her?" "I have every reason to believe that Walling did." Determined to make one more effort to secure a confession as to where the head was, Chief Deitsch arranged for Mrs. Stanley to ask the prisoners. Almost begging on bended knees, and sobbing heavily she cried: "Mr. Jackson, I come to you and ask where is my sister's head. For the sake of my poor mother and for my sister and for my brother I beg of you to tell me where my sister's head is. It is my last chance and I want to send it home with the body. Won't you please tell me, I beg of you?" Jackson looked at her, and, without turning a hair, said: "Mrs. Stanley, I do not know." The same question was asked Walling to which he coldly and without any semblance of feeling, replied: "I do not know where it is." The same evening Pearl Bryan's headless body was taken back to her home in Greencastle accompanied by her brother, sister and friends. CORONER'S INQUEST. Coroner W. S. Tingley, of Campbell County, began the formal inquest in the famous case, on Tuesday Feb. 11. E. G. Lohmeyer, a jeweler; A. J. Mosset, a steamboat agent; W. C. Botts, a coal dealer; John Link, ex-Chief of the Fire Department; Michael Donelan, a shoe-manufacturer, and F. A. Autenheimer, a retired steamboat Captain, were selected as jurors. The first witness called was Sheriff Plummer. "Please state if on February 1 you saw the headless body of a woman on the premises of John Lock, in the Highlands?" "I did." "What evidence have you to submit in identifying the body?" "The body was Pearl Bryan, of Greencastle, Ind. I received information that the body was that of a woman at Greencastle, and went there for that purpose. The clothing found on the headless body and the shoes were identified by Mrs. J. F. Stanley as belonging to her sister, Miss Pearl Bryan. Frederick Bryan corroborated Mrs. Stanley's identification, and afterward identified the headless body as the corpse of their sister, Pearl Bryan." "Have you discovered by what means she came to her death?" "The evidence we have leads us to believe that she died of having her throat cut." Dr. Heyl, Assistant Surgeon of the Sixth Regiment, U. S., stationed at Ft. Thomas testified the manner in which the head was severed plainly showed that an accustomed hand had performed the work, and it was obvious to a professional eye that the work had commenced from the back of the neck. Detective Cal Crim of Cincinnati gave his testimony as follows: "I was notified by the Chief of Detectives Hazen, to report to Newport and assist in clearing the mystery of the crime. With Detectives McDermott and Sheriff Plummer I went to where the body was found, and came to the conclusion that she was murdered there. There was so much blood on the ground that it led me to this belief, and I also found blood high up on the surrounding bushes, which I believed to have been caused by the blood spurting from the neck. I found blood on all the under side of the leaves, showing that the course of the blood was upward, as though the body was on the ground when the throat was cut. The ground was literally saturated with blood. The earth was upturned and blood was found to a depth of eight or nine inches." "State from your examination to your best knowledge and belief who committed the crime?" There was a deathlike stillness in the room as the detective answered: "Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling." "What have you found to lead you to that belief?" "The dead girl, Miss Pearl Bryan, left her home at Greencastle to visit a family named Bishop at 95 Center Street, Indianapolis. Her relatives identified her clothing. We discovered that Scott Jackson had been intimate with the girl. He left Greencastle October 14., and pregnancy having become apparent she, at the solicitation of a cousin, named Will Wood, went to Cincinnati to submit to a criminal operation. Jackson was to have the operation performed and Walling was to assist in the performance. The last we know of Pearl Bryan in life was in the company of Jackson and Walling Friday night preceding the finding of her corpse between 6 and 7 o'clock, when the three were seen to enter a hack at Wallingford's saloon, at George and Plum Streets. We have discovered that Jackson had hired Walling to perform the operation on Miss Bryan. Jackson's coat was found on evidence furnished by Walling in a sewer where it had been hidden. A pair of Jackson's trousers, covered with blood and with mud on the knees, were found in Walling's locker." "Has Jackson or Walling made any statements in your presence concerning the crime?" "Yes, sir. Each accuses the other." "Can you account for Jackson and Walling the night preceding the finding of the body?" "Only up to the time they entered the cab at Wallingford's saloon. Then all traces are lost. Neither Jackson nor Walling was seen or can give any satisfactory account of their whereabouts from 7 p. m. of Friday to 3 a. m. Saturday." "Have you any other evidence?" "We found two valises, one having blood stains on the inside, in which we believe the missing head was carried from the scene of the murder." Detective Crim was excused and Detective McDermott was called. He corroborated Crim's statements. Sheriff Plummer was recalled and gave testimony corroborative of the two detective's statements. Dr. Robert Carothers submitted a report of the result of the post-mortem which was held by order of Coroner Tingley. Dr. W. H. Crane, the chemist who made an analysis of the stomach of the murdered woman, regretted having no written report of the analysis, as it had not then been completed, but testified to having found cocaine in the stomach. A number of other witnesses testified as to the finding of the body, the discovering of the foot-prints, blood, etc. The examinations were completed, and after the court-room had been cleared the jury entered into a discussion of the examination. The evidence as taken by the court-stenographer was carefully gone over and debated. Every little technicality was examined and passed on unanimously, and after an hour's session the jury returned the following verdict: THE VERDICT. "We, the jury, of Campbell County, Kentucky, find that the headless body of the woman found on the premises of John B. Lock, near Ft. Thomas, on the morning of February the 1st., was that of Pearl Bryan, a resident of Greencastle, Ind. "We further find that cocaine had been administered to Pearl Bryan for some reasons unknown. "We further find that the decapitation took place while Pearl Bryan was still alive. "We further find that Pearl Bryan was last seen in company with Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling. The three got into a cab on the Plum-street side of a saloon, corner of George and Plum Streets, and were last seen in the cab turning toward Plum Street. Illustration: CHIEF DEITSCH. SCOTT JACKSON. ALONZO WALLING. Mrs. Stanley sobbing heavily cried: "Mr. Jackson, I come to you and ask where is my sister's head?" "We further find in the end of justice that this verdict, and the report of the post-mortem, the chemical analysis of the stomach and the report of the Court-stenographer be filed with the verdict." On the Wednesday following, the grand jury of Campbell County Kentucky, in session in Newport, returned an indictment against both Jackson and Walling, charging them with the murder of Pearl Bryan and alleging that the crime was committed near Ft. Thomas, Ky. Sheriff Plummer, at once went to Frankfort, Ky., and secured a requisition for the men from Governor Bradley. He then took the papers to Columbus, O., where Governor Bushnell, after a close scrutiny honored them and the Sheriff returned to Cincinnati to serve them on the Sheriff of Hamilton County, Ohio, in whose custody the prisoners were. The prisoners were arraigned in the Police Court of Cincinnati a number of times charged with murder, and their cases continued, to give the Kentucky authorities an opportunity to take action. After the indictment of Jackson and Walling in Kentucky, the charge was changed to "Fugitives from Justice" and on this were they held until the requisition papers were procured and served. In the meantime the detectives, police and Kentucky officers were at work running down rumors and clews which sprang up on every side. The hat worn by Pearl Bryan, was found on the side of the road just back of Newport and was fully identified by her sister. The hat was weighted down with a stone wrapped in a bloody handkerchief which was identified as the property of Jackson. George H. Jackson a negro, came forward and told a very plain straight-forward story of having driven, Jackson, Walling and Pearl Bryan in a surey drawn by a gray horse from Cincinnati to the scene of the murder. The police put great faith in this story until it was proven absolutely false, and that the negro had concocted the story with the expectation of securing the reward, or for gaining notoriety. An investigation of his previous record showed it to be a very unsavory one. No one doubted the guilt of the prisoners under arrest, but great difficulty was found in securing evidence on which they could be convicted. The officers claimed to have sufficient evidence but refused to divulge it, and the granting of the requisition papers by Governor Bradley of Kentucky, and the honoring of those papers of Governor Bushnell of Ohio, showed that there was certainly stronger evidence than had been given the public. As soon as the requisition papers were served on the Sheriff of Hamilton County, Ohio, and an effort made by Sheriff Plummer, to take charge of the prisoners, and take them to Kentucky, it was evident that a terrible fight would be made by the counsel for the prisoners to keep Jackson and Walling from being taken to Kentucky. Learned and able counsel had been secured by the relatives of each of the prisoners and from the start it was evident a big legal battle was on and that every effort, would be put forth to them, not only to save the murderers from paying the penalty of their horrible crime but also to keep them from being sent to Kentucky, where in the eyes of the law, the crime had been committed and the only place where they could be put on trial for their lives. Notwithstanding Gov. Bradley of Kentucky, had promised that he would put the entire Militia force of Kentucky at the command of Sheriff Plummer to protect the prisoners from violent deaths at the hands of a lawless mob, the attorneys for the accused made the claim, and attempted to prove it, that the lives of their clients would not be safe in Kentucky. Habeas corpus proceedings were resorted to and every scheme and plan for delay was brought into play. A fierce and bitter legal battle was fought between the attorneys for the prisoners and those for the state, before Judge M. L. Buchwalter of the Hamilton County, O., Court of Common Pleas. Every technicality and motive for delay known to the law was resorted to by the attorneys for the defense. The cases were called again and again in the Police Court simply as a formality, their continuances having been agreed on before the cases were called, notwithstanding the law providing that there shall be a hearing before a Judge of the Common Pleas Court, in extradition cases as soon as the requisition papers shall have been honored by the Governor of the State. The requisition papers issued by Governor Bradley of Kentucky on Governor Bushnell, of Ohio, had been honored by the last named official for weeks previous to the arraignment of Walling and Jackson, before Judge M. L. Buchwalter, of the Hamilton County Common Pleas Court. Interest in the case did not abate in the least. The Jail where the prisoners were confined, was daily literally besieged with visitors, and loud murmurings were heard on all sides. Mob violence was feared, and this fact more than any other caused the delay in the hearing of the arguments on the requisition papers. Everyone felt that the papers would be honored by the Judge, and the prisoners remanded to the custody of the Sheriff of Campbell County, Kentucky, but it was feared the lives of the prisoners would be placed in serious jeopardy, if they were sent to Kentucky, before the excitement had in some measure died out. On April, the 30., the prisoners were brought before Judge Buchwalter, and Saturday March, 7., fixed as the date for hearing on the requisition papers. Rumors of all kinds prevailed, and squadrons of police were placed in line guarding closely every inch of the way from the jail to the court room. It was intended at first to convey the prisoners from the jail to the court room through the underground passage way, or tunnel, which has been prepared for just such cases of emergency. For this purpose the tunnel was cleared of every obstacle, but when all was in readiness, it was discovered that the key to the massive gate at the entrance to the tunnel from the jail yard had been misplaced and could not be found, and it was necessary to take them through the streets. Before the prisoners arrived however, another consultation between the attorneys in the case resulted in an agreement for another continuance, and Jackson and Walling were before the court but a few minutes, when they were again remanded to jail and Saturday March, 7., set for a final hearing on their requisition. Col. Robert W. Nelson, one of the brightest and leading legal lights of Kentucky, an able prosecutor, fearless and aggressive and universally feared by criminals, volunteered his services to aid in the prosecution of, as he termed it, "villains of the deepest dye, who are without doubt guilty of the most heinous crime and greatest outrage ever put upon the fair name and fame of Kentucky." The attorneys for the defense had selected Judge Buchwalter as the judge to hear their case for the reason that this same judge had but shortly before refused to deliver a prisoner, a negro fugitive, charged with murder, to the Kentucky authorities although Kentucky's Governor had made a requisition which had been honored and granted by Governor McKinley of Ohio. Buchwalter held that the negroe's life would not be safe in Kentucky and refused to hand him over to the Kentucky authorities. This was a ruling without precedent and the attorneys for Walling and Jackson hoped to work on the Judges prejudices against Kentucky and obtain a similar ruling in their cases. Public sentiment however, was too strong, and no matter how much Judge Buchwalter may have disliked to honor a requisition from Kentucky, he saw that public feeling was in no humor to be trifled with in the case of the murderers of Pearl Bryan. At the hearing of the case on March, 7., the State of Kentucky, Jule Plummer, Sheriff of Campbell County, agent, through his attorneys, M. R. Lockhart, Commonwealth's attorney and Col. R. W. Nelson, appeared in court and demanded the custody of the prisoners, presenting the requisition papers, properly approved by Governor Bradley, of Kentucky, and Governor Bushnell of Ohio. The prisoners were represented by Judge James D. Ermston, of Cincinnati, and Messrs. Andrews and Sheppard, of Hamilton, O. A bitter fight was made, but right and justice won and after a fierce legal battle between the opposing counsel, Judge Buchwalter rendered a lengthy decision remanding the prisoners to the custody of Sheriff Jule Plummer, as the agent of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. He also dismissed the habeas-corpus proceedings which had been instituted but granted a stay of the executive of his orders for eight days to give the attorneys for the prisoners ample time to appeal the cases and take them to the Circuit Court. Judge Andrews for the prisoners, announced that the bill of exceptions to Judge Buchwalter's rulings, would be prepared at once for presentation to the Circuit Court. The case was at once taken up on appeal and on March, 14., Judges Swing, Cox and Smith of the Circuit Court of Hamilton County began its hearing. When the higher Court convened an immense throng crowded the rooms, the most noteable among the spectators being the aged father of the murdered girl, Alex. S. Bryan, his three sons, Fred, Frank and James, and ten other gentlemen, who had come from Greencastle, Ind., to Cincinnati, to lend their aid to the prosecution of the prisoners. S. A. Hayes, one of the brightest legal lights of Indiana, was one of the party and he will doubtless aid the State of Kentucky in the prosecution of both Walling and Jackson when they are put on trial for their lives. ALLEGED ERRORS SET FORTH. The grounds of error set forth were as follows: "That there is manifest error in said judgement and proceedings at, by and before said Court of Common Pleas in this to wit: "1. Said court erred in remanding this plaintiff in error to the custody of said defendant in error. "2. Said court erred in not discharging this plaintiff in error from the custody of said defendants in error and restoring him to liberty. "3. The judgement and order of said Court of Common Pleas is against the weight of the evidence and contrary to law. "4. That there was no evidence whatever submitted to said Court of Common Pleas or to said Governor of Kentucky, who issued the said writ of requisition, and there was no evidence whatever submitted to the Governor of Ohio, who issued said warrant on said requisition, that this plaintiff in error was a fugitive from justice. "5. That the charge of indictment against this plaintiff in error does not accuse him according to law of any crime. "6. That there was no evidence submitted to said court or to either of said Governors that the offense set forth in said alleged indictment is a crime under the laws of said State of Kentucky. "7. That there are other errors prejudicial to plaintiff in error manifest in said record and proceedings." The prayer of the petition is: "Wherefore this plaintiff in error prays that said judgement and order may be reserved to all things he has lost thereby, and that he may be discharged from the custody of said defendants in error and restored to his liberty." After hearing the arguments on this bill of errors, the Court took the matter under advisement until the Monday morning following when the three Judges of the higher court met and rendered a decision sustaining Judge Buchwalter and remanding the prisoners to the custody of the Kentucky authorities. Walling and Jackson were at once informed of the decision of the Court. The effect of the information on the two prisoners was of marked difference. Walling smiled sarcastically, and said: "I had hoped we would not be taken over the river, and we have fought desperately to prevent going there. We have made the best fight possible," and winking his eye, added: "We have received no orders to go there yet." Jackson grew as pale as death and was visibly agitated and trembling, when told that the Court had decided against him. Said he: "Of course I do not want to go to Kentucky." "Do you fear being mobbed over there?" "I not only fear that we may be mobbed, but I don't believe we would be given a fair trial. How can I think otherwise when an authority like Sheriff Plummer told me that if we were taken over to Newport the people there would lynch us sure?" "Did the Sheriff tell you that?" "Yes, and then modified it by saying: 'I will, of course, do all I can, as an officer of the law, to prevent it, but we are all Kentuckians over there, and they are hard to restrain.' Since he told me that, I have not had any great longing to visit his State." WILD DRIVE TO KENTUCKY. St. Patrick's day, March, 17., 1896, will ever live green in the memory of Alonzo Walling and Scott Jackson. It was on this day they were taken to Kentucky, quietly and without much ado. Sheriff Plummer appeared at the Hamilton County, O., Jail in Cincinnati, and the prisoners were given in his charge. Walling was at once handcuffed to Detective Crim and Jackson to Detective McDermott. The crowds about the Jail and the reporters had no idea what was going on until patrol wagon No. 3, backed up to the door and Sheriff Plummer, followed by his prisoners and the detectives went to get in. Immediately the crowd went wild and a mighty yell went up. "They're going to Kentucky," was yelled by a thousand voices. Cabs were telephoned for by reporters, spring wagons were pressed into service and before the officers and prisoners could get in the patrol wagon fully twelve or fifteen vehicles were ready to follow. The horses were forced to a run and those following increased their speed accordingly. The crowd increased. Fear was unmistakeably seen on the countenances of both prisoners. Down Sycamore Street to Eighth the horses went on a wild run. Before reaching Eighth Street, Sheriff Plummer said that it would be impossible to thwart the fast increasing throng and in order to throw them of their guard, ordered the driver to turn west off Sycamore on Eighth and drive to Central Police Station. A large crowd awaited them there and the prisoners were quickly hustled into the cells. The crowds increased until the large iron doors had to be closed to keep the crowds from the driveways and corridors of the big City Building. The prisoners were kept there for two hours or more. Every movement of the officers was watched closely, especially by the reporters. Detectives Crim and McDermott, went quickly to the cells where the prisoners were confined, and without any notice, the prisoners were again handcuffed to them. Suddenly the large iron doors flew open, and patrol No. 1, dashed into the court-yard, when the party was again loaded in quickly. Once in the wagon, a wild drive to Newport was made. East on Eighth Street to Broadway dashed the team of splendid police-horses, down Broadway to Second and over the Central Bridge on a full run thence up York Street in Newport, up to Third to the jail. Everywhere the people stopped and stared at the strange chase, as patrol and vehicles containing press-representatives galloped by, throwing mud and snow in all directions, and unconsciously the correct conclusion was arrived at in nearly every case--that Jackson and Walling were being taken across the river. The Newport jailer had been notified that the men were on the way over, but he did not expect them as quickly as they made the journey. It was but about four minutes after 4 o'clock when Patrol No. 1, dashed up to the entrance to the Newport jail, the run from Ninth and Central Avenue having been made in less than fifteen minutes. On the Central bridge the horses broke into a gallop, and everybody in sight began to run. Before the Newport end was reached a surging crowd pushed up York and down Third Streets upon both sides, but they were not fast enough for the horses. When the trip to Central Station became known in Newport the news spread like wildfire, and soon a crowd of at least one thousand people had assembled and impatiently awaited the coming of the prisoners, the unusual activity at the jail indicating that they were to be brought there. Policeman patrolled Gate Street and kept the people constantly moving, while the door of the jail office was locked and admission refused to everyone, even reporters being excluded. About 4 o'clock there was a cry of "Here they come!" from the people on York Street, and in a few seconds patrol No. 1, turned the corner and dashed down to the jail entrance. As the patrol wagon turned the corner the crowd closed in and hurried after it, to check it, and when the jail was reached the entire street was blockaded. Sheriff Plummer stepped from the wagon, and was closely followed by Walling, handcuffed to Detective McDermott, and Jackson, handcuffed to Detective Crim. Both prisoners were pale and trembling, evidently believing that the crowd was there for motives other than curiosity. There was no demonstration from the people, and the prisoners were quickly hurried into the jail-office and the door slammed and locked in the faces of the crowd of reporters who attempted to enter. The Newport Jail is by no means a desireable place of confinement from a sanitary point of view and is poorly ventilated. Both prisoners keenly realized the great change in their accommodations. Regarding this Jackson said: "This is quite different from the Hamilton County Jail, where everything was at least nice and clean. If I could only exercise a little it would not be so bad. I am really losing the use of my legs, and I cannot see what harm there would be in allowing me to walk in the corridor with one of the guards. I am glad that we are to be taken into court on Monday. That will be at least a little relief." "What plea will you enter?" WILL NOT PLEAD GUILTY. "Oh, that, of course, will be for my attorney to decide, but it will certainly be not guilty." When Walling was seen, he appeared to be in much better spirits than Jackson. He was lying on his cot, deeply interested in the novel which he has been reading for the past few days. He arose and pleasantly greeted his visitor. When asked as to how he liked his quarters he replied: "Oh, I suppose I have no kick coming, although they are not as good as those across the river." "What plea will you enter next Monday?" "Not guilty, of course. What other plea could I make. I tell you that I am not guilty of that murder and I fully expect to be cleared." Arraigned in Kentucky Court Monday, March, 23., the murderers, spent the first hour outside the prison walls since the transfer to Kentucky. That hour was spent in appearing in the Circuit Court room of Campbell County for the purpose of entering their plea to the charge of murder placed against them by the Kentucky authorities. In the court-room by 9:30 o'clock the three hundred privileged ones who had obtained tickets of admission had taken their seats, and every seat was taken excepting the four on the jury gallery reserved for the prisoners and their jail attendants. There were not more than twenty women among the spectators. Within the iron-rail-bound quadrangle in front of the Judge's desk thirty or forty members of the Campbell County bar sat, while ranged behind them and just within the railing was a row of tables for the reporters and artists. Occupying the front chairs in the quadrangle were the attorneys in the case: For the Commonwealth, Messrs. M. R. Lockhart, Ramsay Washington and Colonel William Nelson; for the prisoners, Hon. L. J. Crawford, representing Jackson, and Colonel George Washington, representing Walling. In a few minutes Judge Charles J. Helm and the Clerk of the Court, A. L. Reuscher, entered and took their seats and at once opened the Court. Fifteen minutes were spent by the Court disposing of routine business and several minor cases before his honor said: "I will now call the cases of the Commonwealth vs. Jackson et al. Mr. Sheriff, bring in the defendants." Everybody was at once on the alert, and all eyes were turned to the door leading from the corridor. Instead of going toward that door, however, the Sheriff threw open the ante-room door and out walked Jackson, attended by Jail Guard Veith. Jackson walked quickly and without any evidence of the weakness in his knees of which he complained several days ago. A few steps behind Jackson came Walling, attended by Jailer John Bitzer. When they came into the room, both men were pale, but that haggard appearance which distinguished them when they were in the Cincinnati Courts was gone. They both looked well and gave evidence that they enjoyed their Kentucky fare. Walling retained his paleness throughout the proceedings, but Jackson, after taking his seat and looking over the assembled crowd, flushed up a little. "Stand up," said Judge Helm to the prisoners when the rustle occasioned by their appearance had subsided, "You are arraigned--" Colonel Washington interrupted the Judge here to say that he wished to enter his demurrer to the indictment before the arraignment. He was overruled. BOTH PLEAD NOT GUILTY. The men were then arraigned and asked to plead. "Not guilty, as to Walling," said Colonel Washington. "Not guilty, as to Jackson," said Mr. Crawford. Judge Helm then asked the attorneys as to whether they desired the defendants tried together or separately. Mr. Crawford said he did not wish to indicate then, but Colonel Washington said he wanted a seperate trial for Walling. The Judge then said, "All right, let an order be entered accordingly. This court will begin the case against Scott Jackson first, and I will set Jackson's case for April 7." Mr. Crawford thought the time was too short. "Until the prisoner came over here," he said, "I was not connected with the case. Our witnesses are scattered, many of them being in Ohio and Indiana, and I do not wish to risk the chance of their failure to attend court on account of the short time allowed. This trial is for justice, and we ought to be given every opportunity to prepare our case. The prosecution seems to have surprises in store for us, and by a decision of the Court of Appeals the defense has the right to know what the prosecution intends to do against us." Colonel Nelson here got up and said: "I am surprised at Mr. Crawford making such a statement. The Commonwealth expects to prove that Scott Jackson killed Pearl Bryan," a remark that drew a laugh from the audience. Judge Helm said he knew of no rule requiring the Commonwealth to indicate to the defense what its case would be. "Two weeks ought to be ample time," continued he, "for the defense to get ready." Mr. Crawford continued to press for longer time, but the Judge cut him short by repeating "I think you have ample time between this and April 7. If you have an objection to make, make it then, but it must be a good one to receive my attention. Remand the prisoners." No time was fixed for the trial of Alonzo Walling but it was understood that it follow immediately after Jackson's. The demanding of a seperate trial by Walling's attorney gave rise to the rumor, which gained considerable credence that Walling could be induced to turn state's evidence against Jackson and tell all he knows at the trial of Jackson. The authorities have accumulated much important evidence in the matter and the attorneys for the prosecution claimed with perfect confidence that they would be able to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that both Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling are guilty of the murder, and decapitation of Pearl Bryan. It was claimed by them that enough evidence has been secured to reveal how, when, where and by whom Pearl Bryan was murdered; to reveal the secret of her whereabouts on the night proceeding her tragic death; in fact to ring down the curtain upon the most horrible tragedy of the nineteenth century, laid bare in all of its most horrowing details. Like the well-laid plot in the tragedy which has its birth in the imagination of the skillful dramatist, this tragedy in real life, possessed the one element which never fails to fascinate the public mind-mystery. The day of the trial drew near, and still the mystery seemed almost as deep as ever. It was evident before the calling of the case against Scott Jackson in Newport, Ky., on April, 7., 1896, that a hard earnest fight would be made for delay and a postponement asked by Jackson's attorneys. The day of trial April, 7., at last arrived. Every arrangement had been perfected by Sheriff Plummer, not only for the protection and safe keeping of the prisoners but also for the convenience and accommodation of the Court, to prevent any crowding of the court-room or any unseemly acts of violence or disturbance. The announcement of the authorities that only a limited few besides those interested in the case would be allowed in the court-room was the reason of the smallness of the crowd. People, knowing that they could not get in to see the trial, did not--beyond a few of the more curious--care to merely get a look at the prisoner. The twelve jurymen's chairs were placed directly in front of the Judge's desk, and the witness box so placed that the witnesses in giving their testimony would be facing the Judge and jury. The witness stand stood almost in the middle of the court-room. On the right side was the prosecution's and on the left side the defense's tables, while between it and the jury was placed the stenographer's table. The reporters' tables, six in number, were grouped in close proximity around the witness stand, and the whole arrangement left nothing to be desired. The members of the Campbell County bar occupied seats within and without the railed space, and there was a large gathering of them present. SCOTT JACKSON IS BROUGHT TO HIS TRIAL FOR LIFE. About five minutes before the arrival of Judge Helm in the court-room Sheriff Plummer, having all his arrangements perfected, slipped out and proceeded to the jail, and in a few moments emerged therefrom with Scott Jackson handcuffed to his arm. With a nervous smile and a forced jauntiness, which accorded illy with his visible perturbation, Scott Jackson stepped from the old jail door in Newport and started through the dense lines of curious men, women and children for the court of justice, wherein his fight for life will be made. He was handcuffed to Sheriff Plummer, and, as a further precaution, was flanked on either side by a stalwart deputy. Jackson seemed in good humor as he walked from the jail, and did not show the same dread for the Newport crowds that he had displayed on the two former occasions upon which he passed through them. He was taken upstairs in the Courthouse and placed in the witness room to await the opening of court. Ordinarily, a man facing death excites sympathy, particularly among the class who waited for two hours to get a glimpse of Jackson. But the most casual observer could not fail to see that the populace was singularly unanimous in its intense hostility to the supposed and accused murderers of Pearl Bryan. A man may be a murderer and a hero in the minds of many. But nothing but deep-seated and virulent hostility was manifested by ninety-nine out of every hundred of those who gathered about the Courthouse in Newport and reviewed the famous crime in infinite detail. "He'll hang, and he ought to, ---- him," said one big fellow in the center of a listening group. "Yes, and Walling out to follow him in five minutes," said a bare-headed working woman, as she shifted a baby from arm to arm. The same sullen antipathy was apparent as Jackson passed through the crowd. It was indisputably general. A REMARKABLE INCIDENT. A significant proof of this feeling was evidenced in a rather remarkable incident which occurred as Jackson was leaving the court-room after the trial. There were probably a dozen women in the audience, among whom was a party of three comely, well dressed and to all appearances, thoroughly respectable women. They sat on the first row of the benches for the general spectators. As Jackson passed from the inclosure wherein he had been seated and started for the ante-room with Sheriff Plummer, one of the women suddenly reached out and kicked Jackson twice. She put all her strength into the blows. Jackson flushed and then smiled the smile which in his case is better evidence of internal anguish and agitation than is a tear on the face of most men. Neither Judge Helm nor Sheriff Plummer, nor in fact, any one outside from three spectators saw the incident. The officers walked rapidly, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and seemed, from their grimness, to realize the great responsibility which rested upon them. OPENING OF THE TRIAL. It was just 9:40 o'clock, April, 7., when Judge Helm entered the court-room. Immediately the hum of conversation which had been going on at a lively rate stopped, as, with hardly a pause after sitting down, the Judge ordered the Sheriff to open the court. Every seat in the spectators gallery by this time was taken. Judge Helm at once went to the business of the day, calling "Case 2,296, the Commonwealth vs. Scott Jackson," and directing the Sheriff to bring in the prisoner. There was a perceptible movement on the part of the assemblage as Jackson followed Jailer Bitzer and the Sheriff into the court-room and took his place on the left of the witness box and slightly in its rear. His chair was next to that of Attorney Andrews, of Hamilton, Walling's counsels, and the narrow table seperated the prisoner from Hon. L. J. Crawford and Colonel George Washington. As on his former visit to the court-room, Jackson flushed slightly after taking his seat. He paid close attention throughout to every thing that was said by the Judge and the lawyers. Around the table to the right of the witness box were seated Commonwealth's Attorney M. R. Lockhart, Colonel R. W. Nelson and Attorney Silas Hayes, of Greencastle, all representing the prosecution. The Sheriff called the names of the jurors summoned for duty, and these having been disposed of the Judge asked: "Is the Commonwealth ready?" To which Mr. Lockhart replied: "The Commonwealth is ready." "May it please Your Honor, Scott Jackson is not ready," stated Mr. Crawford, rising. "We desire to file a motion for postponement." Illustration: The highest point in Forest Hill Cemetery where the headless remains of Pearl Bryan are buried. He read the affidavit as follows: "Affiant L. J. Crawford says he is still the only attorney herein for defendant, Scott Jackson: that affiant has been ill with la grippe during the last ten days; that for more than a week one of his children has been and still is very ill and under the care of a physician; that, in consequence of his own and his child's sickness, he has been unable to give this case the attention necessary to properly prepare it for trial; that, so far as he has been able, he has constantly and assiduously worked upon the preparation of it; that the commissions to take depositions in Cincinnati, O., Greencastle, Ind., and Brooklyn, N. Y., have not been returned; that the persons named in the former affidavit of affiant as residing in joint places will testify as follows, viz: While in Greencastle that Scott Jackson's general reputation among the neighbors in said town, until charged with the offense mentioned in the indictment, was good; that he resided there for about two years just before or shortly before being so charged; that each and all of said witnesses knew him and his general reputation in said town during said time. "That the reputation of Will Wood, of Greencastle, Ind., whom the prosecution will introduce, for truth, can be successfully impeached by witnesses residing in Greencastle, if time is given in which to take their depositions. "Affiant says he was not aware until April, 1., 1896, that said Wood would be introduced; that affiant will be able by the 10. inst. to file a list of names of persons who will testify upon Wood's reputation and to file a list of interrogations to be addressed to them." OBJECTIONS OF THE STATE. Mr. Lockhart repeated that the State was ready to try the case, and he did not think the Court ought to allow a month's further time. He said that Mr. Crawford, upon a former occasion, had agreed that a month was sufficient in which to prepare the case. It was therefore Mr. Lockhart's opinion that two weeks further continuance was as much as Mr. Crawford could look for. That, he said, would make the full time allowed one month. Mr. Crawford said he did at first think a month would be sufficient, but his work during the past two weeks had shown him that it would take hard work to be ready inside of another month. "I most earnestly and sincerely state," continued he, "that we should have a month, and do not see what particular difference it would make to the Commonwealth. My client is not enjoying himself in jail." The Judge said that the difficulties attending the prosecution were infinitely greater than they were for the defense, the defendant knew everything in reference to himself, whereas the prosecution had to find out everything. He had also pointed out that other counsel had been engaged in the case. CRAWFORD'S EARNEST APPEAL. Mr. Crawford stated that he had only been engaged after Jackson came to Kentucky, a little less than three weeks. In concluding an earnest appeal for a month's extension of time, he said: "It is a question whether this man shall be hanged, go to the penitentiary for life, or whether he shall leave the court-room a free man." The Judge replied: "You are not entitled to any continuance at all. Tuesday, April, 21., will be sufficient time. The case is continued until that day. Witnesses' names will now be called." The following witnesses for the prosecution were in court and were placed upon their recognizances of $100 each to be in court on April, 21.: J. B. Lock, Dr. A. B. Heyl, Henry Motz and Harry and Will Hedger. While the court proceeded to other business of the day the officers removed Jackson to the witness room, where he was kept for about fifteen minutes before being returned to the jail. The attorneys for the Commonwealth were sure of having sufficient testimony to convict both Jackson and Walling of murder in the first degree and objected strenuously to any continuance. Col. R. W. Nelson, who volunteered his services for the prosecution, worked hard and earnestly and through his efforts much valuable and conclusive evidence against the prisoners was unearthed. He said regarding the disposition of the head: "Without a doubt the head of Pearl Bryan is rotting in the Ohio river. At the proper time we will produce witnesses who saw Jackson and Walling make two visits to the Suspension Bridge and throw bundles into the stream. One of these bundles the witnesses will say undoubtedly contained a human head. The witnesses who will testify to these facts have positively identified both Jackson and Walling and will do so again at the trial, and their testimony will be of the most sensational character." On Monday, April, 13., Judge Helm fixed the day for Alonzo Walling's trial, for Tuesday May, 5., 1896. Walling's Hamilton O., attorneys, Morey, Andrews & Shepherd, withdrew from any further connection with the case. Pearl Bryan's headless remains buried at Greencastle. The headless body of poor Pearl Bryan, taken to Greencastle, Ind., from the Newport, Ky., Morgue on that cold, bleak wintry day in February, lay in its beautiful snow-white casket in the vault in Forest Hill Cemetery in Greencastle, until March, 27. The heart-broken sisters, urged on by the friends of the family, had pleaded with their aged and grief-stricken parents to have the remains buried, but their pleading was in vain. Mrs. Bryan could not bear to even think of consigning the remains to mother earth without the head, and Mr. Bryan, the aged and heart-broken father, would only reply when the suggestion of burial would be made to him, "The head must be found," "It must be found." It was only after long and hard pleading that he at last agreed to permit the burial of the headless remains. Hundreds of people had visited the cemetery and gazed longingly on the stone receptacle in which the body lay. At last the consent of Mr. Bryan was secured and arrangements were at once put on foot to consign to mothers earth, all that was left of the beautiful and loved, but misguided girl. Friday, March, 27., was the day fixed for the funeral. It was a beautiful day and the sun shone brightly from an almost cloudless sky. The warm weather of the preceding days had caused the grass and foliage in the beautiful cemetery to assume a decidedly bright greenish tint, and the trees were beginning to bud. It was in every respect a most typical day. The cemetery lies just south of Greencastle, surrounding a lofty hill within plain view, and but a short distance from the colonial mansion of the Bryan's, where the lovely Pearl was born and had grown to womanhood, from which she had attended the Greencastle school and graduated with the highest honors. It was here in the city of the dead, where lie her relatives and friends who have gone before her, in sight of her home, at the highest point in the cemetery, where the fond loving mother and father, whose hearts are broken over the sad, sad ending of the life of their favorite daughter, can look from the window of their room and see the tombs of "the loved and lost", that the grave was dug. Mr. and Mrs. Bryan had insisted on Pearls' grave being located on the highest point in the cemetery. Early in the afternoon of the day fixed, an immense concourse of relatives and friends, and of the curious, assembled at the vault in the cemetery, where the remains lay. Notwithstanding the large crowd, present, a deathlike stillness prevailed. At last the hour arrived, and a few moments afterward the carriages containing the grief-stricken family, arrived on the ground. These carriages, bearing the possessors of so many heavily grief burdened hearts, had hardly stopped at the vault when the large black doors of the vault swung outward, and the dead girl's class-mates of the "Class of '92", with bowed heads and aching hearts, filed slowly into the sepulcher, and took their places around the plain white coffin, on the lid of which was a silver plate with the single word "Pearl" engraved thereon. It was indeed a most solemn and impressive scene, one never to be forgotten by those who witnessed it. With heavy hearts, tear-bedimmed eyes, and trembling hands, the loved and loving class-mates of the beautiful victim of the crime of the nineteenth century, grasped the silver bar handles of the casket which contained all that was mortal of the poor, erring, misguided, but loved Pearl Bryan, and bore it to the outside of the vault. Tender hands and loving hearts bore the headless remains of the once bright, cheerful and petted Pearl, to their last resting place. The remains were not exposed to view at the funeral services. Slowly following the carriages, containing Rev. Dr. Gobin, the officiating pastor, the family and intimate friends, the beautiful casket was carried by the class-mates along the broad cinder path to the grave where it must rest. Following the casket was one of the largest crowds ever seen at a funeral in Greencastle. Arriving at the grave, the casket was let down into the receptacle prepared for it. Simple services appropriate and tender, were said. Dr. Gobin, made a few touching remarks, a hymn was sung by the class-mates with voices filled with emotion, and the services concluded with a short prayer. A new grave was made, the horrible tragedy which cost poor Pearl Bryan her life was recalled vividly to those who had known and loved her all through life, and the headless body of Pearl Bryan, dressed in her magnificent white dress in which she graduated from the Greencastle High School, borne by the loving class-mates in that graduating-class, were consigned to earth from whence they came, and covered from the view of those who loved and knew her. Already a verdant carpet furnished by nature covers the new made mound which is kept covered with beautiful flowers and one would not think that this grave was a new made one, but the girl who lies beneath that mound, whose tragic death startled the whole civilized world, will never be forgotten by those who visit Forest Hill Cemetery. The Trial of Scott Jackson. The trial of Scott Jackson began on April the 22nd, before Judge Helm. It is very remarkable that a jury was secured on the first day. Perhaps this promptness has never been equalled in Kentucky. The completed jury was as follows: John M. Ensweiler, grocer, Bellevue; William White, plumber, Newport; John Boehmer, teamster, Dayton; Merty Shea, retired merchant, Newport; Louis Scharstein, grocer, Newport; D. B. Mader, carpenter and builder, Dayton; William Motz, reporter, Dayton; Millard Carr, carpenter, Bellevue; G. P. Stegner, grocer, Newport; John S. Backsman, cutler, Newport; Fred Gieskemeyer, grocer, Bellevue; David Kraut, coal merchant, Dayton. When all the preliminaries had been completed the attorney for the Commonwealth arose and stated to the jury what the prosecution intended to prove. He said: "In the spring of 1895, the accused, Scott Jackson, commenced living in Greencastle, Ind., where also resided the deceased, Pearl Bryan, who was the youngest daughter of one of the oldest and best families in that vicinity. Her father at one time was a Kentuckian, having lived a long time in Bourbon County, Ky. "The accused, Scott Jackson, became acquainted with Pearl Bryan, shortly after he arrived in Greencastle. By reason of his elegant dress, polished manners and fluent conversation, shortly after his acquaintance with her he became a frequent caller upon her and they were often seen together. Succeeding this the Commonwealth will show, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this innocent young lady became infatuated and yielded her chastity to this man, and later on she advised him of the fact of her condition. It will be clearly demonstrated to you, gentlemen of the jury, that while she was in that condition she left Greencastle and came to Cincinnati, so that her people would not be aware of her unfortunate condition. "That, in obedience to a request from Scott Jackson, she came to Cincinnati on Monday, January 28th. We will introduce a witness to show that he met her at the depot, and that she inquired for Scott Jackson. That he met her on the following morning, Tuesday, January 29th. It will be shown that he was seen not only in Cincinnati, but in Kentucky, and that he was seen with her up to Friday night, and about that time he was with her in a vehicle, and that he took her out to Fort Thomas, where her headless body was found February 1st, 1896. "That Scott Jackson was found in possession of Pearl Bryan's satchel. We will show by two or three persons, to whom he made this confession, that he left the satchel with two different persons after the finding of the body of Pearl Bryan. That upon Friday night a light rain fell, and when the body was found on the Lock property, near Fort Thomas, headless, there was a large quantity of blood lying in clots near the corpse. "The Commonwealth expects to show you the condition of the body at the time; that at that place the decapitation of this unfortunate girl was done, and this man, Scott Jackson (pointing to the prisoner), is the fiend who decapitated the unfortunate girl. "We will also show to you, gentleman, that this fellow led a double life--as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Up at Greencastle he was a gentleman, but in Cincinnati, he was in society of ill repute, and he made no discrimination of color in his choice of women. "That a week or two before the crime was committed he displayed a fine dissecting knife, and that he was experienced in the use of a knife that could have done that kind of work. "Through Jackson Pearl Bryan was brought to Cincinnati, and the evidence tracing her will be established beyond a reasonable doubt, and that the decapitation was done by one who is deft in using the knife, as he is known to be." John Hewling, a lad about sixteen years of age was the first witness. He testified to the finding of the headless body on the farm of J. D. Lock. The second witness was Dr. Tingley, Coroner of Campbell County, Ky. His testimony was very important. He described the spot where he first viewed the corpse and testified that the bushes in the vicinity were spattered with blood that had spurted from the headless trunk. Restated that the head had been removed by some one who had practised in surgery. The following dialogue occurred during his testimony: "On viewing the body I found it had been severed rather high. The knife had struck the vertebra, then its course was changed slightly downward." "Did you notice any other cut?" "Yes; one across the fingers of her left hand." "What fingers?" "Her four fingers, near the tops." "Did you observe no cut on the thumb?" "No, sir." "Did you make any other examination?" "Yes, sir." "Can you say whether or not the cuts on her hand were recently inflicted?" "Yes, they were." "I will ask you if, in your opinion (you have described the condition of the body), whether or not the head was cut off at that place?" "I think so." "Can you say whether the head was cut off before or after death? Or, if death resulted from the severance?" "I think the artery was cut while the heart was still beating." In view of the fact that the defense was seeking to establish that the head was removed after death the last remark coming as it did from an expert was very damaging to Jackson. The same witness was asked, concerning the cuts on the hand which he had referred to. "Will you explain to the jury whether the cuts on the fingers were made before death?" "Before death," replied the witness promptly. He was then questioned more particularly as to the result of his investigations as an expert. The fact that Pearl Bryan had been murdered with a knife (though cocaine was found in her stomach by the chemist), was established beyond peradventure by the witness. He also identified the clothing of Pearl Bryan which was produced all soaked with blood. On the second day of the trial the prosecution sprung a sensation. A headless dummy was brought into the court-room dressed in the clothes that Pearl Bryan wore when her body was discovered. The dummy was placed in an erect position at the left of the witness box and facing the jury. A lively tilt followed between counsel as to the legality of this proceeding. The court finally ordered the figure removed and the clothes produced separately. When this was done Mrs. Mary Stanley, the sister of Pearl Bryan was called. She gave a list of the articles that Pearl had when she left home and identified all the valises and clothing which the prosecution had brought into court. She also identified some handkerchiefs found in Jackson's room by detectives after his arrest and named the store where Pearl had purchased them in Greencastle. The first evidence of the trial that directly connected the prisoner with the murder was given by John A. Caldwell, Mayor of Cincinnati. Jackson became flushed and nervous and at times fastened his watery eyes on the witness with an intensity that became painful. He stated that he was present when Jackson was examined immediately after his arrest in the office of Chief of Police Deitsch, of Cincinnati. Mr. Caldwell said Colonel Deitsch handed him a telegram; he took it in his hand and leaning over and looking at it for quite a time, with his eyes in this way, cast down, he finally uttered: "Oh, my God what will my poor mother say," then he turned his eyes on Colonel Deitsch. When he asked me the question he rose from his position and began to walk up and down the room. He says to me, "What shall I do?" I says, "Do you ask me the question?" He says, "Yes." I says, "Tell the truth." He said, "Many an innocent man has been in as serious trouble as I am to-night," or something to that effect. I do not know that I get his exact words. After what I have related Colonel Deitsch asked: "Where is Pearl Bryan?" Jackson said he did not know; that he had not seen her since he was home during the holidays. He was asked where he was on Friday night. He said at first he was at his room; he was not certain, but he was there. Then he said he was not out of his room after 7:30 o'clock; he remained there all the evening. He was asked who his room-mate was, and he said Alonzo Walling. He was asked if his room-mate was with him. He said that he believed he was. He was asked where he was on Thursday evening, and he said he was at his room. He was then asked as to where Walling was. He said he did not know where Walling was Thursday evening, and afterwards said that Walling did not come home on Thursday evening. That was about the substance of the conversation that evening. The newspaper men were then allowed to come in, and a conversation was then held with him by them as to where he was, much of which I did not hear. "The next morning about 10:30 I went to Colonel Deitsch's office, where the prisoner was sitting. Colonel Deitsch asked him where he was on Friday and Thursday nights, and his answers were the same as he made the evening before. I am not positive as to whether it was at that meeting that Walling was brought into his presence, and the conversation turned as to where Pearl Bryan was and as to whether either of them had seen Pearl Bryan the previous week. "Mr. Jackson admitted to Colonel Deitsch that he had seen Pearl Bryan; that she came to the Dental College on Court Street for him; that he was informed she was in a cab, and that he met her afterward, I think on Tuesday, at the Indiana House, on Fifth Street; that he met her again on Wednesday about one o'clock at the corner of Fourth and Vine or Fourth and Walnut. He said in the presence of Walling that he had sent 'Wally', as he called him, to notify her that he was going out that afternoon and he would meet her that evening. Then he said he did not see her again after that Wednesday. "Walling said he went down and saw Pearl Bryan and that he went that evening to Heider's Restaurant, on Fifth Street, and met Jackson, and Jackson told him to go up to the Postoffice and he would find Pearl Bryan, and to wait there until he went to his room and returned; that he went over to the Postoffice and saw Pearl Bryan standing inside the corridor, and he went on from there and wrote his letters. "Either on that day or the next day Mr. Jackson was asked about the satchel, and he said that he had left the satchel at Legner's saloon, across the street from his room; he said that he brought it there and loaned it to a student and he intended to take it to the college and give it to him, but he did not give it to him. He afterwards admitted that it was Pearl Bryan's satchel. "I want to say that in the meantime, in one of these conversations, I told both of these young men that they did not have to make a confession to any person, that they were at perfect liberty to refuse to answer any of the questions that were asked them. "Walling in this conversation, when Jackson was present, said that when Jackson came back from his holiday vacation he took him in the corner of his room on Ninth Street, where they were rooming, and told him that he was in trouble with Pearl Bryan and that he intended to kill her. When asked how, he said, 'I propose to get a room and take her to the room and give her some cocaine poison and leave her there.' Then again, he says he changed and said. 'No, I will cut her up in pieces and take the pieces and deposit them in different places about the city.' He said that before he saw Pearl Bryan at the Postoffice--I believe that was Thursday evening instead of Wednesday evening---he said that Jackson had made arrangements to take her over to Bellevue, I think it was, or over to the sandbar, or some place there and kill her, take her head off and bury her. He said that Jackson asked all the physicians as to the effects of different kinds of poisons; that he had a standard medical dictionary in his room and studied the effects of poisons, and that he asked one physician particularly as to the effect of cocaine. "He said that Jackson went to a Sixth Street pharmacy and got cocaine and brought it back, that he took out a small teaspoonful and dissolved it in two teaspoonsful of water and put it in a bottle, as he said, to give her so as to paralyze her vocal organs or throat, and then cut her head off. Jackson turned to Walling and said: 'Wally, why do you talk that way; you know you are not telling the truth; you know that you killed Pearl Bryan.' Whereupon Walling says, 'No, you know that you killed her; and why don't you tell where her head is?' Then, when Jackson was talking of where Pearl Bryan's head was, he said, 'I don't know; Wally says he threw it overboard.' Then he said he took the clothes and made one or two trips to the river and threw part in the river and some in the sewer, but he could not tell where." "Jackson then said that there was a bundle that he had given Walling. Walling was then asked what he done with it; he said that it was up in his locker at the college; the bundle was sent for and brought in their presence. It was a pair of pantaloons, which Jackson identified as his, and said that he had not seen them for some time; that Walling must have worn them. "I asked the men as to where the other clothes were. Walling says, 'Jackson, why don't you tell him where those things are, you might just as well do it now as any time?' Jackson said that upon Saturday night, I believe it was, they were walking up Plum Street with a bundle and they saw some young physician or one of the students coming towards them, that Walling changed and went down Plum Street to Ninth and out Ninth, and Jackson said he went along little Richmond Street and from there on around to the room, and then down Ninth to Richmond, and out Richmond Street, westward, where he threw the bundle in one of the manholes of the sewer, but he could not state which. The sewers were drained and searched and a bundle brought to the department which Mr. Jackson identified as his coat. He first denied that it was his coat, and said it was Wallings', but afterwards admitted that it was his coat, but that Walling must have worn it." A valise was shown to Mr. Caldwell and he identified it as the one that Jackson had been confronted with. It was the satchel which had once been Pearl Bryan's and the witness stated that Jackson accused Walling of having brought away the head of the murdered girl in it. The witness then spoke of the occasion when Walling and Jackson accused each other of having murdered the girl. After this he described the scene and last effort that was made to get a confession from the prisoners at Epply's Undertaking Establishment (see page 84). This ended the Mayors testimony. The mother of Pearl Bryan was then called to identify her daughter's clothing. The scene brought tears to every eye and a sob to every bosom not wholly bereft of human qualities. Allan Johnson, employed in a saloon at George and Plum Streets, gave testimony that proved to be highly important. He knew both Jackson and Walling as visitors to the establishment referred to--and which the witness admitted was a house of ill repute. On the night of the murder the two students called with a woman in their company. The woman must have been Pearl Bryan for the witness identified the clothing worn by Pearl on the night she was murdered. The party, consisting of Jackson, Walling, and Pearl drove away from the house in a carriage. George H. Jackson, a colored man, was called. His testimony was of the most startling character. He told that on the night before the murder he was approached by Alonzo Walling at the corner of George and Elm Streets. Walling inquired if Jackson wished to earn five dollars by driving a cab across the Newport bridge. The colored man accepted. On the next night he proceeded to Elm and George Streets to discharge the contract. A cab soon drove up with Walling on the box. Walling gave him the reins and instructed him to drive to the Newport bridge, giving route. This was done. Then Walling got up on the box with him to further direct the way. Before long he heard a noise that sounded like a woman suffering and they moved around and shook the carriage and they broke a glass, and then I was scared and I put my left hand out and my right hand on the lantern and it kind of bent down and I started to jump off, and I said there is something wrong in the back part of that carriage and I don't care anything about this job, and I went to hand the lines to him and when I went to look at him I was looking at a gun. He said, "If you don't drive this horse I will blow you to hell"; of course, I understood and began to drive the horse. At length the carriage stopped at the command of a man inside the carriage whom the witness identified to be Scott Jackson. The witness said, "I stopped the horse and the man inside of the carriage got out, and when this man on the front seat jumped down and went behind and got on the other side of the lady then I got down to shut the door and this here man who sat in the rear says, 'Drive down and turn around and come back and wait until I whistle,' and then I shut the door and they moved off; the woman was in between these two men. I went down the hill and turned around, and when I came back I saw them in the act of getting over the fence. It was a kind of a three-board fence." The witness then related that a panic seized him and that he ran away from the scene as fast as he could, leaving the horse tied where he stood. If George H. Jackson's story was true there can be no doubt of Scott Jackson's and Alonzo Walling's guilt. The next witnesses of importance were the two detectives Crim and McDermott. Crim testified first. He said: "I live in Cincinnati. Have been connected with the Police Department about ten years; on the detective force two years. I was detailed on the Pearl Bryan case. I went to the point where the body was found, Saturday, February 1st, in the neighborhood of one o'clock, in company of McDermott and Mr. Plummer, Sheriff of this county. "I went out with Mr. Plummer and he described the position that the body was lying in when found. I noticed a few spots of blood on the ground, one on the side of the bank and the other down near the bottom, where the neck was supposed to be lying. I noticed blood on the bushes and on the edge of the bank. Mr. McDermott pulled the leaves through his hand and the blood stuck to his fingers; he rubbed it on the back of his hand and it made a red mark. I took one of the leaves and have it with me now. This is the leaf. (The leaf was then exhibited to the jury). I have kept that leaf in another book until I filled that one up and then I placed it in this. It is a leaf I plucked from the bushes there. There were a number of the leaves that had blood upon them, drops like rain-drops would glisten on the same. I found near these blood spots an impression in the ground as though some one had been sitting there. During the time I was there some person took a stick and dug down in the ground six or seven inches. There was blood down as far as he went, or some red substance I thought was blood. On the top of the bank, I judge three feet from where this impression was, there was a track which looked as though it had been made with a rubber shoe of small size. About the size of the rubber shown me. The witness also testified that he had made a search of the room occupied by Jackson. He found a pair of ladies stockings behind a trunk pointed out to him as Scott Jackson's trunk and which had on it the letters "S. J." He also found, in the trunk, a ladies pocket-book with a piece of gold chain in it. In a closet was found a cap. McDermott was present when the search was made and testified exactly as Mr. Crim did. John W. Legner was called and testified. "I live in Cincinnati. I kept a saloon at 225 West Ninth Street, nearly opposite where Walling and Jackson roomed. Scott Jackson had been in my place quite frequently; he came for a pitcher of beer." "State whether at any time he left any article of any kind at your place." "On Saturday night, the 1st of February, between 7 and 8 o'clock. Mr. Jackson, whose name I did not know at the time, but had seen on two or three occasions, opened the door and asked if he could have the permission to leave a satchel there; I told him certainly he could. He set the satchel down close to the ice chest, left it there and went away, and the satchel remained there until Sunday evening about 10 o'clock, when he came in and took it away. He left no directions as to its disposal. On the following Monday night he came and brought it and set it down in the same place where it was sitting before, and it remained there until about 10 o'clock, or a little bit earlier; then he came and took it away. I had no occasion to handle the valise on either occasion. The valise shown me looks like the valise that he brought here. He roomed right across the way from my place." Little Dot Legner, a child belonging to the saloon-keeper testified that the satchel was much heavier on the first night than on the second. It has been conjectured, very plausibly, that the valise contained Pearl Bryan's head, on the first night. William D. Wood, of Greencastle, Ind., was called. Wood's name has been very prominently connected with the case on account of his knowledge of Pearl Bryan's condition and the part he played in sending the girl to Cincinnati. In answer to questions he stated that he introduced Scott Jackson to Pearl Bryan in August, 1895, and that some time afterward Jackson boasted that he had become intimate with the girl. According to Wood, Jackson left Greencastle in October to take a course of dentistry in Cincinnati and that soon afterward Jackson wrote and inquired if Pearl Bryan was sick. Wood investigated and replied that she was sick. Then Jackson sent a prescription for medicine and said: "Tell her to take two or three good doses before she goes to bed at night." The medicine had no effect. Additional prescriptions were then sent. They were unsuccessful. Pearl continued "sick." Wood then stated that Jackson went to Greencastle again during the holidays. The condition of Pearl was becoming more threatening and it was plain that something had to be done. Then it was that Jackson suggested an operation. The witness testified on this point. "He said that it was very frequently done, done every day and if he had the instruments he could do it himself. Such operations, he said, were every day occurrences and if we got it done she would be all right in three or four days." Before Jackson left Greencastle he tried to make Wood agree to send her to Cincinnati where the matter could be attended to, but Wood claimed that he refused, not wishing to have anything to do with it. On January 4th, Jackson left Greencastle and returned to Cincinnati and on January 25th, Wood received a letter from him in which he said that he had secured a room for Pearl. Wood claims that he gave this letter to Pearl. She read it and expressed her intention of going on the next Monday. Accordingly on January 27th, she left Greencastle on the 1:35 train, going east. On February 6th, 1896, Wood received another letter. He was then on the train in charge of the officers, as an accomplice of Scott Jackson who had been arrested. The letter was destroyed by Wood but he remembered the contents. The letter read. "Hello Bill--I have made a big mistake and we will probably get into trouble. I want you to stand by me." On the day before this Wood received the following strange letter which was produced in court and which we already published on page 77. The witness stated that the above letter never reached him--that it fell into the hands of Chief Deitsch. The letter was most damaging to Jackson's case. The next and last witness for the prosecution was Chief of Police, Colonel Deitsch, of Cincinnati. He said: "On February 5th, about 10 o'clock at night I met Jackson in charge of a detective officer named Bulmer on the corner of Ninth and Plum Streets, in Cincinnati. I went up to Scott Jackson and said then, "We want you at the Mayor's office." We walked into the Mayor's office--Mayor Caldwell, of Cincinnati--and there was no one present at the time except myself, His Honor, the Mayor, and Scott Jackson. Detective Bulmer came into the office but walked out. I told Scott Jackson I had a dispatch for his arrest. He sat on the settee, and I asked, "Where is Pearl Bryan?" He said, "I have not seen her since the 2nd day of January, 1896, at Greencastle, Ind." The Mayor partly read the dispatch and gave it to me, and I had handed it to Jackson, and said: "Jackson read the contents of that dispatch." He read it carefully, and then said: "Oh my God, what will my poor mother say?" I asked the question, "Do you know where Pearl Bryan is?" He said he did not. He got up off the settee and made the remark over again. "Oh, my God, what will my poor mother say?" He walked backward and forward. He made the remark. "Must I tell about this?" His Honor, the Mayor, said, "Not unless you want too." The Mayor repeated that twice. He said, "Jackson, you need not tell unless you want too." I then again asked him if he knew anything about Pearl Bryan. He said that he did not. Shortly after that conversation the reporters from the daily press were admitted and my interview with Jackson at that time ended." The Colonel stated that on the following day Jackson requested an interview. Following are the Colonels words: I asked Jackson. "Did you have anything to do with the woman down at Greencastle?" He said: "Yes, I did." "Did you write a letter to Wood advising him to give her ---- of ----?" He said he did, and shortly afterward got a letter again from Will Wood, saying that it had no effect. And in the meantime he had a conversation with Walling about the subject. Walling advised him to give ---- of ----; then in a conversation again with Walling about the matter Walling made the remark: "Bring her up here and we will...." I repeated to Jackson: "Is that statement correct?" He said that it was. "And did you send for Pearl Bryan then?" He said that he did. When that conversation was ended a satchel was brought into the office--a red satchel. Opening the satchel I asked himto look into it; says I, "Jackson, what is in this satchel; look." He says, "There is nothing." Says I, "Did you observe anything unusual?" and I called his attention to some blood that was on the inside of the satchel. He says, "I did not notice that before." I asked him whether he had opened it; he says, "Yes; I took part of Pearl Bryan's clothing on Saturday evening on the Suspension Bridge and threw it overboard into the Ohio River." He furthermore described a meeting between Jackson and Walling in his presence in the course of which Walling and Jackson accused each other of having murdered Pearl Bryan. The witness also repeated a conversation between the two that took place in a peculiarly constructed cell, called "The Sensitive Cell." A telephone attachment connected this cell with other apartments in the building, hence its name. This part of the testimony was ruled out by the court. The defense began its testimony by placing Scott Jackson on the stand. All the man's natural shrewdness came to his aid while on the stand. His words were clear, frankly spoken and there was no hesitation in his manner. He acted the innocent man to perfection. There is little about his testimony that is very remarkable or startling as he disclaims all the manner of knowledge of Pearl Bryan's death. Neither does he accuse anyone of the murder. He merely adheres to his theory that Walling is guilty--that is all. He maintains that Walling was confused and panic stricken when he saw the articles in the newspapers describing the finding of the body at Fort Thomas. Then it was, says Jackson, that they hastened to get rid of all the effects belonging to Pearl Bryan which were in their possession. He also maintained that Wood sent the girl to Cincinnati and that finding her here he tried to hit upon means of best taking care of her. He concluded to allow her to remain at the Indiana House temporarily until he could secure her private accommodations. As these could easily be had he took her valise and started away to hunt for convenient quarters. That is how he happened to have Pearl Bryan's effects in his keeping. His narrative was very smooth. Miss Rose McNevin at whose home Jackson was staying testified that Jackson had not left the house on the night of the murder, she stated that she always knew when her fourteen roomers were at home. She is able to remember for two weeks the exact hour of the night when each of her guests came into the house. Her memory is quite a good one. A certain individual who gave his name as Wm. Trusty was introduced by the defense. Trusty claimed to have driven the cab containing Pearl Bryan to Fort Thomas. He stated that she was dead and that Jackson and Walling were in charge of the corpse. He claimes to have been told that an abortion had been attempted and that the woman had died from the effects of it, and that Jackson and Walling had undertaken to get rid of the body. Immediately after testifying Trusty flew for parts unknown. None believed his story. On May 12th, Colonel Nelson began his speech to the jury. It was a most remarkable effort, being intensely dramatic and spell-binding in its eloquence. Colonel Crawford replied for the defense and made an able argument. On May 14th, Colonel Lockhart made the concluding speech for the Commonwealth and the case went to the jury. After a short session the jury returned and informed the court of their joint agreement that they find Scott Jackson GUILTY OF MURDER IN THE FIRST DEGREE. Transcriber's Notes: The original text does not contain pages numbered 1 through 18. Additional spacing after the block quotes is intentional to indicate both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as presented in the original text. Usage of possessive apostrophe in the original is sporadic and often incorrect (not corrected). Phonetic misspellings were corrected only if necessary for clarity or if spelled correctly elsewhere in the original. The following misspellings and misprints were corrected: "emidiately" corrected to "immediately" (Page 21) "gratuated" corrected to "graduated" (page 22) "dotting" corrected to "doting" (page 22) "cupids" corrected to "cupid's" (page 22) "later" corrected to "latter" (page 24, 84) "accurrences" corrected to "occurrences" (page 26) "sucessful" corrected to "successful" (Page 32) "brocken" corrected to "broken" (page 32) "Deitsh" corrected to "Deitsch"(Page 35) "of" corrected to "off" (Page 35) "Mitchel" corrected to "Mitchell" (Page 40) "Carother's" corrected to "Carothers" (Page 43) "Pook" corrected to "Poock" (Page 44) "telegramm" corrected to "telegram" (Page 44) "own" corrected to "owe" (page 45) "rembling" corrected to "resembling" (page 45) "two" corrected to "too" (page 46) "Deitch" corrected to "Deitsch" (Page 48) "Jakson" corrected to "Jackson" (page 49) "undoudtedly" corrected to "Undoubtedly" (page 50) "Where" corrected to "were" (page 52) "frow" corrected to "from" (page 54) "abrations" corrected to "abrasions" (page 58) "wether" corrected to "whether?" (page 59) "Kentuky" corrected to "Kentucky" (page 60) "apparant" corrected to "apparent" (page 61) "of" corrected to "off" (page 63) "o'oclock" corrected to "o'clock?" (page 67) "shoes" corrected to "shows" (page 67) "ihm" corrected to "him" (page 71) "Jakson" corrected to "Jackson" (page 71) "vaise" corrected to "valise" (Page 72) "barbor" corrected to "barber" (Page 74) "carefull" corrected to "careful" (Page 75) "to" corrected to "too" (page 75) "a" corrected to "at" (page 76) "writting" corrected to "writing" (page 78) "lenghty" corrected to "lengthy" (page 79, 93) "Cirm" corrected to "Crim" (page 81) "sattin" corrected to "satin" (page 84) "Highland's" corrected to "Highlands" (Page 86) "Allonzo" corrected to "Alonzo" (page 87) "pregancy" corrected to "pregnancy" (page 87) "Cincinnti" corrected to "Cincinnati" (page 87) "opeartion" corrected to "operation" (page 87) "Farnkfort" corrected to "Frankfort" (page 90) "requisiton" corrected to "requisition" (page 90) "Hamiton" corrected to "Hamilton" (page 90) "arrainged" corrected to "arraigned" (page 90) "detectivs" corrected to "detectives" (page 90) "connecetd" corrected to "concocted" (page 90) "pirsoners" corrected to "prisoners" (page 91) "feard" corrected to "feared" (page 92) "dicision" corrected to "decision" (page 95) "Aprl" corrected to "April" (page 101) "occured" corrected to "occurred" (page 103) "defendent" corrected to "defendant" (Page 107) "Jugde" corrected to "Judge" (page 107) "claass-mates" corrected to "class-mates" (page 110) "Jacskon" corrected to "Jackson" (page 112) "severence" corrected to "severance" (Page 114) "quesiton" corrected to "question" (page 115) "were" corrected to "where" (page 116) "Jackosn" corrected to "Jackson" (page 117) "Jonhson" corrected to "Johnson" (page 119) "form" corrected to "from" (page 119) "fonud" corrected to "found" (page 121) "Jackosn" corrected to "Jackson" (page 121) "there occassions" corrected to "three occasions" (page 122) "Jackosn" corrected to "Jackson" (page 124) 
58502	----	generously made available by the Internet Archive.) MADAME X _A STORY OF MOTHER-LOVE_ BY J. W. McCONAUGHY FROM THE PLAY OF THE SAME NAME BY ALEXANDRE BISSON ILLUSTRATIONS BY EDWARD C. VOLKERT NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS 1910 Table I. Two Invalids II. The Return III. Magdalen IV. Opening for the Defense V. Continuing for the Prosecution VI. Closing for the Defense VII. The Wanderers VIII. "Confidential Missions" IX. The Hotel of the Three Crowns X. The Uses of Adversity XI. Concerning Dower Claims XII. "Who Saves Another----" XIII. From Out the Shadow XIV. Sic Itur ad Averno XV. The Swelling of Jordan XVI. A Woman of Mystery XVII. Two Lovers and a Lecture XVIII. A Ghost Rises XIX. Hope at Last XX. The Trial Begins XXI. Cherchez l'Homme XXII. Madame X Speaks XXIII. The Verdict XXIV. The Guttering Flame XXV. "While the Lamp Holds Out to Burn----" _ELEGIE_ (_From the French of Massenet_) _Oh, Spring of days long ago, blooming and bright,_ _Far have you fluttered away_! _No more the skies azure light, caroling birds_ _Waken and glisten for me_! _Bearing all joy from my heart--Loved one_! _How far from my life hast thou flown_! _Vainly to me does the springtime return_! _It brings thee never again--Dark is the sun_! _Dead are the days of delight_! _Cold is my heart and as dark as the grave_! _Life is in vain--evermore_! MADAME X CHAPTER I TWO INVALIDS A night lamp--the chosen companion of illness, misery and murder--burned dimly on a little table in the midst of a grim array of bottles and boxes. In a big armchair between the table and the bed, and within easy reach of both, sat a young man. It was his fourteenth night in that chair and he leaned his head back against the cushions in an attitude of utter exhaustion. The hands rested on the arms with the palms turned up. But the strong, clean-cut face--that for two weeks had been a mask of fear and suffering--was transfigured with joy and thanksgiving when he reached over every few minutes and touched the forehead of the little boy in the bed. There was moisture under the dark curls and the fever flush had given way to the pallor of weakness. Louis Floriot was a man with steel nerves and an unbending will. Barely in his thirty-first year, he was Deputy Attorney of Paris, and in all the two weeks he had watched at the bedside of his boy he had not been ten seconds late at the opening of court in the morning. His work and his child were all that were left to him and he divided the day between them without a thought of himself. The woman that had made both dear to him was gone. He had loved the baby with almost more than a father's love because he was hers--theirs. He had slaved for fame and power to lay them at her feet as a proof of his love. Two short years ago it would have been impossible to find a happier man within the girth of the seven seas. Then one night he had returned from his office too early--returned to find his life in ruins and his home made desolate. And she had fled from him into the night and had gone out of his life--but not out of his memory. He had striven with all the strength of his will to forget her; but in his heart he knew that as long as he breathed her image would be there. He worked with feverish energy and poured his love out on Raymond. The child was with him every moment that he was not in court or in his office, but his dark curly hair and great dark eyes were his mother's and forgetfulness did not lie that way. In the two years that had passed since the whole scheme of his life had been shattered he had barely had time to piece together a make-shift plan that would give him an excuse for living. In this new plan Raymond was the one element of tenderness. But for his love for the boy he would have become as stem and inexorable as the laws in which he dealt. He could not tear Jacqueline out of his heart but he forced himself to remember only the bitterness of her perfidy. In the past two weeks the memory had come back more bitterly. How different, he had thought in the long nights, if she had been there! They would have watched hand in hand and whispered hope and comfort to each other. One would have slept calmly when wearied, knowing that the tender love of the other guarded their baby. And what happiness would have been theirs that hour when the fever broke and Raymond passed from stupor to natural sleep! But she had not loved him--she had not even loved her boy; for she had deserted both. Rose, the maid, who had been in their house since his marriage, softly opened the door and whispered that Madame Varenne was in the library waiting to see him. He rose with a sigh, and after a last look at the sleeping child, tiptoed out of the room and noiselessly shut the door behind him. Madame Varenne was a sprightly young widow, the sister of Dr. Chennel, who attended Raymond as if the boy were his own son. Madame Varenne, too, had almost a motherly affection for the child and something beyond admiration for the handsome, slightly grayed father. They supposed, as did everyone else in Passy, that Madame Floriot was dead. Floriot was living in Paris when she left him and he moved out to Passy shortly afterward. He shook hands with her cordially as he came in. "How kind of you to come, Madame Varenne!" he said, gratefully. The young woman looked up at him with a happy smile. "I am delighted with the news that Rose has just given me!" she exclaimed, pressing his hand. "Yes," he smiled wearily, "our nightmare is over and it was time it finished. I couldn't have held out much longer." "You have had a bad time of it," she murmured, sympathetically. "It hasn't been easy. And I shall never be able, to thank your brother enough for what he has done for me," and Floriot's voice trembled. "He has thought of nothing else beside the boy for weeks and he was always talking about him," declared Madame Varenne, shaking her head. "The day before yesterday he went to see one of his old professors to consult him on the treatment, and he was hard at work that night experimenting and reading." Floriot nodded. "He tells me that it was then that he got the idea which has saved Raymond's life. I owe my boy's life to your brother, Madame Varenne," he added, his voice vibrant with gratitude, "and you may be sure that I will never forget it." "What he has done has been its own reward," she replied gently. "My brother is so fond of Raymond!" Floriot smiled tenderly. "And you?" "Oh, I love the child!" she exclaimed. "He loves you, too," Floriot assured her. "You were the first person he asked for when the fever left him. And now, that we are alone for a moment I want to take the opportunity of thanking you from the bottom of my heart!" "Thanking me! For what?" "For your friendship." "How absurd you are!" she laughed. "Then I ought to be making pretty speeches to you to thank you for yours as well!" "It is not quite the same thing," returned Floriot. "You are a charming, happy, amiable and altogether delightful woman while I--Well, I'm just a bear." "You don't mean to say so!" she exclaimed, with a look of mock alarm. "Oh, yes!" he nodded with a smile. "Bear is the only word that describes me--an ill-tempered bear, at that!" "You will never be as disagreeable as my husband was!" And Madame Varenne shook her head decidedly. Floriot laughed. "Really! Was he even gloomier than I?" "My husband! Good gracious me! You are a regular devil of a chap compared to him!" exclaimed the sprightly lady, earnestly. Again Floriot burst into a laugh. It was the first exercise of the kind he had had in some time. "You can't have amused yourself much," he suggested. "You can't have had a wildly merry time." "I didn't!" was the forcible response. "But now everything and everybody appear charming by contrast!" "Even I?" he smiled. "Yes, even you!" she admitted, with another smile. At that moment her brother entered and Floriot greeted him affectionately. His first questions were about Raymond and the replies were satisfactory. He rubbed his hands enthusiastically and busied himself with his bag, while Floriot attempted to continue his speech of thanks in the face of protests from both. "There, there, there!" broke in the doctor. "How do you know that we are not both of us sowing that we may reap? One never knows how useful it may be to be friends with a man in your profession," he chuckled. Madame Varenne made her adieux and left with a rather wistful look at Floriot as she pressed his hand. She promised to come back the first thing in the morning. "And now, friend Floriot," said the doctor, looking at him gravely, "as the boy is out of danger, you begin taking care of yourself." Floriot stared at him in surprise. "Why, there's nothing the matter with me!" he exclaimed. "Oh, yes, there is!" retorted the man of medicine. "And a great deal more than you think!" "Nonsense!" said Floriot, lightly. "I'm a little tired, but a few days' rest will----" "No, no, no!" interrupted the doctor, with an energetic shake of the head. "You are working too much and you are taking too little exercise. You brood and worry over things and you must take a cure!" "What sort of a cure?" inquired Floriot, with an uneasy glance. "Every morning, no matter what the weather is, you must take a smart two hours' walk." "But, my dear fellow----" "You must walk at a smart pace for two hours," insisted the doctor. "And you must feed heartily." "My dear fellow, I can hardly get through a cutlet for my lunch!" protested Floriot. "I will let you off to-day, but from to-morrow on you must eat two," he continued firmly, as if he had not heard the interruption. Considering that luncheon was some eight hours in the past, this was not much of a concession. "I shall never be able to do anything of the sort!" Floriot declared. "Oh, yes, you will!" the doctor assured him with exasperating confidence. "On your way home every evening you must look in at the fencing school and fence for half-hour, take a cold shower and walk home." "Walk! Out to Passy?" "Out to Passy." "My dear doctor," he smiled pityingly, "I can't possibly follow your prescription. I haven't the time." "Then you must get married," returned the doctor calmly. Floriot gazed at him for a few moments in dumb amazement and then laughed amusedly. "Distraction of some sort is absolutely necessary for your case," the doctor explained as gravely as a judge. "There is nothing to be startled at--you've been married before"--Floriot winced--"you can do so again. A lonely life is not the life for you. Look out for a happy-minded woman, who will keep you young and be a mother to your child, and marry her. I have an idea," he smiled knowingly, "that you won't have much difficulty in finding the very woman!" In a flash the young lawyer saw what was in his friend's mind. He saw, too, that he must make him a confidant--tell him a story that he had sworn should never be put into words. For almost a minute emotion held him tongue-tied. Then he said brokenly: "My friend, I see now that I ought to--I ought to have--told you before. I--am not a widower!" Dr. Chennel fell back against the table astounded. "Not a widower!" he gasped. "My wife is living," said Floriot in a low, unsteady voice. "After three years of married life--she left me--with a lover. I came home unexpectedly one day--and found them--together. They rushed out of the house in terror. I should have killed them both, I think, if they had not run." The doctor murmured something meant to be sympathetic. He was too much amazed for speech. "I have sometimes thought of telling you, but, somehow, I could not talk of it. Chennel, old man!" he cried, miserably, laying his hand on his friend's arm, "you can't guess how horribly unhappy I am!" "Then--you--you love her still?" asked the doctor, gently. Floriot bowed his head to conceal the agony written on his face and threw up a hand in a gesture of despair. "I can think of no other woman! God knows, I have tried hard to forget her! She was the whole joy of my life--my life itself! I cannot tell you how I suffered. I would have died if I had dared. But I thought of the child, and that saved me from suicide. I remembered my duty to the boy and the thought of it kept me alive. If I had lost him----" He choked and turned abruptly away. "He will be running about in a week," said the doctor's quiet voice. "Thanks to you, doctor, thanks to you!" he cried, his eyes shining with tears and gratitude as he turned to his friend with both hands outstretched. "You have saved both of our lives!" They were gripping each other's hands hard when Rose appeared at the door to announce that Master Raymond was awake. Arm in arm they hurried off to the sick-room. Rose was about to follow a little later when she heard the buzz of the muffled door bell. "It is Monsieur Noel," she thought as she hurried to the door. Noel Sauvrin, a life-long friend of Floriot's expected to reach the house in Passy from the south of France that night. She opened the door with a smile of welcome that changed to a stare of frightened astonishment. There was a quick swish of skirt, a half-sob of "Rose!" a half-smothered exclamation of "Madame!" and a young woman threw herself into the maid's arms. Jacqueline Floriot had returned. CHAPTER II THE RETURN Madame Floriot's face told its own story of remorse and suffering. The cheeks had lost their smooth, lovely contour and the dark clouds under the beautiful eyes spoke of nights spent in tears. The eyes themselves were now dilated as she gripped the maid's arms until she hurt her and gazed into her face with searching dread. "My boy! Raymond!" she gasped, brokenly. "Is it true--has he been ill?" The maid gently disengaged herself from the clinging arms and glanced uneasily at the library door. Madame Floriot followed the look and moved quickly forward as the maid answered: "For more than two weeks, madame." The woman timidly pushed the door open and stepped into the library. She gave a quick gasp of relief when she saw that the room was empty. "I only heard of--it--yesterday--by accident," she half-whispered, her hand at her throat. Then as the memory of the hours of grief and dread swept over her she cried: "Rose, I must see him!" The maid looked her alarm. "Monsieur Floriot is with him, madame!" "Ah--h!" she stifled a sob. "Poor little chap!" said Rose, tenderly. "We thought he could never get over it!" The tortured mother sank into a chair with a moan of anguish. "But the danger is over now," continued Rose, gently. "The doctor says he will soon be well again." Jacqueline's eyes fell on a photograph of the boy on the table beside her and she seized it with both hands and held it to her face. "My Raymond! My laddie!" she sobbed, softly. "How he has grown! How big--and strong--he looks!" "He does not look strong now, madame," and Rose shook her head. "To think--that he might have died! And I should never have seen him again! My darling, my little laddie!" The face of the picture was wet with tears and kisses. "I wonder if he will recognize me! Does he remember me at all?" she cried eagerly. The maid gave a start and an exclamation of alarm. "Here's Monsieur Floriot!" Jacqueline rose unsteadily with a smothered cry and all but reeled toward the door. In a moment Rose's arm was around her. "No, no!" she whispered, reassuringly. "I was mistaken! I thought I heard him coming." The woman stood with both hands pressed to her breast and Rose watched her pityingly. She had loved her young mistress dearly and had seen much in her short married life to which both husband and wife had been blind. It was several moments before Jacqueline had sufficiently recovered from the shock to speak. "How--my heart--beats!" she panted. And then after another pause: "What--will he say--to me? But I don't care--I don't care what he says if he will only pardon me enough to let me stay here with my boy. If he--if he refuses to see me--I don't know what will happen to me! Rose! Rose!" she cried, piteously, sobbing on the maid's shoulder, "I--I am afraid!" Rose patted her shoulder and murmured sympathy until the sobs became less violent. Then she suggested gently: "Wouldn't it be better to write to Monsieur Floriot, madame? He does--he doesn't expect you and--you know how quick-tempered he is." "I have written to him! I have written three letters in the last three weeks and he has not answered them." "He didn't open them," said Rose, very low. There was another convulsive sob and then Jacqueline straightened and threw back her head, her eyes shining with feverish resolve. "I _must_ see him! I _will_ see him!" she cried in a high, unnatural voice. "He cannot--he _must_ not condemn me unheard! He loved me a little once--he must hear me now! Does he ever speak of me?" The maid sadly shook her head. "Never, madame." "Never!" she echoed faintly. "No, madame." Jacqueline turned away for a moment with a sob of despair. "What did he say--what did he do when I--left? Do you remember?" Rose shuddered at the recollection. "I shall never forget it! He was like a madman! He shut himself up in his room for days together and wouldn't see anyone. Once he went out and was gone for twenty-four hours. I used to listen outside his door and I heard him sobbing and crying. I was so frightened once that in spite of his orders I went into his room. It was in the evening and he was sitting by the fire burning your letters and photographs and the tears were rolling down his cheeks!" Jacqueline listened white-faced, and as Rose told the story of her husband's grief a sudden gleam of hope made her dizzy and faint. He had loved her deeply, after all! He must still love her a little! She had not lost everything! "The boy saved his brain, I think," Rose was saying, but she barely heard her. "He never would let him leave him, night or day. Then he began to calm down a little and seemed to settle to his work again. He has worked a little harder than before--that's all. Then we moved out here," she added. Jacqueline turned to her and she was more nearly calm than she had been at any moment since entering the house. "Rose, I must see him!" she cried, determinedly. "Go and tell him that a lady wants to speak to him, but do not let him guess who it is!" "Ah, but----" "Rose, I beg of you!" The maid shook her head doubtfully and then with a sigh of resignation, went out to carry the message. Jacqueline, her knees trembling, dropped weakly into a chair and strove to compose herself for the terrible interview to come. In returning she had had no hope of forgiveness, for she had not believed that her husband had ever truly loved her. But now that she had gained hope from Rose's story of his grief her emotions were beyond control. There was no natural vice in her, and for that reason she had walked in the purgatory of the fallen who are still permitted to see themselves with the eyes of the virtuous. Vice breeds callousness. She had been gay, witty, laughter-loving and emotional. Without love, as she understood it, she felt herself to be incomplete. She had worshipped her husband, but at last had come to believe that she was giving far more than she received. She never knew the heart of the silent, serious, hard-working man. Her vanity was hurt, and through her vanity she fell--to be driven away from her husband and her boy. Her boy! For two years she had thought of little else, had dreamed of nothing else but the hour when she would be permitted to hold him to her breast. Surely, even the stem attorney who had loved her once would not deny her the mother's right to be with her child in his illness! He must permit her to live where she could see her boy sometimes and watch him grow to manhood! She picked up the photograph and kissed it passionately again and again. "Oh, my darling, my dear one! My laddie!" she half sobbed. "If it were not for you I----" A door facing her opened softly and her husband stepped into the room! CHAPTER III MAGDALEN Floriot did not recognize her as he entered. She was rising and her head was bowed. He turned slowly with hand still on the knob of the door and their eyes met! Every muscle in his body grew rigid and the pallor of his face, born of his long nights in the chair by his boy's bed, changed slowly to a pasty, sickly white. The woman gazed at him with heaving bosom and hope and dread in her eyes. "You----!" he choked. Jacqueline timidly took a half step toward him, and clasped her hands. "Yes--I. I----," she began fearfully, but the sound of her voice galvanized the statue at the door. "Leave this house!" he commanded sternly and he advanced firmly into the room. "Louis! I----" "Leave this house at once!" he interrupted, his voice rising with his anger. "Listen, Louis, please! I----" "Go! Do you hear me!" he cried furiously as he stalked past her, opened the door into the hall, and held it for her to pass out. Jacqueline crept toward him looking up with frightened, tear-stained face. "Yes, yes! I will go, I will go!" she panted hurriedly. "I--I promise I will go right away! But, please, Louis, listen--one moment, _please_!" He looked at the crouching, pleading figure and the anger in his face gave way to an expression as indescribable as unforgettable, and he sharply turned away. "Well, what is it then? Be quick! What do you want?" he demanded roughly. She sank to her knees and raised her hands to him in piteous appeal. "Louis, forgive me! For----" "What!" His voice startled her like a pistol shot. But she stammered on: "Forgive me, Louis, so----" He slammed the door and in two strides was standing over with clenched fists. She could not meet his furious eyes and her head bowed almost to his feet. "Forgive you! Forgive you!" and he laughed a short, bitter laugh that was more terrible and hope-destroying than curses would have been to the crouching woman. "For two years I have lived day and night with the thought of you in another man's arms and your kisses on his lips! And you ask me to forgive you! You----" "Louis! Louis!" she moaned. "In our child's name----" "Stop!" he broke in sternly. "Don't dare to mention him! He is nothing to you and you are nothing to him! He is mine--mine only! Did you think of him when you left us?" "Louis, for God's sake! I was mad! I was----" "Oh, of course!" his harsh laugh grated in again. "That is about what I expected." Then his face hardened and he lashed her with his scorn. "I was false to my husband. I deserted my child--I was mad! I stole out of my home like a thief and took all of its happiness with me--I was mad! I went away with my lover to what I believed would be a life of pleasure--I was mad!" I trampled on every "Louis! Louis!" she sobbed, and writhed at his feet. "It's the truth! I was mad! I----" "The truth! Hah! Would you like to hear the truth? You were tired of being an honorable woman--a pure mother! You were tired of me and loved--him! That's the truth! You loved him, didn't you? You loved him!" "He loved me! He said he would kill himself for me! And I----" "And you believed him! You never thought of me and I"--for a moment grief conquered anger and his voice broke--"I worshipped you! And ours was a love match," he went on bitterly, "for you told me once a thousand years ago that you loved me!" His face worked, in a spasm of anguish, and he tried to move away, but the woman clutched a leg of his trousers with both hands and lifted her head suddenly. "And it was--it is true, Louis!" she cried desperately. His look was more than answer enough. "It is! It is, Louis!" she pleaded feverishly. "We didn't understand each other, that's all! It was my fault, my fault! You loved me passionately but I did not know it! I could not see it! And you made me only part of your home--never part of your life! I was never your friend--you were gentle with me, but you never took me into your life--you never really knew my heart, and with you I always felt alone. I loved you but"--she fought for breath and coherence--"but I was always afraid of you--you were so serious and severe! I wanted to laugh and have a good time! You never noticed it--you had your work, your ambitions, your legal friends and I--had nothing! Nothing!" she sobbed. "And I was so young--twenty! Hardly twenty! Oh, Louis, forgive me! Forgive me!" Floriot half staggered to a chair and sank into it. The unexpectedness of the soul-wracking scene coming on top of the strain of his two weeks' vigil in the sick-room was almost too much for even his iron nerve. Jacqueline, huddled on the floor, was sobbing convulsively. He buried his face in his hands and groaned. At the sound she struggled to her feet and took a step toward him, gasping to control her heaving bosom. He waved a hand toward the door without raising his head. "Louis!" she cried passionately, desperately, "you would not condemn the lowest criminal if there were any defense for him, and I am the mother of your boy! It is all my fault, but you could have helped me if you would! You swore to love, honor and protect me, and did you do it? You loved me but you never honored me! You did not think I was worthy to be the companion to you that a wife should be! You looked for companionship to your friends. I might as well have been your mistress! Did you protect me? You brought _him_ to the house the first time? You said he was your friend and you encouraged me to be kind to him. You permitted him to be my escort wherever I wanted to go, because my pleasure would not then interfere with your work or your plans!" She choked. Floriot did not stir. "He grew to be everything to me that you should have been. He sympathized with me in everything! He anticipated every thought and desire! You would not even make an effort to please me if my request interfered with your work--always your work!" "Life of pleasure!" she quoted bitterly. "Louis, I never loved him! You angered me and hurt me because you would not let me come close to your real life. And I--I--Louis, I was mad! But you could have saved me! A little attention--if I could have felt that I was anything more than a plaything--something to amuse you in the few minutes that you ever took for amusement--Louis.. you will never know how I fought with myself--the torture of those days--and when I came to you for help----!" The words died away in a sob. There was no sound from the husband but the labor of his breathing. "Do you remember a few days before--before--I--the night I--left--I wanted you to go to Fontainebleau with me and you wouldn't? And I went with--him! That day in the park he--kissed my hands--and the lace of my dress--and said he would kill himself at my feet if I didn't love him----!" She stopped with a gasp and went on, bringing the words out in broken phrases. "I made him take me home--I was running from him--from myself--to you! I found you in your study and begged you--to go out with me! I wanted to--show myself--that I loved you only! Do you remember what you said? 'I'm too busy. Run along--and get Lescelles to take you!'" "Oh, Louis, Louis!" she cried, throwing herself at his feet, while the storm of weeping shook her again, "you could have saved me then!" Still the bowed figure in the chair did not stir. He was so numbed that his consciousness seemed to be that of another--watching, listening and judging. He was the type of man whom Duty, once embraced, grips with hug like the Iron Maiden's, and even gains a monstrous pleasure as life itself or all that makes life worth while is slowly crushed out. Had she come a month before this scene would have left him unshaken, but now----! His boy--their boy--lay up-stairs, saved from death by a miracle. Her clasped hands rested on one of his knees and her head touched his arms. His eyes were closed, but he nearly swooned when he breathed the perfume of her hair that brought back the picture of a dark head on the white pillow in the dim moonlight or the gray of dawn. Then came the terrible thought that for two years that picture had been the joy of another.... Fragments of his talk with Madame Varenne flashed through his mind. Was there a little fault on his side?... He need not speak a word. He had but to open his eyes and look forgiveness and her warm body would be pressed again to his breast, her soft arms would be around his neck and her soft lips would shower kisses on his face. ... He drew a sharp breath and rose slowly and uncertainly. "Jacqueline!" he said in an unsteady voice, not daring to let his wavering eyes look down. "Jacqueline, you must go!" A long, convulsive sob and: "Ah, why did I go at all? Why did I ever go?" she moaned. "You would have killed me and that would have been the end of it! Louis, forgive me! Forgive me!" And she clasped his limp hand in both of hers and looked up piteously. "No! No!" he cried, fighting desperately with an impulse to stoop and crush the slender body in his arms and kiss the tears from the upturned face. "Surely, you see that I----" "What will become of me?" she pleaded, as her instinct told her that he was weakening. "Go back to him! Go back to the man who would have killed himself for you!" he cried in a voice that he tried in vain to make as bitter as the words. And he made no effort to free his hand. The answer was a barely audible whisper: "He is dead!" Floriot jerked his hand away with an exclamation of horror and sprang back, his eyes flashing with anger. "So that is why you've come back!" he blazed furiously. "No! No!" she protested, frightened, struggling to her feet with arms outstretched. "I came to see our boy--our Raymond! To beg you--to----" [Illustration: "_Leave the house_"] The flaming scorn in his eyes stopped her. "And I was on the point of yielding!" His laugh made the woman wince. "What a fool I was! I actually believed you! So he is dead, is he?" She bowed her head in utter despair. "I wrote--to tell you." "And now that he is dead you thought of me again--of me, of your idiot of a husband"--his voice rose with fury--"the simple-minded fool who would be only too glad to take you back again!" "Louis, I love you--I wanted to see you, to see our child again! Can't you see I've changed?" she pleaded. She threw open her arms and tears ran unheeded down her face. "Changed! Hah!--Leave the house!" and he pointed imperiously to the door. "Louis, it's true! Let me see our boy again!"-- "He has forgotten you!" "Let me kiss him--just once!" she begged. "He believes you to be dead!" he said, with cold cruelty. The mother rushed to him with half-stifled shriek and terror in her face. "Louis! No! No!" she screamed, "No! No! No!" "He does!" "Louis, no! Don't say that!" Horror was driving her to hysteria. "It can't be true! You wouldn't tell him that! Louis, you loved me once! You loved me! It's not possible! I am your wife--his mother! His mother!" Floriot eyed her, cold and unmoved. "You have gone out of his life and mine," he replied calmly. Jacqueline moaning, sank to the floor. "Oh, my God!" she prayed. "Help me! Help me! Louis, be kind to me! A life of repentance----" He pulled her roughly to her feet and half-carried her toward the door. "Don't take my child away from me!" she panted, struggling. "Go! Leave the house!" "Oh! Let me see him! I won't--speak! Let me kiss him! I won't--say a word!" she gasped as they reached the door and he pushed her violently through into the hall. "Louis! Pity--! Raymond! My child, my----" The slam of the door cut off the sound of the pleading voice from his ears. He held the knob to prevent her from reopening it. For a few moments there was silence. Then Floriot heard through the door something between a choke and a sob and the quickly receding rustle of skirts. The bang of the outside door echoed through the silent house. CHAPTER IV OPENING FOR THE DEFENSE For more than a minute Floriot stood motionless, but now he was leaning his weight on the hand that held the knob. He listened--half-hoping, half-fearing that he would hear her at the outside door--and then staggered across the room and collapsed into the chair where she had sat, lying with arms and head on the table above the photograph that Jacqueline had kissed. He had won--but to know that he would have found happiness in defeat. "God!" he groaned aloud. "She's gone! She's gone! And I love her! I love her! And I shall never see her again! She must never see Raymond! Her influence would be----No!" he cried, as if fighting something within himself. "She must never come back. God give me strength to forget!" he prayed in anguish. "Let me forget! Let me forget!" There was a sound of someone at the door leading to the stairway, and he barely had time to wipe the moisture from his forehead and half-compose himself before Dr. Chennel swung breezily into the room. "He's doing splendidly!" cried the doctor with a cheery smile. "And he's hungry--the best sign in the world! I have left my orders with the nurses." He began packing his little bag on a side table. "He's to have a little milk and three spoonfuls of soup before he goes to sleep and nothing else until I come again in----Why, what's the matter?" he cried in alarm, hurrying over to his friend as he caught a glimpse of his face. "Are you ill?" Floriot straightened up and put out his hand. His face was lined and livid and his eyes were wild with grief. "My dear--doctor!" he said, brokenly, "I have just gone through--the most awful fifteen minutes of my life. My--my wife--has been here!" "Your wife!" The doctor fell back a step and stared at him. Floriot buried his face in his handkerchief. "Yes, she has--just gone! You can imagine--how I felt No, you can't!" he cried, bitterly, springing up with clenched fists. "For a moment I was afraid of myself--afraid that I would kill her!" Dr. Chennel watched the writhing face in silence as Floriot paced wildly up and down the room. "Doctor, in these few minutes--I have lived five years over again! All the joy, all the miseries, all my love, all her----" The other stopped him with a gentle touch on the arm. "Floriot, my friend," he said quietly, "sit down a moment and try to get hold of yourself." The calm strong voice of the physician had the effect that he desired. Floriot's shoulders squared and his voice grew firm. "You're right, Doctor. I will forget all about it! Do you know why she came back?" he added bitterly. "Her lover is dead!" Rose opened the hall door. "Monsieur Noel has come, sir!" Floriot nodded. "Show him in here, Rose," he said quietly and turned to Dr. Chennel. "Noel is an old and very dear friend whom I thought dead until this morning," he explained. "Poor chap! He and I----" A well-set-up young man--apparently several years younger than Floriot, though his hair was more heavily grayed--entered the library with a springy step and cheery call of: "Well, here I am! And very much alive!" His blue eyes were smiling and his white teeth gleamed in the lamplight but his face bore the marks of storms that sweep the soul. And on his right temple was visible the end of a large scar that extended up under the hair. "My dear old Noel!" exclaimed Floriot, hurrying to meet him with both hands extended. The friends stood with their hands locked and looked each other over with the affection mixed with curiosity that may be marked when two who have been as brothers meet after a long separation. "This is my friend, Dr. Chennel," said Floriot, turning at last. "Shake hands with him, old man! He has just saved my boy's life!" "Then I'm more than glad to shake you by the hand, Doctor," said Noel, gracefully, as he took the doctor's fingers in his. "For anything that touches Floriot comes very near to me!" The doctor bowed his appreciation and Floriot, who had never taken his eyes off his friend, remarked with a smile: "You look in very good health for a dead man." Noel turned and asked with whimsical surprise: "Then you heard of my suicide?" "Yes," returned his friend gravely, "and the papers said you were dead." "In the words of a great American humorist," laughed Noel, 'The report was greatly exaggerated!'" "Two bullets, they said." "Yes, and they were right," nodded the "suicide," brightly. "But two bullets were not enough for me. I've always been a bit hardheaded, you know, though one of the doctors had another explanation." The other two looked at him inquiringly, particularly Dr. Chennel, who was prepared to combat any heretical theory. "When I was on the highway to recovery," resumed Noel, "one of the doctors told me that he didn't think that I would ever get to be marksman enough to hit my brain. Said I ought to practise trying to hit a pea in a wine barrel before I tried it again. Then I found out I could laugh," and he burst into one to prove it, "and decided that as long as I could take enough interest in life to laugh there was no occasion for my going on with my suicide plans." Dr. Chennel and Floriot joined in the laugh with considerable restraint and the former felt that he was the "undesirable third." "Well, I must be going," he said, gathering up his hat and bag and shaking hands with both the friends. "You have a good deal to tell each other. I'll be back in the morning," he added to Floriot. Then with many injunctions about the medicine and food he departed. "And now," said Noel, putting a hand affectionately on each shoulder and holding his friend off at arm's length, "let me have a look at you, Louis, old man!" He paused and gravely scrutinized the smiling face. "Life has not been much kinder to you than to me, judging from your looks," he said at last. The hands fell and he turned away. "Find me looking old, do you?" "No, not old for your age," smiled Noel. "How old are you--forty?" "Thirty-five!" protested Floriot. "Well, nobody would say that you were a day more than forty-two!" his friend gravely assured him. "Thank you!" was the ironic response, and they smiled into each other's eyes. "Fancy! Five whole years since I saw you!" "And five weeks' separation, in the old days, seemed a century!" "You're going to stay here all night and take breakfast with me in the morning." "Most assuredly." "An early breakfast, though," Floriot smiled a warning. "I have to be in court at nine." "Ah, of course!" nodded his friend. "You're Deputy Attorney now." "Yes, I received my promotion more than a year ago." "I always knew you'd get on!" exclaimed Noel, patting his shoulder. Floriot turned away with a sigh. "I have not much to worry about there," he said, without enthusiasm. "But, I want to hear about you, old man! What happened to you? Why did you want to commit suicide. Who was she?" Noel threw him a quick, searching glance. "It _was_ a woman," he nodded. "Of course it was! For some time before you went away I noticed a change in you." Again there was the sharp look. "Ah, you did, did you?" "Yes, you were not as jolly and lively as you had been before," Floriot continued gently. "And you used to be away for days at a time; so I knew it must be a woman. You loved her?" A long steady gaze answered him. "And she was false to you?" "She did not even know I loved her!" was the low response. "Didn't you tell her?" asked Floriot, surprised. "No!" "Why?" he persisted with freedom of a friend. "Was she free?" "She loved another man," replied Noel. There was not a tremor in his voice but he stood very still and did not meet his friend's questioning eyes. "When I heard of her marriage I felt that my life was of no particular use to me. So," with a shrug of the shoulders, "I tried to get rid of it--and failed. Ridiculous, eh?" Floriot laid his hand on his friend's arm. The grip of the fingers told his unspoken sympathy. "Oh, I am used to being a fool!" declared Noel, lightly, but with a sub-current of bitterness in his voice. "I was the fool of the family at home and one of the best jokes they ever had at school. I might have known that the woman I loved would have sense enough to pick out another man. I even made a fool of myself when I tried to take my life!" "But you were badly hurt?" "Pretty badly," replied Noel gravely; "but I was soon on my feet again. Then," the shrug again, "having nothing on earth to live for but an occasional laugh--which doesn't cost much--I made a ridiculous amount of money in the Canadian fur business." "But, why didn't you write to me?" demanded Floriot, reproachfully. Noel turned to him apologetically. "I wanted to forget and to be forgotten, old man," he said. "The papers reported me dead, and the fact that I didn't die didn't seem to interest them, so I seized the opportunity to stay dead until it suited my pleasure to come to life again." "Are you married?" "No!" was the emphatic reply. "I shall never marry!" "So you still love her?" Noel made an impatient movement "I don't want anyone else!" he answered, curtly. "Besides, I'm too old to think of marrying now Let's talk about you, Louis. Are you happy? How is Jacqueline? Little Jennie Wren, we used to call her," he went on with a tenderly reminiscent smile. "What a pretty, lively little thing she was! I suppose she's more quiet now after five years with a solemn old crank like you. Why, Louis! What's the matter?" Floriot had sunk into an armchair, his face white and drawn. In two strides his friend was beside him, bending over him in alarm. "Don't--don't worry! It's nothing--nothing!" said Floriot unsteadily. "My child has been at death's door--for the last few days and I thought --I--had lost him. My nerves are just a little--out of joint. That's all!" "My dear old chap!" cried Noel anxiously, "the boy is all right now?" "Yes, Raymond's out of danger now." There was a long pause and then in altered tones Noel asked. "And how old is this Monsieur Raymond?" "Four." "Quite a man. Is he your only child?" There was a curious strained quality in his voice. Floriot nodded. "I will see him, of course?" Floriot wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and returned it to his pocket. Then he replied more calmly. "Certainly! In the morning. He can't be disturbed to-night." There was another long pause broken by Noel. "Don't tell your wife I'm here," he said. "I want to see her face when she comes in and sees me!" He walked slowly across the room with his back to his friend. "You--won't see her," was the low reply. Noel turned quickly. "Oh, she's away?" Floriot leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands. "Yes, she's--gone!" "Gone!" echoed Noel in bewildered astonishment. Floriot rose and lurched a step or two away. Noel could see less than his profile and barely caught the words, but they were enough to leave him momentarily tongue-tied and paralyzed with amazement. "She left me--two years ago--with her lover!" Noel stared at him, dumb with amazement, and stammered something incoherently, of which Floriot could catch only the words, "little Jennie Wren!" in tones of pity. He wheeled on him. "You pity _her_!" Noel raised his eyebrows and looked calmly at his friend. "Is she not to be pitied most?" he asked gently. "Do you think so?" cried Floriot bitterly. "Then, what of me who adored her--and whose life she wrecked? I am an old man at thirty-five You told me so, yourself! Now, you know why!" The other half raised his hand and murmured something sympathetic. "You can never imagine what these last two years have been to me!" Floriot's voice was hoarse with anguish. "I have been tom with jealousy and dreams of vengeance and tortured almost beyond endurance by the memory of the happiness I have lost!" He dropped, shuddering, into a chair, his handkerchief pressed to his face. Noel gazed at him in pitying silence for several minutes. Then he spoke as gently as before. "And yet, she was not wicked," he said, and Floriot writhed. "She was only frivolous and wanted luxury and pleasure. Life was too serious a problem for her. And you never suspected anything?" "No!" groaned the figure in the chair. "I loved her and believed in her." Noel walked over and put his arm affectionately across his friend's bowed shoulders. "My dear old man, brace up!" he said, with not quite enough cheerfulness to grate. "Remember you have your boy still and--who knows? One of these days, perhaps, she'll be bitterly sorry for the misery she has caused, and you'll see her here again, asking----" "I have seen her again!" "She came back then?" asked Noel, dropping back, startled, as Floriot sprang up, his face blazing with anger again. "This very day she had the impudence----" "She came back?" repeated Noel's quiet voice, insistently. "And for what?" "Oh, not for much!" replied Floriot with bitter irony. "Merely to ask my pardon, and to ask me to take her back into my house--in her old place, between my son and myself!" "And what did you say?" The gentle voice and mild blue eyes were turning hard and metallic. "I told her to go!" "You turned her out?" "Turned her out! Of course, I did!" And he stared in astonishment at his friend's set face and narrowed eyes. "Floriot!" said Noel, sternly, "you have made a mistake! You turned her out in the street without knowing where she was going! My friend, unless, I'm badly mistaken myself, you'll be sorry for this in the morning!" Floriot stood dumbly for a moment, twice began to speak, and then with a gesture of despair turned away. Noel watched him in silence. Presently he wheeled again, his face calm with some sudden resolve. The pain was in his eyes. "Will you sit down, old man?" he said, quietly. "I want to tell you something." CHAPTER V CONTINUING FOR THE PROSECUTION When Floriot swore that the story of the wreck of his life should never be told until Judgment Day he did not know that the only man to whom he could possibly have poured out his grief was alive, and he could not foresee that one day he would be so near to collapse that he would be forced to seek the relief of confession. It is rarely that high-strung, sensitive men can put into words such a story as that which Floriot was about to confide to his friend. That is why they call upon the gunsmith instead of the divorce court for aid in "cleansing their honor." But now the need of counsel and comfort was strong upon him. Noel's refusal to agree with him, coming with the recollection of his owns wavering before his pleading wife, shook his faith in himself. He was willing to live again the terrible drama of his wrongs, and his grief to harden his bitter resolution and make a sure ally of Noel. The latter, when he was invited to sit down and listen, looked uncertainly at his friend's drawn face for a moment and then slowly settled back in the big chair, shading his eyes with his hands, until the other could barely tell whether they were open or closed. Floriot did not sit. He paced slowly up and down the room in silence as if preparing himself for the ordeal; and then he began. "Noel, my friend," he said, in low steady tones, "there is no man--or woman--alive excepting you, to whom I could talk as I'm going to do. I have no one left in the world but you and my boy and, God knows, I need both of you--if there is a God," he added bitterly. "You were about to defend her just now without question. You said that she was most to be pitied. I know why--you knew her before she was married. That was five years ago. Marriage develops people"--there was the bitter note again--"and she developed into a woman that you never knew and never dreamed could live in the same body with her. She had the happiness of a home and the life's happiness of two--and possibly three--persons in her hands. For the sake of a vicious intrigue which she now sees could never bring her anything but misery, she sacrificed her boy and me. And there is no consolation for me in the thought that she was caught in the ruins of the home that she pulled down!" Noel stirred in his chair but did not speak. In spite of his breezy humor and love of light conversation he had been blessed with the divine power of silence. "Her misery is no consolation to me," Floriot went on, his voice trembling slightly, "because I--I--old man, I still love her! And she loved me--for a year! Oh, Noel, that is the worst of the hell that I have lived in for two years! She loved me--for a year!" He paused in his walk and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. Noel watched him silently. "But I am not weak enough nor cowardly enough to let that weigh with me. The boy must be protected. He must never know that she is alive--never know what she did." He seemed to be talking more to himself than to his friend. "If she came back there is no knowing how long she would stay!" He clenched his fists end cried bitterly: "The man who said that a woman who was untrue to one man would be untrue to two or a dozen knew her and her kind!" Noel was motionless; and, after a few more turns up and down the room, Floriot went on: "I know that she must have loved me, or why should she have married me? If she wanted position she could have married men farther up in the world than I was--than I am now. If she wanted money she could have married a bigger bank account than mine. No! She loved me--for a year. You said she was not naturally wicked. She was nothing else. Her love is a passion that bums itself out in a year and she will probably have a dozen lovers before she dies!" There was a restless movement in the chair that Floriot did not notice. "Noel, you can't realize the happiness of my life until I--I--learned that I was a fool! For the first year I pitied the whole world because it couldn't be as utterly happy as I was. It didn't seem possible that a man could be more completely filled with joy and content. Then our boy was born, and after that it seemed that before I had been miserable by contrast!" Anguish choked him and he was silent until he recovered control. "Before that time I thought that I had fully the average man's capacity for work and then it was doubled. I was in my office early and late--every moment that I could tear myself away from my home. I even worked in my study at night so that I could be near her and our baby and still be struggling for them. And my spirit was always with her--at her feet--God! How I worshipped her!" he groaned, his hands pressed to his face. Again there was a silence in which Noel could hear his friend's heavy breathing. "Noel," he went on at last, "if I had not lost belief in everything but hell, I would believe that God Himself must have destroyed my happiness because He envied me, and could promise me none in heaven to equal that I had on earth! It was too great, too complete, for this life! "I had set my eyes on the position I now hold as the first big step in my climb, and I was tireless in my work for it. I was as sure that I would win as I was of the sanctity of my home. Then came the scandal in the Finance Department." "Did you hear anything about it? Do you remember? Some rather big men were convicted." Noel nodded almost imperceptibly. "There was one brilliant young fellow in the lot, of whom you may not have heard--thanks to my efforts. Lescelles--Albert Lescelles. I was morally certain before I had been working on the case three days that he was innocent. The older and dishonest cabal had carefully prepared a chain of circumstantial evidence that would lead to Lescelles. None of my associates agreed with me, and that made my work harder; but I finally proved my theory to be the sound one, and you remember the sensation it created when the net of lies was finally ripped and some of our most respected public officers were dragged into the scandal. "It was a great triumph for me, though my part in it was not generally known beyond official circles. Lescelles knew it and tried to kill me with gratitude. The day that he was discharged we were both drunk with excitement, and I insisted that he should come home to dinner with me that evening." Floriot paused again in his tramp to and fro to wipe his moist brow. "It was a merry dinner the three of us had that night! Lescelles was a brilliant young fellow and I never knew Jacqueline to be wittier or more entertaining. For the few months preceding she had been a little more contained and reserved, but she blossomed out into her old self. "After dinner I left them together and went to my study to attend to some urgent matters that were to come up the next day, and I can remember now how I smiled to hear the laughter coming up to me. If the wine had poisoned him!" he groaned.... "He came to see us often after that. He was alone in the world and seemed to have such a good time with us that I was always glad to have him. I could see that Jacqueline liked him and that was enough for me. He never tired of thanking me for what I had done for him, and his face would light with pleasure whenever he saw me. "How was I to suspect anything? As his visits became more frequent and my work grew more absorbing, I encouraged him to escort Jacqueline to the races and the other places of amusement of which she was always so fond. I seldom had time to go with her. But in spite of this friendship Jacqueline grew more affectionate to me every day and pleaded with me constantly to go about with her and let my work take care of itself. I showed her time and again how impossible this was, and then she would pout until Lescelles came, and I would tell him to take her somewhere. "What a blind fool I was!" he cried with a harsh laugh. "I can see it all now. And what an actress she was! The more guilty she grew with Lescelles the more affection she displayed for me to prevent any hint of suspicion. "One day I told her that I would be unusually busy--would dine at a café and would not be home until very late. But, as it happened, when I returned to my office after dinner, I found there was nothing of importance and so I went home." He stopped again and the other could see that he was fighting to retain his composure as he reached the climax of the story. Noel did not speak or stir, but the hand that had but rested on the arm of the chair gripped it tightly. "Noel!" There was unspeakable anguish in his voice. "Noel! In the blackness of these two years I've suffered so that I've sometimes wished that I had not gone home that night until I was expected! It was raining a little and when I reached the front door I let myself in without making any noise. I wanted to surprise Jacqueline and----Oh, God! I did--I did--I did!" And with a sobbing groan he sank into a chair and bowed his head on his arms. It was a long time before he could continue, and when he began again his voice was hoarse with the effort he made to speak calmly. "My friend, God grant that you may never know what I felt when I opened the door of the room where they were and found them--together! For you will never know till you have been--as I was! I think the shock must have unbalanced my mind in the moment that I saw them as I opened the door, for I leaned against the door-post and stared at them as if paralyzed. They leaped up and were staring back at me, and their faces--! They probably thought that I was enjoying a moment of bitter joy before I killed them both, and do you know what was passing in my mind? I was thinking that a chair just behind her was too close to the divan, and that if she leaned back in it, it would probably strike and scar the furniture. My mind refused to grasp the horror that my eyes had seen. "And then in some dim, vague way the idea worked into my benumbed brain--I must shock them! I turned away from the door and stumble down the hall toward my study. I didn't have any desire to kill them in any way--at that moment I didn't even think that I ought to do it. But it seemed to me that I must kill them, and with a revolver--in the same way that a man would go through a distasteful social function. "I was some little time finding my revolver, but that did not seem at the time to make any difference. I came back with it in my hand, fully expecting to find them there, waiting to be shot--but the room was empty! "And then the paralysis passed from my brain and I went mad with fury. I rushed through every room in the house, cursing them at the top of my voice. Fortunately, none of the servants was at home. "Then I ran bareheaded out into the rain and dashed down the street aimlessly, in the hope that I had taken the right direction and might come up with them. Before I had gone a hundred feet I ran into someone and nearly shot him accidentally. He yelled with fright and ran. I had just sense enough to put the revolver in my outside coat pocket, and with my hand still gripping it, I hurried on." He paused again to mop his brow, but his voice I grew firmer and higher as the story of his wrongs worked him from grief to rage. "I don't remember much of the rest of that night. I was only conscious of the rain on my face and that I was walking always at top speed without any goal. Now I was along the quays, then I remember peering into a few cafés. It seems to me that I was stopped several times by gendarmes, who released me when I showed them my card, but I never heard of it afterward. I think I passed through the Bois once, but when dawn came I was in some vile street in Montmartre. And with the daylight came some sort of calm. "I started back toward my house, and after a short walk found a cab. In that drive I became, as I thought, complete master of myself again. I know now that I was practically a somnambulist. I thought the whole thing over in an almost impersonal way, and decided I would devote the rest of my life to vengeance. I would hunt both of them down and kill them, and I would begin the hunt systematically that day. "When I reached home my clothes were soaking wet and my collar and necktie were gone. I had probably tom them off and thrown them away. Rose met me in the hall, and it did not strike me as being at all strange that she asked no questions. I went up to my room, took a bath and dressed in the most faultless style that my wardrobe would permit. With the pistol in my pocket I started, out again, first sending word that I would not, probably, be in my office for several days. "All that day I haunted the cafés and clubs that I knew Lescelles frequented. I did not intend to kill him there unless he saw me. My plan was to follow him to whatever place he had taken Jacqueline, and kill them together. "No one had seen him and I went home early in the morning, bitterly disappointed. I sat in my study most of the day planning, imagining, devising the most delightful ways in which to commit the double murder, as I did not intend to use the revolver unless it became necessary. The way that struck me as being best would be to find them asleep and waken them with one hand on the throat of each. Those throats haunted me. A dozen times that night I felt the joy of sinking my fingers into them, slowly squeezing out their lives as they stared up at me with eyes pleading for mercy. "I was setting out again that evening when I met Rose a few steps outside my door. I think she was waiting for me--and she had the baby in her arms." His voice wavered and sank as if the rest were too terrible to tell. "Noel," he went on at last in a strained, uncertain voice, "up to that moment I had not felt the slightest grief. I was apparently rational, but I was as insane as any man that ever lived. Fury and the lust of vengeance left no room for any other emotion. And," the voice dropped with horror until it was barely more than a hoarse whisper, "for a fraction of a moment I felt an impulse to kill the baby because it was hers!" Again he stopped, unable to go on. Noel could not repress a shudder but his hand shaded his features and he made no other sign that he had heard. Then Floriot spoke again. "Noel! Noel!" he half-sobbed. "I thought the next moment that I was dying and--if it had only been true! For then for the first time came the realization of what I had lost. I must have staggered into my room and locked the door before I fainted, for light was coming in the window when I recovered consciousness and I was lying across my bed. With consciousness came the suffering hat has not ceased for two years!... "I will not try to tell you what the next few days were. I lost track of time. I could not eat or drink or sleep. My revolver lay on the table and a dozen times I picked it up to blow out my brains, but the thought of the baby stopped me. I wept because I couldn't do it. She was so completely part of me that I did not see how I could live any longer. "Finally, I made up my mind that no matter how dreary and empty my life might be, I must; live for the boy's sake, and with that resolution I locked up the revolver, burned every letter and photograph of her that I had, I held them in the fire, one by one, until the flames burned my fingers! Then I came into the world again. "I fled to work like a man running away from something and the work brought--success! Success!"--And he ended with a grating laugh. Then he turned his white, drawn face and feverish eyes on the still figure in the chair. "Now," he demanded, "my friend, which of us deserves the most pity?" CHAPTER VI CLOSING FOR THE DEFENSE A minute--two--minutes--passed but Noel gave no sign that he had heard the question. The hand that shaded the eyes prevented Floriot from finding in his face any clue to his thoughts. He turned away with a sigh that might have been weariness or disappointment or both and sank slowly into a chair. At last Noel rose and shook himself slightly as if shaking off a hypnotic spell. His face was a little pale and his eyes had a queer look. He walked over and put his hand on his friend's arm. "Floriot," he said, gently, "between us there need be no talk of sympathy. You know that I feel your pain almost as much as if it were mine. But I see this thing from a different angle. Even before I heard your story I understood, of course, that she was guilty of grave misconduct. But it seems to me that she has been punished enough--and she has repented!" Floriot's only reply was an exclamation of scorn and contempt. "Then why should she have come back?" asked Noel. "I don't think I told you that her lover is dead," replied Floriot, bitterly. Then he straightened up determinedly: "She shall never come into this house again!" "She's your wife!" said Noel calmly. "I won't have her near the boy!" "He's her boy, too! And whatever becomes of your boy's mother now, my friend, you can take the responsibility." Floriot stared at him in astonishment and anger. "I! Responsible! For her?" he exclaimed. "Yes, you are responsible," was the firm reply. "Who knows what that poor woman may do now--after you have thrown her out!" Floriot rose and burst out between anger and astonishment: "Noel, what on earth is the matter with you? This woman has wrecked my home and ruined my life! Haven't I any rights? Wouldn't you have done what I did?" "Your rights!" sneered his friend, with a scornful laugh. "Do you think that you have the right to sentence the mother of your boy to the life that she will have to lead now? Your own conscience must be singularly clear and your own life wonderfully blameless, my friend! Your rights! Humph! What about your duties? Did you look after your duties as faithfully as you are now looking out for your rights? "Jacqueline was young and thoughtless--did you guide her and guard her? By your own story you threw her in the way of an attractive man so that you could shift some of your duties on to his shoulders! "Did you study her heart? You expected her to make you happy--did you study her happiness?" he cried with bitter scorn. "Did you remember that she is far younger than you are? Did your age try to understand her youth and its needs?" He paused. Floriot had sunk uncertainly back into his chair under the weight of this arraignment. "You don' t answer! And because she--erred--because she has wounded your vanity by preferring--I'm not defending her!--by preferring another man to you when you did everything you could to make her do it, you throw her out and close your door against her! And you tell me you love her!" "God knows I love her!" groaned Floriot. Noel turned away with a short, scornful laugh. "You loved her!" he exclaimed, contemptuously. "Noel!" Noel wheeled on him with flashing eyes. "I say, it's not true!" he cried. "I tell you, you did not love her! Love is stronger than hate, for nothing can stop it! True love will trample down any obstacle to pardon, to sacrifice! And no one who has not suffered can be sure that he has loved. No, my friend," he went on more calmly, "you didn't love Jacqueline. You loved her grace and her beauty and her charm but it did not blind you to her weakness! If you had really loved her she could have done you no irreparable wrong; for, even when she made this mistake, your love would have found an excuse!" Floriot sprang up with an angry protest. "No, no!" he cried. "Any man in the same place would have done what I did! You would--what would you do?" Noel hesitated a moment. "I don't know----exactly--what I should do," he replied gravely, "because I am a man with a man's limitations. But I know what _you ought_ to do!" "I will never forgive her! I----" "Listen to me a minute, Louis!" interrupted his friend, sternly. "Jacqueline is the mother of your son. He is her child and you have dared to separate them for life! Instead of holding out a helping hand to her, you have thrown her out of your house! You might have saved her from her future and you have given her the first push down the hill that leads--we both know where! Wait! Listen to me! You are a public servant. When you plead against a criminal you ask for a verdict and a sentence in proportion to the crime committed. Your wife loved you and gave you a son. She sinned against you and is sorry for her sin, and yet"--his voice rose with bitter passion--"and yet you have sentenced her to misery, despair and death!" A growing fright was driving the angry gleam from Floriot's eyes as he raised his hand in protest. "No! No! I----" he began in an altered voice. "Yes! Yes!" broke in his friend. "What will she do? What will become of her? Have you ever thought of that? She will have a dozen lovers, will she? Who will be responsible? Have you ever thought of that? "You have not! I can see it in your face! And I suppose you consider yourself an honorable man, a model husband, a blameless father! If you won't do your duty, Floriot, by the living God! I'll do it for you!" Floriot started up and moved toward his friend with queer, halting steps. "What--do--you--mean?" came from his lips in barely more than a whisper. Noel looked squarely into his eyes. "I mean that your wife shall find in my house the place that you refuse her! My life shall be hers--and I will ask nothing in exchange!" Floriot halted and stiffened and for a dozen seconds the two men gazed into each other's eyes. Then Floriot spoke slowly and coldly: "It seems to me, Noel, that you are presuming little beyond the privilege of even a friend." "In this case I have more than the privilege--of a friend!" was the calm reply, with a note of meaning in the voice. Floriot continued to stare at him with a mixture of wonder and resentment. Then a sudden thought made him catch his breath with a sharp hiss. His figure relaxed and he took a half-step forward. "Noel! ... Noel!" he gasped. "Jacqueline! ... She was the woman--you loved!" The blue eyes did not waver. "Yes, it was Jacqueline! And," he added, bitterly, "I loved her better, if not more, than you did!..." In the nerve-wracking night Floriot had exhausted, he thought, every emotion. This last shock numbed him. He groped his way to a chair and with both hands to his head tried to collect his wandering mind and grasp the meaning of Noel's admission. Noel had loved Jacqueline! This was the woman for whom he had tried to kill himself! His brain reeled dizzily and he stared down at the carpet with unseeing eyes. It put his friend in a strange and almost incomprehensible light. All that he had said and done now took on a different aspect. Noel had loved her! He still loved her and defended her! All that his friend had said, all that Jacqueline had said, his talk with Madame Varenne--all swept back over him with a new meaning! Was he wrong? Should he have obeyed the impulse to forgive when she sobbed at his feet--the impulse that he strangled almost at the cost of reason?... Noel was speaking but he barely heard the words. "I loved her for years before your marriage," he was saying. "Many and many a time I made up my mind to speak to her but--I loved her more than I could tell her! I was afraid to risk everything on a word. Again and again I went away on my long wanderings, trying to show myself that I wanted nothing more than my freedom. The farther I traveled from St. Pierre the more miserable I grew and I always came back more in love than ever." There was no grief or pain in his voice. He was still the judge denouncing the culprit. "Then I began to think that she was falling in love with you! I tried again to take my life in my hands and to tell her I loved, but I couldn't. I ran away again, and this time I made up my mind that I would never come back. I got as far as Messina and bought my ticket for the next east-bound P. & O. Then I deliberately missed the boat and the next one. I couldn't drag myself up the gangplank! "The next day, without hardly knowing how it happened, I found myself in the railway station, on my way back to France. I had nearly reached her house when I heard of your betrothal!" He paused for a moment and eyed his friend's bowed figure. "I suppose you wonder, Louis, why I was not more completely overcome and horrified by your story of your madness. My madness carried me a little farther. I, too, sat up in my room with a revolver one night trying to decide whether I should kill you or myself or both of us!" Floriot gave no sign that he had heard. "The old Padre told me once when I was a boy," he went on in the same bitter tone, "there is a line somewhere in the holy writings which says, 'Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.' But his friend ought to show that he appreciates the sacrifice!" He paused again for a moment. "If I had dreamed," he said with stem calmness, "that Jacqueline would be where she is to-night, I would have killed you, my friend, before I tried to kill myself!" The voice ceased abruptly and Noel turned slowly away. The silence seemed to stir Floriot more than the lashing words. He raised his head wearily. "What do you think I ought to do?" "Do! Do!" cried Noel, wheeling, his face blazing with scorn. He walked quickly to the door and paused with his hand on the knob. "I am going to find Jacqueline! Are you coming with me?" Floriot rose unsteadily--doubt, dread and the faint promise of returning hope in his face. He moved uncertainly over toward his friend with hand outstretched. Noel seized it in an eager, painful grip and they looked into each other's eyes with trembling lips. Then, without a word, they passed down the hall and out of the house. CHAPTER VII THE WANDERERS You will find in the chronicle of Matthew of Paris (and a reference to it somewhere in the Apocrypha) a legend of a Jew who refused a resting place on the bench by his door to the Friend of the World as He passed on His way to Calvary. And as He walked on He said: "I go to My rest in My Father's house but thou shalt wander o'er the earth till I come again." Many great writers have loved to believe the strange old tale, and it has been immortalized in prose and verse. As the curse was launched, try to imagine that the ancient Jew felt in his heart a great dread and unrest, and he rose from the seat that he denied the Saviour and struck out across the desert. Then--who knows?--for his further punishment the wind piled sand-dunes in his path, and as he toiled over them new ones rose, and ever in the form of the Cross. The palm trees were as crosses through the heat-haze. A hundred times he was near death from thirst and heat but he could not die. And when he came to the mountains the torrents were crosses and the snow drifts and the crags. He turned and sought death in the frozen North and the icebergs rose in cold and shining crosses. And southward in the trackless jungles, in the creepers at his feet and the vines overhead he saw the sign of him who walked on to Calvary. Wandering over the face of the earth in suffering of the body and misery of the soul, praying daily for the death that is denied him, he must go on and on, and always about his path the hated symbol of his curse. Louis Floriot thought often of the queer old legend in the dark years that followed that night in the house at Passy. Some one once said that the greatest hell on earth is reserved for the man who returns to his empty house from his wife's funeral and begins to ask himself whether he was or was not responsible for her death. But there is one even more terrible than that--believing that he is in a large measure responsible for her shame. And Louis Floriot stretched himself on that bed of torture every night of his life. When he and Noel set out on their search they fully expected to find her within forty-eight hours at the longest. They learned at the Passy station that a woman answering Jacqueline's description had taken a train for Paris a short time before they arrived! so that simplified the hunt. They roamed through the cafés of the better sort and examined the registers of the larger hotels all through the night, planning to get help in the morning. There was one dread in the hearts of both that neither dared speak until after daylight. They had found no clue after seeing the man at the Passy station, and when they took breakfast together they were avoiding each other's eyes as they talked. Floriot would not eat, but his friend insisted that he drink several cups of coffee and two small glasses of brandy. When he saw his eye brighten and a faint touch of color return to his pale cheeks, Noel suggested as gently as possible: "There is one more place that we ought to visit before we do anything else, Louis." Floriot glanced at him with questioning dread. Noel read his thoughts and nodded. "I don't think she would do it--as long--as long--as the boy is alive, and I don't want to alarm you needlessly. But we might as well be sure," he continued. Both had feared all night that when Jacqueline reached Paris and realized that she was alone! in the world with no place to go and no one to turn to for aid, comfort or advice, she might have thrown herself in the Seine. They were going to the morgue to see if her body had been found. They walked through the rows of the silent figures wrapped in white sheets, and as the face of every woman was uncovered, Floriot gave a gasp and closed his eyes before he dared to look. The body they dreaded to find was not there, and they silently thanked God as they came out into the sunlight again. Then they hastily formed a plan of campaign. Noel went out to the house in Passy to get a photograph of Jacqueline that he had in his bag. It was six years old, but it was better than none. He was to meet Floriot at the office of the Chief of the Parisian police. The chief knew the young Deputy Attorney very well, and had a deep admiration and respect for him. He did not ask any useless or embarrassing questions when Floriot told him what he wanted. Being a good policeman he already knew much of the private life of the man, and it was easy for him to fill in the gaps in Floriot's story. Noel returned with the photograph and he promised that he would have a number of reproductions made and put his best men on the search. Leaving the office of the police chief they made the rounds of all the hospitals without learning anything of a woman answering Jacqueline's description. Then Noel insisted that they could do nothing more that day and that they had better go out to Passy, have a good dinner and a night's rest. All the way home, at dinner, and throughout the evening Noel talked to his friend with a buoyancy he did not feel. As the day wore on he realized what a task they had undertaken, and already he began to feel that if they succeeded in finding her it must be due more to chance than otherwise. But he had no idea of abandoning the search. In his heart he told himself that he would devote his life to it if necessary. And Floriot? Like the Jew of the legend the spirit of unrest had already entered his soul. He made a hundred vain and impracticable suggestions in the course of the evening, each one involving useless activity on the part of himself and his friend. But the manifest futility of adopting any of his plans did not weigh with him. He wanted to be doing something. Noel finally drugged him with Burgundy and persuaded him to go to bed with many assurances that the Chief would have her or be on the trail in the morning. "Noel, old man, I don't want to sleep!" was his last protest. "What do you think about going, as I suggested, down to----" "Tut! Tut!" interrupted Noel, testily. "What have you employed the police for? Go to sleep, old man! It'll be all right by to-morrow night!" And with a final hand-shake he left him. In spite of his protest that he did not want to sleep, a mine explosion would not have stirred Floriot two minutes after he touched the bed. Exhausted Nature seized the opportunity to make up for the drains of more than two weeks, and he was still sleeping heavily when Noel came to call him shortly after noon. "I've just come from the Chief's office," said Noel, brightly, after he had listened to and put aside Floriot's reproaches for not calling him. He did not mention that he had been to the morgue again. "And what does he say?" demanded the other sitting up with eager anxiety. Noel avoided his eyes. "He hasn't anything definite to report but he assures me that it is only a question of hours," he replied, cheerfully. "He has telegraphed to the frontiers and all the seaports, and unless Jacqueline has left France we have her just as surely as if she were in the next room now!" "Left France! She can't have done that!" exclaimed Floriot. "It's hardly possible in that length of time," agreed the other, "and for that reason I think that our friend the chief will have news for us by to-morrow night--_sure_!" But there was no news "to-morrow night" nor the next night. The nights grew to weeks and the weeks to months and the months to years, and there was never a trace of the missing woman from the moment she left the Passy station. Noel, true to the vow he had sworn the day after she left, spent his life in the search for her. He had ample funds, and Floriot was well provided for in the goods of the world. All the capitals of Europe and the larger cities he searched, aided by the police. He made friends with the demi-monde and the "submerged" of many races. The painted women of St. Petersburg and the belles of, the Tenderloin knew him equally well. But it! was all in vain. Jacqueline had disappeared. Floriot could not abandon his work, for the sake of his boy, but he took from it all the time that he could spare. He labored now without soul and without ambition. The one thing in his life that seemed worth while was to find his wife. He and Noel wrote to each other constantly when the latter was away--advising, suggesting, planning. All the time that he could take from the courts he employed in roaming about Europe while Noel was on the other side of the world. And like the sign of the cross to the ancient Jew, a hundred times a year he thought that in the glimpse of a profile or the sound of a woman's voice behind him, he had reached the end of his quest. And each disappointment was more bitter than the last. Even in his home there was no escape. For as Raymond grew up it became more evident every year that his dark, passionate eyes, smooth forehead and dark curly hair were his mother's. The firmly cut jaw and mouth and straight, high-bred nose came from his father. He was growing into a splendid young man, as clean mentally as he was physically. He was the one joy of his father's life and he tried to make up in his love what the boy missed in not having the mother that had been driven away. He had an inherited taste for the law and at school he was a source of constant pride to his father. He was prouder when the young man--just turned twenty-four--was admitted to practice in the courts of France. Floriot had been transferred from Paris to Dijon and from there to Bordeaux. He was appointed President of the Toulouse Court just before Raymond became a full-fledged advocate. This made it necessary for father and son to part because the son could not practise in his father's court. It was therefore decided that Raymond should remain in Bordeaux with Rose as housekeeper. She had been the nurse of the boy's babyhood, had raised him, and grown gray hair in the service. She was a fixture for life in the Floriot establishment. About this time two men who had never even heard of any of the characters in this story-excepting M. Floriot, for whom they entertained a marked respect and hearty dislike, although he did not know of their existence--sat down one morning and wrote a letter, the effect of which was far beyond their foresight or wildest imaginings. CHAPTER VIII "CONFIDENTIAL MISSIONS" It was nearly twenty years after the disappearance of Jacqueline that M. Robert Henri Perissard and his very dear confrère, M. Modiste Hyacinthe Merivel, reached their office in a little street not very far from the Palace of Justice, about nine o'clock in the morning, as was their custom. They always took a cab in going to and from their place of business for the same reason that the cab never took them to the door of their residence. And, for the same reason, their residence was in one of the worst streets of Montmartre. One maintained an address in the Rue Fribourg and the other in Rue St. Denis, but neither could ever be found there. Their little home was beautifully furnished, but it was on the top floor of a squalid-looking building, and scarcely a soul in the world besides themselves knew that they lived there. They did not look at all like residents of the vilest quarter of Paris. In fact, their appearance was so blamelessly respectable that it would have aroused the suspicions of a clever policeman. All this may seem strange, but in their relation to society it was quite necessary. It was their mission in life to avenge all transgressions of the laws of God and man. They ferreted out evildoing that escaped or was not punishable by the police, and heavily fined the evildoers. It was a lucrative business, but they dared not live up to anything like the full strength of their income. It would attract too much attention, and gentlemen who engage in that business always shrink from notoriety. As it is, they are frequently found in queer places decorated with bullet holes or knife wounds of great merit. Then, besides, the natural guardians of the community--the police--are frequently brutal enough to call them "blackmailers" and send them to prison for long terms. So you can see that only gentlemen of great caution and perspicacity can ply the trade successfully. M. Perissard, the elder of the two, had in conversation a mixture of pomposity and unction that was truly edifying. He was about medium height with a rotund figure, bald head, bushy side-whiskers and little porcine eyes in a fat face. If you were not a close observer of men you would have taken him for a prosperous banker. His companion, M. Merivel, was the larger and younger man. He affected an even more subdued and painfully respectable garb. He had oily black hair and heavy jowls. He was gifted with a deep heavy voice, though not so glib a tongue, but it was most impressive to hear him back up his co-worker's statements with rumbling affirmatives. The commodities in which they dealt are not hard to come by--especially in Continental Europe. There is scarcely a wealthy family that has not some secret that it would rather the world did not know. For men with the shrewdness and insight of Messrs. Perissard and Merivel a whisper, a breath, was enough. A patient and careful system of espionage and research and a little judicious bribing of servants and, lo! The thing was done! Lately their business had been remarkably successful and was spreading rapidly--so rapidly that they had found it necessary to take in another man to look after their interests in Lyons, where they had two or three "_most_ promising affairs," as M. Merivel would have put it. And now they felt the need of a shrewd man in Bordeaux--shrewd and courageous, for they had laid out a "mission" there that was so dangerous that neither cared to handle it in person, and yet so lucrative that it could not be abandoned. The man in Lyons had proved that he was just the genius needed there and the partners feared that they should "never look upon his like again." For weeks they had gone over the field of reckless and unscrupulous blackguards whom they knew--and knew to be at that time out of prison--but they could not fix upon one who, they were sure, had the ability and the loyalty combined. It was in this dilemma that M. Perissard began opening the morning's mail, sighing heavily, while his associate busied himself with a collection of society papers from various capitals in the hope of unearthing a profitable hint of threatened scandal. The first letter was from the editor of a black-mailing weekly who received commissions on all of his "tips" that developed into financial gain for the firm of "Perissard and Merivel, Confidential Missions." It contained the information that a certain Marquise had gone into a secluded part of Switzerland "for her health" and was very anxious to maintain the utmost secrecy, as it was well known that her husband had been in the Far East for more than a year. M. Perissard put the letter carefully to one side of his desk and picked up the next, which bore a queer-looking South American stamp. He opened it and glanced over the two sheets of notepaper that it contained, and as he read his face expressed a grateful and uplifting joy. "My dear Merivel!" he exclaimed. "Our problem is solved! The--veree--thing!" M. Merivel ponderously folded his paper and turned a look of heavy inquiry on his associate. "Indeed!" he rumbled. "True! my dear friend, true!" M. Perissard assured him, joyously. "Listen!" And this is what he read: Café Libertad, Buenos Ayres, Feb. 11th. _My Revered Preceptor_: You will no doubt be surprised to hear from me, and especially in this God-forsaken place, but here I am without exactly knowing how I got here. Furthermore, now that I am here and have been here for some weeks, I don't see how I am going to live much longer. South America is a great place for government officials and cattle raisers. Cattle thieves, I am told, do rather well, too, but none of these three lines of occupation is open to me. I haven't the influence for the first, the capital for the second or the inclination for the third. It is _bourgeois_, and it is well for us of the upper classes to keep our hands clean of vulgar theft. The more gentlemanly forms of acquiring mentionable sums are practically useless. These people of Latin America have the suspicious nature of all provincials; and, as most of them chat about their family scandals in the cafés, it is not a fruitful field for a discreet young man with a keen scent. The very wealthy are usually investing in revolutions, and I have no vocation for that form of promoting. All this, my dear teacher, is simply a prelude to the information that I want to get back to La Belle France--want to very badly. If you can find something for me to do and want me badly enough to pay my passage, I will take the first ship that sails. You can reach me at the above address, unless a certain yellow-skinned suitor of one of the ladies at the café knifes me before I hear from you. Believe me to be yours dutifully, FREDERIC LAROQUE. M. Perissard read and M. Merivel heard this flippant letter without the trace of a smile. They were serious-minded folk. "Confidential missions" have the effect of dwarfing the sense of humor, and they had been in the profession for many years. "A-ahem!" said M. Merivel heavily. "And this Frederic Laroque---? "He is a young man who was a clerk in my office before we became partners, my dear Merivel," explained M. Perissard, smiling happily. "He displayed a singular aptitude for our work but----Youth! Youth!" He shook his head. "He would not stay with me as I advised. He insisted on going his own way and I lost sight of him in a short time. I am really surprised that he is not in prison, but it shows that he must have developed as I knew that he would. His hardships in the New World probably have had the needed subduing effect. And now he is an instrument made to our hand! Thoroughly loyal to his friend or employer he always was, I assure you, my dear Merivel, and without fear--without fear absolutely! Oh, it is providential! Providential!" and he raised his hands piously. "_Most_ providential!" echoed M. Merivel in rolling thunder. Then he added: "You are certain, my dear Robert, that the young man is trustworthy? You remember that Guadin was also fearless!" "Oh, quite so! Quite so, my dear friend!" his confrère hastened to assure him. "He is the soul of honor! He would not think of attempting anything dishonest with me!" "In that case," came from the depths of M. Merivel's chest, "I think that we would do well to send him the money." "Just what I was going to propose the moment I finished his letter!" declared M. Perissard. So the letter was written and a postal order for a thousand francs enclosed. Laroque was requested to meet M. Perissard at the Hotel of the Three Crowns in Bordeaux as soon as he could get there. * * * * * Some three weeks later M. Frederic Laroque, accompanied by the lady of the Café Libertad, walked up the gangplank of the "Amazon," bound for France, while on the pier, Manuel Silvas blasphemed the Virgin because he was armed only with a knife; and Laroque had carelessly dropped his hand on his pistol pocket as he passed. CHAPTER IX THE HOTEL OF THE THREE CROWNS Marie, the pretty chambermaid of the Hotel of the Three Crowns, was visibly nervous one misty day in April. She could not be kept away from the front door, which opened on a dingy street a few minutes' walk from the railway station. Not that there was any particular reason why she should not be there. The guests of the Hotel of the Three Crowns were late risers as a rule. It was too early to set about her duties, and in the meantime the proprietor would rather have had her at the front door than anywhere else, for we have mentioned the fact that she was pretty, and that made her the only attractive feature about the front of the down-at-heel little inn. Transients of the commercial traveler type were seldom known to walk past the door if they caught a glimpse of Marie. It was for one of these gentlemen that Marie was so anxiously waiting, and her nervousness was due to the fact that her husband, Victor, the "boots" of the hotel, was roaming around in the background. He was as simple-minded and unattractive as a husband ought to be. Whenever his intellect tried to grasp anything beyond the mysteries of cleaning shoes and carrying trunks it ran into heavy opaque obstructions. Marie might have carried on a dozen flirtation under his very chin and he would have been none the wiser. But she had never done it, because of her naturally clean morals. So now, that she was preparing to inflict on him the greatest wrong that she had in her power to commit, she felt the trepidation that always precedes the first plunge into crime. In spite of the wrought-up condition of her mind she could not help observing curiously a queer-looking pair that alighted from a cab in front of the door. The man was a tall, rather slender but muscular man of thirty-five or past with sandy hair, a bold chin and sparkling pale gray eyes that ran over her trim figure and pretty face with undisguised pleasure. It was his dress that most attracted her attention. He wore a long, check traveling coat of rough English cloth and soft gray hat, patent-leather shoes with singularly high heels, brown and very baggy "peg-top" trousers. His open coat and overcoat disclosed a gray silk shirt and loose black tie. But the really bizarre feature of the costume was a broad red sash about the waist in place of the conventional belt or braces. The woman, his companion, was rather flashily dressed in clothes that bore the marks of travel and long wear. She was small and might once have been pretty. She was now plainly past forty and looked all of it. Her figure still retained suggestions of a departed grace. Her hair was dark and wavy but it was cut short, and she had dark, unnaturally bright eyes. Even Marie knew enough of the world to place her at once in a calling that is older than the profession of arms. In her face, glance and walk she bore the brand that Nature places on those who "eat the bread of infamy and take the wage of shame." But what Marie did not understand was the unearthly, almost translucent, pallor of her face and the peculiar delicacy of the pouches under the eyes--the hall-marks of the drug slave. The man dropped a large traveling bag on the sidewalk and then helped the driver of the cab unship a small and much battered trunk. The woman eyed the proceedings listlessly. Then he turned to Marie with a breezy smile. "Well, my dear, have you a room to spare and some strong and willing young man to help me carry this trunk up to it?" he asked. On being addressed, the maid started and then smiled sweetly. "Oh, yes, monsieur! I think there is still a vacant room. Victor! Victor!" she called, turning her head to the doorway. In a few moments her husband shambled out. He had a placid, gently inquiring expression that made his face resemble nothing so much as that of a good-natured horse. "Just give me a lift with this trunk, my man," commanded the guest, briskly, as Victor came down the steps. The procession streamed into the house, leaving Marie still on guard at the door, much to the gentleman's regret. Victor showed the way up two flights of stairs to a rather large room under the roof. It contained one big bed, two small tables, a dressing-case and several chairs. The porter, in a slow drawl, pointed out that one of the most stylish features of the apartment was a small dressing-room that opened off it. The walls and low ceiling were kalsomined. The floor was stained with cheap paint and a few cheaper rugs were scattered about. A step or two inside the door the man stopped, looked around and laughed. "H'm! I've seen better!" he remarked. "It's the only one we've got left, monsieur," drawled Victor. "Not a palace, is it?" he went on, turning to his companion. She shrugged her shoulders slightly. "Oh, what does it matter? This room or any other!" she replied, and the indifference of tone and words matched the weariness of her manner and the carelessness of her tawdry attire. "Well, I don't suppose we shall be here long," said her companion. He and Victor carried the luggage into the dressing-room. The woman took off her hat and cloak, put the former on the dresser, threw the latter carelessly across a chair and dropped wearily into another. "Oh, I'm tired!" she sighed. "Has anyone inquired for M. Laroque--Frederic Laroque?" the man was asking as he came back with Victor. The porter handed him a card. "This gentleman called about an hour ago," he replied. Laroque glanced at it. "Perissard," he nodded, half to himself. "He said he'd come back in about an hour," he drawled. "All right! Show him up when he does," he ordered briskly, taking off his coat and overcoat. "Can I get you anything, monsieur?" "A bottle of absinthe!" was the prompt reply. "Yes, monsieur." "And some cigarettes." "Yes, monsieur." And, the guest adding nothing further to the order, he shuffled out and slowly closed the door. Laroque looked again at the card that he still held in his hand. "I wonder what that old devil is up to now!" he murmured, thoughtfully. He had been wondering ever since he received the letter and the thousand francs. The woman did not hear him; or, if she did, paid no attention. "This is better than the ship, anyhow, isn't it?" she remarked from the depths of the big armchair. Laroque was busily emptying his pockets on to the top of the dresser. As he took out the pistol he thought of Senor Silvas and smiled. "Yes!" he declared emphatically, "I've had enough of the sea for a long time. You ought to be glad to be back again; you were certainly anxious to see 'la belle France,' weren't you?" "I've been away from it for twenty--twenty years!" said the woman in a low voice. "I shouldn't wonder if you found a change or two," he suggested pleasantly, marching into the dressing-room to "wash up." She sighed wearily. "I don't suppose I'll find any changes greater than those in myself." "Because you have your hair cut short?" came from the dressing-room with a laugh. "People often have their hair cut short for all sorts of reasons. Typhoid fever is better than most. And I rather like your short curly hair. You look like a boy, dressed up!" "I'm not thinking of my hair," she returned wearily. "I'm thinking of what I was twenty years ago when I left France and what I am to-day." "If it hurts you to think of it, my girl, don't think of it!" he suggested lightly, appearing at the door with a towel in his hands. "I suppose you are right--perhaps that is the better way," was the reply in world-weary tones. "Of course, it is!" he assured her cheerfully. "What's done can't be undone, old girl. There are lots of women more to be pitied than you are." "I wonder!" she murmured, with a faint bitter smile. "To begin with," he went on, vigorously polishing his nails on his trouser legs, "you are the only woman I have loved for the last six months! That ought to count for something, oughtn't it?" "Twenty years ago!" she repeated more to herself than to him. "I was young and pretty then." "Oh, you look all right by gaslight now!" he assured her. "I had a husband and child," she went on without heeding. "Now, I am alone--with nothing left!" "And what about me, pray!" he protested with a laugh. "Don't I count for something?" "Oh, shut up!" she snapped, pettishly. "I don't want to play the fool to-day!" "So I see," retorted Laroque, with an ironical bow. "Madame has her nerves, has she?" "To-day I'm sick of everything," she continued drearily. "Life disgusts me. I'd sell mine for a centime!" "Oh, it's worth more than that! Now, buck up!" he cried, cheerfully. "I quite understand that you used to be a rich woman and now you are not, but everyone has his ups and downs. Look at me! I used to be a lawyer's clerk--old Perissard's clerk--and look at me now! Take the times as they come, old girl, and money when you can get your hands on it! That's my motto--money's the only thing that matters!" She turned her head slowly toward him with a contemptuous look. "Oh, I know you'd do anything for money!" M. Laroque shrugged his shoulders. "Better that than do nothing and get nothing for it," he replied with light philosophy, taking a chair at the opposite side of the table. Victor entered with bottle of absinthe and the cigarettes and deposited them carefully between them. Laroque rubbed his hands together and gazed at the bottle with glistening eyes. "Good!" he exclaimed, enthusiastically. "Now, mix up the drinks, old girl, and put some power in 'em! You want yours about as badly as I want mine!" The woman uncorked the bottle and began preparing the absinthe while he lighted a cigarette and turned to Victor, who stood stolidly by the table. "What's going on in Bordeaux?" he asked pleasantly. "Is there any fun?" Victor studied the question gravely and then drawled: "Well, it's amusing sometimes, then sometimes it isn't." Laroque's clear laugh rang out. "Now, we know all about it, don't we?" Victor stared at him with the mild gaze of a surprised cow. He did not see the joke and didn't feel up to the mental effort of looking for it. "Will you dine at the table d'hôte?" he inquired. "What's the cooking like?" Again Victor pondered for several moments. "Well," he drawled at last, "some people say it's good and then--some people say it isn't." Again Laroque roared with laughter. "Well, you are a mine of information, aren't you?" he shouted. Victor did not acknowledge the compliment. "Dinner's at seven," he announced solemnly. "Right!" "If you want anything, ring once for me and twice for the chambermaid." "Thank you, my lord!" bowed Laroque. "Shall I take away the absinthe?" he asked, as the woman slowly put the bottle down when enough of the milky fluid had dripped slowly into, the tumblers. The other quickly put out a restraining hand. "Nay, nay, my lord!" he replied, firmly. "Never remove a bottle until it's empty!" "It makes no difference to me, monsieur." "Just what I thought!" was the retort. "But it makes a good deal of difference to me!" And as Victor slowly slouched out he picked up one of the tumblers with trembling hands and took a sip. "Great! Great!" he murmured, closing his eyes in ecstasy. "Yes, it is good, isn't it?" And the woman took a long drink. "It's a marvel! A marvel! There's nothing you do better than an absinthe! Light up, old girl and let's be happy!" She lighted a cigarette, and for several minutes they smoked and sipped in silence. "Are we going to stay here long?" she asked at last, in a tone that implied that it made no difference to her whether they did or not. "I don't know," he replied, passing over his empty glass as she began laying the foundations of another drink. "That depends on Perissard. I must have a chat with him before I can say." "Who is Perissard?" she inquired indifferently. "I told you I used to be his clerk. He's a lawyer!" "What sort of a man is he?" "Oh, he's a clever old devil!" smiled Laroque. "He knows the Code Napoleon backwards! When I wrote to him I thought to myself, 'There's a postage stamp wasted, for Perissard has either retired from business or he's making felt shoes in prison somewhere, unless he's flirting with the dusky native ladies of New Caledonia.' But I was wrong, you see, for he's not in prison, says he's glad to hear from me and sends me a thousand francs to pay my passage. That knocked me edgewise! The old fox certainly needs me for something. He doesn't spend a thousand francs for nothing!" "Be careful!" she warned him, but the tone was a mockery of the words. "Don't worry!" he replied jauntily. "I'll keep my eyes open and----" a knock at the door interrupted him. "There he is now, I guess. Come in!" he called, turning his head toward the door. It was opened quickly and with brisk step, M. Perissard, closely followed by his associate in "Confidential missions," bustled in. CHAPTER X THE USES OF ADVERSITY "My dear Laroque!" exclaimed M. Perissard, effusively holding out his hand as the adventurer advanced to meet him. "Well! How are you, monsieur?" returned the ether, cordially shaking his hand. "By heaven! You've put on flesh, haven't you?" M. Perissard laughed. "Ah! I put most of that on with my clothes every morning," he explained with a wink of elephantine slyness. "Every morning! What on earth for?" demanded Laroque, blankly. "Thin people do not inspire confidence," declared M. Perissard, impressively, but still smiling. "Fat people do!" Then he noticed the woman in the chair and evolved an elaborate bow, seconded by M. Merivel. "Madame!" "My life's companion--for the last six months," said Laroque, with flippant irony and an introductory wave of his hand. The partners bowed once more in unison and the woman acknowledged the introduction with a perfunctory nod, the absinthe and cigarette immediately reclaiming her attention. "Let me present M. Merivel," said Perissard, suavely. "Formerly a schoolmaster, but now my friend and associate!" "Delighted!" exclaimed Laroque, squeezing a limp, mushy hand, "But, sit down! Sit down!" All three took chairs, the visitors carefully placing their silk hats on the floor beside them. "And first let me thank you," he went on addressing himself to the older man, "to begin with----" "For the thousand francs I sent you?" "Yes," nodded Laroque. M. Perissard smiled. "When I received your letter it struck me that you were not exactly rolling in money," he said with ponderous playfulness. "I wasn't--exactly!" laughed the young man. "So I thought it was well to send you a little on account," continued M. Perissard. "And supposing I had put the money in my pocket and remained in South America?" "I should have lost my thousand francs. But I wasn't afraid of that," his prospective employer assured him. "I knew you too well, Laroque. I knew you to be too--too----" "Too honest?" grinned the adventurer. "Too intelligent," corrected M. Perissard, "to do such a foolish thing. What are a thousand francs," with an expressive sweep of his arm, "in the position I am going to offer you!" "As good as that, eh?" There was an eager gleam in his eyes. "Ask M. Merivel!" said the senior partner bowing toward his friend. M. Merivel, thus appealed to, delivered his first contribution to the chat in an unctuous bass. "A first class position! _Most_ admirable!" "Well! That sounds interesting!" and Laroque hitched his chair a little nearer. The woman had just finished concocting a third glass of absinthe and now she rose with: "I'll leave you to your business talk and go and unpack the trunk." "Yes, do, my girl!" nodded her "life's companion," and she passed out with the drink and the package of cigarettes. "Now then, to business!" said M. Perissard in slightly crisper tones when the door had closed. "Right!" "To begin with, I'm no longer a lawyer," declared M. Perissard. "So I see," nodded Laroque. "According to your card you are now a Notary Public." His eyes twinkled. Messrs. Perissard and Merivel laughed at the same moment and for precisely the same length of time. The Siamese Twins were in constant discord compared with these two. "That's to inspire confidence," explained the senior partner. "I see! Like this!" chuckled the adventurer sticking his finger into M. Perissard's paunch. "Ah, yes!" rumbled M. Merivel, rolling his eyes up piously and clasping his hands, "Confidence is such a be--u--tiful thing in these days of disrespect! Alas! To-day respect is rapidly disappearing. The young have ceased to respect the old and the family solicitor no longer holds the proud position that was his. 'Where are the snows of yesteryear'?" Laroque listened to this speech with a grin that indicated an utter absence of the virtue the decline of which struck M. Merivel as so exceedingly deplorable. "By Jove! He talks well, doesn't he?" he exclaimed. "Like a book!" declared M. Perissard in a hoarse but enthusiastic whisper. "But to resume," he added in his "business" voice, "I'm in business now." "What sort of business?" inquired the adventurer. "Business of all kinds. I refuse no business!" "With money in it," amended M. Merivel, in a thunderous aside. "But we deal principally in the faults, vices and weakness of our fellow men," continued the senior partner. "Sounds like a good trade!" commented Laroque, heartily, his lips twitching, as he glanced from one to the other. "And a _most_ moral one!" came unctuously from the unsounded depths of M. Merivel's chest, "For we do good with the Strong Hand, you see. Ah-_utile dulci_--the Latin--ahem!" "I don't altogether get you," said the young man, crossing one knee over the other with the air of a man who has made up his mind not to understand hints. M. Perissard shifted his chair a little, cleared his throat and leaned forward with his hands on his thighs. "You shall!" he declared, a little more of the "stagey" quality was missing in his voice. "There are very few houses without a skeleton in the closet." "Skeletons are cheap to-day!" struck in M. Merivel's bass. "And in the best families there are often secrets which are worth a fortune," continued M. Perissard, impressively. Laroque's eye-brows went up. "O, I see," he said a trifle coolly, "Blackmail!" Four large fat hands went up simultaneously in a gesture of horror and two shocked voices burst forth as one. "Sh--h--h! My dear young friend! What an ugly word!" "We are humble helpers in the cause of justice! _Most_ ugly word!" "Find it rather dangerous, don't you?" pursued Laroque in the same tone. "We do not!" came the reply in chorus, baritone and bass. "Pays, does it?" Again the four plump hands went up. "Pay! My dear Laroque, I should think it did!" cried Perissard. "You will very soon find out for yourself how well it pays for I propose paying you--in addition to your salary--ten per cent upon the profits! You won't find it hard work and you won't find it difficult. Quickness, discretion and tact are all that are required. I know you pretty well, my dear friend. You are intelligent and energetic and I'm sure you are honest! Not too scrupulously so at all times--but--ah--you understand!" "Scruples are out of date," groaned M. Merivel, shaking his head gloomily, "_Ne quid nimis_--the Latin again--ahem!" "And you are fond of money!" went on the spokesman. Laroque smiled and nodded. "Well, then! You shall have the money!" declared M. Perissard. Word, look and tone were those of a true philanthropist. "It's a tempting offer," admitted the adventurer rubbing his chin, reflectively; "but, you know, I was sometime getting out of----It has not been many years since I was in trouble and I don't want any more trouble if I can help it." "What possible trouble can there be?" M. Perissard protested. "Well, you know, even a lamb will bleat if you handle him roughly." "Our little lambkins don't!" the older man as? sured him with an oily, paternal smile in which his confrère nobly seconded him. "They have a horror of all kinds of fuss and do net draw attentions to themselves if they can help it." "The fear of a fuss is the beginning of wisdom!" rose from M. Merivel's diaphragm in oracular thunder. "So there is nothing to be afraid of! Our head office is in Paris," resumed M. Perissard, "But I have come to Bordeaux to open a branch office of which M. Merivel will be temporary manager. In a little while, when you understand our methods thoroughly, he will go to Marseilles and leave you in charge. Then we will double your salary and increase your share of the profits to fifteen per cent!" Laroque wavered a moment, then suddenly straightened up to his feet and held out his hand. "It's a bargain!" he said. CHAPTER XI CONCERNING DOWER CLAIMS When the partners had pawed over and patted their new employer like a couple of affectionate behemoths welcoming back their lost offspring, the elder suggested that they must now come to the business details of the first mission which was to be entrusted to him. Laroque resumed his seat and prepared to listen but they smiled at him in paternal reproof. "Not here, my indiscreet friend!" "_Most_ certainly not!" The young man gazed at them astonished. "Why, what's the matter with this place?" he demanded. "Never discuss an important matter in detail within ear-shot of any wall, my dear young man!"! smiled M. Perissard, shaking his head. "_Most_ certainly not!" affirmed his confrère, decidedly, "_Muribus aures_--ahem!--The Latin has it!" Laroque rose and reached for his hat and coat with a smile of amusement. "Well, where do you want to go?" "We will seek a--ah--safe spot in the vicinity!" replied the senior partner. Laroque put his head in the dressing room and remarked chat he was going out for a little while and the three allies departed. M. Perissard led the way to a large café and selected a table in a not too prominent location but still where there was no chance of being overheard. He ordered a bottle of Chateau Lafitte and expensive cigars, gave the waiter more than suitable pourboire and told him they would require nothing more. They were as much alone as they would have been on a South Sea atoll. Three glasses were raised together and a little later three clouds of smoke arose from the table. M. Perissard gazed into his glass reflectively for a moment. "You must understand, my dear Laroque," he began, "that our business is largely with those men who, in public or private life, are a menace to the well-being of society." The adventurer nodded with a little smile of weary cynicism. M. Merivel said something about "_latrones in officio_." "Imagine the shock, the grief to my colleague and myself," continued M. Perissard, "when we learned that a very high official of this fair city of France had falsified his accounts to the extent of one million francs, _at least_!" If he expected to rouse his new employé to eager enthusiasm he was not disappointed. Laroque's face expressed it. "His name I will disclose to you in due time," said M. Perissard, in reply to an unspoken question. "You are wondering how so a large a peculation can possibly be concealed and therefore be of any value to us. "I will not conceal from you that the man is a power in this part of the country and has many rich and influential friends. He recently threw himself on the mercy of these and appealed to them for help. As they were under obligations of more or less doubtful character they could not fail to respond. "They have now made up more than eight hundred thousand francs, I have reason to believe, and will have no difficulty in raising the balance. But there is no occasion for haste and he is all the more useful to them while they still have this hold over him. "Fortunately for the cause of civic and national purity--so dear to the heart of every true citizen of the Republic!--some of them were so indiscreet as to put part of the negotiations into the form of correspondence. A letter or two, quite providentially--" "_Most_ providentially!" interjected M. Merivel. "--Fell into our hands. We made investigations in a quiet way, as was our duty, and have secured What is almost legal proof of this astounding corruption!" Laroque, stretched back in his chair, with his gleaming eyes half-veiled by the drooping lids nodded almost imperceptibly as M. Perissard paused. M. Merivel shook his head in heavy sadness over the fresh proof of the wickedness of man and sipped his wine. "Now, then," resumed M. Perissard. "Since they are so willing to come forward with the full amount of his shortage they will undoubtedly be only too glad to add fifty or seventy-five thousand francs to the amount to insure the utmost secrecy. Ah--you understand, now?" Laroque slowly heaved himself upright in his chair and rubbed his chin for a moment before replying. "I understand, all right," he said doubtfully, "but if these friends of his can save him any time they choose, what is to prevent them from coming up with the money the moment we approach him?" M. Perissard indulged him with another fatherly smile. "Ah, my dear young sir, you don't quite understand as yet! If we go to the Public Prosecutor and lay our information in his hands he will have no way of knowing whether the money has been refunded without an official investigation, which will certainly ruin the gentlemen. For even if he escapes prison the fact that he is guilty of misconduct in office must be brought to light." Laroque's face brightened. "Ah, ha! I see!" he exclaimed, "It certainly begins to look promising!" "_Most_ promising!" rumbled M. Merivel. Then they began to outline the details of the campaign, and it was late in the afternoon when M. Perissard suggested that there was nothing more to do. "I need not impress upon you the necessity for the utmost tact and caution in dealing with this gentleman," he said in conclusion. "You can see that in his position he has powerful official influence and we must be careful that he does not trip us. He is shrewd, bold and unscrupulous." "_Most_ unscrupulous!" affirmed M. Merivel. "By the way," said his colleague, suddenly, "you aren't married, are you?" "Lord! No!" laughed Laroque. "That's all right!" said M. Perissard, approvingly. "Women are charming creatures, but in business-s-s!" M. Merivel's hands, shoulders and eye-brows went up. "I was afraid when I saw the lady and I meant to mention it sooner!" "Most charming woman!" declared M. Merivel, unctuously, "Artistic! Good-looking!" "I met her at Buenos Ayres," explained Laroque, "She hadn't a son to bless herself with and was picking up a living around a café. There's no harm in her but she's taking a lot of trash--morphine, ether, opium and that sort of stuff--to help her forget, she says. She's a married woman, you know. Wife of a man in a good position and quite a shining light at the bar, she says." "Really!" exclaimed M. Perissard, with interest, and he exchanged a glance with his colleague. "Yes," went on Laroque carelessly, "Deputy Attorney in Paris, I believe. She was false to him and he turned her out." M. Merivel's upraised hands indicated that he was shocked. "Oh dear! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" he groaned with a sigh like the roar of a tornado, "Even the morals of our magistrates and leading lawyers _are_ not above suspicion these degenerate days!" "Have some more wine!" laughed Laroque, filling his glass. But M. Perissard hardly heard either of them. "Was this long ago?" he demanded eagerly. "Twenty years ago," replied the young man, settling back in his chair. "She says she went to England shortly after he turned her out. Since then she has been to America, Colombia, Brazil, all over the place--sometimes rich and sometimes poor. When I met her she was dying to get back to France and didn't have a centime, so I brought her with me. Never liked to travel alone," he added with a grin. But the master of "confidential missions" did not smile. "Did she tell you the story herself?" he persisted. "Yes," nodded Laroque, "one day when she'd had a little more ether than usual. It's funny sort of stuff--that! She's a silent sort of woman as a rule, but when she's been drinking ether she gets talkative, and if she doesn't become maudlin over her past, she breaks out with a hellish temper and says anything. She won't live long. About worn out--poor tramp!" M. Perissard listened attentively. "I have been thinking," he said slowly, when Laroque had finished, "that if her husband was a Deputy Attorney in Paris twenty years ago, he may be Attorney General now." "Indeed, yes!" his partner nodded emphatically. "This might lead to business," pursued the other in the same thoughtful tone. Laroque's face betrayed that he, too, had grown suddenly keenly interested. "How?" he demanded. "Supposing the husband is now occupying a position worth having," suggested the older man, "He would be likely to make a sacrifice to prevent scandal about his wife from becoming public property." M. Merivel's fat countenance expressed the most exalted admiration. "Isn't he a wonderful man?" he breathed ecstatically. "Always getting ideas like that! A benefactor of humanity! Most certainly a benefactor!" But his partner and Laroque did not heed. "Do you know her husband's name?" asked the former. "No, she never told me that." "How old would you take her to be?" "Past forty." "H'm! He must have been rather young for the position if he was near her age. You are sure she never mentioned his name?" "I would have remembered it if she had," replied Laroque. "H'm! Well, I don't know that it matters. A Deputy Attorney in Paris whose wife left him twenty years ago ought not be difficult to find." "Do you think so?" "Mere child's play, my dear boy! And I think," he added, thoughtfully, "I think that, on the whole, this had better be your first piece of business. Ah! Wait!" he exclaimed with a sudden thought, "Did she ever mention that her own people were wealthy at the time of her marriage?" Laroque scratched his head in an effort to remember. "No, I don't think she ever did," he said at last "Why? It's the husband we'll have to see anyway? What have her people to do with it?" "Why, don't you see," cried M. Perissard almost pityingly, "That if she is only a little past forty she must have married young and left her husband shortly afterward. The inference is that he was probably a young lawyer and without a great deal of money. He could not have married her unless she brought a _dot_." "Well?" demanded Laroque, not catching the ether drift. "Well, then! If he drove her out of the house she has a good claim to that money--unless he gave it to her then or later," he added anxiously. "Do you know?" "I don't know whether she ever had a _dot_," replied Laroque, as the scheme dawned on him, "but if she did I'm certain that she didn't take it away with her." "Excellent! Excellent!" exclaimed M. Perissard, pressing the palms of his hands together. "_Most_ excellent! Wonderful man!" breathed M. Merivel, with an upward glance of thanksgiving. "Now, then," continued the former briskly, "we will stay the hand of punishment temporarily in the matter of this official scoundrel and teach this magistrate or attorney-general, or whatever he is, that he cannot turn his wife out of his house and keep her money!" "But," objected Laroque. "I think there is a child, though I'm not certain." "Makes no difference whatsoever!" declared M. Perissard. "The money goes to the child upon the death of its mother--not before!" He glanced at his watch. "You go back and find out all that you can from the lady and we will wait for you here. You should be able to pump her thoroughly in an hour. That will give you plenty of time to catch the six-thirty train for Paris. You might as well begin on the work right away." "_Most_ certainly!" agreed M. Merivel, with a heavy nod. "_Nulla dies sine_--H'm!--the Latin, of course!" "We will wait for you here and give you your final instructions," added M. Perissard, as Laroque rose. "Oh, and try to get a power of attorney from her!" The latter nodded. "I'll be back in an hour!" he promised, and with a wave of the hand he hurried out. CHAPTER XII "WHO SAVES ANOTHER----" When the footsteps of the three protectors of society died away down the stairway of the Three Crowns, the woman opened the door of the dressing room and crept out. "Thank God, they've gone!" she muttered, wearily, "I'd like to be alone always. People bore me to death. What a life! What a life!" She walked across the room a trifle unsteadily and deposited her empty glass on the little table with the absinthe and sat down at the other one with her face to the door. She fumbled in a dingy hand-bag, slung to her left wrist, and presently produced a small vial, followed by a greasy pack of cheap cards. None but the eyes of abiding love or undying hate would have seen in the pitiful, drug-ridden, half drunken, fast-sinking wreck any trace of the bewitching, laughing bride of twenty-odd years before. The austere ancient, who virtuously wrote "the descent into hell is easy," might have read in her face a different story of that dark pathway. She took a swallow of the fluid in the bottle and coughed sharply as she recorked it. The peculiar odor of ether spread through the room. Then she began shuffling the cards as if about to play solitaire. Suddenly she stopped, threw herself across the table, buried her face in her arms and burst into tears.... Our life is like some vast lake that is slowly filling with the stream of our years. As the waters creep surely upward the landmarks of the past are one by one submerged. But there shall always be one memory to lift its head above the tide until the lake is full to overflowing. In the calmness of our days it is little noted, but the tempest-lashed waters are swept upon it again and again. It may be but the memory of a moment when a woman looked into our eyes with trust, or it maybe that that trust Was betrayed. But sweet or bitter, its ghost shall come in the hour of woe to whisper hope and solace, or to press more deeply the thorns into the anguished brow and add its weight to the burden of the cross.... Far back over the path of those twenty years Jacqueline had learned to hate her husband, but the memory and love of her boy grew stronger. She had sunk from indifference to degradation and from degradation to despair. She had been a man's joy of a year, his pleasure of a month and his plaything of an hour. But through it all the mother love had lived in the blackened soul and the mother heart--scarred and calloused as it was--yet yearned for her boy. But for this, the years of loathsome vice, of drink and drugs, would have brought at last the numbness of oblivion. She had sought it in vain. She had steeped herself in vice until at times the life within flickered dangerously. But it brought never a moment of forgetfulness. When she was sober, or not under the influence of drugs, she lived in the darkness of black despair. And when she turned to these "to help her forget," she did not know that that was not the reason. They revived and quickened the slowly numbing brain until she could feel again the wild anguish of hopeless loss; and as she sobbed out her agony she vaguely felt that she was again more nearly worthy to press her child to her breast. In the past few months her enfeebled mind had gloated miserably over one dismal ray of hope--the hope of one moment of joy before she died. She had learned from a half-breed woman in Caracas the art of telling fortunes with cards, and hour after hour she retold her future with the soiled pack that she always carried. They told her that the fleeting second of happiness would be bought at the price of one life, to be followed by the end of her own. To that promise she clung.... The storm of weeping, as is the case with sobs that are due wholly or in part to drunkenness, ended as abruptly as it had begun. She took another swallow of the ether and began laying out the cards in the same weary seven rows. She looked over them quickly and wept again. Always the two deaths! "Now, then," she straightened up with a snuffle, "I'll try again." She was spreading them out once more when there came a knock at the door. "Come in!" she called, without looking up. The maid, Marie, entered with pen and ink and a form that the police require the hotel-keepers to have filled out and filed by every guest. She advanced, a little timidly, to the table and said. "I hope I'm not disturbing you, madame, but the police make us go through this business." She held up the blank form. The woman looked up, puzzled for a moment, and then nodded. "Oh, yes, well then----Oh, write it yourself!" she snapped irritably, turning again to the cards. She took another drink of ether and looked up at the maid, as if she did not exactly remember the purpose of her visit. "Monsieur and Madame Laroque," she said at last, listlessly, her eyes on the table. "From Buenos Ayres, on their way to Paris." Marie filled in the blank. "To Paris. Thank you, madame," she said. Then she stood looking curiously at the cards. The woman raised her head. "Is that all?" "Yes, thank you. Are you telling fortunes with the cards?" Marie asked, timidly as the woman began studying the table once more. "Yes." "Then you really believe in them?" "They're the only thing I do believe in," was the weary response. "That's funny!" exclaimed the maid, with a nervous little smile. "I don't believe in them at all!" "You will!" was the grim comment. "Oh, it's like palmistry and all that sort of thing. It's all nonsense." Jacqueline looked up at her pityingly. "You don't know what you're talking about!" she declared, a little thickly. The ether and absinthe were beginning to work more powerfully. "What do the cards tell you?" asked Marie, growing interested. Jacqueline gazed over the table again. "Always the same thing, always the same thing!" she said, with a glassy stare, meant to be impressive. "Death! My own death! And it's coming very soon. That's what the cards tell me!" The maid's eyes opened wide. "Really!" she exclaimed breathlessly. "They never change!" the woman went on in a dull monotone. Dissipation had left little of expression and given much of harshness to her voice. "I can see blood--a great deal of blood! But before I die I shall see the two people that I always see in my dreams, waking or sleeping--the man I love more than anything else in the world and the man I hate more than anything else in the world! The cards have been promising me for the last three months that I shall see them soon and that--I'll die! The cards have never been wrong, and that's why I wanted to get back to France." "You believe in them as much as that?" asked the maid, wonderingly. "Yes!" She watched her rearranging the cards for some moments in silence. "Won't you tell my fortune?" she asked at last with a little hesitation. "What's the good if you don't believe?" retorted the woman, without looking up. "Oh, I don't be--I don't believe in it," she stammered with a slight blush, "but I--I--do believe in it!" Jacqueline glanced at her with the dispassionate, rolling gaze of a drunkard. "Sit down!" she commanded. While Marie was settling herself on the edge of the bed she took another drink of the ether. "Is that ether you're drinking?" asked the girl. "Ye--yes!" coughed the woman, slipping in the cork. "It smells horribly strong! What does it do to you?" she inquired, with shuddering curiosity. "It changes my ideas and that's a good deal," was the grim reply. "But it gets on my nerves sometimes and then I cry or smash the furniture." Marie started. "But that doesn't matter! What do you want to know?" "Oh, but if I tell you that," smiled the maid, cunningly, "there'll be nothing in your telling my fortune, will there?" "Don't tell me anything!" mumbled Jacqueline, shuffling the cards and spreading them out once more. She studied them in dead silence for a minute or more. Then: "You're married!" she announced. "Oh, there's nothing in that!" sniffed Marie; "You saw my ring." "You have a child." "Yes, the darling! Seven months old." "You're in love." The maids cheeks flushed with excitement. "Yes! Yes!" she exclaimed. "But not with your husband." She straightened up. [Illustration: '_Death! My own death! That's what the cards tell me_ ...] "No, I should think not!" she exclaimed, almost indignantly. "You are going to leave your husband!" went on the dull, even voice. Marie's cheeks paled and she gasped but did not reply. Jacqueline looked up slowly. "Is it true?" "Yes! it's quite true!" was the low reply in an awed tone. Then she added by way of justification: "My husband is Victor, the boots, who brought up your luggage." "He seems to be a good fellow," remarked the woman, indifferently. "Yes," the girl sniffed contemptuously, "but he's such a common sort of man!" "And the other?" There was awakening interest in the stupid eyes and dull voice. "Oh, the other is a gentleman! A real gentleman!" cried Marie, clasping her hands joyously. "He's a commercial traveler--in soap! He dresses beautifully and he smells--ah--m-m! I am to meet him to-night at the Grand Café, opposite the theater, and to-morrow we shall be fa-a-r-away!" "And your baby?" The girl shrugged her shoulders indifferently. "He's out to nurse," she replied, "and I know his father will not let him want for anything!" Jacqueline consulted the bottle again. "Look here, my girl! You're going to make a fool of yourself!" she declared with drunken bluntness. "Take my tip and stay with your husband! Be false to him if you must, but stay with him!" "No, no! I love no one in the world but Anatole!" cried the girl, melodramatically. "And I'm going away with him to-night!" "Well, you'll suffer in the long run!" was the other's grim assurance, with something of a return of her usual indifference. "No, I shan't! Anatole loves the very ground I walk on!" declared Marie, proudly. "H'mph! He may now, but it won't last," retorted the woman. "Your lover will leave and you'll take another--and then a third and fourth, and you'll see what sort of a life that means. I _know_!" The girl opened her pretty eyes wide. "Do you?" she asked, with a little shiver of awe. "Yes! I was about your age when I left my husband and my child. I hate my husband God! How I hate him!" she burst out, her eyes blazing with insane fury, he clenched fists above her head. Marie half started toward the door, fearing that one of the furniture-breaking moods was coming on. But as suddenly the voice dropped back to its toneless level and the eyes dulled. "But I'm dying because my child is not with me. Child! Why, he must be a man of twenty-four now, and I'm sure he's a tall, handsome fellow that everybody loves and admires. Just think of it! I might be walking down the street--now--on his arm! Wouldn't I be proud! And I don't even know him. I think of him night and day--all the time I think of him. And if he came into this room now I wouldn't know him. But I shall see him again!" she cried, excitedly, clutching the cards. "I'm sure of that! I know it! But--but I shall not--be able to--kiss him--and press him to my heart. He'll never know who I am!" Jacqueline shook her head with a solemnity born of the stimulants, and went on thickly: "I'd be ashamed! He might despise me or reproach me, and I couldn't stand that. He--he--thinks I died years ago and--and I'm glad of it Oh, Raymond! My boy, my laddie!" And again there was a quick burst of tears. Marie sprang up hastily and hurried over to the table, touching the sobbing woman gently on the arm. "Oh, madame! Don't cry, don't cry!" she pleaded, with clumsy sympathy. "Better be warned by my case!" wept the woman, in a high, queer voice. "You're a pretty girl--now--but you--won't be long! Your lover'll leave you as mine left me! Men--soon get tired. I used to be pretty, too!" The girl began to cry at the sight of the other's distress. "I'm sure Anatole will never leave me!" she whimpered. Jacqueline's tears stopped as suddenly as if they had been turned off at a spigot and she sat up, rigid. "Then you're a d----d fool!" she snapped Marie wept more bitterly. And then--God knows how!--as she stared at the sobbing girl, somewhere in her warped! soul the ether found a spark of womanly pity and fanned it to a little flame of weak resolve. ... "He saved others. Himself he could not save. "Sit down!" she commanded, harshly. "And let me tell you a story, and maybe it will save you some of the suffering that I went through." CHAPTER XIII FROM OUT THE SHADOW Jacqueline brushed the cards to one side, coughed over the ether bottle again and lit another cigarette. The girl settled herself, snuffling on the edge of the bed and wiped her eyes. When she looked up the woman was leering at her contemptuously. "S'pose you think you're beautiful, don't you?" she demanded scornfully, slurring huskily over the words. "S'pose you think you see why anybody'd grow tired of me, but you're different, eh? Let me tell you, m'girl, when I was your age, if anybody'd put us side by side, there's no man in the world would ha' looked at you twice!" And she glared at her as if daring her to deny it. "Not a man in the world!" she repeated, proudly, fixing her bleared eyes on the girl's fresh, young face. "Why, my lovers used to tell that----But that's not what I wanted to tell you! Let me see! What was it?" her eyes wandered and she frowned. The ether was sweeping over her in waves. "Oh, yes! I wanted to tell you that's it's all right 'bout your husband. Don't pay any attention to this rot about being true to him. Nobody cares anything 'bout husbands! Husbands are no good! No good! I could have a dozen husbands!" Her head sank and she waved her hand feebly as if dismissing the whole tribe of married men. The mumbled words died away in incoherencies. The girl watched her a little frightened. "You were going to tell me a story," she reminded her timidly. Jacqueline sat bolt upright, her eyes blazing with senseless anger. "Of course, I am!" she snapped. "You shut up and le' me tell it my own way an' maybe it'll do you some good!" Marie shrank back and glanced nervously at the door. "But that's all light!" the woman assured her generously. "You didn't mean anything wrong. I'm going t' tell you why you better not go'way and leave your boy like I did...." She bowed her head again for a moment and, spurred by the drug, her memory slowly unfolded the panorama of her past. All its happiness, all its sorrow, misery and despair came back to her. As she told the tale her voice was sometimes harsh and indifferent and sometimes only a drunken mumble. Again it was faintly vibrant with the ghost of a lost emotion, or the knife-thrust of reawakened grief cut off the words in her throat. And the simple girl on the bed leaned forward and listened with glistening eyes and hectic cheeks.... "Twenty-five--twenty-six--I don't know how many years ago--I lived in a big house not many miles from this place," she began, slowly. "I was the only child and I don't remember much about my father and mother. They died young. It was a small place and I didn't know much about life--but I learned plenty afterwards. "You're a peasant," she went on with harsh contempt. "You don't know anything about how girls like I was, are brought up. When I was sixteen I knew only two young men more than to bow to when I met them. One was named Noel--I'd known him all my life--and the other's name was--Louis!" The liquid word came gratingly off her tongue. "He was older than Noel and he was one of these grave, dignified young men, all wrapped up in his work. He was a lawyer and I guess he was a pretty good one. Everybody seemed to think so. Well, anyway, we fell in love with each other, and I married him before I was nineteen. Maybe the other one loved me, too," she added, carelessly "He tried to kill himself a little while after I married his friend. "After our honeymoon we took a house in Paris, where his work was. He was ambitious and wanted to be a Deputy Attorney. I didn't see much of him after we settled down, because he was giving so much time to his work, but I didn't care much--then. I loved him so and--I had something else to think about. And when _he_ came I was the happiest girl in Paris. He was the prettiest, little, dark-eyed----" The sentence ended in a choke and she put out her hand for the ether bottle.... "For a while the baby was everything to me, but he couldn't be always. I wanted my husband. I liked fun and a gay time, but he was always too busy--too busy!--until I grew angry at him. He thought that the baby and the little that I saw of him in the evening occasionally were all that I needed. "Sometimes when he was working in his study I used to go in and try to talk to him and get him to tell me what he was doing. I wanted to be more in his life. He always laughed and said that I wouldn't understand and--then he'd turn me out. "I begged him to take me to the theater, to the carnival, to the country--anywhere for life and amusement--but he never had time. I used to cry myself to sleep at night. "One evening he brought home a young man to dinner with him. They were very happy. My husband had saved the young man in some case or other--he never took the trouble to tell me, or I forget what it was. He was a witty, handsome fellow, and that was the merriest dinner I ever had. "The young man--his name was Albert--seemed to have a pretty good time himself, for he came often after that. I suppose my fool of a husband," she grated the word viciously, "thought that he was coming all the time to show his gratitude! One afternoon while he was there, I wanted to go driving and he asked Albert to take me--so he could go on with his d----d work! "That's the way he discovered how to keep me amused and without interfering with his own plans. Albert was always my escort after that, and the more my husband neglected me the angrier I grew. He didn't have brains enough to know that no man devotes his time to a married woman out of gratitude to her husband. "Albert was always respectful--oh, yes, always respectful! But he could tell a lot with his eyes, and the more enraged I was with my husband the more I listened to what his eyes were saying. Once, in a carriage, he picked up my gloves and kissed them again and again. But he never spoke a word of love or put a disrespectful finger on me. Oh, he knew women, he did! He knew women!" she chuckled, tipsily. "I had one of the first editions of every new book. There were flowers every day. He had me in a box at the opening of every new play. Once I mentioned that I would like to have some real white heather to make birthday favors. I didn't see him for four days and then he came out to the house with a trunk-load, nearly. He had gone to Scotland for it. D'you ever have a lover'd do that for you?" she demanded, with a fierce frown. "You bet you didn't!" she went on proudly, while Marie was trying to imagine Anatole en route for Scotland. "That's the kind of lovers I had! "Well, one Sunday I wanted my husband to go to Fontainebleau with me and he wouldn't do it. That was the finish! Albert saw something--for he began to make love to me. When I felt his first kiss on my hand, I started! I was about to jerk it away, when I remembered how my husband had treated me and I let him go on. Ah! he knew how to make love!" she declared, with the admiration of a savant. "When I returned to my husband that night, I was frightened! I knew that I cared for Albert more than I should and I wanted him to protect me. When I tried to talk to him he told me to run along and play with Albert! And I did! I went! I went! I went! I----" The voice trailed off into a sob. She buried her face in her arms for a few moments and the table shook. The girl on the bed was in a semi-hypnotic trance and did not stir. When Jacqueline raised her head her face was set in its usual stony mask. "When I came back that night," her voice was hard and high, "I was no longer a pure woman. I crept into bed and wept, afraid that my husband would question me when he came to say good-night. He didn't come. He was thinking about one of his problems and forgot it. All my remorse was gone in a moment. I didn't think of him or my boy. I was mad--crazy! I gave myself up to Albert without a thought of the future! "But it didn't last long!" she wagged her head solemnly. "My husband came home too early one night and found us in my room. Never should ha' been there! Never! Never, never! But I thought I hated him so much that I wanted to be untrue to him in his own house. Well, when he opened the door he just stood there and looked at us for a minute and didn't say a word. Then he went off down the hall toward his study. We ran down-stairs and out of the house and----" She stopped, her eyes wavering and her face wrinkling, as the absinthe or the ether apparently sketched a humorous picture on her mind. "Hee! Hee!" she cackled hysterically. "I'll bet he was surprised when he came back! Hee, hee, hee! I never thought of that! Hee, hee, hee! Ha, ha, ha! I never--ha, ha, ha!" And she rocked back and forth in uncanny mirth until the laughter changed to sobs. Then she stiffened suddenly and tried to glare at Marie with watery eyes. "What you laughing at? S'there anything funny?" she demanded, belligerently. The frightened girl, who had not made a sound, began a stammering protest. She was too much fascinated by the evil story and its creepy narrator to think of rushing out of the room. "'S all right! All right! But don't do it again," Jacqueline warned her. "Now, le' me see! Oh, yes! Well, Albert and I went down South and bought a little place in the country and lived there for a long time. Happy? No, I wasn't happy! I wanted my boy. My boy! My boy!" And again she burst into tears. "I hadn't been there but a little more than a year," she went on, snuffling and wiping her eyes, "when I told him I couldn't live without my baby and I was going to ask my husband to forgive me. He begged me not to do it, and for months I was afraid to try. At last, he took pneumonia and died. "I wrote three letters to my husband, asking Aim to see me, and he never answered. That made me all the more afraid to meet him, and I don't think I would ever have had the courage if I had not overheard a conversation between two men in a café one evening. They had just come from Paris. They were lawyers, and one of them was wondering at my husband's strength. He said that my boy had been dangerously ill, and that my husband was beside his bed all night, but in Court every day as usual. "When I heard that my baby might be dying I nearly swooned; and, before I had recovered, the two men were gone. I called a cab and drove to the railway station as fast as I could, and within a few hours I was in Paris. Nearly all of my fear of my husband was gone in my grief about my baby and I hurried to the house where we had lived as fast as a horse could go. When I got there I found that he had moved to Passy shortly after I--I left him. It was late in the evening when I found the place." Jacqueline paused and her head sank slowly on to the table. After a few moments she sat up and reached feverishly for the ether bottle. "The--hugh!--maid knew--hugh! hugh--knew, me," she coughed, "but I begged her to tell my husband that a woman wanted to see him, without giving him my name. When he came in he tried to put me out of the house without listening to me. I groveled at his feet and begged him to let me see my boy! I told him how I had suffered and how bitterly I had repented the wrong I had done him, and for a time I thought he would yield and forgive me. But when I told him that my lover was dead he thought that was the only reason that I had returned to him and he went mad with rage. In spite of my tears and struggles he pushed me out of the house and--and--and--I had lost--my boy--forever!..." "You remember that, d'you hear?" she demanded. "You can kill a man, and if you've any sort of reason everybody may forgive. But if you're untrue to your husband--it doesn't make any difference how much reason you have--every-body'll kick you...." CHAPTER XIV SIC ITUR AD AVERNO Jacqueline fumbled in the box for another cigarette and held it, unlighted, in her hand as she went on. "I don't remember much what happened for the next few hours after that. I must have found my way back to Paris somehow, because while it was still dark I was standing at the edge of an embankment looking into the Seine. "It was raining and my clothes were wet through and through. I didn't know what I was doing or how I got there. A light on the other side threw a reflection across, almost to my feet; and, as I looked down, I saw my baby in the water!" Her voice had dropped until it was barely audible across the room, and she leaned toward Marie, her eyes shining with an insane light. "I s'pose you think I'm crazy, eh? Couldn't have seen? Well, you don't know all about babies, my girl! "D'you ever see your baby in the river?" she demanded, with hoarse fierceness. The girl's only reply was a dry sob and a shudder. "Well, you will if you run away with that d----d soap peddler of yours," she grumbled, settling back in her chair.... "I was just going to get into the river and take him in my arms when someone caught hold of my wrist and I heard a man's voice asking, 'Are you ill, madame?' "I don't know what I said, but he put his arm through mine, led me into a little café where he made me drink some brandy before he would let me say a word. Then he called a cab and asked me where I lived. "In the light of the café I had a chance to look at him when the brandy made me feel a little warmer. I knew by his accent that he was an Englishman. He had curly brown hair and a pink and white skin--altogether a nice-looking young man! He seemed to be less than thirty, and he talked and acted toward me as he would have if I had been his sister. "When the cab came he wanted to take me home in it. I told him that I had no place to go and begged him to go away and leave me. He sat down again and I don't remember how much of my story I told him. "He told me afterward that I fainted in the cab; but when I could understand things clearly once more, I was lying in a big soft bed in a beautifully furnished room. There were pictures and statues and heavy draperies everywhere. Foils and arms and books were scattered about. There was a little table covered with bottles beside my bed and a nurse sitting near by. When she saw that I was awake she told me that I was in the Englishman's apartment and that I had been delirious for three weeks. "In a little while he came in and told me how he had brought me home and had sent for a doctor and nurse. The doctor said that I had narrowly escaped brain fever. I went to sleep again in a little while and did not wake until the next day. The nurse stayed less than a week after that and he came into my room and read and talked to me by the hour. He told me all about himself. He was the son of a wealthy English family and had developed a love for painting which he had ample money to cultivate. "He was a bright, cheerful young fellow, and in his company and through his care I grew strong rapidly. He never asked me to tell him one word about my past or my plans for the future. When I was able to sit up comfortably in bed he brought his easel into the room and painted me. He was given honorable mention for it. "All this time I was worrying about what I was to do when I grew strong enough to leave his rooms. I made up my mind that I would try to find work of some sort in the millinery shops. One day I mentioned to him that I would be leaving in a short time, and he looked very grave and asked me what I intended doing. I told him and he approved of the plan. In all this time he had not as much as given me a passionate glance. "He insisted, when I was able to go out, that I should make my home there, until I was established in a place where I could make a living, and loaned me the money to get clothes that I needed. I did not love him, but I worshipped him for his goodness. "It was disappointing work--trying to find employment, and I could not make enough to live on decently. I had never had to be very careful of money before, and I did not know how. He advised me, and helped me, cheered me all he could, and we ate supper together every night. "I was making a few francs a week trimming hats, and when we began telling our experiences of the day those little suppers were almost merry. I was learning to hate my husband with a hate that will be with me till I die," and the glow of her dark eyes put the seal of truth on the words, "and when John--my Englishman--told his jokes and blunders, the pain of the longing for my boy did not hurt so much. "Then I lost my miserable position, and it was days before I got another, although it was a better one when I did find it. During that time he was even more thoughtful and attentive and did not give me a chance to feel hopeless very long. "The night, after I went to work again, we were sitting in the room where I had lain ill and he was telling me, with many laughs, about a picture that a fellow student was painting. As I watched his clean, handsome face and listened to his cheery talk I thought of all that he had done for me--that he had asked for nothing and received nothing but my empty words of gratitude--and my eyes filled with tears. The next moment I was kneeling before his chair, kissing his hands.... "His story stopped with a gasp, and I felt him tremble. Then he drew his hands away and raised me up to him and I kissed his lips and eyes and hair again and again. And ... that night ... I gave him ... all I had ... to give!... "He never really loved me, but he was happy with me for a long time, and when he went back to England he took me with him. His home was only a few hours' ride from London, where he found apartments for me, and he was with me more than he was at home. "Finally his visits were not so frequent and regular and they kept falling off, until once I did not see him for nearly three weeks. When he came he told me he had to tell me something that he was sure would hurt me, but he couldn't help it. He had fallen in love with an English girl, whom he had known all his life, and hoped to marry her; so he would have to break with me. He was always very liberal in money matters, and he wanted to keep on sending me the same allowance that he had given me when I settled in London. But I was too proud--then--to take it. I gathered together what money I had saved, packed my clothes and left that day. "I took a cheap room and started out to find work again. I was given a place as clerk in a millinery store and by living as carefully as I could I did not have to draw often on my savings. But I had to draw on them a little and I was beginning to feel reckless, when an American theatrical man, who was spending part of the summer in England, came into the store one day o buy some ladies' gloves. I waited on him, and--well, in a few days I left my cheap room, and that fall I went back to New York with him. "He wasn't as careful of my feelings as the Englishman was----You'll find that out, too, my girl," she broke off, with a grin of drunken cynicism. "After the first two or three, your lovers don't think much about your feelings. He left me destitute in less than a month after we got to New York! "I tried to get work but I couldn't. The woman where I roomed took all of my clothes, except those had on, to pay for my room, and turned me out. I walked the streets all that night and the next day without anything to eat, and the next night stopped a well-dressed man and asked him if he could give me enough money to get some food. He walked on as if he had not heard me, and then next instant a man stepped out of a doorway and told me I was under arrest! "He took me to a police station where I spent the rest of the night in cell, and the next morning I was taken to court. The detective who had arrested me told the judge that he had seen me speak to a strange man on the street, and the judge gave me my choice of paying a fine of twenty-five francs or going to prison for a month. I tried to explain that I had had nothing to eat for two days and that I had only asked the man for a little money, but they would not listen to me. Just as they were about to take me away to prison, as I had seen them take three or four other girls before me, a young man, very stylishly dressed, came forward and said that he would pay my fine. The clerk took his money and he led me out of the courtroom. "When we were outside I tried to thank him, but I was so weak with hunger and weariness that I could hardly speak or stand. He took me to a little restaurant a few steps away and made me eat until I felt that I would never be hungry again. During breakfast he learned that I was alone, friendless and penniless, and he said he would help me. I went with him and he took me to his room where ... we stayed all day! "That night he took me out, saying that he would get me a room of my own. We went to a nice-looking house not far from one of the main streets of the city where a pleasant woman met us at the door. He asked me to sit down while he explained about me to the woman and when she came in to show me to my room she was very kind. The next morning my clothes were gone from my room and there was nothing in their place but a low-cut wrapper that I couldn't wear on the street. I was a prisoner.... "I was in that house for more than a year and I made sometimes seventy-five--a hundred--a hundred and fifty francs in a day and a night, but I was never allowed to keep any of the money. The woman took part of it and the man who brought me there got the rest. I was on the point of trying to run away two or three times, but the girls in the house told me that I would be arrested and sent to prison and would have to come back to him in the end. Several of them had tried when they were first made slaves...." The voice that had been dispassionate, almost impersonal through the latter part of the story, suddenly ceased. Jacqueline gulped at the ether bottle again and lit the cigarette she had been holding in her fingers. She was silent so long that Marie looked up at her, with something between a sob and a shudder. "Is that all?" she half whispered. The woman once more burst into a harsh, eerie laugh. "All! All!" she repeated with drunken scorn. "Oh, hell! That's only the beginning! Where d'you s'pose I've been for the last fifteen years?--Well, I've been where you'll be if you run off with your soap peddler!" and she glared wickedly. "I was sent all over the country," she went on, "always living the same life, and always with a different master. At last I got back to New York and had to go on the streets to make a living for myself and money for the man that owned me. One night, when my feet were wet with rain and I was cold all through, a girl showed me that an opium pill would make me feel better. "After that I was never without some sort of drug, but I found out that ether is the best. Ether is the best!" And her eyes rested lovingly on the little bottle. "I don't know how many years I was in the 'land of the free.' I'd have been about as well off there as anywhere else if it hadn't been for a lot of fool-women who were always trying to save me. There's a lot of women over there that have plenty of money and nothing to do, and instead of doing nothing they keep sticking their noses into other people's business. I'd like to choke some of 'em!" she blazed out viciously. "Save me!" she sneered with her mirthless laugh. "They got hold of me once when I was arrested and gave me a place where I could make twenty-five or thirty francs a week if I worked hard. All the time they looked at me and acted as if I was some new sort of a wild beast. When they put me in that work-shop they all called and said, 'Now, you're all right!' "'All right!' I could hardly help laughing in their faces. They couldn't put my boy in my arms nor clean the stain from my body or drive the hell out of my soul, but they thought that twenty-five francs a week ought to be a good substitute for all three. It wouldn't much more than buy my food and whiskey and drugs. And because I left I was, 'incorrigible' and they sent me to prison----! "When I was released the man that was collecting my money at that time told me that I wouldn't be of any more use to him in New York and he sold me to a man who was taking some women to South America. It isn't hard to get a lover in South America, and I had been there only a little while when I was free. Then I roamed around from one city to another, sometimes with one man, sometimes with another, until I met--this"--she nodded toward the door--"in Buenos Ayres. A woman in a dance-hall at Caracas taught me how to tell fortunes with cards, and when I learned that I had not long to live and would see my boy before I died I wanted to get back to France. He brought me." There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of Marie's soft weeping. Jacqueline looked at her reflectively. "Now, you're going to go the same way I did," she went on with a solemn air, born of the stimulants. "Remember what I tell you, m'girl. When you run away with that man you're through with being a decent, happy woman! I was an aristocratic prostitute once. You'll never be anything but a common one! Nobody'll try to stop you. Women'll be a sight harder on you than men. The men'll amuse themselves with you and push you a little farther down, but the women'll push you down and swear at you while they're doing it!----Well?" "I'm sure--Anatole--will never--leave me!" sobbed the girl. Jacqueline gazed at her as if trying to decide whether it were worth while to continue the argument. Then the ether moved her to impatient anger. "All right, you d----d fool!" she snapped, "Get out of here!" Marie rose, weeping more loudly and bitterly. "Isn't there--something--I can do for you?" "No! Get out!" As the door closed behind the girl Jacqueline's head fell on the table with a long convulsive sob. She was silent for a long time and then, sitting up, she turned once more to the cards. CHAPTER XV THE SWELLING OF JORDAN Laroque almost skipped with delight as he hurried back to the Three Crowns. The prospect of making plenty of money without working for it acted like champagne on his restless, reckless mind. Before he had walked a hundred steps he was building air-castles to be inhabited four or five years hence. He had no intention of remaining long as an employé of Messrs. Perissard and Merivel. The pay was good and the percentage of the two "missions" that had already been unfolded to him would be larger. He told himself that the first really big sum of money that he collected he would brazenly put in his pocket and whistle at the partners. Then he would buy out a small café somewhere in a paying neighborhood and settle down to a life of ease. And if the woman at the hotel had really brought her husband a dower of considerable size, as Perissard's logic seemed to prove, here was the chance made right to his hand. He would get the money, abandon the woman, and the rest of his years would be a pathway of ease. So he sprang up the stairs, three at a time and threw open the door of the room, singing a song of the dance-halls. Jacqueline glanced up as he came in and then went on with her reading of the future. He tossed his hat on to the bed, kicked a chair up to the table and dropped into it with a cheery: "Do you know, old girl, this man Perissard is a wonderful old chap?" "Is he?" she asked, absent-mindedly, without raising her head. "I should think he was!" was the enthusiastic response. "Brimful of ideas!" "Has he got anything for you?" "Rather! He's offered me a place in his office?" "What does he do in his office?" "Oh--business!" At the evasive reply, Jacqueline raised her head curiously. "What kind of business?" she asked, with a trace of interest in the thick voice. "Oh, business of all kinds! He really is an extraordinary man! Do you know, the moment he set eyes on you he saw that you were a woman of good family?" These were the first words that she seemed to hear clearly, and her face displayed a foolish smile of gratified vanity. "Did he really?" "Yes! 'There's blood in her,' he said," went on Laroque, impressively. "Those were the very words he used." Jacqueline raised the ether bottle. "Here's his health!" she cried, taking another drink. "I told him he could go and bet on it!" continued Laroque. "You--you didn't tell him--who I was!" exclaimed Jacqueline, a dawning fright in her bleared eyes. She had forgotten for the moment that Laroque did not really know. "Not much!" was the emphatic reply. "No," he laughed. "I told him, after making him promise to keep it secret, that you were the daughter of a general--that your father and mother were very rich--that your husband was a marquis and you had brought him 300,000 francs on your marriage!" Jacqueline's hysterical cackle was added to his laugh. "That's good! Veree good!" she chuckled. "And he b'lieved it, did he?" "Every word of it! What do you think of that? Three hundred thousand francs! Ha, ha! And I suppose you didn't bring him a son, did you?" Jacqueline fell into the trap without a thought. She stiffened with drunken dignity. "I beg your pardon!" she said, with a haughtiness somewhat impaired by her difficulty of enunciation. "I did not bring my husband 300,000 francs on my marriage, certainly! But I did bring him 125,000!" Laroque hid the gleam in his eyes. "Oh, nonsense! You're joking!" he laughed, "125,000 francs!" "I 'sure you it's true!" declared Jacqueline, solemnly. "Tut, tut! You're stretching it some!" "Not a sou--more nor less!" "Truth and honor?" he cried, laughing and raising his hand in the gesture of the oath. "Truth _an_' honor!" "A hundred and twenty-five thousand francs?" "A hundred and twenty-five thousand francs!" And she nodded her head with heavy importance. "Then where's the money?" he suddenly demanded. Jacqueline stared at him in mild surprise. "Wha'd'you mean?" "Did your husband give the money back to you?" His voice had changed from a bantering tone to excited harshness. "No, of course not!" she replied roughly. Laroque sprang up, pretended anger in his face. "I can't believe you were such a fool as that! Do you mean to tell me that when your husband turned you out you didn't ask him for the money?" "The money's not mine!" she mumbled, her eyes wandering. "Whose is it, then?" "My son's!" The words were barely audible. "But you're alive still!" he protested angrily. "Your son will get it when you die!" "My son thinks I'm dead," she replied, wearily. "His father told him I was. And when he was twenty-one he probably came into my fortune." Laroque half-turned away with a quick gesture of impatience. "What a fool you are!" he cried, disgustedly. "I don't suppose he saw a sou of it!" He was racking his mind for some lure that would draw her husband's name from her. But this last lead was fatal. Jacqueline glared at him suddenly, her eyes wild. "What the hell's it to you?" she blazed out fiercely. "You've got nothing to do with it, have you? What business is it o' yours, anyway?" "But you ought to clear it up!" protested Laroque, in a milder tone, as he saw that he had erred. "That's what Perissard thinks, and Perissard knows what he's talking about." "What business is it of Perissard's?" she shouted. Laroque extended his hands soothingly. "He only spoke in your interests!" he hastily explained. "When I told him you had brought your husband 300,000 francs, he asked me whether you had got them back again. I said I didn't know, and he declared that you had a perfect right to the money." "Well, I shan't claim it!" declared Jacqueline, sullenly sinking back into her chair. "Why not?" he persisted. "Because I don't--want to!" "But why?" Jacqueline burst into tears again. "I'd rather beg in the streets!" she wept in a high whine. "I'd rather starve in the gutter man ask that man for a son!" "Yes! yes! Of course, I understand that!" he agreed, eagerly. "That's natural pride, that is! But you might get somebody else to get your money for you. You might give somebody the power of attorney." The sobs stopped abruptly and she stared at him in drunken scorn. "Signed with my name and address, eh? No, thanks!" "Well, a letter then," he suggested. "I should think a letter would do just as well. Look here! Give me a letter and I'll go and get your money for you!" "I'd rather die than let my son know I'm alive!" she cried, her voice hoarse with passion and weeping. "He's not to know at any price! I'd rather kill myself! Yes, I would! Kill myself!" "But he'll never know!" protested Laroque. He was fairly dancing with excitement. But Jacqueline apparently did not hear him. "If he ever thinks of me," she went on between raging and sobbing, "I want him to regret me and I want him to feel sorry now and then because I'm not with him. He never knew me! I want him to respect my memory and love me!" "Now, don't get excited!" interrupted Laroque soothingly. "I don't want him to know what kind of a woman his mother is. And he shan't know it!" she shouted with sudden fury. "He shall never know it, I tell you! _Never_! I tell you! _Never!"_ "All right! Don't lose your temper! Who on earth is going to tell him? I certainly won't, and It isn't likely his father will." Jacqueline sank back into her chair and glowered at him. "I don't want to talk about it any more!" "But the money's worth the trouble!" he insisted, trying to hide his exasperation. "D----n the money!" "A hundred and twenty-five thousand francs! Think what a difference they'd make to us!" "Oh, shut your d----d mouth!" she growled. "I don't want to talk about the money, I tell you!" Laroque's eyes sparkled. "Look here, my girl!" he cried, threateningly. "You keep a civil tongue in your head or I'll teach you who you're talking to!" Jacqueline measured him with that boundless contempt that is given only the very drunk to feel. "You can't teach me any more than I know about you!" she retorted with unmistakably insulting meaning. Laroque elected to ignore this last thrust and ostentatiously looked at his watch. "Will you write me a letter so I can get the money?" he demanded with an air of finality. "_No_!" she screamed. He took off his coat and vest and went into the dressing-room with the remark that "he could do without the letter." Jacqueline did not at first catch its significance but an idea slowly worked into her brain. "What do you mean?" she demanded. "Oh, there's no trouble about finding a Deputy Attorney!" was the cheerful reply, accompanied by noise of splashing. She rose unsteadily. "What are you doing in there?" "Dressing." "Are you going out?" "Yes, my girl, I'm going out." "Where are you going?" she demanded. "To Paris," he replied, calmly, through the open door. "This evening?" "Right away!" "Then I'll come with you!" she declared, determinedly. "No, you won't!" he replied, coolly, returning into the room. "Perissard objects." Jacqueline faced him with dilated eyes. "You're not to try and find my husband!" she cried, between anger and dread. She swayed on her feet. The thick slur had disappeared from her voice in the instant. "Mind your own business!" snapped Laroque, picking up his hat and coat, "and I'll mind mine!" "You are not to ask him for that money!" she cried, her voice rising shrilly. "I'll do just as I like!" he sneered. Jacqueline clutched the lapel of his coat with both hands and glared into his face with blazing eyes. "You shall not go!" she screamed furiously. "What kind of a fool do you think I am?" he cried, roughly, trying to break away from her grip. "Who'll stop me?" Jacqueline, with clenched teeth, clung grimly to his coat. "Take care, my girl!" he cried, threateningly, as he tried to wrench his coat out of her hands. "Take care or you'll regret it!" "You shall not go, I tell you! You shan't go into that house and see my child. I won't let you go!" Laroque jerked his coat out of her grip and in the same motion threw her violently against the bed. "Let me alone!" he snarled, and stalked into the dressing-room to get his traveling bag. Jacqueline lurched to her feet and staggered over toward the hall door.... The room was reeling around her in crimson streaks. He must not pass that door! At the price of her life, he must not pass that door! ... There was no key! ... He would go and tell her husband of her shame!... Her boy would blush now for the mother, for whose memory he had wept.... Crazed with rage and horror and drugs she put her back to the door and stared helplessly around the room. The dresser was at her right, and there within easy reach was his revolver! With a gasp she clutched it as Macbeth might have reached for the phantom dagger.... What was his life compared with the thought that her boy would know his mother's shame?... She heard him coming and hid the revolver in the folds of her skirt. Bag in hand, he walked briskly up to the door and attempted to push her to one side. "No! You shan't go! you shan't go!" she panted, struggling. "We'll see!" he laughed, derisively, getting his hand on the knob. [Illustration: "You shan't go" she panted struggling.] "Take care!" "Don't be a fool!" he snarled. "Get out of the way or I'll _make_ you!" And at the word he shoved her roughly against the foot of the bed. With an effort she regained her balance. "_There_--then!" The pistol flashed up and at the same instant the report rang through the house. Laroque dropped his bag, and his right hand went up to his left side. She gazed at him fearfully and he stared back for a few moments with a look of blank amazement. Then his eyes suddenly glazed and he pitched forward on his face at her feet, rolled over and was still. There was a rush of footsteps up the stairs and down the hall and frightened voices calling back and forth. Then the door was thrown open and Victor, followed by a dozen guests and servants, dashed into the room. Jacqueline was still standing with the warm pistol in her hand, looking down at the face of the dead man. She did not even lift her head when they entered. Victor took the pistol out of her limp fingers and called in a shaking voice: "She's killed him! Run for the police, somebody. Quick!" Jacqueline did not take her eyes off Laroque's still, white face. "There's no hurry," she said, in dull, passionless tones. "I shan't try to get away!" CHAPTER XVI A WOMAN OF MYSTERY It is a well-known fact that a sudden and powerful shock will have a remarkable counter-effect on a mind under the influence of alcohol and other stimulants. The shock is immediately succeeded by a numbness which in a few moments gives way to an astonishing clarity of thought. Jacqueline went down the stairs of the Three Crowns and out into the street on the arm of a sergeant of police. She was in a trance, but before she had been taken a hundred steps from the door she had come to a full realization of her position. The officer who arrested her was a veteran, and knew full well that in the two or three minutes immediately after the commission of a great crime the criminal is more than likely to make startling admissions or give hints that lead to the discovery of the real motive. This does not, of course, apply to habitual criminals who seldom utter a syllable until their defense is totally prepared and tested. On the way down the stairs Sergeant Fontaine asked the woman, point-blank, why she had killed her companion. In the voice of a somnambulist she replied that she had done it to prevent him from committing an "abominable act that would bring grief and shame on someone she loved." And after that she could not be induced to open her mouth. They were followed to the police station by a curious and excited throng of men and women, the latter reviling the prisoner and threatening her with the extremity of punishment while the sergeant had to stop several times and threaten to draw his saber to keep some of the men from laying violent hands on her. "The law's delay," upon which the high priests of jurisprudence have opened the floodgates of their wrath, generally proves a blessing in criminal cases. For, by a singular contradiction of a natural law, the laws of a civilized community rise above their source--a majority of the individuals. The commune is less cruel than its component parts. Let an ultra-civilized, hyper-refined man stand between the slayer and his victim and watch the life blood's fitful spurts from a wrecked artery, and all his Veneer of refinement and civilization is burned up in a blast of horror and rage. He does not know--does not care to know--whether there was justification for the deed. In a breath he is hurled back thousands of years, and he demands the instant and primitive justice of his tribal forefathers. Fortunately, it is not then that laws are either made or executed. Men who have grown gray and wise in the analysis of the human brute sit far removed from scenes of violence and frame the laws, and they are executed when natural passions have cooled. Of this latter type of man was Henri Valmorin, the public prosecutor of Bordeaux. He was remarkably able and ambitious, but his ambition did not take the form of worldly advancement. He had a comfortable income beyond his salary and enough reserve to give his daughter a handsome _dot_, so he did not feel the need of a higher position for the sake of money. His office as public prosecutor appealed to him and he filled it so ably that he would have been advanced a dozen times had it not been known that he preferred this work to any other. He had a true and broad conception of his functions. His work was to protect the community and punish its enemies, but he never erred by falling into the habit of regarding every individual accused of a crime as a presumptive criminal. He was rather counsel for the defense until the police and examining magistrate placed in his hands the weapons of attack. Then he became the shrewd, skilful, uncompromising prosecutor. M. Valmorin was in the office of his friend, M. Feverel, Examining Magistrate, when the woman of the Three Crowns was brought before him. He remained in the background and paid but little attention to the proceedings--for as much as a minute. Then his interest was keyed up to the highest pitch. M. Feverel began with the usual questions as to name, age, place of birth, etc., which are to examiner and examined a mutual test of strength, as two pugilists dance around each other for the first round of a fight without striking a blow. To the surprise of both men the woman maintained an absolute and indifferent silence. There was nothing about her suggestive of sullen stubbornness. She looked over M. Feverel's head through an open window with an expression which indicated that she had not even heard the questions. M. Valmorin studied her face closely. Through the ravages of vice and the mask of despair his experienced eyes could see the wreck of a departed beauty and refinement of features that must have been once remarkable. M. Feverel, though less experienced, perceived also that there was apparently some deep and tragic purpose back of the silence that he had at first attributed to the sullen brutishness of her class. But how to break it down? "Madame," he said, courteously, dropping his brusque professional manner, "you must see that your present course cannot but be prejudicial to your case. The authorities will have no difficulty in ultimately establishing your identity but you can readily save us much inconvenience by replying to these simple questions----Is your name Laroque? Was this man your husband?" The woman gave no sign that she had heard. M. Feverel bit his lip. He had purposely used the most polished French and he was sure that she understood him. But he was apparently no nearer to making her speak. "What did you mean by saying that you killed this man to prevent him from bringing grief and shame on someone you love?" he demanded suddenly. The lips moved almost imperceptibly, and for a fraction of a second the eyes wavered and met the magistrate's sharp gaze. But she did not make a sound and the next moment her face was as impassive as before. M. Valmorin, narrowly watching her, waited for the magistrate's next move. The latter had, at command, a voice as soft and persuasive as a woman's and many an evildoer had felt its spell and had been lured to confession. "Do not think, madame," he began, his tone at once, respectful, inclusive and inviting, "that I would try to draw you into saying anything that can injure your cause! Do not consider me an enemy. I know that you shot this man Laroque in the Hotel of the Three Crowns and I am more than willing to believe that you had some good reason for this terrible act. Your words to the policeman who arrested you are an indication of that. It is not my duty to try to convict you of crime which was probably justifiable. The man that you killed was an ex-convict and society is well-rid of him. You have probably simply saved the State the expense of putting him in prison once more and keeping him there. I am more than willing to believe that your reasons for killing him were excusable, even in the eyes of the law. "Look upon me as a friend!" he continued persuasively. "In my office there is no criminal, no judge. You are simply accused of a homicide which you undoubtedly committed. But the law holds that many forms of homicide are justifiable. Convince me that you had even a fairly good reason for shooting this man--and I won't be hard to convince--and it is likely that you may never even come to trial--that your story may be buried with the few who must know it. My stenographer and my friend, the prosecutor, will leave us here together and you can explain everything to me and to me, alone." Valmorin rose with a bow and passed slowly out followed by M. Feverel's stenographer. Jacqueline's eyes met his as the door closed and he began to speak again. "Now we are alone!" and the tone was even more inviting and confidential. "You can talk to me now without fear. I do not care to pry into the secrets of your past. You need not mention any names. But just to tell me as simply as you can the reason you killed this prison rat!" The voice put them on the same level--made them allies against the dead. In its soft, gentle rise and fall, in the dark sympathetic eyes and clean, aquiline face there was something approaching hypnotic power, as several ladies of Bordeaux knew. She began to feel a strange sensation of rest and comfort and vaguely wished that he would go on. M. Feverel's trained eye caught the all but imperceptible relaxation of the rigid figure. A thrill of triumph ran through him. He was winning! But there was no sign of elation or impatience in his voice or words when he continued. He begged her not to think that the machinery of the law was directed against her. Justice was not blind. She was clear-sighted. She was not sternly even-handed, but more frequently merciful. She had long since forgotten the bitter law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. She could make allowances for the frailty of humanity. She could understand that there might be many circumstances under which an assassination might be justifiable. Nay, more--when it became a duty to kill! Twice when he paused, Jacqueline's lips trembled and her eyes looked into his with yearning. She seemed about to speak, but her lips closed firmly and her glance sought the window, without a word uttered. Suddenly he rang a bell and a policeman appeared at the door. "Remove the prisoner!" he commanded in a harsh, curt tone that fell on the woman like the blow of a whip. She hesitated and half-extended her hand as if to stop him and once more the magistrate thought that he had triumphed. But the impulse was conquered and she passed out of his office without having uttered a word. M. Valmorin returned and in reply to his questioning look, the magistrate shook his head. "She would not speak," he said, wearily. M. Valmorin's interest as an expert was aroused, and with the magistrate he went over the examination in detail. M. Feverel told him the impression that he had made once or twice and expressed the fear that she would never be forced to tell her story. "You can see, my friend," he said, "that she is addicted to the use of drugs. She has now been without anything of the sort for forty-eight hours. That means that her nerves must be in a bad shape, and it also means that she has an iron will to conceal the fact so determinedly and foil the examination." M. Feverel's prophecy proved true. In the first few hours of her arrest Jacqueline's instinct told, her she would be helpless in a verbal duel with these trained men of the law. An apparently aimless question and a careless answer might be the combination to open the locked gates of her past and then she would have killed Laroque in vain. So, as the days passed and the examinations followed each other with nerve-wracking persistency, she wept, shrieked, and groaned for hours in her cell, begging for ether or morphine, but not a word of her story could be forced from her. She refused counsel and when the court appointed an advocate she would not see him. At last, M. Feverel abandoned hope. "You will have to try the case as a plain homicide," he told M. Valmorin. "The testimony of the servants and the policeman is ample for conviction but--what is back of it all?" "And you could not even find out her name!" mused the prosecutor. "Call her Madame X!" snapped the exasperated magistrate. "She is about as thoroughly and stubbornly mysterious and elusive as any quantify in the algebra of my youth!" M. Valmorin laughed a little and told the story in the courts that day. The mysterious woman had already attracted some attention among the journalists who frequent the halls of justice, and when brilliant M. Feverel called her "Madame X," as an acknowledgement of defeat, her case in the three days became a _cause célèbre_ in Bordeaux. In the cafés, in the courts, in the homes, nothing else was talked about for weeks. In spite of the elaborate passport system and registry, here was a woman who absolutely defied the authorities to find a clue to her identity. The police of Buenos Ayres could not help them, and beyond that city her past was a blank. Who was she? Where had she come from? Why had she killed her companion? Was he her husband? These and a hundred other questions were asked every hour of the day. Scores of rumors were set afloat. She was the daughter of a noble house who had run away from a convent. She was the wife of a marquis, had left him and married an adventurer. She was the queen of a band of kidnappers. She was the leader of a secret society of murder. She had served a sentence for counterfeiting in an American penitentiary. She was a nihilist, escaped from Siberia. And so on. Dozens were turned away from the prison gate every day. Morbid women and curious men pleaded with the police for a chance to look at her, assuring the chief that they would be able to identify her. A number of hysterical women started! a fund for her defense, but this was firmly suppressed. Advocates of established reputation, who had smilingly congratulated Maître Raymond Floriot on his first brief and expressed the hope that it would lead to something worth while, now regretted that they had not been appointed by the court to defend her, though it was an unprofitable and hopeless case. But M. Valmorin was unaffectedly pleased. He was glad that young Floriot had stumbled into a position to attract so much attention, and was almost sorry that the young man had no chance to win his case. The reason is not far to seek. For several years M. Valmorin and M. Floriot, père, had seen that M. Raymond was in love with blue-eyed, sweet-faced Helene Valmorin. There was nothing remarkable about this, as numbers of young men in Bordeaux were in precisely the same state of mind. But what was important was that it was equally plain that Mademoiselle Helene was passionately in love with the dark-eyed, curly-haired young advocate. The fathers knew that it was only a question of a very short time when they would be formally requested to sanction the marriage. Hence M. Valmorin's desire to see his prospective son-in-law rise as rapidly as possible. That the young man would rise, he was certain. He had inherited, as has been mentioned, his father's faultlessly logical mind and love of his profession and his mother's quickly sympathetic and emotional temperament. His mind was quick to grasp a situation or an unexpected point and equally quick to give it its true value. Coupled with these gifts he had a marked facility of expression and a smooth, vibrant voice. As Mademoiselle Helene said, he made love beautifully. M. Valmorin was prepared to do what he could financially, and he knew that Raymond's father would strain himself to establish the young people properly, but the young man must look to success in his profession to raise a family. M. Floriot had written that he would come over from Toulouse to watch his son handle his first case, and M. Valmorin planned to talk things over with him then. It was to be a great day for Raymond and all who were dear to him had promised to be in court when he appeared for the first time on the firing-line. Rose had promised to take charge of Helene. His father, by request of the President of the Court of Bordeaux, would sit on the bench with the judges. "Uncle" Noel and Dr. Chennel were coming from Paris. The young man worked hard all day on his case and told Helene about it in the evening, and then worked far into the night. He read parts of his speech to her, while her father pretended to be eavesdropping in the hall "to learn the secrets of the defense." He did not have any false notions about the strength of his battle-line. He knew that he had a bad case but he was determined to do as well as could be done. As he remarked, "it is hard work defending a homicide whose conduct is the best evidence for the prosecution." As the day approached he was nervous, anxious, restless--but ready. CHAPTER XVII TWO LOVERS AND A LECTURE It was a day of excitement in the house of Floriot the morning before the trial. M. Floriot arrived from Toulouse on the preceding evening and M. Valmorin planned to call on him that morning if he could find time. Helene was at the house before ten o'clock eager to see Raymond. He had gone to the prison early to make a last attempt to see his client, and she put in the time of waiting by chatting with Rose and lamenting the fact that Raymond's father could not be the judge in the case so he would have a reasonably certain chance of winning! "It's hard enough to get cases, isn't it?" she complained. "I don't know anything about it," replied Rose cheerfully, "but I guess the law is like anything else--you have to make a beginning!" "And Raymond is beginning to-morrow!" murmured the girl, as if it had just occurred to her. "To-morrow he is pleading his first case!" "And a capital case to begin with it is!" declared Rose. "Everyone is talking about it!" "Oh, I hope he'll win!" exclaimed the girl, almost tearfully. "I haven't thought of anything else for weeks!" "Oh, I'm not anxious about that!" returned Rose, with the confidence of an old and loyal servant. "M. Raymond is clever, I tell you! He'll convince them!" "Do you think he'll be back soon?" asked Helene, anxiously. "That depends!" smiled Rose. "Does he know you're here?" "I--I don't think so---No!" Helene replied, turning hastily to the window of the study where they were talking. "I only told him that my father would probably call on M. Floriot this morning at eleven o'clock, and that I might come and meet him. Rose, what are you laughing at?" "Oh, nothing in particular." "Don't tease me!" she pleaded. "Well, I was laughing," chuckled the housekeeper, "because you came here in such a hurry at half-past nine to meet your father, who won't be here until eleven!" Helene blushed. "I suppose you think I'm an awfully silly girl?" "Oh, dear, no!" Rose assured her with a grave little smile. "I'm only too glad to see that you and Raymond love each other." The girl's face lit up with a quick little gleam of pleasure. "Really, does that please you?" she asked softly. "Very much!" nodded Rose. And the next moment the girl kissed her withered cheek. "I brought the young man up, you know," she continued, slipping her arm affectionately around Helene's waist. "And I feel as if he belonged to me a little. I am very happy that he has made such a good choice." "He is going to talk to his father about it this morning," said the girl, timidly. Rose smiled. "I don't think he'll surprise him much." Helene gave her a startled look. "You don't think M. Floriot suspects?" she gasped. "That you and Raymond are in love with each other? Oh, of course, not!" laughed Rose. "He would have to be blind not to see it. Everyone in the neighborhood knows it!" With a gasp of consternation the girl hid her face in her hands. "The baker asked me yesterday when the wedding was to be celebrated," went on the housekeeper, wickedly. "And day before yesterday it was the butcher. A few days ago the grocer made some inquiries about it, and----" She was apparently prepared to continue indefinitely when a joyous voice from the doorway interrupted her. "There you are!" And Maître Raymond Floriot hurried in. "Yes, there she is--quite by accident! You didn't expect to see her, did you?" They heard her laughing as she went down the hall. Helene managed to recover a semblance of her prim dignity as she gave him both her hands and looked up into his dancing eyes. "You did not expect to see me this early, did you?" she asked. "No, I didn't expect you in the least!" he laughed. "I shouldn't wonder if that was why I came so early myself!" "But seriously, aren't you surprised to find me here?" He bent over and kissed her lightly on the lips. "No, I'm not surprised," he replied, gravely. "I like to think that you are as impatient as I am,--and it seems weeks since I saw you!" "Twelve hours!" she laughed happily. "Twelve years!" "Have you thought of me since then?" He answered that question in a manner that the custom of some thousands of years has proved to be the best. "Did you dream of me?" "Not at all!" he shook his head and smiled. She moved away in mock offense. "Reality is too sweet a dream, dearest, for us to need dreams!" he added, tenderly. This little speech was followed by a silence of several minutes, in which occurred the performance considered proper under the circumstances. Helene drew gently away. "Have you been working hard?" she asked. "Yes, I was up at five o'clock this morning finishing my brief. I'm quite ready now." "And the case comes off to-morrow!" she exclaimed, softly. "To-morrow is the great day!" nodded Raymond. "And I'm to hear you!" "Of course! But I'll have to find a place where I can't see you. I'd forget what I was talking about if I caught sight of you; and just think what it would mean if I should stutter and stammer and break down with you in court! Why, I'd never get over it!" He shivered with a dread that was not all feigned. "And you've made up your mind to speak to your father to-day?" she asked timidly, after a little pause. "Yes, I'm going to speak to him as soon as he comes in," declared her lover with an air of hardihood that was far from real. "Well, you must be careful not to stutter and stammer and break down then!" she smiled. Rose put her head in the door an instant. "M. the President is here!" she whispered and was gone. "Now, then, shoulder arms!" ordered Helene, in an eager undertone as they heard the step of the father in the hall outside. She was bubbling with inward laughter as her panic-stricken love hastily fell back out of the direct line of vision from the door. So when M. Floriot walked up and kissed her he did not at first see that his son was present. "Good morning, my child!" he said with a ten der smile. Raymond edged forward and cleared his throat. "You might say, 'good morning, my children,' father," he suggested in an uncertain voice. "If you like!" was the smiling reply. And taking a hand of each he said: "Good morning, my two dear children!" Helene ran over to his desk and returned with an enormous bunch of roses in a slender vase. "I brought you these this morning, monsieur," she said, looking up at him shyly. M. the President took them with both hands and buried his face in their fragrance. "They are only less charming than the donor!" he declared with a stately bow. "Oh, M. Floriot!" she protested with a blush, and smile. Then as he turned to replace the' bouquet on his desk she added in a whisper to Raymond: "I think you might speak to him now." "So do I!" he agreed in the same tone. "My father told me to tell you that he would be over to see you about eleven o'clock, M. Floriot," she remarked as he turned to them again. "I shall be charmed to see him!" "I'll go and bring him--if you don't mind!" she offered eagerly. M. the President smiled. "I'll try not to be very angry!" he assured her. The three walked slowly out into the garden where the older man found a seat in a little rustic house while the lovers moved slowly toward the gate. He pretended to be much absorbed in the morning paper, but watched them slyly out of the corner of his eye. Instead of going outside, Helene stopped behind a big shrub that totally concealed her, and Raymond came back with not exactly eager strides. Within ten feet of the seated figure in the rustic house he stopped and twice opened his mouth, but could not get out a word. His father did not seem to have the slightest idea that he was there. He took another timid step; and then, as the paper rustled, he bolted in the direction of the bush that concealed his ally. Helene stepped out, shaking with silent laughter, and waved him back with imperious gestures. He returned once more to the attack, but again gave way to panic at the critical moment. At last he edged up to within conversational ear-shot and asked with a mock solemnity that did not conceal his nervousness: "Is M. the President extremely busy?" "Extremely!" replied his father, without looking up from the paper. Raymond winced slightly; and, then, raising his eyes to the sky, murmured dolefully: "What a beastly nuisance!" M. the President glanced up in surprise. "Did you want to speak to me?" he inquired, politely. "Yes--and quite seriously!" His father rose with a laugh and folded his paper. "For how long?" he demanded, with a mischievous smile. "Not very long!" Raymond hastily assured him. "At least, I don't think it will take long to say it." "Try it in four words!" "I love Helene Valmorin!" he blurted out, desperately. M. the President fell back a step, his face expressing the utmost astonishment, but his eyes were laughing. "Do you!" he exclaimed. Raymond gazed at him doubtfully a moment and then saw it all. "Did--did you know it?" he asked, sheepishly. His father burst into a hearty laugh. "What an old fool you must think I am!" The lover's instinct told Raymond to strike quickly. "And I want to marry her," he went on. M. the President nodded. "I can quite understand that," he smiled. "Well, God bless you both and make you happy! Is that all you want to say?" "Yes, that's all!" breathed his son, with a deep sigh of relief. M. Floriot gazed into the eyes that were so like the lost woman's, and all the love and yearning that he had ever felt for mother and son shone in his own. He stepped up to the boy and laid a hand affectionately on his shoulder. Raymond felt the grip of the fingers as his father began to speak. "My boy," he said, in grave, gentle tones, "you're a good fellow, and you've been the one joy of my life. I think Helene is worthy of you. Love her, my lad! And love her always--whatever happens! Be her friend, her guide, her mainstay--as well as her husband. "Above all--do your best to understand her! Women are not always easy to understand; but don't leave your wife out of your own life! "Share everyone of your joys and everyone of your sorrows with her. You will have hours of gloomy thought and bitterness, perhaps--most men do. But never forget in those unhappy hours that a husband has a heavy responsibility. Always remember, Raymond, my boy, that you are responsible for the life and soul and happiness of the woman who gives herself to you!" The young man listened gravely with bowed head. As his father paused he looked up with a tender smile. "I don't think the responsibility will be a very heavy one in my case, father," he said. "Life sometimes proves to be exceedingly cruel, my boy," replied his father, shaking his head. "Valmorin will be here presently and I will have a talk with him. I must tell him a secret before I ask him to give you his daughter's hand." "A secret!" exclaimed the young man, startled. "Yes," nodded his father. "I'll tell you what it is afterwards." Raymond felt a growing uneasiness and dread. Lovers are easily-alarmed. "Your secret--won't--won't prevent him----?" he stammered. "No!" replied his father with a light laugh, "ii don't think so." CHAPTER XVIII A GHOST RISES For a time the two were silent in that close communion which is possible only to father and son, who are all in all to each other. Then the father's face lit up with a whimsical smile. "Mind you, I don't expect that Helene will be very rich," he said. Raymond laughed. "I don't either!" he replied. "You have the 125,000 francs of your mother's fortune and I will add as much as I can myself." "Oh, we'll get along all right," his son assured him with a smile. "You seem to forget my briefs." "Impossible!" laughed his father. "You haven't any." "I have one that isn't bringing in anything in the way of money but it is giving me advertisement that will lead to profitable cases." M. the President, being of the old school of lawyers, shook his head at this value set on publicity; but he made no comment. "Are you ready for to-morrow?" he asked. Raymond nodded. "I saw the presiding judge this morning and he was full of praise for you," went on his father with a fond gleam in his eyes. "They are going to make a place for me to-morrow." "So you told me. But you'll make me terribly nervous!" protested Raymond. "Not a bit of it! Have you really an interesting case?" "Well, yes and no," replied the young advocate. "A wretched woman who has killed her lover for no reason that anyone can find out--and she won't speak. For the last three months she has not uttered a word in the prison that can be of any interest to anybody. We don't know who she is, where she comes from or what her name is. I haven't even seen her or heard the sound of her voice; and when the names of the judges, the public prosecutor and her defending lawyer were sent in to her, she tore up the paper without looking at it." "And couldn't the Examining Magistrate get anything out of her?" "Nothing! He dubbed her Madame X," added Raymond with a smile. "What sort of a woman is she?" "Oh, like all women of her kind. She is, I understand, addicted to the use of drugs, and her supply being cut off she naturally turns from stupidity to hysteria all the time. I'm afraid it's one of the cases that are worked out before they come to trial. I don't see how the court proceedings can last much longer than five minutes. But I'll do my best." "Try pathos," suggested his father. "Try to work on the sympathies of the judge and jury." "That's what I'm going to do," smiled Raymond. "I've been practising tears in my voice for the last three days, but I'm not going to have an easy time of it. It's rather hard to find excuses for a woman when you don't know why the crime was committed." And he shook his head dubiously. "On the contrary, that gives you every chance," declared his father. "See here! Your client won't speak and so she can't contradict. This gives you a fine opportunity to invent a host of reasons. Make the jury respect her silence! Throw a veil of mystery over the whole crime and give your imagination play. Say that she is the victim of heredity--say anything you can think of that will work on the jury's feelings and you have a good chance to win." Raymond listened with eager attention. "I had something of that in mind," he said, "but I'll work it up stronger than I intended. I didn't----" He was interrupted by a cheery shout from the house-door and both turned quickly to see M. Noel hurrying across the garden. The elder men greeted each other with hearty affection. "And how is the young disciple of St. Yves?" asked Noel. "St. Yves?" questioned Raymond with a puzzled smile as he shook hands. "Why, certainly! St. Yves of Brittany! Don't you know----? How does the Latin go, Louis?" M. the President threw up his hands and laughed. "Let me see! 'Advocatus sed non latro--latro'--I can't remember it. Anyway, it fits your case, Maître Raymond. He was an advocate but not a thief, and devoted his life to the service of the poor. So he is supposed to be the patron saint of the lawyers--though more of them to-day are rather inclined to lay votive offerings on the shrine of Mammon. So to-morrow is the great day, eh?" "Yes, to-morrow is the day." "Feel frightened?" "A little excited," the young man admitted. "Have you really come all the way from Paris to be here to-morrow?" "Of course I have!" The lined face softened. "I'd have come from Kamschatka to see you fight your first battle!" "Chennel is coming, too," remarked Floriot. "Good! You were not particularly blooming the day I met the worthy doctor, young man," said Noel, turning to Raymond. "No, so I've been told," smiled Raymond; "Dr. Chennel is going to take a practice at Biarritz. He often comes here to see me. Now, I think I'll go over my brief again, father, and see if I can't work in some of the things you suggested." "Yes, that's it! Shake them up, my lad!" nodded his father. "After all she may be more sinned against than sinning--or you can make them think so, anyway. Well, what do you think of the boy?" he demanded, as Raymond disappeared in the direction of the large bush near the gate. "You ought to be proud of him." "I am! Very proud!" said Floriot, softly. There was a long pause. Floriot motioned his friend to a seat on the bench in the rustic house and sat beside him. He felt the need of comfort and counsel; for the hour that he had dreaded for years was upon him at last. He must tell Raymond the truth about his mother. Twenty years of tireless searching had, indeed, proved utterly vain. There was every reason to believe that Jacqueline was dead and that the true story of the boy's mother might be buried with the three men and one woman who knew it. But this loophole of escape from the ordeal did not even present itself to a man with Floriot's stem sense of honor. How would he take it? Floriot had no idea of defending himself or trying to distort the facts in the least degree. If anything, he would take more than his share of the blame for the wreck of his home. It would be terrible enough to tell Raymond that his mother had fallen, but what would he say when he was told that she had repented and pressed her forehead against her husband's shoes only to be hurled out, friendless, on the world--condemned to death, or worse than death? Would the boy--at last knowing why he had grown up without a mother's love, and all the million priceless and nameless joys the phrase contains--rise in the wrath of his outraged youth and denounce the father who had robbed him? What would he say to the neglect that had driven his mother to shame and placed the brand on his own pure life? And now, whatever the cost, he must tell him.... In the twenty years they had pursued a common quest, these long silences were not unusual when the two friends met. Noel divined a little--but only a very little--of what was passing in the Other's mind. He had not foreseen this crisis. "I never look at him without thinking of his mother!" he said, softly. "Louis, it's awful to think that in all these years we have never been able to find a trace." Floriot's only reply was a somber shake of the head. "God knows we've hunted!" "I've done all I can--we've done all we can!" returned the husband in bitter hopelessness. "Detectives, advertising--everything! I haven't told you that I went to Monte Carlo a few days ago to see a woman that seemed to answer the description. The usual result!" And he gazed out across the garden. "And last week I thought I had come to the end of the hunt," returned Noel. "The first night that I reached Paris I dropped into a music hall and thought that I recognized her on the stage. I got an introduction to the woman. She had Jacqueline's eyes to a line almost, but that was all. I was sure from the front of the house! You remember those eyes?" "If I could only forget them!" groaned the other, burying his face in his hands. There was a long silence. In the last few years growing despair and the inaction that is the inevitable outgrowth of the conviction of failure had succeeded the constantly reviving hope that had fed the energy of the search. Their talks, recently, had been bitter reminiscences instead of optimistic plans. At last Floriot raised his head and spoke in a low voice. "I think sometimes that she must be dead or we should have found her!" he said. Noel, staring at the ground between his feet, did not answer at once; then: "Perhaps!" he said in the same low tone. "And perhaps that is the best thing that could have happened!" The other understood his meaning and shuddered. There was another pause and then Floriot spoke of the matter that lay heaviest on his mind. "I have never--dared yet--to tell Raymond--the truth about his mother," he said, unsteadily; "but I have to now!" Noel stared at his friend in amazement. "Tell Raymond!" he exclaimed, "Why?" "He wants to marry and--and--I must tell him the truth!" There was a smothered exclamation from Noel as he grasped the situation. He was silent a few moments and then he asked with meaning emphasis: "Will you tell him the _whole_ truth?" Floriot straightened up with a determined expression. "Yes!" he declared, "I am going to tell him everything! He must know the whole unvarnished truth and--God knows what he'll think of me!" Noel confusedly murmured something meant to be reassuring but Floriot interrupted. "Oh, I have no illusions!" he cried bitterly. "Youth doesn't make allowances! It is possible that he may love me a little after he has heard all of it but he will never forgive me for having robbed him of his mother!" Noel pulled himself together and replied with a heartiness that he did not feel. "Why, of course, he will!" he declared. "He knows what kind of a man you are--what a father you have been to him--and he will not need to be told how you have suffered and repented." The other shook his head hopelessly. "The boy is in love!" he groaned. "If it were not for that there might be some hope. But, don't you see?--He is madly in love with a pure, beautiful girl. He will try to put himself in my place and fail! He will try to imagine himself throwing Helene out into the street in the rain after she has grovelled at his feet--and he will think I am a monster!" Before Noel could think of a counter-argument Rose hurried out from the house with a visiting card in her hand. Composing himself, Floriot looked up and asked: "What is it, Rose?" She handed him the card with: "It's the two gentlemen who were here before and wanted to see you, M. the President." "Perissard! Perissard!" mused the President, studying the bit of pasteboard. "I don't know the name. However, Rose, show them in and take M. Noel up to his room." The friends silently gripped hands as a mute promise that they would renew the conversation later and Noel went in with the housekeeper. CHAPTER XIX HOPE AT LAST Messrs. Perissard and Merivel were not hopelessly shocked and grief-stricken over the death of Laroque. They were grateful to his memory, inasmuch as he had put them in the way of making 125,000 francs with more ease and less risk than they had expected to incur in collecting, at the outside, three-fifths of that amount in Bordeaux. They were doubly grateful when they reflected that his timely death had saved them ten per cent of that amount. While he would have been useful in the matter of the public official of Bordeaux, they felt that they would eventually find as trustworthy an agent. On the whole, from the viewpoint of the partners in Confidential Missions, nothing in his life became him as the leaving it. The fact that he had been murdered by the wife of the President of the Court of Toulouse put that gentleman in position where he could not possibly refuse to pay for "discretion." They went over all this as they sat in a café not far from the Floriot house in Bordeaux and waited for M. Floriot's return. It had taken them nearly three months to finally fix upon him as the husband of the homicide of the Three Crowns. They went to Toulouse to interview him and found that he had just gone to Bordeaux to attend the trial in which his son was to appear for the defense. They fairly hugged themselves with pious joy when they saw the shocking corruption of the whole proceedings. "We have got him, my dear Merivel," declared M. Perissard. "And he has actually come to Bordeaux to see the trial!" "A most shrewd man!" rumbled his colleague. "I should say so!" returned M. Perissard. "He has his own son chosen for the defense, and according to gossip, his son is to marry the daughter of the Public Prosecutor!" "A _most_ clever man!" insisted M. Merivel in a voice like the roar of the surf. "And they tell me that Floriot's wife refused to say a word to the Examining Magistrate." "Of course! The husband has been telling her what to do!" "Obviously! Obviously!" agreed the senior partner with a vigorous nod. "In this way, you see, her name won't even be mentioned, and as nobody knows her in Bordeaux----" A two-handed gesture and a shrug of the shoulders filled the hiatus. "None of the trouble will get out of the family," concluded M. Merivel heavily. "The jury will find her guilty or acquit her--that is of no interest whatever. But no one will ever know the inner interest!" "Excepting ourselves, my dear Perissard," corrected the ex-schoolmaster. "Exactly! Exactly! It is _most_ providential!" It was with the situation thus reasoned out that the defenders of society presented themselves for the second time at the house of M. Floriot, when they were conducted to the garden. M. the President received them with grave courtesy and invited them to take seats. With all three comfortably settled, M. Merivel being a little in the background, he asked: "What can I do for you, gentlemen?" "Have I the honor of speaking to President Floriot?" inquired M. Perissard in his most polished manner. "Yes, monsieur. And your name is----?" "Perissard! This is M. Merivel, my associate," he added, rising with a bow to that gentleman who also rose and saluted M. the President with a profound obeisance. "And what business brings you to Bordeaux?" M. Floriot inquired once more when they had all resumed their seats. "A--a matter of some delicacy, M. the President," began the senior partner, clearing his throat impressively. "A matter which interests you personally." M. Floriot raised his eyebrows a trifle. "Well?" M. Perissard fidgeted slightly. When he spoke again it was in his most "inspiring" manner. "Every man has, at one time or another in his life, reason to regret the past, and these regrets--however secretly we may hide them--remain open wounds," he began, heavily. "Alas!" exclaimed M. Merivel in gloomy thunder. M. Floriot stirred impatiently. "Probably true. But kindly explain yourself!" he commanded, shortly. M. Perissard at once decided that nothing was to be gained by moralizing, so he went directly to business. "M. the President, you were Deputy Attorney in Paris twenty years ago, were you not?" "Yes." "And if I am correctly informed you married a lady named Jacqueline Lefevre, at the Town Hall in the Rue Drouot. She brought you a dot of 125,000 francs." Floriot's glance was troubled and uneasy. "Your information is perfectly correct," he said. "But why all these questions?" "Because they are indispensable," M. Perissard assured him, and he was backed up by a ponderous nod from his colleague. "In family matters of this kind one cannot take too many precautions. In matters of honor, I have always said----" Floriot half-rose. His face had paled slightly and his manner was nervous. "My time is limited!" he broke in, abruptly. "I beg your pardon, monsieur! I beg your pardon!" And four fat hands motioned him back to his seat. "I will be brief!" M. Perissard assured him. "Your marriage was not altogether as happy as it might have been, and one day you had a violent scene. You turned out of your house the lady who had the honor of bearing your name!" "How do you know this? Who told you?" demanded Floriot. His voice was low and menacing. "Ah, it is true, then!" exclaimed M. Perissard. The other gave no sign and Perissard took the silence as an assent. "Very good! After this incident," he continued, hastily. "Madame Floriot traveled. She traveled very far and was more or less--happy. More or less!" Floriot sprang up, white-faced and trembling. "She is dead!" he cried. "You have come to tell me she is dead!" M. Perissard smiled cunningly. He could appreciate good acting. "Oh, no, I haven't!" he replied. "She is _alive_?" "Undoubtedly!" "_Most_ certainly!" thundered M. Merivel. "And where is she? In Paris! In France! Where?" cried Floriot, almost too excited for coherency. M. Perissard was beginning to be really puzzled. Was it possible that this man did not know who the woman of the Three Crowns was? Was it possible that he had not arranged the whole defense? "Do you really mean that you don't know where your wife is now?" he demanded. "No! No! But you've come to tell me, haven't you?" He was feverishly eager. He walked up and down before them with quick nervous strides? and looked from one to the other with burning eyes. "This is really most extraordinary!" declared M. Perissard. "I should have thought with all your means of getting information----" "I have never heard from her or of her since the day she disappeared!" "Never?" insisted the other, wonderingly. "Never! I thought she was dead!" "Extraordinary! Isn't it?" M. Perissard appealed to his partner. "_Most_ extraordinary!" was the prompt response. Floriot was fairly dancing with excitement and impatience. "You know where she is and where I can see her?" he demanded. "Indeed, I do!" declared M. Perissard. "Tell me, man! Tell me!" he cried. M. Perissard stroked his chin a moment. All this excitement indicated excellent opportunities for financial advancement and he did not want to spoil anything through unwary haste. "I have not been instructed to tell you," he said, guardedly. "Good God, man! You don't mean to say you refuse?" "My--my client has so instructed me----" began M. Perissard in his most professional tone. "You come from her?" interrupted the other. "She's your client? What does she want? What can I do?" M. Perissard drew a quick breath. "She wants the money she brought with her on her marriage!" he plumped out. "Her dot? Her 125,000 francs?" "She wants that sum refunded to her!" affirmed M. Perissard, pursing up his lips impressively. "She would have had it long ago if I had known where to find her!" cried Floriot. "Then you will raise no objections?" There was a triumphant gleam in M. Perissard's pig-like I eyes. "None whatever! The money is here!" The two partners rose as one and held out their hands. "I will tell her what you say--word for word!" declared the senior. "Give me her address so I can go and see her at once!" pleaded Floriot, eagerly. "M. the President," replied M. Perissard in his heaviest manner. "I must beg you to excuse me: I have no authority from my client to give you her address." "But----" "I am only acting on instructions!" "But what reason can she have for refusing to see me?" he protested, wildly. "I don't know that she has any reason, but before giving you her address I must ask her permission!" was the firm response. "Then you are going to see her?" "I shall write to her," replied M. Perissard. "I may confide one thing in you, I think, without exceeding my professional duty." "Yes?" questioned Floriot eagerly. "May I count on your discretion?" "Absolutely! You have my word for it!" M. Perissard appeared to hesitate. "Madame Floriot is just now in--ah--er--tight place," he said. "A very tight place!" echoed his partner. "She is absolutely penniless!" "Great heavens!" gasped Floriot, horror-stricken. He dropped into a chair and buried his face in his hands. "Are--are you willing to send her some money?" inquired the senior partner. Floriot sprang up, his face flushed. "By all means!" he cried, his hand darting into his coat pocket. "Will you see that she gets it? _Immediately_?" "Without a moment's delay!" M. Perissard assured him, heartily. Floriot bowed his head as he worked with the leather tongue of his pocket-book, and when he looked up his eyes were misty with tears. "Gentlemen," he said, brokenly, "you must excuse my emotion--when I think that--she--is without a penny----! Here are 300 francs--all I have with me. Send it to her at once and----" "She shall receive the money to-day!" M. Perissard broke in. "Allow me to give you a receipt. And when can I see you again, M. the President? Will the day after to-morrow suit you?" "Can you have an answer by then?" "I hope so!" "I'll expect you in the morning then." He smiled almost joyously and held out his hands to the visitors. "We can go and see her together! I need not ask you to be discreet, need I? Nobody must know!" he added anxiously. M. Perissard drew himself up haughtily. "M. the President!" he said stiffly, "I have not the honor of being known to you, but remember these words: Whatever may happen, we are engaged by our word of honor to remain silent--my partner, you and I!" "Silent as the tomb!" echoed M. Merivel. "And you may always reckon--always, I repeat--on our entire discretion!" Floriot put out a hand which was eagerly gripped. "Gentlemen, I thank you!" he said in a grave, unsteady voice. And with many a scrape and hand-shake and assurance of their perfect discretion the firm of Perissard and Merivel bowed itself out. For a moment, after they had gone, Floriot stood with head raised and fists clenched. "Oh, Jacqueline! Jacqueline!" he murmured aloud, as if he felt that the cry from his heart must reach her ears. "Forgive--forgive me!" Then he darted across the garden and into the house like a boy. Up the steps he raced, three at a time, and burst into Noel's room with tears streaming down his face, speechless with emotion. Noel started up from the suit-case he was unpacking and stared at his friend in alarm. "For God's sake, Louis!" he cried. "What's the matter?" "Jacqueline--Jacqueline is alive!" In a bound Noel was across the room, with a grip on his friend's shoulder. "What do you mean?" he cried, shaking him fiercely. "Alive! Who told you?" In broken, gasping phrases Floriot told the story; and as Noel finally grasped the details, he clutched his friend's arms, and with a shout of joy hurled him on to the bed. Floriot bounded back to his feet and swung his fist into the other's back. Then these two gray-haired men threw each other around the room, rolled over together on the bed, knocked chairs over and tables upside down, shouting and laughing at the top of their lungs. "Day after to-morrow! Twenty years, old man! I knew we'd win out at last!" The uproar reached Raymond in his studio at the other end of the house and he ran up to see what was the matter. As he threw open the door of the disordered room he saw his father and M. Noel shaking hands as enthusiastically as if they had not met for years. "Why, father, what's the matter?" he cried. Floriot ran over and threw an arm across his son's shoulders. "Raymond, my boy!" he shouted, "A wonderful--an unbelievable happiness has come to your father! I can't tell you anything yet but, my God! I'm happy!" CHAPTER XX THE TRIAL BEGINS Although he had been up most of the night at work on his speech, Maître Raymond Floriot was among the early arrivals at court the next morning. His unlined, youthful face wore an expression of grave responsibility as incongruous as his black advocate's gown when he took his seat at his desk. The more he had hammered at his appeal to the jury the more he realized that in the strength of his speech lay his one hope of victory. All the evidence would be against him. He did not expect to profit much by cross-examination. The affair was too simple. He must move the jury to pity. There was not even a chance to instil a doubt into the minds of the men who would judge his case. That is usually the chief aim of a defending lawyer in a bad murder trial. He does not have to convince twelve men of conscience that his client is innocent If he can work one drop of the poison of uncertainty into their minds he is usually safe. For the man of average imagination would rather violate his duty to the state a dozen times and let a dozen murderers go free than send one to the gallows and risk the punishment of remorse. "Certainty beyond reasonable doubt," which is the formula of the law, is a farce with most jurors. If there exists, to them, any doubt at all, nothing can convince them that that doubt is unreasonable. With this powerful weapon taken from him, the young advocate had but one left--an appeal to the emotions. Had he had to face a jury of cold, law-worshipping Anglo-Saxons or stolid, virtue-loving Teutons his best move would have been a plea of guilty and an invocation to Mercy. On these a lawyer might wear out an oratorical rod of Moses without producing a drop of moisture in the way of a tear. But here were volatile, easily moved Latins, and Louis Floriot knew his people when he told his son to "shake them up." So the young man decided to ignore the evidence and build his whole speech on the statement that the woman made to the sergeant of gendarmes on her way to the prison after the shooting--that she had killed Laroque to prevent him from "doing an abominable act." He was very nervous when he took his seat at the table reserved for counsel for the defense, just in front of the dock. He felt himself growing more uneasy when the judges in their robes of red and black marched in from their room at the rear and the clerk solemnly proclaimed that court was in session. The great hall was crowded to the doors with men and women from every plane of the social scale. Dozens of lawyers came to watch their new brother break his first spear. A number of seats were reserved for municipal officers. Veiled society women sat among them. Banker, butcher and baker rubbed elbows and craned necks in the general throng, and women of all descriptions squeezed and jostled their way through them. Raymond ran his eye hurriedly over the first rows and caught a smile of pride on Helene's lovely face, gazing at him over the railing that cut off the spectators from the attorneys and court officials. M. Noel and Dr. Chennel gave him reassuring nods as they met his glance and Rose waved her hand. He turned hastily away and began busying himself with his papers as the prisoner was led in between two gendarmes. She was crying and held her handkerchief to her eyes as she took her seat in the dock. Raymond watched her nervously and tried to say a few encouraging words but he could only stammer. M. Valmorin, from his desk on the opposite side of the "bank," smiled at his future son-in-law's symptoms of panic and gave him a friendly nod. Raymond had watched court proceedings in criminal cases so often that he was as familiar with the routine as a practised lawyer but now that he was for the first time an actor it all seemed strange and overwhelming. He was conscious only that Helene and his father never took their eyes off him but he never looked their way again. The voice of the clerk reading the charge sounded far away and seemed to be no part of the present scene. "--In consequence of which the woman, Laraque, is accused of having, on April 3rd, 19--, at half-past five in the afternoon, committed an act of voluntary homicide in Room 24 of the Hotel of the Three Crowns in Bordeaux, on the person of her lover, Frederick Laroque, a crime punishable by Articles 295 and 304 of the Penal Code." The voice stopped amid absolute silence, and then Raymond heard the grave, gentle tones of the kindly old President of the Court. "Woman Laroque, you have heard the charge against you. You are accused of having committed an act of voluntary homicide on the person of your lover, Frederick Laroque. What have you to say in your defense? Do you admit that you are guilty of this crime?" He paused and Raymond, turning in his chair, locked up at his client. Every eye in the room was on her. She was dressed entirely in black and wore a black cloth shawl over her head that almost entirely concealed her face, excepting from those directly in front of her. Her profile was toward the judges. The black background made her pallor almost ghastly. Her features were set and hard--a hopeless mask of chalk. She gave no sign that she had heard the President's words. "You refuse to reply?" he went on. "You persist in keeping silent as you kept silent under examination? Let me beg of you, in your own interests, to speak. Your silence can only be harmful to your case. You refuse to speak?"--He paused again. "The matter is in the hands of the jury. You shall hear the evidence against you. Clerk of the court, call the first witness!" A stir and a murmur ran through the court as the President settled back in his chair and the clerk called, "Victor Chouquet! Victor Chouquet!" Perissard and Merivel had managed to secure seats well forward and watched the proceedings with the interest of experts. "What did I tell you, my dear Merivel!" whispered the senior partner. "It has all been arranged!" "Of course it has!" While they were awaiting the appearance of the boots of the Three Crowns, Raymond gazed curiously at his client. It was the first time he had ever seen her, and he was wondering what tragic story was masked behind her stony, inscrutable face. She did not seem to be aware that he was alive, and turning her head, glanced over the row of judges. Suddenly Raymond saw her eyes widen with horror and amazement Her bosom heaved and her lips worked as if she were trying to speaks He rose hastily and leaned over the dock. "What is the matter, madame? Are you ill?" he asked in quick undertone. She turned to him with the jerky, uncertain movements of an automaton, but kept her eyes fastened on the bench. "What--who--who is that gentleman--talking to the judges?" she whispered. The words could barely be heard. "President Floriot, from Toulouse," answered Raymond. He supposed that she had asked this apparently idle question to conceal the real thought that had caused her agitation, and so went on earnestly: "Believe me, madame, your silence may lose your case for you. I beg you to speak!" She drew the cloth more closely about her face and stared out over his head with wild eyes. With a shrug of his shoulders Raymond dropped back into his chair and turned to listen to the examination of Chouquet. He was beginning to feel more master of himself and more certain that his case was hopeless. "State your name, age, and profession!" commanded the President as Victor took his stand behind the witness railing. "Victor Emmanuel Chouquet, twenty-nine years of age, boots of the Hotel of the Three Crowns," replied Victor in his high-pitched drawl. "Where do you live?" "At the hotel, M. the President." "You are no relation of the prisoner, are you, or in any way connected with her service?" "No, M. the President." "Raise your right hand!--Do you swear to speak without hatred or fear, to tell the whole truth? Say, 'I swear it.'" "I swear it!" repeated the witness. "Put down your hand. Give your evidence!" Victor shuffled uneasily up against the railing and turned to the jury. "On April 3d," he began, "a man and woman came to the hotel----" "What time was it?" interrupted the President. "It was a short time after lunch." "Go on!" "They had a trunk and a bag. I took them up to Room 24 on the top floor, and the man said, as he went into the room, 'Not a palace, is it?' And the woman said, 'Oh, what does it matter--this room or another one!' to which the man replied, 'Well, I don't suppose we will be here long.' Then they asked me for absinthe and cigarettes which I got for them, and the man asked me to leave the bottle." "Did they drink much?" interrupted the President. "I didn't notice." "What was the attitude of the woman?" "She didn't have any," replied Victor, and a titter ran over the benches. The court usher frowned and rapped on his desk. "Did she look happy, sad, calm or nervous?" explained the President, irritably. Victor considered for several moments. "She looked very tired," he replied. "Go on!" "Some time afterward my wife went up to their room for the police form and took down their names--M. and Mme. Laroque, from Buenos Ayres on their way to Paris." "Your wife was at the hotel?" "Yes, she was chambermaid there." "Why has she not been called as a witness?" the judge demanded with a frown. Victor rubbed his hand across his eyes and snuffled. "Because she's not there any longer. On the evening after the murder she left me and I haven't seen her since. A few days after she had gone she wrote me a note, saying, 'Don't worry about me. I am very happy. Take care of the child.'" There was a quick shuffling of feet and exclamations of pity and sympathy swept across the court. The usher frowned and pounded his desk again. The President's face softened as he watched Victor wiping away his tears, and he gave him time to recover before requesting him to go on. "At about half-past five, as I was taking water to a room on the same floor," said Victor at last, "I heard a shot fired and a shriek in Room 24. I rushed in and found M. Laroque lying on the floor in front of his wife, who held a smoking revolver in her hand. I took the revolver away from her and held her tight." "Did she say anything?" "She said, 'There's no hurry. I shan't try to get away.' Then the police came and took her off." "That's all you know?" "Yes, M. the President." "The prisoner is the woman you call Madame Laroque, is she?" Victor gazed at the white face above Raymond's head. "Yes, M. the President," he said. The President looked in the same direction. "Prisoner, you have heard the evidence of this witness? Have you anything to say?" he asked, solemnly. Jacqueline had not heard the evidence. From the moment she recognized her husband a thousand mad thoughts had stormed through her mind in a bewildering phantasmagoria. Her fierce hatred had given birth to a hundred fantastic schemes of vengeance that the situation made possible. Should she wait until her character and her shame had been painted their blackest and then tell the crowded court that he was her husband? Should she go to the place of execution and denounce him from the scaffold? No! She could not do that because of her boy. She had killed Laroque to hide her shame from her son. How could she proclaim it now and make that terrible crime useless? But couldn't she tell just enough to show _him_--God! how she hated him! who she was and to what he had driven her? She could picture his face as he recognized her and listened to the horrible story of her degradation. She was glad that there was no vice so low that it had not soiled her; for thus the greater would be his anguish when she proclaimed it.... "You insist on remaining silent?" the President was saying. "Wait a little! Wait a little while!" she murmured, but so low that even Raymond could not catch the words. "Gentlemen of the Jury, have you any questions to ask the jury?" He paused and turned to M. Valmorin. "Thank you, no, M. the President," bowed the Prosecutor. "Has the counsel for the defense anything to ask the witness?" The instinct of the cross-examiner triumphed over the nervousness of youth. "The witness has mentioned that my client had been drinking absinthe," said Raymond, rising. His voice was sure and steady. "I should like to know whether he thinks she was intoxicated." The President nodded and turned to Victor. "You hear the question? Was the prisoner drunk or sober when you ran into the room and found her with the revolver in her hand?" Victor shifted uneasily and appeared to hesitate. "Well, she was very much excited," he said. "There's no doubt about that, M. the President Her eyes were like a crazy woman's and her face was red and she didn't seem to know what she was doing." A stir and murmur from the benches told Raymond that the audience credited him with a point scored. "Would you say she was drunk?" he insisted. "Well, some would say she was and some would say she wasn't," replied the witness, falling back on his never-failing formula. A titter ran through the court at this conservative answer, and the president frowned. "What would _you_ say?" demanded Raymond. Victor's confusion was complete. "I--I wouldn't say!" he stammered. Raymond turned back to his desk with a shrug of his shoulders. "Counsel for the defense, have you any more questions to ask the witness?" demanded the court. "No, M. the President," was the reply. "Stand down!" commanded the President "Clerk of the court, call the next witness!" The next witness was Sergeant Fontaine, the gendarme who had arrested Jacqueline. He talked in jerky, military tones, and gave his evidence as if he were dictating an official report He told of arresting her in the hotel and taking her to the prison. "Did she say anything while you were taking her off?" asked the court. "I did most of the talking," he replied. "I asked her why she had killed Laroque and she said she had done it to prevent him doing a disgraceful thing which would have brought unhappiness and despair to some one she loved. I tried to make her say more, but she wouldn't. She said that she wouldn't say another word to anybody, and she didn't." No one had any questions to ask the witness, though it was plain from the manner in which some of the jurors gazed at the prisoner that the policeman's testimony had made an impression. They were the usual run of jurors--plain middle-class tradesmen with a rather better than average intelligence; and, as Raymond looked them over, he felt that there was grim work ahead if he would upset their judgment and make them follow the impulse of emotion. He did not think he could do it. Victor and the sergeant were the only two witnesses, and the President turned to Jacqueline when the gendarme had taken a seat beside Victor on the bench reserved for witnesses. "Before calling on the Public Prosecutor," he said solemnly, "I ask you for the last time, prisoner, in your own interest, to tell the jury why you committed this crime. You told the policeman who arrested you, and who has just given his evidence, that you killed Laroque to prevent him from committing an infamous and abominable act which would have caused trouble to some one you loved. To what act did you allude? To whom would it have brought trouble? Knowledge of the reasons which caused you to commit the murder may have an important influence on the jury in reaching a verdict. You refuse, to speak? You have made up your mind to say nothing----" He paused; and then: "M. the Prosecutor!" he announced. M. Valmorin rose slowly and bowed to the President, and then to the jury. It was an old story with him--the murder of a degenerate man by a fallen woman. He had only to go over an old formula. "There you are!" whispered M. Perissard to his colleague. "It is practically over!" "Gentlemen of the jury, I shall not keep you long," began M. Valmorin, in a gentle, pleasant voice. "The crime on which you have to give your verdict is simple and baneful. The woman has killed her lover--but who is this woman? What is her real name? Where does she come from? Who is she? We do not know! Since her arrest the prisoner has refused to answer all questions that have been put to her. She has not spoken a syllable in reply to the Examining Magistrate, and you have seen for yourselves that here in court she has insisted on remaining obstinately silent, although her silence cannot but harm her case--if she has the slightest shred of defense! "There is sometimes an explanation of a murder--if not an excuse for it--to be found in the motives that inspired it. Murders are committed for reasons of money, for reasons of love, for reasons of jealousy, or to quench a thirst for vengeance. And the passion which arms the criminal's hand, which disturbs her power of reasoning and which makes her act without thinking--this, to some extent, diminishes her responsibility and the horror which the act of murder makes every man feel." The jurors were leaning forward, their eyes fastened on his face and their reasons hypnotized by the musical, confident voice. "When one or other of these reasons is brought forward, justice may be tempered with mercy. But how can you be asked to find excuses for an act, the motive of which the prisoner refuses to disclose? By this very refusal we may be forgiven for believing--nay, we are almost forced to believe that they are the worst possible motives. I distrust, for my part, the impenetrable mystery in which the prisoner has robed herself, and I can feel no pity for a guilty woman whose lips have not uttered a word of repentance!" A loud, clear voice rang suddenly and sharply through the court. "_I will speak presently_!" A burst of laughter would not have been more disconcerting! M. Valmorin stopped, and every eye in the court was on the prisoner. Half of the men in the great room had started to their feet. The attitude and the look of suffering and the dark, hunted eyes were not visibly changed, but it was undoubtedly the woman who had spoken. The prosecutor bit his lip. Ten seconds before he had read in every eye in the jury-box, and in nearly every face in the courtroom, a placid acquiescence. Now there was pity in the glance of more than one of the twelve who would judge his case, and he would have to win them away from it. This would be harder than gaining their confidence at the outset had been. The usher hammered the top of his desk until the excitement died away and there was order in court once more. Then M. Valmorin began the work of repairing the damage. "As I was saying, gentlemen of the jury, we know nothing about the woman Laroque," he continued, calmly, as if he considered of little importance the sensation that accompanied the dramatic interruption. "We have found no proof that she was ever a resident of France. "In Buenos Ayres it is not known where she came from. During her stay in South America she did not, so far as we can learn, offend any of the laws of the country. In the month of March she took passage on board the Amazon for Bordeaux. Nothing particular was remarked about her during the trip, excepting that she told the fortunes of the passengers with a deck of cards--that she said she was certain she would die before long, and that she was in a great hurry to get back to France. This is all we know about her past. "On the afternoon of April 3d she arrived at the Hotel of the Three Crowns, and at half-past five she killed her lover--a man whose past will not bear scrutiny, and who had been sentenced for theft on two occasions. You have heard the evidence of the servant with reference to the overexcitement of the prisoner. I will draw no conclusion from this evidence, nor is it necessary to go into the question of the prisoner's moral responsibility, which overexcitement--caused by drink--may have affected. I will leave this phase of the case to my friend, the counsel for the defense--Maître Raymond Floriot----" A frightful, unearthly shriek drowned the soothing voice of the prosecutor and brought every man and woman in the courtroom, pale-faced and startled, to their feet. Several women screamed, and the others stared, frightened at the prisoner. She was standing, rigid and swaying, head raised and eyes closed, her stiffened arms held close to her sides, her hands opening and closing convulsively. Two gendarmes seized her and tried to force her back into her chair. "My God! My God!" she shrieked again and again. Raymond was beside her in a moment, his hand on her arm, begging her to be calm. "For God's sake! Stop torturing that woman!" roared a man's voice from the audience. It was the signal for a pandemonium! The usher pounded on his desk until the boards cracked, but the crowd lurched forward against the railing in a terrific uproar. "Let her alone!" "She's dying!" "Great God! It's Jacqueline! It's Floriot's wife!" shouted Noel in Dr. Chennel's ear. And the next moment that elderly physician was over the railing like a boy. He burst through the gendarmes and rushed over to the dock. But Jacqueline was again in her seat and waved him back. He and Raymond bent over her. "Are you ill? Shall I ask for an adjournment?" they asked breathlessly. "No! No! No!" she panted, "I'm all right--all right!" Her eyes were still closed and her lips worked as if she were trying to speak. Dr. Chennel's fingers closed over her left wrist. He leaned over and whispered reassuring words in her ear and gently patted her shoulder. The subtle magnetism cf the physician seemed to have its effect at last and she slowly opened her eyes and sat up. The din in the courtroom died as suddenly as it had begun, and the spectators shamefacedly sought their seats under the blazing eyes of the President. He was livid with anger. "This is the most disgraceful scene that ever stained a French court!" he cried in a voice that trembled with suppressed rage. "If there is another sound from the benches during these proceedings I will order the gendarmes to clear the hall!" Noel glanced quickly at his friend in his seat behind the judges to see if he, too, had recognized "the woman, Laroque." Floriot's face was buried in his hands. He pressed a handkerchief so tightly to his eyes that Noel fancied he could see the whiteness of the nails. Any great blow--mental or physical--is immediately followed by a practically complete cessation of all activity of the senses. The mind --if it works at all--revolves around singular and ridiculous trifles, utterly foreign to the disaster or its effect. It was this condition that the recognition of Jacqueline left her husband. He was conscious that quiet had been restored and that Valmorin was continuing his speech, but the scene and its actors seemed remote from his life. "As for the reason of the crime," the prosecutor was saying, "I repeat that we do not know it. Now that the prisoner has promised to speak, we may learn what it was." Speak!--would she speak!--Raymond was standing half facing the prosecutor, his profile toward the woman. His right hand rested on the top of the railing in front of the dock. Jacqueline's eyes were on his handsome head, and in them there was unutterable love and unutterable dread. His delicate nostrils were quivering, and a touch of color came and went in his cheeks. He was watching Valmorin with eager, anxious eyes. Timidly, as a child, her hand crept out and closed softly over his fingers. He glanced up at her quickly, with what was meant to be a reassuring smile, but the early stage fright was returning. The prosecutor was nearing the end of his speech and in a few moments he must rise to reply. She drew her hand away, and he looked from it to the woman for a moment as if something remarkable had happened. ... An invisible band that has never been measured by our mortal standards binds mother and child together. It, alone of earthly ties, takes no count of Time or Space, and joy and degradation and wealth and want and woe alike are powerless to loosen. It has been called the only unselfish love, but it is not that. For, "damned in body and soul," the boy clings to his mother as to a promise of salvation; and a mother, dying in shame and despair, yet sees in her child--Immortality!... As if it had needed but that touch of the fingers to draw the cord tightly around his heart, Raymond felt for a moment that his soul was going out to the wretched woman that he had never seen until that day. Emotions that he had never known before were stirred to life. A desire to take her in his arms almost overpowered him. And what it meant to the mother only a mother may know. "Speak!" She would commit a thousand murders and go a thousand times to execution rather than utter a syllable now!... "You, gentlemen of the jury, will weigh in the balance her sincerity and repentance with her guilt, and let your conscience be the judge of what punishment is proportionate to the crime she has committed." There was a rustle and low murmur of whispered conversation as M. Valmorin resumed his seat. "I don't think much of M. the Public Prosecutor," muttered M. Perissard. M. Merivel nodded his acquiescence without taking his eyes off the scene beyond the railing. The prisoner was huddled over the front of the dock, sobbing violently The President gazed at her with pity in his eyes. "Woman Laroque, will you answer my questions now?" he asked, kindly. She did not seem to hear. "You said a few minutes ago that you would speak." Jacqueline raised her wet, anguish-stricken face and held out both hands, as if warding off a blow. "No! Never! Never!" she cried, wildly, and sank down again. "Take time for reflection, and let me, for the last time, advise you not to remain obstinate!" persisted the judge. There was no reply save a storm of weeping that shook the dock. Murmurs of pity rose again and the usher rapped sharply on his desk for attention. "Counsel for the defense!" called the President, CHAPTER XXI CHERCHEZ L'HOMME Raimond straightened up with an effort and turned to face the jury. His face was almost as white as the prisoner's. His lips trembled and his eyes burned. From the moment the woman had pressed his hand he had been struggling with an emotion more unnerving than stage fright. Hitherto he had known misery only as we who never stir from home know the suffering of an arctic explorer. For the first time in his life he had been thrown into actual contact with the raw reality, stripped of the veneer and varnish of the story-teller. When he looked at the crouching woman and felt the railing tremble with her sobs he dimly understood the despair that could welcome death as a friend. If he had only known--if he could only have felt this way when he had written his speech! What was his speech? How did it begin? His eye met his father's for a wavering instant and the frightened gaze and livid features of the stern magistrate completed the demoralization of his son. His father saw that he would fail and shame him, he thought! He dared not glance toward Helene. He must begin! He fixed his eyes on a light stain on the dark wood of the jury-box and tried to remember the opening words of his address. They would not come. The overwhelming sense of failure, the foreknowledge that he could not make the jury feel the flood of emotion that had paralyzed his tongue, brought team to his eyes! The courtroom was preternaturally still. A juryman coughed, and at the sound Raymond felt an Overmastering impulse to scream or run out. There was a long-drawn sob behind him and he straightened up--rigid. He raised his eyes and the jury-box was a gray-black blur. His lips felt stiff and his tongue dry--but he must begin! He bowed stiffly and hurriedly to the bench and quickly drew the back of his hand across his eyes to clear away the mist of tears.... "Gentlemen--of the jury!" His voice sounded strange to his own ears, and he leaned with both hands on the table. What were his opening words?--It was useless! But he must stumble on some way! "I cannot--I will not try--to conceal--the very great emotion that I feel! I hope--you must pardon me----" He met the eyes of one of the jurors, and instead of the contempt and amusement that he had expected he saw a gleam of sympathy. Oh, if he had only the power to play upon it! Why couldn't he remember his speech? He could only tell them how he felt, and plead for mercy for the woman. "My wish is to be cool--and to keep calm--but my eyes fill with tears in spite of all--my efforts." And again he quickly dashed his hand across his eyes. He looked up at the men, who must judge him and his speech, with almost piteous bravery. "My heart is beating--quicker than it should! My voice is trembling--and it is all that I can do to keep from breaking down and crying like a child instead of pleading for my client--here before you. I crave your indulgence for this weakness--but it does not make me blush!" He threw back his head, and at last he saw the jurors clearly before him. "It is the first time in my life that I have come close to the bitterness of a woman's grief and misery and--my heart is tom by the fear that I shall not be able to prove myself equal to the noble task that I have undertaken!" He paused and wet his dry lips with his tongue. "I can find none of the arguments that I had prepared for the purpose of moving and convincing you, and my ready-made phrases have vanished from my brain, dispersed by one glance at the suffering and distress of this poor woman! "Look at her, gentlemen! No words of mine can have the power of tears to move you to mercy!" There was a falter and piteous break in his voice as he half turned and laid his hand on the dock. There was not another sound save the woman's sobs. The faces of the jurors told him that they were listening with eager attention and the fear of being made ridiculous began to pass. Blindly, Instinctively, he had stumbled on to the greatest rule of the greatest orator that ever lived: "Be earnest!" In those few minutes the jurymen had felt the force of clean emotion, of noble purpose, behind the stumbling words, and they waited breathlessly. With the growing confidence some of the arguments that he had embodied in his written speech came back to him; but he could not remember the words. "And there is a mystery--a veil of mystery which has not been torn by the evidence and still surrounds this woman for whom I am pleading," he went on. "Who is this weeping and despairing woman? Where does she come from, and why did she kill the man with whom she lived? We do not know!" His voice was gaining a strong, commanding ring. "She alone can rend this veil that surrounds her life, and she refuses to do so! She alone knows the secret and keeps it! Why? So as to mislead the cause of justice? Certainly not! For if that were her object, she would speak. She would try to justify herself. She would lie, so as to appear innocent! "She could find a dozen plausible reasons for the murder of her lover! A quarrel, a violence on his part, a momentary madness--nobody could give her the lie. Nobody saw or heard what happened immediately before the murder; and Laroque, the only person in the room besides the prisoner, is dead! But my client has disdained all subterfuge! She knew perfectly well what the consequence of her act would be--_and--she--has not--tried--to--escape it_! "'There's no hurry,' she said to the boots of the hotel, who wrenched the revolver from her hand. 'I sha'n't try to getaway.' And since then she has been silent. Why? Her own words tell us why, gentlemen, and will lift a corner of the curtain which hides the truth from us! "The policeman who arrested her has told us that he asked the prisoner why she killed Laroque, and that she answered: 'I killed him to prevent him from doing an infamous and shameful thing which would have brought misfortune on some one I love!' "This, gentlemen," he cried, his voice rising, "tells us the secret of this poor creature! "She killed this man Laroque, of whose past--as my friend the Public Prosecutor rightly said--no good was known. She killed this man who has, on two occasions, undergone punishment for theft and was capable of anything. _She killed him, because taking his life was the only way she could prevent an infamy that would have brought shame land despair on some one she loved!_ "Does this not explain the insistency of her silence? This woman, this poor wreck, who has been beaten down to the lowest rungs of the ladder of physical and moral misery, this wretched creature--_loves_! Good women will sweep their skirts from her touch in the streets, but love is in her heart, and the happiness of him or her whom she loves is dearer to her than her own life! "One day she sees a menace to this happiness and kills--kills without hesitation the scoundrel who was about to destroy it!" Gone was the stage fright--gone the fear of failure! As the ear of a musician tells him when his hands have found a chord, so is there a psychic ear which tells the orator that the spirit of his audience is in harmony with his words. As this telepathic message reached his brain, Raymond felt at last within him the power to move the hearts of men. Words poured forth in a rushing flood! "Love was the motive that made her a criminal! Love, and love only! And whom does she love to the sacrifice of herself? Is it a father who is respected and honored by all in his old age? Is it a husband or lover to whom she has been false and whom she left long ago? Is it a child who knows nothing of his mother's shame and lives unconscious and happy? "We do not know! But some such love is the secret of my client and the reason of her silence. She cares nothing for what men may say of her, nor for man's judgment of her! She does not care for her own life, and sacrifices it with gladness! But she will not let herself be known! There is only one single being of importance to her, and she will not let her name be spoken lest the sentence stain her picture in the heart of the one she worships! "Gentlemen of the jury, a woman who can feel like this is no vulgar criminal! I feel sure that I shall prove to you that it is no mere criminal who stands before you! The police have moved heaven and earth to establish her identity, and they have failed. This is alone sufficient proof that this crime is her first; for had she been convicted before, the police would have found traces of her past! "And there is no doubt, gentlemen"--his voice was vibrant and his eyes flashed through the tears--"there is no doubt that a man was originally responsible for my client's fall. When a woman falls and rolls in the gutter, it is not with her that we should feel indignant--it is not against her breast that we should cast the stones! "A man has done this thing!" he shouted, his features quivering. "He has seduced or ill-treated her! He is a lover without scruple, or a husband with too little nobility of character and too much pride--a husband who has not known how to pity, and who sentenced her for a first fall to a life of sin! "The laws of man are powerless against such a lover or such a husband," he cried, stepping forward with clenched fist above his head, "but God sees him--and God judges him! "Such a man has made this woman what you see her to-day, and he alone is responsible!" He paused and gulped to swallow an imaginary something in his throat. Then he went on bitterly: "He, no doubt, lives happily--his name respected and his conscience calm! But in the eyes of Eternal Justice this man stands by this woman's side, or lower still! And in the name of a higher law, in the name of your mothers and sisters, I call upon you to do justice--with pity--to this woman whose life has been the plaything of the man who should stand in her place!" He paused again. His head felt hot and his; feet cold. He knew that he had not used a syllable of his original speech, but words and phrases that he had never dreamed of before leaped to his tongue in battalions. His voice, that had been hoarse and uncertain at the opening, was now true to every changing note of his heart. Without looking in their direction he was conscious that Helene and Rose were crying. From the audience he heard the strained coughing of "men and the muffled weeping of women. He glanced toward the bench and saw, with vague wonder, his father's bowed and shaking figure. His eloquence had even moved that iron judge, he thought! He could not know the agony of which he was the author! He could not dream that the generous wrath that flamed up from his pure heart had made his tongue a lash for his father's soul! Noel, watching and listening, his eyes shaded by his hand, felt the terrible torture of his friend, and twice he rose as if he would interrupt the boy's bitter arraignment of his father. But Raymond swept on with his speech. "In the course of the eloquent address for the prosecution my friend reminded us that murder might sometimes be worthy of forgiveness, and that the wave of passion which causes murder sometimes excuses it. "Gentlemen, I ask you on your consciences_--is this woman guilty_? Does she deserve punishment for wiping out of existence the pestilent criminal who was threatening the happiness of the one person she loved? Does this unfortunate woman deserve punishment for the silence she has kept heroically to save her name from scandal--and for whom? For the sake of another! "No, gentlemen, a thousand times--_No!_ Attire mere thought my heart cries out in protest! And you will, I know, gentlemen, share my emotion--and my conviction! "Gentlemen of the jury, my cause is just, and the verdict will bear witness to its justice! I await it without fear! Were you to find my client guilty--even with extenuating circumstances--your verdict would only prove that I have not been equal to my task! "And I should never cease to regret my lack of ability to make you feel those sentiments and convictions which bid me declare in a loud voice, with my hand upon my heart_--this woman is not guilty_!" CHAPTER XXII MADAME X SPEAKS The speech was over. For a moment there was an awed hush. Then Raymond dropped heavily into his chair--exhausted and limp. His body lay half-way across the table, his face buried in his arms. He did not know until it was all over what the effort had cost in nervous force. A listless indifference and the feeling that he had failed came as a reaction to the exaltation of a moment before. A quivering sigh swept through the room, followed by sounds of snuffling and the violent blowing of noses! And the spell was broken. The President drew a long breath and was turning to address the jury when there was an unexpected interruption. Victor Chouquet, who probably alone of those in the courtroom had been unmoved--for the reason that he couldn't understand--had had time to look around him with boorish curiosity. He had seen two men who, while they were dry-eyed, were listening with the appreciation of experts. "Excuse me, M. the President!" he cried, in his high drawl. The President started. "Who is speaking?" "I, M. the President!" And Victor rose. The judge glanced at him impatiently. "Have you anything else to say?" "Yes, M. the President." "Well? You may speak." Victor did not lose any time. It had taken his dull mind some fifteen or twenty minutes to connect cause and effect, and he was ready. He turned and pointed along the front of the benches to the spot where the partners in confidential missions were seated. "Those two over there came to the hotel and asked for M. Laroque before the boat came in," he said. "They came back and saw him after he arrived, and I took them up to his room. They went out with M. Laroque and stayed a long time. He came back about fifteen or twenty minutes before the murder was committed." The judges and court officers gazed sharply at the two men, who were trying to conceal themselves behind the other spectators. "This is important!" muttered the President "Have you anything else to say?" "No, monsieur," replied Victor, resuming his seat. "Usher, bring those two men to the bar!" commanded the President. "I have discretionary powers to question them as witnesses, although they have not previously been summoned--and I will use it." The "confidential agents" looked nervously around the room as if seeking some way of escape as the usher advanced on them. "For pity's sake, be careful!" whispered Perissard, anxiously. "Keep your mouth shut and leave it to me!" "Don't worry! I won't say a word!" replied his colleague in the same tone. "Gentlemen, if you please, this way!" cried the usher from the railing. As they came into the enclosure the President thought of something. "Let one of them step forward and the other be taken to the waiting-room," he ordered. With another quick warning look at his confrère, M. Perissard walked up to the witness-stand while a gendarme escorted the other out behind the dock. With one hand resting lightly on the railing in front of the witness-stand and the other nursing his immaculate silk hat, M. Perissard surveyed the judges and jury with an oily, benevolent smile. "Your name and surname?" demanded the President. "Perissard--Robert Henri!" replied the witness in his most unctuous tones, accompanying the answer with a half-bow. "Your age?" "Fifty-nine years, M. the President!" "Your profession," continued the judge. "Confidential missions," was the reply, with another bend. "Your address?" "No. 62 Rue Fribourg, Paris." "Tell us what you know about the murder of Laroque!" the President commanded, and leaned back in his chair. M. Perissard's manner had not deceived him in the slightest measure. He knew the breed; and, knowing that the witness was a shrewd man, he tried to put him at a disadvantage by making him tell the story without questions. But M. Perissard knew the danger of that system of examination as well as did the President. "I know nothing about it at all, M. the President!" he declared earnestly. "I know absolutely nothing! And I cannot understand----" "Did you know Laroque?" interrupted the judge, abruptly. M. Perissard shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other. "I used to know him years ago in Paris," he admitted, with a fine air of candor. "About six months ago I received a letter from him asking for work. I offered him a place in my office, and I went to see him when he arrived. That's all!" Something familiar in the sound of his voice brought Floriot out of the stupor that succeeded the agony he had suffered. He raised his haggard face from his hands and met M. Perissard's eyes fixed upon him. He recognized him at once. "Did you come from Paris to Bordeaux on purpose to see him?" pursued the examiner. "No, M. the President, I had to come to Bordeaux to start a branch of my Paris house here." "Is that the reason of your coming here to-day?" M. Perissard paused and fixed his glance slowly and meaningly on the President of the Toulouse Court, over the judge's shoulder. "No, M. the President," he said with deliberation. "I came to Bordeaux on a special matter of business, the business of one of my clients--a very delicate affair! It concerns the honor of a well-known family, and I hope to carry it through successfully. I am honorably known in my profession, and my clients know that they can always reckon_--always_ reckon, I repeat--on my entire discretion!" "What did you say to Laroque in the course of your conversation with him?" continued the President. "Nothing much, nothing much!" M. Perissard assured him, with an offhand gesture. "It was a business talk, in which I gave him a few general instructions about the work of my office. That is all!" "You do not know anything about the shooting?" "Not a thing, M. the President!" was the emphatic reply. "Do you know the prisoner?" M. Perissard turned and gave Jacqueline a long and careful scrutiny, as if he were not certain that he had ever seen her before. "I saw her with Laroque," he said at last, "but I do not know who she is." "You may----" began the President and stopped with a start. The prisoner was slowly rising. Her body was tense, and she leaned forward out of the dock with one rigid arm pointing at Perissard. With the black garb, livid face, and burning eyes and the clawlike hand pointing at the witness--whose fat pink cheeks had suddenly paled--she was like some uncanny sibyl about to launch a curse. "But _I_ know _you_!" she cried in a hoarse voice that carried to the farthest corner. "_You are the real cause of the murder!_" In a moment the audience was on its feet. "I! I!" cried the blackmailer, stepping back with well-feigned astonishment while the usher hammered at his desk and shouted for order. But even the President was too much absorbed in the sudden dramatic development to heed the excitement in the court. "Yes, _you_!" she repeated, stabbing at him with her stiff forefinger. "You found out that I was married and that I had left my husband, and you advised Laroque to find him and ask him for the money that I brought him on my marriage!" M. Perissard had been in many a tight place--in many a situation where self-possession and nerve had saved him--and he quickly recovered from the shock of the denunciation. Ignoring the excitement that had upset the decorum of the court he turned to the President and said suavely: "M. the President, Laroque told me during our conversation that his wife had had typhoid fever Hast year and that her brain had suffered." But the woman was not to be silenced by such a trick. "I nearly died last year, and my head was shaved," she said, slowly, turning and looking straight at Floriot, who was watching her with grief-stricken eyes. "That is why those who used to know me cannot recognize me now!" Floriot hid his face in his hands and shuddered. Noel, white-faced, was gripping the railing in front of him with both hands. "But I am not mad!" she cried, her voice rising to a shrill note as she faced Perissard once more. "I begged and prayed Laroque not to follow your hateful advice, and he refused to listen to me. As I would not run the risk of his seeing and speaking to my son, _I killed him_!" Muttered imprecations and half-smothered exclamations of anger swept through the court, and the throng heaved forward against the railings. Raymond sprang up into the dock and with one arm around the woman's waist and the other resting on the arm nearest him, he gently forced her down into her chair once more. The usher pounded his desk and the gendarmes struggled to push the crowd back from the railing. It was several minutes before order was restored, but the President, hastily consulting his confrères on the bench, paid no heed. "You may go!" he said, when the room had reached almost its normal semi-hush and the voices had dropped into excited whisperings. "Call the other witness!" M. Perissard started hurriedly for the door, but at a signal from M. Valmorin the gendarmes stopped him. "No, M. Perissard," said the prosecutor. "Do not leave the court, if you please. We may want you again." "The presiding judge said I could go, and I have important business!" protested the blackmailer. "And I ask you to stay!" repeated M. Valmorin, firmly. "Kindly sit down!" He was escorted, muttering and grumbling, to the witnesses' bench. "I really don't understand! It's disgraceful!" he fumed. "I was not regularly cited--Article 313 of the Code of Criminal Instruction. It's a shame!" But no one paid any further attention to him, excepting a few jurors and the nearest of the spectators, who favored him with curious and unpleasant glances. The usher brought M. Merivel to the stand. He came with mincing steps, and many bows, and a confident smirk on his fat, heavy face. The President eyed him with rather more dislike than he had shown for the other partner. "Your name and surname!" he commanded, curtly. "Merivel--Modiste Hyacinthe!" replied the junior partner, in his blandest professional tones. "Your age?" "Fifty-two years, M. the President!" "Your profession?" "Confidential missions!" replied M. Merivel, with an obsequious tow. "Your address!" demanded the judge. "No. 132 Rue St. Denis, Paris." "What do you know about the murder of Laroque?" M. Merivel threw open his hands and drew himself up. "Nothing. M. the President!" he declared. "Nothing?" questioned the judge with a frown. "Nothing whatever!" M. Merivel assured him with much earnestness. "Did you know Laroque?" was the next question. "No, M. the President," was the prompt reply. "Had you never seen him?" "Never!" exclaimed the witness, without hesitation. Some one tittered and M. Perissard cursed his colleague heartily under his breath. "You did not go to see him in his room at the Hotel of the Three Crowns on April 3d?" "No, M. the President!" replied M. Merivel, with a solemn shake of the head. A ripple of laughter ran along the benches and M. Merivel began to perspire. His glance wavered before the President's stern eye. "Be careful! The hotel people saw you!" he warned. M. Merivel glanced uneasily at his partner for a cue, but Perissard was afraid to give him a sign. "They must have made a mistake, M. the President!" he said, at last, with a great assumption of firmness. "Oh, what an ass!" growled his partner fiercely. M. Valmorin rose suddenly. "M. the President," he said, "the attitude of these two men is distinctly suspicious, and, by virtue of Article 330 of the Code of Criminal Instruction, I ask you to order their immediate arrest for perjury!" M. Perissard bounded up with agility that fitted strangely with his corpulent figure. "Look here!" he shouted angrily, "it isn't my fault if that fool----" "Who are you calling a fool?" demanded his partner, advancing belligerently. "Gendarmes, remove those two men!" commanded the President. "I protest----" began M. Merivel, loudly, holding up his hand. "You have no right to do this! It is perfectly----" stormed the other. "Take them away!" interrupted the judge. "I'll have my revenge!" foamed M. Merivel, in a voice that made the chairs tremble, as the gendarmes laid hold of him. "Shut your mouth, you d----d idiot!" roared the other. "I'll write to the papers! I'll----" And struggling, and threatening, cursing the court and each other, they were dragged off to be held on charges of perjury, while the crowd hissed them out. And this, it may be remarked here, ended their long careers of crookedness. Merivel was convicted of perjury, but the case against the senior partner could not be made to hold. Merivel was so enraged when the other was acquitted that he turned State's evidence and gave M. Valmorin the history of some of Perissard's "deals," with the result that both were sent to prison for long terms. When the excitement attending the exit of the pair had subsided the President made one last appeal to the prisoner before giving the case to the jury. "Woman Laroque," he said, gently, with a slight hesitation at the name, "have you anything to say in your defense? Tell the truth and the whole truth!" To his astonishment, the woman slowly rose. A hush of eager expectancy fell over the room. Looking straight before her into the dead wall she began in a low, uncertain tone. "My counsel has said all that could be said. I shall never forget his words, and I thank him from my heart!" The voice trembled and stopped. "He was right!" she went on, unsteadily, her hands tightly clutching the desk as she struggled for control. "I was not naturally bad! A coward broke my life and made me what I have become!" The President heard a muffled groan behind him where his guest was sitting, but he did not take; his eyes off the woman's face. "I had wronged him, I admit, but I was sorry--and hated myself for my fault. I begged his pardon--begged for it on my knees! And he told me to go--threw me out into the streets! Me! His wife--the mother of his child! "Thanks to him I rolled in the gutter! Thanks to him I have suffered a thousand deaths_--and I have killed_! I hate him! I hate him!" she cried wildly, her voice shaking with passion. "And with my last breath I will curse his name!" She paused with a gasp and swallowed hard. Floriot sat with his face in his hands and his heaving shoulders told the story of his agony. Rose and Helene, their heads close together, were openly crying, and there were sounds of sobbing and snuffling from all over the room. The jury sat; like twelve men hypnotized. Raymond stood looking up into her face, while a hundred emotions swept him. The feeling of pity, the desire to comfort, that had moved him when she pressed his hand, returned with reawakened force. He could not know it--but she dared not glance down at him. "And yet I do not complain," she went on, with a strange note of tenderness. "No, I do not complain! I have a son--a son whom I love, whom I love more than I can say!" Once more she paused, and when she spoke again some of the excitement under which she had labored returned. "But he does not know me!" she cried. "The sound of my voice--thank God!--can awaken no echo in his heart! He will never see me again--know nothing of my shame and," she faltered, "his memory of me will be vague and sweet and beautiful; for--when I became--lost to him--he was a child! He is so far--from me--now! But I love him! I worship him! All my heart is his. My one wish--is that he--should be happy--that--ah!" The words ended in a long-drawn sob and she sank into her chair, huddled over the desk. CHAPTER XXIII THE VERDICT Eloquent and earnest as had been Raymond's impassioned outburst it hardly moved the throng as did the woman's short and broken confession. In the hearts of all men and women who are worthy of the name there is ever pity for a fallen woman; but in this case there was something more than that. Pity for the wrecks of vice is often tempered by the instinctive feeling that the lost are mercifully drugged by their own excesses until they are incapable of realizing fully that they have fallen beyond the reach of redemption. But here there was none of that. In that prayer for her son, every mother in the room heard a mother crying out to her across an unbridgeable gulf--every man knew that the woman's soul was writhing under the torture of seeing herself as she was; and the soft weeping and the pressed lips and shining eyes were eloquent of their emotion. Even the old President felt the spell, and it was with an effort that he took his eyes off the bowed figure with Raymond bending over it and turned to address the jury. At his first words--delivered tin a matter-of-fact "legal" tone--a rustle and stir ran over the benches. It was over. "Gentlemen of the jury," he said, "you have to answer this question: Is the prisoner guilty of the murder committed on April 3d, on the body of her lover, Frederick Laroque? If the majority of you believe that the prisoner is guilty or not guilty, your verdict will be worded accordingly. "If the majority of you believe, on the other hand, that there are extenuating circumstances, you are to give your verdict in these words: "'The majority of the jurors believe that there are extenuating circumstances in favor of the prisoner.' "I point out to you that your vote must be a secret one. Kindly withdraw to the jury-room. The court is rising!" As he spoke he rose, accompanied by the ether' judges and moved toward the door of his private room, opening off the "bank." The usher pounded his desk. "The court is rising!" he repeated in a loud tone. With the shuffling of many feet the throng rose and the hum of conversation filled the room. Escorted by two gendarmes, Jacqueline was taken out to the prisoner's room to await the verdict. Floriot, walking like a drunken man, went out with M. Valmorin to the latter's little office. Noel tried to reach him, but he disappeared before he could cross the court. Dr. Chennel followed him and Raymond suddenly stopped them, returning from the door of the prisoner's room, where he had accompanied the woman. The big hall was practically deserted. Helene had quickly recovered from her emotion in her pride in Raymond, but Rose wept inconsolably, and the girl led her out to the open air. Raymond eagerly seized the hands of his father's friends. "Do you think she will get off, doctor?" he asked, quickly. "I hope so," responded the surgeon with an affectionate smile; "and if she does, she may I thank you, my boy!" "Is that so?" he exclaimed, with a pleased little laugh and nervous toss of his head. "I thought I was awfully bad!" "And I thought you were marvelous!" rejoined Noel, with unmistakable meaning. He was looking curiously at the young man's flushed and handsome face. "Oh, come now!" protested Raymond. "I mean it. You reached me--and not only me!" he added half to himself. Raymond shook his hand with hearty gratitude. "It's awfully good of you to tell me these things," he said, "and I'm mighty proud of one thing! Do you know that I made my father cry? I did, for a fact! 'The Man of Bronze,' some one told me they call him! I managed to glance at him a couple of times, and I'm sure he was crying! "Now, that's a success, you know! For a young fellow like me to make the presiding judge of another criminal court cry over his first speech is pretty good, whether the young lawyer is the judge's son or not! "My, but I was nervous! That poor woman completely upset me. You remember when she called out and nearly fainted?" The others nodded. "Yes," said Noel. "You turned around and looked up and spoke to her, I think." "Exactly!" Raymond rattled on, excitedly. "I put my hand on the edge of the rail and she took hold of it, and pressed it, and--do you know, I forgot all about my speech, and everything else? It's a fact! She looked at me in the most extraordinary way!" He paused a moment and then went on soberly, with a vague, puzzled look in his dark eyes. "She drew me toward her, somehow. I don't know how to explain it to you. I wanted to take her in my arms and console her and kiss her--yes, kiss her! Kind of foolish, eh?" he added, with a quick smile. "Queer sort of a lawyer who'd want to kiss his clients, isn't it? But I swear that's what I did want! It was one of the most extraordinary sensations I have ever felt, and it upset me so that I caught myself talking for a full minute without knowing what I was saying. Luckily, I sort of got hold of myself, and--and--I'm almighty glad it's all over. Ah, here comes the President of the Toulouse court!" His few minutes in M. Valmorin's office had partially restored Floriot's steel nerves. He took a drink of water and gently put aside the prosecutor's solicitous questions, and then he hurried out to find his son, knowing that the boy would feel hurt if he was not among the first to congratulate him. But his white, lined face and haggard eyes bore witness to the terrible suffering of the recent ordeal. Raymond hastened forward a few steps to meet him. "Thank you, my boy, thank you!" said Floriot unsteadily, as he gripped his son's hand. "It was a noble speech!" Then he dropped wearily into a chair. Raymond stared at him, startled. "Why, is anything the matter, father?" he cried, stepping quickly over to his side. Floriot raised his hand as if to motion him away. "No! Nothing, nothing!" he replied. "I think Mademoiselle Valmorin wants to speak to you, Raymond," interrupted Noel, hurriedly. The young man threw a quick look up toward the benches and saw that Helene had returned and was trying to telegraph him with her eyes. A father's claims must always yield to a lover's, and with a lingering glance at the figure in the chair, Raymond hurried off to his sweetheart's, side. Noel put his hand under Floriot's arm and drew him off to a corner by the bench, where they were partially hidden, while Dr. Chennel did sentry duty in the background. "You recognized her, of course?" said Floriot, in a low broken voice, without meeting his friend's eye. Noel nodded, but did not speak. "There's no doubt about it!" went on his friend. "It is Jacqueline, and this is what she has become! This is my work! Jacqueline! Jacqueline!" he groaned, piteously. "What are you going to do?" demanded Noel. The effort to control himself made his voice sound hard. Floriot shook his head miserably. "I don't know!" he groaned. "What do you think?" "It doesn't seem to me," retorted Noel, bitterly, "that this is exactly a time for thinking! If she should be convicted, maybe it would be better to let things take their natural course and never let Raymond know who she was. But if she is acquitted, you will have to tell him, and we will have to do what we can to--to--wipe out twenty years!" Floriot's only reply for a moment was a dry sob. Then: "How can I tell him--_now_! God!" he cried, "he will add his curses to hers! I will lose him! I----" The sharp clang of a bell broke in. Noel started, it was the signal that the court was coming in. "Already!" he exclaimed. "The jury didn't take long!" He hastily gripped his friend's hand as the door of the President's room opened, and pushed him toward his seat. "Keep your heart, old man!" he added, kindly. "We'll come through all right!" Raymond brushed against him as he walked back to his seat. His ears were singing with Helene's whispers. "It's a good sign, isn't it?" he said in low, eager tones. Noel nodded and passed outside the railing. The crowd was swarming in from both doors, and by the time the judges had comfortably settled themselves the hall was packed once more. The jury filed slowly into the box and sat down. The usher rapped for silence. There was not a sound in the court when the President solemnly commanded: "Gentlemen of the jury, give your verdict!" The foreman, a round-faced, dry-goods salesman, plainly oppressed by the importance of his position, rose, and, with his right hand over his heart, declared, in husky tones: "On my honor and on my conscience, before God and before men, the declaration of the jury is: "No, the prisoner is not guilty!" A gasp swept across the hall, and then the great throng burst into a cheer. Men sprang up and slapped each other on the back, and women, with tear-stained faces, frantically waved their limp handkerchiefs. Rose gave Helene a convulsive hug, and it was returned with interest. Sergeant Fontaine so far forgot his official reserve as to seize Victor's hand and shake it with enthusiasm, while he twisted his mustache violently with the other. Raymond was trying to combine the dignity of an advocate with an expression of rapturous delight. The usher hammered his desk and the gendarmes shouted for order. Only Floriot sat with bowed head, and Noel watched him under the hand that shaded his eyes. Evidently feeling that the shortest way was the quickest, the President ordered the usher to bring in the prisoner. As soon as the door opened and the woman walked slowly in between the gendarmes, the din fell away to a tense hush. There was a spot of color in her cheeks that had not been there before, and her eyes were wilder. Dr. Chennel gazed at her with close scrutiny. "She has a very high fever!" he whispered to Noel. The latter nodded, without turning his head. "Clerk of the court, read the declaration of the jury!" commanded the President. The clerk, who had been busily writing out that document in the form prescribed, rose with the paper in his hand and read, in a droning monotone: "The declaration of the jury is: No, the prisoner is not guilty. In consequence whereof the court proclaims the prisoner's innocence of the crime of which she is accused, orders her acquittal, and orders that she be immediately set at liberty, unless there be other reason for her detention. The court is risen!" The last words were lost in a frightful shriek from the prisoner. "_No! No! No_!" she screamed, struggling in the grip of the two guards as she tried to throw herself out of the dock. "_Let me die! I want to, die! I want to die!_" In an instant the court was again in an uproar with oaths, cries of anger, and shrieks of women. The crowd swept forward to the railing. "Clear the court!" roared the President; and the gendarmes threw themselves into the press, driving the packed men and women toward the exits. The din was terrific, and above it all rose Jacqueline's screams. "_I want to die! I want to die!_" Raymond was the first to reach her, closely fol lowed by Dr. Chennel and Noel, and then Floriot "_For God's sake_! _doctor! Help her_!" he cried. CHAPTER XXIV THE GUTTERING FLAME As the rear of the hysterical mob was driven from the hall and the doors locked, Jacqueline collapsed into her chair, unconscious. At the same moment the President hurried up, pulling on his street coat. "Carry her into my room!" he commanded. The two muscular gendarmes picked her up, chair and all, and carried her into the little dressing-room. Then, with a sign, he dismissed them and immediately followed himself, leaving the little party alone. Leaving Helene in her father's care, Rose followed the solemn little procession into the President's room. Dr. Chennel met her at the door and gave her a few hasty orders as to medicine, and she hurried away. Then he turned to the patient. In a moment he had Noel administering smelling salts and Raymond moistening her temples with cologne, which he produced from his emergency tag. Floriot, with white, compressed lips and frightened eyes, stood watching as the doctor felt her pulse, listened with ear to her heart, and turned back the lids of the sightless eyes. Floriot was the first to speak. "Is she--in danger?" he whispered, brokenly. The doctor slowly shook his head. "I can't tell yet," he replied, without taking his eyes off her face. "Her heart is undoubtedly badly affected. It is worn out--like the rest of her. My great fear is that she may die of utter exhaustion." Floriot turned away with an inarticulate groan. "Doctor! I think she moved just now!" exclaimed Noel. The doctor was watching her face keenly. "Yes, she's coming around all right," he nodded. "This crisis is over, but----" He shrugged his shoulders. The dark eyelids trembled and slowly opened. There was a long, fluttering sigh. Dr. Chennel bent over. "How do you feel now?" he asked. She swallowed slowly once or twice, and looked listlessly at the circle of faces around her. Floriot was standing where he could not be seen. "Not well," she murmured, feebly. "I'm all broken up. I--don't--seem to have--any strength. Where am I?" "In the law courts--in the President's room," replied Chennel. She started, as if to rise. "The President's!" she gasped. Her brain was still hazy, but she could think of only one President. Noel seemed to divine something of what was in her mind, for he threw Floriot in the background a look that said: "Leave this to me!" Floriot opened the door and stumbled out. At an imperative gesture from Noel, Raymond followed him. When the door had closed behind them, Noel bent over until his lips all but touched the woman's ear. "Jacqueline!" he murmured. She looked up at him with dull eyes. "Who are you?" she asked, indifferently. "You seem to know my name--who are you?" He looked steadily and tenderly into her eyes. "Don't you remember me?" She shook her head. "But I'm sure you haven't altogether forgotten me!" he insisted, gently. She studied his face for several moments and then recognition slowly dawned in her eyes. "Wait a minute! But--no, it's impossible! It can't be!" she cried, excitedly. Dr. Chennel tactfully stepped back to the opposite side of the little room. "Little Jenny Wren!" whispered Noel. "_Noel! Noel! You!_" she cried, clutching his arm and looking hungrily up into his face. "Yes, it's Noel!" he smiled. She seized his hand and pressed it again and again to her cheek. "Oh, thank God! Thank God!" she sobbed. "I'm no longer alone! Noel! Noel! Noel!" "Are you really as glad as all that to see me again, Jennie Wren?" he whispered, tenderly. He sat on the arm of the chair and she clung to him as if she were afraid he might disappear as suddenly as he had come. "Noel! Noel! Pity me! Pity me!" she sobbed. He gently laid his fingers across her lips. "Don't talk of pity!" he whispered. "Everything is forgotten!" "Ah! As if I could ever forget!" she moaned. "Of course, you can!" he cried, cuddling her up close to him. "It was all a nightmare, and you're awake now. Don't cry, Jacqueline, don't cry! We're all together again, and we'll all be happy together and your son----" Jacqueline tore herself away from him with a frightened cry and tried to rise. "Raymond!" she gasped. "Has any one told him? Does he know?" "No! No! He doesn't know anything yet!" Noel assured her hastily. But the dread of meeting her son and having him know her was too strong. She still struggled to rise, but was too weak. "Is he here?" she panted. "He mustn't see me! Oh, let me go away! Let me go away!" She got half-way out of her chair, but fell back exhausted. Dr. Chennel stepped forward and laid a hand on her arm. "You will be able to go presently, madame," he said, quietly. "Your strength will come back to you shortly." Jacqueline glanced at him eagerly. "You are a doctor, aren't you?" she panted. "Yes," he replied, with a nod. "Don't excite yourself and I'll cure you in a few minutes, for can have perfect confidence in me. I am a friend of your son--a friend of Raymond!" "Oh! Then--you know----" "Yes, I know everything," he interrupted, gravely. "But he will never know, doctor, will he?" she asked, feverishly, gripping his hand. "No, he shall know nothing at all," he assured. "Promise me! Promise me!" she cried. "I promise!" he repeated. She released his hand and sank back with a piteous sob. "I have nothing left--to me now--but my memories of him," she wept, "and his thoughts of what he believes me to have been. I want him to love me always! Always!--Ah--h--h!" She closed her eyes and hid her face as the door opened; but it was only Rose with the medicine, on a little tray with a tumbler of water and a teaspoon. "Quick, Rose, here!" ordered the doctor, sharply. He quickly mixed some of the stimulant with the water and held the tumbler to her lips. She drank a little and presently revived. "Doctor," she said, faintly. "I believe I'm going to die!" "Nonsense! Don't be foolish!" laughed the doctor. Rose broke into sobs and Jacqueline recognized her, and the next moment mistress and maid were in each other's arms. They kissed and wept over each other for a minute or two and then Noel cried lightly: "There you are! Now let's not have any more nonsense about dying!" While Noel kept up a running fire of pleasant chat in an effort to revive Jacqueline's spirits, Dr. Chennel drew Rose off to one side of the room. "Where is M. Floriot?" he asked, in a low undertone. "Just outside--with M. Raymond," replied Rose. "Tell him not to go away!" Rose looked up at him quickly and her cheeks paled. "Do you--think that----" she stopped short. The expression of his eyes gave her the answer. "Hush!" he whispered. "It is only a question of time--and a short time!" Rose slipped out and he returned to his patient in time to hear Noel reorganizing her wardrobe, with much laughter, and making plans for a trip to the country. She was smiling faintly, but the smile faded when he made her take some more of the bitter medicine. "Tastes rather horrible, eh?" he said with a smile, "but you feel better, don't you?" "Yes, thank you," answered Jacqueline, weakly. "I don't suffer at all. It's my strength--I feel so--weak!" "Your strength will come back fast enough!" he assured her heartily. "I'll tell you what we'll do! I shall take you to my house in Biarritz! There I can look after you comfortably and easily, and you'll be around in no time!" "Oh, doctor!" she cried, a grateful catch in her voice. "You are too kind! But it's impossible. I should be in the way." "Not the least bit in the world!" he replied briskly. "The house is a big comfortable sort of a barn. I live there all alone, excepting an elderly sister, and she will be only too happy to have you. You'll be with friends there; for, although you don't know it, my sister and I have been your friends for a long time." "My friends?" she repeated, with a little questioning smile. "He saved Raymond's life, you know," explained Noel, quickly. The expression of Jacqueline's face altered in a moment to one of unutterable gratitude. She seized his hand and kissed it passionately. "Doctor, I--I--cannot thank you!" she murmured brokenly. The doctor gently disengaged his hand and stepped back, turning his face away. The pity of the scene had all but overcome the well-schooled emotions of the man of medicine. "He and his sister did all they could to console Floriot," whispered Noel; "the poor chap was broken-hearted." Noel felt the limp figure stiffen at the mention of the hated name. "Not as broken-hearted as I was!" she exclaimed, bitterly. "How do you know, Jacqueline? 'Judge not, lest ye be judged,'" he quoted softly. "I have been judged!" she replied in the same hard undertone. "He drove me out of his house like a dog!" Noel was silent for a moment; and when he spoke his voice was vibrant with the emotion that the memory of that terrible night awoke. "I was there that day, Jacqueline, after you had gone," he said. "I saw his grief--and his repentance. I heard him curse his anger and his pride. And since then he--we have searched the world for you. For twenty years he has not had a thought that was not of you, and in those twenty years he has never known peace or happiness. Ah! Jacqueline, dearest, I believe he has suffered even more than you have!" "He had his son and I had nobody!" was the bitter reply. And as if her words had been a call to him, the door was thrown violently open and Raymond dashed headlong into the room. CHAPTER XXV "WHILE THE LAMP HOLDS OUT TO BURN----" When Floriot and Raymond passed out of the little room, the former dropped heavily into one of the big empty armchairs on the bank where the judges had sat a short time before. Raymond gazed at him anxiously. His face was buried in his hands and he made no sound. "What's the matter, father?" asked the young man, laying his hand on the quivering shoulder. But still his father did not speak. He was trying to nerve himself up to meet the hour that he had dreaded for years. The time for delay was past. He believed that Jacqueline would live only a few hours and he dared not let Raymond's mother die and have him learn afterward that he had been! robbed of his one chance to speak to her and know. He felt that Raymond might possibly forgive anything but that. With an effort he raised his haggard eyes to his son's and took the boy's hand in his. "My boy," he said, his voice hoarse and trembling with emotion, "I must tell you something unbelievably terrible. I know--how you have loved me and looked up to me--as the sort of man you want to be. When you've heard--what I must tell you now--you will curse God for making me your father!" "Father!" cried the boy in horror, throwing his arm around his neck. "Father! What----" But Floriot gently pushed him away and silenced him with a gesture. "Your mother--is not dead!" he faltered. The words struck the color from Raymond's face and he almost staggered back and stared at his father with terrified eyes. "Not dead!" he repeated in a dull whisper. Floriot shook his head. "When you were hardly a year old she left--me!" he said. The boy started forward with a cry that was something between a choke and a sob. "Wait!" commanded his father, hoarsely. "It was my fault! I didn't know her--I didn't understand her! My neglect drove her to it. She went off with a lover!" Raymond pressed his hands to his face and crouched against the broad desk as if the blow had physically crushed him. "But there is worse than that!" cried Floriot, rising. "She came back to me and begged for forgiveness. She groveled at my feet and pleaded for mercy! She made me see that I shared the blame of her fall! But my cheap, foolish pride conquered every other feeling--every instinct of pity, every impulse of nobility! And I threw her out into the street!" The boy straightened up with a sob of anguish. "And--and--what became--of her?" he panted. Floriot's left hand went up to his throat as if he felt himself choking. He turned his head away, and with a terrible effort raised his other hand, pointed to the door of the President's room and gasped brokenly: "_She is there! That woman--is--your mother_!" Raymond swayed on his feet and his father's rigid figure swam in a haze before his eyes. His, mother! That woman his mother! In the hundred emotions that swept him in the ghost of a second only one was missing--shame for her stained body and blackened soul. His heart--starved all its life--quivered with a joy that was almost pain at the thought at last it would feel the love of even such a mother, as the lost and parched wanderer in the desert falls with a prayer of thanksgiving at the edge of a brackish pool. With a choking cry of _"Mother_!" he stumbled blindly to the door. The instant he rushed into the room, Dr. Chennel and Noel saw what had happened, and the former was in front of him in a stride. "Be careful!" he warned, in a stern whisper that brought the boy to his senses like a dash of cold water. "Any strong excitement may be too? much for her!" He gripped Raymond's arm and held him until he saw that he had nearly recovered control of himself, and then, with another whisper of "Remember!" he released him. "Yes, yes! I understand!" exclaimed Raymond in the same tone, holding himself with a mighty effort. "I'll control myself! She sha'n't know!" Noel was administering a little more of the stimulant as he advanced. He gave Raymond a warning look as, with a gasp of terror, Jacqueline attempted to rise. The young man seemed not to notice her agitation, and with a bright smile he cried: "Well, my dear client, are you better?" "Oh, it's nothing!" Dr. Chennel answered for her. "Just a little fit of the nerves which, after all, is quite natural!" "That's all right!" cried Raymond, heartily. "I didn't want to leave the court without asking' how you were." Her eyes ran hungrily over his graceful but muscular figure, and the pale, handsome face. "You--are--very good!" she murmured, uncertainly. Noel signalled the doctor with his eyes, and they went out softly, leaving the door ajar. Raymond briskly pulled a chair up close beside his mother's and went on in the same light tone. "And I couldn't go without thanking you!" he said. She smiled into his face, but there was still a trace of alarm in her eyes. "Thanking _me_?" she repeated. "Of course!" replied Raymond. "Why, I owe my first success to you! To-day has brought me the greatest joy of my life!" "But if you thank me, what can I say to you?" she asked, her voice trembling with tenderness. He smiled back at her. "Tell me that you are glad," he suggested She gazed into his eyes with her heart in hers. "Yes, I am glad--very glad--almost happy!" she said, in a low, vibrant voice. "But I did not dare hope for the happiness that has come to me to-day!" Her strength did, indeed, seem to be returned rapidly. Her voice was surer, her eyes sparkled, and there was a fleck of color in her cheeks. Raymond felt his lips tremble and he fought with a desire to throw himself into her arms. It was several seconds before he trusted himself to speak. Then: "I hope I won't tire you," he said, politely. "Before I go, don't you think we might have a little chat? You haven't spoiled me much in that respect, have you?" he added, with a sudden smile. "You are my first client and I hardly know you!" She reached out and touched his arm in quick apology. "You must forgive me for having received you so rudely," she said. Raymond laughed. "You didn't receive me at all, as a matter of fact," he declared. "But I wasn't angry. I said to myself, 'She probably finds me too young, or has no confidence in me, or--or----'" His eyes dropped and in a lower tone he added, "or she doesn't think--she would like me." He felt a sudden, almost painful pressure on his arm. "Ah! Don't think that!" she pleaded, quickly. "But I was so sad--so despairingly sad!" Raymond raised his eyes to her face. "And now?" he half whispered. "And now--thanks to you!--I am almost happy!" "It makes me happy to hear you say so! Do you know," he went on, hitching up his chair in a confidential manner, "I felt the deepest sympathy for you from the first!" "Really?" she smiled. "It's a fact!" he declared, with an energetic nod. "From the start; for I was sure you were unhappy, and surer still that you should not have been unhappy. I wanted to console you--to tell you to pluck up your courage--to convince you that I was not only your counsel but your friend--a true and sincere friend!" "If I had only known--if I had only known!" murmured the woman, with a sharp catch in her voice. It cost Raymond an effort to continue in his bright, boyish tones; but he succeeded. "I made myself a promise that I would win your case for you," he went on; "that I would work it out with all my might! As you wouldn't give me your secret, I made up my mind I would guess it, and you see--I succeeded! I made the truth clear, and every heart in the court felt for you. Now you are free!--free to go to the son you love so dearly! Promise me," his voice trembled, "promise me that you will not forget me altogether!" Her eyes were misty with tears and her face quivered. "Forget you! Forget you!" she cried, brokenly. Raymond turned his face away. "I know I shall always remember you!" he said in a low voice, as one making a sacred vow. With a half-cry, half-sob she struggled to her feet. He had promised to spare her the pain of knowing that he knew her to be a mother, but even that paled beside the agony of feeling his presence within touch of her hands, and knowing that she must never clasp him to her heart. "I must go--I must go away!" she panted feverishly. But before Raymond could rise, her weakened limbs had collapsed and she sank back into her chair. "And I cannot!" she moaned, her hands pressed to her eyes. "Please don't go!" he pleaded, laying his hand lightly on her arm. At the touch of his fingers she straightened up with a gasp. "Before you go," she said, in a piteous half-whisper, "I should like to give you some little trifle as a keepsake, but I have absolutely nothing. But you can be sure that as long as I live--as long--as my heart beats and--my breath lasts--I will never forget you!" An impulse that he could not resist moved Raymond to reach out and take her fingers in his. "Give me your hand!" he said. His voice quivered and the woman could feel him tremble. "Do you remember during the trial just now," he went on unsteadily as he slowly bent toward her, "when I turned toward you, you took my hand and pressed it? I--I could feel your eyes--looking into my very heart! I--I--wanted then--to take you in my arms--and press you to my heart!" Her wild eyes closed and her body was rigid and tense. "Will you--won't you--won't you kiss me--_mother_?" The words rushed out in a sob as he slid from the chair to his knees by her side. With a cry that was more than human and strength that was more than a woman's, she flung her arms around his neck, crushed his dark head to her bosom and rained kisses on his eyes and hair and lips and brow.... "Oh, my Raymond! My darling! My darling boy!" she sobbed again and again, and his face was wet with her tears.... "It is too much! Ah, God! I can't stand this joy! My Raymond! My little laddie!..." Minute after minute passed and there was no sound but Jacqueline's quick breathing. "Are you in pain, mother?" he murmured tenderly, trying to lift his head. He could feel against his cheek that the tumultuous beating of her heart suddenly died away to an unsteady flutter. "No, no, dear!" she whispered, faintly. "Don't go! Don't move! How--did you--know----?" "Father just told me, mother mine!" he replied, softly, nestling his head into the hollow where it had not lain for twenty-three years. "He told me all that you had suffered. But it is over now. We'll forget those long years of separation--together!" Her reply was a long, delicious hug and a dozer? soft kisses. There was another silence. Then Raymond spoke, a little timidly: "Fath--my father is waiting, mother. Won't you see him?" She smiled down into his upturned face, but there was a strange dimness in her eyes and his voice sounded far away. "Yes, yes!" came in a faint whisper. "Tell him--to come--quickly!" He gave her a long kiss, sprang up and ran out into the courtroom. She half-rose and stretched out her hand for the glass of medicine but could not reach it. "Raymond!" she tried to call, but her lips barely framed the word. There was a roaring in her ears that might have been the roar of the unknown sea, and a mist before her eyes that might have been the mist upon its waters.... Raymond ran in, closely followed by the three older men. "Hurry, father! She is waiting!" He stopped. Something in the position of the still figure in the chair wiped the words from his lips. Dr. Chennel advanced quickly, touched the limp hand and stepped back with bowed head. Raymond threw himself at her feet with a cry of anguish! "_Mother! Mother_!" * * * * * In a little churchyard in the valley of Vienne, not far from the birthplace of the Blessed Maid, you may find a slender column of white marble marked with the name "Floriot" in large letters. Beneath is an inscription which begins: "Here lies the body of Jacqueline Claire Gilberte Lefevre, the beloved mother of Raymond ----." "Madame X" had found in death what she had lost in life--love and a name. 
41380	----	Movement--The Houses in Portsburgh--The Popular Idea of the Method of Burke and Hare--Origin of the Words "Burker" and "Burking."_ Such were the resurrectionist times in Scotland, and such the crimes committed by Burke and Hare, and their English imitators. Now-a-days it may seem strange that events like these were possible in a country professing a civilizing christianity, but no one with a knowledge of the depths to which humanity can descend will deny that even in our much boasted time, with all our social advancement, men could be found who would dare to put their consciences under the burden of such terrible iniquities, were the other circumstances and necessities still the same. There was little wonder that the public sense of security was alarmed, that the heart of the nation was touched, at the shocking disclosures made at each successive trial, and at the daily actions of men who seemed to be safe from the law. We have seen how the people of Scotland felt under the constant robbing of their churchyards; how they were awe-struck at the mysterious disappearance from among them of some unfortunate, whose whereabouts was never found out; and how they rose in righteous anger when the mystery was cleared up in the High Court of Justiciary. The wonder, indeed, is that considering the reverential regard for the dead which has always characterised them, that they bore the terrible pillage of their Golgothas so long; and that when the end came they did not work more mischief than they did. But the times, hard as they were at the best, and suffering under such a shocking blemish, were productive of real and lasting good to the nation, socially, scientifically, and even spiritually. For a long time after the execution of Burke and the flight of his accomplices, the houses in Wester Portsburgh were objects of horror and detestation; and having acquired a ghastly interest from the horrible crimes of which they were the scene, were among the best visited places in Edinburgh, until at last they were knocked down as eyesores to the community, and as perpetuating a series of crimes which were too deeply impressed on human memory to be easily forgotten. But the tradition clung long to the district, and even to this day the locality is pointed out to the stranger as being notable. The interest taken in these buildings and their internal arrangement was so great, that paintings of them on canvas were taken through the country, and shown at village fairs and markets. But an annoying and reprehensible practice arose out of the actions of Burke and Hare, which while certainly not so serious, was not without its dangerous element. This was a habit which many young men dropped into of attempting to put pieces of sticking-plaster over the mouths of unsuspicious passengers on the streets. Most commonly this prank was played upon girls, many of whom were almost out of their wits, and who would not venture out of the door at nights. This practice obtained not only in Edinburgh but also in Glasgow and the other large towns in Scotland, and though examples were made by the miscreants being apprehended and punished by the police magistrates, it became after a time such an intolerable nuisance, that the strictest measures had to be taken for its repression. One case of this kind in Glasgow created an extraordinary commotion. A servant girl was attacked in the street, and a sticking-plaster of so strong an adhesive nature was placed over her mouth that it could not be removed without taking a great portion of the skin of her face with it. There was little wonder that the _Glasgow Chronicle_, in a comment on the occurrence, said that the "wretches who can behave thus at any time, and more especially in the present state of public feeling, are a disgrace to society." But it is curious to note how this silly imitation of the method of Burke and Hare came to be regarded as the actual mode in which these men had performed their manifold murders. The fact that so many terrible crimes had been committed by them kept a firm hold on the mind of the people, but, gradually, the method, which had been made so public through the medium of the newspapers, was forgotten, and the impression as gradually gained ground that slipping up to their intended victims on the streets, Burke and his accomplice gave them their quietus by skilfully placing a piece of sticking-plaster over their mouths. Of course the preceding narrative, and the confessions of the condemned criminal, show that it was far otherwise, but the impression, amounting latterly to an absolute belief, became so fixed that even yet it still holds sway, though certainly in a less degree now than a generation ago. Allusion has already been made to the remarkably strong hold the whole plot took upon the minds of the Scottish people, and to the fact that it has exercised an influence on the inner life of the Scottish mind down to the present. This is generally acknowledged, but perhaps a better idea of the original character of the impression made by the discoveries of 1829 may be gained when the great events and movements going on all around at and after the time are taken into consideration. In the year 1829 the country was agitated not only by stirring news from the Continent, where armies were marching to and fro, and there was a tendency to a general European conflagration, but also by the Catholic Emancipation movement, and parliamentary reform. Every one knows the interest the people of Scotland took in these matters, and especially in the Reform Bill, and how many suffered on the scaffold for over boldness in the struggle. These were events that might have absorbed all the attention the people could spare from their daily toil for the sustenance of life; but yet the Burke and Hare tragedies were always to be heard repeated by some fireside, and the tales of the resurrectionists were rehearsed to willing listeners. Such great events affected the rights of the people as citizens of the empire, as freemen in the state; but the violation of churchyards, the murder of poor human beings for the sale of their bodies, touched the heart, it related to the home-life of the man, independent of his citizenship. It was the same with the other great political movements of the early half of the century. The stories went from mouth to mouth, from father to son, from nurse to child, and the horrid memory of the foulest series of murders on the criminal calendar of Scotland was kept fresh, young minds grew up in fear of a terrible unknown something of which the preceding generation had had a full realization, a something which happily was impossible, but which exercised a baneful and dwarfing influence all the same. The old bogles of superstitious times were thrown aside, the stern realities of human criminality were used in their stead. Many still remember their youthful impressions and shudder. It is well that these influences are losing their power, but it would be unfortunate if the lessons taught by these awful times were forgotten by the country. Happily, however, the resurrectionist times were not without their good elements as well as their bad. Had such events not taken place two things would have been evident--first, that up to that time anatomical study and research had made little progress; and second, that the study would have continued in a state of stagnation under restrictions discreditable to the country and its rulers. But quite another state of matters existed and do exist. The scientific ardour which from an early period of its history had characterised the medical faculty in Scotland, and particularly in Edinburgh, may be said to have created the necessity for resurrectionists or body-snatchers, and the fact that the research so needful to the happiness and comfort of humanity was being conducted under such unfortunate auspices, and debasing restrictions, gradually awoke the community to a sense of what they owed to themselves and to those whose ultimate object was the general good. The churchyards were being robbed of their silent tenants, the poor were being surreptitiously bribed to part with the bodies of their dead relatives, and even the streets were being laid under contribution for their living wanderers. The exigencies of science had created a necessary evil; the natural and even justifiable prejudices of the nation, outraged and grieved, were against the seeking of a remedy. But the evil became so great, its worst and latest development was so shocking, that some steps had to be taken, even at the expense of human sentiment, to put matters on a right and proper footing. Men could not live without doctors who were thoroughly trained and experienced in all the intricacies and mysteries of the human frame; these doctors could not gain their experience without "subjects," and "subjects" they must have by some means or other. Not, certainly, that the profession approved of murder to obtain their ends, but the result showed that the men upon whom the profession mainly depended had resorted to that terrible act to supply their patrons. The only feasible course open, therefore, was that made lawful by the Anatomy Act of 1832, which put upon a legal basis the purchase of bodies from relatives under certain wise and not too irksome conditions. It has been seen that notwithstanding the unhappy state of matters then existing, and the terrible scourge under which the country had so long suffered, there was a strong feeling against the passage of that measure; but on the other hand an interesting testimony was given in its favour when many of the highest in the land, amongst them the Duke of Sussex, the youngest son of King George III., and uncle of Queen Victoria, gave directions that if necessary their bodies should after death be anatomised. The science of anatomy, therefore, for the first time in its existence, made rapid progress, the art of healing and alleviating disease became more perfect, and although there is much still to be desired, research is unfettered, and the possibility of discoveries valuable to humanity are increased. It is curious, however, that in the last few years of these baneful restrictions, extraordinary results accrued from the researches of anatomists, and, strange though it may seem, the science was really put upon a scientific basis it had never occupied before. But there was still another effect of the resurrectionist movement, and that was that it had a widening tendency on the religious beliefs of the people. The old idea is well expressed in the ballad written in 1711, and quoted in an early chapter in this volume, when the unknown author says:-- "Methink I hear the latter trumpet sound, When emptie graves into this place is found, Of young and old, which is most strange to me, What kind of resurrection this should be." The people preferred to think of a resurrection which would in one respect and to a certain extent be comprehensible to them. They thought they could understand the dead rising from the grave if their bodies were placed intact in the sepulchre, but they deemed that a body dissected and cut into pieces, probably portions buried in different places, was unlikely to be under the influence of the last call. In this they distrusted God in the belief of a doctrine which above all required a distinct act of faith in His almighty power. Their ideas, however, were widened, and they came to see that if it were possible for the Great Father of the human race to wake the dead on the judgment day when their dust lay peacefully beside the village church, it was also possible for Him to call them to Him though their particles lay far apart. There is one other point which must not be omitted in a work of this kind. The transactions in the West Port of Edinburgh, in 1828, gave new words with a peculiar significance to the English language. A "burker" was unknown before the crimes of William Burke were made public; "burking" was an undiscovered art until he discovered it. This in itself is another testimony to the effect the crimes chronicled in this book had upon the minds of the men and women of the period. Many other words similarly derived have had a brief popularity, and dropped into oblivion, to be only hunted up by the philological antiquary, but these have retained their significance, and, by their aptitude to many actions in all phases of life, have attained to a classical position in the language to which their usefulness, rather than their origin, entitle them. [Illustration: MRS. HARE AND CHILD (From a Sketch taken in Court)] APPENDIX APPENDIX. THE CASE AGAINST TORRENCE AND WALDIE. At page twenty-four _ante_ a brief note is given of the case against Torrence and Waldie for the murder of a boy for the purpose of disposing of his body to the surgeons. The account there given is founded upon a brief jotting in the _Edinburgh Evening Courant_, and, as the case is one of considerable interest, the following more lengthy record is taken from the _Scots Magazine_ for 1752:-- "Helen Torrence, residenter, and Jean Waldie, wife of a stabler's servant in Edinburgh, were tried, at the instance of the King's Advocate, before the Court of Justiciary, for stealing and murdering John Dallas, a boy of about eight or nine years of age, son of John Dallas, chairman in Edinburgh. The indictment bears, that in November last the pannels frequently promised two or three surgeon-apprentices to procure them a subject; that they pretended that they were to sit up with a dead child, and after the coffining, slip something else into the coffin, and secrete the body; but said afterwards that they were disappointed in this, the parent refusing to consent; that on the 3rd of December, Janet Johnston, mother to the deceased, having come to Torrence's house, was desired by her to sit down; that Waldie, who was then with Torrence, soon left them, on pretence of being ill with the colic, and went up stairs to her own house, which was immediately above that of Torrence; that thereafter, on hearing a knock upon the floor above, Torrence went up stairs to Waldie, staid a short while with her, then returned to Janet Johnstone, and invited her to drink a pint of ale in a neighbouring house, which invitation she accepted of; that after they had drunk one pint of ale, Torrence offered another; that this second pint being brought in, Torrence went out of the ale-house; that then both or either of the pannels went to the house of the above-mentioned John Dallas, chairman, stole away the poor innocent boy in the absence of its parents, and murdered it; that Waldie immediately after went and informed the surgeon apprentices that Torrence and she had now found a subject, desiring them to carry it instantly away; that on this the apprentices came to Waldie's house, and found the dead body stretched on a chest; that having asked what they should give for the subject? would not two shillings be enough? Both pannels declared they had been at more expense about it than that sum; but that upon their giving Torrence tenpence to buy a dram, she and Waldie accepted of the two shillings in part payment; that, at the desire of the apprentices, Torrence carried the body in her apron to one of their rooms, for which she received sixpence more; and that when the pannels were apprehended, some of the facts were confessed by them, by Torrence before one of the Bailies of Edinburgh, and by Waldie before the Lord Provost; Waldie in particular, having confessed that Torrence told her, that should this boy die, he would be a good one for the doctors; that, at Torrence's desire, she frequently went to see how the boy was; that thereafter, Torrence having asked her how he was? and she having answered, that he continued much in the same way, Torrence replied that it would be better to take him away alive, for he would be dead before he could be brought to her house; that accordingly, after the boy's mother had seen Waldie upstairs to her own house, 3rd December, Torrence came and told her that she and the mother were then drinking a pint of ale, and that it would be a proper time for Waldie to go for the boy; that Waldie accordingly went, found the boy looking over a window, took him up in her arms, and carried him directly to her own house, whither she was immediately followed by Torrence; that, before Torrence came in, Waldie had given the boy a drink of ale, but it would scarce go over, and he died six minutes thereafter; and that Waldie, at Torrence's desire, went for the surgeons, and sold the dead body to them, as above. On missing their child, the parents made inquiry for him. In about four days, the body was found in a place of the town little frequented, but with evident marks of having been in the surgeons' hands. The parents were thereupon taken up, and likewise the pannels. The pannels were examined, the parents set at liberty, and the pannels kept in prison. Their trial came off on the 3rd February. After debates, the Lords found the libel relevant to infer the pains of law. A proof was taken on the same day. Among the witnesses were the boy's parents, and the surgeons' apprentices. Next day the jury returned the following verdict:--'Found, that the pannels are both guilty, art and part, of stealing John Dallas, a living child, and son of John Dallas, chairman in Edinburgh, from his father's house, at the time and in the manner libelled; and of carrying him to the house of Jean Waldie, one of the pannels; and soon thereafter, on the evening of the day libelled, of selling and delivering his body, then dead, to some surgeons and students of physic.' Counsel were heard on the import of this verdict on the sixth, when all defences were over-ruled. Both pannels were sentenced to be hanged in the Grassmarket of Edinburgh, on the 18th March. They were executed accordingly. Waldie, in her last speech, says, that Torrence prevailed on her, when much intoxicated, to go and carry the child alive from its mother's house; that she carried it in her gown-tail to her own house; that when she arrived at home, she found the child was dead, having, as she believed, been smothered in her coats in carrying it off; that it really died in her hands; that she acknowledges her sentence to be just. Torrence declines saying anything about the crime." On page 152 of MacLaurin's _Remarkable Cases_, under date February 3, 1752, there is a short account of the pleadings at the trial. The following is a note of the matter contained there, with the exception of the finding of the jury, which has already been given:-- _His Majesty's Advocate against Helen Torrence and Jean Waldie._ "They were indicted for stealing and murdering John Dallas, a boy about eight or nine years of age, son of John Dallas, chairman, in Edinburgh, on the 3rd December, 1751. "The counsel for the prisoners represented, that however the actual murder might be relevant to infer the pains of death, yet the stealing of the child could only infer an arbitrary punishment. And as to the selling of the dead body, it was no crime at all. "_Ans._--Though the stealing the child when alive, when disjoined from the selling of it when dead, might not go so far; yet, when taken together, they were undoubtedly relevant to infer a capital punishment. "The court pronounced the usual interlocutor." AN INTERVIEW WITH BURKE IN PRISON. The following appeared in the _Caledonian Mercury_ early in the month of January, 1829:-- "The information from which the following article is drawn up we have received from a most respectable quarter, and its perfect correctness in all respects may be confidently relied on. In truth, it is as nearly as possible a strict report, rather than the substance, of what passed at an interview with Burke, in the course of which the unhappy man appears to have opened his mind without reserve, and to have given a distinct and explicit answer to every question which was put to him relative to his connection with the late murders. "After some conversation of a religious nature, in the course of which Burke stated that, while in Ireland, his mind was under the influence of religious impressions, and that he was accustomed to read his Catechism and Prayer-book, and to attend to his duties. He was asked, 'How comes it then that you, who, by your own account, were once under the influence of religious impressions, ever formed the idea of such dreadful atrocities, of such cold-blooded, systematic murders as you admit you have been engaged in--how came such a conception to enter your mind?' To this Burke replied, 'that he did not exactly know; but that becoming addicted to drink, living in open adultery, and associating continually with the most abandoned characters, he gradually became hardened and desperate; gave up attending chapel or any place of religious worship, shunned the face of the priest, and being constantly familiar with every species of wickedness, he at length grew indifferent as to what he did, and was ready to commit any crime.' "He was then asked how long he had been engaged in this murderous traffic, to which he answered, 'From Christmas, 1827, till the murder of the woman Docherty in October last.' 'How many persons have you murdered, or been concerned in murdering, during the time? Were they 30 in all?' 'Not so many; not so many, I assure you.' 'How many?' He answered the question, but the answer was, for a reason perfectly satisfactory, not communicated to us, and reserved for a different quarter. "'Had you any accomplices?' 'None but Hare. We always took care when we were going to commit a murder that no one else should be present; that no one could swear he saw the deed done. The women might suspect what we were about, but we always put them out of the way when we were going to do it. They never saw us commit any of the murders. One of the murders was done in Broggan's house while he was out, but before he returned the thing was finished and the body put into a box. Broggan evidently suspected something, for he appeared much agitated, and entreated us to take away the box, which we accordingly did. But he was not in any way concerned in it.' "'You have already told me that you were engaged in these atrocities from Christmas, 1827, till the end of October, 1828. Were you associated with Hare during all that time?' 'Yes, we began with selling to Dr. ---- the body of a woman who had died a natural death in Hare's house. We got ten pounds for it. After this we began the murders, and all the rest of the bodies that we sold to him were murdered.' "'In what place were these murders generally committed?' 'They were mostly committed in Hare's house, which was very convenient for the purpose, as it consisted of a room and kitchen. Daft Jamie was murdered there. The story told of this murder is incorrect. Hare began the struggle with him, and they fell and rolled together on the floor; then I went to Hare's assistance, and we at length finished him, though with much difficulty. I committed one murder in the country by myself. It was in last harvest. All the rest were done in conjunction with Hare.' "'By what means were these fearful atrocities perpetrated?' 'By suffocation. We made the persons drunk, and then suffocated them by holding the nostrils and mouth and getting on the body. Sometimes I held the mouth and nose, while Hare went upon the body; and sometimes Hare held the mouth and nose, while I placed myself on the body. Hare has perjured himself by what he said at the trial about the murder of Docherty. He did not sit by while I did it, as he says. He was on the body assisting me with all his might, while I held the nostrils and mouth with one hand, choked her under the throat with the other. We sometimes used a pillow, but did not in this case.' "'Now, Burke, answer me this question:--Were you tutored and instructed, or did you receive hints from any one as to the mode of committing murder?' 'No, except from Hare. We often spoke about it, and we agreed that suffocation was the best way. Hare said so, and I agreed with him. We generally did it by suffocation.' "'Did you receive any encouragement to commit or persevere in committing these atrocities?' 'Yes; we were frequently told by Paterson that he would take as many bodies as we could get for him. When we got one he always told us to get more. There was commonly another person with him of the name of ----. They generally pressed us to get more bodies for them.' "'To whom were the bodies so murdered sold?' 'To Dr. ----. We took the bodies to his rooms in ---- ----, and then went to his house to receive the money for them. Sometimes he paid us himself; sometimes we were paid by his assistants. No questions were ever asked as to the mode in which we had come by the bodies. We had nothing to do but to leave a body at the rooms, and go and get money.' "'Did you ever, upon any occasion, sell a body or bodies to any other lecturer in this place?' 'Never. We knew no other.' "'You have been a resurrectionist (as it is called) I understand?' 'No. Neither Hare nor myself ever got a body from a churchyard. All we sold were murdered, save the first one, which was that of the woman who died a natural death in Hare's house. We began with that: our crimes then commenced. The victims we selected were generally elderly persons; they could be more easily disposed of than persons in the vigour of health.' "Such are the disclosures which this wretched man has made, under circumstances which can scarcely fail to give them weight with the public. Before a question were put to him concerning the crimes he had been engaged in, he was solemnly reminded of the duty incumbent upon him, situated as he is, to banish from his mind every feeling of animosity towards Hare, on account of the evidence which the latter gave at the trial; he was told that a dying man, covered with guilt, and without hope except in the infinite mercy of Almighty God, through our blessed Redeemer the Lord Jesus Christ, he, who stood so much in need of forgiveness, must prepare himself to seek it by forgiving from his heart all who had done him wrong; and he was emphatically adjured to speak the truth, and nothing but the truth, without any attempt either to palliate his own iniquities, or to implicate Hare more deeply than the facts warranted. Thus admonished, and thus warned, he answered the several interrogations in the terms above stated; declaring at the same time, upon the word of a dying man, that everything he had said was true, and that he had in no respect exaggerated or extenuated anything, either from a desire to inculpate Hare, or to spare anyone else." THE CONFESSIONS OF BISHOP AND WILLIAMS, THE LONDON "BURKERS." The following are the confessions of Bishop and Williams, the London "Burkers," an account of whose case is given in chapter XLI. They were emitted in presence of the Under-Sheriff on the 4th of December, 1831, the day before their execution:-- "I, John Bishop, do hereby declare and confess, that the boy supposed to be the Italian boy was a Lincolnshire boy. I and Williams took him to my house about half-past ten o'clock on the Thursday night, the 3rd of November, from the Bell, in Smithfield. He walked home with us. Williams promised to give him some work. Williams went with him from the Bell to the Old Bailey watering-house, whilst I went to the Fortune of War. Williams came from the Old Bailey watering-house to the Fortune of War for me, leaving the boy standing at the corner of the court by the watering-house at the Old Bailey. I went directly with Williams to the boy, and we walked then all three to Nova Scotia Gardens, taking a pint of stout at a public-house near Holloway Lane, Shoreditch, on our way, of which we gave the boy a part. We only stayed just to drink it, and walked on to my house, where we arrived about eleven o'clock. My wife and children and Mrs. Williams were not gone to bed, so we put him in the privy, and told him to wait there for us. Williams went in and told them to go to bed, and I stayed in the garden. Williams came out directly, and we both walked out of the garden a little way, to give time for the family getting to bed: we returned in about ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, and listened outside the window to ascertain whether the family were gone to bed. All was quiet, and we then went to the boy in the privy, and took him into the house; we lighted a candle, and gave the boy some bread and cheese, and, after he had eaten, we gave him a cup full of rum, with about half a small phial of laudanum in it. (I had bought the rum the same evening at the Three Tuns, in Smithfield, and the laudanum also in small quantities at different shops). There was no water or other liquid put in the cup with the rum and laudanum. The boy drank the contents of the cup directly in two draughts, and afterwards a little beer. In about ten minutes he fell asleep on the chair on which he sat, and I removed him from the chair to the floor, and laid him on his side. We then went out and left him there. We had a quartern of gin and a pint of beer at the Feathers, near Shoreditch Church, and then went home again, having been away from the boy about twenty minutes. We found him asleep as we had left him. We took him directly, asleep and insensible, into the garden, and tied a cord to his feet to enable us to put him up by, and I then took him in my arms, and let him slide from them headlong into the well in the garden, whilst Williams held the cord to prevent the body going altogether too low in the well. He was nearly wholly in the water in the well, his feet just above the surface. Williams fastened the other end of the cord round the paling, to prevent the body getting beyond our reach. The boy struggled a little with his arms and his legs in the water; the water bubbled for a minute. We waited till these symptoms were past, and then went in, and afterwards I think we went out, and walked down Shoreditch to occupy the time, and in about three-quarters of an hour we returned and took him out of the well, by pulling him by the cord attached to his feet. We undressed him in the paved yard, rolled his clothes up, and buried them where they were found by the witness who produced them. We carried the boy into the wash-house, laid him on the floor, and covered him over with a bag. We left him there, and went and had some coffee in Old Street Road, and then (a little before two on the morning of Friday) went back to my house. We immediately doubled the body up, and put it into a box, which we corded so that nobody might open it to see what was in it; and then went again and had some more coffee in the same place in Old Street Road, where we stayed a little while, and then went home to bed--both in the same house, and to our own beds as usual; we slept till about ten o'clock on Friday morning, when we got up, took breakfast together with the family, and then went both of us to Smithfield, to the Fortune of War--we had something to eat and drink there. In about half-an-hour May came in--I knew May--but had not seen him for about a fortnight before,--he had some rum with me at the bar, Williams remaining in the tap-room. [The condemned man then described the movements of himself and Williams, and May during that day, in course of which they were principally occupied in visiting public houses, though they called upon two lecturers on anatomy and offered them the body, but were refused.] At the Fortune of War we drank something again, and then (about six o'clock) we all three went in the chariot to Nova Scotia Gardens; we went into the wash-house, where I uncorded the trunk, and shewed May the body. He asked, "how are the teeth?" I said I had not looked at them. Williams went and fetched a brad-awl from the house, and May took it and forced the teeth out; it is the constant practice to take the teeth out first, because, if the body be lost, the teeth are saved; after the teeth were taken out, we put the body in a bag, and took it to the chariot; May and I carried the body, and Williams got first into the coach, and then assisted in pulling the body in...." [The rest of this part of the confession is simply a record of "having something to drink," and visiting lecturers, who refused to purchase the body. It concludes with an account of the apprehension of the men at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, with the body in their possession.] In an addition to this confession of the murder of the boy, Bishop made this further statement:-- "I declare that this statement is all true, and that it contains all the facts so far as I can recollect. May knew nothing of the murder, and I do not believe he suspected that I had got the body except in the usual way, and after the death of it. I always told him I got it from the ground, and he never knew to the contrary until I confessed to Mr. Williams [a clergyman] since the trial. I have known May as a body-snatcher for four or five years, but I do not believe he ever obtained a body except in the common course of men in the calling--by stealing from the graves. I also confess that I and Williams were concerned in the murder of a female--whom I believe to have been since discovered as Fanny Pigburn--on or about the 9th of October last. I and Williams saw her sitting about eleven or twelve o'clock at night on the step of a door in Shoreditch, near the church. She had a child four or five years old on her lap. I asked her why she was sitting there. She said she had no home to go to, for her landlord had turned her out into the street. I told her that she might go home with us, and sit by the fire all night. She said she would go with us, and she walked with us to my house, in Nova Scotia Gardens, carrying her child with her. When we got there we found the family abed, and we took the woman in and lighted a fire, by which we all sat down together. I went out for beer, and we all took beer and rum (I had brought the rum from Smithfield in my pocket); the woman and her child laid down on some dirty linen on the floor, and I and Williams went to bed. About six o'clock next morning I and Williams told her to go away, and to meet us at the London Apprentice in Old-Street Road, at one o'clock. This was before our families were up. She met us again at one o'clock at the London Apprentice, without her child. We gave her some half-pence and beer, and desired her to meet us again at ten o'clock at night at the same place. After this we bought rum and laudanum at different places, and at ten o'clock we met the woman again at the London Apprentice, she had no child with her. We drank three pints of beer between us there, and stayed there about an hour. We would have stayed there longer, but an old man came in whom the woman said she knew, and she said she did not like him to see her there with any body; we therefore all went out; it rained hard, and we took shelter under a door-way in the Hackney Road for about an hour. We then walked to Nova Scotia Gardens, and Williams and I led her into No. 2, an empty house adjoining my house. We had no light. Williams stepped into the garden with the rum and laudanum, which I had handed to him; he there mixed them together in a half-pint bottle, and came into the house to me and the woman, and gave her the bottle to drink; she drank the whole at two or three draughts; there was a quartern of rum, and about half a phial of laudanum; she sat down the step between two rooms in the house, and went off to sleep in about ten minutes. She was falling back; I caught her to save her fall, and she laid back on the floor. Then Williams and I went to a public-house, got something to drink, and in about half-an-hour came back to the woman; we took her cloak off, tied a cord to her feet, carried her to a well in the garden and thrust her into it headlong; she struggled very little afterwards, and the water bubbled a little at the top. We fastened the end to the pailings to prevent her going down beyond our reach, and left her and took a walk to Shoreditch and back, in about half-an-hour; we left the woman in the well for this length of time, that the rum and laudanum might run out of the body at the mouth. On our return, we took her out of the well, cut her clothes off, put them down the privy of the empty house, carried the body into the wash-house of my own house, where we doubled it up and put it into a hair-box, which we corded and left there. We did not go to bed, but went to Shields' [a street porter] house in Eagle Street, Red Lion Square, and called him up; this was between four and five o'clock in the morning. We went with Shields to a public-house near the Sessions-house, Clerkenwell, and had some gin, and from thence to my house, where we went in and stayed a little while, to wait the change of the police. I told Shields he was to carry that trunk to St. Thomas's Hospital. He asked if there was a woman in the house who could walk alongside of him, so that people might not take any notice. Williams called his wife up, and asked her to walk with Shields, and to carry the hat-box which he gave her to carry. There was nothing in it, but it was tied up as if there were. We then put the box with the body on Shields' head, and went to the hospital, Shields and Mrs. Williams walking on one side of the street, and I and Williams on the other. At St. Thomas's Hospital I saw Mr. South's footman, and sent him up stairs to Mr. South to ask if he wanted a subject. The footman brought me word that his master wanted one, but could not give an answer till the next day, as he had not time to look at it. During this interview, Shields, Williams, and his wife, were waiting at a public-house. I then went alone to Mr. Appleton, at Mr. Grainger's [Anatomical Theatre], and agreed to sell it to him for eight guineas, and afterwards I fetched it from St. Thomas's Hospital, and took it to Mr. Appleton, who paid me £5 then, and the rest on the following Monday. After receiving the £5, I went to Shields and Williams and his wife, at the public-house, when I paid Shields 10s. for his trouble, and we then all went to the Flower Pot in Bishopsgate, where we had something to drink, and then went home. I never saw the woman's child after the first time before mentioned. She said she had left the child with a person she had taken some of her things to, before her landlord took her goods. The woman murdered did not tell us her name; she said her age was thirty-five, I think, and that her husband, before he died, was a cabinetmaker. She was thin, rather tall, and very much marked with the small-pox. I also confess the murder of a boy who told us his name was Cunningham. It was a fortnight after the murder of the woman. I and Williams found him sleeping about eleven or twelve o'clock at night, on Friday, the 21st of October, as I think, under the pig-boards in the pig market in Smithfield. Williams woke him, and asked him to come along with him (Williams), and the boy walked with Williams and me to my house in Nova Scotia Gardens. We took him into my house, and gave him some warm beer, sweetened with sugar, with rum and laudanum in it. He drank two or three cups full, and then fell asleep in a little chair belonging to one of my children. We laid him on the floor and went out for a little while, and got something to drink and then returned, carried the boy to the well, and threw him into it, in the same way as we served the other boy and the woman. He died instantly in the well, and we left him there a little while, to give time for the mixture we had given him to run out of the body. We then took the body from the well, took off the clothes in the garden, and buried them there. The body we carried into the wash-house, and put it into the same box, and left it there till the next evening, when we got a porter to carry it with us to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where I sold it to Mr. Smith for eight guineas. This boy was about ten or eleven years old, said his mother lived in Kent Street, and that he had not been home for a twelvemonth and better. I solemnly declare that these were all the murders in which I have been concerned, or that I know anything of; that I and Williams were alone concerned in these, and that no other person whatever knew anything about either of them, and that I do not know whether there are others who practise the same mode of obtaining bodies for sale. I know nothing of any Italian boy, and was never concerned in or knew of the murder of such a boy.... Until the transactions before set forth, I never was concerned in obtaining a subject by the destruction of the living. I have followed the course of obtaining a livelihood as a body-snatcher for twelve years, and have obtained and sold, I think, from 500 to 1000 bodies; but I declare, before God, that they were all obtained after death, and that, with the above exceptions, I am ignorant of any murder for that or any other purpose." Williams, whose proper name was Thomas Head, confirmed the confession given above as altogether true. SONGS AND BALLADS. _The following songs and ballads were published at the time the news of the West Port tragedies was agitating the people of Scotland. They are rude and unpoetical for the most part, but they are fairly representative of a very extensive class, in which the feelings of the common people are not unfaithfully mirrored._ RHYMES _On reading the Trial of William Burke and Helen M'Dougal, for Murder, 24th December, 1828._ AN EXPOSTULATION. "_Thou can'st not say I did it!!!_" Ah!--can'st thou, with cold indifference see The hand of execration point to thee? Can'st thou, unmov'd, bear a whole nation's cry, To cleanse thyself from the polluted sty Of Burke, and Hare, and all that fiendish crew, Who, for mere gain, their fellow-mortals slew, And sold to thee, as thou hast not denied, Such bodies as by students were descried Ne'er to have been interred, nay, bore, some say, Strong marks of life, by violence reft away? And thou didst not attempt the truth to find, Though oft it must have flash'd across thy mind; But with a reckless carelessness, receiv'd Whate'er was brought,[1] and any lie believ'd, Told by the gang, whose very forms do show They would not tell thee aught thou did'st not know, Or should'st have known, if true thy Science says, That marks of death by _Murder_ any ways May well be seen, when the dissecting knife Opens all the sure and secret seats of life.[2] Art thou a Scotsman ----? then haste to prove That patriotic feelings can thy bosom move; Haste to wipe out the stain thy country shares, While such a stigma fair Edina bears. Art thou a son of Science? quickly, then, Show she does not make brutes of _lect'ring_ men. Art thou a Father? then thy child may plead, To cleanse thyself from this unholy deed. Art thou a husband? ask thine honest wife, If 'twere not better to descend in life, Than traffic with the basest, vilest band, And thus for ---- soon's the deed is plann'd; A ready market keep--and hide away An _old tea-box_; that's all which you can say. Art thou a Christian? think'st thou this avails With Him on high, who, with unerring scales, Weighs all the thoughts, and words, and deeds of men, And searches through, ev'n the soul's inmost _ken_? If this dread argument will not prevail, Nought can thy cold obdurate heart assail. Yes, time mispent, and surely worse than vain, 'Tis to attempt to rouse, by my poor strain, The proud rich man, hedg'd round by many a friend, Whose voice th' applause of hundred youths attend. If his own conscience will not wake and cry, Assert thine innocence, REPLY, REPLY, To all the accusations lately rais'd 'Gainst thy fair fame, till ev'n ---- has gaz'd, And gaz'd in vain to see thee ---- come forth, Arm'd with thy ---- thy ---- and thy ---- * * * * _Cetera desunt._ [1] _Vide_ the evidence produced on the trial of Burke, &c. It has been told as a fact, that this gang carried off to ---- one of their slaughtered victims in such a hurry, that the body actually _groaned_ in the box on the porter's back. No doubt the half-strangled being would be dead enough after a night in the ---- cellar.--_Original Note._ [2] The ---- is understood to be profoundly skilled in Anatomy; consequently, it is one of the bitterest satires that can be uttered against the utility of the Science, to say that he was _ignorant_ that the bodies supplied by Burke and his gang had come to their death by violence.--_Original Note._ WILLIAM BURKE. O Burke, cruel man, how detested thy name is! Thy dark deeds of blood are a stain on our times. O savage, relentless, forever infamous, Long, long will the world remember thy crimes. Thrice ten human beings, weep all you who hear it, Were caught in his snares and caught in his den, The shades of thy victims may elude thy vile spirit, O Burke, cruel monster, thou basest of men. The weary, the old, and the way-faring stranger, Were woo'd by his kindness and led to his door, But little knew they that the path led to danger, O little knew they that their wanderings were o'er. Little knew they that the beams of the morning, To wake them to brightness, would shine all in vain, And little their friend knew, who watched their returning, That they were ne'er more to return back again. O gather the bones of the murdered together, And give them a grave in some home of the dead, That their poor weeping friends with sad hearts may go thither, And shed tears of sorrow above their cold bed. Ye great men of learning, ye friends of dissection, Who travell'd through blood to the temple of gain, And bright human life for your hateful inspection, O give the poor friends the white bones of the slain. But woe to the riches and skill thus obtained, Woe to the wretch that would injure the dead, And woe to his portion whose fingers are stained With the red drops of life that he cruelly shed. Tho' Burke has been doom'd to expire on the gallows, The vilest that ever dishonoured the tree, Yet some may survive him whose hearts are as callous, O, who wall be safe if the tigers be free. Let none e'er reside in the crime marked dwellings, For ever disgraced by Burke and by Hare, May the cold damp of horror lie dark in their ceilings, And their pale ghastly walls still be dismal and bare. Let their guilt and their gloom speak of nothing but terror, Some dark deeds of blood to the stranger declare, And ages to come ever mark them with horror, For the ghosts of the murdered will still gather there. ELEGAIC LINES WRITTEN ON THE TRAGICAL MURDER OF POOR DAFT JAMIE. Attendance give, whilst I relate How Poor Daft Jamie met his fate; 'Twill make your hair stand on your head, As I unfold the horrid deed;-- That hellish monster, William Burke, Like Reynard sneaking on the lurk, Coy-duck'd his prey into his den, And then the woeful work began;-- "Come, Jamie, drink a glass wi' me, And I'll gang wi' ye in a wee, To seek yer mither i' the toun-- Come drink, man, drink, an' sit ye doun." "Nae, I'll no' drink wi' ye the nou, For if I div 'twill make me fou;" "Tush, man, a wee will do ye guid, 'Twill cheer yer heart, and warm yer bluid." At last he took the fatal glass, Not dreaming what would come to pass; When once he drank, he wanted more-- Till drunk he fell upon the floor. "Now," said th' assassin, "now we may Seize on him as our lawful prey." "Wait, wait," said Hare, "ye greedy ass; He's yet too strong--let's tak' a glass." Like some unguarded gem he lies-- The vulture wants to seize his prize; Nor does he dream he's in his power, Till it has seized him to devour. The ruffian dogs,--the hellish pair,-- The villain Burke,--the meagre Hare,-- Impatient were their prize to win, So to their smothering pranks begin:-- Burke cast himself on Jamie's face, And clasp'd him in his foul embrace; But Jamie waking in surprise, Writhed in an agony to rise. At last, with nerves unstrung before, He threw the monster on the floor; And though alarm'd, and weaken'd too, He would have soon o'ercome the foe; But help was near--for it Burke cried, And soon his friend was at his side; Hare tripp'd up Jamie's heels, and o'er He fell, alas! to rise no more! Now both these blood-hounds him engage, As hungry tygers fill'd with rage, Nor did they handle axe or knife, To take away Daft Jamie's life. No sooner done, than in a chest They cramm'd this lately-welcom'd guest, And bore him into Surgeons' Square-- A subject fresh--a victim rare! And soon he's on the table laid, Expos'd to the dissecting blade; But where his members now may lay Is not for me--or you--to say. But this I'll say--some thoughts _did_ rise, It fill'd the students with surprise, That so short time did intervene Since Jamie on the streets was seen. But though his body is destroy'd, His soul can never be decoy'd From that celestial state of rest, Where he, I trust, is with the bless'd. MRS. WILSON'S LAMENTATION ON HEARING OF THE CRUEL MURDER OF HER SON. Why didst thou wander from my side, My joy, my treasure, and my pride? Though others little thought of thee, Though wert a treasure dear to me. I little thought when thee I left, So soon of thee to be bereft; Or that when after me you sought You would by ruffian men be caught. Thy playful manners fill'd with joy The aged sire and sportive boy; Of real joy you had enough, When you could give or take a snuff. The tricks you play'd with childish art, Bound you the closer to my heart; Thy kindness to thy mother prov'd How dearly she by thee was lov'd. What horrid monsters were these men Who lur'd thee to their fatal den; That den, whose deeds as yet untold, Were done for sake of sordid gold. But they alone were not to blame; For when these dauntless monsters came With human creatures scarcely cold, The doctors took them, we were told. Nor did they leave the doctors door Without an order to bring more! But Justice stern aloud doth cry-- "Let all who wink at murder die!" And justice shall to me be done, On all who murder'd my poor son;-- I'll make appeal to Britain's King, That one and all of them may swing. But that will not restore my son, Or remedy the mischief done; He murder'd is--no peace I have, I shall go mourning to my grave. DAFT JAMIE. The following is a chap-book version of the ballad quoted at pp. 205-6. O! dark was the midnight when Hare fled away, Not a star in the sky gave him one cheering ray, But still now and then, would the blue lightnings glare, And some strange cries assail'd him, like shrieks of despair. Over vale, over hill, I will watch thee for ill; I will haunt all thy wanderings and follow thee still. But, lo! as the savage ran down the wild glen, For no place did he fear like the dwellings of men, Where the heath lay before him all dismal and bare, The ghost of Daft Jamie appeared to him there. Over vale, &c. I am come, said the shade, from the land of the dead, Though there is for Jamie no grass covered bed, Yet I'm come to remind you of deeds that are past, And to tell you that justice will find you at last. Over vale, &c. O! Hare, thou hast been a dark demon of blood, But vengeance shall chase thee o'er field and o'er flood; Though you fly away from the dwellings of men, The shades of thy victims shall rise in thy den. Over vale, &c. When night falls on the world, O! how can you sleep, In your dreams do you ne'er see my poor mother weep? Sadly she wept; but, O! long shall she mourn, E'er poor wandering Jamie from the grave shall return. Over vale, &c. From the grave, did I say, and though calm is the bed Where slumber is dreamless, the home of the dead, Where friends may lament, there sorrow may be, Yet no grave rises as green as the world for me. Over vale, &c. O! Hare, go to shelter thy fugutive head, In some land that is not of the living or dead; For the living against thee may justly combine, And the dead must despise such a spirit as thine. Over vale, &c. O! Hare fly away, but this world cannot be The place of abode to a demon like thee, There is gall in your heart--poison is in your breath, And the glare of your eyes is as fearful as death. Over vale, &c. When the blue lightnings flash'd through the glen, and it shone, And there rose a wild cry, and there heaved a deep groan, As the Ghost of the innocent boy disappear'd, But his shrieks down the glen, in the night breeze were heard. Over vale, &c. THE RESURRECTIONISTS. In No. XXIX of _The Emmet_, an old Glasgow periodical, published on Saturday, 18th October, 1823, is the following:-- "_The_ Resurrectionists, _a Tale_ (in Blind Alek verse) _Humbly Inscribed to the Editor of the 'Glasgow Chronicle.' Printed for John Smith, 25, Gallowgate._ "ORIGINAL. "This _elegant_ poem was put into our hands as we were going to press, so we must be excused for passing it over more slightly than such a performance _deserves_. In fact we have only room for a single extract. It opens as follows, in a style which leaves Lewis, and Ratcliffe, and all our writers on the horrible, far in the rear. John Starke himself, with his 'Thesaurus of Horror,' never penned anything so deliciously frightful. 'Twas a cold winter night, and dark _was_ the clouds, And the dead men lay quietly still in their shrouds; The worms revelled sweetly their eyeholes among,-- It was a rout night, and there was a great throng: Some fed upon brains, others fed upon liver, Had we e'er such a feast, all cried out, O! no, never. "We suspect our readers will think we have given them enough of this feast; if they pant for more of it, let them turn to the work itself. More disgusting trash never emanated from the press. Blind Alek is a Milton compared with the blockhead who would sit down and pen such a mass of loathesomeness.... Lord preserve us from this imitator of Blind Alek. 'Some heads replete with strange bombastic stuff, Think words when rhym'd poetical enough.'" THE LAMENT. "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."--GENESIS, ix. 6. "Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days."--PSALM, lv. 23. "Depart from me therefore, ye bloody men."--PSALM, cxxxix. 19. "Now thou son of man, wilt thou judge, wilt thou judge the bloody city?"--EZEKIEL, xxii. 2. "The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground."--GENESIS, iv. 10. O woe for bonny Scotland, For murder is abroad, And we must flee for refuge, To an avenging God. For we have seen that Law alone, Can do us little _gude_, As it has let three demons loose, To work _mair_ deeds of _blude_. Ye bloody fiends, ye hellish fiends, Dare ye here yet be seen, With the mark of blood upon your brows, And murder in your _een_! O woe for my _ain_ Scotland, For thou art now the land, Chosen for such deeds of darkness, As man before ne'er plann'd. Alas for Mary Paterson, Cut off in her young days, Wi' a' her sins upon her, And in her wicked ways; While steep'd in drunk stupidity, And overcome by sleep, On his devoted victim Burke took the dreadful leap. And alas for the old woman, Entic'd to revelry, Under the mask of country kindness, By a Judas for his fee; That he might sell her body, When he had done the deed, And with the price of human blood, His _loathsome_ carcass feed. O'hon for poor _Daft_ Jamie, Whom we shall miss away, In his own happy _idiocy_, _Sae gude-natur'd_ and gay! O! who shall cheer the mother For the want of her poor boy, By's simpleness the more endear'd To her--her only joy. But our all-gracious Maker Will surely soon look down, On this detested murder With his all-powerful frown! * * * * In search of his dear mother, Burke found him wand'ring then, And for to see his parent, Was lur'd to Hare's dread den; Where he was ply'd with liquor, (And all by coaxings prest), Till he was quite o'erpow'red, And laid him down to rest. The two fell fiends they watch'd then, Until he soundly slept, Then Hare upon his destin'd prey With murderous purpose crept. And having fastened on him, Hare strove his life to take; Which recall'd his long lost reason, And did his senses wake. He shook the butcher from him, And seeing no help there, He fought with all the frenzy Of madness and despair. His cowardly assassin, Did crouch beneath his blows, And called on Burke his comrade To give the murderous close. They two, conjoin'd together, Depriv'd him of his life; But not before he left them Marks of the desperate strife. In his tremendous struggle, Though weaken'd much by drink, He showed how men do fight for life, When on death's dreadful brink. His body, it is said, (if true, Let those who bought beware) Was sold to an Anatomist; And some one did declare, When it lay on his table For the dissecting knife, That it was poor _daft_ Jamie, Whom he saw strong in life But yesterday; and more 'twas strange As all knew passing well, He was a stout and hearty youth, The rest I may not tell; But loudly it's been whisper'd, That damning marks of strife Show'd clear that death by violence Had _twin'd_ him of his life. 'Tis told, that then the body Was laid in spirits strong, To remove all such suspicions, And hide the cruel wrong. If so! O righteous Heaven, To thee we look for aid; Nor will thy kindling anger Be longer much delay'd! Thou art the _poor's_ avenger, The _idiot's_ only guard, The _childless_ mother's helper, The good man's high reward. To Thee then we are looking, To appease the cry of blood Which runs throughout our city, Like a portentous flood! AND WE DO HOLD THY PROMISE, WE SHALL NOT LOOK IN VAIN; FOR WHOSO SHEDDETH MAN'S BLOOD, HE SURELY SHALL BE SLAIN! THE END. 
42973	----	Google Books (Harvard University) Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: Google Books http://books.google.com/books?id=E08YAAAAYAAJ (Harvard University) THE HOUSE OF THE WHITE SHADOWS By B. L. FARJEON _Author of_ Samuel Boyd of Catchpole Square Grif, Toilers of Babylon, etc. R. F. FENNO & COMPANY PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK: 1904 [Illustration] Copyright, 1903, by New Amsterdam Book Co. _The House of the White Shadows_. BENJAMIN LEOPOLD FARJEON We regret to learn that since this book was sent to press in this country, its gifted author has passed away in London at the ripe age of 70 years. It seems appropriate and indeed necessary to preface "The House of the White Shadows," on its appearance in America, with a brief account of Mr. Farjeon's life and literary career. Considering his popularity it is astonishing how very little is generally known regarding this author's personality. The ordinary reference books, if not altogether silent respecting him, have but a line or two, giving the date of his birth with perhaps a list of two or three of his principal novels. It is sincerely to be hoped that a competent biography will ultimately appear, affording to his very many admirers some satisfactory account of a man who has given the world more than twenty-five remarkable works of fiction. Mr. Farjeon was an Englishman, having been born in London in 1833. At an early age he went to Australia and from thence to New Zealand. It would be exceedingly interesting to learn how he employed himself in those colonies. We know that he engaged in a journalistic venture in Dunedin, but how long it continued or how he fed his intellectual life during the years which intervened, until he published his first novel in London, we know little or nothing. At all events he returned home and launched his first literary venture in London in 1870. It was called "Grif, a Story of Australian Life." This story proved to be eminently successful, and probably determined its author's future career. He produced "Joshua Marvel" in 1871; "London's Heart" in 1873; "Jessie Trim" in 1874, and a long list of powerful novels ending with "Samuel Boyd of Catchpole Square," published only two or three years ago. Some of these works, like "Blade o' Grass," "Bread and Cheese and Kisses," "Great Porter Square," etc., have been very popular both in England and the United States, passing through many editions. Mr. Farjeon's style is remarkable for its vivid realism. The London "Athenæum" in a long and appreciative review styles him "a master of realistic fiction." On account of his sentiment and minute characterization he is regarded as a follower of the method of Dickens. No writer since that master can picture like Farjeon the touching and pathetic type of innocent childhood, pure in spite of miserable and squalid surroundings. He can paint, too, a scene of sombre horror so vividly that even Dickens himself could scarcely emulate its realism. Mr. Farjeon visited the United States several times during his long life. Americans have always regarded him with kindly feelings. Perhaps this kindliness was somewhat increased when it became generally known that he had married a daughter of America's genial actor, Joseph Jefferson. "The House of the White Shadows" is published in this country by arrangement with Messrs. Hutchinson & Co., of London, who have been Mr. Farjeon's publishers in Great Britain for many years. THE PUBLISHERS. CONTENTS CHAPTER Book I.--The Trial of Gautran. I.--Only a Flower-girl, II.--The Arrival of the Advocate, III.--The Advocate's Wife Insists upon Having her Way, IV.--Jacob Hartrich, the Baker, Gives his Reasons for Believing Gautran the Woodman Guilty of the Murder of Madeline, V.--Fritz the Fool, VI.--Mistress and Maid, VII.--A Visit from Pierre Lamont--Dreams of Love, VIII.--The Interview in Prison, IX.--The Advocate Undertakes a Strange Case, X.--Two Letters--From Friend to Friend, from Lover to Lover, XI.--Fire and Snow--Fool Fritz Informs Pierre Lamont, where Actual Love Commences, XII.--The Struggle of Love and Duty, XIII.--The Trial of Gautran, XIV.--The Evidence of Witnesses, XV.--The Widow Joseph Gives Evidence Respecting a Mysterious Visitor, XVI.--The Conclusion of the Prosecution, XVII.--The Advocate's Defense--The Verdict, Book II.--The Confession. I.--A Letter from John Vanbrugh, II.--A Startling Interruption, III.--In the Dead of Night, IV.--The Confession, Book III.--The Grave of Honour. I.--Preparations for a Visitor, II.--A Love Story of the Past, III.--A Mother's Treachery, IV.--Husband and Wife, V.--The Gathering of the Storm, VI.--The Grave of Honour, VII.--Husband and Wife, VIII.--The Compact, IX.--Mother Denise Has Strange Fancies in the Night, X.--Christian Almer's Child-life, XI.--Beatrice Almer Gives a Promise to Her Son, XII.--The Last Meeting between Husband and Wife, XIII.--The Arrival of Christian Almer, Book IV.--The Battle with Conscience. I.--Lawyer and Priest, II.--The White Shadow, III.--The Watch on the Hill, IV.--The Silent Voice, V.--Gautran Finds a Refuge, VI.--Pierre Lamont Reads Love-verses to Fritz the Fool, VII.--Mistress and Maid, VIII.--In the Home of His Childhood, IX.--Christian Almer Receives Two Visitors, X.--A Brief Survey of the Web, XI.--A Crisis, XII.--Self-justification, XIII.--Shadows, XIV.--The Advocate Fears he has Created a Monster, XV.--Gautran and the Advocate, XVI.--Pierre Lamont Seeks the Hospitality of the House of White Shadows, XVII.--Fritz the Fool Relates a Strange Dream to Pierre Lamont, Book V.--The Doom Of Gautran. I.--Adelaide Strives to Propitiate Pierre Lamont, II.--Gautran Seeks John Vanbrugh, III.--Gautran Resolves on a Plan of Escape, IV.--Heaven's Judgment, V.--Father Capel Discovers Gautran in His Peril, VI.--The Written Confession, Book VI.--A Record Of The Past. I.--The Discovery of the Manuscript, II.--Christian Almer's Father, III.--A Dishonourable Concealment, IV.--M. Gabriel is Dismissed, V.--The Thief in the Night, VI.--The Hidden Crime, VII.--False Wife, False Friend, Book VII.--Retribution. I.--John Vanbrugh and the Advocate, II.--A Terrible Revelation, III.--Pauline, IV.--Onward--to Death, V.--The Doom of the House of White Shadows, THE HOUSE OF WHITE SHADOWS. _BOOK I.--THE TRIAL OF GAUTRAN_. CHAPTER I ONLY A FLOWER-GIRL. The feverish state of excitement into which Geneva was thrown was not caused by a proclamation of war, a royal visit, a social revolution, a religious wave, or an avalanche. It was simply that a man was on his trial for murder. There is generally in Geneva a rational if not a philosophic foundation for a social upheaving; unlike the people of most other countries, the population do not care to play a blind game of follow my leader. They prefer to think for themselves, and their leaders must be men of mark. Intellect is passionately welcomed; pretenders find their proper level. What, then, in a simple trial for murder, had caused the excitement? Had the accused moved in a high station, was he a poet, a renowned soldier, a philanthropist, a philosopher, or a priest loved for his charities, and the purity of his life? None of these; he was Gautran, a woodman, and a vagabond of the lowest type. It would be natural, therefore, to seek for an explanation in the social standing of his victim. A princess, probably, or at least a lady of quality? On the contrary. A common flower-girl, who had not two pair of shoes to her feet. Seldom had a trial taken place in which the interest manifested had been so absorbing. While it was proceeding, the questions which men and women asked freely of each other were: "What news from the court-house?" "How many days longer is it likely to last?" "Has the monster confessed?" "What will the verdict be?" "Do you think it possible he can escape?" "Why did the famous Advocate undertake the defence?" In fashionable assemblies, and in _cafés_ where the people drank their lager and red wine; in clubs and workshops; on steamboats and diligences; in the fields and vineyards; on high-roads and bye-roads--the trial of Gautran formed the principal topic of conversation and debate, to the almost utter exclusion of trade, and science, and politics, and of a new fashion in hats which was setting the women of adjacent countries crazy. So animated were the discussions that the girl lying in her grave might have been supposed to be closely related to half the inhabitants of Geneva, instead of having been, as she was, a comparative stranger in the town, with no claim upon any living Genevese on the score of kinship. The evidence against the prisoner was overwhelming, and it appeared as though a spirit of personal hatred had guided its preparation. With deadly patience and skill the prosecution had blocked every loophole of escape. Gautran was fast in the meshes, and it was observed that his counsel, the Advocate, in the line he adopted, elicited precisely the kind of evidence which--in the judgment of those who listened to him now for the first time-strengthened the case against the man he was defending. "Ah," said those observers, "this great Advocate shares the horror of the murderer and his crime, and has undertaken the defence for the purpose of ensuring a conviction." A conclusion which could only occur to uninformed minds. There were others--among them the prosecuting counsel, the judge, and the members of the legal profession who thronged the court who, with a better knowledge of the Advocate's marvellous resources, and the subtle quality of his intellect, were inspired with the gravest doubts as to the result of the trial. This remarkable man, who gazed before him with calm, thoughtful eyes, whose face was a mask upon which no trace of inward emotion could be detected, was to them at once a source of perplexity and admiration. Instances were cited of trials in which he had been engaged, in the course of which he had seemed to play so directly into the hands of his antagonists that defeat was not dreamt of until they were startled by the discovery that he had led them into an ambush where, at the supreme moment, victory was snatched from their grasp. And, when it was too late to repair their error, they were galled by the reflection that the Advocate had so blinded their judgment, and so cloaked his designs, that he had compelled them to contribute largely to their own discomfiture. It was in the acknowledgment of these extraordinary powers that the doubt arose whether Gautran would not slip through the hands of justice. Every feature of the case and the proceedings, whether picturesque or horrible, that afforded scope for illustration by pen and pencil was pressed into the service of the public--whose appetite for such fare is regarded as immoderate and not over-nice--by special correspondents and artists. Descriptions and sketches of the river and its banks, of the poor home of the unfortunate flower-girl, of the room in which she had slept, of her habits and demeanour, of her dress, of her appearance alive and dead; and, as a contrast, of Gautran and his vile surroundings--not a detail was allowed to escape. It was impossible, without favour or influence, to obtain admission to the court in which the trial was held, and, could seats have been purchased, a higher price would willingly have been paid for them than the most celebrated actress or prima donna could have commanded. Murders are common enough, but this crime had feverishly stirred the heart of the community, and its strangest feature was that the excitement was caused, not so much by the murder itself, as by an accidental connection which imparted to it its unparalleled interest. The victim was a young girl seventeen years of age, who, until a few months before her cruel and untimely death, had been a stranger in the neighbourhood. Nothing was known of the story of her life. When she first appeared in the suburbs of Geneva she was accompanied by a woman much older than herself, and two facts made themselves immediately apparent. That a strong attachment existed between the new-comers, and that they were very poor. The last circumstance was regarded as a sufficient indication that they belonged to the lower classes. The name of the younger of the women was Madeline, the name of the elder Pauline. That they became known simply by these names, Madeline and Pauline, was not considered singular by those with whom they consorted; as they presented themselves, so they were accepted. Some said they came from the mountains, some from the plains, but this was guess-work. Their dress did not proclaim their canton, and they brought nothing with them to betray them. To the question asked of them, "What are you?" Pauline replied, "Cannot you see? We are common working people." They hired a room in a small cottage for three francs a month, and paid the first month's rent in advance, and their landlady was correct in her surmise that these three francs constituted nearly the whole of their wealth. She was curious to know how they were going to live, for although they called themselves working people, the younger of the two did not seem to be fitted for hard work, or to be accustomed to it. For a few days they did nothing, and then their choice of avocation was made. They sold flowers in the streets and _cafés_ of Geneva, and gained no more than a scanty living thereby. The woman in whose cottage they lived said she was surprised that they did not make a deal of money, as much because of Madeline's beauty as of their exquisite skill in arranging their posies. Had Pauline traded alone it is likely that failure would have attended her, for notwithstanding that she was both comely and straight-made, there was always in her eyes the watchful look of one who mistrusts honeyed words from strangers, and sees a snare in complimentary phrases. It was otherwise with Madeline, in whose young life Nature's fairest season was opening, and it would have been strange indeed if her smiling face and winning manners had not attracted custom. This smiling face and these winning manners were not an intentional part of the trade she followed; they were natural gifts. Admiration pursued her, not only from those in her own station in life, but from some who occupied a higher, and many an insidious proposal was whispered in her ear whose poisonous flattery would have beguiled her to her ruin. If she had not had in Pauline a staunch and devoted protector, it is hard to say whether she could have resisted temptation, for her nature was singularly gentle and confiding; but her faithful companion was ever on the alert, and no false wooer could hope to win his way to Madeline's heart while Pauline was near. One gave gold for flowers, and was about to depart with a smile at the success of his first move, when Pauline, with her hand on his sleeve, stopped his way. "You have made a mistake," she said, tendering the gold; "the flowers you have taken are worth but half-a-franc." "There is no mistake," he said airily; "the gold is yours for beauty's sake." "I prefer silver," she said, gazing steadily at him, "for fair dealing's sake." He took back his gold and gave her silver, with a taunting remark that she was a poor hand at her trade. She made no reply to this, but there was a world of meaning in her eyes as she turned to Madeline with a look of mingled anxiety and tenderness. And yet she desired money, yearningly desired it, for the sake of her young charge; but she would only earn it honestly, or receive it from those of whom she had a right to ask. She guarded Madeline as a mother guards her young, and their affection for each other grew into a proverb. Certainly no harm could befall the young flower-girl while Pauline was by her side. Unhappily a day arrived when the elder of the women was called away for a while. They parted with tears and kisses, never to meet again! CHAPTER II THE ARRIVAL OF THE ADVOCATE Among those whom Madeline's beauty had attracted was a man in a common way of life, Gautran, a woodman, who followed her with dogged persistence. That his company was distasteful to this bright young creature could not be doubted, but he was not to be shaken off, and his ferocity of character deterred others from approaching the girl when he was present. Many times had he been heard to say, "Madeline belongs to me; let me see who is bold enough to dispute it." And again and again that it would go hard with the man who stepped between him and the girl he loved. Even Pauline was loth to anger him, and seemed to stand in fear of him. This was singular enough, for when he and Madeline were seen together, people would say, "There go the wolf and the lamb." This wretch it was who stood accused of the murder of the pretty flower-girl. Her body had been found in the River Rhone, with marks of violence upon it, and a handkerchief tightly twisted round its neck. The proofs of a cruel murder were incontestable, and suspicion fell immediately upon Gautran, who was the last person known to be in Madeline's company. Evidence of his guilt was soon forthcoming. He was madly, brutally in love with her, and madly, brutally jealous of her. On the night of the murder they had been seen walking together on the bank of the river; Gautran had been heard to speak in a high tone, and his exclamation, "I will kill you! I will kill you!" was sworn to by witnesses; and the handkerchief round her neck belonged to him. A thousand damning details were swiftly accumulated, all pointing to the wretch's guilt, and it was well for him that he did not fall into the hands of the populace. So incensed were they against him that they would have torn him to pieces. Not in all Geneva could there be found a man or a woman who, by the holding up of a finger, would have besought mercy for him. Regret was openly expressed that the death punishment for murder was not lawful, some satisfaction, however, being derived from the reflection that in times gone by certain heinous crimes had brought upon the criminals a punishment more terrible than death. "They should chain the monster by the waist," said a man, "so that he cannot lie down, and can only move one step from the stake. Gautran deserves worse than that." But while he lay in prison, awaiting the day of trial, there arrived in Geneva an Advocate of renown, who had travelled thither with his wife in search of much needed repose from years of continuous mental toil. This man was famous in many countries; he was an indefatigable and earnest worker, and so important were his services deemed that phenomenal fees were frequently paid to secure them. But notwithstanding the exceeding value of his time he had been known to refuse large sums of money in cases offered to him, in order to devote himself to others which held out no prospect of pecuniary reward. Wealthy, and held in almost exaggerated esteem, both for his abilities and the cold purity of his life, it was confidently predicted that the highest honours of the state were in store for him, and it was ungrudgingly admitted--so far above his peers did he stand--that the loftiest office would be dignified by association with his name. The position he had attained was due as much to his intense enthusiasm in the cause he championed as to his wondrous capacity for guiding it to victory. As leader of a forlorn hope he was unrivalled. He had an insatiable appetite for obstacles; criminal cases of great moment, in which life and liberty were in imminent peril, and in which there was a dark mystery to be solved, possessed an irresistible fascination for him. Labour such as this was a labour of love, and afforded him the keenest pleasure. The more intricate the task the closer his study of it; the deeper the mystery the greater his patience in the unravelling of it; the more powerful the odds against him the more determined his exertions to win the battle. His microscopic, penetrating mind detected the minutest flaw, seized the smallest detail likely to be of advantage to him, and frequently from the most trivial thread he spun a strand so strong as to drag the ship that was falling to pieces to a safe and secure haven. His satisfaction at these achievements was unbounded, but he rarely allowed an expression of exultation to escape him. His outward tranquillity, even in supreme crises, was little less than marvellous. His nerve was of iron, and to his most intimate associates his inner life was a sealed book. Accompanied by his wife, the Advocate entered Geneva, and alighted at one of the principal hotels, four days before that on which the trial of Gautran was to commence. CHAPTER III THE ADVOCATE'S WIFE INSISTS UPON HAVING HER WAY Their arrival was expected. The moment they were shown into a private room the proprietor of the hotel waited upon them, and with obsequious bows welcomed them to Geneva. "A letter has been awaiting my lord," said this magnate, the whiteness of whose linen was dazzling; he had been considering all the morning whether he should address the great Advocate as "your lordship," or "your eminence," or "your highness," and had decided upon the first, "since yesterday evening." The Advocate in silence received the letter, in silence read it, then handed it to his wife, who also read it, with a careless and supercilious air which deeply impressed the landlord. "Will my lord and my lady," said this official, "honour us by remaining long in our town? The best rooms in the establishment are at their disposal." The Advocate glanced at his wife, who answered for him: "We shall remain for a few hours only." Despair was expressed in the landlord's face as he left the room, overwhelmed with the desolation caused by this announcement. The letter which he had delivered to the Advocate ran as follows: "Comrade, whom I have never seen, but intimately know, Welcome. Were it not that I am a cripple, and physically but half a man--represented, fortunately, by the upper moiety of my body--I should come in person to shake you by the hand. As it is, I must wait till you take up your quarters in Christian Almer's villa in our quiet village, where I spend my days and nights, extracting what amusement I can from the foibles and weaknesses of my neighbours. My father was steward to Christian Almer's father, and I succeeded him, for the reason that the office, during the latter years and after the death of the elder Almer, was a sinecure. Otherwise, another steward would have had to be found, for my labours lay elsewhere. But since the day on which I became a mere bit of animated lumber, unable of my own will to move about, and confined within the narrow limits of this sleepy valley, I have regarded the sinecure as an important slice of good fortune, albeit there was nothing whatever to do except to cause myself to be wheeled past Christian Almer's villa on fine days, for the purpose of satisfying myself that no thief had run away with its rusty gates. Then came an urgent letter from young Almer, whom I have not beheld since he was a lad of nine or ten, begging of me to put the house in order for you and your lady, to whom I, as an old gallant, am already in spirit devoted. And when I heard that it was for you the work was to be done, doubly did I deem myself fortunate in not having thrown up the stewardship in my years of active life. All, then, is ready in the old house, which will be the more interesting to you from the fact of its not having been inhabited for nearly a generation. Comedies and tragedies have been enacted within its walls, as you doubtless know. Does Christian Almer come with you, and has he grown into the likeness of his father?--Your servant and brother, "Pierre Lamont." "Who is this Pierre Lamont?" asked his wife. "Once a famous lawyer," replied the Advocate; "compelled some years ago to relinquish the pursuit of his profession by reason of an accident which crippled him for life. You do not wish to stop in Geneva, then?" "No," said the beautiful woman who stood before him, his junior by five-and-twenty years; "there is nothing new to be seen here, and I am dying with impatience to take possession of Mr. Almer's villa. I have been thinking of nothing else for the last week." "Captivated by the name it bears." "Perhaps. The House of White Shadows! Could anything be more enticing? Why was it so called?" "I cannot tell you. Until lately, indeed when this holiday was decided upon"--he sighed as he uttered the word "holiday"; an indication that he was not accepting it in a glad spirit--"I was not aware that Almer owned a villa hereabouts. Do not forget, Adelaide, that he cautioned you against accepting an offer made in a rash moment." "What more was needed to set me longing for it? 'Here is a very beautiful book,' said Mr. Almer, 'full of wonderful pictures; it is yours, if you like--but, beware, you must not open it.' Think of saying that to a woman!" "You are a true daughter of Eve. Almer's offer was unwise; his caution still more unwise." "The moment he warned me against the villa, I fell in love with it. I shall discover a romance there." "I, too, would warn you against it----" "You are but whetting my curiosity," she interrupted playfully. "Seriously, though. Master Lamont, in his letter, says that the house has not been inhabited for nearly a generation----" "There must be ghosts there," she said, again interrupting him. "It will be delightful." "And Master Lamont's remark," continued the Advocate, "that there have been comedies and tragedies enacted within its walls is not a recommendation." "I have heard you say, Edward, that they are enacted within the walls of the commonest houses." "But this particular house has been for so long a time deserted! I am in ignorance of the stories attached to it; that they are in some sense unpleasant is proved by Almer's avoidance of the place. What occurs to me is that, were it entirely desirable, Almer would not have made it a point to shun it." "Christian Almer is different from other men; that is your own opinion of him." "True; he is a man dominated by sentiment; yet there appears to be something deeper than mere sentiment in his consistent avoidance of the singularly named House of White Shadows." "According to Master Lamont's letter he has been to some trouble to make it agreeable to us. Indeed, Edward, you cannot argue me out of having my own way." "If the house is gloomy, Adelaide----" "I will brighten it. Can I not?" she asked in a tone so winning that it brought a light into his grave face. "You can, for me, Adelaide," he replied; "but I am not thinking of myself. I would not willingly sadden a heart as joyous as yours. You must promise, if you are not happy there, to seek with me a more cheerful retreat." "You can dismiss your fears, Edward. I shall be happy there. All last night I was dreaming of white shadows. Did they sadden me? No. I woke up this morning in delightful spirits. Is that an answer to your forebodings?" "When did you not contrive to have your own way? I have some banking business to do in Geneva, and I must leave you for an hour." She nodded and smiled at him. Before he reached the door he turned and said: "Are you still resolved to send your maid away? She knows your wants so well, and you are so accustomed to her, that her absence might put you to inconvenience. Had you not better keep her with you till you see whether you are likely to be suited at Almer's house?" "Edward," she said gaily, "have I not told you a hundred times, and have you not found out for yourself a hundred and a hundred times again, that your wife is a very wilful woman? I shall love to be inconvenienced; it will set my wits to work. But indeed I happen to know that there is a pretty girl in the villa, the old housekeeper's granddaughter, who was born to do everything I wish done in just the way I wish it done." "Child of impulse and fancy," he said, kissing her hand, and then her lips, in response to a pouting invitation, "it is well for you that you have a husband as serious as myself to keep guard and watch over you. What is the thought that has suddenly entered your head?" "Can you read a woman's thoughts?" she asked in her lightest manner. "I can judge by signs. What was your thought, Adelaide?" "A foolish thought. To keep guard and watch over me, you said. The things are so different. The first is a proof of love, the second of suspicion." "A logician, too," he said with a pleased smile; "the air here agrees with you." So saying he left her, and the moment he was beyond the reach of her personal influence his native manner asserted itself, and his features assumed their usual grave expression. As he was descending the stairs of the hotel he was accosted by a woman, the maid he had advised his wife to keep. "I beg your pardon, sir," she said; "but may I ask why I am discharged?" "Certainly not of me," he replied stiffly; "you are my wife's servant. She has her reasons." "She has not made me acquainted with them," said the woman discontentedly. "Will you?" He saw that she was in an ill-temper, and although he was not a man to tolerate insolence, he was attentive to trifles. "I do not interfere with my wife's domestics. She engages whom she pleases, and discharges whom she pleases." "But to do right, sir, that is everyone's affair. I am discharged suddenly, without notice, and without having committed a fault. Until this morning I am perfection; no one can dress my lady like me, no one can arrange her hair so admirably. That is what she says to me continually. Why, then, am I discharged? I ask my lady why, and she says, for her convenience." "She has paid you, has she not?" "Oh yes, and has given me money to return home. But it is not that. It is that it hurts me to be suddenly discharged. It is to my injury when I seek another situation. I shall be asked why I left my last. To speak the truth, I must say that I did not leave, that I was discharged. I shall be asked why, and I shall not be able to say." "Has she not given you a character?" "Yes; it is not that I complain of; it is being suddenly discharged." "I cannot interfere, mistress. You have no reasonable cause for complaint. You have a character, and you are well paid; that should content you." He turned from her, and she sent her parting words after him: "My lady has her reasons! I hope they will be found to be good ones, and that you will find them so. Do you hear?--that you will find them so!" He paid no further heed to her, and entering his carriage drove to the Rue de la Corraterie, to the business house of Jacob Hartrich, and was at once admitted to the banker's private room. CHAPTER IV JACOB HARTRICH, THE BANKER, GIVES HIS REASONS FOR BELIEVING GAUTRAN THE WOODMAN GUILTY OF THE MURDER OF MADELINE Jacob Hartrich, by birth a Jew, had reached his sixtieth year, and was as hale and strong as a man of forty. His face was bland and full-fleshed, his eyes bright and, at times, joyous, his voice mellow, his hands fat and finely-shaped, and given to a caressing petting of each other, denoting satisfaction with themselves and the world in general. His manners were easy and self-possessed--a characteristic of his race. He was a gentleman and a man of education. He gazed at the Advocate with admiration; he had an intense respect for men who had achieved fame by force of intellect. "Mr. Almer," he said, "prepared me for your arrival, and is anxious that I should forward your views in every possible way. I shall be happy to do so, and, if it is in my power, to contribute to the pleasure of your visit." "I thank you," said the Advocate, with a courteous inclination of his head. "When did you last see Mr. Almer?" "He called upon me this day three weeks--for a few minutes only, and only concerning your business." "He is always thoughtful and considerate. I suppose he was on his road to Paris when he called upon you." "No; he had no intention of going to Paris. I believe he had been for some time in the neighbourhood of Geneva before he favoured me with a visit. He is still here." "Here!" exclaimed the Advocate, in a tone of pleasure and surprise. "At least in Switzerland." "In what part?" "I cannot inform you, but from the remarks he let fall, I should say in the mountains, where tourists are not likely to penetrate." He paused a moment before he continued: "Mr. Almer spoke of you, in terms it was pleasant to hear, as his closest, dearest friend." "We are friends in the truest sense of the word." "Then I may speak freely to you. During the time he was with me I was impressed by an unusual strangeness in him. He was restless and ill at ease; his manner denoted that he was either dissatisfied with himself or was under some evil influence. I expressed my surprise to him that he had been for some time in this neighbourhood without calling upon me, but he did not offer any explanation of his neglect. He told me, however, that he was tired of the light, the gaiety, and the bustle of cities, and that it was his intention to seek some solitude to endeavour to rid himself of a terror which had taken possession of him. No sooner had he made this strange declaration than he strove, in hurried words, to make light of it, evidently anxious that it should leave no impression upon my mind. I need scarcely say he did not succeed. I have frequently thought of that declaration and of Christian Almer in connection with it." The Advocate smiled and shook his head. "Mr. Almer is given to fantastic expression. If you knew him as well as I do you would be aware that he is prone to magnify trifles, and likely to raise ghosts of the conscience for the mere pleasure of laying them. His nature is of that order which suffers keenly, but I am not disposed on that account to pity him. There are men who would be most unhappy unless they suffered." "My dear sir," said Jacob Hartrich, "I have known Christian Almer since he was a child. I knew his father, a gentleman of great attainments, and his mother, a refined and exquisitely beautiful woman. His child-life probably made a sad impression upon him, but he has mixed with the world, and there is a bridge of twenty years between then and now. A great change has taken place in him, and not for the better. There is certainly something on his mind." "There is something on most men's minds. I have remarked no change in Mr. Almer to cause me uneasiness. He is the same high-minded gentleman I have ever known him to be. He is exquisitely sensitive, responsive to the lightest touch; those who are imbued with such qualities suffer keenly and enjoy keenly." "The thought occurred to me that he might have sustained a monetary loss, but I dismissed it." "A monetary loss would rather exalt than depress him. He is rich--it would have been a great happiness for him if he had been poor. What are termed misfortunes are sometimes real blessings; many fine natures are made to halt on their way by worldly prosperity. Had Christian Almer been born in the lower classes he would have found a worthy occupation; he would have made a name for himself, and in all probability would have won a wife--who would have idolised him. He is a man whom a woman might worship." "You have given me a clue," said Jacob Hartrich; "he has met with a disappointment in love." "I think not; had he met with such a disappointment I should most surely have heard of it from his own lips." Interesting as this conversation was to both the speakers it had now come to a natural break, and Jacob Hartrich, diverging from it, inquired whether the Advocate's visit was likely to be a long one. "I have pledged myself," said the Advocate somewhat wearily, "to remain here for at least three months." "Rest is a necessary medicine." The Advocate nodded absently. "Pray excuse me while I attend to your affairs. Here are the local and other papers." He left the room, and returning soon afterwards found the Advocate engaged in the perusal of a newspaper in which he appeared to be deeply interested. "Your business," said Jacob Hartrich, "will occupy about twenty minutes. There are some trifling formalities to be gone through with respect to signatures and stamps. If you are pressed for time I will send to you at your hotel." "With your permission I will wait," said the Advocate, laying aside the paper with a thoughtful air. Jacob Hartrich glanced at the paper, and saw the heading of the column which the Advocate had perused, "The Murder of Madeline the Flower-girl." "You have been reading the particulars of this shocking deed." "I have read what is there written." "But you are familiar with the particulars; everybody has read them." "I am the exception, then. I have seen very few newspapers lately." "It was a foul and wicked murder." "It appears so, from this bare recital." "The foulest and most horrible within my remembrance. Ah! where will not the passions of men lead them?" "A wide contemplation. Were men to measure the consequences of their acts before they committed them, certain channels of human events which are now exceedingly wide and turbulent would become narrow and peaceful. It was a girl who was murdered?" "Yes." "Young?" "Barely seventeen." "Pretty?" "Very pretty." "Had she no father to protect her?" "No." "Nor mother?" "No--as far as is known." "A flower-girl, I gather from the account." "Yes. I have occasionally bought a posy of her--poor child!" "Did she trade alone?" "She had a companion, an elderly woman, who, unhappily, left her a few days before the murder." "Deserted her?" "No; it was an amicable parting, intended to last but a short time, I believe. It is not known what called her away." "This young flower-girl--was she virtuous?" "Undoubtedly, in my belief. She was most modest and child-like." "But susceptible to flattery. You hesitate. Why? Do you not judge human passions by human standards? She was young, pretty, in humble circumstances; her very opposite would be susceptible to flattery; therefore, she." "Why, yes, of course; I hesitated because it would pain me to say anything concerning her which might be construed into a reproach." "In such matters there is but one goal to steer for--the truth. I perceive that a man, Gautran, is in prison, charged with the murder." "A man?" exclaimed Jacob Hartrich, with indignant warmth. "A monster, rather! Some refined punishment should be devised to punish him for his crime." "His crime! I have, then, been reading an old paper." The Advocate referred to the date. "No--it is this morning's." "I see your point, but the proofs of the monster's guilt are irrefragable." "What proofs? The statements of newspaper reporters--the idle and mischievous tattle of persons who cannot be put into the witness-box?" "It is well that you express yourself to me privately on this matter. In public it would not be credited that you were in earnest." "Then the facts are lost sight of that the man has to be tried, that his guilt or innocence has yet to be established." "The law cannot destroy facts." "The law establishes facts, which are often in danger of being perverted by man's sympathies and prejudices. Are you acquainted with this Gautran?" "I have no knowledge of him except from report." "And having no knowledge of him, except from report, you form an opinion upon hearsay, and condemn him offhand. It is justice itself, therefore, that is on its trial, not a man accused of a frightful deed. _He_ is already judged. It is stated in the newspaper that the man's appearance is repulsive." "He is hideous." "Then you _have_ seen him." "No." "Calmly consider what value can be placed upon your judgment under the circumstances. You say the girl was pretty. Her engaging manners have tempted you to buy posies of her, not always when you needed them. In making this statement of a fact which, trivial as it appears to be, is of importance, I judge a human action by a human standard. Thus, beauty on one side, and a forbidding countenance on the other, may be the means of contributing--nay, of leading--to a direct miscarriage of justice. This should be prevented; justice must have a clear course, which must not be blocked and choked up by passion and prejudice. The opinion you express of Gautran's guilt may be entertained by others to whom he is also a stranger." "My opinion is universal." "The man, therefore, is universally condemned before he is called upon to answer the charge brought against him. Amidst this storm, in the wild fury of which reason has lost its proper functions, where shall a jury be found to calmly weigh the evidence on either side, and to judge, with ordinary fairness, a miserable wretch accused of a foul crime?" "Gautran is a vagabond," said Jacob Hartrich feebly, feeling as though the ground were giving way under his feet, "of the lowest type." "He is poor." "Necessarily." "And cannot afford to pay for independent legal aid." "It is fortunate. He will meet with his deserts more surely and swiftly." "You can doubtless call to mind instances of innocent persons being accused of crimes they did not commit, and being made to suffer." "There is no fear in the case of Gautran." "Let us hope not," said the Advocate, whose voice during the conversation had been perfectly passionless, "and in the meantime, do not lose sight of this principle. Were Gautran the meanest creature that breathes, were he the most repulsive being on earth, he is an innocent man until he is declared guilty by the law. Equally so were he a man gifted with exceeding beauty of person, and bearing an honoured name. And of those two extremes, supposing both were found guilty of equal crimes, it is worthy of consideration, whether he who walks the gutters be not better entitled to a merciful sentence than he who lives on the heights." At this moment a clerk brought some papers into the room. Jacob Hartrich looked over them, and handed them, with a roll of notes, to the Advocate, who rose and prepared to go. "Have you a permanent address?" asked the banker. "We take up our quarters at once," replied the Advocate, "at the House of White Shadows." Jacob Hartrich gazed at him in consternation. "Christian Almer's villa! He made no mention of it to me." "It was an arrangement entered into some time since. I have a letter from Master Pierre Lamont informing me that the villa is ready for us." "It has been uninhabited for years, except by servants who have been kept there to preserve it from falling into decay. There are strange stories connected with that house." "I have heard as much, but have not inquired into them. The probability is that they arise from credulity or ignorance, the foundation of all superstition." With that remark the Advocate took his leave. CHAPTER V FRITZ THE FOOL As the little wooden clock in the parlour of the inn of The Seven Liars struck the hour of five, Fritz the Fool ran through the open door, from which an array of bottles and glasses could be seen, and cried: "They are coming--they are coming--the great Advocate and his lady--and will arrive before the cook can toss me up an omelette!" And having thus delivered himself, Fritz ran out of the inn to the House of White Shadows, and swinging open the gates, cried still more loudly: "Mother Denise! Dionetta, my pearl of pearls! Haste--haste! They are on the road, and will be here a lifetime before old Martin can straighten his crooked back!" Within five minutes of this summons, there stood at the door of the inn of The Seven Liars, the customers who had been tippling therein, the host and hostess and their three children; and ten yards off, at the gates of the villa. Mother Denise, her pretty granddaughter, Dionetta, and old Martin, whose breathing came short and quick at the haste he had made to be in time to welcome the Advocate and his lady. The refrain of the breaking-up song sung in the little village school was dying away, and the children trooped out, and waited to witness the arrival. The schoolmaster was also there, with a look of relief on his face, and stood with his hand on the head of his favourite pupil. The news had spread quickly, and when the carriage made its appearance at the end of the lane, which shelved downward to the House of White Shadows, a number of villagers had assembled, curious to see the great lord and lady who intended to reside in the haunted house. As the carriage drove up at the gates, the courier jumped down from his seat next to the driver, and opened the carriage door. The villagers pressed forward, and gazed in admiration at the beautiful lady, and in awe at the stern-faced gentleman who had selected the House of White Shadows for a holiday residence. There were those among them who, poor as they were, would not have undertaken to sleep in any one of the rooms in the villa for the value of all the watches in Geneva. There were, however, three persons in the small concourse of people who had no fears of the house. These were Mother Denise, the old housekeeper, her husband Martin, and Fritz the Fool. Mother Denise, the oldest servant of the house, had been born there, and was ghost and shadow proof; so was her husband, now in his eighty-fifth year, whose body was like a bent bow stretched for the flight of the arrow, his soul. Not for a single night in sixty-eight years had Mother Denise slept outside the walls of the House of White Shadows; nothing did she know of the great world beyond, and nothing did she care; a staunch, faithful servant of the Almer family, conversant with its secret history, her duty was sufficient for her, and she had no desire to travel beyond the space which encompassed it. For forty-three years her husband had kept her company, and to neither, as they had frequently declared, had a supernatural visitant ever appeared. They had no belief whatever in the ghostly gossip. Fool Fritz, on the contrary, averred that there was no mistake about the spiritual visitants; they appeared to him frequently, but he had no fear of them; indeed, he appeared to rather enjoy them. "They may come, and welcome," he said. "They don't strike, they don't bite, they don't burn. They reveal secrets which you would like nobody to find out. If it had not been for them, how should I have known about Karl and Mina kissing and courting at the back of the schoolhouse when everybody was asleep, or about Dame Walther and her sly bottle, or about Wolf Constans coming home at three in the morning with a dead lamb on his back--ah, and about many things you try and keep to yourselves? I don't mind the shadows, not I." There was little in the village that Fritz did not know; all the scandal, all the love-making, all the family quarrels, all the secret doings--it was hard to keep anything from him; and the mystery was how he came to the knowledge of these matters. "He is in affinity with the spirits," said the village schoolmaster; "he is himself a ghost, with a fleshly embodiment. That is why the fool is not afraid." Truly Fritz the Fool was ghostlike in appearance, for his skin was singularly white, and his head was covered with shaggy white hair which hung low down upon his shoulders. From a distance he looked like an old man, but he had not reached his thirtieth year, and so clear were his eyes and complexion that, on a closer observance, he might have passed for a lad of half the years he bore. A shrewd knave, despite his title of fool. Pretty Dionetta did not share his defiance of ghostly visitors. The House of White Shadows was her home, and many a night had she awoke in terror and listened with a beating heart to soft footsteps in the passage outside her room, and buried her head in the sheets to shut out the light of the moon which shone in at her window. Fritz alone sympathised with her. "Two hours before midnight," he would say to her; "then it was you heard them creeping past your door. You were afraid, of course--when one is all alone; I can prescribe a remedy for that--not yet, Dionetta, by-and-by. Till then, keep all men at a distance; avoid them; there is danger in them. If they look at you, frown, and lower your eyes. And to-night, when you go to bed, lock your door tight, and listen. If the spirits come again, I will charm them away; shortly after you hear their footsteps, I will sing a stave outside to trick them from your door. Then sleep in peace, and rely on Fritz the Fool." Very timid and fearful of the supernatural was this country beauty, whom all the louts in the neighbourhood wanted to marry, and she alone, of those who lived in the House of White Shadows, welcomed the Advocate and his wife with genuine delight. Fool Fritz thought of secretly-enjoyed pleasures which might now be disturbed, Martin was too old not to dislike change, and Mother Denise was by no means prepared to rejoice at the arrival of strangers; she would have been better pleased had they never shown their faces at the gates. The Advocate and his wife stood looking around them, he with observant eyes and in silence, she with undisguised pleasure and admiration. She began to speak the moment she alighted. "Charming! beautiful! I am positively in love with it. This morning it was but a fancy picture, now it is real. Could anything be more perfect? So peaceful, and quaint, and sweet! Look at those children peeping from behind their mother's gown--she can be no other than their mother--dirty, but how picturesque!--and the woman herself, how original! It is worth while being a woman like that, to stand as she does, with her children clinging to her. Why does Mr. Almer not like to live here? It is inexplicable, quite inexplicable. I could be happy here for ever--yes, for ever! Do you catch the perfume of the limes? It is delicious--delicious! It comes from the grounds; there must be a lime-tree walk there. And you," she said to the pretty girl at the gates, "you are Dionetta." "Yes, my lady," said Dionetta, and marvelled how her name could have become known to the beautiful woman, whose face was more lovely than the face of the Madonna over the altar of the tiny chapel in which she daily prayed. It was not difficult to divine her thought, for Dionetta was Nature's child. "You wonder who told me your name," said the Advocate's wife, smiling, and patting the girl's cheek with her gloved hand. "Yes, my lady." "It was a little bird, Dionetta." "A little bird, my lady!" exclaimed Dionetta, her wonderment and admiration growing fast into worship. The lady's graceful figure, her pink and white face, her pearly teeth, her lovely laughing mouth, her eyes, blue as the most beautiful summer's cloud--Dionetta had never seen the like before. "You," said the Advocate's wife, turning to the grandmother, "are Mother Denise." "Yes, my lady," said the old woman; "this is my husband, Martin. Come forward, Martin, come forward. He is not as young as he was, my lady." "I know, I know; my little bird was very communicative. You are Fritz." "The Fool," said the white-haired young man, approaching closer to the lady, and consequently closer to Dionetta, "Fritz the Fool. But that needn't tell against me, unless you please. I can be useful, if I care to be, and faithful, too, if I care to be." "It depends upon yourself, then," said the lady, accepting the independent speech in good part, "not upon others." "Mainly upon myself; but I have springs that can be set in motion, if one can only find out how to play upon them. I was told you were coming." "Indeed!" with an air of pleasant surprise. "By whom, and when?" "By whom? The white shadows. When? In my dreams." "The white shadows! They exist then! Edward, do you hear?" "It is not so, my lady," interposed Mother Denise, in ill-humour at the turn the conversation was taking; "the shadows do not exist, despite what people say. Fritz is over-fond of fooling." "It is my trade," retorted Fritz. "I know what I know, grandmother." "Is Fritz your grandson, then?" asked the Advocate's wife, of Mother Denise. "Heaven forbid!" exclaimed Mother Denise. "What is not," remarked Fritz sententiously, "may be. Bear that in mind, grandmother; I may remind you of it one day." The Advocate, upon whom not a word that had passed had been lost, fixed his eyes upon Fritz, and said: "A delusion can be turned to profit. You make use of these shadows." "The saints forbid! They would burn me in brimstone. Yet," with a look both sly and vacant, "it would be a pity to waste them." "You like to be called a fool. It pleases you." "Why not?" "Why, rather?" "I might answer in your own words, that it can be turned to profit. But I am too great a fool to see in what way." "You answer wisely. Why do you close your eyes?" "I can see in the dark what I choose to see. When my eyes are open, I am their slave. When they are closed, they are mine--unless I dream." The Advocate gazed for a moment or two in silence upon the white face with its closed eyes raised to his, and then said to his wife: "Come, Adelaide, we will look at the house." They passed into the grounds, accompanied by Mother Denise, Martin, and Dionetta. Fritz remained outside the gate, with his eyes still closed, and a smile upon his lips. "Fritz," said the host of the inn of The Seven Liars, "do you know anything of the great man?" Fritz rubbed his brows softly and opened his eyes. "Take the advice of a fool, Peter Schelt. Speak low when you speak of him." "You think he can hear us. Why, he is a hundred yards off by this time!" Fritz pointed with a waving finger to the air above him. "There are magnetic lines, neighbours, connecting him with everything he once sets eyes on. He can see without seeing, and hear without hearing." "You speak in riddles, Fritz." "Put it down to your own dulness, Peter Schelt, that you cannot understand me. Master Lamont, now--what would you say about him? That he lacks brains?" "A long way from it. Master Lamont is the cleverest man in the valley." "Not now," said Fritz, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder in the direction taken by the Advocate; "his master has come. Master Lamont is a great lawyer, but we have now a greater, one who is a more skilful cobbler with his tongue than Hans here is with his awl; he can so patch an old boot as to make it better than a new one, and look as close as you may, you will not see the seams. Listen, Master Schelt. When I stood there with my eyes shut I had a dream of a stranger who was found murdered in your house. An awful dream, Peter. Gather round, neighbours, gather round. There lay the stranger dead on his bed, and over him stood you, Peter Schelt, with a bloody knife in your hand. People say you murdered him for his money, and it really seemed so, for a purse stuffed with gold and notes was found in your possession; you had the stranger's silver watch, too. Suspicious, was it not? It was looking so black against you that you begged the great man who has come among us to plead for you at your trial. You were safe enough, then. He told a rare tale. Forty years ago the stranger robbed your father; suddenly he was struck with remorse, and seeking you out, gave you back the money, and his silver watch in the bargain. He proved to everybody's satisfaction that, though you committed the murder, it was impossible you could be guilty. Don't be alarmed, Madame Schelt, it was only a dream." "But are you sure I did it?" asked Peter Schelt, in no way disturbed by the bad light in which he was placed by Fritz's fancies. "What matters? The great man got you off, and that is all you cared for. Look here, neighbours; if any of you have black goats that you wish changed into white, go to him; he can do it for you. Or an old hen that cackles and won't lay, go to him; she will cackle less, and lay you six eggs a day. He is, of all, the greatest." "Ah," said a neighbour, "and what do you know of his lady wife?" "What all of you should know, but cannot see, though it stares you in the face." "Let us have it, Fritz." "She is too fair. Christine," to a stout young woman close to him, "give thanks to the Virgin to-night that you were sent into the world with a cast in your eye, and that your legs grow thicker and crookeder every day. _You_ will never drive a man out of his senses with your beauty." Fritz was compelled to beat a swift retreat, for Christine's arms were as thick as her legs, and they were raised to smite. Up the lane flew the fool, and Christine after him, amid the laughter of the villagers. CHAPTER VI MISTRESS AND MAID In the meantime the Advocate and his wife strolled through the grounds. Although it was evident that much labour had been bestowed upon them, there were signs of decay here and there which showed the need of a master mind; but as these traces were only to be met with at some distance from the villa itself, it was clear that they would not interfere with the comfort of the new arrivals. The house lay low, and the immediate grounds surrounding it were in good condition. There were orchards stocked with fruit-trees, and gardens bright with flowers. At a short distance from the house was an old châlet which had been built with great taste; it was newly painted, and much care had been bestowed upon a covered pathway which led to it from a side entrance to the House of White Shadows. The principal room in this châlet was a large studio, the walls of which were black. On the left wall--in letters which once were white, but which had grown yellow with age--was inscribed the legend, "The Grave of Honour." "How singular!" exclaimed the Advocate's wife. "'The Grave of Honour!' What can be the meaning of it?" But Mother Denise did not volunteer an explanation. Near the end of the studio was an alcove, the space beyond being screened by a dead crimson curtain. Holding back the curtain, a large number of pictures were seen piled against the walls. "Family pictures?" asked the Advocate's wife, of Mother Denise. "No, my lady," was the reply; "they were painted by an artist, who resided and worked here for a year or so in the lifetime of the old master." By the desire of the lady the housekeeper brought a few of the pictures into the light. One represented a pleasure party of ladies and gentlemen dallying in summer woods; another, a lady lying in a hammock and reaching out her arm to pluck some roses; two were companion pictures, the first subject being two persons who might have been lovers, standing among strewn flowers in the sunshine--the second subject showing the same figures in a different aspect; a cold grey sea divided them, on the near shore of which the man stood in an attitude of despair gazing across the waters to the opposite shore, on which stood the woman with a pale, grief-stricken face. "The sentiment is strained," observed the Advocate, "but the artist had talent." "A story could be woven out of them," said his wife; "I feel as if they were connected with the house." Upon leaving the châlet they continued their tour through the grounds. Already the Advocate felt the beneficial effects of a healthy change. His eyes were clearer, his back straighter, he moved with a brisker step. Mother Denise walked in front, pointing out this and that, Martin hobbled behind, and Dionetta, encouraged thereto, walked by her new mistress's side. "Dionetta," said the Advocate's wife, "do you know that you have the prettiest name in the world?" "Have I, my lady? I have never thought of it, but it is, if you say so." "But perhaps," said the Advocate's wife, with a glance at the girl's bright face, "a man would not think of your name when he looked at you." "I am sure I cannot say, my lady; he would not think of me at all." "You little simpleton! I wish I had such a name; they ought to wait till we grow up, so that we might choose our own names. I should not have chosen Adelaide for myself." "Is that your name, my lady?" "Yes--they could not have given me an uglier." "Nay," said Dionetta, raising her eyes in mute appeal for forgiveness for the contradiction, "it is very sweet." "Repeat it, then. Adelaide." "May I, my lady?" "Of course you may, if I wish you to. Let me hear you speak it." "Adelaide! Adelaide!" murmured Dionetta softly. The permission was as precious as the gift of a silver chain would have been. "My lady, it is pretty." "Shall we change?" asked the Advocate's wife gaily. "Can we?" inquired Dionetta in a solemn tone. "I would not mind if you wish it, and if it is right. I will ask the priest." "No, do not trouble. Would you really like to change?" "It would be so strange--and it might be a sin! If we cannot, it is of no use thinking of it." "There is no sin in thinking of things; if there were, the world would be full of sin, and I--dear me, how much I should have to answer for! I should not like everyone to know my thoughts. What a quiet life you must live here, Dionetta!" "Yes, my lady, it is quiet." "Would you not prefer to live in a city?" "I should be frightened, my lady. I have been only twice to Geneva, and there was no room in the streets to move about. I was glad to get back." "No room to move about, simplicity! That is the delight of it. There are theatres, and music, and light, and life. You would not be frightened if you were with me?" "Oh, no, my lady; that would be happiness." "Are you not happy here?" "Oh, yes, very happy." "But you wish for something?" "No, my lady; I have everything I want." "Everything--positively everything?" "Yes, my lady." "There is one thing you must want, Dionetta, if you have it not already." "May I know what it is?" "Yes, child. Love." Dionetta blushed crimson from forehead to throat, and the Advocate's wife laughed, and tapped her cheek. "You are very pretty, Dionetta; it is right you should have a pretty name. Do you mean to tell me you have not a lover?" "I have been asked, my lady," said the girl, in a tone so low that it could only just be heard. "And you said 'yes'? Little one, I have caught you." "My lady, I did not say 'yes.'" "And the men were contented? They must be dolts. Really and truly, you have not a lover?" "What can I say, my lady?" murmured Dionetta, her head bent down. "There are some who say they--love me." "But you do not love them?" "No, my lady." "You would like to have one you could love?" "One day, my lady, if I am so fortunate." "I promise you," said the Advocate's wife with a blithe laugh, "that one day you will be so fortunate. Women were made for love--and men, too, or where would be the use? It is the only thing in life worth living for. Blushing again! I would give my jewel-case to be able to blush like you." "I cannot help it, my lady. My face often grows red when I am quite alone." "And thinking of love," added the Advocate's wife; "for what else should make it red? So you do think of things! I can see, Dionetta, that you and I are going to be great friends." "You are very good, my lady, but I am only a poor peasant. I will serve you as well as I can." "You knew, before I came, that you were to be my maid?" "Yes, my lady. Master Lamont said it was likely. Grandmother did not seem to care that it should be so, but I wished for it, and now that she has seen you she must be glad for me to serve you." "Why should she be glad, Dionetta?" "My lady, it could not be otherwise," said Dionetta very earnestly; "you are so good and beautiful." "Flatterer! Master Lamont--he is an old man?" "Yes, my lady." "There are some old men who are very handsome." "He is not. He is small, and thin, and shrivelled up." "Those are not the men for us, are they, little one?" "But he has a voice like honey. I have heard many say so." "That is something in his favour--or would be, if women were blind. So from this day you are my maid. You will be faithful, I am sure, and will keep my secrets. Mind that, Dionetta. You must keep my secrets." "Have you any?" said Dionetta, "and shall you tell them to me?" "Every woman in the world has secrets, and every woman in the world must have someone to whom she can whisper them. You will find that out for yourself in time. Yes, child, I have secrets--one, a very precious one. If ever you guess it without my telling you, keep it buried in your heart, and do not speak of it to a living soul." "I would not dare, my lady." They walked a little apart from the others during this dialogue. The concluding words brought them to the steps of the House of White Shadows. "Edward," said the Advocate's wife to him, as they entered the house, "I have found a treasure. My new maid is charming." "I am pleased to hear it. She has an ingenuous face, but you will be able to judge better when you know more of her." "You do not trust many persons, Edward." "Not many, Adelaide." "Me?" she asked archly. "Implicitly." "And another, I think." "Certainly, one other." "I should not be far out if I were to name Christian Almer." "It is to him I refer." "I have sometimes wondered," she said, with an artless look, "why you should be so partial to him. He is so unlike you." "We are frequently drawn to our unlikes; but Almer and I have one quality in common with each other." "What quality, Edward?" "The quality of the dog--faithfulness. Almer's friendship is precious to me, and mine to him, because we are each to the other faithful." "The quality of the dog! How odd that sounds! Though when one thinks of it there is really something noble in it. And friendship--it is almost as if you placed it higher than love." "It is far higher. Love too frequently changes, as the seasons change. Friendship is, of the two, the more likely to endure, being less liable to storms. But even a faithful friendship is rare." "And faithful love much rarer, according to your ideas. Yet, Mr. Almer, having this quality of the dog, would be certain, you believe, to be faithful both in love and friendship." "To the death." "You are thorough in your opinions, Edward." "I do not believe in half-heartedness, Adelaide." The arrangements within the house were complete and admirable. For the Advocate's wife, a boudoir and reception-rooms into which new fashions had been introduced with judgment so good as not to jar with the old furnishings which had adorned them for many generations. For the Advocate a study, with a library which won from him cordial approval; a spacious and commodious apartment, neither overloaded with furniture nor oppressive with bare spaces; with an outlook from one window to the snow regions of Mont Blanc, from another to the city of Geneva, which was now bathed in a soft, mellow light. This tender evidence of departing day was creeping slowly downwards into the valleys from mount and city, a moving picture of infinite beauty. They visited the study last; Adelaide had been loud in her praises of the house and its arrangement, commending this and that, and declaring that everything was perfect. While she was examining the furniture in the study the Advocate turned to the principal writing-table, upon which lay a pile of newspapers. He took up the first of these, and instinctively searched for the subject which had not left his mind since his visit to the banker, Jacob Hartrich--the murder of Madeline the flower-girl. He was deep in the perusal of fresh details, confirmatory of Gautran's guilt, when he was aroused by a stifled cry of alarm from Adelaide. With the newspaper still in his hand, he looked up and asked what had alarmed her. She laughed nervously, and pointed to an old sideboard upon which a number of hideous faces were carved. To some of the faces bodies were attached, and the whole of this ancient work of art was extravagant enough to have had for its inspiration the imaginings of a madman's brain. "I thought I saw them moving," said Adelaide. The Advocate smiled, and said: "It is the play of light over the figures that created the delusion; they are harmless, Adelaide." The glow of sunset shone through a painted window upon the faces, which to a nervous mind might have seemed to be animated with living colour. "Look at that frightful head," said Adelaide; "it is really stained with blood." "And now," observed the Advocate, "the blood-stain fades away, and in the darker light the expression grows sad and solemn." "I should be frightened of this room at night," said Adelaide, with a slight shiver; "I should fancy those hideous beings were only waiting an opportunity to steal out upon me for an evil purpose." A noise in the passage outside diverted their attention. "Gently, Fritz, gently," cried a voice, "unless you wish to make holes in the sound part of me." The Advocate moved to the door, and opened it. A strange sight came into view. CHAPTER VII A VISIT FROM PIERRE LAMONT--DREAMS OF LOVE At the door stood Fritz the Fool, carrying in his arms what in the gathering dusk looked like a bundle. This bundle was human--a man who was but half a man. Embracing Fritz, with one arm tightly clutching the Fool's neck, the figure commenced to speak the moment the door was opened. "I only am to blame; learning that you were in the study, I insisted upon being brought here immediately; carry me in gently, Fool, and set me in that chair." The chair indicated was close to the writing-table, by which the Advocate was standing. "Fritz made me acquainted with your arrival," continued the intruder, "and I hastened here without delay. When I tell you that I live two miles off, eight hundred feet above the level of this valley, you will realise the jolting I have had in my wheeled chair. Fritz, you can leave us; but be within call, as you must help to get me home again. Is there any need for me to introduce myself?" he asked. "Master Lamont," said the Advocate. "As much as is left of me; but I manage to exist. I have proved that a man can live without legs. You received my letter?" "Yes; and I thank you for your attention. My wife," said the Advocate, introducing Adelaide. Attracted by the dulcet voice of Pierre Lamont, she had come out of the deeper shadows of the room. Dionetta had spoken truly; this thin, shrivelled wreck of mortality had a voice as sweet as honey. "I cannot rise to pay my respects to you," said Pierre Lamont, his lynx eyes resting with profound admiration upon the beautiful woman, "but I beg you to believe that I am your devoted slave." Adelaide bent her head gracefully, and smiled upon the old lawyer. "One of my great anxieties is to know whether I have arranged the villa to your satisfaction. Christian Almer was most desirous that the place should be made pleasant and attractive, and I have endeavoured to carry out his instructions." "We owe you a debt of gratitude," said Adelaide; "everything has been charmingly done." "I am repaid for my labour," said Pierre Lamont gallantly. "You must be fatigued after your journey. Do not let me detain you. I shall remain with the Advocate but a very few minutes, and I trust you will allow me to make another and a longer visit." "We shall always be happy to see you," said Adelaide, as she bowed and left the room. "You are fortunate, comrade," said Pierre Lamont, "both in love and war. Your lady is the most beautiful I have ever beheld. I am selfishly in hopes that you will make a long stay with us; it will put some life into this sleepy valley. Is Christian Almer with you?" "No; but I may induce him to come. It is to you," said the Advocate, pointing to the pile of newspapers, "that I am indebted for these." "I thought you would find something in them to interest you. I see you have one of the papers in your hand, and that you were reading it before I intruded upon you. May I look at it? Ah! you have caught up the scent. It was the murder of the flower-girl I meant." "Have you formed an opinion upon the case?" "Scarcely yet; it is so surrounded with mystery. In my enforced retirement I amuse myself by taking up any important criminal case that occurs; and trying it in my solitude, acting at once the parts of judge and counsel for the prosecution and defence. A poor substitute for the reality; but I make it serve--not to my satisfaction, I confess, although I may show ingenuity in some of my conclusions. But I miss the cream, which lies in the personality of the persons concerned. This case of Gautran interests and perplexes me; were I able to take an active part, it is not unlikely I should move in it. I envy you, brother; I should feel proud if I could break a lance with you; but we do not live in an age of miracles, so I must be content, perforce, with my hermit life. What I read does not always please me; points are missed--almost wilfully missed, as it seems to me--strong links allowed to fall, disused, false inferences drawn, and, in the end, a verdict and sentence which half make me believe that justice limps on crutches. 'Fools, fools, fools!' I cry; 'if I were among you this should not be.' But what can an old cripple do? Grumble? Yes; and extract a morsel of satisfaction from his discontent--which tickles his vanity. That men's deserts are not meted out to them troubles me more now than it used to do. The times are too lenient of folly and crime. I would have the old law revived. 'To the doer as he hath done'--thus saith the thrice ancient word--so runs the 'Agamemnon.' If my neighbour kill my ass, I would knock his on the head. And this Gautran, if he be guilty, deserves the death; if he be innocent, deserves to live and be set free. But to allow a poor wretch to be judged by public passions--Heaven send us a beneficent change!" The voice of the speaker was so sweet, and the arguments so palatable to the Advocate, and so much in accordance with his own views, that he listened with pleasure to this outburst. He recognised in the cripple huddled up in the chair one whose pre-eminence in his craft had been worthily attained. "I am pleased we have met," he said, and the eyes of Pierre Lamont glistened. He soon brought his visit to a close, and while Fritz the Fool was being summoned, he said that in the morning he would send the Advocate all the papers he could gather which might help to throw a light on the case of Gautran. "You have spoken with Fritz, he tells me." "I have; he appears to me worth studying." "There is salt in the knave; he has occasionally managed to overreach me. Fool as he is, he has a head with brains in it. Farewell." Now, although the old lawyer, while he was with the Advocate, seemed to think of nothing but his more celebrated legal brother, it was far different as he was carried in his wheeled chair to his home on the heights. He had his own servant to propel him; Fritz walked by his side. "You were right, Fritz, you were right," said Pierre Lamont, and he smacked his lips, and his eyes kindled with the fire of youth, "she is a rare piece of flesh and blood--as fair as a lily, as ripe as a peach ready to drop from the wall. With passions of her own, Fritz; her veins are warm. To live in the heart of such a woman would be to live a perpetual summer. What say you, Fritz?" "Nothing." "That is a fool's answer." "Then the fools are the real wise men, for there is wisdom in silence. But I say nothing because I am thinking." "A mouse in labour. Beware of bringing forth a mountain; it will rend you to pieces." Fritz softly hummed a tune as they climbed the hills. Only once did he speak till they arrived at Pierre Lamont's house; it was in reply to the old lawyer, who said: "It is easier going up the hills than coming down." "That depends," said Fritz, "upon whether it is the mule or the man on his back." Pierre Lamont laughed quietly; he had a full enjoyment of Fritz's humour. "I have been thinking," said Fritz when the journey was completed---- "Ah, ah!" interrupted Pierre Lamont; "now for the mountain." "--Upon the reason that made so fair a lady--young, and warm, and ripe--marry an icicle." "There is hidden fire, Fritz; you may get it from a stone." "I forgot," said Fritz, with a sly chuckle, "that I was speaking to an old man." "Rogue!" cried Pierre Lamont, raising his stick. "Never stretch out your hand," said Fritz, darting away, "for what you cannot reach." "Fritz, Fritz, come here!" "You will not strike?" "No." "I will trust you. There are lawyers I would not, though every word they uttered was framed in gold." "So, you have been thinking of the reason that made so fair a lady marry an icicle?" "Yes." "The icicle is celebrated." "That is of no account." "He is rich." "That is good." "He is much older than she. He may die, and leave her a young widow." "That is better." "Then she may marry again--a younger man." "That is best Master Lamont, you have a head." "And your own love-affair, Fritz, is that flourishing, eh? Have the pretty red lips kissed a 'Yes' yet?" "The pretty red lips have not been asked. I bide my time. My peach is not as ripe as the icicle's. I'll go and look after it, Master Lamont. It needs careful watching; there are poachers about." Fritz departed to look after his peach, and Pierre Lamont was carried into his study, where he sat until late in the night, surrounded by books and papers. The Advocate was also in his study until two hours past midnight, searching newspaper after newspaper for particulars and details of the murder of the unfortunate girl whose body had been found in the wildly rushing Rhone. And while he pondered and mused, and ofttimes paced the room with thoughtful face, his wife lay sleeping in her holiday home, with smiles on her lips, and joy in her heart, for she was dreaming of one far away. And her dream was of love. And Dionetta, the pretty maid, also slept, with her hands clasped at the back of her head; and her lady was saying to her: "Really and truly, Dionetta, you have not a lover? Women are made for love. It is the only thing in life worth living for." And a blush, even in her sleep, stole over her fair face and bosom. For her dream was of love. And Pierre Lamont lived over again the days of his youth, and smirked and languished, and made fine speeches, and moved amidst a paradise of fair faces, all of which bore the likeness of one whom he had but just seen for the first time. And, old as he was, his dream was of love. And Fritz the Fool tossed in his bed, and muttered: "Too fair! too fair! If I were rich she might tempt me to be false to one, and make me vow I would lay down my life for her. It is a good thing for me that I am a fool." And Gautran in his prison cell writhed upon his hard bed in the midst of the darkness; for by his side lay the phantom of the murdered girl, and his despair was deep and awful. And in the mountains, two hundred miles distant from the House of White Shadows, roamed Christian Almer in the moonlight, struggling with all his mental might with a terror which possessed him. The spot he had flown to was ten thousand feet above the level of the sea, and his sleeping-room was in the hut of a peasant, mountain-born and mountain-reared, who lived a life of dull contentment with his goats, and wife, and children. Far away in the heights immense forests of fir-trees were grouped in dark, solemn masses. Not a branch stirred; a profound repose reigned within their depths, while the sleepless waterfalls in the lower heights, leaping, and creeping, and dashing over chasm and precipice, proclaimed the eternal wakefulness of Nature. The solitary man gazed upon these majestic signs in awe and despair. "There is no such thing as oblivion," he muttered; "there is no such thing as forgetfulness. These solitudes, upon which no living creature but myself is to be seen, are full of accusing voices. My God! to die and be blotted out for ever and ever were better than this agony! I strive and strive, and cannot rid myself of the sin. I will conquer it--I will--I will--I will!" But even as he spoke there gleamed upon him from a laughing cascade the vision of a face so beautiful as to force a groan from his lips. He turned from the vision, and it shone upon him with a tender wooing in every waterfall that met his sight. Trembling with the force of a passion he found it impossible to resist, he walked to his mountain home, and threw himself upon his couch. He was exhausted with sleepless nights, and in a short time he fell into a deep slumber. And a calm stole over his troubled soul, for his dreams were of love! CHAPTER VIII THE INTERVIEW IN THE PRISON "Arise, Gautran." At this command Gautran rose slowly from the floor of his prison-cell, upon which he had been lying at full length, and shaking himself like a dog, stood before the gaoler. "Can't you let me alone?" he asked, in a coarse, savage voice. "Scum of the gutter!" replied the gaoler. "Speak civilly while you have the power, and be thankful your tongue is not dragged out by the roots." "You would do it if you dared." "Ay--and a thousand honest men would rejoice to help me." "Is it to tell me this you disturbed me?" "No, murderer!" "What do you want of me?" The gaoler laughed at him in mockery. "You look more like beast than man." "That's how I've been treated," growled Gautran. "Better than you deserve. So, you have influential friends, it seems." "Have I?" with a venomous flash at the taunt. "One will be here to see you directly." "Let him keep from me. I care to see no one." "That may be, but the choice is not yours. This gentleman is not to be denied." "A gentleman, eh?" exclaimed Gautran, with some slight show of interest. "Yes, a gentleman." "Who is he, and what is his business with me?" "He is a great lawyer, who has sent murderers to their doom----" "Ah!" and Gautran drew a long vindictive breath through closed teeth. "And has set some free, I've heard." "Is he going to do that for me?" asked Gautran, and a light of fierce hope shone in his eyes. "He will earn Heaven's curse if he does, and man's as well. Here he is. Silence." The door was opened, and the Advocate entered the cell. "This is Gautran?" he asked of the gaoler. "This is he," replied the gaoler. "Leave me alone with him." "It is against my orders, sir." "Here is your authority." He handed to the gaoler a paper, which gave him permission to hold free and uninterrupted converse with Gautran, accused of the murder of Madeline the flower-girl. The interview not to last longer than an hour. The gaoler prepared to depart, but before he left the cell he said in an undertone: "Be careful of the man; he is a savage, and not to be trusted." "There is nothing to fear," said the Advocate. The gaoler lingered a moment, and then retired. The cell was but dimly lighted, and the Advocate, coming into it from the full sunlight of a bright day, could not see clearly for a little while. On the other hand. Gautran, whose eyes were accustomed to the gloom, had a distinct view of the Advocate, and in a furtive, hangdog fashion he closely inspected the features of his visitor. The man who stood before him could obtain his condemnation or his acquittal. Dull-witted as he was, this conviction was as much an intuition as an impression gained from the gaoler's remarks. "You are a woodman?" said the Advocate. "Aye, a woodman. It is well known." "Have you parents?" "They are dead." "Any brothers or sisters?" "None. I was the only one." "Friends?" "No." "Have you wife or children?" "Neither." "How much money have you?" "Not a sou." "What about this murder?" asked the Advocate abruptly. "What about it, then?" demanded Gautran. The questions asked by the Advocate were more judicial than friendly, and he assumed an air of defiance. "Speak in a different tone. I am here to assist you, if I see my way. You have no lawyer to defend you?" "How should I get one? What lawyer works without pay, and where should I find the money to pay him?" "Heed what I say. I do not ask you if you are innocent or guilty of the crime of which you stand charged, for that is a formula and, guilty or not guilty, you would return but one answer. Have you anything to tell me?" "I can't think of anything." "You have led an evil life." "Not my fault. Can a man choose his own parents and his country? The life I have led I was born into; and that is to stand against me." "Are there any witnesses who would come forward and speak in your favour?" "None that I know of." "Is it true that you were walking with the girl on the night she was murdered?" "No man has heard me deny it," said Gautran, shuddering. "Why do you shudder?" "Master, you asked me just now whether I had a wife, and I told you I had none. This girl was to have been my wife. I loved her, and we were to have been married." "That is disputed." "Everything is disputed that would tell in my favour. The truth is of no use to a poor devil caught in a trap as I am. Have you heard any good of me, master?" "Not any; all that I have heard is against you." "That is the way of it. Well, then, judge for yourself." "Can you indicate anyone who would be likely to murder the girl? You shudder again." "I cannot help it. Master, put yourself in this cell, as I am put, without light, without hope, without money, without a friend. You would need a strong nerve to stand it. You want to know if I can point out anyone who could have done the deed but me? Well, if I were free, and came face to face with him, I might. Not that I could say anything, or swear to anything for certain, for I did not see it done. No, master, I will not lie to you. Where would be the use? You are clever enough to find me out. But I had good reason to suspect, aye, to know, that the girl had other lovers, who pressed her hard, I dare say; some who were rich, while I was poor; some who were almost mad for her. She was followed by a dozen and more. She told me so herself, and used to laugh about it; but she never mentioned a name to me. You know something of women, master; they like the men to follow them--the best of them do--ladies as well as peasants. They were sent into the world to drive us to perdition. I was jealous of her, yes, I was jealous. Am I guilty because of that? How could I help being jealous when I loved her? It is in a man's blood. Well, then, what more can I say?" In his intent observance of Gautran's manner the Advocate seemed to weigh every word that fell from the man's lips. "At what time did you leave the girl on the last night you saw her alive?" "At ten o'clock." "She was alone at that hour?" "Yes." "Did you see her again after that?" "No." "Did you have reason to suspect that she was to meet any other man on that night?" "If I had thought it, I should have stopped with her." "For what purpose?" "To see the man she had appointed to meet." "And having seen him?" "He would have had to answer to me. I am hot-blooded, master, and can stand up for my rights." "Would you have harmed the girl?" "No, unless she had driven me out of my senses." "Were you in that state on the night of her death?" "No--I knew what I was about." "You were heard to quarrel with her." "I don't deny it." "You were heard to say you would kill her." "True enough. I told her if ever I found out that she was false to me, I would kill her." "Had she bound herself to marry you?" "She had sworn to marry me." "The handkerchief round her neck, when her body was discovered in the river, is proved to have been yours." "It was mine; I gave it to her. I had not much to give." "When you were arrested you were searched?" "Yes." "Was anything taken from you?" "My knife." "Had you and the girl's secret lover--supposing she had one--met on that night, you might have used your knife." "That is speaking beforehand. I can't say what might have happened." "Come here into the light. Let me look at your hands." "What trick are you going to play me, master?" asked Gautran, in a suspicious tone. "No trick," replied the Advocate sternly. "Obey me, or I leave you." Gautran debated with himself in silence for a full minute; then, with an impatient movement, as though it could not matter one way or another, he moved into the light, and held out his hands. The Advocate, taking a powerful glass from his pocket, examined the prisoner's fingers and nails and wrists with the utmost minuteness, Gautran, the while, wrapped in wonder at the strange proceeding. "Now," said the Advocate, "hold your head back, so that the light may shine on your face." Gautran obeyed, warily holding himself in readiness to spring upon the Advocate in case of an attack. By the aid of his glass the Advocate examined Gautran's face and neck with as much care as he had bestowed upon the hands, and then said: "That will do." "What is it all for, master?" asked Gautran. "I am here to ask questions, not to answer them. Since your arrest, have you been examined as I have examined you?" "No, master." "Has any examination whatever been made of you by doctors or gaolers or lawyers?" "None at all." "How long had you known the girl?" "Ever since she came into the neighbourhood." "Were you not acquainted with her before?" "No." "From what part of the country did she come?" "I can't say." "Not knowing?" "Not knowing." "But being intimate with her, you could scarcely avoid asking her the question." "I did ask her, and I was curious to find out. She would not satisfy me; and when I pressed her, she said the other one--Pauline--had made her promise not to tell." "You don't know, then, where she was born?" "No." "Her refusal to tell you--was it lightly or seriously uttered?" "Seriously." "As though there was a secret in her life she wished to conceal?" "I never thought of it in that way, but I can see now it must have been so." "Something discreditable, then?" "Most likely. Master, you go deeper than I do." "What relationship existed between Pauline and Madeline?" "Some said they were sisters, but there was a big difference in their ages. Others said that Pauline was her mother, but I don't believe it, for they never spoke together in that way. Master, I don't know what to say about it; it used to puzzle me; but it was no business of mine." "Did you never hear Pauline address Madeline as her child?" "Never." "They addressed each other by their Christian names?" "Yes." "Did they resemble each other in feature?" "There was something of a likeness between them." "Why did Pauline leave the girl?" "No one knew." "That is all you can tell me?" "That is all." Then after a slight pause, the Advocate asked: "Do you value your liberty?" "Yes, master," replied Gautran excitedly. "Let no person know what has passed between us, and do not repeat one word I have said to you." "I understand; you may depend upon me. But master, will you not tell me something more? Am I to be set free or not?" "You are to be tried; what is brought against you at your trial will establish either your innocence or your guilt." He knocked at the door of the prison cell, and the gaoler opened it for him and let him out. "Well, Gautran?" said the gaoler, but Gautran, wrapped in contemplation of the door through which the Advocate had taken his departure, paid no attention to him. "Do you hear me?" cried the gaoler, shaking his prisoner with no gentle hand. "What now?" "Is the great lawyer going to defend you?" "You want to know too much," said Gautran, and refused to speak another word on the subject. During the whole of the day there were but two figures in his mind--those of the Advocate and the murdered girl. The latter presented itself in various accusing aspects, and he vainly strove to rid himself of the spectre. Its hair hung in wild disorder over neck and bosom, its white lips moved, its mournful eyes struck terror to his soul. The figure of the Advocate presented itself in far different aspects; it was always terrible, Satanic, and damning in its suggestions. "What matter," muttered Gautran, "if he gets me off? I can do as I please then." In the evening, when the small window in his cell was dark, the gaoler heard him crying out loudly. He entered, and demanded what ailed the wretch. "Light--light!" implored Gautran; "give me light!" "Beast in human shape," said the gaoler; "you have light enough. You'll get no more. Stop your howling, or I'll stop it for you!" "Light! light! light!" moaned Gautran, clasping his hands over his eyes. But he could not shut out the phantom of the murdered girl, which from that moment never left him. So he lay and writhed during the night, and would have dashed his head against the wall to put an end to his misery had he not been afraid of death. CHAPTER IX THE ADVOCATE UNDERTAKES A STRANGE TASK. It was on the evening of this day, the third since the arrival of the Advocate in Geneva, that he said to his wife over the dinner-table: "I shall in all likelihood be up the whole of to-night in my study. Do not let me be disturbed." "Who should disturb you?" asked Adelaide languidly. "There are only you and I in the villa; of course I would not venture to intrude upon you without permission." "You misunderstand me, Adelaide; it is because we are in a strange house that I thought it best to tell you." "As if there were anything unusual in your shutting yourself up all night in your study! Our notions of the way to lead an agreeable life are so different! Take your own course, Edward; you are older and wiser than I; but you must not wonder that I think it strange. You come to the country for rest, and you are as hard at work as ever." "I cannot live without work; aimless days would send me to my grave. If you are lonely, Adelaide----" "Oh, no, I am not," she cried vivaciously, "at least, not yet. There is so much in the neighbourhood that is interesting. Dionetta and I have been out all day seeing the sights. On the road to Master Lamont's house there is the loveliest rustic bridge. And the wild flowers are the most beautiful I have ever seen. We met a priest, Father Capel, a gentle-looking man, with the kindest face! He said he intended to call upon you, and hoped to be permitted. I said, of course, you would be charmed. I had a good mind to visit Master Lamont, but his house was too far up the hills. Fool Fritz joined us; he is very amusing, with his efforts to be wise. I was delighted everywhere with the people. I went into some of their cottages, and the women were very respectful; and the children--upon my word, Edward, they stare at me as if I were a picture." The Advocate looked up at this, and regarded his wife with fond admiration. In his private life two influences were dominant--love for his wife, and friendship for Christian Almer. He had love for no other woman, and friendship for no other man, and his trust in both was a perfect trust. "I do not wonder that the children stare at you," he said; "you must be a new and pleasant experience to them." "I believe they take me for a saint," she said, laughing gaily; "and I need not tell _you_ that I am very far from being one." "You are, as we all are, human; and very beautiful, Adelaide." She gazed at him in surprise. "It is not often you pay me compliments." "Do you need them from me? To be sure of my affection--is not that sufficient?" "But I am fond of compliments." "I must commence a new study, then," he said gravely; it was difficult for him to indulge in light themes for many minutes together. "So you are making yourself acquainted with the neighbours. I hope you will not soon tire of them." "When I do I must seek out some other amusement. You have also discovered something since you came here in which you appear to be wonderfully interested." "Yes; a criminal case----" "A criminal case!" she echoed pettishly. "In which there is a great mystery. I do not trouble you with these law matters; long ago you expressed weariness of such themes." Her humour changed again. "A mystery!" she exclaimed with child-like vivacity, "in a place where news is so scarce! It must be delightful. What is it about? There is a woman in it, of course. There always is." "Yes; a young woman, whose body was found in the Rhone." "Murdered?" "Murdered, as it at present seems." "The wretch! Have they caught him? For of course it is a man who committed the dreadful deed." "One is in prison, charged with the crime. I visited him to-day." "Surely you are not going to defend him?" "It is probable. I shall decide to-night." "But why, Edward, why? If the man is guilty, should he not be punished?" "Undoubtedly he should. And if he is innocent, he should not be made to suffer. He is poor and friendless; it will be a relief for me to take up the case, should I believe him to be unjustly accused." "Is he young--handsome--and was it done through jealousy?" "I have told you the case is shrouded in mystery. As for the man charged with the crime, he is very common and repulsive-looking." "And you intend to defend such a creature?" "Most likely." She shrugged her shoulders with a slight gesture of contempt. She had no understanding of his motives, no sympathy in his labours, no pride in his victories. When he retired to his study he did not immediately proceed to the investigation of the case of Gautran, as it was set forth in the numerous papers which lay on the table. These papers, in accordance with the given promise, had been sent to him by Pierre Lamont, and it was his intention to employ the hours of the night in a careful study of the details of the affair, and of the conjectures and opinions of editors and correspondents. But he held his purpose back for a while, and for nearly half-an-hour paced the floor slowly in deep thought. Suddenly he went out, and sought his wife's private room. "It did not occur to me before," he said, "to tell you that a friend of Christian Almer's--Mr. Hartrich, the banker--in a conversation I had with him, expressed his belief that Almer was suffering." "Ill!" she cried in an agitated tone. "In mind, not in body. You have received letters from him lately, I believe?" "Yes, three or four--the last a fortnight ago." "Does he say he is unwell?" "No; but now I think of it, he does not write in his usual good spirits." "You have his address?" "Yes; he is in Switzerland, you know." "So Mr. Hartrich informed me--somewhere in the mountains, endeavouring to extract peace of mind from silence and solitude. That is well enough for a few days, and intellectual men are always grateful for such a change; but, if it is prolonged, there is danger of its bringing a mental disease of a serious and enduring nature upon a man brooding upon unhealthy fancies. I value Almer too highly to lose sight of him, or to allow him to drift. He has no family ties, and is in a certain sense a lonely man. Why should he not come and remain with us during our stay in the village? I had an idea that he himself would have proposed doing so." "He might have considered it indelicate," said Adelaide with a bright colour in her face, "the house being his. As if he had a right to be here." "It is by no means likely," said the Advocate, shaking his head, "that Almer would ever be swayed by other than generous and large-minded considerations. Write to him to-night, and ask him to leave his solitude, and make his home with us. He will be company for you, and your bright and cheerful ways will do him good. The prospect of his visit has already excited you, I see. I am afraid," he said, with a regretful pathos in his voice, "that my society affords you but poor enjoyment; yet I never thought otherwise, when you honoured me by accepting my proposal of marriage, than that you loved me." "I hope you do not think otherwise now," she said in a low tone. "Why, no," he said with a sigh of relief; "what reason have I to think otherwise? We had time to study each other's characters, and I did not present myself in a false light. But we are forgetting Almer. Can you divine any cause for unusual melancholy in him?" She seemed to consider, and answered: "No, she could not imagine why he should be melancholy." "Mr. Hartrich," continued the Advocate, "suggested that he might have experienced a disappointment in love, but I could not entertain the suggestion. Almer and I have for years exchanged confidences in which much of men's inner natures is revealed, and had he met with such a disappointment, he would have confided in me. I may be mistaken, however; your opinion would be valuable here; in these delicate matters, women are keen observers." "Mr. Hartrich's suggestion is absurd; I am convinced Mr. Almer has not met with a disappointment in love. He is so bright and attractive----" "That any woman," said the Advocate, taking up the thread, for Adelaide seemed somewhat at a loss for words, "might be proud to win him. That is your thought, Adelaide." "Yes." "I agree with you. I have never in my life known a man more likely to inspire love in a woman's heart than Christian Almer, and I have sometimes wondered that he had not met with one to whom he was drawn; it would be a powerful influence over him for good. Of an impure passion I believe him incapable. Write to him to-night, and urge him to come to us." "If you wrote to him, also, it would be as well." "I will do so; you can enclose my letter in yours. How does your new maid suit you?" "Admirably. She is perfection." "Which does not exist." "If I could induce her grandmother to part with her, I should like to keep her with me always." "Do not tempt her, Adelaide. For a simple maid a country life is the happiest and best--indeed, for any maid, or any man, young or old." "How seldom practice and precept agree! Why do you not adopt a country life?" "Too late. A man must follow his star. I should die of inaction in the country; and you--I smile when I think what would become of you were I to condemn you to it." "You are not always right. I adore the country!" "For an hour and a day. Adelaide, you could not exist out of society." Until the Alpine peaks were tipped with the fire of the rising sun, the Advocate remained in his study, investigating and considering the case of Gautran. Only once did he leave it to give his wife the letter he wrote to Christian Almer. Newspaper after newspaper was read and laid aside, until the long labour came to its end. Then the Advocate rose, with no trace of fatigue on his countenance, and according to his wont, walked slowly up and down in deep thought. His eyes rested occasionally upon the grotesque and hideous figures carved on the old sideboard, which, had they been sentient and endowed with the power of speech, might have warned him that he had already, within the past few hours, woven one tragic link in his life, and have held him back from weaving another. But he saw no warning in their fantastic faces, and before he retired to rest he had formed his resolve. On the following day all Geneva was startled by the news that the celebrated Advocate, who had travelled thither for rest from years of arduous toil, had undertaken the defence of a wretch upon whose soul, in the opinion of nearly every thinking man and woman, the guilt of blood lay heavily. The trial of Gautran was instantly invested with an importance which elevated it into an absorbing theme with every class of society. CHAPTER X TWO LETTERS--FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND, FROM LOVER TO LOVER I "My Dear Almer,--We have been here three days, and are comfortably established in your singularly-named villa, the House of White Shadows. It is a perfect country residence, and the scenery around it is, I am told, charming. As you are aware, I have no eyes for the beauties of Nature; human nature and human motive alone interest me, and my impressions of the neighbourhood are derived from the descriptions of my wife, who enjoys novelty with the impulsive enjoyment of a child. It appears that she was enchanted when she heard from your lips that your house was supposed to be haunted by shadows, and although you cautioned her immediately afterwards, she was not to be deterred from accepting your invitation. Up to this time, no ghost has appeared to her, nor has my composure been disturbed by supernatural visions. I am a non-believer in visions from the spiritual world; she is only too ready to believe. It is the human interest attached to such fancies--for which, of course, there must be some foundation--which fascinates and arrests the general attention. There, for me, the interest ends; I do not travel beyond reality. "I am supposed to have come for rest and repose. The physicians who laid this burden upon me know little of my nature; idleness is more irksome, and I believe more injurious, to me than the severest labour; and it is a relief, therefore, to me to find myself interested in a startling criminal case which is shortly coming on for trial in Geneva. It is a case of murder, and a man is in prison, charged with its commission. He has no friends, he has no means, he is a vicious creature of the commonest and lowest type. There is nothing in him to recommend him to favour; he is a being to be avoided--but these are not the points to be considered. Is the man guilty or not guilty? He is pronounced guilty by universal public opinion, and the jury which will be empannelled to try him will be ready to convict upon the slightest evidence, or, indeed, without evidence. The trial will be a mockery of justice unless the accused is defended by one who is not influenced by passion and prejudice. There is a feature in the case which has taken powerful possession of me, and which, as far as I can judge, has not occurred to others. I intend to devote the whole of to-night to a study of the details of the crime, and it is likely that I shall undertake the defence of this repulsive creature--no doubt much to his astonishment. I have, with this object in view, already had an interview with him in his prison-cell, and the trouble I had to obtain permission to see him is a sufficient indication of the popular temper. When, therefore, you hear--if in the mountain fastness in which you are intrenched, you have the opportunity of hearing any news at all from the world at your feet--that I have undertaken the defence of a man named Gautran, accused of the murder of a flower-girl named Madeline, do not be surprised. "What is most troubling me at the present moment is--what is my wife to do, how is she to occupy her time, during our stay in the House of White Shadows? At present she is full of animation and delight; the new faces and scenery by which she is surrounded are very attractive to her; but the novelty will wear off and then she will grow dull. Save me from self-reproach and uneasiness by taking up your residence with us, if not for the whole of the time we remain here, which I should much prefer, at least for a few weeks. By so doing you will confer a service upon us all. My wife enjoys your society; you know the feeling I entertain for you; and personal association with sincere friends will be of real benefit to you. I urge it earnestly upon you, for I have an impression that you are brooding over unhealthy fancies, and that you have sought solitude for the purpose of battling with one of those ordinary maladies of the mind to which sensitive natures are prone. If it be so, Christian, you are committing a grave error; the battle is unequal; silence and seclusion will not help you to a victory over yourself. Come and unbosom yourself to me, if you have anything to unbosom, and do not fear that I shall intrude either myself or my advice upon you against your inclination. If you have a grief, meet it in the society of those who love you. There is a medicine in a friendly smile, in a friendly word, which you cannot find in solitude. One needs sometimes, not the sunshine of fair weather, but the sunshine of the soul. Here it awaits you, and should you bring dark vapours with you I promise you they will soon be dispelled. I am disposed--out of purest friendliness--to insist upon your coming, and to be so uncharitable as to accept it as an act of weakness if you refuse me. When the case of Gautran is at an end I shall be an idle man; you, and only you, can avert the injurious effect idleness will have upon me. We will find occupation together, and create reminiscences for future pleasant thought. It may be a long time, if ever, before another opportunity so favourable occurs for passing a few weeks in each other's society, undisturbed by professional cares and duties. You see I am taking a selfish view of the matter. Add an inestimable value to your hospitality by coming here at once and sweetening my leisure. "Your friend, "Edward." II "My Own,--My husband is uneasy about you, and has imposed a task upon me. You shall judge for yourself whether it is a disagreeable one. I am to write to you immediately, to insist upon your coming to us without an hour's delay. You have not the option of refusal. The Advocate insists upon it, and I also insist upon it. You must come. Upon the receipt of this letter you will pack up your portmanteau, and travel hither in the swiftest possible way, by the shortest possible route. Be sure that you do not disobey me. You are to come instantly, without an hour's--nay, without a moment's delay. If you fail I will not answer for the consequences, and upon you will rest the responsibility of all that follows. For what reason, do you suppose, did I accept the offer of your villa in this strangely quiet valley, unless it was in the hope and the belief that we should be near each other? And now that I _am_ here, pledged to remain, unable to leave without an exhibition of the most dreadful vacillation--which would not matter were I to have my own way, and were everything to be exactly as I wish it--you are bound to fly swiftly to the side of one who entertains for you the very sincerest affection. Do not be angry with me for my disregard of your caution to be careful in my manner of writing to you. I cannot help it. I think of you continually, and if you wish me not to write what you fear other eyes than ours might see, you must come and talk to me. I shall count the minutes till you are here. The Advocate is uneasy about you, and is, indeed and indeed, most anxious that you should be with us. He seems to have an idea that you have some cause for melancholy, and that you are brooding over it. Could anything be more absurd? Cause for melancholy! Just as if you were alone in the world! You do not need to be told that there is one being who will care for you till she is an old, old woman. Think of me as I shall be then. An old woman, with white hair, walking with a crutch-stick, as they do on the stage. If you _are_ sad, it is a just punishment upon you. There was nothing in the world to prevent your travelling with us. What do you think a friend of yours, a banker in Geneva, suggested to the Advocate? He said that it was probable that you had experienced a disappointment in love. Now, this sets me thinking. Why have you chosen to hide yourself in the mountains, a hundred and a hundred miles away? Have you been there before? Is there some pretty girl to attract you, from whom you find it impossible to tear yourself? If it is so, let her beware of me. You have no idea of what I should be capable if you gave me cause for jealousy. What is her disposition--pensive or gay? She is younger than I am, I suppose--though I am not so old, sir!--with hands---- Ah, I am easier in my mind; her hands must be coarse, for she is a peasant. I am almost reconciled; you could never fall in love with a peasant. They may be pretty and fresh for a month or two, but they cannot help being coarse, and I know how anything coarse grates upon you. But a peasant-girl might fall in love with you--there are more unlikely things than that. Shall I tell you what the Advocate said of you this evening? It will make you vain, but never mind. 'I have never in my life known a man more likely to inspire love in a woman's heart than Christian Almer.' There, sir, his very words. How true they are! Ah, how cruel was the chance that separated us from each other, and brought us together again when I was another man's wife! Oh, if I had only known! If some kind fairy had told me that the man who, when I was a child, enthralled me with his beautiful fancies, and won my heart, and who then, as it seemed, passed out of my life--if I had suspected that, after many years, he would return home from his wanderings with the resolve to seek out the child and make her his wife, do you for one moment suppose I would not have waited for him? Do you think it possible I could ever have accepted the hand of another man? No, it could not have been, for even as a child I used to dream of you, and held you in my heart above all other human beings. But you were gone--I never thought of seeing you again--and I was so young that I could have had no foreshadowing of what was to come. "Have you ever considered how utterly different my life might have been had you not crossed it? Not that I reproach you--do not think that; but how strangely things turn out, without the principal actor having anything to do with them! It is exactly like sitting down quietly by yourself, and seeing all sorts of wonderful things happen in which you have no hand, though if you were not in existence they could never have occurred. Just think for a moment. If it had not happened that you knew me when I was a child, and was fond of me then, as you have told me I don't know how many times--if it had not happened that your restless spirit drove you abroad where you remained for years and years and years--if it had not happened that, tired of leading a wandering life, you resolved to come home and seek out the child you used to pet and make love to (but she did not know the meaning of love then)--if it had not happened that, entirely ignorant of what was passing in your mind, the child, grown into a pretty woman (I think I may say that, without vanity), was persuaded by her friends that to refuse an offer of marriage made to her by a great lawyer, famous and rich, was something too shocking to contemplate--if it had not happened that she, knowing nothing of her own heart, knowing nothing of the world, allowed herself to be guided by these cold calculating friends to accept a man utterly unsuited to her, and with whom she has never had an hour's real happiness--if it had not happened by the strangest chance, that this man and you were friends---- There, my dear, follow it out for yourself, and reflect how different our lives might have been if everything had happened in the way it ought to have done. I was cheated and tricked into a marriage with a man whose heart has room for only one sentiment--ambition. I am bound to him for life, but I am yours till death--although the bond which unites us is, as you have taught me, but a spiritual bond. "Are you angry with me for putting all this on paper? You must not be, for I cannot help it if I am not wise. Wisdom belongs to men. Come, then, and give me wise counsel, and prevent me from committing indiscretions. For I declare to you, upon my heart and honour, if you do not very soon present yourself at the House of White Shadows, I will steal from it in the night and make my way to the mountains to see what wonderful attraction it is that separates us. What food for scandal! What wagging and shaking of heads! How the women's tongues would run! I can imagine it all. Save me from exposure as you are a true man. "You have made the villa beautiful. As I walk about the house and grounds I am filled with delight to think that you have effected such a magic change for my sake. Master Lamont has shown really exquisite taste. What a singular old man he is. I can't decide whether I like him or not. But how strange that you should have had it all done by deputy, and that you have not set foot in the house since you were a child. You see I know a great deal. Who tells me? My new maid Dionetta. Do you remember, in one of the letters you showed me from your steward, that he spoke about the old housekeeper, Mother Denise, and a pretty granddaughter? I made up my mind at the time that the pretty granddaughter should be my maid. And she is, and her name is Dionetta. Is it not pretty?--but not prettier than the owner. Will that tempt you? I have sent my town maid away, much to her displeasure; she spoke to the Advocate in complaint, but he did not mention it to me; I found it out for myself. He is as close as the grave. So I am here absolutely alone, with none but strangers around me. "I am very much interested in the pictures in the studio of the old châlet, especially in a pair which represents, the first, two lovers with the sun shining on them; the second, the lovers parted by a cold grey sea. They stand on opposite shores, gazing despairingly at each other. He must have been a weak-minded man indeed; he should have taken a boat, and rowed across to her; and if he was afraid to do that, she should have gone to him. That would have been the most sensible thing. "I could continue my gossip till daylight breaks, but I have already lost an hour of my beauty sleep, and I want you, upon your arrival, to see me at my best. "My heart goes with this letter; bring it swiftly back to me." "Yours for ever, "Adelaide." CHAPTER XI FIRE AND SNOW--FOOL FRITZ INFORMS PIERRE LAMONT WHERE ACTUAL LOVE COMMENCES "News, Master Lamont, news!" "Of what nature, Fritz?" "Of a diabolical nature. Satan is busy." "He is never idle--for which the priests, if they have any gratitude in them, should be thankful." "You are not fond of the priests, Master Lamont." "I do not hate them." "Still you are not fond of them." "I do not love them. Your news, fool--concerning whom?" "A greater than you, or you do not speak the truth." "The Advocate, then?" "The same. You are a good guesser." "Fritz, your news is stale." "I am unlucky; I thought to be the first. You have heard the news?" "Not I." "You have read a letter, informing you of it." "You are a bad guesser. I have neither received nor read a letter to-day." "You have heard nothing, you have read nothing; and yet you know." "As surely as you stand before me. Fritz, you are not a scholar, but I will give you a sum any fool can do. Add one to one--what do you make of it?" "Why, that is easy enough, Master Lamont." "The answer then, fool?" "One." "Good. You shall smart for it, in the most vulnerable part of man. You receive from me, every week, one franc. I owe you, for last week, one franc; I owe you, for this, one." "That is so." "Last week, one; this week, one. I discharge the liability." And Pierre Lamont handed a franc to Fritz. Fritz weighed the coin in the palm of his hand, spun it in the air and smiled. "Master Lamont, here is a fair challenge. If I prove to you that one and one are one, this franc you have given me shall not count off what you owe me." "I agree." "When one man and one woman are joined in matrimony, they become one flesh. Therefore, one and one are one. "You have earned the franc, fool. Here are the two I owe you." "Now, perhaps, you will tell _me_ what I came here to tell you." "The Advocate intends to defend Gautran, who stands charged with the murder of the flower-girl." "You are a master worth serving. I have half a mind to give you back your franc." "Make it a whole mind, Fritz." "No; second thoughts are best. My pockets are not as warm as yours. They are not so well lined. How did you guess, Master Lamont?" "By means of a golden rule, an infallible rule, by the Rule of One--which, intelligibly interpreted to shallow minds--no offence, Fritz, I hope----" "Don't mind me, Master Lamont; I am a fool and used to hard knocks." "Then by the Rule of One, which means the rule of human nature--as, for example, that makes the drunkard stagger to the wine-shop and the sluggard to his bed--I guessed that the Advocate could not withstand so tempting a chance to prove the truth of the scriptural words that all men are liars. What will be palatable information to me is the manner in which the news has been received." "Heaven keep me from ever being so received! The Advocate has not added to the number of his friends. People are gazing at each other in amazement, and asking for reasons which none are able to give." "And his wife, Fritz, his wife?" "Takes as much interest in his doings as a bee does in the crawling of a snail." "Rogue, you have cheated me! How about one and one being one?" "There are marriages and marriages. This was not made in Heaven; when it came about there was a confusion in the pairing, and another couple are as badly off. There will be a natural end to both." "How brought about, fool?" "By your own rule, the rule of human nature." "When a jumper jumps, he first measures his distance with his eye. Do they quarrel?" "No." "Does she look coldly upon him, or he upon her?" "No." "Is there silence between them?" "No." "You are a bad jumper, Fritz. You have not measured your distance." "See, Master Lamont, I will prove it to you by a figure of speech. There travels from the south a flame of fire. There travels from the north a lump of snow. They meet. What happens? Either that the snow extinguishes the fire and it dies, or that the fire puts an end to the snow." "Fairly illustrated, Fritz. Fire and snow! Truly a most unfortunate conjunction." "She was in the mood to visit you yesterday had you lived a mile nearer the valley." "You were out together." "She and Dionetta were walking, and I met them and accompanied them. She spoke graciously to the villagers, and went into the cottages, and drank more than one cup of milk. She was sweeter than sugar, Master Lamont, and won the hearts of some of the women and of all the men. As for the children, they would have followed her to the world's end, I do believe, out of pure admiration. They carry now in their little heads the vision of the beautiful lady. Even Father Capel was struck by her beauty." "Priests are mortals, Fritz. On which side did you walk--next to my lady or Dionetta?" "I should be wrecked in a tempest. I sail only in quiet lakes." "And the maid--did she object to your walking close to her?--for you are other than I take you to be if you did not walk close." "Why should she object? Am I not a man? Women rather like fools." "How stands the pretty maid with her new mistress?" "In high favour, if one can judge from fingers." "Fritz, your wit resembles a tide that is for ever flowing. Favour me with your parable." "It is a delicate point to decide where actual love commences. Have you ever considered it, Master Lamont?" "Not deeply, fool. In my young days I was a mad-brain; you are a philosopher. Like a bee, I took what fell in my way, and did not puzzle myself or the flower with questions. Where love commences? In the heart." "No." "In the brain." "No." "In the eye." "No." "Where, then?" "In the finger-tips. Dionetta and I, walking side by side, shoulder to shoulder, our arms hanging down, brought into close contact our finger-tips. What wonder that they touched!" "Natural magnetism, Fritz." "With our finger-tips touching, we walked along, and if her heart palpitated as mine did, she must have experienced an inward commotion. Master Lamont, this is a confession for your ears only. I should be base and ungrateful to hide it from you." "Your confidence shall be respected." "It leads to an answer to your question as to how Dionetta stands with her new mistress. First the finger-tips, then the fingers, and her little hand was clasped in mine. It was then I felt the ring upon her finger." "Ah!" "Now, Dionetta never till yesterday owned a ring. I felt it, as a man who is curious would do, and suddenly her hand was snatched from mine. A moment or two afterwards, her hand was in mine again, but the ring was gone. A fine piece of conjuring. A man is no match for a woman in these small ways. To-day I saw her for about as long as I could count three. 'Who gave you the ring?' I asked. 'My lady,' she answered. 'Don't tell grandmother that I have got a ring.' Therefore, Master Lamont, Dionetta stands well with her mistress." "Logically carried out, Fritz. The saints prosper your wooing." CHAPTER XII THE STRUGGLE OF LOVE AND DUTY In his lonely room in the mountain hut in which he had taken up his quarters, Christian Almer sat writing. It was early morning; he had risen before the sun. During the past week he had struggled earnestly with the terror which oppressed him; his suffering had been great, but he believed he was conquering. The task he had imposed upon himself of setting his duty before him in clear terms afforded him consolation. The book in which he was writing contained the record of a love which had filled him with unrest, and threatened to bring dishonor into his life. * * * * * * "I thank Heaven," he wrote, "that I am calmer than I have been for several days. Separation has proved an inestimable blessing. The day may come when I shall look upon my love as dead, and shall be able to think of it as one thinks of a beloved being whom death has snatched away. "Even now, as I think of her, there is no fever in the thought. I have not betrayed my friend. "How would he regard me if he were acquainted with my mad passion--if he knew that the woman he adored looked upon him with aversion, and gave her love to the friend whom he trusted as a brother? "There was the error. To listen to her confession of love, and to make confession of my own. "That a man should so forget himself--should be so completely the slave of his passions! "How came it about? When were the first words spoken? "She sat by my side, radiant and beautiful. Admiring glances from every part of the theatre were cast upon her. In a corner of the box sat her husband, silent and thoughtful, heedless of the brilliant scene before him, heedless of her, as it seemed, heedless of the music and the singers. "Royalty was there, immediately facing us, and princes levelled their opera-glasses at her. "There are moments of intoxication when reason and conscience desert us. "We were stepping into the carriage when a note was delivered to him. He read it, and said, 'I cannot go with you; I am called away. You will not miss me, as I do not dance. I will join you in a couple of hours." "So we went alone, we two together, and her hand rested lightly upon mine. And in the dance the words were spoken--words never to be recalled. "What demon prompted them? Why did not an angel whisper to me, 'Remember. There is a to-morrow.' "But in the present the morrow is forgotten. A false sense of security shuts out all thoughts of the consequences of our actions. A selfish delight enthrals us, and we do not see the figure of Retribution hovering above us. "It is only when we are alone with our conscience that this figure is visible. Then it is that we tremble; then it is that we hear words which appal us. "Again and again has this occurred to me, and I have vowed to myself that I would tear myself from her--a vow as worthless as the gambler's resolve to play no more. Drawn irresistibly forward, and finding in every meeting a shameful justification in the delusion that I was seeing her for the last time; and leaving her with a promise to come again soon. Incredible infatuation! But to listen to the recital of her sorrows and unhappiness without sympathising with her--it was not possible; and to hear her whisper, 'I love you, and only you,' without being thrilled by the confession--a man would need to be made of stone. "How often has she said to me, when speaking of her husband, 'He has no heart!' "Can I then, aver with any semblance of honesty that I have not betrayed my friend? Basely have I betrayed him. "If I were sure that she would not suffer--if I were sure that she would forget me! Coldness, neglect, indifference--they are sharp weapons, but I deserve to bleed. "Still, I cry out against my fate. I have committed no crime. Love came to me and tortured me. But a man must perform a man's duty. I will strive to perform mine. Then in years to come I may be able to think of the past without shame, even with pride at having conquered. "I have destroyed her portrait. I could not look upon her face and forget her." * * * * * * A voice from an adjoining room caused him to lay aside his pen. It was the peasant, the master of the hut, calling to him, and asking if he was ready. He went out to the man. "I heard you stirring," said the peasant, "and my young ones are waiting to show you where the edelweiss can be found." The children, a boy and a girl, looked eagerly at Christian Almer. It had been arranged on the previous day that the three should go for a mountain excursion in search of the flower that brings good luck and good fortune to the finder. The children were sturdy-limbed and ruddy-faced, and were impatient to be off. "Breakfast first," said Christian Almer, pinching the little girl's cheek. Brown bread, honey, goat's milk, and an omelette were on the table, and the stranger, who had been as a godsend to the poor family, enjoyed the homely fare. The peasant had already calculated that if his lodger lived a year in the hut, they could save five hundred francs--a fortune. Christian Almer had been generous to the children, in whose eyes he was something more than mortal. Money is a magic power. "Will the day be fine?" asked Christian. "Yes," said the peasant; "but there will be a change in the evening. The little ones will know--you can trust to them." Young as they were, they could read the signs on Nature's face, and could teach their gentleman friend wise things, great and rich as he was. The father accompanied them for a couple of miles; he was a goat-herd, and, unlike others of his class, was by no means a silent man. "You live a happy life here," said Christian Almer. "Why, yes," said the peasant; "it is happy enough. We have to eat, but not to spare; there is the trouble. Still, God be thanked. The children are strong and healthy; that is another reason for thankfulness." "Is your wife, as you are, mountain born?" "Yes; and could tell you stories. And there," said the peasant, pointing upwards afar off, "as though it knew my wife were being talked of, there is the lämmergeier." An enormous vulture, which seemed to have suddenly grown out of the air, was suspended in the clouds. So motionless was it that it might have been likened to a sculptured work, wrought by an angel's hand, and fixed in heaven as a sign. It could not have measured less than ten feet from wing to wing. Its colour was brown, with bright edges and white quills, and its fiery eyes were encircled by broad orange-shaded rings. "My wife," said the peasant, "has reason to remember the lämmergeier. When she was three years old her father took her to a part of the mountains where they were hay-making, and not being able to work and attend to her at the same time, he set her down by the side of a hut. It was a fine sunny day, and Anna fell asleep. Her father, seeing her sleeping calmly, covered her face with a straw hat, and continued his work. Two hours afterwards he went to the spot, and Anna was gone. He searched for her everywhere, and all the haymakers assisted in the search, but Anna was nowhere to be found. My father and I--I was a mere lad at the time, five years older than Anna--were walking towards a mountain stream, three miles from where Anna had been sleeping, when I heard the cry of a child. It came from a precipice, and above this precipice a vulture was flying. We went in the direction of the cry, and found Anna lying on the edge of the precipice, clinging to the roots with her little hand. She was slipping down, and would have slipped to certain death had we been three minutes later. It was a difficult task to rescue her as it was, but we managed it, and carried her to her father. She had no cap to her head, and no shoes or stockings on her feet; she had lost them in her flight through the air in the vulture's beak. She has a scar on her left arm to this day as a remembrance of her acquaintance with the lämmergeier. So it fell out afterwards, when she was a young woman, that I married her." Ever and again, as they walked onwards, Christian Almer turned to look upon the vulture, which remained perfectly still, with its wings outstretched, until it was hid from his sight by the peculiar formation of the valleys they were traversing. Hitherto their course had lain amidst masses of the most beautiful flowers; gentians with purple bells, others spotted and yellow, with brilliant whorls of bloom, the lilac-flowered campanula, the anemone, the blue columbine and starwort, the lovely forget-me-not--which Christian Almer mentally likened to bits of heaven dropped down--and the Alpine rose, the queen of Alpine flowers. Now all was changed. The track was bare of foliage; not a blade of grass peeped up from the barren rocks. "There is good reason for it," said the peasant; "here, long years ago, a man killed his brother in cold blood. Since that day no flowers will grow upon the spot. There are nights on which the spirit of the murderer wanders mournfully about these rocks; a black dog accompanies him, whose bark you can sometimes hear. This valley is accursed." Soon afterwards the peasant left Christian Almer to the guidance of the children, and with them the young man spent the day, sharing contentedly with them the black bread and hard sausage they had brought for dinner. This mid-day meal was eaten as they sat beside a lake, in the waters of which there was not a sign of life, and Christian Almer noticed that, as the children ate, they watched the bosom of this lake with a strange and singular interest. "What are you gazing at?" he asked, curious to learn. "For the dead white trout," answered the boy. "Whenever a priest dies it floats upon the lake." In the lower heights, where the fir-trees stretched their feathery tips to the clouds, they found the flower they were in search of, and the children were wild with delight. The sun was setting when they returned to the hut, tired and gratified with their day's wanderings. The peasant's wife smiled as she saw the edelweiss. "A lucky love-flower," she said to Christian Almer. These simple words proved to him how hard was the lesson of forgetfulness he was striving to learn; he was profoundly agitated by them. Night fell, and the clouds grew black. "The wind is rising," said the peasant; "an ill night for travellers. Here is one coming towards us." It proved to be a guide who lived in the nearest post village, and who, duly commissioned for the service, brought to Christian Almer the letters of the Advocate and his wife. "A storm is gathering," said the guide; "I must find shelter on the heights to-night." In his lonely room Christian Almer broke the seals, and by the dull light of a single candle read the lines written by friend to friend, by lover to lover. The thunder rolled over the mountains; the lightning flashed through the small window; the storm was upon him. He read the letters once only, but every word was impressed clearly upon his brain. For an hour he sat in silence, gazing vacantly at the edelweiss on the table, the lucky love-flower. The peasant's wife called to him, and asked if he wanted anything. "Nothing," he replied, in a voice that sounded strange to him. "I will leave the bread and milk on the table," she said. "Good-night." He did not answer her, nor did he respond to the children's good-night. Their voices, the children's especially, seemed to his ears to come from a great distance. A drop of rain fell from the roof upon the candle, and extinguished the light. For a long while he remained in darkness, until all in the hut were sleeping; then he went out into the wild night, clutching the letters tight in his hand. He staggered almost blindly onwards, and in the course of half an hour found himself standing on a narrow and perilous bridge, from which the few travellers who passed that way could obtain a view of a torrent which dashed with sublime and terrific force over a precipice upon the rocks below, a thousand feet down. "If I were to grow dizzy now!" he muttered, with a reckless laugh; and he tempted fate by leaning over the narrow bridge, and gazing downwards into the dark depths. Indistinct shapes grew out of the mighty and eternal waterfall. Of hosts of angry men battling with each other; of rushing horses; of armies of vultures swooping down for prey; of accusing and beautiful faces; of smiling mouths and white teeth flashing; and, amidst the whirl, sounds of shrieks and laughter. Suddenly he straightened himself, and tearing Adelaide's letter into a thousand pieces, flung the evidence of a treacherous love into the furious torrent of waters; and as he did so he thought that there were times in a man's life when death were the best blessing which Heaven could bestow upon him! CHAPTER XIII THE TRIAL OF GAUTRAN The trial of Gautran was proceeding, and the court was thronged with an excited gathering of men and women, upon whom not a word in the story of the tragic drama was thrown away. Impressed by the great powers of the Advocate who had undertaken to appear for the accused, the most effective measures had been adopted to prove Gautran's guilt, and obtain a conviction. It was a legal battle, fought with all the subtle weapons at the disposal of the law. Gautran's prosecutors fought with faces unmasked, and with their hands displayed; the Advocate, on the contrary, was pursuing a course which none could fathom; nor did he give a clue to it. Long before the case was closed the jury were ready to deliver their verdict; but, calm and unmoved, the Advocate, with amazing patience, followed out his secret theory, the revelation of which was awaited, by those who knew him best and feared him most, with intense and painful curiosity. Every disreputable circumstance in Gautran's life was raked up to display the odiousness of his character; his infamous career was tracked from his childhood to the hour of his arrest. A creature more debased, with features more hideous, it would have been difficult to drag forward from the worst haunts of crime and shame. Degraded he was born, degraded he had lived, degraded he stood before his judges. It was a horror to gaze upon his face as he stood in the dock, convulsively clutching the rails. For eight days had he so stood, execrated and condemned by all. For eight days he had endured the anguish of a thousand deaths, of a myriad agonising fears. His soul had been harrowed by the most awful visions--visions of which none but himself had any conception. In his cell with the gaolers watching his every movement; in the court with the glare of daylight upon him; in the dusky corridors he traversed morning and evening he saw the phantom of the girl with whose murder he was charged, and by her side the phantom of himself standing on the threshold of a future in which there was no mercy or pity. No communication passed between him and the lawyer who was fighting for him; not once did the Advocate turn to the prisoner or address a word to him; it was as though he were battling for a victory in which Gautran was in no wise concerned. But if indeed he desired to win, he adopted the strangest tactics to accomplish his desire. Not a question he asked the witnesses, not an observation he made to the judge, but tended to fix more surely the prisoner's degradation, and gradually there stole into Gautran's heart a deadly hatred and animosity against his defender. "He defends me to ruin me," this was Gautran's thought; "he is seeking to destroy me, body and soul." His own replies to the questions put to him by the judge were sufficient to convict him. He equivocated and lied in the most barefaced manner, and when he was exposed and reproved, evinced no shame--preserving either a dogged silence, or obstinately exclaiming that the whole world was leagued against him. Apart from the question whether he was lying or speaking the truth, there was a certain consistency in his method which would have been of service to him had his cause been good. This was especially noticeable when he was being interrogated with respect to his relations with the murdered girl. "You insist," said the judge, "that Madeline accepted you as her lover?" "Yes," replied Gautran, "I insist upon it." "Evidence will be brought forward to prove that it was not so. What, then, will you answer?" "That whoever denies it is a liar." "And if a dozen or twenty deny it?" "They lie, the lot of them." "What should make them speak falsely instead of truly?" "Because they are all against me." "There is no other evidence except your bare statement that Madeline and you were affianced." "That is my misfortune. If she were alive she could speak for me." "It is a safe remark, the poor child being in her grave. It is the rule for young girls to love men whose appearance is not repulsive." "Is this," cried Gautran, smiting his face with his fist, "to stand as a witness against me, too?" "No; but a girl has generally a cause for falling in love. If the man be not attractive in appearance, it is almost certain he will possess some other quality to attract her. He may be clever, and this may win her." "I do not pretend to be clever." "His manners may be engaging. His nature may be kind and affectionate, and she may have had proof of it." "_My_ nature is kind and affectionate. It may have been that, if you are determined upon having a reason for her fondness for me." "She was fond of you?" "Aye." "Did she tell you so, and when?" "Always when we were alone." "We cannot have Madeline's evidence as to the feelings she entertained for you; but we can have the evidence of others who knew you both. Are you acquainted with Katherine Scherrer?" "Not too well; we were never very intimate." "She is a young woman a few years older than Madeline, and she warned Madeline against you. She herself had received instances of your brutality. Before you saw Madeline you made advances towards Katherine Scherrer." "False. She made advances towards me. She asked me to be her lover, and now she speaks against me out of revenge." "She has not spoken yet, but she will. Madeline told her that she trembled at the sight of you, and had entreated you not to follow her; but that you would not be shaken off." "It is my way; I will never be baulked." "It is true, therefore; you paid no attention to this poor girl's entreaties because it is your way not to allow yourself to be baulked." "I did not mean that; I was thinking of other matters." "Katherine Scherrer has a mother." "Yes; a woman of no account." "Some time ago this mother informed you, if you did not cease to pester Katherine with your insulting proposals, that she would have you beaten." "I should like to see the man who would have attempted it." "That is savagely spoken for one whose nature is kind and affectionate." "May not a man defend himself? I don't say I am kind and affectionate to men; but I am to women." "The murdered girl found you so. Hearing from her daughter that Madeline was frightened of you, and did not wish you to follow her, Katherine's mother desired you to let the girl alone." "She lies." "They all lie who utter a word against you?" "Every one of them." "You never courted Katherine Scherrer?" "Never." "Her mother never spoke to you about either her daughter or Madeline?" "Never." "Do you know the Widow Joseph?" "No." "Madeline lodged in her house." "What is that to me?" "Did she never speak to you concerning Madeline?" "Never." "Attend. Four nights before Madeline met her death you were seen prowling outside Widow Joseph's house." "I was not there." "The Widow Joseph came out and asked you what you wanted." "She did not." "You said you must see Madeline. The Widow Joseph went into the house, and returned with the message that Madeline would not see you. Upon that you tried to force your way into the house, and struck the woman because she prevented you. Madeline came down, alarmed at the sounds of the struggle, and begged you to go away, and you said you would, now that you had seen her, as you had made up your mind to. What have you to say to this?" "A batch of lies. Twenty women could not have prevented me getting into the house." "You think yourself a match for twenty women?" "Aye." "And for as many men?" "For one man, whoever he may be. Give me the chance of proving it." "Do you know Heinrich Heitz?" "No." "He is, like yourself, a woodcutter." "There are thousands of woodcutters." "Did you and he not work together as partners?" "We did not." "Were you not continually quarrelling, and did he not wish to break the partnership?" "No." "In consequence of this, did you not threaten to murder him?" "No." "Did you not strike him with a weapon, and cut his forehead open?" "No." "How many women have you loved?" "One." "Her name?" "Madeline." "You never loved another?" "Never." "Have you been married?" "No." "Have you ever lived with a woman who should have been your wife?" "Never." "Did you not continually beat this poor woman until her life became a burden to her, and she was compelled to fly from you to another part of the country?" "No." "Do you expect to be believed in the answers you have given?" "No." "It is said that you possess great strength." "It has served me in good stead." "That you are a man of violent passions." "I have my feelings. I would never submit to be trampled on." "You were always kind to Madeline?" "Always." "On the night of her murder?" "Yes." "Witnesses will prove that you were heard to say, 'I will kill you! I will kill you!' Do you deny saying so?" "No." "How does that cruel threat accord with a mild and affectionate nature?" "I was asking her whether she had another lover, and I said if she had, and encouraged him, that I would kill her." "The handkerchief found round her neck was yours." "I gave it to her as a love-gift." "A terrible love-gift. It was not wound loosely round her neck; it was tight, almost to strangulation." "She must have made it so in her struggles, or----" "Or?" "The man who killed her must have attempted to strangle her with it." "That is your explanation?" "Yes." "Your face is bathed in perspiration; your eyes glare wildly." "Change places with me, and see how you would feel." "Such signs, then, are the signs of innocence?" "What else should they be?" During this long examination, Gautran's limbs trembled violently, and there passed over his face the most frightful expressions. CHAPTER XIV. THE EVIDENCE OF WITNESSES Among the first witnesses called was Heinrich Heitz, a wood-cutter, who had been for some time in partnership with Gautran, and of whom Gautran had denied any knowledge whatever. On his forehead was the red scar of a wound inflicted some time before. "Look at the prisoner. Do you know him?" "I have reason to." "His name?" "Gautran." "How did he get his living?" "By wood-cutting." "You and he were comrades for a time?" "We were." "For how long?" "For three years; we were partners." "During the time you worked with him, did he know you as Heinrich Heitz?" "By no other name. I never bore another." "Was the partnership an agreeable one?" "Not to me; it was infernally disagreeable. I never want another partner like him." "Why?" "Because I don't want another savage beast for a partner." "You did not get along well with him?" "Quite the reverse." "For what reasons?" "Well, for one, I am a hard-working man; he is an indolent bully. The master he works for once does not want to employ him again. When we worked together on a task, the profits of which were to be equally divided between us, he shirked his share of the work, and left me to do the lot." "Did you endeavour to separate from him?" "I did; and he swore he would murder me; and once, when I was more than usually determined, he marked me on my forehead. You can see the scar; I shall never get rid of it." "Did he use a weapon against you?" "Yes; a knife." "His temper is ungovernable?" "He has not the slightest control over it." "He is a man of great strength?" "He is very powerful." "Possessed with an idea which he was determined to carry out, is it likely that anything would soften him?" "Nothing could soften him." "How would opposition affect him?" "It would infuriate him. I have seen him, when crossed, behave as if he were a mad tiger instead of a human being." "At such times, would it be likely that he would show any coolness or cunning?" "He would have no time to think; he would be carried away by his passion." "You were acquainted with him when he was a lad?" "I was." "Was he noted for his cruel disposition in his childhood?" "He was; it was the common talk." "Did he take a pleasure in inflicting physical pain upon those weaker than himself?" "He did." "And in prolonging that pain?" "Yes." "In his paroxysms of fury would not an appeal to his humanity have a softening effect upon him?" "He has no humanity." "You were acquainted with Madeline?" "I was." "Was she an amiable girl?" "Most amiable." "She was very gentle?" "As gentle as a child." "But she was capable of being aroused?" "Of course she was." "She had many admirers?" "I have heard so." "You yourself admired her?" "I did." "You made love to her?" "I suppose I did." "Did she encourage you?" "I cannot say she did." "Did you ever attempt to embrace her?" The witness did not reply to this question, and upon its being repeated, still preserved silence. Admonished by the judge, and ordered to reply, he said: "Yes, I have attempted to embrace her." "On more than one occasion." "Only on one occasion." "Did she permit the embrace?" "No." "She resisted you?" "Yes." "There must have been a struggle. Did she strike you?" "She scratched my face." "She resisted you successfully?" "Yes." "Gentle as she was, she possessed strength?" "Oh yes, more than one would have supposed." "Strength which she would exert to protect herself from insult?" "Yes." "Her disposition was a happy one?" "That was easy to see. She was always singing to herself, and smiling." "You believe she was fond of life?" "Why yes--who is not?" "And would not have welcomed a violent and sudden death?" "Certainly not. What a question!" "Threatened with such a fate, she would have resisted?" "Aye, with all her strength. It would be but natural." "Knowing Madeline somewhat intimately, you must have known Pauline?" "Yes, I knew her." "It is unfortunate and inexplicable that we cannot call her as a witness, and are ignorant of the reason why she left Madeline alone. Can you furnish any clue, even the slightest, which might enable us to find her?" "I cannot; I do not know where she has gone." "Were they sisters, or mother and daughter?" "I cannot say." "Do you know where they came from?" "I do not." "Reflect. During your intimacy, was any chance word or remark made by either of the women which, followed up, might furnish the information?" "I can remember none. But something was said, a few days before Pauline left, which surprised me." "Relate it, and do not fear to weary the court. Omit nothing." "I made love to Madeline, as I have said, and she did not encourage me. Then, for perhaps a month or two, I said nothing more to her than good-morning or good-evening. But afterwards, when I was told that Gautran was following her up, I thought to myself, 'I am better than he; why should I be discouraged because she said "No" to me once?' Well, then it was that I mustered up courage to speak to Pauline, thinking to win her to my side. I did not, though. Pauline was angry and impatient with me, and as much as told me that when Madeline married it would be to a better man than I was. I was angry, also, because it seemed as if she looked down on me. 'You think she will marry a gentleman,' said I. 'It might be so,' she answered. 'A fine idea that,' said I, 'for a peasant. But perhaps she isn't a peasant: perhaps she is a lady in disguise.' I suppose I spoke scornfully, for Pauline fired up, and asked whether Madeline was not good enough, and pretty enough, and gentle enough for a lady; and said, too, that those who believed her to be a peasant might one day find out their mistake. And then all at once she stopped suddenly, with red fire in her face, and I saw she had said that which she had rather left unspoken." This last piece of evidence supplied a new feature of interest in the case. It furnished a clue to a tempting mystery as to the social position of Pauline and Madeline; but it was a clue which could not be followed to a satisfactory result, although another unexpected revelation was made in the course of the trial which appeared to have some connection with it. Much of the evidence given by Heinrich Heitz was elicited by the Advocate--especially those particulars which related to Gautran's strength and ferocity, and to Madeline's love of life and the way in which she met an insult. It was not easy to see what good could be done for Gautran by the stress which the Advocate laid upon these points. Katherine Scherrer was called and examined. She testified that Gautran had made advances towards her, and had pressed her to become his wife; that she refused him, and that he threatened her; that as he persisted in following her, her mother had spoken to him, and had warned him, if he did not cease persecuting her daughter, that she would have him beaten. This evidence was corroborated by Katherine's mother, who testified that she had cautioned Gautran not to persecute Madeline with his attentions and proposals. Madeline had expressed to both these women her abhorrence of Gautran and her fear of him, but nothing could induce him to relinquish his pursuit of her. The only evidence elicited from these witnesses by the Advocate related to Gautran's strength and ferocity. Following Katherine Scherrer and her mother came a witness whose appearance provoked murmurs of compassion. It was a poor, wretched woman, half demented, who had lived with Gautran in another part of the country, and who had been so brutally treated by him that her reason had become impaired. If her appearance provoked compassion, the story of her wrongs, as it was skilfully drawn from her by kindly examination, stirred the court into strong indignation, and threw a lurid light upon the character of the man arraigned at the bar of justice. In the presence of this poor creature the judge interrogated Gautran. "You denied having ever lived with a woman who should have been your wife. Do you still deny it?" "Yes." "Shameless obstinacy! Look at this poor woman, whom your cruelty has reduced to a state of imbecility. Do you not know her?" "I know nothing of her." "You never lived with her?" "Never." "You will even go so far as to declare that you never saw her before to-day?" "Yes; I never saw her before to-day." "To question you farther would be useless. You have shown yourself in your true colours." To which Gautran made answer: "I can't help my colours. They're not of my choosing." The Widow Joseph was next called. CHAPTER XV THE WIDOW JOSEPH GIVES EVIDENCE RESPECTING A MYSTERIOUS VISITOR The appearance of this woman was looked forward to by the spectators with lively curiosity, and her evidence was listened to with deep attention. "Your name is Joseph?" "That was my husband's first name. While he lived I was known as Mistress Joseph; since his death I have been called the Widow Joseph." "The poor child, Madeline, and her companion, Pauline, lived in your house?" "Yes, from the first day they came into this part of the country. 'We have come a great distance,' said Pauline to me, 'and want a room to sleep in.' I showed her the room, and said it would be twelve francs a month. She paid me twelve francs, and remained with me till she left to go on a journey." "Did you ask her where she came from?" "Yes; and she answered that it was of no consequence." "Did she pay the rent regularly?" "Yes; and always without being asked for it." "Did she tell you she was poor?" "She said she had but little money." "Did they have any settled plan of gaining a livelihood?" "I do not think they had at first. Pauline asked me whether I thought it likely they could earn a living by selling flowers. I looked at Madeline, and said that I thought they were certain to do well." "You looked at Madeline. Why?" "She was a very pretty girl." "And you thought, because she was very pretty, that she would have a greater chance of disposing of her flowers." "Yes. Gentlemen like to buy of pretty girls." "That is not said to Madeline's disparagement?" "No. Madeline was a good girl. She was full of gaiety, but it was innocent gaiety." "What were your impressions of them? As to their social position? Did you believe them to be humbly born?" "Pauline certainly; she was a peasant the same as myself. But there was something superior about Madeline which puzzled me." "How? In what way?" "It was only an impression. Yet there were signs. Pauline's hands were hard and coarse; and from remarks she made from time to time I knew that she was peasant-born. Madeline's hands were soft and delicate, and she had not been accustomed to toil, which all peasants are, from their infancy almost." "From this do you infer that they were not related to each other?" "I am sure they were related to each other. Perhaps few had the opportunities of judging as well as I could. When they were in a quiet mood I have seen expressions upon their faces so exactly alike as to leave no doubt that they were closely related." "Sisters?" "I cannot say." "Or mother and daughter?" "I wish to tell everything I know, but to say nothing that might be turned into a reproach against them." "We have every confidence in you. Judgment can be formed from the bearing of persons towards each other. Pauline loved Madeline?" "Devotedly." "There is a distinctive quality in the attachment of a loving mother for her child which can scarcely be mistaken; it is far different, in certain visible manifestations--especially on occasions where there is any slight disagreement--between sisters. Distinctive, also, is the tenderness which accompanies the exercise of a mother's authority. Bearing this in mind, and recalling to the best of your ability those particulars of their intercourse which came within your cognisance, which hypothesis would you be the more ready to believe--that they were sisters or mother and child?" "That they were mother and child." "We recognise your anxiety to assist us. Pauline's hands, you say, were coarse, while Madeline's were soft and delicate. Ordinarily, a peasant woman brings up her child as a peasant, with no false notions; in this instance, however, Pauline brought Madeline up with some idea that the young girl was superior to her own station in life. Else why the unusual care of the child? Supposing this line of argument to be correct, it appears not to be likely that the attentions of a man like Gautran would be encouraged." "They were not encouraged." "Do you know that they were not encouraged from statements made to you by Pauline and Madeline?" "Yes." "Then Gautran's declaration that he was Madeline's accepted lover is false?" "Quite false." "He speaks falsely when he says that Madeline promised to marry him?" "It is impossible." "Four nights before Madeline met her death, was Gautran outside your house?" "Yes; he was prowling about there with his evil face, for a long time." "Did you go to him, and ask him what he wanted?" "Yes." "Did he tell you that he must see Madeline?" "Yes, and I went into the house, and informed the girl. She said she would not see him, and I went down to Gautran and told him so. He then tried to force himself into the house, and I stood in his way. He struck me, and Madeline, frightened by my cries, ran to the door, and begged him to go away." "It is a fact that he was often seen in Madeline's company?" "Yes; do what they would, they could not get rid of him; and they were frightened, if they angered him too much, that he would commit an act of violence." "As he did?" "As he did. It is written on Madeline's grave." "Had the poor girl any other lovers?" "None that I should call lovers. But she was greatly admired." "Was any one of these lovers especially favoured?" "Not that I knew of." "Did any of them visit the house?" "No--but may I speak?" "Certainly." "It was not what I should call a visit. A gentleman came once to the door, and before I could get there, Pauline was with him. All that I heard was this: 'It is useless,' Pauline said to him; 'I will not allow you to see her, and if you persecute us with your attentions I will appeal for help to those who will teach you a lesson.' 'What is your objection to me?' he asked, and he was smiling all the time he spoke. 'Am I not a gentleman?' 'Yes,' she answered; 'and it is because of that, that I will not permit you to address her. Gentlemen! I have had enough of gentlemen!' 'You are a foolish woman,' he said, and he went away. That is all, and that is the only time--except when I saw Pauline in conversation with a man. He might have been a gentleman, but his clothes were not the clothes of one; neither were they the clothes of a peasant. They were conversing at a little distance from the house. I did not hear what they said, not a word, and half an hour afterwards Pauline came home. There was a look on her face such as I had never observed--a look of triumph and doubt. But she made no remark to me, nor I to her." "Where was Madeline at this time?" "In the house." "Did you see this man again?" "A second time, two evenings after. A third time, within the same week. He and Pauline spoke together very earnestly, and when anyone approached them always moved out of hearing. During the second week he came to the house, and inquired for Pauline. She ran downstairs and accompanied him into the open road. This occurred to my knowledge five or six times, until Pauline said to me, 'To-morrow I am going on a journey. Before long I may be able to reward you well for the kindness you have shown us.' The following day she left, and I have not seen her since." "Did she say how long she would be likely to be away?" "I understood not longer than three weeks." "That time has passed, and still she does not appear. Since she left, have you seen the man who was so frequently with her?" "No." "He has not been to the house to make inquiries?" "No." "Is it not possible that he may have been Pauline's lover?" "There was nothing of the lover in his manner towards her." "There was, however, some secret between them?" "Evidently." "And Madeline--was she acquainted with it?" "It is impossible to say." "You have no reason to suppose, when Pauline went away, that she had no intention of returning?" "I am positive she intended to return." "And with good news, for she promised to reward you for your kindness?" "Yes, she did so." "Is it not probable that she, also, may have met with foul play?" "It is probable; but Heaven alone knows!" CHAPTER XVI THE CONCLUSION OF THE PROSECUTION It length the case for the prosecution was concluded, with an expression of regret on the part of counsel at the absence of Pauline, who might have been able to supply additional evidence, if any were needed, of the guilt of the prisoner. "Every effort has been made," said counsel, "to trace and produce this woman, but when she parted from the murdered girl no person knew whither she was directing her steps; even the Widow Joseph, the one living person besides the mysterious male visitor who was in frequent consultation with her, can furnish us with no clue. The victim of this foul and horrible crime could most likely have told us, but her lips are sealed by the murderer's hand, the murderous wretch who stands before you. "It has been suggested that Pauline has met with foul play. It may be so; otherwise, it is humanly impossible to divine the cause that could keep her from this trial. "Neither have we been able to trace the man who was in her confidence, and between whom and herself a secret of a strange nature existed. "In my own mind I do not doubt that this secret related to Madeline, but whether it did do so or not cannot affect the issue of this trial; neither can the absence of Pauline and her mysterious friend affect it. The proofs of the cruel, ruthless murder are complete and irrefragable, and nothing is wanting, not a link, in the chain of evidence to enable you to return a verdict which will deprive of the opportunity of committing further crime a wretch as infamous as ever walked the earth. He declares his innocence; if the value of that declaration is to be gauged by the tissue of falsehoods he has uttered, by his shameless effrontery and denials, by his revolting revelations of the degradation of his nature, he stands self-convicted. "But it needs not that; had he not spoken, the issue would be the same; for painful and shocking as is the spectacle, you have but to glance at him to assure yourself of his guilt. If that is not sufficient to move you unhesitatingly to your duty, cast him from your thoughts and weigh only the evidence of truth which has been laid unfolded to you. "As I speak, a picture of that terrible night, in the darkness of which the fearful deed was committed, rises before me. "I see the river's bank in a mist of shadows; I see two forms moving onward, one a monster in human shape, the other that of a child who had never wronged a fellow creature, a child whose spirit was joyous and whose amiable disposition won every heart. "It is not with her willing consent that this monster is in her company. He has followed her stealthily until he finds an opportunity to be alone with her, at a time when she is least likely to have friends near her; and in a place where she is entirely at his mercy. He forces his attentions upon her; she repulses him. She turns towards her home; he thrusts her roughly back. Enraged at her obstinacy, he threatens to kill her; his threats are heard by persons returning home along the river's bank, and, until the sound of their footsteps has died away and they are out of hearing, he keeps his victim silent by force. "Being alone with her once more, he renews his infamous suit. She still repulses him, and then commences a struggle which must have made the angels weep to witness. "In vain his victim pleads, in vain she struggles; she clings to him and begs for her life in tones that might melt the stoniest heart; but this demon has no heart. He winds his handkerchief round her neck, he beats and tears her, as is proved by the bruises on her poor body. The frightful struggle ends, and the deed is accomplished which condemns the wretch to life-long torture in this world and to perdition in the next. "Do not lose sight of this picture and of the evidence which establishes it; and let me warn you not to be diverted by sophistry or specious reasoning from the duty which you are here to perform. "A most vile and horrible crime has been committed; the life of a child has been cruelly, remorselessly, wickedly sacrificed; her blood calls for justice on her murderer; and upon you rests the solemn responsibility of not permitting the escape of a wretch whose guilt has been proven by evidence so convincing as to leave no room for doubt in the mind of any human being who reasons in accordance with facts. "I cannot refrain from impressing upon you the stern necessity of allowing no other considerations than those supplied by a calm judgment to guide you in the delivery of your verdict. I should be wanting in my duty if I did not warn you that there have been cases in which the guilty have unfortunately escaped by the raising of side issues which had but the remotest bearing upon the crimes of which they stood accused. It is not by specious logic that a guilty man can be proved innocent. Innocence can only be established by facts, and the facts laid before you are fatal in the conclusion to be deduced from them. Bear these facts in mind, and do not allow your judgment to be clouded even by the highest triumphs of eloquence. I know of no greater reproach from which men of sensibility can suffer than that which proceeds from the consciousness that, in an unguarded moment, they have allowed themselves to be turned aside from the performance of a solemn duty. May you have no cause for such a reproach! May you have no cause to lament that you have allowed your judgment to be warped by a display of passionate and fevered oratory! Let a sense of justice alone be your guide. Justice we all desire, nothing more and nothing less. The law demands it of you; society demands it of you. The safety of your fellow citizens, the honour of young girls, of your sisters, your daughters, and others dear to you, depend upon your verdict. For if wretches like the prisoner are permitted to walk in our midst, to pursue their savage courses, to live their evil lives, unchecked, life and honour are in fatal peril. The duty you have to perform is a sacred duty--see that you perform it righteously and conscientiously, and bear in mind that the eyes of the Eternal are upon you." This appeal, delivered with intense earnestness, produced a profound impression. In the faces of the jury was written the fate of Gautran. They looked at each other with stern resolution. Under these circumstances, when the result of the trial appeared to be a foregone conclusion, it might have been expected, the climax of interest having apparently been reached, that the rising of the Advocate to speak for the defence would have attracted but slight attention. It was not so. At that moment the excitement reached a painful pitch, and every person in the court, with the exception of the jury and the judges, leant forward with eager and absorbed expectation. CHAPTER XVII THE ADVOCATES DEFENCE--THE VERDICT He spoke in a calm and passionless voice, the clear tones of which had an effect resembling that of a current of cold air through an over-heated atmosphere. The audience had been led to expect a display of fevered and passionate oratory; but neither in the Advocate's speech nor in his manner of delivering it was there any fire or passion; it was chiefly remarkable for earnestness and simplicity. His first words were a panegyric of justice, the right of dispensing which had been placed in mortal hands by a Supreme Power which watched its dispensation with a jealous eye. He claimed for himself that the leading principle of his life, not only in his judicial, but in his private career, had been a desire for justice, in small matters as well as in great, for the lowliest equally with the loftiest of human beings. Before the bar of justice, prince and peasant, the most ignorant and the most highly cultured, the meanest and the most noble in form and feature, were equal. They had been told that justice was demanded from them by law and by society. He would supply a strange omission in this appeal, and he would tell them that, primarily and before every other consideration, the prisoner it was who demanded justice from them. "That an innocent girl has been done to death," said the Advocate, "is most unfortunately true, and as true that a man who inspires horror is charged with her murder. You have been told that you have but to glance at him to assure yourself of his guilt. These are lamentable words to be used in an argument of accusation. The facts that the victim was of attractive, and that the accused is of repulsive appearance, should not weigh with you, even by a hair's weight, to the prejudice of the prisoner. If it does, I call upon you to remember that justice is blind to external impressions. And moreover, if in your minds you harbour a feeling such as exists outside this court against the degraded creature who stands before you, I charge you to dismiss it. "All the evidence presented to you which bears directly upon the crime is circumstantial. A murder has been committed--no person saw it committed. The last person proved to have been in the murdered girl's company, is Gautran, her lover, as he declares himself to have been. "And here I would say that I do not expect you to place the slightest credence upon the statements of this man. His unblushing, astonishing falsehoods prove that in him the moral sense is deadened, if indeed it ever existed. But his own statement that, after the manner of his brutal nature, he loved the girl, may be accepted as probable. It has been sufficiently proved that the girl had other lovers, who were passionately enamoured of her. She was left to herself, deprived of the protection and counsel of a devoted woman, who, unhappily, was absent at the fatal crisis in her life. She was easily persuaded and easily led. Who can divine by what influences she was surrounded, by what temptations she was beset, temptations and influences which may have brought upon her an untimely death? "Gautran was hear to say, 'I will kill you--I will kill you!' He had threatened her before, and she lived to speak of it to her companions, and to permit him, without break or interruption in their intimacy, to continue to associate with her. What more probable than that this was one of his usual threats in his moments of passion, when he jealously believed that a rival was endeavouring to supplant him in her affections? "The handkerchief found about her neck belonged to Gautran. The gift of a handkerchief among the lower classes is not uncommon, and it is frequently worn round the neck. Easy, then, for any murderer to pull it tight during the commission of the crime. But apart from this, the handkerchief does not fix the crime of murder upon Gautran or any other accused, for you have had it proved that the girl did not die by strangulation, but by drowning. These are bare facts, and I present them to you in bare form, without needless comment. I do not base my defence upon them, but upon what I am now about to say. "If in a case of circumstantial evidence there is reasonable cause to believe that the evidence furnished is of insufficient weight to convict; and if on the other side, on the side of the accused, evidence is adduced which directly proves, according to the best judgment we are enabled to form of human action in supreme moments--as to the course it would take and the manner in which it would be displayed--that it is almost beyond the bounds of possibility and nature that the person can have committed the deed, you have no option, unless you yourselves are bent upon judicial murder, than to acquit that person, however vile his character may be, however degraded his career and antecedents. It is evidence of this description which I intend to submit to you at the conclusion of my remarks. "The character of Gautran has been exposed and laid bare in all its vileness; the minuteness of the evidence is surprising; not the smallest detail has been overlooked or omitted to complete the picture of a ferocious, ignorant, and infamous being. Guilty, he deserves no mercy; innocent, he is not to be condemned because he is vile. "In the world's history there are records of countries and times in which it was the brutal fashion to bring four-footed animals to the bar of justice, there solemnly to try them for witchcraft and evil deeds; and you will find upon examination of those records of man's incredible folly and ignorance, that occasionally even these beasts of the earth--pigs and such-like--have been declared innocent of the crimes of which they have been charged. I ask no more for Gautran than the principle involved in these trials. Judge him, if you will, as you would an animal, but judge him in accordance with the principles of justice, which neither extenuates nor maliciously and unreasonably condemns. "The single accusation of the murder of Madeline, a flower-girl, is the point to be determined, and you must not travel beyond it to other crimes and other misdeeds of which Gautran may have been guilty. "It has been proved that the prisoner is possessed of great strength, that he is violent in his actions, uncontrollable in his passions, and fond of inflicting pain and prolonging it. He has not a redeeming feature in his coarse, animal nature. Thwarted, he makes the person who thwarts him suffer without mercy. An appeal to his humanity would be useless--he has no humanity; when crossed, he has been seen to behave like a wild beast. All this is in evidence, and has been strongly dwelt upon as proof of guilt. Most important is this evidence, and I charge you not for one moment to lose sight of it. "I come now to the depiction of the murdered girl, as it has been presented to you. Pretty, admired, gentle in her manners, and poor. Although the fact of a person being poor is no proof of morality, we may accept it in this instance as a proof of the girl's virtue. She was fond of life: her disposition was a happy one; she was in the habit of singing to herself. "Thus we have the presentment of a young girl whose nature was joyous, and to whom life was sweet. "Another important piece of evidence must be borne in mind. She possessed strength, greater strength than would have been supposed in a form so slight. This strength she would use to protect herself from injury: it has been proved that she used it successfully to protect herself from insult. In the whole of this case nothing has been more forcibly insisted upon than that she resisted her murder, and that there was a long and horrible struggle in which she received many injuries, wounds, bruises, and scratches, and in which her clothes were rent and torn. "This struggle, in the natural order of things, could not have been a silent one; accompanying the conflict there must have been outcries, frenzied appeals for mercy, screams of terror and anguish. No witness has been called who heard such sounds, and therefore it must be a fact that the murder must have been committed some time after Gautran's threat, 'I will kill you, I will kill you!' was heard by persons who passed along the bank of the river in the darkness of that fatal night. Time enough for Gautran to have left her; time enough for another--lover or stranger--to meet her; time enough for murder by another hand than that of the prisoner who stands charged with the commission of the crime. "I assert, with all the force of my experience of human nature, that it is impossible that Gautran could have committed the deed. There was a long and terrible struggle--a struggle in which the murdered girl's clothes were torn, in which her face, her hands, her arms, her neck, her sides were bruised and wounded in a hundred cruel ways. Can you for one moment entertain the belief that, in this desperate fight in which two persons were engaged, only one should bear the marks of a contest so horrible? If you bring yourselves to this belief it must be by the aid of prejudice, not of reason. Attend to what follows. "On the very morning after the murder, within four hours of the body being discovered in the river, Gautran was arrested. He wore the same clothes he had worn for months past, the only clothes he possessed. In these clothes there was not a rent or tear, nor any indication of a recent rent having been mended. How, then, could this man have been engaged in a violent and prolonged hand-to-hand conflict? It is manifestly impossible, opposed to all reasonable conjecture, that his garments could have escaped some injury, however slight, at the hands of a girl to whom life was very sweet, who was strong and capable of resistance, and who saw before her the shadow of an awful fate. "Picture to yourselves this struggle already so vividly painted, so graphically portrayed. The unhappy girl clung to her destroyer, she clutched his dress, his hands, his body in her wild despair--a despair which inspired her with strength beyond her ordinary capacity. And of still greater weight is the fact that there was not to be found on any part of Gautran's body a scratch, a wound, or a bruise of any description. "What, then, becomes of the evidence of a terrible life and death struggle in which it is said he was engaged? Upon this point alone the entire theory of the prosecution breaks down. The absence from Gautran's clothes and person of any mark or identification of a physical contest is the strongest testimony of his innocence of this ruthless, diabolical crime; and, wretched and degraded as is the spectacle he presents, justice demands from you his acquittal. "Still one other proof of his innocence remains to be spoken of; I will touch upon it lightly, but it bears a very strange aspect, as though the prosecution were fearful that its introduction would fatally injure their case. "When Gautran was searched a knife was found upon him--the knife, without doubt, with which he inflicted upon the face of a comrade a wound which he will bear to the grave. Throughout the whole of the evidence for the prosecution I waited and looked for the production of that knife; I expected to see upon it a blood proof of guilt. But it was not produced; no mention has been made of it. Why? Because there is upon its blade no mark of blood. "Do you believe that a ruffian like Gautran would have refrained from using his knife upon the body of his victim, to shorten the terrible struggle? Even in light quarrels men in his condition of life threaten freely with their knives, and use them recklessly. To suppose that with so swift and sure a means at hand to put an end to the horrible affair, Gautran, in the heat and fury of the time, refrained from availing himself of it, is to suppose a thing contrary and opposed to reason. "Remember the answer given by one of the witnesses who knows the nature of the man well, when I asked him whether in his passionate moods Gautran would be likely to show coolness or cunning. 'He would have no time to think; he would be carried away by his passion.' His is the nature of a brute, governed by brute laws. You are here to try, not the prisoner's general character, not his repulsive appearance, not his brutish nature, but a charge of murder of which he is accused, and of which, in the clear light of human motive and action, it is impossible he can be guilty." The Advocate's speech, of which this is but a brief and imperfect summary, occupied seven hours, and was delivered throughout with a cold impressive earnestness and with an absence of passion which gradually and effectually turned the current which had set so fatally against the prisoner. The disgust and abhorrence he inspired were in no wise modified, but the Advocate had instilled into the minds of his auditors the strongest doubts of Gautran's guilt. Two witnesses were called, one a surgeon of eminence, the other a nurse in an hospital. They deposed that there were no marks of an encounter upon the prisoner's person, that upon his skin was no abrasion, that his clothes exhibited no traces of recent tear or repair, and that it was scarcely possible he could have been engaged in a violent personal struggle. Upon the conclusion of this evidence, which cross-examination did not shake, the jury asked that Gautran should be examined by independent experts. This was done by thoroughly qualified men, whose evidence strengthened that of the witnesses for the defence. The jury asked, also, that the knife found upon Gautran should be produced. It was brought into court, and carefully examined, and it was found that its blade was entirely free from blood-stain. The jury, astounded at the turn the affair had taken, listened attentively to the speech of the judge, who dwelt with great care upon every feature in the case. The court sat late to give its decision, and when the verdict was pronounced, Gautran was a free man. Free, to enjoy the sunlight, and the seasons as they passed; free, to continue his life of crime and shame; free, to murder again! BOOK II.--THE CONFESSION. CHAPTER I A LETTER FROM JOHN VANBRUGH For a little while Gautran scarcely comprehended that he was at liberty to wander forth. He had so completely given himself up as lost that he was stupefied by the announcement that his liberty was restored to him. He gazed vacantly before him, and the announcement had to be twice repeated before he arrived at an understanding of its purport; then his attitude changed. A spasm of joy passed into his face, followed immediately by a spasm of fear; those who observed him would indeed have been amazed had they known what was passing through his mind. "Free, am I?" he asked. "You have been told so twice," a warder answered. "It astonishes you. Well, you are not the only one." As the warders fell from his side he watched them warily, fearing they were setting a trap which might prove his destruction. From where he stood he could not see the Advocate, who was preparing to depart. Distasteful as the verdict was to every person in court, with the exception of Gautran and his counsel, those members of the legal profession who had not taken an active part in the trial were filled with professional admiration at the skill the Advocate had displayed. An eminent member of the bar remarked to him: "It is a veritable triumph, the greatest and most surprising I have ever witnessed. None but yourself could have accomplished it. Yet I cannot believe in the man's innocence." This lawyer held too high and honourable a position for the Advocate to remain silent. "The man is innocent," he said. "You know him to be so?" "I know him to be so. I stake my reputation upon it." "You almost convince me. It would be fatal to any reputation were Gautran, after what has passed, to be proved guilty. But that, of course, is impossible." "Quite impossible," said the Advocate somewhat haughtily. "Exactly so. There can be no room for doubt, after your statement that you know the man to be innocent." With no wish to continue the conversation, the Advocate turned to leave the court when an officer presented himself. "He wishes to speak to you, sir." "He! Who?" asked the Advocate. He was impatient to be gone, his interest at the trial being at an end. The victory was gained; there was nothing more to be done. "The prisoner, sir. He desired me to tell you." "The prisoner!" said the Advocate. "You forget. The man is free." He walked towards Gautran, and for the first time during the long days of the trial gazed directly in his client's face. The magnetism in the Advocate's eyes arrested Gautran's speech. His own dilated, and he appeared to forget what he had intended to say. They looked at each other in silence for a few moments, the expression on the face of the Advocate cold, keen, and searching, that on the face of Gautran as of a man entranced; and then the Advocate turned sternly away, without a word having been spoken between them. When Gautran looked again for his defender he was gone. Gautran still lingered; the court was nearly empty. "Be off," said the warder, who had been his chief attendant in his cell; "we have done with you for the present." But Gautran made no effort to leave. The warder laid his hand upon the ruffian's shoulder, with the intention of expelling him from the court. Gautran shook him off with the snarl of a wild beast. "Touch me again," he cried, "and I'll strangle you! I can do it easily enough--two of you at a time!" And, indeed, so ferocious was his manner that it seemed as if he were disposed to carry his threat into execution. "Women are more in your way," said the warder tauntingly. "Look you, Gautran; if Madeline had been my daughter, your life would not be worth an hour's purchase, despite the verdict gained by your clever Advocate." "You would not dare to say that to me if you and I were alone," retorted Gautran, scowling at the sullen faces of the officers about him. "Away with you!" exclaimed the warder, "at once, or we will throw you into the streets!" "I will go when I get my property." "What property?" "The knife you took from me when you dragged me to prison. I don't move without it." They deemed it best to comply with this demand, the right being on his side, and his knife was restored to him. It was an old knife, with a keen blade and a stout handle, and it opened and closed with a sharp click. Gautran tried it three or four times with savage satisfaction and then, with another interchange of threatening glances, he slunk from the court. The Advocate's carriage was at the door, ready to convey him to Christian Almer's villa. But after his long confinement in the close court, he felt the need of physical exercise, and he dismissed his coachman, saying he intended to walk home. As the carriage drove off, a person plucked him by the sleeve, and pressed a letter into his hand. It was dusk, and the Advocate, although he looked quickly around, could not discover the giver. His sight was short and strong, and standing beneath the light of a street-lamp he opened and read the letter. "Old Friend, "It will doubtless surprise you to see my handwriting, it is so long since we met. The sight of it may displease you, but that is of small consequence to me. When a man is in a desperate strait, he is occasionally driven to desperate courses. When needs must, as you are aware, the devil drives. I have been but an hour in Geneva, and I have heard of your victory; I congratulate you upon it. I must see you--soon. I know the House of White Shadows in the pretty valley yonder. At a short distance from the gates--but far enough off, and so situated as to enable a man to hide with safety if he desires--is a hill upon which I will wait for your signal to come to you, which shall be the waving of a white handkerchief from your study window. At midnight and alone will be best. You see how ready I am to oblige you. I shall wait till sunrise for the signal. If you are too busy to-night, let it be tomorrow night, or the next, or any night this week. "I am, as ever, your friend, "John Vanbrugh." The Advocate placed the letter in his pocket, and murmured as he walked through the streets of Geneva: "John Vanbrugh! Has he risen from his grave? He would see me at midnight and alone! He must be mad, or drunk, to make such a request. He may keep his vigil, undisturbed. Of such a friendship there can be no renewal. The gulf that separates us is too wide to be bridged over by sentimental memories. John Vanbrugh, the vagabond! I can imagine him, and the depth to which he has sunk. Every man must bear the consequences of his actions. Let him bear his, and make the best, or the worst, of them." CHAPTER II A STARTLING INTERRUPTION The news of the acquittal of Gautran spread swiftly through the town, and the people gathered in front of the _cafés_ and lingered in the streets, to gaze upon the celebrated Advocate who had worked the marvel. "He has a face like the Sphynx," said one. "With just as much feeling," said another. "Do you believe Gautran was innocent?" "Not I--though he made it appear so." "Neither do I believe it, but I confess I am puzzled." "If Gautran did not murder the girl, who did?" asked one, a waverer, who formed an exception to the general rule. "That is for the law to find out." "It was found out, and the murderer has been set loose. We shall have to take care of ourselves on dark nights." "Would you condemn a man upon insufficient evidence?" "I would condemn such as Gautran on any evidence. When you want to get rid of vermin it does not do to be over particular." "The law must be respected." "Life must be protected. That is the first law." "Hush! Here he is. Best not let him overhear you." There was but little diversity of opinion. Even in the inn of The Seven Liars, to which Fritz the Fool--who had attended the court every day of the trial, and who had the fleetest foot of any man for a dozen miles round--had already conveyed the news of Gautran's acquittal, the discussion was loud and animated; the women regarding the result as an outrage on their sex, the men more disposed to put Gautran out of the question, and to throw upon the Advocate the opprobrium of the verdict. "Did I not tell you," said Fritz, "that he could turn black into white? A great man--a great man! If we had more like him, murdering would be a fine trade." There were, doubtless, among those who thronged the streets to see the Advocate pass, some sinners whose consciences tormented them, and who secretly hoped, if exposure ever overtook them, that Heaven would send them such a defender. His reception, indeed, partook of the character of an ovation. These tributes to his powers made no impression upon him; he pursued his way steadily onward, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and soon the gaily-lighted shops and _cafés_ of Geneva were far behind him. His thoughts were upon John Vanbrugh, who had been one of his boy friends, and whom for many years he had believed to be dead. In his lonely walk to the House of White Shadows he recalled the image of Vanbrugh, and dwelt, with idle curiosity, upon the recollection of their youthful lives. He had determined not to see Vanbrugh, and was resolved not to renew a friendship which, during its existence, had been lacking in those sterling qualities necessary for endurance. That it was pleasant while it lasted was the best that could be said of it. When he and Vanbrugh grew to manhood there was a wide divergence in their paths. One walked with firm unfaltering step the road which leads to honour and renown, sparing no labour, throwing aside seductive temptation when it presented itself to him, as it did in its most alluring forms, giving all his mental might to the cause to which he had devoted himself, studying by day and night so earnestly that his bright and strong intellect became stronger and clearer, and he could scarcely miss success. Only once in his younger days had he allowed himself, for a brief period, to be seduced from this path, and it was John Vanbrugh who had tempted him. The other threw himself upon pleasure's tide, and, blind to earnest duty, drank the sunshine of life's springtime in draughts so intemperate that he became intoxicated with poisonous fire, and, falling into the arms of the knaves who thrive on human weakness and depravity, his moral sense, like theirs, grew warped, and he ripened into a knave himself. Something of this, but not in its fulness, had reached the Advocate's ears, making but small impression upon him, and exciting no surprise, for by that time his judgment was matured, and human character was an open book to him; and when, some little while afterwards, he heard that John Vanbrugh was dead, he said, "He is better dead," and scarcely gave his once friend another thought. He was a man who had no pity for the weak, and no forgiveness for the erring. He walked slowly, with a calm enjoyment of the solitude and the quiet night, and presently entered a narrow lane, dotted with orchards. It was now dark, and he could not see a dozen yards before him. He was fond of darkness; it contained mysterious possibilities, he had been heard to say. There was an ineffable charm in the stillness which encompassed him, and he enjoyed it to its full. There were cottages here and there, lying back from the road, but no light or movement in them; the inmates were asleep. Soft sighs proceeded from the drowsy trees, and slender boughs waved solemnly, while the only sounds from the farmyards were, at intervals, a muffled shaking of wings, and the barking of dogs whom his footsteps had aroused. As he passed a high wooden gate, through the bars of which he could dimly discern a line of tall trees standing like sentinels of the night, the perfume of limes was wafted towards him, and he softly breathed the words: "My wife!" He yielded up his senses to the thralldom of a delicious languor, in which the only image was that of the fair and beautiful woman who was waiting for him in their holiday home. Had any person seen the tender light in his eyes, and heard the tone in which the words were whispered, he could not have doubted that the woman they referred to was passionately adored. Not for long was he permitted to muse upon the image of a being the thought of whom appeared to transform a passionless man into an ardent lover; a harsher interruption than sweet perfume floating on a breeze recalled him to his sterner self. "Stop!" "For what reason?" "The best. Money!" The summons proceeded from one in whom, as his voice betrayed, the worst passions were dominant. CHAPTER III IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT There lived not in the world a man more fearless than the Advocate. At this threatening demand, which meant violence, perhaps murder, he exhibited as little trepidation as he would have done at an acquaintance asking him, in broad daylight, for a pinch of snuff. Indeed, he was so perfectly unembarrassed that his voice assumed a lightness foreign to its usual serious tones. "Money, my friend! How much?" "All you've got." "Terse, and to the point. If I refuse?" "I am desperate. Look to yourself." The Advocate smiled, and purposely deepened the airiness of his tones. "This is a serious business, then?" "You'll find it so, if you trifle with me." "Are you hungry?" "I am starving." "You have a powerful voice for a starving man." "Don't play with me, master. I mean to have what I ask for." "How can you, if I do not possess it? How will you if, possessing it, I refuse to give it you?" The reply was a crashing blow at an overhanging branch, which broke it to the ground. It was evident that the man carried a stout weapon, and that he meant to use it, with murderous effect, if driven to extremes. They spoke at arm's-length; neither was quite within the other's grasp. "A strong argument," said the Advocate, without blenching, "and a savage one. You have a staff in your hand, and, probably, a knife in your pocket." "Ah, I have, and a sharp blade to it." "I thought as much. Would not that do your business more effectually?" "Perhaps. But I've learnt a lesson to-day about knives, which teaches me not to use mine too freely." The Advocate frowned. "Other scoundrels would run less risk of the gaol if their proceeding's were as logical. Do you know me?" "How should I?" "It might be, then," continued the Advocate, secretly taking a box of matches from his pocket, "that, like yourself, I am both a thief and a would-be murderer." As he uttered the last words he flung a lighted match straight at the man's face, and for a moment the glare revealed the ruffian's features. He staggered back, repeating the word "Murderer!" in a hoarse startled whisper. The Advocate strode swiftly to his side, and striking another match, held it up to his own face. "Look at me, Gautran," he said. The man looked up, and recognising the Advocate, recoiled, muttering: "Aye, aye--I see who it is." "And you would rob me, wretch!" "Not now, master, not now. Your voice--it was the voice of another man. I crave your pardon, humbly." "So--you recommence work early, Gautran. Have you not had enough of the gaol?" "More than enough. Don't be hard on me, master; call me mad if you like." "Mad or sane, Gautran, every man is properly made accountable for his acts. Take this to heart." "It won't do me any good. What is a poor wretch to do with nothing but empty pockets?" "You are a dull-witted knave, or you would be aware it is useless to lie to me. Gautran, I can read your soul. You wished to speak to me in the court. Here is your opportunity. Say what you had to say." "Give me breathing time. You've the knack of driving the thoughts clean out of a man's head. Have you got a bit of something that a poor fellow can chew--the end of a cigar, or a nip of tobacco?" "I have nothing about me but money, which you can't chew, and should not have if you could. Hearken, my friend. When you said you were starving, you lied to me." "How do you know it?" "Fool! Are there not fruit-trees here, laden with wholesome food, within any thief's grasp? Your pockets at this moment are filled with fruit." "You have a gift," said Gautran with a cringing movement of his body. "It would be an act of charity to put me in the way of it." "What would you purchase?" asked the advocate ironically. "Gold, for wine, and pleasure, and fine clothes?" "Aye, master," replied Gautran with eager voice. "Power, to crush those you hate, and make them smart and bleed?" "Aye, master. That would be fine." "Gautran, these things are precious, and have their price. What are you ready to pay for them?" "Anything--anything but money!" "Something of less worth--your soul?" Gautran shuddered and crossed himself. "No, no," he muttered; "not that--not that!" "Strange," said the Advocate with a contemptuous smile, "the value we place upon an unknown quantity! We cannot bargain, friend. Say now what you desire to say, and as briefly as you can." But it was some time before Gautran could sufficiently recover himself to speak with composure. "I want to know," he said at length, with a clicking in his throat, "whether you've been paid for what you did for me?" "At your trial?" "Aye, master." "I have not been paid for what I did for you." "When they told me yonder," said Gautran after another pause, pointing in the direction of Geneva, where the prison lay, "that you were to appear for me, they asked me how I managed it, but I couldn't tell them, and I'm beating my head now to find out, without getting any nearer to it. There must be a reason." "You strike a key-note, my friend." "Someone has promised to pay you." "No one has promised to pay me." "You puzzle and confuse me, master. You're a stranger in Geneva, I'm told." "It is true." "I've lived about here half my life. I was born in Sierre. My father worked in the foundry, my mother in the fields. You are not a stranger in Sierre." "I am a stranger there; I never visited the town." "My father was born in Martigny. You knew my father." "I did not know your father." "My mother--her father once owned a vineyard. You knew her." "I did not know her." Once more was Gautran silent. What he desired now to say raised up images so terrifying that he had not the courage to give it utterance. "You are in deep shadow, my friend," said the Advocate, "body and soul. Shall I tell you what is in your mind?" "You can do that?" "You wish to know if I was acquainted with the unhappy girl with whose murder you were charged." "Is there another in the world like you?" asked Gautran, with fear in his voice. "Yes, that is what I want to know." "I was not acquainted with her." Gautran retreated a step or two, in positive terror. "Then what," he exclaimed, "in the fiend's name made you come forward?" "At length," said the Advocate, "we arrive at an interesting point in our conversation. I thank you for the opportunity you afford me in questioning my inner self. What made me come forward to the assistance of such a scoundrel? Humanity? No. Sympathy? No. What, then, was my motive? Indeed, friend, you strike home. Shall I say I was prompted by a desire to assist the course of justice--or by a contemptible feeling of vanity to engage in a contest for the simple purpose of proving myself the victor? It was something of both, mayhap. Do you know, Gautran, a kind of self-despisal stirs within me at the present moment? You do not understand me? I will give you a close illustration. You are a thief." "Yes, master." "You steal sometimes from habit, to keep your hand in as it were, and you feel a certain satisfaction at having accomplished your theft in a workmanlike manner. We are all of us but gross and earthly patches. It is simply a question of degree, and it is because I am in an idle mood--indeed, I am grateful to you for this playful hour--that I make a confession to you which would not elevate me in the eyes of better men. You were anxious to know whether I have been paid for my services. I now acknowledge payment. I accept as my fee the recreation you have afforded me." "I shall be obliged to you, master," said Gautran, "if you will leave your mysteries, and come back to my trial." "I will oblige you. I read the particulars of the case for the first time on my arrival here, and it appeared to me almost impossible you could escape conviction. It was simply that. I examined you, and saw the legal point which, villain as you are, proclaimed your innocence. That laugh of yours, Gautran, has no mirth in it. I am beginning to be dangerously shaken. I will do, I said then, for this wretch what I believe no other man can do. I will perform a miracle." "You have done it!" cried Gautran, falling on his knees in a paroxysm of fear, and kissing the Advocate's hand, which was instantly snatched away. "You are great--you are the greatest! You knew the truth!" "The truth!" echoed the Advocate, and his face grew ashen white. "Aye, the truth--and you were sent to save me. You can read the soul; nothing is hidden from you. But you have not finished your work. You can save me entirely--you can, you can! Oh, master, finish your work, and I will be your slave to the last hour of my life!" "Save you! From what?" demanded the Advocate. He was compelled to exercise great control over himself, for a horror was stealing upon him. The trembling wretch rose, and pointed to the opposite roadside. "From shadows--from dreams--from the wild eyes of Madeline! Look there--look there!" The Advocate turned in the direction of Gautran's outstretched trembling hand. A pale light was coining into the sky, and weird shadows were on the earth. "What are you gazing on?" "You ask me to torture me," moaned Gautran. "She dogs me like my shadow--I cannot shake her off! I have threatened her, but she does not heed me. She is waiting--there--there--to follow me when I am alone--to put her arms about me--to breathe upon my face, and turn my heart to ice! If I could hold her, I would tear her piecemeal! You _must_ have known her, you who can read what passes in a man's soul--you who knew the truth when you came to me in my cell! She will not obey me, but she will you. Command her, compel her to leave me, or she will drive me mad!" With amazing strength the Advocate placed his hands on Gautran's shoulders, and twisted the man's face so close to his own that not an inch of space divided them. Their eyes met, Gautran's wavering and dilating with fear, the Advocate's fixed and stern, and with a fire in them terrible to behold. "Recall," said the Advocate, in a clear voice that rang through the night like a bell, "what passed between you and Madeline on the last night of her life. Speak!" CHAPTER IV THE CONFESSION "I sought her in the Quartier St. Gervais," said I Gautran, speaking like a man in a dream, "and found her at eight o'clock in the company of a man. I watched them, and kept out of their sight. "He was speaking to her softly, and some things he said to her made her smile; and every time she showed her white teeth I swore that she should be mine and mine alone. They remained together for an hour, and then they parted, he going one way, Madeline another. "I followed her along the banks of the river, and when no one was near us I spoke to her. She was not pleased with my company, and bade me leave her, but I replied that I had something particular to say to her, and did not intend to go till it was spoken. "It was a dark night; there was no moon. "I told her I had been watching her, and that I knew she had another lover. 'Do you mean to give me up?' I said, and she answered that she had never accepted me, and that after that night she would never see me again. I said it might happen, and that it might be the last night we should ever see each other. She asked me if I was going away, and I said no, it might be her that was going away on the longest journey she had ever taken. 'What journey?' she asked, and I answered, a journey with Death for the coachman, for I had sworn a dozen times that night that if she would not swear upon her cross to be true and faithful to me, I would kill her. "I said it twice, and some persons passed and turned to look at us, but there was not light enough to see us clearly. "Madeline would have cried to them for help, but I held my hand over her mouth, and whispered that if she uttered a word it would be her last, and that she need not be frightened, for I loved her too well to do her any harm. "But when we were alone again, and no soul was near us, I told her again that as sure as there was a sky above us I would kill her, unless she swore to give up her other lover, and be true to me. She said she would promise, and she put her little hand in mine and pressed it, and said: "'Gautran, I will be only yours; now let us go back.' "But I told her it was not enough; that she must kneel, and swear upon the holy cross that she would have nothing to do with any man but me. I forced her upon her knees, and knelt by her side, and put the cross to her lips; and then she began to sob and tremble. She dared not put her soul in peril, she said; she did not love me--how could she swear to be true to me? "I said it was that or death, and that it would be the blackest hour of my life to kill her, but that I meant to do it if she would not give in to me. I asked her for the last time whether she would take the oath, and she said she daren't. Then I told her to say a prayer, for she had not five minutes to live. She started to her feet and ran along the bank. I ran after her, and she stumbled and fell to the ground, and before she could escape me again I had her in my arms to fling her into the river. "She did not scratch or bite me, but clung to me, and her tears fell all about my face. I said to her: "'You love me, kissing me so; swear then; it is not too late!' "But she cried: "No, no! I kiss you so that you may not have the heart to kill me!' "Soon she got weak, and her arms had no power in them, and I lifted her high in the air, and flung her far from me into the river. "I waited a minute or two, and thought she was dead, but then I heard a bubbling and a scratching, and, looking down, saw that by a miracle she had got back to the river's brink, and that there was yet life in her. I pulled her out, and she clung to me in a weak way, and whispered, nearly choked the while, that the Virgin Mary would not let me kill her. "Will you take the oath?' I asked, and she shook her head from side to side. "'No! no! no!' "I took my handkerchief, and tied it tight round her neck, and she smiled in my face. Then I lifted her up, and threw her into the river again. "I saw her no more that night!" * * * * * * The Advocate removed his eyes, with a shudder, from the eyes of the wretch who had made this horrible confession, and who now sank to the ground, quivering in every limb, crying: "Save me, master, save me!" "Monster!" exclaimed the Advocate. "Live and die accursed!" But the terror-stricken man did not hear the words, and the Advocate, upon whose features, during Gautran's narration, a deep gloom had settled, strode swiftly from him through the peaceful narrow lane, fragrant with the perfume of limes, at the end of which the lights in the House of White Shadows were shining a welcome to him. BOOK III.--THE GRAVE OF HONOUR. CHAPTER I PREPARATIONS FOR A VISITOR At noon the same day the old housekeeper, Mother Denise, and her pretty granddaughter Dionetta were busily employed setting in order and arranging the furniture in a suite of rooms intended for an expected visitor. There were but two floors in the House of White Shadows, and the rooms in which Mother Denise and Dionetta were busy were situated on the upper floor. "I think they will do now," said Mother Denise, wiping imaginary dust away with her apron. "All but the flowers." said Dionetta. "No, grandmother, that desk is wrong; it is my lady's own desk, and is to be placed exactly in this corner, by the window. There--it is right now. Be sure that everything is in its proper place, and that the rooms are sweet and bright--be sure--be sure! She has said that twenty times this week." "Ah," said Mother Denise testily, "as if butterflies could teach bees how to work! My lady is turning your head, Dionetta, it is easy to see that; she has bewitched half the people in the village. Here is father, with the flowers. Haste, Martin, haste!" "Easy to say, hard to do," grumbled Martin, entering slowly with a basket of cut flowers. "My bones get more obstinate every day. Here's my lady been teasing me out of my life to cut every flower worth looking at. She would have made the garden a wilderness, and spoilt every bed, if I had not argued with her." "And what did she say," asked Mother Denise, "when you argued with her?" "Say? Smiled, and showed all her white teeth at once. I never saw such teeth in my young days, nor such eyes, nor such hair, nor such hands--enough to drive a young man crazy." "Or an old one either," interrupted Mother Denise. "She smiled as sweet as honey--you silly old man--and wheedled you, and wheedled you, till she got what she wanted." "Pretty well, pretty well. You see, Dionetta, there are two ways of getting a thing done, a soft way and a hard way." "There, there, there!" cried Mother Denise impatiently. "Do your work with a still tongue, and let us do ours. Get back to the garden, and repair the mischief my lady has caused you to do. What does a man want with a room full of roses?" she muttered, when Martin, quick to obey his domestic tyrant, had gone. "It is a welcome home," said Dionetta. "If I were absent from my place a long, long while, it would make me feel glad when I returned, to see my rooms as bright as this. It is as though the very roses remembered you." "You are young," said Mother Denise, "and your thoughts go the way of roses. I can't blame you, Dionetta." "It was ten years since the master was here, you have told me, grandmother." "Yes, Dionetta, yes, ten years ago this summer, and even then he did not sleep in the house. Christian Almer hates the place, and of all the rooms in the villa, this is the room he would be most anxious to avoid." "But why, grandmother?" asked Dionetta, her eyes growing larger and rounder with wonder; "and does my lady know it?" "My lady is a headstrong woman; she would not listen to me when I advised her to select other rooms for the young master, and she declares--in a light way to be sure, but these are not things to make light of--that she is very disappointed to find that the villa is not haunted. Haunted! I have never seen anything, nor has Martin, nor you, Dionetta." "Oh, grandmother!" said the girl, in a timid voice, "I don't know whether I have or not. Sometimes I have fancied----" "Of course you have fancied, and that is all; and you have woke up in the night, and been frightened by nothing. Mark me, Dionetta, if you do no wrong, and think no wrong, you will never see anything of the White Shadows of this house." "I am certain," said Dionetta, more positively, "when I have been almost falling asleep, that I have heard them creeping, creeping past the door. I have listened to them over and over again, without daring to move in bed. Indeed I have." "I am certain," retorted Mother Denise, "that you have heard nothing of the kind. You are a foolish, silly girl to speak of such things. You put me quite out of patience, child." "But Fritz says----" "Fritz is a fool, a cunning, lazy fool. If I were the owner of this property I would pack him off. There's no telling which master he serves--Christian Almer or Master Pierre Lamont. He likes his bread buttered on both sides, and accepts money from both gentlemen. That is not the conduct of a faithful servant. If I acted in such a manner I should consider myself disgraced." "I am sure," murmured Dionetta, "that Fritz has done nothing to disgrace himself." "Let those who are older than you," said Mother Denise, in a sharp tone, "be judges of that. Fritz is good for nothing but to chatter like a magpie and idle round the place from morning to night. When there's work to do, as there has been this week, carrying furniture and moving heavy things about, he must run away to the city, to the court-house where that murderer is being tried. Dionetta, I am not in love with the Advocate or his lady. The Advocate is trying to get a murderer off; it may be the work of a clever man, but it is not the work of a good man. If I had a son, I would sooner have him good than clever; and I would sooner you married a good man than a clever one, I hope you are not thinking of marrying a fool." "Oh, grandmother, whoever thinks of marrying?" "Not you, of course, child--would you have me believe that? When I was your age I thought of nothing else, and when you are my age you will see the folly of it. No, I am not in love with the Advocate. He is performing unholy work down there in Geneva. The priest says as much. If that murderer escapes from justice, the guilt of blood will weigh upon the Advocate's soul." "Oh, grandmother! If my lady heard you she would never forgive you." "If she hears it, it will not be from my tongue. Dionetta, it was a young girl who was murdered, about the same age as yourself. It might have been you--ah, you may well turn white--and this clever lawyer, this stranger it is, who comes among us to prevent justice being done upon a murderous wretch. He will be punished for it, mark my words." Dionetta, who knew how useless it was to oppose her grandmother's opinions, endeavoured to change the subject by saying: "Tell me, grandmother, why Mr. Almer should be more anxious to avoid this room than any other room in the house? I think it is the prettiest of all." Mother Denise did not reply. She looked round her with the air of a woman recalling a picture of long ago. "The story connected with this part of the house," she presently said, "gave to the villa the name of the House of White Shadows. You are old enough to hear it. Let me see, let me see. Christian Almer is now thirty-one years old--yes, thirty-one on his last birthday. How time passes! I remember well the day he was born----" "Hush, grandmother," said Dionetta, holding up her hand. "My lady." The Advocate's wife had entered the room quietly, and was regarding the arrangements with approval. "It is excellently done," she said, "exactly as I wished. Dionetta, it was you who arranged the flowers?" "Yes, my lady." "You have exquisite taste, really exquisite. Mother Denise, I am really obliged to you." "I have done nothing," said Mother Denise, "that it was not my duty to do." "Such an unpleasant way of putting it; for there is a way of doing things----" "Just what grandfather said," cried Dionetta, gleefully, "a hard way and a soft way." And then becoming suddenly aware of her rudeness in interrupting her mistress, she curtsied, and with a bright colour in her face, said, "I beg your pardon, my lady." "There's no occasion, child," said Adelaide graciously. "Grandfather is quite right, and everything in this room has been done beautifully." She held a framed picture in her hand, a coloured cabinet photograph of herself, and she looked round the walls to find a place for it. "This will do," she said, and she took down the picture of a child which hung immediately above her desk, and put her own in its stead. "It is nice," she said to Mother Denise, smiling, "to see the faces of old friends about us. Mr. Almer and I are very old friends." "The picture you have taken down," said Mother Denise, "is of Christian Almer when he was a child." "Indeed! How old was he then?" "Five years, my lady." "He was a handsome boy. His hair and eyes are darker now. You were speaking of him, Mother Denise, as I entered. You were saying he was thirty-one last birthday, and that you remember the day he was born." "Yes, my lady." "And you were about to tell Dionetta why this villa was called the House of White Shadows. Give me the privilege of hearing the story." "I would rather not relate it, my lady." "Nonsense, nonsense! If Dionetta may hear it, there can be no objection to me. Mr. Almer would be quite angry if he knew you refused me so simple a thing. Listen to what he says in his last letter," and Adelaide took a letter from her pocket, and read: "'Mother Denise, the housekeeper, and the most faithful servant of the house, will do everything in her power to make you comfortable and happy. She will carry out your wishes to the letter--tell her, if necessary, that it is my desire, and that she is to refuse you nothing.' Now, you dear old soul, are you satisfied?" "Well, my lady, if you insist----" "Of course I insist, you dear creature. I am sure there is no one in the village who can tell a story half as well as you. Come and stand by me, Dionetta, for fear of ghosts." She seated herself before the desk, upon which she laid the picture of the lad, and Mother Denise, who was really by no means loth to recall old reminiscences, and who, as she proceeded, derived great enjoyment herself from her narration, thus commenced: CHAPTER II A LOVE STORY OF THE PAST "I was born in this house, my lady; my mother was housekeeper here before me. I am sixty-eight years old, and I have never slept a night away from the villa; I hope to die here. Until your arrival the house has not been inhabited for more than twenty years. I dare say if Mr. Christian Almer, the present master, had the power to sell the estate, he would have done so long ago, but he is bound by his father's will not to dispose of it while he lives. So it has been left to our care all these years. "Christian Almer's father lived here, and courted his young wife here; a very beautiful lady. That is her portrait hanging on the wall. It was painted by M. Gabriel, and is a faithful likeness of Mr. Christian Almer's mother. His father, perhaps he may have told you, was a distinguished author; there are books upon the library shelves written by him. I will speak of him, if you please, as Mr. Almer, and my present master I will call Master Christian; it will make the story easier to tell. "When Mr. Almer came into his property, which consisted of this villa and many houses and much land in other parts, all of which have been sold--this is the only portion of the old estates which remains in the family--there were at least twenty servants employed here. He was fond of passing days and nights shut up with his books and papers, but he liked to see company about him. He had numerous friends and acquaintances, and money was freely spent; he would invite a dozen, twenty at a time, who used to come and go as they pleased, living in the house as if it were their own. Mr. Almer and his friends understood each other, and the master was seldom intruded upon. In his solitude he was very, very quiet, but when he came among his guests he was full of life and spirits. He seemed to forget his books, and his studies, and it was hard to believe he was the same gentleman who appeared to be so happy when he was in solitude. He was a good master, and although he appeared to pay no attention to what was passing around him, there was really very little that escaped his notice. "At the time I speak of he was not a young man; he was forty-five years of age, and everybody wondered why he did not marry. He laughed, and shook his head when it was mentioned, and said sometimes that he was too old, sometimes that he was happy enough with his books, sometimes that if a man married without loving and being loved he deserved every kind of misfortune that could happen to him; and then he would say that, cold as he might appear, he worshipped beauty, and that it was not possible he could marry any but a young and beautiful woman. I have heard the remark made to him that the world was full of young and beautiful women, and have heard him reply that it was not likely one would fall at the feet of a man of his age. "My mother and I were privileged servants--my mother had been his nurse, and he had an affection for her--so that we had opportunities of hearing and knowing more than the others. "One summer there came to the villa, among the visitors, an old gentleman and his wife, and their daughter. The young lady's name was Beatrice. "She was one of the brightest beings I have ever beheld, with the happiest face and the happiest laugh, and a step as light as a fairy's. I do not know how many people fell in love with her--I think all who saw her. My master, Mr. Almer, was one of these, but, unlike her other admirers, he shunned rather than followed her. He shut himself up with his books for longer periods, and took less part than ever in the gaieties and excursions which were going on day after day. No one would have supposed that her beauty and her winning ways had made any impression upon him. "It is not for me to say whether the young lady, observing this, as she could scarcely help doing, resolved to attract him to her. When we are young we act from impulse, and do not stop to consider consequences. It happened, however, and she succeeded in wooing him from his books. But there was no love-making on his part, as far as anybody could see, and his conduct gave occasion for no remarks; but I remember it was spoken of among the guests that the young lady was in love with our master, and we all wondered what would come of it. "Soon afterwards a dreadful accident occurred. "The gentlemen were out riding, and were not expected home till evening, but they had not been away more than two hours before Mr. Almer galloped back in a state of great agitation. He sought Mdlle. Beatrice's mother, and communicated the news to her, in a gentle manner you may be sure. Her husband had been thrown from his horse, and was being carried to the villa dreadfully hurt and in a state of insensibility. Mr. Almer's great anxiety was to keep the news from Mdlle. Beatrice, but he did not succeed. She rushed into the room and heard all. "She was like one distracted. She flew out of the villa in her white dress, and ran along the road the horsemen had taken. Her movements were so quick that they could not stop her, but Mr. Almer ran after her, and brought her back to the house in a fainting condition. A few minutes afterwards the old gentleman was brought in, and the house was a house of mourning. No dancing, no music, no singing; all was changed; we spoke in whispers, and moved about slowly, just as if a funeral was about to take place. The doctors gave no hopes; they said he might linger in a helpless state for weeks, but that it was impossible he could recover. "Of course this put an end to all the festivities, and one after another the guests took their departure, until in a little while the only visitors remaining were the family upon whom such a heavy blow had fallen. "Mr. Almer no longer locked himself up in his study, but devoted the whole of his time to Mdlle. Beatrice and her parents. He asked me to wait upon Mdlle. Beatrice, and to see that her slightest wish was gratified. I found her very quiet and very gentle; she spoke but little, and the only thing she showed any obstinacy in was in insisting upon sitting by her father's bedside a few hours every day. I had occasion, not very long afterwards, to learn that when she set her mind upon a thing, it was not easy to turn her from it. These gentle, delicate creatures, sometimes, are capable of as great determination as the strongest man. "'Denise,' said Mr. Almer to me, 'the doctors say that if Mdlle. Beatrice does not take exercise she will herself become seriously ill. Prevail upon her to enjoy fresh air: walk with her in the garden an hour or so every day, and amuse her with light talk; a nature like hers requires sunshine.' "I did my best to please Mr. Almer; the weather was fine, and not a day passed that Mdlle. Beatrice did not walk with me in the grounds. And here Mr. Almer was in the habit of joining us. When he came, I fell back, and he and Mdlle. Beatrice walked side by side, sometimes arm in arm, and I a few yards behind. "I could not help noticing the wonderful kindness of his manner towards her; it was such as a father might show for a daughter he loved very dearly. 'Well, well!' I thought. I seemed to see how it would all end, and I believed it would be a good ending, although there were such a number of years between them--he forty-five, and she seventeen. "A month passed in this way, and the old gentleman's condition became so critical that we expected every moment to hear of his death. The accident had deprived him of his senses, and it was only two days before his death that his mind became clear. Then a long private interview took place between him and Mr. Almer, which left my master more than ever serious, and more than ever gentle towards Mdlle. Beatrice. "I was present when the old gentleman died. He had lost the power of speech; his wife was sitting by his bedside holding his hand; his daughter was on her knees with her face buried in the bed-clothes; Mr. Almer was standing close, looking down upon them; I was at the end of the room waiting to attend upon Mdlle. Beatrice. She was overwhelmed with grief, but her mother's trouble, it appeared to me, was purely selfish. She seemed to be thinking of what would become of her when her husband was gone. The dying gentleman suddenly looked into my master's face, and then turned his eyes upon his daughter, and my master inclined his head gravely, as though he was answering a question. A peaceful expression came upon the sufferer's face, and in a very little while he breathed his last." Here Mother Denise paused and broke off in her story, saying: "I did not know it would take so long a-telling; I have wearied you, my lady." "Indeed not," said the Advocate's wife; "I don't know when I have been so much interested. It is just like reading a novel. I am sure there is something startling to come. You must go on to the end, Mother Denise, if you please." "With your permission, my lady," said Mother Denise, and smoothing down her apron, she continued the narrative. CHAPTER III A MOTHER'S TREACHERY "Two days after Mdlle. Beatrice's father was buried, Mr. Almer said to me: "'Denise, I am compelled to go away on business, and I shall be absent a fortnight at least. I leave Mdlle. Beatrice in your care. As a mark of faithful service to me, be sure that nothing is left undone to comfort both her and her mother in their great trouble.' "I understood without his telling me that it was really Mdlle. Beatrice he was anxious about; everyone who had any experience of the old lady knew that she was very well able to take care of herself. "On the same day a long conversation took place between my master and the widow, and before sundown he departed. "It got to be known that he had gone to look after the affairs of the gentleman who died here, and that the ladies, instead of being rich, as we had supposed them to be, were in reality very poor, and likely to be thrown upon the world in a state of poverty, unless they accepted assistance from Mr. Almer. They were much worse off than poor people; having been brought up as ladies, they could do nothing to help themselves. "While Mr. Almer was away, Mdlle. Beatrice and I became almost friends, I may say. She took great notice of me, and appeared to be glad to have me with her. The poor young lady had no one else, for there was not much love lost between her and her mother. The selfish old lady did nothing but bewail her own hard fate, and spoke to her daughter as if the young lady could have nothing to grieve at in being deprived of a father's love. "But sorrow does not last forever, my lady, even with the old, and the young shake it off much more readily. So it was, to my mind, quite natural, when Mr. Almer returned, which he did after an absence of fifteen days, that he should find Mdlle. Beatrice much more cheerful than when he left. He was pleased to say that it was my doing, and that I should have no cause to regret it to the last day of my life. I had done so little that the great store he set upon it made me think more and more of the ending to it all. There could be but one natural ending, a marriage, and yet never for one moment had I seen him conduct himself toward Mdlle. Beatrice as a lover. He brought bad news back with him, and when he communicated it to the old lady she walked about the grounds like a distracted person, moaning and wringing her hands. "I got to know about it, through my young lady. We were out walking in the lanes when we overtook two wretched-looking women, one old and one young. They were in rags, and their white faces and slow, painful steps, as they dragged one foot after another, would have led anybody to suppose that they had not eaten a meal for days. They were truly misery's children. "Mdlle. Beatrice asked in a whisper, as they turned and looked pitifully at her: "'Who are they, Denise?' "'They are beggars,' I answered. "She took out her purse, and spoke to them, and gave them some money. They thanked her gratefully, and crawled away, Mdlle. Beatrice looking after them with an expression of thoughtfulness and curiosity in her lovely face. "Denise,' she said presently, 'Mr. Almer, who, before my father's death, promised to look after his affairs, has told us we are beggars.' "I was very, very sorry to hear it, but I could not reconcile the appearance of the bright young creature standing before me with that of the wretched beings who had just left us; and although she spoke gravely, and said the news was shocking, she did not seem to feel it as much as her words would have led one to believe. It was a singular thing, my lady, that Mdlle. Beatrice wore black for her father for only one day. There was quite a scene between her and her mother on the subject, but the young lady had her way, and only wore her black dress for a few hours. "'I hate it,' she said; 'it makes me feel as if I were dead.' "I am sure it was not because she did not love her father that she refused to put on mourning for him. Never, except on that one day, did I see her wear any dress but white, and the only bits of colour she put on were sometimes a light pink or a light blue ribbon. That is how it got to be said, when she was seen from a distance walking in the grounds: "'She looks like a white shadow.' "So when she told me she was a beggar, and stood before me, fair and beautiful, dressed in soft white, with a pink ribbon at her throat, and long coral earrings in her ears, I could not understand how it was possible she could be what she said. It was true, though; she and her mother had not a franc, and Mr. Almer, who brought the news, did not seem to be sorry for it. The widow cried for days and days--did nothing but cry and cry, but that, of course, could not go on forever, and in time she became, to all appearance, consoled. No guests were invited to the villa, and my master was alone with Mdlle. Beatrice and her mother. "It seemed to me, after a time, that he made many attempts to get back into his old groove; but he was not his own master, and could not do as he pleased. Now it was Mdlle. Beatrice who wanted him, now it was her mother, and as they were in a measure dependent upon him he could not deny himself to them. He might have done so had they been rich; he could not do so as they were poor. I soon saw that when Mdlle. Beatrice intruded herself upon him it was at the instigation of her mother, and that, had she consulted her own inclination, she would have retired as far into the background as he himself desired to be. The old lady, however, had set her heart upon a scheme, and she left no stone unturned to bring it about. Oh, she was cunning and clever, and they were not a match for her, neither her daughter, who knew nothing of the world, nor Mr. Almer, who, deeply read as he was, and clever, and wise in many things, knew as little of worldly ways as the young lady he loved and was holding aloof from. For this was clear to me and to others, though I dare say our master had no idea that his secret was known--indeed, that it was common talk. "One morning I had occasion to go into Geneva to purchase things for the house, which I was to bring back with me in the afternoon. As I was stepping into the waggon, Mdlle. Beatrice came out of the gates and said: "'Denise, will you pass the post-office in Geneva?' "'Yes, mademoiselle,' I replied. "'Here is a letter,' she then said, 'I have just written, and I want it posted there at once. Will you do it for me?' "'Certainly I will,' I said, and I took the letter. "'Be sure you do not forget, Denise,' she said, as she turned away. "'I will not forget, mademoiselle,' I said. "There was no harm in looking at the envelope; it was addressed to a M. Gabriel. I was not half a mile on the road to Geneva before I heard coming on behind me very fast the wheels of a carriage. We drove aside to let it pass; it was one of our own carriages, and the old lady was in it. "'Ah, Denise,' she said, are you going to Geneva?' "'Yes, my lady.' "'I shall be there an hour before you; I am going to the post-office to get some letters.' As she said that I could not help glancing at the letter Mdlle. Beatrice had given me, which I held in my hand for safety. 'It is a letter my daughter has given you to post,' she said. "'Yes, my lady,' I could say nothing else. "'Give it to me,' she said, 'I know she wants it posted immediately. It does not matter who posts a letter.' "She said this impatiently and haughtily, for I think I was hesitating. However, I could do nothing but give her the letter, and as I did not suspect anything wrong I said nothing of the adventure to Mdlle. Beatrice, especially as she did not speak of the letter to me. Had she done so, I might have explained that her mother had taken it from me to post, and quite likely--although I hope I am mistaken--the strange and dreadful events that occurred before three years passed by might have been avoided. "'The old lady was very civil to me after this, and would continually question me about my master. "'He has a great deal of property?' she asked. "'Yes, madame.' "'He is very rich, Denise?' "'Yes, madame.' "'And comes from an old family?' "'Yes, madame.' "'It is a pity he writes books; but he is highly respected, is he not, Denise?' "'No gentleman stands higher, madame.' "'His nature, Denise--though it is exceedingly wrong in me to ask, for I have had experience of it--his nature is very kind?' "'Very kind, madame, and very noble.' "A hundred questions of this kind were put to me, sometimes when the young lady was present, sometimes when the mother and I were alone. While this was going on, I often noticed that Mdlle. Beatrice came from her mother's room in great agitation. From a man these signs can be hidden; from a woman, no; man is too often blind to the ways of women. I am sure Mr. Almer knew nothing of what was passing between mother and daughter; but even if he had known he would not have understood the meaning of it--I did not at the time. "Well, all at once the old lady made her appearance among us with a face in which the greatest delight was expressed. She talked to the servants quite graciously, and nodded and smiled, and didn't know what to do to show how amiable she was. 'What a change in the weather!' we all said. The reason was soon forthcoming. Our master and her daughter were engaged to be married. "We were none of us sorry; we all liked Mdlle. Beatrice, and it was sad to think that a good old race would die out if Mr. Almer remained single all the days of his life. Yes, we talked over the approaching marriage, as did everybody in the village, with real pleasure, and if good feeling and sincere wishes could bring happiness, Mr. Almer and his young and beautiful wife that was to be could not have failed to enjoy it. "'It is true, mademoiselle, is it not?' I asked of her. 'I may congratulate you?' "'I am engaged to be married to Mr. Almer,' she said, 'if that is what you mean.' "'You will have a good man for your husband, mademoiselle,' I said; 'you will be very happy.' "But here was something in her manner that made me hope the approaching change in her condition would not make her proud. It was cold and distant--different from the way she had hitherto behaved to me. "So the old house was gay again; improvements and alterations were made, and very soon we were thronged with visitors, who came and went, and laughed and danced, as though life were a perpetual holiday. "But Mdlle. Beatrice was not as light-hearted as before; she moved about more slowly, and with a certain sadness. It was noticed by many. I thought, perhaps, that the contemplation of the change in her life made her more serious, or that she had not yet recovered the shock of her father's death. The old lady was in her glory, ordering here and ordering there, and giving herself such airs that one might have supposed it was she who was going to get married, and not her daughter. "Mr. Almer gave Mdlle. Beatrice no cause for disquiet; he was entirely and most completely devoted to her, and I am sure that no other woman in the world ever had a more faithful lover. He watched her every step, and followed her about with his eyes in a way that would have made any ordinary woman proud. As for presents, he did not know how to do enough for the beautiful girl who was soon to be his wife. I never saw such beautiful jewelry as he had made for her, and he seemed to be continually studying what to do to give her pleasure. If ever a woman ought to have been happy, she ought to have been." CHAPTER IV HUSBAND AND WIFE "Well, they were married, and the day was never forgotten in the village. Mr. Almer made everybody merry, the children, the grown-up people, the poor, and the well-to-do. New dresses, ribbons, flags, flowers, music and feasting from morning to night--there was never seen anything like it. The bride, in her white dress and veil, was as beautiful as an angel, and Mr. Almer's face had a light in it such as I had never seen before--it shone with pride, and joy, and happiness. "In the afternoon they departed on their honeymoon tour, and the old lady was left mistress of the villa during the absence of the newly-married pair. She exercised her authority in a way that was not pleasing to us. No wonder, therefore, that we looked upon her with dislike, and spoke of it as an evil day when she came among us; but that did not lessen our horror at an accident which befell her, and which led to her death. "Mr. and Mrs. Almer had been absent barely three weeks when the old lady going into a distant part of the grounds where workmen were employed in building up some rocks to serve as an artificial waterfall, fell into a pit, and was so frightfully bruised and shaken that, when she was taken up, the doctors declared she could not live another twenty-four hours. Letters were immediately sent off to Mr. Almer, but there was no chance of his receiving them before the unfortunate old lady breathed her last. We did everything we could for her, and she took it into her head that she would have no one to attend to her but me. "'My daughter is fond of you,' she said on her deathbed, 'and will be pleased that I have chosen you before the other servants. Keep them all away from me.' "It was many hours before she could be made to believe that there was no hope for her, and when the conviction was forced upon her, she cried, in a tone of great bitterness: "'This is a fatal house! First my husband--now me! Will Beatrice be the next?' "And then she bemoaned her hard fate that she should have to die just at the time that a life of pleasure was spread before her. Yes, she spoke in that way, just as if she was a young girl, instead of an old woman with white hair. A life of pleasure! Do some people never think of another life, a life of rewards and punishments, according to their actions in this world? The old lady was one of these, I am afraid. Three or four hours before she died she said she must speak to me quite alone, and the doctors accordingly left the room. "'I want you to tell me the truth, Denise,' she said; I had to place my ear quite close to her lips to hear her. "'I will tell you,' I said. "'It would be a terrible sin to deceive a dying woman,' she said. "I answered I knew it was, and I would not deceive her. "'Beatrice ought to be happy,' she said; 'I have done my best to make her so--against her own wishes! But is it likely she should know better than her mother? You believe she will be happy, do you not, Denise?' "I replied that I could not doubt it; that she had married a good man, against whom no person could breathe a word, a man who commanded respect, and who was looked upon by the poor as a benefactor--as indeed he was. "'That is what I thought,' said the dying woman; 'that is what I told her over and over again. A good man, a kind man, a rich man, very rich man! And then we were under obligations to him; had Beatrice refused him he might have humiliated us. There was no other way to repay him.' "I could not help saying to her then that when Mr. Almer rendered a service to anyone he did not look for repayment. "'Ah,' she said impatiently, 'but we are of noble descent, and we never receive a favour without returning it. All I thought of was my daughter's happiness. And there was the future--hers as well as mine--it was dreadful to look forward to. Denise, did my daughter ever complain to you?' "'Never!' I answered. "'Did she ever say I was a hard mother to her--that I was leading her wrong--that I was selfish, and thought only of myself? Did she? Answer me truly.' "'Never,' I said, and I wondered very much to hear her speak in that way. 'She never spoke a single word against you. If she had any such thoughts it would not have been proper for her to have confided them to me. I am only a servant.' "'That is true,' she muttered. 'Beatrice has pride--yes, thank God, she has pride, and if she suffers can suffer in silence. But why should she suffer? She has everything--everything! I torment myself without cause. You remember the letter my daughter gave you to post--the one to M. Gabriel?' "'Yes, madame; you took it from me on the road. I hope I did not do wrong in parting with it. Mademoiselle Beatrice desired me to post it with my own hands.' "'You did right,' she said. 'It does not matter who posts a letter. You did not tell my daughter I took it from you?' "'No, madame.' "'You are faithful and judicious,' she said, but her praise gave me no pleasure. 'If I had lived I would have rewarded you. You must not repeat to my daughter or to Mr. Almer what I have been saying to you. Promise me.' "I gave her the promise, and then she said that perhaps she would give me a message to deliver to her daughter, her last message; but she must think of it first, and if she forgot it I was to ask her for it. After that she was quiet, and spoke to no one. A couple of hours passed, and I asked the doctors whether she had long to live. They said she could not live another hour. I then told them that she had asked me to remind her of a message she wished me to give to her daughter, and whether it was right I should disturb her. They said that the wishes of the dying should be respected, and that I should try to make her understand that death was very near. I put my face again very close to hers. "'Can you hear me?' I asked. "'Who are you?' she said. "Her words were but a breath, and I could only understand them by watching the movements of her lips. "'I am Denise.' "'Ah, yes,' she replied. 'Denise, that my daughter is fond of.' "'You wished to give me a message to your daughter.' "'I don't know what it was. I have done everything for the best--yes, everything. And she was foolish enough to rebel, and to tell me that I might live to repent my work; but see how wrong she was. And presently she said: 'Denise, when my daughter comes home ask her to forgive me.' "These were her last words. Before the sun rose the next morning she was dead. "Mr. and Mrs. Almer arrived at the villa before she was buried. It was a shocking interruption to their honeymoon, and their appearance showed how much they suffered. It was as if the whole course of their lives had been turned; tears took the place of smiles, sorrow of joy. And how different was the appearance of the village! No feasting, no music and dancing; everybody was serious and sad. "And all within one short month! "I gave Mrs. Almer her mother's dying message. When she heard the words such a smile came upon her lips as I hope never again to see upon a human face, it was so bitterly scornful and despairing. "'It is too late for forgiveness,' she said, and not another word passed between us on the subject. "Mrs. Almer did not wear mourning for her mother, nor did her husband wish her to do so. I remember his saying to her: "With some races, white is the emblem of mourning; not for that reason, Beatrice, but because it so well becomes you, I like you best in white.' "Now, as time went on, we all thought that the sadness which weighed upon Mrs. Almer's heart, and which seemed to put lead into her feet, would naturally pass away, but weeks and months elapsed, and she remained the same. There used to be colour in her cheeks; it was all gone now--her face was as white as milk. Her eyes used to sparkle and brighten, but now there was never to be seen any gladness in them; and she, who used to smile so often, now smiled no more. She moved about like one who was walking slowly to her grave. "Mr. Almer made great efforts to arouse her, but she met him with coldness, and when he spoke to her she simply answered 'yes' or 'no,' and she did nothing whatever to make his home cheerful and happy. "This weighed upon his spirits, as it would upon the spirits of any man, and during those times I often saw him gazing upon her from a distance, when she was walking in the grounds, with a look in his eyes which denoted how troubled he was. Then, as if some thought had suddenly occurred to him, he would join her, and endeavour to entice her into conversation; but she answered him only when she was compelled, and he became so chilled by her manner that soon he would himself grow silent, and they would pace the garden round and round for an hour together in the most complete silence. It hurt one to see it. They were never heard to quarrel, and the little they said to each other was said in a gentle way; but that seemed to make matters worse. Much better to have spoken outright, so that they might have known what was in each other's minds. A storm now and then is naturally good; it clears the air, and the sun always shines when it is over; but here a silent storm was brooding which never burst, and the only signs of it were seen in the sad faces of those who were suffering, and who did not deserve to suffer. "Imagine what the house was, my lady, and how we all felt, who loved our master, and would have loved our lady too, if she had allowed us. Cold as she was to us, we could not help pitying her. For my own part I used to think I would rather live in a hut with a quarrelsome husband who would beat and starve me, than lead such a life as my master and mistress were leading. "Once more, after many months has passed in this dreadful way, my master suddenly resolved to make another attempt to alter things for the better. He locked up his study, and courted his wife with the perseverance and the love of a lover. It was really so, my lady. He gathered posies for her, and placed them on her desk and dressing-table; he spoke cheerfully to her, taking no apparent notice of her silence and reserve; he strove in a thousand little delicate ways to bring pleasure into her life. "'We will ride out to-day,' he would say. "'Very well,' she would answer. "He would assist her into the saddle, and they would ride away, they two alone, he animated by but one desire--to make her happy; and they would return after some hours, the master with an expression of suffering in his face which he would strive in vain to hide, and she, sad, resigned, and uncomplaining. But that silence of hers! That voice so seldom heard, and, when heard, so gentle, and soft, and pathetic! I would rather have been beaten with an oak stick every day of my life than have been compelled to endure it, as he was compelled. For there was no relief or escape for him except in the doing of what it was not in his nature to do--to be downright cruel to her, or to find another woman to love him. He would have had no difficulty in this, had he been so minded. "Still he did not relax his efforts to alter things for the better. He bought beautiful books, and pictures, and dresses, and pet animals for her; he forgot nothing that a man could possibly thing of to please a woman. He had frequently spoken to her of inviting friends to the villa, but she had never encouraged him to do so. Now, however, without consulting her, he called friends and acquaintances around him, and in a short time we were again overrun with company. She was the mistress of the house, and it would have been sinful in her to have neglected her duties as Mr. Almer's wife. Many young people came to the villa, and among them one day appeared M. Gabriel, the artist who painted the picture." CHAPTER V THE GATHERING OF THE STORM "At about this time it was generally known that Mr. Almer expected to become a father within three or four months, and some people considered it strange that he should have selected the eve of an event so important for the celebration of social festivities. For my own part I thought it a proof of his wisdom that he should desire his wife to be surrounded by an atmosphere of cheerfulness on such an occasion. Innocent laughter, music, pleasant society--what better kind of medicine is there in the world? But it did not do my lady good. She moved about listlessly, without heart and without spirit, and not until M. Gabriel appeared was any change observable in her. The manner in which she received him was sufficiently remarkable. My lady was giving me some instructions as Mr. Almer and a strange gentleman came towards us. "'Beatrice,' said Mr. Almer, 'let me introduce M. Gabriel to you. A friend whom I have not seen for years.' "She looked at M. Gabriel, and bowed, and when she raised her head, her face and neck were crimson; her eyes, too, had an angry light in them. M. Gabriel, also, whose natural complexion was florid, turned deathly white as his eyes fell upon her. "Whether Mr. Almer observed these signs I cannot say; they were plain enough to me, and I did not need anyone to tell me that those two had met before. "My lady turned from her husband and M. Gabriel in silence, and taking my arm walked into a retired part of the grounds. She could not have walked without assistance, for she was trembling violently; the moment we were alone her strength failed her, and she swooned dead away. I thought it prudent not to call or run for assistance, and I attended to her myself. Presently she recovered, and looking around with a frightened air, asked if any person but myself had seen her swoon. I answered 'No,' and for a moment I thought she had some intention of confiding in me, but she said nothing more than 'Thank you, Denise; do not speak of my fainting to any person; it is only that I am weak, and that the least thing overcomes me. Be sure that no one hears of it.' 'No one shall from me, my lady,' I said. She thanked me again, and pressed my hand, and then we went into the house. "After that, there was no perceptible difference in her manner toward M. Gabriel than towards her other guests, but I, whose eyes were in a certain way opened, could not help observing that M. Gabriel watched with anxiety her every movement and every expression. The summer-house in which all those pictures are stored away was given to M. Gabriel for a studio, and there he painted and passed a great deal of his time. Mr. Almer often joined him there, and if appearances went for anything, they spent many happy hours together. About three weeks after M. Gabriel came to the villa my master took his wife into the studio, and they remained there for some time. It was understood that my lady had been prevailed upon to allow M. Gabriel to paint her portrait. From that time my lady's visits to the summer-house were frequent, at first always in her husband's company, but afterwards occasionally alone. One day she said to me: "'Denise, I have often wished to ask you a question, but till lately have not thought it worth while.' "'I am ready to answer anything, my lady,' I said. "'One morning,' she said, after a pause, 'shortly after my dear father died, I gave you a letter to post for me in Geneva.' "'Yes, my lady,' I said, and it flashed upon me like a stroke of lightning that the letter she referred to was addressed to M. Gabriel. Never till that moment had I thought of it. "'Did you post the letter for me, Denise, as I desired you? Did you do so with your own hands? Do not tremble. Mistakes often happen without our being able to prevent them--even fatal mistakes sometimes. I saw you drive away with the letter in your hand. You did not lose it?' "'No, my lady; but before I had gone a mile on the road to Geneva, your mother overtook me, and said she knew you had given it to me to post immediately in Geneva, and that as she would be at the post-office a good hour before me--which was true--she would put it into the post with other letters.' "'And you gave her the letter, Denise?' "'Yes, my lady.' "'Did my mother desire you not to mention to me that she had taken the letter from you?' "'No, my lady, but on her deathbed----' "I hesitated, and my mistress said. 'Do not fear, Denise; you did no wrong. How should you know that a mother would conspire against her daughter's happiness? On her deathbed my mother spoke to you of that letter?' "'Yes, my lady, and asked me if I had told you that she had taken it from me. I answered no, and she said I had done right. My lady, in telling you this. I am breaking the promise I gave her; I hope to be forgiven.' "'It is right that you should tell me the truth, when I desire you, about an affair I entrusted to you. Had you told me of your own account, it might have been a sin.' "'I can see, my lady, that I should not have parted with the letter. I am truly sorry.' "'The fault was not yours, Denise: the wrong-doing was not yours. I should have instructed you not to part with the letter to anyone; although even then it could not have been prevented; you could not have refused my mother. The past is lost to us forever.' Her eyes filled with tears, and she said, 'We will not speak of this again, Denise.' "And it was never mentioned again by either of us, though we both thought of it often enough. "It was easy for me to arrive at an understanding of it. M. Gabriel and my mistress had been lovers, and had been parted and kept apart by my lady's mother. The old lady had played a false and treacherous part towards her daughter, and by so doing had destroyed the happiness of her life. "Whether my young lady thought that Mr. Almer had joined in the plot against her--that was what puzzled me a great deal at the time; but I was certain that he was innocent in the matter, as much a victim to the arts and wiles of a scheming old woman as the unfortunate lady he had married. "The motive of the treachery was plain enough. M. Gabriel was poor, a struggling artist, with his place to make in the world. My master was rich; money and estates were his, and the old woman believed she would live to enjoy them if she could bring about a marriage between him and her daughter. "She succeeded--too well did she succeed, and she met with her punishment. Though she was dead in her grave I had no pity for her, and her daughter, also, thought of her with bitterness. What misery is brought about by the mad worship of money which fills some persons' souls! As though hearts count for nothing! "I understood it all now--my lady's unhappiness, her silence, the estrangement between her and her husband. How often did I repeat the sad words she had uttered! 'The past is lost to us forever.' Yes, it was indeed true. Sunshine had fled; a gloomy future was before her. Which was the most to be pitied--my lady, or her innocent, devoted husband, who lived in ignorance of the wrong which had been done? "After the conversation I have just related, the behaviour of my mistress toward M. Gabriel underwent a change; she was gracious and familiar with him, and sometimes, as I noticed with grief, even tender. They walked frequently together; she was often in his studio when her husband was absent. Following out in my mind the course of events, I felt sure that explanations had passed between them, and that they were satisfied that neither had been intentionally false to the other. It was natural that this should have happened; but what good could come of this better understanding? Mischief was in the air, and no one saw it but myself. "My lady recovered her cheerfulness; the colour came back to her face; her eyes were brighter, life once more appeared enjoyable to her. Mr. Almer was delighted and unsuspicious; but behind these fair clouds I seemed to hear the muttering of the thunder, and I dreaded the moment when my master's suspicions should be aroused. "As my lady's time to become a mother drew near, many of the guests took their departure; but M. Gabriel remained. He and Mr. Almer were the closest friends, and they would talk with the greatest animation about pictures and books. M. Gabriel was very clever; the rapidity with which he would paint used to surprise us; his sketches were beautiful, and were hung everywhere about the house. Everybody sang his praises. He had a very sweet voice, he was a fine musician, there was not a subject he was not ready to converse upon. If it came to deep scholarship and learning I have no doubt that Mr. Almer held the first place, but my master was never eager, as M. Gabriel was, to display his gifts, and to show off his brilliant qualities in society. Certainly he could not win ladies' hearts as easily as M. Gabriel. These things are in the nature of a man, and one will play for the mere pleasure of winning, while another does not consider it worth his while to try. Of two such men I know which is the better and more deserving of love. "Rapid worker as M. Gabriel was with his paintings and sketches, my lady's portrait hung upon his hands; he did not seem to be able to satisfy himself, and he was continually making alterations. When Master Christian was born, his mother's picture was still unfinished in M. Gabriel's studio." CHAPTER VI THE GRAVE OF HONOUR "The birth of the heir was now the most important event; everything gave way to it. Congratulations poured in from all quarters, and it really seemed as if a better era had dawned. I believe I was the only one who mistrusted appearances; I should have been easier in my mind had M. Gabriel left the villa. But he remained, and as long as he and my lady were near each other I knew that the storm-clouds were not far off. "In a few weeks my lady got about again; she was never strong, and now she was so delicate and weak that the doctors would not allow her to nurse her child. I was very sorry for this; had her baby drawn life from her breast it might have diverted her attention from M. Gabriel. "It is hard to believe that so joyful an event as the birth of her first child should not have softened her heart towards her husband. It is the truth, however; they were no nearer to each other than they had been before. Mr. Almer was not to blame; he did all in his power to win his wife to more affectionate ways, but he might as well have hoped for a miracle as to hope to win a love that was given to another. "The child throve, and it was not till he was a year old that the portrait of his mother was finished--the picture that is hanging on the wall before me. It was greatly admired, and my master set great store upon it. "'It is in every way your finest work,' he said to M. Gabriel. 'Were it not that I object to my wife's beauty being made a subject of criticism, I should persuade you to exhibit the portrait.' "Not long afterwards, M. Gabriel was called away. I thanked God for it. The danger I feared was removed; but he returned in the course of a few weeks, and began to paint again in the summer-house. While he was absent my lady fell into her former habits of listlessness; when he returned she became animated and joyous. Truly he was to her as the sun is to the flower. This change in her mood, from sadness to gaiety, was so sudden that it frightened me, for I felt that Mr. Almer must be the blindest of the blind if it did not force itself upon his attention. It did not escape his notice; I saw that, from a certain alteration in his manner toward his wife and his friend. It was not that he was colder or less friendly; but when he looked at them he seemed to be pondering upon something which perplexed him. He said nothing to them, however, to express disapproval of their intimacy. He was not an impulsive man, and I never knew him to commit himself to an important act without deliberation. "In the midst of his perplexity the storm burst. I was an accidental witness of the occurrence which led to the tragic events of which I have yet to speak. "There was at this time among our guests an old dowager, who did nothing but tittle-tattle from morning till night about her friends and acquaintances, and who seemed to be always hunting for an opportunity to make ill-natured remarks. A piece of scandal was a great delight to her. Heaven save me from ever meeting with another such a lady. "I was in one of the wooded walks at some distance from the house, gathering balsam for a fellow-servant whose hand had been wounded, when the voice of this old dowager reached my ears. She was speaking to a lady companion, and I should not have stopped to listen had not Mrs. Almer's name been mentioned in a tone which set my blood tingling. "'It is scandalous, my dear,' the old dowager was saying, 'the way she goes on with M. Gabriel. Of course, I wouldn't mention it to another soul in the world but you, for it is not my affair. Not that it is not natural, for she is young, and he is young, and Mr. Almer is old enough to be their father; but they really should be more discreet. I can't make up my mind whether Mr. Almer sees it, and considers it best to take no notice, or whether he is really blind to what is going on. Anyway, that does not alter the affair, so far as his wife and M. Gabriel are concerned. Such looks at each other, my dear!--such pressing of hands!--such sighs! One can almost hear them. It is easy to see they are in love with each other.' "And a great deal more to the same effect until they walked away from the spot and were out of hearing. "I was all of a tremble, and I was worrying myself as to what it was best to do when I heard another step close to me. "It was my master, who must also have been within hearing. His face was stern and white, and there was blood on his lips as though he had bitten them through. "He walked my way and saw me. "'How long have you been here, Denise?' he asked. "I could not tell him a falsehood, and I had not the courage to answer him. "'It is enough,' he said; 'you have heard what I have heard. Not to a living being must a word of what you have heard pass your lips. I have always believed that you had a regard for the honour of my house and name, and it is for that reason I have placed confidence in you. I shall continue to trust you until you give me cause to doubt your good faith. Hasten after that lady and her companion who have been conversing here, and ask them to favour me with an interview. While I speak to them, remain out of hearing.' "I obeyed him in silence, and conducted the ladies to my master's presence. I am in ignorance of what he said to them, but that evening an excuse was made for their sudden departure from the villa. They left, and did not appear again. "Grateful as I was at the removal of this source of danger, I soon saw that the time I dreaded had arrived. My master was in doubt whether his wife was faithful to him. "A more cruel suspicion never entered the mind of man, and as false as it was cruel. Mrs. Almer was a pure woman; basely wronged as she had been, she was a virtuous wife. As I hope for salvation this is my firm belief. "But how can I blame my master? Smarting with a grief which had sucked all the light out of his days, which had poisoned his life and his hopes, trusting as he had trusted, deceived as he had been deceived, with every offer of love refused and despised, and with, as he believed, dishonour staring him in the face--he might well be pardoned for the doubt which now took possession of him. "He planned out a course, and steadily followed it. Without betraying himself, he watched his wife and his friend, and he could not fail to see that the feelings they entertained for each other were stronger than the ordinary feelings of friendship which may properly be allowed between a man and a woman. I know, also, that he discovered that my lady, before she married him, had accepted M. Gabriel as her lover. This in itself was sufficient for him. "Under such circumstances it was, in his opinion, a sin for any woman to plight her faith and duty to another. To my master the words used at the altar were, in the meaning they conveyed, most sacred, solemn and binding. For a woman to utter them, with the image of another man in her heart, was a fearful and unpardonable crime. "These perjuries are common enough, I believe, in the great world which moves at a distance from this quiet spot, but that they are common does not excuse them. Mr. Almer had strict and stern views of the duties of life, and roused as he was roused, he carried them out with cruel effect. "Gradually he got rid of all his guests, with the exception of M. Gabriel; and then, one fatal morning, he surprised my lady and M. Gabriel as they sat together in the summer-house. There was no guilt between them; they were conversing innocently enough, but my lady was in tears, and M. Gabriel was endeavouring to console her. Sufficient, certainly, to work a husband into a furious state. "None of us knew what passed or what words were spoken; something terrible must have been uttered, for my lady, with a face like the face of death, tottered from the summer-house to this very room, where she lay in a fainting condition for hours. Her husband did not come near her, nor did he make any inquiries after her, but in the course of an hour he gave me instructions to have every sketch and painting made by M. Gabriel taken from the walls of the villa, and conveyed to the summer-house. I obeyed him, and all were removed except this portrait of my lady; it seemed to me that I ought not to allow it to be touched without her permission, and she was not in a fit condition to be disturbed. "While this work was being accomplished no servant but myself was allowed to enter the studio. Two strange men carried the pictures into the summer-house, and these men, who had paint-pots and brushes with them, remained with Mr. Almer the whole of the afternoon. "Dinner was served, but no one sat down to it. My lady was in her chamber, her husband was still in the summer-house, and M. Gabriel was wandering restlessly about. In the evening he addressed me. "'Where is Mr. Almer?' he asked. "'In the summer-house,' I replied. "'Go to him,' he said, 'and say I desire to have a few words with him.' "In a few minutes they confronted each other on the steps which led to the studio. "'Enter,' said my master; 'you also, Denise, so that you may hear what I have to say to M. Gabriel, and what he has to say to me.' "I entered with them, and could scarcely believe my eyes. The walls of the studio had been painted a deep black. Not only the walls, but the woodwork of the windows which gave light to the room. The place resembled a tomb. "M. Gabriel's face was like the face of a corpse as he gazed around. "'This is your doing,' he said to my master, pointing to the black walls. "'Pardon me,' said my master; 'it is none of my work. _You_ are the artist here, and this is the picture you have painted on my heart and life. Denise, are all M. Gabriel's sketches and paintings in this studio?' "'They are all here, sir,' I replied. "There was a sense of guilt at my heart, for I thought of my lady's portrait. Fortunately for me my master did not refer to it. "'M. Gabriel,' said my master to the artist, 'these paintings are your property, and are at your disposal for one week from this day. Within that time remove them from my house. You will have no other opportunity. At the end of the week this summer-house will be securely locked and fastened, and thereafter, during my lifetime, no person will be allowed to enter it. For yourself a carriage is now waiting for you at the gates. I cannot permit you to sleep another night under my roof.' "'I had no intention of doing so,' said M. Gabriel, 'nor should I have remained here so long had it not been that I was determined not to leave without an interview with you.' "'What do you require of me?' "'Satisfaction.' "'Satisfaction!' exclaimed my master, with a scornful smile. 'Is it not I rather should demand it?' "'Demand it, then,' cried M. Gabriel. 'I am ready to give it to you.' "'I am afraid,' said my master coldly, 'that it is out of your power to afford me satisfaction. Were you a man of honour events might take a different course. It is only lately that I have seen you in your true colours; to afford you the satisfaction you demand would be, on my part, an admission that you are my equal. You are not; you are the basest of cowards. Depart at once, and do not compel me to call my servants to force you from my gates.' "'Endeavour to evade me,' said M. Gabriel, as he walked to the door, 'in every way you can, you shall not escape the consequences of your conduct.' "He carried it with a high hand, this fine gentleman who had brought misery into this house; had I been a man I should have had a difficulty in preventing myself from striking him. "When he was gone my master said: "'You are at liberty to repeat to your lady what has passed between me and M. Gabriel.' "I did not repeat it: there was such a dreadful significance in the black walls, and in my master's words, that that was the picture M. Gabriel had painted on his heart and life, that I could not be so cruel to my lady as to tell her what had passed between the two gentlemen who held her fate in their hands. "But she herself, on the following day, questioned me: "'You were present yesterday,' she said, 'at an interview between M. Gabriel and my husband?' "'Yes, my lady,' I answered. "'Did they meet in anger, Denise?' "'M. Gabriel was angry, my lady,' I said. "'And my husband?' she asked. "'Appeared to be suffering, my lady.' "'Did they part in anger?' "'On M. Gabriel's side, my lady, yes.' "'Is M. Gabriel in the villa?' "'No, my lady. He departed last night. "'Of his own accord?' "'My master bade him go, and M. Gabriel said he intended to leave without being bidden.' "'It could not be otherwise. My husband is here?' "'Yes, my lady.' "That was all that was said on that day. The next day my lady asked me again if her husband was in the villa and I answered 'Yes.' The next day she asked me the same question, and I gave the same reply. The fourth day and the fifth she repeated the question, and my reply that my master had not been outside the gates afforded her relief. The fear in her mind was that my master and M. Gabriel would fight a duel, and that one would be killed. "During these days my lady did not leave her chamber, nor did her husband visit her. "From the window of this room the summer-house can be seen, and my lady for an hour or two each day sat at the window, gazing vacantly out. "On the evening of the fifth day my lady said: "'Denise, there have been workmen busily engaged about the summer-house. What are they doing?' "I bore in mind my master's remark to me that I was at liberty to repeat to my lady what had been said by him and M. Gabriel in their last interview. It was evident that he wished her to be made acquainted with it, and it was my duty to be faithful to him as well as to my lady. I informed her of my master's resolve to fasten the doors of the summer-house and never to allow them to be opened during his lifetime. "'There are only two more days,' she said, 'to-morrow and the next.' "I prayed silently that she would not take the fancy in her head to visit the summer-house before it was fastened up, knowing the shock that the sight of the black walls would cause her. "The next day she did not refer to the subject, but the next, which was the last, she sat at the window watching the workmen bring their tools and bars and bolts to complete the work for which they had been engaged. "'Come with me, Denise,' she said. 'A voice whispers to me that there is something concealed in the summer-house which I must see before it is too late.' "'My lady,' I said, trembling, 'I would not go if I were in your place.' "I could not have chosen worse words. "'You would not go if you were in my place!' she repeated. 'Then there _is_ something concealed there which it is necessary for me to see. Unless,' she added, looking at me for an answer, 'my husband prohibits it.' "'He has not prohibited it, my lady.' "'And yet you would not go if you were in my place! Cannot you see that I should be false to myself if I allowed that place to be sealed forever against me, before making myself acquainted with something that has taken place therein? You need not accompany me, Denise, unless you choose.' "'I will go with you, my lady,' I said, and we went out of the villa together. "We entered the summer-house, my lady first, I a few steps behind her. "She placed her hands upon her eyes and shuddered, the moment she saw the black walls. She understood what was meant by this sign. "But there was more to come, of which, up to that day, I had been ignorant. On one of the walls was painted in white, the words, "'The Grave Of Honour.' "It was like an inscription on a tomb. "When my lady opened her eyes they fell upon these cruel words. For many minutes she stood in silence, with eyes fixed on the wall, and then she turned towards me, and by a motion of her hand, ordered me to leave the place with her. Never, never, had I seen such an expression of anguish on a face as rested on hers. It was as though her own heart, her own good name, her own honour, were lying dead in that room! There are deeds which can never be atoned for. This deed of my master's was one." CHAPTER VII HUSBAND AND WIFE "Remain with me, Denise,' said my lady, as we walked back to the house. 'I am weak, and may need you." "Then, for the first time, I noticed what gave me hope. She took her baby boy in her arms, and pressed him passionately to her bosom, murmuring: "'I have only you--I have only you!' "It was not that hitherto she had been wanting in tenderness, but that in my presence she had never so yearningly displayed it. It gladdened me also to think that her child was a comfort to her in this grave crisis. "But the hope I indulged in was doomed to disappointment. In the evening my lady bade me ascertain whether her husband was in the villa. "I went to him, and made the inquiry. "'Tell my wife,' he said, in a gentle tone, 'that I am ready to wait upon her whenever she desires it.' "It was late in the night when my lady called me to assist her to dress. I did so, wondering at the strange proceeding. She chose her prettiest dress, one which she had worn in her maiden days. She wore no ornaments, or flowers or ribbons of any colour. Simply a white dress, with white lace for her head and shoulders. "'Now go to your master,' she said, 'and say I desire to see him.' "I gave him the message, and he accompanied me to this room, where my lady was waiting to receive him, with as much ceremony as if he had been a stranger guest. "I am here at your bidding,' he said, and turning to me, 'You can go, Denise.' "'You will stay, Denise,' said my lady. "The manner of both was stern, but there was more decision in my lady's voice than in his. I hesitated, not knowing which of them to obey. "'Stay, then, Denise,' said my master, 'as your mistress desires it.' "I retreated to a corner of the room, as far away from them as I could get. I was really afraid of what was coming. Within the hearts of husband and wife a storm was raging, all the more terrible because of the outward calm with which they confronted each other. "'You know,' said my lady, 'for what reason I desired to see you.' "'I know,' he replied,' that I expected you would send for me. If you had not, I should not have presented myself.' "'You have in your mind,' she said, 'matters which concern us both, of which it is necessary you should speak.' "'It is more than necessary--it is imperative that I should speak of the matters you refer to.' "'The opportunity is yours. I also have something to say when you have finished. The sooner our minds are unburdened the better it will be--for you and me.' "'It were preferable,' he added, 'that what we say to each other should be said without witnesses. Consider whether it will not be best that Denise should retire.' "'There is no best or worst for me,' she rejoined; 'my course is decided, and no arguments of yours can alter it. Denise will remain, as I bade her, and what you have to say must be spoken in her presence.' "'Be it so. Denise is the most trusted servant of my house; I have every confidence in her. Otherwise, I should insist upon her leaving the room.' "'It is right,' said my lady, 'that you should be made acquainted with a resolution I have come to within the last few hours. After this night I will never open my lips to you, nor, willingly, will I ever listen to your voice. I swear most solemnly that I am in earnest--as truly in earnest as if I were on my death-bed!' "I shuddered; her voice and manner carried conviction with them. My master turned to me, and said: "'What you hear must never pass your lips while your mistress and I are alive.' "'It never shall,' I said, shaking like a leaf. "'When we are dead, Denise, you can please yourself.' He stood again face to face with his wife. 'Madame, it is necessary that I should recall the past. When I spoke to your lady mother on the subject of my love for you--being encouraged and in a measure urged to do so by herself--I was frank and open with her. There was nothing in my life which I concealed, which I had occasion to conceal. I had grave doubts as to the suitability of a marriage with you, doubts which did not place you at a disadvantage. I had not the grace of youth to recommend me; there was a serious difference in our ages; my habits of life were staid and serious. You were fit to be the wife of a prince; your youth, your beauty, your accomplishments, entitled you to more than I could offer--which was simply a life of ease and the homage of a faithful heart. Only in one respect were we equal--in respect of birth. Had I not been encouraged by your mother, I should not have had the temerity to give expression to my feelings; but I spoke, and for me there was no retreating. I begged your lady mother not to encourage me with false hopes, but to be as frank with me as I was with her. Of the doubts which disturbed me, one was paramount. You had moved in the world--you had been idolised in society--and it scarcely seemed possible that your heart could be disengaged. In that case, I informed your lady mother that no earthly consideration could induce me to step between you and your affections; nay, with all the force which earnestness could convey, I offered to do all in my power--if it were possible that my services could avail-- to aid in bringing your life to its happiest pass. At such a moment as this, a solemn one, madame, which shall never be forgotten by you or by me, I may throw aside false delicacy, and may explain the meaning of these last words to your mother. Having had in my hands the settlement of your father's affairs, I knew that you were poor, and my meaning was, that if any money of mine could assist in bringing about a union between you and the object of your affections--did any such exist--it was ready, cheerfully offered and cheerfully given for such a purpose. I made but one stipulation in the matter--that it should never, directly or indirectly, be brought to your knowledge.' "He paused, in the expectation that his wife would speak, and she said coldly: "'You are doubtless stating the truth.' "'The simple truth, madame, neither more nor less; and believe it or not, as you will, it was your welfare, not mine, that was uppermost in my mind. Your lady mother assured me that before you came to the villa your heart was entirely free, but that since you honoured me by becoming my guest, you had fixed your affections upon myself. My astonishment was great; I could scarcely believe the evidence of my senses. I entreated your lady mother not to mislead me, and she proved to me--to me, to whom the workings of a woman's heart were as a sealed book--in a hundred different ways, which she said I might have discovered for myself if I had had the wit--that you most truly loved me. She professed to be honoured by my proposal, which she accepted for you, and which she said you would joyfully accept for yourself. But she warned me not to be disappointed in the manner in which you would receive me; that your pride and shame might impel you to appear reluctant instead of joyful, and that it behoved me, as a wise man--Heaven help me!--to put a right and sensible construction on the natural maidenly reserve of a young girl. The rest you know. The wise man, madame, has been sadly at fault; it has been fatally proved to him that he knows little of the workings of the human heart.' "She held up her hand as a sign that she wished to speak, and he paused. A little thing struck me at the time, which has never passed out of my mind. She held up her hand in front of the lamp, and the light shone through the thin, delicate fingers. Seldom do I think of my lady without seeing that slight, beautiful hand, with the pink light shining through it. "'My mother,' she said, 'did not speak the truth. M. Gabriel and I were affianced before I became your guest.' "'Your information comes too late,' said my master; 'you should have told me so much when I offered you my name. It would have been sufficient. I should not have forced myself upon you, and shame and sin would have been avoided.' "'There has been no sin,' said my lady, 'and who links me with shame brings shame upon himself. I have been wronged beyond the hope of reparation in this life. Before you spoke to me of marriage I wrote to M. Gabriel frequently from this villa. My letters were intercepted----' "He interrupted her. 'To my knowledge no letters were intercepted; I had no suspicion of such a proceeding.' "I do not say you had; I am making you acquainted with a fact. Hurt and vexed at receiving no reply to my letters, and being able to account for it only on the supposition that they had not come into his possession, I wrote one and gave it to Denise to post for me. That also, as I learnt after my mother's death, was intercepted, and never reached its destination. In the meantime, false information was given to me respecting M. Gabriel; shameful stories were related to me, in which he was the principal actor. He was vile and false, as I was led to believe; and you were held up to me as his very opposite, as noble, chivalrous, generous, disinterested----' "'In all of which you will bear in mind, I was in no way inculpated, being entirely ignorant of what was going on under my roof.' "'And I was, besides, led to believe by my mother that you had laid us under such obligations that there was but one repayment of them----' "'Plainly speaking,' he interposed, 'that, in any kindness I had shown, I was deliberately making a purchase, that in every friendly office I performed, I had but one cowardly end in view. It needed this to complete the story.' "'My heart was almost broken,' she continued, making no comment on his bitter interruption; 'but it was pointed out to me that I could at least answer the call of gratitude and duty. Doubly did my mother deceive me.' "'And doubly,' said my master, 'did you deceive me.' "'When, some time after our unhappy marriage, you introduced M. Gabriel into this house, I was both angry and humiliated. It looked as though you intended to insult me, and Denise was a witness of my agitation. It was not unnatural that, remaining here, your guest--bidden by you, not by me--for so long a time explanations should pass between M. Gabriel and myself. Then it was that my eyes were really opened to the pit into which I had been deliberately dragged.' "'Not by me were you dragged into this pit.' "'Let it pass for a moment,' she said, in a disdainful voice. 'When my eyes were opened to the truth, how was I to know that you had not shared in the plot against me? How am I to know it now?' "'By my denial. Doubt me if you will, and believe that I tricked to obtain you. I shall not attempt to undeceive you. No good purpose would be served by a successful endeavour to soften your feelings towards me; I do not, indeed, desire that they should be softened, for no link of love can ever unite us. It never did, and never can, and I am not a man to live upon shams. If I tricked to obtain you, you will not deny that I have my reward--a rich reward, the rank fruit of which will cling to me and abide with me till the last moment of my life.' "'I went into the summer-house this afternoon,' she said. "'I know it.' "'It was your intention that I should visit it.' "'It was not exactly my intention; I left it to chance.' "'You have made it a memorial of shame, of a cruel declaration against me!' "'I have made it a memorial of my own deep unhappiness. That studio will never again be opened during your life and mine. Madame, in all that you have said--and I have followed you attentively--you have not succeeded in making me believe that I have anything to reproach myself for. My blindness was deplorable, but it is not a reproach. My actions were distinguished at least by absolute candour and frankness. Can you assert the same? You loved M. Gabriel before you met me--was I to blame for that? You were made to believe he was false to you--was I to blame for that? You revenged yourself upon him by accepting my hand, and I, unversed in woman's ways, believed that no pure-minded woman would marry a man unless she loved him. I still believe so. When we stood before the altar, I was happy in the belief that your heart was mine; and certainly from that moment, your faith, your honour, were pledged to me, as mine was pledged to you. M. Gabriel was my friend. I was a man when he was a boy, and I became interested in him, and assisted him in his career. We had not met for years: he knew that I had married----' "'But he did not know,' interrupted my lady, 'that you had married _me!_' "'Granted. Was I to blame for that? After our marriage you fell into melancholy moods, which I at first ascribed to the tragic fate of your parents. Most sincerely did I sympathise with you. Day after day, night after night, did I ponder and consider how I could bring the smile to your lips, how I could gladden your young heart. Reflect upon this, madame, in the days that are before you, and reflect upon the manner in which you received my attentions. At one time, when I had invited to the villa a number of joyous spirits in the hope that their liveliness and gaiety would have a beneficial effect upon you, I received a letter from M. Gabriel with reference to a picture he was painting. I invited him here, and he came. What was his duty, what was yours, when you and he met in my presence, when I introduced you to each other, for the first time as I thought? Madame, if not before him, at least before you, there was but one honest course. Did you pursue it? No; you received M. Gabriel as a stranger, and you permitted me to rest in the belief that until that day you had been unconscious of his existence. Without referring to my previous sufferings--which, madame, were very great--in what position did I, the husband, stand in relation to my wife and friend, who, in that moment of introduction, tacitly conspired against my honour, and who, after explanations had passed between them, met and conversed as lovers? Their guilt was the more heinous because of its secrecy--and utterly, utterly unpardonable because of their treachery towards him who trusted in them both. A double betrayal! But at length the husband's suspicions were aroused. In a conversation which he accidentally overheard between two ladies who were visiting him--the name of his wife--your name, madame--was mentioned in connection with that of M. Gabriel; and from their conversation he learnt that their too friendly intimacy had become a subject for common talk. Jealous of his honour, and of his name, upon which there had hitherto been no blot, he silenced the scandal-mongers; but from that day he more carefully observed his wife and his friend, until the truth was revealed. Then came retribution, and a black chapter in the lives of three human beings was closed--though the book itself is not yet completed.' "He paused, a long time as it seemed to me, before he spoke again. The silence was awful, and in the faces of the husband and the wife there were no signs of relenting. They bore themselves as two persons might have done who had inflicted upon each other a mortal wrong for which there was no earthly forgiveness. From my heart I pitied them both." CHAPTER VIII THE COMPACT "You sent for me, madame,' he said presently, 'because it was necessary that some explanation should be given of the occurrences that have taken place in my family, of which you are a member. Each of us has reason to regret an alliance which has caused us so much suffering. Unfortunately for our happiness and our peace of mind the truth has been spoken too late; but it were idle now to waste time in lamentations. There are in life certain bitter trials which must be accepted; in that light I accept the calamity which has fallen upon us, and which, had I known before our marriage what I know now, would most surely have been averted. It was in your power to avert it; you did not do so, but led me blindly into the whirlpool. You have informed me that, after this night, you will never open your lips to me, nor ever again listen to my voice.' "'Nor will I,' she said, 'from the rising of to-morrow's sun.' "'I shall do nothing to woo you from that resolve. But you bear my name, and to some extent my honour is still in your keeping.' "'Have you, then,' she asked, 'any commands to give me?' "'It will depend,' he replied, 'upon what I hear from you. So far as my honour is concerned I intend to exercise control over you; no farther.' "'Your honour is safe with me, as it has always been." "'I will not debate the point with you. You say that you have decided on your course, and that no arguments of mine will turn you from it.' "'Yes; my course is decided. Am I free to go from your house?' "'You are not free to go. Only one thing shall part us--death!' "'We have a child,' she said, and her voice, for that moment, insensibly softened. "'Is he asleep?' "'Yes.' "He went into the inner room, and remained there for several minutes, and my lady, with a white and tearless face, waited for his return. "I thought I heard the sound of kisses in the bedroom, but I could not be sure. There was, however, a tender light in my master's eyes when he came back, a light which showed that his heart was touched. "'Our child shall remain with you,' he said to my lady, 'if you wish.' "'I do wish it," she said. "'I will not take him from you, only that I must sometimes see him.' "'He shall be brought to you every day.' "'I am content. Let him grow up to love me or hate me, as the prompting of his nature and your teaching shall direct. From my lips he shall never hear a disparaging word of his mother.' "'Nor shall he, from my lips, of his father.' "He bowed to her as he would have bowed to a princess, and said: "'I thank you. But little, then, remains to be said. We are bound to each other irrevocably, and we cannot part without disgrace. We have brought our griefs upon ourselves, and we must bear them in silence. The currents of my life are changed, and these gates shall never again be opened to friends. I have done with friendship as I have done with love. I ask you what course you have determined upon?' "'I propose,' said my lady, 'to make these rooms my home, if you will give them to me to live in.' "'They are yours,' he replied. 'Unless I am compelled by duty, or by circumstances which I do not at present foresee, I will never enter them during your lifetime.' "'It is as I would have it,' she said. 'In daylight I shall not leave them. If I walk in the grounds it shall be at nightfall. Outside your gates I will never more be seen, nor will I allow a friend or an acquaintance to visit me. Will you allow Denise to wait upon me?' "'She is your servant, and yours only, from this moment. I am pleased that you have selected her.' "'Denise,' said my lady to me, 'are you willing to serve me?' "'Yes, my lady,' I answered. I was almost choked with sobs, while they were outwardly calm and unmoved. "'Then there is nothing more to be said--except farewell.' And my lady looked towards the door. "He did not linger a moment. He bowed to her ceremoniously, and left the room. "When he was gone I felt as if some sudden and fearful shock must surely take place, as if a thunderbolt would fall and destroy us, or as if my lady would fall dead at my feet, the silence that ensued was so unearthly. But nothing occurred, and when I had courage to look up I saw my lady sitting in a chair, white and still, with a resigned and determined expression on her face. It would have been a great relief to me if she had cried, but there was not a tear in her eyes. "'Do you believe me guilty, Denise?' she asked. "'The saints forbid,' I cried, 'that such a wicked thought should enter my mind! I know you to be an innocent, suffering lady.' "'You will do as you have been bidden to do, Denise. While my husband and I are living you will not speak of what has passed within this room.' "'I will not, my lady.' "And never again was the subject referred to by either of us. She did not make the slightest allusion to it, and I did not dare to do so." CHAPTER IX MOTHER DENISE HAS STRANGE FANCIES IN THE NIGHT "A new life now commenced for us--a new and dreadful life. Mr. Almer gave orders that no person was to be admitted to the villa without his express permission. He denied himself to every chance visitor, and from that time until you came, my lady, no friend of the family, except a great banker, and occasionally Master Pierre Lamont, both of whom came upon business, ever entered the gates. The doctor, of course, when he was needed; but no one else. "Mr. Almer passed most of his time in his study, writing and reading, and pacing to and fro as he used to do in times gone by. He did not make any enquiries about my lady, nor did she about him. She lived in these rooms, and, in my remembrance, did not stir out of them during the day. Master Christian slept in the inner room there, and was free to roam about as he pleased. "Every morning I took the child to his father, who sometimes would kiss him and send him back to my lady, and sometimes would say: "'You can leave him with me, Denise, for an hour.' "Then he would take the child into the study, and lock the door, and nurse and sing to him. I was in the habit of seeing him thus engaged as I walked backwards and forwards in the grounds in front of the study, waiting for his summons to carry master Christian to his mother. "His was not a happy childhood, for when he began ta speak and think, the estrangement between his parents puzzled him deeply, and made him sad. He was continually asking questions to which he received replies which perplexed him more and more. With childlike, innocent cunning he strove to draw them to each other. When he was with my lady, it was: "'Mamma, why do you not go and speak to papa? There he is walking in the garden. Come out with me, mamma--come quickly, or papa will be gone.' "And when he was with his father he would say: "'Papa, I have a message for you.' "'Yes, Christian,' my master would say. "'You are to take hold of my hand, and come with me immediately to mamma. Yes, papa, indeed, immediately! She wants to speak to you.' "Mr. Almer knew that this was nothing but invention on the child's part. "What they learnt of each other's health and doings came through Master Christian; it is very hard, my lady, to stop a child's innocent prattle. "'Papa, I wish to tell you something.' "'Tell me, Christian.' "'Mamma has a bad headache--such a bad, bad headache! I have been smoothing her forehead with my hand, but it will not go away for me. You cured my headache last week; come and cure mamma.' "And at another time: "'Papa, is not this beautiful?' "'Yes, Christian, it is very pretty.' "'Mamma painted it for me. Do you know, papa, she has painted me--yes, my portrait, and has put it in a book. It is exactly like--you could not tell it from me myself. Shall I ask her to give it to you--or will you come and ask for it yourself?' "With my lady it was the same. "'Mamma, papa has been writing all day long. I peeped through the window, and he looked so tired--just as you look sometimes. Now, mamma, tell me--do you think papa is happy?' "'Mamma, see what papa has given me--a musical-box! Only because I said to him I should like a musical-box! Is he not good?' "And so it went on day after day, week after week, but the child's eager, anxious love brought them no nearer to each other. "In the dark nights when the weather permitted, my lady walked in the grounds. At first I offered to accompany her, but she refused my company. "'I will walk alone, Denise.' "The servants used to say, as the moonlight fell on her white dress: "'She looks like a white ghost.' "And at other times: "'She is like a white shadow moving in the moon's light.' "Her husband was careful to keep out of her sight when she indulged in these lonely rambles. They would not make the slightest advance to each other. "I must not forget to tell you what occurred about a month after this estrangement. The duties of my attendance on my lady did not keep me with her during the night unless she was ill, and was likely to require my services. Generally I waited till I saw her abed and asleep. She retired early, and this afforded me an opportunity of looking after the room occupied by my husband and myself. "I remember that on this night I drew the blind aside after I was undressed, and looked toward my master's study. There were lights in the windows, as usual. I was not surprised, for Mr. Almer frequently sat up the whole night through. "I went to bed, and soon fell asleep. "Quite contrary to my usual habit, I woke up while it was dark, and heard the sound of the clock striking the hour. I counted the strokes, from one to twelve. It was midnight. "I was such a good sleeper--seldom waking till the morning, when it was time to get up--that I wondered to myself what it was that awoke me. The striking of the clock? Hardly--for that was no new sound. What, then? Gusts of wind were sweeping round the walls of the villa. 'Ah,' I thought, 'it was the wind that disturbed me;' and I settled myself for sleep again, when suddenly another sound--an unusual one this time--made me jump up in bed. The sound was like that of a heavy object jumping, or falling, from a height within the grounds. "'Can it be robbers,' I thought, 'who have climbed the gates, and missed their footing?' "The thought alarmed me, and I woke my husband, and told him what I had heard. He rose, and looked out of the window. "'Mr. Almer is up and awake,' said he. 'If there were any cause for alarm he would not be sitting quietly in his study, poring over his books. What you heard is the wind. Robbers, indeed! I pity the thief who tries to pass our dogs; he would be torn to pieces. There! let me get to sleep, and don't disturb me again with your foolish fancies; and get to sleep yourself as quick as you can. Now your head is stirring, you'll be imagining all sorts of things.' "That was all the satisfaction I could get out of him; the next moment he was fast asleep again. "It was no easy thing for me to follow his example. I lay thinking and thinking for an hour or more. I was glad my husband had mentioned the dogs; in my alarm I had forgotten them. Martin was quite right. Any stranger who attempted to pass them would have been torn to pieces. "Well, but there _was_ somebody walking on the gravelpaths! I heard soft footsteps crunching the stones, stepping cautiously, as though fearful of disturbing the people in the house. These sounds came to my ears between the gusts of wind, which were growing stronger and stronger. "I was on the point of rousing my husband again when it occurred to me that it might be my master, who, restless as usual, was walking about the grounds. "This explanation quieted me, and I was soon asleep. For how long I cannot say, for suddenly I found myself sitting up in bed, wide awake, listening to the wind, which was shaking the house to its foundations. And yet the impression was so strong upon me that it was not the storm that had frightened me, that I went to the window and looked out, expecting to see Heaven only knows what. Nothing was to be seen, and presently I reasoned myself out of my fears, and was not again disturbed during the night. "In the morning a strange discovery was made. A servant came running to me before I was dressed, with the information that our two dogs were dead. I hurried to the kennel and saw their bodies stretched out, cold and stiff. "Mr. Almer was very fond of these dogs, and I went to him and told him what had occurred. There was a strange, wild look in his eyes which I attributed to want of sleep. But stranger than this weary, wild expression was the smile on his lips when he heard the news. "He followed me to the kennel, and stooped down. "'They are quite dead, Denise,' he said. "'Yes, sir,' I said, 'but who could have done such a cruel thing?' "'The dogs have been poisoned,' he said, 'here is the meat that was thrown to them. There is still some white powder upon it.' "'Poisoned!' I cried. 'The wretches.' "'Whoever did this deed,' said my master, 'deserved to die. It is as bad as killing a human creature in cold blood.' "'Are you sure, sir,' I said, 'there has been nothing stolen from the house?' "'You can go and see, Denise.' "I made an examination of the rooms. Nothing had been taken from them. I tried the door of my master's study to examine that room also, but it was locked. When I returned my master was still kneeling by the dogs. "'It does not appear that anything has been taken,' I said, 'but the sounds I heard in the night prove that there have been robbers here.' "'What sounds did you hear?' asked my master, looking up. "I told him of my alarm, and of my waking my husband, and of my fancies. "'Fancies!' he said; 'yes--it could have been nothing but imagination. I have been up the whole night, and had there been an attempt at robbery, I must surely have known it. Were any of the other servants disturbed?" "'No, sir.' "I had already questioned them, but they had all slept soundly and had heard nothing. I had been also with my lady for a few moments, but she had not been disturbed during the night by anything but the howling of the wind. "'Let the matter rest,' said my master; 'it will be best. It is my wish that you do not speak of it. The dogs are dead, and nothing can restore them to life. Evil deeds carry their own punishment with them! The next time you are frightened by fancies in the night, and see a light in my study, you may be satisfied that all is well.' "So the dogs were buried, and no action was taken to punish their murderers; and in a little while the whole affair was forgotten." CHAPTER X CHRISTIAN ALMER'S CHILD-LIFE "The years went by in the lonely villa without any change, except that my lady grew into the habit of taking her walks in the grounds later in the night. Not a word was exchanged between her and her husband; had seas divided them they could not have been further apart from each other. "A dreadful, dreary monotony of days. The direction and control of the house was left entirely to me; my master took not the slightest interest in what was going on. I should have asked to be relieved from the service, had it not been for my affection for my mistress. To live with her--as I did for years, attending upon her daily--without loving her was not possible. Her gentleness, her resignation, her resolution, her patience, were almost beyond belief with those who were not constant witnesses of her lonely, blameless, suffering life. "She never wrote or received a letter. She severed herself entirely from the world, and these rooms were her living grave. "She loved her child, but she did not give way to any violent demonstration of feeling. I observed, as the lad grew up, that he became more and more perplexed by the relations which existed between his parents. Had one or the other been unkind to him, he might have been able to put a reasonable construction upon the estrangement, but they were equally affectionate, equally tender towards him. He continued to exercise the prettiest cunning to bring them together, but without avail. Without avail, also, the entreaties he used. "'Mamma, the sun is shining beautifully. Do come out with me and speak to papa. Do, mamma, do! See, he is walking in the garden.' "'Mamma, may I bring papa into your room? Say yes. I am sure he would be glad.' "'Papa, mamma is really very ill. I do so wish you would see her and speak to her! There, papa, I have hold of your hand. Come, papa, come!' "It was heart-breaking to hear the lad, who loved both, who received love from both. "'Mamma,' he said, 'are you rich?' "'In what way, dear child?' she asked, I have no doubt wondering at his question; 'in money? Do you mean that?' "'Yes, mamma, I mean that.' "'We are not in want of money, Christian.' "'Then you can buy whatever you want, mamma.' "'I want very little, Christian.' "'But if you wanted a great deal,' he persisted, 'you have money to pay for it?' "'Yes, Christian.' "'And papa, too?' "'Yes, and papa too.' "'I can't make it out,' he said. 'Yesterday, I saw a poor little girl crying. I asked her what she was crying for, and she said her mamma was in great trouble because they had no money. I asked her if money would make her mamma happy, and she said yes. Then why does it not make you happy?' "'Would you like some money, Christian,' said my lady, 'to give to this poor girl's mamma?' "'Yes, mamma.' "Here is my purse. Denise will go with you at once.' "We went to the cottage, and found that the family were in deep distress. The father was in arrears with his rent, having been unable to work, through illness, for a good many weeks; he was now strong enough to return to his employment, but he was plunged into such difficulties that all his courage had deserted him. The mother was weak with overpowering anxiety, and the children were in want of food. "I saw that the family were deserving of assistance, and I directed Master Christian what to give them. He visited them daily for a week and more, and the roses came back to the children's cheeks, and the hearts of the father and mother were filled with hope and gladness. "'Mamma,' said Master Christian, 'you have no idea how happy they are--and all because I gave them a little money. They play and sing together--yes, mamma, all of them; it is beautiful to see them. They call me their good angel.' "'I am very glad you have made them happy, my dear,' said my lady. "'Mamma, they are happy because they love each other, and because they laugh and sing together. Let me be your good angel, mamma, and papa's. Tell me what to do, so that we may live like those poor people!' "These were hard things for parents to hear, and harder because no answers could be given to them. "We went out for a stroll every fine day for an hour or so, and when Master Christian saw a child walking between father and mother, who smiled at each other and their little one, and spoke pleasantly and kindly one to the other, his eyes would fill with tears. He would peep through cottage windows--nay, he would go into the cottages, where he was always welcome, and would furnish himself with proofs of domestic happiness which never gladdened his heart in his own home. With scanty food, with ragged clothes, the common peasant children were enjoying what was denied to him. "He had one especial friend, a delicate child, who at length was laid on a bed of sickness from which he never rose. Master Christian, for a few weeks before this child died, visited him daily in my company, and took the poor little fellow many comforting things, for which the humble family were very grateful. My young master would stand by the bedside of the sick child, and witness, in silent pain, the evidences of paternal love which lightened the load of the little sufferer. "The day before the child died we approached the cottage, and Master Christian peeped through the window. The child was dying, and by his bedside sat the sorrowing parents. The man's arm was round the woman's waist, and her head was resting on her husband's shoulder. We entered the cottage, and remained an hour, and as we walked home Master Christian said: "'If I were dying, would my mamma and papa sit like that?' "I could find no words to answer this question, which showed what was passing in Master Christian's mind. "'Cannot you tell me,' said Master Christian, 'whether my rich parents would do for me what that little boy's poor parents are doing for him? It is so very much, Denise--so very, very much! It is more than money, for money is no use in Heaven, where he is going to. I wish my mamma and papa had been poor; then they would have lived together and have loved each other. Denise, tell me what it all means.' "'Hush, Master Christian,' I said, trying to soothe him, for his little bosom was swelling with grief. 'When you are a man you will understand.' "'I want to understand now--I want to understand now!' he cried. 'There is something very wicked about our house. I hate it--I hate it!' "And he stamped his foot, and broke into a fit of sobbing so charged with sorrow that I could not help sobbing with him. "Something of this must have reached his parents' ears, and how they suffered only themselves could have known. My master grew thin and wan; dark circles came round his eyes, and they often had a wild look in them which made me fear he was losing his senses. And my lady drooped and drooped, like a flower planted in unwholesome soil. Paler and quieter she grew every day; sweeter and more resigned, if that were possible, with every setting of the sun; so weak at last that she could not take her walk in the grounds. "Sitting by the window, looking at the lovely sky, she said to me one peaceful evening: "'I shall soon be there, Denise.' "'Oh, my lady!' was all I could say. "'It rejoices me to think,' she said, 'that this long agony is coming to an end. I pray that the dear child I shall leave behind me will not suffer as I have suffered, that his life may be happy, and his end be peaceful. Denise, my mother is in that invisible spirit-land to which I am going. When she sees me coming, will she not be frightened to meet me? for, if it had not been for her, all this misery would have been averted.' "'My lady,' I said--so saint-like was her appearance that I could have knelt to her, 'let me go to my master and bring him to you.' "'He would not come,' she said, 'at your bidding, Denise. Has he not been often entreated by our child?' "Believing that this was a sign of relenting on her part, I said: "'He knows that I dare not deceive him. He will come if I say you sent for him.' "'Perhaps, perhaps,' she said; 'but I would not have him come yet. When I summon him here he will not refuse me.' "'You will send for him one day, my lady?' "'Yes, Denise, unless I die suddenly in my sleep--an end I have often prayed for. But this great blessing may be denied to me.' "Ah, how sad were the days! It fills me with grief, even now, to speak of them. All kinds of strange notions entered my head during that time. I used to think it would be a mercy if a terrible flood were to come, or if someone would set fire to the villa. It would bring these two unhappy beings together for a few minutes at least. But nothing happened; the days were all alike, except that I saw very plainly that my lady could not live through another summer. She was fading away before my eyes. "The end came at last, when Master Christian was nearly nine years old." CHAPTER XI BEATRICE ALMER GIVES A PROMISE TO HER SON "It was a spring morning, and my lady was alone. Master Christian was in the woods with his father; he was to be home at noon, and my lady was watching for him at her window. "Exactly at noon the lad returned, beaming with delight; the hours he spent with his father were memorable hours in his life. "'You have enjoyed yourself, Christian,' said my lady, drawing her boy to her side, and smoothing his hair. 'It does you good to go out with papa.' "'Yes, mamma,' said the lad, in his eager, excited voice. 'There is no one in the world like papa--no man, I mean. He knows everything--yes, mamma, everything! There isn't a thing you ask him that he can't tell you all about it. We have had such a beautiful walk; the forests are full of birds and squirrels. Papa knows the name of every bird and flower. See, mamma, all these are wild flowers--papa helped me to gather them, and showed me where some of the prettiest are to be found. You should hear him talk about the flowers! He has told me such wonderful, wonderful things about them! I believe they live, as we do, and that they have a language of their own. Papa smiled when I said I thought the flowers were alive, and he told me that the world was full of the loveliest mysteries, and that, although men thought themselves very wise, they really knew very little. Perhaps it is so--with all men but papa. It is because he isn't vain and proud that he doesn't set himself above other men. In the middle of the woods papa stopped and said, as he waved his hand around, "This, Christian, is Nature's book. Not all the wisdom of all the men in all the world could write one line of it. That little bird flying in the air to the nest which it has built for its young, and which is so small that I could hold it in the palm of my hand, is in itself a greater and more marvellous work than the united wisdom of all mankind shall ever be able to produce." There, mamma, you would hardly believe that I should remember papa's words; but I repeated them to myself over and over again as we walked along--they sounded so wonderful! Mamma, are there flowers in heaven?' "'Yes, my dear,' she answered, gazing upwards, 'forever blooming.' "'Then it is always summer there, mamma?' "'Yes, dear child--it is the better land on which we dwell in hope. Peace is there, and love.' "'We shall all go there, mamma?' "'Yes, dear child--one day.' "'And shall live there in peace and love?' "'Yes, Christian.' "'Mamma,' said the child solemnly, 'I shall be glad when the day comes on which you and papa and I shall be together there, in peace and love. Mamma, you are crying. I have not hurt you, have I?' "'No, dear child, no. To hear you speak gives me great joy.' "'Ah, but I can't speak like papa. He has told me of that better world, and though I can't understand all he says, I know it must be very beautiful. Papa is a good man. I love him more than any other man--and I love you, mamma, better than any other woman. Papa is a good man, is he not, mamma?' "'Yes, my child,' said my lady, 'your father is a good and a just man.' "My heart leapt into my throat as I heard her speak these words of her husband. Was it possible that this dreadful estrangement was to end, and that my master and his wife would at length be reconciled, after all these weary years? "My lady was lying back in her chair, gazing now at her boy, now at the bright clouds which were floating in the heavens. Ah, my lady, if we were but to follow God's teaching, and learn the lessons He sends us every day and every hour, how much unhappiness should we be spared! But it seems as if there was a wicked spirit within us which is continually dropping poison into the fairest things, for the mere pleasure of destroying their beauty and making us wretched. "There was an angelic expression on my lady's face as she encouraged her boy to speak of his father. "'I have often wished to tell you,' said Master Christian, 'that papa is not strong--not as strong as I am. He soon gets tired, while I can run about all day. This morning he often stopped to rest, and once he threw himself upon the ground, and fell fast asleep. I sat by his side and listened to the birds, who were all so happy, while papa's face was filled with pain. Yes, mamma, he was in great pain, and he sighed, oh, so heavily! as though sleep was hurting him instead of doing him good. And he spoke in his sleep, and his words made me tremble. "I call God to witness"--that was what he said, mamma--"I call God to witness that there was in my mind no design to do wrong." And then he said something about sin and sorrow springing from the flower of innocence. A bird was flying near us, stopping to look at us, and not at all frightened, because I was so very, very quiet. "Little bird," I whispered, "that my father could hold in the palm of his hand, do you know what he is dreaming of, and will you, because he is my father and a good man, do something to make him happy?" Oh, mamma, the bird at that very moment began to sing, and papa smiled in his sleep, and all the pain in his face disappeared. That bird, mamma, was a fairy-bird, and knew that papa ought not to suffer. And presently papa awoke, and folded me tight in his arms, and we sat there quite still, for a long, long time, listening to the singing of the bird. Oh, mamma, mamma! why will you not love papa as I do?' "Who could resist such pleading? My lady could not. "'My child,' she said, 'I will send for papa to-morrow.' "'You will--you will!' cried the child. 'Oh, how glad I am! Papa will be here to-morrow, and we shall live together as poor people do, and be happy, as they are!' He sprang from her side, ready to fly out of the room. 'Shall I go and tell papa now? Yes, I may, I may--say that I may, mamma!' "'Not till to-morrow, Christian. Come and sit quietly by me, and talk to me.' "He obeyed her, though it was difficult for him to control himself, his joy was so great. He devised numberless schemes in which he and his parents were to take part. They were to go here, and to go there--always together. His friends were to be their friends, and they were to share each other's pleasures. Rambles in the woods, hunting for wild flowers, visits to poor cottages--he planned all these things in the delight of his heart. "So they passed the day, the mother and child, and when night came he begged again to be allowed to go to his father and tell him what was in store for him. But my lady was firm. "'No, Christian,' she said, 'you must wait yet for a few hours. They will soon pass away. You are tired, dear child. Go to bed and sleep well.' "Good mamma! beautiful mamma!' said the lad, caressing his mother and stroking her face. 'I shall dream all night long of to-morrow!' "She never kissed her child with deeper tenderness than she did on this night. He knelt at her knees and said his prayers, and of his own accord ended with the words: 'And make my papa and my mamma love each other to-morrow!' "'Good-night, dear child.' "'Good-night, dear mamma. I want to-morrow to come quickly. Good-night, Denise.' "'Good-night, Master Christian.' "In a few minutes he was asleep. Then my lady called me to her, and spoke gratefully of the manner in which I had performed my services to her. "'You have been a good and faithful servant to me,' she said, 'and you have helped to comfort me. Your duties have been difficult, and you have performed them well.' "'My lady,' I said sobbing; I could not keep back my tears, she was so gracious and sweet. 'I have done nothing to deserve such thanks. If what you have said to Master Christian comes true I shall be very happy. Forgive me for asking, but is it really true that you will send for my master to-morrow?' "'It will be so, Denise, unless God in His mercy takes me to-night. We are in His hands, and I wait for His summons. His will be done! Denise, wear this cross in remembrance of me. I kiss it before I give it to you--and I kiss you, Denise!' "And as she put the cross round my neck, which she took from her own, she kissed me on the lips. Her touch was like an angel's touch. "Then she said, pointing to the posy which had been gathered in the woods by her husband and her child: "'Give me those flowers, you faithful woman.' "Do not think me vain or proud for repeating the words she spoke to me. They were very, very precious to me, and the sweetness has not died out of them, though she who uttered them is dust. "I gave her the flowers, and she held them to her heart, and encouraged me to sit with her later than usual. Two or three times in the midst of our conversation, she asked me to go to Master Christian's room to see if he was asleep, and when I told her he was sleeping beautifully, and that he looked like an angel, she smiled, and thanked me. "'He will grow into a noble man,' she said, 'and will, I trust, think of me with tenderness. I often look forward and wonder what his life will be.' "'A happy one, I am sure,' I said. "'I pray that it may be so, and that he will meet with a woman who will truly and faithfully love him.' "Then she asked me if there was a light in her husband's study, and going out into the balcony to look, I said there was, and said, moreover, that my master often sat up the whole night through, reading and studying. "'You have been in his service a long time, Denise,' said my lady. "'Yes, my lady. I was born in this house, and my mother lived and died here.' "'Was your master always a student, Denise?' "Always, my lady. Even when he was a boy he would shut himself up with his books. He is not like other men. From his youngest days we used to speak of him with wonder.' "'He is very learned,' said my lady. 'How shall one be forgiven for breaking up his life?' "'Ah, my lady,' I said, 'if I dared to speak!' "'Speak freely, Denise!' "And then I described to her what a favourite my master was when he was a lad, and how everybody admired him, although he held himself aloof from people. I spoke of his gentleness, of his kindness, of his goodness to the poor, whom he used to visit and help in secret. I told her that never did woman have a more faithful and devoted lover than my master was to her, nor a man with a nobler heart, nor one who stood more highly in the world's esteem. "She listened in silence, and did not chide me for my boldness, and when I was done, she said she would retire to rest. But she was so weak that she could scarcely rise from her chair. "'I had best remain with you to-night, my lady,' I said; 'you may need my services.' "'It is not necessary," she said; 'I shall require nothing, and I shall be better to-morrow.' "I considered it my duty to make my master acquainted with his wife's condition, but I did not tell him of her intention to ask him to come to her to-morrow for fear that she should alter her mind. There had been disappointment and vexation enough in the house, and I would not add to it. "I could not rest, I was so anxious about my lady, and an hour after I was abed, I rose and dressed myself and went to her room. She was on her knees, praying by the bedside of her child, and I stole softly away without disturbing her. "Again, later in the night, I went to her room. She was sleeping calmly, but her breathing was so light that I could scarcely hear it. In the morning I helped her to dress, and afterwards assisted her to her favourite seat by the window. "Master Christian was already up and about, and shortly after his mother was dressed he came in loaded with flowers, to make the room look beautiful, he said, on this happy day. "It was a day he was never to forget." CHAPTER XII THE LAST MEETING BETWEEN HUSBAND AND WIFE "The morning passed, and my lady made no sign. Master Christian, flitting restlessly in and out and about the room, waited impatiently for his mother's instructions to bring her husband to her. I offered her food, but she could not eat it. On the previous day the doctor, who regularly attended her, had said that his services were required at a great distance from the villa, and that he should not be able to visit my lady on the morrow. She had replied: "'Do not trouble, doctor; you can do nothing for me.' "And, indeed, there appeared to be no special necessity for his presence. My lady was not in pain; she looked happy and contented. But she was so quiet, so very, very quiet! Not a word of complaint or suffering, not a moan, not a sigh. Why, therefore, did my heart sink as I gazed at her? "At length Master Christian was compelled to speak; he could no longer control his impatience. "'Mamma, do you like the way I have arranged the flowers? The room looks pretty, does it not?' "'Yes, my child.' "'I wanted it to look very bright to-day. So did you, did you not, mamma? Papa will be pleased when he comes.' "'I hope so, my dear.' "'And I shall tell him that it is not so every day, and that it is done for him. Shall I go for him now?' "'Presently, my dear. Wait yet a little while.' "'But, mamma, it was to be to-day, you know, and it is nearly afternoon. Just look at the clock, mamma, it is nearly two---- Ah, but you are tired, and I am worrying you! Now I will sit quite still, and when the clock strikes two, you shall tell me to go for papa. Say yes, or look it, mamma.' "'Yes, my dear, at two o'clock you shall go. Denise will accompany you, for perhaps, Christian, your papa will think that the message comes from your affectionate heart, and not from me.' "'That,' said Master Christian,' is because I have tried to bring papa to you before. But I did it out of love, mamma.' "'I know, my dear, I know. If, when you were a little baby, and could not speak or think of things, I had reflected, it might all have been different. Perhaps I have been to blame.' "'No, mamma, you shall not say that; I will not let you say that. You can't do anything wrong, and papa can't do anything wrong. Now I shall be quite still, and watch the clock, and I will not say another word till it strikes.' "He sat, as he had promised, quite still, with his eyes fixed on the clock, and I saw by the motion of his lips that he was counting the seconds. Slowly, oh, so slowly, the hands moved round till they reached the hour, and then the silver chimes were heard. First, the four divisions of the hour, then the hour itself. One, Two. In my ears it was like the chapel bell calling the people to prayer. "'Now, mamma!' cried Master Christian, starting up. "She took his pretty face between her hands, and drew it close to hers. She kissed his lips and his forehead, and then her hands fell to her side. "'May I go now, mamma?' "He saw in her eyes that she was willing he should bring his father, and he embraced her joyfully, and ran out of the room crying: "'Come, Denise, come! Papa, papa!' "He did not wait for me, and when I arrived at the study door, the father and son were standing together, and Master Christian was trying to pull my master along. "'This little fellow here,' said my master, striving to speak cheerfully, but his lips trembled, and his voice was husky, 'has a strong imagination, and his heart is so full of love that it runs away with his tongue.' "'It does not, papa, it does not,' cried Master Christian very earnestly. 'And it is not imagination. Mamma wants you to come and love her.' "My master turned his enquiring eyes to my face. "'My lady wishes you to come to her, sir,' I said simply. "I knew that the fewer words I spoke at such a time the better it would be. "He did not question me. He was satisfied that I spoke the truth. "His agitation was great, and he walked a few steps from me, holding Master Christian by the hand, and then stood still for quite a minute. Then he stooped and kissed his son, and suffered himself to be led to my lady's room. "I followed them at a little distance, and remained outside my lady's room, while they entered and closed the door behind them. It was not right that any eyes but theirs should witness so sacred a meeting; but though I denied myself the pleasure of being present, my heart was in my ears. It was proper that I should be within call. In my lady's weak state, my services might be required. "From where I stood, I heard Master Christian's eager, happy voice: "'Mamma, mamma--here is papa! He is come at last, mamma! Speak to him, and love him, as I do! Papa, put your arms around mamma's neck, and kiss her.' "Then all was quiet--so quiet, so quiet! Not a sound, not a breath. Ah, Holy Mother! I can _hear_ the silence now:--I can _feel_ it about me! It was in this very room, and my lady was sitting in the chair in which you are seated. "Suddenly the silence was broken. My master was calling loudly for me. "'Denise--Denise! Where are you? Come quickly, for God's sake!' "Before the words were out of his lips, I was in the room. My master was looking wildly upon his wife and child. The lad, with his arms about his mother, was kissing her passionately, and crying over her. "'Mamma, mamma! why do you not speak? Here is papa waiting for you. Oh, mamma, say only one word!' "'Is it true,' my master whispered to me, 'that your lady sent you for me?' "'It is true, sir,' I replied in a low tone. "'What, then, is the meaning of this?' he asked, still in the same unnatural whisper. 'I have spoken to her--she will not answer me. She will not even look at me!' "A sudden fear smote my heart. I stepped softly to my lady's side. I gently unwound Master Christian's arms from his mother's neck. I took her hand in mine, and pressed it. The pressure was not returned. Her fingers, though still warm, were motionless. "'What is it, Denise?' my master asked hoarsely. 'The truth--the truth!' "He read the answer in my eyes. We were gazing on the face of a dead woman! "Yes, she was dead, and no word had been exchanged between them--no look of affection--no token of forgiveness. How truly, how prophetically, had she spoken to her husband in their last interview on this spot, eight years before! 'After this night I will never open my lips to you, nor, willingly, will I ever again listen to your voice!' "From that hour to this he had never heard the sound of her voice, and now that, after their long agony--for there is no doubt that his sufferings were as great as hers--she had summoned him to her, she was dead! Ah, if she had only lived to say: "'Mine was the fault; it was not only I who was betrayed; let there be peace and forgiveness between us!' "Did she know, when she called him to her, that he would look upon her dead face? Could she so measure her moments upon earth as to be certain that her heart would cease to beat as he entered the room at her bidding? No, it could not have been, for this premeditation would have proclaimed her capable of vindictive passion. She was full of tender feeling and sweet compassion, and the influence of her child _must_ have softened her heart towards the man who had loved and married her, and had done her no wrong. "That she knew she was dying was certain, and she was willing--nay more than willing, wishful to forgive and to ask forgiveness as she stood upon the brink of another world. The sight of his worn and wasted face may have shocked her and caused her sudden death. But it remained a mystery whether she had seen him--whether her spirit had not taken flight before her husband presented himself to her. It was a question none could answer. "I am aware that there are people who would say that my lady deliberately designed this last bitter blow to her husband. My master did not think so. When the first shock of his grief was spent, his face expressed nothing but sorrow and compassion. He kissed her once--on her forehead, not on her lips--and after her eyes were closed and she lay, white and beautiful, upon her bed, he sat by her side the whole of the day and night--for a great part of the time with Master Christian in his arms. "There were those in the villa who declared that on the night of her death the white shadow of my lady was seen gliding about the grounds, and from that day the place was supposed to be haunted. For my own part I knew that these were foolish fancies, but you cannot reason people out of them. "The next day my master made preparations for the funeral. His strange manner of conducting it strengthened the superstition. He would not have any of his old friends at the funeral, although many wrote to him. Only himself and Master Christian and the servants followed my lady to her grave. He would not allow any black crape to be worn, and all the female servants of the house were dressed in white. "It caused a great deal of talk, a good many people saying that it was a sinful proceeding on the part of my master, and that it was a sign of joy at his wife's death. They must have been blind to the grief in his face--so plainly written there that the tears came to my eyes as I looked at it--when they uttered this slander. And yet, if the truth were told, if it were deeply searched for among the ashes in his heart, it is not unlikely that my master was sorrowfully grateful that his wife's martyrdom was at an end. For her sake, not for his own, did he experience this sad feeling of gratitude. It was entirely in accordance with his stern sense of justice--in the exercise of which he was least likely to spare himself of all people in the world--that, while he was bowed down to the earth in grief, he should be glad that his wife was dead. "All kinds of rumours were afloat concerning the house and the family. The gossips declared that on certain nights the grounds were filled with white shadows, mournfully following each other in a long funeral train. That is how the villa grew to be called The House of Shadows. "It was like a tomb. Not a person was permitted to pass the gates. Not a servant could be prevailed upon to stop. All of them left, with the exception of Martin and myself, and my daughter, Dionetta's mother. Dionetta was not born at the time. We were glad to take Fritz the Fool into the place, to run of errands and do odd jobs. He was a young lad then, an orphan, and has been hanging about ever since. But for all the good he is, he might as well be at the other end of the world. "The rumours spread into distant quarters, and one day a priest, who had travelled scores of miles for the purpose of seeing my master, presented himself at the gates, which were always kept locked by my master's orders. I asked the priest what he wanted, and he said he must speak to Mr. Almer. I told him that no person was admitted, and that my master would see none, but he insisted that I should give his errand. I did so, and my master accompanied me to the gates. "'You have received your answer from my servant,' said my master. 'Why do you persist in your attempts to force yourself upon me?' "'My errand is a solemn one,' said the priest; 'I am bidden by Heaven to come to you.' "My master smiled scornfully. 'What deeds in my life,' he said, 'I shall be called upon to answer for before a divine tribunal, concern me, and me only. Were you an officer of justice you should be admitted; but you are a priest, and I do not need you. I am my own priest. Begone.' "He was importunate, and was not so easily got rid of. Day after day, for two weeks, he made his appearance at the gates, but he could not obtain admittance, and at length he was compelled to forego his mission, whatever it might have been, and to leave without having any further speech with my master. "Soon after he left, my master took Master Christian to school, at a great distance from the village, and returning alone, resumed his solitary habits. "How well do I remember the evening on which he desired me not to disturb him on any account whatever, and to come to his study at four o'clock on the afternoon of the following day. At that hour, I knocked at the door, and received no answer. I knocked several times, and, becoming alarmed, tried the handle of the door. It was unlocked, and I stepped into the study, and said: "'It is I, sir, Denise; you bade me come at this hour.' "I spoke to deaf ears. On the floor lay my master stone dead! "He had not killed himself; he died a natural death, and must have been forewarned that his moments on earth were numbered. "That is all I have to tell, my lady." CHAPTER XIII THE ARRIVAL OF CHRISTIAN ALMER "And you have really told it very well, Mother Denise," said the Advocate's wife; "with such sentiment, and in such beautiful language! It is a great talent: I don't know when I have been so interested. Why, in some parts you actually gave me the creeps! And here is Dionetta, as white as a lily. What a comfort it must have been to the poor lady to have had a good soul like you about her! If such a misfortune happened to me, I should like to have just such a servant as you were to her." "Heaven forbid, my lady," said Mother Denise, raising her hands, "that such an unhappy lot should be yours!" "Well, to tell you the truth," said Adelaide, with a bright smile, "I do not think it at all likely to happen. Of course, there is no telling what one might have to go through. Men are such strange creatures, and lead such strange lives! They may do anything--absolutely anything!--fight, gamble, make love without the least sincerity, deceive poor women and forsake them--yes, they may do all that, and the world will smile indulgently upon them. But if one of us, Mother Denise, makes the slightest trip, dear me! what a fuss is made about it--how shocked everybody is! A perfect carnival for the scandal-mongers! 'Isn't it altogether too dreadful.' 'Did you ever hear of such a thing?' 'Would you have believed it of her?' That is what is said by all sorts of people. But if _I_ happened to be treated badly I should not submit to it tamely--nor between you and me, Mother Denise, in my opinion, did the lady whose story you have just related." "Everything occurred," said Mother Denise stiffly, "exactly as I have described it." "With a small allowance," said Adelaide archly, "for exaggeration, and with here and there a chapter left out. Come, you must admit that!" "I have omitted nothing, my lady. I am angry with myself for having told so much. I doubt whether I have not done wrong." "Mr. Christian Almer, whom I expect every minute"--and Adelaide looked at her watch--"would have been seriously annoyed with you if you had not satisfied my curiosity. Where is the harm? To be living here, with such an interesting tale untold, would have been inexcusable, perfectly inexcusable. But I am certain that you have purposely passed over more than one chapter, and I admire you for it. It is highly to your credit not to have told all you know, though it could hurt no one at this distance of time." "What do you think I have concealed, my lady?" "There was a certain M. Gabriel," said Adelaide, "who played a most important part in the story--a good many people would say, the most important part. If it had not been for him, there would have been no story to tell worth the hearing; there would have been no quarrel between husband and wife, and the foolish young lady would not have died, and I should not be here, listening to her story, and ready to cry my eyes out in pity for her. M. Gabriel must have been a very handsome young fellow, or there would not have been such a fuss made about him. There! I declare you have never even given me a description of him. Of course he was handsome." She was full of vivacity, and as she leaned forward towards the old housekeeper, it appeared as if, in her estimation, nothing connected with the story she had heard was of so much importance as this question, which she repeated anxiously, "Tell me, Mother Denise, was he handsome?" "He was exceedingly good-looking," Mother Denise was constrained to reply, "but not so distinguished in his bearing as my unhappy master." "Tall?" "Yes, tall, my lady." "Dark or fair? But I think you gave me the impression that he was dark." "Yes, my lady, he was dark," replied Mother Denise, coldly, more and more displeased at the frivolity of the questions. "And young, of course--much younger than Mr. Almer?" "Much younger, my lady." "There would be no sense in the matter otherwise; anyone might guess that he was young and handsome and fascinating. Well, as I was about to say--I hope you will forgive me for flying off as I do; my head gets so full of ideas that they tumble over one another--all at once this M. Gabriel drops clean out of the story, and we hear nothing more of him. If there is one thing more inexplicable than another in the affair, it is that nothing more should be heard of M. Gabriel." "We live out of the gay world, my lady; far removed from it, I am happy to think. It is not at all strange that in this quiet village we should not know what became of him." "That is assuming that M. Gabriel went back into the gay world, as you call it, which is not such a bad place, I assure you, Mother Denise." "He could not have stopped in the village, my lady, without its being known." "Probably not; but, you dear old soul!" said Adelaide, her manner becoming more animated as that of Mother Denise became more frigid, "you dear old soul, they always come back! When lovers are dismissed, as M. Gabriel was, they always come back. They think they never will--they vow they never will--but they cannot help themselves. They are not their own masters. It is the story of the moth and the candle over again." "You mean, my lady," said Mother Denise, very gravely, "that M. Gabriel returned to the villa." "That is my meaning exactly. What else could he do?" "I will not say whether I am glad or sorry to disappoint you, my lady, but M. Gabriel, after the summer-house was barred up, never made his appearance again in the village." "Of course, under the circumstances, he could not show himself to everybody. It was necessary that he should be cautious. He had to come quietly--secretly, if you like." "He never came, my lady," said Mother Denise, with determination. "But he wrote, and sent his letters by a confidential messenger; he did that at least." "I told you, my lady, that while my poor mistress lived in these rooms she never received or wrote a letter." "If that is so, his letters to her must have been intercepted." "There were no letters," said Mother Denise, stubbornly. "There were," said Adelaide, smiling a reproof to Mother Denise. "I know the ways of men better than you do." "By whom, my lady, do you suppose these imaginary letters were intercepted?" "By her husband, of course, you dear, simple soul!" "Mr. Almer could not have been guilty of such an act." The Advocate's wife gazed admiringly at the housekeeper. "Dionetta," she exclaimed, "never be tempted to betray your mistress's secrets; take pattern by your grandmother." "She might do worse, my lady," said Mother Denise, still unbending. "Indeed she might. I am thinking of something. On the night you were aroused from your sleep, and heard the sound of a man falling to the ground----" "I only fancied it was a man, my lady; we never learnt the truth." "It was a man, and he climbed the wall. And he chose a dark and stormy night for his adventure. He was a brave fellow. I quite admire him." "Admire a thief!" exclaimed Mother Denise, in horror. "My dear old soul, you _must_ know it was not a thief. The house was not robbed, was it?" "No, my lady, nothing was taken; but what is the use of speaking of it?" "When once I get an idea into my head," said Adelaide, "it carries me along, whether I like it or not. So, then--some time after you heard a man falling or jumping from the wall, you heard the sound of someone walking in the paths outside. He was fearful of disturbing anyone in the house, and he trod very, very softly. I should have done just the same. Now can't you guess the name of that man?" "No, my lady, it was never discovered. He was a villain, whoever he was, to poison our dogs." "That was a small matter. What is the life of a dog--of a thousand dogs--when a man is in love?" "My lady!" cried Mother Denise. "What is it you are saying?" "Nothing will deter him," continued Adelaide, with an intense enjoyment of the old woman's uneasiness, "nothing will frighten him, if he is brave and earnest, as M. Gabriel was. You dear old soul, the man you heard in the grounds that night was M. Gabriel, and he came to see your mistress--perhaps to carry her off! This window is not very high; I could almost jump from it myself." Mother Denise pressed her hand to her side, as though to relieve a sudden pain; her face was white with a newly born apprehension. "Do you really believe, my lady," she asked in trembling tones, "that M. Gabriel would have dared to enter the grounds in the dead of night, like a thief, after what had occurred?" "I certainly believe it; it was the daring of a lover, not of a thief. Were any traces of blood discovered in the grounds?" "None were discovered; but if blood was spilt, the rain would have washed it away." "Or it could have been wiped away in the dark night!" "Is it possible," said Mother Denise under her breath, "that you can be right, and that my master and M. Gabriel met on that night!" "The most probable occurrence in the world," said Adelaide, with a pleasant smile. "What should have made your old master so anxious that you should not speak of the sounds you heard? He had a motive, depend upon it." Mother Denise, who had sunk into a chair in great agitation, suddenly rose, and said abruptly: "My lady, this is very painful to me. Will you allow me to go?" "Certainly; do not let me detain you a moment. I cannot express to you the obligations you have laid me under by relating the history of this house and family. There is nothing more to do in these rooms, I believe. How very, very pretty they look! We must do everything in our power to make the place pleasant to the young master who is coming. But I think I can promise he will be happy here." Not even Adelaide's smiles and good-humour could smooth Mother Denise's temper for the rest of the day. "Mark my words, Martin," she said to her husband, "something wrong will happen before the Advocate and his fine lady leave the villa. She has put such horrible ideas into my head! Ah, but I will not think of them; it is treason, rank treason! We shall rue the day she came among us." "Ha, ha!" chuckled the old man slyly. "You're jealous, Denise, you're jealous! She is the pleasantest lady, and the sweetest spoken, and the most generous, and the handsomest, for twenty miles round. The whole village is in love with her." "And you as well as the rest, I suppose," snapped Mother Denise. "I don't say that--I don't say that," piped Martin, with a childish laugh. "Never kiss and tell, Denise, never kiss and tell! If I was young and straight----" "But you're old and crooked," retorted Mother Denise, "and your mind's going, if it hasn't gone already. You grow sillier and sillier every day." A reproach the old man received with gleeful laughs and tiresome coughs. His worship of the beautiful lady was not to be lightly disturbed. "The sweetest and the handsomest!" he chuckled, as he hobbled away, at the rate of half a mile an hour. "I'd walk twenty mile to serve her--twenty mile--twenty mile!" "And this is actually the room," said Adelaide, walking about it, "in which that poor lady spent so many unhappy years! Her prison! Her grave! Dionetta, my pretty one, when the chance of happiness is offered to you, do not throw it away. Life is short. Enjoy it. A great many people moralise and preach, but if you were to see what they do, and put it in by the side of what they say, you would understand what fools those people must be who believe in their moralising and preaching. The persecuted lady whose story your grandmother has told us--what happiness did she enjoy in her life? None. Do you know why, Dionetta? Because it was life without love. Love is life's sunshine. Better to be dead than to live without it! Hark! Is not that a carriage driving up at the gates?" She ran swiftly from the room, down the stairs, into the grounds. The gates were thrown open. A young man, just alighted, came towards her. She ran forward to meet him, with outstretched hands, with face beaming with joy. He took her hands in his. "Welcome, Mr. Almer," she said aloud, so that those around her could hear her. "You have had a pleasant journey, I hope." And then, in a whisper, "Christian!" "Adelaide!" he said, in a tone as low as hers. "Now I am the happiest woman!" she murmured. "It is an eternity since I saw you. How could you have kept away from me so long?" _BOOK IV.--THE BATTLE WITH CONSCIENCE_ CHAPTER I LAWYER AND PRIEST It happened that certain persons had selected this evening as a suitable occasion for a friendly visit to the House of White Shadows; Jacob Hartrich, the banker, was one of these. The banker was accompanied by his wife, a handsome and dignified woman, and by his two daughters, whose personal attractions, enhanced by their father's wealth and their consequent expectations, would have created a sensation in fashionable circles. Although in his religious observances Jacob Hartrich was by no means orthodox, he did not consider himself less a true Jew on that account. It is recognised by the most intelligent and liberal-minded of his race in the civilised countries of the world that the carrying-out of the Mosaic law in its integrity would not only debar them from social relations, but would check their social advancement. It is a consequence of the recognition of this undoubted fact that the severe ordinances of the Jewish religion should become relaxed in their fulfilment. Jacob Hartrich was a member of this band of reformers, and though his conscience occasionally gave him a twinge, he was none the less devoted, in a curiously jealous and illogical spirit, to the faith of his forefathers, to which he clung with the greater tenacity because his daily habits compelled him to act, to some extent, in antagonism with the decrees they had laid down. Master Pierre Lamont was also at the villa. His bodily ailments were more severe than usual, and the jolting over the rough roads, as he was drawn from his house in his hand-carriage, had caused him excruciating suffering. He bore it with grins and grimaces, scorning to give pain an open triumph over him. Fritz was not by his side to amuse him with his humour; the Fool was at the court, on this last day of Gautran's trial, as he had been on every previous day, hastening thence every evening to Pierre Lamont, to give him an account of the day's proceedings. Father Capel was there--a simple and learned ecclesiastic, with a smile and a pleasant greeting for old and young, for rich and poor alike. A benevolent, sweet-natured man, who, when trouble came to his door, received it with cheerful resignation; universally beloved; a man whose course through life was strewn with flowers of charity and kindness. The visit of these and other guests was unexpected by Adelaide, and she inwardly resented the interruption to a contemplated quiet evening with Christian Almer; but outwardly she was all affability. The principal topic of conversation was the trial of Gautran, and Pierre Lamont was enthusiastic on the theme. "The trial will end this evening," he said, "and intellect will triumph." "Truth, I trust, will triumph," said Jacob Hartrich, gravely. "Intellect is truth's best champion," said Pierre Lamont. "But some mortals believe themselves to be omniscient, and set up a standard of truth which is independent of proof. I understood that you were to have been on the jury at the trial." "I was excused," said Jacob Hartrich, "on the ground that I had already formed so strong a view of the guilt of the prisoner that no testimony could affect it." "Decidedly," observed Pierre Lamont, "an unfit frame of mind to take part in a judicial inquiry of great difficulty. For my own part, I would willingly have given a year of my life, which cannot have too many years to run, to have been able to be in Geneva these last few days. It will be long before another trial so celebrated will take place in our courts." "I am happy to think so." "It has always been a puzzle to me," said Adelaide, whose feelings towards Pierre Lamont were of the most contradictory character--now inclining her to be exceedingly partial to him, now to detest him--"how such vulgar cases can excite the interest they do." "It is surprising," was Pierre Lamont's comment, "that the wife of an Advocate so celebrated should express such an opinion." "There are stranger things than that in the world, Master Lamont." "Truly, truly," said Pierre Lamont, regarding her with curiosity; "but cannot you understand how even these vulgar cases become, at least for a time, great and grand when the highest qualities of the mind are engaged in unravelling the threads which bind them?" "No, I cannot understand it," she replied with an amiable smile. "I believe that you lawyers are only happy when people are murdering and robbing each other." "My friend the Advocate," said Pierre Lamont, bending gallantly, an exertion which sent a twinge of pain through his body, "is at least happy in one other respect--that of being the husband of a lady whom none can see without admiring--if I were a younger man I should say without loving." "Pierre Lamont," said Jacob Hartrich, "gives us here a proof that love and law can go hand in hand." "Nay," said Pierre Lamont, whose eyes and mind were industriously studying the face of his beautiful hostess, "such proof from me is not needed. The Advocate has supplied it, and words cannot strengthen the case." And he waved his hand courteously towards Adelaide. These compliments were not wasted upon her, and Pierre Lamont laughed secretly as he observed their effect. "You are worth studying, fair dame," he thought, "with your smiling face, and your heart of vanity, and your lack of sympathy with your husband's triumphs. If not with his triumphs, then not with him! Feeling you _must_ have, though it is born of selfishness. Ah! the curtain is drawn aside. Which one, which one, you beautiful animal?" His eyes travelled from one to the other in the room, until they fell upon Christian Almer, whose eyes at that moment met those of Adelaide. "Ah!" and he drew a deep breath of enjoyment. "Are you the favoured one, my master of this House of Shadows! Then we must take you into the game, for it cannot be played without you." The old lawyer was in his element, probing character and motive, and submitting them to mental analysis. Physically he was helpless amidst the animated life around him; curled up in his invalid chair he was dependent for every movement upon his fellow-creatures; despite his intellect, he was at the mercy of a hind; but he was nevertheless the strongest man in all that throng, the man most to be feared by those who had anything to conceal, any secret which it behoved them to hide from the knowledge of men. "How such vulgar cases," he said aloud, to the astonishment of the Advocate's wife, who deemed the subject dismissed, "can excite the interest they do! It surprises you. But there is not one of these cases which does not contain elements of human sympathy and affinity with ourselves. This very case of Gautran--what is its leading feature? Love--the theme of minstrel and poet, the sentiment without which human and divine affairs would be plunged into darkness. Crimes for which Gautran is being tried are caused by the human passions and emotions which direct our own movements. The balance in our favour is so heavy when our desires and wishes clash with the desires and wishes of other men, that we easily find justification for our misdeeds. Father Capel is listening to me with more than ordinary attention. He perceives the justice of my argument." "We travel by different roads," said Father Capel. "You do not take into account the prompting of evil spirits, ever on the alert to promote discord and instigate to crime. It is that consideration which makes me tolerant of human error, which makes me pity it, which makes me forgive it." "I dispute your spiritual basis. All motive for crime springs from within ourselves." "Nay, nay," gently remonstrated Father Capel. "Pardon me for restraining you. I was about to say that not only does all motive for human crime spring from within ourselves, but all motive for human goodness as well. If your thesis that evil spirits prompt us to crime is correct, it must be equally correct that good spirits prompt us to deeds of mercy, and charity, and kindness. Then there is no merit in performing a good action. You rob life of its grace, and you virtually declare that it is an injustice to punish a man for murdering his fellow-creature. Plainly stated, you establish the doctrine of irresponsibility. I will not do you the injustice of believing that you are in earnest. Your tolerance of human error, and your pity and forgiveness for it, spring from natural kindliness, as my tolerance of it, and my lack of pity and forgiveness for it, spring from a natural hardness of heart, begot of much study of the weakness, perverseness, and selfishness of my species. In the rank soil of these imperfections grows that wondrous, necessary tree known by the name of Law, whose wide-spreading branches at once smite and protect. You may thank this tree for preserving to some extent the decencies of society." "Well expressed, Pierre Lamont," said Jacob Hartrich approvingly. "I regret that the Advocate is not present to listen to your eloquence." "Ah," said Pierre Lamont, with a scarcely perceptible sneer, "does your endorsement spring from judgment or self-interest?" "You strike both friend and foe," said Father Capel, with much gentleness. "It is as dangerous to agree with you as to dissent from you. But in your extravagant laudation of the profession of which you are a representative you lose sight of a mightier engine than Law, towering far above it in usefulness, and as a protection, no less than a solace to mankind. Without Religion, Law would be powerless, and the world a world of wild beasts. It softens, humanizes----" "Invents," sneered Pierre Lamont, with undisguised contempt, "fables which sober reason rejects." "If you will have it so, yes. Fables to divert men's minds from sordid materialism into purer channels. Be thankful for Religion if you practise it not. In the Sabbath's holy peace, in the hush and calm of one day out of the turbulent seven, in the influences which touch you closely, though you do not acknowledge them, in the restraint imposed by fear, in the charitable feelings inspired by love, in the unseen spirit which softens and subdues, in the yearning hope which chastens grief when one dear to you is lost, lie the safeguard of your days and much of the happiness you enjoy. So much for your body. For your soul, I will pray to-night." "Father Capel," said Pierre Lamont in a voice of honey, "if all priests were like you, I would wear a hair-shirt to-morrow." "What need, my son," asked Father Capel, "if you have a conscience?" "Let me pay for my sins," said Pierre Lamont, handing his purse to the priest. Father Capel took a few francs from the purse. "For the poor," he said. "In their name I bless you!" "The priest has the best of it," said Adelaide to Christian Almer. "I hate these dry arguments! It is altogether too bad that I should be called upon to entertain a set of musty old men. How much happier we should be, we two alone, even in the mountains where you have been hiding yourself from me!" "You are in better health and spirits," said Jacob Hartrich, drawing Almer aside, "than when I last saw you. The mountain air has done you good. It is strange to see you in the old house; I thought it would never be opened again to receive guests." "It is many years since we were together under this roof," said Christian Almer thoughtfully. "You were so young at the time," rejoined the banker, "that you can scarcely have a remembrance of it." "My remembrance is very keen. I could have been scarcely six years of age, and we had no visitors. I remember that my curiosity was excited because you were admitted." "I came on business," said Jacob Hartrich, and then, unwilling to revive the sad reminiscences of the young man's childhood, he said abruptly: "Almer, you should marry." His eyes wandered to his two comely daughters. "What is that you are saying?" interposed the Advocate's wife; "that Mr. Almer should marry? If I were a man--how I wish I were!--nothing, nothing in the world would tempt me to marry. I would live a life without chain or shackle." "So, so, my fair dame," thought Pierre Lamont, who had overheard this remark. "Bright as you appear, there is a skeleton in your cupboard. Chains and shackles! But you are sufficiently self-willed to throw these off." And he said aloud: "Can you ascertain for me if Fritz the Fool has returned from Geneva?" "Certainly," replied Adelaide, and Dionetta being in the room, she sent her out to inquire. "If he has returned," said Pierre Lamont, "the trial is over. I miss the fool's nightly report of the proceedings, which he has given me regularly since the commencement of the inquiry." "If the trial is over," said Christian Almer, "the Advocate should be here." "You need not expect him so soon," said Pierre Lamont; "after such exertion as he has gone through, an hour's solitude is imperative. Besides, Fritz can travel faster than our slow-going horses; he is as fleet as a hare." "A favourite of yours, evidently." "I have the highest respect for him. This particular fool is the wisest fool in my acquaintance." Dionetta entered the room with Fritz at her heels. "Well, Fritz," called out Pierre Lamont, "is the trial over?" "Yes, Master Lamont, and we're ready for the next." "The verdict, Fritz, the verdict?" eagerly inquired Pierre Lamont, and everybody in the room listened anxiously for the reply. "If I were a bandy-legged man," said Fritz, ignoring the question, "I would hire some scoundrel to do a deed, so that you might be on one side and my lord the Advocate on the other. Then we should witness a fine battle of brains." "Come, Fritz--the verdict!" repeated Pierre Lamont impatiently. "On second thoughts," said Fritz quietly, "you would be no match for the greatest lawyer living. I would not have you on my side. It is as well that your pleading days are ended." "No fooling, Fritz. The verdict; Acquitted?" "What else? Washed white as driven snow." "I knew it would be so," cried the old lawyer triumphantly. "How was it received?" "The town is mad about it. The women are furious, and the men thunderstruck. You should have heard the speech! Such a thing was never known. Men's minds were twisted inside out, and the jury were convinced against their convictions. Why, Master Lamont, even Gautran himself for a few minutes believed himself to be innocent!" "Enough," said Christian Almer sternly. "Leave the room." Fritz darted a sharp look at the newly returned master, and with a low bow quitted the apartment. The next moment the Advocate made his appearance, and all eyes were turned towards him. CHAPTER II THE WHITE SHADOW He entered the room with a cloud upon his face. Gautran's horrible confession had deeply moved him, and, almost for the first time in his life, he found himself at fault. His heart was heavy, and his mind was troubled; but he had never yet lost his power of self-control, and the moment he saw his guests the mask fell over his features, and they assumed their usual tranquil expression. He greeted one and another with calmness and courtesy, leaving his wife and Christian Almer to the last. "I am happy to tell you, Adelaide," he said, "that the trial is over." "Oh, we have already had the news," she said coldly. "Fool Fritz has given us a glowing account of it, and the excitement the verdict created." "Did it create excitement?" he asked. "I was not aware of it." "I take no interest in such cases, as you are aware," she rejoined. "You knew the man was innocent, or you would not have defended him. It is a pity the monster is set free." "Last, but not least," said the Advocate, turning to Christian Almer, and cordially pressing his hand. "Welcome, and again welcome! You have come to stay?" Adelaide answered for him: "Certainly he has: I have his promise." "That is well," said the Advocate. "I am glad to see you looking so bright, Christian." "You have not derived much benefit from your holiday," said Christian Almer, gazing at the Advocate's pale face. "Was it wise to take upon yourself the weight of so harassing a trial?" "Do we always do what is wise?" asked the Advocate, with a smile in which there was no light. "But seldom, I should say," replied Almer. "I once had great faith in the power of Will; but I am beginning to believe that we are as completely slaves to independent forces as feathers in a fierce wind: driven this way or that in spite of ourselves. Not inward, but outward magnetism rules us. Perhaps the best plan is to submit without a struggle." "Of course it is," said Adelaide with a bright look, "if it is pleasant to submit. It is ridiculous to make one's head ache over things. I can teach you, in a word, a wiser lesson than either of you have ever learnt." "What is that word, Adelaide?" asked the Advocate. "Enjoy," she replied. "A butterfly's philosophy. What say you, Christian? Shall we follow the teaching of this Solon in petticoats?" "May I join you?" said Pierre Lamont, who had caused himself to be drawn to this group. "My infirmities make me a privileged person, and unless I thrust myself forward, I might be left to languish like a decrepit spider in a ruined web." "Ill-natured people," remarked Adelaide, "might say that your figure of speech is a dangerous one for a lawyer to employ." "Fairest of dames," said Pierre Lamont, "your arrows are sugar-tipped; there is no poison in them. Use me as your target, I beg. You put new life into this old frame." "The old school can teach the new," said Christian Almer. "You should open a class of gallantry, Master Lamont." "I! with my useless limbs! You mock me!" "He will not allow me to be angry with him," said Adelaide, smiling on the lawyer. Then Pierre Lamont drew the Advocate into a conversation on the trial which the Advocate would gladly have avoided, could he have done so without being considered guilty of a breach of courtesy. But Pierre Lamont was not a man to be denied, and the Advocate was fain to answer the questions put to him until the old lawyer was acquainted with every detail of the line of defence. "Excellent--excellent!" he exclaimed. "A masterstroke! You do not share my enthusiasm," he said, addressing Jacob Hartrich, who had stood silently by, listening to the conversation. "You have no understanding of the intense, the fierce delight of such a battle and such a victory." "The last word is not spoken here on earth," said Jacob Hartrich. "There is a higher tribunal." "Well said, my son," said Father Capel. "Son!" said Pierre Lamont to the banker, with a little scornful laugh. "Resent the familiarity, man of another faith." "Better any faith than none," warmly remarked Jacob Hartrich, cordially taking the hand which Father Capel held out to him. "Good! good! good!" cried Pierre Lamont. "I stand renounced by church and synagogue." "You are uncharitable only to yourself," said Father Capel. "I, for one, will not take you at your word." Pierre Lamont lowered his eyes. "You teach me humility," he said. "Profit by it," rejoined Father Capel. "You formed the opinion that Gautran was guilty," said Pierre Lamont to the banker. "Upon what evidence?" "Inward conviction," briefly replied Jacob Hartrich. "You, at least," said Pierre Lamont, turning his wily face to Father Capel, "although you look at human affairs through Divine light, have a respect for the law." "Undoubtedly," was the reply. "But this man of finance," said Pierre Lamont, "would destroy its very fabric when it clashes with his inward conviction. Argue with him, and your words fall against a steel wall, impenetrable to logic, reason, natural deduction, and even common sense--and behind this wall lurks a self-sufficient imp which he calls Inward Conviction. Useful enough, nay, necessary, in religion, for it needs no proof. Faith answers for all. Accept, and rest content. I congratulate you, Jacob Hartrich. But does it not occur to you that others, besides yourself, may have inward convictions antagonistic to yours, and that occasionally theirs may be the true conviction and yours the false? Our friend the Advocate, for instance. Do you think it barely possible that he would have undertaken the defence of Gautran unless he had an inward conviction, formed upon a sure foundation, that the man was innocent of the crime imputed to him?" It was with some indignation that Jacob Hartrich replied, "That a man of honour would voluntarily come forward as a defender under any conditions than that of the firmest belief in the prisoner's innocence is incredible." "We agree upon this point I am happy to know, and upon another--that in the profession to which I have the honour to belong, there are men whose actions are guided by the highest and finest principles, and whose motives spring from what I conceive to be the most ennobling of all impulse, a desire for justice." "Who can doubt it?" "How, then, stands the case as between you and my brother the Advocate? You have an inward conviction of Gautran's guilt--he an inward conviction of Gautran's innocence. Up to a certain time you and he are on an equality; your knowledge of the crime is derived from hearsay and newspaper reports. Upon that evidence you rest; you have your business to attend to--the value of money, the fluctuations of the Exchanges, the public movements which affect securities, in addition to the anxieties springing from your private transactions. The Advocate cannot afford to depend upon hearsay and the newspapers. It is his business to investigate, to unearth, to bring together the scattered bones and fit them one with another, to reason, to argue, to deduce. As all the powers of your mind are brought to bear upon your business, which is money, so all the powers of his mind are brought to bear upon his, which is Gautran, in connection with the crime of which he stands accused. His inward conviction of the man's innocence is strengthened no less by the facts which come to light than by the presumptive evidence he is enabled by his patience and application to bring forward in favour of his client. You and he are no longer on an equality. He is a man informed, you remain in ignorance. He has dissected the body, and all the arteries of the crime are exposed to his sight and judgment. You merely raise up a picture--a dark night, a river, a girl vainly struggling with her fate, a murderer (with veiled face) flying from the spot, or looking with brutal calmness upon his victim. That is the entire extent of your knowledge. You seize a brush--you throw light upon the darkness--you paint the river and the girl--you paint the portrait of the murderer, Gautran. All is clear to you. You have formed your own court of justice, imagination affords the proof, and prejudice is the judge. It is an easy and agreeable task to find the prisoner guilty. You are satisfied. You believe you have fulfilled a duty, whereas you have been but a stumbling-block in the path of justice." "Notwithstanding which," said Jacob Hartrich, who had thoroughly recovered his good humour, "I have as firm a conviction as ever in the guilt of Gautran the woodman." "Admonish this member of a stiff-necked race, Father Capel," said Pierre Lamont, "and tell him why reason was given to man." Earnest as the old lawyer was in the discussion, and apparently engaged in it to the exclusion of all other subjects, he had eyes and ears for everything that passed in the room. Retirement from the active practice of his profession had by no means rusted his powers; on the contrary, indeed, for it had developed in him a finer and more subtle capacity of observation. It gave him time, also, to devote himself to matters which, at an earlier period of his life, he would have considered trivial. Thus, when he moved in private circles, freed from larger duties, there lurked in him always a possible danger, and although he would not do mischief for mischief's sake, he was irresistibly drawn in its direction. The quality of his mind was such as to seek out for itself, and unerringly detect, human blemish. He was ready, when it was presented to him, to recognise personal goodness, but while he recognised he did not admire it. The good man was in his eyes a negative character, pithless, uninteresting; his dominant qualities, being on the surface, presented no field for study. He himself, as has already been seen, was not loth to bestow money in charity, but he was destitute of benevolence; his soul never glowed with pity, nor did the sight of suffering touch his heart. While goodness did not attract him, he took no interest in the profligate or dissolute. His magnet was of the Machiavellian type. Cunning, craft, duplicity, guile--here he was at home in his glory. As easy to throw him off the scent as a bloodhound. Chiefly on this occasion was his attention given to the Advocate's wife. Not a movement, not a gesture, not a varying shade of expression escaped him. Any person, noting his observance of her, would have detected in it nothing but admiration; and to this conclusion Adelaide herself--she knew when she was admired--was by no means averse. But his eye was upon her when she was not aware of it. "Have I not heard of a case," asked a guest of Pierre Lamont, "in which a lawyer defended a murderer, knowing him to be guilty?" "Yes," said Pierre Lamont, "there was such a case. The murder was a ruthless murder; the lawyer a man of great attainments. His speech to the court was eloquent and thrilling, and in it he declared his solemn belief in the prisoner's innocence, and made an appeal to God to strengthen the declaration. It created a profound impression. But the evidence was conclusive, and the prisoner was found guilty. It then transpired that the accused, in his cell, had confessed to his advocate that he had perpetrated the murder." "Confessed before his trial?" "Yes, before the trial." "What became of the lawyer?" "He was ruined, socially and professionally. A great career was blighted." "A deserved punishment," remarked Father Capel. "Yet it is an open question," said Pierre Lamont, "whether the secrets of the prison-cell should not be held as sacred as those of the confessional." "Nothing can justify," said Father Capel, "the employment of such an appeal, used to frustrate the ends of justice." "Then," said Pierre Lamont with malicious emphasis, "you admit the doctrine of responsibility. Your prompting of evil spirits, what becomes of it?" Father Capel did not have time to reply, for a cry of terror from a visitor gave an unexpected turn to the gossip of the evening, and diverted it into a common channel. The person who had uttered this cry was the youngest daughter of Jacob Hartrich. She had been standing at a window, the heavy curtains of which she had held aside, in an idle moment, to look out upon the grounds, which were wrapped in a pall of deep darkness. Upon the utterance of her terrified scream she had retreated into the room, and was now gazing with affrighted eyes at the curtains, which her loosened hold had allowed to fall over the window. Her mother and sister hurried to her side, and most of the other guests clustered around her. What had occasioned her alarm? When she had sufficiently recovered she gave an explanation of it. She was looking out, without any purpose in her mind, "thinking of nothing," as she expressed it, when, in a distant part of the grounds, there suddenly appeared a bright light, which moved slowly onward, and within the radius of this light, of which it seemed to form a part, she saw distinctly a white figure, like a spirit. The curtains of the window were drawn aside, and all within the room, with the exception of Pierre Lamont, who was left without an audience, peered into the grounds below. Nothing was to be seen; no glimpse of light or white shadow; no movement but the slight stir of leaf and branch, but the young lady vehemently persisted in her statement, and, questioned more closely, declared that the figure was that of a woman; she had seen her face, her hair, her white robe. The three persons whom her story most deeply impressed were the Advocate's wife, Christian Almer, and Father Capel. With the Advocate it was a simple delusion of the senses; with Jacob Hartrich, "nerves." Christian Almer and Father Capel went out to search the grounds, and when they returned reported that nothing was to be seen. During this excitement Pierre Lamont was absolutely unnoticed, and it was not till a groan proceeded from the part of the room where he sat huddled up in the wheeled chair in which he was imprisoned that attention was directed to him. He was evidently in great pain; his features were contracted with the spasms which darted through his limbs. "It almost masters me," he said to the Advocate, as he laughed and winced, "this physical anguish. I will not allow it to conquer me, but I must humour it. I am tempted to ask you to give me a bed to-night." "Stop with us by all means," said the Advocate; "the night is too dark, and your house too far, for you to leave while you are suffering." So it was arranged, and within half an hour all the other guests had taken their departure. CHAPTER III THE WATCH ON THE HILL For more than twenty years the House of White Shadows may be said to have been without a history. Its last eventful chapter ended with the death of Christian Almer's father, the tragic story of whose life has been related by Mother Denise. Then followed a blank--a dull uniformity of days and months and years, without the occurrence of a single event worthy of record in the annals of the family who had held the estate for four generations. The doors and windows of the villa were but seldom opened, and on those rare occasions only by Mother Denise, who had too strict a regard for the faithful discharge of her duties to allow the costly furniture to fall into decay. Suddenly all this was altered. Light and life reigned again. Startling was the transformation. Within a few short weeks the House of White Shadows had become the centre of a chain of events, in which the affections which sway and the passions which dominate mankind were displayed in all their strangest variety. At a short distance from the gate, on this dark night, upon the rise of a hill which commanded a view of the villa, sometimes stood and sometimes lay a man in the prime of life. Not a well-looking man, nor a desirable man, and yet one who in his better days might have passed for a gentleman. Even now, with the aid of fine feathers, he might have reached such a height in the judgment of those who were not given to close observation. His feathers at the present time were anything but fine--a sad fall, for they have been once such as fine birds wear; no barn-door fowl's, but of the partridge's quality. So that, between the man and his garments, there was something of an affinity. He was tall and fairly presentable, and he bore himself with a certain air which, in the eyes of the vulgar, would have passed for grace. But his swagger spoilt him; and his sensual mouth, which had begot a coarseness from long and unrestrained indulgence, spoilt him; and the blotches on his face spoilt him. His hands were white, and rings would have looked well on them, if rings ever looked well on the hands of a man--which may be doubted. As he stood, or lay, his eyes were for the chief part of his time fixed on the House of White Shadows. Following with precision his line of sight, it would have been discovered that the point which claimed his attention were the windows of the Advocate's study. There was a light in them, but no movement. "Yet he is there," muttered the man, whose name was John Vanbrugh, "for I see his shadow." His sight unassisted would not have enabled him to speak with authority upon this, but he held in his hand a field-glass, and he saw by its aid what would otherwise have been hidden from him. "His guests have gone," continued John Vanbrugh, "and he has time to attend to me. I have that to sell, Edward, which it is worth your while to purchase--nay, which it is vital you should purchase. Every hour's delay increases its price. It must be near midnight, and still no sign. Well, I can wait--I can wait." He had no watch to take count of the time, which passed slowly; but he waited patiently nevertheless, until the sound of footsteps, approaching in his direction, diverted his attention. They came nearer, nearer, until this other wanderer of the night was close upon him. "Who," he thought, "has taken it into his head to come my way? This is no time for honest men to be about." And then he said aloud--for the intruder had paused within a yard of him: "What particular business brings you here, friend, and why do you not pass on?" A sigh of intense relief escaped the breast of the newcomer, who was none other than Gautran. With the cuff of his shirt he wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and muttered in a grateful tone: "A man's voice! That is something to be thankful for." The sound of this muttering, but not the words, reached Vanbrugh's ears. "Well, friend?" said Vanbrugh, who, being unarmed, felt himself at a disadvantage. "Well?" repeated Gautran. "Are you meditating an attack upon me? I am not worth the risk, upon my honour. If you are poor, behold in me a brother in misfortune. Go to a more profitable market." "I don't want to hurt you." "I'll take your word for it. Pass on, then. The way is clear for you." He stepped aside, and observed that Gautran took step with him instead of from him. "Are _you_ going to pass on?" asked Gautran. "Upon my soul this is getting amusing, and I should enjoy it if I were not angry. Am I going to pass on? No, I am not going to pass on." "Neither am I." "In the name of all that is mischievous," cried Vanbrugh, "what is it you want?" "Company," was the answer, "till daylight. That is all. You need not be afraid of me." "Company!" exclaimed Vanbrugh. "My company?" "Yours or any man's. Something human--something living. And you must talk to me. I'm not going to be driven mad by silence." "You are a cool customer, with your this and that. Are you aware that you are robbing me?" "I don't want to rob you." "But you are--of solitude. And you appropriate it! No further fooling. Leave me." "Not till daylight." "There is something strange in your resolve. Let me have a better look at you." He laid his hand upon Gautran's shoulder, and the man did not resent the movement. In the evening, when he had arrived in Geneva, he had made an unsuccessful attempt to enter the court-house; therefore, Gautran being otherwise a stranger to him, he did not recognise in the face of the man he was now looking into, and which he could but dimly see in consequence of the darkness of the night, the prisoner whose trial for murder had caused so great an excitement. "If I am any judge of human nature," he said, "you are in a bad way. I can see sufficient of you to discern that from a social point of view you are a ruin, a very wreck of respectability, if your lines ever crossed in that direction. In which respect I, who was once a gentleman, and am still, cannot deny that there is something of moral kinship between us. This confers distinction upon you--upon me, a touch of obloquy. But I am old enough not to be squeamish. We must take the world as we find it--a villainous world! What say you?" "A villainous world! Go on talking." Vanbrugh stood with his face towards the House of White Shadows, watching for the signal he had asked the Advocate to give him. Gautran, facing the man upon whom he had forced his company, stood, therefore, with his back to the villa, the lights in which he had not yet seen. "Our condition may be borne," continued Vanbrugh, "with greater or lesser equanimity, so long as we feed the body--the quality of our food being really of no great importance, so far as the tissues are concerned; but when the mind is thrown off its balance, as I see by your eyes is the case with you, the condition of the man becomes serious. What is it you fear?" "Nothing human." "Yet you are at war with society." "I was; but I am a free man now." "You have been in peril, then--plainly speaking, a gaol-bird. What matters? The world is apt to be too censorious; I find no fault with you for your misfortune. Such things happen to the best of us. But you are free now, you say, and you fear nothing in human shape. What is it, then, you do fear?" "Were you ever followed by a spirit?" asked Gautran, in a hoarse whisper. "A moment," said Vanbrugh. "Your question startles me. I have about me two mouthfuls of an elixir without which life would not be worth the living. Share and share alike." He produced a bottle containing about a quarter of a pint of brandy, and saying, "Your health, friend," put it to his lips. Gautran watched him greedily, and, when he received the bottle, drained it with a gasp of savage satisfaction. "That is fine, that is fine!" he said; "I wish there were more of it." "To echo your wish is the extent of my power in the direction of fulfilment. Now we can continue. Was I ever followed by a spirit? Of what kind?" "Of a woman," replied Gautran with a shudder. "Being a spirit, necessarily a dead woman!" "Aye, a dead woman--one who was murdered." A look of sudden and newly-awakened intelligence flashed into Vanbrugh's face. He placed his hand again upon Gautran's shoulder. "A young woman?" he said. "Aye," responded Gautran. "Fair and beautiful?" "Yes." "Who met her death in the river Rhone?' "Aye--it is known to all the world." "One who sold flowers in the streets of Geneva--whose name was Madeline?" The utterance of the name conjured up the phantom of the murdered girl, and Gautran, with violent shudders, gazed upon the spectre. "She is there--she is there!" he muttered, in a voice of agony. "Will she never, never leave me?" These words confirmed Vanbrugh's suspicion. It was Gautran who stood before him. "Another winning card," he said, in a tone of triumph, and with a strange smile. "The man is guilty, else why should he fear? Vanbrugh, a life of ease is yours once more. Away with these rags, this money-pinch which has nipped you for years. Days of pleasure, of luxury, are yours to enjoy. You step once more into the ranks of gentlemen. What would the great Advocate in yonder study think of this chance encounter, knowing--what he has yet to learn--that I hold in my hands what he prizes most--his fame and honour?" Gautran heard the words; he turned, and followed the direction of Vanbrugh's gaze. "There is but one great Advocate, the man who set me free. He lives yonder, then?" "You know it, rogue," replied Vanbrugh. "There are the lights in his study window. Gautran, you and I must be better acquainted." But he was compelled to submit to a postponement of his wish, for the next moment he was alone. Gautran had disappeared. CHAPTER IV THE SILENT VOICE Alone in his study the Advocate had time to review his position. His first feeling, when he listened to Gautran's confession, had been one of unutterable horror, and this feeling was upon him when he entered the villa. From his outward demeanour no person could have guessed how terrible was his inward agitation. Self-repression was in him a second nature. The habit of concealing his thoughts had been of incalculable value in his profession, and had materially assisted in many of his great victories. But now he was alone, and when he had locked the study-door, he threw off the mask. He had been proud of this victory; it was the greatest he had ever achieved. He knew that it would increase his fame, and that it was an important step in the ladder it had been the delight of his life to climb. Cold as he appeared, and apparently indifferent to success, his ambition was vast, overpowering. His one great aim had been not only to achieve the highest distinction while he lived, but to leave behind him a name which should be placed at the head of all his class--a clear and unsullied name which men in after times would quote as a symbol of the triumph of intellect. It was the sublimity of egoism, contemptible when allied with intellectual inferiority and weakness of character, but justifiable in his case because it was in association with a force of mental gifts little short of marvellous. In the exercise of his public duties he had been careful never to take a false step. Before he committed himself to a task he invariably made a study of its minutest detail; conned it over and over, stripped it of its outward coverings, probed it to its very heart, added facets to it which lay not only within the region of probability, but possibility; and the result had been that his triumphs were spoken of with wonderment, as something almost higher than human, and within the capacity of no other man. It had sometimes occurred that the public voice was against a prisoner whose defence he had undertaken, but it was never raised against himself, and perhaps the sweetest reward which was ever bestowed upon him was when, in an unpopular cause which he had conducted to victory, it was afterwards proved that the man he had championed--whose very name was an offence--was in honest truth a victim instead of a wronger. It had grown into a fashion to say, "He must have right on his side, or the Advocate would not defend him." Here, then, was a triple alliance of justice, truth, and humanity--and he, their champion and the vindicator and upholder of right. In another sphere of life, and in times when the dragon of oppression was weighing heavily upon a people's liberties, such achievements as his would have caused the champion to be worshipped as a saint--certainly as a hero imbued with kingly qualities. No man really deserves this altitude, though it be sometimes reached. Human nature is too imperfect, its undercurrents are not sufficiently translucent for truth's face to be reflected as in a crystal. But we judge the deed, not the doer, and the man is frequently crowned, the working of whose inner life, were it laid bare, would shock and disgust. It was when he was at the height of his fame that the Advocate met Adelaide. Hitherto he had seen but little of women, or, seeing them, had passed them lightly by, but there comes a time in the lives of most men, even of the greatest, when they are abruptly arrested by an influence which insensibly masters them. Only once in his life had the Advocate wandered from the path he had formed for himself; but it was an idle wandering, partly prompted by a small and unworthy desire to prove himself of two men, the superior, and he had swiftly and effectually thrown the folly aside, never again to be indulged in or renewed. That was many years ago, and had been long forgotten, when Adelaide appeared to him, a star of loveliness, which proved, what few would have believed, that he had a heart. The new revelation was to him at first a source of infinite gladness, and he yielded to the enchantment. But after a time he questioned himself as to the wisdom of this infatuation. It was then, however, too late. The spell was upon him, and it did not lay in his power to remove it. And when he found that this sweet pleasure did not--as it would have done with most men--interfere with his active duties, nay, that it seemed to infuse a keener relish into their fulfilment, he asked himself the question, "Why not?" In the simple prompting of the question lay the answer. He possessed an immense power of concentration. With many subjects claiming close attention he could dismiss them all but the one to which it was necessary he should devote himself, and after much self-communing he satisfied himself that love would be no block to ambition. And indeed so it proved. Adelaide, dazzled by the attentions of a man who stood so high, accepted his worship, and, warned by friends not to be exigent, made no demands upon his time which interfered with his duties. He was a devoted but not a passionate lover. On all sides she was congratulated--it gratified her. By many she was envied--it delighted her; and she took pleasure in showing how easily she could lead this man, who to all other women was cold as ice. In those days it was out of her own vanity and thirst for conquest that she evolved pleasure from the association of her name with his. After their marriage he strove to interest her in the cases upon which he was engaged, but, discovering that her taste did not lie in that direction, he did not persist in his endeavour. It did not lessen his love for her, nor her hold upon him. She was to him on this night as she had ever been, a sweet, affectionate, pure woman, who gave him as much love and honour as a man so much older than herself could reasonably expect. Something of what has been here expressed passed through his mind as he reflected upon the events of the day. How should he deal with Gautran's confession? That was the point he debated. When he undertook the defence he had a firm belief in the man's innocence. He had drawn the picture of Gautran exactly as he had conceived it. Vile, degraded, brutal, without a redeeming feature--but not the murderer of Madeline the flower-girl. He reviewed the case again carefully, to see whether he could have arrived at any other conclusion. He could not perceive a single defect in his theory. He was justified in his own eyes. He knew that the entire public sentiment was against him, and that he had convinced men against their will. He knew that there was imported into this matter a feeling of resentment at his successful efforts to set Gautran free. What, then, had induced him to come forward voluntarily in defence of this monster? He asked the question of himself aloud, and he answered it aloud: A reverence for justice. He had not indulged in self-deception when he declared to Gautran's judges that the leading principle of his life had been a desire for justice in small matters as well as great, for the meanest equally with the loftiest of his fellow-creatures. That it did not clash with his ambition was his good fortune. It was not tainted because of this human coincidence. So far, then, he was justified in his own estimation. Rut he must be justified also in the eyes of the world. And here intruded the torturing doubt whether this were possible. If he made it known to the world that Gautran was guilty, the answer would be: "We know it, and knew it, as we believe you yourself did while you were working to set him free. Why did you prevent justice being done upon a murderer?" "But I believed him innocent," he would say. "Only now do I know him to be guilty!" "Upon what grounds?" would be asked. "Upon Gautran's own confession, given to me, alone, on a lonely road, within an hour after the delivery of the verdict." He saw the incredulous looks with which this would be received. He put himself in the place of the public, and he asked: "Why, at such a time, in such a spot, did Gautran confess to you? What motive had he? You are not a priest, and the high road is not a confessional." He could supply to this question no answer which common-sense would accept. And say that Gautran were questioned, as he would assuredly be. He would deny the statement point-blank. Liberty is sweet to all men. Then it would be one man's statement against another's; he would be on an equality with Gautran, reduced to his level; and in the judgment of numbers of people Gautran would have the advantage over him. Sides would be taken; he himself, in a certain sense, would be placed upon his trial, and public resentment, which now was smothered and would soon be quite hushed, would break out against him. Was he strong enough to withstand this? Could he arrest the furious torrent and stand unwounded on the shore, pure and scatheless in the eyes of men? He doubted. He was too profound a student of human nature not to know that his fair fame would be blotted, and that there would be a stain upon his reputation which would cling to him to the last day of his life. Still he questioned himself. Should he dare it, and brave it, and bow his head? Who humbles himself lays himself open to the blow--and men are not merciful when the chance is offered to them. But he would stand clear in his own eyes; his conscience would approve. To none but himself would this be known. Inward approval would be his sole reward, his sole compensation. A hero's work, however. For a moment or two he glowed at the contemplation. He soon cooled down, and with a smile, partly of self-pity, partly of self-contempt, proceeded to the calmer consideration of the matter. The meaner qualities came into play. The world did not know; what reason was there that it should be enlightened--that he should enlighten it, to his own injury? The secret belonged to two men--to himself and Gautran. It was not likely that Gautran would blurt it out to others; he valued his liberty too highly. So that it was as safe as though it were buried in a deep grave. As for the wrong done, it was a silent wrong. To ruin one's self for a sentiment would be madness; no one really suffered. The unfortunate girl was at rest. She was a stranger; no person knew her, or was interested in her except for her beauty; she left no family, no father, mother, or sisters, to mourn her cruel death. There was certainly the woman spoken of as Pauline, but she had disappeared, and was probably in no way related to Madeline. What more likely than that the elder woman's association with the younger arose out of a desire to trade upon the girl's beauty, and appropriate the profits to her own use? A base view of the matter, but natural, human. And having reaped a certain profit out of their trade in flowers, larger than was suspected, the crafty woman of the world had deliberately deserted Madeline and left her to her fate. Why, then, should he step forward as her avenger, to the destruction of the great name he had spent the best fruits of his mind and the best years of his life to build up? To think of such a thing was Quixotism run mad. One of the threads of these reflections--that which forced itself upon him as the toughest and the most prominent--was contempt of himself for permitting his thoughts to wander into currents so base. But that was his concern; it affected no other person, so long as he chose to hold his own counsel. The difficulty into which he was plunged was not of his seeking. Fate had dealt him a hard stroke; he received it on his shield instead of on his body. Who would say that that was not wise? What other man, having the option, would not have done as he was about to do? "Cunning sophist, cunning sophist!" his conscience whispered to him; "think not that, wandering in these crooked paths of reasoning, you can find the talisman which will transform wrong into right, or remove the stain which will rest upon your soul." He answered his conscience: "To none but myself is my soul visible. Who, then, can see the stain?" His conscience replied: "God!" "I will confess to Him." he said, "but not to man." "There is but one right course," his conscience said; "juggle as you may, you know that there is but one right course." "I know it," he said boldly, "but I am cast in human mould, and am not heroic enough for the sacrifice you would impose upon me." "Listen," said his conscience, "a voice from the grave is calling to you." He heard the voice: "Blood for Blood." He stood transfixed. The images raised by that, silent voice were appalling. They culminated in the impalpable shape of a girl, with pallid face, gazing sadly at him, over whose form seemed to be traced in the air the lurid words, "Blood For Blood!" Heaven's decree. The vision lasted but for a brief space. In the light of his strong will such airy terrors could not long exist. Blood for blood! It once held undisputed sway, but there are great and good men who look upon the fulfilment of the stern decree as a crime. Mercy, humanity, and all the higher laws of civilisation were on their side. But he could not quite stifle the voice. He took another view. Say that he yielded to the whisperings of his conscience--say that, braving all the consequences of his action, he denounced Gautran. The man had already been tried for murder, and could not be tried again. Set this aside. Say that a way was discovered to bring Gautran again to the bar of earthly justice, of what value was the new evidence that could be brought against him? His own bare word--his recital of an interview of which he held no proof, and which Gautran's simple denial would be sufficient to destroy. Place this new evidence against the evidence he himself had established in proof of Gautran's innocence, and it became a feather-weight. A lawyer of mediocre attainments would blow away such evidence with a breath. It would injure only him who brought it forward. He decided. The matter must rest where it was. In silence lay safety. There was still another argument in favour of this conclusion. The time for making public the horrible knowledge of which he had become possessed was passed. After he had received Gautran's confession he should not have lost a moment in communicating with the authorities. Not only had he allowed the hours to slip by without taking action, but in the conversation initiated that evening by Pierre Lamont, in which he had joined, he had tacitly committed himself to the continuance of a belief in Gautran's innocence. He saw no way out of the fatal construction which all who knew him, as well as all who knew him not, would place upon this line of conduct. He had been caught in a trap of his own setting, but he could hide his wounds. Yes; the question was answered. He must preserve silence. This long self-communing had exhausted him. He could not sleep; he could neither read nor study. His mind required relief and solace in companionship. His wife was doubtless asleep; he would not disturb her. He would go to his friend's chamber; Christian Almer would be awake, and they would pass an hour in sympathising converse. Almer had asked him, when they bade each other good-night, whether he intended immediately to retire to rest, and he had answered that he had much to do in his study, and should probably be up till late in the night. "I will not disturb you," Almer had said, "but I, too, am in no mood for sleep. I have letters to write, and if you happen to need society, come to my room, and we will have one of our old chats." As he quitted the study to seek his friend the soft silvery chimes of a clock on the mantel proclaimed the hour. He counted the strokes. It was midnight. CHAPTER V GAUTRAN FINDS A REFUGE When John Vanbrugh found himself alone he cried: "What! Tired of my company already? That is a fine compliment to pay to a gentleman of my breeding. Gautran! Gautran!" He listened; no answer came. "A capital disappearance," he continued; "in its way dramatic. The scene, the time, all agreeing. It does not please me. Do you hear me, Gautran," he shouted. "It does not please me. If I were not tied to this spot in the execution of a most important mission, I would after you, my friend, and teach you better manners. He drank my brandy, too, the ungrateful rogue. A waste of good liquor--a sheer waste! He gets no more without paying its equivalent." Vanbrugh indulged in this soliloquy without allowing his wrath to interfere with his watch; not for a single moment did he shift his gaze from the windows of the Advocate's study. "Now what induced him," he said after a pause, "to spirit himself away so mysteriously? From the violent fancy he expressed for my company I regarded him as a fixture; one would have supposed he intended to stick to me like a limpet to a rock. Suddenly, without rhyme or reason, and just as the conversation was getting interesting, he takes French leave, and makes himself scarce. "I hope he has not left his ghost behind him--the ghost of pretty Madeline. Not likely, though. When a partnership such as that is entered into--uncommonly unpleasant and inconvenient it must be--it is not dissolved so easily. "Perhaps he was spirited away--wanted, after the fashion of our dear Lothario, Don Giovanni. There was no blue fire about, however, and I smell no brimstone. No--he disappeared of his own prompting; it will repay thinking over. He saw his phantom--even my presence could not keep her from him. He murdered her--not a doubt of it--and the Advocate has proved his innocence. "Were it not a double tragedy I should feel disposed to laugh. "We were speaking of the Advocate when he darted off. But you cannot escape me, Gautran; we shall meet again. An acquaintanceship so happily commenced must not be allowed to drop--nor shall it, while it suits my purpose. "At length, John Vanbrugh, you are learning to be wise. You allowed yourself to be fleeced, sucked dry, and being thrown upon the rocks, stripped of fortune and the means to woo it, you strove to live as knaves live, upon the folly of others like yourself. But you were a poor hand at the trade; you were never cut out for a knave, and you passed through a succession of reverses so hard as almost to break an honest man's heart. It is all over now. I see the sun; bright days are before you, John, the old days over again; but you will spend your money more prudently, my lad; no squandering; exact its value; be wise, bold, determined, and you shall not go down with sorrow to the grave. Edward, my friend, if I had the liquor I would drink to you. As it is----" As it was, he wafted a mocking kiss towards the House of White Shadows, and patiently continued his watch. Meanwhile Gautran had not been idle. Upon quitting Vanbrugh, the direction he took was from the House of White Shadows, but when he was at a safe distance from Vanbrugh, out of sight and hearing, he paused, and deliberately set his face towards the villa. He skirted the hill at its base, and walking with great caution, pausing frequently to assure himself that he was alone and was not being followed, arrived at the gates of the villa. He tried the gates--they were locked. Could he climb over them? He would have risked the danger--they were set with sharp spikes--had he not known that it would take some time, and feared that some person passing along the high road might detect him. He made his way to the back of the villa, and carefully examined the walls. His eyes were accustomed to darkness, and he could see pretty clearly; it was a long time before he discovered a means of ingress, afforded by an old elm which grew within a few yards of the wall, and the far-spreading branches of which stretched over the grounds. He climbed the tree, and crept like a cat along the stoutest branch he could find. It bent beneath his weight as he hung suspended from it. It was a fall of twenty feet, but he risked it. He unloosed his hands, and dropped to the earth. He was shaken, but not bruised. His purpose, thus far, was accomplished. He was within the grounds of the villa. All was quiet. When he had recovered from the shock of the fall, he stepped warily towards the house. Now and then he was startled and alarmed at the shadows of the trees which moved athwart his path, but he mastered these terrors, and crept on and on till he heard the soft sound of a clock striking the hour. He paused, as the Advocate had done, and counted the strokes. Midnight. When the sound had quite died away, he stepped forward, and saw the lights in the study windows. Was anybody there? He guessed shrewdly enough that if the room was occupied it would be by no other person than the Advocate. Well, it was the Advocate he came to see; he had no design of robbery in his mind. He stealthily approached a window, and blessed his good fortune to find that it was partly open. He peered into the study; it was empty. He climbed the sill, and dropped safely into the room. What a grand apartment! What costly pictures and vases, what an array of books and papers! Beautiful objects met his eyes whichever way he turned. There was the Advocate's chair, there the table at which he wrote. The Advocate had left the room for a while--this was Gautran's correct surmise--and intended to return. The lamps fully turned up were proof of this. He looked at the papers on the table. Could he have read, he would have seen that many of them bore his own name. On a massive sideboard there were bottles filled with liquor, and glasses. He drank three or four glasses rapidly, and then, coiling himself up in a corner of the room, in a few moments was fast asleep. CHAPTER VI PIERRE LAMONT READS LOVE-VERSES TO FRITZ THE FOOL The bedroom allotted to Pierre Lamont by Mother Denise was situated on the first floor, and adjoined the apartments prepared for Christian Almer. As he was unable to walk a step it was necessary that the old lawyer should be carried upstairs. His body-servant, expressly engaged to wheel him about and attend to his wants, was ready to perform his duties, but into Pierre Lamont's head had entered the whim that he would be assisted to his room by no person but Fritz the Fool. The servant was sent in search of Fritz, who could not easily be found. It was quite half an hour before the fool made his appearance, and by that time all the guests, with the exception of Pierre Lamont, had left the House of White Shadows. Out of sympathy with Pierre Lamont's sufferings Father Capel had remained to chat with him until Fritz arrived. But the priest was suddenly called away. Mother Denise, entering the room, informed him that a peasant who lived ten miles from the House of White Shadows urgently desired to see him. Father Capel was about to go out to the man, when Adelaide suggested that he should be brought in, and the peasant accordingly disclosed his errand in the presence of the Advocate and his wife, Pierre Lamont, and Christian Almer. "I have been to your house," said the peasant, standing, cap in hand, in humble admiration of the grandeur by which he was surrounded, "and was directed here. There is a woman dying in my hut." "What is her name, and where does she come from?" "I know not. She has been with us for over three weeks, and it is a sore burden upon us. It happened in this way, reverend father. My hut, you know, is in the cleft of a rock, at the foot of the Burger Pass, a dangerous spot for those who are not familiar with the track. Some twenty-four days ago it was that my wife in the night roused me with the tale of a frightful scream, which, proceeding from one in agony near my hut, pierced her very marrow, and woke her from sleep. I sprang from my bed, and went into the open, and a few yards down I found a woman who had fallen from a height, and was lying in delirious pain upon the sharp stones. I raised her in my arms; she was bleeding terribly, and I feared she was hurt to death. I did the best I could, and carried her into my hut, where my wife nursed and tended her. But from that night to this we have been unable to get one sensible word from her, and she is now at death's door. She needs your priestly offices, reverend father, and therefore I have come for you." "How interesting!" exclaimed Adelaide. "Who will pay you for your goodness to this poor creature?" "God," said Father Capel, replying for the peasant. "It is the poor who help the poor, and in the Kingdom of Heaven our Gracious Lord rewards them." "I am content," said the peasant. "But in the contemplation of the Hereafter," said Pierre Lamont, "let us not forget the present. There are many whose loads are too heavy--for instance, asses. There are a few whose loads are too light--scoffers, like myself. You have had occasion to rebuke me, this night, Father Capel, and were I not a hardened sinner I should be groaning in tribulation. That to the last hour of my life I shall deserve your rebukes, proves me, I fear, beyond hope of redemption. Still I bear in mind the asses' burden. You have used my purse once, in penance; use it again, and pay this man for the loss inflicted upon him by his endeavours to earn the great spiritual reward--which, in all humility I say it, does not put bread into human stomachs." Father Capel accepted Pierre Lamont's purse, and said: "I judge not by words, but by works; your offering shall be justly administered. Come, let us hasten to this unfortunate woman." When he and the peasant had departed, Pierre Lamont said, with mock enthusiasm: "A good man! a good man! Virtue such as his is a severe burden, but I doubt not he enjoys it. I prefer to earn my seat in heaven vicariously, to which end my gold will materially assist. It is as though paradise can be bought by weight or measure; the longer the purse the greater the chance of salvation. Ah, here is Fritz. Good-night, good-night. Bright dreams to all. Gently, Fritz, gently," continued the old lawyer, as he was being carried up the stairs, "my bones are brittle." "Brittle enough I should say," rejoined Fritz; "chicken bones they might be from the weight of you." "Are diamonds heavy, fool?" "Ha, ha!" laughed Fritz, "if I had the selling of you, Master Lamont, I should like to make you the valuer. I should get a rare good price for you at that rate." In the bedroom Pierre Lamont retained Fritz to prepare him for bed. The old lawyer, undressed, was a veritable skeleton; there was not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his shrivelled bones. "What would you have done in the age of giants?" asked Fritz, making merry over Pierre Lamont's attenuated form. "This would have served," replied Pierre Lamont, tapping his forehead with his forefinger. "I should have contrived so as to be a match for them. Bring that small table close to the bedside. Now place the lamp on it. Put your hand into the tail-pocket of my coat; you will find a silk handkerchief there." He tied the handkerchief--the colour of which was yellow--about his head; and as the small, thin face peeped out of it, brown-skinned and hairless, it looked like the face of a mummy. Fritz gazed at him, and laughed immoderately, and Pierre Lamont nodded and nodded at the fool, with a smile of much humour on his lips. "Enjoy yourself, fool, enjoy yourself," he said kindly; "but don't pass your life in laughter; it is destructive of brain power. What do you think of the spirit, Fritz, the appearance of which so alarmed one of the young ladies in our merry party to-night?" "What do you think of it?" asked Fritz in return, with a quivering of his right eyelid, which suspiciously resembled a wink. "Ah, ah, knave!" cried Pierre Lamont, chuckling. "I half suspected you." "You will not tell on me, Master Lamont?" "Not I, fool. How did you contrive it?" "With a white sheet and a lantern. I thought it a pity that my lady should be disappointed. Should she leave the place without some warranty that spirits are here, the house would lose its character. Then there is the young master, your Christian Almer. He spoke to me very much as if I were a beast of the field instead of a--fool. So I thought I would give him food for thought." "A dangerous trick, Fritz. Your secret is safe with me, but I would not try it too often. Are there any books in the room? Look about, Fritz, look about." "For books!" exclaimed Fritz. "People go to bed to sleep." "I go to bed to think," retorted Pierre Lamont, "and read. People are idiots--they don't know how to use the nights." "Men are not owls," said Fritz. "There are no books in the room." "How shall I pass the night?" grumbled Pierre Lamont. "Open that drawer; there may be something to read in it." Fritz opened the drawer; it was filled with books. Pierre Lamont uttered a cry of delight. "Bring half-a-dozen of them--quick. Now I am happy." He opened the books which Fritz handed to him, and placed them by his side on the bed. They were in various languages. Lavater, Zimmermann, a Latin book on Demonology, poems of Lope da Vega, Klingemann's tragedies, Italian poems by Zappi, Filicaja, Cassiani, and others. "You understand all these books, Master Lamont?" "Of course, fool." "What language is this?" "Latin." "And this?" "Spanish." "And this?" "Italian. No common mind collected these books, Fritz." "The master that's dead--father of him who sleeps in the next room." "Ha, ha!" interposed Pierre Lamont, turning over the pages as he spoke. "He sleeps there, does he? "Yes. His father was a great scholar, I've heard." "A various scholar, Fritz, if these books are an epitome of his mind. Love, philosophy, gloomy wanderings in dark paths--here we have them all. The lights and shadows of life. Which way runs your taste, fool?" "I love the light, of course. What use in being a fool if you don't know how to take advantage of your opportunities?" "Well said. Let us indulge a little. These poets are sly rascals. They take unconscionable liberties, and play with women's beauty as other men dare not do." Fritz's eyes twinkled. "It does not escape even you, Master Lamont." "What does not escape me, fool?" "Woman's beauty, Master Lamont." "Have I not eyes in my head and blood in my veins?" asked Pierre Lamont. "It warms me like wine to know that I and the loveliest woman for a hundred miles round are caged within the same roof." Fritz indulged in another fit of laughter, and then exclaimed: "She has caught you too, eh? Now, who would have thought it? Two of the cleverest lawyers in the world fixed with one arrow! Beauty is a divine gift, Master Lamont. To possess it is almost as good as being born a fool." "I shall lie awake and read love-verses. Listen to Zappi, fool." And in a voice really tender, Pierre Lamont read from the book: "A hundred pretty little loves, in fun, Were romping; laughing, rioting one day." "A hundred!" cried Fritz, chuckling and rubbing his hands. "A hundred--pretty--little loves! If Father Capel were to hear you, his face would grow as long as my arm. "Wrong, Fritz, wrong. His face would beam, and he would listen for the continuation of the poem." And Pierre Lamont resumed: "'Let's fly a little now,' said one, 'I pray.' 'Whither?' 'To beauty's face.' 'Agreed--'tis done.' "Faster than bees to flowers they wing their way To lovely maids--to mine, the sweetest one; And to her hair and panting lips they run-- Now here, now there, now everywhere they stray. "My love so full of loves--delightful sight! Two with their torches in her eyes, and two Upon her eyelids with their bows alight." "You read rarely, Master Lamont," said Fritz. "It is true, is it not, that, when you were in practice, you were called the lawyer with the silver tongue?" "It has been said of me, Fritz." The picture of this withered, dried-up old lawyer, sitting up in bed, with a yellow handkerchief for a night-cap tied round his head, reading languishing verses in a tender voice, and striving to bring into his weazened features an expression in harmony with them, was truly a comical one. "Why, Master Lamont," said Fritz in admiration, "you were cut out for a gallant. Had you recited those lines in the drawing-room, you would have had all the ladies at your feet--supposing," he added, with a broad grin, "they had all been blind." "Ah me!" said Pierre Lamont, throwing aside the book with a mocking sigh. "Too old--too old!" "And shrunken," said Fritz. "It is not to be denied, Fritz. And shrunken." "And ugly." "You stick daggers into me. Yes--and ugly. Ah!" and with simulated wrath he shook his fist in the air, "if I were but like my brother the Advocate! Eh, Fritz--eh?" Fritz shook his head slowly. "If I were not a fool, I should say I would much rather be as you are, old, and withered, and ugly, and a cripple, than be standing in the place of your brother the Advocate. And so would you, Master Lamont, for all your love-songs." "I can teach you nothing, fool. Push the lamp a little nearer to me. Give me my waistcoat. Here is a gold piece for you. I owe you as much, I think. We will keep our own counsel, Fritz. Good-night." "Good--night, Master Lamont. I am sorry that trial is over. It was rare fun!" CHAPTER VII MISTRESS AND MAID "Dionetta?" "Yes, my lady." The maid and her mistress were in Adelaide's dressing-room, and Dionetta was brushing her lady's hair, which hung down in rich, heavy waves. She smiled at herself in the glass before which she was sitting, and her mood became more joyous as she noted the whiteness of her teeth and the beautiful expression of her mouth when she smiled. There was an irresistible fascination in her smile; it flashed into all her features, like a laughing sunrise. She was never tired of admiring her beauty; it was to her a most precious possession of which nothing but time could rob her. "To-day is mine," she frequently said to herself, and she wished with all her heart that there were no to-morrow. Yes, to-day was hers, and she was beautiful, and, gazing at the reflection of her fair self, she thought that she did not look more than eighteen. "Do you think I do, child?" she asked of Dionetta. "Think you do what, my lady?" inquired Dionetta. Adelaide laughed, a musical, child-like laugh which any man, hearing, would have judged to be an expression of pure innocent delight. She derived pleasure even from this pleasant sound. "I was thinking to myself, and I believed I was speaking aloud. Do you think I look twenty-five?" "No, indeed, my lady, not by many years. You look younger than I do." "And you are not eighteen, Dionetta." "Not yet, my lady." Adelaide's eyes sparkled. It was indeed true that she looked younger than her maid, who was in herself a beauty and young-looking. "Dionetta," she said, presently, after a pause, "I have had a curious dream." "I saw you close your eyes for a moment, my lady." "I dreamt I was the most beautiful woman in all this wide world." "You are, my lady." The words were uttered in perfect honesty and simplicity. Her mistress was truly the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. "Nonsense, child, nonsense--there are others as fair, although I should not fear to stand beside them. It was only a dream, and this but the commencement of it. I was the most beautiful woman in the world. I had the handsomest features, the loveliest figure, and a shape that sculptors would have called perfection. I had the most exquisite dresses that ever were worn, and everything in that way a woman's heart could desire." "A happy dream, my lady!" "Wait. I had a palace to live in, in a land where it was summer the whole year through. Such gardens, Dionetta, and such flowers as one only sees in dreams. I had rings enough to cover my fingers a dozen times over; diamonds in profusion for my hair, and neck, and arms,--trunks full of them, and of old lace, and of the most wonderful jewels the mind can conceive. Would you believe it, child, in spite of all this, I was the most miserable woman in the universe?" "It is hard to believe, my lady." "Not when I tell you the reason. Dionetta, I was absolutely alone. There was not a single person near me, old or young--not one to look at me, to envy me, to admire me, to love me. What was the use of beauty, diamonds, flowers, dresses? The brightest eyes, the loveliest complexion, the whitest skin--all were thrown away. It would have been just as well if I had been dressed in rags, and were old and wrinkled as Pierre Lamont. Now, what I learn from my dream is this--that beauty is not worth having unless it is admired and loved, and unless other people can see it as well as yourself." "Everybody sees that you are beautiful, my lady; it is spoken of everywhere." "Is it, Dionetta, really, now, is it?" "Yes, my lady. And you are admired and loved." "I think I am, child; I know I am. So that my dream goes for nothing. A foolish fancy, was it not, Dionetta?--but women are never satisfied. I should never be tired--never, never, of hearing the man I love say, 'I love you, I love you! You are the most beautiful, the dearest, the sweetest!'" She leant forward and looked closely at herself in the glass, and then sank back in her chair and smiled, and half-closed her eyes. "Dionetta," she said presently, "what makes you so pale?" "It is the Shadow, my lady, that was seen to-night," replied Dionetta in a whisper; "I cannot get it out of my mind." "But you did not see it?" "No, my lady; but it was there." "You believe in ghosts?" "Yes, my lady." "You would not have the courage to go where one was to be seen?" "Not for all the gold in the world, my lady." "But the other servants are more courageous?" "They may be, but they would not dare to go; they said so to-night, all of them." "They have been speaking of it, then?" "Oh, yes; of scarcely anything else. Grandmother said to-night that if you had not come to the villa, the belief in the shadows would have died away altogether." "That is too ridiculous," interrupted Adelaide. "What can I have to do with them?" "If you had not come," said Dionetta, "grandmother said our young master would not be here. It is because he is in the house, sleeping here for the first night for so many, many years, that the spirit of his mother appeared to him." "But your grandmother has told me she did not believe in the shadows." "My lady, I think she is changing her opinion--else she would never have said what she did. It is long since I have seen her so disturbed." Adelaide rose from her chair, the fairest picture of womanhood eyes ever gazed upon. A picture an artist would have contemplated with delight. She stood still for a few moments, her hand resting on her writing-desk. "Your grandmother does not like me, Dionetta." "She has not said so, my lady," said Dionetta after an awkward pause. "Not directly, child," said Adelaide, "and I have no reason to complain of want of respect in her. But one always knows whether one is really liked or not." "She is growing old," murmured Dionetta apologetically, "and has seen very little of ladies." "Neither have you, child. Yet you do not dislike me." "My lady, if I dare to say it, I love you." "There is no daring in it, child. I love to be loved--and I would sooner be loved by the young than the old. Come here, pretty one. Your ears are like little pink shells, and deserve something better than those common rings in them. Put these in their place." She took from a jewel-case a pair of earrings, turquoise and small diamonds, and with her own hands made the exchange. "Oh, my lady," sighed Dionetta with a rose-light in her face. "They are too grand for me! What shall I say when people see them?" The girl's heart was beating quick with ecstasy. She looked at herself in the glass, and uttered a cry of joy. "Say that I gave them to you because I love you. I never had a maid who pleased me half as much. Does this prove it?" and she put her lips to Dionetta's face. The girl's eyes filled with tears, and she kissed Adelaide's hand in a passion of gratitude. "I love you, Dionetta, because you love me, and because I can trust you." "You can, my lady. I will serve you with all my heart and soul. But I have done nothing for you that any other girl could not have done." "Would you like to do something for me that I would trust no other to do?" "Yes, my lady," eagerly answered Dionetta. "I should be proud." "And you will tell no one?' "Not a soul, my lady, if you command me." "I do command you. It is easy to do--merely to deliver a note, and to say: 'This is from my mistress.'" "Oh, my lady, that is no task at all. It is so simple." "Simple as it is, I do not wish even your grandmother to hear of it." "She shall not--nor any person. I swear it." In the extravagance of her gratitude and joy, she kissed a little cross that hung from her neck. "You have made me your friend for life," said Adelaide, "the best friend you ever had, or ever will have." She sat down to her desk, and on a sheet of note-paper wrote these words: "Dear Christian: "I cannot sleep until I wish you good-night, with no horrid people around us. Let me see you for one minute only. "Adelaide." Placing the sheet of note-paper in an envelope, she gave it to Dionetta, saying: "Take this to Mr. Almer's room, and give it to him. It is nothing of any importance, but he will be pleased to receive it." Dionetta, marvelling why her lady should place any value upon so slight a service, went upstairs with the note, and returned with the information that Christian Almer was not in his room. "But his door is open, my lady," she said, "and the lamps are burning." "Go then, again," said Adelaide, "and place the note on his desk. There is no harm, child; he cannot see you, as he is not there, and if he were, he would not be angry." Dionetta obeyed without fear, and when she told her mistress that the note was placed where Christian Almer was sure to see it, Adelaide kissed her again, and wished her "Good-night." CHAPTER VIII IN THE HOME OF HIS CHILDHOOD Upon no person had the supposed appearance of a phantom in the grounds of the House of White Shadows produced so profound an impression as upon Christian Almer. This was but natural. Even supposing him not to have been a man of susceptibility, the young lady's terror, as she gazed at the shadow, could not have failed to make an impression upon him. It was the first night of his return, after an absence of many years, to the house in which he had been born and had passed his unhappy childhood's life: and the origin of the belief in these white shadows which were said to haunt his estate was so closely woven into his personal history as almost to form a part of himself. He had never submitted his mind to a rigid test of belief or disbelief in these signs; one of the principal aims of his life had been, not only to avoid the villa, but to shut out all thought of the tragic events which had led to the death of his parents. He loved them both with an equal love. When he thought of his mother he saw a woman patient in suffering, of a temper exquisitely sweet, whose every word and act towards her child was fraught with tenderness. When he thought of his father he saw a man high-principled and just, inflexible in matters of right and conscience, patient also in suffering, and bearing in silence, as his mother did, a grief which had poisoned his life and hers. Neither of his parents had ever spoken a word against the other; the mystery which kept this tender, loving woman, and this just, high-principled man, apart, was never disclosed to their child. On this subject they entrenched themselves behind a barrier of silence which the child's love and winning ways could not penetrate. Only when his mother's eyes were closed and her lips sealed by death was he privileged to witness how deeply his father had loved her. Much of what had been disclosed to the Advocate's wife by Mother Denise was absolutely unknown to him. Doubtless he could have learned every particular of the circumstances which had led to the separation of his parents, had his wish lain in that direction; but a delicate instinct whispered to him not to lift the veil, and he would permit no person to approach the subject in his presence. The bright appearance of his sitting-room cheered him when he entered it, after bidding the Advocate good-night. But this pleasurable sense was not unalloyed. His heart and his conscience were disturbed, and as he took up a handful of roses which had been thrown loose into a bowl and inhaled their fragrance, a guilty thrill shot through his veins. With the roses in his hand he stood before the picture of Adelaide, which she had hung above his desk. How bright and beautiful was the face, how lovely the smile with which she greeted him! It was almost as if she were speaking to him, telling him that she loved him, and asking him to assure her once more that her love was returned. For a moment the fancy came upon him that Adelaide and he were like two stars wandering through a dark and dangerous path, and that before them lay death, and worse than death--dishonour and irretrievable ruin; and that she, the brighter star, holding him tightly by the hand, was whispering: "I will guide you safely; only love me!" There was one means of escape--death! A coward's refuge, which might not even afford him a release from dishonour, for Adelaide in her despair might let their secret escape her. Why, then, should he torture himself unnecessarily? It was not in his power to avert the inevitable. He had not deliberately chosen his course. Fate had driven him into it. Was it not best, after all, to do as he had said to the Advocate that night, to submit without a struggle? Men were not masters, but slaves. When the image of the Advocate, of his friend, presented itself to him, he thrust it sadly from him. But it came again and again, like the ghost of Banquo; conscience refused to be tricked. Crumbling the roses in his hand, and strewing the floor with the leaves, he turned, and saw, gazing wistfully at him, the eyes of his mother. The artist who had painted her picture had not chosen to depict her in her most joyous mood. In _his_ heart also, as she sat before him, love's fever was burning, and he knew, while his brush was fixing her beauty on the canvas, that his love was returned, though treachery had parted them. He had striven, not unsuccessfully, to portray in her features the expression of one who loved and to whom love was denied. The look in her eyes was wistful rather than hopeless, and conveyed, to those who knew her history, the idea of one who hoped to find in another world the happiness she had lost in this. Sad and tender reminiscences of the years he had lived with his mother in these very rooms stole into Christian Almer's mind, and he allowed his thoughts to dwell upon the question, "Why had she been unhappy?" She was young, beautiful, amiable, rich; her husband was a man honoured and esteemed, with a character above reproach. What secret would be revealed if the heart of this mystery were laid bare to his sight? If it were in his power to ascertain the truth, might not the revelation cause him additional sorrow? Better, then, to let the matter rest. No good purpose could be served by raking up the ashes of a melancholy past. His parents were dead---- And here occurred a sudden revulsion. His mother was dead--and, but a few short minutes since, her spirit was supposed to have appeared in the grounds of the villa. Almost upon the thought, he hurriedly left the room, and made his way into the gardens. * * * * * * "My neighbour, and master of this house," said Pierre Lamont, who was lying wide awake in the adjoining room, "does not seem inclined to rest. Something disturbs him." Pierre Lamont was alone; Fritz the Fool had left him for the night, and the old lawyer, himself in no mood for sleep, was reading and listening to the movements around him. There was little to hear, only an occasional muffled sound which the listener interpreted as best he could; but Christian Almer, when he left his room, had to pass Pierre Lamont's door in his progress to the grounds, and it was the clearer sound of his footsteps which led Pierre Lamont to his correct conclusion. "He is going out of the house," continued Pierre Lamont. "For what? To look for his mother's ghost, perhaps. Fool Fritz, in raising this particular ghost, did not foresee what it might lead to. Ghosts! And fools still live who believe in them! Well, well, but for the world's delusions there would be little work for busy minds to accomplish. As a fantastic piece of imagery I might conjure up an army of men sweeping the world with brooms made of brains--of knavery, folly, trickery, and delusion. What is that? A footstep! Human? No. Too light for any but the feet of a cat!" But here Pierre Lamont was at fault. It was Dionetta who passed his door in the passage, conveying to Christian Almer's room the note written by the Advocate's wife. Before the arrival of her new mistress, Dionetta had always worn thick boots, and the sound of her footstep was plain to hear; but Adelaide's nerves could not endure the creaking and clattering, and she had supplied her maid with shoes. Besides, Dionetta had naturally a light step. * * * * * * Christian Almer met with nothing in the grounds to disturb him. No airy shadow appeared to warn him of the danger which threatened him. Were it possible for the spirits of the dead to make themselves seen and heard, assuredly the spirit of his mother would have appeared and implored him to fly from the house without delay. Happy for him would it have been were he one of the credulous fools Pierre Lamont held in despisal--happy for him could he have formed, out of the shadows which moved around him, a spirit in which he would have believed, and could he have heard, in the sighing of the breeze, a voice which would have impressed him with a true sense of the peril in which he stood. But he heard and saw nothing for which he could not naturally account, and within a few minutes of midnight he re-entered his room. * * * * * * "My neighbour has returned," said Pierre Lamont, "after his nocturnal ramble in search of the spirit of his dead mother. Hark! That sound again! As of some living thing stepping cautiously on the boards. If I were not a cripple I would satisfy myself whether this villa is tormented by restless cats as well as haunted by unholy spirits. When will science supply mankind with the means of seeing, as well as hearing, what is transpiring on the other side of stone and wooden walls? "Ah, that door of his is creaking. It opens--shuts. I hear a murmur of voices, but cannot catch a word. Almer's voice of course--and the Advocate's. No--the other voice and the soft footsteps are in partnership. Not the Advocate's, nor any man's. Men don't tread like cats. It was a woman who passed my door, and who has been admitted into that room. Being a woman, what woman? If Fool Fritz were here, we would ferret it out between us before we were five minutes older. "Still talking--talking--like the soft murmur of peaceful waves. Ah! a laugh! By all that's natural, a woman's laugh! It is a woman! And I should know that silvery sound. There is a special music in a laugh which cannot be mistaken. It is distinctive--characteristic. "Ah, my lady, my lady! Fair face, false heart--but woman, woman all over!" And Pierre Lamont rubbed his hands, and also laughed--but his laugh was like his speech, silent, voiceless. CHAPTER IX CHRISTIAN ALMER RECEIVES TWO VISITORS Upon Christian Almer's desk lay the note written by Adelaide. He saw it the moment he entered the room, and knew, therefore, that some person had called during his absence. At first he thought it must have been the Advocate, who, not finding him in his room, had left the note for him; but as he opened the envelope a faint perfume floated from it. "It is from Adelaide," he murmured. "How often and how vainly have I warned her!" He read the note: "Dear Christian: "I cannot sleep until I wish you good-night, with no horrid people around us. Let me see you for one minute only. "Adelaide." To comply with her request at such an hour would be simple folly; infatuated as he was he would not deliberately commit himself to such an act. "Surely she cannot have been here," he thought. "But if another hand placed this note upon my desk, another person must share the secret which it is imperative should never be revealed. I must be firm with her. There must be an end to this imprudence. Fortunately there is no place in Edward's nature for suspicion." He blushed with shame at the unworthy thought. Five years ago, could he have seen--he who up to that time never had stooped to meanness and deceit--the position in which he now stood, he would have rejected the mere suspicion of its possibility with indignation. But by what fatally easy steps had he reached it! In the midst of these reflections his heart almost stopped beating at the sound of a light footstep without. He listened, and heard a soft tapping on the door, not with the knuckles, but with the finger-tips; he opened the door, and Adelaide stood smiling before him. With her finger at her lips she stepped into the room, and closed the door behind her. "It would not do for me to be seen," she whispered. "Do not be alarmed; I shall not be here longer than one little minute. I have only come to wish you good-night. Give me a chair, or I shall sink to the ground. I am really very, very frightened. Quick; bring me a chair. Do you not see how weak I am?" He drew a chair towards Her, and she sank languidly into it. "As you would not come to me," she said, "I was compelled to come to you." "Compelled!" he said. They spoke in low tones, fearful lest their voices should travel beyond the room. "Yes, compelled. I was urged by a spirit." His face grew white. "A spirit!" "How you echo me, Christian. Yes, by a spirit, to which you yourself shall give a name. Shall we call it a spirit of restlessness, or jealousy, or love?" She gazed at him with an arch smile. "Adelaide," he said, "your imprudence will ruin us." "Nonsense, Christian, nonsense," she said lightly; "ruined because I happened to utter one little word! To be sure I ought, so as to prove myself an apt pupil, to put a longer word before it, and call it platonic love. How unreasonable you are! What harm is there in our having a moment's chat? We are old friends, are we not? No, I will not let you interrupt me; I know what you are going to say. You are going to say, Think of the hour! I decline to think of the hour. I think of nothing but you. And instead of looking delighted, as you should do, as any other man would do, there you stand as serious as an owl. Now, answer me, sir. Why did you not come to me the moment you received my note?" "I had but just read it when you tapped at my door." "I forgive you. Where have you been? With the Advocate?" "No; I have been walking in the grounds." "You saw nothing, Christian?" she asked with a little shiver. "Nothing to alarm or disturb me." "There was a light in the Advocate's study, was there not?" "Yes." "He will remain up late, and then he will retire to his room. My life is a very bright and beautiful life with him. He is so tender in his ways--so fond of pleasure--pays me so much attention, and _such_ compliments--is so light--hearted and joyous--sings to me, dances with me! Oh, you don't know him, you don't indeed. I remember asking him to join in a cotillon; you should have seen the look he gave me!" She laughed out loud, and clapped her hand on her mouth to stifle the sound. "I wonder whether he was ever young, like you and me. What a wonderful child he must have been--with scientific toys, and books always under his arm--yes, a wonderful child, holding in disdain little girls who wished him to join in their innocent games. What is your real opinion of him, Christian?" "It pains me to hear you speak of him in that way." "It should please you; but men are never satisfied. I speak lightly, do I not, but there are moments when I shudder at my fate. Confess, it is not a happy one." "It is not," he replied, after a pause, "but if I had not crossed your path, life would be full of joy for you." It was not this he intended to say, but there was such compelling power in her lightest words that his very thoughts seemed to be under her dominion. "There would have been no joy in my life," she said, "without you. We will not discuss it. What is, is. Sometimes when I think of things they make my head ache. Then I say, I will think of them no longer. If everybody did the same, would not this world be a great deal pleasanter than it is? Oh, you must not forget what the Advocate called me to-night in your presence--a philosopher in petticoats. Don't you see that even he is on my side, though it is against himself? Of course one can't help respecting him. He is a very learned man. He should have married a very learned woman. What a pity it is that I am not wise! But that is not my fault. I hate learning, I hate science, I hate theories. What is the good of them? They say, this is not right, that is not right. And all we poor creatures can do is to look on in a state of bewilderment, and wonder what they mean. If people would only let the world alone, they would find it a very beautiful world. But they will _not_ let it alone; they _will_ meddle. A flower, now--is it not sweet--is it not enough that it is sent to give us pleasure? But these disagreeable people say, 'Of what is this flower composed--is it as good as other flowers--has it qualities, and what qualities?' What do I care? I put it in my hair, and I am happy because it becomes me, because it is pretty, because Nature sent it to me to enjoy. Why, I have actually made you smile!" "Because there is a great deal of natural wisdom in what you are saying----" "Natural wisdom! There now, does it not prove I am right? Thank you, Christian. It comes to you to say exactly the right thing exactly at the right time. I shall begin to feel proud." "And," continued Almer, "if you were only to talk to me like that in the middle of the day instead of the middle of the night----" She interrupted him again: "You have undone it all with your 'ifs.' What does it matter if it is in the middle of the day or the middle of the night? What is right, is right, is it not, without thinking of the time? Don't get disagreeable; but indeed I will not allow you to be anything but nice to me. You have made me forget everything I was going to say." "Except one thing," he said gravely, "which you came to say, 'Good-night.'" "The minute is not gone yet," she said with a silvery laugh. "Many minutes, many minutes," he said helplessly, "and every minute is fraught with danger." "I will protect you," she said with supreme assurance. "Do not fear. I see quite plainly that if there is a dragon to kill I shall have to be the St. George. Well, I am ready. Danger is sweet when you are with me." He was powerless against her; he resigned himself to his fate. "Who brought your letter to my room?" he asked. "Dionetta." "Have you confided in her?" "She knows nothing, and she is devoted to me. If the simple maid thought of the letter at all--as to what was in it, I mean--she thought, of course, that it was something I wanted you to do for me to-morrow, and had forgotten to tell you. But even here I was prudent, although you do not give me credit for prudence. I made her promise not to tell a soul, not even her grandmother, that queer, good old Mother Denise, that she had taken a letter from me to you. She did more than promise--she swore she would not tell. I bribed her, Christian--I gave her things, and to-night I gave her a pair of earrings. You should have witnessed her delight! I would wager that she is at this moment no more asleep than I am. She is looking at herself in the glass, shaking her pretty little head to make the diamonds glisten." "Diamonds, Adelaide! A simple maid like Dionetta with diamond earrings! What will the folks say?" "Oh, they all know I am fond of her----" They started to their feet with a simultaneous movement. "Footsteps!" whispered Almer. "The Advocate's," said Adelaide, and she glided to the door, and turned the key as softly as if it were made of velvet. "He will see a light in the room," said Christian. "He has come to talk with me. What shall we do?" She gazed at him with a bright smile. His face was white with apprehension; hers, red with excitement and exaltation. "I am St. George," she whispered; "but really there is no dragon to kill; we have only to send him to sleep. Of course you must see him. I will conceal myself in the inner room, and you will lock me in, and put the key in your pocket, so that I shall be quite safe. Do not be uneasy about me; I can amuse myself with books and pictures, and I will turn over the leaves so quietly that even a butterfly would not be disturbed. And when the dragon is gone I will run away immediately. I am almost sorry I came, it has distressed you so." She kissed the tips of her fingers to him, and entered the adjoining room. Then, turning the key in the door Christian Almer admitted the Advocate. CHAPTER X A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE WEB Pause we here a moment, and contemplate the threads of the web which Chance, Fate, or Retribution was weaving round this man. With the exception of a few idle weeks in his youth, his life had been a life of honour and renown. His ambition was a worthy one, and success had not been attained without unwearying labour and devotion. Close study and application, zeal, earnestness, unflagging industry, these were the steps in the ladder he had climbed. Had it not been for his keen intellect these qualities would not have been sufficient to conduct him to the goal he had in view. Good luck is not to be despised, but unless it is allied with brain power of a high order only an ephemeral success can be achieved. Never, to outward appearance, was a great reputation more stable or better deserved. His wonderful talents, and the victories he had gained in the face of formidable odds, had destroyed all the petty jealousies with which he had to cope in the outset of his career, and he stood now upon a lofty pinnacle, acknowledged by all as a master in his craft. Wealth and distinction were his, and higher honours lay within his grasp; and, in addition, he had won for his wife one of the most beautiful of women. It seemed as if the world had nothing to add to his happiness. And yet destruction stared him in the face. The fabric he had raised, on a foundation so secure that it appeared as if nothing could shake it, was tottering, and might fall, destroying him and all he had worked for in the ruins. He stood at the door of the only man in the world to whom he had given the full measure of his friendship. With all the strength of his nature he believed in Christian Almer. In the gravest crisis of his life he would have called this friend to his side, and would have placed in his hands, without hesitation, his life, his reputation, and his honour. To Almer, in their conversation, he had revealed what may be termed his inner life, that life the workings of which were concealed from all other men. And in this friend's chamber his wife was concealed; and dishonour hung over him by the slenderest thread. Not only dishonour, but unutterable grief, for he loved this woman with a most complete undoubting love. Little time had he for dalliance; but he believed in his wife implicitly. His trust in her was a perfect trust. Within the room at the door of which he was waiting, stood his one friend, with white face and guilty conscience, about to admit him and grasp his hand. Had the heart of this friend been laid bare to him, he would have shrunk from it in horror and loathing, and from that moment to the last moment of his life the sentiment of friendship would have been to him the bitterest mockery and delusion with which man could be cursed. Not five yards from where he stood lay Pierre Lamont, listening and watching for proofs of the perfidy which would bring disgrace upon him--which would cause men and women to speak of him in terms of derision for his blindness and scorn for his weakness--which would make a byeword of him--of him, the great Advocate, who had played his part in many celebrated cases in which woman's faithlessness and disloyalty were the prominent features--and which would cause him to regard the sentiment of love as the falsest delusion with which mankind was ever afflicted. In the study he had left but a few minutes since slept a man who, in a certain sense, claimed comradeship with him, a man whom he had championed and set free, a self-confessed murderer, a wretch so vile that he had fled from him in horror at the act he had himself accomplished. And in the open air, upon a hill, a hundred yards from the House of White Shadows, lay John Vanbrugh, a friend of his youth, a man disgraced by his career, watching for the signal which would warrant him in coming forward and divulging what was in his mind. If what John Vanbrugh had disclosed in his mutterings during his lonely watch was true, he held in his hands the key to a mystery, which, revealed, would overwhelm the Advocate with shame and infamy. Thus was he threatened on all sides by friend and foe alike. CHAPTER XI A CRISIS "Have I disturbed you, Christian?" asked the Advocate, entering the room. "I hesitated a moment or two, hearing no sound, but seeing your lamp was lighted, I thought you were up, and might be expecting me." "I had an idea you would come," said Almer, with a feeling of relief at the Advocate's statement that he had heard no sound; and then he said, so that he might be certain of his ground, "You have not been to my room before to-night?" "No; for the last two hours I have not left my study. Half an hour's converse with you will do me good. I am terribly jaded." "The reaction of the excitement of the long trial in which you have been engaged." "Probably; though I have endured fatigue as great without feeling as jaded as I do now." "You must take rest. Your doctors who prescribed repose for you would be angry if they were aware of the strain you have put upon your mind." "They do know. The physician I place the greatest faith in writes to me that I must have been mad to have undertaken Gautran's defence. It might have been better if I had not entered into that trial." "You have one consolation. Defended by a lawyer less eminent than yourself, an unfortunate man might have been convicted of a crime he did not commit." "Yes," said the Advocate slowly, "that is true." "You compel admiration, Edward. With frightful odds against you, with the public voice against you, you voluntarily engage in a contest from which nothing is to be gained, and come out triumphant. I do not envy the feelings of the lawyers on the other side." "At least, Christian, as you have said, they have the public voice with them." "And you, Edward, have justice on your side, and the consciousness of right. The higher height is yours; you must regard these narrower minds with a feeling of pity." "I have no feeling whatever for them; they do not trouble me. Christian, we will quit the subject of Gautran; you can well understand that I have had enough of him. Let us speak of yourself. I am an older man than you, and there is something of a fatherly interest in the friendship I entertain for you. Since my marriage I have sometimes thought if I had a son I should have been pleased if his nature resembled yours, and if I had a daughter it would be in the hands of such a man as yourself I should wish to place her happiness." "You esteem me too highly," said Almer, in a tone of sadness. "I esteem you as you deserve, friend. Within your nature are possibilities you do not recognise. It is needful to be bold in this world, Christian; not arrogant, or over-confident, or vain-glorious, but modestly bold. Unless a man assert himself his powers will lie dormant; and not to use the gifts with which we are endowed is a distinct reproach upon us. I have heard able men say it is a crime to neglect our powers, for great gifts are bestowed upon us for others' good as well as for our own. Besides, it is healthy in every way to lead a busy life, to set our minds upon the accomplishment of certain tasks. If we fail--well, failure is very often more honourable than success. We have at least striven to mount the hill which rises above the pettiness and selfishness of our everyday life; we have at least proved ourselves worthy of the spiritual influences which prompt the execution of noble deeds. You did not reply to the letter I sent you in the mountains; but Adelaide heard from you, and that is sufficient. Sufficient, also, that you are here with us, and that we know we have a true friend in the house. You were many weeks in the mountains." "Yes." "Were you engaged on any work? Did you paint or write?" "I made a few sketches, which pleased me one day and displeased me the next, so I tore them up and threw them away. There is enough indifferent work in the world." "Nothing short of perfection will satisfy you," said the Advocate with a serious smile; "but some men must march in the ranks." "I am not worthy even of that position," said Almer moodily. The Advocate regarded him with thoughtful eyes. "If your mind is not deeply reflective, if your power of observation applies only to the surface of things, you are capable of imparting what some call tenderness and I call soul, to every subject which presents itself to you. I have detected this in your letters and conversation. It is a valuable quality. I grant that you may be unfit to cope with practical matters, but in your study you would be able to produce works which would charm if they did not instruct. There is in you a heart instinct which, as it forms part of your nature, would display itself in everything you wrote." "Useless, Edward, useless! My father was an author; it brought him no happiness." "How do you know? It may have afforded him consolation, and that is happiness. But I was not speaking of happiness. The true artist does not look to results. He has only one aim and one desire--to produce a perfect work. His task being done--not that he produces a perfect work, but the ennoblement lies in the aspiration and the earnest application--that being done, he has accomplished something worthy, whatever its degree of excellence. The day upon which a man first devotes himself to such labour he awakes within his being a new and delightful life, the life of creative thought. Fresh wonders continually reveal themselves--quaint suggestions, exquisite fancies, and he makes use of them according to the strength of his intellect. He enriches the world." "And if he is a poor man, starves." "Maybe; but he wears the crown. You, however, are rich." "Nothing to be grateful for. I had no incentive to effort, therefore I stand to-day an idle, aimless man. You have spoken of books. When I looked at crowded bookshelves, I should blush at the thought of adding to them any rubbish of my own creation." "I find no fault with you for that. Blush if you like--but work, produce." "And let the world call me vain and presumptuous." "Give it the chance of judging; it may be the other way. Perhaps the greatest difficulty we have to encounter in life is in the discovery of that kind of work for which we are best fitted. Fortunate the man who gravitates to it naturally, and who, having the capacity to become a fine shoemaker, is not clapped upon a watchmaker's bench instead of a cobbler's stool. Being fitted, he is certain to acquire some kind of distinction. Believe me, Christian, it is not out of idleness, or for the mere purpose of making conversation that I open up this subject. It would afford me great pleasure if you were in a more settled frame of mind. You cannot disguise from me that you are uneasy, perhaps unhappy. I see it this very moment in your wandering glances, and in the difficulty you experience in fixing your attention upon what I am saying. You are not satisfied with yourself. You have probably arrived at that stage when a man questions himself as to what is before him--when he reviews the past, and discovers that he has allowed the years to slip by without having made an effort to use them to a worthy end. You ask yourself, 'Is it for this I am here? Are there not certain duties which I ought to perform? If I allow the future to slip away as the past has done, without having accomplished a man's work in the world, I shall find myself one day an old man, of whom it may be said, "He lived only for himself; he had no thought, no desire beyond himself; the struggles of humanity, the advance of civilisation, the progress and development of thought which have effected such marvellous changes in the aspects of society, the exposing of error--these things touched him not; he bore no part in them, but stood idly by, a careless observer, whose only ambition it was to utilise the hours to his own selfish pleasures."' A heavy charge, Christian. What you want is occupation. Politics--your inclinations do not lead that way; trade is abhorrent to you. You are not sufficiently frivolous to develop into a butterfly leader of fashion. Law is distasteful to you. Science demands qualities which you do not possess. For a literary life you are specially adapted. I say to you, turn your attention to it for a while. If it disappoint you, it is easy to relinquish it. It will be but an attempt made in the right direction. But understand, Christian, without earnestness, without devotion, without application, it will be useless to make the attempt." "And that is precisely the reason why I hesitate to make it. I am wanting in firmness of purpose. I doubt myself; I should have begun earlier." "But you will think over what I have said?" "Yes, I will think of it, and I cordially thank you." "And now tell me how you enjoyed yourself in the mountains." "Passably well. It was a negative sort of life. There was no pleasure in it, and no pain. One day was so exactly like another, that I should scarcely have been surprised if I had awoke one morning and discovered that in the dull uniformity of the hours my hair had grown white and I into an old man. The principal subject of interest was the weather, and that palled so soon that sunshine or storm became a matter of indifference to me." "Look at me a moment, Christian." They sat gazing at each other in silence for a little while. There was an unusual tenderness in the Advocate's eyes which pierced Christian Almer to the heart. During the whole of this interview the thought never left his mind: "If he knew the part I am playing towards him--if he suspected that simply by listening at this inner door he could hear his wife's soft breathing--in what way would he call me to account for my treachery?" He dreaded every moment that something would occur to betray him. Adelaide was careless, reckless. If she made a movement to attract attention, if she overturned a chair, if she let a book fall, what was he to say in answer to the Advocate's questioning look? But all was quiet within; he was tortured only by the whisperings of his conscience. "You are suffering, Christian," said the Advocate. Almer knew intuitively that on this point, as on many others, it would be useless to attempt to deceive the Advocate. To return an evasive answer might arouse suspicion. He said simply: "Yes, I am suffering." "It is not bodily suffering, though your pulse is feverish." He had taken Almer's wrist, and his fingers were on the pulse. "Your disease is mental." He paused, but Almer did not speak. "It is no breach of confidence," continued the Advocate, "to tell you that on the first day of my entering Geneva, Jacob Hartrich and I had a conversation about you. There was nothing said that need be kept private. We conversed as two men might converse concerning an absent friend in whom both took an affectionate interest. He had noticed a change in you which I have noticed since I entered this room. When you visited him he was impressed by an unusual strangeness in your manner. That strangeness of manner, without your being aware of it, is upon you now. He said that you were restless and ill at ease. You are at this moment restless and ill at ease. The muscles of your face, your eyes, your hands, are not under your control. They respond to the mental disease which causes you to suffer. You will forgive me for saying that you convey to me the impression that you would be more at ease at the present time if I were not with you." "I entreat you," said Almer eagerly, "not to think so." "I accept your assurance, which, nevertheless, does not convince me that I am wrong in my impression. The friendship which exists between us is too close and binding--I may even go so far as to say, too sacred--for me, a colder and more experienced man than yourself, to allow it to be affected by any matter outside its boundary. Deprive it of sympathy, and friendship is an unmeaning word. I sympathise with you deeply, sincerely, without knowing how to relieve you. I ask you frankly, however, one question which you may freely answer. Have you fixed your affections upon a woman who does not reciprocate your love?" The Advocate was seated by the desk upon which Almer had, after reading it, carelessly thrown the note written to him by Adelaide, and as he put the question to his friend, he involuntarily laid his hand upon this damning evidence of his wife's disloyalty. CHAPTER XII SELF-JUSTIFICATION The slight action and the significant question presented a coincidence so startling that Christian Almer was fascinated by it. That there was premeditation or design in the coincidence, or that the Advocate had cunningly led the conversation to this point for the purpose of confounding him and bringing him face to face with his treachery, did not suggest itself to his mind. He was, indeed, incapable of reasoning coherently. All that he was momentarily conscious of was, that discovery was imminent, that the sword hung over him, suspended by a hair. Would it fall, and in its fall compel into a definite course the conflicting passions by which he was tortured? It would, perhaps, be better so. Already did he experience a feeling of relief at this suggestion, and it appeared to him as if he were bending his head for the welcome blow. But all was still and quiet, and through the dim mist before his eyes he saw the Advocate gazing kindly upon him. Then there stole upon him a wild prompting, a mad impulse, to expedite discovery by his own voluntary act--to say to the Advocate: "I have betrayed you. Read that note beneath your hand; take this key, and open yonder door; find there your wife. What do you propose to do?" The words did actually shape themselves in his mind, and he half believed that he had uttered them. They did not, however, escape his lips. He was instinctively restrained by the consideration that in his punishment Adelaide would be involved. What right had he deliberately to ruin and expose her? A cowardly act thus to sacrifice a woman who in this crisis relied upon him for protection. In a humiliating, shameful sense it is true, but none the less was she under his direct protection at this moment. Self-tortured as he was he could still show that he had some spark of manliness left in him. To recklessly dispose of the fate of the woman whose only crime was that she loved him--this he dared not do. His mood changed. Arrived at this conclusion, his fear now was that he had betrayed himself--that in some indefinite way he had given the Advocate the key to his thoughts, or that he had, by look or expression, conveyed to his friend a sense of the terrible importance of the perfumed note which lay upon the desk. "You do not answer me, Christian," said the Advocate. But Almer could not speak. His eyes were fixed upon Adelaide's note, and he found it impossible to divert his attention from the idle movements of the Advocate's fingers. His unreasoning impulse to hasten discovery was gone, and he was afflicted now by a feeling of apprehension. It was his imperative duty to protect Adelaide; while the Advocate's hand rested upon the envelope which contained her secret she was not safe. At all risks, even at the hazard of his life, must she be held blameless. Had the Advocate lifted the envelope from the desk, Almer would have torn it from him. "Why do you not speak?" asked the Advocate. "Surely there is nothing offensive in such a question between friends like ourselves." "I can offer you no explanation of what I am about to say," replied Almer: "it may sound childish, trivial, pitiful, but my thoughts are not under my own control while your hand is upon that letter." With the slightest expression of surprise the Advocate handed Almer the envelope, scarcely looking at it as it passed from his possession. "Why did you not speak of it before?" he said. "But when a mind is unbalanced, trifling matters are magnified into importance." "I can only ask you to forgive me," said Almer, placing the envelope in his pocket-book. "I have no doubt in the course of your career you have met with many small incidents quite as inexplicable." Then an excuse which would surely be accepted occurred to him. "It may be sufficient for me to say that this is the first night of my return to the house in which I was born and passed a not too happy boyhood, and that in this room my mother died." The Advocate pressed Almer's hand. "There is no need for another word. You have been looking over some old family papers, and they have aroused melancholy reminiscences. I should have been more thoughtful; I was wrong in coming to you. It will be best to say good-night." But Almer, anxious to avoid the slightest cause for suspicion in the right direction, said: "Nay, stay with me a few minutes longer, or I shall reproach myself for having behaved unreasonably. You were asking----" "A delicate question. Whether you love without being loved in return?" "No, Edward, that is not the case with me." "You have no intention of marrying?" "No." "Then your heart is still free. You reassure me. You are not suffering from what has been described as the most exquisite of all human sufferings--unrequited love. Neither have you experienced a disappointment in friendship?" "No. I have scarcely a friend with the exception of yourself." "And my wife. You must not forget her. She takes a cordial interest in you." "Yes, and your wife." "It was Jacob Hartrich who suggested that you might have met with a disappointment in love or friendship. I disputed it, in the belief that had it been unhappily so you would have confided in me. I am glad that I was right. Shall I continue?" "Yes." "The banker, who entertains the most kindly sentiments towards you, based all his conjectures upon a certain remark which made a strong impression upon him. You told him you were weary of the gaiety and the light and bustle of cities, and that it was your intention to seek some solitude where, by a happy chance, you might rid yourself of a terror which possessed you. I can understand your weariness of the false glare of fashionable city life; it can never for any long period satisfy the intellect. But neither can it instil a terror into a man's soul. That would spring from another and a deeper cause." "The words were hastily spoken. Look upon them as an exaggeration." "I certainly regard them in that light, but they were not an invention, and there must have been a serious motive for them. It is not in vain that I have studied your character, although I feel that I did not master the study. I am subjecting you, Christian, to a kind of mental analysis, in an endeavour to arrive at a conclusion which will enable me to be of assistance to you. And I do not disguise from you that, were it in my power, I would assist you even against your will. Our friendship, and my age and more varied experience, would justify me. I do not seek to force your confidence, but I ask you in the spirit of true friendship to consider--not at present, but in a few days, when your mind is in a calmer state--whether such counsel and guidance as it may be in my power to offer will not be a real help to you. Do not lightly reject my assistance in probing a painful wound. I will use my knife gently. There was a time when I believed there was nothing that could happen to either of us which we should be unwilling to confide each to the other, freely and without restraint. I find I am not too old to learn the lesson that the strongest beliefs, the firmest convictions, may be seriously weakened by the occurrence of circumstances for which the wisest foresight could not have provided. Keep, then, your secret, if you are so resolved, and bear in mind that on the day you come to me and say, 'Edward, help me, guide me,' you will find me ready. I shall not fail you, Christian, in any crisis." Almer rose and slowly paced the room, while the Advocate sat back in his chair, and watched his friend with affectionate solicitude. "Does this lesson," presently said Almer, "which you are not too old to learn, spring entirely from the newer impressions you are receiving of my character, or has something in your mind which you have not disclosed helped to lead you to it?" It was a chance shot, but it strangely hit the mark. The question brought forcibly to the Advocate's mind the position in which he himself was placed by Gautran's confession, and by his subsequent resolve to conceal the knowledge of Gautran's crime. "What a web is the world!" he thought. "How the lines which here are widely apart, but a short space beyond cross and are linked in closest companionship!" Both Christian and himself had something to conceal, and it would be acting in bad faith to his friend were he to return an evasive answer. "It is not entirely from the newer impressions you speak of that I learn the lesson. It springs partly from a matter which disturbs my mind." "Referring to me?" "No, to myself. You are not concerned in it." In his turn Almer now became the questioner. "A new experience of your own, Edward?" "Yes." "Which must have occurred to you since we were last together?" "It originated during your absence." "Which came upon you unaware--for which your foresight could not have provided?" "At all events it did not." "You speak seriously, Edward, and your face is clouded." "It is a very serious matter." "Can I help you? Is it likely that my advice would be of assistance?" "I can speak of it to no one." "You also have a secret then?" "Yes, I also have a secret." Christian Almer appeared to gather strength--a warranty, as it were, for his own wrong-doing--from the singular direction the conversation had taken. It was as though part of a burden was lifted from him. He was not the only one who was suffering--he was not the only one who was standing on a dangerous brink--he was not the only one who had drifted into dangerous waters. Even this strong-brained man, this Advocate who had seemingly held aloof from pleasure, whose days and nights had been given up to study, whose powerful intellect could pierce dark mysteries and bring them into clear light, who was the last man in the world who could be suspected of yielding to a prompting of which his judgment and conscience could not approve--even he had a secret which he was guarding with jealous care. Was it likely then, that he, the younger and the more impressionable of the two, could escape snares into which the Advocate had fallen? The fatalist's creed recurred to him. All these matters of life were preordained. What folly--what worse than folly, what presumption, for one weak man to attempt to stem the irresistible current! It was delivering himself up to destruction. Better to yield and float upon the smooth tide and accept what good or ill fate has in store for him. What use to infuse into the sunlight, and the balmy air, and into all the sweets of life, the poison of self-torture? The confession he had extracted from the Advocate was in a certain sense a justification of himself. He would pursue the subject still further. As he had been questioned, so he would question. It was but just. "To judge from your manner, Edward, your secret is no light one." "It is of most serious import." "I almost fear to ask a question which occurs to me." "Ask freely. I have been candid with you, in my desire to ascertain how I could help you in your trouble. Be equally candid with me." "But it may be misconstrued. I am ashamed that it should have suggested itself--for which, of course, the worser part of me is responsible. No--it shall remain unspoken." "I should prefer that you asked it--nay, I desire you to do so. There is no fear of misconstruction. Do you think I wish to stand in your eyes as a perfect man? That would be arrogant, indeed. Or that I do not know that you and I and all men are possessed of contradictions which, viewed in certain aspects, may degrade the most noble? The purest of us--men and women alike--have undignified thoughts, unworthy imaginings, to which we would be loth to give utterance. But sometimes, as in this instance, it becomes a duty. I have had occasion quite lately to question myself closely, and I have fallen in my own estimation. There is more baseness in me than I imagined. Hesitate no longer. Ask your question, and as many more as may arise from it; these things are frequently hydra-headed. I shall know how far to answer without disclosing what I desire shall remain buried." Almer put his question boldly. "Is the fate of a woman involved in your secret?" An almost imperceptible start revealed to Almer's eyes that another chance arrow had hit the mark. Truly, a woman's fate formed the kernel of the Advocate's secret--a virtuous, innocent woman who had been most foully murdered. He answered in set words, without any attempt at evasion. "Yes, a woman's fate is involved in it." "Your wife's?" Had his life depended upon it, Almer could not have kept back the words. "No, not my wife's." "In that case," said Almer slowly, "a man's honour is concerned." "You guess aright--a man's honour is concerned." "Yours?" "Mine." For a few moments neither of them spoke, and then the Advocate said: "To men suspicious of each other--as most men naturally are, and generally with reason--such a turn in our conversation, and indeed the entire conversation in which we have indulged, might be twisted to fatal disadvantage. In the way of conjecture I mean--as to what is the essence of the secret which I do not reveal to my dearest friend, and the essence of that which my dearest friend does not reveal to me. It is fortunate, Christian, that you and I stand higher than most. We have rarely hesitated to speak heart to heart and soul to soul; and if, by some strange course of events, there has arisen in each of our inner lives a mystery which we have decided not to reveal, it will not weaken the feeling of affection we entertain for each other. Is that so, Christian?" "Yes, it is so, Edward." "Men of action, of deep thought, of strong passion, of sensitive natures, are less their own masters than peasants who take no part in the turmoil of the world. An uneventful life presents fewer temptations, and there is therefore more freedom in it. We live in an atmosphere of wine, and often miss our way. Well, we must be indulgent to each other, and be sometimes ready to say, 'The position of difficulty into which you have been thrust, the error you have committed, the sin--yes, even the sin--of which you have been guilty, may have fallen to my lot had I been placed in similar circumstances. It is not I who will be the first to condemn you.'" "Even," said Almer, "if that error or that sin may be a grievous wrong inflicted against yourself. Even then you would be ready to excuse and forgive?" "Yes, even in that case. I should be taking a narrow view of an argument if I applied to all the world what I hesitated to apply to myself." "So that the committal of a great wrong may be justified by circumstances?" "Yes, I will go as far as that. The fault of the child or the fault of the man, is but a question of degree. Some err deliberately, some are hurried into error by passions which master them." "By natural passions?" "All such passions are natural, although it is the fashion to condemn them when they clash with the conditions of social life. The workings of the moral and sympathetic affections are beyond our own control." "Of those who have erred with deliberate intention and those who have been hurried blindly into error, which should you be most ready to forgive?" "The latter," replied the Advocate, conscious that in his answer he was condemning himself; "they are comparatively innocent, having less power over, and being less able to retrace their steps." "You pause," said Almer, a sudden thrill agitating his veins. "Why?" "I thought I heard a sound--like a suppressed laugh! Did you not hear it?" "No. I heard nothing." Almer's teeth met in scorn of himself as he uttered this falsehood. The sound of the laugh was low but distinct, and it proceeded from the room in which Adelaide was concealed. The Advocate stepped to the door by which he had entered, and looked up and down the passage, to which two lamps gave light. It was quiet and deserted. "My fancy," he said, standing within the half-open door. "My physicians know more of the state of my nerves than I do myself. It is interesting, however, to observe one's own mental delusions. But I was wrong in mixing myself up with that trial." Still that trial. Always that trial. It seemed to him as if he could never forget it, as if it would forever abide with him. It coloured his thoughts, it gave form to his arguments. Would it end by changing his very nature? "You are over-wrought, Edward," said Almer. "If you were to seek what I have sought, solitude, it might be more beneficial to you than it has been to me." "There is solitude enough for me in this retired village," said the Advocate, "and had I not undertaken the defence of Gautran, my health by this time might have been completely established. We are here sufficiently removed from the fierce passions of the world--they cannot touch us in this primitive birthplace of yours. Do you recognise how truly I spoke when I said that men like ourselves are the slaves, and peasants the free men? Besides, Christian, there is a medicine in friendship such as yours which I defy the doctors to rival. Even though there has been a veil over our confidences to-night, I feel that this last hour has been of benefit to me. You know that I am much given to thinking to myself. As a rule, at those times, one walks in a narrow groove; if he argues, the contradiction he receives is of that mild character that it can be easily proved wrong. No wonder, when the thinker creates it for the purpose of proving himself right. It is seldom healthy, this solitary communionship--it leads rarely to just conclusions. But in conversation new byeroads reveal themselves, in which we wander pleasantly--new vistas appear--new suggestions arise, to give variety to the argument and to show that it has more than one selfish side. He who leads entirely a life of thought lives a dead life. Good-night, Christian. I have kept you from your rest. Good-night. Sleep well." CHAPTER XIII SHADOWS Christian Almer stood at the door, gazing at the retreating figure of the Advocate. It passed through the clear light of the lamps, became blurred, was merged in the darkness. The corridor was long, and before the Advocate reached the end he was a shadow among shadows. In Almer's excited mood the slightest impressions became the medium for distorted reflection. The dim form of the Advocate was pregnant with meaning, and when it was finally lost to sight, Almer's eyes followed an invisible figure moving, not through space, but through events in which he and his friend and Adelaide were the principal actors. A wild whirl of images crowded to his mind, presenting in the midst of their confusion defined and distinct pictures, the leading features of which were the consequences arising from the double betrayal of love and friendship. Violent struggles, deadly embraces--in houses, in forests, on the brinks of precipices, in the torrents of furious rivers. The proportions of these images were vast, titanic. The forests were interminable, the trees rose to an immense height, the rivers resembled raging seas, the presentments of animated life were of unnatural magnitude. Even when he and Adelaide were flying through a trackless wood, and were overtaken by the Advocate, this impression of gigantic growth prevailed, as though there were room in the world for naught but themselves and the passions by which they were swayed. He was recalled to himself by a soft tapping at the door of the inner room. He instantly unlocked it, and released Adelaide, who raised her eyes, beaming with animation, to his. He was overcome with astonishment. He thought to see her pale, frightened, trembling. Never had he beheld her more radiant. "He is gone," she said in a gay tone. "Hush!" whispered Almer, "he may return." "He will not," she said. "You will see him no more to-night." "Thank Heaven the danger is averted! I feel as if I had been guilty of some horrible crime." "Whereas you have simply indulged poor innocent me in a harmless fancy. Christian, I heard every word." "I thought you would have fallen asleep. How could you have been so imprudent, so reckless, as to laugh?" "How can I help being a woman of impulse? Were you very much frightened? I was not--I rather enjoyed it. Christian, there is not a single thing my immaculate husband does which does not convince me he has no heart. Just think what might have happened if he had come to the right door and thrown it open and seen me! There! You look so horrified that I feel I have said something wrong again. Christian, what did you mean by saying to him, 'My thoughts are not under my control while you have your hand on that letter'? What letter was it?" "Your note, which Dionetta left in the room. He was sitting by the desk upon which I had laid it, and his hand was upon it." "And it made you nervous? To think that he had but to open that innocent bit of paper! What a scene there would have been! I should have gloried in the situation--yes, indeed. There is no pleasure in life like the excitement of danger. Those who say women are weak know nothing of us. We are braver than men, a thousand, thousand times braver. I tried to peep through the door, but there wasn't a single friendly crevice. What a shock it would have given him if I had suddenly called out as he held the letter: 'Open it, my love, open it and read it!'" "That is what you call being prudent?" said Almer in despair. "Tyrant! I cannot promise you not to think. I have a good mind to be angry with you. You are positively ungrateful. You shut me up in a room all by myself, where I quietly remain, the very soul of discretion--you did not so much as hear me breathe--only forgetting myself once when my feelings overcame me, and you don't give me one word of praise. Tell me instantly, sir, that I am a brave little woman." "You are the personification of rashness." "How ungrateful! Did you think of me, Christian, while I was locked up there?" "My thoughts did not wander from you for a moment." "If you had only given me a handful of these roseleaves so that I might have buried my face in them and imagined I was not tied to a man who loves another woman than his wife! You seem amazed. Do you forget already what has passed between you? If it had happened that I loved him, after his confession to-night I should hate him. But it is indifferent to me upon whom he has set his affections--with all my heart I pity the unfortunate creature he loves. She need not fear me; I shall not harm her. You got at the heart of his secret when you asked him if a woman was involved in it; and you compelled him to confess that his honour--and of course hers; mine does not matter--was at stake in his miserable love-affair. He loves a woman who is not his wife; with all his evasions he could not help admitting it. And this is the man who holds his head so high above all other men--the man who was never known to commit an indiscretion! Of course he must keep his secret close--of course he could not speak of it to his friend, whom he tries to hoodwink with professions and twisted words! He married me, I suppose, to satisfy his vanity; he wanted the world to see that old as he was, grave as he was, no woman could resist him. And I allowed myself to be persuaded by worldly friends! Is it not a proof of my never having loved him, that, instead of hating him when in my hearing he confesses he loves another, I simply laugh at him and despise him? I should not shed a tear over him if he died to-night. He has insulted me--and what woman ever forgets or forgives an insult? But he has done me a good service, too, and I thank him. How sleepy I am! Good-night. My minute is up, and I cannot stay longer; I must think of my complexion. Goodnight, Christian; that is all I came to say." CHAPTER XIV THE ADVOCATE FEARS HE HAS CREATED A MONSTER The Advocate did not immediately return to his study. Darkness was more congenial to his mood, and he spent a few minutes in the gardens of the villa. Although he had stated to Christian Almer that the conversation which had passed between them had been of benefit to him, he felt, now that he was alone, that there was much in it to give rise to disturbing thought and conjecture. He had not foreseen the difficulty, in social intercourse, of avoiding the subject uppermost in his mind. A morbid self-consciousness, at present in its germ, and from which he had hitherto been entirely free, seemed to unlock all roads in its direction. It was, as it were, the converging-point of all matters, even the most trivial, affecting himself. Having put the seal upon his resolution with respect to Gautran's confession, he became painfully aware that he had committed himself to a line of action from which he could not now recede without laying himself open to such suspicion, from friend and foe alike, as might fatally injure his reputation. He was a lawyer, and he knew what powerful use he could make of such a weapon against any man, high or low. If it could be turned against another it could be turned against himself. He must not, therefore, waver in his resolution. Only his conscience could call him to account. Well, he would reckon with that. It was a passive, not an active accuser. Gautran would seek some new locality, in which he would be lost to sight. As a matter of common prudence, it was more than likely he would change his name. The suspicion which attached itself to him, and the horror with which he was regarded in the neighbourhood in which he had lived, would compel him to fly to other pastures. In this, and in the silence of time, lay the Advocate's safety, for every day that passed would weaken the fever of excitement created by the trial. After a few weeks, if it even happened that Gautran were insanely to make a public declaration of his guilt, and to add to this confession a statement that the Advocate was aware of it during the trial, by whom would he be believed? Certainly not by the majority of the better classes of the people; and in the event of such a contingency, he could quote with effect the poet's words: "Be thou chaste as ice, and pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny." So much, then, for himself: but he was more than ever anxious and ill at ease regarding Christian Almer. The secret which his friend dared not divulge to him was evidently of the gravest import--probably as terrible in its way as that which lay heavily on the Advocate's soul; and the profound mystery in which it was wrapt invested it with a significance so unusual, even in the Advocate's varied experience of human nature, that he could not keep from brooding upon it. Was it a secret in which honour was involved? He could not bring himself to believe that Almer could be guilty of a dishonourable act--but a man might be dragged into a difficulty against his will, and might have a burden of shame unexpectedly thrust upon him which he could not openly fling off without disgrace. And yet--and yet--that he should be so careful in concealing it from the knowledge of the truest of friends--it was inexplicable. Ponder as long as he might, the Advocate could arrive at no explanation of it, nor could his logical mind obtain the slightest clue to the mystery. The cool air in the gardens refreshed him, and he walked about, always within view of the lights in his study windows, with his head uncovered. It was during the first five minutes of his solitude that an impression stole upon him that he was not alone. He searched the avenues, he listened, he asked aloud: "Is any person near, and does he wish to speak to me?" No voice answered him. The gardens, with the exception of the soft rustling of leaf and branch, were as silent as the grave. Towards the end of his solitary rambling, and as he was contemplating leaving the grounds, this impression again stole upon him. Was it the actual sound of muffled footsteps, or the spiritual influence of an unseen presence, which disturbed him? He could not decide. Again he searched the avenues, again he listened, again he asked a question aloud. All was silent. This was the third time during the night that he had allowed himself to be beguiled. Once in Christian Almer's room, when he thought he had heard a laugh, and now twice in the solitude of the grounds. He set it down as an unreasoning fancy springing from the agitation into which he had been thrown by his interview with Gautran, and he breathed a wish that the next fortnight were passed, when his mind would almost certainly have recovered its equilibrium. The moment the wish was born, he smiled in contempt of his own weakness. It opened another vein in the psychological examination to which he was subjecting himself. He entered his study, and did not perceive Gautran, who was asleep in the darkest corner of the room. But his quick observant eye immediately fell upon the glass out of which Gautran had drunk the wine. The glass was on his writing-table; it was not there when he left his study. He glanced at the wine-bottles on the sideboard; they had been disturbed. "Some person has been here in my absence," he thought. "Who--and for what purpose?" He hastily examined his manuscripts and, missing none, raised the wine-glass and held it mouth downwards. As a couple of drops of red liquor fell to the ground, he heard behind him the sound of heavy breathing. An ordinary man would have let the glass fall from his hand in sudden alarm, for the breathing was so deep, and strong, and hoarse, that it might have proceeded from the throat of a wild beast who was preparing to spring upon him. But the Advocate was not easily alarmed. He carefully replaced the glass, and wheeled in the direction of the breathing. He saw the outlines of a form stretched upon the ground in a distant corner; he stepped towards it, and stooping, recognised Gautran. He was not startled. It seemed to be in keeping with what had previously transpired, that Gautran should be lying there slumbering at his feet. He stood quite still, regarding the sleeping figure of the murderer in silence. He had risen to his full height; one hand rested upon the back of a massive oak chair: his face was grave and pale; his head was downwards bent. So he stood for many minutes almost motionless. Not the slightest agitation was observable in him; he was calmly engaged in reflecting upon the position of affairs, as though they related not to himself, but to a client in whose case he was interested, and he was evolving from them, by perfectly natural reasoning, the most extraordinary complications and results. In all his experience he had never been engaged in a case presenting so many rare possibilities, and he was in a certain sense fascinated by the powerful use he could make of the threads of the web in which he had become so strangely and unexpectedly entangled. Gautran's features were not clearly visible to him; they were too much in shadow. He took from his writing-table a lamp with a soft strong light, and set it near to the sleeping man. It brought the ruffian into full view. His unshaven face, his coarse, matted hair, his brutal sensual mouth, his bushy eyebrows, his large ears, his bared neck, his soiled and torn clothes, the perspiration in which he was bathed, presented a spectacle of human degradation as revolting as any the Advocate had ever gazed upon. "By what means," he thought, "did this villain obtain information of my movements and residence, and what is his motive in coming here? When he accosted me tonight he did not know where I lived--of that I am convinced, for he had no wish to meet me, and believed he was threatening another man than myself on the high road. That was a chance meeting. Is this, also, a chance encounter? No; there is premeditation in it. Had he entered another house he would have laid his hands on something valuable and decamped, his purpose being served. He would not dare to rob me, but he dares to thrust his company upon me. Of all men, I am the man he should be most anxious to avoid, for only I know him to be guilty. Have I created a monster who is destined to be the terror and torture of my life? Is he shrewd enough, clever enough, cunning enough, to use his power as I should use it were I in his place, and he in mine? That is not to be borne, but what is the alternative? I could put life into the grotesque oaken features upon which my hand is resting, and they might suggest a remedy. The branches of the tree within which these faces grew in some old forest waved doubtless over many a mystery, but this in which I am at present engaged matches the deepest of them. Some demon seems to be whispering at my elbow. Speak, then; what would you urge me to do?" The Unseen: "Gautran entered unobserved." The Advocate: "That is apparent, or he would not be lying here with the hand of Fate above him." The Unseen: "No person saw him--no person is aware that he is in your study, at your mercy." The Advocate: "At my mercy! You could have found a better word to express your meaning." The Unseen: "You know him to be a murderer." The Advocate: "True." The Unseen: "He deserves death! You have already heard the whisperings of the voice which urged you to fulfil the divine law, Blood for blood!" The Advocate: "Speak not of what is Divine. Tempter, have you not the courage to come straight to the point?" The Unseen: "Kill him where he lies! He will not be missed. It is night--black night. Every living being in the house, with the exception of yourself, is asleep. You have twisted justice from its rightful course. The wrong you did you can repair. Kill him where he lies!" The Advocate: "And have the crime of murder upon my soul?" The Unseen: "It is not murder. Standing as you are standing now, knowing what you know, you are justified." The Advocate: "I will have no juggling. If I kill him it is not in the cause of justice. Speak plainly. Why should he die at my hands?" The Unseen: "His death is necessary for your safety." The Advocate: "Ah, that is better. No talk of justice now. We come to the coarse selfishness of things, which will justify the deadliest crimes. His death is necessary for my safety! How am I endangered? Say that his presence here is a threat. Am I not strong enough to avoid the peril? How vile am I that I should allow such thoughts to suggest themselves! Christian, my friend, whatever is the terror which has taken possession of you, and from which you vainly strive to fly, your secret is pure in comparison with mine. If it were possible that the secret which oppresses you concerned your dearest friend, concerned me, whom perchance it has in some hidden way wronged, how could I withhold from you pity and forgiveness, knowing how sorely my own actions need pity and forgiveness? For the first time in my life I am brought face to face with my soul, and I see how base it is. Has my life, then, been surrounded by dreams, and do I now awake to find how low and abominable are the inner workings of my nature? I must arouse this monster. He shall hide nothing from me." He spurned Gautran with his foot. It was with no gentle touch, and Gautran sprang to his feet, and would have thrown himself upon the Advocate had he not suddenly recognised him. CHAPTER XV GAUTRAN AND THE ADVOCATE "How long have I been asleep?" muttered Gautran, shaking himself and rubbing his eyes. "It seems but a minute." The clock on the mantel struck the hour of two. "I counted twelve when I was in the grounds; I have been here two hours. You might have let me sleep longer. It is the first I have enjoyed for weeks--a sleep without a dream. As I used to sleep before----" He shuddered, and did not complete the sentence. "Give me something to drink, master." "You have been helping yourself to my wine," said the Advocate. "You know everything, master. Yes, it was wine I drank, as mild as milk. It went down like water. Good for gentlemen, perhaps, but not for us. I must have something stronger." He looked anxiously round the room, and sighed and smiled; no appalling vision greeted his sight. "Ah," he said, "I am safe here. Give me some brandy." "You will have none, Gautran," said the Advocate sternly. "Ah, master," implored Gautran, "think better of it, I must have brandy--I must!" "Must!" echoed the Advocate, with a frown. "Yes, master, must; I shall not be able to talk else. My throat is parched--you can hear for yourself that it is as dry as a raven's. I must have drink, and it mustn't be milk-wine. I am not quite a fool, master. If that horrible shadow were never to appear to me again, I would show those who have been hard on me a trick or two that would astonish them. If you've a spark of compassion in you, master, give a poor wretch a glass of brandy." The Advocate considered a moment, and then unlocked a small cupboard, from which he took a bottle of brandy. He filled a glass, and gave it to Gautran. "Here's confusion to our enemies," said Gautran. "Ah, this is fine! I have never tasted such before. It puts life into a man." "What makes you drink to _our_ enemies, Gautran?" asked the Advocate. "Why, master, are not my enemies yours, and yours mine? We row in the same boat. If they found us out, it would be as bad for you as it would be for me. Worse, master, worse, for you have much to lose; I have nothing. You see, master, I have been thinking over things since we met in the lane yonder." "You are bold and impudent. What if I were to summon my servants and have you marched off to gaol?" "What would you accuse me of? I have not stolen anything; you may search me if you like. No, no, master, I will take nothing from you. What you give I shall be grateful for; but rob you? No--you are mistaken in me. I owe you too much already. I am bound to you for life." "You do not seem afraid of the gaol, Gautran." "Not when you threaten me with it, master, for you are jesting with me. It is not worth your while; I am a poor creature to make sport of." "Yet I am dangerously near handing you over to justice." "For what, master, for what? For coming into your room, and not finding you there, throwing myself in a corner like a dog?" "It is sufficient--and you have stolen my wine. These are crimes which the law is ready to punish, especially in men with evil reputations." "You are right, I've no doubt; you know more about the law than I do. I don't intend to dispute with you, master. But when they got hold of me they would question me, and my tongue would be loosened against my will. I say again, you are jesting with me. How warm and comfortable it is in this grand room, and how miserable outside! Ah, why wasn't I born rich? It was a most unfortunate accident." "Your tongue would be loosened against your will! What could you say?" "What everybody suspects, but could not prove, master, thanks to you. They owe me a grudge in the prison yonder--lawyers and judges and gaolers--and nothing would please them better than to hear what I could tell them--that I killed the girl, and that you knew I killed her. You don't look pleased, master. You drove me to say it." "You slanderous villain!" "I don't mind what you call me, master. I can bear anything from you. I am your slave, and there is nothing you could set me to do that I am not ready to perform. I mean it, master. Try me--only try me! Think of something fearful, something it would take a bold, desperate man to do, and see if I shrink from it. The gaoler was right when he said I was a lucky dog to get such an Advocate as you to defend me. You knew the truth--you knew I did the deed--you knew no one else could save me--and you wanted to show them how clever you were, and what a fool any lawyer was to think he could stand against you. And you did it, master, you did it. How mad they must be with you! I wonder how much they would give to cry Quits! And you've done even more than that, master. The spirit which has been with me night and day, in prison and out of prison, lying by me in bed, standing by my side in the court--you saw it there, master--dogging me through the streets and lanes, hiding behind trees and gliding upon me when I thought I had escaped it--it is gone, master, it is gone! It will not come where you are. It is afraid of you. I don't care whether it is a holy or an unholy power you possess, I am your slave, and you can do with me as you will. But you must not send me to prison again--no, you must not do that! Why, master, simple as I am, and ignorant of the law, I feel that you are joking with me, when you threaten to summon your servants to march me off to gaol for coming into your house. I should say to them, 'You are a pack of fools. Don't you see he is jesting with you? Here have we been talking together for half an hour, and he has given me his best brandy as a mark of friendship. There is the bottle--feel the rim of it, and you will find it wet. Look at the glass, if you don't believe me. Smell it--smell my breath.' Why, then they would ask you again if you were in earnest, and you would have to send them away. Master, I was never taught to read or write, and there is very little I know--but I know well that there is a time to do a thing and a time not to do it, and that unless a thing is done at the proper time, there is no use afterwards attempting it. I will tell you something, though I dare say I might save myself the trouble, for you can read what is in me. If Madeline, when she ran from me along the river's bank, had escaped me, it is likely she would be alive at this moment, for the fiend that spurred me on to kill her might never again have been so strong within me, might never again have had such power over me as he had that night. But he was too strong for me, and that was the time to do the deed, and she had to die. Do you think I don't pity her? I do, when she is not tormenting me. But when she follows me, as she has done to-night, when she stands looking at me with eyes in which there is fire, but no light, I feel that I could kill her over again if I dared, and if I could get a good grip of her. Are all spirits silent? Have they no voice to speak? It is terrible, terrible! I must buy masses for her soul, and then, perhaps, she will rest in peace. Master, give me another glass of that rare brandy of yours. Talking is dry work." "You'll get no more till you leave me." "I am to leave you, then?" "When I have done with you--when our conversation is at an end." "I must obey you, master. You could crush me if you liked." "I could kill you if I liked," said the Advocate, in a voice so cold and determined that Gautran shuddered. "You could, master--I know it well enough. Not with your hands; I am your match there. Few men can equal me in strength. But you would not trust to that; you are too wise. You would scorch and wither me with a lightning touch. I should be a fool to doubt it. If you will not give me brandy, give me a biscuit or some bread and meat. Since noon I have had nothing to eat but a few apples, to which I helped myself. The gaolers robbed me of my dinner in the middle of the day, and put before me only a slice of dry bread. I would cut off two of my fingers to be even with them." In the cupboard which contained the brandy and other liquors was a silver basket containing biscuits, which the Advocate brought forward and placed before Gautran, who ate them greedily and filled his pockets with them. During the silence the Advocate's mind was busy with Gautran's words. Ignorant as the man was, and confessed himself to be, there was an undisputable logic in the position he assumed. Shrink from it as he might, the Advocate could not avoid confessing that between this man, who was little better than an animal, and himself, who had risen so high above his fellows--that in these extremes of intellectual degradation and superiority--existed a strange and, in its suggestiveness, an awful, equality. And what afforded him food for serious reflection, from an abstract point of view, was that, though they travelled upon roads so widely apart, they both arrived at the same goal. This was proved by Gautran's reasoning upon the Advocate's threat to put him in prison for breaking into the House of White Shadows. "Sound logic," thought the Advocate, "learnt in a school in which the common laws of nature are the teachers. A decided kinship exists between this murderer and myself. Am I, then, as low as he, and do the best of us, in our pride of winning the crown, indulge in self-delusions at which a child might feel ashamed? Or is it that, strive as he may, the most earnest man cannot lift himself above the grovelling motives which set in motion every action of a human life?" "Now, master," said Gautran, having finished munching. "Now, Gautran," said the Advocate, "why do you come to me?" "I belong to you," replied Gautran. "You gave me my life and my liberty. You had some meaning in it. I don't ask you what it is, for you will tell me only what you choose to tell me. I am yours, master, body and soul." "And soul?" questioned the Advocate ironically. "So long," said Gautran, crossing himself, "as you do not ask me to do anything to imperil my salvation." "Is it not already imperilled? Murderer!" "I have done nothing that I cannot buy off with masses. Ask the priests. If I could not get money any other way, to save myself I would rob a church." "Admirable!" exclaimed the Advocate. "You interest me, Gautran. How did you obtain admission into the grounds?" "Over the wall at the back. It is a mercy I did not break my bones." "And into this room--how did you enter?" "Through the window." "Knowing it was my room?" "Yes, master." "How did you gain that knowledge?" "I was told--and told, as well, that you lived in this house." "By whom were you told?" "As I ran from Madeline--she has left me forever, I hope--I came upon a man who, for some purpose of his own, was lingering on a hill a little distance from here. I sought company, and was glad of his. I made up my mind to pass my night near something human, and did not intend to leave him. But when he said that yonder was the house in which the great Advocate lived, and when he pointed out your study window, I gave him the slip, knowing I could do better than remain with him. That is the truth, master." "Are you acquainted with this man?" "No, I never saw him before; I saw but little of him as it was, the night was so dark; but I know voices when I hear them. His voice was strange to me." "How happened it, then, that you conversed about me?" "I can't remember exactly how it came about. He gave me some brandy out of a flask--not such liquor as yours, master, but I was thankful for it--and I asked him if he had ever been followed by the spirit of a dead woman. He questioned me about this woman, asking if she was fair and beautiful, whether she had met her death in the Rhone, whether her name was Madeline. Yes, he called her up before me and I was spellbound. When I came to my proper senses he was talking to himself about a great Advocate in the house he was staring at, and I said there was only one great Advocate--you who set me free--and I asked him if you lived in the house. He said yes, and that the lights I saw were the lights in your study windows. Upon that I left him, suddenly and secretly, and made my way here." "Was the man watching this house?" "It had the look of it. He is no friend of yours, that I can tell you. When he spoke of you it was with the voice of a man who could make you wince if he pleased. You have served him some trick, and he wants to be revenged, I suppose. But you can take care of yourself, master." "That will do. Leave me and leave this house, and as you value your life, enter it no more." "Then, you will see me elsewhere. Where, master, and when?" "I will see you in no place and at no time. I understand the meaning of looks, Gautran, and there is a threat in your eyes. Beware! I have means to punish you. You have escaped the penalty of your crime, but there is no safety for you here. You do not wish to die; the guilt of blood is on your soul, and you are afraid of death. Well may you be afraid of it. Such terrors await you in the life beyond as you cannot dream of. Live, then, and repent; or die, and be eternally lost! Dare to intrude yourself upon me, and death will be your portion, and you will go straight to your punishment. Here, and at this moment only, you have the choice of either fate. Choose, and swiftly." The cold, stern, impressive voice, the commanding figure, had their effect upon Gautran. He shook with fear; he was thoroughly subdued. "If I am not safe here, master, where shall I find safety?" "In a distant part of the country where you are not known." "How am I to get there? I have no money." "I will give you sufficient for flight and subsistence. Here are five gold pieces. Now, go, and let me never see your murderous face again." "Master," said Gautran humbly, as he turned the money over in his hand and counted it. "I must have more--not for myself, but to pay for masses for the repose of Madeline's soul. Then I may hope for forgiveness--then she will leave me in peace!" The Advocate emptied his purse into Gautran's open palm, saying, "Let no man see you. Depart as secretly as you came." But Gautran lingered still. "You promised me some more brandy, master." The Advocate filled the glass, and Gautran, with fierce eagerness, drank the brandy. "You will not give me another glass, master?" "No, murderer. I have spoken my last word to you." Gautran spoke no more, but with head sunk upon his breast, left the room and the house. "A vulgar expedient," mused the Advocate, when he was alone, "but the only one likely to prove effective with such a monster. It is perhaps best that it has happened. This man watching upon the hill is none other than John Vanbrugh. I had almost forgotten him. He does not come in friendship. Let him watch and wait. I will not see him." CHAPTER XVI PIERRE LAMONT SEEKS THE HOSPITALITY OF THE HOUSE OF WHITE SHADOWS. The following day Pierre Lamont did not leave his bed, and was visited in his room by the Advocate and Christian Almer. To the Advocate he said: "I trust I shall not incommode you, for I am compelled to throw myself upon your hospitality." "Get well, then," said the Advocate, "and enjoy it--which you cannot do, thus confined." "I do not know--I do not know," said the old lawyer, gazing at the Advocate, and wondering how it was possible that this profound thinker and observer could be blind to the drama which was being acted at his very door, "one can still follow the world. Have you read the papers this morning?" "No--I have not troubled myself to look at them." "Here is one that will interest you. What is called the freedom of the press is growing into a scandal. Editors and critics abuse their charter, and need some wholesome check. But you are not likely to be moved by what they say." He handed a newspaper to the Advocate, who walked to the window and read the editorial comments upon the trial and the part he had played in it. "The trial of Gautran is over, and the monster whom all believe to be guilty of a foul murder is set free. The victim, unavenged, is in her grave, and a heavy responsibility lies not only upon the city, but upon the nation. Neither for good nor ill can the words we write affect the future of Gautran. Released, by the law, he is universally condemned. Justice is not satisfied. In all Switzerland there is but one man who in his soul believes the degraded wretch to be innocent, and that this man should be right and all others wrong we refuse to believe. Never in a cause so weighty have we felt it our duty to raise our voice against a verdict reluctantly wrung from the citizens whose lot it was to judge a human being accused--and we insist, righteously accused--of a horrible crime. The verdict cannot be disturbed. Gautran is free! There is a frightful significance in these words--Gautran is free! "Removed from the feverish excitement of the court in which the trial took place, the report of the proceedings reads more like a stage drama than an episode of real life. All the elements which led to the shameful result are eminently dramatic, and were, without doubt, planned by the great Advocate who defended the accused with an eye to dramatic effect. It would scarcely surprise us were the climax now reached to be followed by an anti-climax in which Gautran's champion of yesterday would become his accuser of to-day. Our courts of justice are becoming accustomed to this kind of theatrical display. Consider the profound sensation which would be produced by the great lawyer coming forward and saying, 'Yesterday, after a long and exciting struggle, I proved to you that Gautran was innocent, and by my efforts he was let loose upon society. To-day I propose to prove to you that he is guilty, and I ask you to mete out to him his just punishment.' A dangerous temptation, indeed, to one who studies effect. But there is a safeguard against such a course. It would so blacken the fame of any man who adopted it, however high that man might stand in the estimation of his peers and the people, that he could never hope to rise from the depths of shame into which his own act had plunged him. "Many persons who believe that way will doubtless argue that there is something providential in the history of this ruthless murder of an unfortunate innocent being. She is slain. Not a soul comes forward to claim kinship with her. None the less is she a child of God. Human reason leads to the arrest and imprisonment of Gautran. Providence brings upon the scene a great lawyer, who, unsolicited, undertakes the defence of a monster, association with whom is defilement. The wretch is set free, and Justice stands appalled at what has been done in the name of the law. But this is not the end. Providence may have something yet in store which will bring punishment to the guilty and unravel this tangled skein. What, then, will the great Advocate have to say who deliberately and voluntarily brought about a miscarriage of justice so flagrant as to cause every honest heart to thrill with indignation?" The Advocate did not read any further, but laid the paper aside and said: "Men who take part in public matters are open to attacks of this kind. There is nothing to complain of." "And yet," thought Pierre Lamont, when the Advocate left him, "there was in his face, as he read the article, an expression denoting that he was moved. Well,--well--men are but human, even the greatest." Later in the day he was visited by Christian Almer, to whom he repeated his apologies. "I have one of my bad attacks on me. They frequently last for days. At such times it is dangerous for me to be moved about." "Then do not be moved about," said Almer, with a smile. But despite this smile. Almer was inwardly disquieted. He had not been aware on the previous night that Pierre Lamont occupied the next room to his. After the departure of the Advocate, Adelaide had not been careful; her voice had been frequently raised, and Almer was anxious to ascertain whether it had reached the old lawyer's ears. "You slept well, I hope," he said. "Yes, until the early morning, a little after sunrise. I am a very deep sleeper for four or five hours. The moment I close my eyes sleep claims me, and holds me so securely that, were the house on fire, it would be difficult to arouse me. But the moment the sunshine peeps into my room, my rest is at an end. When I had the use of my limbs I was an early riser." Almer's mind was relieved. "Sleeping in a strange bed is often not conducive to repose." "I have slept in so many strange beds." And Pierre Lamont thought as he spoke: "But never in a stranger bed than this." "You can still find occupation," said Almer, pointing to the books on table and bed. "Ah, books, books, books!" said Pierre Lamont. "What would the world do without them? How did it ever do without them? But I am old, and I am talking to a young man." "My father was a bookworm and a student," said Almer. "Were he alive, he would be disappointed that I do not tread in his footsteps." "Perhaps not. He was a wise man, with a comprehensive mind. It would not do for us all to be monks." CHAPTER XVII FRITZ THE FOOL RELATES A STRANGE DREAM TO PIERRE LAMONT Half-a-dozen times in the course of the day Pierre Lamont had sent in search of Fritz the Fool, and it was not till the afternoon that Fritz made his appearance. "You should have come earlier, fool," said Pierre Lamont with a frown. "I was better engaged," said Fritz coolly. "You fired me with those love-verses last night, and I have been studying what to say to my peach." "The pretty Dionetta! Rehearse, then; I am dull." "Ah, I have much to tell you. I am thinking of saying to the peach, 'Dionetta, place your hand in mine, and we will both serve Pierre Lamont. He will give us a home; he will pay us liberally; and when he dies he will not leave us unprovided for.'" "And if the peach should laugh in your face?" "I would reason with it. I would say, 'Look you now; you cannot be always ripe, you cannot be always mellow and luscious. Do not waste the precious sunshine of life, but give yourself to a clever fool, who cares quite as much for your fair face and beautiful skin as he does for the diamond baubles in your ears.'" "Diamond earrings, Fritz! Are you dreaming?" "Not at this moment--though I had a dream last night after I left you which I may tell you if I don't repent of it before I disclose it. Yes, Master Lamont, diamond earrings--as I'm a living fool, diamonds of value. See, Master Lamont, I don't want this peach to be gathered yet. It is well placed, it is in favour; it is making itself in some way useful, not to finer, but to richer fruit. Heaven only knows what may be rained upon it when the very first summer shower brings a diamond finger-ring, and the second a pair of diamond earrings. A diamond brooch, perhaps; money for certain, if it will take a fool's advice. And of course it will do that if, seeing that the fool is a proper fool, the peach says kindly, 'I am yours.' That is the way of it, is it not, Master Lamont?" "I am waiting to hear more, Fritz," said Pierre Lamont, with a full enjoyment of Fritz's loquacity. "Behind the summer-house, Master Lamont, lies a lovely lake, clear as crystal in parts where it is not covered with fairy lilies. I am as good as a pair of eyes to you to tell you of these beauties. The water is white and shining and at one part there is a mass of willows bending over; then there is a break, clear of the shadow of branch and leaf; then there is another mass of willows. From a distance you would think that there was no break in the foliage; you have to go close to it to make the discovery, and once you are there you are completely hidden from sight. Not more than two hours ago I was passing this spot at the back of the willows, when I heard a voice--a girl's voice, Master Lamont--saying quite softly, 'Oh, how lovely! how beautiful--how beautiful!' It was Dionetta's voice; I should know it among a thousand. Through the willows I crept with the foot of a cat till I came to the break, and there was Dionetta herself, bending over the water, and sighing, 'Oh, how lovely! how beautiful!' She could not see me, for her back was towards me, and I took care she did not hear me. She was shaking her pretty head over the water, and I shouldn't deserve to be called a fool if I had not felt curious to see what it was in the lake that was so lovely and beautiful. Perhaps it was her own face she was admiring. Well, she had a perfect right, and I was ready to join in the chorus. I crept up to her as still as a mouse, and looked over her shoulder. She gave a great scream when she saw my face in the lake, and I caught hold of her to prevent her from falling in. Then I saw what almost took away my breath. In her ears there flashed a pair of diamond earrings, the like of which I never in my life beheld in our village. Her face got as red as a sunset as I gazed at her. 'How you frightened me, Fritz!' she said. I set the earrings swinging with my fingers and said, 'Where did you get these wonderful things from?' She answered me pat. 'My lady gave them to me.' 'They are yours, then?' I asked. 'Yes, Fritz,' she said, 'they are mine, and I came here to see how I look in them. They are so grand that I am ashamed to put them on unless I am alone. Don't tell anybody, will you, Fritz? If grandmother knew I had them, she would take them from me. She would never, never let me wear them. Don't tell anybody.' Why, of course I said I would not, and then I asked why my lady gave them to her, and she said it was because my lady loved her. So, so! thought I, as I left my peach--I would like to have given her just one kiss, but I did not dare to try--so, so! my lady gives her maid a pair of diamond earrings that are as suitable to her as a crown of gold to an ass's head. There is something more than common between lady and maid. What is it, Master Lamont, what is it?" "A secret, fool, which, if you get your peach to tell, will be worth much to you. And as you and I are going to keep our own counsel, learn from me that this secret has but one of two kernels. Love or jealousy. Set your wits at work, Fritz, set your wits at work, and keep your eyes open. I may help you to your peach, fool. And now about that dream of yours. Were you asleep or awake at the time?" Fritz stepped cautiously to the door, opened it, looked along the passage, closed the door, and came close to the bedside. "Master Lamont," he said, "what I dreamt is something so strange that it will take a great deal of thinking over. Do you know why I tell you things?" "I might guess wrong, Fritz. Save me the trouble." "You have never been but one way with me; you have never given me a hard word; you have never given me a blow. When I was a boy--twenty years ago and more, Master Lamont--you were the only man who spoke kind words to me, who used to pat my head and pity me. For, if you remember, Master Lamont, I was nothing but a castaway, living on charity, and everybody but you made me feel it. Cuffed by this one and that one, kicked, and laughed at--but never by you. Even a fool can bear these things in mind." "Well, well, Fritz, go on with your dream. You are making me hungry." "It came nearly two hours after midnight. At that time I was in the grounds. All was dark. There was nobody about but me, until the Advocate came. Then I slipped aside and watched him. He walked up and down, like a machine. It was not as if a man was walking, but a figure of steel. It was enough to drive me crazy, it was so like clockwork. Twice he almost discovered me. He looked about him, he searched the grounds, still with the same measured step, he called aloud, and asked if anybody was near. Then he went into the house and into the study. I knew he was there by the shifting of the lights in the room. Being alone with the shadows, your love-verses came into my mind, and you may believe me, Master Lament, I made my way to the window of the room in which Dionetta sleeps, and stood there looking up at it. I should have been right down ashamed of myself if I hadn't been dreaming. Is it the way of lovers, Master Lamont? 'Faster than bees to flowers they wing their way;' that is how the line runs, is it not? Well, there stood I, a bee, dreaming in the dark night, before the window of my flower. An invisible flower, unfortunately. But thoughts are free; you can't put chains on them. So there stood I, for how many minutes I cannot say, imagining my flower. Now, if I had known that her pretty head was lying on the pillow, with great diamond earrings in her ears--for that is a certainty--I might not perhaps have been able to tear myself away. Luckily for my dream, that knowledge had still to come to me, so I wandered off, and found myself once more staring at the lights in the Advocate's study windows. Now, what made me step quite close to them, and put my eye to a pane which the curtains did not quite cover? I could see clear into the room. Imagine my surprise, Master Lamont, when I discovered that the Advocate was not alone! Master Lamont, you know every man in the village, but I would give you a thousand guesses, and you would not hit upon the name of the Advocate's friend. From where I stood I could not hear a word that was said, but I saw everything. I saw the Advocate go to a cupboard, and give this man liquor; he poured it out for him himself. Then they talked--then the Advocate brought forward a silver basket of biscuits, and the man ate some, and stuffed some into his pockets. They were on the very best of terms with each other. The Advocate gave his friend some money--pieces of gold, Master Lamont; I saw them glitter. The man counted them, and by his action, asked for more; and more was given; the Advocate emptied his purse into the man's hand. Then, after further conversation, the man turned to leave the room. It was time for me to scuttle from my peep-hole. Presently the man was in the grounds stepping almost as softly as I stepped after him. For I was not going to lose him, Master Lamont; my curiosity was whetted to that degree that it would have taken a great deal to prevent me from following this friend of the Advocate's. 'How will he get out?' thought I; 'the gates are locked; he will hardly venture to scale them.' Two or three times he stopped, and looked behind him; he did not see me. He arrived at the wall which stretches at the back; he climbed the wall; so did I, in another and an easier part; he dropped down with a thud and a groan; I let myself to the ground without disturbing a leaf. Presently he picked himself up and walked off, with more haste than before. I followed him. He stopped; I stopped; he walked on again, and so did I. Again he stopped and cried aloud: 'I hear you follow me! Is not one killing enough for you?' And then he gave a scream so awful that the hair rose on my head. 'She is here!' he screamed; 'she is here, and is driving me to madness!' With that he took to his heels and tore through field and forest really like a madman. I could not keep up with him, and after an hour's running I completely lost sight of him. There was nothing for me to do but to get back to the villa. I returned the way I came--I had plenty to think about on the road--and I was once more before the windows of the Advocate's study. The lights were still there. The Advocate, I believe, can live without sleep. I peeped through the window, and there he was, sitting at his table reading, with an expression of power in his face which might well make any man tremble who dared to oppose him. That is the end of my dream, Master Lamont." "But the man, Fritz, the man!" exclaimed Pierre, Lamont. "I am still in ignorance as to who this strange, nocturnal visitor can be." "There lies the pith of my dream. If I were to tell you that this man who makes his way secretly into the grounds in the darkness of the night--who is closeted with the Advocate for an hour at least--who is treated to wine and cake--who is presented with money, and grumblingly asks for more, and gets it--if I were to tell you that this man is Gautran, who was tried for the murder of Madeline, the flower-girl, and who was set free by the Advocate--what would you say, Master Lamont?" "I should say," replied Pierre Lamont with some difficulty controlling his excitement, "that you were mad, fool Fritz." "Nevertheless," said Fritz with great composure, "it is so. I have related my dream as it occurred. The man was Gautran and no other. Can you explain that to me in one word?" "No," said Pierre Lamont, gazing sharply at Fritz. "You are not fooling me, Fritz?" "If it were my last word it would make no difference. I have told you the truth." "You know Gautran's face well?" "I was in the court every day of the trial, and there is no chance of my being mistaken. See here, Master Lamont. I can do many things that would surprise people. I can draw faces. Give me a pencil and some paper." With a few rapid strokes he produced the very image of Pierre Lamont, sitting up in bed, with thin, cadaverous face, with high forehead and large nose; even the glitter of the old lawyer's eyes was depicted. Pierre Lamont examined the portrait with admiration. "I am proud of you, Fritz," he said; "you have the true artist's touch." Fritz was busy with the pencil again. "Who may this be?" he asked, holding another sketch before Pierre Lamont. "The Advocate. To the life, Fritz, to the life." "This is also to the life," said Fritz, producing a third portrait. "This is Gautran. It is all I can draw, Master Lamont--human faces; I could do it when I was a boy. There is murder in Gautran's face; there was murder in the words I heard him speak as I followed him: 'Is not one killing enough for you?' There is only one meaning to such words. I leave you to puzzle it all out, Master Lamont. You have a wise head; I am a fool. Mother Denise may be right, after all, when she said--not knowing I was within hearing--that it was an evil day when my lady, the Advocate's wife, set foot in the grounds of the House of White Shadows. But it is no business of mine; only I must look after my peach, or it may suddenly be spirited away on a broomstick. Unholy work, Master Lamont, unholy work! What do you say to letting Father Capel into the mystery?" "Not for worlds!" cried Pierre Lamont. "Priests in such matters are the rarest bunglers. No--the secret is ours, yours and mine; you shall be well paid for your share in it. Without my permission you will not speak of it--do you hear me, Fritz?" "I hear you, and will obey you." "Good lad! Ah, what would I give if I had the use of my limbs! But you shall be my limbs and my eyes--my second self. Help me to dress, Fritz--quick, quick!" "Master Lamont," said Fritz with a sly laugh, "be careful of your precious self. You are ill, you know, very, very ill! You must keep your bed. I cannot run the risk of losing so good a master." "I have a dozen years of life in me yet, fool. This dried-up old skin, these withered limbs, this lack of fat, are my protection. If I were a stout, fine man I might go off at any moment. As it is, I may live to a hundred--old enough to see your grandchildren, Fritz. But yes, yes, yes--I am indeed very ill and weak! Let everybody know it--so weak and ill that it is not possible for me to leave this hospitable house for many, many days. The medicine I require is the fresh air of the gardens. With my own eyes I must see what I can of the comedy that is being played under our very noses. I, also, had dreams last night, Fritz, rare dreams! Ah--what a comedy, what a comedy! But there are tragic veins in it, fool, which make it all the more human." _BOOK V.--THE DOOM OF GAUTRAN_. CHAPTER I ADELAIDE STRIVES TO PROPITIATE PIERRE LAMONT The following night was even darker than the preceding one had been. In the afternoon portents of a coming storm were apparent in the sky. Low mutterings of thunder in the distance travelled faintly to the ears of the occupants of the House of White Shadows. The Advocate's wife shuddered as she heard the sounds. "There are only two things in the world I am afraid of," she said to Pierre Lamont, "and those are thunder and lightning. When I was a little child a dreadful thing occurred to me. I was playing in a garden when a storm came on. I was all alone, and it was some distance to the house. The storm broke so suddenly that I had not time to reach shelter without getting myself drenched. I dare say, though, I should have run through it had I not been frightened by the flashes of lightning that seemed to want to cut me in two. I flew behind a tree, and stood there trembling. Every time a flash came I shut my eyes tight and screamed. But the storm did not allow my cries to be heard. You can imagine the state I was in. It would not have mattered, except for the wetting, had I kept my eyes closed, but like a little fool, I opened them once, and just at that moment a flash seemed to strike the tree behind which I stood. I can almost hear the shriek I gave, as I fell and fainted dead away. There, lying on the wet grass, I was found. A dreadful looking object I must have been! They carried me into the house, and when I was conscious of what was passing around me, I asked why they did not light the gas. The fact is I was quite blind, and remained so for several days. Was it not shocking? I shall never, never forget my fright. Can you imagine anything more dreadful than being struck blind? To be born blind cannot be half as bad, for one does not know what one loses--never having seen the flowers, and the fields, and the beautiful skies. But to enjoy them, and then to lose them! It is altogether too horrible to think of." She was very gracious to the old lawyer during the afternoon. "Do you know," she said, "I can't quite make up my mind whether to be fond or frightened of you." "Be fond of me," said Pierre Lamont, with a queer look. "I shall see how you behave. I am afraid you are very clever. I don't like clever people, they are so suspicious, pretending to know everything always." "I am very simple," said Pierre Lamont, laughing inwardly. He knew that she wanted to propitiate him; "and beauty can lead me by a silken thread." "Is that another of your compliments? I declare, you speak as if you were a young man." She did, indeed, desire to win Pierre Lamont entirely to her, and she would have endured much to make him her friend instead of her enemy. Christian Almer had told her that the old lawyer had slept in the next room to his, and she had set herself the task of sounding the old fellow to ascertain whether his suspicions were aroused, and whether she had anything to fear from him. She could not help saying to herself what a fool Mother Denise--who looked after the household arrangements--was to put him so close to Christian. "I do believe," thought Adelaide, "that she did it to spite me." Her mind, however, was quite at ease after chatting with the old lawyer. "I am so glad we are friends," she said to him; "it is altogether so much nicer." Pierre Lamont looked reproachfully at her, and asked how she could ever have supposed he was anything but her most devoted admirer. "Lawyers are so fond of mischief," she replied, "that if it does not come to them ready-made they manufacture it for themselves." "I am no longer a lawyer," he said; "if I were twenty years younger I should call myself a lover." "If you were twenty years younger," she rejoined gaily, "I should not sit and listen to your nonsense." Being called from his side she turned and gave him an arch look. "All that only makes the case stronger, my lady," he said inwardly. "You cannot deceive me with your wiles." CHAPTER II GAUTRAN SEEKS JOHN VANBRUGH During the chief part of the day Gautran concealed himself in the woods. Twice had he ventured to present himself to his fellow--creatures. He was hungry, and in sore need of food, and he went to a wayside inn, and called for cold meat and bread and brandy. "Can you pay for it?" asked the innkeeper suspiciously. Gautran threw down a gold piece. The innkeeper took it, bit it, turned it over and over, rang it on the wooden table, and then set the food before Gautran. The murderer ate ravenously; it was the first sufficient meal he had eaten for days. The innkeeper gave him his change, and he ordered more meat and brandy, and paid for them. While he was disposing of this, two men came up, eyed him, and passed into the inn; Gautran was eating at a little table in the open air. Presently the innkeeper came out and looked at him; then the innkeeper's wife did the same; then other men and women came and cast wrathful glances upon him. At first he was not conscious that he was being thus observed, he was so ravenously engaged; but his hunger being appeased, he raised his head, and saw seven or eight persons standing at a little distance from him, and all with their eyes fixed upon his face. "What are you staring at?" he cried. "Did you never see a hungry man eat before?" They did not answer him, but stood whispering among themselves. The idea occurred to Gautran to take away with him a supply of food, and he called to the innkeeper to bring it to him. Instead of doing so, the innkeeper removed the plates and glasses in which the meal had been served. Having done this, he joined the group, and stood apart from Gautran, without addressing a word to him. "Do you hear me?" shouted Gautran. "Are you deaf and dumb?" "Neither deaf nor dumb," replied the innkeeper; "we hear you plain enough." "Bring me the bread and meat, then," he said. "Not another morsel," said the innkeeper. "Be off with you." "When I get the food." "You will get none here--nor would you have had bite or sup if I had known." "Known what?" demanded Gautran fiercely. "Is not my money as good as another man's?" "No." "Why?" "Because there is blood upon it." If this did not convince him that his name was known and execrated, what next transpired would have enlightened him. The innkeeper's wife came out with a glass and two plates in her hands. "Are these the things," she asked of her husband, "the monster has been eating out of?" "Yes," replied the innkeeper. She dashed them to the ground and shivered them to pieces, and the onlookers applauded the act. "Why do you do that, Mistress?" cried Gautran. "So that honest men shall not be poisoned," was the answer, "by eating out of a murderer's dish or putting their lips to a murderer's glass." And the onlookers again applauded her, and kicked away the pieces. Gautran glared at the men and women, and asked: "Who do you take me for?" "For Gautran. There is but one such monster. If you do not know your own face, look upon it there." She pointed to the window, and there he beheld his own portrait, cut out of an illustrated newspaper, and beneath it his name--"GAUTRAN," to which had been added, in writing, the words, "The Murderer of Madeline, the Flower-Girl." He could not read the inscription, but he correctly divined its nature. The moment before he saw his portrait, it had entered his mind to deny himself; he recognised now how futile the attempt would be. "What if I am Gautran?" he exclaimed. "Do you think the law would set me free if I was guilty?" To which the innkeeper's wife replied: "You have escaped by a quibble. You are a murderer, and you know yourself to be one." "Mistress," he said, "if I had you alone I would make you smart." "How does that sound, men?" cried the innkeeper's wife with excited gestures. "Is it the speech of an innocent man? He would like to get me alone. Yes, he got one poor girl alone, and we know what became of her. The coward! the murderer! Hunt him away, neighbours. It is a disgrace to look upon him." They advanced towards Gautran threateningly, and he drew his knife and snapped it open. "Who will be the first?" he asked savagely, and seeing that they held together, he retreated backwards, with his face to them, until a turn in the road hid them from his sight. Then he fled into the woods, and with wild cries slashed the trees with his knife, which he had sharpened in the early morning. On the second occasion he presented himself at a cottage door, with the intention of begging or buying some food. He knocked at the door, and not receiving an answer, lifted the latch. In the room were two children--a baby in a cradle, and a five-year-old boy sitting on the floor, playing with a little wooden soldier. Looking up, and seeing the features of the ruffian, the boy scrambled to his feet, and rushing past Gautran, ran screaming down the road. Enraged almost to madness, Gautran ran after the child, and catching him, tossed him in the air, shouting: "What! you, too, brat? This for your pains!" And standing over the child, was about to stamp upon him, when he found himself seized by the throat. It was the father, who, hearing the child's screams, came up just in time to save him. Then ensued a desperate struggle, and Gautran, despite his boast to the Advocate, found that he had met more than his match. He was beaten to the ground, lifted, and thrown into the air, as he had thrown the child. He rose, bruised and bleeding, and was slinking off, when the man cried: "Holy Mother! it is the murderer, Gautran!" Some labourers who were coming across the fields, were attracted by the scuffle, and the father called out to them: "Here is Gautran the murderer, and he has tried to murder my child!" This was enough for them. They were armed with reaping-hooks, and they raced towards Gautran with loud threats. They chased him for full a mile, but he was fleeter of foot than they, and despair gave him strength. He escaped them, and sank, panting, to the ground. The Advocate had spoken truly. There was no safety for him. He was known for miles round, and the people were eager for vengeance. He would hide in the woods for the rest of the day. There was but one means of escape for him. He must seek some distant spot, where he and his crime were unknown. But to get there he would be compelled to pass through villages in which he would be recognised. It was necessary that he should disguise himself. In what way could this be done? He pondered upon it for hours. In the afternoon he heard the muttering of the thunder in the distant mountains. "There's a storm coming," he said, and he raised his burning face to meet the welcome rain. But only a few heavy drops fell, and the wind moaned through the woods as if in pain. Night stole upon him swiftly, and wrapt him in horrible darkness. He bit his lips, he clenched his hands, his body shook with fear. Solitude was worse than death to him. He tried to sleep; in vain. Terrible images crowded upon him. Company he must have, at all hazards. Suddenly he thought of John Vanbrugh, the man he had met the night before on the hill not far from the Advocate's house. This man had not avoided him. He would seek him again, and, if he found him, would pass the night with him. So resolving, he walked with feverish steps towards the hill on which John Vanbrugh was keeping watch. CHAPTER III GAUTRAN RESOLVES ON A PLAN OF ESCAPE The distance was longer than Gautran had calculated, and he did not shorten it by the devious tracks he took in his anxiety to avoid meeting with his enemies. The rainstorm still kept off, but, in spite of the occasional flashes of lightning, the darkness seemed to grow thicker and thicker, and he frequently missed his way. He kept on doggedly, however, and although the shadow of his crime waited upon his steps, and made itself felt in the sighing and moaning of the wind, in the bending of every branch, and in the fluttering of every leaf, the craving for human companionship in which there was something of sympathy, and from which he would not be hunted like a dog, imbued him with courage to fight these terrors. Often, indeed, did he pause and threaten with fearful words the spectre of the girl he had murdered; and sometimes he implored her to leave him, and told her he was going to pay for masses for the repose of her soul. Occasionally he was compelled to take the high road, and then he was grateful for the darkness, for it prevented his face from being seen. At those times he slunk close to the hedges, as though dreading that the slightest contact with a human being would lead to discovery. Terrible as the night was to him, he feared the approach of day, when it would be more difficult to conceal himself from his pursuers. He knew that his life was not safe while he remained in this fatal neighbourhood. He _must_ escape, and in disguise, before he was many hours older. How was this to be accomplished? Once, in the roadway, he followed with stealthy steps two men who were conversing. He would have avoided them, as he had avoided others, had it not been that he heard his name mentioned, and was morbidly curious to hear what they were saying about him. Said one: "I have not set eyes upon this man-monster, but I shall know him if I meet him in the light." To which the other replied: "How will you manage that, if you have never seen his face?" "You ask a foolish question. Have not full descriptions of the murderer been put about everywhere? His features, the colour of his hair, his clothes, from his cap to his boots--all is known. His face he might disguise by a slash of his knife, if he has courage enough for it, or he might stain it--and in that way, too, he might change the colour of his hair. But his clothes would remain. The shirt he wears is one in a thousand, and there's no mistaking it. It is blue, with broad yellow bands, which encircle his villainous body like rings. Let him get another shirt if he can. The country is aroused for twenty miles round, and men are resolved to take justice into their own hands. The law has allowed him to slip through its fingers; he shall not slip through ours. Why, he said to a woman this morning that he would know how to serve her if he had her alone, and not long afterwards he tried to murder a child! Shall such a monster be allowed to remain at liberty to strike women down and murder the helpless? No--we don't intend to let him escape. Men are on the watch for him everywhere, and when he is caught he will be beaten to death, or hung upon the nearest tree. There is another end for him, if he chooses to take it. He can hide in the woods and starve, and when his body is found, we'll drive a stake through it. Take my word for it, Gautran, the murderer, has not long to live." Gautran shook with fear and rage. "I could spring upon them with my knife," he thought, "but they are two to one." And then, when the men were out of hearing, he shook his fist at them, and muttered: "Curse you! I will cheat you yet!" But how? The description given of his shirt was a faithful one; the broad yellow bands were there, and he remembered that, two days before the end of his trial, the gaolers had taken it from his cell in the night, and returned it to him in the morning, washed, with the yellow colour brighter than it had been for months. He knew now that this had been done out of malice, in case he should be acquitted, so that he might be the more readily recognised and shunned, or the more easily tracked and caught if he was again wanted. There loomed upon him a way to foil those who had vowed to kill him. The man he was seeking had spoken in a reckless manner; he had complained of the world, and was doubtless in want of money. He had gold which the Advocate had given him; he would offer to buy the man's clothes, and would give him his own, and one, two, or even three gold pieces in exchange; An easy thing to accomplish. But if the man would not consent to the bargain! He smiled savagely, and felt the edge of his knife. He was thoroughly desperate. He would sacrifice a thousand lives to save his own. Out of this murderous alternative--and out of the words uttered by the man he had overheard, "His face he might disguise by a slash of his knife if he has courage for it"--grew ideas which, as he plodded on gradually arranged themselves into a scheme which would ensure him an almost sure escape from those who had leagued themselves against him. Its entire success depended upon certain physical attributes in John Vanbrugh--but he would risk it even if these were not as he wished them to be. The plan was horrible in its design, and needed strength and cunning. He had both, and would use them without mercy, to ensure his safety. John Vanbrugh, with whose name he was not acquainted, was probably a stranger in the locality; something in Vanbrugh's speech caused him to suspect this. He would assure himself first of the fact, and then the rest was easy. Vanbrugh was about his own height and build; he had stood by his side and knew this to be so. Gautran should die this night in the person of another man, and should be found in the morning, murdered, with features so battered as to defy recognition. But he would be attired in Gautran's clothes, and would by those means be instantly identified. Then he, the true Gautran, would be forever safe. In John Vanbrugh's garments he could make his way to a distant part of the country, and take another name. No one would suspect him, for Gautran would be dead; and he would buy masses for the repose of Madeline's soul, and so purge himself of blood-guiltiness. As to this second contemplated crime he gave it no thought, except that it was necessary, and must be done. CHAPTER IV HEAVEN'S JUDGMENT Within half an hour of midnight he arrived at the hill, and saw the shadow of a man who was leaning against a tree. Gautran had been walking for nearly three hours, and during the whole time the storm of thunder and lightning had continued at intervals, now retreating, now advancing; but its full force had been spent many miles away, and it did not seem likely to approach much nearer to the House of White Shadows. "The man is there," muttered Gautran, "with his face still towards the Advocate's window. What is his purpose?" He was curious about that, too, and thought he would endeavour to ferret it out. It might be useful to him in the future, for it concerned the Advocate. There was plenty of time before him to accomplish his own murderous design. John Vanbrugh heard Gautran's footsteps. "Who comes this way?" he cried. "A friend," replied Gautran. "That is easily said," cried Vanbrugh. "I am not in a trustful mood. Hold off a bit, or I may do you mischief." "Do you not know me?" asked Gautran, approaching closer, and measuring himself with the dark form of Vanbrugh. They were of exactly the same height. "What, Gautran!" exclaimed Vanbrugh in a gay tone. "Yes, Gautran." "Welcome, friend, welcome," said Vanbrugh, with a laugh. "Give me your hand. Veritable flesh and blood. You have a powerful grip, Gautran. I thought we should meet again. What caused you to make yourself scarce so suddenly last night? You vanished like a cloud." "I had business to do. Have you got any more of that brandy about you?" "I am not sure whether you deserve it. After emptying my flask, you may make off again. A poor return for hospitality, my friend." "I promise to remain with you--it is what I came for--if you give me brandy." "I take your word," said Vanbrugh, producing a flask. "Drink, but not too greedily." Gautran took a long draught and returned the flask, saying, "You have no food, I suppose?" "Why, yes, I have. Warned by previous experiences I supplied myself liberally for this night's watch. I'll not refuse you, though I spent my last franc on it." "Ah," said Gautran, with some eagerness, for an amicable exchange of clothing would render the more villainous part of his task easier of accomplishment, "you are poor, then?" "Poor? Yes, but not for long, Gautran. The days of full purses are coming. Here is the food. Eat, rogue, eat. It is honest bread and meat, bought and paid for; but none the sweeter for that. We know which fruit is the sweetest. So you had business to do when you took French leave of me! How runs the matter? I had just pointed out the Advocate's window to you--your own special Advocate, my friend, to whom you have so much reason to be grateful--when you disappeared like an arrow from a bow. What follows then? That, leaving me so abruptly, your business was important, and that it concerned the Advocate. Right or wrong, rogue?" "Right," replied Gautran, as he devoured the food. "Come, that's candid of you, and spoken like a friend. You did not know, before I informed you, that he lived in the villa yonder?" "I did not." "I begin to have hopes of you. And learning it from me, you made up your mind on the spur of the moment--your business being so important--to pay him a friendly visit, despite the strangeness of the hour for a familiar call?" "You've hit it," said Gautran. John Vanbrugh pondered a while. These direct answers, given without hesitation, puzzled him. He had expected to meet with prevarication, and he was receiving, instead, straightforward confidence. "You are not afraid," he said, "to speak the truth to me, Gautran?" "I am not." "But I am a stranger to you." "That's true." "Why, then, do you confide in me?" It was Gautran's turn now to pause, but he soon replied, with a sinister look which John Vanbrugh, in the darkness, could not see: "Because, after what passes between us this night, I am sure you will not betray me." "Good," said Vanbrugh; "then it is plain you sought me deliberately, because you think I can in some way serve you." "Yes, because you can in some way serve me--that is why I am here." "Then you intend to hide nothing from me?" "Nothing--for the reason I have given." A flash of lightning seemed to strike the spot on which he and Gautran were conversing, and he waited for the thunder. It came--long, deep, and threatening. "There is a terrible storm somewhere," he said. "It does not matter," rejoined Gautran, with a shudder, "so long as a man is not alone. Don't mind my coming so close. I have walked many a mile to find you. I have not a friend in the world but you." "Not even the Advocate?" "Not even him. He will see me no more." "He told you that last night?" "Yes." "But how did you get to him, Gautran? You did not enter by the gates." "No; I dropped over the wall at the back. Tell me. It is but fair; I answer you honestly enough. What are you watching his house for? A man does not do as you are doing, on such black nights as this, for idle pastime." "No, indeed, Gautran! I also have business with him. And strangely enough, you, whom I met in the flesh for the first time within these last twenty-four hours, are indirectly concerned in it." "Am I? Strange enough, as you say. But it will not matter after to-night." Some hidden meaning in Gautran's tone struck warningly upon John Vanbrugh, and caused him to bestow a clearer observance upon Gautran's movements from this moment. "There is a thing I wish to know, Gautran," he said. "Between vagabonds like ourselves there is no need for concealment. It is a delicate question, but you have been so frank with me that I will venture to ask it. Besides, there are no witnesses, and you will not, therefore, incriminate yourself. This girl, Madeline, whose spirit follows you----" Vanbrugh hesitated. The question he was about to ask trembled on his lips, and he scarcely knew how to give it shape in words that would not provoke an outbreak on the part of Gautran. He had no desire to come into open collision with this ruffian, of whose designs upon himself he was inwardly warned. Gautran, with brutal recklessness, assisted him. "You want to know if I killed her?" "Why, yes--though you put it roughly." "What matter? Well, then, she died at my hands." John Vanbrugh recoiled from the murderer in horror, and in a suppressed tone asked: "When the Advocate defended you, did he know you were guilty?" "Aye. We kept the secret to ourselves. It was cleverly worked, was it not?" "And last night," continued John Vanbrugh, "he received you in his study?" "Aye--and gave me liquor, and food, and money. Listen to it." He rattled the gold pieces in the palms of his hands. "Look you. I have answered questions enough. I answer no more for a while. It is my turn now." "Proceed, Gautran," said Vanbrugh; "I may satisfy you or not, according to my whim." "You'll satisfy me, or I'll know the reason why. There is no harm in what I am going to say. You are a stranger in these parts--there is no offence in that, is there?" "None. Yes, I am a stranger in these parts. Heavens! what a flash! The storm is coming nearer." "All the better. You will hardly believe that I have been bothering myself about the colour of your hair. I hate red-haired men. Yours, now. Is there any offence in asking the colour of it?" "None. My hair is black." Gautran's eyes glittered and a flash of lightning illuminated his face, and revealed to Vanbrugh the savage and ruthless look which shone there. "And your height and build, about the same as mine," said Gautran. "Let us strike a bargain. I have gold--you have none. I have taken a fancy to your clothes; I will buy them of you. Two gold pieces in exchange for them, and mine thrown in." "The clothes of a murderer," said Vanbrugh, slowly retreating as Gautran advanced upon him. "Thank you for nothing. Not for two hundred gold pieces, poor as I am. Keep off. Do not come so near to me." "Why not? You are no better than I. Three gold pieces! That should content you." "You have my answer, Gautran. Leave me, I have had enough of you." "You will have had more than enough before I have done with you," said Gautran, and Vanbrugh was satisfied now, from the man's brutal tones, that it was a deadly foe who stood within a few inches of him, "if you do not do as I bid you. Say, done and done; you had better. By fair means or foul I mean to have what I want." "Not by fair means, you murderous villain. Be warned. I am on my guard." "If you will have it, then!" cried Gautran, and with a savage shout he threw himself upon Vanbrugh. So sudden and fierce was the attack that Vanbrugh could not escape from it; but although he was no match for Gautran in strength, he had had, in former years, some experience in wrestling which came to his aid now in this terrible crisis. The struggle that ensued was prolonged and deadly, and while the men were locked in each other's arms, the storm broke immediately over their heads. The thunder pealed above them, the lightning played about their forms. "You villain!" gasped Vanbrugh, as he felt himself growing weaker. "Have you been paid by the Advocate to do this deed?" "Yes," answered Gautran, between his clenched teeth; "he is the fiend's agent, and I am his! He bade me kill you. Your last moment has come!" "Not yet," cried Vanbrugh, and by a supreme and despairing effort he threw Gautran clear from him, and stood again on the defensive. Simultaneously with the movement a flash of forked lightning struck the tree against which Vanbrugh had been leaning when Gautran first accosted him, and cleft it in twain; and as Gautran was about to spring forward, a huge mass of timber fell upon him with fatal force, and bore him to the earth--where he lay imprisoned, crushed and bleeding to death. CHAPTER V FATHER CAPEL DISCOVERS GAUTRAN IN HIS PERIL Father Capel was wending his way slowly over the hill from the bedside of the sick woman whom he had attended for two nights in succession. On the first night she was in a state of delirium, and Father Capel could not arouse her to a consciousness of surrounding things. In her delirium she had repeatedly uttered a name which had powerfully interested him. "Madeline! Madeline! my Madeline," she moaned again and again. "Is it possible," thought the priest, "that the girl whose name she utters with agonised affection is the poor child who was so ruthlessly murdered?" On this, the second night, the woman whose last minutes on earth were approaching, was conscious, and she made certain disclosures to Father Capel which, veiled as they were, had grievously disturbed his usually serene mood. She had, also, given him a mission to perform which did not tend to compose his mind. He had promised faithfully to obey her, and they were to meet again within a few hours. To his earnest request that she would pray with him, she had impatiently answered: "There will be time enough after I have seen the man you have promised to bring with you. I shall live till then." So he had knelt by her bedside and had prayed for her and for himself, and for all the erring. His compassionate heart had room for them all. For twenty miles around there was no man better loved than he. His life had been reproachless, and his tender nature never turned from the performance of a good deed, though it entailed suffering and privation upon himself. These were matters not to be considered when duty beckoned to him. A poor man, and one who very often deprived himself of a meal in the cause of charity. A priest in the truest sense of the word. Seldom, in the course of a long, merciful, and charitable career, had he met with so much cause to grieve as on the present occasion. In the first place, because it was an added proof to the many he had received that a false step in life, in the taking of which one human being caused another to suffer, was certain to bring at some time or other its own bitter punishment; in the second place, because in this particular instance, the punishment, and the remorse that must surely follow, were as terrible as the mind of man could conceive. His road lay towards the hill upon which the desperate conflict between John Vanbrugh and Gautran was taking place. There was no occasion for him to cross this hill; by skirting its base he could follow the road he intended to take. But as he approached the spot, the wind bore to him, in moments when the fury of the storm was lulled, cries which sounded in his ears like cries of pain and despair They were faint, and difficult to ascribe to any precise definite cause; they might be the cries of an animal, but even in that case it was more than likely that Father Capel would have proceeded in their direction. Presently, however, he heard a human cry for help; the word was distinct, and it decided his movements. Without hesitation he began to climb the hill. As he approached nearer and nearer to the spot on which the struggle was proceeding, there was no longer room to doubt its nature. "Holy Mother!" murmured the priest, quickening his steps, "will the evil passions of men never be stilled? It seems as if murder were being done here. Grant that I am not too late to avert the crime!" Then came the terrific lightning-flash, followed immediately by Gautran's piercing scream as he was struck down by the tree. "Who calls for help?" cried Father Capel, in a loud voice, but his words were lost in the peals of thunder which shook the earth and made it tremble beneath his feet. When comparative silence reigned, he shouted again: "Who calls for help? I am a priest, and tender it." Gautran's voice answered him: "Here--here! I am crushed and dying!" This appeal was not coherently made, but the groans which accompanied it guided Father Capel to the spot upon which Gautran lay. He felt amid the darkness and shuddered at the touch of blood, and then he clasped Gautran's right hand. The tree had fallen across the murderer's legs, and had so crushed them into the earth that he could not move the lower part of his body; his chest and arms were free. A heavy branch had inflicted a terrible gash on his forehead, and it was from this wound that he was bleeding to death. "Who are you?" said Father Capel, kneeling by the dying man, "that lies here in this sad condition? I cannot see you. Is this Heaven's deed, or man's?" "It is Heaven's," gasped Gautran, "and I am justly punished." "I heard the sounds of a struggle between two men. Are you one of those who were fighting in the midst of this awful darkness?" "Yes, I am one." "And the design," continued Father Capel, "was murder. You do not answer me; your silence is sufficient confirmation. Are you hurt much?" "I am hurt to death. In a few minutes I shall be in eternal fire unless you grant me absolution and forgiveness for my crimes." "Speak first the truth. Were you set upon, or were you the attacker in this evil combat?" "I attacked him first." "Then he may be dead!" exclaimed Father Capel, and rising hastily to his feet, he peered into the darkness, and felt about with his hands, and called aloud to know if the other man was conscious. "This is horrible," said the priest, in deep perplexity, scarcely knowing what it was best to do; "one man dying, another in all likelihood dead." He turned as if about to go, and Gautran, divining his intention, cried in a tone of agony: "Do not leave me, father, do not leave me!" "Truly," murmured the priest, "it seems to me that my present duty is more with the living than the dead." He knelt again by the side of Gautran. "Miserable wretch, if the man you attacked be dead, you have murdered him, and you have been smitten for your crime. It may not be the only sin that lies upon your soul." "It is not, it is not," groaned Gautran. "My strength is deserting me; I can hardly speak. Father, is there hope for a murderer? Do not let me die yet. Give me something to revive me. I am fainting." "I have nothing with me to restore your strength. To go for wine, and for assistance to remove this heavy timber which imprisons you--my weak arms cannot stir it--cannot be accomplished in less than half an hour. It will be best, perhaps, for me to take this course; in the meantime, pray, miserable man, with all the earnestness of your heart and soul, for Divine forgiveness. What is your name?" "I am Gautran," faintly answered the murderer. Father Capel's frame shook under the influence of a strong agitation. "From the bedside of the woman I have left within the hour," he murmured, "to this poor sinner who has but a few minutes to live! The hand of God is visible in it." He addressed himself to the dying man: "You are he who was tried for the murder of Madeline, the flower-girl?" "I am he," moaned Gautran. "Hearken to me," said Father Capel. "For that crime you were tried and acquitted by an earthly tribunal, which pronounced you innocent. But you are now about to appear before the Divine throne for judgment; and from God nothing can be hidden. He sees into the hearts of men. Who is ready--as you but now admitted to me--to commit one murder, and who, perhaps, has committed it, for, from the silence, I infer that the body of your victim lies at no great distance, will not shrink from committing two. Answer me truly, as you hope for mercy. Were you guilty or innocent of the murder of Madeline?" "I was guilty," groaned Gautran. "Wretch that I am, I killed her. I loved her, father--I loved her!" Gautran, from whose lips these words had come amid gasps of agony, could say no more; his senses were fast leaving him. "Ah me--ah me!" sighed Father Capel; "how shall such a crime be expiated?" "Father," moaned Gautran, rallying a little, "had I lived till to-morrow, I intended to buy masses for the repose of her soul. I will buy them now, and for my own soul too. I have money. Feel in my pocket; there is gold. Take it all--all--every piece--and tell me I am forgiven." Father Capel did not attempt to take the money. "Stolen gold will not buy absolution or the soul's repose," he said sadly. "Crime upon crime--sin upon sin! Gautran, evil spirits have been luring you to destruction." "I did not steal the gold," gasped Gautran. "It was given to me--freely given." "Forgiveness you cannot hope for," said Father Capel, "if in these awful moments you swerve from the truth by a hair's-breadth. Confess you stole the gold, and tell me from whom, so that it may be restored." "May eternal torments be mine if I stole it! Believe me, father--believe me. I speak the truth." "Who gave it to you, then?" "The Advocate." "The Advocate! He who defended you, and so blinded the judgment of men as to cause them to set a murderer loose?" "Yes; he, and no other man." "From what motive, Gautran--compassion?" "No, from fear." "What reason has he to fear you?" "I have his secret, as he had mine, and he wished to get rid of me, so that he and I should never meet again. It was for that he gave me the gold." "What is the nature of this secret which made him fear your presence?" "He knew me to be guilty." "What do you say? When he defended you, he knew you to be guilty?" "Aye, he knew it well." "Incredible--horrible!" exclaimed Father Capel, raising his hands. "He shared, then, your crime. Yes; though he committed not the deed, his guilt is as heavy as the guilt of the murderer. How will he atone for it?--how _can_ atone for it? And if what I otherwise fear to be true, what pangs of remorse await him!" A frightful scream from Gautran arrested his further speech. "Save me, father--save me!" shrieked the wretch. "Send her away! Tell her I repent. See, there--there!--she is creeping upon me, along the tree!" "What is it you behold amidst the darkness of this appalling night?" asked Father Capel, crossing himself. "It is Madeline--her spirit that will never, never leave me! Will you not be satisfied, you, with my punishment? Is not my death enough for you? You fiend--you fiend! I will strangle you if you come closer. Have mercy--mercy! You are a priest; have you no power over her? Then what is the use of prayer? It is a mockery--a mockery! My eyes are filled with blood! Ah!" Then all was silent. "Gautran," whispered Father Capel, "take this cross in your hand; put it to your lips and repeat the words I say. Gautran, do you hear me? No sound--no sound! He has gone to his account, unrepentant and unforgiven!" Father Capel rose to his feet. "I will seek assistance at once; there is another to be searched for. Ah, terrible, terrible night! Heaven have mercy upon us!" And with a heart overburdened with grief, the good priest left the spot to seek for help. CHAPTER VI THE WRITTEN CONFESSION During the whole of this interview John Vanbrugh had lain concealed within two or three yards of the fallen tree, and had heard every word that had passed between Gautran and Father Capel. For a few moments after he had thrown Gautran from him he was dazed and exhausted by the struggle in which he had been engaged, and by the crashing of the timber which had saved him from his deadly foe. Gradually he realised what had occurred, and when Father Capel's voice reached his ears he resolved not to discover himself, and to be a silent witness of what transpired. In this decision lay safety for himself and absolute immunity, for Gautran knew nothing of him, not even his name, and to be dragged into the light, to be made to give evidence of the scene in which he had been a principal actor, would have seriously interfered with his plan of action respecting the Advocate. Favoured by the night, he had no difficulty in concealing himself, and he derived an inward satisfaction from the reflection that he might turn even the tragic and unexpected event that had occurred to his own immediate advantage. He had not been seriously hurt in the conflict; a few bruises and scratches comprised the injuries he had received. Among his small gifts lay the gift of mimicry; he could imitate another man's voice to perfection; and when Father Capel left Gautran for the purpose of obtaining assistance, an idea crossed his mind which he determined to carry out. He waited until he was assured that Father Capel was entirely out of hearing, and then he stepped from his hiding-place, and knelt by the side of Gautran. Having now no fear of his enemy, he placed his ear to Gautran's heart and listened. "He breathes," he muttered, "there is yet a little life left in him." He raised Gautran's head upon his knee, and taking his flask of brandy from his pocket, he poured some of the liquor down the dying man's throat. It revived him; he opened his eyes languidly; but he had not strength enough left in him to utter more than a word or two at the time. "I have returned, Gautran," said John Vanbrugh, imitating the voice of the priest; "I had it not in my heart to desert you in your last moments. The man you fought with is dead, and in his pocket I found this flask of brandy. It serves one good purpose; it will give you time to earn salvation. You have two murders upon your soul. Are you prepared to do as I bid you?" "Yes," replied Gautran. "Answer my questions, then. What do you know of the man whom you have slain?" "Nothing." "Was he, then, an absolute stranger to you?" "Yes." "You do not even know his name?" "No." "There is no time to inquire into your reasons for attacking him, for I perceive from your breathing that your end is very near, and the precious moments must not be wasted. It is your soul--your soul--that has to be saved! And there is only one way--the guilty must be punished. You have met your punishment. Heaven's lightning has struck you down. These gold pieces which I now take from your pocket shall be expended in masses. Rest easy, rest easy, Gautran. There is but one thing for you to do--and then you will have made atonement. You hear me--you understand me?" "Yes--quick--quick!" "To die, leaving behind you no record of the guilt of your associate--of the Advocate who, knowing you to be a murderer, deliberately defeated the ends of justice--will be to provoke Divine anger against you. There is no hope for pardon in that case. Can you write?" "No." "Your name, with my assistance, you could trace?" "Perhaps." "I will write a confession which you must sign. Then you shall receive absolution." He poured a few drops of brandy into Gautran's mouth, and they were swallowed with difficulty. After this he allowed Gautran's head to rest upon the earth, and tore from his pocket-book some sheets of blank paper, upon which, with much labour, he wrote the following: "I, Gautran, the woodman, lately tried for the murder of Madeline, the flower-girl, being now upon the point of death, and conscious that I have only a few minutes to live, and being in full possession of my reason, hereby make oath, and swear: "That being thrown into prison, awaiting my trial. I believed there was no escape from the doom I justly merited, for the reason that I was guilty of the murder. "That some days before my trial was to take place, the Advocate who defended me voluntarily undertook to prove to my judges that I was innocent of the crime I committed. "That with this full knowledge he conducted my case with such ability that I was set free and pronounced innocent. "That on the night of my acquittal, after midnight had struck, and when every person but himself in the House of White Shadows was asleep, I secretly visited him in his study, and remained with him some time. "That he gave me food and money, and bade me go my way. "That I am ignorant of the motives which induced him to whom I was a perfect stranger, to deliberately defeat the ends of justice. "That the proof that he knew me to be guilty lies in the fact that I made a full confession to him. "To which I solemnly swear, being about to appear before a just God to answer for my crime. I pray for forgiveness and mercy. "Signed----." And here John Vanbrugh left a space for Gautran's name. He read the statement to Gautran, who was now fast sinking, and then he raised the dying man's head in his arms, and holding the pencil in the almost nerveless fingers, assisted him to trace the name "Gautran." This was no sooner accomplished than Gautran, with a wild scream, fell back. John Vanbrugh lost not another moment. With an exultant smile he placed the fatal evidence in his pocket, and prepared to depart. As he did so he heard the voices of men who were ascending the hill. "This paper," thought Vanbrugh, as he crept softly away in an opposite direction, "is worth, I should say, at least half the Advocate's fortune. It is the ruin of his life and career, and, if he does not purchase it of me on my own terms, let him look to himself." When Father Capel, with the men he had summoned to his assistance, arrived at the spot upon which Gautran lay, the murderer was dead. _BOOK VI.--A RECORD OF THE PAST_ CHAPTER I THE DISCOVERY OF THE MANUSCRIPT All was silent in the House of White Shadows. Strange as was the drama that was in progress within its walls it found no open expression, and to the Advocate, seated alone in his study, was about to be unfolded a record of events long buried in the past, the disclosure of which had not, up to this moment, been revealed to man. During the afternoon, the Advocate had said to Christian Almer: "Now that I have leisure, I intend, with your permission, to devote some time to your father's works. In his day, certainly for a number of years, he was celebrated, and well known in many countries, and I have heard surprise expressed that a career which promised to shed lasting lustre upon the name you bear seemed suddenly to come to an end. Of this abrupt break in the labours of an eminent man there is no explanation--as to what led to it, and in what way it was broken off. I may chance upon the reason of a singular and complete diversion from a pursuit which he loved. It will interest me, if you will give me permission to search among his papers." "A permission," rejoined Christian Almer, "freely accorded. Everything in the study is at your disposal. For my own part the impressions of my childhood are of such a nature as to render distasteful the records of my father's labours. But you are a student and a man of deeper observation and research than myself. You may unearth something of value. I place all my father's manuscripts at your unreserved disposal. Pray, read them if you care to do so, and use them in any way you may desire." Thus it happened that, two hours before midnight, the Advocate, after looking through a number of manuscripts, most of them in an incomplete shape, came upon some written pages, the opening lines of which exercised upon him a powerful fascination. The only heading of these pages was, "A FAITHFUL RECORD." And it was made in the following strain: CHAPTER II CHRISTIAN ALMER'S FATHER "It devolves upon me, Ernest Christian Almer, as a duty, to set down here, in a brief form, before I die, the record of certain events in my life which led me to the commission of a crime. Whether justifiable or not--whether this which I call a crime may be otherwise designated as an accident or as the execution of a just punishment for trust and friendship betrayed--is for others to determine. "It is probable that no human eye will read what I am about to write until I am dead; but if it should be brought to light in my lifetime I am ready to bear the consequences of my act. The reason why I myself do nothing to assist directly in the discovery (except in so far as making this record and placing it without concealment among my manuscripts) is that I may in that way be assisting in bringing into the life of my dear son, Christian Almer, a stigma and a reproach which will be a cause of suffering to him. If it should happen that many years elapse before these lines fall into the hands of a human being, if may perhaps be for the best. What is done is done, and cannot be recalled. Even had I the power to bring the dead to life I doubt whether I should avail myself of it. "My name is not unknown to the small world in which I live and move, and I once cherished a hope that I should succeed in making it famous. That hope is now like a flower burnt to ashes, never more to blossom. It proves the vanity of ambition upon which we pride ourselves and which we imbue with false nobility. "As a lad I was almost morbidly tender in my nature; I shrank from giving pain to living creature; the ordinary pursuits of childhood, in which cruelty to insects forms so prominent a feature, were to me revolting; to strip even a flower of its leaves was in my eyes a cruel proceeding. And yet I have lived to take a human life. "My earliest aspiration was to win a name in literature. Every book I read and admired assisted in making this youthful aspiration a fixed purpose when I became a man. Often, as I read the last words of a book which had fired my imagination, would I think, and sometimes say aloud, 'Gladly would I die were I capable of writing a work so good, so grand as this.' "My parents were rich, and allowed me to follow my bent. When they died I was left sole heir to their wealth. I had not to struggle as poorer men in the profession to which I resolved to devote myself have had to do. So much the worse for me perhaps--but that now matters little. Whether the books I hoped to write would be eagerly sought after or not was of no moment to me. What I desired was to produce; for the rest, as to being successful or unsuccessful, I was equal to either fortune. "I made many friends and acquaintances, who grew to learn that they could use and enjoy my house as their own. In setting this down I lay no claim to unusual generosity; it was on my part simply the outcome of a nature that refused to become a slave to rigid forms of hospitality. The trouble entailed would have been too great, and I declined to undertake it. I chose to employ my hours after my own fashion--the fashion of solitude. I found great pleasure in it, and to see my friends around me without feeling myself called upon to sacrifice my time for their enjoyment, knowing (as they well knew) that they were welcome to the best my wealth and means could supply them with--this added to my pleasure a peculiar charm. They were satisfied, and so was I; and only in one instance was my hospitality abused and my friendship betrayed. But had I been wise, this one instance would never have occurred to destroy the hopes of my life. "Although it is running somewhat ahead of the sequence of events, I may mention here the name of the man who proved false to friendship. It was M. Gabriel. He was almost young enough to be my son, and when I first knew him he was a boy and I was a man. He was an artist, with rare talents, and at the outset of his career I assisted him, for, like the majority of artists, he was poor. This simple mention of him will be sufficient for the present. "As when I was a lad I took no delight in the pleasures of lads of my own age, so when I was a man I did not go the way of men in that absorbing passion to which is given the name of Love. Those around me were drawn into the net which natural impulse and desire spread for mankind. There was no credit in this; it was simply that it did not happen. I was by no means a woman-hater, but it would seem as if the pursuits to which I was devoted were too engrossing to admit of a rival. So I may say what few can say--that I had passed my fortieth year, and had never loved. "My turn came, however. "Among my guests were the lady who afterwards became my wife, and her parents. A sweet and beautiful lady, twenty-five years my junior. My unhappiness and ruin sprang from the chance which brought us together--as did her wretchedness and misery. In this I was more to blame than she--much more to blame. In the ordinary course of a life which had reached beyond its middle age I should have acquired sufficient experience to learn that youth should mate with youth--that nature has its laws which it is dangerous to trifle with. But such experience did not come to me. At forty-five years of age I was as unlearned as a child in matters of the heart; I had no thought of love or marriage, and the youngest man of my acquaintance would have laughed at my simplicity had the opportunity been afforded him of seeing my inner life. It was not the fault of the young lady that she knew nothing of this simplicity. No claim whatever had I to demand to be judged by special and exceptional rules. She had a perfect right to judge me as any other man of my age would have been judged. All that can be said of it was that it was most unfortunate for her and for me. If it should happen (which is not unlikely, for the unforeseen is always occurring) that these pages should be read by a man who is contemplating marriage with one young enough to be his daughter, I would advise him to pause and submit his case to the test of natural reason; for if both live, there must come a time when nature will take its revenge for the transgression. The glamour of the present is very alluring, but it is the duty of the wiser and the riper of the twain to consider the future, which will press more hardly upon the woman than upon the man. With the fashion of things as regards the coupling of the sexes I have nothing to do; fashions are artificial and often most mischievous. Frequently, when the deeper laws of nature are involved, they are destructive and fatal. "It was my misfortune that during the visit of the young lady and her parents, the father, an old and harmless gentleman, met his death through an accident while he, I, and other gentlemen were riding. In my house he died. "It occasioned me distress and profound sorrow, and I felt myself in some way accountable, though the fault was none of mine. Before his death he and I had private confidences, in which he asked me to look after his affairs, and if, as he feared, they were in an embarrassed state, to act as protector to his daughter. I gave him the promise readily, and, when he died, I took a journey for the purpose of ascertaining how the widow and the orphan were circumstanced. I found that they were literally beggars. As gently as I could I broke the news to them. The mother understood it; the daughter scarcely knew its meaning. Her charming, artless ignorance of the consequences of poverty deeply interested me, and I resolved in my mind how I could best serve her and render her future a happy one. "Speaking as I am in a measure to my own soul, I will descend to no duplicity. That I was entirely unselfish in my desire that her life should be bright and free from anxieties with which she could not cope is true; but none the less true is it that, for the first time, I felt myself under the dominion of a passion deeper and more significant than I had ever felt for woman. It was love, I believe, but love in which there was reason. For I took myself to task; I set my age and hers before me; I did this on paper, and as I gazed at the figures I said. Absurd; it is not in nature, and I must fight it down.' I did wrestle with it, and although I did not succeed in vanquishing it, I was sufficiently master of myself to keep the struggle hidden in my own breast. "How, then, did this hapless lady become my wife? Not, in the first instance, through any steps voluntarily and unreasoningly taken by myself. I had firmly resolved to hold my feelings in check. It was the mother who accomplished that upon which she had set her heart. I may speak freely. This worldly mother has been long dead, and my confession cannot harm her. It was she who ruined at least the happiness of one life, and made me what I am. "Needless here to recount the arts by which she worked to the end she desired; needless to speak of the deceits she practised to make me believe her daughter loved me. It may be that the fault was mine, and that I was too ready to believe. Sufficient to say that we fell into the snare she prepared for us; that, intoxicated by the prospect of an earthly heaven, I accepted the meanings she put on her daughter's reserve and apparent coldness, and that, once engaged in the enterprise, I was animated by the ardour of my own heart, in which I allowed the flower of love to grow to fruition. So we were married, and with no doubt of the future I set out with my wife on our bridal tour. She was both child and wife to me, and I solemnly resolved and most earnestly desired to do my duty by her. "Before we were many days away news arrived that my wife's mother had met with an accident, in a part of the grounds which was being beautified by my workmen according to plans I had prepared for the pleasure of my young bride--an accident so serious that death could not be averted. In sadness we returned to the villa. My wife's coldness I ascribed to grief--to no other cause. And, indeed, apart from the sorrow I felt at the dreadful news, I was myself overwhelmed for a time by the fatality which had deprived my wife of her parents within so short a time on my estate, and while they were my guests. 'But it will pass away,' I thought, 'and I will be parents, lover, husband, to the sweet flower who has given her happiness into my keeping.' When we arrived at the villa, her mother was dead. "I allowed my wife's grief to take its natural course; seeing that she wished for solitude, I did not intrude upon her sorrow. I had to study this young girl's feelings and impulses; it was my duty to be tender and considerate to her. I was wise, and thoughtful, and loving, as I believed, and I spared no effort to comfort without disturbing her. 'Time will console her,' I thought, 'and then we will begin a new life. She will learn to look upon me not only as a husband, but as a protector who will fully supply the place of those she has lost.' I was patient--very patient--and I waited for the change. It never came. "She grew more and more reserved towards me; and still I waited, and still was patient. Not for a moment did I lose sight of my duty. "But after a long time had passed I began to question myself--I began to doubt whether I had not allowed myself to be deceived. Is it possible, I asked myself, that she married me without loving me? When this torturing doubt arose I thrust it indignantly from me; it was as though I was casting a stain upon her truth and purity." CHAPTER III A DISHONOURABLE CONCEALMENT "I will not recount the continual endeavours I made to win my wife to cheerfulness and a better frame of mind. Sufficient to say that they were unsuccessful, and that many and many a time I gave up the attempt in despair, to renew it again under the influence of false hopes. Unhappy and disheartened, the pursuits in which I had always taken delight afforded me now no pleasure, and though I sought relief in solitude and study, I did not find it. My peace of mind was utterly wrecked. There was, however, in the midst of my wretchedness, one ray of light. In the course of a little while a child would be born to us, and this child might effect what I was unable to accomplish. When my wife pressed her baby to her breast, when it drew life from her bosom, she might be recalled to a sense of duty and of some kind of affection which I was ready to accept in the place of that thorough devoted love which I bore to her, and which I had hoped she would bear to me. "Considering this matter with as much wisdom as I could bring to my aid, I recognised the desirability of surrounding my wife with signs of pleasant and even joyful life. Gloomy parents are cursed with gloomy children. I would fill my house once more with friends; my wife should move in an atmosphere of cheerfulness; there should be music, laughter, sunny looks, happy voices. These could not fail to influence for good both my wife and our little one soon to be born. "I called friends around me, and I took special care that there should be many young people among them. Their presence, however, did not at first arouse my wife from her melancholy, and it was not until the man whose name I have already mentioned--M. Gabriel--arrived that I noticed in her any change for the better. "He came, and I introduced him to my wife, believing them to have been hitherto strangers to each other. I had no reason to believe otherwise when I presented M. Gabriel to her; had they met before, it would have been but honest that one or both should have made me acquainted with the fact. They did not, by direct or indirect word, and I had, therefore, no cause for suspicion. "Things went on as usual for a week or two after M. Gabriel's arrival, and then I noticed with joy that my wife was beginning to grow more cheerful. My happiness was great. I have been too impatient, I thought, with this young girl. The shock of losing her parents, one after another, under circumstances so distressing, was sufficient to upset a stronger mind than hers. How unwise in me that I should have tormented myself as I had been doing for so many months past! And how unjust to her that, because she was sorrowful and silent, I should have doubted her love for me! But all was well now: comfort had come to her bruised heart, and the book of happiness was not closed to me as I had feared. A terrible weight, a gnawing grief, were lifted from me. For I could imagine no blacker treason than that a woman should deliberately deceive a man into the belief that she loved him, and that she should marry him under such conditions. My wife had not done this; I had wronged her. Most fervently did I thank Heaven that I had discovered my error before it was too late to repair it. "I saw that my wife took pleasure in M. Gabriel's society, and I made him as free of my house as if it had been his own. He had commissions to execute, pictures to paint. "'Paint them here,' I said to him, 'you bring happiness to us. I look upon you as though you belonged to my family.' "In the summer-house was a room which he used as a studio; no artist could have desired a better, and M. Gabriel said he had never been able to paint as well as he was doing in my house. It gladdened me to observe that my wife, who had for a little while been reserved towards M. Gabriel, looked upon him now as a sister might look upon a brother. I encouraged their intimacy, and was grateful to M. Gabriel for accepting my hospitality in the free spirit in which it was tendered. He expressed a wish to paint my wife's portrait, and I readily consented. My wife gave him frequent sittings, sometimes in my company, sometimes alone. And still no word was spoken to acquaint me with the fact that my wife and he had known each other before they met in my house. "My child was born--a boy. My happiness would have been complete had my wife shown me a little more affection; but again, after the birth of our child, it dawned upon me that she cared very little for me, and that the feelings she entertained for me in no wise resembled those which a loving woman should feel towards a husband who was indefatigable, as indeed I was, in his efforts to promote her happiness. Even then it did not strike me that she was happier in M. Gabriel's society than she was in mine. The truth, however, was now to be made known to me. It reached me through the idle tittle-tattling of one of my guests; of my own prompting I doubt whether I should ever have discovered it. I overheard this lady making some injurious observations respecting my wife; no man's name was mentioned, but I heard enough to cause me to resolve to hear more, and to put an end at once to the utterances of a malicious tongue. "During my life, in matters of great moment, I have seldom acted upon impulse, and the value of calm deliberation after sudden excitement of feeling has frequently been made apparent to me. "I sought this lady, and told her that I had overheard the remarks she had made on the previous day; that I was profoundly impressed by them, and intended to know what foundation there was for even a breath of scandal. I had some difficulty in bringing her to the point, but I was determined, and would be satisfied with no evasions. "'I love my wife, madam,' I said, 'too well to be content with half words and innuendoes, which in their effect are worse than open accusations.' "'Accusations!' exclaimed the lady. 'Good Heavens! I have brought none.' "'It is for that reason I complain,' I said; 'accusations can be met, and are by no means so much to be feared as idle words which affect the honour of those who are the subject of them.' "'I merely repeated,' then said the lady, 'what others have been saying for a long time past.' "'And what have others been saying for a long time past, madam?' I asked, with an outward calmness which deceived her into the belief that I was not taking the matter seriously to heart. "'I am sure it is very foolish of them,' said the lady, 'and that there is nothing in it. But people are so mischievous, and place such dreadful constructions upon things! It is, after all, only natural that when, after a long separation, young lovers meet, they should feel a little tender towards each other, even though one of them has got married in the interval. We all go through such foolish experiences, and when we grow as old as you and I are, we laugh at them.' "'Probably, madam,' I said, still with exceeding calmness; 'but before we can laugh with any genuineness or enjoyment, it is necessary to have some knowledge of the cause of our mirth. When young lovers meet, you said, after a long separation, it is natural they should feel a tenderness towards each other. But we are speaking of my wife.' "'Yes,' she replied, 'of your wife, and I am sure you are too sensible a man--so much older than that sweet creature!--to make any unnecessary bother about it.' "She knew well how to plant daggers in my heart. "'My wife, then, is one of those young lovers? You really must answer me, madam. These are, after all, but foolish experiences.' "'I am glad you are taking it so sensibly,' she rejoined. 'Yes, your wife is one of the young lovers.' "'And the other, madam.' "'Why, who else should it be but M. Gabriel?' "I did not speak for a few moments. The shock was so severe that I required time to recover some semblance of composure. "'My mind is much relieved,' I said. 'There is not the slightest foundation for scandal, and I trust that this interview will put an effectual stop to it. My wife and M. Gabriel have not been long acquainted. They met each other for the first time in this house.' "'Ah,' cried the lady very vivaciously, 'you want to deceive me now; but it is nonsense. Your wife and M. Gabriel have known each other for many years. They were once affianced. Had you not stepped in, there is no knowing what might have occurred. It is much better as it is--I am sure you think so. What can be worse for a young and beautiful creature than to marry a poor and struggling artist? M. Gabriel is very talented, but he is very poor. By the time he is a middle-aged man he may have made his way in the world, and then his little romance will be forgotten--quite forgotten. I dare say you can look back to the time when you were as young as he is, and can recall somebody you were madly in love with, but of whom you never think, except by the merest chance. These things are so common, you see. And now don't let us talk any more about it.' "I had no desire to exchange another word with the lady on the subject; I allowed her to rest in the belief that I had been acquainted with the whole affair, and did not wish it to get about. She promised me never to speak of it again to her friends in any injurious way, said it was a real pleasure to see what a sensible view I took of the matter, and our interview was at an end. "I had learnt all. At length, at length my eyes were opened, and the perfidy which had been practised towards me was revealed. All was explained. My wife's constant coldness, her insensibility to the affectionate advances I had made towards her, her pleasure at meeting her lover--the unworthy picture lay before my sight. There was no longer any opportunity for self-deception. Had I not recognised and acknowledged the full extent of the treason, I should have become base in my own esteem. It was not that they had been lovers--that knowledge in itself would have been hard to bear--but that they should have concealed it from me, that they should have met in my presence as strangers, that they should have tacitly agreed to trick me!--for hours I could not think with calmness upon these aspects of the misery which had been forced upon me. For she, my wife, was in the first instance responsible for our marriage; she could have refused me. I was in utter ignorance of a love which, during all these years, had been burning in her heart, and making her life and mine a torture. Had she been honest, had she been true, she would have said to me: 'I love another; how, then, can I accept the love you offer me, and how can you hope for a return? If circumstances compel me to marry you there must be no concealment, no treason. You must take me as I am, and never, never make my coldness the cause of reproach or unhappiness.' Yes, this much she might have said to me when I offered her my name--a name upon which there had hitherto been no stain and no dishonour. I should not have married her; I should have acted as a father towards her; I should have conducted her to the arms of her lover, and into their lives and mine would not have crept this infamy, this blight, this shame which even death cannot efface. "Of such a nature were my thoughts during the day. "Then came the resolve to be sure before I took action in the matter. The evidence of my own senses should convince me that in my own house my wife and her lover were playing a base part, were systematically deceiving me and laughing at me. "Of this man, this friend, whom I had taken to my heart, my horror and disgust were complete. I, whose humane instincts had in my youth been made the sport of my companions, who shrank from inflicting the slightest injury upon the meanest creature that crawled upon the earth, who would not even strip the leaves from a flower, found myself now transformed. Had M. Gabriel been in my presence at any moment during these hours of agonising thought, I should have torn him limb from limb and rejoiced in my cruelty. So little do we know ourselves." CHAPTER IV M. GABRIEL IS DISMISSED "I was up the whole of the night; I did not close my eyes, and when morning broke I had schooled myself to the task before me--to assure myself of the truth and the extent of the shame. "I kept watch, and did not betray myself to them, and what I saw filled me with amazement at my blindness and credulity. That my wife was not guilty, that she was not faithless to me in the ordinary acceptation of the term, was no palliation of her conduct. "Steadfastly I kept before me one unalterable resolve. In the eyes of the world the name I bore should not be dishonoured, if by any means it could be prevented. We would keep our shame and our deep unhappiness within our own walls. In the light of this resolve it was impossible that I could challenge M. Gabriel; he must go unpunished by me. My name should not be dragged through the mire, to become a byeword for pity. "By degrees, upon one excuse and another, I got rid of my visitors, and there remained in the villa only I, my wife and child, and M. Gabriel. Then, in M. Gabriel's studio, I broke in upon the lovers, and found my wife in tears. "For a moment or two I gazed upon them in silence, and they, who had risen in confusion when I presented myself, confronted me also in silence, waiting for the storm of anger which they expected to burst from me, an outraged husband. They were mistaken; I was outwardly calm. "'Madam,' I inquired, addressing my wife, 'may I inquire the cause of your tears?' "She did not reply; M. Gabriel did. 'Let me explain,' he said, but I would not allow him to proceed. "'I do not need you,' I said, 'to interpose between man and wife. I may presently have something to say to you. Till then, be silent.' Again I addressed my wife, and asked her why she was weeping. "'They are not the first tears I have shed,' she replied, 'since I entered this unhappy house.' "'I am aware of it, madam,' I replied; 'yet the house was not an unhappy one before you entered it. Honour, and truth, and faithfulness were its characteristics, and towards no man or woman who has received hospitality within these walls has any kind of treachery been practised by me, its master and your husband. Tears are a sign of grief, and suffering from it, as I perceive you are, I ask you why have you not sought consolation from the man whose name you bear, and whose life since you and he first met has had but one aim--to render you happy.' "'You cannot comfort me,' she said. "'Can he?' I asked, pointing to M. Gabriel. "'You insult me,' she said with great dignity. 'I will leave you. We can speak of this in private.' "'You will not leave me,' I said, 'and we will not speak of this in private, until after some kind of explanation is afforded me from your own lips and the lips of your friend. In saying I insult you, there is surely a mistaken idea in your mind as to what is due from you to me. M. Gabriel, whom I once called a friend, is here, enjoying my hospitality, of which I trust he has had no reason to complain. I find you in tears by his side, and he, by his attitude, endeavouring to console you. When I ask you, in his presence, why, being in grief, you do not come to me for consolation, you reply that I cannot comfort you. Yet you were accepting comfort from him, who is not your husband. It suggests itself to me that if an insult has been passed it has been passed upon me. I do not, however, receive it as such, for if an insult has been offered to me, M. Gabriel is partly responsible for it, and it is only between equals that such an indignity can be offered.' "'Equals!' cried M. Gabriel; he understood my words in the sense in which I intended them. 'I am certainly your equal.' "'It has to be proved,' I retorted. 'I use the term in so far as it affects honour and upright conduct between man and man. You can bring against me no accusation of having failed in those respects in my behaviour towards you. It has to be seen whether I can in truth bring such an accusation against you, and if I can substantiate it by evidence which the commonest mind would not reject, you are not my equal. I see that this plain and honest reasoning disturbs you; it should not without sufficient cause. Something more. If in addition I can prove that you have violated my hospitality, you are not only not my equal, but you have descended to a depth of baseness to describe which I can find no fitting terms.' "He grew hot at this. 'I decline to be present any longer,' he said, 'at an interview conducted in such a manner.' And he attempted to leave me, but I stood in his way, and would not permit him to pass. "'From this moment,' I said, 'I discharge myself of all duties towards you as your host. You are no longer my guest, and you will remain at this interview during my pleasure.' "He made another attempt to leave the room, and as he accompanied it by violence, I seized his arms, and threw him to the ground. He rose, and stood trembling before me. "'I make no excuse, madam,' I said to my wife, 'for the turn this scene has taken. It is unseemly for men to brawl in presence of a lady, but there are occasions when of two evils the least must be chosen. Should I find myself mistaken, I shall give to M. Gabriel the amplest apology he could desire. Let me recall to your mind the day on which M. Gabriel first entered my gates as my guest. I brought him to you, and presented him to you as a friend whom I esteemed, and whom I wished you also to esteem. You received him as a stranger, and I had no reason to suspect that he and you had been intimate friends, and that you were already well known to each other. You allowed me to remain in ignorance of this fact. Was it honest?' "'It was not honest,' she replied. "'It made me happy,' I continued, 'to see, after the lapse of a few days, that you found pleasure in his society, and I regarded him in the light of a brother to you. I trusted him implicitly, and although, madam, you and I have been most unhappy, I had no suspicion that there was any guilt in this, as I believed, newly-formed friendship.' "'There was no guilt in it,' she said very firmly. "'I receive your assurance, and believe it in the sense in which you offer it. But in my estimation the word I use is the proper word. In the concealment from me of a fact with which you or he should have hastened to make me acquainted; in the secret confidences necessarily involved in the carrying out of such an intimacy as yours; there was treachery from wife to husband, from friend to friend, and in that treachery there was guilt. By an accident, within the past month, a knowledge has come to me of a shameful scandal which, had I not nipped it in the bud, would have brought open disgrace upon my name and house--but the secret disgrace remains, and you have brought it into my family.' "'A shameful scandal!' she exclaimed, and her white face grew whiter. 'Who has dared----' "'The world has dared, madam, the world over whose tongue we have no control. The nature of the intimacy existing between you and M. Gabriel, far exceeding the limits of friendship, has provoked remark and comment from many of your guests, and we who should have been the first to know it, have been the last. From a lady stopping in my house I learnt that you and M. Gabriel were lovers before you and I met--that you were affianced. Madam, had you informed me of this fact you would have spared yourself the deepest unhappiness under which any human being can suffer. For then you and I would not have been bound to each other by a tie which death alone can sever. I have, at all events, the solace which right doing sometimes sheds upon a wounded heart; that solace cannot unhappily be yours. You have erred consciously, and innocent though you proclaim yourself, you have brought shame upon yourself and me. I pity you, but cannot help you further than by the action I intend to take of preventing the occurrence of a deeper shame and a deeper disgrace falling upon me. For M. Gabriel I have no feelings but those of utter abhorrence. I request him to remove himself immediately from my presence and from this house. This evening he will send for his paintings, which shall be delivered to his order. They will be placed in this summer-house. And in your presence madam, I give M. Gabriel the warning that if at any time, or under any circumstances, he intrudes himself within these walls, he will do so at his own peril. The protection which my honour--not safe in your keeping, madam--needs I shall while I live be able to supply.' "This, in substance, is all that took place while my wife was with us. When she was gone I gave instructions that M. Gabriel's paintings and property should be brought to the summer-house immediately, and I informed him of my intentions regarding them and the room he had used as a study. He replied that I would have to give him a more satisfactory explanation of my conduct. I took no notice of the threat, and I carried out my resolve--which converted the study into a tomb in which my honour was buried. And on the walls of the study I caused to be inscribed the words 'The Grave of Honour.' "On the evening of that day my wife sent for me, and in the presence of Denise, our faithful servant, heard my resolve with reference to our future life, and acquainted me with her own. The gates would never again be opened to friends. Our life was to be utterly secluded, and she had determined never to quit her rooms unless for exercise in the grounds at such times as I was absent from them. "'After to-night,' she said, 'I will never open my lips to you, nor, willingly, will I ever again listen to your voice.' "In this interview I learnt the snare, set by my wife's mother, into which we both had fallen. "I left my wife, and our new life commenced--a life with hearts shut to love or forgiveness. But I had done my duty, and would bear with strength and resignation the unmerited misfortunes with which I was visited. Not my wife's, I repeat, the fault alone. I should have been wiser, and should have known--apart from any consideration of M. Gabriel--that my habits, my character, my tastes, my age, were entirely unsuitable to the fair girl I had married. I come now to the event which has rendered this record necessary." CHAPTER V THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT "The impressions left upon me by the tragic occurrence I am about to narrate have, strangely enough, given me a confused idea as to the exact date upon which it took place, but I am correct in saying that it was within a month of the agreement entered into between my wife and myself that we should live separate lives under the same roof. "I expected to receive a challenge from M. Gabriel, a challenge which for the reason I have given--that I would not afford the world an opportunity of discussing my private affairs--I firmly resolved not to accept. To my surprise no such challenge reached me, and I indulged the hope that M. Gabriel had removed himself forever from us. It was not so. "The night was wild and dark. The wind was sweeping round the house; the rain was falling. I had resumed my old habits, and was awake in my study, in which I am now writing. I did no intelligent work during those sad days. If I forced myself to write, I invariably tore up the sheets when I read them with a clearer mind. My studies afforded me neither profit nor relief. The occupation which claimed me was that of brooding over the circumstances attendant upon my wooing and my marriage. For ever brooding. Walking to and fro, dwelling upon each little detail of my intimacy with my girl-wife, and revolving in my mind whether I could have prevented what had occurred--whether, if I had done this or that, I could have averted the misery in which our lives were wrapt. It was a profitless occupation, but I could not tear myself from it. There was a morbid fascination in it which held me fast. That it harrowed me, tortured me, made me smart and bleed, mattered not. It clung to me, and I to it. Thus do we hug our misery to our bosoms, and inflict upon ourselves the most intolerable sufferings. "I strove to escape from it, to fix my mind upon some abstruse subject, upon some difficult study, but, like a demon to whom I had sold my soul, it would not be denied. There intruded always this one picture--the face of a baby-boy, mine, my dear son, lying asleep in his mother's arms. Let me say here that I never harboured the thought of depriving my wife of this precious consolation, that never by the slightest effort have I endeavoured to estrange him from her. The love he bore to me--and I thank Heaven that he grew to love me--sprang from his own heart, which also must have been sorely perplexed and have endured great pain in the estrangement that existed between his parents. Well, this pretty baby-face always intruded itself--this soul which I had brought into life lay ever before me, weighted with myriad mysterious and strange suggestions. It might live to accomplish great and noble deeds--it might live to inspire to worthy deeds--it might become a saviour of men, a patriot, an emancipator. And but for me, it would never have been. Even the supreme tribulation of his parents' lives might be productive of some great actions which would bring a blessing upon mankind. In that case it was good to suffer. "After some time--not in those days, but later on--this thought became a consolation to me, although it troubled and perplexed me to think whether the birth of a soul which was destined to shine as a star among men was altogether a matter of chance. "A dark, stormy night. I created voices in the sweeping of the wind. They spoke to me in groans, in whispers, in loud shrieks. Was it fancy that inspired the wail, 'To-night, to-night shall be your undoing!' "Midnight struck. I paced to and fro, listening to the voices of the wind. Presently another sound--a sound not created by my imagination--came to my ears. It was as though something heavy had fallen in the grounds. Perhaps a tree had been blown down. Or did it proceed from another cause, which warned me of danger? "I hastened immediately into the grounds. The sense of danger exhilarated me. I was in a mood which courted death as a boon. Willingly would I have gone out to meet it, as a certain cure for the anguish of my soul. Thus I believe it is sometimes with soldiers, and they become heroes by force of desperation. "I could see nothing. I was about to return, when a moving object arrested my purpose. I sprang towards it--threw myself upon it. And in my arms I clasped the body of a man, just recovering consciousness from a physical hurt. "I did not speak a word. I lifted the body in my arms--it had not yet sufficient strength to repel me--and carried it into my study. The moment the light of my lamps shone on the face of the man I recognised him. It was M. Gabriel. "I laughed with savage delight as I placed him on a couch. 'You villain--you villain!' I muttered. 'Your last hour, or mine, has come. This night, one or both of us shall die!' "I drew my chair before the couch, so that his eyes, when he opened them, should rest upon my face. He was recovering consciousness, but very slowly. 'I could kill you here,' I said aloud, 'and no man would be the wiser. But I will first have speech with you.' His eyelids quivered, opened, and we were gazing at each other face to face. The sight of me confounded him for a while, but presently he realised the position of affairs and he strove to rise. I thrust him back fiercely. "'Stay you there,' I said, 'until I learn your purpose. You have entered my house as a thief, and you have given your life into my hands. I told you, if you ever intruded yourself within these walls, that you would do so at your peril. What brought you here? Are you a would-be thief or murderer? You foul betrayer and coward! So--you climb walls in the dark in pursuance of your villainous schemes! Answer me--do you come here by appointment, and are you devil enough to strive to make me believe that a pure and misguided girl would be weak enough to throw herself into your arms? Fill up the measure of your baseness, and declare as much.' "'No,' he replied; 'I alone am culpable. No one knew of my coming--no one suspected it. I could not rest.' "I interrupted him. 'After to-night,' I said gloomily, 'you will rest quietly. Men such as you must be removed from the earth. You steal into my house, you thief and coward, with no regard for the fair fame of the woman you profess to love--reckless what infamy you cast upon her and of the life-long shame you would deliberately fling upon one who has been doubly betrayed. You have not the courage to suffer in silence, but you would proclaim to all the world that you are a martyr to love, the very name of which becomes degraded when placed in association with natures like yours. You belong to the class of miserable sentimentalists who bring ruin upon the unhappy women whom they entangle with their maudlin theories. Mischief enough have you accomplished--this night will put an end to your power to work further ill.' "'What do you intend to do with me?' he asked. "'I intend to kill you,' I replied; 'not in cold blood--not as a murderer, but as an avenger. Stand up.' "He obeyed me. His fall had stunned him for a time; he was not otherwise injured. "'I will take no advantage of you,' I said. 'Here is wine to give you a false courage. Drink, and prepare yourself for what is to come. As surely as you have delivered yourself into my hands, so surely shall you die!" CHAPTER VI THE HIDDEN CRIME "He drank the wine, not wisely or temperately as a cool-headed man whose life was at stake would have done, but hastily, feverishly, and with an air of desperation. "'You are a good fencer,' I said, 'the best among all the friends who visited me during the days of your treachery. You were proud of showing your skill, as you were of exhibiting every admirable quality with which you are gifted. Something of the mountebank in this.' "'At least,' he said, rallying his courage, 'do not insult me.' "'Why not? Have you not outraged what is most honourable and sacred? Here are rapiers ready to our hands.' "'A duel!' he cried. 'Here, and now?' "'Yes,' I replied, 'a duel, here and now. There is no fear of interruption. The sound of clashing steel will not fall upon other ears than ours.' "'It will not be a fair combat,' he said. 'You are no match for me with the rapier. Let me depart. Do not compel me to become your murderer.' "'You will nevermore set foot outside these walls,' I said; 'here you will find your grave.' "It was my firm belief. I saw him already lying dead at my feet. "'If I should kill you,' he said, 'how shall I escape?' "'As best you may,' I replied. 'You are an adept at climbing walls. If you kill me, what happens to you thereafter is scarcely likely to interest me. But do not allow that thought to trouble you. What will take place to-night is ordained!' "I began to move the furniture from the centre of the room, so as to afford a clear space for the duel. The tone in which he next spoke convinced me that I had impressed him. Indeed, my words were uttered with the certainty of conviction, and a fear stole upon him that he had come to his death. "'I will not fight with you,' he said; 'the duel you propose is barbarous, and I decline to meet you unless witnesses are present.' "'So that we may openly involve the fair name of a lady in our quarrel,' I retorted quietly. 'No; that will not be. Before witnesses it is I who would decline to meet you. Are you a coward?' "'It matters little what you call me,' he said, 'as no other person is near. You cannot force me to fight you.' "'I think I can,' I said, and I struck him in the face, and proceeded with my work. "My back was towards him; a loaded gun was hanging on the wall; unperceived by me he unslung it, and fired at me. "I did not know whether I was hit or not. Maddened by the cowardly act, I turned, and lifting him in the air, dashed him to the ground. His head struck against one of the legs of my writing-table; he groaned but once, and then lay perfectly still. It was the work of a moment, and the end had come. He lay dead before me. "I had no feeling of pity for him, and I was neither startled nor deeply moved. His punishment was a just punishment, and my honour was safe from the babble of idle and malicious tongues. All that devolved upon me now was to keep the events of this night from the knowledge of men. "There was, however, one danger. A gun had been fired. The sound might have aroused my wife or some of the servants, in which case an explanation would have to be given. At any moment they might appear. What lay on the floor must not be seen by other eyes than mine. "I dragged a cloth from a table and threw it over the body, and with as little noise as possible swiftly replaced the furniture in its original position. Then I sat on my chair and waited. For a few minutes I was in a state of great agitation, but after I had sat for an hour without being disturbed I knew that my secret was safe. "I removed the cloth from the face of the dead man and gazed at it. Strange to say, the features wore an expression of peacefulness. Death must have been instantaneous. Gradually, as I gazed upon the form of the man I had killed, the selfish contemplation in which I had been engaged during the last hour of suspense--a contemplation devoted solely to a consideration of the consequences of discovery, so far as I was concerned, and in which the fate of the dead man formed no part--became merged in the contemplation of the act itself apart from its earthly consequences. "I had taken a human life. I, whose nature had been proverbially humane, was, in a direct sense of the word, a murderer. That the deed was done in a moment of passion was no excuse; a man is responsible for his acts. The blood I had shed shone in my eyes. "What hopes, what yearnings, what ambitions, were here destroyed by me! For, setting aside the unhappy sentiment which had conducted events to this end, M. Gabriel was a man of genius, of whose career high expectations had been formed. I had not only destroyed a human being, I had destroyed art. Would it have been better had I allowed myself to be killed? Were death preferable to a life weighed down by a crime such as mine? "For a short time these reflections had sway over me, but presently I steadily argued them down. I would not allow them to unman me. This coward and traitor had met a just doom. "What remained for me now to do was to complete the concealment. The body must be hidden. After to-night--unless chance or the hand of Providence led to its discovery--the lifeless clay at my feet must never more be seen. "There was a part of my grounds seldom, if ever, intruded upon by the servants--that portion in which, for the gratification of my wife, I had at the time of our marriage commenced improvements which had never been completed. There it was that my wife's mother had met with the accident which resulted in her death. I thought of a pit deep enough for the concealment of the bodies of fifty men. Into this pit I would throw the body of M. Gabriel, and would cover it with earth and stones. The task accomplished, there would be little fear of discovery. "First satisfying myself that all was quiet and still in the villa, and that I was not being watched, I raised the body of M. Gabriel in my arms. As I did so, a horror and loathing of myself took possession of me; I shuddered in disgust; the work I was performing seemed to be the work of a butcher. "However, what I resolved to do was done. In the dead of night, with darkness surrounding me, with the rain beating upon me, and the accusing wind shrieking in my ears, I consigned to its last resting-place the body of the man I had killed. "Years have passed since that night. My name has not been dragged into the light for scandal-mongers to make sport of. Open shame and derision have been avoided--but at what a price! From the day following that upon which I forbade M. Gabriel my house, not a single word was exchanged between my wife and myself. She sent for me before she died, but she knew she would be dead before I arrived. A fearful gloom settled upon our lives, and will cover me to my last hour. This domestic estrangement, this mystery of silence between those whom he grew to love and honour, weighed heavily upon my son Christian. His child's soul must have suffered much, and at times I have fancied I see in him the germs of a combination of sweetness and weakness which may lead to suffering. But suffer as he may, if honour be his guide I am content. I shall not live to see him as a man; my days are numbered. "In the time to come--in the light of a purer existence--I may learn whether the deed I have done is or is not a crime. "But one thing is clear to me. Had it not been for my folly, shame would not have threatened me, misery would not have attended me, and I should not have taken a human life. The misery and the shame did not affect me alone; they waited upon a young life and blighted its promise. It is I who am culpable, I who am responsible for what has occurred. It is impossible, without courting unhappiness, to divert the currents of being from their natural channels: youth needs youth, is attracted to youth, seeks youth, as flowers seek the sun. Roses do not grow in ice. "Mine, then, the sin--a sin too late to expiate. "I would have my son marry when he is young, as in the course of nature he will love when he is young. It is the happier fate, because it is in accordance with natural laws. "If he into whose hands these pages may fall can discern a lesson applicable to himself in the events I have recorded, let him profit by them. If the circumstances of his life in any way resemble mine, I warn him to bear with wisdom and patience the penalty he has brought upon himself, and not to add, in the person of another being to whom he is bound and who is bound to him, to an unhappiness--most probably a secret unhappiness--of his own creating. "And I ask him to consider well whether any good purpose will be served by dragging into the open day the particulars of a crime, the publishing of which cannot injure the dead or benefit the living. It cannot afford him any consolation to think, if my son be alive, that needless suffering will be brought to the door of the innocent. Let him, then, be merciful and pitiful." CHAPTER VII FALSE WIFE, FALSE FRIEND Thus abruptly the record closed. To the last written page there were several added, as though the writer had more to say, and intended to say it. But the pages were blank. The intention, if intention there were, had never been carried out. The reading of the record occupied the Advocate over an hour, and when he had finished, he sat gazing upon the manuscript. For a quarter of an hour he did not move. Then he rose--not quickly, as one would rise who was stirred by a sudden impulse, but slowly, with the air of a man who found a difficulty in arranging his thoughts. With uneven steps he paced the study, to and fro, to and fro, pausing occasionally to handle in an aimless way a rare vase, which he turned about in his hands, and gazed at with vacant eyes. Occasionally, also, he paused before the manuscript and searched in its pages for words which his memory had not correctly retained. He did this with a consciousness which forced itself upon him, and which he vainly strove to ignore, that what he sought was applicable to himself. It was not compassion, it was not tenderness, it was not horror, that moved him thus strangely, for he was a man who had been but rarely, if ever, moved as he was at the present time. It was the curious and disquieting associations between the dead man who had written and the living man who had read the record. And yet, although he could, if he had chosen, have reasoned this out, and have placed it mentally before him in parallel lines, his only distinct thought was to avoid the comparison. That he was unsuccessful in this did not tend to compose him. Upon a bracket lay a bronze, the model of a woman's hand, from the life. A beautiful hand, slender but shapely. It reminded him of his wife. He took it from the bracket and examined it, and after a little while thus passed, the words came involuntarily from his lips: "Perfect--but cold." The spoken words annoyed him; they were the evidence of a lack of self-control. He replaced the bronze hastily, and when he passed it again would not look at it. Suddenly he left the study, and went towards his wife's rooms. He had not proceeded more than half a dozen yards before his purpose, whatever it might have been, was relinquished as swiftly as it had been formed. He retraced his steps, and lingered irresolutely at the door of the study. With an impatient movement of his head--it was the action of a man who wrestled with thought as he would have done with a palpable being--he once more proceeded in the direction of his wife's apartments. At the commencement of the passage which led to the study was a lobby, opening from the principal entrance. A noble staircase in the centre of the lobby led to the rooms occupied by Christian Almer and Pierre Lamont. On the same floor as the study, beyond the staircase, were his wife's boudoir and private rooms. This part of the house was but dimly lighted; one rose-lamp only was alight. On the landing above, where the staircase terminated, three lamps in a cluster were burning, and shed a soft and clear light around. When he reached the lobby and was about to pass the staircase, the Advocate's progress was arrested by the sound of voices which fell upon his ears. These voices proceeded from the top of the staircase. He looked up, and saw, standing close together, his wife and Christian Almer. Instinctively he retreated into the deeper shadows, and stood there in silence with his eyes fixed upon the figures above him. His wife's hand was resting on Almer's shoulder, and her fingers occasionally touched his hair. She was speaking almost in a whisper, and her face was bright and animated. Almer was replying to her in monosyllables, and even in the midst of the torture of this discovery, the Advocate observed that the face of his friend wore a troubled expression. The Advocate remembered that his wife had wished him good-night before ten o'clock, and that when he made the observation that she was retiring early, she replied that she was so overpowered with fatigue that she could not keep her eyes open one minute longer. And here, nearly two hours after this statement, he found her conversing clandestinely with his friend in undisguised gaiety of spirits! Never had he seen her look so happy. There was a tender expression in her eyes as she gazed upon Christian Almer which she had never bestowed upon him from the first days of their courtship. A grave, dignified courtship, in which each was studiously kind and courteous to the other; a courtship without romance, in which there was no spring. A bitter smile rested upon his lips as this remembrance impressed itself significantly upon him. He watched and waited, motionless as a statue. Midnight struck, and still the couple on the staircase lingered. Presently, however, and manifestly on Almer's urging, Adelaide consented to leave him. Smilingly she offered him her hand, and held his for a longer time than friendship warranted. They parted; he ascending to his room, she descending to hers. When she was at the foot of the staircase she looked up and threw a kiss to Almer, and her face, with the light of the rose-lamp upon it, was inexpressibly beautiful. The next minute the Advocate was alone. He listened for the shutting of their chamber-doors. So softly was this done both by his friend and his wife that it was difficult to catch the faint sound. He smiled again--a bitter smile of confirmation. It was in his legal mind a fatal item of evidence against them. Slowly he returned to his study, and the first act of which he was conscious was that of standing on a certain spot and saying audibly as he looked down: "It was here M. Gabriel fell!" He knelt upon the carpet, and thought that on the boards beneath, even at this distance of time, stains of blood might be discerned, the blood of a treacherous friend. It was impossible for him to control the working of his mind; impossible to dwell upon the train of thought it was necessary he should follow out before he could decide upon a line of action. One o'clock, two o'clock struck, and he was still in this condition. All he could think of was the fate of M. Gabriel, and over and over again he muttered: "It was here he fell--it was here he fell!" There was a harmony in the storm which raged without. The peals of thunder, the lightning flashing through the windows, were in consonance with his mood. He knew that he was standing on the brink of a fatal precipice. "Which would be best," he asked mentally of himself, "that lightning should destroy three beings in this unhappy house, or that the routine of a nine-days' wonder should be allowed to take its course? All that is wanting to complete the wreck would be some evidence to damn me in connection with Gautran and the unhappy girl he foully murdered." As if in answer to his thought, he heard a distinct tapping on one of his study windows. He hailed it with eagerness; anything in the shape of action was welcome to him. He stepped to the window, and drawing up the blind saw darkly the form of a man without. "Whom do you seek?" he asked. "You," was the answer. "Your mission must be an urgent one," said the Advocate, throwing up the window. "Is it murder or robbery?" "Neither. Something of far greater importance." "Concerning me?" "Most vitally concerning you." "Indeed. Then I should welcome you." With strange recklessness he held out his hand to assist his visitor into the room. The man accepted the assistance, and climbing over the window-sill sprang into the study. He was bloody, and splashed from head to foot with mud. "Have you a name?" inquired the Advocate. "Naturally." "Favour me with it." "John Vanbrugh." _BOOK VII.--RETRIBUTION_ CHAPTER I JOHN VANBRUGH AND THE ADVOCATE "A stormy night to seek you out," said John Vanbrugh, "and to renew an old friendship----" "Stop there," interrupted the Advocate. "I admit no idea of a renewal of friendship between us." "You reject my friendship?" asked Vanbrugh, wiping the blood and dirt from his face. "Distinctly." "So be it. Our interview shall be conducted without a thought of friendship, though some reference to the old days cannot be avoided. I make no apology for presenting myself in this condition. Man can no more rule the storm than he can the circumstances of his life. I have run some distance through the rain, and I have been attacked and almost killed. You perceive that I am exhausted, yet you do not offer me wine. You have it, I know, in that snug cupboard there. May I help myself? Thank you. Ah, there's a smack of youth in this liquor. It is life to one who has passed through such dangers as have encompassed me. You received my letter asking for an interview? I gave it myself into your hands on the last evening of the trial." "I received it." "Yet you were unwilling to accord me an interview." "I had no desire to meet you again." "It was ungrateful of you, for it is upon your own business--yours and no other man's--that I wished to speak with you. It was cold work out on the hill yonder, watching the lights in your study window, watching for the simple waving of a handkerchief, which would mean infinitely more to you than to me, as you will presently confess. Dreary cold work, not likely to put a man like myself in an amiable mood. I am not on good terms with the world, as you may plainly perceive. I have had rough times since the days you deemed it no disgrace to shake hands with me. I have sunk very low by easy descents; you have risen to a giddy height. I wonder whether you have ever feared the fall. Men as great as you have met with such a misfortune. Things do not last for ever, Edward--pardon me. it was a slip of the tongue." "Do you come to beg?" "No--for a reason. If I came on such an errand, I might spare myself the trouble." "Likely enough," said the Advocate, who was too well acquainted with human nature not to be convinced, from Vanbrugh's manner, that his was no idle visit. "You were never renowned for your charities. And on the other hand I am poor, but I am not a beggar. I am frank enough to tell you I would prefer to steal. It is more independent, and not half so disgraceful. It may happen that the world would take an interest in a thief, but never in a beggar." "Is it to favour me with your philosophies that you pay me this visit?" "I should be the veriest dolt. No, I will air my opinions when I am rich." "You intend, poor as you confess yourself, to become rich?" "With your help, old friend." "Not with my help. You will receive none from me." "You are mistaken. Forgive me for the contradiction, but I speak on sure ground. Ah, how I have heard you spoken of! With what admiration and esteem! Almost with awe by some. Your talents, of themselves, could not have won this universal eulogy; it is your spotless character that has set the seal upon your fame. There is not a stain upon it; you have no weaknesses, no blemishes; you are absolutely pure. Other men have something to conceal--some family difficulty, some domestic disgrace, some slip in the path of virtue, which, were it known, would turn the current against them. But against you there is not a breath; scandal has never soiled you. In this lies the strength of your position--in this lies its danger. Let shame, with cause, point its finger at you--old friend, the result is unpleasant to contemplate. For when a man such as you falls, he does not fall gradually. He topples over suddenly, and to-day he is as low in the gutter as yesterday he was high in the clouds." "You have said enough. I do not care to listen to you further. The tone you assume is offensive to me--such as I would brook from no man. You can go the way you came." And with a scornful gesture the Advocate pointed to the window. "When I inform you which way I came," said Vanbrugh, with easy insolence, "you will not be so ready to tell me to leave you before you learn the errand which brought me." "Which way, then, did you come?" asked the Advocate, in a tone of contempt. "The way Gautran came--somewhat earlier than this, it is true, but not earlier than midnight." The Advocate grasped the back of a chair; it was a slight action, but sufficient to show that he was taken off his guard. "You know that?" he said. "Aye, I know that, and also that you feasted him, and gave him money." "Are you accomplices, you two knaves?" "If so, I have at present the best of the bargain. But your surmise is not made with shrewdness. I never set eyes on Gautran until after he was pronounced innocent of the murder of Madeline. On that night I--shall we say providentially?--made his acquaintance." "You have met him since then?" "Yes--this very night; our interview was one never to be forgotten. Come, I have been frank with you; I have used no disguises. I say to you honestly, the world has gone hard with me; I have known want and privation, and I am in a state of destitution. That is a condition of affairs sufficient not only to depress a man's spirits, but to make him disgusted with the world and mankind. I have, however, still some capacity for enjoyment left in me, and I would give the world another trial, not as a penniless rogue, but as a gentleman." "Hard to accomplish," observed the Advocate, with a cynical smile. "Not with a full purse. No music like the jingling of gold, and the world will dance to the tune. Well, I present myself to you, and ask you, who are rich and can spare what will be the making of me, to hand me from your full store as much as will convert a poor devil into a respectable member of society." "I appreciate your confidence. I leave you to supply the answer." "You will give me nothing?" "Nothing." "Mind--I do not ask it of your charity; I ask it of your prudence. It will be worth your while." "That has to be proved." "Good. We have made a commencement. Your reputation is worth much--in sober truth as much as it has brought you. But I am not greedy. It lies at my mercy, and I shall be content with a share." "That is generous of you," said the Advocate, who by this time had regained his composure; "but I warn you--my patience is beginning to be exhausted." "Only beginning? That is well. I advise you to keep a tight rein over it, and to ask yourself whether it is likely--considering the difference of our positions--that I should be here talking in this bold tone unless I held a power over you? I put it to you as a lawyer of eminence." "There is reason in what you say." "Let me see. What have I to sell? The security of your reputation? The power to prevent your name being uttered with horror? Your fame--your honour? Yes, I have quite that to dispose of, and as a man of business, which I never was until now, I recognise the importance of being precise. First--I have to sell my knowledge that, after midnight, you received Gautran in your study, that you treated him as a friend, and filled his pockets with gold. How much is that worth?" "Nothing. My word against his, against yours, against a hundred such as you and he." "You would deny it?" "Assuredly--to protect myself." As he made this answer, it seemed to the Advocate as if the principle of honour by which his actions had been guided until within the last few days were slipping from him, and as if the vilest wretch that breathed had a right to call him his equal. "We will pass that by," said Vanbrugh, helping himself to wine. "Really, your wine is exquisite. In some respects you are a man to be envied. It is worth much to a man not only to possess the best of everything the world can give, but to know that he has the means and the power to purchase it. With that consciousness within him, he walks with his head in the air. You used to be fond of discussing these niceties; I had no taste for them. I left the deeper subtleties of life to those of thinner blood than mine. Pleasure was more in my way--and will be again." "You are wandering from the point," said the Advocate. "There is a meaning in everything I say; I will clip my wings. Your word against a hundred men such as I and Gautran? I am afraid you are right. We are vagabonds--you are a gentleman. So, then, my knowledge of the fact that you treated Gautran as a friend after you had procured his acquittal is worth nothing. Admitted. But put that knowledge and that fact in connection with another and a sterner knowledge and fact--that you knew Gautran to be guilty of the murder. How then? Does it begin to assume a value? Your silence gives me hopes that my visit will not be fruitless. Between men who once were equals and friends, and who, after a lapse of years, come together as we have come together now, candour is a useful attribute. Let us exercise it. I am not here on your account, nor do I hold you in such regard that I would trouble myself to move a finger to save your reputation. The master I am working for is Self; the end I am working for is an easy life, a life of pleasure. This accomplished by your aid, I have nothing more to do with you or your affairs. The business is an unpleasant one, and I shall be glad to forget it. Refuse what I ask, and you will sink lower than I have ever sunk. There are actions which the world will forgive in the ignorant, but not in men of ripe intellect." He paused and gazed negligently at the Advocate, who during the latter part of Vanbrugh's speech, was considering the dangers of his position. The secret of Gautran's guilt belonged not alone to himself and Gautran; this man Vanbrugh had been admitted into it, and he was an enemy more to be dreaded than Gautran. He saw his peril, and that he unconsciously acknowledged it to be imminent was proved by the thought which intruded itself--against his will, as it seemed--whether it would be wise to buy Vanbrugh off, to purchase his silence. "It is easy," he said, "to invent tales. You and a dozen men, in conjunction with the monster Gautran----" "As you say," interrupted Vanbrugh, gently nodding his head, "the monster Gautran. But why should you call him so unless you knew him to be guilty? Were you assured of his innocence, you would speak of him pityingly, as one undeservedly oppressed and persecuted. 'The monster Gautran!' Thank you. It is an admission." "----May invent," continued the Advocate, not heeding the interruption, but impressed by its logic, "may invent any horrible tale you please of any man you please. The difficulty will be to get the world to believe it." "Exactly. But in this case there is no difficulty, although the murderer be dead." "Gautran! Dead!" exclaimed the Advocate, surprised out of himself. Gautran was dead! Encompassed as he was by danger and treachery, the news was a relief to him. "Yes, dead," replied Vanbrugh, purposely assuming a careless tone. "Did I not tell you before? Singular that it should have escaped me. But I have so much to say, and in my brightest hours I was always losing the sequence of things." "And you," said the Advocate, "meeting this man by chance----" "Pardon me. I asked you whether I should consider our meeting providential." "It matters not. You, meeting this man, come to me after his death, for the purpose of extracting money from me. You will fail." "I shall succeed." "You killed Gautran, and want money to escape." "No. He was killed by a higher agency, and I want no money to escape. You will hear to-morrow how he met his death, for all the towns and villages will be ringing with it. I continue. Say that Gautran at the point of death made a dying confession, on oath, not only of his guilt, but of your knowledge of it when you defended him;--say that this confession exists in writing, duly signed. Would that paper, in conjunction with what I have already offered for sale, be worth your purchase? Take time to consider. You are dealing with a man in desperate circumstances, one who, if you drive him to it, will pull you down, high as you are. You will help me, old friend." "It may be. Have you possession of the paper you speak of?" "I have. Would you like to hear it?" "Yes." Vanbrugh moved, so that a table was between him and the Advocate, and taking Gautran's confession from his pocket read in a clear voice: "I, Gautran the woodman, lately tried for the murder of Madeline the flower-girl, being now at the point of death, and conscious that I have only a few minutes to live, and being also in the full possession of my reason, hereby make oath and swear: "That being thrown into prison, awaiting my trial, I believed there was no escape from the doom I justly merited, for the reason that I was guilty of the murder. "That some days before my trial was to take place, the Advocate who defended me voluntarily undertook to prove to my judges that I was innocent of the crime I committed. "That with this full knowledge, he conducted my case with such ability that I was set free and pronounced innocent. "That on the night of my acquittal, after midnight had struck, and when every person but himself in the House of White Shadows was asleep, I secretly visited him in his study, and remained with him for some time. "That he gave me food and money, and bade me go my way. "That I am ignorant of the motives which induced him, to whom I was a perfect stranger, to deliberately defeat the ends of justice. "That the proof that he knew me to be guilty lies in the fact that I made a full confession to him. "To which I solemnly swear, being about to appear before a just God to answer for my crime. I pray for forgiveness and mercy. "Signed, Gautran." Without comment, John Vanbrugh folded the paper, and replaced it carefully in his pocket. "The confession may be forged," said the Advocate. "Gautran's signature," said Vanbrugh, "will refute such a charge. He could write only his name, and documents can certainly be found bearing his signature, which can be compared with this." "With that document in your possession," said the Advocate, speaking very slowly, "are you not afraid to be here with me--alone--knowing, if it state the truth, how much I have at stake?" "Excellent!" exclaimed Vanbrugh. "What likenesses there are in human nature, and how thin the line that divides the base from the noble! Afraid? No--for if you lay a hand upon me, for whom you are no more than a match, I will rouse the house and denounce you. Restrain yourself and hear me out. I have that to say which will prove to you the necessity, if you have the slightest regard for your honour, of dealing handsomely with me. It relates to the girl whose murderer you set free--to Madeline the flower-girl and to yourself." CHAPTER II A TERRIBLE REVELATION Without requesting permission, John Vanbrugh filled his glass with wine, which he drank leisurely with his eyes fixed on the Advocate's pale face the while. When he spoke, it did not escape the Advocate that he seemed to fling aside the flippancy of manner which had hitherto characterised him, and that his voice was unusually earnest. "I do not ask you to excuse me," he said, "for recalling the memory of a time when you did not despise my companionship. It is necessary for my purpose. We were, indeed, more than companions--we were friends. What it was that made you consort with me is just now a mystery to me. The contrast in our characters may have tempted you. I, a careless, light-hearted fellow who loved to enjoy the hours; you, a serious, cold-hearted student, dreaming perhaps of the position you have attained. It may be that you deliberately made a study of me to see what use you could make of my weakness. However it was, I lived in the present, you in the future. The case is now reversed, and it is I who live in the future. "I have said you were cold-hearted, and I do not suppose you will trouble yourself to deny it. Such as you are formed to rise, while we impulsive, reckless devils are pretty sure to tumble in the mud. But I never had such a fall as you are threatened with, and scapegrace, vagabond as I am, I am thankful not to have on my conscience what you have on yours. "Now for certain facts. "I contemplated--no, I mistake, I never contemplated--I settled to go on a tour for a few weeks, and scramble through bits of France, Switzerland, and Italy. You will remember my mentioning it to you. Yes, I see in your face that you are following me, and I shall feel obliged by your correcting me if in my statement of facts I should happen to trip. The story I am telling needs no effort of the imagination to embellish it. It is in its bare aspect sufficiently ghastly and cruel. "When I was about to start on my tour, you, of your own accord, offered to accompany me. You had been studying too hard, and a wise doctor recommended you to rest a while, if you did not care to have brain-fever, and also recommended you to seek new scenes in the company of a cheerful friend whose light spirits would be a good medicine for an overworked brain. You took the doctor's advice, and you did me the honour to choose me for a companion. So we started on our little tour of pleasure. "To shorten what I have to say I will not dwell upon the details of our jaunt, but I fix myself, with you, at Zermatt, where we stayed for three weeks. The attraction--what was it? The green valleys--the grandeur of the scenery? No. A woman. More correctly speaking, two women. Young, lovely, inexperienced, innocent. Daughters of a peasant, whose cottage door was always open to us, and who was by no means unwilling to receive small presents of money from liberal gentlemen like ourselves. Again I slip details--the story becomes trite. We captivated the hearts of the simple peasant maidens, and amused ourselves with them. In me that was natural; it was my way. But in you this circumstance was something to be astonished at. For just as long as you remained at Zermatt you were a transformed being. I don't think, until that time, I had ever heard you laugh heartily. Well, suddenly you disappeared; getting up one morning, I found that my friend had deserted me. "It was shabby behaviour, at the best. However, it did not seriously trouble me; every man is his own master, and I think we were beginning to tire a little of each other. It was awkward, though, to be asked by one of our pretty peasant friends where my handsome friend had gone, and when he would return, and not be able to give a sensible answer. "This girl, who had been in your presence always bright and joyous and happy, grew sad and quiet and anxious-looking in your absence, and appeared to have a secret on her mind that was making her wretched. I stayed on at Zermatt for another month, and then I bade good-bye to my sweetheart, promising to come again in a year. I kept my promise, but when I asked for her in Zermatt I heard that she was dead, and that her sister and father had left the village, and had gone no one knew whither. "It will be as well for me here to remind you that during our stay in Zermatt we gave no home address, and that no one knew where we came from or where we lived. So prudent were we that we acted as if we were ashamed of our names. "Three years afterwards in another part of Switzerland I met the woman to whom you had made love; she had lost her father, but was not without a companion. She had a little daughter--your child!" "A lie!" said the Advocate, with difficulty controlling himself; "a monstrous fabrication!" "A solemn truth," replied Vanbrugh, "verified by the mother's oath, and the certificate of birth. To dispute it will be a waste of breath and time. Hear me to the end. The mother had but one anxiety--to forget you and your treachery, and to be able to live so that her shame should be concealed. To accomplish this it was necessary that she should live among strangers, and it was for this reason she had left her native village. She asked me about you, and I--well, I played your game. I told her you had gone to a distant part of the world, and that I knew nothing of you. We were still friends, you and I, although our friendship was cooling. When I next saw you I had it in my mind to relate the circumstance to you; but you will remember that just at that time you took it into your head to put an end to our intimacy. We had a few words, I think, and you were pleased to tell me that you disapproved of my habits of life, and that you intended we should henceforth be strangers. I was not in an amiable mood when I left you, and I resolved, on the first opportunity, to seek the woman you had brought to shame, and advise her to take such steps against you as would bring disgrace to your door. It would be paying you in your own coin, I thought. However, good fortune stood your friend at that time. My own difficulties or pleasures, or both combined, claimed my attention, and occupied me for many months, and when next I went to the village in which I had last seen your peasant sweetheart and your child, they were not to be found. I made inquiries, but could learn nothing of them, so I gave it up as a bad job, and forgot all about the matter. Since then very many years have passed, and I sank and sank, and you rose and rose. We did not meet again; but I confess, when I used to read accounts of your triumphs and your rising fame, that I would not have neglected an opportunity to have done you an ill turn had it been in my power. I was at the lowest ebb, everything was against me, and I was wondering how I should manage to extricate myself from the desperate position into which bad luck had driven me, when, not many weeks since, I met in the streets of Geneva two women. They were hawking nosegays, and the moment I set eyes upon the elder of these women I recognised in her your old sweetheart from Zermatt. You appear to be faint. Shall I pause a while before I continue?" "No," said the Advocate, and he drank with feverish eagerness two glasses of wine; "go on to the end." "It was your sweetheart from Zermatt, and no other. And the younger of these women, one of the loveliest creatures I ever beheld, was known as Madeline the flower-girl." The Advocate, with a sudden movement, turned his chair, so that his face was hidden from Vanbrugh. "They were poor--and I was poor. If what I suspected, when I gazed at Madeline, was correct, I saw not only an opportunity for revenge upon you, but a certainty of being able to obtain money from you. The secret to such a man as you, married to a young and beautiful woman, was worth a fair sum, which I resolved should be divided between Pauline--that was the name adopted by the mother of your child--and myself. You cannot accuse me of a want of frankness. I discovered where they lived--I had secret speech with Pauline. My suspicion was no longer a suspicion--it was a fact. Madeline the flower-girl was your daughter." He paused, but the Advocate made no movement, and did not speak. "How," continued Vanbrugh, "to turn that fact to advantage? How, and in what way, to make it worth a sum sufficiently large to satisfy me? That was what now occupied my thoughts. Madeline and her mother were even poorer than I supposed, and from Pauline's lips did I hear how anxious she was to remove her daughter from the temptations by which she was surrounded. In dealing with you, I knew it was necessary to be well prepared. You are a powerful antagonist to cope with, and one must have sure cards in his hand to have even a chance of winning any game he is playing with such a man as yourself. Pauline and I spoke frequently together, and gradually I unfolded to her the plan I had resolved upon. Without disclosing your name I told her sufficiently to convince her that, by my aid, she might obtain a sum of money from the man who had wronged her which would enable her to place herself and her daughter in a safer position--a position in which a girl as beautiful as Madeline would almost certainly meet with a lover of good social position whom she would marry and with whom she would lead a happy life. Thus would she escape the snare into which she herself fell when she met you. This was the mother's dream. Satisfied that I could guide her to this end, Pauline signed an agreement, which is in my possession, by which she bound herself to pay me half the money she obtained from you in compensation for your wrong. Only one thing was to remain untouched by her and me--a sum which I resolved to obtain from you as a marriage portion for your daughter. Probably, under other circumstances, you would not have given me credit for so much consideration, but viewed in the light of the position in which you are placed, you may believe me. If you doubt it, I can show you the clause in black and white. This being settled between Pauline and me, I told her who you were--how rich you were, how famous you had grown, and how that you had lately married a young and beautiful woman. The affairs of a man as eminent as yourself are public property, and the newspapers delight in recording every particular, be it ever so trivial, connected with the lives of men of your rank. It was then necessary to ascertain what proof we held that you were the father of Madeline. Our visit to Zermatt could be proved--her oath and mine, in connection with dates, would suffice. Then there would, in all likelihood, be living in Zermatt men and women whose testimony would be valuable. The great point was the birth of the child and the date, and to my discomfiture I learnt that Pauline had lost the certificate of her daughter's birth. But the record existed elsewhere, and it was to obtain a copy of this record, and to collect other evidence, that Pauline left her daughter. Her mission was a secret one, necessarily, and thus no person, not even Madeline, had any knowledge of its purport. What, now, remains to be told? Nothing that you do not know--except that when Pauline left her daughter for a few weeks, it was arranged that she and I should meet in Geneva on a certain date, to commence our plan of operations, and that I, having business elsewhere, was a couple of hundred miles away when Gautran murdered your hapless child. I arrived in Geneva on the last day of Gautran's trial; and on that evening, as you came out of the court-house, I placed in your hands the letter asking you to give me an interview. I will say nothing of my feelings when I heard that you had successfully defended, and had set free, the murderer of your child. What I had to look after was myself and my own interest. And now you, who at the beginning of this interview rejected a renewal of the old friendship which existed between us, may probably inwardly acknowledge that had you accepted the hand I offered you, it is not I who would have been the gainer." Again he paused, and again, neither by word or movement, did the Advocate break the silence. "It will be as well," presently said Vanbrugh, "to recapitulate what I have to sell. First, the fact that you, a man of spotless character--so believed--deliberately betrayed a simple innocent girl, and then deserted her. Inconceivable, the world would say, in such a man, unless the proofs were incontestable. The proofs are incontestable. Next, the birth of your child, and your brutal--pardon me, there is no other word to express it, and it is one which would be freely used--negligence to ascertain whether your conduct had brought open shame and ruin upon the girl you betrayed. Next, the knowledge of the life of poverty and suffering led by the mother and the child, while you were in the possession of great wealth. Next, the murder of your child by a man whose name is uttered with execration. Next, your voluntary espousal of his cause, and your successful defence of a monster whom all men knew to be guilty of the foul crime. Next, your knowledge, at the time you defended him, that he was guilty of the murder of your own child. Next, in corroboration of this knowledge, the dying declaration of Gautran, solemnly sworn to and signed by him. A strong hand. No stronger has ever been held by any man's enemy, and until you come to my terms, I am your enemy. If you refuse to purchase of me what I have to sell--the documents in my possession, and my sacred silence to the last day of my life upon the matters which affect you--and for such a sum as will make my future an easy one, I give you my word I will use my power against you, and will drag you down from the height upon which you stand. I cannot speak in more distinct terms. You can rescue me from poverty, I can rescue you from ignominy." The Advocate turned his face to Vanbrugh, who saw that, in the few minutes during which it had been hidden from his sight, it had assumed a hue of deadly whiteness. All the sternness had departed from it, and the cold, piercing eyes wavered as they looked first at Vanbrugh, then at the objects in the study. It was as though the Advocate were gazing, for the first time, upon the familiar things by which he was surrounded. Strange to say, this change in him seemed to make him more human--seemed to declare, "Stern and cold-hearted as I have appeared to the world, I am susceptible to tenderness." The mask had fallen from his face, and he stood now revealed--a man with human passions and human weaknesses, to whom a fatal sin in his younger days had brought a retribution as awful as it was ever the lot of a human being to suffer. There was something pitiable in this new presentment of a strong, earnest, self-confident nature, and even Vanbrugh was touched by it. During the last half-hour the full force of the storm had burst over the House of White Shadows. The rain poured down with terrific power, and the thunder shook the building to its foundations. The Advocate listened with a singular and curious intentness to the terrible sounds, and when Vanbrugh remarked, "A fearful night," he smiled in reply. But it was the smile of a man whose heart was tortured to the extreme limits of human endurance. Once again he filled a glass with wine, and raised it to his mouth, but as the liquor touched his lips, he shuddered, and holding the glass upright in his hand, he turned it slowly over and poured it on the ground; then, with much gentleness, he replaced the glass upon the table. "What has become of the woman you speak of as Pauline?" he asked. His very voice was changed. It was such as would proceed from one who had been prostrated by long and almost mortal sickness. "I do not know," replied Vanbrugh. "I have neither seen nor heard from her since the day before she left her daughter." "Say that I was disposed," said the Advocate, speaking very slowly, and pausing occasionally, as though he was apprehensive that he would lose control of speech, "to purchase your silence, do you think I should be safe in the event of her appearing on the scene? Would not her despair urge her to seek revenge upon the man who betrayed and deserted her, and who set her daughter's murderer free?" "It might be so--but at all events she would be ignorant of your knowledge of Gautran's guilt. This danger at least would be averted. The secret is ours at present, and ours only." "True. You believe that I knew Gautran to be guilty when I defended him?" "I am forced to believe it. Explain, otherwise, why you permitted him to visit you secretly in the dead of night, and why you filled his pockets with gold." "It cannot be explained. Yet what motive could I have had in setting him free?" "It is not for me to say. What I know, I know. I pretend to nothing further." "Do you suppose I care for money?" As the Advocate asked the question, he opened a drawer in the escritoire, and produced a roll of notes. "Take them; they are yours. But I do not purchase your silence with them. I give the money to you as a gift." "And I thank you for it. But I must have more." "Wait--wait. This story of yours has yet to be concluded." "Is it my fancy," said Vanbrugh, "or is it a real sound I hear? The ringing of a bell--and now, a beating at the gates without, and a man's voice calling loudly?" Without hesitation, the Advocate went from his study into the grounds. The fury of the storm made it difficult for him to keep his feet, but he succeeded in reaching the gate and opening it. A hand grasped his, and a man clung to him for support. The Advocate could not see the face of his visitor, nor, although he heard a voice speaking to him, did the words of the answer fall upon his ears. Staggering blindly through the grounds, they arrived at the door of the villa, and stumbled into the passage. There, by the aid of the rose lamp which hung in the hall, he distinguished the features of his visitor. It was Father Capel. "Have you come to see me?" asked the Advocate, "or are you seeking shelter from the storm?" "I have come to see you," replied Father Capel. "I hardly hoped to find you up, but perceived lights in your study windows, and they gave me confidence to make the attempt to speak with you. I have been beating at the gates for fully half an hour." He spoke in his usual gentle tones, and gazed at the Advocate's white face with a look of kindly and pitying penetration. "You are wet to the skin," said the Advocate. "I must find a change of clothing for you." "No, my son," said the priest; "I need none. It is not the storm without I dread--it is the storm within." As though desirous this remark should sink into the Advocate's heart, he paused a few moments before he spoke again. "I fear this storm of Nature will do much harm. Trees are being uprooted and buildings thrown down. There is danger of a flood which may devastate the village, and bring misery to the poor. But there is a gracious God above us"--he looked up reverently--"and if a man's conscience is clear, all is well." "There is a significance in the words you utter," said the Advocate, conducting the priest to his study, "which impresses me. Your mission is an important one." "Most important; it concerns the soul, not the body." "A friend of mine," said the Advocate, pointing to Vanbrugh, who was standing when they entered, "who has visited me to-night for the first time for many years, on a mission as grave as yours. It was he who heard your voice at the gates." Father Capel inclined his head to Vanbrugh, who returned the courtesy. "I wish to confer with you privately," said the priest. "It will be best that we should be alone." "Nay," said the Advocate, "you may speak freely in his presence. I have but one secret from him and all men. I beg you to proceed." CHAPTER III PAULINE "I have no choice but to obey you," said Father Capel, "for time presses, and a life is hanging in the balance. I should have been here before had it not been that my duty called me most awfully and suddenly to a man who has been smitten to death by the hand of God. The man you defended--Gautran, charged with the murder of an innocent girl--is dead. Of him I may not speak at present. Death-bed confessions are sacred, and apart from that, not even in the presence of your dearest friend can I say one further word concerning the sinner whose soul is now before its Creator. I came to you from a dying woman, who is known by the name of Pauline." Both Vanbrugh and the Advocate started at the mention of the name. "Fate is merciful," said the Advocate in a low tone; "its blows are sharp and swift." "Before I left her I promised to bring you to her tomorrow," continued the priest, "but Providence, which directed me to Gautran in his dying moments, impels me to break that promise. She may die before to-morrow, and she has that to say which vitally concerns you, and which you must hear, if she has strength enough to speak. I ask you to come with me to her without a moment's delay, through this storm, which has been sent as a visitation for human crime." "I am ready to accompany you," said the Advocate. "And I," said Vanbrugh. "No," said the priest, "only he and I. Who you are I do not seek to know, but you cannot accompany us." "Remain here," said the Advocate to Vanbrugh; "when I return I will hide nothing from you. Now, Father Capel." It was not possible for them to engage in conversation. The roaring of the wind prevented a word from being heard. For mutual safety they clasped hands and proceeded on their way. They encountered many dangers, but escaped them. Torrents of water poured down from the ranges--great branches snapped from the trees and fell across their path--the valleys were in places knee-deep in water--and occasionally they fancied they heard cries of human distress in the distance. If the priest had not been perfectly familiar with the locality, they would not have arrived at their destination, but he guided his companion through the storm, and they stood at length before the cottage in which Pauline lay. Father Capel lifted the latch, and pulled the Advocate after him into the room. There were but two apartments in the cottage. Pauline lay in the room at the back. In a corner of the room in which they found themselves a man lay asleep; his wife was sitting in a chair, watching and waiting. She rose wearily as the priest and the Advocate entered. "I am glad you have come, father," she said, "she has been very restless, and once she gave a shriek, like a death-shriek, which curdled my blood. She woke and frightened my child." She pointed to a baby-girl, scarcely eighteen months old, who was lying by her father with her eyes wide open. The child, startled by the entrance of strangers, ran to her mother, who took her on her lap, saying petulantly, "There, there--be quiet. The gentlemen won't hurt you." "Is Pauline awake now?" asked Father Capel. The woman went to the inner room and returned. "She is sleeping," she said, "and is very quiet." Father Capel beckoned to the Advocate, who followed him to the bedside of the dying woman. She lay so still that the priest lowered his head to hers to ascertain whether she was breathing. "Life appears to be ebbing away," he whispered to the Advocate; "she may die in her sleep." Quiet as she was, there was no peace in her face; an expression of exquisite suffering rested on it. The sign of suffering, denoting how sorely her heart had been wrung, caused the Advocate's lips to quiver. "It is I who have brought her to this," he thought. "But for me she would not be lying in a dying state before me." He was tortured not only by remorse, but by a terror of himself. Notwithstanding that so many years had passed since he last gazed upon her, she was not so much changed that he did not recognise in her the blooming peasant girl of Zermatt. Since then he had won honour and renown and the admiration and esteem of men; the best that life could offer was his, or had been his until the fatal day upon which he resolved to undertake the defence of Gautran. And now--how stood the account? He was the accomplice of the murderer of his own child--the mother of his child was dying in suffering--his wife was false to him--his one friend had betrayed him. The monument of greatness he had raised had crumbled away, and in a very little while the world would know him for what he was. His bitterest enemy could not have held him in deeper despisal than he held himself. "You recognise her?" said the priest. "Yes." "And her child, Madeline, was yours?" "I am fain to believe it," said the Advocate; "but the proof is not too clear." "The proof is there," said the priest, pointing to Pauline; "she has sworn it. Do you think--knowing that death's door is open for her to enter--knowing that her child, the only being she loved on earth, is waiting for her in the eternal land--that she would, by swearing falsely, and with no end in view that could possibly benefit herself, imperil the salvation of her soul? It is opposed to human reason." "It is. I am forced to believe what I would give my life to know was false." "Unhappy man! Unhappy man!" said the priest, sinking--on his knees. "I will pray for you, and for the woman whose life you blighted." The Advocate did not join the priest in prayer. His stern sense of justice restrained him. The punishment he had brought upon himself he would bear as best he might, and he would not inflict upon himself the shameful humiliation of striving to believe that, by prayers and tears, he could suddenly atone for a crime as terrible as that of which he was guilty. "Father Capel," he said, when the priest rose from his knees, "from what you have said, I gather that the man Gautran made confession to you before he died. I do not seek to know what that confession was, but with absolute certainty I can divine its nature. The man you saw in my study brought to me Gautran's dying declaration, signed by Gautran himself, which charges me with a crime so horrible that, were I guilty of it, laden as I am with the consequences of a sin which I do not repudiate, I should deserve the worst punishment. Are you aware of the existence of this document?" "I hear of its existence now for the first time," replied the priest. "When I left the bedside of this unhappy woman, and while I was wending my way home through the storm, I heard cries and screams for help on a hill near the House of White Shadows, as though two men were engaged in a deadly struggle. I proceeded in the direction of the conflict, and discovered only Gautran, who had been crushed to the earth by the falling of a tree which had been split by the storm. He admitted that he and another man were fighting, and that the design was murder. I made search, both then and afterwards, for the other man, but did not succeed in finding him. I left Gautran for the purpose of obtaining assistance to extricate him, for the tree had fallen across his body, and he could not move. When I returned he was dead, and some gold which he had asked me to take from his pocket was gone; an indication that, during my absence, human hands had been busy about him. If Gautran's dying declaration be authentic, it must have been obtained while I was away to seek for assistance." "I can piece the circumstances," said the Advocate. "The man you saw in my study was the man who was engaged in the struggle with Gautran. It was he who obtained the confession, and he who stole the gold. In that confession I am charged with undertaking the defence of Gautran with the knowledge that he was guilty. It is not true. When I defended him I believed him to be innocent; and if he made a similar declaration to you, he has gone to his account with a black lie upon his soul. That will not clear me, I know, and I do not mention it to you for the purpose of exciting your pity for me. It is simply because it is just that you should hear my denial of the charge; and it is also just that you should hear something more. Up to the hour of Gautran's acquittal I believed him, degraded and vile as he was, to be innocent of the murder; but that night, as I was walking to the House of White Shadows, I met Gautran, who, in the darkness, supposing me to be a stranger, would have robbed me, and probably taken my life. I made myself known to him, and he, overcome with terror at the imaginary shadow of his victim which his remorse and ignorance had conjured up, voluntarily confessed to me that he was guilty. My error--call it by what strange name you will--dated from that moment. Knowing that the public voice was against me, I had not the honesty to take the right course. But if I," he added, with a gloomy recollection of his wife and friend, "had not by my own act rendered valueless the fruits of a life of earnest endeavour, it would have been done for me by those in whom I placed a sacred trust." For several hours Father Capel and the Advocate remained by the bedside of Pauline, who lay unconscious, as if indeed, as the priest had said, life was ebbing away in her sleep. The storm continued and increased in intensity, and had it not been that the little hut which sheltered them was protected by the position in which it stood, it would have been swept away by the wind. From time to time the peasant gave them particulars of the devastation created by the floods, which were rushing in torrents from every hill, but their duty chained them to the bedside of Pauline. An hour before noon she opened her eyes, and they rested upon the face of the Advocate. "You have come," she sighed. He knelt by the bed, and addressed her, but it was with difficulty he caught the words she spoke. Death was very near. "Was Madeline my daughter?" he asked. "Yes," answered Pauline, "as I am about to appear before my God!" The effort exhausted her, and she lay still for many minutes. Then her hand feebly sought her pillow, and the Advocate, perceiving that she wished to obtain something from under it, searched and found a small packet. He knew immediately, when she motioned that she desired him to retain it, that it contained the certificate of his daughter's birth. The priest prayed audibly for the departing soul. Pauline's lips moved; the Advocate placed his ear close. She breathed the words: "We shall meet again soon! Pray for forgiveness!" Then death claimed her, and her earthly sorrows were ended. CHAPTER IV ONWARD--TO DEATH Late in the afternoon the Advocate was stumbling, almost blindly, through the tempest towards the House of White Shadows. Father Capel had striven in vain to dissuade him from making the attempt to reach the villa. "There is safety only in the sheltered heights," said the priest. "By this time the valleys are submerged, and the dwellings therein are being swept away. Ah me--ah me! how many of my poor are ruined; how many dead! Not in my experience have I seen a storm as terrible as this. It is sent as a warning and a punishment. Only the strongest houses in the villages that lie in the valleys will be able to withstand its fury. Be persuaded, and remain here until its force is spent." He spoke to one who was deaf to reason. It seemed to the Advocate as though the end of his life had come, as though his hold upon the world might at any moment be sapped; but while he yet lived there was before him a task which it was incumbent upon him to perform. It was imperative that he should have speech with his wife and Christian Almer. "I have work to do," he said to the priest, "and it must be done to-day." An unaccustomed note in his voice caused Father Capel to regard him with even a more serious attention than he had hitherto bestowed upon him. "There are men," said the priest, "who, when sudden misfortune overtakes them, adopt a desperate expedient to put an end to all worldly trouble, and thus add sin to sin." "Have no fear for me," said the Advocate. "I am not contemplating suicide. What fate has in store for me I will meet without repining. You caution me against the storm, yet I perceive you yourself are preparing to face it." "I go to my duty," said the priest. "And I to mine," rejoined the Advocate. Thus they parted, each going his separate way. The Advocate had not calculated the difficulties he was to encounter; his progress was slow, and he had to make wide detours on the road, and frequently to retrace his steps for a considerable distance, in order to escape being swept to death by the floods. From the ranges all around the village in which the House of White Shadows was situated the water was pouring in torrents, which swirled furiously through the lower heights, carrying almost certain destruction to those who had not already availed themselves of the chances of escape. Terrific as was the tempest, he took no heed of it. It was not the storm of Nature, but the storm within his soul which absorbed him. He met villagers on the road flying for safety. With terror-struck movements they hurried past, men, women, and children, uttering cries of alarm at the visitation. Now and then one and another called upon him to turn back. "If you proceed," they said, "you will be engulfed in the rapids. Turn back if you wish to live." He did not answer them, but doggedly pursued his way. "My punishment has come," he thought. "I have no wish to live, nor do I desire to outlast this day." Once only, of his own prompting, did he pause. A woman, with little children clinging to her, passed him, sobbing bitterly. His eyes happening to light upon her face, he saw in it some likeness to the peasant girl whom in years gone by he had betrayed. The likeness might or might not have been there, but it existed certainly in his fancy. He stopped and questioned her, and learned that she had been utterly ruined by the storm, her cottage destroyed, her small savings lost, and all her hopes blasted. He emptied his pockets of money, and gave her what valuables he had about him. "Sell them," he said; "they will help to purchase you a new home." She called down blessings on his head. "If she knew me for what I am," he muttered as he left her, "she would curse me." On and on he struggled and seemed to make no progress. The afternoon was waning, and the clouds were growing blacker and thicker, when he saw a man staggering towards him. He was about to put a question to him respecting the locality of the House of White Shadows--his course had been so devious that he scarcely knew in what direction it lay--when a closer approach to the man showed him to be no other than John Vanbrugh. "Ah!" cried Vanbrugh, seizing the Advocate's arm, and thus arresting his steps, "I feared we had lost you. A fine time I have had of it down in your villa yonder! Had it not been for the storm, I should have been bundled before a magistrate on a charge of interloping; but everybody had enough to do to look after himself. It was a case of the devil take the hindmost. A scurvy trick, though, of yours, to desert a comrade; still, for my sake, I am glad to see you in the land of the living." "Have you come straight from the villa?" asked the Advocate. "Straight!" cried Vanbrugh with a derisive laugh. "I defy the soberest saint to walk straight for fifty yards in such a hurricane. Three bottles of wine would not make me so unsteady as this cursed wind--enough to stop one's breath for good or ill. What! you are not going on?" "I am. What should hinder me?" "Some small love of life--a trivial but human sentiment. There is no one in your house. It is by this time deserted by all but the rats." "My wife----" "Was the last to leave, with a friend of yours, Christian Almer by name. He and I had some words together. Let me tell you. I happened to drop a remark concerning you which he considered disparaging, and had I been guilty of all the cardinal sins he could not have been more angered. A true friend--but probably he does not know what I know. Well for you that I did not enlighten him. You will meet them a little lower down on the road, but I advise you not to go too far. The valleys are rivers, carrying everything, headlong, in their course." "There was an old lawyer in the house. Do you know what has become of him?" "I saw him perched on the back of a fool, and by their side a girl with the sweetest face, and an old woman I should take to be her grandmother." "Farewell," said the Advocate, wrenching himself free. "Should we meet again I will pay you for your friendly services." "Well said," replied Vanbrugh. "I am content. No man ever knew you to be false to your word. A woman perhaps--but that lies in the past. Ah, what a storm! It is as though the end of the world had come." "To those whose minutes are numbered," said the Advocate between his set teeth, "the end of the world has come. Farewell once more." "Farewell then," cried Vanbrugh, proceeding onward. "For my sake be careful of yourself. If this be not the Second Deluge I will seek you to-morrow." "For me," muttered the Advocate, as he left Vanbrugh, "there may be no to-morrow." Bearing in mind the words of Vanbrugh that he would meet his wife and Christian Almer lower down on the road, he looked out for them. He saw no trace of them, and presently he began to blunder in his course; he searched in vain for a familiar landmark, and he knew not in which direction the House of White Shadows was situated. Evening was fast approaching when he heard himself hailed by loud shouts. The sounds proceeded from a strongly-built stone hut, protected on three sides from wind and rain, and so placed that the water from the ranges rolled past without injuring it. Standing within the doorway was Fritz the Fool. Thinking his wife might have sought shelter there, the Advocate made his way to it, and found therein assembled, in addition to Fritz, old Pierre Lamont, Mother Denise and her husband Martin, and their pretty granddaughter Dionetta. "Welcome, comrade, welcome," cried Pierre Lamont. "It is pleasant to see a familiar face. We were compelled to fly from the villa, and Fritz here conveyed us here to this hospitable hut, where we shall be compelled to stay till the storm ceases. Where is 'your fair lady?" "It is a question I would ask of you," said the Advocate. "She is not here, then?" "No. She left the villa before we did, in the company of your friend"--the slight involuntary accent he placed upon the word caused the Advocate to start as though he had received a blow--"Christian Almer. They have doubtless found another shelter as secure as this. We wished them to stop for us, but they preferred not to wait. Fritz had a hard job of it carrying me to this hut, which he claims as his own, and which is stored with provisions sufficient for a month's siege. I have robbed the old house of its servants--Dionetta here, for whom" (he dropped his voice) "the fool has a fancy, and her grandmother, whom I shall pension off, and Fritz himself--an invaluable fool. Fritz, open a bottle of wine; do the honours of your mansion. The Advocate is exhausted." The Advocate did not refuse the wine; he felt its need to sustain his strength for the work he had yet to perform. He glanced round the walls. "Is there an inner room?" he asked. "Yes; there is the door." "May I crave privacy for a few minutes?" Pierre Lamont waved his hand, and the Advocate walked to the inner room, and closed the door upon himself. "What has come over this man?" mused Pierre Lamont. "There is in his face, since yesterday, such a change as it is rare in life's experience to see. It is not produced by fatigue. Has he made discovery of his wife's faithlessness and his friend's treachery. And should I not behave honestly to him, and make him as wise as I am on events within my knowledge? What use? What use? But at least he shall know that the secret of Gautran's guilt is not his alone." In the meantime the Advocate was taking advantage of the solitude for which he had been yearning since he left the bedside of Pauline. It was not until this moment that he could find an opportunity to examine the packet she had given him. It contained what he imagined--the certificate of the birth of his child. He read it and mentally took note of the date and also of certain words written on the back, in confirmation of the story related to him by John Vanbrugh. No room was there for doubt. Madeline was his child, and by his means her murderer had escaped from justice. "A just Heaven smote him down," he thought; "so should retribution fall upon me. I am partner in his crime. Upon my soul lies guilt heavier than his." Within the certificate of birth was a smaller packet, which he had laid aside. He took it up now, and removed the paper covering. It was the portrait of his daughter, Madeline the flower-girl. The picture was that of a young girl just budding into womanhood--a girl whose laughing mouth and sparkling eyes conveyed to his heart so keen a torture that he gave utterance to a groan, and covered his eyes with his hand to shut out the reproach. But in the darkness he saw a vision which sent violent shudders through him--such a vision as had pursued Gautran in the lonely woods, as he had seen in the waving of branch and leaf, as had hovered over him in his prison cell, as he stood by his side in the courthouse during the trial from which he emerged a free man. Bitterly was this man, who had reached a height so lofty that it seemed as if calumny could not touch him, bitterly was he expiating the error of his youth. He folded the portrait of his child within the certificate of birth, and replaced them in his pocket. Then, with an effort, he succeeded in summoning some kind of composure to his features, and the next minute he rejoined Pierre Lamont. "You will remain with me," said the old lawyer; "it will be best." "Nay," responded the Advocate, "a plain duty lies before me. I must seek my wife." "She herself is doubtless in a place of shelter," said Pierre Lamont, "and while this tempest is raging, devastating the land in every direction, you can scarcely hope to find her." "I shall find her," said the Advocate in a tone of conviction. "Stern fate, which has dogged my steps since I arrived in Geneva, and brought me to a pass which, were you acquainted with the details, would appear incredible to you, will conduct me to her side. Were I otherwise convinced I must not shrink from my duty." "Outside these walls," urged Pierre Lamont, "death stares you in the face." "There are worse things than death," said the Advocate, with an air of gloomy and invincible resolution. "Useless to argue with such a man as yourself," said Pierre Lamont. He turned to Fritz. "Go, you and your friends, into the inner room for a while. I wish to speak in private with my friend." "One moment," said the Advocate to the fool as he was preparing to obey Pierre Lamont. "You were the last to leave the House of White Shadows." "We were the last humans," replied Fritz. "In what condition was it at the time?" "In a most perilous condition. The waters were rising around the walls. It had, I should say, not twelve hours to live." "To live!" echoed Pierre Lamont, striving to impart lightness to his voice, and signally failing. "How do you apply that, Fritz?" "Trees live!" replied Fritz, "and their life goes with the houses they help to build. If the walls of the old house we have run from could talk, mysteries would be brought to light." "You have been my wife's maid," said the Advocate to Dionetta, as she was about to pass him. Dionetta curtsied. "Has she discharged you?" Dionetta cast a nervous glance at Pierre Lamont, and another at Mother Denise. The old grandmother answered for her. "I thought it as well," said Mother Denise, "in all respect and humility, that so simple a child as Dionetta should be kept to her simple life. My lady was good enough to give Dionetta a pair of diamond earrings and a diamond finger-ring, which we have left behind us." Fritz made a grimace. "These things are not fit for poor peasants, and the pleasure they convey is a dangerous pleasure." "You are not favourably disposed towards my wife," said the Advocate. Mother Denise was silent. "But you are right in what you say. Diamonds are not fit gifts for simple maids. I wish you well, you and your grandchild. It might have been----" The thought of his own child, of the same age as Dionetta, and as beautiful, crossed his mind. He brushed his hand across his eyes, and when he looked round the room again, he and Pierre Lamont were alone. "A fool of fools," said Pierre Lamont, looking after Fritz. "If he and the pretty Dionetta wed--it will be a suitable match for beauty to mate with folly--he will be father to a family of fools who may, in their way, be wiser in their generation than you and I. Your decision is irrevocable?" "It is irrevocable." "If you do not find your wife you will endeavour to return to us?" "I shall find her." "And then?" asked Pierre Lamont with a singular puckering of his brows. "And then?" echoed the Advocate absently, and added: "Who can tell what may happen from one hour to another?" "How much does he know?" thought Pierre Lamont; "or are his suspicions but just aroused? There is a weight upon his soul which taxes all his strength. It is grand to see a strong man suffer as he is suffering. Is there a mystery in his trouble with which I am not acquainted? His wife--I know about her. Gautran--I know about him. But the stranger he left in his study in the middle of the night--a broken-down gentleman--vagabond, with a spice of wickedness in him--who is he, and what was his mission? Of one thing I must satisfy myself before I am assured that he is worthy of my compassion." Then he spoke aloud. "You said just now there are worse things than death." "Aye." "Disgrace?" "In a certain form that may be borne, and life yet be worth the having." "Good. Dishonour?" "It matters little," said the Advocate; "but were the time not precious, I should be curious to learn why you desire to get at the heart of my secrets." "The argument would be too long," said Pierre Lamont with earnestness, "but I can justify myself. There are worse things than death. Pardon me--an older man than yourself, and one who is well disposed towards you--for asking you bluntly whether such things have come to you?" "They have. You can read the signs in my face." "But if you have a secret, the revealing of which would be hurtful to you, cannot the mischief be averted? As far as I can expect you have been frank with me. Frankness for frankness. Say that the secret refers to Gautran and to your defence of him?" "I have been living in a fool's paradise," said the Advocate with a scornful smile. "To whom is this known?" "To Fritz the Fool, and to me, through him. He saw Gautran in your study after the trial----" "Have I been watched?" "The discovery was accidental. He was moved by some love-verses I read to him, and becoming sentimental, he dallied outside Dionetta's window, after the manner of foolish lovers. Then the lights of your study window attracted him, and he peeped through. When Gautran left the villa, Fritz followed him, and heard him in his terrified soliloquies proclaim his guilt. Were this to go out to the world, it would, according to its fashion, construe it in a manner which might be fatal to you. But Gautran is dead, and I can be silent, and can put a lock on Fritz's tongue--for in my soul I believe you were not aware the wretch was guilty when you defended him." "I thank you. I believed him to be innocent." "Why, then, my mind is easy. Friend, shake hands." He held the Advocate's hand in his thin fingers, and with something of wistfulness, said: "I would give a year of my life if I could prevail upon you to remain with us." "You cannot prevail upon me. So much being said between us, more is necessary. The avowal of my ignorance of Gautran's guilt at the time I defended him--I learnt it after the trial, mind you--will not avail me. A written confession,--sworn upon his dying oath, exists, which accuses me of that which the world will be ready to believe. Strange to say, this is my lightest trouble. There are others of graver moment which more vitally concern me--unknown to you, unless, indeed, you possess a wizard's art of divination." "Comrade," said Pierre Lamont, slowly and with emphasis, "there breathes not in the world a woman worth the breaking of a man's heart." "Stop!" cried the Advocate in a voice of agony. In silence he and Pierre Lamont gazed upon each other, and in the old lawyer's face the Advocate saw that his wife's faithlessness and his friend's treachery were known. "Enough," he said; "there is for me no deeper shame, no deeper dishonour." And he turned abruptly from Pierre Lamont, and left the hut staggering like a drunken man. "Fritz, Fritz!" cried Pierre Lamont. "Come quickly!" Fritz instantly made his appearance from the inner room. "Look you, Fritz," said the old lawyer, in hurried, excited tones, "the Advocate has gone upon his mad errand--has gone alone. After him at once, and if you can save him from the consequences of his desperate resolve--if you can advise, assist him, do so for my sake. Quick, Fritz, quick!" "Master Lamont," said Fritz, "are you asking me to do a man's work?' "Yes, Fritz--you can do no more." "Well and good. As far as a man dare go, I will go; but if a madman persists in rushing upon certain death, it will not help him for a fool to follow his example. I am fond of life, Master Lamont, doubly fond of it just now, for reasons." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to the room which contained Dionetta. "But I will do what can be done. You may depend upon me." He was gone at least two hours, and when he returned he was exhausted and panting for breath. "I was never born to be drowned," he said, and he threw himself into a chair, and sat there, gasping. "Well, Fritz, well?" cried Pierre Lamont. "Wait till I get my breath. I followed this great Advocate as you desired, and for some time, so deep was he in his dreams, he did not know I was with him. But once, when he was waist high in water--not that he cared, it was as though he was inviting death--and I, who was acquainted with the road through which he was wading, pulled him suddenly back and so saved his life, he turned upon me savagely, and demanded who I was. He recognised me the moment he spoke the words--I will say this of him, that in the presence of another man he never loses his self-possession, and that, in my belief he would be a match for Death, if it presented itself to him in a visible, palpable shape. 'Ah,' said he, 'you are Fritz the Fool; why do you dog me?' 'I do not dog you,' I replied; 'Master Lamont bade me guide and assist you, if you needed guidance and assistance. He is the only man for whom I would risk my life.' 'Honesty is a rare virtue,' he said; 'keep with me, then, for just as long as you think yourself to be safe. You saw my wife and Mr. Almer leave the House of White Shadows. Is it likely they took this road?' 'They could take no other, and live,' I said, 'but there is no trace of them. They must have turned back to the villa.' 'Could they reach it, do you think?' he asked. 'A brave man can do wonders,' I replied; 'some hours ago they may have reached it; but they could not stop in the lower rooms, which even at that time must have been below water-mark. I will not answer for the upper part of the house at this moment, and before morning it will be swept away.' 'Guide me as far on the road as you care to accompany me,' said he, 'and when you leave me point me out the way I should go.' I did so, and we encountered dangers, and but for me he would not have been alive when I left him. We came to the bridge which spans the ravine of pines, two miles this side of the House of White Shadows. A great part of it had been torn away, and down below a torrent was rushing fierce enough to beat the life out of any living being, human or animal. 'There is no other way but this,' I said, 'to the House of White Shadows. I shall not cross the bridge.' He said no word, but struggled on to the bridge, which--all that was left of it--consisted of three slender trunks half hanging over the ravine. It was nothing short of a miracle that he got across; no sooner was he upon the other side than the remaining portion of the bridge fell into the ravine. He waved his hand to me, and I soon lost sight of him in the darkness. I stumbled here as well as I could. Master Lamont, I never want another journey such as that; had not the saints watched over me I should not be here to tell the tale. This is the blackest night in my remembrance." "Do you think he can escape, Fritz?" asked Pierre Lamont. "His life is not worth a straw," replied Fritz. "Look you here, Master Lamont. If I were to see him tomorrow, or any other day, alive, I should know that he is in league with the Evil One. No human power can save him." "Peace be with him," said Pierre Lamont. "A great man is lost to us--a noble mind has gone." "Master Lamont," said Fritz sententiously, "there is such a thing as being too clever. Better to be a simpleton than to be over-wise or over-confident. I intend to remain a fool to the end of my days. I have no pity for such a man. Who climbs must risk the fall. Not rocky peaks, but level ground, with bits of soft moss, for Fritz the Fool." He slept well and soundly, but Pierre Lamont tossed about the whole of the night, thinking with sadness and regret upon the downfall of the Advocate. CHAPTER V THE DOOM OF THE HOUSE OF WHITE SHADOWS An unerring instinct guided him; a superhuman power possessed him; and at midnight--though he could keep no count of time--he found himself within the gates of the House of White Shadows. Upon his lips, contracted and spasmodic with pain and suffering, appeared a pitiable smile as he gazed at a window on the upper floor, and saw a light. It was reflected from the window of Christian Almer's room. "There they are," he muttered; "I shall not die unavenged." The water was breast high. He battled through it, and reached the open door of the villa. Slowly he ascended the stairs until he arrived at the landing above. He listened at Christian Almer's door, but heard no sound. Enraged at the thought that they might, after all, have escaped him, he dashed into the room, and called out the names of his wife and friend. Silence answered him. He staggered towards the lamp, which stood on a table covered with a shade which threw the light downward. Before the lamp was a sheet of paper, with writing upon it, and bending over it the Advocate saw that it was addressed to him, and was intended for his perusal. A steadier survey of the room brought its revelations. At the extreme end of the apartment lay a woman, still and motionless. He crept towards her, knelt by her, and lowered his face to hers. It was his wife, cold and dead! A rosy tint was in her cheeks; a smile was on her lips; her death had brought no suffering with it. "Fair and false," he said. "Beauty is a sinful possession." Her clothes were wet, and he knew that she had been drowned. Then, turning, he saw what had before escaped his notice--the body of Christian Almer, lying near the table. He put his ear to Almer's heart and felt a slight beating. "He can wait," muttered the Advocate. "I will first read what he has written." He was about to sit at the table when he heard a surging sound without. He stepped into the passage, and saw the waters swaying beneath him. "It is well," he thought. "In a little while all will be over for those who have sinned." This reflection softened him somewhat toward those who lay within the room, and by whom he believed himself to have been wronged. Was he not himself the greatest sinner in that fatal house? He returned to the table and read what Christian Almer had written. "Edward: "I pray that these words may reach your eyes. Above all things on earth have I valued your friendship, and my heart is wrung with anguish by the reproach that I have not been worthy of it. Last night, when your wife and I parted, I knew that you had discovered the weak and treacherous part I have played towards you, for as I turned towards my room--at that very moment, looking downward, I saw you below. I did not dare to come to you--I did not dare to show my face to the man I had wronged. It was my intention to fly this morning from your presence and hers, and never to see you more; and also to write to you the words to which, by the memory of all that I hold sacred, I now solemnly swear--that the wrong I have done you is compassed by sentiment. I do not seek to excuse myself; I know that treachery in thought is as base between you and me, as treachery in act. Yet in all humbleness I implore you to endeavour to find some palliation, though but the slightest, of my conduct in the reflection that sometimes in the strongest men--even in such a man as yourself, whose mind and life are most pure and noble--error cannot be avoided. We are hurried into wrong by subtle forces which wither one's earnest endeavours to step in the right path. Thus it has been with me. If you will recall certain words which were spoken in our conversation at midnight in the room in which this is written, you will understand what was meant when I said that I flew to the mountains to rid myself, by a happy chance, of a terror which possessed me. You who have never erred, you who have never sinned, may not be able to find it in your heart to forgive me. If it be so, I bow my head to your judgment--which is just, as in all your actions you are known to be. But if you cannot forgive me, I entreat you to pity me. "You were not in the house to-day when we endeavoured to escape to a place of shelter in which we should be protected from this terrible inundation. We did not succeed--we were beaten back; and being engulfed in a sudden rush of waters, I could not save your wife. The utmost I could do was to bear her lifeless body back to this fatal house. It was I who should have died, not she; but my last moments are approaching. Think kindly of her if you can. "Christian Almer." Had he not been absorbed, not only in the last words written by Christian Almer, but by the reflections which they engendered, the Advocate would have known that the floods were increasing in volume, and that, in the short time he had been in the house, the waters had risen several feet. But he was living an inner life--a life in which the spiritual part of himself was dominant. He stepped to the body of his wife and said: "Poor child! Mine the error." Then he knelt by the side of Christian Almer, and raised him in his arms. Aroused to consciousness by the action, Almer opened his eyes. They rested upon the Advocate's face vacantly, but presently they dilated in terror. "Be not afraid," said the Advocate, "I have read what you have written. I know all." "I am very weak," murmured Christian Almer. "Do not torture me; say that you pity me." "I pity and forgive you, Christian," replied the Advocate in a very gentle voice. "Thank God! Thank God!" said Almer, and closed his eyes, from which the warm tears gushed. "God be merciful to sinners!" murmured the Advocate. When daylight broke, the House of White Shadows, and all that it contained, had been swept from the face of the earth. A bare waste was all that remained to mark the record of human love and human ambition. 
60467	----	A QUESTION OF IDENTITY BY FRANK RILEY _What is a Man?... A paradox indeed--the world's finest minds gathered to defend a punk killer...._ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, April 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Every pair of eyes in the hushed courtroom watched Jake Emspak walk slowly toward the prospective juror. Around the Earth, and above it, too, from South Africa and Franz Joseph Land to the satellite stations adrift through the black morning, two hundred million pairs of eyes focussed on the gaunt figure that moved so deliberately across the television screen. In the glass-fronted TV booth, where the 80-year-old Edward R. Murrow had created something of a stir by his unexpected appearance a few moments earlier, newsmen stopped talking to let the viewers see and hear for themselves what was happening. Jake halted in front of the witness stand, both hands cupped over the gold head of the cane that had been his trademark, in and out of court, for most of a half century. The shaggy mane of white hair, once as black as the coal in the West Virginia mining country of his birth, stood out like an incongruous halo above the bone ridges of his face. The jutting nose, the forward hunch of his body accentuated the impression he always gave of being about to leap on a nervous witness. The magnificent voice, which could thunder, rasp, weep and persuade in all the registers of eloquence, now phrased his first question with disconcerting softness: "What is a man?" The prospective juror, a Bronx appliance distributor with sagging jowls and perpetual tension lines around his mouth, started visibly. "I--I beg your pardon?" Again Jake Emspak gently phrased his question: "What is a man?" The distributor, who could wake up out of a sound sleep and address a sales meeting of unhappy dealers, opened his mouth and closed it again. Jake waited patiently, rocking a little on the point of his cane. Finally, the distributor said: "I can't answer that--right off...." "Thank you," Jake said mildly. He turned to Judge Hayward and nodded his acceptance of the juror. Up in the TV booth, Murrow smiled to himself and listened to his colleagues chew over the familiar questions: Why had Jake Emspak, the "million dollar mouthpiece", taken a cheap case like this away from the Public Defender? Who would possibly pay him enough to defend a punk like Tony Corfino--a bungling hoodlum who had killed two bystanders in a miserable attempt to rob a bank? The Judge noted acceptance of the juror, then brusquely recessed court until 10 A.M. Monday. The timing was excellent. Jake smiled with satisfaction, and his smile was like the slash of a paring knife across the skin of a dried apple. He walked with Tony Corfino and the bailiff as far as the prisoner's gate. "Don't worry," Jake said. Tony's eyes were wide and bewildered, like the eyes of a confused child--or of an old man not quite certain whether he is awake or dreaming. "I ain't worried," Tony replied. As he walked, there was the crackling sound of a bone twisting in a stiff joint. From under his shaggy brows, Jake studied him carefully, and was content with what he saw. Tony could have been very young, or very old. Undoubtedly he was both, with a lot of in-between, Jake thought suddenly. The tangle of black, curly hair was the hair of youth. The cameo-smooth skin had the waxed perfection of an expensive doll. But the mouth and lips were still puffy, sensuous. And the eyes--Jake Emspak, for all his knowing, couldn't be sure about the eyes. Silently, he addressed a memo to himself: Check on the eyes. At the prisoners' gate, Tony faced him. "I ain't worried," he repeated. "It's just--well, I don't see why you're takin' my case--I can't pay anythin'...." The thin smile slashed again across the wrinkled harshness of Jake's face. "I'll be paid," he chuckled drily. The District Attorney brought up the same question when Jake sat in his office two hours later. They had been studying each other across the desk, thinking of all the years that were gone, the good years dying with the new quarter of the century. How many times had he sat here just like this, Jake wondered. How often had he come into this office to bargain and to deal, to cajole and plead--and always hovering like a hawk to pounce on any bit of information that could fit his case. Now the D.A. was old, too. Older than Jake, if you measured a man's life by the inverse proportion of his distance from the grave. Even the limitless possibilities of medical science had about reached their limit with the D.A. He was heavier than Jake, and his skin was smoother, yet somehow it looked much older. "I don't get it," he wheezed, with the shortness of breath that the latest bronchial replacement had not substantially relieved. "I just can't see Jake Emspak taking a case without a fee! Why, in the old days, you wouldn't defend your mother without a cashier's check in advance!" Jake accepted the taunt without blinking. "I'm touched by this solicitude for my fees," he retorted. "Tony Corfino's guilty," said the D.A., moving up another pawn in the never-ending chess game between them. "He's a punk, and he's guilty. You know that, don't you, Jake?" "Do I?" "You know it--and damn well! I've got six witnesses who saw Tony walk into the bank with that sawed-off shotgun! I've got four more who saw him get panicky and start spraying lead! And there are a dozen others who helped load him on a stretcher after his getaway car went over the curve on the Parkway!... Hell, Jake, this is a two-bit case. Why are you taking it away from the Public Defender?" "Now, Emmett," Jake mocked, "you know it's not ethical for me to discuss my client's case." "To hell with your client!" The D.A. breathed deeply for a moment, then pressed ahead: "I don't care about that punk--I'm talking about you, Jake. What's this case mean to you?" The chuckle started again, then died in Jake's throat. "It means a lot, Emmett," he answered soberly. "For one thing, it's my last case...." "What?" The D.A. looked stunned. Jake nodded. "I've been around the circle enough times for any man, Emmett." Both of them absorbed this thought in silence, and the long years walked between them. The D.A.'s lips set, and the steel of his jaw showed beneath the soft folds of his skin. "I guess it'll have to be my last case, too, Jake," he said quietly. Then he banged his fist on the desk. "But what a helluva case! What a helluva two-bit case! We've had some good ones, Jake--I've got the scars of them all over me! But why do we have to go out on something as cheap as this?" Jake Emspak stood up, all six feet of him, and he brushed back his long white hair with a gesture that was fierce and strong. "It's not a cheap case, Emmett! It's big--bigger than any case we've ever fought out!" * * * * * The reporters were waiting for Jake outside the D.A.'s office. "Is it true you're retiring, Jake?" "This is my last case." "Why are you representing Tony Corfino?" "You couldn't keep me out of a case as big as this." "Can you tell us why it's so big?" "I can, but I won't. Not until I get before the jury." "Is robbing a bank and shooting two people so important?" "Not particularly." "What else did he do, then?" "Nothing that I know of." "Jake, this isn't some kind of a joke, is it?" "It's the most serious case I've ever handled." "Mr. Emspak, it was reported that you received $100,000 from your last client. Are you being paid for defending Tony Corfino?" "I never discuss my fees." "Would you object to a televised interview with Tony?" "Certainly not. How about tomorrow morning?" The reporters left, baffled and intrigued. That night, Jake Emspak sat alone in his apartment high over Central Park West, chuckling with satisfaction as he read the headlines in the first editions: FAMED CRIMINAL LAWYER IN MYSTERY CASE The other headlines were substantially the same. Jake grinned. Things were working out fine, just fine. Publicity was a wonderful tool, if a lawyer knew when to use it, and how. He showed one of the headlines to his wife, whose picture was in a mellow gold frame on the stand beside his window chair. Marge had been dead since '67, but he still found it a quiet comfort to share things with her. She didn't have to answer, because words weren't necessary after you'd lived and loved with a woman for forty-three years. His thin smile became warmer as he turned toward her. "Mystery case!" he chortled. "Mystery! The only mystery is why someone hasn't tried a case like this before!" He paused, looked across the park at the spangle of lights, and added softly: "But I'm glad no one did." Ed Murrow called just before Jake went to bed. "Sorry you got into this?" Murrow asked. "You know better than that, Ed. I'm deeply grateful to you for tipping me off on this case." "Well, don't forget to tip me off, too, Jake! I'm not too old to appreciate a scoop now and then!" "Don't worry, Ed...." Next morning, Jake was rested and ready to meet the challenge of Tony Corfino's TV interview. He knew there was a danger Tony might say too much, but it was a calculated risk that had to be taken. The case needed build-up, plenty of build-up. The interview took place in the open square between the towering cell-blocks of Manhattan's new jail. When Jake and Tony came out, the TV cameramen and reporters had already taken their places. The city's crack newspapermen were seated on folding chairs in front of the cameras, along with two men from the District Attorney's office who self-consciously tried to look like members of the working press. Jake sat down beside Tony and hunched forward watchfully over the gold head of his cane. Bert Brown of the _Tribune_, whose pipelines into the D.A.'s office had brought him many an exclusive, shot out the first question. It came with a whiplash crack: "Tony, are you paying Mr. Emspak to represent you?" Tony looked uncertainly toward Jake, and when the old lawyer didn't answer, Tony said quietly: "No--I'm not." "Is the Syndicate paying Mr. Emspak?" "I don't know why they should--I never got into the Syndicate." Tony's answer was expressionless, yet his voice had a strangely subdued quality for a Tenth Avenue kid who had grown up fighting for crumbs from the tables of underworld kingpins. Cassidy of the Times interjected: "Do you know who is paying Mr. Emspak to represent you?" "Nope." Now the sun broke through the morning overcast and gleamed on the polished perfection of Tony's waxlike skin. A woman reporter from the Mirror asked in an abrupt, mannish voice: "Tony--what happened to your face?" "The Doc says it's some new kind of plastic surgery. I got burned in that accident...." "When you were driving away from the bank?" Bert Brown snapped out. "Yeah." Brown grinned in triumph. It had been a neat double play. The two investigators from the D.A.'s office scribbled furiously. Jake Emspak continued to stare into the TV cameras without blinking. From the back row, a _Daily News_ man boomed out: "Then you admit the shootings, Tony?" Jake lifted one finger from the gold head of his cane. It was a small gesture, but it silenced Tony's answer and immediately commanded the attention of everyone present. "My client," rasped Jake, "neither denies nor admits any connection with the crimes for which he is being tried." Bert Brown grinned sardonically at him. "Do you expect to win this case, Mr. Emspak?" "We'll win it," Jake answered, in a voice so cold and certain and hard that the reporters involuntarily joined the TV audience in a collective gasp. Jake stood up and motioned to the deputies. It was time to end the interview. Precisely the right time. The reporters left without further questions. They knew from long experience when Jake Emspak would and would not talk. By that evening, speculation--without the ballast of facts--was soaring to dizzy heights. Even the communist angle came in for its share of limelight. Was Tony Corfino somehow of value to the resurgent Red underground? Could Jake Emspak's fee be traced back to Peiping, new headquarters for the Comintern? But not even the most skilled commentator could adequately sustain innuendo on innuendo alone. Not by the grossest distortion of facts could any Communist connection be twisted out of Tony's record of juvenile delinquency, pimping, pick-pocketing, petty thievery, dope peddling, armed robbery, and--since the grain and sugar restrictions of '70--bootlegging. But one of the more perceptive reporters had noted Tony's strangely quiet manner of speaking. Inquiries at the jail disclosed that Tony had apparently developed an interest in reading. Here, indeed, was a fresh angle! By mid-afternoon, "Gentleman Tony" had been conceived and given birth. His sordid record was reinterpreted in a picaresque light, and he became something of a Tenth Avenue Robin Hood. A nation squeezed between the twin problems of mounting population and tighter food rationing took "Gentleman Tony" to its fancy. It was like a case of 24-hour flu. In the midst of all this, as Jake Emspak sat in his office Sunday morning, behind a mound of microfilmed court records dating back to the mid-fifties, he received a more serious-minded interviewer. The visitor was John O. Callihan, well-publicized sportsman, art connoisseur, world traveler and No. 1 man in the Syndicate. His mistresses, and a few old friends like Jake Emspak, called him Johnno. "Greetings, Jake," he said, easing his athletic, tastefully dressed frame into the chair in front of Jake's desk. "Hello, Johnno," Jake rasped. "I'm busy." "I know. That's why I came." "I can't talk about this case, Johnno." "I'm not asking you to." Johnno lit a long, pencil-thin cigarette, and continued reflectively: "Jake, I've given you some big cases, paid you well--and always let you handle them clean, in your own way. Right?" "Right enough." "This is the first time I've ever come for a favor, Jake." "Yeah?" "Who's paying for Tony Corfino?" "Nobody you have to worry about, Johnno." "No other Syndicate--or anything like that?" Jake shook his head, and his caller stood up. "Thanks, Jake." "Now, will you get the hell out of here!" "Sure, Jake--give my love to Marge." Jake lowered his head to hide the mist in his eyes. Johnno had sent a simple corsage of blue violets to Marge's funeral. And he sent one every year, on the anniversary of her death. Jake went back to Gould v. Gould, 243 App. Div. 589, and stayed with it until nearly six o'clock, when he turned wearily to People v. Gibbs. This looked like an interminable case, even on microfilm. His eyes were strained from staring at the viewer screen, and his big hand was stiff from spinning the reel crank. He opened his fingers, and the knuckles cracked. Jake stared disgustedly at them. You could take a boy out of the coal mines, but not the coal mines out of the boy. His hand was too big for such a small crank. Someday, he'd have to buy an automatic viewer, or even one of those electronic brains they demonstrated at the last Bar Association meeting. But then, he wouldn't need anything after this case. And besides, he didn't trust such impersonal help. Leibowitz had taught him a good lawyer should do his own preparation. Leibowitz! The Vera Stretz case.... That was forty years ago! Jake shook his head to chase away the memories, and started People v. Gibbs, patiently searching for points of law to help him prove that a punk named Tony Corfino.... * * * * * When court reconvened on Monday morning, the weekend's publicity showed its results. A bailiff whispered to Jake that people had been waiting for the doors to open since five A.M. Thousands had gone home disappointed. The fortunate who did get seats filled the courtroom with babble and shrillness as they waited impatiently for something to happen. A new note of excitement sounded when Tony Corfino walked in beside a Sheriff's Deputy. Jake had insisted that Tony be carefully groomed and dressed each morning before coming into court, and the women among the spectators buzzed with appreciation. Promptly at ten, Judge Hayward stepped out of his chambers and looked, gimlet-eyed, over the courtroom. The hubub quieted, then faded to stillness. Jake was glad to have Judge Hayward on this case. At forty-seven, he was the youngest Superior Court judge and least wedded to precedent. He was impatient with legal sleight-of-hand, painstakingly insistent on a structure of evidence. "Any mule can kick a barn down; it takes a good carpenter to build one," he had once told Jake. Selection of the jury proceeded at a creeping pace, which court reporters had come to expect with both the D.A. and Jake Emspak in the same courtroom. In their last clash, they had meticulously examined one hundred and fifty jurors before accepting twelve. But this time, the District Attorney was responsible for most of the delay. Not knowing why Jake had taken the case, the D.A. proceeded nervously and cautiously in questioning each juror: What is your feeling about capital punishment? Would you credit the testimony of an eye witness? Do you believe that a criminal must be punished as decreed by law? Jake's questions were fewer, and less orthodox. Sometimes he asked: "What is your attitude toward science?" Or, again: "Are you a religious man?" But most frequently he came without preamble to what seemed to be the key to his case: "What is a man?" And while this went on in the courtroom, Jake continued his tireless preparations. Research, subpoenas, talking to witnesses, taking depositions, then more research and more subpoenas. Bound the case on the east, the north, the south and the west. Lincoln had said that. Jake's stomach rebelled, and he took to eating a bowl of baby cereal before going to bed in an effort to still its growling and grumbling. Those who knew how hard he worked continued to ask: Where's the money coming from? Why is this important anyway? Whenever speculation started to sag, Jake shrewdly needled it by leaking a fact here, a rumor there. From Los Angeles, the ebullient old television commentator, George Putnam, still indefatigable in his late sixties, reported that a noted brain surgeon had been subpoenaed to testify at the Corfino trial. In New York, Ed Murrow asked the probing, provocative question: Why has Jake Emspak personally invited one of our great religious philosophers to appear as a defense witness? "I suggest," hinted Murrow, "that you won't find the gold in this case by panning the mainstream. Or, as Plato said...." The D.A. and his deputies sat up half the night studying an air-check of the Murrow broadcast. By the close of the fourth day, selection of the jury had been completed and the trial was ready to begin. That evening, Jake worked on his notes until ten o'clock, and then went out for his customary walk through the memories and quiet of Central Park. As he paused at a crosswalk to watch a satellite platform sweep like a new planet across the sky, a long, black car drifted silently to a stop beside him. The door swung open, and the District Attorney's tired voice said, "Get in, Jake." Jake got in, and neither of them spoke for awhile. "Couldn't sleep," the D.A. said finally. "Can't even sleep with them damn pills anymore." Jake didn't say anything. He stared at the back of the chauffeur in front of them. What could you say when an old friend was wearing out? "Look, Jake," the D.A. continued, "do you really mean this is your last case?" "You know I do." "Then, how about a deal--You cop a plea, and Tony gets off with life...." "Why, Emmett?" "I don't want to see you wind up this way, Jake--losing a penny-ante case like this!" "You know how I feel about this case." "No deal, then?" "No deal." The D.A. wheezed angrily: "Then I'm going to whip you, Jake--and that punk's going to burn!" Jake didn't answer, and they drove slowly along the endless, winding roads of Central Park. The tires of the great car murmured over the pavement like a boat in the ripples of a lake, and the silent motor gave them a sensation of floating through the night. * * * * * Anger still fired the D.A.'s voice when he made his opening address to the jury. His final words were brutally to the point: "We've all heard rumors about what the defense may or may not attempt to prove in this trial, but let us not forget that in the law of our land there is no place for medical quacks, parole panderers or all the bleeding hearts who drip sympathy for a killer like Tony Corfino! The chair is the only thing he and others like him will ever understand!" The courtroom stilled to breathlessness as Jake Emspak stepped forward to deliver his own opening remarks. He moved, then paused, with a great dramatist's sense of timing. Ghosts of a thousand courtrooms and fifty years of practice moved and paused with him. Impeccably dressed, his long silver hair artfully disheveled, he folded his blue-veined hands over the gold head of his cane and swayed for a moment in silence, thoughtfully contemplating the jurors. When he spoke, his voice had a quality of remoteness that was peculiarly compelling: "I would like," he began, "to quote from a Supreme Court Justice who died before some of you were born. It was Benjamin Cardoza who said--'Law in its deepest aspects is one with the humanities and with all the things by which humanity is uplifted and inspired. Law is not a cadaver, but a spirit; not a finality, but a process of becoming; not a clog in the fullness of life, but an outlet and a means thereto; not a game but a sacrament'...." He waited fully a half-minute before continuing, and not a person in the courtroom stirred. "The defense," Jake went on quietly, "will rest its case on two major points: "First, we will prove that the law has not kept pace with the progress of science and the forward march of human thought. "Second ..." here Jake paused again, while he looked slowly from the jurors, to the judge and finally to the District Attorney. "Second," he continued, with a ghost of a smile on his thin lips, "we will prove that _Tony Corfino is not Tony Corfino_!" Jake stood for a moment in silence. Then, with a slight, almost curt nod of his head, he turned away and walked back to his seat beside Tony Corfino. Tony stared at him wordlessly, with a look in his eyes that Jake had not yet fathomed. The courtroom exploded into bedlam. Judge Hayward gaveled peremptorily for silence, and motioned to the District Attorney to begin presentation of the People's case. If the D.A. was puzzled by Jake's opening remarks, he gave no sign of it. His marshalling of the evidence was grimly efficient. There was a quality of the inexorable about the way he moved up his witnesses one by one. It was like the maneuvering of a skilled boxer who seeks to take his opponent out, not with one punch, but with a carefully executed combination of punches. Tony Corfino was not Tony Corfino? The D.A. smiled sardonically as he pointed to the pale defendant and asked the witness to identify him. "And is this the man who entered the bank on the morning of last October 17?" "Yes, it is," replied the nervous, overly plump young woman. "Were you in a position to observe him closely at all times?" "Yes." "Where were you?" "In--in the Note Window ... right next to where he--he came up and pointed his gun." "Thank you." With elaborate courtesy, the D.A. turned to Jake: "Does the distinguished defense counsel desire to cross-examine this witness?" Jake nodded gravely, and advanced toward the witness stand. The young woman watched him apprehensively. In the TV booth, the regular court reporters leaned forward with anticipation. Many a time had they seen Jake Emspak take the most positive witness and reduce him to a quivering, stuttering symbol of uncertainty. "Show me an eye witness," Jake had once observed, "and I'll show you a liar." Now, as Jake began, there was a note of friendliness in his voice: "You say this is the man who entered the bank on the morning of last October 17?" "Yes--yes, sir.... It is!" Jake nodded understandingly. "Suppose," he continued, "we look at it another way for a moment: Is the man who entered the bank on the morning of last October 17 the same man who now appears as defendant in this trial?" The young woman bit her lip, smearing some of the lipstick on her large front teeth. She hesitated, thinking through the question, then nodded firmly. "Yes--of course!" "How do you know?" "Why--he--he _looks_ the same!" "_Exactly_ the same? I suggest you look him over carefully before you answer." The young woman stared at Tony, then dropped her eyes in confusion. "_Exactly_ the same?" Jake pressed. "Well ... I'm ... I'm not sure...." Jake teetered on the point of his cane, thoughtfully contemplating the now flustered witness. Then, unexpectedly, he turned to Judge Hayward and said, "No further questions, your Honor." The D.A. blinked in surprise. It was not like Jake to stop once he had a witness in full retreat. The court reporters looked at each other disappointedly. Maybe the old man should retire! Jake continued to treat prosecution witnesses with similar restraint. He would lead them up to the brink of uncertainty, then leave them there. As a result, the District Attorney was able to complete presentation of his case by the middle of the second morning. "The People rest," he announced, with grim satisfaction. * * * * * Jake Emspak's first defense witness was a youthful looking man of about forty who quickly identified himself as a well-known authority on fingerprints, an expert who had many times been called to assist the police in major criminal cases. "Is it not true," Jake began, "that in the tradition of modern law, fingerprints are regarded as the most positive method of identification?" "That is correct." From a mass of data on his desk, Jake extracted a single sheet of photostatic copy and handed it to Judge Hayward. "I have here," he said, "a certified copy of one Tony Corfino's fingerprints--taken at the time of his arrest and conviction five years ago on a charge of Grand Theft, Auto...." The Judge accepted the photostat and handed it to the clerk for entry into the record. Jake then retrieved it, and gave it to his witness. "Now, Sir," he went on, "will you please take the defendant's fingerprints and compare them to this photostatic copy." The jurors craned forward curiously as the fingerprint expert opened his kit and went methodically about the business of fingerprinting Tony Corfino. When he had finished, and returned to the witness stand with the new prints, Jake Emspak demanded: "Is there any similarity between those fingerprints and the fingerprints of one Tony Corfino?" The expert looked from one set of prints to the other, and quickly replied: "There can be absolutely no doubt about it--these are _not_ the same prints." Red-faced with anger, the District Attorney heaved himself to his feet and strode toward the bench. "Objection, your Honor!" he stormed. "This is the most outrageous deception I have ever witnessed in a courtroom. Frankly, I am astounded that opposing counsel would stoop to such tactics!" Judge Hayward's voice had the bite of steel drill as he directed: "Will you please explain to the Court exactly what you mean?" "It's a matter of record," the D.A. snapped, "that the defendant was seriously injured in the accident that resulted in his capture. Massive burns were part of his injuries.... Bone and skin grafts were necessary to repair the damage to his hands--as well as to other parts of his body. Naturally, his fingerprints would be different! The Defense Counsel knows that!" Jake smiled, and replied mildly: "Of course the Defense Counsel knows that, and will certainly make the full extent of the defendant's injuries a part of the trial record. However, I have called this particular witness to show that Tony Corfino cannot be identified as Tony Corfino by what is still regarded as the most infallible method of criminal identification." "Your Honor," retorted the D.A., "This so-called testimony is totally irrelevant and immaterial. I request that it be stricken from the record!" "It is most relevant to our case," Jake shot back. "Furthermore, the Defense will prove that Tony Corfino cannot be identified as Tony Corfino by any known method of criminal identification!" Judge Hayward's eyes narrowed speculatively. He thought the matter over for a moment before stating, with unconcealed interest: "This may well be a legal situation without precedent. The Court will withhold ruling on the objection for the time being." The next defense witness was a specialist on agglutination of the blood. "Agglutination," he explained, adjusting his glasses pedantically, "is a biological reaction consisting of the mutual adhesion of the red corpuscles. It is also a method of establishing individualization of blood." "I see," said Jake. "Now, tell us--how has this method been used to establish identification in a criminal case?" "It is sometimes used where the victim's blood leaves stains on the murderer's clothing--as well as the victim's own clothing. If both blood stains produce the same biological reaction, the murderer is either guilty--or has a great deal of explaining to do!" Jake meticulously selected another exhibit from the material on his desk. "Will you identify this, please?" "It is a piece of cotton stained with the blood of this--this defendant." "When was it stained?" "In the test I made last week." "Did you compare it with the stains on garments worn by a certain Tony Corfino at the time of his accident?" "I did." "What did you find?" "The two samples were entirely different?" "Could we assume, then, that the blood of a man known as Tony Corfino does not flow through the veins of this defendant, who also bears the name of Tony Corfino?" The witness rubbed his hand thoughtfully over the high, polished dome of his forehead. "You _could_ put it that way," he conceded. With the skill of a symphony conductor calling upon the diverse instruments under his baton, Jake Emspak continued to bring forward a bewildering variety of witnesses to prove that in the identifiable details of his physiology, Tony Corfino indeed was not Tony Corfino. The D.A. watched in furious silence. Once, when Jake passed near him, he muttered: "This is contemptible!" Imperturbably, Jake turned back to the witness stand, where a radiographer from Scripps Institute was taking the oath. Patiently, he led the witness through a description of how the radiographies of the nasal accessory sinuses and mastoid processes could be used to establish the identity of an individual. Jake then produced medical records from a juvenile correctional institution in eastern Pennsylvania, where Tony Corfino had sojourned during his seventeenth year. Comparison with recent hospital records showed a striking difference between the two radiographies. The opthalmologic method of Capdevielle was next explored by Jake to show that the eyes of Tony Corfino were not the eyes of Tony Corfino. The technique of Tamassia and Ameuille was employed to prove the same point about Tony's veins. The umbilicial method of Bert and Vianny intrigued the courtroom and TV audience with structural dissimilarities of Tony's navel. By means of projection on a large screen, Jake demonstrated to the jurors and Judge Hayward that Tony Corfino, defendant, had an entirely different electrocardiagram from the Tony Corfino whose crushed body had been pulled, more dead than alive, from the wreckage of a burning automobile. Late that afternoon, Ed Murrow commented to his news audience in the cadence that had been his trademark for more than forty years: "We know not yet where this trial is taking us, though Jake Emspak is beginning to show the direction. Perhaps, we, too, could ask ourselves the question: _What is a man?_" Less philosophically, a space-weary young captain, sending in his nightly report from the satellite station, Vanguard VI, queried: "If this Tony Corfino isn't Tony Corfino, who or what in the hell is he?" * * * * * Part of the answer to this question was on display the next morning when the jury filed into Judge Hayward's courtroom. Before them, and angled toward the TV cameras, was a chart nearly eight feet tall. It showed, in outline, the figure of a man. The figure was covered with small black dots, each bearing a white number. In all, there was seventy-two dots. As soon as court was in session, Jake called a short, squarely-built man of about fifty to the stand. There was a bulldog set to his jaw and mouth. He identified himself as Dr. Theodore Clendenning, Chief of Staff at City Hospital. "Dr. Clendenning," said Jake, "I assume you are familiar with the medical and surgical care received by the defendant at your hospital?" "Quite familiar," the doctor retorted, impatiently. "Then, may I direct your attention to this chart. It indicates areas in which artificial parts were used to replace the damaged or destroyed natural parts of a certain Tony Corfino's body. Will you name them, please, as I point them out with my cane." Tapping the chart like a school-teacher signalling for the attention of his pupils, Jake Emspak started at the outline of the head. "Vitallium skull plate," snapped Dr. Clendenning. Jake's cane touched the nose. "Vitallium nose plate." Swiftly, the tip of the cane moved around the outline of the body, pausing only long enough for the doctor to name each part: "Plastic tear duct ... vitallium jaw bone and implanted dentures ... paraffin and plastic sponge to fill chest after removal of lung ... plastic esophagus ... tantalum breast plate ... tantalum mesh to patch chest wall ... vitallium shoulder socket rim and shoulder joint bone ... vitallium elbow joint, radius bone, ulna bone, wrist bone, finger joint ... spinal fusion plate ... vitallium blood vessel tubes." Jake put down his cane, and turned conversationally toward the doctor. "Dr. Clendenning, is it true that this Tony Corfino's reproductive organs were destroyed in the accident?" "Virtually so." "And is it not also true that the defendant in this case is now capable of becoming a parent?" Dr. Clendenning glanced at his watch and sighed. "What you are referring to," he answered, "has been rather elementary surgery for the past ten years." "But the children of Tony Corfino would not then be the children of Tony Corfino?" Dr. Clendenning looked toward Judge Hayward with a pained expression. Receiving no sign of any kind from the Judge, he turned back to Jake Emspak. "I have given you the medical data," he said angrily. "You can draw your own conclusions." Jake nodded, and replied with emphasis: "I am sure this Court and the Jury will do just that." He studied the chart for a moment, then tapped the outline figure in the area of the eyes. "Tell us, Dr. Clendenning, what did your staff do about Tony Corfino's eyes? I understand the flames had reached them." "Cornea transplants were necessary." "And where did you obtain the corneas?" "Mr. Emspak--I'm sure you know that most people nowadays will their eyes to the Cornea Bank!" "Can you tell us anything about the corneas that were transplanted in Tony Corfino's eyes? From what type a person did they come?" "I'd rather not answer that?" Jake turned to the Judge. "Your Honor, unless there is a legal reason why the good doctor should not answer, I ask the Court to direct that he do so." Judge Hayward hesitated, then directed the witness to answer. "They came from the eyes of a priest," growled the doctor. Jake Emspak raised his cane to the chart once again, then apparently changed his mind and lowered it. "Dr. Clendenning," he asked quietly, "am I correct in believing that the construction of parts for the human body is now an important industry?" "That's right," the doctor said grudgingly. "It's grown tremendously in the past twenty years--from a $160-million-a-year business in 1957 to nearly a billion today...." "One further question, if you please, Doctor," said Jake. "What is _your_ definition of a man?" The doctor thought for a moment, and smiled coldly. "I'm afraid it would not assist your case," he replied. "We are only looking for some basic truths." Dr. Clendenning bunched his square shoulders and leaned forward aggressively. "I can think of no better definition," he snapped, "than one given by a distinguished physician in the earlier years of this century. He defined the human body as an animal organism, differing in only a few respects from other animal organisms, and fitted for the performance of two main functions: The conversion of food and air into energy and tissue; and the reproduction of other individuals of its species!" So coldly, with such an air of finality did he speak, that his words brought an audible gasp from two women in the jury box. Jake Emspak remained impassive. "And this is all you see in a man?" he prodded gently. The doctor's jaw set stubbornly. "As a philosopher," he retorted, "I may engage in some speculation in the company of Plato, Schopenhauer or the Archbishop of Canterbury, but my speculations would themselves be based upon speculations and not upon any scientific data resembling observed facts!" "Then, from your point of view, the defendant in this courtroom is not _the_ Tony Corfino--the same man--whose broken body was brought into your hospital eight months ago?" "Obviously not." "Thank you, Doctor." Jake walked slowly from the witness stand to the jury box, and then back to the bench. "Perhaps," he said softly, "a ten-minute recess would be in order...." Judge Hayward drew a long breath, exhaled and nodded. With the sound of his gavel, tension ran out of the courtroom like water from a punctured barrel. * * * * * When court reconvened, Jake began bringing to the witness stand a parade of educators, religious leaders and philosophers who kept the courtroom alternately fascinated and bewildered for the next two days. They came from London, Rome, Johannesburg, Philadelphia, Tokyo and Chicago. They came from every oasis of learning where men could still find profit in thought, without relating the profit to the cash register or the thought of technology. They spoke in words and symbols that sometimes soared beyond space itself, and left the world's TV audience groping for stability in earthbound cliches. The paradox was incredible: All this thinking, all this culture--all of everything brought into a courtroom to defend a bush-league hoodlum. Reporters ceased to ask who was paying for this display; they simply marveled at the pyrotechnics. Through it all, Jake Emspak moved deftly, surely, extracting from each witness the pure essence of relevant thought: Man is a creature destined to live in two worlds. He is surrounded first by the realities of this world--and he is called to live with eternal realities that transcend this world.... The human person is a body, and therefore subject to the laws of matter, to spatiality, temporality and opacity. As such, he is a meeting place for passing forces, a crossroads of contacts and reactions. But the human person is also a spirit, that is to say a reality that transcends apparent reality. There is within him the wakened or nascent ability to comprehend space and surpass time.... The human self is an object, of a sort--and, as such, can be described as the empiricists have described us. But the human self is also, and more essentially, a subject, which never appears to the view of others or even to the most determined introspection. The self as object is finite, but the self as subject touches the infinite; it is the meeting place of time and eternity, of man and God.... For all its advances, the 20th century is still a child of the 19th, when the impact of the developing sciences of physics and biology produced a change in the concept of nature and Man's place in it. From Malthus and Darwin, Spencer and Feuerbach, Vogt, Buchner, Czolbe and Haeckel evolved a reductive naturalism in which the spiritual quality of man is ruled out and he becomes a unique emergent of a blind natural process--a creature who must make of nature what he can.... The next five million years of evolution will be in the human brain, where Man must ultimately be defined. Until Man appeared, evolution strove only to produce an organ, the brain, in a body capable of protecting it, and carrying out its will. The ancestors of Man were irresponsible actors playing parts in a play they did not understand. Man continues to play his part but wants to understand the play.... Man is a blending of the rational and intuitive processes. Ethical conclusions reached by logical thinking were attained several thousand years ago by the religions, which proves that man's rational processes are strangely slower than his intuitive processes.... Jurors shifted impatiently in their seats, yet their attention would inexorably be drawn back to the witness stand. Courtroom spectators, who had come to be titillated by the sensational, stayed to grope with concepts they could not understand. The TV audience, spoon-fed for so many decades, tried doggedly to chew and digest adult foodstuffs. Sets were turned off in anger or despair--and then turned back on again. "What is a man?" The pivotal nature of this question became steadily more evident. If Tony Corfino was not Tony Corfino, was he then not more of the real personality, the human entity, than the original Tony had ever been. "In restoring the damaged areas of the brain," a surgeon testified under Jake's skillful prodding, "we thought it wise to perform a lobotomy at the same time, thereby relieving anti-social tensions and pressures." (The body is at once a means of expression for the soul, and a veil; it reveals and it hides....) "During the convalescent period," a consulting specialist informed the courtroom, "we recommended treatment with sodium dilantin and electroshock therapy, thereby producing a change in this patient's electroencephalograph." (The body presents all the problems of matter: It is a limitation, a weight, a force. It seems almost a miracle when it is overcome, penetrated and ordered by thought and spirit....) "Subsequently," the psychiatrist stated, "this patient underwent extensive therapy, aided frequently by hypnosis and sodium pentathol. His respiratory, vascular and circulatory systems began to show increasing stability." (Released from its warped framework, brought into balance with instincts inherited from our animal ancestors, the body becomes, in a way, an image of the soul, a sign conveying something of our personal mystery....) And then Jake called the hospital Administrator to the stand. Speaking with great deliberation, so that each word registered, Jake asked: "Is this type of medical care ordinarily given to a prisoner-patient?" "The type of care depends upon the case, Mr. Emspak. In a case such as this, I would regard the treatment as routine. You see, in the past decade our approach to any patient has become one of total therapy...." "And in the case of a prisoner, what do you do when the therapy is completed?" The Administrator looked surprised. "Why, we return him to jail--in accordance with the law." Jake Emspak stood in silence, contemplatively staring down at the blue veins on the back of his hands. At length, he announced: "Your Honor, the Defense will conclude tomorrow morning, after one more witness--a man who goes by the name of Tony Corfino...." * * * * * The sweat on the pale, polished skin of Tony's forehead stood out like drops of summer rain; they seemed to have fallen there rather than seeped out through the pores. A polygraph lie detector had been set up under Jake's direction and wheeled close to the witness stand. A technician opened the front of Tony's shirt and made fast the pneumograph tube with the aid of a beaded chain. Next, a blood-pressure cuff, of the type used by physicians, was fasted around Tony's right arm. A set of electrodes was attached to the palmar and dorsal surfaces of the hand of the other arm. The recorder showing the graph lines had been specially constructed so as to be visible throughout the courtroom, and to the television cameras. The technician had already been on the stand to explain the simplified and easily read graph lines of the modern polygraph: A shallow breathing line denoting suppression; a heavy breath line denoting relief; the respiratory block, fast pulse and slow pulse lines; the rise in blood pressure tracing.... It was all there on the screen--the emotional picture of a man testifying at his own trial for murder. "Objection, your Honor!" shouted the D.A. for the tenth time that morning. "This procedure is definitely irregular and immaterial! Defense Counsel has been making a mockery of the Court for days, but now he has stepped completely out of line!" Jake clucked soothingly. "What," he inquired, "is irregular or immaterial about a defendant voluntarily taking a lie detector test? I believe that I have heard the District Attorney challenge clients of mine to do so on several occasions! Now, we are merely permitting the Court and the Jury to view the test in progress...." Once again, the Judge withheld his ruling, and the D.A. sagged dejectedly in his chair. The strain of the last few days--sitting in the courtroom and listening to witnesses he knew not how or why to cross-examine--had taken its toll. His eyes were bloodshot, and fits of wheezing seized him spasmodically, but the set of his jaw was still unyielding. Jake grieved for him. Tony Corfino's reactions, as he sat in the witness chair watching the final preparations, would be difficult to catalogue. He looked both aloof and nervously concerned. His curly black hair was damp from the way he constantly brushed the sweat back off his forehead; his puffy lips seemed in constant need of moistening. But his hands were folded quietly in his lap. He seemed to Jake like a man lost to the past, adrift in the present and unrelated to the future. "Will you give us your name, please?" Jake asked casually. "Tony Corfino." "Where were you born?" "I ain't--I'm not sure.... On the West Side, I suppose...." On the recorder over Tony's head, the graph lines rippled in smooth patterns. Suddenly changing his manner, Jake rasped: "Have you ever committed a crime?" Tony frowned in bewilderment. "I _know_ that I have, but sometimes.... Well, I kinda wonder...." "Do you remember what happened last October 17?" "You mean the bank ... the shootin'?" "That's right." "I've read so much--heard so much talk--that I ain't sure just what I remember...." Tony's eyes--or the eyes of the dead priest through which Tony had vision--reflected his torment. Jake moved around so that Tony would be facing the jury when he answered the next question. "Tony," directed Jake, "think about this question before you answer it: Are _you_ the man who tried to rob that bank--then got excited and killed two people?" Jake knew this question was the one element of gamble in his entire case. The way it was answered could be a summation or refutation of all the evidence and testimony he had so painstakingly assembled. The jury sensed this, too. So did Judge Hayward. His keen eyes flickered alertly from the defendant's face to the lines on the polygraph recorder. Now Tony's hands were no longer folded quietly in his lap. They were locked together, and the new veins in his wrists stood out under the new skin. His lips worked silently as he groped for words. And then the words burst into an anguished outcry: "No! I couldn't!..." The polygraph lines leaped into jagged peaks. Blood pressure, respiratory block, pulse and breathing--all climbed and dropped wildly, recording their damning message for the world to see. The D.A.'s lips twisted in a mirthless smile of triumph. Up in the TV booth, reporters sputtered, split infinitives and shattered syntax in frantic efforts to describe and interpret what had happened. Jake Emspak stood and waited, a sear and wrinkled leaf hanging motionless in the wind. (If the self is merely a node in a complex casual series, if self is solely energized and motivated by the sovereign need of survival and security, then the idea of a bridge between Man and the infinite is a pious illusion....) Tony Corfino stared down at his twisted hands, and slowly they unlocked. He looked up at Jake, and the doubt and fear and bewilderment were gone at last from his eyes. "That ain't so," he said quietly. "I did it ... I know I did it ... an' I know it was wrong ... I deserve the chair!" (Thus Man escapes himself in freedom, and is therefore never a fully predictable or manipulatable object--only a window through which we peer with blind eyes into the reaches of the universe....) * * * * * The District Attorney's summary to the jury was a model of legal craftsmanship. Boldly disregarding the broader issues raised by Jake, he hewed firmly to the line of criminal responsibility and punishment. Point by point he reviewed the facts of the crime. Witness by witness he retraced the eye-witness testimony. He produced photographs of Tony's body being loaded from the wreckage of the car into the ambulance, and from the ambulance into the prison ward of City Hospital. He proved beyond any reasonable doubt that Tony had never been out of custody from the moment of his apprehension. "Even the defendant admits to his responsibility for the crime," the D.A. continued coldly. Only in his concluding remarks did the District Attorney make reference to the defense presented by Jake Emspak. "I wonder," he asked, smiling for the first time, "if any of you tried--as I did--to carry through to its ultimate conclusion the line of reasoning presented with such detail and admitted virtuosity by the defendant's counsel? If the fabricating of replacement parts for the human body has already become a billion dollar industry, if psychiatry continues to achieve new miracles, how many people in this world could now--or in the near future--seek to escape their responsibilities by taking refuge in the argument that they were no longer themselves? At what point would we draw the line? If fifty-percent of a man's body has been replaced is he neither himself nor a new person? If fifty-one has been replaced, is he no longer the husband of his wife or the father of his children? Can he then walk blithely away from his responsibilities, proclaiming 'I am a new man'?" A titter went through the courtroom. Judge Hayward gavelled immediately for silence, but the D.A. winked at the TV cameras. His point had been well made. When Jake Emspak stepped up to the jury box to deliver his own final plea, he promptly picked up the challenge. "I have known the District Attorney too well, for too many years," he said, "to believe that he has considered only the superficial aspects of this case. If you should find the defendant guilty, I am sure he would be the last to oppose consideration of all the matters I have raised in the determination of a just sentence. "And I grant you that if a verdict of guilty is reached, the letter of the law will be fulfilled, and an eye for an eye can be paid. "Likewise, if the verdict is not guilty, the letter of the law most unquestionably will be violated--but its spirit will be vindicated! "I am asking you to take a bold step, across a new frontier.... Yes, down through the ages, law has become a living, meaningful instrument of human dignity because--at each crossroad of decision--men and women were not afraid to depart from precedent!" Oldtimers in the court had never before heard Jake Emspak summarize a case in such dispassionate, objective tones. Usually, his voice and argument ranged the gamut of emotional and semantic appeals, plucking at each member of the jury like the strings of a harp. Today, he seemed to be making an effort to hold himself in check. "This is the trial of a living man for the crime of a man who no longer exists," Jake continued quietly. "Science destroyed that man--completely and with absolute finality! In his place is a man with a new body, new thoughts, new blood and new reproductive capacity. The fact that this new man can be brought to trial violates justice in its deepest and truest meaning! It points inescapably to the fact that the law must be revised to bring it up to date with present reality...." Jake paused and was silent for so long that he appeared to have forgotten his surroundings. When he finally continued, his voice was so soft that the jurors unconsciously leaned forward to catch his words: "There is still another dimension to this case--one that transcends science ... and the law. It is one I approached with great uncertainty, because it leads down a path I am walking for the first time.... "Some of the testimony brought out in this trial may not have been new to all of you, though it was new to me. Perhaps you have all formed your own conclusions with regard to the relationship between the spirit or soul of Man, and his outer shell ... the house in which man lives. But if this house becomes a prison for the real man, and science releases him to live in a new dwelling, then did the man ever actually exist until his release? And if the man who lives now did not exist at the time of the crime for which he is tried, can he then be judged guilty? "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury--we await your answer." * * * * * Twilight faded, and across Central Park the skyline of the city changed from steel and concrete to a gossamer web of light and shadow. Jake Emspak sat in peace by his window, the fingers of his right hand resting gently on the gold frame of his wife's picture. He touched a button on the arm of his chair, and in a moment Ed Murrow's features came into focus on the wall-screen. "The jury in the Corfino case is now locked up for the night," Murrow began, his 80-year-old voice more vibrantly alive than ever. "Tomorrow we may--and very likely will--have a verdict. "But whatever the verdict, this case has served an epochal purpose--to our time as well as to the law. We have paused for an instant in our frantic drive for technological advancement to ponder the essential meaning of man--and the worth of the human entity. "It may take years to evaluate and appreciate all of the complex testimony Jake Emspak put into the trial record, for each of us will see in it only what we want to see or are capable of seeing.... "But we may be assured that in the generations to come this case will be footnoted throughout the opening worlds of space by serious students of the law, the sciences and the humanities. "For tonight, it should suffice to say: Thank you, Jake Emspak--Well done!" Jake touched the button again, and the screen went dark. Between old friends, there was much that words left unsaid. 
6943	----	[Illustration: Bookcover] [Illustration: Spines] THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN, Volume 2 By Walter Scott TALES OF MY LANDLORD COLLECTED AND ARRANGED BY JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM, SCHOOLMASTER AND PARISH CLERK OF GANDERCLEUGH. SECOND SERIES. [Illustration: Titlepage] THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN. CHAPTER FIRST. Isab.--Alas! what poor ability's in me To do him good? Lucio.--Assay the power you have. Measure for Measure. When Mrs. Saddletree entered the apartment in which her guests had shrouded their misery, she found the window darkened. The feebleness which followed his long swoon had rendered it necessary to lay the old man in bed. The curtains were drawn around him, and Jeanie sate motionless by the side of the bed. Mrs. Saddletree was a woman of kindness, nay, of feeling, but not of delicacy. She opened the half-shut window, drew aside the curtain, and, taking her kinsman by the hand, exhorted him to sit up, and bear his sorrow like a good man, and a Christian man, as he was. But when she quitted his hand, it fell powerless by his side, nor did he attempt the least reply. "Is all over?" asked Jeanie, with lips and cheeks as pale as ashes,--"and is there nae hope for her?" "Nane, or next to nane," said Mrs. Saddletree; "I heard the Judge-carle say it with my ain ears--It was a burning shame to see sae mony o' them set up yonder in their red gowns and black gowns, and to take the life o' a bit senseless lassie. I had never muckle broo o' my gudeman's gossips, and now I like them waur than ever. The only wiselike thing I heard onybody say, was decent Mr. John Kirk of Kirk-knowe, and he wussed them just to get the king's mercy, and nae mair about it. But he spake to unreasonable folk--he might just hae keepit his breath to hae blawn on his porridge." "But _can_ the king gie her mercy?" said Jeanie, earnestly. "Some folk tell me he canna gie mercy in cases of mur in cases like hers." "_Can_ he gie mercy, hinny?--I weel I wot he can, when he likes. There was young Singlesword, that stickit the Laird of Ballencleuch, and Captain Hackum, the Englishman, that killed Lady Colgrain's gudeman, and the Master of Saint Clair, that shot the twa Shaws,* and mony mair in my time--to be sure they were gentle blood, and had their, kin to speak for them--And there was Jock Porteous the other day--I'se warrant there's mercy, an folk could win at it." * [In 1828, the Author presented to the Roxburgh Club a curious volume containing the "Proceedings in the Court-Martial held upon John, Master of Sinclair, for the murder of Ensign Schaw, and Captain Schaw, 17th October 1708."] "Porteous?" said Jeanie; "very true--I forget a' that I suld maist mind.-- Fare ye weel, Mrs. Saddletree; and may ye never want a friend in the hour of distress!" "Will ye no stay wi' your father, Jeanie, bairn?--Ye had better," said Mrs. Saddletree. "I will be wanted ower yonder," indicating the Tolbooth with her hand, "and I maun leave him now, or I will never be able to leave him. I fearna for his life--I ken how strong-hearted he is--I ken it," she said, laying her hand on her bosom, "by my ain heart at this minute." "Weel, hinny, if ye think it's for the best, better he stay here and rest him, than gang back to St. Leonard's." "Muckle better--muckle better--God bless you!--God bless you!--At no rate let him gang till ye hear frae me," said Jeanie. "But ye'll be back belive?" said Mrs. Saddletree, detaining her; "they winna let ye stay yonder, hinny." "But I maun gang to St. Leonard's--there's muckle to be dune, and little time to do it in--And I have friends to speak to--God bless you--take care of my father." She had reached the door of the apartment, when, suddenly turning, she came back, and knelt down by the bedside.--"O father, gie me your blessing--I dare not go till ye bless me. Say but 'God bless ye, and prosper ye, Jeanie'--try but to say that!" Instinctively, rather than by an exertion of intellect, the old man murmured a prayer, that "purchased and promised blessings might be multiplied upon her." "He has blessed mine errand," said his daughter, rising from her knees, "and it is borne in upon my mind that I shall prosper." So saying, she left the room. Mrs. Saddletree looked after her, and shook her head. "I wish she binna roving, poor thing--There's something queer about a' thae Deanses. I dinna like folk to be sae muckle better than other folk--seldom comes gude o't. But if she's gaun to look after the kye at St. Leonard's, that's another story; to be sure they maun be sorted.--Grizzie, come up here, and tak tent to the honest auld man, and see he wants naething.--Ye silly tawpie" (addressing the maid-servant as she entered), "what garr'd ye busk up your cockemony that gate?--I think there's been enough the day to gie an awfa' warning about your cockups and your fallal duds--see what they a' come to," etc. etc. etc. Leaving the good lady to her lecture upon worldly vanities, we must transport our reader to the cell in which the unfortunate Effie Deans was now immured, being restricted of several liberties which she had enjoyed before the sentence was pronounced. When she had remained about an hour in the state of stupified horror so natural in her situation, she was disturbed by the opening of the jarring bolts of her place of confinement, and Ratcliffe showed himself. "It's your sister," he said, "wants to speak t'ye, Effie." "I canna see naebody," said Effie, with the hasty irritability which misery had rendered more acute--"I canna see naebody, and least of a' her--Bid her take care o' the auld man--I am naething to ony o' them now, nor them to me." "She says she maun see ye, though," said Ratcliffe; and Jeanie, rushing into the apartment, threw her arms round her sister's neck, who writhed to extricate herself from her embrace. "What signifies coming to greet ower me," said poor Effie, "when you have killed me?--killed me, when a word of your mouth would have saved me--killed me, when I am an innocent creature--innocent of that guilt at least--and me that wad hae wared body and soul to save your finger from being hurt?" "You shall not die," said Jeanie, with enthusiastic firmness; "say what you like o' me--think what you like o' me--only promise--for I doubt your proud heart--that ye wunna harm yourself, and you shall not die this shameful death." "A _shameful_ death I will not die, Jeanie, lass. I have that in my heart--though it has been ower kind a ane--that wunna bide shame. Gae hame to our father, and think nae mair on me--I have eat my last earthly meal." "Oh, this was what I feared!" said Jeanie. "Hout, tout, hinny," said Ratcliffe; "it's but little ye ken o' thae things. Ane aye thinks at the first dinnle o' the sentence, they hae heart eneugh to die rather than bide out the sax weeks; but they aye bide the sax weeks out for a' that. I ken the gate o't weel; I hae fronted the doomster three times, and here I stand, Jim Ratcliffe, for a' that. Had I tied my napkin strait the first time, as I had a great mind till't--and it was a' about a bit grey cowt, wasna worth ten punds sterling--where would I have been now?" "And how _did_ you escape?" said Jeanie, the fates of this man, at first so odious to her, having acquired a sudden interest in her eyes from their correspondence with those of her sister. "_How_ did I escape?" said Ratcliffe, with a knowing wink,--"I tell ye I 'scapit in a way that naebody will escape from this Tolbooth while I keep the keys." "My sister shall come out in the face of the sun," said Jeanie; "I will go to London, and beg her pardon from the king and queen. If they pardoned Porteous, they may pardon her; if a sister asks a sister's life on her bended knees, they will pardon her--they _shall_ pardon her--and they will win a thousand hearts by it." Effie listened in bewildered astonishment, and so earnest was her sister's enthusiastic assurance, that she almost involuntarily caught a gleam of hope; but it instantly faded away. "Ah, Jeanie! the king and queen live in London, a thousand miles from this--far ayont the saut sea; I'll be gane before ye win there." "You are mistaen," said Jeanie; "it is no sae far, and they go to it by land; I learned something about thae things from Reuben Butler." "Ah, Jeanie! ye never learned onything but what was gude frae the folk ye keepit company wi'; but!--but!"--she wrung her hands and wept bitterly. "Dinna think on that now," said Jeanie; "there will be time for that if the present space be redeemed. Fare ye weel. Unless I die by the road, I will see the king's face that gies grace--O, sir" (to Ratcliffe), "be kind to her--She ne'er ken'd what it was to need a stranger's kindness till now.--Fareweel--fareweel, Effie!--Dinna speak to me--I maunna greet now--my head's ower dizzy already!" She tore herself from her sister's arms, and left the cell. Ratcliffe followed her, and beckoned her into a small room. She obeyed his signal, but not without trembling. "What's the fule thing shaking for?" said he; "I mean nothing but civility to you. D--n me, I respect you, and I can't help it. You have so much spunk, that d--n me, but I think there's some chance of your carrying the day. But you must not go to the king till you have made some friend; try the duke--try MacCallummore; he's Scotland's friend--I ken that the great folks dinna muckle like him--but they fear him, and that will serve your purpose as weel. D'ye ken naebody wad gie ye a letter to him?" "Duke of Argyle!" said Jeanie, recollecting herself suddenly, "what was he to that Argyle that suffered in my father's time--in the persecution?" "His son or grandson, I'm thinking," said Ratcliffe, "but what o' that?" "Thank God!" said Jeanie, devoutly clasping her hands. "You whigs are aye thanking God for something," said the ruffian. "But hark ye, hinny, I'll tell ye a secret. Ye may meet wi' rough customers on the Border, or in the Midland, afore ye get to Lunnon. Now, deil ane o' them will touch an acquaintance o' Daddie Ratton's; for though I am retired frae public practice, yet they ken I can do a gude or an ill turn yet--and deil a gude fellow that has been but a twelvemonth on the lay, be he ruffler or padder, but he knows my gybe* as well as the jark** of e'er a queer cuffin*** in England--and there's rogue's Latin for you." * Pass. ** Seal. *** Justice of Peace. It was indeed totally unintelligible to Jeanie Deans, who was only impatient to escape from him. He hastily scrawled a line or two on a dirty piece of paper, and said to her, as she drew back when he offered it, "Hey!--what the deil--it wunna bite you, my lass--if it does nae gude, it can do nae ill. But I wish you to show it, if you have ony fasherie wi' ony o' St. Nicholas's clerks." "Alas!" said she, "I do not understand what you mean." "I mean, if ye fall among thieves, my precious,--that is a Scripture phrase, if ye will hae ane--the bauldest of them will ken a scart o' my guse feather. And now awa wi' ye--and stick to Argyle; if onybody can do the job, it maun be him." After casting an anxious look at the grated windows and blackened walls of the old Tolbooth, and another scarce less anxious at the hospitable lodging of Mrs. Saddletree, Jeanie turned her back on that quarter, and soon after on the city itself. She reached St. Leonard's Crags without meeting any one whom she knew, which, in the state of her mind, she considered as a great blessing. "I must do naething," she thought, as she went along, "that can soften or weaken my heart--it's ower weak already for what I hae to do. I will think and act as firmly as I can, and speak as little." There was an ancient servant, or rather cottar, of her father's, who had lived under him for many years, and whose fidelity was worthy of full confidence. She sent for this woman, and explaining to her that the circumstances of her family required that she should undertake a journey, which would detain her for some weeks from home, she gave her full instructions concerning the management of the domestic concerns in her absence. With a precision, which, upon reflection, she herself could not help wondering at, she described and detailed the most minute steps which were to be taken, and especially such as were necessary for her father's comfort. "It was probable," she said, "that he would return to St. Leonard's to-morrow! certain that he would return very soon--all must be in order for him. He had eneugh to distress him, without being fashed about warldly matters." In the meanwhile she toiled busily, along with May Hettly, to leave nothing unarranged. It was deep in the night when all these matters were settled; and when they had partaken of some food, the first which Jeanie had tasted on that eventful day, May Hettly, whose usual residence was a cottage at a little distance from Deans's house, asked her young mistress, whether she would not permit her to remain in the house all night? "Ye hae had an awfu' day," she said, "and sorrow and fear are but bad companions in the watches of the night, as I hae heard the gudeman say himself." "They are ill companions indeed," said Jeanie; "but I maun learn to abide their presence, and better begin in the house than in the field." She dismissed her aged assistant accordingly,--for so slight was the gradation in their rank of life, that we can hardly term May a servant,--and proceeded to make a few preparations for her journey. The simplicity of her education and country made these preparations very brief and easy. Her tartan screen served all the purposes of a riding-habit and of an umbrella; a small bundle contained such changes of linen as were absolutely necessary. Barefooted, as Sancho says, she had come into the world, and barefooted she proposed to perform her pilgrimage; and her clean shoes and change of snow-white thread stockings were to be reserved for special occasions of ceremony. She was not aware, that the English habits of comfort attach an idea of abject misery to the idea of a barefooted traveller; and if the objection of cleanliness had been made to the practice, she would have been apt to vindicate herself upon the very frequent ablutions to which, with Mahometan scrupulosity, a Scottish damsel of some condition usually subjects herself. Thus far, therefore, all was well. From an oaken press, or cabinet, in which her father kept a few old books, and two or three bundles of papers, besides his ordinary accounts and receipts, she sought out and extracted from a parcel of notes of sermons, calculations of interest, records of dying speeches of the martyrs, and the like, one or two documents which she thought might be of some use to her upon her mission. But the most important difficulty remained behind, and it had not occurred to her until that very evening. It was the want of money; without which it was impossible she could undertake so distant a journey as she now meditated. David Deans, as we have said, was easy, and even opulent in his circumstances. But his wealth, like that of the patriarchs of old, consisted in his kine and herds, and in two or three sums lent out at interest to neighbours or relatives, who, far from being in circumstances to pay anything to account of the principal sums, thought they did all that was incumbent on them when, with considerable difficulty, they discharged the "annual rent." To these debtors it would be in vain, therefore, to apply, even with her father's concurrence; nor could she hope to obtain such concurrence, or assistance in any mode, without such a series of explanations and debates as she felt might deprive her totally of the power of taking the step, which, however daring and hazardous, she felt was absolutely necessary for trying the last chance in favour of her sister. Without departing from filial reverence, Jeanie had an inward conviction that the feelings of her father, however just, and upright, and honourable, were too little in unison with the spirit of the time to admit of his being a good judge of the measures to be adopted in this crisis. Herself more flexible in manner, though no less upright in principle, she felt that to ask his consent to her pilgrimage would be to encounter the risk of drawing down his positive prohibition, and under that she believed her journey could not be blessed in its progress and event. Accordingly, she had determined upon the means by which she might communicate to him her undertaking and its purpose, shortly after her actual departure. But it was impossible to apply to him for money without altering this arrangement, and discussing fully the propriety of her journey; pecuniary assistance from that quarter, therefore, was laid out of the question. It now occurred to Jeanie that she should have consulted with Mrs. Saddletree on this subject. But, besides the time that must now necessarily be lost in recurring to her assistance Jeanie internally revolted from it. Her heart acknowledged the goodness of Mrs. Saddletree's general character, and the kind interest she took in their family misfortunes; but still she felt that Mrs. Saddletree was a woman of an ordinary and worldly way of thinking, incapable, from habit and temperament, of taking a keen or enthusiastic view of such a resolution as she had formed; and to debate the point with her, and to rely upon her conviction of its propriety, for the means of carrying it into execution, would have been gall and wormwood. Butler, whose assistance she might have been assured of, was greatly poorer than herself. In these circumstances, she formed a singular resolution for the purpose of surmounting this difficulty, the execution of which will form the subject of the next chapter. CHAPTER SECOND 'Tis the voice of the sluggard, I've heard him complain, "You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again;" As the door on its hinges, so he on his bed, Turns his side, and his shoulders, and his heavy head. Dr. Watts. The mansion-house of Dumbiedikes, to which we are now to introduce our readers, lay three or four miles--no matter for the exact topography--to the southward of St. Leonard's. It had once borne the appearance of some little celebrity; for the "auld laird," whose humours and pranks were often mentioned in the ale-houses for about a mile round it, wore a sword, kept a good horse, and a brace of greyhounds; brawled, swore, and betted at cock-fights and horse-matches; followed Somerville of Drum's hawks, and the Lord Ross's hounds, and called himself _point devise_ a gentleman. But the line had been veiled of its splendour in the present proprietor, who cared for no rustic amusements, and was as saying, timid, and retired, as his father had been at once grasping and selfishly extravagant--daring, wild, and intrusive. Dumbiedikes was what is called in Scotland a single house; that is, having only one room occupying its whole depth from back to front, each of which single apartments was illuminated by six or eight cross lights, whose diminutive panes and heavy frames permitted scarce so much light to enter as shines through one well-constructed modern window. This inartificial edifice, exactly such as a child would build with cards, had a steep roof flagged with coarse grey stones instead of slates; a half-circular turret, battlemented, or, to use the appropriate phrase, bartizan'd on the top, served as a case for a narrow turnpike stair, by which an ascent was gained from storey to storey; and at the bottom of the said turret was a door studded with large-headed nails. There was no lobby at the bottom of the tower, and scarce a landing-place opposite to the doors which gave access to the apartments. One or two low and dilapidated outhouses, connected by a courtyard wall equally ruinous, surrounded the mansion. The court had been paved, but the flags being partly displaced and partly renewed, a gallant crop of docks and thistles sprung up between them, and the small garden, which opened by a postern through the wall, seemed not to be in a much more orderly condition. Over the low-arched gateway which led into the yard there was a carved stone, exhibiting some attempt at armorial bearings; and above the inner entrance hung, and had hung, for many years, the mouldering hatchment, which announced that umquhile Laurence Dumbie of Dumbiedikes had been gathered to his fathers in Newbattle kirkyard. The approach to this palace of pleasure was by a road formed by the rude fragments of stone gathered from the fields, and it was surrounded by ploughed, but unenclosed land. Upon a baulk, that is, an unploughed ridge of land interposed among the corn, the Laird's trusty palfrey was tethered by the head, and picking a meal of grass. The whole argued neglect and discomfort; the consequence, however, of idleness and indifference, not of poverty. In this inner court, not without a sense of bashfulness and timidity, stood Jeanie Deans, at an early hour in a fine spring morning. She was no heroine of romance, and therefore looked with some curiosity and interest on the mansion-house and domains, of which, it might at that moment occur to her, a little encouragement, such as women of all ranks know by instinct how to apply, might have made her mistress. Moreover, she was no person of taste beyond her time, rank, and country, and certainly thought the house of Dumbiedikes, though inferior to Holyrood House, or the palace at Dalkeith, was still a stately structure in its way, and the land a "very bonny bit, if it were better seen to and done to." But Jeanie Deans was a plain, true-hearted, honest girl, who, while she acknowledged all the splendour of her old admirer's habitation, and the value of his property, never for a moment harboured a thought of doing the Laird, Butler, or herself, the injustice, which many ladies of higher rank would not have hesitated to do to all three on much less temptation. Her present errand being with the Laird, she looked round the offices to see if she could find any domestic to announce that she wished to see him. As all was silence, she ventured to open one door--it was the old Laird's dog-kennel, now deserted, unless when occupied, as one or two tubs seemed to testify, as a washing-house. She tried another--it was the rootless shed where the hawks had been once kept, as appeared from a perch or two not yet completely rotten, and a lure and jesses which were mouldering on the wall. A third door led to the coal-house, which was well stocked. To keep a very good fire was one of the few points of domestic management in which Dumbiedikes was positively active; in all other matters of domestic economy he was completely passive, and at the mercy of his housekeeper--the same buxom dame whom his father had long since bequeathed to his charge, and who, if fame did her no injustice, had feathered her nest pretty well at his expense. Jeanie went on opening doors, like the second Calender wanting an eye, in the castle of the hundred obliging damsels, until, like the said prince errant, she came to a stable. The Highland Pegasus, Rory Bean, to which belonged the single entire stall, was her old acquaintance, whom she had seen grazing on the baulk, as she failed not to recognise by the well-known ancient riding furniture and demi-pique saddle, which half hung on the walls, half trailed on the litter. Beyond the "treviss," which formed one side of the stall, stood a cow, who turned her head and lowed when Jeanie came into the stable, an appeal which her habitual occupations enabled her perfectly to understand, and with which she could not refuse complying, by shaking down some fodder to the animal, which had been neglected like most things else in the castle of the sluggard. While she was accommodating "the milky mother" with the food which she should have received two hours sooner, a slipshod wench peeped into the stable, and perceiving that a stranger was employed in discharging the task which she, at length, and reluctantly, had quitted her slumbers to perform, ejaculated, "Eh, sirs! the Brownie! the Brownie!" and fled, yelling as if she had seen the devil. To explain her terror it may be necessary to notice that the old house of Dumbiedikes had, according to report, been long haunted by a Brownie, one of those familiar spirits who were believed in ancient times to supply the deficiencies of the ordinary labourer-- Whirl the long mop, and ply the airy flail. Certes, the convenience of such a supernatural assistance could have been nowhere more sensibly felt than in a family where the domestics were so little disposed to personal activity; yet this serving maiden was so far from rejoicing in seeing a supposed aerial substitute discharging a task which she should have long since performed herself, that she proceeded to raise the family by her screams of horror, uttered as thick as if the Brownie had been flaying her. Jeanie, who had immediately resigned her temporary occupation, and followed the yelling damsel into the courtyard, in order to undeceive and appease her, was there met by Mrs. Janet Balchristie, the favourite sultana of the last Laird, as scandal went--the housekeeper of the present. The good-looking buxom woman, betwixt forty and fifty (for such we described her at the death of the last Laird), was now a fat, red-faced, old dame of seventy, or thereabouts, fond of her place, and jealous of her authority. Conscious that her administration did not rest on so sure a basis as in the time of the old proprietor, this considerate lady had introduced into the family the screamer aforesaid, who added good features and bright eyes to the powers of her lungs. She made no conquest of the Laird, however, who seemed to live as if there was not another woman in the world but Jeanie Deans, and to bear no very ardent or overbearing affection even to her. Mrs. Janet Balchristie, notwithstanding, had her own uneasy thoughts upon the almost daily visits to St. Leonard's Crags, and often, when the Laird looked at her wistfully and paused, according to his custom before utterance, she expected him to say, "Jenny, I am gaun to change my condition;" but she was relieved by, "Jenny, I am gaun to change my shoon." Still, however, Mrs. Balchristie regarded Jeanie Deans with no small portion of malevolence, the customary feeling of such persons towards anyone who they think has the means of doing them an injury. But she had also a general aversion to any female tolerably young, and decently well-looking, who showed a wish to approach the house of Dumbiedikes and the proprietor thereof. And as she had raised her mass of mortality out of bed two hours earlier than usual, to come to the rescue of her clamorous niece, she was in such extreme bad humour against all and sundry, that Saddletree would have pronounced that she harboured _inimicitiam contra omnes mortales._ "Wha the deil are ye?" said the fat dame to poor Jeanie, whom she did not immediately recognise, "scouping about a decent house at sic an hour in the morning?" "It was ane wanting to speak to the Laird," said Jeanie, who felt something of the intuitive terror which she had formerly entertained for this termagant, when she was occasionally at Dumbiedikes on business of her father's. "Ane!--And what sort of ane are ye!--hae ye nae name?--D'ye think his honour has naething else to do than to speak wi' ilka idle tramper that comes about the town, and him in his bed yet, honest man?" "Dear Mrs. Balchristie," replied Jeanie, in a submissive tone, "d'ye no mind me?--d'ye no mind Jeanie Deans?" "Jeanie Deans!" said the termagant, in accents affecting the utmost astonishment; then, taking two strides nearer to her, she peered into her face with a stare of curiosity, equally scornful and malignant--"I say Jeanie Deans indeed--Jeanie Deevil, they had better hae ca'ed ye!--A bonny spot o' wark your tittie and you hae made out, murdering ae puir wean, and your light limmer of a sister's to be hanged for't, as weel she deserves!--And the like o' you to come to ony honest man's house, and want to be into a decent bachelor gentleman's room at this time in the morning, and him in his bed!--Gae wa', gae wa'!" Jeanie was struck mute with shame at the unfeeling brutality of this accusation, and could not even find words to justify herself from the vile construction put upon her visit. When Mrs. Balchristie, seeing her advantage, continued in the same tone, "Come, come, bundle up your pipes and tramp awa wi' ye!--ye may be seeking a father to another wean for ony thing I ken. If it warna that your father, auld David Deans, had been a tenant on our land, I would cry up the men-folk, and hae ye dookit in the burn for your impudence." Jeanie had already turned her back, and was walking towards the door of the court-yard, so that Mrs. Balchristie, to make her last threat impressively audible to her, had raised her stentorian voice to its utmost pitch. But, like many a general, she lost the engagement by pressing her advantage too far. The Laird had been disturbed in his morning slumbers by the tones of Mrs. Balchristie's objurgation, sounds in themselves by no means uncommon, but very remarkable, in respect to the early hour at which they were now heard. He turned himself on the other side, however, in hopes the squall would blow by, when, in the course of Mrs. Balchristie's second explosion of wrath, the name of Deans distinctly struck the tympanum of his ear. As he was, in some degree, aware of the small portion of benevolence with which his housekeeper regarded the family at St. Leonard's, he instantly conceived that some message from thence was the cause of this untimely ire, and getting out of his bed, he slipt as speedily as possible into an old brocaded night-gown, and some other necessary garments, clapped on his head his father's gold-laced hat (for though he was seldom seen without it, yet it is proper to contradict the popular report that he slept in it, as Don Quixote did in his helmet), and opening the window of his bedroom, beheld, to his great astonishment, the well-known figure of Jeanie Deans herself retreating from his gate; while his housekeeper, with arms a-kimbo, fist clenched and extended, body erect, and head shaking with rage, sent after her a volley of Billingsgate oaths. His choler rose in proportion to the surprise, and, perhaps, to the disturbance of his repose. "Hark ye," he exclaimed from the window, "ye auld limb of Satan--wha the deil gies you commission to guide an honest man's daughter that gate?" Mrs. Balchristie was completely caught in the manner. She was aware, from the unusual warmth with which the Laird expressed himself, that he was quite serious in this matter, and she knew, that with all his indolence of nature, there were points on which he might be provoked, and that, being provoked, he had in him something dangerous, which her wisdom taught her to fear accordingly. She began, therefore, to retract her false step as fast as she could. "She was but speaking for the house's credit, and she couldna think of disturbing his honour in the morning sae early, when the young woman might as weel wait or call again; and to be sure, she might make a mistake between the twa sisters, for ane o' them wasna sae creditable an acquaintance." "Haud your peace, ye auld jade," said Dumbiedikes; "the warst quean e'er stude in their shoon may ca' you cousin, an a' be true that I have heard.--Jeanie, my woman, gang into the parlour--but stay, that winna be redd up yet--wait there a minute till I come down to let ye in--Dinna mind what Jenny says to ye." "Na, na," said Jenny, with a laugh of affected heartiness, "never mind me, lass--a' the warld kens my bark's waur than my bite--if ye had had an appointment wi' the Laird, ye might hae tauld me--I am nae uncivil person--gang your ways in by, hinny," and she opened the door of the house with a master-key. "But I had no appointment wi' the Laird," said Jeanie, drawing back; "I want just to speak twa words to him, and I wad rather do it standing here, Mrs. Balchristie." "In the open court-yard!--Na, na, that wad never do, lass; we mauna guide ye that gate neither--And how's that douce honest man, your father?" Jeanie was saved the pain of answering this hypocritical question by the appearance of the Laird himself. "Gang in and get breakfast ready," said he to his housekeeper--"and, d'ye hear, breakfast wi' us yoursell--ye ken how to manage thae porringers of tea-water--and, hear ye, see abune a' that there's a gude fire.--Weel, Jeanie, my woman, gang in by--gang in by, and rest ye." "Na, Laird," Jeanie replied, endeavouring as much as she could to express herself with composure, notwithstanding she still trembled, "I canna gang in--I have a lang day's darg afore me--I maun be twenty mile o' gate the night yet, if feet will carry me." "Guide and deliver us!--twenty mile--twenty mile on your feet!" ejaculated Dumbiedikes, whose walks were of a very circumscribed diameter,--"Ye maun never think o' that--come in by." "I canna do that, Laird," replied Jeanie; "the twa words I have to say to ye I can say here; forby that Mrs. Balchristie" "The deil flee awa wi' Mrs. Balchristie," said Dumbiedikes, "and he'll hae a heavy lading o' her! I tell ye, Jeanie Deans, I am a man of few words, but I am laird at hame, as well as in the field; deil a brute or body about my house but I can manage when I like, except Rory Bean, my powny; but I can seldom be at the plague, an it binna when my bluid's up." "I was wanting to say to ye, Laird," said Jeanie, who felt the necessity of entering upon her business, "that I was gaun a lang journey, outby of my father's knowledge." "Outby his knowledge, Jeanie!--Is that right? Ye maun think ot again--it's no right," said Dumbiedikes, with a countenance of great concern. "If I were ance at Lunnon," said Jeanie, in exculpation, "I am amaist sure I could get means to speak to the queen about my sister's life." "Lunnon--and the queen--and her sister's life!" said Dumbiedikes, whistling for very amazement--"the lassie's demented." "I am no out o' my mind," said she, "and sink or swim, I am determined to gang to Lunnon, if I suld beg my way frae door to door--and so I maun, unless ye wad lend me a small sum to pay my expenses--little thing will do it; and ye ken my father's a man of substance, and wad see nae man, far less you, Laird, come to loss by me." Dumbiedikes, on comprehending the nature of this application, could scarce trust his ears--he made no answer whatever, but stood with his eyes rivetted on the ground. "I see ye are no for assisting me, Laird," said Jeanie, "sae fare ye weel--and gang and see my poor father as aften as ye can--he will be lonely eneugh now." "Where is the silly bairn gaun?" said Dumbiedikes; and, laying hold of her hand, he led her into the house. "It's no that I didna think o't before," he said, "but it stack in my throat." Thus speaking to himself, he led her into an old-fashioned parlour, shut the door behind them, and fastened it with a bolt. While Jeanie, surprised at this manoeuvre, remained as near the door as possible, the Laird quitted her hand, and pressed upon a spring lock fixed in an oak panel in the wainscot, which instantly slipped aside. An iron strong-box was discovered in a recess of the wall; he opened this also, and pulling out two or three drawers, showed that they were filled with leathern bags full of gold and silver coin. "This is my bank, Jeanie lass," he said, looking first at her and then at the treasure, with an air of great complacency,--"nane o' your goldsmith's bills for me,--they bring folk to ruin." Then, suddenly changing his tone, he resolutely said,--"Jeanie, I will make ye Lady Dumbiedikes afore the sun sets and ye may ride to Lunnon in your ain coach, if ye like." "Na, Laird," said Jeanie, "that can never be--my father's grief--my sister's situation--the discredit to you" "That's _my_ business," said Dumbiedikes; "ye wad say naething about that if ye werena a fule--and yet I like ye the better for't--ae wise body's eneugh in the married state. But if your heart's ower fu', take what siller will serve ye, and let it be when ye come back again--as gude syne as sune." "But, Laird," said Jeanie, who felt the necessity of being explicit with so extraordinary a lover, "I like another man better than you, and I canna marry ye." "Another man better than me, Jeanie!" said Dumbiedikes; "how is that possible? It's no possible, woman--ye hae ken'd me sae lang." "Ay but, Laird," said Jeanie, with persevering simplicity, "I hae ken'd him langer." "Langer! It's no possible!" exclaimed the poor Laird. "It canna be; ye were born on the land. O Jeanie woman, ye haena lookit--ye haena seen the half o' the gear." He drew out another drawer--"A' gowd, Jeanie, and there's bands for siller lent--And the rental book, Jeanie--clear three hunder sterling--deil a wadset, heritable band, or burden--Ye haena lookit at them, woman--And then my mother's wardrobe, and my grandmother's forby--silk gowns wad stand on their ends, their pearline-lace as fine as spiders' webs, and rings and ear-rings to the boot of a' that--they are a' in the chamber of deas--Oh, Jeanie, gang up the stair and look at them!" [Illustration: Jeanie and the Laird of Dumbiedykes--Frontispiece] But Jeanie held fast her integrity, though beset with temptations, which perhaps the Laird of Dumbiedikes did not greatly err in supposing were those most affecting to her sex. "It canna be, Laird--I have said it--and I canna break my word till him, if ye wad gie me the haill barony of Dalkeith, and Lugton into the bargain." "Your word to _him,_" said the Laird, somewhat pettishly; "but wha is he, Jeanie?--wha is he?--I haena heard his name yet--Come now, Jeanie, ye are but queering us--I am no trowing that there is sic a ane in the warld--ye are but making fashion--What is he?--wha is he?" "Just Reuben Butler, that's schulemaster at Liberton," said Jeanie. "Reuben Butler! Reuben Butler!" echoed the Laird of Dumbiedikes, pacing the apartment in high disdain,--"Reuben Butler, the dominie at Liberton--and a dominie depute too!--Reuben, the son of my cottar!--Very weel, Jeanie lass, wilfu' woman will hae her way--Reuben Butler! he hasna in his pouch the value o' the auld black coat he wears--But it disna signify." And as he spoke, he shut successively and with vehemence the drawers of his treasury. "A fair offer, Jeanie, is nae cause of feud--Ae man may bring a horse to the water, but twenty winna gar him drink--And as for wasting my substance on other folk's joes" There was something in the last hint that nettled Jeanie's honest pride.-- "I was begging nane frae your honour," she said; "least of a' on sic a score as ye pit it on.--Gude morning to ye, sir; ye hae been kind to my father, and it isna in my heart to think otherwise than kindly of you." So saying, she left the room without listening to a faint "But, Jeanie--Jeanie--stay, woman!" and traversing the courtyard with a quick step, she set out on her forward journey, her bosom glowing with that natural indignation and shame, which an honest mind feels at having subjected itself to ask a favour, which had been unexpectedly refused. When out of the Laird's ground, and once more upon the public road, her pace slackened, her anger cooled, and anxious anticipations of the consequence of this unexpected disappointment began to influence her with other feelings. Must she then actually beg her way to London? for such seemed the alternative; or must she turn back, and solicit her father for money? and by doing so lose time, which was precious, besides the risk of encountering his positive prohibition respecting the journey! Yet she saw no medium between these alternatives; and, while she walked slowly on, was still meditating whether it were not better to return. While she was thus in an uncertainty, she heard the clatter of a horse's hoofs, and a well-known voice calling her name. She looked round, and saw advancing towards her on a pony, whose bare back and halter assorted ill with the nightgown, slippers, and laced cocked-hat of the rider, a cavalier of no less importance than Dumbiedikes himself. In the energy of his pursuit, he had overcome even the Highland obstinacy of Rory Bean, and compelled that self-willed palfrey to canter the way his rider chose; which Rory, however, performed with all the symptoms of reluctance, turning his head, and accompanying every bound he made in advance with a sidelong motion, which indicated his extreme wish to turn round,--a manoeuvre which nothing but the constant exercise of the Laird's heels and cudgel could possibly have counteracted. When the Laird came up with Jeanie, the first words he uttered were,--"Jeanie, they say ane shouldna aye take a woman at her first word?" "Ay, but ye maun take me at mine, Laird," said Jeanie, looking on the ground, and walking on without a pause.--"I hae but ae word to bestow on ony body, and that's aye a true ane." "Then," said Dumbiedikes, "at least ye suldna aye take a man at _his_ first word. Ye maunna gang this wilfu' gate sillerless, come o't what like."--He put a purse into her hand. "I wad gie you Rory too, but he's as wilfu' as yoursell, and he's ower weel used to a gate that maybe he and I hae gaen ower aften, and he'll gang nae road else." "But, Laird," said Jeanie, "though I ken my father will satisfy every penny of this siller, whatever there's o't, yet I wadna like to borrow it frae ane that maybe thinks of something mair than the paying o't back again." "There's just twenty-five guineas o't," said Dumbiedikes, with a gentle sigh, "and whether your father pays or disna pay, I make ye free till't without another word. Gang where ye like--do what ye like--and marry a' the Butlers in the country gin ye like--And sae, gude morning to you, Jeanie." "And God bless you, Laird, wi' mony a gude morning!" said Jeanie, her heart more softened by the unwonted generosity of this uncouth character, than perhaps Butler might have approved, had he known her feelings at that moment; "and comfort, and the Lord's peace, and the peace of the world, be with you, if we suld never meet again!" Dumbiedikes turned and waved his hand; and his pony, much more willing to return than he had been to set out, hurried him homeward so fast, that, wanting the aid of a regular bridle, as well as of saddle and stirrups, he was too much puzzled to keep his seat to permit of his looking behind, even to give the parting glance of a forlorn swain. I am ashamed to say, that the sight of a lover, ran away with in nightgown and slippers and a laced hat, by a bare-backed Highland pony, had something in it of a sedative, even to a grateful and deserved burst of affectionate esteem. The figure of Dumbiedikes was too ludicrous not to confirm Jeanie in the original sentiments she entertained towards him. "He's a gude creature," said she, "and a kind--it's a pity he has sae willyard a powny." And she immediately turned her thoughts to the important journey which she had commenced, reflecting with pleasure, that, according to her habits of life and of undergoing fatigue, she was now amply or even superfluously provided with the means of encountering the expenses of the road, up and down from London, and all other expenses whatever. CHAPTER THIRD What strange and wayward thoughts will slide Into a lover's head; "O mercy!" to myself I cried, "If Lucy should be dead!" Wordsworth. In pursuing her solitary journey, our heroine, soon after passing the house of Dumbiedikes, gained a little eminence, from which, on looking to the eastward down a prattling brook, whose meanders were shaded with straggling widows and alder trees, she could see the cottages of Woodend and Beersheba, the haunts and habitation of her early life, and could distinguish the common on which she had so often herded sheep, and the recesses of the rivulet where she had pulled rushes with Butler, to plait crowns and sceptres for her sister Effie, then a beautiful but spoiled child, of about three years old. The recollections which the scene brought with them were so bitter, that, had she indulged them, she would have sate down and relieved her heart with tears. "But I ken'd," said Jeanie, when she gave an account of her pilgrimage, "that greeting would do but little good, and that it was mair beseeming to thank the Lord, that had showed me kindness and countenance by means of a man, that mony ca'd a Nabal, and churl, but wha was free of his gudes to me, as ever the fountain was free of the stream. And I minded the Scripture about the sin of Israel at Meribah, when the people murmured, although Moses had brought water from the dry rock that the congregation might drink and live. Sae, I wad not trust mysell with another look at puir Woodend, for the very blue reek that came out of the lum-head pat me in mind of the change of market days with us." In this resigned and Christian temper she pursued her journey until she was beyond this place of melancholy recollections, and not distant from the village where Butler dwelt, which, with its old-fashioned church and steeple, rises among a tuft of trees, occupying the ridge of an eminence to the south of Edinburgh. At a quarter of a mile's distance is a clumsy square tower, the residence of the Laird of Liberton, who, in former times, with the habits of the predatory chivalry of Germany, is said frequently to have annoyed the city of Edinburgh, by intercepting the supplies and merchandise which came to the town from the southward. This village, its tower, and its church, did not lie precisely in Jeanie's road towards England; but they were not much aside from it, and the village was the abode of Butler. She had resolved to see him in the beginning of her journey, because she conceived him the most proper person to write to her father concerning her resolution and her hopes. There was probably another reason latent in her affectionate bosom. She wished once more to see the object of so early and so sincere an attachment, before commencing a pilgrimage, the perils of which she did not disguise from herself, although she did not allow them so to press upon her mind as to diminish the strength and energy of her resolution. A visit to a lover from a young person in a higher rank of life than Jeanie's, would have had something forward and improper in its character. But the simplicity of her rural habits was unacquainted with these punctilious ideas of decorum, and no notion, therefore, of impropriety crossed her imagination, as, setting out upon a long journey, she went to bid adieu to an early friend. There was still another motive that pressed upon her mind with additional force as she approached the village. She had looked anxiously for Butler in the courthouse, and had expected that, certainly, in some part of that eventful day, he would have appeared to bring such countenance and support as he could give to his old friend, and the protector of his youth, even if her own claims were laid aside. She know, indeed, that he was under a certain degree of restraint; but she still had hoped that he would have found means to emancipate himself from it, at least for one day. In short, the wild and wayward thoughts which Wordsworth has described as rising in an absent lover's imagination, suggested, as the only explanation of his absence, that Butler must be very ill. And so much had this wrought on her imagination, that when she approached the cottage where her lover occupied a small apartment, and which had been pointed out to her by a maiden with a milk-pail on her head, she trembled at anticipating the answer she might receive on inquiring for him. Her fears in this case had, indeed, only hit upon the truth. Butler, whose constitution was naturally feeble, did not soon recover the fatigue of body and distress of mind which he had suffered, in consequence of the tragical events with which our narrative commenced. The painful idea that his character was breathed on by suspicion, was an aggravation to his distress. But the most cruel addition was the absolute prohibition laid by the magistrates on his holding any communication with Deans or his family. It had unfortunately appeared likely to them, that some intercourse might be again attempted with that family by Robertson, through the medium of Butler, and this they were anxious to intercept, or prevent if possible. The measure was not meant as a harsh or injurious severity on the part of the magistrates; but, in Butler's circumstances, it pressed cruelly hard. He felt he must be suffering under the bad opinion of the person who was dearest to him, from an imputation of unkind desertion, the most alien to his nature. This painful thought, pressing on a frame already injured, brought on a succession of slow and lingering feverish attacks, which greatly impaired his health, and at length rendered him incapable even of the sedentary duties of the school, on which his bread depended. Fortunately, old Mr. Whackbairn, who was the principal teacher of the little parochial establishment, was sincerely attached to Butler. Besides that he was sensible of his merits and value as an assistant, which had greatly raised the credit of his little school, the ancient pedagogue, who had himself been tolerably educated, retained some taste for classical lore, and would gladly relax, after the drudgery of the school was over, by conning over a few pages of Horace or Juvenal with his usher. A similarity of taste begot kindness, and accordingly he saw Butler's increasing debility with great compassion, roused up his own energies to teaching the school in the morning hours, insisted upon his assistant's reposing himself at that period, and, besides, supplied him with such comforts as the patient's situation required, and his own means were inadequate to compass. Such was Butler's situation, scarce able to drag himself to the place where his daily drudgery must gain his daily bread, and racked with a thousand fearful anticipations concerning the fate of those who were dearest to him in the world, when the trial and condemnation of Effie Deans put the copestone upon his mental misery. He had a particular account of these events, from a fellow-student who resided in the same village, and who, having been present on the melancholy occasion, was able to place it in all its agony of horrors before his excruciated imagination. That sleep should have visited his eyes after such a curfew-note, was impossible. A thousand dreadful visions haunted his imagination all night, and in the morning he was awaked from a feverish slumber, by the only circumstance which could have added to his distress,--the visit of an intrusive ass. This unwelcome visitant was no other than Bartoline Saddletree. The worthy and sapient burgher had kept his appointment at MacCroskie's with Plumdamas and some other neighbours, to discuss the Duke of Argyle's speech, the justice of Effie Deans's condemnation, and the improbability of her obtaining a reprieve. This sage conclave disputed high and drank deep, and on the next morning Bartoline felt, as he expressed it, as if his head was like a "confused progress of writs." To bring his reflective powers to their usual serenity, Saddle-tree resolved to take a morning's ride upon a certain hackney, which he, Plumdamas, and another honest shopkeeper, combined to maintain by joint subscription, for occasional jaunts for the purpose of business or exercise. As Saddletree had two children boarded with Whackbairn, and was, as we have seen, rather fond of Butler's society, he turned his palfrey's head towards Liberton, and came, as we have already said, to give the unfortunate usher that additional vexation, of which Imogene complains so feelingly, when she says,-- "I'm sprighted with a fool-- Sprighted and anger'd worse." If anything could have added gall to bitterness, it was the choice which Saddletree made of a subject for his prosing harangues, being the trial of Effie Deans, and the probability of her being executed. Every word fell on Butler's ear like the knell of a death-bell, or the note of a screech-owl. Jeanie paused at the door of her lover's humble abode upon hearing the loud and pompous tones of Saddletree sounding from the inner apartment, "Credit me, it will be sae, Mr. Butler. Brandy cannot save her. She maun gang down the Bow wi' the lad in the pioted coat* at her heels.-- * The executioner, in livery of black or dark grey and silver, likened by low wit to a magpie. I am sorry for the lassie, but the law, sir, maun hae its course-- Vivat Rex, Currat Lex, as the poet has it, in whilk of Horace's odes I know not." Here Butler groaned, in utter impatience of the brutality and ignorance which Bartoline had contrived to amalgamate into one sentence. But Saddletree, like other prosers, was blessed with a happy obtuseness of perception concerning the unfavourable impression which he sometimes made on his auditors. He proceeded to deal forth his scraps of legal knowledge without mercy, and concluded by asking Butler, with great self-complacency, "Was it na a pity my father didna send me to Utrecht? Havena I missed the chance to turn out as _clarissimus_ an _ictus,_ as auld Grunwiggin himself?--Whatfor dinna ye speak, Mr. Butler? Wad I no hae been a _clarissimus ictus?_--Eh, man?" "I really do not understand you, Mr. Saddletree," said Butler, thus pushed hard for an answer. His faint and exhausted tone of voice was instantly drowned in the sonorous bray of Bartoline. "No understand me, man? _Ictus_ is Latin for a lawyer, is it not?" "Not that ever I heard of," answered Butler in the same dejected tone. "The deil ye didna!--See, man, I got the word but this morning out of a memorial of Mr. Crossmyloof's--see, there it is, _ictus clarissimus et perti--peritissimus_--it's a' Latin, for it's printed in the Italian types." "O, you mean _juris-consultus--Ictus_ is an abbreviation for _juris-consultus._" "Dinna tell me, man," persevered Saddletree, "there's nae abbreviates except in adjudications; and this is a' about a servitude of water-drap--that is to say, _tillicidian_* (maybe ye'll say that's no Latin neither), in Mary King's Close in the High Street." * He meant, probably, _stillicidium._ "Very likely," said poor Butler, overwhelmed by the noisy perseverance of his visitor. "Iam not able to dispute with you." "Few folk are--few folk are, Mr. Butler, though I say it that shouldna say it," returned Bartoline with great delight. "Now, it will be twa hours yet or ye're wanted in the schule, and as ye are no weel, I'll sit wi' you to divert ye, and explain t'ye the nature of a _tillicidian._ Ye maun ken, the petitioner, Mrs. Crombie, a very decent woman, is a friend of mine, and I hae stude her friend in this case, and brought her wi' credit into the court, and I doubtna that in due time she will win out o't wi' credit, win she or lose she. Ye see, being an inferior tenement or laigh house, we grant ourselves to be burdened wi' the _tillicide,_ that is, that we are obligated to receive the natural water-drap of the superior tenement, sae far as the same fa's frae the heavens, or the roof of our neighbour's house, and from thence by the gutters or eaves upon our laigh tenement. But the other night comes a Highland quean of a lass, and she flashes, God kens what, out at the eastmost window of Mrs. MacPhail's house, that's the superior tenement. I believe the auld women wad hae agreed, for Luckie MacPhail sent down the lass to tell my friend Mrs. Crombie that she had made the gardyloo out of the wrang window, out of respect for twa Highlandmen that were speaking Gaelic in the close below the right ane. But luckily for Mrs. Crombie, I just chanced to come in in time to break aff the communing, for it's a pity the point suldna be tried. We had Mrs. MacPhail into the Ten-Mark Court--The Hieland limmer of a lass wanted to swear herself free--but haud ye there, says I." The detailed account of this important suit might have lasted until poor Butler's hour of rest was completely exhausted, had not Saddletree been interrupted by the noise of voices at the door. The woman of the house where Butler lodged, on returning with her pitcher from the well, whence she had been fetching water for the family, found our heroine Jeanie Deans standing at the door, impatient of the prolix harangue of Saddletree, yet unwilling to enter until he should have taken his leave. The good woman abridged the period of hesitation by inquiring, "Was ye wanting the gudeman or me, lass?" "I wanted to speak with Mr. Butler, if he's at leisure," replied Jeanie. "Gang in by then, my woman," answered the goodwife; and opening the door of a room, she announced the additional visitor with, "Mr. Butler, here's a lass wants to speak t'ye." The surprise of Butler was extreme, when Jeanie, who seldom stirred half-a-mile from home, entered his apartment upon this annunciation. "Good God!" he said, starting from his chair, while alarm restored to his cheek the colour of which sickness had deprived it; "some new misfortune must have happened!" "None, Mr. Reuben, but what you must hae heard of--but oh, ye are looking ill yoursell!"--for the "hectic of a moment" had not concealed from her affectionate eyes the ravages which lingering disease and anxiety of mind had made in her lover's person. "No: I am well--quite well," said Butler with eagerness; "if I can do anything to assist you, Jeanie--or your father." "Ay, to be sure," said Saddletree; "the family may be considered as limited to them twa now, just as if Effie had never been in the tailzie, puir thing. But, Jeanie lass, what brings you out to Liberton sae air in the morning, and your father lying ill in the Luckenbooths?" "I had a message frae my father to Mr. Butler," said Jeanie with embarrassment; but instantly feeling ashamed of the fiction to which she had resorted, for her love of and veneration for truth was almost Quaker-like, she corrected herself--"That is to say, I wanted to speak with Mr. Butler about some business of my father's and puir Effie's." "Is it law business?" said Bartoline; "because if it be, ye had better take my opinion on the subject than his." "It is not just law business," said Jeanie, who saw considerable inconvenience might arise from letting Mr. Saddletree into the secret purpose of her journey; "but I want Mr. Butler to write a letter for me." "Very right," said Mr. Saddletree; "and if ye'll tell me what it is about, I'll dictate to Mr. Butler as Mr. Crossmyloof does to his clerk.--Get your pen and ink in initialibus, Mr. Butler." Jeanie looked at Butler, and wrung her hands with vexation and impatience. "I believe, Mr. Saddletree," said Butler, who saw the necessity of getting rid of him at all events, "that Mr. Whackbairn will be somewhat affronted if you do not hear your boys called up to their lessons." "Indeed, Mr. Butler, and that's as true; and I promised to ask a half play-day to the schule, so that the bairns might gang and see the hanging, which canna but have a pleasing effect on their young minds, seeing there is no knowing what they may come to themselves.--Odd so, I didna mind ye were here, Jeanie Deans; but ye maun use yoursell to hear the matter spoken o'.--Keep Jeanie here till I come back, Mr. Butler; I winna bide ten minutes." And with this unwelcome assurance of an immediate return, he relieved them of the embarrassment of his presence. "Reuben," said Jeanie, who saw the necessity of using the interval of his absence in discussing what had brought her there, "I am bound on a lang journey--I am gaun to Lunnon to ask Effie's life of the king and of the queen." "Jeanie! you are surely not yourself," answered Butler, in the utmost surprise;--"_you_ go to London--_you_ address the king and queen!" "And what for no, Reuben?" said Jeanie, with all the composed simplicity of her character; "it's but speaking to a mortal man and woman when a' is done. And their hearts maun be made o' flesh and blood like other folk's, and Effie's story wad melt them were they stane. Forby, I hae heard that they are no sic bad folk as what the Jacobites ca' them." "Yes, Jeanie," said Butler; "but their magnificence--their retinue--the difficulty of getting audience?" "I have thought of a' that, Reuben, and it shall not break my spirit. Nae doubt their claiths will be very grand, wi' their crowns on their heads, and their sceptres in their hands, like the great King Ahasuerus when he sate upon his royal throne fornent the gate of his house, as we are told in Scripture. But I have that within me that will keep my heart from failing, and I am amaist sure that I will be strengthened to speak the errand I came for." "Alas! alas!" said Butler, "the kings now-a-days do not sit in the gate to administer justice, as in patriarchal times. I know as little of courts as you do, Jeanie, by experience; but by reading and report I know, that the King of Britain does everything by means of his ministers." "And if they be upright, God-fearing ministers," said Jeanie, "it's sae muckle the better chance for Effie and me." "But you do not even understand the most ordinary words relating to a court," said Butler; "by the ministry is meant not clergymen, but the king's official servants." "Nae doubt," returned Jeanie, "he maun hae a great number mair, I daur to say, than the duchess has at Dalkeith, and great folk's servants are aye mair saucy than themselves. But I'll be decently put on, and I'll offer them a trifle o' siller, as if I came to see the palace. Or, if they scruple that, I'll tell them I'm come on a business of life and death, and then they will surely bring me to speech of the king and queen?" Butler shook his head. "O Jeanie, this is entirely a wild dream. You can never see them but through some great lord's intercession, and I think it is scarce possible even then." "Weel, but maybe I can get that too," said Jeanie, "with a little helping from you." "From me, Jeanie! this is the wildest imagination of all." "Ay, but it is not, Reuben. Havena I heard you say, that your grandfather (that my father never likes to hear about) did some gude langsyne to the forbear of this MacCallummore, when he was Lord of Lorn?" "He did so," said Butler, eagerly, "and I can prove it.--I will write to the Duke of Argyle--report speaks him a good kindly man, as he is known for a brave soldier and true patriot--I will conjure him to stand between your sister and this cruel fate. There is but a poor chance of success, but we will try all means." "We _must_ try all means," replied Jeanie; "but writing winna do it--a letter canna look, and pray, and beg, and beseech, as the human voice can do to the human heart. A letter's like the music that the ladies have for their spinets--naething but black scores, compared to the same tune played or sung. It's word of mouth maun do it, or naething, Reuben." "You are right," said Reuben, recollecting his firmness, "and I will hope that Heaven has suggested to your kind heart and firm courage the only possible means of saving the life of this unfortunate girl. But, Jeanie, you must not take this most perilous journey alone; I have an interest in you, and I will not agree that my Jeanie throws herself away. You must even, in the present circumstances, give me a husband's right to protect you, and I will go with you myself on this journey, and assist you to do your duty by your family." "Alas, Reuben!" said Jeanie in her turn, "this must not be; a pardon will not gie my sister her fair fame again, or make me a bride fitting for an honest man and an usefu' minister. Wha wad mind what he said in the pu'pit, that had to wife the sister of a woman that was condemned for sic wickedness?" "But, Jeanie," pleaded her lover, "I do not believe, and I cannot believe, that Effie has done this deed." "Heaven bless ye for saying sae, Reuben," answered Jeanie; "but she maun bear the blame o't after all." "But the blame, were it even justly laid on her, does not fall on you." "Ah, Reuben, Reuben," replied the young woman, "ye ken it is a blot that spreads to kith and kin.--Ichabod--as my poor father says--the glory is departed from our house; for the poorest man's house has a glory, where there are true hands, a divine heart, and an honest fame--And the last has gane frae us a." "But, Jeanie, consider your word and plighted faith to me; and would you undertake such a journey without a man to protect you?--and who should that protector be but your husband?" "You are kind and good, Reuben, and wad take me wi' a' my shame, I doubtna. But ye canna but own that this is no time to marry or be given in marriage. Na, if that suld ever be, it maun be in another and a better season.--And, dear Reuben, ye speak of protecting me on my journey--Alas! who will protect and take care of you?--your very limbs tremble with standing for ten minutes on the floor; how could you undertake a journey as far as Lunnon?" "But I am strong--I am well," continued Butler, sinking in his seat totally exhausted, "at least I shall be quite well to-morrow." "Ye see, and ye ken, ye maun just let me depart," said Jeanie, after a pause; and then taking his extended hand, and gazing kindly in his face, she added, "It's e'en a grief the mair to me to see you in this way. But ye maun keep up your heart for Jeanie's sake, for if she isna your wife, she will never be the wife of living man. And now gie me the paper for MacCallummore, and bid God speed me on my way." There was something of romance in Jeanie's venturous resolution; yet, on consideration, as it seemed impossible to alter it by persuasion, or to give her assistance but by advice, Butler, after some farther debate, put into her hands the paper she desired, which, with the muster-roll in which it was folded up, were the sole memorials of the stout and enthusiastic Bible Butler, his grandfather. While Butler sought this document, Jeanie had time to take up his pocket Bible. "I have marked a scripture," she said, as she again laid it down, "with your kylevine pen, that will be useful to us baith. And ye maun tak the trouble, Reuben, to write a' this to my father, for, God help me, I have neither head nor hand for lang letters at ony time, forby now; and I trust him entirely to you, and I trust you will soon be permitted to see him. And, Reuben, when ye do win to the speech o' him, mind a' the auld man's bits o' ways, for Jeanie's sake; and dinna speak o' Latin or English terms to him, for he's o' the auld warld, and downa bide to be fashed wi' them, though I daresay he may be wrang. And dinna ye say muckle to him, but set him on speaking himself, for he'll bring himsell mair comfort that way. And O, Reuben, the poor lassie in yon dungeon!--but I needna bid your kind heart--gie her what comfort ye can as soon as they will let ye see her--tell her--But I maunna speak mair about her, for I maunna take leave o' ye wi' the tear in my ee, for that wouldna be canny.--God bless ye, Reuben!" To avoid so ill an omen she left the room hastily, while her features yet retained the mournful and affectionate smile which she had compelled them to wear, in order to support Butler's spirits. It seemed as if the power of sight, of speech, and of reflection, had left him as she disappeared from the room, which she had entered and retired from so like an apparition. Saddletree, who entered immediately afterwards, overwhelmed him with questions, which he answered without understanding them, and with legal disquisitions, which conveyed to him no iota of meaning. At length the learned burgess recollected that there was a Baron Court to be, held at Loanhead that day, and though it was hardly worth while, "he might as weel go to see if there was onything doing, as he was acquainted with the baron bailie, who was a decent man, and would be glad of a word of legal advice." So soon as he departed, Butler flew to the Bible, the last book which Jeanie had touched. To his extreme surprise, a paper, containing two or three pieces of gold, dropped from the book. With a black-lead pencil, she had marked the sixteenth and twenty-fifth verses of the thirty-seventh Psalm,--"A little that a righteous man hath, is better than the riches of the wicked."--"I have been young and am now old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread." Deeply impressed with the affectionate delicacy which shrouded its own generosity under the cover of a providential supply to his wants, he pressed the gold to his lips with more ardour than ever the metal was greeted with by a miser. To emulate her devout firmness and confidence seemed now the pitch of his ambition, and his first task was to write an account to David Deans of his daughter's resolution and journey southward. He studied every sentiment, and even every phrase, which he thought could reconcile the old man to her extraordinary resolution. The effect which this epistle produced will be hereafter adverted to. Butler committed it to the charge of an honest clown, who had frequent dealings with Deans in the sale of his dairy produce, and who readily undertook a journey to Edinburgh to put the letter into his own hands.* * By dint of assiduous research I am enabled to certiorate the reader, that the name of this person was Saunders Broadfoot, and that he dealt in the wholesome commodity called kirn-milk (_Anglice',_ butter-milk).-- J. C. CHAPTER FOURTH. "My native land, good night." Lord Byron. In the present day, a journey from Edinburgh to London is a matter at once safe, brief, and simple, however inexperienced or unprotected the traveller. Numerous coaches of different rates of charge, and as many packets, are perpetually passing and repassing betwixt the capital of Britain and her northern sister, so that the most timid or indolent may execute such a journey upon a few hours' notice. But it was different in 1737. So slight and infrequent was the intercourse betwixt London and Edinburgh, that men still alive remember that upon one occasion the mail from the former city arrived at the General Post-Office in Scotland with only one letter in it.* * The fact is certain. The single epistle was addressed to the principal director of the British Linen Company. The usual mode of travelling was by means of post-horses, the traveller occupying one, and his guide another, in which manner, by relays of horses from stage to stage, the journey might be accomplished in a wonderfully short time by those who could endure fatigue. To have the bones shaken to pieces by a constant change of those hacks was a luxury for the rich--the poor were under the necessity of using the mode of conveyance with which nature had provided them. With a strong heart, and a frame patient of fatigue, Jeanie Deans, travelling at the rate of twenty miles a-day, and sometimes farther, traversed the southern part of Scotland, and advanced as far as Durham. Hitherto she had been either among her own country-folk, or those to whom her bare feet and tartan screen were objects too familiar to attract much attention. But as she advanced, she perceived that both circumstances exposed her to sarcasm and taunts, which she might otherwise have escaped; and although in her heart she thought it unkind, and inhospitable, to sneer at a passing stranger on account of the fashion of her attire, yet she had the good sense to alter those parts of her dress which attracted ill-natured observation. Her chequed screen was deposited carefully in her bundle, and she conformed to the national extravagance of wearing shoes and stockings for the whole day. She confessed afterwards, that, "besides the wastrife, it was lang or she could walk sae comfortably with the shoes as without them; but there was often a bit saft heather by the road-side, and that helped her weel on." The want of the screen, which was drawn over the head like a veil, she supplied by a _bon-grace,_ as she called it; a large straw bonnet like those worn by the English maidens when labouring in the fields. "But I thought unco shame o' mysell," she said, "the first time I put on a married woman's _bon-grace,_ and me a single maiden." With these changes she had little, as she said, to make "her kenspeckle when she didna speak," but her accent and language drew down on her so many jests and gibes, couched in a worse _patois_ by far than her own, that she soon found it was her interest to talk as little and as seldom as possible. She answered, therefore, civil salutations of chance passengers with a civil courtesy, and chose, with anxious circumspection, such places of repose as looked at once most decent and sequestered. She found the common people of England, although inferior in courtesy to strangers, such as was then practised in her own more unfrequented country, yet, upon the whole, by no means deficient in the real duties of hospitality. She readily obtained food, and shelter, and protection at a very moderate rate, which sometimes the generosity of mine host altogether declined, with a blunt apology,--"Thee hast a long way afore thee, lass; and I'se ne'er take penny out o' a single woman's purse; it's the best friend thou can have on the road." It often happened, too, that mine hostess was struck with "the tidy, nice Scotch body," and procured her an escort, or a cast in a waggon, for some part of the way, or gave her a useful advice and recommendation respecting her resting-places. At York our pilgrim stopped for the best part of a day, partly to recruit her strength,--partly because she had the good luck to obtain a lodging in an inn kept by a countrywoman,--partly to indite two letters to her father and Reuben Butler; an operation of some little difficulty, her habits being by no means those of literary composition. That to her father was in the following words.-- "Dearest Father,--I make my present pilgrimage more heavy and burdensome, through the sad occasion to reflect that it is without your knowledge, which, God knows, was far contrary to my heart; for Scripture says, that 'the vow of the daughter should not be binding without the consent of the father,' wherein it may be I have been guilty to tak this wearie journey without your consent. Nevertheless, it was borne in upon my mind that I should be an instrument to help my poor sister in this extremity of needcessity, otherwise I wad not, for wealth or for world's gear, or for the haill lands of Da'keith and Lugton, have done the like o' this, without your free will and knowledge. Oh, dear father, as ye wad desire a blessing on my journey, and upon your household, speak a word or write a line of comfort to yon poor prisoner. If she has sinned, she has sorrowed and suffered, and ye ken better than me, that we maun forgie others, as we pray to be forgien. Dear father, forgive my saying this muckle, for it doth not become a young head to instruct grey hairs; but I am sae far frae ye, that my heart yearns to ye a', and fain wad I hear that ye had forgien her trespass, and sae I nae doubt say mair than may become me. The folk here are civil, and, like the barbarians unto the holy apostle, hae shown me much kindness; and there are a sort of chosen people in the land, for they hae some kirks without organs that are like ours, and are called meeting-houses, where the minister preaches without a gown. But most of the country are prelatists, whilk is awfu' to think; and I saw twa men that were ministers following hunds, as bauld as Roslin or Driden, the young Laird of Loup-the-dike, or ony wild gallant in Lothian. A sorrowfa' sight to behold! Oh, dear father, may a blessing be with your down-lying and up-rising, and remember in your prayers your affectionate daughter to command, "Jean Deans." A postscript bore, "I learned from a decent woman, a grazier's widow, that they hae a cure for the muir-ill in Cumberland, whilk is ane pint, as they ca't, of yill, whilk is a dribble in comparison of our gawsie Scots pint, and hardly a mutchkin, boiled wi' sope and hartshorn draps, and toomed doun the creature's throat wi' ane whorn. Ye might try it on the bauson-faced year-auld quey; an it does nae gude, it can do nae ill.-- She was a kind woman, and seemed skeely about horned beasts. When I reach Lunnon, I intend to gang to our cousin Mrs. Glass, the tobacconist, at the sign o' the Thistle, wha is so ceevil as to send you down your spleuchan-fu' anes a year; and as she must be well kend in Lunnon, I doubt not easily to find out where she lives." Being seduced into betraying our heroine's confidence thus far, we will stretch our communication a step beyond, and impart to the reader her letter to her lover. "Mr. Reuben Butler,--Hoping this will find you better, this comes to say, that I have reached this great town safe, and am not wearied with walking, but the better for it. And I have seen many things which I trust to tell you one day, also the muckle kirk of this place; and all around the city are mills, whilk havena muckle wheels nor mill-dams, but gang by the wind--strange to behold. Ane miller asked me to gang in and see it work, but I wad not, for I am not come to the south to make acquaintance with strangers. I keep the straight road, and just beck if onybody speaks to me ceevilly, and answers naebody with the tong but women of my ain sect. I wish, Mr. Butler, I kend onything that wad mak ye weel, for they hae mair medicines in this town of York than wad cure a' Scotland, and surely some of them wad be gude for your complaints. If ye had a kindly motherly body to nurse ye, and no to let ye waste yoursell wi' reading--whilk ye read mair than eneugh wi' the bairns in the schule--and to gie ye warm milk in the morning, I wad be mair easy for ye. Dear Mr. Butler, keep a good heart, for we are in the hands of Ane that kens better what is gude for us than we ken what is for oursells. I hae nae doubt to do that for which I am come--I canna doubt it--I winna think to doubt it--because, if I haena full assurance, how shall I bear myself with earnest entreaties in the great folk's presence? But to ken that ane's purpose is right, and to make their heart strong, is the way to get through the warst day's darg. The bairns' rime says, the warst blast of the borrowing days* couldna kill the three silly poor hog-lams. * The last three days of March, old style, are called the Borrowing Days; for, as they are remarked to be unusually stormy, it is feigned that March had borrowed them from April, to extend the sphere of his rougher sway. The rhyme on the subject is quoted in the glossary to Leyden's edition of the "Complaynt of Scotland"-- [March said to Aperill, I see three hogs upon a hill, A young sheep before it has lost its first fleece. But when the borrowed days were gane The three silly hogs came hirplin hame.] "And if it be God's pleasure, we that are sindered in sorrow may meet again in joy, even on this hither side of Jordan. I dinna bid ye mind what I said at our partin' anent my poor father, and that misfortunate lassie, for I ken you will do sae for the sake of Christian charity, whilk is mair than the entreaties of her that is your servant to command, "Jeanie Deans." This letter also had a postscript. "Dear Reuben, If ye think that it wad hae been right for me to have said mair and kinder things to ye, just think that I hae written sae, since I am sure that I wish a' that is kind and right to ye and by ye. Ye will think I am turned waster, for I wear clean hose and shoon every day; but it's the fashion here for decent bodies and ilka land has it's ain landlaw. Ower and aboon a', if laughing days were e'er to come back again till us, ye wad laugh weel to see my round face at the far end of a strae _bon-grace,_ that looks as muckle and round as the middell aisle in Libberton Kirk. But it sheds the sun weel aff, and keeps uncivil folk frae staring as if ane were a worrycow. I sall tell ye by writ how I come on wi' the Duke of Argyle, when I won up to Lunnon. Direct a line, to say how ye are, to me, to the charge of Mrs. Margaret Glass, tobacconist, at the sign of the Thistle, Lunnon, whilk, if it assures me of your health, will make my mind sae muckle easier. Excuse bad spelling and writing, as I have ane ill pen." The orthography of these epistles may seem to the southron to require a better apology than the letter expresses, though a bad pen was the excuse of a certain Galwegian laird for bad spelling; but, on behalf of the heroine, I would have them to know, that, thanks to the care of Butler, Jeanie Deans wrote and spelled fifty times better than half the women of rank in Scotland at that period, whose strange orthography and singular diction form the strongest contrast to the good sense which their correspondence usually intimates. For the rest, in the tenor of these epistles, Jeanie expressed, perhaps, more hopes, a firmer courage, and better spirits, than she actually felt. But this was with the amiable idea of relieving her father and lover from apprehensions on her account, which she was sensible must greatly add to their other troubles. "If they think me weel, and like to do weel," said the poor pilgrim to herself, "my father will be kinder to Effie, and Butler will be kinder to himself. For I ken weel that they will think mair o' me than I do o' mysell." Accordingly, she sealed her letters carefully, and put them into the post-office with her own hand, after many inquiries concerning the time in which they were likely to reach Edinburgh. When this duty was performed, she readily accepted her landlady's pressing invitation to dine with her, and remain till the next morning. The hostess, as we have said, was her countrywoman, and the eagerness with which Scottish people meet, communicate, and, to the extent of their power, assist each other, although it is often objected to us as a prejudice and narrowness of sentiment, seems, on the contrary, to arise from a most justifiable and honourable feeling of patriotism, combined with a conviction, which, if undeserved, would long since have been confuted by experience, that the habits and principles of the nation are a sort of guarantee for the character of the individual. At any rate, if the extensive influence of this national partiality be considered as an additional tie, binding man to man, and calling forth the good offices of such as can render them to the countryman who happens to need them, we think it must be found to exceed, as an active and efficient motive, to generosity, that more impartial and wider principle of general benevolence, which we have sometimes seen pleaded as an excuse for assisting no individual whatever. Mrs. Bickerton, lady of the ascendant of the Seven Stars, in the Castle-gate, York, was deeply infected with the unfortunate prejudices of her country. Indeed, she displayed so much kindness to Jeanie Deans (because she herself, being a Merse woman, _marched_ with Mid-Lothian, in which Jeanie was born), showed such motherly regard to her, and such anxiety for her farther progress, that Jeanie thought herself safe, though by temper sufficiently cautious, in communicating her whole story to her. Mrs. Bickerton raised her hands and eyes at the recital, and exhibited much wonder and pity. But she also gave some effectual good advice. She required to know the strength of Jeanie's purse, reduced by her deposit at Liberton, and the necessary expense of her journey, to about fifteen pounds. "This," she said, "would do very well, providing she would carry it a' safe to London." "Safe!" answered Jeanie; "I'se warrant my carrying it safe, bating the needful expenses." "Ay, but highwaymen, lassie," said Mrs. Bickerton; "for ye are come into a more civilised, that is to say, a more roguish country than the north, and how ye are to get forward, I do not profess to know. If ye could wait here eight days, our waggons would go up, and I would recommend you to Joe Broadwheel, who would see you safe to the Swan and two Necks. And dinna sneeze at Joe, if he should be for drawing up wi' you" (continued Mrs. Bickerton, her acquired English mingling with her national or original dialect), "he's a handy boy, and a wanter, and no lad better thought o' on the road; and the English make good husbands enough, witness my poor man, Moses Bickerton, as is i' the kirkyard." Jeanie hastened to say, that she could not possibly wait for the setting forth of Joe Broadwheel; being internally by no means gratified with the idea of becoming the object of his attention during the journey, "Aweel, lass," answered the good landlady, "then thou must pickle in thine ain poke-nook, and buckle thy girdle thine ain gate. But take my advice, and hide thy gold in thy stays, and keep a piece or two and some silver, in case thou be'st spoke withal; for there's as wud lads haunt within a day's walk from hence, as on the braes of Doune in Perthshire. And, lass, thou maunna gang staring through Lunnon, asking wha kens Mrs. Glass at the sign o' the Thistle; marry, they would laugh thee to scorn. But gang thou to this honest man," and she put a direction into Jeanie's hand, "he kens maist part of the sponsible Scottish folk in the city, and he will find out your friend for thee." Jeanie took the little introductory letter with sincere thanks; but, something alarmed on the subject of the highway robbers, her mind recurred to what Ratcliffe had mentioned to her, and briefly relating the circumstances which placed a document so extraordinary in her hands, she put the paper he had given her into the hand of Mrs. Bickerton. The Lady of the Seven Stars did not indeed ring a bell, because such was not the fashion of the time, but she whistled on a silver call, which was hung by her side, and a tight serving-maid entered the room. "Tell Dick Ostler to come here," said Mrs. Bickerton. Dick Ostler accordingly made his appearance;--a queer, knowing, shambling animal, with a hatchet-face, a squint, a game-arm, and a limp. "Dick Ostler," said Mrs. Bickerton, in a tone of authority that showed she was (at least by adoption) Yorkshire too, "thou knowest most people and most things o' the road." "Eye, eye, God help me, mistress," said Dick, shrugging his shoulders betwixt a repentant and a knowing expression--"Eye! I ha' know'd a thing or twa i' ma day, mistress." He looked sharp and laughed--looked grave and sighed, as one who was prepared to take the matter either way. "Kenst thou this wee bit paper amang the rest, man?" said Mrs. Bickerton, handing him the protection which Ratcliffe had given Jeanie Deans. When Dick had looked at the paper, he winked with one eye, extended his grotesque mouth from ear to ear, like a navigable canal, scratched his head powerfully, and then said, "Ken!--ay--maybe we ken summat, an it werena for harm to him, mistress!" "None in the world," said Mrs. Bickerton; "only a dram of Hollands to thyself, man, an thou wilt speak." "Why, then," said Dick, giving the head-band of his breeches a knowing hoist with one hand, and kicking out one foot behind him to accommodate the adjustment of that important habiliment, "I dares to say the pass will be kend weel eneugh on the road, an that be all." "But what sort of a lad was he?" said Mrs. Bickerton, winking to Jeanie, as proud of her knowing Ostler. "Why, what ken I?--Jim the Rat--why he was Cock o' the North within this twelmonth--he and Scotch Wilson, Handle Dandie, as they called him--but he's been out o' this country a while, as I rackon; but ony gentleman, as keeps the road o' this side Stamford, will respect Jim's pass." Without asking farther questions, the landlady filled Dick Ostler a bumper of Hollands. He ducked with his head and shoulders, scraped with his more advanced hoof, bolted the alcohol, to use the learned phrase, and withdrew to his own domains. "I would advise thee, Jeanie," said Mrs. Bickerton, "an thou meetest with ugly customers o' the road, to show them this bit paper, for it will serve thee, assure thyself." A neat little supper concluded the evening. The exported Scotswoman, Mrs. Bickerton by name, ate heartily of one or two seasoned dishes, drank some sound old ale, and a glass of stiff negus; while she gave Jeanie a history of her gout, admiring how it was possible that she, whose fathers and mothers for many generations had been farmers in Lammermuir, could have come by a disorder so totally unknown to them. Jeanie did not choose to offend her friendly landlady, by speaking her mind on the probable origin of this complaint; but she thought on the flesh-pots of Egypt, and, in spite of all entreaties to better fare, made her evening meal upon vegetables, with a glass of fair water. Mrs. Bickerton assured her, that the acceptance of any reckoning was entirely out of the question, furnished her with credentials to her correspondent in London, and to several inns upon the road where she had some influence or interest, reminded her of the precautions she should adopt for concealing her money, and as she was to depart early in the morning, took leave of her very affectionately, taking her word that she would visit her on her return to Scotland, and tell her how she had managed, and that summum bonum for a gossip, "all how and about it." This Jeanie faithfully promised. CHAPTER FIFTH. And Need and Misery, Vice and Danger, bind, In sad alliance, each degraded mind. As our traveller set out early on the ensuing morning to prosecute her journey, and was in the act of leaving the innyard, Dick Ostler, who either had risen early or neglected to go to bed, either circumstance being equally incident to his calling, hollowed out after her,--"The top of the morning to you, Moggie. Have a care o' Gunderby Hill, young one. Robin Hood's dead and gwone, but there be takers yet in the vale of Bever. Jeanie looked at him as if to request a farther explanation, but, with a leer, a shuffle, and a shrug, inimitable (unless by Emery*), Dick turned again to the raw-boned steed which he was currying, and sung as he employed the comb and brush,-- "Robin Hood was a yeoman right good, And his bow was of trusty yew; And if Robin said stand on the king's lea-land, Pray, why should not we say so too?" * [John Emery, an eminent comedian, played successfully at Covent Garden Theatre between 1798 and 1820. Among his characters, were those of Dandie Dinmont in _Guy Mannering,_ Dougal in _Rob Roy,_ and Ratcliffe in the Heart of _Mid-Lothian._] Jeanie pursued her journey without farther inquiry, for there was nothing in Dick's manner that inclined her to prolong their conference. A painful day's journey brought her to Ferrybridge, the best inn, then and since, upon the great northern road; and an introduction from Mrs. Bickerton, added to her own simple and quiet manners, so propitiated the landlady of the Swan in her favour, that the good dame procured her the convenient accommodation of a pillion and post-horse then returning to Tuxford, so that she accomplished, upon the second day after leaving York, the longest journey she had yet made. She was a good deal fatigued by a mode of travelling to which she was less accustomed than to walking, and it was considerably later than usual on the ensuing morning that she felt herself able to resume her pilgrimage. At noon the hundred-armed Trent, and the blackened ruins of Newark Castle, demolished in the great civil war, lay before her. It may easily be supposed, that Jeanie had no curiosity to make antiquarian researches, but, entering the town, went straight to the inn to which she had been directed at Ferrybridge. While she procured some refreshment, she observed the girl who brought it to her, looked at her several times with fixed and peculiar interest, and at last, to her infinite surprise, inquired if her name was not Deans, and if she was not a Scotchwoman, going to London upon justice business. Jeanie, with all her simplicity of character, had some of the caution of her country, and, according to Scottish universal custom, she answered the question by another, requesting the girl would tell her why she asked these questions? The Maritornes of the Saracen's Head, Newark, replied, "Two women had passed that morning, who had made inquiries after one Jeanie Deans, travelling to London on such an errand, and could scarce be persuaded that she had not passed on." Much surprised and somewhat alarmed (for what is inexplicable is usually alarming), Jeanie questioned the wench about the particular appearance of these two women, but could only learn that the one was aged, and the other young; that the latter was the taller, and that the former spoke most, and seemed to maintain an authority over her companion, and that both spoke with the Scottish accent. This conveyed no information whatever, and with an indescribable presentiment of evil designed towards her, Jeanie adopted the resolution of taking post-horses for the next stage. In this, however, she could not be gratified; some accidental circumstances had occasioned what is called a run upon the road, and the landlord could not accommodate her with a guide and horses. After waiting some time, in hopes that a pair of horses that had gone southward would return in time for her use, she at length, feeling ashamed at her own pusillanimity, resolved to prosecute her journey in her usual manner. "It was all plain road," she was assured, "except a high mountain called Gunnerby Hill, about three miles from Grantham, which was her stage for the night. "I'm glad to hear there's a hill," said Jeanie, "for baith my sight and my very feet are weary o' sic tracts o' level ground--it looks a' the way between this and York as if a' the land had been trenched and levelled, whilk is very wearisome to my Scotch een. When I lost sight of a muckle blue hill they ca' Ingleboro', I thought I hadna a friend left in this strange land." "As for the matter of that, young woman," said mine host, "an you be so fond o' hill, I carena an thou couldst carry Gunnerby away with thee in thy lap, for it's a murder to post-horses. But here's to thy journey, and mayst thou win well through it, for thou is a bold and a canny lass." So saying, he took a powerful pull at a solemn tankard of home-brewed ale. "I hope there is nae bad company on the road, sir?" said Jeanie. "Why, when it's clean without them I'll thatch Groby pool wi' pancakes. But there arena sae mony now; and since they hae lost Jim the Rat, they hold together no better than the men of Marsham when they lost their common. Take a drop ere thou goest," he concluded, offering her the tankard; "thou wilt get naething at night save Grantham gruel, nine grots and a gallon of water." Jeanie courteously declined the tankard, and inquired what was her "lawing?" "Thy lawing! Heaven help thee, wench! what ca'st thou that?" "It is--I was wanting to ken what was to pay," replied Jeanie. "Pay? Lord help thee!--why nought, woman--we hae drawn no liquor but a gill o' beer, and the Saracen's Head can spare a mouthful o' meat to a stranger like o' thee, that cannot speak Christian language. So here's to thee once more. The same again, quoth Mark of Bellgrave," and he took another profound pull at the tankard. The travellers who have visited Newark more lately, will not fail to remember the remarkably civil and gentlemanly manners of the person who now keeps the principal inn there, and may find some amusement in contrasting them with those of his more rough predecessor. But we believe it will be found that the polish has worn off none of the real worth of the metal. Taking leave of her Lincolnshire Gaius, Jeanie resumed her solitary walk, and was somewhat alarmed when evening and twilight overtook her in the open ground which extends to the foot of Gunnerby Hill, and is intersected with patches of copse and with swampy spots. The extensive commons on the north road, most of which are now enclosed, and in general a relaxed state of police, exposed the traveller to a highway robbery in a degree which is now unknown, except in the immediate vicinity of the metropolis. Aware of this circumstance, Jeanie mended her pace when she heard the trampling of a horse behind, and instinctively drew to one side of the road, as if to allow as much room for the rider to pass as might be possible. When the animal came up, she found that it was bearing two women, the one placed on a side-saddle, the other on a pillion behind her, as may still occasionally be seen in England. "A braw good-night to ye, Jeanie Deans," said the foremost female as the horse passed our heroine; "What think ye o' yon bonny hill yonder, lifting its brow to the moon? Trow ye yon's the gate to heaven, that ye are sae fain of?--maybe we will win there the night yet, God sain us, though our minny here's rather dreigh in the upgang." The speaker kept changing her seat in the saddle, and half stopping the horse as she brought her body round, while the woman that sate behind her on the pillion seemed to urge her on, in words which Jeanie heard but imperfectly. "Hand your tongue, ye moon-raised b----! what is your business with ----, or with heaven or hell either?" "Troth, mither, no muckle wi' heaven, I doubt, considering wha I carry ahint me--and as for hell, it will fight its ain battle at its ain time, I'se be bound.--Come, naggie, trot awa, man, an as thou wert a broomstick, for a witch rides thee-- With my curtch on my foot, and my shoe on my hand, I glance like the wildfire through brugh and through land." The tramp of the horse, and the increasing distance, drowned the rest of her song, but Jeanie heard for some time the inarticulate sounds ring along the waste. Our pilgrim remained stupified with undefined apprehensions. The being named by her name in so wild a manner, and in a strange country, without farther explanation or communing, by a person who thus strangely flitted forward and disappeared before her, came near to the supernatural sounds in Comus:-- The airy tongues, which syllable men's names On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses. And although widely different in features, deportment, and rank, from the Lady of that enchanting masque, the continuation of the passage may be happily applied to Jeanie Deans upon this singular alarm:-- These thoughts may startle well, but not astound The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended By a strong siding champion--Conscience. In fact, it was, with the recollection of the affectionate and dutiful errand on which she was engaged, her right, if such a word could be applicable, to expect protection in a task so meritorious. She had not advanced much farther, with a mind calmed by these reflections, when she was disturbed by a new and more instant subject of terror. Two men, who had been lurking among some copse, started up as she advanced, and met her on the road in a menacing manner. "Stand and deliver," said one of them, a short stout fellow, in a smock-frock, such as are worn by waggoners. "The woman," said the other, a tall thin figure, "does not understand the words of action.--Your money, my precious, or your life." "I have but very little money, gentlemen," said poor Jeanie, tendering that portion which she had separated from her principal stock, and kept apart for such an emergency; "but if you are resolved to have it, to be sure you must have it." "This won't do, my girl. D--n me, if it shall pass!" said the shorter ruffian; "do ye think gentlemen are to hazard their lives on the road to be cheated in this way? We'll have every farthing you have got, or we will strip you to the skin, curse me." His companion, who seemed to have something like compassion for the horror which Jeanie's countenance now expressed, said, "No, no, Tom, this is one of the precious sisters, and we'll take her word, for once, without putting her to the stripping proof--Hark ye, my lass, if ye look up to heaven, and say, this is the last penny you have about ye, why, hang it, we'll let you pass." "I am not free," answered Jeanie, "to say what I have about me, gentlemen, for there's life and death depends on my journey; but if you leave me as much as finds me bread and water, I'll be satisfied, and thank you, and pray for you." "D--n your prayers!" said the shorter fellow, "that's a coin that won't pass with us;" and at the same time made a motion to seize her. "Stay, gentlemen," Ratcliffe's pass suddenly occurring to her; "perhaps you know this paper." "What the devil is she after now, Frank?" said the more savage ruffian--"Do you look at it, for, d--n me if I could read it if it were for the benefit of my clergy." "This is a jark from Jim Ratcliffe," said the taller, having looked at the bit of paper. "The wench must pass by our cutter's law." "I say no," answered his companion; "Rat has left the lay, and turned bloodhound, they say." "We may need a good turn from him all the same," said the taller ruffian again. "But what are we to do then?" said the shorter man--"We promised, you know, to strip the wench, and send her begging back to her own beggarly country, and now you are for letting her go on." "I did not say that," said the other fellow, and whispered to his companion, who replied, "Be alive about it then, and don't keep chattering till some travellers come up to nab us." "You must follow us off the road, young woman," said the taller. "For the love of God!" exclaimed Jeanie, "as you were born of woman, dinna ask me to leave the road! rather take all I have in the world." "What the devil is the wench afraid of?" said the other fellow. "I tell you you shall come to no harm; but if you will not leave the road and come with us, d--n me, but I'll beat your brains out where you stand." "Thou art a rough bear, Tom," said his companion.--"An ye touch her, I'll give ye a shake by the collar shall make the Leicester beans rattle in thy guts.--Never mind him, girl; I will not allow him to lay a finger on you, if you walk quietly on with us; but if you keep jabbering there, d--n me, but I'll leave him to settle it with you." This threat conveyed all that is terrible to the imagination of poor Jeanie, who saw in him that "was of milder mood" her only protection from the most brutal treatment. She, therefore, not only followed him, but even held him by the sleeve, lest he should escape from her; and the fellow, hardened as he was, seemed something touched by these marks of confidence, and repeatedly assured her, that he would suffer her to receive no harm. They conducted their prisoner in a direction leading more and more from the public road, but she observed that they kept a sort of track or by-path, which relieved her from part of her apprehensions, which would have been greatly increased had they not seemed to follow a determined and ascertained route. After about half-an-hour's walking, all three in profound silence, they approached an old barn, which stood on the edge of some cultivated ground, but remote from everything like a habitation. It was itself, however, tenanted, for there was light in the windows. One of the footpads scratched at the door, which was opened by a female, and they entered with their unhappy prisoner. An old woman, who was preparing food by the assistance of a stifling fire of lighted charcoal, asked them, in the name of the devil, what they brought the wench there for, and why they did not strip her and turn her abroad on the common? "Come, come, Mother Blood," said the tall man, "we'll do what's right to oblige you, and we'll do no more; we are bad enough, but not such as you would make us,--devils incarnate." "She has got a jark from Jim Ratcliffe," said the short fellow, "and Frank here won't hear of our putting her through the mill." "No, that I will not, by G--d!" answered Frank; "but if old Mother Blood could keep her here for a little while, or send her back to Scotland, without hurting her, why, I see no harm in that--not I." "I'll tell you what, Frank Levitt," said the old woman, "if you call me Mother Blood again, I'll paint this gully" (and she held a knife up as if about to make good her threat) "in the best blood in your body, my bonny boy." "The price of ointment must be up in the north," said Frank, "that puts Mother Blood so much out of humour." Without a moment's hesitation the fury darted her knife at him with the vengeful dexterity of a wild Indian. As he was on his guard, he avoided the missile by a sudden motion of his head, but it whistled past his ear, and stuck deep in the clay wall of a partition behind. "Come, come, mother," said the robber, seizing her by both wrists, "I shall teach you who's master;" and so saying, he forced the hag backwards by main force, who strove vehemently until she sunk on a bunch of straw, and then, letting go her hands, he held up his finger towards her in the menacing posture by which a maniac is intimidated by his keeper. It appeared to produce the desired effect; for she did not attempt to rise from the seat on which he had placed her, or to resume any measures of actual violence, but wrung her withered hands with impotent rage, and brayed and howled like a demoniac. "I will keep my promise with you, you old devil," said Frank; "the wench shall not go forward on the London road, but I will not have you touch a hair of her head, if it were but for your insolence." This intimation seemed to compose in some degree the vehement passion of the old hag; and while her exclamations and howls sunk into a low, maundering, growling tone of voice, another personage was added to this singular party. "Eh, Frank Levitt," said this new-comer, who entered with a hop, step, and jump, which at once conveyed her from the door into the centre of the party, "were ye killing our mother? or were ye cutting the grunter's weasand that Tam brought in this morning? or have ye been reading your prayers backward, to bring up my auld acquaintance the deil amang ye?" The tone of the speaker was so particular, that Jeanie immediately recognised the woman who had rode foremost of the pair which passed her just before she met the robbers; a circumstance which greatly increased her terror, as it served to show that the mischief designed against her was premeditated, though by whom, or for what cause, she was totally at a loss to conjecture. From the style of her conversation, the reader also may probably acknowledge in this female an old acquaintance in the earlier part of our narrative. "Out, ye mad devil!" said Tom, whom she had disturbed in the middle of a draught of some liquor with which he had found means of accommodating himself; "betwixt your Bess of Bedlam pranks, and your dam's frenzies, a man might live quieter in the devil's ken than here."--And he again resumed the broken jug out of which he had been drinking. "And wha's this o't?" said the mad woman, dancing up to Jeanie Deans, who, although in great terror, yet watched the scene with a resolution to let nothing pass unnoticed which might be serviceable in assisting her to escape, or informing her as to the true nature of her situation, and the danger attending it,--"Wha's this o't?" again exclaimed Madge Wildfire. "Douce Davie Deans, the auld doited whig body's daughter, in a gipsy's barn, and the night setting in? This is a sight for sair een!--Eh, sirs, the falling off o' the godly!--and the t'other sister's in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh; I am very sorry for her, for my share--it's my mother wusses ill to her, and no me--though maybe I hae as muckle cause." "Hark ye, Madge," said the taller ruffian, "you have not such a touch of the devil's blood as the hag your mother, who may be his dam for what I know--take this young woman to your kennel, and do not let the devil enter, though he should ask in God's name." "Ou ay; that I will, Frank," said Madge, taking hold of Jeanie by the arm, and pulling her along; "for it's no for decent Christian young leddies, like her and me, to be keeping the like o' you and Tyburn Tam company at this time o' night. Sae gude-e'en t'ye, sirs, and mony o' them; and may ye a' sleep till the hangman wauken ye, and then it will be weel for the country." She then, as her wild fancy seemed suddenly to prompt her, walked demurely towards her mother, who, seated by the charcoal fire, with the reflection of the red light on her withered and distorted features marked by every evil passion, seemed the very picture of Hecate at her infernal rites; and, suddenly dropping on her knees, said, with the manner of a six years' old child, "Mammie, hear me say my prayers before I go to bed, and say God bless my bonny face, as ye used to do lang syne." "The deil flay the hide o' it to sole his brogues wi'!" said the old lady, aiming a buffet at the supplicant, in answer to her duteous request. The blow missed Madge, who, being probably acquainted by experience with the mode in which her mother was wont to confer her maternal benedictions, slipt out of arm's length with great dexterity and quickness. The hag then started up, and, seizing a pair of old fire-tongs, would have amended her motion, by beating out the brains either of her daughter or Jeanie (she did not seem greatly to care which), when her hand was once more arrested by the man whom they called Frank Levitt, who, seizing her by the shoulder, flung her from him with great violence, exclaiming, "What, Mother Damnable--again, and in my sovereign presence!--Hark ye, Madge of Bedlam! get to your hole with your playfellow, or we shall have the devil to pay here, and nothing to pay him with." Madge took Levitt's advice, retreating as fast as she could, and dragging Jeanie along with her into a sort of recess, partitioned off from the rest of the barn, and filled with straw, from which it appeared that it was intended for the purpose of slumber. The moonlight shone, through an open hole, upon a pillion, a pack-saddle, and one or two wallets, the travelling furniture of Madge and her amiable mother.--"Now, saw ye e'er in your life," said Madge, "sae dainty a chamber of deas? see as the moon shines down sae caller on the fresh strae! There's no a pleasanter cell in Bedlam, for as braw a place as it is on the outside.--Were ye ever in Bedlam?" "No," answered Jeanie faintly, appalled by the question, and the way in which it was put, yet willing to soothe her insane companion, being in circumstances so unhappily precarious, that even the society of this gibbering madwoman seemed a species of protection. "Never in Bedlam?" said Madge, as if with some surprise.--"But ye'll hae been in the cells at Edinburgh!" "Never," repeated Jeanie. "Weel, I think thae daft carles the magistrates send naebody to Bedlam but me--thae maun hae an unco respect for me, for whenever I am brought to them, thae aye hae me back to Bedlam. But troth, Jeanie" (she said this in a very confidential tone), "to tell ye my private mind about it, I think ye are at nae great loss; for the keeper's a cross-patch, and he maun hae it a' his ain gate, to be sure, or he makes the place waur than hell. I often tell him he's the daftest in a' the house.--But what are they making sic a skirling for?--Deil ane o' them's get in here--it wadna be mensfu'! I will sit wi' my back again the door; it winna be that easy stirring me." "Madge!"--"Madge!"--"Madge Wildfire!"--"Madge devil! what have ye done with the horse?" was repeatedly asked by the men without. "He's e'en at his supper, puir thing," answered Madge; "deil an ye were at yours, too, an it were scauding brimstone, and then we wad hae less o' your din." "His supper!" answered the more sulky ruffian--"What d'ye mean by that!--Tell me where he is, or I will knock your Bedlam brains out!" "He's in Gaffer Gablewood's wheat-close, an ye maun ken." "His wheat-close, you crazed jilt!" answered the other, with an accent of great indignation. "O, dear Tyburn Tam, man, what ill will the blades of the young wheat do to the puir nag?" "That is not the question," said the other robber; "but what the country will say to us to-morrow, when they see him in such quarters?--Go, Tom, and bring him in; and avoid the soft ground, my lad; leave no hoof-track behind you." "I think you give me always the fag of it, whatever is to be done," grumbled his companion. "Leap, Laurence, you're long enough," said the other; and the fellow left the barn accordingly, without farther remonstrance. In the meanwhile, Madge had arranged herself for repose on the straw; but still in a half-sitting posture, with her back resting against the door of the hovel, which, as it opened inwards, was in this manner kept shut by the weight of the person. "There's mair shifts by stealing, Jeanie," said Madge Wildfire; "though whiles I can hardly get our mother to think sae. Wha wad hae thought but mysell of making a bolt of my ain back-bane? But it's no sae strong as thae that I hae seen in the Tolbooth at Edinburgh. The hammermen of Edinburgh are to my mind afore the warld for making stancheons, ring-bolts, fetter-bolts, bars, and locks. And they arena that bad at girdles for carcakes neither, though the Cu'ross hammermen have the gree for that. My mother had ance a bonny Cu'ross girdle, and I thought to have baked carcakes on it for my puir wean that's dead and gane nae fair way--But we maun a' dee, ye ken, Jeanie--You Cameronian bodies ken that brawlies; and ye're for making a hell upon earth that ye may be less unwillin' to part wi' it. But as touching Bedlam that ye were speaking about, I'se ne'er recommend it muckle the tae gate or the other, be it right--be it wrang. But ye ken what the sang says." And, pursuing the unconnected and floating wanderings of her mind, she sung aloud-- "In the bonny cells of Bedlam, Ere I was ane-and-twenty, I had hempen bracelets strong, And merry whips, ding-dong, And prayer and fasting plenty. "Weel, Jeanie, I am something herse the night, and I canna sing muckle mair; and troth, I think, I am gaun to sleep." She drooped her head on her breast, a posture from which Jeanie, who would have given the world for an opportunity of quiet to consider the means and the probability of her escape, was very careful not to disturb her. After nodding, however, for a minute'or two, with her eyes half-closed, the unquiet and restless spirit of her malady again assailed Madge. She raised her head, and spoke, but with a lowered tone, which was again gradually overcome by drowsiness, to which the fatigue of a day's journey on horseback had probably given unwonted occasion,--"I dinna ken what makes me sae sleepy--I amaist never sleep till my bonny Lady Moon gangs till her bed--mair by token, when she's at the full, ye ken, rowing aboon us yonder in her grand silver coach--I have danced to her my lane sometimes for very joy--and whiles dead folk came and danced wi' me--the like o' Jock Porteous, or ony body I had ken'd when I was living--for ye maun ken I was ance dead mysell." Here the poor maniac sung, in a low and wild tone, "My banes are buried in yon kirkyard Sae far ayont the sea, And it is but my blithesome ghaist That's speaking now to thee. "But after a', Jeanie, my woman, naebody kens weel wha's living and wha's dead--or wha's gone to Fairyland--there's another question. Whiles I think my puir bairn's dead--ye ken very weel it's buried--but that signifies naething. I have had it on my knee a hundred times, and a hundred till that, since it was buried--and how could that be were it dead, ye ken?--it's merely impossible."--And here, some conviction half-overcoming the reveries of her imagination, she burst into a fit of crying and ejaculation, "Wae's me! wae's me! wae's me!" till at length she moaned and sobbed herself into a deep sleep, which was soon intimated by her breathing hard, leaving Jeanie to her own melancholy reflections and observations. CHAPTER SIXTH. Bind her quickly; or, by this steel, I'll tell, although I truss for company. Fletcher. The imperfect light which shone into the window enabled Jeanie to see that there was scarcely any chance of making her escape in that direction; for the aperture was high in the wall, and so narrow, that, could she have climbed up to it, she might well doubt whether it would have permitted her to pass her body through it. An unsuccessful attempt to escape would be sure to draw down worse treatment than she now received, and she, therefore, resolved to watch her opportunity carefully ere making such a perilous effort. For this purpose she applied herself to the ruinous clay partition, which divided the hovel in which she now was from the rest of the waste barn. It was decayed and full of cracks and chinks, one of which she enlarged with her fingers, cautiously and without noise, until she could obtain a plain view of the old hag and the taller ruffian, whom they called Levitt, seated together beside the decayed fire of charcoal, and apparently engaged in close conference. She was at first terrified by the sight; for the features of the old woman had a hideous cast of hardened and inveterate malice and ill-humour, and those of the man, though naturally less unfavourable, were such as corresponded well with licentious habits, and a lawless profession. "But I remembered," said Jeanie, "my worthy fathers tales of a winter evening, how he was confined with the blessed martyr, Mr. James Renwick, who lifted up the fallen standard of the true reformed Kirk of Scotland, after the worthy and renowned Daniel Cameron, our last blessed banner-man, had fallen among the swords of the wicked at Airsmoss, and how the very hearts of the wicked malefactors and murderers, whom they were confined withal, were melted like wax at the sound of their doctrine: and I bethought mysell, that the same help that was wi' them in their strait, wad be wi' me in mine, an I could but watch the Lord's time and opportunity for delivering my feet from their snare; and I minded the Scripture of the blessed Psalmist, whilk he insisteth on, as weel in the forty-second as in the forty-third psalm--'Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.'" Strengthened in a mind naturally calm, sedate, and firm, by the influence of religious confidence, this poor captive was enabled to attend to, and comprehend, a great part of an interesting conversation which passed betwixt those into whose hands she had fallen, notwithstanding that their meaning was partly disguised by the occasional use of cant terms, of which Jeanie knew not the import, by the low tone in which they spoke, and by their mode of supplying their broken phrases by shrugs and signs, as is usual amongst those of their disorderly profession. The man opened the conversation by saying, "Now, dame, you see I am true to my friend. I have not forgot that you _planked a chury,_* which helped me through the bars of the Castle of York, and I came to do your work without asking questions; for one good turn deserves another. * Concealed a knife. But now that Madge, who is as loud as Tom of Lincoln, is somewhat still, and this same Tyburn Neddie is shaking his heels after the old nag, why, you must tell me what all this is about, and what's to be done--for d--n me if I touch the girl, or let her be touched, and she with Jim Rat's pass, too." "Thou art an honest lad, Frank," answered the old woman, "but e'en too good for thy trade; thy tender heart will get thee into trouble. I will see ye gang up Holborn Hill backward, and a' on the word of some silly loon that could never hae rapped to ye had ye drawn your knife across his weasand." "You may be balked there, old one," answered the robber; "I have known many a pretty lad cut short in his first summer upon the road, because he was something hasty with his flats and sharps. Besides, a man would fain live out his two years with a good conscience. So, tell me what all this is about, and what's to be done for you that one can do decently?" "Why, you must know, Frank--but first taste a snap of right Hollands." She drew a flask from her pocket, and filled the fellow a large bumper, which he pronounced to be the right thing.--"You must know, then, Frank--wunna ye mend your hand?" again offering the flask. "No, no,--when a woman wants mischief from you, she always begins by filling you drunk. D--n all Dutch courage. What I do I will do soberly--I'll last the longer for that too." "Well, then, you must know," resumed the old woman, without any further attempts at propitiation, "that this girl is going to London." Here Jeanie could only distinguish the word sister. The robber answered in a louder tone, "Fair enough that; and what the devil is your business with it?" "Business enough, I think. If the b--queers the noose, that silly cull will marry her." "And who cares if he does?" said the man. "Who cares, ye donnard Neddie! I care; and I will strangle her with my own hands, rather than she should come to Madge's preferment." "Madge's preferment! Does your old blind eyes see no farther than that? If he is as you say, dye think he'll ever marry a moon-calf like Madge? Ecod, that's a good one--Marry Madge Wildfire!--Ha! ha! ha!" "Hark ye, ye crack-rope padder, born beggar, and bred thief!" replied the hag, "suppose he never marries the wench, is that a reason he should marry another, and that other to hold my daughter's place, and she crazed, and I a beggar, and all along of him? But I know that of him will hang him--I know that of him will hang him, if he had a thousand lives--I know that of him will hang--hang--hang him!" She grinned as she repeated and dwelt upon the fatal monosyllable, with the emphasis of a vindictive fiend. "Then why don't you hang--hang--hang him?" said Frank, repeating her words contemptuously. "There would be more sense in that, than in wreaking yourself here upon two wenches that have done you and your daughter no ill." "No ill?" answered the old woman--"and he to marry this jail-bird, if ever she gets her foot loose!" "But as there is no chance of his marrying a bird of your brood, I cannot, for my soul, see what you have to do with all this," again replied the robber, shrugging his shoulders. "Where there is aught to be got, I'll go as far as my neighbours, but I hate mischief for mischiefs sake." "And would you go nae length for revenge?" said the hag--"for revenge--the sweetest morsel to the mouth that over was cooked in hell!" "The devil may keep it for his own eating, then," said the robber; "for hang me if I like the sauce he dresses it with." "Revenge!" continued the old woman; "why, it is the best reward the devil gives us for our time here and hereafter. I have wrought hard for it--I have suffered for it--and I have sinned for it--and I will have it,--or there is neither justice in heaven or in hell!" Levitt had by this time lighted a pipe, and was listening with great composure to the frantic and vindictive ravings of the old hag. He was too much, hardened by his course of life to be shocked with them--too indifferent, and probably too stupid, to catch any part of their animation or energy. "But, mother," he said, after a pause, "still I say, that if revenge is your wish, you should take it on the young fellow himself." "I wish I could," she said, drawing in her breath, with the eagerness of a thirsty person while mimicking the action of drinking--"I wish I could--but no--I cannot--I cannot." "And why not?--You would think little of peaching and hanging him for this Scotch affair.--Rat me, one might have milled the Bank of England, and less noise about it." "I have nursed him at this withered breast," answered the old woman, folding her hands on her bosom, as if pressing an infant to it, "and, though he has proved an adder to me--though he has been the destruction of me and mine--though he has made me company for the devil, if there be a devil, and food for hell, if there be such a place, yet I cannot take his life.--No, I cannot," she continued, with an appearance of rage against herself; "I have thought of it--I have tried it--but, Francis Levitt, I canna gang through wi't--Na, na--he was the first bairn I ever nurst--ill I had been--and man can never ken what woman feels for the bairn she has held first to her bosom!" "To be sure," said Levitt, "we have no experience; but, mother, they say you ha'n't been so kind to other bairns, as you call them, that have come in your way.--Nay, d--n me, never lay your hand on the whittle, for I am captain and leader here, and I will have no rebellion." The hag, whose first motion had been, upon hearing the question, to grasp the haft of a large knife, now unclosed her hand, stole it away from the weapon, and suffered it to fall by her side, while she proceeded with a sort of smile--"Bairns! ye are joking, lad--wha wad touch bairns? Madge, puir thing, had a misfortune wi' ane--and the t'other"--Here her voice sunk so much, that Jeanie, though anxiously upon the watch, could not catch a word she said, until she raised her tone at the conclusion of the sentence--"So Madge, in her daffin', threw it into the Nor'-lock, I trow." Madge, whose slumbers, like those of most who labour under mental malady, had been short, and were easily broken, now made herself heard from her place of repose. "Indeed, mother, that's a great lie, for I did nae sic thing." "Hush, thou hellicat devil," said her mother--"By Heaven! the other wench will be waking too." "That may be dangerous," said Frank; and he rose, and followed Meg Murdockson across the floor. "Rise," said the hag to her daughter, "or I sall drive the knife between the planks into the Bedlam back of thee!" Apparently she at the same time seconded her threat by pricking her with the point of a knife, for Madge, with a faint scream, changed her place, and the door opened. [Illustration: Jennie in the Outlaws Hut--80] The old woman held a candle in one hand, and a knife in the other. Levitt appeared behind her, whether with a view of preventing, or assisting her in any violence she might meditate, could not be well guessed. Jeanie's presence of mind stood her friend in this dreadful crisis. She had resolution enough to maintain the attitude and manner of one who sleeps profoundly, and to regulate even her breathing, notwithstanding the agitation of instant terror, so as to correspond with her attitude. The old woman passed the light across her eyes; and although Jeanie's fears were so powerfully awakened by this movement, that she often declared afterwards, that she thought she saw the figures of her destined murderers through her closed eyelids, she had still the resolution to maintain the feint, on which her safety perhaps depended. Levitt looked at her with fixed attention; he then turned the old woman out of the place, and followed her himself. Having regained the outward apartment, and seated themselves, Jeanie heard the highwayman say, to her no small relief, "She's as fast as if she were in Bedfordshire.--Now, old Meg, d--n me if I can understand a glim of this story of yours, or what good it will do you to hang the one wench and torment the other; but, rat me, I will be true to my friend, and serve ye the way ye like it. I see it will be a bad job; but I do think I could get her down to Surfleet on the Wash, and so on board Tom Moonshine's neat lugger, and keep her out of the way three or four weeks, if that will please ye--But d--n me if any one shall harm her, unless they have a mind to choke on a brace of blue plums.--It's a cruel, bad job, and I wish you and it, Meg, were both at the devil." "Never mind, hinny Levitt," said the old woman; "you are a ruffler, and will have a' your ain gate--She shanna gang to heaven an hour sooner for me; I carena whether she live or die--it's her sister--ay, her sister!" "Well, we'll say no more about it; I hear Tom coming in. We'll couch a hogshead,* and so better had you." * Lay ourselves down to sleep. They retired to repose accordingly, and all was silent in this asylum of iniquity. Jeanie lay for a long time awake. At break of day she heard the two ruffians leave the barn, after whispering to the old woman for some time. The sense that she was now guarded by persons of her own sex gave her some confidence, and irresistible lassitude at length threw her into slumber. When the captive awakened, the sun was high in heaven, and the morning considerably advanced. Madge Wildfire was still in the hovel which had served them for the night, and immediately bid her good-morning, with her usual air of insane glee. "And dye ken, lass," said Madge, "there's queer things chanced since ye hae been in the land of Nod. The constables hae been here, woman, and they met wi' my minnie at the door, and they whirl'd her awa to the Justice's about the man's wheat.--Dear! thae English churls think as muckle about a blade of wheat or grass, as a Scotch laird does about his maukins and his muir-poots. Now, lass, if ye like, we'll play them a fine jink; we will awa out and take a walk--they will mak unco wark when they miss us, but we can easily be back by dinner time, or before dark night at ony rate, and it will be some frolic and fresh air.--But maybe ye wad like to take some breakfast, and then lie down again? I ken by mysell, there's whiles I can sit wi' my head in my hand the haill day, and havena a word to cast at a dog--and other whiles, that I canna sit still a moment. That's when the folk think me warst, but I am aye canny eneugh--ye needna be feared to walk wi' me." Had Madge Wildfire been the most raging lunatic, instead of possessing a doubtful, uncertain, and twilight sort of rationality, varying, probably, from the influence of the most trivial causes, Jeanie would hardly have objected to leave a place of captivity, where she had so much to apprehend. She eagerly assured Madge that she had no occasion for further sleep, no desire whatever for eating; and, hoping internally that she was not guilty of sin in doing so, she flattered her keeper's crazy humour for walking in the woods. "It's no a'thegither for that neither," said poor Madge; "but I am judging ye will wun the better out o' thae folk's hands; no that they are a'thegither bad folk neither, but they have queer ways wi' them, and I whiles dinna think it has ever been weel wi' my mother and me since we kept sic-like company." With the haste, the joy, the fear, and the hope of a liberated captive, Jeanie snatched up her little bundle, followed Madge into the free air, and eagerly looked round her for a human habitation; but none was to be seen. The ground was partly cultivated, and partly left in its natural state, according as the fancy of the slovenly agriculturists had decided. In its natural state it was waste, in some places covered with dwarf trees and bushes, in others swamp, and elsewhere firm and dry downs or pasture grounds. Jeanie's active mind next led her to conjecture which way the high-road lay, whence she had been forced. If she regained that public road, she imagined she must soon meet some person, or arrive at some house, where she might tell her story, and request protection. But, after a glance around her, she saw with regret that she had no means whatever of directing her course with any degree of certainty, and that she was still in dependence upon her crazy companion. "Shall we not walk upon the high-road?" said she to Madge, in such a tone as a nurse uses to coax a child. "It's brawer walking on the road than amang thae wild bushes and whins." Madge, who was walking very fast, stopped at this question, and looked at Jeanie with a sudden and scrutinising glance, that seemed to indicate complete acquaintance with her purpose. "Aha, lass!" she exclaimed, "are ye gaun to guide us that gate?--Ye'll be for making your heels save your head, I am judging." Jeanie hesitated for a moment, on hearing her companion thus express herself, whether she had not better take the hint, and try to outstrip and get rid of her. But she knew not in which direction to fly; she was by no means sure that she would prove the swiftest, and perfectly conscious that in the event of her being pursued and overtaken, she would be inferior to the madwoman in strength. She therefore gave up thoughts for the present of attempting to escape in that manner, and, saying a few words to allay Madge's suspicions, she followed in anxious apprehension the wayward path by which her guide thought proper to lead her. Madge, infirm of purpose, and easily reconciled to the present scene, whatever it was, began soon to talk with her usual diffuseness of ideas. "It's a dainty thing to be in the woods on a fine morning like this! I like it far better than the town, for there isna a wheen duddie bairns to be crying after ane, as if ane were a warld's wonder, just because ane maybe is a thought bonnier and better put-on than their neighbours--though, Jeanie, ye suld never be proud o' braw claiths, or beauty neither--wae's me! they're but a snare--I ance thought better o'them, and what came o't?" "Are ye sure ye ken the way ye are taking us?" said Jeanie, who began to imagine that she was getting deeper into the woods and more remote from the high-road. "Do I ken the road?--Wasna I mony a day living here, and what for shouldna I ken the road? I might hae forgotten, too, for it was afore my accident; but there are some things ane can never forget, let them try it as muckle as they like." By this time they had gained the deepest part of a patch of woodland. The trees were a little separated from each other, and at the foot of one of them, a beautiful poplar, was a hillock of moss, such as the poet of Grasmere has described. So soon as she arrived at this spot, Madge Wildfire, joining her hands above her head with a loud scream that resembled laughter, flung herself all at once upon the spot, and remained lying there motionless. Jeanie's first idea was to take the opportunity of flight; but her desire to escape yielded for a moment to apprehension for the poor insane being, who, she thought, might perish for want of relief. With an effort, which in her circumstances, might be termed heroic, she stooped down, spoke in a soothing tone, and endeavoured to raise up the forlorn creature. She effected this with difficulty, and as she placed her against the tree in a sitting posture, she observed with surprise, that her complexion, usually florid, was now deadly pale, and that her face was bathed in tears. Notwithstanding her own extreme danger, Jeanie was affected by the situation of her companion; and the rather, that, through the whole train of her wavering and inconsistent state of mind and line of conduct, she discerned a general colour of kindness towards herself, for which she felt gratitude. "Let me alane!--let me alane!" said the poor young woman, as her paroxysm of sorrow began to abate--"Let me alane--it does me good to weep. I canna shed tears but maybe ance or twice a year, and I aye come to wet this turf with them, that the flowers may grow fair, and the grass may be green." "But what is the matter with you?" said Jeanie--"Why do you weep so bitterly?" "There's matter enow," replied the lunatic,--"mair than ae puir mind can bear, I trow. Stay a bit, and I'll tell you a' about it; for I like ye, Jeanie Deans--a'body spoke weel about ye when we lived in the Pleasaunts-- And I mind aye the drink o' milk ye gae me yon day, when I had been on Arthur's Seat for four-and-twenty hours, looking for the ship that somebody was sailing in." These words recalled to Jeanie's recollection, that, in fact, she had been one morning much frightened by meeting a crazy young woman near her father's house at an early hour, and that, as she appeared to be harmless, her apprehension had been changed into pity, and she had relieved the unhappy wanderer with some food, which she devoured with the haste of a famished person. The incident, trifling in itself, was at present of great importance, if it should be found to have made a favourable and permanent impression in her favour on the mind of the object of her charity. "Yes," said Madge, "I'll tell ye a' about it, for ye are a decent man's daughter--Douce Davie Deans, ye ken--and maybe ye'll can teach me to find out the narrow way, and the straight path, for I have been burning bricks in Egypt, and walking through the weary wilderness of Sinai, for lang and mony a day. But whenever I think about mine errors, I am like to cover my lips for shame."--Here she looked up and smiled.--"It's a strange thing now--I hae spoke mair gude words to you in ten minutes, than I wad speak to my mother in as mony years--it's no that I dinna think on them--and whiles they are just at my tongue's end, but then comes the devil, and brushes my lips with his black wing, and lays his broad black loof on my mouth--for a black loof it is, Jeanie--and sweeps away a' my gude thoughts, and dits up my gude words, and pits a wheen fule sangs and idle vanities in their place." "Try, Madge," said Jeanie,--"try to settle your mind and make your breast clean, and you'll find your heart easier.--Just resist the devil, and he will flee from you--and mind that, as my worthy father tells me, there is nae devil sae deceitfu' as our ain wandering thoughts." "And that's true too, lass," said Madge, starting up; "and I'll gang a gate where the devil daurna follow me; and it's a gate that you will like dearly to gang--but I'll keep a fast haud o' your arm, for fear Apollyon should stride across the path, as he did in the Pilgrim's Progress." Accordingly she got up, and, taking Jeanie by the arm, began to walk forward at a great pace; and soon, to her companion's no small joy, came into a marked path, with the meanders of which she seemed perfectly acquainted. Jeanie endeavoured to bring her back to the confessional, but the fancy was gone by. In fact, the mind of this deranged being resembled nothing so much as a quantity of dry leaves, which may for a few minutes remain still, but are instantly discomposed and put in motion by the first casual breath of air. She had now got John Bunyan's parable into her head, to the exclusion of everything else, and on she went with great volubility. "Did ye never read the Pilgrim's Progress? And you shall be the woman, Christiana, and I will be the maiden, Mercy--for ye ken Mercy was of the fairer countenance, and the more alluring than her companion--and if I had my little messan dog here, it would be Great-heart, their guide, ye ken, for he was e'en as bauld, that he wad bark at ony thing twenty times his size; and that was e'en the death of him, for he bit Corporal MacAlpine's heels ae morning when they were hauling me to the guard-house, and Corporal MacAlpine killed the bit faithfu' thing wi' his Lochaber axe--deil pike the Highland banes o' him." "O fie! Madge," said Jeanie, "ye should not speak such words." "It's very true," said Madge, shaking her head; "but then I maunna think o' my puir bit doggie, Snap, when I saw it lying dying in the gutter. But it's just as weel, for it suffered baith cauld and hunger when it was living, and in the grave there is rest for a' things--rest for the doggie, and my puir bairn, and me." "Your bairn?" said Jeanie, conceiving that by speaking on such a topic, supposing it to be a real one, she could not fail to bring her companion to a more composed temper. She was mistaken, however, for Madge coloured, and replied with some anger, "_My_ bairn? ay, to be sure, my bairn. Whatfor shouldna I hae a bairn and lose a bairn too, as weel as your bonnie tittie, the Lily of St. Leonard's?" The answer struck Jeanie with some alarm, and she was anxious to soothe the irritation she had unwittingly given occasion to. "I am very sorry for your misfortune" "Sorry! what wad ye be sorry for?" answered Madge. "The bairn was a blessing--that is, Jeanie, it wad hae been a blessing if it hadna been for my mother; but my mother's a queer woman.--Ye see, there was an auld carle wi' a bit land, and a gude clat o' siller besides, just the very picture of old Mr. Feeblemind or Mr. Ready-to-halt, that Great-heart delivered from Slaygood the giant, when he was rifling him and about to pick his bones, for Slaygood was of the nature of the flesh-eaters--and Great-heart killed Giant Despair too--but I am doubting Giant Despair's come alive again, for a' the story book--I find him busy at my heart whiles." "Weel, and so the auld carle," said Jeanie, for she was painfully interested in getting to the truth of Madge's history, which she could not but suspect was in some extraordinary way linked and entwined with the fate of her sister. She was also desirous, if possible, to engage her companion in some narrative which might be carried on in a lower tone of voice, for she was in great apprehension lest the elevated notes of Madge's conversation should direct her mother or the robbers in search of them. "And so the auld carle," said Madge, repeating her words--"I wish ye had seen him stoiting about, aff ae leg on to the other, wi' a kind o' dot-and-go-one sort o' motion, as if ilk ane o' his twa legs had belanged to sindry folk--but Gentle George could take him aff brawly--Eh, as I used to laugh to see George gang hip-hop like him!--I dinna ken, I think I laughed heartier then than what I do now, though maybe no just sae muckle." "And who was Gentle George?" said Jeanie, endeavouring to bring her back to her story. "O, he was Geordie Robertson, ye ken, when he was in Edinburgh; but that's no his right name neither--His name is--But what is your business wi' his name?" said she, as if upon sudden recollection, "What have ye to do asking for folk's names?--Have ye a mind I should scour my knife between your ribs, as my mother says?" As this was spoken with a menacing tone and gesture, Jeanie hastened to protest her total innocence of purpose in the accidental question which she had asked, and Madge Wildfire went on somewhat pacified. "Never ask folk's names, Jeanie--it's no civil--I hae seen half-a-dozen o' folk in my mother's at ance, and ne'er ane a' them ca'd the ither by his name; and Daddie Ratton says, it is the most uncivil thing may be, because the bailie bodies are aye asking fashions questions, when ye saw sic a man, or sic a man; and if ye dinna ken their names, ye ken there can be nae mair speerd about it." "In what strange school," thought Jeanie to herself, "has this poor creature been bred up, where such remote precautions are taken against the pursuits of justice? What would my father or Reuben Butler think if I were to tell them there are sic folk in the world? And to abuse the simplicity of this demented creature! Oh, that I were but safe at hame amang mine ain leal and true people! and I'll bless God, while I have breath, that placed me amongst those who live in His fear, and under the shadow of His wing." She was interrupted by the insane laugh of Madge Wildfire, as she saw a magpie hop across the path. "See there!--that was the gate my auld joe used to cross the country, but no just sae lightly--he hadna wings to help his auld legs, I trow; but I behoved to have married him for a' that, Jeanie, or my mother wad hae been the dead o' me. But then came in the story of my poor bairn, and my mother thought he wad be deaved wi' it's skirling, and she pat it away in below the bit bourock of turf yonder, just to be out o' the gate; and I think she buried my best wits with it, for I have never been just mysell since. And only think, Jeanie, after my mother had been at a' these pains, the auld doited body Johnny Drottle turned up his nose, and wadna hae aught to say to me! But it's little I care for him, for I have led a merry life ever since, and ne'er a braw gentleman looks at me but ye wad think he was gaun to drop off his horse for mere love of me. I have ken'd some o' them put their hand in their pocket, and gie me as muckle as sixpence at a time, just for my weel-faured face." This speech gave Jeanie a dark insight into Madge's history. She had been courted by a wealthy suitor, whose addresses her mother had favoured, notwithstanding the objection of old age and deformity. She had been seduced by some profligate, and, to conceal her shame and promote the advantageous match she had planned, her mother had not hesitated to destroy the offspring of their intrigue. That the consequence should be the total derangement of amind which was constitutionally unsettled by giddiness and vanity, was extremely natural; and such was, in fact, the history of Madge Wildfire's insanity. CHAPTER SEVENTH. So free from danger, free from fear They crossed the court--right glad they were. Christabel. Pursuing the path which Madge had chosen, Jeanie Deans observed, to her no small delight, that marks of more cultivation appeared, and the thatched roofs of houses, with their blue smoke arising in little columns, were seen embosomed in a tuft of trees at some distance. The track led in that direction, and Jeanie, therefore, resolved, while Madge continued to pursue it, that she would ask her no questions; having had the penetration to observe, that by doing so she ran the risk of irritating her guide, or awakening suspicions, to the impressions of which, persons in Madge's unsettled state of mind are particularly liable. Madge, therefore, uninterrupted, went on with the wild disjointed chat which her rambling imagination suggested; a mood in which she was much more communicative respecting her own history, and that of others, than when there was any attempt made, by direct queries, or cross-examinations, to extract information on these subjects. "It's a queer thing," she said, "but whiles I can speak about the bit bairn and the rest of it, just as if it had been another body's, and no my ain; and whiles I am like to break my heart about it--Had you ever a bairn, Jeanie?" Jeanie replied in the negative. "Ay; but your sister had, though--and I ken what came o't too." "In the name of heavenly mercy," said Jeanie, forgetting the line of conduct which she had hitherto adopted, "tell me but what became of that unfortunate babe, and" Madge stopped, looked at her gravely and fixedly, and then broke into a great fit of laughing--"Aha, lass,--catch me if you can--I think it's easy to gar you trow ony thing.--How suld I ken onything o' your sister's wean? Lasses suld hae naething to do wi' weans till they are married--and then a' the gossips and cummers come in and feast as if it were the blithest day in the warld.--They say maidens' bairns are weel guided. I wot that wasna true of your tittie's and mine; but these are sad tales to tell.--I maun just sing a bit to keep up my heart--It's a sang that Gentle George made on me lang syne, when I went with him to Lockington wake, to see him act upon a stage, in fine clothes, with the player folk. He might hae dune waur than married me that night as he promised--better wed over the mixen* as over the moor, as they say in Yorkshire-- * A homely proverb, signifying better wed a neighbour than one fetched from a distance.--Mixen signifies dunghill. he may gang farther and fare waur--but that's a' ane to the sang, 'I'm Madge of the country, I'm Madge of the town, And I'm Madge of the lad I am blithest to own-- The Lady of Beeve in diamonds may shine, But has not a heart half so lightsome as mine. 'I am Queen of the Wake, and I'm Lady of May, And I lead the blithe ring round the May-pole to-day; The wildfire that flashes so fair and so free, Was never so bright, or so bonny, as me.' "I like that the best o' a' my sangs," continued the maniac, "because he made it. I am often singing it, and that's maybe the reason folk ca' me Madge Wildfire. I aye answer to the name, though it's no my ain, for what's the use of making a fash?" "But ye shouldna sing upon the Sabbath at least," said Jeanie, who, amid all her distress and anxiety, could not help being scandalised at the deportment of her companion, especially as they now approached near to the little village. "Ay! is this Sunday?" said Madge. "My mother leads sic a life, wi' turning night into day, that ane loses a' count o' the days o' the week, and disna ken Sunday frae Saturday. Besides, it's a' your whiggery--in England, folk sings when they like--And then, ye ken, you are Christiana and I am Mercy--and ye ken, as they went on their way, they sang."--And she immediately raised one of John Bunyan's ditties:-- "He that is down need fear no fall, He that is low no pride, He that is humble ever shall Have God to be his guide. "Fulness to such a burthen is That go on pilgrimage; Here little, and hereafter bliss, Is best from age to age." "And do ye ken, Jeanie, I think there's much truth in that book, the Pilgrim's Progress. The boy that sings that song was feeding his father's sheep in the Valley of Humiliation, and Mr. Great-heart says, that he lived a merrier life, and had more of the herb called heart's-ease in his bosom, than they that wear silk and velvet like me, and are as bonny as I am." Jeanie Deans had never read the fanciful and delightful parable to which Madge alluded. Bunyan was, indeed, a rigid Calvinist, but then he was also a member of a Baptist congregation, so that his works had no place on David Deans's shelf of divinity. Madge, however, at some time of her life, had been well acquainted, as it appeared, with the most popular of his performances, which, indeed, rarely fails to make a deep impression upon children, and people of the lower rank. "I am sure," she continued, "I may weel say I am come out of the city of Destruction, for my mother is Mrs. Bat's-eyes, that dwells at Deadman's corner; and Frank Levitt, and Tyburn Tam, they may be likened to Mistrust and Guilt, that came galloping up, and struck the poor pilgrim to the ground with a great club, and stole a bag of silver, which was most of his spending money, and so have they done to many, and will do to more. But now we will gang to the Interpreter's house, for I ken a man that will play the Interpreter right weel; for he has eyes lifted up to Heaven, the best of books in his hand, the law of truth written on his lips, and he stands as if he pleaded wi' men--Oh, if I had minded what he had said to me, I had never been the cutaway creature that I am!--But it is all over now.--But we'll knock at the gate, and then the keeper will admit Christiana, but Mercy will be left out--and then I'll stand at the door, trembling and crying, and then Christiana--that's you, Jeanie--will intercede for me; and then Mercy--that's me, ye ken, will faint; and then the Interpreter--yes, the Interpreter, that's Mr. Staunton himself, will come out and take me--that's poor, lost, demented me--by the hand, and give me a pomegranate, and a piece of honeycomb, and a small bottle of spirits, to stay my fainting--and then the good times will come back again, and we'll be the happiest folk you ever saw." In the midst of the confused assemblage of ideas indicated in this speech, Jeanie thought she saw a serious purpose on the part of Madge, to endeavour to obtain the pardon and countenance of some one whom she had offended; an attempt the most likely of all others to bring them once more into contact with law and legal protection. She, therefore, resolved to be guided by her while she was in so hopeful a disposition, and act for her own safety according to circumstances. They were now close by the village, one of those beautiful scenes which are so often found in merry England, where the cottages, instead of being built in two direct lines on each side of a dusty high-road, stand in detached groups, interspersed not only with large oaks and elms, but with fruit-trees, so many of which were at this time in flourish, that the grove seemed enamelled with their crimson and white blossoms. In the centre of the hamlet stood the parish church, and its little Gothic tower, from which at present was heard the Sunday chime of bells. "We will wait here until the folk are a' in the church--they ca' the kirk a church in England, Jeanie, be sure you mind that--for if I was gaun forward amang them, a' the gaitts o' boys and lasses wad be crying at Madge Wildfire's tail, the little hell-rakers! and the beadle would be as hard upon us as if it was our fault. I like their skirting as ill as he does, I can tell him; I'm sure I often wish there was a het peat doun their throats when they set them up that gate." Conscious of the disorderly appearance of her own dress after the adventure of the preceding night, and of the grotesque habit and demeanour of her guide, and sensible how important it was to secure an attentive and impatient audience to her strange story from some one who might have the means to protect her, Jeanie readily acquiesced in Madge's proposal to rest under the trees, by which they were still somewhat screened, until the commencement of service should give them an opportunity of entering the hamlet without attracting a crowd around them. She made the less opposition, that Madge had intimated that this was not the village where her mother was in custody, and that the two squires of the pad were absent in a different direction. She sate herself down, therefore, at the foot of an oak, and by the assistance of a placid fountain, which had been dammed up for the use of the villagers, and which served her as a natural mirror, she began--no uncommon thing with a Scottish maiden of her rank--to arrange her toilette in the open air, and bring her dress, soiled and disordered as it was, into such order as the place and circumstances admitted. She soon perceived reason, however, to regret that she had set about this task, however decent and necessary, in the present time and society. Madge Wildfire, who, among other indications of insanity, had a most overweening opinion of those charms, to which, in fact, she had owed her misery, and whose mind, like a raft upon a lake, was agitated and driven about at random by each fresh impulse, no sooner beheld Jeanie begin to arrange her hair, place her bonnet in order, rub the dust from her shoes and clothes, adjust her neck-handkerchief and mittans, and so forth, than with imitative zeal she began to bedizen and trick herself out with shreds and remnants of beggarly finery, which she took out of a little bundle, and which, when disposed around her person, made her appearance ten times more fantastic and apish than it had been before. Jeanie groaned in spirit, but dared not interfere in a matter so delicate. Across the man's cap or riding hat which she wore, Madge placed a broken and soiled white feather, intersected with one which had been shed from the train of a peacock. To her dress, which was a kind of riding-habit, she stitched, pinned, and otherwise secured, a large furbelow of artificial flowers, all crushed, wrinkled and dirty, which had at first bedecked a lady of quality, then descended to her Abigail, and dazzled the inmates of the servants' hall. A tawdry scarf of yellow silk, trimmed with tinsel and spangles, which had seen as hard service, and boasted as honourable a transmission, was next flung over one shoulder, and fell across her person in the manner of a shoulder-belt, or baldrick. Madge then stripped off the coarse ordinary shoes, which she wore, and replaced them by a pair of dirty satin ones, spangled and embroidered to match the scarf, and furnished with very high heels. She had cut a willow switch in her morning's walk, almost as long as a boy's fishing-rod. This she set herself seriously to peel, and when it was transformed into such a wand as the Treasurer or High Steward bears on public occasions, she told Jeanie that she thought they now looked decent, as young women should do upon the Sunday morning, and that, as the bells had done ringing, she was willing to conduct her to the Interpreter's house. Jeanie sighed heavily, to think it should be her lot on the Lord's day, and during kirk time too, to parade the street of an inhabited village with so very grotesque a comrade; but necessity had no law, since, without a positive quarrel with the madwoman, which, in the circumstances, would have been very unadvisable, she could see no means of shaking herself free of her society. As for poor Madge, she was completely elated with personal vanity, and the most perfect satisfaction concerning her own dazzling dress, and superior appearance. They entered the hamlet without being observed, except by one old woman, who, being nearly "high-gravel blind," was only conscious that something very fine and glittering was passing by, and dropped as deep a reverence to Madge as she would have done to a countess. This filled up the measure of Madge's self-approbation. She minced, she ambled, she smiled, she simpered, and waved Jeanie Deans forward with the condescension of a noble _chaperone,_ who has undertaken the charge of a country miss on her first journey to the capital. Jeanie followed in patience, and with her eyes fixed on the ground, that she might save herself the mortification of seeing her companion's absurdities; but she started when, ascending two or three steps, she found herself in the churchyard, and saw that Madge was making straight for the door of the church. As Jeanie had no mind to enter the congregation in such company, she walked aside from the pathway, and said in a decided tone, "Madge, I will wait here till the church comes out--you may go in by yourself if you have a mind." As she spoke these words, she was about to seat herself upon one of the grave-stones. Madge was a little before Jeanie when she turned aside; but, suddenly changing her course, she followed her with long strides, and, with every feature inflamed with passion, overtook and seized her by the arm. "Do ye think, ye ungratefu' wretch, that I am gaun to let you sit doun upon my father's grave? The deil settle ye doun, if ye dinna rise and come into the Interpreter's house, that's the house of God, wi' me, but I'll rive every dud aft your back!" She adapted the action to the phrase; for with one clutch she stripped Jeanie of her straw bonnet and a handful of her hair to boot, and threw it up into an old yew-tree, where it stuck fast. Jeanie's first impulse was to scream, but conceiving she might receive deadly harm before she could obtain the assistance of anyone, notwithstanding the vicinity of the church, she thought it wiser to follow the madwoman into the congregation, where she might find some means of escape from her, or at least be secured against her violence. But when she meekly intimated her consent to follow Madge, her guide's uncertain brain had caught another train of ideas. She held Jeanie fast with one hand, and with the other pointed to the inscription on the grave-stone, and commanded her to read it. Jeanie obeyed, and read these words:-- "This Monument was erected to the Memory of Donald Murdockson of the King's xxvi., or Cameronian Regiment, a sincere Christian, a brave Soldier, and a faithful Servant, by his grateful and sorrowing master, Robert Staunton." "It's very weel read, Jeanie; it's just the very words," said Madge, whose ire had now faded into deep melancholy, and with a step which, to Jeanie's great joy, was uncommonly quiet and mournful, she led her companion towards the door of the church. [Illustration: Madge and Jennie--103] It was one of those old-fashioned Gothic parish churches which are frequent in England, the most cleanly, decent, and reverential places of worship that are, perhaps, anywhere to be found in the Christian world. Yet, notwithstanding the decent solemnity of its exterior, Jeanie was too faithful to the directory of the Presbyterian kirk to have entered a prelatic place of worship, and would, upon any other occasion, have thought that she beheld in the porch the venerable figure of her father waving her back from the entrance, and pronouncing in a solemn tone, "Cease, my child, to hear the instruction which causeth to err from the words of knowledge." But in her present agitating and alarming situation, she looked for safety to this forbidden place of assembly, as the hunted animal will sometimes seek shelter from imminent danger in the human habitation, or in other places of refuge most alien to its nature and habits. Not even the sound of the organ, and of one or two flutes which accompanied the psalmody, prevented her from following her guide into the chancel of the church. No sooner had Madge put her foot upon the pavement, and become sensible that she was the object of attention to the spectators, than she resumed all the fantastic extravagance of deportment which some transient touch of melancholy had banished for an instant. She swam rather than walked up the centre aisle, dragging Jeanie after her, whom she held fast by the hand. She would, indeed, have fain slipped aside into the pew nearest to the door, and left Madge to ascend in her own manner and alone to the high places of the synagogue; but this was impossible, without a degree of violent resistance, which seemed to her inconsistent with the time and place, and she was accordingly led in captivity up the whole length of the church by her grotesque conductress, who, with half-shut eyes, a prim smile upon her lips, and a mincing motion with her hands, which corresponded with the delicate and affected pace at which she was pleased to move, seemed to take the general stare of the congregation, which such an exhibition necessarily excited, as a high compliment, and which she returned by nods and half-courtesies to individuals amongst the audience, whom she seemed to distinguish as acquaintances. Her absurdity was enhanced in the eyes of the spectators by the strange contrast which she formed to her companion, who, with dishevelled hair, downcast eyes, and a face glowing with shame, was dragged, as it were in triumph after her. Madge's airs were at length fortunately cut short by her encountering in her progress the looks of the clergyman, who fixed upon her a glance, at once steady, compassionate, and admonitory. She hastily opened an empty pew which happened to be near her, and entered, dragging in Jeanie after her. Kicking Jeanie on the shins, by way of hint that she should follow her example, she sunk her head upon her hand for the space of a minute. Jeanie, to whom this posture of mental devotion was entirely new, did not attempt to do the like, but looked round her with a bewildered stare, which her neighbours, judging from the company in which they saw her, very naturally ascribed to insanity. Every person in their immediate vicinity drew back from this extraordinary couple as far as the limits of their pew permitted; but one old man could not get beyond Madge's reach, ere, she had snatched the prayer-book from his hand, and ascertained the lesson of the day. She then turned up the ritual, and with the most overstrained enthusiasm of gesture and manner, showed Jeanie the passages as they were read in the service, making, at the same time, her own responses so loud as to be heard above those of every other person. Notwithstanding the shame and vexation which Jeanie felt in being thus exposed in a place of worship, she could not and durst not omit rallying her spirits so as to look around her, and consider to whom she ought to appeal for protection so soon as the service should be concluded. Her first ideas naturally fixed upon the clergyman, and she was confirmed in the resolution by observing that he was an aged gentleman, of a dignified appearance and deportment, who read the service with an undisturbed and decent gravity, which brought back to becoming attention those younger members of the congregation who had been disturbed by the extravagant behaviour of Madge Wildfire. To the clergyman, therefore, Jeanie resolved to make her appeal when the service was over. It is true she felt disposed to be shocked at his surplice, of which she had heard so much, but which she had never seen upon the person of a preacher of the word. Then she was confused by the change of posture adopted in different parts of the ritual, the more so as Madge Wildfire, to whom they seemed familiar, took the opportunity to exercise authority over her, pulling her up and pushing her down with a bustling assiduity, which Jeanie felt must make them both the objects of painful attention. But, notwithstanding these prejudices, it was her prudent resolution, in this dilemma, to imitate as nearly as she could what was done around her. The prophet, she thought, permitted Naaman the Syrian to bow even in the house of Rimmon. Surely if I, in this streight, worship the God of my fathers in mine own language, although the manner thereof be strange to me, the Lord will pardon me in this thing. In this resolution she became so much confirmed, that, withdrawing herself from Madge as far as the pew permitted, she endeavoured to evince by serious and composed attention to what was passing, that her mind was composed to devotion. Her tormentor would not long have permitted her to remain quiet, but fatigue overpowered her, and she fell fast asleep in the other corner of the pew. Jeanie, though her mind in her own despite sometimes reverted to her situation, compelled herself to give attention to a sensible, energetic, and well-composed discourse, upon the practical doctrines of Christianity, which she could not help approving, although it was every word written down and read by the preacher, and although it was delivered in a tone and gesture very different from those of Boanerges Stormheaven, who was her father's favourite preacher. The serious and placid attention with which Jeanie listened, did not escape the clergyman. Madge Wildfire's entrance had rendered him apprehensive of some disturbance, to provide against which, as far as possible, he often turned his eyes to the part of the church where Jeanie and she were placed, and became soon aware that, although the loss of her head-gear, and the awkwardness of her situation, had given an uncommon and anxious air to the features of the former, yet she was in a state of mind very different from that of her companion. When he dismissed the congregation, he observed her look around with a wild and terrified look, as if uncertain what course she ought to adopt, and noticed that she approached one or two of the most decent of the congregation, as if to address them, and then shrunk back timidly, on observing that they seemed to shun and to avoid her. The clergyman was satisfied there must be something extraordinary in all this, and as a benevolent man, as well as a good Christian pastor, he resolved to inquire into the matter more minutely. CHAPTER EIGHTH. There governed in that year A stern, stout churl--an angry overseer. Crabbe. While Mr. Staunton, for such was this worthy clergyman's name, was laying aside his gown in the vestry, Jeanie was in the act of coming to an open rupture with Madge. "We must return to Mummer's barn directly," said Madge; "we'll be ower late, and my mother will be angry." "I am not going back with you, Madge," said Jeanie, taking out a guinea, and offering it to her; "I am much obliged to you, but I maun gang my ain road." "And me coming a' this way out o' my gate to pleasure you, ye ungratefu' cutty," answered Madge; "and me to be brained by my mother when I gang hame, and a' for your sake!--But I will gar ye as good" "For God's sake," said Jeanie to a man who stood beside them, "keep her off!--she is mad." "Ey, ey," answered the boor; "I hae some guess of that, and I trow thou be'st a bird of the same feather.--Howsomever, Madge, I redd thee keep hand off her, or I'se lend thee a whisterpoop." Several of the lower class of the parishioners now gathered round the strangers, and the cry arose among the boys that "there was a-going to be a fite between mad Madge Murdockson and another Bess of Bedlam." But while the fry assembled with the humane hope of seeing as much of the fun as possible, the laced cocked-hat of the beadle was discerned among the multitude, and all made way for that person of awful authority. His first address was to Madge. "What's brought thee back again, thou silly donnot, to plague this parish? Hast thou brought ony more bastards wi' thee to lay to honest men's doors? or does thou think to burden us with this goose, that's as hare-brained as thysell, as if rates were no up enow? Away wi' thee to thy thief of a mother; she's fast in the stocks at Barkston town-end-- Away wi' ye out o' the parish, or I'se be at ye with the ratan." Madge stood sulky for a minute; but she had been too often taught submission to the beadle's authority by ungentle means to feel courage enough to dispute it. "And my mother--my puir auld mother, is in the stocks at Barkston!--This is a' your wyte, Miss Jeanie Deans; but I'll be upsides wi' you, as sure as my name's Madge Wildfire--I mean Murdockson--God help me, I forget my very name in this confused waste!" So saying, she turned upon her heel, and went off, followed by all the mischievous imps of the village, some crying, "Madge, canst thou tell thy name yet?" some pulling the skirts of her dress, and all, to the best of their strength and ingenuity, exercising some new device or other to exasperate her into frenzy. Jeanie saw her departure with infinite delight, though she wished that, in some way or other, she could have requited the service Madge had conferred upon her. In the meantime, she applied to the beadle to know whether "there was any house in the village where she could be civilly entertained for her money, and whether she could be permitted to speak to the clergyman?" "Ay, ay, we'se ha' reverend care on thee; and I think," answered the man of constituted authority, "that, unless thou answer the Rector all the better, we'se spare thy money, and gie thee lodging at the parish charge, young woman." "Where am I to go then?" said Jeanie, in some alarm. "Why, I am to take thee to his Reverence, in the first place, to gie an account o' thysell, and to see thou comena to be a burden upon the parish." "I do not wish to burden anyone," replied Jeanie; "I have enough for my own wants, and only wish to get on my journey safely." "Why, that's another matter," replied the beadle, "and if it be true--and I think thou dost not look so polrumptious as thy playfellow yonder--Thou wouldst be a mettle lass enow, an thou wert snog and snod a bid better. Come thou away, then--the Rector is a good man." "Is that the minister," said Jeanie, "who preached" "The minister? Lord help thee! What kind o' Presbyterian art thou?--Why, 'tis the Rector--the Rector's sell, woman, and there isna the like o' him in the county, nor the four next to it. Come away--away with thee--we maunna bide here." "I am sure I am very willing to go to see the minister," said Jeanie; "for though he read his discourse, and wore that surplice, as they call it here, I canna but think he must be a very worthy God-fearing man, to preach the root of the matter in the way he did." The disappointed rabble, finding that there was like to be no farther sport, had by this time dispersed, and Jeanie, with her usual patience, followed her consequential and surly, but not brutal, conductor towards the rectory. This clerical mansion was large and commodious, for the living was an excellent one, and the advowson belonged to a very wealthy family in the neighbourhood, who had usually bred up a son or nephew to the church for the sake of inducting him, as opportunity offered, into this very comfortable provision. In this manner the rectory of Willingham had always been considered as a direct and immediate appanage of Willingham Hall; and as the rich baronets to whom the latter belonged had usually a son, or brother, or nephew, settled in the living, the utmost care had been taken to render their habitation not merely respectable and commodious, but even dignified and imposing. It was situated about four hundred yards from the village, and on a rising ground which sloped gently upward, covered with small enclosures, or closes, laid out irregularly, so that the old oaks and elms, which were planted in hedge-rows, fell into perspective, and were blended together in beautiful irregularity. When they approached nearer to the house, a handsome gateway admitted them into a lawn, of narrow dimensions indeed, but which was interspersed with large sweet chestnut trees and beeches, and kept in handsome order. The front of the house was irregular. Part of it seemed very old, and had, in fact, been the residence of the incumbent in Romish times. Successive occupants had made considerable additions and improvements, each in the taste of his own age, and without much regard to symmetry. But these incongruities of architecture were so graduated and happily mingled, that the eye, far from being displeased with the combinations of various styles, saw nothing but what was interesting in the varied and intricate pile which they displayed. Fruit-trees displayed on the southern wall, outer staircases, various places of entrance, a combination of roofs and chimneys of different ages, united to render the front, not indeed beautiful or grand, but intricate, perplexed, or, to use Mr. Price's appropriate phrase, picturesque. The most considerable addition was that of the present Rector, who, "being a bookish man," as the beadle was at the pains to inform Jeanie, to augment, perhaps, her reverence for the person before whom she was to appear, had built a handsome library and parlour, and no less than two additional bedrooms. "Mony men would hae scrupled such expense," continued the parochial officer, "seeing as the living mun go as it pleases Sir Edmund to will it; but his Reverence has a canny bit land of his own, and need not look on two sides of a penny." Jeanie could not help comparing the irregular yet extensive and commodious pile of building before her to the "Manses" in her own country, where a set of penurious heritors, professing all the while the devotion of their lives and fortunes to the Presbyterian establishment, strain their inventions to discover what may be nipped, and clipped, and pared from a building which forms but a poor accommodation even for the present incumbent, and, despite the superior advantage of stone-masonry, must, in the course of forty or fifty years, again burden their descendants with an expense, which, once liberally and handsomely employed, ought to have freed their estates from a recurrence of it for more than a century at least. Behind the Rector's house the ground sloped down to a small river, which, without possessing the romantic vivacity and rapidity of a northern stream, was, nevertheless, by its occasional appearance through the ranges of willows and poplars that crowned its banks, a very pleasing accompaniment to the landscape. "It was the best trouting stream," said the beadle, whom the patience of Jeanie, and especially the assurance that she was not about to become a burden to the parish, had rendered rather communicative, "the best trouting stream in all Lincolnshire; for when you got lower, there was nought to be done wi' fly-fishing." Turning aside from the principal entrance, he conducted Jeanie towards a sort of portal connected with the older part of the building, which was chiefly occupied by servants, and knocking at the door, it was opened by a servant in grave purple livery, such as befitted a wealthy and dignified clergyman. "How dost do, Tummas?" said the beadle--"and how's young Measter Staunton?" "Why, but poorly--but poorly, Measter Stubbs.--Are you wanting to see his Reverence?" "Ay, ay, Tummas; please to say I ha' brought up the young woman as came to service to-day with mad Madge Murdockson seems to be a decentish koind o' body; but I ha' asked her never a question. Only I can tell his Reverence that she is a Scotchwoman, I judge, and as flat as the fens of Holland." Tummas honoured Jeanie Deans with such a stare, as the pampered domestics of the rich, whether spiritual or temporal, usually esteem it part of their privilege to bestow upon the poor, and then desired Mr. Stubbs and his charge to step in till he informed his master of their presence. The room into which he showed them was a sort of steward's parlour, hung with a county map or two, and three or four prints of eminent persons connected with the county, as Sir William Monson, James York the blacksmith of Lincoln,* and the famous Peregrine, Lord Willoughby, in complete armour, looking as when he said in the words of the legend below the engraving,-- * [Author of the _Union of Honour,_ a treatise on English Heraldry. London, 1641.] "Stand to it, noble pikemen, And face ye well about; And shoot ye sharp, bold bowmen, And we will keep them out. "Ye musquet and calliver-men, Do you prove true to me, I'll be the foremost man in fight, Said brave Lord Willoughbee." [Illustration: A "Summat" to Eat and Drink--113] When they had entered this apartment, Tummas as a matter of course offered, and as a matter of course Mr. Stubbs accepted, a "summat" to eat and drink, being the respectable relies of a gammon of bacon, and a _whole whiskin,_ or black pot of sufficient double ale. To these eatables Mr. Beadle seriously inclined himself, and (for we must do him justice) not without an invitation to Jeanie, in which Tummas joined, that his prisoner or charge would follow his good example. But although she might have stood in need of refreshment, considering she had tasted no food that day, the anxiety of the moment, her own sparing and abstemious habits, and a bashful aversion to eat in company of the two strangers, induced her to decline their courtesy. So she sate in a chair apart, while Mr. Stubbs and Mr. Tummas, who had chosen to join his friend in consideration that dinner was to be put back till after the afternoon service, made a hearty luncheon, which lasted for half-an-hour, and might not then have concluded, had not his Reverence rung his bell, so that Tummas was obliged to attend his master. Then, and no sooner, to save himself the labour of a second journey to the other end of the house, he announced to his master the arrival of Mr. Stubbs, with the other madwoman, as he chose to designate Jeanie, as an event which had just taken place. He returned with an order that Mr. Stubbs and the young woman should be instantly ushered up to the library. The beadle bolted in haste his last mouthful of fat bacon, washed down the greasy morsel with the last rinsings of the pot of ale, and immediately marshalled Jeanie through one or two intricate passages which led from the ancient to the more modern buildings, into a handsome little hall, or anteroom, adjoining to the library, and out of which a glass door opened to the lawn. "Stay here," said Stubbs, "till I tell his Reverence you are come." So saying, he opened a door and entered the library. Without wishing to hear their conversation, Jeanie, as she was circumstanced, could not avoid it; for as Stubbs stood by the door, and his Reverence was at the upper end of a large room, their conversation was necessarily audible in the anteroom. "So you have brought the young woman here at last, Mr. Stubbs. I expected you some time since. You know I do not wish such persons to remain in custody a moment without some inquiry into their situation." "Very true, your Reverence," replied the beadle; "but the young woman had eat nought to-day, and so Measter Tummas did set down a drap of drink and a morsel, to be sure." "Thomas was very right, Mr. Stubbs; and what has, become of the other most unfortunate being?" "Why," replied Mr. Stubbs, "I did think the sight on her would but vex your Reverence, and soa I did let her go her ways back to her mother, who is in trouble in the next parish." "In trouble!--that signifies in prison, I suppose?" said Mr. Staunton. "Ay, truly; something like it, an it like your Reverence." "Wretched, unhappy, incorrigible woman!" said the clergyman. "And what sort of person is this companion of hers?" "Why, decent enow, an it like your Reverence," said Stubbs; "for aught I sees of her, there's no harm of her, and she says she has cash enow to carry her out of the county." "Cash! that is always what you think of, Stubbs--But, has she sense?--has she her wits?--has she the capacity of taking care of herself?" "Why, your Reverence," replied Stubbs, "I cannot just say--I will be sworn she was not born at Witt-ham;* for Gaffer Gibbs looked at her all the time of service, and he says, she could not turn up a single lesson like a Christian, even though she had Madge Murdockson to help her--but then, as to fending for herself, why, she's a bit of a Scotchwoman, your Reverence, and they say the worst donnot of them can look out for their own turn--and she is decently put on enow, and not bechounched like t'other." * A proverbial and punning expression in that county, to intimate that a person is not very clever. "Send her in here, then, and do you remain below, Mr. Stubbs." This colloquy had engaged Jeanie's attention so deeply, that it was not until it was over that she observed that the sashed door, which, we have said, led from the anteroom into the garden, was opened, and that there entered, or rather was borne in by two assistants, a young man, of a very pale and sickly appearance, whom they lifted to the nearest couch, and placed there, as if to recover from the fatigue of an unusual exertion. Just as they were making this arrangement, Stubbs came out of the library, and summoned Jeanie to enter it. She obeyed him, not without tremor; for, besides the novelty of the situation, to a girl of her secluded habits, she felt also as if the successful prosecution of her journey was to depend upon the impression she should be able to make on Mr. Staunton. It is true, it was difficult to suppose on what pretext a person travelling on her own business, and at her own charge, could be interrupted upon her route. But the violent detention she had already undergone, was sufficient to show that there existed persons at no great distance who had the interest, the inclination, and the audacity, forcibly to stop her journey, and she felt the necessity of having some countenance and protection, at least till she should get beyond their reach. While these things passed through her mind, much faster than our pen and ink can record, or even the reader's eye collect the meaning of its traces, Jeanie found herself in a handsome library, and in presence of the Rector of Willingham. The well-furnished presses and shelves which surrounded the large and handsome apartment, contained more books than Jeanie imagined existed in the world, being accustomed to consider as an extensive collection two fir shelves, each about three feet long, which contained her father's treasured volumes, the whole pith and marrow, as he used sometimes to boast, of modern divinity. An orrery, globes, a telescope, and some other scientific implements, conveyed to Jeanie an impression of admiration and wonder, not unmixed with fear; for, in her ignorant apprehension, they seemed rather adapted for magical purposes than any other; and a few stuffed animals (as the Rector was fond of natural history) added to the impressive character of the apartment. Mr. Staunton spoke to her with great mildness. He observed, that, although her appearance at church had been uncommon, and in strange, and he must add, discreditable society, and calculated, upon the whole, to disturb the congregation during divine worship, he wished, nevertheless, to hear her own account of herself before taking any steps which his duty might seem to demand. He was a justice of peace, he informed her, as well as a clergyman. "His Honour" (for she would not say his Reverence) "was very civil and kind," was all that poor Jeanie could at first bring out. "Who are you, young woman?" said the clergyman, more peremptorily--"and what do you do in this country, and in such company?--We allow no strollers or vagrants here." "I am not a vagrant or a stroller, sir," said Jeanie, a little roused by the supposition. "I am a decent Scots lass, travelling through the land on my own business and my own expenses and I was so unhappy as to fall in with bad company, and was stopped a' night on my journey. And this puir creature, who is something light-headed, let me out in the morning." "Bad company!" said the clergyman. "I am afraid, young woman, you have not been sufficiently anxious to avoid them." "Indeed, sir," returned Jeanie, "I have been brought up to shun evil communication. But these wicked people were thieves, and stopped me by violence and mastery." "Thieves!" said Mr. Staunton; "then you charge them with robbery, I suppose?" "No, sir; they did not take so much as a boddle from me," answered Jeanie; "nor did they use me ill, otherwise than by confining me." The clergyman inquired into the particulars of her adventure, which she told him from point to point. "This is an extraordinary, and not a very probable tale, young woman," resumed Mr. Staunton. "Here has been, according to your account, a great violence committed without any adequate motive. Are you aware of the law of this country--that if you lodge this charge, you will be bound over to prosecute this gang?" Jeanie did not understand him, and he explained, that the English law, in addition to the inconvenience sustained by persons who have been robbed or injured, has the goodness to intrust to them the care and the expense of appearing as prosecutors. Jeanie said, "that her business at London was express; all she wanted was, that any gentleman would, out of Christian charity, protect her to some town where she could hire horses and a guide; and finally," she thought, "it would be her father's mind that she was not free to give testimony in an English court of justice, as the land was not under a direct gospel dispensation." Mr. Staunton stared a little, and asked if her father was a Quaker. "God forbid, sir," said Jeanie--"He is nae schismatic nor sectary, nor ever treated for sic black commodities as theirs, and that's weel kend o' him." "And what is his name, pray?" said Mr. Staunton. "David Deans, sir, the cowfeeder at Saint Leonard's Crags, near Edinburgh." A deep groan from the anteroom prevented the Rector from replying, and, exclaiming, "Good God! that unhappy boy!" he left Jeanie alone, and hastened into the outer apartment. Some noise and bustle was heard, but no one entered the library for the best part of an hour. CHAPTER NINTH. Fantastic passions' maddening brawl! And shame and terror over all! Deeds to be hid which were not hid, Which, all confused, I could not know Whether I suffer'd or I did, For all seem'd guilt, remorse, or woe; My own, or others, still the same Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame. Coleridge. During the interval while she was thus left alone, Jeanie anxiously revolved in her mind what course was best for her to pursue. She was impatient to continue her journey, yet she feared she could not safely adventure to do so while the old hag and her assistants were in the neighbourhood, without risking a repetition of their violence. She thought she could collect from the conversation which she had partly overheard, and also from the wild confessions of Madge Wildfire, that her mother had a deep and revengeful motive for obstructing her journey if possible. And from whom could she hope for assistance if not from Mr. Staunton? His whole appearance and demeanour seemed to encourage her hopes. His features were handsome, though marked with a deep cast of melancholy; his tone and language were gentle and encouraging; and, as he had served in the army for several years during his youth, his air retained that easy frankness which is peculiar to the profession of arms. He was, besides, a minister of the gospel; and, although a worshipper, according to Jeanie's notions, in the court of the Gentiles, and so benighted as to wear a surplice; although he read the Common Prayer, and wrote down every word of his sermon before delivering it; and although he was, moreover, in strength of lungs, as well as pith and marrow of doctrine, vastly inferior to Boanerges Stormheaven, Jeanie still thought he must be a very different person from Curate Kilstoup, and other prelatical divines of her father's earlier days, who used to get drunk in their canonical dress, and hound out the dragoons against the wandering Cameronians. The house seemed to be in some disturbance, but as she could not suppose she was altogether forgotten, she thought it better to remain quiet in the apartment where she had been left, till some one should take notice of her. The first who entered was, to her no small delight, one of her own sex, a motherly-looking aged person of a housekeeper. To her Jeanie explained her situation in a few words, and begged her assistance. The dignity of a housekeeper did not encourage too much familiarity with a person who was at the Rectory on justice-business, and whose character might seem in her eyes somewhat precarious; but she was civil, although distant. "Her young master," she said, "had had a bad accident by a fall from his horse, which made him liable to fainting fits; he had been taken very ill just now, and it was impossible his Reverence could see Jeanie for some time; but that she need not fear his doing all that was just and proper in her behalf the instant he could get her business attended to."--She concluded by offering to show Jeanie a room, where she might remain till his Reverence was at leisure. Our heroine took the opportunity to request the means of adjusting and changing her dress. The housekeeper, in whose estimation order and cleanliness ranked high among personal virtues, gladly complied with a request so reasonable; and the change of dress which Jeanie's bundle furnished made so important an improvement in her appearance, that the old lady hardly knew the soiled and disordered traveller, whose attire showed the violence she had sustained, in the neat, clean, quiet-looking little Scotch-woman, who now stood before her. Encouraged by such a favourable alteration in her appearance, Mrs. Dalton ventured to invite Jeanie to partake of her dinner, and was equally pleased with the decent propriety of her conduct during the meal. "Thou canst read this book, canst thou, young woman?" said the old lady, when their meal was concluded, laying her hand upon a large Bible. "I hope sae, madam," said Jeanie, surprised at the question "my father wad hae wanted mony a thing ere I had wanted _that_ schuling." "The better sign of him, young woman. There are men here, well to pass in the world, would not want their share of a Leicester plover, and that's a bag-pudding, if fasting for three hours would make all their poor children read the Bible from end to end. Take thou the book, then, for my eyes are something dazed, and read where thou listest--it's the only book thou canst not happen wrong in." Jeanie was at first tempted to turn up the parable of the good Samaritan, but her conscience checked her, as if it were a use of Scripture, not for her own edification, but to work upon the mind of others for the relief of her worldly afflictions; and under this scrupulous sense of duty, she selected, in preference, a CHAPTER of the prophet Isaiah, and read it, notwithstanding her northern' accent and tone, with a devout propriety, which greatly edified Mrs. Dalton. "Ah," she said, "an all Scotchwomen were sic as thou but it was our luck to get born devils of thy country, I think--every one worse than t'other. If thou knowest of any tidy lass like thysell that wanted a place, and could bring a good character, and would not go laiking about to wakes and fairs, and wore shoes and stockings all the day round--why, I'll not say but we might find room for her at the Rectory. Hast no cousin or sister, lass, that such an offer would suit?" This was touching upon a sore point, but Jeanie was spared the pain of replying by the entrance of the same man-servant she had seen before. "Measter wishes to see the young woman from Scotland," was Tummas's address. "Go to his Reverence, my dear, as fast as you can, and tell him all your story--his Reverence is a kind man," said Mrs. Dalton. "I will fold down the leaf, and wake you a cup of tea, with some nice muffin, against you come down, and that's what you seldom see in Scotland, girl." "Measter's waiting for the young woman," said Tummas impatiently. "Well, Mr. Jack-Sauce, and what is your business to put in your oar?--And how often must I tell you to call Mr. Staunton his Reverence, seeing as he is a dignified clergyman, and not be meastering, meastering him, as if he were a little petty squire?" As Jeanie was now at the door, and ready to accompany Tummas, the footman said nothing till he got into the passage, when he muttered, "There are moe masters than one in this house, and I think we shall have a mistress too, an Dame Dalton carries it thus." Tummas led the way through a more intricate range of passages than Jeanie had yet threaded, and ushered her into an apartment which was darkened by the closing of most of the window-shutters, and in which was a bed with the curtains partly drawn. "Here is the young woman, sir," said Tummas. "Very well," said a voice from the bed, but not that of his Reverence; "be ready to answer the bell, and leave the room." "There is some mistake," said Jeanie, confounded at finding herself in the apartment of an invalid; "the servant told me that the minister" "Don't trouble yourself," said the invalid, "there is no mistake. I know more of your affairs than my father, and I can manage them better.--Leave the room, Tom." The servant obeyed.--"We must not," said the invalid, "lose time, when we have little to lose. Open the shutters of that window." She did so, and as he drew aside the curtain of his bed, the light fell on his pale countenance, as, turban'd with bandages, and dressed in a night-gown, he lay, seemingly exhausted, upon the bed. "Look at me," he said, "Jeanie Deans; can you not recollect me?" "No, sir," said she, full of surprise. "I was never in this country before." "But I may have been in yours. Think--recollect. I should faint did I name the name you are most dearly bound to loathe and to detest. Think--remember!" A terrible recollection flashed on Jeanie, which every tone of the speaker confirmed, and which his next words rendered certainty. "Be composed--remember Muschat's Cairn, and the moonlight night!" Jeanie sunk down on a chair with clasped hands, and gasped in agony. "Yes, here I lie," he said, "like a crushed snake, writhing with impatience at my incapacity of motion--here I lie, when I ought to have been in Edinburgh, trying every means to save a life that is dearer to me than my own.--How is your sister?--how fares it with her?--condemned to death, I know it, by this time! O, the horse that carried me safely on a thousand errands of folly and wickedness, that he should have broke down with me on the only good mission I have undertaken for years! But I must rein in my passion--my frame cannot endure it, and I have much to say. Give me some of the cordial which stands on that table.--Why do you tremble? But you have too good cause.--Let it stand--I need it not." Jeanie, however reluctant, approached him with the cup into which she had poured the draught, and could not forbear saying, "There is a cordial for the mind, sir, if the wicked will turn from their transgressions, and seek to the Physician of souls." "Silence!" he said sternly--"and yet I thank you. But tell me, and lose no time in doing so, what you are doing in this country? Remember, though I have been your sister's worst enemy, yet I will serve her with the best of my blood, and I will serve you for her sake; and no one can serve you to such purpose, for no one can know the circumstances so well--so speak without fear." "I am not afraid, sir," said Jeanie, collecting her spirits. "I trust in God; and if it pleases Him to redeem my sister's captivity, it is all I seek, whosoever be the instrument. But, sir, to be plain with you, I dare not use your counsel, unless I were enabled to see that it accords with the law which I must rely upon." "The devil take the Puritan!" cried George Staunton, for so we must now call him--"I beg your pardon; but I am naturally impatient, and you drive me mad! What harm can it possibly do to tell me in what situation your sister stands, and your own expectations of being able to assist her? It is time enough to refuse my advice when I offer any which you may think improper. I speak calmly to you, though 'tis against my nature; but don't urge me to impatience--it will only render me incapable of serving Effie." There was in the looks and words of this unhappy young man a sort of restrained eagerness and impetuosity which seemed to prey upon itself, as the impatience of a fiery steed fatigues itself with churning upon the bit. After a moment's consideration, it occurred to Jeanie that she was not entitled to withhold from him, whether on her sister's account or her own, the fatal account of the consequences of the crime which he had committed, nor to reject such advice, being in itself lawful and innocent, as he might be able to suggest in the way of remedy. Accordingly, in as few words as she could express it, she told the history of her sister's trial and condemnation, and of her own journey as far as Newark. He appeared to listen in the utmost agony of mind, yet repressed every violent symptom of emotion, whether by gesture or sound, which might have interrupted the speaker, and, stretched on his couch like the Mexican monarch on his bed of live coals, only the contortions of his cheek, and the quivering of his limbs, gave indication of his sufferings. To much of what she said he listened with stifled groans, as if he were only hearing those miseries confirmed, whose fatal reality he had known before; but when she pursued her tale through the circumstances which had interrupted her journey, extreme surprise and earnest attention appeared to succeed to the symptoms of remorse which he had before exhibited. He questioned Jeanie closely concerning the appearance of the two men, and the conversation which she had overheard between the taller of them and the woman. When Jeanie mentioned the old woman having alluded to her foster-son--"It is too true," he said; "and the source from which I derived food, when an infant, must have communicated to me the wretched--the fated--propensity to vices that were strangers in my own family.--But go on." Jeanie passed slightly over her journey in company with Madge, having no inclination to repeat what might be the effect of mere raving on the part of her companion, and therefore her tale was now closed. Young Staunton lay for a moment in profound meditation and at length spoke with more composure than he had yet displayed during their interview.--"You are a sensible, as well as a good young woman, Jeanie Deans, and I will tell you more of my story than I have told to any one.-- Story did I call it?--it is a tissue of folly, guilt, and misery.--But take notice--I do it because I desire your confidence in return--that is, that you will act in this dismal matter by my advice and direction. Therefore do I speak." "I will do what is fitting for a sister, and a daughter, and a Christian woman to do," said Jeanie; "but do not tell me any of your secrets.--It is not good that I should come into your counsel, or listen to the doctrine which causeth to err." "Simple fool!" said the young man. "Look at me. My head is not horned, my foot is not cloven, my hands are not garnished with talons; and, since I am not the very devil himself, what interest can any one else have in destroying the hopes with which you comfort or fool yourself? Listen to me patiently, and you will find that, when you have heard my counsel, you may go to the seventh heaven with it in your pocket, if you have a mind, and not feel yourself an ounce heavier in the ascent." At the risk of being somewhat heavy, as explanations usually prove, we must here endeavour to combine into a distinct narrative, information which the invalid communicated in a manner at once too circumstantial, and too much broken by passion, to admit of our giving his precise words. Part of it indeed he read from a manuscript, which he had perhaps drawn up for the information of his relations after his decease. "To make my tale short--this wretched hag--this Margaret Murdockson, was the wife of a favourite servant of my father--she had been my nurse--her husband was dead--she resided in a cottage near this place--she had a daughter who grew up, and was then a beautiful but very giddy girl; her mother endeavoured to promote her marriage with an old and wealthy churl in the neighbourhood--the girl saw me frequently--She was familiar with me, as our connection seemed to permit--and I--in a word, I wronged her cruelly--It was not so bad as your sister's business, but it was sufficiently villanous--her folly should have been her protection. Soon after this I was sent abroad--To do my father justice, if I have turned out a fiend it is not his fault--he used the best means. When I returned, I found the wretched mother and daughter had fallen into disgrace, and were chased from this country.--My deep share in their shame and misery was discovered--my father used very harsh language--we quarrelled. I left his house, and led a life of strange adventure, resolving never again to see my father or my father's home. "And now comes the story!--Jeanie, I put my life into your hands, and not only my own life, which, God knows, is not worth saving, but the happiness of a respectable old man, and the honour of a family of consideration. My love of low society, as such propensities as I was cursed with are usually termed, was, I think of an uncommon kind, and indicated a nature, which, if not depraved by early debauchery, would have been fit for better things. I did not so much delight in the wild revel, the low humour, the unconfined liberty of those with whom I associated as in the spirit of adventure, presence of mind in peril, and sharpness of intellect which they displayed in prosecuting their maraudings upon the revenue, or similar adventures.--Have you looked round this rectory?--is it not a sweet and pleasant retreat?" Jeanie, alarmed at this sudden change of subject, replied in the affirmative. "Well! I wish it had been ten thousand fathoms under ground, with its church-lands, and tithes, and all that belongs to it. Had it not been for this cursed rectory, I should have been permitted to follow the bent of my own inclinations and the profession of arms, and half the courage and address that I have displayed among smugglers and deer-stealers would have secured me an honourable rank among my contemporaries. Why did I not go abroad when I left this house!--Why did I leave it at all!--why--But it came to that point with me that it is madness to look back, and misery to look forward!" He paused, and then proceeded with more composure. "The chances of a wandering life brought me unhappily to Scotland, to embroil myself in worse and more criminal actions than I had yet been concerned in. It was now I became acquainted with Wilson, a remarkable man in his station of life; quiet, composed, and resolute, firm in mind, and uncommonly strong in person, gifted with a sort of rough eloquence which raised him above his companions. Hitherto I had been As dissolute as desperate, yet through both Were seen some sparkles of a better hope. "But it was this man's misfortune, as well as mine, that, notwithstanding the difference of our rank and education, he acquired an extraordinary and fascinating influence over me, which I can only account for by the calm determination of his character being superior to the less sustained impetuosity of mine. Where he led I felt myself bound to follow; and strange was the courage and address which he displayed in his pursuits. While I was engaged in desperate adventures, under so strange and dangerous a preceptor, I became acquainted with your unfortunate sister at some sports of the young people in the suburbs, which she frequented by stealth--and her ruin proved an interlude to the tragic scenes in which I was now deeply engaged. Yet this let me say--the villany was not premeditated, and I was firmly resolved to do her all the justice which marriage could do, so soon as I should be able to extricate myself from my unhappy course of life, and embrace some one more suited to my birth. I had wild visions--visions of conducting her as if to some poor retreat, and introducing her at once to rank and fortune she never dreamt of. A friend, at my request, attempted a negotiation with my father, which was protracted for some time, and renewed at different intervals. At length, and just when I expected my father's pardon, he learned by some means or other my infamy, painted in even exaggerated colours, which was, God knows, unnecessary. He wrote me a letter--how it found me out I know not--enclosing me a sum of money, and disowning me for ever. I became desperate--I became frantic--I readily joined Wilson in a perilous smuggling adventure in which we miscarried, and was willingly blinded by his logic to consider the robbery of the officer of the customs in Fife as a fair and honourable reprisal. Hitherto I had observed a certain line in my criminality, and stood free of assaults upon personal property, but now I felt a wild pleasure in disgracing myself as much as possible. "The plunder was no object to me. I abandoned that to my comrades, and only asked the post of danger. I remember well that when I stood with my drawn sword guarding the door while they committed the felony, I had not a thought of my own safety. I was only meditating on my sense of supposed wrong from my family, my impotent thirst of vengeance, and how it would sound in the haughty cars of the family of Willingham, that one of their descendants, and the heir apparent of their honours, should perish by the hands of the hangman for robbing a Scottish gauger of a sum not equal to one-fifth part of the money I had in my pocket-book. We were taken--I expected no less. We were condemned--that also I looked for. But death, as he approached nearer, looked grimly; and the recollection of your sister's destitute condition determined me on an effort to save my life.-- I forgot to tell you, that in Edinburgh I again met the woman Murdockson and her daughter. She had followed the camp when young, and had now, under pretence of a trifling traffic, resumed predatory habits, with which she had already been too familiar. Our first meeting was stormy; but I was liberal of what money I had, and she forgot, or seemed to forget, the injury her daughter had received. The unfortunate girl herself seemed hardly even to know her seducer, far less to retain any sense of the injury she had received. Her mind is totally alienated, which, according to her mother's account, is sometimes the consequence of an unfavourable confinement. But it was _my doing._ Here was another stone knitted round my neck to sink me into the pit of perdition. Every look--every word of this poor creature--her false spirits--her imperfect recollections--her allusions to things which she had forgotten, but which were recorded in my conscience, were stabs of a poniard--stabs did I say?--they were tearing with hot pincers, and scalding the raw wound with burning sulphur--they were to be endured however, and they were endured.-- I return to my prison thoughts. "It was not the least miserable of them that your sister's time approached. I knew her dread of you and of her father. She often said she would die a thousand deaths ere you should know her shame--yet her confinement must be provided for. I knew this woman Murdockson was an infernal hag, but I thought she loved me, and that money would make her true. She had procured a file for Wilson, and a spring-saw for me; and she undertook readily to take charge of Effie during her illness, in which she had skill enough to give the necessary assistance. I gave her the money which my father had sent me. It was settled that she should receive Effie into her house in the meantime, and wait for farther directions from me, when I should effect my escape. I communicated this purpose, and recommended the old hag to poor Effie by a letter, in which I recollect that I endeavoured to support the character of Macheath under condemnation-a fine, gay, bold-faced ruffian, who is game to the last. Such, and so wretchedly poor, was my ambition! Yet I had resolved to forsake the courses I had been engaged in, should I be so fortunate as to escape the gibbet. My design was to marry your sister, and go over to the West Indies. I had still a considerable sum of money left, and I trusted to be able, in one way or other, to provide for myself and my wife. "We made the attempt to escape, and by the obstinacy of Wilson, who insisted upon going first, it totally miscarried. The undaunted and self-denied manner in which he sacrificed himself to redeem his error, and accomplish my escape from the Tolbooth Church, you must have heard of--all Scotland rang with it. It was a gallant and extraordinary deed--All men spoke of it--all men, even those who most condemned the habits and crimes of this self-devoted man, praised the heroism of his friendship. I have many vices, but cowardice or want of gratitude, are none of the number. I resolved to requite his generosity, and even your sister's safety became a secondary consideration with me for the time. To effect Wilson's liberation was my principal object, and I doubted not to find the means. "Yet I did not forget Effie neither. The bloodhounds of the law were so close after me, that I dared not trust myself near any of my old haunts, but old Murdockson met me by appointment, and informed me that your sister had happily been delivered of a boy. I charged the hag to keep her patient's mind easy, and let her want for nothing that money could purchase, and I retreated to Fife, where, among my old associates of Wilson's gang, I hid myself in those places of concealment where the men engaged in that desperate trade are used to find security for themselves and their uncustomed goods. Men who are disobedient both to human and divine laws are not always insensible to the claims of courage and generosity. We were assured that the mob of Edinburgh, strongly moved with the hardship of Wilson's situation, and the gallantry of his conduct, would back any bold attempt that might be made to rescue him even from the foot of the gibbet. Desperate as the attempt seemed, upon my declaring myself ready to lead the onset on the guard, I found no want of followers who engaged to stand by me, and returned to Lothian, soon followed by some steady associates, prepared to act whenever the occasion might require. "I have no doubt I should have rescued him from the very noose that dangled over his head," he continued with animation, which seemed a flash of the interest which he had taken in such exploits; "but amongst other precautions, the magistrates had taken one, suggested, as we afterwards learned, by the unhappy wretch Porteous, which effectually disconcerted my measures. They anticipated, by half-an-hour, the ordinary period for execution; and, as it had been resolved amongst us, that, for fear of observation from the officers of justice, we should not show ourselves upon the street until the time of action approached, it followed, that all was over before our attempt at a rescue commenced. It did commence, however, and I gained the scaffold and cut the rope with my own hand. It was too late! The bold, stouthearted, generous criminal was no more--and vengeance was all that remained to us--a vengeance, as I then thought, doubly due from my hand, to whom Wilson had given life and liberty when he could as easily have secured his own." "O sir," said Jeanie, "did the Scripture never come into your mind, 'Vengeance is mine, and I will repay it?'" "Scripture! Why, I had not opened a Bible for five years," answered Staunton. "Wae's me, sirs," said Jeanie--"and a minister's son too!" "It is natural for you to say so; yet do not interrupt me, but let me finish my most accursed history. The beast, Porteous, who kept firing on the people long after it had ceased to be necessary, became the object of their hatred for having overdone his duty, and of mine for having done it too well. We that is, I and the other determined friends of Wilson, resolved to be avenged--but caution was necessary. I thought I had been marked by one of the officers, and therefore continued to lurk about the vicinity of Edinburgh, but without daring to venture within the walls. At length I visited, at the hazard of my life, the place where I hoped to find my future wife and my son--they were both gone. Dame Murdockson informed me, that so soon as Effie heard of the miscarriage of the attempt to rescue Wilson, and the hot pursuit after me, she fell into a brain fever; and that being one day obliged to go out on some necessary business and leave her alone, she had taken that opportunity to escape, and she had not seen her since. I loaded her with reproaches, to which she listened with the most provoking and callous composure; for it is one of her attributes, that, violent and fierce as she is upon most occasions, there are some in which she shows the most imperturbable calmness. I threatened her with justice; she said I had more reason to fear justice than she had. I felt she was right, and was silenced. I threatened her with vengeance; she replied in nearly the same words, that, to judge by injuries received, I had more reason to fear her vengeance, than she to dread mine. She was again right, and I was left without an answer. I flung myself from her in indignation, and employed a comrade to make inquiry in the neighbourhood of Saint Leonard's concerning your sister; but ere I received his answer, the opening quest of a well-scented terrier of the law drove me from the vicinity of Edinburgh, to a more distant and secluded place of concealment. A secret and trusty emissary at length brought me the account of Porteous's condemnation, and of your sister's imprisonment on a criminal charge; thus astounding one of mine ears, while he gratified the other. "I again ventured to the Pleasance--again charged Murdockson with treachery to the unfortunate Effie and her child, though I could conceive no reason, save that of appropriating the whole of the money I had lodged with her. Your narrative throws light on this, and shows another motive, not less powerful because less evident--the desire of wreaking vengeance on the seducer of her daughter,--the destroyer at once of her reason and reputation. Great God! how I wish that, instead of the revenge she made choice of, she had delivered me up to the cord!" "But what account did the wretched woman give of Effie and the bairn?" said Jeanie, who, during this long and agitating narrative, had firmness and discernment enough to keep her eye on such points as might throw light on her sister's misfortunes. "She would give none," said Staunton; "she said the mother made a moonlight flitting from her house, with the infant in her arms--that she had never seen either of them since--that the lass might have thrown the child into the North Loch or the Quarry Holes for what she knew, and it was like enough she had done so." "And how came you to believe that she did not speak the fatal truth?" said Jeanie, trembling. "Because, on this second occasion, I saw her daughter, and I understood from her, that, in fact, the child had been removed or destroyed during the illness of the mother. But all knowledge to be got from her is so uncertain and indirect, that I could not collect any farther circumstances. Only the diabolical character of old Murdockson makes me augur the worst." "The last account agrees with that given by my poor sister," said Jeanie; "but gang on wi' your ain tale, sir." "Of this I am certain," said Staunton, "that Effie, in her senses, and with her knowledge, never injured living creature.--But what could I do in her exculpation?--Nothing--and, therefore, my whole thoughts were turned toward her safety. I was under the cursed necessity of suppressing my feelings towards Murdockson; my life was in the hag's hand--that I cared not for; but on my life hung that of your sister. I spoke the wretch fair; I appeared to confide in her; and to me, so far as I was personally concerned, she gave proofs of extraordinary fidelity. I was at first uncertain what measures I ought to adopt for your sister's liberation, when the general rage excited among the citizens of Edinburgh on account of the reprieve, of Porteous, suggested to me the daring idea of forcing the jail, and at once carrying off your sister from the clutches of the law, and bringing to condign punishment a miscreant, who had tormented the unfortunate Wilson, even in the hour of death as if he had been a wild Indian taken captive by a hostile tribe. I flung myself among the multitude in the moment of fermentation--so did others among Wilson's mates, who had, like me, been disappointed in the hope of glutting their eyes with Porteous's execution. All was organised, and I was chosen for the captain. I felt not--I do not now feel, compunction for what was to be done, and has since been executed." "O, God forgive ye, sir, and bring ye to a better sense of your ways!" exclaimed Jeanie, in horror at the avowal of such violent sentiments. "Amen," replied Staunton, "if my sentiments are wrong. But I repeat, that, although willing to aid the deed, I could have wished them to have chosen another leader; because I foresaw that the great and general duty of the night would interfere with the assistance which I proposed to render Effie. I gave a commission however, to a trusty friend to protect her to a place of safety, so soon as the fatal procession had left the jail. But for no persuasions which I could use in the hurry of the moment, or which my comrade employed at more length, after the mob had taken a different direction, could the unfortunate girl be prevailed upon to leave the prison. His arguments were all wasted upon the infatuated victim, and he was obliged to leave her in order to attend to his own safety. Such was his account; but, perhaps, he persevered less steadily in his attempts to persuade her than I would have done." "Effie was right to remain," said Jeanie; "and I love her the better for it." "Why will you say so?" said Staunton. "You cannot understand my reasons, sir, if I should render them," answered Jeanie composedly; "they that thirst for the blood of their enemies have no taste for the well-spring of life." "My hopes," said Staunton, "were thus a second time disappointed. My next efforts were to bring her through her trial by means of yourself. How I urged it, and where, you cannot have forgotten. I do not blame you for your refusal; it was founded, I am convinced, on principle, and not on indifference to your sister's fate. For me, judge of me as a man frantic; I knew not what hand to turn to, and all my efforts were unavailing. In this condition, and close beset on all sides, I thought of what might be done by means of my family, and their influence. I fled from Scotland--I reached this place--my miserably wasted and unhappy appearance procured me from my father that pardon, which a parent finds it so hard to refuse, even to the most undeserving son. And here I have awaited in anguish of mind, which the condemned criminal might envy, the event of your sister's trial." "Without taking any steps for her relief?" said Jeanie. "To the last I hoped her ease might terminate more favourably; and it is only two days since that the fatal tidings reached me. My resolution was instantly taken. I mounted my best horse with the purpose of making the utmost haste to London and there compounding with Sir Robert Walpole for your sister's safety, by surrendering to him, in the person of the heir of the family of Willingham, the notorious George Robertson, the accomplice of Wilson, the breaker of the Tolbooth prison, and the well-known leader of the Porteous mob." "But would that save my sister?" said Jeanie, in astonishment. "It would, as I should drive my bargain," said Staunton. "Queens love revenge as well as their subjects--Little as you seem to esteem it, it is a poison which pleases all palates, from the prince to the peasant. Prime ministers love no less the power of gratifying sovereigns by gratifying their passions.--The life of an obscure village girl! Why, I might ask the best of the crown-jewels for laying the head of such an insolent conspiracy at the foot of her majesty, with a certainty of being gratified. All my other plans have failed, but this could not--Heaven is just, however, and would not honour me with making this voluntary atonement for the injury I have done your sister. I had not rode ten miles, when my horse, the best and most sure-footed animal in this country, fell with me on a level piece of road, as if he had been struck by a cannon-shot. I was greatly hurt, and was brought back here in the condition in which you now see me." As young Staunton had come to the conclusion, the servant opened the door, and, with a voice which seemed intended rather for a signal, than merely the announcing of a visit, said, "His Reverence, sir, is coming up stairs to wait upon you." "For God's sake, hide yourself, Jeanie," exclaimed Staunton, "in that dressing closet!" "No, sir," said Jeanie; "as I am here for nae ill, I canna take the shame of hiding mysell frae the master of the house." "But, good Heavens!" exclaimed George Staunton, "do but consider--" Ere he could complete the sentence, his father entered the apartment. CHAPTER TENTH. And now, will pardon, comfort, kindness, draw The youth from vice? will honour, duty, law? Crabbe. Jeanie arose from her seat, and made her quiet reverence, when the elder Mr. Staunton entered the apartment. His astonishment was extreme at finding his son in such company. "I perceive, madam, I have made a mistake respecting you, and ought to have left the task of interrogating you, and of righting your wrongs, to this young man, with whom, doubtless, you have been formerly acquainted." "It's unwitting on my part that I am here;" said Jeanie; "the servant told me his master wished to speak with me." "There goes the purple coat over my ears," murmured Tummas. "D--n her, why must she needs speak the truth, when she could have as well said anything else she had a mind?" "George," said Mr. Staunton, "if you are still, as you have ever been,--lost to all self-respect, you might at least have spared your father and your father's house, such a disgraceful scene as this." "Upon my life--upon my soul, sir!" said George, throwing his feet over the side of the bed, and starting from his recumbent posture. "Your life, sir?" interrupted his father, with melancholy sternness,--"What sort of life has it been?--Your soul! alas! what regard have you ever paid to it? Take care to reform both ere offering either as pledges of your sincerity." "On my honour, sir, you do me wrong," answered George Staunton; "I have been all that you can call me that's bad, but in the present instance you do me injustice. By my honour you do!" "Your honour!" said his father, and turned from him, with a look of the most upbraiding contempt, to Jeanie. "From you, young woman, I neither ask nor expect any explanation; but as a father alike and as a clergyman, I request your departure from this house. If your romantic story has been other than a pretext to find admission into it (which, from the society in which you first appeared, I may be permitted to doubt), you will find a justice of peace within two miles, with whom, more properly than with me, you may lodge your complaint." "This shall not be," said George Staunton, starting up to his feet. "Sir, you are naturally kind and humane--you shall not become cruel and inhospitable on my account. Turn out that eaves-dropping rascal," pointing to Thomas, "and get what hartshorn drops, or what better receipt you have against fainting, and I will explain to you in two words the connection betwixt this young woman and me. She shall not lose her fair character through me. I have done too much mischief to her family already, and I know too well what belongs to the loss of fame." "Leave the room, sir," said the Rector to the servant; and when the man had obeyed, he carefully shut the door behind him. Then, addressing his son, he said sternly, "Now, sir, what new proof of your infamy have you to impart to me?" Young Staunton was about to speak, but it was one of those moments when those, who, like Jeanie Deans, possess the advantage of a steady courage and unruffled temper, can assume the superiority over more ardent but less determined spirits. "Sir," she said to the elder Staunton, "ye have an undoubted right to ask your ain son to render a reason of his conduct. But respecting me, I am but a wayfaring traveller, no ways obligated or indebted to you, unless it be for the meal of meat which, in my ain country, is willingly gien by rich or poor, according to their ability, to those who need it; and for which, forby that, I am willing to make payment, if I didna think it would be an affront to offer siller in a house like this--only I dinna ken the fashions of the country." "This is all very well, young woman," said the Rector, a good deal surprised, and unable to conjecture whether to impute Jeanie's language to simplicity or impertinence; "this may be all very well--but let me bring it to a point. Why do you stop this young man's mouth, and prevent his communicating to his father and his best friend, an explanation (since he says he has one) of circumstances which seem in themselves not a little suspicious?" "He may tell of his ain affairs what he likes," answered Jeanie; "but my family and friends have nae right to hae ony stories told anent them without their express desire; and, as they canna be here to speak for themselves, I entreat ye wadna ask Mr. George Rob--I mean Staunton, or whatever his name is, ony questions anent me or my folk; for I maun be free to tell you, that he will neither have the bearing of a Christian or a gentleman, if he answers you against my express desire." "This is the most extraordinary thing I ever met with," said the Rector, as, after fixing his eyes keenly on the placid, yet modest countenance of Jeanie, he turned them suddenly upon his son. "What have you to say, sir?" "That I feel I have been too hasty in my promise, sir," answered George Staunton; "I have no title to make any communications respecting the affairs of this young person's family without her assent." The elder Mr. Staunton turned his eyes from one to the other with marks of surprise. "This is more, and worse, I fear," he said, addressing his son, "than one of your frequent and disgraceful connections--I insist upon knowing the mystery." "I have already said, sir," replied his son, rather sullenly, "that I have no title to mention the affairs of this young woman's family without her consent." "And I hae nae mysteries to explain, sir," said Jeanie, "but only to pray you, as a preacher of the gospel and a gentleman, to permit me to go safe to the next public-house on the Lunnon road." "I shall take care of your safety," said young Staunton "you need ask that favour from no one." "Do you say so before my face?" said the justly-incensed father. "Perhaps, sir, you intend to fill up the cup of disobedience and profligacy by forming a low and disgraceful marriage? But let me bid you beware." "If you were feared for sic a thing happening wi' me, sir," said Jeanie, "I can only say, that not for all the land that lies between the twa ends of the rainbow wad I be the woman that should wed your son." "There is something very singular in all this," said the elder Staunton; "follow me into the next room, young woman." "Hear me speak first," said the young man. "I have but one word to say. I confide entirely in your prudence; tell my father as much or as little of these matters as you will, he shall know neither more nor less from me." His father darted at him a glance of indignation, which softened into sorrow as he saw him sink down on the couch, exhausted with the scene he had undergone. He left the apartment, and Jeanie followed him, George Staunton raising himself as she passed the door-way, and pronouncing the word, "Remember!" in a tone as monitory as it was uttered by Charles I. upon the scaffold. The elder Staunton led the way into a small parlour, and shut the door. "Young woman," said he, "there is something in your face and appearance that marks both sense and simplicity, and, if I am not deceived, innocence also--Should it be otherwise, I can only say, you are the most accomplished hypocrite I have ever seen.--I ask to know no secret that you have unwillingness to divulge, least of all those which concern my son. His conduct has given me too much unhappiness to permit me to hope comfort or satisfaction from him. If you are such as I suppose you, believe me, that whatever unhappy circumstances may have connected you with George Staunton, the sooner you break them through the better." "I think I understand your meaning, sir," replied Jeanie; "and as ye are sae frank as to speak o' the young gentleman in sic a way, I must needs say that it is but the second time of my speaking wi' him in our lives, and what I hae heard frae him on these twa occasions has been such that I never wish to hear the like again." "Then it is your real intention to leave this part of the country, and proceed to London?" said the Rector. "Certainly, sir; for I may say, in one sense, that the avenger of blood is behind me; and if I were but assured against mischief by the way" "I have made inquiry," said the clergyman, "after the suspicious characters you described. They have left their place of rendezvous; but as they may be lurking in the neighbourhood, and as you say you have special reason to apprehend violence from them, I will put you under the charge of a steady person, who will protect you as far as Stamford, and see you into a light coach, which goes from thence to London." "A coach is not for the like of me, sir," said Jeanie, to whom the idea of a stage-coach was unknown, as, indeed, they were then only used in the neighbourhood of London. Mr. Staunton briefly explained that she would find that mode of conveyance more commodious, cheaper, and more safe, than travelling on horseback. She expressed her gratitude with so much singleness of heart, that he was induced to ask her whether she wanted the pecuniary means of prosecuting her journey. She thanked him, but said she had enough for her purpose; and, indeed, she had husbanded her stock with great care. This reply served also to remove some doubts, which naturally enough still floated in Mr. Staunton's mind, respecting her character and real purpose, and satisfied him, at least, that money did not enter into her scheme of deception, if an impostor she should prove. He next requested to know what part of the city she wished to go to. "To a very decent merchant, a cousin o' my ain, a Mrs. Glass, sir, that sells snuff and tobacco, at the sign o' the Thistle, somegate in the town." Jeanie communicated this intelligence with a feeling that a connection so respectable ought to give her consequence in the eyes of Mr. Staunton; and she was a good deal surprised when he answered-- "And is this woman your only acquaintance in London, my poor girl? and have you really no better knowledge where she is to be found?" "I was gaun to see the Duke of Argyle, forby Mrs. Glass," said Jeanie; "and if your honour thinks it would be best to go there first, and get some of his Grace's folk to show me my cousin's shop" "Are you acquainted with any of the Duke of Argyle's people?" said the Rector. "No, sir." "Her brain must be something touched after all, or it would be impossible for her to rely on such introductions.--Well," said he aloud, "I must not inquire into the cause of your journey, and so I cannot be fit to give you advice how to manage it. But the landlady of the house where the coach stops is a very decent person; and as I use her house sometimes, I will give you a recommendation to her." Jeanie thanked him for his kindness with her best courtesy, and said, "That with his honour's line, and ane from worthy Mrs. Bickerton, that keeps the Seven Stars at York, she did not doubt to be well taken out in Lunnon." "And now," said he, "I presume you will be desirous to set out immediately." "If I had been in an inn, sir, or any suitable resting-place," answered Jeanie, "I wad not have presumed to use the Lord's day for travelling but as I am on a journey of mercy, I trust my doing so will not be imputed." "You may, if you choose, remain with Mrs. Dalton for the evening; but I desire you will have no farther correspondence with my son, who is not a proper counsellor for a person of your age, whatever your difficulties may be." "Your honour speaks ower truly in that," said Jeanie; "it was not with my will that I spoke wi' him just now, and--not to wish the gentleman onything but gude--I never wish to see him between the een again." "If you please," added the Rector, "as you seem to be a seriously disposed young woman, you may attend family worship in the hall this evening." "I thank your honour," said Jeanie; "but I am doubtful if my attendance would be to edification." "How!" said the Rector; "so young, and already unfortunate enough to have doubts upon the duties of religion!" "God forbid, sir," replied Jeanie; "it is not for that; but I have been bred in the faith of the suffering remnant of the Presbyterian doctrine in Scotland, and I am doubtful if I can lawfully attend upon your fashion of worship, seeing it has been testified against by many precious souls of our kirk, and specially by my worthy father." "Well, my good girl," said the Rector, with a good-humoured smile, "far be it from me to put any force upon your conscience; and yet you ought to recollect that the same divine grace dispenses its streams to other kingdoms as well as to Scotland. As it is as essential to our spiritual, as water to our earthly wants, its springs, various in character, yet alike efficacious in virtue, are to be found in abundance throughout the Christian world." "Ah, but," said Jeanie, "though the waters may be alike, yet, with your worship's leave, the blessing upon them may not be equal. It would have been in vain for Naaman the Syrian leper to have bathed in Pharpar and Abana, rivers of Damascus, when it was only the waters of Jordon that were sanctified for the cure." "Well," said the Rector, "we will not enter upon the great debate betwixt our national churches at present. We must endeavour to satisfy you, that, at least, amongst our errors, we preserve Christian charity, and a desire to assist our brethren." He then ordered Mrs. Dalton into his presence, and consigned Jeanie to her particular charge, with directions to be kind to her, and with assurances, that, early in the morning, a trusty guide and a good horse should be ready to conduct her to Stamford. He then took a serious and dignified, yet kind leave of her, wishing her full success in the objects of her journey, which he said he doubted not were laudable, from the soundness of thinking which she had displayed in conversation. Jeanie was again conducted by the housekeeper to her own apartment. But the evening was not destined to pass over without farther torment from young Staunton. A paper was slipped into her hand by the faithful Tummas, which intimated his young master's desire, or rather demand, to see her instantly, and assured her he had provided against interruption. "Tell your young master," said Jeanie, openly, and regardless of all the winks and signs by which Tummas strove to make her comprehend that Mrs. Dalton was not to be admitted into the secret of the correspondence, "that I promised faithfully to his worthy father that I would not see him again." "Tummas," said Mrs. Dalton, "I think you might be much more creditably employed, considering the coat you wear, and the house you live in, than to be carrying messages between your young master and girls that chance to be in this house." "Why, Mrs. Dalton, as to that, I was hired to carry messages, and not to ask any questions about them; and it's not for the like of me to refuse the young gentleman's bidding, if he were a little wildish or so. If there was harm meant, there's no harm done, you see." "However," said Mrs. Dalton, "I gie you fair warning, Tummas Ditton, that an I catch thee at this work again, his Reverence shall make a clear house of you." Thomas retired, abashed and in dismay. The rest of the evening passed away without anything worthy of notice. Jeanie enjoyed the comforts of a good bed and a sound sleep with grateful satisfaction, after the perils and hardships of the preceding day; and such was her fatigue, that she slept soundly until six o'clock, when she was awakened by Mrs. Dalton, who acquainted her that her guide and horse were ready, and in attendance. She hastily rose, and, after her morning devotions, was soon ready to resume her travels. The motherly care of the housekeeper had provided an early breakfast, and, after she had partaken of this refreshment, she found herself safe seated on a pillion behind a stout Lincolnshire peasant, who was, besides, armed with pistols, to protect her against any violence which might be offered. They trudged along in silence for a mile or two along a country road, which conducted them, by hedge and gate-way, into the principal highway, a little beyond Grantham. At length her master of the horse asked her whether her name was not Jean, or Jane, Deans. She answered in the affirmative, with some surprise. "Then here's a bit of a note as concerns you," said the man, handing it over his left shoulder. "It's from young master, as I judge, and every man about Willingham is fain to pleasure him either for love or fear; for he'll come to be landlord at last, let them say what they like." Jeanie broke the seal of the note, which was addressed to her, and read as follows:-- "You refuse to see me. I suppose you are shocked at my character: but, in painting myself such as I am, you should give me credit for my sincerity. I am, at least, no hypocrite. You refuse, however, to see me, and your conduct may be natural--but is it wise? I have expressed my anxiety to repair your sister's misfortunes at the expense of my honour,--my family's honour--my own life, and you think me too debased to be admitted even to sacrifice what I have remaining of honour, fame, and life, in her cause. Well, if the offerer be despised, the victim is still equally at hand; and perhaps there may be justice in the decree of Heaven, that I shall not have the melancholy credit of appearing to make this sacrifice out of my own free good-will. You, as you have declined my concurrence, must take the whole upon yourself. Go, then, to the Duke of Argyle, and, when other arguments fail you, tell him you have it in your power to bring to condign punishment the most active conspirator in the Porteous mob. He will hear you on this topic, should he be deaf to every other. Make your own terms, for they will be at your own making. You know where I am to be found; and you may be assured I will not give you the dark side of the hill, as at Muschat's Cairn; I have no thoughts of stirring from the house I was born in; like the hare, I shall be worried in the seat I started from. I repeat it--make your own terms. I need not remind you to ask your sister's life, for that you will do of course; but make terms of advantage for yourself--ask wealth and reward--office and income for Butler--ask anything--you will get anything--and all for delivering to the hands of the executioner a man most deserving of his office;--one who, though young in years, is old in wickedness, and whose most earnest desire is, after the storms of an unquiet life, to sleep and be at rest." This extraordinary letter was subscribed with the initials G. S. Jeanie read it over once or twice with great attention, which the slow pace of the horse, as he stalked through a deep lane, enabled her to do with facility. When she had perused this billet, her first employment was to tear it into as small pieces as possible, and disperse these pieces in the air by a few at a time, so that a document containing so perilous a secret might not fall into any other person's hand. The question how far, in point of extremity, she was entitled to save her sister's life by sacrificing that of a person who, though guilty towards the state, had done her no injury, formed the next earnest and most painful subject of consideration. In one sense, indeed, it seemed as if denouncing the guilt of Staunton, the cause of her sister's errors and misfortunes, would have been an act of just, and even providential retribution. But Jeanie, in the strict and severe tone of morality in which she was educated, had to consider not only the general aspect of a proposed action, but its justness and fitness in relation to the actor, before she could be, according to her own phrase, free to enter upon it. What right had she to make a barter between the lives of Staunton and of Effie, and to sacrifice the one for the safety of the other? His guilt--that guilt for which he was amenable to the laws--was a crime against the public indeed, but it was not against her. Neither did it seem to her that his share in the death of Porteous, though her mind revolted at the idea of using violence to any one, was in the relation of a common murder, against the perpetrator of which every one is called to aid the public magistrate. That violent action was blended with many circumstances, which, in the eyes of those in Jeanie's rank of life, if they did not altogether deprive it of the character of guilt, softened, at least, its most atrocious features. The anxiety of the government to obtain conviction of some of the offenders, had but served to increase the public feeling which connected the action, though violent and irregular, with the idea of ancient national independence. The rigorous measures adopted or proposed against the city of Edinburgh, the ancient metropolis of Scotland--the extremely unpopular and injudicious measure of compelling the Scottish clergy, contrary to their principles and sense of duty, to promulgate from the pulpit the reward offered for the discovery of the perpetrators of this slaughter, had produced on the public mind the opposite consequences from what were intended; and Jeanie felt conscious, that whoever should lodge information concerning that event, and for whatsoever purpose it might be done, it would be considered as an act of treason against the independence of Scotland. With the fanaticism of the Scottish Presbyterians, there was always mingled a glow of national feeling, and Jeanie, trembled at the idea of her name being handed down to posterity with that of the "fause Monteath," and one or two others, who, having deserted and betrayed the cause of their country, are damned to perpetual remembrance and execration among its peasantry. Yet, to part with Effie's life once more, when a word spoken might save it, pressed severely on the mind of her affectionate sister. "The Lord support and direct me!" said Jeanie, "for it seems to be His will to try me with difficulties far beyond my ain strength." While this thought passed through Jeanie's mind, her guard, tired of silence, began to show some inclination to be communicative. He seemed a sensible, steady peasant, but not having more delicacy or prudence than is common to those in his situation, he, of course, chose the Willingham family as the subject of his conversation. From this man Jeanie learned some particulars of which she had hitherto been ignorant, and which we will briefly recapitulate for the information of the reader. The father of George Staunton had been bred a soldier, and during service in the West Indies, had married the heiress of a wealthy planter. By this lady he had an only child, George Staunton, the unhappy young, man who has been so often mentioned in this narrative. He passed the first part of his early youth under the charge of a doting mother, and in the society of negro slaves, whose study it was to gratify his every caprice. His father was a man of worth and sense; but as he alone retained tolerable health among the officers of the regiment he belonged to, he was much engaged with his duty. Besides, Mrs. Staunton was beautiful and wilful, and enjoyed but delicate health; so that it was difficult for a man of affection, humanity, and a quiet disposition, to struggle with her on the point of her over-indulgence to an only child. Indeed, what Mr. Staunton did do towards counteracting the baneful effects of his wife's system, only tended to render it more pernicious; for every restraint imposed on the boy in his father's presence, was compensated by treble license during his absence. So that George Staunton acquired, even in childhood, the habit of regarding his father as a rigid censor, from whose severity he was desirous of emancipating himself as soon and absolutely as possible. When he was about ten years old, and when his mind had received all the seeds of those evil weeds which afterwards grew apace, his mother died, and his father, half heart-broken, returned to England. To sum up her imprudence and unjustifiable indulgence, she had contrived to place a considerable part of her fortune at her son's exclusive control or disposal, in consequence of which management, George Staunton had not been long in England till he learned his independence, and how to abuse it. His father had endeavoured to rectify the defects of his education by placing him in a well-regulated seminary. But although he showed some capacity for learning, his riotous conduct soon became intolerable to his teachers. He found means (too easily afforded to all youths who have certain expectations) of procuring such a command of money as enabled him to anticipate in boyhood the frolics and follies of a more mature age, and, with these accomplishments, he was returned on his father's hands as a profligate boy, whose example might ruin a hundred. The elder Mr. Staunton, whose mind, since his wife's death, had been tinged with a melancholy, which certainly his son's conduct did not tend to dispel, had taken orders, and was inducted by his brother Sir William Staunton into the family living of Willingham. The revenue was a matter of consequence to him, for he derived little advantage from the estate of his late wife; and his own fortune was that of a younger brother. He took his son to reside with him at the rectory, but he soon found that his disorders rendered him an intolerable inmate. And as the young men of his own rank would not endure the purse-proud insolence of the Creole, he fell into that taste for low society, which is worse than "pressing to death, whipping, or hanging." His father sent him abroad, but he only returned wilder and more desperate than before. It is true, this unhappy youth was not without his good qualities. He had lively wit, good temper, reckless generosity, and manners, which, while he was under restraint, might pass well in society. But all these availed him nothing. He was so well acquainted with the turf, the gaming-table, the cock-pit, and every worse rendezvous of folly and dissipation, that his mother's fortune was spent before he was twenty-one, and he was soon in debt and in distress. His early history may be concluded in the words of our British Juvenal, when describing a similar character:-- Headstrong, determined in his own career, He thought reproof unjust, and truth severe. The soul's disease was to its crisis come, He first abused, and then abjured, his home; And when he chose a vagabond to be, He made his shame his glory, "I'll be free!"* [Crabbe's _Borough,_ Letter xii.] "And yet 'tis pity on Measter George, too," continued the honest boor, "for he has an open hand, and winna let a poor body want an he has it." The virtue of profuse generosity, by which, indeed, they themselves are most directly advantaged, is readily admitted by the vulgar as a cloak for many sins. At Stamford our heroine was deposited in safety by her communicative guide. She obtained a place in the coach, which, although termed a light one, and accommodated with no fewer than six horses, only reached London on the afternoon of the second day. The recommendation of the elder Mr. Staunton procured Jeanie a civil reception at the inn where the carriage stopped, and, by the aid of Mrs. Bickerton's correspondent, she found out her friend and relative Mrs. Glass, by whom she was kindly received and hospitably entertained. CHAPTER ELEVENTH. My name is Argyle, you may well think it strange, To live at the court and never to change. Ballad. Few names deserve more honourable mention in the history of Scotland, during this period, than that of John, Duke of Argyle and Greenwich. His talents as a statesman and a soldier were generally admitted; he was not without ambition, but "without the illness that attends it"--without that irregularity of thought and aim, which often excites great men, in his peculiar situation, (for it was a very peculiar one), to grasp the means of raising themselves to power, at the risk of throwing a kingdom into confusion. Pope has distinguished him as Argyle, the state's whole thunder born to wield, And shake alike the senate and the field. He was alike free from the ordinary vices of statesmen, falsehood, namely, and dissimulation; and from those of warriors, inordinate and violent thirst after self-aggrandisement. Scotland, his native country, stood at this time in a very precarious and doubtful situation. She was indeed united to England, but the cement had not had time to acquire consistence. The irritation of ancient wrongs still subsisted, and betwixt the fretful jealousy of the Scottish, and the supercilious disdain of the English, quarrels repeatedly occurred, in the course of which the national league, so important to the safety of both, was in the utmost danger of being dissolved. Scotland had, besides, the disadvantage of being divided into intestine factions, which hated each other bitterly, and waited but a signal to break forth into action. In such circumstances, another man, with the talents and rank of Argyle, but without a mind so happily regulated, would have sought to rise from the earth in the whirlwind, and direct its fury. He chose a course more safe and more honourable. Soaring above the petty distinctions of faction, his voice was raised, whether in office or opposition, for those measures which were at once just and lenient. His high military talents enabled him, during the memorable year 1715, to render such services to the House of Hanover, as, perhaps, were too great to be either acknowledged or repaid. He had employed, too, his utmost influence in softening the consequences of that insurrection to the unfortunate gentlemen whom a mistaken sense of loyalty had engaged in the affair, and was rewarded by the esteem and affection of his country in an uncommon degree. This popularity, with a discontented and warlike people, was supposed to be a subject of jealousy at court, where the power to become dangerous is sometimes of itself obnoxious, though the inclination is not united with it. Besides, the Duke of Argyle's independent and somewhat haughty mode of expressing himself in Parliament, and acting in public, were ill calculated to attract royal favour. He was, therefore, always respected, and often employed; but he was not a favourite of George the Second, his consort, or his ministers. At several different periods in his life, the Duke might be considered as in absolute disgrace at court, although he could hardly be said to be a declared member of opposition. This rendered him the dearer to Scotland, because it was usually in her cause that he incurred the displeasure of his sovereign; and upon this very occasion of the Porteous mob, the animated and eloquent opposition which he had offered to the severe measures which were about to be adopted towards the city of Edinburgh, was the more gratefully received in that metropolis, as it was understood that the Duke's interposition had given personal offence to Queen Caroline. His conduct upon this occasion, as, indeed, that of all the Scottish members of the legislature, with one or two unworthy exceptions, had been in the highest degree spirited. The popular tradition, concerning his reply to Queen Caroline, has been given already, and some fragments of his speech against the Porteous Bill are still remembered. He retorted upon the Chancellor, Lord Hardwicke, the insinuation that he had stated himself in this case rather as a party than as a judge:--"I appeal," said Argyle, "to the House--to the nation, if I can be justly branded with the infamy of being a jobber or a partisan. Have I been a briber of votes?--a buyer of boroughs?--the agent of corruption for any purpose, or on behalf of any party?--Consider my life; examine my actions in the field and in the cabinet, and see where there lies a blot that can attach to my honour. I have shown myself the friend of my country--the loyal subject of my king. I am ready to do so again, without an instant's regard to the frowns or smiles of a court. I have experienced both, and am prepared with indifference for either. I have given my reasons for opposing this bill, and have made it appear that it is repugnant to the international treaty of union, to the liberty of Scotland, and, reflectively, to that of England, to common justice, to common sense, and to the public interest. Shall the metropolis of Scotland, the capital of an independent nation, the residence of a long line of monarchs, by whom that noble city was graced and dignified--shall such a city, for the fault of an obscure and unknown body of rioters, be deprived of its honours and its privileges--its gates and its guards?--and shall a native Scotsman tamely behold the havoc? I glory, my Lords, in opposing such unjust rigour, and reckon it my dearest pride and honour to stand up in defence of my native country while thus laid open to undeserved shame, and unjust spoliation." Other statesmen and orators, both Scottish and English, used the same arguments, the bill was gradually stripped of its most oppressive and obnoxious clauses, and at length ended in a fine upon the city of Edinburgh in favour of Porteous's widow. So that, as somebody observed at the time, the whole of these fierce debates ended in making the fortune of an old cook-maid, such having been the good woman's original capacity. The court, however, did not forget the baffle they had received in this affair, and the Duke of Argyle, who had contributed so much to it, was thereafter considered as a person in disgrace. It is necessary to place these circumstances under the reader's observation, both because they are connected with the preceding and subsequent part of our narrative. The Duke was alone in his study, when one of his gentlemen acquainted him, that a country-girl, from Scotland, was desirous of speaking with his Grace. "A country-girl, and from Scotland!" said the Duke; "what can have brought the silly fool to London?--Some lover pressed and sent to sea, or some stock sank in the South-Sea funds, or some such hopeful concern, I suppose, and then nobody to manage the matter but MacCallummore,--Well, this same popularity has its inconveniences.--However, show our countrywoman up, Archibald--it is ill manners to keep her in attendance." A young woman of rather low stature, and whose countenance might be termed very modest and pleasing in expression, though sun-burnt, somewhat freckled, and not possessing regular features, was ushered into the splendid library. She wore the tartan plaid of her country, adjusted so as partly to cover her head, and partly to fall back over her shoulders. A quantity of fair hair, disposed with great simplicity and neatness, appeared in front of her round and good-humoured face, to which the solemnity of her errand, and her sense of the Duke's rank and importance, gave an appearance of deep awe, but not of slavish fear, or fluttered bashfulness. The rest of Jeanie's dress was in the style of Scottish maidens of her own class; but arranged with that scrupulous attention to neatness and cleanliness, which we often find united with that purity of mind, of which it is a natural emblem. She stopped near the entrance of the room, made her deepest reverence, and crossed her hands upon her bosom, without uttering a syllable. The Duke of Argyle advanced towards her; and, if she admired his graceful deportment and rich dress, decorated with the orders which had been deservedly bestowed on him, his courteous manner, and quick and intelligent cast of countenance, he on his part was not less, or less deservedly, struck with the quiet simplicity and modesty expressed in the dress, manners, and countenance of his humble countrywoman. "Did you wish to speak with me, my bonny lass?" said the Duke, using the encouraging epithet which at once acknowledged the connection betwixt them as country-folk; "or did you wish to see the Duchess?" "My business is with your honour, my Lord--I mean your Lordship's Grace." "And what is it, my good girl?" said the Duke, in the same mild and encouraging tone of voice. Jeanie looked at the attendant. "Leave us, Archibald," said the Duke, "and wait in the anteroom." The domestic retired. "And now sit down, my good lass," said the Duke; "take your breath--take your time, and tell me what you have got to say. I guess by your dress, you are just come up from poor Scotland--Did you come through the streets in your tartan plaid?" "No, sir," said Jeanie; "a friend brought me in ane o' their street coaches--a very decent woman," she added, her courage increasing as she became familiar with the sound of her own voice in such a presence; "your Lordship's Grace kens her--it's Mrs. Glass, at the sign o' the Thistle." "O, my worthy snuff-merchant--I have always a chat with Mrs. Glass when I purchase my Scots high-dried. Well, but your business, my bonny woman--time and tide, you know, wait for no one." "Your honour--I beg your Lordship's pardon--I mean your Grace,"--for it must be noticed, that this matter of addressing the Duke by his appropriate title had been anxiously inculcated upon Jeanie by her friend Mrs. Glass, in whose eyes it was a matter of such importance, that her last words, as Jeanie left the coach, were, "Mind to say your Grace;" and Jeanie, who had scarce ever in her life spoke to a person of higher quality than the Laird of Dumbiedikes, found great difficulty in arranging her language according to the rules of ceremony. The Duke, who saw her embarrassment, said, with his usual affability, "Never mind my grace, lassie; just speak out a plain tale, and show you have a Scots tongue in your head." "Sir, I am muckle obliged--Sir, I am the sister of that poor unfortunate criminal, Effie Deans, who is ordered for execution at Edinburgh."' "Ah!" said the Duke, "I have heard of that unhappy story, I think--a case of child-murder, under a special act of parliament--Duncan Forbes mentioned it at dinner the other day." "And I was come up frae the north, sir, to see what could be done for her in the way of getting a reprieve or pardon, sir, or the like of that." "Alas! my poor girl," said the Duke; "you have made a long and a sad journey to very little purpose--Your sister is ordered for execution." "But I am given to understand that there is law for reprieving her, if it is in the king's pleasure," said Jeanie. "Certainly, there is," said the Duke; "but that is purely in the king's breast. The crime has been but too common--the Scots crown-lawyers think it is right there should be an example. Then the late disorders in Edinburgh have excited a prejudice in government against the nation at large, which they think can only be managed by measures of intimidation and severity. What argument have you, my poor girl, except the warmth of your sisterly affection, to offer against all this?--What is your interest?--What friends have you at court?" "None, excepting God and your Grace," said Jeanie, still keeping her ground resolutely, however. "Alas!" said the Duke, "I could almost say with old Ormond, that there could not be any, whose influence was smaller with kings and ministers. It is a cruel part of our situation, young woman--I mean of the situation of men in my circumstances, that the public ascribe to them influence which they do not possess; and that individuals are led to expect from them assistance which we have no means of rendering. But candour and plain dealing is in the power of every one, and I must not let you imagine you have resources in my influence, which do not exist, to make your distress the heavier--I have no means of averting your sister's fate--She must die." "We must a' die, sir," said Jeanie; "it is our common doom for our father's transgression; but we shouldna hasten ilk other out o' the world, that's what your honour kens better than me." "My good young woman," said the Duke, mildly, "we are all apt to blame the law under which we immediately suffer; but you seem to have been well educated in your line of life, and you must know that it is alike the law of God and man, that the murderer shall surely die." "But, sir, Effie--that is, my poor sister, sir--canna be proved to be a murderer; and if she be not, and the law take her life notwithstanding, wha is it that is the murderer then?" "I am no lawyer," said the Duke; "and I own I think the statute a very severe one." "You are a law-maker, sir, with your leave; and, therefore, ye have power over the law," answered Jeanie. "Not in my individual capacity," said the Duke; "though, as one of a large body, I have a voice in the legislation. But that cannot serve you--nor have I at present, I care not who knows it, so much personal influence with the sovereign, as would entitle me to ask from him the most insignificant favour. What could tempt you, young woman, to address yourself to me?" "It was yourself, sir." "Myself?" he replied--"I am sure you have never seen me before." "No, sir; but a' the world kens that the Duke of Argyle is his country's friend; and that ye fight for the right, and speak for the right, and that there's nane like you in our present Israel, and so they that think themselves wranged draw to refuge under your shadow; and if ye wunna stir to save the blood of an innocent countrywoman of your ain, what should we expect frae southerns and strangers? And maybe I had another reason for troubling your honour." "And what is that?" asked the Duke. "I hae understood from my father, that your honour's house, and especially your gudesire and his father, laid down their lives on the scaffold in the persecuting time. And my father was honoured to gie his testimony baith in the cage and in the pillory, as is specially mentioned in the books of Peter Walker the packman, that your honour, I dare say, kens, for he uses maist partly the westland of Scotland. And, sir, there's ane that takes concern in me, that wished me to gang to your Grace's presence, for his gudesire had done your gracious gudesire some good turn, as ye will see frae these papers." With these words, she delivered to the Duke the little parcel which she had received from Butler. He opened it, and, in the envelope, read with some surprise, "'Musterroll of the men serving in the troop of that godly gentleman, Captain Salathiel Bangtext.--Obadiah Muggleton, Sin-Despise Double-knock, Stand-fast-in-faith Gipps, Turn-to-the-right Thwack-away'-- What the deuce is this? A list of Praise-God Barebone's Parliament I think, or of old Noll's evangelical army--that last fellow should understand his wheelings, to judge by his name.--But what does all this mean, my girl?" "It was the other paper, sir," said Jeanie, somewhat abashed at the mistake. "O, this is my unfortunate grandfather's hand sure enough--'To all who may have friendship for the house of Argyle, these are to certify, that Benjamin Butler, of Monk's regiment of dragoons, having been, under God, the means of saving my life from four English troopers who were about, to slay me, I, having no other present means of recompense in my power, do give him this acknowledgment, hoping that it may be useful to him or his during these troublesome times; and do conjure my friends, tenants, kinsmen, and whoever will do aught for me, either in the Highlands or Lowlands, to protect and assist the said Benjamin Butler, and his friends or family, on their lawful occasions, giving them such countenance, maintenance, and supply, as may correspond with the benefit he hath bestowed on me; witness my hand--Lorne.' "This is a strong injunction--This Benjamin Butler was your grandfather, I suppose?--You seem too young to have been his daughter." "He was nae akin to me, sir--he was grandfather to ane--to a neighbour's son--to a sincere weel-wisher of mine, sir," dropping her little courtesy as she spoke. "O, I understand," said the Duke--"a true-love affair. He was the grandsire of one you are engaged to?" "One I _was_ engaged to, sir," said Jeanie, sighing; "but this unhappy business of my poor sister" "What!" said the Duke, hastily--"he has not deserted you on that account, has he?" "No, sir; he wad be the last to leave a friend in difficulties," said Jeanie; "but I maun think for him as weel as for mysell. He is a clergyman, sir, and it would not beseem him to marry the like of me, wi' this disgrace on my kindred." "You are a singular young woman," said the Duke. "You seem to me to think of every one before yourself. And have you really come up from Edinburgh on foot, to attempt this hopeless solicitation for your sister's life?" "It was not a'thegither on foot, sir," answered Jeanie; "for I sometimes got a cast in a waggon, and I had a horse from Ferrybridge, and then the coach" "Well, never mind all that," interrupted the Duke--"What reason have you for thinking your sister innocent?" "Because she has not been proved guilty, as will appear from looking at these papers." She put into his hand a note of the evidence, and copies of her sister's declaration. These papers Butler had procured after her departure, and Saddletree had them forwarded to London, to Mrs. Glass's care, so that Jeanie found the documents, so necessary for supporting her suit, lying in readiness at her arrival. "Sit down in that chair, my good girl," said the Duke,--"until I glance over the papers." She obeyed, and watched with the utmost anxiety each change in his countenance as he cast his eye through the papers briefly, yet with attention, and making memoranda as he went along. After reading them hastily over, he looked up, and seemed about to speak, yet changed his purpose, as if afraid of committing himself by giving too hasty an opinion, and read over again several passages which he had marked as being most important. All this he did in shorter time than can be supposed by men of ordinary talents; for his mind was of that acute and penetrating character which discovers, with the glance of intuition, what facts bear on the particular point that chances to be subjected to consideration. At length he rose, after a few minutes' deep reflection.-- "Young woman," said he, "your sister's case must certainly be termed a hard one." "God bless you, sir, for that very word!" said Jeanie. "It seems contrary to the genius of British law," continued the Duke, "to take that for granted which is not proved, or to punish with death for a crime, which, for aught the prosecutor has been able to show, may not have been committed at all." "God bless you, sir!" again said Jeanie, who had risen from her seat, and, with clasped hands, eyes glittering through tears, and features which trembled with anxiety, drank in every word which the Duke uttered. "But, alas! my poor girl," he continued, "what good will my opinion do you, unless I could impress it upon those in whose hands your sister's life is placed by the law? Besides, I am no lawyer; and I must speak with some of our Scottish gentlemen of the gown about the matter." "O, but, sir, what seems reasonable to your honour, will certainly be the same to them," answered Jeanie. "I do not know that," replied the Duke; "ilka man buckles his belt his ain gate--you know our old Scots proverb?--But you shall not have placed this reliance on me altogether in vain. Leave these papers with me, and you shall hear from me to-morrow or next day. Take care to be at home at Mrs. Glass's, and ready to come to me at a moment's warning. It will be unnecessary for you to give Mrs. Glass the trouble to attend you;--and by the by, you will please to be dressed just as you are at present." "I wad hae putten on a cap, sir," said Jeanie, "but your honour kens it isna the fashion of my country for single women; and I judged that, being sae mony hundred miles frae hame, your Grace's heart wad warm to the tartan," looking at the corner of her plaid. "You judged quite right," said the Duke. "I know the full value of the snood; and MacCallummore's heart will be as cold as death can make it, when it does _not_ warm to the tartan. Now, go away, and don't be out of the way when I send." Jeanie replied,--"There is little fear of that, sir, for I have little heart to go to see sights amang this wilderness of black houses. But if I might say to your gracious honour, that if ye ever condescend to speak to ony ane that is of greater degree than yoursell, though maybe it isna civil in me to say sae, just if you would think there can be nae sic odds between you and them, as between poor Jeanie Deans from St. Leonard's and the Duke of Argyle; and so dinna be chappit back or cast down wi' the first rough answer." "I am not apt," said the Duke, laughing, "to mind rough answers much--Do not you hope too much from what I have promised. I will do my best, but God has the hearts of Kings in his own hand." Jeanie courtesied reverently and withdrew, attended by the Duke's gentleman, to her hackney-coach, with a respect which her appearance did not demand, but which was perhaps paid to the length of the interview with which his master had honoured her. CHAPTER TWELFTH. Ascend While radiant summer opens all its pride, Thy hill, delightful Shene! Here let us sweep The boundless landscape. Thomson. From her kind and officious, but somewhat gossiping friend, Mrs. Glass, Jeanie underwent a very close catechism on their road to the Strand, where the Thistle of the good lady flourished in full glory, and, with its legend of _Nemo me impune,_ distinguished a shop then well known to all Scottish folk of high and low degree. "And were you sure aye to _say your_ Grace to him?" said the good old lady; "for ane should make a distinction between MacCallummore and the bits o' southern bodies that they ca' lords here--there are as mony o' them, Jeanie, as would gar ane think they maun cost but little fash in the making--some of them I wadna trust wi' six pennies-worth of black-rappee--some of them I wadna gie mysell the trouble to put up a hapnyworth in brown paper for--But I hope you showed your breeding to the Duke of Argyle, for what sort of folk would he think your friends in London, if you had been lording him, and him a Duke?" "He didna seem muckle to mind," said Jeanie; "he kend that I was landward bred." "Weel, weel," answered the good lady. "His Grace kens me weel; so I am the less anxious about it. I never fill his snug-box but he says, 'How d'ye do, good Mrs. Glass?--How are all our friends in the North?' or it may be--'Have ye heard from the North lately?' And you may be sure, I make my best courtesy, and answer, 'My Lord Duke, I hope your Grace's noble Duchess, and your Grace's young ladies, are well; and I hope the snuff continues to give your Grace satisfaction.' And then ye will see the people in the shop begin to look about them; and if there's a Scotsman, as there may be three or half-a-dozen, aff go the hats, and mony a look after him, and 'There goes the Prince of Scotland, God bless him!' But ye have not told me yet the very words he said t'ye." Jeanie had no intention to be quite so communicative. She had, as the reader may have observed, some of the caution and shrewdness, as well as of the simplicity of her country. She answered generally, that the Duke had received her very compassionately, and had promised to interest himself in her sister's affair, and to let her hear from him in the course of the next day, or the day after. She did not choose to make any mention of his having desired her to be in readiness to attend him, far less of his hint, that she should not bring her landlady. So that honest Mrs. Glass was obliged to remain satisfied with the general intelligence above mentioned, after having done all she could to extract more. It may easily be conceived, that, on the next day, Jeanie declined all invitations and inducements, whether of exercise or curiosity, to walk abroad, and continued to inhale the close, and somewhat professional atmosphere of Mrs. Glass's small parlour. The latter flavour it owed to a certain cupboard, containing, among other articles, a few canisters of real Havannah, which, whether from respect to the manufacture, or out of a reverend fear of the exciseman, Mrs. Glass did not care to trust in the open shop below, and which communicated to the room a scent, that, however fragrant to the nostrils of the connoisseur, was not very agreeable to those of Jeanie. "Dear sirs," she said to herself, "I wonder how my cousin's silk manty, and her gowd watch, or ony thing in the world, can be worth sitting sneezing all her life in this little stilling room, and might walk on green braes if she liked." Mrs. Glass was equally surprised at her cousin's reluctance to stir abroad, and her indifference to the fine sights of London. "It would always help to pass away the time," she said, "to have something to look at, though ane was in distress." But Jeanie was unpersuadable. The day after her interview with the Duke was spent in that "hope delayed, which maketh the heart sick." Minutes glided after minutes--hours fled after hours--it became too late to have any reasonable expectation of hearing from the Duke that day; yet the hope which she disowned, she could not altogether relinquish, and her heart throbbed, and her ears tingled, with every casual sound in the shop below. It was in vain. The day wore away in the anxiety of protracted and fruitless expectation. The next morning commenced in the same manner. But before noon, a well-dressed gentleman entered Mrs. Glass's shop, and requested to see a young woman from Scotland. "That will be my cousin Jeanie Deans, Mr. Archibald," said Mrs. Glass, with a courtesy of recognisance. "Have you any message for her from his Grace the Duke of Argyle, Mr. Archibald? I will carry it to her in a moment." "I believe I must give her the trouble of stepping down, Mrs. Glass." "Jeanie--Jeanie Deans!" said Mrs. Glass, screaming at the bottom of the little staircase, which ascended from the corner of the shop to the higher regions. "Jeanie--Jeanie Deans, I say! come down stairs instantly; here is the Duke of Argyle's groom of the chambers desires to see you directly." This was announced in a voice so loud, as to make all who chanced to be within hearing aware of the important communication. It may easily be supposed, that Jeanie did not tarry long in adjusting herself to attend the summons, yet her feet almost failed her as she came down stairs. "I must ask the favour of your company a little way," said Archibald, with civility. "I am quite ready, sir," said Jeanie. "Is my cousin going out, Mr. Archibald? then I will hae to go wi' her, no doubt.--James Rasper--Look to the shop, James.--Mr. Archibald," pushing a jar towards him, "you take his Grace's mixture, I think. Please to fill your box, for old acquaintance' sake, while I get on my things." Mr. Archibald transferred a modest parcel of snuff from the jar to his own mull, but said he was obliged to decline the pleasure of Mrs. Glass's company, as his message was particularly to the young person. "Particularly to the young person?" said Mrs. Glass; "is not that uncommon, Mr. Archibald? But his Grace is the best judge; and you are a steady person, Mr. Archibald. It is not every one that comes from a great man's house I would trust my cousin with.--But, Jeanie, you must not go through the streets with Mr. Archibald with your tartan what-d'ye-call-it there upon your shoulders, as if you had come up with a drove of Highland cattle. Wait till I bring down my silk cloak. Why, we'll have the mob after you!" "I have a hackney-coach in waiting, madam," said Mr. Archibald, interrupting the officious old lady, from whom Jeanie might otherwise have found it difficult to escape; "and, I believe, I must not allow her time for any change of dress." So saying, he hurried Jeanie into the coach, while she internally praised and wondered at the easy manner in which he shifted off Mrs. Glass's officious offers and inquiries, without mentioning his master's orders, or entering into any explanation, On entering the coach, Mr. Archibald seated himself in the front seat opposite to our heroine, and they drove on in silence. After they had driven nearly half-an-hour, without a word on either side, it occurred to Jeanie, that the distance and time did not correspond with that which had been occupied by her journey on the former occasion, to and from the residence of the Duke of Argyle. At length she could not help asking her taciturn companion, "Whilk way they were going?" "My Lord Duke will inform you himself, madam," answered Archibald, with the same solemn courtesy which marked his whole demeanour. Almost as he spoke, the hackney-coach drew up, and the coachman dismounted and opened the door. Archibald got out, and assisted Jeanie to get down. She found herself in a large turnpike road, without the bounds of London, upon the other side of which road was drawn up a plain chariot and four horses, the panels without arms, and the servants without liveries. "You have been punctual, I see, Jeanie," said the Duke of Argyle, as Archibald opened the carriage-door. "You must be my companion for the rest of the way. Archibald will remain here with the hackney-coach till your return." Ere Jeanie could make answer, she found herself, to her no small astonishment, seated by the side of a duke, in a carriage which rolled forward at a rapid yet smooth rate, very different in both particulars from the lumbering, jolting vehicle which she had just left; and which, lumbering and jolting as it was, conveyed to one who had seldom been in a coach before a certain feeling of dignity and importance. "Young woman," said the Duke, "after thinking as attentively on your sister's case as is in my power, I continue to be impressed with the belief that great injustice may be done by the execution of her sentence. So are one or two liberal and intelligent lawyers of both countries whom I have spoken with.--Nay, pray hear me out before you thank me.--I have already told you my personal conviction is of little consequence, unless I could impress the same upon others. Now I have done for you what I would certainly not have done to serve any purpose of my own--I have asked an audience of a lady whose interest with the king is deservedly very high. It has been allowed me, and I am desirous that you should see her and speak for yourself. You have no occasion to be abashed; tell your story simply, as you did to me." "I am much obliged to your Grace," said Jeanie, remembering Mrs. Glass's charge, "and I am sure, since I have had the courage to speak to your Grace in poor Effie's cause, I have less reason to be shame-faced in speaking to a leddy. But, sir, I would like to ken what to ca' her, whether your grace or your honour, or your leddyship, as we say to lairds and leddies in Scotland, and I will take care to mind it; for I ken leddies are full mair particular than gentlemen about their titles of honour." "You have no occasion to call her anything but Madam. Just say what you think is likely to make the best impression--look at me from time to time--and if I put my hand to my cravat so--(showing her the motion)--you will stop; but I shall only do this when you say anything that is not likely to please." "But, sir, your Grace," said Jeanie, "if it wasna ower muckle trouble, wad it no be better to tell me what I should say, and I could get it by heart?" "No, Jeanie, that would not have the same effect--that would be like reading a sermon, you know, which we good Presbyterians think has less unction than when spoken without book," replied the Duke. "Just speak as plainly and boldly to this lady, as you did to me the day before yesterday, and if you can gain her consent, I'll wad ye a plack, as we say in the north, that you get the pardon from the king." As he spoke, he took a pamphlet from his pocket, and began to read. Jeanie had good sense and tact, which constitute betwixt them that which is called natural good breeding. She interpreted the Duke's manoeuvre as a hint that she was to ask no more questions, and she remained silent accordingly. The carriage rolled rapidly onwards through fertile meadows, ornamented with splendid old oaks, and catching occasionally a glance of the majestic mirror of a broad and placid river. After passing through a pleasant village, the equipage stopped on a commanding eminence, where the beauty of English landscape was displayed in its utmost luxuriance. Here the Duke alighted, and desired Jeanie to follow him. They paused for a moment on the brow of a hill, to gaze on the unrivalled landscape which it presented. A huge sea of verdure, with crossing and intersecting promontories of massive and tufted groves, was tenanted by numberless flocks and herds, which seemed to wander unrestrained and unbounded through the rich pastures. The Thames, here turreted with villas, and there garlanded with forests, moved on slowly and placidly, like the mighty monarch of the scene, to whom all its other beauties were but accessories, and bore on its bosom an hundred barks and skiffs, whose white sails and gaily fluttering pennons gave life to the whole. The Duke of Argyle was, of course, familiar with this scene; but to a man of taste it must be always new. Yet, as he paused and looked on this inimitable landscape, with the feeling of delight which it must give to the bosom of every admirer of nature, his thoughts naturally reverted to his own more grand, and scarce less beautiful, domains of Inverary.-- "This is a fine scene," he said to his companion, curious, perhaps, to draw out her sentiments; "we have nothing like it in Scotland." "It's braw rich feeding for the cows, and they have a fine breed o' cattle here," replied Jeanie; "but I like just as weel to look at the craigs of Arthur's Seat, and the sea coming in ayont them as at a' thae muckle trees." The Duke smiled at a reply equally professional and national, and made a signal for the carriage to remain where it was. Then adopting an unfrequented footpath, he conducted Jeanie through several complicated mazes to a postern-door in a high brick wall. It was shut; but as the Duke tapped slightly at it, a person in waiting within, after reconnoitring through a small iron grate, contrived for the purpose, unlocked the door and admitted them. They entered, and it was immediately closed and fastened behind them. This was all done quickly, the door so instantly closing, and the person who opened it so suddenly disappearing, that Jeanie could not even catch a glimpse of his exterior. They found themselves at the extremity of a deep and narrow alley, carpeted with the most verdant and close-shaven turf, which felt like velvet under their feet, and screened from the sun by the branches of the lofty elms which united over the path, and caused it to resemble, in the solemn obscurity of the light which they admitted, as well as from the range of columnar stems, and intricate union of their arched branches, one of the narrow side aisles in an ancient Gothic cathedral. CHAPTER THIRTEETH I beseech you-- These tears beseech you, and these chaste hands woo you That never yet were heaved but to things holy-- Things like yourself--You are a God above us; Be as a God, then, full of saving mercy! The Bloody Brother. Encouraged as she was by the courteous manners of her noble countryman, it was not without a feeling of something like terror that Jeanie felt herself in a place apparently so lonely with a man of such high rank. That she should have been permitted to wait on the Duke in his own house, and have been there received to a private interview, was in itself an uncommon and distinguished event in the annals of a life so simple as hers; but to find herself his travelling companion in a journey, and then suddenly to be left alone with him in so secluded a situation, had something in it of awful mystery. A romantic heroine might have suspected and dreaded the power of her own charms; but Jeanie was too wise to let such a silly thought intrude on her mind. Still, however, she had a most eager desire to know where she now was, and to whom she was to be presented. She remarked that the Duke's dress, though still such as indicated rank and fashion (for it was not the custom of men of quality at that time to dress themselves like their own coachmen or grooms), was nevertheless plainer than that in which she had seen him upon a former occasion, and was divested, in particular, of all those badges of external decoration which intimated superior consequence. In short, he was attired as plainly as any gentleman of fashion could appear in the streets of London in a morning; and this circumstance helped to shake an opinion which Jeanie began to entertain, that, perhaps, he intended she should plead her cause in the presence of royalty itself. "But surely," said she to, herself, "he wad hae putten on his braw star and garter, an he had thought o' coming before the face of majesty--and after a', this is mair like a gentleman's policy than a royal palace." There was some sense in Jeanie's reasoning; yet she was not sufficiently mistress either of the circumstances of etiquette, or the particular relations which existed betwixt the government and the Duke of Argyle, to form an accurate judgment. The Duke, as we have said, was at this time in open opposition to the administration of Sir Robert Walpole, and was understood to be out of favour with the royal family, to whom he had rendered such important services. But it was a maxim of Queen Caroline to bear herself towards her political friends with such caution, as if there was a possibility of their one day being her enemies, and towards political opponents with the same degree of circumspection, as if they might again become friendly to her measures, Since Margaret of Anjou, no queen-consort had exercised such weight in the political affairs of England, and the personal address which she displayed on many occasions, had no small share in reclaiming from their political heresy many of those determined Tories, who, after the reign of the Stuarts had been extinguished in the person of Queen Anne, were disposed rather to transfer their allegiance to her brother the Chevalier de St. George, than to acquiesce in the settlement of the crown on the Hanover family. Her husband, whose most shining quality was courage in the field of battle, and who endured the office of King of England, without ever being able to acquire English habits, or any familiarity with English dispositions, found the utmost assistance from the address of his partner, and while he jealously affected to do everything according to his own will and pleasure, was in secret prudent enough to take and follow the advice of his more adroit consort. He intrusted to her the delicate office of determining the various degrees of favour necessary to attach the wavering, or to confirm such as were already friendly, or to regain those whose good-will had been lost. With all the winning address of an elegant, and, according to the times, an accomplished woman, Queen Caroline possessed the masculine soul of the other sex. She was proud by nature, and even her policy could not always temper her expressions of displeasure, although few were more ready at repairing any false step of this kind, when her prudence came up to the aid of her passions. She loved the real possession of power rather than the show of it, and whatever she did herself that was either wise or popular, she always desired that the King should have the full credit as well as the advantage of the measure, conscious that, by adding to his respectability, she was most likely to maintain her own. And so desirous was she to comply with all his tastes, that, when threatened with the gout, she had repeatedly had recourse to checking the fit, by the use of the cold bath, thereby endangering her life, that she might be able to attend the king in his walks. It was a very consistent part of Queen Caroline's character, to keep up many private correspondences with those to whom in public she seemed unfavourable, or who, for various reasons, stood ill with the court. By this means she kept in her hands the thread of many a political intrigue, and, without pledging herself to anything, could often prevent discontent from becoming hatred, and opposition from exaggerating itself into rebellion. If by any accident her correspondence with such persons chanced to be observed or discovered, which she took all possible pains to prevent, it was represented as a mere intercourse of society, having no reference to politics; an answer with which even the prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, was compelled to remain satisfied, when he discovered that the Queen had given a private audience to Pulteney, afterwards Earl of Bath, his most formidable and most inveterate enemy. In thus maintaining occasional intercourse with several persons who seemed most alienated from the crown, it may readily be supposed that Queen Caroline had taken care not to break entirely with the Duke of Argyle. His high birth, his great talents, the estimation in which he was held in his own country, the great services which he had rendered the house of Brunswick in 1715, placed him high in that rank of persons who were not to be rashly neglected. He had, almost by his single and unassisted talents, stopped the irruption of the banded force of all the Highland chiefs; there was little doubt, that, with the slightest encouragement, he could put them all in motion, and renew the civil war; and it was well known that the most flattering overtures had been transmitted to the Duke from the court of St. Germains. The character and temper of Scotland was still little known, and it was considered as a volcano, which might, indeed, slumber for a series of years, but was still liable, at a moment the least expected, to break out into a wasteful irruption. It was, therefore, of the highest importance to retain come hold over so important a personage as the Duke of Argyle, and Caroline preserved the power of doing so by means of a lady, with whom, as wife of George II., she might have been supposed to be on less intimate terms. It was not the least instance of the Queen's address, that she had contrived that one of her principal attendants, Lady Suffolk, should unite in her own person the two apparently inconsistent characters, of her husband's mistress, and her own very obsequious and complaisant confidant. By this dexterous management the Queen secured her power against the danger which might most have threatened it--the thwarting influence of an ambitious rival; and if she submitted to the mortification of being obliged to connive at her husband's infidelity, she was at least guarded against what she might think its most dangerous effects, and was besides at liberty, now and then, to bestow a few civil insults upon "her good Howard," whom, however, in general, she treated with great decorum.* * See Horace Walpole's Reminiscences. Lady Suffolk lay under strong obligations to the Duke of Argyle, for reasons which may be collected from Horace Walpole's Reminiscences of that reign, and through her means the Duke had some occasional correspondence with Queen Caroline, much interrupted, however, since the part he had taken in the debate concerning the Porteous mob, an affair which the Queen, though somewhat unreasonably, was disposed to resent, rather as an intended and premeditated insolence to her own person and authority, than as a sudden ebullition of popular vengeance. Still, however, the communication remained open betwixt them, though it had been of late disused on both sides. These remarks will be found necessary to understand the scene which is about to be presented to the reader. From the narrow alley which they had traversed, the Duke turned into one of the same character, but broader and still longer. Here, for the first time since they had entered these gardens, Jeanie saw persons approaching them. They were two ladies; one of whom walked a little behind the other, yet not so much as to prevent her from hearing and replying to whatever observation was addressed to her by the lady who walked foremost, and that without her having the trouble to turn her person. As they advanced very slowly, Jeanie had time to study their features and appearance. The Duke also slackened his pace, as if to give her time to collect herself, and repeatedly desired her not to be afraid. The lady who seemed the principal person had remarkably good features, though somewhat injured by the small-pox, that venomous scourge which each village Esculapius (thanks to Jenner) can now tame as easily as their tutelary deity subdued the Python. The lady's eyes were brilliant, her teeth good, and her countenance formed to express at will either majesty or courtesy. Her form, though rather _embonpoint,_ was nevertheless graceful; and the elasticity and firmness of her step gave no room to suspect, what was actually the case, that she suffered occasionally from a disorder the most unfavourable to pedestrian exercise. Her dress was rather rich than gay, and her manner commanding and noble. Her companion was of lower stature, with light brown hair and expressive blue eyes. Her features, without being absolutely regular, were perhaps more pleasing than if they had been critically handsome. A melancholy, or at least a pensive expression, for which her lot gave too much cause, predominated when she was silent, but gave way to a pleasing and good-humoured smile when she spoke to any one. When they were within twelve or fifteen yards of these ladies, the Duke made a sign that Jeanie should stand still, and stepping forward himself, with the grace which was natural to him, made a profound obeisance, which was formally, yet in a dignified manner, returned by the personage whom he approached. "I hope," she said, with an affable and condescending smile, "that I see so great a stranger at court, as the Duke of Argyle has been of late, in as good health as his friends there and elsewhere could wish him to enjoy." The Duke replied, "That he had been perfectly well;" and added, "that the necessity of attending to the public business before the House, as well as the time occupied by a late journey to Scotland, had rendered him less assiduous in paying his duty at the levee and drawing-room than he could have desired." "When your Grace _can_ find time for a duty so frivolous," replied the Queen, "you are aware of your title to be well received. I hope my readiness to comply with the wish which you expressed yesterday to Lady Suffolk, is, a sufficient proof that one of the royal family, at least, has not forgotten ancient and important services, in resenting something which resembles recent neglect." This was said apparently with great good humour, and in a tone which expressed a desire of conciliation. The Duke replied, "That he would account himself the most unfortunate of men, if he could be supposed capable of neglecting his duty, in modes and circumstances when it was expected, and would have been agreeable. He was deeply gratified by the honour which her Majesty was now doing to him personally; and he trusted she would soon perceive that it was in a matter essential to his Majesty's interest that he had the boldness to give her this trouble." "You cannot oblige me more, my Lord Duke," replied the Queen, "than by giving me the advantage of your lights and experience on any point of the King's service. Your Grace is aware, that I can only be the medium through which the matter is subjected to his Majesty's superior wisdom; but if it is a suit which respects your Grace personally, it shall lose no support by being preferred through me." "It is no suit of mine, madam," replied the Duke; "nor have I any to prefer for myself personally, although I feel in full force my obligation to your Majesty. It is a business which concerns his Majesty, as a lover of justice and of mercy, and which, I am convinced, may be highly useful in conciliating the unfortunate irritation which at present subsists among his Majesty's good subjects in Scotland." There were two parts of this speech disagreeable to Caroline. In the first place, it removed the flattering notion she had adopted, that Argyle designed to use her personal intercession in making his peace with the administration, and recovering the employments of which he had been deprived; and next, she was displeased that he should talk of the discontents in Scotland as irritations to be conciliated, rather than suppressed. Under the influence of these feelings, she answered hastily, "That his Majesty has good subjects in England, my Lord Duke, he is bound to thank God and the laws--that he has subjects in Scotland, I think he may thank God and his sword." The Duke, though a courtier, coloured slightly, and the Queen, instantly sensible of her error, added, without displaying the least change of countenance, and as if the words had been an original branch of the sentence--"And the swords of those real Scotchmen who are friends to the House of Brunswick, particularly that of his Grace of Argyle." "My sword, madam," replied the Duke, "like that of my fathers, has been always at the command of my lawful king, and of my native country--I trust it is impossible to separate their real rights and interests. But the present is a matter of more private concern, and respects the person of an obscure individual." "What is the affair, my Lord?" said the Queen. "Let us find out what we are talking about, lest we should misconstrue and misunderstand each other." "The matter, madam," answered the Duke of Argyle, "regards the fate of an unfortunate young woman in Scotland, now lying under sentence of death, for a crime of which I think it highly probable that she is innocent. And my humble petition to your Majesty is, to obtain your powerful intercession with the King for a pardon." It was now the Queen's turn to colour, and she did so over cheek and brow, neck and bosom. She paused a moment as if unwilling to trust her voice with the first expression of her displeasure; and on assuming the air of dignity and an austere regard of control, she at length replied, "My Lord Duke, I will not ask your motives for addressing to me a request, which circumstances have rendered such an extraordinary one. Your road to the King's closet, as a peer and a privy-councillor, entitled to request an audience, was open, without giving me the pain of this discussion. _I,_ at least, have had enough of Scotch pardons." The Duke was prepared for this burst of indignation, and he was not shaken by it. He did not attempt a reply while the Queen was in the first heat of displeasure, but remained in the same firm, yet respectful posture, which he had assumed during the interview. The Queen, trained from her situation to self-command, instantly perceived the advantage she might give against herself by yielding to passion; and added, in the same condescending and affable tone in which she had opened the interview, "You must allow me some of the privileges of the sex, my Lord; and do not judge uncharitably of me, though I am a little moved at the recollection of the gross insult and outrage done in your capital city to the royal authority, at the very time when it was vested in my unworthy person. Your Grace cannot be surprised that I should both have felt it at the time, and recollected it now." "It is certainly a matter not speedily to be forgotten," answered the Duke. "My own poor thoughts of it have been long before your Majesty, and I must have expressed myself very ill if I did not convey my detestation of the murder which was committed under such extraordinary circumstances. I might, indeed, be so unfortunate as to differ with his Majesty's advisers on the degree in which it was either just or politic to punish the innocent instead of the guilty. But I trust your Majesty will permit me to be silent on a topic in which my sentiments have not the good fortune to coincide with those of more able men." "We will not prosecute a topic on which we may probably differ," said the Queen. "One word, however, I may say in private--you know our good Lady Suffolk is a little deaf--the Duke of Argyle, when disposed to renew his acquaintance with his master and mistress, will hardly find many topics on which we should disagree." "Let me hope," said the Duke, bowing profoundly to so flattering an intimation, "that I shall not be so unfortunate as to have found one on the present occasion." "I must first impose on your Grace the duty of confession," said the Queen, "before I grant you absolution. What is your particular interest in this young woman? She does not seem" (and she scanned Jeanie, as she said this, with the eye of a connoisseur) "much qualified to alarm my friend the Duchess's jealousy." "I think your Majesty," replied the Duke, smiling in his turn, "will allow my taste may be a pledge for me on that score." "Then, though she has not much the air _d'une grande dame,_ I suppose she is some thirtieth cousin in the terrible CHAPTER of Scottish genealogy?" "No, madam," said the Duke; "but I wish some of my nearer relations had half her worth, honesty, and affection." "Her name must be Campbell, at least?" said Queen Caroline. "No, madam; her name is not quite so distinguished, if I may be permitted to say so," answered the Duke. "Ah! but she comes from Inverary or Argyleshire?" said the Sovereign. "She has never been farther north in her life than Edinburgh, madam." "Then my conjectures are all ended," said the Queen, "and your Grace must yourself take the trouble to explain the affair of your prote'ge'e." With that precision and easy brevity which is only acquired by habitually conversing in the higher ranks of society, and which is the diametrical opposite of that protracted style of disquisition, Which squires call potter, and which men call prose, the Duke explained the singular law under which Effie Deans had received sentence of death, and detailed the affectionate exertions which Jeanie had made in behalf of a sister, for whose sake she was willing to sacrifice all but truth and conscience. Queen Caroline listened with attention; she was rather fond, it must be remembered, of an argument, and soon found matter in what the Duke told her for raising difficulties to his request. "It appears to me, my Lord," she replied, "that this is a severe law. But still it is adopted upon good grounds, I am bound to suppose, as the law of the country, and the girl has been convicted under it. The very presumptions which the law construes into a positive proof of guilt exist in her case; and all that your Grace has said concerning the possibility of her innocence may be a very good argument for annulling the Act of Parliament, but cannot, while it stands good, be admitted in favour of any individual convicted upon the statute." The Duke saw and avoided the snare, for he was conscious, that, by replying to the argument, he must have been inevitably led to a discussion, in the course of which the Queen was likely to be hardened in her own opinion, until she became obliged, out of mere respect to consistency, to let the criminal suffer. [Illustration: Jeanie and Queen Caroline--194] "If your Majesty," he said, "would condescend to hear my poor countrywoman herself, perhaps she may find an advocate in your own heart, more able than I am, to combat the doubts suggested by your understanding." The Queen seemed to acquiesce, and the Duke made a signal for Jeanie to advance from the spot where she had hitherto remained watching countenances, which were too long accustomed to suppress all apparent signs of emotion, to convey to her any interesting intelligence. Her Majesty could not help smiling at the awe-struck manner in which the quiet demure figure of the little Scotchwoman advanced towards her, and yet more at the first sound of her broad northern accent. But Jeanie had a voice low and sweetly toned, an admirable thing in woman, and eke besought "her Leddyship to have pity on a poor misguided young creature," in tones so affecting, that, like the notes of some of her native songs, provincial vulgarity was lost in pathos. "Stand up, young woman," said the Queen, but in a kind tone, "and tell me what sort of a barbarous people your country-folk are, where child-murder is become so common as to require the restraint of laws like yours?" "If your Leddyship pleases," answered Jeanie, "there are mony places besides Scotland where mothers are unkind to their ain flesh and blood." It must be observed, that the disputes between George the Second and Frederick Prince of Wales were then at the highest, and that the good-natured part of the public laid the blame on the Queen. She coloured highly, and darted a glance of a most penetrating character first at Jeanie, and then at the Duke. Both sustained it unmoved; Jeanie from total unconsciousness of the offence she had given, and the Duke from his habitual composure. But in his heart he thought, My unlucky _protegee_ has with this luckless answer shot dead, by a kind of chance-medley, her only hope of success. Lady Suffolk, good-humouredly and skilfully, interposed in this awkward crisis. "You should tell this lady," she said to Jeanie, "the particular causes which render this crime common in your country." "Some thinks it's the Kirk-session--that is--it's the--it's the cutty-stool, if your Leddyship pleases," said Jeanie, looking down and courtesying. "The what?" said Lady Suffolk, to whom the phrase was new, and who besides was rather deaf. "That's the stool of repentance, madam, if it please your Leddyship," answered Jeanie, "for light life and conversation, and for breaking the seventh command." Here she raised her eyes to the Duke, saw his hand at his chin, and, totally unconscious of what she had said out of joint, gave double effect to the innuendo, by stopping short and looking embarrassed. As for Lady Suffolk, she retired like a covering party, which, having interposed betwixt their retreating friends and the enemy, have suddenly drawn on themselves a fire unexpectedly severe. The deuce take the lass, thought the Duke of Argyle to himself; there goes another shot--and she has hit with both barrels right and left! Indeed the Duke had himself his share of the confusion, for, having acted as master of ceremonies to this innocent offender, he felt much in the circumstances of a country squire, who, having introduced his spaniel into a well-appointed drawing-room, is doomed to witness the disorder and damage which arises to china and to dress-gowns, in consequence of its untimely frolics. Jeanie's last chance-hit, however, obliterated the ill impression which had arisen from the first; for her Majesty had not so lost the feelings of a wife in those of a Queen, but that she could enjoy a jest at the expense of "her good Suffolk." She turned towards the Duke of Argyle with a smile, which marked that she enjoyed the triumph, and observed, "The Scotch are a rigidly moral people." Then, again applying herself to Jeanie, she asked how she travelled up from Scotland. "Upon my foot mostly, madam," was the reply. "What, all that immense way upon foot?--How far can you walk in a day." "Five-and-twenty miles and a bittock." "And a what?" said the Queen, looking towards the Duke of Argyle. "And about five miles more," replied the Duke. "I thought I was a good walker," said the Queen, "but this shames me sadly." "May your Leddyship never hae sae weary a heart, that ye canna be sensible of the weariness of the limbs," said Jeanie. That came better off, thought the Duke; it's the first thing she has said to the purpose. "And I didna just a'thegither walk the haill way neither, for I had whiles the cast of a cart; and I had the cast of a horse from Ferrybridge--and divers other easements," said Jeanie, cutting short her story, for she observed the Duke made the sign he had fixed upon. "With all these accommodations," answered the Queen, "you must have had a very fatiguing journey, and, I fear, to little purpose; since, if the King were to pardon your sister, in all probability it would do her little good, for I suppose your people of Edinburgh would hang her out of spite." She will sink herself now outright, thought the Duke. But he was wrong. The shoals on which Jeanie had touched in this delicate conversation lay under ground, and were unknown to her; this rock was above water, and she avoided it. "She was confident," she said, "that baith town and country wad rejoice to see his Majesty taking compassion on a poor unfriended creature." "His Majesty has not found it so in a late instance," said the Queen; "but I suppose my Lord Duke would advise him to be guided by the votes of the rabble themselves, who should be hanged and who spared?" "No, madam," said the Duke; "but I would advise his Majesty to be guided by his own feelings, and those of his royal consort; and then I am sure punishment will only attach itself to guilt, and even then with cautious reluctance." "Well, my Lord," said her Majesty, "all these fine speeches do not convince me of the propriety of so soon showing any mark of favour to your--I suppose I must not say rebellious?--but, at least, your very disaffected and intractable metropolis. Why, the whole nation is in a league to screen the savage and abominable murderers of that unhappy man; otherwise, how is it possible but that, of so many perpetrators, and engaged in so public an action for such a length of time, one at least must have been recognised? Even this wench, for aught I can tell, may be a depositary of the secret.--Hark you, young woman, had you any friends engaged in the Porteous mob?" "No, madam," answered Jeanie, happy that the question was so framed that she could, with a good conscience, answer it in the negative. "But I suppose," continued the Queen, "if you were possessed of such a secret, you would hold it a matter of conscience to keep it to yourself?" "I would pray to be directed and guided what was the line of duty, madam," answered Jeanie. "Yes, and take that which suited your own inclinations," replied her Majesty. "If it like you, madam," said Jeanie, "I would hae gaen to the end of the earth to save the life of John Porteous, or any other unhappy man in his condition; but I might lawfully doubt how far I am called upon to be the avenger of his blood, though it may become the civil magistrate to do so. He is dead and gane to his place, and they that have slain him must answer for their ain act. But my sister, my puir sister, Effie, still lives, though her days and hours are numbered! She still lives, and a word of the King's mouth might restore her to a brokenhearted auld man, that never in his daily and nightly exercise, forgot to pray that his Majesty might be blessed with a long and a prosperous reign, and that his throne, and the throne of his posterity, might be established in righteousness. O madam, if ever ye kend what it was to sorrow for and with a sinning and a suffering creature, whose mind is sae tossed that she can be neither ca'd fit to live or die, have some compassion on our misery!--Save an honest house from dishonour, and an unhappy girl, not eighteen years of age, from an early and dreadful death! Alas! it is not when we sleep soft and wake merrily ourselves that we think on other people's sufferings. Our hearts are waxed light within us then, and we are for righting our ain wrangs and fighting our ain battles. But when the hour of trouble comes to the mind or to the body--and seldom may it visit your Leddyship--and when the hour of death comes, that comes to high and low--lang and late may it be yours!--Oh, my Leddy, then it isna what we hae dune for oursells, but what we hae dune for others, that we think on maist pleasantly. And the thoughts that ye hae intervened to spare the puir thing's life will be sweeter in that hour, come when it may, than if a word of your mouth could hang the haill Porteous mob at the tail of ae tow." Tear followed tear down Jeanie's cheeks, as, her features glowing and quivering with emotion, she pleaded her sister's cause with a pathos which was at once simple and solemn. "This is eloquence," said her Majesty to the Duke of Argyle. "Young woman," she continued, addressing herself to Jeanie, "_I_ cannot grant a pardon to your sister--but you shall not want my warm intercession with his Majesty. Take this house-wife case," she continued, putting a small embroidered needle-case into Jeanie's hands; "do not open it now, but at your leisure--you will find something in it which will remind you that you have had an interview with Queen Caroline." Jeanie, having her suspicions thus confirmed, dropped on her knees, and would have expanded herself in gratitude; but the Duke who was upon thorns lest she should say more or less than just enough, touched his chin once more. "Our business is, I think, ended for the present, my Lord Duke," said the Queen, "and, I trust, to your satisfaction. Hereafter I hope to see your Grace more frequently, both at Richmond and St. James's.--Come Lady Suffolk, we must wish his Grace good-morning." They exchanged their parting reverences, and the Duke, so soon as the ladies had turned their backs, assisted Jeanie to rise from the ground, and conducted her back through the avenue, which she trode with the feeling of one who walks in her sleep. CHAPTER FOURTEENTH. So soon as I can win the offended king, I will be known your advocate. Cymbeline. The Duke of Argyle led the way in silence to the small postern by which they had been admitted into Richmond Park, so long the favourite residence of Queen Caroline. It was opened by the same half-seen janitor, and they found themselves beyond the precincts of the royal demesne. Still not a word was spoken on either side. The Duke probably wished to allow his rustic prote'ge'e time to recruit her faculties, dazzled and sunk with colloquy sublime; and betwixt what she had guessed, had heard, and had seen, Jeanie Deans's mind was too much agitated to permit her to ask any questions. They found the carriage of the Duke in the place where they had left it; and when they resumed their places, soon began to advance rapidly on their return to town. "I think, Jeanie," said the Duke, breaking silence, "you have every reason to congratulate yourself on the issue of your interview with her Majesty." "And that leddy was the Queen herself?" said Jeanie; "I misdoubted it when I saw that your honour didna put on your hat--And yet I can hardly believe it, even when I heard her speak it herself." "It was certainly Queen Caroline," replied the Duke. "Have you no curiosity to see what is in the little pocket-book?" "Do you think the pardon will be in it, sir?" said Jeanie, with the eager animation of hope. "Why, no," replied the Duke; "that is unlikely. They seldom carry these things about them, unless they were likely to be wanted; and, besides, her Majesty told you it was the King, not she, who was to grant it." "That is true, too," said Jeanie; "but I am so confused in my mind--But does your honour think there is a certainty of Effie's pardon then?" continued she, still holding in her hand the unopened pocket-book. "Why, kings are kittle cattle to shoe behind, as we say in the north," replied the Duke; "but his wife knows his trim, and I have not the least doubt that the matter is quite certain." "Oh, God be praised! God be praised!" ejaculated Jeanie; "and may the gude leddy never want the heart's ease she has gien me at this moment!-- And God bless you too, my Lord!--without your help I wad ne'er hae won near her." The Duke let her dwell upon this subject for a considerable time, curious, perhaps, to see how long the feelings of gratitude would continue to supersede those of curiosity. But so feeble was the latter feeling in Jeanie's mind, that his Grace, with whom, perhaps, it was for the time a little stronger, was obliged once more to bring forward the subject of the Queen's present. It was opened accordingly. In the inside of the case was the usual assortment of silk and needles, with scissors, tweezers, etc.; and in the pocket was a bank-bill for fifty pounds. The Duke had no sooner informed Jeanie of the value of this last document, for she was unaccustomed to see notes for such sums, than she expressed her regret at the mistake which had taken place. "For the hussy itsell," she said, "was a very valuable thing for a keepsake, with the Queen's name written in the inside with her ain hand doubtless--_Caroline_--as plain as could be, and a crown drawn aboon it." She therefore tendered the bill to the Duke, requesting him to find some mode of returning it to the royal owner. "No, no, Jeanie," said the Duke, "there is no mistake in the case. Her Majesty knows you have been put to great expense, and she wishes to make it up to you." "I am sure she is even ower gude," said Jeanie, "and it glads me muckle that I can pay back Dumbiedikes his siller, without distressing my father, honest man." "Dumbiedikes! What, a freeholder of Mid-Lothian, is he not?" said his Grace, whose occasional residence in that county made him acquainted with most of the heritors, as landed persons are termed in Scotland.--"He has a house not far from Dalkeith, wears a black wig and a laced hat?" "Yes sir," answered Jeanie, who had her reasons for being brief in her answers upon this topic. "Ah, my old friend Dumbie!" said the Duke; "I have thrice seen him fou, and only once heard the sound of his voice--Is he a cousin of yours, Jeanie?" "No, sir,--my Lord." "Then he must be a well-wisher, I suspect?" "Ye--yes,--my Lord, sir," answered Jeanie, blushing, and with hesitation. "Aha! then, if the Laird starts, I suppose my friend Butler must be in some danger?" "O no, sir," answered Jeanie, much more readily, but at the same time blushing much more deeply. "Well, Jeanie," said the Duke, "you are a girl may be safely trusted with your own matters, and I shall inquire no farther about them. But as to this same pardon, I must see to get it passed through the proper forms; and I have a friend in office who will for auld lang syne, do me so much favour. And then, Jeanie, as I shall have occasion to send an express down to Scotland, who will travel with it safer and more swiftly than you can do, I will take care to have it put into the proper channel; meanwhile you may write to your friends by post of your good success." "And does your Honour think," said Jeanie, "that will do as weel as if I were to take my tap in my lap, and slip my ways hame again on my ain errand?" "Much better, certainly," said the Duke. "You know the roads are not very safe for a single woman to travel." Jeanie internally acquiesced in this observation. "And I have a plan for you besides. One of the Duchess's attendants, and one of mine--your acquaintance Archibald--are going down to Inverary in a light calash, with four horses I have bought, and there is room enough in the carriage for you to go with them as far as Glasgow, where Archibald will find means of sending you safely to Edinburgh.--And in the way I beg you will teach the woman as much as you can of the mystery of cheese-making, for she is to have a charge in the dairy, and I dare swear you are as tidy about your milk-pail as about your dress." "Does your Honour like cheese?" said Jeanie, with a gleam of conscious delight as she asked the question. "Like it?" said the Duke, whose good-nature anticipated what was to follow,--"cakes and cheese are a dinner for an emperor, let alone a Highlandman." "Because," said Jeanie, with modest confidence, and great and evident self-gratulation, "we have been thought so particular in making cheese, that some folk think it as gude as the real Dunlop; and if your honour's Grace wad but accept a stane or twa, blithe, and fain, and proud it wad make us? But maybe ye may like the ewe-milk, that is, the Buckholmside* cheese better; or maybe the gait-milk, as ye come frae the Highlands--and I canna pretend just to the same skeel o' them; but my cousin Jean, that lives at Lockermachus in Lammermuir, I could speak to her, and--" * The hilly pastures of Buckholm, which the Author now surveys,--"Not in the frenzy of a dreamer's eye,"--are famed for producing the best ewe-milk cheese in the south of Scotland. "Quite unnecessary," said the Duke; "the Dunlop is the very cheese of which I am so fond, and I will take it as the greatest favour you can do me to send one to Caroline Park. But remember, be on honour with it, Jeanie, and make it all yourself, for I am a real good judge." "I am not feared," said Jeanie, confidently, "that I may please your Honour; for I am sure you look as if you could hardly find fault wi' onybody that did their best; and weel is it my part, I trow, to do mine." This discourse introduced a topic upon which the two travellers, though so different in rank and education, found each a good deal to say. The Duke, besides his other patriotic qualities, was a distinguished agriculturist, and proud of his knowledge in that department. He entertained Jeanie with his observations on the different breeds of cattle in Scotland, and their capacity for the dairy, and received so much information from her practical experience in return, that he promised her a couple of Devonshire cows in reward for the lesson. In short his mind was so transported back to his rural employments and amusements, that he sighed when his carriage stopped opposite to the old hackney-coach, which Archibald had kept in attendance at the place where they had left it. While the coachman again bridled his lean cattle, which had been indulged with a bite of musty hay, the Duke cautioned Jeanie not to be too communicative to her landlady concerning what had passed. "There is," he said, "no use of speaking of matters till they are actually settled; and you may refer the good lady to Archibald, if she presses you hard with questions. She is his old acquaintance, and he knows how to manage with her." He then took a cordial farewell of Jeanie, and told her to be ready in the ensuing week to return to Scotland--saw her safely established in her hackney-coach, and rolled of in his own carriage, humming a stanza of the ballad which he is said to have composed:-- "At the sight of Dumbarton once again, I'll cock up my bonnet and march amain, With my claymore hanging down to my heel, To whang at the bannocks of barley meal." Perhaps one ought to be actually a Scotsman to conceive how ardently, under all distinctions of rank and situation, they feel their mutual connection with each other as natives of the same country. There are, I believe, more associations common to the inhabitants of a rude and wild, than of a well-cultivated and fertile country; their ancestors have more seldom changed their place of residence; their mutual recollection of remarkable objects is more accurate; the high and the low are more interested in each other's welfare; the feelings of kindred and relationship are more widely extended, and in a word, the bonds of patriotic affection, always honourable even when a little too exclusively strained, have more influence on men's feelings and actions. The rumbling hackney-coach, which tumbled over the (then) execrable London pavement, at a rate very different from that which had conveyed the ducal carriage to Richmond, at length deposited Jeanie Deans and her attendant at the national sign of the Thistle. Mrs. Glass, who had been in long and anxious expectation, now rushed, full of eager curiosity and open-mouthed interrogation, upon our heroine, who was positively unable to sustain the overwhelming cataract of her questions, which burst forth with the sublimity of a grand gardyloo:-- "Had she seen the Duke, God bless him--the Duchess--the young ladies?-- Had she seen the King, God bless him--the Queen--the Prince of Wales--the Princess--or any of the rest of the royal family?--Had she got her sister's pardon?--Was it out and out--or was it only a commutation of punishment?--How far had she gone--where had she driven to--whom had she seen--what had been said--what had kept her so long?" Such were the various questions huddled upon each other by a curiosity so eager, that it could hardly wait for its own gratification. Jeanie would have been more than sufficiently embarrassed by this overbearing tide of interrogations, had not Archibald, who had probably received from his master a hint to that purpose, advanced to her rescue. "Mrs. Glass," said Archibald, "his Grace desired me particularly to say, that he would take it as a great favour if you would ask the young woman no questions, as he wishes to explain to you more distinctly than she can do how her affairs stand, and consult you on some matters which she cannot altogether so well explain. The Duke will call at the Thistle to-morrow or next day for that purpose." "His Grace is very condescending," said Mrs. Glass, her zeal for inquiry slaked for the present by the dexterous administration of this sugar plum--"his Grace is sensible that I am in a manner accountable for the conduct of my young kinswoman, and no doubt his Grace is the best judge how far he should intrust her or me with the management of her affairs." "His Grace is quite sensible of that," answered Archibald, with national gravity, "and will certainly trust what he has to say to the most discreet of the two; and therefore, Mrs. Glass, his Grace relies you will speak nothing to Mrs. Jean Deans, either of her own affairs or her sister's, until he sees you himself. He desired me to assure you, in the meanwhile, that all was going on as well as your kindness could wish, Mrs. Glass." "His Grace is very kind--very considerate, certainly, Mr. Archibald--his Grace's commands shall be obeyed, and--But you have had a far drive, Mr. Archibald, as I guess by the time of your absence, and I guess" (with an engaging smile) "you winna be the waur o' a glass of the right Rosa Solis." "I thank you, Mrs. Glass," said the great man's great man, "but I am under the necessity of returning to my Lord directly." And, making his adieus civilly to both cousins, he left the shop of the Lady of the Thistle. "I am glad your affairs have prospered so well, Jeanie, my love," said Mrs. Glass; "though, indeed, there was little fear of them so soon as the Duke of Argyle was so condescending as to take them into hand. I will ask you no questions about them, because his Grace, who is most considerate and prudent in such matters, intends to tell me all that you ken yourself, dear, and doubtless a great deal more; so that anything that may lie heavily on your mind may be imparted to me in the meantime, as you see it is his Grace's pleasure that I should be made acquainted with the whole matter forthwith, and whether you or he tells it, will make no difference in the world, ye ken. If I ken what he is going to say beforehand, I will be much more ready to give my advice, and whether you or he tell me about it, cannot much signify after all, my dear. So you may just say whatever you like, only mind I ask you no questions about it." Jeanie was a little embarrassed. She thought that the communication she had to make was perhaps the only means she might have in her power to gratify her friendly and hospitable kinswoman. But her prudence instantly suggested that her secret interview with Queen Caroline, which seemed to pass under a certain sort of mystery, was not a proper subject for the gossip of a woman like Mrs. Glass, of whose heart she had a much better opinion than of her prudence. She, therefore, answered in general, that the Duke had had the extraordinary kindness to make very particular inquiries into her sister's bad affair, and that he thought he had found the means of putting it a' straight again, but that he proposed to tell all that he thought about the matter to Mrs. Glass herself. This did not quite satisfy the penetrating mistress of the Thistle. Searching as her own small rappee, she, in spite of her promise, urged Jeanie with still farther questions. "Had she been a' that time at Argyle House? Was the Duke with her the whole time? and had she seen the Duchess? and had she seen the young ladies--and specially Lady Caroline Campbell?"--To these questions Jeanie gave the general reply, that she knew so little of the town that she could not tell exactly where she had been; that she had not seen the Duchess to her knowledge; that she had seen two ladies, one of whom, she understood, bore the name of Caroline; and more, she said, she could not tell about the matter. "It would be the Duke's eldest daughter, Lady Caroline Campbell, there is no doubt of that," said Mrs. Glass; "but doubtless, I shall know more particularly through his Grace.--And so, as the cloth is laid in the little parlour above stairs, and it is past three o'clock, for I have been waiting this hour for you, and I have had a snack myself; and, as they used to say in Scotland in my time--I do not ken if the word be used now--there is ill talking between a full body and a fasting." CHAPTER FIFTEENTH. Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid,-- Some banished lover or some captive maid. Pope. By dint of unwonted labour with the pen, Jeanie Deans contrived to indite, and give to the charge of the postman on the ensuing day, no less than three letters, an exertion altogether strange to her habits; insomuch so, that, if milk had been plenty, she would rather have made thrice as many Dunlop cheeses. The first of them was very brief. It was addressed to George Staunton, Esq., at the Rectory, Willingham, by Grantham; the address being part of the information she had extracted from the communicative peasant who rode before her to Stamford. It was in these words:-- "Sir,--To prevent farder mischieves, whereof there hath been enough, comes these: Sir, I have my sister's pardon from the Queen's Majesty, whereof I do not doubt you will be glad, having had to say naut of matters whereof you know the purport. So, Sir, I pray for your better welfare in bodie and soul, and that it will please the fisycian to visit you in His good time. Alwaies, sir, I pray you will never come again to see my sister, whereof there has been too much. And so, wishing you no evil, but even your best good, that you may be turned from your iniquity (for why suld ye die?) I rest your humble servant to command, "_Ye ken wha._" The next letter was to her father. It is too long altogether for insertion, so we only give a few extracts. It commenced-- "Dearest and truly honoured father,--This comes with my duty to inform you, that it has pleased God to redeem that captivitie of my poor sister, in respect the Queen's blessed Majesty, for whom we are ever bound to pray, hath redeemed her soul from the slayer, granting the ransom of her, whilk is ane pardon or reprieve. And I spoke with the Queen face to face and yet live; for she is not muckle differing from other grand leddies, saying that she has a stately presence, and een like a blue huntin' hawk's, whilk gaed throu' and throu' me like a Highland durk--And all this good was, alway under the Great Giver, to whom all are but instruments, wrought forth for us by the Duk of Argile, wha is ane native true-hearted Scotsman, and not pridefu', like other folk we ken of--and likewise skeely enow in bestial, whereof he has promised to gie me twa Devonshire kye, of which he is enamoured, although I do still haud by the real hawlit Airshire breed--and I have promised him a cheese; and I wad wuss ye, if Gowans, the brockit cow, has a quey, that she suld suck her fill of milk, as I am given to understand he has none of that breed, and is not scornfu' but will take a thing frae a puir body, that it may lighten their heart of the loading of debt that they awe him. Also his honour the Duke will accept ane of our Dunlop cheeses, and it sall be my faut if a better was ever yearned in Lowden."--[Here follow some observations respecting the breed of cattle, and the produce of the dairy, which it is our intention to forward to the Board of Agriculture.]--"Nevertheless, these are but matters of the after-harvest, in respect of the great good which Providence hath gifted us with--and, in especial, poor Effie's life. And oh, my dear father, since it hath pleased God to be merciful to her, let her not want your free pardon, whilk will make her meet to be ane vessel of grace, and also a comfort to your ain graie hairs. Dear Father, will ye let the Laird ken that we have had friends strangely raised up to us, and that the talent whilk he lent me will be thankfully repaid. I hae some of it to the fore; and the rest of it is not knotted up in ane purse or napkin, but in ane wee bit paper, as is the fashion heir, whilk I am assured is gude for the siller. And, dear father, through Mr. Butler's means I hae gude friendship with the Duke, for their had been kindness between their forbears in the auld troublesome time bye-past. And Mrs. Glass has been kind like my very mother. She has a braw house here, and lives bien and warm, wi' twa servant lasses, and a man and a callant in the shop. And she is to send you doun a pound of her hie-dried, and some other tobaka, and we maun think of some propine for her, since her kindness hath been great. And the Duk is to send the pardun doun by an express messenger, in respect that I canna travel sae fast; and I am to come doun wi' twa of his Honour's servants--that is, John Archibald, a decent elderly gentleman, that says he has seen you lang syne, when ye were buying beasts in the west frae the Laird of Aughtermuggitie--but maybe ye winna mind him--ony way, he's a civil man--and Mrs. Dolly Dutton, that is to be dairy-maid at Inverara; and they bring me on as far as Glasgo, whilk will make it nae pinch to win hame, whilk I desire of all things. May the Giver of all good things keep ye in your outgauns and incomings, whereof devoutly prayeth your loving dauter, "Jean Deans." The third letter was to Butler, and its tenor as follows:-- "Master Butler.--Sir,--It will be pleasure to you to ken, that all I came for is, thanks be to God, weel dune and to the gude end, and that your forbear's letter was right welcome to the Duke of Argile, and that he wrote your name down with a kylevine pen in a leathern book, whereby it seems like he will do for you either wi' a scule or a kirk; he has enow of baith, as I am assured. And I have seen the queen, which gave me a hussy-case out of her own hand. She had not her crown and skeptre, but they are laid by for her, like the bairns' best claise, to be worn when she needs them. And they are keepit in a tour, whilk is not like the tour of Libberton, nor yet Craigmillar, but mair like to the castell of Edinburgh, if the buildings were taen and set down in the midst of the Nor'-Loch. Also the Queen was very bounteous, giving me a paper worth fiftie pounds, as I am assured, to pay my expenses here and back agen. Sae, Master Butler, as we were aye neebours' bairns, forby onything else that may hae been spoken between us, I trust you winna skrimp yoursell for what is needfu' for your health, since it signifies not muckle whilk o' us has the siller, if the other wants it. And mind this is no meant to haud ye to onything whilk ye wad rather forget, if ye suld get a charge of a kirk or a scule, as above said. Only I hope it will be a scule, and not a kirk, because of these difficulties anent aiths and patronages, whilk might gang ill down wi' my honest father. Only if ye could compass a harmonious call frae the parish of Skreegh-me-dead, as ye anes had hope of, I trow it wad please him weel; since I hae heard him say, that the root of the matter was mair deeply hafted in that wild muirland parish than in the Canongate of Edinburgh. I wish I had whaten books ye wanted, Mr. Butler, for they hae haill houses of them here, and they are obliged to set sum out in the street, whilk are sald cheap, doubtless, to get them out of the weather. It is a muckle place, and I hae seen sae muckle of it, that my poor head turns round. And ye ken langsyne, I am nae great pen-woman, and it is near eleven o'clock o' the night. I am cumming down in good company, and safe--and I had troubles in gaun up whilk makes me blither of travelling wi' kend folk. My cousin, Mrs. Glass, has a braw house here, but a' thing is sae poisoned wi' snuff, that I am like to be scomfished whiles. But what signifies these things, in comparison of the great deliverance whilk has been vouchsafed to my father's house, in whilk you, as our auld and dear well-wisher, will, I dout not, rejoice and be exceedingly glad. And I am, dear Mr. Butler, your sincere well-wisher in temporal and eternal things, "J. D." After these labours of an unwonted kind, Jeanie retired to her bed, yet scarce could sleep a few minutes together, so often was she awakened by the heart-stirring consciousness of her sister's safety, and so powerfully urged to deposit her burden of joy, where she had before laid her doubts and sorrows, in the warm and sincere exercises of devotion. All the next, and all the succeeding day, Mrs. Glass fidgeted about her shop in the agony of expectation, like a pea (to use a vulgar simile which her profession renders appropriate) upon one of her own tobacco pipes. With the third morning came the expected coach, with four servants clustered behind on the footboard, in dark brown and yellow liveries; the Duke in person, with laced coat, gold-headed cane, star and garter, all, as the story-book says, very grand. He inquired for his little countrywoman of Mrs. Glass, but without requesting to see her, probably because he was unwilling to give an appearance of personal intercourse betwixt them, which scandal might have misinterpreted. "The Queen," he said to Mrs. Glass, "had taken the case of her kinswoman into her gracious consideration, and being specially moved by the affectionate and resolute character of the elder sister, had condescended to use her powerful intercession with his Majesty, in consequence of which a pardon had been despatched to Scotland to Effie Deans, on condition of her banishing herself forth of Scotland for fourteen years. The King's Advocate had insisted," he said, "upon this qualification of the pardon, having pointed out to his Majesty's ministers, that, within the course of only seven years, twenty-one instances of child-murder had occurred in Scotland. "Weary on him!" said Mrs. Glass, "what for needed he to have telled that of his ain country, and to the English folk abune a'? I used aye to think the Advocate a douce decent man, but it is an ill bird*--begging your Grace's pardon for speaking of such a coorse by-word. * [It's an ill bird that fouls its own pest.] And then what is the poor lassie to do in a foreign land?--Why, wae's me, it's just sending her to play the same pranks ower again, out of sight or guidance of her friends." "Pooh! pooh!" said the Duke, "that need not be anticipated. Why, she may come up to London, or she may go over to America, and marry well for all that is come and gone." "In troth, and so she may, as your Grace is pleased to intimate," replied Mrs. Glass; "and now I think upon it, there is my old correspondent in Virginia, Ephraim Buckskin, that has supplied the Thistle this forty years with tobacco, and it is not a little that serves our turn, and he has been writing to me this ten years to send him out a wife. The carle is not above sixty, and hale and hearty, and well to pass in the world, and a line from my hand would settle the matter, and Effie Deans's misfortune (forby that there is no special occasion to speak about it) would be thought little of there." "Is she a pretty girl?" said the Duke; "her sister does not get beyond a good comely sonsy lass." "Oh, far prettier is Effie than Jeanie," said Mrs. Glass; "though it is long since I saw her mysell, but I hear of the Deanses by all my Lowden friends when they come--your Grace kens we Scots are clannish bodies." "So much the better for us," said the Duke, "and the worse for those who meddle with us, as your good old-fashioned sign says, Mrs. Glass. And now I hope you will approve of the measures I have taken for restoring your kinswoman to her friends." These he detailed at length, and Mrs. Glass gave her unqualified approbation, with a smile and a courtesy at every sentence. "And now, Mrs. Glass, you must tell Jeanie, I hope, she will not forget my cheese when she gets down to Scotland. Archibald has my orders to arrange all her expenses." "Begging your Grace's humble pardon," said Mrs. Glass, "it is a pity to trouble yourself about them; the Deanses are wealthy people in their way, and the lass has money in her pocket." "That's all very true," said the Duke; "but you know, where MacCallummore travels he pays all; it is our Highland privilege to take from all what _we_ want, and to give to all what _they_ want." "Your Grace is better at giving than taking," said Mrs. Glass. "To show you the contrary," said the Duke, "I will fill my box out of this canister without paying you a bawbee;" and again desiring to be remembered to Jeanie, with his good wishes for her safe journey, he departed, leaving Mrs. Glass uplifted in heart and in countenance, the proudest and happiest of tobacco and snuff dealers. Reflectively, his Grace's good humour and affability had a favourable effect upon Jeanie's situation.--Her kinswoman, though civil and kind to her, had acquired too much of London breeding to be perfectly satisfied with her cousin's rustic and national dress, and was, besides, something scandalised at the cause of her journey to London. Mrs. Glass might, therefore, have been less sedulous in her attentions towards Jeanie, but for the interest which the foremost of the Scottish nobles (for such, in all men's estimation, was the Duke of Argyle) seemed to take in her fate. Now, however, as a kinswoman whose virtues and domestic affections had attracted the notice and approbation of royalty itself, Jeanie stood to her relative in a light very different and much more favourable, and was not only treated with kindness, but with actual observance and respect. It depended on herself alone to have made as many visits, and seen as many sights, as lay within Mrs. Glass's power to compass. But, excepting that she dined abroad with one or two "far away kinsfolk," and that she paid the same respect, on Mrs. Glass's strong urgency, to Mrs. Deputy Dabby, wife of the Worshipful Mr. Deputy Dabby, of Farringdon Without, she did not avail herself of the opportunity. As Mrs. Dabby was the second lady of great rank whom Jeanie had seen in London, she used sometimes afterwards to draw a parallel betwixt her and the Queen, in which she observed, "that Mrs. Dabby was dressed twice as grand, and was twice as big, and spoke twice as loud, and twice as muckle, as the Queen did, but she hadna the same goss-hawk glance that makes the skin creep, and the knee bend; and though she had very kindly gifted her with a loaf of sugar and twa punds of tea, yet she hadna a'thegither the sweet look that the Queen had when she put the needle-book into her hand." Jeanie might have enjoyed the sights and novelties of this great city more, had it not been for the qualification added to her sister's pardon, which greatly grieved her affectionate disposition. On this subject, however, her mind was somewhat relieved by a letter which she received in return of post, in answer to that which she had written to her father. With his affectionate blessing, it brought his full approbation of the step which she had taken, as one inspired by the immediate dictates of Heaven, and which she had been thrust upon in order that she might become the means of safety to a perishing household. "If ever a deliverance was dear and precious, this," said the letter, "is a dear and precious deliverance--and if life saved can be made more sweet and savoury, it is when it cometh by the hands of those whom we hold in the ties of affection. And do not let your heart be disquieted within you, that this victim, who is rescued from the horns of the altar, whereuntil she was fast bound by the chains of human law, is now to be driven beyond the bounds of our land. Scotland is a blessed land to those who love the ordinances of Christianity, and it is a faer land to look upon, and dear to them who have dwelt in it a' their days; and weel said that judicious Christian, worthy John Livingstone, a sailor in Borrowstouness, as the famous Patrick Walker reporteth his words, that howbeit he thought Scotland was a Gehennah of wickedness when he was at home, yet when he was abroad, he accounted it ane paradise; for the evils of Scotland he found everywhere, and the good of Scotland he found nowhere. But we are to hold in remembrance that Scotland, though it be our native land, and the land of our fathers, is not like Goshen, in Egypt, on whilk the sun of the heavens and of the gospel shineth allenarly, and leaveth the rest of the world in utter darkness. Therefore, and also because this increase of profit at Saint Leonard's Crags may be a cauld waff of wind blawing from the frozen land of earthly self, where never plant of grace took root or grew, and because my concerns make me take something ower muckle a grip of the gear of the warld in mine arms, I receive this dispensation anent Effie as a call to depart out of Haran, as righteous Abraham of old, and leave my father's kindred and my mother's house, and the ashes and mould of them who have gone to sleep before me, and which wait to be mingled with these auld crazed bones of mine own. And my heart is lightened to do this, when I call to mind the decay of active and earnest religion in this land, and survey the height and the depth, the length and the breadth, of national defections, and how the love of many is waxing lukewarm and cold; and I am strengthened in this resolution to change my domicile likewise, as I hear that store-farms are to be set at an easy mail in Northumberland, where there are many precious souls that are of our true though suffering persuasion. And sic part of the kye or stock as I judge it fit to keep, may be driven thither without incommodity--say about Wooler, or that gate, keeping aye a shouther to the hills,--and the rest may be sauld to gude profit and advantage, if we had grace weel to use and guide these gifts of the warld. The Laird has been a true friend on our unhappy occasions, and I have paid him back the siller for Effie's misfortune, whereof Mr. Nichil Novit returned him no balance, as the Laird and I did expect he wad hae done. But law licks up a', as the common folk say. I have had the siller to borrow out of sax purses. Mr. Saddletree advised to give the Laird of Lounsbeck a charge on his hand for a thousand merks. But I hae nae broo' of charges, since that awfu' morning that a tout of a horn, at the Cross of Edinburgh, blew half the faithfu' ministers of Scotland out of their pulpits. However, I sall raise an adjudication, whilk Mr. Saddletree says comes instead of the auld apprisings, and will not lose weel-won gear with the like of him, if it may be helped. As for the Queen, and the credit that she hath done to a poor man's daughter, and the mercy and the grace ye found with her, I can only pray for her weel-being here and hereafter, for the establishment of her house now and for ever, upon the throne of these kingdoms. I doubt not but what you told her Majesty, that I was the same David Deans of whom there was a sport at the Revolution, when I noited thegither the heads of twa false prophets, these ungracious Graces the prelates, as they stood on the Hie Street, after being expelled from the Convention-parliament.* * Note P. Expulsion of the Scotch Bishops. The Duke of Argyle is a noble and true-hearted nobleman, who pleads the cause of the poor, and those who have none to help them; verily his reward shall not be lacking unto him.--I have, been writing of many things, but not of that whilk lies nearest mine heart. I have seen the misguided thing, she will be at freedom the morn, on enacted caution that she shall leave Scotland in four weeks. Her mind is in an evil frame,--casting her eye backward on Egypt, I doubt, as if the bitter waters of the wilderness were harder to endure than the brick furnaces, by the side of which there were savoury flesh-pots. I need not bid you make haste down, for you are, excepting always my Great Master, my only comfort in these straits. I charge you to withdraw your feet from the delusion of that Vanity-fair in whilk ye are a sojourner, and not to go to their worship, whilk is an ill-mumbled mass, as it was weel termed by James the Sext, though he afterwards, with his unhappy son, strove to bring it ower back and belly into his native kingdom, wherethrough their race have been cut off as foam upon the water, and shall be as wanderers among the nations-see the prophecies of Hosea, ninth and seventeenth, and the same, tenth and seventh. But us and our house, let us say with the same prophet, 'Let us return to the Lord, for he hath torn, and he will heal us--He hath smitten, and he will bind us up.'" He proceeded to say, that he approved of her proposed mode of returning by Glasgow, and entered into sundry minute particulars not necessary to be quoted. A single line in the letter, but not the least frequently read by the party to whom it was addressed, intimated, that "Reuben Butler had been as a son to him in his sorrows." As David Deans scarce ever mentioned Butler before, without some gibe, more or less direct, either at his carnal gifts and learning, or at his grandfather's heresy, Jeanie drew a good omen from no such qualifying clause being added to this sentence respecting him. A lover's hope resembles the bean in the nursery tale,--let it once take root, and it will grow so rapidly, that in the course of a few hours the giant Imagination builds a castle on the top, and by and by comes Disappointment with the "curtal axe," and hews down both the plant and the superstructure. Jeanie's fancy, though not the most powerful of her faculties, was lively enough to transport her to a wild farm in Northumberland, well stocked with milk-cows, yeald beasts, and sheep; a meeting-house, hard by, frequented by serious Presbyterians, who had united in a harmonious call to Reuben Butler to be their spiritual guide--Effie restored, not to gaiety, but to cheerfulness at least--their father, with his grey hairs smoothed down, and spectacles on his nose--herself, with the maiden snood exchanged for a matron's curch--all arranged in a pew in the said meeting-house, listening to words of devotion, rendered sweeter and more powerful by the affectionate ties which combined them with the preacher. She cherished such visions from day to day, until her residence in London began to become insupportable and tedious to her; and it was with no ordinary satisfaction that she received a summons from Argyle House, requiring her in two days to be prepared to join their northward party. CHAPTER SIXTEENTH. One was a female, who had grievous ill Wrought in revenge, and she enjoy'd it still; Sullen she was, and threatening; in her eye Glared the stern triumph that she dared to die. Crabbe. The summons of preparation arrived after Jeanie Deans had resided in the metropolis about three weeks. On the morning appointed she took a grateful farewell of Mrs. Glass, as that good woman's attention to her particularly required, placed herself and her movable goods, which purchases and presents had greatly increased, in a hackney-coach, and joined her travelling companions in the housekeeper's apartment at Argyle House. While the carriage was getting ready, she was informed that the Duke wished to speak with her; and being ushered into a splendid saloon, she was surprised to find that he wished to present her to his lady and daughters. "I bring you my little countrywoman, Duchess," these were the words of the introduction. "With an army of young fellows, as gallant and steady as she is, and, a good cause, I would not fear two to one." "Ah, papa!" said a lively young lady, about twelve years old, "remember you were full one to two at Sheriffmuir, and yet" (singing the well-known ballad)-- "Some say that we wan, and some say that they wan, And some say that nane wan at a', man But of ae thing I'm sure, that on Sheriff-muir A battle there was that I saw, man." "What, little Mary turned Tory on my hands?--This will be fine news for our countrywoman to carry down to Scotland!" "We may all turn Tories for the thanks we have got for remaining Whigs," said the second young lady. "Well, hold your peace, you discontented monkeys, and go dress your babies; and as for the Bob of Dunblane, 'If it wasna weel bobbit, weel bobbit, weel bobbit, If it wasna weel bobbit, we'll bob it again.'" "Papa's wit is running low," said Lady Mary: "the poor gentleman is repeating himself--he sang that on the field of battle, when he was told the Highlanders had cut his left wing to pieces with their claymores." A pull by the hair was the repartee to this sally. "Ah! brave Highlanders and bright claymores," said the Duke, "well do I wish them, 'for a' the ill they've done me yet,' as the song goes.--But come, madcaps, say a civil word to your countrywoman--I wish ye had half her canny hamely sense; I think you may be as leal and true-hearted." The Duchess advanced, and, in a few words, in which there was as much kindness as civility, assured Jeanie of the respect which she had for a character so affectionate, and yet so firm, and added, "When you get home, you will perhaps hear from me." "And from me." "And from me." "And from me, Jeanie," added the young ladies one after the other, "for you are a credit to the land we love so well." Jeanie, overpowered by these unexpected compliments, and not aware that the Duke's investigation had made him acquainted with her behaviour on her sister's trial, could only answer by blushing, and courtesying round and round, and uttering at intervals, "Mony thanks! mony thanks!" "Jeanie," said the Duke, "you must have _doch an' dorroch,_ or you will be unable to travel." There was a salver with cake and wine on the table. He took up a glass, drank "to all true hearts that lo'ed Scotland," and offered a glass to his guest. Jeanie, however, declined it, saying, "that she had never tasted wine in her life." "How comes that, Jeanie?" said the Duke,--"wine maketh glad the heart, you know." "Ay, sir, but my father is like Jonadab the son of Rechab, who charged his children that they should drink no wine." "I thought your father would have had more sense," said the Duke, "unless indeed he prefers brandy. But, however, Jeanie, if you will not drink, you must eat, to save the character of my house." He thrust upon her a large piece of cake, nor would he permit her to break off a fragment, and lay the rest on a salver. "Put it in your pouch, Jeanie," said he; "you will be glad of it before you see St. Giles's steeple. I wish to Heaven I were to see it as soon as you! and so my best service to all my friends at and about Auld Reekie, and a blithe journey to you." And, mixing the frankness of a soldier with his natural affability, he shook hands with his prote'ge'e, and committed her to the charge of Archibald, satisfied that he had provided sufficiently for her being attended to by his domestics, from the unusual attention with which he had himself treated her. Accordingly, in the course of her journey, she found both her companions disposed to pay her every possible civility, so that her return, in point of comfort and safety, formed a strong contrast to her journey to London. Her heart also was disburdened of the weight of grief, shame, apprehension, and fear, which had loaded her before her interview with the Queen at Richmond. But the human mind is so strangely capricious, that, when freed from the pressure of real misery, it becomes open and sensitive to the apprehension of ideal calamities. She was now much disturbed in mind, that she had heard nothing from Reuben Butler, to whom the operation of writing was so much more familiar than it was to herself. "It would have cost him sae little fash," she said to herself; "for I hae seen his pen gan as fast ower the paper, as ever it did ower the water when it was in the grey goose's wing. Wae's me! maybe he may be badly--but then my father wad likely hae said somethin about it--Or maybe he may hae taen the rue, and kensna how to let me wot of his change of mind. He needna be at muckle fash about it,"--she went on, drawing herself up, though the tear of honest pride and injured affection gathered in her eye, as she entertained the suspicion,-- "Jeanie Deans is no the lass to pu' him by the sleeve, or put him in mind of what he wishes to forget. I shall wish him weel and happy a' the same; and if he has the luck to get a kirk in our country, I sall gang and hear him just the very same, to show that I bear nae malice." And as she imagined the scene, the tear stole over her eye. In these melancholy reveries, Jeanie had full time to indulge herself; for her travelling companions, servants in a distinguished and fashionable family, had, of course, many topics of conversation, in which it was absolutely impossible she could have either pleasure or portion. She had, therefore, abundant leisure for reflection, and even for self-tormenting, during the several days which, indulging the young horses the Duke was sending down to the North with sufficient ease and short stages, they occupied in reaching the neighbourhood of Carlisle. In approaching the vicinity of that ancient city, they discerned a considerable crowd upon an eminence at a little distance from the high road, and learned from some passengers who were gathering towards that busy scene from the southward, that the cause of the concourse was, the laudable public desire "to see a doomed Scotch witch and thief get half of her due upo' Haribeebroo' yonder, for she was only to be hanged; she should hae been boorned aloive, an' cheap on't." "Dear Mr. Archibald," said the dame of the dairy elect, "I never seed a woman hanged in a' my life, and only four men, as made a goodly spectacle." Mr. Archibald, however, was a Scotchman, and promised himself no exuberant pleasure in seeing his countrywoman undergo "the terrible behests of law." Moreover, he was a man of sense and delicacy in his way, and the late circumstances of Jeanie's family, with the cause of her expedition to London, were not unknown to him; so that he answered drily, it was impossible to stop, as he must be early at Carlisle on some business of the Duke's, and he accordingly bid the postilions get on. The road at that time passed at about a quarter of a mile's distance from the eminence, called Haribee or Harabee-brow, which, though it is very moderate in size and height, is nevertheless seen from a great distance around, owing to the flatness of the country through which the Eden flows. Here many an outlaw, and border-rider of both kingdoms, had wavered in the wind during the wars, and scarce less hostile truces, between the two countries. Upon Harabee, in latter days, other executions had taken place with as little ceremony as compassion; for these frontier provinces remained long unsettled, and, even at the time of which we write, were ruder than those in the centre of England. The postilions drove on, wheeling as the Penrith road led them, round the verge of the rising ground. Yet still the eyes of Mrs. Dolly Dutton, which, with the head and substantial person to which they belonged, were all turned towards the scene of action, could discern plainly the outline of the gallows-tree, relieved against the clear sky, the dark shade formed by the persons of the executioner and the criminal upon the light rounds of the tall aerial ladder, until one of the objects, launched into the air, gave unequivocal signs of mortal agony, though appearing in the distance not larger than a spider dependent at the extremity of his invisible thread, while the remaining form descended from its elevated situation, and regained with all speed an undistinguished place among the crowd. This termination of the tragic scene drew forth of course a squall from Mrs. Dutton, and Jeanie, with instinctive curiosity, turned her head in the same direction. The sight of a female culprit in the act of undergoing the fatal punishment from which her beloved sister had been so recently rescued, was too much, not perhaps for her nerves, but for her mind and feelings. She turned her head to the other side of the carriage, with a sensation of sickness, of loathing, and of fainting. Her female companion overwhelmed her with questions, with proffers of assistance, with requests that the carriage might be stopped--that a doctor might be fetched--that drops might be gotten--that burnt feathers and asafoetida, fair water, and hartshorn, might be procured, all at once, and without one instant's delay. Archibald, more calm and considerate, only desired the carriage to push forward; and it was not till they had got beyond sight of the fatal spectacle, that, seeing the deadly paleness of Jeanie's countenance, he stopped the carriage, and jumping out himself, went in search of the most obvious and most easily procured of Mrs. Dutton's pharmacopoeia--a draught, namely, of fair water. While Archibald was absent on this good-natured piece of service, damning the ditches which produced nothing but mud, and thinking upon the thousand bubbling springlets of his own mountains, the attendants on the execution began to pass the stationary vehicle in their way back to Carlisle. From their half-heard and half-understood words, Jeanie, whose attention was involuntarily rivetted by them, as that of children is by ghost stories, though they know the pain with which they will afterwards remember them, Jeanie, I say, could discern that the present victim of the law had died game, as it is termed by those unfortunates; that is, sullen, reckless, and impenitent, neither fearing God nor regarding man. "A sture woife, and a dour," said one Cumbrian peasant, as he clattered by in his wooden brogues, with a noise like the trampling of a dray-horse. "She has gone to ho master, with ho's name in her mouth," said another; "Shame the country should be harried wi' Scotch witches and Scotch bitches this gate--but I say hang and drown." "Ay, ay, Gaffer Tramp, take awa yealdon, take awa low--hang the witch, and there will be less scathe amang us; mine owsen hae been reckan this towmont." "And mine bairns hae been crining too, mon," replied his neighbour. "Silence wi' your fule tongues, ye churls," said an old woman, who hobbled past them, as they stood talking near the carriage; "this was nae witch, but a bluidy-fingered thief and murderess." "Ay? was it e'en sae, Dame Hinchup?" said one in a civil tone, and stepping out of his place to let the old woman pass along the footpath--"Nay, you know best, sure--but at ony rate, we hae but tint a Scot of her, and that's a thing better lost than found." The old woman passed on without making any answer. "Ay, ay, neighbour," said Gaffer Tramp, "seest thou how one witch will speak for t'other--Scots or English, the same to them." His companion shook his head, and replied in the same subdued tone, "Ay, ay, when a Sark-foot wife gets on her broomstick, the dames of Allonby are ready to mount, just as sure as the by-word gangs o' the hills,-- If Skiddaw hath a cap, Criffel, wots full weel of that." "But," continued Gager Tramp, "thinkest thou the daughter o' yon hangit body isna as rank a witch as ho?" "I kenna clearly," returned the fellow, "but the folk are speaking o' swimming her i' the Eden." And they passed on their several roads, after wishing each other good-morning. Just as the clowns left the place, and as Mr. Archibald returned with some fair water, a crowd of boys and girls, and some of the lower rabble of more mature age, came up from the place of execution, grouping themselves with many a yell of delight around a tall female fantastically dressed, who was dancing, leaping, and bounding in the midst of them. A horrible recollection pressed on Jeanie as she looked on this unfortunate creature; and the reminiscence was mutual, for by a sudden exertion of great strength and agility, Madge Wildfire broke out of the noisy circle of tormentors who surrounded her, and clinging fast to the door of the calash, uttered, in a sound betwixt laughter and screaming, "Eh, d'ye ken, Jeanie Deans, they hae hangit our mother?" Then suddenly changing her tone to that of the most piteous entreaty, she added, "O gar them let me gang to cut her down!--let me but cut her down!--she is my mother, if she was waur than the deil, and she'll be nae mair kenspeckle than half-hangit Maggie Dickson,* that cried saut mony a day after she had been hangit; her voice was roupit and hoarse, and her neck was a wee agee, or ye wad hae kend nae odds on her frae ony other saut-wife." * Note Q. Half-hanged Maggie Dickson. Mr. Archibald, embarrassed by the madwoman's clinging to the carriage, and detaining around them her noisy and mischievous attendants, was all this while looking out for a constable or beadle, to whom he might commit the unfortunate creature. But seeing no such person of authority, he endeavoured to loosen her hold from the carriage, that they might escape from her by driving on. This, however, could hardly be achieved without some degree of violence; Madge held fast, and renewed her frantic entreaties to be permitted to cut down her mother. "It was but a tenpenny tow lost," she said, "and what was that to a woman's life?" There came up, however, a parcel of savage-looking fellows, butchers and graziers chiefly, among whose cattle there had been of late a very general and fatal distemper, which their wisdom imputed to witchcraft. They laid violent hands on Madge, and tore her from the carriage, exclaiming-- "What, doest stop folk o' king's high-way? Hast no done mischief enow already, wi' thy murders and thy witcherings?" "Oh, Jeanie Deans--Jeanie Deans!" exclaimed the poor maniac, "save my mother, and I will take ye to the Interpreter's house again,--and I will teach ye a' my bonny sangs,--and I will tell ye what came o' the." The rest of her entreaties were drowned in the shouts of the rabble. "Save her, for God's sake!--save her from those people!" exclaimed Jeanie to Archibald. "She is mad, but quite innocent; she is mad, gentlemen," said Archibald; "do not use her ill, take her before the Mayor." "Ay, ay, we'se hae care enow on her," answered one of the fellows; "gang thou thy gate, man, and mind thine own matters." "He's a Scot by his tongue," said another; "and an he will come out o' his whirligig there, I'se gie him his tartan plaid fu' o' broken banes." It was clear nothing could be done to rescue Madge; and Archibald, who was a man of humanity, could only bid the postilions hurry on to Carlisle, that he might obtain some assistance to the unfortunate woman. As they drove off, they heard the hoarse roar with which the mob preface acts of riot or cruelty, yet even above that deep and dire note, they could discern the screams of the unfortunate victim. They were soon out of hearing of the cries, but had no sooner entered the streets of Carlisle, than Archibald, at Jeanie's earnest and urgent entreaty, went to a magistrate, to state the cruelty which was likely to be exercised on this unhappy creature. In about an hour and a half he returned, and reported to Jeanie, that the magistrate had very readily gone in person, with some assistance, to the rescue of the unfortunate woman, and that he had himself accompanied him; that when they came to the muddy pool, in which the mob were ducking her, according to their favourite mode of punishment, the magistrate succeeded in rescuing her from their hands, but in a state of insensibility, owing to the cruel treatment which she had received. He added, that he had seen her carried to the workhouse, and understood that she had been brought to herself, and was expected to do well. This last averment was a slight alteration in point of fact, for Madge Wildfire was not expected to survive the treatment she had received; but Jeanie seemed so much agitated, that Mr. Archibald did not think it prudent to tell her the worst at once. Indeed, she appeared so fluttered and disordered by this alarming accident, that, although it had been their intention to proceed to Longtown that evening, her companions judged it most advisable to pass the night at Carlisle. This was particularly agreeable to Jeanie, who resolved, if possible, to procure an interview with Madge Wildfire. Connecting some of her wild flights with the narrative of George Staunton, she was unwilling to omit the opportunity of extracting from her, if possible, some information concerning the fate of that unfortunate infant which had cost her sister so dear. Her acquaintance with the disordered state of poor Madge's mind did not permit her to cherish much hope that she could acquire from her any useful intelligence; but then, since Madge's mother had suffered her deserts, and was silent for ever, it was her only chance of obtaining any kind of information, and she was loath to lose the opportunity. She coloured her wish to Mr. Archibald by saying that she had seen Madge formerly, and wished to know, as a matter of humanity, how she was attended to under her present misfortunes. That complaisant person immediately went to the workhouse, or hospital, in which he had seen the sufferer lodged, and brought back for reply, that the medical attendants positively forbade her seeing any one. When the application for admittance was repeated next day, Mr. Archibald was informed that she had been very quiet and composed, insomuch that the clergyman who acted as chaplain to the establishment thought it expedient to read prayers beside her bed, but that her wandering fit of mind had returned soon after his departure; however, her countrywoman might see her if she chose it. She was not expected to live above an hour or two. Jeanie had no sooner received this information than she hastened to the hospital, her companions attending her. They found the dying person in a large ward, where there were ten beds, of which the patient's was the only one occupied. Madge was singing when they entered--singing her own wild snatches of songs and obsolete airs, with a voice no longer overstrained by false spirits, but softened, saddened, and subdued by bodily exhaustion. She was still insane, but was no longer able to express her wandering ideas in the wild notes of her former state of exalted imagination. There was death in the plaintive tones of her voice, which yet, in this moderated and melancholy mood, had something of the lulling sound with which a mother sings her infant asleep. As Jeanie entered she heard first the air, and then a part of the chorus and words, of what had been, perhaps, the song of a jolly harvest-home. "Our work is over--over now, The goodman wipes his weary brow, The last long wain wends slow away, And we are free to sport and play. "The night comes on when sets the sun, And labour ends when day is done. When Autumn's gone and Winter's come, We hold our jovial harvest-home." Jeanie advanced to the bedside when the strain was finished, and addressed Madge by her name. But it produced no symptoms of recollection. On the contrary, the patient, like one provoked by interruption, changed her posture, and called out with an impatient tone, "Nurse--nurse, turn my face to the wa', that I may never answer to that name ony mair, and never see mair of a wicked world." The attendant on the hospital arranged her in her bed as she desired, with her face to the wall and her back to the light. So soon as she was quiet in this new position, she began again to sing in the same low and modulated strains, as if she was recovering the state of abstraction which the interruption of her visitants had disturbed. The strain, however, was different, and rather resembled the music of the Methodist hymns, though the measure of the song was similar to that of the former: "When the fight of grace is fought-- When the marriage vest is wrought-- When Faith hath chased cold Doubt away, And Hope but sickens at delay-- "When Charity, imprisoned here, Longs for a more expanded sphere, Doff thy robes of sin and clay; Christian, rise, and come away." The strain was solemn and affecting, sustained as it was by the pathetic warble of a voice which had naturally been a fine one, and which weakness, if it diminished its power, had improved in softness. Archibald, though a follower of the court, and a pococurante by profession, was confused, if not affected; the dairy-maid blubbered; and Jeanie felt the tears rise spontaneously to her eyes. Even the nurse, accustomed to all modes in which the spirit can pass, seemed considerably moved. The patient was evidently growing weaker, as was intimated by an apparent difficulty of breathing, which seized her from time to time, and by the utterance of low listless moans, intimating that nature was succumbing in the last conflict. But the spirit of melody, which must originally have so strongly possessed this unfortunate young woman, seemed, at every interval of ease, to triumph over her pain and weakness. And it was remarkable that there could always be traced in her songs something appropriate, though perhaps only obliquely or collaterally so, to her present situation. Her next seemed the fragment of some old ballad: "Cauld is my bed, Lord Archibald, And sad my sleep of sorrow; But thine sall be as sad and cauld, My fause true-love! to-morrow. "And weep ye not, my maidens free, Though death your mistress borrow; For he for whom I die to-day Shall die for me to-morrow." Again she changed the tune to one wilder, less monotonous, and less regular. But of the words, only a fragment or two could be collected by those who listened to this singular scene "Proud Maisie is in the wood, Walking so early; Sweet Robin sits on the bush, Singing so rarely. "'Tell me, thou bonny bird. When shall I marry me?' 'When six braw gentlemen Kirkward shall carry ye.' "'Who makes the bridal bed, Birdie, say truly?'-- 'The grey-headed sexton, That delves the grave duly. "The glow-worm o'er grave and stone Shall light thee steady; The owl from the steeple sing, 'Welcome, proud lady.'" Her voice died away with the last notes, and she fell into a slumber, from which the experienced attendant assured them that she never would awake at all, or only in the death agony. The nurse's prophecy proved true. The poor maniac parted with existence, without again uttering a sound of any kind. But our travellers did not witness this catastrophe. They left the hospital as soon as Jeanie had satisfied herself that no elucidation of her sister's misfortunes was to be hoped from the dying person.* * Note R. Madge Wildfire. CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH. Wilt thou go on with me? The moon is bright, the sea is calm, And I know well the ocean paths . . . Thou wilt go on with me! Thalaba. The fatigue and agitation of these various scenes had agitated Jeanie so much, notwithstanding her robust strength of constitution, that Archibald judged it necessary that she should have a day's repose at the village of Longtown. It was in vain that Jeanie protested against any delay. The Duke of Argyle's man of confidence was of course consequential; and as he had been bred to the medical profession in his youth (at least he used this expression to describe his having, thirty years before, pounded for six months in the mortar of old Mungo Mangleman, the surgeon at Greenock), he was obstinate whenever a matter of health was in question. In this case he discovered febrile symptoms, and having once made a happy application of that learned phrase to Jeanie's case, all farther resistance became in vain; and she was glad to acquiesce, and even to go to bed, and drink water-gruel, in order that she might possess her soul in quiet and without interruption. Mr. Archibald was equally attentive in another particular. He observed that the execution of the old woman, and the miserable fate of her daughter, seemed to have had a more powerful effect upon Jeanie's mind, than the usual feelings of humanity might naturally have been expected to occasion. Yet she was obviously a strong-minded, sensible young woman, and in no respect subject to nervous affections; and therefore Archibald, being ignorant of any special connection between his master's prote'ge'e and these unfortunate persons, excepting that she had seen Madge formerly in Scotland, naturally imputed the strong impression these events had made upon her, to her associating them with the unhappy circumstances in which her sister had so lately stood. He became anxious, therefore, to prevent anything occurring which might recall these associations to Jeanie's mind. Archibald had speedily an opportunity of exercising this precaution. A pedlar brought to Longtown that evening, amongst other wares, a large broad-side sheet, giving an account of the "Last Speech and Execution of Margaret Murdockson, and of the barbarous Murder of her Daughter, Magdalene or Madge Murdockson, called Madge Wildfire; and of her pious conversation with his Reverence Archdeacon Fleming;" which authentic publication had apparently taken place on the day they left Carlisle, and being an article of a nature peculiarly acceptable to such country-folk as were within hearing of the transaction, the itinerant bibliopolist had forthwith added them to his stock in trade. He found a merchant sooner than he expected; for Archibald, much applauding his own prudence, purchased the whole lot for two shillings and ninepence; and the pedlar, delighted with the profit of such a wholesale transaction, instantly returned to Carlisle to supply himself with more. The considerate Mr. Archibald was about to commit his whole purchase to the flames, but it was rescued by the yet more considerate dairy-damsel, who said, very prudently, it was a pity to waste so much paper, which might crepe hair, pin up bonnets, and serve many other useful purposes; and who promised to put the parcel into her own trunk, and keep it carefully out of the sight of Mrs. Jeanie Deans: "Though, by-the-bye, she had no great notion of folk being so very nice. Mrs. Deans might have had enough to think about the gallows all this time to endure a sight of it, without all this to-do about it." Archibald reminded the dame of the dairy of the Duke's particular charge, that they should be attentive and civil to Jeanie as also that they were to part company soon, and consequently would not be doomed to observing any one's health or temper during the rest of the journey. With which answer Mrs. Dolly Dutton was obliged to hold herself satisfied. On the morning they resumed their journey, and prosecuted it successfully, travelling through Dumfriesshire and part of Lanarkshire, until they arrived at the small town of Rutherglen, within about four miles of Glasgow. Here an express brought letters to Archibald from the principal agent of the Duke of Argyle in Edinburgh. He said nothing of their contents that evening; but when they were seated in the carriage the next day, the faithful squire informed Jeanie, that he had received directions from the Duke's factor, to whom his Grace had recommended him to carry her, if she had no objection, for a stage or two beyond Glasgow. Some temporary causes of discontent had occasioned tumults in that city and the neighbourhood, which would render it unadvisable for Mrs. Jeanie Deans to travel alone and unprotected betwixt that city and Edinburgh; whereas, by going forward a little farther, they would meet one of his Grace's subfactors, who was coming down from the Highlands to Edinburgh with his wife, and under whose charge she might journey with comfort and in safety. Jeanie remonstrated against this arrangement. "She had been lang," she said, "frae hame--her father and her sister behoved to be very anxious to see her--there were other friends she had that werena weel in health. She was willing to pay for man and horse at Glasgow, and surely naebody wad meddle wi' sae harmless and feckless a creature as she was.--She was muckle obliged by the offer; but never hunted deer langed for its resting-place as I do to find myself at Saint Leonard's." The groom of the chambers exchanged a look with his female companion, which seemed so full of meaning, that Jeanie screamed aloud--"O Mr. Archibald--Mrs. Dutton, if ye ken of onything that has happened at Saint Leonard's, for God's sake--for pity's sake, tell me, and dinna keep me in suspense!" "I really know nothing, Mrs. Deans," said the groom of the chambers. "And I--I--I am sure, I knows as little," said the dame of the dairy, while some communication seemed to tremble on her lips, which, at a glance of Archibald's eye, she appeared to swallow down, and compressed her lips thereafter into a state of extreme and vigilant firmness, as if she had been afraid of its bolting out before she was aware. Jeanie saw there was to be something concealed from her, and it was only the repeated assurances of Archibald that her father--her sister--all her friends were, as far as he knew, well and happy, that at all pacified her alarm. From such respectable people as those with whom she travelled she could apprehend no harm, and yet her distress was so obvious, that Archibald, as a last resource, pulled out, and put into her hand, a slip of paper, on which these words were written:-- "Jeanie Deans--You will do me a favour by going with Archibald and my female domestic a day's journey beyond Glasgow, and asking them no questions, which will greatly oblige your friend, 'Argyle & Greenwich.'" Although this laconic epistle, from a nobleman to whom she was bound by such inestimable obligations, silenced all Jeanie's objections to the proposed route, it rather added to than diminished the eagerness of her curiosity. The proceeding to Glasgow seemed now no longer to be an object with her fellow-travellers. On the contrary, they kept the left-hand side of the river Clyde, and travelled through a thousand beautiful and changing views down the side of that noble stream, till, ceasing to hold its inland character, it began to assume that of a navigable river. "You are not for gaun intill Glasgow then?" said Jeanie, as she observed that the drivers made no motion for inclining their horses' heads towards the ancient bridge, which was then the only mode of access to St. Mungo's capital. "No," replied Archibald; "there is some popular commotion, and as our Duke is in opposition to the court, perhaps we might be too well received; or they might take it in their heads to remember that the Captain of Carrick came down upon them with his Highlandmen in the time of Shawfield's mob in 1725, and then we would be too ill received.* And, at any rate, it is best for us, and for me in particular, who may be supposed to possess his Grace's mind upon many particulars, to leave the good people of the Gorbals to act according to their own imaginations, without either provoking or encouraging them by my presence." * In 1725, there was a great riot in Glasgow on account of the malt-tax. Among the troops brought in to restore order, was one of the independent companies of Highlanders levied in Argyleshire, and distinguished, in a lampoon of the period, as "Campbell of Carrick and his Highland thieves." It was called Shawfield's Mob, because much of the popular violence was directed against Daniel Campbell, Esq. of Shawfield, M. P., Provost of the town. To reasoning of such tone and consequence Jeanie had nothing to reply, although it seemed to her to contain fully as much self-importance as truth. The carriage meantime rolled on; the river expanded itself, and gradually assumed the dignity of an estuary or arm of the sea. The influence of the advancing and retiring tides became more and more evident, and in the beautiful words of him of the laurel wreath, the river waxed-- A broader and yet broader stream. The cormorant stands upon its shoals, His black and dripping wings Half open'd to the wind. [From Southey's _Thalaba,_ Book xi. stanza 36.] "Which way lies Inverary?" said Jeanie, gazing on the dusky ocean of Highland hills, which now, piled above each other, and intersected by many a lake, stretched away on the opposite side of the river to the northward. "Is yon high castle the Duke's hoose?" "That, Mrs. Deans?--Lud help thee," replied Archibald, "that's the old castle of Dumbarton, the strongest place in Europe, be the other what it may. Sir William Wallace was governor of it in the old war with the English, and his Grace is governor just now. It is always entrusted to the best man in Scotland." "And does the Duke live on that high rock, then?" demanded Jeanie. "No, no, he has his deputy-governor, who commands in his absence; he lives in the white house you see at the bottom of the rock--His Grace does not reside there himself." "I think not, indeed," said the dairy-woman, upon whose mind the road, since they had left Dumfries, had made no very favourable impression, "for if he did, he might go whistle for a dairy-woman, an he were the only duke in England. I did not leave my place and my friends to come down to see cows starve to death upon hills as they be at that pig-stye of Elfinfoot, as you call it, Mr. Archibald, or to be perched upon the top of a rock, like a squirrel in his cage, hung out of a three pair of stairs' window." Inwardly chuckling that these symptoms of recalcitration had not taken place until the fair malcontent was, as he mentally termed it, under his thumb, Archibald coolly replied, "That the hills were none of his making, nor did he know how to mend them; but as to lodging, they would soon be in a house of the Duke's in a very pleasant island called Roseneath, where they went to wait for shipping to take them to Inverary, and would meet the company with whom Jeanie was to return to Edinburgh." "An island?" said Jeanie, who, in the course of her various and adventurous travels, had never quitted terra firma, "then I am doubting we maun gang in ane of these boats; they look unco sma', and the waves are something rough, and" "Mr. Archibald," said Mrs. Dutton, "I will not consent to it; I was never engaed to leave the country, and I desire you will bid the boys drive round the other way to the Duke's house." "There is a safe pinnace belonging to his Grace, ma'am, close by," replied Archibald, "and you need be under no apprehensions whatsoever." "But I am under apprehensions," said the damsel; "and I insist upon going round by land, Mr. Archibald, were it ten miles about." "I am sorry I cannot oblige you, madam, as Roseneath happens to be an island." "If it were ten islands," said the incensed dame, "that's no reason why I should be drowned in going over the seas to it." "No reason why you should be drowned certainly, ma'am," answered the unmoved groom of the chambers, "but an admirable good one why you cannot proceed to it by land." And, fixed his master's mandates to perform, he pointed with his hand, and the drivers, turning off the high-road, proceeded towards a small hamlet of fishing huts, where a shallop, somewhat more gaily decorated than any which they had yet seen, having a flag which displayed a boar's head, crested with a ducal coronet, waited with two or three seamen, and as many Highlanders. The carriage stopped, and the men began to unyoke their horses, while Mr. Archibald gravely superintended the removal of the baggage from the carriage to the little vessel. "Has the Caroline been long arrived?" said Archibald to one of the seamen. "She has been here in five days from Liverpool, and she's lying down at Greenock," answered the fellow. "Let the horses and carriage go down to Greenock then," said Archibald, "and be embarked there for Inverary when I send notice--they may stand in my cousin's, Duncan Archibald the stabler's.--Ladies," he added, "I hope you will get yourselves ready; we must not lose the tide." "Mrs. Deans," said the Cowslip of Inverary, "you may do as you please--but I will sit here all night, rather than go into that there painted egg-shell.--Fellow--fellow!" (this was addressed to a Highlander who was lifting a travelling trunk), "that trunk is _mine,_ and that there band-box, and that pillion mail, and those seven bundles, and the paper-bag; and if you venture to touch one of them, it shall be at your peril." The Celt kept his eye fixed on the speaker, then turned his head towards Archibald, and receiving no countervailing signal, he shouldered the portmanteau, and without farther notice of the distressed damsel, or paying any attention to remonstrances, which probably he did not understand, and would certainly have equally disregarded whether he understood them or not, moved off with Mrs. Dutton's wearables, and deposited the trunk containing them safely in the boat. The baggage being stowed in safety, Mr. Archibald handed Jeanie out of the carriage, and, not without some tremor on her part, she was transported through the surf and placed in the boat. He then offered the same civility to his fellow-servant, but she was resolute in her refusal to quit the carriage, in which she now remained in solitary state, threatening all concerned or unconcerned with actions for wages and board-wages, damages and expenses, and numbering on her fingers the gowns and other habiliments, from which she seemed in the act of being separated for ever. Mr. Archibald did not give himself the trouble of making many remonstrances, which, indeed, seemed only to aggravate the damsel's indignation, but spoke two or three words to the Highlanders in Gaelic; and the wily mountaineers, approaching the carriage cautiously, and without giving the slightest intimation of their intention, at once seized the recusant so effectually fast that she could neither resist nor struggle, and hoisting her on their shoulders in nearly a horizontal posture, rushed down with her to the beach, and through the surf, and with no other inconvenience than ruffling her garments a little, deposited her in the boat; but in a state of surprise, mortification, and terror, at her sudden transportation, which rendered her absolutely mute for two or three minutes. The men jumped in themselves; one tall fellow remained till he had pushed off the boat, and then tumbled in upon his companions. They took their oars and began to pull from the shore, then spread their sail, and drove merrily across the firth. "You Scotch villain!" said the infuriated damsel to Archibald, "how dare you use a person like me in this way?" "Madam," said Archibald, with infinite composure, "it's high time you should know you are in the Duke's country, and that there is not one of these fellows but would throw you out of the boat as readily as into it, if such were his Grace's pleasure." "Then the Lord have mercy on me!" said Mrs. Dutton. "If I had had any on myself, I would never have engaged with you." "It's something of the latest to think of that now, Mrs. Dutton," said Archibald; "but I assure you, you will find the Highlands have their pleasures. You will have a dozen of cow-milkers under your own authority at Inverary, and you may throw any of them into the lake, if you have a mind, for the Duke's head people are almost as great as himself." "This is a strange business, to be sure, Mr. Archibald," said the lady; "but I suppose I must make the best on't.--Are you sure the boat will not sink? it leans terribly to one side, in my poor mind." "Fear nothing," said Mr. Archibald, taking a most important pinch of snuff; "this same ferry on Clyde knows us very well, or we know it, which is all the same; no fear of any of our people meeting with any accident. We should have crossed from the opposite shore, but for the disturbances at Glasgow, which made it improper for his Grace's people to pass through the city." "Are you not afeard, Mrs. Deans," said the dairy-vestal, addressing Jeanie, who sat, not in the most comfortable state of mind, by the side of Archibald, who himself managed the helm.--"are you not afeard of these wild men with their naked knees, and of this nut-shell of a thing, that seems bobbing up and down like a skimming-dish in a milk-pail?" "No--no--madam," answered Jeanie with some hesitation, "I am not feared; for I hae seen Hielandmen before, though never was sae near them; and for the danger of the deep waters, I trust there is a Providence by sea as well as by land." "Well," said Mrs. Dutton, "it is a beautiful thing to have learned to write and read, for one can always say such fine words whatever should befall them." Archibald, rejoicing in the impression which his vigorous measures had made upon the intractable dairymaid, now applied himself, as a sensible and good-natured man, to secure by fair means the ascendency which he had obtained by some wholesome violence; and he succeeded so well in representing to her the idle nature of her fears, and the impossibility of leaving her upon the beach enthroned in an empty carriage, that the good understanding of the party was completely revived ere they landed at Roseneath. CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH. Did Fortune guide, Or rather Destiny, our bark, to which We could appoint no port, to this best place? Fletcher. The islands in the Firth of Clyde, which the daily passage of so many smoke-pennoned steamboats now renders so easily accessible, were in our fathers' times secluded spots, frequented by no travellers, and few visitants of any kind. They are of exquisite, yet varied beauty. Arran, a mountainous region, or Alpine island, abounds with the grandest and most romantic scenery. Bute is of a softer and more woodland character. The Cumbrays, as if to exhibit a contrast to both, are green, level, and bare, forming the links of a sort of natural bar which is drawn along the mouth of the firth, leaving large intervals, however, of ocean. Roseneath, a smaller isle, lies much higher up the firth, and towards its western shore, near the opening of the lake called the Gare Loch, and not far from Loch Long and Loch Scant, or the Holy Loch, which wind from the mountains of the Western Highlands to join the estuary of the Clyde. In these isles the severe frost winds which tyrannise over the vegetable creation during a Scottish spring, are comparatively little felt; nor, excepting the gigantic strength of Arran, are they much exposed to the Atlantic storms, lying landlocked and protected to the westward by the shores of Ayrshire. Accordingly, the weeping-willow, the weeping-birch, and other trees of early and pendulous shoots, flourish in these favoured recesses in a degree unknown in our eastern districts; and the air is also said to possess that mildness which is favourable to consumptive cases. The picturesque beauty of the island of Roseneath, in particular, had such recommendations, that the Earls and Dukes of Argyle, from an early period, made it their occasional residence, and had their temporary accommodation in a fishing or hunting-lodge, which succeeding improvements have since transformed into a palace. It was in its original simplicity when the little bark which we left traversing the firth at the end of last CHAPTER approached the shores of the isle. When they touched the landing-place, which was partly shrouded by some old low but wide-spreading oak-trees, intermixed with hazel-bushes, two or three figures were seen as if awaiting their arrival. To these Jeanie paid little attention, so that it was with a shock of surprise almost electrical, that, upon being carried by the rowers out of the boat to the shore, she was received in the arms of her father! It was too wonderful to be believed--too much like a happy dream to have the stable feeling of reality--She extricated herself from his close and affectionate embrace, and held him at arm's length, to satisfy her mind that it was no illusion. But the form was indisputable--Douce David Deans himself, in his best light-blue Sunday's coat, with broad metal buttons, and waistcoat and breeches of the same, his strong gramashes or leggins of thick grey cloth--the very copper buckles--the broad Lowland blue bonnet, thrown back as he lifted his eyes to Heaven in speechless gratitude--the grey locks that straggled from beneath it down his weather-beaten "haffets"--the bald and furrowed forehead--the clear blue eye, that, undimmed by years, gleamed bright and pale from under its shaggy grey pent-house--the features, usually so stern and stoical, now melted into the unwonted expression of rapturous joy, affection, and gratitude--were all those of David Deans; and so happily did they assort together, that, should I ever again see my friends Wilkie or Allan, I will try to borrow or steal from them a sketch of this very scene. "Jeanie--my ain Jeanie--my best--my maist dutiful bairn--the Lord of Israel be thy father, for I am hardly worthy of thee! Thou hast redeemed our captivity--brought back the honour of our house--Bless thee, my bairn, with mercies promised and purchased! But He _has_ blessed thee, in the good of which He has made thee the instrument." These words broke from him not without tears, though David was of no melting mood. Archibald had, with delicate attention, withdrawn the spectators from the interview, so that the wood and setting sun alone were witnesses of the expansion of their feelings. "And Effie?--and Effie, dear father?" was an eager interjectional question which Jeanie repeatedly threw in among her expressions of joyful thankfulness. "Ye will hear--Ye will hear," said David hastily, and over and anon renewed his grateful acknowledgments to Heaven for sending Jeanie safe down from the land of prelatic deadness and schismatic heresy; and had delivered her from the dangers of the way, and the lions that were in the path. "And Effie?" repeated her affectionate sister again and again. "And--and" (fain would she have said Butler, but she modified the direct inquiry)--"and Mr. and Mrs. Saddletree--and Dumbiedikes--and a' friends?" "A' weel--a' weel, praise to His name!" "And--Mr. Butler--he wasna weel when I gaed awa?" "He is quite mended--quite weel," replied her father. "Thank God--but O, dear father, Effie?--Effie?" "You will never see her mair, my bairn," answered Deans in a solemn tone-- "You are the ae and only leaf left now on the auld tree--hale be your portion!" "She is dead!--She is slain!--It has come ower late!" exclaimed Jeanie, wringing her hands. "No, Jeanie," returned Deans, in the same grave melancholy tone. "She lives in the flesh, and is at freedom from earthly restraint, if she were as much alive in faith, and as free from the bonds of Satan." "The Lord protect us!" said Jeanie.--"Can the unhappy bairn hae left you for that villain?" "It is ower truly spoken," said Deans--"She has left her auld father, that has wept and prayed for her--She has left her sister, that travailed and toiled for her like a mother--She has left the bones of her mother, and the land of her people, and she is ower the march wi' that son of Belial--She has made a moonlight flitting of it." He paused, for a feeling betwixt sorrow and strong resentment choked his utterance. "And wi' that man?--that fearfu' man?" said Jeanie. "And she has left us to gang aff wi' him?--O Effie, Effie, wha could hae thought it, after sic a deliverance as you had been gifted wi'!" "She went out from us, my bairn, because she was not of us," replied David. "She is a withered branch will never bear fruit of grace--a scapegoat gone forth into the wilderness of the world, to carry wi' her, as I trust, the sins of our little congregation. The peace of the warld gang wi' her, and a better peace when she has the grace to turn to it! If she is of His elected, His ain hour will come. What would her mother have said, that famous and memorable matron, Rebecca MacNaught, whose memory is like a flower of sweet savour in Newbattle, and a pot of frankincense in Lugton? But be it sae--let her part--let her gang her gate--let her bite on her ain bridle--The Lord kens his time--She was the bairn of prayers, and may not prove an utter castaway. But never, Jeanie, never more let her name be spoken between you and me--She hath passed from us like the brook which vanisheth when the summer waxeth warm, as patient Job saith--let her pass, and be forgotten." There was a melancholy pause which followed these expressions. Jeanie would fain have asked more circumstances relating to her sister's departure, but the tone of her father's prohibition was positive. She was about to mention her interview with Staunton at his father's rectory; but, on hastily running over the particulars in her memory, she thought that, on the whole, they were more likely to aggravate than diminish his distress of mind. She turned, therefore, the discourse from this painful subject, resolving to suspend farther inquiry until she should see Butler, from whom she expected to learn the particulars of her sister's elopement. But when was she to see Butler? was a question she could not forbear asking herself, especially while her father, as if eager to escape from the subject of his youngest daughter, pointed to the opposite shore of Dumbartonshire, and asking Jeanie "if it werena a pleasant abode?" declared to her his intention of removing his earthly tabernacle to that country, "in respect he was solicited by his Grace the Duke of Argyle, as one well skilled in country labour, and a' that appertained to flocks and herds, to superintend a store-farm, whilk his Grace had taen into his ain hand for the improvement of stock." Jeanie's heart sunk within her at this declaration. "She allowed it was a goodly and pleasant land, and sloped bonnily to the western sun; and she doubtedna that the pasture might be very gude, for the grass looked green, for as drouthy as the weather had been. But it was far frae hame, and she thought she wad be often thinking on the bonny spots of turf, sae fu' of gowans and yellow king-cups, amang the Crags at St. Leonard's." "Dinna speak on't, Jeanie," said her father; "I wish never to hear it named mair--that is, after the rouping is ower, and the bills paid. But I brought a' the beasts owerby that I thought ye wad like best. There is Gowans, and there's your ain brockit cow, and the wee hawkit ane, that ye ca'd--I needna tell ye how ye ca'd it--but I couldna bid them sell the petted creature, though the sight o' it may sometimes gie us a sair heart--it's no the poor dumb creature's fault--And ane or twa beasts mair I hae reserved, and I caused them to be driven before the other beasts, that men might say, as when the son of Jesse returned from battle, 'This is David's spoil.'" Upon more particular inquiry, Jeanie found new occasion to admire the active beneficence of her friend the Duke of Argyle. While establishing a sort of experimental farm on the skirts of his immense Highland estates, he had been somewhat at a loss to find a proper person in whom to vest the charge of it. The conversation his Grace had upon country matters with Jeanie Deans during their return from Richmond, had impressed him with a belief that the father, whose experience and success she so frequently quoted, must be exactly the sort of person whom he wanted. When the condition annexed to Effie's pardon rendered it highly probable that David Deans would choose to change his place of residence, this idea again occurred to the Duke more strongly, and as he was an enthusiast equally in agriculture and in benevolence, he imagined he was serving the purposes of both, when he wrote to the gentleman in Edinburgh entrusted with his affairs, to inquire into the character of David Deans, cowfeeder, and so forth, at St. Leonard's Crags; and if he found him such as he had been represented, to engage him without delay, and on the most liberal terms, to superintend his fancy-farm in Dumbartonshire. The proposal was made to old David by the gentleman so commissioned, on the second day after his daughter's pardon had reached Edinburgh. His resolution to leave St. Leonard's had been already formed; the honour of an express invitation from the Duke of Argyle to superintend a department where so much skill and diligence was required, was in itself extremely flattering; and the more so, because honest David, who was not without an exeellent opinion of his own talents, persuaded himself that, by accepting this charge, he would in some sort repay the great favour he had received at the hands of the Argyle family. The appointments, including the right of sufficient grazing for a small stock of his own, were amply liberal; and David's keen eye saw that the situation was convenient for trafficking to advantage in Highland cattle. There was risk of "her'ship"* from the neighbouring mountains, indeed, but the awful name of the Duke of Argyle would be a great security, and a trifle of _black-mail_ would, David was aware, assure his safety. * Her'ship, a Scottish word which may be said to be now obsolete; because, fortunately, the practice of "plundering by armed force," which is its meaning, does not require to be commonly spoken of. Still however, there were two points on which he haggled. The first was the character of the clergyman with whose worship he was to join; and on this delicate point he received, as we will presently show the reader, perfect satisfaction. The next obstacle was the condition of his youngest daughter, obliged as she was to leave Scotland for so many years. The gentleman of the law smiled, and said, "There was no occasion to interpret that clause very strictly--that if the young woman left Scotland for a few months, or even weeks, and came to her father's new residence by sea from the western side of England, nobody would know of her arrival, or at least nobody who had either the right or inclination to give her disturbance. The extensive heritable jurisdictions of his Grace excluded the interference of other magistrates with those living on his estates, and they who were in immediate dependence on him would receive orders to give the young woman no disturbance. Living on the verge of the Highlands, she might, indeed, be said to be out of Scotland, that is, beyond the bounds of ordinary law and civilisation." Old Deans was not quite satisfied with this reasoning; but the elopement of Effie, which took place on the third night after her liberation, rendered his residence at St. Leonard's so detestable to him, that he closed at once with the proposal which had been made him, and entered with pleasure into the idea of surprising Jeanie, as had been proposed by the Duke, to render the change of residence more striking to her. The Duke had apprised Archibald of these circumstances, with orders to act according to the instructions he should receive from Edinburgh, and by which accordingly he was directed to bring Jeanie to Roseneath. The father and daughter communicated these matters to each other, now stopping, now walking slowly towards the Lodge, which showed itself among the trees, at about half-a-mile's distance from the little bay in which they had landed. As they approached the house, David Deans informed his daughter, with somewhat like a grim smile, which was the utmost advance he ever made towards a mirthful expression of visage, that "there was baith a worshipful gentleman, and ane reverend gentleman, residing therein. The worshipful gentleman was his honour the Laird of Knocktarlitie, who was bailie of the lordship under the Duke of Argyle, ane Highland gentleman, tarr'd wi' the same stick," David doubted, "as mony of them, namely, a hasty and choleric temper, and a neglect of the higher things that belong to salvation, and also a gripping unto the things of this world, without muckle distinction of property; but, however, ane gude hospitable gentleman, with whom it would be a part of wisdom to live on a gude understanding (for Hielandmen were hasty, ower hasty). As for the reverend person of whom he had spoken, he was candidate by favour of the Duke of Argyle (for David would not for the universe have called him presentee) for the kirk of the parish in which their farm was situated, and he was likely to be highly acceptable unto the Christian souls of the parish, who were hungering for spiritual manna, having been fed but upon sour Hieland sowens by Mr. Duncan MacDonought, the last minister, who began the morning duly, Sunday and Saturday, with a mutchkin of usquebaugh. But I need say the less about the present lad," said David, again grimly grimacing, "as I think ye may hae seen him afore; and here he is come to meet us." She had indeed seen him before, for it was no other than Reuben Butler himself. CHAPTER NINETEENTH. No more shalt thou behold thy sister's face; Thou hast already had her last embrace. Elegy on Mrs. Anne Killigrew. This second surprise had been accomplished for Jeanie Deans by the rod of the same benevolent enchanter, whose power had transplanted her father from the Crags of St. Leonard's to the banks of the Gare Loch. The Duke of Argyle was not a person to forget the hereditary debt of gratitude, which had been bequeathed to him by his grandfather, in favour of the grandson of old Bible Butler. He had internally resolved to provide for Reuben Butler in this kirk of Knocktarlitie, of which the incumbent had just departed this life. Accordingly, his agent received the necessary instructions for that purpose, under the qualifying condition always, that the learning and character of Mr. Butler should be found proper for the charge. Upon inquiry, these were found as highly satisfactory as had been reported in the case of David Deans himself. By this preferment, the Duke of Argyle more essentially benefited his friend and _protegee_, Jeanie, than he himself was aware of, since he contributed to remove objections in her father's mind to the match, which he had no idea had been in existence. We have already noticed that Deans had something of a prejudice against Butler, which was, perhaps, in some degree owing to his possessing a sort of consciousness that the poor usher looked with eyes of affection upon his eldest daughter. This, in David's eyes, was a sin of presumption, even although it should not be followed by any overt act, or actual proposal. But the lively interest which Butler had displayed in his distresses, since Jeanie set forth on her London expedition, and which, therefore, he ascribed to personal respect for himself individually, had greatly softened the feelings of irritability with which David had sometimes regarded him. And, while he was in this good disposition towards Butler, another incident took place which had great influence on the old man's mind. So soon as the shock of Effie's second elopement was over, it was Deans's early care to collect and refund to the Laird of Dumbiedikes the money which he had lent for Effie's trial, and for Jeanie's travelling expenses. The Laird, the pony, the cocked hat, and the tabacco-pipe, had not been seen at St. Leonard's Crags for many a day; so that, in order to pay this debt, David was under the necessity of repairing in person to the mansion of Dumbiedikes. He found it in a state of unexpected bustle. There were workmen pulling down some of the old hangings, and replacing them with others, altering, repairing, scrubbing, painting, and white-washing. There was no knowing the old house, which had been so long the mansion of sloth and silence. The Laird himself seemed in some confusion, and his reception, though kind, lacked something of the reverential cordiality, with which he used to greet David Deans. There was a change also, David did not very well know of what nature, about the exterior of this landed proprietor--an improvement in the shape of his garments, a spruceness in the air with which they were put on, that were both novelties. Even the old hat looked smarter; the cock had been newly pointed, the lace had been refreshed, and instead of slouching backward or forward on the Laird's head, as it happened to be thrown on, it was adjusted with a knowing inclination over one eye. David Deans opened his business, and told down the cash. Dumbiedikes steadily inclined his ear to the one, and counted the other with great accuracy, interrupting David, while he was talking of the redemption of the captivity of Judah, to ask him whether he did not think one or two of the guineas looked rather light. When he was satisfied on this point, had pocketed his money, and had signed a receipt, he addressed David with some little hesitation,--"Jeanie wad be writing ye something, gudeman?" "About the siller?" replied David--"Nae doubt, she did." "And did she say nae mair about me?" asked the Laird. "Nae mair but kind and Christian wishes--what suld she hae said?" replied David, fully expecting that the Laird's long courtship (if his dangling after Jeanie deserves so active a name) was now coming to a point. And so indeed it was, but not to that point which he wished or expected. "Aweel, she kens her ain mind best, gudeman. I hae made a clean house o' Jenny Balchristie, and her niece. They were a bad pack--steal'd meat and mault, and loot the carters magg the coals--I'm to be married the morn, and kirkit on Sunday." Whatever David felt, he was too proud and too steady-minded to show any unpleasant surprise in his countenance and manner. "I wuss ye happy, sir, through Him that gies happiness--marriage is an honourable state." "And I am wedding into an honourable house, David--the Laird of Lickpelf's youngest daughter--she sits next us in the kirk, and that's the way I came to think on't." There was no more to be said but again to wish the Laird joy, to taste a cup of his liquor, and to walk back again to St. Leonard's, musing on the mutability of human affairs and human resolutions. The expectation that one day or other Jeanie would be Lady Dumbiedikes, had, in spite of himself, kept a more absolute possession of David's mind than he himself was aware of. At least, it had hitherto seemed a union at all times within his daughter's reach, whenever she might choose to give her silent lover any degree of encouragement, and now it was vanished for ever. David returned, therefore, in no very gracious humour for so good a man. He was angry with Jeanie for not having encouraged the Laird--he was angry with the Laird for requiring encouragement--and he was angry with himself for being angry at all on the occasion. On his return he found the gentleman who managed the Duke of Argyle's affairs was desirous of seeing him, with a view to completing the arrangement between them. Thus, after a brief repose, he was obliged to set off anew for Edinburgh, so that old May Hettly declared, "That a' this was to end with the master just walking himself aff his feet." When the business respecting the farm had been talked over and arranged, the professional gentleman acquainted David Deans, in answer to his inquiries concerning the state of public worship, that it was the pleasure of the Duke to put an excellent young clergyman, called Reuben Butler, into the parish, which was to be his future residence. "Reuben Butler!" exclaimed David--"Reuben Butler, the usher at Liberton?" "The very same," said the Duke's commissioner; "his Grace has heard an excellent character of him, and has some hereditary obligations to him besides--few ministers will be so comfortable as I am directed to make Mr. Butler." "Obligations?--The Duke?--Obligations to Reuben Butler--Reuben Butler a placed minister of the Kirk of Scotland?" exclaimed David, in interminable astonishment, for somehow he had been led by the bad success which Butler had hitherto met with in all his undertakings, to consider him as one of those step-sons of Fortune, whom she treats with unceasing rigour, and ends with disinheriting altogether. There is, perhaps, no time at which we are disposed to think so highly of a friend, as when we find him standing higher than we expected in the esteem of others. When assured of the reality of Butler's change of prospects, David expressed his great satisfaction at his success in life, which, he observed, was entirely owing to himself (David). "I advised his puir grand-mother, who was but a silly woman, to breed him up to the ministry; and I prophesied that, with a blessing on his endeavours, he would become a polished shaft in the temple. He may be something ower proud o' his carnal learning, but a gude lad, and has the root of the matter--as ministers gang now, where yell find ane better, ye'll find ten waur, than Reuben Butler." He took leave of the man of business, and walked homeward, forgetting his weariness in the various speculations to which this wonderful piece of intelligence gave rise. Honest David had now, like other great men, to go to work to reconcile his speculative principles with existing circumstances; and, like other great men, when they set seriously about that task, he was tolerably successful. Ought Reuben Butler in conscience to accept of this preferment in the Kirk of Scotland, subject as David at present thought that establishment was to the Erastian encroachments of the civil power? This was the leading question, and he considered it carefully. "The Kirk of Scotland was shorn of its beams, and deprived of its full artillery and banners of authority; but still it contained zealous and fructifying pastors, attentive congregations, and, with all her spots and blemishes, the like of this Kirk was nowhere else to be seen upon earth." David's doubts had been too many and too critical to permit him ever unequivocally to unite himself with any of the dissenters, who upon various accounts absolutely seceded from the national church. He had often joined in communion with such of the established clergy as approached nearest to the old Presbyterian model and principles of 1640. And although there were many things to be amended in that system, yet he remembered that he, David Deans, had himself ever been an humble pleader for the good old cause in a legal way, but without rushing into right-hand excesses, divisions and separations. But, as an enemy to separation, he might join the right-hand of fellowship with a minister of the Kirk of Scotland in its present model. _Ergo,_ Reuben Butler might take possession of the parish of Knocktarlitie, without forfeiting his friendship or favour--Q. E. D. But, secondly, came the trying point of lay-patronage, which David Deans had ever maintained to be a coming in by the window, and over the wall, a cheating and starving the souls of a whole parish, for the purpose of clothing the back and filling the belly of the incumbent. This presentation, therefore, from the Duke of Argyle, whatever was the worth and high character of that nobleman, was a limb of the brazen image, a portion of the evil thing, and with no kind of consistency could David bend his mind to favour such a transaction. But if the parishioners themselves joined in a general call to Reuben Butler to be their pastor, it did not seem quite so evident that the existence of this unhappy presentation was a reason for his refusing them the comforts of his doctrine. If the Presbytery admitted him to the kirk, in virtue rather of that act of patronage than of the general call of the congregation, that might be their error, and David allowed it was a heavy one. But if Reuben Butler accepted of the cure as tendered to him by those whom he was called to teach, and who had expressed themselves desirous to learn, David, after considering and reconsidering the matter, came, through the great virtue of if, to be of opinion that he might safely so act in that matter. There remained a third stumbling-block--the oaths to Government exacted from the established clergymen, in which they acknowledge an Erastian king and parliament, and homologate the incorporating Union between England and Scotland, through which the latter kingdom had become part and portion of the former, wherein Prelacy, the sister of Popery, had made fast her throne, and elevated the horns of her mitre. These were symptoms of defection which had often made David cry out, "My bowels--my bowels!--I am pained at the very heart!" And he remembered that a godly Bow-head matron had been carried out of the Tolbooth church in a swoon, beyond the reach of brandy and burnt feathers, merely on hearing these fearful words, "It is enacted by the Lords _spiritual_ and temporal," pronounced from a Scottish pulpit, in the proem to the Porteous Proclamation. These oaths were, therefore, a deep compliance and dire abomination--a sin and a snare, and a danger and a defection. But this shibboleth was not always exacted. Ministers had respect to their own tender consciences, and those of their brethren; and it was not till a later period that the reins of discipline were taken up tight by the General Assemblies and Presbyteries. The peacemaking particle came again to David's assistance. _If_ an incumbent was not called upon to make such compliances, and _if_ he got a right entry into the church without intrusion, and by orderly appointment, why, upon the whole, David Deans came to be of opinion, that the said incumbent might lawfully enjoy the spirituality and temporality of the cure of souls at Knocktarlitie, with stipend, manse, glebe, and all thereunto appertaining. The best and most upright-minded men are so strongly influenced by existing circumstances, that it would be somewhat cruel to inquire too nearly what weight parental affection gave to these ingenious trains of reasoning. Let David Deans's situation be considered. He was just deprived of one daughter, and his eldest, to whom he owed so much, was cut off, by the sudden resolution of Dumbiedikes, from the high hope which David had entertained, that she might one day be mistress of that fair lordship. Just while this disappointment was bearing heavy on his spirits, Butler comes before his imagination--no longer the half-starved threadbare usher, but fat and sleek and fair, the beneficed minister of Knocktarlitie, beloved by his congregation--exemplary in his life--powerful in his doctrine--doing the duty of the kirk as never Highland minister did before--turning sinners as a colley dog turns sheep--a favourite of the Duke of Argyle, and drawing a stipend of eight hundred punds Scots, and four chalders of victual. Here was a match, making up in David's mind, in a tenfold degree, the disappointment in the case of Dumbiedikes, in so far as the goodman of St. Leonard's held a powerful minister in much greater admiration than a mere landed proprietor. It did not occur to him, as an additional reason in favour of the match, that Jeanie might herself have some choice in the matter; for the idea of consulting her feelings never once entered into the honest man's head, any more than the possibility that her inclination might perhaps differ from his own. The result of his meditations was, that he was called upon to take the management of the whole affair into his own hand, and give, if it should be found possible without sinful compliance, or backsliding, or defection of any kind, a worthy pastor to the kirk of Knocktarlitie. Accordingly, by the intervention of the honest dealer in butter-milk who dwelt in Liberton, David summoned to his presence Reuben Butler. Even from this worthy messenger he was unable to conceal certain swelling emotions of dignity, insomuch, that, when the carter had communicated his message to the usher, he added, that "Certainly the Gudeman of St. Leonard's had some grand news to tell him, for he was as uplifted as a midden-cock upon pattens." Butler, it may readily be conceived, immediately obeyed the summons. He was a plain character, in which worth and good sense and simplicity were the principal ingredients; but love, on this occasion, gave him a certain degree of address. He had received an intimation of the favour designed him by the Duke of Argyle, with what feelings those only can conceive who have experienced a sudden prospect of being raised to independence and respect from penury and toil. He resolved, however, that the old man should retain all the consequence of being, in his own opinion, the first to communicate the important intelligence. At the same time, he also determined that in the expected conference he would permit David Deans to expatiate at length upon the proposal, in all its bearings, without irritating him either by interruption or contradiction. This last was the most prudent plan he could have adopted; because, although there were many doubts which David Deans could himself clear up to his own satisfaction, yet he might have been by no means disposed to accept the solution of any other person; and to engage him in an argument would have been certain to confirm him at once and for ever in the opinion which Butler chanced to impugn. He received his friend with an appearance of important gravity, which real misfortune had long compelled him to lay aside, and which belonged to those days of awful authority in which he predominated over Widow Butler, and dictated the mode of cultivating the crofts of Beersheba. He made known to Reuben, with great prolixity, the prospect of his changing his present residence for the charge of the Duke of Argyle's stock-farm in Dumbartonshire, and enumerated the various advantages of the situation with obvious self-congratulation; but assured the patient hearer, that nothing had so much moved him to acceptance, as the sense that, by his skill in bestial, he could render the most important services to his Grace the Duke of Argyle, to whom, "in the late unhappy circumstance" (here a tear dimmed the sparkle of pride in the old man's eye), "he had been sae muckle obliged." "To put a rude Hielandman into sic a charge," he continued, "what could be expected but that he suld be sic a chiefest herdsman, as wicked Doeg the Edomite? whereas, while this grey head is to the fore, not a clute o' them but sall be as weel cared for as if they were the fatted kine of Pharaoh.--And now, Reuben, lad, seeing we maun remove our tent to a strange country, ye will be casting a dolefu' look after us, and thinking with whom ye are to hold counsel anent your government in thae slippery and backsliding times; and nae doubt remembering, that the auld man, David Deans, was made the instrument to bring you out of the mire of schism and heresy, wherein your father's house delighted to wallow; aften also, nae doubt, when ye are pressed wi' ensnaring trials and tentations and heart-plagues, you, that are like a recruit that is marching for the first time to the touk of drum, will miss the auld, bauld, and experienced veteran soldier that has felt the brunt of mony a foul day, and heard the bullets whistle as aften as he has hairs left on his auld pow." It is very possible that Butler might internally be of opinion, that the reflection on his ancestor's peculiar tenets might have been spared, or that he might be presumptuous enough even to think, that, at his years, and with his own lights, he might be able to hold his course without the pilotage of honest David. But he only replied, by expressing his regret, that anything should separate him from an ancient, tried, and affectionate friend. "But how can it be helped, man?" said David, twisting his features into a sort of smile--"How can we help it?--I trow, ye canna tell me that--Ye maun leave that to ither folk--to the Duke of Argyle and me, Reuben. It's a gude thing to hae friends in this warld--how muckle better to hae an interest beyond it!" And David, whose piety, though not always quite rational, was as sincere as it was habitual and fervent, looked reverentially upward and paused. Mr. Butler intimated the pleasure with which he would receive his friend's advice on a subject so important, and David resumed. "What think ye now, Reuben, of a kirk--a regular kirk under the present establishment?--Were sic offered to ye, wad ye be free to accept it, and under whilk provisions?--I am speaking but by way of query." Butler replied, "That if such a prospect were held out to him, he would probably first consult whether he was likely to be useful to the parish he should be called to; and if there appeared a fair prospect of his proving so, his friend must be aware, that in every other point of view, it would be highly advantageous for him." "Right, Reuben, very right, lad," answered the monitor, "your ain conscience is the first thing to be satisfied--for how sall he teach others that has himself sae ill learned the Scriptures, as to grip for the lucre of foul earthly preferment, sic as gear and manse, money and victual, that which is not his in a spiritual sense--or wha makes his kirk a stalking-horse, from behind which he may tak aim at his stipend? But I look for better things of you--and specially ye maun be minded not to act altogether on your ain judgment, for therethrough comes sair mistakes, backslidings and defections, on the left and on the right. If there were sic a day of trial put to you, Reuben. you, who are a young lad, although it may be ye are gifted wi' the carnal tongues, and those whilk were spoken at Rome, whilk is now the seat of the scarlet abomination, and by the Greeks, to whom the Gospel was as foolishness, yet nae-the-less ye may be entreated by your weel-wisher to take the counsel of those prudent and resolved and weather-withstanding professors, wha hae kend what it was to lurk on banks and in mosses, in bogs and in caverns, and to risk the peril of the head rather than renounce the honesty of the heart." Butler replied, "That certainly, possessing such a friend as he hoped and trusted he had in the goodman himself, who had seen so many changes in the preceding century, he should be much to blame if he did not avail himself of his experience and friendly counsel." "Eneugh said--eneugh said, Reuben," said David Deans, with internal exultation; "and say that ye were in the predicament whereof I hae spoken, of a surety I would deem it my duty to gang to the root o' the matter, and lay bare to you the ulcers and imposthumes, and the sores and the leprosies, of this our time, crying aloud and sparing not." David Deans was now in his element. He commenced his examination of the doctrines and belief of the Christian Church with the very Culdees, from whom he passed to John Knox,--from John Knox to the recusants in James the Sixth's time--Bruce, Black, Blair, Livingstone,--from them to the brief, and at length triumphant period of the Presbyterian Church's splendour, until it was overrun by the English Independents. Then followed the dismal times of prelacy, the indulgences, seven in number, with all their shades and bearings, until he arrived at the reign of King James the Second, in which he himself had been, in his own mind, neither an obscure actor nor an obscure sufferer. Then was Butler doomed to hear the most detailed and annotated edition of what he had so often heard before,--David Deans's confinement, namely, in the iron cage in the Canongate Tolbooth, and the cause thereof. We should be very unjust to our friend David Deans, if we should "pretermit"--to use his own expression--a narrative which he held essential to his fame. A drunken trooper of the Royal Guards, Francis Gordon by name, had chased five or six of the skulking Whigs, among whom was our friend David; and after he had compelled them to stand, and was in the act of brawling with them, one of their number fired a pocket-pistol, and shot him dead. David used to sneer and shake his head when any one asked him whether _he_ had been the instrument of removing this wicked persecutor from the face of the earth. In fact the merit of the deed lay between him and his friend, Patrick Walker, the pedlar, whose words he was so fond of quoting. Neither of them cared directly to claim the merit of silencing Mr. Francis Gordon of the Life-Guards, there being some wild cousins of his about Edinburgh, who might have been even yet addicted to revenge, but yet neither of them chose to disown or yield to the other the merit of this active defence of their religious rights. David said, that if he had fired a pistol then, it was what he never did after or before. And as for Mr. Patrick Walker, he has left it upon record, that his great surprise was, that so small a pistol could kill so big a man. These are the words of that venerable biographer, whose trade had not taught him by experience, that an inch was as good as an ell. "He," (Francis Gordon) "got a shot in his head out of a pocket-pistol, rather fit for diverting a boy than killing such a furious, mad, brisk man, which notwithstanding killed him dead!"* * Note S. Death of Francis Gordon. Upon the extensive foundation which the history of the kirk afforded, during its short-lived triumph and long tribulation, David, with length of breath and of narrative, which would have astounded any one but a lover of his daughter, proceeded to lay down his own rules for guiding the conscience of his friend, as an aspirant to serve in the ministry. Upon this subject, the good man went through such a variety of nice and casuistical problems, supposed so many extreme cases, made the distinctions so critical and nice betwixt the right hand and the left hand--betwixt compliance and defection--holding back and stepping aside--slipping and stumbling--snares and errors--that at length, after having limited the path of truth to a mathematical line, he was brought to the broad admission, that each man's conscience, after he had gained a certain view of the difficult navigation which he was to encounter, would be the best guide for his pilotage. He stated the examples and arguments for and against the acceptance of a kirk on the present revolution model, with much more impartiality to Butler than he had been able to place them before his own view. And he concluded, that his young friend ought to think upon these things, and be guided by the voice of his own conscience, whether he could take such an awful trust as the charge of souls without doing injury to his own internal conviction of what is right or wrong. When David had finished his very long harangue, which was only interrupted by monosyllables, or little more, on the part of Butler, the orator himself was greatly astonished to find that the conclusion, at which he very naturally wished to arrive, seemed much less decisively attained than when he had argued the case in his own mind. In this particular, David's current of thinking and speaking only illustrated the very important and general proposition, concerning the excellence of the publicity of debate. For, under the influence of any partial feeling, it is certain, that most men can more easily reconcile themselves to any favourite measure, when agitating it in their own mind, than when obliged to expose its merits to a third party, when the necessity of seeming impartial procures for the opposite arguments a much more fair statement than that which he affords it in tacit meditation. Having finished what he had to say, David thought himself obliged to be more explicit in point of fact, and to explain that this was no hypothetical case, but one on which (by his own influence and that of the Duke of Argyle) Reuben Butler would soon be called to decide. It was even with something like apprehension that David Deans heard Butler announce, in return to this communication, that he would take that night to consider on what he had said with such kind intentions, and return him an answer the next morning. The feelings of the father mastered David on this occasion. He pressed Butler to spend the evening with him--He produced, most unusual at his meals, one, nay, two bottles of aged strong ale.--He spoke of his daughter--of her merits--her housewifery--her thrift--her affection. He led Butler so decidedly up to a declaration of his feelings towards Jeanie, that, before nightfall, it was distinctly understood she was to be the bride of Reuben Butler; and if they thought it indelicate to abridge the period of deliberation which Reuben had stipulated, it seemed to be sufficiently understood betwixt them, that there was a strong probability of his becoming minister of Knocktarlitie, providing the congregation were as willing to accept of him, as the Duke to grant him the presentation. The matter of the oaths, they agreed, it was time enough to dispute about, whenever the shibboleth should be tendered. Many arrangements were adopted that evening, which were afterwards ripened by correspondence with the Duke of Argyle's man of business, who intrusted Deans and Butler with the benevolent wish of his principal, that they should all meet with Jeanie, on her return from England, at the Duke's hunting-lodge in Roseneath. This retrospect, so far as the placid loves of Jeanie Deans and Reuben Butler are concerned, forms a full explanation of the preceding narrative up to their meeting on the island, as already mentioned. CHAPTER TWENTIETH. "I come," he said, "my love, my life, And--nature's dearest name--my wife: Thy father's house and friends resign, My home, my friends, my sire, are thine." Logan. The meeting of Jeanie and Butler, under circumstances promising to crown an affection so long delayed, was rather affecting, from its simple sincerity than from its uncommon vehemence of feeling. David Deans, whose practice was sometimes a little different from his theory, appalled them at first, by giving them the opinion of sundry of the suffering preachers and champions of his younger days, that marriage, though honourable by the laws of Scripture, was yet a state over-rashly coveted by professors, and specially by young ministers, whose desire, he said, was at whiles too inordinate for kirks, stipends, and wives, which had frequently occasioned over-ready compliance with the general defections of the times. He endeavoured to make them aware also, that hasty wedlock had been the bane of many a savoury professor--that the unbelieving wife had too often reversed the text and perverted the believing husband--that when the famous Donald Cargill, being then hiding in Lee-Wood, in Lanarkshire, it being killing-time, did, upon importunity, marry Robert Marshal of Starry Shaw, he had thus expressed himself: "What hath induced Robert to marry this woman? her ill will overcome his good--he will not keep the way long--his thriving days are done." To the sad accomplishment of which prophecy David said he was himself a living witness, for Robert Marshal, having fallen into foul compliances with the enemy, went home, and heard the curates, declined into other steps of defection, and became lightly esteemed. Indeed, he observed, that the great upholders of the standard, Cargill, Peden, Cameron, and Renwick, had less delight in tying the bonds of matrimony than in any other piece of their ministerial work; and although they would neither dissuade the parties, nor refuse their office, they considered the being called to it as an evidence of indifference, on the part of those between whom it was solemnised, to the many grievous things of the day. Notwithstanding, however, that marriage was a snare unto many, David was of opinion (as, indeed, he had showed in his practice) that it was in itself honourable, especially if times were such that honest men could be secure against being shot, hanged, or banished, and had ane competent livelihood to maintain themselves, and those that might come after them. "And, therefore," as he concluded something abruptly, addressing Jeanie and Butler, who, with faces as high-coloured as crimson, had been listening to his lengthened argument for and against the holy state of matrimony, "I will leave you to your ain cracks." As their private conversation, however interesting to themselves, might probably be very little so to the reader, so far as it respected their present feelings and future prospects, we shall pass it over, and only mention the information which Jeanie received from Butler concerning her sister's elopement, which contained many particulars that she had been unable to extract from her father. Jeanie learned, therefore, that, for three days after her pardon had arrived, Effie had been the inmate of her father's house at St. Leonard's--that the interviews betwixt David and his erring child, which had taken place before she was liberated from prison, had been touching in the extreme; but Butler could not suppress his opinion, that, when he was freed from the apprehension of losing her in a manner so horrible, her father had tightened the bands of discipline, so as, in some degree, to gall the feelings, and aggravate the irritability of a spirit naturally impatient and petulant, and now doubly so from the sense of merited disgrace. On the third night, Effie disappeared from St. Leonard's, leaving no intimation whatever of the route she had taken. Butler, however, set out in pursuit of her, and with much trouble traced her towards a little landing-place, formed by a small brook which enters the sea betwixt Musselburgh and Edinburgh. This place, which has been since made into a small harbour, surrounded by many villas and lodging-houses, is now termed Portobello. At this time it was surrounded by a waste common, covered with furze, and unfrequented, save by fishing-boats, and now and then a smuggling lugger. A vessel of this description had been hovering in the firth at the time of Effie's elopement, and, as Butler ascertained, a boat had come ashore in the evening on which the fugitive had disappeared, and had carried on board a female. As the vessel made sail immediately, and landed no part of their cargo, there seemed little doubt that they were accomplices of the notorious Robertson, and that the vessel had only come into the firth to carry off his paramour. This was made clear by a letter which Butler himself soon afterwards received by post, signed E. D., but without bearing any date of place or time. It was miserably ill written and spelt; sea-sickness having apparently aided the derangement of Effie's very irregular orthography and mode of expression. In this epistle, however, as in all that unfortunate girl said or did, there was something to praise as well as to blame. She said in her letter, "That she could not endure that her father and her sister should go into banishment, or be partakers of her shame,--that if her burden was a heavy one, it was of her own binding, and she had the more right to bear it alone,--that in future they could not be a comfort to her, or she to them, since every look and word of her father put her in mind of her transgression, and was like to drive her mad,--that she had nearly lost her judgment during the three days she was at St. Leonard's--her father meant weel by her, and all men, but he did not know the dreadful pain he gave her in casting up her sins. If Jeanie had been at hame, it might hae dune better--Jeanie was ane, like the angels in heaven, that rather weep for sinners, than reckon their transgressions. But she should never see Jeanie ony mair, and that was the thought that gave her the sairest heart of a' that had come and gane yet. On her bended knees would she pray for Jeanie night and day, baith for what she had done, and what she had scorned to do, in her behalf; for what a thought would it have been to her at that moment o' time, if that upright creature had made a fault to save her! She desired her father would give Jeanie a' the gear--her ain (_i.e._ Effie's) mother's and a'--She had made a deed, giving up her right, and it was in Mr. Novit's hand--Warld's gear was henceforward the least of her care, nor was it likely to be muckle her mister--She hoped this would make it easy for her sister to settle;" and immediately after this expression, she wished Butler himself all good things, in return for his kindness to her. "For herself," she said, "she kend her lot would be a waesome ane, but it was of her own framing, sae she desired the less pity. But, for her friends' satisfaction, she wished them to know that she was gaun nae ill gate--that they who had done her maist wrong were now willing to do her what justice was in their power; and she would, in some warldly respects, be far better off than she deserved. But she desired her family to remain satisfied with this assurance, and give themselves no trouble in making farther inquiries after her." To David Deans and to Butler this letter gave very little comfort; for what was to be expected from this unfortunate girl's uniting her fate to that of a character so notorious as Robertson, who they readily guessed was alluded to in the last sentence, excepting that she should become the partner and victim of his future crimes? Jeanie, who knew George Staunton's character and real rank, saw her sister's situation under a ray of better hope. She augured well of the haste he had shown to reclaim his interest in Effie, and she trusted he had made her his wife. If so, it seemed improbable that, with his expected fortune, and high connections, he should again resume the life of criminal adventure which he had led, especially since, as matters stood, his life depended upon his keeping his own secret, which could only be done by an entire change of his habits, and particularly by avoiding all those who had known the heir of Willingham under the character of the audacious, criminal, and condemned Robertson. She thought it most likely that the couple would go abroad for a few years, and not return to England until the affair of Porteous was totally forgotten. Jeanie, therefore, saw more hopes for her sister than Butler or her father had been able to perceive; but she was not at liberty to impart the comfort which she felt in believing that she would be secure from the pressure of poverty, and in little risk of being seduced into the paths of guilt. She could not have explained this without making public what it was essentially necessary for Effie's chance of comfort to conceal, the identity, namely, of George Staunton and George Robertson. After all, it was dreadful to think that Effie had united herself to a man condemned for felony, and liable to trial for murder, whatever might be his rank in life, and the degree of his repentance. Besides, it was melancholy to reflect, that, she herself being in possession of the whole dreadful secret, it was most probable he would, out of regard to his own feelings, and fear for his safety, never again permit her to see poor Effie. After perusing and re-perusing her sister's valedictory letter, she gave ease to her feelings in a flood of tears, which Butler in vain endeavoured to check by every soothing attention in his power. She was obliged, however, at length to look up and wipe her eyes, for her father, thinking he had allowed the lovers time enough for conference, was now advancing towards them from the Lodge, accompanied by the Captain of Knockdunder, or, as his friends called him for brevity's sake, Duncan Knock, a title which some youthful exploits had rendered peculiarly appropriate. This Duncan of Knockdunder was a person of first-rate importance in the island of Roseneath,* and the continental parishes of Knocktarlitie, Kilmun, and so forth; nay, his influence extended as far as Cowal, where, however, it was obscured by that of another factor. * [This is, more correctly speaking, a peninsula.] The Tower of Knockdunder still occupies, with its remains, a cliff overhanging the Holy Loch. Duncan swore it had been a royal castle; if so, it was one of the smallest, the space within only forming a square of sixteen feet, and bearing therefore a ridiculous proportion to the thickness of the walls, which was ten feet at least. Such as it was, however, it had long given the title of Captain, equivalent to that of Chatellain, to the ancestors of Duncan, who were retainers of the house of Argyle, and held a hereditary jurisdiction under them, of little extent indeed, but which had great consequence in their own eyes, and was usually administered with a vigour somewhat beyond the law. The present representative of that ancient family was a stout short man about fifty, whose pleasure it was to unite in his own person the dress of the Highlands and Lowlands, wearing on his head a black tie-wig, surmounted by a fierce cocked-hat, deeply guarded with gold lace, while the rest of his dress consisted of the plaid and philabeg. Duncan superintended a district which was partly Highland, partly Lowland, and therefore might be supposed to combine their national habits, in order to show his impartiality to Trojan or Tyrian. The incongruity, however, had a whimsical and ludicrous effect, as it made his head and body look as if belonging to different individuals; or, as some one said who had seen the executions of the insurgent prisoners in 1715, it seemed as if some Jacobite enchanter, having recalled the sufferers to life, had clapped, in his haste, an Englishman's head on a Highlander's body. To finish the portrait, the bearing of the gracious Duncan was brief, bluff, and consequential, and the upward turn of his short copper-coloured nose indicated that he was somewhat addicted to wrath and usquebaugh. When this dignitary had advanced up to Butler and to Jeanie, "I take the freedom, Mr. Deans," he said in a very consequential manner, "to salute your daughter, whilk I presume this young lass to be--I kiss every pretty girl that comes to Roseneath, in virtue of my office." Having made this gallant speech, he took out his quid, saluted Jeanie with a hearty smack, and bade her welcome to Argyle's country. Then addressing Butler, he said, "Ye maun gang ower and meet the carle ministers yonder the Morn, for they will want to do your job, and synd it down with usquebaugh doubtless--they seldom make dry wark in this kintra." "And the Laird"--said David Deans, addressing Butler in farther explanation-- "The Captain, man," interrupted Duncan; "folk winna ken wha ye are speaking aboot, unless ye gie shentlemens their proper title." "The Captain, then," said David, "assures me that the call is unanimous on the part of the parishioners--a real harmonious call, Reuben." "I pelieve," said Duncan, "it was as harmonious as could pe expected, when the tae half o' the bodies were clavering Sassenach, and the t'other skirting Gaelic, like sea-maws and clackgeese before a storm. Ane wad hae needed the gift of tongues to ken preceesely what they said--but I pelieve the best end of it was, 'Long live MacCallummore and Knockdunder!'--And as to its being an unanimous call, I wad be glad to ken fat business the carles have to call ony thing or ony body but what the Duke and mysell likes!" "Nevertheless," said Mr. Butler, "if any of the parishioners have any scruples, which sometimes happen in the mind of sincere professors, I should be happy of an opportunity of trying to remove" "Never fash your peard about it, man," interrupted Duncan Knock--"Leave it a' to me.--Scruple! deil ane o' them has been bred up to scruple onything that they're bidden to do. And if sic a thing suld happen as ye speak o', ye sall see the sincere professor, as ye ca' him, towed at the stern of my boat for a few furlongs. I'll try if the water of the Haly Loch winna wash off scruples as weel as fleas--Cot tam!" The rest of Duncan's threat was lost in a growling gargling sort of sound, which he made in his throat, and which menaced recusants with no gentle means of conversion. David Deans would certainly have given battle in defence of the right of the Christian congregation to be consulted in the choice of their own pastor, which, in his estimation, was one of the choicest and most inalienable of their privileges; but he had again engaged in close conversation with Jeanie, and, with more interest than he was in use to take in affairs foreign alike to his occupation and to his religious tenets, was inquiring into the particulars of her London journey. This was, perhaps, fortunate for the newformed friendship betwixt him and the Captain of Knockdunder, which rested, in David's estimation, upon the proofs he had given of his skill in managing stock; but, in reality, upon the special charge transmitted to Duncan from the Duke and his agent, to behave with the utmost attention to Deans and his family. "And now, sirs," said Duncan, in a commanding tone, "I am to pray ye a' to come in to your supper, for yonder is Mr. Archibald half famished, and a Saxon woman, that looks as if her een were fleeing out o' her head wi' fear and wonder, as if she had never seen a shentleman in a philabeg pefore." "And Reuben Butler," said David, "will doubtless desire instantly to retire, that he may prepare his mind for the exercise of to-morrow, that his work may suit the day, and be an offering of a sweet savour in the nostrils of the reverend Presbytery!" "Hout tout, man, it's but little ye ken about them," interrupted the Captain. "Teil a ane o' them wad gie the savour of the hot venison pasty which I smell" (turning his squab nose up in the air) "a' the way frae the Lodge, for a' that Mr. Putler, or you either, can say to them." David groaned; but judging he had to do with a Gallio, as he said, did not think it worth his while to give battle. They followed the Captain to the house, and arranged themselves with great ceremony round a well-loaded supper-table. The only other circumstance of the evening worthy to be recorded is, that Butler pronounced the blessing; that Knockdunder found it too long, and David Deans censured it as too short, from which the charitable reader may conclude it was exactly the proper length. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST. Now turn the Psalms of David ower, And lilt wi' holy clangor; Of double verse come gie us four, And skirl up the Bangor. Burns. The next was the important day, when, according to the forms and ritual of the Scottish Kirk, Reuben Butler was to be ordained minister of Knocktarlitie, by the Presbytery of ------. And so eager were the whole party, that all, excepting Mrs. Dutton, the destined Cowslip of Inverary, were stirring at an early hour. Their host, whose appetite was as quick and keen as his temper, was not long in summoning them to a substantial breakfast, where there were at least a dozen of different preparations of milk, plenty of cold meat, scores boiled and roasted eggs, a huge cag of butter, half-a-firkin herrings boiled and broiled, fresh and salt, and tea and coffee for them that liked it, which, as their landlord assured them, with a nod and a wink, pointing, at the same time, to a little cutter which seemed dodging under the lee of the island, cost them little beside the fetching ashore. "Is the contraband trade permitted here so openly?" said Butler. "I should think it very unfavourable to the people's morals." "The Duke, Mr. Putler, has gien nae orders concerning the putting of it down," said the magistrate, and seemed to think that he had said all that was necessary to justify his connivance. Butler was a man of prudence, and aware that real good can only be obtained by remonstrance when remonstrance is well-timed; so for the present he said nothing more on the subject. When breakfast was half over, in flounced Mrs. Dolly, as fine as a blue sacque and cherry-coloured ribands could make her. "Good morrow to you, madam," said the master of ceremonies; "I trust your early rising will not skaith ye." The dame apologised to Captain Knockunder, as she was pleased to term their entertainer; "but, as we say in Cheshire," she added, "I was like the Mayor of Altringham, who lies in bed while his breeches are mending, for the girl did not bring up the right bundle to my room, till she had brought up all the others by mistake one after t'other--Well, I suppose we are all for church to-day, as I understand--Pray may I be so bold as to ask, if it is the fashion for your North country gentlemen to go to church in your petticoats, Captain Knockunder?" "Captain of Knockdunder, madam, if you please, for I knock under to no man; and in respect of my garb, I shall go to church as I am, at your service, madam; for if I were to lie in bed like your Major What-d'ye-callum, till my preeches were mended, I might be there all my life, seeing I never had a pair of them on my person but twice in my life, which I am pound to remember, it peing when the Duke brought his Duchess here, when her Grace pehoved to be pleasured; so I e'en porrowed the minister's trews for the twa days his Grace was pleased to stay--but I will put myself under sic confinement again for no man on earth, or woman either, but her Grace being always excepted, as in duty pound." The mistress of the milking-pail stared but, making no answer to this round declaration, immediately proceeded to show, that the alarm of the preceding evening had in no degree injured her appetite. When the meal was finished, the Captain proposed to them to take boat, in order that Mrs. Jeanie might see her new place of residence, and that he himself might inquire whether the necessary preparations had been made there, and at the Manse, for receiving the future inmates of these mansions. The morning was delightful, and the huge mountain-shadows slept upon the mirrored wave of the firth, almost as little disturbed as if it had been an inland lake. Even Mrs. Dutton's fears no longer annoyed her. She had been informed by Archibald, that there was to be some sort of junketting after the sermon, and that was what she loved dearly; and as for the water, it was so still that it would look quite like a pleasuring on the Thames. The whole party being embarked, therefore, in a large boat, which the captain called his coach and six, and attended by a smaller one termed his gig, the gallant Duncan steered straight upon the little tower of the old-fashioned church of Knocktarlitie, and the exertions of six stout rowers sped them rapidly on their voyage. As they neared the land, the hills appeared to recede from them, and a little valley, formed by the descent of a small river from the mountains, evolved itself as it were upon their approach. The style of the country on each side was simply pastoral, and resembled, in appearance and character, the description of a forgotten Scottish poet, which runs nearly thus:-- The water gently down a level slid, With little din, but couthy what it made; On ilka side the trees grew thick and lang, And wi' the wild birds' notes were a' in sang; On either side, a full bow-shot and mair, The green was even, gowany, and fair; With easy slope on every hand the braes To the hills' feet with scatter'd bushes raise; With goats and sheep aboon, and kye below, The bonny banks all in a swarm did go.* * Ross's _Fortunate Shepherdess._ Edit. 1778, p. 23. They landed in this Highland Arcadia, at the mouth of the small stream which watered the delightful and peaceable valley. Inhabitants of several descriptions came to pay their respects to the Captain of Knockdunder, a homage which he was very peremptory in exacting, and to see the new settlers. Some of these were men after David Deans's own heart, elders of the kirk-session, zealous professors, from the Lennox, Lanarkshire, and Ayrshire, to whom the preceding Duke of Argyle had given _rooms_ in this corner of his estate, because they had suffered for joining his father, the unfortunate Earl, during his ill-fated attempt in 1686. These were cakes of the right leaven for David regaling himself with; and, had it not been for this circumstance, he has been heard to say, "that the Captain of Knockdunder would have swore him out of the country in twenty-four hours, sae awsome it was to ony thinking soul to hear his imprecations, upon the slightest temptation that crossed his humour." Besides these, there were a wilder set of parishioners, mountaineers from the upper glen and adjacent hill, who spoke Gaelic, went about armed, and wore the Highland dress. But the strict commands of the Duke had established such good order in this part of his territories, that the Gael and Saxons lived upon the best possible terms of good neighbourhood. They first visited the Manse, as the parsonage is termed in Scotland. It was old, but in good repair, and stood snugly embosomed in a grove of sycamore, with a well-stocked garden in front, bounded by the small river, which was partly visible from the windows, partly concealed by the bushes, trees, and bounding hedge. Within, the house looked less comfortable than it might have been, for it had been neglected by the late incumbent; but workmen had been labouring, under the directions of the Captain of Knockdunder, and at the expense of the Duke of Argyle, to put it into some order. The old "plenishing" had been removed, and neat, but plain household furniture had been sent down by the Duke in a brig of his own called the Caroline, and was now ready to be placed in order in the apartments. The gracious Duncan, finding matters were at a stand among the workmen, summoned before him the delinquents, and impressed all who heard him with a sense of his authority, by the penalties with which he threatened them for their delay. Mulcting them in half their charge, he assured them, would be the least of it; for, if they were to neglect his pleasure and the Duke's, "he would be tamn'd if he paid them the t'other half either, and they might seek law for it where they could get it." The work-people humbled themselves before the offended dignitary, and spake him soft and fair; and at length, upon Mr. Butler recalling to his mind that it was the ordination-day, and that the workmen were probably thinking of going to church, Knockdunder agreed to forgive them, out of respect to their new minister. "But an I catch them neglecking my duty again, Mr. Putler, the teil pe in me if the kirk shall be an excuse; for what has the like o' them rapparees to do at the kirk ony day put Sundays, or then either, if the Duke and I has the necessitous uses for them?" It may be guessed with what feelings of quiet satisfaction and delight Butler looked forward to spending his days, honoured and useful as he trusted to be, in this sequestered valley, and how often an intelligent glance was exchanged betwixt him and Jeanie, whose good-humoured face looked positively handsome, from the expression of modesty, and, at the same time, of satisfaction, which she wore when visiting the apartments of which she was soon to call herself mistress. She was left at liberty to give more open indulgence to her feelings of delight and admiration, when, leaving the Manse, the company proceeded to examine the destined habitation of David Deans. Jeanie found with pleasure that it was not above a musket-shot from the Manse; for it had been a bar to her happiness to think she might be obliged to reside at a distance from her father, and she was aware that there were strong objections to his actually living in the same house with Butler. But this brief distance was the very thing which she could have wished. The farmhouse was on the plan of an improved cottage, and contrived with great regard to convenience; an excellent little garden, an orchard, and a set of offices complete, according to the best ideas of the time, combined to render it a most desirable habitation for the practical farmer, and far superior to the hovel at Woodend, and the small house at Saint Leonard's Crags. The situation was considerably higher than that of the Manse, and fronted to the west. The windows commanded an enchanting view of the little vale over which the mansion seemed to preside, the windings of the stream, and the firth, with its associated lakes and romantic islands. The hills of Dumbartonshire, once possessed by the fierce clan of MacFarlanes, formed a crescent behind the valley, and far to the right were seen the dusky and more gigantic mountains of Argyleshire, with a seaward view of the shattered and thunder-splitten peaks of Arran. But to Jeanie, whose taste for the picturesque, if she had any by nature, had never been awakened or cultivated, the sight of the faithful old May Hettly, as she opened the door to receive them in her clean toy, Sunday's russet-gown, and blue apron, nicely smoothed down before her, was worth the whole varied landscape. The raptures of the faithful old creature at seeing Jeanie were equal to her own, as she hastened to assure her, "that baith the gudeman and the beasts had been as weel seen after as she possibly could contrive." Separating her from the rest of the company, May then hurried her young mistress to the offices, that she might receive the compliments she expected for her care of the cows. Jeanie rejoiced, in the simplicity of her heart, to see her charge once more; and the mute favourites of our heroine, Gowans, and the others, acknowledged her presence by lowing, turning round their broad and decent brows when they heard her well-known "Pruh, my leddy--pruh, my woman," and, by various indications, known only to those who have studied the habits of the milky mothers, showing sensible pleasure as she approached to caress them in their turn. "The very brute beasts are glad to see ye again," said May; "but nae wonder, Jeanie, for ye were aye kind to beast and body. And I maun learn to ca' ye _mistress_ now, Jeanie, since ye hae been up to Lunnon, and seen the Duke, and the King, and a' the braw folk. But wha kens," added the old dame slily, "what I'll hae to ca' ye forby mistress, for I am thinking it wunna lang be Deans." "Ca' me your ain Jeanie, May, and then ye can never gang wrang." In the cow-house which they examined, there was one animal which Jeanie looked at till the tears gushed from her eyes. May, who had watched her with a sympathising expression, immediately observed, in an under-tone, "The gudeman aye sorts that beast himself, and is kinder to it than ony beast in the byre; and I noticed he was that way e'en when he was angriest, and had maist cause to be angry.--Eh, sirs! a parent's heart's a queer thing!--Mony a warsle he has had for that puir lassie--I am thinking he petitions mair for her than for yoursell, hinny; for what can he plead for you but just to wish you the blessing ye deserve? And when I sleepit ayont the hallan, when we came first here, he was often earnest a' night, and I could hear him come ower and ower again wi', 'Effie--puir blinded misguided thing!' it was aye 'Effie! Effie!'--If that puir wandering lamb comena into the sheepfauld in the Shepherd's ain time, it will be an unco wonder, for I wot she has been a child of prayers. Oh, if the puir prodigal wad return, sae blithely as the goodman wad kill the fatted calf!--though Brockie's calf will no be fit for killing this three weeks yet." And then, with the discursive talent of persons of her description, she got once more afloat in her account of domestic affairs, and left this delicate and affecting topic. Having looked at every thing in the offices and the dairy, and expressed her satisfaction with the manner in which matters had been managed in her absence, Jeanie rejoined the rest of the party, who were surveying the interior of the house, all excepting David Deans and Butler, who had gone down to the church to meet the kirk-session and the clergymen of the Presbytery, and arrange matters for the duty of the day. In the interior of the cottage all was clean, neat, and suitable to the exterior. It had been originally built and furnished by the Duke, as a retreat for a favourite domestic of the higher class, who did not long enjoy it, and had been dead only a few months, so that every thing was in excellent taste and good order. But in Jeanie's bedroom was a neat trunk, which had greatly excited Mrs. Dutton's curiosity, for she was sure that the direction, "For Mrs. Jean Deans, at Auchingower, parish of Knocktarlitie," was the writing of Mrs. Semple, the Duchess's own woman. May Hettly produced the key in a sealed parcel, which bore the same address, and attached to the key was a label, intimating that the trunk and its contents were "a token of remembrance to Jeanie Deans, from her friends the Duchess of Argyle and the young ladies." The trunk, hastily opened, as the reader will not doubt, was found to be full of wearing apparel of the best quality, suited to Jeanie's rank in life; and to most of the articles the names of the particular donors were attached, as if to make Jeanie sensible not only of the general, but of the individual interest she had excited in the noble family. To name the various articles by their appropriate names, would be to attempt things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme; besides that the old-fashioned terms of manteaus, sacques, kissing-strings, and so forth, would convey but little information even to the milliners of the present day. I shall deposit, however, an accurate inventory of the contents of the trunk with my kind friend, Miss Martha Buskbody, who has promised, should the public curiosity seem interested in the subject, to supply me with a professional glossary and commentary. Suffice it to say, that the gift was such as became the donors, and was suited to the situation of the receiver; that every thing was handsome and appropriate, and nothing forgotten which belonged to the wardrobe of a young person in Jeanie's situation in life, the destined bride of a respectable clergyman. Article after article was displayed, commented upon, and admired, to the wonder of May, who declared, "she didna think the queen had mair or better claise," and somewhat to the envy of the northern Cowslip. This unamiable, but not very unnatural, disposition of mind, broke forth in sundry unfounded criticisms to the disparagement of the articles, as they were severally exhibited. But it assumed a more direct character, when, at the bottom of all, was found a dress of white silk, very plainly made, but still of white silk, and French silk to boot, with a paper pinned to it, bearing that it was a present from the Duke of Argyle to his travelling companion, to be worn on the day when she should change her name. Mrs. Dutton could forbear no longer, but whispered into Mr. Archibald's ear, that it was a clever thing to be a Scotchwoman: "She supposed all _her_ sisters, and she had half-a-dozen, might have been hanged, without any one sending her a present of a pocket handkerchief." "Or without your making any exertion to save them, Mrs. Dolly," answered Archibald drily.--"But I am surprised we do not hear the bell yet," said he, looking at his watch. "Fat ta deil, Mr. Archibald," answered the Captain of Knockdunder, "wad ye hae them ring the bell before I am ready to gang to kirk?--I wad gar the bedral eat the bell-rope, if he took ony sic freedom. But if ye want to hear the bell, I will just show mysell on the knowe-head, and it will begin jowing forthwith." Accordingly, so soon as they sallied out, and that the gold-laced hat of the Captain was seen rising like Hesper above the dewy verge of the rising ground, the clash (for it was rather a clash than a clang) of the bell was heard from the old moss-grown tower, and the clapper continued to thump its cracked sides all the while they advanced towards the kirk, Duncan exhorting them to take their own time, "for teil ony sport wad be till he came."* * Note T. Tolling to service in Scotland. Accordingly, the bell only changed to the final and impatient chime when they crossed the stile; and "rang in," that is, concluded its mistuned summons, when they had entered the Duke's seat, in the little kirk, where the whole party arranged themselves, with Duncan at their head, excepting David Deans, who already occupied a seat among the elders. The business of the day, with a particular detail of which it is unnecessary to trouble the reader, was gone through according to the established form, and the sermon pronounced upon the occasion had the good fortune to please even the critical David Deans, though it was only an hour and a quarter long, which David termed a short allowance of spiritual provender. The preacher, who was a divine that held many of David's opinions, privately apologised for his brevity by saying, "That he observed the Captain was gaunting grievously, and that if he had detained him longer, there was no knowing how long he might be in paying the next term's victual stipend." David groaned to find that such carnal motives could have influence upon the mind of a powerful preacher. He had, indeed, been scandalised by another circumstance during the service. So soon as the congregation were seated after prayers, and the clergyman had read his text, the gracious Duncan, after rummaging the leathern purse which hung in front of his petticoat, produced a short tobacco-pipe made of iron, and observed, almost aloud, "I hae forgotten my spleuchan--Lachlan, gang down to the clachan, and bring me up a pennyworth of twist." Six arms, the nearest within reach, presented, with an obedient start, as many tobacco-pouches to the man of office. He made choice of one with an nod of acknowledgment, filled his pipe, lighted it with the assistance of his pistol-flint, and smoked with infinite composure during the whole time of the sermon. When the discourse was finished, he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, replaced it in his sporran, returned the tobacco-pouch or spleuchan to its owner, and joined in the prayer with decency and attention. [Illustration: The Captain of Knockdunder--303] At the end of the service, when Butler had been admitted minister of the kirk of Knocktarlitie, with all its spiritual immunities and privileges, David, who had frowned, groaned, and murmured at Knockdunder's irreverent demeanour, communicated his plain thoughts of the matter to Isaac Meiklehose, one of the elders, with whom a reverential aspect and huge grizzle wig had especially disposed him to seek fraternisation. "It didna become a wild Indian," David said, "much less a Christian, and a gentleman, to sit in the kirk puffing tobacco-reek, as if he were in a change-house." Meiklehose shook his head, and allowed it was "far frae beseeming--But what will ye say? The Captain's a queer hand, and to speak to him about that or onything else that crosses the maggot, wad be to set the kiln a-low. He keeps a high hand ower the country, and we couldna deal wi' the Hielandmen without his protection, sin' a' the keys o' the kintray hings at his belt; and he's no an ill body in the main, and maistry, ye ken, maws the meadows doun." "That may be very true, neighbour," said David; "but Reuben Butler isna the man I take him to be, if he disna learn the Captain to fuff his pipe some other gate than in God's house, or the quarter be ower." "Fair and softly gangs far," said Meiklehose; "and if a fule may gie a wise man a counsel, I wad hae him think twice or he mells with Knockdunder--He auld hae a lang-shankit spune that wad sup kail wi' the deil. But they are a' away to their dinner to the change-house, and if we dinna mend our pace, we'll come short at meal-time." David accompanied his friend without answer; but began to feel from experience, that the glen of Knocktarlitie, like the rest of the world, was haunted by its own special subjects of regret and discontent. His mind was, so much occupied by considering the best means of converting Duncan of Knock to a sense of reverend decency during public worship, that he altogether forgot to inquire whether Butler was called upon to subscribe the oaths to Government. Some have insinuated, that his neglect on this head was, in some degree, intentional; but I think this explanation inconsistent with the simplicity of my friend David's character. Neither have I ever been able, by the most minute inquiries, to know whether the _formula,_ at which he so much scrupled, had been exacted from Butler, ay or no. The books of the kirk-session might have thrown some light on this matter; but unfortunately they were destroyed in the year 1746, by one Donacha Dhu na Dunaigh, at the instance, it was said, or at least by the connivance, of the gracious Duncan of Knock, who had a desire to obliterate the recorded foibles of a certain Kate Finlayson. CHAPTER TWENTY-SECOND. Now butt and ben the change-house fills Wi' yill-caup commentators, Here's crying out for bakes and gills, And there the pint-stoup clatters. Wi' thick and thrang, and loud and lang,-- Wi' logic and wi' scripture, They raise a din that in the end Is like to breed a rupture, O' wrath that day. Burns. A plentiful entertainment, at the Duke of Argyle's cost, regaled the reverend gentlemen who had assisted at the ordination of Reuben Butler, and almost all the respectable part of the parish. The feast was, indeed, such as the country itself furnished; for plenty of all the requisites for "a rough and round dinner" were always at Duncan of Knock's command. There was the beef and mutton on the braes, the fresh and salt-water fish in the lochs, the brooks, and firth; game of every kind, from the deer to the leveret, were to be had for the killing, in the Duke's forests, moors, heaths, and mosses; and for liquor, home-brewed ale flowed as freely as water; brandy and usquebaugh both were had in those happy times without duty; even white wine and claret were got for nothing, since the Duke's extensive rights of admiralty gave him a title to all the wine in cask which is drifted ashore on the western coast and isles of Scotland, when shipping have suffered by severe weather. In short, as Duncan boasted, the entertainment did not cost MacCallummore a plack out of his sporran, and was nevertheless not only liberal, but overflowing. The Duke's health was solemnised in a _bona fide_ bumper, and David Deans himself added perhaps the first huzza that his lungs had ever uttered, to swell the shout with which the pledge was received. Nay, so exalted in heart was he upon this memorable occasion, and so much disposed to be indulgent, that, he expressed no dissatisfaction when three bagpipers struck up, "The Campbells are coming." The health of the reverend minister of Knocktarlitie was received with similar honours; and there was a roar of laughter, when one of his brethren slily subjoined the addition of, "A good wife to our brother, to keep the Manse in order." On this occasion David Deans was delivered of his first-born joke; and apparently the parturition was accompanied with many throes, for sorely did he twist about his physiognomy, and much did he stumble in his speech, before he could express his idea, "That the lad being now wedded to his spiritual bride, it was hard to threaten him with ane temporal spouse in the same day." He then laughed a hoarse and brief laugh, and was suddenly grave and silent, as if abashed at his own vivacious effort. After another toast or two, Jeanie, Mrs. Dolly, and such of the female natives as had honoured the feast with their presence, retired to David's new dwelling at Auchingower, and left the gentlemen to their potations. The feast proceeded with great glee. The conversation, where Duncan had it under his direction, was not indeed always strictly canonical, but David Deans escaped any risk of being scandalised, by engaging with one of his neighbours in a recapitulation of the sufferings of Ayrshire and Lanarkshire, during what was called the invasion of the Highland Host; the prudent Mr. Meiklehose cautioning them from time to time to lower their voices, "for that Duncan Knock's father had been at that onslaught, and brought back muckle gude plenishing, and that Duncan was no unlikely to hae been there himself, for what he kend." Meanwhile, as the mirth grew fast and furious, the graver members of the party began to escape as well as they could. David Deans accomplished his retreat, and Butler anxiously watched an opportunity to follow him. Knockdunder, however, desirous, he said, of knowing what stuff was in the new minister, had no intention to part with him so easily, but kept him pinned to his side, watching him sedulously, and with obliging violence filling his glass to the brim, as often as he could seize an opportunity of doing so. At length, as the evening was wearing late, a venerable brother chanced to ask Mr. Archibald when they might hope to see the Duke, _tam carum caput,_ as he would venture to term him, at the Lodge of Roseneath. Duncan of Knock, whose ideas were somewhat conglomerated, and who, it may be believed, was no great scholar, catching up some imperfect sound of the words, conceived the speaker was drawing a parallel between the Duke and Sir Donald Gorme of Sleat; and being of opinion that such comparison was odious, snorted thrice, and prepared himself to be in a passion. To the explanation of the venerable divine the Captain answered, "I heard the word Gorme myself, sir, with my ain ears. D'ye think I do not know Gaelic from Latin?" "Apparently not, sir;"--so the clergyman, offended in his turn, and taking a pinch of snuff, answered with great coolness. The copper nose of the gracious Duncan now became heated like the Bull of Phalaris, and while Mr. Archibald mediated betwixt the offended parties, and the attention of the company was engaged by their dispute, Butler took an opportunity to effect his retreat. He found the females at Auchingower very anxious for the breaking up of the convivial party; for it was a part of the arrangement, that although David Deans was to remain at Auchingower, and Butler was that night to take possession of the Manse, yet Jeanie, for whom complete accommodations were not yet provided in her father's house, was to return for a day or two to the Lodge at Roseneath, and the boats had been held in readiness accordingly. They waited, therefore, for Knockdunder's return, but twilight came, and they still waited in vain. At length Mr. Archibald, who was a man of decorum, had taken care not to exceed in his conviviality, made his appearance, and advised the females strongly to return to the island under his escort; observing, that, from the humour in which he had left the Captain, it was a great chance whether he budged out of the public-house that night, and it was absolutely certain that he would not be very fit company for ladies. The gig was at their disposal, he said, and there was still pleasant twilight for a party on the water. Jeanie, who had considerable confidence in Archibald's prudence, immediately acquiesced in this proposal; but Mrs. Dolly positively objected to the small boat. If the big boat could be gotten, she agreed to set out, otherwise she would sleep on the floor, rather than stir a step. Reasoning with Dolly was out of the question, and Archibald did not think the difficulty so pressing as to require compulsion. He observed, it was not using the Captain very politely to deprive him of his coach and six; "but as it was in the ladies' service," he gallantly said, "he would use so much freedom--besides the gig would serve the Captain's purpose better, as it could come off at any hour of the tide; the large boat should, therefore, be at Mrs. Dolly's service." They walked to the beach accordingly, accompanied by Butler. It was some time before the boatmen could be assembled, and ere they were well embarked, and ready to depart, the pale moon was come over the hill, and flinging a trembling reflection on the broad and glittering waves. But so soft and pleasant was the night, that Butler, in bidding farewell to Jeanie, had no apprehension for her safety; and what is yet more extraordinary, Mrs. Dolly felt no alarm for her own. The air was soft, and came over the cooling wave with something of summer fragrance. The beautiful scene of headlands, and capes, and bays, around them, with the broad blue chain of mountains, were dimly visible in the moonlight; while every dash of the oars made the waters glance and sparkle with the brilliant phenomenon called the sea fire. This last circumstance filled Jeanie with wonder, and served to amuse the mind of her companion, until they approached the little bay, which seemed to stretch its dark and wooded arms into the sea as if to welcome them. The usual landing-place was at a quarter of a mile's distance from the Lodge, and although the tide did not admit of the large boat coming quite close to the jetty of loose stones which served as a pier, Jeanie, who was both bold and active, easily sprung ashore; but Mrs., Dolly positively refusing to commit herself to the same risk, the complaisant Mr. Archibald ordered the boat round to a more regular landing-place, at a considerable distance along the shore. He then prepared to land himself, that he might, in the meanwhile, accompany Jeanie to the Lodge. But as there was no mistaking the woodland lane, which led from thence to the shore, and as the moonlight showed her one of the white chimneys rising out of the wood which embosomed the building, Jeanie declined this favour with thanks, and requested him to proceed with Mrs. Dolly, who, being "in a country where the ways were so strange to her, had mair need of countenance." This, indeed, was a fortunate circumstance, and might even be said to save poor Cowslip's life, if it was true, as she herself used solemnly to aver, that she must positively have expired for fear, if she had been left alone in the boat with six wild Highlanders in kilts. The night was so exquisitely beautiful, that Jeanie, instead of immediately directing her course towards the Lodge, stood looking after the boat as it again put off from the side, and rowed into the little bay, the dark figures of her companions growing less and less distinct as they diminished in the distance, and the jorram, or melancholy boat-song of the rowers, coming on the ear with softened and sweeter sound, until the boat rounded the headland, and was lost to her observation. Still Jeanie remained in the same posture, looking out upon the sea. It would, she was aware, be some time ere her companions could reach the Lodge, as the distance by the more convenient landing-place was considerably greater than from the point where she stood, and she was not sorry to have an opportunity to spend the interval by herself. The wonderful change which a few weeks had wrought in her situation, from shame and grief, and almost despair, to honour, joy, and a fair prospect of future happiness, passed before her eyes with a sensation which brought the tears into them. Yet they flowed at the same time from another source. As human happiness is never perfect, and as well-constructed minds are never more sensible of the distresses of those whom they love, than when their own situation forms a contrast with them, Jeanie's affectionate regrets turned to the fate of her poor sister--the child of so many hopes--the fondled nursling of so many years--now an exile, and, what was worse, dependent on the will of a man, of whose habits she had every reason to entertain the worst opinion, and who, even in his strongest paroxysms of remorse, had appeared too much a stranger to the feelings of real penitence. While her thoughts were occupied with these melancholy reflections, a shadowy figure seemed to detach itself from the copsewood on her right hand. Jeanie started, and the stories of apparitions and wraiths, seen by solitary travellers in wild situations, at such times, and in such an hour, suddenly came full upon her imagination. The figure glided on, and as it came betwixt her and the moon, she was aware that it had the appearance of a woman. A soft voice twice repeated, "Jeanie--Jeanie!"-- Was it indeed--could it be the voice of her sister?--Was she still among the living, or had the grave given uly its tenant?--Ere she could state these questions to her own mind, Effie, alive, and in the body, had clasped her in her arms and was straining her to her bosom, and devouring her with kisses. "I have wandered here," she said, "like a ghaist, to see you, and nae wonder you take me for ane--I thought but to see you gang by, or to hear the sound of your voice; but to speak to yoursell again, Jeanie, was mair than I deserved, and mair than I durst pray for." "O Effie! how came ye here alone, and at this hour, and on the wild seabeach?--Are you sure it's your ain living sell?" There was something of Effie's former humour in her practically answering the question by a gentle pinch, more beseeming the fingers of a fairy than of a ghost. And again the sisters embraced, and laughed, and wept by turns. "But ye maun gang up wi' me to the Lodge, Effie," said Jeanie, "and tell me a' your story--I hae gude folk there that will make ye welcome for my sake." "Na, na, Jeanie," replied her sister sorrowfully,--"ye hae forgotten what I am--a banished outlawed creature, scarce escaped the gallows by your being the bauldest and the best sister that ever lived--I'll gae near nane o' your grand friends, even if there was nae danger to me." "There is nae danger--there shall be nae danger," said Jeanie eagerly. "O Effie, dinna be wilfu'--be guided for ance--we will be sae happy a' thegither!" "I have a' the happiness I deserve on this side of the grave, now that I hae seen you," answered Effie; "and whether there were danger to mysell or no, naebody shall ever say that I come with my cheat-the-gallows face to shame my sister among her grand friends." "I hae nae grand friends," said Jeanie; "nae friends but what are friends of yours--Reuben Butler and my father.--O unhappy lassie, dinna be dour, and turn your back on your happiness again! We wunna see another acquaintance--Come hame to us, your ain dearest friends--it's better sheltering under an auld hedge than under a new-planted wood." "It's in vain speaking, Jeanie,--I maun drink as I hae brewed--I am married, and I maun follow my husband for better for worse." "Married, Effie!" exclaimed Jeanie--"Misfortunate creature! and to that awfu'" "Hush, hush," said Effie, clapping one hand on her mouth, and pointing to the thicket with the other, "he is yonder." She said this in a tone which showed that her husband had found means to inspire her with awe, as well as affection. At this moment a man issued from the wood. It was young Staunton. Even by the imperfect light of the moon, Jeanie could observe that he was handsomely dressed, and had the air of a person of rank. "Effie," he said, "our time is well-nigh spent--the skiff will be aground in the creek, and I dare not stay longer.--I hope your sister will allow me to salute her?" But Jeanie shrunk back from him with a feeling of internal abhorrence. "Well," he said, "it does not much signify; if you keep up the feeling of ill-will, at least you do not act upon it, and I thank you for your respect to my secret, when a word (which in your place I would have spoken at once) would have cost me my life. People say, you should keep from the wife of your bosom the secret that concerns your neck--my wife and her sister both know mine, and I shall not sleep a wink the less sound." "But are you really married to my sister, sir?" asked Jeanie, in great doubt and anxiety; for the haughty, careless tone in which he spoke seemed to justify her worst apprehensions. "I really am legally married, and by my own name," replied Staunton, more gravely. "And your father--and your friends?" "And my father and my friends must just reconcile themselves to that which is done and cannot be undone," replied Staunton. "However, it is my intention, in order to break off dangerous connections, and to let my friends come to their temper, to conceal my marriage for the present, and stay abroad for some years. So that you will not hear of us for some time, if ever you hear of us again at all. It would be dangerous, you must be aware, to keep up the correspondence; for all would guess that the husband of Effie was the--what shall I call myself?--the slayer of Porteous." Hard-hearted light man! thought Jeanie--to what a character she has intrusted her happiness!--She has sown the wind, and maun reap the whirlwind. "Dinna think ill o' him," said Effie, breaking away from her husband, and leading Jeanie a step or two out of hearing--"dinna think very ill o' him--he's gude to me, Jeanie--as gude as I deserve--And he is determined to gie up his bad courses--Sae, after a', dinna greet for Effie; she is better off than she has wrought for.--But you--oh, you!--how can you be happy eneugh! never till ye get to heaven, where a'body is as gude as yoursell.--Jeanie, if I live and thrive, ye shall hear of me--if not, just forget that sic a creature ever lived to vex ye--fare ye weel--fare--fare ye weel!" She tore herself from her sister's arms--rejoined her husband--they plunged into the copsewood, and she saw them no more. The whole scene had the effect of a vision, and she could almost have believed it such, but that very soon after they quitted her, she heard the sound of oars, and a skiff was seen on the firth, pulling swiftly towards the small smuggling sloop which lay in the offing. It was on board of such a vessel that Effie had embarked at Portobello, and Jeanie had no doubt that the same conveyance was destined, as Staunton had hinted, to transport them to a foreign country. Although it was impossible to determine whether this interview, while it was passing, gave more pain or pleasure to Jeanie Deans, yet the ultimate impression which remained on her mind was decidedly favourable. Effie was married--made, according to the common phrase, an honest woman--that was one main point; it seemed also as if her husband were about to abandon the path of gross vice in which he had run so long and so desperately--that was another. For his final and effectual conversion he did not want understanding, and God knew his own hour. Such were the thoughts with which Jeanie endeavoured to console her anxiety respecting her sister's future fortune. On her arrival at the lodge, she found Archibald in some anxiety at her stay, and about to walk out in quest of her. A headache served as an apology for retiring to rest, in order to conceal her visible agitation of mind from her companions. By this secession also she escaped a scene of a different sort. For, as if there were danger in all gigs, whether by sea or land, that of Knockdunder had been run down by another boat, an accident owing chiefly to the drunkenness of the Captain, his crew, and passengers. Knockdunder, and two or three guests, whom he was bringing along with him to finish the conviviality of the evening at the Lodge, got a sound ducking; but, being rescued by the crew of the boat which endangered them, there was no ultimate loss, excepting that of the Captain's laced hat, which, greatly to the satisfaction of the Highland part of the district, as well as to the improvement of the conformity of his own personal appearance, he replaced by a smart Highland bonnet next day. Many were the vehement threats of vengeance which, on the succeeding morning, the gracious Duncan threw out against the boat which had upset him; but as neither she, nor the small smuggling vessel to which she belonged, was any longer to be seen in the firth, he was compelled to sit down with the affront. This was the more hard, he said, as he was assured the mischief was done on purpose, these scoundrels having lurked about after they had landed every drop of brandy, and every bag of tea they had on board; and he understood the coxswain had been on shore, making particular inquiries concerning the time when his boat was to cross over, and to return, and so forth. "Put the neist time they meet me on the firth," said Duncan, with great majesty, "I will teach the moonlight rapscallions and vagabonds to keep their ain side of the road, and pe tamn'd to them!" CHAPTER TWENTY-THIRD. Lord! who would live turmoiled in a court, And may enjoy such quiet walks as these? Shakespeare. Within a reasonable time after Butler was safely and comfortably settled in his living, and Jeanie had taken up her abode at Auchingower with her father,--the precise extent of which interval we request each reader to settle according to his own sense of what is decent and proper upon the occasion,--and after due proclamation of banns, and all other formalities, the long wooing of this worthy pair was ended by their union in the holy bands of matrimony. On this occasion, David Deans stoutly withstood the iniquities of pipes, fiddles, and promiscuous dancing, to the great wrath of the Captain of Knockdunder, who said, if he "had guessed it was to be sic a tamn'd Quakers' meeting, he wad hae seen them peyont the cairn before he wad hae darkened their doors." And so much rancour remained on the spirits of the gracious Duncan upon this occasion, that various "picqueerings," as David called them, took place upon the same and similar topics and it was only in consequence of an accidental visit of the Duke to his Lodge at Roseneath, that they were put a stop to. But upon that occasion his Grace showed such particular respect to Mr. and Mrs. Butler, and such favour even to old David, that Knockdunder held it prudent to change his course towards the latter. He, in future, used to express himself among friends, concerning the minister and his wife, as "very worthy decent folk, just a little over strict in their notions; put it was pest for thae plack cattle to err on the safe side." And respecting David, he allowed that "he was an excellent judge of nowte and sheep, and a sensible eneugh carle, an it werena for his tamn'd Cameronian nonsense, whilk it is not worth while of a shentleman to knock out of an auld silly head, either by force of reason or otherwise." So that, by avoiding topics of dispute, the personages of our tale lived in great good habits with the gracious Duncan, only that he still grieved David's soul, and set a perilous example to the congregation, by sometimes bringing his pipe to the church during a cold winter day, and almost always sleeping during sermon in the summer time. Mrs. Butler, whom we must no longer, if we can help it, term by the familiar name of Jeanie, brought into the married state the same firm mind and affectionate disposition--the same natural and homely good sense, and spirit of useful exertion--in a word, all the domestic good qualities of which she had given proof during her maiden life. She did not indeed rival Butler in learning; but then no woman more devoutly venerated the extent of her husband's erudition. She did not pretend to understand his expositions of divinity; but no minister of the Presbytery had his humble dinner so well arranged, his clothes and linen in equal good order, his fireside so neatly swept, his parlour so clean, and his books so well dusted. If he talked to Jeanie of what she did not understand--and (for the man was mortal, and had been a schoolmaster) he sometimes did harangue more scholarly and wisely than was necessary--she listened in placid silence; and whenever the point referred to common life, and was such as came under the grasp of a strong natural understanding, her views were more forcible, and her observations more acute, than his own. In acquired politeness of manners, when it happened that she mingled a little in society, Mrs. Butler was, of course, judged deficient. But then she had that obvious wish to oblige, and that real and natural good-breeding depending on, good sense and good humour, which, joined to a considerable degree of archness and liveliness of manner, rendered her behaviour acceptable to all with whom she was called upon to associate. Notwithstanding her strict attention to all domestic affairs, she always appeared the clean well-dressed mistress of the house, never the sordid household drudge. When complimented on this occasion by Duncan Knock, who swore "that he thought the fairies must help her, since her house was always clean, and nobody ever saw anybody sweeping it," she modestly replied, "That much might be dune by timing ane's turns." Duncan replied, "He heartily wished she could teach that art to the huzzies at the Lodge, for he could never discover that the house was washed at a', except now and then by breaking his shins over the pail-- Cot tamn the jauds!" Of lesser matters there is not occasion to speak much. It may easily be believed that the Duke's cheese was carefully made, and so graciously accepted, that the offering became annual. Remembrances and acknowledgments of past favours were sent to Mrs. Bickerton and Mrs. Glass, and an amicable intercourse maintained from time to time with these two respectable and benevolent persons. It is especially necessary to mention that, in the course of five years, Mrs. Butler had three children, two boys and a girl, all stout healthy babes of grace, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and strong-limbed. The boys were named David and Reuben, an order of nomenclature which was much to the satisfaction of the old hero of the Covenant, and the girl, by her mother's special desire, was christened Euphemia, rather contrary to the wish both of her father and husband, who nevertheless loved Mrs. Butler too well, and were too much indebted to her for their hours of happiness, to withstand any request which she made with earnestness, and as a gratification to herself. But from some feeling, I know not of what kind, the child was never distinguished by the name of Effie, but by the abbreviation of Femie, which in Scotland is equally commonly applied to persons called Euphemia. In this state of quiet and unostentatious enjoyment, there were, besides the ordinary rubs and ruffles which disturb even the most uniform life, two things which particularly chequered Mrs. Butler's happiness. "Without these," she said to our informer, "her life would have been but too happy; and perhaps," she added, "she had need of some crosses in this world to remind her that there was a better to come behind it." The first of these related to certain polemical skirmishes betwixt her father and her husband, which, notwithstanding the mutual respect and affection they entertained for each other, and their great love for her--notwithstanding, also, their general agreement in strictness, and even severity, of Presbyterian principle--often threatened unpleasant weather between them. David Deans, as our readers must be aware, was sufficiently opinionative and intractable, and having prevailed on himself to become a member of a kirk-session under the Established Church, he felt doubly obliged to evince that, in so doing, he had not compromised any whit of his former professions, either in practice or principle. Now Mr. Butler, doing all credit to his father-in-law's motives, was frequently of opinion that it were better to drop out of memory points of division and separation, and to act in the manner most likely to attract and unite all parties who were serious in religion. Moreover, he was not pleased, as a man and a scholar, to be always dictated to by his unlettered father-in-law; and as a clergyman, he did not think it fit to seem for ever under the thumb of an elder of his own kirk-session. A proud but honest thought carried his opposition now and then a little farther than it would otherwise have gone. "My brethren," he said, "will suppose I am flattering and conciliating the old man for the sake of his succession, if I defer and give way to him on every occasion; and, besides, there are many on which I neither can nor will conscientiously yield to his notions. I cannot be persecuting old women for witches, or ferreting out matter of scandal among the young ones, which might otherwise have remained concealed." From this difference of opinion it happened that, in many cases of nicety, such as in owning certain defections, and failing to testify against certain backslidings of the time, in not always severely tracing forth little matters of scandal and _fama clamosa,_ which David called a loosening of the reins of discipline, and in failing to demand clear testimonies in other points of controversy which had, as it were, drifted to leeward with the change of times, Butler incurred the censure of his father-in-law; and sometimes the disputes betwixt them became eager and almost unfriendly. In all such cases Mrs Butler was a mediating spirit, who endeavoured, by the alkaline smoothness of her own disposition, to neutralise the acidity of theological controversy. To the complaints of both she lent an unprejudiced and attentive ear, and sought always rather to excuse than absolutely to defend the other party. She reminded her father that Butler had not "his experience of the auld and wrastling times, when folk were gifted wi' a far look into eternity, to make up for the oppressions whilk they suffered here below in time. She freely allowed that many devout ministers and professors in times past had enjoyed downright revelation, like the blessed Peden, and Lundie, and Cameron, and Renwick, and John Caird the tinkler, wha entered into the secrets, and Elizabeth Melvil, Lady Culross, wha prayed in her bed, surrounded by a great many Christians in a large room, in whilk it was placed on purpose, and that for three hours' time, with wonderful assistance; and Lady Robertland, whilk got six sure outgates of grace, and mony other in times past; and of a specially, Mr. John Scrimgeour, minister of Kinghorn, who, having a beloved child sick to death of the crewels, was free to expostulate with his Maker with such impatience of displeasure, and complaining so bitterly, that at length it was said unto him, that he was heard for this time, but that he was requested to use no such boldness in time coming; so that when he returned he found the child sitting up in the bed hale and fair, with all its wounds closed, and supping its parritch, whilk babe he had left at the time of death. But though these things might be true in these needful times, she contended that those ministers who had not seen such vouchsafed and especial mercies, were to seek their rule in the records of ancient times; and therefore Reuben was carefu' both to search the Scriptures and the books written by wise and good men of old; and sometimes in this way it wad happen that twa precious saints might pu' sundry wise, like twa cows riving at the same hayband." To this David used to reply, with a sigh, "Ah, hinny, thou kenn'st little o't; but that saam John Scrimgeour, that blew open the gates of heaven as an it had been wi' a sax-pund cannonball, used devoutly to wish that most part of books were burnt, except the Bible. Reuben's a gude lad and a kind--I have aye allowed that; but as to his not allowing inquiry anent the scandal of Marjory Kittlesides and Rory MacRand, under pretence that they have southered sin wi' marriage, it's clear agane the Christian discipline o' the kirk. And then there's Aily MacClure of Deepheugh, that practises her abominations, spacing folks' fortunes wi' egg-shells, and mutton-banes, and dreams and divinations, whilk is a scandal to ony Christian land to suffer sic a wretch to live; and I'll uphaud that, in a' judicatures, civil or ecclesiastical." "I daresay ye are very right, father," was the general style of Jeanie's answer; "but ye maun come down to the Manse to your dinner the day. The bits o' bairns, puir things, are wearying to see their luckie dad; and Reuben never sleeps weel, nor I neither, when you and he hae had ony bit outcast." "Nae outcast, Jeanie; God forbid I suld cast out wi' thee, or aught that is dear to thee!" And he put on his Sundays coat, and came to the Manse accordingly. With her husband, Mrs. Butler had a more direct conciliatory process. Reuben had the utmost respect for the old man's motives, and affection for his person, as well as gratitude for his early friendship. So that, upon any such occasion of accidental irritation, it was only necessary to remind him with delicacy of his father-in-law's age, of his scanty education, strong prejudices, and family distresses. The least of these considerations always inclined Butler to measures of conciliation, in so far as he could accede to them without compromising principle; and thus our simple and unpretending heroine had the merit of those peacemakers, to whom it is pronounced as a benediction, that they shall inherit the earth. The second crook in Mrs. Butler's lot, to use the language of her father, was the distressing circumstance, that she had never heard of her sister's safety, or of the circumstances in which she found herself, though betwixt four and five years had elapsed since they had parted on the beach of the island of Roseneath. Frequent intercourse was not to be expected--not to be desired, perhaps, in their relative situations; but Effie had promised, that, if she lived and prospered, her sister should hear from her. She must then be no more, or sunk into some abyss of misery, since she had never redeemed her pledge. Her silence seemed strange and portentous, and wrung from Jeanie, who could never forget the early years of their intimacy, the most painful anticipation concerning her fate. At length, however, the veil was drawn aside. One day, as the Captain of Knockdunder had called in at the Manse, on his return from some business in the Highland part of the parish, and had been accommodated, according to his special request, with a mixture of milk, brandy, honey, and water, which he said Mrs. Butler compounded "potter than ever a woman in Scotland,"--for, in all innocent matters, she studied the taste of every one around her,--he said to Butler, "Py the py, minister, I have a letter here either for your canny pody of a wife or you, which I got when I was last at Glasco; the postage comes to fourpence, which you may either pay me forthwith, or give me tooble or quits in a hit at packcammon." The playing at backgammon and draughts had been a frequent amusement of Mr. Whackbairn, Butler's principal, when at Liberton school. The minister, therefore, still piqued himself on his skill at both games, and occasionally practised them, as strictly canonical, although David Deans, whose notions of every kind were more rigorous, used to shake his head, and groan grievously, when he espied the tables lying in the parlour, or the children playing with the dice boxes or backgammon men. Indeed, Mrs. Butler was sometimes chidden for removing these implements of pastime into some closet or corner out of sight. "Let them be where they are, Jeanie," would Butler say upon such occasions; "I am not conscious of following this, or any other trifling relaxation, to the interruption of my more serious studies, and still more serious duties. I will not, therefore, have it supposed that I am indulging by stealth, and against my conscience, in an amusement which, using it so little as I do, I may well practise openly, and without any check of mind--_Nil conscire sibi,_ Jeanie, that is my motto; which signifies, my love, the honest and open confidence which a man ought to entertain when he is acting openly, and without any sense of doing wrong." Such being Butler's humour, he accepted the Captain's defiance to a twopenny hit at backgammon, and handed the letter to his wife, observing the post-mark was York, but, if it came from her friend Mrs. Bickerton, she had considerably improved her handwriting, which was uncommon at her years. Leaving the gentlemen to their game, Mrs. Butler went to order something for supper, for Captain Duncan had proposed kindly to stay the night with them, and then carelessly broke open her letter. It was not from Mrs. Bickerton; and, after glancing over the first few lines, she soon found it necessary to retire to her own bedroom, to read the document at leisure. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOURTH. Happy thou art! then happy be, Nor envy me my lot; Thy happy state I envy thee, And peaceful cot. Lady Charlotte Campbell. The letter, which Mrs. Butler, when retired into her own apartment, perused with anxious wonder, was certainly from Effie, although it had no other signature than the letter E.; and although the orthography, style, and penmanship, were very far superior not only to anything which Effie could produce, who, though a lively girl, had been a remarkably careless scholar, but even to her more considerate sister's own powers of composition and expression. The manuscript was a fair Italian hand, though something stiff and constrained--the spelling and the diction that of a person who had been accustomed to read good composition, and mix in good society. The tenor of the letter was as follows:-- "My Dearest Sister,--At many risks I venture to write to you, to inform you that I am still alive, and, as to worldly situation, that I rank higher than I could expect or merit. If wealth, and distinction, and an honourable rank, could make a woman happy, I have them all; but you, Jeanie, whom the world might think placed far beneath me in all these respects, are far happier than I am. I have had means of hearing of your welfare, my dearest Jeanie, from time to time--I think I should have broken my heart otherwise. I have learned with great pleasure of your increasing family. We have not been worthy of such a blessing; two infants have been successively removed, and we are now childless--God's will be done! But, if we had a child, it would perhaps divert him from the gloomy thoughts which make him terrible to himself and others. Yet do not let me frighten you, Jeanie; he continues to be kind, and I am far better off than I deserve. You will wonder at my better scholarship; but when I was abroad, I had the best teachers, and I worked hard, because my progress pleased him. He is kind, Jeanie, only he has much to distress him, especially when he looks backward. When I look backward myself, I have always a ray of comfort: it is in the generous conduct of a sister, who forsook me not when I was forsaken by every one. You have had your reward. You live happy in the esteem and love of all who know you, and I drag on the life of a miserable impostor, indebted for the marks of regard I receive to a tissue of deceit and lies, which the slightest accident may unravel. He has produced me to his friends, since the estate opened to him, as a daughter of a Scotchman of rank, banished on account of the Viscount of Dundee's wars--that is, our Fr's old friend Clavers, you know--and he says I was educated in a Scotch convent; indeed, I lived in such a place long enough to enable me to support the character. But when a countryman approaches me, and begins to talk, as they all do, of the various families engaged in Dundee's affair, and to make inquiries into my connections, and when I see his eye bent on mine with such an expression of agony, my terror brings me to the very risk of detection. Good-nature and politeness have hitherto saved me, as they prevented people from pressing on me with distressing questions. But how long--O how long, will this be the case!--And if I bring this disgrace on him, he will hate me--he will kill me, for as much as he loves me; he is as jealous of his family honour now, as ever he was careless about it. I have been in England four months, and have often thought of writing to you; and yet, such are the dangers that might arise from an intercepted letter, that I have hitherto forborne. But now I am obliged to run the risk. Last week I saw your great friend, the D. of A. He came to my box, and sate by me; and something in the play put him in mind of you--Gracious Heaven! he told over your whole London journey to all who were in the box, but particularly to the wretched creature who was the occasion of it all. If he had known--if he could have conceived, beside whom he was sitting, and to whom the story was told!--I suffered with courage, like an Indian at the stake, while they are rending his fibres and boring his eyes, and while he smiles applause at each well-imagined contrivance of his torturers. It was too much for me at last, Jeanie--I fainted; and my agony was imputed partly to the heat of the place, and partly to my extreme sensibility; and, hypocrite all over, I encouraged both opinions--anything but discovery! Luckily, _he_ was not there. But the incident has more alarms. I am obliged to meet your great man often; and he seldom sees me without talking of E. D. and J. D., and R. B. and D. D., as persons in whom my amiable sensibility is interested. My amiable sensibility!!!--And then the cruel tone of light indifference with which persons in the fashionable world speak together on the most affecting subjects! To hear my guilt, my folly, my agony, the foibles and weaknesses of my friends--even your heroic exertions, Jeanie, spoken of in the drolling style which is the present tone in fashionable life--Scarce all that I formerly endured is equal to this state of irritation--then it was blows and stabs--now it is pricking to death with needles and pins.--He--I mean the D.--goes down next month to spend the shooting-season in Scotland--he says, he makes a point of always dining one day at the Manse--be on your guard, and do not betray yourself, should he mention me--Yourself, alas! _you_ have nothing to betray--nothing to fear; you, the pure, the virtuous, the heroine of unstained faith, unblemished purity, what can you have to fear from the world or its proudest minions? It is E. whose life is once more in your hands--it is E. whom you are to save from being plucked of her borrowed plumes, discovered, branded, and trodden down, first by him, perhaps, who has raised her to this dizzy pinnacle!--The enclosure will reach you twice a-year--do not refuse it--it is out of my own allowance, and may be twice as much when you want it. With you it may do good--with me it never can. "Write to me soon, Jeanie, or I shall remain in the agonising apprehension that this has fallen into wrong hands--Address simply to L. S., under cover, to the Reverend George Whiterose, in the Minster-Close, York. He thinks I correspond with some of my noble Jacobite relations who are in Scotland. How high-church and jacobitical zeal would burn in his checks, if he knew he was the agent, not of Euphemia Setoun, of the honourable house of Winton, but of E. D., daughter of a Cameronian cowfeeder!--Jeanie, I can laugh yet sometimes--but God protect you from such mirth.--My father--I mean your father, would say it was like the idle crackling of thorns; but the thorns keep their poignancy, they remain unconsumed. Farewell, my dearest Jeanie--Do not show this even to Mr. Butler, much less to any one else. I have every respect for him, but his principles are over strict, and my case will not endure severe handling.--I rest your affectionate sister, E." In this long letter there was much to surprise as well as to distress Mrs. Butler. That Effie--her sister Effie, should be mingling freely in society, and apparently on not unequal terms, with the Duke of Argyle, sounded like something so extraordinary, that she even doubted if she read truly. Not was it less marvellous, that, in the space of four years, her education should have made such progress. Jeanie's humility readily allowed that Effie had always, when she chose it, been smarter at her book than she herself was, but then she was very idle, and, upon the whole, had made much less proficiency. Love, or fear, or necessity, however, had proved an able school-mistress, and completely supplied all her deficiencies. What Jeanie least liked in the tone of the letter, was a smothered degree of egotism. "We should have heard little about her," said Jeanie to herself, "but that she was feared the Duke might come to learn wha she was, and a' about her puir friends here; but Effie, puir thing, aye looks her ain way, and folk that do that think mair o' themselves than of their neighbours.--I am no clear about keeping her siller," she added, taking up a L50 note which had fallen out of the paper to the floor. "We hae eneugh, and it looks unco like theftboot, or hushmoney, as they ca' it; she might hae been sure that I wad say naething wad harm her, for a' the gowd in Lunnon. And I maun tell the minister about it. I dinna see that she suld be sae feared for her ain bonny bargain o' a gudeman, and that I shouldna reverence Mr. Butler just as much; and sae I'll e'en tell him, when that tippling body the Captain has ta'en boat in the morning.--But I wonder at my ain state of mind," she added, turning back, after she had made a step or two to the door to join the gentlemen; "surely I am no sic a fule as to be angry that Effie's a braw lady, while I am only a minister's wife?--and yet I am as petted as a bairn, when I should bless God, that has redeemed her from shame, and poverty, and guilt, as ower likely she might hae been plunged into." Sitting down upon a stool at the foot of the bed, she folded her arms upon her bosom, saying within herself, "From this place will I not rise till I am in a better frame of mind;" and so placed, by dint of tearing the veil from the motives of her little temporary spleen against her sister, she compelled herself to be ashamed of them, and to view as blessings the advantages of her sister's lot, while its embarrassments were the necessary consequences of errors long since committed. And thus she fairly vanquished the feeling of pique which she naturally enough entertained, at seeing Effie, so long the object of her care and her pity, soar suddenly so high above her in life, as to reckon amongst the chief objects of her apprehension the risk of their relationship being discovered. When this unwonted burst of _amour propre_ was thoroughly subdued, she walked down to the little parlour where the gentlemen were finishing their game, and heard from the Captain a confirmation of the news intimated in her letter, that the Duke of Argyle was shortly expected at Roseneath. "He'll find plenty of moor-fowls and plack-cock on the moors of Auchingower, and he'll pe nae doubt for taking a late dinner, and a ped at the Manse, as he has done pefore now." "He has a gude right, Captain," said Jeanie. "Teil ane potter to ony ped in the kintra," answered the Captain. "And ye had potter tell your father, puir body, to get his beasts a' in order, and put his tamn'd Cameronian nonsense out o' his head for twa or three days, if he can pe so opliging; for fan I speak to him apout prute pestil, he answers me out o' the Pible, whilk is not using a shentleman weel, unless it be a person of your cloth, Mr. Putler." No one understood better than Jeanie the merit of the soft answer, which turneth away wrath; and she only smiled, and hoped that his Grace would find everything that was under her father's care to his entire satisfaction. But the Captain, who had lost the whole postage of the letter at backgammon, was in the pouting mood not unusual to losers, and which, says the proverb, must be allowed to them. "And, Master Putler, though you know I never meddle with the things of your kirk-sessions, yet I must pe allowed to say that I will not be pleased to allow Ailie MacClure of Deepheugh to be poonished as a witch, in respect she only spaes fortunes, and does not lame, or plind, or pedevil any persons, or coup cadger's carts, or ony sort of mischief; put only tells people good fortunes, as anent our poats killing so many seals and doug-fishes, whilk is very pleasant to hear." "The woman," said Butler, "is, I believe, no witch, but a cheat: and it is only on that head that she is summoned to the kirk-session, to cause her to desist in future from practising her impostures upon ignorant persons." "I do not know," replied the gracious Duncan, "what her practices or postures are, but I pelieve that if the poys take hould on her to duck her in the Clachan purn, it will be a very sorry practice--and I pelieve, moreover, that if I come in thirdsman among you at the kirk-sessions, you will be all in a tamn'd pad posture indeed." Without noticing this threat, Mr. Butler replied, "That he had not attended to the risk of ill-usage which the poor woman might undergo at the hands of the rabble, and that he would give her the necessary admonition in private, instead of bringing her before the assembled session." "This," Duncan said, "was speaking like a reasonable shentleman;" and so the evening passed peaceably off. Next morning, after the Captain had swallowed his morning draught of Athole brose, and departed in his coach and six, Mrs. Butler anew deliberated upon communicating to her husband her sister's letter. But she was deterred by the recollection, that, in doing so, she would unveil to him the whole of a dreadful secret, of which, perhaps, his public character might render him an unfit depositary. Butler already had reason to believe that Effie had eloped with that same Robertson who had been a leader in the Porteous mob, and who lay under sentence of death for the robbery at Kirkcaldy. But he did not know his identity with George Staunton, a man of birth and fortune, who had now apparently reassumed his natural rank in society. Jeanie had respected Staunton's own confession as sacred, and upon reflection she considered the letter of her sisteras equally so, and resolved to mention the contents to no one. On reperusing the letter, she could not help observing the staggering and unsatisfactory condition of those who have risen to distinction by undue paths, and the outworks and bulwarks of fiction and falsehood, by which they are under the necessity of surrounding and defending their precarious advantages. But she was not called upon, she thought, to unveil her sister's original history--it would restore no right to any one, for she was usurping none--it would only destroy her happiness, and degrade her in the public estimation. Had she been wise, Jeanie thought she would have chosen seclusion and privacy, in place of public life and gaiety; but the power of choice might not be hers. The money, she thought, could not be returned without her seeming haughty and unkind. She resolved, therefore, upon reconsidering this point, to employ it as occasion should serve, either in educating her children better than her own means could compass, or for their future portion. Her sister had enough, was strongly bound to assist Jeanie by any means in her power, and the arrangement was so natural and proper, that it ought not to be declined out of fastidious or romantic delicacy. Jeanie accordingly wrote to her sister, acknowledging her letter, and requesting to hear from her as often as she could. In entering into her own little details of news, chiefly respecting domestic affairs, she experienced a singular vacillation of ideas; for sometimes she apologised for mentioning things unworthy the notice of a lady of rank, and then recollected that everything which concerned her should be interesting to Effie. Her letter, under the cover of Mr. Whiterose, she committed to the post-office at Glasgow, by the intervention of a parishioner who had business at that city. The next week brought the Duke to Roseneath, and shortly afterwards he intimated his intention of sporting in their neighbourhood, and taking his bed at the Manse; an honour which he had once or twice done to its inmates on former occasions. Effie proved to be perfectly right in her auticipations. The Duke had hardly set himself down at Mrs. Butler's right hand, and taken upon himself the task of carving the excellent "barn-door chucky," which had been selected as the high dishes upon this honourable occasion, before he began to speak of Lady Staunton of Willingham, in Lincolnshire, and the great noise which her wit and beauty made in London. For much of this Jeanie was, in some measure, prepared--but Effie's wit! that would never have entered into her imagination, being ignorant how exactly raillery in the higher rank resembles flippancy among their inferiors. "She has been the ruling belle--the blazing star--the universal toast of the winter," said the Duke; "and is really the most beautiful creature that was seen at court upon the birth-day." The birthday! and at court!--Jeanie was annihilated, remembering well her own presentation, all its extraordinary circumstances, and particularly the cause of it. "I mention this lady particularly to you, Mrs. Butler," said the Duke, "because she has something in the sound of her voice, and cast of her countenance, that reminded me of you--not when you look so pale though--you have over-fatigued yourself--you must pledge me in a glass of wine." She did so, and Butler observed, "It was dangerous flattery in his Grace to tell a poor minister's wife that she was like a court-beauty." "Oho, Mr. Butler," said the Duke, "I find you are growing jealous; but it's rather too late in the day, for you know how long I have admired your wife. But seriously, there is betwixt them one of those inexplicable likenesses which we see in countenances, that do not otherwise resemble each other." "The perilous part of the compliment has flown off," thought Mr. Butler. His wife, feeling the awkwardness of silence, forced herself to say, "That, perhaps, the lady might be her countrywoman, and the language might have made some resemblance." "You are quite right," replied the Duke. "She is a Scotch-woman, and speaks with a Scotch accent, and now and then a provincial word drops out so prettily, that it is quite Doric, Mr. Butler." "I should have thought," said the clergyman, "that would have sounded vulgar in the great city." "Not at all," replied the Duke; "you must suppose it is not the broad coarse Scotch that is spoken in the Cowgate of Edinburgh, or in the Gorbals. This lady has been very little in Scotland, in fact she was educated in a convent abroad, and speaks that pure court-Scotch, which was common in my younger days; but it is so generally disused now, that it sounds like a different dialect, entirely distinct from our modern _patois._" Notwithstanding her anxiety, Jeanie could not help admiring within herself, how the most correct judges of life and manners can be imposed on by their own preconceptions, while the Duke proceeded thus: "She is of the unfortunate house of Winton, I believe; but, being bred abroad, she had missed the opportunity of learning her own pedigree, and was obliged to me for informing her, that she must certainly come of the Setons of Windygoul. I wish you could have seen how prettily she blushed at her own ignorance. Amidst her noble and elegant manners, there is now and then a little touch of bashfulness and conventual rusticity, if I may call it so, that makes her quite enchanting. You see at once the rose that had bloomed untouched amid the chaste precincts of the cloister, Mr. Butler." True to the hint, Mr. Butler failed not to start with his "Ut flos in septis secretus nascitur hortis," etc., while his wife could hardly persuade herself that all this was spoken of Effie Deans, and by so competent a judge as the Duke of Argyle; and had she been acquainted with Catullus, would have thought the fortunes of her sister had reversed the whole passage. She was, however, determined to obtain some indemnification for the anxious feelings of the moment, by gaining all the intelligence she could; and therefore ventured to make some inquiry about the husband of the lady his Grace admired so much. "He is very rich," replied the Duke; "of an ancient family, and has good manners: but he is far from being such a general favourite as his wife. Some people say he can be very pleasant--I never saw him so; but should rather judge him reserved, and gloomy, and capricious. He was very wild in his youth, they say, and has bad health; yet he is a good-looking man enough--a great friend of your Lord High Commissioner of the Kirk, Mr. Butler." "Then he is the friend of a very worthy and honourable nobleman," said Butler. "Does he admire his lady as much as other people do?" said Jeanie, in a low voice. "Who--Sir George? They say he is very fond of her," said the Duke; "but I observe she trembles a little when he fixes his eye on her, and that is no good sign--But it is strange how I am haunted by this resemblance of yours to Lady Staunton, in look and tone of voice. One would almost swear you were sisters." Jeanie's distress became uncontrollable, and beyond concealment. The Duke of Argyle was much disturbed, good-naturedly ascribing it to his having unwittingly recalled, to her remembrance her family misfortunes. He was too well-bred to attempt to apologise; but hastened to change the subject, and arrange certain points of dispute which had occurred betwixt Duncan of Knock and the minister, acknowledging that his worthy substitute was sometimes a little too obstinate, as well as too energetic, in his executive measures. Mr. Butler admitted his general merits; but said, "He would presume to apply to the worthy gentleman the words of the poet to Marrucinus Asinius, Manu Non belle uteris in joco atque vino." The discourse being thus turned on parish business, nothing farther occurred that can interest the reader. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIFTH. Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown, And put a barren sceptre in my gripe, Thence to be wrench'd by an unlineal hand, No son of mine succeeding. Macbeth. After this period, but under the most strict precautions against discovery, the sisters corresponded occasionally, exchanging letters about twice every year. Those of Lady Staunton spoke of her husband's health and spirits as being deplorably uncertain; her own seemed also to be sinking, and one of the topics on which she most frequently dwelt was their want of family. Sir George Staunton, always violent, had taken some aversion at the next heir, whom he suspected of having irritated his friends against him during his absence; and he declared, he would bequeath Willingham and all its lands to an hospital, ere that fetch-and-carry tell-tale should inherit an acre of it. "Had he but a child," said the unfortunate wife, "or had that luckless infant survived, it would be some motive for living and for exertion. But Heaven has denied us a blessing which we have not deserved." Such complaints, in varied form, but turning frequently on the same topic, filled the letters which passed from the spacious but melancholy halls of Willingham, to the quiet and happy parsonage at Knocktarlitie. Years meanwhile rolled on amid these fruitless repinings. John, Duke of Argyle and Greenwich, died in the year 1743, universally lamented, but by none more than by the Butlers, to whom his benevolence had been so distinguished. He was succeeded by his brother Duke Archibald, with whom they had not the same intimacy; but who continued the protection which his brother had extended towards them. This, indeed, became more necessary than ever; for, after the breaking out and suppression of the rebellion in 1745, the peace of the country, adjacent to the Highlands, was considerably disturbed. Marauders, or men that had been driven to that desperate mode of life, quartered themselves in the fastnesses nearest to the Lowlands, which were their scene of plunder; and there is scarce a glen in the romantic and now peaceable Highlands of Perth, Stirling, and Dumbartonshire, where one or more did not take up their residence. The prime pest of the parish of Knocktarlitie was a certain Donacha dhu na Dunaigh, or Black Duncan the Mischievous, whom we have already casually mentioned. This fellow had been originally a tinkler, or _caird,_ many of whom stroll about these districts; but when all police was disorganised by the civil war, he threw up his profession, and from half thief became whole robber; and being generally at the head of three or four active young fellows, and he himself artful, bold, and well acquainted with the passes, he plied his new profession with emolument to himself, and infinite plague to the country. All were convinced that Duncan of Knock could have put down his namesake Donacha any morning he had a mind; for there were in the parish a set of stout young men, who had joined Argyle's banner in the war under his old friend, and behaved very well on several occasions. And as for their leader, as no one doubted his courage, it was generally supposed that Donacha had found out the mode of conciliating his favour, a thing not very uncommon in that age and country. This was the more readily believed, as David Deans's cattle (being the property of the Duke) were left untouched, when the minister's cows were carried off by the thieves. Another attempt was made to renew the same act of rapine, and the cattle were in the act of being driven off, when Butler, laying his profession aside in a case of such necessity, put himself at the head of some of his neighbours, and rescued the creagh, an exploit at which Deans attended in person, notwithstanding his extreme old age, mounted on a Highland pony, and girded with an old broadsword, likening himself (for he failed not to arrogate the whole merit of the expedition) to David, the son of Jesse, when he recovered the spoil of Ziklag from the Amalekites. This spirited behaviour had so far a good effect, that Donacha dhu na Dunaigh kept his distance for some time to come; and, though his distant exploits were frequently spoken of, he did not exercise any depredations in that part of the country. He continued to flourish, and to be heard of occasionally, until the year 1751, when, if the fear of the second David had kept him in check, fate released him from that restraint, for the venerable patriarch of St. Leonard's was that year gathered to his fathers. David Deans died full of years and of honour. He is believed, for the exact time of his birth is not known, to have lived upwards of ninety years; for he used to speak of events as falling under his own knowledge, which happened about the time of the battle of Bothwell Bridge. It was said that he even bore arms there; for once, when a drunken Jacobite laird wished for a Bothwell Brigg whig, that "he might stow the lugs out of his head," David informed him with a peculiar austerity of countenance, that, if he liked to try such a prank, there was one at his elbow; and it required the interference of Butler to preserve the peace. He expired in the arms of his beloved daughter, thankful for all the blessings which Providence had vouchsafed to him while in this valley of strife and toil--and thankful also for the trials he had been visited with; having found them, he said, needful to mortify that spiritual pride and confidence in his own gifts, which was the side on which the wily Enemy did most sorely beset him. He prayed in the most affecting manner for Jeanie, her husband, and her family, and that her affectionate duty to the puir auld man might purchase her length of days here, and happiness hereafter; then, in a pathetic petition, too well understood by those who knew his family circumstances, he besought the Shepherd of souls, while gathering his flock, not to forget the little one that had strayed from the fold, and even then might be in the hands of the ravening wolf.--He prayed for the national Jerusalem, that peace might be in her land, and prosperity in her palaces--for the welfare of the honourable House of Argyle, and for the conversion of Duncan of Knockdunder. After this he was silent, being exhausted, nor did he again utter anything distinctly. He was heard, indeed, to mutter something about national defections, right-hand extremes, and left-hand failings off; but, as May Hettly observed, his head was carried at the time; and it is probable that these expressions occurred to him merely out of general habit, and that he died in the full spirit of charity with all men. About an hour afterwards he slept in the Lord. Notwithstanding her father's advanced age, his death was a severe shock to Mrs. Butler. Much of her time had been dedicated to attending to his health and his wishes, and she felt as if part of her business in the world was ended, when the good old man was no more. His wealth, which came nearly to fifteen hundred pounds, in disposable capital, served to raise the fortunes of the family at the Manse. How to dispose of this sum for the best advantage of his family, was matter of anxious consideration to Butler. "If we put it on heritable bond, we shall maybe lose the interest; for there's that bond over Lounsbeck's land, your father could neither get principal nor interest for it--If we bring it into the funds, we shall maybe lose the principal and all, as many did in the South Sea scheme. The little estate of Craigsture is in the market--it lies within two miles of the Manse, and Knock says his Grace has no thought to buy it. But they ask L2500, and they may, for it is worth the money; and were I to borrow the balance, the creditor might call it up suddenly, or in case of my death my family might be distressed." "And so if we had mair siller, we might buy that bonny pasture-ground, where the grass comes so early?" asked Jeanie. "Certainly, my dear; and Knockdunder, who is a good judge, is strongly advising me to it. To be sure it is his nephew that is selling it." "Aweel, Reuben," said Jeanie, "ye maun just look up a text in Scripture, as ye did when ye wanted siller before--just look up a text in the Bible." "Ah, Jeanie," said Butler, laughing and pressing her hand at the same time, "the best people in these times can only work miracles once." "We will see," said Jeanie composedly; and going to the closet in which she kept her honey, her sugar, her pots of jelly, her vials of the more ordinary medicines, and which served her, in short, as a sort of store-room, she jangled vials and gallipots, till, from out the darkest nook, well flanked by a triple row of bottles and jars, which she was under the necessity of displacing, she brought a cracked brown cann, with a piece of leather tied over the top. Its contents seemed to be written papers, thrust in disorder into this uncommon _secre'taire._ But from among these Jeanie brought an old clasped Bible, which had been David Deans's companion in his earlier wanderings, and which he had given to his daughter when the failure of his eyes had compelled him to use one of a larger print. This she gave to Butler, who had been looking at her motions with some surprise, and desired him to see what that book could do for him. He opened the clasps, and to his astonishment a parcel of L50 bank-notes dropped out from betwixt the leaves, where they had been separately lodged, and fluttered upon the floor. "I didna think to hae tauld you o' my wealth, Reuben," said his wife, smiling at his surprise, "till on my deathbed, or maybe on some family pinch; but it wad be better laid out on yon bonny grass-holms, than lying useless here in this auld pigg." "How on earth came ye by that siller, Jeanie?--Why, here is more than a thousand pounds," said Butler, lifting up and counting the notes. "If it were ten thousand, it's a' honestly come by," said Jeanie; "and troth I kenna how muckle there is o't, but it's a' there that ever I got.--And as for how I came by it, Reuben--it's weel come by, and honestly, as I said before--And it's mair folk's secret than mine, or ye wad hae kend about it lang syne; and as for onything else, I am not free to answer mair questions about it, and ye maun just ask me nane." "Answer me but one," said Butler. "Is it all freely and indisputably your own property, to dispose of it as you think fit?--Is it possible no one has a claim in so large a sum except you?" "It _was_ mine, free to dispose of it as I like," answered Jeanie; "and I have disposed of it already, for now it is yours, Reuben--You are Bible Butler now, as well as your forbear, that my puir father had sic an ill will at. Only, if ye like, I wad wish Femie to get a gude share o't when we are gane." "Certainly, it shall be as you choose--But who on earth ever pitched on such a hiding-place for temporal treasures?" "That is just ane o' my auld-fashioned gates, as you ca' them, Reuben. I thought if Donacha Dhu was to make an outbreak upon us, the Bible was the last thing in the house he wad meddle wi'--but an ony mair siller should drap in, as it is not unlikely, I shall e'en pay it ower to you, and ye may lay it out your ain way." "And I positively must not ask you how you have come by all this money?" said the clergyman. "Indeed, Reuben, you must not; for if you were asking me very sair I wad maybe tell you, and then I am sure I would do wrong." "But tell me," said Butler, "is it anything that distresses your own mind?" "There is baith weal and woe come aye wi' world's gear, Reuben; but ye maun ask me naething mair--This siller binds me to naething, and can never be speered back again." "Surely," said Mr. Butler, when he had again counted over the money, as if to assure himself that the notes were real, "there was never man in the world had a wife like mine--a blessing seems to follow her." "Never," said Jeanie, "since the enchanted princess in the bairn's fairy tale, that kamed gold nobles out o' the tae side of her haffit locks, and Dutch dollars out o' the tother. But gang away now, minister, and put by the siller, and dinna keep the notes wampishing in your hand that gate, or I shall wish them in the brown pigg again, for fear we get a black cast about them--we're ower near the hills in these times to be thought to hae siller in the house. And, besides, ye maun gree wi' Knockdunder, that has the selling o' the lands; and dinna you be simple and let him ken o' this windfa', but keep him to the very lowest penny, as if ye had to borrow siller to make the price up." In the last admonition, Jeanie showed distinctly, that, although she did not understand how to secure the money which came into her hands otherwise than by saving and hoarding it, yet she had some part of her father David's shrewdness, even upon worldly subjects. And Reuben Butler was a prudent man, and went and did even as his wife had advised him. The news quickly went abroad into the parish that the minister had bought Craigsture; and some wished him joy, and some "were sorry it had gane out of the auld name." However, his clerical brethren, understanding that he was under the necessity of going to Edinburgh about the ensuing Whitsunday, to get together David Deans's cash to make up the purchase-money of his new acquisition, took the opportunity to name him their delegate to the General Assembly, or Convocation of the Scottish Church, which takes place usually in the latter end of the month of May. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIXTH. But who is this? what thing of sea or land-- Female of sex it seems-- That so bedeck'd, ornate, and gay, Comes this way sailing? Milton. Not long after the incident of the Bible and the bank-notes, Fortune showed that she could surprise Mrs Butler as well as her husband. The Minister, in order to accomplish the various pieces of business which his unwonted visit to Edinburgh rendered necessary, had been under the necessity of setting out from home in the latter end of the month of February, concluding justly that he would find the space betwixt his departure and the term of Whitsunday (24th May) short enough for the purpose of bringing forward those various debtors of old David Deans, out of whose purses a considerable part of the price of his new purchase was to be made good. Jeanie was thus in the unwonted situation of inhabiting a lonely house, and she felt yet more solitary from the death of the good old man who used to divide her cares with her husband. Her children were her principal resource, and to them she paid constant attention. It happened a day or two after Butler's departure that, while she was engaged in some domestic duties, she heard a dispute among the young folk, which, being maintained with obstinacy, appeared to call for her interference. All came to their natural umpire with their complaints. Femie, not yet ten years old, charged Davie and Reubie with an attempt to take away her book by force; and David and Reuben replied, the elder, "That it was not a book for Femie to read," and Reuben, "That it was about a bad woman." "Where did you get the book, ye little hempie?" said Mrs. Butler. "How dare ye touch papa's books when he is away?" But the little lady, holding fast a sheet of crumpled paper, declared "It was nane o' papa's books, and May Hettly had taken it off the muckle cheese which came from Inverara;" for, as was very natural to suppose, a friendly intercourse, with interchange of mutual civilities, was kept up from time to time between Mrs. Dolly Dutton, now Mrs. MacCorkindale, and her former friends. Jeanie took the subject of contention out of the child's hand, to satisfy herself of the propriety of her studies; but how much was she struck when she read upon the title of the broadside-sheet, "The Last Speech, Confession, and Dying Words of Margaret MacCraw, or Murdockson, executed on Harabee Hill, near Carlisle, the day of 1737." It was, indeed, one of those papers which Archibald had bought at Longtown, when he monopolised the pedlar's stock, which Dolly had thrust into her trunk out of sheer economy. One or two copies, it seems, had remained in her repositories at Inverary, till she chanced to need them in packing a cheese, which, as a very superior production, was sent, in the way of civil challenge, to the dairy at Knocktarlitie. The title of this paper, so strangely fallen into the very hands from which, in well-meant respect to her feelings, it had been so long detained, was of itself sufficiently startling; but the narrative itself was so interesting, that Jeanie, shaking herself loose from the children, ran upstairs to her own apartment, and bolted the door, to peruse it without interruption. The narrative, which appeared to have been drawn up, or at least corrected, by the clergyman who attended this unhappy woman, stated the crime for which she suffered to have been "her active part in that atrocious robbery and murder, committed near two years since near Haltwhistle, for which the notorious Frank Levitt was committed for trial at Lancaster assizes. It was supposed the evidence of the accomplice Thomas Tuck, commonly called Tyburn Tom, upon which the woman had been convicted, would weigh equally heavy against him; although many were inclined to think it was Tuck himself who had struck the fatal blow, according to the dying statement of Meg Murdockson." After a circumstantial account of the crime for which she suffered, there was a brief sketch of Margaret's life. It was stated that she was a Scotchwoman by birth, and married a soldier in the Cameronian regiment--that she long followed the camp, and had doubtless acquired in fields of battle, and similar scenes, that ferocity and love of plunder for which she had been afterwards distinguished--that her husband, having obtained his discharge, became servant to a beneficed clergyman of high situation and character in Lincolnshire, and that she acquired the confidence and esteem of that honourable family. She had lost this many years after her husband's death, it was stated, in consequence of conniving at the irregularities of her daughter with the heir of the family, added to the suspicious circumstances attending the birth of a child, which was strongly suspected to have met with foul play, in order to preserve, if possible, the girl's reputation. After this she had led a wandering life both in England and Scotland, under colour sometimes of telling fortunes, sometimes of driving a trade in smuggled wares, but, in fact, receiving stolen goods, and occasionally actively joining in the exploits by which they were obtained. Many of her crimes she had boasted of after conviction, and there was one circumstance for which she seemed to feel a mixture of joy and occasional compunction. When she was residing in the suburbs of Edinburgh during the preceding summer, a girl, who had been seduced by one of her confederates, was intrusted to her charge, and in her house delivered of a male infant. Her daughter, whose mind was in a state of derangement ever since she had lost her own child, according to the criminal's account, carried off the poor girl's infant, taking it for her own, of the reality of whose death she at times could not be persuaded. Margaret Murdockson stated that she, for some time, believed her daughter had actually destroyed the infant in her mad fits, and that she gave the father to understand so, but afterwards learned that a female stroller had got it from her. She showed some compunction at having separated mother and child, especially as the mother had nearly suffered death, being condemned, on the Scotch law, for the supposed murder of her infant. When it was asked what possible interest she could have had in exposing the unfortunate girl to suffer for a crime she had not committed, she asked, if they thought she was going to put her own daughter into trouble to save another? She did not know what the Scotch law would have done to her for carrying the child away. This answer was by no means satisfactory to the clergyman, and he discovered, by close examination, that she had a deep and revengeful hatred against the young person whom she had thus injured. But the paper intimated, that, whatever besides she had communicated upon this subject was confided by her in private to the worthy and reverend Archdeacon who had bestowed such particular pains in affording her spiritual assistance. The broadside went on to intimate, that, after her execution, of which the particulars were given, her daughter, the insane person mentioned more than once, and who was generally known by the name of Madge Wildfire, had been very ill-used by the populace, under the belief that she was a sorceress, and an accomplice in her mother's crimes, and had been with difficulty rescued by the prompt interference of the police. Such (for we omit moral reflections, and all that may seem unnecessary to the explanation of our story) was the tenor of the broadside. To Mrs. Butler it contained intelligence of the highest importance, since it seemed to afford the most unequivocal proof of her sister's innocence respecting the crime for which she had so nearly suffered. It is true, neither she nor her husband, nor even her father, had ever believed her capable of touching her infant with an unkind hand when in possession of her reason; but there was a darkness on the subject, and what might have happened in a moment of insanity was dreadful to think upon. Besides, whatever was their own conviction, they had no means of establishing Effie's innocence to the world, which, according to the tenor of this fugitive publication, was now at length completely manifested by the dying confession of the person chiefly interested in concealing it. After thanking God for a discovery so dear to her feelings, Mrs. Butler began to consider what use she should make of it. To have shown it to her husband would have been her first impulse; but, besides that he was absent from home, and the matter too delicate to be the subject of correspondence by an indifferent penwoman, Mrs. Butler recollected that he was not possessed of the information necessary to form a judgment upon the occasion; and that, adhering to the rule which she had considered as most advisable, she had best transmit the information immediately to her sister, and leave her to adjust with her husband the mode in which they should avail themselves of it. Accordingly, she despatched a special messenger to Glasgow with a packet, enclosing the Confession of Margaret Murdockson, addressed, as usual, under cover, to Mr. Whiterose of York. She expected, with anxiety, an answer, but none arrived in the usual course of post, and she was left to imagine how many various causes might account for Lady Staunton's silence. She began to be half sorry that she had parted with the printed paper, both for fear of its having fallen into bad hands, and from the desire of regaining the document which might be essential to establish her sister's innocence. She was even doubting whether she had not better commit the whole matter to her husband's consideration, when other incidents occurred to divert her purpose. Jeanie (she is a favourite, and we beg her pardon for still using the familiar title) had walked down to the sea-side with her children one morning after breakfast, when the boys, whose sight was more discriminating than hers, exclaimed, that "the Captain's coach and six was coming right for the shore, with ladies in it." Jeanie instinctively bent her eyes on the approaching boat, and became soon sensible that there were two females in the stern, seated beside the gracious Duncan, who acted as pilot. It was a point of politeness to walk towards the landing-place, in order to receive them, especially as she saw that the Captain of Knockdunder was upon honour and ceremony. His piper was in the bow of the boat, sending forth music, of which one half sounded the better that the other was drowned by the waves and the breeze. Moreover, he himself had his brigadier wig newly frizzed, his bonnet (he had abjured the cocked-hat) decorated with Saint George's red cross, his uniform mounted as a captain of militia, the Duke's flag with the boar's head displayed--all intimated parade and gala. As Mrs. Butler approached the landing-place, she observed the Captain hand the ladies ashore with marks of great attention, and the parties advanced towards her, the Captain a few steps before the two ladies, of whom the taller and elder leaned on the shoulder of the other, who seemed to be an attendant or servant. As they met, Duncan, in his best, most important, and deepest tone of Highland civility, "pegged leave to introduce to Mrs. Putler, Lady--eh--eh--I hae forgotten your leddyship's name!" "Never mind my name, sir," said the lady; "I trust Mrs. Butler will be at no loss. The Duke's letter"--And, as she observed Mrs. Butler look confused, she said again to Duncan somethin sharply, "Did you not send the letter last night, sir?" "In troth and I didna, and I crave your leddyship's pardon; but you see, matam, I thought it would do as weel to-tay, pecause Mrs. Putler is never taen out o'sorts--never--and the coach was out fishing--and the gig was gane to Greenock for a cag of prandy--and--Put here's his Grace's letter." "Give it me, sir," said the lady, taking it out of his hand; "since you have not found it convenient to do me the favour to send it before me, I will deliver it myself." Mrs. Butler looked with great attention, and a certain dubious feeling of deep interest, on the lady, who thus expressed herself with authority over the man of authority, and to whose mandates he seemed to submit, resigning the letter with a "Just as your leddyship is pleased to order it." The lady was rather above the middle size, beautifully made, though something _embonpoint,_ with a hand and arm exquisitely formed. Her manner was easy, dignified, and commanding, and seemed to evince high birth and the habits of elevated society. She wore a travelling dress--a grey beaver hat, and a veil of Flanders lace. Two footmen, in rich liveries, who got out of the barge, and lifted out a trunk and portmanteau, appeared to belong to her suite. "As you did not receive the letter, madam, which should have served for my introduction--for I presume you are Mrs. Butler--I will not present it to you till you are so good as to admit me into your house without it." "To pe sure, matam," said Knockdunder, "ye canna doubt Mrs. Putler will do that.--Mrs. Putler, this is Lady--Lady--these tamned Southern names rin out o' my head like a stane trowling down hill--put I believe she is a Scottish woman porn--the mair our credit--and I presume her leddyship is of the house of" "The Duke of Argyle knows my family very well, sir," said the lady, in a tone which seemed designed to silence Duncan, or, at any rate, which had that effect completely. There was something about the whole of this stranger's address, and tone, and manner, which acted upon Jeanie's feelings like the illusions of a dream, that tease us with a puzzling approach to reality. Something there was of her sister in the gait and manner of the stranger, as well as in the sound of her voice, and something also, when, lifting her veil, she showed features, to which, changed as they were in expression and complexion, she could not but attach many remembrances. The stranger was turned of thirty certainly; but so well were her personal charms assisted by the power of dress, and arrangement of ornament, that she might well have passed for one-and-twenty. And her behaviour was so steady and so composed, that, as often as Mrs. Butler perceived anew some point of resemblance to her unfortunate sister, so often the sustained self-command and absolute composure of the stranger destroyed the ideas which began to arise in her imagination. She led the way silently towards the Manse, lost in a confusion of reflections, and trusting the letter with which she was to be there intrusted, would afford her satisfactory explanation of what was a most puzzling and embarrassing scene. The lady maintained in the meanwhile the manners of a stranger of rank. She admired the various points of view like one who has studied nature, and the best representations of art. At length she took notice of the children. "These are two fine young mountaineers--Yours, madam, I presume?" Jeanie replied in the affirmative. The stranger sighed, and sighed once more as they were presented to her by name. "Come here, Femie," said Mrs. Butler, "and hold your head up." "What is your daughter's name, madam?" said the lady. "Euphemia, madam," answered Mrs. Butler. "I thought the ordinary Scottish contraction of the name had been Effie;" replied the stranger, in a tone which went to Jeanie's heart; for in that single word there was more of her sister--more of _lang syne_ ideas--than in all the reminiscences which her own heart had anticipated, or the features and manner of the stranger had suggested. When they reached the Manse, the lady gave Mrs. Butler the letter which she had taken out of the hands of Knockdunder; and as she gave it she pressed her hand, adding aloud, "Perhaps, madam, you will have the goodness to get me a little milk!" "And me a drap of the grey-peard, if you please, Mrs. Putler," added Duncan. Mrs. Butler withdrew; but, deputing to May Hettly and to David the supply of the strangers' wants, she hastened into her own room to read the letter. The envelope was addressed in the Duke of Argyle's hand, and requested Mrs. Butler's attentions and civility to a lady of rank, a particular friend of his late brother, Lady Staunton of Willingham, who, being recommended to drink goats' whey by the physicians, was to honour the Lodge at Roseneath with her residence, while her husband made a short tour in Scotland. But within the same cover, which had been given to Lady Staunton unsealed, was a letter from that lady, intended to prepare her sister for meeting her, and which, but for the Captain's negligence, she ought to have received on the preceding evening. It stated that the news in Jeanie's last letter had been so interesting to her husband, that he was determined to inquire farther into the confession made at Carlisle, and the fate of that poor innocent, and that, as he had been in some degree successful, she had, by the most earnest entreaties, extorted rather than obtained his permission, under promise of observing the most strict incognito, to spend a week or two with her sister, or in her neighbourhood, while he was prosecuting researches, to which (though it appeared to her very vainly) he seemed to attach some hopes of success. There was a postscript, desiring that Jeanie would trust to Lady S. the management of their intercourse, and be content with assenting to what she should propose. After reading and again reading the letter, Mrs. Butler hurried down stairs, divided betwixt the fear of betraying her secret, and the desire to throw herself upon her sister's neck. Effie received her with a glance at once affectionate and cautionary, and immediately proceeded to speak. "I have been telling Mr. ------, Captain , this gentleman, Mrs. Butler, that if you could accommodate me with an apartment in your house, and a place for Ellis to sleep, and for the two men, it would suit me better than the Lodge, which his Grace has so kindly placed at my disposal. I am advised I should reside as near where the goats feed as possible." "I have peen assuring my leddy, Mrs. Putler," said Duncan, "that though it could not discommode you to receive any of his Grace's visitors or mine, yet she had mooch petter stay at the Lodge; and for the gaits, the creatures can be fetched there, in respect it is mair fitting they suld wait upon her Leddyship, than she upon the like o' them." "By no means derange the goats for me," said Lady Staunton; "I am certain the milk must be much better here." And this she said with languid negligence, as one whose slightest intimation of humour is to bear down all argument. Mrs. Butler hastened to intimate, that her house, such as it was, was heartily at the disposal of Lady Staunton; but the Captain continued to remonstrate.. "The Duke," he said, "had written" "I will settle all that with his Grace" "And there were the things had been sent down frae Glasco" "Anything necessary might be sent over to the Parsonage--She would beg the favour of Mrs. Butler to show her an apartment, and of the Captain to have her trunks, etc., sent over from Roseneath." So she courtesied off poor Duncan, who departed, saying in his secret soul, "Cot tamn her English impudence!--she takes possession of the minister's house as an it were her ain--and speaks to shentlemens as if they were pounden servants, and per tamned to her!--And there's the deer that was shot too--but we will send it ower to the Manse, whilk will pe put civil, seeing I hae prought worthy Mrs. Putler sic a fliskmahoy."-- And with these kind intentions, he went to the shore to give his orders accordingly. In the meantime, the meeting of the sisters was as affectionate as it was extraordinary, and each evinced her feelings in the way proper to her character. Jeanie was so much overcome by wonder, and even by awe, that her feelings were deep, stunning, and almost overpowering. Effie, on the other hand, wept, laughed, sobbed, screamed, and clapped her hands for joy, all in the space of five minutes, giving way at once, and without reserve, to a natural excessive vivacity of temper, which no one, however, knew better how to restrain under the rules of artificial breeding. After an hour had passed like a moment in their expressions of mutual affection, Lady Staunton observed the Captain walking with impatient steps below the window. "That tiresome Highland fool has returned upon our hands," she said. "I will pray him to grace us with his absence." "Hout no! hout no!" said Mrs. Butler, in a tone of entreaty; "ye maunna affront the Captain." "Affront?" said Lady Staunton; "nobody is ever affronted at what I do or say, my dear. However, I will endure him, since you think it proper." The Captain was accordingly graciously requested by Lady Staunton to remain during dinner. During this visit his studious and punctilious complaisance towards the lady of rank was happily contrasted by the cavalier air of civil familiarity in which he indulged towards the minister's wife. "I have not been able to persuade Mrs. Butler," said Lady Staunton to the Captain, during the interval when Jeanie had left the parlour, "to let me talk of making any recompense for storming her house, and garrisoning it in the way I have done." "Doubtless, matam," said the Captain, "it wad ill pecome Mrs. Putler, wha is a very decent pody, to make any such sharge to a lady who comes from my house, or his Grace's, which is the same thing.--And speaking of garrisons, in the year forty-five, I was poot with a garrison of twenty of my lads in the house of Inver-Garry, whilk had near been unhappily, for" "I beg your pardon, sir--But I wish I could think of some way of indemnifying this good lady." "O, no need of intemnifying at all--no trouble for her, nothing at all-- So, peing in the house of Inver-Garry, and the people about it being uncanny, I doubted the warst, and" "Do you happen to know, sir," said Lady Staunton, "if any of these two lads, these young Butlers, I mean, show any turn for the army?" "Could not say, indeed, my leddy," replied Knockdunder--"So, I knowing the people to pe unchancy, and not to lippen to, and hearing a pibroch in the wood, I pegan to pid my lads look to their flints, and then" "For," said Lady Staunton, with the most ruthless disregard to the narrative which she mangled by these interruptions, "if that should be the case, it should cost Sir George but the asking a pair of colours for one of them at the War-Office, since we have always supported Government, and never had occasion to trouble ministers." "And if you please, my leddy," said Duncan, who began to find some savour in this proposal, "as I hae a braw weel-grown lad of a nevoy, ca'd Duncan MacGilligan, that is as pig as paith the Putler pairns putten thegither, Sir George could ask a pair for him at the same time, and it wad pe put ae asking for a'." Lady Staunton only answered this hint with a well-bred stare, which gave no sort of encouragement. Jeanie, who now returned, was lost in amazement at the wonderful difference betwixt the helpless and despairing girl, whom she had seen stretched on a flock-bed in a dungeon, expecting a violent and disgraceful death, and last as a forlorn exile upon the midnight beach, with the elegant, well-bred, beautiful woman before her. The features, now that her sister's veil was laid aside, did not appear so extremely different, as the whole manner, expression, look, and bearing. In outside show, Lady Staunton seemed completely a creature too soft and fair for sorrow to have touched; so much accustomed to have all her whims complied with by those around her, that she seemed to expect she should even be saved the trouble of forming them; and so totally unacquainted with contradiction, that she did not even use the tone of self-will, since to breathe a wish was to have it fulfilled. She made no ceremony of ridding herself of Duncan as soon as the evening approached; but complimented him out of the house under pretext of fatigue, with the utmost _nonchalance._ When they were alone, her sister could not help expressing her wonder at the self-possession with which Lady Staunton sustained her part. "I daresay you are surprised at it," said Lady Staunton composedly; "for you, my dear Jeanie, have been truth itself from your cradle upwards; but you must remember that I am a liar of fifteen years' standing, and therefore must by this time be used to my character." In fact, during the feverish tumult of feelings excited during the two or three first days, Mrs. Butler thought her sister's manner was completely contradictory of the desponding tone which pervaded her correspondence. She was moved to tears, indeed, by the sight of her father's grave, marked by a modest stone recording his piety and integrity; but lighter impressions and associations had also power over her. She amused herself with visiting the dairy, in which she had so long been assistant, and was so near discovering herself to May Hettly, by betraying her acquaintance with the celebrated receipt for Dunlop cheese, that she compared herself to Bedreddin Hassan, whom the vizier, his father-in-law, discovered by his superlative skill in composing cream-tarts with pepper in them. But when the novelty of such avocations ceased to amuse her, she showed to her sister but too plainly, that the gaudy colouring with which she veiled her unhappiness afforded as little real comfort, as the gay uniform of the soldier when it is drawn over his mortal wound. There were moods and moments, in which her despondence seemed to exceed even that which she herself had described in her letters, and which too well convinced Mrs. Butler how little her sister's lot, which in appearance was so brilliant, was in reality to be envied. There was one source, however, from which Lady Staunton derived a pure degree of pleasure. Gifted in every particular with a higher degree of imagination than that of her sister, she was an admirer of the beauties of nature, a taste which compensates many evils to those who happen to enjoy it. Here her character of a fine lady stopped short, where she ought to have Scream'd at ilk cleugh, and screech'd at ilka how, As loud as she had seen the worrie-cow. On the contrary, with the two boys for her guides, she undertook long and fatiguing walks among the neighbouring mountains, to visit glens, lakes, waterfalls, or whatever scenes of natural wonder or beauty lay concealed among their recesses. It is Wordsworth, I think, who, talking of an old man under difficulties, remarks, with a singular attention to nature, Whether it was care that spurr'd him, God only knows; but to the very last, He had the lightest foot in Ennerdale. In the same manner, languid, listless, and unhappy, within doors, at times even indicating something which approached near to contempt of the homely accommodations of her sister's house, although she instantly endeavoured, by a thousand kindnesses, to atone for such ebullitions of spleen, Lady Staunton appeared to feel interest and energy while in the open air, and traversing the mountain landscapes in society with the two boys, whose ears she delighted with stories of what she had seen in other countries, and what she had to show them at Willingham Manor. And they, on the other hand, exerted themselves in doing the honours of Dumbartonshire to the lady who seemed so kind, insomuch that there was scarce a glen in the neighbouring hills to which they did not introduce her. Upon one of these excursions, while Reuben was otherwise employed, David alone acted as Lady Staunton's guide, and promised to show her a cascade in the hills, grander and higher than any they had yet visited. It was a walk of five long miles, and over rough ground, varied, however, and cheered, by mountain views, and peeps now of the firth and its islands, now of distant lakes, now of rocks and precipices. The scene itself, too, when they reached it, amply rewarded the labour of the walk. A single shoot carried a considerable stream over the face of a black rock, which contrasted strongly in colour with the white foam of the cascade, and, at the depth of about twenty feet, another rock intercepted the view of the bottom of the fall. The water, wheeling out far beneath, swept round the crag, which thus bounded their view, and tumbled down the rocky glen in a torrent of foam. Those who love nature always desire to penetrate into its utmost recesses, and Lady Staunton asked David whether there was not some mode of gaining a view of the abyss at the foot of the fall. He said that he knew a station on a shelf on the farther side of the intercepting rock, from which the whole waterfall was visible, but that the road to it was steep and slippery and dangerous. Bent, however, on gratifying her curiosity, she desired him to lead the way; and accordingly he did so over crag and stone, anxiously pointing out to her the resting-places where she ought to step, for their mode of advancing soon ceased to be walking, and became scrambling. In this manner, clinging like sea-birds to the face of the rock, they were enabled at length to turn round it, and came full in front of the fall, which here had a most tremendous aspect, boiling, roaring, and thundering with unceasing din, into a black cauldron, a hundred feet at least below them, which resembled the crater of a volcano. The noise, the dashing of the waters, which gave an unsteady appearance to all around them, the trembling even of the huge crag on which they stood, the precariousness of their footing, for there was scarce room for them to stand on the shelf of rock which they had thus attained, had so powerful an effect on the senses and imagination of Lady Staunton, that she called out to David she was falling, and would in fact have dropped from the crag had he not caught hold of her. The boy was bold and stout of his age--still he was but fourteen years old, and as his assistance gave no confidence to Lady Staunton, she felt her situation become really perilous. The chance was, that, in the appalling novelty of the circumstances, he might have caught the infection of her panic, in which case it is likely that both must have perished. She now screamed with terror, though without hope of calling any one to her assistance. To her amazement, the scream was answered by a whistle from above, of a tone so clear and shrill, that it was heard even amid the noise of the waterfall. In this moment of terror and perplexity, a human face, black, and having grizzled hair hanging down over the forehead and cheeks, and mixing with mustaches and a beard of the same colour, and as much matted and tangled, looked down on them from a broken part of the rock above. "It is the Enemy!" said the boy, who had very nearly become incapable of supporting Lady Staunton. "No, no," she exclaimed, inaccessible to supernatural terrors, and restored to the presence of mind of which she had been deprived by the danger of her situation, "it is a man--For God's sake, my friend, help us!" The face glared at them, but made no answer; in a second or two afterwards, another, that of a young lad, appeared beside the first, equally swart and begrimed, but having tangled black hair, descending in elf-locks, which gave an air of wildness and ferocity to the whole expression of the countenance. Lady Staunton repeated her entreaties, clinging to the rock with more energy, as she found that, from the superstitious terror of her guide, he became incapable of supporting her. Her words were probably drowned in the roar of the falling stream, for, though she observed the lips of the young being whom she supplicated move as he spoke in reply, not a word reached her ear. A moment afterwards it appeared he had not mistaken the nature of her supplication, which, indeed, was easy to be understood from her situation and gestures. The younger apparition disappeared, and immediately after lowered a ladder of twisted osiers, about eight feet in length, and made signs to David to hold it fast while the lady ascended. Despair gives courage, and finding herself in this fearful predicament, Lady Staunton did not hesitate to risk the ascent by the precarious means which this accommodation afforded; and, carefully assisted by the person who had thus providentially come to her aid, she reached the summit in safety. She did not, however, even look around her until she saw her nephew lightly and actively follow her examples although there was now no one to hold the ladder fast. When she saw him safe she looked round, and could not help shuddering at the place and company in which she found herself. They were on a sort of platform of rock, surrounded on every side by precipices, or overhanging cliffs, and which it would have been scarce possible for any research to have discovered, as it did not seem to be commanded by any accessible position. It was partly covered by a huge fragment of stone, which, having fallen from the cliffs above, had been intercepted by others in its descent, and jammed so as to serve for a sloping roof to the farther part of the broad shelf or platform on which they stood. A quantity of withered moss and leaves, strewed beneath this rude and wretched shelter, showed the lairs,--they could not be termed the beds,--of those who dwelt in this eyrie, for it deserved no other name. Of these, two were before Lady Staunton. One, the same who had afforded such timely assistance, stood upright before them, a tall, lathy, young savage; his dress a tattered plaid and philabeg, no shoes, no stockings, no hat or bonnet, the place of the last being supplied by his hair, twisted and matted like the _glibbe_ of the ancient wild Irish, and, like theirs, forming a natural thick-set stout enough to bear off the cut of a sword. Yet the eyes of the lad were keen and sparkling; his gesture free and noble, like that of all savages. He took little notice of David Butler, but gazed with wonder on Lady Staunton, as a being different probably in dress, and superior in beauty, to anything he had ever beheld. The old man, whose face they had first seen, remained recumbent in the same posture as when he had first looked down on them, only his face was turned towards them as he lay and looked up with a lazy and listless apathy, which belied the general expression of his dark and rugged features. He seemed a very tall man, but was scarce better clad than the younger. He had on a loose Lowland greatcoat, and ragged tartan trews or pantaloons. All around looked singularly wild and unpropitious. Beneath the brow of the incumbent rock was a charcoal fire, on which there was a still working, with bellows, pincers, hammers, a movable anvil, and other smith's tools; three guns, with two or three sacks and barrels, were disposed against the wall of rock, under shelter of the superincumbent crag; a dirk and two swords, and a Lochaber axe, lay scattered around the fire, of which the red glare cast a ruddy tinge on the precipitous foam and mist of the cascade. The lad, when he had satisfied his curiosity with staring at Lady Staunton, fetched an earthen jar and a horn-cup, into which he poured some spirits, apparently hot from the still, and offered them successively to the lady and to the boy. Both declined, and the young savage quaffed off the draught, which could not amount to less than three ordinary glasses. He then fetched another ladder from the corner of the cavern, if it could be termed so, adjusted it against the transverse rock, which served as a roof, and made signs for the lady to ascend it, while he held it fast below. She did so, and found herself on the top of a broad rock, near the brink of the chasm into which the brook precipitates itself. She could see the crest of the torrent flung loose down the rock, like the mane of a wild horse, but without having any view of the lower platform from which she had ascended. David was not suffered to mount so easily; the lad, from sport or love of mischief, shook the ladder a good deal as he ascended, and seemed to enjoy the terror of young Butler, so that, when they had both come up, they looked on each other with no friendly eyes. Neither, however, spoke. The young caird, or tinker, or gipsy, with a good deal of attention, assisted Lady Staunton up a very perilous ascent which she had still to encounter, and they were followed by David Butler, until all three stood clear of the ravine on the side of a mountain, whose sides were covered with heather and sheets of loose shingle. So narrow was the chasm out of which they ascended, that, unless when they were on the very verge, the eye passed to the other side without perceiving the existence of a rent so fearful, and nothing was seen of the cataract, though its deep hoarse voice was still heard. Lady Staunton, freed from the danger of rock and river, had now a new subject of anxiety. Her two guides confronted each other with angry countenances; for David, though younger by two years at least, and much shorter, was a stout, well-set, and very bold boy. "You are the black-coat's son of Knocktarlitie," said the young caird; "if you come here again, I'll pitch you down the linn like a foot-ball." "Ay, lad, ye are very short to be sae lang," retorted young Butler undauntedly, and measuring his opponent's height with an undismayed eye; "I am thinking you are a gillie of Black Donacha; if you come down the glen, we'll shoot you like a wild buck." "You may tell your father," said the lad, "that the leaf on the timber is the last he shall see--we will hae amends for the mischief he has done to us." "I hope he will live to see mony simmers, and do ye muckle mair," answered David. More might have passed, but Lady Staunton stepped between them with her purse in her hand, and taking out a guinea, of which it contained several, visible through the net-work, as well as some silver in the opposite end, offered it to the caird. "The white siller, lady--the white siller," said the young savage, to whom the value of gold was probably unknown. Lady Staunton poured what silver she had into his hand, and the juvenile savage snatched it greedily, and made a sort of half inclination of acknowledgment and adieu. "Let us make haste now, Lady Staunton," said David, "for there will be little peace with them since they hae seen your purse." They hurried on as fast as they could; but they had not descended the hill a hundred yards or two before they heard a halloo behind them, and looking back, saw both the old man and the young one pursuing them with great speed, the former with a gun on his shoulder. Very fortunately, at this moment a sportsman, a gamekeeper of the Duke, who was engaged in stalking deer, appeared on the face of the hill. The bandits stopped on seeing him, and Lady Staunton hastened to put herself under his protection. He readily gave them his escort home, and it required his athletic form and loaded rifle to restore to the lady her usual confidence and courage. Donald listened with much gravity to the account of their adventure; and answered with great composure to David's repeated inquiries, whether he could have suspected that the cairds had been lurking there,--"Inteed, Master Tavie, I might hae had some guess that they were there, or thereabout, though maybe I had nane. But I am aften on the hill; and they are like wasps--they stang only them that fashes them; sae, for my part, I make a point not to see them, unless I were ordered out on the preceese errand by MacCallummore or Knockdunder, whilk is a clean different case." They reached the Manse late; and Lady Staunton, who had suffered much both from fright and fatigue, never again permitted her love of the picturesque to carry her so far among the mountains without a stronger escort than David, though she acknowledged he had won the stand of colours by the intrepidity he had displayed, so soon as assured he had to do with an earthly antagonist. "I couldna maybe hae made muckle o' a bargain wi' yon lang callant," said David, when thus complimented on his valour; "but when ye deal wi' thae folk, it's tyne heart tyne a'." CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVENTH. What see you there, That hath so cowarded and chased your blood Out of appearance? Henry the Fifth. We are under the necessity of returning to Edinburgh, where the General Assembly was now sitting. It is well known, that some Scottish nobleman is usually deputed as High Commissioner, to represent the person of the King in this convocation; that he has allowances for the purpose of maintaining a certain outward show and solemnity, and supporting the hospitality of the representative of Majesty. Whoever are distinguished by rank, or office, in or near the capital, usually attend the morning levees of the Lord Commissioner, and walk with him in procession to the place where the Assembly meets. The nobleman who held this office chanced to be particularly connected with Sir George Staunton, and it was in his train that he ventured to tread the High Street of Edinburgh for the first time since the fatal night of Porteous's execution. Walking at the right hand of the representative of Sovereignty, covered with lace and embroidery, and with all the paraphernalia of wealth and rank, the handsome though wasted figure of the English stranger attracted all eyes. Who could have recognised in a form so aristocratic the plebeian convict, that, disguised in the rags of Madge Wildfire, had led the formidable rioters to their destined revenge? There was no possibility that this could happen, even if any of his ancient acquaintances, a race of men whose lives are so brief, had happened to survive the span commonly allotted to evil-doers. Besides, the whole affair had long fallen asleep, with the angry passions in which it originated. Nothing is more certain than that persons known to have had a share in that formidable riot, and to have fled from Scotland on that account, had made money abroad, returned to enjoy it in their native country, and lived and died undisturbed by the law.* * See Arnot's _Criminal Trials,_ 4to ed. p. 235. The forbearance of the magistrate was, in these instances, wise, certainly, and just; for what good impression could be made on the public mind by punishment, when the memory of the offence was obliterated, and all that was remembered was the recent inoffensive, or perhaps exemplary conduct of the offender? Sir George Staunton might, therefore, tread the scene of his former audacious exploits, free from the apprehension of the law, or even of discovery or suspicion. But with what feelings his heart that day throbbed, must be left to those of the reader to imagine. It was an object of no common interest which had brought him to encounter so many painful remembrances. In consequence of Jeanie's letter to Lady Staunton, transmitting the confession, he had visited the town of Carlisle, and had found Archdeacon Fleming still alive, by whom that confession had been received. This reverend gentleman, whose character stood deservedly very high, he so far admitted into his confidence, as to own himself the father of the unfortunate infant which had been spirited away by Madge Wildfire, representing the intrigue as a matter of juvenile extravagance on his own part, for which he was now anxious to atone, by tracing, if possible, what had become of the child. After some recollection of the circumstances, the clergyman was able to call to memory, that the unhappy woman had written a letter to George Staunton, Esq., younger, Rectory, Willingham, by Grantham; that he had forwarded it to the address accordingly, and that it had been returned, with a note from the Reverend Mr. Staunton, Rector of Willingham, saying, he knew no such person as him to whom the letter was addressed. As this had happened just at the time when George had, for the last time, absconded from his father's house to carry off Effie, he was at no loss to account for the cause of the resentment, under the influence of which his father had disowned him. This was another instance in which his ungovernable temper had occasioned his misfortune; had he remained at Willingham but a few days longer, he would have received Margaret Murdockson's letter, in which were exactly described the person and haunts of the woman, Annaple Bailzou, to whom she had parted with the infant. It appeared that Meg Murdockson had been induced to make this confession, less from any feelings of contrition, than from the desire of obtaining, through George Staunton or his father's means, protection and support for her daughter Madge. Her letter to George Staunton said, "That while the writer lived, her daughter would have needed nought from any body, and that she would never have meddled in these affairs, except to pay back the ill that George had done to her and hers. But she was to die, and her daughter would be destitute, and without reason to guide her. She had lived in the world long enough to know that people did nothing for nothing;--so she had told George Staunton all he could wish to know about his wean, in hopes he would not see the demented young creature he had ruined perish for want. As for her motives for not telling them sooner, she had a long account to reckon for in the next world, and she would reckon for that too." The clergyman said that Meg had died in the same desperate state of mind, occasionally expressing some regret about the child which was lost, but oftener sorrow that the mother had not been hanged--her mind at once a chaos of guilt, rage, and apprehension for her daughter's future safety; that instinctive feeling of parental anxiety which she had in common with the she-wolf and lioness, being the last shade of kindly affection that occupied a breast equally savage. The melancholy catastrophe of Madge Wildfire was occasioned by her taking the confusion of her mother's execution, as affording an opportunity of leaving the workhouse to which the clergyman had sent her, and presenting herself to the mob in their fury, to perish in the way we have already seen. When Dr. Fleming found the convict's letter was returned from Lincolnshire, he wrote to a friend in Edinburgh, to inquire into the fate of the unfortunate girl whose child had been stolen, and was informed by his correspondent, that she had been pardoned, and that, with all her family, she had retired to some distant part of Scotland, or left the kingdom entirely. And here the matter rested, until, at Sir George Staunton's application, the clergyman looked out, and produced Margaret Murdockson's returned letter, and the other memoranda which he had kept concerning the affair. Whatever might be Sir George Staunton's feelings in ripping up this miserable history, and listening to the tragical fate of the unhappy girl whom he had ruined, he had so much of his ancient wilfulness of disposition left, as to shut his eyes on everything, save the prospect which seemed to open itself of recovering his son. It was true, it would be difficult to produce him, without telling much more of the history of his birth, and the misfortunes of his parents, than it was prudent to make known. But let him once be found, and, being found, let him but prove worthy of his father's protection, and many ways might be fallen upon to avoid such risk. Sir George Staunton was at liberty to adopt him as his heir, if he pleased, without communicating the secret of his birth; or an Act of Parliament might be obtained, declaring him legitimate, and allowing him the name and arms of his father. He was indeed already a legitimate child according to the law of Scotland, by the subsequent marriage of his parents. Wilful in everything, Sir George's sole desire now was to see this son, even should his recovery bring with it a new series of misfortunes, as dreadful as those which followed on his being lost. But where was the youth who might eventually be called to the honours and estates of this ancient family? On what heath was he wandering, and shrouded by what mean disguise? Did he gain his precarious bread by some petty trade, by menial toil, by violence, or by theft? These were questions on which Sir George's anxious investigations could obtain no light. Many remembered that Annaple Bailzou wandered through the country as a beggar and fortune-teller, or spae-wife--some remembered that she had been seen with an infant in 1737 or 1738,--but for more than ten years she had not travelled that district; and that she had been heard to say she was going to a distant part of Scotland, of which country she was a native. To Scotland, therefore, came Sir George Staunton, having parted with his lady at Glasgow; and his arrival at Edinburg happening to coincide with the sitting of the General Assembly of the Kirk, his acquaintance with the nobleman who held the office of Lord High Commissioner forced him more into public than suited either his views or inclinations. At the public table of this nobleman, Sir George Staunton was placed next to a clergyman of respectable appearance, and well-bred, though plain demeanour, whose name he discovered to be Butler. It had been no part of Sir George's plan to take his brother-in-law into his confidence, and he had rejoiced exceedingly in the assurances he received from his wife, that Mrs. Butler, the very soul of integrity and honour, had never suffered the account he had given of himself at Willingham Rectory to transpire, even to her husband. But he was not sorry to have an opportunity to converse with so near a connection without being known to him, and to form a judgment of his character and understanding. He saw much, and heard more, to raise Butler very high in his opinion. He found he was generally respected by those of his own profession, as well as by the laity who had seats in the Assembly. He had made several public appearances in the Assembly, distinguished by good sense, candour, and ability; and he was followed and admired as a sound, and, at the same time, an eloquent preacher. This was all very satisfactory to Sir George Staunton's pride, which had revolted at the idea of his wife's sister being obscurely married. He now began, on the contrary, to think the connection so much better than he expected, that, if it should be necessary to acknowledge it, in consequence of the recovery of his son, it would sound well enough that Lady Staunton had a sister, who, in the decayed state of the family, had married a Scottish clergyman, high in the opinion of his countrymen, and a leader in the church. It was with these feelings, that, when the Lord High Commissioner's company broke up, Sir George Staunton, under pretence of prolonging some inquiries concerning the constitution of the Church of Scotland, requested Butler to go home to his lodgings in the Lawnmarket, and drink a cup of coffee. Butler agreed to wait upon him, providing Sir George would permit him, in passing, to call at a friend's house where he resided, and make his apology for not coming to partake her tea. They proceeded up the High Street, entered the Krames, and passed the begging-box, placed to remind those at liberty of the distresses of the poor prisoners. Sir George paused there one instant, and next day a L20 note was found in that receptacle for public charity. When he came up to Butler again, he found him with his eyes fixed on the entrance of the Tolbooth, and apparently in deep thought. "That seems a very strong door," said Sir George, by way of saying something. "It is so, sir," said Butler, turning off and beginning to walk forward, "but it was my misfortune at one time to see it prove greatly too weak." At this moment, looking at his companion, he asked him whether he felt himself ill? and Sir George Staunton admitted, that he had been so foolish as to eat ice, which sometimes disagreed with him. With kind officiousness, that would not be gainsaid, and ere he could find out where he was going, Butler hurried Sir George into the friend's house, near to the prison, in which he himself had lived since he came to town, being, indeed, no other than that of our old friend Bartoline Saddletree, in which Lady Staunton had served a short noviciate as a shop-maid. This recollection rushed on her husband's mind, and the blush of shame which it excited overpowered the sensation of fear which had produced his former paleness. Good Mrs. Saddletree, however, bustled about to receive the rich English baronet as the friend of Mr. Butler, and requested an elderly female in a black gown to sit still, in a way which seemed to imply a wish, that she would clear the way for her betters. In the meanwhile, understanding the state of the case, she ran to get some cordial waters, sovereign, of course, in all cases of faintishness whatsoever. During her absence, her visitor, the female in black, made some progress out of the room, and might have left it altogether without particular observation, had she not stumbled at the threshold, so near Sir George Staunton, that he, in point of civility, raised her and assisted her to the door. "Mrs. Porteous is turned very doited now, puir body," said Mrs. Saddletree, as she returned with her bottle in her hand--"She is no sae auld, but she got a sair back-cast wi' the slaughter o' her husband--Ye had some trouble about that job, Mr. Butler.--I think, sir," to Sir George, "ye had better drink out the haill glass, for to my een ye look waur than when ye came in." And, indeed, he grew as pale as a corpse, on recollecting who it was that his arm had so lately supported--the widow whom he had so large a share in making such. "It is a prescribed job that case of Porteous now," said old Saddletree, who was confined to his chair by the gout--"clean prescribed and out of date." "I am not clear of that, neighbour," said Plumdamas, "for I have heard them say twenty years should rin, and this is but the fifty-ane-- Porteous's mob was in thretty-seven." "Ye'll no teach me law, I think, neighbour--me that has four gaun pleas, and might hae had fourteen, an it hadna been the gudewife? I tell ye, if the foremost of the Porteous mob were standing there where that gentleman stands, the King's Advocate wadna meddle wi' him--it fa's under the negative prescription." "Haud your din, carles," said Mrs. Saddletree, "and let the gentleman sit down and get a dish of comfortable tea." But Sir George had had quite enough of their conversation; and Butler, at his request, made an apology to Mrs. Saddletree, and accompanied him to his lodgings. Here they found another guest waiting Sir George Staunton's return. This was no other than our reader's old acquaintance, Ratcliffe. This man had exercised the office of turnkey with so much vigilance, acuteness, and fidelity, that he gradually rose to be governor, or captain of the Tolbooth. And it is yet to be remembered in tradition, that young men, who rather sought amusing than select society in their merry-meetings, used sometimes to request Ratcliffe's company, in order that he might regale them with legends of his extraordinary feats in the way of robbery and escape.* * There seems an anachronism in the history of this person. Ratcliffe, among other escapes from justice, was released by the Porteous mob when under sentence of death; and he was again under the same predicament, when the Highlanders made a similar jail-delivery in 1745. He was too sincere a whig to embrace liberation at the hands of the Jacobites, and in reward was made one of the keepers of the Tolbooth. So at least runs constant tradition. But he lived and died without resuming his original vocation, otherwise than in his narratives over a bottle. Under these circumstances, he had been recommended to Sir George Staunton by a man of the law in Edinburgh, as a person likely to answer any questions he might have to ask about Annaple Bailzou, who, according to the colour which Sir George Staunton gave to his cause of inquiry, was supposed to have stolen a child in the west of England, belonging to a family in which he was interested. The gentleman had not mentioned his name, but only his official title; so that Sir George Staunton, when told that the captain of the Tolbooth was waiting for him in his parlour, had no idea of meeting his former acquaintance, Jem Ratcliffe. This, therefore, was another new and most unpleasant surprise, for he had no difficulty in recollecting this man's remarkable features. The change, however, from George Robertson to Sir George Staunton, baffled even the penetration of Ratcliffe, and he bowed very low to the baronet and his guest, hoping Mr. Butler would excuse his recollecting that he was an old acquaintance. "And once rendered my wife a piece of great service," said Mr. Butler, "for which she sent you a token of grateful acknowledgment, which I hope came safe and was welcome." "Deil a doubt on't," said Ratcliffe, with a knowing nod; "but ye are muckle changed for the better since I saw ye, Maister Butler." "So much so, that I wonder you knew me." "Aha, then!--Deil a face I see I ever forget," said Ratcliffe while Sir George Staunton, tied to the stake, and incapable of escaping, internally cursed the accuracy of his memory. "And yet, sometimes," continued Ratcliffe, "the sharpest hand will be ta'en in. There is a face in this very room, if I might presume to be sae bauld, that, if I didna ken the honourable person it belangs to, I might think it had some cut of an auld acquaintance." "I should not be much flattered," answered the Baronet, sternly, and roused by the risk in which he saw himself placed, "if it is to me you mean to apply that compliment." "By no manner of means, sir," said Ratcliffe, bowing very low; "I am come to receive your honour's commands, and no to trouble your honour wi' my poor observations." "Well, sir," said Sir George, "I am told you understand police matters-- So do I.--To convince you of which, here are ten guineas of retaining fee--I make them fifty when you can find me certain notice of a person, living or dead, whom you will find described in that paper. I shall leave town presently--you may send your written answer to me to the care of Mr. " (naming his highly respectable agent), "or of his Grace the Lord High Commissioner." Rateliffe bowed and withdrew. "I have angered the proud peat now," he said to himself, "by finding out a likeness; but if George Robertson's father had lived within a mile of his mother, d--n me if I should not know what to think, for as high as he carries his head." When he was left alone with Butler, Sir George Staunton ordered tea and coffee, which were brought by his valet, and then, after considering with himself for a minute, asked his guest whether he had lately heard from his wife and family. Butler, with some surprise at the question, replied, "that he had received no letter for some time; his wife was a poor penwoman." "Then," said Sir George Staunton, "I am the first to inform you there has been an invasion of your quiet premises since you left home. My wife, whom the Duke of Argyle had the goodness to permit to use Roseneath Lodge, while she was spending some weeks in your country, has sallied across and taken up her quarters in the Manse, as she says, to be nearer the goats, whose milk she is using; but, I believe, in reality, because she prefers Mrs. Butler's company to that of the respectable gentleman who acts as seneschal on the Duke's domains." Mr. Butler said, "He had often heard the late Duke and the present speak with high respect of Lady Staunton, and was happy if his house could accommodate any friend of theirs--it would be but a very slight acknowledgment of the many favours he owed them." "That does not make Lady Staunton and myself the less obliged to your hospitality, sir," said Sir George. "May I inquire if you think of returning home soon?" "In the course of two days," Mr. Butler answered, "his duty in the Assembly would be ended; and the other matters he had in town being all finished, he was desirous of returning to Dumbartonshire as soon as he could; but he was under the necessity of transporting a considerable sum in bills and money with him, and therefore wished to travel in company with one or two of his brethren of the clergy." "My escort will be more safe," said Sir George Staunton, "and I think of setting off to-morrow or next day. If you will give me the pleasure of your company, I will undertake to deliver you and your charge safe at the Manse, provided you will admit me along with you." Mr. Butler gratefully accepted of this proposal; the appointment was made accordingly, and, by despatches with one of Sir George's servants, who was sent forward for the purpose, the inhabitants of the manse of Knocktarlitie were made acquainted with the intended journey; and the news rung through the whole vicinity, "that the minister was coming back wi' a braw English gentleman and a' the siller that was to pay for the estate of Craigsture." This sudden resolution of going to Knocktarlitie had been adopted by Sir George Staunton in consequence of the incidents of the evening. In spite of his present consequence, he felt he had presumed too far in venturing so near the scene of his former audacious acts of violence, and he knew too well, from past experience, the acuteness of a man like Ratcliffe, again to encounter him. The next two days he kept his lodgings, under pretence of indisposition, and took leave by writing of his noble friend the High Commissioner, alleging the opportunity of Mr. Butler's company as a reason for leaving Edinburgh sooner than he had proposed. He had a long conference with his agent on the subject of Annaple Bailzou; and the professional gentleman, who was the agent also of the Argyle family, had directions to collect all the information which Ratcliffe or others might be able to obtain concerning the fate of that woman and the unfortunate child, and so soon as anything transpired which had the least appearance of being important, that he should send an express with it instantly to Knocktarlitie. These instructions were backed with a deposit of money, and a request that no expense might be spared; so that Sir George Staunton had little reason to apprehend negligence on the part of the persons intrusted with the commission. The journey, which the brothers made in company, was attended with more pleasure, even to Sir George Staunton, than he had ventured to expect. His heart lightened in spite of himself when they lost sight of Edinburgh; and the easy, sensible conversation of Butler was well calculated to withdraw his thoughts from painful reflections. He even began to think whether there could be much difficulty in removing his wife's connections to the rectory of Willingham; it was only on his part procuring some still better preferment for the present incumbent, and on Butler's, that he should take orders according to the English Church, to which he could not conceive a possibility of his making objection, and then he had them residing under his wing. No doubt there was pain in seeing Mrs. Butler, acquainted, as he knew her to be, with the full truth of his evil history; but then her silence, though he had no reason to complain of her indiscretion hitherto, was still more absolutely ensured. It would keep his lady, also, both in good temper and in more subjection; for she was sometimes troublesome to him by insisting on remaining in town when he desired to retire to the country, alleging the total want of society at Willingham. "Madam, your sister is there," would, he thought, be a sufficient answer to this ready argument. He sounded Butler on this subject, asking what he would think of an English living of twelve hundred pounds yearly, with the burden of affording his company now and then to a neighbour, whose health was not strong or his spirits equal. "He might meet," he said, "occasionally, a very learned and accomplished gentleman, who was in orders as a Catholic priest, but he hoped that would be no insurmountable objection to a man of his liberality of sentiment. What," he said, "would Mr. Butler think of as an answer, if the offer should be made to him?" "Simply that I could not accept of it," said Mr. Butler. "I have no mind to enter into the various debates between the churches; but I was brought up in mine own, have received her ordination, am satisfied of the truth of her doctrines, and will die under the banner I have enlisted to." "What may be the value of your preferment?" said Sir George Staunton, "unless I am asking an indiscreet question." "Probably one hundred a-year, one year with another, besides my glebe and pasture-ground." "And you scruple to exchange that for twelve hundred a-year, without alleging any damning difference of doctrine betwixt the two churches of England and Scotland?" "On that, sir, I have reserved my judgment; there may be much good, and there are certainly saving means in both; but every man must act according to his own lights. I hope I have done, and am in the course of doing, my Master's work in this Highland parish; and it would ill become me, for the sake of lucre, to leave my sheep in the wilderness. But, even in the temporal view which you have taken of the matter, Sir George, this hundred pounds a-year of stipend hath fed and clothed us, and left us nothing to wish for; my father-in-law's succession, and other circumstances, have added a small estate of about twice as much more, and how we are to dispose of it I do not know--So I leave it to you, sir, to think if I were wise, not having the wish or opportunity of spending three hundred a-year, to covet the possession of four times that sum." "This is philosophy," said Sir George; "I have heard of it, but I never saw it before." "It is common sense," replied Butler, "which accords with philosophy and religion more frequently than pedants or zealots are apt to admit." Sir George turned the subject, and did not again resume it. Although they travelled in Sir George's chariot, he seemed so much fatigued with the motion, that it was necessary for him to remain for a day at a small town called Mid-Calder, which was their first stage from Edinburgh. Glasgow occupied another day, so slow were their motions. They travelled on to Dumbarton, where they had resolved to leave the equipage and to hire a boat to take them to the shores near the manse, as the Gare-Loch lay betwixt them and that point, besides the impossibility of travelling in that district with wheel-carriages. Sir George's valet, a man of trust, accompanied them, as also a footman; the grooms were left with the carriage. Just as this arrangement was completed, which was about four o'clock in the afternoon, an express arrived from Sir George's agent in Edinburgh, with a packet, which he opened and read with great attention, appearing much interested and agitated by the contents. The packet had been despatched very soon after their leaving Edinburgh, but the messenger had missed the travellers by passing through Mid-Calder in the night, and overshot his errand by getting to Roseneath before them. He was now on his return, after having waited more than four-and-twenty hours. Sir George Staunton instantly wrote back an answer, and rewarding the messenger liberally, desired him not to sleep till he placed it in his agent's hands. At length they embarked in the boat, which had waited for them some time. During their voyage, which was slow, for they were obliged to row the whole way, and often against the tide, Sir George Staunton's inquiries ran chiefly on the subject of the Highland banditti who had infested that country since the year 1745. Butler informed him that many of them were not native Highlanders, but gipsies, tinkers, and other men of desperate fortunes, who had taken advantage of the confusion introduced by the civil war, the general discontent of the mountaineers, and the unsettled state of police, to practise their plundering trade with more audacity. Sir George next inquired into their lives, their habits, whether the violences which they committed were not sometimes atoned for by acts of generosity, and whether they did not possess the virtues as well as the vices of savage tribes? Butler answered, that certainly they did sometimes show sparks of generosity, of which even the worst class of malefactors are seldom utterly divested; but that their evil propensities were certain and regular principles of action, while any occasional burst of virtuous feeling was only a transient impulse not to be reckoned upon, and excited probably by some singular and unusual concatenation of circumstances. In discussing these inquiries, which Sir George pursued with an apparent eagerness that rather surprised Butler, the latter chanced to mention the name of Donacha dhu na Dunaigh, with which the reader is already acquainted. Sir George caught the sound up eagerly, and as if it conveyed particular interest to his ear. He made the most minute inquiries concerning the man whom he mentioned, the number of his gang, and even the appearance of those who belonged to it. Upon these points Butler could give little answer. The man had a name among the lower class, but his exploits were considerably exaggerated; he had always one or two fellows with him, but never aspired to the command of above three or four. In short, he knew little about him, and the small acquaintance he had had by no means inclined him to desire more. "Nevertheless, I should like to see him some of these days." "That would be a dangerous meeting, Sir George, unless you mean we are to see him receive his deserts from the law, and then it were a melancholy one." "Use every man according to his deserts, Mr. Butler, and who shall escape whipping? But I am talking riddles to you. I will explain them more fully to you when I have spoken over the subject with Lady Staunton.--Pull away, my lads," he added, addressing himself to the rowers; "the clouds threaten us with a storm." In fact, the dead and heavy closeness of the air, the huge piles of clouds which assembled in the western horizon, and glowed like a furnace under the influence of the setting sun--that awful stillness in which nature seems to expect the thunder-burst, as a condemned soldier waits for the platoon fire which is to stretch him on the earth, all betokened a speedy storm. Large broad drops fell from time to time, and induced the gentlemen to assume the boat-cloaks; but the rain again ceased, and the oppressive heat, so unusual in Scotland in the end of May, inclined them to throw them aside. "There is something solemn in this delay of the storm," said Sir George; "it seems as if it suspended its peal till it solemnised some important event in the world below." "Alas!" replied Butler, "what are we that the laws of nature should correspond in their march with our ephemeral deeds or sufferings! The clouds will burst when surcharged with the electric fluid, whether a goat is falling at that instant from the cliffs of Arran, or a hero expiring on the field of battle he has won." "The mind delights to deem it otherwise," said Sir George Staunton; "and to dwell on the fate of humanity as on that which is the prime central movement of the mighty machine. We love not to think that we shall mix with the ages that have gone before us, as these broad black raindrops mingle with the waste of waters, making a trifling and momentary eddy, and are then lost for ever." "_For ever!_--we are not--we cannot be lost for ever," said Butler, looking upward; "death is to us change, not consummation; and the commencement of a new existence, corresponding in character to the deeds which we have done in the body." While they agitated these grave subjects, to which the solemnity of the approaching storm naturally led them, their voyage threatened to be more tedious than they expected, for gusts of wind, which rose and fell with sudden impetuosity, swept the bosom of the firth, and impeded the efforts of the rowers. They had now only to double a small headland, in order to get to the proper landing-place in the mouth of the little river; but in the state of the weather, and the boat being heavy, this was like to be a work of time, and in the meanwhile they must necessarily be exposed to the storm. "Could we not land on this side of the headland," asked Sir George, "and so gain some shelter?" Butler knew of no landing-place, at least none affording a convenient or even practicable passage up the rocks which surrounded the shore. "Think again," said Sir George Staunton; "the storm will soon be violent." "Hout, ay," said one of the boatmen, "there's the Caird's Cove; but we dinna tell the minister about it, and I am no sure if I can steer the boat to it, the bay is sae fa' o' shoals and sunk rocks." "Try," said Sir George, "and I will give you half-a-guinea." The old fellow took the helm, and observed, "That, if they could get in, there was a steep path up from the beach, and half-an-hour's walk from thence to the Manse." "Are you sure you know the way?" said Butler to the old man. "I maybe kend it a wee better fifteen years syne, when Dandie Wilson was in the firth wi' his clean-ganging lugger. I mind Dandie had a wild young Englisher wi' him, that they ca'd" "If you chatter so much," said Sir George Staunton, "you will have the boat on the Grindstone--bring that white rock in a line with the steeple." "By G--," said the veteran, staring, "I think your honour kens the bay as weel as me.--Your honour's nose has been on the Grindstone ere now, I'm thinking." As they spoke thus, they approached the little cove, which, concealed behind crags, and defended on every point by shallows and sunken rocks, could scarce be discovered or approached, except by those intimate with the navigation. An old shattered boat was already drawn up on the beach within the cove, close beneath the trees, and with precautions for concealment. Upon observing this vessel, Butler remarked to his companion, "It is impossible for you to conceive, Sir George, the difficulty I have had with my poor people, in teaching them the guilt and the danger of this contraband trade--yet they have perpetually before their eyes all its dangerous consequences. I do not know anything that more effectually depraves and ruins their moral and religious principles." Sir George forced himself to say something in a low voice about the spirit of adventure natural to youth, and that unquestionably many would become wiser as they grew older. "Too seldom, sir," replied Butler. "If they have been deeply engaged, and especially if they, have mingled in the scenes of violence and blood to which their occupation naturally leads, I have observed, that, sooner or later, they come to an evil end. Experience, as well as Scripture, teaches us, Sir George, that mischief shall hunt the violent man, and that the bloodthirsty man shall not live half his days--But take my arm to help you ashore." Sir George needed assistance, for he was contrasting in his altered thought the different feelings of mind and frame with which he had formerly frequented the same place. As they landed, a low growl of thunder was heard at a distance. "That is ominous, Mr. Butler," said Sir George. "_Intonuit laevum_--it is ominous of good, then," answered Butler, smiling. The boatmen were ordered to make the best of their way round the headland to the ordinary landing-place; the two gentlemen, followed by their servant, sought their way by a blind and tangled path, through a close copsewood, to the Manse of Knocktarlitie, where their arrival was anxiously expected. The sisters in vain had expected their husbands' return on the preceding day, which was that appointed by Sir George's letter. The delay of the travellers at Calder had occasioned this breach of appointment. The inhabitants of the Manse began even to doubt whether they would arrive on the present day. Lady Staunton felt this hope of delay as a brief reprieve, for she dreaded the pangs which her husband's pride must undergo at meeting with a sister-in-law, to whom the whole of his unhappy and dishonourable history was too well known. She knew, whatever force or constraint he might put upon his feelings in public, that she herself must be doomed to see them display themselves in full vehemence in secret,--consume his health, destroy his temper, and render him at once an object of dread and compassion. Again and again she cautioned Jeanie to display no tokens of recognition, but to receive him as a perfect stranger,--and again and again Jeanie renewed her promise to comply with her wishes. Jeanie herself could not fail to bestow an anxious thought on the awkwardness of the approaching meeting; but her conscience was ungalled--and then she was cumbered with many household cares of an unusual nature, which, joined to the anxious wish once more to see Butler, after an absence of unusual length, made her extremely desirous that the travellers should arrive as soon as possible. And--why should I disguise the truth?--ever and anon a thought stole across her mind that her gala dinner had now been postponed for two days; and how few of the dishes, after every art of her simple cuisine had been exerted to dress them, could with any credit or propriety appear again upon the third; and what was she to do with the rest?--Upon this last subject she was saved the trouble of farther deliberation, by the sudden appearance of the Captain at the head of half-a-dozen stout fellows, dressed and armed in the Highland fashion. "Goot-morrow morning to ye, Leddy Staunton, and I hope I hae the pleasure to see you weel--And goot-morrow to you, goot Mrs. Putler--I do peg you will order some victuals and ale and prandy for the lads, for we hae peen out on firth and moor since afore daylight, and a' to no purpose neither--Cot tam!" So saying, he sate down, pushed back his brigadier wig, and wiped his head with an air of easy importance; totally regardless of the look of well-bred astonishment by which Lady Staunton endeavoured to make him comprehend that he was assuming too great a liberty. "It is some comfort, when one has had a sair tussel," continued the Captain, addressing Lady Staunton, with an air of gallantry, "that it is in a fair leddy's service, or in the service of a gentleman whilk has a fair leddy, whilk is the same thing, since serving the husband is serving the wife, as Mrs. Putler does very weel know." "Really, sir," said Lady Staunton, "as you seem to intend this compliment for me, I am at a loss to know what interest Sir George or I can have in your movements this morning." "O, Cot tam!--this is too cruel, my leddy--as if it was not py special express from his Grace's honourable agent and commissioner at Edinburgh, with a warrant conform, that I was to seek for and apprehend Donacha dhu na Dunaigh, and pring him pefore myself and Sir George Staunton, that he may have his deserts, that is to say, the gallows, whilk he has doubtless deserved, py peing the means of frightening your leddyship, as weel as for something of less importance." "Frightening me!" said her ladyship; "why, I never wrote to Sir George about my alarm at the waterfall." "Then he must have heard it otherwise; for what else can give him sic an earnest tesire to see this rapscallion, that I maun ripe the haill mosses and muirs in the country for him, as if I were to get something for finding him, when the pest o't might pe a pall through my prains?" "Can it be really true, that it is on Sir George's account that you have been attempting to apprehend this fellow?" "Py Cot, it is for no other cause that I know than his honour's pleasure; for the creature might hae gone on in a decent quiet way for me, sae lang as he respectit the Duke's pounds--put reason goot he suld be taen, and hangit to poet, if it may pleasure ony honourable shentleman that is the Duke's friend--Sae I got the express over night, and I caused warn half a score of pretty lads, and was up in the morning pefore the sun, and I garr'd the lads take their kilts and short coats." "I wonder you did that, Captain," said Mrs. Butler, "when you know the act of Parliament against wearing the Highland dress." "Hout, tout, ne'er fash your thumb, Mrs. Putler. The law is put twa-three years auld yet, and is ower young to hae come our length; and pesides, how is the lads to climb the praes wi' thae tamn'd breekens on them? It makes me sick to see them. Put ony how, I thought I kend Donacha's haunt gey and weel, and I was at the place where he had rested yestreen; for I saw the leaves the limmers had lain on, and the ashes of them; by the same token, there was a pit greeshoch purning yet. I am thinking they got some word oat o' the island what was intended--I sought every glen and clench, as if I had been deer-stalking, but teil a want of his coat-tail could I see--Cot tam!" "He'll be away down the Firth to Cowal," said David; and Reuben, who had been out early that morning a-nutting, observed, "That he had seen a boat making for the Caird's Cove;" a place well known to the boys, though their less adventurous father was ignorant of its existence. "Py Cot," said Duncan, "then I will stay here no longer than to trink this very horn of prandy and water, for it's very possible they will pe in the wood. Donacha's a clever fellow, and maype thinks it pest to sit next the chimley when the lum reeks. He thought naebody would look for him sae near hand! I peg your leddyship will excuse my aprupt departure, as I will return forthwith, and I will either pring you Donacha in life, or else his head, whilk I dare to say will be as satisfactory. And I hope to pass a pleasant evening with your leddyship; and I hope to have mine revenges on Mr. Putler at backgammon, for the four pennies whilk he won, for he will pe surely at home soon, or else he will have a wet journey, seeing it is apout to pe a scud." Thus saying, with many scrapes and bows, and apologies for leaving them, which were very readily received, and reiterated assurances of his speedy return (of the sincerity whereof Mrs. Butler entertained no doubt, so long as her best greybeard of brandy was upon duty), Duncan left the Manse, collected his followers, and began to scour the close and entangled wood which lay between the little glen and the Caird's Cove. David, who was a favourite with the Captain, on account of his spirit and courage, took the opportunity of escaping, to attend the investigations of that great man. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHTH. I did send for thee, That Talbot's name might be in thee revived, When sapless age and weak, unable limbs, Should bring thy father to his drooping chair. But--O malignant and ill-boding stars!-- First part of Henry the Sixth. Duncan and his party had not proceeded very far in the direction of the Caird's Cove before they heard a shot, which was quickly followed by one or two others. "Some tamn'd villains among the roe-deer," said Duncan; "look sharp out, lads." The clash of swords was next heard, and Duncan and his myrmidons, hastening to the spot, found Butler and Sir George Staunton's servant in the hands of four ruffians. Sir George himself lay stretched on the ground, with his drawn sword in his hand. Duncan, who was as brave as a lion, instantly fired his pistol at the leader of the band, unsheathed his sword, cried out to his men, _Claymore!_ and run his weapon through the body of the fellow whom he had previously wounded, who was no other thau Donacha dhu na Dunaigh himself. The other banditti were speedily overpowered, excepting one young lad, who made wonderful resistance for his years, and was at length secured with difficulty. [Illustration: Death of Sir George Staunton--404] Butler, so soon as he was liberated from the ruffians, ran to raise Sir George Staunton, but life had wholly left him. "A creat misfortune," said Duncan; "I think it will pe pest that I go forward to intimate it to the coot lady.--Tavie, my dear, you hae smelled pouther for the first time this day--take my sword and hack off Donacha's head, whilk will pe coot practice for you against the time you may wish to do the same kindness to a living shentleman--or hould! as your father does not approve, you may leave it alone, as he will pe a greater object of satisfaction to Leddy Staunton to see him entire; and I hope she will do me the credit to pelieve that I can afenge a shentleman's plood fery speedily and well." Such was the observation of a man too much accustomed to the ancient state of manners in the Highlands, to look upon the issue of such a skirmish as anything worthy of wonder or emotion. We will not attempt to describe the very contrary effect which the unexpected disaster produced upon Lady Staunton, when the bloody corpse of her husband was brought to the house, where she expected to meet him alive and well. All was forgotten, but that he was the lover of her youth; and whatever were his faults to the world, that he had towards her exhibited only those that arose from the inequality of spirits and temper, incident to a situation of unparalleled difficulty. In the vivacity of her grief she gave way to all the natural irritability of her temper; shriek followed shriek, and swoon succeeded to swoon. It required all Jeanie's watchful affection to prevent her from making known, in these paroxysms of affliction, much which it was of the highest importance that she should keep secret. At length silence and exhaustion succeeded to frenzy, and Jeanie stole out to take counsel with her husband, and to exhort him to anticipate the Captain's interference, by taking possession, in Lady Staunton's name, of the private papers of her deceased husband. To the utter astonishment of Butler, she now, for the first time, explained the relation betwixt herself and Lady Staunton, which authorised, nay, demanded, that he should prevent any stranger from being unnecessarily made acquainted with her family affairs. It was in such a crisis that Jeanie's active and undaunted habits of virtuous exertion were most conspicuous. While the Captain's attention was still engaged by a prolonged refreshment, and a very tedious examination, in Gaelic and English, of all the prisoners, and every other witness of the fatal transaction, she had the body of her brother-in-law undressed and properly disposed. It then appeared, from the crucifix, the beads, and the shirt of hair which he wore next his person, that his sense of guilt had induced him to receive the dogmata of a religion, which pretends, by the maceration of the body, to expiate the crimes of the soul. In the packet of papers which the express had brought to Sir George Staunton from Edinburgh, and which Butler, authorised by his connection with the deceased, did not scruple to examine, he found new and astonishing intelligence, which gave him reason to thank God he had taken that measure. Ratcliffe, to whom all sorts of misdeeds and misdoers were familiar, instigated by the promised reward, soon found himself in a condition to trace the infant of these unhappy parents. The woman to whom Meg Murdockson had sold that most unfortunate child, had made it the companion of her wanderings and her beggary, until he was about seven or eight years old, when, as Ratcliffe learned from a companion of hers, then in the Correction House of Edinburgh, she sold him in her turn to Donacha dhu na Dunaigh. This man, to whom no act of mischief was unknown, was occasionally an agent in a horrible trade then carried on betwixt Scotland and America, for supplying the plantations with servants, by means of _kidnapping,_ as it was termed, both men and women, but especially children under age. Here Ratcliffe lost sight of the boy, but had no doubt but Donacha Dhu could give an account of him. The gentleman of the law, so often mentioned, despatched therefore an express, with a letter to Sir George Staunton, and another covering a warrant for apprehension of Donacha, with instructions to the Captain of Knockdunder to exert his utmost energy for that purpose. Possessed of this information, and with a mind agitated by the most gloomy apprehensions, Butler now joined the Captain, and obtained from him with some difficulty a sight of the examinations. These, with a few questions to the elder of the prisoners, soon confirmed the most dreadful of Butler's anticipations. We give the heads of the information, without descending into minute details. Donacha Dhu had indeed purchased Effie's unhappy child, with the purpose of selling it to the American traders, whom he had been in the habit of supplying with human flesh. But no opportunity occurred for some time; and the boy, who was known by the name of "The Whistler," made some impression on the heart and affections even of this rude savage, perhaps because he saw in him flashes of a spirit as fierce and vindictive as his own. When Donacha struck or threatened him--a very common occurrence--he did not answer with complaints and entreaties like other children, but with oaths and efforts at revenge--he had all the wild merit, too, by which Woggarwolfe's arrow-bearing page won the hard heart of his master: Like a wild cub, rear'd at the ruffian's feet, He could say biting jests, bold ditties sing, And quaff his foaming bumper at the board, With all the mockery of a little man.* * Ethwald. In short, as Donacha Dhu said, the Whistler was a born imp of Satan, and _therefore_ he should never leave him. Accordingly, from his eleventh year forward, he was one of the band, and often engaged in acts of violence. The last of these was more immediately occasioned by the researches which the Whistler's real father made after him whom he had been taught to consider as such. Donacha Dhu's fears had been for some time excited by the strength of the means which began now to be employed against persons of his description. He was sensible he existed only by the precarious indulgence of his namesake, Duncan of Knockdunder, who was used to boast that he could put him down or string him up when he had a mind. He resolved to leave the kingdom by means of one of those sloops which were engaged in the traffic of his old kidnapping friends, and which was about to sail for America; but he was desirous first to strike a bold stroke. The ruffian's cupidity was excited by the intelligence, that a wealthy Englishman was coming to the Manse--he had neither forgotten the Whistler's report of the gold he had seen in Lady Staunton's purse, nor his old vow of revenge against the minister; and, to bring the whole to a point, he conceived the hope of appropriating the money, which, according to the general report of the country, the minister was to bring from Edinburgh to pay for his pew purchase. While he was considering how he might best accomplish his purpose, he received the intelligence from one quarter, that the vessel in which he proposed to sail was to sail immediately from Greenock; from another, that the minister and a rich English lord, with a great many thousand pounds, were expected the next evening at the Manse; and from a third, that he must consult his safety by leaving his ordinary haunts as soon as possible, for that the Captain had ordered out a party to scour the glens for him at break of day. Donacha laid his plans with promptitude and decision. He embarked with the Whistler and two others of his band (whom, by the by, he meant to sell to the kidnappers), and set sail for the Caird's Cove. He intended to lurk till nightfall in the wood adjoining to this place, which he thought was too near the habitation of men to excite the suspicion of Duncan Knock, then break into Butler's peaceful habitation, and flesh at once his appetite for plunder and revenge. When his villany was accomplished, his boat was to convey him to the vessel, which, according to previous agreement with the master, was instantly to set sail. This desperate design would probably have succeeded, but for the ruffians being discovered in their lurking-place by Sir George Staunton and Butler, in their accidental walk from the Caird's Cove towards the Manse. Finding himself detected, and at the same time observing that the servant carried a casket, or strong-box, Donacha conceived that both his prize and his victims were within his power, and attacked the travellers without hesitation. Shots were fired and swords drawn on both sides; Sir George Staunton offered the bravest resistance till he fell, as there was too much reason to believe, by the hand of a son, so long sought, and now at length so unhappily met. While Butler was half-stunned with this intelligence, the hoarse voice of Knockdunder added to his consternation. "I will take the liperty to take down the pell-ropes, Mr. Putler, as I must pe taking order to hang these idle people up to-morrow morning, to teach them more consideration in their doings in future." Butler entreated him to remember the act abolishing the heritable jurisdictions, and that he ought to send them to Glasgow or Inverary, to be tried by the Circuit. Duncan scorned the proposal. "The Jurisdiction Act," he said, "had nothing to do put with the rebels, and specially not with Argyle's country; and he would hang the men up all three in one row before coot Leddy Staunton's windows, which would be a great comfort to her in the morning to see that the coot gentleman, her husband, had been suitably afenged." And the utmost length that Butler's most earnest entreaties could prevail was, that he would, reserve "the twa pig carles for the Circuit, but as for him they ca'd the Fustler, he should try how he could fustle in a swinging tow, for it suldna be said that a shentleman, friend to the Duke, was killed in his country, and his people didna take at least twa lives for ane." Butler entreated him to spare the victim for his soul's sake. But Knockdunder answered, "that the soul of such a scum had been long the tefil's property, and that, Cot tam! he was determined to gif the tefil his due." All persuasion was in vain, and Duncan issued his mandate for execution on the succeeding morning. The child of guilt and misery was separated from his companions, strongly pinioned, and committed to a separate room, of which the Captain kept the key. In the silence of the night, however, Mrs. Butler arose, resolved, if possible, to avert, at least to delay, the fate which hung over her nephew, especially if, upon conversing with him, she should see any hope of his being brought to better temper. She had a master-key that opened every lock in the house; and at midnight, when all was still, she stood before the eyes of the astonished young savage, as, hard bound with cords, he lay, like a sheep designed for slaughter, upon a quantity of the refuse of flax which filled a corner in the apartment. Amid features sunburnt, tawny, grimed with dirt, and obscured by his shaggy hair of a rusted black colour, Jeanie tried in vain to trace the likeness of either of his very handsome parents. Yet how could she refuse compassion to a creature so young and so wretched,--so much more wretched than even he himself could be aware of, since the murder he had too probably committed with his own hand, but in which he had at any rate participated, was in fact a parricide? She placed food on a table near him, raised him, and slacked the cords on his arms, so as to permit him to feed himself. He stretched out his hands, still smeared with blood perhaps that of his father, and he ate voraciously and in silence. "What is your first name?" said Jeanie, by way of opening the conversation. "The Whistler." "But your Christian name, by which you were baptized?" "I never was baptized that I know of--I have no other name than the Whistler." "Poor unhappy abandoned lad!" said Jeanie. "What would ye do if you could escape from this place, and the death you are to die to-morrow morning?" "Join wi' Rob Roy, or wi' Sergeant More Cameron" (noted freebooters at that time), "and revenge Donacha's death on all and sundry." "O ye unhappy boy," said Jeanie, "do ye ken what will come o' ye when ye die?" "I shall neither feel cauld nor hunger more," said the youth doggedly. "To let him be execute in this dreadful state of mind would be to destroy baith body and soul--and to let him gang I dare not--what will be done?-- But he is my sister's son--my own nephew--our flesh and blood--and his hands and feet are yerked as tight as cords can be drawn.--Whistler, do the cords hurt you?" "Very much." "But, if I were to slacken them, you would harm me?" "No, I would not--you never harmed me or mine." There may be good in him yet, thought Jeanie; I will try fair play with him. She cut his bonds--he stood upright, looked round with a laugh of wild exultation, clapped his hands together, and sprung from the ground, as if in transport on finding himself at liberty. He looked so wild, that Jeanie trembled at what she had done. "Let me out," said the young savage. "I wunna, unless you promise" "Then I'll make you glad to let us both out." He seized the lighted candle and threw it among the flax, which was instantly in a flame. Jeanie screamed, and ran out of the room; the prisoner rushed past her, threw open a window in the passage, jumped into the garden, sprung over its enclosure, bounded through the woods like a deer, and gained the seashore. Meantime, the fire was extinguished, but the prisoner was sought in vain. As Jeanie kept her own secret, the share she had in his escape was not discovered: but they learned his fate some time afterwards--it was as wild as his life had hitherto been. The anxious inquiries of Butler at length learned, that the youth had gained the ship in which his master, Donacha, had designed to embark. But the avaricious shipmaster, inured by his evil trade to every species of treachery, and disappointed of the rich booty which Donacha had proposed to bring aboard, secured the person of the fugitive, and having transported him to America, sold him as a slave, or indented servant, to a Virginian planter, far up the country. When these tidings reached Butler, he sent over to America a sufficient sum to redeem the lad from slavery, with instructions that measures should be taken for improving his mind, restraining his evil propensities, and encouraging whatever good might appear in his character. But this aid came too late. The young man had headed a conspiracy in which his inhuman master was put to death, and had then fled to the next tribe of wild Indians. He was never more heard of; and it may therefore be presumed that he lived and died after the manner of that savage people, with whom his previous habits had well fitted him to associate. All hopes of the young man's reformation being now ended, Mr. and Mrs. Butler thought it could serve no purpose to explain to Lady Staunton a history so full of horror. She remained their guest more than a year, during the greater part of which period her grief was excessive. In the latter months, it assumed the appearance of listlessness and low spirits, which the monotony of her sister's quiet establishment afforded no means of dissipating. Effie, from her earliest youth, was never formed for a quiet low content. Far different from her sister, she required the dissipation of society to divert her sorrow, or enhance her joy. She left the seclusion of Knocktarlitie with tears of sincere affection, and after heaping its inmates with all she could think of that might be valuable in their eyes. But she _did_ leave it; and, when the anguish of the parting was over, her departure was a relief to both sisters. The family at the Manse of Knocktarlitie, in their own quiet happiness, heard of the well-dowered and beautiful Lady Staunton resuming her place in the fashionable world. They learned it by more substantial proofs, for David received a commission; and as the military spirit of Bible Butler seemed to have revived in him, his good behaviour qualified the envy of five hundred young Highland cadets, "come of good houses," who were astonished at the rapidity of his promotion. Reuben followed the law, and rose more slowly, yet surely. Euphemia Butler, whose fortune, augmented by her aunt's generosity, and added to her own beauty, rendered her no small prize, married a Highland laird, who never asked the name of her grand-father, and was loaded on the occasion with presents from Lady Staunton, which made her the envy of all the beauties in Dumbarton and Argyle shires. After blazing nearly ten years in the fashionable world, and hiding, like many of her compeers, an aching heart with a gay demeanour--after declining repeated offers of the most respectable kind for a second matrimonial engagement, Lady Staunton betrayed the inward wound by retiring to the Continent, and taking up her abode in the convent where she had received her education. She never took the veil, but lived and died in severe seclusion, and in the practice of the Roman Catholic religion, in all its formal observances, vigils, and austerities. Jeanie had so much of her father's spirit as to sorrow bitterly for this apostasy, and Butler joined in her regret. "Yet any religion, however imperfect," he said, "was better than cold scepticism, or the hurrying din of dissipation, which fills the ears of worldlings, until they care for none of these things." Meanwhile, happy in each other, in the prosperity of their family, and the love and honour of all who knew them, this simple pair lived beloved, and died lamented. [Illustration: Jeanie Dean's Cottage--414] READER, THIS TALE WILL NOT BE TOLD IN VAIN, IF IT SHALL BE FOUND TO ILLUSTRATE THE GREAT TRUTH, THAT GUILT, THOUGH IT MAY ATTAIN TEMPORAL SPLENDOUR, CAN NEVER CONFER REAL HAPPINESS; THAT THE EVIL CONSEQUENCES OF OUR CRIMES LONG SURVIVE THEIR COMMISSION, AND, LIKE THE GHOSTS OF THE MURDERED, FOR EVER HAUNT THE STEPS OF THE MALEFACTOR; AND THAT THE PATHS OF VIRTUE, THOUGH SELDOM THOSE OF WORLDLY GREATNESS, ARE ALWAYS THOSE OF PLEASANTNESS AND PEACE. L'ENVOY, BY JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM. Thus concludeth the Tale of "The Heart of Mid-Lothian," which hath filled more pages than I opined. The Heart of Mid-Lothian is now no more, or rather it is transferred to the extreme side of the city, even as the Sieur Jean Baptiste Poquelin hath it, in his pleasant comedy called _Le Me'decin Malgre' Lui,_ where the simulated doctor wittily replieth to a charge, that he had placed the heart on the right side, instead of the left, "_Cela e'tait autrefois ainsi, mais nous avons change' tout cela._" Of which witty speech if any reader shall demand the purport, I have only to respond, that I teach the French as well as the Classical tongues, at the easy rate of five shillings per quarter, as my advertisements are periodically making known to the public. NOTES TO THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN. NOTE A--Author's connection with Quakerism. It is an old proverb, that "many a true word is spoken in jest." The existence of Walter Scott, third son of Sir William Scott of Harden, is instructed, as it is called, by a charter under the great seal, Domino Willielmo Scott de Harden Militi, et Waltero Scott suo filio legitimo tertio genito, terrarum de Roberton.* * See Douglas's _Baronage,_ page 215. The munificent old gentleman left all his four sons considerable estates. and settled those of Eilrig and Raeburn, together with valuable possessions around Lessuden, upon Walter, his third son, who is ancestor of the Scotts of Raeburn, and of the Author of Waverley. He appears to have become a convert to the doctrine of the Quakers, or Friends, and a great assertor of their peculiar tenets. This was probably at the time when George Fox, the celebrated apostle of the sect, made an expedition into the south of Scotland about 1657, on which occasion, he boasts, that "as he first set his horse's feet upon Scottish ground, he felt the seed of grace to sparkle about him like innumerable sparks of fire." Upon the same occasion, probably, Sir Gideon Scott of Highchester, second son of Sir William, immediate elder brother of Walter, and ancestor of the author's friend and kinsman, the present representative of the family of Harden, also embraced the tenets of Quakerism. This last convert, Gideon, entered into a controversy with the Rev. James Kirkton, author of the _Secret and True History of the Church of Scotland,_ which is noticed by my ingenious friend Mr. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, in his valuable and curious edition of that work, 4to, 1817. Sir William Scott, eldest of the brothers, remained, amid the defection of his two younger brethren, an orthodox member of the Presbyterian Church, and used such means for reclaiming Walter of Raeburn from his heresy, as savoured far more of persecution than persuasion. In this he was assisted by MacDougal of Makerston, brother to Isabella MacDougal, the wife of the said Walter, and who, like her husband, had conformed to the Quaker tenets. The interest possessed by Sir William Scott and Makerston was powerful enough to procure the two following acts of the Privy Council of Scotland, directed against Walter of Raeburn as an heretic and convert to Quakerism, appointing him to be imprisoned first in Edinburgh jail, and then in that of Jedburgh; and his children to be taken by force from the society and direction of their parents, and educated at a distance from them, besides the assignment of a sum for their maintenance, sufficient in those times to be burdensome to a moderate Scottish estate. "Apud Edin., vigesimo Junii 1665. "The Lords of his Magesty's Privy Council having receaved information that Scott of Raeburn, and Isobel Mackdougall, his wife, being infected with the error of Quakerism, doe endeavour to breid and trains up William, Walter, and Isobel Scotts, their children, in the same profession, doe therefore give order and command to Sir William Scott of Harden, the said Raeburn's brother, to seperat and take away the saids children from the custody and society of the saids parents, and to cause educat and bring them up in his owne house, or any other convenient place, and ordaines letters to be direct at the said Sir William's instance against Raeburn, for a maintenance to the saids children, and that the said Sir Wm. give ane account of his diligence with all conveniency." "Edinburgh, 5th July 1666. "Anent a petition presented be Sir Wm. Scott of Harden, for himself and in name and behalf of the three children of Walter Scott of Raeburn, his brother, showing that the Lords of Councill, by ane act of the 22d day of Junii 1665, did grant power and warrand to the petitioner, to separat and take away Raeburn's children, from his family and education, and to breed them in some convenient place, where they might be free from all infection in their younger years, from the principalls of Quakerism, and, for maintenance of the saids children, did ordain letters to be direct against Raeburn; and, seeing the Petitioner, in obedience to the said order, did take away the saids children, being two sonnes and a daughter, and after some paines taken upon them in his owne family, hes sent them to the city of Glasgow, to be bread at schooles, and there to be principled with the knowledge of the true religion, and that it is necessary the Councill determine what shall be the maintenance for which Raeburn's three children may be charged, as likewise that Raeburn himself, being now in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, where he dayley converses with all the Quakers who are prisoners there, and others who daily resort to them, whereby he is hardened in his pernitious opinions and principles, without all hope of recovery, unlesse he be separat from such pernitious company, humbly therefore, desyring that the Councell might determine upon the soume of money to be payed be Raeburn, for the education of his children, to the petitioner, who will be countable therefor; and that, in order to his conversion, the place of his imprisonment may be changed. The Lords of his Maj. Privy Councell having at length heard and considered the foresaid petition, doe modifie the soume of two thousand pounds Scots, to be payed yearly at the terms of Whitsunday be the said Walter Scott of Raeburn, furth of his estate to the petitioner, for the entertainment and education of the said children, beginning the first termes payment therof at Whitsunday last for the half year preceding, and so furth yearly, at the said terme of Whitsunday in tym comeing till furder orders; and ordaines the said Walter Scott of Raeburn to be transported from the tolbooth of Edinburgh to the prison of Jedburgh, where his friends and others may have occasion to convert him. And to the effect he may be secured from the practice of other Quakers, the said Lords doe hereby discharge the magistrates of Jedburgh to suffer any persons suspect of these principles to have access to him; and in case any contraveen, that they secure ther persons till they be therfore puneist; and ordaines letters to be direct heirupon in form, as effeirs." Both the sons, thus harshly separated from their father, proved good scholars. The eldest, William, who carried on the line of Raeburn, was, like his father, a deep Orientalist; the younger, Walter, became a good classical scholar, a great friend and correspondent of the celebrated Dr. Pitcairn, and a Jacobite so distinguished for zeal, that he made a vow never to shave his beard till the restoration of the exiled family. This last Walter Scott was the author's great-grandfather. There is yet another link betwixt the author and the simple-minded and excellent Society of Friends, through a proselyte of much more importance than Walter Scott of Raeburn. The celebrated John Swinton, of Swinton, nineteenth baron in descent of that ancient and once powerful family, was, with Sir William Lockhart of Lee, the person whom Cromwell chiefly trusted in the management of the Scottish affairs during his usurpation. After the Restoration, Swinton was devoted as a victim to the new order of things, and was brought down in the same vessel which conveyed the Marquis of Argyle to Edinburgh, where that nobleman was tried and executed. Swinton was destined to the same fate. He had assumed the habit, and entered into the Society of the Quakers, and appeared as one of their number before the Parliament of Scotland. He renounced all legal defence, though several pleas were open to him, and answered, in conformity to the principles of his sect, that at the time these crimes were imputed to him, he was in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity; but that God Almighty having since called him to the light, he saw and acknowledged these errors, and did not refuse to pay the forfeit of them, even though, in the judgment of the Parliament, it should extend to life itself. Respect to fallen greatness, and to the patience and calm resignation with which a man once in high power expressed himself under such a change of fortune, found Swinton friends; family connections, and some interested considerations of Middleton the Commissioner, joined to procure his safety, and he was dismissed, but after a long imprisonment, and much dilapidation of his estates. It is said that Swinton's admonitions, while confined in the Castle of Edinburgh, had a considerable share in converting to the tenets of the Friends Colonel David Barclay, then lying there in the garrison. This was the father of Robert Barclay, author of the celebrated _Apology for the Quakers._ It may be observed among the inconsistencies of human nature, that Kirkton, Wodrow, and other Presbyterian authors, who have detailed the sufferings of their own sect for nonconformity with the established church, censure the government of the time for not exerting the civil power against the peaceful enthusiasts we have treated of, and some express particular chagrin at the escape of Swinton. Whatever might be his motives for assuming the tenets of the Friends, the old man retained them faithfully till the close of his life. Jean Swinton, grand-daughter of Sir John Swinton, son of Judge Swinton, as the Quaker was usually termed, was mother of Anne Rutherford, the author's mother. And thus, as in the play of the Anti-Jacobin, the ghost of the author's grandmother having arisen to speak the Epilogue, it is full time to conclude, lest the reader should remonstrate that his desire to know the Author of Waverley never included a wish to be acquainted with his whole ancestry. NOTE B.--TOMBSTONE TO HELEN WALKER. On Helen Walker's tombstone in Irongray churchyard, Dumfriesshire, there is engraved the following epitaph, written by Sir Walter Scott: THIS STONE WAS ERECTED BY THE AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY TO THE MEMORY OF HELEN WALKER, WHO DIED IN THE YEAR OF GOD 1791. THIS HUMBLE INDIVIDUAL PRACTISED IN REAL LIFE THE VIRTUES WITH WHICH FICTION HAS INVESTED THE IMAGINARY CHARACTER OF JEANIE DEANS; REFUSING THE SLIGHTEST DEPARTURE FROM VERACITY, EVEN TO SAVE THE LIFE OF A SISTER, SHE NEVERTHELESS SHOWED HER KINDNESS AND FORTITUDE, IN RESCUING HER FROM THE SEVERITY OF THE LAW AT THE EXPENSE OF PERSONAL EXERTIONS WHICH THE TIME RENDERED AS DIFFICULT AS THE MOTIVE WAS LAUDABLE. RESPECT THE GRAVE OF POVERTY WHEN COMBINED WITH LOVE OF TRUTH AND DEAR AFFECTION. _Erected October 1831._ NOTE C.--THE OLD TOLBOOTH. The ancient Tolbooth of Edinburgh, Situated as described in this CHAPTER, was built by the citizens in 1561, and destined for the accommodation of Parliament, as well as of the High Courts of Justice;* and at the same time for the confinement of prisoners for debt, or on criminal charges. Since the year 1640, when the present Parliament House was erected, the Tolbooth was occupied as a prison only. * [This is not so certain. Few persons now living are likely to remember the interior of the old Tolbooth, with narrow staircase, thick walls, and small apartments, nor to imagine that it could ever have been used for these purposes. Robert Chambers, in his _Minor Antiquities_ of Edinburgh, has preserved ground-plans or sections, which clearly show this,--the largest hall was on the second floor, and measuring 27 feet by 20, and 12 feet high. It may have been intended for the meetings of Town Council, while the Parliament assembled, after 1560, in what was called the Upper Tolbooth, that is the south-west portion of the Collegiate Church of St. Giles, until the year 1640, when the present Parliament House was completed. Being no longer required for such a purpose, it was set apart by the Town Council on the 24th December 1641 as a distinct church, with the name of the Tolbooth parish, and therefore could not have derived the name from its vicinity to the Tolbooth, as usually stated.] Gloomy and dismal as it was, the situation in the centre of the High Street rendered it so particularly well-aired, that when the plague laid waste the city in 1645, it affected none within these melancholy precincts. The Tolbooth was removed, with the mass of buildings in which it was incorporated, in the autumn of the year 1817. At that time the kindness of his old schoolfellow and friend, Robert Johnstone, Esquire, then Dean of Guild of the city, with the liberal acquiescence of the persons who had contracted for the work, procured for the Author of Waverley the stones which composed the gateway, together with the door, and its ponderous fastenings, which he employed in decorating the entrance of his kitchen-court at Abbotsford. "To such base offices may we return." The application of these relies of the Heart of Mid-Lothian to serve as the postern-gate to a court of modern offices, may be justly ridiculed as whimsical; but yet it is not without interest, that we see the gateway through which so much of the stormy politics of a rude age, and the vice and misery of later times, had found their passage, now occupied in the service of rural economy. Last year, to complete the change, a tomtit was pleased to build her nest within the lock of the Tolbooth,--a strong temptation to have committed a sonnet, had the Author, like Tony Lumpkin, been in a concatenation accordingly. It is worth mentioning, that an act of beneficence celebrated the demolition of the Heart of Mid-Lothian. A subscription, raised and applied by the worthy Magistrate above mentioned, procured the manumission of most of the unfortunate debtors confined in the old jail, so that there were few or none transferred to the new place of confinement. [The figure of a Heart upon the pavement between St. Giles's Church and the Edinburgh County Hall, now marks the site of the Old Tolbooth.] NOTE D--THE PORTEOUS MOB. The following interesting and authentic account of the inquiries made by Crown Counsel into the affair of the Porteous Mob, seems to have been drawn up by the Solicitor-General. The office was held in 1737 by Charles Erskine, Esq. I owe this curious illustration to the kindness of a professional friend. It throws, indeed, little light on the origin of the tumult; but shows how profound the darkness must have been, which so much investigation could not dispel. "Upon the 7th of September last, when the unhappy wicked murder of Captain Porteus was committed, His Majesty's Advocate and Solicitor were out of town; the first beyond Inverness, and the other in Annandale, not far from Carlyle; neither of them knew anything of the reprieve, nor did they in the least suspect that any disorder was to happen. "When the disorder happened, the magistrates and other persons concerned in the management of the town, seemed to be all struck of a heap; and whether, from the great terror that had seized all the inhabitants, they thought ane immediate enquiry would be fruitless, or whether, being a direct insult upon the prerogative of the crown, they did not care rashly to intermeddle; but no proceedings was had by them. Only, soon after, ane express was sent to his Majestie's Solicitor, who came to town as soon as was possible for him; but, in the meantime, the persons who had been most guilty, had either ran off, or, at least, kept themselves upon the wing until they should see what steps were taken by the Government. "When the Solicitor arrived, he perceived the whole inhabitants under a consternation. He had no materials furnished him; nay, the inhabitants were so much afraid of being reputed informers, that very few people had so much as the courage to speak with him on the streets. However, having received her Majestie's orders, by a letter from the Duke of New castle, he resolved to sett about the matter in earnest, and entered upon ane enquiry, gropeing in the dark. He had no assistance from the magistrates worth mentioning, but called witness after witness in the privatest manner, before himself in his own house, and for six weeks time, from morning to evening, went on in the enquiry without taking the least diversion, or turning his thoughts to any other business. "He tried at first what he could do by declarations, by engaging secresy, so that those who told the truth should never be discovered; made use of no clerk, but wrote all the declarations with his own hand, to encourage them to speak out. After all, for some time, he could get nothing but ends of stories which, when pursued, broke off; and those who appeared and knew anything of the matter, were under the utmost terror, lest it should take air that they had mentioned any one man as guilty. "During the course of the enquiry, the run of the town, which was strong for the villanous actors, begun to alter a little, and when they saw the King's servants in earnest to do their best, the generality, who before had spoke very warmly in defence of the wickedness, began to be silent, and at that period more of the criminals began to abscond. "At length the enquiry began to open a little, and the Sollicitor was under some difficulty how to proceed. He very well saw that the first warrand that was issued out would start the whole gang; and as he had not come at any of the most notorious offenders, he was unwilling, upon the slight evidence he had, to begin. However, upon notice given him by Generall Moyle, that one King, a butcher in the Canongate, had boasted, in presence of Bridget Knell, a soldier's wife, the morning after Captain Porteus was hanged, that he had a very active hand in the mob, a warrand was issued out, and King was apprehended, and imprisoned in the Canongate Tolbooth. "This obliged the Sollicitor immediately to take up those against whom he had any information. By a signed declaration, William Stirling, apprentice to James Stirling, merchant in Edinburgh, was charged as haveing been at the Nether-Bow, after the gates were shutt, with a Lochaber-ax or halbert in his hand, and haveing begun a huzza, marched upon the head of the mob towards the Guard. "James Braidwood, son to a candlemaker in town, was, by a signed declaration, charged as haveing been at the Tolbooth door, giveing directions to the mob about setting fire to the door, and that the mob named him by his name, and asked his advice. "By another declaration, one Stoddart, a journeyman smith, was charged of having boasted publickly, in a smith's shop at Leith, that he had assisted in breaking open the Tolbooth door. "Peter Traill, a journeyman wright, (by one of the declarations) was also accused of haveing lockt the Nether-Bow Port, when it was shutt by the mob. "His Majestie's Sollicitor having these informations, implored privately such persons as he could best rely on, and the truth was, there were very few in whom he could repose confidence. But he was, indeed, faithfully served by one Webster, a soldier in the Welsh fuzileers, recommended him by Lieutenant Alshton, who, with very great address, informed himself, and really run some risque in getting his information, concerning the places where the persons informed against used to haunt, and how they might be seized. In consequence of which, a party of the Guard from the Canongate was agreed on to march up at a certain hour, when a message should be sent. The Sollicitor wrote a letter and gave it to one of the town officers, ordered to attend Captain Maitland, one of the town Captains, promoted to that command since the unhappy accident, who, indeed, was extremely diligent and active throughout the whole; and haveing got Stirling and Braidwood apprehended, dispatched the officer with the letter to the military in the Canongate, who immediately begun their march, and by the time the Sollicitor had half examined the said two persons in the Burrow-room, where the Magistrates were present, a party of fifty men, drums beating, marched into the Parliament close, and drew up, which was the first thing that struck a terror, and from that time forward, the insolence was succeeded by fear. "Stirling and Braidwood were immediately sent to the Castle and imprisoned. That same night, Stoddart, the smith, was seized, and he was committed to the Castle also; as was likewise Traill, the journeyman wright, who were all severally examined, and denyed the least accession. "In the meantime, the enquiry was going on, and it haveing cast up in one of the declarations, that a hump'd backed creature marched with a gun as one of the guards to Porteus when he went up to the Lawn Markett, the person who emitted this declaration was employed to walk the streets to see if he could find him out; at last he came to the Sollicitor and told him he had found him, and that he was in a certain house. Whereupon a warrand was issued out against him, and he was apprehended and sent to the Castle, and he proved to be one Birnie, a helper to the Countess of Weemys's coachman. "Thereafter, ane information was given in against William M'Lauchlan, ffootman to the said Countess, he haveing been very active in the mob; ffor sometime he kept himself out of the way, but at last he was apprehended and likewise committed to the Castle. "And these were all the prisoners who were putt under confinement in that place. "There were other persons imprisoned in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, and severalls against whom warrands were issued, but could not be apprehended, whose names and cases shall afterwards be more particularly taken notice of. "The ffriends of Stirling made an application to the Earl of Islay, Lord Justice-Generall, setting furth, that he was seized with a bloody fflux; that his life was in danger; and that upon ane examination of witnesses whose names were given in, it would appear to conviction, that he had not the least access to any of the riotous proceedings of that wicked mob. "This petition was by his Lordship putt in the hands of his Majestie's Sollicitor, who examined the witnesses; and by their testimonies it appeared, that the young man, who was not above eighteen years of age, was that night in company with about half a dozen companions, in a public house in Stephen Law's closs, near the back of the Guard, where they all remained untill the noise came to the house, that the mob had shut the gates and seized the Guard, upon which the company broke up, and he, and one of his companions, went towards his master's house; and, in the course of the after examination, there was a witness who declared, nay, indeed swore (for the Sollicitor, by this time, saw it necessary to put those he examined upon oath), that he met him [Stirling] after he entered into the alley where his master lives, going towards his house; and another witness, fellow-prentice with Stirling, declares, that after the mob had seized the Guard, he went home, where he found Stirling before him; and, that his master lockt the door, and kept them both at home till after twelve at night: upon weighing of which testimonies, and upon consideration had, That he was charged by the declaration only of one person, who really did not appear to be a witness of the greatest weight, and that his life was in danger from the imprisonment, he was admitted to baill by the Lord Justice-Generall, by whose warrand he was committed. "Braidwood's friends applyed in the same manner; but as he stood charged by more than one witness, he was not released--tho', indeed, the witnesses adduced for him say somewhat in his exculpation--that he does not seem to have been upon any original concert; and one of the witnesses says he was along with him at the Tolbooth door, and refuses what is said against him, with regard to his having advised the burning of the Tolbooth door. But he remains still in prison. "As to Traill, the journeyman wright, he is charged by the same witness who declared against Stirling, and there is none concurrs with him and, to say the truth concerning him, he seemed to be the most ingenuous of any of them whom the Solicitor examined, and pointed out a witness by whom one of the first accomplices was discovered, and who escaped when the warrand was to be putt in execution against them. He positively denys his having shutt the gate, and 'tis thought Traill ought to be admitted to baill. "As to Birnie, he is charged only by one witness, who had never seen him before, nor knew his name; so, tho' I dare say the witness honestly mentioned him, 'tis possible he may be mistaken; and in the examination of above 200 witnesses there is no body concurrs with him, and he is ane insignificant little creature. "With regard to M'Lauchlan, the proof is strong against him by one witness, that he acted as a serjeant, or sort of commander, for some time, of a Guard, that stood cross between the upper end of the Luckenbooths and the north side of the street, to stop all but friends from going towards the Tolbooth; and by other witnesses, that he was at the Tolbooth door with a link in his hand, while the operation of beating and burning it was going on; that he went along with the mob with a halbert in his hand, untill he came to the gallows stone in the Grassmarket, and that he stuck the halbert into the hole of the gallows stone: that afterwards he went in amongst the mob when Captain Porteus was carried to the dyer's tree; so that the proof seems very heavy against him. "To sum up this matter with regard to the prisoners in the Castle, 'tis believed there is strong proof against M'Lauchlan; there is also proof against Braidwood. But, as it consists only in emission of words said to have been had by him while at the Tolbooth door, and that he is ane insignificant pitifull creature, and will find people to swear heartily in his favours, 'tis at best doubtfull whether a jury will be got to condemn him. "As to those in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, John Crawford, who had for some time been employed to ring the bells in the steeple of the New Church of Edinburgh, being in company with a soldier accidentally, the discourse falling in concerning the Captain Porteus and his murder, as he appears to be a light-headed fellow, he said, that he knew people that were more guilty than any that were putt in prison. Upon this information, Crawford was seized, and being examined, it appeared, that when the mob begun, as he was comeing down from the steeple, the mob took the keys from him; that he was that night in several corners, and did indeed delate severall persons whom he saw there, and immediately warrands were despatched, and it was found they had absconded and fled. But there was no evidence against him of any kind. Nay, on the contrary, it appeared, that he had been with the Magistrates in Clerk's, the vintner's, relating to them what he had seen in the streets. Therefore, after haveing detained him in prison ffor a very considerable time, his Majestie's Advocate and Sollicitor signed a warrand for his liberation. "There was also one James Wilson incarcerated in the said Tolbooth, upon the declaration of one witness, who said he saw him on the streets with a gun; and there he remained for some time, in order to try if a concurring witness could be found, or that he acted any part in the tragedy and wickedness. But nothing farther appeared against him; and being seized with a severe sickness, he is, by a warrand signed by his Majestie's Advocate and Sollicitor, liberated upon giveing sufficient baill. "As to King, enquiry was made, and the ffact comes out beyond all exception, that he was in the lodge at the Nether-Bow with Lindsay the waiter, and several other people, not at all concerned in the mob. But after the affair was over, he went up towards the guard, and having met with Sandie the Turk and his wife, who escaped out of prison, they returned to his house at the Abbey, and then 'tis very possible he may have thought fitt in his beer to boast of villany, in which he could not possibly have any share for that reason; he was desired to find baill and he should be set at liberty. But he is a stranger and a fellow of very indifferent character, and 'tis believed it won't be easy for him to find baill. Wherefore, it's thought he must be sett at liberty without it. Because he is a burden upon the Government while kept in confinement, not being able to maintain himself. "What is above is all that relates to persons in custody. But there are warrands out against a great many other persons who had fled, particularly against one William White, a journeyman baxter, who, by the evidence, appears to have been at the beginning of the mob, and to have gone along with the drum, from the West-Port to the Nether-Bow, and is said to have been one of those who attacked the guard, and probably was as deep as any one there. "Information was given that he was lurking at Falkirk, where he was born. Whereupon directions were sent to the Sheriff of the County, and a warrand from his Excellency Generall Wade, to the commanding officers at Stirling and Linlithgow, to assist, and all possible endeavours were used to catch hold of him, and 'tis said he escaped very narrowly, having been concealed in some outhouse; and the misfortune was, that those who were employed in the search did not know him personally. Nor, indeed, was it easy to trust any of the acquaintances of so low, obscure a fellow with the secret of the warrand to be putt in execution. "There was also strong evidence found against Robert Taylor, servant to William and Charles Thomsons, periwig-makers, that he acted as ane officer among the mob, and he was traced from the guard to the well at the head of Forester's Wynd, where he stood and had the appellation of Captain from the mob, and from that walking down the Bow before Captain Porteus, with his Lochaber axe; and, by the description given of one who hawl'd the rope by which Captain Porteus was pulled up, 'tis believed Taylor was the person; and 'tis farther probable, that the witness who debated Stirling had mistaken Taylor for him, their stature and age (so far as can be gathered from the description) being the same. "A great deal of pains were taken, and no charge was saved, in order to have catched hold of this Taylor, and warrands were sent to the country where he was born; but it appears he had shipt himself off for Holland, where it is said he now is. "There is strong evidence also against Thomas Burns, butcher, that he was ane active person from the beginning of the mob to the end of it. He lurkt for some time amongst those of his trade; and artfully enough a train was laid to catch him, under pretence of a message that had come from his father in Ireland, so that he came to a blind alehouse in the Flesh-market close, and, a party being ready, was, by Webster the soldier, who was upon this exploit, advertised to come down. However, Burns escaped out at a back-window, and hid himself in some of the houses which are heaped together upon one another in that place, so that it was not possible to catch him. 'Tis now said he is gone to Ireland to his father who lives there. "There is evidence also against one Robert Anderson, journeyman and servant to Colin Alison, wright; and against Thomas Linnen and James Maxwell, both servants also to the said Colin Alison, who all seem to have been deeply concerned in the matter. Anderson is one of those who putt the rope upon Captain Porteus's neck. Linnen seems also to have been very active; and Maxwell (which is pretty remarkable) is proven to have come to a shop upon the Friday before, and charged the journeymen and prentices there to attend in the Parliament close on Tuesday night, to assist to hang Captain Porteus. These three did early abscond, and, though warrands had been issued out against them, and all endeavours used to apprehend them, could not be found. "One Waldie, a servant to George Campbell, wright, has also absconded, and many others, and 'tis informed that numbers of them have shipt themselves off ffor the Plantations; and upon an information that a ship was going off ffrom Glasgow, in which severall of the rogues were to transport themselves beyond seas, proper warrands were obtained, and persons despatched to search the said ship, and seize any that can be found. "The like warrands had been issued with regard to ships from Leith. But whether they had been scard, or whether the information had been groundless, they had no effect. "This is a summary of the enquiry, ffrom which it appears there is no prooff on which one can rely, but against M'Lauchlan. There is a prooff also against Braidwood, but more exceptionable. His Majestie's Advocate, since he came to town, has join'd with the Sollicitor, and has done his utmost to gett at the bottom of this matter, but hitherto it stands as is above represented. They are resolved to have their eyes and their ears open, and to do what they can. But they laboured exceedingly against the stream; and it may truly be said, that nothing was wanting on their part. Nor have they declined any labour to answer the commands laid upon them to search the matter to the bottom." THE PORTEOUS MOB. In the preceding CHAPTERs (I. to VI.) the circumstances of that extraordinary riot and conspiracy, called the Porteous Mob, are given with as much accuracy as the author was able to collect them. The order, regularity, and determined resolution with which such a violent action was devised and executed, were only equalled by the secrecy which was observed concerning the principal actors. Although the fact was performed by torch-light, and in presence of a great multitude, to some of whom, at least, the individual actors must have been known, yet no discovery was ever made concerning any of the perpetrators of the slaughter. Two men only were brought to trial for an offence which the Government were so anxious to detect and punish. William M'Lauchlan, footman to the Countess of Wemyss, who is mentioned in the report of the Solicitor-General, against whom strong evidence had been obtained, was brought to trial in March 1737, charged as having been accessory to the riot, armed with a Lochaber axe. But this man (who was at all times a silly creature) proved, that he was in a state of mortal intoxication during the time he was present with the rabble, incapable of giving them either advice or assistance, or, indeed, of knowing what he or they were doing. He was also able to prove, that he was forced into the riot, and upheld while there by two bakers, who put a Lochaber axe into his hand. The jury, wisely judging this poor creature could be no proper subject of punishment, found the panel Not Guilty. The same verdict was given in the case of Thomas Linning, also mentioned in the Solicitor's memorial, who was tried in 1738. In short, neither then, nor for a long period afterwards, was anything discovered relating to the organisation of the Porteous Plot. The imagination of the people of Edinburgh was long irritated, and their curiosity kept awake, by the mystery attending this extraordinary conspiracy. It was generally reported of such natives of Edinburgh as, having left the city in youth, returned with a fortune amassed in foreign countries, that they had originally fled on account of their share in the Porteous Mob. But little credit can be attached to these surmises, as in most of the cases they are contradicted by dates, and in none supported by anything but vague rumours, grounded on the ordinary wish of the vulgar, to impute the success of prosperous men to some unpleasant source. The secret history of the Porteous Mob has been till this day unravelled; and it has always been quoted as a close, daring, and calculated act of violence, of a nature peculiarly characteristic of the Scottish people. Nevertheless, the author, for a considerable time, nourished hopes to have found himself enabled to throw some light on this mysterious story. An old man, who died about twenty years ago, at the advanced age of ninety-three, was said to have made a communication to the clergyman who attended upon his death-bed, respecting the origin of the Porteous Mob. This person followed the trade of a carpenter, and had been employed as such on the estate of a family of opulence and condition. His character in his line of life and amongst his neighbours, was excellent, and never underwent the slightest suspicion. His confession was said to have been to the following purpose: That he was one of twelve young men belonging to the village of Pathhead, whose animosity against Porteous, on account of the execution of Wilson, was so extreme, that they resolved to execute vengeance on him with their own hands, rather than he should escape punishment. With this resolution they crossed the Forth at different ferries, and rendezvoused at the suburb called Portsburgh, where their appearance in a body soon called numbers around them. The public mind was in such a state of irritation, that it only wanted a single spark to create an explosion; and this was afforded by the exertions of the small and determined band of associates. The appearance of premeditation and order which distinguished the riot, according to his account, had its origin, not in any previous plan or conspiracy, but in the character of those who were engaged in it. The story also serves to show why nothing of the origin of the riot has ever been discovered, since though in itself a great conflagration, its source, according to this account, was from an obscure and apparently inadequate cause. I have been disappointed, however, in obtaining the evidence on which this story rests. The present proprietor of the estate on which the old man died (a particular friend of the author) undertook to question the son of the deceased on the subject. This person follows his father's trade, and holds the employment of carpenter to the same family. He admits that his father's going abroad at the time of the Porteous Mob was popularly attributed to his having been concerned in that affair; but adds that, so far as is known to him, the old man had never made any confession to that effect; and, on the contrary, had uniformly denied being present. My kind friend, therefore, had recourse to a person from whom he had formerly heard the story; but who, either from respect to an old friend's memory, or from failure of his own, happened to have forgotten that ever such a communication was made. So my obliging correspondent (who is a fox-hunter) wrote to me that he was completely _planted;_ and all that can be said with respect to the tradition is, that it certainly once existed, and was generally believed. [_N.B._--The Rev. Dr. Carlyle, minister of Inveresk, in his _Autobiography,_ gives some interesting particulars relating to the Porteous Mob, from personal recollections. He happened to be present in the Tolbooth Church when Robertson made his escape, and also at the execution of Wilson in the Grassmarket, when Captain Porteous fired upon the mob, and several persons were killed. Edinburgh 1860, 8vo, pp. 30-42.] NOTE E.--CARSPHARN JOHN. John Semple, called Carspharn John, because minister of the parish in Galloway so called, was a Presbyterian clergyman of singular piety and great zeal, of whom Patrick Walker records the following passage: "That night after his wife died, he spent the whole ensuing night in prayer and meditation in his garden. The next morning, one of his elders coming to see him, and lamenting his great loss and want of rest, he replied,--'I declare I have not, all night, had one thought of the death of my wife, I have been so taken up in meditating on heavenly things. I have been this night on the banks of Ulai, plucking an apple here and there.'"-- _Walker's Remarkable Passages of the Life and Death of Mr. John Semple._ NOTE F.--PETER WALKER. This personage, whom it would be base ingratitude in the author to pass over without some notice, was by far the most zealous and faithful collector and recorder of the actions and opinions of the Cameronians. He resided, while stationary, at the Bristo Port of Edinburgh, but was by trade an itinerant merchant, or pedlar, which profession he seems to have exercised in Ireland as well as Britain. He composed biographical notices of Alexander Peden, John Semple, John Welwood, and Richard Cameron, all ministers of the Cameronian persuasion, to which the last mentioned member gave the name. It is from such tracts as these, written in the sense, feeling, and spirit of the sect, and not from the sophisticated narratives of a later period, that the real character of the persecuted class is to be gathered. Walker writes with a simplicity which sometimes slides into the burlesque, and sometimes attains a tone of simple pathos, but always expressing the most daring confidence in his own correctness of creed and sentiments, sometimes with narrow-minded and disgusting bigotry. His turn for the marvellous was that of his time and sect; but there is little room to doubt his veracity concerning whatever he quotes on his own knowledge. His small tracts now bring a very high price, especially the earlier and authentic editions. The tirade against dancing, pronounced by David Deans, is, as intimated in the text, partly borrowed from Peter Walker. He notices, as a foul reproach upon the name of Richard Cameron, that his memory was vituperated, "by pipers and fiddlers playing the Cameronian march--carnal vain springs, which too many professors of religion dance to; a practice unbecoming the professors of Christianity to dance to any spring, but somewhat more to this. Whatever," he proceeds, "be the many foul blots recorded of the saints in Scripture, none of them is charged with this regular fit of distraction. We find it has been practised by the wicked and profane, as the dancing at that brutish, base action of the calf-making; and it had been good for that unhappy lass, who danced off the head of John the Baptist, that she had been born a cripple, and never drawn a limb to her. Historians say, that her sin was written upon her judgment, who some time thereafter was dancing upon the ice, and it broke, and snapt the head off her; her head danced above, and her feet beneath. There is ground to think and conclude, that when the world's wickedness was great, dancing at their marriages was practised; but when the heavens above, and the earth beneath, were let loose upon them with that overflowing flood, their mirth was soon staid; and when the Lord in holy justice rained fire and brimstone from heaven upon that wicked people and city Sodom, enjoying fulness of bread and idleness, their fiddle-strings and hands went all in a flame; and the whole people in thirty miles of length, and ten of breadth, as historians say, were all made to fry in their skins and at the end, whoever are giving in marriages and dancing when all will go in a flame, they will quickly change their note. "I have often wondered thorow my life, how any that ever knew what it was to bow a knee in earnest to pray, durst crook a hough to fyke and fling at a piper's and fiddler's springs. I bless the Lord that ordered my lot so in my dancing days, that made the fear of the bloody rope and bullets to my neck and head, the pain of boots, thumikens, and irons, cold and hunger, wetness and weariness, to stop the lightness of my head, and the wantonness of my feet. What the never-to-be-forgotten Man of God, John Knox, said to Queen Mary, when she gave him that sharp challenge, which would strike our mean-spirited, tongue-tacked ministers dumb, for his giving public faithful warning of the danger of the church and nation, through her marrying the Dauphine of France, when he left her bubbling and greeting, and came to an outer court, where her Lady Maries were fyking and dancing, he said, 'O brave ladies, a brave world, if it would last, and heaven at the hinder end! But fye upon the knave Death, that will seize upon those bodies of yours; and where will all your fiddling and flinging be then?' Dancing being such a common evil, especially amongst young professors, that all the lovers of the Lord should hate, has caused me to insist the more upon it, especially that foolish spring the Cameronian march!"--_Life and Death of Three Famous Worthies,_ etc., collected and printed for Patrick Walker, Edin. 1727, 12mo, p. 59. It may be here observed, that some of the milder class of Cameronians made a distinction between the two sexes dancing separately, and allowed of it as a healthy and not unlawful exercise; but when men and women mingled in sport, it was then called _promiscuous dancing,_ and considered as a scandalous enormity. NOTE G.--MUSCHAT'S CAIRN. Nichol Muschat, a debauched and profligate wretch, having conceived a hatred against his wife, entered into a conspiracy with another brutal libertine and gambler, named Campbell of Burnbank (repeatedly mentioned in Pennycuick's satirical poems of the time), by which Campbell undertook to destroy the woman's character, so as to enable Muschat, on false pretences to obtain a divorce from her. The brutal devices to which these worthy accomplices resorted for that purpose having failed, they endeavoured to destroy her by administering medicine of a dangerous kind, and in extraordinary quantities. This purpose also failing, Nichol Muschat, or Muschet, did finally, on the 17th October 1720, carry his wife under cloud of night to the King's Park, adjacent to what is called the Duke's Walk, near Holyrood Palace, and there took her life by cutting her throat almost quite through, and inflicting other wounds. He pleaded guilty to the indictment, for which he suffered death. His associate, Campbell, was sentenced to transportation, for his share in the previous conspiracy. See _MacLaurin's Criminal Cases,_pp. 64 and 738. In memory, and at the same time execration, of the deed, a _cairn,_ or pile of stones, long marked the spot. It is now almost totally removed, in consequence of an alteration on the road in that place. NOTE H.--HANGMAN, OR LOCKMAN. _Lockman,_ so called from the small quantity of meal (Scottice, _lock_) which he was entitled to take out of every boll exposed to market in the city. In Edinburgh, the duty has been very long commuted; but in Dumfries, the finisher of the law still exercises, or did lately exercise, his privilege, the quantity taken being regulated by a small iron ladle, which he uses as the measure of his perquisite. The expression _lock,_ for a small quantity of any readily divisible dry substance, as corn, meal, flax, or the like, is still preserved, not only popularly, but in a legal description, as the _lock_ and _gowpen,_ or small quantity and handful, payable in thirlage cases, as in town multure. NOTE I.--THE FAIRY BOY OF LEITH, This legend was in former editions inaccurately said to exist in Baxter's "World of Spirits;" but is, in fact, to be found, in "Pandaemonium, or the Devil's Cloyster; being a further blow to Modern Sadduceism," by Richard Bovet, Gentleman, 12mo, 1684. The work is inscribed to Dr. Henry More. The story is entitled, "A remarkable passage of one named the Fairy Boy of Leith, in Scotland, given me by my worthy friend, Captain George Burton, and attested under his hand;" and is as follows:-- "About fifteen years since, having business that detained me for some time in Leith, which is near Edenborough, in the kingdom of Scotland, I often met some of my acquaintance at a certain house there, where we used to drink a glass of wine for our refection. The woman which kept the house was of honest reputation amongst the neighbours, which made me give the more attention to what she told me one day about a Fairy Boy (as they called him) who lived about that town. She had given me so strange an account of him, that I desired her I might see him the first opportunity, which she promised; and not long after, passing that way, she told me there was the Fairy Boy but a little before I came by; and casting her eye into the street, said, 'Look you, sir, yonder he is at play with those other boys,' and designing him to me. I went, and by smooth words, and a piece of money, got him to come into the house with me; where, in the presence of divers people, I demanded of him several astrological questions, which he answered with great subtility, and through all his discourse carried it with a cunning much beyond his years, which seemed not to exceed ten or eleven. He seemed to make a motion like drumming upon the table with his fingers, upon which I asked him, whether he could beat a drum, to which he replied, 'Yes, sir, as well as any man in Scotland; for every Thursday night I beat all points to a sort of people that use to meet under yon hill" (pointing to the great hill between Edenborough and Leith). 'How, boy,' quoth I; 'what company have you there?'--'There are, sir,' said he, 'a great company both of men and women, and they are entertained with many sorts of music besides my drum; they have, besides, plenty variety of meats and wine; and many times we are carried into France or Holland in a night, and return again; and whilst we are there, we enjoy all the pleasures the country doth afford.' I demanded of him, how they got under that hill? To which he replied, 'that there were a great pair of gates that opened to them, though they were invisible to others, and that within there were brave large rooms, as well accommodated as most in Scotland.' I then asked him, how I should know what he said to be true? upon which he told me he would read my fortune, saying I should have two wives, and that he saw the forms of them sitting on my shoulders; that both would be very handsome women. "As he was thus speaking, a woman of the neighbourhood, coming into the room, demanded of him what her fortune should be? He told her that she had two bastards before she was married; which put her in such a rage, that she desired not to hear the rest. The woman of the house told me that all the people in Scotland could not keep him from the rendezvous on Thursday night; upon which, by promising him some more money, I got a promise of him to meet me at the same place, in the afternoon of the Thursday following, and so dismissed him at that time. The boy came again at the place and time appointed, and I had prevailed with some friends to continue with me, if possible, to prevent his moving that night; he was placed between us, and answered many questions, without offering to go from us, until about eleven of the clock, he was got away unperceived of the company; but I suddenly missing him, hasted to the door, and took hold of him, and so returned him into the same room; we all watched him, and on a sudden he was again out of the doors. I followed him close, and he made a noise in the street as if he had been set upon; but from that time I could never see him. "GEORGE BURTON." [A copy of this rare little volume is in the library at Abbotsford.] NOTE J.--INTERCOURSE OF THE COVENANTERS WITH THE INVISIBLE WORLD. The gloomy, dangerous, and constant wanderings of the persecuted sect of Cameronians, naturally led to their entertaining with peculiar credulity the belief that they were sometimes persecuted, not only by the wrath of men, but by the secret wiles and open terrors of Satan. In fact, a flood could not happen, a horse cast a shoe, or any other the most ordinary interruption thwart a minister's wish to perform service at a particular spot, than the accident was imputed to the immediate agency of fiends. The encounter of Alexander Peden with the Devil in the cave, and that of John Sample with the demon in the ford, are given by Peter Walker almost in the language of the text. NOTE K.--CHILD-MURDER. The Scottish Statute Book, anno 1690, CHAPTER 21, in consequence of the great increase of the crime of child-murder, both from the temptations to commit the offence and the difficulty of discovery enacted a certain set of presumptions, which, in the absence of direct proof, the jury were directed to receive as evidence of the crime having actually been committed. The circumstances selected for this purpose were, that the woman should have concealed her situation during the whole period of pregnancy; that she should not have called for help at her delivery; and that, combined with these grounds of suspicion, the child should be either found dead or be altogether missing. Many persons suffered death during the last century under this severe act. But during the author's memory a more lenient course was followed, and the female accused under the act, and conscious of no competent defence, usually lodged a petition to the Court of Justiciary, denying, for form's sake, the tenor of the indictment, but stating, that as her good name had been destroyed by the charge, she was willing to submit to sentence of banishment, to which the crown counsel usually consented. This lenity in practice, and the comparative infrequency of the crime since the doom of public ecclesiastical penance has been generally dispensed with, have led to the abolition of the Statute of William, and Mary, which is now replaced by another, imposing banishment in those circumstances in which the crime was formerly capital. This alteration took place in 1803. NOTE L.--CALUMNIATOR OF THE FAIR SEX. The journal of Graves, a Bow Street officer, despatched to Holland to obtain the surrender of the unfortunate William Brodie, bears a reflection on the ladies somewhat like that put in the mouth of the police-officer Sharpitlaw. It had been found difficult to identify the unhappy criminal; and when a Scotch gentleman of respectability had seemed disposed to give evidence on the point required, his son-in-law, a clergyman in Amsterdam, and his daughter, were suspected by Graves to have used arguments with the witness to dissuade him from giving his testimony. On which subject the journal of the Bow Street officer proceeds thus:-- "Saw then a manifest reluctance in Mr. -------, and had no doubt the daughter and parson would endeavour to persuade him to decline troubling himself in the matter, but judged he could not go back from what he had said to Mr. Rich.--Nota Bene. _No mischief but a woman or a priest in it_--here both." NOTE M.--Sir William Dick of Braid. This gentleman formed a striking example of the instability of human prosperity. He was once the wealthiest man of his time in Scotland, a merchant in an extensive line of commerce, and a farmer of the public revenue; insomuch that, about 1640, he estimated his fortune at two hundred thousand pounds sterling. Sir William Dick was a zealous Covenanter; and in the memorable year 1641, he lent the Scottish Convention of Estates one hundred thousand merks at once, and thereby enabled them to support and pay their army, which must otherwise have broken to pieces. He afterwards advanced L20,000 for the service of King Charles, during the usurpation; and having, by owning the royal cause, provoked the displeasure of the ruling party, he was fleeced of more money, amounting in all to L65,000 sterling. Being in this manner reduced to indigence, he went to London to try to recover some part of the sums which had been lent on Government security. Instead of receiving any satisfaction, the Scottish Croesus was thrown into prison, in which he died, 19th December 1655. It is said his death was hastened by the want of common necessaries. But this statement is somewhat exaggerated, if it be true, as is commonly said, that though he was not supplied with bread, he had plenty of pie-crust, thence called "Sir William Dick's Necessity." The changes of fortune are commemorated in a folio pamphlet, entitled, "The Lamentable Estate and distressed Case of Sir William Dick" [Lond. 1656]. It contains three copper-plates, one representing Sir William on horseback, and attended with guards as Lord Provost of Edinburgh, superintending the unloading of one of his rich argosies. A second exhibiting him as arrested, and in the hands of the bailiffs. A third presents him dead in prison. The tract is esteemed highly valuable by collectors of prints. The only copy I ever saw upon sale, was rated at L30. (In London sales, copies have varied in price from L15 to L52: 10s.) NOTE N.--Doomster, or Dempster, of Court. The name of this officer is equivalent to the pronouncer of doom or sentence. In this comprehensive sense, the Judges of the Isle of Man were called Dempsters. But in Scotland the word was long restricted to the designation of an official person, whose duty it was to recite the sentence after it had been pronounced by the Court, and recorded by the clerk; on which occasion the Dempster legalised it by the words of form, "_And this I pronounce for doom._" For a length of years, the office, as mentioned in the text, was held in commendam with that of the executioner; for when this odious but necessary officer of justice received his appointment, he petitioned the Court of Justiciary to be received as their Dempster, which was granted as a matter of course. The production of the executioner in open court, and in presence of the wretched criminal, had something in it hideous and disgusting to the more refined feelings of later times. But if an old tradition of the Parliament House of Edinburgh may be trusted, it was the following anecdote which occasioned the disuse of the Dempster's office. It chanced at one time that the office of public executioner was vacant. There was occasion for some one to act as Dempster, and, considering the party who generally held the office, it is not wonderful that a locum tenens was hard to be found. At length, one Hume, who had been sentenced to transportation, for an attempt to burn his own house, was induced to consent that he would pronounce the doom on this occasion. But when brought forth to officiate, instead of repeating the doom to the criminal, Mr. Hume addressed himself to their lordships in a bitter complaint of the injustice of his own sentence. It was in vain that he was interrupted, and reminded of the purpose for which he had come hither; "I ken what ye want of me weel eneugh," said the fellow, "ye want me to be your Dempster; but I am come to be none of your Dempster, I am come to summon you, Lord T, and you, Lord E, to answer at the bar of another world for the injustice you have done me in this." In short, Hume had only made a pretext of complying with the proposal, in order to have an opportunity of reviling the Judges to their faces, or giving them, in the phrase of his country, "a sloan." He was hurried off amid the laughter of the audience, but the indecorous scene which had taken place contributed to the abolition of the office of Dempster. The sentence is now read over by the clerk of court, and the formality of pronouncing doom is altogether omitted. [The usage of calling the Dempster into court by the ringing of a hand-bell, to repeat the sentence on a criminal, is said to have been abrogated in March 1773.] NOTE O.--John Duke of Argyle and Greenwich. This nobleman was very dear to his countrymen, who were justly proud of his military and political talents, and grateful for the ready zeal with which he asserted the rights of his native country. This was never more conspicuous than in the matter of the Porteous Mob, when the ministers brought in a violent and vindictive bill, for declaring the Lord Provost of Edinburgh incapable of bearing any public office in future, for not foreseeing a disorder which no one foresaw, or interrupting the course of a riot too formidable to endure opposition. The same bill made provision for pulling down the city gates, and abolishing the city guard,--rather a Hibernian mode of enabling their better to keep the peace within burgh in future. The Duke of Argyle opposed this bill as a cruel, unjust, and fanatical proceeding, and an encroachment upon the privileges of the royal burghs of Scotland, secured to them by the treaty of Union. "In all the proceedings of that time," said his Grace, "the nation of Scotland treated with the English as a free and independent people; and as that treaty, my Lords, had no other guarantee for the due performance of its articles, but the faith and honour of a British Parliament, it would be both unjust and ungenerous, should this House agree to any proceedings that have a tendency to injure it." Lord Hardwicke, in reply to the Duke of Argyle, seemed to insinuate, that his Grace had taken up the affair in a party point of view, to which the nobleman replied in the spirited language quoted in the text. Lord Hardwicke apologised. The bill was much modified, and the clauses concerning the dismantling the city, and disbanding the guard, were departed from. A fine of L2000 was imposed on the city for the benefit of Porteous's widow. She was contented to accept three-fourths of the sum, the payment of which closed the transaction. It is remarkable, that, in our day, the Magistrates of Edinburgh have had recourse to both those measures, hold in such horror by their predecessors, as necessary steps for the improvement of the city. It may be here noticed, in explanation of another circumstance mentioned in the text, that there is a tradition in Scotland, that George II., whose irascible temper is said sometimes to have hurried him into expressing his displeasure _par voie du fait,_ offered to the Duke of Argyle in angry audience, some menace of this nature, on which he left the presence in high disdain, and with little ceremony. Sir Robert Walpole, having met the Duke as he retired, and learning the cause of his resentment and discomposure, endeavoured to reconcile him to what had happened by saying, "Such was his Majesty's way, and that he often took such liberties with himself without meaning any harm." This did not mend matters in MacCallummore's eyes, who replied, in great disdain, "You will please to remember, Sir Robert, the infinite distance there is betwixt you and me." Another frequent expression of passion on the part of the same monarch, is alluded to in the old Jacobite song-- The fire shall get both hat and wig, As oft-times they've got a' that. NOTE P.--Expulsion of the Bishops from the Scottish Convention. For some time after the Scottish Convention had commenced its sittings, the Scottish prelates retained their seats, and said prayers by rotation to the meeting, until the character of the Convention became, through the secession of Dundee, decidedly Presbyterian. Occasion was then taken on the Bishop of Ross mentioning King James in his prayer, as him for whom they watered their couch with tears. On this the Convention exclaimed, they had no occasion for spiritual Lords, and commanded the Bishops to depart and return no more, Montgomery of Skelmorley breaking at the same time a coarse jest upon the scriptural expression used by the prelate. Davie Deans's oracle, Patrick Walker, gives this account of their dismission. "When they came out, some of the Convention said they wished the honest lads knew they were put out, for then they would not get away with haill (whole) gowns. All the fourteen gathered together with pale faces, and stood in a cloud in the Parliament Close; James Wilson, Robert Neilson, Francis Hislop, and myself, were standing close by them; Francis Hislop with force thrust Robert Neilson upon them, their heads went hard on one another. But there being so many enemies in the city fretting and gnashing the teeth, waiting for an occasion to raise a mob, when undoubtedly blood would have been shed, and having laid down conclusions amongst ourselves to avoid giving the least occasion to all mobs, kept us from tearing off their gowns. "Their graceless Graces went quickly off, and there was neither bishop nor curate seen in the street--this was a surprising sudden change not to be forgotten. Some of us would have rejoiced near them in large sums to have seen these Bishops sent legally down the Bow that they might have found the weight of their tails in a tow to dry their tow-soles; that they might know what hanging was, they having been active for themselves and the main instigators to all the mischiefs, cruelties, and bloodshed of that time, wherein the streets of Edinburgh and other places of the land did run with the innocent precious dear blood of the Lord's people."--_Life and Death of three famous Worthies_ (Semple, etc.), by Patrick Walker. Edin. 1727, pp. 72, 73. NOTE Q.--Half-hanged Maggie Dickson. [In the Statistical Account of the Parish of Inveresk (vol. xvi. p. 34), Dr. Carlyle says, "No person has been convicted of a capital felony since the year 1728, when the famous Maggy Dickson was condemned and executed for child-murder in the Grassmarket of Edinburgh, and was restored to life in a cart on her way to Musselburgh to be buried . . . . . She kept an ale-house in a neighbouring parish for many years after she came to life again, which was much resorted to from curiosity." After the body was cut down and handed over to her relatives, her revival is attributed to the jolting of the cart, and according to Robert Chambers,--taking a retired road to Musselburgh, "they stopped near Peffer-mill to get a dram; and when they came out from the house to resume their journey, Maggie was sitting up in the cart." Among the poems of Alexander Pennecuick (who died in 1730), is one entitled "The Merry Wives of Musselburgh's Welcome to Meg Dickson;" while another broadside, without any date or author's name, is called "Margaret Dickson's Penitential Confession," containing these lines referring to her conviction:-- "Who found me guilty of that barbarous crime, And did, by law, end this wretched life of mine; But God . . . . did me preserve," etc. In another of these ephemeral productions hawked about the streets, called, "A Ballad by J--n B--s," are the following lines:-- "Please peruse the speech Of ill-hanged Maggy Dickson. Ere she was strung, the wicked wife Was sainted by the Flamen (priest), But now, since she's retum'd to life, Some say she's the old samen." In his reference to Maggie's calling salt after her recovery, the Author would appear to be alluding to another character who went by the name of "saut _Maggie,_" and is represented in one or more old etchings about 1790.] NOTE R.--Madge Wildfire. In taking leave of the poor maniac, the Author may here observe that the first conception of the character, though afterwards greatly altered, was taken from that of a person calling herself, and called by others, Feckless Fannie (weak or feeble Fannie), who always travelled with a small flock of sheep. The following account, furnished by the persevering kindness of Mr. Train, contains, probably, all that can now be known of her history, though many, among whom is the Author, may remember having heard of Feckless Fannie in the days of their youth. "My leisure hours," says Mr. Train, "for some time past have been mostly spent in searching for particulars relating to the maniac called Feckless Fannie, who travelled over all Scotland and England, between the years 1767 and 1775, and whose history is altogether so like a romance, that I have been at all possible pains to collect every particular that can be found relative to her in Galloway, or in Ayrshire. "When Feckless Fannie appeared in Ayrshire, for the first time, in the summer of 1769, she attracted much notice, from being attended by twelve or thirteen sheep, who seemed all endued with faculties so much superior to the ordinary race of animals of the same species, as to excite universal astonishment. She had for each a different name, to which it answered when called by its mistress, and would likewise obey in the most surprising manner any command she thought proper to give. When travelling, she always walked in front of her flock, and they followed her closely behind. When she lay down at night in the fields, for she would never enter into a house, they always disputed who should lie next to her, by which means she was kept warm, while she lay in the midst of them; when she attempted to rise from the ground, an old ram, whose name was Charlie, always claimed the sole right of assisting her; pushing any that stood in his way aside, until he arrived right before his mistress; he then bowed his head nearly to the ground that she might lay her hands on his horns, which were very large; he then lifted her gently from the ground by raising his head. If she chanced to leave her flock feeding, as soon as they discovered she was gone, they all began to bleat most piteously, and would continue to do so till she returned; they would then testify their joy by rubbing their sides against her petticoat and frisking about. "Feckless Fannie was not, like most other demented creatures, fond of fine dress; on her head she wore an old slouched hat, over her shoulders an old plaid, and carried always in her hand a shepherd's crook; with any of these articles she invariably declared she would not part for any consideration whatever. When she was interrogated why she set so much value on things seemingly so insignificant, she would sometimes relate the history of her misfortune, which was briefly as follows:-- "'I am the only daughter of a wealthy squire in the north of England, but I loved my father's shepherd, and that has been my ruin; for my father, fearing his family would be disgraced by such an alliance, in a passion mortally wounded my lover with a shot from a pistol. I arrived just in time to receive the last blessing of the dying man, and to close his eyes in death. He bequeathed me his little all, but I only accepted these sheep, to be my sole companions through life, and this hat, this plaid, and this crook, all of which I will carry until I descend into the grave.' "This is the substance of a ballad, eighty-four lines of which I copied down lately from the recitation of an old woman in this place, who says she has seen it in print, with a plate on the title-page, representing Fannie with her sheep behind her. As this ballad is said to have been written by Lowe, the author of _Mary's Dream,_ I am surprised that it has not been noticed by Cromek in his _Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song;_ but he perhaps thought it unworthy of a place in his collection, as there is very little merit in the composition; which want of room prevents me from transcribing at present. But if I thought you had never seen it, I would take an early opportunity of doing so. "After having made the tour of Galloway in 1769, as Fannie was wandering in the neighbourhood of Moffat, on her way to Edinburgh, where, I am informed, she was likewise well known, Old Charlie, her favourite ram, chanced to break into a kale-yard, which the proprietor observing, let loose a mastiff, that hunted the poor sheep to death. This was a sad misfortune; it seemed to renew all the pangs which she formerly felt on the death of her lover. She would not part from the side of her old friend for several days, and it was with much difficulty she consented to allow him to be buried; but still wishing to pay a tribute to his memory, she covered his grave with moss, and fenced it round with osiers, and annually returned to the same spot, and pulled the weeds from the grave and repaired the fence. This is altogether like a romance; but I believe it is really true that she did so. The grave of Charlie is still held sacred even by the school-boys of the present day in that quarter. It is now, perhaps, the only instance of the law of Kenneth being attended to, which says, 'The grave where anie that is slaine lieth buried, leave untilled for seven years. Repute every grave holie so as thou be well advised, that in no wise with thy feet thou tread upon it.' "Through the storms of winter, as well as in the milder seasons of the year, she continued her wandering course, nor could she be prevented from doing so, either by entreaty or promise of reward. The late Dr. Fullarton of Rosemount, in the neighbourhood of Ayr, being well acquainted with her father when in England, endeavoured, in a severe season, by every means in his power, to detain her at Rosemount for a few days until the weather should become more mild; but when she found herself rested a little, and saw her sheep fed, she raised her crook, which was the signal she always gave for the sheep to follow her, and off they all marched together. "But the hour of poor Fannie's dissolution was now at hand, and she seemed anxious to arrive at the spot where she was to terminate her mortal career. She proceeded to Glasgow, and while passing through that city a crowd of idle boys, attracted by her singular appearance, together with the novelty of seeing so many sheep obeying her command, began to ferment her with their pranks, till she became so irritated that she pelted them with bricks and stones, which they returned in such a manner, that she was actually stoned to death between Glasgow and Anderston. "To the real history of this singular individual credulity has attached several superstitious appendages. It is said that the farmer who was the cause of Charlie's death shortly afterwards drowned himself in a peat-hag; and that the hand with which a butcher in Kilinarnock struck one of the other sheep became powerless, and withered to the very bone. In the summer of 1769, when she was passing by New Cumnock, a young man, whose name was William Forsyth, son of a farmer in the same parish, plagued her so much that she wished he might never see the morn; upon which he went home and hanged himself in his father's barn. And I doubt not that many such stories may yet be remembered in other parts where she had been." So far Mr. Train. The Author can only add to this narrative that Feckless Fannie and her little flock were well known in the pastoral districts. In attempting to introduce such a character into fiction, the Author felt the risk of encountering a comparison with the Maria of Sterne; and, besides, the mechanism of the story would have been as much retarded by Feckless Fannie's flock as the night march of Don Quixote was delayed by Sancho's tale of the sheep that were ferried over the river. The Author has only to add, that notwithstanding the preciseness of his friend Mr. Train's statement, there may be some hopes that the outrage on Feckless Fannie and her little flock was not carried to extremity. There is no mention of any trial on account of it, which, had it occurred in the manner stated, would have certainly taken place; and the Author has understood that it was on the Border she was last seen, about the skirts of the Cheviot hills, but without her little flock. NOTE S.--Death of Francis Gordon. This exploit seems to have been one in which Patrick Walker prided himself not a little; and there is reason to fear, that that excellent person would have highly resented the attempt to associate another with him in the slaughter of a King's Life-Guardsman. Indeed, he would have had the more right to be offended at losing any share of the glory, since the party against Gordon was already three to one, besides having the advantage of firearms. The manner in which he vindicates his claim to the exploit, without committing himself by a direct statement of it, is not a little amusing. It is as follows:-- "I shall give a brief and true account of that man's death, which I did not design to do while I was upon the stage; I resolve, indeed (if it be the Lord's will), to leave a more full account of that and many other remarkable steps of the Lord's dispensations towards me through my life. It was then commonly said, that Francis Gordon was a volunteer out of wickedness of principles, and could not stay with the troop, but was still raging and ranging to catch hiding suffering people. Meldrum and Airly's troops, lying at Lanark upon the first day of March 1682, Mr. Gordon and another wicked comrade, with their two servants and four horses, came to Kilcaigow, two miles from Lanark, searching for William Caigow and others, under hiding. "Mr. Gordon, rambling throw the town, offered to abuse the women. At night, they came a mile further to the Easter-Seat, to Robert Muir's, he being also under hiding. Gordon's comrade and the two servants went to bed, but he could sleep none, roaring all night for women. When day came, he took only his sword in his hand, and came to Moss-platt, and some new men (who had been in the fields all night) seeing him, they fled, and he pursued. James Wilson, Thomas Young, and myself, having been in a meeting all night, were lying down in the morning. We were alarmed, thinking there were many more than one; he pursued hard, and overtook us. Thomas Young said, 'Sir, what do ye pursue us for?' He said, 'he was come to send us to hell.' James Wilson said, 'that shall not be, for we will defend ourselves.' He said, 'that either he or we should go to it now.' He run his sword furiously throw James Wilson's coat. James fired upon him, but missed him. All this time he cried, 'Damn his soul!' He got a shot in his head out of a pocket-pistol, rather fit for diverting a boy than killing such a furious, mad, brisk man, which, notwithstanding, killed him dead. The foresaid William Caigow and Robert Muir came to us. We searched him for papers, and found a long scroll of sufferers' names, either to kill or take. I tore it all in pieces. He had also some Popish books and bonds of money, with one dollar, which a poor man took off the ground; all which we put in his pocket again. Thus, he was four miles from Lanark, and near a mile from his comrade, seeking his own death and got it. And for as much as we have been condemned for this, I could never see how any one could condemn us that allows of self-defence, which the laws both of God and nature allow to every creature. For my own part, my heart never smote me for this. When I saw his blood run, I wished that all the blood of the Lord's stated and avowed enemies in Scotland had been in his veins. Having such a clear call and opportunity, I would have rejoiced to have seen it all gone out with a gush. I have many times wondered at the greater part of the indulged, lukewarm ministers and professors in that time, who made more noise of murder, when one of these enemies had been killed even in our own defence, than of twenty of us being murdered by them. None of these men present was challenged for this but myself. Thomas Young thereafter suffered at Mauchline, but was not challenged for this; Robert Muir was banished; James Wilson outlived the persecution; Williarn Caigow died in the Canongate Tolbooth, in the beginning of 1685. Mr. Wodrow is misinformed, who says that he suffered unto death." NOTE T.--Tolling to Service in Scotland. In the old days of Scotland, when persons of property (unless they happened to be non-jurors) were as regular as their inferiors in attendance on parochial worship, there was a kind of etiquette, in waiting till the patron or acknowledged great man of the parish should make his appearance. This ceremonial was so sacred in the eyes of a parish beadle in the Isle of Bute, that the kirk bell being out of order, he is said to have mounted the steeple every Sunday, to imitate with his voice the successive summonses which its mouth of metal used to send forth. The first part of this imitative harmony was simply the repetition of the words _Bell bell, bell bell,_ two or three times in a manner as much resembling the sound as throat of flesh could imitate throat of iron. _Bellu'm! bellu'm!_ was sounded forth in a more urgent manner; but he never sent forth the third and conclusive peal, the varied tone of which is called in Scotland the ringing-in, until the two principal heritors of the parish approached, when the chime ran thus:-- Bellu'm Belle'llum, Bernera and Knockdow's coming! Bellu'm Belle'llum, Bernera and Knockdow's coming! Thereby intimating that service was instantly to proceed. [Mr. Mackinlay of Borrowstounness, a native of Bute, states that Sir Walter Scott had this story from Sir Adam Ferguson; but that the gallant knight had not given the lairds' titles correctly--the bellman's great men being "Craich, Drumbuie, and Barnernie!"--1842.] 
6942	----	[Illustration: Bookcover] [Illustration: Spine THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN By Walter Scott TALES OF MY LANDLORD COLLECTED AND ARRANGED BY JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM, SCHOOLMASTER AND PARISH CLERK OF GANDERCLEUGH. SECOND SERIES. [Illustration: Frontispiece] [Illustration: Titlepage_1] [Illustration: First Poem] THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN. Hear, Land o' Cakes and brither Scots, Frae Maidenkirk to Johnny Groat's, If there's a hole in a' your coats, I rede ye tent it; A chiel's amang you takin' notes, An' faith he'll prent it! Burns. EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION TO THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN. SCOTT began to work on "The Heart of Mid-Lothian" almost before he had completed "Rob Roy." On Nov. 10, 1817, he writes to Archibald Constable announcing that the negotiations for the sale of the story to Messrs. Longman have fallen through, their firm declining to relieve the Ballantynes of their worthless "stock." "So you have the staff in your own hands, and, as you are on the spot, can manage it your own way. Depend on it that, barring unforeseen illness or death, these will be the best volumes which have appeared. I pique myself on the first tale, which is called 'The Heart of Mid-Lothian.'" Sir Walter had thought of adding a romance, "The Regalia," on the Scotch royal insignia, which had been rediscovered in the Castle of Edinburgh. This story he never wrote. Mr. Cadell was greatly pleased at ousting the Longmans--"they have themselves to blame for the want of the Tales, and may grumble as they choose: we have Taggy by the tail, and, if we have influence to keep the best author of the day, we ought to do it."--[Archibald Constable, iii. 104.] Though contemplated and arranged for, "The Heart of Mid-Lothian" was not actually taken in hand till shortly after Jan. 15, 1818, when Cadell writes that the tracts and pamphlets on the affair of Porteous are to be collected for Scott. "The author was in great glee . . . he says that he feels very strong with what he has now in hand." But there was much anxiety concerning Scott's health. "I do not at all like this illness of Scott's," said James Ballantyne to Hogg. "I have eften seen him look jaded of late, and am afraid it is serious." "Hand your tongue, or I'll gar you measure your length on the pavement," replied Hogg. "You fause, down-hearted loon, that ye are, you daur to speak as if Scott were on his death-bed! It cannot be, it must not be! I will not suffer you to speak that gait." Scott himself complains to Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe of "these damned spasms. The merchant Abudah's hag was a henwife to them when they give me a real night of it." "The Heart of Mid-Lothian," in spite of the author's malady, was published in June 1818. As to its reception, and the criticism which it received, Lockhart has left nothing to be gleaned. Contrary to his custom, he has published, but without the writer's name, a letter from Lady Louisa Stuart, which really exhausts what criticism can find to say about the new novel. "I have not only read it myself," says Lady Louisa, "but am in a house where everybody is tearing it out of each other's hands, and talking of nothing else." She preferred it to all but "Waverley," and congratulates him on having made "the perfectly good character the most interesting. . . . Had this very story been conducted by a common hand, Effie would have attracted all our concern and sympathy, Jeanie only cold approbation. Whereas Jeanie, without youth, beauty, genius, warns passions, or any other novel-perfection, is here our object from beginning to end." Lady Louisa, with her usual frankness, finds the Edinburgh lawyers tedious, in the introduction, and thinks that Mr. Saddletree "will not entertain English readers." The conclusion "flags"; "but the chief fault I have to find relates to the reappearance and shocking fate of the boy. I hear on all sides 'Oh, I do not like that!' I cannot say what I would have had instead, but I do not like it either; it is a lame, huddled conclusion. I know you so well in it, by-the-by! You grow tired yourself, want to get rid of the story, and hardly care how." Lady Lousia adds that Sir George Staunton would never have hazarded himself in the streets of Edinburgh. "The end of poor Madge Wildfire is most pathetic. The meeting at Muschat's Cairn tremendous. Dumbiedikes and Rory Beau are delightful. . . . I dare swear many of your readers never heard of the Duke of Argyle before." She ends: "If I had known nothing, and the whole world had told me the contrary, I should have found you out in that one parenthesis, 'for the man was mortal, and had been a schoolmaster.'" Lady Louisa omits a character who was probably as essential to Scott's scheme as any--Douce Davie Deans, the old Cameronian. He had almost been annoyed by the criticism of his Covenanters in "Old Mortality," "the heavy artillery out of the Christian Instructor or some such obscure field work," and was determined to "tickle off" another. There are signs of a war between literary Cavaliers and literary Covenanters at this time, after the discharge of Dr. McCrie's "heavy artillery." Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe was presented by Surtees of Mainsforth with a manuscript of Kirkton's unprinted "History of the Church of Scotland." This he set forth to edite, with the determination not to "let the Whig dogs have the best of it." Every Covenanting scandal and absurdity, such as the old story of Mess David Williamson--"Dainty Davie"--and his remarkable prowess, and presence of mind at Cherrytrees, was raked up, and inserted in notes to Kirkton. Scott was Sharpe's ally in this enterprise. "I had in the persons of my forbears a full share, you see, of religious persecution . . . for all my greatgrandfathers were under the ban, and I think there were hardly two of them out of jail at once." "I think it would be most scandalous to let the godly carry it oft thus." "It" seems to have been the editing of Kirkton. "It is very odd the volume of Wodrow, containing the memoir of Russell concerning the murder, is positively vanished from the library" (the Advocates' Library). "Neither book nor receipt is to be found: surely they have stolen it in the fear of the Lord." The truth seems to have been that Cavaliers and Covenanters were racing for the manuscripts wherein they found smooth stones of the brook to pelt their opponents withal. Soon after Scott writes: "It was not without exertion and trouble that I this day detected Russell's manuscript (the account of the murder of Sharpe by one of the murderers), also Kirkton and one or two others, which Mr. McCrie had removed from their place in the library and deposited in a snug and secret corner." The Covenanters had made a raid on the ammunition of the Cavaliers. "I have given," adds Sir Walter, "an infernal row on the subject of hiding books in this manner." Sharpe replies that the "villainous biographer of John Knox" (Dr. McCrie), "that canting rogue," is about to edite Kirkton. Sharpe therefore advertised his own edition at once, and edited Kirkton by forced marches as it were. Scott reviewed the book in the Quarterly (Jan. 1818). He remarked that Sharpe "had not escaped the censure of these industrious literary gentlemen of opposite principles, who have suffered a work always relied upon as one of their chief authorities to lie dormant for a hundred and forty years." Their "querulous outcries" (probably from the field-work of the Christian Instructor) he disregards. Among the passions of this literary "bicker," which Scott allowed to amuse him, was Davie Deans conceived. Scott was not going to be driven by querulous outcries off the Covenanting field, where he erected another trophy. This time he was more friendly to the "True Blue Presbyterians." His Scotch patriotism was one of his most earnest feelings, the Covenanters, at worst, were essentially Scotch, and he introduced a new Cameronian, with all the sterling honesty, the Puritanism, the impracticable ideas of the Covenant, in contact with changed times, and compelled to compromise. He possessed a curious pamphlet, Haldane's "Active Testimony of the true blue Presbyterians" (12mo, 1749). It is a most impartial work, "containing a declaration and testimony against the late unjust invasion of Scotland by Charles, Pretended Prince of Wales, and William, Pretended Duke of Cumberland." Everything and everybody not Covenanted, the House of Stuart, the House of Brunswick, the House of Hapsburg, Papists, Prelatists and Turks, are cursed up hill and down dale, by these worthy survivors of the Auld Leaven. Everybody except the authors, Haldane and Leslie, "has broken the everlasting Covenant." The very Confession of Westminster is arraigned for its laxity. "The whole Civil and Judicial Law of God," as given to the Jews (except the ritual, polygamy, divorce, slavery, and so forth), is to be maintained in the law of Scotland. Sins are acknowledged, and since the Covenant every political step--Cromwell's Protectorate, the Restoration, the Revolution, the accession of the "Dukes of Hanover"--has been a sin. A Court of Elders is to be established to put in execution the Law of Moses. All offenders against the Kirk are to be "capitally punished." Stage plays are to be suppressed by the successors of the famous convention at Lanark, Anno 1682. Toleration of all religions is "sinful," and "contrary to the word of God." Charles Edward and the Duke of Cumberland are cursed. "Also we reckon it a great vice in Charles, his foolish Pity and Lenity, in sparing these profane, blasphemous Redcoats, that Providence delivered into his hand, when, by putting them to death, this poor land might have been eased of the heavy burden of these vermin of Hell." The Auld Leaven swore terribly in Scotland. The atrocious cruelties of Cumberland after Culloden are stated with much frankness and power. The German soldiers are said to have carried off "a vast deal of Spoil and Plunder into Germany," and the Redcoats had Plays and Diversions (cricket, probably) on the Inch of Perth, on a Sabbath. "The Hellish, Pagan, Juggler plays are set up and frequented with more impudence and audacity than ever." Only the Jews, "our elder Brethren," are exempted from the curses of Haldane and Leslie, who promise to recover for them the Holy Land. "The Massacre in Edinburgh" in 1736, by wicked Porteous, calls for vengeance upon the authors and abettors thereof. The army and navy are "the most wicked and flagitious in the Universe." In fact, the True Blue Testimony is very active indeed, and could be delivered, thanks to hellish Toleration, with perfect safety, by Leslie and Haldane. The candour of their eloquence assuredly proves that Davie Deans is not overdrawn; indeed, he is much less truculent than those who actually were testifying even after his decease. In "The Heart of Mid-Lothian" Scott set himself to draw his own people at their best. He had a heroine to his hand in Helen Walker, "a character so distinguished for her undaunted love of virtue," who, unlike Jeanie Deans, "lived and died in poverty, if not want." In 1831 he erected a pillar over her grave in the old Covenanting stronghold of Irongray. The inscription ends-- Respect the Grave of Poverty, When combined with Love of Truth And Dear Affection. The sweetness, the courage, the spirit, the integrity of Jeanie Deans have made her, of all Scott's characters, the dearest to her countrymen, and the name of Jeanie was given to many children, in pious memory of the blameless heroine. The foil to her, in the person of Effie, is not less admirable. Among Scott's qualities was one rare among modern authors: he had an affectionate toleration for his characters. If we compare Effie with Hetty in "Adam Bede," this charming and genial quality of Scott's becomes especially striking. Hetty and Dinah are in very much the same situation and condition as Effie and Jeanie Deans. But Hetty is a frivolous little animal, in whom vanity and silliness do duty for passion: she has no heart: she is only a butterfly broken on the wheel of the world. Doubtless there are such women in plenty, yet we feel that her creator persecutes her, and has a kind of spite against her. This was impossible to Scott. Effie has heart, sincerity, passion, loyalty, despite her flightiness, and her readiness, when her chance comes, to play the fine lady. It was distasteful to Scott to create a character not human and sympathetic on one side or another. Thus his robber "of milder mood," on Jeanie's journey to England, is comparatively a good fellow, and the scoundrel Ratcliffe is not a scoundrel utterly. "'To make a Lang tale short, I canna undertake the job. It gangs against my conscience.' 'Your conscience, Rat?' said Sharpitlaw, with a sneer, which the reader will probably think very natural upon the occasion. 'Ou ay, sir,' answered Ratcliffe, calmly, 'just my conscience; a body has a conscience, though it may be ill wunnin at it. I think mine's as weel out o' the gate as maist folk's are; and yet it's just like the noop of my elbow, it whiles gets a bit dirl on a corner.'" Scott insists on leaving his worst people in possession of something likeable, just as he cannot dismiss even Captain Craigengelt without assuring us that Bucklaw made a provision for his necessities. This is certainly a more humane way of writing fiction than that to which we are accustomed in an age of humanitarianism. Nor does Scott's art suffer from his kindliness, and Effie in prison, with a heart to be broken, is not less pathetic than the heartless Hetty, in the same condemnation. As to her lover, Robertson, or Sir George Staunton, he certainly verges on the melodramatic. Perhaps we know too much about the real George Robertson, who was no heir to a title in disguise, but merely a "stabler in Bristol" accused "at the instance of Duncan Forbes, Esq. of Culloden, his Majesty's advocate, for the crimes of Stouthrieff, Housebreaking, and Robbery." Robertson "kept an inn in Bristo, at Edinburgh, where the Newcastle carrier commonly did put up," and is believed to have been a married man. It is not very clear that the novel gains much by the elevation of the Bristo innkeeper to a baronetcy, except in so far as Effie's appearance in the character of a great lady is entertaining and characteristic, and Jeanie's conquest of her own envy is exemplary. The change in social rank calls for the tragic conclusion, about which almost every reader agrees with the criticism of Lady Louisa Stuart and her friends. Thus the novel "filled more pages" than Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham had "opined," and hence comes a languor which does not beset the story of "Old Mortality." Scott's own love of adventure and of stirring incidents at any cost is an excellent quality in a novelist, but it does, in this instance, cause him somewhat to dilute those immortal studies of Scotch character which are the strength of his genius. The reader feels a lack of reality in the conclusion, the fatal encounter of the father and the lost son, an incident as old as the legend of Odysseus. But this is more than atoned for by the admirable part of Madge Wildfire, flitting like a _feu follet_ up and down among the douce Scotch, and the dour rioters. Madge Wildfire is no repetition of Meg Merrilies, though both are unrestrained natural things, rebels against the settled life, musical voices out of the past, singing forgotten songs of nameless minstrels. Nowhere but in Shakspeare can we find such a distraught woman as Madge Wildfire, so near akin to nature and to the moods of "the bonny lady Moon." Only he who created Ophelia could have conceived or rivalled the scene where Madge accompanies the hunters of Staunton on the moonlit hill and sings her warnings to the fugitive. When the glede's in the blue cloud, The lavrock lies still; When the hound's in the green-wood, The hind keeps the hill. There's a bloodhound ranging Tinwald wood, There's harness glancing sheen; There's a maiden sits on Tinwald brae, And she sings loud between. O sleep ye sound, Sir James, she said, When ye suld rise and ride? There's twenty men, wi' bow and blade, Are seeking where ye hide. The madness of Madge Wildfire has its parallel in the wildness of Goethe's Marguerite, both of them lamenting the lost child, which, to Madge's fancy, is now dead, now living in a dream. But the gloom that hangs about Muschat's Cairn, the ghastly vision of "crying up Ailie Muschat, and she and I will hae a grand bouking-washing, and bleach our claise in the beams of the bonny Lady Moon," have a terror beyond the German, and are unexcelled by Webster or by Ford. "But the moon, and the dew, and the night-wind, they are just like a caller kail-blade laid on my brow; and whiles I think the moon just shines on purpose to pleasure me, when naebody sees her but mysell." Scott did not deal much in the facile pathos of the death-bed, but that of Madge Wildfire has a grace of poetry, and her latest song is the sweetest and wildest of his lyrics, the most appropriate in its setting. When we think of the contrasts to her--the honest, dull good-nature of Dumbiedikes; the common-sense and humour of Mrs. Saddletree; the pragmatic pedantry of her husband; the Highland pride, courage, and absurdity of the Captain of Knockdander--when we consider all these so various and perfect creations, we need not wonder that Scott was "in high glee" over "The Heart of Mid-Lothian," "felt himself very strong," and thought that these would be "the best volumes that have appeared." The difficulty, as usual, is to understand how, in all this strength, he permitted himself to be so careless over what is really by far the easiest part of the novelist's task--the construction. But so it was; about "The Monastery" he said, "it was written with as much care as the rest, that is, with no care at all." His genius flowed free in its own unconscious abundance: where conscious deliberate workmanship was needed, "the forthright craftsman's hand," there alone he was lax and irresponsible. In Shakspeare's case we can often account for similar incongruities by the constraint of the old plot which he was using; but Scott was making his own plots, or letting them make themselves. "I never could lay down a plan, or, having laid it down, I never could adhere to it; the action of composition always diluted some passages and abridged or omitted others; and personages were rendered important or insignificant, not according to their agency in the original conception of the plan, but according to the success or otherwise with which I was able to bring them out. I only tried to make that which I was actually writing diverting and interesting, leaving the rest to fate. . . When I chain my mind to ideas which are purely imaginative--for argument is a different thing--it seems to me that the sun leaves the landscape, that I think away the whole vivacity and spirit of my original conception, and that the results are cold, tame, and spiritless." In fact, Sir Walter was like the Magician who can raise spirits that, once raised, dominate him. Probably this must ever be the case, when an author's characters are not puppets but real creations. They then have a will and a way of their own; a free-will which their creator cannot predetermine and correct. Something like this appears to have been Scott's own theory of his lack of constructive power. No one was so assured of its absence, no one criticised it more severely than he did himself. The Edinburgh Review about this time counselled the "Author of Waverley" to attempt a drama, doubting only his powers of compression. Possibly work at a drama might have been of advantage to the genius of Scott. He was unskilled in selection and rejection, which the drama especially demands. But he detested the idea of writing for actors, whom he regarded as ignorant, dull, and conceited. "I shall not fine and renew a lease of popularity upon the theatre. To write for low, ill-informed, and conceited actors, whom you must please, for your success is necessarily at their mercy, I cannot away with," he wrote to Southey. "Avowedly, I will never write for the stage; if I do, 'call me horse,'" he remarks to Terry. He wanted "neither the profit nor the shame of it." "I do not think that the character of the audience in London is such that one could have the least pleasure in pleasing them." He liked helping Terry to "Terryfy" "The Heart of Mid-Lothian," and his other novels, but he had no more desire than a senator of Rome would have had to see his name become famous by the Theatre. This confirmed repulsion in one so learned in the dramatic poets is a curious trait in Scott's character. He could not accommodate his genius to the needs of the stage, and that crown which has most potently allured most men of genius he would have thrust away, had it been offered to him, with none of Caesar's reluctance. At the bottom of all this lay probably the secret conviction that his genius was his master, that it must take him where it would, on paths where he was compelled to follow. Terse and concentrated, of set purpose, he could not be. A notable instance of this inability occurs in the Introductory Chapter to "The Heart of Mid-Lothian," which has probably frightened away many modern readers. The Advocate and the Writer to the Signet and the poor Client are persons quite uncalled for, and their little adventure at Gandercleugh is unreal. Oddly enough, part of their conversation is absolutely in the manner of Dickens. "'I think,' said I, . . . 'the metropolitan county may, in that case, be said to have a sad heart.' "'Right as my glove, Mr. Pattieson,' added Mr. Hardie; 'and a close heart, and a hard heart--Keep it up, Jack.' "'And a wicked heart, and a poor heart,' answered Halkit, doing his best. "'And yet it may be called in some sort a strong heart, and a high heart,' rejoined the advocate. 'You see I can put you both out of heart.'" Fortunately we have no more of this easy writing, which makes such very melancholy reading. The narrative of the Porteous mob, as given by the novelist, is not, it seems, entirely accurate. Like most artists, Sir Walter took the liberty of "composing" his picture. In his "Illustrations of the Author of Waverley" (1825) Mr. Robert Chambers records the changes in facts made by Scott. In the first place, Wilson did not attack his guard, and enable Robertson to escape, after the sermon, but as soon as the criminals took their seats in the pew. When fleeing out, Robertson tripped over "the plate," set on a stand to receive alms and oblations, whereby he hurt himself, and was seen to stagger and fall in running down the stairs leading to the Cowgate. Mr. McQueen, Minister of the New Kirk, was coming up the stairs. He conceived it to be his duty to set Robertson on his feet again, "and covered his retreat as much as possible from the pursuit of the guard." Robertson ran up the Horse Wynd, out at Potter Row Port, got into the King's Park, and headed for the village of Duddingston, beside the loch on the south-east of Arthur's Seat. He fainted after jumping a dyke, but was picked up and given some refreshment. He lay in hiding till he could escape to Holland. The conspiracy to hang Porteous did not, in fact, develop in a few hours, after his failure to appear on the scaffold. The Queen's pardon (or a reprieve) reached Edinburgh on Thursday, Sept. 2; the Riot occurred on the night of Sept. 7. The council had been informed that lynching was intended, thirty-six hours before the fatal evening, but pronounced the reports to be "caddies' clatters." Their negligence, of course, must have increased the indignation of the Queen. The riot, according to a very old man, consulted by Mr. Chambers, was headed by two butchers, named Cumming, "tall, strong, and exceedingly handsome men, who dressed in women's clothes as a disguise." The rope was tossed out of a window in a "small wares shop" by a woman, who received a piece of gold in exchange. This extravagance is one of the very few points which suggest that people of some wealth may have been concerned in the affair. Tradition, according to Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, believed in noble leaders of the riot. It is certain that several witnesses of good birth and position testified very strongly against Porteous, at his trial. According to Hogg, Scott's "fame was now so firmly established that he cared not a fig for the opinion of his literary friends beforehand." He was pleased, however, by the notice of "Ivanhoe," "The Heart of Mid-Lothian," and "The Bride of Lammermoor" in the Edinburgh Review of 1820, as he showed by quoting part of its remarks. The Reviewer frankly observed "that, when we began with one of these works, we were conscious that we never knew how to leave off. The Porteous mob is rather heavily described, and the whole part of George Robertson, or Staunton, is extravagant and displeasing. The final catastrophe is needlessly improbable and startling." The critic felt that he must be critical, but his praise of Effie and Jeanie Deans obviously comes from his heart. Jeanie's character "is superior to anything we can recollect in the history of invention . . . a remarkable triumph over the greatest of all difficulties in the conduct of a fictitious narrative." The critique ends with "an earnest wish that the Author would try his hand in the lore of Shakspeare"; but, wiser than the woers of Penelope, Scott refused to make that perilous adventure. ANDREW LANG. An essay by Mr. George Ormond, based on manuscripts in the Edinburgh Record office (Scottish Review, July, 1892), adds little to what is known about the Porteous Riot. It is said that Porteous was let down alive, and hanged again, more than once, that his arm was broken by a Lochaber axe, and that a torch was applied to the foot from which the shoe had fallen. A pamphlet of 1787 says that Robertson became a spy on smugglers in Holland, returned to London, procured a pardon through the Butcher Cumberland, and "at last died in misery in London." It is plain that Colonel Moyle might have rescued Porteous, but he was naturally cautious about entering the city gates without a written warrant from the civil authorities. TO THE BEST OF PATRONS, A PLEASED AND INDULGENT READER JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM WISHES HEALTH, AND INCREASE, AND CONTENTMENT. Courteous Reader, If ingratitude comprehendeth every vice, surely so foul a stain worst of all beseemeth him whose life has been devoted to instructing youth in virtue and in humane letters. Therefore have I chosen, in this prolegomenon, to unload my burden of thanks at thy feet, for the favour with which thou last kindly entertained the Tales of my Landlord. Certes, if thou hast chuckled over their factious and festivous descriptions, or hadst thy mind filled with pleasure at the strange and pleasant turns of fortune which they record, verily, I have also simpered when I beheld a second storey with attics, that has arisen on the basis of my small domicile at Gandercleugh, the walls having been aforehand pronounced by Deacon Barrow to be capable of enduring such an elevation. Nor has it been without delectation that I have endued a new coat (snuff-brown, and with metal buttons), having all nether garments corresponding thereto. We do therefore lie, in respect of each other, under a reciprocation of benefits, whereof those received by me being the most solid (in respect that a new house and a new coat are better than a new tale and an old song), it is meet that my gratitude should be expressed with the louder voice and more preponderating vehemence. And how should it be so expressed?--Certainly not in words only, but in act and deed. It is with this sole purpose, and disclaiming all intention of purchasing that pendicle or poffle of land called the Carlinescroft, lying adjacent to my garden, and measuring seven acres, three roods, and four perches, that I have committed to the eyes of those who thought well of the former tomes, these four additional volumes of the Tales of my Landlord. Not the less, if Peter Prayfort be minded to sell the said poffle, it is at his own choice to say so; and, peradventure, he may meet with a purchaser: unless (gentle reader) the pleasing pourtraictures of Peter Pattieson, now given unto thee in particular, and unto the public in general, shall have lost their favour in thine eyes, whereof I am no way distrustful. And so much confidence do I repose in thy continued favour, that, should thy lawful occasions call thee to the town of Gandercleugh, a place frequented by most at one time or other in their lives, I will enrich thine eyes with a sight of those precious manuscripts whence thou hast derived so much delectation, thy nose with a snuff from my mull, and thy palate with a dram from my bottle of strong waters, called by the learned of Gandercleugh, the Dominie's Dribble o' Drink. It is there, O highly esteemed and beloved reader, thou wilt be able to bear testimony, through the medium of thine own senses, against the children of vanity, who have sought to identify thy friend and servant with I know not what inditer of vain fables; who hath cumbered the world with his devices, but shrunken from the responsibility thereof. Truly, this hath been well termed a generation hard of faith; since what can a man do to assert his property in a printed tome, saving to put his name in the title-page thereof, with his description, or designation, as the lawyers term it, and place of abode? Of a surety I would have such sceptics consider how they themselves would brook to have their works ascribed to others, their names and professions imputed as forgeries, and their very existence brought into question; even although, peradventure, it may be it is of little consequence to any but themselves, not only whether they are living or dead, but even whether they ever lived or no. Yet have my maligners carried their uncharitable censures still farther. These cavillers have not only doubted mine identity, although thus plainly proved, but they have impeached my veracity and the authenticity of my historical narratives! Verily, I can only say in answer, that I have been cautelous in quoting mine authorities. It is true, indeed, that if I had hearkened with only one ear, I might have rehearsed my tale with more acceptation from those who love to hear but half the truth. It is, it may hap, not altogether to the discredit of our kindly nation of Scotland, that we are apt to take an interest, warm, yea partial, in the deeds and sentiments of our forefathers. He whom his adversaries describe as a perjured Prelatist, is desirous that his predecessors should be held moderate in their power, and just in their execution of its privileges, when truly, the unimpassioned peruser of the annals of those times shall deem them sanguinary, violent, and tyrannical. Again, the representatives of the suffering Nonconformists desire that their ancestors, the Cameronians, shall be represented not simply as honest enthusiasts, oppressed for conscience' sake, but persons of fine breeding, and valiant heroes. Truly, the historian cannot gratify these predilections. He must needs describe the cavaliers as proud and high-spirited, cruel, remorseless, and vindictive; the suffering party as honourably tenacious of their opinions under persecution; their own tempers being, however, sullen, fierce, and rude; their opinions absurd and extravagant; and their whole course of conduct that of persons whom hellebore would better have suited than prosecutions unto death for high-treason. Natheless, while such and so preposterous were the opinions on either side, there were, it cannot be doubted, men of virtue and worth on both, to entitle either party to claim merit from its martyrs. It has been demanded of me, Jedediah Cleishbotham, by what right I am entitled to constitute myself an impartial judge of their discrepancies of opinions, seeing (as it is stated) that I must necessarily have descended from one or other of the contending parties, and be, of course, wedded for better or for worse, according to the reasonable practice of Scotland, to its dogmata, or opinions, and bound, as it were, by the tie matrimonial, or, to speak without metaphor, _ex jure sanguinis,_ to maintain them in preference to all others. But, nothing denying the rationality of the rule, which calls on all now living to rule their political and religious opinions by those of their great-grandfathers, and inevitable as seems the one or the other horn of the dilemma betwixt which my adversaries conceive they have pinned me to the wall, I yet spy some means of refuge, and claim a privilege to write and speak of both parties with impartiality. For, O ye powers of logic! when the Prelatists and Presbyterians of old times went together by the ears in this unlucky country, my ancestor (venerated be his memory!) was one of the people called Quakers, and suffered severe handling from either side, even to the extenuation of his purse and the incarceration of his person. Craving thy pardon, gentle Reader, for these few words concerning me and mine, I rest, as above expressed, thy sure and obligated friend,* J. C. GANDERCLEUGH, this 1st of April, 1818. * Note A. Author's connection with Quakerism. INTRODUCTION TO THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN--(1830). The author has stated, in the preface to the Chronicles of the Canongate, 1827, that he received from an anonymous correspondent an account of the incident upon which the following story is founded. He is now at liberty to say, that the information was conveyed to him by a late amiable and ingenious lady, whose wit and power of remarking and judging of character still survive in the memory of her friends. Her maiden name was Miss Helen Lawson, of Girthhead, and she was wife of Thomas Goldie, Esq. of Craigmuie, Commissary of Dumfries. Her communication was in these words:-- "I had taken for summer lodgings a cottage near the old Abbey of Lincluden. It had formerly been inhabited by a lady who had pleasure in embellishing cottages, which she found perhaps homely and even poor enough; mine, therefore, possessed many marks of taste and elegance unusual in this species of habitation in Scotland, where a cottage is literally what its name declares. "From my cottage door I had a partial view of the old Abbey before mentioned; some of the highest arches were seen over, and some through, the trees scattered along a lane which led down to the ruin, and the strange fantastic shapes of almost all those old ashes accorded wonderfully well with the building they at once shaded and ornamented. "The Abbey itself from my door was almost on a level with the cottage; but on coming to the end of the lane, it was discovered to be situated on a high perpendicular bank, at the foot of which run the clear waters of the Cluden, where they hasten to join the sweeping Nith, 'Whose distant roaring swells and fa's.' As my kitchen and parlour were not very far distant, I one day went in to purchase some chickens from a person I heard offering them for sale. It was a little, rather stout-looking woman, who seemed to be between seventy and eighty years of age; she was almost covered with a tartan plaid, and her cap had over it a black silk hood, tied under the chin, a piece of dress still much in use among elderly women of that rank of life in Scotland; her eyes were dark, and remarkably lively and intelligent; I entered into conversation with her, and began by asking how she maintained herself, etc. "She said that in winter she footed stockings, that is, knit feet to country-people's stockings, which bears about the same relation to stocking-knitting that cobbling does to shoe-making, and is of course both less profitable and less dignified; she likewise taught a few children to read, and in summer she whiles reared a few chickens. "I said I could venture to guess from her face she had never been married. She laughed heartily at this, and said, 'I maun hae the queerest face that ever was seen, that ye could guess that. Now, do tell me, madam, how ye cam to think sae?' I told her it was from her cheerful disengaged countenance. She said, 'Mem, have ye na far mair reason to be happy than me, wi' a gude husband and a fine family o' bairns, and plenty o' everything? for me, I'm the puirest o' a' puir bodies, and can hardly contrive to keep mysell alive in a' the wee bits o' ways I hae tell't ye.' After some more conversation, during which I was more and more pleased with the old womans sensible conversation, and the _naivete_ of her remarks, she rose to go away, when I asked her name. Her countenance suddenly clouded, and she said gravely, rather colouring, 'My name is Helen Walker; but your husband kens weel about me.' "In the evening I related how much I had been pleased, and inquired what was extraordinary in the history of the poor woman. Mr. ---- said, there were perhaps few more remarkable people than Helen Walker. She had been left an orphan, with the charge of a sister considerably younger than herself, and who was educated and maintained by her exertions. Attached to herby so many ties, therefore, it will not be easy to conceive her feelings, when she found that this only sister must be tried by the laws of her country for child-murder, and upon being called as principal witness against her. The counsel for the prisoner told Helen, that if she could declare that her sister had made any preparations, however slight, or had given her any intimation on the subject, that such a statement would save her sister's life, as she was the principal witness against her. Helen said, 'It is impossible for me to swear to a falsehood; and, whatever may be the consequence, I will give my oath according to my conscience.' "The trial came on, and the sister was found guilty and condemned; but in Scotland six weeks must elapse between the sentence and the execution, and Helen Walker availed herself of it. The very day of her sister's condemnation she got a petition drawn, stating the peculiar circumstances of the case, and that very night set out on foot to London. "Without introduction or recommendation, with her simple (perhaps ill-expressed) petition, drawn up by some inferior clerk of the court, she presented herself, in her tartan plaid and country attire, to the late Duke of Argyle, who immediately procured the pardon she petitioned for, and Helen returned with it on foot just in time to save her sister. "I was so strongly interested by this narrative, that I determined immediately to prosecute my acquaintance with Helen Walker; but as I was to leave the country next day, I was obliged to defer it till my return in spring, when the first walk I took was to Helen Walker's cottage. "She had died a short time before. My regret was extreme, and I endeavoured to obtain some account of Helen from an old woman who inhabited the other end of her cottage. I inquired if Helen ever spoke of her past history--her journey to London, etc., 'Na,' the old woman said, 'Helen was a wily body, and whene'er ony o' the neebors asked anything about it, she aye turned the conversation.' "In short, every answer I received only tended to increase my regret, and raise my opinion of Helen Walker, who could unite so much prudence with so much heroic virtue." This narrative was inclosed in the following letter to the author, without date or signature-- "Sir,--The occurrence just related happened to me twenty-six years ago. Helen Walker lies buried in the churchyard of Irongray, about six miles from Dumfries. I once proposed that a small monument should have been erected to commemorate so remarkable a character, but I now prefer leaving it to you to perpetuate her memory in a more durable manner." The reader is now able to judge how far the author has improved upon, or fallen short of, the pleasing and interesting sketch of high principle and steady affection displayed by Helen Walker, the prototype of the fictitious Jeanie Deans. Mrs. Goldie was unfortunately dead before the author had given his name to these volumes, so he lost all opportunity of thanking that lady for her highly valuable communication. But her daughter, Miss Goldie, obliged him with the following additional information:-- "Mrs. Goldie endeavoured to collect further particulars of Helen Walker, particularly concerning her journey to London, but found this nearly impossible; as the natural dignity of her character, and a high sense of family respectability, made her so indissolubly connect her sister's disgrace with her own exertions, that none of her neighbours durst ever question her upon the subject. One old woman, a distant relation of Helen's, and who is still living, says she worked an harvest with her, but that she never ventured to ask her about her sister's trial, or her journey to London; 'Helen,' she added, 'was a lofty body, and used a high style o' language.' The same old woman says, that every year Helen received a cheese from her sister, who lived at Whitehaven, and that she always sent a liberal portion of it to herself, or to her father's family. This fact, though trivial in itself, strongly marks the affection subsisting between the two sisters, and the complete conviction on the mind of the criminal that her sister had acted solely from high principle, not from any want of feeling, which another small but characteristic trait will further illustrate. A gentleman, a relation of Mrs. Goldie's, who happened to be travelling in the North of England, on coming to a small inn, was shown into the parlour by a female servant, who, after cautiously shutting the door, said, 'Sir, I'm Nelly Walker's sister.' Thus practically showing that she considered her sister as better known by her high conduct than even herself by a different kind of celebrity. "Mrs. Goldie was extremely anxious to have a tombstone and an inscription upon it erected in Irongray Churchyard; and if Sir Walter Scott will condescend to write the last, a little subscription could be easily raised in the immediate neighbourhood, and Mrs. Goldie's wish be thus fulfilled." It is scarcely necessary to add that the request of Miss Goldie will be most willingly complied with, and without the necessity of any tax on the public.* Nor is there much occasion to repeat how much the author conceives himself obliged to his unknown correspondent, who thus supplied him with a theme affording such a pleasing view of the moral dignity of virtue, though unaided by birth, beauty, or talent. If the picture has suffered in the execution, it is from the failure of the author's powers to present in detail the same simple and striking portrait exhibited in Mrs. Goldie's letter. Abbotsford, April 1, 1830. * [Note B. Tombstone to Helen Walker.] POSTSCRIPT. Although it would be impossible to add much to Mrs. Goldie's picturesque and most interesting account of Helen Walker, the prototype of the imaginary Jeanie Deans, the Editor may be pardoned for introducing two or three anecdotes respecting that excellent person, which he has collected from a volume entitled, _Sketches from Nature,_ by John M'Diarmid, a gentleman who conducts an able provincial paper in the town of Dumfries. Helen was the daughter of a small farmer in a place called Dalwhairn, in the parish of Irongray; where, after the death of her father, she continued, with the unassuming piety of a Scottish peasant, to support her mother by her own unremitted labour and privations; a case so common, that even yet, I am proud to say, few of my countrywomen would shrink from the duty. Helen Walker was held among her equals _pensy,_ that is, proud or conceited; but the facts brought to prove this accusation seem only to evince a strength of character superior to those around her. Thus it was remarked, that when it thundered, she went with her work and her Bible to the front of the cottage, alleging that the Almighty could smite in the city as well as in the field. Mr. M'Diarmid mentions more particularly the misfortune of her sister, which he supposes to have taken place previous to 1736. Helen Walker, declining every proposal of saving her relation's life at the expense of truth, borrowed a sum of money sufficient for her journey, walked the whole distance to London barefoot, and made her way to John Duke of Argyle. She was heard to say, that, by the Almighty strength, she had been enabled to meet the Duke at the most critical moment, which, if lost, would have caused the inevitable forfeiture of her sister's life. Isabella, or Tibby Walker, saved from the fate which impended over her, was married by the person who had wronged her (named Waugh), and lived happily for great part of a century, uniformly acknowledging the extraordinary affection to which she owed her preservation. Helen Walker died about the end of the year 1791, and her remains are interred in the churchyard of her native parish of Irongray, in a romantic cemetery on the banks of the Cairn. That a character so distinguished for her undaunted love of virtue, lived and died in poverty, if not want, serves only to show us how insignificant, in the sight of Heaven, are our principal objects of ambition upon earth. INTRODUCTORY So down thy hill, romantic Ashbourn, glides The Derby dilly, carrying six insides. Frere. The times have changed in nothing more (we follow as we were wont the manuscript of Peter Pattieson) than in the rapid conveyance of intelligence and communication betwixt one part of Scotland and another. It is not above twenty or thirty years, according to the evidence of many credible witnesses now alive, since a little miserable horse-cart, performing with difficulty a journey of thirty miles _per diem,_ carried our mails from the capital of Scotland to its extremity. Nor was Scotland much more deficient in these accommodations than our rich sister had been about eighty years before. Fielding, in his Tom Jones, and Farquhar, in a little farce called the Stage-Coach, have ridiculed the slowness of these vehicles of public accommodation. According to the latter authority, the highest bribe could only induce the coachman to promise to anticipate by half-an-hour the usual time of his arrival at the Bull and Mouth. But in both countries these ancient, slow, and sure modes of conveyance are now alike unknown; mail-coach races against mail-coach, and high-flyer against high-flyer, through the most remote districts of Britain. And in our village alone, three post-coaches, and four coaches with men armed, and in scarlet cassocks, thunder through the streets each day, and rival in brilliancy and noise the invention of the celebrated tyrant:-- Demens, qui nimbos et non imitabile fulmen, AEre et cornipedum pulsu, simularat, equorum. Now and then, to complete the resemblance, and to correct the presumption of the venturous charioteers, it does happen that the career of these dashing rivals of Salmoneus meets with as undesirable and violent a termination as that of their prototype. It is on such occasions that the Insides and Outsides, to use the appropriate vehicular phrases, have reason to rue the exchange of the slow and safe motion of the ancient Fly-coaches, which, compared with the chariots of Mr. Palmer, so ill deserve the name. The ancient vehicle used to settle quietly down, like a ship scuttled and left to sink by the gradual influx of the waters, while the modern is smashed to pieces with the velocity of the same vessel hurled against breakers, or rather with the fury of a bomb bursting at the conclusion of its career through the air. The late ingenious Mr. Pennant, whose humour it was to set his face in stern opposition to these speedy conveyances, had collected, I have heard, a formidable list of such casualties, which, joined to the imposition of innkeepers, whose charges the passengers had no time to dispute, the sauciness of the coachman, and the uncontrolled and despotic authority of the tyrant called the guard, held forth a picture of horror, to which murder, theft, fraud, and peculation, lent all their dark colouring. But that which gratifies the impatience of the human disposition will be practised in the teeth of danger, and in defiance of admonition; and, in despite of the Cambrian antiquary, mail-coaches not only roll their thunders round the base of Penman-Maur and Cader-Idris, but Frighted Skiddaw hears afar The rattling of the unscythed car. And perhaps the echoes of Ben Nevis may soon be awakened by the bugle, not of a warlike chieftain, but of the guard of a mail-coach. It was a fine summer day, and our little school had obtained a half-holiday, by the intercession of a good-humoured visitor.* * His honour Gilbert Goslinn of Gandercleugh; for I love to be precise in matters of importance.--J. C. I expected by the coach a new number of an interesting periodical publication, and walked forward on the highway to meet it, with the impatience which Cowper has described as actuating the resident in the country when longing for intelligence from the mart of news.-- The grand debate, The popular harangue,--the tart reply,-- The logic, and the wisdom, and the wit, And the loud laugh,--I long to know them all;-- I burn to set the imprisoned wranglers free, And give them voice and utterance again. It was with such feelings that I eyed the approach of the new coach, lately established on our road, and known by the name of the Somerset, which, to say truth, possesses some interest for me, even when it conveys no such important information. The distant tremulous sound of its wheels was heard just as I gained the summit of the gentle ascent, called the Goslin-brae, from which you command an extensive view down the valley of the river Gander. The public road, which comes up the side of that stream, and crosses it at a bridge about a quarter of a mile from the place where I was standing, runs partly through enclosures and plantations, and partly through open pasture land. It is a childish amusement perhaps,--but my life has been spent with children, and why should not my pleasures be like theirs?--childish as it is then, I must own I have had great pleasure in watching the approach of the carriage, where the openings of the road permit it to be seen. The gay glancing of the equipage, its diminished and toy-like appearance at a distance, contrasted with the rapidity of its motion, its appearance and disappearance at intervals, and the progressively increasing sounds that announce its nearer approach, have all to the idle and listless spectator, who has nothing more important to attend to, something of awakening interest. The ridicule may attach to me, which is flung upon many an honest citizen, who watches from the window of his villa the passage of the stage-coach; but it is a very natural source of amusement notwithstanding, and many of those who join in the laugh are perhaps not unused to resort to it in secret. On the present occasion, however, fate had decreed that I should not enjoy the consummation of the amusement by seeing the coach rattle past me as I sat on the turf, and hearing the hoarse grating voice of the guard as he skimmed forth for my grasp the expected packet, without the carriage checking its course for an instant. I had seen the vehicle thunder down the hill that leads to the bridge with more than its usual impetuosity, glittering all the while by flashes from a cloudy tabernacle of the dust which it had raised, and leaving a train behind it on the road resembling a wreath of summer mist. But it did not appear on the top of the nearer bank within the usual space of three minutes, which frequent observation had enabled me to ascertain was the medium time for crossing the bridge and mounting the ascent. When double that space had elapsed, I became alarmed, and walked hastily forward. As I came in sight of the bridge, the cause of delay was too manifest, for the Somerset had made a summerset in good earnest, and overturned so completely, that it was literally resting upon the ground, with the roof undermost, and the four wheels in the air. The "exertions of the guard and coachman," both of whom were gratefully commemorated in the newspapers, having succeeded in disentangling the horses by cutting the harness, were now proceeding to extricate the insides by a sort of summary and Caesarean process of delivery, forcing the hinges from one of the doors which they could not open otherwise. In this manner were two disconsolate damsels set at liberty from the womb of the leathern conveniency. As they immediately began to settle their clothes, which were a little deranged, as may be presumed, I concluded they had received no injury, and did not venture to obtrude my services at their toilette, for which, I understand, I have since been reflected upon by the fair sufferers. The _outsides,_ who must have been discharged from their elevated situation by a shock resembling the springing of a mine, escaped, nevertheless, with the usual allowance of scratches and bruises, excepting three, who, having been pitched into the river Gander, were dimly seen contending with the tide like the relics of AEneas's shipwreck,-- Rari apparent mantes in gurgite vasto. I applied my poor exertions where they seemed to be most needed, and with the assistance of one or two of the company who had escaped unhurt, easily succeeded in fishing out two of the unfortunate passengers, who were stout active young fellows; and, but for the preposterous length of their greatcoats, and the equally fashionable latitude and longitude of their Wellington trousers, would have required little assistance from any one. The third was sickly and elderly, and might have perished but for the efforts used to preserve him. When the two greatcoated gentlemen had extricated themselves from the river, and shaken their ears like huge water-dogs, a violent altercation ensued betwixt them and the coachman and guard, concerning the cause of their overthrow. In the course of the squabble, I observed that both my new acquaintances belonged to the law, and that their professional sharpness was likely to prove an overmatch for the surly and official tone of the guardians of the vehicle. The dispute ended in the guard assuring the passengers that they should have seats in a heavy coach which would pass that spot in less than half-an-hour, provided it were not full. Chance seemed to favour this arrangement, for when the expected vehicle, arrived, there were only two places occupied in a carriage which professed to carry six. The two ladies who had been disinterred out of the fallen vehicle were readily admitted, but positive objections were stated by those previously in possession to the admittance of the two lawyers, whose wetted garments being much of the nature of well-soaked sponges, there was every reason to believe they would refund a considerable part of the water they had collected, to the inconvenience of their fellow-passengers. On the other hand, the lawyers rejected a seat on the roof, alleging that they had only taken that station for pleasure for one stage, but were entitled in all respects to free egress and regress from the interior, to which their contract positively referred. After some altercation, in which something was said upon the edict _Nautae caupones stabularii,_ the coach went off, leaving the learned gentlemen to abide by their action of damages. They immediately applied to me to guide them to the next village and the best inn; and from the account I gave them of the Wallace Head, declared they were much better pleased to stop there than to go forward upon the terms of that impudent scoundrel the guard of the Somerset. All that they now wanted was a lad to carry their travelling bags, who was easily procured from an adjoining cottage; and they prepared to walk forward, when they found there was another passenger in the same deserted situation with themselves. This was the elderly and sickly-looking person, who had been precipitated into the river along with the two young lawyers. He, it seems, had been too modest to push his own plea against the coachman when he saw that of his betters rejected, and now remained behind with a look of timid anxiety, plainly intimating that he was deficient in those means of recommendation which are necessary passports to the hospitality of an inn. I ventured to call the attention of the two dashing young blades, for such they seemed, to the desolate condition of their fellow-traveller. They took the hint with ready good-nature. "O, true, Mr. Dunover," said one of the youngsters, "you must not remain on the pave' here; you must go and have some dinner with us--Halkit and I must have a post-chaise to go on, at all events, and we will set you down wherever suits you best." The poor man, for such his dress, as well as his diffidence, bespoke him, made the sort of acknowledging bow by which says a Scotsman, "It's too much honour for the like of me;" and followed humbly behind his gay patrons, all three besprinkling the dusty road as they walked along with the moisture of their drenched garments, and exhibiting the singular and somewhat ridiculous appearance of three persons suffering from the opposite extreme of humidity, while the summer sun was at its height, and everything else around them had the expression of heat and drought. The ridicule did not escape the young gentlemen themselves, and they had made what might be received as one or two tolerable jests on the subject before they had advanced far on their peregrination. "We cannot complain, like Cowley," said one of them, "that Gideon's fleece remains dry, while all around is moist; this is the reverse of the miracle." "We ought to be received with gratitude in this good town; we bring a supply of what they seem to need most," said Halkit. "And distribute it with unparalleled generosity," replied his companion; "performing the part of three water-carts for the benefit of their dusty roads." "We come before them, too," said Halkit, "in full professional force--counsel and agent"-- "And client," said the young advocate, looking behind him; and then added, lowering his voice, "that looks as if he had kept such dangerous company too long." It was, indeed, too true, that the humble follower of the gay young men had the threadbare appearance of a worn-out litigant, and I could not but smile at the conceit, though anxious to conceal my mirth from the object of it. When we arrived at the Wallace Inn, the elder of the Edinburgh gentlemen, and whom I understood to be a barrister, insisted that I should remain and take part of their dinner; and their inquiries and demands speedily put my landlord and his whole family in motion to produce the best cheer which the larder and cellar afforded, and proceed to cook it to the best advantage, a science in which our entertainers seemed to be admirably skilled. In other respects they were lively young men, in the hey-day of youth and good spirits, playing the part which is common to the higher classes of the law at Edinburgh, and which nearly resembles that of the young Templars in the days of Steele and Addison. An air of giddy gaiety mingled with the good sense, taste, and information which their conversation exhibited; and it seemed to be their object to unite the character of men of fashion and lovers of the polite arts. A fine gentleman, bred up in the thorough idleness and inanity of pursuit, which I understand is absolutely necessary to the character in perfection, might in all probability have traced a tinge of professional pedantry which marked the barrister in spite of his efforts, and something of active bustle in his companion, and would certainly have detected more than a fashionable mixture of information and animated interest in the language of both. But to me, who had no pretensions to be so critical, my companions seemed to form a very happy mixture of good-breeding and liberal information, with a disposition to lively rattle, pun, and jest, amusing to a grave man, because it is what he himself can least easily command. The thin pale-faced man, whom their good-nature had brought into their society, looked out of place as well as out of spirits; sate on the edge of his seat, and kept the chair at two feet distance from the table; thus incommoding himself considerably in conveying the victuals to his mouth, as if by way of penance for partaking of them in the company of his superiors. A short time after dinner, declining all entreaty to partake of the wine, which circulated freely round, he informed himself of the hour when the chaise had been ordered to attend; and saying he would be in readiness, modestly withdrew from the apartment. "Jack," said the barrister to his companion, "I remember that poor fellow's face; you spoke more truly than you were aware of; he really is one of my clients, poor man." "Poor man!" echoed Halkit--"I suppose you mean he is your one and only client?" "That's not my fault, Jack," replied the other, whose name I discovered was Hardie. "You are to give me all your business, you know; and if you have none, the learned gentleman here knows nothing can come of nothing." "You seem to have brought something to nothing though, in the case of that honest man. He looks as if he were just about to honour with his residence the Heart of Mid-Lothian." "You are mistaken--he is just delivered from it.--Our friend here looks for an explanation. Pray, Mr. Pattieson, have you been in Edinburgh?" I answered in the affirmative. "Then you must have passed, occasionally at least, though probably not so faithfully as I am doomed to do, through a narrow intricate passage, leading out of the north-west corner of the Parliament Square, and passing by a high and antique building with turrets and iron grates, Making good the saying odd, 'Near the church and far from God'"-- Mr. Halkit broke in upon his learned counsel, to contribute his moiety to the riddle--"Having at the door the sign of the Red man"-- "And being on the whole," resumed the counsellor interrupting his friend in his turn, "a sort of place where misfortune is happily confounded with guilt, where all who are in wish to get out"-- "And where none who have the good luck to be out, wish to get in," added his companion. "I conceive you, gentlemen," replied I; "you mean the prison." "The prison," added the young lawyer--"You have hit it--the very reverend Tolbooth itself; and let me tell you, you are obliged to us for describing it with so much modesty and brevity; for with whatever amplifications we might have chosen to decorate the subject, you lay entirely at our mercy, since the Fathers Conscript of our city have decreed that the venerable edifice itself shall not remain in existence to confirm or to confute its." "Then the Tolbooth of Edinburgh is called the Heart of Mid-Lothian?" said I. "So termed and reputed, I assure you." "I think," said I, with the bashful diffidence with which a man lets slip a pun in presence of his superiors, "the metropolitan county may, in that case, be said to have a sad heart." "Right as my glove, Mr. Pattieson," added Mr. Hardie; "and a close heart, and a hard heart--Keep it up, Jack." "And a wicked heart, and a poor heart," answered Halkit, doing his best. "And yet it may be called in some sort a strong heart, and a high heart," rejoined the advocate. "You see I can put you both out of heart." "I have played all my hearts," said the younger gentleman. "Then we'll have another lead," answered his companion.--"And as to the old and condemned Tolbooth, what pity the same honour cannot be done to it as has been done to many of its inmates. Why should not the Tolbooth have its 'Last Speech, Confession, and Dying Words?' The old stones would be just as conscious of the honour as many a poor devil who has dangled like a tassel at the west end of it, while the hawkers were shouting a confession the culprit had never heard of." "I am afraid," said I, "if I might presume to give my opinion, it would be a tale of unvaried sorrow and guilt." "Not entirely, my friend," said Hardie; "a prison is a world within itself, and has its own business, griefs, and joys, peculiar to its circle. Its inmates are sometimes short-lived, but so are soldiers on service; they are poor relatively to the world without, but there are degrees of wealth and poverty among them, and so some are relatively rich also. They cannot stir abroad, but neither can the garrison of a besieged fort, or the crew of a ship at sea; and they are not under a dispensation quite so desperate as either, for they may have as much food as they have money to buy, and are not obliged to work, whether they have food or not." "But what variety of incident," said I (not without a secret view to my present task), "could possibly be derived from such a work as you are pleased to talk of?" "Infinite," replied the young advocate. "Whatever of guilt, crime, imposture, folly, unheard-of misfortunes, and unlooked-for change of fortune, can be found to chequer life, my Last Speech of the Tolbooth should illustrate with examples sufficient to gorge even the public's all-devouring appetite for the wonderful and horrible. The inventor of fictitious narratives has to rack his brains for means to diversify his tale, and after all can hardly hit upon characters or incidents which have not been used again and again, until they are familiar to the eye of the reader, so that the development, _enle'vement,_ the desperate wound of which the hero never dies, the burning fever from which the heroine is sure to recover, become a mere matter of course. I join with my honest friend Crabbe, and have an unlucky propensity to hope, when hope is lost, and to rely upon the cork-jacket, which carries the heroes of romance safe through all the billows of affliction." He then declaimed the following passage, rather with too much than too little emphasis:-- Much have I feared, but am no more afraid, When some chaste beauty by some wretch betrayed, Is drawn away with such distracted speed, That she anticipates a dreadful deed. Not so do I--Let solid walls impound The captive fair, and dig a moat around; Let there be brazen locks and bars of steel, And keepers cruel, such as never feel; With not a single note the purse supply, And when she begs, let men and maids deny; Be windows there from which she dare not fall, And help so distant, 'tis in vain to call; Still means of freedom will some Power devise, And from the baffled ruffian snatch his prize. "The end of uncertainty," he concluded, "is the death of interest; and hence it happens that no one now reads novels." "Hear him, ye gods!" returned his companion. "I assure you, Mr. Pattieson, you will hardly visit this learned gentleman, but you are likely to find the new novel most in repute lying on his table,--snugly intrenched, however, beneath Stair's Institutes, or an open volume of Morrison's Decisions." "Do I deny it?" said the hopeful jurisconsult, "or wherefore should I, since it is well known these Delilahs seduce my wisers and my betters? May they not be found lurking amidst the multiplied memorials of our most distinguished counsel, and even peeping from under the cushion of a judge's arm-chair? Our seniors at the bar, within the bar, and even on the bench, read novels; and, if not belied, some of them have written novels into the bargain. I only say, that I read from habit and from indolence, not from real interest; that, like ancient Pistol devouring his leek, I read and swear till I get to the end of the narrative. But not so in the real records of human vagaries--not so in the State Trials, or in the Books of Adjournal, where every now and then you read new pages of the human heart, and turns of fortune far beyond what the boldest novelist ever attempted to produce from the coinage of his brain." "And for such narratives," I asked, "you suppose the History of the Prison of Edinburgh might afford appropriate materials?" "In a degree unusually ample, my dear sir," said Hardie--"Fill your glass, however, in the meanwhile. Was it not for many years the place in which the Scottish parliament met? Was it not James's place of refuge, when the mob, inflamed by a seditious preacher, broke, forth, on him with the cries of 'The sword of the Lord and of Gideon--bring forth the wicked Haman?' Since that time how many hearts have throbbed within these walls, as the tolling of the neighbouring bell announced to them how fast the sands of their life were ebbing; how many must have sunk at the sound--how many were supported by stubborn pride and dogged resolution--how many by the consolations of religion? Have there not been some, who, looking back on the motives of their crimes, were scarce able to understand how they should have had such temptation as to seduce them from virtue; and have there not, perhaps, been others, who, sensible of their innocence, were divided between indignation at the undeserved doom which they were to undergo, consciousness that they had not deserved it, and racking anxiety to discover some way in which they might yet vindicate themselves? Do you suppose any of these deep, powerful, and agitating feelings, can be recorded and perused without exciting a corresponding depth of deep, powerful, and agitating interest?--Oh! do but wait till I publish the _Causes Ce'le'bres_ of Caledonia, and you will find no want of a novel or a tragedy for some time to come. The true thing will triumph over the brightest inventions of the most ardent imagination. _Magna est veritas, et praevalebit._" "I have understood," said I, encouraged by the affability of my rattling entertainer, "that less of this interest must attach to Scottish jurisprudence than to that of any other country. The general morality of our people, their sober and prudent habits"-- "Secure them," said the barrister, "against any great increase of professional thieves and depredators, but not against wild and wayward starts of fancy and passion, producing crimes of an extraordinary description, which are precisely those to the detail of which we listen with thrilling interest. England has been much longer a highly civilised country; her subjects have been very strictly amenable to laws administered without fear or favour, a complete division of labour has taken place among her subjects, and the very thieves and robbers form a distinct class in society, subdivided among themselves according to the subject of the depredations, and the mode in which they carry them on, acting upon regular habits and principles, which can be calculated and anticipated at Bow Street, Hatton Garden, or the Old Bailey. Our sister kingdom is like a cultivated field,--the farmer expects that, in spite of all his care, a certain number of weeds will rise with the corn, and can tell you beforehand their names and appearance. But Scotland is like one of her own Highland glens, and the moralist who reads the records of her criminal jurisprudence, will find as many curious anomalous facts in the history of mind, as the botanist will detect rare specimens among her dingles and cliffs." "And that's all the good you have obtained from three perusals of the Commentaries on Scottish Criminal Jurisprudence?" said his companion. "I suppose the learned author very little thinks that the facts which his erudition and acuteness have accumulated for the illustration of legal doctrines, might be so arranged as to form a sort of appendix to the half-bound and slip-shod volumes of the circulating library." "I'll bet you a pint of claret," said the elder lawyer, "that he will not feel sore at the comparison. But as we say at the bar, 'I beg I may not be interrupted;' I have much more to say, upon my Scottish collection of _Causes Ce'le'bres._ You will please recollect the scope and motive given for the contrivance and execution of many extraordinary and daring crimes, by the long civil dissensions of Scotland--by the hereditary jurisdictions, which, until 1748, rested the investigation of crises in judges, ignorant, partial, or interested--by the habits of the gentry, shut up in their distant and solitary mansion-houses, nursing their revengeful Passions just to keep their blood from stagnating--not to mention that amiable national qualification, called the _perfervidum ingenium Scotorum,_ which our lawyers join in alleging as a reason for the severity of some of our enactments. When I come to treat of matters so mysterious, deep, and dangerous, as these circumstances have given rise to, the blood of each reader shall be curdled, and his epidermis crisped into goose skin.--But, hist!--here comes the landlord, with tidings, I suppose, that the chaise is ready." It was no such thing--the tidings bore, that no chaise could be had that evening, for Sir Peter Plyem had carried forward my landlord's two pairs of horses that morning to the ancient royal borough of Bubbleburgh, to look after his interest there. But as Bubbleburgh is only one of a set of five boroughs which club their shares for a member of parliament, Sir Peter's adversary had judiciously watched his departure, in order to commence a canvass in the no less royal borough of Bitem, which, as all the world knows, lies at the very termination of Sir Peter's avenue, and has been held in leading-strings by him and his ancestors for time immemorial. Now Sir Peter was thus placed in the situation of an ambitious monarch, who, after having commenced a daring inroad into his enemy's territories, is suddenly recalled by an invasion of his own hereditary dominions. He was obliged in consequence to return from the half-won borough of Bubbleburgh, to look after the half-lost borough of Bitem, and the two pairs of horses which had carried him that morning to Bubbleburgh were now forcibly detained to transport him, his agent, his valet, his jester, and his hard-drinker, across the country to Bitem. The cause of this detention, which to me was of as little consequence as it may be to the reader, was important enough to my companions to reconcile them to the delay. Like eagles, they smelled the battle afar off, ordered a magnum of claret and beds at the Wallace, and entered at full career into the Bubbleburgh and Bitem politics, with all the probable "Petitions and complaints" to which they were likely to give rise. In the midst of an anxious, animated, and, to me, most unintelligible discussion, concerning provosts, bailies, deacons, sets of boroughs, leets, town-clerks, burgesses resident and non-resident, all of a sudden the lawyer recollected himself. "Poor Dunover, we must not forget him;" and the landlord was despatched in quest of the _pauvre honteux,_ with an earnestly civil invitation to him for the rest of the evening. I could not help asking the young gentlemen if they knew the history of this poor man; and the counsellor applied himself to his pocket to recover the memorial or brief from which he had stated his cause. "He has been a candidate for our _remedium miserabile,_" said Mr. Hardie, "commonly called a _cessio bonorum._ As there are divines who have doubted the eternity of future punishments, so the Scotch lawyers seem to have thought that the crime of poverty might be atoned for by something short of perpetual imprisonment. After a month's confinement, you must know, a prisoner for debt is entitled, on a sufficient statement to our Supreme Court, setting forth the amount of his funds, and the nature of his misfortunes, and surrendering all his effects to his creditors, to claim to be discharged from prison." "I had heard," I replied, "of such a humane regulation." "Yes," said Halkit, "and the beauty of it is, as the foreign fellow said, you may get the _cessio,_ when the _bonorums_ are all spent--But what, are you puzzling in your pockets to seek your only memorial among old play-bills, letters requesting a meeting of the Faculty, rules of the Speculative Society,* syllabus' of lectures--all the miscellaneous contents of a young advocate's pocket, which contains everything but briefs and bank-notes? * [A well-known debating club in Edinburgh.] Can you not state a case of _cessio_ without your memorial? Why, it is done every Saturday. The events follow each other as regularly as clock-work, and one form of condescendence might suit every one of them." "This is very unlike the variety of distress which this gentleman stated to fall under the consideration of your judges," said I. "True," replied Halkit; "but Hardie spoke of criminal jurisprudence, and this business is purely civil. I could plead a _cessio_ myself without the inspiring honours of a gown and three-tailed periwig--Listen.--My client was bred a journeyman weaver--made some little money--took a farm--(for conducting a farm, like driving a gig, comes by nature)--late severe times--induced to sign bills with a friend, for which he received no value--landlord sequestrates--creditors accept a composition--pursuer sets up a public-house--fails a second time--is incarcerated for a debt of ten pounds seven shillings and sixpence--his debts amount to blank--his losses to blank--his funds to blank--leaving a balance of blank in his favour. There is no opposition; your lordships will please grant commission to take his oath." Hardie now renounced this ineffectual search, in which there was perhaps a little affectation, and told us the tale of poor Dunover's distresses, with a tone in which a degree of feeling, which he seemed ashamed of as unprofessional, mingled with his attempts at wit, and did him more honour. It was one of those tales which seem to argue a sort of ill-luck or fatality attached to the hero. A well-informed, industrious, and blameless, but poor and bashful man, had in vain essayed all the usual means by which others acquire independence, yet had never succeeded beyond the attainment of bare subsistence. During a brief gleam of hope, rather than of actual prosperity, he had added a wife and family to his cares, but the dawn was speedily overcast. Everything retrograded with him towards the verge of the miry Slough of Despond, which yawns for insolvent debtors; and after catching at each twig, and experiencing the protracted agony of feeling them one by one elude his grasp, he actually sunk into the miry pit whence he had been extricated by the professional exertions of Hardie. "And, I suppose, now you have dragged this poor devil ashore, you will leave him half naked on the beach to provide for himself?" said Halkit. "Hark ye,"--and he whispered something in his ear, of which the penetrating and insinuating words, "Interest with my Lord," alone reached mine. "It is _pessimi exempli,_" said Hardie, laughing, "to provide for a ruined client; but I was thinking of what you mention, provided it can be managed--But hush! here he comes." The recent relation of the poor man's misfortunes had given him, I was pleased to observe, a claim to the attention and respect of the young men, who treated him with great civility, and gradually engaged him in a conversation, which, much to my satisfaction, again turned upon the _Causes Ce'le'bres_ of Scotland. Imboldened by the kindness with which he was treated, Mr. Dunover began to contribute his share to the amusement of the evening. Jails, like other places, have their ancient traditions, known only to the inhabitants, and handed down from one set of the melancholy lodgers to the next who occupy their cells. Some of these, which Dunover mentioned, were interesting, and served to illustrate the narratives of remarkable trials, which Hardie had at his finger-ends, and which his companion was also well skilled in. This sort of conversation passed away the evening till the early hour when Mr. Dunover chose to retire to rest, and I also retreated to take down memorandums of what I had learned, in order to add another narrative to those which it had been my chief amusement to collect, and to write out in detail. The two young men ordered a broiled bone, Madeira negus, and a pack of cards, and commenced a game at picquet. Next morning the travellers left Gandercleugh. I afterwards learned from the papers that both have been since engaged in the great political cause of Bubbleburgh and Bitem, a summary case, and entitled to particular despatch; but which, it is thought, nevertheless, may outlast the duration of the parliament to which the contest refers. Mr. Halkit, as the newspapers informed me, acts as agent or solicitor; and Mr. Hardie opened for Sir Peter Plyem with singular ability, and to such good purpose, that I understand he has since had fewer play-bills and more briefs in his pocket. And both the young gentlemen deserve their good fortune; for I learned from Dunover, who called on me some weeks afterwards, and communicated the intelligence with tears in his eyes, that their interest had availed to obtain him a small office for the decent maintenance of his family; and that, after a train of constant and uninterrupted misfortune, he could trace a dawn of prosperity to his having the good fortune to be flung from the top of a mail-coach into the river Gander, in company with an advocate and a writer to the Signet. The reader will not perhaps deem himself equally obliged to the accident, since it brings upon him the following narrative, founded upon the conversation of the evening. THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN CHAPTER FIRST. Whoe'er's been at Paris must needs know the Gre've, The fatal retreat of the unfortunate brave, Where honour and justice most oddly contribute, To ease heroes' pains by an halter and gibbet. There death breaks the shackles which force had put on, And the hangman completes what the judge but began; There the squire of the poet, and knight of the post, Find their pains no more baulked, and their hopes no more crossed. Prior. In former times, England had her Tyburn, to which the devoted victims of justice were conducted in solemn procession up what is now called Oxford Street. In Edinburgh, a large open street, or rather oblong square, surrounded by high houses, called the Grassmarket, was used for the same melancholy purpose. It was not ill chosen for such a scene, being of considerable extent, and therefore fit to accommodate a great number of spectators, such as are usually assembled by this melancholy spectacle. On the other hand, few of the houses which surround it were, even in early times, inhabited by persons of fashion; so that those likely to be offended or over deeply affected by such unpleasant exhibitions were not in the way of having their quiet disturbed by them. The houses in the Grassmarket are, generally speaking, of a mean description; yet the place is not without some features of grandeur, being overhung by the southern side of the huge rock on which the Castle stands, and by the moss-grown battlements and turreted walls of that ancient fortress. It was the custom, until within these thirty years or thereabouts, to use this esplanade for the scene of public executions. The fatal day was announced to the public by the appearance of a huge black gallows-tree towards the eastern end of the Grassmarket. This ill-omened apparition was of great height, with a scaffold surrounding it, and a double ladder placed against it, for the ascent of the unhappy criminal and executioner. As this apparatus was always arranged before dawn, it seemed as if the gallows had grown out of the earth in the course of one night, like the production of some foul demon; and I well remember the fright with which the schoolboys, when I was one of their number, used to regard these ominous signs of deadly preparation. On the night after the execution the gallows again disappeared, and was conveyed in silence and darkness to the place where it was usually deposited, which was one of the vaults under the Parliament House, or courts of justice. This mode of execution is now exchanged for one similar to that in front of Newgate,--with what beneficial effect is uncertain. The mental sufferings of the convict are indeed shortened. He no longer stalks between the attendant clergymen, dressed in his grave-clothes, through a considerable part of the city, looking like a moving and walking corpse, while yet an inhabitant of this world; but, as the ultimate purpose of punishment has in view the prevention of crimes, it may at least be doubted, whether, in abridging the melancholy ceremony, we have not in part diminished that appalling effect upon the spectators which is the useful end of all such inflictions, and in consideration of which alone, unless in very particular cases, capital sentences can be altogether justified. On the 7th day of September 1736, these ominous preparations for execution were descried in the place we have described, and at an early hour the space around began to be occupied by several groups, who gazed on the scaffold and gibbet with a stern and vindictive show of satisfaction very seldom testified by the populace, whose good nature, in most cases, forgets the crime of the condemned person, and dwells only on his misery. But the act of which the expected culprit had been convicted was of a description calculated nearly and closely to awaken and irritate the resentful feelings of the multitude. The tale is well known; yet it is necessary to recapitulate its leading circumstances, for the better understanding what is to follow; and the narrative may prove long, but I trust not uninteresting even to those who have heard its general issue. At any rate, some detail is necessary, in order to render intelligible the subsequent events of our narrative. Contraband trade, though it strikes at the root of legitimate government, by encroaching on its revenues,--though it injures the fair trader, and debauches the mind of those engaged in it,--is not usually looked upon, either by the vulgar or by their betters, in a very heinous point of view. On the contrary, in those countries where it prevails, the cleverest, boldest, and most intelligent of the peasantry, are uniformly engaged in illicit transactions, and very often with the sanction of the farmers and inferior gentry. Smuggling was almost universal in Scotland in the reigns of George I. and II.; for the people, unaccustomed to imposts, and regarding them as an unjust aggression upon their ancient liberties, made no scruple to elude them whenever it was possible to do so. The county of Fife, bounded by two firths on the south and north, and by the sea on the east, and having a number of small seaports, was long famed for maintaining successfully a contraband trade; and, as there were many seafaring men residing there, who had been pirates and buccaneers in their youth, there were not wanting a sufficient number of daring men to carry it on. Among these, a fellow called Andrew Wilson, originally a baker in the village of Pathhead, was particularly obnoxious to the revenue officers. He was possessed of great personal strength, courage, and cunning,--was perfectly acquainted with the coast, and capable of conducting the most desperate enterprises. On several occasions he succeeded in baffling the pursuit and researches of the king's officers; but he became so much the object of their suspicions and watchful attention, that at length he was totally ruined by repeated seizures. The man became desperate. He considered himself as robbed and plundered; and took it into his head that he had a right to make reprisals, as he could find opportunity. Where the heart is prepared for evil, opportunity is seldom long wanting. This Wilson learned that the Collector of the Customs at Kirkcaldy had come to Pittenweem, in the course of his official round of duty, with a considerable sum of public money in his custody. As the amount was greatly within the value of the goods which had been seized from him, Wilson felt no scruple of conscience in resolving to reimburse himself for his losses, at the expense of the Collector and the revenue. He associated with himself one Robertson, and two other idle young men, whom, having been concerned in the same illicit trade, he persuaded to view the transaction in the same justifiable light in which he himself considered it. They watched the motions of the Collector; they broke forcibly into the house where he lodged,--Wilson, with two of his associates, entering the Collector's apartment, while Robertson, the fourth, kept watch at the door with a drawn cutlass in his hand. The officer of the customs, conceiving his life in danger, escaped out of his bedroom window, and fled in his shirt, so that the plunderers, with much ease, possessed themselves of about two hundred pounds of public money. The robbery was committed in a very audacious manner, for several persons were passing in the street at the time. But Robertson, representing the noise they heard as a dispute or fray betwixt the Collector and the people of the house, the worthy citizens of Pittenweem felt themselves no way called on to interfere in behalf of the obnoxious revenue officer; so, satisfying themselves with this very superficial account of the matter, like the Levite in the parable, they passed on the opposite side of the way. An alarm was at length given, military were called in, the depredators were pursued, the booty recovered, and Wilson and Robertson tried and condemned to death, chiefly on the evidence of an accomplice. Many thought that, in consideration of the men's erroneous opinion of the nature of the action they had committed, justice might have been satisfied with a less forfeiture than that of two lives. On the other hand, from the audacity of the fact, a severe example was judged necessary; and such was the opinion of the Government. When it became apparent that the sentence of death was to be executed, files, and other implements necessary for their escape, were transmitted secretly to the culprits by a friend from without. By these means they sawed a bar out of one of the prison-windows, and might have made their escape, but for the obstinacy of Wilson, who, as he was daringly resolute, was doggedly pertinacious of his opinion. His comrade, Robertson, a young and slender man, proposed to make the experiment of passing the foremost through the gap they had made, and enlarging it from the outside, if necessary, to allow Wilson free passage. Wilson, however, insisted on making the first experiment, and being a robust and lusty man, he not only found it impossible to get through betwixt the bars, but, by his struggles, he jammed himself so fast, that he was unable to draw his body back again. In these circumstances discovery became unavoidable, and sufficient precautions were taken by the jailor to prevent any repetition of the same attempt. Robertson uttered not a word of reflection on his companion for the consequences of his obstinacy; but it appeared from the sequel, that Wilson's mind was deeply impressed with the recollection that, but for him, his comrade, over whose mind he exercised considerable influence, would not have engaged in the criminal enterprise which had terminated thus fatally; and that now he had become his destroyer a second time, since, but for his obstinacy, Robertson might have effected his escape. Minds like Wilson's, even when exercised in evil practices, sometimes retain the power of thinking and resolving with enthusiastic generosity. His whole thoughts were now bent on the possibility of saving Robertson's life, without the least respect to his own. The resolution which he adopted, and the manner in which he carried it into effect, were striking and unusual. Adjacent to the tolbooth or city jail of Edinburgh, is one of three churches into which the cathedral of St. Giles is now divided, called, from its vicinity, the Tolbooth Church. It was the custom that criminals under sentence of death were brought to this church, with a sufficient guard, to hear and join in public worship on the Sabbath before execution. It was supposed that the hearts of these unfortunate persons, however hardened before against feelings of devotion, could not but be accessible to them upon uniting their thoughts and voices, for the last time, along with their fellow-mortals, in addressing their Creator. And to the rest of the congregation, it was thought it could not but be impressive and affecting, to find their devotions mingling with those, who, sent by the doom of an earthly tribunal to appear where the whole earth is judged, might be considered as beings trembling on the verge of eternity. The practice, however edifying, has been discontinued, in consequence of the incident we are about to detail. The clergyman, whose duty it was to officiate in the Tolbooth Church, had concluded an affecting discourse, part of which was particularly directed to the unfortunate men, Wilson and Robertson, who were in the pew set apart for the persons in their unhappy situation, each secured betwixt two soldiers of the city guard. The clergyman had reminded them, that the next congregation they must join would be that of the just, or of the unjust; that the psalms they now heard must be exchanged, in the space of two brief days, for eternal hallelujahs, or eternal lamentations; and that this fearful alternative must depend upon the state to which they might be able to bring their minds before the moment of awful preparation: that they should not despair on account of the suddenness of the summons, but rather to feel this comfort in their misery, that, though all who now lifted the voice, or bent the knee in conjunction with them, lay under the same sentence of certain death, _they_ only had the advantage of knowing the precise moment at which it should be executed upon them. "Therefore," urged the good man, his voice trembling with emotion, "redeem the time, my unhappy brethren, which is yet left; and remember, that, with the grace of Him to whom space and time are but as nothing, salvation may yet be assured, even in the pittance of delay which the laws of your country afford you." Robertson was observed to weep at these words; but Wilson seemed as one whose brain had not entirely received their meaning, or whose thoughts were deeply impressed with some different subject;--an expression so natural to a person in his situation, that it excited neither suspicion nor surprise. The benediction was pronounced as usual, and the congregation was dismissed, many lingering to indulge their curiosity with a more fixed look at the two criminals, who now, as well as their guards, rose up, as if to depart when the crowd should permit them. A murmur of compassion was heard to pervade the spectators, the more general, perhaps, on account of the alleviating circumstances of the case; when all at once, Wilson, who, as we have already noticed, was a very strong man, seized two of the soldiers, one with each hand, and calling at the same time to his companion, "Run, Geordie, run!" threw himself on a third, and fastened his teeth on the collar of his coat. Robertson stood for a second as if thunderstruck, and unable to avail himself of the opportunity of escape; but the cry of "Run, run!" being echoed from many around, whose feelings surprised them into a very natural interest in his behalf, he shook off the grasp of the remaining soldier, threw himself over the pew, mixed with the dispersing congregation, none of whom felt inclined to stop a poor wretch taking his last chance for his life, gained the door of the church, and was lost to all pursuit. The generous intrepidity which Wilson had displayed on this occasion augmented the feeling of compassion which attended his fate. The public, where their own prejudices are not concerned, are easily engaged on the side of disinterestedness and humanity, admired Wilson's behaviour, and rejoiced in Robertson's escape. This general feeling was so great, that it excited a vague report that Wilson would be rescued at the place of execution, either by the mob or by some of his old associates, or by some second extraordinary and unexpected exertion of strength and courage on his own part. The magistrates thought it their duty to provide against the possibility of disturbance. They ordered out, for protection of the execution of the sentence, the greater part of their own City Guard, under the command of Captain Porteous, a man whose name became too memorable from the melancholy circumstances of the day, and subsequent events. It may be necessary to say a word about this person, and the corps which he commanded. But the subject is of importance sufficient to deserve another chapter. CHAPTER SECOND. And thou, great god of aquavitae! Wha sways the empire of this city (When fou we're sometimes capernoity), Be thou prepared, To save us frae that black banditti, The City Guard! Fergusson's _Daft Days._ Captain John Porteous, a name memorable in the traditions of Edinburgh, as well as in the records of criminal jurisprudence, was the son of a citizen of Edinburgh, who endeavoured to breed him up to his own mechanical trade of a tailor. The youth, however, had a wild and irreclaimable propensity to dissipation, which finally sent him to serve in the corps long maintained in the service of the States of Holland, and called the Scotch Dutch. Here he learned military discipline; and, returning afterwards, in the course of an idle and wandering life, to his native city, his services were required by the magistrates of Edinburgh in the disturbed year 1715, for disciplining their City Guard, in which he shortly afterwards received a captain's commission. It was only by his military skill and an alert and resolute character as an officer of police, that he merited this promotion, for he is said to have been a man of profligate habits, an unnatural son, and a brutal husband. He was, however, useful in his station, and his harsh and fierce habits rendered him formidable to rioters or disturbers of the public peace. The corps in which he held his command is, or perhaps we should rather say _was,_ a body of about one hundred and twenty soldiers divided into three companies, and regularly armed, clothed, and embodied. They were chiefly veterans who enlisted in this cogs, having the benefit of working at their trades when they were off duty. These men had the charge of preserving public order, repressing riots and street robberies, acting, in short, as an armed police, and attending on all public occasions where confusion or popular disturbance might be expected.* * The Lord Provost was ex-officio commander and colonel of the corps, which might be increased to three hundred men when the times required it. No other drum but theirs was allowed to sound on the High Street between the Luckenbooths and the Netherbow. Poor Fergusson, whose irregularities sometimes led him into unpleasant rencontres with these military conservators of public order, and who mentions them so often that he may be termed their poet laureate,* thus admonishes his readers, warned doubtless by his own experience:-- * [Robert Fergusson, the Scottish Poet, born 1750, died 1774.] "Gude folk, as ye come frae the fair, Bide yont frae this black squad: There's nae sic savages elsewhere Allowed to wear cockad." In fact, the soldiers of the City Guard, being, as we have said, in general discharged veterans, who had strength enough remaining for this municipal duty, and being, moreover, for the greater part, Highlanders, were neither by birth, education, nor former habits, trained to endure with much patience the insults of the rabble, or the provoking petulance of truant schoolboys, and idle debauchees of all descriptions, with whom their occupation brought them into contact. On the contrary, the tempers of the poor old fellows were soured by the indignities with which the mob distinguished them on many occasions, and frequently might have required the soothing strains of the poet we have just quoted-- "O soldiers! for your ain dear sakes, For Scotland's love, the Land o' Cakes, Gie not her bairns sic deadly paiks, Nor be sae rude, Wi' firelock or Lochaber-axe, As spill their bluid!" On all occasions when a holiday licensed some riot and irregularity, a skirmish with these veterans was a favourite recreation with the rabble of Edinburgh. These pages may perhaps see the light when many have in fresh recollection such onsets as we allude to. But the venerable corps, with whom the contention was held, may now be considered as totally extinct. Of late the gradual diminution of these civic soldiers reminds one of the abatement of King Lear's hundred knights. The edicts of each succeeding set of magistrates have, like those of Goneril and Regan, diminished this venerable band with the similar question, "What need we five-and-twenty?--ten?--or five?" And it is now nearly come to, "What need one?" A spectre may indeed here and there still be seen, of an old grey-headed and grey-bearded Highlander, with war-worn features, but bent double by age; dressed in an old fashioned cocked-hat, bound with white tape instead of silver lace; and in coat, waistcoat, and breeches, of a muddy-coloured red, bearing in his withered hand an ancient weapon, called a Lochaber-axe; a long pole, namely, with an axe at the extremity, and a hook at the back of the hatchet.* * This hook was to enable the bearer of the Lochaber-axe to scale a gateway, by grappling the top of the door, and swinging himself up by the staff of his weapon. Such a phantom of former days still creeps, I have been informed, round the statue of Charles the Second, in the Parliament Square, as if the image of a Stuart were the last refuge for any memorial of our ancient manners; and one or two others are supposed to glide around the door of the guardhouse assigned to them in the Luckenbooths, when their ancient refuge in the High Street was laid low.* * This ancient corps is now entirely disbanded. Their last march to do duty at Hallowfair had something in it affecting. Their drums and fifes had been wont on better days to play, on this joyous occasion, the lively tune of "Jockey to the fair;" but on his final occasion the afflicted veterans moved slowly to the dirge of "The last time I came ower the muir." But the fate of manuscripts bequeathed to friends and executors is so uncertain, that the narrative containing these frail memorials of the old Town Guard of Edinburgh, who, with their grim and valiant corporal, John Dhu (the fiercest-looking fellow I ever saw), were, in my boyhood, the alternate terror and derision of the petulant brood of the High School, may, perhaps, only come to light when all memory of the institution has faded away, and then serve as an illustration of Kay's caricatures, who has preserved the features of some of their heroes. In the preceding generation, when there was a perpetual alarm for the plots and activity of the Jacobites, some pains were taken by the magistrates of Edinburgh to keep this corps, though composed always of such materials as we have noticed, in a more effective state than was afterwards judged necessary, when their most dangerous service was to skirmish with the rabble on the king's birthday. They were, therefore, more the objects of hatred, and less that of scorn, than they were afterwards accounted. To Captain John Porteous, the honour of his command and of his corps seems to have been a matter of high interest and importance. He was exceedingly incensed against Wilson for the affront which he construed him to have put upon his soldiers, in the effort he made for the liberation of his companion, and expressed himself most ardently on the subject. He was no less indignant at the report, that there was an intention to rescue Wilson himself from the gallows, and uttered many threats and imprecations upon that subject, which were afterwards remembered to his disadvantage. In fact, if a good deal of determination and promptitude rendered Porteous, in one respect, fit to command guards designed to suppress popular commotion, he seems, on the other, to have been disqualified for a charge so delicate, by a hot and surly temper, always too ready to come to blows and violence; a character void of principle; and a disposition to regard the rabble, who seldom failed to regale him and his soldiers with some marks of their displeasure, as declared enemies, upon whom it was natural and justifiable that he should seek opportunities of vengeance. Being, however, the most active and trustworthy among the captains of the City Guard, he was the person to whom the magistrates confided the command of the soldiers appointed to keep the peace at the time of Wilson's execution. He was ordered to guard the gallows and scaffold, with about eighty men, all the disposable force that could be spared for that duty. But the magistrates took farther precautions, which affected Porteous's pride very deeply. They requested the assistance of part of a regular infantry regiment, not to attend upon the execution, but to remain drawn up on the principal street of the city, during the time that it went forward, in order to intimidate the multitude, in case they should be disposed to be unruly, with a display of force which could not be resisted without desperation. It may sound ridiculous in our ears, considering the fallen state of this ancient civic corps, that its officer should have felt punctiliously jealous of its honour. Yet so it was. Captain Porteous resented, as an indignity, the introducing the Welsh Fusileers within the city, and drawing them up in the street where no drums but his own were allowed to be sounded without the special command or permission of the magistrates. As he could not show his ill-humour to his patrons the magistrates, it increased his indignation and his desire to be revenged on the unfortunate criminal Wilson, and all who favoured him. These internal emotions of jealousy and rage wrought a change on the man's mien and bearing, visible to all who saw him on the fatal morning when Wilson was appointed to suffer. Porteous's ordinary appearance was rather favourable. He was about the middle size, stout, and well made, having a military air, and yet rather a gentle and mild countenance. His complexion was brown, his face somewhat fretted with the sears of the smallpox, his eyes rather languid than keen or fierce. On the present occasion, however, it seemed to those who saw him as if he were agitated by some evil demon. His step was irregular, his voice hollow and broken, his countenance pale, his eyes staring and wild, his speech imperfect and confused, and his whole appearance so disordered, that many remarked he seemed to be _fey,_ a Scottish expression, meaning the state of those who are driven on to their impending fate by the strong impulse of some irresistible necessity. One part of his conduct was truly diabolical, if indeed it has not been exaggerated by the general prejudice entertained against his memory. When Wilson, the unhappy criminal, was delivered to him by the keeper of the prison, in order that he might be conducted to the place of execution, Porteous, not satisfied with the usual precautions to prevent escape, ordered him to be manacled. This might be justifiable from the character and bodily strength of the malefactor, as well as from the apprehensions so generally entertained of an expected rescue. But the handcuffs which were produced being found too small for the wrists of a man so big-boned as Wilson, Porteous proceeded with his own hands, and by great exertion of strength, to force them till they clasped together, to the exquisite torture of the unhappy criminal. Wilson remonstrated against such barbarous usage, declaring that the pain distracted his thoughts from the subjects of meditation proper to his unhappy condition. "It signifies little," replied Captain Porteous; "your pain will soon be at an end." "Your cruelty is great," answered the sufferer. "You know not how soon you yourself may have occasion to ask the mercy which you are now refusing to a fellow-creature. May God forgive you!" These words, long afterwards quoted and remembered, were all that passed between Porteous and his prisoner; but as they took air, and became known to the people, they greatly increased the popular compassion for Wilson, and excited a proportionate degree of indignation against Porteous; against whom, as strict, and even violent in the discharge of his unpopular office, the common people had some real, and many imaginary causes of complaint. When the painful procession was completed, and Wilson, with the escort, had arrived at the scaffold in the Grassmarket, there appeared no signs of that attempt to rescue him which had occasioned such precautions. The multitude, in general, looked on with deeper interest than at ordinary executions; and there might be seen, on the countenances of many, a stern and indignant expression, like that with which the ancient Cameronians might be supposed to witness the execution of their brethren, who glorified the Covenant on the same occasion, and at the same spot. But there was no attempt at violence. Wilson himself seemed disposed to hasten over the space that divided time from eternity. The devotions proper and usual on such occasions were no sooner finished than he submitted to his fate, and the sentence of the law was fulfilled. He had been suspended on the gibbet so long as to be totally deprived of life, when at once, as if occasioned by some newly received impulse, there arose a tumult among the multitude. Many stones were thrown at Porteous and his guards; some mischief was done; and the mob continued to press forward with whoops, shrieks, howls, and exclamations. A young fellow, with a sailor's cap slouched over his face, sprung on the scaffold, and cut the rope by which the criminal was suspended. Others approached to carry off the body, either to secure for it a decent grave, or to try, perhaps, some means of resuscitation. Captain Porteous was wrought, by this appearance of insurrection against his authority, into a rage so headlong as made him forget, that, the sentence having been fully executed, it was his duty not to engage in hostilities with the misguided multitude, but to draw off his men as fast as possible. He sprung from the scaffold, snatched a musket from one of his soldiers, commanded the party to give fire, and, as several eye-witnesses concurred in swearing, set them the example, by discharging his piece, and shooting a man dead on the spot. Several soldiers obeyed his command or followed his example; six or seven persons were slain, and a great many were hurt and wounded. After this act of violence, the Captain proceeded to withdraw his men towards their guard-house in the High Street. The mob were not so much intimidated as incensed by what had been done. They pursued the soldiers with execrations, accompanied by volleys of stones. As they pressed on them, the rearmost soldiers turned, and again fired with fatal aim and execution. It is not accurately known whether Porteous commanded this second act of violence; but of course the odium of the whole transactions of the fatal day attached to him, and to him alone. He arrived at the guard-house, dismissed his soldiers, and went to make his report to the magistrates concerning the unfortunate events of the day. Apparently by this time Captain Porteous had began to doubt the propriety of his own conduct, and the reception he met with from the magistrates was such as to make him still more anxious to gloss it over. He denied that he had given orders to fire; he denied he had fired with his own hand; he even produced the fusee which he carried as an officer for examination; it was found still loaded. Of three cartridges which he was seen to put in his pouch that morning, two were still there; a white handkerchief was thrust into the muzzle of the piece, and re-turned unsoiled or blackened. To the defence founded on these circumstances it was answered, that Porteous had not used his own piece, but had been seen to take one from a soldier. Among the many who had been killed and wounded by the unhappy fire, there were several of better rank; for even the humanity of such soldiers as fired over the heads of the mere rabble around the scaffold, proved in some instances fatal to persons who were stationed in windows, or observed the melancholy scene from a distance. The voice of public indignation was loud and general; and, ere men's tempers had time to cool, the trial of Captain Porteous took place before the High Court of Justiciary. After a long and patient hearing, the jury had the difficult duty of balancing the positive evidence of many persons, and those of respectability, who deposed positively to the prisoner's commanding his soldiers to fire, and himself firing his piece, of which some swore that they saw the smoke and flash, and beheld a man drop at whom it was pointed, with the negative testimony of others, who, though well stationed for seeing what had passed, neither heard Porteous give orders to fire, nor saw him fire himself; but, on the contrary, averred that the first shot was fired by a soldier who stood close by him. A great part of his defence was also founded on the turbulence of the mob, which witnesses, according to their feelings, their predilections, and their opportunities of observation, represented differently; some describing as a formidable riot, what others represented as a trifling disturbance such as always used to take place on the like occasions, when the executioner of the law, and the men commissioned to protect him in his task, were generally exposed to some indignities. The verdict of the jury sufficiently shows how the evidence preponderated in their minds. It declared that John Porteous fired a gun among the people assembled at the execution; that he gave orders to his soldiers to fire, by which many persons were killed and wounded; but, at the same time, that the prisoner and his guard had been wounded and beaten, by stones thrown at them by the multitude. Upon this verdict, the Lords of Justiciary passed sentence of death against Captain John Porteous, adjudging him, in the common form, to be hanged on a gibbet at the common place of execution, on Wednesday, 8th September 1736, and all his movable property to be forfeited to the king's use, according to the Scottish law in cases of wilful murder.* * The signatures affixed to the death-warrant of Captain Porteous were-- Andrew Fletcher of Milton, Lord Justice-Clerk. Sir James Mackenzie, Lord Royston. David Erskine, Lord Dun. Sir Walter Pringle, Lord Newhall. Sir Gilbert Elliot, Lord Minto. CHAPTER THIRD. "The hour's come, but not the man."* * There is a tradition, that while a little stream was swollen into a torrent by recent showers, the discontented voice of the Water Spirit was heard to pronounce these words. At the some moment a man, urged on by his fate, or, in Scottish language, _fey,_ arrived at a gallop, and prepared to cross the water. No remonstrance from the bystanders was of power to stop him--he plunged into the stream, and perished. Kelpie. On the day when the unhappy Porteous was expected to suffer the sentence of the law, the place of execution, extensive as it is, was crowded almost to suffocation. There was not a window in all the lofty tenements around it, or in the steep and crooked street called the Bow, by which the fatal procession was to descend from the High Street, that was not absolutely filled with spectators. The uncommon height and antique appearance of these houses, some of which were formerly the property of the Knights Templars, and the Knights of St. John, and still exhibit on their fronts and gables the iron cross of these orders, gave additional effect to a scene in itself so striking. The area of the Grassmarket resembled a huge dark lake or sea of human heads, in the centre of which arose the fatal tree, tall, black, and ominous, from which dangled the deadly halter. Every object takes interest from its uses and associations, and the erect beam and empty noose, things so simple in themselves, became, on such an occasion, objects of terror and of solemn interest. Amid so numerous an assembly there was scarcely a word spoken, save in whispers. The thirst of vengeance was in some degree allayed by its supposed certainty; and even the populace, with deeper feeling than they are wont to entertain, suppressed all clamorous exultation, and prepared to enjoy the scene of retaliation in triumph, silent and decent, though stern and relentless. It seemed as if the depth of their hatred to the unfortunate criminal scorned to display itself in anything resembling the more noisy current of their ordinary feelings. Had a stranger consulted only the evidence of his ears, he might have supposed that so vast a multitude were assembled for some purpose which affected them with the deepest sorrow, and stilled those noises which, on all ordinary occasions, arise from such a concourse; but if he had gazed upon their faces, he would have been instantly undeceived. The compressed lip, the bent brow, the stern and flashing eye of almost everyone on whom he looked, conveyed the expression of men come to glut their sight with triumphant revenge. It is probable that the appearance of the criminal might have somewhat changed the temper of the populace in his favour, and that they might in the moment of death have forgiven the man against whom their resentment had been so fiercely heated. It had, however, been destined, that the mutability of their sentiments was not to be exposed to this trial. The usual hour for producing the criminal had been past for many minutes, yet the spectators observed no symptom of his appearance. "Would they venture to defraud public justice?" was the question which men began anxiously to ask at each other. The first answer in every case was bold and positive,--"They dare not." But when the point was further canvassed, other opinions were entertained, and various causes of doubt were suggested. Porteous had been a favourite officer of the magistracy of the city, which, being a numerous and fluctuating body, requires for its support a degree of energy in its functionaries, which the individuals who compose it cannot at all times alike be supposed to possess in their own persons. It was remembered, that in the Information for Porteous (the paper, namely, in which his case was stated to the Judges of the criminal court), he had been described by his counsel as the person on whom the magistrates chiefly relied in all emergencies of uncommon difficulty. It was argued, too, that his conduct, on the unhappy occasion of Wilson's execution, was capable of being attributed to an imprudent excess of zeal in the execution of his duty, a motive for which those under whose authority he acted might be supposed to have great sympathy. And as these considerations might move the magistrates to make a favourable representation of Porteous's case, there were not wanting others in the higher departments of Government, which would make such suggestions favourably listened to. The mob of Edinburgh, when thoroughly excited, had been at all times one of the fiercest which could be found in Europe; and of late years they had risen repeatedly against the Government, and sometimes not without temporary success. They were conscious, therefore, that they were no favourites with the rulers of the period, and that, if Captain Porteous's violence was not altogether regarded as good service, it might certainly be thought, that to visit it with a capital punishment would render it both delicate and dangerous for future officers, in the same circumstances, to act with effect in repressing tumults. There is also a natural feeling, on the part of all members of Government, for the general maintenance of authority; and it seemed not unlikely, that what to the relatives of the sufferers appeared a wanton and unprovoked massacre, should be otherwise viewed in the cabinet of St. James's. It might be there supposed, that upon the whole matter, Captain Porteous was in the exercise of a trust delegated to him by the lawful civil authority; that he had been assaulted by the populace, and several of his men hurt; and that, in finally repelling force by force, his conduct could be fairly imputed to no other motive than self-defence in the discharge of his duty. These considerations, of themselves very powerful, induced the spectators to apprehend the possibility of a reprieve; and to the various causes which might interest the rulers in his favour, the lower part of the rabble added one which was peculiarly well adapted to their comprehension. It was averred, in order to increase the odium against Porteous, that while he repressed with the utmost severity the slightest excesses of the poor, he not only overlooked the license of the young nobles and gentry, but was very willing to lend them the countenance of his official authority, in execution of such loose pranks as it was chiefly his duty to have restrained. This suspicion, which was perhaps much exaggerated, made a deep impression on the minds of the populace; and when several of the higher rank joined in a petition, recommending Porteous to the mercy of the Crown, it was generally supposed he owed their favour not to any conviction of the hardship of his case, but to the fear of losing a convenient accomplice in their debaucheries. It is scarcely necessary to say how much this suspicion augmented the people's detestation of this obnoxious criminal, as well as their fear of his escaping the sentence pronounced against him. While these arguments were stated and replied to, and canvassed and supported, the hitherto silent expectation of the people became changed into that deep and agitating murmur, which is sent forth by the ocean before the tempest begins to howl. The crowded populace, as if their motions had corresponded with the unsettled state of their minds, fluctuated to and fro without any visible cause of impulse, like the agitation of the waters, called by sailors the ground-swell. The news, which the magistrates had almost hesitated to communicate to them, were at length announced, and spread among the spectators with a rapidity like lightning. A reprieve from the Secretary of State's office, under the hand of his Grace the Duke of Newcastle, had arrived, intimating the pleasure of Queen Caroline (regent of the kingdom during the absence of George II. on the Continent), that the execution of the sentence of death pronounced against John Porteous, late Captain-Lieutenant of the City Guard of Edinburgh, present prisoner in the Tolbooth of that city, be respited for six weeks from the time appointed for his execution. The assembled spectators of almost all degrees, whose minds had been wound up to the pitch which we have described, uttered a groan, or rather a roar of indignation and disappointed revenge, similar to that of a tiger from whom his meal has been rent by his keeper when he was just about to devour it. This fierce exclamation seemed to forbode some immediate explosion of popular resentment, and, in fact, such had been expected by the magistrates, and the necessary measures had been taken to repress it. But the shout was not repeated, nor did any sudden tumult ensue, such as it appeared to announce. The populace seemed to be ashamed of having expressed their disappointment in a vain clamour, and the sound changed, not into the silence which had preceded the arrival of these stunning news, but into stifled mutterings, which each group maintained among themselves, and which were blended into one deep and hoarse murmur which floated above the assembly. Yet still, though all expectation of the execution was over, the mob remained assembled, stationary, as it were, through very resentment, gazing on the preparations for death, which had now been made in vain, and stimulating their feelings, by recalling the various claims which Wilson might have had on royal mercy, from the mistaken motives on which he acted, as well as from the generosity he had displayed towards his accomplice. "This man," they said,--"the brave, the resolute, the generous, was executed to death without mercy for stealing a purse of gold, which in some sense he might consider as a fair reprisal; while the profligate satellite, who took advantage of a trifling tumult, inseparable from such occasions, to shed the blood of twenty of his fellow-citizens, is deemed a fitting object for the exercise of the royal prerogative of mercy. Is this to be borne?--would our fathers have borne it? Are not we, like them, Scotsmen and burghers of Edinburgh?" The officers of justice began now to remove the scaffold, and other preparations which had been made for the execution, in hopes, by doing so, to accelerate the dispersion of the multitude. The measure had the desired effect; for no sooner had the fatal tree been unfixed from the large stone pedestal or socket in which it was secured, and sunk slowly down upon the wain intended to remove it to the place where it was usually deposited, than the populace, after giving vent to their feelings in a second shout of rage and mortification, began slowly to disperse to their usual abodes and occupations. The windows were in like manner gradually deserted, and groups of the more decent class of citizens formed themselves, as if waiting to return homewards when the streets should be cleared of the rabble. Contrary to what is frequently the case, this description of persons agreed in general with the sentiments of their inferiors, and considered the cause as common to all ranks. Indeed, as we have already noticed, it was by no means amongst the lowest class of the spectators, or those most likely to be engaged in the riot at Wilson's execution, that the fatal fire of Porteous's soldiers had taken effect. Several persons were killed who were looking out at windows at the scene, who could not of course belong to the rioters, and were persons of decent rank and condition. The burghers, therefore, resenting the loss which had fallen on their own body, and proud and tenacious of their rights, as the citizens of Edinburgh have at all times been, were greatly exasperated at the unexpected respite of Captain Porteous. It was noticed at the time, and afterwards more particularly remembered, that, while the mob were in the act of dispersing, several individuals were seen busily passing from one place and one group of people to another, remaining long with none, but whispering for a little time with those who appeared to be declaiming most violently against the conduct of Government. These active agents had the appearance of men from the country, and were generally supposed to be old friends and confederates of Wilson, whose minds were of course highly excited against Porteous. If, however, it was the intention of these men to stir the multitude to any sudden act of mutiny, it seemed for the time to be fruitless. The rabble, as well as the more decent part of the assembly, dispersed, and went home peaceably; and it was only by observing the moody discontent on their brows, or catching the tenor of the conversation they held with each other, that a stranger could estimate the state of their minds. We will give the reader this advantage, by associating ourselves with one of the numerous groups who were painfully ascending the steep declivity of the West Bow, to return to their dwellings in the Lawnmarket. "An unco thing this, Mrs. Howden," said old Peter Plumdamas to his neighbour the rouping-wife, or saleswoman, as he offered her his arm to assist her in the toilsome ascent, "to see the grit folk at Lunnon set their face against law and gospel, and let loose sic a reprobate as Porteous upon a peaceable town!" "And to think o' the weary walk they hae gien us," answered Mrs. Howden, with a groan; "and sic a comfortable window as I had gotten, too, just within a penny-stane-cast of the scaffold--I could hae heard every word the minister said--and to pay twalpennies for my stand, and a' for naething!" "I am judging," said Mr. Plumdamas, "that this reprieve wadna stand gude in the auld Scots law, when the kingdom was a kingdom." "I dinna ken muckle about the law," answered Mrs. Howden; "but I ken, when we had a king, and a chancellor, and parliament men o' our ain, we could aye peeble them wi' stanes when they werena gude bairns--But naebody's nails can reach the length o' Lunnon." "Weary on Lunnon, and a' that e'er came out o't!" said Miss Grizel Damahoy, an ancient seamstress; "they hae taen away our parliament, and they hae oppressed our trade. Our gentles will hardly allow that a Scots needle can sew ruffles on a sark, or lace on an owerlay." "Ye may say that--Miss Damahoy, and I ken o' them that hae gotten raisins frae Lunnon by forpits at ance," responded Plumdamas; "and then sic an host of idle English gaugers and excisemen as hae come down to vex and torment us, that an honest man canna fetch sae muckle as a bit anker o' brandy frae Leith to the Lawnmarket, but he's like to be rubbit o' the very gudes he's bought and paid for.--Weel, I winna justify Andrew Wilson for pitting hands on what wasna his; but if he took nae mair than his ain, there's an awfu' difference between that and the fact this man stands for." "If ye speak about the law," said Mrs. Howden, "here comes Mr. Saddletree, that can settle it as weel as ony on the bench." The party she mentioned, a grave elderly person, with a superb periwig, dressed in a decent suit of sad-coloured clothes, came up as she spoke, and courteously gave his arm to Miss Grizel Damahoy. It may be necessary to mention, that Mr. Bartoline Saddletree kept an excellent and highly-esteemed shop for harness, saddles, &c. &c., at the sign of the Golden Nag, at the head of Bess Wynd.* * [Maitland calls it Best's Wynd, and later writers Beth's Wynd. As the name implies, it was an open thoroughfare or alley leading from the Lawnmarket, and extended in a direct line between the old Tolbooth to near the head of the Cowgate. It was partly destroyed by fire in 1786, and was totally removed in 1809, preparatory to the building of the new libraries of the Faculty of Advocates and writers to the Signet.] His genius, however (as he himself and most of his neighbours conceived), lay towards the weightier matters of the law, and he failed not to give frequent attendance upon the pleadings and arguments of the lawyers and judges in the neighbouring square, where, to say the truth, he was oftener to be found than would have consisted with his own emolument; but that his wife, an active painstaking person, could, in his absence, make an admirable shift to please the customers and scold the journeymen. This good lady was in the habit of letting her husband take his way, and go on improving his stock of legal knowledge without interruption; but, as if in requital, she insisted upon having her own will in the domestic and commercial departments which he abandoned to her. Now, as Bartoline Saddletree had a considerable gift of words, which he mistook for eloquence, and conferred more liberally upon the society in which he lived than was at all times gracious and acceptable, there went forth a saying, with which wags used sometimes to interrupt his rhetoric, that, as he had a golden nag at his door, so he had a grey mare in his shop. This reproach induced Mr. Saddletree, on all occasions, to assume rather a haughty and stately tone towards his good woman, a circumstance by which she seemed very little affected, unless he attempted to exercise any real authority, when she never failed to fly into open rebellion. But such extremes Bartoline seldom provoked; for, like the gentle King Jamie, he was fonder of talking of authority than really exercising it. This turn of mind was, on the whole, lucky for him; since his substance was increased without any trouble on his part, or any interruption of his favourite studies. This word in explanation has been thrown in to the reader, while Saddletree was laying down, with great precision, the law upon Porteous's case, by which he arrived at this conclusion, that, if Porteous had fired five minutes sooner, before Wilson was cut down, he would have been _versans in licito;_ engaged, that is, in a lawful act, and only liable to be punished _propter excessum,_ or for lack of discretion, which might have mitigated the punishment to _poena ordinaria._ "Discretion!" echoed Mrs. Howden, on whom, it may well be supposed, the fineness of this distinction was entirely thrown away,--"whan had Jock Porteous either grace, discretion, or gude manners?--I mind when his father" "But, Mrs. Howden," said Saddletree-- "And I," said Miss Damahoy, "mind when his mother" "Miss Damahoy," entreated the interrupted orator "And I," said Plumdamas, "mind when his wife" "Mr. Plumdamas--Mrs. Howden--Miss Damahoy," again implored the orator,--"Mind the distinction, as Counsellor Crossmyloof says--'I,' says he, 'take a distinction.' Now, the body of the criminal being cut down, and the execution ended, Porteous was no longer official; the act which he came to protect and guard, being done and ended, he was no better than _cuivis ex populo._" "_Quivis--quivis,_ Mr. Saddletree, craving your pardon," said (with a prolonged emphasis on the first syllable) Mr. Butler, the deputy-schoolmaster of a parish near Edinburgh, who at that moment came up behind them as the false Latin was uttered. "What signifies interrupting me, Mr. Butler?--but I am glad to see ye notwithstanding--I speak after Counsellor Crossmyloof, and he said _cuivis._" "If Counsellor Crossmyloof used the dative for the nominative, I would have crossed his loof with a tight leathern strap, Mr. Saddletree; there is not a boy on the booby form but should have been scourged for such a solecism in grammar." "I speak Latin like a lawyer, Mr. Butler, and not like a schoolmaster," retorted Saddletree. "Scarce like a schoolboy, I think," rejoined Butler. "It matters little," said Bartoline; "all I mean to say is, that Porteous has become liable to the _poena extra ordinem,_ or capital punishment--which is to say, in plain Scotch, the gallows--simply because he did not fire when he was in office, but waited till the body was cut down, the execution whilk he had in charge to guard implemented, and he himself exonered of the public trust imposed on him." "But, Mr. Saddletree," said Plumdamas, "do ye really think John Porteous's case wad hae been better if he had begun firing before ony stanes were flung at a'?" "Indeed do I, neighbour Plumdamas," replied Bartoline, confidently, "he being then in point of trust and in point of power, the execution being but inchoat, or, at least, not implemented, or finally ended; but after Wilson was cut down it was a' ower--he was clean exauctorate, and had nae mair ado but to get awa wi' his guard up this West Bow as fast as if there had been a caption after him--And this is law, for I heard it laid down by Lord Vincovincentem." "Vincovincentem?--Is he a lord of state, or a lord of seat?" inquired Mrs. Howden.* * A nobleman was called a Lord of State. The Senators of the College * of Justice were termed Lords of Seat, or of the Session. "A lord of seat--a lord of session.--I fash mysell little wi' lords o' state; they vex me wi' a wheen idle questions about their saddles, and curpels, and holsters and horse-furniture, and what they'll cost, and whan they'll be ready--a wheen galloping geese--my wife may serve the like o' them." "And so might she, in her day, hae served the best lord in the land, for as little as ye think o' her, Mr. Saddletree," said Mrs. Howden, somewhat indignant at the contemptuous way in which her gossip was mentioned; "when she and I were twa gilpies, we little thought to hae sitten doun wi' the like o' my auld Davie Howden, or you either, Mr. Saddletree." While Saddletree, who was not bright at a reply, was cudgelling his brains for an answer to this homethrust, Miss Damahoy broke in on him. "And as for the lords of state," said Miss Damahoy, "ye suld mind the riding o' the parliament, Mr. Saddletree, in the gude auld time before the Union,--a year's rent o' mony a gude estate gaed for horse-graith and harnessing, forby broidered robes and foot-mantles, that wad hae stude by their lane wi' gold brocade, and that were muckle in my ain line." "Ay, and then the lusty banqueting, with sweetmeats and comfits wet and dry, and dried fruits of divers sorts," said Plumdamas. "But Scotland was Scotland in these days." "I'll tell ye what it is, neighbours," said Mrs. Howden, "I'll ne'er believe Scotland is Scotland ony mair, if our kindly Scots sit doun with the affront they hae gien us this day. It's not only the blude that _is_ shed, but the blude that might hae been shed, that's required at our hands; there was my daughter's wean, little Eppie Daidle--my oe, ye ken, Miss Grizel--had played the truant frae the school, as bairns will do, ye ken, Mr. Butler" "And for which," interjected Mr. Butler, "they should be soundly scourged by their well-wishers." "And had just cruppen to the gallows' foot to see the hanging, as was natural for a wean; and what for mightna she hae been shot as weel as the rest o' them, and where wad we a' hae been then? I wonder how Queen Carline (if her name be Carline) wad hae liked to hae had ane o' her ain bairns in sic a venture?" "Report says," answered Butler, "that such a circumstance would not have distressed her majesty beyond endurance." "Aweel," said Mrs. Howden, "the sum o' the matter is, that, were I a man, I wad hae amends o' Jock Porteous, be the upshot what like o't, if a' the carles and carlines in England had sworn to the nay-say." "I would claw down the Tolbooth door wi' my nails," said Miss Grizel, "but I wad be at him." "Ye may be very right, ladies," said Butler, "but I would not advise you to speak so loud." "Speak!" exclaimed both the ladies together, "there will be naething else spoken about frae the Weigh-house to the Water-gate, till this is either ended or mended." The females now departed to their respective places of abode. Plumdamas joined the other two gentlemen in drinking their _meridian_ (a bumper-dram of brandy), as they passed the well-known low-browed shop in the Lawnmarket, where they were wont to take that refreshment. Mr. Plumdamas then departed towards his shop, and Mr. Butler, who happened to have some particular occasion for the rein of an old bridle (the truants of that busy day could have anticipated its application), walked down the Lawnmarket with Mr. Saddletree, each talking as he could get a word thrust in, the one on the laws of Scotland, the other on those of syntax, and neither listening to a word which his companion uttered. CHAPTER FOURTH. Elswhair he colde right weel lay down the law, But in his house was meek as is a daw. Davie Lindsay. "There has been Jock Driver the carrier here, speering about his new graith," said Mrs. Saddletree to her husband, as he crossed his threshold, not with the purpose, by any means, of consulting him upon his own affairs, but merely to intimate, by a gentle recapitulation, how much duty she had gone through in his absence. "Weel," replied Bartoline, and deigned not a word more. "And the laird of Girdingburst has had his running footman here, and ca'd himsell (he's a civil pleasant young gentleman), to see when the broidered saddle-cloth for his sorrel horse will be ready, for he wants it agane the Kelso races." "Weel, aweel," replied Bartoline, as laconically as before. "And his lordship, the Earl of Blazonbury, Lord Flash and Flame, is like to be clean daft, that the harness for the six Flanders mears, wi' the crests, coronets, housings, and mountings conform, are no sent hame according to promise gien." "Weel, weel, weel--weel, weel, gudewife," said Saddletree, "if he gangs daft, we'll hae him cognosced--it's a' very weel." "It's weel that ye think sae, Mr. Saddletree," answered his helpmate, rather nettled at the indifference with which her report was received; "there's mony ane wad hae thought themselves affronted, if sae mony customers had ca'd and naebody to answer them but women-folk; for a' the lads were aff, as soon as your back was turned, to see Porteous hanged, that might be counted upon; and sae, you no being at hame" "Houts, Mrs. Saddletree," said Bartoline, with an air of consequence, "dinna deave me wi' your nonsense; I was under the necessity of being elsewhere--_non omnia_--as Mr. Crossmyloof said, when he was called by two macers at once--_non omnia possumus--pessimus--possimis_--I ken our law-latin offends Mr. Butler's ears, but it means, Naebody, an it were the Lord President himsell, can do twa turns at ance." "Very right, Mr. Saddletree," answered his careful helpmate, with a sarcastic smile; "and nae doubt it's a decent thing to leave your wife to look after young gentlemen's saddles and bridles, when ye gang to see a man, that never did ye nae ill, raxing a halter." "Woman," said Saddletree, assuming an elevated tone, to which the _meridian_ had somewhat contributed, "desist,--I say forbear, from intromitting with affairs thou canst not understand. D'ye think I was born to sit here brogging an elshin through bend-leather, when sic men as Duncan Forbes, and that other Arniston chield there, without muckle greater parts, if the close-head speak true, than mysell maun be presidents and king's advocates, nae doubt, and wha but they? Whereas, were favour equally distribute, as in the days of the wight Wallace" "I ken naething we wad hae gotten by the wight Wallace," said Mrs. Saddletree, "unless, as I hae heard the auld folk tell, they fought in thae days wi' bend-leather guns, and then it's a chance but what, if he had bought them, he might have forgot to pay for them. And as for the greatness of your parts, Bartley, the folk in the close-head* maun ken mair about them than I do, if they make sic a report of them." * [_Close-head,_ the entrance of a blind alley.] "I tell ye, woman," said Saddletree, in high dudgeon, "that ye ken naething about these matters. In Sir William Wallace's days there was nae man pinned down to sic a slavish wark as a saddler's, for they got ony leather graith that they had use for ready-made out of Holland." "Well," said Butler, who was, like many of his profession, something of a humorist and dry joker, "if that be the case, Mr. Saddletree, I think we have changed for the better; since we make our own harness, and only import our lawyers from Holland." "It's ower true, Mr. Butler," answered Bartoline, with a sigh; "if I had had the luck--or rather, if my father had had the sense to send me to Leyden and Utrecht to learn the Substitutes and Pandex" "You mean the Institutes--Justinian's Institutes, Mr. Saddletree?" said Butler. "Institutes and substitutes are synonymous words, Mr. Butler, and used indifferently as such in deeds of tailzie, as you may see in Balfour's Practiques, or Dallas of St. Martin's Styles. I understand these things pretty weel, I thank God but I own I should have studied in Holland." "To comfort you, you might not have been farther forward than you are now, Mr. Saddletree," replied Mr. Butler; "for our Scottish advocates are an aristocratic race. Their brass is of the right Corinthian quality, and _Non cuivis contigit adire Corinthum_--Aha, Mr. Saddletree?" "And aha, Mr. Butler," rejoined Bartoline, upon whom, as may be well supposed, the jest was lost, and all but the sound of the words, "ye said a gliff syne it was _quivis,_ and now I heard ye say _cuivis_ with my ain ears, as plain as ever I heard a word at the fore-bar." "Give me your patience, Mr. Saddletree, and I'll explain the discrepancy in three words," said Butler, as pedantic in his own department, though with infinitely more judgment and learning, as Bartoline was in his self-assumed profession of the law--"Give me your patience for a moment--You'll grant that the nominative case is that by which a person or thing is nominated or designed, and which may be called the primary case, all others being formed from it by alterations of the termination in the learned languages, and by prepositions in our modern Babylonian jargons--You'll grant me that, I suppose, Mr. Saddletree?" "I dinna ken whether I will or no--_ad avisandum,_ ye ken--naebody should be in a hurry to make admissions, either in point of law, or in point of fact," said Saddletree, looking, or endeavouring to look, as if he understood what was said. "And the dative case," continued Butler "I ken what a tutor dative is," said Saddletree, "readily enough." "The dative case," resumed the grammarian, "is that in which anything is given or assigned as properly belonging to a person or thing--You cannot deny that, I am sure." "I am sure I'll no grant it, though," said Saddletree. "Then, what the _deevil_ d'ye take the nominative and the dative cases to be?" said Butler, hastily, and surprised at once out of his decency of expression and accuracy of pronunciation. "I'll tell you that at leisure, Mr. Butler," said Saddletree, with a very knowing look; "I'll take a day to see and answer every article of your condescendence, and then I'll hold you to confess or deny as accords." "Come, come, Mr. Saddletree," said his wife, "we'll hae nae confessions and condescendences here; let them deal in thae sort o' wares that are paid for them--they suit the like o' us as all as a demipique saddle would suit a draught ox." "Aha!" said Mr. Butler, "_Optat ephippia bos piger,_ nothing new under the sun--But it was a fair hit of Mrs. Saddletree, however." "And it wad far better become ye, Mr. Saddletree," continued his helpmate, "since ye say ye hae skeel o' the law, to try if ye can do onything for Effie Deans, puir thing, that's lying up in the tolbooth yonder, cauld, and hungry, and comfortless--A servant lass of ours, Mr. Butler, and as innocent a lass, to my thinking, and as usefu' in the shop--When Mr. Saddletree gangs out,--and ye're aware he's seldom at hame when there's ony o' the plea-houses open,--poor Effie used to help me to tumble the bundles o' barkened leather up and down, and range out the gudes, and suit a' body's humours--And troth, she could aye please the customers wi' her answers, for she was aye civil, and a bonnier lass wasna in Auld Reekie. And when folk were hasty and unreasonable, she could serve them better than me, that am no sae young as I hae been, Mr. Butler, and a wee bit short in the temper into the bargain. For when there's ower mony folks crying on me at anes, and nane but ae tongue to answer them, folk maun speak hastily, or they'll ne'er get through their wark--Sae I miss Effie daily." "_De die in diem,_" added Saddletree. "I think," said Butler, after a good deal of hesitation, "I have seen the girl in the shop--a modest-looking, fair-haired girl?" "Ay, ay, that's just puir Effie," said her mistress. "How she was abandoned to hersell, or whether she was sackless o' the sinful deed, God in Heaven knows; but if she's been guilty, she's been sair tempted, and I wad amaist take my Bible-aith she hasna been hersell at the time." Butler had by this time become much agitated; he fidgeted up and down the shop, and showed the greatest agitation that a person of such strict decorum could be supposed to give way to. "Was not this girl," he said, "the daughter of David Deans, that had the parks at St. Leonard's taken? and has she not a sister?" "In troth has she,--puir Jeanie Deans, ten years aulder than hersell; she was here greeting a wee while syne about her tittie. And what could I say to her, but that she behoved to come and speak to Mr. Saddletree when he was at hame? It wasna that I thought Mr. Saddletree could do her or ony ither body muckle good or ill, but it wad aye serve to keep the puir thing's heart up for a wee while; and let sorrow come when sorrow maun." "Ye're mistaen though, gudewife," said Saddletree scornfully, "for I could hae gien her great satisfaction; I could hae proved to her that her sister was indicted upon the statute saxteen hundred and ninety, chapter one--For the mair ready prevention of child-murder--for concealing her pregnancy, and giving no account of the child which she had borne." "I hope," said Butler,--"I trust in a gracious God, that she can clear herself." "And sae do I, Mr. Butler," replied Mrs. Saddletree. "I am sure I wad hae answered for her as my ain daughter; but wae's my heart, I had been tender a' the simmer, and scarce ower the door o' my room for twal weeks. And as for Mr. Saddletree, he might be in a lying-in hospital, and ne'er find out what the women cam there for. Sae I could see little or naething o' her, or I wad hae had the truth o' her situation out o' her, I'se warrant ye--But we a' think her sister maun be able to speak something to clear her." "The haill Parliament House," said Saddletree, "was speaking o' naething else, till this job o' Porteous's put it out o' head--It's a beautiful point of presumptive murder, and there's been nane like it in the Justiciar Court since the case of Luckie Smith the howdie, that suffered in the year saxteen hundred and seventy-nine." "But what's the matter wi' you, Mr. Butler?" said the good woman; "ye are looking as white as a sheet; will ye tak a dram?" "By no means," said Butler, compelling himself to speak. "I walked in from Dumfries yesterday, and this is a warm day." "Sit down," said Mrs. Saddletree, laying hands on him kindly, "and rest ye--yell kill yoursell, man, at that rate.--And are we to wish you joy o' getting the scule, Mr. Butler?" "Yes--no--I do not know," answered the young man vaguely. But Mrs. Saddletree kept him to point, partly out of real interest, partly from curiosity. "Ye dinna ken whether ye are to get the free scule o' Dumfries or no, after hinging on and teaching it a' the simmer?" "No, Mrs. Saddletree--I am not to have it," replied Butler, more collectedly. "The Laird of Black-at-the-Bane had a natural son bred to the kirk, that the Presbytery could not be prevailed upon to license; and so" "Ay, ye need say nae mair about it; if there was a laird that had a puir kinsman or a bastard that it wad suit, there's enough said.--And ye're e'en come back to Liberton to wait for dead men's shoon?--and for as frail as Mr. Whackbairn is, he may live as lang as you, that are his assistant and successor." "Very like," replied Butler, with a sigh; "I do not know if I should wish it otherwise." "Nae doubt, it's a very vexing thing," continued the good lady, "to be in that dependent station; and you that hae right and title to sae muckle better, I wonder how ye bear these crosses." "_Quos diligit castigat,_" answered Butler; "even the pagan Seneca could see an advantage in affliction, The Heathens had their philosophy, and the Jews their revelation, Mrs. Saddletree, and they endured their distresses in their day. Christians have a better dispensation than either--but doubtless" He stopped and sighed. "I ken what ye mean," said Mrs. Saddletree, looking toward her husband; "there's whiles we lose patience in spite of baith book and Bible--But ye are no gaun awa, and looking sae poorly--ye'll stay and take some kale wi' us?" Mr. Saddletree laid aside Balfour's Practiques (his favourite study, and much good may it do him), to join in his wife's hospitable importunity. But the teacher declined all entreaty, and took his leave upon the spot. "There's something in a' this," said Mrs. Saddletree, looking after him as he walked up the street; "I wonder what makes Mr. Butler sae distressed about Effie's misfortune--there was nae acquaintance atween them that ever I saw or heard of; but they were neighbours when David Deans was on the Laird o' Dumbiedikes' land. Mr. Butler wad ken her father, or some o' her folk.--Get up, Mr. Saddletree--ye have set yoursell down on the very brecham that wants stitching--and here's little Willie, the prentice.--Ye little rin-there-out deil that ye are, what takes you raking through the gutters to see folk hangit?--how wad ye like when it comes to be your ain chance, as I winna ensure ye, if ye dinna mend your manners?--And what are ye maundering and greeting for, as if a word were breaking your banes?--Gang in by, and be a better bairn another time, and tell Peggy to gie ye a bicker o' broth, for ye'll be as gleg as a gled, I'se warrant ye.--It's a fatherless bairn, Mr. Saddletree, and motherless, whilk in some cases may be waur, and ane would take care o' him if they could--it's a Christian duty." "Very true, gudewife," said Saddletree in reply, "we are _in loco parentis_ to him during his years of pupillarity, and I hae had thoughts of applying to the Court for a commission as factor _loco tutoris,_ seeing there is nae tutor nominate, and the tutor-at-law declines to act; but only I fear the expense of the procedure wad not be _in rem versam,_ for I am not aware if Willie has ony effects whereof to assume the administration." He concluded this sentence with a self-important cough, as one who has laid down the law in an indisputable manner. "Effects!" said Mrs. Saddletree, "what effects has the puir wean?--he was in rags when his mother died; and the blue polonie that Effie made for him out of an auld mantle of my ain, was the first decent dress the bairn ever had on. Poor Effie! can ye tell me now really, wi' a' your law, will her life be in danger, Mr. Saddletree, when they arena able to prove that ever there was a bairn ava?" "Whoy," said Mr. Saddletree, delighted at having for once in his life seen his wife's attention arrested by a topic of legal discussion--"Whoy, there are two sorts of _murdrum_ or _murdragium,_ or what you _populariter et vulgariser_ call murther. I mean there are many sorts; for there's your _murthrum per vigilias et insidias,_ and your _murthrum_ under trust." "I am sure," replied his moiety, "that murther by trust is the way that the gentry murther us merchants, and whiles make us shut the booth up--but that has naething to do wi' Effie's misfortune." "The case of Effie (or Euphemia) Deans," resumed Saddletree, "is one of those cases of murder presumptive, that is, a murder of the law's inferring or construction, being derived from certain _indicia_ or grounds of suspicion." "So that," said the good woman, "unless poor Effie has communicated her situation, she'll be hanged by the neck, if the bairn was still-born, or if it be alive at this moment?" "Assuredly," said Saddletree, "it being a statute made by our Sovereign Lord and Lady, to prevent the horrid delict of bringing forth children in secret--The crime is rather a favourite of the law, this species of murther being one of its ain creation." "Then, if the law makes murders," said Mrs. Saddletree, "the law should be hanged for them; or if they wad hang a lawyer instead, the country wad find nae faut." A summons to their frugal dinner interrupted the farther progress of the conversation, which was otherwise like to take a turn much less favourable to the science of jurisprudence and its professors, than Mr. Bartoline Saddletree, the fond admirer of both, had at its opening anticipated. CHAPTER FIFTH. But up then raise all Edinburgh. They all rose up by thousands three. Johnnie Armstrang's _Goodnight._ Butler, on his departure from the sign of the Golden Nag, went in quest of a friend of his connected with the law, of whom he wished to make particular inquiries concerning the circumstances in which the unfortunate young woman mentioned in the last chapter was placed, having, as the reader has probably already conjectured, reasons much deeper than those dictated by mere humanity for interesting himself in her fate. He found the person he sought absent from home, and was equally unfortunate in one or two other calls which he made upon acquaintances whom he hoped to interest in her story. But everybody was, for the moment, stark-mad on the subject of Porteous, and engaged busily in attacking or defending the measures of Government in reprieving him; and the ardour of dispute had excited such universal thirst, that half the young lawyers and writers, together with their very clerks, the class whom Butler was looking after, had adjourned the debate to some favourite tavern. It was computed by an experienced arithmetician, that there was as much twopenny ale consumed on the discussion as would have floated a first-rate man-of-war. Butler wandered about until it was dusk, resolving to take that opportunity of visiting the unfortunate young woman, when his doing so might be least observed; for he had his own reasons for avoiding the remarks of Mrs. Saddletree, whose shop-door opened at no great distance from that of the jail, though on the opposite or south side of the street, and a little higher up. He passed, therefore, through the narrow and partly covered passage leading from the north-west end of the Parliament Square. He stood now before the Gothic entrance of the ancient prison, which, as is well known to all men, rears its ancient front in the very middle of the High Street, forming, as it were, the termination to a huge pile of buildings called the Luckenbooths, which, for some inconceivable reason, our ancestors had jammed into the midst of the principal street of the town, leaving for passage a narrow street on the north; and on the south, into which the prison opens, a narrow crooked lane, winding betwixt the high and sombre walls of the Tolbooth and the adjacent houses on the one side, and the butresses and projections of the old Cathedral upon the other. To give some gaiety to this sombre passage (well known by the name of the Krames), a number of little booths, or shops, after the fashion of cobblers' stalls, are plastered, as it were, against the Gothic projections and abutments, so that it seemed as if the traders had occupied with nests, bearing the same proportion to the building, every buttress and coign of vantage, as the martlett did in Macbeth's Castle. Of later years these booths have degenerated into mere toy-shops, where the little loiterers chiefly interested in such wares are tempted to linger, enchanted by the rich display of hobby-horses, babies, and Dutch toys, arranged in artful and gay confusion; yet half-scared by the cross looks of the withered pantaloon, or spectacled old lady, by whom these tempting stores are watched and superintended. But, in the times we write of, the hosiers, the glovers, the hatters, the mercers, the milliners, and all who dealt in the miscellaneous wares now termed haberdasher's goods, were to be found in this narrow alley. To return from our digression. Butler found the outer turnkey, a tall thin old man, with long silver hair, in the act of locking the outward door of the jail. He addressed himself to this person, and asked admittance to Effie Deans, confined upon accusation of child-murder. The turnkey looked at him earnestly, and, civilly touching his hat out of respect to Butler's black coat and clerical appearance, replied, "It was impossible any one could be admitted at present." "You shut up earlier than usual, probably on account of Captain Porteous's affair?" said Butler. The turnkey, with the true mystery of a person in office, gave two grave nods, and withdrawing from the wards a ponderous key of about two feet in length, he proceeded to shut a strong plate of steel, which folded down above the keyhole, and was secured by a steel spring and catch. Butler stood still instinctively while the door was made fast, and then looking at his watch, walked briskly up the street, muttering to himself, almost unconsciously-- Porta adversa, ingens, solidoque adamante columnae; Vis ut nulla virum, non ipsi exscindere ferro Coelicolae valeant--Stat ferrea turris ad auras--etc.* Dryden's _Virgil,_ Book vi. * Wide is the fronting gate, and, raised on high, With adamantine columns threats the sky; Vain is the force of man, and Heaven's as vain, To crush the pillars which the pile sustain: Sublime on these a tower of steel is reard. Having wasted half-an-hour more in a second fruitless attempt to find his legal friend and adviser, he thought it time to leave the city and return to his place of residence, in a small village about two miles and a half to the southward of Edinburgh. The metropolis was at this time surrounded by a high wall, with battlements and flanking projections at some intervals, and the access was through gates, called in the Scottish language _ports,_ which were regularly shut at night. A small fee to the keepers would indeed procure egress and ingress at any time, through a wicket left for that purpose in the large gate; but it was of some importance, to a man so poor as Butler, to avoid even this slight pecuniary mulct; and fearing the hour of shutting the gates might be near, he made for that to which he found himself nearest, although, by doing so, he somewhat lengthened his walk homewards. Bristo Port was that by which his direct road lay, but the West Port, which leads out of the Grassmarket, was the nearest of the city gates to the place where he found himself, and to that, therefore, he directed his course. He reached the port in ample time to pass the circuit of the walls, and entered a suburb called Portsburgh, chiefly inhabited by the lower order of citizens and mechanics. Here he was unexpectedly interrupted. He had not gone far from the gate before he heard the sound of a drum, and, to his great surprise, met a number of persons, sufficient to occupy the whole front of the street, and form a considerable mass behind, moving with great speed towards the gate he had just come from, and having in front of them a drum beating to arms. While he considered how he should escape a party, assembled, as it might be presumed, for no lawful purpose, they came full on him and stopped him. "Are you a clergyman?" one questioned him. Butler replied that "he was in orders, but was not a placed minister." "It's Mr. Butler from Liberton," said a voice from behind, "he'll discharge the duty as weel as ony man." "You must turn back with us, sir," said the first speaker, in a tone civil but peremptory. "For what purpose, gentlemen?" said Mr. Butler. "I live at some distance from town--the roads are unsafe by night--you will do me a serious injury by stopping me." "You shall be sent safely home--no man shall touch a hair of your head--but you must and shall come along with us." "But to what purpose or end, gentlemen?" said Butler. "I hope you will be so civil as to explain that to me." "You shall know that in good time. Come along--for come you must, by force or fair means; and I warn you to look neither to the right hand nor the left, and to take no notice of any man's face, but consider all that is passing before you as a dream." "I would it were a dream I could awaken from," said Butler to himself; but having no means to oppose the violence with which he was threatened, he was compelled to turn round and march in front of the rioters, two men partly supporting and partly holding him. During this parley the insurgents had made themselves masters of the West Port, rushing upon the Waiters (so the people were called who had the charge of the gates), and possessing themselves of the keys. They bolted and barred the folding doors, and commanded the person, whose duty it usually was, to secure the wicket, of which they did not understand the fastenings. The man, terrified at an incident so totally unexpected, was unable to perform his usual office, and gave the matter up, after several attempts. The rioters, who seemed to have come prepared for every emergency, called for torches, by the light of which they nailed up the wicket with long nails, which, it seemed probable, they had provided on purpose. While this was going on, Butler could not, even if he had been willing, avoid making remarks on the individuals who seemed to lead this singular mob. The torch-light, while it fell on their forms and left him in the shade, gave him an opportunity to do so without their observing him. Several of those who seemed most active were dressed in sailors' jackets, trousers, and sea-caps; others in large loose-bodied greatcoats, and slouched hats; and there were several who, judging from their dress, should have been called women, whose rough deep voices, uncommon size, and masculine, deportment and mode of walking, forbade them being so interpreted. They moved as if by some well-concerted plan of arrangement. They had signals by which they knew, and nicknames by which they distinguished each other. Butler remarked, that the name of Wildfire was used among them, to which one stout Amazon seemed to reply. The rioters left a small party to observe the West Port, and directed the Waiters, as they valued their lives, to remain within their lodge, and make no attempt for that night to repossess themselves of the gate. They then moved with rapidity along the low street called the Cowgate, the mob of the city everywhere rising at the sound of their drum, and joining them. When the multitude arrived at the Cowgate Port, they secured it with as little opposition as the former, made it fast, and left a small party to observe it. It was afterwards remarked, as a striking instance of prudence and precaution, singularly combined with audacity, that the parties left to guard those gates did not remain stationary on their posts, but flitted to and fro, keeping so near the gates as to see that no efforts were made to open them, yet not remaining so long as to have their persons closely observed. The mob, at first only about one hundred strong, now amounted to thousands, and were increasing every moment. They divided themselves so as to ascend with more speed the various narrow lanes which lead up from the Cowgate to the High Street; and still beating to arms as they went, an calling on all true Scotsmen to join them, they now filled the principal street of the city. The Netherbow Port might be called the Temple Bar of Edinburgh, as, intersecting the High Street at its termination, it divided Edinburgh, properly so called, from the suburb named the Canongate, as Temple Bar separates London from Westminster. It was of the utmost importance to the rioters to possess themselves of this pass, because there was quartered in the Canongate at that time a regiment of infantry, commanded by Colonel Moyle, which might have occupied the city by advancing through this gate, and would possess the power of totally defeating their purpose. The leaders therefore hastened to the Netherbow Port, which they secured in the same manner, and with as little trouble, as the other gates, leaving a party to watch it, strong in proportion to the importance of the post. The next object of these hardy insurgents was at once to disarm the City Guard, and to procure arms for themselves; for scarce any weapons but staves and bludgeons had been yet seen among them. The Guard-house was a long, low, ugly building (removed in 1787), which to a fanciful imagination might have suggested the idea of a long black snail crawling up the middle of the High Street, and deforming its beautiful esplanade. This formidable insurrection had been so unexpected, that there were no more than the ordinary sergeant's guard of the city-corps upon duty; even these were without any supply of powder and ball; and sensible enough what had raised the storm, and which way it was rolling, could hardly be supposed very desirous to expose themselves by a valiant defence to the animosity of so numerous and desperate a mob, to whom they were on the present occasion much more than usually obnoxious. There was a sentinel upon guard, who (that one town-guard soldier might do his duty on that eventful evening) presented his piece, and desired the foremost of the rioters to stand off. The young Amazon, whom Butler had observed particularly active, sprung upon the soldier, seized his musket, and after a struggle succeeded in wrenching it from him, and throwing him down on the causeway. One or two soldiers, who endeavoured to turn out to the support of their sentinel, were in the same manner seized and disarmed, and the mob without difficulty possessed themselves of the Guard-house, disarming and turning out of doors the rest of the men on duty. It was remarked, that, notwithstanding the city soldiers had been the instruments of the slaughter which this riot was designed to revenge, no ill usage or even insult was offered to them. It seemed as if the vengeance of the people disdained to stoop at any head meaner than that which they considered as the source and origin of their injuries. On possessing themselves of the guard, the first act of the multitude was to destroy the drums, by which they supposed an alarm might be conveyed to the garrison in the castle; for the same reason they now silenced their own, which was beaten by a young fellow, son to the drummer of Portsburgh, whom they had forced upon that service. Their next business was to distribute among the boldest of the rioters the guns, bayonets, partisans, halberts, and battle or Lochaber axes. Until this period the principal rioters had preserved silence on the ultimate object of their rising, as being that which all knew, but none expressed. Now, however, having accomplished all the preliminary parts of their design, they raised a tremendous shout of "Porteous! Porteous! To the Tolbooth! To the Tolbooth!" [Illustration: Tolbooth, Cannongate] They proceeded with the same prudence when the object seemed to be nearly in their grasp, as they had done hitherto when success was more dubious. A strong party of the rioters, drawn up in front of the Luckenbooths, and facing down the street, prevented all access from the eastward, and the west end of the defile formed by the Luckenbooths was secured in the same manner; so that the Tolbooth was completely surrounded, and those who undertook the task of breaking it open effectually secured against the risk of interruption. The magistrates, in the meanwhile, had taken the alarm, and assembled in a tavern, with the purpose of raising some strength to subdue the rioters. The deacons, or presidents of the trades, were applied to, but declared there was little chance of their authority being respected by the craftsmen, where it was the object to save a man so obnoxious. Mr. Lindsay, member of parliament for the city, volunteered the perilous task of carrying a verbal message, from the Lord Provost to Colonel Moyle, the commander of the regiment lying in the Canongate, requesting him to force the Netherbow Port, and enter the city to put down the tumult. But Mr. Lindsay declined to charge himself with any written order, which, if found on his person by an enraged mob, might have cost him his life; and the issue, of the application was, that Colonel Moyle having no written requisition from the civil authorities, and having the fate of Porteous before his eyes as an example of the severe construction put by a jury on the proceedings of military men acting on their own responsibility, declined to encounter the risk to which the Provost's verbal communication invited him. More than one messenger was despatched by different ways to the Castle, to require the commanding officer to march down his troops, to fire a few cannon-shot, or even to throw a shell among the mob, for the purpose of clearing the streets. But so strict and watchful were the various patrols whom the rioters had established in different parts of the streets, that none of the emissaries of the magistrates could reach the gate of the Castle. They were, however, turned back without either injury or insult, and with nothing more of menace than was necessary to deter them from again attempting to accomplish their errand. The same vigilance was used to prevent everybody of the higher, and those which, in this case, might be deemed the more suspicious orders of society, from appearing in the street, and observing the movements, or distinguishing the persons, of the rioters. Every person in the garb of a gentleman was stopped by small parties of two or three of the mob, who partly exhorted, partly required of them, that they should return to the place from whence they came. Many a quadrille table was spoilt that memorable evening; for the sedan chairs of ladies; even of the highest rank, were interrupted in their passage from one point to another, in spite of the laced footmen and blazing flambeaux. This was uniformly done with a deference and attention to the feelings of the terrified females, which could hardly have been expected from the videttes of a mob so desperate. Those who stopped the chair usually made the excuse, that there was much disturbance on the streets, and that it was absolutely necessary for the lady's safety that the chair should turn back. They offered themselves to escort the vehicles which they had thus interrupted in their progress, from the apprehension, probably, that some of those who had casually united themselves to the riot might disgrace their systematic and determined plan of vengeance, by those acts of general insult and license which are common on similar occasions. Persons are yet living who remember to have heard from the mouths of ladies thus interrupted on their journey in the manner we have described, that they were escorted to their lodgings by the young men who stopped them, and even handed out of their chairs, with a polite attention far beyond what was consistent with their dress, which was apparently that of journeymen mechanics.* * A near relation of the author's used to tell of having been stopped by the rioters, and escorted home in the manner described. On reaching her own home one of her attendants, in the appearance a _baxter_, a baker's lad, handed her out of her chair, and took leave with a bow, which, in the lady's opinion, argued breeding that could hardly be learned at the oven's mouth. It seemed as if the conspirators, like those who assassinated Cardinal Beatoun in former days, had entertained the opinion, that the work about which they went was a judgment of Heaven, which, though unsanctioned by the usual authorities, ought to be proceeded in with order and gravity. While their outposts continued thus vigilant, and suffered themselves neither from fear nor curiosity to neglect that part of the duty assigned to them, and while the main guards to the east and west secured them against interruption, a select body of the rioters thundered at the door of the jail, and demanded instant admission. No one answered, for the outer keeper had prudently made his escape with the keys at the commencement of the riot, and was nowhere to be found. The door was instantly assailed with sledge-hammers, iron crows, and the coulters of ploughs, ready provided for the purpose, with which they prized, heaved, and battered for some time with little effect; for the door, besides being of double oak planks, clenched, both endlong and athwart, with broad-headed nails, was so hung and secured as to yield to no means of forcing, without the expenditure of much time. The rioters, however, appeared determined to gain admittance. Gang after gang relieved each other at the exercise, for, of course, only a few could work at once; but gang after gang retired, exhausted with their violent exertions, without making much progress in forcing the prison door. Butler had been led up near to this the principal scene of action; so near, indeed, that he was almost deafened by the unceasing clang of the heavy fore-hammers against the iron-bound portal of the prison. He began to entertain hopes, as the task seemed protracted, that the populace might give it over in despair, or that some rescue might arrive to disperse them. There was a moment at which the latter seemed probable. The magistrates, having assembled their officers, and some of the citizens who were willing to hazard themselves for the public tranquillity, now sallied forth from the tavern where they held their sitting, and approached the point of danger. Their officers went before them with links and torches, with a herald to read the riot-act, if necessary. They easily drove before them the outposts and videttes of the rioters; but when they approached the line of guard which the mob, or rather, we should say, the conspirators, had drawn across the street in the front of the Luckenbooths, they were received with an unintermitted volley of stones, and, on their nearer approach, the pikes, bayonets, and Lochaber-axes, of which the populace had possessed themselves, were presented against them. One of their ordinary officers, a strong resolute fellow, went forward, seized a rioter, and took from him a musket; but, being unsupported, he was instantly thrown on his back in the street, and disarmed in his turn. The officer was too happy to be permitted to rise and run away without receiving any farther injury; which afforded another remarkable instance of the mode in which these men had united a sort of moderation towards all others, with the most inflexible inveteracy against the object of their resentment. The magistrates, after vain attempts to make themselves heard and obeyed, possessing no means of enforcing their authority, were constrained to abandon the field to the rioters, and retreat in all speed from the showers of missiles that whistled around their ears. The passive resistance of the Tolbooth gate promised to do more to baffle the purpose of the mob than the active interference of the magistrates. The heavy sledge-hammers continued to din against it without intermission, and with a noise which, echoed from the lofty buildings around the spot, seemed enough to have alarmed the garrison in the Castle. It was circulated among the rioters, that the troops would march down to disperse them, unless they could execute their purpose without loss of time; or that, even without quitting the fortress, the garrison might obtain the same end by throwing a bomb or two upon the street. Urged by such motives for apprehension, they eagerly relieved each other at the labour of assailing the Tolbooth door: yet such was its strength, that it still defied their efforts. At length, a voice was heard to pronounce the words, "Try it with fire." The rioters, with an unanimous shout, called for combustibles, and as all their wishes seemed to be instantly supplied, they were soon in possession of two or three empty tar-barrels. A huge red glaring bonfire speedily arose close to the door of the prison, sending up a tall column of smoke and flame against its antique turrets and strongly-grated windows, and illuminating the ferocious and wild gestures of the rioters, who surrounded the place, as well as the pale and anxious groups of those, who, from windows in the vicinage, watched the progress of this alarming scene. The mob fed the fire with whatever they could find fit for the purpose. The flames roared and crackled among the heaps of nourishment piled on the fire, and a terrible shout soon announced that the door had kindled, and was in the act of being destroyed. The fire was suffered to decay, but, long ere it was quite extinguished, the most forward of the rioters rushed, in their impatience, one after another, over its yet smouldering remains. Thick showers of sparkles rose high in the air, as man after man bounded over the glowing embers, and disturbed them in their passage. It was now obvious to Butler, and all others who were present, that the rioters would be instantly in possession of their victim, and have it in their power to work their pleasure upon him, whatever that might be.* * Note C. The Old Tolbooth. CHAPTER SIXTH. The evil you teach us, We will execute; and it shall go hard, but we will Better the instruction. Merchant of Venice. The unhappy object of this remarkable disturbance had been that day delivered from the apprehension of public execution, and his joy was the greater, as he had some reason to question whether Government would have run the risk of unpopularity by interfering in his favour, after he had been legally convicted by the verdict of a jury, of a crime so very obnoxious. Relieved from this doubtful state of mind, his heart was merry within him, and he thought, in the emphatic words of Scripture on a similar occasion, that surely the bitterness of death was past. Some of his friends, however, who had watched the manner and behaviour of the crowd when they were made acquainted with the reprieve, were of a different opinion. They augured, from the unusual sternness and silence with which they bore their disappointment, that the populace nourished some scheme of sudden and desperate vengeance; and they advised Porteous to lose no time in petitioning the proper authorities, that he might be conveyed to the Castle under a sufficient guard, to remain there in security until his ultimate fate should be determined. Habituated, however, by his office, to overawe the rabble of the city, Porteous could not suspect them of an attempt so audacious as to storm a strong and defensible prison; and, despising the advice by which he might have been saved, he spent the afternoon of the eventful day in giving an entertainment to some friends who visited him in jail, several of whom, by the indulgence of the Captain of the Tolbooth, with whom he had an old intimacy, arising from their official connection, were even permitted to remain to supper with him, though contrary to the rules of the jail. It was, therefore, in the hour of unalloyed mirth, when this unfortunate wretch was "full of bread," hot with wine, and high in mistimed and ill-grounded confidence, and alas! with all his sins full blown, when the first distant' shouts of the rioters mingled with the song of merriment and intemperance. The hurried call of the jailor to the guests, requiring them instantly to depart, and his yet more hasty intimation that a dreadful and determined mob had possessed themselves of the city gates and guard-house, were the first explanation of these fearful clamours. Porteous might, however, have eluded the fury from which the force of authority could not protect him, had he thought of slipping on some disguise, and leaving the prison along with his guests. It is probable that the jailor might have connived at his escape, or even that in the hurry of this alarming contingency, he might not have observed it. But Porteous and his friends alike wanted presence of mind to suggest or execute such a plan of escape. The former hastily fled from a place where their own safety seemed compromised, and the latter, in a state resembling stupefaction, awaited in his apartment the termination of the enterprise of the rioters. The cessation of the clang of the instruments with which they had at first attempted to force the door, gave him momentary relief. The flattering hopes, that the military had marched into the city, either from the Castle or from the suburbs, and that the rioters were intimidated, and dispersing, were soon destroyed by the broad and glaring light of the flames, which, illuminating through the grated window every corner of his apartment, plainly showed that the mob, determined on their fatal purpose, had adopted a means of forcing entrance equally desperate and certain. The sudden glare of light suggested to the stupified and astonished object of popular hatred the possibility of concealment or escape. To rush to the chimney, to ascend it at the risk of suffocation, were the only means which seemed to have occurred to him; but his progress was speedily stopped by one of those iron gratings, which are, for the sake of security, usually placed across the vents of buildings designed for imprisonment. The bars, however, which impeded his farther progress, served to support him in the situation which he had gained, and he seized them with the tenacious grasp of one who esteemed himself clinging to his last hope of existence. The lurid light which had filled the apartment, lowered and died away; the sound of shouts was heard within the walls, and on the narrow and winding stair, which, eased within one of the turrets, gave access to the upper apartments of the prison. The huzza of the rioters was answered by a shout wild and desperate as their own, the cry, namely, of the imprisoned felons, who, expecting to be liberated in the general confusion, welcomed the mob as their deliverers. By some of these the apartment of Porteous was pointed out to his enemies. The obstacle of the lock and bolts was soon overcome, and from his hiding place the unfortunate man heard his enemies search every corner of the apartment, with oaths and maledictions, which would but shock the reader if we recorded them, but which served to prove, could it have admitted of doubt, the settled purpose of soul with which they sought his destruction. A place of concealment so obvious to suspicion and scrutiny as that which Porteous had chosen, could not long screen him from detection. He was dragged from his lurking-place, with a violence which seemed to argue an intention to put him to death on the spot. More than one weapon was directed towards him, when one of the rioters, the same whose female disguise had been particularly noticed by Butler, interfered in an authoritative tone. "Are ye mad?" he said, "or would ye execute an act of justice as if it were a crime and a cruelty? This sacrifice will lose half its savour if we do not offer it at the very horns of the altar. We will have him die where a murderer should die, on the common gibbet--We will have him die where he spilled the blood of so many innocents!" A loud shout of applause followed the proposal, and the cry, "To the gallows with the murderer!--to the Grassmarket with him!" echoed on all hands. "Let no man hurt him," continued the speaker; "let him make his peace with God, if he can; we will not kill both his soul and body." "What time did he give better folk for preparing their account?" answered several voices. "Let us mete to him with the same measure he measured to them." But the opinion of the spokesman better suited the temper of those he addressed, a temper rather stubborn than impetuous, sedate though ferocious, and desirous of colouring their cruel and revengeful action with a show of justice and moderation. For an instant this man quitted the prisoner, whom he consigned to a selected guard, with instructions to permit him to give his money and property to whomsoever he pleased. A person confined in the jail for debt received this last deposit from the trembling hand of the victim, who was at the same time permitted to make some other brief arrangements to meet his approaching fate. The felons, and all others who, wished to leave the jail, were now at full liberty to do so; not that their liberation made any part of the settled purpose of the rioters, but it followed as almost a necessary consequence of forcing the jail doors. With wild cries of jubilee they joined the mob, or disappeared among the narrow lanes to seek out the hidden receptacles of vice and infamy, where they were accustomed to lurk and conceal themselves from justice. Two persons, a man about fifty years old and a girl about eighteen, were all who continued within the fatal walls, excepting two or three debtors, who probably saw no advantage in attempting their escape. The persons we have mentioned remained in the strong room of the prison, now deserted by all others. One of their late companions in misfortune called out to the man to make his escape, in the tone of an acquaintance. "Rin for it, Ratcliffe--the road's clear." "It may be sae, Willie," answered Ratcliffe, composedly, "but I have taen a fancy to leave aff trade, and set up for an honest man." "Stay there, and be hanged, then, for a donnard auld deevil!" said the other, and ran down the prison stair. The person in female attire whom we have distinguished as one of the most active rioters, was about the same time at the ear of the young woman. "Flee, Effie, flee!" was all he had time to whisper. She turned towards him an eye of mingled fear, affection, and upbraiding, all contending with a sort of stupified surprise. He again repeated, "Flee, Effie, flee! for the sake of all that's good and dear to you!" Again she gazed on him, but was unable to answer. A loud noise was now heard, and the name of Madge Wildfire was repeatedly called from the bottom of the staircase. "I am coming,--I am coming," said the person who answered to that appellative; and then reiterating hastily, "For God's sake--for your own sake--for my sake, flee, or they'll take your life!" he left the strong room. The girl gazed after him for a moment, and then, faintly muttering, "Better tyne life, since tint is gude fame," she sunk her head upon her hand, and remained, seemingly, unconscious as a statue of the noise and tumult which passed around her. That tumult was now transferred from the inside to the outside of the Tolbooth. The mob had brought their destined victim forth, and were about to conduct him to the common place of execution, which they had fixed as the scene of his death. The leader, whom they distinguished by the name of Madge Wildfire, had been summoned to assist at the procession by the impatient shouts of his confederates. "I will insure you five hundred pounds," said the unhappy man, grasping Wildfire's hand,--"five hundred pounds for to save my life." The other answered in the same undertone, and returning his grasp with one equally convulsive, "Five hundredweight of coined gold should not save you.--Remember Wilson!" A deep pause of a minute ensued, when Wildfire added, in a more composed tone, "Make your peace with Heaven.--Where is the clergyman?" Butler, who in great terror and anxiety, had been detained within a few yards of the Tolbooth door, to wait the event of the search after Porteous, was now brought forward, and commanded to walk by the prisoner's side, and to prepare him for immediate death. His answer was a supplication that the rioters would consider what they did. "You are neither judges nor jury," said he. "You cannot have, by the laws of God or man, power to take away the life of a human creature, however deserving he may be of death. If it is murder even in a lawful magistrate to execute an offender otherwise than in the place, time, and manner which the judges' sentence prescribes, what must it be in you, who have no warrant for interference but your own wills? In the name of Him who is all mercy, show mercy to this unhappy man, and do not dip your hands in his blood, nor rush into the very crime which you are desirous of avenging!" "Cut your sermon short--you are not in your pulpit," answered one of the rioters. "If we hear more of your clavers," said another, "we are like to hang you up beside him." "Peace--hush!" said Wildfire. "Do the good man no harm--he discharges his conscience, and I like him the better." He then addressed Butler. "Now, sir, we have patiently heard you, and we just wish you to understand, in the way of answer, that you may as well argue to the ashlar-work and iron stanchels of the Tolbooth as think to change our purpose--Blood must have blood. We have sworn to each other by the deepest oaths ever were pledged, that Porteous shall die the death he deserves so richly; therefore, speak no more to us, but prepare him for death as well as the briefness of his change will permit." They had suffered the unfortunate Porteous to put on his night-gown and slippers, as he had thrown off his coat and shoes, in order to facilitate his attempted escape up the chimney. In this garb he was now mounted on the hands of two of the rioters, clasped together, so as to form what is called in Scotland, "The King's Cushion." Butler was placed close to his side, and repeatedly urged to perform a duty always the most painful which can be imposed on a clergyman deserving of the name, and now rendered more so by the peculiar and horrid circumstances of the criminal's case. Porteous at first uttered some supplications for mercy, but when he found that there was no chance that these would be attended to, his military education, and the natural stubbornness of his disposition, combined to support his spirits. "Are you prepared for this dreadful end?" said Butler, in a faltering voice. "O turn to Him, in whose eyes time and space have no existence, and to whom a few minutes are as a lifetime, and a lifetime as a minute." "I believe I know what you would say," answered Porteous sullenly. "I was bred a soldier; if they will murder me without time, let my sins as well as my blood lie at their door." "Who was it," said the stern voice of Wildfire, "that said to Wilson at this very spot, when he could not pray, owing to the galling agony of his fetters, that his pains would soon be over?--I say to you to take your own tale home; and if you cannot profit by the good man's lessons, blame not them that are still more merciful to you than you were to others." [Illustration: The Porteous Mob--95] The procession now moved forward with a slow and determined pace. It was enlightened by many blazing, links and torches; for the actors of this work were so far from affecting any secrecy on the occasion, that they seemed even to court observation. Their principal leaders kept close to the person of the prisoner, whose pallid yet stubborn features were seen distinctly by the torch-light, as his person was raised considerably above the concourse which thronged around him. Those who bore swords, muskets, and battle-axes, marched on each side, as if forming a regular guard to the procession. The windows, as they went along, were filled with the inhabitants, whose slumbers had been broken by this unusual disturbance. Some of the spectators muttered accents of encouragement; but in general they were so much appalled by a sight so strange and audacious, that they looked on with a sort of stupified astonishment. No one offered, by act or word, the slightest interruption. The rioters, on their part, continued to act with the same air of deliberate confidence and security which had marked all their proceedings. When the object of their resentment dropped one of his slippers, they stopped, sought for it, and replaced it upon his foot with great deliberation.* * This little incident, characteristic of the extreme composure of this extraordinary mob, was witnessed by a lady, who, disturbed like others from her slumbers, had gone to the window. It was told to the Author by the lady's daughter. As they descended the Bow towards the fatal spot where they designed to complete their purpose, it was suggested that there should be a rope kept in readiness. For this purpose the booth of a man who dealt in cordage was forced open, a coil of rope fit for their purpose was selected to serve as a halter, and the dealer next morning found that a guinea had been left on his counter in exchange; so anxious were the perpetrators of this daring action to show that they meditated not the slightest wrong or infraction of law, excepting so far as Porteous was himself concerned. Leading, or carrying along with them, in this determined and regular manner, the object of their vengeance, they at length reached the place of common execution, the scene of his crime, and destined spot of his sufferings. Several of the rioters (if they should not rather be described as conspirators) endeavoured to remove the stone which filled up the socket in which the end of the fatal tree was sunk when it was erected for its fatal purpose; others sought for the means of constructing a temporary gibbet, the place in which the gallows itself was deposited being reported too secure to be forced, without much loss of time. Butler endeavoured to avail himself of the delay afforded by these circumstances, to turn the people from their desperate design. "For God's sake," he exclaimed, "remember it is the image of your Creator which you are about to deface in the person of this unfortunate man! Wretched as he is, and wicked as he may be, he has a share in every promise of Scripture, and you cannot destroy him in impenitence without blotting his name from the Book of Life--Do not destroy soul and body; give time for preparation." "What time had they," returned a stern voice, "whom he murdered on this very spot?--The laws both of God and man call for his death." "But what, my friends," insisted Butler, with a generous disregard to his own safety--"what hath constituted you his judges?" "We are not his judges," replied the same person; "he has been already judged and condemned by lawful authority. We are those whom Heaven, and our righteous anger, have stirred up to execute judgment, when a corrupt Government would have protected a murderer." "I am none," said the unfortunate Porteous; "that which you charge upon me fell out in self-defence, in the lawful exercise of my duty." "Away with him--away with him!" was the general cry. "Why do you trifle away time in making a gallows?--that dyester's pole is good enough for the homicide." The unhappy man was forced to his fate with remorseless rapidity. Butler, separated from him by the press, escaped the last horrors of his struggles. Unnoticed by those who had hitherto detained him as a prisoner,--he fled from the fatal spot, without much caring in what direction his course lay. A loud shout proclaimed the stern delight with which the agents of this deed regarded its completion. Butler, then, at the opening into the low street called the Cowgate, cast back a terrified glance, and, by the red and dusky light of the torches, he could discern a figure wavering and struggling as it hung suspended above the heads of the multitude, and could even observe men striking at it with their Lochaber-axes and partisans. The sight was of a nature to double his horror, and to add wings to his flight. The street down which the fugitive ran opens to one of the eastern ports or gates of the city. Butler did not stop till he reached it, but found it still shut. He waited nearly an hour, walking up and down in inexpressible perturbation of mind. At length he ventured to call out, and rouse the attention of the terrified keepers of the gate, who now found themselves at liberty to resume their office without interruption. Butler requested them to open the gate. They hesitated. He told them his name and occupation. "He is a preacher," said one; "I have heard him preach in Haddo's-hole." "A fine preaching has he been at the night," said another "but maybe least said is sunest mended." Opening then the wicket of the main gate, the keepers suffered Butler to depart, who hastened to carry his horror and fear beyond the walls of Edinburgh. His first purpose was instantly to take the road homeward; but other fears and cares, connected with the news he had learned in that remarkable day, induced him to linger in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh until daybreak. More than one group of persons passed him as he was whiling away the hours of darkness that yet remained, whom, from the stifled tones of their discourse, the unwonted hour when they travelled, and the hasty pace at which they walked, he conjectured to have been engaged in the late fatal transaction. Certain it was, that the sudden and total dispersion of the rioters, when their vindictive purpose was accomplished, seemed not the least remarkable feature of this singular affair. In general, whatever may be the impelling motive by which a mob is at first raised, the attainment of their object has usually been only found to lead the way to farther excesses. But not so in the present case. They seemed completely satiated with the vengeance they had prosecuted with such stanch and sagacious activity. When they were fully satisfied that life had abandoned their victim, they dispersed in every direction, throwing down the weapons which they had only assumed to enable them to carry through their purpose. At daybreak there remained not the least token of the events of the night, excepting the corpse of Porteous, which still hung suspended in the place where he had suffered, and the arms of various kinds which the rioters had taken from the city guard-house, which were found scattered about the streets as they had thrown them from their hands when the purpose for which they had seized them was accomplished. The ordinary magistrates of the city resumed their power, not without trembling at the late experience of the fragility of its tenure. To march troops into the city, and commence a severe inquiry into the transactions of the preceding night, were the first marks of returning energy which they displayed. But these events had been conducted on so secure and well-calculated a plan of safety and secrecy, that there was little or nothing learned to throw light upon the authors or principal actors in a scheme so audacious. An express was despatched to London with the tidings, where they excited great indignation and surprise in the council of regency, and particularly in the bosom of Queen Caroline, who considered her own authority as exposed to contempt by the success of this singular conspiracy. Nothing was spoke of for some time save the measure of vengeance which should be taken, not only on the actors of this tragedy, so soon as they should be discovered, but upon the magistrates who had suffered it to take place, and upon the city which had been the scene where it was exhibited. On this occasion, it is still recorded in popular tradition, that her Majesty, in the height of her displeasure, told the celebrated John Duke of Argyle, that, sooner than submit to such an insult, she would make Scotland a hunting-field. "In that case, Madam," answered that high-spirited nobleman, with a profound bow, "I will take leave of your Majesty, and go down to my own country to get my hounds ready." The import of the reply had more than met the ear; and as most of the Scottish nobility and gentry seemed actuated by the same national spirit, the royal displeasure was necessarily checked in mid-volley, and milder courses were recommended and adopted, to some of which we may hereafter have occasion to advert.* * Note D. Memorial concerning the murder of Captain Porteous. CHAPTER SEVENTH Arthur's Seat shall be my bed, The sheets shall ne'er be pressed by me, St. Anton's well shall be my drink, Sin' my true-love's forsaken me. Old Song. If I were to choose a spot from which the rising or setting sun could be seen to the greatest possible advantage, it would be that wild path winding around the foot of the high belt of semicircular rocks, called Salisbury Crags, and marking the verge of the steep descent which slopes down into the glen on the south-eastern side of the city of Edinburgh. The prospect, in its general outline, commands a close-built, high-piled city, stretching itself out beneath in a form, which, to a romantic imagination, may be supposed to represent that of a dragon; now, a noble arm of the sea, with its rocks, isles, distant shores, and boundary of mountains; and now, a fair and fertile champaign country, varied with hill, dale, and rock, and skirted by the picturesque ridge of the Pentland mountains. But as the path gently circles around the base of the cliffs, the prospect, composed as it is of these enchanting and sublime objects, changes at every step, and presents them blended with, or divided from, each other, in every possible variety which can gratify the eye and the imagination. When a piece of scenery so beautiful, yet so varied,--so exciting by its intricacy, and yet so sublime,--is lighted up by the tints of morning or of evening, and displays all that variety of shadowy depth, exchanged with partial brilliancy, which gives character even to the tamest of landscapes, the effect approaches near to enchantment. This path used to be my favourite evening and morning resort, when engaged with a favourite author, or new subject of study. It is, I am informed, now become totally impassable; a circumstance which, if true, reflects little credit on the taste of the Good Town or its leaders.* * A beautiful and solid pathway has, within a few years, been formed around these romantic rocks; and the Author has the pleasure to think, that the passage in the text gave rise to the undertaking. It was from this fascinating path--the scene to me of so much delicious musing, when life was young and promised to be happy, that I have been unable to pass it over without an episodical description--it was, I say, from this romantic path that Butler saw the morning arise the day after the murder of Porteous. It was possible for him with ease to have found a much shorter road to the house to which he was directing his course, and, in fact, that which he chose was extremely circuitous. But to compose his own spirits, as well as to while away the time, until a proper hour for visiting the family without surprise or disturbance, he was induced to extend his circuit by the foot of the rocks, and to linger upon his way until the morning should be considerably advanced. While, now standing with his arms across, and waiting the slow progress of the sun above the horizon, now sitting upon one of the numerous fragments which storms had detached from the rocks above him, he is meditating, alternately upon the horrible catastrophe which he had witnessed, and upon the melancholy, and to him most interesting, news which he had learned at Saddletree's, we will give the reader to understand who Butler was, and how his fate was connected with that of Effie Deans, the unfortunate handmaiden of the careful Mrs. Saddletree. Reuben Butler was of English extraction, though born in Scotland. His grandfather was a trooper in Monk's army, and one of the party of dismounted dragoons which formed the forlorn hope at the storming of Dundee in 1651. Stephen Butler (called from his talents in reading and expounding, Scripture Stephen, and Bible Butler) was a stanch Independent, and received in its fullest comprehension the promise that the saints should inherit the earth. As hard knocks were what had chiefly fallen to his share hitherto in the division of this common property, he lost not the opportunity which the storm and plunder of a commercial place afforded him, to appropriate as large a share of the better things of this world as he could possibly compass. It would seem that he had succeeded indifferently well, for his exterior circumstances appeared, in consequence of this event, to have been much mended. The troop to which he belonged was quartered at the village of Dalkeith, as forming the bodyguard of Monk, who, in the capacity of general for the Commonwealth, resided in the neighbouring castle. When, on the eve of the Restoration, the general commenced his march from Scotland, a measure pregnant with such important consequences, he new-modelled his troops, and more especially those immediately about his person, in order that they might consist entirely of individuals devoted to himself. On this occasion Scripture Stephen was weighed in the balance, and found wanting. It was supposed he felt no call to any expedition which might endanger the reign of the military sainthood, and that he did not consider himself as free in conscience to join with any party which might be likely ultimately to acknowledge the interest of Charles Stuart, the son of "the last man," as Charles I. was familiarly and irreverently termed by them in their common discourse, as well as in their more elaborate predications and harangues. As the time did not admit of cashiering such dissidents, Stephen Butler was only advised in a friendly way to give up his horse and accoutrements to one of Middleton's old troopers who possessed an accommodating conscience of a military stamp, and which squared itself chiefly upon those of the colonel and paymaster. As this hint came recommended by a certain sum of arrears presently payable, Stephen had carnal wisdom enough to embrace the proposal, and with great indifference saw his old corps depart for Coldstream, on their route for the south, to establish the tottering Government of England on a new basis. The _zone_ of the ex-trooper, to use Horace's phrase, was weighty enough to purchase a cottage and two or three fields (still known by the name of Beersheba), within about a Scottish mile of Dalkeith; and there did Stephen establish himself with a youthful helpmate, chosen out of the said village, whose disposition to a comfortable settlement on this side of the grave reconciled her to the gruff manners, serious temper, and weather-beaten features of the martial enthusiast. Stephen did not long survive the falling on "evil days and evil tongues," of which Milton, in the same predicament, so mournfully complains. At his death his consort remained an early widow, with a male child of three years old, which, in the sobriety wherewith it demeaned itself, in the old-fashioned and even grim cast of its features, and in its sententious mode of expressing itself, would sufficiently have vindicated the honour of the widow of Beersheba, had any one thought proper to challenge the babe's descent from Bible Butler. Butler's principles had not descended to his family, or extended themselves among his neighbours. The air of Scotland was alien to the growth of independency, however favourable to fanaticism under other colours. But, nevertheless, they were not forgotten; and a certain neighbouring Laird, who piqued himself upon the loyalty of his principles "in the worst of times" (though I never heard they exposed him to more peril than that of a broken head, or a night's lodging in the main guard, when wine and cavalierism predominated in his upper storey), had found it a convenient thing to rake up all matter of accusation against the deceased Stephen. In this enumeration his religious principles made no small figure, as, indeed, they must have seemed of the most exaggerated enormity to one whose own were so small and so faintly traced, as to be well nigh imperceptible. In these circumstances, poor widow Butler was supplied with her full proportion of fines for nonconformity, and all the other oppressions of the time, until Beersheba was fairly wrenched out of her hands, and became the property of the Laird who had so wantonly, as it had hitherto appeared, persecuted this poor forlorn woman. When his purpose was fairly achieved, he showed some remorse or moderation, of whatever the reader may please to term it, in permitting her to occupy her husband's cottage, and cultivate, on no very heavy terms, a croft of land adjacent. Her son, Benjamin, in the meanwhile, grew up to mass estate, and, moved by that impulse which makes men seek marriage, even when its end can only be the perpetuation of misery, he wedded and brought a wife, and, eventually, a son, Reuben, to share the poverty of Beersheba. The Laird of Dumbiedikes* had hitherto been moderate in his exactions, perhaps because he was ashamed to tax too highly the miserable means of support which remained to the widow Butler. * Dumbiedikes, selected as descriptive of the taciturn character of the imaginary owner, is really the name of a house bordering on the King's Park, so called because the late Mr. Braidwood, an instructor of the deaf and dumb, resided there with his pupils. The situation of the real house is different from that assigned to the ideal mansion. But when a stout active young fellow appeared as the labourer of the croft in question, Dumbiedikes began to think so broad a pair of shoulders might bear an additional burden. He regulated, indeed, his management of his dependants (who fortunately were but few in number) much upon the principle of the carters whom he observed loading their carts at a neighbouring coal-hill, and who never failed to clap an additional brace of hundredweights on their burden, so soon as by any means they had compassed a new horse of somewhat superior strength to that which had broken down the day before. However reasonable this practice appeared to the Laird of Dumbiedikes, he ought to have observed, that it may be overdone, and that it infers, as a matter of course, the destruction and loss of both horse, and cart, and loading. Even so it befell when the additional "prestations" came to be demanded of Benjamin Butler. A man of few words, and few ideas, but attached to Beersheba with a feeling like that which a vegetable entertains to the spot in which it chances to be planted, he neither remonstrated with the Laird, nor endeavoured to escape from him, but, toiling night and day to accomplish the terms of his taskmaster, fell into a burning fever and died. His wife did not long survive him; and, as if it had been the fate of this family to be left orphans, our Reuben Butler was, about the year 1704-5, left in the same circumstances in which his father had been placed, and under the same guardianship, being that of his grandmother, the widow of Monk's old trooper. The same prospect of misery hung over the head of another tenant of this hardhearted lord of the soil. This was a tough true-blue Presbyterian, called Deans, who, though most obnoxious to the Laird on account of principles in church and state, contrived to maintain his ground upon the estate by regular payment of mail-duties, kain, arriage, carriage, dry multure, lock, gowpen, and knaveship, and all the various exactions now commuted for money, and summed up in the emphatic word rent. But the years 1700 and 1701, long remembered in Scotland for dearth and general distress, subdued the stout heart of the agricultural whig. Citations by the ground-officer, decreets of the Baron Court, sequestrations, poindings of outside and inside plenishing, flew about his ears as fast as the tory bullets whistled around those of the Covenanters at Pentland, Bothwell Brigg, or Airsmoss. Struggle as he might, and he struggled gallantly, "Douce David Deans" was routed horse and foot, and lay at the mercy of his grasping landlord just at the time that Benjamin Butler died. The fate of each family was anticipated; but they who prophesied their expulsion to beggary and ruin were disappointed by an accidental circumstance. On the very term-day when their ejection should have taken place, when all their neighbours were prepared to pity, and not one to assist them, the minister of the parish, as well as a doctor from Edinburgh, received a hasty summons to attend the Laird of Dumbiedikes. Both were surprised, for his contempt for both faculties had been pretty commonly his theme over an extra bottle, that is to say, at least once every day. The leech for the soul, and he for the body, alighted in the court of the little old manor-house at almost the same time; and when they had gazed a moment at each other with some surprise, they in the same breath expressed their conviction that Dumbiedikes must needs be very ill indeed, since he summoned them both to his presence at once. Ere the servant could usher them to his apartment, the party was augmented by a man of law, Nichil Novit, writing himself procurator before the sheriff-court, for in those days there were no solicitors. This latter personage was first summoned to the apartment of the Laird, where, after some short space, the soul-curer and the body-curer were invited to join him. Dumbiedikes had been by this time transported into the best bedroom, used only upon occasions of death and marriage, and called, from the former of these occupations, the Dead-Room. There were in this apartment, besides the sick person himself and Mr. Novit, the son and heir of the patient, a tall gawky silly-looking boy of fourteen or fifteen, and a housekeeper, a good buxom figure of a woman, betwixt forty and fifty, who had kept the keys and managed matters at Dumbiedikes since the lady's death. It was to these attendants that Dumbiedikes addressed himself pretty nearly in the following words; temporal and spiritual matters, the care of his health and his affairs, being strangely jumbled in a head which was never one of the clearest. "These are sair times wi' me, gentlemen and neighbours! amaist as ill as at the aughty-nine, when I was rabbled by the collegeaners.* * Immediately previous to the Revolution, the students at the Edinburgh College were violent anti-catholics. They were strongly suspected of burning the house of Prestonfield, belonging to Sir James Dick, the Lord Provost; and certainly were guilty of creating considerable riots in 1688-9. --They mistook me muckle--they ca'd me a papist, but there was never a papist bit about me, minister.--Jock, ye'll take warning--it's a debt we maun a' pay, and there stands Nichil Novit that will tell ye I was never gude at paying debts in my life.--Mr. Novit, ye'll no forget to draw the annual rent that's due on the yerl's band--if I pay debt to other folk, I think they suld pay it to me--that equals aquals.--Jock, when ye hae naething else to do, ye may be aye sticking in a tree; it will be growing, Jock, when ye're sleeping.* * The Author has been flattered by the assurance, that this _naive_ mode of recommending arboriculture (which was actually delivered in these very words by a Highland laird, while on his death-bed, to his son) had so much weight with a Scottish earl as to lead to his planting a large tract of country. "My father tauld me sae forty years sin', but I ne'er fand time to mind him--Jock, ne'er drink brandy in the morning, it files the stamach sair; gin ye take a morning's draught, let it be aqua mirabilis; Jenny there makes it weel--Doctor, my breath is growing as scant as a broken-winded piper's, when he has played for four-and-twenty hours at a penny wedding--Jenny, pit the cod aneath my head--but it's a' needless!--Mass John, could ye think o' rattling ower some bit short prayer, it wad do me gude maybe, and keep some queer thoughts out o' my head, Say something, man." "I cannot use a prayer like a rat-rhyme," answered the honest clergyman; "and if you would have your soul redeemed like a prey from the fowler, Laird, you must needs show me your state of mind." "And shouldna ye ken that without my telling you?" answered the patient. "What have I been paying stipend and teind, parsonage and vicarage, for, ever sin' the aughty-nine, and I canna get a spell of a prayer for't, the only time I ever asked for ane in my life?--Gang awa wi' your whiggery, if that's a' ye can do; auld Curate Kilstoup wad hae read half the prayer-book to me by this time--Awa wi' ye!--Doctor, let's see if ye can do onything better for me." The doctor, who had obtained some information in the meanwhile from the housekeeper on the state of his complaints, assured him the medical art could not prolong his life many hours. "Then damn Mass John and you baith!" cried the furious and intractable patient. "Did ye come here for naething but to tell me that ye canna help me at the pinch? Out wi' them, Jenny--out o' the house! and, Jock, my curse, and the curse of Cromwell, go wi' ye, if ye gie them either fee or bountith, or sae muckle as a black pair o' cheverons!"* *_Cheverons_--gloves. The clergyman and doctor made a speedy retreat out of the apartment, while Dumbiedikes fell into one of those transports of violent and profane language, which had procured him the surname of Damn-me-dikes. "Bring me the brandy bottle, Jenny, ye b--," he cried, with a voice in which passion contended with pain. "I can die as I have lived, without fashing ony o' them. But there's ae thing," he said, sinking his voice--"there's ae fearful thing hings about my heart, and an anker of brandy winna wash it away.--The Deanses at Woodend!--I sequestrated them in the dear years, and now they are to flit, they'll starve--and that Beersheba, and that auld trooper's wife and her oe, they'll starve--they'll starve! --Look out, Jock; what kind o' night is't?" "On-ding o' snaw, father," answered Jock, after having opened the window, and looked out with great composure. "They'll perish in the drifts!" said the expiring sinner--"they'll perish wi' cauld!--but I'll be het eneugh, gin a' tales be true." This last observation was made under breath, and in a tone which made the very attorney shudder. He tried his hand at ghostly advice, probably for the first time in his life, and recommended as an opiate for the agonised conscience of the Laird, reparation of the injuries he had done to these distressed families, which, he observed by the way, the civil law called _restitutio in integrum._ But Mammon was struggling with Remorse for retaining his place in a bosom he had so long possessed; and he partly succeeded, as an old tyrant proves often too strong for his insurgent rebels. "I canna do't," he answered, with a voice of despair. "It would kill me to do't--how can ye bid me pay back siller, when ye ken how I want it? or dispone Beersheba, when it lies sae weel into my ain plaid-nuik? Nature made Dumbiedikes and Beersheba to be ae man's land--She did, by Nichil, it wad kill me to part them." "But ye maun die whether or no, Laird," said Mr. Novit; "and maybe ye wad die easier--it's but trying. I'll scroll the disposition in nae time." "Dinna speak o't, sir," replied Dumbiedikes, "or I'll fling the stoup at your head.--But, Jock, lad, ye see how the warld warstles wi' me on my deathbed--be kind to the puir creatures, the Deanses and the Butlers--be kind to them, Jock. Dinna let the warld get a grip o' ye, Jock--but keep the gear thegither! and whate'er ye do, dispone Beersheba at no rate. Let the creatures stay at a moderate mailing, and hae bite and soup; it will maybe be the better wi' your father whare he's gaun, lad." After these contradictory instructions, the Laird felt his mind so much at ease, that he drank three bumpers of brandy continuously, and "soughed awa," as Jenny expressed it, in an attempt to sing "Deil stick the Minister." His death made a revolution in favour of the distressed families. John Dumbie, now of Dumbiedikes, in his own right, seemed to be close and selfish enough, but wanted the grasping spirit and active mind of his father; and his guardian happened to agree with him in opinion, that his father's dying recommendation should be attended to. The tenants, therefore, were not actually turned out of doors among the snow-wreaths, and were allowed wherewith to procure butter-milk and peas-bannocks, which they ate under the full force of the original malediction. The cottage of Deans, called Woodend, was not very distant from that at Beersheba. Formerly there had been but little intercourse between the families. Deans was a sturdy Scotsman, with all sort of prejudices against the southern, and the spawn of the southern. Moreover, Deans was, as we have said, a stanch Presbyterian, of the most rigid and unbending adherence to what he conceived to be the only possible straight line, as he was wont to express himself, between right-hand heats and extremes and left-hand defections; and, therefore, he held in high dread and horror all Independents, and whomsoever he supposed allied to them. But, notwithstanding these national prejudices and religious professions, Deans and the widow Butler were placed in such a situation, as naturally and at length created some intimacy between the families. They had shared a common danger and a mutual deliverance. They needed each other's assistance, like a company, who, crossing a mountain stream, are compelled to cling close together, lest the current should be too powerful for any who are not thus supported. On nearer acquaintance, too, Deans abated some of his prejudices. He found old Mrs. Butler, though not thoroughly grounded in the extent and bearing of the real testimony against the defections of the times, had no opinions in favour of the Independent party; neither was she an Englishwoman. Therefore, it was to be hoped, that, though she was the widow of an enthusiastic corporal of Cromwell's dragoons, her grandson might be neither schismatic nor anti-national, two qualities concerning which Goodman Deans had as wholesome a terror as against papists and malignants, Above all (for Douce Davie Deans had his weak side), he perceived that widow Butler looked up to him with reverence, listened to his advice, and compounded for an occasional fling at the doctrines of her deceased husbands to which, as we have seen, she was by no means warmly attached, in consideration of the valuable counsels which the Presbyterian afforded her for the management of her little farm. These usually concluded with "they may do otherwise in England, neighbour Butler, for aught I ken;" or, "it may be different in foreign parts;" or, "they wha think differently on the great foundation of our covenanted reformation, overturning and mishguggling the government and discipline of the kirk, and breaking down the carved work of our Zion, might be for sawing the craft wi' aits; but I say peace, peace." And as his advice was shrewd and sensible, though conceitedly given, it was received with gratitude, and followed with respect. The intercourse which took place betwixt the families at Beersheba and Woodend became strict and intimate, at a very early period, betwixt Reuben Butler, with whom the reader is already in some degree acquainted, and Jeanie Deans, the only child of Douce Davie Deans by his first wife, "that singular Christian woman," as he was wont to express himself, "whose name was savoury to all that knew her for a desirable professor, Christian Menzies in Hochmagirdle." The manner of which intimacy, and the consequences thereof, we now proceed to relate. CHAPTER EIGHTH. Reuben and Rachel, though as fond as doves, Were yet discreet and cautious in their loves, Nor would attend to Cupid's wild commands, Till cool reflection bade them join their hands; When both were poor, they thought it argued ill Of hasty love to make them poorer still. Crabbe's _Parish Register._ While widow Butler and widower Deans struggled with poverty, and the hard and sterile soil of "those parts and portions" of the lands of Dumbiedikes which it was their lot to occupy, it became gradually apparent that Deans was to gain the strife, and his ally in the conflict was to lose it. The former was a Man, and not much past the prime of life--Mrs. Butler a woman, and declined into the vale of years, This, indeed, ought in time to have been balanced by the circumstance, that Reuben was growing up to assist his grandmothers labours, and that Jeanie Deans, as a girl, could be only supposed to add to her father's burdens. But Douce Davie Deans know better things, and so schooled and trained the young minion, as he called her, that from the time she could walk, upwards, she was daily employed in some task or other, suitable to her age and capacity; a circumstance which, added to her father's daily instructions and lectures, tended to give her mind, even when a child, a grave, serious, firm, and reflecting cast. An uncommonly strong and healthy temperament, free from all nervous affection and every other irregularity, which, attacking the body in its more noble functions, so often influences the mind, tended greatly to establish this fortitude, simplicity, and decision of character. On the other hand, Reuben was weak in constitution, and, though not timid in temper might be safely pronounced anxious, doubtful, and apprehensive. He partook of the temperament of his mother, who had died of a consumption in early age. He was a pale, thin, feeble, sickly boy, and somewhat lame, from an accident in early youth. He was, besides, the child of a doting grandmother, whose too solicitous attention to him soon taught him a sort of diffidence in himself, with a disposition to overrate his own importance, which is one of the very worst consequences that children deduce from over-indulgence. Still, however, the two children clung to each other's society, not more from habit than from taste. They herded together the handful of sheep, with the two or three cows, which their parents turned out rather to seek food than actually to feed upon the unenclosed common of Dumbiedikes. It was there that the two urchins might be seen seated beneath a blooming bush of whin, their little faces laid close together under the shadow of the same plaid drawn over both their heads, while the landscape around was embrowned by an overshadowing cloud, big with the shower which had driven the children to shelter. On other occasions they went together to school, the boy receiving that encouragement and example from his companion, in crossing the little brooks which intersected their path, and encountering cattle, dogs, and other perils, upon their journey, which the male sex in such cases usually consider it as their prerogative to extend to the weaker. But when, seated on the benches of the school-house, they began to con their lessons together, Reuben, who was as much superior to Jeanie Deans in acuteness of intellect, as inferior to her in firmness of constitution, and in that insensibility to fatigue and danger which depends on the conformation of the nerves, was able fully to requite the kindness and countenance with which, in other circumstances, she used to regard him. He was decidedly the best scholar at the little parish school; and so gentle was his temper and disposition, that he was rather admired than envied by the little mob who occupied the noisy mansion, although he was the declared favourite of the master. Several girls, in particular (for in Scotland they are taught with the boys), longed to be kind to and comfort the sickly lad, who was so much cleverer than his companions. The character of Reuben Butler was so calculated as to offer scope both for their sympathy and their admiration, the feelings, perhaps, through which the female sex (the more deserving part of them at least) is more easily attached. But Reuben, naturally reserved and distant, improved none of these advantages; and only became more attached to Jeanie Deans, as the enthusiastic approbation of his master assured him of fair prospects in future life, and awakened his ambition. In the meantime, every advance that Reuben made in learning (and, considering his opportunities, they were uncommonly great) rendered him less capable of attending to the domestic duties of his grandmother's farm. While studying the _pons asinorum_ in Euclid, he suffered every _cuddie_ upon the common to trespass upon a large field of peas belonging to the Laird, and nothing but the active exertions of Jeanie Deans, with her little dog Dustiefoot, could have saved great loss and consequent punishment. Similar miscarriages marked his progress in his classical studies. He read Virgil's Georgics till he did not know bere from barley; and had nearly destroyed the crofts of Beersheba while attempting to cultivate them according to the practice of Columella and Cato the Censor. These blunders occasioned grief to his grand-dame, and disconcerted the good opinion which her neighbour, Davie Deans, had for some time entertained of Reuben. "I see naething ye can make of that silly callant, neighbour Butler," said he to the old lady, "unless ye train him to the wark o' the ministry. And ne'er was there mair need of poorfu' preachers than e'en now in these cauld Gallio days, when men's hearts are hardened like the nether mill-stone, till they come to regard none of these things. It's evident this puir callant of yours will never be able to do an usefu' day's wark, unless it be as an ambassador from our Master; and I will make it my business to procure a license when he is fit for the same, trusting he will be a shaft cleanly polished, and meet to be used in the body of the kirk; and that he shall not turn again, like the sow, to wallow in the mire of heretical extremes and defections, but shall have the wings of a dove, though he hath lain among the pots." The poor widow gulped down the affront to her husband's principles, implied in this caution, and hastened to take Butler from the High School, and encourage him in the pursuit of mathematics and divinity, the only physics and ethics that chanced to be in fashion at the time. Jeanie Deans was now compelled to part from the companion of her labour, her study, and her pastime, and it was with more than childish feeling that both children regarded the separation. But they were young, and hope was high, and they separated like those who hope to meet again at a more auspicious hour. While Reuben Butler was acquiring at the University of St. Andrews the knowledge necessary for a clergyman, and macerating his body with the privations which were necessary in seeking food for his mind, his grand-dame became daily less able to struggle with her little farm, and was at length obliged to throw it up to the new Laird of Dumbiedikes. That great personage was no absolute Jew, and did not cheat her in making the bargain more than was tolerable. He even gave her permission to tenant the house in which she had lived with her husband, as long as it should be "tenantable;" only he protested against paying for a farthing of repairs, any benevolence which he possessed being of the passive, but by no means of the active mood. In the meanwhile, from superior shrewdness, skill, and other circumstances, some of them purely accidental, Davie Deans gained a footing in the world, the possession of some wealth, the reputation of more, and a growing disposition to preserve and increase his store; for which, when he thought upon it seriously, he was inclined to blame himself. From his knowledge in agriculture, as it was then practised, he became a sort of favourite with the Laird, who had no great pleasure either in active sports or in society, and was wont to end his daily saunter by calling at the cottage of Woodend. Being himself a man of slow ideas and confused utterance, Dumbiedikes used to sit or stand for half-an-hour with an old laced hat of his father's upon his head, and an empty tobacco-pipe in his mouth, with his eyes following Jeanie Deans, or "the lassie" as he called her, through the course of her daily domestic labour; while her father, after exhausting the subject of bestial, of ploughs, and of harrows, often took an opportunity of going full-sail into controversial subjects, to which discussions the dignitary listened with much seeming patience, but without making any reply, or, indeed, as most people thought, without understanding a single word of what the orator was saying. Deans, indeed, denied this stoutly, as an insult at once to his own talents for expounding hidden truths, of which he was a little vain, and to the Laird's capacity of understanding them. He said, "Dumbiedikes was nane of these flashy gentles, wi' lace on their skirts and swords at their tails, that were rather for riding on horseback to hell than gauging barefooted to heaven. He wasna like his father--nae profane company-keeper--nae swearer--nae drinker--nae frequenter of play-house, or music-house, or dancing-house--nae Sabbath-breaker--nae imposer of aiths, or bonds, or denier of liberty to the flock.--He clave to the warld, and the warld's gear, a wee ower muckle, but then there was some breathing of a gale upon his spirit," etc. etc. All this honest Davie said and believed. It is not to be supposed, that, by a father and a man of sense and observation, the constant direction of the Laird's eyes towards Jeanie was altogether unnoticed. This circumstance, however, made a much greater impression upon another member of his family, a second helpmate, to wit, whom he had chosen to take to his bosom ten years after the death of his first. Some people were of opinion, that Douce Davie had been rather surprised into this step, for, in general, he was no friend to marriages or giving in marriage, and seemed rather to regard that state of society as a necessary evil,--a thing lawful, and to be tolerated in the imperfect state of our nature, but which clipped the wings with which we ought to soar upwards, and tethered the soul to its mansion of clay, and the creature-comforts of wife and bairns. His own practice, however, had in this material point varied from his principles, since, as we have seen, he twice knitted for himself this dangerous and ensnaring entanglement. Rebecca, his spouse, had by no means the same horror of matrimony, and as she made marriages in imagination for every neighbour round, she failed not to indicate a match betwixt Dumbiedikes and her step-daughter Jeanie. The goodman used regularly to frown and pshaw whenever this topic was touched upon, but usually ended by taking his bonnet and walking out of the house, to conceal a certain gleam of satisfaction, which, at such a suggestion, involuntarily diffused itself over his austere features. The more youthful part of my readers may naturally ask, whether Jeanie Deans was deserving of this mute attention of the Laird of Dumbiedikes; and the historian, with due regard to veracity, is compelled to answer, that her personal attractions were of no uncommon description. She was short, and rather too stoutly made for her size, had grey eyes, light coloured hair, a round good-humoured face, much tanned with the sun, and her only peculiar charm was an air of inexpressible serenity, which a good conscience, kind feelings, contented temper, and the regular discharge of all her duties, spread over her features. There was nothing, it may be supposed, very appalling in the form or manners of this rustic heroine; yet, whether from sheepish bashfulness, or from want of decision and imperfect knowledge of his own mind on the subject, the Laird of Dumbiedikes, with his old laced hat and empty tobacco-pipe, came and enjoyed the beatific vision of Jeanie Deans day after day, week after week, year after year, without proposing to accomplish any of the prophecies of the stepmother. This good lady began to grow doubly impatient on the subject, when, after having been some years married, she herself presented Douce Davie with another daughter, who was named Euphemia, by corruption, Effie. It was then that Rebecca began to turn impatient with the slow pace at which the Laird's wooing proceeded, judiciously arguing, that, as Lady Dumbiedikes would have but little occasion for tocher, the principal part of her gudeman's substance would naturally descend to the child by the second marriage. Other step-dames have tried less laudable means for clearing the way to the succession of their own children; but Rebecca, to do her justice, only sought little Effie's advantage through the promotion, or which must have generally been accounted such, of her elder sister. She therefore tried every female art within the compass of her simple skill, to bring the Laird to a point; but had the mortification to perceive that her efforts, like those of an unskilful angler, only scared the trout she meant to catch. Upon one occasion, in particular, when she joked with the Laird on the propriety of giving a mistress to the house of Dumbiedikes, he was so effectually startled, that neither laced hat, tobacco-pipe, nor the intelligent proprietor of these movables, visited Woodend for a fortnight. Rebecca was therefore compelled to leave the Laird to proceed at his own snail's pace, convinced, by experience, of the grave-digger's aphorism, that your dull ass will not mend his pace for beating. Reuben, in the meantime, pursued his studies at the university, supplying his wants by teaching the younger lads the knowledge he himself acquired, and thus at once gaining the means of maintaining himself at the seat of learning, and fixing in his mind the elements of what he had already obtained. In this manner, as is usual among the poorer students of divinity at Scottish universities, he contrived not only to maintain himself according to his simple wants, but even to send considerable assistance to his sole remaining parent, a sacred duty, of which the Scotch are seldom negligent. His progress in knowledge of a general kind, as well as in the studies proper to his profession, was very considerable, but was little remarked, owing to the retired modesty of his disposition, which in no respect qualified him to set off his learning to the best advantage. And thus, had Butler been a man given to make complaints, he had his tale to tell, like others, of unjust preferences, bad luck, and hard usage. On these subjects, however, he was habitually silent, perhaps from modesty, perhaps from a touch of pride, or perhaps from a conjunction of both. He obtained his license as a preacher of the gospel, with some compliments from the Presbytery by whom it was bestowed; but this did not lead to any preferment, and he found it necessary to make the cottage at Beersheba his residence for some months, with no other income than was afforded by the precarious occupation of teaching in one or other of the neighbouring families. After having greeted his aged grandmother, his first visit was to Woodend, where he was received by Jeanie with warm cordiality, arising from recollections which had never been dismissed from her mind, by Rebecca with good-humoured hospitality, and by old Deans in a mode peculiar to himself. Highly as Douce Davie honoured the clergy, it was not upon each individual of the cloth that he bestowed his approbation; and, a little jealous, perhaps, at seeing his youthful acquaintance erected into the dignity of a teacher and preacher, he instantly attacked him upon various points of controversy, in order to discover whether he might not have fallen into some of the snares, defections, and desertions of the time. Butler was not only a man of stanch Presbyterian principles, but was also willing to avoid giving pain to his old friend by disputing upon points of little importance; and therefore he might have hoped to have come like fine gold out of the furnace of Davie's interrogatories. But the result on the mind of that strict investigator was not altogether so favourable as might have been hoped and anticipated. Old Judith Butler, who had hobbled that evening as far as Woodend, in order to enjoy the congratulations of her neighbours upon Reuben's return, and upon his high attainments, of which she was herself not a little proud, was somewhat mortified to find that her old friend Deans did not enter into the subject with the warmth she expected. At first, in he seemed rather silent than dissatisfied; and it was not till Judith had essayed the subject more than once that it led to the following dialogue. "Aweel, neibor Deans, I thought ye wad hae been glad to see Reuben amang us again, poor fellow." "I _am_ glad, Mrs. Butler," was the neighbour's concise answer. "Since he has lost his grandfather and his father (praised be Him that giveth and taketh!), I ken nae friend he has in the world that's been sae like a father to him as the sell o'ye, neibor Deans." "God is the only father of the fatherless," said Deans, touching his bonnet and looking upwards. "Give honour where it is due, gudewife, and not to an unworthy instrument." "Aweel, that's your way o' turning it, and nae doubt ye ken best; but I hae ken'd ye, Davie, send a forpit o' meal to Beersheba when there wasna a bow left in the meal-ark at Woodend; ay, and I hae ken'd ye" "Gudewife," said Davie, interrupting her, "these are but idle tales to tell me; fit for naething but to puff up our inward man wi' our ain vain acts. I stude beside blessed Alexander Peden, when I heard him call the death and testimony of our happy martyrs but draps of blude and scarts of ink in respect of fitting discharge of our duty; and what suld I think of ony thing the like of me can do?" "Weel, neibor Deans, ye ken best; but I maun say that, I am sure you are glad to see my bairn again--the halt's gane now, unless he has to walk ower mony miles at a stretch; and he has a wee bit colour in his cheek, that glads my auld een to see it; and he has as decent a black coat as the minister; and" "I am very heartily glad he is weel and thriving," said Mr. Deans, with a gravity that seemed intended to cut short the subject; but a woman who is bent upon a point is not easily pushed aside from it. "And," continued Mrs. Butler, "he can wag his head in a pulpit now, neibor Deans, think but of that--my ain oe--and a'body maun sit still and listen to him, as if he were the Paip of Rome." "The what?--the who?--woman!" said Deans, with a sternness far beyond his usual gravity, as soon as these offensive words had struck upon the tympanum of his ear. "Eh, guide us!" said the poor woman; "I had forgot what an ill will ye had aye at the Paip, and sae had my puir gudeman, Stephen Butler. Mony an afternoon he wad sit and take up his testimony again the Paip, and again baptizing of bairns, and the like." "Woman!" reiterated Deans, "either speak about what ye ken something o', or be silent; I say that independency is a foul heresy, and anabaptism a damnable and deceiving error, whilk suld be rooted out of the land wi' the fire o' the spiritual, and the sword o' the civil magistrate." "Weel, weel, neibor, I'll no say that ye mayna be right," answered the submissive Judith. "I am sure ye are right about the sawing and the mawing, the shearing and the leading, and what for suld ye no be right about kirkwark, too?--But concerning my oe, Reuben Butler" "Reuben Butler, gudewife," said David, with solemnity, "is a lad I wish heartily weel to, even as if he were mine ain son--but I doubt there will be outs and ins in the track of his walk. I muckle fear his gifts will get the heels of his grace. He has ower muckle human wit and learning, and thinks as muckle about the form of the bicker as he does about the healsomeness of the food--he maun broider the marriage-garment with lace and passments, or it's no gude eneugh for him. And it's like he's something proud o' his human gifts and learning, whilk enables him to dress up his doctrine in that fine airy dress. But," added he, at seeing the old woman's uneasiness at his discourse, "affliction may gie him a jagg, and let the wind out o' him, as out o' a cow that's eaten wet clover, and the lad may do weel, and be a burning and a shining light; and I trust it will be yours to see, and his to feel it, and that soon." Widow Butler was obliged to retire, unable to make anything more of her neighbour, whose discourse, though she did not comprehend it, filled her with undefined apprehensions on her grandson's account, and greatly depressed the joy with which she had welcomed him on his return. And it must not be concealed, in justice to Mr. Deans's discernment, that Butler, in their conference, had made a greater display of his learning than the occasion called for, or than was likely to be acceptable to the old man, who, accustomed to consider himself as a person preeminently entitled to dictate upon theological subjects of controversy, felt rather humbled and mortified when learned authorities were placed in array against him. In fact, Butler had not escaped the tinge of pedantry which naturally flowed from his education, and was apt, on many occasions, to make parade of his knowledge, when there was no need of such vanity. Jeanie Deans, however, found no fault with this display of learning, but, on the contrary, admired it; perhaps on the same score that her sex are said to admire men of courage, on account of their own deficiency in that qualification. The circumstances of their families threw the young people constantly together; their old intimacy was renewed, though upon a footing better adapted to their age; and it became at length understood betwixt them, that their union should be deferred no longer than until Butler should obtain some steady means of support, however humble. This, however, was not a matter speedily to be accomplished. Plan after plan was formed, and plan after plan failed. The good-humoured cheek of Jeanie lost the first flush of juvenile freshness; Reuben's brow assumed the gravity of manhood, yet the means of obtaining a settlement seemed remote as ever. Fortunately for the lovers, their passion was of no ardent or enthusiastic cast; and a sense of duty on both sides induced them to bear, with patient fortitude, the protracted interval which divided them from each other. In the meanwhile, time did not roll on without effecting his usual changes. The widow of Stephen Butler, so long the prop of the family of Beersheba, was gathered to her fathers; and Rebecca, the careful spouse of our friend Davie Deans, wa's also summoned from her plans of matrimonial and domestic economy. The morning after her death, Reuben Butler went to offer his mite of consolation to his old friend and benefactor. He witnessed, on this occasion, a remarkable struggle betwixt the force of natural affection and the religious stoicism which the sufferer thought it was incumbent upon him to maintain under each earthly dispensation, whether of weal or woe. On his arrival at the cottage, Jeanie, with her eyes overflowing with tears, pointed to the little orchard, "in which," she whispered with broken accents, "my poor father has been since his misfortune." Somewhat alarmed at this account, Butler entered the orchard, and advanced slowly towards his old friend, who, seated in a small rude arbour, appeared to be sunk in the extremity of his affliction. He lifted his eyes somewhat sternly as Butler approached, as if offended at the interruption; but as the young man hesitated whether he ought to retreat or advance, he arose, and came forward to meet him with a self-possessed, and even dignified air. "Young man," said the sufferer, "lay it not to heart, though the righteous perish, and the merciful are removed, seeing, it may well be said, that they are taken away from the evils to come. Woe to me were I to shed a tear for the wife of my bosom, when I might weep rivers of water for this afflicted Church, cursed as it is with carnal seekers, and with the dead of heart." "I am happy," said Butler, "that you can forget your private affliction in your regard for public duty." "Forget, Reuben?" said poor Deans, putting his handkerchief to his eyes--"She's not to be forgotten on this side of time; but He that gives the wound can send the ointment. I declare there have been times during this night when my meditation hae been so rapt, that I knew not of my heavy loss. It has been with me as with the worthy John Semple, called Carspharn John,* upon a like trial--I have been this night on the banks of Ulai, plucking an apple here and there!" * Note E. Carspharn John. Notwithstanding the assumed fortitude of Deans, which he conceived to be the discharge of a great Christian duty, he had too good a heart not to suffer deeply under this heavy loss. Woodend became altogether distasteful to him; and as he had obtained both substance and experience by his management of that little farm, he resolved to employ them as a dairy-farmer, or cowfeeder, as they are called in Scotland. The situation he chose for his new settlement was at a place called Saint Leonard's Crags, lying betwixt Edinburgh and the mountain called Arthur's Seat, and adjoining to the extensive sheep pasture still named the King's Park, from its having been formerly dedicated to the preservation of the royal game. Here he rented a small lonely house, about half-a-mile distant from the nearest point of the city, but the site of which, with all the adjacent ground, is now occupied by the buildings which form the southeastern suburb. An extensive pasture-ground adjoining, which Deans rented from the keeper of the Royal Park, enabled him to feed his milk-cows; and the unceasing industry and activity of Jeanie, his oldest daughter, were exerted in making the most of their produce. She had now less frequent opportunities of seeing Reuben, who had been obliged, after various disappointments, to accept the subordinate situation of assistant in a parochial school of some eminence, at three or four miles' distance from the city. Here he distinguished himself, and became acquainted with several respectable burgesses, who, on account of health, or other reasons, chose that their children should commence their education in this little village. His prospects were thus gradually brightening, and upon each visit which he paid at Saint Leonard's he had an opportunity of gliding a hint to this purpose into Jeanie's ear. These visits were necessarily very rare, on account of the demands which the duties of the school made upon Butler's time. Nor did he dare to make them even altogether so frequent as these avocations would permit. Deans received him with civility indeed, and even with kindness; but Reuben, as is usual in such cases, imagined that he read his purpose in his eyes, and was afraid too premature an explanation on the subject would draw down his positive disapproval. Upon the whole, therefore, he judged it prudent to call at Saint Leonard's just so frequently as old acquaintance and neighbourhood seemed to authorise, and no oftener. There was another person who was more regular in his visits. [Illustration: The Laird in Jeanie's Cottage--130] When Davie Deans intimated to the Laird of Dumbiedikes his purpose of "quitting wi' the land and house at Woodend," the Laird stared and said nothing. He made his usual visits at the usual hour without remark, until the day before the term, when, observing the bustle of moving furniture already commenced, the great east-country _awmrie_ dragged out of its nook, and standing with its shoulder to the company, like an awkward booby about to leave the room, the Laird again stared mightily, and was heard to ejaculate,--"Hegh, sirs!" Even after the day of departure was past and gone, the Laird of Dumbiedikes, at his usual hour, which was that at which David Deans was wont to "loose the pleugh," presented himself before the closed door of the cottage at Woodend, and seemed as much astonished at finding it shut against his approach as if it was not exactly what he had to expect. On this occasion he was heard to ejaculate, "Gude guide us!" which, by those who knew him, was considered as a very unusual mark of emotion. From that moment forward Dumbiedikes became an altered man, and the regularity of his movements, hitherto so exemplary, was as totally disconcerted as those of a boy's watch when he has broken the main-spring. Like the index of the said watch did Dumbiedikes spin round the whole bounds of his little property, which may be likened unto the dial of the timepiece, with unwonted velocity. There was not a cottage into which he did not enter, nor scarce a maiden on whom he did not stare. But so it was, that although there were better farm-houses on the land than Woodend, and certainly much prettier girls than Jeanie Deans, yet it did somehow befall that the blank in the Laird's time was not so pleasantly filled up as it had been. There was no seat accommodated him so well as the "bunker" at Woodend, and no face he loved so much to gaze on as Jeanie Deans's. So, after spinning round and round his little orbit, and then remaining stationary for a week, it seems to have occurred to him that he was not pinned down to circulate on a pivot, like the hands of the watch, but possessed the power of shifting his central point, and extending his circle if he thought proper. To realise which privilege of change of place, he bought a pony from a Highland drover, and with its assistance and company stepped, or rather stumbled, as far as Saint Leonard's Crags. Jeanie Deans, though so much accustomed to the Laird's staring that she was sometimes scarce conscious of his presence, had nevertheless some occasional fears lest he should call in the organ of speech to back those expressions of admiration which he bestowed on her through his eyes. Should this happen, farewell, she thought, to all chance of a union with Butler. For her father, however stouthearted and independent in civil and religious principles, was not without that respect for the laird of the land, so deeply imprinted on the Scottish tenantry of the period. Moreover, if he did not positively dislike Butler, yet his fund of carnal learning was often the object of sarcasms on David's part, which were perhaps founded in jealousy, and which certainly indicated no partiality for the party against whom they were launched. And lastly, the match with Dumbiedikes would have presented irresistible charms to one who used to complain that he felt himself apt to take "ower grit an armfu' o' the warld." So that, upon the whole, the Laird's diurnal visits were disagreeable to Jeanie from apprehension of future consequences, and it served much to console her, upon removing from the spot where she was bred and born, that she had seen the last of Dumbiedikes, his laced hat, and tobacco-pipe. The poor girl no more expected he could muster courage to follow her to Saint Leonard's Crags than that any of her apple-trees or cabbages which she had left rooted in the "yard" at Woodend, would spontaneously, and unaided, have undertaken the same journey. It was therefore with much more surprise than pleasure that, on the sixth day after their removal to Saint Leonard's, she beheld Dumbiedikes arrive, laced hat, tobacco-pipe, and all, and, with the self-same greeting of "How's a' wi' ye, Jeanie?--Whare's the gudeman?" assume as nearly as he could the same position in the cottage at Saint Leonard's which he had so long and so regularly occupied at Woodend. He was no sooner, however, seated, than with an unusual exertion of his powers of conversation, he added, "Jeanie--I say, Jeanie, woman"--here he extended his hand towards her shoulder with all the fingers spread out as if to clutch it, but in so bashful and awkward a manner, that when she whisked herself beyond its reach, the paw remained suspended in the air with the palm open, like the claw of a heraldic griffin--"Jeanie," continued the swain in this moment of inspiration--"I say, Jeanie, it's a braw day out-by, and the roads are no that ill for boot-hose." [Illustration: Jeanie--I say, Jeanie, woman--133 "The deil's in the daidling body," muttered Jeanie between her teeth; "wha wad hae thought o' his daikering out this length?" And she afterwards confessed that she threw a little of this ungracious sentiment into her accent and manner; for her father being abroad, and the "body," as she irreverently termed the landed proprietor, "looking unco gleg and canty, she didna ken what he might be coming out wi' next." Her frowns, however, acted as a complete sedative, and the Laird relapsed from that day into his former taciturn habits, visiting the cowfeeder's cottage three or four times every week, when the weather permitted, with apparently no other purpose than to stare at Jeanie Deans, while Douce Davie poured forth his eloquence upon the controversies and testimonies of the day. CHAPTER NINTH. Her air, her manners, all who saw admired, Courteous, though coy, and gentle, though retired; The joy of youth and health her eyes displayed; And ease of heart her every look conveyed. Crabbe. The visits of the Laird thus again sunk into matters of ordinary course, from which nothing was to be expected or apprehended. If a lover could have gained a fair one as a snake is said to fascinate a bird, by pertinaciously gazing on her with great stupid greenish eyes, which began now to be occasionally aided by spectacles, unquestionably Dumbiedikes would have been the person to perform the feat. But the art of fascination seems among the _artes perditae,_ and I cannot learn that this most pertinacious of starers produced any effect by his attentions beyond an occasional yawn. In the meanwhile, the object of his gaze was gradually attaining the verge of youth, and approaching to what is called in females the middle age, which is impolitely held to begin a few years earlier with their more fragile sex than with men. Many people would have been of opinion, that the Laird would have done better to have transferred his glances to an object possessed of far superior charms to Jeanie's, even when Jeanie's were in their bloom, who began now to be distinguished by all who visited the cottage at St. Leonard's Crags. Effie Deans, under the tender and affectionate care of her sister, had now shot up into a beautiful and blooming girl. Her Grecian shaped head was profusely rich in waving ringlets of brown hair, which, confined by a blue snood of silk, and shading a laughing Hebe countenance, seemed the picture of health, pleasure, and contentment. Her brown russet short-gown set off a shape, which time, perhaps, might be expected to render too robust, the frequent objection to Scottish beauty, but which, in her present early age, was slender and taper, with that graceful and easy sweep of outline which at once indicates health and beautiful proportion of parts. These growing charms, in all their juvenile profusion, had no power to shake the steadfast mind, or divert the fixed gaze of the constant Laird of Dumbiedikes. But there was scarce another eye that could behold this living picture of health and beauty, without pausing on it with pleasure. The traveller stopped his weary horse on the eve of entering the city which was the end of his journey, to gaze at the sylph-like form that tripped by him, with her milk-pail poised on her head, bearing herself so erect, and stepping so light and free under her burden, that it seemed rather an ornament than an encumbrance. The lads of the neighbouring suburb, who held their evening rendezvous for putting the stone, casting the hammer, playing at long bowls, and other athletic exercises, watched the motions of Effie Deans, and contended with each other which should have the good fortune to attract her attention. Even the rigid Presbyterians of her father's persuasion, who held each indulgence of the eye and sense to be a snare at least if not a crime, were surprised into a moment's delight while gazing on a creature so exquisite,--instantly checked by a sigh, reproaching at once their own weakness, and mourning that a creature so fair should share in the common and hereditary guilt and imperfection of our nature, which she deserved as much by her guileless purity of thought, speech, and action, as by her uncommon loveliness of face and person. Yet there were points in Effie's character which gave rise not only to strange doubt and anxiety on the part of Douce David Deans, whose ideas were rigid, as may easily be supposed, upon the subject of youthful amusements, but even of serious apprehension to her more indulgent sister. The children of the Scotch of the inferior classes are usually spoiled by the early indulgence of their parents; how, wherefore, and to what degree, the lively and instructive narrative of the amiable and accomplished authoress of "Glenburnie"* has saved me and all future scribblers the trouble of recording. * [The late Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton.] Effie had had a double share of this inconsiderate and misjudged kindness. Even the strictness of her father's principles could not condemn the sports of infancy and childhood; and to the good old man, his younger daughter, the child of his old age, seemed a child for some years after she attained the years of womanhood, was still called the "bit lassie," and "little Effie," and was permitted to run up and down uncontrolled, unless upon the Sabbath, or at the times of family worship. Her sister, with all the love and care of a mother, could not be supposed to possess the same authoritative influence; and that which she had hitherto exercised became gradually limited and diminished as Effie's advancing years entitled her, in her own conceit at least, to the right of independence and free agency. With all the innocence and goodness of disposition, therefore, which we have described, the Lily of St. Leonard's possessed a little fund of self-conceit and obstinacy, and some warmth and irritability of temper, partly natural perhaps, but certainly much increased by the unrestrained freedom of her childhood. Her character will be best illustrated by a cottage evening scene. The careful father was absent in his well-stocked byre, foddering those useful and patient animals on whose produce his living depended, and the summer evening was beginning to close in, when Jeanie Deans began to be very anxious for the appearance of her sister, and to fear that she would not reach home before her father returned from the labour of the evening, when it was his custom to have "family exercise," and when she knew that Effie's absence would give him the most serious displeasure. These apprehensions hung heavier upon her mind, because, for several preceding evenings, Effie had disappeared about the same time, and her stay, at first so brief as scarce to be noticed, had been gradually protracted to half-an-hour, and an hour, and on the present occasion had considerably exceeded even this last limit. And now, Jeanie stood at the door, with her hand before her eyes to avoid the rays of the level sun, and looked alternately along the various tracks which led towards their dwelling, to see if she could descry the nymph-like form of her sister. There was a wall and a stile which separated the royal domain, or King's Park, as it is called, from the public road; to this pass she frequently directed her attention, when she saw two persons appear there somewhat suddenly, as if they had walked close by the side of the wall to screen themselves from observation. One of them, a man, drew back hastily; the other, a female, crossed the stile, and advanced towards her--It was Effie. She met her sister with that affected liveliness of manner, which, in her rank, and sometimes in those above it, females occasionally assume to hide surprise or confusion; and she carolled as she came-- "The elfin knight sate on the brae, The broom grows bonny, the broom grows fair; And by there came lilting a lady so gay, And we daurna gang down to the broom nae mair." "Whisht, Effie," said her sister; "our father's coming out o' the byre." --The damsel stinted in her song.--"Whare hae ye been sae late at e'en?" "It's no late, lass," answered Effie. "It's chappit eight on every clock o' the town, and the sun's gaun down ahint the Corstorphine hills--Whare can ye hae been sae late?" "Nae gate," answered Effie. "And wha was that parted wi' you at the stile?" "Naebody," replied Effie once more. "Nae gate?--Naebody?--I wish it may be a right gate, and a right body, that keeps folk out sae late at e'en, Effie." "What needs ye be aye speering then at folk?" retorted Effie. "I'm sure, if ye'll ask nae questions, I'll tell ye nae lees. I never ask what brings the Laird of Dumbiedikes glowering here like a wull-cat (only his een's greener, and no sae gleg), day after day, till we are a' like to gaunt our charts aft." "Because ye ken very weel he comes to see our father," said Jeanie, in answer to this pert remark. "And Dominie Butler--Does he come to see our father, that's sae taen wi' his Latin words?" said Effie, delighted to find that by carrying the war into the enemy's country, she could divert the threatened attack upon herself, and with the petulance of youth she pursued her triumph over her prudent elder sister. She looked at her with a sly air, in which there was something like irony, as she chanted, in a low but marked tone, a scrap of an old Scotch song-- "Through the kirkyard I met wi' the Laird, The silly puir body he said me nae harm; But just ere 'twas dark, I met wi' the clerk" Here the songstress stopped, looked full at her sister, and, observing the tears gather in her eyes, she suddenly flung her arms round her neck, and kissed them away. Jeanie, though hurt and displeased, was unable to resist the caresses of this untaught child of nature, whose good and evil seemed to flow rather from impulse than from reflection. But as she returned the sisterly kiss, in token of perfect reconciliation, she could not suppress the gentle reproof--"Effie, if ye will learn fule sangs, ye might make a kinder use of them." "And so I might, Jeanie," continued the girl, clinging to her sister's neck; "and I wish I had never learned ane o' them--and I wish we had never come here--and I wish my tongue had been blistered or I had vexed ye." "Never mind that, Effie," replied the affectionate sister; "I canna be muckle vexed wi' ony thing ye say to me--but O, dinna vex our father!" "I will not--I will not," replied Effie; "and if there were as mony dances the morn's night as there are merry dancers in the north firmament on a frosty e'en, I winna budge an inch to gang near ane o' them." "Dance!" echoed Jeanie Deans in astonishment. "O Effie, what could take ye to a dance?" It is very possible, that, in the communicative mood into which the Lily of St. Leonard's was now surprised, she might have given her sister her unreserved confidence, and saved me the pain of telling a melancholy tale; but at the moment the word dance was uttered, it reached the ear of old David Deans, who had turned the corner of the house, and came upon his daughters ere they were aware of his presence. The word _prelate,_ or even the word _pope,_ could hardly have produced so appalling an effect upon David's ear; for, of all exercises, that of dancing, which he termed a voluntary and regular fit of distraction, he deemed most destructive of serious thoughts, and the readiest inlet to all sorts of licentiousness; and he accounted the encouraging, and even permitting, assemblies or meetings, whether among those of high or low degree, for this fantastic and absurd purpose, or for that of dramatic representations, as one of the most flagrant proofs of defection and causes of wrath. The pronouncing of the word _dance_ by his own daughters, and at his own door, now drove him beyond the verge of patience. "Dance!" he exclaimed. "Dance!--dance, said ye? I daur ye, limmers that ye are, to name sic a word at my door-cheek! It's a dissolute profane pastime, practised by the Israelites only at their base and brutal worship of the Golden Calf at Bethel, and by the unhappy lass wha danced aff the head of John the Baptist, upon whilk chapter I will exercise this night for your farther instruction, since ye need it sae muckle, nothing doubting that she has cause to rue the day, lang or this time, that e'er she suld hae shook a limb on sic an errand. Better for her to hae been born a cripple, and carried frae door to door, like auld Bessie Bowie, begging bawbees, than to be a king's daughter, fiddling and flinging the gate she did. I hae often wondered that ony ane that ever bent a knee for the right purpose, should ever daur to crook a hough to fyke and fling at piper's wind and fiddler's squealing. And I bless God (with that singular worthy, Peter Walker the packman at Bristo-Port),* that ordered my lot in my dancing days, so that fear of my head and throat, dread of bloody rope and swift bullet, and trenchant swords and pain of boots and thumkins, cauld and hunger, wetness and weariness, stopped the lightness of my head, and the wantonness of my feet. * Note F. Peter Walker. And now, if I hear ye, quean lassies, sae muckle as name dancing, or think there's sic a thing in this warld as flinging to fiddler's sounds, and piper's springs, as sure as my father's spirit is with the just, ye shall be no more either charge or concern of mine! Gang in, then--gang in, then, hinnies," he added, in a softer tone, for the tears of both daughters, but especially those of Effie, began to flow very fast,--"Gang in, dears, and we'll seek grace to preserve us frae all, manner of profane folly, whilk causeth to sin, and promoteth the kingdom of darkness, warring with the kingdom of light." The objurgation of David Deans, however well meant, was unhappily timed. It created a division of feelings in Effie's bosom, and deterred her from her intended confidence in her sister. "She wad hand me nae better than the dirt below her feet," said Effie to herself, "were I to confess I hae danced wi' him four times on the green down by, and ance at Maggie Macqueens's; and she'll maybe hing it ower my head that she'll tell my father, and then she wad be mistress and mair. But I'll no gang back there again. I'm resolved I'll no gang back. I'll lay in a leaf of my Bible,* and that's very near as if I had made an aith, that I winna gang back." * This custom of making a mark by folding a leaf in the party's Bible, when a solemn resolution is formed, is still held to be, in some sense, an appeal to Heaven for his or her sincerity. And she kept her vow for a week, during which she was unusually cross and fretful, blemishes which had never before been observed in her temper, except during a moment of contradiction. There was something in all this so mysterious as considerably to alarm the prudent and affectionate Jeanie, the more so as she judged it unkind to her sister to mention to their father grounds of anxiety which might arise from her own imagination. Besides, her respect for the good old man did not prevent her from being aware that he was both hot-tempered and positive, and she sometimes suspected that he carried his dislike to youthful amusements beyond the verge that religion and reason demanded. Jeanie had sense enough to see that a sudden and severe curb upon her sister's hitherto unrestrained freedom might be rather productive of harm than good, and that Effie, in the headstrong wilfulness of youth, was likely to make what might be overstrained in her father's precepts an excuse to herself for neglecting them altogether. In the higher classes, a damsel, however giddy, is still under the dominion of etiquette, and subject to the surveillance of mammas and chaperons; but the country girl, who snatches her moment of gaiety during the intervals of labour, is under no such guardianship or restraint, and her amusement becomes so much the more hazardous. Jeanie saw all this with much distress of mind, when a circumstance occurred which appeared calculated to relieve her anxiety. Mrs. Saddletree, with whom our readers have already been made acquainted, chanced to be a distant relation of Douce David Deans, and as she was a woman orderly in her life and conversation, and, moreover, of good substance, a sort of acquaintance was formally kept up between the families. Now, this careful dame, about a year and a half before our story commences, chanced to need, in the line of her profession, a better sort of servant, or rather shop-woman. "Mr. Saddletree," she said, "was never in the shop when he could get his nose within the Parliament House, and it was an awkward thing for a woman-body to be standing among bundles o' barkened leather her lane, selling saddles and bridles; and she had cast her eyes upon her far-awa cousin Effie Deans, as just the very sort of lassie she would want to keep her in countenance on such occasions." In this proposal there was much that pleased old David,--there was bed, board, and bountith--it was a decent situation--the lassie would be under Mrs. Saddletree's eye, who had an upright walk, and lived close by the Tolbooth Kirk, in which might still be heard the comforting doctrines of one of those few ministers of the Kirk of Scotland who had not bent the knee unto Baal, according to David's expression, or become accessory to the course of national defections,--union, toleration, patronages, and a bundle of prelatical Erastian oaths which had been imposed on the church since the Revolution, and particularly in the reign of "the late woman" (as he called Queen Anne), the last of that unhappy race of Stuarts. In the good man's security concerning the soundness of the theological doctrine which his daughter was to hear, he was nothing disturbed on account of the snares of a different kind, to which a creature so beautiful, young, and wilful, might be exposed in the centre of a populous and corrupted city. The fact is, that he thought with so much horror on all approaches to irregularities of the nature most to be dreaded in such cases, that he would as soon have suspected and guarded against Effie's being induced to become guilty of the crime of murder. He only regretted that she should live under the same roof with such a worldly-wise man as Bartoline Saddletree, whom David never suspected of being an ass as he was, but considered as one really endowed with all the legal knowledge to which he made pretension, and only liked him the worse for possessing it. The lawyers, especially those amongst them who sate as ruling elders in the General Assembly of the Kirk, had been forward in promoting the measures of patronage, of the abjuration oath, and others, which, in the opinion of David Deans, were a breaking down of the carved work of the sanctuary, and an intrusion upon the liberties of the kirk. Upon the dangers of listening to the doctrines of a legalised formalist, such as Saddletree, David gave his daughter many lectures; so much so, that he had time to touch but slightly on the dangers of chambering, company-keeping, and promiscuous dancing, to which, at her time of life, most people would have thought Effie more exposed, than to the risk of theoretical error in her religious faith. Jeanie parted from her sister with a mixed feeling of regret, and apprehension, and hope. She could not be so confident concerning Effie's prudence as her father, for she had observed her more narrowly, had more sympathy with her feelings, and could better estimate the temptations to which she was exposed. On the other hand, Mrs. Saddletree was an observing, shrewd, notable woman, entitled to exercise over Effie the full authority of a mistress, and likely to do so strictly, yet with kindness. Her removal to Saddletree's, it was most probable, would also serve to break off some idle acquaintances, which Jeanie suspected her sister to have formed in the neighbouring suburb. Upon the whole, then, she viewed her departure from Saint Leonard's with pleasure, and it was not until the very moment of their parting for the first time in their lives, that she felt the full force of sisterly sorrow. While they repeatedly kissed each other's cheeks, and wrung each other's hands, Jeanie took that moment of affectionate sympathy, to press upon her sister the necessity of the utmost caution in her conduct while residing in Edinburgh. Effie listened, without once raising her large dark eyelashes, from which the drops fell so fast as almost to resemble a fountain. At the conclusion she sobbed again, kissed her sister, promised to recollect all the good counsel she had given her, and they parted. During the first weeks, Effie was all that her kinswoman expected, and even more. But with time there came a relaxation of that early zeal which she manifested in Mrs. Saddletree's service. To borrow once again from the poet, who so correctly and beautifully describes living manners:-- Something there was,--what, none presumed to say,-- Clouds lightly passing on a summer's day; Whispers and hints, which went from ear to ear, And mixed reports no judge on earth could clear. During this interval, Mrs. Saddletree was sometimes displeased by Effie's lingering when she was sent upon errands about the shop business, and sometimes by a little degree of impatience which she manifested at being rebuked on such occasions. But she good-naturedly allowed, that the first was very natural to a girl to whom everything in Edinburgh was new and the other was only the petulance of a spoiled child, when subjected to the yoke of domestic discipline for the first time. Attention and submission could not be learned at once--Holyrood was not built in a day--use would make perfect. It seemed as if the considerate old lady had presaged truly. Ere many months had passed, Effie became almost wedded to her duties, though she no longer discharged them with the laughing cheek and light step, which had at first attracted every customer. Her mistress sometimes observed her in tears, but they were signs of secret sorrow, which she concealed as often as she saw them attract notice. Time wore on, her cheek grew pale, and her step heavy. The cause of these changes could not have escaped the matronly eye of Mrs. Saddletree, but she was chiefly confined by indisposition to her bedroom for a considerable time during the latter part of Effie's service. This interval was marked by symptoms of anguish almost amounting to despair. The utmost efforts of the poor girl to command her fits of hysterical agony were, often totally unavailing, and the mistakes which she made in the shop the while, were so numerous and so provoking that Bartoline Saddletree, who, during his wife's illness, was obliged to take closer charge of the business than consisted with his study of the weightier matters of the law, lost all patience with the girl, who, in his law Latin, and without much respect to gender, he declared ought to be cognosced by inquest of a jury, as _fatuus, furiosus,_ and _naturaliter idiota._ Neighbours, also, and fellow-servants, remarked with malicious curiosity or degrading pity, the disfigured shape, loose dress, and pale cheeks, of the once beautiful and still interesting girl. But to no one would she grant her confidence, answering all taunts with bitter sarcasm, and all serious expostulation with sullen denial, or with floods of tears. At length, when Mrs. Saddletree's recovery was likely to permit her wonted attention to the regulation of her household, Effie Deans, as if unwilling to face an investigation made by the authority of her mistress, asked permission of Bartoline to go home for a week or two, assigning indisposition, and the wish of trying the benefit of repose and the change of air, as the motives of her request. Sharp-eyed as a lynx (or conceiving himself to be so) in the nice sharp quillits of legal discussion, Bartoline was as dull at drawing inferences from the occurrences of common life as any Dutch professor of mathematics. He suffered Effie to depart without much suspicion, and without any inquiry. It was afterwards found that a period of a week intervened betwixt her leaving her master's house and arriving at St. Leonard's. She made her appearance before her sister in a state rather resembling the spectre than the living substance of the gay and beautiful girl, who had left her father's cottage for the first time scarce seventeen months before. The lingering illness of her mistress had, for the last few months, given her a plea for confining herself entirely to the dusky precincts of the shop in the Lawnmarket, and Jeanie was so much occupied, during the same period, with the concerns of her father's household, that she had rarely found leisure for a walk in the city, and a brief and hurried visit to her sister. The young women, therefore, had scarcely seen each other for several months, nor had a single scandalous surmise reached the ears of the secluded inhabitants of the cottage at St. Leonard's. Jeanie, therefore, terrified to death at her sister's appearance, at first overwhelmed her with inquiries, to which the unfortunate young woman returned for a time incoherent and rambling answers, and finally fell into a hysterical fit. Rendered too certain of her sister's misfortune, Jeanie had now the dreadful alternative of communicating her ruin to her father, or of endeavouring to conceal it from him. To all questions concerning the name or rank of her seducer, and the fate of the being to whom her fall had given birth, Effie remained as mute as the grave, to which she seemed hastening; and indeed the least allusion to either seemed to drive her to distraction. Her sister, in distress and in despair, was about to repair to Mrs. Saddletree to consult her experience, and at the same time to obtain what lights she could upon this most unhappy affair, when she was saved that trouble by a new stroke of fate, which seemed to carry misfortune to the uttermost. David Deans had been alarmed at the state of health in which his daughter had returned to her paternal residence; but Jeanie had contrived to divert him from particular and specific inquiry. It was therefore like a clap of thunder to the poor old man, when, just as the hour of noon had brought the visit of the Laird of Dumbiedikes as usual, other and sterner, as well as most unexpected guests, arrived at the cottage of St. Leonard's. These were the officers of justice, with a warrant of justiciary to search for and apprehend Euphemia, or Effie Deans, accused of the crime of child-murder. The stunning weight of a blow so totally unexpected bore down the old man, who had in his early youth resisted the brow of military and civil tyranny, though backed with swords and guns, tortures and gibbets. He fell extended and senseless upon his own hearth; and the men, happy to escape from the scene of his awakening, raised, with rude humanity, the object of their warrant from her bed, and placed her in a coach, which they had brought with them. The hasty remedies which Jeanie had applied to bring back her father's senses were scarce begun to operate, when the noise of the wheels in motion recalled her attention to her miserable sister. To ran shrieking after the carriage was the first vain effort of her distraction, but she was stopped by one or two female neighbours, assembled by the extraordinary appearance of a coach in that sequestered place, who almost forced her back to her father's house. The deep and sympathetic affliction of these poor people, by whom the little family at St. Leonard's were held in high regard, filled the house with lamentation. Even Dumbiedikes was moved from his wonted apathy, and, groping for his purse as he spoke, ejaculated, "Jeanie, woman!--Jeanie, woman! dinna greet--it's sad wark, but siller will help it;" and he drew out his purse as he spoke. The old man had now raised himself from the ground, and, looking about him as if he missed something, seemed gradually to recover the sense of his wretchedness. "Where," he said, with a voice that made the roof ring, "where is the vile harlot, that has disgraced the blood of an honest man?--Where is she, that has no place among us, but has come foul with her sins, like the Evil One, among the children of God?--Where is she, Jeanie?--Bring her before me, that I may kill her with a word and a look!" All hastened around him with their appropriate sources of consolation--the Laird with his purse, Jeanie with burnt feathers and strong waters, and the women with their exhortations. "O neighbour--O Mr. Deans, it's a sair trial, doubtless--but think of the Rock of Ages, neighbour--think of the promise!" "And I do think of it, neighbours--and I bless God that I can think of it, even in the wrack and ruin of a' that's nearest and dearest to me--But to be the father of a castaway--a profligate--a bloody Zipporah--a mere murderess!--O, how will the wicked exult in the high places of their wickedness!--the prelatists, and the latitudinarians, and the hand-waled murderers, whose hands are hard as horn wi' handing the slaughter-weapons--they will push out the lip, and say that we are even such as themselves. Sair, sair I am grieved, neighbours, for the poor castaway--for the child of mine old age--but sairer for the stumbling-block and scandal it will be to all tender and honest souls!" "Davie--winna siller do't?" insinuated the laird, still proffering his green purse, which was full of guineas. "I tell ye, Dumbiedikes," said Deans, "that if telling down my haill substance could hae saved her frae this black snare, I wad hae walked out wi' naething but my bonnet and my staff to beg an awmous for God's sake, and ca'd mysell an happy man--But if a dollar, or a plack, or the nineteenth part of a boddle, wad save her open guilt and open shame frae open punishment, that purchase wad David Deans never make!--Na, na; an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, life for life, blood for blood--it's the law of man, and it's the law of God.--Leave me, sirs--leave me--I maun warstle wi' this trial in privacy and on my knees." Jeanie, now in some degree restored to the power of thought, joined in the same request. The next day found the father and daughter still in the depth of affliction, but the father sternly supporting his load of ill through a proud sense of religious duty, and the daughter anxiously suppressing her own feelings to avoid again awakening his. Thus was it with the afflicted family until the morning after Porteous's death, a period at which we are now arrived. CHAPTER TENTH. Is all the counsel that we two have shared, The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent When we have chid the hasty-footed time For parting us--Oh!--and is all forgot? Midsummer Night's Dream. We have been a long while in conducting Butler to the door of the cottage at St. Leonard's; yet the space which we have occupied in the preceding narrative does not exceed in length that which he actually spent on Salisbury Crags on the morning which succeeded the execution done upon Porteous by the rioters. For this delay he had his own motives. He wished to collect his thoughts, strangely agitated as they were, first by the melancholy news of Effie Deans's situation, and afterwards by the frightful scene which he had witnessed. In the situation also in which he stood with respect to Jeanie and her father, some ceremony, at least some choice of fitting time and season, was necessary to wait upon them. Eight in the morning was then the ordinary hour for breakfast, and he resolved that it should arrive before he made his appearance in their cottage. Never did hours pass so heavily. Butler shifted his place and enlarged his circle to while away the time, and heard the huge bell of St. Giles's toll each successive hour in swelling tones, which were instantly attested by those of the other steeples in succession. He had heard seven struck in this manner, when he began to think he might venture to approach nearer to St. Leonard's, from which he was still a mile distant. Accordingly he descended from his lofty station as low as the bottom of the valley, which divides Salisbury Crags from those small rocks which take their name from Saint Leonard. It is, as many of my readers may know, a deep, wild, grassy valley, scattered with huge rocks and fragments which have descended from the cliffs and steep ascent to the east. This sequestered dell, as well as other places of the open pasturage of the King's Park, was, about this time, often the resort of the gallants of the time who had affairs of honour to discuss with the sword. Duels were then very common in Scotland, for the gentry were at once idle, haughty, fierce, divided by faction, and addicted to intemperance, so that there lacked neither provocation, nor inclination to resent it when given; and the sword, which was part of every gentleman's dress, was the only weapon used for the decision of such differences. When, therefore, Butler observed a young man, skulking, apparently to avoid observation, among the scattered rocks at some distance from the footpath, he was naturally led to suppose that he had sought this lonely spot upon that evil errand. He was so strongly impressed with this, that, notwithstanding his own distress of mind, he could not, according to his sense of duty as a clergyman, pass this person without speaking to him. There are times, thought he to himself, when the slightest interference may avert a great calamity--when a word spoken in season may do more for prevention than the eloquence of Tully could do for remedying evil--And for my own griefs, be they as they may, I shall feel them the lighter, if they divert me not from the prosecution of my duty. Thus thinking and feeling, he quitted the ordinary path, and advanced nearer the object he had noticed. The man at first directed his course towards the hill, in order, as it appeared, to avoid him; but when he saw that Butler seemed disposed to follow him, he adjusted his hat fiercely, turned round, and came forward, as if to meet and defy scrutiny. Butler had an opportunity of accurately studying his features as they advanced slowly to meet each other. The stranger seemed about twenty-five years old. His dress was of a kind which could hardly be said to indicate his rank with certainty, for it was such as young gentlemen sometimes wore while on active exercise in the morning, and which, therefore, was imitated by those of the inferior ranks, as young clerks and tradesmen, because its cheapness rendered it attainable, while it approached more nearly to the apparel of youths of fashion than any other which the manners of the times permitted them to wear. If his air and manner could be trusted, however, this person seemed rather to be dressed under than above his rank; for his carriage was bold and somewhat supercilious, his step easy and free, his manner daring and unconstrained. His stature was of the middle size, or rather above it, his limbs well-proportioned, yet not so strong as to infer the reproach of clumsiness. His features were uncommonly handsome, and all about him would have been interesting and prepossessing but for that indescribable expression which habitual dissipation gives to the countenance, joined with a certain audacity in look and manner, of that kind which is often assumed as a mask for confusion and apprehension. Butler and the stranger met--surveyed each other--when, as the latter, slightly touching his hat, was about to pass by him, Butler, while he returned the salutation, observed, "A fine morning, sir--You are on the hill early." "I have business here," said the young man, in a tone meant to repress farther inquiry. "I do not doubt it, sir," said Butler. "I trust you will forgive my hoping that it is of a lawful kind?" "Sir," said the other, with marked surprise, "I never forgive impertinence, nor can I conceive what title you have to hope anything about what no way concerns you." "I am a soldier, sir," said Butler, "and have a charge to arrest evil-doers in the name of my Master." "A soldier!" said the young man, stepping back, and fiercely laying his hand on his sword--"A soldier, and arrest me! Did you reckon what your life was worth, before you took the commission upon you?" "You mistake me, sir," said Butler, gravely; "neither my warfare nor my warrant are of this world. I am a preacher of the gospel, and have power, in my Master's name, to command the peace upon earth and good-will towards men, which was proclaimed with the gospel." "A minister!" said the stranger, carelessly, and with an expression approaching to scorn. "I know the gentlemen of your cloth in Scotland claim a strange right of intermeddling with men's private affairs. But I have been abroad, and know better than to be priest-ridden." "Sir, if it be true that any of my cloth, or, it might be more decently said, of my calling, interfere with men's private affairs, for the gratification either of idle curiosity, or for worse motives, you cannot have learned a better lesson abroad than to contemn such practices. But in my Master's work, I am called to be busy in season and out of season; and, conscious as I am of a pure motive, it were better for me to incur your contempt for speaking, than the correction of my own conscience for being silent." "In the name of the devil!" said the young man impatiently, "say what you have to say, then; though whom you take me for, or what earthly concern you have with me, a stranger to you, or with my actions and motives, of which you can know nothing, I cannot conjecture for an instant." "You are about," said Butler, "to violate one of your country's wisest laws--you are about, which is much more dreadful, to violate a law, which God himself has implanted within our nature, and written as it were, in the table of our hearts, to which every thrill of our nerves is responsive." "And what is the law you speak of?" said the stranger, in a hollow and somewhat disturbed accent. "Thou shalt do no murder," said Butler, with a deep and solemn voice. The young man visibly started, and looked considerably appalled. Butler perceived he had made a favourable impression, and resolved to follow it up. "Think," he said, "young man," laying his hand kindly upon the stranger's shoulder, "what an awful alternative you voluntarily choose for yourself, to kill or be killed. Think what it is to rush uncalled into the presence of an offended Deity, your heart fermenting with evil passions, your hand hot from the steel you had been urging, with your best skill and malice, against the breast of a fellow-creature. Or, suppose yourself the scarce less wretched survivor, with the guilt of Cain, the first murderer, in your heart, with the stamp upon your brow--that stamp which struck all who gazed on him with unutterable horror, and by which the murderer is made manifest to all who look upon him. Think" The stranger gradually withdrew himself from under the hand of his monitor; and, pulling his hat over his brows, thus interrupted him. "Your meaning, sir, I dare say, is excellent, but you are throwing your advice away. I am not in this place with violent intentions against any one. I may be bad enough--you priests say all men are so--but I am here for the purpose of saving life, not of taking it away. If you wish to spend your time rather in doing a good action than in talking about you know not what, I will give you an opportunity. Do you see yonder crag to the right, over which appears the chimney of a lone house? Go thither, inquire for one Jeanie Deans, the daughter of the goodman; let her know that he she wots of remained here from daybreak till this hour, expecting to see her, and that he can abide no longer. Tell her, she _must_ meet me at the Hunter's Bog to-night, as the moon rises behind St. Anthony's Hill, or that she will make a desperate man of me." "Who or what are you," replied Butler, exceedingly and most unpleasantly surprised, "who charge me with such an errand?" "I am the devil!"--answered the young man hastily. Butler stepped instinctively back, and commanded himself internally to Heaven; for, though a wise and strong-minded man, he was neither wiser nor more strong-minded than those of his age and education, with whom, to disbelieve witchcraft or spectres, was held an undeniable proof of atheism. The stranger went on without observing his emotion. "Yes! call me Apollyon, Abaddon, whatever name you shall choose, as a clergyman acquainted with the upper and lower circles of spiritual denomination, to call me by, you shall not find an appellation more odious to him that bears it, than is mine own." This sentence was spoken with the bitterness of self-upbraiding, and a contortion of visage absolutely demoniacal. Butler, though a man brave by principle, if not by constitution, was overawed; for intensity of mental distress has in it a sort of sublimity which repels and overawes all men, but especially those of kind and sympathetic dispositions. The stranger turned abruptly from Butler as he spoke, but instantly returned, and, coming up to him closely and boldly, said, in a fierce, determined tone, "I have told you who and what I am--who and what are you? What is your name?" "Butler," answered the person to whom this abrupt question was addressed, surprised into answering it by the sudden and fierce manner of the querist--"Reuben Butler, a preacher of the gospel." At this answer, the stranger again plucked more deep over his brows the hat which he had thrown back in his former agitation. "Butler!" he repeated--"the assistant of the schoolmaster at Liberton?" "The same," answered Butler composedly. The stranger covered his face with his hand, as if on sudden reflection, and then turned away, but stopped when he had walked a few paces; and seeing Butler follow him with his eyes, called out in a stern yet suppressed tone, just as if he had exactly calculated that his accents should not be heard a yard beyond the spot on which Butler stood. "Go your way, and do mine errand. Do not look after me. I will neither descend through the bowels of these rocks, nor vanish in a flash of fire; and yet the eye that seeks to trace my motions shall have reason to curse it was ever shrouded by eyelid or eyelash. Begone, and look not behind you. Tell Jeanie Deans, that when the moon rises I shall expect to meet her at Nicol Muschat's Cairn, beneath Saint Anthony's Chapel." [Illustration: St. Anthony's Chapel--159] As he uttered these words, he turned and took the road against the hill, with a haste that seemed as peremptory as his tone of authority. Dreading he knew not what of additional misery to a lot which seemed little capable of receiving augmentation, and desperate at the idea that any living man should dare to send so extraordinary a request, couched in terms so imperious, to the half-betrothed object of his early and only affection, Butler strode hastily towards the cottage, in order to ascertain how far this daring and rude gallant was actually entitled to press on Jeanie Deans a request, which no prudent, and scarce any modest young woman, was likely to comply with. Butler was by nature neither jealous nor superstitious; yet the feelings which lead to those moods of the mind were rooted in his heart, as a portion derived from the common stock of humanity. It was maddening to think that a profligate gallant, such as the manner and tone of the stranger evinced him to be, should have it in his power to command forth his future bride and plighted true love, at a place so improper, and an hour so unseasonable. Yet the tone in which the stranger spoke had nothing of the soft half-breathed voice proper to the seducer who solicits an assignation; it was bold, fierce, and imperative, and had less of love in it than of menace and intimidation. The suggestions of superstition seemed more plausible, had Butler's mind been very accessible to them. Was this indeed the Roaring Lion, who goeth about seeking whom he may devour? This was a question which pressed itself on Butler's mind with an earnestness that cannot be conceived by those who live in the present day. The fiery eye, the abrupt demeanour, the occasionally harsh, yet studiously subdued tone of voice,--the features, handsome, but now clouded with pride, now disturbed by suspicion, now inflamed with passion--those dark hazel eyes which he sometimes shaded with his cap, as if he were averse to have them seen while they were occupied with keenly observing the motions and bearing of others--those eyes that were now turbid with melancholy, now gleaming with scorn, and now sparkling with fury--was it the passions of a mere mortal they expressed, or the emotions of a fiend, who seeks, and seeks in vain, to conceal his fiendish designs under the borrowed mask of manly beauty? The whole partook of the mien, language, and port of the ruined archangel; and, imperfectly as we have been able to describe it, the effect of the interview upon Butler's nerves, shaken as they were at the time by the horrors of the preceding night, were greater than his understanding warranted, or his pride cared to submit to. The very place where he had met this singular person was desecrated, as it were, and unhallowed, owing to many violent deaths, both in duels and by suicide, which had in former times taken place there; and the place which he had named as a rendezvous at so late an hour, was held in general to be accursed, from a frightful and cruel murder which had been there committed by the wretch from whom the place took its name, upon the person of his own wife.* * Note G. Muschat's Cairn. It was in such places, according to the belief of that period (when the laws against witchcraft were still in fresh observance, and had even lately been acted upon), that evil spirits had power to make themselves visible to human eyes, and to practise upon the feelings and senses of mankind. Suspicions, founded on such circumstances, rushed on Butler's mind, unprepared as it was by any previous course of reasoning, to deny that which all of his time, country, and profession believed; but common sense rejected these vain ideas as inconsistent, if not with possibility, at least with the general rules by which the universe is governed,--a deviation from which, as Butler well argued with himself, ought not to be admitted as probable, upon any but the plainest and most incontrovertible evidence. An earthly lover, however, or a young man, who, from whatever cause, had the right of exercising such summary and unceremonious authority over the object of his long-settled, and apparently sincerely returned affection, was an object scarce less appalling to his mind, than those which superstition suggested. His limbs exhausted with fatigue, his mind harassed with anxiety, and with painful doubts and recollections, Butler dragged himself up the ascent from the valley to St. Leonard's Crags, and presented himself at the door of Deans's habitation, with feelings much akin to the miserable reflections and fears of its inhabitants. CHAPTER ELEVENTH. Then she stretched out her lily hand, And for to do her best; "Hae back thy faith and troth, Willie, God gie thy soul good rest!" Old Ballad. "Come in," answered the low and sweet-toned voice he loved best to hear, as Butler tapped at the door of the cottage. He lifted the latch, and found himself under the roof of affliction. Jeanie was unable to trust herself with more than one glance towards her lover, whom she now met under circumstances so agonising to her feelings, and at the same time so humbling to her honest pride. It is well known, that much, both of what is good and bad in the Scottish national character, arises out of the intimacy of their family connections. "To be come of honest folk," that is, of people who have borne a fair and unstained reputation, is an advantage as highly prized among the lower Scotch, as the emphatic counterpart, "to be of a good family," is valued among their gentry. The worth and respectability of one member of a peasant's family is always accounted by themselves and others, not only a matter of honest pride, but a guarantee for the good conduct of the whole. On the contrary, such a melancholy stain as was now flung on one of the children of Deans, extended its disgrace to all connected with him, and Jeanie felt herself lowered at once, in her own eyes, and in those of her lover. It was in vain that she repressed this feeling, as far subordinate and too selfish to be mingled with her sorrow for her sister's calamity. Nature prevailed; and while she shed tears for her sister's distress and danger, there mingled with them bitter drops of grief for her own degradation. As Butler entered, the old man was seated by the fire with his well-worn pocket Bible in his hands, the companion of the wanderings and dangers of his youth, and bequeathed to him on the scaffold by one of those, who, in the year 1686, sealed their enthusiastic principles with their blood. The sun sent its rays through a small window at the old man's back, and, "shining motty through the reek," to use the expression of a bard of that time and country, illumined the grey hairs of the old man, and the sacred page which he studied. His features, far from handsome, and rather harsh and severe, had yet from their expression of habitual gravity, and contempt for earthly things, an expression of stoical dignity amidst their sternness. He boasted, in no small degree, the attributes which Southey ascribes to the ancient Scandinavians, whom he terms "firm to inflict, and stubborn to endure." The whole formed a picture, of which the lights might have been given by Rembrandt, but the outline would have required the force and vigour of Michael Angelo. Deans lifted his eye as Butler entered, and instantly withdrew it, as from an object which gave him at once surprise and sudden pain. He had assumed such high ground with this carnal-witted scholar, as he had in his pride termed Butler, that to meet him, of all men, under feelings of humiliation, aggravated his misfortune, and was a consummation like that of the dying chief in the old ballad--"Earl Percy sees my fall!" Deans raised the Bible with his left hand, so as partly to screen his face, and putting back his right as far as he could, held it towards Butler in that position, at the same time turning his body from, him, as if to prevent his seeing the working of his countenance. Butler clasped the extended hand which had supported his orphan infancy, wept over it, and in vain endeavoured to say more than the words--"God comfort you--God comfort you!" "He will--he doth, my friend," said Deans, assuming firmness as he discovered the agitation of his guest; "he doth now, and he will yet more in his own gude time. I have been ower proud of my sufferings in a gude cause, Reuben, and now I am to be tried with those whilk will turn my pride and glory into a reproach and a hissing. How muckle better I hae thought mysell than them that lay saft, fed sweet, and drank deep, when I was in the moss-haggs and moors, wi' precious Donald Cameron, and worthy Mr. Blackadder, called Guess-again; and how proud I was o' being made a spectacle to men and angels, having stood on their pillory at the Canongate afore I was fifteen years old, for the cause of a National Covenant! To think, Reuben, that I, wha hae been sae honoured and exalted in my youth, nay, when I was but a hafflins callant, and that hae borne testimony again the defections o' the times yearly, monthly, daily, hourly, minutely, striving and testifying with uplifted hand and voice, crying aloud, and sparing not, against all great national snares, as the nation-wasting and church-sinking abomination of union, toleration, and patronage, imposed by the last woman of that unhappy race of Stuarts; also against the infringements and invasions of the just powers of eldership, whereanent, I uttered my paper, called a 'Cry of an Howl in the Desert,' printed at the Bow-head, and sold by all flying stationers in town and country--and _now_" Here he paused. It may well be supposed that Butler, though not absolutely coinciding in all the good old man's ideas about church government, had too much consideration and humanity to interrupt him, while he reckoned up with conscious pride his sufferings, and the constancy of his testimony. On the contrary, when he paused under the influence of the bitter recollections of the moment, Butler instantly threw in his mite of encouragement. "You have been well known, my old and revered friend, a true and tried follower of the Cross; one who, as Saint Jerome hath it, '_per infamiam et bonam famam grassari ad immortalitatem,_' which may be freely rendered, 'who rusheth on to immortal life, through bad report and good report.' You have been one of those to whom the tender and fearful souls cry during the midnight solitude--'Watchman, what of the night?--Watchman, what of the night?'--And, assuredly, this heavy dispensation, as it comes not without divine permission, so it comes not without its special commission and use." "I do receive it as such," said poor Deans, returning the grasp of Butler's hand; "and if I have not been taught to read the Scripture in any other tongue but my native Scottish" (even in his distress Butler's Latin quotation had not escaped his notice), "I have nevertheless so learned them, that I trust to bear even this crook in my lot with submission. But, oh! Reuben Butler, the kirk, of whilk, though unworthy, I have yet been thought a polished shaft, and meet to be a pillar, holding, from my youth upward, the place of ruling elder--what will the lightsome and profane think of the guide that cannot keep his own family from stumbling? How will they take up their song and their reproach, when they see that the children of professors are liable to as foul backsliding as the offspring of Belial! But I will bear my cross with the comfort, that whatever showed like goodness in me or mine, was but like the light that shines frae creeping insects, on the brae-side, in a dark night--it kythes bright to the ee, because all is dark around it; but when the morn comes on the mountains, it is, but a puir crawling kail-worm after a'. And sae it shows, wi' ony rag of human righteousness, or formal law-work, that we may pit round us to cover our shame." As he pronounced these words, the door again opened, and Mr. Bartoline Saddletree entered, his three-pointed hat set far back on his head, with a silk handkerchief beneath it to keep it in that cool position, his gold-headed cane in his hand, and his whole deportment that of a wealthy burgher, who might one day look to have a share in the magistracy, if not actually to hold the curule chair itself. Rochefoucault, who has torn the veil from so many foul gangrenes of the human heart, says, we find something not altogether unpleasant to us in the misfortunes of our best friends. Mr. Saddletree would have been very angry had any one told him that he felt pleasure in the disaster of poor Effie Deans, and the disgrace of her family; and yet there is great question whether the gratification of playing the person of importance, inquiring, investigating, and laying down the law on the whole affair, did not offer, to say the least, full consolation for the pain which pure sympathy gave him on account of his wife's kinswoman. He had now got a piece of real judicial business by the end, instead of being obliged, as was his common case, to intrude his opinion where it was neither wished nor wanted; and felt as happy in the exchange as a boy when he gets his first new watch, which actually goes when wound up, and has real hands and a true dial-plate. But besides this subject for legal disquisition, Bartoline's brains were also overloaded with the affair of Porteous, his violent death, and all its probable consequences to the city and community. It was what the French call _l'embarras des richesses,_ the confusion arising from too much mental wealth. He walked in with a consciousness of double importance, full fraught with the superiority of one who possesses more information than the company into which he enters, and who feels a right to discharge his learning on them without mercy. "Good morning, Mr. Deans,--good-morrow to you, Mr. Butler,--I was not aware that you were acquainted with Mr. Deans." Butler made some slight answer; his reasons may be readily imagined for not making his connection with the family, which, in his eyes, had something of tender mystery, a frequent subject of conversation with indifferent persons, such as Saddletree. The worthy burgher, in the plenitude of self-importance, now sate down upon a chair, wiped his brow, collected his breath, and made the first experiment of the resolved pith of his lungs, in a deep and dignified sigh, resembling a groan in sound and intonation--"Awfu' times these, neighbour Deans, awfu' times!" "Sinfu', shamefu', heaven-daring times!" answered Deans, in a lower and more subdued tone. "For my part," continued Saddletree, swelling with importance, "what between the distress of my friends, and my poor auld country, ony wit that ever I had may be said to have abandoned me, sae that I sometimes think myself as ignorant as if I were _inter rusticos._ Here when I arise in the morning, wi' my mind just arranged touching what's to be done in puir Effie's misfortune, and hae gotten the haill statute at my finger-ends, the mob maun get up and string Jock Porteous to a dyester's beam, and ding a' thing out of my head again." Deeply as he was distressed with his own domestic calamity, Deans could not help expressing some interest in the news. Saddletree immediately entered on details of the insurrection and its consequences, while Butler took the occasion to seek some private conversation with Jeanie Deans. She gave him the opportunity he sought, by leaving the room, as if in prosecution of some part of her morning labour. Butler followed her in a few minutes, leaving Deans so closely engaged by his busy visitor, that there was little chance of his observing their absence. The scene of their interview was an outer apartment, where Jeanie was used to busy herself in arranging the productions of her dairy. When Butler found an opportunity of stealing after her into this place, he found her silent, dejected, and ready to burst into tears. Instead of the active industry with which she had been accustomed, even while in the act of speaking, to employ her hands in some useful branch of household business, she was seated listless in a corner, sinking apparently under the weight of her own thoughts. Yet the instant he entered, she dried her eyes, and, with the simplicity and openness of her character, immediately entered on conversation. "I am glad you have come in, Mr. Butler," said she, "for--for--for I wished to tell ye, that all maun be ended between you and me--it's best for baith our sakes." "Ended!" said Butler, in surprise; "and for what should it be ended?--I grant this is a heavy dispensation, but it lies neither at your door nor mine--it's an evil of God's sending, and it must be borne; but it cannot break plighted troth, Jeanie, while they that plighted their word wish to keep it." "But, Reuben," said the young woman, looking at him affectionately, "I ken weel that ye think mair of me than yourself; and, Reuben, I can only in requital think mair of your weal than of my ain. Ye are a man of spotless name, bred to God's ministry, and a' men say that ye will some day rise high in the kirk, though poverty keep ye doun e'en now. Poverty is a bad back-friend, Reuben, and that ye ken ower weel; but ill-fame is a waur ane, and that is a truth ye sall never learn through my means." "What do you mean?" said Butler, eagerly and impatiently; "or how do you connect your sister's guilt, if guilt there be, which, I trust in God, may yet be disproved, with our engagement?--how can that affect you or me?" "How can you ask me that, Mr. Butler? Will this stain, d'ye think, ever be forgotten, as lang as our heads are abune the grund? Will it not stick to us, and to our bairns, and to their very bairns' bairns? To hae been the child of an honest man, might hae been saying something for me and mine; but to be the sister of a--O my God!"--With this exclamation her resolution failed, and she burst into a passionate fit of tears. The lover used every effort to induce her to compose herself, and at length succeeded; but she only resumed her composure to express herself with the same positiveness as before. "No, Reuben, I'll bring disgrace hame to nae man's hearth; my ain distresses I can bear, and I maun bear, but there is nae occasion for buckling them on other folk's shouthers. I will bear my load alone--the back is made for the burden." A lover is by charter wayward and suspicious; and Jeanie's readiness to renounce their engagement, under pretence of zeal for his peace of mind and respectability of character, seemed to poor Butler to form a portentous combination with the commission of the stranger he had met with that morning. His voice faltered as he asked, "whether nothing but a sense of her sister's present distress occasioned her to talk in that manner?" "And what else can do sae?" she replied with simplicity. "Is it not ten long years since we spoke together in this way?" "Ten years!" said Butler. "It's a long time--sufficient perhaps for a woman to weary" "To weary of her auld gown," said Jeanie, "and to wish for a new ane if she likes to be brave, but not long enough to weary of a friend--The eye may wish change, but the heart never." "Never!" said Reuben,--"that's a bold promise." "But not more bauld than true," said Jeanie, with the same quiet simplicity which attended her manner in joy and grief in ordinary affairs, and in those which most interested her feelings. Butler paused, and looking at her fixedly--"I am charged," he said, "with a message to you, Jeanie." "Indeed! From whom? Or what can ony ane have to say to me?" "It is from a stranger," said Butler, affecting to speak with an indifference which his voice belied--"A young man whom I met this morning in the Park." "Mercy!" said Jeanie, eagerly; "and what did he say?" "That he did not see you at the hour he expected, but required you should meet him alone at Muschat's Cairn this night, so soon as the moon rises." "Tell him," said Jeanie, hastily, "I shall certainly come." "May I ask," said Butler, his suspicions increasing at the ready alacrity of the answer, "who this man is to whom you are so willing to give the meeting at a place and hour so uncommon?" "Folk maun do muckle they have little will to do, in this world," replied Jeanie. "Granted," said her lover; "but what compels you to this?--who is this person? What I saw of him was not very favourable--who, or what is he?" "I do not know," replied Jeanie, composedly. "You do not know!" said Butler, stepping impatiently through the apartment--"You purpose to meet a young man whom you do not know, at such a time, and in a place so lonely--you say you are compelled to do this--and yet you say you do not know the person who exercises such an influence over you!--Jeanie, what am I to think of this?" "Think only, Reuben, that I speak truth, as if I were to answer at the last day.--I do not ken this man--I do not even ken that I ever saw him; and yet I must give him the meeting he asks--there's life and death upon it." "Will you not tell your father, or take him with you?" said Butler. "I cannot," said Jeanie; "I have no permission." "Will you let _me_ go with you? I will wait in the Park till nightfall, and join you when you set out." "It is impossible," said Jeanie; "there maunna be mortal creature within hearing of our conference." "Have you considered well the nature of what you are going to do?--the time--the place--an unknown and suspicious character?--Why, if he had asked to see you in this house, your father sitting in the next room, and within call, at such an hour, you should have refused to see him." "My weird maun be fulfilled, Mr. Butler; my life and my safety are in God's hands, but I'll not spare to risk either of them on the errand I am gaun to do." "Then, Jeanie," said Butler, much displeased, "we must indeed break short off, and bid farewell. When there can be no confidence betwixt a man and his plighted wife on such a momentous topic, it is a sign that she has no longer the regard for him that makes their engagement safe and suitable." Jeanie looked at him and sighed. "I thought," she said, "that I had brought myself to bear this parting--but--but--I did not ken that we were to part in unkindness. But I am a woman and you are a man--it may be different wi' you--if your mind is made easier by thinking sae hardly of me, I would not ask you to think otherwise." "You are," said Butler, "what you have always been--wiser, better, and less selfish in your native feelings, than I can be, with all the helps philosophy can give to a Christian--But why--why will you persevere in an undertaking so desperate? Why will you not let me be your assistant--your protector, or at least your adviser?" "Just because I cannot, and I dare not," answered Jeanie.--"But hark, what's that? Surely my father is no weel?" In fact, the voices in the next room became obstreperously loud of a sudden, the cause of which vociferation it is necessary to explain before we go farther. When Jeanie and Butler retired, Mr. Saddletree entered upon the business which chiefly interested the family. In the commencement of their conversation he found old Deans, who in his usual state of mind, was no granter of propositions, so much subdued by a deep sense of his daughter's danger and disgrace, that he heard without replying to, or perhaps without understanding, one or two learned disquisitions on the nature of the crime imputed to her charge, and on the steps which ought to be taken in consequence. His only answer at each pause was, "I am no misdoubting that you wuss us weel--your wife's our far-awa cousin." Encouraged by these symptoms of acquiescence, Saddletree, who, as an amateur of the law, had a supreme deference for all constituted authorities, again recurred to his other topic of interest, the murder, namely, of Porteous, and pronounced a severe censure on the parties concerned. "These are kittle times--kittle times, Mr. Deans, when the people take the power of life and death out of the hands of the rightful magistrate into their ain rough grip. I am of opinion, and so I believe will Mr. Crossmyloof and the Privy Council, that this rising in effeir of war, to take away the life of a reprieved man, will prove little better than perduellion." "If I hadna that on my mind whilk is ill to bear, Mr. Saddletree," said Deans, "I wad make bold to dispute that point wi' you." "How could you dispute what's plain law, man?" said Saddletree, somewhat contemptuously; "there's no a callant that e'er carried a pock wi' a process in't, but will tell you that perduellion is the warst and maist virulent kind of treason, being an open convocating of the king's lieges against his authority (mair especially in arms, and by touk of drum, to baith whilk accessories my een and lugs bore witness), and muckle worse than lese-majesty, or the concealment of a treasonable purpose--It winna bear a dispute, neighbour." "But it will, though," retorted Douce Davie Deans; "I tell ye it will bear a disputer never like your cauld, legal, formal doctrines, neighbour Saddletree. I haud unco little by the Parliament House, since the awfu' downfall of the hopes of honest folk that followed the Revolution." "But what wad ye hae had, Mr. Deans?" said Saddletree, impatiently; "didna ye get baith liberty and conscience made fast, and settled by tailzie on you and your heirs for ever?" "Mr. Saddletree," retorted Deans, "I ken ye are one of those that are wise after the manner of this world, and that ye hand your part, and cast in your portion, wi' the lang heads and lang gowns, and keep with the smart witty-pated lawyers of this our land--Weary on the dark and dolefu' cast that they hae gien this unhappy kingdom, when their black hands of defection were clasped in the red hands of our sworn murtherers: when those who had numbered the towers of our Zion, and marked the bulwarks of Reformation, saw their hope turn into a snare, and their rejoicing into weeping." "I canna understand this, neighbour," answered Saddletree. "I am an honest Presbyterian of the Kirk of Scotland, and stand by her and the General Assembly, and the due administration of justice by the fifteen Lords o' Session and the five Lords o' Justiciary." "Out upon ye, Mr. Saddletree!" exclaimed David, who, in an opportunity of giving his testimony on the offences and backslidings of the land, forgot for a moment his own domestic calamity--"out upon your General Assembly, and the back of my hand to your Court o' Session!--What is the tane but a waefu' bunch o' cauldrife professors and ministers, that sate bien and warm when the persecuted remnant were warstling wi' hunger, and cauld, and fear of death, and danger of fire and sword upon wet brae-sides, peat-haggs, and flow-mosses, and that now creep out of their holes, like bluebottle flees in a blink of sunshine, to take the pu'pits and places of better folk--of them that witnessed, and testified, and fought, and endured pit, prison-house, and transportation beyond seas?--A bonny bike there's o' them!--And for your Court o' Session" "Ye may say what ye will o' the General Assembly," said Saddletree, interrupting him, "and let them clear them that kens them; but as for the Lords o' Session, forby that they are my next-door neighbours, I would have ye ken, for your ain regulation, that to raise scandal anent them, whilk is termed to _murmur_ again them, is a crime _sui generis,_--_sui generis,_ Mr. Deans--ken ye what that amounts to?" "I ken little o' the language of Antichrist," said Deans; "and I care less than little what carnal courts may call the speeches of honest men. And as to murmur again them, it's what a' the folk that loses their pleas, and nine-tenths o' them that win them, will be gey sure to be guilty in. Sae I wad hae ye ken that I hand a' your gleg-tongued advocates, that sell their knowledge for pieces of silver--and your worldly-wise judges, that will gie three days of hearing in presence to a debate about the peeling of an ingan, and no ae half-hour to the gospel testimony--as legalists and formalists, countenancing by sentences, and quirks, and cunning terms of law, the late begun courses of national defections--union, toleration, patronages, and Yerastian prelatic oaths. As for the soul and body-killing Court o' Justiciary" The habit of considering his life as dedicated to bear testimony in behalf of what he deemed the suffering and deserted cause of true religion, had swept honest David along with it thus far; but with the mention of the criminal court, the recollection of the disastrous condition of his daughter rushed at once on his mind; he stopped short in the midst of his triumphant declamation, pressed his hands against his forehead, and remained silent. Saddletree was somewhat moved, but apparently not so much so as to induce him to relinquish the privilege of prosing in his turn afforded him by David's sudden silence. "Nae doubt, neighbour," he said, "it's a sair thing to hae to do wi' courts of law, unless it be to improve ane's knowledge and practique, by waiting on as a hearer; and touching this unhappy affair of Effie--ye'll hae seen the dittay, doubtless?" He dragged out of his pocket a bundle of papers, and began to turn them over. "This is no it--this is the information of Mungo Marsport, of that ilk, against Captain Lackland, for coming on his lands of Marsport with hawks, hounds, lying-dogs, nets, guns, cross-bows, hagbuts of found, or other engines more or less for destruction of game, sic as red-deer, fallow-deer, cappercailzies, grey-fowl, moor-fowl, paitricks, herons, and sic like; he, the said defender not being ane qualified person, in terms of the statute sixteen hundred and twenty-ane; that is, not having ane plough-gate of land. Now, the defences proponed say, that _non constat_ at this present what is a plough-gate of land, whilk uncertainty is sufficient to elide the conclusions of the libel. But then the answers to the defences (they are signed by Mr. Crossmyloof, but Mr. Younglad drew them), they propone, that it signifies naething, _in hoc statu,_ what or how muckle a plough-gate of land may be, in respect the defender has nae lands whatsoever, less or mair. 'Sae grant a plough-gate'" (here Saddletree read from the paper in his hand) "'to be less than the nineteenth part of a guse's grass'--(I trow Mr. Crossmyloof put in that--I ken his style),--'of a guse's grass, what the better will the defender be, seeing he hasna a divot-cast of land in Scotland?--_Advocatus_ for Lackland duplies, that _nihil interest de possessione,_ the pursuer must put his case under the statute'--(now, this is worth your notice, neighbour),--'and must show, _formaliter et specialiter,_ as well as _generaliter,_ what is the qualification that defender Lackland does _not_ possess--let him tell me what a plough-gate of land is, and I'll tell him if I have one or no. Surely the pursuer is bound to understand his own libel, and his own statute that he founds upon. _Titius_ pursues _Maevius_ for recovery of ane _black_ horse lent to Maevius--surely he shall have judgment; but if Titius pursue Maevius for ane _scarlet_ or _crimson_ horse, doubtless he shall be bound to show that there is sic ane animal _in rerum natura._ No man can be bound to plead to nonsense--that is to say, to a charge which cannot be explained or understood'--(he's wrang there--the better the pleadings the fewer understand them),--'and so the reference unto this undefined and unintelligible measure of land is, as if a penalty was inflicted by statute for any man who suld hunt or hawk, or use lying-dogs, and wearing a sky-blue pair of breeches, without having--'But I am wearying you, Mr. Deans,--we'll pass to your ain business,--though this cue of Marsport against Lackland has made an unco din in the Outer House. Weel, here's the dittay against puir Effie: 'Whereas it is humbly meant and shown to us,' etc. (they are words of mere style), 'that whereas, by the laws of this and every other well-regulated realm, the murder of any one, more especially of an infant child, is a crime of ane high nature, and severely punishable: And whereas, without prejudice to the foresaid generality, it was, by ane act made in the second session of the First Parliament of our most High and Dread Sovereigns William and Mary, especially enacted, that ane woman who shall have concealed her condition, and shall not be able to show that she hath called for help at the birth in case that the child shall be found dead or amissing, shall be deemed and held guilty of the murder thereof; and the said facts of concealment and pregnancy being found proven or confessed, shall sustain the pains of law accordingly; yet, nevertheless, you, Effie, or Euphemia Deans'" "Read no farther!" said Deans, raising his head up; "I would rather ye thrust a sword into my heart than read a word farther!" "Weel, neighbour," said Saddletree, "I thought it wad hae comforted ye to ken the best and the warst o't. But the question is, what's to be dune?" "Nothing," answered Deans firmly, "but to abide the dispensation that the Lord sees meet to send us. Oh, if it had been His will to take the grey head to rest before this awful visitation on my house and name! But His will be done. I can say that yet, though I can say little mair." "But, neighbour," said Saddletree, "ye'll retain advocates for the puir lassie? it's a thing maun needs be thought of." "If there was ae man of them," answered Deans, "that held fast his integrity--but I ken them weel, they are a' carnal, crafty, and warld-hunting self-seekers, Yerastians, and Arminians, every ane o' them." "Hout tout, neighbour, ye mauna take the warld at its word," said Saddletree; "the very deil is no sae ill as he's ca'd; and I ken mair than ae advocate that may be said to hae some integrity as weel as their neighbours; that is, after a sort o' fashion' o' their ain." "It is indeed but a fashion of integrity that ye will find amang them," replied David Deans, "and a fashion of wisdom, and fashion of carnal learning--gazing, glancing-glasses they are, fit only to fling the glaiks in folk's een, wi' their pawky policy, and earthly ingine, their flights and refinements, and periods of eloquence, frae heathen emperors and popish canons. They canna, in that daft trash ye were reading to me, sae muckle as ca' men that are sae ill-starred as to be amang their hands, by ony name o' the dispensation o' grace, but maun new baptize them by the names of the accursed Titus, wha was made the instrument of burning the holy Temple, and other sic like heathens!" "It's Tishius," interrupted Saddletree, "and no Titus. Mr. Crossmyloof cares as little about Titus or the Latin as ye do.--But it's a case of necessity--she maun hae counsel. Now, I could speak to Mr. Crossmyloof--he's weel ken'd for a round-spun Presbyterian, and a ruling elder to boot." "He's a rank Yerastian," replied Deans; "one of the public and polititious warldly-wise men that stude up to prevent ane general owning of the cause in the day of power!" "What say ye to the auld Laird of Cuffabout?" said Saddletree; "he whiles thumps the dust out of a case gey and well." "He? the fause loon!" answered Deans--"he was in his bandaliers to hae joined the ungracious Highlanders in 1715, an they had ever had the luck to cross the Firth." "Weel, Arniston? there's a clever chield for ye!" said Bartoline, triumphantly. "Ay, to bring popish medals in till their very library from that schismatic woman in the north, the Duchess of Gordon."* * [James Dundas younger of Arniston was tried in the year 1711 upon charge of leasing-making, in having presented, from the Duchess of Gordon, medal of the Pretender, for the purpose, it was said, of affronting Queen Anne.] "Weel, weel, but somebody ye maun hae--What think ye o' Kittlepunt?" "He's an Arminian." "Woodsetter?" "He's, I doubt, a Cocceian." "Auld Whilliewhaw?" "He's ony thing ye like." "Young Naemmo?" "He's naething at a'." "Ye're ill to please, neighbour," said Saddletree: "I hae run ower the pick o' them for you, ye maun e'en choose for yoursell; but bethink ye that in the multitude of counsellors there's safety--What say ye to try young Mackenyie? he has a' his uncle's Practiques at the tongue's end." "What, sir, wad ye speak to me," exclaimed the sturdy Presbyterian in excessive wrath, "about a man that has the blood of the saints at his fingers' ends? Did na his eme [Uncle] die and gang to his place wi' the name of the Bluidy Mackenyie? and winna he be kend by that name sae lang as there's a Scots tongue to speak the word? If the life of the dear bairn that's under a suffering dispensation, and Jeanie's, and my ain, and a' mankind's, depended on my asking sic a slave o' Satan to speak a word for me or them, they should a' gae doun the water thegither for Davie Deans!" It was the exalted tone in which he spoke this last sentence that broke up the conversation between Butler and Jeanie, and brought them both "ben the house," to use the language of the country. Here they found the poor old man half frantic between grief and zealous ire against Saddletree's proposed measures, his cheek inflamed, his hand clenched, and his voice raised, while the tear in his eye, and the occasional quiver of his accents, showed that his utmost efforts were inadequate to shaking off the consciousness of his misery. Butler, apprehensive of the consequences of his agitation to an aged and feeble frame, ventured to utter to him a recommendation to patience. "I _am_ patient," returned the old man sternly,--"more patient than any one who is alive to the woeful backslidings of a miserable time can be patient; and in so much, that I need neither sectarians, nor sons nor grandsons of sectarians, to instruct my grey hairs how to bear my cross." "But, sir," continued Butler, taking no offence at the slur cast on his grandfather's faith, "we must use human means. When you call in a physician, you would not, I suppose, question him on the nature of his religious principles!" "Wad I _no?_" answered David--"but I wad, though; and if he didna satisfy me that he had a right sense of the right hand and left hand defections of the day, not a goutte of his physic should gang through my father's son." It is a dangerous thing to trust to an illustration. Butler had done so and miscarried; but, like a gallant soldier when his musket misses fire, he stood his ground, and charged with the bayonet.--"This is too rigid an interpretation of your duty, sir. The sun shines, and the rain descends, on the just and unjust, and they are placed together in life in circumstances which frequently render intercourse between them indispensable, perhaps that the evil may have an opportunity of being converted by the good, and perhaps, also, that the righteous might, among other trials, be subjected to that of occasional converse with the profane." "Ye're a silly callant, Reuben," answered Deans, "with your bits of argument. Can a man touch pitch and not be defiled? Or what think ye of the brave and worthy champions of the Covenant, that wadna sae muckle as hear a minister speak, be his gifts and graces as they would, that hadna witnessed against the enormities of the day? Nae lawyer shall ever speak for me and mine that hasna concurred in the testimony of the scattered, yet lovely remnant, which abode in the clifts of the rocks." So saying, and as if fatigued, both with the arguments and presence of his guests, the old man arose, and seeming to bid them adieu with a motion of his head and hand, went to shut himself up in his sleeping apartment. "It's thrawing his daughter's life awa," said Saddletree to Butler, "to hear him speak in that daft gate. Where will he ever get a Cameronian advocate? Or wha ever heard of a lawyer's suffering either for ae religion or another? The lassie's life is clean flung awa." During the latter part of this debate, Dumbiedikes had arrived at the door, dismounted, hung the pony's bridle on the usual hook, and sunk down on his ordinary settle. His eyes, with more than their usual animation, followed first one speaker then another, till he caught the melancholy sense of the whole from Saddletree's last words. He rose from his seat, stumped slowly across the room, and, coming close up to Saddletree's ear, said in a tremulous anxious voice, "Will--will siller do naething for them, Mr. Saddletree?" "Umph!" said Saddletree, looking grave,--"siller will certainly do it in the Parliament House, if ony thing _can_ do it; but where's the siller to come frae? Mr. Deans, ye see, will do naething; and though Mrs. Saddletree's their far-awa friend, and right good weel-wisher, and is weel disposed to assist, yet she wadna like to stand to be bound _singuli in solidum_ to such an expensive wark. An ilka friend wad bear a share o' the burden, something might be dune--ilka ane to be liable for their ain input--I wadna like to see the case fa' through without being pled--it wadna be creditable, for a' that daft whig body says." "I'll--I will--yes" (assuming fortitude), "I will be answerable," said Dumbiedikes, "for a score of punds sterling."--And he was silent, staring in astonishment at finding himself capable of such unwonted resolution and excessive generosity. "God Almighty bless ye, Laird!" said Jeanie, in a transport of gratitude. "Ye may ca' the twenty punds thretty," said Dumbiedikes, looking bashfully away from her, and towards Saddletree. "That will do bravely," said Saddletree, rubbing his hands; and ye sall hae a' my skill and knowledge to gar the siller gang far--I'll tape it out weel--I ken how to gar the birkies tak short fees, and be glad o' them too--it's only garring them trow ye hae twa or three cases of importance coming on, and they'll work cheap to get custom. Let me alane for whilly-whaing an advocate:--it's nae sin to get as muckle flue them for our siller as we can--after a', it's but the wind o' their mouth--it costs them naething; whereas, in my wretched occupation of a saddler, horse milliner, and harness maker, we are out unconscionable sums just for barkened hides and leather." "Can I be of no use?" said Butler. "My means, alas! are only worth the black coat I wear; but I am young--I owe much to the family--Can I do nothing?" "Ye can help to collect evidence, sir," said Saddletree; "if we could but find ony ane to say she had gien the least hint o' her condition, she wad be brought aft wi' a wat finger--Mr. Crossmyloof tell'd me sae. The crown, says he, canna be craved to prove a positive--was't a positive or a negative they couldna be ca'd to prove?--it was the tane or the tither o' them, I am sure, and it maksna muckle matter whilk. Wherefore, says he, the libel maun be redargued by the panel proving her defences. And it canna be done otherwise." "But the fact, sir," argued Butler, "the fact that this poor girl has borne a child; surely the crown lawyers must prove that?" said Butler. Saddletree paused a moment, while the visage of Dumbiedikes, which traversed, as if it had been placed on a pivot, from the one spokesman to the other, assumed a more blithe expression. "Ye--ye--ye--es," said Saddletree, after some grave hesitation; "unquestionably that is a thing to be proved, as the court will more fully declare by an interlocutor of relevancy in common form; but I fancy that job's done already, for she has confessed her guilt." "Confessed the murder?" exclaimed Jeanie, with a scream that made them all start. "No, I didna say that," replied Bartoline. "But she confessed bearing the babe." "And what became of it, then?" said Jeanie, "for not a word could I get from her but bitter sighs and tears." "She says it was taken away from her by the woman in whose house it was born, and who assisted her at the time." "And who was that woman?" said Butler. "Surely by her means the truth might be discovered.--Who was she? I will fly to her directly." "I wish," said Dumbiedikes, "I were as young and as supple as you, and had the gift of the gab as weel." "Who is she?" again reiterated Butler impatiently.--"Who could that woman be?" "Ay, wha kens that but herself?" said Saddletree; "she deponed farther, and declined to answer that interrogatory." "Then to herself will I instantly go," said Butler; "farewell, Jeanie;" then coming close up to her--"Take no _rash steps_ till you hear from me. Farewell!" and he immediately left the cottage. "I wad gang too," said the landed proprietor, in an anxious, jealous, and repining tone, "but my powny winna for the life o' me gang ony other road than just frae Dumbiedikes to this house-end, and sae straight back again." "Yell do better for them," said Saddletree, as they left the house together, "by sending me the thretty punds." "Thretty punds!" hesitated Dumbiedikes, who was now out of the reach of those eyes which had inflamed his generosity; "I only said _twenty_ punds." "Ay; but," said Saddletree, "that was under protestation to add and eik; and so ye craved leave to amend your libel, and made it thretty." "Did I? I dinna mind that I did," answered Dumbiedikes. "But whatever I said I'll stand to." Then bestriding his steed with some difficulty, he added, "Dinna ye think poor Jeanie's een wi' the tears in them glanced like lamour beads, Mr. Saddletree?" "I kenna muckle about women's een, Laird," replied the insensible Bartoline; "and I care just as little. I wuss I were as weel free o' their tongues; though few wives," he added, recollecting the necessity of keeping up his character for domestic rule, "are under better command than mine, Laird. I allow neither perduellion nor lese-majesty against my sovereign authority." The Laird saw nothing so important in this observation as to call for a rejoinder, and when they had exchanged a mute salutation, they parted in peace upon their different errands. CHAPTER TWELFTH. I'll warrant that fellow from drowning, were the ship no stronger than a nut-shell. The Tempest. Butler felt neither fatigue nor want of refreshment, although, from the mode in which he had spent the night, he might well have been overcome with either. But in the earnestness with which he hastened to the assistance of the sister of Jeanie Deans, he forgot both. In his first progress he walked with so rapid a pace as almost approached to running, when he was surprised to hear behind him a call upon his name, contending with an asthmatic cough, and half-drowned amid the resounding trot of a Highland pony. He looked behind, and saw the Laird of Dumbiedikes making after him with what speed he might, for it happened, fortunately for the Laird's purpose of conversing with Butler, that his own road homeward was for about two hundred yards the same with that which led by the nearest way to the city. Butler stopped when he heard himself thus summoned, internally wishing no good to the panting equestrian who thus retarded his journey. "Uh! uh! uh!" ejaculated Dumbiedikes, as he checked the hobbling pace of the pony by our friend Butler. "Uh! uh! it's a hard-set willyard beast this o' mine." He had in fact just overtaken the object of his chase at the very point beyond which it would have been absolutely impossible for him to have continued the pursuit, since there Butler's road parted from that leading to Dumbiedikes, and no means of influence or compulsion which the rider could possibly have used towards his Bucephalus could have induced the Celtic obstinacy of Rory Bean (such was the pony's name) to have diverged a yard from the path that conducted him to his own paddock. Even when he had recovered from the shortness of breath occasioned by a trot much more rapid than Rory or he were accustomed to, the high purpose of Dumbiedikes seemed to stick as it were in his throat, and impede his utterance, so that Butler stood for nearly three minutes ere he could utter a syllable; and when he did find voice, it was only to say, after one or two efforts, "Uh! uh! uhm! I say, Mr.--Mr. Butler, it's a braw day for the har'st." "Fine day, indeed," said Butler. "I wish you good morning, sir." "Stay--stay a bit," rejoined Dumbiedikes; "that was no what I had gotten to say." "Then, pray be quick, and let me have your commands," rejoined Butler; "I crave your pardon, but I am in haste, and _Tempus nemini_--you know the proverb." Dumbiedikes did not know the proverb, nor did he even take the trouble to endeavour to look as if he did, as others in his place might have done. He was concentrating all his intellects for one grand proposition, and could not afford any detachment to defend outposts. "I say, Mr. Butler," said he, "ken ye if Mr. Saddletree's a great lawyer?" "I have no person's word for it but his own," answered Butler, drily; "but undoubtedly he best understands his own qualities." "Umph!" replied the taciturn Dumbiedikes, in a tone which seemed to say, "Mr. Butler, I take your meaning." "In that case," he pursued, "I'll employ my ain man o' business, Nichil Novit (auld Nichil's son, and amaist as gleg as his father), to agent Effie's plea." And having thus displayed more sagacity than Butler expected from him, he courteously touched his gold-laced cocked hat, and by a punch on the ribs, conveyed to Rory Bean, it was his rider's pleasure that he should forthwith proceed homewards; a hint which the quadruped obeyed with that degree of alacrity with which men and animals interpret and obey suggestions that entirely correspond with their own inclinations. Butler resumed his pace, not without a momentary revival of that jealousy which the honest Laird's attention to the family of Deans had at different times excited in his bosom. But he was too generous long to nurse any feeling which was allied to selfishness. "He is," said Butler to himself, "rich in what I want; why should I feel vexed that he has the heart to dedicate some of his pelf to render them services, which I can only form the empty wish of executing? In God's name, let us each do what we can. May she be but happy!--saved from the misery and disgrace that seems impending--Let me but find the means of preventing the fearful experiment of this evening, and farewell to other thoughts, though my heart-strings break in parting with them!" He redoubled his pace, and soon stood before the door of the Tolbooth, or rather before the entrance where the door had formerly been placed. His interview with the mysterious stranger, the message to Jeanie, his agitating conversation with her on the subject of breaking off their mutual engagements, and the interesting scene with old Deans, had so entirely occupied his mind as to drown even recollection of the tragical event which he had witnessed the preceding evening. His attention was not recalled to it by the groups who stood scattered on the street in conversation, which they hushed when strangers approached, or by the bustling search of the agents of the city police, supported by small parties of the military, or by the appearance of the Guard-House, before which were treble sentinels, or, finally, by the subdued and intimidated looks of the lower orders of society, who, conscious that they were liable to suspicion, if they were not guilty of accession to a riot likely to be strictly inquired into, glided about with an humble and dismayed aspect, like men whose spirits being exhausted in the revel and the dangers of a desperate debauch over-night, are nerve-shaken, timorous, and unenterprising on the succeeding day. None of these symptoms of alarm and trepidation struck Butler, whose mind was occupied with a different, and to him still more interesting subject, until he stood before the entrance to the prison, and saw it defended by a double file of grenadiers, instead of bolts and bars. Their "Stand, stand!" the blackened appearance of the doorless gateway, and the winding staircase and apartments of the Tolbooth, now open to the public eye, recalled the whole proceedings of the eventful night. Upon his requesting to speak with Effie Deans, the same tall, thin, silver-haired turnkey, whom he had seen on the preceding evening, made his appearance, "I think," he replied to Butler's request of admission, with true Scottish indirectness, "ye will be the same lad that was for in to see her yestreen?" Butler admitted he was the same person. "And I am thinking," pursued the turnkey, "that ye speered at me when we locked up, and if we locked up earlier on account of Porteous?" "Very likely I might make some such observation," said Butler; "but the question now is, can I see Effie Deans?" "I dinna ken--gang in by, and up the turnpike stair, and turn till the ward on the left hand." The old man followed close behind him, with his keys in his hand, not forgetting even that huge one which had once opened and shut the outward gate of his dominions, though at present it was but an idle and useless burden. No sooner had Butler entered the room to which he was directed, than the experienced hand of the warder selected the proper key, and locked it on the outside. At first Butler conceived this manoeuvre was only an effect of the man's habitual and official caution and jealousy. But when he heard the hoarse command, "Turn out the guard!" and immediately afterwards heard the clash of a sentinel's arms, as he was posted at the door of his apartment, he again called out to the turnkey, "My good friend, I have business of some consequence with Effie Deans, and I beg to see her as soon as possible." No answer was returned. "If it be against your rules to admit me," repeated Butler, in a still louder tone, "to see the prisoner, I beg you will tell me so, and let me go about my business.--_Fugit irrevocabile tempus!_" muttered he to himself. "If ye had business to do, ye suld hae dune it before ye cam here," replied the man of keys from the outside; "yell find it's easier wunnin in than wunnin out here--there's sma' likelihood o' another Porteous mob coming to rabble us again--the law will haud her ain now, neighbour, and that yell find to your cost." "What do you mean by that, sir?" retorted Butler. "You must mistake me for some other person. My name is Reuben Butler, preacher of the gospel." "I ken that weel eneugh," said the turnkey. "Well, then, if you know me, I have a right to know from you in return, what warrant you have for detaining me; that, I know, is the right of every British subject." "Warrant!" said the jailor,--"the warrant's awa to Libberton wi' twa sheriff officers seeking ye. If ye had staid at hame, as honest men should do, ye wad hae seen the warrant; but if ye come to be incarcerated of your ain accord, wha can help it, my jo?" "'So I cannot see Effie Deans, then," said Butler; "and you are determined not to let me out?" "Troth will I no, neighbour," answered the old man, doggedly; "as for Effie Deans, ye'll hae eneuch ado to mind your ain business, and let her mind hers; and for letting you out, that maun be as the magistrate will determine. And fare ye weel for a bit, for I maun see Deacon Sawyers put on ane or twa o' the doors that your quiet folk broke down yesternight, Mr. Butler." There was something in this exquisitely provoking, but there was also something darkly alarming. To be imprisoned, even on a false accusation, has something in it disagreeable and menacing even to men of more constitutional courage than Butler had to boast; for although he had much of that resolution which arises from a sense of duty and an honourable desire to discharge it, yet, as his imagination was lively, and his frame of body delicate, he was far from possessing that cool insensibility to danger which is the happy portion of men of stronger health, more firm nerves, and less acute sensibility. An indistinct idea of peril, which he could neither understand nor ward off, seemed to float before his eyes. He tried to think over the events of the preceding night, in hopes of discovering some means of explaining or vindicating his conduct for appearing among the mob, since it immediately occurred to him that his detention must be founded on that circumstance. And it was with anxiety that he found he could not recollect to have been under the observation of any disinterested witness in the attempts that he made from time to time to expostulate with the rioters, and to prevail on them to release him. The distress of Deans's family, the dangerous rendezvous which Jeanie had formed, and which he could not now hope to interrupt, had also their share in his unpleasant reflections. Yet, impatient as he was to receive an _e'claircissement_ upon the cause of his confinement, and if possible to obtain his liberty, he was affected with a trepidation which seemed no good omen; when, after remaining an hour in this solitary apartment, he received a summons to attend the sitting magistrate. He was conducted from prison strongly guarded by a party of soldiers, with a parade of precaution, that, however ill-timed and unnecessary, is generally displayed _after_ an event, which such precaution, if used in time, might have prevented. He was introduced into the Council Chamber, as the place is called where the magistrates hold their sittings, and which was then at a little distance from the prison. One or two of the senators of the city were present, and seemed about to engage in the examination of an individual who was brought forward to the foot of the long green-covered table round which the council usually assembled. "Is that the preacher?" said one of the magistrates, as the city officer in attendance introduced Butler. The man answered in the affirmative. "Let him sit down there for an instant; we will finish this man's business very briefly." "Shall we remove Mr. Butler?" queried the assistant. "It is not necessary--Let him remain where he is." Butler accordingly sate down on a bench at the bottom of the apartment, attended by one of his keepers. It was a large room, partially and imperfectly lighted; but by chance, or the skill of the architect, who might happen to remember the advantage which might occasionally be derived from such an arrangement, one window was so placed as to throw a strong light at the foot of the table at which prisoners were usually posted for examination, while the upper end, where the examinants sate, was thrown into shadow. Butler's eyes were instantly fixed on the person whose examination was at present proceeding, in the idea that he might recognise some one of the conspirators of the former night. But though the features of this man were sufficiently marked and striking, he could not recollect that he had ever seen them before. The complexion of this person was dark, and his age somewhat advanced. He wore his own hair, combed smooth down, and cut very short. It was jet black, slightly curled by nature, and already mottled with grey. The man's face expressed rather knavery than vice, and a disposition to sharpness, cunning, and roguery, more than the traces of stormy and indulged passions. His sharp quick black eyes, acute features, ready sardonic smile, promptitude and effrontery, gave him altogether what is called among the vulgar a _knowing_ look, which generally implies a tendency to knavery. At a fair or market, you could not for a moment have doubted that he was a horse-jockey, intimate with all the tricks of his trade; yet, had you met him on a moor, you would not have apprehended any violence from him. His dress was also that of a horse-dealer--a close-buttoned jockey-coat, or wrap-rascal, as it was then termed, with huge metal buttons, coarse blue upper stockings, called boot-hose because supplying the place of boots, and a slouched hat. He only wanted a loaded whip under his arm and a spur upon one heel, to complete the dress of the character he seemed to represent. "Your name is James Ratcliffe?" said the magistrate. "Ay--always wi' your honour's leave." "That is to say, you could find me another name if I did not like that one?" "Twenty to pick and choose upon, always with your honour's leave," resumed the respondent. "But James Ratcliffe is your present name?--what is your trade?" "I canna just say, distinctly, that I have what ye wad ca' preceesely a trade." "But," repeated the magistrate, "what are your means of living--your occupation?" "Hout tout--your honour, wi' your leave, kens that as weel as I do," replied the examined. "No matter, I want to hear you describe it," said the examinant. "Me describe!--and to your honour!--far be it from Jemmie Ratcliffe," responded the prisoner. "Come, sir, no trifling--I insist on an answer." "Weel, sir," replied the declarant, "I maun make a clean breast, for ye see, wi' your leave, I am looking for favour--Describe my occupation, quo' ye?--troth it will be ill to do that, in a feasible way, in a place like this--but what is't again that the aught command says?" "Thou shalt not steal," answered the magistrate. "Are you sure o' that?" replied the accused.--"Troth, then, my occupation, and that command, are sair at odds, for I read it, thou _shalt_ steal; and that makes an unco difference, though there's but a wee bit word left out." "To cut the matter short, Ratcliffe, you have been a most notorious thief," said the examinant. "I believe Highlands and Lowlands ken that, sir, forby England and Holland," replied Ratcliffe, with the greatest composure and effrontery. "And what d'ye think the end of your calling will be?" said the magistrate. "I could have gien a braw guess yesterday--but I dinna ken sae weel the day," answered the prisoner. "And what would you have said would have been your end, had you been asked the question yesterday?" "Just the gallows," replied Ratcliffe, with the same composure. "You are a daring rascal, sir," said the magistrate; "and how dare you hope times are mended with you to-day?" "Dear, your honour," answered Ratcliffe, "there's muckle difference between lying in prison under sentence of death, and staying there of ane's ain proper accord, when it would have cost a man naething to get up and rin awa--what was to hinder me from stepping out quietly, when the rabble walked awa wi' Jock Porteous yestreen?--and does your honour really think I staid on purpose to be hanged?" "I do not know what you may have proposed to yourself; but I know," said the magistrate, "what the law proposes for you, and that is, to hang you next Wednesday eight days." "Na, na, your honour," said Ratcliffe firmly, "craving your honour's pardon, I'll ne'er believe that till I see it. I have kend the law this mony a year, and mony a thrawart job I hae had wi' her first and last; but the auld jaud is no sae ill as that comes to--I aye fand her bark waur than her bite." "And if you do not expect the gallows, to which you are condemned (for the fourth time to my knowledge), may I beg the favour to know," said the magistrate, "what it is you _do_ expect, in consideration of your not having taken your flight with the rest of the jail-birds, which I will admit was a line of conduct little to have been expected?" "I would never have thought for a moment of staying in that auld gousty toom house," answered Ratcliffe, "but that use and wont had just gien me a fancy to the place, and I'm just expecting a bit post in't." "A post!" exclaimed the magistrate; "a whipping-post, I suppose, you mean?" "Na, na, sir, I had nae thoughts o' a whuppin-post. After having been four times doomed to hang by the neck till I was dead, I think I am far beyond being whuppit." "Then, in Heaven's name, what _did_ you expect?" "Just the post of under-turnkey, for I understand there's a vacancy," said the prisoner; "I wadna think of asking the lockman's* place ower his head; it wadna suit me sae weel as ither folk, for I never could put a beast out o' the way, much less deal wi' a man." * Note H. Hangman, or Lockman. "That's something in your favour," said the magistrate, making exactly the inference to which Ratcliffe was desirous to lead him, though he mantled his art with an affectation of oddity. "But," continued the magistrate, "how do you think you can be trusted with a charge in the prison, when you have broken at your own hand half the jails in Scotland?" "Wi' your honour's leave," said Ratcliffe, "if I kend sae weel how to wun out mysell, it's like I wad be a' the better a hand to keep other folk in. I think they wad ken their business weel that held me in when I wanted to be out, or wan out when I wanted to hand them in." The remark seemed to strike the magistrate, but he made no further immediate observation, only desired Ratcliffe to be removed. When this daring and yet sly freebooter was out of hearing, the magistrate asked the city clerk, "what he thought of the fellow's assurance?" "It's no for me to say, sir," replied the clerk; "but if James Ratcliffe be inclined to turn to good, there is not a man e'er came within the ports of the burgh could be of sae muckle use to the Good Town in the thief and lock-up line of business. I'll speak to Mr. Sharpitlaw about him." Upon Ratcliffe's retreat, Butler was placed at the table for examination. The magistrate conducted his inquiry civilly, but yet in a manner which gave him to understand that he laboured under strong suspicion. With a frankness which at once became his calling and character, Butler avowed his involuntary presence at the murder of Porteous, and, at the request of the magistrate, entered into a minute detail of the circumstances which attended that unhappy affair. All the particulars, such as we have narrated, were taken minutely down by the clerk from Butler's dictation. When the narrative was concluded, the cross-examination commenced, which it is a painful task even for the most candid witness to undergo, since a story, especially if connected with agitating and alarming incidents, can scarce be so clearly and distinctly told, but that some ambiguity and doubt may be thrown upon it by a string of successive and minute interrogatories. The magistrate commenced by observing, that Butler had said his object was to return to the village of Libberton, but that he was interrupted by the mob at the West Port. "Is the West Port your usual way of leaving town when you go to Libberton?" said the magistrate, with a sneer. "No, certainly," answered Butler, with the haste of a man anxious to vindicate the accuracy of his evidence; "but I chanced to be nearer that port than any other, and the hour of shutting the gates was on the point of striking." "That was unlucky," said the magistrate, drily. "Pray, being, as you say, under coercion and fear of the lawless multitude, and compelled to accompany them through scenes disagreeable to all men of humanity, and more especially irreconcilable to the profession of a minister, did you not attempt to struggle, resist, or escape from their violence?" Butler replied, "that their numbers prevented him from attempting resistance, and their vigilance from effecting his escape." "That was unlucky," again repeated the magistrate, in the same dry inacquiescent tone of voice and manner. He proceeded with decency and politeness, but with a stiffness which argued his continued suspicion, to ask many questions concerning the behaviour of the mob, the manners and dress of the ringleaders; and when he conceived that the caution of Butler, if he was deceiving him, must be lulled asleep, the magistrate suddenly and artfully returned to former parts of his declaration, and required a new recapitulation of the circumstances, to the minutest and most trivial point, which attended each part of the melancholy scene. No confusion or contradiction, however, occurred, that could countenance the suspicion which he seemed to have adopted against Butler. At length the train of his interrogatories reached Madge Wildfire, at whose name the magistrate and town-clerk exchanged significant glances. If the fate of the Good Town had depended on her careful magistrate's knowing the features and dress of this personage, his inquiries could not have been more particular. But Butler could say almost nothing of this person's features, which were disguised apparently with red paint and soot, like an Indian going to battle, besides the projecting shade of a curch, or coif, which muffled the hair of the supposed female. He declared that he thought he could not know this Madge Wildfire, if placed before him in a different dress, but that he believed he might recognise her voice. The magistrate requested him again to state by what gate he left the city. "By the Cowgate Port," replied Butler. "Was that the nearest road to Libberton?" "No," answered Butler, with embarrassment; "but it was the nearest way to extricate myself from the mob." The clerk and magistrate again exchanged glances. "Is the Cowgate Port a nearer way to Libberton from the Grassmarket than Bristo Port?" "No," replied Butler; "but I had to visit a friend." "Indeed!" said the interrogator--"You were in a hurry to tell the sight you had witnessed, I suppose?" "Indeed I was not," replied Butler; "nor did I speak on the subject the whole time I was at St. Leonard's Crags." "Which road did you take to St. Leonard's Crags?" "By the foot of Salisbury Crags," was the reply. "Indeed? you seem partial to circuitous routes," again said the magistrate. "Whom did you see after you left the city?" One by one he obtained a description of every one of the groups who had passed Butler, as already noticed, their number, demeanour, and appearance; and, at length, came to the circumstance of the mysterious stranger in the King's Park. On this subject Butler would fain have remained silent, But the magistrate had no sooner got a slight hint concerning the incident, than he seemed bent to possess himself of the most minute particulars. "Look ye, Mr. Butler," said he, "you are a young man, and bear an excellent character; so much I will myself testify in your favour. But we are aware there has been, at times, a sort of bastard and fiery zeal in some of your order, and those, men irreproachable in other points, which has led them into doing and countenancing great irregularities, by which the peace of the country is liable to be shaken.--I will deal plainly with you. I am not at all satisfied with this story, of your setting out again and again to seek your dwelling by two several roads, which were both circuitous. And, to be frank, no one whom we have examined on this unhappy affair could trace in your appearance any thing like your acting under compulsion. Moreover, the waiters at the Cowgate Port observed something like the trepidation of guilt in your conduct, and declare that you were the first to command them to open the gate, in a tone of authority, as if still presiding over the guards and out-posts of the rabble, who had besieged them the whole night." "God forgive them!" said Butler; "I only asked free passage for myself; they must have much misunderstood, if they did not wilfully misrepresent me." "Well, Mr. Butler," resumed the magistrate, "I am inclined to judge the best and hope the best, as I am sure I wish the best; but you must be frank with me, if you wish to secure my good opinion, and lessen the risk of inconvenience to yourself. You have allowed you saw another individual in your passage through the King's Park to Saint Leonard's Crags--I must know every word which passed betwixt you." Thus closely pressed, Butler, who had no reason for concealing what passed at that meeting, unless because Jeanie Deans was concerned in it, thought it best to tell the whole truth from beginning to end. "Do you suppose," said the magistrate, pausing, "that the young woman will accept an invitation so mysterious?" "I fear she will," replied Butler. "Why do you use the word _fear_ it?" said the magistrate. "Because I am apprehensive for her safety, in meeting at such a time and place, one who had something of the manner of a desperado, and whose message was of a character so inexplicable." "Her safety shall be cared for," said the magistrate. "Mr. Butler, I am concerned I cannot immediately discharge you from confinement, but I hope you will not be long detained.--Remove Mr. Butler, and let him be provided with decent accommodation in all respects." He was conducted back to the prison accordingly; but, in the food offered to him, as well as in the apartment in which he was lodged, the recommendation of the magistrate was strictly attended to. CHAPTER THIRTEENTH. Dark and eerie was the night, And lonely was the way, As Janet, wi' her green mantell, To Miles' Cross she did gae. Old Ballad. Leaving Butler to all the uncomfortable thoughts attached to his new situation, among which the most predominant was his feeling that he was, by his confinement, deprived of all possibility of assisting the family at St. Leonard's in their greatest need, we return to Jeanie Deans, who had seen him depart, without an opportunity of farther explanation, in all that agony of mind with which the female heart bids adieu to the complicated sensations so well described by Coleridge,-- Hopes, and fears that kindle hope, An undistinguishable throng; And gentle wishes long subdued-- Subdued and cherished long. It is not the firmest heart (and Jeanie, under her russet rokelay, had one that would not have disgraced Cato's daughter) that can most easily bid adieu to these soft and mingled emotions. She wept for a few minutes bitterly, and without attempting to refrain from this indulgence of passion. But a moment's recollection induced her to check herself for a grief selfish and proper to her own affections, while her father and sister were plunged into such deep and irretrievable affliction. She drew from her pocket the letter which had been that morning flung into her apartment through an open window, and the contents of which were as singular as the expression was violent and energetic. "If she would save a human being from the most damning guilt, and all its desperate consequences,--if she desired the life an honour of her sister to be saved from the bloody fangs of an unjust law,--if she desired not to forfeit peace of mind here, and happiness hereafter," such was the frantic style of the conjuration, "she was entreated to give a sure, secret, and solitary meeting to the writer. She alone could rescue him," so ran the letter, "and he only could rescue her." He was in such circumstances, the billet farther informed her, that an attempt to bring any witness of their conference, or even to mention to her father, or any other person whatsoever, the letter which requested it, would inevitably prevent its taking place, and ensure the destruction of her sister. The letter concluded with incoherent but violent protestations, that in obeying this summons she had nothing to fear personally. The message delivered to her by Butler from the stranger in the Park tallied exactly with the contents of the letter, but assigned a later hour and a different place of meeting. Apparently the writer of the letter had been compelled to let Butler so far into his confidence, for the sake of announcing this change to Jeanie. She was more than once on the point of producing the billet, in vindication of herself from her lover's half-hinted suspicions. But there is something in stooping to justification which the pride of innocence does not at all times willingly submit to; besides that the threats contained in the letter, in case of her betraying the secret, hung heavy on her heart. It is probable, however, that had they remained longer together, she might have taken the resolution to submit the whole matter to Butler, and be guided by him as to the line of conduct which she should adopt. And when, by the sudden interruption of their conference, she lost the opportunity of doing so, she felt as if she had been unjust to a friend, whose advice might have been highly useful, and whose attachment deserved her full and unreserved confidence. To have recourse to her father upon this occasion, she considered as highly imprudent. There was no possibility of conjecturing in what light the matter might strike old David, whose manner of acting and thinking in extraordinary circumstances depended upon feelings and principles peculiar to himself, the operation of which could not be calculated upon even by those best acquainted with him. To have requested some female friend to have accompanied her to the place of rendezvous, would perhaps have been the most eligible expedient; but the threats of the writer, that betraying his secret would prevent their meeting (on which her sister's safety was said to depend) from taking place at all, would have deterred her from making such a confidence, even had she known a person in whom she thought it could with safety have been reposed. But she knew none such. Their acquaintance with the cottagers in the vicinity had been very slight, and limited to trifling acts of good neighbourhood. Jeanie knew little of them, and what she knew did not greatly incline her to trust any of them. They were of the order of loquacious good-humoured gossips usually found in their situation of life; and their conversation had at all times few charms for a young woman, to whom nature and the circumstance of a solitary life had given a depth of thought and force of character superior to the frivolous part of her sex, whether in high or low degree. Left alone and separated from all earthly counsel, she had recourse to a friend and adviser, whose ear is open to the cry of the poorest and most afflicted of his people. She knelt, and prayed with fervent sincerity, that God would please to direct her what course to follow in her arduous and distressing situation. It was the belief of the time and sect to which she belonged, that special answers to prayer, differing little in their character from divine inspiration, were, as they expressed it, "borne in upon their minds" in answer to their earnest petitions in a crisis of difficulty. Without entering into an abstruse point of divinity, one thing is plain;--namely, that the person who lays open his doubts and distresses in prayer, with feeling and sincerity, must necessarily, in the act of doing so, purify his mind from the dross of worldly passions and interests, and bring it into that state, when the resolutions adopted are likely to be selected rather from a sense of duty, than from any inferior motive. Jeanie arose from her devotions, with her heart fortified to endure affliction, and encouraged to face difficulties. "I will meet this unhappy man," she said to herself--"unhappy he must be, since I doubt he has been the cause of poor Effie's misfortune--but I will meet him, be it for good or ill. My mind shall never cast up to me, that, for fear of what might be said or done to myself, I left that undone that might even yet be the rescue of her." With a mind greatly composed since the adoption of this resolution, she went to attend her father. The old man, firm in the principles of his youth, did not, in outward appearance at least, permit a thought of hit family distress to interfere with the stoical reserve of his countenance and manners. He even chid his daughter for having neglected, in the distress of the morning, some trifling domestic duties which fell under her department. "Why, what meaneth this, Jeanie?" said the old man--"The brown four-year-auld's milk is not seiled yet, nor the bowies put up on the bink. If ye neglect your warldly duties in the day of affliction, what confidence have I that ye mind the greater matters that concern salvation? God knows, our bowies, and our pipkins, and our draps o' milk, and our bits o' bread, are nearer and dearer to us than the bread of life!" Jeanie, not unpleased to hear her father's thoughts thus expand themselves beyond the sphere of his immediate distress, obeyed him, and proceeded to put her household matters in order; while old David moved from place to place about his ordinary employments, scarce showing, unless by a nervous impatience at remaining long stationary, an occasional convulsive sigh, or twinkle of the eyelid, that he was labouring under the yoke of such bitter affliction. The hour of noon came on, and the father and child sat down to their homely repast. In his petition for a blessing on the meal, the poor old man added to his supplication, a prayer that the bread eaten in sadness of heart, and the bitter waters of Marah, might be made as nourishing as those which had been poured forth from a full cup and a plentiful basket and store; and having concluded his benediction, and resumed the bonnet which he had laid "reverently aside," he proceeded to exhort his daughter to eat, not by example indeed, but at least by precept. "The man after God's own heart," he said, "washed and anointed himself, and did eat bread, in order to express his submission under a dispensation of suffering, and it did not become a Christian man or woman so to cling to creature-comforts of wife or bairns"--(here the words became too great, as it were, for his utterance),--"as to forget the fist duty,--submission to the Divine will." To add force to his precept, he took a morsel on his plate, but nature proved too strong even for the powerful feelings with which he endeavoured to bridle it. Ashamed of his weakness, he started up, and ran out of the house, with haste very unlike the deliberation of his usual movements. In less than five minutes he returned, having successfully struggled to recover his ordinary composure of mind and countenance, and affected to colour over his late retreat, by muttering that he thought he heard the "young staig loose in the byre." He did not again trust himself with the subject of his former conversation, and his daughter was glad to see that he seemed to avoid farther discourse on that agitating topic. The hours glided on, as on they must and do pass, whether winged with joy or laden with affliction. The sun set beyond the dusky eminence of the Castle and the screen of western hills, and the close of evening summoned David Deans and his daughter to the family duty of the night. It came bitterly upon Jeanie's recollection, how often, when the hour of worship approached, she used to watch the lengthening shadows, and look out from the door of the house, to see if she could spy her sister's return homeward. Alas! this idle and thoughtless waste of time, to what evils had it not finally led? and was she altogether guiltless, who, noticing Effie's turn to idle and light society, had not called in her father's authority to restrain her?--But I acted for the best, she again reflected, and who could have expected such a growth of evil, from one grain of human leaven, in a disposition so kind, and candid, and generous? As they sate down to the "exercise," as it is called, a chair happened accidentally to stand in the place which Effie usually occupied. David Deans saw his daughter's eyes swim in tears as they were directed towards this object, and pushed it aside, with a gesture of some impatience, as if desirous to destroy every memorial of earthly interest when about to address the Deity. The portion of Scripture was read, the psalm was sung, the prayer was made; and it was remarkable that, in discharging these duties, the old man avoided all passages and expressions, of which Scripture affords so many, that might be considered as applicable to his own domestic misfortune. In doing so it was perhaps his intention to spare the feelings of his daughter, as well as to maintain, in outward show at least, that stoical appearance of patient endurance of all the evil which earth could bring, which was in his opinion essential to the character of one who rated all earthly things at their just estimate of nothingness. When he had finished the duty of the evening, he came up to his daughter, wished her good-night, and, having done so, continued to hold her by the hands for half-a-minute; then drawing her towards him, kissed her forehead, and ejaculated, "The God of Israel bless you, even with the blessings of the promise, my dear bairn!" It was not either in the nature or habits of David Deans to seem a fond father; nor was he often observed to experience, or at least to evince, that fulness of the heart which seeks to expand itself in tender expressions or caresses even to those who were dearest to him. On the contrary, he used to censure this as a degree of weakness in several of his neighbours, and particularly in poor widow Butler. It followed, however, from the rarity of such emotions in this self-denied and reserved man, that his children attached to occasional marks of his affection and approbation a degree of high interest and solemnity; well considering them as evidences of feelings which were only expressed when they became too intense for suppression or concealment. With deep emotion, therefore, did he bestow, and his daughter receive, this benediction and paternal caress. "And you, my dear father," exclaimed Jeanie, when the door had closed upon the venerable old man, "may you have purchased and promised blessings multiplied upon you--upon _you,_ who walk in this world as though you were not of the world, and hold all that it can give or take away but as the _midges_ that the sun-blink brings out, and the evening wind sweeps away!" She now made preparation for her night-walk. Her father slept in another part of the dwelling, and, regular in all his habits, seldom or never left his apartment when he had betaken himself to it for the evening. It was therefore easy for her to leave the house unobserved, so soon as the time approached at which she was to keep her appointment. But the step she was about to take had difficulties and terrors in her own eyes, though she had no reason to apprehend her father's interference. Her life had been spent in the quiet, uniform, and regular seclusion of their peaceful and monotonous household. The very hour which some damsels of the present day, as well of her own as of higher degree, would consider as the natural period of commencing an evening of pleasure, brought, in her opinion, awe and solemnity in it; and the resolution she had taken had a strange, daring, and adventurous character, to which she could hardly reconcile herself when the moment approached for putting it into execution. Her hands trembled as she snooded her fair hair beneath the riband, then the only ornament or cover which young unmarried women wore on their head, and as she adjusted the scarlet tartan screen or muffler made of plaid, which the Scottish women wore, much in the fashion of the black silk veils still a part of female dress in the Netherlands. A sense of impropriety as well as of danger pressed upon her, as she lifted the latch of her paternal mansion to leave it on so wild an expedition, and at so late an hour, unprotected, and without the knowledge of her natural guardian. When she found herself abroad and in the open fields, additional subjects of apprehension crowded upon her. The dim cliffs and scattered rocks, interspersed with greensward, through which she had to pass to the place of appointment, as they glimmered before her in a clear autumn night, recalled to her memory many a deed of violence, which, according to tradition, had been done and suffered among them. In earlier days they had been the haunt of robbers and assassins, the memory of whose crimes is preserved in the various edicts which the council of the city, and even the parliament of Scotland, had passed for dispersing their bands, and ensuring safety to the lieges, so near the precincts of the city. The names of these criminals, and, of their atrocities, were still remembered in traditions of the scattered cottages and the neighbouring suburb. In latter times, as we have already noticed, the sequestered and broken character of the ground rendered it a fit theatre for duels and rencontres among the fiery youth of the period. Two or three of these incidents, all sanguinary, and one of them fatal in its termination, had happened since Deans came to live at St. Leonard's. His daughter's recollections, therefore, were of blood and horror as she pursued the small scarce-tracked solitary path, every step of which conveyed het to a greater distance from help, and deeper into the ominous seclusion of these unhallowed precincts. As the moon began to peer forth on the scene with a doubtful, flitting, and solemn light, Jeanie's apprehensions took another turn, too peculiar to her rank and country to remain unnoticed. But to trace its origin will require another chapter. CHAPTER FOURTEENTH. The spirit I have seen May be the devil. And the devil has power To assume a pleasing shape. Hamlet. Witchcraft and demonology, as we have already had occasion to remark, were at this period believed in by almost all ranks, but more especially among the stricter classes of Presbyterians, whose government, when their party were at the head of the state, had been much sullied by their eagerness to inquire into and persecute these imaginary crimes. Now, in this point of view, also, Saint Leonard's Crags and the adjacent Chase were a dreaded and ill-reputed district. Not only had witches held their meetings there, but even of very late years the enthusiast or impostor, mentioned in the _Pandaemonium_ of Richard Bovet, Gentleman,* had, among the recesses of these romantic cliffs, found his way into the hidden retreats where the fairies revel in the bowels of the earth. * Note I. The Fairy Boy of Leith. With all these legends Jeanie Deans was too well acquainted to escape that strong impression which they usually make on the imagination. Indeed, relations of this ghostly kind had been familiar to her from her infancy, for they were the only relief which her father's conversation afforded from controversial argument, or the gloomy history of the strivings and testimonies, escapes, captures, tortures, and executions of those martyrs of the Covenant, with whom it was his chiefest boast to say he had been acquainted. In the recesses of mountains, in caverns, and in morasses, to which these persecuted enthusiasts were so ruthlessly pursued, they conceived they had often to contend with the visible assaults of the Enemy of mankind, as in the cities, and in the cultivated fields, they were exposed to those of the tyrannical government and their soldiery. Such were the terrors which made one of their gifted seers exclaim, when his companion returned to him, after having left him alone in a haunted cavern in Sorn in Galloway, "It is hard living in this world-incarnate devils above the earth, and devils under the earth! Satan has been here since ye went away, but I have dismissed him by resistance; we will be no more troubled with him this night." David Deans believed this, and many other such ghostly encounters and victories, on the faith of the Ansars, or auxiliaries of the banished prophets. This event was beyond David's remembrance. But he used to tell with great awe, yet not without a feeling of proud superiority to his auditors, how he himself had been present at a field-meeting at Crochmade, when the duty of the day was interrupted by the apparition of a tall black man, who, in the act of crossing a ford to join the congregation, lost ground, and was carried down apparently by the force of the stream. All were instantly at work to assist him, but with so little success, that ten or twelve stout men, who had hold of the rope which they had cast in to his aid, were rather in danger to be dragged into the stream, and lose their own lives, than likely to save that of the supposed perishing man. "But famous John Semple of Carspharn," David Deans used to say with exultation, "saw the whaup in the rape.--'Quit the rope,' he cried to us (for I that was but a callant had a hand o' the rape mysell), 'it is the Great Enemy! he will burn, but not drown; his design is to disturb the good wark, by raising wonder and confusion in your minds; to put off from your spirits all that ye hae heard and felt.'--Sae we let go the rape," said David, "and he went adown the water screeching and bullering like a Bull of Bashan, as he's ca'd in Scripture."* * Note J. Intercourse of the Covenanters with the invisible world. Trained in these and similar legends, it was no wonder that Jeanie began to feel an ill-defined apprehension, not merely of the phantoms which might beset her way, but of the quality, nature, and purpose of the being who had thus appointed her a meeting, at a place and hour of horror, and at a time when her mind must be necessarily full of those tempting and ensnaring thoughts of grief and despair, which were supposed to lay sufferers particularly open to the temptations of the Evil One. If such an idea had crossed even Butler's well-informed mind, it was calculated to make a much stronger impression upon hers. Yet firmly believing the possibility of an encounter so terrible to flesh and blood, Jeanie, with a degree of resolution of which we cannot sufficiently estimate the merit, because the incredulity of the age has rendered us strangers to the nature and extent of her feelings, persevered in her determination not to omit an opportunity of doing something towards saving her sister, although, in the attempt to avail herself of it, she might be exposed to dangers so dreadful to her imagination. So, like Christiana in the Pilgrim's Progress, when traversing with a timid yet resolved step the terrors of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, she glided on by rock and stone, "now in glimmer and now in gloom," as her path lay through moonlight or shadow, and endeavoured to overpower the suggestions of fear, sometimes by fixing her mind upon the distressed condition of her sister, and the duty she lay under to afford her aid, should that be in her power; and more frequently by recurring in mental prayer to the protection of that Being to whom night is as noon-day. Thus drowning at one time her fears by fixing her mind on a subject of overpowering interest, and arguing them down at others by referring herself to the protection of the Deity, she at length approached the place assigned for this mysterious conference. It was situated in the depth of the valley behind Salisbury Crags, which has for a background the north-western shoulder of the mountain called Arthur's Seat, on whose descent still remain the ruins of what was once a chapel, or hermitage, dedicated to St. Anthony the Eremite. A better site for such a building could hardly have been selected; for the chapel, situated among the rude and pathless cliffs, lies in a desert, even in the immediate vicinity of a rich, populous, and tumultuous capital: and the hum of the city might mingle with the orisons of the recluses, conveying as little of worldly interest as if it had been the roar of the distant ocean. Beneath the steep ascent on which these ruins are still visible, was, and perhaps is still pointed out, the place where the wretch Nichol Muschat, who has been already mentioned in these pages, had closed a long scene of cruelty towards his unfortunate wife, by murdering her, with circumstances of uncommon barbarity.* * See Note G. Muschat's Cairn. The execration in which the man's crime was held extended itself to the place where it was perpetrated, which was marked by a small _cairn,_ or heap of stones, composed of those which each chance passenger had thrown there in testimony of abhorrence, and on the principle, it would seem, of the ancient British malediction, "May you have a cairn for your burial-place!" [Illustration: Muschat's Cairn--221] As our heroine approached this ominous and unhallowed spot, she paused and looked to the moon, now rising broad in the north-west, and shedding a more distinct light than it had afforded during her walk thither. Eyeing the planet for a moment, she then slowly and fearfully turned her head towards the cairn, from which it was at first averted. She was at first disappointed. Nothing was visible beside the little pile of stones, which shone grey in the moonlight. A multitude of confused suggestions rushed on her mind. Had her correspondent deceived her, and broken his appointment?--was he too tardy at the appointment he had made?--or had some strange turn of fate prevented him from appearing as he proposed?--or, if he were an unearthly being, as her secret apprehensions suggested, was it his object merely to delude her with false hopes, and put her to unnecessary toil and terror, according to the nature, as she had heard, of those wandering demons?--or did he purpose to blast her with the sudden horrors of his presence when she had come close to the place of rendezvous? These anxious reflections did not prevent her approaching to the cairn with a pace that, though slow, was determined. When she was within two yards of the heap of stones, a figure rose suddenly up from behind it, and Jeanie scarce forbore to scream aloud at what seemed the realisation of the most frightful of her anticipations. She constrained herself to silence, however, and, making a dead pause, suffered the figure to open the conversation, which he did, by asking, in a voice which agitation rendered tremulous and hollow, "Are you the sister of that ill-fated young woman?" "I am--I am the sister of Effie Deans!" exclaimed Jeanie. "And as ever you hope God will hear you at your need, tell me, if you can tell, what can be done to save her!" "I do _not_ hope God will hear me at my need," was the singular answer. "I do not deserve--I do not expect he will." This desperate language he uttered in a tone calmer than that with which he had at first spoken, probably because the shook of first addressing her was what he felt most difficult to overcome. Jeanie remained mute with horror to hear language expressed so utterly foreign to all which she had ever been acquainted with, that it sounded in her ears rather like that of a fiend than of a human being. The stranger pursued his address to her, without seeming to notice her surprise. "You see before you a wretch, predestined to evil here and hereafter." "For the sake of Heaven, that hears and sees us," said Jeanie, "dinna speak in this desperate fashion! The gospel is sent to the chief of sinners--to the most miserable among the miserable." "Then should I have my own share therein," said the stranger, "if you call it sinful to have been the destruction of the mother that bore me--of the friend that loved me--of the woman that trusted me--of the innocent child that was born to me. If to have done all this is to be a sinner, and survive it is to be miserable, then am I most guilty and most miserable indeed." "Then you are the wicked cause of my sister's ruin?" said Jeanie, with a natural touch of indignation expressed in her tone of voice. "Curse me for it, if you will," said the stranger; "I have well deserved it at your hand." "It is fitter for me," said Jeanie, "to pray to God to forgive you." "Do as you will, how you will, or what you will," he replied, with vehemence; "only promise to obey my directions, and save your sister's life." "I must first know," said Jeanie, "the means you would have me use in her behalf." "No!--you must first swear--solemnly swear, that you will employ them when I make them known to you." "Surely, it is needless to swear that I will do all that is lawful to a Christian to save the life of my sister?" "I will have no reservation!" thundered the stranger; "lawful or unlawful, Christian or heathen, you shall swear to do my hest, and act by my counsel, or--you little know whose wrath you provoke!" "I will think on what you have said," said Jeanie, who began to get much alarmed at the frantic vehemence of his manner, and disputed in her own mind, whether she spoke to a maniac, or an apostate spirit incarnate--"I will think on what you say, and let you ken to-morrow." "To-morrow!" exclaimed the man with a laugh of scorn--"And where will I be to-morrow?--or, where will you be to-night, unless you swear to walk by my counsel?--there was one accursed deed done at this spot before now; and there shall be another to match it, unless you yield up to my guidance body and soul." As he spoke, he offered a pistol at the unfortunate young woman. She neither fled nor fainted, but sunk on her knees, and asked him to spare her life. "Is that all you have to say?" said the unmoved ruffian. "Do not dip your hands in the blood of a defenceless creature that has trusted to you," said Jeanie, still on her knees. "Is that all you can say for your life?--Have you no promise to give?--Will you destroy your sister, and compel me to shed more blood?" "I can promise nothing," said Jeanie, "which is unlawful for a Christian." He cocked the weapon, and held it towards her. "May God forgive you!" she said, pressing her hands forcibly against her eyes. "D--n!" muttered the man; and, turning aside from her, he uncocked the pistol, and replaced it in his pocket--"I am a villain," he said, "steeped in guilt and wretchedness, but not wicked enough to do you any harm! I only wished to terrify you into my measures--She hears me not--she is gone!--Great God! what a wretch am I become!" As he spoke, she recovered herself from an agony which partook of the bitterness of death; and, in a minute or two, through the strong exertion of her natural sense and courage, collected herself sufficiently to understand he intended her no personal injury. "No!" he repeated; "I would not add to the murder of your sister, and of her child, that of any one belonging to her!--Mad, frantic, as I am, and unrestrained by either fear or mercy, given up to the possession of an evil being, and forsaken by all that is good, I would not hurt you, were the world offered me for a bribe! But, for the sake of all that is dear to you, swear you will follow my counsel. Take this weapon, shoot me through the head, and with your own hand revenge your sister's wrong, only follow the course--the only course, by which her life can be saved." "Alas! is she innocent or guilty?" "She is guiltless--guiltless of every thing, but of having trusted a villain!--Yet, had it not been for those that were worse than I am--yes, worse than I am, though I am bad indeed--this misery had not befallen." "And my sister's child--does it live?" said Jeanie. "No; it was murdered--the new-born infant was barbarously murdered," he uttered in a low, yet stern and sustained voice.--"but," he added hastily, "not by her knowledge or consent." "Then, why cannot the guilty be brought to justice, and the innocent freed?" "Torment me not with questions which can serve no purpose," he sternly replied--"The deed was done by those who are far enough from pursuit, and safe enough from discovery!--No one can save Effie but yourself." "Woe's me! how is it in my power?" asked Jeanie, in despondency. "Hearken to me!--You have sense--you can apprehend my meaning--I will trust you. Your sister is innocent of the crime charged against her" "Thank God for that!" said Jeanie. "Be still and hearken!--The person who assisted her in her illness murdered the child; but it was without the mother's knowledge or consent--She is therefore guiltless, as guiltless as the unhappy innocent, that but gasped a few minutes in this unhappy world--the better was its hap, to be so soon at rest. She is innocent as that infant, and yet she must die--it is impossible to clear her of the law!" "Cannot the wretches be discovered, and given up to punishment?" said Jeanie. "Do you think you will persuade those who are hardened in guilt to die to save another?--Is that the reed you would lean to?" "But you said there was a remedy," again gasped out the terrified young woman. "There is," answered the stranger, "and it is in your own hands. The blow which the law aims cannot be broken by directly encountering it, but it may be turned aside. You saw your sister during the period preceding the birth of her child--what is so natural as that she should have mentioned her condition to you? The doing so would, as their cant goes, take the case from under the statute, for it removes the quality of concealment. I know their jargon, and have had sad cause to know it; and the quality of concealment is essential to this statutory offence.* * Note K. Child Murder. Nothing is so natural as that Effie should have mentioned her condition to you--think--reflect--I am positive that she did." "Woe's me!" said Jeanie, "she never spoke to me on the subject, but grat sorely when I spoke to her about her altered looks, and the change on her spirits." "You asked her questions on the subject?" he said eagerly. "You _must_ remember her answer was, a confession that she had been ruined by a villain--yes, lay a strong emphasis on that--a cruel false villain call it--any other name is unnecessary; and that she bore under her bosom the consequences of his guilt and her folly; and that he had assured her he would provide safely for her approaching illness.--Well he kept his word!" These last words he spoke as if it were to himself, and with a violent gesture of self-accusation, and then calmly proceeded, "You will remember all this?--That is all that is necessary to be said." "But I cannot remember," answered Jeanie, with simplicity, "that which Effie never told me." "Are you so dull--so very dull of apprehension?" he exclaimed, suddenly grasping her arm, and holding it firm in his hand. "I tell you" (speaking between his teeth, and under his breath, but with great energy), "you _must_ remember that she told you all this, whether she ever said a syllable of it or no. You must repeat this tale, in which there is no falsehood, except in so far as it was not told to you, before these Justices--Justiciary--whatever they call their bloodthirsty court, and save your sister from being murdered, and them from becoming murderers. Do not hesitate--I pledge life and salvation, that in saying what I have said, you will only speak the simple truth." "But," replied Jeanie, whose judgment was too accurate not to see the sophistry of this argument, "I shall be man-sworn in the very thing in which my testimony is wanted, for it is the concealment for which poor Effie is blamed, and you would make me tell a falsehood anent it." "I see," he said, "my first suspicions of you were right, and that you will let your sister, innocent, fair, and guiltless, except in trusting a villain, die the death of a murderess, rather than bestow the breath of your mouth and the sound of your voice to save her." "I wad ware the best blood in my body to keep her skaithless," said Jeanie, weeping in bitter agony, "but I canna change right into wrang, or make that true which is false." "Foolish, hardhearted girl," said the stranger, "are you afraid of what they may do to you? I tell you, even the retainers of the law, who course life as greyhounds do hares, will rejoice at the escape of a creature so young--so beautiful, that they will not suspect your tale; that, if they did suspect it, they would consider you as deserving, not only of forgiveness, but of praise for your natural affection." "It is not man I fear," said Jeanie, looking upward; "the God, whose name I must call on to witness the truth of what I say, he will know the falsehood." "And he will know the motive," said the stranger, eagerly; "he will know that you are doing this--not for lucre of gain, but to save the life of the innocent, and prevent the commission of a worse crime than that which the law seeks to avenge." "He has given us a law," said Jeanie, "for the lamp of our path; if we stray from it we err against knowledge--I may not do evil, even that good may come out of it. But you--you that ken all this to be true, which I must take on your word--you that, if I understood what you said e'en now, promised her shelter and protection in her travail, why do not _you_ step forward, and bear leal and soothfast evidence in her behalf, as ye may with a clear conscience?" "To whom do you talk of a clear conscience, woman?" said he, with a sudden fierceness which renewed her terrors,--"to _me?_--I have not known one for many a year. Bear witness in her behalf?--a proper witness, that even to speak these few words to a woman of so little consequence as yourself, must choose such an hour and such a place as this. When you see owls and bats fly abroad, like larks, in the sunshine, you may expect to see such as I am in the assemblies of men.--Hush--listen to that." A voice was heard to sing one of those wild and monotonous strains so common in Scotland, and to which the natives of that country chant their old ballads. The sound ceased--then came nearer, and was renewed; the stranger listened attentively, still holding Jeanie by the arm (as she stood by him in motionless terror), as if to prevent her interrupting the strain by speaking or stirring. When the sounds were renewed, the words were distinctly audible: "When the glede's in the blue cloud, The lavrock lies still; When the hound's in' the green-wood, The hind keeps the hill." The person who sung kept a strained and powerful voice at its highest pitch, so that it could be heard at a very considerable distance. As the song ceased, they might hear a stifled sound, as of steps and whispers of persons approaching them. The song was again raised, but the tune was changed: "O sleep ye sound, Sir James, she said, When ye suld rise and ride; There's twenty men, wi' bow and blade, Are seeking where ye hide." "I dare stay no longer," said the stranger; "return home, or remain till they come up--you have nothing to fear--but do not tell you saw me--your sister's fate is in your hands." So saying, he turned from her, and with a swift, yet cautiously noiseless step, plunged into the darkness on the side most remote from the sounds which they heard approaching, and was soon lost to her sight. Jeanie remained by the cairn terrified beyond expression, and uncertain whether she ought to fly homeward with all the speed she could exert, or wait the approach of those who were advancing towards her. This uncertainty detained her so long, that she now distinctly saw two or three figures already so near to her, that a precipitate flight would have been equally fruitless and impolitic. CHAPTER FIFTEENTH. She speaks things in doubt, That carry but half sense: her speech is nothing, Yet the unshaped use of it doth move The hearers to collection; they aim at it, And botch the words up to fit their own thoughts. Hamlet. Like the digressive poet Ariosto, I find myself under the necessity of connecting the branches of my story, by taking up the adventures of another of the characters, and bringing them down to the point at which we have left those of Jeanie Deans. It is not, perhaps, the most artificial way of telling a story, but it has the advantage of sparing the necessity of resuming what a knitter (if stocking-looms have left such a person in the land) might call our "dropped stitches;" a labour in which the author generally toils much, without getting credit for his pains. "I could risk a sma' wad," said the clerk to the magistrate, "that this rascal Ratcliffe, if he were insured of his neck's safety, could do more than ony ten of our police-people and constables to help us to get out of this scrape of Porteous's. He is weel acquent wi' a' the smugglers, thieves, and banditti about Edinburgh; and, indeed, he may be called the father of a' the misdoers in Scotland, for he has passed amang them for these twenty years by the name of Daddie Rat." "A bonny sort of a scoundrel," replied the magistrate, "to expect a place under the city!" "Begging your honour's pardon," said the city's procurator-fiscal, upon whom the duties of superintendent of police devolved, "Mr. Fairscrieve is perfectly in the right. It is just sic as Ratcliffe that the town needs in my department; an' if sae be that he's disposed to turn his knowledge to the city service, yell no find a better man.--Ye'll get nae saints to be searchers for uncustomed goods, or for thieves and sic like;--and your decent sort of men, religious professors, and broken tradesmen, that are put into the like o' sic trust, can do nae gude ava. They are feared for this, and they are scrupulous about that, and they arena free to tell a lie, though it may be for the benefit of the city; and they dinna like to be out at irregular hours, and in a dark cauld night, and they like a clout ower the crown far waur; and sae between the fear o' God, and the fear o' man, and the fear o' getting a sair throat, or sair banes, there's a dozen o' our city-folk, baith waiters, and officers, and constables, that can find out naething but a wee bit skulduddery for the benefit of the Kirk treasurer. Jock Porteous, that's stiff and stark, puir fallow, was worth a dozen o' them; for he never had ony fears, or scruples, or doubts, or conscience, about onything your honours bade him." "He was a gude servant o' the town," said the Bailie, "though he was an ower free-living man. But if you really think this rascal Ratcliffe could do us ony service in discovering these malefactors, I would insure him life, reward, and promotion. It's an awsome thing this mischance for the city, Mr. Fairscrieve. It will be very ill taen wi' abune stairs. Queen Caroline, God bless her! is a woman--at least I judge sae, and it's nae treason to speak my mind sae far--and ye maybe ken as weel as I do, for ye hae a housekeeper, though ye arena a married man, that women are wilfu', and downa bide a slight. And it will sound ill in her ears, that sic a confused mistake suld come to pass, and naebody sae muckle as to be put into the Tolbooth about it." "If ye thought that, sir," said the procurator-fiscal, "we could easily clap into the prison a few blackguards upon suspicion. It will have a gude active look, and I hae aye plenty on my list, that wadna be a hair the waur of a week or twa's imprisonment; and if ye thought it no strictly just, ye could be just the easier wi' them the neist time they did onything to deserve it; they arena the sort to be lang o' gieing ye an opportunity to clear scores wi' them on that account." "I doubt that will hardly do in this case, Mr. Sharpitlaw," returned the town-clerk; "they'll run their letters,* and be adrift again, before ye ken where ye are." * A Scottish form of procedure, answering, in some respects, to the English Habeas Corpus. "I will speak to the Lord Provost," said the magistrate, "about Ratcliffe's business. Mr. Sharpitlaw, you will go with me, and receive instructions--something may be made too out of this story of Butler's and his unknown gentleman--I know no business any man has to swagger about in the King's Park, and call himself the devil, to the terror of honest folks, who dinna care to hear mair about the devil than is said from the pulpit on the Sabbath. I cannot think the preacher himsell wad be heading the mob, though the time has been, they hae been as forward in a bruilzie as their neighbours." "But these times are lang by," said Mr. Sharpitlaw. "In my father's time, there was mair search for silenced ministers about the Bow-head and the Covenant Close, and all the tents of Kedar, as they ca'd the dwellings o' the godly in those days, than there's now for thieves and vagabonds in the Laigh Calton and the back o' the Canongate. But that time's weel by, an it bide. And if the Bailie will get me directions and authority from the Provost, I'll speak wi' Daddie Rat mysell; for I'm thinking I'll make mair out o' him than ye'll do." Mr. Sharpitlaw, being necessarily a man of high trust, was accordingly empowered, in the course of the day, to make such arrangements as might seem in the emergency most advantageous for the Good Town. He went to the jail accordingly, and saw Ratcliffe in private. The relative positions of a police-officer and a professed thief bear a different complexion, according to circumstances. The most obvious simile of a hawk pouncing upon his prey is often least applicable. Sometimes the guardian of justice has the air of a cat watching a mouse, and, while he suspends his purpose of springing upon the pilferer, takes care so to calculate his motions that he shall not get beyond his power. Sometimes, more passive still, he uses the art of fascination ascribed to the rattlesnake, and contents himself with glaring on the victim, through all his devious flutterings; certain that his terror, confusion, and disorder of ideas, will bring him into his jaws at last. The interview between Ratcliffe and Sharpitlaw had an aspect different from all these. They sat for five minutes silent, on opposite sides of a small table, and looked fixedly at each other, with a sharp, knowing, and alert cast of countenance, not unmingled with an inclination to laugh, and resembled more than anything else, two dogs, who, preparing for a game at romps, are seen to couch down, and remain in that posture for a little time, watching each other's movements, and waiting which shall begin the game. "So, Mr. Ratcliffe," said the officer, conceiving it suited his dignity to speak first, "you give up business, I find?" "Yes, sir," replied Ratcliffe; "I shall be on that lay nae mair--and I think that will save your folk some trouble, Mr. Sharpitlaw?" "Which Jock DaIgleish" (then finisher of the law* in the Scottish metropolis) "wad save them as easily," returned the procurator-fiscal. * [Among the flying leaves of the period, there is one called "Sutherland's Lament for the loss of his post,--with his advice, to John Daglees his successor." He was whipped and banished 25th July 1722. There is another, called the Speech and dying words of John Dalgleish, lockman _alias_ hangman of Edinburgh, containing these lines:-- Death, I've a Favour for to beg, That ye wad only gie a Fleg, And spare my Life; As I did to ill-hanged Megg, The Webster's Wife."] "Ay; if I waited in the Tolbooth here to have him fit my cravat--but that's an idle way o' speaking, Mr. Sharpitlaw." "Why, I suppose you know you are under sentence of death, Mr. Ratcliffe?" replied Mr. Sharpitlaw. "Aye, so are a', as that worthy minister said in the Tolbooth Kirk the day Robertson wan off; but naebody kens when it will be executed. Gude faith, he had better reason to say sae than he dreamed off, before the play was played out that morning!" "This Robertson," said Sharpitlaw, in a lower and something like a confidential tone, "d'ye ken, Rat--that is, can ye gie us ony inkling where he is to be heard tell o'?" "Troth, Mr. Sharpitlaw, I'll be frank wi' ye; Robertson is rather a cut abune me--a wild deevil he was, and mony a daft prank he played; but except the Collector's job that Wilson led him into, and some tuilzies about run goods wi' the gaugers and the waiters, he never did onything that came near our line o' business." "Umph! that's singular, considering the company he kept." "Fact, upon my honour and credit," said Ratcliffe, gravely. "He keepit out o' our little bits of affairs, and that's mair than Wilson did; I hae dune business wi' Wilson afore now. But the lad will come on in time; there's nae fear o' him; naebody will live the life he has led, but what he'll come to sooner or later." "Who or what is he, Ratcliffe? you know, I suppose?" said Sharpitlaw. "He's better born, I judge, than he cares to let on; he's been a soldier, and he has been a play-actor, and I watna what he has been or hasna been, for as young as he is, sae that it had daffing and nonsense about it." "Pretty pranks he has played in his time, I suppose?" "Ye may say that," said Ratcliffe, with a sardonic smile; "and" (touching his nose) "a deevil amang the lasses." "Like enough," said Sharpitlaw. "Weel, Ratcliffe, I'll no stand niffering wi' ye; ye ken the way that favour's gotten in my office; ye maun be usefu'." "Certainly, sir, to the best of my power--naething for naething--I ken the rule of the office," said the ex-depredator. "Now the principal thing in hand e'en now," said the official person, "is the job of Porteous's; an ye can gie us a lift--why, the inner turnkey's office to begin wi', and the captainship in time--ye understand my meaning?" "Ay, troth do I, sir; a wink's as gude as a nod to a blind horse; but Jock Porteous's job--Lord help ye!--I was under sentence the haill time. God! but I couldna help laughing when I heard Jock skirting for mercy in the lads' hands. Mony a het skin ye hae gien me, neighbour, thought I, tak ye what's gaun: time about's fair play; ye'll ken now what hanging's gude for." "Come, come, this is all nonsense, Rat," said the procurator. "Ye canna creep out at that hole, lad; you must speak to the point--you understand me--if you want favour; gif-gaf makes gude friends, ye ken." "But how can I speak to the point, as your honour ca's it," said Ratcliffe, demurely, and with an air of great simplicity, "when ye ken I was under sentence and in the strong room a' the while the job was going on?" "And how can we turn ye loose on the public again, Daddie Rat, unless ye do or say something to deserve it?" "Well, then, d--n it!" answered the criminal, "since it maun be sae, I saw Geordie Robertson among the boys that brake the jail; I suppose that will do me some gude?" "That's speaking to the purpose, indeed," said the office-bearer; "and now, Rat, where think ye we'll find him?" "Deil haet o' me kens," said Ratcliffe; "he'll no likely gang back to ony o' his auld howffs; he'll be off the country by this time. He has gude friends some gate or other, for a' the life he's led; he's been weel educate." "He'll grace the gallows the better," said Mr. Sharpitlaw; "a desperate dog, to murder an officer of the city for doing his duty! Wha kens wha's turn it might be next?--But you saw him plainly?" "As plainly as I see you." "How was he dressed?" said Sharpitlaw. "I couldna weel see; something of a woman's bit mutch on his head; but ye never saw sic a ca'-throw. Ane couldna hae een to a' thing." "But did he speak to no one?" said Sharpitlaw. "They were a' speaking and gabbling through other," said Ratcliffe, who was obviously unwilling to carry his evidence farther than he could possibly help. "This will not do, Ratcliffe," said the procurator; "you must speak _out--out--out,_" tapping the table emphatically, as he repeated that impressive monosyllable. "It's very hard, sir," said the prisoner; "and but for the under-turnkey's place" "And the reversion of the captaincy--the captaincy of the Tolbooth, man--that is, in case of gude behaviour." "Ay, ay," said Ratcliffe, "gude behaviour!--there's the deevil. And then it's waiting for dead folk's shoon into the bargain." "But Robertson's head will weigh something," said Sharpitlaw; "something gey and heavy, Rat; the town maun show cause--that's right and reason--and then ye'll hae freedom to enjoy your gear honestly." "I dinna ken," said Ratcliffe; "it's a queer way of beginning the trade of honesty--but deil ma care. Weel, then, I heard and saw him speak to the wench Effie Deans, that's up there for child-murder." "The deil ye did? Rat, this is finding a mare's nest wi' a witness.--And the man that spoke to Butler in the Park, and that was to meet wi' Jeanie Deans at Muschat's Cairn--whew! lay that and that together? As sure as I live he's been the father of the lassie's wean." "There hae been waur guesses than that, I'm thinking," observed Ratcliffe, turning his quid of tobacco in his cheek, and squirting out the juice. "I heard something a while syne about his drawing up wi' a bonny quean about the Pleasaunts, and that it was a' Wilson could do to keep him frae marrying her." Here a city officer entered, and told Sharpitlaw that they had the woman in custody whom he had directed them to bring before him. "It's little matter now," said he, "the thing is taking another turn; however, George, ye may bring her in." The officer retired, and introduced, upon his return, a tall, strapping wench of eighteen or twenty, dressed, fantastically, in a sort of blue riding-jacket, with tarnished lace, her hair clubbed like that of a man, a Highland bonnet, and a bunch of broken feathers, a riding-skirt (or petticoat) of scarlet camlet, embroidered with tarnished flowers. Her features were coarse and masculine, yet at a little distance, by dint of very bright wild-looking black eyes, an aquiline nose, and a commanding profile, appeared rather handsome. She flourished the switch she held in her hand, dropped a courtesy as low as a lady at a birth-night introduction, recovered herself seemingly according to Touchstone's directions to Audrey, and opened the conversation without waiting till any questions were asked. "God gie your honour gude-e'en, and mony o' them, bonny Mr. Sharpitlaw!--Gude-e'en to ye, Daddie Ratton--they tauld me ye were hanged, man; or did ye get out o' John Dalgleish's hands like half-hangit Maggie Dickson?" "Whisht, ye daft jaud," said Ratcliffe, "and hear what's said to ye." "Wi' a' my heart, Ratton. Great preferment for poor Madge to be brought up the street wi' a grand man, wi' a coat a' passemented wi' worset-lace, to speak wi' provosts, and bailies, and town-clerks, and prokitors, at this time o' day--and the haill town looking at me too--This is honour on earth for ance!" "Ay, Madge," said Mr. Sharpitlaw, in a coaxing tone; "and ye're dressed out in your braws, I see; these are not your every-days' claiths ye have on." "Deil be in my fingers, then!" said Madge--"Eh, sirs!" (observing Butler come into the apartment), "there's a minister in the Tolbooth--wha will ca' it a graceless place now?--I'se warrant he's in for the gude auld cause--but it's be nae cause o' mine," and off she went into a song-- "Hey for cavaliers, ho for cavaliers, Dub a dub, dub a dub, Have at old Beelzebub,-- Oliver's squeaking for fear." "Did you ever see that mad woman before?" said Sharpitlaw to Butler. "Not to my knowledge, sir," replied Butler. "I thought as much," said the procurator-fiscal, looking towards Ratcliffe, who answered his glance with a nod of acquiescence and intelligence.-- "But that is Madge Wildfire, as she calls herself," said the man of law to Butler. "Ay, that I am," said Madge, "and that I have been ever since I was something better--Heigh ho"--(and something like melancholy dwelt on her features for a minute)--"But I canna mind when that was--it was lang syne, at ony rate, and I'll ne'er fash my thumb about it.-- I glance like the wildfire through country and town; I'm seen on the causeway--I'm seen on the down; The lightning that flashes so bright and so free, Is scarcely so blithe or so bonny as me." "Hand your tongue, ye skirling limmer!" said the officer who had acted as master of the ceremonies to this extraordinary performer, and who was rather scandalised at the freedom of her demeanour before a person of Mr. Sharpitlaw's importance--"haud your tongue, or I'se gie ye something to skirl for!" "Let her alone, George," said Sharpitlaw, "dinna put her out o' tune; I hae some questions to ask her--But first, Mr. Butler, take another look of her." "Do sae, minister--do sae," cried Madge; "I am as weel worth looking at as ony book in your aught.--And I can say the single carritch, and the double carritch, and justification, and effectual calling, and the assembly of divines at Westminster, that is" (she added in a low tone), "I could say them ance--but it's lang syne--and ane forgets, ye ken." And poor Madge heaved another deep sigh. "Weel, sir," said Mr. Sharpitlaw to Butler, "what think ye now?" "As I did before," said Butler; "that I never saw the poor demented creature in my life before." "Then she is not the person whom you said the rioters last night described as Madge Wildfire?" "Certainly not," said Butler. "They may be near the same height, for they are both tall, but I see little other resemblance." "Their dress, then, is not alike?" said Sharpitlaw. "Not in the least," said Butler. "Madge, my bonny woman," said Sharpitlaw, in the same coaxing manner, "what did ye do wi' your ilka-day's claise yesterday?" "I dinna mind," said Madge. "Where was ye yesterday at e'en, Madge?" "I dinna mind ony thing about yesterday," answered Madge; "ae day is eneugh for ony body to wun ower wi' at a time, and ower muckle sometimes." "But maybe, Madge, ye wad mind something about it, if I was to gie ye this half-crown?" said Sharpitlaw, taking out the piece of money. "That might gar me laugh, but it couldna gar me mind." "But, Madge," continued Sharpitlaw, "were I to send you to the workhouse in Leith Wynd, and gar Jock Dalgleish lay the tawse on your back" "That wad gar me greet," said Madge, sobbing, "but it couldna gar me mind, ye ken." "She is ower far past reasonable folks' motives, sir," said Ratcliffe, "to mind siller, or John Dalgleish, or the cat-and-nine-tails either; but I think I could gar her tell us something." "Try her, then, Ratcliffe," said Sharpitlaw, "for I am tired of her crazy pate, and be d--d to her." "Madge," said Ratcliffe, "hae ye ony joes now?" "An ony body ask ye, say ye dinna ken.--Set him to be speaking of my joes, auld Daddie Ratton!" "I dare say, ye hae deil ane?" "See if I haena then," said Madge, with the toss of the head of affronted beauty--"there's Rob the Ranter, and Will Fleming, and then there's Geordie Robertson, lad--that's Gentleman Geordie--what think ye o' that?" Ratcliffe laughed, and, winking to the procurator-fiscal, pursued the inquiry in his own way. "But, Madge, the lads only like ye when ye hae on your braws--they wadna touch you wi' a pair o' tangs when you are in your auld ilka-day rags." "Ye're a leeing auld sorrow then," replied the fair one; "for Gentle Geordie Robertson put my ilka-day's claise on his ain bonny sell yestreen, and gaed a' through the town wi' them; and gawsie and grand he lookit, like ony queen in the land." "I dinna believe a word o't," said Ratcliffe, with another wink to the procurator. "Thae duds were a' o' the colour o' moonshine in the water, I'm thinking, Madge--The gown wad be a sky-blue scarlet, I'se warrant ye?" "It was nae sic thing," said Madge, whose unretentive memory let out, in the eagerness of contradiction, all that she would have most wished to keep concealed, had her judgment been equal to her inclination. "It was neither scarlet nor sky-blue, but my ain auld brown threshie-coat of a short-gown, and my mother's auld mutch, and my red rokelay--and he gied me a croun and a kiss for the use o' them, blessing on his bonny face--though it's been a dear ane to me." "And where did he change his clothes again, hinnie?" said Sharpitlaw, in his most conciliatory manner. "The procurator's spoiled a'," observed Ratcliffe, drily. And it was even so; for the question, put in so direct a shape, immediately awakened Madge to the propriety of being reserved upon those very topics on which Ratcliffe had indirectly seduced her to become communicative. "What was't ye were speering at us, sir?" she resumed, with an appearance of stolidity so speedily assumed, as showed there was a good deal of knavery mixed with her folly. "I asked you," said the procurator, "at what hour, and to what place, Robertson brought back your clothes." "Robertson?--Lord hand a care o' us! what Robertson?" "Why, the fellow we were speaking of, Gentle Geordie, as you call him." "Geordie Gentle!" answered Madge, with well-feigned amazement--"I dinna ken naebody they ca' Geordie Gentle." "Come, my jo," said Sharpitlaw, "this will not do; you must tell us what you did with these clothes of yours." Madge Wildfire made no answer, unless the question may seem connected with the snatch of a song with which she indulged the embarrassed investigator:-- "What did ye wi' the bridal ring--bridal ring--bridal ring? What did ye wi' your wedding ring, ye little cutty quean, O? I gied it till a sodger, a sodger, a sodger, I gied it till a sodger, an auld true love o' mine, O." Of all the madwomen who have sung and said, since the days of Hamlet the Dane, if Ophelia be the most affecting, Madge Wildfire was the most provoking. The procurator-fiscal was in despair. "I'll take some measures with this d--d Bess of Bedlam," said he, "that shall make her find her tongue." "Wi' your favour, sir," said Ratcliffe, "better let her mind settle a little--Ye have aye made out something." "True," said the official person; "a brown short-gown, mutch, red rokelay--that agrees with your Madge Wildfire, Mr. Butler?" Butler agreed that it did so. "Yes, there was a sufficient motive for taking this crazy creature's dress and name, while he was about such a job." "And I am free to say _now,_" said Ratcliffe "When you see it has come out without you," interrupted Sharpitlaw. "Just sae, sir," reiterated Ratcliffe. "I am free to say now, since it's come out otherwise, that these were the clothes I saw Robertson wearing last night in the jail, when he was at the head of the rioters." "That's direct evidence," said Sharpitlaw; "stick to that, Rat--I will report favourably of you to the provost, for I have business for you to-night. It wears late; I must home and get a snack, and I'll be back in the evening. Keep Madge with you, Ratcliffe, and try to get her into a good tune again." So saying he left the prison. CHAPTER SIXTEENTH. And some they whistled--and some they sang, And some did loudly say, Whenever Lord Barnard's horn it blew, "Away, Musgrave away!" Ballad of Little Musgrave. When the man of office returned to the Heart of Mid-Lothian, he resumed his conference with Ratcliffe, of whose experience and assistance he now held himself secure. "You must speak with this wench, Rat--this Effie Deans--you must sift her a wee bit; for as sure as a tether she will ken Robertson's haunts--till her, Rat--till her without delay." "Craving your pardon, Mr. Sharpitlaw," said the turnkey elect, "that's what I am not free to do." "Free to do, man? what the deil ails ye now?--I thought we had settled a' that?" "I dinna ken, sir," said Ratcliffe; "I hae spoken to this Effie--she's strange to this place and to its ways, and to a' our ways, Mr. Sharpitlaw; and she greets, the silly tawpie, and she's breaking her heart already about this wild chield; and were she the mean's o' taking him, she wad break it outright." "She wunna hae time, lad," said Sharpitlaw; "the woodie will hae it's ain o' her before that--a woman's heart takes a lang time o' breaking." "That's according to the stuff they are made o' sir," replied Ratcliffe--"But to make a lang tale short, I canna undertake the job. It gangs against my conscience." "_Your_ conscience, Rat?" said Sharpitlaw, with a sneer, which the reader will probably think very natural upon the occasion. "Ou ay, sir," answered Ratcliffe, calmly, "just my conscience; a'body has a conscience, though it may be ill wunnin at it. I think mine's as weel out o' the gate as maist folk's are; and yet it's just like the noop of my elbow, it whiles gets a bit dirl on a corner." "Weel, Rat," replied Sharpitlaw, "since ye are nice, I'll speak to the hussy mysell." Sharpitlaw, accordingly, caused himself to be introduced into the little dark apartment tenanted by the unfortunate Effie Deans. The poor girl was seated on her little flock-bed, plunged in a deep reverie. Some food stood on the table, of a quality better than is usually supplied to prisoners, but it was untouched. The person under whose care she was more particularly placed, said, "that sometimes she tasted naething from the tae end of the four-and-twenty hours to the t'other, except a drink of water." Sharpitlaw took a chair, and, commanding the turnkey to retire, he opened the conversation, endeavouring to throw into his tone and countenance as much commiseration as they were capable of expressing, for the one was sharp and harsh, the other sly, acute, and selfish. "How's a' wi' ye, Effie?--How d'ye find yoursell, hinny?" A deep sigh was the only answer. "Are the folk civil to ye, Effie?--it's my duty to inquire." "Very civil, sir," said Effie, compelling herself to answer, yet hardly knowing what she said. "And your victuals," continued Sharpitlaw, in the same condoling tone,--"do you get what you like?--or is there onything you would particularly fancy, as your health seems but silly?" "It's a' very weel, sir, I thank ye," said the poor prisoner, in a tone how different from the sportive vivacity of those of the Lily of St. Leonard's!--"it's a' very gude--ower gude for me." "He must have been a great villain, Effie, who brought you to this pass," said Sharpitlaw. The remark was dictated partly by a natural feeling, of which even he could not divest himself, though accustomed to practise on the passions of others, and keep a most heedful guard over his own, and partly by his wish to introduce the sort of conversation which might, best serve his immediate purpose. Indeed, upon the present occasion, these mixed motives of feeling and cunning harmonised together wonderfully; for, said Sharpitlaw to himself, the greater rogue Robertson is, the more will be the merit of bringing him to justice. "He must have been a great villain, indeed," he again reiterated; "and I wish I had the skelping o' him." "I may blame mysell mair than him," said Effie; "I was bred up to ken better; but he, poor fellow,"--(she stopped). "Was a thorough blackguard a' his life, I dare say," said Sharpitlaw. "A stranger he was in this country, and a companion of that lawless vagabond, Wilson, I think, Effie?" "It wad hae been dearly telling him that he had ne'er seen Wilson's face." "That's very true that you are saying, Effie," said Sharpitlaw. "Where was't that Robertson and you were used to howff thegither? Somegate about the Laigh Calton, I am thinking." The simple and dispirited girl had thus far followed Mr. Sharpitlaw's lead, because he had artfully adjusted his observations to the thoughts he was pretty certain must be passing through her own mind, so that her answers became a kind of thinking aloud, a mood into which those who are either constitutionally absent in mind, or are rendered so by the temporary pressure of misfortune, may be easily led by a skilful train of suggestions. But the last observation of the procurator-fiscal was too much of the nature of a direct interrogatory, and it broke the charm accordingly. "What was it that I was saying?" said Effie, starting up from her reclining posture, seating herself upright, and hastily shading her dishevelled hair back from her wasted but still beautiful countenance. She fixed her eyes boldly and keenly upon Sharpitlaw--"You are too much of a gentleman, sir,--too much of an honest man, to take any notice of what a poor creature like me says, that can hardly ca' my senses my ain--God help me!" "Advantage!--I would be of some advantage to you if I could," said Sharpitlaw, in a soothing tone; "and I ken naething sae likely to serve ye, Effie, as gripping this rascal, Robertson." "O dinna misca' him, sir, that never misca'd you!--Robertson?--I am sure I had naething to say against ony man o' the name, and naething will I say." "But if you do not heed your own misfortune, Effie, you should mind what distress he has brought on your family," said the man of law. "O, Heaven help me!" exclaimed poor Effie--"My poor father--my dear Jeanie--O, that's sairest to bide of a'! O, sir, if you hae ony kindness--if ye hae ony touch of compassion--for a' the folk I see here are as hard as the wa'-stanes--If ye wad but bid them let my sister Jeanie in the next time she ca's! for when I hear them put her awa frae the door, and canna climb up to that high window to see sae muckle as her gown-tail, it's like to pit me out o' my judgment." And she looked on him with a face of entreaty, so earnest, yet so humble, that she fairly shook the steadfast purpose of his mind. "You shall see your sister," he began, "if you'll tell me,"--then interrupting himself, he added, in a more hurried tone,--"no, d--n it, you shall see your sister whether you tell me anything or no." So saying, he rose up and left the apartment. When he had rejoined Ratcliffe, he observed, "You are right, Ratton; there's no making much of that lassie. But ae thing I have cleared--that is, that Robertson has been the father of the bairn, and so I will wager a boddle it will be he that's to meet wi' Jeanie Deans this night at Muschat's Cairn, and there we'll nail him, Rat, or my name is not Gideon Sharpitlaw." "But," said Ratcliffe, perhaps because he was in no hurry to see anything which was like to be connected with the discovery and apprehension of Robertson, "an that were the case, Mr. Butler wad hae kend the man in the King's Park to be the same person wi' him in Madge Wildfire's claise, that headed the mob." "That makes nae difference, man," replied Sharpitlaw--"the dress, the light, the confusion, and maybe a touch o' a blackit cork, or a slake o' paint-hout, Ratton, I have seen ye dress your ainsell, that the deevil ye belang to durstna hae made oath t'ye." "And that's true, too," said Ratcliffe. "And besides, ye donnard carle," continued Sharpitlaw, triumphantly, "the minister _did_ say that he thought he knew something of the features of the birkie that spoke to him in the Park, though he could not charge his memory where or when he had seen them." "It's evident, then, your honour will be right," said Ratcliffe. "Then, Rat, you and I will go with the party oursells this night, and see him in grips or we are done wi' him." "I seena muckle use I can be o' to your honour," said Ratcliffe, reluctantly. "Use?" answered Sharpitlaw--"You can guide the party--you ken the ground. Besides, I do not intend to quit sight o' you, my good friend, till I have him in hand." "Weel, sir," said Ratcliffe, but in no joyful tone of acquiescence; "Ye maun hae it your ain way--but mind he's a desperate man." "We shall have that with us," answered Sharpitlaw, "that will settle him, if it is necessary." "But, sir," answered Ratcliffe, "I am sure I couldna undertake to guide you to Muschat's Cairn in the night-time; I ken the place as mony does, in fair day-light, but how to find it by moonshine, amang sae mony crags and stanes, as like to each other as the collier to the deil, is mair than I can tell. I might as soon seek moonshine in water." "What's the meaning o' this, Ratcliffe?" said Sharpitlaw, while he fixed his eye on the recusant, with a fatal and ominous expression,--"Have you forgotten that you are still under sentence of death?" "No, sir," said Ratcliffe, "that's a thing no easily put out o' memory; and if my presence be judged necessary, nae doubt I maun gang wi' your honour. But I was gaun to tell your honour of ane that has mair skeel o' the gate than me, and that's e'en Madge Wildfire." "The devil she has!--Do you think me as mad as she, is, to trust to her guidance on such an occasion?" "Your honour is the best judge," answered Ratcliffe; "but I ken I can keep her in tune, and garr her haud the straight path--she often sleeps out, or rambles about amang thae hills the haill simmer night, the daft limmer." "Weel, Ratcliffe," replied the procurator-fiscal, "if you think she can guide us the right way--but take heed to what you are about--your life depends on your behaviour." "It's a sair judgment on a man," said Ratcliffe, "when he has ance gane sae far wrang as I hae done, that deil a bit he can be honest, try't whilk way he will." Such was the reflection of Ratcliffe, when he was left for a few minutes to himself, while the retainer of justice went to procure a proper warrant, and give the necessary directions. The rising moon saw the whole party free from the walls of the city, and entering upon the open ground. Arthur's Seat, like a couchant lion of immense size--Salisbury Crags, like a huge belt or girdle of granite, were dimly visible. Holding their path along the southern side of the Canongate, they gained the Abbey of Holyrood House, and from thence found their way by step and stile into the King's Park. They were at first four in number--an officer of justice and Sharpitlaw, who were well armed with pistols and cutlasses; Ratcliffe, who was not trusted with weapons, lest, he might, peradventure, have used them on the wrong side; and the female. But at the last stile, when they entered the Chase, they were joined by other two officers, whom Sharpitlaw, desirous to secure sufficient force for his purpose, and at the same time to avoid observation, had directed to wait for him at this place. Ratcliffe saw this accession of strength with some disquietude, for he had hitherto thought it likely that Robertson, who was a bold, stout, and active young fellow, might have made his escape from Sharpitlaw and the single officer, by force or agility, without his being implicated in the matter. But the present strength of the followers of justice was overpowering, and the only mode of saving Robertson (which the old sinner was well disposed to do, providing always he could accomplish his purpose without compromising his own safety), must be by contriving that he should have some signal of their approach. It was probably with this view that Ratcliffe had requested the addition of Madge to the party, having considerable confidence in her propensity to exert her lungs. Indeed, she had already given them so many specimens of her clamorous loquacity, that Sharpitlaw half determined to send her back with one of the officers, rather than carry forward in his company a person so extremely ill qualified to be a guide in a secret expedition. It seemed, too, as if the open air, the approach to the hills, and the ascent of the moon, supposed to be so portentous over those whose brain is infirm, made her spirits rise in a degree tenfold more loquacious than she had hitherto exhibited. To silence her by fair means seemed impossible; authoritative commands and coaxing entreaties she set alike at defiance, and threats only made her sulky and altogether intractable. "Is there no one of you," said Sharpitlaw, impatiently, "that knows the way to this accursed place--this Nichol Muschat's Cairn--excepting this mad clavering idiot?" "Deil ane o' them kens it except mysell," exclaimed Madge; "how suld they, the puir fule cowards! But I hae sat on the grave frae batfleeing time till cook-crow, and had mony a fine crack wi' Muschat and Ailie Muschat, that are lying sleeping below." "The devil take your crazy brain," said Sharpitlaw; "will you not allow the men to answer a question?" The officers obtaining a moment's audience while Ratcliffe diverted Madge's attention, declared that, though they had a general knowledge of the spot, they could not undertake to guide the party to it by the uncertain light of the moon, with such accuracy as to insure success to their expedition. "What shall we do, Ratcliffe?" said Sharpitlaw, "if he sees us before we see him,--and that's what he is certain to do, if we go strolling about, without keeping the straight road,--we may bid gude day to the job, and I would rather lose one hundred pounds, baith for the credit of the police, and because the provost says somebody maun be hanged for this job o' Porteous, come o't what likes." "I think," said Ratcliffe, "we maun just try Madge; and I'll see if I can get her keepit in ony better order. And at ony rate, if he suld hear her skirting her auld ends o' sangs, he's no to ken for that that there's onybody wi' her." "That's true," said Sharpitlaw; "and if he thinks her alone, he's as like to come towards her as to rin frae her. So set forward--we hae lost ower muckle time already--see to get her to keep the right road." "And what sort o' house does Nichol Muschat and his wife keep now?" said Ratcliffe to the mad woman, by way of humouring her vein of folly; "they were but thrawn folk lang syne, an a' tales be true." "Ou, ay, ay, ay--but a's forgotten now," replied Madge, in the confidential tone of a gossip giving the history of her next-door neighbour--"Ye see, I spoke to them mysell, and tauld them byganes suld be byganes--her throat's sair misguggled and mashackered though; she wears her corpse-sheet drawn weel up to hide it, but that canna hinder the bluid seiping through, ye ken. I wussed her to wash it in St. Anthony's Well, and that will cleanse if onything can--But they say bluid never bleaches out o' linen claith--Deacon Sanders's new cleansing draps winna do't--I tried them mysell on a bit rag we hae at hame that was mailed wi' the bluid of a bit skirting wean that was hurt some gate, but out it winna come--Weel, yell say that's queer; but I will bring it out to St. Anthony's blessed Well some braw night just like this, and I'll cry up Ailie Muschat, and she and I will hae a grand bouking-washing, and bleach our claes in the beams of the bonny Lady Moon, that's far pleasanter to me than the sun--the sun's ower het, and ken ye, cummers, my brains are het eneugh already. But the moon, and the dew, and the night-wind, they are just like a caller kail-blade laid on my brow; and whiles I think the moon just shines on purpose to pleasure me, when naebody sees her but mysell." This raving discourse she continued with prodigious volubility, walking on at a great pace, and dragging Ratcliffe along with her, while he endeavoured, in appearance at least, if not in reality, to induce her to moderate her voice. All at once she stopped short upon the top of a little hillock, gazed upward fixedly, and said not one word for the space of five minutes. "What the devil is the matter with her now?" said Sharpitlaw to Ratcliffe--"Can you not get her forward?" "Ye maun just take a grain o' patience wi' her, sir," said Ratcliffe. "She'll no gae a foot faster than she likes herself." "D--n her," said Sharpitlaw, "I'll take care she has her time in Bedlam or Bridewell, or both, for she's both mad and mischievous." In the meanwhile, Madge, who had looked very pensive when she first stopped, suddenly burst into a vehement fit of laughter, then paused and sighed bitterly,--then was seized with a second fit of laughter--then, fixing her eyes on the moon, lifted up her voice and sung,-- "Good even, good fair moon, good even to thee; I prithee, dear moon, now show to me The form and the features, the speech and degree, Of the man that true lover of mine shall be. But I need not ask that of the bonny Lady Moon--I ken that weel eneugh mysell--_true_-love though he wasna--But naebody shall sae that I ever tauld a word about the matter--But whiles I wish the bairn had lived--Weel, God guide us, there's a heaven aboon us a',"--(here she sighed bitterly), "and a bonny moon, and sterns in it forby" (and here she laughed once more). "Are we to stand, here all night!" said Sharpitlaw, very impatiently. "Drag her forward." "Ay, sir," said Ratcliffe, "if we kend whilk way to drag her, that would settle it at ance.--Come, Madge, hinny," addressing her, "we'll no be in time to see Nichol and his wife, unless ye show us the road." "In troth and that I will, Ratton," said she, seizing him by the arm, and resuming her route with huge strides, considering it was a female who took them. "And I'll tell ye, Ratton, blithe will Nichol Muschat be to see ye, for he says he kens weel there isna sic a villain out o' hell as ye are, and he wad be ravished to hae a crack wi' you--like to like ye ken--it's a proverb never fails--and ye are baith a pair o' the deevil's peats I trow--hard to ken whilk deserves the hettest corner o' his ingle-side." Ratcliffe was conscience-struck, and could not forbear making an involuntary protest against this classification. "I never shed blood," he replied. "But ye hae sauld it, Ratton--ye hae sauld blood mony a time. Folk kill wi' the tongue as weel as wi' the hand--wi' the word as weel as wi' the gulley!-- It is the 'bonny butcher lad, That wears the sleeves of blue, He sells the flesh on Saturday, On Friday that he slew." "And what is that I ain doing now?" thought Ratcliffe. "But I'll hae nae wyte of Robertson's young bluid, if I can help it;" then speaking apart to Madge, he asked her, "Whether she did not remember ony o' her auld Sangs?" "Mony a dainty ane," said Madge; "and blithely can I sing them, for lightsome sangs make merry gate." And she sang,-- "When the glede's in the blue cloud, The lavrock lies still; When the hound's in the greenwood. The hind keeps the hill." "Silence her cursed noise, if you should throttle her," said Sharpitlaw; "I see somebody yonder.--Keep close, my boys, and creep round the shoulder of the height. George Poinder, stay you with Ratcliffe and tha mad yelling bitch; and you other two, come with me round under the shadow of the brae." And he crept forward with the stealthy pace of an Indian savage, who leads his band to surprise an unsuspecting party of some hostile tribe. Ratcliffe saw them glide of, avoiding the moonlight, and keeping as much in: the shade as possible. "Robertson's done up," said he to himself; "thae young lads are aye sae thoughtless. What deevil could he hae to say to Jeanie Deans, or to ony woman on earth, that he suld gang awa and get his neck raxed for her? And this mad quean, after cracking like a pen-gun, and skirling like a pea-hen for the haill night, behoves just to hae hadden her tongue when her clavers might have dune some gude! But it's aye the way wi' women; if they ever hand their tongues ava', ye may swear it's for mischief. I wish I could set her on again without this blood-sucker kenning what I am doing. But he's as gleg as MacKeachan's elshin,* that ran through sax plies of bendleather and half-an-inch into the king's heel." * [_Elshin,_ a shoemaker's awl.] He then began to hum, but in a very low and suppressed tone, the first stanza of a favourite ballad of Wildfire's, the words of which bore some distant analogy with the situation of Robertson, trusting that the power of association would not fail to bring the rest to her mind:-- "There's a bloodhound ranging Tinwald wood, There's harness glancing sheen: There's a maiden sits on Tinwald brae, And she sings loud between." Madge had no sooner received the catch-word, than she vindicated Ratcliffe's sagacity by setting off at score with the song:-- "O sleep ye sound, Sir James, she said, When ye suld rise and ride? There's twenty men, wi' bow and blade, Are seeking where ye hide." Though Ratcliffe was at a considerable distance from the spot called Muschat's Cairn, yet his eyes, practised like those of a cat to penetrate darkness, could mark that Robertson had caught the alarm. George Poinder, less keen of sight, or less attentive, was not aware of his flight any more than Sharpitlaw and his assistants, whose view, though they were considerably nearer to the cairn, was intercepted by the broken nature of the ground under which they were screening themselves. At length, however, after the interval of five or six minutes, they also perceived that Robertson had fled, and rushed hastily towards the place, while Sharpitlaw called out aloud, in the harshest tones of a voice which resembled a saw-mill at work, "Chase, lads--chase--haud the brae--I see him on the edge of the hill!" Then hollowing back to the rear-guard of his detachment, he issued his farther orders: "Ratcliffe, come here, and detain the woman--George, run and kepp the stile at the Duke's Walk--Ratcliffe, come here directly--but first knock out that mad bitch's brains!" "Ye had better rin for it, Madge," said Ratcliffe, "for it's ill dealing wi' an angry man." Madge Wildfire was not so absolutely void of common sense as not to understand this innuendo; and while Ratcliffe, in seemingly anxious haste of obedience, hastened to the spot where Sharpitlaw waited to deliver up Jeanie Deans to his custody, she fled with all the despatch she could exert in an opposite direction. Thus the whole party were separated, and in rapid motion of flight or pursuit, excepting Ratcliffe and Jeanie, whom, although making no attempt to escape, he held fast by the cloak, and who remained standing by Muschat's Cairn. CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH. You have paid the heavens your function, and the prisoner the very debt of your calling. Measure for Measure. Jeanie Deans,--for here our story unites itself with that part of the narrative which broke off at the end of the fourteenth chapter,--while she waited, in terror and amazement, the hasty advance of three or four men towards her, was yet more startled at their suddenly breaking asunder, and giving chase in different directions to the late object of her terror, who became at that moment, though she could not well assign a reasonable cause, rather the cause of her interest. One of the party (it was Sharpitlaw) came straight up to her, and saying, "Your name is Jeanie Deans, and you are my prisoner," immediately added, "But if you will tell me which way he ran I will let you go." "I dinna ken, sir," was all the poor girl could utter; and, indeed, it is the phrase which rises most readily to the lips of any person in her rank, as the readiest reply to any embarrassing question. "But," said Sharpitlaw, "ye _ken_ wha it was ye were speaking wi', my leddy, on the hill side, and midnight sae near; ye surely ken _that,_ my bonny woman?" "I dinna ken, sir," again iterated Jeanie, who really did not comprehend in her terror the nature of the questions which were so hastily put to her in this moment of surprise. "We will try to mend your memory by and by, hinny," said Sharpitlaw, and shouted, as we have already told the reader, to Ratcliffe, to come up and take charge of her, while he himself directed the chase after Robertson, which he still hoped might be successful. As Ratcliffe approached, Sharpitlaw pushed the young woman towards him with some rudeness, and betaking himself to the more important object of his quest, began to scale crags and scramble up steep banks, with an agility of which his profession and his general gravity of demeanour would previously have argued him incapable. In a few minutes there was no one within sight, and only a distant halloo from one of the pursuers to the other, faintly heard on the side of the hill, argued that there was any one within hearing. Jeanie Deans was left in the clear moonlight, standing under the guard of a person of whom she knew nothing, and, what was worse, concerning whom, as the reader is well aware, she could have learned nothing that would not have increased her terror. When all in the distance was silent, Ratcliffe for the first time addressed her, and it was in that cold sarcastic indifferent tone familiar to habitual depravity, whose crimes are instigated by custom rather than by passion. "This is a braw night for ye, dearie," he said, attempting to pass his arm across her shoulder, "to be on the green hill wi' your jo." Jeanie extricated herself from his grasp, but did not make any reply. "I think lads and lasses," continued the ruffian, "dinna meet at Muschat's Cairn at midnight to crack nuts," and he again attempted to take hold of her. "If ye are an officer of justice, sir," said Jeanie, again eluding his attempt to seize her, "ye deserve to have your coat stripped from your back." "Very true, hinny," said he, succeeding forcibly in his attempt to get hold of her, "but suppose I should strip your cloak off first?" "Ye are more a man, I am sure, than to hurt me, sir," said Jeanie; "for God's sake have pity on a half-distracted creature!" "Come, come," said Ratcliffe, "you're a good-looking wench, and should not be cross-grained. I was going to be an honest man--but the devil has this very day flung first a lawyer, and then a woman, in my gate. I'll tell you what, Jeanie, they are out on the hill-side--if you'll be guided by me, I'll carry you to a wee bit corner in the Pleasance, that I ken o' in an auld wife's, that a' the prokitors o' Scotland wot naething o', and we'll send Robertson word to meet us in Yorkshire, for there is a set o' braw lads about the midland counties, that I hae dune business wi' before now, and sae we'll leave Mr. Sharpitlaw to whistle on his thumb." It was fortunate for Jeanie, in an emergency like the present, that she possessed presence of mind and courage, so soon as the first hurry of surprise had enabled her to rally her recollection. She saw the risk she was in from a ruffian, who not only was such by profession, but had that evening been stupifying, by means of strong liquors, the internal aversion which he felt at the business on which Sharpitlaw had resolved to employ him. "Dinna speak sae loud," said she, in a low voice; "he's up yonder." "Who?--Robertson?" said Ratcliffe, eagerly. "Ay," replied Jeanie; "up yonder;" and she pointed to the ruins of the hermitage and chapel. "By G--d, then," said Ratcliffe, "I'll make my ain of him, either one way or other--wait for me here." But no sooner had he set off as fast as he could run, towards the chapel, than Jeanie started in an opposite direction, over high and low, on the nearest path homeward. Her juvenile exercise as a herdswoman had put "life and mettle" in her heels, and never had she followed Dustiefoot, when the cows were in the corn, with half so much speed as she now cleared the distance betwixt Muschat's Cairn and her father's cottage at St. Leonard's. To lift the latch--to enter--to shut, bolt, and double bolt the door--to draw against it a heavy article of furniture (which she could not have moved in a moment of less energy), so as to make yet farther provision against violence, was almost the work of a moment, yet done with such silence as equalled the celerity. Her next anxiety was upon her father's account, and she drew silently to the door of his apartment, in order to satisfy herself whether he had been disturbed by her return. He was awake,--probably had slept but little; but the constant presence of his own sorrows, the distance of his apartment from the outer door of the house, and the precautions which Jeanie had taken to conceal her departure and return, had prevented him from being sensible of either. He was engaged in his devotions, and Jeanie could distinctly hear him use these words:--"And for the other child thou hast given me to be a comfort and stay to my old age, may her days be long in the land, according to the promise thou hast given to those who shall honour father and mother; may all her purchased and promised blessings be multiplied upon her; keep her in the watches of the night, and in the uprising of the morning, that all in this land may know that thou hast not utterly hid thy face from those that seek thee in truth and in sincerity." He was silent, but probably continued his petition in the strong fervency of mental devotion. His daughter retired to her apartment, comforted, that while she was exposed to danger, her head had been covered by the prayers of the just as by an helmet, and under the strong confidence, that while she walked worthy of the protection of Heaven, she would experience its countenance. It was in that moment that a vague idea first darted across her mind, that something might yet be achieved for her sister's safety, conscious as she now was of her innocence of the unnatural murder with which she stood charged. It came, as she described it, on her mind, like a sun-blink on a stormy sea; and although it instantly vanished, yet she felt a degree of composure which she had not experienced for many days, and could not help being strongly persuaded that, by some means or other, she would be called upon, and directed, to work out her sister's deliverance. She went to bed, not forgetting her usual devotions, the more fervently made on account of her late deliverance, and she slept soundly in spite of her agitation. We must return to Ratcliffe, who had started, like a greyhound from the slips when the sportsman cries halloo, as soon as Jeanie had pointed to the ruins. Whether he meant to aid Robertson's escape, or to assist his pursuers, may be very doubtful; perhaps he did not himself know but had resolved to be guided by circumstances. He had no opportunity, however, of doing either; for he had no sooner surmounted the steep ascent, and entered under the broken arches of the rains, than a pistol was presented at his head, and a harsh voice commanded him, in the king's name, to surrender himself prisoner. "Mr. Sharpitlaw!" said Ratcliffe, surprised, "is this your honour?" "Is it only you, and be d--d to you?" answered the fiscal, still more disappointed--"what made you leave the woman?" "She told me she saw Robertson go into the ruins, so I made what haste I could to cleek the callant." "It's all over now," said Sharpitlaw; "we shall see no more of him to-night; but he shall hide himself in a bean-hool, if he remains on Scottish ground without my finding him. Call back the people, Ratcliffe." Ratcliffe hollowed to the dispersed officers, who willingly obeyed the signal; for probably there was no individual among them who would have been much desirous of a rencontre, hand to hand, and at a distance from his comrades, with such an active and desperate fellow as Robertson. "And where are the two women?" said Sharpitlaw. "Both made their heels serve them, I suspect," replied Ratcliffe, and he hummed the end of the old song-- "Then hey play up the rin-awa bride, For she has taen the gee." "One woman," said Sharpitlaw,--for, like all rogues, he was a great calumniator of the fair sex,*--"one woman is enough to dark the fairest ploy that was ever planned; and how could I be such an ass as to expect to carry through a job that had two in it? * Note L. Calumniator of the Fair Sex. But we know how to come by them both, if they are wanted, that's one good thing." Accordingly, like a defeated general, sad and sulky, he led back his discomfited forces to the metropolis, and dismissed them for the night. The next morning early, he was under the necessity of making his report to the sitting magistrate of the day. The gentleman who occupied the chair of office on this occasion (for the bailies, _Anglice',_ aldermen, take it by rotation) chanced to be the same by whom Butler was committed, a person very generally respected among his fellow-citizens. Something he was of a humorist, and rather deficient in general education; but acute, patient, and upright, possessed of a fortune acquired by honest industry which made him perfectly independent; and, in short, very happily qualified to support the respectability of the office, which he held. Mr. Middleburgh had just taken his seat, and was debating in an animated manner, with one of his colleagues, the doubtful chances of a game at golf which they had played the day before, when a letter was delivered to him, addressed "For Bailie Middleburgh; These: to be forwarded with speed." It contained these words:-- "Sir,--I know you to be a sensible and a considerate magistrate, and one who, as such, will be content to worship God, though the devil bid you. I therefore expect that, notwithstanding the signature of this letter acknowledges my share in an action, which, in a proper time and place, I would not fear either to avow or to justify, you will not on that account reject what evidence I place before you. The clergyman, Butler, is innocent of all but involuntary presence at an action which he wanted spirit to approve of, and from which he endeavoured, with his best set phrases, to dissuade us. But it was not for him that it is my hint to speak. There is a woman in your jail, fallen under the edge of a law so cruel, that it has hung by the wall like unsecured armour, for twenty years, and is now brought down and whetted to spill the blood of the most beautiful and most innocent creature whom the walls of a prison ever girdled in. Her sister knows of her innocence, as she communicated to her that she was betrayed by a villain.--O that high Heaven Would put in every honest hand a whip, To scourge me such a villain through the world! "I write distractedly--But this girl--this Jeanie Deans, is a peevish puritan, superstitious and scrupulous after the manner of her sect; and I pray your honour, for so my phrase must go, to press upon her, that her sister's life depends upon her testimony. But though she should remain silent, do not dare to think that the young woman is guilty--far less to permit her execution. Remember the death of Wilson was fearfully avenged; and those yet live who can compel you to drink the dregs of your poisoned chalice.--I say, remember Porteous, and say that you had good counsel from "One of his Slayers." The magistrate read over this extraordinary letter twice or thrice. At first he was tempted to throw it aside as the production of a madman, so little did "the scraps from play-books," as he termed the poetical quotation, resemble the correspondence of a rational being. On a re-perusal, however, he thought that, amid its incoherence, he could discover something like a tone of awakened passion, though expressed in a manner quaint and unusual. "It is a cruelly severe statute," said the magistrate to his assistant, "and I wish the girl could be taken from under the letter of it. A child may have been born, and it may have been conveyed away while the mother was insensible, or it may have perished for want of that relief which the poor creature herself--helpless, terrified, distracted, despairing, and exhausted--may have been unable to afford to it. And yet it is certain, if the woman is found guilty under the statute, execution will follow. The crime has been too common, and examples are necessary." "But if this other wench," said the city-clerk, "can speak to her sister communicating her situation, it will take the case from under the statute." "Very true," replied the Bailie; "and I will walk out one of these days to St. Leonard's, and examine the girl myself. I know something of their father Deans--an old true-blue Cameronian, who would see house and family go to wreck ere he would disgrace his testimony by a sinful complying with the defections of the times; and such he will probably uphold the taking an oath before a civil magistrate. If they are to go on and flourish with their bull-headed obstinacy, the legislature must pass an act to take their affirmations, as in the case of Quakers. But surely neither a father nor a sister will scruple in a case of this kind. As I said before, I will go speak with them myself, when the hurry of this Porteous investigation is somewhat over; their pride and spirit of contradiction will be far less alarmed, than if they were called into a court of justice at once." "And I suppose Butler is to remain incarcerated?" said the city-clerk. "For the present, certainly," said the magistrate. "But I hope soon to set him at liberty upon bail." "Do you rest upon the testimony of that light-headed letter?" asked the clerk. "Not very much," answered the Bailie; "and yet there is something striking about it too--it seems the letter of a man beside himself, either from great agitation, or some great sense of guilt." "Yes," said the town-clerk, "it is very like the letter of a mad strolling play-actor, who deserves to be hanged with all the rest of his gang, as your honour justly observes." "I was not quite so bloodthirsty," continued the magistrate. "But to the point, Butler's private character is excellent; and I am given to understand, by some inquiries I have been making this morning, that he did actually arrive in town only the day before yesterday, so that it was impossible he could have been concerned in any previous machinations of these unhappy rioters, and it is not likely that he should have joined them on a suddenty." "There's no saying anent that--zeal catches fire at a slight spark as fast as a brunstane match," observed the secretary. "I hae kend a minister wad be fair gude-day and fair gude-e'en wi' ilka man in the parochine, and hing just as quiet as a rocket on a stick, till ye mentioned the word abjuration-oath, or patronage, or siclike, and then, whiz, he was off, and up in the air an hundred miles beyond common manners, common sense, and common comprehension." "I do not understand," answered the burgher-magistrate, "that the young man Butler's zeal is of so inflammable a character. But I will make farther investigation. What other business is there before us?" And they proceeded to minute investigations concerning the affair of Porteous's death, and other affairs through which this history has no occasion to trace them. In the course of their business they were interrupted by an old woman of the lower rank, extremely haggard in look, and wretched in her appearance, who thrust herself into the council room. "What do you want, gudewife?--Who are you?" said Bailie Middleburgh. "What do I want!" replied she, in a sulky tone--"I want my bairn, or I want naething frae nane o' ye, for as grand's ye are." And she went on muttering to herself with the wayward spitefulness of age--"They maun hae lordships and honours, nae doubt--set them up, the gutter-bloods! and deil a gentleman amang them."--Then again addressing the sitting magistrate, "Will _your honour_ gie me back my puir crazy bairn?--_His_ honour!--I hae kend the day when less wad ser'd him, the oe of a Campvere skipper." "Good woman," said the magistrate to this shrewish supplicant--"tell us what it is you want, and do not interrupt the court." "That's as muckle as till say, Bark, Bawtie, and be dune wi't!--I tell ye," raising her termagant voice, "I want my bairn! is na that braid Scots?" "Who _are_ you?--who is your bairn?" demanded the magistrate. "Wha am I?--wha suld I be, but Meg Murdockson, and wha suld my bairn be but Magdalen Murdockson?--Your guard soldiers, and your constables, and your officers, ken us weel eneugh when they rive the bits o' duds aff our backs, and take what penny o' siller we hae, and harle us to the Correctionhouse in Leith Wynd, and pettle us up wi' bread and water and siclike sunkets." "Who is she?" said the magistrate, looking round to some of his people. "Other than a gude ane, sir," said one of the city officers, shrugging his shoulders and smiling. "Will ye say sae?" said the termagant, her eye gleaming with impotent fury; "an I had ye amang the Figgat-Whins,* wadna I set my ten talents in your wuzzent face for that very word?" and she suited the word to the action, by spreading out a set of claws resembling those of St. George's dragon on a country sign-post. * [This was a name given to a tract of sand hillocks extending along the sea-shore from Leith to Portobello, and which at this time were covered with _whin_-bushes or furze.] "What does she want here?" said the impatient magistrate--"Can she not tell her business, or go away?" "It's my bairn!--it's Magdalen Murdockson I'm wantin'," answered the beldam, screaming at the highest pitch of her cracked and mistuned voice--"havena I been telling ye sae this half-hour? And if ye are deaf, what needs ye sit cockit up there, and keep folk scraughin' t'ye this gate?" "She wants her daughter, sir," said the same officer whose interference had given the hag such offence before--"her daughter, who was taken up last night--Madge Wildfire, as they ca' her." "Madge Hellfire, as they ca' her!" echoed the beldam "and what business has a blackguard like you to ca' an honest woman's bairn out o' her ain name?" "An _honest_ woman's bairn, Maggie?" answered the peace-officer, smiling and shaking his head with an ironical emphasis on the adjective, and a calmness calculated to provoke to madness the furious old shrew. "If I am no honest now, I was honest ance," she replied; "and that's mair than ye can say, ye born and bred thief, that never kend ither folks' gear frae your ain since the day ye was cleckit. Honest, say ye?--ye pykit your mother's pouch o' twalpennies Scots when ye were five years auld, just as she was taking leave o' your father at the fit o' the gallows." "She has you there, George," said the assistants, and there was a general laugh; for the wit was fitted for the meridian of the place where it was uttered. This general applause somewhat gratified the passions of the old hag; the "grim feature" smiled and even laughed--but it was a laugh of bitter scorn. She condescended, however, as if appeased by the success of her sally, to explain her business more distinctly, when the magistrate, commanding silence, again desired her either to speak out her errand, or to leave the place. "Her bairn," she said, "_was_ her bairn, and she came to fetch her out of ill haft and waur guiding. If she wasna sae wise as ither folk, few ither folk had suffered as muckle as she had done; forby that she could fend the waur for hersell within the four wa's of a jail. She could prove by fifty witnesses, and fifty to that, that her daughter had never seen Jock Porteous, alive or dead, since he had gien her a laundering wi' his cane, the neger that he was! for driving a dead cat at the provost's wig on the Elector of Hanover's birthday." Notwithstanding the wretched appearance and violent demeanour of this woman, the magistrate felt the justice of her argument, that her child might be as dear to her as to a more fortunate and more amiable mother. He proceeded to investigate the circumstances which had led to Madge Murdockson's (or Wildfire's) arrest, and as it was clearly shown that she had not been engaged in the riot, he contented himself with directing that an eye should be kept upon her by the police, but that for the present she should be allowed to return home with her mother. During the interval of fetching Madge from the jail, the magistrate endeavoured to discover whether her mother had been privy to the change of dress betwixt that young woman and Robertson. But on this point he could obtain no light. She persisted in declaring, that she had never seen Robertson since his remarkable escape during service-time; and that, if her daughter had changed clothes with him, it must have been during her absence at a hamlet about two miles out of town, called Duddingstone, where she could prove that she passed that eventful night. And, in fact, one of the town-officers, who had been searching for stolen linen at the cottage of a washer-woman in that village, gave his evidence, that he had seen Maggie Murdockson there, whose presence had considerably increased his suspicion of the house in which she was a visitor, in respect that he considered her as a person of no good reputation. "I tauld ye sae," said the hag; "see now what it is to hae a character, gude or bad!--Now, maybe, after a', I could tell ye something about Porteous that you council-chamber bodies never could find out, for as muckle stir as ye mak." All eyes were turned towards her--all ears were alert. "Speak out!" said the magistrate. "It will be for your ain gude," insinuated the town-clerk. "Dinna keep the Bailie waiting," urged the assistants. She remained doggedly silent for two or three minutes, casting around a malignant and sulky glance, that seemed to enjoy the anxious suspense with which they waited her answer. And then she broke forth at once,--"A' that I ken about him is, that he was neither soldier nor gentleman, but just a thief and a blackguard, like maist o' yoursells, dears--What will ye gie me for that news, now?--He wad hae served the gude town lang or provost or bailie wad hae fund that out, my jo!" While these matters were in discussion, Madge Wildfire entered, and her first exclamation was, "Eh! see if there isna our auld ne'er-do-weel deevil's-buckie o' a mither--Hegh, sirs! but we are a hopeful family, to be twa o' us in the Guard at ance--But there were better days wi' us ance--were there na, mither?" Old Maggie's eyes had glistened with something like an expression of pleasure when she saw her daughter set at liberty. But either her natural affection, like that of the tigress, could not be displayed without a strain of ferocity, or there was something in the ideas which Madge's speech awakened, that again stirred her cross and savage temper. "What signifies what we, were, ye street-raking limmer!" she exclaimed, pushing her daughter before her to the door, with no gentle degree of violence. "I'se tell thee what thou is now--thou's a crazed hellicat Bess o' Bedlam, that sall taste naething but bread and water for a fortnight, to serve ye for the plague ye hae gien me--and ower gude for ye, ye idle taupie!" Madge, however, escaped from her mother at the door, ran back to the foot of the table, dropped a very low and fantastic courtesy to the judge, and said, with a giggling laugh,--"Our minnie's sair mis-set, after her ordinar, sir--She'll hae had some quarrel wi' her auld gudeman--that's Satan, ye ken, sirs." This explanatory note she gave in a low confidential tone, and the spectators of that credulous generation did not hear it without an involuntary shudder. "The gudeman and her disna aye gree weel, and then I maun pay the piper; but my back's broad eneugh to bear't a'--an' if she hae nae havings, that's nae reason why wiser folk shouldna hae some." Here another deep courtesy, when the ungracious voice of her mother was heard. "Madge, ye limmer! If I come to fetch ye!" "Hear till her," said Madge. "But I'll wun out a gliff the night for a' that, to dance in the moonlight, when her and the gudeman will be whirrying through the blue lift on a broom-shank, to see Jean Jap, that they hae putten intill the Kirkcaldy Tolbooth--ay, they will hae a merry sail ower Inchkeith, and ower a' the bits o' bonny waves that are poppling and plashing against the rocks in the gowden glimmer o' the moon, ye ken.--I'm coming, mother--I'm coming," she concluded, on hearing a scuffle at the door betwixt the beldam and the officers, who were endeavouring to prevent her re-entrance. Madge then waved her hand wildly towards the ceiling, and sung, at the topmost pitch of her voice, "Up in the air, On my bonny grey mare, And I see, and I see, and I see her yet;" and with a hop, skip, and jump, sprung out of the room, as the witches of Macbeth used, in less refined days, to seem to fly upwards from the stage. Some weeks intervened before Mr. Middleburgh, agreeably to his benevolent resolution, found an opportunity of taking a walk towards St. Leonard's, in order to discover whether it might be possible to obtain the evidence hinted at in the anonymous letter respecting Effie Deans. In fact, the anxious perquisitions made to discover the murderers of Porteous occupied the attention of all concerned with the administration of justice. In the course of these inquiries, two circumstances happened material to our story. Butler, after a close investigation of his conduct, was declared innocent of accession to the death of Porteous; but, as having been present during the whole transaction, was obliged to find bail not to quit his usual residence at Liberton, that he might appear as a witness when called upon. The other incident regarded the disappearance of Madge Wildfire and her mother from Edinburgh. When they were sought, with the purpose of subjecting them to some farther interrogatories, it was discovered by Mr. Sharpitlaw that they had eluded the observation of the police, and left the city so soon as dismissed from the council-chamber. No efforts could trace the place of their retreat. In the meanwhile the excessive indignation of the Council of Regency, at the slight put upon their authority by the murder of Porteous, had dictated measures, in which their own extreme desire of detecting the actors in that conspiracy were consulted in preference to the temper of the people and the character of their churchmen. An act of Parliament was hastily passed, offering two hundred pounds reward to those who should inform against any person concerned in the deed, and the penalty of death, by a very unusual and severe enactment, was denounced against those who should harbour the guilty. But what was chiefly accounted exceptionable, was a clause, appointing the act to be read in churches by the officiating clergyman, on the first Sunday of every month, for a certain period, immediately before the sermon. The ministers who should refuse to comply with this injunction were declared, for the first offence, incapable of sitting or voting in any church judicature, and for the second, incapable of holding any ecclesiastical preferment in Scotland. This last order united in a common cause those who might privately rejoice in Porteous's death, though they dared not vindicate the manner of it, with the more scrupulous Presbyterians, who held that even the pronouncing the name of the "Lords Spiritual" in a Scottish pulpit was, _quodammodo,_ an acknowledgment of prelacy, and that the injunction of the legislature was an interference of the civil government with the _jus divinum_ of Presbytery, since to the General Assembly alone, as representing the invisible head of the kirk, belonged the sole and exclusive right of regulating whatever pertained to public worship. Very many also, of different political or religious sentiments, and therefore not much moved by these considerations, thought they saw, in so violent an act of parliament, a more vindictive spirit than became the legislature of a great country, and something like an attempt to trample upon the rights and independence of Scotland. The various steps adopted for punishing the city of Edinburgh, by taking away her charter and liberties, for what a violent and overmastering mob had done within her walls, were resented by many, who thought a pretext was too hastily taken for degrading the ancient metropolis of Scotland. In short, there was much heart-burning, discontent, and disaffection, occasioned by these ill-considered measures.* * The magistrates were closely interrogated before the House of Peers, concerning the particulars of the Porteous Mob, and the _patois_ in which these functionaries made their answers, sounded strange in the ears of the Southern nobles. The Duke of Newcastle having demanded to know with what kind of shot the guard which Porteous commanded had loaded their muskets, was answered, naively, "Ow, just sic as ane shoots _dukes and fools_ with." This reply was considered as a contempt of the House of Lords, and the Provost would have suffered accordingly, but that the Duke of Argyle explained, that the expression, properly rendered into English, meant _ducks and waterfowls._ Amidst these heats and dissensions, the trial of Effie Deans, after she had been many weeks imprisoned, was at length about to be brought forward, and Mr. Middleburgh found leisure to inquire into the evidence concerning her. For this purpose, he chose a fine day for his walk towards her father's house. The excursion into the country was somewhat distant, in the opinion of a burgess of those days, although many of the present inhabit suburban villas considerably beyond the spot to which we allude. Three-quarters of an hour's walk, however, even at a pace of magisterial gravity, conducted our benevolent office-bearer to the Crags of St. Leonard's, and the humble mansion of David Deans. The old man was seated on the deas, or turf-seat, at the end of his cottage, busied in mending his cart-harness with his own hands; for in those days any sort of labour which required a little more skill than usual fell to the share of the goodman himself, and that even when he was well to pass in the world. With stern and austere gravity he persevered in his task, after having just raised his head to notice the advance of the stranger. It would have been impossible to have discovered, from his countenance and manner, the internal feelings of agony with which he contended. Mr. Middleburgh waited an instant, expecting Deans would in some measure acknowledge his presence, and lead into conversation; but, as he seemed determined to remain silent, he was himself obliged to speak first. "My name is Middleburgh--Mr. James Middleburgh, one of the present magistrates of the city of Edinburgh." "It may be sae," answered Deans laconically, and without interrupting his labour. "You must understand," he continued, "that the duty of a magistrate is sometimes an unpleasant one." "It may be sae," replied David; "I hae naething to say in the contrair;" and he was again doggedly silent. "You must be aware," pursued the magistrate, "that persons in my situation are often obliged to make painful and disagreeable inquiries of individuals, merely because it is their bounden duty." "It may be sae," again replied Deans; "I hae naething to say anent it, either the tae way or the t'other. But I do ken there was ance in a day a just and God-fearing magistracy in yon town o' Edinburgh, that did not bear the sword in vain, but were a terror to evil-doers, and a praise to such as kept the path. In the glorious days of auld worthy faithfu' Provost Dick,* when there was a true and faithfu' General Assembly of * Note M. Sir William Dick of Braid. the Kirk, walking hand in hand with the real noble Scottish-hearted barons, and with the magistrates of this and other towns, gentles, burgesses, and commons of all ranks, seeing with one eye, hearing with one ear, and upholding the ark with their united strength--And then folk might see men deliver up their silver to the state's use, as if it had been as muckle sclate stanes. My father saw them toom the sacks of dollars out o' Provost Dick's window intill the carts that carried them to the army at Dunse Law; and if ye winna believe his testimony, there is the window itsell still standing in the Luckenbooths--I think it's a claith-merchant's booth the day*--at the airn stanchells, five doors abune Gossford's Close. * I think so too--But if the reader be curious, he may consult Mr. Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh. --But now we haena sic spirit amang us; we think mair about the warst wallydraigle in our ain byre, than about the blessing which the angel of the covenant gave to the Patriarch even at Peniel and Mahanaim, or the binding obligation of our national vows; and we wad rather gie a pund Scots to buy an unguent to clear out auld rannell-trees and our beds o' the English bugs as they ca' them, than we wad gie a plack to rid the land of the swarm of Arminian caterpillars, Socinian pismires, and deistical Miss Katies, that have ascended out of the bottomless pit, to plague this perverse, insidious, and lukewarm generation." It happened to Davie Deans on this occasion, as it has done to many other habitual orators; when once he became embarked on his favourite subject, the stream of his own enthusiasm carried him forward in spite of his mental distress, while his well-exercised memory supplied him amply with all the types and tropes of rhetoric peculiar to his sect and cause. Mr. Middleburgh contented himself with answering--"All this may be very true, my friend; but, as you said just now, I have nothing to say to it at present, either one way or other.--You have two daughters, I think, Mr. Deans?" The old man winced, as one whose smarting sore is suddenly galled; but instantly composed himself, resumed the work which, in the heat of his declamation, he had laid down, and answered with sullen resolution, "Ae daughter, sir--only _ane._" "I understand you," said Mr. Middleburgh; "you have only one daughter here at home with you--but this unfortunate girl who is a prisoner--she is, I think, your youngest daughter?" The Presbyterian sternly raised his eyes. "After the world, and according to the flesh, she _is_ my daughter; but when she became a child of Belial, and a company-keeper, and a trader in guilt and iniquity, she ceased to be a bairn of mine." "Alas, Mr. Deans," said Middleburgh, sitting down by him, and endeavouring to take his hand, which the old man proudly withdrew, "we are ourselves all sinners; and the errors of our offspring, as they ought not to surprise us, being the portion which they derive of a common portion of corruption inherited through us, so they do not entitle us to cast them off because they have lost themselves." "Sir," said Deans impatiently, "I ken a' that as weel as--I mean to say," he resumed, checking the irritation he felt at being schooled--a discipline of the mind which those most ready to bestow it on others do themselves most reluctantly submit to receive--"I mean to say, that what ye o serve may be just and reasonable--But I hae nae freedom to enter into my ain private affairs wi' strangers--And now, in this great national emergency, When there's the Porteous' Act has come doun frae London, that is a deeper blow to this poor sinfu' kingdom and suffering kirk than ony that has been heard of since the foul and fatal Test--at a time like this" "But, goodman," interrupted Mr. Middleburgh, "you must think of your own household first, or else you are worse even than the infidels." "I tell ye, Bailie Middleburgh," retorted David Deans, "if ye be a bailie, as there is little honour in being ane in these evil days--I tell ye, I heard the gracious Saunders Peden--I wotna whan it was; but it was in killing time, when the plowers were drawing alang their furrows on the back of the Kirk of Scotland--I heard him tell his hearers, gude and waled Christians they were too, that some o' them wad greet mair for a bit drowned calf or stirk than for a' the defections and oppressions of the day; and that they were some o' them thinking o' ae thing, some o' anither, and there was Lady Hundleslope thinking o' greeting Jock at the fireside! And the lady confessed in my hearing that a drow of anxiety had come ower her for her son that she had left at hame weak of a decay*--And what wad he hae said of me if I had ceased to think of the gude cause for a castaway--a--It kills me to think of what she is!" * See _Life of Peden,_ p. 14. "But the life of your child, goodman--think of that--if her life could be saved," said Middleburgh. "Her life!" exclaimed David--"I wadna gie ane o' my grey hairs for her life, if her gude name be gane--And yet," said he, relenting and retracting as he spoke, "I wad make the niffer, Mr. Middleburgh--I wad gie a' these grey hairs that she has brought to shame and sorrow--I wad gie the auld head they grow on for her life, and that she might hae time to amend and return, for what hae the wicked beyond the breath of their nosthrils?--but I'll never see her mair--No!--that--that I am determined in--I'll never see her mair!" His lips continued to move for a minute after his voice ceased to be heard, as if he were repeating the same vow internally. "Well, sir," said Mr. Middleburgh, "I speak to you as a man of sense; if you would save your daughter's life, you must use human means." "I understand what you mean; but Mr. Novit, who is the procurator and doer of an honourable person, the Laird of Dumbiedikes, is to do what carnal wisdom can do for her in the circumstances. Mysell am not clear to trinquet and traffic wi' courts o' justice as they are now constituted; I have a tenderness and scruple in my mind anent them." "That is to say," said Middleburgh, "that you are a Cameronian, and do not acknowledge the authority of our courts of judicature, or present government?" "Sir, under your favour," replied David, who was too proud of his own polemical knowledge to call himself the follower of any one, "ye take me up before I fall down. I canna see why I suld be termed a Cameronian, especially now that ye hae given the name of that famous and savoury sufferer, not only until a regimental band of souldiers, [H. M. 26th Foot] whereof I am told many can now curse, swear, and use profane language, as fast as ever Richard Cameron could preach or pray, but also because ye have, in as far as it is in your power, rendered that martyr's name vain and contemptible, by pipes, drums, and fifes, playing the vain carnal spring called the Cameronian Rant, which too many professors of religion dance to--a practice maist unbecoming a professor to dance to any tune whatsoever, more especially promiscuously, that is, with the female sex.* A brutish fashion it is, whilk is the beginning of defection with many, as I may hae as muckle cause as maist folk to testify." * See Note F. Peter Walker. "Well, but, Mr. Deans," replied Mr. Middleburgh, "I only meant to say that you were a Cameronian, or MacMillanite, one of the society people, in short, who think it inconsistent to take oaths under a government where the Covenant is not ratified." "Sir," replied the controversialist, who forgot even his present distress in such discussions as these, "you cannot fickle me sae easily as you do opine. I am _not_ a MacMillanite, or a Russelite, or a Hamiltonian, or a Harleyite, or a Howdenite*--I will be led by the nose by none--I take my name as a Christian from no vessel of clay. I have my own principles and practice to answer for, and am an humble pleader for the gude auld cause in a legal way." * All various species of the great genus Cameronian. "That is to say, Mr. Deans," said Middleburgh, "that you are a _Deanite,_ and have opinions peculiar to yourself." "It may please you to say sae," said David Deans; "but I have maintained my testimony before as great folk, and in sharper times; and though I will neither exalt myself nor pull down others, I wish every man and woman in this land had kept the true testimony, and the middle and straight path, as it were, on the ridge of a hill, where wind and water shears, avoiding right-hand snares and extremes, and left-hand way-slidings, as weel as Johnny Dodds of Farthing's Acre, and ae man mair that shall be nameless." "I suppose," replied the magistrate, "that is as much as to say, that Johnny Dodds of Farthing's Acre, and David Deans of St. Leonard's, constitute the only members of the true, real, unsophisticated Kirk of Scotland?" "God forbid that I suld make sic a vain-glorious speech, when there are sae mony professing Christians!" answered David; "but this I maun say, that all men act according to their gifts and their grace, 'sae that it is nae marvel that" "This is all very fine," interrupted Mr. Middleburgh; "but I have no time to spend in hearing it. The matter in hand is this--I have directed a citation to be lodged in your daughter's hands--If she appears on the day of trial and gives evidence, there is reason to hope she may save her sister's life--if, from any constrained scruples about the legality of her performing the office of an affectionate sister and a good subject, by appearing in a court held under the authority of the law and government, you become the means of deterring her from the discharge of this duty, I must say, though the truth may sound harsh in your ears, that you, who gave life to this unhappy girl, will become the means of her losing it by a premature and violent death." So saying, Mr. Middleburgh turned to leave him. "Bide awee--bide awee, Mr. Middleburgh," said Deans, in great perplexity and distress of mind; but the Bailie, who was probably sensible that protracted discussion might diminish the effect of his best and most forcible argument, took a hasty leave, and declined entering farther into the controversy. Deans sunk down upon his seat, stunned with a variety of conflicting emotions. It had been a great source of controversy among those holding his opinions in religious matters how far the government which succeeded the Revolution could be, without sin, acknowledged by true Presbyterians, seeing that it did not recognise the great national testimony of the Solemn League and Covenant? And latterly, those agreeing in this general doctrine, and assuming the sounding title of "The anti-Popish, anti-Prelatic, anti-Erastian, anti-Sectarian, true Presbyterian remnant," were divided into many petty sects among themselves, even as to the extent of submission to the existing laws and rulers, which constituted such an acknowledgment as amounted to sin. At a very stormy and tumultuous meeting, held in 1682, to discuss these important and delicate points, the testimonies of the faithful few were found utterly inconsistent with each other.* * This remarkable convocation took place upon 15th June 1682, and an account of its confused and divisive proceedings may be found in Michael Shield's _Faithful Contendings Displayed_ (first printed at Glasgow, 1780, p. 21). It affords a singular and melancholy example how much a metaphysical and polemical spirit had crept in amongst these unhappy sufferers, since amid so many real injuries which they had to sustain, they were disposed to add disagreement and disunion concerning the character and extent of such as were only imaginary. The place where this conference took place was remarkably well adapted for such an assembly. It was a wild and very sequestered dell in Tweeddale, surrounded by high hills, and far remote from human habitation. A small river, or rather a mountain torrent, called the Talla, breaks down the glen with great fury, dashing successively over a number of small cascades, which has procured the spot the name of Talla Linns. Here the leaders among the scattered adherents to the Covenant, men who, in their banishment from human society, and in the recollection of the seventies to which they had been exposed, had become at once sullen in their tempers, and fantastic in their religious opinions, met with arms in their hands, and by the side of the torrent discussed, with a turbulence which the noise of the stream could not drown, points of controversy as empty and unsubstantial as its foam. It was the fixed judgment of most of the meeting, that all payment of cess or tribute to the existing government was utterly unlawful, and a sacrificing to idols. About other impositions and degrees of submission there were various opinions; and perhaps it is the best illustration of the spirit of those military fathers of the church to say, that while all allowed it was impious to pay the cess employed for maintaining the standing army and militia, there was a fierce controversy on the lawfulness of paying the duties levied at ports and bridges, for maintaining roads and other necessary purposes; that there were some who, repugnant to these imposts for turnpikes and pontages, were nevertheless free in conscience to make payment of the usual freight at public ferries, and that a person of exceeding and punctilious zeal, James Russel, one of the slayers of the Archbishop of St. Andrews, had given his testimony with great warmth even against this last faint shade of subjection to constituted authority. This ardent and enlightened person and his followers had also great scruples about the lawfulness of bestowing the ordinary names upon the days of the week and the months of the year, which savoured in their nostrils so strongly of paganism, that at length they arrived at the conclusion that they who owned such names as Monday, Tuesday, January, February, and so forth, "served themselves heirs to the same, if not greater punishment, than had been denounced against the idolaters of old." David Deans had been present on this memorable occasion, although too young to be a speaker among the polemical combatants. His brain, however, had been thoroughly heated by the noise, clamour, and metaphysical ingenuity of the discussion, and it was a controversy to which his mind had often returned; and though he carefully disguised his vacillation from others, and, perhaps from himself, he had never been able to come to any precise line of decision on the subject. In fact, his natural sense had acted as a counterpoise to his controversial zeal. He was by no means pleased with the quiet and indifferent manner in which King William's government slurred over the errors of the times, when, far from restoring the Presbyterian kirk to its former supremacy, they passed an act of oblivion even to those who had been its persecutors, and bestowed on many of them titles, favours, and employments. When, in the first General Assembly which succeeded the Revolution, an overture was made for the revival of the League and Covenant, it was with horror that Douce David heard the proposal eluded by the men of carnal wit and policy, as he called them, as being inapplicable to the present times, and not falling under the modern model of the church. The reign of Queen Anne had increased his conviction, that the Revolution government was not one of the true Presbyterian complexion. But then, more sensible than the bigots of his sect, he did not confound the moderation and tolerance of these two reigns with the active tyranny and oppression exercised in those of Charles II. and James II. The Presbyterian form of religion, though deprived of the weight formerly attached to its sentences of excommunication, and compelled to tolerate the coexistence of Episcopacy, and of sects of various descriptions, was still the National Church; and though the glory of the second temple was far inferior to that which had flourished from 1639 till the battle of Dunbar, still it was a structure that, wanting the strength and the terrors, retained at least the form and symmetry, of the original model. Then came the insurrection in 1715, and David Deans's horror for the revival of the Popish and prelatical faction reconciled him greatly to the government of King George, although he grieved that that monarch might be suspected of a leaning unto Erastianism. In short, moved by so many different considerations, he had shifted his ground at different times concerning the degree of freedom which he felt in adopting any act of immediate acknowledgment or submission to the present government, which, however mild and paternal, was still uncovenanted, and now he felt himself called upon, by the most powerful motive conceivable, to authorise his daughter's giving testimony in a court of justice, which all who have been since called Cameronians accounted a step of lamentable and direct defection. The voice of nature, however, exclaimed loud in his bosom against the dictates of fanaticism; and his imagination, fertile in the solution of polemical difficulties, devised an expedient for extricating himself from the fearful dilemma, in which he saw, on the one side, a falling off from principle, and, on the other, a scene from which a father's thoughts could not but turn in shuddering horror. "I have been constant and unchanged in my testimony," said David Deans; "but then who has said it of me, that I have judged my neighbour over closely, because he hath had more freedom in his walk than I have found in mine? I never was a separatist, nor for quarrelling with tender souls about mint, cummin, or other the lesser tithes. My daughter Jean may have a light in this subject that is hid frae my auld een--it is laid on her conscience, and not on mine--If she hath freedom to gang before this judicatory, and hold up her hand for this poor castaway, surely I will not say she steppeth over her bounds; and if not"--He paused in his mental argument, while a pang of unutterable anguish convulsed his features, yet, shaking it off, he firmly resumed the strain of his reasoning--"And if not--God forbid that she should go into defection at bidding of mine! I wunna fret the tender conscience of one bairn--no, not to save the life of the other." A Roman would have devoted his daughter to death from different feelings and motives, but not upon a more heroic principle of duty. CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH. To man, in this his trial state, The privilege is given, When tost by tides of human fate, To anchor fast on heaven. Watts's _Hymns._ It was with a firm step that Deans sought his daughter's apartment, determined to leave her to the light of her own conscience in the dubious point of casuistry in which he supposed her to be placed. The little room had been the sleeping apartment of both sisters, and there still stood there a small occasional bed which had been made for Effie's accommodation, when, complaining of illness, she had declined to share, as in happier times, her sister's pillow. The eyes of Deans rested involuntarily, on entering the room, upon this little couch, with its dark-green coarse curtains, and the ideas connected with it rose so thick upon his soul as almost to incapacitate him from opening his errand to his daughter. Her occupation broke the ice. He found her gazing on a slip of paper, which contained a citation to her to appear as a witness upon her sister's trial in behalf of the accused. For the worthy magistrate, determined to omit no chance of doing Effie justice, and to leave her sister no apology for not giving the evidence which she was supposed to possess, had caused the ordinary citation, or _subpoena,_ of the Scottish criminal court, to be served upon her by an officer during his conference with David. This precaution was so far favourable to Deans, that it saved him the pain of entering upon a formal explanation with his daughter; he only said, with a hollow and tremulous voice, "I perceive ye are aware of the matter." "O father, we are cruelly sted between God's laws and man's laws--What shall we do?--What can we do?" Jeanie, it must be observed, had no hesitation whatever about the mere act of appearing in a court of justice. She might have heard the point discussed by her father more than once; but we have already noticed that she was accustomed to listen with reverence to much which she was incapable of understanding, and that subtle arguments of casuistry found her a patient, but unedified hearer. Upon receiving the citation, therefore, her thoughts did not turn upon the chimerical scruples which alarmed her father's mind, but to the language which had been held to her by the stranger at Muschat's Cairn. In a word, she never doubted but she was to be dragged forward into the court of justice, in order to place her in the cruel position of either sacrificing her sister by telling the truth, or committing perjury in order to save her life. And so strongly did her thoughts run in this channel, that she applied her father's words, "Ye are aware of the matter," to his acquaintance with the advice that had been so fearfully enforced upon her. She looked up with anxious surprise, not unmingled with a cast of horror, which his next words, as she interpreted and applied them, were not qualified to remove. "Daughter," said David, "it has ever been my mind, that in things of ane doubtful and controversial nature, ilk Christian's conscience suld be his ain guide--Wherefore descend into yourself, try your ain mind with sufficiency of soul exercise, and as you sall finally find yourself clear to do in this matter--even so be it." "But, father," said Jeanie, whose mind revolted at the construction which she naturally put upon his language, "can this-this be a doubtful or controversial matter?--Mind, father, the ninth command--'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.'" David Deans paused; for, still applying her speech to his preconceived difficulties, it seemed to him as if _she,_ a woman, and a sister, was scarce entitled to be scrupulous upon this occasion, where he, a man, exercised in the testimonies of that testifying period, had given indirect countenance to her following what must have been the natural dictates of her own feelings. But he kept firm his purpose, until his eyes involuntarily rested upon the little settle-bed, and recalled the form of the child of his old age, as she sate upon it, pale, emaciated, and broken-hearted. His mind, as the picture arose before him, involuntarily conceived, and his tongue involuntarily uttered--but in a tone how different from his usual dogmatical precision!--arguments for the course of conduct likely to ensure his child's safety. "Daughter," he said, "I did not say that your path was free from stumbling--and, questionless, this act may be in the opinion of some a transgression, since he who beareth witness unlawfully, and against his conscience, doth in some sort bear false witness against his neighbour. Yet in matters of compliance, the guilt lieth not in the compliance sae muckle, as in the mind and conscience of him that doth comply; and, therefore, although my testimony hath not been spared upon public defections, I haena felt freedom to separate mysell from the communion of many who have been clear to hear those ministers who have taken the fatal indulgence because they might get good of them, though I could not." When David had proceeded thus far, his conscience reproved him, that he might be indirectly undermining the purity of his daughter's faith, and smoothing the way for her falling off from strictness of principle. He, therefore, suddenly stopped, and changed his tone:--"Jeanie, I perceive that our vile affections,--so I call them in respect of doing the will of our Father,--cling too heavily to me in this hour of trying sorrow, to permit me to keep sight of my ain duty, or to airt you to yours. I will speak nae mair anent this overtrying matter--Jeanie, if ye can, wi' God and gude conscience, speak in favour of this puir unhappy"--(here his voice faltered)--"She is your sister in the flesh--worthless and castaway as she is, she is the daughter of a saint in heaven, that was a mother to you, Jeanie, in place of your ain--but if ye arena free in conscience to speak for her in the court of judicature, follow your conscience, Jeanie, and let God's will be done." After this adjuration he left the apartment, and his daughter remained in a state of great distress and perplexity. It would have been no small addition to the sorrows of David Deans, even in this extremity of suffering, had he known that his daughter was applying the casuistical arguments which he had been using, not in the sense of a permission to follow her own opinion on a dubious and disputed point of controversy, but rather as an encouragement to transgress one of those divine commandments which Christians of all sects and denominations unite in holding most sacred. "Can this be?" said Jeanie, as the door closed on her father--"Can these be his words that I have heard, or has the Enemy taken his voice and features to give weight unto the counsel which causeth to perish?--a sister's life, and a father pointing out how to save it!--O God, deliver me!--this is a fearfu' temptation." Roaming from thought to thought, she at one time imagined her father understood the ninth commandment literally, as prohibiting false witness _against_ our neighbour, without extending the denunciation against falsehood uttered _in favour_ of the criminal. But her clear and unsophisticated power of discriminating between good and evil, instantly rejected an interpretation so limited, and so unworthy of the Author of the law. She remained in a state of the most agitating terror and uncertainty--afraid to communicate her thoughts freely to her father, lest she should draw forth an opinion with which she could not comply,--wrung with distress on her sister's account, rendered the more acute by reflecting that the means of saving her were in her power, but were such as her conscience prohibited her from using,--tossed, in short, like a vessel in an open roadstead during a storm, and, like that vessel, resting on one only sure cable and anchor,--faith in Providence, and a resolution to discharge her duty. Butler's affection and strong sense of religion would have been her principal support in these distressing circumstances, but he was still under restraint, which did not permit him to come to St. Leonard's Crags; and her distresses were of a nature, which, with her indifferent habits of scholarship, she found it impossible to express in writing. She was therefore compelled to trust for guidance to her own unassisted sense of what was right or wrong. It was not the least of Jeanie's distresses, that, although she hoped and believed her sister to be innocent, she had not the means of receiving that assurance from her own mouth. The double-dealing of Ratcliffe in the matter of Robertson had not prevented his being rewarded, as double-dealers frequently have been, with favour and preferment. Sharpitlaw, who found in him something of a kindred genius, had been intercessor in his behalf with the magistrates, and the circumstance of his having voluntarily remained in the prison, when the doors were forced by the mob, would have made it a hard measure to take the life which he had such easy means of saving. He received a full pardon; and soon afterwards, James Ratcliffe, the greatest thief and housebreaker in Scotland, was, upon the faith, perhaps, of an ancient proverb, selected as a person to be entrusted with the custody of other delinquents. When Ratcliffe was thus placed in a confidential situation, he was repeatedly applied to by the sapient Saddletree and others, who took some interest in the Deans family, to procure an interview between the sisters; but the magistrates, who were extremely anxious for the apprehension of Robertson, had given strict orders to the contrary, hoping that, by keeping them separate, they might, from the one or the other, extract some information respecting that fugitive. On this subject Jeanie had nothing to tell them. She informed Mr. Middleburgh, that she knew nothing of Robertson, except having met him that night by appointment to give her some advice respecting her sister's concern, the purport of which, she said, was betwixt God and her conscience. Of his motions, purposes, or plans, past, present, or future, she knew nothing, and so had nothing to communicate. Effie was equally silent, though from a different cause. It was in vain that they offered a commutation and alleviation of her punishment, and even a free pardon, if she would confess what she knew of her lover. She answered only with tears; unless, when at times driven into pettish sulkiness by the persecution of the interrogators, she made them abrupt and disrespectful answers. At length, after her trial had been delayed for many weeks, in hopes she might be induced to speak out on a subject infinitely more interesting to the magistracy than her own guilt or innocence, their patience was worn out, and even Mr. Middleburgh finding no ear lent to farther intercession in her behalf, the day was fixed for the trial to proceed. It was now, and not sooner, that Sharpitlaw, recollecting his promise to Effie Deans, or rather being dinned into compliance by the unceasing remonstrances of Mrs. Saddletree, who was his next-door neighbour, and who declared it was heathen cruelty to keep the twa brokenhearted creatures separate, issued the important mandate, permitting them to see each other. On the evening which preceded the eventful day of trial, Jeanie was permitted to see her sister--an awful interview, and occurring at a most distressing crisis. This, however, formed a part of the bitter cup which she was doomed to drink, to atone for crimes and follies to which she had no accession; and at twelve o'clock noon, being the time appointed for admission to the jail, she went to meet, for the first time for several months, her guilty, erring, and most miserable sister, in that abode of guilt, error, and utter misery. CHAPTER NINETEENTH. Sweet sister, let me live! What sin you do to save a brother's life, Nature dispenses with the deed so far, That it becomes a virtue. Measure for Measure. Jeanie Deans was admitted into the jail by Ratcliffe. This fellow, as void of shame as of honesty, as he opened the now trebly secured door, asked her, with a leer which made her shudder, "whether she remembered him?" A half-pronounced and timid "No," was her answer. "What! not remember moonlight, and Muschat's Cairn, and Rob and Rat?" said he, with the same sneer;--"Your memory needs redding up, my jo." If Jeanie's distresses had admitted of aggravation, it must have been to find her sister under the charge of such a profligate as this man. He was not, indeed, without something of good to balance so much that was evil in his character and habits. In his misdemeanours he had never been bloodthirsty or cruel; and in his present occupation, he had shown himself, in a certain degree, accessible to touches of humanity. But these good qualities were unknown to Jeanie, who, remembering the scene at Muschat's Cairn, could scarce find voice to acquaint him, that she had an order from Bailie Middleburgh, permitting her to see her sister. "I ken that fa' weel, my bonny doo; mair by token, I have a special charge to stay in the ward with you a' the time ye are thegither." "Must that be sae?" asked Jeanie, with an imploring voice. "Hout, ay, hinny," replied the turnkey; "and what the waur will you and your tittie be of Jim Ratcliffe hearing what ye hae to say to ilk other?--Deil a word ye'll say that will gar him ken your kittle sex better than he kens them already; and another thing is, that if ye dinna speak o' breaking the Tolbooth, deil a word will I tell ower, either to do ye good or ill." Thus saying, Ratcliffe marshalled her the way to the apartment where Effie was confined. Shame, fear, and grief, had contended for mastery in the poor prisoner's bosom during the whole morning, while she had looked forward to this meeting; but when the door opened, all gave way to a confused and strange feeling that had a tinge of joy in it, as, throwing herself on her sister's neck, she ejaculated, "My dear Jeanie!--my dear Jeanie! it's lang since I hae seen ye." Jeanie returned the embrace with an earnestness that partook almost of rapture, but it was only a flitting emotion, like a sunbeam unexpectedly penetrating betwixt the clouds of a tempest, and obscured almost as soon as visible. The sisters walked together to the side of the pallet bed, and sate down side by side, took hold of each other's hands, and looked each other in the face, but without speaking a word. In this posture they remained for a minute, while the gleam of joy gradually faded from their features, and gave way to the most intense expression, first of melancholy, and then of agony, till, throwing themselves again into each other's arms, they, to use the language of Scripture, lifted up their voices, and wept bitterly. Even the hardhearted turnkey, who had spent his life in scenes calculated to stifle both conscience and feeling, could not witness this scene without a touch of human sympathy. It was shown in a trifling action, but which had more delicacy in it than seemed to belong to Ratcliffe's character and station. The unglazed window of the miserable chamber was open, and the beams of a bright sun fell right upon the bed where the sufferers were seated. With a gentleness that had something of reverence in it, Ratcliffe partly closed the shutter, and seemed thus to throw a veil over a scene so sorrowful. "Ye are ill, Effie," were the first words Jeanie could utter; "ye are very ill." "O, what wad I gie to be ten times waur, Jeanie!" was the reply--"what wad I gie to be cauld dead afore the ten o'clock bell the morn! And our father--but I am his bairn nae langer now--O, I hae nae friend left in the warld!--O, that I were lying dead at my mother's side, in Newbattle kirkyard!" "Hout, lassie," said Ratcliffe, willing to show the interest which he absolutely felt, "dinna be sae dooms doon-hearted as a' that; there's mony a tod hunted that's no killed. Advocate Langtale has brought folk through waur snappers than a' this, and there's no a cleverer agent than Nichil Novit e'er drew a bill of suspension. Hanged or unhanged, they are weel aff has sic an agent and counsel; ane's sure o' fair play. Ye are a bonny lass, too, an ye wad busk up your cockernony a bit; and a bonny lass will find favour wi' judge and jury, when they would strap up a grewsome carle like me for the fifteenth part of a flea's hide and tallow, d--n them." To this homely strain of consolation the mourners returned no answer; indeed, they were so much lost in their own sorrows as to have become insensible of Ratcliffe's presence. "O Effie," said her elder sister, "how could you conceal your situation from me? O woman, had I deserved this at your hand?--had ye spoke but ae word--sorry we might hae been, and shamed we might hae been, but this awfu' dispensation had never come ower us." "And what gude wad that hae dune?" answered the prisoner. "Na, na, Jeanie, a' was ower when ance I forgot what I promised when I faulded down the leaf of my Bible. See," she said, producing the sacred volume, "the book opens aye at the place o' itsell. O see, Jeanie, what a fearfu' Scripture!" Jeanie took her sister's Bible, and found that the fatal mark was made at this impressive text in the book of Job: "He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone. And mine hope hath he removed like a tree." "Isna that ower true a doctrine?" said the prisoner "Isna my crown, my honour, removed? And what am I but a poor, wasted, wan-thriven tree, dug up by the roots, and flung out to waste in the highway, that man and beast may tread it under foot? I thought o' the bonny bit them that our father rooted out o' the yard last May, when it had a' the flush o' blossoms on it; and then it lay in the court till the beasts had trod them a' to pieces wi' their feet. I little thought, when I was wae for the bit silly green bush and its flowers, that I was to gang the same gate mysell." "O, if ye had spoken ae word," again sobbed Jeanie,--"if I were free to swear that ye had said but ae word of how it stude wi' ye, they couldna hae touched your life this day." "Could they na?" said Effie, with something like awakened interest--for life is dear even to those who feel it is a burden--"Wha tauld ye that, Jeanie?" "It was ane that kend what he was saying weel eneugh," replied Jeanie, who had a natural reluctance at mentioning even the name of her sister's seducer. "Wha was it?--I conjure you to tell me," said Effie, seating herself upright.--"Wha could tak interest in sic a cast-by as I am now?--Was it--was it _him?_" "Hout," said Ratcliffe, "what signifies keeping the poor lassie in a swither? I'se uphaud it's been Robertson that learned ye that doctrine when ye saw him at Muschat's Cairn." "Was it him?" said Effie, catching eagerly at his words--"was it him, Jeanie, indeed?--O, I see it was him--poor lad, and I was thinking his heart was as hard as the nether millstane--and him in sic danger on his ain part--poor George!" Somewhat indignant at this burst of tender feeling towards the author of her misery, Jeanie could not help exclaiming--"O Effie, how can ye speak that gate of sic a man as that?" "We maun forgie our enemies, ye ken," said poor Effie, with a timid look and a subdued voice; for her conscience told her what a different character the feelings with which she regarded her seducer bore, compared with the Christian charity under which she attempted to veil it. "And ye hae suffered a' this for him, and ye can think of loving him still?" said her sister, in a voice betwixt pity and blame. "Love him!" answered Effie--"If I hadna loved as woman seldom loves, I hadna been within these wa's this day; and trow ye, that love sic as mine is lightly forgotten?--Na, na--ye may hew down the tree, but ye canna change its bend--And, O Jeanie, if ye wad do good to me at this moment, tell me every word that he said, and whether he was sorry for poor Effie or no!" "What needs I tell ye onything about it?" said Jeanie. "Ye may be sure he had ower muckle to do to save himsell, to speak lang or muckle about ony body beside." [Illustration: Jeanie and Effie--304] "That's no true, Jeanie, though a saunt had said it," replied Effie, with a sparkle of her former lively and irritable temper. "But ye dinna ken, though I do, how far he pat his life in venture to save mine." And looking at Ratcliffe, she checked herself and was silent. "I fancy," said Ratcliffe, with one of his familiar sneers, "the lassie thinks that naebody has een but hersell--Didna I see when Gentle Geordie was seeking to get other folk out of the Tolbooth forby Jock Porteous?--but ye are of my mind, hinny--better sit and rue, than flit and rue--ye needna look in my face sae amazed. I ken mair things than that, maybe." "O my God! my God!" said Effie, springing up and throwing herself down on her knees before him--"D'ye ken where they hae putten my bairn?--O my bairn! my bairn! the poor sackless innocent new-born wee ane--bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh!--O man, if ye wad e'er deserve a portion in Heaven, or a brokenhearted creature's blessing upon earth, tell me where they hae put my bairn--the sign of my shame, and the partner of my suffering! tell me wha has taen't away, or what they hae dune wi't?" "Hout tout," said the turnkey, endeavouring to extricate himself from the firm grasp with which she held him, "that's taking me at my word wi' a witness--Bairn, quo' she? How the deil suld I ken onything of your bairn, huzzy? Ye maun ask that of auld Meg Murdockson, if ye dinna ken ower muckle about it yoursell." As his answer destroyed the wild and vague hope which had suddenly gleamed upon her, the unhappy prisoner let go her hold of his coat, and fell with her face on the pavement of the apartment in a strong convulsion fit. Jeanie Deans possessed, with her excellently clear understanding, the concomitant advantage of promptitude of spirit, even in the extremity of distress. She did not suffer herself to be overcome by her own feelings of exquisite sorrow, but instantly applied herself to her sister's relief, with the readiest remedies which circumstances afforded; and which, to do Ratcliffe justice, he showed himself anxious to suggest, and alert in procuring. He had even the delicacy to withdraw to the farthest corner of the room, so as to render his official attendance upon them as little intrusive as possible, when Effie was composed enough again to resume her conference with her sister. The prisoner once more, in the most earnest and broken tones, conjured Jeanie to tell her the particulars of the conference with Robertson, and Jeanie felt it was impossible to refuse her this gratification. "Do ye mind," she said, "Effie, when ye were in the fever before we left Woodend, and how angry your mother, that's now in a better place, was wi' me for gieing ye milk and water to drink, because ye grat for it? Ye were a bairn then, and ye are a woman now, and should ken better than ask what canna but hurt you--But come weal or woe, I canna refuse ye onything that ye ask me wi' the tear in your ee." Again Effie threw herself into her arms, and kissed her cheek and forehead, murmuring, "O, if ye kend how lang it is since I heard his name mentioned?--if ye but kend how muckle good it does me but to ken onything o' him, that's like goodness or kindness, ye wadna wonder that I wish to hear o' him!" Jeanie sighed, and commenced her narrative of all that had passed betwixt Robertson and her, making it as brief as possible. Effie listened in breathless anxiety, holding her sister's hand in hers, and keeping her eye fixed upon her face, as if devouring every word she uttered. The interjections of "Poor fellow,"--"Poor George," which escaped in whispers, and betwixt sighs, were the only sounds with which she interrupted the story. When it was finished she made a long pause. "And this was his advice?" were the first words she uttered. "Just sic as I hae tell'd ye," replied her sister. "And he wanted you to say something to yon folks, that wad save my young life?" "He wanted," answered Jeanie, "that I suld be man-sworn." "And you tauld him," said Effie, "that ye wadna hear o' coming between me and the death that I am to die, and me no aughten year auld yet?" "I told him," replied Jeanie, who now trembled at the turn which her sister's reflection seemed about to take, "that I daured na swear to an untruth." "And what d'ye ca' an untruth?" said Effie, again showing a touch of her former spirit--"Ye are muckle to blame, lass, if ye think a mother would, or could, murder her ain bairn--Murder!--I wad hae laid down my life just to see a blink o' its ee!" "I do believe," said Jeanie, "that ye are as innocent of sic a purpose as the new-born babe itsell." "I am glad ye do me that justice," said Effie, haughtily; "ifs whiles the faut of very good folk like you, Jeanie, that, they think a' the rest of the warld are as bad as the warst temptations can make them." "I didna deserve this frae ye, Effie," said her sister, sobbing, and feeling at once the injustice of the reproach, and compassion for the state of mind which dictated it. "Maybe no, sister," said Effie. "But ye are angry because I love Robertson--How can I help loving him, that loves me better than body and soul baith?--Here he put his life in a niffer, to break the prison to let me out; and sure am I, had it stude wi' him as it stands wi' you"--Here she paused and was silent. "O, if it stude wi' me to save ye wi' risk of my life!" said Jeanie. "Ay, lass," said her sister, "that's lightly said, but no sae lightly credited, frae ane that winna ware a word for me; and if it be a wrang word, ye'll hae time eneugh to repent o't." "But that word is a grievous sin, and it's a deeper offence when it's a sin wilfully and presumptuously committed." "Weel, weel, Jeanie," said Effie, "I mind a' about the sins o' presumption in the questions--we'll speak nae mair about this matter, and ye may save your breath to say your carritch and for me, I'll soon hae nae breath to waste on onybody." "I must needs say," interposed Ratcliffe, "that it's d--d hard, when three words of your mouth would give the girl the chance to nick Moll Blood,* that you make such scrupling about rapping** to them. D--n me, if they would take me, if I would not rap to all what d'ye callums--Hyssop's Fables, for her life--I am us'd to't, b--t me, for less matters. Why, I have smacked calf-skin*** fifty times in England for a keg of brandy." * The gallows. ** Swearing. *** Kissed the book. "Never speak mair o't," said the prisoner. "It's just as weel as it is--and gude-day, sister; ye keep Mr. Ratcliffe waiting on--Ye'll come back and see me, I reckon, before"--here she stopped and became deadly pale. "And are we to part in this way," said Jeanie, "and you in sic deadly peril? O Effie, look but up, and say what ye wad hae me to do, and I could find in my heart amaist to say that I wad do't." "No, Jeanie," replied her sister after an effort, "I am better minded now. At my best, I was never half sae gude as ye were, and what for suld you begin to mak yoursell waur to save me, now that I am no worth saving? God knows, that in my sober mind, I wadna wuss ony living creature to do a wrang thing to save my life. I might have fled frae this Tolbooth on that awfu' night wi' ane wad hae carried me through the warld, and friended me, and fended for me. But I said to them, let life gang when gude fame is gane before it. But this lang imprisonment has broken my spirit, and I am whiles sair left to mysell, and then I wad gie the Indian mines of gold and diamonds, just for life and breath--for I think, Jeanie, I have such roving fits as I used to hae in the fever; but, instead of the fiery een and wolves, and Widow Butler's bullseg, that I used to see spieling upon my bed, I am thinking now about a high, black gibbet, and me standing up, and such seas of faces all looking up at poor Effie Deans, and asking if it be her that George Robertson used to call the Lily of St. Leonard's. And then they stretch out their faces, and make mouths, and girn at me, and whichever way I look, I see a face laughing like Meg Murdockson, when she tauld me I had seen the last of my wean. God preserve us, Jeanie, that carline has a fearsome face!" She clapped her hands before her eyes as she uttered this exclamation, as if to secure herself against seeing the fearful object she had alluded to. Jeanie Deans remained with her sister for two hours, during which she endeavoured, if possible, to extract something from her that might be serviceable in her exculpation. But she had nothing to say beyond what she had declared on her first examination, with the purport of which the reader will be made acquainted in proper time and place. "They wadna believe her," she said, "and she had naething mair to tell them." At length, Ratcliffe, though reluctantly, informed the sisters that there was a necessity that they should part. "Mr. Novit," he said, "was to see the prisoner, and maybe Mr. Langtale too. Langtale likes to look at a bonny lass, whether in prison or out o' prison." Reluctantly, therefore, and slowly, after many a tear, and many an embrace, Jeanie retired from the apartment, and heard its jarring bolts turned upon the dear being from whom she was separated. Somewhat familiarised now even with her rude conductor, she offered him a small present in money, with a request he would do what he could for her sister's accommodation. To her surprise, Ratcliffe declined the fee. "I wasna bloody when I was on the pad," he said, "and I winna be greedy--that is, beyond what's right and reasonable--now that I am in the lock.--Keep the siller; and for civility, your sister sall hae sic as I can bestow; but I hope you'll think better on it, and rap an oath for her--deil a hair ill there is in it, if ye are rapping again the crown. I kend a worthy minister, as gude a man, bating the deed they deposed him for, as ever ye heard claver in a pu'pit, that rapped to a hogshead of pigtail tobacco, just for as muckle as filled his spleuchan.* * Tobacco-pouch. But maybe ye are keeping your ain counsel--weel, weel, there's nae harm in that. As for your sister, I'se see that she gets her meat clean and warm, and I'll try to gar her lie down and take a sleep after dinner, for deil a ee she'll close the night. I hae gude experience of these matters. The first night is aye the warst o't. I hae never heard o' ane that sleepit the night afore trial, but of mony a ane that sleepit as sound as a tap the night before their necks were straughted. And it's nae wonder--the warst may be tholed when it's kend--Better a finger aff as aye wagging." CHAPTER TWENTIETH. Yet though thou mayst be dragg'd in scorn To yonder ignominious tree, Thou shalt not want one faithful friend To share the cruel fates' decree. Jemmy Dawson. After spending the greater part of the morning in his devotions (for his benevolent neighbours had kindly insisted upon discharging his task of ordinary labour), David Deans entered the apartment when the breakfast meal was prepared. His eyes were involuntarily cast down, for he was afraid to look at Jeanie, uncertain as he was whether she might feel herself at liberty, with a good conscience, to attend the Court of Justiciary that day, to give the evidence which he understood that she possessed, in order to her sister's exculpation. At length, after a minute of apprehensive hesitation, he looked at her dress to discover whether it seemed to be in her contemplation to go abroad that morning. Her apparel was neat and plain, but such as conveyed no exact intimation of her intentions to go abroad. She had exchanged her usual garb for morning labour, for one something inferior to that with which, as her best, she was wont to dress herself for church, or any more rare occasion of going into society. Her sense taught her, that it was respectful to be decent in her apparel on such an occasion, while her feelings induced her to lay aside the use of the very few and simple personal ornaments, which, on other occasions, she permitted herself to wear. So that there occurred nothing in her external appearance which could mark out to her father, with anything like certainty, her intentions on this occasion. The preparations for their humble meal were that morning made in vain. The father and daughter sat, each assuming the appearance of eating, when the other's eyes were turned to them, and desisting from the effort with disgust, when the affectionate imposture seemed no longer necessary. At length these moments of constraint were removed. The sound of St. Giles's heavy toll announced the hour previous to the commencement of the trial; Jeanie arose, and with a degree of composure for which she herself could not account, assumed her plaid, and made her other preparations for a distant walking. It was a strange contrast between the firmness of her demeanour, and the vacillation and cruel uncertainty of purpose indicated in all her father's motions; and one unacquainted with both could scarcely have supposed that the former was, in her ordinary habits of life, a docile, quiet, gentle, and even timid country maiden, while her father, with a mind naturally proud and strong, and supported by religious opinions of a stern, stoical, and unyielding character, had in his time undergone and withstood the most severe hardships, and the most imminent peril, without depression of spirit, or subjugation of his constancy. The secret of this difference was, that Jeanie's mind had already anticipated the line of conduct which she must adopt, with all its natural and necessary consequences; while her father, ignorant of every other circumstance, tormented himself with imagining what the one sister might say or swear, or what effect her testimony might have upon the awful event of the trial. He watched his daughter, with a faltering and indecisive look, until she looked back upon him, with a look of unutterable anguish, as she was about to leave the apartment. "My dear lassie," said he, "I will." His action, hastily and confusedly searching for his worsted mittans* and staff, showed his purpose of accompanying her, though his tongue failed distinctly to announce it. * A kind of worsted gloves, used by the lower orders. "Father," said Jeanie, replying rather to his action than his words, "ye had better not." "In the strength of my God," answered Deans, assuming firmness, "I will go forth." And, taking his daughter's arm under his, he began to walk from the door with a step so hasty, that she was almost unable to keep up with him. A trifling circumstance, but which marked the perturbed state of his mind, checked his course. "Your bonnet, father?" said Jeanie, who observed he had come out with his grey hairs uncovered. He turned back with a slight blush on his cheek, being ashamed to have been detected in an omission which indicated so much mental confusion, assumed his large blue Scottish bonnet, and with a step slower, but more composed, as if the circumstance, had obliged him to summon up his resolution, and collect his scattered ideas, again placed his daughter's arm under his, and resumed the way to Edinburgh. The courts of justice were then, and are still, held in what is called the Parliament Close, or, according to modern phrase, Parliament Square, and occupied the buildings intended for the accommodation of the Scottish Estates. This edifice, though in an imperfect and corrupted style of architecture, had then a grave, decent, and, as it were, a judicial aspect, which was at least entitled to respect from its antiquity. For which venerable front, I observed, on my last occasional visit to the metropolis, that modern taste had substituted, at great apparent expense, a pile so utterly inconsistent with every monument of antiquity around, and in itself so clumsy at the same time and fantastic, that it may be likened to the decorations of Tom Errand the porter, in the _Trip to the Jubilee,_ when he appears bedizened with the tawdry finery of Beau Clincher. _Sed transeat cum caeteris erroribus._ The small quadrangle, or Close, if we may presume still to give it that appropriate, though antiquated title, which at Lichfield, Salisbury, and elsewhere, is properly applied to designate the enclosure adjacent to a cathedral, already evinced tokens of the fatal scene which was that day to be acted. The soldiers of the City Guard were on their posts, now enduring, and now rudely repelling with the butts of their muskets, the motley crew who thrust each other forward, to catch a glance at the unfortunate object of trial, as she should pass from the adjacent prison to the Court in which her fate was to be determined. All must have occasionally observed, with disgust, the apathy with which the vulgar gaze on scenes of this nature, and how seldom, unless when their sympathies are called forth by some striking and extraordinary circumstance, the crowd evince any interest deeper than that of callous, unthinking bustle, and brutal curiosity. They laugh, jest, quarrel, and push each other to and fro, with the same unfeeling indifference as if they were assembled for some holiday sport, or to see an idle procession. Occasionally, however, this demeanour, so natural to the degraded populace of a large town, is exchanged for a temporary touch of human affections; and so it chanced on the present occasion. When Deans and his daughter presented themselves in the Close, and endeavoured to make their way forward to the door of the Court-house, they became involved in the mob, and subject, of course, to their insolence. As Deans repelled with some force the rude pushes which he received on all sides, his figure and antiquated dress caught the attention of the rabble, who often show an intuitive sharpness in ascribing the proper character from external appearance,-- "Ye're welcome, whigs, Frae Bothwell briggs," sung one fellow (for the mob of Edinburgh were at that time jacobitically disposed, probably because that was the line of sentiment most diametrically opposite to existing authority). "Mess David Williamson, Chosen of twenty, Ran up the pu'pit stair, And sang Killiecrankie," chanted a siren, whose profession might be guessed by her appearance. A tattered caidie, or errand-porter, whom David Deans had jostled in his attempt to extricate himself from the vicinity of these scorners, exclaimed in a strong north-country tone, "Ta deil ding out her Cameronian een--what gies her titles to dunch gentlemans about?" "Make room for the ruling elder," said yet another; "he comes to see a precious sister glorify God in the Grassmarket!" "Whisht; shame's in ye, sirs," said the voice of a man very loudly, which, as quickly sinking, said in a low but distinct tone, "It's her father and sister." All fell back to make way for the sufferers; and all, even the very rudest and most profligate, were struck with shame and silence. In the space thus abandoned to them by the mob, Deans stood, holding his daughter by the hand, and said to her, with a countenance strongly and sternly expressive of his internal emotion, "Ye hear with your ears, and ye see with your eyes, where and to whom the backslidings and defections of professors are ascribed by the scoffers. Not to themselves alone, but to the kirk of which they are members, and to its blessed and invisible Head. Then, weel may we take wi' patience our share and portion of this outspreading reproach." The man who had spoken, no other than our old friend, Dumbiedikes, whose mouth, like that of the prophet's ass, had been opened by the emergency of the case, now joined them, and, with his usual taciturnity, escorted them into the Court-house. No opposition was offered to their entrance either by the guards or doorkeepers; and it is even said that one of the latter refused a shilling of civility-money tendered him by the Laird of Dumbiedikes, who was of opinion that "siller wad make a' easy." But this last incident wants confirmation. Admitted within the precincts of the Court-house, they found the usual number of busy office-bearers, and idle loiterers, who attend on these scenes by choice, or from duty. Burghers gaped and stared; young lawyers sauntered, sneered, and laughed, as in the pit of the theatre; while others apart sat on a bench retired, and reasoned highly, _inter apices juris,_ on the doctrines of constructive crime, and the true import of the statute. The bench was prepared for the arrival of the judges. The jurors were in attendance. The crown-counsel, employed in looking over their briefs and notes of evidence, looked grave, and whispered with each other. They occupied one side of a large table placed beneath the bench; on the other sat the advocates, whom the humanity of the Scottish law (in this particular more liberal than that of the sister-country) not only permits, but enjoins, to appear and assist with their advice and skill all persons under trial. Mr. Nichil Novit was seen actively instructing the counsel for the panel (so the prisoner is called in Scottish law-phraseology), busy, bustling, and important. When they entered the Court-room, Deans asked the Laird, in a tremulous whisper, "Where will _she_ sit?" Dumbiedikes whispered Novit, who pointed to a vacant space at the bar, fronting the judges, and was about to conduct Deans towards it. "No!" he said; "I cannot sit by her--I cannot own her--not as yet, at least--I will keep out of her sight, and turn mine own eyes elsewhere--better for us baith." Saddletree, whose repeated interference with the counsel had procured him one or two rebuffs, and a special request that he would concern himself with his own matters, now saw with pleasure an opportunity of playing the person of importance. He bustled up to the poor old man, and proceeded to exhibit his consequence, by securing, through his interest with the bar-keepers and macers, a seat for Deans, in a situation where he was hidden from the general eye by the projecting corner of the bench. "It's gude to have a friend at court," he said, continuing his heartless harangues to the passive auditor, who neither heard nor replied to them; "few folk but mysell could hae sorted ye out a seat like this--the Lords will be here incontinent, and proceed _instanter_ to trial. They wunna fence the Court as they do at the Circuit--the High Court of Justiciary is aye fenced.--But, Lord's sake, what's this o't--Jeanie, ye are a cited witness--Macer, this lass is a witness--she maun be enclosed--she maun on nae account be at large.--Mr. Novit, suldna Jeanie Deans be enclosed?" Novit answered in the affirmative, and offered to conduct Jeanie to the apartment, where, according to the scrupulous practice of the Scottish Court, the witnesses remain in readiness to be called into Court to give evidence; and separated, at the same time, from all who might influence their testimony, or give them information concerning that which was passing upon the trial. "Is this necessary?" said Jeanie, still reluctant to quit her father's hand. "A matter of absolute needcessity," said Saddletree, "wha ever heard of witnesses no being enclosed?" "It is really a matter of necessity," said the younger counsellor, retained for her sister; and Jeanie reluctantly followed the macer of the Court to the place appointed. "This, Mr. Deans," said Saddletree, "is ca'd sequestering a witness; but it's clean different (whilk maybe ye wadna fund out o' yoursell) frae sequestering ane's estate or effects, as in cases of bankruptcy. I hae aften been sequestered as a witness, for the Sheriff is in the use whiles to cry me in to witness the declarations at precognitions, and so is Mr. Sharpitlaw; but I was ne'er like to be sequestered o' land and gudes but ance, and that was lang syne, afore I was married. But whisht, whisht! here's the Court coming." As he spoke, the five Lords of Justiciary, in their long robes of scarlet, faced with white, and preceded by their mace-bearer, entered with the usual formalities, and took their places upon the bench of judgment. The audience rose to receive them; and the bustle occasioned by their entrance was hardly composed, when a great noise and confusion of persons struggling, and forcibly endeavouring to enter at the doors of the Court-room, and of the galleries, announced that the prisoner was about to be placed at the bar. This tumult takes place when the doors, at first only opened to those either having right to be present, or to the better and more qualified ranks, are at length laid open to all whose curiosity induces them to be present on the occasion. With inflamed countenances and dishevelled dresses, struggling with, and sometimes tumbling over each other, in rushed the rude multitude, while a few soldiers, forming, as it were, the centre of the tide, could scarce, with all their efforts, clear a passage for the prisoner to the place which she was to occupy. By the authority of the Court, and the exertions of its officers, the tumult among the spectators was at length appeased, and the unhappy girl brought forward, and placed betwixt two sentinels with drawn bayonets, as a prisoner at the bar, where she was to abide her deliverance for good or evil, according to the issue of her trial. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST. We have strict statutes, and most biting laws-- The needful bits and curbs for headstrong steeds-- Which, for these fourteen years, we have let sleep, Like to an o'ergrown lion in a cave, That goes not out to prey. Measure for Measure. "Euphemia Deans," said the presiding Judge, in an accent in which pity was blended with dignity, "stand up and listen to the criminal indictment now to be preferred against you." The unhappy girl, who had been stupified by the confusion through which the guards had forced a passage, cast a bewildered look on the multitude of faces around her, which seemed to tapestry, as it were, the walls, in one broad slope from the ceiling to the floor, with human countenances, and instinctively obeyed a command, which rung in her ears like the trumpet of the judgment-day. "Put back your hair, Effie," said one of the macers. For her beautiful and abundant tresses of long fair hair, which, according to the costume of the country, unmarried women were not allowed to cover with any sort of cap, and which, alas! Effie dared no longer confine with the snood or riband, which implied purity of maiden-fame, now hung unbound and dishevelled over her face, and almost concealed her features. On receiving this hint from the attendant, the unfortunate young woman, with a hasty, trembling, and apparently mechanical compliance, shaded back from her face her luxuriant locks, and showed to the whole court, excepting one individual, a countenance, which, though pale and emaciated, was so lovely amid its agony, that it called forth a universal murmur of compassion and sympathy. Apparently the expressive sound of human feeling recalled the poor girl from the stupor of fear, which predominated at first over every other sensation, and awakened her to the no less painful sense of shame and exposure attached to her present situation. Her eye, which had at first glanced wildly around, was turned on the ground; her cheek, at first so deadly pale, began gradually to be overspread with a faint blush, which increased so fast, that, when in agony of shame she strove to conceal her face, her temples, her brow, her neck, and all that her slender fingers and small palms could not cover, became of the deepest crimson. All marked and were moved by these changes, excepting one. It was old Deans, who, motionless in his seat, and concealed, as we have said, by the corner of the bench, from seeing or being seen, did nevertheless keep his eyes firmly fixed on the ground, as if determined that, by no possibility whatever, would he be an ocular witness of the shame of his house. "Ichabod!" he said to himself--"Ichabod! my glory is departed!" While these reflections were passing through his mind, the indictment, which set forth in technical form the crime of which the panel stood accused, was read as usual, and the prisoner was asked if she was Guilty, or Not Guilty. "Not guilty of my poor bairn's death," said Effie Deans, in an accent corresponding in plaintive softness of tone to the beauty of her features, and which was not heard by the audience without emotion. The presiding Judge next directed the counsel to plead to the relevancy; that is, to state on either part the arguments in point of law, and evidence in point of fact, against and in favour of the criminal; after which it is the form of the Court to pronounce a preliminary judgment, sending the cause to the cognisance of the jury, or assize. The counsel for the crown briefly stated the frequency of the crime of infanticide, which had given rise to the special statute under which the panel stood indicted. He mentioned the various instances, many of them marked with circumstances of atrocity, which had at length induced the King's Advocate, though with great reluctance, to make the experiment, whether, by strictly enforcing the Act of Parliament which had been made to prevent such enormities, their occurrence might be prevented. "He expected," he said, "to be able to establish by witnesses, as well as by the declaration of the panel herself, that she was in the state described by the statute. According to his information, the panel had communicated her pregnancy to no one, nor did she allege in her own declaration that she had done so. This secrecy was the first requisite in support of the indictment. The same declaration admitted, that she had borne a male child, in circumstances which gave but too much reason to believe it had died by the hands, or at least with the knowledge or consent, of the unhappy mother. It was not, however, necessary for him to bring positive proof that the panel was accessory to the murder, nay, nor even to prove, that the child was murdered at all. It was sufficient to support the indictment, that it could not be found. According to the stern, but necessary severity of this statute, she who should conceal her pregnancy, who should omit to call that assistance which is most necessary on such occasions, was held already to have meditated the death of her offspring, as an event most likely to be the consequence of her culpable and cruel concealment. And if, under such circumstances, she could not alternatively show by proof that the infant had died a natural death, or produce it still in life, she must, under the construction of the law, be held to have murdered it, and suffer death accordingly." The counsel for the prisoner, Mr. Fairbrother, a man of considerable fame in his profession, did not pretend directly to combat the arguments of the King's Advocate. He began by lamenting that his senior at the bar, Mr. Langtale, had been suddenly called to the county of which he was sheriff, and that he had been applied to, on short warning, to give the panel his assistance in this interesting case. He had had little time, he said, to make up for his inferiority to his learned brother by long and minute research; and he was afraid he might give a specimen of his incapacity, by being compelled to admit the accuracy of the indictment under the statute. "It was enough for their Lordships," he observed, "to know that such was the law, and he admitted the advocate had a right to call for the usual interlocutor of relevancy." But he stated, "that when he came to establish his case by proof, he trusted to make out circumstances which would satisfactorily elide the charge in the libel. His client's story was a short, but most melancholy one. She was bred up in the strictest tenets of religion and virtue, the daughter of a worthy and conscientious person, who, in evil times, had established a character for courage and religion, by becoming a sufferer for conscience' sake." David Deans gave a convulsive start at hearing himself thus mentioned, and then resumed the situation, in which, with his face stooped against his hands, and both resting against the corner of the elevated bench on which the Judges sate, he had hitherto listened to the procedure in the trial. The Whig lawyers seemed to be interested; the Tories put up their lip. "Whatever may be our difference of opinion," resumed the lawyer, whose business it was to carry his whole audience with him if possible, "concerning the peculiar tenets of these people" (here Deans groaned deeply), "it is impossible to deny them the praise of sound, and even rigid morals, or the merit of training up their children in the fear of God; and yet it was the daughter of such a person whom a jury would shortly be called upon, in the absence of evidence, and upon mere presumptions, to convict of a crime more properly belonging to a heathen, or a savage, than to a Christian and civilised country. It was true," he admitted, "that the excellent nurture and early instruction which the poor girl had received, had not been sufficient to preserve her from guilt and error. She had fallen a sacrifice to an inconsiderate affection for a young man of prepossessing manners, as he had been informed, but of a very dangerous and desperate character. She was seduced under promise of marriage--a promise, which the fellow might have, perhaps, done her justice by keeping, had he not at that time been called upon by the law to atone for a crime, violent and desperate in itself, but which became the preface to another eventful history, every step of which was marked by blood and guilt, and the final termination of which had not even yet arrived. He believed that no one would hear him without surprise, when he stated that the father of this infant now amissing, and said by the learned Advocate to have been murdered, was no other than the notorious George Robertson, the accomplice of Wilson, the hero of the memorable escape from the Tolbooth Church, and as no one knew better than his learned friend the Advocate, the principal actor in the Porteous conspiracy" "I am sorry to interrupt a counsel in such a case as the present," said, the presiding Judge; "but I must remind the learned gentleman that he is travelling out of the case before us." The counsel bowed and resumed. "He only judged it necessary," he said, "to mention the name and situation of Robertson, because the circumstance in which that character was placed, went a great way in accounting for the silence on which his Majesty's counsel had laid so much weight, as affording proof that his client proposed to allow no fair play for its life to the helpless being whom she was about to bring into the world. She had not announced to her friends that she had been seduced from the path of honour--and why had she not done so?--Because she expected daily to be restored to character, by her seducer doing her that justice which she knew to be in his power, and believed to be in his inclination. Was it natural--was it reasonable--was it fair, to expect that she should in the interim, become _felo de se_ of her own character, and proclaim her frailty to the world, when she had every reason to expect, that, by concealing it for a season, it might be veiled for ever? Was it not, on the contrary, pardonable, that, in such an emergency, a young woman, in such a situation, should be found far from disposed to make a confidant of every prying gossip, who, with sharp eyes, and eager ears, pressed upon her for an explanation of suspicious circumstances, which females in the lower--he might say which females of all ranks, are so alert in noticing, that they sometimes discover them where they do not exist? Was it strange or was it criminal, that she should have repelled their inquisitive impertinence with petulant denials? The sense and feeling of all who heard him would answer directly in the negative. But although his client had thus remained silent towards those to whom she was not called upon to communicate her situation,--to whom," said the learned gentleman, "I will add, it would have been unadvised and improper in her to have done so; yet, I trust, I shall remove this case most triumphantly from under the statute, and obtain the unfortunate young woman an honourable dismission from your Lordships' bar, by showing that she did, in due time and place, and to a person most fit for such confidence, mention the calamitous circumstances in which she found herself. This occurred after Robertson's conviction, and when he was lying in prison in expectation of the fate which his comrade Wilson afterwards suffered, and from which he himself so strangely escaped. It was then, when all hopes of having her honour repaired by wedlock vanished from her eyes,--when an union with one in Robertson's situation, if still practicable, might, perhaps, have been regarded rather as an addition to her disgrace,--it was _then,_ that I trust to be able to prove that the prisoner communicated and consulted with her sister, a young woman several years older than herself, the daughter of her father, if I mistake not, by a former marriage, upon the perils and distress of her unhappy situation." "If, indeed, you are able to instruct _that_ point, Mr. Fairbrother," said the presiding Judge. "If I am indeed able to instruct that point, my Lord," resumed Mr. Fairbrother, "I trust not only to serve my client, but to relieve your Lordships from that which I know you feel the most painful duty of your high office; and to give all who now hear me the exquisite pleasure of beholding a creature, so young, so ingenuous, and so beautiful, as she that is now at the bar of your Lordships' Court, dismissed from thence in safety and in honour." This address seemed to affect many of the audience, and was followed by a slight murmur of applause. Deans, as he heard his daughter's beauty and innocent appearance appealed to, was involuntarily about to turn his eyes towards her; but, recollecting himself, he bent them again on the ground with stubborn resolution. "Will not my learned brother, on the other side of the bar," continued the advocate, after a short pause, "share in this general joy, since, I know, while he discharges his duty in bringing an accused person here, no one rejoices more in their being freely and honourably sent hence? My learned brother shakes his head doubtfully, and lays his hand on the panel's declaration. I understand him perfectly--he would insinuate that the facts now stated to your Lordships are inconsistent with the confession of Euphemia Deans herself. I need not remind your Lordships, that her present defence is no whit to be narrowed within the bounds of her former confession; and that it is not by any account which she may formerly have given of herself, but by what is now to be proved for or against her, that she must ultimately stand or fall. I am not under the necessity of accounting for her choosing to drop out of her declaration the circumstances of her confession to her sister. She might not be aware of its importance; she might be afraid of implicating her sister; she might even have forgotten the circumstance entirely, in the terror and distress of mind incidental to the arrest of so young a creature on a charge so heinous. Any of these reasons are sufficient to account for her having suppressed the truth in this instance, at whatever risk to herself; and I incline most to her erroneous fear of criminating her sister, because I observe she has had a similar tenderness towards her lover (however undeserved on his part), and has never once mentioned Robertson's name from beginning to end of her declaration. "But, my Lords," continued Fairbrother, "I am aware the King's Advocate will expect me to show, that the proof I offer is consistent with other circumstances of the, case, which I do not and cannot deny. He will demand of me how Effie Deans's confession to her sister, previous to her delivery, is reconcilable with the mystery of the birth,--with the disappearance, perhaps the murder (for I will not deny a possibility which I cannot disprove) of the infant. My Lords, the explanation of this is to be found in the placability, perchance, I may say, in the facility and pliability, of the female sex. The _dulcis Amaryllidis irae,_ as your Lordships well know, are easily appeased; nor is it possible to conceive a woman so atrociously offended by the man whom she has loved, but that she will retain a fund of forgiveness, upon which his penitence, whether real or affected, may draw largely, with a certainty that his bills will be answered. We can prove, by a letter produced in evidence, that this villain Robertson, from the bottom of the dungeon whence he already probably meditated the escape, which he afterwards accomplished by the assistance of his comrade, contrived to exercise authority over the mind, and to direct the motions, of this unhappy girl. It was in compliance with his injunctions, expressed in that letter, that the panel was prevailed upon to alter the line of conduct which her own better thoughts had suggested; and, instead of resorting, when her time of travail approached, to the protection of her own family, was induced to confide herself to the charge of some vile agent of this nefarious seducer, and by her conducted to one of those solitary and secret purlieus of villany, which, to the shame of our police, still are suffered to exist in the suburbs of this city, where, with the assistance, and under the charge, of a person of her own sex, she bore a male child, under circumstances which added treble bitterness to the woe denounced against our original mother. What purpose Robertson had in all this, it is hard to tell, or even to guess. He may have meant to marry the girl, for her father is a man of substance. But, for the termination of the story, and the conduct of the woman whom he had placed about the person of Euphemia Deans, it is still more difficult to account. The unfortunate young woman was visited by the fever incidental to her situation. In this fever she appears to have been deceived by the person that waited on her, and, on recovering her senses, she found that she was childless in that abode of misery. Her infant had been carried off, perhaps for the worst purposes, by the wretch that waited on her. It may have been murdered, for what I can tell." He was here interrupted by a piercing shriek, uttered by the unfortunate prisoner. She was with difficulty brought to compose herself. Her counsel availed himself of the tragical interruption, to close his pleading with effect. "My Lords," said he, "in that piteous cry you heard the eloquence of maternal affection, far surpassing the force of my poor words--Rachel weeping for her children! Nature herself bears testimony in favour of the tenderness and acuteness of the prisoner's parental feelings. I will not dishonour her plea by adding a word more." "Heard ye ever the like o' that, Laird?" said Saddletree to Dumbiedikes, when the counsel had ended his speech. "There's a chield can spin a muckle pirn out of a wee tait of tow! Deil haet he kens mair about it than what's in the declaration, and a surmise that Jeanie Deans suld hae been able to say something about her sister's situation, whilk surmise, Mr. Crossmyloof says, rests on sma' authority. And he's cleckit this great muckle bird out o' this wee egg! He could wile the very flounders out o' the Firth.--What garr'd my father no send me to Utrecht?--But whisht, the Court is gaun to pronounce the interlocutor of relevancy." And accordingly the Judges, after a few words, recorded their judgment, which bore, that the indictment, if proved, was relevant to infer the pains of law: And that the defence, that the panel had communicated her situation to her sister, was a relevant defence: And, finally, appointed the said indictment and defence to be submitted to the judgment of an assize. CHAPTER TWENTY-SECOND. Most righteous judge! a sentence.--Come, prepare. Merchant of Venice. It is by no means my intention to describe minutely the forms of a Scottish criminal trial, nor am I sure that I could draw up an account so intelligible and accurate as to abide the criticism of the gentlemen of the long robe. It is enough to say that the jury was impanelled, and the case proceeded. The prisoner was again required to plead to the charge, and she again replied, "Not Guilty," in the same heart-thrilling tone as before. The crown counsel then called two or three female witnesses, by whose testimony it was established, that Effie's situation had been remarked by them, that they had taxed her with the fact, and that her answers had amounted to an angry and petulant denial of what they charged her with. But, as very frequently happens, the declaration of the panel or accused party herself was the evidence which bore hardest upon her case. In the event of these tales ever finding their way across the Border, it may be proper to apprise the southern reader that it is the practice in Scotland, on apprehending a suspected person, to subject him to a judicial examination before a magistrate. He is not compelled to answer any of the questions asked of him, but may remain silent if he sees it his interest to do so. But whatever answers he chooses to give are formally written down, and being subscribed by himself and the magistrate, are produced against the accused in case of his being brought to trial. It is true, that these declarations are not produced as being in themselves evidence properly so called, but only as adminicles of testimony, tending to corroborate what is considered as legal and proper evidence. Notwithstanding this nice distinction, however, introduced by lawyers to reconcile this procedure to their own general rule, that a man cannot be required to bear witness against himself, it nevertheless usually happens that these declarations become the means of condemning the accused, as it were, out of their own mouths. The prisoner, upon these previous examinations, has indeed the privilege of remaining silent if he pleases; but every man necessarily feels that a refusal to answer natural and pertinent interrogatories, put by judicial authority, is in itself a strong proof of guilt, and will certainly lead to his being committed to prison; and few can renounce the hope of obtaining liberty by giving some specious account of themselves, and showing apparent frankness in explaining their motives and accounting for their conduct. It, therefore, seldom happens that the prisoner refuses to give a judicial declaration, in which, nevertheless, either by letting out too much of the truth, or by endeavouring to substitute a fictitious story, he almost always exposes himself to suspicion and to contradictions, which weigh heavily in the minds of the jury. The declaration of Effie Deans was uttered on other principles, and the following is a sketch of its contents, given in the judicial form, in which they may still be found in the Books of Adjournal. The declarant admitted a criminal intrigue with an individual whose name she desired to conceal. "Being interrogated, what her reason was for secrecy on this point? She declared, that she had no right to blame that person's conduct more than she did her own, and that she was willing to confess her own faults, but not to say anything which might criminate the absent. Interrogated, if she confessed her situation to any one, or made any preparation for her confinement? Declares, she did not. And being interrogated, why she forbore to take steps which her situation so peremptorily required? Declares, she was ashamed to tell her friends, and she trusted the person she has mentioned would provide for her and the infant. Interrogated if he did so? Declares, that he did not do so personally; but that it was not his fault, for that the declarant is convinced he would have laid down his life sooner than the bairn or she had come to harm. Interrogated, what prevented him from keeping his promise? Declares, that it was impossible for him to do so, he being under trouble at the time, and declines farther answer to this question. Interrogated, where she was from the period she left her master, Mr. Saddletree's family, until her appearance at her father's, at St. Leonard's, the day before she was apprehended? Declares, she does not remember. And, on the interrogatory being repeated, declares, she does not mind muckle about it, for she was very ill. On the question being again repeated, she declares, she will tell the truth, if it should be the undoing of her, so long as she is not asked to tell on other folk; and admits, that she passed that interval of time in the lodging of a woman, an acquaintance of that person who had wished her to that place to be delivered, and that she was there delivered accordingly of a male child. Interrogated, what was the name of that person? Declares and refuses to answer this question. Interrogated, where she lives? Declares, she has no certainty, for that she was taken to the lodging aforesaid under cloud of night. Interrogated, if the lodging was in the city or suburbs? Declares and refuses to answer that question. Interrogated, whether, when she left the house of Mr. Saddletree, she went up or down the street? Declares and refuses to answer the question. Interrogated, whether she had ever seen the woman before she was wished to her, as she termed it, by the person whose name she refuses to answer? Declares and replies, not to her knowledge. Interrogated, whether this woman was introduced to her by the said person verbally, or by word of mouth? Declares, she has no freedom to answer this question. Interrogated, if the child was alive when it was born? Declares, that--God help her and it!--it certainly was alive. Interrogated, if it died a natural death after birth? Declares, not to her knowledge. Interrogated, where it now is? Declares, she would give her right hand to ken, but that she never hopes to see mair than the banes of it. And being interrogated, why she supposes it is now dead? the declarant wept bitterly and made no answer. Interrogated, if the woman, in whose lodging she was, seemed to be a fit person to be with her in that situation? Declares, she might be fit enough for skill, but that she was an hard-hearted bad woman. Interrogated, if there was any other person in the lodging excepting themselves two? Declares, that she thinks there was another woman; but her head was so carried with pain of body and trouble of mind, that she minded her very little. Interrogated, when the child was taken away from her? Declared that she fell in a fever, and was light-headed, and when she came to her own mind, the woman told her the bairn was dead; and that the declarant answered, if it was dead it had had foul play. That, thereupon, the woman was very sair on her, and gave her much ill language; and that the deponent was frightened, and crawled out of the house when her back was turned, and went home to Saint Leonard's Crags, as well as a woman in her condition dought.* * i.e. Was able to do. Interrogated, why she did not tell her story to her sister and father, and get force to search the house for her child, dead or alive? Declares, it was her purpose to do so, but she had not time. Interrogated, why she now conceals the name of the woman, and the place of her abode? The declarant remained silent for a time, and then said, that to do so could not repair the skaith that was done, but might be the occasion of more. Interrogated, whether she had herself, at any time, had any purpose of putting away the child by violence? Declares, never; so might God be merciful to her--and then again declares, never, when she was in her perfect senses; but what bad thoughts the Enemy might put into her brain when she was out of herself, she cannot answer. And again solemnly interrogated, declares, that she would have been drawn with wild horses, rather than have touched the bairn with an unmotherly hand. Interrogated, declares, that among the ill-language the woman gave her, she did say sure enough that the declarant had hurt the bairn when she was in the brain fever; but that the declarant does not believe that she said this from any other cause than to frighten her, and make her be silent. Interrogated, what else the woman said to her? Declares, that when the declarant cried loud for her bairn, and was like to raise the neighbours, the woman threatened her, that they that could stop the wean's skirling would stop hers, if she did not keep a' the founder.* * i.e. The quieter. And that this threat, with the manner of the woman, made the declarant conclude, that the bairn's life was gone, and her own in danger, for that the woman was a desperate bad woman, as the declarant judged from the language she used. Interrogated, declares, that the fever and delirium were brought on her by hearing bad news, suddenly told to her, but refuses to say what the said news related to. Interrogated, why she does not now communicate these particulars, which might, perhaps, enable the magistrate to ascertain whether the child is living or dead; and requested to observe, that her refusing to do so, exposes her own life, and leaves the child in bad hands; as also that her present refusal to answer on such points is inconsistent with her alleged intention to make a clean breast to her sister? Declares, that she kens the bairn is now dead, or, if living, there is one that will look after it; that for her own living or dying, she is in God's hands, who knows her innocence of harming her bairn with her will or knowledge; and that she has altered her resolution of speaking out, which she entertained when she left the woman's lodging, on account of a matter which she has since learned. And declares, in general, that she is wearied, and will answer no more questions at this time." Upon a subsequent examination, Euphemia Deans adhered to the declaration she had formerly made, with this addition, that a paper found in her trunk being shown to her, she admitted that it contained the credentials, in consequence of which she resigned herself to the conduct of the woman at whose lodgings she was delivered of the child. Its tenor ran thus:-- "Dearest Effie,--I have gotten the means to send to you by a woman who is well qualified to assist you in your approaching streight; she is not what I could wish her, but I cannot do better for you in my present condition. I am obliged to trust to her in this present calamity, for myself and you too. I hope for the best, though I am now in a sore pinch; yet thought is free--I think Handie Dandie and I may queer the stifler* for all that is come and gone. * Avoid the gallows. You will be angry for me writing this to my little Cameronian Lily; but if I can but live to be a comfort to you, and a father to your babie, you will have plenty of time to scold.--Once more, let none knew your counsel--my life depends on this hag, d--n her--she is both deep and dangerous, but she has more wiles and wit than ever were in a beldam's head, and has cause to be true to me. Farewell, my Lily--Do not droop on my account--in a week I will be yours or no more my own." Then followed a postscript. "If they must truss me, I will repent of nothing so much, even at the last hard pinch, as of the injury I have done my Lily." Effie refused to say from whom she had received this letter, but enough of the story was now known, to ascertain that it came from Robertson; and from the date, it appeared to have been written about the time when Andrew Wilson (called for a nickname Handie Dandie) and he were meditating their first abortive attempt to escape, which miscarried in the manner mentioned in the beginning of this history. The evidence of the Crown being concluded, the counsel for the prisoner began to lead a proof in her defence. The first witnesses were examined upon the girl's character. All gave her an excellent one, but none with more feeling than worthy Mrs. Saddletree, who, with the tears on her cheeks, declared, that she could not have had a higher opinion of Effie Deans, nor a more sincere regard for her, if she had been her own daughter. All present gave the honest woman credit for her goodness of heart, excepting her husband, who whispered to Dumbiedikes, "That Nichil Novit of yours is but a raw hand at leading evidence, I'm thinking. What signified his bringing a woman here to snotter and snivel, and bather their Lordships? He should hae ceeted me, sir, and I should hae gien them sic a screed o' testimony, they shauldna hae touched a hair o' her head." "Hadna ye better get up and tryt yet?" said the Laird. "I'll mak a sign to Novit." "Na, na," said Saddletree, "thank ye for naething, neighbour--that would be ultroneous evidence, and I ken what belangs to that; but Nichil Novit suld hae had me ceeted _debito tempore._" And wiping his mouth with his silk handkerchief with great importance, he resumed the port and manner of an edified and intelligent auditor. Mr. Fairbrother now premised, in a few words, "that he meant to bring forward his most important witness, upon whose evidence the cause must in a great measure depend. What his client was, they had learned from the preceding witnesses; and so far as general character, given in the most forcible terms, and even with tears, could interest every one in her fate, she had already gained that advantage. It was necessary, he admitted, that he should produce more positive testimony of her innocence than what arose out of general character, and this he undertook to do by the mouth of the person to whom she had communicated her situation--by the mouth of her natural counsellor and guardian--her sister.--Macer, call into court, Jean, or Jeanie Deans, daughter of David Deans, cowfeeder, at Saint Leonard's Crags!" When he uttered these words, the poor prisoner instantly started up, and stretched herself half-way over the bar, towards the side at which her sister was to enter. And when, slowly following the officer, the witness advanced to the foot of the table, Effie, with the whole expression of her countenance altered, from that of confused shame and dismay, to an eager, imploring, and almost ecstatic earnestness of entreaty, with outstretched hands, hair streaming back, eyes raised eagerly to her sister's face, and glistening through tears, exclaimed in a tone which went through the heart of all who heard her,--"O Jeanie, Jeanie, save me, save me!" With a different feeling, yet equally appropriated to his proud and self-dependent character, old Deans drew himself back still farther under the cover of the bench; so that when Jeanie, as she entered the court, cast a timid glance towards the place at which she had left him seated, his venerable figure was no longer visible. He sate down on the other side of Dumbiedikes, wrung his hand hard, and whispered, "Ah, Laird, this is warst of a'--if I can but win ower this part--I feel my head unco dizzy; but my Master is strong in his servant's weakness." After a moment's mental prayer, he again started up, as if impatient of continuing in any one posture, and gradually edged himself forward towards the place he had just quitted. Jeanie in the meantime had advanced to the bottom of the table, when, unable to resist the impulse of affections she suddenly extended her hand to her sister. Effie was just within the distance that she could seize it with both hers, press it to her mouth, cover it with kisses, and bathe it in tears, with the fond devotion that a Catholic would pay to a guardian saint descended for his safety; while Jeanie, hiding her own face with her other hand, wept bitterly. The sight would have moved a heart of stone, much more of flesh and blood. Many of the spectators shed tears, and it was some time before the presiding Judge himself could so far subdue his emotion as to request the witness to compose herself, and the prisoner to forbear those marks of eager affection, which, however natural, could not be permitted at that time, and in that presence. The solemn oath,--"the truth to tell, and no truth to conceal, as far as she knew or should be asked," was then administered by the Judge "in the name of God, and as the witness should answer to God at the great day of judgment;" an awful adjuration, which seldom fails to make impression even on the most hardened characters, and to strike with fear even the most upright. Jeanie, educated in deep and devout reverence for the name and attributes of the Deity, was, by the solemnity of a direct appeal to his person and justice, awed, but at the same time elevated above all considerations, save those which she could, with a clear conscience, call Him to witness. She repeated the form in a low and reverent, but distinct tone of voice, after the Judge, to whom, and not to any inferior officer of the Court, the task is assigned in Scotland of directing the witness in that solemn appeal which is the sanction of his testimony. When the Judge had finished the established form, he added in a feeling, but yet a monitory tone, an advice, which the circumstances appeared to him to call for. "Young woman," these were his words, "you come before this Court in circumstances, which it would be worse than cruel not to pity and to sympathise with. Yet it is my duty to tell you, that the truth, whatever its consequences may be, the truth is what you owe to your country, and to that God whose word is truth, and whose name you have now invoked. Use your own time in answering the questions that gentleman" (pointing to the counsel) "shall put to you.--But remember, that what you may be tempted to say beyond what is the actual truth, you must answer both here and hereafter." The usual questions were then put to her:--Whether any one had instructed her what evidence she had to deliver? Whether any one had given or promised her any good deed, hire, or reward, for her testimony? Whether she had any malice or ill-will at his Majesty's Advocate, being the party against whom she was cited as a witness? To which questions she successively answered by a quiet negative. But their tenor gave great scandal and offence to her father, who was not aware that they are put to every witness as a matter of form. "Na, na," he exclaimed, loud enough to be heard, "my bairn is no like the Widow of Tekoah--nae man has putten words into her mouth." One of the judges, better acquainted, perhaps, with the Books of Adjournal than with the Book of Samuel, was disposed to make some instant inquiry after this Widow of Tekoah, who, as he construed the matter, had been tampering with the evidence. But the presiding Judge, better versed in Scripture history, whispered to his learned brother the necessary explanation; and the pause occasioned by this mistake had the good effect of giving Jeanie Deans time to collect her spirits for the painful task she had to perform. Fairbrother, whose practice and intelligence were considerable, saw the necessity of letting the witness compose herself. In his heart he suspected that she came to bear false witness in her sister's cause. "But that is her own affair," thought Fairbrother; "and it is my business to see that she has plenty of time to regain composure, and to deliver her evidence, be it true, or be it false--_valeat quantum._" Accordingly, he commenced his interrogatories with uninteresting questions, which admitted of instant reply. "You are, I think, the sister of the prisoner?" "Yes, sir." "Not the full sister, however?" "No, sir--we are by different mothers." "True; and you are, I think, several years older than your sister?" "Yes, sir," etc. After the advocate had conceived that, by these preliminary and unimportant questions, he had familiarised the witness with the situation in which she stood, he asked, "whether she had not remarked her sister's state of health to be altered, during the latter part of the term when she had lived with Mrs. Saddletree?" Jeanie answered in the affirmative. "And she told you the cause of it, my dear, I suppose?" said Fairbrother, in an easy, and, as one may say, an inductive sort of tone. "I am sorry to interrupt my brother," said the Crown Counsel, rising; "but I am in your Lordships' judgment, whether this be not a leading question?" "If this point is to be debated," said the presiding Judge, "the witness must be removed." For the Scottish lawyers regard with a sacred and scrupulous horror every question so shaped by the counsel examining, as to convey to a witness the least intimation of the nature of the answer which is desired from him. These scruples, though founded on an excellent principle, are sometimes carried to an absurd pitch of nicety, especially as it is generally easy for a lawyer who has his wits about him to elude the objection. Fairbrother did so in the present case. "It is not necessary to waste the time of the Court, my Lord since the King's Counsel thinks it worth while to object to the form of my question, I will shape it otherwise.--Pray, young woman, did you ask your sister any question when you observed her looking unwell?--take courage--speak out." "I asked her," replied Jeanie, "what ailed her." "Very well--take your own time--and what was the answer she made?" continued Mr. Fairbrother. Jeanie was silent, and looked deadly pale. It was not that she at any one instant entertained an idea of the possibility of prevarication--it was the natural hesitation to extinguish the last spark of hope that remained for her sister. "Take courage, young woman," said Fairbrother.--"I asked what your sister said ailed her when you inquired?" "Nothing," answered Jeanie, with a faint voice, which was yet heard distinctly in the most distant corner of the Court-room,--such an awful and profound silence had been preserved during the anxious interval, which had interposed betwixt the lawyer's question and the answer of the witness. Fairbrother's countenance fell; but with that ready presence of mind, which is as useful in civil as in military emergencies, he immediately rallied.--"Nothing? True; you mean nothing at _first_--but when you asked her again, did she not tell you what ailed her?" The question was put in a tone meant to make her comprehend the importance of her answer, had she not been already aware of it. The ice was broken, however, and with less pause than at first, she now replied,--"Alack! alack! she never breathed word to me about it." A deep groan passed through the Court. It was echoed by one deeper and more agonised from the unfortunate father. The hope to which unconsciously, and in spite of himself, he had still secretly clung, had now dissolved, and the venerable old man fell forward senseless on the floor of the Court-house, with his head at the foot of his terrified daughter. The unfortunate prisoner, with impotent passion, strove with the guards betwixt whom she was placed. "Let me gang to my father!--I _will_ gang to him--I _will_ gang to him--he is dead--he is killed--I hae killed him!"--she repeated, in frenzied tones of grief, which those who heard them did not speedily forget. Even in this moment of agony and general confusion, Jeanie did not lose that superiority, which a deep and firm mind assures to its possessor under the most trying circumstances. "He is my father--he is our father," she mildly repeated to those who endeavoured to separate them, as she stooped,--shaded aside his grey hairs, and began assiduously to chafe his temples. The Judge, after repeatedly wiping his eyes, gave directions that they should be conducted into a neighbouring apartment, and carefully attended. The prisoner, as her father was borne from the Court, and her sister slowly followed, pursued them with her eyes so earnestly fixed, as if they would have started from their sockets. But when they were no longer visible, she seemed to find, in her despairing and deserted state, a courage which she had not yet exhibited. "The bitterness of it is now past," she said, and then boldly, addressed the Court. "My Lords, if it is your pleasure to gang on wi' this matter, the weariest day will hae its end at last." The Judge, who, much to his honour, had shared deeply in the general sympathy, was surprised at being recalled to his duty by the prisoner. He collected himself, and requested to know if the panel's counsel had more evidence to produce. Fairbrother replied, with an air of dejection, that his proof was concluded. The King's Counsel addressed the jury for the crown. He said in a few words, that no one could be more concerned than he was for the distressing scene which they had just witnessed. But it was the necessary consequence of great crimes to bring distress and ruin upon all connected with the perpetrators. He briefly reviewed the proof, in which he showed that all the circumstances of the case concurred with those required by the act under which the unfortunate prisoner was tried: That the counsel for the panel had totally failed in proving, that Euphemia Deans had communicated her situation to her sister: That, respecting her previous good character, he was sorry to observe, that it was females who possessed the world's good report, and to whom it was justly valuable, who were most strongly tempted, by shame and fear of the world's censure, to the crime of infanticide: That the child was murdered, he professed to entertain no doubt. The vacillating and inconsistent declaration of the prisoner herself, marked as it was by numerous refusals to speak the truth on subjects, when, according to her own story, it would have been natural, as well as advantageous, to have been candid; even this imperfect declaration left no doubt in his mind as to the fate of the unhappy infant. Neither could he doubt that the panel was a partner in this guilt. Who else had an interest in a deed so inhuman? Surely neither Robertson, nor Robertson's agent, in whose house she was delivered, had the least temptation to commit such a crime, unless upon her account, with her connivance, and for the sake of saying her reputation. But it was not required of him, by the law, that he should bring precise proof of the murder, or of the prisoner's accession to it. It was the very purpose of the statute to substitute a certain chain of presumptive evidence in place of a probation, which, in such cases, it was peculiarly difficult to obtain. The jury might peruse the statute itself, and they had also the libel and interlocutor of relevancy to direct them in point of law. He put it to the conscience of the jury, that under both he was entitled to a verdict of Guilty. The charge of Fairbrother was much cramped by his having failed in the proof which he expected to lead. But he fought his losing cause with courage and constancy. He ventured to arraign the severity of the statute under which the young woman was tried. "In all other cases," he said, "the first thing required of the criminal prosecutor was to prove unequivocally that the crime libelled had actually been committed, which lawyers called proving the _corpus delicti._ But this statute, made doubtless with the best intentions, and under the impulse of a just horror for the unnatural crime of infanticide, ran the risk of itself occasioning the worst of murders, the death of an innocent person, to atone for a supposed crime which may never have been committed by anyone. He was so far from acknowledging the alleged probability of the child's violent death, that he could not even allow that there was evidence of its having ever lived." The King's Counsel pointed to the woman's declaration; to which the counsel replied--"A production concocted in a moment of terror and agony, and which approached to insanity," he said, "his learned brother well knew was no sound evidence against the party who emitted it. It was true, that a judicial confession, in presence of the Justices themselves, was the strongest of all proof, insomuch that it is said in law, that '_in confitentem nullae sunt partes judicis._' But this was true of judicial confession only, by which law meant that which is made in presence of the justices, and the sworn inquest. Of extrajudicial confession, all authorities held with the illustrious Farinaceus and Matthaeus, '_confessio extrajudicialis in se nulla est; et quod nullum est, non potest adminiculari._' It was totally inept, and void of all strength and effect from the beginning; incapable, therefore, of being bolstered up or supported, or, according to the law phrase, adminiculated, by other presumptive circumstances. In the present case, therefore, letting the extrajudicial confession go, as it ought to go, for nothing," he contended, "the prosecutor had not made out the second quality of the statute, that a live child had been born; and _that,_ at least, ought to be established before presumptions were received that it had been murdered. If any of the assize," he said, "should be of opinion that this was dealing rather narrowly with the statute, they ought to consider that it was in its nature highly penal, and therefore entitled to no favourable construction." He concluded a learned speech, with an eloquent peroration on the scene they had just witnessed, during which Saddletree fell fast asleep. It was now the presiding Judge's turn to address the jury. He did so briefly and distinctly. "It was for the jury," he said, "to consider whether the prosecutor had made out his plea. For himself, he sincerely grieved to say, that a shadow of doubt remained not upon his mind concerning the verdict which the inquest had to bring in. He would not follow the prisoner's counsel through the impeachment which he had brought against the statute of King William and Queen Mary. He and the jury were sworn to judge according to the laws as they stood, not to criticise, or evade, or even to justify them. In no civil case would a counsel have been permitted to plead his client's case in the teeth of the law; but in the hard situation in which counsel were often placed in the Criminal Court, as well as out of favour to all presumptions of innocence, he had not inclined to interrupt the learned gentleman, or narrow his plea. The present law, as it now stood, had been instituted by the wisdom of their fathers, to check the alarming progress of a dreadful crime; when it was found too severe for its purpose it would doubtless be altered by the wisdom of the Legislature; at present it was the law of the land, the rule of the Court, and, according to the oath which they had taken, it must be that of the jury. This unhappy girl's situation could not be doubted; that she had borne a child, and that the child had disappeared, were certain facts. The learned counsel had failed to show that she had communicated her situation. All the requisites of the case required by the statute were therefore before the jury. The learned gentleman had, indeed, desired them to throw out of consideration the panel's own confession, which was the plea usually urged, in penury of all others, by counsel in his situation, who usually felt that the declarations of their clients bore hard on them. But that the Scottish law designed that a certain weight should be laid on these declarations, which, he admitted, were _quodammodo_ extrajudicial, was evident from the universal practice by which they were always produced and read, as part of the prosecutor's probation. In the present case, no person who had heard the witnesses describe the appearance of the young woman before she left Saddletree's house, and contrasted it with that of her state and condition at her return to her father's, could have any doubt that the fact of delivery had taken place, as set forth in her own declaration, which was, therefore, not a solitary piece of testimony, but adminiculated and supported by the strongest circumstantial proof. "He did not," he said, "state the impression upon his own mind with the purpose of biassing theirs. He had felt no less than they had done from the scene of domestic misery which had been exhibited before them; and if they, having God and a good conscience, the sanctity of their oath, and the regard due to the law of the country, before their eyes, could come to a conclusion favourable to this unhappy prisoner, he should rejoice as much as anyone in Court; for never had he found his duty more distressing than in discharging it that day, and glad he would be to be relieved from the still more painful task which would otherwise remain for him." The jury, having heard the Judge's address, bowed and retired, preceded by a macer of Court, to the apartment destined for their deliberation. CHAPTER TWENTY-THIRD. Law, take thy victim--May she find the mercy In yon mild heaven, which this hard world denies her! It was an hour ere the jurors returned, and as they traversed the crowd with slow steps, as men about to discharge themselves of a heavy and painful responsibility, the audience was hushed into profound, earnest, and awful silence. "Have you agreed on your chancellor, gentlemen?" was the first question of the Judge. The foreman, called in Scotland the chancellor of the jury, usually the man of best rank and estimation among the assizers, stepped forward, and with a low reverence, delivered to the Court a sealed paper, containing the verdict, which, until of late years, that verbal returns are in some instances permitted, was always couched in writing. The jury remained standing while the Judge broke the seals, and having perused the paper, handed it with an air of mournful gravity down to the clerk of Court, who proceeded to engross in the record the yet unknown verdict, of which, however, all omened the tragical contents. A form still remained, trifling and unimportant in itself, but to which imagination adds a sort of solemnity, from the awful occasion upon which it is used. A lighted candle was placed on the table, the original paper containing the verdict was enclosed in a sheet of paper, and, sealed with the Judge's own signet, was transmitted to the Crown Office, to be preserved among other records of the same kind. As all this is transacted in profound silence, the producing and extinguishing the candle seems a type of the human spark which is shortly afterwards doomed to be quenched, and excites in the spectators something of the same effect which in England is obtained by the Judge assuming the fatal cap of judgment. When these preliminary forms had been gone through, the Judge required Euphemia Deans to attend to the verdict to be read. After the usual words of style, the verdict set forth, that the Jury having made choice of John Kirk, Esq., to be their chancellor, and Thomas Moore, merchant, to be their clerk, did, by a plurality of voices, find the said Euphemia Deans Guilty of the crime libelled; but, in consideration of her extreme youth, and the cruel circumstances of her case, did earnestly entreat that the Judge would recommend her to the mercy of the Crown. "Gentlemen," said the Judge, "you have done your duty--and a painful one it must have been to men of humanity like you. I will undoubtedly transmit your recommendation to the throne. But it is my duty to tell all who now hear me, but especially to inform that unhappy young woman, in order that her mind may be settled accordingly, that I have not the least hope of a pardon being granted in the present case. You know the crime has been increasing in this land, and I know farther, that this has been ascribed to the lenity in which the laws have been exercised, and that there is therefore no hope whatever of obtaining a remission for this offence." The jury bowed again, and, released from their painful office, dispersed themselves among the mass of bystanders. The Court then asked Mr. Fairbrother whether he had anything to say, why judgment should not follow on the verdict? The counsel had spent some time in persuing and reperusing the verdict, counting the letters in each juror's name, and weighing every phrase, nay, every syllable, in the nicest scales of legal criticism. But the clerk of the jury had understood his business too well. No flaw was to be found, and Fairbrother mournfully intimated, that he had nothing to say in arrest of judgment. The presiding Judge then addressed the unhappy prisoner:--"Euphemia Deans, attend to the sentence of the Court now to be pronounced against you." She rose from her seat, and with a composure far greater than could have been augured from her demeanour during some parts of the trial, abode the conclusion of the awful scene. So nearly does the mental portion of our feelings resemble those which are corporeal, that the first severe blows which we receive bring with them a stunning apathy, which renders us indifferent to those that follow them. Thus said Mandrin, when he was undergoing the punishment of the wheel; and so have all felt, upon whom successive inflictions have descended with continuous and reiterated violence.* * [The notorious Mandrin was known as the Captain-General of French & smugglers. See a Tract on his exploits, printed 1753.] "Young woman," said the Judge, "it is my painful duty to tell you, that your life is forfeited under a law, which, if it may seem in some degree severe, is yet wisely so, to render those of your unhappy situation aware what risk they run, by concealing, out of pride or false shame, their lapse from virtue, and making no preparation to save the lives of the unfortunate infants whom they are to bring into the world. When you concealed your situation from your mistress, your sister, and other worthy and compassionate persons of your own sex, in whose favour your former conduct had given you a fair place, you seem to me to have had in your contemplation, at least, the death of the helpless creature, for whose life you neglected to provide. How the child was disposed of--whether it was dealt upon by another, or by yourself--whether the extraordinary story you have told is partly false, or altogether so, is between God and your own conscience. I will not aggravate your distress by pressing on that topic, but I do most solemnly adjure you to employ the remaining space of your time in making your peace with God, for which purpose such reverend clergymen, as you yourself may name, shall have access to you. Notwithstanding the humane recommendation of the jury, I cannot afford to you, in the present circumstances of the country, the slightest hope that your life will be prolonged beyond the period assigned for the execution of your sentence. Forsaking, therefore, the thoughts of this world, let your mind be prepared by repentance for those of more awful moments--for death, judgment, and eternity.--Doomster, read the sentence."* * Note N. Doomster, or Dempster, of Court. When the Doomster showed himself, a tall haggard figure, arrayed in a fantastic garment of black and grey, passmented with silver lace, all fell back with a sort of instinctive horror, and made wide way for him to approach the foot of the table. As this office was held by the common executioner, men shouldered each other backward to avoid even the touch of his garment, and some were seen to brush their own clothes, which had accidentally become subject to such contamination. A sound went through the Court, produced by each person drawing in their breath hard, as men do when they expect or witness what is frightful, and at the same time affecting. The caitiff villain yet seemed, amid his hardened brutality, to have some sense of his being the object of public detestation, which made him impatient of being in public, as birds of evil omen are anxious to escape from daylight, and from pure air. Repeating after the Clerk of Court, he gabbled over the words of the sentence, which condemned Euphemia Deans to be conducted back to the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, and detained there until Wednesday the day of ---; and upon that day, betwixt the hours of two and four o'clock afternoon, to be conveyed to the common place of execution, and there hanged by the neck upon a gibbet. "And this," said the Doomster, aggravating his harsh voice, "I pronounce for _doom._" He vanished when he had spoken the last emphatic word, like a foul fiend after the purpose of his visitation had been accomplished; but the impression of horror excited by his presence and his errand, remained upon the crowd of spectators. The unfortunate criminal,--for so she must now be termed,--with more susceptibility, and more irritable feelings than her father and sister, was found, in this emergence, to possess a considerable share of their courage. She had remained standing motionless at the bar while the sentence was pronounced, and was observed to shut her eyes when the Doomster appeared. But she was the first to break silence when that evil form had left his place. "God forgive ye, my Lords," she said, "and dinna be angry wi' me for wishing it--we a' need forgiveness.--As for myself, I canna blame ye, for ye act up to your lights; and if I havena killed my poor infant, ye may witness a' that hae seen it this day, that I hae been the means of killing my greyheaded father--I deserve the warst frae man, and frae God too--But God is mair mercifu' to us than we are to each other." With these words the trial concluded. The crowd rushed, bearing forward and shouldering each other, out of the Court, in the same tumultuary mode in which they had entered; and, in excitation of animal motion and animal spirits, soon forgot whatever they had felt as impressive in the scene which they had witnessed. The professional spectators, whom habit and theory had rendered as callous to the distress of the scene as medical men are to those of a surgical operation, walked homeward in groups, discussing the general principle of the statute under which the young woman was condemned, the nature of the evidence, and the arguments of the counsel, without considering even that of the Judge as exempt from their criticism. The female spectators, more compassionate, were loud in exclamation against that part of the Judge's speech which seemed to cut off the hope of pardon. "Set him up, indeed," said Mrs. Howden, "to tell us that the poor lassie behoved to die, when Mr. John Kirk, as civil a gentleman as is within the ports of the town, took the pains to prigg for her himsell." "Ay, but, neighbour," said Miss Damahoy, drawing up her thin maidenly form to its full height of prim dignity--"I really think this unnatural business of having bastard-bairns should be putten a stop to.--There isna a hussy now on this side of thirty that you can bring within your doors, but there will be chields--writer-lads, prentice-lads, and what not--coming traiking after them for their destruction, and discrediting ane's honest house into the bargain--I hae nae patience wi' them." "Hout, neighbour," said Mrs. Howden, "we suld live and let live--we hae been young oursells, and we are no aye to judge the warst when lads and lasses forgather." "Young oursells! and judge the warst!" said Miss Damahoy. "I am no sae auld as that comes to, Mrs. Howden; and as for what ye ca' the warst, I ken neither good nor bad about the matter, I thank my stars!" "Ye are thankfu' for sma' mercies, then," said Mrs. Howden with a toss of her head; "and as for you and young--I trow ye were doing for yoursell at the last riding of the Scots Parliament, and that was in the gracious year seven, sae ye can be nae sic chicken at ony rate." Plumdamas, who acted as squire of the body to the two contending dames, instantly saw the hazard of entering into such delicate points of chronology, and being a lover of peace and good neighbourhood, lost no time in bringing back the conversation to its original subject. "The Judge didna tell us a' he could hae tell'd us, if he had liked, about the application for pardon, neighbours," said he "there is aye a wimple in a lawyer's clew; but it's a wee bit of a secret." "And what is't--what is't, neighbour Plumdamas?" said Mrs. Howden and Miss Damahoy at once, the acid fermentation of their dispute being at once neutralised by the powerful alkali implied in the word secret. "Here's Mr. Saddletree can tell ye that better than me, for it was him that tauld me," said Plumdamas as Saddletree came up, with his wife hanging on his arm, and looking very disconsolate. When the question was put to Saddletree, he looked very scornful. "They speak about stopping the frequency of child-murder," said he, in a contemptuous tone; "do ye think our auld enemies of England, as Glendook aye ca's them in his printed Statute-book, care a boddle whether we didna kill ane anither, skin and birn, horse and foot, man, woman, and bairns, all and sindry, _omnes et singulos,_ as Mr. Crossmyloof says? Na, na, it's no _that_ hinders them frae pardoning the bit lassie. But here is the pinch of the plea. The king and queen are sae ill pleased wi' that mistak about Porteous, that deil a kindly Scot will they pardon again, either by reprieve or remission, if the haill town o' Edinburgh should be a' hanged on ae tow." "Deil that they were back at their German kale-yard then, as my neighbour MacCroskie ca's it," said Mrs. Howden, "an that's the way they're gaun to guide us!" "They say for certain," said Miss Damahoy, "that King George flang his periwig in the fire when he heard o' the Porteous mob." "He has done that, they say," replied Saddletree, "for less thing." "Aweel," said Miss Damahoy, "he might keep mair wit in his anger--but it's a' the better for his wigmaker, I'se warrant." "The queen tore her biggonets for perfect anger,--ye'll hae heard o' that too?" said Plumdamas. "And the king, they say, kickit Sir Robert Walpole for no keeping down the mob of Edinburgh; but I dinna believe he wad behave sae ungenteel." "It's dooms truth, though," said Saddletree; "and he was for kickin' the Duke of Argyle* too." * Note O. John Duke of Argyle and Greenwich. "Kickin' the Duke of Argyle!" exclaimed the hearers at once, in all the various combined keys of utter astonishment. "Ay, but MacCallummore's blood wadna sit down wi' that; there was risk of Andro Ferrara coming in thirdsman." "The duke is a real Scotsman--a true friend to the country," answered Saddletree's hearers. "Ay, troth is he, to king and country baith, as ye sall hear," continued the orator, "if ye will come in bye to our house, for it's safest speaking of sic things _inter parietes._" When they entered his shop, he thrust his prentice boy out of it, and, unlocking his desk, took out, with an air of grave and complacent importance, a dirty and crumpled piece of printed paper; he observed, "This is new corn--it's no every body could show you the like o' this. It's the duke's speech about the Porteous mob, just promulgated by the hawkers. Ye shall hear what Ian Roy Cean* says for himsell. * Red John the warrior, a name personal and proper in the Highlands to John Duke of Argyle and Greenwich, as MacCummin was that of his race or dignity. My correspondent bought it in the Palace-yard, that's like just under the king's nose--I think he claws up their mittans!--It came in a letter about a foolish bill of exchange that the man wanted me to renew for him. I wish ye wad see about it, Mrs. Saddletree." Honest Mrs. Saddletree had hitherto been so sincerely distressed about the situation of her unfortunate prote'ge'e, that she had suffered her husband to proceed in his own way, without attending to what he was saying. The words bills and renew had, however, an awakening sound in them; and she snatched the letter which her husband held towards her, and wiping her eyes, and putting on her spectacles, endeavoured, as fast as the dew which collected on her glasses would permit, to get at the meaning of the needful part of the epistle; while her husband, with pompous elevation, read an extract from the speech. "I am no minister, I never was a minister, and I never will be one" "I didna ken his Grace was ever designed for the ministry," interrupted Mrs. Howden. "He disna mean a minister of the gospel, Mrs. Howden, but a minister of state," said Saddletree, with condescending goodness, and then proceeded: "The time was when I might have been a piece of a minister, but I was too sensible of my own incapacity to engage in any state affair. And I thank God that I had always too great a value for those few abilities which Nature has given me, to employ them in doing any drudgery, or any job of what kind soever. I have, ever since I set out in the world (and I believe few have set out more early), served my prince with my tongue; I have served him with any little interest I had, and I have served him with my sword, and in my profession of arms. I have held employments which I have lost, and were I to be to-morrow deprived of those which still remain to me, and which I have endeavoured honestly to deserve, I would still serve him to the last acre of my inheritance, and to the last drop of my blood" Mrs. Saddletree here broke in upon the orator:--"Mr. Saddletree, what _is_ the meaning of a' this? Here are ye clavering about the Duke of Argyle, and this man Martingale gaun to break on our hands, and lose us gude sixty pounds--I wonder what duke will pay that, quotha--I wish the Duke of Argyle would pay his ain accounts--He is in a thousand punds Scots on thae very books when he was last at Roystoun--I'm no saying but he's a just nobleman, and that it's gude siller--but it wad drive ane daft to be confused wi' deukes and drakes, and thae distressed folk up-stairs, that's Jeanie Deans and her father. And then, putting the very callant that was sewing the curpel out o' the shop, to play wi' blackguards in the close--Sit still, neighbours, it's no that I mean to disturb _you;_ but what between courts o' law and courts o' state, and upper and under parliaments, and parliament houses, here and in London, the gudeman's gane clean gyte, I think." The gossips understood civility, and the rule of doing as they would be done by, too well, to tarry upon the slight invitation implied in the conclusion of this speech, and therefore made their farewells and departure as fast as possible, Saddletree whispering to Plundamas that he would "meet him at MacCroskie's" (the low-browed shop in the Luckenbooths, already mentioned), "in the hour of cause, and put MacCallummore's speech in his pocket, for a' the gudewife's din." When Mrs. Saddletree saw the house freed of her importunate visitors, and the little boy reclaimed from the pastimes of the wynd to the exercise of the awl, she went to visit her unhappy relative, David Deans, and his elder daughter, who had found in her house the nearest place of friendly refuge. 
58773	----	LES MACHINES BY JOE LOVE _There are human beings who function "like machines" and there are machines which seem to be "almost human". So--the problem in this case was not murder, or who committed it but who was the "machine" and who was the "human being"._ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, December 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] On January 5, 1997 Isobel Smith became Isobel Smith d'Larte. On November 13, 1997 Isobel Smith d'Larte gave birth to a boy-child who died. And on March 20, 1998 Isobel Smith d'Larte was placed on trial for the willful and premeditated murder of her husband Arnaud d'Larte. "Not Isobel," said her friends. "Not Isobel. Too mousey. So quiet. Surely it wasn't Isobel." "But it's the quiet type you've got to watch out for," said others. "Probably has a lover somewhere. She was younger than her husband you know. Much younger. Too much younger." "Killed him for his money," said the people on the street. "Read where she likes art and museums, stuff like that. Must be a queer one that Isobel d'Larte." The accusations piled high against Isobel, but she said nothing. She sat in court, a tiny figure in black saying nothing, seemingly not even listening to the accusations of the Prosecutor. "We will prove willful and premeditated murder," the Prosecutor thundered. "Easily done," an old woman in the audience murmured spitefully. "Young wife, old husband. Rich husband. Murder! Easily proved." "First witness," the Prosecutor called. "Sergeant Melot." Sergeant Melot took the stand. The witness chair creaked under his weight. He answered a loud, "I do," when the clerk swore him in. "Tell us about finding the body," the Prosecutor said. "Miss no details." "A Mrs. Watson, servant of Arnaud d'Larte, called us at nine five P.M. on March 15. Her master was dead, she said. When we answered her call we found Mr. d'Larte's body in his bedroom. He had been dead for about an hour." "The cause?" "Beaten to death. Beaten with an iron statue of Venus. Evidence of a struggle. Twenty wounds on his head." "Twenty wounds, Sergeant Melot?" "Twenty. The first, or second, would have been enough to kill him. But there were twenty." The audience gasped and the Prosecutor smiled. "And where was Mrs. d'Larte?" he asked. "Locked in her bedroom. Had to break the door down to get to her." "Did you speak to her?" "We spoke to her, but she didn't speak to us." The audience laughed and the judge rapped for silence. "The iron statue of Venus, the one found near Mr. d'Larte's body, you found fingerprints on it, did you not?" Sergeant Melot nodded. "Whose fingerprints were they, Sergeant Melot?" "Mrs. d'Larte's." "Your witness," the Prosecutor told the Defense. "No questions," said the Defense. "Why ask questions," a spectator commented. "She's guilty." "Next witness." "Mrs. Abby Watson to the stand please." Abby Watson strode to the witness chair. Her shrew-like eyes flicked sharply towards Isobel d'Larte then away. Her answer to the clerk who swore her in was sharp and positive. "How long have you worked for Mr. d'Larte?" the Prosecutor asked. "Fifteen years." "In your opinion Mr. d'Larte was a good employer?" "The best. A wonderful man, but a lonely one. That woman tricked him into marriage. Played on his loneliness." "Objection." "Objection sustained. Confine yourself to the questions please." "Mr. d'Larte was older than his wife?" the Prosecutor asked. "Eighteen years older." "Was it a happy marriage?" "At first, at least on his part. He was contented, but she seemed restless. Always wanted to go to museums and see paintings, or playing her silly antique records all day. Not content with the government 'Do-It-Yourself' kits. Called them mechanical and expressionless. She insulted Mr. d'Larte's friends time and again. Called them frauds. Said their paintings, books and plays were terrible. Said that real talent was dead. "You said she spent a lot of time in museums?" "I didn't say it, but she did. Every chance she got. She'd be gone for hours." "Which museum? The one commemorating the wars? The Museum of Mechanics?" "None of those. She'd go to the old one on the hill. That horrible thing with the relics of the past in it. The one run by the robots. The one run by the government to remind us of the past when only a few were allowed talent and not everybody like today. But I think she went to the museum for another reason. No one could _really_ be interested in those things they have there." "What do you think she went for, Mrs. Watson?" "To meet her lover. Shortly before he was killed Mr. d'Larte confessed to me that he was of the same opinion." "See, I told you she had a lover," someone whispered. "Old husband, young wife. I just knew there was a lover." "Objection," said the Defense. "There is no proof that Mrs. d'Larte went to the museum to meet a lover. There are only opinions, guesses." "If your honor will permit me to call my next witness I think I can prove that there was a lover," the Prosecutor said. The judge leaned forward in eager anticipation. "Call your witness." "Bella Whychek." A fat, dumpy, flame-haired woman made her way to the witness stand. As she was sworn in she tugged self-consciously at her too tight girdle. "Miss Whychek--" "Mrs. ... I'm a widow." "Mrs. Whychek, would you tell us where you are employed." "Timon's and Sons. I'm a secretary there." "And where is your office located." "In the building just across the street from the Museum of the Past--the one you were just talking about to that other woman." "Mrs. Whychek, do you recognize the woman sitting over there?" the Prosecutor asked as he pointed to Isobel d'Larte. "Indeed I do. I saw her most everyday." "Would you tell us the circumstances." "Well, from the window in my office I have a very good view of the park that is next to the museum. About a month ago I began noticing that woman in the park. I couldn't help but notice her, she came so often." "Alone, Mrs. Whychek?" "At first yes. She'd go into the museum, stay about two hours or so, then come out and sit in the park. She never did anything but sit." "Was she always alone?" "I was just coming to that. After about a week I noticed that a man would come and sit with her in the park." "Could you describe the man?" "No, I'm afraid I couldn't. He always wore a long overcoat and a hat pulled down over his face. Both the overcoat and the hat were very old though. I did notice that. They looked like they might have dated from around 1950." "And what did this man and Mrs. d'Larte do in the park?" "Just sat. Talked I guess. I never saw them kiss or anything if that's what you mean. Of course many times they would still be sitting there when I left work. What they did after that I don't know." "But Mrs. d'Larte definitely did meet a man in the park." "Oh, yes. She met him nearly every day for almost a month." "Thank you. Your witness." The Defense rose slowly and walked over to where Mrs. Whychek sat. "Remember you are under oath, Mrs. Whychek," he said. "You say Mrs. d'Larte and this man merely sat and talked?" "As far as I could tell that's all they did. Of course I didn't watch them every minute." "Then you can say that they never did anything out of the way, that their meetings, if they were that, were innocent?" "As far as I could tell they were." "Could you say whether the meetings were prearranged?" "I really couldn't, but--" "That will be all, thank you," the Defense interrupted. So the first day of the trial went. There seemed no doubt that Isobel d'Larte was guilty. Her friends admitted loudly that poor Isobel had scandalized them to the core. The papers labeled Isobel queer and hinted that her lover, whoever he might be, killed Mr. d'Larte for her. Old fashioned Isobel, they called her. Some had other names for her. * * * * * On the second day of the trial the Defense called its witnesses. There were only three. Two were character witnesses who hesitantly assured the court that Isobel d'Larte could not have killed her husband. She really was a good woman. The third witness was Isobel herself. When she was called she rose very slowly and walked to the witness stand. She was sworn in and seated herself in the witness chair. Her face and hands were chalk white against the blackness of her dress. "Mrs. d'Larte, did you kill your husband?" the Defense asked. "No." "Do you know who did kill your husband?" "No." "Why did you lock yourself in your bedroom the night he was killed." "I wanted to be alone." The spectators giggled. "Could you explain how your fingerprints came to be on the iron statue of Venus? The statue that killed your husband." "It was my statue. It is quite possible that my fingerprints would be on it." "And you heard nothing, no sounds of struggle, the night your husband was killed?" "No. I slept awhile that night. I was tired so I locked my door and slept. I heard nothing." "Do you know who would want to kill your husband?" "An enemy I suppose." "Did your husband have any enemies?" "Of course, everyone does. Even God has enemies." That shocked the spectators, but then Isobel had meant it to. Quite suddenly she found herself hating those in the packed court room. Hating these upright citizens who had come to delight in her misfortune. Who sat in smug holier-than-thou attitudes and hoped for the worst. Not one among them really cared what happened to her--as long as it entertained them. Isobel shivered. "Could you be more specific about your husband's enemies?" the Defense asked. "No. He never confided in me. He was only interested in his munitions factories. In machines. He loved machines. He particularly loved destructive machines. Some hated him for that." "The man Mrs. Whychek said you met in the park. Was there such a man?" Isobel twisted her handkerchief. It was a thin, white snake in her hands. "Was there a man, Mrs. d'Larte?" the Defense repeated. "There was a man." "Could you tell us his name?" "I do not know his name. He was a man I met in the park. He was a kind and gentle man. We talked about art, music--the beautiful old art and music. He was well informed about such things. We talked a lot, but I don't know his name. We just talked." "Were you in love with this man, or he with you?" "No! No!" "You definitely were not lovers?" "We were not!" "Thank you, Mrs. d'Larte. Your witness." The Prosecutor approached the witness stand. "Mrs. d'Larte, you do not like the 'Do-It-Yourself' kits the government has put out, do you?" "I do not." "You do not approve or recognize the fact that today everyone is conceded to have talent, do you?" "I do not." "Why, Mrs. d'Larte?" "Anyone can paint, but everyone isn't an artist. Anyone can write, but everyone isn't an author. Anyone can do anything, but everyone does not have talent." "So you spent a great deal of your time in the Museum of the Past looking at the _so-called_ art treasures there?" "Yes. They were worth looking at." "And you did not use that to cover up the fact that you met your lover at the museum?" "I do not have a lover." "The man you met in the park, you just talked to him?" "We talked about the wonderful, the beautiful things in the museum. He knew about them and loved them as I did. There was no one else I could talk to about them." "Naturally," the Prosecutor sneered. "Everyone else knows what frauds they are." The spectators laughed. "Then I like the frauds," Isobel said quietly. "You claim you were in your bedroom with the door locked and asleep when Mr. d'Larte was killed. Is that right?" "That is right." "And even though your bedroom is right next to Mr. d'Larte's you heard nothing. Is _that_ right?" "Yes." "Your husband struggled, struggled hard before he died, Mrs. d'Larte. You'll forgive me if I seem skeptical of the fact that you heard nothing." "I was asleep. I heard nothing." "No cry? No crashes?" "I heard nothing!" "And the man in the park--he was not your lover?" "He was _not_ my lover." The Prosecutor turned to the judge with a grim smile. "Your honor, I request a recess so that I may bring in a new witness." "This witness is not in the court room?" "No. I myself only learned of him a few minutes ago. It will take about a half-hour to bring him here." "And this witness is important?" "Yes. I believe he can prove that Mrs. d'Larte is lying." "Then this court is recessed until the prosecution brings in the new witness." The spectators buzzed and jibbered excitedly. A new witness. A surprise witness. The trial was really becoming interesting. "I hate to leave. I really hate to leave," one said to her companion. "I'll never get back in if I leave. But one must eat. I hate to leave." "No need. No need to leave," the companion assured her. "See, I brought sandwiches. Always bring something to eat to things like this. People crowd so. It's really terrible. Have an egg?" "Pretty good trial," an old man with a white beard told the person next to him. "Not as good as the Bronson trial, but pretty good." "You've seen a lot of trials?" the figure next to him asked. "Seen all the good ones," the one with the beard said proudly. "Saw the Bronson trial in '96, the Treamont trial in '94. Saw a lot of trials. First time that I've seen one where a wife killed her husband. Most of the others involved infanticide. Good trials, you understand, but disappointing. All the verdicts were not guilty." "Naturally. With over-population infanticide isn't a crime. Rather more like a good deed these days." "Understand they are going to legalize the killing of unwanted children." "Should have been done long ago." "People should be more careful. If they don't want children, they should be more careful." "If you know you can get rid of them, why be careful?" A woman fanned herself with her pocketbook and glanced at her companion. "Have another sandwich, dear?" "No, on a diet you know." The companion sighed. "It's too bad that they abolished capital punishment. Believe me, this d'Larte hussy deserves it." "But it's so much better the way they do it now, I mean sending the guilty to the wars to fight in the front lines. Might as well get some use out of them." "True. But why bother killing a husband? Divorcing them is so much easier. Only takes a day and you get half the husband's earnings." "You should know, dear. You've done it enough." "Only seven times." "I thought it was eight?" "I don't count Rodger. The lout killed himself so he wouldn't have to pay me a settlement. Ah, here comes the judge." * * * * * The spectators stood lazily as the judge entered, then reseated themselves and buzzed in anticipation. "Your witness has arrived?" the judge asked. "Yes, Your Honor," the Prosecutor replied. "Then call him." The witness was called and sworn in as the spectators gawked at him eagerly. "Good looking. Dark. Evil eyes though. Black eyes. I like dark eyes, don't you?" "Dark blue coat. Lime green sports shirt. Nice combination. Must have a suit made with those colors." "Nasty look about that fellow. Wouldn't trust him." "Who is he?" "Shhhhhhhhhh!" Isobel d'Larte stared at the witness in fear. "Your name, please," the Prosecutor demanded of the witness. "Andy Kirk." "You are Mr. d'Larte's nephew?" "Yep." "What do you do for a living, Mr. Kirk?" "Anything, but basically I'm an artist." "Is that what you are doing at the present time, Mr. Kirk?" "No. Everybody's an artist today. No room for a good one, a real one." "Then what do you do, Mr. Kirk?" the Prosecutor asked in exasperation. "Don't shout. I didn't ask to come here." "What do you do for a living?" the Prosecutor asked quietly. "Arnaud--Mr. d'Larte--paid me to follow his wife. To spy on her. He paid very well." The spectators gasped happily. "Now we'll hear something," someone said in a stage whisper. The judge rapped for silence. "Why did Mr. d'Larte pay you to follow his wife?" "He thought she had a lover." "But you heard Mrs. d'Larte claim that she did not have a lover." "No, I didn't. How could I? I wasn't here." Laughter rippled through the crowded room and the judge rapped for silence. The Prosecutor frowned angrily. "Mrs. d'Larte said under oath that she did not have a lover." "She lied." "Can you prove that she lied?" "I suppose so." "And they were really lovers?" "Mrs. d'Larte told me that she loved him." "And he loved her I suppose." "Mrs. d'Larte loved him." "How long were they lovers?" "Nearly a month." "I repeat, can you prove it?" "I can tell you who her lover is." "Then by all means do so." "No! Please, no," Isobel d'Larte cried. "I killed my husband." When order had been restored in the court the judge stared down at Isobel. "Am I to understand that you confess to the murder of Arnaud d'Larte?" "Yes," Isobel said softly. "I hated him and I killed him. I killed with the iron statue of Venus. I hit him with it till he died and I hit him with it after he was dead. I killed him." Andy Kirk smiled. It only took a short time to bring in a verdict of guilty against Isobel d'Larte. She accepted the verdict silently and without flinching. In like manner she accepted her sentence. She was to be sent to fight in the front lines of the war in Asia. "I declare this court adjourned," the judge said and banged his gavel down authoritatively. As Isobel d'Larte was taken from the room she was led passed Andy Kirk. Seeing him, she stopped and stared at him coldly. "Why did you do this to me?" she asked. "To help you. If the trial had continued the way it had you would have been judged insane and executed here in the States. In Asia you may have a chance." "Does it make a difference if I have a chance? No one really cares." "You may find what you've been looking for over there." "You think so?" "I hope so." "I don't understand you, Andy." "Sometimes one must do bad to do good." Isobel stared at him not understanding his words, then the guard led her away. Isobel d'Larte spent the night in jail, and the next morning, along with twenty other prisoners, was taken to the rocket-port to be sent to Asia. At the rocket-port the prisoners were allowed to say their goodbyes to their families without the benefit of guards. Isobel stood alone watching the tearful farewells, then walked slowly into the cafeteria. As she sat alone at the corner table drinking coffee a tall man dressed in an old fashioned top coat and with an old fashioned hat pulled down over his face walked up to the table and sat down opposite her. Isobel looked at the figure happily. "I knew you would come." "Why did you confess?" "I did not want them to know about us. They would have made it all so ugly sounding. They would have made it sound vile ... and it wasn't." Isobel reached out a hand towards the figure and a metal hand closed over hers. "I didn't want them to harm you." "You did it for me?" "Yes. I love you." "I'm a robot. A machine. An unfeeling thing of iron and steel. How can you love me?" "My husband was the machine. He ate at the same time everyday, dressed at the same time, went to work at the same time. He did the same things, thought the same things everyday of his life." "But he had emotion." "Only those he had been taught to feel and those only at the proper times. He was mad when he should be mad and happy when he should be happy, nothing more. He was much more of a machine than you." "But I cannot return your love. I do not know what emotion is." "I had to have someone," Isobel cried. "I had to have someone who was kind to me. You liked what I liked. You could talk to me of something besides machines. Machines do everything now. But you could talk to me of art, music, beauty." "My creator taught me those things. Taught me to care for those things in the museum. I would miss them if they were taken away." "Yes." Sudden tears stung Isobel's eyes. No one would miss her. No one would care about her. "I will miss you too, Isobel. I will miss you very much." "As much as the things in the museum?" "As much as those. More." Isobel stood up, leaned over and kissed the metal cheek of the one opposite her. "Then it was worth it." "All prisoners assemble on the runway," a harsh voice boomed over the loudspeaker. "Perhaps someday I can learn to return love," the robot said. "You have done more than that. You have made me happy." "Come back safely, Isobel." Isobel d'Larte ran to the runway and joined the other prisoners. They looked at her strangely not understanding her smile. Isobel barely noticed them, for she was happy. Someone cared for her. That was the important thing. _Someone cared._ 
55642	----	Google Books (the New York Public Library) Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=muIhAAAAMAAJ [the New York Public Library] THE BEST NOVELS BY FERGUS HUME The Mystery of a Hansom Cab The Sealed Message The Sacred Herb Claude Duval of Ninety-five The Rainbow Feather The Pagan's Cup A Coin of Edward VII The Yellow Holly The Red Window The Mandarin's Fan The Secret Passage The Opal Serpent Lady Jim of Curzon Street =================================================== The Sacred Herb =================================================== BY FERGUS HUME AUTHOR OF "Lady Jim of Curzon Street," "The Rainbow Feather," "The Opal Serpent," "A Coin of Edward VII," "The Mystery of a Hansom Cab," etc. =================================================== G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK Copyright, 1908 By G. W. DILLINGHAM CO. ------------------------------------ The Sacred Herb Issued Jan., 1908 CONTENTS I. The Latest Sensation II. The Trial III. The Paper-Cutter IV. Evidence for the Prosecution V. Mrs. Rover's Masked Ball VI. A Startling Discovery VII. Shepworth Explains VIII. A Private Explanation IX. Dr. Horace X. The Verdict XI. Dr. Horace's Warning XII. Mrs. Dolly Rover XIII. Lanwin Grange XIV. Mrs. Blexey's Opinion XV. Jadby plays a Card XVI. Dr. Horace Intervenes XVII. The Old, Old Story XVIII. The Power of the Herb XIX. Circumstantial Evidence XX. Mr. Rover Explains XXI. A Possible Scandal XXII. The Unexpected XXIII. Helpless XXIV. The Beginning of the End XXV. Explanations XXVI. A Confession XXVII. All's well that ends well The Sacred Herb CHAPTER I. THE LATEST SENSATION Lord Prelice felt desperately bored. Like Xeres, he longed for some new pleasure, yet knew not where to look for one. This was the result of being surfeited with the sweets of extraordinary good fortune. Born to a title, endowed with passable good looks, gifted with abilities above the average, and possessed of admirable health, he should have been the happiest of men; the more especially as his income ran well into five figures, and he had the whole wide world to play with. Certainly he had played with it and with life, up to his present age of thirty-five years. Perhaps this was the reason of his acute boredom. If all work and no play makes Jack dull; all play and no work must necessarily make him _blase_. Therefore, in spite of the excellent breakfast spread before him on this bright summer morning, when London was looking at its best, the young man was ungratefully wondering what he could do to render life endurable. He ate from habit and not because he enjoyed his food; he read the morning papers, since it was necessary to be abreast of the times, for conversational purposes, although very little was new therein and still less was true. By the time he arrived at the marmalade stage of the meal he was again considering the possibilities of the next four and twenty hours. In this discontented frame of mind he was discovered by his aunt. Lady Sophia Haken bustled into the pleasant room exasperatingly cheerful, and very pleased with life in general and with herself in particular. She was an elderly woman of a somewhat masculine type who lived a simple out-of-door existence, and who proclaimed loudly that it was necessary for humanity to return to the Stone Age for true enjoyment. Having been riding in the Row for the last two hours, she entered in her habit, filled with the egotism of the early riser. As a near relative, she could not do less than scold Prelice for lingering over a late breakfast, and told him,--also as a near relative--that she scolded him for his good. She had done so very often before without result, and, but that she loved to lay down the law, would have long since given over the attempt to improve her nephew. Nevertheless, anxious to achieve the impossible, she attacked him with pristine vigor, as though aware for the first time of his bad habits. "Nine o'clock and still at breakfast," said Lady Sophia significantly, and slapped her skirts with a whip which she would have dearly liked to lay across her lazy nephew's broad shoulders. Prelice looked indolently at the clock, then at the table, and finally at his fuming aunt. "I cannot deny it," he said, with a yawn. "Is that all you have to say?" she asked, much disgusted. Prelice heaved a sigh. It was necessary to say something, if only to stem the coming tide of verbose speech. "How well you are looking." "Because I have been up since six o'clock." "How unwise; you will probably sleep all the afternoon." Lady Sophia snapped, tartly: "I shall do nothing of the sort." "Oh, very well," he assented, "you will do nothing of the sort. Anything for a quiet life, even agreement with the improbable." His aunt grasped her whip dangerously. "How exasperating you are!" "I was just thinking the same about you," confessed Prelice, good-humouredly; "it is so disagreeable for a late riser to be reminded of the time." And having folded his napkin, he lighted a cigarette. "How long is this going on?" demanded Lady Sophia fiercely. His imperturbability made her long to shake him thoroughly. "How long is what going on?" asked Prelice provokingly. "This idle, idiotic, insane, sensual, foolish, wicked, dilatory existence!" "Seven adjectives," murmured the young man, opening his eyes. "Waste, waste--oh, what waste!" "How long is this going on?" inquired his relative again, and whipped her skirts--instead of Prelice's back--with renewed vigour. He was forced to answer. "As long as I do, no doubt. What else is to be done, I should like to know?" "You shall know. Serve your country." "What! And be abused in the penny press? No, thank you." "You can surely help your brother-man." "Surely--only to learn how much ingratitude exists in the world." Lady Sophia stamped, bit her lip, and looked like a ruffled cockatoo in a bad temper. She wanted to quarrel, and it annoyed her that Prelice would not meet her half way, by supplying a reason. She had to invent the quarrel, and bring about the quarrel, and carry on the quarrel, and finish the quarrel without assistance. "Marry!" was the one word which suggested itself, and she hoped that it would be like a red rag to a bull. "Oh, Jerusalem!" Prelice shook his closely cropped fair head. "I would much rather serve brother-man than marry sister-woman. You offer me a choice of unoriginal evils." "You never will face the truth," declared Lady Sophia irrelevantly; and forthwith--according to an old-established custom--she proceeded to recount the family history--that is, she picked out the worst traits of Prelice's ancestors and debited them to his account. He smoked through two cigarettes, and nodded at intervals, not very much interested, since he had heard the same oration at least a dozen times. Lady Sophia having worked her way from the reign of Elizabeth down to that of Edward VII., ended with a lurid, penny-sensational picture of what would befall her listener in the near future, unless he worked like a nigger. "Such a bad illustration," interposed Prelice placidly; "niggers don't work. As I have just returned from the West Indies, I ought to know." Lady Sophia snorted down the interruption, and seeing that he was still unimpressed, tried to goad him into industry by mentioning several of his school-fellows who had attained to comparative fame and fortune, while Prelice--as she scathingly put it--had been grovelling in the mud. "Even young Shepworth," ended Lady Sophia, somewhat out of breath, "and _he_ was never clever--even _he_ is Counsel for the Defence this very day in an important murder case." "I'm deuced sorry for his client," murmured Prelice indolently. "Why should you be?" demanded his aunt aggressively. "You said that he wasn't clever." "He must be." Lady Sophia contradicted herself with feminine calmness. "If he wasn't he certainly would not be talking this very day at the New Bailey. Go and hear him, Prelice, and be ashamed that a fool--yes, a superlative fool--should succeed where you fail." "What _do_ you mean?" inquired her nephew, with great curiosity. "First you say that Ned isn't clever----" "Ned! Ned. I never mentioned Ned. Who is Ned?" "Shepworth. Edward Shepworth--Ned for short. We were great chums at Eton, you know. But you say that he isn't clever, then you insist that he is, and wind up by calling him a fool." "You know quite well what I mean," said Lady Sophia with dignity. "I really don't," confessed her nephew artlessly, "you describe such a complex character. However, as I have nothing to do to-day----" "And never have anything to do--idler." "I shall go to the New Bailey, and listen to Ned hanging his client!" "So brilliant a barrister as Mr. Shepworth will certainly get her off," said Lady Sophia decisively. Prelice passed over this new contradiction. "It's a woman?" "Yes. Mona Chent. You know her." "I'm sure I don't. The criminal classes don't attract me." "She is not a criminal, but a lady," said his aunt, as though the two things were incompatible; "and you _do_ know her. Mona Chent, the niece of old Sir Oliver Lanwin." Prelice reflected with bent brows. "I never heard the name before, I assure you, Aunt Sophia," he said at length. "Remember that I have been travelling round the world for the last seven years and know very little of the latest London sensation." "You ought to stay at home, and make yourself acquainted with people, Prelice." "Including this murderess?" "She is not a murderess," cried Lady Sophia energetically. "I always did think that she was a sweet girl, and if she did kill her uncle, it was no more than he deserved. I never liked him." "Therefore he ought to be murdered," said Prelice, rising and stretching himself before the empty grate. "So Sir Oliver was the victim. I have heard of him. He used to send Ned shells and barbaric things from the South Seas. And now Ned is repaying him by defending his murderess." "I tell you Mona did not murder the man. I know her. I have received her. Would I receive a murderess?" "It might be a draw to some of your parties," said Prelice politely, and with a recollection of several dull entertainments. "But I cannot quite gather from your clear explanation if she is guilty or not." "Half London thinks that she is, and half asserts her innocence." "What does Shepworth think?" "He naturally believes her to be innocent." "Because he defends her?" "Because she is his future wife." Prelice looked startled. "Oh, Jerusalem! And if he proves her innocence he'll marry her, I suppose." "As she is her uncle's heiress, and Mr. Shepworth is poor, I presume he will. Ten thousand a year is not to be despised." "But a wife with such a past," protested the young man. "Ugh! Did Miss Chent murder her uncle to get the money?" "She didn't murder him at all. Look at the facts of the case----" "I shall be delighted to, if you will place them before me." "You ought to know all about them," said Lady Sophia, rising impatiently; "everyone has been talking about the case for the last month;--ever since Mona Chent was arrested, in fact." "Ah, but you see I have only just arrived in London. I shall go to my club and get posted up in the latest scandal." "The latest sensation," corrected his aunt. "Go to the New Bailey instead, and hear Mr. Shepworth place the case before the judge and jury. His eloquence will make you sorry for your lazy, useless life; he will be a K.C.," cried Lady Sophia, becoming prophetic, "and Attorney-General and Lord Chancellor, and----" "King of Timbuctoo, no doubt. Loud cheers." Lady Sophia looked indignantly at the scoffer, who beamed on her benignly with laughing blue eyes. "You _have_ deteriorated since you left the Army." "No doubt, the standard of morality in the Army being so high." "Oh!" His aunt stamped, and flung open the door with a tragic air. "I have done with you. Your flippancy is disgusting. I repeat, Prelice, I have done with you." And she departed hastily, lest a reply from the scoffer should spoil her impressive exit. Prelice laughed, knowing that Lady Sophia would never be done with him while she had a tongue to wag. Also he believed that she was truly fond of him, and knew that she had only too much reason to accuse him of wasting his life. He resolved to mend his ways, more as an experiment in self-denial than because he wanted to, and cast about for a model person to imitate. After Lady Sophia's conversation the name of Edward Shepworth naturally suggested itself, so Prelice arrayed himself in purple and fine linen, and ordered round his motor car. Within two hours he was driving out of Half-Moon Street, and was soon dodging the traffic of Piccadilly. It was so delightful, manipulating the machine in the sunshine, and acting as a chauffeur so appealed to him that he was minded to turn the Mercedes in the direction of Richmond. But the hints about the murder being an unusual one kept him to his earlier determination; also a copy of _The Daily Mirror_ assured him that the accused girl was exceedingly pretty; finally, he had always been friendly with the Counsel for the Defence, and thought that he would renew the tie of old school-days. These things brought his smart Mercedes to the bran-new portals of the Criminal Court, and when he had handed over the steering-wheel to his chauffeur he sought out the arena, wherein Shepworth was fighting for the life of his promised wife. Naturally the first person at whom the young man looked was the prisoner in the dock, and he mentally confessed that _The Daily Mirror_ photograph had not done her justice. It could scarcely do so in mere black and white, as Miss Chent needed vivid tints to convey her peculiar charm. She was one of those rare blondes who embody sunshine in hair and eyes: a dragon-fly of humanity, all radiance and glow. Since she was on trial for her life, Prelice quite expected to see a white-faced, terrified creature, worn out with shame and suffering. But Miss Chent might have been in an opera-box, for all the emotion she displayed. Prelice had more experience of women than was good for him, but he never beheld so perfectly dressed, or so perfectly serene a girl. It would be absurd to say that so level-headed a young man fell in love with this attractive criminal at first sight; but he certainly felt drawn to her. She looked like a captive angel, and without knowing the rights or wrongs of the case, Prelice mentally pronounced her to be entirely innocent. Her calmness, if not her beauty, acquitted her, as his susceptible heart decided, for no woman with an unclean conscience could have faced judge and jury with such manifest confidence. Prelice thought of Joan of Arc on trial for sorcery; of Mary Stuart before a prejudiced tribunal; of Marie Antoinette; and of the Vestal, who proved her innocence by drawing Tiber water in a sieve. He might also have recalled the Marquise de Brinvilliers, likewise calm, beautiful, and--guilty. But he did not. The Court was filled with more or less fashionable people, who came to make a Roman holiday of Sir Oliver Lanwin's violent death, and Miss Chent's position. Doubtless she had been well known in Society, and those who had been her friends were here to watch her in the new role of an accused criminal. Prelice was disgusted at the heartless conduct of some ladies, who whispered and tittered, and used opera-glasses to stare at the unfortunate girl. He internally commended his aunt for having had the good taste to remain absent, and then turned his eyes on the array of barristers to search for Ned Shepworth. If the prisoner was serene in the consciousness of innocence, her counsel certainly was less composed. A strong will and the second nature of custom kept Shepworth sufficiently self-controlled to deceive those who had but a passing acquaintance with his personality. But Prelice, who had known the young barrister for years, noted that his usually ruddy complexion was whiter than usual, and that his eyes seemed to be sunken in his head by reason of the dark shadows beneath them. Shepworth was a slim, handsome man, brown-haired and brown-eyed, with a clean-shaven face and a resolute mouth. In his wig and gown he looked a very presentable son of Themis, if somewhat less composed than the traditionally unemotional lawyer should be. He was seated at the long table with two older men, who apparently were his coadjutors; and near the defence trio the Counsel for the Prosecution--appointed by the Public Prosecutor on behalf of the Crown--was chatting amiably with his colleague, a keen-faced young barrister. Behind sat many other lawyers wigged and gowned, who were taking the deepest interest in the proceedings. For the moment the Court was so still that the rustling of the briefs, as the barristers turned their pages, could be plainly heard. "Are those two fellows assisting Mr. Shepworth in the defence?" Prelice whispered to a legal-looking bystander at his elbow. "No," replied the man in a low voice; "the big fellow is Cudworth, K.C., and the other is young Arkers, who acts as Junior Counsel, Shepworth is not defending, as he was in the house when the crime was committed, and will be called as a witness." So Lady Sophia was inaccurate as usual, and Prelice felt somewhat disappointed that he would not have an opportunity of hearing his old school-chum orating. However, he had little time to think, for at this moment the Prosecuting Counsel got on his legs to open the case. Prelice felt that the curtain had risen on a tragedy. He wondered what would be the scene when the curtain fell. CHAPTER II. THE TRIAL. The Counsel, in a clear and deliberate voice, opened his speech with an unvarnished statement of the case; and a very remarkable story he unfolded. Prelice, as an experienced traveller, had always believed in the impossible; but it seemed to him that he had returned to prosaic England to hear a veritable fairy-tale. There was something extremely fantastic about the way in which the crime was said to have been committed. As set forth by the speaker, the event happened in this wise. Sir Oliver Lanwin, the last male heir of an ancient Kentish family, whose seat was situated near Hythe, had found himself, some forty years previous to the trial, a pauper with a newly inherited title. Seeing no chance in England of rehabilitating his fortunes, he had taken what little money he possessed to New Zealand, leaving his only sister well provided for, as the wife of an army officer named Chent. After making some money in various ways at Hokitika, Sir Oliver had purchased a fruit schooner to trade amongst the South Sea Islands. Being successful, he had bought other ships, and for more than thirty years he had been a kind of Polynesian merchant-prince, owing to his wealth and enterprise and keen business capacity. He had never married, because of an early disappointment, and ten years before, he had returned to England with a capital representing ten thousand a year. With this he had retired to his ancestral seat, near Hythe, and there proposed to end his days in comfort, after the fashion of Sinbad, the famous sailor of the Arabian Nights. He brought with him an old shell-back mariner, Steve Agstone by name, who was an important witness for the prosecution. Unfortunately, said the Counsel, the man had disappeared, immediately before the inquest, after hinting to the housekeeper, Mrs. Blexey, that he had actually witnessed the committal of the crime, for which the prisoner was being tried. In spite of all efforts made by the police, this witness could not be discovered, and it was impossible to say why he had disappeared. But Counsel hoped to produce other witnesses, who would prove beyond all shadow of a doubt that the prisoner was guilty. After proceeding thus far, Counsel sipped a glass of water, hitched his gown more comfortably on to his shoulders, and continued his speech amidst the breathless silence of the listeners. Being a bachelor, Sir Oliver felt somewhat lonely, since he was of a sociable disposition. For a few months he kept open house, but as his nature proved to be exacting and imperious, he did not get on well with his neighbours. Finally, he proclaimed that they were all idiots, and closing his doors, he became more or less of a recluse. It was then that Sir Oliver's widowed sister, Mrs. Chent, died suddenly, leaving her daughter Mona--the prisoner--to the care of her uncle. Sir Oliver became extremely fond of the young lady, who was of a lively and amiable disposition. Indeed, his attachment was so great that he made a will in her favour, by which she was to inherit ten thousand a year and the family-seat. "And here," proceeded Counsel impressively, "I may mention a circumstance which, in the light of after events, has some bearing on the case. Mr. Oliver, while bathing at Samoa, had his leg taken off, from the knee, by a shark. He thus was unable to indulge in field sports, in games, or indeed in any kind of out-of-door life. He therefore took to reading, and of a somewhat unusual kind. Jacob Bohme, Paracelsus, and Eliphas Levi were his favourite authors, from which it can be judged that the dead man took a deep interest in psychic questions. "He also consulted palmists, fortune-tellers, astrologers, and crystal-gazers, frequently asking them down to Lanwin Grange. In fact, at the very time when the crime was committed, Madame Marie Eppingrave, a well-known Bond Street interpreter of the future, was staying in the house. She will be called as a witness. But you can see, gentlemen of the jury, that the late baronet was an exceedingly superstitious man, although clear-headed in business and perfectly capable of managing his affairs." It was at this point that Shepworth caught sight of Prelice, and he nodded in a friendly manner. Then he scribbled a note, and sent it by an usher to the young man. It proved to be a request that Prelice would wait for him at the door when the Court adjourned for luncheon. Prelice slipped the missive into his pocket, and nodded a reply. Shepworth seemed to be pleased with this prompt acceptance, and immediately resumed his attitude of attention, while Counsel continued to boom out facts with the drone of a bumble-bee. As the narrative proceeded it appeared that, a few months before his death, Sir Oliver had received a South Sea visitor in the person of a young sailor called Captain Felix Jadby, whose father he had known at Tahiti. The baronet was extremely intimate with the visitor, and practically gave him the run of the house. Captain Jadby came and went at will, and Sir Oliver talked to him a great deal in connection with matters dealing with Polynesian trade. This was not to be wondered at, since the baronet, having been a trader himself, it was pleasant for him to converse with one who knew about such things. Unfortunately, Captain Jadby fell in love with the prisoner, and wished to marry her. She refused to become his wife, on the plea that she loved Mr. Edward Shepworth, and was engaged to him. Sir Oliver was annoyed at the engagement, as he desired the marriage with Captain Jadby to take place. On the day of his death he quarrelled seriously with the prisoner, and, according to Madame Marie Eppingrave's evidence--since she was present during the quarrel--Sir Oliver stated that if the prisoner did not marry Captain Jadby he would disinherit her. Prisoner still refused, and retired to her room, saying that she would not reappear until Captain Jadby was out of the house. For the sake of peace Jadby went up to London that same day, with the intention of returning by the ten o'clock train. Then, if prisoner still remained obdurate, he intended to say good-bye to his host, and leave for the Colonies within the week. "And now, gentlemen of the jury," continued Counsel, with another hitch of his gown, "we come to the most important part of the story. Previous to going to London, Captain Jadby had a wordy quarrel with Mr. Shepworth, and from words the quarrel came to blows. Mr. Shepworth's foot slipped and he slightly sprained his ankle, so that he was not able to leave Lanwin Grange, as he desired. His position was an unpleasant one, since Sir Oliver was not well disposed towards him on account of the engagement which existed with the prisoner. As Captain Jadby had left the Grange, Mr. Shepworth wished to go also, and would have gone, but that his sprained ankle prevented his removal, and he therefore remained in his room. Now, gentlemen, you can see the position of the several people connected with this matter at the time when the crime was committed. Captain Jadby was in London, intending to return at ten o'clock; Mr. Shepworth was in his room with a sprained ankle which prevented his leaving it; the prisoner was also in her room, and even though Captain Jadby had departed, for the time being, she declined to come down to dinner. Madame Marie Eppingrave and Sir Oliver dined alone, and then the baronet retired to his library, where until nine o'clock--according to Madame Marie's evidence--he chatted with her on occult subjects. Also, as Madame Marie will state, Sir Oliver expressed himself strongly on the subject of the prisoner's refusal of Jadby. "As Sir Oliver was in the habit of retiring early to bed on account of his health, his factotum, Steve Agstone, entered the library at nine o'clock to bolt and bar the windows. There were no shutters; and this please remember, gentlemen, as it is an important point. The servants had already retired, and after making the library safe, Steve Agstone left the room with the intention of waiting up for Captain Jadby, who was expected back by the ten o'clock train, and who intended to walk to the Grange. Madame Marie lingered for a few minutes to say good-night, and then retired to her bedroom. She declares that it was five minutes after nine o'clock that she left the library. Sir Oliver--so she says--was seated at the table near the window reading and smoking. "Here, gentlemen," pursued Counsel, taking up a plan, "is a drawing of the library." He passed it by an usher to the foreman of the jury. "You will see that there is only one door to the library, which leads out into the hall, and which is opposite to the fireplace. The inner walls of the room, on three sides, are covered with books, but the fourth wall--the outer wall, gentlemen--has in it three tall French windows, which lead on to a terrace over a lawn. The lawn extends for some distance, ending in flower-beds, these in their turn being encircled by shrubs, and farther back by the park trees. When Madame Marie left the room Sir Oliver was seated at his writing-table, marked 'X,' immediately before the middle window. As the night was chilly there was a fire burning in the grate. You understand, gentlemen? Good. Now we come to the discovery of the crime." Counsel then went on to state that Captain Jadby returned, according to his promise, at ten o'clock--that is, his train arrived at the station, which was about half-a-mile from the Grange. He walked to Sir Oliver's house, as he had no luggage to carry, and the night was fine if somewhat cold. On emerging from the avenue on to the lawn he saw that there was a light in the library; and it was here that Counsel again drew the jury's attention to the fact that the windows had no shutters. Captain Jadby therefore thought that, as Sir Oliver had not retired to bed, he would knock at one of the windows, and enter the house that way, so as to avoid rousing the other inmates by ringing the bell. He advanced to the lighted windows, and looked through the middle one, which was veiled, as were the others, with curtains of Indian beadwork. To his surprise, he saw that Sir Oliver, seated at his desk, was lying forward on the writing-table. "I am precise to a fault here, gentlemen," said Counsel jocularly, "but it is absolutely to be even pedantic, so that you will understand. "Sir Oliver," he continued, "was lying with his face on his outstretched hands, and in an armchair near the fireplace sat the prisoner, in a white dressing-gown with her hands on her lap. Captain Jadby could not see very distinctly, owing to the beadwork curtains, but he saw sufficient to guess that something was wrong, especially as his knocking produced no effect either on Sir Oliver or on the prisoner. He unconsciously pushed at the middle window, and, to his surprise, discovered that it was not locked. He therefore entered, and what he saw made him ring the bell at once, to summon the household. "And what did he see, gentlemen of the jury? he saw that Sir Oliver was dead. He had been stabbed to the heart, under the left shoulder-blade, apparently while seated at his desk. The body had naturally fallen forward. The prisoner, seated in the armchair with her hands on her lap, was in an unconscious state, but her hands and the white dressing-gown were stained with blood--with the blood, gentlemen," said Counsel impressively, "of her uncle. Before anyone could enter the room she revived, and on seeing the body of her uncle, displayed great terror and horror. Steve Agstone, who had been waiting up for Captain Jadby, was the first person to enter, and on discovering the dead body of his master--to whom he was sincerely attached--he at once rushed out of the house for a doctor. By this time the servants were aroused by the noise, and with them came Madame Marie Eppingrave. Even Mr. Shepworth, lame as he was, managed to crawl down the stairs, so loud had been the clamour which had awakened him. "And what did the prisoner say to all this? Gentlemen, she told a most ridiculous story to account for her presence in the library. According to her statement, which the inspector from Hythe took down in the presence of witnesses, prisoner said that she could not sleep on account of her quarrel with her uncle. She came down the stairs at a quarter to ten o'clock, and entered the library, with the intention of making friends with her uncle. When she entered--so she declares--the room was filled with pungent white smoke, through which she could dimly see Sir Oliver seated at the writing-table. The smoke made her senses reel, but by holding her handkerchief to her mouth she managed to stagger to the middle window. She had just managed to unfasten the catch when she fell unconscious. The next thing she remembers--according to her preposterous story--is the presence of Captain Jadby. She declares that she did not know when Sir Oliver was stabbed, and when she entered the library did not know why it should be filled with smoke. When Captain Jadby entered--as he will tell you--there was no smoke, and the fire had burned down to red cinders." Again Counsel had to drink a sip of water, as he had been talking for some time, and there was a low murmur of conversation heard before he again began to speak. The story, which he alleged that Miss Chent had told, seemed ridiculous; and even Prelice, prejudiced as he was in her favour, thought that the defence was absurd. But Miss Chent never moved a muscle; she did not even change colour. Quiet, and without a word, she sat in the dock, waiting patiently for her innocence to be made manifest. And yet, as everyone thought, her tale was too ridiculous for words. "And finally, gentlemen," said Counsel, taking up his brief, "I would draw your attention to the medical evidence. The doctor called in stated that Sir Oliver was murdered about ten o'clock--mark that, gentlemen--about the very time that the prisoner confesses she was in the library in a state of unconsciousness. Captain Jadby did not arrive until thirty minutes after ten, as he did not walk very quickly. And again, gentlemen, no weapon was found wherewith the wound--a wide, clean wound--could have been inflicted. But an Indian dagger with a jade handle, used by Sir Oliver as a paper-knife, is missing. With that I verily believe the deceased was stabbed. And remember, gentlemen, that the window was unfastened; and if we are to believe this foolish tale of a pungent smoke, prisoner unfastened it when she entered and immediately before she fainted. Gentlemen, she _did_ faint, but not then. No! Can you not guess what took place? The prisoner came down the stairs to see her uncle; perhaps, as she declares, to make it up with him, since we may as well give her the benefit of the doubt. But in place of reconciliation, the quarrel grows more bitter. Impulsive and furious, the prisoner snatches the paper-knife--a dangerous weapon remember, gentlemen--and while Sir Oliver turns again to his book, stabs him in the back. She then opens the window, and buried the paper-knife, all bloody, in the garden. On re-entering, the sight of the dead body shows her what a terrible crime she has committed. Instead of refastening the window she staggers forward, with the intention of regaining her bedroom, and of playing the part of an innocent woman. But her nerves, which maintained her strength and consciousness so far, fail at the critical moment. She manages to reach the armchair, and falls into it unconscious, some time after ten o'clock. There she lies, with blood-stained hands and dress, until Captain Jadby arrives, when she recovers her senses to tell a wild and improbable story. Sir Oliver, as the medical evidence proves, was alive when she entered the library at a quarter to ten. He is dead, and his blood is smearing the prisoner's dressing-gown at half-past ten, when Captain Jadby arrives. And all that time prisoner says that she was unconscious. Quite so. She was, up to the moment of Captain Jadby's arrival, and from the moment, when she staggered into the room, after burying the knife in the garden. And now, gentlemen----" Here Counsel went on to state that in spite of all efforts the knife could not be found. He also detailed more explicitly the medical evidence, and gave the name of the witness whom he proposed to call, and ended with a damning indictment of the reasons which had led the prisoner to commit the crime. Amongst these was the fact that by Sir Oliver's death prisoner would inherit ten thousand a year at once, and would thus have been enabled to marry Edward Shepworth. When his speech was finished Counsel sat down, wiping his brow, and a hum of conversation rose in the crowded Court. Mona's eyes wandered here and there, and rested finally on the pitying face of Lord Prelice. For a moment she remained calm, and then flushed deeply, the first sign of emotion she had given. A moment later and she was led away in charge of a warder, while the Court adjourned for luncheon. CHAPTER III. THE PAPER-CUTTER. "I am delighted to see you, Dorry," said Shepworth, addressing Prelice by his Eton nickname, when the young man had been called "Dormouse," shortened as above, on account of his lethargic habits. "I want you very badly. Come and grub somewhere, and we can talk." Prelice responded very cordially, as the two had been very close friends at the old school, and submitted to be led round the corner to a small hidden restaurant much affected by the gentlemen of the long robe. Here, when they were snugly ensconced in a corner, Shepworth ordered food for his friend, but contented himself with a cigarette, and a cup of strong coffee. "I can't eat a morsel," he protested when Prelice advised a meal. "I am too much bothered over this case. How the deuce did you come to the Court, Dorry?" Prelice, who possessed a hearty appetite, tackled a plate of cold beef, and answered between mouthfuls. "My aunt Sophia bully-ragged me this morning as an idler, and advised me to hear you spouting. She wanted to make me ashamed of myself." "And are you?" asked Shepworth aimlessly. "Rats!" said his lordship inelegantly; "but I'm sorry, old man. This is a sinfully hard business for you. Why didn't you write me that you were engaged?" "I didn't know where to find you, Dorry. Lady Sophia, whom I met once or twice, told me that you were scampering round the world. I _have_ wanted you, Prelice, these last few months. Yes, and before that." "Before the murder, do you mean?" "Yes! I have never had a chum since I left school. Lots of friends, no doubt, good men all, but a chum," he laid his hand on Prelice's shoulder with a burst of emotion. "Oh, Dorry, what a mercy you are here, and that I have some safe person in whom to confide. I should have had to tell someone in the long run." "Tell someone what?" asked Prelice soberly. "About that poor girl." "Miss Chent?" "Yes! It is an awful position for her, and for me. No! Don't look at me like that, Dorry. I swear that I'm not thinking of myself. I'd give my right hand to save Mona." "She is innocent, of course?" asked Prelice, pushing away his plate. "Yes! I am certain that she is innocent, although----" He hesitated for a moment, then flung away his cigarette, leaned his arms on the marble-topped table, and looked earnestly at his friend. "You heard Belmain's speech?" Prelice nodded. "You mean the prosecuting Counsel." "Yes! He was fair enough in the beginning and in the middle, but he had no right to rub it into the jury about the knife and about Mona's guilt being so certain. That part should have been left to the time when he addressed the jury, and after the evidence on both sides had been heard." "I thought it was rather prejudging the prisoner myself, Ned." Shepworth shuddered. "Don't call Mona a prisoner," he expostulated. "Every time that infernal Belmain alluded to her so, I felt sick." "It is rough on you undoubtedly," murmured Prelice; and not wanting any more food, for Shepworth's agitation had spoilt his appetite, he turned to the waiter and ordered coffee. Shepworth passed along his cigarette case. "Very rough on you, Ned." "Oh, don't talk about me," rejoined the barrister, restlessly; "think of Mona, a young girl, gently born and bred, being accused of murder and being put into prison. It's horrible." "She seemed to me to be the calmest person in Court." "Because she knows that she is innocent. She's a religious girl too, and firmly believes that God will prove her innocence." "Well, He will," said Prelice quietly. "I'm not a saint myself, but I know that God looks after us all." "Yet innocent people have been hanged before now, Dorry!" Prelice did not answer immediately. Lighting his cigarette, he meanwhile looked very straight at his friend. "You don't seem to have a good defence," he remarked suddenly. "Yes and no," replied Shepworth, fidgeting. "Not only is there a very good reason why she should love her uncle, but a better one that she should wish him to have remained alive." "What do you mean?" "That will, you know, Dorry; the will made by Sir Oliver in favour of Mona?" Prelice nodded. "It has been destroyed," went on Shepworth; "bits of it were found in the grate. There was a fire burning in the library on that night, if you remember Belmain's speech. Well, the will had been torn up and thrown into the fire. A few bits fell under the grate, and these prove beyond all doubt that it is the will which Sir Oliver made in favour of Mona. Now, if guilty, why should she destroy a document which gave her ten thousand a year?" "But I say," remarked Prelice thoughtfully, "towards the end of his speech Belmain distinctly stated that Miss Chent had killed her uncle so as to get the money. If he knows of the burning of the will----" "Oh, the other side admit that a will was burnt, but deny that it was the one made in Mona's favour. They will try and prove that Sir Oliver was drawing up another will disinheriting her because she would stick to me, and that she burnt this will after killing the old man. We fight hard on that point, Dorry." "Has the will in favour of Miss Chent been found?" "No. The lawyers have not got it, as Sir Oliver kept it himself. It can't be found, and, of course, we say--that is, our side, Cudworth, Arkers, and myself--that the will was burnt." "Presuming it is, who inherits?" "Captain Jadby." "What--the South Sea chap?" Shepworth nodded. "It seems that Sir Oliver was a great friend of his father's at Tahiti, and made a will out there in favour of young Jadby. He brought it home with him, I believe. Of course, the will in Mona's favour invalidated the first document, so unless the second will had been destroyed, the first would not hold good." "Which points to the fact," said Prelice quickly, "that Jadby had a reason to murder Sir Oliver." "I say," Shepworth glanced around in alarm, "don't talk so loud. There isn't a shadow of evidence to connect Jadby with the crime. He was in London on that day, and only returned by the ten train. However, he claims the property, but until this trial is ended nothing will be done about that." "Humph!" said Prelice reflectively. "I expect it was on account of the earlier will that Sir Oliver wished Miss Chent to marry Jadby." Shepworth nodded. "He thought to kill two birds with one stone; to let them both have the money, and, so to speak, blend the two wills into one. Jadby loves Mona too, but she hates him." "And, moreover, is engaged to you," mused Prelice, tipping the ash off his cigarette. "It's a queer case." "Much queerer than you think, Dorry." "Now what do you mean by that?" asked Prelice. Shepworth glanced round again, and cautiously brought his lips to his friend's left ear. "I swear that Mona is innocent. She is a good, kind, religious girl, who would not hurt a fly, much less Sir Oliver, whom she loved in spite of that ridiculous quarrel. All the same----" "Well, well, go on!" said Prelice impatiently. "That knife," breathed Shepworth nervously. "The jade-handled paper-cutter. Well?" "She had it in her hand." "When? Where?" Prelice could not grasp the true significance of this very serious statement. "In the library, when she was unconscious in the chair." "How on earth do you know, Ned?" Shepworth looked round again, and wiped his face. "See here," he whispered. "I was in bed with that sprained ankle, as Belmain said. In our row I gave Jadby the worst of it, including a black eye, although he fought like a cat with nine lives. But I tripped, and hurt my foot, as Belmain said in his speech. It was swollen and painful, but not so much but what I could have got away to town." "Why didn't you?" "Because Mona asked me to stop and support her. She expected further trouble with her uncle. I lay awake, trying to bear the pain as best I could, for my ankle got worse when I lay down. About a quarter to ten I heard Mona pass my door and go down the stairs." "How did you know that it was Miss Chent?" "I would know her footstep amongst a hundred; and she admitted afterwards that she had gone down to the library at that hour. I wondered where she was going, but lay quiet, listening for her return. At length, some fifteen minutes or so after ten o'clock, I could bear the suspense no longer, and hobbled downstairs in my dressing-gown. I thought that she might have gone to the library to see her uncle, and that further trouble might be brewing. As I promised to stand by her, ankle or no ankle, it seemed right that I should learn what was going on." "Very reasonable of you, Ned. Continue." Prelice was deeply interested. "I opened the library door, and saw her seated in the armchair." "Was there any sign of smoke?" "No! But there was a peculiar smell in the room." "What kind of a smell?" Shepworth wrinkled his brows. "I can scarcely describe it," he said after some thought; "a sweetish, heavy, sickly scent--like a tuberose. That's as near as I can get. Mona told me afterwards that she also thought it resembled the thick perfume of a tuberose. It came from the smoke, of course--it must have come from the smoke." "You believe in the smoke then?" "Oh yes. Sir Oliver had evidently been trying some magical experiment." Prelice looked doubtful. "Magic is all bosh," he remarked. "I'm not so certain of that, Dorry. There are queer things done, even in this twentieth century." "H'm! Then you believe Miss Chent's improbable story?" "I do--because I saw her insensible in the chair." His listener reflected. "Was Sir Oliver dead then?" "Yes! Sitting in his chair and lying half on the desk. He had been stabbed in the back." "Was the window, or one of the windows, open?" "I never noticed. And remember, Jadby did not say that the middle window was ajar, but only that the latch had been unfastened." "I remember that. What happened next?" Shepworth explained. "I found Sir Oliver dead, and Mona unconscious." "One moment, please." Prelice became quite like a cross-examining barrister himself. "Had she fainted?" "It was more than a faint, Dorry. She was in a kind of trance--quite like a person seized with catalepsy. I know; I am sure; because I shook her, and pinched her, and tried my best to rouse her." "You should have opened the window to admit the fresh air." "I never thought of doing so. I was too agitated." "Natural enough--natural enough," murmured the other absently, and cast his eyes round the restaurant idly while thinking of what next to say. His gaze fell on a slim, boyish-looking young man of medium height, who had just entered, and who was looking at the unconscious Shepworth with an undeniable scowl. "Who is that?" asked Prelice in a whisper. "He seems to know you." Shepworth looked up and across the crowded room, whereat the man--he was dark and clean-shaven and somewhat Italian in his looks--scowled more than ever. "Jadby," said the barrister under his breath. "Captain Jadby!" And he stared hard at his enemy. On his part, the captain returned the stare with scowling interest, and dropped into a seat near the door, no great distance away. "Looks like a half-caste," breathed Prelice, glancing furtively at the young man; "good-looking too, but with a bad temper I should say." If expression went for anything, Jadby certainly did not possess a superlatively even temper. His mouth was hard, his eyes were filled with sombre fire, and he seemed to be an alert, wiry, impetuous man, who could hold his own excellently in a fight. Dressed in a well-cut frock-coat, with dark-stripped trousers, a white waistcoat, a highly-polished silk hat, and patent-leather boots with spotless spats, he looked a great dandy, quite of the Bond Street-Piccadilly-Pall-Mall type. All the same, there was a suggestion of the sea in the way he rolled in his gait and held his slim brown hands. "A dangerous man to have for an enemy," thought Prelice, looking furtively at the smooth, feline face and sullen eyes. However, as Jadby busied himself in selecting a luncheon from the menu-card, Prelice, after taking in his picturesque personality, paid no further attention to him. Nor did Shepworth. He and the captain scowled grudging recognition of one another, and then ostentatiously looked in other directions. Lord Prelice lighted another cigarette, and resumed the conversation, which the episode of Jadby's entrance had interrupted. "You say that Miss Chent was holding the paper-cutter when you found her." "Yes! It was a dangerous Indian dagger, and the blade and the hilt were stained with blood. Mona's hands and dress were also stained. I really believed for the moment that she had killed Sir Oliver, and my only thought was how to save her." "A terrible situation," murmured Prelice, looking round again for Jadby, and then saw to his surprise that the man had disappeared. It was apparent that the captain, not liking to be in the same room with the barrister who had thrashed him, had gone out again. However, this was just as well, as Jadby could not listen. "So you removed the knife," said Prelice, eying his friend. "Yes! It seemed the most reasonable thing to do. I took it away at once, seeing that I could not rouse her for an explanation. It was my intention to hide the knife in my bedroom, and then return to take Mona away. I ran upstairs with the knife, and concealed it in my mattress, and then cautiously came back to the library. When I reached the door, however, I heard someone moving in the room, so thought it best to go back. Don't think me a coward, Dorry. You must see that I was in as dangerous a position as Mona herself, after I hid the knife." "I quite understand," replied Prelice swiftly. "I expect Captain Jadby was in the library." "He was. I am certain he was, for just as I reached the first landing I heard the library bell ring. Remember that he said he rang it as soon as he found Mona insensible and Sir Oliver dead." "What have you done with the knife?" "It is concealed in my desk in my study in my flat. I dare not produce it, lest I should get into trouble. Besides, its production would do Mona harm, as would my evidence of finding it in her hand. I must hold my tongue, Dorry, and lie as best I am able. But now you can see how needful it was for me to hold my tongue and have you beside me. You must be silent and stand by me." Prelice shook hands, and they rose to return to the Court. The action brought them round to face the door, and there--at the marble-topped table--they saw Jadby sipping coffee, as though he had never moved. "H'm!" said Prelice, rather puzzled. "The fellow comes and goes like a ghost. Just like a half-caste cat." And he stealthily glanced at the captain, who was ostentatiously reading a newspaper, and took no notice, even when the young men brushed past him to leave the restaurant. "I say, Ned," remarked Prelice thoughtfully when they were outside, "do you think that Miss Chent will be proved guilty?" "No. I suppress my evidence about the knife, remember; and then the destroyed will is in her favour. The sole chance for the prosecution to prove Mona's guilt is to find Steve Agstone. He declares that he was looking through the window, and saw Mona kill Sir Oliver." "To whom did he say this?" "To Mrs. Blexey, the housekeeper. She is a witness for the prosecution, and is nearly broken-hearted. She loves Mona, like everyone else." "H'm! Do you believe Agstone's story?" "No! The old man hated Mona for some reason or another, and besides, he was drunk when he confessed to Mrs. Blexey. I expect, when sober again, he found that he would be forced to prove his words, and knowing that he could not, made himself scarce. I hope that he won't be found, Dorry." "What does it matter if he is telling lies?" "I believe it is a lie, Dorry, and so do you; but will the judge and jury believe as we do, if Agstone appears and sticks to what he told Mrs. Blexey? No, hang him, I hope he'll not turn up." "Who do you think murdered Sir Oliver?" "I can't say. But remember that the middle window was unfastened. Anyone could have entered from the outside and stabbed him." "You forget," said Prelice quickly, "Miss Chent herself confesses to having unfastened the window." "Quite so; but recollect also that she did not know when she entered the library if her uncle was dead or alive. A quarter to ten that was." "But he surely would have made some sign if----" "No!" interrupted Shepworth decisively. "What of the thick white smoke at which everyone jeers? It probably rendered Sir Oliver insensible, as it did Mona." "Can you explain the smoke?" "I cannot, unless Sir Oliver was trying one of his infernal experiments in connection with the next world." "What book was he reading when found dead?" "There were several books open on the desk," explained Shepworth; "one was the first volume of Captain Cook's voyages; another Pierre Loti's 'Reflets sur la Sombre Route'; and the third 'Polly in Polynesia,' some silly book with a silly title by a silly feminine globe-trotter. I expect Sir Oliver had been refreshing his South Sea memory." "Were the books open at pages dealing with any particular subject?" demanded Prelice after a pause. Shepworth considered. "When examining Sir Oliver's body, I glanced down at the open pages, and saw something about Easter Island. I didn't take much notice, as you may guess; but an illustration of the Easter Island statues was displayed in Cook's voyages. But I'll tell you a queer thing, Dorry. Afterwards, when the murder was discovered, the three books were all closed." "That is natural." "I don't agree with you," rejoined Shepworth emphatically; "the desk should have been left in its original untidiness until the police came to take possession. But someone closed those books." "What do you make of it?" demanded Prelice abruptly. "Well, my theory is that someone--I can't say who--wished to prevent the police seeing that Sir Oliver had been reading about Easter Island. Why, I don't know; and perhaps I may be making a mountain out of a mole-hill." "Mole-hills are important on occasions," said Prelice dryly; "witness the death of William III. Easter Island! Easter Island!" he went on in a musing way. "H'm! h'm! h'm! now what the dickens do I know about Easter Island in connection with this case?" But he asked this question in vain. His memory refused to supply information. CHAPTER IV. EVIDENCE FOR THE PROSECUTION. The Court had reassembled rather late in the afternoon, so there was little chance of much evidence being taken. Prelice went back to his seat still wondering what thought hovered at the back of his brain about Easter Island. He had visited that lonely and little known spot during his travels in the company of a friend given to occult studies, who insisted that the dismal spot of land was one of the remaining portions of the great Continent of Lemuria, which was said to have stretched from New Zealand to Africa. They had seen the famous statues, and had fraternised with the somewhat dirty natives, who had welcomed them warmly, as might be expected, seeing how few visitors ever came to the desolate land. For one week Prelice and his friend, Dr. Horace by name, had dwelt with the savages, and during that time had seen much of their manners and customs, and even had witnessed religious rites in front of the gigantic statues. Prelice had an idea that there he had seen something, suggested anew by this murder case, but vainly attempted to recall what it was. His memory would not help him in the least. Meanwhile Shepworth, looking much more cheerful now that he had unbosomed himself to his chum, was again beside Cudworth, K.C., and young Arker. Belmain called his first witness as soon as the judge took his seat, in the person of the medical man who had examined the body of the murdered baronet. The medical evidence was very scanty. Dr. Quick stated that, to the best of his belief, the dead man had been stabbed somewhere about ten o'clock. The blow had been delivered straight and strong, and the blade of the weapon used had penetrated right to the heart. Death must have taken place instantaneously, and while Sir Oliver, suspecting no treachery, had been reading. Belmain in cross-examination deduced from this that the prisoner was guilty, since Sir Oliver would scarcely have turned to his reading again had a stranger been in the room. Also, had the person who committed the crime been one whom the dead man suspected of any such design, he would assuredly not have presented a defenceless back to such an assassin. No! It was evident that the prisoner, after quarrelling with her uncle, had waited until he again was buried in his books, and then had stabbed him with the paper-knife. The doctor stated that the wound had been caused by a broad, thin blade, which exactly described the jade-handled paper-knife which was missing. Several of the Grange servants were called to prove that Sir Oliver had been heard quarrelling violently with his niece. He was, as the evidence proved, a very hot-tempered and imperious man, and used language of the worst. In fact, the coachman, called to prove an outburst of temper when driving his master, said the late baronet could outswear any navvy. It was also clearly proved that Sir Oliver and his niece were on the worst possible terms when the crime was committed. Several times Sir Oliver declared that he would disinherit her, unless she surrendered her will and married Captain Jadby. But prisoner, as her maid said, had as imperious a temper as her uncle, and was well able to hold her own. "I don't mean," said the witness, "that Miss Chent was ever unkind to me, for she always behaved with consideration. I only mean that Sir Oliver could not brow-beat her, as he did the rest of them." "What do you mean by that?" asked Belmain. "Who did he brow-beat?" "Captain Jadby for one, sir. He was fond of Captain Jadby, and used to walk arm in arm with him in the garden, using him as a crutch for his lameness, as it were, sir. But he stormed a good deal, and Captain Jadby didn't fight like Miss Chent." "You imply then that Captain Jadby was frightened of Sir Oliver?" Witness (evasively): "I don't know, sir. I'm sure that my master was a terrible man, and only liked those who gave way to him." In cross-examination, Cudworth for the defence asked: "Do you believe that prisoner is capable of committing the alleged crime?" "No, sir, no," declared the lady's maid fervently. "Miss Chent is as good and kind a young lady as ever breathed. I don't think for one moment that she killed the master, and no more does anyone else." The other servants gave similar evidence, all pointing to Sir Oliver's ungovernable temper, and to Miss Chent's dexterous way of managing him by meeting like with like. With Sir Oliver she fought on every occasion, otherwise she would have been reduced to slavery; but with other people Miss Chent was always kind and even-tempered. Although the witnesses called were for the prosecution, not one of them would confess to a belief in the prisoner's guilt. Belmain was rather disconcerted by his unanimous approval of Miss Chent, and tried his best to bully the witnesses into blaming her. But he failed on every occasion, and even when Mrs. Blexey was hoisted into the box he could not induce her to run down the girl. This loyalty created a deep impression, and prisoner for the first time showed emotion. Mrs. Blexey was very stout, and very red-faced, and very tall, and extremely frightened. She looked like an elephant, and certainly possessed the timid nature of a rabbit. The contrast between her gigantic appearance and her timid speech amused those present so greatly that a continuous tittering was heard until the judge threatened to clear the Court. Belmain: "You are Emma Blexey, the late Sir Oliver's housekeeper?" Mrs. Blexey: "Yes, my lord!" (with a curtsey). Belmain (facetiously): "You need not give me a title before I have earned it, my good woman." (Laughter.) Mrs. Blexey: "Oh no, my lord--I mean my dear sir." (Laughter.) When the laughter over this second form of address had subsided, Mrs. Blexey stated that the prisoner was as attached to her uncle as he was to her. They had tiffs on occasions, as Sir Oliver's temper was none of the best, but Miss Chent was never in the wrong, and usually contrived to pacify the irascible baronet. He was as fractious as a child, said the housekeeper, and required similar management. But, on the whole, he and Miss Chent--Mrs. Blexey refused to call her young mistress "the prisoner"--got on extremely well. As to the phrase about disinheriting, that was a favourite threat of Sir Oliver's, which meant practically nothing. He used it on every occasion, sometimes in earnest, and often in fun. It meant nothing, she said again. Belmain: "He meant it when the prisoner refused to marry Captain Jadby, no doubt." Mrs. Blexey (wiping her red face): "The Lord knows what he meant, sir. He was a queer gentleman." Then Belmain proceeded to question the housekeeper regarding the admission which Steve Agstone was said to have made to her. It would have been preferable to obtain the evidence of the old sailor first hand, but since he could not be discovered the Counsel got what he could out of Mrs. Blexey. And what she knew he had to drag out of her by persistent questioning, for her sympathies were entirely with the prisoner. She stated that Agstone drank a great deal, and was always in trouble with Sir Oliver on that account. But that he had been the baronet's factotum for many years he would have been dismissed dozens of times. A drunken, grumpy, sullen savage, was the description given by the housekeeper. "But he was good-natured enough when sober," she confessed, "and quite devoted to Sir Oliver." Belmain: "A kind of loyal henchman, in fact. Well, and what statement did he make to you, and when did he make it?" Mrs. Blexey: "On the morning after the murder, Agstone--or Steve as everyone called him--was drinking rum to drown his grief at the death of Sir Oliver. He sat for a long time in my room weeping, and said that he knew Miss Mona would do for her uncle. Those were his very words, and I told him that he was speaking rubbish." Belmain: "What happened then?" Mrs. Blexey: "He fired up, and declared that while waiting up on the previous night for Captain Jadby, he had gone down the avenue to see if he was coming. Not finding him, and seeing the light still in the library, he wondered if Captain Jadby had arrived and had gone in to say good-night to Sir Oliver. He therefore went to one of the windows, and saw Miss Chent stooping over the fire to burn something. Sir Oliver was leaning forward on the desk with his head on his outstretched arms. Miss Chent also had a knife in her hands. Steve said that he thought there had been a row, and that Sir Oliver was weeping, as he sometimes did, being old and feeble from much hardship. He said that, had he guessed that Miss Chent had just murdered his master, he would have given the alarm. As it was, afraid lest Sir Oliver should be angry at his spying, he stole back into the house by the front door, and went to his own room at the back of the house. There he waited for Captain Jadby, and rushed into the library when he heard the bell." Belmain: "I understood that Agstone told you that he had actually seen the prisoner kill Sir Oliver." Prelice, in the body of the Court, thought so too, as he remembered what Ned had said during the luncheon. But Mrs. Blexey emphatically denied such a story. "I mentioned the matter to Mr. Shepworth but I am sure that he said nothing. But Steve might have talked in his drunken way to others, and might have told a different story. I know that there is a prevailing impression that he saw the murder, but he did not say so to me." So spoke Mrs. Blexey, and Belmain looked worried. "You are telling the truth?" he demanded, in vexed tones. "I am here to tell the truth," retorted Mrs. Blexey, "and I am, so there." After this somewhat incoherent speech she was cross-examined by Cudworth, and expressed her belief that Agstone had scarcely measured his words. Being devoted to Sir Oliver himself, he had always been very jealous of the favour shown to Miss Chent, and fairly hated her. Undoubtedly his wild maunderings were intended to hurt Miss Chent, and to get her into trouble. But Agstone had disappeared before the inquest, where he would have had to give evidence on oath. Mrs. Blexey firmly believed that had he been put on his oath he could not have substantiated what he had said to her. "I never could bear that Steve," she cried; "he was a sneaking dog, saving your presence, and had no love for anyone except Sir Oliver." "Do you know where he is now?" asked Belmain, returning to the attack. "No, I don't, sir, and I don't want to." "I quite believe that," rejoined Counsel dryly, "seeing that you are prejudiced in prisoner's favour." As Mrs. Blexey had surmised that Steve might have told a story of actually seeing prisoner kill her uncle to the other servants, Belmain recalled several witnesses. But not one of them could state that the current report was true. Steve had certainly hinted to several that he could bring home the crime to Miss Chent; but he had supplied no details, and as his hints were given when he was drunk, no one paid much attention to them. On the afternoon of the day following the night of the murder Steve had gone out for his usual stroll in the direction of Sandgate, and had not returned. The evidence of a detective proved that he had taken the train to London, and had been traced as far as Charing-Cross Station. There he had disappeared, and in spite of all search, his whereabouts could not be discovered. By this time it was growing late, and judge, jury, lawyers, and listeners all exhibited symptoms of weariness. Therefore the Court rose, with the intention of sitting at eleven o'clock on the following morning. It was the general opinion that, unless Steve Agstone could be placed in the witness-box, the prisoner would not be convicted. Also Miss Chent's calm demeanour, and the loyalty of the Grange servants, which had placed her character in so attractive a light, went far to enlist public sympathy in her favour. Those who left the Court had more belief in her innocence than when they had entered. Many insisted that she could not possibly be guilty; but others pointing to the fact--which had been forthcoming at the inquest--that she had burned a new will disinheriting her, declared that, without doubt, she had murdered her uncle so as not to lose the money. All the same, the majority favoured the prisoner, and many well-wishers hoped for her acquittal. Shepworth was pleased and hopeful. "The tide is quite in Mona's favour, Dorry," he said to Prelice when the Court rose, "and unless Steve Agstone turns up, she must be set free for want of evidence." "There is the question of the burnt will, you know, Ned." "We can prove that it was the will made in Mona's favour which was burnt," said Shepworth decisively. "Sir Oliver made no new will, as he had not left the house for quite a month, and could not have altered his will before then. His lawyer never came down to the Grange to draw up a will, and if Sir Oliver had drawn up a new one himself, he would have asked some of the servants to be his witnesses. We know that no one was asked to witness any document." "Captain Jadby and Steve Agstone might have witnessed." "No. There is a chance certainly that Agstone might have done so, but one signature would have been of no use. And had Jadby witnessed a new will, he would not have benefited under it. Besides, since he had the will made in the South Seas, and Sir Oliver assuredly wished him to have the money, along with Mona, all that had to be done was to destroy the will made in Mona's favour, and then Jadby, having the cash, could leave her penniless unless she married him. Which is just what has happened," ended Shepworth. "Of course," said Prelice thoughtfully, "Miss Chent might have been trying, when seen by Steve, to rescue the will from the fire into which it had been thrown by Sir Oliver." Shepworth wheeled round. "Do you believe that she is guilty?" "Oh, no. But we must look on all sides. And Agstone----" "Is a liar," interrupted the barrister quickly. "I don't believe that he saw Mona bending over the fire. She was insensible, by her own showing, from the moment she entered the room until Jadby woke her. And remember that I found her insensible." "It would help her if you said so." "I don't agree with you. Were I examined about my presence in the library, I might let slip that the knife----" "Yes, yes," said Prelice hastily. "I see. It will be better for you to hold your tongue. I hope that Agstone will not appear." "If he does not, Mona is safe," rejoined Ned, with a sigh of relief. "Oh, poor Mona. Think of her in prison, Dorry." "She will soon be out of it," answered Prelice soothingly. "I am quite sure that she will be acquitted. Where are you going now?" "Home to my flat. I am quite worn out. Come and look me up this evening about ten or eleven, when I have had a sleep. I live at Alexander Mansions, Kensington Gore. Number Forty." "Alexander Mansions," repeated Prelice, surprised; "why, here is the long arm of coincidence, Ned. Mrs. Dolly Rover has asked me to a masked ball, which she is giving in her flat--a most unsuitable place for a _bal masque_ I think." "Oh, no," said Shepworth, with a flush of colour, though why he should show this emotion Prelice could not say; "the flat occupied by Mrs. Rover is above mine. She has, in fact, two flats furnished on a most palatial scale. Her husband is a rich little beast, you know." "Why a little beast?" asked Prelice, rather perplexed. Shepworth's colour grew deeper. "He is not worthy of his wife. She was Miss Newton, you know, very clever and very beautiful. Dolly--fancy a man being called Dolly----" "Short for Adolphus. It is not an uncommon abbreviation." "It is contemptible for a man--and he's a rat. Dolly Rover," added Shepworth contemptuously, "fooh! the effeminate monkey. Well, good-bye. I'll see you between ten and eleven." When Ned jumped into a cab, Prelice walked home wondering why he should run down the dapper little stockbroker whom Miss Newton had married. Then he remembered that Shepworth had admired Miss Newton before she changed her name to Rover. CHAPTER V. MRS. ROVER'S MASKED BALL. "It is a long lane that has no turning!" Lord Prelice began to believe that there might be some truth in the proverb, for the lengthy lane of idleness, down which he had sauntered for many years, seemed to be rounding the corner to open out into the road of industry. The chance observation of Lady Sophia, which had sent him to the New Bailey, had become a sign-post, as it were, showing him which way he was to go. In other words, he was now involved in Shepworth's troubles, out of sheer friendship. Ned had confessed that he required assistance, and had turned to his old school-chum for the same. Prelice was naturally willing to do what he could towards aiding Ned in extricating Miss Chent from her perilous position, and so found work for his idle brain to do. Of course, as he tried to believe, he could resume his former life when the service was duly rendered. The wedding-bells which rang for Mr. and Mrs. Shepworth would dismiss their best man once more to his sauntering. But this, as Prelice began to think, was easier said than done, mainly owing to the looks of Miss Chent. He had not spoken to the girl, and knew her character solely through the evidence of the Grange servants, who had been placed in the witness-box. Also Ned, as he remembered, had said very little about his affianced wife, and Prelice knew none whom he could question as to the prisoner's qualities. Yet, for all his scanty knowledge, he felt strangely drawn towards the unhappy woman, and confessed inwardly that he would feel a pang on seeing her become Mrs. Shepworth. Without doubt Prelice was in love, although not head over ears, and he swore at himself for being so disloyal to his friend. Mona--the name slipped quite naturally into his mind--Mona would assuredly be acquitted, unless the missing Agstone appeared, which was extremely unlikely, and then she would as assuredly marry Ned, who had so manfully stood by her in this grave trouble. Therefore it behooved Prelice, as an honourable gentleman--and he was all that--to put her out of his mind, if he wished to continue meeting Shepworth's gaze squarely. And, after all, a peer worth twenty thousand a year could pick and choose almost any woman for his wife; it was hard on Ned that such a peer should play the part of David in the parable, and select the less fortunate commoner's one ewe-lamb. The struggle between more than a liking for Mona, and a feeling of genuine friendship for Ned, made Prelice waver in determining his future behaviour. His first inclination, when aware of his feeling, was to cross the Channel for a prolonged stay abroad, and leave Shepworth to his own devices. Then it occurred to him that this course would be cowardly, and he resolved to remain and help. Nothing that the world could cavil at could ever take place, since Prelice, with his high sense of honour, never dreamed of paying marked attentions to Miss Chent. All the same, if he came often into Mona's company--and that seemed inevitable should he remain--his life's happiness would certainly be at stake. He would have his feelings to smother, and therefore--as he plainly saw--would be most unhappy. Prelice at this early stage of infatuation termed his feeling towards the girl "affection," but he knew very well that, given time and opportunity, affection of this sudden kind might easily increase to love. In that case, seeing how Miss Chent was engaged to be married, he would be vainly crying for the honeymoon. His lordship, then, felt less happy in the evening than he had done in the morning. Then he had been heart-whole; now the sight of a beautiful woman in peril had aroused the deepest and most chivalrous feelings of which his nature was capable. Placed thus between the devil and the deep sea, Prelice compromised dangerously with his conscience. He resolved to crush down his newly born desire for Mona, and to help Ned as best he could. In this way did the young man mix fire and snow, in the vain hope that such hostile elements would blend. Common-sense should have told him otherwise. Having so decided--although not over-pleased with his decision, and with good reason--Prelice dressed for dinner. He remembered that he had promised to partake of this agreeable meal at his aunt's. A solitary chop at his club would have been preferable, as he was disinclined for company. But, aware from experience that Lady Sophia would strongly object to an excusing telegram, Prelice smothered his unwillingness, and reached the abode of his relative shortly before eight o'clock. Lady Sophia lived magnificently in Brummel Square. The fourth daughter of a pauper Duke, she had married a wealthy city man--that is, she had entered into a social partnership, as there was little genuine marital feeling about the union. Simon Haken was a dried-up, active atom of humanity with a bald head, a pair of piercing dark eyes, and an exasperating chuckle, which he used when getting the better of anyone. As he usually scored over less clever financiers, he chuckled very often, and this sardonic merriment imparted a somewhat cynical expression to his withered face. His wife, large, and expansive, and fresh-coloured, looked like an elephant beside a grasshopper, when the two went into Society, and they were generally known as the Mountain and the Mouse. But Haken cared as little for the jest as did Lady Sophia. As husband and wife in its strictest sense they were failures, being two and not one; as partners they were admirably matched. Having no children, and plenty of money and excellent health, and no strong emotions, the two enjoyed life immensely. Possessed of a complacent husband, of a good position, ample cash, and absolute freedom, Lady Sophia even forgot to sigh for the delights of the Stone Age when she reflected upon the position in life to which it had pleased Providence to call her. On this occasion Mr. Haken, as usual, had wired detention in the city on business, so Lady Sophia received her nephew in a solitary drawing-room, as handsomely furnished as she was dressed. "You are just in time for dinner," said she with emphasis, implying thereby that Prelice was usually late. "I always am in time," answered the guest, smiling but preoccupied. "Dinner is a sacred feast which cannot be trifled with. I would as soon insult the King as the Cook." Then he sat and stared at the points of his patent-leather boots with the air of a misanthrope. "You are out of spirits," declared Lady Sophia, rapping his knuckles with her lorgnette. "I prescribe a round of pleasure. To-night you shall escort me to two dances and four musical parties." "But I haven't done anything to deserve such punishment." "How absurdly you talk. These festivals----" "I agree with the man who said that life would be endurable were it not for its festivals." "Nonsense. He could not have been in Society." "He just was, and so made a profoundly true observation. I renounce Society and all its play. Besides," added Prelice inconsequently, "I am going to a masked ball to-night at Mrs. Dolly Rover's." "That woman!" cried Lady Sophia, with disdain. Prelice looked up, surprised. "I thought you liked her?" "As Constance Newton, not as Mrs. Rover," she informed him swiftly. "They are one and the same," he urged. "Not at all. Marriage changes a woman into something entirely different. Constance was a charming girl; Mrs. Rover is a flirting, fast-living, heartless, spendthrift, Society doll." "Society Doll--y Rover," murmured Prelice, noting his aunt's usual waste of adjectives. "Will you come to this ball?" "What!" Lady Sophia almost screamed, "a masked ball, and at my age? Oh, how can you be so ridiculous, Prelice? And at Mrs. Rover's too; a woman who neglects her husband, and squanders his money, and whips him like a poodle, I believe." "He is something of a poodle, isn't he?" "That is no reason why he should be whipped," she snapped heatedly; "and if you knew how she had treated your friend Mr. Shepworth, you would not go near her disreputable ball." Prelice pricked up his ears, remembering the unnecessary blush of the barrister at midday. "How did she treat Shepworth?" he asked. "How? Can you ask?" "Of course, seeing that, as a newly returned traveller, I know nothing." "Well then, she was almost engaged to him, and he was very much in love with her. She threw him over in a cold-blooded way, because Dolly Rover came along with a better-filled purse. He's a horrid little cad," added Lady Sophia candidly, "and his father was a chemist, or a draper--I forget which. All the same, he is too good for a jilt, who played blind hooky--don't raise your eyebrows, Prelice; it's vulgar, but expressive, and I shall use it--who played blind hooky with poor Mr. Shepworth." "But are you sure, aunt? Ned is engaged to Miss Chent." "Out of pique--out of pique," she assured him. "Mona is a nice girl, poor darling, even though she did murder her uncle, not that I believe she did. But Constance is the one love of Mr. Shepworth's life, and fifty Monas won't make up for the loss. Mona, if ever she does become Mrs. Shepworth, which I very much doubt, will only be a make-shift." "Oh!" Prelice was almost too indignant to speak. That so peerless a girl should be talked of as a "make-shift" seemed positively wicked. "You must be mistaken. Ned would not behave so badly." "Ask him then." "I shall do this very night." "Then you will go to that woman's?" "Yes. I accepted, as I always liked Constance. Besides, I have to see Ned, who lives in these same mansions----" "I know he does," burst out Lady Sophia; "quite indecent I call it." "Oh, hang it, aunt, a man must live somewhere." "Not next door to a woman who has jilted him." "He doesn't live next door, but on the floor below." "It would be more creditable if he lived in Timbuctoo. I believe that he loves her still, and she's quite capable of loving him back in spite of the marriage service, which I don't believe she listened to. As for her husband----" Lady Sophia was about to give her opinion of Mr. Dolly Rover, when the butler threw open the door, and announced dinner. At once she took her nephew's arm, and changed the conversation. "Tell me about the case," she chattered as they passed to the dining-room. "Have they hanged that poor girl?" "Who? Miss Chent? No, and I don't believe they will." "Ah!" Lady Sophia pulled off her gloves. "I always said that she was innocent." "Of course, if Agstone turns up, she may be convicted." "Agstone--oh yes; the man who declares that he saw her kill Sir Oliver." Prelice corrected her, while taking his soup. "He only saw her bending over the fire with a knife in her hand." "Burning the will after killing her uncle. What a horrid girl!" "Aunt Sophia, will you tell me plainly if you believe Miss Chent to be innocent or guilty?" "How can I judge when I haven't heard the evidence? You talk as though I were on the jury. I like Mona, and I'm sure she didn't kill him; but if she did, he deserved it, as he was a nasty old bully." Prelice desisted in despair, and helped himself to fish. Lady Sophia seemed to change her mind every half minute, and never considered facts when she wanted to deliver an opinion. Besides, she preferred fiction, as it was less trouble to invent than to remember. All the same, her sympathies appeared to be with Mona, and Prelice felt pleased that it should be so. Should the girl be acquitted, her position would be extremely difficult, and she would require a staunch friend of her own sex. Why should not that friend be Lady Sophia, whose support could do much to efface the stain of a Criminal Court? But until the case was decided, Prelice did not dare to hint that such an idea had crossed his mind. As the servants were hovering round the table he could not talk confidentially to his aunt, so drifted into general conversation about mutual friends. He thus became posted up in the latest Mayfair gossip, and so was brought up to date in necessary knowledge. And Lady Sophia knew as much about London as Asmodeus did about Madrid, and like that delightful demon, she could unroof houses to some purpose. Luckily for the men and women about whom she talked, the presence of the butler and two footmen prevented entire candour. As the food was excellent and the conversation interesting, not to say necessary--for Prelice as a newly returned traveller required much posting-up in recent scandals--nephew and aunt lingered for a considerable time at table. When the meal was ended Prelice preferred to accompany Lady Sophia to the drawing-room, instead of remaining solitary over Haken's famous port. They had half-an-hour left for coffee, and then Lady Sophia would have to start out on her round of festivals. "You ought to come with me, Prelice," she said later, as he helped her on with her cloak; "everyone thinks that you are dead." "Well, aunt, you would not have much pleasure in taking a corpse about with you. Besides, I promised to look up Ned this evening." "No doubt, and he'll be at that woman's ball. Most indecent, seeing that poor Mona is in gaol." "Ned isn't such a blighter," cried Prelice crossly. "I never called him a blighter, whatever that may mean," retorted Lady Sophia with great dignity. "Mr. Shepworth is an estimable young man, whom you would do well to imitate." "I intend to. He and I are going to save Miss Chent." "How horrid; you'll be a kind of detective." Prelice nodded. "It's something to do." "As if you required anything to do with your rank and money." "But I say, aunt, you advised me this morning----" "Oh, I never remember anything I say in the morning," said Lady Sophia airily. "You are so stupid, Prelice, you always take one at the foot of the letter. You won't come with me. Oh, very well. Help me into the brougham, you horrid boy. I believe you'll fall in love with Mona, and give me a criminal for a niece." This was Lady Sophia's parting shot, and when her motor-brougham spun towards the first turning out of the square, Prelice laughed long and loudly. His aunt was nearer the truth than she had been the whole evening, although she was far from suspecting it. It never entered her elderly head that a man of the world, such as her nephew certainly was, would fall in love on the spur of the moment. "And I should not have suspected myself of such lunacy either," thought his lordship as he turned in the direction of Half-Moon Street to procure domino and mask for the ball. The street before Alexander Mansions was filled with carriages and motors and four-wheelers and hansoms, together with a crowd of onlookers, who passed remarks, complimentary and otherwise, on the many guests of Mrs. Rover. The mansions themselves were palatial and splendid, with a royal flight of broad marble steps to the main entrance. Prelice, shuffling on his domino and assuming his mask, climbed these, to find himself with other revellers in a vast hall, with two staircases ascending on either side at the farther end, and between them two lifts, the cages of which soared and sank with parties of pleasure-seekers. Prelice delivered his rainbow-hued ticket of invitation to a gorgeously uniformed commissionaire, and took his time in climbing the long stairs. Many other people did the same, instead of waiting for the lifts, but, as all were masked and cloaked, the young man could recognise no one. As Shepworth had stated, Mr. and Mrs. Dolly Rover occupied the whole of the third floor--that is, they tenanted two flats which faced each other, and the outer doors of these, opening on to a spacious landing, had been removed from their hinges. Thus the guests could pass easily from one flat to the other, and the landing between was a nest of greenery and roses, like the hanging gardens of Babylon. The flats themselves had wide corridors, spacious rooms, and lofty ceilings, so they were capable of receiving a large number of guests. On this occasion they were crowded, and it would seem as though Mrs. Rover had invited everyone on her visiting-list. And there may have been others, not set down on that list, since the masks and dominos prevented recognition. Prelice looked about for his hostess, but found himself received by a tiny, pale-faced man with large, plaintive blue eyes set in a white expanse of absolutely colourless skin. He wore a domino over his smart evening-dress, but no mask, and was so clipped and curled, and brushed and washed, that Prelice easily guessed him to be the poodle mentioned by Lady Sophia. Pushing out a small tightly gloved hand, he murmured a nervous greeting to each new arrival; but after this ceremony was ended no one seemed to take any notice of him. As all who came were masked, Prelice wondered how Mr. Rover could possibly know whom he was greeting. Of course, there was the rainbow-hued ticket given to the commissionaire below, which would guarantee the respectability of the presenter. But tickets of this sort could be stolen and forged, and as no further supervision was exercised to ensure the identity of the guests, Prelice considered that such a procedure was somewhat rash. His thoughts were confirmed by a dried-up little man who appeared without a mask, and who was rebuked by Mr. Rover for his originality. "You shouldn't, you know," expostulated the host in a penny whistle kind of voice; "no one is to know anyone until the clock strikes twelve, when we all unmask for supper. Why, even my wife insisted that I should receive in her place. She would be spotted, you know, if she stopped here to shake hands, and she doesn't want to be found out until midnight. The whole fun of a masquerade lies in secrecy, so obey the rules, Haken, and put on your mask." Prelice started when he heard the name, and twisted his neck to see if the new-comer really was his uncle-by-marriage. It was Simon Haken sure enough, for no one could mistake his looks let alone his celebrated chuckle. The young man laughed, and wondered what Haken--by no means a Society butterfly--was doing at the ball of a lady whom his wife openly disliked. And then he remembered that lying telegram from the city. Mr. Haken had his little secrets it would seem, and was more human, under the rose, than when posing as a money-making machine. His dutiful nephew determined, before the evening was out, to let his sly uncle know that his misdoings were discovered. Meanwhile the little millionaire was chuckling and masking. "It is a risk, you know, Rover," he observed dryly. "You don't know who is here. Half the swell mobsmen of London may have come after diamonds." "Oh, dear me, how can you talk so, Haken?" said the host fretfully; "the man below examines the tickets." "As if anyone could not forge or steal one," retorted Haken, voicing his nephew's thoughts. "Well, in to-morrow's papers I shall look for a criminal scandal." And with his odious chuckle Haken brushed past Prelice towards the ballroom of the left-hand flat. His lordship, tired of watching new arrivals, thought that he also would go and view the revellers. But he had hardly moved half-a-dozen paces when he unexpectedly began to think of Easter Island. A sweet, heavy perfume, as of tuberoses, was wafted in his nostrils. But why should such a familiar fragrance recall that desolate land, environed by leagues of ocean? CHAPTER VI. A STARTLING DISCOVERY. Odour is one of the strongest aids which memory can have, and a chance whiff of a particular scent will recall to the most lethargic brain, circumstances both trivial and important of long-forgotten years. But the well-known fragrance of the tuberose usually brings funerals to mind, since that flower is so extensively woven into burial wreaths and mortuary crosses. It was strange indeed that it should conjure into an idle-thinking mind the vision of a heathen festival. There were many people crowding the corridor, so that it was impossible for the young man to tell who wore the flowers which gave forth the magical scent--for magical it was in its effect. They might adorn a man's button-hole or a woman's bodice. He could not tell, since the evening-dress of both sexes was veiled by voluminous dominos. But as he leaned against the wall, the vision became clearer and more insistent. His body was in London--in Alexander Mansions, at a masked ball, as he well knew--but the scent of the tuberose had drawn his spirit across leagues of trackless sea to the uttermost parts of the earth. The present vanished, and he beheld the past. Before him, as the interior vision opened, he saw colossal images of a vanished and forgotten race, rudely hewn into the semblance of human beings, each bearing a cylinder--according to Captain Cook's description--on its gigantic head. These reared themselves from vast platforms of Cyclopean architecture, overgrown with tropical vegetation, and strewn with bleaching bones. And in the soft radiance of the southern moon Prelice beheld a kneeling crowd of bronze-hued worshippers, tattooed and painted, adoring the weird stone gods. An old priest, his face and body streaked with white pigment, murmured strange names over a rude stone altar, whereon blazed a clear fire. He invoked terrible deities incarnate in the giant idols--Kanaro! Gotomoara! Marapate! Areekee!--and cast upon the flames the yellow leaves of a sacred herb. A thick white cloud of smoke spread like a milky mist before the statues, veiling their grotesque looks and vast outlines, and the sickly scent of the tuberose grew powerful. Then did the priest become rigid as the dead, and his spirit blended with the spirits of those grim gods he worshipped. Finally, the fragrance which loaded the heavy air--whether of Easter Island or London Prelice could not tell--passed away, and with that odour passed the vision. It could only have lasted a minute or so, but was so terribly vivid that Prelice could scarcely believe that his surroundings were real when the material asserted its sway. He had closed his eyes to behold the vision, which the scent had invoked, and opened them again, with a bewildered expression, to see the pushing, laughing, chattering throng of guests. Although a commonplace young man, and contemptuous, as a rule, of the unseen, he felt that the recollection had not been brought back for nothing. The dead man at Lanwin Grange had been reading about Easter Island when foully stabbed, and the accused girl had described to her lover the white smoke and sickly perfume, which also had to do with that isolated land. And Mona also--Prelice remembered faithfully what Shepworth had told him--had been in a state of catalepsy, like the priest of the vision. And, after all, although he chose to call what he had seen mentally a vision, it was simply a vivid recollection of what he and Dr. Horace had beheld a year or two before. But what had a fetish worship in Easter Island to do with a murder in Kent? That was a question which Prelice could not answer. There was no time to invent possible explanations or to reason out answers. Being in Rome, the momentary dreamer had to do as the Romans did; and as Prelice was at a ball, he was compelled, out of courtesy to his hostess and host, to enjoy himself. He did not have far to go for an adventure, as a lady in a blue domino, and with a fringed mask to disguise her voice, stole to his side, and engaged him in airy conversation. Who she was the young man did not know, and probably she was equally ignorant of his identity. But on this especial night, Mrs. Rover's flat was Liberty Hall with a vengeance, for men and women, trusting in masks and dominos for concealment, flirted and danced and drank and laughed with one another in a most outrageous manner. There was no need of introductions, or of reticence, or of timidity; in that Eden's Bower of flowers and ferns faces were hidden, but souls were revealed. The blue domino proved to be a most charming companion, full of fun and flirtation, and a delightful dancer. Prelice found her extremely entertaining, and she appeared to reciprocate the feeling. After a particularly perfect waltz, and an inspiriting glass of champagne, his lordship did his best to lure the unknown into a corner where she might unmask. But the lady shook her head laughingly, and ran off to the ballroom with another man, whose stature of a life-guardsman had caught her roving eyes. Prelice solaced himself with another glass of wine, and looked about him for another female of man. It was then that a chuckle at his elbow made him turn. "Now then, now then," said the gentleman who had chuckled, "let me come to refresh myself." He spoke irritably, and pushed past Prelice in a hurry. "Waiter! Waiter, a glass of champagne." "I thought you were a teetotaler, uncle!" whispered Prelice. Mr. Haken, betrayed by his chuckle, and wheeled suddenly, and spilt the wine he was about to sip. To his nephew's surprise he was trembling, and his stammering voice betrayed his agitation. "Who--who are you?" Prelice whispered his name. "You needn't be alarmed," he added; "I won't tell Aunt Sophia that you are accepting her enemy's hospitality." Haken drank off his wine in one deep gulp, and set down the glass, with his hands still shaking. "I would rather you did not tell her," he said in a low tone. "Sophia dislikes Mrs. Rover, and would be annoyed if she knew that I was here. I have come on business." "What! Business at a ball? Invent a more credible story, uncle." "It is true," insisted Haken, becoming more composed. "I have to see a political man from the Continent about a loan. He doesn't want it to be known that I am meeting him, so we thought that this would be the best place to ensure secrecy. Not a word of this, Prelice." "Of course not," replied the young man, puzzled to know why Haken should take the trouble to explain; "but don't mention my name. I also wish to be unknown." "What are you doing here?" asked Haken abruptly. "I came to the ball, and also I have to see Ned Shepworth, who----" "Shepworth," gasped Haken, backing nervously. "Oh yes! friend of our charming hostess; friend of mine also. Is he here?" "No. He would not come to a ball when his promised wife is in prison." "Of course not; very creditable of him, to be sure," muttered Haken, and took another glass of wine with a whispered apology. "I am teetotal as a rule, you know; but Society always tries my nerves, and I need sustenance. I wish the man I have to meet here had chosen my office in the city. But it wouldn't have done--it wouldn't have done. There would be trouble were it known that he was in London. What is the time, Prelice?" "Don't mention my name or I'll mention yours," said Prelice impatiently, and drew out his watch. "It is eleven o'clock." Haken nodded. "I must meet my man. Eleven-fifteen is the time. As to mentioning my name, what does that matter? I came here without my mask. Never thought of putting it on." Prelice nodded in his turn. "I saw you when Rover received you." "Then hold your tongue--hold your tongue. Not a word to Sophia, mind." "Not a word," Prelice promised gravely; and Mr. Haken, drawing a long breath--it would seem to be of relief--at having extracted the promise, vanished into the many-hued crowd with his usual chuckle. While the millionaire gave vent to that chuckle there did not seem to be much chance of his concealing his identity. Lord Prelice looked after him somewhat puzzled. He could quite understand why Haken did not want his wife to know of his presence in Alexander Mansions; but it was difficult to account for the old man's agitation and quite unnecessary explanations. As a rule, Haken was extremely reticent, and on such an important matter as a secret meeting with a Continental diplomatist, would be much more so. Yet he had gone out of his way to set himself right with his nephew, and by telling his private business, when a gay excuse of needing a night off, would have been sufficient to account for his presence. However, Prelice simply shrugged his shoulders, and did not deem the incident worth remembering. Why should not Simon Haken enjoy himself in this way if he liked, and turn Mrs. Rover's ballroom into an office, wherein to meet his foreign clients? All the same--and Prelice gave this a passing thought--it was strange that the chance meeting with one who knew him should so upset him. And it was still stranger that, if Mr. Haken wished to preserve his incognito, he should have arrived unmasked. Having lost both his uncle and his charming blue domino, Prelice took a tour through the rooms in search of further adventures. He could only afford a few minutes, since he had to call upon Shepworth at eleven o'clock, and it was already that hour, as he had told Haken. Still, a few minutes more or less would not matter, and Prelice wished to see if he could espy Mrs. Dolly Rover, in order to renew his acquaintance with her and to compliment her on the success of her ball. And it undoubtedly was a success, for everyone seemed highly amused, and the laughter and small talk went on incessantly. Many people were dancing to the music of a gaily uniformed Hungarian Band, and many more were ensconced in flirtation corners, making the best of the hour which would elapse before everyone unmasked for supper. Prelice therefore wandered leisurely throughout the two flats, exchanging a few chaffing words with the different women who addressed him, and looking for the tall form of his hostess. Alas! there were many tall women, who looked as imperial and graceful as Mrs. Rover, and Prelice felt like Ali Baba's robber when he examined Morgiana's chalk-marks on the various doors. He therefore began, by way of some diversion, to admire the costumes of the women, which showed themselves more or less plainly from under the flowing dominos of silk. In fact, the heat of the night and of the rooms was so great that many ladies loosened the strings and buttons of their dominos, and permitted their frocks to be plainly seen. They would have removed their masks also in some cases, so stifling was the perfumed air; but the rule of the ball stopped them from doing so. Still, as many revealed the gowns they were wearing, it was probable that some would pay for their flirtatious sins when the supper hour and recognition came. The young man had an eye for colour, but knew very little about millinery, so if anyone later had asked him to describe the various dresses, he would have been puzzled. But one woman wore a dress which attracted him from its oddity. It was a flowing gown of white silk, and from hem to waist the skirt was adorned with triple lines, at intervals, of narrow red velvet. The spaces between the triple lines were equal, and the lines of red velvet themselves ran apparently entirely round the skirt. The effect was bizarre, and rather fascinating; but what made Prelice note the dress so exactly was the wonderful ubiquity of the lady who wore it. He went into the ballroom of the right-hand flat, and there she was dancing; he strolled into the left-hand ballroom, and found her flirting in a corner with another partner. Then he stumbled across her in the corridor, and later discovered her at the buffet sipping champagne. Her domino was green, as was her mask, and she seemed to be in several places at once. Prelice was amused at her activity, and at the way in which she seemed to permeate the entire place. She was certainly getting all the enjoyment she could out of the ball. He spoke to her once, but she made no reply, and disappeared before he could address her again. Rather annoyed that she would not respond, Prelice yawned, and discovering that it was half-past-eleven, decided to descend and look up Shepworth. The stairs were crowded, not only with people leaving and arriving, but with flirting couples, who were cooling themselves in the purer air, which ascended from the main entrance of the mansions. These expostulated loudly, and sometimes silently--if irritated gestures went for anything--with those who pushed past them to go up or down. Prelice came in for his share of blame, as he cautiously steered his way to the second floor. Here there were but few people, as the guests kept to the third-floor stairs and to those leading to the fourth. A look at the left-hand door as he came down showed Prelice that it was Number Forty, so he pressed the button of the electric bell, and waited for the door to be opened. As he did so, and while he was leaning against the wall, still wearing his mask and domino, the ubiquitous lady in the green domino with the oddly trimmed frock descended the stairs alone. She cast a swift look at him as he passed, and it was not until she vanished below that Prelice became aware that the scent of the tuberose was again in his nostrils. He had half a mind to run after her, and--assuming the privilege of a masked ball--ask her if she was wearing such a flower. But, in his idle way, he did not think it was worth while, and remained where he was. No one came to answer the bell, so Prelice judged that Shepworth's servants were out, perhaps fraternising with Mrs. Rover's domestics at the ball overhead. He rang again, however, believing that Shepworth must be within and awake by this time. As again the door did not open, Prelice raised his hand to the knocker. To his surprise, the door yielded a trifle, and then he discovered that it was slightly ajar, but so little so that he had believed it to be closed. For the moment there was no one on the landing, so he stepped into Shepworth's flat, without closing the door after him. "I say, Ned. Ned, are you in?" cried the young man, pausing in the corridor, which was similar to that overhead in Mrs. Rover's flat. "I say, Ned! It is me. It is Prelice." And he slipped off his mask. There was still no reply, and then Prelice smelt stronger than ever that strange odour, which had evoked the Easter Island vision. His thoughts again flew back to the heathen festival, and he walked along the corridor wondering why the scent should follow him here. On the left-hand side he peeped into a drawing-room, but it was empty. The door opposite was surely that of the dining-room. It was closed, but Prelice opened it and walked in to look for his friend. Shepworth was in the room sure enough, but Prelice uttered an irrepressible cry when his amazed eyes fell on the barrister. In a deep saddle-back chair, placed between the fireplace and the near window, sat Shepworth, bolt upright, with his hands resting upon his knees, in the hieratic attitude of an Egyptian statue. His intensely calm face was pearly-white, his brown eyes were fixed in a glassy, unnatural stare, and he appeared as rigid and stiff and unbending as though hewn out of granite. There was no disorder about his clothing, the evening-dress he wore was as accurate and neat as though he had got ready to go to the ball overhead. Prelice stared at him, tongue-tied and motionless with astonishment. Then his eyes mechanically wandered round the room. They fell immediately upon another figure seated on the far side of the dining-table, with outstretched arms sprawling nervelessly across the cloth. On them rested a huge head covered with shaggy red hair. Drawn, as by a loadstone, Prelice stole forward with staring eyes, and saw, with a sudden shudder, that the man at the table was stone-dead. He had been stabbed ruthlessly in the back, under the left shoulder-blade. Everything in the room was in absolute order. Only one man, dead, sat at the table, sprawling half across it, and the other man, insensible, was stiffly seated in the armchair. And the whole apartment was permeated with the scent which suggested Easter Island; suggested also that other murder at Lanwin Grange. CHAPTER VII. SHEPWORTH EXPLAINS. An unsteady footstep roused Lord Prelice from his momentary stupor, and he wheeled automatically to see a little man, masked, and wearing a black silk domino, swaying to and fro at the open dining-room door. But the sight of the two apparently dead men, and the presence of their possible murderer, seemed to sober the new-comer in a single moment. Before Prelice could spring forward, he gasped and fled. Almost immediately his voice, tense with terror, was heard shouting the news of his discovery to the revellers on the stairs. Prelice cursed under his moustache, and ran into the passage to close the outer door, which he now remembered he had foolishly left ajar. Possibly the little man, being intoxicated, had stumbled up the stairs on his way to the ball, and finding the door open, had so far mistaken his way as to stagger in. Prelice wondered if the stranger was Haken or Rover, both small of stature; but he recollected that he had never seen either drunk. Besides, drunk or sober, Rover or Haken would never mistake Shepworth's flat for the one overhead. At the outer door Prelice swiftly changed his mind. He saw that the murder of the red-headed man was similar in all respects to that of Sir Oliver Lanwin. Then Miss Chent had been given time to recover, and so had been accused of the crime, although she protested that she had been in a state of catalepsy, induced by the scented smoke. Shepworth likewise was insensible, and, judging from the odour in the dining-room, from the same cause. It would be better, decided the young man rapidly, that Shepworth should be seen by a score of witnesses thus insensible, for then it could be proved that so helpless a man could not have struck the blow. Thus, when a crowd of startled people came pouring down the staircase, and into the flat on the second floor, Prelice threw open the door widely, and admitted them with a hurried explanation. "There has been a terrible crime committed," he declared, leading the way to the dining-room. "I came here a few minutes ago to find Mr. Shepworth, the owner of the flat, insensible as you see, and this other man stone-dead. He has been stabbed." "Stabbed!" Several voices echoed the word, and one woman gave a faint scream. The passage was crowded to the very door of the dining-room, and as many as could were looking over one another's shoulders to view the sinister scene. And like a ball from one person to another was tossed in various tones the ominous word "Murder!" "Who stabbed the man?" asked a medium-sized masker in a blue domino, who had placed himself directly in front of the mob, blocking the doorway. He addressed Prelice, and his manner was offensively suspicious. "I do not know," disclaimed that young gentleman quietly, for it seemed absurd indeed that he should be suspected. "I came here to see Mr. Shepworth only ten minutes ago." "How did you enter?" The tone of the question was still offensive. "The outer door was slightly ajar," explained the other suavely. "I pushed it open, as I had an appointment with my friend. I decline to defend myself further, as you seem to suspect me." "Send for the police! Send for the police!" said many voices; and a rough male voice was heard recommending that Prelice--only the voice called him the murderer--should not be allowed to escape. "What nonsense," cried the young man indignantly, raising his voice on hearing so direct an accusation. "I have nothing to do with the matter. I am Lord Prelice, if anyone here knows me." The utterance of a title had a magical effect, and several people began to unmask; amongst these was the aggressive masker who had questioned Prelice. "You can explain to the police," said this man sharply. "Certainly, Captain Jadby." "You know me?" "I saw you in Court to-day, and also in Geddy's Restaurant, Burns Street." Jadby nodded, but did not relax his suspicious manner. "It is strange that you should be here," he said, marching into the room. "Not at all," rejoined Prelice hotly. "I had an appointment to see Mr. Shepworth, and came only a few minutes ago." Jadby took no notice of this speech, but lifted the shaggy red head of the dead man. Apparently he knew who he was, for after a single glance he dropped the heavy head again, and wheeled round with an amazed face. "Steve Agstone," he gasped, "the missing witness!" Prelice also startled, backed against the wall with outstretched hands and open mouth. In a flash he saw how dangerous was the position of the barrister; and indeed many confused voices were muttering as to the guilt of Shepworth. Captain Jadby, letting his eyes fall on the dead man, made himself spokesman for all. "Shepworth murdered him to win the case," he said, nodding. "I ask your pardon, Lord Prelice, for suspecting you." "I would rather you continued to do so," cried Prelice angrily. "It is absurd to think that Shepworth killed this man. Look at him," he pointed to the rigid form in the armchair; "he is incapable of raising a hand." "Miss Chent was also incapable," sneered the captain, "yet----" "She is innocent," stormed Prelice fiercely; "she no more killed her uncle than did Shepworth this witness." Everyone was listening eagerly with open eyes and ears to the altercation; and it is impossible to say how long it would have continued, but for the entry of the police. Two constables pushed their way through the crowd, and forthwith--when they had taken in the situation--began to clear the place. The crowd of pleasure-seekers, now unmasked for the most part, were driven outside. Some fled down the stairs, anxious to get away from the scene of the tragedy, while others returned to the Rovers' flat. But the fact of the murder ruined the ball. It broke up, like Macbeth's famous banquet, "with most admir'd disorder," and in ten minutes the rooms were deserted. Everyone ran away, as though from the plague, and Mr. Rover, looking like a frightened rabbit, came down to make inquiries. "Is Shepworth dead?" he asked tremulously of a stalwart policeman whom he found guarding the closed door of Number Forty. "Everyone says that Shepworth is dead; and my wife has fainted." "The doctor is with Mr. Shepworth now," said the constable gruffly. "I don't know what's the matter with him, and it ain't my duty to say anything, sir." "Oh dear! Oh dear!" Rover wrung his small white hands. "How very, very dreadful all this is. Who is the other man--the dead man?" He handed the officer half-a-sovereign so as to gain a reply. Dogberry unbent. "They do say, sir, as the corpse is Steve Agstone, who is the missing witness in the Lanwin murder case." "How wicked--how very wicked. But if Mr. Shepworth is dead----" "He ain't, sir," the constable slipped the gold into his pocket; "he's in a faint of sorts I believe. And they do say as he killed Steve Agstone, so as to save the young lady he's defending. Now I can't tell you more, sir, and I've said too much already. Just go home and keep quiet, sir. The police will look after this matter here." Rover, still wringing his useless hands, and muttering to himself like the weak-brained little man he was, wearily climbed the stairs to his deserted ballrooms. As he ascended, two women and a man came down, white-faced and shaken. They tried to enter Number Forty, but the constable stretched forth a brawny arm to prevent entrance. "But we must come in," said the man deferentially; "we are Mr. Shepworth's servants. I am his valet, this lady is the cook, and yonder is the housemaid. We have a right to enter." "You can't until the doctor and the inspector have done with your master," said the constable stolidly. "And why aren't you in bed?" The cook, a large, red-faced lady, gaily dressed, replied. "Mr. Shepworth allowed us to join Mrs. Rover's servants at the masked ball." "Then none of you were in this flat when the murder was committed?" questioned the policeman, doing a little detective business on his own account. "Oh, lor', no," cried the housemaid timidly; "we've been upstairs since nine o'clock helping Mrs. Rover's servants with the party. Do let us in, Mr. Policeman." "Stay where you are until orders come," commanded the officer sternly; and the trio sat disconsolately on the stairs. With the instinct of self-preservation, they had thoroughly explained their absence from the scene of the crime, and now felt perfectly safe. Meanwhile in the dining-room a young medical man, who had fortunately been present at the ball, was reviving Shepworth with brandy and ammonia. The windows had been thrown open, and the fresh air was filling the room so rapidly that scarcely a trace of the tuberose fragrance remained. Prelice, having laid aside his mask and domino, was standing near the door with his hands in his pockets, watching a man in uniform, who examined the dead along with the official doctor whom the police had called in. The first individual was Inspector Bruge, a keen-looking, sharp-eyed man, with a clean-shaven face and closely clipped grey hair, and an abrupt red-tape manner. Captain Jadby was not present, having departed with the rest of the too curious onlookers; but Lord Prelice remained, as he had been the first to discover the crime, and Bruge wished to hear his account of it. Already the Inspector's note-book was in his hand to note down the result of the official doctor's examination. There was a dead silence in the room, faintly broken by the distant roll of vehicular traffic, with the occasional hoot of a motor horn. The bell of a near church boomed out midnight so unexpectedly that Prelice jumped. He might well be excused for doing so, as his nerves were considerably shaken. "Twelve o'clock," said Bruge crisply. "When did you discover the crime, my lord?" "At half-past eleven," replied Prelice, shivering. "Good heavens, is it only half-an-hour since then? It seems like years." "We were on the spot in ten minutes," said Bruge with official satisfaction, "and haven't been long in getting things ship-shape. Now that these ladies and gentlemen have gone, we can look into matters. Doctor," he glanced at the young man attending to Shepworth, "is your patient reviving?" "A trifle," answered the other, rising; "help me to place him near the window--in a draught." "It is a long faint," said the Inspector, helping to wheel the armchair to the open window. "It is not a faint at all. The man is in a cataleptic state, induced by the administration of some drug." "Induced by the odour of a burning herb, you mean," said Prelice, looking at the rigid face of Shepworth, which was as expressionless as that of the dead man at the table. "What's that?" questioned the Inspector, turning his head. Prelice waved his hand. "I'll explain later, and after I have seen my friend Dr. Horace." "Horace! Horace!" The medical man who was examining the corpse looked up at this remark. "I know him slightly. A great traveller, isn't he?" "Yes," answered Prelice quickly; "he travelled with me to a little known part of the world called Easter Island. Lucky that he did so, and that I was with him. Between us we may be able to solve the mystery of this cataleptic business." "You know that it is catalepsy, induced by some odour?" "Of course I do. I have seen a man in that state before." And Prelice pointed to the rigid form of Shepworth. "Where?" asked Bruge, looking at him with keen eyes, somewhat puzzled. "On Easter Island." The Inspector would have asked further questions when the elder doctor rose from examining Agstone's body, and stretched himself. "Well, Thornton?" he asked curtly. "The man is dead right enough!" said Thornton, with a shrug; "that stab under the left shoulder-blade reached the heart at one blow. I don't see the weapon with which it was committed--the crime I mean." "We haven't searched the flat yet," rejoined Bruge brusquely; "and if you remember, Thornton, the weapon which killed Sir Oliver Lanwin was not found either." "What has this case to do with Sir Oliver Lanwin's death?" Bruge looked surprised. "Don't you read the papers, doctor? There is a murder case on at the New Bailey which resembles this in every particular. Sir Oliver Lanwin was stabbed seated at his desk, and under the left shoulder-blade. His niece, who is accused, says that she is innocent, and was in a cataleptic state, just as this Counsel of hers is. What we see here," mused Bruge, "will go a long way towards helping her to prove her innocence. Mr. Shepworth need not have got rid of Agstone in this way." "He didn't," cried Prelice sharply; "I'll stake my existence that Mr. Shepworth is perfectly innocent." "My lord, we know that the prosecution hoped to convict Miss Chent on Agstone's evidence. It was necessary that the defence should keep him out of the way. And here is the man, very forcibly removed, and in the rooms of the young gentleman who is not only helping to defend Miss Chent, but who is her affianced husband. It looks strange." Prelice pointed to Shepworth, who now showed signs of reviving. "I say to you, as I said to those people who burst into the flat when the alarm was given, that Shepworth is incapable of lifting a hand." "Ah! but we don't know how long he has been incapable," said Bruge cunningly. "When was Agstone murdered, doctor?" Thornton, who was twisting a cigarette, answered promptly enough. "I should say, judging from the condition of the temperature of the body, some time between ten and eleven o'clock." "And can you tell," asked the Inspector, turning to the other doctor, "how long Mr. Shepworth has been insensible?" "No!" said the young physician promptly; "but he'll tell us himself soon. He is coming round." Even as he spoke Shepworth opened his eyes, and stared vaguely at those in the room. His gaze wandered in a bewildered manner from the Inspector to Prelice, and from Prelice to the two doctors. Finally, he looked meditatively at the dead body, which was stretched right across the blue cloth of the dining-table, with its glassy eyes staring at the ceiling. A shudder shook the barrister's frame, and as though moved by wires, he sprang stiffly to his feet. "Prelice! Prelice!" he cried, and his voice grew stronger as his strength came back, as did his colour and senses. "Look! Look! Isn't it the same as in the Grange library! Agstone is dead, and I have been in a trance." "You know then?" asked Bruge swiftly, "that the dead man is Agstone?" "Yes! I have seen him many times, at the Grange. But how did he come here? Who murdered him?" And his eyes questioned those present dumbly. "That is what we wish to ask you," said the Inspector. Shepworth passed his hand across his forehead, which was now moist with perspiration. "The police," he murmured, "and Agstone dead. Will you place me in the dock beside Mona?" he asked Bruge passionately. Prelice sprang to his side, and caught him by the hand. "Ned, Ned!" he urged, "pull yourself together and tell us how Agstone came to be murdered in this room." "I can't tell you," cried Shepworth, wrenching away his hand. "I can tell you no more than Mona could. She was in a trance, and saw nothing, only coming out of it to find the dead beside her. I was in a trance, and saw---- Ah!" he broke off, and his wild eyes went roving round the room, "where is the woman?" "What woman?" asked Bruge suddenly, and kept his eyes on Shepworth's face with a look of severe scrutiny. "The woman who came in, masked and cloaked. She came in. Agstone admitted her. She waved the bronze cup before me, and then I--I---- Oh! what does it all mean?" he asked, breaking down, and with every reason, considering what he had undergone. Prelice shook him gently by the shoulders. "I am beside you, Ned. I am looking after you. Only tell us everything you remember." Shepworth stared straight before him, and then, as though a spring had been touched, he began to speak swiftly and coherently. "I was sitting reading in the drawing-room, when I heard three heavy blows struck on the wall of this room. As my servants were all upstairs, assisting at the ball, I wondered who was in my flat, and came out to inquire. The door of this room was closed, and I opened it to find a thick white smoke, smelling sweetly and sickly, curling from a bronze cup placed on the table. The fumes choked me, and I staggered instinctively to open the window. Before I could reach it, I fell." "Senseless?" interpolated Thornton keenly. "No!" Shepworth turned irritably. "How could I be senseless when I heard and saw everything?--up to a point, that is." "What did you see?" questioned Bruge eagerly. "I could move neither hand nor foot, nor could I call out," went on Shepworth slowly, "and I lay on the floor, half propped up against that chair. Then I saw," he shuddered, "a large hairy hand push aside the tablecloth, and shortly a man crawled from underneath. It was Agstone, for I recognised him without difficulty. He growled in a pleased manner, and lifted me into this chair. Then he went out, and remained absent for some time. When he returned a tall woman was with him, wearing a mask and a green domino. Taking the bronze cup, from which the white smoke still poured, she waved it under my nose. My senses left me, and I knew no more until I woke to find you all in my room. And Agstone is dead," ended the barrister, trembling. "Agstone is dead." "And Agstone," said Bruge significantly, "is the chief witness for the prosecution." CHAPTER VIII. A PRIVATE EXPLANATION. Shepworth made no reply to the insinuation contained in the remark of the Inspector. His brain was still dazed with the fumes of the white smoke, and after telling his story he sat indifferently in his armchair. Prelice watched him closely, recognising the mental confusion, then laid his hand on the poor fellow's arm. "You had better come and lie down," he said gently, and glanced at Thornton. "Certainly, certainly!" answered that gentleman briskly, and in reply to the unspoken query of Prelice; "a few hours' sleep will cure Mr. Shepworth completely." "Can I stay with my friend?" demanded Prelice, turning to Bruge. The Inspector nodded absently, as he was evidently following some train of thought. "Will it be necessary to make a further examination of this?" he inquired, looking at the dead body and at Thornton. "No, no--not at present. When it has been removed to the dead-house I will see to a further examination. I have seen the body before rigor mortis has set in, so that is all that is necessary. The man has been stabbed some time between ten and eleven, and he is as dead as a coffin nail." Thornton drew on his gloves. "Good-night!" "Good-night," replied the Inspector. "Allow me to see you to the door." And he conducted both the medical men out of the room, leaving Prelice alone with his still dazed friend. But Shepworth was not so dazed as he pretended to be, for the moment the door was closed he sprang to his feet. "Dorry, Dorry," he gasped, swaying, "the knife--look for the knife!" Then he dropped back again in the chair, too weak to stand. "What do you mean?" demanded Prelice sharply, and much puzzled. Shepworth clutched him. "I did not tell all," he stuttered hurriedly; "it would not have done to tell all. Listen, Dorry. Agstone came back again alone--alone, I tell you--before he brought the lady. I was still conscious, although unable to move in any way. He held the knife in his hand--the jade-handled paper-cutter with which Sir Oliver was murdered. I had it, as you know; it was concealed in my desk--in my study. Agstone must have found it. Agstone must have used it. No! Agstone is dead. I forgot. But someone must have used it to kill Agstone. Oh, my head, my head!" He grasped his hair, and rocked to and fro; then with an effort: "Look for the knife--under the table perhaps--under the----" Before he could end the sentence Prelice, realising its importance, sprang forward, and lifted a corner of the tablecloth, which trailed on the ground. At the same instant Inspector Bruge appeared again, unexpectedly. His keen eyes immediately fixed themselves on Prelice. "What are you doing, my lord?" he asked imperatively. "Making a search," retorted the other bluffly. He did not know what else to say, and hoped that his ready and natural explanation would lull any newly aroused suspicions entertained by the officer. It did to a certain extent. "You must allow us to do that, my lord. I think you had better take Mr. Shepworth to his bed. And we may as well cover this thing until it is taken away," added Bruge, gathering up the folds of the tablecloth to lay them over the stark-dead creature staring at the ceiling. Shepworth moved at the same moment as Bruge; but Prelice, guessing that he wished to interfere, held him down with an iron grasp. When the lifted cloth exposed the bare legs of the table, both the young men caught sight of an object lying underneath. Bruge, stepping back, espied it also, with his trained faculty of instant observation, and stooped to pick it up. The jade-handled paper-cutter lay just where the feet of the dead man had rested before the body had been shifted on to the table. The wonder was that it had not been discovered before; but then it had been concealed by the drooping cloth. "The weapon with which the crime has been committed," murmured Bruge in a complacent tone; "after stabbing his victim, the assassin must have allowed the knife to fall under the table, or perhaps threw it there intentionally. A jade handle! H'm! It looks like a dagger too--an Eastern dagger. Where have I seen it--where?" And the Inspector fell into a brown study, turning and twisting the paper-cutter slowly. Prelice pressed Shepworth's shoulder to keep him quiet, and cleared his throat to answer. "It is the knife used to kill Sir Oliver," he said, and felt Shepworth jerk his body in surprised remonstrance at this unnecessary frankness. Bruge glanced up in amazement. "Why, so it is," he remarked wonderingly--"the very dagger. I remember now that I read the description given of this in the newspaper report of the inquest at Hythe. H'm! So that is how I fancied that I had seen it before." He balanced the knife on the palm of his hand. "A very good piece of description it must have been to so enable me to recognise this. But you," he glanced suspiciously at Prelice, "how did you know?" The young man shrugged his square shoulders. "That is easily explained," he replied suavely. "I went to hear the case at the New Bailey to-day, as I thought that my friend here," he again pressed Shepworth's shoulder significantly, "was to speak in defence of Miss Chent. At the Court I heard the knife described. It is quite simple, you see." "I wonder how it comes to be here?" mused Bruge, nodding acquiescence to this lucid explanation. "Odd, isn't it?" "Not at all," rejoined Prelice easily; "the assassin of Sir Oliver Lanwin brought it here to kill Agstone." "But Miss Chent is in prison," remonstrated the Inspector; "she could not have----" "She never did in any case," interrupted Shepworth faintly, but rousing himself sufficiently to defend his promised wife. "She is innocent." "It is natural that you should say so," remarked Bruge, with polite scepticism, then added significantly: "Did you expect Agstone?" Shepworth's eyebrows went up wearily. "I? No! Why should I have expected a witness for the prosecution to call upon me? I have told you all that happened until I entirely lost my senses. The first I saw of Agstone was when he crawled from under that table. Then the smoke had rendered me, not unconscious, but unable to speak or move." "Can this smoke you mention, do that?" "I speak from experience, Mr. Inspector; and Miss Chent, if you remember, told the same story." "Oh, I see that the two crimes are connected," said Bruge hastily. "The circumstances are the same as regards this mysterious smoke and its curious power. But you say," he added, turning to Prelice, "you say, my lord, that the assassin of Sir Oliver brought the knife to kill Agstone. Yet we see," he waved his hands towards the corpse, "that Agstone himself is a victim." "Quite so; but he may have brought the knife for all that." "Then you imply that Agstone murdered his master?" "I imply nothing," retorted the young man restively; "but the knife could not have got here unless someone brought it, and as it was missing from the Lanwin Grange library, only the murderer who used it could have possessed it. Moreover," Prelice pressed Shepworth's shoulder to make him particularly note the next sentence, "moreover, Mr. Shepworth saw the knife in Agstone's hand." Bruge wheeled swiftly towards the barrister. "You did not say that?" "Not when the doctors and you were in the room," said Shepworth languidly. "I am only beginning to recover my senses, remember; but I told Lord Prelice that Agstone, after he left this room, returned and looked in, to see if I was insensible I suppose, before he brought in the lady. Then he had the knife in his hand." "And what do you infer?" asked Bruge pointedly. "There can only be one inference drawn," said Prelice, before Shepworth could speak; "Agstone must have had the knife in his pocket." "Then Agstone must have murdered Sir Oliver," said Bruge triumphantly. Shepworth shrugged his shoulders, and staggered to his feet. "I feel too dizzy to give an opinion," he said, leaning heavily on his friend. "We know that Agstone was devoted to Sir Oliver. Why should he have murdered him? Besides, he accuses Miss Chent." "Naturally," cried the Inspector, who followed eagerly the scent of the red herring which Prelice had drawn across the trail. "If Agstone is guilty himself he naturally would throw the blame on another person; and if he was possessed of the knife he must be guilty. It was missed from the Grange library and reappears here." "The masked lady might have brought it," suggested Shepworth. Bruge, extremely pleased with his own theory, shook his head sapiently. "Mr. Shepworth saw the knife in Agstone's hand before he became insensible. You can swear to that?" he asked the barrister. "Yes," said Shepworth truthfully; "I can swear to that." "And you can swear that the masked woman killed Agstone?" "No; I can't say that. When she waved the bronze cup before me I became entirely insensible." The Inspector looked more knowing than ever. "Of course," said he in a complacent way, "she did not wish you to see her stabbing Agstone." "But why should she have stabbed him?" "We can't say until we know the lady. Did you recognise her?" "No; she was masked and cloaked." "A green domino, I think you said." "And a green mask," supplemented Shepworth. "She must have been at Mrs. Rover's ball," mused Bruge. "Not necessarily," interpolated Prelice; "but as many people masked and cloaked were ascending and descending the stairs, she may have taken advantage of the ball to get into this flat unobserved." "Quite so," assented the Inspector; "but who admitted her?" "Agstone must have done that," said Shepworth. "Probably; but who admitted Agstone?" The barrister shook his head. "I can't say," he replied in a tired tone. "I heard a noise--three heavy blows struck in this room--as I told you, when seated in the drawing-room. I did not know that anyone was in the flat." "What time did your servants go to assist at the ball?" "Shortly before nine o'clock, when the dinner was over." "You had dinner then?" "Oh yes. I came from the Court worn out, and slept for a long time. I then had a light dinner." "Agstone could not have been at the table then--under it I mean?" "I think not," said the barrister slowly; "it is not a large table as you see. I would either have heard him, or I should have felt him with my feet." "Your servants may have left the outer door ajar." Shepworth nodded. "Perhaps. You can question them. But after dining I returned to the drawing-room before nine o'clock." "And you did not re-enter this room until you came to see what the three heavy blows meant?" "No; I did not." "They must have been struck to make you enter the room." "I think so, Mr. Inspector. Agstone wished to be smothered with the smoke. That was why the bronze cup was smoking on the table." "Where is the bronze cup?" Bruge looked about him. "I can't say. I last saw it when the lady waved it under my nose." The Inspector meditated. "It's a queer case altogether," he mused, "and undoubtedly it is connected with the Lanwin murder," he mused again, and then looked up abruptly. "I believe that this second murder will exonerate Miss Chent," he said quietly. "I hope so," rejoined Shepworth, walking towards the door heavily, and still leaning on Prelice's shoulder. "If she is condemned for murdering her uncle, I should certainly be arrested and tried for murdering Agstone. I had every reason to kill him, since on his evidence hangs the fate of Miss Chent." "You may as well speak in the past tense, Mr. Shepworth, seeing that the man is dead. For my part, I believe that Agstone murdered his master, and was ready to throw the blame on Miss Chent so as to save his own skin. Only the assassin of Sir Oliver could have been possessed of the knife." "Am I to consider myself arrested?" demanded the barrister. "No," rejoined Bruge promptly, and held open the door; "but, of course, we must keep an eye on you," he added, smiling ambiguously. Shepworth nodded languidly, and went out with his friend. "Come into my study, Prelice," he said almost in a whisper. "That knife----" "Hush!" Prelice gripped the barrister's arm hard. He quite understood what Shepworth wished to do. "Not so loud." But he need not have been so cautious, for the door of the dining-room had been closed by Bruge, who was now probably searching the clothes of the dead man for more evidence. The two young men went into the study, which was at the end of the passage, and there found that the desk had been forced open--that is, all the three drawers on each side, six in all--in a most dexterous manner. Agstone had apparently come provided with house-breaking tools, so as to gain possession of the dagger. "But how did he know that I had it?" asked Shepworth, perplexed. "I daresay he was watching through the Grange window, and saw you take it from Miss Chent," suggested Prelice. Shepworth nodded. "Let us put the room tidy," he said hurriedly, and closing the door; "I don't want the police to fuss about here." The room really was untidy, for in searching for the knife Agstone had scattered the loose papers lying on the desk all over the carpet. The young man collected these, and placed them in order; then Shepworth closed the drawers of the desk carefully. In a few minutes--after replacing a chair that had been kicked over, and smoothing a rug that had been rucked up--the study looked quite in order. Nevertheless, Shepworth stared anxiously at the now innocent-looking desk. "I hope the police will not examine it," he said nervously. "I don't think so, since you have explained so much, Ned. Their attentions will be confined to the dining-room wherein the murder took place. Will you go to bed?" "No." Shepworth sat at his desk. "I don't want this examined. Let us sit here and have some strong coffee." Prelice shook his head. "Don't," he advised; "better let us steal to your bedroom, and say nothing about having been here. If the police examine the desk you can pretend ignorance, and express surprise. On the other hand, if Bruge comes in and makes the discovery while we are here, he will naturally demand why we kept silence, and inquiries would lead to difficulties. Leave the thing to chance." Shepworth agreed with this reasoning, since it was useless, and even dangerous, to create difficulties at the present juncture. The two walked silently to the bedroom, and here the barrister stripped, to put on his dressing-gown. Then, lying down outside the bed, he placed his hands behind his head, and stared at the ceiling, while Prelice lounged in an armchair close at hand. "Why did you tell Bruge about the second entrance of Agstone with the dagger?" asked Shepworth suddenly. "Because he had already seen the dagger," rejoined Prelice promptly. "It is as well to tell the truth when possible, and just as well that the Inspector should think Agstone--who cannot now contradict--brought the dagger. You heard what he said yourself about Agstone's possible guilt. Our frankness will probably save Miss Chent, as the murder of Sir Oliver will be attributed to Agstone because he possessed that paper-cutter." Shepworth groaned. "But if Bruge knew that I took it from Mona?" "Then there would be serious trouble. Let things remain as they are, Ned. We know that Miss Chent is innocent, and must save her." "But we don't know that Agstone is guilty. He certainly is not, on the reasoning of Bruge." "No; seeing that we know Agstone did not bring the dagger here. But the man is dead, and if he can be made to act as scapegoat for an innocent woman, so much the better." The barrister sighed. "We are environed by difficulties," he murmured; then added significantly and unexpectedly: "Jadby called to see me this evening." "What!" Prelice was startled. "I thought that you had quarrelled." "So we had--so we did--and with fists too. But when I was reading in the drawing-room, and thinking of my poor girl shut up in prison, I heard a ring at the front door. The servants had gone to the ball, as you know, so I had to open the door myself. Captain Jadby was there, and after a stiff greeting he asked for an interview. I took him into the drawing-room, and----" "One moment. Did you close the outer door?" "Of course. Why do you ask that?" "I fancied that you might have unconsciously left it open, and that Agstone might then have entered to conceal himself." "No," said Shepworth decisively. "I am certain that I closed it. With Jadby I went to the drawing-room, and there he frankly expressed his regrets that we had quarrelled. He wished to make it up, and to join forces with me to save poor Mona." "Because he loves her?" "Quite so. He makes no secret of the fact that he is madly in love with Mona. Our hand-to-hand fight at Lanwin Grange rose solely from the fact that he would insist upon forcing his attentions on her. She appealed to me as her lover, so I tackled Jadby, and knocked him down. However, he seemed to be sorry that he had behaved like a bounder; so we shook hands, and then sat down to consider how we should act with regard to Mona's position." "H'm!" Prelice looked sceptical. "From the glimpse I caught of Jadby I should not think he was the sort of man to forgive a punch in the eye, much less the loss of the girl he loves. He might have come here with the intention of trapping you; he might have admitted Agstone." "No," replied Shepworth quickly. "I was with him all the time. I opened the outer door to admit him, and closed it when he departed. As he was under my eyes while in the flat, he had no chance of admitting Agstone secretly. I don't know how the man managed to enter and conceal himself under that table, but Jadby had nothing to do with it. Moreover," added the barrister decisively, "Jadby told me that he was as ignorant as everyone else of Agstone's whereabouts." "Oh, a blighter like Jadby would say anything." Shepworth protested. "I think we have judged Jadby wrongly." "My dear Ned, you are altogether too good for this wicked world. I don't trust Jadby for one instant. He plays for his own hand." "I know he does. He admits that he intends to claim the estate of Sir Oliver, and that he loves Mona. But he swears that he will take no steps until she is set free. Then she can marry me if she chooses." Prelice laughed ironically. "And you believe him?" "He seemed to be in earnest." "About setting Miss Chent free? Oh yes; I am sure of that; but he intends to marry her, you may be sure. Jadby is very philanthropic. How does he propose to save Miss Chent?" "By finding Agstone, and sending him out of the kingdom." "And Agstone appears shortly after that proposal. H'm! H'm! H'm! I must have a personal interview with Captain Jadby, and ask him----" "Ask him what?" "If he has ever visited Easter Island." "What on earth do you mean?" demanded Shepworth curiously. But Lord Prelice refused to explain further. CHAPTER IX. DR. HORACE. Next day everyone, from the man in the street to the lady in her drawing-room, was talking about the murder at Alexander Mansions. As a rule, those in Society talk very little about such horrors; but on this occasion people, more or less fashionable, felt that the crime had been committed, so to speak, on their very doorsteps. Mrs. Rover's ball had been broken up by the discovery of the crime, and many of the guests, crowding down to Shepworth's flat, had seen a murdered man for the first time in their frivolous lives. No wonder the tragedy made a sensation. Moreover, the second crime in London was connected--no one knew exactly how--with the first crime at Lanwin Grange, Hythe. Sir Oliver had been murdered by his niece, who was now being tried for the offence. The victim had been a baronet, and the prisoner was a well-known figure in the social world. Now the missing witness, upon whose evidence was supposed to hinge the condemnation or acquittal of Miss Chent, had been violently done away with. And--hinted gossip--in spite of appearances, the barrister to whom the flat belonged must have killed the man, so that damaging evidence might be finally suppressed. Thus the two crimes had much to do with Society as a whole, and the newspaper placards informed the lower orders of "A Tragedy in High Life." Stump orators in Hyde Park chose the placards and the moment to talk of the decay of the upper classes, and of the need of a revolution to sweep away tyrants born in the social purple. Finally, there was another thing which interested fashionable folk. Many guests at the masked ball had been robbed of valuable jewellery, and the police were entirely at a loss to trace the thieves. Undoubtedly, what Mr. Simon Haken had prophesied jokingly to his host had come cruelly true: swell mobsmen and light-fingered ladies had taken advantage of the use of masks at the ball to mingle with the legitimate guests, and appropriate gems and gold of great value. Bracelets, ear-rings, chains, brooches, and even rings--many of these had vanished, and scarcely a single woman had escaped the rapacity of the unknown thieves. This in itself was sufficient to make Mrs. Dolly Rover's entertainment notorious, and that a terrible murder should cap the climax of such roguery was almost too much for belief. Next day the journals sold like hot cakes, and the one topic of conversation with high and low had to do with this astounding criminality. Lord Prelice returned to his rooms in Half-Moon Street just as the dawn broke over an astonished and indignant Mayfair, and threw himself on his bed to recuperate. Tough as he was with travel and adventure, he needed sleep very badly after the exciting events of the dark hours, and as he dropped off into slumber it struck him forcibly that the time of superabundant leisure had gone by for ever. Formerly an idler, who took comparatively little interest in life, and certainly none in the doings of other people, he found himself committed, through friendship, to a strenuous career. Ever since Lady Sophia's visit on the previous morning he had gradually become entangled in other lives, and until the crooked ways of these had been made straight he saw no chance of reverting to his happy-go-lucky existence. Prelice, having a high ideal of friendship, resolved to help Shepworth, and, through him, Miss Mona Chent, with all the brain power and physical power and social power at his command. And the opportunity of doing so was not unpleasing to an active-minded man, who had hitherto fritted away his intelligence in butterfly pursuits. He woke at noon to receive a telegram, which his man brought in, with an apology for disturbing him. It proved to be from Shepworth, and contained the amazing news that the barrister had been arrested for the murder. Considering that Inspector Bruge had assured Shepworth--and in Prelice's presence--that there was no chance of any suspicion being cast upon him in any way, the young man had to read the wire twice or thrice before he could fully grasp its sinister significance. It seemed absurd. Dozens of people, including Bruge and two medical men, had seen the insensible form of the accused man, and were content at the time that he could not raise a hand, much less execute a crime, which needed clear-headedness and strength. And it was the more ridiculous to arrest Shepworth, because the barrister had given a plain account of what had happened,--so far as he remembered--which was similar in most respects to what had taken place at Hythe. Of course, Prelice recollected the way in which he and Ned had concealed the true story of the knife; but it was impossible that Shepworth, now quite in possession of his wits, should have told an unnecessary truth. If he had, Prelice believed that he would be arrested also, as an accessory after the fact. The thought made him uncomfortable, until he brushed it away. Ned was not exactly an idiot, and on whatever plea he had been arrested, it certainly could not have to do with the story of the knife. But it was necessary to learn what had taken place, and also to bail Ned out, so that they might work together to elucidate the mystery. This would be difficult considering the charge was one of murder; but Prelice indulged in a cold bath to freshen his physical powers, and after dressing rapidly, took a hansom back to Alexander Mansions. Here he was confronted at the door by the same burly police constable who had prevented Shepworth's servants from re-entering their master's flat some hours before. He treated Lord Prelice in the same way. "You can't come in, my lord. Inspector's orders." "I wish to see Mr. Shepworth," argued Prelice vexedly. "It's against orders, my lord." "Is he within?" "Yes, my lord, but he isn't allowed to see anyone." "Will you take a note in from me?" "No, my lord. I can't do that." "Can I see Inspector Bruge?" "He is at the police station, my lord." Prelice stamped with vexation at the obstacles placed in his way. He did his best to argue this official machine into something resembling reasonable humanity, but without success. Shepworth, he learned, was to be taken to prison later in the day, and the constable hinted that, since the charge was so serious, there would be no chance of the barrister being let out on bail. There was no other course open but to see Inspector Bruge, so Prelice drove to the Kensington Police Station, only to find that the man he wished to see had gone to Scotland Yard, presumably about the case. Apparently there was nothing to be done at the moment in connection with this new trouble, so Prelice was half minded to repair to the New Bailey, and listen to the further progress of the charge against Miss Chent. Now that Agstone was dead, he did not think that she would be convicted. Also, the repetition of the circumstances of the Hythe crime in Alexander Mansions would assuredly strengthen her position, since the jury would now be compelled to believe her story of the stupefying smoke, which formerly had been regarded as absurd. And it was when the thought of the smoke entered his mind that Prelice recollected that Dr. Horace lived in the neighbourhood. He therefore walked to Rutland Square, and asked at Number Twenty for his former fellow-traveller. Chance stood the young man's friend, for the doctor was within, and saw him at once. "This is an unexpected pleasure, Prelice," said the doctor, beaming. "I thought you were in the West Indies." "I returned only a few days ago. Are you busy?" "My friend, I am always busy." And Horace indicated a case of beetles and butterflies, with which he was dealing when his guest entered. The room was a large one, with two broad windows looking out onto the quiet square, but all available space was taken up with records of the doctor's travels. The floor was carpeted with wild-beast skins, for Horace was a noted hunter; the walls were decorated with Polynesian war-clubs, with Zulu assegaies, with Redskin wampum belts and beaded moccasins. Also, there were Japanese gods, Chinese jars of grotesquely decorated porcelain, Hindoo swords, Persian tiles reft from mosques, and African canoe paddles rudely carved. As Horace never allowed any servant to meddle with his treasures the room was extremely untidy and dusty, and generally neglected, With the exception of a gigantic dining-table of mahogany and two chairs there was no civilised furniture, yet the place was so crammed with barbaric curiosities that Prelice could scarcely find a clear place to stand in. Finally, he stumbled through a narrow passage of Egyptian mummies and gigantic Maori idols to an uncomfortable cane chair near the window. Here he sat down, and looked at his host with some disgust. "Why the dickens can't you live like a civilised being when you are in London?" he asked, lighting a cigar to dispel the frowsy smell of the room. "I am perfectly comfortable," said Horace, clearing a place on the table to sit on. "This is my home; I live here." "You camp here, I think. I never saw such a messy place in my life." "Huh," grunted the doctor, filling a German pipe with strong tobacco. "You shouldn't come here in a Bond Street kit. Well, what is it? Are you longing to be on the trail again?" "I am on a sort of trail certainly," admitted Prelice slowly, and inspecting the ash of his cigar. "A manhunt. Ah, your eyes light up at that, you bloodthirsty old pagan." "A manhunt," repeated Horace meditatively, "and in London--slow business." "Well, I don't know, Horace. It is one requiring a great deal of subtility. I have come for your assistance." "Huh!" said the doctor again, and nodded. "I'm with you." Prelice reflected for a few moments before beginning an explanation of his errand. He did not know how much to tell and how much to withhold. Horace saw his hesitation, and ascribed it to the right cause. "I must know everything, Prelice," he said quickly, "else I do not assist. I have no notion of working in the dark, and failing through ignorance." "You can read my thoughts as usual, I see," commented the visitor; "some more of that clairvoyant business, I expect. Well, I have a case to lay before you which will tax your occult powers to the utmost." "Fire away," said Horace, and placing his hands on the table rocked to and fro, looking absurdly like a monkey. "The Missing Link" they called him in the Wilds, and certainly the name was deserved. Horace was a small man with a long body, short legs, and lengthy arms; very powerfully built, and very shaggy in appearance. Prelice looked at the doctor's large head covered with tangled red hair; at his beard and moustache of the same hue, untrimmed and untidy, concealing nearly all his flat face; and at his big horn-rimmed spectacles, which hid the brightest and keenest of blue eyes. He wore an old pair of flannel trousers, and a still older flannel shirt, the sleeves of which were turned up over two hairy wrists encircled with Matabele wire bracelets. To complete his barbaric looks his large ears, furry as those of a faun, were adorned with gold rings. A more quaint or a more extraordinary figure was not to be met with outside a Freak Museum. And Dr. Horace should have been exhibited in one, if only on account of the beautifully executed tattooing, which Prelice could see on his sunburnt arms, and on his chest, through the unbuttoned shirt. No one would have taken this man-monkey to be a clever and learned scholar with a heart of gold and a fund of knowledge second to none. Prelice knew and esteemed him, and had fought with him--for the doctor was obstinate--and beside him in the Naked Lands at the Back-of-Beyond, when both held their lives in their hands. All the same, being fastidious, he sincerely wished that when the doctor returned to civilisation, he would leave behind him in the wilderness his uncouth manners and shabby dress and general appearance of being a prehistoric man of Lady Sophia's favourite Stone Age. "Go on, go on," said Horace impatiently, "don't keep me waiting. I have lots to do, and can't waste time." "You have lots to do in the way of dress, I think. Come and have a Turkish bath, and visit the nearest barber. Then I can take you to my tailor to be clothed properly, and----" Horace interrupted characteristically by throwing his pipe at the young man. It was deftly fielded and returned. "Do you remember Easter Island?" asked Prelice when the doctor was again smoking; then in reply to a consenting grunt: "I see you do. And the Sacred Herb, eh?" Horace scowled. "How do you come into the matter?" he growled. "Into what matter?" queried the other. "Oliver Lanwin's murder. It's in all the papers." "Quite so; but why should my remark about the Sacred Herb make you think that I referred to Lanwin's murder?" "Is there any need of an explanation?" asked Horace coolly. "If you didn't guess, as I did, that the Sacred Herb was used to make that smoke, why do you talk of the matter at all?" "Then you think that the herb----" "Course! Course!" growled Horace, beginning to rock again. "Lanwin haunted the South Seas. I knew him there. He must have got the herb from Easter Island, as it is the only place it grows in. When I read the girl's yarn of the smoke, I guessed straight off that Lanwin had been trying to induce a trance with the burning herb." "Do you think that Miss Chent murdered him?" "No! The library was filled with the smoke of the herb. Anyone not used to the fumes would go down like a shot, as she did." "Then you believe Miss Chent's story?" asked Prelice eagerly. Horace nodded. "She could not have made up such a clever yarn." "Then why in Heaven's name," questioned the young man, rising, "did you not volunteer your evidence to save her?" "Will it save her?" "Assuredly! Everyone regards her story of being stupefied with the smoke as absurd. If you tell what we saw on Easter Island, in front of the statues----" "Tell it yourself." "I intend to. I am going to the Court now, and you," said Prelice with emphasis, "_you_ are coming with me." Horace knocked the ashes out of his pipe. "Why should I?" he demanded, with a stolid air. "That's a long story," retorted Prelice restlessly. "I can give you ten minutes. Don't talk through your hat." Knowing his man, the visitor did not waste time, but bluntly detailed how he came to be drawn into the Lanwin murder case. But he naturally suppressed his feelings for the beautiful prisoner, and put down his interest, with some emphasis, to pure friendship for Shepworth. On reaching the end of the Hythe portion of the story, he paused to draw breath. "Is that all?" asked Horace grimly. "The first part only," replied Prelice promptly, and narrated the events of the previous night from the time he went to Mrs. Rover's _bal masqué_ to the time he left the Kensington Police Station to call upon his listener. During this latter part of the history Dr. Horace became restless, and wandered about his untidy room, stumbling over obstacles, and softly swearing, with a wonderful command of language. He appeared to be inattentive, but in reality had not lost a single word. When Prelice stopped he came to a halt before the young man. "I'll go with you to the Court," he declared. "The first thing to do is to save the girl. After that we can consider how to get Shepworth out of his difficulty." "He is innocent, of course," observed Prelice, trying to read the rugged face of his new ally. "Never said he wasn't," grumbled the doctor; then reflected for a few moments, raking his long beard with out-spread fingers. "See here," he burst out finally, "will you allow me to engineer this business?" "I shall only be too glad. Are you going to use occult methods?" "I don't need to. I have my own ideas, having read the newspapers." "Then you think that Agstone murdered Lanwin?" "No more than I think Shepworth murdered Agstone. On your own showing your barrister friend brought the knife to the flat. And it is on the false evidence of the knife, which you and Shepworth supplied, that Inspector Bruge seems to judge Agstone." "Still----" "Oh, don't talk poppy-cock," interrupted the little man impatiently. "You are not polite, Horace." "Was I ever polite?" demanded the other scornfully. "No! To do you justice, you are always consistently rude!" "Then why expect the impossible?" retorted Horace, and again stumbled about the crowded room, swearing softly. When again abreast of Prelice, who was sorely puzzled by this strange conduct, the doctor thrust out a large hairy paw. "Shake," said he brusquely. Prelice did so promptly, and inquired: "Why?" "Because you are giving me pleasure in allowing me to help you." His friend looked at the odd creature perplexedly. "I don't understand what you mean," he declared, frowning. "Never mind," returned Horace, with a chuckle; "when it is necessary for you to understand I'll straighten out things." "Then you have a theory?" "I have more than that; I have certain knowledge." "Of what, in Heaven's name?" "High cockalorum, snip snap snorum," was the jocular and enigmatic reply, "come to my bedroom, and we can chatter while I dress." "Well," said Prelice as he sauntered after his friend, "I am glad that you are not going in that rigout. It isn't the fifth of November." "Silly ass," snapped the traveller; "get a dressed-up doll to help you." "All right. Come to a toy-shop and help me to choose one." Dr. Horace began to laugh. "Why can't you talk sense?" he growled. "I shall do so if you will set the example." "Very good. I have some of the Sacred Herb here. Shall I take it to the New Bailey, and give judge and jury and counsel a practical illustration of how Miss Chent and Shepworth went into trances?" "You can if you like. By the way, did you give any portion of that herb away, Horace?" The doctor, who was plunging his hairy face in water, gurgled and grumbled, but made no reply. Prelice was nettled. "Why can't you be plain with me, confound you?" "All right." Horace began to dry his face vigorously. "I don't believe that Miss Chent is guilty, or that Shepworth killed Agstone." "I knew that before," said Prelice dryly; "you tell me nothing new." "Oh," retorted Horace mockingly, "you want to hear something new, like an Athenian of St. Paul's period. Very good. Do you know why I take so deep an interest in this case?" "No, I don't; unless it is to help me and Ned." "I don't care a red cent about you and Ned. But I care a trifle about Agstone, poor devil." Prelice sat up straight, and stared. "In Heaven's name, why?" "Because," said Dr. Horace slowly, and looking at Prelice's puzzled face in the glass, "because Steve Agstone is my brother." CHAPTER X. THE VERDICT. Here was a surprise indeed. Prelice knew that Dr. Horace had worked his way up from a humble position, and laid no claims to being of gentle blood. But he had never referred to the existence of a single relative, and the young man had always believed him to be alone in the world. Now it seemed that Agstone was his brother. And when Prelice recollected that Agstone was the same hirsute, red-haired, uncouth animal in appearance, it flashed across his mind that the brothers were twins. The extraordinary thing was that he had not noted the close resemblance before, since he had seen Agstone dead and Horace alive, within the last few hours. But the idea of connecting a common sailor with an eminent scientific man had never entered his mind. In the cab, on the way to the New Bailey, Horace gruffly gave his companion a few facts to substantiate his statement, but Prelice observed that he said as little as he could. "My full name is Horace Agstone," explained the doctor bluntly, "but as I got on in life and rose in the world I dropped the last and kept to the first. Steve is my elder brother by one year, and we are the sons of a Suffolk labourer. I had the brains of the family, and in one way and another managed to cultivate those same brains, with the result--no very great one--you see. Steve went to sea, and we did not meet for years and years. When he returned to England with old Lanwin he went down to Suffolk to look up the family. Our parents were dead and buried, but Steve learned my name and address from the vicar. He came to look me up, but as we did not hit it off very well, we considered it best to live our lives apart, as formerly. That's all." Prelice threw his cigarette out of the cab, and stared at the horse in a meditative way. "Strange that you should be connected with this case also," he remarked dreamily. The doctor grew red, and looked fierce. "What the devil do you mean by that? I have nothing to do with the case." "Your brother----" "I have nothing to do with my brother. He and I were born of the same mother, but beyond that we are--I mean we were, seeing he is dead--nothing to one another. If he chooses to kill people and be killed, that is his affair. No one can connect Steve Agstone with Dr. Horace, save the vicar of Burfield in Suffolk, unless you betray me. Not that I care, mark you, Prelice. I learned that fable of the old man and his ass very early in life, and never trouble about people and their opinions." "I don't intend to betray you," said Prelice coldly, but flushing all over his freckled face; "you can be brother to Satan for all I care. Moreover, I have given confidence for confidence. If I know about your relation to Agstone, you know about the knife's evidence, which I and Shepworth suppressed." "Right! Right! Don't get your hair off," said Horace, gripping his companion's knee in a painful manner. "You and I are chums of the Wild, old son, and those of that breed don't go back on one another." He released Prelice's knee, and leaned back, thoughtfully. "Of course, it was a shock for me to learn of Agstone's death." "Didn't you see it in the morning papers?" "No. I have more to do than to read riff-raff rubbish. You were the first to inform me. Well!" Horace leaned his arms on the splash-board calmly, "Steve's gone to see father and mother on the Astral Plane. I expect he will quarrel with them as usual. They never got on together." Prelice suppressed a smile at this odd, unchristian way of viewing death, and nodded. "I quite understand why you don't believe Agstone to be guilty!" he remarked after a pause. "Meaning that I'm a born fool," retorted Horace genially. "Make no mistake, old son. If Steve were guilty, I should not defend him in any way; but he was too devoted to old Lanwin to murder him. Besides----" The doctor suddenly checked himself. "But that's neither here nor there, my son." "What isn't?" asked Prelice alertly. "Never you mind; ask no questions and you'll be told no lies. Here we are at the door of the Temple of Falsehood. Get out." Prelice alighted with his companion, sorely puzzled to know what this enigmatic remark meant. That Horace knew of something which had to do with the Lanwin case he was perfectly sure; that the something implicated the late Mr. Agstone he was also certain. But Prelice knew his friend sufficiently well to be satisfied that he would not explain, unless it appeared to him needful to do so. All that could be done was to trust blindly to the rugged old sinner, and perhaps he would be able to lead those concerned in the case out of the labyrinth of crime. He certainly appeared to hold a clue. Dr. Horace, more brusque and domineering than ever, pushed his way into the crowded Court, eliciting comments the reverse of complimentary. Of these, with characteristic cynicism, he took no notice, but secured good places for himself and Prelice. In a few minutes he scribbled a note, and sent it to Cudworth, K.C. The Counsel read it with a puzzled air, glanced at the writer across the crowded Court, and whispered to the usher. Shortly Dr. Horace was requested to go to the lawyer's table, and was soon in deep conversation with the big barrister. While this was taking place Prelice stared at Miss Chent, who looked weary and sad as she sat in the dock. The strain of her perilous position was beginning to tell upon her, which was scarcely to be wondered at. Again her roving eyes caught sight of Prelice, and again she blushed, this time drawing a corresponding signal from him. Apparently the natures of these two were sympathetic. The case was rapidly drawing to a close, as the witnesses for the prosecution had been examined, and now those for the defence were giving evidence. From a solicitor at his elbow the young man learned that Cudworth had succeeded in proving the destruction of the will in Mona Chent's favour. This had been done by the production of half burnt and minutely torn scraps of paper rescued from the grate in the library. These, pieced together, had revealed the mention of the prisoner's name, and of the ten thousand a year, and of the love and affection felt by the testator for his niece. As the will could not be found, and it was certain that Sir Oliver had framed no new testament, the presumption was that the burnt document was the will in question, and despite all efforts the other side could not prove otherwise. This was assuredly a great point in the prisoner's favour, as had she murdered her uncle she would certainly not have destroyed a deed which made her wealthy. It was with great surprise that Prelice saw Shepworth placed in the witness-box to give evidence, since he had left him practically imprisoned in his own flat. Possibly Inspector Bruge had received instructions from Scotland Yard, on detailing what had happened in Alexander Mansions, to afford the judge and jury the opportunity of seeing how similar the murders of Agstone and his master were to one another. Shepworth was perfectly cheerful and composed, much more so than he had been on the previous day, so apparently he had no fear that his arrest would lead to his conviction. Indeed, he was so clearly innocent that Prelice expected he would be set free after the inquest proceedings on Agstone's body had taken place. Meanwhile he caught his friend's eye, and smiled, after which he smiled again encouragingly at Mona. Shepworth's evidence was to the effect that Miss Chent loved her uncle, and would never have harmed him in any way. Sir Oliver, in the course of an occult conversation, had referred to a certain herb--he did not give it any name--which when burned produced trances. Apparently, when prisoner entered the library to make up her quarrel with Sir Oliver, the baronet had been testing the herb, and the fumes had reduced Miss Chent to an unconscious state. Then Shepworth went on to detail his own experience, and narrated the same story as he had told to Prelice, to the two doctors, and to Inspector Bruge. Finally, he mentioned that Agstone had re-entered the dining-room, before returning with the masked lady, holding a knife. As Shepworth, naturally, was not asked if the knife was concealed in his desk, there was no need for him to commit perjury, which he would have been unwilling to do, even to save the girl he loved. While the barrister was giving his evidence Lord Prelice was called to Cudworth's side, and introduced by Dr. Horace. He learned that the Counsel wished him to appear as a witness and substantiate Shepworth's story, which the young man was perfectly willing to do. It thus happened that when Shepworth retired Cudworth examined Prelice, and heard from him how Shepworth had been found unconscious, and how many people, including Captain Jadby, had seen him in this helpless state. This evidence induced the recall of Jadby, and he reluctantly swore that the barrister was indeed unable to strike the murderous blow which had slain the old sailor. Both Shepworth and Prelice had given evidence as to the finding of the knife under the table by Inspector Bruge, and that officer himself next appeared to say how he had picked it up. Mrs. Blexey, Madame Marie Eppingrave, and two of the Grange servants were then called to depose that the paper-cutter with the jade handle, found in the flat by Bruge; and produced in Court, was the same that had lain on Sir Oliver's writing-table in the library, wherein the crime had been committed. Thus the jury, and indeed everyone else, believed that Agstone had murdered his master, and then had brought the knife up to Alexander Mansions, presumably to kill Shepworth; but, of course, the question as to who had killed Agstone was not touched upon. The final witness was Dr. Horace, and he dealt entirely with the questions of the perfumed smoke alluded to by the prisoner and by Shepworth. Producing a grotesque brown root and several stems covered with purple leaves, more or less withered, the doctor deposed that it was a certain plant growing in Easter Island, and nowhere else, so far as he knew. The natives gave it no name, but termed it "The Sacred Herb," and it was used by their priests to induce trances, in which the spirit was supposed to leave the body, and appear before the gods incarnate--so to speak--in the gigantic statues of the island. Belmain (for the prosecution): "Did you give any portion of this herb to Sir Oliver Lanwin?" Witness (emphatically): "No! I was acquainted with Sir Oliver in the South Seas, but I never met him in England. We did not get on well together, and were better apart." Belmain: "Then how did Sir Oliver become possessed of this herb, which, by your own showing, is to be found only in Easter Island?" Witness: "I cannot say how Sir Oliver got the herb. Of course, he was sailing the South Seas for years, and probably went to Easter Island. If he did, he certainly would have secured a portion of the herb from the native priests, seeing that he took so profound an interest in occult matters." Belmain: "Then you think that Sir Oliver was experimenting with the herb when prisoner entered the library?" Witness: "I think it extremely likely, considering the presence of the white smoke, and the tuberose perfume, which is exactly the kind of scent given off by the herb when burnt. The fumes of the herb would choke prisoner in the way she stated, and reduce her to unconsciousness." Belmain (significantly): "To complete unconsciousness?" Witness: "I think so, seeing that she was not accustomed to the smoke of the herb. A slight smoke would place anyone in a cataleptic state merely, but a dense smoke would take away all consciousness. It did so apparently in the case of Miss Chent, and although Mr. Shepworth was simply cataleptic at first, the waving of the bronze cup under his nose plunged him into the deeper state." Belmain: "How did Agstone become possessed of the herb to burn in Alexander Mansions?" Witness: "I really cannot tell you. Perhaps he went to Easter Island with his master, and got some leaves of the herb; or it might be that, when taking the knife away from the library, he also secured the leaves which were lying on Sir Oliver's desk." Belmain (quickly): "How do you know the leaves were there?" Witness (coolly): "I am only surmising. If Lanwin was experimenting with the herb, he must have got out his packet of leaves and roots. I expect, not being used to the herb, he was reduced either to catalepsy or to unconsciousness, and while thus helpless was murdered." Belmain: "By Steve Agstone?" Witness: "I am not prepared to say." (Very dryly.) "A very improper question," rebuked the judge; and Belmain sat down feeling that he had not scored off this rugged witness. Before Dr. Horace left the witness-box the judge, prompted by the foreman of the jury, requested him to burn some leaves of the herb at once. "But do not reduce us to a state of catalepsy," said the judge, with a smile; "we have to finish our business, you know." A china plate was brought, and on this Horace gravely laid two or three leaves of the Sacred Herb. On applying a match, a thick curl of pungent white smoke arose, like a summer cloud, and the odour of tuberoses was perceptibly indicated in the heavy atmosphere of the Court. Prelice, who was standing near the witness-box, and so smelt the perfume very strongly, suddenly felt sick, and swiftly pushed his way into the fresh air. He was inclined to faint, being susceptible to odours, and but that a good Samaritan addicted to alcohol had produced a flask of brandy, he would have become unconscious. When quite restored, he thought how very powerful the herb was, when even so slight a breath of the smoke could muddle his senses. No wonder that Miss Chent and Sir Oliver and Shepworth had become unconscious when the full power of the burning purple leaves was poured through the rooms. Prelice did not feel inclined to re-enter the Court, and sat outside in the vestibule, smoking a cigarette. Here he was joined by Captain Jadby, which rather surprised the young man, as he thought that the sailor's love for Mona Chent would have kept him in the Court. Also, Prelice was surprised when Jadby approached him in quite a friendly way, and with an apology. "I hope you have forgiven me for my rudeness last night, Lord Prelice," was his ingratiating remark. "I never gave it another thought," retorted Prelice brusquely. "Pray do not apologise again. You did so last night." "Thank you," said Jadby, smiling all over his smooth, feline face. "I am glad that you take it in such a spirit. By the way, I never knew that you were acquainted with Dr. Horace." Prelice stared at this impertinent remark. "Very probably," he said stiffly, "but then you know nothing about me." "I know that you went to Easter Island, Lord Prelice. I heard of your visit when I went there myself." "Oh," said Prelice alertly, "then you visited the Island also." "I have just said so," rejoined Jadby coolly, "but I did not bring away any of the herb, if that is what you mean." "It is _not_ what I mean," said the other, wondering why Jadby should say such a thing. "I don't accuse you of murdering Sir Oliver, even though you inherit the property." He was thus pointed and rude to get rid of the smiling man before him, as he felt the same antipathy to Jadby as he would have done to a cat, the one animal which Prelice could not endure. But the sailor was not at all annoyed, or if he was, did not show it. Rather did he smile in a very satisfied way. "Yes, I do inherit the property," he remarked, "and there is a good reason why I should." "Really," observed Prelice, considering what the reason might be, but unwilling to ask. "Yes, really," retorted the captain, still smiling; "of course, I am sorry for Miss Chent, but when she marries me all will be well." "You forget, sir. She marries Mr. Shepworth." "They are engaged," replied Jadby, with a shrug, "but I do not think that they will ever be married. Mrs. Rover----" Prelice interrupted imperiously. "What do you mean by mentioning Mrs. Rover's name in this connection?" he demanded, flushing. "Oh," said Jadby, with his hateful smile, "I understood that you and Mr. Shepworth were intimate friends. Good-day!" And before Prelice could stop him, Captain Jadby had vanished amidst the crowd, leaving, like the wasp he was, a sting behind him. Prelice frowned. He recollected Shepworth's blush, Lady Sophia's remarks, and now considered Captain Jadby's hint. It would seem that his friend was either in love with Mrs. Dolly Rover or was entangled in some way. If that was the case, he could not possibly love Mona, and if he did not---- Prelice's face grew crimson, and his eyes brightened. Then he shook himself free of the thought. Jadby was implying that Shepworth was behaving dishonourably, and Prelice could not bring himself to believe that such was the case. He had known Ned too long to doubt him. All the same, he felt that an explanation would clear the air, and concluded to ask Shepworth for one as delicately as possible. Upon that explanation would depend his future movements. Lord Prelice walked up and down the vestibule, musing on Mona, on her perilous position, on Shepworth's possible entanglement with Mrs. Rover, late Miss Constance Newton, and on the enigmatic hints of Dr. Horace dealing with the mysterious cases, in which friendship had involved him. Thus thinking, he lost all note of time, and it was only when a Court official came to turn on the electrics that he became aware of the passing of time. Glancing at his watch, he found that it was several hours since he had left the Court, and he determined to enter again, and hear the speeches of the Counsel for the Defence and Prosecution. But just as he turned in the direction of the Court he heard a cheer, and an excited throng of people poured out. In two minutes Prelice was in possession of the news, and learned that Mona Chent had been acquitted. She was free. CHAPTER XI. DR. HORACE'S WARNING. When London was made acquainted with the verdict, the majority of people were satisfied that justice had been done. Miss Chent's behaviour while in the dock, the open sympathy of the Grange servants, the occurrence of the second murder, so similar in all respects to the first, and the evidence of Horace with regard to the anæsthetic properties of the Sacred Herb of Easter Island, went far to enlist the public in favour of the accused girl. Perhaps, also, her youth and brilliant beauty had something to do with the loudly expressed pleasure of those who read in the newspapers that she had been set free. Of course, there were the usual malcontents, who agreed with no one, and wrote to the journals stating that the verdict was wrong. A communication to _The Daily Telegraph_ insisted that Miss Client must have lied, declaring that she fell senseless while unfastening the window for fresh air. If it had been the case Captain Jadby would have found her lying near the window, whereas she was discovered in the armchair near the fire, some distance away. But a supporter of the late prisoner replied to this by pointing out that the murderer of Sir Oliver undoubtedly had picked up the girl while she was insensible, and placed her in the chair. The first correspondent retorted that Sir Oliver was dead, and his murderer conspicuous by his absence, when Miss Chent entered the library, and so could not have shifted her from the floor on to the chair. To this the defending writer wrote that there was no proof of Sir Oliver being dead when Miss Chent entered, as it was apparent that the fumes of the herb had drugged him into insensibility, and therefore the murderer must have entered later to kill the baronet, and remove his niece from the place where she fell, by her own showing, to the chair in which she was discovered by Captain Jadby. And so the war of letter-writing went on; and although Mona was free from the danger of hanging, her character was still stained, in the opinion of some people, with the blood of her uncle. Prelice was furious when he read this correspondence, but, on the face of it, did not see how he could defend Mona, since he had no evidence to bring forward in her favour. On the testimony of the knife it was generally considered that Agstone had murdered his master, and then had come to Alexander Mansions to kill the barrister. But, of course, both Shepworth and his friend, knowing the true story of how the knife came into Agstone's possession, were by no means certain that the old sailor was guilty. The mystery of Sir Oliver's death was no longer one to the public--as everyone had been misled by the suppression of the evidence dealing with the knife--but it continued to be one to those who had suppressed that same evidence. But of one thing Lord Prelice was certain--namely, that Mona's character would have to be completely cleared by the discovery of the real criminal. With this idea in his mind, he went next day to Alexander Mansions, and learned--somewhat to his surprise--that Shepworth was within. Inspector Bruge informed him of this at a chance meeting on the stairs, and affably told the constable guarding the door of Number Forty that Lord Prelice was to be admitted to see the prisoner. "Not that he is a prisoner," said Bruge, nodding; "we are merely detaining Mr. Shepworth until the inquest is held on the body of Agstone." "When does the inquest take place?" asked Prelice, lingering to ask necessary questions. "To-morrow, at three o'clock in the afternoon, at the Greyhound Hotel, Kensington. Beyond the fact that the jury will bring in a verdict of wilful murder against some person, or persons, unknown, I don't think that we--the police that is, my lord--can give any evidence to indicate the assassin of Agstone." "Then why accuse Mr. Shepworth?" "I don't accuse him." "If you don't, why arrest him?" "It is best to be on the safe side," said Bruge dryly; "and notwithstanding what Mr. Shepworth may have written to you, my lord, the arrest has not taken place. He is merely detained, pending the inquest." "And under suspicion?" flashed out Prelice loyally. The Inspector shrugged his square shoulders. "If you like to put it in that way," he said indifferently. "But it is absurd to suspect Mr. Shepworth," cried Prelice excitedly; "many people saw him insensible, in the same way that Miss Chent was insensible. If she is guiltless--and a competent jury have acquitted her--Mr. Shepworth also must be innocent. The evidence of Dr. Horace----" "Quite so, my lord," interrupted Bruge, with rather a bored air; "but all that will be discussed at the inquest. We need not enter into it now, considering we have insufficient premises to go upon." "If anyone murdered Agstone----" "Which they certainly did, since no man can stab himself in the back." "It must have been the lady seen by Mr. Shepworth," finished Prelice. "Hum! That might have been a hallucination." "And the moon may be made of cream cheese," retorted Prelice heatedly. "It may be," assented Bruge gravely; "I know no reason to the contrary, my lord. But this talk leads to nothing, and I am very busy. Go in and see your friend. You will find Dr. Horace with him." "Dr. Horace?" echoed the young man, staring. Inspector Bruge nodded. "So you may guess that, when thus permitted to see his friends, Mr. Shepworth is not a legitimate prisoner. By the way," added Bruge formally as he took his leave, "I am delighted that Miss Chent has been acquitted." "Of course. She is innocent." "Entirely innocent in my opinion, and very beautiful also. Mr. Shepworth is a lucky man, my lord. Good-day." The Inspector descended the stairs, leaving Prelice somewhat puzzled. The young man could not quite determine whether Bruge believed Shepworth to be innocent or guilty. At one time he said one thing; again, he hinted at another. However, it was useless to ponder over the enigma; so Prelice entered the flat, after a word or two with the uniformed Cerberus who guarded the door, and was conducted by a somewhat pale parlour-maid to the library. Here he found Dr. Horace, looking more uncivilised than ever, in deep conversation with Ned. The latter sprang up when his friend entered. Shepworth had lost some of his ruddy colour, and his eyes had dark circles under them. Otherwise he appeared to be quite composed, and not at all like a man accused of a serious crime. And in spite of Bruge's protestations, Prelice believed that the Inspector did so accuse him, mentally at all events. "You are just in time, Prelice," cried Shepworth, grasping the new-comer's hand warmly; "in addition to the mysteries of these murders we have another to solve in the person of our friend here." "There's no mystery about me," said Horace gruffly. "I merely advise you to leave matters as they stand." Prelice looked as astonished as Shepworth. "But I say," he cried, "you wanted to take a hand in the game yourself, Horace." "I _have_ taken a hand," retorted the doctor coolly, "and I have won. My aim was to save Miss Chent from being unjustly convicted; for whomsoever murdered Lanwin, I am convinced that she is innocent. As she is now free, and the prevailing opinion seems to be that Agstone is guilty, why stir up muddy water and waken sleeping dogs?" "You forget," said Shepworth rather tartly, "that I have to be cleared myself. Bruge says that I am innocent, but the fact that he has practically arrested me proves that he thinks the contrary." Horace, who was smoking his ungainly German pipe, shook his shaggy head vigorously. "When the inquest takes place, you will be discharged without a stain on your character. That being the case, my advice to you is a speedy marriage with Miss Chent, who is also free. Don't bother your head further about these two murders." When Horace mentioned marriage with Mona so pointedly Prelice darted a side glance at his chum, bearing in mind the hints of Captain Jadby and Lady Sophia. As he expected, Shepworth coloured and looked confused. "At present I am not rich enough to marry Mona," he said in a halting way; "and by the burning of the will she loses the property." Horace chuckled silently. "Which goes to Captain Jadby?" "Yes. The earlier will comes into force now that the latter one has been destroyed." "In that case," observed Horace, complacently puffing at his pipe, "I should advise her to marry Captain Jadby." Shepworth, still looking uneasy, went to stare out of the window, and it was Prelice who replied. "I'm hanged if she'll do that." "Why not?" inquired the doctor, with a keen glance. "Jadby has the money by Shepworth's showing; he isn't bad-looking, and he loves her devotedly. Also, it was Sir Oliver's wish." "Jadby's a cattish ruffian," cried Prelice warmly, and with a sudden access of colour; "we don't know where he comes from or----" "From the South Seas, my old son." "Or who he is," continued Prelice impetuously. "It would be a shame that so delightful a girl should marry a shady buccaneer. Ned, you are engaged to Miss Chent--why don't you speak?" "There is nothing to say," replied the barrister somewhat coldly. "If Miss Chent will take me, a pauper as I am, I shall only be too charmed to make her my wife." Prelice raised his eyebrows. A conviction was forcing itself upon him that Ned had no real love for the girl. But if that was the case, why had he become engaged to her; why had he so vigorously defended her of late? Then there was Mrs. Dolly Rover; but Prelice knew nothing about that mysterious lady, as he had not seen her since returning to London. He had half a mind then and there to demand an explanation from Ned; but the presence of Dr. Horace restrained him, and with an afterthought of wisdom, he determined to interview Mrs. Rover herself before coming to an understanding with the barrister. As it was therefore unnecessary to pursue the subject, and as already Horace was asking him mutely why he should take such an interest in an engaged young lady, Prelice changed the subject by an attack on the doctor himself. "I can't understand why you should wish to abandon the search into these cases when you were so keen yesterday to run the show on your own." Horace quite understood the slang of the concluding remark. "I merely quoted a proverb about letting sleeping dogs lie," he said coolly. "Why? Are you afraid for a certain person?" questioned Prelice, meaning Agstone and the listener's relationship with Agstone. "Oh no," retorted the doctor, quite aware of what Prelice was referring to. "The person you hint at is dead, and everyone believes him guilty of the first murder. It doesn't matter who killed him, as Shepworth here is sure to be acquitted. I don't care a damn one way or the other, as you will respect my confidence." "What confidence?" asked the barrister suddenly. "One that I made to Prelice here," said the doctor dryly; then heaving up his squat figure from the armchair, he waddled towards the door. There he paused, and addressed himself to Prelice: "If you go on prying into this matter," he said, with uplifted finger, "you will be very, very sorry, my son." "What do you mean?" "Gammon and spinach," said Horace, again enigmatic, and hurled himself out of the room, still smoking his unwieldy pipe. The two young men stared at one another. "Is he mad?" asked Shepworth. "Mad like Hamlet, south-sou'west," rejoined the other in a vexed tone; "unless he is in league with that Jadby bounder, whom he knew in the South Seas, I don't know what he means by backing out." "But surely you don't suspect Jadby?" asked Ned, startled. "Why not? He was at Mrs. Rover's ball." "Nonsense. She doesn't know him!" "Remember the jewel robberies," said Prelice dryly; "a great number of people unknown to host or hostess were at that ball." "But Jadby!" Shepworth bit his fingers perplexedly. "You can't suspect him? He came and saw me, and then went away. It was a woman whom Agstone brought in. She must have killed Agstone." Prelice shrugged his shoulders, and sauntered about the room. "Perhaps!" he remarked carelessly, sauntering about the room. "I certainly have no reason to suspect Jadby, save that he was at the ball." "How do you know?" "He was one of the crowd that rushed in to see you insensible, and he wore a domino and mask, as did the rest of them." "Then how did you spot him?" "He unmasked." "That shows his innocence," declared Shepworth quickly, "for if he had come to the ball to slip down and murder Agstone, he would not have revealed himself." "Hum! Hum! Perhaps not." Prelice threw himself into a chair. "However, I shall keep an eye on Jadby." "Then you are still searching into the case?" "Into both cases," corrected the other, lighting a cigar; "I want to learn who killed Lanwin, and who murdered Agstone." "Out of friendship for me," cried Shepworth, grasping his chum's hand. "You are a brick, Dorry." Prelice returned the grasp, but blushed a trifle. He knew that love for Mona prompted the desire to search, as much as friendship for the man before him. If he could only understand Shepworth's attitude towards the girl and towards Mrs. Rover! Again it was on the tip of his tongue to ask a leading question, but he suppressed the desire, and kept to his earlier resolution to see the lady in the flat overhead. "By the way," said Prelice carelessly, "have you seen Miss Chent?" "No," answered Shepworth rather ruefully. "I wish I could have seen her, but Bruge hurried me away from the Court to keep me as a kind of state prisoner here. However, Mona wrote me a short note thanking me for all I had done, and said that she was going down to Lanwin Grange." "But if that belongs to Jadby----" "The will isn't proved yet," interrupted the barrister quickly, "and until it is, Mr. Martaban thinks Mona should stop at the Grange." "Mr. Martaban?" "The late Sir Oliver's lawyer--a kind, clever old chap. He has taken Mona down to the Grange; and Mrs. Blexey, who is devoted to her, will look after the poor girl until I am free to visit her." "You'll go down, of course," said Prelice nervously. "Oh yes; as soon as the inquest is over and Bruge sets me free. I do not see how I can be arrested. But meanwhile, Dorry, you could do me a great favour?" Prelice raised his eyes. "What is that?" "Go down at once to Hythe and see Mona." "But I don't know her," said Prelice, taken aback, although his face grew hot and his heart bounded at the idea of meeting this adorable girl, with whom he now knew himself to be in love. "I'll give you a card of introduction. Tell her that I'm all right and will be down as soon as I can." "All right," assented Prelice, feeling a guilty joy in thus yielding to a delightful temptation. "But the case?" "That can look after itself until the inquest is over. Then, when I have seen Mona, and her future is settled by Martaban--her living and income and all that I mean--we can look into matters. I am as keen as you are to get at the truth of these two murders, Dorry. We can dispense with Horace." "I wish I knew exactly why he backed out," muttered Prelice thoughtfully; "it is so unlike Horace to jib." "Perhaps he has something to do with the matter himself, seeing that he possessed the Sacred Herb," said Shepworth jocularly. "Nonsense. Horace would kill one man and a dozen men in fair fight, but he's not the chap to stick anyone in the back. By the way, tell me one thing, Ned. This lady, who came in with Agstone, and waved the cup under your nose to make you insensible--she wore a green mask, you said?" "Yes; and a green domino also." Prelice nodded. "Did you catch a glimpse of her frock by any chance, or did your senses fail you?" "They did not fail me too quickly. I _did_ see her frock. It was a white dress with thin lines of red running horizontally across it." "Many lines?" asked Prelice breathlessly. "It seemed to be ruled like a page of music," said Shepworth. "Why, what is the matter?" "Matter!" echoed Prelice, who had risen and was dancing round the room like a school-boy. "What you say gives me a clue. I saw that dress at the ball. The lady who wore it was scented with tuberoses----" "With tuberoses?" "Or with the Sacred Herb. I must find out who she is." "How can you?" "I don't know. I can't say. But if we can find her we may learn if she killed Agstone, and why she did it. That discovery will lead to learning who murdered Lanwin. It is the beginning of the end. Give up the case indeed!" cried Prelice exultantly--"why, it's the only thing that renders life in London bearable." "But do you think that this lady is guilty?" asked Shepworth doubtfully. "Of course I do. Otherwise, why should she be scented with the perfume of the Sacred Herb, which has to do with both crimes?" Shepworth shook his head, unable to answer this question. CHAPTER XII. MRS. DOLLY ROVER. Shortly after the reference to the unknown lady, Lord Prelice took a hasty leave. There was nothing more to be said, as matters up to date had been threshed out thoroughly between them. Until the inquest had been held on the body of Agstone, and Shepworth's immediate future was decided, no move could be made towards elucidating the mysteries. Moreover, Prelice was mortally afraid lest Shepworth should alter his mind about making him ambassador to Miss Chent at Hythe. Strong-willed as the young man was, when he chose to exercise that same will he could not deny himself the pleasure of being in Mona's company, if only for ten minutes. Besides, he very much wished to learn if she truly loved Ned, for by this time he felt sure that Ned had no very deep affection for her. In his hurry to catch a train to Hythe, Prelice quite forgot his determination to see Mrs. Rover, and learn how matters stood between her and the barrister. But the powers that direct the actions of men, and the lives that are made by such actions, brought about a meeting with the lady almost immediately. After shaking hands with the pseudo-prisoner, Prelice left the flat, to find Mrs. Rover arguing vehemently with the constable posted at the outer door. She wished to enter and see Shepworth; the constable, pursuant to strict orders, was trying to point out that his duty lay in stopping her, a point which Mrs. Rover obstinately refused to see. "I wish to enter," she kept repeating. "It is necessary that I should see Mr. Shepworth, and----" "Will I do instead?" said Prelice, suddenly appearing at the open door. "Dorry!" cried Mrs. Rover, giving him the pet name of his youth. "What are you doing here?" "I am talking to you," said the young man, shaking hands, "but just now I have been chatting with Ned." "Then why can't I chat with him also?" demanded the lady. Prelice shrugged his shoulders. "Ned is allowed to see no one, unless Inspector Bruge gives permission." "What rubbish! Let me go in!" And Mrs. Rover, in a flaming temper, tried to push past the policeman. "You can't, ma'am," he said firmly and respectfully; adding to the pale parlour-maid, who still lingered, out of sheer curiosity: "Close that door straight away." "I'll report you," cried Mrs. Rover, when she saw the door practically banged in her angry face. "All right, ma'am. But dooty is dooty." "Constance! Constance!" whispered Prelice, touching her arm. "Don't make an exhibition of yourself before the servants. The man is only doing his duty. Come upstairs, and we can have a chat." "What about?" demanded Mrs. Rover swiftly; and Prelice saw, or thought he saw, a glint of fear in her eyes. "Well," he answered, smiling, "I have not had an opportunity of talking to you since I returned to town, so it is natural that I should wish for a short conversation." Mrs. Rover, who apparently was an extremely obstinate woman, paused irresolutely, looking at the stolid policeman with a battle light in her eyes. But the constable met her gaze firmly, so finding that feminine persistence could do nothing in the face of an official barrier, she turned away biting her lip. "Come upstairs, Dorry," she said, beginning to ascend; "I can do nothing with that fool." Prelice smiled at this Parthian arrow, and slipped a florin into the constable's hand to pacify him for the parting insult. Then he ran up after the lady, and reached her on the next landing. "You ought to be pleased, Constance," he said slyly; "you've had the last word." "I should like to have had the last half-dozen," she retorted, putting a Yale latch-key into the lock. "I think that you have even achieved that," replied Prelice dryly. "It is extraordinary that women never will learn that the law is stronger than sheer temper." "I am not in a temper," snapped Mrs. Rover, sweeping into her flat. "I never was calmer in my life--never, never, never." "I am quite content to believe that," said her companion acidly; for as Constance Newton, Mrs. Rover had not been noted for imperturbability. It was all the better, in Prelice's opinion, that her temperament should be thus fiery, as he would discover from her rash tongue much that a more cautious and composed woman would withhold. Moreover, Constance and her visitor had been friends for many a long year--witness her calling him Dorry--and she was accustomed to speak frankly to him about her troubles. Had Prelice been in England when the stockbroker was courting the lady, it is doubtful if Constance would ever have become Mrs. Rover. And Prelice strongly suspected that Mr. Rover found Ned Shepworth an inconvenient third in his married state. "You are looking very well, Constance," said Prelice when the two were seated in the drawing-room, which was more gorgeous than artistic. "I'm not well then. I'm nearly worried to death." "So sorry. Tell me all about it." "I'll do nothing of the sort." "I beg your pardon. Let us chat about the weather." "Do you think that I have time to waste in discussing barometers?" She rose, impetuously. "Don't know, I'm sure," replied Prelice, keeping his temper admirably. "Well then, I haven't." "Would it do any good if I gave you a thorough shaking?" "Yes, it would. If Dolly shook me I should respect him; but he lets me lead him the life of a dog, and doesn't even bark, much less bite." "I see, you prefer a bull-dog to a poodle." "Ned isn't a----" Mrs. Rover stopped in the centre of the room, grew red, and could have bitten out her tongue for so incautious a speech. "What rubbish you talk!" she said, trying to smile carelessly. Prelice looked at her gravely. "I hope you are talking rubbish too." "I wish I were dead and buried!" whispered Mrs. Rover, and once more sat down to burst into violent tears. Expert in the handling of the sex, Prelice knew better than to offer a single word of consolation. He lay back in his chair, quietly watching the progress of the storm. Mrs. Rover was going through the usual programme of upset woman. She had raged, now she wept, and would shortly be offering an apology for her conduct on the plea of nerves. Constance had certainly grown into a handsome woman. When Prelice had left England seven years before she was merely a school-girl, very gawky and very awkward. Now she appeared tall, majestic, and beautiful after the voluptuous style of Juno, Queen of Olympus. Her hair and eyes were dark, her features delicate and regular, and her figure was finely formed, even if a trifle inclined to stoutness, as it assuredly was. Prelice had somewhere seen an old print of Catherine II. of Russia, and it struck him that Mrs. Rover greatly resembled the Empress, although she was undeniably a more lovely woman. It was unfortunate that her face should have been marred by a sullen expression, hinting at a superlatively bad temper. But many people--unobservant as most people are--never noted this defect. They only saw before their ravished eyes a handsome, well-bred, graceful woman, perfectly dressed, and quite able to hold her own in the most exacting society. Yes, Constance had improved greatly. Prelice admitted that, but he wished to find out if she possessed the same beauty of character as of person. From what he had heard and what he had seen, he had grave doubts on this point. "Pray excuse me," said Mrs. Rover, offering the expected social apology in a faint voice. "I'm rather upset; my nerves are out of order. The season has been trying, and then that horrid ball bowled me over, with its robberies and murders; not to speak of Dolly, who is--who is---- Oh, I don't know what he is." "Do you think it is good taste to discuss your husband with me?" asked Prelice rather tartly. "You are the only true friend I have in the world, Dorry." "Then you have made no acquaintances since I left England seven years ago, Constance?" "Oh, acquaintances?" she echoed contemptuously, rolling her damp handkerchief into a ball. "I have hundreds of these. But a friend--oh, Dorry, there isn't a single person I'd trust with a shoe-lace." "He or she would not thank you if you did," replied Prelice, smiling; "a shoe-lace is not good security for anything." "That's just it," wailed Mrs. Rover, dabbing her red eyes with the handkerchief; "people like one for what they can get out of one. But there isn't a soul to help me--poor me." "Won't Ned?" asked her companion very deliberately. Mrs. Rover darted a keen glance at him, and rose to alter the position of her hat in front of the mirror over the fireplace. Prelice knew quite well that she was watching him in the mirror, and carefully smoothed all expression out of his good-humoured face. "Ned!" repeated Mrs. Rover, patting her back hair; "oh yes, Ned, of course. Do you think they will hang him?" she demanded, wheeling round, rather white, and breathing hard. "Good heavens, no. What put that into your head?" "He isn't allowed to see me. The arrest----" "Ned hasn't been arrested. The fact that he was seen insensible by heaps of people proves his innocence. Bruge is simply detaining him as a necessary witness, although I admit that Bruge is taking a somewhat high hand in the matter. Don't bother your head about Ned, Constance. He'll soon be free to marry that girl." "Mona Chent!" Mrs. Rover clenched her hands, and breathed still harder, while Prelice anxiously watched the effect of his deliberate introduction of the name. "Oh yes." She went off into a meaningless trill of laughter. "She's free, isn't she? Lucky girl, for I quite believe that she killed her uncle." "Why do you believe that?" demanded Prelice. "Everyone says so." "Everyone does _not_ say so. The majority of people think that the verdict is a just one. I do myself." "Do you know her?" "No. What has that to do with it?" "You won't like her when you do know her," said Mrs. Rover spitefully. "She's a horrid girl; I never liked her." "That's a pity; you won't be able to visit Ned's wife." "She isn't his wife yet," breathed Mrs. Rover, trying to keep her temper in check; "perhaps she never will be." "Oh," Prelice spoke with calculated daring and cruelty, "do you then think that Mr. Rover will die?" "You coward--you----" She broke off. "What do you mean by that?" "I would rather you explained, Constance." "I have nothing to explain. Did you come here to insult me?" "Of course," replied Prelice, rising; "and now that I have done so, I may as well take my leave." She seized him by the lapels of his coat before he could reach the door. "Don't go, don't go," she panted; "I do so want a friend. I'll tell you all; you shall know everything." "If it is against your husband, I sha'n't listen." "You shall! Sit down, and hear what I have to say." Prelice was a strong young man, but for the moment her feminine strength prevailed, and he found himself forced into his former seat. "I wouldn't say what I'm going to say to everyone," panted Mrs. Rover, who was very strongly moved, "but, even though we have been apart for so many years, I still regard you as my best friend. You and I were boy and girl together, Dorry--you remember----" "Ned also," interposed Prelice pointedly. "Yes! Yes. Of course. I always loved Ned." "Constance, what are you saying?" She rose, and beat her hands together. "The truth--the truth! I liked you, Dorry, I always liked you, but I loved Ned, and I shall love him until I die!" She looked like a tragedy queen. Prelice grew impatient, being a very matter-of-fact young man. "Don't be melodramatic, Constance. Sit down, and explain quietly." With that wonderful adaptability of women, at which man never ceases to marvel, Mrs. Rover sat down, and composed herself with a violent effort. When next she spoke it was in so cold and icy a tone that Prelice, had his eyes been closed, could have sworn that another person had joined in the dialogue. "You know that my father, the General, was not rich, and that my mother was extravagant. I was the only child, and my parents wished me to make a wealthy marriage, so that their affairs might be put right. That is, my mother wished it, for my father, dear old man, desired me to consult my own heart. I did, and it told me to marry Ned. We were half engaged. My father was willing in spite of his difficulties, but my mother would not consent. Ned was poor, you know; he had only five hundred a year of his own, and has not yet made a success at the Bar. Then Dolly Rover came along." She stopped, and bit her lip, while her hands moved restlessly, as though boxing her husband's ears. "What about Mr. Rover?" asked Prelice soothingly. Then the natural woman came out, and she rose in a rage. "I hate Dolly like poison," she cried, pacing up and down the room, twisting her hands together; "he's a horrid, sneaky little cur, who----" "Don't abuse your husband, Constance," interrupted Prelice impatiently; "it does no good. You married him of your own free will." "I did nothing of the sort. I married him to save my father from going through the Bankruptcy Court. It would have broken his heart, dear old father, and he would have died. Dolly knew that I hated him, and that I loved Ned. But he demanded his price, like the mean dog that he is. My mother was on his side too, and I could not bear to see my father suffer. I parted with Ned, and married Dolly. That is, I sold myself, on condition that father's debts were paid. I kept to my part of the bargain----" "And didn't your husband keep to his?" "No," Mrs. Rover stamped violently; "he paid a portion of the debts; enough to avert bankruptcy merely. But he left father the worry, and of that worry father died. My mother has married again--a rich man--so she is happy. And here am I tied to Dolly--ugh! the name--while my heart is breaking for Ned." "It is a hard case," said Prelice, sorry for the miserable woman; "still, your self-respect, Constance." "That is right--preach, preach, preach. So like a man," she mocked. "I have kept my self-respect as you term it. I am a good wife to Dolly, although I detest him. I have never said a word against him to anyone, and I wouldn't to you, but that I must speak or suffocate. I can trust you, Dorry, and you understand how I feel, and what I feel. I love Ned. I want to marry Ned, and here I'm tied to--to----" Prelice interrupted. "It is hard on you, Constance, I admit," he said, "but you must make the best of it. You say that you lead your husband the life of a dog." "Of a pet dog, of a poodle. He's so meek and mild and sneaky that I can't respect him. He merely sniggers when I grow angry, and chuckles how he got the best of me over the marriage by not paying all father's debts. Oh, what is the use of talking! I love Ned, and Ned loves me." Prelice jumped up. "I can't believe that," he declared, growing angry, "for Ned is engaged to Miss Chent. If he loves you, why is he----" "Don't ask questions," interrupted Mrs. Rover angrily; "or if you must ask them, go to Ned; or better still, to Mona Chent herself." "What can I ask Miss Chent?" demanded Prelice sharply. "It's very warm weather," mocked Mrs. Rover, "and I think there will be a thunder-storm." The young man looked at her, and saw her mouth set obstinately. He knew as well as if she had spoken that there was nothing more to be got out of her for the time being. But what she had said made him all the more determined to see Miss Chent, and learn the truth about the engagement to Shepworth. Meanwhile he took the wind out of Mrs. Rover's sails by falling in with her humour. "It will be a good thing if it does thunder and rain," he remarked, glancing out of the window; "it will clear the air." Mrs. Rover looked as though she would have struck him, but being unable to parry his thrust, threw herself sulkily on the sofa. Prelice took up hat and gloves to depart, but halted at the door with premeditated craft. A sudden thought had struck him. "Constance," he said in a natural tone, "I am in love." "Indeed," she said indifferently. "Yes; with a lady who was at your ball." The remark made her rouse herself, and she sat up with a look of curiosity. "Who is she?" "I want you to tell me that. I could not see her face, and very little of her figure, owing to the domino, but she seemed to be so charming when we talked together"--this was a lie to gain information--"that I quite lost my heart." "It's easy lost," said Mrs. Rover, curling her lip. "The woman may be as ugly as sin under her mask. How was she dressed?" "In a green mask and domino," Mrs. Rover stiffened, "and with a white dress streaked with lines of red velvet. Why do you laugh?" he asked, for Mrs. Rover was trying to suppress her mirth. "Why?" she cried, shaking with merriment, "because _I_ wore that dress and mask and domino." "You?" Prelice looked horrified. "Yes. Why do you look at me like that?" "You?" Prelice backed to the door in silent horror. He could not trust himself to speak, and finally disappeared, leaving Mrs. Rover petrified with amazement, perhaps with dread. CHAPTER XIII. LANWIN GRANGE. In the exercise of his profession, a legitimate detective would have waited to question Mrs. Rover. Since she had said so much he would have forced her to say all, in order to get at the truth as speedily as possible; but Lord Prelice was new to the business, and his emotions were not entirely under control. On leaving Alexander Mansions he felt that he was in possession of a most dangerous and perilous secret, the publication of which would cause even a greater sensation than that produced by the crimes themselves. The shock of learning that Mrs. Rover was the woman who had been brought by Agstone into Number Forty was very great, and quite confused Prelice's usually strong brain. He did not dare to call again on Shepworth, lest he should say too much. It will be seen that Prelice, being an untrained detective, jumped somewhat hastily to a conclusion. Mrs. Rover had admitted that she wore the dress, the mask, and the domino which Shepworth had seen on the unknown lady. But Constance did not know that Ned had so described her appearance, and, if she had, would probably not have admitted that she had assumed such a costume at her _bal masque_. But the mere fact that, even in ignorance of Shepworth's description, she had, as the saying goes, given herself away, should have proved to Lord Prelice that she could not be guilty. Had Mrs. Rover entered Number Forty in Agstone's company, and had she struck the blow, she assuredly would not have incriminated herself so unthinkingly. Rather would she have denied that the frock mentioned by Prelice belonged to her. After the first shock, and while Prelice was in the train going to Hythe, he began to revise his earlier opinion on the above-mentioned grounds. His common-sense came to his aid, and told him that, if guilty, Mrs. Rover would not have confessed even to a half-truth. Certainly, had she not done so, her maid, knowing what dress her mistress wore at the ball, might have blurted out the secret; but then, so far as the world knew, no inquiry would have been made about the wearer of that especial frock. Of course, assuming that in a thoughtless moment Mrs. Rover had foolishly confessed the truth, Prelice could find a motive for her behaviour in committing the crime. It might be that Agstone wished to kill Ned, and that Mrs. Rover, to save the life of the man she loved, had struck down the sailor unawares. Having committed the deed, she could easily slip back to her own flat, and mingle with the masked crowd. But then again, as Prelice further argued, while the train drew near to the coast, Mrs. Rover must have known that in murdering Agstone she was not only securing the freedom of Mona Chent, whom she hated, but also was placing her lover in a dangerous position. Agstone was a necessary witness for the prosecution, whom Shepworth of all men did not wish to see placed in the box, so the supposition would be, were the man found dead in Number Forty, that Shepworth had killed him to save Mona Chent. As a matter of fact, this is exactly what had taken place, and in saving Ned from the sailor's knife Mrs. Rover, always presuming that she was guilty, had simply condemned her lover to a death on the scaffold. But that Prelice had been clever enough to admit the crowd of guests, so that all might see the barrister's helpless position, it is certain that the man would have been arrested, and probably sentenced to death, since it would have been extraordinarily difficult for him to clear his character in the face of circumstances. Therefore on these assumptions, for that they were and no more, Prelice after much reflection decided that Mrs. Rover was innocent. Finally, the young man recollected that a woman dressed as described, by Ned, and in the costume which Mrs. Rover confessed to wearing, had passed down the stairs while he was waiting for entrance to Number Forty and immediately before the discovery of the crime. She could scarcely have been Mrs. Rover, for as that lady could have easily proved an _alibi_ by returning to her guests and casually unmasking at the right moment, it would have been useless for her to leave the mansions. Of course, the lady--whether Mrs. Rover or a stranger--certainly might have followed Prelice down to the door, knowing that he would be certain to discover the tragedy, and might merely have descended to return to the ballroom overhead when the young man entered Shepworth's flat. But then, again, the person in question could not have known that Prelice, masked and unknown, was going to enter Number Forty, so there would be no reason to track him there. And to conclude, the murderess--if a woman was guilty--must have known that Shepworth, being in a cataleptic state, must have seen and remembered her very peculiar frock. On the whole, Prelice arrived at certain conclusions, by no means inimical to Mrs. Rover, by the time he alighted at Hythe Station. He believed that Constance was innocent for four reasons. Firstly, if guilty, she would not have confessed to wearing the dress, since such a confession would necessarily lead to her detection. Secondly, by killing Agstone she would not only have placed Shepworth in a dangerous position, but by getting rid of an inconvenient witness would have enabled Mona to escape possible condemnation. Thirdly, she would not have followed an unknown man--as Prelice was by reason of his mask and domino--down the stairs with the intention of seeing what took place. Fourthly, and lastly, she would not have sought safety in an incriminating flight--as the similarly dressed woman on the stairs apparently had--when she would have been much safer in her own ballroom and amongst her own guests. Only by such a course could she have provided an _alibi_. No! Mrs. Rover, in spite of her startling admission, was innocent, and the sole conclusion that Prelice could arrive at, was the existence of a double--outwardly at all events. He remembered the extraordinary ubiquity of the green domino in the red-streaked white dress, and decided, very naturally, that there was another woman in the field. But what woman possessed a motive sufficiently strong to urge her to murder Agstone? As Prelice felt quite worn out with arguing in Mrs. Rover's defence, he decided to leave the answering of this new question to the portentous moment, when further evidence might reveal the identity of the unknown lady. Meanwhile, on arriving at Hythe, he rested himself at a quiet hotel, and soothed his troubled brain with an hour's necessary sleep. Later on, after an invigorating bath and an excellent dinner, he started to walk towards Lanwin Grange. It was summer, and romance was in the air--at least Prelice scented its presence by some sixth sense. He was going to see the girl he loved--the girl with whom he had not, as yet, exchanged a single word. Therefore, although past the peacock age, he was particularly attentive to his appearance when assuming his evening clothes. As he strolled inland along the leafy lanes, through the July warmth of the twilight, this somewhat premature wooer looked as comely and well groomed a swain as any damsel, not demanding an Apollo, could desire. And it was a great proof of Prelice's infatuation that, in looking forward to meeting Mona, he almost forgot that he was merely the emissary of the man to whom the girl was engaged. The whole position was extraordinarily queer. He adored this girl, without being personally acquainted with her; she was affianced to his best friend; and yet he could not be certain if that same best friend really loved the girl herself. Even a Palais Royal farce could offer no more fantastic complication than this. Prelice felt that, after running round the wild world in search of the unusual, he had returned to find Romance sitting on his doorstep. The way to the family seat of the Lanwins twisted inland and uphill through deep lanes and umbrageous woods. On emerging high up from the belt of trees Prelice found himself on a wide, unshaded road, snaking over bare Downs. For some distance he toiled upward; then the road mounted a rise to slip down into a cup-shaped hollow brimmed with cultivated woods. In the midst of these he saw an old grey house, seemingly prevented from falling to pieces by the ivy which covered its mouldering walls. From the lips of the hollow stretched the rolling grassy Downs, dotted with nibbling sheep, grey in the shadows of the coming night. But it was not yet night, for the sky was filled with a luminous light, all-pervading, yet emanating from no certain point. A breathless peace brooded over the vast, treeless uplands, and an even deeper peace seemed to enwrap the ancient mansion. It appeared to be the veritable palace of the Sleeping Beauty, set amidst enchanted woods. And Prelice thrilled with the idea that Beauty herself, awake and unkissed, awaited some prince in the seclusion of her faery castle. Following the road, which here grew somewhat narrower, Lord Prelice descended into the hollow, passed under the shade of overhanging trees, and came out into a kind of artificial glade, smooth with carefully tended lawns and brilliant with flowers. The Grange itself was somewhat sunken in the ground, entirely level with the lawns, and looked like part of the woods themselves, so clothed was it with darkly green ivy. There appeared a weather-worn escutcheon over the great doorway, and lights gleamed from oriel windows in the east wing. But to the left Prelice saw the three tall French windows opening on to a wide terrace which had been referred to at the trial. These windows appeared quite out of keeping with the Tudor architecture of the mansion, but the visitor eyed them with great interest. It was through one of those windows that Agstone and Jadby had looked, to see the tragedy of Sir Oliver's death. And had that not taken place Prelice might never have been brought into contact with the most charming girl in the world. His heart beat loudly as he rang the bell. Afterwards Lord Prelice never could explain clearly how he had first come into the presence of his goddess. In a bewildered manner he waited in the antique hall, after delivering his card to a pompous footman, and in a bewildered manner was led into a long, low, wide drawing-room with oriels at the farther end, brilliant with family crests in stained glass. So far as he could recollect, he did not look at the cumbersome Georgian furniture, or at the aggressively modern grand piano, which seemed to be out of place, or at the portraits of cavaliers and their ladies decking the mellow-hued walls, or even at the painted ceiling, or the carpet tinted with rainbow colours, subdued by time to grateful sobriety: he had no eyes save for a tall slim girl arrayed in a white dress, with a somewhat pale, worn face, who welcomed him in the sweetest of voices and with the most grateful of smiles. "I am glad to see Ned's best friend," she said, and her voice sounded like faery music in the new-comer's ravished ears, "and to thank him." "To thank me!" muttered Prelice, staring at the lovely face in the mellow lamplight. "I saw you in that terrible Court," she said swiftly, "and the way in which you looked at me gave me comfort. Other people--my friends, they call themselves--stared as though I were a wild animal, but you, Lord Prelice----" She threw out her hands with an eloquent gesture full of grace. "Ned wrote and told me that you were his friend." "I am here to be yours also," stuttered Prelice, suppressing a wild desire to kneel and worship. "We are friends already. It does not need words to confirm a friendship offered and accepted mutely and with gratitude." Prelice felt more bewildered than ever. Here was a girl so entirely unconventional that she defied the usages of Society, which prescribed the etiquette for a primary meeting between bachelor and maid. It was marvellously sweet to be thus greeted; but Prelice must have revealed his delighted surprise too clearly, for Miss Chent laughed. "I am afraid that my proffer of unasked-for friendship surprises you," she said, smilingly; "but, you see, my poor uncle instructed me somewhat in psychology, and I look at the inner, rather than the outer." "You said yourself, Miss Chent, that the friendship was asked for in Court," said Prelice earnestly; "and it was. As Ned's best friend, I claim to be yours also. I bring a message from Ned." "You shall deliver it presently," said Mona, turning to a stout, white-haired gentleman with a genial face who was standing near the window silently. "Just now you must allow me to introduce Mr. Martaban, another loyal friend. Also," she waved her hand towards a spindle-legged Versailles table as the two men shook hands, "you must have some coffee." Prelice accepted gratefully, as he would have taken poison from the hands of this delightful girl, so long as she served it, as she did the coffee, with her own white hands. Martaban took a cup also, and resumed the seat from which he had arisen when Prelice entered. Miss Chent pointed out a chair to her visitor, and herself reclined on a Louis Treize sofa. Then the three began to talk on immediate and earthly matters, and Prelice was forced to descend from transcendental heights. In that room, at that hour, and in the presence of such an angel, it seemed desperately hard to abandon romance for reality. But there was no help for it. "Ned's message?" questioned Mona anxiously. "He is all right, and will be down as soon as he can get away," replied the emissary, delivering the exact words of his friend. "Then you don't think that he is in danger of being accused of this second crime?" "No, no!" interposed Martaban in a genial but authoritative voice. "I have told you before, and I tell you again, that, under the circumstances, no one can accuse Mr. Shepworth. And that," added the solicitor, bowing towards the young man, "is due, my lord, to your wise action in admitting the crowd to see Mr. Shepworth insensible." Prelice nodded his thanks. "Ned is perfectly safe," he said quietly. Mona clasped her hands with a thankful gesture. "I am so glad--I am so thankful," she whispered softly; "he has been a dear, good friend in standing by me, when I so sadly needed help." "Oh!" Prelice was rather indignant. "Seeing that he is something more than a friend to you, Miss Chent, he could scarcely fail to lay himself and his life at your feet. It is only what an English gentleman would do to any lady he respected, much less loved." Mona coloured, and turned aside her face, rather embarrassed by the impetuous outbreak of her lover's friend. "Both English gentlemen and English ladies held aloof when I was in danger," she said simply, "so you can understand how much I prize the friendship both of Ned, and of Mr. Martaban here, seeing that they never believed that I was guilty." "No one could believe that," cried Prelice, still impetuous, and throwing his usual discretion to the winds; "the moment I set eyes on your face I knew that you were innocent." Miss Chent coloured again, and rather retreated from the confidential attitude she had assumed. Prelice was going ahead too fast, and her womanly nature, in spite of occult training, was taking alarm. "I must say that, seeing you did not know me, the belief was somewhat rash," she rejoined coldly; "however, I thank you." "And you will allow me to help you?" asked Prelice eagerly, but timidly. "Help Miss Chent," said the lawyer, looking keenly at the young man's glowing face. "In what way?" Prelice laid down his cup, crossed his legs, and delivered himself of his opinion. It was just as well that both Mona and Martaban should learn of his determination to enter into their lives. "Everyone is delighted, with few exceptions," he said somewhat incoherently to the girl, "that you have been acquitted. But some insist that you must be guilty. Forgive me for inflicting pain," he added rapidly, "but it is necessary, so that you may entirely understand me. You are safe from the law, Miss Chent, but, with some idiots, your character is not yet clear. Also Ned, in spite of the absurdity of the thing, may be accused of making away with Steve Agstone in your interests. In order to set everything right it is necessary for us to make certain who killed your uncle, and who killed the sailor." "But Agstone killed Sir Oliver," said Martaban quickly; "the evidence of the paper-cutter, which----" "Quite so, quite so," interrupted Lord Prelice hurriedly, and skating quickly over this thin ice, "but we can't prove Agstone's guilt, beyond all doubt, without further evidence. For Miss Chent's sake, the truth--whatever it may be--must be made public." "And what do you think is the truth?" demanded Martaban, puzzled. Prelice, bearing Mrs. Rover in mind, shuffled again. "I am not prepared to give an opinion off-hand," he replied politely. "But what I wish you and Miss Chent to understand is, that Ned Shepworth has accepted my services towards hunting down the author, or authors, of this double crime. I wish Miss Chent, if she will, to accept them also." "Willingly and with gratitude," said Mona, extending her slim hand. Prelice contrived to press it in a friendly way, and not kiss it, as he felt strongly inclined to do, but the effort was great. "Then we can go ahead," he said easily; "and as I am now admitted to the inner circle as it were, I should like to know exactly how matters stand. About you, Miss Chent, for instance. Do you remain here?" The girl flushed, and glanced, rather embarrassed, at her lawyer. "Yes!" replied the latter. "Captain Jadby, who undoubtedly inherits, now that the second will has been destroyed, has made no move towards assuming possession of his property. Moreover, there are certain legal formalities to be gone through before he can become the legitimate master of the Grange. Until everything is straight, I suggest that Miss Chent remains in her home." "It is not my home, but Captain Jadby's," answered the girl, colouring painfully. "I would much rather go away. But," she added piteously, yet with a proud effort of self-restraint, "I have nowhere to go to. Uncle Oliver has disinherited me, and my parents died insolvent. If I leave the Grange I go into the world penniless and alone." Prelice winced at the picture she drew. "There is always Ned," he remarked lamely. Miss Ghent shot a swift glance at his distressed face, and answered coldly in his own words. "Yes, there is always Ned." The young man felt more puzzled than ever. Her voice did not sound like that of a girl in love, and as he had gathered from Constance, the man Mona was engaged to, had not given her his heart. But if this was the case--and it was beginning to appear obvious--why had the two agreed to marry? Prelice did not know what to say, so Miss Chent, seeing his embarrassment, explained in a somewhat embarrassed fashion herself. "Ned is poor," she remarked with deliberate self-control; "he has his way to make in the world. It would never do for me to burden him with a pauper wife." "Two are stronger than one, Miss Chent. There is strength in unity." "Not in this case," she retorted; and quietly dismissed the subject. "Will you come to my house, my dear?" said Martaban, who seemed to be devoted to his luckless client, "my wife will be glad to have you." "So will Aunt Sophia," interposed Prelice quickly, and struck with a brilliant idea. "You know my aunt, Miss Chent? Lady Sophia Haken. She is a friend of yours." "Save yourself, Mr. Martaban, and Ned, I have had no friend since I was put on my trial for murder," said Mona in a level voice. "I decline to trouble any person until my innocence is proved." "It has been proved at the trial," said Prelice; and Mr. Martaban echoed the speech. "Legally, but not socially," she rejoined, rising. "I accept your services, Lord Prelice. Learn who killed my uncle, and who stabbed poor Agstone, and earn," she faltered--"and earn my--my gratitude." Prelice looked disappointed. Yet what else could the girl say? CHAPTER XIV. MRS. BLEXEY'S OPINION. Despite the threatening clouds on the horizon, which hinted at coming trouble, the days passed very quietly at the Grange. As an elderly male chaperon, Mr. Martaban remained to look after his client, and the very respectable Mrs. Blexey was also useful in this necessary capacity. Prelice, unable to tear himself away from the too dangerous society of Mona--and dangerous it was considering his feelings and her engagement to Ned--lingered at the Hythe Hotel. Shepworth, strange to say, did not put in an appearance. "It's odd," remarked Prelice, when strolling over the lawns on the third day of his arrival, "it's odd that Ned doesn't come down." He put the observation in the form of a query, and so Mona, who strolled beside him, was forced to reply. But she did so unwillingly, and as briefly as was possible. "Very odd," she said indifferently. Lord Prelice cast a puzzled side glance at her beautiful face, which looked ethereal and rosy under a red sunshade. Even as yet he could not understand what were her feelings towards his friend. And as he was more in love than ever, the situation was perplexing from its very vagueness. In sheer desperation, he tried to make her talk of Ned (which she did very rarely), by continuing the topic. "Ned," said the young man, eyeing the trees, the lawns, the sky, and the house, with a fine affectation of indifference, "Ned has been acquitted at the inquest, and the jury gave a verdict of wilful murder against some person, or persons, unknown, in the orthodox style. Agstone has been buried, and here am I waiting for an interview with Ned to settle some course of action towards elucidating these criminal problems. Yet he has not come down, and has not even replied to my letter." Miss Chent shifted her sunshade from one shoulder to the other. "I expect he'll come down when he is ready," said she calmly. "Oh Jerusalem! Excuse the swear-word, Miss Chent; but if I were Ned I should have come here ages ago." "You did, Lord Prelice. But if you are so anxious to interview Ned--and I quite admit the necessity--why not go up to London?" Her companion wriggled uneasily, and searched his brains for an excuse to remain in his uncomfortable paradise. "Well, you see--er--that is, my dear young lady, I am--to put it plainly--er--my aunt, you know Lady Sophia, is coming to Folkstone." "She arrived there last night, Lord Prelice." "Eh--what--you don't--er--you don't say so?" Mona laughed, and the young man was glad to hear her laugh. She gave way rarely to merriment during the undecided present. "Why did you write about me to Lady Sophia?" asked the girl gently. "I?" Prelice was quite prepared to lie, but decided not to when he saw the expression of her face. "Well, you see--that is, you understand--that an aunt is an aunt." "I never thought that she was an uncle." "Course not. But there, you see, my aunt expected me to write, and I have written." "You needn't have made me the subject-matter of your letter." "Who said that I did?" asked Prelice, growing scarlet. "Lady Sophia herself. I received a note from her this morning, and, considering my position, a very kind note. It seems that you wrote asking her to stand by me, and she has come to Folkstone to do so." "Loud cheers!" cried Prelice shamelessly. "I always thought that Aunt Sophia was a brick. She never believed you were guilty, you know," he went on confusedly; "said all manner of nice things about you to me whenever we met. Now she'll take you under her wing, and make things hot for any Society fool that dares to say a word against you." "Why do you do this for me, Lord Prelice?" asked Mona in rather a faltering tone, and averting her too-speaking face. "I am--that is--well--Ned's friend, you know." "Oh," Mona's voice became steady, and she turned to look at him squarely, "so you enlist your aunt on my behalf for Ned's sake." Was there ever such a perplexing girl! A moment ago and she seemed pleased at being championed by Lady Sophia, now her looks and her voice were cold. Prelice, in sheer desperation, blurted out the truth in a blundering manner. "A little bit for my own sake also." "I am glad of that." "Are you?" This time it was the young man's voice which became unsteady, for he did not know whether he was on his head or his heels. "That's all right." A sentiment of honour towards the absent Shepworth, who would not look after his own interests, made him end thus lamely. Mona laughed again, and was as enigmatic as the Sphinx. "It is extremely good of you, Lord Prelice," she went on in a guarded manner. "Lady Sophia can help me greatly to recover my position in Society." "You have never lost it," blurted out Prelice crossly. "I did lose it, and I have lost it," she answered sadly, "and I shall never recover it entirely until the murderer of my uncle is discovered. Lady Sophia, who really likes me----" "Loves you! Loves you!" "No, no! She likes me; let us say that she has an affection for me. That is a greatly-to-be-appreciated state of mind for one woman to be in towards another. That's rather a German sentence, isn't it?" "I don't know what you mean," muttered Prelice, beginning to find out that, after all his experiences in the four quarters of the globe, he was but a neophyte where women were concerned. "I mean that Lady Sophia's liking or affection for me will do a great deal to rehabilitate me, but that the punishment of Uncle Oliver's assassin will do more." "And your marriage with Ned will do most of all." Mona mocked him. "Marriage covers a multitude of sins, doesn't it?" Prelice clutched his head, but his hair was too closely cropped for him to grip. "I'm to be best man," he said feebly, and found a delight in torturing himself. "Oh! Has Ned selected you for that post?" "He did; when we were at Eton." "I see. Then he was engaged when at Eton. How precocious!" The young man groaned, and glanced at her despairingly, quite unable to understand her moods. Lately she had been sad, now her eyes were dancing with merriment. "I am glad you are happy," he said in a surly tone, for this mystery of her engagement tortured him. "I am," she assented swiftly, "and for three reasons." "May I hear them?" "Certainly. In the first place, you and Ned will find out who killed my uncle and poor old Steve, so as to clear my character. In the second place, Lady Sophia is coming over to-day, and thus begins the necessary whitewashing for me to re-enter the world. And in the third place," she ended seriously, "throughout all this trouble I have had a firm conviction that God would help me. He _has_ helped me by saving my life from a legal death, and He will help me to clear my character. Some day--perhaps in the near future--there won't be a single stain on my name. Now don't speak," she held up her hand; "you are about to say that there is not a stain now. But there is. To remove it, I trust in God first, and in you second." "What about Ned?" asked Prelice restlessly. "Oh, in Ned also," she rejoined, and looked at him quietly. As he made no observation--and he could not out of sheer perplexity--she turned on her Louis Quinze heel. "I am going in to get ready for the visit of Lady Sophia," she said abruptly. Prelice watched the red sunshade vanish into the house, then dug his stick into the turf, and swore volubly. He had a considerable command of language in this respect, but rarely exercised his vocabulary. On this occasion he did, since ordinary words failed to soothe him. And even as it was, swearing did little good, so Prelice started to walk violently and aimlessly, only desirous of restoring his temper to its usual state of cynical calm by abnormal exercise. He could not make Mona--as he called her mentally--out in any way whatsoever. She was certainly engaged to Ned, and yet she spoke of him quite unemotionally, as she would have done of--well, not of an acquaintance perhaps, but of a friend. She could not possibly love him, and if she did not, should certainly not be engaged to him. Ned had no money and no position, so she assuredly could not be seeking to better herself by the marriage. Certainly gratitude might induce her to become his wife, since he had stood by her; but then--and here Prelice swore again--she had been engaged to him some time before the death of Sir Oliver, and when no gratitude could possibly have entered into her acceptance. And if she was merely grateful, Ned would not marry her on that account, especially since, on the authority of Mrs. Rover, he loved another woman. For the third time Prelice swore over the problem, and determined to throw all delicacy to the winds, so far as Shepworth was concerned. The moment Ned arrived at the Grange he would ask him plainly what he meant, and what she meant, and what the whole infernal complication meant. It was quite impossible that a young aristocrat with a large income, and a healthy frame, and a loving heart, should sit on thorns any longer. "Blankety--blankety--blank," raged Prelice, and looked up on hearing an exclamation of horror at his elbow. His aimless walk had led him to the kitchen garden, and to a bed of pot-herbs, which Mrs. Blexey was laboriously picking. Being stout, and like Hamlet scant of breath, the housekeeper wheezed like a creaky wheel as she stooped to gather some sage and thyme. But she retained enough breath to cry out with horror, when hearing this handsome young gentleman swearing--as she afterwards described it--like the late Mr. Blexey, who had been a skipper of renown in the way of bad language. "I beg your pardon," said Prelice, showing his white teeth in a smile which won Mrs. Blexey's heart. "I'm a little put out. Didn't know any lady was within earshot." "Bless you, my lord, I'm not a lady, and never laid claim to be one, so swearing, though not proper, don't worrit me over-much. It calls back old times, sir." "Really. Did you swear yourself?" "Me!" Mrs. Blexey looked indignant. "Why, I belong to the United Inhabitants of the Celestial Regions." "What?" "It's my religion," said Mrs. Blexey simply; "what you might call my sect, my lord. There's very few of us, but we all go to heaven." "There's nothing like being certain of your destination," said Prelice dryly, and was about to move on, when the housekeeper stopped him. "Your pardin, my lord, but I've been trying to catch your eyes ever since you came here, but never managed it till now. In a kitchen garden too," ended Mrs. Blexey mournfully, "which don't seem to be the place for a lord of high degree to speak in." "It suited him to swear in it, however," murmured Prelice frivolously; then added in louder tones: "What do you wish to speak to me about?" "Not about him that is gone," remarked Mrs. Blexey, referring to her lost spouse, "though his language--begging your lordship's pardin--was as like yours as bean-pods. And because of such talk, he'll never come back--never. Them as has him, will keep him." "Indeed. Are they--whomsoever they may be--fond of him?" "I don't think so, my lord. You see, he's--well, he's dead, my lord." Prelice put up his hand to twirl his moustache and hide a smile. "Then you think that----" "I'm sorry for Blexey," interrupted the housekeeper firmly; "but he didn't belong to the United Inhabitants of the Celestial Regions, so he----" She pointed stealthily downward. "Let us hope it is not so bad as that," said Prelice, choking with suppressed laughter. "You wish to speak to me," he repeated politely. "To catch your lordship's eyes as it were." "That has been accomplished. What next?" Mrs. Blexey groaned, and made an effort. "It's about Miss Mona." The young man's merriment died away, and he looked keenly at the red-faced, shapeless old woman. "What's that?" he demanded in the imperious tone which formerly he had used towards recalcitrant soldiers. Mrs. Blexey, being timid, dropped with a thud on to the sage and thyme, and placed a podgy hand on her ample breast, gasping like a fish out of water. "The heart, my lord--mother's side--it ain't strong. If your lordship would speak less like a gun going off----" "Certainly," interrupted Prelice in his most silky tones. "What have you to tell me about Miss Mona?" "It ain't about her exactly, my lord. But there's the will, you know, and that Madame Eppingrave, as she called herself, though I don't believe it is her name for all her airs and graces, and she nearly as old as me, and as stout too, for all her tight lacing." Prelice, leaning against the mellow brick wall where the nectarines grew, stared at the fat woman, who was still prostrate amidst the herbs. "If you knew of such things, Mrs. Blexey, why didn't you explain in Court?" "Because I don't believe in Courts or in them as is in Courts," said Mrs. Blexey, fanning herself with a pink sun-bonnet. "They got me to give what they called evidence, and say things against my dear, pretty Miss Mona. I nursed her, sir. I was born in the Grange, and have served the Lanwins all my life. When Mrs. Chent went away with her husband, I followed; and when she and him died, I came back here with Miss Mona, as Sir Oliver wished, to be the housekeeper." Prelice nodded sympathetically. "I know that you are devoted to Miss Mona," he said, approving of this devotion. "You are too, my lord, ain't you?" asked the old woman pointedly. The young man grew as red as the brick wall against which he was leaning; but Mrs. Blexey, seeing this sign of anger, went on hastily. "I don't mean boldness, my lord; indeed, I don't. But Miss Mona does need a friend sadly, my lord, and she tells me that you are one." "I am," said Prelice firmly, and flushing again, "and I am glad that she spoke thus of me. But about this Madame Marie Eppingrave?" "I never liked her, my lord. An oily flatterer she was, with a gimblet eye and a buttery tongue. She was always trying to get the better of Sir Oliver, and gave him that nasty thing that made the smoke." Prelice naturally looked startled. "Why, Sir Oliver brought the herb from Easter Island himself--at least I fancy he did." "I don't, my lord; and what's more, he didn't. I went into the library to ask master what he'd have for dinner, and Madame Eppingrave--if that is her name, the old bag-o'-rags--was showing master a lot of dry stems and purple leaves, and talking about trances and suchlike rubbish. That was just a week before Sir Oliver's death." "What do you make of that, Mrs. Blexey?" asked Prelice thoughtfully. "I don't make anything of it, sir. But it was strange that the nasty smoky weeds she gave master should bring about his death." "Madame Marie had no reason to wish Sir Oliver dead?" "Oh no, my lord. Why, she lost a good friend in him, and often must have desired him to be alive and kicking. All the same, sir, she gave him them withered leaves, and through them master came by his end." Prelice nodded absently. He required time to think over the matter, and turned away to be alone. Then a thought struck him, and he returned to the housekeeper. "What about the will?" he demanded. "It wasn't burnt." "You must be mistaken The Court----" "Much them lawyers knew about it," cried Mrs. Blexey, struggling to her feet. "I never said it to them, because they said as it would help Miss Mona to get out of their nasty clutches if the will was proved to be burnt. So I said what I was told, for Miss Mona's sake. But Sir Oliver was writing out another will----" "How do you know?" asked Prelice sharply, and much disturbed. "I saw him writing it," said Mrs. Blexey firmly. "It was never signed, to my knowledge. But you can take my word for it, my lord, that the unsigned will was burnt, and that Miss Mona is entitled by the other to the property." CHAPTER XV. JADBY PLAYS A CARD. Mrs. Blexey's communications certainly afforded Lord Prelice ample food for reflection. What she had said about Madame Marie--as the young man mentally termed her--implied that the fortune-teller was somehow implicated in the tragedy of Sir Oliver's death. Yet he had been a good friend to the lady, and by his death she lost a valuable client. It was impossible to think that she had killed the baronet herself, or had been a consenting party to his death. But undoubtedly, according to Mrs. Blexey's firm asseveration, she had given Lanwin the roots and leaves of the Sacred Herb, and from using these in the prescribed way to induce a trance, Sir Oliver had been rendered helpless. Had he not been chained hand and foot by the fumes of the herb he could not have been killed, as, in spite of his lost leg, he was no despicable antagonist. The herb, therefore, was the main factor in the tragedy, and Madame Marie had placed the same in the man's hands. Of course, it was just possible that someone--name unknown--had found Sir Oliver helpless, and so had taken the opportunity to kill him. Madame Marie may have discovered the guilty person, and, to recompense her for the loss of a wealthy friend, had been bribed by the same person to silence. This pointed to the guilt of Captain Jadby, who might have been anxious to get rid of the baronet so as to enter into his heritage. But the assertion of the housekeeper about the new, unsigned will went far to show that the sailor was innocent. Captain Jadby assuredly would have destroyed the will which gave the property to Mona, and not an unsigned document, which mattered nothing to him. Much puzzled by the new aspect of the case, Prelice sought out Mr. Martaban, and related what he had heard in the kitchen garden. The solicitor at first scoffed at the idea of the unsigned will being destroyed, but later cautiously ventured the remark that there might be something in it. "Though, mind you," he remarked thoughtfully, "Mrs. Blexey does not prove her case, as we say in legal circles. She states that Sir Oliver made a new will in his own handwriting, but she cannot prove that this was the particular will which was burnt." "But Sir Oliver's handwriting would be recognised," urged Prelice. "It was," replied Martaban tersely; "the will leaving the property to Miss Chent was in my late client's handwriting also. He always preferred to write out his own testaments." "To draw them up you mean." "Not in this especial instance, my lord. The will leaving all to Captain Jadby, and made in the South Seas years ago, is a personal document, since I have seen it. The unsigned will also was personal, as so far as I know Sir Oliver did not employ any lawyer to draw it. But I drew out the document by which Miss Chent inherited, and Sir Oliver copied it himself, and had it signed by Mrs. Blexey and Agstone. So you see that we can't actually say which will was burnt, as there is not sufficient remaining of the document. From some of the scraps found, which alluded to Miss Chent as 'my dear niece,' it would seem that the will in her favour must have been destroyed, since Sir Oliver when angered would not have spoken kindly of her in the document alluded to by Mrs. Blexey." Prelice nodded absently. "I presume that the new will would also have been signed by Mrs. Blexey and Agstone as witnesses?" "I think so, since Sir Oliver trusted both, but according to the housekeeper the will was not witnessed. For all we know, it may not even have been signed." "Mrs. Blexey says that it wasn't." "I think she is right," said Martaban thoughtfully, "since the testator has to sign in the presence of the witnesses, and Mrs. Blexey would probably have been one." "What about Captain Jadby?" "He was absent on many occasions, and had he signed as a witness he would not have benefited." "Madame Marie Eppingrave?" "Humph!" Martaban considered. "She and Agstone might have signed certainly, but in that case she would have come forward to state to whom the new will left the property. It could not have been Jadby, since the old will held good, if the second was destroyed." "Madame Marie may have been bribed by Jadby to hold her tongue about the third will, so that the first could stand." "Which points to the fact that the second must have been destroyed. Yet Mrs. Blexey says that it was not." "I agree," admitted Prelice; "but, as you say, she does not prove her case." Martaban nodded. "The sole way in which the case can be proved is by the production of the second will." "Or of the third," remarked Prelice quietly. "The assassin of Sir Oliver burnt one will--we know not which--and holds the other. He will produce it when he is ready." "And so lay himself open to arrest," ended Martaban neatly. He paused, and went on deliberately: "I advise a waiting game." "A waiting game?" Martaban nodded. "Let the other side move first." "Do you mean Captain Jadby?" asked Prelice abruptly. "And this unknown assassin, who holds one of the last two wills. Jadby, we know, retains the first, which gives the property to him. He will probably come down to insist upon his rights. I shall refuse to let him have the Grange or the income until the other wills are proved to be destroyed, or at least until he proves that the burnt will is the one giving the property to Miss Chent." "That was proved at the trial." "Quite so; but Mrs. Blexey's story requires that the case should be reopened." "Not for the trial of Miss Chent!" cried Prelice in alarm. Martaban laughed heartily. "You can make yourself easy on that score, my lord. No one can be tried twice for the same offence. Well?" "I agree with you that it is best to wait and see what Jadby does, and then we can checkmate him, as you suggest. Meanwhile I shall go to London, and call on Madame Marie in New Bond Street. She may know of something likely to elucidate the mystery of the Lanwin Grange crime." "If she does," said Martaban, with a chuckle, "she certainly will not speak out. A clever woman, Madame Marie." "I can deal with clever women," said Prelice, rather conceitedly. "Deal with Miss Chent then," finished the lawyer, and the conversation ended for the time being. It was all very well for Martaban to suggest dealing with Mona, but that young lady was much too feminine for Prelice to tackle. He could make nothing of her. Sometimes she was kindness itself to him, and then she would hold him at arm's length with freezing politeness. Even as yet he could not determine her relations to Ned, otherwise than that an official engagement existed. She gave him no chance of learning the exact truth. When he praised Ned she would assent cordially to the most enthusiastic eulogiums, and yet when he hinted--and being in love, he could not help hinting--that Ned did not behave as a lover should, she entirely agreed. In desperation, he would have spoken to her about Constance Rover, but a feeling of loyalty to his absent friend prevented his doing this. Once or twice Prelice determined to leave for London, and wash his hands of all these mysteries, of which Miss Chent was not the least. But he was so deeply in love that, awkward as the position was, he could not tear himself away. Yet, like a true gentleman, Prelice never revealed by word or deed, or even look, that he was at Mona's feet. It was with a feeling of relief that Prelice came one day to the Grange, and found Lady Sophia officially established as Mona's friend. All day long the young man had been walking off his feelings on the Downs, trying by violent exercise to calm his agitated nerves. He tore along at top speed for miles, cursing himself for a fool in submitting to be lured by a will-o'-the-wisp, since, seeing how matters stood between Mona and Ned, he could not hope to make the girl Lady Prelice. But however far he went, the loadstone of the Grange, magnetised by Miss Chent's mere presence, always drew him back to her dainty feet, there to sigh hopelessly for the moon. On this occasion he arrived back to afternoon tea, and was greeted effusively in the drawing-room by his aunt. "Though I can't say that you look well, Prelice," said Lady Sophia, putting up her lorgnette. "What have you been doing with yourself? Late hours and indigestible suppers, no doubt." "Ask Miss Chent," replied Prelice, somewhat sulkily; "she knows what a rake I am." Mona, who was presiding over a well-provided tea-table, glanced at the dark circles under the young man's eyes, at his lack of colour, and noted his cross looks. The survey, for some reason, appeared to give her a large amount of satisfaction. "I don't know Lord Prelice's character," she observed demurely. "He's a dormouse--always asleep," said Lady Sophia, sipping her tea. "So Ned told me, and his nickname also. But he's a very energetic dormouse, surely, in exploring the world as he has done." "Humph! It would be much better if he stayed at home and married." Prelice could not stand this observation in Mona's presence. "That is entirely a personal matter, Aunt Sophia," he snapped. "Not at all," answered the lady coolly; "as you are the head of the house, its members should have some say in your marriage. Unless you marry a nice girl, I sha'n't call on her." "Have some more tea, Lord Prelice," said Mona, sorry to see how very annoyed he was, yet secretly pleased, Heaven knows for what reason. "Thank you." He passed his cup. "I am glad to see you, Aunt Sophia, and surprised," he ended with emphasis. Lady Sophia put up her lorgnette again. "One is always surprised to find virtue in unexpected places," she remarked coolly. "I plagiarise that from Molière, my dear. Yes, I _am_ virtuous coming over into these wilds on a hot day, and I want the reward of my virtue." "What reward do you want?" asked Prelice gruffly. "The right to look after this dear girl." Lady Sophia patted Mona's arm. "I propose that she shall come abroad with me for a few months. Then next year we can return, and I can present her again at Court. I never believed the rubbish that people talked, my sweetest Mona, so you can safely trust yourself under my wing." "I shall be delighted," said Mona, giving the elder lady's arm a little affectionate squeeze. "But don't you think I ought to remain here until the truth is found out?" "You silly child, the truth has positively been shouted from the housetops. Everyone knows that you are innocent--not," added Lady Sophia in her usual inconsequent fashion, "that I should blame you if you were guilty. I never liked Sir Oliver." "He was very kind to me," said Mona impetuously; "he meant well." "That condemns him. People one doesn't like always mean well. However, he's dead, so we'll say no more about him. But you'll come to Germany with me, my dear. I'm going to some Bad--I can't tell you the name exactly--it's too long, and sounds too much like swearing. But it's a new Bad that has to do with the new disease." "And have you got the new disease, Aunt Sophia?" "I never was healthier in my life, my dear boy; but there's a cave near this Bad, with bones and skulls of the Stone Age. I want to see what like the poor, dear things were, in those happy times." "They won't look pretty as merely bones," said Prelice dryly. "Perhaps not. Only dogs like bones. But I daresay there will be some dear little axes, with which they cut off the heads of animals that lived before the flood. And beads too, perhaps. Fancy, beads. It brings the poor, dear things so near to us to think they wore beads." While Lady Sophia rattled on thus, talking about everyone and everything to set Mona at her ease, the girl herself was listening. "I hear a fly," she said, starting to her feet expectantly. "Where?" asked Lady Sophia, looking up at the ceiling. "What sharp ears you must have, child." "Hark!" Miss Chent walked to the drawing-room door, opened it, and passed through. A moment later, they heard her voice raised in joyful welcome, and Prelice tried hard to suppress his jealousy. He did not need Lady Sophia to tell him that it was that "Shepworth man." All the same, he contrived to be fairly amiable, when Ned entered with greetings. "How do you do, Lady Sophia? Dorry, I am glad to see you. What a hot day it has been! Thank you, Mona, I shall be glad to have a cup of tea." Prelice stared, as Ned sat down in a comfortable chair near Miss Chent, for he could not understand Shepworth, who had so lately escaped peril, chatting in this silly fashion. The barrister did not look well either, as his face was pale and his eyes sunken. "I expected you down here before," growled Prelice after a pause. "I could not get down," rattled on Ned, stirring his tea. "Another lump of sugar, please, Mona. There was much to do. But now that Agstone has been buried, and my character cleared, I have come down to circumvent our friend Captain Jadby." Mona started nervously. "Oh, Ned, is there anything wrong?" "Not at present, but Jadby will try and put things wrong. He will be here in a quarter of an hour." "Here!" Mona rose in dismay. "Are you sure?" Shepworth nodded, and cast a hasty glance at Prelice. "He came to me yesterday, and said that he was coming down to see you for a certain purpose. As Prelice is here, and I know very well what Jadby wants to say, I thought it best to come down too. By watching at the station I found what train he was going by, and nipped in also. At Hythe I secured the only fly, and so have got ahead of him." Shepworth glanced at his watch. "He'll soon be here; and then----" He paused. "And then?" queried Lady Sophia, astonished. "Bless me, Mr. Shepworth, what then? How mysterious you are. You surprise me." "Captain Jadby will surprise you more," rejoined Shepworth dryly. "And so I am glad that you are here, Dorry." "Why?" demanded that young gentleman, who was as astonished as his aunt. Shepworth merely nodded mysteriously, and whispered to Mona, who nodded in reply with very bright eyes, and with another glance at the puzzled Prelice. He could not understand, even in the presence of the engaged couple, if they really were in love. Shepworth was certainly attentive, and Mona was extremely amiable. But there was something wanting in their behaviour. They had not kissed, for one thing, as engaged lovers surely would do. But perhaps that sign of future marriage had taken place in the hall. Lady Sophia, also puzzled, would have asked questions which her more diffident nephew was afraid to put, but that the footman brought in a card. "Captain Jadby," said Mona, reading the same. "Ned, must I see him?" "It will be as well," rejoined Shepworth significantly, "and in the presence of Martaban." "He has gone out for a walk, and won't be back for some time," explained the girl nervously, "but I feel safe with you and Lord Prelice." "Why with me?" Prelice asked, when the footman departed to usher in the South Sea sailor. "You are always so kind," she observed in a low voice, and cast down her eyes, blushing scarlet, much to Prelice's amazement. He really did not know what to make of all this. But Mona's sudden colour ebbed from her cheeks when Captain Jadby entered, for she appeared to be rather afraid of the buccaneer. Jadby, halting, and bowing on the threshold, did look rather lawless in spite of his civilised flannel garb. He had arrayed himself in white, and wore a scarlet cummerbund and a scarlet tie. These touches of too vivid colour, added to his smooth, dark face with fiery black eyes and curly black hair, and general hint at foreign blood, bespoke him the buccaneer from the fringes of the Empire. His manners also left something to be desired, for after bowing to Lady Sophia and Miss Chent, and greeting Prelice with a sullen nod, he turned towards Shepworth. Then his eyes flashed, and his mouth grew hard. "You have stolen a march on me," he declared, coming forward. "As you see," replied Shepworth very coolly; "after what you told me yesterday it was necessary." "I wonder that you are not afraid to come," said Jadby, sneering viciously. "Why should Mr. Shepworth be afraid?" demanded Mona, catching at Lady Sophia's hand to keep up her courage. "Ask him," snarled the captain, posing picturesquely. "Why should you be afraid?" Mona reiterated, turning to her lover. "Captain Jadby can explain," replied Shepworth suavely. "And may I suggest," said Prelice politely, "that in explaining, Captain Jadby might remember that there are two ladies present." The buccaneer shrugged his shoulders, and pointedly turned his back on Prelice, a rudeness which that young gentleman noted carefully, intending to rebuke Jadby later for the same. "You are, I understand, Miss Chent, engaged to Mr. Shepworth," he said to Mona insolently. She glanced at Shepworth, but kept her temper. "Everyone knows that news! It is common property." "And I love you," he went on steadily. "Rather a public place to speak like that to me, Captain Jadby." "I am true to you, and he," pointing to Shepworth, "is false. He loves another woman." "And I forbid you to mention that woman's name," cried Shepworth meaningly. "Then you admit it!" cried the sailor triumphantly. "He does," said Mona unexpectedly, "because I know it." "What?" Jadby recoiled in dismay. His thunderbolt had fallen and failed. "My engagement," pursued Miss Chent, "is merely official." CHAPTER XVI. DR. HORACE INTERVENES. In the dead silence which followed Mona's enigmatic announcement a pin could have been heard to drop. Prelice's head was whirling. Here, at last, was the explanation, and he would now know the true relationship between the girl he loved and Ned, who apparently cared nothing for her. Shepworth stood quietly beside Miss Chent with a perfectly calm face, but his eyes were fixed threateningly on Captain Jadby, who appeared to be much amazed at the calm way in which Mona received his news. Lady Sophia glanced from one man to the other, and, having a shrewd idea of what was coming, made up her mind to depart, so as to spare herself a scene, and Shepworth an awkward explanation. "Most interesting," she said, rising and shaking out her skirts, "but I have so much to do that I really cannot wait. Mona, child, you must come and see me at Folkstone, the Piccadilly Hotel, you know, though why Piccadilly by the seaside I really don't know." "Will you not wait and hear what I have to say?" asked Jadby, who seemed desirous of having as many listeners as possible, so as to cast shame upon Shepworth. "No, my good man," rejoined Lady Sophia, with all the polished insolence of a grand dame; "other people's affairs do not interest me. You had better go back to the South Seas, where I am sure you will be much more at home. Prelice, help me on with my dust-cloak." She pointed to a grey silk mantle, which her dutiful nephew duly adjusted on her shoulders. "Now, Mona, child, don't forget. Good-bye, Mr. Shepworth. Prelice, you had better come with me," she ended, sailing towards the door. The young man hesitated, and looked at Mona doubtfully. She interpreted his look promptly. "Lord Prelice will stay, at my request." "My dear," Lady Sophia at the door sunk her voice, "so very awkward, if you really know what that creature"--so she designed Jadby--"is going to say." "It has to be said sooner or later," whispered Mona, "and I want Lord Prelice to hear." "Oh!" A new thought seemed to strike Lady Sophia. She glanced from her hostess to her nephew, and then pursed up her lips, guessing in a flash what was coming. "You had better come with me, Prelice," she repeated, raising her voice, and at the sound of it Mona shrank away. But Prelice looked dogged, and declined to come. "I must stop and support Miss Chent," he said. "Mr. Shepworth can do that," cried Captain Jadby insolently. "He can," said the barrister, taking a step forward, "and he can support the cause of"--with emphasis--"any lady." The advocate of the Stone Age, standing at the open door, raised her lorgnette, and surveyed the group. "Most interesting," she said, with cool impertinence; "quite a comedy. Let us hope that it will not merge into a tragedy." And, biting her lip, she departed, with a glare at her obstinate nephew. Guessing that Lady Sophia was offended, and pretty certain of the reason, Mona did not dare to follow. The motor car of Lady Sophia was heard whirring down the avenue in the hot sunshine, and only when the sound died away did Miss Chent return to the three men. "What more have you to say, Captain Jadby?" she asked politely. "It seems to me that there is little need of an explanation," he answered, with another shrug, and compressing his lips. "None at all that I can see," rejoined Shepworth in a cool voice. "I think Captain Jadby had better go." "Not until I receive Mona's answer from her own lips," he snarled, and looked a very ugly customer in his impotent wrath. "Miss Chent to you," said the girl equably. "Mona! Mona!" vociferated the captain, "I have a double right to call you by your christian name." "I did not even know that you had a single right," she retorted. "I have; Sir Oliver wished us to marry." "Quite so, and for that reason I became engaged to Mr. Shepworth." Prelice gave a gasp, and turned to his friend. Ned nodded. "It is true, Dorry," said the barrister. "When I was stopping here, during the lifetime of Sir Oliver, this man," he indicated Captain Jadby with contempt, "pestered Miss Chent with his attentions. Sir Oliver was on his side--why, I can't say--but----" "I can tell you now," interrupted Jadby hoarsely; "I am Sir Oliver's son, and Mona is my cousin." There was a second silence. "I don't believe it," said Prelice decidedly, and his opinion was echoed by Miss Chent and Shepworth. Jadby threw back his handsome head scornfully. "It matters little what you believe," he said violently, "since what I say is the truth, and no denial can make it anything else. My mother was the daughter of a great chief of Tahiti." "Oh!" broke in Prelice impulsively, "then you are a half-caste?" "Yes," admitted the captain, his nostrils working and his native origin becoming more and more apparent as he lost his temper. "My father was married to my mother in native fashion, but that, I learn, does not entitle me to inherit my father's title and property, which it should do. However, my father made a will in my favour before leaving the South Seas. He never had much love for me, and therefore I dreaded lest he should change his mind and leave his property to someone else. I came to England to look after my interests, and then learned that a new will had been made leaving the money to Mona. My father, to give him his due, was ashamed of himself, and proposed that the affairs should be settled by marriage, so that both Mona and I should benefit. I loved her, and agreed to the arrangement, but she scorned me, and so----" "And so her uncle died," ended Prelice, looking sharply at the captain. Jadby whirled round furiously, and stamped. "My father's death has nothing whatever to do with my engagement to Mona." "I never was engaged to you," she interposed swiftly; "it was because you persecuted me that I asked Ned to stand between us. I have known Ned for years, and he is a loyal gentleman." "Very loyal," sneered Jadby, with quivering lips, "to love one woman and become engaged to another." Shepworth would have spoken, but Mona prevented him. "There is no need for you to excuse yourself, Ned," she said coldly, and addressed herself to the fuming captain. "When I asked Mr. Shepworth to pretend to be engaged to me, so that your worrying might be stopped, he told me that he loved another woman----" "A woman who is----" Shepworth threw up his hand. "If you dare to say a word," he cried menacingly, "I shall break your neck." "There is no need," said Mona again, while Prelice, keenly observant, held his peace. "I can explain to Captain Jadby, and then he can go." "I have heard enough," said the sailor hoarsely, and glared. "To fool your uncle--my father," he added with emphasis, "and to fool me, you pretended to engage yourself to this man." "You have stated the position accurately," said Mona with great calmness. "Mr. Shepworth and I have paid you out. We have played a comedy by which you, for your insolence, have been deceived." "Mona!" The man took a step forward imploringly. Miss Chent receded. "I am not afraid of you now," she declared in a clear voice, "although you did your best to frighten me. And I do not allow anyone to call me Mona save those I love. You may be my cousin for all I know, but I don't like you, and I shall have nothing to do with you. My fictitious engagement with Mr. Shepworth is at an end," she concluded, slipping off a ring and passing it to Ned, who put it in his pocket; "and you, I understand, have the property, since the will in my favour has been destroyed. There is no more to be said." "There is this to be said," shouted Jadby, the veins on his forehead swelling dangerously, "that this house is mine, and you shall leave it." Mona faced him coolly. "Mr. Martaban looks after my interests," she declared, quite composed; "as soon as he tells me to leave I shall do so, but until then I am mistress here, and I order you to go." Jadby would have disobeyed, as he was furious at the failure of his two thunderbolts. He had hoped to overwhelm Mona by stating that he was her cousin, and he had hoped to separate her from Shepworth by telling of the latter's infatuation for Mrs. Dolly Rover. Having failed, he looked like a fool, and would have tried to recover his ground by insisting upon remaining, but that Prelice rose to his feet and Shepworth took a step forward. Jadby was no coward, for the drop of white blood in him came from a brave old stock; but the odds were too great. Moreover, he really and truly loved his cousin, and his soul was torn within him at the thought of losing her. With a sudden revulsion of feeling, the tears sprang to his dark eyes, although he was by no means a tearful individual. Putting out his hands blindly, he groped his way to the door. Mona's generous heart smote her when she saw the man brought thus low, and she sprang forward to lay her hand on his arm. "Do not go in anger, Felix," she pleaded, using his christian name, as Sir Oliver had often done; "if you are my cousin--and I believe that you have spoken the truth--let us part in peace. Shake hands." Jadby dashed the tears from his eyes and her hand from his arm. Her appeal brought back the original devil to his semi-civilised heart fiercer than ever. "Will you be my wife?" he demanded savagely. "No. I cannot." "Do you love anyone else?" Mona drew herself up, quivering. "You have no right to ask that." "Perhaps not," raged the captain, with contempt, "because you love a man who is in love with a married woman, and----" Shepworth ran forward, his face white and his eyes bright. "Silence!" he exclaimed, and took Jadby by the shoulders. "I shall not be silent," shrieked the half-caste, becoming feminine and abusive in his towering passion. "You and your Mrs. Rover, who----" What else he would have said neither Mona nor Prelice knew, for the barrister, becoming suddenly silent, after the manner of the angered white man, ran Jadby swiftly out of the room. The semi-Polynesian kicked and shrieked and swore, and even tried to bite. But Shepworth, with set teeth and grim eyes, forced him along the hall, and out of the front door. The next moment Jadby was lying on his back some distance away, with Shepworth blocking the door of the house he claimed. "You devil!" yelled the half-caste, and he leaped up, to slip his hand behind him. The barrister flung himself down, while three shots rang out from the captain's derringer, then sprang to his feet on hearing no more. Apparently only three chambers had been loaded, for Shepworth, filled with wrath at this treachery, dared the worst, and ran blindly down the steps. Jadby flung away the still smoking weapon with an oath, and sped down the avenue, as though the fiend himself was after him. For some little distance Shepworth followed, until he lost him on the wide Downs, and then returned to the Grange, to meet Prelice coming down the avenue at top speed. "Are you hurt, Ned?" shouted his friend. "One of the bullets ripped my arm, but it's nothing to speak of," was Shepworth's reply. "Where's Mona?" "She ran upstairs to see Mrs. Blexey. I'll send up and let her know that you are all right. I say, Ned, you have made a dangerous enemy." "Oh, damn the danger," growled Shepworth, who was furious--"the low, mean, sulking hound. He insulted me before on account of Constance, and that was why we fought. He hadn't a revolver then, and I gave him a black eye, the brute." "And are you really in love with Constance?" asked Prelice doubtfully. "Yes," said Ned gruffly, and not seemingly inclined to talk about the matter just then. "I'll tell you all about it some day. Meanwhile let us reassure Mona, and get my arm bathed. It's only a scratch." "But one moment, Ned," said Prelice, holding him back from entering the house. "You are not actually engaged to Mona--I mean Miss Chent?" "No. I only agreed so as to save her from Jadby's insolence and Sir Oliver's persecution." "Then Miss Chent is heart-whole?" "Entirely, so far as I know," replied Shepworth dryly; and then wheeling to face his friend: "Why do you ask these questions?" "I'll tell you all about it some day," said Prelice, echoing the former speech of the barrister. "Halloa, here's Mona--that is, Miss Chent herself." It was indeed Mona who appeared at the top of the steps, with Mrs. Blexey and two footmen behind her. She looked pale, and hurried forward. "Are you hurt, Ned?" she asked anxiously. "I heard the shots." "It's only a flea-bite," said Ned quickly; "don't bother about it. I'll go to my room and bathe it." "Let me do that, sir," said Mrs. Blexey; and Shepworth, nodding a faint assent, for he had lost some blood, went into the house, and up the wide oaken stairs. Prelice lingered behind with Mona. "I am so glad," he said meaningly. "That Ned has been shot? How cruel of you." "No, no, no! You must be aware that I am glad, because----" "I haven't time to listen now," said Mona, her face crimson and her eyes very bright. "I have to send a telegram." "To whom?" demanded Prelice as she disappeared through the hall. "To Dr. Horace," came back the reply; and then the young man in addition to his other puzzled thoughts had this new one concerning his former fellow-traveller. "I wonder what she wants with Horace?" he asked himself. The answer came at dinner, when Mona was in the safe presence of Ned, and Prelice could make no demonstration of the feelings he had for her--feelings which she had guessed long since existed. Shepworth's wound, which was worse than he admitted, had been bound up, and he was in very good spirits. Mona, startled by the events of the afternoon, looked pale, and was rather restless. But Prelice said nothing. In the first place, he could not in the presence of a third party, even though that party was his school-chum; and in the second, he was too happy to speak much. All he could do, and did do, was to fill his eyes and heart with the pale beauty of Mona Chent. After all, the gods had been very good to him by removing an apparently impassable barrier. It was Shepworth who asked why Mona had sent the wire to Dr. Horace, and Prelice listened with great interest to her reply. "After the case," explained the girl, more to Martaban than to the young men, "Dr. Horace sent and congratulated me on the verdict. Also he wrote a note saying that if Jadby proved dangerous--those were his words--that I was to wire to him, and he would draw Jadby's teeth--his own words again, Mr. Martaban." "Do you know Dr. Horace?" asked the solicitor, looking puzzled. "No. I never set eyes on him until he stepped into the witness-box to give evidence about the herb. But when I heard the shots I knew then that Captain Jadby was becoming dangerous, so I sent off a telegram to Dr. Horace. Just before dinner a reply came." "And the reply?" asked Shepworth, also puzzled. "Dr. Horace will be here by ten o'clock to-night." Prelice stared. "It must be something very important to bring Horace down so promptly. Have you any idea of what he means?" "No," replied Mona quietly; "all I know I have told you; but if this Dr. Horace can stop Felix from shooting people, it will be as wise to have him down." "Felix," muttered Prelice discontentedly. Mona shot a smiling glance at him, not ill pleased to see how openly jealous he was, even though he had no official right to be so. "He is my cousin, you know," she said sweetly. "I don't believe it," said Shepworth sharply. "I do, and if you will look at Uncle Oliver's portrait up there," she turned to point at the wall, "you will see that there is a likeness between him and Felix, only Felix is darker," finished Mona. Prelice did not argue, but sat restlessly in his seat. When Mona left the three men over their wine they had a long discussion concerning the present aspect of things, and formed a committee of three to decide what was best to be done. Lord Prelice insisted upon going up to London for an interview with Madame Marie, while Shepworth was equally certain that the trail of Jadby ought to be followed. As to Mr. Martaban, he openly bewailed the loss of the will, which would have placed Mona in possession of the Lanwin property. As the dinner was late, the three men lingered for a considerable time talking of what was best to be done, and the stable clock struck ten before they were aware of the passing of time. At once Prelice jumped up and walked into the drawing-room. There, to his surprise, he found Dr. Horace, more shaggy and uncouth than ever, sitting comfortably beside Mona Chent. The two looked like Titania and Bottom the Weaver. "How on earth did you come here?" asked Prelice, amazed. "Walked," retorted Horace gruffly. "I caught an earlier train, and so got here before the time mentioned in my wire. Good-evening, Shepworth; so you've been killed. Eh?" "Oh, I'm alive yet," laughed the barrister; and then Dr. Horace was introduced to Mr. Martaban, to whom he immediately addressed himself. "I'm glad that you are here," he said in his usual growling tones. "I mean you, sir, the land-shark. I've some business for you." "Is this the time to talk business?" said Martaban somewhat annoyed, as after a good dinner he did not feel able to give advice. "Judge for yourself," said Horace, fishing a blue envelope, foolscap size, out of the breast-pocket of his shabby coat. "Look at that." Martaban did so, and so did Prelice and Shepworth, peering over the shoulder of his dress-coat. Martaban uttered a cry of amazement. "Why, it's the missing will!" he almost shouted. CHAPTER XVII. THE OLD, OLD STORY. On hearing Martaban's surprised cry, everyone stood still and silent out of sheer amazement. The unexpected had happened with a vengeance; and Dr. Horace, quite delighted with the sensation that he had produced, rubbed his hairy hands with a grim chuckle. "Quite dramatic, isn't it!" said Horace. Martaban drew a long breath, and clutched the document, as though he feared that it would vanish into thin air, like Macbeth's witches. "I am surprised," he confessed, staring at the doctor. "How did you become possessed of this, sir?" And in asking that very pertinent question he anticipated the speech of the others. Horace did not answer immediately. Without requesting permission, he produced his immense German pipe, already stuffed as full as it would hold with strong tobacco, and lighted it calmly. Prelice looked annoyed at this breach of good manners, and would have stepped forward to remind Horace that he was not in his native wilds, but that Mona, guessing his intention, made a little gesture to stop him. Seeing what Dr. Horace had done, she was prepared to forgive him everything. Besides, the great traveller was such an eccentric person that no one could be angry when he behaved like a bear. It seemed natural that he should. Meanwhile the lawyer, becoming impatient, repeated his query. "How did I become possessed of it?" said Horace, lying back luxuriously and puffing out white clouds of smoke. "Well, I might say that I murdered Lanwin, mightn't I?" "Yes, you might," remarked Mona, smiling, "but you will not." "No," sighed Horace, with an odd expression on his large face; "it would be an anti-climax." "Oh, hang your dramatic instincts," said Prelice crossly. "Why can't you answer the question?" "I am about to, if you will hold your tongue and sit down. You always did have too much chin-music, Prelice. Well," he looked round with a grin, like a somewhat malicious monkey, "if you must know, I got that will from Agstone." Mona dropped back into the seat whence she had arisen, and her example was followed by the three men. Horace's calm announcement took their several breaths away, and their individual legs could support them no longer. "It seems to me," cried Prelice, much annoyed, "that you are presuming on our credulity." "No; I am telling you the truth." "But did you know Agstone?" demanded Shepworth, staring. "Oh yes. He was my brother." "What! What! What!" quacked Martaban like an excited duck. "Go slow, old son of a gun," said the doctor, smoking calmly. "I told Lord Prelice yonder of my relationship, and there is no need for me to explain the same to you, beyond stating the fact that Steve Agstone was my brother. He knew of my address in London, and came to see me on the day after the murder." "Why didn't you give him in charge?" asked the lawyer. Horace surveyed the red face turned towards him in an aggravatingly calm way. "For two reasons," he grunted--"firstly, Agstone was my brother, and dog doesn't eat dog; secondly, I had no reason to believe that he had anything to do with the death." "But the knife which he brought to Mr. Shepworth's flat----" "Oh yes!" Horace glanced at the two young men and chuckled; "but you see there was no mention of the knife when Steve came to see me. Still, I must admit that he feared lest he should be accused of the crime." "Oh!" cried Mona, sitting bolt upright, "then he did not accuse me again?" "Not to me," answered the doctor promptly; "in fact, Steve seemed to be rather friendly inclined towards you." "No! No! No!" cried Mona earnestly. "He never liked me; he was jealous because my uncle loved me." "Well," Horace looked at his pipe rather than at the speaker, "I should not say that if I were you. In my opinion Steve was not so very devoted to Lanwin as was made out----" "But I thought----" "Never mind what you thought," said Horace rudely, and rose to walk up and down the room. "I am here to tell you facts. When I have explained as much as is possible for me to explain, I'm going." "Won't you stop here for the night?" asked Mona, surprised. "No," retorted Horace abruptly; "I won't. Now listen, as my time is valuable, and I can't remain here chattering nonsense, and----" "And behaving rudely," finished Prelice, with sarcasm. "Oh, you're there, my son, with your monkey-brand manners. There, there!" he went on teasingly, as Prelice jumped up, flushing, "don't get out your little gun. There's a lady present." "I wish you would remember that." "Oh, so I do. There's a lady present who wishes to hear how I became possessed of a document which gives her ten thousand a year. Very good, don't interrupt, or----" Horace broke off with a gruff laugh. "What bad manners you civilised people have." Prelice looked despairingly at Shepworth. It seemed impossible to bring this uncouth person to the point. But Mona was laughing at the bearlike antics of the traveller, although Mr. Martaban's indignant face showed how his feelings were outraged. "This," cried the lawyer, "is quite intolerable." "Cock-a-doodle-doo," crowed Horace derisively; then unexpectedly whirled a chair round between his stumpy legs, and sat down, leaning his arms over the back, to address his audience as it were from an imaginary pulpit. "Listen," said Horace gravely, and the smiles gave place to watchfulness on every face. "My brother came to see me on the day after the murder. I had already read of Lanwin's death in the papers, and asked Steve how his master came by his end. Steve swore that he did not know, but stated that he quite expected to be accused. He then lugged that blue envelope which Mr. Martaban is holding out of his pocket, and passed it along to me. Before I could open the envelope he was out of the house, and I never heard of him again until Prelice yonder brought me the report of his death in Shepworth's flat. When alone I opened the envelope, and found the will." "Why didn't you bring it forward at once?" fumed the lawyer. "Because I thought that its production might implicate Steve, and I didn't wish to have Steve hanged for a crime which he did not commit." "Are you sure that he did not?" asked Shepworth, meaningly. "One is sure of nothing in this old ramshackle world," said Horace philosophically; "but what I want you all to understand is that Steve told me nothing. Why he should bring me the will I can't say, and he did not wait to tell me how he became possessed of it. I should have brought it forward at the trial, but that the papers hinted at the burning of this will being a point in Miss Chent's favour. I therefore waited until Miss Chent was acquitted, and resolved only to use the will when Jadby--whom I don't like--tried to secure this property. Miss Chent sent me the wire to-night, saying that Jadby was making himself disagreeable, so I came down with the will. _You_ have it, Mr. Land-shark," he added, looking at Martaban, "so that is a present for you, Miss Chent." He pulled out a small white paper packet from his breast-pocket, and flung it dexterously across the room. "You will find that useful should Captain Jadby prove to be troublesome, as he will now that he has lost the money. That is all my mission here." He jumped away from his chair unexpectedly, and trotted to the door, where he turned to survey the company. "Good-night." "Stop, stop!" cried Mona, running to the door, through which he had so promptly vanished; and the others following, echoed her urgent cry. But by the time they reached the hall the door was wide open, and Horace had disappeared as completely as though the earth had swallowed him up. Beyond was the darkness, which veiled him. "Is he mad?" asked Mona, turning an amazed face to the three men. "Mad or not, he has done you a service," said Martaban, looking down at the will, which he still held. "This is undoubtedly your uncle's last testament, which was _not_ burnt. It is signed by Sir Oliver in the presence of Stephen Agstone and Emma Blexey. What a facer this will be for our South Sea friend," ended the lawyer, actually becoming slangy in his delight. "Ought we to follow Horace?" Shepworth asked. "No," replied Prelice, who was frowning at Horace's manners; "even if we caught up with him, he would say nothing. We must wait to see if he will again intervene in the case." "He seems to have washed his hands of it," said Ned, sauntering back to the drawing-room. "He did so before, yet when Miss Chent wired he came down. I wonder----" Prelice paused, and bit his fingers. "You wonder what?" "If Horace killed Sir Oliver and Agstone." Shepworth stared. "That's a rotten bad shot, Dorry. Why should he?" "Oh, I can assign no reason, but----" "My dear old chap, it is absurd. I know you are thinking of the will being brought here by Horace; but why should not his story be a true one, since Agstone is his brother?" "Well," Prelice threw out his hands with a despairing gesture, "I can't understand the whole business; it passes my powers of comprehension." Before Ned could reply Mona summoned both the young men. Along with Martaban, she had been opening the parcel which Horace had thrown across the room, and was now exclaiming at its contents. "Ned, Lord Prelice, here is the Sacred Herb." They hurried over to have a look, and there sure enough was the yellowish stalk of the herb from Easter Island, bearing seven or more purple leaves. In addition, there was a written paper, which Mona read aloud. "Use the enclosed when Jadby comes to close quarters and makes himself unpleasant," she read in a bewildered manner; "also, it will be as well for you to use your power over Lord Prelice to prevent his searching further in this case. If he meddles with what does not concern him, it means sorrow, and perhaps a public scandal." There was a dead silence. "Now what does that mean?" asked Mona. No one knew; no one dared to suggest an explanation. Prelice was the first to speak. "I advise you, Miss Chent, to obey Horace, and keep this herb constantly in your pocket. He is not the man to give a warning without some grave reason. He has saved you once from Jadby, and this herb, as he plainly says, intimates that it will save you again." "But why should----" "Oh!" Prelice shrugged his shoulders. "I can explain nothing. And with your leave I shall go back to Hythe, Ned." "I remain here for the night," replied the barrister. "All right, I shall see you in the morning." And Prelice sauntered to the door, after bowing to Miss Chent. He did not dare to take her hand, for fear he should never let go of it again. But she hurried after him, and spoke anxiously in the hall as he put on his light summer overcoat. This hasty departure annoyed her, as she showed plainly. "Why will you not remain and talk over this strange matter?" she asked. "No, no!" answered the young man, averting his eyes and quickly opening the door himself, since no footman was at hand: "But if you will permit me, I shall come here at five in the morning." "At five? Why at five?" "Then is the breaking of a new day," whispered Prelice in a somewhat tremulous voice. "And in the gardens--in the light of the dawn--you can then say---you can then say----" He repeated the phrase, raised his eyes to meet hers, and left with a hurried good-night. Mona stood where she was, amazed and confused. "What did he mean?" she asked herself; and immediately her heart explained. A light broke over her lovely face, and she whispered to herself: "At five--in the gardens--in the light of the dawn." Meanwhile Prelice rushed downward to Hythe through the darkness of the night. There was no moon, but the purple sky scintillated gloriously with stars. A warm wind, laden with the fragrance of wild flowers, was blowing with strange murmurings over the bare spaces of the Downs, and the young man's spirits thrilled to the beauty and peace of the night. He should have thought of the case; of Horace's queer warning, repeated for the third time; and of the behaviour of Captain Jadby, now converted from a secret foe into an open enemy. But he considered nothing of these pressing matters, which had to do with the everyday world. Rather did he think of Mona and her starry beauty; rather did he recall with joy the great truth, which he could scarcely realise, that he was free to woo her, without being disloyal to his bosom friend. Mona was not engaged to Ned; her heart was free to receive a loving occupant; and Prelice, striding through the leafy lanes, swore inly that he would be that occupant. Lady Sophia would be hostile; he knew that from the way in which she had taken leave of the girl. But what did that matter, so long as Mona received him at dawn, in the enchanted gardens of the secluded Grange? All that night Prelice slept soundly. As a lover, the tumult of his heart should have kept him wide awake, but the transcendental heights to which his thoughts raised him so drew him away from earthly matters that he lost consciousness of physical surroundings. Lying on his bed, the sound of the breaking waves on the rugged beach below the hotel lulled him to sleep. And then his spirit soared to a higher world, spiritual and pure, in which there was no pain or sorrow or weary misunderstandings. When he awoke, with the rosy lights of sunrise streaming through the curtainless window, his spirit told him little of what it had seen in the superphysical world. But Prelice was conscious that somewhere in the vast spaces of the unknown he had met with Mona, and had talked with her for endless periods of time. True, according to the clock, he had slept but a few hours; but, living in eternity, as a true lover should, he took no count of earthly time--man's measure of the eternal. He had lived for thousands of years during the dark hours, kneeling at the feet of Mona, crowned Queen of Dreams, of Kisses. And now he was to see her again in the flesh, gracious and lovely, and--as he knew she would be--truly kind. The spirit of the man having bathed in the fountain of sleep, rose therefrom pure and undefiled. It seemed meet to Prelice--although he was not usually so imaginative--that he should wear a suit of pure white as symbolic of the coming interview. And as he passed uphill clothed in spotless flannels, with the purity of the dawn stealing into his soul, he felt as though he had been reborn into a fairer and more perfect world. Passing swiftly over the grassy uplands, his eager feet bore him down into the hollow, through the ancient woods, and on to the bird-haunted lawn. And there, in the cold, searching, chaste light of the dawn hours, he beheld his lady standing amidst the dewy grass, waiting for his coming. And she also was clothed in white. As Prelice came across the lawns, his eyes far off met those of Mona, which shone like twin stars in the rosy flushing of her face. According to precedent, he should have raised his hat; he should have greeted her with a hand-shake; he should have explained his desire for this unconventional meeting. But he did none of these things; neither did she desire that he should do them. Without a words without a pause, he came to her swiftly, and clasped her in his arms. Their lips met in one long kiss, and the awakened birds sang joyfully in the rustling trees. So might Adam have greeted Eve in Paradise, when God presented him with the helpmate who was to be the mother of all mankind. "And you knew--you knew all the time?" murmured Mona on his breast. "No, I did not know, more shame to me. I really thought that you were engaged to Ned." "I don't mean that. But surely you knew--you guessed that I loved you, and you only?" "No. How could I when----" "I showed my love in a hundred ways," she said, with a playful laugh. "Oh, Lord Prelice, how very little you know of women." "I know more than is good for me," he murmured, smiling. "What?" "That is, Lord Prelice does," he protested, hedging; "but George is an innocent boy, who knows nothing." "Who is George?" "I am." And he kissed her again, victoriously. Mona laughed happily. "I am afraid that George is not so innocent as he makes himself out to be." "Teach him to be good, my darling." "A hard task you set me--George," she lingered lovingly over the name; "and oh, what you must think of me, who take so much for granted." "I think that you are an angel," he cried fervently. "Dear, I loved you from the moment I first saw you in that cruel Court." "And I loved you," she whispered. "I thought that it was merely friendship, until we met again, and then--then, I knew!" She gave a delighted little crow of laughter, which stirred the young man's heart to its depths. Impulsively he dropped on his knees, and kissed her hands alternately, scarcely able to speak. "I am not worthy of you," he muttered. "Dear." She stooped, and raised him to her breast. "Let me find out your imperfections by myself." "I have many," he said humbly. "And I love you for them. I marry a man in the world of men, and not an archangel; in the same way as you take a faulty woman, and not a spirit of light. But we are spirits, although clothed in coats of skin," she ended gently, "and when the hour strikes we shall know each other." "Do we not know each other now?" "No. That is, Mona Chent knows George Prelice." The young man jumped gaily to his feet. "Enough for the day is the delight therefore," he cried. "I am quite content to know Mona Chent until she becomes Mona Prelice. When will you marry me?" "So like a man," laughed the girl; "you wish to settle an important future in five minutes. We must wait." "Wait? Oh no, no! Why should we?" "Because," Mona laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, "your wife must be like Cæsar's, above suspicion." "You wish me, then, to go on looking into the case?" "I do, unless you accept the warning of Dr. Horace." Prelice threw his panama over the hedge "I accept no warning, since you make me strong to dare it. I shall go on with the case--to-morrow." "Why to-morrow?" "Oh, Mona, let me enjoy Paradise for twenty-four hours." "No. You must act, and at once, lest we lose our Paradise altogether. I don't understand what Dr. Horace means, but in spite of his hints I wish you to look into matters in order to find out who murdered poor Uncle Oliver, and in order to clear my name. You must go up to London to-day and begin your search. It is a sacrifice I ask of you, no doubt, but then love--true love--means sacrifice." "Very good," said Prelice sedately; "I shall go up by the midday train and interview Madame Marie Eppingrave." "Why her particularly?" "She gave the herb to your uncle. Mrs. Blexey mistrusts her. Now," he closed her mouth with a kiss, "not a word more. The gates of Paradise will close in a few hours. Until then----" "Yes, yes! Until then?" "Let us play at being Adam and Eve in a garden." And they did. CHAPTER XVIII. THE POWER OF THE HERB. It had been Prelice's intention to ask Ned about his love for Constance Rover before leaving the Grange, but on second thought he resolved to wait until he learned more concerning the murders before putting Shepworth in the witness-box. Nevertheless, he was somewhat upset to think that his best friend was entangling himself with a married woman. Prelice was no prude, and had not been a Sir Galahad himself; all the same, he did not think that Ned was acting rightly. Of course, the case was a hard one, since the two truly loved one another. Constance had been sacrificed on the family altar, and to a man who took advantage of her sacrifice to play the tyrant as much as he dared. The poor woman was very unhappy, and it was to be presumed that the man who loved her was unhappy also. It said a great deal for Shepworth and Mrs. Rover that they had not long ago defied conventionality and eloped. Since they had not gone this length, Prelice argued that they were trying to bear their several burdens as honourably as possible. But how long would such endurance last? According to Shepworth himself, Mona knew of his love for Constance, since he had explained the same when the pretended engagement was made to save the girl from Jadby's wooing and Sir Oliver's persecution. But Prelice, in the first flush of his love, shrank from questioning her about so distasteful a subject; and on her side, Mona was loyally silent, until Ned chose to speak. Thus it came about that, although Prelice met his friend at breakfast, he made no remark about this very private business, and Shepworth did not volunteer an explanation. Rather did the conversation turn on the unexpected appearance of the lost will; and Martaban explained his future actions. These included an immediate journey to London with Mrs. Blexey, who had to make an affidavit as to the authenticity of the document. Under these circumstances, as Shepworth could scarcely remain at the Grange when both Martaban and the housekeeper were absent, he arranged to go to London with them by the ten o'clock train. Prelice would fain have lingered in those delicious gardens with Mona, but as he knew her views, he kept to his determination. However, when the trio drove away to Hythe, Prelice had a golden hour or so all to himself, and very wisely made the most of it. It was with great regret that he took his way to the station at Hythe and to the train which was to bear him miles away from his goddess. But the memory of the last kiss which she gave him cheered his somewhat despondent mood all the way to Charing Cross. And on stepping on to the platform of the metropolitan station Prelice shook off his dreams, and addressed himself to the task in hand. As the day was fine, and Prelice, as usual, felt the need of exercise to tame his exuberant spirits--which had quite recovered during the journey--he walked to New Bond Street, and somewhere about three o'clock found himself reading a brass plate inscribed "Madame Marie Eppingrave." And afterwards he entered a narrow and dark passage, to mount a steep flight of stairs, and finally came to the second floor of the building, where the fortune-teller received clients. A dark-complexioned lad of fourteen, dressed in white robes, with a blue scarf round his waist, received the new-comer, and informed him that Madame Marie was engaged for ten minutes or so. Prelice therefore sat down, and glanced over some papers lying on a round table. These mostly dealt with occult matters up to date, and he speedily grew tired of reading much which he could not understand. The room was small and commonplace, and even ugly in its adornments. The table aforesaid, a few cane chairs, and an old horse-hair sofa completed the furnishings, and two dingy uncurtained windows overlooked Bond Street. There was nothing of the mystical about this very ordinary apartment, and Prelice concluded that Madame Marie certainly did not spend her earnings on magical frippery in order to impress those who called upon her. After a glance round he spoke to the lad, who was seated cross-legged at the door, and asked him if he was a Hindoo. "No," answered the boy in very good English, and with a flash of snow-white teeth; "I come from the South Seas." "Indeed," answered Prelice in his turn, and somewhat astonished. "Has your mistress been in the South Seas?" "Yes, sir. She brought me from Tahiti, but I want to go back again." Prelice reflected. Tahiti was the home of Captain Jadby, and the former haunt of Sir Oliver Lanwin. He wondered if Madame Marie had met the baronet there. But the lad was not likely to know that, so he asked him another question. "Does your mistress know Captain Felix Jadby?" The effect on the boy was somewhat strange. He leaped to his feet, and muttered some words in his native tongue, which apparently were not complimentary to the captain, judging from the savage expression of his face. "Madame does know him," he said at length, "and he comes to see her here very often. I don't like him. He kicked me. I would kill him if I were in Tahiti, but here----" The boy shrugged his shoulders, to show that the English law was much too particular. "Madame loves the captain, and wants to marry him," went on the boy, apparently so carried away by his hate that he said more than was wise, considering his dependent position, "but he loves another, and----" Here the sound of the inner door opening made the lad aware of his folly in speaking secrets to a stranger. He cringed, and caught Prelice's hand. "You will say nothing to her?" he implored. "No, no," Prelice assured him, and slipped half-a-crown into his hand; "but later you must tell me more. I also dislike Captain Jadby." "I'll tell you what I can to harm him," said the boy viciously. "He kicked me and struck me--me, the son of a chief. But don't tell her," he added, pointing with a trembling hand to the inner door; "oh, my soul, don't tell her, for she can send the spirits to torment me." The young man promised again, thinking that the lad in a way was somewhat like Caliban in his fear of spirits, and looked upon Madame Marie as a sort of female Prospero, who could have him pinched black and blue. But he had little time to think about this new ally, who might be of assistance in undermining Jadby's schemes; for a lady, fashionably dressed, and holding a handkerchief to her face, emerged from the inner room. The lad showed her out, and Prelice waited for his reception. A silver bell sounded within, and the boy returned to point meaningly at the door, laying his finger on his lips in token of silence. Prelice nodded reassuringly, and stepped into the shrine. If the approach to this holy of holies was commonplace, the shrine itself certainly was not. Prelice beheld a room of no great size furnished very oddly--that is to say, it was not furnished in the ordinary acceptation of the word. The ceiling was painted a dull red, and a plain carpet of the same hue was spread over the floor. Two windows looking on to Bond Street were filled in with painted glass, representing various mystical signs, and the four walls were hung with lustreless black stuff, which made the place look like a chapel during a funeral service. But the odd thing was that the red carpet was strewn with perfectly white cushions, and there was neither table nor chair. Tall pillars of black marble stood in the four corners, each bearing a glass ball on its summit, and between the windows was placed a bronze tripod, in which smoked a perfumed fire. What with the dim religious light, the black walls, the red carpet, and the snowy cushions of silk, Prelice felt somewhat dizzy. All this theatrical parade was evidently designed to produce a confusing effect, and unseat as much as possible the reason and judgment of Madame's dupes. Annoyed that he should give way so easily, the young man pulled his wits together, and looked at the priestess who had conceived this artful _mise en scène_. Madame Marie, clothed in a long white silk robe, made perfectly plain, knelt--Japanese fashion--on a cushion in front of the tripod, and with her back to the painted windows. She was a stout, heavy-looking woman, of apparently no great height, with a colourless face, very large and smooth, and with masses of snowy, silvery hair, which tumbled down her back in waves of white. What her figure might be Prelice could not judge because of the robe, but he noted that her hands were slender and beautiful, and also ringless. Indeed, she did not wear a single ornament of any description, and kneeling perfectly motionless, with closed eyes, looked like an idol carved out of alabaster. It was cleverly done, and Prelice, the sceptical, could quite understand how the majority of people yielded to the carefully prepared spells of this managing woman. But it was when Madame Marie opened her eyes that Prelice became aware of the true secret of her power over weaker minds. These were large and blue and clear, looking from under white eyebrows in a penetrating way, fathomless as the sea, and as mysterious. Prelice met this mystical gaze calmly, but felt his skin prickling, and his will power growing weak. Aware that the seeress was trying to hypnotise him, as she doubtless hypnotised her other clients, the young man concentrated his will to meet and baffle hers. For some time they stared at one another, Prelice looking down from his height, and Madame Marie gazing upward from her cushion. Then the woman closed her eyes again with a somewhat annoyed expression. "You are not a weak man," she said in a deep melodious voice, like the sound of a mellow bell. "No," answered Prelice calmly; "I am not!" And he sat down cross-legged on a cushion directly in front of the sibyl. "Then why do you come to me?" she asked, looking at him steadily; "only weak persons wish to know the future. The man who is strong and self-willed and sceptical, as you are, need learn nothing of the future, which lies in his own hands." "In the hands of God rather," corrected Prelice. "Do you know who I am?" "You are Lord Prelice." "How do you know?" "I might say by magic, but you would not believe that. I always suit myself to the nature of those I meet, therefore I shall give a commonplace explanation. I saw you in Court, when you gave evidence during the trial of Miss Chent for murder." Prelice nodded. "I might have guessed that. Do you know why I have come?" Madame Marie folded her hands calmly before her, and replied equally calmly. "You have come to solve the secret of the murders." "That is a very clever guess, and I rather think that you can solve the secret, Madame." "Why should you think so?" she asked with absolute calmness. "You gave the Sacred Herb to Sir Oliver." "I did. The Sacred Herb of Easter Island--but I need not explain to you, since you heard what Dr. Horace said in Court. The herb induces trances, and Sir Oliver wished to go into a trance by its aid. I therefore gave him a few twigs." "Why did Sir Oliver wish to go into a trance?" "He desired to explore the Astral Plane, if you understand that----" "I quite understand; I have studied Theosophy. Well?" "There is nothing more to be said," rejoined Madame Marie, with a little shrug, which hinted at French blood. "He went into a trance, and while his spirit was absent from his body he was murdered." "Who by?" "I can't tell you. Even with my powers, and they are great, I am not permitted to know who killed Sir Oliver Lanwin. It was his Karma, and he had to bear it, since he reaped only as he sowed. The Karma of his murderer has nothing to do with me, therefore my sight is veiled, and I cannot read the truth; and if I could," added the woman with emphasis, "you must be aware, if you have studied the occult, that I would not be permitted to tell without permission from those who rule." "The Lords of Karma?" asked Prelice, wondering if she was talking in earnest, or merely wriggling out of an awkward position. Madame Marie bowed solemnly. "I see you understand somewhat; but may I ask you to be more open with me regarding the purpose of your visit. You can hardly have come to accuse me of these crimes?" "No," said Prelice, studying her face carefully; "I think that you are innocent. Let us leave the murders alone for the moment; I want you to help me"--he paused to add effect to his next words--"with Captain Felix Jadby." The woman's hands moved restlessly, and she began to lose her calmness when the name was pronounced. "I know nothing about Captain Jadby beyond the fact that I met him at Lanwin Grange; but he is not guilty of Sir Oliver's death, if that is what you mean." "Oh dear me, that is not what I mean at all," rejoined Prelice in his most airy manner, and resolving to be very plain; "but the fact is that Captain Jadby is my rival." Madame Marie rose as though moved by a spring, and he then saw that she was little, but tremendously dignified. "Your rival!" she repeated, and her marble-white face became crimson with angry blood. At length he had managed to break through her calculated calm. "I understood that Miss Chent was engaged to Mr. Shepworth?" "Oh, the whole world knows that," replied Prelice, still airy in his manner, "but that was merely an official engagement to prevent Jadby from worrying Miss Chent. Sir Oliver was in favour of the engagement with Jadby, for reasons----" "I know those reasons--I know that Felix," she let slip the name, forgetting that she had disclaimed intimacy--"that Felix is his son." "His illegitimate son," said Prelice with emphasis. "Yes, by the daughter of a chief to whom he was married in native fashion, Lord Prelice. Of course, Captain Jadby," she had the name stiffly by this time, remembering her slip, "came home to look after his interests, and wished to marry another woman; forgetting," cried Madame Marie, beginning to pace the room, "that he was engaged to marry another woman--myself, Lord Prelice--myself." Remembering what the native boy had said, Prelice expressed no surprise, but rapidly resolved to work on her jealousy. "I congratulate Captain Jadby more than I do you," he remarked gravely. "Oh, I know that he is not a good man," she cried, now quite the woman, and kicking several cushions out of the way; "but I loved him, I have always loved him, and he owes much to me. He promised, when we met in the South Seas, that he would make me his wife. Not that I am young or beautiful, but because he found in me--so he said--a good comrade. I gave him the money to come home and see his father, and to secure his inheritance if possible. But he saw that girl, and loved her. Oh, how I hate that girl who stole his heart." "You need not," said Prelice very dryly. "Miss Chent dislikes Jadby immensely, and pretended to be engaged to Shepworth so as to escape his clutches, otherwise Sir Oliver might have worried her into consenting to a marriage which she hated; but Jadby came down the other evening to Lanwin Grange, and knows now that the engagement was a false one. What he does not know," ended Prelice emphatically, "is that Miss Chent is now engaged to me." "To you!" Madame Marie stopped in sheer surprise, then went on pacing the room, talking half to herself. "But why should I be astonished? I saw her look at you in Court; I noted how you glanced in her direction. I told Jadby that you loved her, and that she loved you." "Oh, you couldn't be certain," cried Prelice blushing. "I have occult powers which enable me to read hearts," said Madame Marie coldly, "believe, or disbelieve, as you like." "I shall believe if you will read my heart now." "There is no need of my exercising occult powers for that," she replied, waving her beautiful hands; "you wish to learn the truth about the murders so that Miss Chent's name may be cleared and Felix thwarted." "Yes," said Prelice coolly; "you are right. And you can help me to clear Miss Chent's name, to discover the truth, as I can help you to marry Jadby." "How can you do that?" "By marrying Miss Chent myself." Madame Marie nodded, and thought, pressing her hands to her head. "I can help you by the power of the herb," she said rapidly. "Listen. I shall go into a trance, induced by the herb. Do whatever I say, but do not attempt to waken me. Simply listen to what I say, and then leave the room. I shall send my spirit to seek out the truth; but first," she said, slipping down on to the cushion again, "tell me how much you know." Prelice saw no objection in being thus clear. Even if Madame Marie wished to work against him--and seeing that her love for Jadby was at stake, he did not think that she would--all that he told her would do little to harm his own schemes. He therefore made no demur, but detailed everything from the time Lady Sophia had first drawn him into the case by sending him to the New Bailey. Madame Marie listened intently, nodding at intervals. "It is useless for Felix to strive," she said when he ended, and with an air of triumph; "the fate of yourself is mingled with that of the girl. You love so speedily now, because you loved before, in previous incarnations. Her Karma is your Karma. Felix can never marry her, nor can Mr. Shepworth marry her, even if he did not love Mrs. Rover." "Pardon me," cried Prelice quickly; "I made no mention of Mrs. Rover beyond the fact that she wore the green domino and the scarlet-embroidered dress. And she, as I explained, is innocent. You have no right to talk of Mr. Shepworth's love for a married woman." "Lord Prelice," said Madame Marie quietly, and moved towards the wall, "my knowledge of these affairs is greater than you imagine. Mrs. Rover has consulted me, and Felix learned--how it matters not--that she loved Mr. Shepworth. However, we can talk of these things another time. I will go into a trance, and search in Alexander Mansions for what I can find, only, as I said, after I have spoken and have become silent, leave this room at once. In due time I shall come out of the trance, when the power of the herb is exhausted." Prelice nodded in silence, and Madame Marie, drawing aside a portion of the black hangings, revealed a small recess. From this she took some purple leaves, and moving towards the tripod, threw them on the perfumed fire. "Lie down on your face," she commended, "else the fumes will send you into a trance. Quick! The smoke rises." It certainly did, in a thick white cloud. Madame Marie stood over it, letting the odour flow into her nostrils. Not wishing to experience the power of the herb, as he had witnessed its results before, Prelice lay full length on the red carpet. The smoke was circling so high up that he could not breathe it, although a sickly whiff of tuberose perfume came to his nostrils. Perhaps the draught sweeping from under the door neutralised the powerful scent at this lower level; but be this as it may, Prelice lay perfectly flat, and, as in a dream, heard Madame Marie speak after the manner of the tranced in an unemotional voice, and very distinctly. "I leave this room," she said in her mellow tones. "I rise high. I pass across London; the streets are under me. I see the Park, and now I poise above Alexander Mansions. I sink; I pass through the roof; I am in Mrs. Rover's flat." "Search for the dress," commanded Prelice softly. There was a pause, and then the calm voice sounded again. "I search in Mrs. Rover's room. The dress she wore is there in a wardrobe together with a green domino." "Search for another dress," said Prelice, risking the chance; "another dress of the same style." Again there came a pause. "I am searching!" said the voice, and a silence ensued. For quite two minutes it endured; then Madame spoke again, still with the same awful calmness. "A man's dressing-room--in the flat across the landing. I see a cupboard, in which many clothes are hanging up. Men's clothes they are. Behind them is a green domino with a scarlet-embroidered dress sewn to it." "Who wore it?" asked Prelice, his heart beating. "I cannot tell. It is not permitted by the Powers." Then came a long silence. CHAPTER XIX. CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. It was with extraordinary feelings that Lord Prelice emerged from that mystic room into the everyday world of Bond Street. After the refusal to declare the name of the person who had worn the dress Madame Marie had become silent, and Prelice raised his head, to see her standing rigid and white between the painted windows. The white smoke had disappeared into thin air, and save that the strong tuberose scent still lingered behind, there was nothing to show what had placed her in the trance. Obedient to instructions, the young man left the still figure in the lonely room, and passed through the outer apartment on his way down the stairs. The boy, cross-legged in the corner, looked up anxiously as he went out. "You have said nothing?" he breathed apprehensively. "Nothing," answered Prelice softly, and descended the stairs. When he stood in the street again he removed his hat, and drew a long breath of the smoky London air. Impure as it was, it dispelled the slight dizziness which the odour of the Sacred Herb had produced. Then the young man chartered a hansom to reach his rooms in Half-Moon Street; but not until he was in his very own den, and seated in an armchair with a brandy and soda within reach, did he find time to reflect. His reflections were considerably aided by a first-class cigar. "A queer adventure," thought Prelice meditatively. "What am I to do next, I should like to know?" Of course, the answer to this was obvious. He should go at once to Alexander Mansions, and learn if what Madame Marie said was correct. A very difficult errand to go upon, Prelice thought, as it would be hard to induce Mrs. Rover to explore her husband's dressing-room in search of evidence which might bring him into trouble. And what excuse could he make, without telling the whole truth? Then, again, Mrs. Rover might scoff at Madame Marie's astounding statement, made under such astounding conditions. Yet, on reflection, Prelice did not think that she would scoff, considering that she had consulted the fortune-teller herself, and believed in the occult. There was a considerable vein of what the vulgar call superstition in Constance Rover. That the dress was there, Prelice had not the least doubt. Of course, on the face of it, an ordinary mortal would laugh at the idea of evidence being procured in such a way. But Prelice had travelled too widely, and he had seen too much to make him a sceptic. In Cairo, in the West Indies, in South America, and in the South Seas, he had witnessed occult ceremonies and doings, which proved clearly the existence of that Unseen World at which many people laugh, and of which all people are afraid. Drink, drugs, music, rapid movement, and even absolute stillness, are all aids to open the psychic senses, as Prelice knew very well. Madame Marie had used the fumes of the Sacred Herb to rend the spirit from the body, and he quite believed that she had gone to Alexander Mansions to make the strange discovery. When she woke from the trance she would be--according to psychic laws--quite unconscious of what she had said. But here Lord Prelice began to doubt. Madame Marie had admitted that she knew more than Prelice imagined. Seeing that she had been at the Grange during the tragedy, and was closely connected with Jadby, it seemed very probable that she was aware of much which it was necessary to learn before the actual truth could be made manifest. So far as Prelice could judge--and he was a shrewd reader of character--the fortune-teller was entirely honest in her dealings with him. If she wished to gain Jadby as her husband it was necessary that she should be so, since only by the marriage of Lord Prelice could the girl whom the buccaneer loved be removed from her path. It was not worth her while to play Prelice false, since his aims and hers were identical. Prelice desired to marry Mona, and Madame Marie wished this also. She was anxious to make the sailor her husband, and Prelice was quite willing that this should be so, since it would put an end to Jadby's troubling, and might perhaps take him out of England. Therefore Prelice believed in Madame Marie Eppingrave. He credited her powers also, for she had the true eyes of one who can see into the Astral World; but he could not be certain if she had used her occult powers on this occasion. She may have known beforehand of the dress, and might merely have used the trance as a means of communicating it without arousing Jadby's wrath. If the dress was found, and evidence therefrom was forthcoming likely to solve the mystery of Agstone's death, the captain, wishing to keep Mona in uneasy terror for her reputation, would be much annoyed. But then Madame Marie could explain that she had only gone into a trance for Prelice, as an ordinary client, and was unaware of what she said. Under these circumstances the buccaneer could say nothing. "Well," said Prelice, stretching himself, and talking aloud, a habit which he had contracted when travelling in silent places, "it's rum business altogether. If the dress is in Dolly Rover's wardrobe, what then? I can't accuse him, as he certainly had no reason to kill Agstone. Humph! I wonder if this is what Horace meant when he said that I would be sorry if I searched further into the case? I certainly don't want Dolly to be hanged; but if he were, I am quite sure that Ned would console the widow. Ugh!" Prelice shivered, "what a horrible thought. Rover is a bounder and a blighter and a cad, but I honestly don't think that he is a criminal of this sort. I don't believe that he has the pluck, for one thing; and for another, he had no motive. Hum!" he reflected, "I'd best get along and see Constance." On glancing at his watch Prelice learned that it was half-past five, and concluded that probably Mrs. Rover would be at home sipping tea, after the manner of women, worn out with shopping. He decided to give her half-an-hour, and then catch the seven train from Charing Cross to Hythe. Come what might, the young man intended to get back to Hythe that night in order to walk over and see Mona. He assured himself that she would be anxious, and would wish to learn how he had sped. But he might as well have confessed the truth to himself--namely, that he pined hungrily for a sight of her face, and that every moment passed away from her side was spent in the outer darkness. "Where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth," said Prelice to himself, quite ready to wail and gnash if he missed his train. As fate would have it, Mrs. Rover was at home, and came forward to greet her friend in a wonderful tea-gown, which suited her queenly figure. The rose-hued blinds were down, and the room looked like the grotto of the Venusberg; but in spite of these softening aids, Mrs. Rover appeared somewhat haggard. Nor was her greeting of Prelice very friendly. Indeed, it was so harsh that he congratulated himself on finding her alone. But then had anyone else been present, she would have been all smiles and gentle words. "How dare you come and see me after leaving as you did last time," was Mrs. Rover's polite salutation; "and I know why you went too. Yes, you may look and look, Lord Prelice, but I know. I explained your conduct to Ned, and he told me how he had described the dress to you." "Which means!" asked Prelice calmly and unflinchingly. "Means!" she cried in stormy tones. "It means that you believed me to be the woman who came in and waved the bronze cup under Ned's nose." "I did believe it for one minute," confessed her friend, making a clean breast of it in view of what was coming, "but, of course, on reflection I saw how ridiculous it was to suspect you." "It was--it was--it was!" retorted Mrs. Rover, sitting down and tapping her foot. "I have not many friends, Lord Prelice, but I did think that Dorry was one of them." "Dorry is," he assured her. "A fair-weather friend. Pooh! To suspect Me," she went on angrily. "Me of all people. As if I would have hurt Ned. Had it been that Chent girl, you might have had some cause." "Speak gently about Miss Chent," said Prelice quietly. "I sha'n't. Why should I?" "Because I am engaged to her." "You!" Mrs. Rover started to her feet in delighted amazement. "But Ned?" "Ned's engagement was merely an official one to prevent Jadby----" "Oh yes, yes! I know all about that; but I didn't believe that Ned was speaking the truth. I thought that he was throwing me over for that horrid girl. No, no! Don't look at me like that. She isn't a horrid girl now that she is engaged to you. I shall love Lady Prelice much more than I loved Mona Chent. Engaged--engaged!" Mrs. Rover made a ball of her handkerchief, and tossed it in the air. "What a rage Lady Sophia will be in." "She is in it already," said Prelice dryly. "I don't care." "Of course you don't. You're a man--a man. Oh, how I love a man. Not that my married life gives me any experience," she ended bitterly. "Constance," said Prelice seriously, "sit down, and let us talk quietly about your married life." "I don't wish to talk of it," she retorted, but nevertheless took the seat he pointed to. "You must. I am your friend, as you very truly say----" "I admit it, now that you are engaged to Mona. But I say, Dorry--yes, I'll call you Dorry now--I say, isn't it rather sudden? You have only known her a week or two." "It was a case of love at first sight," said the young man very earnestly. "Pooh! pooh! I don't believe in such a thing." "I didn't either until I experienced the sensation; but I really did love Mona from the moment I saw her in the dock, and it was only honour which held me back from speaking even earlier." "Honour! What honour?" asked Mrs. Rover contemptuously. "She was supposed to be engaged to Ned, you know. Only when I learned that the engagement meant nothing was I able to speak out." "You have very many scruples," said Mrs. Rover, with a shrug, "and evidently forget that all is fair in love and war." "That's a purely feminine view, Constance. Had Ned really been in love with Mona, and really engaged to her, I should have left England without saying a word." "So like a man," retorted Constance scornfully. "Why, if a dozen women loved Ned, I shouldn't give him up." "Constance, you forget that you are married." "I don't; Dolly never gives me a chance of forgetting." "Constance," Prelice spoke sharply, "you are a foolish, headstrong woman. Do you want to be disgraced?" "There is no chance of that," cried Mrs. Rover in a fury. "How dare you talk to me like that?" "Because I see you going headlong to ruin." "You see nothing of the sort. I am a loyal wife, to Dolly. Ned knows that I love him now as I loved him before my marriage, and you know, Dorry, as he does, how my marriage came about." "I know, but you ought to make the best of it." "I am making the best of it," cried Constance, rising to stamp her foot in a royal rage. "There is not a breath of scandal against my name. No one can couple my name and Ned's together. We scarcely ever meet; but we can't prevent our feelings." "Still," urged Prelice, in rather a futile manner, "since you have elected to become Mrs. Rover, you must consider your husband." "Let him consider me first. I made a bargain with him, and he accepted, knowing that I loved Ned, and not him. He has broken that bargain in the meanest manner, and my father died of sheer worry through the breaking of it. Now I have to stifle my deep love for Ned, and act the part of a loving wife. I feel like a hypocrite." "I don't think you need, Constance. People say that you treat Rover badly. It is as well that you should know." "I do know. I have heard that before. But Dolly himself put that story about. I don't love him, and I don't pretend to; but I am as obedient and kind as I can be. I told you that I treated him like a dog. So I do, like a pet dog, a dog that is fed up and smoothed and cosseted and given cream and meat and all the things poodle dogs like; but Dolly goes about posing as a husband that is badly treated. He does not dare to say that I have deceived him, however," she added, drawing a deep breath; "he would suffer for it if he did. Miserable as I am, I abide by the bargain which he broke." "But what is to be the end of it?" "I don't know. I don't know," wailed Mrs. Rover, pacing the room, and holding her hands to her head. "I really believe that Dolly wants to see me disgraced. He took these flats above Ned's in spite of my protestations. I want him to go away, but he won't." "Oh," said Prelice thoughtfully, "so Mr. Rover took these flats above Ned's, did he? Purposely?" "I don't know." Constance paused, looking startled. "Why do you ask?" Lord Prelice considered. "Constance, I want you to do me a favour." "Yes." Mrs. Rover spoke softly and with an effort. "Do you think that your husband wishes to get Ned into trouble?" Constance put her hand to her head. "He hates Ned," she said at last in a strained voice, "because he knows that Ned loves me, and I do Ned. But for all his jealous watching, he cannot find anything wrong between Ned and myself. Because," she added, drawing herself up to her full height, "there is nothing wrong, and never will be." "You have not answered my question," repeated Prelice quietly. "Do you think that Rover wishes to get Ned into trouble? "Yes; I believe that he would be glad to see him dead." "Well then, Constance, answer me another question. Would you like to see your husband get into trouble?" "No," she said, with a startled air. "Dolly is a fool, and cruel, and I can scarcely endure him; all the same, I don't wish him any harm." "That is all right," said Prelice, rising. "Then I can trust you to hold your tongue?" "About what? Why are you so mysterious?" "My poor girl, I would rather hold my peace than tell you what I am about to tell; but it is necessary that you should know. If I do not move in the matter someone less friendly to you and Rover may do so, and then only God knows what would happen." "Dorry," Constance caught his hand, and passed her tongue over her dry lips slowly, "what do you mean? I have gone through so much that I'm quite able to face the worst." "You won't scream?" "No; I'm not a fool. Oh, what is it?" she blazed out, with a stamp, clenching her hands, and clenching her teeth also. Prelice raised his hand. "I must tell you as I best can," he said in a peremptory tone, which quietened her. "After all, I may be mistaken. Is that dress you wore at your ball in your room?" For answer Constance pressed the bell-button, and when the footman appeared, gave an order. "Tell my maid to bring me the frock and domino I wore at the ball--at the masked ball," she said; then faced Prelice when the man went out. "Are you about to accuse me?" "No. Don't ask questions, Constance. I am sorry to keep you in suspense, but I can't help it. The whole thing is so extraordinary." "What thing? What thing?" But Prelice, perhaps mistakenly, would not tell her. The maid entered with the domino and dress, which Prelice at once recognised as the masked ball costume. He simply cast one glance at it, and then, "You can tell her to take it away again," he remarked. Mrs. Rover did so wonderingly, and waited to hear what he had to say next. "Take me to your husband's dressing-room in the other flat." "What for?" she asked. "And how do you know that Dolly's dressing-room is in the other flat?" "Never mind; take me there," said Prelice impatiently. He wished to get the things over as speedily as possible, as he saw how strung up she was; and yet until he was certain how could he accuse Rover? In his heart of hearts, Lord Prelice wished that he might be spared the disagreeable task of accusing Rover at all. But if he did not do so, it was not improbable that Jadby--to further his own ends--might intervene. And it was much better that Jadby, at all costs, should be kept out of the business, since he was not likely to spare either Constance or her husband. "Come, come," cried Prelice impatiently, and seeing that she did not move, "take me to your husband's dressing-room." And Constance led him thither like a woman in a dream. They left one flat, and crossed the landing to the other. When in the dressing-room, which was luxuriously furnished, Mrs. Rover remained silent and observant at the door, while her friend examined the sanctum of her husband. So mysterious were his words and movements that she began to wish that she had not admitted him, since she did not desire to harm Dolly, objectionable as she found him. But if she could not trust Dorry in all ways, who could she trust? Meanwhile Prelice peered into a wardrobe, and shook out the many suits it contained; he searched a large wooden press, wherein shirts and underlinen and handkerchiefs and collars were neatly laid out. But in each case he failed to find that for which he hunted, and drew a long breath of relief. Perhaps, after all, Madame Marie was wrong, in spite of the magical powers to which she laid claim. When at his wits' end, Prelice turned to Constance. "Isn't there a cupboard?" he asked. "Over there," she said, pointing to the hither side of the fireplace. "You must be blind not to see it. Oh, it is unlocked," she added, noting that he hesitated. "Dolly has no secrets. There is nothing in it but old clothes and rubbish, which Trimmer"--this was Mr. Rover's valet--"stows there. Look into the cupboard by all means." The young man made no reply to the sarcasm, but opened the cupboard of Bluebeard. It was deep and wide, with many pegs at the back and round the sides, upon which hung many clothes, out of date and slightly worn. On the floor was a heterogeneous pile of shabby slippers, discarded boots, sundry medicine bottles, tin boxes of polish, and many odds and ends, showing that this was a bag-o'-rags receptacle for sheer rubbish. Prelice speedily pulled out all the clothes, and threw them on the floor, while Mrs. Rover shrugged and stared at his zeal. Suddenly he came upon a green silk domino, inside which was sewn the front of a white dress, streaked with thin lines of red velvet. The whole made one garment, easy to slip on and off, which, when worn, would look both like a dress and a domino. This very ingenious garb was hidden behind the discarded clothes, which apparently had not been disturbed for some considerable time, and only by removing all, as Prelice had done, could the domino and its clever fixings have been discovered. "There," said the young man, holding it up for Mrs. Rover's inspection. With staring eyes Mrs. Rover drew near, and handled the fabric. "An imitation of the frock and domino I wore at my ball," she gasped; then added after a pause: "A woman never wore this." "Ned said that the person who waved the bronze cup under his nose to make him insensible was a woman," said Prelice significantly. "Oh," gasped Constance, taking his meaning at once. "Dolly? It's a lie!" CHAPTER XX. MR. ROVER EXPLAINS. "It's a lie," repeated Constance, seeing that Prelice did not say a word. "Dolly is a little cruel fool, who tyrannises to the full extent of his weak powers. But I don't believe that he killed Agstone." "Well," drawled Prelice reflectively, "on the face of it, there appears to be no reason, and yet this sham frock is in this rubbish cupboard." "Dolly can explain," breathed Mrs. Rover hopefully. "Can he explain why he entered Ned's flat to----" "He didn't, he didn't--it's impossible, I tell you." "Constance," declared the other seriously, "you said yourself that Mr. Rover would be glad to see Ned dead, out of sheer jealousy. I quite believe that, and I believe also that he had not the pluck to kill him. But he did his best to get Ned into trouble----" "By killing Agstone? What rubbish," cried Mrs. Rover feverishly. "If he killed the one he would have murdered the other, and would have chosen Ned in preference." "Humph! Perhaps with a refinement of cruelty, Rover wished Ned to be hanged, and so slaughtered Agstone, in the hope that Ned would be accused. And accused Ned would have been," cried Prelice decisively, "but that I brought in your guests to see him helpless." Mrs. Rover twisted her hands in her hair. "It's impossible, I tell you," she lamented, hoping against hope. "Dolly is a fool, he never would be a murderer. He hasn't the pluck. Heaven knows that I have no cause to love him, and that he stands in the way of my happiness. But I tell you, Dorry, that I would have cut off my right hand sooner than have brought you in here to spy out his shame." "I am glad to hear you say that, Constance," returned Prelice quietly, "for it shows that you have honour if not love, and that, even to secure your happiness with Ned, you will not stoop to injure the man who is your husband. But think, my dear girl, is it not better that I should find this than Jadby?" "Jadby--the man who loves Mona! What has he got to do with it?" "Everything," said Prelice tersely; "he wishes to secure Mona as his wife, and will stop at nothing. You may wonder how I came to guess that your husband's dressing-room was in this flat, and how I came to know that this sham dress was hidden behind these clothes. I can explain very shortly. I consulted Madame Marie Eppingrave." "That fortune-teller," gasped Constance, staring. "I have consulted her myself, and she told me a lot of rubbish. Surely you do not believe what she says in that shoddy room of hers?" "I am bound to believe," said Prelice dryly, "seeing that the domino with the attached frock-front is here, as she stated. But she may not have told me so by means of occult power, in spite of her claim to exercise the same. In some earthly way--I know not how--she knew where this," he touched the domino, "was to be found. She will tell Captain Jadby, to whom she is much attached, and then he will come here to make what trouble he can. Therefore you can understand that it is better for Rover that I should be the discoverer." "Yes; I see, I see," murmured Constance, and tottered towards a chair, to fall into it. "Oh, horrible, horrible! But there must be some explanation, Dorry. Think of one--think of one." Women, as Prelice reflected at the moment, were most extraordinary. Here was a wife who avowedly hated a husband of the tricky effeminate sort, yet when chance placed a weapon against him in her hand, she refused to use it, despite the temptation of thus ridding herself for ever of a marital incubus. Rover had practically killed her father, he had cheated her into a match which she loathed, and he was doing his best to make her unhappy. In the face of it all, his deceived wife defended him. And this against the strong desire which she had for the man who truly loved her. Truly, women were strange. However, it was not Prelice's business to analyse Mrs. Rover's feelings. What he had to do was to learn the meaning of Rover's hiding the domino in his cupboard, and this he proceeded to do. "Was Jadby at your ball?" he asked abruptly. "I never asked him; I don't know him," she replied, clasping her hands tightly; "but you know that owing to the masks, many people--shady people too--were there. Captain Jadby might have come also." "He did come," said Prelice quickly, "for he was one of the first to unmask when seeing Ned insensible, and to blame me. Certainly he may have come up the stairs opportunely, but since he wore a domino and mask, I am sure that he was at the ball." "What colour was the domino?" "Blue. Light blue," rejoined Prelice promptly. "There were many blue dominos," murmured Constance. "I wonder why this man came to my ball?" "Ah, that is what we have to find out. But another question." Prelice cleared his throat. "Presuming, as we must, that your husband wore this made-up thing, did he know what you would wear?" "Yes," assented Mrs. Rover; then started up with a cry and a very pale face. "Oh, Dorry, Dorry, are you going to say that my dress was imitated by him, so that I might be accused?" "It looks like it," said Prelice reluctantly. "What else could he say?" "But I can't believe that Dolly would be so wicked," said the poor wife anxiously, "and yet the dress is the same. There is only a front, to be sure. But when worn, anyone would have mistaken him for me. A man always looks taller in women's clothes." "These are hardly women's clothes." "Sufficiently like them to deceive anyone. But you said that you spoke to someone wearing a dress like mine. It was not me, Dorry. I should have remembered. Was it Dolly?" "I never spoke to you or to anyone dressed like you," said Prelice quickly; "I only told you that to get at the truth. But I never expected to hear you say that you had worn the dress. One thing I may tell you," he added, "that the green domino seemed to be ubiquitous. I saw him--presuming your husband is the person--talking and drinking and dancing all over the place." "I was dancing also," said Constance, "and if Dolly wore a similar dress, it is natural that you should see the frock and domino often. Dolly received my guests unmasked, you know." "I remember; but later he vanished, and then might have----" Prelice touched the domino significantly. "Still, there is one thing to be said," he added, "how did your husband enter Ned's flat?" "Don't you remember?" she said, raising her head. "Agstone brought in the lady--Dolly, I suppose--when Ned was in that cataleptic state." "I forgot that. But who admitted Agstone? What is the matter?" He asked this because Constance rose suddenly to her feet with a cry of astonishment. "Mr. Haken was at the ball," she said, alarmed. "I know. I saw him--that is, I recognised him by his chuckle. Well?" Mrs. Rover sat down again. "You know that Mr. Haken is my godfather," she remarked; and when Prelice nodded, went on. "He was much distressed over my preference for Ned, seeing that I was married, and came to remonstrate with me on the night of the ball." "Humph," said Prelice coolly, "I wondered why he was at the ball. A most unusual festivity for a dry-as-dust old man like Uncle Simon to be at." "I gave him the key," said Constance in a low voice. "The key! What key?" "The key of Ned's flat." "Constance, how did you become possessed of the key?" With a bent head and a hurried low voice, she explained. "Dolly was very cruel to me at times. He even struck me, and I could not strike back at a little rat like that. I told Ned, who was furious, and wanted to frighten Dolly. I prevented him, so that there might be no scandal. Ned then gave me the key of his flat--he had an extra key--and told me if Dolly ever struck me again to come to him. I should not have thought of doing so, but to quieten Ned I consented to take the key." "What an injudicious thing to do," breathed Prelice, alarmed; "if your husband knew, he might do a lot of damage. But how did Uncle Simon get the key out of you?" "I told him about it the night of the ball. He got me into a quiet corner to remonstrate, so I explained everything. Mr. Haken was angry at Ned for having given me the key----" "He was quite right," interposed Prelice. "Ned ought to have had more sense than to do such a mad thing. Go on." "Mr. Haken insisted upon having the key, and then said that he would go down and see Ned." Prelice turned suddenly pale. Was this what Horace had warned him against when he advised him to leave the case alone? "Did Uncle Simon go?" he asked in a stifled voice. "I don't know. He certainly said that he would go down and give Ned back the key, and talk to him about his folly in letting me have it." Prelice felt very uncomfortable, and his thoughts flew to his aunt with her merry ways. It would be terrible for Lady Sophia if Haken were involved in this dreadful case, and indeed if he were--as seemed apparent from Constance's story--Prelice wished that he had taken the doctor's advice, and had left it well alone. While he was puzzling over this new problem, and trying to find reasons against his uncle's complicity, he heard Constance cry out, and looked up, to see Rover standing in the doorway. The little stockbroker, dressed to perfection, and overdressed at that, looked more dapper and neat than ever. His face was more colourless, his eyes more plaintive and blue, than they had been in the artificial light in which he had received his wife's guests. Such a mean-looking, bloodless man could scarcely get into a rage; yet a venomous look crept into his eyes as he surveyed his wife and her visitor. "What is the meaning of this?" he demanded, trying to assume the dignity of an injured husband, which sat very badly on him. Before Constance could speak, Lord Prelice stepped forward with the domino over his arm, and spread it out. "This is the meaning of my being in your dressing-room, Mr. Rover," he said sharply and perfectly cool. "I found this behind some clothes in yonder cupboard." "How dare you search into my private affairs?" cried Dolly, standing on tiptoe, and growing red. "Is it not better that I should do so than the police, Mr. Rover?" The little man looked genuinely puzzled. "The police? What do you mean by mentioning the police?" "This dress, this domino, both are an imitation of the dress and domino which your wife wore at the ball. And the lady who was introduced by Agstone to make Shepworth insensible--if you remember the case--was arrayed in this way." Instead of turning pale, Dolly became redder than ever, and turned like a snake on his wife. "You!" he said savagely, "you entered Shepworth's flat. You dared to----" "I never was near the flat," said Constance, coming very close to him, and looking down contemptuously from her great height; "and if you dare to hint at such a thing I shall leave you for ever. I have put up with enough from you. Don't drive me too far." "Mr. Rover has enough to do to defend himself without troubling you, Constance," said Prelice quietly. Dolly started. "What do you mean?" he asked nervously. "This sham dress was hidden in your cupboard." "I never saw it before; I didn't know it was there." Dolly gasped, for he was beginning to scent danger. "The presumed woman introduced by Agstone was dressed in this," went on Lord Prelice mercilessly. "You hated Shepworth, you wished to get him into trouble, and so----" Prelice stopped. "I leave you to draw your own inferences," he ended. Dolly trembled, as well he might, for the visitor had drawn up a very good case against him. "I tell you I never saw the dress before," he quavered. "And how did you find it?" "That is neither here nor there," said Prelice, wishing to shield Constance from the mean wrath of the little man. "Later on the police can explain." "The police--the police!" Dolly grew as white as a sheet. Constance laid her hand on his shoulder. "Don't be afraid, Dolly; I do not believe that you killed that man Agstone." Dolly brushed her hand away, with the snarl of a terrified cat. "Keep yourself to yourself," he snapped, showing his teeth. "You hate me, so you need not defend me." "I don't love you," answered Constance bitterly. "I have small cause to, considering the way in which you tricked me. All the same, I do not wish to see you get into trouble over a crime which I truly believe you had not pluck enough to commit." "You are quite right," retorted her husband shamelessly. "I never did have pluck enough to kill a fly, much less a human being. I should have stabbed your lover long ago if I had." "Shepworth is not Mrs. Rover's lover," said Prelice, quietly. "He is. She is always howling after him," taunted the venomous little man; "but she sold herself to me, and----" "And you did not pay the price," said Constance, scornful and still. "No," Dolly chuckled. "I got the better of you there. But you are my wife now, and I'll make you pay. Shepworth can marry that criminal girl whenever he likes. I hope he will, so as to torment you." Mrs. Rover's eyes flashed. "Ned shall never marry----" she began, when Prelice made a sign to her to keep the secret of the new engagement, and spoke himself, coldly and sternly. "Miss Chent's character has been perfectly cleared by her acquittal, Mr. Rover, and if you dare to say a word against her I shall throw you out of the window." "How brave you are in defending Shepworth's bride," said Dolly, wincing at the flash in Prelice's blue eyes. "I am," replied the other, not contradicting the mistake under which he saw Dolly laboured; "but as yet you have not proved your innocence." "There is no need to prove it." Rover's voice whimpered unsteadily. "It is ridiculous to accuse me." "This dress was hidden in your cupboard," insisted Prelice. "What of that? This room was used as a place for the coats and hats of the men who came to the ball. Any one of them might have hidden the domino and frock there. I did not. I received my guests unmasked, and afterwards put on a black silk domino." "Ah!" Prelice took a step forward, "then it was you who appeared in Shepworth's dining-room, and who gave the alarm." "Yes; it was me. I came down to see Shepworth, and to make it plain to him that he was not to make love any longer to my wife." "He never did make love since our marriage," flashed out Constance with scorn. "Ned has been true to honour, as I have been." Prelice raised a hand to stop a promising quarrel between the ill-matched couple. "Only you, Rover, knew what kind of a dress your wife was to wear at the ball," he said judicially; "only you could have had a similar one made--so as to get her into trouble, I expect." "Another person knew," cried Dolly, with a flash of triumph in his china-blue eyes. "Yes. I asked Haken to come to the ball to remonstrate with Constance about her love for Shepworth. He is godfather to Constance, as you know. I was aware that Constance would try to dodge Haken, as she didn't want to be scolded, so I described her dress to him that there might be no mistake. Haken was at the ball, Lord Prelice. Why don't you accuse him?" The young man sneered, although he felt distinctly nervous at the many proofs accumulating against his uncle. "Haken had no reason to get Shepworth into trouble; you had." "Nothing would have pleased me better; but I should have stopped short of putting my neck into a noose, and I did. I tell you again that I don't know how that domino-frock thing came to be in my cupboard; that I never entered Shepworth's flat, as I certainly could not do so, without a key; and that I was the man in the black silk domino who gave the alarm. And when I entered the flat then, you had left the door open." All this explanation was perfectly natural, and Dolly gave it with such an air of truth that Prelice was reluctantly obliged to believe him. The young man threw the domino over his shoulder, and moved to the door. "I shall take this with me," he said curtly. "And see the police?" asked Rover, with twinkling eyes. "No. Not at present." "Not at any time, if you value your uncle's liberty." "What do you mean?" Prelice faced round sharply. "I mean nothing, as I know nothing. But there is as much evidence against Haken as against me, and if you accuse me I shall accuse him. How will Lady Sophia like a scandal of that sort? Eh?" Prelice turned away without vouchsafing a reply. "I shall see you again, Constance," he said coldly. "You shall not see her until Shepworth marries Mona Chent," snapped the venomous little husband; "and I shall move heaven and earth to bring that about." "You will need to," retorted Prelice, remembering his engagement and thinking how angry Dolly would be when he learned the truth. "And let me tell you, Rover, that if you ill-treat your wife I shall make it my business to thrash you." Dolly drew back, and snarled, but seemed distinctly afraid. Prelice, with a nod to the unhappy wife, passed from the room, and out of the flat. He felt distinctly nervous about Simon Haken. CHAPTER XXI. A POSSIBLE SCANDAL. After all, Lord Prelice did not return to Hythe on that night, much as he desired to. In view of this new complication, which threatened the domestic peace of Lady Sophia Haken, her nephew decided to remain in London, and give all his energies towards solving the problem. He could not think that Haken had anything to do with the murder of Agstone. In the first place, he had no reason to kill the man; in the second, he did not possess any leaves of the Sacred Herb with which to make Shepworth unconscious. Certainly it was Agstone who had kindled the leaves in the bronze cup, but he must have obtained them from Mr. Haken--presuming he was the disguised lady---since he could have obtained them in no other way. Sir Oliver had possessed a portion of the plant, but had used it in the library when he was murdered, so the old sailor could not have procured the leaves in that direction. Prelice began to wonder if Haken had got the leaves from Madame Marie Eppingrave to execute his purpose. But then, so far as Prelice knew, his uncle was not acquainted with the Bond Street fortune-teller. And again, he was well acquainted with Dr. Horace, who admitted to possession of the leaves, and, more than this, had actually burnt the Sacred Herb in the New Bailey. Lord Prelice decided first to call upon his uncle in the city, and lay the facts discovered before him, and then to interview Dr. Horace. In these two several ways he might get at the truth. Also, somewhat later, he decided to again speak with Madame Marie, and if possible see her in the presence of Captain Jadby. When that buccaneer learned that Mona was engaged to another man, and that she had inherited the property, he might bow to fate and leave things alone. Finally, Prelice knew that he had a powerful ally in the fortune-teller. From what he had seen of her strong-willed character he guessed that she would stick at nothing to secure as her husband the man with whom she was infatuated. Bearing all these circumstances in mind, Prelice sent a wire to Mona stating that business detained him in London, and also went to his club to write his first love letter. In this he carefully refrained from mentioning the case, and merely poured out his heart in a passionate dithyramb in honour of his goddess. Mona, for the moment, felt some disappointment when she noted the absence of information regarding Madame Marie, but later confessed that her lover was right. It would never have done for the first letter which had passed between them to be soiled by the sordid tragedy in which she had been implicated. All the same, much as she appreciated Prelice's slightly turgid prose, her heart hungered to learn of his doings relative to the case. She felt that she would not know a happy moment until the truth were made manifest. Then she could become Lady Prelice with a light heart. The next day Prelice went into the city to see his uncle, and learned that Mr. Haken had gone to Paris for a few days. He was expected back on the morrow, as he already had been absent for some time, so all that his eager nephew could do was to possess his soul in patience. Prelice returned to his club rather disappointed, and there found a telegram waiting for him. It had been sent to his Hythe hotel, and had been repeated on to his club, since it was marked "Urgent." It proved to be from Horace, and asked Prelice to come up at once. "Be at my house at three in the afternoon. Important," said the wire. "I wonder what this means?" Prelice asked himself uneasily, and fretted over the matter until the time came for him to go to Rutland Square. There was no getting over the fact that the mystery of this case was telling on Prelice's strong nerves. Nor was his uneasiness diminished when he found that Dr. Horace was not alone. With him were Captain Jadby and Madame Marie Eppingrave, both of whom appeared to be on very good terms with their host. As usual, the room was untidy with its litter of curiosities, but Prelice managed to find a seat with his back to the light. This he did so as to keep his face well in the shade, as he had a premonition that there was about to be a duel of words. Indeed, the first whispered remark of Horace hinted at a storm about to break. "You silly ass," grumbled the doctor in his beard as he went forward to welcome his guest, "why couldn't you leave things alone as I told you to? Now all the fat is on the fire with a vengeance." Prelice shrugged his shoulders with a carelessness which he was far from feeling, and saluted Madame Marie with a bow. Of Captain Jadby, who stood fidgeting by the window, he took no notice. The buccaneer noticed the omission, and resented it. "English manners, I suppose," sneered the half-caste pointedly. Prelice sat down calmly, and took up the challenge. "Considering our last meeting, when you treacherously fired on my friend, you can hardly expect me to behave courteously." "I wish I had killed him," flashed out Jadby viciously. "I quite believe that; but you did not harm him in the least," retorted Prelice, lying bravely to defend Ned, and to annoy the captain. "I wounded him in the arm," snarled Jadby. "Didn't I, Marie?" "I certainly saw that Mr. Shepworth was slightly hurt," replied the fortune-teller; "in a trance, of course." "Ah!" replied Prelice negligently, "your trances are not always reliable, Madame." "I think you have found that one is, at least," she replied in her turn, and very significantly. "What does Captain Jadby think?" asked Prelice genially. He felt sure that the woman had not dared to risk the buccaneer's rage by explaining what she had said. "Madame Marie told me that she went into a trance on your account," said Jadby, taking a chair, sullenly, "but, of course, she did not remember what she said, and could not explain to me." "Since Madame is certain that this especial trance is reliable," was Prelice's retort, "she must remember something." "Oh, the deuce take your chatter," shouted Horace ruffling his shaggy red hair, in a high state of irritation. "I didn't ask you here to waste my time in drivel." "In that case, as my time is also valuable, I had better go." "No, no, confound you," said Horace crossly, and seeing that Prelice knew well how to treat his humours. "Madame here, and Jadby, wish to speak to you seriously." "I fail to see upon what subject." "Upon the subject of Miss Chent," cried the buccaneer savagely. "I decline to discuss an absent lady," said Prelice coolly. "You are engaged to her." "Am I indeed?" "But you sha'n't marry her." "Won't I! See here!" Prelice rose, very tall and very straight and very cool-headed, "if you persist in going like this, Captain Jadby, I shall be compelled to twist your neck." "English manners," sneered the half-caste again. "Not at all. Colonial manners, South Sea manners if you will, and very necessary manners for dealing with a ruffian such as you are." "I'll kill you for this," muttered Jadby, sinking back into his chair. "With your little gun?" taunted Prelice pleasantly. "I hope you'll shoot straighter. I never saw so rotten a shot." "I can do more than shoot." "Yes--you can bark." "And bite too. See here, I asked you here to tell you, in the presence of Horace, that if you don't stop meddling with things which do not concern you, I'll disgrace your uncle." Prelice never winced. He had a kind of idea that something of this sort was forthcoming, and merely laughed aggravatingly. "Which uncle?" said he, calmly. "I have two or three." "Mr. Simon Haken." "Oh indeed." Prelice turned to Horace. "Are you on my side, or on the side of these blackmailers?" he demanded. Madame Marie arose furiously. "I am not a blackmailer," she cried, and her deep-toned voice became shrill with anger. "I did not want to say anything, and if Felix does not swear to give up this girl, I shall refuse to speak out." "No," snapped Jadby, with a fierce glance; at which, strange to say, the courageous woman looked cowed. "You shall speak as I direct." "Are you on my side or on theirs?" Prelice asked Horace again. "On yours, hang you," snarled the ugly little man. "And if I were not, you would find yourself in Queer Street, I can tell you." Prelice took no notice of this outburst, but turned to the woman. "Are you against me?" he demanded. "I am neutral," she retorted uneasily. "I see; and Jadby there is an open enemy. Well, now that I understand the situation, perhaps you will let me know how Mr. Haken can be disgraced by you two, or you three." "We can accuse him of murder," said Jadby, choking with anger at the exasperating coolness of the young aristocrat. "Good. Go on." "Of two murders?" spat out the half-caste. "Better and better. Ha! I understand then that you, Captain Jadby, and you, Madame Marie, accuse Mr. Haken of killing Sir Oliver Lanwin and Steve Agstone?" "Yes," snapped the captain; and "Yes," breathed the woman, very pale. Prelice looked quietly at them. "Prove these charges," he said. "One moment," said Dr. Horace, getting out his German pipe. "Remember, Prelice, that this business is none of my bringing about. I warned you against meddling in the case, and you would not take my warning. You have only yourself to thank for what is coming." "I am perfectly ready to take the responsibility of my actions," was the stiff retort of the young man; and he turned to Jadby. "Go on!" The captain, bursting with venom, was only too pleased to relieve himself in a torrent of words. "Before my father, Sir Oliver, died, he frequently talked to me about the estate--sought my counsel, in fact. I thus learned that Mr. Haken, although supposed to be a wealthy man, was in difficulties owing to disastrous speculation. He asked Sir Oliver to lend him fifty thousand pounds to tide over a crisis, and this my father refused to do. Naturally Mr. Haken was very angry----" "Probably!" put in Prelice coolly; "but what you say does not prove that Mr. Haken killed Sir Oliver." "Let me speak now," said Horace rapidly. "I was the sole possessor of the Sacred Herb, which, if you remember, Prelice, I brought from Easter Island. I gave some to Haken, who desired to get the same for Sir Oliver. You see," pursued the traveller, "Haken knew that Lanwin was much interested in occult studies, so thought to tempt him to lend the necessary fifty thousand pounds by getting him this rare herb, which, as you know, produces a trance." "I see." Prelice nodded. "Then Mr. Haken confessed to you that he desired the loan of this money?" "He did, saying that his affairs were in a bad way. With the gift of the Sacred Herb he hoped to soften Sir Oliver's heart, which was somewhat hard where money matters were concerned." "I never knew that Mr. Haken was aware of Lanwin's inclination to the occult," said Prelice quietly. "He was in a way," said Madame Marie suddenly, and taking up the story; "but, of course, I told him more, being very friendly with Sir Oliver, as you know. Mr. Haken was superstitious himself--as the saying goes--and frequently consulted me about stocks and shares." "What?" Prelice looked incredulous. "Do you mean to tell me that a hard-headed man like Mr. Haken consulted you?" "He did; and I was enabled to serve him by my powers. I understood, Lord Prelice, that you believed in the Occult World." "I do," rejoined the young man dryly, "because I have had considerable experience and possess imagination. But Mr. Haken----" "He believed also," interrupted the fortune-teller quickly, "and came to me for advice. It was I who recommended him to apply to his old friend, Sir Oliver, for the fifty thousand pounds. When Sir Oliver refused, I told Mr. Haken that he should get some of the Sacred Herb from Dr. Horace, and give it to Sir Oliver, in the hope that the gift would make Sir Oliver hand over the money." "How did you know that Dr. Horace had the herb?" asked Prelice sharply. "Madame Marie and I were acquainted in Samoa," put in the traveller, "and when we met in London I told her that I had succeeded in getting the famous trance herb of Easter Island. She asked me for some leaves to use in her business, and I declined." "Why, when you gave the same to Sir Oliver?" inquired Prelice. "Because I wished to keep the herb to myself," said Horace, his rugged face growing dark; "but when Haken asked me for it to get money out of Lanwin I gave it readily. I hated Lanwin. He thwarted me in Tahiti--it matters not how--and he treated my brother Steve like a dog. I knew that Haken would lose the fifty thousand, and wished Lanwin to see the last of the cash. I would have ruined Lanwin if I could." "This is quite a new light on your character, Horace," said Prelice, with uplifted eyebrows. "However, I understand that for your own purposes, which you have so kindly set forth, you gave the herb to Lanwin." "Not personally," retorted the doctor, scowling; "I gave it to Haken, and he passed it to Madame Marie." "And it was I who presented the herb to Sir Oliver, after retaining some leaves for my own use," said the woman coolly. "It was on the night of the murder that Mr. Haken came down to see Sir Oliver." "Can you swear to that?" demanded Prelice, watching her. "I can," she assured him emphatically. "Mr. Haken knew that I was to give the herb to Sir Oliver on that night, and came down so as to strike the iron while it was hot, by explaining how he had procured the herb from Dr. Horace. Mr. Haken came in quietly by the window when I was conversing with Sir Oliver in the library. That was about nine o'clock. Agstone entered to close the windows--they were not shuttered, remember--and also saw Mr. Haken. At five minutes after nine--if you recollect the evidence I gave in Court--I went to bed, leaving Mr. Haken alone with Sir Oliver----" She paused. "And then?" questioned Prelice. "There is nothing more to say," she replied coldly. "Mr. Haken was in the library with a man from whom he desired to get money. It was, I believe, refused; and then Mr. Haken murdered Sir Oliver, afterwards burning the Sacred Herb, about the time Miss Chent entered the room. Needless to say, before she entered, Mr. Haken had gone." "A very pretty story," said Prelice, quite unmoved. "That is one crime no doubt; but the other?" "I can explain," said Jadby, enraged at the young man's coolness. "From Madame Marie I learned that Mr. Haken was going to Mrs. Rover's ball to see his goddaughter and Shepworth, and----" "How did you know that?" asked Prelice, turning to the woman. "Mrs. Rover consulted me occultly about her marriage, and confessed amongst other things that Mr. Haken was her godfather. I saw that Mrs. Rover was in that reckless state which might lead to a scandal, and I told everything to Mr. Haken. He resolved to go to the masked ball and remonstrate with Mrs. Rover, and afterwards with Mr. Shepworth. I told Captain Jadby." "And I went there," said the captain quickly, "because I knew that Haken had killed Sir Oliver, and wished to see him, in order to get some money." "To blackmail him, in fact," said Prelice coolly. "So you were the Continental individual whom my uncle was to meet." "Yes. But he was too clever for me. He came in an ordinary domino, and afterwards changed to a green one with a dress similar to that of Mrs. Rover's." "How can you be sure?" "Because I was hunting for Mr. Haken, and heard him chuckle. For the moment I fancied that he was Mrs. Rover owing to the dress, but when he chuckled I guessed it was Mr. Haken. He eluded me, however, but not before I had smelt the perfume of the tuberose, which the Sacred Herb gives out. When you discovered the crime, Lord Prelice, I guessed that Mr. Haken, disguised as Mrs. Rover, so as to implicate her with Shepworth, should there be trouble, had gone down and murdered Agstone." "How did Agstone come there? How did Mr. Haken know he would be there?" Jadby leaned back coolly. "I cannot answer either of those questions," he said calmly; "perhaps Mr. Haken can." There was a few moments of silence, which Prelice broke. "Well," he asked, rising, "and what are your terms for silence?" "You must give up Miss Chent to me," said the captain, with a glance of gratification, for he fancied that Prelice was yielding. "I shall marry her, and then we shall live at the Grange." "Ah, but you see it will not be your property," said Prelice politely. Jadby sprang to his feet. "Not my property?" "No. I fear that Dr. Horace has not informed you that Agstone brought the will, leaving everything to Miss Chent, to him, and that he has restored it to the lady. You are a pauper, Captain Jadby. Miss Chent has the money, and shortly she will have me as her husband." Jadby took scarcely any notice of Prelice, important as was the matter he talked about. "Horace," he cried, glaring viciously, "you have played me false." "I never intended to play you true," said Horace contemptuously. "Then I shall ruin Haken," cried Jadby, at his wits' end with sheer rage. "Do so," said Prelice, walking to the door. "I decline to be blackmailed. Good-day." And he walked out. After him came Madame Marie before he could descend the stairs. She gripped him by the arm earnestly, and looked into his face. Prelice could hear the captain and Horace quarrelling desperately in the room he had left, but waited patiently until the woman spoke. "Swear to me," panted Madame Marie, "that Jadby will never, never marry that girl, and I will help you." "In what way?" "For one thing, I shall stop Felix from denouncing your uncle." "Pooh! That's bluff!" "Indeed, indeed it isn't," said the woman passionately. "What I have told you is perfectly true. Your uncle will be in great danger if Felix speaks. But swear to save him from that girl, and I shall stop all trouble about Mr. Haken." "I swear," said Prelice quietly; "especially as it is the dearest wish of my life to make Miss Chent my wife." "Beware--oh, be careful!" implored Madame Marie, clinging to Prelice. "I know that Felix is desperate; he is dangerous." "I am not afraid of him. He cannot hurt me." "But he may hurt her," cried Madame Marie. "If anything goes wrong, come to me. I can help you." "I shall do so; but why do you work against the man you love?" "Because I can secure him in no other way. I want him to leave England to marry me. While he stops here, and is infatuated with Miss Chent, there is no hope. Hark! Felix is calling. Remember, we are outwardly enemies, but inwardly friends. You promise." On this she produced a small golden crucifix. Considering the exigencies of the case, Prelice was willing to promise anything, even to a doubtfully good woman, such as Madame Marie appeared to be. But the production of the crucifix took him aback. "I give you my word," he said, stiffly. "I want your oath," she retorted. "Swear on this, to aid me to marry Felix, or I do nothing." There was no help for it, and Prelice had to make allowance for Madame Marie's flamboyant, foreign way of exaggeration. "I swear to help you," he said, and kissed the crucifix. CHAPTER XXII. THE UNEXPECTED. "Don't talk nonsense to me," cried Lady Sophia, rapping the dinner-table with her lorgnette. "The idea is too ridiculous for words. To marry a girl out of gaol? Monstrous! Your father would turn in his grave, and _he_ wasn't very particular." Lord Prelice was dining with his lively relative, when this speech was made at the tail-end of a very excellent meal. Haken had duly returned from Paris on the day after the interview of Prelice with Dr. Horace and his two friends. On finding a note from his nephew stating that he desired to speak on an important subject, Mr. Haken had responded with a wire inviting the young man to dinner. Lady Sophia had also arrived in town from Folkstone, and explained to Prelice, when he appeared, that she would do nothing for Mona. This remark led to a request for explanations, which Lady Sophia was only too anxious to afford, and the presence of footmen and butler at the dinner-table alone kept her from raging at Prelice all the time he was eating. Haken, looking more dried-up than ever, sat at the foot of the table--his wife invariably took the top--and chuckled at intervals. He had not yet heard what Prelice wished to speak about, and was waiting until Lady Sophia retired to the drawing-room, a thing she seemed disinclined to do at present, so rabid was she against her nephew. Having made the above remark, she waited for a reply; but as Prelice merely crumbled what was left of his bread, and said nothing, she launched out again with a peremptory question. "Do you, or do you not, wish your father to turn in his grave?" "My dear aunt," replied Prelice very distinctly, "I wish the corpse to take the position it finds the most comfortable." "Oh!" cried Lady Sophia, outraged in her deepest feelings, "oh, that I should live to hear my late brother called an 'it.' Have you no reverence, Prelice?" "Not so much reverence, as I have patience," he replied, very bored. "Ah." Lady Sophia hugged herself. "I might have expected that. You never, never will face the truth." "What is the truth?" asked Haken, his eyes twinkling, and putting the question of Pilate. "The truth," said his wife majestically, "is that Prelice must have been changed at nurse. He has not the feelings of his ancestors." "I have their gout, however," said Prelice humorously. "What possible objection can you have to my marrying. Aunt Sophia?" "It's not the marriage itself I object to, Prelice, but to the bride you choose. You know that well." "There won't be a prettier bride in the Three Kingdoms than Mona." "I am quite sure there won't," said his aunt spitefully, "if she only gets as far as the altar." "The communion-rails, you mean. I'll do my best to bring her there." "Not in my presence, Prelice." "All right. We'll have a quiet wedding." "A quiet wedding," raged Lady Sophia, "and with such a notorious girl as the bride. Why, all the----" "Aunt Sophia," interrupted Prelice, growing restive under these insults, "permit me to remind you that Miss Chent is to be my wife, and that I am quite capable of managing my own affairs." Lady Sophia rose, and swept to the door. "I'm sorry for you. I am truly sorry for you," said she with scorn, and throwing back her head. "Thank you," replied her nephew meekly, and politely holding open the door; "the same to you, and many of them." "Oh, Prelice, how I should love to box your ears!" And unable to say anything worse, Lady Sophia disappeared in a royal rage. Prelice did not feel very amiable himself for having been baited unnecessarily, and closed the door with a bang, which said volumes. Then he returned to the disordered dinner-table, poured himself out a glass of port, caught his uncle's twinkling eyes, and laughed in spite of his irritation. Haken nodded approvingly. "That's better than banging the door," he said, stretching his legs in a genial fashion. "Have a cigar?" Prelice accepted one of the best, and lighted up, while his host followed his example. When the blue smoke was curling round the old head and the young, and the glasses were full, they dismissed the trouble of Lady Sophia by common consent. Haken looked interrogatively at the young man. "Well," he demanded quietly, "and what have you to say to me? If I know anything of young men, you wish to borrow money." And ended with a chuckle at his joke, knowing the wealth of his nephew. "And if I know anything of old men," said Prelice coolly, "I should advise them to borrow from their relatives instead of from strangers." Haken was somewhat startled by this speech, which was as rude a one as Prelice could well have made. But he felt irritable, and wished to smash, rather than break the ice. "What are you talking about?" asked the elder man cautiously. "About fifty thousand pounds." "A very tidy little sum," said Haken, quite composed. "I required that precise sum myself a month or so ago, to tide over a crisis." "Did you get it?" "Not from Oliver Lanwin," retorted the city man dryly. Prelice jumped up from his chair, and let his cigar fall. He was far from expecting that Haken would own up so quickly. Leaning forward, he placed his hands on the table, and looked straight into the withered face before him. "What do you mean?" "Don't burn the carpet with your cigar," said Haken irrelevantly; and when Prelice stooped to pick it up he continued. "I should rather ask you that, my boy. You know something, or else you wouldn't talk of my borrowing, and of the exact sum which I required." "I know a great deal," said the young man, and sat down. Haken settled himself luxuriously in his chair. "Let us hear all about it, my boy," said he. "Is your glass filled; your cigar all right? Good. Fire away. I am in a mood for listening." "Are you in the mood to face danger?" questioned the other man, astonished at this coolness. Haken wrinkled his brows as a monkey does. "Danger?" he repeated. "And from whom?" "From Madame Marie, from Captain Jadby, and from Dr. Horace." "I agree as to the first two," said Haken, perfectly calm, "but I am sure that the last-named will not harm me in any way." Prelice reflected. "You are right," he said thoughtfully. "Horace is your friend and mine. But the others----" "Yes. I know all about the others," interrupted Haken in a level voice. "They have their own fish to fry, and are not particular how big a blaze they make to fry them. Of course, I expected you would find out." "Did you? And why?" "Why," Haken pushed back his chair, and rose with a chuckle, "didn't Sophia inveigle you into helping young Shepworth and the girl he was engaged to? You could scarcely do that and not cross my trail." "Why didn't you confess to me?" asked Prelice, much vexed. "Confess what? That I murdered Lanwin?" "And that you stabbed Agstone." "The deuce." Haken started at this last remark. "They accuse me of that, do they? I didn't know that they would go so far. Well," he looked very straightly at his nephew, and with very bright eyes, "you have no doubt heard what these people have had to say, and no doubt they have manufactured good fiction out of certain facts. My character, I take it, is as black as a crow." "Blacker, if anything." "No doubt. Well, and what do you say?" "I say that Jadby and Madame Marie, and possibly Horace, are liars." Haken walked round the table, and placed his hand on his nephew's shoulder. "Do you believe that I am guilty?" "Certainly not." "Why. On what grounds?" Prelice laughed. He had always doubted the guilt of his uncle, ever since the telling of it in Rutland Square. Now he was sure that, however cleverly the story had been put together, Simon Haken would be quite capable of reconstructing it so as to prove his innocence. He therefore answered, with a laugh: "On the grounds that you are much too clever a man to commit a murder without making things much safer than they appear to be in this instance." "Thank you," said Haken simply, and after a friendly squeeze of Prelice's shoulder he returned to his seat. A weaker man would have required a more emotional denial, but Haken was too strong and too business-like to trouble about sentiment. "You see," he remarked, when again in his chair, "it would not have suited me to murder Lanwin." "No," assented Prelice, tickled by the remark; "murder in this country is attended with certain disadvantages." Haken chuckled, and drank a second glass of port. In spite of his nonchalance, he was more nervous than he chose to admit. "Now tell me how our friends bring home the crime to me, and why they told you about the business." "I shall tell you the whole case from the beginning," said Prelice after a pause. "My connection with it began when Aunt Sophia came to bully me into doing something." Haken nodded sympathetically. "When your aunt interferes there is generally trouble. Well?" Prelice settled himself to work, and recounted the whole story, ending with his parting from Madame Marie on the stairs of Horace's house, and the oath upon the crucifix. Haken smoked quietly while the narrative proceeded, merely raising his eyebrows when he heard how ingeniously the fortune-teller and Jadby proved his guilt. When Prelice concluded Haken chuckled, and passed the port. "Have another glass, my boy," he said quietly; "you must be dry over that talking." All the same, Prelice noted that the perspiration was beading the old man's brow, and that he was exercising considerable will power to keep himself in hand. While Prelice sipped his fresh glass of wine, Haken walked up and down the length of the dining-room, keeping silent. After quite five minutes he began to talk, still walking steadily. "I should have come to you for that money," he said in a conversational tone, "only that I don't like taking advantage of my wife's relatives. I needed fifty thousand pounds badly, and when Lanwin refused to lend the money, I scarcely knew what to do. However, the cash turned up unexpectedly, although I had to make a sacrifice to get it. I calculate that I shall have to pay cent, per cent, for that money. However, it is worth it. The worst is over, and everything is going swimmingly. I shall have no further trouble, so don't look glum, Prelice." "Oh, I'm not afraid of your finances," said the young man quickly, "as I know your head for figures, and know also that the soundest men in the city have their money troubles on occasions. But I am thinking of your being in the power of these wretches. That is," added Prelice, correcting himself, "in the power of Jadby. I don't think that Madame Marie is so bad, and Horace is gruff, but honest." "Oh, Horace is all right, but Marie is as bad as they make them." "Nonsense! She wants to help me." "Selfishly. In order to secure Jadby she must make use of you, otherwise you could go hang. But I must tell you that portions of her story, and Jadby's story, and that of Horace are correct. I got the herb in the way you heard, and I did go down to Hythe to see Lanwin." "Were you in the library when Madame Marie went to bed?" "I was," admitted Haken coolly; "but by that time Lanwin had not commenced his hanky-panky with the herb. I asked him straight out to lend the money. He refused, with a word or two of abuse; so I walked away, and back to Folkstone, where I was stopping. There was no row, as I disdained to reply to Lanwin's coarse language. Madame Marie left the library at five minutes after nine; by fifteen minutes past I left it also, and by the window, on my way to Folkstone. What happened after I left I cannot say." "What was Lanwin doing when you left?" "Fiddling with his herbs. He came and shut the window after I had gone, and shouted out a word or two as I departed." "Do you suspect anyone of the crime?" Haken shrugged his shoulders. "Unless it was Jadby--no," he replied thoughtfully. "Jadby was in London, and did not return until later. You heard his evidence in Court." "Then Agstone must be guilty." "Agstone certainly hated his master," said Haken. "Why," Prelice looked astonished, "I understood that Agstone was devoted to Sir Oliver." "So Lanwin said, and everyone believed. But the fact is--as I learned from Madame Marie--that Agstone was Lanwin's slave. Sir Oliver knew something about him, which he used as a threat, and so kept him in bondage. Lanwin was not a pleasant character," ended the city man, twirling his cigar. "Oh," Prelice sunk his chin in his breast, and thought. He knew well enough that so far as the evidence of the knife was concerned, Agstone could not possibly be guilty. Nevertheless, since Agstone had brought the missing will to his brother--and the assassin could only have procured that will--it would seem that the old sailor, after all, had struck the blow. But why had he tried to put the blame on Mona both by placing the knife in her hand and by accusing her? "Did Madame Marie say that Agstone hated Mona?" asked Prelice, raising his head. "No! On the contrary, I understand that Agstone liked Miss Chent because she was kind to him. Sir Oliver, however, was of a jealous disposition, and Agstone was afraid to display his liking." "Do you suppose that Madame Marie herself killed Lanwin?" "Certainly not; she had nothing to gain by doing so, and, moreover, lost a valuable client by Lanwin's death. Marie is fond of money too. She wants to make all she can, so as to marry Jadby. She is strangely infatuated with that rascal." "Jadby is good-looking in a way," replied Prelice. "Humph! It seems to me that we are as far as ever from learning the truth." "No doubt," assented his uncle; "still, one thing is certain, that I did not kill Lanwin. As to Agstone----" he hesitated. "You are not going to confess that you killed him?" said Prelice, with a wry smile. Haken chuckled. "No; I never tell unnecessary lies. But I certainly saw him dead and Shepworth insensible." "Oh!" Prelice was quite unmoved, "so you did make use of that key?" "No," said Haken again, and unexpectedly; "there was no need to. I went down, intending to remonstrate with Shepworth on behalf of Rover, and found that the door was unfastened. I entered, and saw--what you saw--so at once I came upstairs, reclosing the door as I had found it." "Why didn't you give the alarm?" "What, with Jadby hanging about, already intending to blackmail me for Lanwin's death? I should have given myself into the hands of the Philistines with a vengeance had I raised the alarm." "I see. So Jadby was the Continental swell whom you told me that you were to meet?" "Yes. He insisted upon seeing me at the ball. Why he chose such a place I don't know, and how he got to the ball I can't imagine." "Oh, that was easy. Remember the masks. Jadby had only to assume a mask and domino, and could slip in easily. But this dress----" "I didn't wear it," interrupted Haken quickly; "woman's disguise is the last thing I should think of assuming, with my figure and face, to say nothing of my age. It's my opinion----" He paused. "Well, well?" questioned Prelice impatiently. "That Madame Marie wore the dress herself." "But how could she come to the ball? Constance never invited her." "You answered that question yourself a few minutes ago with reference to Jadby. Madame Marie could easily have slipped on a mask and domino, and have come to the ball to meet Jadby. Probably she wore that dress to implicate Constance, and concealed it in Rover's dressing-room to bring him into the matter. Remember, Madame Marie herself told you where the sham dress was to be found." "Yes!" assented Lord Prelice thoughtfully; "but how did Madame Marie learn what kind of a costume Constance would wear?" "Rover told her. Yes! he came to me about Constance's love for Shepworth, and told me that in his efforts to gain his wife's love he had gone to see if Madame Marie could give him a philter of sorts. Infernally silly to act in that way now-a-days. Madame Marie told him to learn the exact costume which Constance would wear at the ball--you see, Constance was keeping her style of dress a secret even from her husband--so that Rover could watch if she went down to see Shepworth. Rover learned about the dress from Constance's dressmaker, and told me, and also told Madame Marie. It was easy then for Madame Marie to get the frock imitated and slip down to Shepworth's flat. By doing that she managed to kill Agstone, to implicate young Shepworth, and to throw the blame on Constance. A confoundedly clever woman is Marie Eppingrave," ended Haken, chuckling. Lord Prelice rose thoughtfully. "The further we go into this case the more complicated does it become," he remarked. "Certainly Agstone, knowing Madame Marie, would bring her into the room; while not knowing Constance, he would not. Then again, Madame Marie knew about the herb, and Constance did not. It would seem----" He stopped, and walked abruptly to the door. "I must sleep on this," he said wearily. "But you know that I am innocent now that I have explained," said the old man, following, and speaking anxiously. He liked Prelice, and did not wish him to have a bad opinion of his uncle by marriage. Prelice grasped Haken's hand. "I believed in your innocence before you gave the explanation," he replied. "Wish my aunt good-night for me, Uncle Simon. I am going home to think over things." "Your aunt will be annoyed." "Not so much as I will be, if I listen to her scolding. Good-night." Haken grumbled a trifle at being left to explain to Lady Sophia, but on going to the drawing-room he found that his wife had gone to a concert in Park Lane. Thus he was saved the trouble of making things smooth, and went to bed very thankfully. Haken was not a young man, and the interview with Prelice had shaken him greatly. Meanwhile Prelice himself had driven straight to his rooms, and had gone immediately to bed, thinking that he could better argue out the case as it stood when lying down than when sitting or standing. But he was so weary with talk and with the strain of the last few days that he fell sound asleep before he could arrive at any conclusion regarding the guilt or innocence of Madame Marie. It seemed to him that he had only been resting for five minutes when his valet woke him in the morning at nine o'clock; woke him also in a most unpleasant manner by presenting a telegram. Prelice, half awake, tore open the orange-hued envelope, but he was wide awake when he finished reading the news it contained. The wire proved to be from Mrs. Blexey. "Miss Mona has disappeared." That was all the wire said, but it was quite enough. CHAPTER XXIII. HELPLESS. At Lanwin Grange all was confusion. About twelve o'clock on the previous day Mona had left the house with the intention of going to Folkstone to interview Lady Sophia. She was unaware that this formidable personage had returned to London, and wished to explain how much she loved Lord Prelice, so that Lady Sophia might offer no opposition to the marriage. From the time that she had left the Grange she had not been seen. Mrs. Blexey was not alarmed until her young mistress failed to return to dinner, as she had promised. Then the housekeeper had sent a groom with a dog-cart over to the Folkstone hotel at which Lady Sophia was supposed to be stopping. The man had returned with the information that Miss Chent had not been seen at the hotel, and that Lady Sophia Haken had gone back to London. It was then that Mrs. Blexey grew terrified. "Whatever will his lordship and Mr. Shepworth say?" she wailed. "They will be fit to take the skin off me." The butler advised an immediate wire to both the young gentlemen; but Mrs. Blexey, hoping to save the situation, refused to listen, alleging that perhaps Miss Mona, walking across the Downs towards Folkstone, had lost herself. But when the night passed, and still the girl did not put in an appearance, the housekeeper was compelled to send telegrams to Prelice and the barrister. The two friends, oddly enough, met at Charing-Cross Station to go down by the same train. Naturally they secured a first-class carriage in order to talk over the disappearance of Miss Chent. "What do you think about it?" asked Shepworth anxiously. "It is a new move on the part of that blackguard Jadby," replied the other between his teeth. "But would he dare?" "He would dare anything to gain his ends. He tried to shoot you, and now he has kidnapped Mona." "Are you sure of that, Dorry?" "What other explanation can there be, Ned? Mona has not returned, and she never went near the Piccadilly Hotel in Folkstone, where my aunt has been staying. I expect after our meeting at Horace's this scoundrel came down, and watched for an opportunity to get Mona by herself. Then he kidnapped her." "But he could not do that alone and in England." "No doubt he had help of some sort, and the Downs are lonely. Besides, he threatened at Horace's to do me an injury, and what greater one could he inflict than to carry off Mona? Also, Madame Marie hinted that Jadby would strike at me through the girl I love. By the way, I have sent a special messenger to bring that lady down to Hythe." "For what reason Dorry?" "Madame Marie," said Prelice quietly, "may be a bad woman; Uncle Simon says that she is. All the same, she loves that Jadby beast, and will move heaven and earth to secure him. If he has carried off Mona--as I suspect--Madame Marie will help me." "How can she?" "She can go into a trance, and see where Mona is hidden." Shepworth raised his eyebrows. "Dorry, do you really believe in these magical things?" "There is no magic about them," retorted Lord Prelice bluntly, "save to people who can't see farther than their noses. Everything works under well-defined laws both in the seen and in the unseen worlds. It only needs a person to learn and understand these laws to work what the unthinking call miracles." "And you believe that this woman----" "Yes, I do," interrupted Prelice impatiently; "you have only to look into Madame Marie's eyes to see that she has the Sight. She may be a bad lot, as Uncle Simon says, but there are Black Magicians as well as White ones. But there," he ended abruptly, "I am only talking in High Dutch to you." "I confess that I am not superstitious," said Shepworth thoughtfully. "Occult powers have nothing to do with superstition," said Prelice in a calm and decisive way. "Everything is law, as I tell you, and when the law is known, certain things can be done. By means of the Sacred Herb, the spirit--that is the astral body--can part from the flesh and go where it will. When Madame Marie arrives at the Grange, I shall make her help me in that way. She will be quite willing, if only to thwart Jadby. But there," Prelice again brushed away his words with a gesture, "I have explained enough to a sceptic such as you are. Let us talk of other matters. What do you intend to do about Constance?" Shepworth coloured, and looked out of the window at the landscape, which was flying past, dream-fashion. "I do not like to discuss Mrs. Rover even to you, Prelice," he said stiffly. "Ned," answered his friend, "don't be a fool If you had confided in me when we first met in Geddy's Restaurant a great deal of trouble might have been avoided. Besides, you told Mona, why should you not tell me?" And Prelice waited for a reply. "I only told Mona that I loved Constance," said Shepworth, after an uneasy pause; "naturally I didn't like to say too much." "I quite understand. But the fact remains that you love Constance, and that Constance loves you. She is a married woman." "Unfortunately for me," said Shepworth bitterly. "And unfortunately for her also, seeing that she is tied to a man who hates her more than he loves her. Rover's pride is wounded, Ned, by his wife's preference for you, and he'll make trouble." "I see that, and I wish to avoid trouble for Constance's sake. But what can I do?" "You can move from Alexander Mansions for one thing, and take a trip to the Colonies for another. Rover may die." "There is no chance." "Pooh!" said Prelice contemptuously, "the man's a bloodless little rat. And look at those dilated eyes of his--like those of a fierce rabbit, if there is such a thing in nature. I shouldn't be at all surprised if Rover pegged out unexpectedly. He doesn't motor, nor golf, nor bicycle, nor shoot--in fact, he avoids all excitements. So Aunt Sophia told me. That shows how weak his heart is. Depend upon it----" "No, no!" said Shepworth impatiently; "even for Constance. I do not want to build my future happiness on a man's death. I shall take your advice, and go to Australia for a few years. It will be better for me and for Constance, since here we can only look at one another, and dare not meet, much less speak, save in the presence of others. But there has been no scandal since Rover's marriage, and so far as I'm concerned there shall be no scandal. There, we have talked enough." "Poor old chap," said Prelice, leaning forward to shake Shepworth's hand, "you're having a deuce of a time. Your Karma----" "Oh, hang your theosophy!" "Very good. One wastes words in speaking to the deaf. Besides, the matter of Mona's rescue is more important than anything else. Hang it, how slow this beastly train is!" This was hard on the engine driver, who was doing his best, and actually was sending along the train at top speed. But had Prelice been mounted on a flying bombshell he would have found its speed too slow, since his thoughts, outstripping all other means of locomotion, had flown long since to the house in the hollow. However, the longest rivers get to the sea in the end, and the young men found themselves on Hythe platform. A motor car--ordered in advance by wire--waited them, and they were soon buzzing upward to Lanwin Grange. On arriving at the great mansion they were met by Mrs. Blexey, all tears and lamentation. But Prelice, in his stiff military manner, soon reduced her to common-sense talk, and learned that although every inquiry had been made, and every possible place searched, as yet Mona had not been found. She had disappeared as completely as a dewdrop does in the ocean. Even the local police could do nothing. "Which is just like the local police," growled Prelice. "I say, Ned, you take the car and scout over the Downs. Somewhere about there Jadby may hold her prisoner." "Oh, sir," wailed Mrs. Blexey, "do you think that such a nasty man has run away with Miss Mona?" "It is the sole solution of her disappearance that I can think of, Mrs. Blexey. There, there! Don't talk any more. Ned, you go round the Downs, and use the car for speed. I'll wait until the arrival of Madame Marie, and then search Folkstone. Humph!" Prelice looked sharply at Ned. "Do you know if Jadby has a boat, or a yacht, or a steamer of any sort?" "Yes," said Shepworth, starting to his feet; "now you mention it, I did hear him say to Sir Oliver that he had a small steamer anchored in the Thames. But I can't give particulars." "Never mind. I'll set the police to work on this possible clue. If that steamer has been brought round to Folkstone Harbour, you may be sure that Mona is held prisoner on board. But if this is so, and Jadby has gone off to the South Seas--which is just what he would do--I'll borrow Uncle Simon's yacht. Twin screw, triple expansion, and a devil to go. I'll follow Jadby to Polynesia, and to hell if necessary," ended Lord Prelice grimly. Arrangements being thus made, Shepworth went off in the car with a policeman who knew the neighbourhood, and with the chauffeur, who was a magnificent driver--and driving of the best was needed on the rolling uplands of the Downs. Prelice, left behind, waited for Madame Marie, and in the meantime asked Mrs. Blexey about the herb which Horace had given to the girl. "Was it a small white parcel?" asked the housekeeper. "Yes. It contained some roots and leaves." "Miss Mona took it with her," explained Mrs. Blexey; "she asked me to make a linen bag, and then sewed it inside her dress." "Good," said Prelice; adding to himself: "If she has the herb and can make use of it, she may render Jadby insensible, and escape." The reflection that Mona had this means of protection quietened him somewhat; but his anxiety rose again to fever heat when Madame Marie appeared. On this woman and on her occult powers depended the chance of saving Mona; but had Prelice told this to the police he would have been jeered at. However, he had his own methods of going about things, and it was not needful for him to expose himself to ridicule. He watched anxiously for the fortune-teller, and was amazed when she arrived in the unexpected company of Mr. Dolly Rover. "What the devil are you doing here?" asked Prelice rudely. "I shall tell you," said the little man very deliberately, and looking at the other with his dilated blue eyes. "This morning I went to see Madame Marie about my wife. She loves Shepworth, and I want Shepworth removed out of her path and mine." "Did you propose murder to Madame?" asked Prelice coolly. "No," replied Rover, with a shudder, while the fortune-teller sat down; "but I wished Captain Jadby to marry Miss Chent----" "The deuce you did----" "To Shepworth. That is, I fancied that Jadby could manage the business, and I offered--through Madame Marie here--a sum of money if the marriage could be brought about." "Oh, indeed. And did Madame Marie tell you----" "I told him nothing," interrupted the woman in her deep voice. "I never intended to, without your permission, as I said that I was your friend. Your wire came while Mr. Rover and myself were talking--that is, your messenger came--so I brought Mr. Rover down with me." "And I came to help to find Miss Chent," said Rover hurriedly. "I want her to be found and married to Shepworth. Any money I can offer to help in the search----" "I have ample money to deal with the matter," said Prelice, pleased to find that the fortune-teller had respected his confidence about the new engagement. "But I don't see why you need have applied to Jadby to bring about this marriage." "Because I know that Jadby loves Miss Chent and wants to marry her, Lord Prelice. As you know, that would not remove Shepworth beyond my wife's reach. I wished to bribe Jadby into letting Shepworth marry Miss Chent as was arranged. Then my wife----" "All right, all right," cried Lord Prelice irritably; "don't worry your head, Rover. I'll see to this. And you had better clear off, back to London. Jadby is a rough customer, and if we get involved in a row it will be bad for your heart." "My dear Lord Prelice!" "Yes. Anyone can see--oh, pooh! don't worry me." "My heart is weak," said Rover with dignity, "and my wife's behaviour is not likely to make it strong. Nevertheless, I shall wait and help in the search for Miss Chent, and bribe Jadby as I said. He must not marry this young lady." "He won't," Madame assured him coolly; "he shall marry me." Prelice turned to the fortune-teller. "Will you go into a trance and see where Mona is?" "I have already been in a trance before leaving Bond Street." "Then you know----" Madame looked at him unflinchingly. "I could see nothing but clouds, and clouds, and clouds," she responded. "Only one thing I am certain of, and that is that Miss Chent is hidden somewhere amongst these Downs." Prelice shrugged his shoulders. "Much good that information does. I quite believe it; but where?" "I can't say. But," added Madame Marie with animation, "I can tell you that the steamer which Felix owns is coming round to Folkstone Harbour this afternoon. Felix asked me two days ago to tell his captain to take the boat round. I didn't know why he wished that. I can understand now." "So can I," rejoined Lord Prelice quickly. "Jadby intends to take Miss Chent to the steamer at nightfall, and do a bunk." "Yes," replied the fortune-teller, breathing hard; "leaving me in the lurch. But he sha'n't--he sha'n't. I'll kill him first." The young man looked at her curiously, and wished to ask her if she had killed Agstone. But he did not think that it was wise to irritate her at so critical a moment, so merely asked: "What is the name of the steamer?" "The _Kanaro_. That is the name of one of the Easter Island statues which are worshipped by the natives." "Jadby seems to be very closely connected with Easter Island. He certainly has made good use of the Sacred Herb." "What do you mean?" asked Madame Marie angrily. "Nothing," replied Prelice, wondering why she should grow so angry. "But I think that we have talked enough. Mr. Shepworth is exploring the Downs in a motor car, so you and Mr. Rover here can go also if you like." "Yes, yes!" said the fortune-teller eagerly, and with very bright eyes, "we can do that; but I would rather go alone." "No," said Dolly, piping out his decision. "I wish to aid in finding Miss Chent. I must get her married to Shepworth." "Very good," said Prelice, with a short laugh; "go and hunt. I shall go into Folkstone and see after the _Kanaro_. Describe her, Madame." The woman did so at once, and Prelice left the house an hour later with a full knowledge of what kind of a boat Jadby owned. Walking to Hythe, he took the train to Sandgate, and then used the funicular to reach the Leas. Here he swept the horizon and the harbour with his marine-glass to seek for the steamer in which Jadby intended to fly with Mona Chent; but he could see no sign of the boat. Had Prelice been absolutely wise he would have gone to the police station to engage a couple of constables to board the vessel; but he preferred to trust in his own strong arm and in his own wits, which had hitherto served him excellently. Also, unless the constables had a warrant, they could not board the yacht if refused permission. It was better, thought the young man, to go alone and interview the captain. If Jadby was not open to argument, the captain might be, and an intimation that the law would be put in force if Miss Chent was kidnapped might prevent the commander of the _Kanaro_ from risking his own liberty and the liberty of his crew. So Prelice went down to the harbour, and watched for the coming of the steamer. To his surprise, he found that she had arrived an hour since, and was anchored some distance away from the land. There was no doubt that this was the _Kanaro_, as not only did she correspond to the description given by the fortune-teller, but by means of the glass he saw the name on her stern. Lord Prelice acted promptly, and engaged a boat to be rowed on board the steamer. When he climbed up the rope ladder hanging over the side he was greeted unceremoniously by a rough-looking man in a nondescript sort of uniform. In reply, Prelice handed his card, upon which the officer's manner changed to one of courtesy. He conducted Lord Prelice to a richly furnished cabin, and removed his cap with an explanation. "I know your name, my lord," he said politely. "Madame Marie mentioned it to me. I am Captain Brisson, in command of this yacht." "It belongs to Captain Jadby?" Brisson shrugged his heavy shoulders. "So he says, my lord; but I think that it is the property of Madame Marie herself. Still as Captain Jadby is to marry her, they can both own it." "Captain Jadby wants to marry a young lady whom he is kidnapping," was Prelice's sharp reply, "and if you aid him to do so, the law----" "Stop, sir," said Brisson, rising. "My first mate said something of this to-day. I'll bring him in." And he tramped heavily out. Prelice waited, but the man did not return. Then he tried the door of the cabin, and found it locked. It flashed across him at once that he had been trapped. CHAPTER XXIV. THE BEGINNING OF THE END. After a strong word or two, Prelice sat down philosophically to consider his position. A weaker man might have raged aimlessly, and have wasted his strength in battering at the closed door; but Lord Prelice was too wise to kick against the pricks. He had been trapped sure enough, and he did not see any way out of the trap. No one knew where he was save the boatman who had brought him, and even as this thought came into his mind he heard the raucous voice of Brisson telling the man that his passenger would remain on board; more than this, Brisson paid the waterman, and sent him away. Until the hue and cry was raised the owner of the boat would say nothing, so it was absolutely certain that Prelice would have to remain in durance vile, without hope of immediate rescue. The situation, however, was not devoid of certain consolations. Without doubt Jadby's plan was to bring Mona on board the _Kanaro_, and steam away with her to Polynesia. Prelice, at all events, would be on the same boat as the girl, and if it came to fighting with Jadby he felt certain that he could hold his own. Moreover, if, as Brisson declared, the yacht belonged to Madame Marie, he, as her captain, owed fealty to her rather than to Jadby; and the fortune-teller certainly would not allow her steamer to carry Mona Chent to the South Seas to be the bride of her precious Felix. No! Things, on reflection, were not so bad after all. In any case, Prelice felt that he was in the thick of the whole villainous business, and soon would be within arm's length of Mona. When she was dragged on board by her scoundrelly kidnapper, it would then be the time to act. Prelice lovingly fingered a revolver which he had strapped behind him, and wondered if it would be necessary to use it. The weapon formed a strange addition to the very civilised suit of tweeds which he wore, and was out of place in sober, law-abiding England. But then danger and murder and sudden death had entered into his life, and it was necessary to prepare for emergencies. "I am not a bloodthirsty man," said Prelice, while seeing that his gun was well loaded and worked without a hitch, "but I should like one clean shot at Felix Jadby!" And it may be mentioned that if the shooting took place Prelice would probably hit the bull's eyes, represented by the buccaneer. He was a clean shot, and very quick with his weapon, as those who inhabited uncivilised parts knew from experience. The afternoon wore on to six o'clock, and still Prelice was left alone in his floating dungeon. Probably Brisson did not desire a personal explanation, knowing that he could not make any very pertinent reply to this breaking of the law. And it was possible that he preferred to leave the explanation to Jadby when he arrived with his prey. Personally, Prelice cared very little. He knew that Mona was safe, though in the power of a scoundrel; for she was a brave girl, and a religious girl, who firmly believed in God. So did Prelice, and he was quite content to think that God, who was slightly stronger than Felix Jadby, would look after his angel. This being so, and the young man knowing that God would bring everything to pass for the best in His own good time, Prelice quietly smoked cigarette after cigarette throughout that weary afternoon. Then he stretched himself on the divan, and went to sleep, wondering how Ned was getting on with his search, and what Madame Marie and Rover were doing. He was awakened about eight o'clock by a bright light, and a sense that someone was looking steadily at him. With a yawn he opened his eyes, and saw that a steward was lighting the swing lamp over the central table, and that Captain Brisson was looking down upon him. The sailor had a rugged but somewhat good-natured face, and possessed an extraordinary athletic figure, which promised well for fighting purposes. "Well," said Prelice, swinging his legs on to the floor, "are you going to starve me?" Brisson burst into a horse-laugh, while his unwilling guest blinked and rubbed his eyes. "You're a plucky chap, my lord," said he approvingly. "Thanks awfully; but I prefer food to compliments." "I'm just about to eat myself. Hurry up, steward!" Then, when the man had gone out, Brisson threw his cap on a chair, and resumed. "You wonder maybe why I keep you here?" "No," said Prelice, stretching himself; "it's all in the game." "What game?" asked Brisson abruptly. "The very dangerous one you are playing along with Jadby and your mistress. With Dr. Horace too, for all I know." "I never met Horace, whoever he may be," retorted Brisson gruffly; "but all I know of the game is that I have to obey orders----" "If you break owners," finished Prelice, remembering the saying, "and you will break them before you've done." "None of your larks, my lord. I've got a gun." "So have I," answered Prelice, "loaded in all six chambers. But you need make no mistake, Brisson. I intend to stop here, and see the game out to the end. Captain Jadby and I have to settle accounts." "What sort of accounts?" "Well, Jadby is kidnapping the lady to whom I am engaged. You can't expect me to stand that?" "I guess not," assented Brisson agreeably. "I'm hitched up with a girl of spirit myself, and if anyone dare to----" He clenched his huge fist, looking pistols and daggers and Maxim guns. "That's the proper spirit, Brisson. By the way," Prelice got out a cigarette, "you might tell me how much you know of this business." "Very little, I reckon," answered the captain, more and more puzzled by the young man's coolness. "Jadby and Madame came to London some months ago, and she started the fortune-telling racket, while he went to see his uncle. I anchored the boat in Thames River, and went a loaf round the coast at times to keep the barky in trim. Then the other day Madame sends a message that I'm to bring the _Kanaro_ round here, which I have done. Now I'm waiting for further orders." "When Jadby comes on board with Miss Chent?" Brisson nodded. "But I don't take any orders from any son of a sea-cook, you can bet your boots. Madame's owner, and she wants to run in double harness with Jadby, rum though her taste may be. If he's skipping with a girl, that's Madame's lookout. I don't sail until she gives the office." Prelice nodded his approval. "In that case, Jadby will get left," he remarked coolly, "for he's trying to play low down on Madame Marie. By the way, if you know so little of the game, why detain me?" "Well," said Brisson, scratching his head, "Madame visited the yacht at times when we were swinging off Gravesend. She told me there was some trouble over these murders----" "You know about them?" "Only what I read in the papers. But Madame said that you were taking a hand in the meddling way, and that she'd like to keep you out of the whole business. As I like Madame--who is a dandy fine woman with a temper--I put you in quod the moment I heard your name. You must stop here, my lord, until Madame comes on board." "You have acted in a somewhat high-handed manner, and without any instructions to go upon," said Prelice calmly. "If I wanted to make a row I could." "Not in this ship," growled Brisson. "Oh, I think so. Yonder is the port-hole, and there isn't very much distance between this boat and the shore. Also, there are other steamers lying at anchor close at hand. Not to speak of my boatman having been in a position to be spoken to from the port-hole. I could fire a shot or two and rouse the harbour, and I could have hailed my boatman before you sent him away. I did none of these things. And why? Because I am in the very position I wish to be in. Jadby is coming on board, and I want to meet Jadby." "And to rescue the girl." "To rescue the young lady," corrected Prelice coldly. "If you attempt to clear out with Miss Chent, I'll make it hot for you." "What can you do?" "What I said. I have my revolver. See!" Prelice whipped out his weapon before Brisson could move. "I have you covered. What is to prevent me from shooting you and racing on deck to swim ashore?" The captain did not move a muscle. "You can put the gun down, my lord," said he, with a note of admiration in his voice. "I promise you that I won't steam for the Southern Cross until Madame gives the word." "Madame won't come on board." "Then I wait until she does," retorted Brisson. "Will you put that gun down, or am I to be shot?" "You are more use to me alive than dead," said Prelice, and slipped his derringer behind him, handy for the grip; "but I see the tea is on the table. I'm infernally hungry." Brisson smacked his great thigh, and looked at Prelice with much admiration. "Guess you'll come home on the winner," said he as they sat at table, "and I should just love to see you get the bulge on that son of a sea-cook." "Meaning Jadby?" "Meaning Jadby," assented Brisson gravely. "Have some salt tack." The hungry guest assented very readily, and ate a decent meal of extremely bad sea food. Prelice was not fastidious when in the wilds, and passed over the table like a prairie fire. At the conclusion of the meal Brisson mixed him a tot of rum, and handed along a box of very good cigars, which had never paid duty. Then to pass the time until Jadby arrived, they chatted. Amongst other things, Prelice learned that Brisson had met Sir Oliver Lanwin, and did not like him. The baronet had a bad record in the South Seas. "I was in his service once," growled Brisson, cutting up tobacco with a clasp-knife; "but he gave me the chuck 'cause I wouldn't pile up a schooner, which he'd insured for wrecking. Agstone did it, though." And he filled a dirty little pipe with the rank tobacco. "Humph! You knew Agstone?" Brisson nodded. "He was a fairy-tale pirate, was Agstone," said he. "Lord, I could put in the night yarning about his doings. Murder amongst 'em too." And he spat. "Sir Oliver knew of that, and got the hang of Aggy. No wonder Aggy got square with him." "Do you mean to say that he murdered Sir Oliver?" "You can hold on to that, my lord. Sir Oliver treated Aggy like the old devil treats a holy man. Course I wouldn't swear to Aggy's knifing him in a Court o' Law; but it sounds like Aggy. Wonderfully quick with his sticker, was Aggy." "And who do you think murdered Agstone?" Brisson leered. "You've got me there," he confessed. "I can't lay my hand on the son of a gun that did that." Prelice nodded. Possibly Agstone had turned on his tyrant to send him below; but it was impossible to say who had sent Agstone to join the baronet. "About Madame Marie, now. Is that her real name?" he inquired. "Oh yes. Marie Eppingrave. She's the daughter of a Tahiti merchant and a French lady. There's no half-caste rubbish about Madame, you bet. She's got cash too--this yacht, and a slap-up island all to herself. Why she wants to collect Jadby into her life, I dunno; but there, you can't understand womenfolk." "You like Madame Marie?" "Seeing she nursed me through a yellow fever bout and gave me this command, I do," said the man of the sea. "A good sort is Madame, with a temper of sorts, of course, as every woman should have. She'd knife a man as soon as look at him, and nurse him square after her temper had busted. Wish she'd knife Jadby. He's a rotten beach-comber." "Humph!" Prelice thought for the space of half a cigar. "And Madame Marie's fortune-telling?" "Well, I guess there's no explanation of that, my lord. She's got piles of cash; but maybe her heart's in them hocus-pocus things. I've seen her do some rum business on occasions. When she looks at you, you feel cold water freezing your spine. Can't say I'd like to have her to be Mrs. Brisson, even if I put my old gal into her wooden overcoat. But Madame Marie's a dandy fine woman. No mistake about that." In suchlike conversation did the two wile away the time until ten o'clock, then they went on deck. Brisson was quite willing to allow Prelice to accompany him, as he had grown to like the young man, and, moreover, was ready to take his word that he would not try to escape. But Prelice warned him that he would make trouble to save Mona if needful, and Brisson being on the side of Madame Marie was agreeable that it should be so. Besides, he had a sneaking liking for Prelice's somewhat stormy wooing, and wished to help him. Perhaps a strong dislike for Jadby had something to do with Brisson's attitude. It was a perfect night, lighted by a brilliant moon and countless stars. A warm wind was blowing from the land, and far up on the heights twinkled the innumerable lights of Folkstone. The _Kanaro_ rocked at anchor a stone's throw from the shore, and many other vessels of a less piratical nature were anchored in the harbour. The water shone like a sheet of silver, and the green and red riding-lights of the ships glittered in the sheeny depths. Prelice leaned over the side of the boat, and strained his eyes to see if any craft was approaching the _Kanaro_, but for quite half-an-hour he beheld nothing. However, he was tolerably certain that Jadby would come carrying Mona with him, and felt if his revolver was ready in his hip-pocket. If need be, he was resolved to shoot the buccaneer; and who can blame him, considering how basely Jadby had acted? It was when the clock from the church tower boomed out eleven that the trouble came. Brisson laid his big hand on Prelice's arm, and pointed to a boat which was putting off from a somewhat deserted part of the shore. Three figures were in it, two rowing and one seated holding the tiller-ropes. The rowers were labouring hard to reach the _Kanaro_, and Prelice saw through his glass that other figures on the land were launching another boat to follow. "There's going to be a holy show," swore Brisson under his breath. "I wish----" He fingered his revolver, but did not dare to use it. The place was too civilised. The first boat came on swiftly, and Prelice discerned that Jadby was rowing with the other man, and that Madame Marie was seated in the stern. He could see nothing of Mona, and his heart thrilled, as he thought from the presence of the second boat, which had now put off, that the girl had been saved, and that her kidnapper was now being pursued. Brisson watched the race between the two boats, and then ran on to the bridge. Prelice heard him shout to the engineer to start the engines--for the boat had steam up--and a minute later he heard the steady throbbing of the screw, while a rush of men hastily pulled up the anchor. Apparently Brisson saw that the only chance of safety for Madame Marie and Jadby was to have the boat ready to start, and risked the engines going before the anchor was up. Indeed, this latter took so much time, and time was so precious, that he shouted out to let the anchor slip, and the roar of the chain showed that his orders had been obeyed. Meanwhile many people were rushing to and fro on the shore. It was apparent that everyone knew something untowards was going on, and that there was intense excitement. Already other boats were putting off, and Brisson was cursing, like the old salt he was, at the danger of his beloved mistress. The first boat swung near the side of the yacht, and Brisson raced from the bridge to the side to shake out the rope ladder. Madame Marie rose to grip the rope; but in a moment Jadby was on his feet, and catching her round the waist, had thrown her into the sea. Brisson gave a cry of wrath, and as Jadby placed his hand on the ladder, he leaned over, fumbling behind with his hand. The next moment there was a clear, sharp crack of a revolver, and Jadby, with a wild cry, fell off the ladder into the sea. The boatman cowered in his craft; and Prelice could see the head of Madame Marie appear some distance away, as she came to the surface and drifted with the tide. On witnessing the sudden catastrophe, the second boat rowed towards the drowning woman. Brisson uttered a shout of rage as Madame Marie was pulled into the boat, and ran up again on to the bridge. "Damn it, they've got her," he yelled, and twirled the dial to "Full speed ahead." Then he sprang to the wheel, and wrenched it out of the steersman's hands. Prelice soon saw what he meant. The _Kanaro_ bore straight down on to the boat. Brisson was evidently prepared to kill his mistress rather than let her fall into the hands of her enemies. A shout of dismay arose from the boat as the great bulk of the yacht swung forward. In a flash Prelice took his choice, and poised his revolver at the mad captain. There was a crack of the revolver, a cry from Brisson, and he went down like a shot, while the boat swung helplessly in the harbour, the engines working powerfully, but the wheel swinging idly. Two or three sailors seeing that Prelice had shot the skipper, came towards him with a rush. The young man did not lose time. He jumped on the taffrail, and dived straight into the silver tide. As he rose to the surface the crew flung belaying-pins and spars, and bits of coal lying on the deck, at him. One man, with a straighter aim than the others, hit Prelice with a lump of hard coal. The young man uttered a gasping cry, and flinging up his hands, went down. His last look was at the yacht, and he saw that she swung round, and was heading full speed for the entrance to the harbour. CHAPTER XXV. EXPLANATIONS. When Lord Prelice recovered his senses, he opened his eyes in a comfortable room on a comfortable bed, and saw as in a dream that Ned was seated beside him. His head felt confused and sore, but he regained sufficient command of his wits to recognise his friend. "Where am I, Ned?" he asked in a feeble voice, and put up a weak hand to his head, which was bandaged. "At Lanwin Grange," replied Shepworth quietly, thinking it best to explain reasonably, and glad to think that Prelice was sane. The knock on his head had been a nasty one. "Who pulled me out of the water?" "One of the boats that followed us picked you up when you rose for the second time. You have had a narrow escape from death, Dorry." "Mona?" asked Prelice, closing his eyes. "She is all right, but somewhat shaken after her experiences." "With that blackguard Jadby. What of him?" "Dead--shot through the heart. His body was found, and now lies at Folkstone, awaiting the inquest." "And Brisson, the man who shot him?" "Oh, Brisson did that, did he," said Shepworth. "He's got a good eye, and saved us a lot of trouble. Well, Brisson and the _Kanaro_ have gone into the wide world. I expect he's on the high seas, making for Polynesia, and won't be caught. I hope not, for after all he only saved Jadby from the hangman." "Why? What did Jadby do?" "He murdered Dolly Rover." "Ned, do you mean to say----" "I mean to say nothing just now. Try and go to sleep. Here, drink this first; you are still weak. Hang it, Dorry, you have been unconscious for twenty-four hours, and heaps has happened." "One last question, and then I'll sleep," said Prelice, who felt that he was weak from loss of blood. "Madame Marie?" "Dead. She killed herself, after confessing." "Confessing what?" "Many things. Go to sleep, Dorry, I tell you." Prelice did not answer, but closed his eyes with a groan, feeling very stiff and sore and wonderfully weary. But sleep, the great healer, soothed his too restless brain, and mended his broken body, so that he woke again, after hours of slumber, feeling hungry and refreshed, and eager to learn all that had taken place. It was candle-light when he closed his eyes, but the sun was shining into the room when he opened them again. And beside his bed, Ned had been replaced by Mona. She was hanging over him like a mother over her first-born, and uttered a coo of satisfaction when he looked at her and smiled. "Mona--darling," said the sick man, thrusting out one weak hand. She kissed it, and tucked it again under the clothes. "Go to sleep!" Prelice, feeling ever so much stronger, objected to being treated like an infant, sweet though it was when Mona was the nurse. "I have had enough sleep," he said, yawning; "one can overdo laziness, my dear girl. Besides, I am hungry." "Ah!" Mona laughed, "you can't live on love." "No," said Prelice ruefully. "I am too earthly. Now breakfast----" "Is waiting. Come, let me place this pillow behind you, and smooth the clothes so, and----" "And kiss me, so," said the invalid, suiting the action to the word. The future Lady Prelice tapped his cheek in pretended displeasure, and went to the door. In another minute she returned, followed by Mrs. Blexey bearing a tray, which she placed before the hungry young man. "Coffee and cream, two lightly biled eggs, thin bread and butter, and honey from our own bees," said Mrs. Blexey, arranging the tray. "I hope that your lordship is better." "My lordship is starving, Mrs. Blexey." "And no wonder," sighed the housekeeper, placing one fat hand on her ample breast; "you ain't had anything for hours and hours, my dear, if you'll excuse my boldness in calling you so. And to think of all the terrible things that had happened, while you were lying there, as pretty and neat as though you were in your coffin, and----" "Blexey, you're a ghoul. Go away," said Mona imperiously. "I'm a United Inhabitant of the Celestial Regions," said Mrs. Blexey with dignity; "but I see that you want to feed him, my dear lady. May the dear Lord bless your marriage, and happy I am that I should have lived to see this day." She waited for a reply, but Mona was too busy assisting Prelice with his breakfast to answer, and the young man was too busy admiring Mona to worry about the stout housekeeper. So she heaved a sigh, and retired in a flood of tears, as she thought how happy they would be. It was an odd way of showing her joy; but Mrs. Blexey, after the manner of her class, wept indiscriminately for a wedding or for a funeral. "Mona, dearest and best," said Prelice when half way through his second egg, "I am a selfish beast. You are looking tired, and here I am letting you feed me." "I am not tired at all," denied the girl vigorously, "but my nerves are a trifle out of order after what I have undergone. Hush! eat your breakfast, you tiresome boy." "Will you give me a kiss if I drink another cup of coffee?" "No. I'll give you a cigarette. Then you can sleep, and get up at midday. Mr. Shepworth and Mr. Martaban want to see you on business." "Why do you speak of Ned so stiffly, Mona?" "I am engaged to you now," she replied demurely. "That doesn't mean poor Ned is to be left out in the cold." "He won't. I expect that he'll marry Mrs. Rover after her months of mourning are over." "Ah, yes. Ned mentioned that Jadby had murdered Dolly. How did it happen, Mona, my dear?" The girl shuddered, and took away the tray. "I don't think Captain Jadby meant to kill him," she said in a low voice. "Madame Marie denies that he did. But Mr. Rover's heart was weak, and so----" "Give me that cigarette, and tell me all about it from the beginning, dear," said Prelice coaxingly. Mona did as she was asked, as he really now looked much the better for the food and the night's rest. In fact, Prelice was in such good spirits that he apologised for his untidy appearance. "I must look a regular Bill Sikes with this rough chin," he said, passing his hand over his face. "Oh, how delicious this cigarette is. Well?" "I'll tell you all as quickly as I can," said Miss Chent, sitting beside him, and allowing him to hold her hand, on the principle that sick people must be humoured. "You know that Captain Jadby carried me off in a motor car." "Infernal insolence----" "Hush, George; the poor wretch is dead, so I forgive him everything." "All right. I'll try and be a Christian such as you are, although it is not easy. Fire ahead." "I started to walk to Hythe to catch the train to Folkstone in order to see Lady Sophia," explained Mona slowly. "I did not know that she had returned to London. Just as I got into the belt of woods between Hythe and the Downs a motor car met me, coming up. Captain Jadby was driving it." "Didn't know he could drive," growled Prelice restlessly. "Oh yes. Uncle Oliver talked of having a motor, and asked his son to learn driving, so that he might take him about with him. And, in fact, I think that Uncle Oliver presented this motor to Captain Jadby when he learned how to handle the machine." "Didn't your uncle tell you that he did?" "No, and yes. That is, he let slip a word or two. But what does it matter? Captain Jadby had this motor, and a very good one it was--at least Ned says so." "Ned, and not Mr. Shepworth. That's right, darling." And Prelice patted her hand. "Go on, sweetest." "I can't if you keep interrupting," said Mona severely. "Well then, Captain Jadby got out, and said that he was coming up to see me, and while he was speaking to me he lighted a cigarette." "Hang him--confound him." "But it wasn't a cigarette after all, as I found," went on Miss Chent hurriedly. "He had twisted up a leaf or two of the herb into the form of a cigarette, and when it was lighted he suddenly seized me, and held it smoking under my nose. I screamed, but no one was near to hear me, and then I became rigid and helpless. Owing to the scantiness of the smoke, I did not become quite insensible, but fell into a cataleptic state, as Mr. Shepworth did." "And as you did in the library." "No; for then I became quite insensible. Of course, had not Captain Jadby tricked me by twisting the leaves into a sham cigarette, I should have run away. As it was, the smoke seized me before I could do anything. I became cataleptic, as I said, and could move neither hand nor foot, although I was quite conscious all the time. Captain Jadby put me into the car, and arranged the rug round me. Then he"--Mona hesitated, and coloured, "he--he kissed me." "Damn him--hang him--curse him!" raged Prelice, banging on his pillow. "I wish he was alive that I could horsewhip him. The beast! The----" "Hush! hush!" Mona placed a cool hand over her lover's mouth. "He is now dead. Leave his punishment to God. But you can fancy my feelings when, owing to the herb, I had to suffer his kiss. Faugh!" She passed a handkerchief across her mouth; then, while Prelice swore under his breath, she continued quickly, so as to prevent another outbreak of anger. "Captain Jadby drove the motor up the hill and over the Downs. As I was conscious, though helpless, I carefully noted the way, so that I might return if I escaped." "Did you see anyone on the road or on the Downs?" "Not a soul," she replied. "We went far inland, and then turned to one side. Captain Jadby drove the car off the road and across the grass for over a mile. It swayed and bumped; but he is a wonderful driver, and managed to prevent the car from overturning. At last we came to a small hut in a hollow, quite concealed from the surrounding country. No one would have noted it, for the side and chimney were built of turf, and the roof was thatched with green rushes. It looked quite like a part of the hollow itself, and great grey stones were lying about on all sides. Captain Jadby drove the car into some bushes, and carried me into the hut. He then sat me down, and talked." "What did he say?" asked Prelice, frightfully pale, and grinding his teeth. "I am bound to acknowledge," said Mona quietly, "that after the one kiss he behaved like a gentleman. He told me that he would keep me here until the next evening, when he intended to take me on board Madame Marie's yacht, and steam for the South Seas. I heard all he said, but could not reply until the effects of the drug had worn off. Captain Jadby had evidently prepared the place for my prison. The door was strong, and the one window was barred; and then there was a girl to wait on me." "A girl?" Prelice stared in great surprise. "Yes. I was astonished and thankful to see one of my own sex. After Captain Jadby had explained that he intended to carry me off in the _Kanaro_ he went out, and brought in the girl. She was a native of the South Seas, very handsome and dark, called Vavi, but could speak very little English. Captain Jadby told me that the girl was Madame Marie's maid, and that he had brought her here to be my companion. Then he went away, and I never saw him again until eight o'clock the next evening--at least," added Mona, correcting herself, "I fancy it was eight o'clock. But it might have been six or seven; I lost all count of time. So that was how I was kidnapped." "It was cleverly done," said Prelice caustically. "Go on." "In about an hour I came out of the cataleptic state, and tried to escape; but the girl showed me a knife, and intimated in her broken English that she would stab me if I did. I tried to bribe her, but she would not be bribed. I had therefore to make the best of it, as I was alone midst those lonely hills, with a half-savage woman for a companion. All the same, George, I was not afraid. I knew that you would look for me, and that God was watching over me." "Dear, I thought the same." Prelice kissed her hand. "Then I remembered the Sacred Herb which Dr. Horace had given me. I got it ready, and when Captain Jadby came the next evening with the car to take me on board the _Kanaro_, which he told me was at Folkstone, I waited my opportunity. Vavi had been cooking--there was plenty of good food--" said Mona, in parenthesis, "and the fire had smouldered to red ashes. When Captain Jadby entered he sent Vavi away. Where she went I do not know; but Captain Jadby sat by the fire, and made me sit also. We had two stools. Then he talked a lot of rubbish about loving me and of the necessity of getting away from Madame Marie. He said that she was an old fool, who loved him, but that he intended to make use of her yacht, and run away with me. He finally said that by the time Madame Marie found him again in the South Seas I would be his wife. After that he called you names, and----" "I can guess the stuff he spouted," said Prelice contemptuously. "What about the herb? Did you make use of it?" "Yes. When Captain Jadby was not looking at me, but bending over the fire stirring it with his cane, I dropped all the leaves on to the ashes. A thick, white smoke arose. I got up quickly, and sprang on Captain Jadby's shoulders to hold his nose over the smoke. It caught him in a second, and he received the full volume in his face. I felt dizzy myself, but managed to pull him back out of the fire, and ran to the door. It was not locked since Vavi went out, so I escaped into the open. It was growing dark, and I ran up the hill, to get out of the hollow as quickly as I could." "And Vavi with her knife?" asked Prelice excitedly. "I never saw her. I don't know where she went. I ran without a hat or cloak up the hills and over the Downs. Then I saw the road, and struck out for that. It was very late when I reached the Grange, and I fainted in Mrs. Blexey's arms." "No wonder," muttered Prelice, "but thank God you tricked the beast, and with the Sacred Herb too." Prelice chuckled. "You paid him out in his own coin. But what happened next?" "I can't tell you myself. I can only repeat what Ned told me. He gathered a lot from Madame Marie when she confessed." "What did she say?" "Wait, and I'll tell you in an orderly manner, George. After I ran away, Vavi came back to the hut. She found that I was gone, and Captain Jadby insensible with the smoke. Instead of hunting for me--very luckily--she set to work to revive him." "But could she, seeing that the herb----" "Vavi," said Mona quickly, "came from Easter Island, and knew all about the herb. The priests there have a way of reviving those who go into such trances. How Vavi did it I don't know, but she managed in an hour to bring Captain Jadby to his senses. As soon as he got them, he rushed out, still half dizzy, to search for me. Just as he left the hut he came upon Madame Marie and Mr. Rover, who had been searching on the Downs for me." "Yes! Yes! I remember they started out. Well?" "Captain Jadby thought in his dizziness and in the twilight that Mr. Rover was you, and seized him by the throat, saying he would kill you rather than let you marry me. Madame Marie tried to pull him off, but Captain Jadby held on tight. Then Vavi helped, by Madame's command, and they released Mr. Rover. He was dead." Prelice nodded. "I quite understand. The poor devil had a weak heart, and should not have mixed himself up in this business. I told him that Jadby was a rough customer. Strange how Jadby has been the means of removing an obstacle from Ned's path. Well then, what happened?" "Madame gave Captain Jadby something to revive him entirely--some drug--some antidote. He became quite himself, and was terrified when he saw what he had done. Madame insisted that he should fly with her from England, lest he should be hanged for the murder of Mr. Rover, and made him get the car. It was ready to take me to the _Kanaro_, if you remember, but instead it took Madame Marie and Vavi and Captain Jadby. When they reached the road, they met the car with Mr. Shepworth, who had been searching for me, and were recognised." "Perhaps Ned took Vavi for you?" "Perhaps he did in the twilight," assented Mona; "at all events Ned's chauffeur followed, and then there was a race to Folkstone Harbour. Captain Jadby's car was the best, and he gained about ten minutes. In the harbour he and Madame seized a boat, and leaving Vavi on the shore, they offered the boatman twenty pounds to row them to the _Kanaro_. He did; and then--well, you know." "Yes," said Prelice slowly, and with a sigh. "Jadby tried to kill that poor woman, who loved him too well, and Brisson shot him. I shot Brisson when he tried to run down the boat in which Ned was following, and into which he had pulled Madame Marie. I wish I had killed Brisson, but unfortunately I only winged him," ended Prelice regretfully. "I daresay he's all right now, and sailing for the Southern Cross. Oh, my dear, dear angel!" he cried, gathering Mona into his arms, "what an escape." "Let us thank God, darling," she said reverently; and they both did with full hearts. It was a very excellent beginning to the new life. CHAPTER XXVI. A CONFESSION. That afternoon Prelice was up and dressed, and seated in the drawing-room, talking earnestly to Martaban and Ned Shepworth. His head was perfectly clear, although still a trifle sore, and he wore a picturesque bandage round it, which added to his pale and interesting looks. But the colour was gradually creeping back to his cheeks, and he was well enough to hear further what had taken place since he had been rendered unconscious. Shepworth was lounging in the window-seat under one of the painted windows, and it might have been the rosy light which came through this which made him look so happy and healthy. On the other hand, it might have been the consciousness that fate had opened the way to his marrying the woman he loved, and who loved him. He could not find it in his heart to regret Rover's timely death. The man had always behaved badly to his wife, and had done his best to make her life a martyrdom. Now, poor victim of a family sacrifice, she would have a chance of being happy for the rest of her life. Mr. Martaban, seated at the table with a few sheets of foolscap before him, also looked happy. And no wonder. His beloved client, Miss Mona Chent, had inherited the lovely old house and ten thousand a year, and shortly was to become Lady Prelice. A great change this from the time, not so long ago, when she had stood in the New Bailey dock accused of murder. And again, the sheets of foolscap with which the lawyer fiddled contained a confession by Madame Marie Eppingrave which entirely cleansed the name of Miss Chent from the stain of crime. "This is not the original document," explained the delighted Mr. Martaban to the anxious Lord Prelice. "Inspector Bruge has the original, which was signed by Marie Eppingrave in his presence." "How did she come to make the confession?" "I think it was because Captain Jadby was dead," put in Shepworth from his end of the room. "She held up, until it was proved beyond all doubt that he had been shot through the heart. Then--I suppose--she saw that life was not worth living without him, and so decided to put an end to herself." "How did she manage it, seeing that she was in custody?" "Oh, she had some phial filled with poison about her. I expect she had everything prepared to make away with herself should Jadby have succeeded in kidnapping Mona to the South Seas. However, we stopped that, thank Heaven, and Madame Marie confessed." "I wonder she did," said Prelice reflectively. "I think it was because she had a sneaking regard for you, Dorry," said the barrister after a pause. "To the last she declared that she was your friend, and hoped that you would be happy. However, she did confess, and yonder is the copy of her confession." "What does it say?" questioned the other man. "I am about to read it to you," said Martaban, gathering up the sheets skilfully; "or else, if you prefer it, I can give you a shorter account in the form of a story." "I should prefer that," said Prelice gravely. "I haven't patience to wait to the end of that long screed to know the exact truth. Who murdered Sir Oliver? Tell me at once." "Steve Agstone, inspired and coerced by Madame Marie." "Humph! So Brisson was right after all," commented Prelice. "And who got rid of Agstone?" "Captain Jadby." "The deuce!" Prelice raised himself on his couch. "Did he wear that sham frock?" "He did," said Shepworth quickly; "and being, as you know, slimly built, I quite mistook him for a woman, seeing how clever was the disguise----" Martaban waved his hand impatiently, as Shepworth drew breath to continue his speech. "Let me speak," he said, leaning back in his chair. "Lord Prelice, you know, of course, that Madame Marie Eppingrave was deeply in love with this man Jadby." "Yes. Brisson told me so, and so did Madame herself." "To make a long story short," said Martaban, gathering up the papers, and speaking with much deliberation, "this woman wished to marry Jadby, and as she was rich, he was willing to do so. Then he decided to go to England, and see if Sir Oliver--his father, remember--was keeping to his promise of leaving the money to his natural son. Madame Marie supplied the cash for Jadby to live in London, and brought him there in her yacht--the _Kanaro_--commanded by Captain Brisson." "And the yacht was anchored in the Thames until Madame sent it round at Jadby's request to Folkstone for the kidnapping," said Prelice. "I know all that, Mr. Martaban. Continue." The lawyer did so very willingly. "For some reason--I know not why, seeing that she was wealthy--Madame Marie took to telling fortunes in the Bond Street establishment. Jadby, on the other hand, came down to see his father in this house, and here fell in love with Miss Chent. He kept this secret from Madame Marie, naturally fearing what she would say; but she suspected something, and insisted upon coming down to see Sir Oliver, whom she had known in the South Seas. Madame learned that Lanwin was in favour of the match, and therefore set herself to work to thwart it by every means in her power. She implored Sir Oliver to allow Miss Chent to marry Shepworth here----" "Thinking that we loved one another because of the sham engagement," said the barrister quickly. "Quite so, quite so," said Mr. Martaban, annoyed by the interruption; "I hinted at that before. However, Sir Oliver was bent upon his natural son inheriting the property and marrying his cousin--as Miss Chent truly was. Miss Chent refused, and Sir Oliver drew out a new will, of which Madame Marie knew. It confirmed the will made in Jadby's favour." "But what was the need of that?" asked Prelice, surprised. "Wasn't the first will good enough?" "Oh yes, but as it had been made in the South Seas, Sir Oliver thought--very wrongly, in point of fact--that there might be some flaw. Now, Lord Prelice, you can see that if Jadby married Miss Chent, the elder woman would lose him----" "Madame Marie, you mean?" "Yes, yes. I speak plainly, do I not? Well then, if Jadby inherited the property Madame Marie lost him all the same, as while he had money he would never marry her. She therefore decided to destroy the third will, which had not been signed, and--to have Sir Oliver murdered." "Why didn't she stick him herself?" asked Prelice. "A strange woman," said the solicitor meditatively; "she would do much to gain her ends, even employing a third person to commit a crime. But for some feminine reason she would not stain her own hands with blood." "Rather a quibble." "It is, my lord, it is. However, to continue. As Mr. Haken wished to borrow money from Sir Oliver, and consulted Madame Marie about the same, she used his confidence as a lever by which to obtain the leaves of the Sacred Herb from Dr. Horace. Before that time he had refused her, but he gave the herb to Mr. Haken. I don't know why." "I do," said Prelice below his breath, and thinking of the openly expressed hatred which Horace had proclaimed towards the dead man. Martaban took no notice of the interruption. "Mr. Haken got the herb, and gave it to Madame Marie, who handed it to Sir Oliver on the day of the murder. As you know, Jadby and Shepworth quarrelled on that day." "Yes," said Shepworth vigorously. "Jadby learned about my love for a certain lady--through Madame Marie, I believe--and threatened to make himself disagreeable. I gave him a black eye, and myself a sprained ankle. Then the murder took place." "Yes," said Martaban; "and Mr. Haken was in the library, when----" "I know," interrupted Prelice sharply; "my uncle told me. But how did Madame Marie induce Steve to murder his master?" "It seems that she knew how Agstone was wanted for certain other murders in the South Seas," said Martaban, glancing at the papers, "so she threatened to have him extradited unless he did her bidding. He was, I regret to say, quite willing to do so, as he hated Sir Oliver, who treated him like a slave." "That," said Prelice emphatically, "I also know from Brisson. And then?" "Then when Mr. Haken retired, Sir Oliver burned the herb in a shallow bronze cup--the same as Mr. Shepworth saw in his flat--and went into a trance. Madame Marie had arranged with Agstone that he should watch at the window until Sir Oliver was insensible, and then kill him. The man did so with the jade-handled paper-knife." "Why wasn't Agstone stifled with the smoke fumes?" "Because the smoke had died away. When Sir Oliver was dead, Agstone heard a step, and, after setting fire to some more leaves, he ran out of the window, not the one opened by Miss Chent, but another one. He watched, and saw Miss Chent enter; saw also how she fainted with the acrid smoke. He entered, and placed her in the armchair where she was found. It was then that Madame Marie came downstairs and into the room. She snatched up the third will, at which Sir Oliver had been looking, before manipulating the herb, and tearing it up, flung it into the fire. Then she gave the will leaving everything to Miss Chent--which Lanwin had also been looking at to destroy, I presume--to Agstone, and told him to take it up to his brother, Dr. Horace." "What for?" asked Prelice, surprised. "Madame Marie said she had no grudge against Miss Chent," explained Martaban, "and wanted the will placed safely out of Jadby's way, so that Miss Chent might inherit, and that Jadby might be kept poor." "One for Mona and two for herself," said Prelice grimly. "But who placed the knife in Mona's hand?" "Agstone, who hated her, did. A step was heard--that was Shepworth coming down--so Madame Marie ran out of the window, and got back to her room by another door, which Agstone had left open. The man waited to smear Miss Chent's dressing-gown with blood and to place the knife in her hand. Then Mr. Shepworth--so he says--secured the knife, and----" "I know all that," said Prelice, "and understand the why and the wherefore of the first crime. But the second?" "That arose out of Jadby's hatred for Shepworth and his love for Miss Chent. Jadby learned the truth about the crime from Agstone, whom he found hiding in London, under the protection of Madame Marie. He threatened to denounce him to the police to save Miss Chent, and then resolved to make use of him to incriminate Shepworth, and, at the same time, to kill him, so that he might not come forward to give evidence against Miss Chent, which Agstone wanted to do." "But surely he would not have accused Mona of a crime which he had committed himself?" said Prelice indignantly. "Yes, he would," said Ned quickly; "he hated Mona, and Sir Oliver, and Madame Marie, and Jadby, and everyone. The man was a Caliban; and to tell you the truth," added Shepworth candidly, "I don't think that his brother is much better." "Ah!" said Prelice suddenly, "did Agstone confess the truth to Horace?" "No; he did not. He simply came and handed over the will, as Madame Marie had instructed him, and then cleared out. He had to do what he was told, or else he would have been hanged." "Well, I see. Now the Alexander Mansions crime." Martaban went on again, glancing at the sheets. "Madame Marie learned about Mrs. Rover's dress, and told Captain Jadby, so that he could get a double made, which he did." "Was she in favour of this second crime?" "Oh no; for then Miss Chent would be set free to marry Jadby. She liked Miss Chent in a way, but did not intend her to be an obstacle." "I don't believe that she liked Mona at all," snapped Prelice irritably; "she saved the second will so that Jadby might be made penniless, and would have stopped the second crime from being committed so that Mona might be condemned on Agstone's evidence. A wicked woman." "She was all that," assented Martaban. "But allow me to proceed. Madame Marie merely thought that Jadby wished to be disguised to meet Haken, and told him about the dress, knowing that Haken intended to remonstrate with Shepworth about his conduct." "Which was perfectly correct," cried Ned indignantly. "But why in a dress like Mrs. Rover's?" asked Prelice, puzzled. Martaban scratched his head. "I am not quite clear on that point," he declared; "all I know is that Madame Marie wished to mix up things. I believe that she had some clearly defined scheme in her head; but what it was she did not explain. Nevertheless, you can see how Jadby came to the ball disguised." "Yes. But how did Agstone enter?" "I can tell you that," said Shepworth, rising with a yawn. "Jadby, as you know, called to see me early in the evening. I opened the door to him, as the servants were out. He entered, and I preceded him into the drawing-room. He went back for his handkerchief, which he said he had dropped in the hall, and then must have set the door ajar. While I talked to him Agstone entered, and concealed himself under the dining-table. Then Jadby went to the ball in his disguise. Agstone set the herb burning, and stifled me, and afterwards admitted Jadby in his disguise. I was incriminated, you see; and Jadby, to make me quite insensible, lest I should see too much, waved the bronze cup under my nose. When I was completely insensible he stabbed Agstone with the knife, which Agstone--having taken it from my desk--had intended to use on me. Finally, Jadby returned to the ball, and concealed his dress in the cupboard in Rover's dressing-room, which was used on that night as a cloakroom. Afterwards he came down in a plain blue domino to clinch the fact that I had murdered Agstone. But you had bowled him out by then, Dorry." There was a silence. "A strange story," said Prelice thoughtfully. "Does Inspector Bruge know it?" "Yes; and a carefully prepared account, suppressing certain facts, has been sent to the newspapers," said Martaban, folding up the sheets. "You can be certain now, Lord Prelice, that in two days all London will learn the truth, and that Miss Chent will be looked upon as a martyr." "Quite so; but I trust in a month or so she will be looked upon as my very dear and loving wife." "Loud cheers!" cried Ned, adopting Prelice's favourite expression. CHAPTER XXVII. ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. The title of Shakespeare's comedy quite suited the present state of affairs at the Grange, seeing that the worst was over. Within a week everything was put straight. The inquests on Madame Marie, on Dolly Rover, and on Felix Jadby lead to a disclosure of the whole strange story in the newspapers. Luckily, owing to strong influence being brought to bear, the painful love story of Shepworth and Mrs. Rover was suppressed, and it was supposed that merely the desire to save Miss Chent had led Dolly to that lonely hut, where he met with his death. Indeed, the little man became somewhat of a hero, and--as the saying goes--"nothing in life became him better than his manner of leaving it." The public followed his body to the grave with eulogistic comments, and Dolly's spirit must have smiled at the irony of the semi-public funeral. Jadby and the miserable woman, who had loved him so dearly, were buried quietly in the Folkstone cemetery. As to Brisson, he disappeared into the unknown, and nothing was ever heard of him again. Which was just as well, as Prelice had punished him in a measure by shooting him in the shoulder. But the whole affair was a nine days' wonder, and those connected with it were glad when the excitement began to simmer down. It was annoying to have photographs of the Grange appearing in numberless illustrated papers; and still more annoying when the said pictures sent trippers across the Downs to the lonely hollow. They came in shoals, in char-a-bancs, in motor cars, in traps and carts, and riding on bicycles. But Martaban, who was taking charge of everything until his dear client became Lady Prelice, instructed the police to keep the sight-seers out of the grounds. Therefore these could only stare from the smooth heights of the Downs into the woody hollow. And that was unpleasant enough to a couple of ardent lovers, who found their wanderings in the enchanted gardens overlooked by kodak fiends, though Heaven knows what kind of a picture these creatures hoped to obtain at such a distance. However, unless Mona and Prelice took refuge in the woods or in the house, they had nowhere to go, for the lawns, girdled by trees, were quite open to the gazers from above. "I feel like a Christian martyr in the Colosseum," said Prelice, when the sight of three bicycles, with three dismounting riders, sent them hastily into the drawing-room. "What an infernal nuisance it is to be kodaked to make a British holiday." "Never mind, darling," said Mona, taking his arm to lead him to a most comfortable window-seat; "let us sit here and talk. I have something to show you. Mrs. Rover sent it down. Look!" Prelice glanced at the near table, and saw a shallow bronze cup of a somewhat graceful shape. "Is that THE cup?" he asked, examining it. "Yes. Mrs. Rover found it in the cupboard. I expect Captain Jadby left it there along with the dress. It is rudely made, but pretty." It was indeed quaint, being of rough bronze, carved with hideous heads twined round with wreaths of some strange plant. Prelice examined it closely. "By Jove, Mona," he said, "I believe these faces are wreathed with imitations of the Sacred Herb. See, the same spear-shaped leaves with the serrated edges. I wish we had some of the herb to compare." "I have," said Mona, going to a cabinet and pulling out a drawer; "I have just one leaf left!" And she brought forward the purple withered leaf which, as Prelice had pointed out, exactly resembled the chasings of the cup. "It must have come from Easter Island," said Mona, while the two bent their heads over it. "I never wish to hear of Easter Island again," said Prelice, putting down the cup; "it has brought such misery." "Do you call me misery?" said Mona reproachfully. "Hasn't it brought me to you?" "Yes, in a way; but Lady Sophia is really responsible. Jerusalem! Just fancy, Mona, dearest, she sent me to the New Bailey to find an interest in life, and----" "And you have," said Mona, blushing and smiling. Prelice said nothing, but kissed her twice, with a look which spoke volumes. "But I wish Aunt Sophia would be agreeable to the match," sighed the young man. "I am fond of Aunt Sophia, although she is such a worry. Besides, I want her to present you at Court after our marriage." "Do you indeed," said a complacent voice at the door, and the two looked up in great amazement to behold Lady Sophia standing there in the best of spirits, and the most perfect of summer dresses. "I have stolen a march on you," said the lady, coming forward, "and waited for a dramatic moment upon which to enter. Your speech, my dear Prelice, was a happy one; but I am _not_ a worry." "Aunt Sophia, how did you come here?" "In a motor car along with Dr. Horace, who will soon be in. We left the car at the lodge-keeper's, because the creature would insist that we were trippers wanting to see the house. Do I look like a tripper?" And Lady Sophia spun round for inspection. "You are a----" Prelice stopped, and glared. "I sha'n't say what you are until you tell me if you come in peace or war." For answer Lady Sophia turned to Mona, and took her to her breast. "My dearest girl," she said, smiling, "when you marry George Prelice you must really try and put some sense into his head." "Do you wish me to marry him?" asked Mona rather scared. "Of course I do," cried Lady Sophia with asperity. "What else am I here for, you dear, silly, pretty, sweet, angelic darling?" "Hurrah, Aunt Sophia! I endorse all the unnecessary adjectives save the second!" "You can take that to yourself, Prelice. Now what am I?" "A weathercock," said her graceless nephew promptly, although she quite expected him to say something else. "You bully-ragged me about my marriage, and now you---- Oh, I say," ended Prelice in dismay, for Lady Sophia had burst into tears, "whatever is the matter?" "I'm so wicked," sobbed the old lady, clinging to Mona. "Simon has told me all, and how very nearly he was being accused of murder. It was so lucky that his connection with this horrid herb thing was kept out of the papers, or else I never, never, never should have held up my head again. Oh, that I might have lived to see my husband in a nasty dock." "Don't trouble," whispered Mona, leading the old lady to the sofa; "it is all right. Mr. Haken is in no danger." "And that being so," cried Prelice indignantly, "he might have held his confounded tongue, and not worried you." "My dear George," said Lady Sophia, wiping her eyes, "he did it for your sake. I was raging against the marriage, and he told me how nearly he had been an Old Bailey thing, or a New Bailey creature. I forget which. I saw then how very easily one can be accused of things they hadn't the slightest intention of doing. And so--I am here. Kiss me, my love," cried Lady Sophia, again embracing Mona. "You are much, oh, ever so much, too good for Prelice." "And I was too good for her some time ago," laughed Prelice. "Aunt Sophia, you are a weathercock; but," he added, shaking hands, "I am glad that a kind wind has blown you round to being pleased. You are an angel." "I've been very horrid," said Lady Sophia penitently, "but I have made it up with everyone--even with Constance, poor thing, although she did behave badly with that silly poodle creature." "He is dead, so let him rest, Aunt Sophia; and Constance has been punished, so don't blame her any more." "I am not blaming her. How silly you are, Prelice. Don't I tell you that I've called to see her? She looks so well in her mourning, and so very happy. Mr. Shepworth is keeping away from her for a time; but they quite understand each other, and marry in a year. It will be a good match for Mr. Shepworth, for Constance will have all that poor thing's money. She won't have any bridesmaids, though, being a widow." Lady Sophia's discontented chatter was ended by the entrance of Dr. Horace, still gruff and untidy and aggressive. "Oh, here you are," said Lady Sophia, "looking more like a man out of the Stone Age than ever. I take him about as an illustration of the time when people lived in sweet little caves, and wore sables all the year round." "'Day, Prelice," said Horace, taking no notice of Lady Sophia's babble. "How are you, Miss Chent? I have come to say good-bye. I can't stand this London rot, so I'm off again to the other side of the world." "Go to Polynesia, and ask Brisson how his arm is," said Prelice. "But, I say, you treated me rather badly over this case." "Bosh! Pickles and fal-de-lal," snorted the traveller. "Why, I gave you back the will, and did my best for Haken's sake to keep you from going into the case." "Yes, yes!" said Mona, jumping up to take Horace's hand. "I won't have him scolded." Horace grunted, and disengaged his arm, in no wise impressed by the beauty of Mona. "Such a dear, delightful cave bear," sighed Lady Sophia on seeing this. But Dr. Horace's eyes were fixed greedily upon the bronze cup. "I see that you have the Sacred Herb Burner of Easter Island," said he, fingering the bronze lovingly. "How do you know?" "I saw it there. I expect Jadby stole it. This cup," said Horace, raising it aloft, "is thousands and thousands of years old. It is a remnant of Lemurian civilisation. See how like these heads are to the heads of the Easter Island statues. And the leaves of the herb are indicated. Give me this, Prelice, and I'll take it back to those poor priests on the island. They will be delighted to see it again. It is used in their sacred ceremonies." Prelice glanced at Mona. "What do you say?" he asked. "Mrs. Rover sent it to you, my darling." "Take it away, take it away," cried the girl, shuddering, and spreading out her hands. "I never wish to see or hear anything of the Sacred Herb again. It has been a terrible time all through, but," she added, looking tenderly at Prelice, "it has led to happiness." "I should like to see the herb," said Lady Sophia, coming forward, with her lorgnette raised. "Dr. Horace, can you show it to me?" "No; I can't," growled the doctor. "I gave all I had to your husband." "There is one leaf left," said Mona, picking up the same. "Give me the cup. Dorry, have you a match?" "Don't send us into trances," said Prelice jokingly. "I should love it above all things," said Lady Sophia. Mona laid the leaf on the bronze cup, and lighted it. A thin stream of white smoke curled into the air, and, while the two women and the two men stood back to avoid the fumes, a sickly scent of tuberoses spread through the room. The leaf frizzled into nothing, and Dr. Horace slipped the still warm cup into his capacious pocket. "That's the last of the Sacred Herb in England," said he; and without saying farewell, trotted towards the door. There he stopped to wave a friendly hand, and departed, _en route_ to Polynesia and to Easter Island. Lady Sophia fell back on to the sofa. "I declare this smell makes me quite giddy," she said, sniffing; "it's like funerals and coffins. I don't wonder people go into trances with it and see things." She bent forward, with her lorgnette to her eyes, and laughed. "I am in a trance now," she said gaily. "I see--I see--the prettiest bride in the Three Kingdoms." "And the happiest bridegroom," said Prelice, slipping his arm round Mona's waist. "And I see--I see----" "You see this," said Mona; and laying her arms about her lover's neck, she kissed him fairly on the mouth. "I think trances are quite improper," said Lady Sophia, rising. "My dear, if you will ask me to remain to dinner, I'll stop and talk over your wedding-dress." THE END. 
5162	----	AGATHA WEBB BY ANNA KATHARINE GREEN (MRS. CHARLES ROHLFS) AUTHOR OF "THE LEAVENWORTH CASE," "THAT AFFAIR NEXT DOOR" "LOST MAN'S LANE," ETC. THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED TO MY FRIEND PROFESSOR A. V. DICEY OF OXFORD, ENGLAND CONTENTS BOOK I THE PURPLE ORCHID I--A Cry on the Hill II--One Night's Work III--The Empty Drawer IV--The Full Drawer V--A Spot on the Lawn VI--"Breakfast is Served, Gentlemen!" VII--"Marry Me" VIII--"A Devil That Understands Men" IX--A Grand Woman X--Detective Knapp Arrives XI--The Man with a Beard XII--Wattles Comes XIII--Wattles Goes XIV--A Final Temptation XV--The Zabels Visited XVI--Local Talent at Work XVII--The Slippers, the Flower, and What Sweetwater Made of Them XVIII--Some Leading Questions XIX--Poor Philemon XX--A Surprise for Mr. Sutherland BOOK II THE MAN OF NO REPUTATION XXI--Sweetwater Reasons XXII--Sweetwater Acts XXIII--A Sinister Pair XXIV--In the Shadow of the Mast XXV--In Extremity XXVI--The Adventure of the Parcel XXVII--The Adventure of the Scrap of Paper and the Three Words XXVIII--"Who Are You?" XXIX--Home Again BOOK III HAD BATSY LIVED! XXX--What Followed the Striking of the Clock XXXI--A Witness Lost XXXII--Why Agatha Webb will Never be Forgotten in Sutherlandtown XXXIII--Father and Son XXXIV--"Not When They Are Young Girls" XXXV--Sweetwater Pays His Debt at Last to Mr. Sutherland BOOK I THE PURPLE ORCHID I A CRY ON THE HILL The dance was over. From the great house on the hill the guests had all departed and only the musicians remained. As they filed out through the ample doorway, on their way home, the first faint streak of early dawn became visible in the east. One of them, a lank, plain-featured young man of ungainly aspect but penetrating eye, called the attention of the others to it. "Look!" said he; "there is the daylight! This has been a gay night for Sutherlandtown." "Too gay," muttered another, starting aside as the slight figure of a young man coming from the house behind them rushed hastily by. "Why, who's that?" As they one and all had recognised the person thus alluded to, no one answered till he had dashed out of the gate and disappeared in the woods on the other side of the road. Then they all spoke at once. "It's Mr. Frederick!" "He seems in a desperate hurry." "He trod on my toes." "Did you hear the words he was muttering as he went by?" As only the last question was calculated to rouse any interest, it alone received attention. "No; what were they? I heard him say something, but I failed to catch the words." "He wasn't talking to you, or to me either, for that matter; but I have ears that can hear an eye wink. He said: 'Thank God, this night of horror is over!' Think of that! After such a dance and such a spread, he calls the night horrible and thanks God that it is over. I thought he was the very man to enjoy this kind of thing." "So did I." "And so did I." The five musicians exchanged looks, then huddled in a group at the gate. "He has quarrelled with his sweetheart," suggested one. "I'm not surprised at that," declared another. "I never thought it would be a match." "Shame if it were!" muttered the ungainly youth who had spoken first. As the subject of this comment was the son of the gentleman whose house they were just leaving, they necessarily spoke low; but their tones were rife with curiosity, and it was evident that the topic deeply interested them. One of the five who had not previously spoken now put in a word: "I saw him when he first led out Miss Page to dance, and I saw him again when he stood up opposite her in the last quadrille, and I tell you, boys, there was a mighty deal of difference in the way he conducted himself toward her in the beginning of the evening and the last. You wouldn't have thought him the same man. Reckless young fellows like him are not to be caught by dimples only. They want cash." "Or family, at least; and she hasn't either. But what a pretty girl she is! Many a fellow as rich as he and as well connected would be satisfied with her good looks alone." "Good looks!" High scorn was observable in this exclamation, which was made by the young man whom I have before characterised as ungainly. "I refuse to acknowledge that she has any good looks. On the contrary, I consider her plain." "Oh! Oh!" burst in protest from more than one mouth. "And why does she have every fellow in the room dangling after her, then?" asked the player on the flageolet. "She hasn't a regular feature." "What difference does that make when it isn't her features you notice, but herself?" "I don't like her." A laugh followed this. "That won't trouble her, Sweetwater. Sutherland does, if you don't, and that's much more to the point. And he'll marry her yet; he can't help it. Why, she'd witch the devil into leading her to the altar if she took a notion to have him for her bridegroom." "There would be consistency in that," muttered the fellow just addressed. "But Mr. Frederick--" "Hush! There's some one on the doorstep. Why, it's she!" They all glanced back. The graceful figure of a young girl dressed in white was to be seen leaning toward them from the open doorway. Behind her shone a blaze of light--the candles not having been yet extinguished in the hall--and against this brilliant background her slight form, with all its bewitching outlines, stood out in plain relief. "Who was that?" she began in a high, almost strident voice, totally out of keeping with the sensuous curves of her strange, sweet face. But the question remained unanswered, for at that moment her attention, as well as that of the men lingering at the gate, was attracted by the sound of hurrying feet and confused cries coming up the hill. "Murder! Murder!" was the word panted out by more than one harsh voice; and in another instant a dozen men and boys came rushing into sight in a state of such excitement that the five musicians recoiled from the gate, and one of them went so far as to start back toward the house. As he did so he noticed a curious thing. The young woman whom they had all perceived standing in the door a moment before had vanished, yet she was known to possess the keenest curiosity of any one in town. "Murder! Murder!" A terrible and unprecedented cry in this old, God-fearing town. Then came in hoarse explanation from the jostling group as they stopped at the gate: "Mrs. Webb has been killed! Stabbed with a knife! Tell Mr. Sutherland!" Mrs. Webb! As the musicians heard this name, so honoured and so universally beloved, they to a man uttered a cry. Mrs. Webb! Why, it was impossible. Shouting in their turn for Mr. Sutherland, they all crowded forward. "Not Mrs. Webb!" they protested. "Who could have the daring or the heart to kill HER?" "God knows," answered a voice from the highway. "But she's dead--we've just seen her!" "Then it's the old man's work," quavered a piping voice. "I've always said he would turn on his best friend some day. 'Sylum's the best place for folks as has lost their wits. I--" But here a hand was put over his mouth, and the rest of the words was lost in an inarticulate gurgle. Mr. Sutherland had just appeared on the porch. He was a superb-looking man, with an expression of mingled kindness and dignity that invariably awakened both awe and admiration in the spectator. No man in the country--I was going to say no woman was more beloved, or held in higher esteem. Yet he could not control his only son, as everyone within ten miles of the hill well knew. At this moment his face showed both pain and shock. "What name are you shouting out there?" he brokenly demanded. "Agatha Webb? Is Agatha Webb hurt?" "Yes, sir; killed," repeated a half-dozen voices at once. "We've just come from the house. All the town is up. Some say her husband did it." "No, no!" was Mr. Sutherland's decisive though half-inaudible response. "Philemon Webb might end his own life, but not Agatha's. It was the money--" Here he caught himself up, and, raising his voice, addressed the crowd of villagers more directly. "Wait," said he, "and I will go back with you. Where is Frederick?" he demanded of such members of his own household as stood about him. No one knew. "I wish some one would find my son. I want him to go into town with me." "He's over in the woods there," volunteered a voice from without. "In the woods!" repeated the father, in a surprised tone. "Yes, sir; we all saw him go. Shall we sing out to him?" "No, no; I will manage very well without him." And taking up his hat Mr. Sutherland stepped out again upon the porch. Suddenly he stopped. A hand had been laid on his arm and an insinuating voice was murmuring in his ear: "Do you mind if I go with you? I will not make any trouble." It was the same young lady we have seen before. The old gentleman frowned--he who never frowned and remarked shortly: "A scene of murder is no place for women." The face upturned to his remained unmoved. "I think I will go," she quietly persisted. "I can easily mingle with the crowd." He said not another word against it. Miss Page was under pay in his house, but for the last few weeks no one had undertaken to contradict her. In the interval since her first appearance on the porch, she had exchanged the light dress in which she had danced at the ball, for a darker and more serviceable one, and perhaps this token of her determination may have had its influence in silencing him. He joined the crowd, and together they moved down-hill. This was too much for the servants of the house. One by one they too left the house till it stood absolutely empty. Jerry snuffed out the candles and shut the front door, but the side entrance stood wide open, and into this entrance, as the last footstep died out on the hillside, passed a slight and resolute figure. It was that of the musician who had questioned Miss Page's attractions. II ONE NIGHT'S WORK Sutherlandtown was a seaport. The village, which was a small one, consisted of one long street and numerous cross streets running down from the hillside and ending on the wharves. On one of the corners thus made, stood the Webb house, with its front door on the main street and its side door on one of the hillside lanes. As the group of men and boys who had been in search of Mr. Sutherland entered this last-mentioned lane, they could pick out this house from all the others, as it was the only one in which a light was still burning. Mr. Sutherland lost no time in entering upon the scene of tragedy. As his imposing figure emerged from the darkness and paused on the outskirts of the crowd that was blocking up every entrance to the house, a murmur of welcome went up, after which a way was made for him to the front door. But before he could enter, some one plucked him by the sleeve. "Look up!" whispered a voice into his ear. He did so, and saw a woman's body hanging half out of an upper window. It hung limp, and the sight made him sick, notwithstanding his threescore years of experience. "Who's that?" he cried. "That's not Agatha Webb." "No, that's Batsy, the cook. She's dead as well as her mistress. We left her where we found her for the coroner to see." "But this is horrible," murmured Mr. Sutherland. "Has there been a butcher here?" As he uttered these words, he felt another quick pressure on his arm. Looking down, he saw leaning against him the form of a young woman, but before he could address her she had started upright again and was moving on with the throng. It was Miss Page. "It was the sight of this woman hanging from the window which first drew attention to the house," volunteered a man who was standing as a sort of guardian at the main gateway. "Some of the sailors' wives who had been to the wharves to see their husbands off on the ship that sailed at daybreak, saw it as they came up the lane on their way home, and gave the alarm. Without that we might not have known to this hour what had happened." "But Mrs. Webb?" "Come in and see." There was a board fence about the simple yard within which stood the humble house forever after to be pointed out as the scene of Sutherlandtown's most heart-rending tragedy. In this fence was a gate, and through this gate now passed Mr. Sutherland, followed by his would-be companion, Miss Page. A path bordered by lilac bushes led up to the house, the door of which stood wide open. As soon as Mr. Sutherland entered upon this path a man approached him from the doorway. It was Amos Fenton, the constable. "Ah, Mr. Sutherland," said he, "sad business, a very sad business! But what little girl have you there?" "This is Miss Page, my housekeeper's niece. She would come. Inquisitiveness the cause. I do not approve of it." "Miss Page must remain on the doorstep. We allow no one inside excepting yourself," he said respectfully, in recognition of the fact that nothing of importance was ever undertaken in Sutherlandtown without the presence of Mr. Sutherland. Miss Page curtsied, looking so bewitching in the fresh morning light that the tough old constable scratched his chin in grudging admiration. But he did not reconsider his determination. Seeing this, she accepted her defeat gracefully, and moved aside to where the bushes offered her more or less protection from the curiosity of those about her. Meanwhile Mr. Sutherland had stepped into the house. He found himself in a small hall with a staircase in front and an open door at the left. On the threshold of this open door a man stood, who at sight of him doffed his hat. Passing by this man, Mr. Sutherland entered the room beyond. A table spread with eatables met his view, beside which, in an attitude which struck him at the moment as peculiar, sat Philemon Webb, the well-known master of the house. Astonished at seeing his old friend in this room and in such a position, he was about to address him, when Mr. Fenton stopped him. "Wait!" said he. "Take a look at poor Philemon before you disturb him. When we broke into the house a half-hour ago he was sitting just as you see him now, and we have let him be for reasons you can easily appreciate. Examine him closely, Mr. Sutherland; he won't notice it." "But what ails him? Why does he sit crouched against the table? Is he hurt too?" "No; look at his eyes." Mr. Sutherland stooped and pushed aside the long grey locks that half concealed the countenance of his aged friend. "Why," he cried, startled, "they are closed! He isn't dead?" "No, he is asleep." "Asleep?" "Yes. He was asleep when we came in and he is asleep yet. Some of the neighbours wanted to wake him, but I would not let them. His wits are not strong enough to bear a sudden shock." "No, no, poor Philemon! But that he should sit sleeping here while she--But what do these bottles mean and this parade of supper in a room they were not accustomed to eat in?" "We don't know. It has not been eaten, you see. He has swallowed a glass of port, but that is all. The other glasses have had no wine in them, nor have the victuals been touched." "Seats set for three and only one occupied," murmured Mr. Sutherland. "Strange! Could he have expected guests?" "It looks like it. I didn't know that his wife allowed him such privileges; but she was always too good to him, and I fear has paid for it with her life." "Nonsense! he never killed her. Had his love been anything short of the worship it was, he stood in too much awe of her to lift his hand against her, even in his most demented moments." "I don't trust men of uncertain wits," returned the other. "You have not noticed everything that is to be seen in this room." Mr. Sutherland, recalled to himself by these words, looked quickly about him. With the exception of the table and what was on and by it there was nothing else in the room. Naturally his glance returned to Philemon Webb. "I don't see anything but this poor sleeping man," he began. "Look at his sleeve." Mr. Sutherland, with a start, again bent down. The arm of his old friend lay crooked upon the table, and on its blue cotton sleeve there was a smear which might have been wine, but which was--blood. As Mr. Sutherland became assured of this, he turned slightly pale and looked inquiringly at the two men who were intently watching him. "This is bad," said he. "Any other marks of blood below stairs?" "No; that one smear is all." "Oh, Philemon!" burst from Mr. Sutherland, in deep emotion. Then, as he looked long and shudderingly at his friend, he added slowly: "He has been in the room where she was killed; so much is evident. But that he understood what was done there I cannot believe, or he would not be sleeping here like a log. Come, let us go up-stairs." Fenton, with an admonitory gesture toward his subordinate, turned directly toward the staircase. Mr. Sutherland followed him, and they at once proceeded to the upper hall and into the large front room which had been the scene of the tragedy. It was the parlour or sitting-room of this small and unpretentious house. A rag carpet covered the floor and the furniture was of the plainest kind, but the woman who lay outstretched on the stiff, old-fashioned lounge opposite the door was far from being in accord with the homely type of her surroundings. Though the victim of a violent death, her face and form, both of a beauty seldom to be found among women of any station, were so majestic in their calm repose, that Mr. Sutherland, accustomed as he was to her noble appearance, experienced a shock of surprise that found vent in these words: "Murdered! she? You have made some mistake, my friends. Look at her face!" But even in the act of saying this his eyes fell on the blood which had dyed her cotton dress and he cried: "Where was she struck and where is the weapon which has made this ghastly wound?" "She was struck while standing or sitting at this table," returned the constable, pointing to two or three drops of blood on its smooth surface. "The weapon we have not found, but the wound shows that it was inflicted by a three-sided dagger." "A three-sided dagger?" "Yes." "I didn't know there was such a thing in town. Philemon could have had no dagger." "It does not seem so, but one can never tell. Simple cottages like these often contain the most unlooked-for articles." "I cannot imagine a dagger being among its effects," declared Mr. Sutherland. "Where was the body of Mrs. Webb lying when you came in?" "Where you see it now. Nothing has been moved or changed." "She was found here, on this lounge, in the same position in which we see her now?" "Yes, sir." "But that is incredible. Look at the way she lies! Hands crossed, eyes closed, as though made ready for her burial. Only loving hands could have done this. What does it mean?" "It means Philemon; that is what it means Philemon." Mr. Sutherland shuddered, but said nothing. He was dumbfounded by these evidences of a crazy man's work. Philemon Webb always seemed so harmless, though he had been failing in mind for the last ten years. "But" cried Mr. Sutherland, suddenly rousing, "there is another victim. I saw old woman Batsy hanging from a window ledge, dead." "Yes, she is in this other room; but there is no wound on Batsy." "How was she killed, then?" "That the doctors must tell us." Mr. Sutherland, guided by Mr. Fenton's gesture, entered a small room opening into the one in which they stood. His attention was at once attracted by the body of the woman he had seen from below, lying half in and half out of the open window. That she was dead was evident; but, as Mr. Fenton had said, no wound was to be seen upon her, nor were there any marks of blood on or about the place where she lay. "This is a dreadful business," groaned Mr. Sutherland, "the worst I have ever had anything to do with. Help me to lift the woman in; she has been long enough a show for the people outside." There was a bed in this room (indeed, it was Mrs. Webb's bedroom), and upon this poor Batsy was laid. As the face came uppermost both gentlemen started and looked at each other in amazement. The expression of terror and alarm which it showed was in striking contrast to the look of exaltation to be seen on the face of her dead mistress. III THE EMPTY DRAWER As they re-entered the larger room, they were astonished to come upon Miss Page standing in the doorway. She was gazing at the recumbent figure of the dead woman, and for a moment seemed unconscious of their presence. "How did you get in? Which of my men was weak enough to let you pass, against my express instructions?" asked the constable, who was of an irritable and suspicious nature. She let the hood drop from her head, and, turning, surveyed him with a slow smile. There was witchery in that smile sufficient to affect a much more cultivated and callous nature than his, and though he had been proof against it once he could not quite resist the effect of its repetition. "I insisted upon entering," said she. "Do not blame the men; they did not want to use force against a woman." She had not a good voice and she knew it; but she covered up this defect by a choice of intonations that carried her lightest speech to the heart. Hard-visaged Amos Fenton gave a grunt, which was as near an expression of approval as he ever gave to anyone. "Well! well!" he growled, but not ill-naturedly, "it's a morbid curiosity that brings you here. Better drop it, girl; it won't do you any good in the eyes of sensible people." "Thank you," was her demure reply, her lips dimpling at the corners in a way to shock the sensitive Mr. Sutherland. Glancing from her to the still outlines of the noble figure on the couch, he remarked with an air of mild reproof: "I do not understand you, Miss Page. If this solemn sight has no power to stop your coquetries, nothing can. As for your curiosity, it is both ill-timed and unwomanly. Let me see you leave this house at once, Miss Page; and if in the few hours which must elapse before breakfast you can find time to pack your trunks, you will still farther oblige me." "Oh, don't send me away, I entreat you." It was a cry from her inner heart, which she probably regretted, for she instantly sought to cover up her inadvertent self-betrayal by a submissive bend of the head and a step backward. Neither Mr. Fenton nor Mr. Sutherland seemed to hear the one or see the other, their attention having returned to the more serious matter in hand. "The dress which our poor friend wears shows her to have been struck before retiring," commented Mr. Sutherland, after another short survey of Mrs. Webb's figure. "If Philemon--" "Excuse me, sir," interrupted the voice of the young man who had been left in the hall, "the lady is listening to what you say. She is still at the head of the stairs." "She is, is she!" cried Fenton, sharply, his admiration for the fascinating stranger having oozed out at his companion's rebuff. "I will soon show her--" But the words melted into thin air as he reached the door. The young girl had disappeared, and only a faint perfume remained in the place where she had stood. "A most extraordinary person," grumbled the constable, turning back, but stopping again as a faint murmur came up from below. "The gentleman is waking," called up a voice whose lack of music was quite perceptible at a distance. With a bound Mr. Fenton descended the stairs, followed by Mr. Sutherland. Miss Page stood before the door of the room in which sat Philemon Webb. As they reached her side, she made a little bow that was half mocking, half deprecatory, and slipped from the house. An almost unbearable sensation of incongruity vanished with her, and Mr. Sutherland, for one, breathed like a man relieved. "I wish the doctor would come," Fenton said, as they watched the slow lifting of Philemon Webb's head. "Our fastest rider has gone for him, but he's out Portchester way, and it may be an hour yet before he can get here." "Philemon!" Mr. Sutherland had advanced and was standing by his old friend's side. "Philemon, what has become of your guests? You've waited for them here until morning." The old man with a dazed look surveyed the two plates set on either side of him and shook his head. "James and John are getting proud," said he, "or they forget, they forget." James and John. He must mean the Zabels, yet there were many others answering to these names in town. Mr. Sutherland made another effort. "Philemon, where is your wife? I do not see any place set here for her!" "Agatha's sick, Agatha's cross; she don't care for a poor old man like me." "Agatha's dead and you know it," thundered back the constable, with ill-judged severity. "Who killed her? tell me that. Who killed her?" A sudden quenching of the last spark of intelligence in the old man's eye was the dreadful effect of these words. Laughing with that strange gurgle which proclaims an utterly irresponsible mind, he cried: "The pussy cat! It was the pussy cat. Who's killed? I'm not killed. Let's go to Jericho." Mr. Sutherland took him by the arm and led him up-stairs. Perhaps the sight of his dead wife would restore him. But he looked at her with the same indifference he showed to everything else. "I don't like her calico dresses," said he. "She might have worn silk, but she wouldn't. Agatha, will you wear silk to my funeral?" The experiment was too painful, and they drew him away. But the constable's curiosity had been roused, and after they had found some one to take care of him, he drew Mr. Sutherland aside and said: "What did the old man mean by saying she might have worn silk? Are they better off than they seem?" Mr. Sutherland closed the door before replying. "They are rich," he declared, to the utter amazement of the other. "That is, they were; but they may have been robbed; if so, Philemon was not the wretch who killed her. I have been told that she kept her money in an old-fashioned cupboard. Do you suppose they alluded to that one?" He pointed to a door set in the wall over the fireplace, and Mr. Fenton, perceiving a key sticking in the lock, stepped quickly across the floor and opened it. A row of books met his eyes, but on taking them down a couple of drawers were seen at the back. "Are they locked?" asked Mr. Sutherland. "One is and one is not." "Open the one that is unlocked." Mr. Fenton did so. "It is empty," said he. Mr. Sutherland cast a look toward the dead woman, and again the perfect serenity of her countenance struck him. "I do not know whether to regard her as the victim of her husband's imbecility or of some vile robber's cupidity. Can you find the key to the other drawer?" "I will try." "Suppose you begin, then, by looking on her person. It should be in her pocket, if no marauder has been here." "It is not in her pocket." "Hanging to her neck, then, by a string?" "No; there is a locket here, but no key. A very handsome locket, Mr. Sutherland, with a child's lock of golden hair--" "Never mind, we will see that later; it is the key we want just now." "Good heavens!" "What is it?" "It is in her hand; the one that lies underneath." "Ah! A point, Fenton." "A great point." "Stand by her, Fenton. Don't let anyone rob her of that key till the coroner comes, and we are at liberty to take it." "I will not leave her for an instant." "Meanwhile, I will put back these books." He had scarcely done so when a fresh arrival occurred. This time it was one of the village clergymen. IV THE FULL DRAWER This gentleman had some information to give. It seems that at an early hour of this same night he had gone by this house on his way home from the bedside of a sick parishioner. As he was passing the gate he was run into by a man who came rushing out of the yard, in a state of violent agitation. In this man's hand was something that glittered, and though the encounter nearly upset them both, he had not stopped to utter an apology, but stumbled away out of sight with a hasty but infirm step, which showed he was neither young nor active. The minister had failed to see his face, but noticed the ends of a long beard blowing over his shoulder as he hurried away. Philemon was a clean-shaven man. Asked if he could give the time of this encounter, he replied that it was not far from midnight, as he was in his own house by half-past twelve. "Did you glance up at these windows in passing?" asked Mr. Fenton. "I must have; for I now remember they were both lighted." "Were the shades up?" "I think not. I would have noticed it if they had been." "How were the shades when you broke into the house this morning?" inquired Mr. Sutherland of the constable. "Just as they are now; we have moved nothing. The shades were both down--one of them over an open window." "Well, we may find this encounter of yours with this unknown man a matter of vital importance, Mr. Crane." "I wish I had seen his face." "What do you think the object was you saw glittering in his hand?" "I should not like to say; I saw it but an instant." "Could it have been a knife or an old-fashioned dagger?" "It might have been." "Alas! poor Agatha! That she, who so despised money, should fall a victim to man's cupidity! Unhappy life, unhappy death! Fenton, I shall always mourn for Agatha Webb." "Yet she seems to have found peace at last," observed the minister. "I have never seen her look so contented." And leading Mr. Sutherland aside, he whispered: "What is this you say about money? Had she, in spite of appearances, any considerable amount? I ask, because in spite of her humble home and simple manner of living, she always put more on the plate than any of her neighbours. Besides which, I have from time to time during my pastorate received anonymously certain contributions, which, as they were always for sick or suffering children--" "Yes, yes; they came from her, I have no doubt of it. She was by no means poor, though I myself never knew the extent of her means till lately. Philemon was a good business man once; but they evidently preferred to live simply, having no children living--" "They have lost six, I have been told." "So the Portchester folks say. They probably had no heart for display or for even the simplest luxuries. At all events, they did not indulge in them." "Philemon has long been past indulging in anything." "Oh, he likes his comfort, and he has had it too. Agatha never stinted him." "But why do you think her death was due to her having money?" "She had a large sum in the house, and there are those in town who knew this." "And is it gone?" "That we shall know later." As the coroner arrived at this moment, the minister's curiosity had to wait. Fortunately for his equanimity, no one had the presumption to ask him to leave the room. The coroner was a man of but few words, and but little given to emotion. Yet they were surprised at his first question: "Who is the young woman standing outside there, the only one in the yard?" Mr. Sutherland, moving rapidly to the window, drew aside the shade. "It is Miss Page, my housekeeper's niece," he explained. "I do not understand her interest in this affair. She followed me here from the house and could hardly be got to leave this room, into which she intruded herself against my express command." "But look at her attitude!" It was Mr. Fenton who spoke. "She's crazier than Philemon, it seems to me." There was some reason for this remark. Guarded by the high fence from the gaze of the pushing crowd without, she stood upright and immovable in the middle of the yard, like one on watch. The hood, which she had dropped from her head when she thought her eyes and smile might be of use to her in the furtherance of her plans, had been drawn over it again, so that she looked more like a statue in grey than a living, breathing woman. Yet there was menace in her attitude and a purpose in the solitary stand she took in that circle of board-girded grass, which caused a thrill in the breasts of those who looked at her from that chamber of death. "A mysterious young woman," muttered the minister. "And one that I neither countenance nor understand," interpolated Mr. Sutherland. "I have just shown my displeasure at her actions by dismissing her from my house." The coroner gave him a quick look, seemed about to speak, but changed his mind and turned toward the dead woman. "We have a sad duty before us," said he. The investigations which followed elicited one or two new facts. First, that all the doors of the house were found unlocked; and, secondly, that the constable had been among the first to enter, so that he could vouch that no disarrangement had been made in the rooms, with the exception of Batsy's removal to the bed. Then, his attention being drawn to the dead woman, he discovered the key in her tightly closed hand. "Where does this key belong?" he asked. They showed him the drawers in the cupboard. "One is empty," remarked Mi. Sutherland. "If the other is found to be in the same condition, then her money has been taken. That key she holds should open both these drawers." "Then let it be made use of at once. It is important that we should know whether theft has been committed here as well as murder." And drawing the key out, he handed it to Mr. Fenton. The constable immediately unlocked the drawer and brought it and its contents to the table. "No money here," said he. "But papers as good as money," announced the doctor. "See! here are deeds and more than one valuable bond. I judge she was a richer woman than any of us knew." Mr. Sutherland, meantime, was looking with an air of disappointment into the now empty drawer. "Just as I feared," said he. "She has been robbed of her ready money. It was doubtless in the other drawer." "How came she by the key, then?" "That is one of the mysteries of the affair; this murder is by no means a simple one. I begin to think we shall find it full of mysteries." "Batsy's death, for instance?" "O yes, Batsy! I forgot that she was found dead too." "Without a wound, doctor." "She had heart disease. I doctored her for it. The fright has killed her." "The look of her face confirms that." "Let me see! So it does; but we must have an autopsy to prove it." "I would like to explain before any further measures are taken, how I came to know that Agatha Webb had money in her house," said Mr. Sutherland, as they stepped back into the other room. "Two days ago, as I was sitting with my family at table, old gossip Judy came in. Had Mrs. Sutherland been living, this old crone would not have presumed to intrude upon us at mealtime, but as we have no one now to uphold our dignity, this woman rushed into our presence panting with news, and told us all in one breath how she had just come from Mrs. Webb; that Mrs. Webb had money; that she had seen it, she herself; that, going into the house as usual without knocking, she had heard Agatha stepping overhead and had gone up; and finding the door of the sitting-room ajar, had looked in, and seen Agatha crossing the room with her hands full of bills; that these bills were big bills, for she heard Agatha cry, as she locked them up in the cupboard behind the book-shelves, 'A thousand dollars! That is too much money to have in one's house'; that she, Judy, thought so too, and being frightened at what she had seen, had crept away as silently as she had entered and run away to tell the neighbours. Happily, I was the first she found up that morning, but I have no doubt that, in spite of my express injunctions, she has since related the news to half the people in town." "Was the young woman down yonder present when Judy told this story?" asked the coroner, pointing towards the yard. Mr. Sutherland pondered. "Possibly; I do not remember. Frederick was seated at the table with me, and my housekeeper was pouring out the coffee, but it was early for Miss Page. She has been putting on great airs of late." "Can it be possible he is trying to blind himself to the fact that his son Frederick wishes to marry this girl?" muttered the clergyman into the constable's ear. The constable shook his head. Mr. Sutherland was one of those debonair men, whose very mildness makes them impenetrable. V A SPOT ON THE LAWN The coroner, on leaving the house, was followed by Mr. Sutherland. As the fine figures of the two men appeared on the doorstep, a faint cheer was heard from the two or three favoured persons who were allowed to look through the gate. But to this token of welcome neither gentleman responded by so much as a look, all their attention being engrossed by the sight of the solitary figure of Miss Page, who still held her stand upon the lawn. Motionless as a statue, but with her eyes fixed upon their faces, she awaited their approach. When they were near her she thrust one hand from under her cloak, and pointing to the grass at her feet, said quietly: "See this?" They hastened towards her and bent down to examine the spot she indicated. "What do you find there?" cried Mr. Sutherland, whose eyesight was not good. "Blood," responded the coroner, plucking up a blade of grass and surveying it closely. "Blood," echoed Miss Page, with so suggestive a glance that Mr. Sutherland stared at her in amazement, not understanding his own emotion. "How were you able to discern a stain so nearly imperceptible?" asked the coroner. "Imperceptible? It is the only thing I see in the whole yard," she retorted, and with a slight bow, which was not without its element of mockery, she turned toward the gate. "A most unaccountable girl," commented the doctor. "But she is right about these stains. Abel," he called to the man at the gate, "bring a box or barrel here and cover up this spot. I don't want it disturbed by trampling feet." Abel started to obey, just as the young girl laid her hand on the gate to open it. "Won't you help me?" she asked. "The crowd is so great they won't let me through." "Won't they?" The words came from without. "Just slip out as I slip in, and you'll find a place made for you." Not recognising the voice, she hesitated for a moment, but seeing the gate swaying, she pushed against it just as a young man stepped through the gap. Necessarily they came face to face. "Ah, it's you," he muttered, giving her a sharp glance. "I do not know you," she haughtily declared, and slipped by him with such dexterity she was out of the gate before he could respond. But he only snapped his finger and thumb mockingly at her, and smiled knowingly at Abel, who had lingered to watch the end of this encounter. "Supple as a willow twig, eh?" he laughed. "Well, I have made whistles out of willows before now, and hallo! where did you get that?" He was pointing to a rare flower that hung limp and faded from Abel's buttonhole. "This? Oh, I found it in the house yonder. It was lying on the floor of the inner room, almost under Batsy's skirts. Curious sort of flower. I wonder where she got it?" The intruder betrayed at once an unaccountable emotion. There was a strange glitter in his light green eyes that made Abel shift rather uneasily on his feet. "Was that before this pretty minx you have just let out came in here with Mr. Sutherland?" "O yes; before anyone had started for the hill at all. Why, what has this young lady got to do with a flower dropped by Batsy?" "She? Nothing. Only--and I have never given you bad advice, Abel--don't let that thing hang any longer from your buttonhole. Put it into an envelope and keep it, and if you don't hear from me again in regard to it, write me out a fool and forget we were ever chums when little shavers." The man called Abel smiled, took out the flower, and went to cover up the grass as Dr. Talbot had requested. The stranger took his place at the gate, toward which the coroner and Mr. Sutherland were now advancing, with an air that showed his great anxiety to speak with them. He was the musician whom we saw secretly entering the last-mentioned gentleman's house after the departure of the servants. As the coroner paused before him he spoke. "Dr. Talbot," said he, dropping his eyes, which were apt to betray his thoughts too plainly, "you have often promised that you would give me a job if any matter came up where any nice detective work was wanted. Don't you think the time has come to remember me?" "You, Sweetwater? I'm afraid the affair is too deep for an inexperienced man's first effort. I shall have to send to Boston for an expert. Another time, Sweetwater, when the complications are less serious." The young fellow, with a face white as milk, was turning away. "But you'll let me stay around here?" he pleaded, pausing and giving the other an imploring look. "O yes," answered the good-natured coroner. "Fenton will have work enough for you and half a dozen others. Go and tell him I sent you." "Thank you," returned the other, his face suddenly losing its aspect of acute disappointment. "Now I shall see where that flower fell," he murmured. VI "BREAKFAST IS SERVED, GENTLEMEN!" Mr. Sutherland returned home. As he entered the broad hall he met his son, Frederick. There was a look on the young man's face such as he had not seen there in years. "Father," faltered the youth, "may I have a few words with you?" The father nodded kindly, though it is likely he would have much preferred his breakfast; and the young man led him into a little sitting-room littered with the faded garlands and other tokens of the preceding night's festivities. "I have an apology to make," Frederick began, "or rather, I have your forgiveness to ask. For years" he went on, stumbling over his words, though he gave no evidence of a wish to restrain them--"for years I have gone contrariwise to your wishes and caused my mother's heart to ache and you to wish I had never been born to be a curse to you and her." He had emphasised the word mother, and spoke altogether with force and deep intensity. Mr. Sutherland stood petrified; he had long ago given up this lad as lost. "I--I wish to change. I wish to be as great a pride to you as I have been a shame and a dishonour. I may not succeed at once; but I am in earnest, and if you will give me your hand--" The old man's arms were round the young man's shoulders at once. "Frederick!" he cried, "my Frederick!" "Do not make me too much ashamed," murmured the youth, very pale and strangely discomposed. "With no excuse for my past, I suffer intolerable apprehension in regard to my future, lest my good intentions should fail or my self-control not hold out. But the knowledge that you are acquainted with my resolve, and regard it with an undeserved sympathy, may suffice to sustain me, and I should certainly be a base poltroon if I should disappoint you or her twice." He paused, drew himself from his father's arms, and glanced almost solemnly out of the window. "I swear that I will henceforth act as if she were still alive and watching me." There was strange intensity in his manner. Mr. Sutherland regarded him with amazement. He had seen him in every mood natural to a reckless man, but never in so serious a one, never with a look of awe or purpose in his face. It gave him quite a new idea of Frederick. "Yes," the young man went on, raising his right hand, but not removing his eyes from the distant prospect on which they were fixed, "I swear that I will henceforth do nothing to discredit her memory. Outwardly and inwardly, I will act as though her eye were still upon me and she could again suffer grief at my failures or thrill with pleasure at my success." A portrait of Mrs. Sutherland, painted when Frederick was a lad of ten, hung within a few feet of him as he spoke. He did not glance at it, but Mr. Sutherland did, and with a look as if he expected to behold a responsive light beam from those pathetic features. "She loved you very dearly," was his slow and earnest comment. "We have both loved you much more deeply than you have ever seemed to realise, Frederick." "I believe it," responded the young man, turning with an expression of calm resolve to meet his father's eye. "As proof that I am no longer insensible to your affection, I have made up my mind to forego for your sake one of the dearest wishes of my heart. Father" he hesitated before he spoke the word, but he spoke it firmly at last,--"am I right in thinking you would not like Miss Page for a daughter?" "Like my housekeeper's niece to take the place in this house once occupied by Marietta Sutherland? Frederick, I have always thought too well of you to believe you would carry your forgetfulness of me so far as that, even when I saw that you were influenced by her attractions." "You did not do justice to my selfishness, father. I did mean to marry her, but I have given up living solely for myself, and she could never help me to live for others. Father, Amabel Page must not remain in this house to cause division between you and me." "I have already intimated to her the desirability of her quitting a home where she is no longer respected," the old gentleman declared. "She leaves on the 10.45 train. Her conduct this morning at the house of Mrs. Webb--who perhaps you do not know was most cruelly and foully murdered last night--was such as to cause comment and make her an undesirable adjunct to any gentleman's family." Frederick paled. Something in these words had caused him a great shock. Mr. Sutherland was fond enough to believe that it was the news of this extraordinary woman's death. But his son's words, as soon as he could find any, showed that his mind was running on Amabel, whom he perhaps had found it difficult to connect even in the remotest way with crime. "She at this place of death? How could that be? Who would take a young girl there?" The father, experiencing, perhaps, more compassion for this soon-to-be-disillusioned lover than he thought it incumbent upon him to show, answered shortly, but without any compromise of the unhappy truth: "She went; she was not taken. No one, not even myself, could keep her back after she had heard that a murder had been committed in the town. She even intruded into the house; and when ordered out of the room of death took up her stand in the yard in front, where she remained until she had the opportunity of pointing out to us a stain of blood on the grass, which might otherwise have escaped our attention." "Impossible!" Frederick's eye was staring; he looked like a man struck dumb by surprise or fear. "Amabel do this? You are mocking me, sir, or I may be dreaming, which may the good God grant." His father, who had not looked for so much emotion, eyed his son in surprise, which rapidly changed to alarm as the young man faltered and fell back against the wall. "You are ill, Frederick; you are really ill. Let me call down Mrs. Harcourt. But no, I cannot summon her. She is this girl's aunt." Frederick made an effort and stood up. "Do not call anybody," he entreated. "I expect to suffer some in casting this fascinating girl out of my heart. Ultimately I will conquer the weakness; indeed I will. As for her interest in Mrs. Webb's death"--how low his voice sank and how he trembled!" she may have been better friends with her than we had any reason to suppose. I can think of no other motive for her conduct. Admiration for Mrs. Webb and horror---" "Breakfast is served, gentlemen!" cried a thrilling voice behind them. Amabel Page stood smiling in the doorway. VII "MARRY ME" "Wait a moment, I must speak to you." It was Amabel who was holding Frederick back. She had caught him by the arm as he was about leaving the room with his father, and he felt himself obliged to stop and listen. "I start for Springfield to-day," she announced. "I have another relative there living at the house. When shall I have the pleasure of seeing you in my new home?" "Never." It was said regretfully, and yet with a certain brusqueness, occasioned perhaps by over-excited feeling. "Hard as it is for me to say it, Amabel, it is but just for me to tell you that after our parting here to-day we will meet only as strangers. Friendship between us would be mockery, and any closer relationship has become impossible." It had cost him an immense effort to say these words, and he expected, fondly expected, I must admit, to see her colour change and her head droop. But instead of this she looked at him steadily for a moment, then slipped her hand down his arm till she reached his palm, which she pressed with sudden warmth, drawing him into the room as she did so, and shutting the door behind them. He was speechless, for she never had looked so handsome or so glowing. Instead of showing depression or humiliation even, she confronted him with a smile more dangerous than any display of grief, for it contained what it had hitherto lacked, positive and irresistible admiration. Her words were equally dangerous. "I kiss your hand, as the Spaniards say." And she almost did so, with a bend of her head, which just allowed him to catch a glimpse of two startling dimples. He was astounded. He thought he knew this woman well, but at this moment she was as incomprehensible to him as if he had never made a study of her caprices and sought an explanation for her ever-shifting expressions. "I am sensible of the honour," said he, "but hardly understand how I have earned it." Still that incomprehensible look of admiration continued to illumine her face. "I did not know I could ever think so well of you," she declared. "If you do not take care, I shall end by loving you some day." "Ah!" he ejaculated, his face contracting with sudden pain; "your love, then, is but a potentiality. Very well, Amabel, keep it so and you will be spared much misery. As for me, who have not been as wise as you---" "Frederick!" She had come so near he did not have the strength to finish. Her face, with its indefinable charm, was raised to his, as she dropped these words one by one from her lips in lingering cadence: "Frederick--do you love me, then, so very much?" He was angry; possibly because he felt his resolution failing him. "You know!" he hotly began, stepping back. Then with a sudden burst of feeling, that was almost like prayer, he resumed: "Do not tempt me, Amabel. I have trouble enough, without lamenting the failure of my first steadfast purpose." "Ah!" she said, stopping where she was, but drawing him toward her by every witchery of which her mobile features were capable; "your generous impulse has strengthened into a purpose, has it? Well, I'm not worth it, Frederick." More and more astounded, understanding her less than ever, but charmed by looks that would have moved an anchorite, he turned his head away in a vain attempt to escape an influence that was so rapidly undermining his determination. She saw the movement, recognised the weakness it bespoke, and in the triumph of her heart allowed a low laugh to escape her. Her voice, as I have before said, was unmusical though effective; but her laugh was deliciously sweet, especially when it was restrained to a mere ripple, as now. "You will come to Springfield soon," she avowed, slipping from before him so as to leave the way to the door open. "Amabel!" His voice was strangely husky, and the involuntary opening and shutting of his hands revealed the emotion under which he was labouring. "Do you love me? You have acknowledged it now and then, but always as if you did not mean it. Now you acknowledge that you may some day, and this time as if you did mean it. What is the truth? Tell me, without coquetry or dissembling, for I am in dead earnest, and---" He paused, choked, and turned toward the window where but a few minutes before he had taken that solemn oath. The remembrance of it seemed to come back with the movement. Flushing with a new agitation, he wheeled upon her sharply. "No, no," he prayed, "say nothing. If you swore you did not love me I should not believe it, and if you swore that you did I should only find it harder to repeat what must again be said, that a union between us can never take place. I have given my solemn promise to---" "Well, well. Why do you stop? Am I so hard to talk to that the words will not leave your lips?" "I have promised my father I will never marry you. He feels that he has grounds of complaint against you, and as I owe him everything---" He stopped amazed. She was looking at him intently, that same low laugh still on her lips. "Tell the truth," she whispered. "I know to what extent you consider your father's wishes. You think you ought not to marry me after what took place last night. Frederick, I like you for this evidence of consideration on your part, but do not struggle too relentlessly with your conscience. I can forgive much more in you than you think, and if you really love me---" "Stop! Let us understand each other." He had turned mortally pale, and met her eyes with something akin to alarm. "What do you allude to in speaking of last night? I did not know there was anything said by us in our talk together---" "I do not allude to our talk." "Or--or in the one dance we had---" "Frederick, a dance is innocent." The word seemed to strike him with the force of a blow. "Innocent," he repeated, "innocent?" becoming paler still as the full weight of her meaning broke gradually upon him. "I followed you into town," she whispered, coming closer, and breathing the words into his ear. "But what I saw you do there will not prevent me from obeying you if you say: 'Follow me wherever I go, Amabel; henceforth our lives are one.'" "My God!" It was all he said, but it seemed to create a gulf between them. In the silence that followed, the evil spirit latent beneath her beauty began to make itself evident even in the smile which no longer called into view the dimples which belong to guileless mirth, while upon his face, after the first paralysing effect of her words had passed, there appeared an expression of manly resistance that betrayed a virtue which as yet had never appeared in his selfish and altogether reckless life. That this was more than a passing impulse he presently made evident by lifting his hand and pushing her slowly back. "I do not know what you saw me do," said he; "but whatever it was, it can make no difference in our relations." Her whisper, which had been but a breath before, became scarcely audible. "I did not pause at the gate you entered," said she. "I went in after you." A gasp of irresistible feeling escaped him, but he did not take his eyes from her face. "It was a long time before you came out," she went on, "but previous to that time the shade of a certain window was thrust aside, and---" "Hush!" he commanded, in uncontrollable passion, pressing his hand with impulsive energy against her mouth. "Not another word of that, or I shall forget you are a woman or that I have ever loved you." Her eyes, which were all she had remaining to plead with, took on a peculiar look of quiet satisfaction, and power. Seeing it, he let his hand fall and for the first time began to regard her with anything but a lover's eyes. "I was the only person in sight at that time," she continued. "You have nothing to fear from the world at large." "Fear?" The word made its own echo; she had no need to emphasise it even by a smile. But she watched him as it sunk into his consciousness with an intentness it took all his strength to sustain. Suddenly her bearing and expression changed. The few remains of sweetness in her face vanished, and even the allurement which often lasts when the sweetness is gone, disappeared in the energy which now took possession of her whole threatening and inflexible personality. "Marry me," she cried, "or I will proclaim you to be the murderer of Agatha Webb." She had seen the death of love in his eyes. VIII "A DEVIL THAT UNDERSTANDS MEN" Frederick Sutherland was a man of finer mental balance than he himself, perhaps, had ever realised. After the first few moments of stupefaction following the astounding alternative which had been given him, he broke out with the last sentence she probably expected to hear: "What do you hope from a marriage with me, that to attain your wishes you thus sacrifice every womanly instinct?" She met him on his own ground. "What do I hope?" She actually glowed with the force of her secret desire. "Can you ask a poor girl like me, born in a tenement house, but with tastes and ambitions such as are usually only given to those who can gratify them? I want to be the rich Mr. Sutherland's daughter; acknowledged or unacknowledged, the wife of one who can enter any house in Boston as an equal. With a position like that I can rise to anything. I feel that I have the natural power and aptitude. I have felt it since I was a small child." "And for that---" he began. "And for that," she broke in, "I am quite willing to overlook a blot on your record. Confident that you will never repeat the risk of last night, I am ready to share the burden of your secret through life. If you treat me well, I am sure I can make that burden light for you." With a quick flush and an increase of self-assertion, probably not anticipated by her, he faced the daring girl with a desperate resolution that showed how handsome he could be if his soul once got control of his body. "Woman," he cried, "they were right; you are little less than a devil." Did she regard it as a compliment? Her smile would seem to say so. "A devil that understands men," she answered, with that slow dip of her dimples that made her smile so dangerous. "You will not hesitate long over this matter; a week, perhaps." "I shall not hesitate at all. Seeing you as you are, makes my course easy. You will never share any burden with me as my wife." Still she was not abashed. "It is a pity," she whispered; "it would have saved you such unnecessary struggle. But a week is not long to wait. I am certain of you then. This day week at twelve o'clock, Frederick." He seized her by the arm, and lost to everything but his rage, shook her with a desperate hand. "Do you mean it?" he cried, a sudden horror showing itself in his face, notwithstanding his efforts to conceal it. "I mean it so much," she assured him, "that before I came home just now I paid a visit to the copse over the way. A certain hollow tree, where you and I have held more than one tryst, conceals within its depths a package containing over one thousand dollars. Frederick, I hold your life in my hands." The grasp with which he held her relaxed; a mortal despair settled upon his features, and recognising the impossibility of further concealing the effect of her words upon him, he sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands. She viewed him with an air of triumph, which brought back some of her beauty. When she spoke it was to say: "If you wish to join me in Springfield before the time I have set, well and good. I am willing that the time of our separation should be shortened, but it must not be lengthened by so much as a day. Now, if you will excuse me, I will go and pack my trunks." He shuddered; her voice penetrated him to the quick. Drawing herself up, she looked down on him with a strange mixture of passion and elation. "You need fear no indiscretion on my part, so long as our armistice lasts," said she. "No one can drag the truth from me while any hope remains of your doing your duty by me in the way I have suggested." And still he did not move. "Frederick?" Was it her voice that was thus murmuring his name? Can the tiger snarl one moment and fawn the next? "Frederick, I have a final word to say--a last farewell. Up to this hour I have endured your attentions, or, let us say, accepted them, for I always found you handsome and agreeable, if not the master of my heart. But now it is love that I feel, love; and love with me is no fancy, but a passion--do you hear?--a passion which will make life a heaven or hell for the man who has inspired it. You should have thought of this when you opposed me." And with a look in which love and hatred contended for mastery, she bent and imprinted a kiss upon his forehead. Next moment she was gone. Or so he thought. But when, after an interval of nameless recoil, he rose and attempted to stagger from the place, he discovered that she had been detained in the hall by two or three men who had just come in by the front door. "Is this Miss Page?" they were asking. "Yes, I am Miss Page--Amabel Page" she replied with suave politeness. "If you have any business with me, state it quickly, for I am about to leave town." "That is what we wish to prevent," declared a tall, thin young man who seemed to take the lead. "Till the inquest has been held over the remains of Mrs. Webb, Coroner Talbot wishes you to regard yourself as a possible witness." "Me?" she cried, with an admirable gesture of surprise and a wide opening of her brown eyes that made her look like an astonished child. "What have I got to do with it?" "You pointed out a certain spot of blood on the grass, and--well, the coroner's orders have to be obeyed, miss. You cannot leave the town without running the risk of arrest" "Then I will stay in it," she smiled. "I have no liking for arrests," and the glint of her eye rested for a moment on Frederick. "Mr. Sutherland," she continued, as that gentleman appeared at the dining-room door, "I shall have to impose upon your hospitality for a few days longer. These men here inform me that my innocent interest in pointing out to you that spot of blood on Mrs. Webb's lawn has awakened some curiosity, and that I am wanted as a witness by the coroner." Mr. Sutherland, with a quick stride, lessened the distance between himself and these unwelcome intruders. "The coroner's wishes are paramount just now," said he, but the look he gave his son was not soon forgotten by the spectators. IX A GRAND WOMAN There was but one topic discussed in the country-side that day, and that was the life and character of Agatha Webb. Her history had not been a happy one. She and Philemon had come from Portchester some twenty or more years before to escape the sorrows associated with their native town. They had left behind them six small graves in Portchester churchyard; but though evidences of their affliction were always to be seen in the countenances of either, they had entered with so much purpose into the life of their adopted town that they had become persons of note there till Philemon's health began to fail, when Agatha quit all outside work and devoted herself exclusively to him. Of her character and winsome personality we can gather some idea from the various conversations carried on that day from Portchester Green to the shipyards in Sutherlandtown. In Deacon Brainerd's cottage, the discussion was concerning Agatha's lack of vanity; a virtue not very common at that time among the women of this busy seaport. "For a woman so handsome," the good deacon was saying "(and I think I can safely call her the finest-featured woman who ever trod these streets), she showed as little interest in dress as anyone I ever knew. Calico at home and calico at church, yet she looked as much of a lady in her dark-sprigged gowns as Mrs. Webster in her silks or Mrs. Parsons in her thousand-dollar sealskin." As this was a topic within the scope of his eldest daughter's intelligence she at once spoke up: "I never thought she needed to dress so plainly. I don't believe in such a show of poverty myself. If one is too poor to go decent, all right; but they say she had more money than most anyone in town. I wonder who is going to get the benefit of it?" "Why, Philemon, of course; that is, as long as he lives. He doubtless had the making of it." "Is it true that he's gone clean out of his head since her death?" interposed a neighbour who had happened in. "So they say. I believe widow Jones has taken him into her house." "Do you think," asked a second daughter with becoming hesitation, "that he had anything to do with her death? Some of the neighbours say he struck her while in one of his crazy fits, while others declare she was killed by some stranger, equally old and almost as infirm." "We won't discuss the subject," objected the deacon. "Time will show who robbed us of the greatest-hearted and most capable woman in these parts." "And will time show who killed Batsy?" It was a morsel of a girl who spoke; the least one of the family, but the brightest. "I'm sorry for Batsy; she always gave me cookies when I went to see Mrs. Webb." "Batsy was a good girl for a Swede," allowed the deacon's wife, who had not spoken till now. "When she first came into town on the spars of that wrecked ship we all remember, there was some struggle between Agatha and me as to which of us should have her. But I didn't like the task of teaching her the name of every pot and pan she had to use in the kitchen, so I gave her up to Agatha; and it was fortunate I did, for I've never been able to understand her talk to this day." "I could talk with her right well," lisped the little one. "She never called things by their Swedish names unless she was worried; and I never worried her." "I wonder if she would have worshipped the ground under your feet, as she did that under Agatha's?" asked the deacon, eying his wife with just the suspicion of a malicious twinkle in his eye. "I am not the greatest-hearted and most capable woman in town," retorted his wife, clicking her needles as she went on knitting. In Mr. Sprague's house on the opposite side of the road, Squire Fisher was relating some old tales of bygone Portchester days. "I knew Agatha when she was a girl," he avowed. "She had the grandest manners and the most enchanting smile of any rich or poor man's daughter between the coast and Springfield. She did not dress in calico then. She wore the gayest clothes her father could buy. her, and old Jacob was not without means to make his daughter the leading figure in town. How we young fellows did adore her, and what lengths we went to win one of her glorious smiles! Two of us, John and James Zabel, have lived bachelors for her sake to this very day; but I hadn't courage enough for that; I married and"--something between a sigh and a chuckle filled out the sentence. "What made Philemon carry off the prize? His good looks?" "Yes, or his good luck. It wasn't his snap; of that you may be sure. James Zabel had the snap, and he was her first choice, too, but he got into some difficulty--I never knew just what it was, but it was regarded as serious at the time--and that match was broken off. Afterwards she married Philemon. You see, I was out of it altogether; had never been in it, perhaps; but there were three good years of my life in which I thought of little else than Agatha. I admired her spirit, you see. There was something more taking in her ways than in her beauty, wonderful as that was. She ruled us with a rod of iron, and yet we worshipped her. I have wondered to see her so meek of late. I never thought she would be satisfied with a brick-floored cottage and a husband of failing wits. But no one, to my knowledge, has ever heard a complaint from her lips; and the dignity of her afflicted wife-hood has far transcended the haughtiness of those days when she had but to smile to have all the youth of Portchester at her feet." "I suppose it was the loss of so many children that reconciled her to a quiet life. A woman cannot close the eyes of six children, one after the other, without some modification taking place in her character." "Yes, she and Philemon have been unfortunate; but she was a splendid looking girl, boys. I never see such grand-looking women now." In a little one-storied cottage on the hillside a woman was nursing a baby and talking at the same time of Agatha Webb. "I shall never forget the night my first baby fell sick," she faltered; "I was just out of bed myself, and having no nearer neighbours then than now, I was all alone on the hillside, Alec being away at sea. I was too young to know much about sickness, but something told me that I must have help before morning or my baby would die. Though I could just walk across the floor, I threw a shawl around me, took my baby in my arms, and opened the door. A blinding gust of rain blew in. A terrible storm was raging and I had not noticed it, I was so taken up with the child. "I could not face that gale. Indeed, I was so weak I fell on my knees as it struck me and became dripping wet before I could drag myself inside. The baby began to moan and everything was turning dark before me, when I heard a strong, sweet voice cry out in the roadway: "'Is there room in this house for me till the storm has blown by? I cannot see my way down the hillside.' "With a bursting heart I looked up. A woman was standing in the doorway, with the look of an angel in her eyes. I did not know her, but her face was one to bring comfort to the saddest heart. Holding up my baby, I cried: "'My baby is dying; I tried to go for the doctor, but my knees bent under me. Help me, as you are a mother--I--- ' "I must have fallen again, for the next thing I remember I was lying by the hearth, looking up into her face, which was bending over me. She was white as the rag I had tied about my baby's throat, and by the way her breast heaved she was either very much frightened or very sorry. "'I wish you had the help of anyone else,' said she. 'Babies perish in my arms and wither at my breast. I cannot touch it, much as I yearn to. But let me see its face; perhaps I can tell you what is the matter with it.' "I showed her the baby's face, and she bent over it, trembling very much, almost as much indeed as myself. "'It is very sick,' she said, 'but if you will use the remedies I advise, I think you can save it.' And she told me what to do, and helped me all she could; but she did not lay a finger on the little darling, though from the way she watched it I saw that her heart was set on his getting better. And he did; in an hour he was sleeping peacefully, and the terrible weight was gone from my heart and from hers. When the storm stopped, and she could leave the house, she gave me a kiss; but the look she gave him meant more than kisses. God must have forgotten her goodness to me that night when He let her die so pitiable a death." At the minister's house they were commenting upon the look of serenity observable in her dead face. "I have known her for thirty years," her pastor declared, "and never before have I seen her wear a look of real peace. It is wonderful, considering the circumstances. Do you think she was so weary of her life's long struggle that she hailed any release from it, even that of violence?" A young man, a lawyer, visiting them from New York, was the only one to answer. "I never saw the woman you are talking about," said he, "and know nothing of the circumstances of her death beyond what you have told me. But from the very incongruity between her expression and the violent nature of her death, I argue that there are depths to this crime which have not yet been sounded." "What depths? It is a simple case of murder followed by theft. To be sure we do not yet know the criminal, but money was his motive; that is clear enough." "Are you ready to wager that that is all there is to it?" This was a startling proposition to the minister. "You forget my cloth," said he. The young man smiled. "That is true. Pardon me. I was only anxious to show how strong my conviction was against any such easy explanation of a crime marked by such contradictory features." Two children on the Portchester road were exchanging boyish confidences. "Do you know what I think about it?" asked one. "Naw! How should I?" "Wall, I think old Mrs. Webb got the likes of what she sent. Don't you know she had six children once, and that she killed every one of them?" "Killed'em--she?" "Yes, I heard her tell granny once all about it. She said there was a blight on her house--I don't know what that is; but I guess it's something big and heavy--and that it fell on every one of her children, as fast as they came, and killed 'em." "Then I'm glad I ben't her child." Very different were the recollections interchanged between two middle-aged Portchester women. "She was drinking tea at my house when her sister Sairey came running in with the news that the baby she had left at home wasn't quite right. That was her first child, you know." "Yes, yes, for I was with her when that baby came," broke in the other, "and such joy as she showed when they told her it was alive and well I never saw. I do not know why she didn't expect it to be alive, but she didn't, and her happiness was just wonderful to see." "Well, she didn't enjoy it long. The poor little fellow died young. But I was telling you of the night when she first heard he was ailing. Philemon had been telling a good story, and we were all laughing, when Sairey came in. I can see Agatha now. She always had the most brilliant eyes in the county, but that day they were superbly dazzling. They changed, though, at the sight of Sairey's face, and she jumped to meet her just as if she knew what Sairey was going to say before ever a word left her lips. 'My baby!' (I can hear her yet.) 'Something is the matter with the baby!' And though Sairey made haste to tell her that he was only ailing and not at all ill, she turned upon Philemon with a look none of us ever quite understood; he changed so completely under it, just as she had under Sairey's; and to neither did the old happiness ever return, for the child died within a week, and when the next came it died also, and the next, till six small innocents lay buried in yonder old graveyard." "I know; and sad enough it was too, especially as she and Philemon were both fond of children. Well, well, the ways of Providence are past rinding out! And now she is gone and Philemon---" "Ah, he'll follow her soon; he can't live without Agatha." Nearer home, the old sexton was chattering about the six gravestones raised in Portchester churchyard to these six dead infants. He had been sent there to choose a spot in which to lay the mother, and was full of the shock it gave him to see that line of little stones, telling of a past with which the good people of Sutherlandtown found it hard to associate Philemon and Agatha Webb. "I'm a digger of graves," he mused, half to himself and half to his old wife watching him from the other side of the hearthstone. "I spend a good quarter of my time in the churchyard; but when I saw those six little mounds, and read the inscriptions over them, I couldn't help feeling queer. Think of this! On the first tiny headstone I read these words:" STEPHEN, Son of Philemon and Agatha Webb, Died, Aged Six Weeks. God be merciful to me a sinner! "Now what does that mean? Did you ever hear anyone say?" "No," was his old wife's answer. "Perhaps she was one of those Calvinist folks who believe babies go to hell if they are not baptised." "But her children were all baptised. I've been told so; some of them before she was well out of her bed. 'God be merciful to me a sinner!' And the chick not six weeks old! Something queer about that, dame, if it did happen more than thirty years ago." "What did you see over the grave of the child who was killed in her arms by lightning?" "This: "'And he was not, for God took him.'" Farmer Waite had but one word to say: "She came to me when my Sissy had the smallpox; the only person in town who would enter my doors. More than that; when Sissy was up and I went to pay the doctor's bill I found it had been settled. I did not know then who had enough money and compassion to do this for me; now I do." Many an act of kindness which had been secretly performed in that town during the last twenty years came to light on that day, the most notable of which was the sending of a certain young lad to school and his subsequent education as a minister. But other memories of a sweeter and more secret nature still came up likewise, among them the following: A young girl, who was of a very timid but deeply sensitive nature, had been urged into an engagement with a man she did not like. Though the conflict this occasioned her and the misery which accompanied it were apparent to everybody, nobody stirred in her behalf but Agatha. She went to see her, and, though it was within a fortnight of the wedding, she did not hesitate to advise the girl to give him up, and when the poor child said she lacked the courage, Agatha herself went to the man and urged him into a display of generosity which saved the poor, timid thing from a life of misery. They say this was no easy task for Agatha, and that the man was sullen for a year. But the girl's gratitude was boundless. Of her daring, which was always on the side of right and justice, the stories were numerous; so were the accounts, mostly among the women, of her rare tenderness and sympathy for the weak and the erring. Never was a man talked to as she talked to Jake Cobleigh the evening after he struck his mother, and if she had been in town on the day when Clarissa Mayhew ran away with that Philadelphia adventurer many said it would never have happened, for no girl could stand the admonition, or resist the pleading, of this childless mother. It was reserved for Mr. Halliday and Mr. Sutherland to talk of her mental qualities. Her character was so marked and her manner so simple that few gave attention to the intellect that was the real basis of her power. The two mentioned gentlemen, however, appreciated her to the full, and it was while listening to their remarks that Frederick was suddenly startled by some one saying to him: "You are the only person in town who have nothing to say about Agatha Webb. Didn't you ever exchange any words with her?--for I can hardly believe you could have met her eye to eye without having some remark to make about her beauty or her influence." The speaker was Agnes Halliday, who had come in with her father for a social chat. She was one of Frederick's earliest playmates, but one with whom he had never assimilated and who did not like him. He knew this, as did everyone else in town, and it was with some hesitation he turned to answer her. "I have but one recollection," he began, and for the moment got no farther, for in turning his head to address his young guest he had allowed his gaze to wander through the open window by which she sat, into the garden beyond, where Amabel could be seen picking flowers. As he spoke, Amabel lifted her face with one of her suggestive looks. She had doubtless heard Miss Halliday's remark. Recovering himself with an effort, he repeated his words: "I have but one recollection of Mrs. Webb that I can give you. Years ago when I was a lad I was playing on the green with several other boys. We had had some dispute about a lost ball, and I was swearing angrily and loud when I suddenly perceived before me the tall form and compassionate face of Mrs. Webb. She was dressed in her usual simple way, and had a basket on her arm, but she looked so superior to any other woman I had ever met that I did not know whether to hide my face in her skirts or to follow my first impulse and run away. She saw the emotion she had aroused, and lifting up my face by the chin, she said: 'Little boy, I have buried six children, all of them younger than you, and now my husband and myself live alone. Often and often have I wished that one at least of these darling infants might have been spared us. But had God given me the choice of having them die young and innocent, or of growing up to swear as I have heard you to-day, I should have prayed God to take them, as He did. You have a mother. Do not break her heart by taking in vain the name of the God she reveres.' And with that she kissed me, and, strange as it may seem to you, in whatever folly or wickedness I have indulged, I have never made use of an oath from that day to this--and I thank God for it." There was such unusual feeling in his voice, a feeling that none had ever suspected him capable of before, that Miss Halliday regarded him with astonishment and quite forgot to indulge in her usual banter. Even the gentlemen sat still, and there was a momentary silence, through which there presently broke the incongruous sound of a shrill and mocking laugh. It came from Amabel, who had just finished gathering her bouquet in the garden outside. X DETECTIVE KNAPP ARRIVES Meanwhile, in a small room at the court-house, a still more serious conversation was in progress. Dr. Talbot, Mr. Fenton, and a certain able lawyer in town by the name of Harvey, were in close discussion. The last had broken the silence of years, and was telling what he knew of Mrs. Webb's affairs. He was a shrewd man, of unblemished reputation. When called upon to talk, he talked well, but he much preferred listening, and was, as now appeared, the safest repository of secrets to be found in all that region. He had been married three times, and could still count thirteen children around his board, one reason, perhaps, why he had learned to cultivate silence to such a degree. Happily, the time had come for him to talk, and he talked. This is what he said: "Some fifteen years ago Philemon Webb came to me with a small sum of money, which he said he wished to have me invest for his wife. It was the fruit of a small speculation of his and he wanted it given unconditionally to her without her knowledge or that of the neighbours. I accordingly made out a deed of gift, which he signed with joyful alacrity, and then after due thought and careful investigation, I put the money into a new enterprise then being started in Boston. It was the best stroke of business I ever did in my life. At the end of a year it paid double, and after five had rolled away the accumulated interest had reached such a sum that both Philemon and myself thought it wisest to let her know what she was worth and what was being done with the money. I was in hopes it would lead her to make some change in her mode of living, which seemed to me out of keeping with her appearance and mental qualifications; while he, I imagine, looked for something more important still--a smile on the face which had somehow lost the trick of merriment, though it had never acquired that of ill nature. But we did not know Agatha; at least I did not. When she learned that she was rich, she looked at first awestruck and then heart-pierced. Forgetting me, or ignoring me, it makes no matter which, she threw herself into Philemon's arms and wept, while he, poor faithful fellow, looked as distressed as if he had brought news of failure instead of triumphant success. I suppose she thought of her buried children, and what the money would have been to her if they had lived; but she did not speak of them, nor am I quite sure they were in her thoughts when, after the first excitement was over, she drew back and said quietly, but in a tone of strong feeling, to Philemon: 'You meant me a happy surprise, and you must not be disappointed. This is heart money; we will use it to make our townsfolk happy.' I saw him glance at her dress, which was a purple calico. I remember it because of that look and because of the sad smile with which she followed his glance. 'Can we not afford now,' he ventured, 'a little show of luxury, or at least a ribbon or so for this beautiful throat of yours?' She did not answer him; but her look had a rare compassion in it, a compassion, strange to say, that seemed to be expended upon him rather than upon herself. Philemon swallowed his disappointment. 'Agatha is right,' he said to me. 'We do not need luxury. I do not know how I so far forgot myself as to mention it.' That was ten years ago, and every day since then her property has increased. I did not know then, and I do not know now, why they were both so anxious that all knowledge of their good fortune should be kept from those about them; but that it was to be so kept was made very evident to me; and, notwithstanding all temptations to the contrary, I have refrained from uttering a word likely to give away their secret. The money, which to all appearance was the cause of her tragic and untimely death, was interest money which I was delegated to deliver her. I took it to her day before yesterday, and it was all in crisp new notes, some of them twenties, but most of them tens and fives. I am free to say there was not such another roll of fresh money in town." "Warn all shopkeepers to keep a sharp lookout for new bills in the money they receive," was Dr. Talbot's comment to the constable. "Fresh ten-and twenty-dollar bills are none too common in this town. And now about her will. Did you draw that up, Harvey?" "No. I did not know she had made one. I often spoke to her about the advisability of her doing so, but she always put me off. And now it seems that she had it drawn up in Boston. Could not trust her old friend with too many secrets, I suppose." "So you don't know how her money has been left?" "No more than you do." Here an interruption occurred. The door opened and a slim young man, wearing spectacles, came in. At sight of him they all rose. "Well?" eagerly inquired Dr. Talbot. "Nothing new," answered the young man, with a consequential air. "The elder woman died from loss of blood consequent upon a blow given by a small, three-sided, slender blade; the younger from a stroke of apoplexy, induced by fright." "Good! I am glad to hear my instincts were not at fault. Loss of blood, eh? Death, then, was not instantaneous?" "No." "Strange!" fell from the lips of his two listeners. "She lived, yet gave no alarm." "None that was heard," suggested the young doctor, who was from another town. "Or, if heard, reached no ears but Philemon's," observed the constable. "Something must have taken him up-stairs." "I am not so sure," said the coroner, "that Philemon is not answerable for the whole crime, notwithstanding our failure to find the missing money anywhere in the house. How else account for the resignation with which she evidently met her death? Had a stranger struck her, Agatha Webb would have struggled. There is no sign of struggle in the room." "She would have struggled against Philemon had she had strength to struggle. I think she was asleep when she was struck." "Ah! And was not standing by the table? How about the blood there, then?" "Shaken from the murderer's fingers in fright or disgust." "There was no blood on Philemon's fingers." "No; he wiped them on his sleeve." "If he was the one to use the dagger against her, where is the dagger? Should we not be able to find it somewhere about the premises?" "He may have buried it outside. Crazy men are supernaturally cunning." "When you can produce it from any place inside that board fence, I will consider your theory. At present I limit my suspicions of Philemon to the half-unconscious attentions which a man of disordered intellect might give a wife bleeding and dying under his eyes. My idea on the subject is---" "Would you be so kind as not to give utterance to your ideas until I have been able to form some for myself?" interrupted a voice from the doorway. As this voice was unexpected, they all turned. A small man with sleek dark hair and expressionless features stood before them. Behind him was Abel, carrying a hand-bag and umbrella. "The detective from Boston," announced the latter. Coroner Talbot rose. "You are in good time," he remarked. "We have work of no ordinary nature for you." The man failed to look interested. But then his countenance was not one to show emotion. "My name is Knapp," said he. "I have had my supper, and am ready to go to work. I have read the newspapers; all I want now is any additional facts that have come to light since the telegraphic dispatches were sent to Boston. Facts, mind you; not theories. I never allow myself to be hampered by other persons' theories." Not liking his manner, which was brusque and too self-important for a man of such insignificant appearance, Coroner Talbot referred him to Mr. Fenton, who immediately proceeded to give him the result of such investigations as he and his men had been able to make; which done, Mr. Knapp put on his hat and turned toward the door. "I will go to the house and see for myself what is to be learned there," said he. "May I ask the privilege of going alone?" he added, as Mr. Fenton moved. "Abel will see that I am given admittance." "Show me your credentials," said the coroner. He did so. "They seem all right, and you should be a man who understands his business. Go alone, if you prefer, but bring your conclusions here. They may need some correcting." "Oh, I will return," Knapp nonchalantly remarked, and went out, having made anything but a favourable impression upon the assembled gentlemen. "I wish we had shown more grit and tried to handle this thing ourselves," observed Mr. Fenton. "I cannot bear to think of that cold, bloodless creature hovering over our beloved Agatha." "I wonder at Carson. Why should he send us such a man? Could he not see the matter demanded extraordinary skill and judgment?" "Oh, this fellow may have skill. But he is so unpleasant. I hate to deal with folks of such fish-like characteristics. But who is this?" he asked as a gentle tap was heard at the door. "Why, it's Loton. What can he want here?" The man whose presence in the doorway had called out this exclamation started at the sound of the doctor's heavy voice, and came very hesitatingly forward. He was of a weak, irritable type, and seemed to be in a state of great excitement. "I beg pardon," said he, "for showing myself. I don't like to intrude into such company, but I have something to tell you which may be of use, sirs, though it isn't any great thing, either." "Something about the murder which has taken place?" asked the coroner, in a milder tone. He knew Loton well, and realised the advisability of encouragement in his case. "The murder! Oh, I wouldn't presume to say anything about the murder. I'm not the man to stir up any such subject as that. It's about the money--or some money--more money than usually falls into my till. It--it was rather queer, sirs, and I have felt the flutter of it all day. Shall I tell you about it? It happened last night, late last night, sirs, so late that I was in bed with my wife, and had been snoring, she said, four hours." "What money? New money? Crisp, fresh bills, Loton?" eagerly questioned Mr. Fenton. Loton, who was the keeper of a small confectionery and bakery store on one of the side streets leading up the hill, shifted uneasily between his two interrogators, and finally addressed himself to the coroner: "It was new money. I thought it felt so at night, but I was sure of it in the morning. A brand-new bill, sir, a--But that isn't the queerest thing about it. I was asleep, sir, sound asleep, and dreaming of my courting days (for I asked Sally at the circus, sirs, and the band playing on the hill made me think of it), when I was suddenly shook awake by Sally herself, who says she hadn't slept a wink for listening to the music and wishing she was a girl again. 'There's a man at the shop door,' cries she. 'He's a-calling of you; go and see what he wants.' I was mad at being wakened. Dreaming is pleasant, specially when clowns and kissing get mixed up in it, but duty is duty, and so into the shop I stumbled, swearing a bit perhaps, for I hadn't stopped for a light and it was as dark as double shutters could make it. The hammering had become deafening. No let up till I reached the door, when it suddenly ceased. "'What is it?' I cried. 'Who's there and what do you want?' "A trembling voice answered me. 'Let me in,' it said. 'I want to buy something to eat. For God's sake, open the door!' "I don't know why I obeyed, for it was late, and I did not know the voice, but something in the impatient rattling of the door which accompanied the words affected me in spite of myself, and I slowly opened my shop to this midnight customer. "'You must be hungry,' I began. But the person who had crowded in as soon as the opening was large enough wouldn't let me finish. "'Bread! I want bread, or crackers, or anything that you can find easiest,' he gasped, like a man who had been running. 'Here's money'; and he poked into my hand a bill so stiff that it rattled. 'It's more than enough,' he hastened to say, as I hesitated over it, 'but never mind that; I'll come for the change in the morning.' "'Who are you? I cried. 'You are not Blind Willy, I'm sure.' "But his only answer was 'Bread!' while he leaned so hard against the counter I felt it shake. "I could not stand that cry of 'Bread!' so I groped about in the dark, and found him a stale loaf, which I put into his arms, with a short, 'There! Now tell me what your name is.' "But at this he seemed to shrink into himself; and muttering something that might pass for thanks, he stumbled towards the door and rushed hastily out. Running after him, I listened eagerly to his steps. They went up the hill." "And the money? What about the money?" asked the coroner. "Didn't he come back for the change?" "No. I put it in the till, thinking it was a dollar bill. But when I came to look at it in the morning, it was a twenty; yes, sirs, a twenty!" This was startling. The coroner and the constable looked at each other before looking again at him. "And where is that bill now?" asked the former. "Have you brought it with you?" "I have, sir. It's been in and out of the till twenty times to-day. I haven't known what to do with it. I don't like to think wrong of anybody, but when I heard that Mrs. Webb (God bless her!) was murdered last night for money, I couldn't rest for the weight of this thing on my conscience. Here's the bill, sir. I wish I had let the old man rap on my door till morning before I had taken it from him." They did not share this feeling. A distinct and valuable clew seemed to be afforded them by the fresh, crisp bill they saw in his hand. Silently Dr. Talbot took it, while Mr. Fenton, with a shrewd look, asked: "What reasons have you for calling this mysterious customer old? I thought it was so dark you could not see him." The man, who looked relieved since he had rid himself of the bill, eyed the constable in some perplexity. "I didn't see a feature of his face," said he, "and yet I'm sure he was old. I never thought of him as being anything else." "Well, we will see. And is that all you have to tell us?" His nod was expressive, and they let him go. An hour or so later Detective Knapp made his reappearance. "Well," asked the coroner, as he came quietly in and closed the door behind him, "what's your opinion?" "Simple case, sir. Murdered for money. Find the man with a flowing beard." XI THE MAN WITH A BEARD There were but few men in town who wore long beards. A list was made of these and handed to the coroner, who regarded it with a grim smile. "Not a man whose name is here would be guilty of a misdemeanour, let alone a crime. You must look outside of our village population for the murderer of Agatha Webb." "Very likely, but tell me something first about these persons," urged Knapp. "Who is Edward Hope?" "A watch repairer; a man of estimable character." "And Sylvester Chubb?" "A farmer who, to support his mother, wife, and seven children, works from morning till sundown on his farm, and from sundown till 11 o'clock at night on little fancy articles he cuts out from wood and sells in Boston." "John Barker, Thomas Elder, Timothy Sinn?" "All good men; I can vouch for every one of them." "And John Zabel, James Zabel?" "Irreproachable, both of them. Famous ship--builders once, but the change to iron ship-building has thrown them out of business. Pity, too, for they were remarkable builders. By the by, Fenton, we don't see them at church or on the docks any more." "No, they keep very much to themselves; getting old, like ourselves, Talbot." "Lively boys once. We must hunt them up, Fenton. Can't bear to see old friends drop away from good company. But this isn't business. You need not pause over their names, Knapp." But Knapp had slipped out. We will follow him. Walking briskly down the street, he went up the steps of a certain house and rang the bell. A gentleman with a face not entirely unknown to us came to the door. The detective did not pause for preliminaries. "Are you Mr. Crane?" he asked,--"the gentleman who ran against a man coming out of Mrs. Webb's house last night?" "I am Mr. Crane," was the slightly surprised rejoinder, "and I was run against by a man there, yes." "Very well," remarked the detective, quietly, "my name is Knapp. I have been sent from Boston to look into this matter, and I have an idea that you can help me more than any other man here in Sutherlandtown. Who was this person who came in contact with you so violently? You know, even if you have been careful not to mention any names." "You are mistaken. I don't know; I can't know. He wore a sweeping beard, and walked and acted like a man no longer young, but beyond that---" "Mr. Crane, excuse me, but I know men. If you had no suspicion as to whom that person was you would not look so embarrassed. You suspect, or, at least, associate in your own mind a name with the man you met. Was it either of these you see written here?" Mr. Crane glanced at the card on which the other had scribbled a couple of names, and started perceptibly. "You have me," said he; "you must be a man of remarkable perspicacity." The detective smiled and pocketed his card. The names he thus concealed were John Zabel, James Zabel. "You have not said which of the two it was," Knapp quietly suggested. "No," returned the minister, "and I have not even thought. Indeed, I am not sure that I have not made a dreadful mistake in thinking it was either. A glimpse such as I had is far from satisfactory; and they are both such excellent men---" "Eight! You did make a mistake, of course, I have not the least doubt of it. So don't think of the matter again. I will find out who the real man was; rest easy." And with the lightest of bows, Knapp drew off and passed as quickly as he could, without attracting attention, round the corner to the confectioner's. Here his attack was warier. Sally Loton was behind the counter with her husband, and they had evidently been talking the matter over very confidentially. But Knapp was not to be awed by her small, keen eye or strident voice, and presently succeeded in surprising a knowing look on the lady's face, which convinced him that in the confidences between husband and wife a name had been used which she appeared to be less unwilling to impart than he. Knapp, consequently, turned his full attention towards her, using in his attack that oldest and subtlest weapon against the sex--flattery. "My dear madam," said he, "your good heart is apparent; your husband has confided to you a name which you, out of fear of some mistake, hesitate to repeat. A neighbourly spirit, ma'am, a very neighbourly spirit; but you should not allow your goodness to defeat the ends of justice. If you simply told us whom this man resembled we would be able to get some idea of his appearance." "He didn't resemble anyone I know," growled Loton. "It was too dark for me to see how he looked." "His voice, then? People are traced by their voices." "I didn't recognise his voice." Knapp smiled, his eye still on the woman. "Yet you have thought of someone he reminded you of?" The man was silent, but the wife tossed her head ever so lightly. "Now, you must have had your reasons for that. No one thinks of a good and respectable neighbour in connection with the buying of a loaf of bread at midnight with a twenty-dollar bill, without some positive reason." "The man wore a beard. I felt it brush my hand as he took the loaf." "Good! That is a point." "Which made me think of other men who wore beards." "As, for instance---" The detective had taken from his pocket the card which he had used with such effect at the minister's, and as he said these words twirled it so that the two names written upon it fell under Sally Loton's inquisitive eyes. The look with which she read them was enough. John Zabel, James Zabel. "Who told you it was either of these men?" she asked. "You did," he retorted, pocketing the card with a smile. "La, now! Samuel, I never spoke a word," she insisted, in anxious protest to her husband, as the detective slid quietly from the store. XII WATTLES COMES The Hallidays lived but a few rods from the Sutherlands. Yet as it was dusk when Miss Halliday rose to depart, Frederick naturally offered his services as her escort. She accepted them with a slight blush, the first he had ever seen on her face, or at least had ever noted there. It caused him such surprise that he forgot Amabel's presence in the garden till they came upon her at the gate. "A pleasant evening," observed that young girl in her high, unmusical voice. "Very," was Miss Halliday's short reply; and for a moment the two faces were in line as he held open the gate before his departing guest. They were very different faces in feature and expression, and till that night he had never thought of comparing them. Indeed, the fascination which beamed from Amabel Page's far from regular features had put all others out of his mind, but now, as he surveyed the two girls, the candour and purity which marked Agnes's countenance came out so strongly under his glance that Amabel lost all attraction for him, and he drew his young neighbour hastily away. Amabel noted the movement and smiled. Her contempt for Agnes Halliday's charms amounted to disdain. She might have felt less confidence in her own had she been in a position to note the frequent glances Frederick cast at his old playmate as they proceeded slowly up the road. Not that there was any passion in them--he was too full of care for that; but the curiosity which could prompt him to turn his head a dozen times in the course of so short a walk, to see why Agnes Halliday held her face so persistently away from him, had an element of feeling in it that was more or less significant. As for Agnes, she was so unlike her accustomed self as to astonish even herself. Whereas she had never before walked a dozen steps with him without indulging in some sharp saying, she found herself disinclined to speak at all, much less to speak lightly. In mutual silence, then, they reached the gateway leading into the Halliday grounds. But Agnes having passed in, they both stopped and for the first time looked squarely at each other. Her eyes fell first, perhaps because his had changed in his contemplation of her. He smiled as he saw this, and in a half-careless, half-wistful tone, said quietly: "Agnes, what would you think of a man who, after having committed little else but folly all his life, suddenly made up his mind to turn absolutely toward the right and to pursue it in face of every obstacle and every discouragement?" "I should think," she slowly replied, with one quick lift of her eyes toward his face, "that he had entered upon the noblest effort of which man is capable, and the hardest. I should have great sympathy for that man, Frederick." "Would you?" he said, recalling Amabel's face with bitter aversion as he gazed into the womanly countenance he had hitherto slighted as uninteresting. "It is the first kind word you have ever given me, Agnes. Possibly it is the first I have ever deserved." And without another word he doffed his hat, saluted her, and vanished down the hillside. She remained; remained so long that it was nearly nine when she entered the family parlour. As she came in her mother looked up and was startled at her unaccustomed pallor. "Why, Agnes," cried her mother, "what is the matter?" Her answer was inaudible. What was the matter? She dreaded, even feared, to ask herself. Meantime a strange scene was taking place in the woods toward which she had seen Frederick go. The moon, which was particularly bright that night, shone upon a certain hollow where a huge tree lay. Around it the underbrush was thick and the shadow dark, but in this especial place the opening was large enough for the rays to enter freely. Into this circlet of light Frederick Sutherland had come. Alone and without the restraint imposed upon him by watching eyes, he showed a countenance so wan and full of trouble that it was well it could not be seen by either of the two women whose thoughts were at that moment fixed upon him. To Amabel it would have given a throb of selfish hope, while to Agnes it would have brought a pang of despair which might have somewhat too suddenly interpreted to her the mystery of her own sensations. He had bent at once to the hollow space made by the outspreading roots just mentioned, and was feeling with an air of confidence along the ground for something he had every reason to expect to find, when the shock of a sudden distrust seized him, and he flung himself down in terror, feeling and feeling again among the fallen leaves and broken twigs, till a full realisation of his misfortune reached him, and he was obliged to acknowledge that the place was empty. Overwhelmed at his loss, aghast at the consequences it must entail upon him, he rose in a trembling sweat, crying out in his anger and dismay: "She has been here! She has taken it!" And realising for the first time the subtlety and strength of the antagonist pitted against him, he forgot his new resolutions and even that old promise made in his childhood to Agatha Webb, and uttered oath after oath, cursing himself, the woman, and what she had done, till a casual glance at the heavens overhead, in which the liquid moon hung calm and beautiful, recalled him to himself. With a sense of shame, the keener that it was a new sensation in his breast, he ceased his vain repinings, and turning from the unhallowed spot, made his way with deeper and deeper misgivings toward a home made hateful to him now by the presence of the woman who was thus bent upon his ruin. He understood her now. He rated at its full value both her determination and her power, and had she been so unfortunate as to have carried her imprudence to the point of surprising him by her presence, it would have taken more than the memory of that day's solemn resolves to have kept him from using his strength against her. But she was wise, and did not intrude upon him in his hour of anger, though who could say she was not near enough to hear the sigh which broke irresistibly from his lips as he emerged from the wood and approached his father's house? A lamp was still burning in Mr. Sutherland's study over the front door, and the sight of it seemed to change for a moment the current of Frederick's thoughts. Pausing at the gate, he considered with himself, and then with a freer countenance and a lighter step was about to proceed inward, when he heard the sound of a heavy breather coming up the hill, and hesitated--why he hardly knew, except that every advancing step occasioned him more or less apprehension. The person, whoever it was, stopped before reaching the brow of the hill, and, panting heavily, muttered an oath which Frederick heard. Though it was no more profane than those which had just escaped his own lips in the forest, it produced an effect upon him which was only second in intensity to the terror of the discovery that the money he had so safely hidden was gone. Trembling in every limb, he dashed down the hill and confronted the person standing there. "You!" he cried, "you!" And for a moment he looked as if he would like to fell to the ground the man before him. But this man was a heavyweight of no ordinary physical strength and adroitness, and only smiled at Frederick's heat and threatening attitude. "I thought I would be made welcome," he smiled, with just the hint of sinister meaning in his tone. Then, before Frederick could speak: "I have merely saved you a trip to Boston; why so much anger, friend? You have the money; of that I am positive." "Hush! We can't talk here," whispered Frederick. "Come into the grounds, or, what would be better, into the woods over there." "I don't go into any woods with you," laughed the other; "not after last night, my friend. But I will talk low; that's no more than fair; I don't want to put you into any other man's power, especially if you have the money." "Wattles,"--Frederick's tone was broken, almost unintelligible,--"what do you mean by your allusion to last night? Have you dared to connect me---" "Pooh! Pooh!" interrupted the other, good-humouredly. "Don't let us waste words over a chance expression I may have dropped. I don't care anything about last night's work, or who was concerned in it. That's nothing to me. All I want, my boy, is the money, and that I want devilish bad, or I would not have run up here from Boston, when I might have made half a hundred off a countryman Lewis brought in from the Canada wilds this morning." "Wattles, I swear---" But the hand he had raised was quickly drawn down by the other. "Don't," said the older man, shortly. "It won't pay, Sutherland. Stage-talk never passed for anything with me. Besides, your white face tells a truer story than your lips, and time is precious. I want to take the 11 o'clock train back. So down with the cash. Nine hundred and fifty-five it is, but, being friends, we will let the odd five go." "Wattles, I was to bring it to you to-morrow, or was it the next day? I do not want to give it to you to-night; indeed, I cannot, but--Wattles, wait, stop! Where are you going?" "To see your father. I want to tell him that his son owes me a debt; that this debt was incurred in a way that lays him liable to arrest for forgery; that, bad as he thinks you, there are facts which can be picked up in Boston which would render Frederick Sutherland's continued residence under the parental roof impossible; that, in fact, you are a scamp of the first water, and that only my friendship for you has kept you out of prison so long. Won't that make a nice story for the old gentleman's ears!" "Wattles--I--oh, my God! Wattles, stop a minute and listen to me. I have not got the money. I had enough this morning to pay you, had it legitimately, Wattles, but it has been stolen from me and---" "I will also tell him," the other broke in, as quietly as if Frederick had not uttered a word, "that in a certain visit to Boston you lost five hundred dollars on one hand; that you lost it unfairly, not having a dollar to pay with; that to prevent scandal I became your security, with the understanding that I was to be paid at the end of ten days from that night; that you thereupon played again and lost four hundred and odd more, so that your debt amounted to nine hundred and fifty-five dollars; that the ten days passed without payment; that, wanting money, I pressed you and even resorted to a threat or two; and that, seeing me in earnest, you swore that the dollars should be mine within five days; that instead of remaining in Boston to get them, you came here; and that this morning at a very early hour you telegraphed that the funds were to hand and that you would bring them down to me to-morrow. The old gentleman may draw conclusions from this, Sutherland, which may make his position as your father anything but grateful to him. He may even--Ah, you would try that game, would you?" The young man had flung himself at the older man's throat as if he would choke off the words he saw trembling on his lips. But the struggle thus begun was short. In a moment both stood panting, and Frederick, with lowered head, was saying humbly: "I beg pardon, Wattles, but you drive me mad with your suggestions and conclusions. I have not got the money, but I will try and get it. Wait here." "For ten minutes, Sutherland; no longer! The moon is bright, and I can see the hands of my watch distinctly. At a quarter to ten, you will return here with the amount I have mentioned, or I will seek it at your father's hands in his own study." Frederick made a hurried gesture and vanished up the walk. Next moment he was at his father's study door. XIII WATTLES GOES Mr. Sutherland was busily engaged with a law paper when his son entered his presence, but at sight of that son's face, he dropped the paper with an alacrity which Frederick was too much engaged with his own thoughts to notice. "Father," he began without preamble or excuse, "I am in serious and immediate need of nine hundred and fifty dollars. I want it so much that I ask you to make me a check for that amount to-night, conscious though I am that you have every right to deny me this request, and that my debt to you already passes the bound of presumption on my part and indulgence on yours. I cannot tell you why I want it or for what. That belongs to my past life, the consequences of which I have not yet escaped, but I feel bound to state that you will not be the loser by this material proof of confidence in me, as I shall soon be in a position to repay all my debts, among which this will necessarily stand foremost." The old gentleman looked startled and nervously fingered the paper he had let fall. "Why do you say you will soon be in a position to repay me? What do you mean by that?" The flash, which had not yet subsided from the young man's face, ebbed slowly away as he encountered his father's eye. "I mean to work," he murmured. "I mean to make a man of myself as soon as possible." The look which Mr. Sutherland gave him was more inquiring than sympathetic. "And you need this money for a start?" said he. Frederick bowed; he seemed to be losing the faculty of speech. The clock over the mantel had told off five of the precious moments. "I will give it to you," said his father, and drew out his check-book. But he did not hasten to open it; his eyes still rested on his son. "Now," murmured the young man. "There is a train leaving soon. I wish to get it away on that train." His father frowned with natural distrust. "I wish you would confide in me," said he. Frederick did not answer. The hands of the clock were moving on. "I will give it to you; but I should like to know what for." "It is impossible for me to tell you," groaned the young man, starting as he heard a step on the walk without. "Your need has become strangely imperative," proceeded the other. "Has Miss Page---" Frederick took a step forward and laid his hand on his father's arm. "It is not for her," he whispered. "It goes into other hands." Mr. Sutherland, who had turned over the document as his son approached, breathed more easily. Taking up his pen, he dipped it in the ink. Frederick watched him with constantly whitening cheek. The step on the walk had mounted to the front door. "Nine hundred and fifty?" inquired the father. "Nine hundred and fifty," answered the son. The judge, with a last look, stooped over the book. The hands of the clock pointed to a quarter to ten. "Father, I have my whole future in which to thank you," cried Frederick, seizing the check his father held out to him and making rapidly for the door. "I will be back before midnight." And he flung himself down-stairs just as the front door opened and Wattles stepped in. "Ah," exclaimed the latter, as his eye fell on the paper fluttering in the other's hand, "I expected money, not paper." "The paper is good," answered Frederick, drawing him swiftly out of the house. "It has my father's signature upon it." "Your father's signature?" "Yes." Wattles gave it a look, then slowly shook his head at Frederick. "Is it as well done as the one you tried to pass off on Brady?" Frederick cringed, and for a moment looked as if the struggle was too much for him. Then he rallied and eying Wattles firmly, said: "You have a right to distrust me, but you are on the wrong track, Wattles. What I did once, I can never do again; and I hope I may live to prove myself a changed man. As for that check, I will soon prove its value in your eyes. Follow me up-stairs to my father." His energy--the energy of despair, no doubt seemed to make an impression on the other. "You might as well proclaim yourself a forger outright, as to force your father to declare this to be his signature," he observed. "I know it," said Frederick. "Yet you will run that risk?" "If you oblige me." Wattles shrugged his shoulders. He was a magnificent-looking man and towered in that old colonial hall like a youthful giant. "I bear you no ill will," said he. "If this represents money, I am satisfied, and I begin to think it does. But listen, Sutherland. Something has happened to you. A week ago you would have put a bullet through my head before you would have been willing to have so compromised yourself. I think I know what that something is. To save yourself from being thought guilty of a big crime you are willing to incur suspicion of a small one. It's a wise move, my boy, but look out! No tricks with me or my friendship may not hold. Meantime, I cash this check to-morrow." And he swung away through the night with a grand-opera selection on his lips. XIV A FINAL TEMPTATION Frederick looked like a man thoroughly exhausted when the final echo of this hateful voice died away on the hillside. For the last twenty hours he had been the prey of one harrowing emotion after another, and human nature could endure no more without rest. But rest would not come. The position in which he found himself, between Amabel and the man who had just left, was of too threatening a nature for him to ignore. But one means of escape presented itself. It was a cowardly one; but anything was better than to make an attempt to stand his ground against two such merciless antagonists; so he resolved upon flight. Packing up a few necessaries and leaving a letter behind him for his father, he made his way down the stairs of the now darkened house to a door opening upon the garden. To his astonishment he found it unlocked, but, giving little heed to this in his excitement, he opened it with caution, and, with a parting sigh for the sheltering home he was about to leave forever, stepped from the house he no longer felt worthy to inhabit. His intention was to take the train at Portchester, and that he might reach that place without inconvenient encounters, he decided to proceed by a short cut through the fields. This led him north along the ridge that overlooks the road running around the base of the hill. He did not think of this road, however, or of anything, in fact, but the necessity of taking the very earliest train out of Portchester. As this left at 3.30 A.M., he realised that he must hasten in order to reach it. But he was not destined to take it or any other train out of Portchester that night, for when he reached the fence dividing Mr. Sutherland's grounds from those of his adjoining neighbour, he saw, drawn up in the moonlight just at the point where he had intended to leap the fence, the form of a woman with one hand held out to stop him. It was Amabel. Confounded by this check and filled with an anger that was nigh to dangerous, he fell back and then immediately sprang forward. "What are you doing here?" he cried. "Don't you know that it is eleven o'clock and that my father requires the house to be closed at that hour?" "And you?" was her sole retort; "what are you doing here? Are you searching for flowers in the woods, and is that valise you carry the receptacle in which you hope to put your botanical specimens?" With a savage gesture he dropped the valise and took her fiercely by the shoulders. "Where have you hidden my money?" he hissed. "Tell me, or---" "Or what?" she asked, smiling into his face in a way that made him lose his grip. "Or--or I cannot answer for myself," he proceeded, stammering. "Do you. think I can endure everything from you because you are a woman? No; I will have those bills, every one of them, or show myself your master. Where are they, you incarnate fiend?" It was an unwise word to use, but she did not seem to heed it. "Ah," she said softly, and with a lingering accent, as if his grasp of her had been a caress to which she was not entirely averse. "I did not think you would discover its loss so soon. When did you go to the woods, Frederick? And was Miss Halliday with you?" He had a disposition to strike her, but controlled himself. Blows would not avail against the softness of this suave, yet merciless, being. Only a will as strong as her own could hope to cope with this smiling fury; and this he was determined to show, though, alas! he had everything to lose in a struggle that robbed her of nothing but a hope which was but a baseless fabric at best; for he was more than ever determined never to marry her. "A man does not need to wait long to miss his own," said he. "And if you have taken this money, which, you do not deny, you have shown yourself very short-sighted, for danger lies closer to the person holding this money than to the one you vilify by your threats. This you will find, Amabel, when you come to make use of the weapon with which you have thought to arm yourself." "Tut, tut!" was her contemptuous reply. "Do you consider me a child? Do I look like a babbling infant, Frederick?" Her face, which had been lifted to his in saying this, was so illumined, both by her smile, which was strangely enchanting for one so evil, and by the moonlight, which so etherialises all that it touches, that he found himself forced to recall that other purer, truer face he had left at the honeysuckle porch to keep down a last wild impulse toward her, which would have been his undoing, both in this world and the next, as he knew. "Or do I look simply like a woman?" she went on, seeing the impression she had made, and playing upon it. "A woman who understands herself and you and all the secret perils of the game we are both playing? If I am a child, treat me as a child; but if I am a woman---" "Stand out of my way!" he cried, catching up his valise and striding furiously by her. "Woman or child, know that I will not be your plaything to be damned in this world and in the next." "Are you bound for the city of destruction?" she laughed, not moving, but showing such confidence in her power to hold him back that he stopped in spite of himself. "If so, you are taking the direct road there and have only to hasten. But you had better remain in your father's house; even if you are something of a prisoner there, like my very insignificant self. The outcome will be more satisfactory, even if you have to share your future with me." "And what course will you take," he asked, pausing with his hand on the fence, "if I decide to choose destruction without you, rather than perdition with you?" "What course? Why, I shall tell Dr. Talbot just enough to show you to be as desirable a witness in the impending inquest as myself. The result I leave to your judgment. But you will not drive me to this extremity. You will come back and--" "Woman, I will never come back. I shall have to dare your worst in a week and will begin by daring you now. I--" But he did not leap the fence, though he made a move to do so, for at that moment a party of men came hurrying by on the lower road, one of whom was heard to say: "I will bet my head that we will put our hand on Agatha Webb's murderer to-night. The man who shoves twenty-dollar bills around so heedlessly should not wear a beard so long it leads to detection." It was the coroner, the constable, Knapp, and Abel on their way to the forest road on which lived John and James Zabel. Frederick and Amabel confronted each other, and after a moment's silence returned as if by a common impulse towards the house. "What have they got in their heads?" queried she. "Whatever it is, it may serve to occupy them till the week of your probation is over." He did not answer. A new and overwhelming complication had been added to the difficulties of his situation. XV THE ZABELS VISITED Let us follow the party now winding up the hillside. In a deeply wooded spot on a side road stood the little house to which John and James Zabel had removed when their business on the docks had terminated. There was no other dwelling of greater or lesser pretension on the road, which may account for the fact that none of the persons now approaching it had been in that neighbourhood for years, though it was by no means a long walk from the village in which they all led such busy lives. The heavy shadows cast by the woods through which the road meandered were not without their effect upon the spirits of the four men passing through them, so that long before they reached the opening in which the Zabel cottage stood, silence had fallen upon the whole party. Dr. Talbot especially looked as if he little relished this late visit to his old friends, and not till they caught a glimpse of the long sloping roof and heavy chimney of the Zabel cottage did he shake off the gloom incident to the nature of his errand. "Gentlemen," said he, coming to a sudden halt, "let us understand each other. We are about to make a call on two of our oldest and most respectable townsfolk. If in the course of that call I choose to make mention of the twenty-dollar bill left with Loton, well and good, but if not, you are to take my reticence as proof of my own belief that they had nothing to do with it." Two of the party bowed; Knapp, only, made no sign. "There is no light in the window," observed Abel. "What if we find them gone to bed?" "We will wake them," said the constable. "I cannot go back without being myself assured that no more money like that given to Loton remains in the house." "Very well," remarked Knapp, and going up to the door before him, he struck a resounding knock sufficiently startling in that place of silence. But loud as the summons was it brought no answer. Not only the moon-lighted door, but the little windows on each side of it remained shut, and there was no evidence that the knock had been heard. "Zabel! John Zabel!" shouted the constable, stepping around the side of the house. "Get up, my good friends, and let an old crony in. James! John! Late as it is, we have business with you. Open the door; don't stop to dress." But this appeal received no more recognition than the first, and after rapping on the window against which he had flung the words, he came back and looked up and down the front of the house. It had a solitary aspect and was much less comfortable-looking than he had expected. Indeed, there were signs of poverty, or at least of neglect, about the place that astonished him. Not only had the weeds been allowed to grow over the doorstep, but from the unpainted front itself bits of boards had rotted away, leaving great gaps about the window-ledges and at the base of the sunken and well-nigh toppling chimney. The moon flooding the roof showed up all these imperfections with pitiless insistence, and the torn edges of the green paper shades that half concealed the rooms within were plainly to be seen, as well as the dismantled knocker which hung by one nail to the old cracked door. The vision of Knapp with his ear laid against this door added to the forlorn and sinister aspect of the scene, and gave to the constable, who remembered the brothers in their palmy days when they were the life and pride of the town, a by no means agreeable sensation, as he advanced toward the detective and asked him what they should do now. "Break down the door!" was the uncompromising reply. "Or, wait! The windows of country houses are seldom fastened; let me see if I cannot enter by some one of them." "Better not," said the coroner, with considerable feeling. "Let us exhaust all other means first." And he took hold of the knob of the door to shake it, when to his surprise it turned and the door opened. It had not been locked. Rather taken aback by this, he hesitated. But Knapp showed less scruple. Without waiting for any man's permission, he glided in and stepped cautiously, but without any delay, into a room the door of which stood wide open before him. The constable was about to follow when he saw Knapp come stumbling back. "Devilish work," he muttered, and drew the others in to see. Never will any of these men forget the sight that there met their eyes. On the floor near the entrance lay one brother, in a streak of moonlight, which showed every feature of his worn and lifeless face, and at a table drawn up in the centre of the room sat the other, rigid in death, with a book clutched in his hand. Both, had been dead some time, and on the faces and in the aspects of both was visible a misery that added its own gloom to the pitiable and gruesome scene, and made the shining of the great white moon, which filled every corner of the bare room, seem a mockery well-nigh unendurable to those who contemplated it. John, dead in his chair! James, dead on the floor! Knapp, who of all present was least likely to feel the awesome nature of the tragedy, was naturally the first to speak. "Both wear long beards," said he, "but the one lying on the floor was doubtless Loton's customer. Ah!" he cried, pointing at the table, as he carefully crossed the floor. "Here is the bread, and--" Even he had his moments of feeling. The appearance of that loaf had stunned him; one corner of it had been gnawed off. "A light! let us have a light!" cried Mr. Fenton, speaking for the first time since his entrance. "These moonbeams are horrible; see how they cling to the bodies as if they delighted in lighting up these wasted and shrunken forms." "Could it have been hunger?" began Abel, tremblingly following Knapp's every movement as he struck a match and lit a lantern which he had brought in his pocket. "God help us all if it was!" said Fenton, in a secret remorse no one but Dr. Talbot understood. "But who could have believed it of men who were once so prosperous? Are you sure that one of them has gnawed this bread? Could it not have been--" "These are the marks of human teeth," observed Knapp, who was examining the loaf carefully. "I declare, it makes me very uncomfortable, notwithstanding it's in the line of regular experiences." And he laid the bread down hurriedly. Meantime, Mr. Fenton, who had been bending over another portion of the table, turned and walked away to the window. "I am glad they are dead," he muttered. "They have at least shared the fate of their victims. Take a look under that old handkerchief lying beside the newspaper, Knapp." The detective did so. A three-edged dagger, with a curiously wrought handle, met his eye. It had blood dried on its point, and was, as all could see, the weapon with which Agatha Webb had been killed. XYI LOCAL TALENT AT WORK "Gentlemen, we have reached the conclusion of this business sooner than I expected," announced Knapp. "If you will give me just ten minutes I will endeavour to find that large remainder of money we have every reason to think is hidden away in this house." "Stop a minute," said the coroner. "Let me see what book John is holding so tightly. Why," he exclaimed, drawing it out and giving it one glance, "it is a Bible." Laying it reverently down he met the detective's astonished glance and seriously remarked: "There is some incongruity between the presence of this book and the deed we believe to have been performed down yonder." "None at all," quoth the detective. "It was not the man in the chair, but the one on the floor, who made use of that dagger. But I wish you had left it to me to remove that book, sir." "You? and why? What difference would it have made?" "I would have noticed between what pages his finger was inserted. Nothing like making yourself acquainted with every detail in a case like this." Dr. Talbot gazed wistfully at the book. He would have liked to know himself on what especial passage his friend's eyes had last rested. "I will stand aside," said he, "and hear your report when you are done." The detective had already begun his investigations. "Here is a spot of blood," said he. "See! on the right trouser leg of the one you call James. This connects him indisputably with the crime in which this dagger was used. No signs of violence on his body. She was the only one to receive a blow. His death is the result of God's providence." "Or man's neglect," muttered the constable. "There is no money in any of their pockets, or on either wasted figure," the detective continued, after a few minutes of silent search. "It must be hidden in the room, or--look through that Bible, sirs." The coroner, glad of an opportunity to do something, took up the book, and ran hurriedly through its leaves, then turned it and shook it out over the table. Nothing fell out; the bills must be looked for elsewhere. "The furniture is scanty," Abel observed, with an inquiring look about him. "Very, very scanty," assented the constable, still with that biting remorse at his heart. "There is nothing in this cupboard," pursued the detective, swinging open a door in the wall, "but a set of old china more or less nicked." Abel started. An old recollection had come up. Some weeks before, he had been present when James had made an effort to sell this set. They were all in Warner's store, and James Zabel (he could see his easy attitude yet, and hear the off-hand tones with which he tried to carry the affair off) had said, quite as if he had never thought of it before: "By the by, I have a set of china at the house which came over in the Mayflower. John likes it, but it has grown to be an eyesore to me, and if you hear of anybody who has a fancy for such things, send him up to the cottage. I will let it go for a song." Nobody answered, and James disappeared. It was the last time, Abel remembered, that he had been seen about town. "I can't stand it," cried the lad. "I can't stand it. If they died of hunger I must know it. I am going to take a look at their larder." And before anyone could stop him he dashed to the rear of the house. The constable would have liked to follow him, but he looked about the walls of the room instead. John and James had been fond of pictures and had once indulged their fancy to the verge of extravagance, but there were no pictures on the walls now, nor was there so much as a candlestick on the empty and dust-covered mantel. Only on a bracket in one corner there was a worthless trinket made out of cloves and beads which had doubtless been given them by some country damsel in their young bachelor days. But nothing of any value anywhere, and Mr. Fenton felt that he now knew why they had made so many visits to Boston at one time, and why they always returned with a thinner valise than they took away. He was still dwelling on the thought of the depths of misery to which highly respectable folks can sink without the knowledge of the nearest neighbours, when Abel came back looking greatly troubled. "It is the saddest thing I ever heard of," said he. "These men must have been driven wild by misery. This room is sumptuous in comparison to the ones at the back; and as for the pantry, there is not even a scrap there a mouse could eat. I struck a match and glanced into the flour barrel. It looked as if it had been licked. I declare, it makes a fellow feel sick." The constable, with a shudder, withdrew towards the door. "The atmosphere here is stifling," said he. "I must have a breath of out-door air." But he was not destined to any such immediate relief. As he moved down the hall the form of a man darkened the doorway and he heard an anxious voice exclaim: "Ah, Mr. Fenton, is that you? I have been looking for you everywhere." It was Sweetwater, the young man who had previously shown so much anxiety to be of service to the coroner. Mr. Fenton looked displeased. "And how came you to find me here?" he asked. "Oh, some men saw you take this road, and I guessed the rest." "Oh, ah, very good. And what do you want, Sweetwater?" The young man, who was glowing with pride and all alive with an enthusiasm which he had kept suppressed for hours, slipped up to the constable and whispered in his ear: "I have made a discovery, sir. I know you will excuse the presumption, but I couldn't bring myself to keep quiet and follow in that other fellow's wake. I had to make investigations on my own account, and--and"--stammering in his eagerness "they have been successful, sir. I have found out who was the murderer of Agatha Webb." The constable, compassionating the disappointment in store for him, shook his head, with a solemn look toward the room from which he had just emerged. "You are late, Sweetwater," said he. "We have found him out ourselves, and he lies there, dead." It was dark where they stood and Sweetwater's back was to the moonlight, so that the blank look which must have crossed his face at this announcement was lost upon the constable. But his consternation was evident from the way he thrust out either hand to steady himself against the walls of the narrow passageway, and Mr. Fenton was not at all surprised to hear him stammer out: "Dead! He! Whom do you mean by he, Mr. Fenton?" "The man in whose house we now are," returned the other. "Is there anyone else who can be suspected of this crime?" Sweetwater gave a gulp that seemed to restore him to himself. "There are two men living here, both very good men, I have heard. Which of them do you mean, and why do you think that either John or James Zabel killed Agatha Webb?" For reply Mr. Fenton drew him toward the room in which such a great heart-tragedy had taken place. "Look," said he, "and see what can happen in a Christian land, in the midst of Christian people living not fifty rods away. These men are dead, Sweetwater, dead from hunger. The loaf of bread you see there came too late. It was bought with a twenty-dollar bill, taken from Agatha Webb's cupboard drawer." Sweetwater, to whom the whole scene seemed like some horrible nightmare, stared at the figure of James lying on the floor, and then at the figure of John seated at the table, as if his mind had failed to take in the constable's words. "Dead!" he murmured. "Dead! John and James Zabel. What will happen next? Is the town under a curse?" And he fell on his knees before the prostrate form of James, only to start up again as he saw the eyes of Knapp resting on him. "Ah," he muttered, "the detective!" And after giving the man from Boston a close look he turned toward Mr. Fenton. "You said something about this good old man having killed Agatha Webb. What was it? I was too dazed to take it in." Mr. Fenton, not understanding the young man's eagerness, but willing enough to enlighten him as to the situation, told him what reasons there were for ascribing the crime in the Webb cottage to the mad need of these starving men. Sweetwater listened with open eyes and confused bearing, only controlling himself when his eyes by chance fell upon the quiet figure of the detective, now moving softly to and fro through the room. "But why murder when he could have had his loaf for the asking?" remonstrated Sweetwater. "Agatha Webb would have gone without a meal any time to feed a wandering tramp; how much more to supply the necessities of two of her oldest and dearest friends!" "Yes," remarked Fenton, "but you forget or perhaps never knew that the master passion of these men was pride. James Zabel ask for bread! I can much sooner imagine him stealing it; yes, or striking a blow for it, so that the blow shut forever the eyes that saw him do it." "You don't believe your own words, Mr. Fenton. How can you?" Sweetwater's hand was on the breast of the accused man as he spoke, and his manner was almost solemn. "You must not take it for granted," he went on, his green eyes twinkling with a curious light, "that all wisdom comes from Boston. We in Sutherlandtown have some sparks of it, if they have not yet been recognised. You are satisfied"--here he addressed himself to Knapp--"that the blow which killed Agatha Webb was struck by this respectable old man?" Knapp smiled as if a child had asked him this question; but he answered him good-humouredly enough. "You see the dagger lying here with which the deed was done, and you see the bread that was bought from Loton with a twenty-dollar bill of Agatha Webb's money. In these you can read my answer." "Good evidence," acknowledged Sweetwater--"very good evidence, especially when we remember that Mr. Crane met an old man rushing from her gateway with something glittering in his hand. I never was so beat in my life, and yet--and yet--if I could have a few minutes of quiet thought all by myself I am certain I could show you that there is more to this matter than you think. Indeed, I know that there is, but I do not like to give my reasons till I have conquered the difficulties presented by these men having had the twenty-dollar bill." "What fellow is this?" suddenly broke in Knapp. "A fiddler, a nobody," quietly whispered Mr. Fenton in his ear. Sweetwater heard him and changed in a twinkling from the uncertain, half-baffled, wholly humble person they had just seen, to a man with a purpose strong enough to make him hold up his head with the best. "I am a musician," he admitted, "and I play on the violin for money whenever the occasion offers, something which you will yet congratulate yourselves upon if you wish to reach the root of this mysterious and dastardly crime. But that I am a nobody I deny, and I even dare to hope that you will agree with me in this estimate of myself before this very night is over. Only give me an opportunity for considering this subject, and the permission to walk for a few minutes about this house." "That is my prerogative," protested the detective firmly, but without any display of feeling. "I am the man employed to pick up whatever clews the place may present." "Have you picked up all that are to be found in this room?" asked Sweetwater calmly. Knapp shrugged his shoulders. He was very well satisfied with himself. "Then give me a chance," prayed Sweetwater. "Mr. Fenton," he urged more earnestly, "I am not the fool you take me for. I feel, I know, I have a genius for this kind of thing, and though I am not prepossessing to look at, and though I do play the fiddle, I swear there are depths to this affair which none of you have as yet sounded. Sirs, where are the nine hundred and eighty dollars in bills which go to make up the clean thousand that was taken from the small drawer at the back of Agatha Webb's cupboard?" "They are in some secret hiding-place, no doubt, which we will presently come upon as we go through the house," answered Knapp. "Umph! Then I advise you to put your hand on them as soon as possible," retorted Sweetwater. "I will confine myself to going over the ground you have already investigated." And with a sudden ignoring of the others' presence, which could only have sprung from an intense egotism or from an overwhelming belief in his own theory, he began an investigation of the room that threw the other's more commonplace efforts entirely in the shade. Knapp, with a slight compression of his lips, which was the sole expression of anger he ever allowed himself, took up his hat and made his bow to Mr. Fenton. "I see," said he, "that the sympathy of those present is with local talent. Let local talent work, then, sir, and when you feel the need of a man of training and experience, send to the tavern on the docks, where I will be found till I am notified that my services are no longer required." "No, no!" protested Mr. Fenton. "This boy's enthusiasm will soon evaporate. Let him fuss away if he will. His petty business need not interrupt us." "But he understands himself," whispered Knapp. "I should think he had been on our own force for years." "All the more reason to see what he's up to. Wait, if only to satisfy your curiosity. I shan't let many minutes go by before I pull him up." Knapp, who was really of a cold and unimpressionable temperament, refrained from further argument, and confined himself to watching the young man, whose movements seemed to fascinate him. "Astonishing!" Mr. Fenton heard him mutter to himself. "He's more like an eel than a man." And indeed the way Sweetwater wound himself out and in through that room, seeing everything that came under his eye, was a sight well worth any professional's attention. Pausing before the dead man on the floor, he held the lantern close to the white, worn face. "Ha!" said he, picking something from the long beard, "here's a crumb of that same bread. Did you see that, Mr. Knapp?" The question was so sudden and so sharp that the detective came near replying to it; but he bethought himself, and said nothing. "That settles which of the two gnawed the loaf," continued Sweetwater. The next minute he was hovering over the still more pathetic figure of John, sitting in the chair. "Sad! Sad!" he murmured. Suddenly he laid his finger on a small rent in the old man's faded vest. "You saw this, of course," said he, with a quick glance over his shoulder at the silent detective. No answer, as before. "It's a new slit," declared the officious youth, looking closer, "and--yes--there's blood on its edges. Here, take the lantern, Mr. Fenton, I must see how the skin looks underneath. Oh, gentlemen, no shirt! The poorest dockhand has a shirt! Brocaded vest and no shirt; but he's past our pity now. Ah, only a bruise over the heart. Sirs, what did you make out of this?" As none of them had even seen it, Knapp was not the only one to remain silent. "Shall I tell you what I make out of it?" said the lad, rising hurriedly from the floor, which he had as hurriedly examined. "This old man has tried to take his life with the dagger already wet with the blood of Agatha Webb. But his arm was too feeble. The point only pierced the vest, wiping off a little blood in its passage, then the weapon fell from his hand and struck the floor, as you will see by the fresh dent in the old board I am standing on. Have you anything to say against these simple deductions?" Again the detective opened his lips and might have spoken, but Sweetwater gave him no chance. "Where is the letter he was writing?" he demanded. "Have any of you seen any paper lying about here?" "He was not writing," objected Knapp; "he was reading; reading in that old Bible you see there." Sweetwater caught up the book, looked it over, and laid it down, with that same curious twinkle of his eye they had noted in him before. "He was writing," he insisted. "See, here is his pencil." And he showed them the battered end of a small lead-pencil lying on the edge of his chair. "Writing at some time," admitted Knapp. "Writing just before the deed," insisted Sweetwater. "Look at the fingers of his right hand. They have not moved since the pencil fell out of them." "The letter, or whatever it was, shall be looked for," declared the constable. Sweetwater bowed, his eyes roving restlessly into every nook and corner of the room. "James was the stronger of the two," he remarked; "yet there is no evidence that he made any attempt at suicide." "How do you know that it was suicide John attempted?" asked someone. "Why might not the dagger have fallen from James's hand in an effort to kill his brother?" "Because the dent in the floor would have been to the right of the chair instead of to the left," he returned. "Besides, James's hand would not have failed so utterly, since he had strength to pick up the weapon afterward and lay it where you found it." "True, we found it lying on the table," observed Abel, scratching his head in forced admiration of his old schoolmate. "All easy, very easy," Sweetwater remarked, seeing the wonder in every eye. "Matters like those are for a child's reading, but what is difficult, and what I find hard to come by, is how the twenty-dollar bill got into the old man's hand. He found it here, but how--" "Found it here? How do you know that?" "Gentlemen, that is a point I will make clear to you later, when I have laid my hand on a certain clew I am anxiously seeking. You know this is new work for me and I have to advance warily. Did any of you gentlemen, when you came into this room, detect the faintest odour of any kind of perfume?" "Perfume?" echoed Abel, with a glance about the musty apartment. "Rats, rather." Sweetwater shook his head with a discouraged air, but suddenly brightened, and stepping quickly across the floor, paused at one of the windows. It was that one in which the shade had been drawn. Peering at this shade he gave a grunt. "You must excuse me for a minute," said he; "I have not found what I wanted in this room and now must look outside for it. Will someone bring the lantern?" "I will," volunteered Knapp, with grim good humour. Indeed, the situation was almost ludicrous to him. "Bring it round the house, then, to the ground under this window," ordered Sweetwater, without giving any sign that he noticed or even recognised the other's air of condescension. "And, gentlemen, please don't follow. It's footsteps I am after, and the fewer we make ourselves, the easier will it be for me to establish the clew I am after." Mr. Fenton stared. What had got into the fellow? The lantern gone, the room resumed its former appearance. Abel, who had been much struck by Sweetwater's mysterious manoeuvres, drew near Dr. Talbot and whispered in his ear: "We might have done without that fellow from Boston." To which the coroner replied: "Perhaps so, and perhaps not. Sweetwater has not yet proved his case; let us wait till he explains himself." Then, turning to the constable, he showed him an old-fashioned miniature, which he had found lying on James's breast, when he made his first examination. It was set with pearls and backed with gold and was worth many meals, for the lack of which its devoted owner had perished. "Agatha Webb's portrait," explained Talbot, "or rather Agatha Gilchrist's; for I presume this was painted when she and James were lovers." "She was certainly a beauty," commented Fenton, as he bent over the miniature in the moonlight. "I do not wonder she queened it over the whole country." "He must have worn it where I found it for the last forty years," mused the doctor. "And yet men say that love is a fleeting passion. Well, after coming upon this proof of devotion, I find it impossible to believe James Zabel accountable for the death of one so fondly remembered. Sweetwater's instinct was truer than Knapp's." "Or ours," muttered Fenton. "Gentlemen," interposed Abel, pointing to a bright spot that just then made its appearance in the dark outline of the shade before alluded to, "do you see that hole? It was the sight of that prick in the shade which sent Sweetwater outside looking for footprints. See! Now his eye is to it" (as the bright spot became suddenly eclipsed). "We are under examination, sirs, and the next thing we will hear is that he's not the only person who's been peering into this room through that hole." He was so far right that the first words of Sweetwater on his re-entrance were: "It's all O. K., sirs. I have found my missing clew. James Zabel was not the only person who came up here from the Webb cottage last night." And turning to Knapp, who was losing some of his supercilious manner, he asked, with significant emphasis: "If, of the full amount stolen from Agatha Webb, you found twenty dollars in the possession of one man and nine hundred and eighty dollars in the possession of another, upon which of the two would you fix as the probable murderer of the good woman?" "Upon him who held the lion's share, of course." "Very good; then it is not in this cottage you will find the person most wanted. You must look--But there! first let me give you a glimpse of the money. Is there anyone here ready to accompany me in search of it? I shall have to take him a quarter of a mile farther up-hill." "You have seen the money? You know where it is?" asked Dr. Talbot and Mr. Fenton in one breath. "Gentlemen, I can put my hand on it in ten minutes." At this unexpected and somewhat startling statement Knapp looked at Dr. Talbot and Dr. Talbot looked at the constable, but only the last spoke. "That is saying a good deal. But no matter. I am willing to credit the assertion. Lead on, Sweetwater; I'll go with you." Sweetwater seemed to grow an inch taller in his satisfied vanity. "And Dr. Talbot?" he suggested. But the coroner's duty held him to the house and he decided not to accompany them. Knapp and Abel, however, yielded to the curiosity which had been aroused by these extraordinary promises, and presently the four men mentioned started on their small expedition up the hill. Sweetwater headed the procession. He had admonished silence, and his wish in this regard was so well carried out that they looked more like a group of spectres moving up the moon-lighted road, than a party of eager and impatient men. Not till they turned into the main thoroughfare did anyone speak. Then Abel could no longer restrain himself and he cried out: "We are going to Mr. Sutherland's." But Sweetwater quickly undeceived him. "No," said he, "only into the woods opposite his house." But at this Mr. Fenton drew him back. "Are you sure of yourself?" he said. "Have you really seen this money and is it concealed in this forest?" "I have seen the money," Sweetwater solemnly declared, "and it is hidden in these woods." Mr. Fenton dropped his arm, and they moved on till their way was blocked by the huge trunk of a fallen tree. "It is here we are to look," cried Sweetwater, pausing and motioning Knapp to turn his lantern on the spot where the shadows lay thickest. "Now, what do you see?" he asked. "The upturned roots of a great tree," said Mr. Fenton. "And under them?" "A hole, or, rather, the entrance to one." "Very good; the money is in that hole. Pull it out, Mr. Fenton." The assurance with which Sweetwater spoke was such that Mr. Fenton at once stooped and plunged his hand into the hole. But when, after a hurried search, he drew it out again, there was nothing in it; the place was empty. Sweetwater stared at Mr. Fenton amazed. "Don't you find anything?" he asked. "Isn't there a roll of bills in that hole?" "No," was the gloomy answer, after a renewed attempt and a second disappointment. "There is nothing to be found here. You are labouring under some misapprehension, Sweetwater." "But I can't be. I saw the money; saw it in the hand of the person who hid it there. Let me look for it, constable. I will not give up the search till I have turned the place topsy-turvy." Kneeling down in Mr. Fenton's place, he thrust his hand into the hole. On either side of him peered the faces of Mr. Fenton and Knapp. (Abel had slipped away at a whisper from Sweetwater.) They were lit with a similar expression of anxious interest and growing doubt. His own countenance was a study of conflicting and by no means cheerful emotions. Suddenly his aspect changed. With a quick twist of his lithe, if awkward, body, he threw himself lengthwise on the ground, and began tearing at the earth inside the hole, like a burrowing animal. "I cannot be mistaken. Nothing will make me believe it is not here. It has simply been buried deeper than I thought. Ah! What did I tell you? See here! And see here!" Bringing his hands into the full blaze of the light, he showed two rolls of new, crisp bills. "They were lying under half a foot of earth," said he, "but if they had been buried as deep as Grannie Fuller's well, I'd have unearthed them." Meantime Mr. Fenton was rapidly counting one roll and Knapp the other. The result was an aggregate sum of nine hundred and eighty dollars, just the amount Sweetwater had promised to show them. "A good stroke of business," cried Mr. Fenton. "And now, Sweetwater, whose is the hand that buried this treasure? Nothing is to be gained by preserving silence on this point any longer." Instantly the young man became very grave. With a quick glance around which seemed to embrace the secret recesses of the forest rather than the eager faces bending towards him, he lowered his voice and quietly said: "The hand that buried this money under the roots of this old tree is the same which you saw pointing downward at the spot of blood in Agatha Webb's front yard." "You do not mean Amabel Page!" cried Mr. Fenton, with natural surprise. "Yes, I do; and I am glad it is you who have named her." XVII THE SLIPPERS, THE FLOWER, AND WHAT SWEETWATER MADE OF THEM A half-hour later these men were all closeted with Dr. Talbot in the Zabel kitchen. Abel had rejoined them, and Sweetwater was telling his story with great earnestness and no little show of pride. "Gentlemen, when I charge a young woman of respectable appearance and connections with such a revolting crime as murder, I do so with good reason, as I hope presently to make plain to you all. "Gentlemen, on the night and at the hour Agatha Webb was killed, I was playing with four other musicians in Mr. Sutherland's hallway. From the place where I sat I could see what went on in the parlour and also have a clear view of the passageway leading down to the garden door. As the dancing was going on in the parlour I naturally looked that way most, and this is how I came to note the eagerness with which, during the first part of the evening, Frederick Sutherland and Amabel Page came together in the quadrilles and country dances. Sometimes she spoke as she passed him, and sometimes he answered, but not always, although he never failed to show he was pleased with her or would have been if something--perhaps it was his lack of confidence in her, sirs--had not stood in the way of a perfect understanding. She seemed to notice that he did not always respond, and after a while showed less inclination to speak herself, though she did not fail to watch him, and that intently. But she did not watch him any more closely than I did her, though I little thought at the time what would come of my espionage. She wore a white dress and white shoes, and was as coquettish and seductive as the evil one makes them. Suddenly I missed her. She was in the middle of the dance one minute and entirely out of it the next. Naturally I supposed her to have slipped aside with Frederick Sutherland, but he was still in sight, looking so pale and so abstracted, however, I was sure the young miss was up to some sort of mischief. But what mischief? Watching and waiting, but no longer confining my attention to the parlour, I presently espied her stealing along the passageway I have mentioned, carrying a long cloak which she rolled up and hid behind the open door. Then she came back humming a gay little song which didn't deceive me for a moment. 'Good!' thought I, 'she and that cloak will soon join company.' And they did. As we were playing the Harebell mazurka I again caught sight of her stealthy white figure in that distant doorway. Seizing the cloak, she wrapped it round her, and with just one furtive look backwards, seen, I warrant, by no one but myself, she vanished in the outside dark. 'Now to note who follows her!' But nobody followed her. This struck me as strange, and having a natural love for detective work, in spite of my devotion to the arts, I consulted the clock at the foot of the stairs, and noting that it was half-past eleven, scribbled the hour on the margin of my music, with the intention of seeing how long my lady would linger outside alone. Gentlemen, it was two hours before I saw her face again. How she got back into the house I do not know. It was not by the garden door, for my eye seldom left it; yet at or near half-past one I heard her voice on the stair above me and saw her descend and melt into the crowd as if she had not been absent from it for more than five minutes. A half-hour later I saw her with Frederick again. They were dancing, but not with the same spirit as before, and even while I watched them they separated. Now where was Miss Page during those two long hours? I think I know, and it is time I unburdened myself to the police. "But first I must inform you of a small discovery I made while the dance was still in progress. Miss Page had descended the stairs, as I have said, from what I now know to have been her own room. Her dress was, in all respects, the same as before, with one exception--her white slippers had been exchanged for blue ones. This seemed to show that they had been rendered unserviceable, or at least unsightly, by the walk she had taken. This in itself was not remarkable nor would her peculiar escapade have made more than a temporary impression upon my curiosity if she had not afterward shown in my presence such an unaccountable and extraordinary interest in the murder which had taken place in the town below during the very hours of her absence from Mr. Sutherland's ball. This, in consideration of her sex, and her being a stranger to the person attacked, was remarkable, and, though perhaps I had no business to do what I did, I no sooner saw the house emptied of master and servants than I stole softly back, and climbed the stairs to her room. Had no good followed this intrusion, which, I am quite ready to acknowledge, was a trifle presumptuous, I would have held my peace in regard to it; but as I did make a discovery there, which has, as I believe, an important bearing on this affair, I have forced myself to mention it. The lights in the house having been left burning, I had no difficulty in finding her apartment. I knew it by the folderols scattered about. But I did not stop to look at them. I was on a search for her slippers, and presently came upon them, thrust behind an old picture in the dimmest corner of the room. Taking them down, I examined them closely. They were not only soiled, gentlemen, but dreadfully cut and rubbed. In short, they were ruined, and, thinking that the young lady herself would be glad to be rid of them, I quietly put them into my pocket, and carried them to my own home. Abel has just been for them, so you can see them for yourselves, and if your judgment coincides with mine, you will discover something more on them than mud." Dr. Talbot, though he stared a little at the young man's confessed theft, took the slippers Abel was holding out and carefully turned them over. They were, as Sweetwater had said, grievously torn and soiled, and showed, beside several deep earth-stains, a mark or two of a bright red colour, quite unmistakable in its character. "Blood," declared the coroner. "There is no doubt about it. Miss Page was where blood was spilled last night." "I have another proof against her," Sweetwater went on, in full enjoyment of his prominence amongst these men, who, up to now, had barely recognised his existence. "When, full of the suspicion that Miss Page had had a hand in the theft which had taken place at Mrs. Webb's house, if not in the murder that accompanied it, I hastened down to the scene of the tragedy, I met this young woman issuing from the front gate. She had just been making herself conspicuous by pointing out a trail of blood on the grass plot. Dr. Talbot, who was there, will remember how she looked on that occasion; but I doubt if he noticed how Abel here looked, or so much as remarked the faded flower the silly boy had stuck in his buttonhole." "--me if I did!" ejaculated the coroner. "Yet that flower has a very important bearing on this case. He had found it, as he will tell you, on the floor near Batsy's skirts, and as soon as I saw it in his coat, I bade him take it out and keep it, for, gentlemen, it was a very uncommon flower, the like of which can only be found in this town in Mr. Sutherland's conservatory. I remember seeing such a one in Miss Page's hair, early in the evening. Have you that flower about you, Abel?" Abel had, and being filled with importance too, showed it to the doctor and to Mr. Fenton. It was withered and faded in hue, but it was unmistakably an orchid of the rarest description. "It was lying near Batsy," explained Abel. "I drew Mr. Fenton's attention to it at the time, but he scarcely noticed it." "I will make up for my indifference now," said that gentleman. "I should have been shown that flower," put in Knapp. "So you should," acknowledged Sweetwater, "but when the detective instinct is aroused it is hard for a man to be just to his rivals; besides, I was otherwise occupied. I had Miss Page to watch. Happily for me, you had decided that she should not be allowed to leave town till after the inquest, and so my task became easy. This whole day I have spent in sight of Mr. Sutherland's house, and at nightfall I was rewarded by detecting her end a prolonged walk in the garden by a hurried dash into the woods opposite. I followed her and noted carefully all that she did. As she had just seen Frederick Sutherland and Miss Halliday disappear up the road together, she probably felt free to do as she liked, for she walked very directly to the old tree we have just come from, and kneeling down beside it pulled from the hole underneath something which rattled in her hand with that peculiar sound we associate with fresh bank-notes. I had approached her as near as I dared, and was peering around a tree trunk, when she stooped down again and plunged both hands into the hole. She remained in this position so long that I did not know what to make of it. But she rose at last and turned toward home, laughing to herself in a wicked but pleased way that did not tend to make me think any more of her. The moon was shining very brightly by this time and I could readily perceive every detail of her person. She held her hands out before her and shook them more than once as she trod by me, so I was sure there was nothing in them, and this is why I was so confident we should find the money still in the hole. "When I saw her enter the house, I set out to find you, but the court-house room was empty, and it was a long time before I learned where to look for you. But at last a fellow at Brighton's corner said he saw four men go by on their way to Zabel's cottage, and on the chance of finding you amongst them, I turned down here. The shock you gave me in announcing that you had discovered the murderer of Agatha Webb knocked me over for a moment, but now I hope you realise, as I do, that this wretched man could never have had an active hand in her death, notwithstanding the fact that one of the stolen bills has been found in his possession. For, and here is my great point, the proof is not wanting that Miss Page visited this house as well as Mrs. Webb's during her famous escapade; or at least stood under the window beneath which I have just been searching. A footprint can be seen there, sirs, a very plain footprint, and if Dr. Talbot will take the trouble to compare it with the slipper he holds in his hand, he will find it to have been made by the foot that wore that slipper." The coroner, with a quick glance from the slipper in his hand up to Sweetwater's eager face, showed a decided disposition to make the experiment thus suggested. But Mr. Fenton, whose mind was full of the Zabel tragedy, interrupted them with the question: "But how do you explain by this hypothesis the fact of James Zabel trying to pass one of the twenty-dollar bills stolen from Mrs. Webb's cupboard? Do you consider Miss Page generous enough to give him that money?" "You ask ME that, Mr. Fenton. Do you wish to know what _I_ think of the connection between these two great tragedies?" "Yes; you have earned a voice in this matter; speak, Sweetwater." "Well, then, I think Miss Page has made an effort to throw the blame of her own misdoing on one or both of these unfortunate old men. She is sufficiently cold-blooded and calculating to do so; and circumstances certainly favoured her. Shall I show how?" Mr. Fenton consulted Knapp, who nodded his head. The Boston detective was not without curiosity as to how Sweetwater would prove the case. "Old James Zabel had seen his brother sinking rapidly from inanition; this their condition amply shows. He was weak himself, but John was weaker, and in a moment of desperation he rushed out to ask a crumb of bread from Agatha Webb, or possibly--for I have heard some whispers of an old custom of theirs to join Philemon at his yearly merry-making and so obtain in a natural way the bite for himself and brother he perhaps had not the courage to ask for outright. But death had been in the Webb cottage before him, which awful circumstance, acting on his already weakened nerves, drove him half insane from the house and sent him wandering blindly about the streets for a good half-hour before he reappeared in his own house. How do I know this? From a very simple fact. Abel here has been to inquire, among other things, if Mr. Crane remembers the tune we were playing at the great house when he came down the main street from visiting old widow Walker. Fortunately he does, for the trip, trip, trip in it struck his fancy, and he has found himself humming it over more than once since. Well, that waltz was played by us at a quarter after midnight, which fixes the time of the encounter at Mrs. Webb's gateway pretty accurately. But, as you will soon see, it was ten minutes to one before James Zabel knocked at Loton's door. How do I know this? By the same method of reasoning by which I determined the time of Mr. Crane's encounter. Mrs. Loton was greatly pleased with the music played that night, and had all her windows open in order to hear it, and she says we were playing 'Money Musk' when that knocking came to disturb her. Now, gentlemen, we played 'Money Musk' just before we were called out to supper, and as we went to supper promptly at one, you can see just how my calculation was made. Thirty-five minutes, then, passed between the moment James Zabel was seen rushing from Mrs. Webb's gateway and that in which he appeared at Loton's bakery, demanding a loaf of bread, and offering in exchange one of the bills which had been stolen from the murdered woman's drawer. Thirty-five minutes! And he and his brother were starving. Does it look, then, as if that money was in his possession when he left Mrs. Webb's house? Would any man who felt the pangs of hunger as he did, or who saw a brother perishing for food before his eyes, allow thirty-five minutes to elapse before he made use of the money that rightfully or wrongfully had come into his hand? No; and so I say that he did not have it when Mr. Crane met him. That, instead of committing crime to obtain it, he found it in his own home, lying on his table, when, after his frenzied absence, he returned to tell his dreadful news to the brother he had left behind him. But how did it come there? you ask. Gentlemen, remember the footprints under the window. Amabel Page brought it. Having seen or perhaps met this old man roaming in or near the Webb cottage during the time she was there herself, she conceived the plan of throwing upon him the onus of the crime she had herself committed, and with a slyness to be expected from one so crafty, stole up to his home, made a hole in the shade hanging over an open window, looked into the room where John sat, saw that he was there alone and asleep, and, creeping in by the front door, laid on the table beside him the twenty-dollar bill and the bloody dagger with which she had just slain Agatha Webb. Then she stole out again, and in twenty minutes more was leading the dance in Mr. Sutherland's parlour." "Well reasoned!" murmured Abel, expecting the others to echo him. But, though Mr. Fenton and Dr. Talbot looked almost convinced, they said nothing, while Knapp, of course, was quiet as an oyster. Sweetwater, with an easy smile calculated to hide his disappointment, went on as if perfectly satisfied. "Meanwhile John awakes, sees the dagger, and thinks to end his misery with it, but finds himself too feeble. The cut in his vest, the dent in the floor, prove this, but if you call for further proof, a little fact, which some, if not all, of you seem to have overlooked, will amply satisfy you that this one at least of my conclusions is correct. Open the Bible, Abel; open it, not to shake it for what will never fall from between its leaves, but to find in the Bible itself the lines I have declared to you he wrote as a dying legacy with that tightly clutched pencil. Have you found them?" "No," was Abel's perplexed retort; "I cannot see any sign of writing on flyleaf or margin." "Are those the only blank places in the sacred book? Search the leaves devoted to the family record. Now! what do you find there?" Knapp, who was losing some of his indifference, drew nearer and read for himself the scrawl which now appeared to every eye on the discoloured page which Abel here turned uppermost. "Almost illegible," he said; "one can just make out these words: 'Forgive me, James--tried to use dagger--found lying--but hand wouldn't--dying without--don't grieve--true men--haven't disgraced ourselves--God bless--' That is all." "The effort must have overcome him," resumed Sweetwater in a voice from which he carefully excluded all signs of secret triumph, "and when James returned, as he did a few minutes later, he was evidently unable to ask questions, even if John was in a condition to answer them. But the fallen dagger told its own story, for James picked it up and put it back on the table, and it was at this minute he saw, what John had not, the twenty-dollar bill lying there with its promise of life and comfort. Hope revives; he catches up the bill, flies down to Loton's, procures a loaf of bread, and comes frantically back, gnawing it as he runs; for his own hunger is more than he can endure. Re-entering his brother's presence, he rushes forward with the bread. But the relief has come too late; John has died in his absence; and James, dizzy with the shock, reels back and succumbs to his own misery. Gentlemen, have you anything to say in contradiction to these various suppositions?" For a moment Dr. Talbot, Mr. Fenton, and even Knapp stood silent; then the last remarked, with pardonable dryness: "All this is ingenious, but, unfortunately, it is up set by a little fact which you yourself have overlooked. Have you examined attentively the dagger of which you have so often spoken, Mr. Sweetwater?" "Not as I would like to, but I noticed it had blood on its edge, and was of the shape and size necessary to inflict the wound from which Mrs. Webb died." "Very good, but there is something else of interest to be observed on it. Fetch it, Abel." Abel, hurrying from the room, soon brought back the weapon in question. Sweetwater, with a vague sense of disappointment disturbing him, took it eagerly and studied it very closely. But he only shook his head. "Bring it nearer to the light," suggested Knapp, "and examine the little scroll near the top of the handle." Sweetwater did so, and at once changed colour. In the midst of the scroll were two very small but yet perfectly distinct letters; they were J. Z. "How did Amabel Page come by a dagger marked with the Zabel initials?" questioned Knapp. "Do you think her foresight went so far as to provide herself with a dagger ostensibly belonging to one of these brothers? And then, have you forgotten that when Mr. Crane met the old man at Mrs. Webb's gateway he saw in his hand something that glistened? Now what was that, if not this dagger?" Sweetwater was more disturbed than he cared to acknowledge. "That just shows my lack of experience," he grumbled. "I thought I had turned this subject so thoroughly over in my mind that no one could bring an objection against it." Knapp shook his head and smiled. "Young enthusiasts like yourself are great at forming theories which well-seasoned men like myself must regard as fantastical. However," he went on, "there is no doubt that Miss Page was a witness to, even if she has not profited by, the murder we have been considering. But, with this palpable proof of the Zabels' direct connection with the affair, I would not recommend her arrest as yet." "She should be under surveillance, though," intimated the coroner. "Most certainly," acquiesced Knapp. As for Sweetwater, he remained silent till the opportunity came for him to whisper apart to Dr. Talbot, when he said: "For all the palpable proof of which Mr. Knapp speaks--the J. Z. on the dagger, and the possibility of this being the object he was seen carrying out of Philemon Webb's gate--I maintain that this old man in his moribund condition never struck the blow that killed Agatha Webb. He hadn't strength enough, even if his lifelong love for her had not been sufficient to prevent him." The coroner looked thoughtful. "You are right," said he; "he hadn't strength enough. But don't expend too much energy in talk. Wait and see what a few direct questions will elicit from Miss Page." XVIII SOME LEADING QUESTIONS Frederick rose early. He had slept but little. The words he had overheard at the end of the lot the night before were still ringing in his ears. Going down the back stairs, in his anxiety to avoid Amabel, he came upon one of the stablemen. "Been to the village this morning?" he asked. "No, sir, but Lem has. There's great news there. I wonder if anyone has told Mr. Sutherland." "What news, Jake? I don't think my father is up yet." "Why, sir, there were two more deaths in town last night--the brothers Zabel; and folks do say (Lem heard it a dozen times between the grocery and the fish market) that it was one of these old men who killed Mrs. Webb. The dagger has been found in their house, and most of the money. Why, sir, what's the matter? Are you sick?" Frederick made an effort and stood upright. He had nearly fallen. "No; that is, I am not quite myself. So many horrors, Jake. What did they die of? You say they are both dead--both?" "Yes, sir, and it's dreadful to think of, but it was hunger, sir. Bread came too late. Both men are mere skeletons to look at. They have kept themselves close for weeks now, and nobody knew how bad off they were. I don't wonder it upset you, sir. We all feel it a bit, and I just dread to tell Mr. Sutherland." Frederick staggered away. He had never in his life been so near mental and physical collapse. At the threshold of the sitting-room door he met his father. Mr. Sutherland was looking both troubled and anxious; more so, Frederick thought, than when he signed the check for him on the previous night. As their eyes met, both showed embarrassment, but Frederick, whose nerves had been highly strung by what he had just heard, soon controlled himself, and surveying his father with forced calmness, began: "This is dreadful news, sir." But his father, intent on his own thought, hurriedly interrupted him. "You told me yesterday that everything was broken off between you and Miss Page. Yet I saw you reenter the house together last night a little while after I gave you the money you asked for." "I know, and it must have had a bad appearance. I entreat you, however, to believe that this meeting between Miss Page and myself was against my wish, and that the relations between us have not been affected by anything that passed between us." "I am glad to hear it, my son. You could not do worse by yourself than to return to your old devotion." "I agree with you, sir." And then, because he could not help it, Frederick inquired if he had heard the news. Mr. Sutherland, evidently startled, asked what news; to which Frederick replied: "The news about the Zabels. They are both dead, sir,--dead from hunger. Can you imagine it!" This was something so different from what his father had expected to hear, that he did not take it in at first. When he did, his surprise and grief were even greater than Frederick had anticipated. Seeing him so affected, Frederick, who thought that the whole truth would be no harder to bear than the half, added the suspicion which had been attached to the younger one's name, and then stood back, scarcely daring to be a witness to the outraged feelings which such a communication could not fail to awaken in one of his father's temperament. But though he thus escaped the shocked look which crossed his father's countenance, he could not fail to hear the indignant exclamation which burst from his lips, nor help perceiving that it would take more than the most complete circumstantial evidence to convince his father of the guilt of men he had known and respected for so many years. For some reason Frederick experienced great relief at this, and was bracing himself to meet the fire of questions which his statement must necessarily call forth, when the sound of approaching steps drew the attention of both towards a party of men coming up the hillside. Among them was Mr. Courtney, Prosecuting Attorney for the district, and as Mr. Sutherland recognised him he sprang forward, saying, "There's Courtney; he will explain this." Frederick followed, anxious and bewildered, and soon had the doubtful pleasure of seeing his father enter his study in company with the four men considered to be most interested in the elucidation of the Webb mystery. As he was lingering in an undecided mood in the small passageway leading up-stairs he felt the pressure of a finger on his shoulder. Looking up, he met the eyes of Amabel, who was leaning toward him over the banisters. She was smiling, and, though her face was not without evidences of physical languor, there was a charm about her person which would have been sufficiently enthralling to him twenty-four hours before, but which now caused him such a physical repulsion that he started back in the effort to rid his shoulder from her disturbing touch. She frowned. It was an instantaneous expression of displeasure which was soon lost in one of her gurgling laughs. "Is my touch so burdensome?" she demanded. "If the pressure of one finger is so unbearable to your sensitive nerves, how will you relish the weight of my whole hand?" There was a fierceness in her tone, a purpose in her look, that for the first time in his struggle with her revealed the full depth of her dark nature. Shrinking from her appalled, he put up his hand in protest, at which she changed again in a twinkling, and with a cautious gesture toward the room into which Mr. Sutherland and his friends had disappeared, she whispered significantly: "We may not have another chance to confer together. Understand, then, that it will not be necessary for you to tell me, in so many words, that you are ready to link your fortunes to mine; the taking off of the ring you wear and your slow putting of it on again, in my presence, will be understood by me as a token that you have reconsidered your present attitude and desire my silence and--myself." Frederick could not repress a shudder. For an instant he was tempted to succumb on the spot and have the long agony over. Then his horror of the woman rose to such a pitch that he uttered an execration, and, turning away from her face, which was rapidly growing loathsome to him, he ran out of the passageway into the garden, seeing as he ran a persistent vision of himself pulling off the ring and putting it back again, under the spell of a look he rebelled against even while he yielded to its influence. "I will not wear a ring, I will not subject myself to the possibility of obeying her behest under a sudden stress of fear or fascination," he exclaimed, pausing by the well-curb and looking over it at his reflection in the water beneath. "If I drop it here I at least lose the horror of doing what she suggests, under some involuntary impulse." But the thought that the mere absence of the ring from his finger would not stand in the way of his going through the motions to which she had just given such significance, deterred him from the sacrifice of a valuable family jewel, and he left the spot with an air of frenzy such as a man displays when he feels himself on the verge of a doom he can neither meet nor avert. As he re-entered the house, he felt himself enveloped in the atmosphere of a coming crisis. He could hear voices in the upper hall, and amongst them he caught the accents of her he had learned so lately to fear. Impelled by something deeper than curiosity and more potent even than dread, he hastened toward the stairs. When half-way up, he caught sight of Amabel. She was leaning back against the balustrade that ran across the upper hall, with her hands gripping the rail on either side of her and her face turned toward the five men who had evidently issued from Mr. Sutherland's study to interview her. As her back was to Frederick he could not judge of the expression of that face save by the effect it had upon the different men confronting her. But to see them was enough. From their looks he could perceive that this young girl was in one of her baffling moods, and that from his father down, not one of the men present knew what to make of her. At the sound his feet made, a relaxation took place in her body and she lost something of the defiant attitude she had before maintained. Presently he heard her voice: "I am willing to answer any questions you may choose to put to me here; but I cannot consent to shut myself in with you in that small study; I should suffocate." Frederick could perceive the looks which passed between the five men assembled before her, and was astonished to note that the insignificant fellow they called Sweetwater was the first to answer. "Very well," said he; "if you enjoy the publicity of the open hall, no one here will object. Is not that so, gentlemen?" Her two little fingers, which were turned towards Frederick, ran up and down the rail, making a peculiar rasping noise, which for a moment was the only sound to be heard. Then Mr. Courtney said: "How came you to have the handling of the money taken from Agatha Webb's private drawer?" It was a startling question, but it seemed to affect Amabel less than it did Frederick. It made him start, but she only turned her head a trifle aside, so that the peculiar smile with which she prepared to answer could be seen by anyone standing below. "Suppose you ask something less leading than that, to begin with," she suggested, in her high, unmusical voice. "From the searching nature of this inquiry, you evidently believe I have information of an important character to give you concerning Mrs. Webb's unhappy death. Ask me about that; the other question I will answer later." The aplomb with which this was said, mixed as it was with a feminine allurement of more than ordinary subtlety, made Mr. Sutherland frown and Dr. Talbot look perplexed, but it did not embarrass Mr. Courtney, who made haste to respond in his dryest accents: "Very well, I am not particular as to what you answer first. A flower worn by you at the dance was found near Batsy's skirts, before she was lifted up that morning. Can you explain this, or, rather, will you?" "You are not obliged to, you know," put in Mr. Sutherland, with his inexorable sense of justice. "Still, if you would, it might rob these gentlemen of suspicions you certainly cannot wish them to entertain." "What I say," she remarked slowly, "will be as true to the facts as if I stood here on my oath. I can explain how a flower from my hair came to be in Mrs. Webb's house, but not how it came to be found under Batsy's feet. That someone else must clear up." Her little finger, lifted from the rail, pointed toward Frederick, but no one saw this, unless it was that gentleman himself. "I wore a purple orchid in my hair that night, and there would be nothing strange in its being afterward picked up in Mrs. Webb's house, because I was in that house at or near the time she was murdered." "You in that house?" "Yes, as far as the ground floor; no farther." Here the little finger stopped pointing. "I am ready to tell you about it, sirs, and only regret I have delayed doing so so long, but I wished to be sure it was necessary. Your presence here and your first question show that it is." There was suavity in her tone now, not unmixed with candour. Sweetwater did not seem to relish this, for he moved uneasily and lost a shade of his self-satisfied attitude. He had still to be made acquainted with all the ins and outs of this woman's remarkable nature. "We are waiting," suggested Dr. Talbot. She turned to face this new speaker, and Frederick was relieved from the sight of her tantalising smile. "I will tell my story simply," said she, "with the simple suggestion that you believe me; otherwise you will make a mistake. While I was resting from a dance the other night, I heard two of the young people talking about the Zabels. One of them was laughing at the old men, and the other was trying to relate some half-forgotten story of early love which had been the cause, she thought, of their strange and melancholy lives. I was listening to them, but I did not take in much of what they were saying till I heard behind me an irascible voice exclaiming: 'You laugh, do you? I wonder if you would laugh so easily if you knew that these two poor old men haven't had a decent meal in a fortnight?' I didn't know the speaker, but I was thrilled by his words. Not had a good meal, these men, for a fortnight! I felt as if personally guilty of their suffering, and, happening to raise my eyes at this minute and seeing through an open door the bountiful refreshments prepared for us in the supper room, I felt guiltier than ever. Suddenly I took a resolution. It was a queer one, and may serve to show you some of the oddities of my nature. Though I was engaged for the next dance, and though I was dressed in the flimsy garments suitable to the occasion, I decided to leave the ball and carry some sandwiches down to these old men. Procuring a bit of paper, I made up a bundle and stole out of the house without having said a word to anybody of my intention. Not wishing to be seen, I went out by the garden door, which is at the end of the dark hall--" "Just as the band was playing the Harebell mazurka," interpolated Sweetwater. Startled for the first time from her careless composure by an interruption of which it was impossible for her at that time to measure either the motive or the meaning, she ceased to play with her fingers on the baluster rail and let her eyes rest for a moment on the man who had thus spoken, as if she hesitated between her desire to annihilate him for his impertinence and a fear of the cold hate she saw actuating his every word and look. Then she went on, as if no one had spoken: "I ran down the hill recklessly. I was bent on my errand and not at all afraid of the dark. When I reached that part of the road where the streets branch off, I heard footsteps in front of me. I had overtaken someone. Slackening my pace, so that I should not pass this person, whom I instinctively knew to be a man, I followed him till I came to a high board fence. It was that surrounding Agatha Webb's house, and when I saw it I could not help connecting the rather stealthy gait of the man in front of me with a story I had lately heard of the large sum of money she was known to keep in her house. Whether this was before or after this person disappeared round the corner I cannot say, but no sooner had I become certain that he was bent upon entering this house than my impulse to follow him became greater than my precaution, and turning aside from the direct path to the Zabels', I hurried down High Street just in time to see the man enter Mrs. Webb's front gateway. "It was a late hour for visiting, but as the house had lights in both its lower and upper stories, I should by good rights have taken it for granted that he was an expected guest and gone on my way to the Zabels'. But I did not. The softness with which this person stepped and the skulking way in which he hesitated at the front gate aroused my worst fears, and after he had opened that gate and slid in, I was so pursued by the idea that he was there for no good that I stepped inside the gate myself and took my stand in the deep shadow cast by the old pear tree on the right-hand side of the walk. Did anyone speak?" There was a unanimous denial from the five gentlemen before her, yet she did not look satisfied. "I thought I heard someone make a remark," she repeated, and paused again for a half-minute, during which her smile was a study, it was so cold and in such startling contrast to the vivid glances she threw everywhere except behind her on the landing where Frederick stood listening to her every word. "We are very much interested," remarked Mr. Courtney. "Pray, go on." Drawing her left hand from the balustrade where it had rested, she looked at one of her fingers with an odd backward gesture. "I will," she said, and her tone was hard and threatening. "Five minutes, no longer, passed, when I was startled by a loud and terrible cry from the house, and looking up at the second-story window from which the sound proceeded, I saw a woman's figure hanging out in a seemingly pulseless condition. Too terrified to move, I clung trembling to the tree, hearing and not hearing the shouts and laughter of a dozen or more men, who at that minute passed by the corner on their way to the wharves. I was dazed, I was choking, and only came to myself when, sooner or later, I do not know how soon or how late, a fresh horror happened. The woman whom I had just seen fall almost from the window was a serving woman, but when I heard another scream I knew that the mistress of the house was being attacked, and rivetting my eyes on those windows, I beheld the shade of one of them thrown back and a hand appear, flinging out something which fell in the grass on the opposite side of the lawn. Then the shade fell again, and hearing nothing further, I ran to where the object flung out had fallen, and feeling for it, found and picked up an old-fashioned dagger, dripping with blood. Horrified beyond all expression, I dropped the weapon and retreated into my former place of concealment. "But I was not satisfied to remain there. A curiosity, a determination even, to see the man who had committed this dastardly deed, attacked me with such force that I was induced to leave my hiding-place and even to enter the house where in all probability he was counting the gains he had just obtained at the price of so much precious blood. The door, which he had not perfectly closed behind him, seemed to invite me in, and before I had realised my own temerity, I was standing in the hall of this ill-fated house." The interest, which up to this moment had been breathless, now expressed itself in hurried ejaculations and broken words; and Mr. Sutherland, who had listened like one in a dream, exclaimed eagerly, and in a tone which proved that he, for the moment at least, believed this more than improbable tale: "Then you can tell us if Philemon was in the little room at the moment when you entered the house?" As everyone there present realised the importance of this question, a general movement took place and each and all drew nearer as she met their eyes and answered placidly: "Yes; Mr. Webb was sitting in a chair asleep. He was the only person I saw." "Oh, I know he never committed this crime," gasped his old friend, in a relief so great that one and all seemed to share it. "Now I have courage for the rest. Go on, Miss Page." But Miss Page paused again to look at her finger, and give that sideways toss to her head that seemed so uncalled for by the situation to any who did not know of the compact between herself and the listening man below. "I hate to go back to that moment," said she; "for when I saw the candles burning on the table, and the husband of the woman who at that very instant was possibly breathing her last breath in the room overhead, sitting there in unconscious apathy, I felt something rise in my throat that made me deathly sick for a moment. Then I went right in where he was, and was about to shake his arm and wake him, when I detected a spot of blood on my finger from the dagger I had handled. That gave me another turn, and led me to wipe off my finger on his sleeve." "It's a pity you did not wipe off your slippers too," murmured Sweetwater. Again she looked at him, again her eyes opened in terror upon the face of this man, once so plain and insignificant in her eyes, but now so filled with menace she inwardly quaked before it, for all her apparent scorn. "Slippers," she murmured. "Did not your feet as well as your hands pass through the blood on the grass?" She disdained to answer him. "I have accounted for the blood on my hand," she said, not looking at him, but at Mr. Courtney. "If there is any on my slippers it can be accounted for in the same way." And she rapidly resumed her narrative. "I had no sooner made my little finger clean I never thought of anyone suspecting the old gentleman when I heard steps on the stairs and knew that the murderer was coming down, and in another instant would pass the open door before which I stood. "Though I had been courageous enough up to that minute, I was seized by a sudden panic at the prospect of meeting face to face one whose hands were perhaps dripping with the blood of his victim. To confront him there and then might mean death to me, and I did not want to die, but to live, for I am young, sirs, and not without a prospect of happiness before me. So I sprang back, and seeing no other place of concealment in the whole bare room, crouched down in the shadow of the man you call Philemon. For one, two minutes, I knelt there in a state of mortal terror, while the feet descended, paused, started to enter the room where I was, hesitated, turned, and finally left the house." "Miss Page, wait, wait," put in the coroner. "You saw him; you can tell who this man was?" The eagerness of this appeal seemed to excite her. A slight colour appeared in her cheeks and she took a step forward, but before the words for which they so anxiously waited could leave her lips, she gave a start and drew back with, an ejaculation which left a more or less sinister echo in the ears of all who heard it. Frederick had just shown himself at the top of the staircase. "Good-morning, gentlemen," said he, advancing into their midst with an air whose unexpected manliness disguised his inward agitation. "The few words I have just heard Miss Page say interest me so much, I find it impossible not to join you." Amabel, upon whose lips a faint complacent smile had appeared as he stepped by her, glanced up at these words in secret astonishment at the indifference they showed, and then dropped her eyes to his hands with an intent gaze which seemed to affect him unpleasantly, for he thrust them immediately behind him, though he did not lower his head or lose his air of determination. "Is my presence here undesirable?" he inquired, with a glance towards his father. Sweetwater looked as if he thought it was, but he did not presume to say anything, and the others being too interested in the developments of Miss Page's story to waste any time on lesser matters, Frederick remained, greatly to Miss Page's evident satisfaction. "Did you see this man's face?" Mr. Courtney now broke in, in urgent inquiry. Her answer came slowly, after another long look in Frederick's direction. "No, I did not dare to make the effort. I was obliged to crouch too close to the floor. I simply heard his footsteps." "See, now!" muttered Sweetwater, but in so low a tone she did not hear him. "She condemns herself. There isn't a woman living who would fail to look up under such circumstances, even at the risk of her life." Knapp seemed to agree with him, but Mr. Courtney, following his one idea, pressed his former question, saying: "Was it an old man's step?" "It was not an agile one." "And you did not catch the least glimpse of the man's face or figure?" "Not a glimpse." "So you are in no position to identify him?" "If by any chance I should hear those same footsteps coming down a flight of stairs, I think I should be able to recognise them," she allowed, in the sweetest tones at her command. "She knows it is too late for her to hear those of the two dead Zabels," growled the man from Boston. "We are no nearer the solution of this mystery than we were in the beginning," remarked the coroner. "Gentlemen, I have not yet finished my story," intimated Amabel, sweetly. "Perhaps what I have yet to tell may give you some clew to the identity of this man." "Ah, yes; go on, go on. You have not yet explained how you came to be in possession of Agatha's money." "Just so," she answered, with another quick look at Frederick, the last she gave him for some time. "As soon, then, as I dared, I ran out of the house into the yard. The moon, which had been under a cloud, was now shining brightly, and by its light I saw that the space before me was empty and that I might venture to enter the street. But before doing so I looked about for the dagger I had thrown from me before going in, but I could not find it. It had been picked up by the fugitive and carried away. Annoyed at the cowardice which had led me to lose such a valuable piece of evidence through a purely womanish emotion, I was about to leave the yard, when my eyes fell on the little bundle of sandwiches which I had brought down from the hill and which I had let fall under the pear tree, at the first scream I had heard from the house. It had burst open and two or three of the sandwiches lay broken on the ground. But those that were intact I picked up, and being more than ever anxious to cover up by some ostensible errand my absence from the party, I rushed away toward the lonely road where these brothers lived, meaning to leave such fragments as remained on the old doorstep, beyond which I had been told such suffering existed. "It was now late, very late, for a girl like myself to be out, but, under the excitement of what I had just seen and heard, I became oblivious to fear, and rushed into those dismal shadows as into transparent daylight. Perhaps the shouts and stray sounds of laughter that came up from the wharves where a ship was getting under way gave me a certain sense of companionship. Perhaps--but it is folly for me to dilate upon my feelings; it is my errand you are interested in, and what happened when I approached the Zabels' dreary dwelling." The look with which she paused, ostensibly to take breath, but in reality to weigh and criticise the looks of those about her, was one of those wholly indescribable ones with which she was accustomed to control the judgment of men who allowed themselves to watch too closely the ever-changing expression of her weird yet charming face. But it fell upon men steeled against her fascinations, and realising her inability to move them, she proceeded with her story before even the most anxious of her hearers could request her to do so. "I had come along the road very quietly," said she, "for my feet were lightly shod, and the moonlight was too bright for me to make a misstep. But as I cleared the trees and came into the open place where the house stands I stumbled with surprise at seeing a figure crouching on the doorstep I had anticipated finding as empty as the road. It was an old man's figure, and as I paused in my embarrassment he slowly and with great feebleness rose to his feet and began to grope about for the door. As he did so, I heard a sharp tinkling sound, as of something metallic falling on the doorstone, and, taking a quick step forward, I looked over his shoulder and espied in the moonlight at his feet a dagger so like the one I had lately handled in Mrs. Webb's yard that I was overwhelmed with astonishment, and surveyed the aged and feeble form of the man who had dropped it with a sensation difficult to describe. The next moment he was stooping for the weapon, with a startled air that has impressed itself distinctly upon my memory, and when, after many feeble attempts, he succeeded in grasping it, he vanished into the house so suddenly that I could not be sure whether or not he had seen me standing there. "All this was more than surprising to me, for I had never thought of associating an old man with this crime. Indeed, I was so astonished to find him in possession of this weapon that I forgot all about my errand and only wondered how I could see and know more. Fearing detection, I slid in amongst the bushes and soon found myself under one of the windows. The shade was down and I was about to push it aside when I heard someone moving about inside and stopped. But I could not restrain my curiosity, so pulling a hairpin from my hair, I worked a little hole in the shade and through this I looked into a room brightly illumined by the moon which shone in through an adjoining window. And what did I see there?" Her eye turned on Frederick. His right hand had stolen toward his left, but it paused under her look and remained motionless. "Only an old man sitting at a table and--" Why did she pause, and why did she cover up that pause with a wholly inconsequential sentence? Perhaps Frederick could have told, Frederick, whose hand had now fallen at his side. But Frederick volunteered nothing, and no one, not even Sweetwater, guessed all that lay beyond that AND which was left hovering in the air to be finished--- when? Alas! had she not set the day and the hour? What she did say was in seeming explanation of her previous sentence. "It was not the same old man I had seen on the doorstep, and while I was looking at him I became aware of someone leaving the house and passing me on the road up-hill. Of course this ended my interest in what went on within, and turning as quickly as I could I hurried into the road and followed the shadow I could just perceive disappearing in the woods above me. I was bound, gentlemen, as you see, to follow out my adventure to the end. But my task now became very difficult, for the moon was high and shone down upon the road so distinctly that I could not follow the person before me as closely as I wished without running the risk of being discovered by him. I therefore trusted more to my ear than to my eye, and as long as I could hear his steps in front of me I was satisfied. But presently, as we turned up this very hill, I ceased to hear these steps and so became confident that he had taken to the woods. I was so sure of this that I did not hesitate to enter them myself, and, knowing the paths well, as I have every opportunity of doing, living, as we do, directly opposite this forest, I easily found my way to the little clearing that I have reason to think you gentlemen have since become acquainted with. But though from the sounds I heard I was assured that the person I was following was not far in advance of me, I did not dare to enter this brilliantly illumined space, especially as there was every indication of this person having completed whatever task he had set for himself. Indeed, I was sure that I heard his steps coming back. So, for the second time, I crouched down in the darkest place I could find and let this mysterious person pass me. When he had quite disappeared, I made my own retreat, for it was late, and I was afraid of being missed at the ball. But later, or rather the next day, I recrossed the road and began a search for the money which I was confident had been left in the woods opposite, by the person I had been following. I found it, and when the man here present who, though a mere fiddler, has presumed to take a leading part in this interview, came upon me with the bills in my hand, I was but burying deeper the ill-gotten gains I had come upon." "Ah, and so making them your own," quoth Sweetwater, stung by the sarcasm in that word fiddler. But with a suavity against which every attack fell powerless, she met his significant look with one fully as significant, and quietly said: "If I had wanted the money for myself I would not have risked leaving it where the murderer could find it by digging up a few handfuls of mould and a bunch of sodden leaves. No, I had another motive for my action, a motive with which few, if any, of you will be willing to credit me. I wished to save the murderer, whom I had some reason, as you see, for thinking I knew, from the consequences of his own action." Mr. Courtney, Dr. Talbot, and even Mr. Sutherland, who naturally believed she referred to Zabel, and who, one and all, had a lingering tenderness for this unfortunate old man, which not even this seeming act of madness on his part could quite destroy, felt a species of reaction at this, and surveyed the singular being before them with, perhaps, the slightest shade of relenting in their severity. Sweetwater alone betrayed restlessness, Knapp showed no feeling at all, while Frederick stood like one petrified, and moved neither hand nor foot. "Crime is despicable when it results from cupidity only," she went on, with a deliberateness so hard that the more susceptible of her auditors shuddered. "But crime that springs from some imperative and overpowering necessity of the mind or body might well awaken sympathy, and I am not ashamed of having been sorry for this frenzied and suffering man. Weak and impulsive as you may consider me, I did not want him to suffer on account of a moment's madness, as he undoubtedly would if he were ever found with Agatha Webb's money in his possession, so I plunged it deeper into the soil and trusted to the confusion which crime always awakens even in the strongest mind, for him not to discover its hiding-place till the danger connected with it was over." "Ha! wonderful! Devilish subtle, eh? Clever, too clever!" were some of the whispered exclamations which this curious explanation on her part brought out. Yet only Sweetwater showed his open and entire disbelief of the story, the others possibly remembering that for such natures as hers there is no governing law and no commonplace interpretation. To Sweetwater, however, this was but so much display of feminine resource and subtlety. Though he felt he should keep still in the presence of men so greatly his superiors, he could not resist saying: "Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. I should never have attributed any such motive as you mention to the young girl I saw leaving this spot with many a backward glance at the hole from which we afterwards extracted the large sum of money in question. But say that this reburying of stolen funds was out of consideration for the feeble old man you describe as having carried them there, do you not see that by this act you can be held as an accessory after the fact?" Her eyebrows went up and the delicate curve of her lips was not without menace as she said: "You hate me, Mr. Sweetwater. Do you wish me to tell these gentlemen why?" The flush which, notwithstanding this peculiar young man's nerve, instantly crimsoned his features, was a surprise to Frederick. So was it to the others, who saw in it a possible hint as to the real cause of his persistent pursuit of this young girl, which they had hitherto ascribed entirely to his love of justice. Slighted love makes some hearts venomous. Could this ungainly fellow have once loved and been disdained by this bewitching piece of unreliability? It was a very possible assumption, though Sweetwater's blush was the only answer he gave to her question, which nevertheless had amply served its turn. To fill the gap caused by his silence, Mr. Sutherland made an effort and addressed her himself. "Your conduct," said he, "has not been that of a strictly honourable person. Why did you fail to give the alarm when you re-entered my house after being witness to this double tragedy?" Her serenity was not to be disturbed. "I have just explained," she reminded him, "that I had sympathy for the criminal." "We all have sympathy for James Zabel, but--" "I do not believe one word of this story," interposed Sweetwater, in reckless disregard of proprieties. "A hungry, feeble old man, like Zabel, on the verge of death, could not have found his way into these woods. You carried the money there yourself, miss; you are the--" "Hush!" interposed the coroner, authoritatively; "do not let us go too fast--yet. Miss Page has an air of speaking the truth, strange and unaccountable as it may seem. Zabel was an admirable man once, and if he was led into theft and murder, it was not until his faculties had been weakened by his own suffering and that of his much-loved brother." "Thank you," was her simple reply; and for the first time every man there thrilled at her tone. Seeing it, all the dangerous fascination of her look and manner returned upon her with double force. "I have been unwise," said she, "and let my sympathy run away with my judgment. Women have impulses of this kind sometimes, and men blame them for it, till they themselves come to the point of feeling the need of just such blind devotion. I am sure I regret my short-sightedness now, for I have lost esteem by it, while he--" With a wave of the hand she dismissed the subject, and Dr. Talbot, watching her, felt a shade of his distrust leave him, and in its place a species of admiration for the lithe, graceful, bewitching personality before them, with her childish impulses and womanly wit which half mystified and half imposed upon them. Mr. Sutherland, on the contrary, was neither charmed from his antagonism nor convinced of her honesty. There was something in this matter that could not be explained away by her argument, and his suspicion of that something he felt perfectly sure was shared by his son, toward whose cold, set face he had frequently cast the most uneasy glances. He was not ready, however, to probe into the subject more deeply, nor could he, for the sake of Frederick, urge on to any further confession a young woman whom his unhappy son professed to love, and in whose discretion he had so little confidence. As for Sweetwater, he had now fully recovered his self-possession, and bore himself with great discretion when Dr. Talbot finally said: "Well, gentlemen, we have got more than we expected when we came here this morning. There remains, however, a point regarding which we have received no explanation. Miss Page, how came that orchid, which I am told you wore in your hair at the dance, to be found lying near the hem of Batsy's skirts? You distinctly told us that you did not go up-stairs when you were in Mrs. Webb's house." "Ah, that's so!" acquiesced the Boston detective dryly. "How came that flower on the scene of the murder?" She smiled and seemed equal to the emergency. "That is a mystery for us all to solve," she said quietly, frankly meeting the eyes of her questioner. "A mystery it is your business to solve," corrected the district attorney. "Nothing that you have told us in support of your innocence would, in the eyes of the law, weigh for one instant against the complicity shown by that one piece of circumstantial evidence against you." Her smile carried a certain high-handed denial of this to one heart there, at least. But her words were humble enough. "I am aware of that," said she. Then, turning to where Sweetwater stood lowering upon her from out his half-closed eyes, she impetuously exclaimed: "You, sir, who, with no excuse an honourable person can recognise, have seen fit to arrogate to yourself duties wholly out of your province, prove yourself equal to your presumption by ferreting out, alone and unassisted, the secret of this mystery. It can be done, for, mark, _I_ did not carry that flower into the room where it was found. This I am ready to assert before God and before man!" Her hand was raised, her whole attitude spoke defiance and--hard as it was for Sweetwater to acknowledge it--truth. He felt that he had received a challenge, and with a quick glance at Knapp, who barely responded by a shrug, he shifted over to the side of Dr. Talbot. Amabel at once dropped her hand. "May I go?" she now cried appealingly to Mr. Courtney. "I really have no more to say, and I am tired." "Did you see the figure of the man who brushed by you in the wood? Was it that of the old man you saw on the doorstep?" At this direct question Frederick quivered in spite of his dogged self-control. But she, with her face upturned to meet the scrutiny of the speaker, showed only a childish kind of wonder. "Why do you ask that? Is there any doubt about its being the same?" What an actress she was! Frederick stood appalled. He had been amazed at the skill with which she had manipulated her story so as to keep her promise to him, and yet leave the way open for that further confession which would alter the whole into a denunciation of himself which he would find it difficult, if not impossible, to meet. But this extreme dissimulation made him lose heart. It showed her to be an antagonist of almost illimitable resource and secret determination. "I did not suppose there could be any doubt," she added, in such a natural tone of surprise that Mr. Courtney dropped the subject, and Dr. Talbot turned to Sweetwater, who for the moment seemed to have robbed Knapp of his rightful place as the coroner's confidant. "Shall we let her go for the present?" he whispered. "She does look tired, poor girl." The public challenge which Sweetwater had received made him wary, and his reply was a guarded one: "I do not trust her, yet there is much to confirm her story. Those sandwiches, now. She says she dropped them in Mrs. Webb's yard under the pear tree, and that the bag that held them burst open. Gentlemen, the birds were so busy there on the morning after the murder that I could not but notice them, notwithstanding my absorption in greater matters. I remember wondering what they were all pecking at so eagerly. But how about the flower whose presence on the scene of guilt she challenges me to explain? And the money so deftly reburied by her? Can any explanation make her other than accessory to a crime on whose fruits she lays her hand in a way tending solely to concealment? No, sirs; and so I shall not relax my vigilance over her, even if, in order to be faithful to it, I have to suggest that a warrant be made out for her imprisonment." "You are right," acquiesced the coroner, and turning to Miss Page, he told her she was too valuable a witness to be lost sight of, and requested her to prepare to accompany him into town. She made no objection. On the contrary her cheeks dimpled, and she turned away with alacrity towards her room. But before the door closed on her she looked back, and, with a persuasive smile, remarked that she had told all she knew, or thought she knew at the time. But that perhaps, after thinking the matter carefully over, she might remember some detail that would throw some extra light on the subject. "Call her back!" cried Mr. Courtney. "She is withholding something. Let us hear it all." But Mr. Sutherland, with a side look at Frederick, persuaded the district attorney to postpone all further examination of this artful girl until they were alone. The anxious father had noted, what the rest were too preoccupied to observe, that Frederick had reached the limit of his strength and could not be trusted to preserve his composure any longer in face of this searching examination into the conduct of a woman from whom he had so lately detached himself. XIX POOR PHILEMON The next day was the day of Agatha's funeral. She was to be buried in Portchester, by the side of her six children, and, as the day was fine, the whole town, as by common consent, assembled in the road along which the humble cortege was to make its way to the spot indicated. From the windows of farmhouses, from between the trees of the few scattered thickets along the way, saddened and curious faces looked forth till Sweetwater, who walked as near as he dared to the immediate friends of the deceased, felt the impossibility of remembering them all and gave up the task in despair. Before one house, about a mile out of town, the procession paused, and at a gesture from the minister everyone within sight took off their hats, amid a hush which made almost painfully apparent the twittering of birds and the other sounds of animate and inanimate nature, which are inseparable from a country road. They had reached widow Jones's cottage in which Philemon was then staying. The front door was closed, and so were the lower windows, but in one of the upper casements a movement was perceptible, and in another instant there came into view a woman and man, supporting between them the impassive form of Agatha's husband. Holding him up in plain sight of the almost breathless throng below, the woman pointed to where his darling lay and appeared to say something to him. Then there was to be seen a strange sight. The old man, with his thin white locks fluttering in the breeze, leaned forward with a smile, and holding out his arms, cried in a faint but joyful tone: "Agatha!" Then, as if realising for the first time that it was death he looked upon, and that the crowd below was a funeral procession, his face altered and he fell back with a low heartbroken moan into the arms of those who supported him. As his white head disappeared from sight, the procession moved on, and from only one pair of lips went up that groan of sorrow with which every heart seemed surcharged. One groan. From whose lips did it come? Sweetwater endeavoured to ascertain, but was not able, nor could anyone inform him, unless it was Mr. Sutherland, whom he dared not approach. This gentleman was on foot like the rest, with his arm fast linked in that of his son Frederick. He had meant to ride, for the distance was long for men past sixty; but finding the latter resolved to walk, he had consented to do the same rather than be separated from his son. He had fears for Frederick--he could hardly have told why; and as the ceremony proceeded and Agatha was solemnly laid away in the place prepared for her, his sympathies grew upon him to such an extent that he found it difficult to quit the young man for a moment, or even to turn his eyes away from the face he had never seemed to know till now. But as friends and strangers were now leaving the yard, he controlled himself, and assuming a more natural demeanour, asked his son if he were now ready to ride back. But, to his astonishment, Frederick replied that he did not intend to return to Sutherlandtown at present; that he had business in Portchester, and that he was doubtful as to when he would be ready to return. As the old gentleman did not wish to raise a controversy, he said nothing, but as soon as he saw Frederick disappear up the road, he sent back the carriage he had ordered, saying that he would return in a Portchester gig as soon as he had settled some affairs of his own, which might and might not detain him there till evening. Then he proceeded to a little inn, where he hired a room with windows that looked out on the high-road. In one of these windows he sat all day, watching for Frederick, who had gone farther up the road. But no Frederick appeared, and with vague misgivings, for which as yet he had no name, he left the window and set out on foot for home. It was now dark, but a silvery gleam on the horizon gave promise of the speedy rising of a full moon. Otherwise he would not have attempted to walk over a road proverbially dark and dismal. The churchyard in which they had just laid away Agatha lay in his course. As he approached it he felt his heart fail, and stopping a moment at the stone wall that separated it from the high-road, he leaned against the trunk of a huge elm that guarded the gate of entrance. As he did so he heard a sound of repressed sobbing from some spot not very far away, and, moved by some undefinable impulse stronger than his will, he pushed open the gate and entered the sacred precincts. Instantly the weirdness and desolation of the spot struck him. He wished, yet dreaded, to advance. Something in the grief of the mourner whose sobs he had heard had seized upon his heart-strings, and yet, as he hesitated, the sounds came again, and forgetting that his intrusion might not prove altogether welcome, he pressed forward, till he came within a few feet of the spot from which the sobs issued. He had moved quietly, feeling the awesomeness of the place, and when he paused it was with a sensation of dread, not to be entirely explained by the sad and dismal surroundings. Dark as it was, he discerned the outline of a form lying stretched in speechless misery across a grave; but when, impelled by an almost irresistible compassion, he strove to speak, his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth and he only drew back farther into the shadow. He had recognised the mourner and the grave. The mourner was Frederick and the grave that of Agatha Webb. A few minutes later Mr. Sutherland reappeared at the door of the inn, and asked for a gig and driver to take him back to Sutherlandtown. He said, in excuse for his indecision, that he had undertaken to walk, but had found his strength inadequate to the exertion. He was looking very pale, and trembled so that the landlord, who took his order, asked him if he were ill. But Mr. Sutherland insisted that he was quite well, only in a hurry, and showed the greatest impatience till he was again started upon the road. For the first half-mile he sat perfectly silent. The moon was now up, and the road stretched before them, flooded with light. As long as no one was to be seen on this road, or on the path running beside it, Mr. Sutherland held himself erect, his eyes fixed before him, in an attitude of anxious inquiry. But as soon as any sound came to break the silence, or there appeared in the distance ahead of them the least appearance of a plodding wayfarer, he drew back, and hid himself in the recesses of the vehicle. This happened several times. Then his whole manner changed. They had just passed Frederick, walking, with bowed head, toward Sutherlandtown. But he was not the only person on the road at this time. A few minutes previously they had passed another man walking in the same direction. As Mr. Sutherland mused over this he found himself peering through the small window at the back of the buggy, striving to catch another glimpse of the two men plodding behind him. He could see them both, his son's form throwing its long shadow over the moonlit road, followed only too closely by the man whose ungainly shape he feared to acknowledge to himself was growing only too familiar in his eyes. Falling into a troubled reverie, he beheld the well-known houses, and the great trees under whose shadow he had grown from youth to manhood, flit by him like phantoms in a dream. But suddenly one house and one place drew his attention with a force that startled him again into an erect attitude, and seizing with one hand the arm of the driver, he pointed with the other at the door of the cottage they were passing, saying in choked tones: "See! see! Something dreadful has happened since we passed by here this morning. That is crape, Samuel, crape, hanging from the doorpost yonder!" "Yes, it is crape," answered the driver, jumping out and running up the path to look. "Philemon must be dead; the good Philemon." Here was a fresh blow. Mr. Sutherland bowed before it for a moment, then he rose hurriedly and stepped down into the road beside the driver. "Get in again," said he, "and drive on. Ride a half-mile, then come back for me. I must see the widow Jones." The driver, awed both by the occasion and the feeling it had called up in Mr. Sutherland, did as he was bid and drove away. Mr. Sutherland, with a glance back at the road he had just traversed, walked painfully up the path to Mrs. Jones's door. A moment's conversation with the woman who answered his summons proved the driver's supposition to be correct. Philemon had passed away. He had never rallied from the shock he had received. He had joined his beloved Agatha on the day of her burial, and the long tragedy of their mutual life was over. "It is a mercy that no inheritor of their misfortune remains," quoth the good woman, as she saw the affliction her tidings caused in this much-revered friend. The assent Mr. Sutherland gave was mechanical. He was anxiously studying the road leading toward Portchester. Suddenly he stepped hastily into the house. "Will you be so good as to let me sit down in your parlour for a few minutes?" he asked. "I should like to rest there for an instant alone. This final blow has upset me." The good woman bowed. Mr. Sutherland's word was law in that town. She did not even dare to protest against the ALONE which he had so pointedly emphasised, but left him after making him, as she said, comfortable, and went back to her duties in the room above. It was fortunate she was so amenable to his wishes, for no sooner had her steps ceased to be heard than Mr. Sutherland rose from the easy-chair in which he had been seated, and, putting out the lamp widow Jones had insisted on lighting, passed directly to the window, through which he began to peer with looks of the deepest anxiety. A man was coming up the road, a young man, Frederick. As Mr. Sutherland recognised him he leaned forward with increased anxiety, till at the appearance of his son in front his scrutiny grew so strained and penetrating that it seemed to exercise a magnetic influence upon Frederick, causing him to look up. The glance he gave the house was but momentary, but in that glance the father saw all that he had secretly dreaded. As his son's eye fell on that fluttering bit of crape, testifying to another death in this already much-bereaved community, he staggered wildly, then in a pause of doubt drew nearer and nearer till his fingers grasped this symbol of mourning and clung there. Next moment he was far down the road, plunging toward home in a state of great mental disorder. A half-hour afterwards Mr. Sutherland reached home. He had not overtaken Frederick again, or even his accompanying shadow. Ascertaining at his own door that his son had not yet come in, but had been seen going farther up the hill, he turned back again into the road and proceeded after him on foot. The next place to his own was occupied by Mr. Halliday. As he approached it he caught sight of a man standing half in and half out of the honeysuckle porch, whom he at first thought to be Frederick. But he soon saw that it was the fellow who had been following his son all the way from Portchester, and, controlling his first movement of dislike, he stepped up to him and quietly said: "Sweetwater, is this you?" The young man fell back and showed a most extraordinary agitation, quickly suppressed, however. "Yes, sir, it is no one else. Do you know what I am doing here?" "I fear I do. You have been to Portchester. You have seen my son--" Sweetwater made a hurried, almost an entreating, gesture. "Never mind that, Mr. Sutherland. I had rather you wouldn't say anything about that. I am as much broken up by what I have seen as you are. I never suspected him of having any direct connection with this murder; only the girl to whom he has so unfortunately attached himself. But after what I have seen, what am I to think? what am I to do? I honour you; I would not grieve you; but--but--oh, sir, perhaps you can help me out of the maze into which I have stumbled. Perhaps you can assure me that Mr. Frederick did not leave the ball at the time she did. I missed him from among the dancers. I did not see him between twelve and three, but perhaps you did; and--and--" His voice broke. He was almost as profoundly agitated as Mr. Sutherland. As for the latter, who found himself unable to reassure the other on this very vital point, having no remembrance himself of having seen Frederick among his guests during those fatal hours, he stood speechless, lost in abysses, the depth and horror of which only a father can appreciate. Sweetwater respected his anguish and for a moment was silent himself. Then he burst out: "I had rather never lived to see this day than be the cause of shame or suffering to you. Tell me what to do. Shall I be deaf, dumb--" Here Mr. Sutherland found voice. "You make too much of what you saw," said he. "My boy has faults and has lived anything but a satisfactory life, but he is not as bad as you would intimate. He can never have taken life. That would be incredible, monstrous, in one brought up as he has been. Besides, if he were so far gone in evil as to be willing to attempt crime, he had no motive to do so; Sweetwater, he had no motive. A few hundred dollars but these he could have got from me, and did, but--" Why did the wretched father stop? Did he recall the circumstances under which Frederick had obtained these last hundreds from him? They were not ordinary circumstances, and Frederick had been in no ordinary strait. Mr. Sutherland could not but acknowledge to himself that there was something in this whole matter which contradicted the very plea he was making, and not being able to establish the conviction of his son's innocence in his own mind, he was too honourable to try to establish it in that of another. His next words betrayed the depth of his struggle: "It is that girl who has ruined him, Sweetwater. He loves but doubts her, as who could help doing after the story she told us day before yesterday? Indeed, he has doubted her ever since that fatal night, and it is this which has broken his heart, and not--not--" Again the old gentleman paused; again he recovered himself, this time with a touch of his usual dignity and self-command. "Leave me," he cried. "Nothing that you have seen has escaped me; but our interpretations of it may differ. I will watch over my son from this hour, and you may trust my vigilance." Sweetwater bowed. "You have a right to command me," said he. "You may have forgotten, but I have not, that I owe my life to you. Years ago--perhaps you can recall it--it was at the Black Pond--I was going down for the third time and my mother was screaming in terror on the bank, when you plunged in and--Well, sir, such things are never forgotten, and, as I said before, you have only to command me." He turned to go, but suddenly came back. There were signs of mental conflict in his face and voice. "Mr. Sutherland, I am not a talkative man. If I trust your vigilance you may trust my discretion. Only I must have your word that you will convey no warning to your son." Mr. Sutherland made an indefinable gesture, and Sweetwater again disappeared, this time not to return. As for Mr. Sutherland, he remained standing before Mr. Halliday's door. What had the young man meant by this emphatic repetition of his former suggestion? That he would be quiet, also, and not speak of what he had seen? Why, then--But to the hope thus given, this honest-hearted gentleman would yield no quarter, and seeing a duty before him, a duty he dare not shirk, he brought his emotions, violent as they were, into complete and absolute subjection, and, opening Mr. Halliday's door, entered the house. They were old neighbours, and ceremony was ignored between them. Finding the hall empty and the parlour door open he walked immediately into the latter room. The sight that met his eyes never left his memory. Agnes, his little Agnes, whom he had always loved and whom he had vainly longed to call by the endearing name of daughter, sat with her face towards him, looking up at Frederick. That young gentleman had just spoken to her, or she had just received something from his hand for her own was held out and her expression was one of gratitude and acceptance. She was not a beautiful girl, but she had a beautiful look, and at this moment it was exalted by a feeling the old gentleman had once longed, but now dreaded inexpressibly, to see there. What could it mean? Why did she show at this unhappy crisis, interest, devotion, passion almost, for one she had regarded with open scorn when it was the dearest wish of his heart to see them united? It was one of the contradictions of our mysterious human nature, and at this crisis and in this moment of secret heart-break and miserable doubt it made the old gentleman shrink, with his first feeling of actual despair. The next moment Agnes had risen and they were both facing him. "Good-evening, Agnes." Mr. Sutherland forced himself to speak lightly. "Ah, Frederick, do I find you here?" The latter question had more constraint in it. Frederick smiled. There was an air of relief about him, almost of cheerfulness. "I was just leaving," said he. "I was the bearer of a message to Miss Halliday." He had always called her Agnes before. Mr. Sutherland, who had found his faculties confused by the expression he had surprised on the young girl's face, answered with a divided attention: "And I have a message to give you. Wait outside on the porch for me, Frederick, till I exchange a word with our little friend here." Agnes, who had thrust something she held into a box that lay beside her on a table, turned with a confused blush to listen. Mr. Sutherland waited till Frederick had stepped into the hall. Then he drew Agnes to one side and remorselessly, persistently, raised her face toward him till she was forced to meet his benevolent but searching regard. "Do you know," he whispered, in what he endeavoured to make a bantering tone, "how very few days it is since that unhappy boy yonder confessed his love for a young lady whose name I cannot bring myself to utter in your presence?" The intent was kind, but the effect was unexpectedly cruel. With a droop of her head and a hurried gasp which conveyed a mixture of entreaty and reproach, Agnes drew back in a vague endeavour to hide her sudden uneasiness. He saw his mistake, and let his hands drop. "Don't, my dear," he whispered. "I had no idea it would hurt you to hear this. You have always seemed indifferent, hard even, toward my scapegrace son. And this was right, for--for--" What could he say, how express one-tenth of that with which his breast was labouring! He could not, he dared not, so ended, as we have intimated, by a confused stammering. Agnes, who had never before seen this object of her lifelong admiration under any serious emotion, felt an impulse of remorse, as if she herself had been guilty of occasioning him embarrassment. Plucking up her courage, she wistfully eyed him. "Did you imagine," she murmured, "that I needed any warning against Frederick, who has never honoured me with his regard, as he has the young lady you cannot mention? I'm afraid you don't know me, Mr. Sutherland, notwithstanding I have sat on your knee and sometimes plucked at your beard in my infantile insistence upon attention." "I am afraid I don't know you," he answered. "I feel that I know nobody now, not even my son." He had hoped she would look up at this, but she did not. "Will my little girl think me very curious and very impertinent if I ask her what my son Frederick was saying when I came into the room?" She looked up now, and with visible candour answered him immediately and to the point: "Frederick is in trouble, Mr. Sutherland. He has felt the need of a friend who could appreciate this, and he has asked me to be that friend. Besides, he brought me a packet of letters which he entreated me to keep for him. I took them, Mr. Sutherland, and I will keep them as he asked me to do, safe from everybody's inspection, even my own." Oh! why had he questioned her? He did not want to know of these letters; he did not want to know that Frederick possessed anything which he was afraid to retain in his own possession. "My son did wrong," said he, "to confide anything to your care which he did not desire to retain in his own home. I feel that I ought to see these letters, for if my son is in trouble, as you say, I, his father, ought to know it." "I am not sure about that," she smiled. "His trouble may be of a different nature than you imagine. Frederick has led a life that he regrets. I think his chief source of suffering lies in the fact that it is so hard for him to make others believe that he means to do differently in the future." "Does he mean to do differently?" She flushed. "He says so, Mr. Sutherland. And I, for one, cannot help believing him. Don't you see that he begins to look like another man?" Mr. Sutherland was taken aback. He had noticed this fact, and had found it a hard one to understand. To ascertain what her explanation of it might be, he replied at once: "There is a change in him--a very evident change. What is the occasion of it? To what do you ascribe it, Agnes?" How breathlessly he waited for her answer! Had she any suspicion of the awful doubts which were so deeply agitating himself that night? She did not appear to have. "I hesitate," she faltered, "but not from any doubt of Frederick, to tell you just what I think lies at the bottom of the sudden change observable in him. Miss Page (you see, I can name her, if you cannot) has proved herself so unworthy of his regard that the shock he has received has opened his eyes to certain failings of his own which made his weakness in her regard possible. I do not know of any other explanation. Do you?" At this direct question, breathed though it was by tender lips, and launched in ignorance of the barb which carried it to his heart, Mr. Sutherland recoiled and cast an anxious look upon the door. Then with forced composure he quietly said: "If you who are so much nearer his age, and, let me hope, his sympathy, do not feel sure of his real feelings, how should I, who am his father, but have never been his confidant?" "Oh," she cried, holding out her hands, "such a good father! Some day he will appreciate that fact as well as others. Believe it, Mr. Sutherland, believe it." And then, ashamed of her glowing interest, which was a little more pronounced than became her simple attitude of friend toward a man professedly in love with another woman, she faltered and cast the shyest of looks upward at the face she had never seen turned toward her with anything but kindness. "I have confidence in Frederick's good heart," she added, with something like dignity. "Would God that I could share it!" was the only answer she received. Before she could recover from the shock of these words, Mr. Sutherland was gone. Agnes was more or less disconcerted by this interview. There was a lingering in her step that night, as she trod the little white-embowered chamber sacred to her girlish dreams, which bespake an overcharged heart; a heart that, before she slept, found relief in these few words whispered by her into the night air, laden with the sweetness of honeysuckles: "Can it be that he is right? Did I need such a warning,--I, who have hated this man, and who thought that it was my hatred which made it impossible for me to think of anything or anybody else since we parted from each other last night? O me, if it is so!" And from the great, wide world without, tremulous with moonlight, the echo seemed to come back: "Woe to thee, Agnes Halliday, if this be so!" XX A SURPRISE FOR MR. SUTHERLAND Meanwhile Mr. Sutherland and Frederick stood facing each other in the former's library. Nothing had been said during their walk down the hill, and nothing seemed likely to proceed from Frederick now, though his father waited with great and growing agitation for some explanation that would relieve the immense strain on his heart. At last he himself spoke, dryly, as we all speak when the heart is fullest and we fear to reveal the depth of our emotions. "What papers were those you gave into Agnes Halliday's keeping? Anything which we could not have more safely, not to say discreetly, harboured in our own house?" Frederick, taken aback, for he had not realised that his father had seen these papers, hesitated for a moment; then he boldly said: "They were letters--old letters--which I felt to be better out of this house than in it. I could not destroy them, so I gave them into the guardianship of the most conscientious person I know. I hope you won't demand to see those letters. Indeed, sir, I hope you won't demand to see them. They were not written for your eye, and I would rather rest under your displeasure than have them in any way made public." Frederick showed such earnestness, rather than fear, that Mr. Sutherland was astonished. "When were these letters written?" he asked. "Lately, or before--You say they are old; how old?" Frederick's breath came easier. "Some of them were written years ago--most of them, in fact. It is a personal matter--every man has such. I wish I could have destroyed them. You will leave them with Agnes, sir?" "You astonish me," said Mr. Sutherland, relieved that he could at least hope that these letters were in nowise connected with the subject of his own frightful suspicions. "A young girl, to whom you certainly were most indifferent a week ago, is a curious guardian of letters you decline to show your father." "I know it," was Frederick's sole reply. Somehow the humility with which this was uttered touched Mr. Sutherland and roused hopes he had supposed dead. He looked his son for the first time directly in the eye, and with a beating heart said: "Your secrets, if you have such, might better be entrusted to your father. You have no better friend--" and there he stopped with a horrified, despairing feeling of inward weakness. If Frederick had committed a crime, anything would be better than knowing it. Turning partially aside, he fingered the papers on the desk before which he was standing. A large envelope, containing some legal document, lay before him. Taking it up mechanically, he opened it. Frederick as mechanically watched him. "I know," said the latter, "that I have no better friend. You have been too good, too indulgent. What is it, father? You change colour, look ill, what is there in that paper?" Mr. Sutherland straightened himself; there was a great reserve of strength in this broken-down man yet. Fixing Frederick with a gaze more penetrating than any he had yet bestowed upon him, he folded his hands behind him with the document held tightly between them, and remarked: "When you borrowed that money from me you did it like a man who expected to repay it. Why? Whence did you expect to receive the money with which to repay me? Answer, Frederick; this is your hour for confession." Frederick turned so pale his father dropped his eyes in mercy. "Confess?" he repeated. "What should I confess? My sins? They are too many. As for that money, I hoped to return it as any son might hope to reimburse his father for money advanced to pay a gambler's debt. I said I meant to work. My first money earned shall be offered to you. I--" "Well? Well?" His father was holding the document he had just read, opened out before his eyes. "Didn't you expect THIS?" he asked. "Didn't you know that that poor woman, that wretchedly murdered, most unhappy woman, whose death the whole town mourns, had made you her heir? That by the terms of this document, seen by me here and now for the first time, I am made executor and you the inheritor of the one hundred thousand dollars or more left by Agatha Webb?" "No!" cried Frederick, his eyes glued to the paper, his whole face and form expressing something more akin to terror than surprise. "Has she done this? Why should she? I hardly knew her." "No, you hardly knew her. And she? She hardly knew you; if she had she would have abhorred rather than enriched you. Frederick, I had rather see you dead than stand before me the inheritor of Philemon and Agatha Webb's hard-earned savings." "You are right; it would be better," murmured Frederick, hardly heeding what he said. Then, as he encountered his father's eye resting upon him with implacable scrutiny, he added, in weak repetition: "Why should she give her money to me? What was I to her that she should will me her fortune?" The father's finger trembled to a certain line in the document, which seemed to offer some explanation of this; but Frederick did not follow it. He had seen that his father was expecting a reply to the question he had previously put, and he was casting about in his mind how to answer it. "When did you know of this will?" Mr. Sutherland now repeated. "For know of it you did before you came to me for money." Frederick summoned up his full courage and confronted his father resolutely. "No," said he, "I did not know of it. It is as much of a surprise to me as it is to you." He lied. Mr. Sutherland knew that he lied and Frederick knew that he knew it. A shadow fell between them, which the older, with that unspeakable fear upon him roused by Sweetwater's whispered suspicions, dared no longer attempt to lift. After a few minutes in which Frederick seemed to see his father age before his eyes, Mr. Sutherland coldly remarked: "Dr. Talbot must know of this will. It has been sent here to me from Boston by a lawyer who drew it up two years ago. The coroner may not as yet have heard of it. Will you accompany me to his office to-morrow? I should like to have him see that we wish to be open with him in an affair of such importance." "I will accompany you gladly," said Frederick, and seeing that his father neither wished nor was able to say anything further, he bowed with distant ceremony as to a stranger and quietly withdrew. But when the door had closed between them and only the memory of his father's changed countenance remained to trouble him, he paused and laid his hand again on the knob, as if tempted to return. But he left without doing so, only to turn again at the end of the hall and gaze wistfully back. Yet he went on. As he opened his own door and disappeared within, he said half audibly: "Easy to destroy me now, Amabel. One word and I am lost!" BOOK II THE MAN OF NO REPUTATION XXI SWEETWATER REASONS And what of Sweetwater, in whose thoughts and actions the interest now centres? When he left Mr. Sutherland it was with feelings such as few who knew him supposed him capable of experiencing. Unattractive as he was in every way, ungainly in figure and unprepossessing of countenance, this butt of the more favoured youth in town had a heart whose secret fires were all the warmer for being so persistently covered, and this heart was wrung with trouble and heavy with a struggle that bade fair to leave him without rest that night, if not for many nights to come. Why? One word will explain. Unknown to the world at large and almost unknown to himself, his best affections were fixed upon the man whose happiness he thus unexpectedly saw himself destined to destroy. He loved Mr. Sutherland. The suspicion which he now found transferred in his own mind from the young girl whose blood-stained slippers he had purloined during the excitement of the first alarm, to the unprincipled but only son of his one benefactor, had not been lightly embraced or thoughtlessly expressed. He had had time to think it out in all its bearings. During that long walk from Portchester churchyard to Mr. Halliday's door, he had been turning over in his mind everything that he had heard and seen in connection with this matter, till the dim vision of Frederick's figure going on before him was not more apparent to his sight than was the guilt he so deplored to his inward understanding. He could not help but recognise him as the active party in the crime he had hitherto charged Amabel with. With the clew offered by Frederick's secret anguish at the grave of Agatha, he could read the whole story of this detestable crime as plainly as if it had been written in letters of fire on the circle of the surrounding darkness. Such anguish under such circumstances on the part of such a man could mean but one thing--remorse; and remorse in the breast of one so proverbially careless and corrupt, over the death of a woman who was neither relative nor friend, could have but one interpretation, and that was guilt. No other explanation was possible. Could one be given, or if any evidence could be adduced in contradiction of this assumption, he would have dismissed his new suspicion with more heartiness even than he had embraced his former one. He did not wish to believe Frederick guilty. He would have purchased an inner conviction of his innocence almost at the price of his own life, not because of any latent interest in the young man himself, but because he was Charles Sutherland's son, and the dear, if unworthy, centre of all that noble man's hopes, aims, and happiness. But he could come upon no fact capable of shaking his present belief. Taking for truth Amabel's account of what she had seen and done on that fatal night--something which he had hesitated over the previous day, but which he now found himself forced to accept or do violence to his own secret convictions--and adding to it such facts as had come to his own knowledge in his self-imposed role of detective, he had but to test the events of that night by his present theory of Frederick's guilt, to find them hang together in a way too complete for mistake. For what had been his reasons for charging Amabel herself with the guilt of a crime she only professed to have been a partial witness to? They were many. First--The forced nature of her explanations in regard to her motive for leaving a merry ball and betaking herself to the midnight road in her party dress and slippers. A woman of her well-known unsympathetic nature might use the misery of the Zabels as a pretext for slipping into town at night, but never would be influenced by it as a motive. Second--The equally unsatisfactory nature of the reasons she gave for leaving the course she had marked out for herself and entering upon the pursuit of an unknown man into a house in which she had no personal interest and from which she had just seen a bloody dagger thrown out. The most callous of women would have shrunk from letting her curiosity carry her thus far. Third--The poverty of her plea that, after having braved so much in her desire to identify this criminal, she was so frightened at his near approach as to fail to lift her head when the opportunity was given her to recognise him. Fourth--Her professed inability to account for the presence of the orchid from her hair being found in the room with Batsy. Fifth--Her evident attempt to throw the onus of the crime on an old man manifestly incapable from physical causes of committing it. Sixth--The improbability, which she herself should have recognised, of this old man, in his extremely weak condition, ignoring the hiding-places offered by the woods back of his own house, for the sake of one not only involving a long walk, but situated close to a much-frequented road, and almost in view of the Sutherland mansion. Seventh--The transparent excuse of sympathy for the old man and her desire to save him from the consequences of his crime, which she offered in extenuation of her own criminal avowal of having first found and then reburied the ill-gotten gains she had come upon in her persistent pursuit of the flying criminal. So impulsive an act might be consistent with the blind compassion of some weak-headed but warm-hearted woman, but not with her self-interested nature, incapable of performing any heroic deed save from personal motives or the most headlong passion. Lastly--The weakness of her explanation in regard to the cause which led her to peer into the Zabel cottage through a hole made in the window-shade. Curiosity has its limits even in a woman's breast, and unless she hoped to see more than was indicated by her words, her action was but the precursor of a personal entrance into a room where we have every reason to believe the twenty-dollar bill was left. A telling record and sufficient to favour the theory of her personal guilt if, after due thought, certain facts in contradiction to this assumption had not offered themselves to his mind even before he thought of Frederick as the unknown man she had followed down the hillside, as, for instance: This crime, if committed by her, was done deliberately and with a premeditation antedating her departure from the ballroom. Yet she went upon this errand in slippers, white slippers at that, something which so cool and calculating a woman would have avoided, however careless she might have shown herself in other regards. Again, guilt awakens cunning, even in the dullest breast; but she, keen beyond most men even, and so self-poised that the most searching examination could not shake her self-control, betrayed an utter carelessness as to what she did with these slippers on her return, thrusting them into a place easily accessible to the most casual search. Had she been conscious of guilt and thus amenable to law, the sight of blood and mud-stains on those slippers would have appalled her, and she would have made some attempt to destroy them, and not put them behind a picture and forgotten them. Again, would she have been so careless with a flower she knew to be identified with herself? A woman who deliberately involves herself in crime has quick eyes; she would have seen that flower fall. At all events, if she had been immediately responsible for its being on the scene of crime she would, with her quick wit, have found some excuse or explanation for it, instead of defying her examiners with some such words as these: "It is a fact for you to explain. I only know that I did not carry this flower into that room of death." Again, had she been actuated in her attempt to fix the crime on old James Zabel by a personal consciousness of guilt and a personal dread, she would not have stopped at suggestion in her allusions to the person she watched burying the treasure in the woods. Instead of speaking of him as a shadow whose flight she had followed at a distance, she would have described his figure as that of the same old man she had seen enter the Zabel cottage a few minutes before, there being no reason for indefiniteness on this point, her conscience being sufficiently elastic for any falsehood that would further her ends. And lastly, her manner, under the examination to which she had been subjected, was not that of one who felt herself under a personal attack. It was a strange, suggestive, hesitating manner, baffling alike to him who had more or less sounded her strange nature and to those who had no previous knowledge of her freaks and subtle intellectual power, and only reaching its height of hateful charm and mysterious daring when Frederick appeared on the scene and joined, or seemed to join, himself to the number of her examiners. Now, let all suspicion of her as an active agent in this crime be dropped, assume Frederick to be the culprit and she the simple accessory after the fact, and see how inconsistencies vanish, and how much more natural the whole conduct of this mysterious woman appears. Amabel Page left a merry dance at midnight and stole away into the Sutherland garden in her party dress and slippers--why? Not to fulfil an errand which anyone who knows her cold and unsympathetic nature can but regard as a pretext, but because she felt it imperative to see if her lover (with whose character, temptations, and necessities she was fully acquainted, and in whose excited and preoccupied manner she had probably discovered signs of a secretly growing purpose) meant indeed to elude his guests and slip away to town on the dangerous and unholy enterprise suggested by their mutual knowledge of the money to be obtained there by one daring enough to enter a certain house open like their own to midnight visitors. She followed at such an hour and into such a place, not an unknown man casually come upon, but her lover, whom she had tracked from the garden of his father's house, where she had lain in wait for him. It took courage to do this, but a courage no longer beyond the limit of feminine daring, for her fate was bound up in his and she could not but feel the impulse to save him from the consequences of crime, if not from the crime itself. As for the aforementioned flower, what more natural than that Frederick should have transferred it from her hair to his buttonhole during some of their interviews at the ball, and that it should have fallen from its place to the floor in the midst of his possible struggle with Batsy? And with this assumption of her perfect knowledge as to who the man was who had entered Mrs. Webb's house, how much easier it is to understand why she did not lift her head when she heard him descend the stairs! No woman, even one so depraved as she, would wish to see the handsome face of her lover in the glare of a freshly committed crime, and besides she might very easily be afraid of him, for a man has but a blow for the suddenly detected witness of his crime unless that witness is his confidant, which from every indication Sweetwater felt bound to believe Amabel was not. Her flight to the Zabel cottage, after an experience which would madden most women, can now be understood. She was still following her lover. The plan of making Agatha's old and wretched friend amenable for her death originated with Frederick and not with Amabel. It was he who first started for the Zabel cottage. It was he who left the bank bill there. This is all clear, and even the one contradictory fact of the dagger having been seen in the old man's hand was not a stumbling-block to Sweetwater. With the audacity of one confident of his own insight, he explained it to himself thus: The dagger thrown from the window by the assassin, possibly because he knew of Zabel's expected visit there that night, fell on the grass and was picked up by Amabel, only to be flung down again in the brightest part of the lawn. It was lying there then, when, a few minutes later and before either Frederick or Amabel had left the house, the old man entered the yard in a state of misery bordering on frenzy. He and his brother were starving, had been starving for days. He was too proud to own his want, and too loyal to his brother to leave him for the sake of the food prepared for them both at Agatha's house, and this was why he had hesitated over his duty till this late hour, when his own secret misery or, perhaps, the hope of relieving his brother drove him to enter the gate he had been accustomed to see open before him in glad hospitality. He finds the lights burning in the house above and below, and encouraged by the welcome they seem to hold out, he staggers up the path, ignorant of the tragedy which was at that very moment being enacted behind those lighted windows. But half-way toward the house he stops, the courage which has brought him so far suddenly fails, and in one of those quick visions which sometimes visit men in extremity, he foresees the astonishment which his emaciated figure is likely to cause in these two old friends, and burying his face in his hands he stops and bitterly communes with himself before venturing farther. Fatal stop! fatal communing! for as he stands there he sees a dagger, his own old dagger, how lost or how found he probably did not stop to ask, lying on the grass and offering in its dumb way suggestions as to how he might end this struggle without any further suffering. Dizzy with the new hope, preferring death to the humiliation he saw before him in Agatha's cottage, he dashes out of the yard, almost upsetting Mr. Crane, who was passing by on his homeward way from an errand of mercy. A little while later Amabel comes upon him lying across his own doorstep. He has made an effort to enter, but his long walk and the excitement of this last bitter hour have been too much for him. As she watches him he gains strength and struggles to his feet, while she, aghast at the sight of the dagger she had herself flung down in Agatha's yard, and dreading the encounter between this old man and the lover she had been following to this place, creeps around the house and looks into the first window she finds open. What does she expect to see? Frederick brought face to face with this desperate figure with its uplifted knife. But instead of that she beholds another old man seated at a table and--Amabel had paused when she reached that AND--and Sweetwater had not then seen how important this pause was, but now he understood it. Now he saw that if she had not had a subtle purpose in view, that if she had wished to tell the truth rather than produce false inferences in the minds of those about her calculated to save the criminal as she called him, she would have completed her sentence thus: "I saw an old man seated at a table and Frederick Sutherland standing over him." For Sweetwater had no longer a doubt that Frederick was in that room at that moment. What further she saw, whether she was witness to an encounter between this intruder and James, or whether by some lingering on the latter's part Frederick was able to leave the house without running across him, was a matter of comparative unimportance. What is of importance is that he did leave it and that Amabel, knowing it was Frederick, strove to make her auditors believe it was Zabel, who carried the remainder of the money into the woods. Yet she did not say so, and if her words on this subject could be carefully recalled, one would see that it was still her lover she was following and no old man, tottering on the verge of the grave and only surviving because of the task he was bent on performing. Amabel's excuse for handling the treasure, and for her reburial of the same, comes now within the bounds of possibility. She hoped to share this money some day, and her greed was too great for her to let such an amount lie there untouched, while her caution led her to bury it deeper, even at the risk of the discovery she was too inexperienced to fear. That she should forget to feign surprise when the alarm of murder was raised was very natural, and so was the fact that a woman with a soul so blunted to all delicate instincts, and with a mind so intent upon perfecting the scheme entered into by the murderer of throwing the blame upon the man whose dagger had been made use of, should persist in visiting the scene of crime and calling attention to the spot where that dagger had fallen. And so with her manner before her examiners. Baffling as that manner was, it still showed streaks of consistency, when you thought of it as the cloak of a subtle, unprincipled woman, who sees amongst her interlocutors the guilty man whom by a word she can destroy, but whom she exerts herself to save, even at the cost of a series of bizarre explanations. She was playing with a life, a life she loved, but not with sincerity sufficient to rob the game of a certain delicate, if inconceivable, intellectual enjoyment. [Footnote: That Sweetwater in his hate, and with no real clew to the real situation, should come so near the truth as in this last supposition, shows the keenness of his insight.] And Frederick? Had there been anything in his former life or in his conduct since the murder to give the lie to these heavy doubts against him? On the contrary. Though Sweetwater knew little of the dark record which had made this young man the disgrace of his family, what he did know was so much against him that he could well see that the distance usually existing between simple dissipation and desperate crime might be easily bridged by some great necessity for money. Had there been such a necessity? Sweetwater found it easy to believe so. And Frederick's manner? Was it that of an honest man simply shocked by the suspicions which had fallen upon the woman he loved? Had he, Sweetwater, not observed certain telltale moments in his late behaviour that required a deeper explanation even than this? The cry, for instance, with which he had rushed from the empty ballroom into the woods on the opposite side of the road! Was it a natural cry or an easily explainable one? "Thank God! this terrible night is over!" Strange language to be uttered by this man at such a time and in such a place, if he did not already know what was to make this night of nights memorable through all this region. He did know, and this cry which had struck Sweetwater strangely at the time and still more strangely when he regarded it simply as a coincidence, now took on all the force of a revelation and the irresistible bubbling up in Frederick's breast of that remorse which had just found its full expression on Agatha's grave. To some that remorse and all his other signs of suffering might be explained by his passion for the real criminal. But to Sweetwater it was only too evident that an egotist like Frederick Sutherland cannot suffer for another to such an extent as this, and that a personal explanation must be given for so personal a grief, even if that explanation involves the dreadful charge of murder. It was when Sweetwater reached this point in his reasoning that Frederick disappeared beneath Mr. Halliday's porch, and Mr. Sutherland came up behind him. After the short conversation in which Sweetwater saw his own doubts more than reflected in the uneasy consciousness of this stricken father, he went home and the struggle of his life began. XXII SWEETWATER ACTS Sweetwater had promised Mr. Sutherland that he would keep counsel in regard to his present convictions concerning Frederick's guilt; but this he knew he could not do if he remained in Sutherlandtown and fell under the pitiless examination of Mr. Courtney, the shrewd and able prosecuting attorney of the district. He was too young, too honest, and had made himself too conspicuous in this affair to succeed in an undertaking requiring so much dissimulation, if not actual falsehood. Indeed, he was not sure that in his present state of mind he could hear Frederick's name mentioned without flushing, and slight as such a hint might be, it would be enough to direct attention to Frederick, which once done could but lead to discovery and permanent disgrace to all who bore the name of Sutherland. What was he to do then? How avoid a consequence he found himself absolutely unable to face? It was a problem which this night must solve for him. But how? As I have said, he went down to his house to think. Sweetwater was not a man of absolute rectitude. He was not so much high-minded as large-hearted. He had, besides, certain foibles. In the first place, he was vain, and vanity in a very plain man is all the more acute since it centres in his capabilities, rather than in his appearance. Had Sweetwater been handsome, or even passably attractive, he might have been satisfied with the approbation of demure maidens and a comradeship with his fellows. But being one who could hope for nothing of this kind, not even for a decent return to the unreasoning heart-worship he felt himself capable of paying, and which he had once paid for a few short days till warned of his presumption by the insolence of the recipient, he had fixed his hope and his ambition on doing something which would rouse the admiration of those about him and bring him into that prominence to which he felt himself entitled. That he, a skilful musician, should desire to be known as a brilliant detective, is only one of the anomalies of human nature which it would be folly and a waste of time on our part to endeavour to explain. That, having chosen to exercise his wits in this way, he should so well succeed that he dared not for his life continue in the work he had so publicly undertaken, occasioned in him a pang of disappointment almost as insufferable as that brought by the realisation of what his efforts were likely to bring upon the man to whose benevolence he owed his very life. Hence his struggle, which must be measured by the extent of his desires and the limitations which had been set to his nature by his surroundings and the circumstances of his life and daily history. If we enter with him into the humble cottage where he was born and from which he had hardly strayed more than a dozen miles in the twenty-two years of his circumscribed life, we may be able to understand him better. It was an unpainted house perched on an arid hillside, with nothing before it but the limitless sea. He had found his way to it mechanically, but as he approached the narrow doorway he paused and turned his face towards the stretch of heaving waters, whose low or loud booming had been first his cradle song and then the ceaseless accompaniment of his later thoughts and aspirations. It was heaving yet, ceaselessly heaving, and in its loud complaint there was a sound of moaning not always to be found there, or so it seemed to Sweetwater in his present troubled mood. Sighing as this sound reached his ear, and shuddering as its meaning touched his heart, Sweetwater pushed open the door of his small house, and entered. "It is I, mamsie!" he shouted, in what he meant to be his usual voice; but to a sensitive ear--and what ear is so sensitive as a mother's?--there was a tremble in it that was not wholly natural. "Is anything the matter, dear?" called out that mother, in reply. The question made him start, though he replied quickly enough, and in more guarded tones: "No, mamsie. Go to sleep. I'm tired, that's all." Would to God that was all! He recalled with envy the days when he dragged himself into the house at sundown, after twelve long hours of work on the docks. As he paused in the dark hallway and listened till he heard the breathing of her who had called him DEAR--the only one in the world who ever had or ever would call him DEAR--he had glimpses of that old self which made him question if his self-tutoring on the violin, and the restless ambition which had driven him out of the ways of his ancestors into strange attempts for which he was not prepared by any previous discipline, had brought him happiness or improved his manhood. He was forced to acknowledge that the sleep of those far-distant nights of his busy boyhood was sweeter than the wakefulness of these later days, and that it would have been better for him, and infinitely better for her, if he had remained at the carpenter's bench and been satisfied with a repetition of his father's existence. His mother was the only person sharing that small house with him, and once assured that she was asleep, he lighted a lamp in the empty kitchen and sat down. It was just twelve o'clock. This, to anyone accustomed to this peculiar young man's habits, had nothing unusual in it. He was accustomed to come home late and sit thus by himself for a short time before going up-stairs. But, to one capable of reading his sharp and none too mobile countenance, there was a change in the character of the brooding into which he now sank, which, had that mother been awake to watch him, would have made every turn of his eye and movement of his hand interesting and important. In the first place, the careless attitude into which he had fallen was totally at variance with the restless glance which took in every object in that well-known room so associated with his mother and her daily work that he could not imagine her in any other surroundings, and wondered sometimes if she would seem any longer his mother if transplanted to other scenes and engaged in other tasks. Little things, petty objects of household use or ornament, which he had seen all his life without specially noticing them, seemed under the stress of his present mood to acquire a sudden importance and fix themselves indelibly in his memory. There, on a nail driven long before he was born, hung the little round lid-holder he had pieced together in his earliest years and presented to his mother in a gush of pride greater than any he had since experienced. She had never used it, but it always hung upon the one nail in the one place, as a symbol of his love and of hers. And there, higher up on the end of the shelf barren enough of ornaments, God wot, were a broken toy and a much-defaced primer, mementos likewise of his childhood; and farther along the wall, on a sort of raised bench, a keg, the spigot of which he was once guilty of turning on in his infantile longing for sweets, only to find he could not turn it back again until all the floor was covered with molasses, and his appetite for the forbidden gratified to the full. And yonder, dangling from a peg, never devoted to any other use, hung his father's old hat, just where he had placed it on the fatal morning when he came in and lay down on the sitting-room lounge for the last time; and close to it, lovingly close to it, Sweetwater thought, his mother's apron, the apron he had seen her wear at supper, and which he would see her wear at breakfast, with all its suggestions of ceaseless work and patient every-day thrift. Somehow, he could not bear the sight of that apron. With the expectation now forming in his mind, of leaving this home and leaving this mother, this symbol of humble toil became an intolerable grief to him. Jumping up, he turned in another direction; but now another group of objects equally eloquent came under his eye. It was his mother's work-basket he saw, with a piece of sewing in it intended for him, and as if this were not enough, the table set for two, and at his place a little covered dish which held the one sweetmeat he craved for breakfast. The spectacles lying beside her plate told him how old she was, and as he thought of her failing strength and enfeebled ways, he jumped up again and sought another corner. But here his glances fell on his violin, and a new series of emotions awakened within him. He loved the instrument and played as much from natural intuition as acquired knowledge, but in the plan of action he had laid out for himself his violin could have no part. He would have to leave it behind. Feeling that his regrets were fast becoming too much for him, he left the humble kitchen and went up-stairs. But not to sleep. Locking the door (something he never remembered doing before in all his life), he began to handle over his clothes and other trivial belongings. Choosing out a certain strong suit, he laid it out on the bed and then went to a bureau drawer and drew out an old-fashioned wallet. This he opened, but after he had counted the few bills it contained he shook his head and put them all back, only retaining a little silver, which he slipped into one of the pockets of the suit he had chosen. Then he searched for and found a little Bible which his mother had once given him. He was about to thrust that into another pocket, but he seemed to think better of this, too, for he ended by putting it back into the drawer and taking instead a bit from one of his mother's old aprons which he had chanced upon on the stairway. This he placed as carefully in his watch pocket as if it had been the picture of a girl he loved. Then he undressed and went to bed. Mrs. Sweetwater said afterwards that she never knew Caleb to talk so much and eat so little as he did that next morning at breakfast. Such plans as he detailed for unmasking the murderer of Mrs. Webb! Such business for the day! So many people to see! It made her quite dizzy, she said. And, indeed, Sweetwater was more than usually voluble that morning,--perhaps because he could not bear his mother's satisfied smile; and when he went out of the house it was with a laugh and a cheery "Good-bye, mamsie" that was in spiking contrast to the irrepressible exclamation of grief which escaped him when the door was closed between them. Ah, when should he enter those four walls again, and when should he see the old mother? He proceeded immediately to town. A ship was preparing to sail that morning for the Brazils, and the wharves were alive with bustle. He stopped a moment to contemplate the great hulk rising and falling at her moorings, then he passed on and entered the building where he had every reason to expect to find Dr. Talbot and Knapp in discussion. It was very important to him that morning to learn just how they felt concerning the great matter absorbing him, for if suspicion was taking the direction of Frederick, or if he saw it was at all likely to do so, then would his struggle be cut short and all necessity for leaving town be at an end. It was to save Frederick from this danger that he was prepared to cut all the ties binding him to this place, and nothing short of the prospect of accomplishing this would make him willing to undergo such a sacrifice. "Well, Sweetwater, any news, eh?" was the half-jeering, half-condescending greeting he received from the coroner. Sweetwater, who had regained entire control over his feelings as soon as he found himself under the eye of this man and the supercilious detective he had attempted to rival, gave a careless shrug and passed the question on to Knapp. "Have you any news?" he asked. Knapp, who would probably not have acknowledged it if he had, smiled the indulgent smile of a self-satisfied superior and uttered a few equivocal sentences. This was gall and wormwood to Sweetwater, but he kept his temper admirably and, with an air of bravado entirely assumed for the occasion, said to Dr. Talbot: "I think I shall have something to tell you soon which will materially aid you in your search for witnesses. By to-morrow, at least, I shall know whether I am right or wrong in thinking I have discovered an important witness in quite an unexpected quarter." Sweetwater knew of no new witness, but it was necessary for him not only to have a pretext for the move he contemplated, but to so impress these men with an idea of his extreme interest in the approaching proceedings, that no suspicion should ever arise of his having premeditated an escape from them. He wished to appear the victim of accident; and this is why he took nothing from his home which would betray any intention of leaving it. "Ha! indeed!" ejaculated the coroner with growing interest. "And may I ask----" "Please," urged Sweetwater, with a side look at Knapp, "do not ask me anything just yet. This afternoon, say, after I have had a certain interview with--What, are they setting sails on the Hesper already?" he burst out, with a quick glance from the window at the great ship riding at anchor a little distance from them in the harbour. "There is a man on her I must see. Excuse me--Oh, Mr. Sutherland!" He fell back in confusion. That gentleman had just entered the room in company with Frederick. XXIII A SINISTER PAIR "I beg your pardon," stammered Sweetwater, starting aside and losing on the instant all further disposition to leave the room. Indeed, he had not the courage to do so, even if he had had the will. The joint appearance of these two men in this place, and at an hour so far in advance of that which usually saw Mr. Sutherland enter the town, was far too significant in his eyes for him to ignore it. Had any explanation taken place between them, and had Mr. Sutherland's integrity triumphed over personal considerations to the point of his bringing Frederick here to confess? Meanwhile Dr. Talbot had risen with a full and hearty greeting which proved to Sweetwater's uneasy mind that notwithstanding Knapp's disquieting reticence no direct suspicion had as yet fallen on the unhappy Frederick. Then he waited for what Mr. Sutherland had to say, for it was evident he had come there to say something. Sweetwater waited, too, frozen almost into immobility by the fear that it would be something injudicious, for never had he seen any man so changed as Mr. Sutherland in these last twelve hours, nor did it need a highly penetrating eye to detect that the relations between him and Frederick were strained to a point that made it almost impossible for them to more than assume their old confidential attitude. Knapp, knowing them but superficially, did not perceive this, but Dr. Talbot was not blind to it, as was shown by the inquiring look he directed towards them both while waiting. Mr. Sutherland spoke at last. "Pardon me for interrupting you so early," said he, with a certain tremble in his voice which Sweetwater quaked to hear. "For certain reasons, I should be very glad to know, WE should be very glad to know, if during your investigations into the cause and manner of Agatha Webb's death, you have come upon a copy of her will." "No." Talbot was at once interested, so was Knapp, while Sweetwater withdrew further into his corner in anxious endeavour to hide his blanching cheek. "We have found nothing. We do not even know that she has made a will." "I ask," pursued Mr. Sutherland, with a slight glance toward Frederick, who seemed, at least in Sweetwater's judgment, to have braced himself up to bear this interview unmoved, "because I have not only received intimation that she made such a will, but have even been entrusted with a copy of it as chief executor of the same. It came to me in a letter from Boston yesterday. Its contents were a surprise to me. Frederick, hand me a chair. These accumulated misfortunes--for we all suffer under the afflictions which have beset this town--have made me feel my years." Sweetwater drew his breath more freely. He thought he might understand by this last sentence that Mr. Sutherland had come here for a different cause than he had at first feared. Frederick, on the contrary, betrayed a failing ability to hide his emotion. He brought his father a chair, placed it, and was drawing back out of sight when Mr. Sutherland prevented him by a mild command to hand the paper he had brought to the coroner. There was something in his manner that made Sweetwater lean forward and Frederick look up, so that the father's and son's eyes met under that young man's scrutiny. But while he saw meaning in both their regards, there was nothing like collusion, and, baffled by these appearances, which, while interesting, told him little or nothing, he transferred his attention to Dr. Talbot and Knapp, who had drawn together to see what this paper contained. "As I have said, the contents of this will are a surprise to me," faltered Mr. Sutherland. "They are equally so to my son. He can hardly be said to have been a friend even of the extraordinary woman who thus leaves him her whole fortune." "I never spoke with her but twice," exclaimed Frederick with a studied coldness, which was so evidently the cloak of inner agitation that Sweetwater trembled for its effect, notwithstanding the state of his own thoughts, which were in a ferment. Frederick, the inheritor of Agatha Webb's fortune! Frederick, concerning whom his father had said on the previous night that he possessed no motive for wishing this good woman's death! Was it the discovery that such a motive existed which had so aged this man in the last twelve hours? Sweetwater dared not turn again to see. His own face might convey too much of his own fears, doubts, and struggle. But the coroner, for whose next words Sweetwater listened with acute expectancy, seemed to be moved simply by the unexpectedness of the occurrence. Glancing at Frederick with more interest than he had ever before shown him, he cried with a certain show of enthusiasm: "A pretty fortune! A very pretty fortune!" Then with a deprecatory air natural to him in addressing Mr. Sutherland, "Would it be indiscreet for me to ask to what our dear friend Agatha alludes in her reference to your late lamented wife?" His finger was on a clause of the will and his lips next minute mechanically repeated what he was pointing at: "'In remembrance of services rendered me in early life by Marietta Sutherland, wife of Charles Sutherland of Sutherlandtown, I bequeath to Frederick, sole child of her affection, all the property, real and personal, of which I die possessed.' Services rendered! They must have been very important ones," suggested Dr. Talbot. Mr. Sutherland's expression was one of entire perplexity and doubt. "I do not remember my wife ever speaking of any special act of kindness she was enabled to show Agatha Webb. They were always friends, but never intimate ones. However, Agatha could be trusted to make no mistake. She doubtless knew to what she referred. Mrs. Sutherland was fully capable of doing an extremely kind act in secret." For all his respect for the speaker, Dr. Talbot did not seem quite satisfied. He glanced at Frederick and fumbled the paper uneasily. "Perhaps you were acquainted with the reason for this legacy--this large legacy," he emphasised. Frederick, thus called upon, nay, forced to speak, raised his head, and without perhaps bestowing so much as a thought on the young man behind him who was inwardly quivering in anxious expectancy of some betrayal on his part which would precipitate disgrace and lifelong sorrow on all who bore the name of Sutherland, met Dr. Talbot's inquiring glance with a simple earnestness surprising to them all, and said: "My record is so much against me that I am not surprised that you wonder at my being left with Mrs. Webb's fortune. Perhaps she did not fully realise the lack of estimation in which I am deservedly held in this place, or perhaps, and this would be much more like her, she hoped that the responsibility of owing my independence to so good and so unfortunate a woman might make a man of me." There was a manliness in Frederick's words and bearing that took them all by surprise. Mr. Sutherland's dejection visibly lightened, while Sweetwater, conscious of the more than vital interests hanging upon the impression which might be made by this event upon the minds of the men present, turned slightly so as to bring their faces into the line of his vision. The result was a conviction that as yet no real suspicion of Frederick had seized upon either of their minds. Knapp's face was perfectly calm and almost indifferent, while the good coroner, who saw this and every other circumstance connected with this affair through the one medium of his belief in Amabel's guilt, was surveying Frederick with something like sympathy. "I fear," said he, "that others were not as ignorant of your prospective good fortune as you were yourself," at which Frederick's cheek turned a dark red, though he said nothing, and Sweetwater, with a sudden involuntary gesture indicative of resolve, gazed for a moment breathlessly at the ship, and then with an unexpected and highly impetuous movement dashed from the room crying loudly: "I've seen him! I've seen him! he's just going on board the ship. Wait for me, Dr. Talbot. I'll be back in fifteen minutes with such a witness--" Here the door slammed. But they could hear his hurrying footsteps as he plunged down the stairs and rushed away from the building. It was an unexpected termination to an interview fast becoming unbearable to the two Sutherlands, but no one, not even the old gentleman himself, took in its full significance. He was, however, more than agitated by the occurrence and could hardly prevent himself from repeating aloud Sweetwater's final word, which after their interview at Mr. Halliday's gate, the night before, seemed to convey to him at once a warning and a threat. To keep himself from what he feared might prove a self-betrayal, he faltered out in very evident dismay: "What is the matter? What has come over the lad?" "Oh!" cried Dr. Talbot, "he's been watching that ship for an hour. He is after some man he has just seen go aboard her. Says he's a new and important witness in this case. Perhaps he is. Sweetwater is no man's fool, for all his small eyes and retreating chin. If you want proof of it, wait till he comes back. He'll be sure to have something to say." Meanwhile they had all pressed forward to the window. Frederick, who carefully kept his face out of his father's view, bent half-way over the sill in his anxiety to watch the flying figure of Sweetwater, who was making straight for the dock, while Knapp, roused at last, leaned over his shoulder and pointed to the sailors on the deck, who were pulling in the last ropes, preparatory to sailing. "He's too late: they won't let him aboard now. What a fool to hang around here till he saw his man, instead of being at the dock to nab him! That comes of trusting a country bumpkin. I knew he'd fail us at the pinch. They lack training, these would-be detectives. See, now! He's run up against the mate, and the mate pushes him back. His cake is all dough, unless he's got a warrant. Has he a warrant, Dr. Talbot?" "No," said the coroner, "he didn't ask for one. He didn't even tell me whom he wanted. Can it be one of those two passengers you see on the forward deck, there?" It might well be. Even from a distance these two men presented a sinister appearance that made them quite marked figures among the crowd of hurrying sailors and belated passengers. "One of them is peering over the rail with a very evident air of anxiety. His eye is on Sweetwater, who is dancing with impatience. See, he is gesticulating like a monkey, and--By the powers, they are going to let him go aboard!" Mr. Sutherland, who had been leaning heavily against the window-jamb in the agitation of doubt and suspense which Sweetwater's unaccountable conduct had evoked, here crossed to the other side and stole a determined look at Frederick. Was his son personally interested in this attempt of the amateur detective? Did he know whom Sweetwater sought, and was he suffering as much or more than himself from the uncertainty and fearful possibilities of the moment? He thought he knew Frederick's face, and that he read dread there, but Frederick had changed so completely since the commission of this crime that even his father could no longer be sure of the correct meaning either of his words or expression. The torture of the moment continued. "He climbs like a squirrel," remarked Dr. Talbot, with a touch of enthusiasm. "Look at him now--he's on the quarterdeck and will be down in the cabins before you can say Jack Robinson. I warrant they have told him to hurry. Captain Dunlap isn't the man to wait five minutes after the ropes are pulled in." "Those two men have shrunk away behind some mast or other," cried Knapp. "They are the fellows he's after. But what can they have to do with the murder? Have you ever seen them here about town, Dr. Talbot?" "Not that I remember; they have a foreign air about them. Look like South Americans." "Well, they're going to South America. Sweetwater can't stop them. He has barely time to get off the ship himself. There goes the last rope! Have they forgotten him? They're drawing up the ladder." "No: the mate stops them; see, he's calling the fellow. I can hear his voice, can't you? Sweetwater's game is up. He'll have to leave in a hurry. What's the rumpus now?" "Nothing, only they've scattered to look for him; the fox is down in the cabins and won't come up, laughing in his sleeve, no doubt, at keeping the vessel waiting while he hunts up his witness." "If it's one of those two men he's laying a trap for he won't snare him in a hurry. They're sneaks, those two, and--Why, the sailors are coming back shaking their heads. I can almost hear from here the captain's oaths." "And such a favourable wind for getting out of the harbour! Sweetwater, my boy, you are distinguishing yourself. If your witness don't pan out well you won't hear the last of this in a hurry." "It looks as if they meant to sail without waiting to put him ashore," observed Frederick in a low tone, too carefully modulated not to strike his father as unnatural. "By jingoes, so it does!" ejaculated Knapp. "There go the sails! The pilot's hand is on the wheel, and Dr. Talbot, are you going to let your cunning amateur detective and his important witness slip away from you like this?" "I cannot help myself," said the coroner, a little dazed himself at this unexpected chance. "My voice wouldn't reach them from this place; besides they wouldn't heed me if it did. The ship is already under way and we won't see Sweetwater again till the pilot's boat comes back." Mr. Sutherland moved from the window and crossed to the door like a man in a dream. Frederick, instantly conscious of his departure, turned to follow him, but presently stopped and addressing Knapp for the first time, observed quietly: "This is all very exciting, but I think your estimate of this fellow Sweetwater is just. He's a busybody and craves notoriety above everything. He had no witness on board, or, if he had, it was an imaginary one. You will see him return quite crestfallen before night, with some trumped-up excuse of mistaken identity." The shrug which Knapp gave dismissed Sweetwater as completely from the affair as if he had never been in it. "I think I may now regard myself as having this matter in my sole charge," was his curt remark, as he turned away, while Frederick, with a respectful bow to Dr. Talbot, remarked in leaving: "I am at your service, Dr. Talbot, if you require me to testify at the inquest in regard to this will. My testimony can all be concentrated into the one sentence, 'I did not expect this bequest, and have no theories to advance in explanation of it.' But it has made me feel myself Mrs. Webb's debtor, and given me a justifiable interest in the inquiry which, I am told, you open to-morrow into the cause and manner of her death. If there is a guilty person in this case, I shall raise no barrier in the way of his conviction." And while the coroner's face still showed the embarrassment which this last sentence called up, his mind being now, as ever, fixed on Amabel, Frederick offered his arm to his father, whose condition was not improved by the excitements of the last half-hour, and proceeded to lead him from the building. Whatever they thought, or however each strove to hide their conclusions from the other, no words passed between them till they came in full sight of the sea, on a distant billow of which the noble-ship bound for the Brazils rode triumphantly on its outward course. Then Mr. Sutherland remarked, with a suggestive glance at the vessel: "The young man who has found an unexpected passage on that vessel will not come back with the pilot." Was the sigh which was Frederick's only answer one of relief? It certainly seemed so. XXIV IN THE SHADOW OP THE MAST Mr. Sutherland was right. Sweetwater did not return with the pilot. According to the latter there was no Sweetwater on board the ship to return. At all events the minutest search had not succeeded in finding him in the cabins, though no one had seen him leave the vessel, or, indeed, seen him at all after his hasty dash below decks. It was thought on board that he had succeeded in reaching shore before the ship set sail, and the pilot was suitably surprised at learning this was not so. So were Sweetwater's friends and associates with the exception of a certain old gentleman living on the hill, and Knapp the detective. He, that is the latter, had his explanation at his tongue's end: "Sweetwater is a fakir. He thought he could carry off the honours from the regular force, and when he found he couldn't he quietly disappeared. We shall hear of him again in the Brazils." An opinion that speedily gained ground, so that in a few hours Sweetwater was all but forgotten, save by his mother, whose heart was filled with suspense, and by Mr. Sutherland, whose breast was burdened by gratitude. The amazing fact of Frederick, the village scapegrace and Amabel's reckless, if aristocratic, lover, having been made the legatee of the upright Mrs. Webb's secret savings had something to do with this. With such a topic at hand, not only the gossips, but those who had the matter of Agatha's murder in hand, found ample material to occupy their thoughts and tongues, without wasting time over a presumptuous busybody, who had not wits enough to know that five minutes before sailing-time is an unfortunate moment in which to enter a ship. And where was Sweetwater, that he could not be found on the shore or on the ship? We will follow him and see. Accustomed from his youth to ramble over the vessels while in port, he knew this one as well as he did his mother's house. It was, therefore, a surprise to the sailors when, shortly after the departure of the pilot, they came upon him lying in the hold, half buried under a box which had partially fallen upon him. He was unconscious, or appeared to be so, and when brought into open light showed marks of physical distress and injury; but his eye was clear and his expression hardly as rueful as one would expect in a man who finds himself en route for the Brazils with barely a couple of dollars in his pocket and every prospect of being obliged to work before the mast to earn his passage. Even the captain noticed this and eyed him with suspicion. But Sweetwater, rousing to the necessities of the occasion, forthwith showed such a mixture of discouragement and perplexity that the honest sailor was deceived and abated half at least of his oaths. He gave Sweetwater a hammock and admitted him to the mess, but told him that as soon as his bruises allowed him to work he should show himself on deck or expect the rough treatment commonly bestowed on stowaways. It was a prospect to daunt some men, but not Sweetwater. Indeed it was no more than he had calculated upon when he left his savings behind with his old mother and entered upon this enterprise with only a little change in his pocket. He had undertaken out of love and gratitude to Mr. Sutherland to rid Frederick of a dangerous witness and he felt able to complete the sacrifice. More than that, he was even strangely happy for a time. The elation of the willing victim was his, that is for a few short hours, then he began to think of his mother. How had she borne his sudden departure? What would she think had befallen him, and how long would he have to wait before he could send her word of his safety? If he was to be of real service to the man he venerated, he must be lost long enough for the public mind to have become settled in regard to the mysteries of the Webb murder and for his own boastful connection with it to be forgotten. This might mean years of exile. He rather thought it did; meanwhile his mother! Of himself he thought little. By sundown he felt himself sufficiently recovered from his bruises to go up on deck. It was a mild night, and the sea was running in smooth long waves that as yet but faintly presaged the storm brewing on the distant horizon. As he inhaled the fresh air, the joy of renewed health began to infuse its life into his veins and lift the oppression from his heart, and, glad of a few minutes of quiet enjoyment, he withdrew to a solitary portion of the deck and allowed himself to forget his troubles in contemplation of the rapidly deepening sky and boundless stretch of waters. But such griefs and anxieties as weighed upon this man's breast are not so easily shaken off. Before he realised it his thoughts had recurred to the old theme, and he was wondering if he was really of sufficient insignificance in the eyes of his fellow-townsmen not to be sought for and found in that distant country to which he was bound. Would they, in spite of his precautions, suspect that he had planned this evasion and insist on his return, or would he be allowed to slip away and drop out of sight like the white froth he was watching on the top of the ever-shifting waves? He had boasted of possessing a witness. Would they believe that boast and send a detective in search of him, or would they take his words for the bombast they really were and proceed with their investigations in happy relief at the loss of his intrusive assistance? As this was a question impossible for him to answer, he turned to other thoughts and fretted himself for a while with memories of Amabel's disdain and Frederick's careless acceptance of a sacrifice he could never know the cost of, mixed strangely with relief at being free of it all and on the verge of another life. As the dark settled, his head fell farther and farther forward on the rail he was leaning against, till he became to any passing eye but a blurred shadow mixing with other shadows equally immovable. Unlike them, however, his shadow suddenly shifted. Two men had drawn near him, one speaking pure Spanish and the other English. The English was all that Sweetwater could understand, and this half of the conversation was certainly startling enough. Though he could not, of coarse, know to what or whom it referred, and though it certainly had nothing to do with him, or any interest he represented or understood, he could not help listening and remembering every word. The English-speaking man uttered the first sentence he comprehended. It was this: "Shall it be to-night?" The answer was in Spanish. Again the English voice: "He has come up. I saw him distinctly as he passed the second mast." More Spanish; then English: "You may if you want to, but I'll never breathe easy while he's on the ship. Are you sure he's the fellow we fear?" A rapid flow of words from which Sweetwater got nothing. Then slowly and distinctly in the sinister tones he had already begun to shiver at: "Very good. The R. F. A. should pay well for this," with the quick addition following a hurried whisper: "All right! I'd send a dozen men to the bottom for half that money. But 'ware there! Here's a fellow watching us! If he has heard--" Sweetwater turned, saw two desperate faces projected toward him, realised that something awful, unheard of, was about to happen, and would have uttered a yell of dismay, but that the very intensity of his fright took away his breath. The next minute he felt himself launched into space and enveloped in the darkness of the chilling waters. He had been lifted bodily and flung headlong into the sea. XXV IN EXTREMITY Sweetwater's one thought as he sank was, "Now Mr. Sutherland need fear me no longer." But the instinct of life is strong in every heart, and when he found himself breathing the air again he threw out his arms wildly and grasped a spar. It was life to him, hope, reconnection with his kind. He clutched, clung, and, feeling himself floating, uttered a shout of mingled joy and appeal that unhappily was smothered in the noise of the waters and the now rapidly rising wind. Whence had come this spar in his desperate need? He never knew, but somewhere in his remote consciousness an impression remained of a shock to the waves following his own plunge into the water, which might mean that this spar had been thrown out after him, perhaps by the already repentant hands of the wretches who had tossed him to his death. However it came, or from whatever source, it had at least given him an opportunity to measure his doom and realise the agonies of hope when it alternates with despair. The darkness was impenetrable. It was no longer that of heaven, but of the nether world, or so it seemed to this dazed soul, plunged suddenly from dreams of exile into the valley of the shadow of death. And such a death! As he realised its horrors, as he felt the chill of night and the oncoming storm strike its piercing fangs into his marrow, and knew that his existence and the hope of ever again seeing the dear old face at the fireside rested upon the strength of his will and the tenacity of his life-clutch, he felt his heart fail, and the breath that was his life cease in a gurgle of terror. But he clung on, and, though no comfort came, still clung, while vague memories of long-ago shipwrecks, and stories told in his youth of men, women, and children tossing for hours on a drifting plank, flashed through his benumbed brain, and lent their horror to his own sensations of apprehension and despair. He wanted to live. Now that the dread spectre had risen out of the water and had its clutch on his hair, he realised that the world held much for him, and that even in exile he might work and love and enjoy God's heaven and earth, the green fields and the blue sky. Not such skies as were above him now. No, this was not sky that overarched him, but a horrible vault in which the clouds, rushing in torn masses, had the aspect of demons stooping to contend for him with those other demons that with long arms and irresistible grip were dragging at him from below. He was alone on a whirling spar in the midst of a midnight ocean, but horror and a pitiless imagination made this conflict more than that of the elements, and his position an isolation beyond that of man removed from his fellows. He was almost mad. Yet he clung. Suddenly a better frame of mind prevailed. The sky was no lighter, save as the lightning came to relieve the overwhelming darkness by a still more overwhelming glare, nor were the waves less importunate or his hold on the spar more secure; but the horror seemed to have lifted, and the practical nature of the man reasserted itself. Other men had gone through worse dangers than these and survived to tell the tale, as he might survive to tell his. The will was all--will and an indomitable courage; and he had will and he had courage, or why had he left his home to dare a hard and threatening future purely from a sentiment of gratitude? Could he hold on long enough, daylight would come; and if, as he now thought possible, he had been thrown into the sea within twenty hours after leaving Sutherlandtown, then he must be not far from Cape Cod, and in the direct line of travel from New York to Boston. Rescue would come, and if the storm which was breaking over his head more and more furiously made it difficult for him to retain his hold, it certainly would not wreck his spar or drench him more than he was already drenched, while every blast would drive him shoreward. The clinging was all, and filial love would make him do that, even in the semi-unconsciousness which now and then swept over him. Only, would it not be better for Mr. Sutherland if he should fail and drop away into the yawning chasms of the unknown world beneath? There were moments when he thought so, and then his clutch perceptibly weakened; but only once did he come near losing his hold altogether. And that was when he thought he heard a laugh. A laugh, here in the midst of ocean! in the midst of storm! a laugh! Were demons a reality, then? Yes; but the demon he had heard was of his own imagination; it had a face of Medusa sweetness and the laugh--Only Amabel's rang out so thrillingly false, and with such diabolic triumph. Amabel, who might be laughing in her dreams at this very moment of his supreme misery, and who assuredly would laugh if conscious of his suffering and aware of the doom to which his self-sacrifice had brought him. Amabel! the thought of her made the night more dark, the waters more threatening, the future less promising. Yet he would hold on if only to spite her who hated him and whom he hated almost as much as he loved Mr. Sutherland. It was his last conscious thought for hours. When morning broke he was but a nerveless figure, with sense enough to cling, and that was all. XXVI THE ADVENTURE OF THE PARCEL "A man! Haul him in! Don't leave a poor fellow drifting about like that." The speaker, a bluff, hearty skipper, whose sturdy craft had outridden one of the worst storms of the season, pointed to our poor friend Sweetwater, whose head could just be seen above the broken spar he clung to. In another moment a half-dozen hands were stretched for him, and the insensible form was drawn in and laid on a deck which still showed the results of the night's fierce conflict with the waters. "Damn it! how ugly he is!" cried one of the sailors, with a leer at the half-drowned man's face. "I'd like to see the lass we'd please in saving him. He's only fit to poison a devil-fish!" But though more than one laugh rang out, they gave him good care, and when Sweetwater came to life and realised that his blood was pulsing warmly again through his veins, and that a grey sky had taken the place of darkness, and a sound board supported limbs which for hours had yielded helplessly to the rocking billows, he saw a ring of hard but good-natured faces about him and realised quite well what had been done for him when one of them said: "There! he'll do now; all hands on deck! We can get into New Bedford in two days if this wind holds. Nor' west!" shouted the skipper to the man at the tiller. "We'll sup with our old women in forty-eight hours!" New Bedford! It was the only word Sweetwater heard. So, he was no farther away from Sutherlandtown than that. Evidently Providence had not meant him to escape. Or was it his fortitude that was being tried? A man as humble as he might easily be lost even in a place as small as New Bedford. It was his identity he must suppress. With that unrecognised he might remain in the next village to Sutherlandtown without fear of being called up as a witness against Frederick. But could he suppress it? He thought he could. At all events he meant to try. "What's your name?" were the words he now heard shouted in his ear. "Jonathan Briggs," was his mumbled reply. "I was blown off a ship's deck in the gale last night." "What ship?" "The Proserpine." It was the first name that suggested itself to him. "Oh, I thought it might have been the Hesper; she foundered off here last night." "Foundered? The Hesper?" The hot blood was shooting now through his veins. "Yes, we just picked up her name-board. That was before we got a hold on you." Foundered! The ship from which he had been so mercilessly thrown! And all on board lost, perhaps. He began to realise the hand of Providence in his fate. "It was the Hesper I sailed on. I'm not just clear yet in my head. My first voyage was made on the Proserpine. Well, bless the gale that blew me from that deck!" He seemed incoherent, and they left him again for a little while. When they came back he had his story all ready, which imposed upon them just so far as it was for their interest. Their business on this coast was not precisely legitimate, and when they found he simply wanted to be set on shore, they were quite willing to do thus much for him. Only they regretted that he had barely two dollars and his own soaked clothing to give in exchange for the motley garments they trumped up among them for his present comfort. But he, as well as they, made the best of a bad bargain, he especially, as his clothes, which would be soon scattered among half a dozen families, were the only remaining clew connecting him with his native town. He could now be Jonathan Briggs indeed. Only who was Jonathan Briggs, and how was he to earn a living under these unexpected conditions? At the end of a couple of days he was dexterously landed on the end of a long pier, which they passed without stopping, on their way to their own obscure anchorage. As he jumped from the rail to the pier and felt again the touch of terra firma he drew a long breath of uncontrollable elation. Yet he had not a cent in the world, no friends, and certainly no prospects. He did not even know whether to turn to the right or the left as he stepped out upon the docks, and when he had decided to turn to the right as being on the whole more lucky, he did not know whether to risk his fortune in the streets of the town or to plunge into one of the low-browed drinking houses whose signs confronted him on this water-lane. He decided that his prospects for a dinner were slim in any case, and that his only hope of breaking fast that day lay in the use he might make of one of his three talents. Either he must find a fiddle to play on, a carpenter's bench to work at, or a piece of detective shadowing to do. The last would bring him before the notice of the police, which was just the thing he must avoid; so it was fiddling or carpentry he must seek, either of which would be difficult to obtain in his present garb. But of difficulties Sweetwater was not a man to take note. He had undertaken out of pure love for a good man to lose himself. He had accomplished this, and now was he to complain because in doing so he was likely to go hungry for a day or two? No; Amabel might laugh at him, or he might fancy she did, while struggling in the midst of rapidly engulfing waters, but would she laugh at him now? He did not think she would. She was of the kind who sometimes go hungry themselves in old age. Some premonition of this might give her a fellow feeling. He came to a stand before a little child sitting on an ill-kept doorstep. Smiling at her kindly, he waited for her first expression to see how he appeared in the eyes of innocence. Not so bad a man, it seemed, though his naturally plain countenance was not relieved by the seaman's cap and knitted shirt he wore. For she laughed as she looked at him, and only ran away because there wasn't room for him to pass beside her. Comforted a little, he sauntered on, glancing here and there with that sharp eye of his for a piece of work to be done. Suddenly he came to a halt. A market-woman had got into an altercation with an oysterman, and her stall had been upset in the contention, and her vegetables were rolling here and there. He righted her stall, picked up her vegetables, and in return got two apples and a red herring he would not have given to a dog at home. Yet it was the sweetest morsel he had ever tasted, and the apples might have been grown in the garden of the Hesperides from the satisfaction and pleasure they gave this hungry man. Then, refreshed, he dashed into the town. It should now go hard but he would earn a night's lodging. The day was windy and he was going along a narrow street, when something floated down from a window above past his head. It was a woman's veil, and as he looked up to see where it came from he met the eyes of its owner looking down from an open casement above him. She was gesticulating, and seemed to point to someone up the street. Glad to seize at anything which promised emolument or adventure, he shouted up and asked her what she wanted. "That man down there!" she cried; "the one in a long black coat going up the street. Keep after him and stop him; tell him the telegram has come. Quick, quick, before he gets around the corner! He will pay you; run!" Sweetwater, with joy in his heart,--for five cents was a boon to him in the present condition of his affairs,--rushed after the man she had pointed out and hastily stopped him. "Someone," he added, "a woman in a window back there, bade me run after you and say the telegram has come. She told me you would pay me," he added, for he saw the man was turning hastily back, without thinking of the messenger. "I need the money, and the run was a sharp one." With a preoccupied air, the man thrust his hand into his pocket, pulled out a coin, and handed it to him. Then he walked hurriedly off. Evidently the news was welcome to him. But Sweetwater stood rooted to the ground. The man had given him a five-dollar gold piece instead of the nickel he had evidently intended. How hungrily Sweetwater eyed that coin! In it was lodging, food, perhaps a new article or so of clothing. But after a moment of indecision which might well be forgiven him, he followed speedily after the man and overtook him just as he reached the house from which the woman's veil had floated. "Sir, pardon me; but you gave me five dollars instead of five cents. It was a mistake; I cannot keep the money." The man, who was not just the sort from whom kindness would be expected, looked at the money in Sweetwater's palm, then at the miserable, mud-bespattered clothes he wore (he had got that mud helping the poor market-woman), and stared hard at the face of the man who looked so needy and yet returned him five dollars. "You're an honest fellow," he declared, not offering to take back the gold piece. Then, with a quick glance up at the window, "Would you like to earn that money?" Sweetwater broke out into a smile, which changed his whole countenance. "Wouldn't I, sir?" The man eyed him for another minute with scrutinising intensity. Then he said shortly: "Come up-stairs with me." They entered the house, went up a flight or two, and stopped at a door which was slightly ajar. "We are going into the presence of a lady," remarked the man. "Wait here until I call you." Sweetwater waited, the many thoughts going through his mind not preventing him from observing all that passed. The man, who had left the door wide open, approached the lady who was awaiting him, and who was apparently the same one who had sent Sweetwater on his errand, and entered into a low but animated conversation. She held a telegram in her hand which she showed him, and then after a little earnest parley and a number of pleading looks from them both toward the waiting Sweetwater, she disappeared into another room, from which she brought a parcel neatly done up, which she handed to the man with a strange gesture. Another hurried exchange of words and a meaning look which did not escape the sharp eye of the watchful messenger, and the man turned and gave the parcel into Sweetwater's hands. "You are to carry this," said he, "to the town hall. In the second room to the right on entering you will see a table surrounded by chairs, which at this hour ought to be empty. At the head of the table you will find an arm-chair. On the table directly in front of this you will lay this packet. Mark you, directly before the chair and not too far from the edge of the table. Then you are to come out. If you see anyone, say you came to leave some papers for Mr. Gifford. Do this and you may keep the five dollars and welcome." Sweetwater hesitated. There was something in the errand or in the manner of the man and woman that he did not like. "Don't potter!" spoke up the latter, with an impatient look at her watch. "Mr. Gifford will expect those papers." Sweetwater's sensitive fingers closed on the package he held. It did not feel like papers. "Are you going?" asked the man. Sweetwater looked up with a smile. "Large pay for so slight a commission," he ventured, turning the packet over and over in his hand. "But then you will execute it at once, and according to the instructions I have given you," retorted the man. "It is your trustworthiness I pay for. Now go." Sweetwater turned to go. After all it was probably all right, and five dollars easily earned is doubly five dollars. As he reached the staircase he stumbled. The shoes he wore did not fit him. "Be careful, there!" shouted the woman, in a shrill, almost frightened voice, while the man stumbled back into the room in a haste which seemed wholly uncalled for. "If you let the packet fall you will do injury to its contents. Go softly, man, go softly!" Yet they had said it held papers! Troubled, yet hardly knowing what his duty was, Sweetwater hastened down the stairs, and took his way up the street. The town hall should be easy to find; indeed, he thought he saw it in the distance. As he went, he asked himself two questions: Could he fail to deliver the package according to instructions, and yet earn his money? And was there any way of so delivering it without risk to the recipient or dereliction of duty to the man who had intrusted it to him and whose money he wished to earn? To the first question his conscience at once answered no; to the second the reply came more slowly, and before fixing his mind determinedly upon it he asked himself why he felt that this was no ordinary commission. He could answer readily enough. First, the pay was too large, arguing that either the packet or the placing of the packet in a certain position on Mr. Gifford's table was of uncommon importance to this man or this woman. Secondly, the woman, though plainly and inconspicuously clad, had the face of a more than ordinarily unscrupulous adventuress, while her companion was one of those saturnine-faced men we sometimes meet, whose first look puts us on our guard and whom, if we hope nothing from him, we instinctively shun. Third, they did not look like inhabitants of the house and rooms in which he found them. Nothing beyond the necessary articles of furniture was to be seen there; not a trunk, not an article of clothing, nor any of the little things that mark a woman's presence in a spot where she expects to spend a day or even an hour. Consequently they were transients and perhaps already in the act of flight. Then he was being followed. Of this he felt sure. He had followed people himself, and something in his own sensations assured him that his movements were under surveillance. It would, therefore, not do to show any consciousness of this, and he went on directly and as straight to his goal as his rather limited knowledge of the streets would allow. He was determined to earn this money and to earn it without disadvantage to anyone. And he thought he saw his way. At the entrance of the town hall he hesitated an instant. An officer was standing in the doorway, it would be easy to call his attention to the packet he held and ask him to keep his eye on it. But this might involve him with the police, and this was something, as we know, which he was more than anxious to avoid. He reverted to his first idea. Mixing with the crowd just now hurrying to and fro through the long corridors, he reached the room designated and found it, as he had been warned he should, empty. Approaching the table, he laid down the packet just as he had been directed, in front of the big arm chair, and then, casting a hurried look towards the door and failing to find anyone watching him, he took up a pencil lying near-by and scrawled hastily across the top of the packet the word "Suspicious." This he calculated would act as a warning to Mr. Gifford in case there was anything wrong about the package, and pass as a joke with him, and even the sender, if there was not. And satisfied that he had both earned his money and done justice to his own apprehensions, he turned to retrace his steps. As before, the corridors were alive with hurrying men of various ages and appearance, but only two attracted his notice. One of these was a large, intellectual-looking man, who turned into the room from which he had just emerged, and the other a short, fair man, with a countenance he had known from boyhood. Mr. Stone of Sutherlandtown was within ten paces of him, and he was as well known to the good postmaster as the postmaster was to him. Could anyone have foreseen such a chance! Turning his back with a slow slouch, he made for a rear door he saw swinging in and out before him. As he passed through he cast a quick look behind him. He had not been recognised. In great relief he rushed on, knocking against a man standing against one of the outside pillars. "Halloo!" shouted this man. Sweetwater stopped. There was a tone of authority in the voice which he could not resist. XXVII THE ADVENTURE OF THE SCRAP OF PAPER AND THE THREE WORDS "What are you trying to do? Why do you fall over a man like that? Are you drunk?" Sweetwater drew himself up, made a sheepish bow, and muttered pantingly: "Excuse me, sir. I'm in a hurry; I'm a messenger." The man who was not in a hurry seemed disposed to keep him for a moment. He had caught sight of Sweetwater's eye, which was his one remarkable feature, and he had also been impressed by that word messenger, for he repeated it with some emphasis. "A messenger, eh? Are you going on a message now?" Sweetwater, who was anxious to get away from the vicinity of Mr. Stone, shrugged his shoulders in careless denial, and was pushing on when the gentleman again detained him. "Do you know," said he, "that I like your looks? You are not a beauty, but you look like a fellow who, if he promised to do a thing, would do it and do it mighty well too." Sweetwater could not restrain a certain movement of pride. He was honest, and he knew it, but the fact had not always been so openly recognised. "I have just earned five dollars by doing a commission for a man," said he, with a straightforward look. "See, sir. It was honestly earned." The man, who was young and had a rather dashing but inscrutable physiognomy, glanced at the coin Sweetwater showed him and betrayed a certain disappointment. "So you're flush," said he. "Don't want another job?" "Oh, as to that," said Sweetwater, edging slowly down the street, "I'm always ready for business. Five dollars won't last forever, and, besides, I'm in need of new togs." "Well, rather," retorted the other, carelessly following him. "Do you mind going up to Boston?" Boston! Another jump toward home. "No," said Sweetwater, hesitatingly, "not if it's made worth my while. Do you want your message delivered to-day?" "At once. That is, this evening. It's a task involving patience and more or less shrewd judgment. Have you these qualities, my friend? One would not judge it from your clothes." "My clothes!" laughed Sweetwater. Life was growing very interesting all at once. "I know it takes patience to WEAR them, and as for any lack of judgment I may show in their choice, I should just like to say I did not choose them myself, sir; they fell to me promiscuous-like as a sort of legacy from friends. You'll see what I'll do in that way if you give me the chance to earn an extra ten." "Ah, it's ten dollars you want. Well, come in here and have a drink and then we'll see." They were before a saloon house of less than humble pretensions, and as he followed the young gentleman in it struck him that it was himself rather than his well-dressed and airy companion who would be expected to drink here. But he made no remark, though he intended to surprise the man by his temperance. "Now, look here," said the young gentleman, suddenly seating himself at a dingy table in a very dark corner and motioning Sweetwater to do the same; "I've been looking for a man all day to go up to Boston for me, and I think you'll do. You know Boston?" Sweetwater had great command over himself, but he flushed slightly at this question, though it was so dark where he sat with this man that it made very little difference. "I have been there," said he. "Very well, then, you will go again to-night. You will arrive there about seven, you will go the rounds of some half-dozen places whose names I will give you, and when you come across a certain gentleman whom I will describe to you, you will give him--" "Not a package?" Sweetwater broke out with a certain sort of dread of a repetition of his late experience. "No, this slip on which two words are written. He will want one more word, but before you give it to him you must ask for your ten dollars. You'll get them," he answered in response to a glance of suspicion from Sweetwater. Sweetwater was convinced that he had got hold of another suspicious job. It made him a little serious. "Do I look like a go-between for crooks?" he asked himself. "I'm afraid I'm not so much of a success as I thought myself." But he said to the man before him: "Ten dollars is small pay for such business. Twenty-five would be nearer the mark." "Very well, he will give you twenty-five dollars. I forgot that ten dollars was but little in advance of your expenses." "Twenty-five if I find him, and he is in funds. What if I don't?" "Nothing." "Nothing?" "Except your ticket; that I'll give you." Sweetwater did not know what to say. Like the preceding job it might be innocent and it might not. And then, he did not like going to Boston, where he was liable to meet more than one who knew him. "There is no harm in the business," observed the other, carelessly, pushing a glass of whiskey which had just been served him toward Sweetwater. "I would even be willing to do it myself, if I could leave New Bedford to-night, but I can't. Come! It's as easy as crooking your elbow." "Just now you said it wasn't," growled Sweetwater, drinking from his glass. "But no matter about that, go ahead, I'll do it. Shall I have to buy other clothes?" "I'd buy a new pair of trousers," suggested the other. "The rest you can get in Boston. You don't want to be too much in evidence, you know." Sweetwater agreed with. him. To attract attention was what he most dreaded. "When does the train start?" he asked. The young man told him. "Well, that will give me time to buy what I want. Now, what are your instructions?" The young man gave him a memorandum, containing four addresses. "You will find him at one of these places," said he. "And now to know your man when you see him. He is a large, handsome fellow, with red hair and a moustache like the devil. He has been hurt, and wears his left hand in a sling, but he can play cards, and will be found playing cards, and in very good company too. You will have to use your discretion in approaching him. When once he sees this bit of paper, all will be easy. He knows what these two words mean well enough, and the third one, the one that is worth twenty-five dollars to you, is FREDERICK." Sweetwater, who had drunk half his glass, started so at this word, which was always humming in his brain, that he knocked over his tumbler and spilled what was left in it. "I hope I won't forget that word," he remarked, in a careless tone, intended to carry off his momentary show of feeling. "If you do, then don't expect the twenty-five dollars," retorted the other, finishing his own glass, but not offering to renew Sweetwater's. Sweetwater laughed, said he thought he could trust his memory, and rose. In a half-hour he was at the depot, and in another fifteen minutes speeding out of New Bedford on his way to Boston. He had had but one anxiety--that Mr. Stone might be going up to Boston too. But, once relieved of this apprehension, he settled back, and for the first time in twelve hours had a minute in which to ask himself who he was, and what he was about. Adventure had followed so fast upon adventure that he was in a more or less dazed condition, and felt as little capable of connecting event with event as if he had been asked to recall the changing pictures of a kaleidoscope. That affair of the packet, now, was it or was it not serious, and would he ever know what it meant or how it turned out? Like a child who had been given a pebble, and told to throw it over the wall, he had thrown and run, giving a shout of warning, it is true, but not knowing, nor ever likely to know, where the stone had fallen, or what it was meant to do. Then this new commission on which he was bent--was it in any way connected with the other, or merely the odd result of his being in the right place at the right moment? He was inclined to think the latter. And yet how odd it was that one doubtful errand should be followed by another, in a town no larger than New Bedford, forcing him from scene to scene, till he found himself speeding toward the city he least desired to enter, and from which he had the most to fear! But brooding over a case like this brings small comfort. He felt that he had been juggled with, but he neither knew by whose hand nor in what cause. If the hand was that of Providence, why he had only to go on following the beck of the moment, while if it was that of Fate, the very uselessness of struggling with it was apparent at once. Poor reasoning, perhaps, but no other offered, and satisfied that whatever came his intentions were above question, he settled himself at last for a nap, of which he certainly stood in good need. When he awoke he was in Boston. The first thing he did was to show his list of addresses and inquire into what quarter they would lead him. To his surprise he found it to be the fashionable quarter. Two of them were names of well-known club-houses, a third that of a first-class restaurant, and the fourth that of a private house on Commonwealth Avenue. Heigho! and he was dressed like a tramp, or nearly so! "Queer messenger, I, for such kind of work," thought he. "I wonder why he lighted on such a rough-looking customer. He must have had his reasons. I wonder if he wished the errand to fail. He bore himself very nonchalantly at the depot. When I last saw him his face and attitude were those of a totally unconcerned man. Have I been sent on a fool's chase after all?" The absurdity of this conclusion struck him, however, as he reasoned: "Why, then, should he have paid my fare? Not as a benefit to me, of course, but for his own ends, whatever they might be. Let us see, then, what those ends are. So now for the gentleman of the red hair who plays cards with one arm in a sling." He thought that he might get entrance into the club-houses easily enough. He possessed a certain amount of insinuation when necessity required, and, if hard-featured, had a good expression which in unprejudiced minds defied criticism. Of porters and doorkeepers he was not afraid, and these were the men he must first encounter. At the first club-house he succeeded easily enough in getting word with the man waiting in the large hall, and before many minutes learned that the object of his search was not to be found there that evening. He also learned his name, which was a great step towards the success of his embassy. It was Wattles, Captain Wattles, a marked man evidently, even in this exclusive and aristocratic club. Armed with this new knowledge, he made his way to the second building of the kind and boldly demanded speech with Captain Wattles. But Captain Wattles had not yet arrived and he went out again this time to look him up at the restaurant. He was not there. As Sweetwater was going out two gentlemen came in, one of whom said to the other in passing: "Sick, do you say? I thought Wattles was made of iron." "So he was," returned the other, "before that accident to his arm. Now the least thing upsets him. He's down at Haberstow's." That was all; the door was swung to between them. Sweetwater had received his clew, but what a clew! Haberstow's? Where was that? Thinking the bold course the best one, he re-entered the restaurant and approached the gentlemen he had just seen enter. "I heard you speak the name of Captain Wattles," said he. "I am hunting for Captain Wattles. Can you tell me where he is?" He soon saw that he had struck the wrong men for information. They not only refused to answer him, but treated him with open disdain. Unwilling to lose time, he left them, and having no other resource, hastened to the last place mentioned on his list. It was now late, too late to enter a private house under ordinary circumstances, but this house was lighted up, and a carriage stood in front of it; so he had the courage to run up the steps and consult the large door-plate visible from the sidewalk. It read thus: HABERSTOW. Fortune had favoured him better than he expected. He hesitated a moment, then decided to ring the bell. But before he had done so, the door opened and an old gentleman appeared seeing a younger man out. The latter had his arm in a sling, and bore himself with a fierceness that made his appearance somewhat alarming; the other seemed to be in an irate state of mind. "No apologies!" the former was saying. "I don't mind the night air; I'm not so ill as that. When I'm myself again we'll have a little more talk. My compliments to your daughter, sir. I wish you a very good evening, or rather night." The old gentleman bowed, and as he did so Sweetwater caught a glimpse (it was the shortest glimpse in the world) of a sweet face beaming from a doorway far down the hall. There was pain in it and a yearning anxiety that made it very beautiful; then it vanished, and the old gentleman, uttering some few sarcastic words, closed the door, and Sweetwater found himself alone and in darkness. The kaleidoscope had been given another turn. Dashing down the stoop, he came upon the gentleman who had preceded him, just as he was seating himself in the carriage. "Pardon me," he gasped, as the driver caught up the reins; "you have forgotten something." Then, as Captain Wattles looked hastily out, "You have forgotten me." The oath that rang out from under that twitching red moustache was something to startle even him. But he clung to the carriage window and presently managed to say: "A messenger, sir, from New Bedford. I have been on the hunt for you for two hours. It won't keep, sir, for more than a half-hour longer. Where shall I find you during that time?" Captain Wattles, on whom the name New Bedford seemed to have made some impression, pointed up at the coachman's box with a growl, in which command mingled strangely with menace. Then he threw himself back. Evidently the captain was not in very good humour. Sweetwater, taking this as an order to seat himself beside the driver, did so, and the carriage drove off. It went at a rapid pace, and before he had time to propound more than a question or two to the coachman, it stopped before a large apartment-house in a brilliantly lighted street. Captain Wattles got out, and Sweetwater followed him. The former, who seemed to have forgotten Sweetwater, walked past him and entered the building with a stride and swing that made the plain, lean, insignificant-looking messenger behind him feel smaller than ever. Indeed, he had never felt so small, for not only was the captain a man of superb proportions and conspicuous bearing, but he possessed, in spite of his fiery hair and fierce moustache, that _beauté de diable_ which is at once threatening and imposing. Added to this, he was angry and so absorbed in his own thoughts that he would be very apt to visit punishment of no light character upon anyone who interfered with him. A pleasing prospect for Sweetwater, who, however, kept on with the dogged determination of his character up the first flight of stairs and then up another till they stopped, Captain Wattles first and afterwards his humble follower, before a small door into which the captain endeavoured to fit a key. The oaths which followed his failure to do this were not very encouraging to the man behind, nor was the kick which he gave the door after the second more successful attempt calculated to act in a very reassuring way upon anyone whose future pay for a doubtful task rested upon this man's good nature. The darkness which met them both on the threshold of this now open room was speedily relieved by a burst of electric light, that flooded the whole apartment and brought out the captain's swaggering form and threatening features with startling distinctness. He had thrown off his hat and was relieving himself of a cloak in a furious way that caused Sweetwater to shrink back, and, as the French say, efface himself as much as possible behind a clothes-tree standing near the door. That the captain had entirely forgotten him was evident, and for the present moment that gentleman was too angry to care or even notice if a dozen men stood at the door. As he was talking all this time, or rather jerking out sharp sentences, as men do when in a towering rage, Sweetwater was glad to be left unnoticed, for much can be gathered from scattered sentences, especially when a man is in too reckless a frame of mind to weigh them. He, therefore, made but little movement and listened; and these are some of the ejaculations and scraps of talk he heard: "The old purse-proud fool! Honoured by my friendship, but not ready to accept me as his daughter's suitor! As if I would lounge away hours that mean dollars to me in his stiff old drawing-room, just to hear his everlasting drone about stocks up and stocks down, and politics gone all wrong. He has heard that I play cards, and--How pretty she looked! I believe I half like that girl, and when I think she has a million in her own right--Damn it, if I cannot win her openly and with papa's consent, I will carry her off with only her own. She's worth the effort, doubly worth it, and when I have her and her money--Eh! Who are you?" He had seen Sweetwater at last, which was not strange, seeing that he had turned his way, and was within two feet of him. "What are you doing here, and who let you in? Get out, or--" "A message, Captain Wattles! A message from New Bedford. You have forgotten, sir; you bade me follow you." It was curious to see the menace slowly die out of the face of this flushed and angry man as he met Sweetwater's calm eye and unabashed front, and noticed, as he had not done at first, the slip of paper which the latter resolutely held out. "New Bedford; ah, from Campbell, I take it. Let me see!" And the hand which had shook with rage now trembled with a very different sort of emotion as he took the slip, cast his eyes over it, and then looked back at Sweetwater. Now, Sweetwater knew the two words written on that paper. He could see out of the back of his head at times, and he had been able to make out these words when the man in New Bedford was writing them. "Happenings; Afghanistan," with the figures 2000 after the latter. Not much sense in them singly or in conjunction, but the captain, muttering them over to himself, consulted a little book which he took from his breast pocket and found, or seemed to, a clew to their meaning. It could only have been a partial one, however, for in another instant he turned on Sweetwater with a sour look and a thundering oath. "Is this all?" he shouted. "Does he call this a complete message?" "There is another word," returned Sweetwater, "which he bade me give you by word of mouth; but that word don't go for nothing. It's worth just twenty-five dollars. I've earned it, sir. I came up from New Bedford on purpose to deliver it to you." Sweetwater expected a blow, but he only got a stare. "Twenty-five dollars," muttered the captain. "Well, it's fortunate that I have them. And who are you?" he asked. "Not one of Campbell's pick-ups, surely?" "I am a confidential messenger," smiled Sweetwater, amused against his will at finding a name for himself. "I carry messages and execute commissions that require more or less discretion in the handling. I am paid well. Twenty-five dollars is the price of this job." "So you have had the honour of informing me before," blustered the other with an attempt to hide some serious emotion. "Why, man, what do you fear? Don't you see I'm hurt? You could knock me over with a feather if you touched my game arm." "Twenty-five dollars," repeated Sweetwater. The captain grew angrier. "Dash it! aren't you going to have them? What's the word?" But Sweetwater wasn't going to be caught by chaff. "C. O. D.," he insisted firmly, standing his ground, though certain that the blow would now fall. But no, the captain laughed, and tugging away with his one free hand at his pocket, he brought out a pocket-book, from which he managed deftly enough to draw out three bills. "There," said he, laying them on the table, but keeping one long vigorous finger on them. "Now, the word." Sweetwater laid his own hand on the bills. "Frederick," said he. "Ah!" said the other thoughtfully, lifting his finger and proceeding to stride up and down the room. "He's a stiff one. What he says, he will do. Two thousand dollars! and soon, too, I warrant. Well, I'm in a devil of a fix at last." He had again forgotten the presence of Sweetwater. Suddenly he turned or rather stopped. His eye was on the messenger, but he did not even see him. "One Frederick must offset the other," he cried. "It's the only loophole out," and he threw himself into a chair from which he immediately sprang up again with a yell. He had hurt his wounded arm. Pandemonium reigned in that small room for a minute, then his eye fell again on Sweetwater, who, under the fascination of the spectacle offered him, had only just succeeded in finding the knob of the door. This time there was recognition in his look. "Wait!" he cried. "I may have use for you too. Confidential messengers are hard to come by, and one that Campbell would employ must be all right. Sit down there! I'll talk to you when I'm ready." Sweetwater was not slow in obeying this command. Business was booming with him. Besides, the name of Frederick acted like a charm upon him. There seemed to be so many Fredericks in the world, and one of them lay in such a curious way near his heart. Meanwhile the captain reseated himself, but more carefully. He had a plan or method of procedure to think out, or so it seemed, for he sat a long time in rigid immobility, with only the scowl of perplexity or ill-temper on his brow to show the nature of his thoughts. Then he drew a sheet of paper toward him, and began to write a letter. He was so absorbed over this letter and the manipulation of it, having but one hand to work with, that Sweetwater determined upon a hazardous stroke. The little book which the captain had consulted, and which had undoubtedly furnished him with a key to those two incongruous words, lay on the floor not far from him, having been flung from its owner's hand during the moments of passion and suffering I have above mentioned. To reach this book with his foot, to draw it toward him, and, finally, to get hold of it with his hand, was not difficult for one who aspired to be a detective, and had already done some good work in that direction. But it was harder to turn the leaves and find the words he sought without attracting the attention of his fierce companion. He, however, succeeded in doing this at last, the long list of words he found on every page being arranged alphabetically. It was a private code for telegraphic or cable messages, and he soon found that "Happenings" meant: "Our little game discovered; play straight until I give you the wink." And that "Afghanistan" stood for: "Hush money." As the latter was followed by the figures I have mentioned, the purport of the message needed no explanation, but the word "Frederick" did. So he searched for that, only to find that it was not in the book. There was but one conclusion to draw. This name was perfectly well known between them, and was that of the person, no doubt, who laid claim to the two thousand dollars. Satisfied at holding this clew to the riddle, he dropped the book again at his side and skilfully kicked it far out into the room. Captain Wattles had seen nothing. He was a man who took in only one thing at a time. The penning of that letter went on laboriously. It took so long that Sweetwater dozed, or pretended to, and when it was at last done, the clock on the mantelpiece had struck two. "Halloo there, now!" suddenly shouted the captain, turning on the messenger. "Are you ready for another journey?" "That depends," smiled Sweetwater, rising sleepily and advancing. "Haven't got over the last one yet, and would rather sleep than start out again." "Oh, you want pay? Well, you'll get that fast enough if you succeed in your mission. This letter" he shook it with an impatient hand--"should be worth two thousand five hundred dollars to me. If you bring me back that money or its equivalent within twenty-four hours, I will give you a clean hundred of it. Good enough pay, I take it, for five hours' journey. Better than sleep, eh? Besides, you can doze on the cars." Sweetwater agreed with him in all these assertions. Putting on his cap, he reached for the letter. He didn't like being made an instrument for blackmail, but he was curious to see to whom he was about to be sent. But the captain had grown suddenly wary. "This is not a letter to be dropped in the mailbox," said he. "You brought me a line here whose prompt delivery has prevented me from making a fool of myself to-night. You must do as much with this one. It is to be carried to its destination by yourself, given to the person whose name you will find written on it, and the answer brought back before you sleep, mind you, unless you snatch a wink or so on the cars. That it is night need not disturb you. It will be daylight before you arrive at the place to which this is addressed, and if you cannot get into the house at so early an hour, whistle three times like this--listen and one of the windows will presently fly up. You have had no trouble finding me; you'll have no trouble finding him. When you return, hunt me up as you did to-night. Only you need not trouble yourself to look for me at Haberstow's," he added under his breath in a tone that was no doubt highly satisfactory to himself. "I shall not be there. And now, off with you!" he shouted. "You've your hundred dollars to make before daylight, and it's already after two." Sweetwater, who had stolen a glimpse at the superscription on the letter he held, stumbled as he went out of the door. It was directed, as he had expected, to a Frederick, probably to the second one of whom Captain Wattles had spoken, but not, as he had expected, to a stranger. The name on the letter was Frederick Sutherland, and the place of his destination was Sutherlandtown. XXVIII "WHO ARE YOU?" The round had come full circle. By various chances and a train of circumstances for which he could not account, he had been turned from his first intention and was being brought back stage by stage to the very spot he had thought it his duty to fly from. Was this fate? He began to think so, and no longer so much as dreamed of struggling against it. But he felt very much dazed, and walked away through the now partially deserted streets with an odd sense of failure that was only compensated by the hope he now cherished of seeing his mother again, and being once more Caleb Sweetwater of Sutherlandtown. He was clearer, however, after a few blocks of rapid walking, and then he began to wonder over the contents of the letter he held, and how they would affect its recipient. Was it a new danger he was bringing him? Instead of aiding Mr. Sutherland in keeping his dangerous secret, was he destined to bring disgrace upon him, not only by his testimony before the coroner, but by means of this letter, which, whatever it contained, certainly could not bode good to the man from whom it was designed to wrest two thousand five hundred dollars? The fear that he was destined to do so grew upon him rapidly, and the temptation to open the letter and make himself master of its contents before leaving town at last became so strong that his sense of honour paled before it, and he made up his mind that before he ventured into the precincts of Sutherlandtown he would know just what sort of a bombshell he was carrying into the Sutherland family. To do this he stopped at the first respectable lodging-house he encountered and hired a room. Calling for hot water "piping hot," he told them--he subjected the letter to the effects of steam and presently had it open. He was not disappointed in its contents, save that they were even more dangerous than he had anticipated. Captain Wattles was an old crony of Frederick's and knew his record better than anyone else in the world. From this fact and the added one that Frederick had stood in special need of money at the time of Agatha Webb's murder, the writer had no hesitation in believing him guilty of the crime which opened his way to a fortune, and though under ordinary circumstances he would, as his friend Frederick already knew, be perfectly willing to keep his opinions to himself, he was just now under the same necessity for money that Frederick had been at that fatal time, and must therefore see the colour of two thousand five hundred dollars before the day was out if Frederick desired to have his name kept out of the Boston papers. That it had been kept out up to this time argued that the crime had been well enough hidden to make the alternative thus offered an important one. There was no signature. Sweetwater, affected to an extent he little expected, resealed the letter, made his excuses to the landlord, and left the house. Now he could see why he had not been allowed to make his useless sacrifice. Another man than himself suspected Frederick, and by a word could precipitate the doom he already saw hung too low above the devoted head of Mr. Sutherland's son to be averted. "Yet I'll attempt that too," burst impetuously from his lips. "If I fail, I can but go back with a knowledge of this added danger. If I succeed, why I must still go back. From some persons and from some complications it is useless to attempt flight." Returning to the club-house he had first entered in his search for Captain Wattles, he asked if that gentleman had yet come in. This time he was answered by an affirmative, though he might almost as well have not been, for the captain was playing cards in a private room and would not submit to any interruption. "He will submit to mine," retorted Sweetwater to the man who had told him this. "Or wait; hand him back this letter and say that the messenger refuses to deliver it." This brought the captain out, as he had fully expected it would. "Why, what--" began that gentleman in a furious rage. But Sweetwater, laying his hand on the arm he knew to be so sensitive, rose on tiptoe and managed to whisper in the angry man's ear: "You are a card-sharp, and it will be easy enough to ruin you. Threaten Frederick Sutherland and in two weeks you will be boycotted by every club in this city. Twenty-five hundred dollars won't pay you for that." This from a nondescript fellow with no grains of a gentleman about him in form, feature, or apparel! The captain stared nonplussed, too much taken aback to be even angry. Suddenly he cried: "How do you know all this? How do you know what is or is not in the letter I gave you?" Sweetwater, with a shrug that in its quiet significance seemed to make him at once the equal of his interrogator, quietly pressed the quivering limb under his hand and calmly replied: "I know because I have read it. Before putting my head in the lion's mouth, I make it a point to count his teeth," and lifting his hand, he drew back, leaving the captain reeling. "What is your name? Who are you?" shouted out Wattles as Sweetwater was drawing off. It was the third time he had been asked that question within twenty-four hours, but not before with this telling emphasis. "Who are you, I say, and what can you do to me--?" "I am--But that is an insignificant detail unworthy of your curiosity. As to what I can do, wait and see. But first burn that letter." And turning his back he fled out of the building, followed by oaths which, if not loud, were certainly deep and very far-reaching. It was the first time Captain Wattles had met his match in audacity. XXIX HOME AGAIN On his way to the depot, Sweetwater went into the Herald office and bought a morning paper. At the station he opened it. There was one column devoted to the wreck of the Hesper, and a whole half-page to the proceedings of the third day's inquiry into the cause and manner of Agatha Webb's death. Merely noting that his name was mentioned among the lost, in the first article, he began to read the latter with justifiable eagerness. The assurance given in Captain Wattles's letter was true. No direct suspicion had as yet fallen on Frederick. As the lover of Amabel Page, his name was necessarily mentioned, but neither in the account of the inquest nor in the editorials on the subject could he find any proof that either the public or police had got hold of the great idea that he was the man who had preceded Amabel to Agatha's cottage. Relieved on this score, Sweetwater entered more fully into the particulars, and found that though the jury had sat three days, very little more had come to light than was known on the morning he made that bold dash into the Hesper. Most of the witnesses had given in their testimony, Amabel's being the chief, and though no open accusation had been made, it was evident from the trend of the questions put to the latter that Amabel's connection with the affair was looked upon as criminal and as placing her in a very suspicious light. Her replies, however, as once before, under a similar but less formal examination, failed to convey any recognition on her part either of this suspicion or of her own position; yet they were not exactly frank, and Sweetwater saw, or thought he saw (naturally failing to have a key to the situation), that she was still working upon her old plan of saving both herself and Frederick, by throwing whatever suspicion her words might raise upon the deceased Zabel. He did not know, and perhaps it was just as well that he did not at this especial juncture, that she was only biding her time--now very nearly at hand--and that instead of loving Frederick, she hated him, and was determined upon his destruction. Reading, as a final clause, that Mr. Sutherland was expected to testify soon in explanation of his position as executor of Mrs. Webb's will, Sweetwater grew very serious, and, while no change took place in his mind as to his present duty, he decided that his return must be as unobtrusive as possible, and his only too timely reappearance on the scene of the inquiry kept secret till Mr. Sutherland had given his evidence and retired from under the eyes of his excited fellow-citizens. "The sight of me might unnerve him," was Sweetwater's thought, "precipitating the very catastrophe we dread. One look, one word on his part indicative of his inner apprehensions that his son had a hand in the crime which has so benefited him, and nothing can save Frederick from the charge of murder. Not Knapp's skill, my silence, or Amabel's finesse. The young man will be lost." He did not know, as we do, that Amabel's finesse was devoted to winning a husband for herself, and that, in the event of failure, the action she threatened against her quondam lover would be precipitated that very day at the moment when the clock struck twelve. . . . . . . Sweetwater arrived home by the way of Portchester. He had seen one or two persons he knew, but, so far, had himself escaped recognition. The morning light was dimly breaking when he strode into the outskirts of Sutherlandtown and began to descend the hill. As he passed Mr. Halliday's house he looked up, and was astonished to see a light burning in one deeply embowered window. Alas! he did not know how early one anxious heart woke during those troublous days. The Sutherland house was dark, but as he crept very close under its overhanging eaves he heard a deep sigh uttered over his head, and knew that someone was up here also in anxious expectation of a day that was destined to hold more than even he anticipated. Meanwhile, the sea grew rosy, and the mother's cottage was as yet far off. Hurrying on, he came at last under the eye of more than one of the early risers of Sutherlandtown. "What, Sweetwater! Alive and well!" "Hey, Sweetwater, we thought you were lost on the Hesper!" "Halloo! Home in time to see the pretty Amabel arrested?" Phrases like these met him at more than one corner; but he eluded them all, stopping only to put one hesitating question. Was his mother well? Home fears had made themselves felt with his near approach to that humble cottage door. BOOK III HAD BATSY LIVED! XXX WHAT FOLLOWED THE STRIKING OF THE CLOCK It was the last day of the inquest, and to many it bade fair to be the least interesting. All the witnesses who had anything to say had long ago given in their testimony, and when at or near noon Sweetwater slid into the inconspicuous seat he had succeeded in obtaining near the coroner, it was to find in two faces only any signs of the eagerness and expectancy which filled his own breast to suffocation. But as these faces were those of Agnes Halliday and Amabel Page, he soon recognised that his own judgment was not at fault, and that notwithstanding outward appearances and the languid interest shown in the now lagging proceedings, the moment presaged an event full of unseen but vital consequence. Frederick was not visible in the great hall; but that he was near at hand soon became evident from the change Sweetwater now saw in Amabel. For while she had hitherto sat under the universal gaze with only the faint smile of conscious beauty on her inscrutable features, she roused as the hands of the clock moved toward noon, and glanced at the great door of entrance with an evil expectancy that startled even Sweetwater, so little had he really understood the nature of the passions labouring in that venomous breast. Next moment the door opened, and Frederick and his father came in. The air of triumphant satisfaction with which Amabel sank back into her seat was as marked in its character as her previous suspense. What did it mean? Sweetwater, noting it, and the vivid contrast it offered to Frederick's air of depression, felt that his return had been well timed. Mr. Sutherland was looking very feeble. As he took the chair offered him, the change in his appearance was apparent to all who knew him, and there were few there who did not know him. And, startled by these evidences of suffering which they could not understand and feared to interpret even to themselves, more than one devoted friend stole uneasy glances at Frederick to see if he too were under the cloud which seemed to envelop his father almost beyond recognition. But Frederick was looking at Amabel, and his erect head and determined aspect made him a conspicuous figure in the room. She who had called up this expression, and alone comprehended it fully, smiled as she met his eye, with that curious slow dipping of her dimples which had more than once confounded the coroner, and rendered her at once the admiration and abhorrence of the crowd who for so long a time had had the opportunity of watching her. Frederick, to whom this smile conveyed a last hope as well as a last threat, looked away as soon as possible, but not before her eyes had fallen in their old inquiring way to his hands, from which he had removed the ring which up to this hour he had invariably worn on his third finger. In this glance of hers and this action of his began the struggle that was to make that day memorable in many hearts. After the first stir occasioned by the entrance of two such important persons the crowd settled back into its old quietude under the coroner's hand. A tedious witness was having his slow say, and to him a full attention was being given in the hope that some real enlightenment would come at last to settle the questions which had been raised by Amabel's incomplete and unsatisfactory testimony. But no man can furnish what he does not possess, and the few final minutes before noon passed by without any addition being made to the facts which had already been presented for general consideration. As the witness sat down the clock began to strike. As the slow, hesitating strokes rang out, Sweetwater saw Frederick yield to a sudden but most profound emotion. The old fear, which we understand, if Sweetwater did not, had again seized the victim of Amabel's ambition, and under her eye, which was blazing full upon him now with a fell and steady purpose, he found his right hand stealing toward the left in the significant action she expected. Better to yield than fall headlong into the pit one word of hers would open. He had not meant to yield, but now that the moment had come, now that he must at once and forever choose between a course that led simply to personal unhappiness and one that involved not only himself, but those dearest to him, in disgrace and sorrow, he felt himself weaken to the point of clutching at whatever would save him from the consequences of confession. Moral strength and that tenacity of purpose which only comes from years of self-control were too lately awakened in his breast to sustain him now. As stroke after stroke fell on the ear, he felt himself yielding beyond recovery, and had almost touched his finger in the significant action of assent which Amabel awaited with breathless expectation, when--was it miracle or only the suggestion of his better nature?--the memory of a face full of holy pleading rose from the past before his eyes and with an inner cry of "Mother!" he flung his hand out and clutched his father's arm in a way to break the charm of his own dread and end forever the effects of the intolerable fascination that was working upon him. Next minute the last stroke of noon rang out, and the hour was up which Amabel had set as the limit of her silence. A pause, which to their two hearts if to no others seemed strangely appropriate, followed the cessation of these sounds, then the witness was dismissed, and Amabel, taking advantage of the movement, was about to lean toward Mr. Courtney, when Frederick, leaping with a bound to his feet, drew all eyes towards himself with the cry: "Let me be put on my oath. I have testimony to give of the utmost importance in this case." The coroner was astounded; everyone was astounded. No one had expected anything from him, and instinctively every eye turned towards Amabel to see how she was affected by his action. Strangely, evidently, for the look with which she settled back in her seat was one which no one who saw it ever forgot, though it conveyed no hint of her real feelings, which were somewhat chaotic. Frederick, who had forgotten her now that he had made up his mind to speak, waited for the coroner's reply. "If you have testimony," said that gentleman after exchanging a few hurried words with Mr. Courtney and the surprised Knapp, "you can do no better than give it to us at once. Mr. Frederick Sutherland, will you take the stand?" With a noble air from which all hesitation had vanished, Frederick started towards the place indicated, but stopped before he had taken a half-dozen steps and glanced back at his father, who was visibly succumbing under this last shock. "Go!" he whispered, but in so thrilling a tone it was heard to the remotest corner of the room. "Spare me the anguish of saying what I have to say in your presence. I could not bear it. You could not bear it. Later, if you will wait for me in one of these rooms, I will repeat my tale in your ears, but go now. It is my last entreaty." There was a silence; no one ventured a dissent, no one so much as made a gesture of disapproval. Then Mr. Sutherland struggled to his feet, cast one last look around him, and disappeared through a door which had opened like magic before him. Then and not till then did Frederick move forward. The moment was intense. The coroner seemed to share the universal excitement, for his first question was a leading one and brought out this startling admission: "I have obtruded myself into this inquiry and now ask to be heard by this jury, because no man knows more than I do of the manner and cause of Agatha Webb's death. This you will believe when I tell you that _I_ was the person Miss Page followed into Mrs. Webb's house and whom she heard descend the stairs during the moment she crouched behind the figure of the sleeping Philemon." It was more, infinitely more, than anyone there had expected. It was not only an acknowledgment but a confession, and the shock, the surprise, the alarm, which it occasioned even to those who had never had much confidence in this young man's virtue, was almost appalling in its intensity. Had it not been for the consciousness of Mr. Sutherland's near presence the feeling would have risen to outbreak; and many voices were held in subjection by the remembrance of this venerated man's last look, that otherwise would have made themselves heard in despite of the restrictions of the place and the authority of the police. To Frederick it was a moment of immeasurable grief and humiliation. On every face, in every shrinking form, in subdued murmurs and open cries, he read instant and complete condemnation, and yet in all his life from boyhood up to this hour, never had he been so worthy of their esteem and consideration. But though he felt the iron enter his soul, he did not lose his determined attitude. He had observed a change in Amabel and a change in Agnes, and if only to disappoint the vile triumph of the one and raise again the drooping courage of the other, he withstood the clamour and began speaking again, before the coroner had been able to fully restore quiet. "I know," said he, "what this acknowledgment must convey to the minds of the jury and people here assembled. But if anyone who listens to me thinks me guilty of the death I was so unfortunate as to have witnessed, he will be doing me a wrong which Agatha Webb would be the first to condemn. Dr. Talbot, and you, gentlemen of the jury, in the face of God and man, I here declare that Mrs. Webb, in my presence and before my eyes, gave to herself the blow which has robbed us all of a most valuable life. She was not murdered." It was a solemn assertion, but it failed to convince the crowd before him. As by one impulse men and women broke into a tumult. Mr. Sutherland was forgotten and cries of "Never! She was too good! It's all calumny! A wretched lie!" broke in unrestrained excitement from every part of the large room. In vain the coroner smote with his gavel, in vain the local police endeavoured to restore order; the tide was up and over-swept everything for an instant till silence was suddenly restored by the sight of Amabel smoothing out the folds of her crisp white frock with an incredulous, almost insulting, smile that at once fixed attention again on Frederick. He seized the occasion and spoke up in a tone of great resolve. "I have made an assertion," said he, "before God and before this jury. To make it seem a credible one I shall have to tell my own story from the beginning. Am I allowed to do so, Mr. Coroner?" "You are," was the firm response. "Then, gentlemen," continued Frederick, still without looking at Amabel, whose smile had acquired a mockery that drew the eyes of the jury toward her more than once during the following recital, "you know, and the public generally now know, that Mrs. Webb has left me the greater portion of the money of which she died possessed. I have never before acknowledged to anyone, not even to the good man who awaits this jury's verdict on the other side of that door yonder, that she had reasons for this, good reasons, reasons of which up to the very evening of her death I was myself ignorant, as I was ignorant of her intentions in my regard, or that I was the special object of her attention, or that we were under any mutual obligations in any way. Why, then, I should have thought of going to her in the great strait in which I found myself on that day, I cannot say. I knew she had money in her house; this I had unhappily been made acquainted with in an accidental way, and I knew she was of kindly disposition and quite capable of doing a very unselfish act. Still, this would not seem to be reason enough for me to intrude upon her late at night with a plea for a large loan of money, had I not been in a desperate condition of mind, which made any attempt seem reasonable that promised relief from the unendurable burden of a pressing and disreputable debt. I was obliged to have money, a great deal of money, and I had to have it at once; and while I know that this will not serve to lighten the suspicion I have brought upon myself by my late admissions, it is the only explanation I can give you for leaving the ball at my father's house and hurrying down secretly and alone into town to the little cottage where, as I had been told early in the evening, a small entertainment was being given, which would insure its being open even at so late an hour as midnight. Miss Page, who will, I am sure, pardon the introduction of her name into this narrative, has taken pains to declare to you that in the expedition she herself made into town that evening, she followed some person's steps down-hill. This is very likely true, and those steps were probably mine, for after leaving the house by the garden door, I came directly down the main road to the corner of the lane running past Mrs. Webb's cottage. Having already seen from the hillside the light burning in her upper windows, I felt encouraged to proceed, and so hastened on till I came to the gate on High Street. Here I had a moment of hesitation, and thoughts bitter enough for me to recall them at this moment came into my mind, making that instant, perhaps, the very worst in my life; but they passed, thank God, and with no more desperate feeling than a sullen intention of having my own way about this money, I lifted the latch of the front door and stepped in. "I had expected to find a jovial group of friends in her little ground parlour, or at least to hear the sound of merry voices and laughter in the rooms above; but no sounds of any sort awaited me; indeed the house seemed strangely silent for one so fully lighted, and, astonished at this, I pushed the door ajar at my left and looked in. An unexpected and pitiful sight awaited me. Seated at a table set with abundance of untasted food, I saw the master of the house with his head sunk forward on his arms, asleep. The expected guests had failed to arrive, and he, tired out with waiting, had fallen into a doze at the board. "This was a condition of things for which I was not prepared. Mrs. Webb, whom I wished to see, was probably up-stairs, and while I might summon her by a sturdy rap on the door beside which I stood, I had so little desire to wake her husband, of whose mental condition I was well aware, that I could not bring myself to make any loud noise within his hearing. Yet I had not the courage to retreat. All my hope of relief from the many difficulties that menaced me lay in the generosity of this great-hearted woman, and if out of pusillanimity I let this hour go by without making my appeal, nothing but shame and disaster awaited me. Yet how could I hope to lure her down-stairs without noise? I could not, and so, yielding to the impulse of the moment, without any realisation, I here swear, of the effect which my unexpected presence would have on the noble woman overhead, I slipped up the narrow staircase, and catching at that moment the sound of her voice calling out to Batsy, I stepped up to the door I saw standing open before me and confronted her before she could move from the table before which she was sitting, counting over a large roll of money. "My look (and it was doubtless not a common look, for the sight of a mass of money at that moment, when money was everything to me, roused every lurking demon in my breast) seemed to appall, if it did not frighten her, for she rose, and meeting my eye with a gaze in which shock and some strange and poignant agony totally incomprehensible to me were strangely blended, she cried out: "'No, no, Frederick! You don't know what you are doing. If you want my money, take it; if you want my life, I will give it to you with my own hand. Don't stain yours--don't--' "I did not understand her. I did not know until I thought it over afterward that my hand was thrust convulsively into my breast in a way which, taken with my wild mien, made me look as if I had come to murder her for the money over which she was hovering. I was blind, deaf to everything but that money, and bending madly forward in a state of mental intoxication awful enough for me to remember now, I answered her frenzied words by some such broken exclamations as these: "'Give, then! I want hundreds--thousands--now, now, to save myself! Disgrace, shame, prison await me if I don't have them. Give, give!' And my hand went out toward it, not toward her; but she mistook the action, mistook my purpose, and, with a heart-broken cry, to save me, ME, from crime, the worst crime of which humanity is capable, she caught up a dagger lying only too near her hand in the open drawer against which she leaned, and in a moment of fathomless anguish which we who can never know more than the outward seeming of her life can hardly measure, plunged against it and--I can tell you no more. Her blood and Batsy's shriek from the adjoining room swam through my consciousness, and then she fell, as I supposed, dead upon the floor, and I, in scarcely better case, fell also. "This, as God lives, is the truth concerning the wound found in the breast of this never-to-be-forgotten woman." The feeling, the pathos, the anguish even, to be found in his tone made this story, strange and incredible as it seemed, appear for the moment plausible. "And Batsy?" asked the coroner. "Must have fallen when we did, for I never heard her voice after the first scream. But I shall speak of her again. What I must now explain is how the money in Mrs. Webb's drawer came into my possession, and how the dagger she had planted in her breast came to be found on the lawn outside. When I came to myself, and that must have been very soon, I found that the blow of which I had been such a horrified witness had not yet proved fatal. The eyes I had seen close, as I had supposed, forever, were now open, and she was looking at me with a smile that has never left my memory, and never will. "'There is no blood on you,' she murmured. 'You did not strike the blow. Was it money only that you wanted, Frederick? If so, you could have had it without crime. There are five hundred dollars on that table. Take them and let them pave your way to a better life. My death will help you to remember.' Do these words, this action of hers, seem incredible to you, sirs? Alas! alas! they will not when I tell you"--and here he cast one anxious, deeply anxious, glance at the room in which Mr. Sutherland was hidden--"that unknown to me, unknown to anyone living but herself, unknown to that good man from whom it can no longer be kept hidden, Agatha Webb was my mother. I am Philemon's son and not the offspring of Charles and Marietta Sutherland!" XXXI A WITNESS LOST Impossible! Incredible! Like a wave suddenly lifted the whole assemblage rose in surprise if not in protest. But there was no outburst. The very depth of the feelings evoked made all ebullition impossible, and as one sees the billow pause ere it breaks, and gradually subside, so this crowd yielded to its awe, and man by man sank back into his seat till quiet was again restored, and only a circle of listening faces confronted the man who had just stirred a whole roomful to its depths. Seeing this, and realising his opportunity, Frederick at once entered into the explanations for which each heart there panted. "This will be overwhelming news to him who has cared for me since infancy. You have heard him call me son; with what words shall I overthrow his confidence in the truth and rectitude of his long-buried wife and make him know in his old age that he has wasted years of patience upon one who was not of his blood or lineage? The wonder, the incredulity you manifest are my best excuse for my long delay in revealing the secret entrusted to me by this dying woman." An awed silence greeted these words. Never was the interest of a crowd more intense or its passions held in greater restraint. Yet Agnes's tears flowed freely, and Amabel's smiles--well, their expression had changed; and to Sweetwater, who alone had eyes for her now, they were surcharged with a tragic meaning, strange to see in one of her callous nature. Frederick's voice broke as he proceeded in his self-imposed task. "The astounding fact which I have just communicated to you was made known by my mother, with the dagger still plunged in her breast. She would not let me draw it out. She knew that death would follow that act, and she prized every moment remaining to her because of the bliss she enjoyed of seeing and having near her her only living child. The love, the passion, the boundless devotion she showed in those last few minutes transformed me in an instant from a selfish brute into a deeply repentant man. I knelt before her in anguish. I made her feel that, wicked as I had been, I was not the conscienceless wretch she had imagined, and that she was mistaken as to the motives which led me into her presence. And when I saw, by her clearing brow and peaceful look, that I had fully persuaded her of this, I let her speak what words she would, and tell, as she was able, the secret tragedy of her life. "It is a sacred story to me, and if you must know it, let it be from her own words in the letters she left behind her. She only told me that to save me from the fate of the children who had preceded me, the five little girls and boys who had perished almost at birth in her arms, she had parted from me in early infancy to Mrs. Sutherland, then mourning the sudden death of her only child; that this had been done secretly and under circumstances calculated to deceive Mr. Sutherland, consequently he had never known I was not his own child, and in terror of the effect which the truth might have upon him she enjoined me not to enlighten him now, if by any sacrifice on my part I could rightfully avoid it; that she was happy in having me hear the truth before she died; that the joy which this gave her was so great she did not regret her fatal act, violent and uncalled for as it was, for it had showed her my heart and allowed me to read hers. Then she talked of my father, by whom I mean him whom you call Philemon; and she made me promise I would care for him to the last with tenderness, saying that I would be able to do this without seeming impropriety, since she had willed me all her fortune under this proviso. Finally, she gave me a key, and pointing out where the money lay hidden, bade me carry it away as her last gift, together with the package of letters I would find with it. And when I had taken these and given her back the key, she told me that but for one thing she would die happy. And though her strength and breath were fast failing her, she made me understand that she was worried about the Zabels, who had not come according to a sacred custom between them, to celebrate the anniversary of her wedding, and prayed me to see the two old gentlemen before I slept, since nothing but death or dire distress would have kept them from gratifying the one whim of my father's failing mind. I promised, and with perfect peace in her face, she pointed to the dagger in her breast. "But before I could lay my hand upon it she called for Batsy. 'I want her to hear me declare before I go,' said she, 'that this stroke was delivered by myself upon myself.' But when I rose to look for Batsy I found that the shock of her mistress's fatal act had killed her and that only her dead body was lying across the window-sill of the adjoining room. It was a chance that robbed me of the only witness who could testify to my innocence, in case my presence in this house of death should become known, and realising all the danger in which it threw me, I did not dare to tell my mother, for fear it would make her last moments miserable. So I told her that the poor woman had understood what she wished, but was too terrified to move or speak; and this satisfied my mother and made her last breath one of trust and contented love. She died as I drew the dagger from her breast, and seeing this, I was seized with horror of the instrument which had cost me such a dear and valuable life and flung it wildly from the window. Then I lifted her and laid her where you found her, on the sofa. I did not know that the dagger was an old-time gift of her former lover, James Zabel, much less that it bore his initials on the handle." He paused, and the awe occasioned by the scene he had described was so deep and the silence so prolonged that a shudder passed over the whole assemblage when from some unknown quarter a single cutting voice arose in this one short, mocking comment: "Oh, the fairy tale!" Was it Amabel who spoke? Some thought so and looked her way, but they only beheld a sweet, tear-stained face turned with an air of moving appeal upon Frederick as if begging pardon for the wicked doubts which had driven him to this defence. Frederick met that look with one so severe it partook of harshness; then, resuming his testimony, he said: "It is of the Zabel brothers I must now speak, and of how one of them, James by name, came to be involved in this affair. "When I left my dead mother's side I was in such a state of mind that I passed with scarcely so much as a glance the room where my new-found father sat sleeping. But as I hastened on toward the quarter where the Zabels lived, I was seized by such compunction for his desolate state that I faltered in my rapid flight and did not arrive at the place of my destination as quickly as I intended. When I did I found the house dark and the silence sepulchral. But I did not turn away. Remembering my mother's anxiety, an anxiety so extreme it disturbed her final moments, I approached the front door and was about to knock when I found it open. Greatly astonished, I at once passed in, and, seeing my way perfectly in the moonlight, entered the room on the left, the door of which also stood open. It was the second house I had entered unannounced that night, and in this as in the other I encountered a man sitting asleep by the table. "It was John, the elder of the two, and, perceiving that he was suffering for food and in a condition of extreme misery, I took out the first bill my hand encountered in my overfull pockets and laid it on the table by his side. As I did so he gave a sigh, but did not wake; and satisfied that I had done all that was wise and all that even my mother would expect of me under the circumstances, and fearing to encounter the other brother if I lingered, I hastened away and took the shortest path home. Had I been more of a man, or if my visit to Mrs. Webb had been actuated by a more communicable motive, I would have gone at once to the good man who believed me to be of his own flesh and blood, and told him of the strange and heart-rending adventure which had changed the whole tenor of my thoughts and life, and begged his advice as to what I had better do under the difficult circumstances in which I found myself placed. But the memory of a thousand past ingratitudes, together with the knowledge of the shock which he could not fail to receive on learning at this late day, and under conditions at once so tragic and full of menace, that the child which his long-buried wife had once placed in his arms as his own was neither of her blood nor his, rose up between us and caused me not only to attempt silence, but to secrete in the adjoining woods the money I had received, in the vain hope that all visible connection between myself and my mother's tragic death would thus be lost. You see I had not calculated on Miss Amabel Page." The flash he here received from that lady's eyes startled the crowd, and gave Sweetwater, already suffering under shock after shock of mingled surprise and wonder, his first definite idea that he had never rightly understood the relations between these two, and that something besides justice had actuated Amabel in her treatment of this young man. This feeling was shared by others, and a reaction set in in Frederick's favour, which even affected the officials who were conducting the inquiry. This was shown by the difference of manner now assumed by the coroner and by the more easily impressed Sweetwater, who had not yet learned the indispensable art of hiding his feelings. Frederick himself felt the change and showed it by the look of relief and growing confidence he cast at Agnes. Of the questions and answers which now passed between him and the various members of the jury I need give no account. They but emphasised facts already known, and produced but little change in the general feeling, which was now one of suppressed pity for all who had been drawn into the meshes of this tragic mystery. When he was allowed to resume his seat, the name of Miss Amabel Page was again called. She rose with a bound. Nought that she had anticipated had occurred; facts of which she could know nothing had changed the aspect of affairs and made the position of Frederick something so remote from any she could have imagined, that she was still in the maze of the numberless conflicting emotions which these revelations were calculated to call out in one who had risked all on the hazard of a die and lost. She did not even know at this moment whether she was glad or sorry he could explain so cleverly his anomalous position. She had caught the look he had cast at Agnes, and while this angered her, it did not greatly modify her opinion that he was destined for herself. For, however other people might feel, she did not for a moment believe his story. She had not a pure enough heart to do so. To her all self-sacrifice was an anomaly. No woman of the mental or physical strength of Agatha Webb would plant a dagger in her own breast just to prevent another person from committing a crime, were he lover, husband, or son. So Amabel believed and so would these others believe also when once relieved of the magnetic personality of this extraordinary witness. Yet how thrilling it had been to hear him plead his cause so well! It was almost worth the loss of her revenge to meet his look of hate, and dream of the possibility of turning it later into the old look of love. Yes, yes, she loved him now; not for his position, for that was gone; not even for his money, for she could contemplate its loss; but for himself, who had so boldly shown that he was stronger than she and could triumph over her by the sheer force of his masculine daring. With such feelings, what should she say to these men; how conduct herself under questions which would be much more searching now than before? She could not even decide in her own mind. She must let impulse have its way. Happily, she took the right stand at first. She did not endeavour to make any corrections in her former testimony, only acknowledging that the flower whose presence on the scene of death had been such a mystery, had fallen from her hair at the ball and that she had seen Frederick pick it up and put it in his buttonhole. Beyond this, and the inferences it afterward awakened in her mind, she would not go, though many present, and among them Frederick, felt confident that her attitude had been one of suspicion from the first, and that it was to follow him rather than to supply the wants of the old man, Zabel, she had left the ball and found her way to Agatha Webb's cottage. XXXII WHY AGATHA WEBB WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN IN SUTHERLANDTOWN Meanwhile Sweetwater had been witness to a series of pantomimic actions that interested him more than Amabel's conduct under this final examination. Frederick, who had evidently some request to make or direction to give, had sent a written line to the coroner, who, on reading it, had passed it over to Knapp, who a few minutes later was to be seen in conference with Agnes Halliday. As a result, the latter rose and left the room, followed by the detective. She was gone a half-hour, then simultaneously with her reappearance, Sweetwater saw Knapp hand a bundle of letters to the coroner, who, upon opening them, chose out several which he proceeded to read to the jury. They were the letters referred to by Frederick as having been given to him by his mother. The first was dated thirty-five years previously and was in the handwriting of Agatha herself. It was directed to James Zabel, and was read amid a profound hush. DEAR JAMES: You are too presumptuous. When I let you carry me away from John in that maddening reel last night, I did not mean you to draw the inference you did. That you did draw it argues a touch of vanity in a man who is not alone in the field where he imagines himself victor. John, who is humbler, sees some merit in--well, in Frederick Snow, let us say. So do I, but merit does not always win, any more than presumption. When we meet, let it be as friends, but as friends only. A girl cannot be driven into love. To ride on your big mare, Judith, is bliss enough for my twenty years. Why don't you find it so too? I think I hear you say you do, but only when she stops at a certain gate on Portchester highway. Folly! there are other roads and other gates, though if I should see you enter one--There! my pen is galloping away with me faster than Judith ever did, and it is time I drew rein. Present my regards to John--But no; then he would know I had written you a letter, and that might hurt him. How could he guess it was only a scolding letter, such as it would grieve him to receive, and that it does not count for anything! Were it to Frederick Snow, now--There! some horses are so hard to pull up--and so are some pens. I will come to a standstill, but not before your door. Respectfully your neighbour, AGATHA GILCHRIST. DEAR JAMES: I know I have a temper, a wicked temper, and now you know it too. When it is roused, I forget love, gratitude, and everything else that should restrain me, and utter words I am myself astonished at. But I do not get roused often, and when all is over I am not averse to apologising or even to begging forgiveness. My father says my temper will undo me, but I am much more afraid of my heart than I am of my temper. For instance, here I am writing to you again just because I raised my riding-whip and said--But you know what I said, and I am not fond of recalling the words, for I cannot do so without seeing your look of surprise and contrasting it with that of Philemon's. Yours had judgment in it, while Philemon's held only indulgence. Yet I liked yours best, or should have liked it best if it were not for the insufferable pride which is a part of my being. Temper such as mine OUGHT to surprise you, yet would I be Agatha Gilchrist without it? I very much fear not. And not being Agatha Gilchrist, should I have your love? Again I fear not. James, forgive me. When I am happier, when I know my own heart, I will have less provocation. Then, if that heart turns your way, you will find a great and bountiful serenity where now there are lowering and thunderous tempests. Philemon said last night that he would be content to have my fierce word o' mornings, if only I would give him one drop out of the honey of my better nature when the sun went down and twilight brought reflection and love. But I did not like him any the better for saying this. YOU would not halve the day so. The cup with which you would refresh yourself must hold no bitterness. Will it not have to be proffered, then, by other hands than those of AGATHA GILCHRIST? MR. PHILEMON WEBB. Respected Sir: You are persistent. I am willing to tell YOU, though I shall never confide so much to another, that it will take a stronger nature than yours, and one that loves me less, to hold me faithful and make me the happy, devoted wife which I must be if I would not be a demon. I cannot, I dare not, marry where I am not held in a passionate, self-forgetful subjection. I am too proud, too sensitive, too little mistress of myself when angry or aroused. If, like some strong women, I loved what was weaker than myself, and could be controlled by goodness and unlimited kindness, I might venture to risk living at the side of the most indulgent and upright man I know. But I am not of that kind. Strength only can command my admiration or subdue my pride. I must fear where I love, and own for husband him who has first shown himself my master. So do not fret any more for me, for you, less than any man I know, will ever claim my obedience or command my love. Not that I will not yield my heart to you, but that I cannot; and, knowing that I cannot, feel it honest to say so before any more of your fine, young manhood is wasted. Go your ways, then, Philemon, and leave me to the rougher paths my feet were made to tread. I like you now and feel something like a tender regard for your goodness, but if you persist in a courtship which only my father is inclined to smile upon, you will call up an antagonism that can lead to nothing but evil, for the serpent that lies coiled in my breast has deadly fangs, and is to be feared, as you should know who have more than once seen me angry. Do not blame John or James Zabel, or Frederick Snow, or even Samuel Barton for this. It would be the same if none of these men existed. I was not made to triumph over a kindly nature, but to yield the haughtiest heart in all this county to the gentle but firm control of its natural master. Do you want to know who that master is? I cannot tell you, for I have not yet named him to myself. DEAR JAMES: I am going away. I am going to leave Portchester for several months. I am going to see the world. I did not tell you this last night for fear of weakening under your entreaties, or should I say commands? Lately I have felt myself weakening more than once, and I want to know what it means. Absence will teach me, absence and the sight of new faces. Do you quarrel with this necessity? Do you think I should know my mind without any such test? Alas! James, it is not a simple mind and it baffles me at times. Let us then give it a chance. If the glow and glamour of elegant city life can make me forget certain snatches of talk at our old gate, or that night when you drew my hand through your arm and softly kissed my fingertips, then I am no mate for you, whose love, however critical, has never wavered, but has made itself felt, even in rebuke, as the strongest, sweetest thing that has entered my turbulent life. Because I would be worthy of you, I submit to a separation which will either be a permanent one or the last that will ever take place between you and me. John will not bear this as well as you, yet he does not love me as well, possibly because to him I am simply a superior being, while to you I am a loving but imperfect woman who wishes to do right but can only do so under the highest guidance. DEAR JOHN: I feel that I owe you a letter because you have been so patient. You may show it to James if you like, but I mean it for you as an old and dear friend who will one day dance at my wedding. I am living in a whirl of enjoyment. I am seeing and tasting of pleasures I have only dreamed about till now. From a farmhouse kitchen to Mrs. Andrews's drawing-room is a lively change for a girl who loves dress and show only less than daily intercourse with famous men and brilliant women. But I am bearing it nobly and have developed tastes I did not know I possessed; expensive tastes, John, which I fear may unfit me for the humble life of a Portchester matron. Can you imagine me dressed in rich brocade, sitting in the midst of Washington's choicest citizens and exchanging sallies with senators and judges? You may find it hard, yet so it is, and no one seems to think I am out of place, nor do I feel so, only--do not tell James--there are movements in my heart at times which make me shut my eyes when the lights are brightest, and dream, if but for an instant, of home and the tumble-down gateway where I have so often leaned when someone (you know who it is now, John, and I shall not hurt you too deeply by mentioning him) was saying good-night and calling down the blessings of Heaven upon a head not worthy to receive them. Does this argue my speedy return? Perhaps. Yet I do not know. There are fond hearts here also, and a life in this country's centre would be a great life for me if only I could forget the touch of a certain restraining hand which has great power over me even as a memory. For the sake of that touch shall I give up the grandeur and charm of this broad life? Answer, John. You know him and me well enough now to say. DEAR JOHN: I do not understand your letter. You speak in affectionate terms of everybody, yet you beg me to wait and not be in a hurry to return. Why? Do you not realise that such words only make me the more anxious to see old Portchester again? If there is anything amiss at home, or if James is learning to do without me--but you do not say that; you only intimate that perhaps I will be better able to make up my mind later than now, and hint of great things to come if I will only hold my affections in check a little longer. This is all very ambiguous and demands a fuller explanation. So write to me once more, John, or I shall sever every engagement I have made here and return. DEAR JOHN: Your letter is plain enough this time. James read the letter I wrote you about my pleasure in the life here and was displeased at it. He thinks I am growing worldly and losing that simplicity which he has always looked upon as my most attractive characteristic. So! so! Well, James is right; I am becoming less the country girl and more the woman of the world every day I remain here. That means I am becoming less worthy of him. So--But whatever else I have to say on this topic must be said to him. For this you will pardon me like the good brother you are. I cannot help my preference. He is nearer my own age; besides, we were made for each other. DEAR JAMES: I am not worldly; I am not carried away by the pleasures and satisfactions of this place,--at least not to the point of forgetting what is dearer and better. I have seen Washington, I have seen gay life; I like it, but I LOVE Portchester. Consequently I am going to return to Portchester, and that very soon. Indeed I cannot stay away much longer, and if you are glad of this, and if you wish to be convinced that a girl who has been wearing brocade and jewels can content herself quite gaily again with calico, come up to the dear old gate a week from now and you will have the opportunity. Do you object to flowers? I may wear a flower in my hair. Your wayward but ever-constant AGATHA. DEAR JAMES: Why must I write? Why am I not content with the memory of last night? When one's cup is quite full, a cup that has been so long in filling,--must some few drops escape just to show that a great joy like mine is not satisfied to be simply quiescent? I have suffered so long from uncertainty, have tried you and tried myself with so tedious an indecision, that, now I know no other man can ever move my heart as you have done, the ecstasy of it makes me over-demonstrative. I want to tell you that I love you; that I do not simply accept your love, but give you back in fullest measure all the devotion you have heaped upon me in spite of my many faults and failings. You took me to your heart last night, and seemed satisfied; but it does not satisfy me that I just let you do it without telling you that I am proud and happy to be the chosen one of your heart, and that as I saw your smile and the proud passion which lit up your face, I felt how much sweeter was the dear domestic bliss you promised me than the more brilliant but colder life of a statesman's wife in Washington. I missed the flower from my hair when I went back to my room last night. Did you take it, dear? If so, do not cherish it. I hate to think of anything withering on your breast. My love is deathless, James, and owns no such symbol as that. But perhaps you are not thinking of my love, but of my faults. If so, let the flower remain where you have put it; and when you gaze on it say, "Thus is it with the defects of my darling; once in full bloom, now a withered remembrance. When I gathered her they began to fade." O James, I feel as if I never could feel anger again. DEAR JAMES: I do not, I cannot, believe it. Though you said to me on going out, "Your father will explain," I cannot content myself with his explanations and will never believe what he said of you except you confirm his accusations by your own act. If, after I have told you exactly what passed between us, you return me this and other letters, then I shall know that I have leaned my weight on a hollow staff, and that henceforth I am to be without protector or comforter in this world. O James, were we not happy! I believed in you and felt that you believed in me. When we stood heart to heart under the elm tree (was it only last night?) and you swore that if it lay in the power of earthly man to make me happy, I should taste every sweet that a woman's heart naturally craved, I thought my heaven had already come and that now it only remained for me to create yours. Yet that very minute my father was approaching us, and in another instant we heard these words: "James, I must talk with you before you make my daughter forget herself any further." Forget herself! What had happened? This was not the way my father had been accustomed to talk, much as he had always favoured the suit of Philemon Webb, and pleased as he would have been had my choice fallen on him. Forget herself! I looked at you to see how these insulting words would affect you. But while you turned pale, or seemed to do so in the fading moonlight, you were not quite so unprepared for them as I was myself, and instead of showing anger, followed my father into the house, leaving me shivering in a spot which had held no chill for me a moment before. You were gone--how long? To me it seemed an hour, and perhaps it was. It would seem to take that long for a man's face to show such change as yours did when you confronted me again in the moonlight. Yet a lightning stroke makes quick work, and perhaps my countenance in that one minute showed as great a change as yours. Else why did you shudder away from me, and to my passionate appeal reply with this one short phrase: "Your father will explain"? Did you think any other words than yours would satisfy me, or that I could believe even him when he accused you of a base and dishonest act? Much as I have always loved and revered my father, I find it impossible not to hope that in his wish to see me united to Philemon he has resorted to an unworthy subterfuge to separate us; therefore I give you our interview word for word. May it shock you as much as it shocked me. Here is what he said first: "Agatha, you cannot marry James Zabel. He is not an honest man. He has defrauded me, ME, your father, of several thousand dollars. In a clever way, too, showing him to be as subtle as he is unprincipled. Shall I tell you the wretched story, my girl? He has left me to do so. He sees as plainly as I do that any communication between you two after the discovery I have this day made would be but an added offence. He is at least a gentleman, which is something, considering how near he came to being my son-in-law." I may have answered. People do cry out when they are stabbed, sometimes, but I rather think I did not say a word, only looked a disdain which at that minute was as measureless as my belief in you. YOU dishonest? YOU--Or perhaps I laughed; that would have been truer to my feeling; yes, I must have laughed. My father's next words indicated that I did something. "You do not believe in his guilt," he went on, and there was a kindness in his tone which gave me my first feeling of real terror. "I can readily comprehend that, Agatha. He has been in my office and acted under my eye for several years now, and I had almost as much confidence in him as you had, notwithstanding the fact that I liked him much better as my confidential clerk than as your probable or prospective husband. He has never held the key to my heart; would God he never had to yours! But he was a good and reliable man in the office, or so I thought, and I gave into his hand much of the work I ought to have done myself, especially since my health has more or less failed me. My trust he abused. A month ago--it was during that ill turn you remember I received a letter from a man I had never expected to hear from again. He was in my debt some ten thousand dollars, and wrote that he had brought with him as much of this sum as he had been able to save in the last five years, to Sutherlandtown, where he was now laid up with a dangerous illness from which he had small hope of recovering. Would I come there and get it? He was a stranger and wished to take no one into his confidence, but he had the money and would be glad to place it in my hands. He added that as he was a lone man, without friends or relatives to inherit from him, he felt a decided pleasure at the prospect of satisfying his only creditor, and devoutly hoped he would be well enough to realise the transaction and receive my receipt. But if his fever increased and he should be delirious or unconscious when I reached him, then I was to lift up the left-hand corner of the mattress on which he lay and take from underneath his head a black wallet in which I would find the money promised me. He had elsewhere enough to pay all his expenses, so that the full contents of the wallet were mine. "I remembered the man and I wanted the money; so, not being able to go for it myself, I authorised James Zabel to collect it for me. He started at once for Sutherlandtown, and in a few hours returned with the wallet alluded to. Though I was suffering intensely at the time, I remember distinctly the air with which he laid it down and the words with which he endeavoured to carry off a certain secret excitement visible in him. 'Mr. Orr was alive, sir, and fully conscious; but he will not outlive the night. He seemed quite satisfied with the messenger and gave up the wallet without any hesitation.' I roused up and looked at him. 'What has shaken you up so?' I asked. He was silent a moment before replying. 'I have ridden fast,' said he; then more slowly, 'One feels sorry for a man dying alone and amongst strangers.' I thought he showed an unnecessary emotion, but paid no further heed to it at the time. "The wallet held two thousand and more dollars, which was less than I expected, but yet a goodly sum and very welcome. As I was counting it over I glanced at the paper accompanying it. It was an acknowledgment of debt and mentioned the exact sum I should find in the wallet--$2753.67. Pointing them out to James, I remarked, 'The figures are in different ink from the words. How do you account for that?' I thought his answer rather long in coming, though when it did come it was calm, if not studied. 'I presume,' said he, 'that the sum was inserted at Sutherlandtown, after Mr. Orr was quite sure just how much he could spare for the liquidation of this old debt.' 'Very likely,' I assented, not bestowing another thought upon the matter. "But to-day it has been forced back upon my attention in a curious if not providential way. I was over in Sutherlandtown for the first time since my illness, and having some curiosity about my unfortunate but honest debtor, went to the hotel and asked to see the room in which he died. It being empty they at once showed it to me; and satisfied that he had been made comfortable in his last hours, I was turning away, when I espied on a table in one corner an inkstand and what seemed to be an old copy-book. Why I stopped and approached this table I do not know, but once in front of it I remembered what Zabel had said about the figures, and taking up the pen I saw there, I dipped it in the ink-pot and attempted to scribble a number or two on a piece of loose paper I found in the copy-book. The ink was thick and the pen corroded, so that it was not till after several ineffectual efforts that I succeeded in making any strokes that were at all legible. But when I did, they were so exactly similar in colour to the numbers inserted in Mr. Orr's memorandum (which I had fortunately brought with me) that I was instantly satisfied this especial portion of the writing had been done, as James had said, in this room, and with the very pen I was then handling. As there was nothing extraordinary in this, I was turning away, when a gust of wind from the open window lifted the loose sheet of paper I had been scribbling on and landed it, the other side up, on the carpet. As I stooped for it I saw figures on it, and feeling sure that they had been scrawled there by Mr. Orr in his attempt to make the pen write, I pulled out the memorandum again and compared the two minutely. They were the work of the same hand, but the figures on the stray leaf differed from those in the memorandum in a very important particular. Those in the memorandum began with a 2, while those on the stray sheet began with a 7--a striking difference. Look, Agatha, here is the piece of paper just as I found it. You see here, there, and everywhere the one set of figures, 7753.67. Here it is hardly legible, here it is blotted with too much ink, here it is faint but sufficiently distinct, and here--well, there can be no mistake about these figures, 7753.67; yet the memorandum reads, $2753.67, and the money returned to me amounts to $2753.67--a clean five thousand dollars' difference." Here, James, my father paused, perhaps to give me a commiserating look, though I did not need it; perhaps to give himself a moment in which to regain courage for what he still had to say. I did not break the silence; I was too sure of your integrity; besides, my tongue could not have moved if it would; all my faculties seemed frozen except that instinct which cried out continually within me: "No! there is no fault in James. He has done no wrong. No one but himself shall ever convince me that he has robbed anyone of anything except poor me of my poor heart." But inner cries of this kind are inaudible and after a moment's interval my father went on: "Five thousand dollars is no petty sum, and the discrepancy in the two sets of figures which seemed to involve me in so considerable a loss set me thinking. Convinced that Mr. Orr would not be likely to scribble one number over so many times if it was not the one then in his mind, I went to Mr. Forsyth's office and borrowed a magnifying-glass, through which I again subjected the figures in the memorandum to a rigid scrutiny. The result was a positive conviction that they had been tampered with after their first writing, either by Mr. Orr himself or by another whom I need not name. The 2 had originally been a 7, and I could even see where the top line of the 7 had been given a curl and where a horizontal stroke had been added at the bottom. "Agatha, I came home as troubled a man as there was in all these parts. I remembered the suppressed excitement which had been in James Zabel's face when he handed me over the money, and I remembered also that you loved him, or thought you did, and that, love or no love, you were pledged to marry him. If I had not recalled all this I might have proceeded more warily. As it was, I took the bold and open course and gave James Zabel an opportunity to explain himself. Agatha, he did not embrace it. He listened to my accusations and followed my finger when I pointed out the discrepancy between the two sets of figures, but he made no protestations of innocence, nor did he show me the front of an honest man when I asked if he expected me to believe that the wallet had held only two thousand and over when Mr. Orr handed it over to him. On the contrary he seemed to shrink into himself like a person whose life has been suddenly blasted, and replying that he would expect me to believe nothing except his extreme contrition at the abuse of confidence of which he had been guilty, begged me to wait till to-morrow before taking any active steps in the matter. I replied that I would show him that much consideration if he would immediately drop all pretensions to your hand. This put him in a bad way; but he left, as you see, with just a simple injunction to you to seek from me an explanation of his strange departure. Does that look like innocence or does it look like guilt?" I found my tongue at this and passionately cried: "James Zabel's life, as I have known it, shows him to be an honest man. If he has done what you suggest, given you but a portion of the money entrusted to him and altered the figures in the memorandum to suit the amount he brought you, then there is a discrepancy between this act and all the other acts of his life which I find it more difficult to reconcile than you did the two sets of figures in Mr. Orr's handwriting. Father, I must hear from his own lips a confirmation of your suspicions before I will credit them." And this is why I write you so minute an account of what passed between my father and myself last night. If his account of the matter is a correct one, and you have nothing to add to it in way of explanation, then the return of this letter will be token enough that my father has been just in his accusations and that the bond between us must be broken. But if--O James, if you are the true man I consider you, and all that I have heard is a fabrication or mistake, then come to me at once; do not delay, but come at once, and the sight of your face at the gate will be enough to establish your innocence in my eyes. AGATHA. The letter that followed this was very short: DEAR JAMES: The package of letters has been received. God help me to bear this shock to all my hopes and the death of all my girlish beliefs. I am not angry. Only those who have something left to hold on to in life can be angry. My father tells me he has received a packet too. It contained five thousand dollars in ten five-hundred-dollar notes. James! James! was not my love enough, that you should want my father's money too? I have begged my father, and he has promised me, to keep the cause of this rupture secret. No one shall know from either of us that James Zabel has any flaw in his nature. The next letter was dated some months later. It is to Philemon: DEAR PHILEMON: The gloves are too small; besides, I never wear gloves. I hate their restraint and do not feel there is any good reason for hiding my hands, in this little country town where everyone knows me. Why not give them to Hattie Weller? She likes such things, while I have had my fill of finery. A girl whose one duty is to care for a dying father has no room left in her heart for vanities. DEAR PHILEMON: It is impossible. I have had my day of love and my heart is quite dead. Show your magnanimity by ceasing to urge me any longer to forget the past. It is all you can do for AGATHA. DEAR PHILEMON: You WILL have my hand though I have told you that my heart does not go with it. It is hard to understand such persistence, but if you are satisfied to take a woman of my strength against her will, then God have mercy upon you, for I will be your wife. But do not ask me to go to Sutherlandtown. I will live here. And do not expect to keep up your intimacy with the Zabels. There is no tie of affection remaining between James and myself, but if I am to shed that half-light over your home which is all I can promise and all that you can hope to receive, then keep me from all influence but your own. That this in time may grow sweet and dear to me is my earnest prayer to-day, for you are worthy of a true wife. AGATHA. DEAR JOHN: I am going to be married. My father exacts it and there is no good reason why I should not give him this final satisfaction. At least I do not think there is; but if you or your brother differ from me--Say good-bye to James from me. I pray that his life may be peaceful. I know that it will be honest. AGATHA. DEAR PHILEMON: My father is worse. He fears that if we wait till Tuesday he will not be able to see us married. Decide, then, what our duty is; I am ready to abide by your pleasure. AGATHA. The following is from John Zabel to his brother James, and is dated one day after the above: DEAR JAMES: When you read this I will be far away, never to look in your face again, unless you bid me. Brother, brother, I meant it for the best, but God was not with me and I have made four hearts miserable without giving help to anyone. When I read Agatha's letter--the last for more reasons than one that I shall ever receive from her--I seemed to feel as never before what I had done to blast your two lives. For the first time I realised to the full that but for me she might have been happy and you the respected husband of the one grand woman to be found in Portchester. That I had loved her so fiercely myself came back to me in reproach, and the thought that she perhaps suspected that the blame had fallen where it was not deserved roused me to such a pitch that I took the sudden and desperate resolution of telling her the truth before she gave her hand to Philemon. Why the daily sight of your misery should not have driven me before to this act, I cannot tell. Some remnants of the old jealousy may have been still festering in my heart; or the sense of the great distance between your self-sacrificing spirit and the selfishness of my weaker nature risen like a barrier between me and the only noble act left for a man in my position. Whatever the cause, it was not till to-day the full determination came to brave the obloquy of a full confession; but when it did come I did not pause till I reached Mr. Gilchrist's house and was ushered into his presence. He was lying on the sitting-room lounge, looking very weak and exhausted, while on one side of him stood Agatha and on the other Philemon, both contemplating him with ill-concealed anxiety. I had not expected to find Philemon there, and for a moment I suffered the extreme agony of a man who has not measured the depth of the plunge he is about to take; but the sight of Agatha trembling under the shock of my unexpected presence restored me to myself and gave me firmness to proceed. Advancing with a bow, I spoke quickly the one word I had come there to say. "Agatha, I have done you a great wrong and I am here to undo it. For months I have felt driven to confession, but not till to-day have I possessed the necessary courage. NOW, nothing shall hinder me." I said this because I saw in both Mr. Gilchrist and Philemon a disposition to stop me where I was. Indeed Mr. Gilchrist had risen on his elbow and Philemon was making that pleading gesture of his which we know so well. Agatha alone looked eager. "What is it?" she cried. "I have a right to know." I went to the door, shut it, and stood with my back against it, a figure of shame and despair; suddenly the confession burst from me. "Agatha," said I, "why did you break with my brother James? Because you thought him guilty of theft; because you believed he took the five thousand dollars out of the sum entrusted to him by Mr. Orr for your father. Agatha, it was not James who did this it was I; and James knew it, and bore the blame of my misdoing because he was always a loyal soul and took account of my weakness and knew, alas! too well, that open shame would kill me." It was a weak plea and merited no reply. But the silence was so dreadful and lasted so long that I felt first crushed and then terrified. Raising my head, for I had not dared to look any of them in the face, I cast one glance at the group before me and dropped my head again, startled. Only one of the three was looking at me, and that was Agatha. The others had their heads turned aside, and I thought, or rather the passing fancy took me, that they shrank from meeting her gaze with something of the same shame and dread I myself felt. But she! Can I ever hope to make you realise her look, or comprehend the pang of utter self-abasement with which I succumbed before it? It was so terrible that I seemed to hear her utter words, though I am sure she did not speak; and with some wild idea of stemming the torrent of her reproaches, I made an effort at explanation, and impetuously cried: "It was not for my own good, Agatha, not for self altogether, I did this. I too loved you, madly, despairingly, and, good brother as I seemed, I was jealous of James and hoped to take his place in your regard if I could show a greater prosperity and get for you those things his limited prospects denied him. You enjoy money, beauty, ease; I could see that by your letters, and if James could not give them to you and I could--Oh, do not look at me like that! I see now that millions could not have bought you." "Despicable!" was all that came from her lips. At which I shuddered and groped about for the handle of the door. But she would not let me go. Subduing with an unexpected grand self-restraint the emotions which had hitherto swelled too high in her breast for either speech or action, she thrust out one arm to stay me and said in short, commanding tones: "How was this thing done? You say you took the money, yet it was James who was sent to collect it--or so my father says." Here she tore her looks from me and cast one glance at her father. What she saw I cannot say, but her manner changed and henceforth she glanced his way as much as mine and with nearly as much emotion. "I am waiting to hear what you have to say," she exclaimed, laying her hand on the door over my head so as to leave me no opportunity for escape. I bowed and attempted an explanation. "Agatha," said I, "the commission was given to James and he rode to Sutherlandtown to perform it. But it was on the day when he was accustomed to write to you, and he was not easy in his mind, for he feared he would miss sending you his usual letter. When, therefore, he came to the hotel and saw me in Philemon's room--I was often there in those days, often without Philemon's knowing it--he saw, or thought he did, a way out of his difficulties. Entering where I was, he explained to me his errand, and we being then--though never, alas! since--one in everything but the secret hopes he enjoyed, he asked me if I would go in his stead to Mr. Orr's room, present my credentials, and obtain the money while he wrote the letter with which his mind was full. Though my jealousy was aroused and I hated the letter he was about to write, I did not see how I could refuse him; so after receiving such credentials as he himself carried, and getting full instructions how to proceed, I left him writing at Philemon's table and hastened down the hall to the door he had pointed out. If Providence had been on the side of guilt, the circumstances could not have been more favourable for the deception I afterwards played. No one was in the hall, no one was with Mr. Orr to note that it was I instead of James who executed Mr. Gilchrist's commission. But I was thinking of no deception then. I proceeded quite innocently on my errand, and when the feeble voice of the invalid bade me enter, I experienced nothing but a feeling of compassion for a man dying in this desolate way, alone. Of course Mr. Orr was surprised to see a stranger, but after reading Mr. Gilchrist's letter which I handed him, he seemed quite satisfied and himself drew out the wallet at the head of his bed and handed it over. 'You will find,' said he, 'a memorandum inside of the full amount, $7758.67. I should like to have returned Mr. Gilchrist the full ten thousand which I owe him, but this is all I possess, barring a hundred dollars which I have kept for my final expenses.' 'Mr. Gilchrist will be satisfied,' I assured him. 'Shall I make you out a receipt?' He shook his head with a sad smile. 'I shall be dead in twenty-four hours. What good will a receipt do me?' But it seemed unbusinesslike not to give it, so I went over to the table, where I saw a pen and paper, and recognising the necessity of counting the money before writing a receipt, I ran my eye over the bills, which were large, and found the wallet contained just the amount he had named. Then I glanced at the memorandum. It had evidently been made out by him at some previous time, for the body of the writing was in firm characters and the ink blue, while the figures were faintly inscribed in muddy black. The 7 especially was little more than a straight line, and as I looked at it the devil that is in every man's nature whispered at first carelessly, then with deeper and deeper insistence: 'How easy it would be to change that 7 to a 2! Only a little mark at the top and the least additional stroke at the bottom and these figures would stand for five thousand less. It might be a temptation to some men.' It presently became a temptation to me; for, glancing furtively up, I discovered that Mr. Orr had fallen either into a sleep or into a condition of insensibility which made him oblivious to my movements. Five thousand dollars! just the sum of the ten five-hundred-dollar bills that made the bulk of the amount I had counted. In this village and at my age this sum would raise me at once to comparative independence. The temptation was too strong for resistance. I succumbed to it, and seizing the pen before me, I made the fatal marks. When I went back to James the wallet was in my hand, and the ten five-hundred-dollar bills in my breast pocket." Agatha had begun to shudder. She shook so she rattled the door against which I leaned. "And when you found that Providence was not so much upon your side as you thought, when you saw that the fraud was known and that your brother was suspected of it--" "Don't!" I pleaded, "don't make me recall that hour!" But she was inexorable. "Recall that and every hour," she commanded. "Tell me why he sacrificed himself, why he sacrificed me, to a cur--" She feared her own tongue, she feared her own anger, and stopped. "Speak," she whispered, and it was the most ghastly whisper that ever left mortal lips. I was but a foot from her and she held me as by a strong enchantment. I could not help obeying her. "To make it all clear," I pursued, "I must go back to the time I rejoined James in Philemon's room. He had finished his letter when I entered and was standing with it, sealed, in his hand. I may have cast it a disdainful glance. I may have shown that I was no longer the same man I had been when I left him a half-hour before, for he looked curiously at me for a moment previous to saying: "'Is that the wallet you have there? Was Mr. Orr conscious, and did he give it to you himself?' 'Mr. Orr was conscious,' I returned,--and I didn't like the sound of my own voice, careful as I was to speak naturally,--' but he fainted just before I came out, and I think you had better ask the clerk as you go down to send someone up to him.' "James was weighing the pocket-book in his hand. 'How much do you think there is in here? The debt was ten thousand.' I had turned carelessly away and was looking out of the window. 'The memorandum inside gives the figures as two thousand,' I declared. 'He apologises for not sending the full amount. He hasn't it.' Again I felt James looking at me. Why? Could he see that guilty wad of bills lying on my breast? 'How came you to read the memorandum?' he asked. 'Mr. Orr wished me to. I looked at it to please him.' This was a lie--the first I had ever uttered. James's eyes had not moved. 'John,' said he, 'this little bit of business seems to have disturbed you. I ought to have attended to it myself. I am quite sure I ought to have attended to it myself.' 'The man is dying,' I muttered. 'You escaped a sad sight. Be satisfied that you have got the money. Shall I post that letter for you?' He put it jealously in his pocket, and again I saw him look at me, but he said nothing more except that he repeated that same phrase, 'I ought to have attended to it myself. Agatha might better have waited.' Then he went out; but I remained till Philemon came home. My brother and myself were no longer companions; a crime divided us,--a crime he could not suspect, yet which made itself felt in both our hearts and prepared him for the revelation made to him by Mr. Gilchrist some weeks after. That night he came to Sutherlandtown, where I was, and entered my bedroom--not in the fraternal way of the old days, but as an elder enters the presence of a younger. 'John,' he said, without any preamble or preparation, 'where are the five thousand dollars you kept back from Mr. Gilchrist? The memorandum said seven and you delivered to me only two.' There are death-knells sounded in every life; those words sounded mine, or would have if he had not immediately added: 'There! I knew you had no stamina. I have taken your crime on myself, who am really to blame for it, since I delegated my duty to another, and you will only have to bear the disgrace of having James Zabel for a brother. In exchange, give me the money; it shall be returned to-morrow. You cannot have disposed of it already. After which, you, or rather I, will be in the eyes of the world only a thief in intent, not in fact.' Had he only stopped there!--but he went on: 'Agatha is lost to me, John. In return, be to me the brother I always thought you up to the unhappy day the sin of Achan came between us.' "YOU were lost to him! It was all I heard. YOU were lost to him! Then, if I acknowledged the crime I should not only take up my own burden of disgrace, but see him restored to his rights over the only woman I had ever loved. The sacrifice was great and my virtue was not equal to it. I gave him back the money, but I did not offer to assume the responsibility of my own crime." "And since?" In what a hard tone she spoke! "I have had to see Philemon gradually assume the rights James once enjoyed." "John," she asked,--she was under violent self-restraint,--"why do you come now?" I cast my eyes at Philemon. He was standing, as before, with his eyes turned away. There was discouragement in his attitude, mingled with a certain grand patience. Seeing that he was better able to bear her loss than either you or myself, I said to her very low, "I thought you ought to know the truth before you gave your final word. I am late, but I would have been TOO LATE a week from now." Her hand fell from the door, but her eyes remained fixed on my face. Never have I sustained such a look; never will I encounter such another. "It is too late NOW," she murmured. "The clergyman has just gone who united me to Philemon." The next minute her back was towards me; she had faced her father and her new-made husband. "Father, you knew this thing!" Keen, sharp, incisive, the words rang out. "I saw it in your face when he began to speak." Mr. Gilchrist drooped slightly; he was a very sick man and the scene had been a trying one. "If I did," was his low response, "it was but lately. You were engaged then to Philemon. Why break up this second match?" She eyed him as if she found it difficult to credit her ears. Such indifference to the claims of innocence was incredible to her. I saw her grand profile quiver, then the slow ebbing from her cheek of every drop of blood indignation had summoned there. "And you, Philemon?" she suggested, with a somewhat softened aspect. "You committed this wrong ignorantly. Never having heard of this crime, you could not know on what false grounds I had been separated from James." I had started to escape, but stopped just beyond the threshold of the door as she uttered these words. Philemon was not as ignorant as she supposed. This was evident from his attitude and expression. "Agatha," he began, but at this first word, and before he could clasp the hands held helplessly out before her, she gave a great cry, and staggering back, eyed both her father and himself in a frenzy of indignation that was all the more uncontrollable from the superhuman effort which she had hitherto made to suppress it. "You too!" she shrieked. "You too! and I have just sworn to love, honour, and obey you! Love YOU! Honour YOU! the unconscionable wretch who--" But here Mr. Gilchrist rose. Weak, tottering, quivering with something more than anger, he approached his daughter and laid his finger on her lips. "Be quiet!" he said. "Philemon is not to blame. A month ago he came to me and prayed that as a relief to his mind I would tell him why you had separated yourself from James. He had always thought the match had fallen through on account of some foolish quarrel or incompatibility, but lately he had feared there was something more than he suspected in this break, something that he should know. So I told him why you had dismissed James; and whether he knew James better than we did, or whether he had seen something in his long acquaintance with these brothers which influenced his judgment, he said at once: 'This cannot be true of James. It is not in his nature to defraud any man; but John--I might believe it of John. Isn't there some complication here?' I had never thought of John, and did not see how John could be mixed up with an affair I had supposed to be a secret between James and myself, but when we came to locate the day, Philemon remembered that on returning to his room that night, he had found John awaiting him. As his room was not five doors from that occupied by Mr. Orr, he was convinced that there was more to this matter than I had suspected. But when he laid the matter before James, he did not deny that John was guilty, but was peremptory in wishing you not to be told before your marriage. He knew that you were engaged to a good man, a man that your father approved, a man that could and would make you happy. He did not want to be the means of a second break, and besides, and this, I think, was at the bottom of the stand he took, for James Zabel was always the proudest man I ever knew,--he never could bear, he said, to give to one like Agatha a name which he knew and she knew was not entirely free from reproach. It would stand in the way of his happiness and ultimately of hers; his brother's dishonour was his. So while he still loved you, his only prayer was that after you were safely married and Philemon was sure of your affection, he should tell you that the man you once regarded so favourably was not unworthy of that regard. To obey him, Philemon has kept silent, while I--Agatha, what are you doing? Are you mad, my child?" She looked so for the moment. Tearing off the ring which she had worn but an hour, she flung it on the floor. Then she threw her arms high up over her head and burst out in an awful voice: "Curses on the father, curses on the husband, who have combined to make me rue the day I was born! The father I cannot disown, but the husband--" "Hush!" It was Mr. Gilchrist who dared her fury. Philemon said nothing. "Hush! he may be the father of your children. Don't curse--" But she only towered the higher and her beauty, from being simply majestic, became appalling. "Children!" she cried. "If ever I bear children to this man, may the blight of Heaven strike them as it has struck me this day. May they die as my hopes have died, or, if they live, may they bruise his heart as mine is bruised, and curse their father as--" Here I fled the house. I was shaking as if this awful denunciation had fallen on my own head. But before the door closed behind me, a different cry called me back. Mr. Gilchrist was lying lifeless on the floor, and Philemon, the patient, tender Philemon, had taken Agatha to his breast and was soothing her there as if the words she had showered upon him had been blessings instead of the most fearful curses which had ever left the lips of mortal woman. The next letter was in Agatha's handwriting. It was dated some months later and was stained and crumpled more than any other in the whole packet. Could Philemon once have told why? Were these blotted lines the result of his tears falling fast upon them, tears of forty years ago, when he and she were young and love had been doubtful? Was the sheet so yellowed and so seamed because it had been worn on his breast and folded and unfolded so often? Philemon, thou art in thy grave, sleeping sweetly at last by thy deeply idolised one, but these marks of feeling still remain indissolubly connected with the words that gave them birth. DEAR PHILEMON: You are gone for a day and a night only, but it seems a lengthened absence to me, meriting a little letter. You have been so good to me, Philemon, ever since that dreadful hour following our marriage, that sometimes--I hardly dare yet to say always--I feel that I am beginning to love you and that God did not deal with me so harshly when He cast me into your arms. Yesterday I tried to tell you this when you almost kissed me at parting. But I was afraid it was a momentary sentimentality and so kept still. But to-day such a warm well-spring of joy rises in my heart when I think that to-morrow the house will be bright again, and that in place of the empty wall opposite me at table I shall see your kindly and forbearing face, I know that the heart I had thought impregnable has begun to yield, and that daily gentleness, and a boundless consideration from one who had excuse for bitter thoughts and recrimination, are doing what all of us thought impossible a few short months ago. Oh, I am so happy, Philemon, so happy to love where it is now my duty to love; and if it were not for that dreadful memory of a father dying with harsh words in his ears, and the knowledge that you, my husband, yet not my husband, are bearing ever about with you echoes of words that in another nature would have turned tenderness into gall, I could be merry also and sing as I go about the house making it pleasant and comfortable against your speedy return. As it is I can but lay my hand softly on my heart as its beatings grow too impetuous and say, "God bless my absent Philemon and help him to forgive me! I forgive him and love him as I never thought I could." That you may see that these are not the weak outpourings of a lonely woman, I will here write that I heard to-day that John and James Zabel have gone into partnership in the ship-building business, John's uncle having left him a legacy of several thousand dollars. I hope they will do well. James, they say, is full of business and is, to all appearance, perfectly cheerful. This relieves me from too much worry in his regard. God certainly knew what kind of a husband I needed. May you find yourself equally blessed in your wife. Another letter to Philemon, a year later: DEAR PHILEMON: Hasten home, Philemon; I do not like these absences. I am just now too weak and fearful. Since we knew the great hope before us, I have looked often in your face for a sign that you remembered what this hope cannot but recall to my shuddering memory. Philemon, Philemon, was I mad? When I think what I said in my rage, and then feel the little life stirring about my heart, I wonder that God did not strike me dead rather than bestow upon me the greatest blessing that can come to woman. Philemon, Philemon, if anything should happen to the child! I think of it by day, I think of it by night. I know you think of it too, though you show me such a cheerful countenance and make such great plans for the future. "Will God remember my words, or will He forget? It seems as if my reason hung upon this question." A note this time in answer to one from John Zabel: DEAR JOHN: Thank you for words which could have come from nobody else. My child is dead. Could I expect anything different? If I did, God has rebuked me. Philemon thinks only of me. We understand each other so perfectly now that our greatest suffering comes in seeing each other's pain. My load I can bear, but HIS--Come and see me, John; and tell James our house is open to him. We have all done wrong, and are caught in one net of misfortune. Let it make us friends again. Below this in Philemon's hand: My wife is superstitious. Strong and capable as she is, she has regarded this sudden taking off of our first-born as a sign that certain words uttered by her on her marriage day, unhappily known to you and, as I take it, to James also, have been remembered by the righteous God above us. This is a weakness which I cannot combat. Can you, who alone of all the world beside know both it and its cause, help me by a renewed friendship, whose cheerful and natural character may gradually make her forget? If so, come like old neighbours, and dine with us on our wedding day. If God sees that we have buried the past and are ready to forgive each other the faults of our youth, perhaps He will further spare this good woman. I think she will be able to bear it. She has great strength except where a little child is concerned. That alone can henceforth stir the deepest recesses of her heart. After this, a gap of years. One, two, three, four, five children were laid away to rest in Portchester churchyard, then Philemon and she came to Sutherlandtown; but not till after a certain event had occurred, best made known by this last letter to Philemon: DEAREST HUSBAND: Our babe is born, our sixth and our dearest, and the reproach of its first look had to be met by me alone. Oh, why did I leave you and come to this great Boston where I have no friend but Mrs. Sutherland? Did I think I could break the spell of fate or providence by giving birth to my last darling among strangers? I shall have to do something more than that if I would save this child to our old age. It is borne in upon me like fate that never will a child prosper at my breast or survive the clasp of my arms. If it is to live it must be reared by others. Some woman who has not brought down the curse of Heaven upon her by her own blasphemies must nourish the tender frame and receive the blessing of its growing love. Neither I nor you can hope to see recognition in our babe's eye. Before it can turn upon us with love, it will close in its last sleep and we will be left desolate. What shall we do, then, with this little son? To whose guardianship can we entrust it? Do you know a man good enough or a woman sufficiently tender? I do not, but if God wills that our little Frederick should live, He will raise up someone. By the pang of possible separation already tearing my heart, I believe that He WILL raise up someone. Meanwhile I do not dare to kiss the child, lest I should blight it. He is so sturdy, Philemon, so different from all the other five. I open this to add that Mrs. Sutherland has just been in--with her five-weeks-old infant. His father is away, too, and has not yet seen his boy; and this is their first after ten years of marriage. Oh, that my future opened before me as brightly as hers! The next letter opens with a cry: Philemon! Come to me, Philemon! I have done what I threatened. I have made the sacrifice. Our child is no longer ours, and now, perhaps, he may live. But oh, my breaking heart! my empty arms! Help me to bear my desolation, for it is for life. We will never have another child. And where is it? Ah, that is the wonder of it. Near you, Philemon, yet not too near. Mrs. Sutherland has it, and you may have seen its little face through the car window if you were in the station last night when the express passed through to Sutherlandtown. Ah! but she has her burden to bear too. An awful, secret burden like my own, only she will have the child--for, Philemon, she has taken it in lieu of her own, which died last night in my sight; and Mr. Sutherland does not know what she has done, and never will, if you keep the secret as I shall, for the sake of the life our little innocent has thus won. What do I mean and how was it all? Philemon, it was God's work, all but the deception, and that is for the good of all, and to save four broken hearts. Listen. Yesterday, only yesterday,--it seems a month ago,--Mrs. Sutherland came again to see me with her baby in her arms. Mr. Sutherland is expected home, as you know, this week, and she was about to start out for Sutherlandtown so as to be in her own house when he came. The baby was looking well and she was the happiest of women; for the one wish of his heart and hers had been fulfilled and she was soon going to have the bliss of showing the child to his father. My own babe was on the bed asleep, and I, who am feeling wonderfully strong, was sitting up in a little chair as far away from him as possible, not out of hatred or indifference--oh, no!--but because he seemed to rest better when left entirely by himself and not under the hungry look of my eye. Mrs. Sutherland went over to look at it. "Oh, he is fair like my baby," she said, "and almost as sturdy, though mine is a month older." And she stooped down and kissed him. Philemon, he smiled for her, though he never had for me. I saw it with a greedy longing that almost made me cry out. Then I turned to her and we talked. Of what? I cannot remember now. At home we had never been intimate friends. She is from Sutherlandtown and I am from Portchester, and the distance of nine miles is enough to estrange people. But here, each with a husband absent and a darling infant lying asleep under our eyes, interests we have never thought identical drew us to one another and we chatted with ever-increasing pleasure--when suddenly Mrs. Sutherland jumped up in a terrible fright. The infant she had been rocking on her breast was blue; the next minute it shuddered; the next--it lay in her arms DEAD! I hear the shriek yet with which she fell with it still in her arms to the floor. Fortunately no other ears were open to her cry. I alone saw her misery. I alone heard her tale. The child had been poisoned, Philemon, poisoned by her. She had mistaken a cup of medicine for a cup of water and had given the child a few drops in a spoon just before setting out from her hotel. She had not known at the time what she had done, but now she remembered that the fatal cup was just like the other and that the two stood very near together. Oh, her innocent child, and oh, her husband! It seemed as if the latter thought would drive her wild. "He has so wished for a child," she moaned. "We have been married ten years and this baby seemed to have been sent from heaven. He will curse me, he will hate me, he will never be able after this to bear me in his sight." This was not true of Mr. Sutherland, but it was useless to argue with her. Instead of attempting it, I took another way to stop her ravings. Lifting the child out of her hands, I first listened at its heart, and then, finding it was really dead,--Philemon, I have seen too many lifeless children not to know,--I began slowly to undress it. "What are you doing?" she cried. "Mrs. Webb, Mrs. Webb, what are you doing?" For reply I pointed to the bed, where two little arms could be seen feebly fluttering. "You shall have my child," I whispered. "I have carried too many babies to the tomb to dare risk bringing up another." And catching her poor wandering spirit with my eye, I held her while I told her my story. Philemon, I saved that woman. Before I had finished speaking I saw the reason return to her eye and the dawning of a pitiful hope in her passion-drawn face. She looked at the child in my arms and then she looked at the one in the bed, and the long-drawn sigh with which she finally bent down and wept over our darling told me that my cause was won. The rest was easy. When the clothes of the two children had been exchanged, she took our baby in her arms and prepared to leave. Then I stopped her. "Swear," I cried, holding her by the arm and lifting my other hand to heaven, "swear you will be a mother to this child! Swear you will love it as your own and rear it in the paths of truth and righteousness!" The convulsive clasp with which she drew the baby to her breast assured me more than her shuddering "I swear!" that her heart had already opened to it. I dropped her arm and covered my face with my hands. I could not see my darling go; it was worse than death--for the moment it was worse than death. "O God, save him!" I groaned. "God, make him an honour--" But here she caught me by the arm. Her clutch was frenzied, her teeth were chattering. "Swear in your turn!" she gasped. "Swear that if I do a mother's duty by this boy, you will keep my secret and never, never reveal to my husband, to the boy, or to the world that you have any claims upon him!" It was like tearing the heart from my breast with my own hand, but I swore, Philemon, and she in her turn drew back. But suddenly she faced me again, terror and doubt in all her looks. "Your husband!" she whispered. "Can you keep such a secret from him? You will breathe it in your dreams." "I shall tell him," I answered. "Tell him!" The hair seemed to rise on her forehead and she shook so that I feared she would drop the babe. "Be careful!" I cried. "See! you frighten the babe. My husband has but one heart with me. What I do he will subscribe to. Do not fear Philemon." So I promised in your name. Gradually she grew calmer. When I saw she was steady again, I motioned her to go. Even my more than mortal strength was failing, and the baby--Philemon, I had never kissed it and I did not kiss it then. I heard her feet draw slowly towards the door, I heard her hand fall on the knob, heard it turn, uttered one cry, and then---- They found me an hour after, lying along the floor, clasping the dead infant in my arms. I was in a swoon, and they all think I fell with the child, as perhaps I did, and that its little life went out during my insensibility. Of its features, like and yet unlike our boy's, no one seems to take heed. The nurse who cared for it is gone, and who else would know that little face but me? They are very good to me, and are full of self-reproaches for leaving me so long in my part of the building alone. But though they watch me now, I have contrived to write this letter, which you will get with the one telling of the baby's death and my own dangerous condition. Destroy it, Philemon, and then COME. Nothing in all the world will give me comfort but your hand laid under my head and your true eyes looking into mine. Ah, we must love each other now, and live humbly! All our woe has come from my early girlish delight in gay and elegant things. From this day on I eschew all vanities and find in your affection alone the solace which Heaven will not deny to our bewildered hearts. Perhaps in this way the blessing that has been denied us will be visited on our child, who will live. I am now sure, to be the delight of our hearts and the pride of our eyes, even though we are denied the bliss of his presence and affection. Mrs. Sutherland was not seen to enter or go out of my rooms. Being on her way to the depot, she kept on her way, and must be now in her own home. Her secret is safe, but ours--oh, you will help me to preserve it! Help me not to betray--tell them I have lost five babies before this one--delirious--there may be an inquest--she must not be mentioned--let all the blame fall on me if there is blame--I fell--there is a bruise on the baby's forehead--and--and--I am growing incoherent--I will try and direct this and then love--love--O God! [A scrawl for the name.] Under it these words: Though bidden to destroy this, I have never dared to do so. Some day it may be of inestimable value to us or our boy. PHILEMON WEBB. This was the last letter found in the first packet. As it was laid down, sobs were heard all over the room, and Frederick, who for some time now had been sitting with his head in his hands, ventured to look up and say: "Do you wonder that I endeavoured to keep this secret, bought at such a price and sealed by the death of her I thought my mother and of her who really was? Gentlemen, Mr. Sutherland loved his wife and honoured her memory. To tell him, as I shall have to within the hour, that the child she placed in his arms twenty-five years ago was an alien, and that all his love, his care, his disappointment, and his sufferings had been lavished on the son of a neighbour, required greater courage than to face doubt on the faces of my fellow-townsmen, or anything, in short, but absolute arraignment on the charge of murder. Hence my silence, hence my indecision, till this woman"--here he pointed a scornful finger at Amabel, now shrinking in her chair--"drove me to it by secretly threatening me with a testimony which would have made me the murderer of my mother and the lasting disgrace of a good man who alone has been without blame from the beginning to the end of this desperate affair. She was about to speak when I forestalled her. My punishment, if I deserve such, will be to sit and hear in your presence the reading of the letters still remaining in the coroner's hands." These letters were certain ones written by Agatha to her unacknowledged son. They had never been sent. The first one dated from his earliest infancy, and its simple and touching hopefulness sent a thrill through every heart. It read as follows: Three years old, my darling! and the health flush has not faded from your cheek nor the bright gold from your hair. Oh, how I bless Mrs. Sutherland that she did not rebuke me when your father and I came to Sutherlandtown and set up our home where I could at least see your merry form toddling through the streets, holding on to the hand of her who now claims your love. My darling, my pride, my angel, so near and yet so far removed, will you ever know, even in the heaven to which we all look for joy after our weary pilgrimage is over, how often in this troublous world, and in these days of your early infancy, I have crept out of my warm bed, dressed myself, and, without a word to your father, whose heart it would break, gone out and climbed the steep hillside just to look at the window of your room to see if it were light or dark and you awake or sleeping? To breathe the scent of the eglantine which climbs up to your nursery window, I have braved the night-damps and the watching eyes of Heaven; but you have a child's blissful ignorance of all this; you only grow and grow and live, my darling, LIVE!--which is the only boon I crave, the only recompense I ask. Have I but added another sin to my account and brought a worse vengeance on myself than that of seeing you die in your early infancy? Frederick, my son, my son, I heard you swear to-day! Not lightly, thoughtlessly, as boys sometimes will in imitation of their elders, but bitterly, revengefully, as if the seeds of evil passions were already pushing to life in the boyish breast I thought so innocent. Did you wonder at the strange woman who stopped you? Did you realise the awful woe from which my commonplace words sprang? No, no, what grown mind could take that in, least of all a child's? To have forsworn the bliss of motherhood and entered upon a life of deception for THIS! Truly Heaven is implacable and my last sin is to be punished more inexorably than my first. There are worse evils than death. This I have always heard, but now I know it. God was merciful when He slew my babes, and I, presumptous in my rebellion, and the efforts with which I tried to prevent His work. Frederick, you are weak, dissipated, and without conscience. The darling babe, the beautiful child, has grown into a reckless youth whose impulses Mr. Sutherland will find it hard to restrain, and over whom his mother--do _I_ call her your mother?--has little influence, though she tries hard to do a mother's part and save herself and myself from boundless regret. My boy, my boy, do you feel the lack of your own mother's vigour? Might you have lived under my care and owned a better restraint and learned to work and live a respectable life in circumstances less provocative of self-indulgence? Such questions, when they rise, are maddening. When I see them form themselves in Philemon's eyes I drive them out with all the force of my influence, which is still strong over him. But when they make way in my own breast, I can find no relief, not even in prayer. Frederick, were I to tell you the truth about your parentage, would the shock of such an unexpected revelation make a man of you? I have been tempted to make the trial, at times. Deep down in my heart I have thought that perhaps I should best serve the good man who is growing grey under your waywardness, by opening up before you the past and present agonies of which you are the unconscious centre. But I cannot do this while SHE lives. The look she gave me one day when I approached you a step too near at the church door, proves that it would be the killing of her to reveal her long-preserved secret now. I must wait her death, which seems near, and then--No, I cannot do it. Mr. Sutherland has but one staff to lean on, and that is you. It may be a poor one, a breaking one, but it is still a staff. I dare not take it away--I dare not. Ah, if Philemon was the man he was once, he might counsel me, but he is only a child now; just as if God had heard my cry for children and had given me--HIM. More money, and still more money! and I hate it except for what it will do for the poor and incapable about me. How strange are the ways of Providence! To us who have no need of aught beyond a competence, money pours in almost against our will, while to those who long and labour for it, it comes not, or comes so slowly the life wears out in the waiting and the working. The Zabels, now! Once well-to-do ship-builders, with a good business and a home full of curious works of art, they now appear to find it hard to obtain even the necessities of life. Such are the freaks of fortune; or should I say, the dealings of an inscrutable Providence? Once I tried to give something out of my abundance to these old friends, but their pride stood in the way and the attempt failed. Worse than that. As if to show that benefits should proceed from them to me rather than from me to them, James bestowed on me a gift. It is a strange one,--nothing more nor less than a quaint Florentine dagger which I had often admired for its exquisite workmanship. Was it the last treasure he possessed? I am almost afraid so. At all events it shall lie here in my table-drawer where I alone can see it. Such sights are not good for Philemon. He must have cheerful objects before him, happy faces such as mine tries to be. But ah! I would gladly give my life if I could once hold you in my arms, my erring but beloved son. Will the day ever come when I can? Will you have strength enough to hear my story and preserve your peace and let me go down to the grave with the memory of one look, one smile, that is for me alone? Sometimes I foresee this hour and am happy for a few short minutes; and then some fresh story of your recklessness is wafted through the town and--What stopped her at this point we shall never know. Some want of Philemon's, perhaps. At all events she left off here and the letter was never resumed. It was the last secret outpouring of her heart. With this broken sentence Agatha's letters terminated.. ...... That afternoon, before the inquiry broke up, the jury brought in their verdict. It was: "Death by means of a wound inflicted upon herself in a moment of terror and misapprehension." It was all his fellow-townsmen could do for Frederick. XXXIII FATHER AND SON But Frederick's day of trial was not yet over. There was a closed door to open and a father to see (as in his heart he still called Mr. Sutherland). Then there were friends to face, and foes, under conditions he better than anyone else, knew were in some regards made worse rather than better by the admissions and revelations of this eventful day--Agnes, for instance. How could he meet her pure gaze? But it was his father he must first confront, his father to whom he would have to repeat in private the tale which robbed the best of men of a past, and took from him a son, almost a wife, without leaving him one memory calculated to console him. Frederick was so absorbed in this anticipation that he scarcely noticed the two or three timid hands stretched out in encouragement toward him, and was moving slowly toward the door behind which his father had disappeared so many hours before, when he was recalled to the interests of the moment by a single word, uttered not very far from him. It was simply, "Well?" But it was uttered by Knapp and repeated by Mr. Courtney. Frederick shuddered, and was hurrying on when he found himself stopped by a piteous figure that, with appealing eyes and timid gestures, stepped up before him. It was Amabel. "Forgive!" she murmured, looking like a pleading saint. "I did not know--I never dreamed--you were so much of a man, Frederick: that you bore such a heart, cherished such griefs, were so worthy of love and a woman's admiration. If I had--" Her expression was eloquent, more eloquent than he had ever seen it, for it had real feeling in it; but he put her coldly by. "When my father's white hairs become black again, and the story of my shame is forgotten in this never-forgetting world, then come back and I will forgive you." And he was passing on when another touch detained him. He turned, this time in some impatience, only to meet the frank eyes of Sweetwater. As he knew very little of this young man, save that he was the amateur detective who had by some folly of his own been carried off on the Hesper, and who was probably the only man saved from its wreck, he was about to greet him with some commonplace phrase of congratulation, when Sweetwater interrupted him with the following words: "I only wanted to say that it may be easier for you to approach your father with the revelations you are about to make if you knew that in his present frame of mind he is much more likely to be relieved by such proofs of innocence as you can give him than overwhelmed by such as show the lack of kinship between you. For two weeks Mr. Sutherland has been bending under the belief of your personal criminality in this matter. This was his secret, which was shared by me." "By you?" "Yes, by me! I am more closely linked to this affair than you can readily imagine. Some day I may be able to explain myself, but not now. Only remember what I have said about your father--pardon me, I should perhaps say Mr. Sutherland--and act accordingly. Perhaps it was to tell you this that I was forced back here against my will by the strangest series of events that ever happened to a man. But," he added, with a sidelong look at the group of men still hovering about the coroner's table, "I had rather think it was for some more important office still. But this the future will show,--the future which I seem to see lowering in the faces over there." And, waiting for no reply, he melted into the crowd. Frederick passed at once to his father. No one interrupted them during this solemn interview, but the large crowd that in the halls and on the steps of the building awaited Frederick's reappearance showed that the public interest was still warm in a matter affecting so deeply the heart and interests of their best citizen. When, therefore, that long-closed door finally opened and Frederick was seen escorting Mr. Sutherland on his arm, the tide of feeling which had not yet subsided since Agatha's letters were read vented itself in one great sob of relief. For Mr. Sutherland's face was calmer than when they had last seen it, and his step more assured, and he leaned, or made himself lean, on Frederick's arm, as if to impress upon all who saw them that the ties of years cannot be shaken off so easily, and that he still looked upon Frederick as his son. But he was not contented with this dumb show, eloquent as it was. As the crowd parted and these two imposing figures took their way down the steps to the carriage which had been sent for them, Mr. Sutherland cast one deep and long glance about him on faces he knew and on faces he did not know, on those who were near and those who were far, and raising his voice, which did not tremble as much as might have been expected, said deliberately: "My son accompanies me to his home. If he should afterwards be wanted, he will be found at his own fireside. Good-day, my friends. I thank you for the goodwill you have this day shown us both." Then he entered the carriage. The solemn way in which Frederick bared his head in acknowledgment of this public recognition of the hold he still retained on this one faithful heart, struck awe into the hearts of all who saw it. So that the carriage rolled off in silence, closing one of the most thrilling and impressive scenes ever witnessed in that time-worn village. XXXIV "NOT WHEN THEY ARE YOUNG GIRLS" But, alas! all tides have their ebb as well as flow, and before Mr. Sutherland and Frederick were well out of the main street the latter became aware that notwithstanding the respect with which his explanations had been received by the jury, there were many of his fellow-townsmen who were ready to show dissatisfaction at his being allowed to return in freedom to that home where he had still every prospect of being called the young master. Doubt, that seed of ramifying growth, had been planted in more than one breast, and while it failed as yet to break out into any open manifestation, there were evidences enough in the very restraint visible in such groups of people as they passed that suspicion had not been suppressed or his innocence established by the over-favourable verdict of the coroner's jury. To Mr. Sutherland, suffering now from the reaction following all great efforts, much, if not all, of this quiet but significant display of public feeling passed unnoticed. But to Frederick, alive to the least look, the least sign that his story had not been accepted unquestioned, this passage through the town was the occasion of the most poignant suffering. For not only did these marks of public suspicion bespeak possible arraignment in the future, but through them it became evident that even if he escaped open condemnation in the courts, he could never hope for complete reinstatement before the world, nor, what was to him a still deeper source of despair, anticipate a day when Agnes's love should make amends to him for the grief and errors of his more than wayward youth. He could never marry so pure a being while the shadow of crime separated him from the mass of human beings. Her belief in his innocence and the exact truth of his story (and he was confident she did believe him) could make no difference in this conclusion. While he was regarded openly or in dark corners or beside the humblest fireside as a possible criminal, neither Mr. Sutherland nor her father, nor his own heart even, would allow him to offer her anything but a friend's gratitude, or win from her anything but a neighbour's sympathy; yet in bidding good-bye to larger hopes and more importunate desires, he parted with the better part of his heart and the only solace remaining in this world for the boundless griefs and tragic experiences of his still young life. He had learned to love through suffering, only to realise that the very nature of his suffering forbade him to indulge in love. And this seemed a final judgment, even in this hour of public justification. He had told his story and been for the moment believed, but what was there in his life, what was there in the facts as witnessed by others, what was there in his mother's letters and the revelation of their secret relationship, to corroborate his assertions, or to prove that her hand and not his had held the weapon when the life-blood gushed from her devoted breast? Nothing, nothing; only his word to stand against all human probabilities and natural inference; only his word and the generous nature of the great-hearted woman who had thus perished! Though a dozen of his fellow-citizens had by their verdict professed their belief in his word and given him the benefit of a doubt involving his life as well as his honour, he, as well as they, knew that neither the police nor the general public were given to sentimentality, and that the question of his guilt still lay open and must remain so till his dying day. For from the nature of things no proof of the truth was probable. Batsy being dead, only God and his own heart could know that the facts of that awful half-hour were as he had told them. Had God in His justice removed in this striking way his only witness, as a punishment for his sins and his mad indulgence in acts so little short of crime as to partake of its guilt and merit its obloquy? He was asking himself this question as he bent to fasten the gate. His father had passed in, the carriage had driven off, and the road was almost solitary--but not quite. As he leaned his arm over the gate and turned to take a final glance down the hillside, he saw, with what feelings no one will ever know, the light figure of Agnes advancing on the arm of her father. He would have drawn back, but a better impulse intervened and he stood his ground. Mr. Halliday, who walked very close to Agnes, cast her an admonitory glance which Frederick was not slow in interpreting, then stopped reluctantly, perhaps because he saw her falter, perhaps because he knew that an interview between these two was unavoidable and had best be quickly over. Frederick found his voice first. "Agnes," said he, "I am glad of this opportunity for expressing my gratitude. You have acted like a friend and have earned my eternal consideration, even if we never speak again." There was a momentary silence. Her head, which had drooped under his greeting, rose again. Her eyes, humid with feeling, sought his face. "Why do you speak like that?" said she. "Why shouldn't we meet? Does not everyone recognise your innocence, and will not the whole world soon see, as I have, that you have left the old life behind and have only to be your new self to win everyone's regard?" "Agnes," returned Frederick, smiling sadly as he observed the sudden alarm visible in her father's face at these enthusiastic words, "you know me perhaps better than others do and are prepared to believe my words and my more than unhappy story. But there are few like you in the world. People in general will not acquit me, and if there was only one person who doubted "--Mr. Halliday began to look relieved--"I would fail to give any promise of the new life you hope to see me lead, if I allowed the shadow under which I undoubtedly rest to fall in the remotest way across yours. You and I have been friends and will continue such, but we will hold little intercourse in future, hard as I find it to say so. Does not Mr. Halliday consider this right? As your father he must." Agnes's eyes, leaving Frederick's for a moment, sought her father's. Alas! there was no mistaking their language. Sighing deeply, she again hung her head. "Too much care for people's opinion," she murmured, "and too little for what is best and noblest in us. I do not recognise the necessity of a farewell between us any more than I recognise that anyone who saw and heard you to-day can believe in your guilt." "But there are so many who did not hear and see me. Besides" (here he turned a little and pointed to the garden in his rear), "for the past week a man--I need not state who, nor under what authority he acts--has been in hiding under that arbour, watching my every movement, and almost counting my sighs. Yesterday he left for a short space, but to-day he is back. What does that argue, dear friend? Innocence, completely recognised, does not call for such guardianship." The slight frame of the young girl bending so innocently toward him shuddered involuntarily at this, and her eyes, frightened and flashing, swept over the arbour before returning to his face. "If there is a watcher there, and if such a fact proves you to be in danger of arrest for a crime you never committed, then it behooves your friends to show where they stand in this matter, and by lending their sympathy give you courage and power to meet the trials before you." "Not when they are young girls," murmured Frederick, and casting a glance at Mr. Halliday, he stepped softly back. Agnes flushed and yielded to her father's gentle pressure. "Good-bye, my friend," she said, the quiver in her tones sinking deep into Frederick's heart. "Some day it will be good-morrow," and her head, turned back over her shoulder, took on a beautiful radiance that fixed itself forever in the hungry heart of him who watched it disappear. When she was quite gone, a man not the one whom Frederick had described, as lying in hiding in the arbour, but a different one, in fact, no other than our old friend the constable--advanced around the corner of the house and presented a paper to him. It was the warrant for his arrest on a charge of murder. XXXV SWEETWATER PAYS HIS DEBT AT LAST TO MR. SUTHERLAND Frederick's arrest had been conducted so quietly that no hint of the matter reached the village before the next morning. Then the whole town broke into uproar, and business was not only suspended, but the streets and docks overflowed with gesticulating men and excited women, carrying on in every corner and across innumerable doorsteps the endless debate which such an action on the part of the police necessarily opened. But the most agitated face, though the stillest tongue, was not to be seen in town that morning, but in a little cottage on an arid hill-slope overlooking the sea. Here Sweetwater sat and communed with his great monitor, the ocean, and only from his flashing eye and the firm set of his lips could the mother of Sweetwater see that the crisis of her son's life was rapidly approaching, and that on the outcome of this long brooding rested not only his own self-satisfaction, but the interests of the man most dear to them. Suddenly, from that far horizon upon which Sweetwater's eye rested with a look that was almost a demand, came an answer that flushed him with a hope as great as it was unexpected. Bounding to his feet, he confronted his mother with eager eyes and outstretched hand. "Give me money, all the money we have in the house. I have an idea that may be worth all I can ever make or can ever hope to have. If it succeeds, we save Frederick Sutherland; if it fails, I have only to meet another of Knapp's scornful looks. But it won't fail; the inspiration came from the sea, and the sea, you know, is my second mother!" What this inspiration was he did not say, but it carried him presently into town and landed him in the telegraph office. . . . . . . The scene later in the day, when Frederick entered the village under the guardianship of the police, was indescribable. Mr. Sutherland had insisted upon accompanying him, and when the well-loved figure and white head were recognised, the throng, which had rapidly collected in the thoroughfare leading to the depot, succumbed to the feelings occasioned by this devotion, and fell into a wondering silence. Frederick had never looked better. There is something in the extremity of fate which brings out a man's best characteristics, and this man, having much that was good in him, showed it at that moment as never before in his short but over-eventful life. As the carriage stopped before the court-house on its way to the train, a glimpse was given of his handsome head to those who had followed him closest, and as there became visible for the first time in his face, so altered under his troubles, a likeness to their beautiful and commanding Agatha, a murmur broke out around him that was half a wail and half a groan, and which affected him so that he turned from his father, whose hand he was secretly holding, and taking the whole scene in with one flash of his eye, was about to speak, when a sudden hubbub broke out in the direction of the telegraph office, and a man was seen rushing down the street holding a paper high over his head. It was Sweetwater. "News!" he cried. "News! A cablegram from the Azores! A Swedish sailor--" But here a man with more authority than the amateur detective pushed his way to the carriage and took off his hat to Mr. Sutherland. "I beg your pardon," said he, "but the prisoner will not leave town to-day. Important evidence has just reached us." Mr. Sutherland saw that it was in Frederick's favour and fainted on his son's neck. As the people beheld his head fall forward, and observed the look with which Frederick received him in his arms, they broke into a great shout. "News!" they shrieked. "News! Frederick Sutherland is innocent! See! the old man has fainted from joy!" And caps went up and tears fell, before a mother's son of them knew what grounds he had for his enthusiasm. Later, they found they were good and substantial ones. Sweetwater had remembered the group of sailors who had passed by the corner of Agatha's house just as Batsy fell forward on the window-sill, and cabling to the captain of the vessel, at the first port at which they were likely to put in, was fortunate enough to receive in reply a communication from one of the men, who remembered the words she shouted. They were in Swedish and none of his mates had understood them, but he recalled them well. They were: "Hjelp! Hjelp! Frun håller på alb döda sig. Hon har en knif. Hjelp! Hjelp!" In English: "Help! Help! My mistress kills herself. She has a knife. Help! Help!" The impossible had occurred. Batsy was not dead, or at least her testimony still remained and had come at Sweetwater's beck from the other side of the sea to save her mistress's son. . . . . . . Sweetwater was a made man. And Frederick? In a week he was the idol of the town. In a year--but let Agnes's contented face and happy smile show what he was then. Sweet Agnes, who first despised, then encouraged, then loved him, and who, next to Agatha, commanded the open worship of his heart. Agatha is first, must be first, as anyone can see who beholds him, on a certain anniversary of each year, bury his face in the long grass which covers the saddest and most passionate heart which ever yielded to the pressure of life's deepest tragedy. THE END 
3744	----	THE TRIAL or MORE LINKS OF THE DAISY CHAIN by CHARLOTTE M. YONGE CHAPTER I Quand on veut dessecher un marais, on ne fait pas voter les grenouilles.--Mme. EMILE. DE GIRADIN 'Richard? That's right! Here's a tea-cup waiting for you,' as the almost thirty-year-old Incumbent of Cocksmoor, still looking like a young deacon, entered the room with his quiet step, and silent greeting to its four inmates. 'Thank you, Ethel. Is papa gone out?' 'I have not seen him since dinner-time. You said he was gone out with Dr. Spencer, Aubrey?' 'Yes, I heard Dr. Spencer's voice--"I say, Dick"--like three notes of consternation,' said Aubrey; 'and off they went. I fancy there's some illness about in the Lower Pond Buildings, that Dr. Spencer has been raging so long to get drained.' 'The knell has been ringing for a little child there,' added Mary; 'scarlatina, I believe--' 'But, Richard,' burst forth the merry voice of the youngest, 'you must see our letters from Edinburgh.' 'You have heard, then? It was the very thing I came to ask.' 'Oh yes! there were five notes in one cover,' said Gertrude. 'Papa says they are to be laid up in the family archives, and labelled "The Infants' Honeymoon."' 'Papa is very happy with his own share,' said Ethel. 'It was signed, "Still his own White Flower," and it had two Calton Hill real daisies in it. I don't know when I have seen him more pleased.' 'And Hector's letter--I can say that by heart,' continued Gertrude. '"My dear Father, This is only to say that she is the darlint, and for the pleasure of subscribing myself--Your loving SON,"--the son as big as all the rest put together.' 'I tell Blanche that he only took her for the pleasure of being my father's son,' said Aubrey, in his low lazy voice. 'Well,' said Mary, 'even to the last, I do believe he had as soon drive papa out as walk with Blanche. Flora was quite scandalized at it.' 'I should not imagine that George had often driven my father out,' said Aubrey, again looking lazily up from balancing his spoon. Ethel laughed; and even Richard smiled; then recovering herself, she said, 'Poor Hector, he never could call himself son to any one before.' 'He has not been much otherwise here,' said Richard. 'No,' said Ethel; 'it is the peculiar hardship of our weddings to break us up by pairs, and carry off two instead of one. Did you ever see me with so shabby a row of tea-cups? When shall I have them come in riding double again?' The recent wedding was the third in the family; the first after a five years' respite. It ensued upon an attachment that had grown up with the young people, so that they had been entirely one with each other; and there had been little of formal demand either of the maiden's affection or her father's consent; but both had been implied from the first. The bridegroom was barely of age, the bride not seventeen, and Dr. May had owned it was very shocking, and told Richard to say nothing about it! Hector had coaxed and pleaded, pathetically talked of his great empty house at Maplewood, and declared that till he might take Blanche away, he would not leave Stoneborough; he would bring down all sorts of gossip on his courtship, he would worry Ethel, and take care she finished nobody's education. What did Blanche want with more education? She knew enough for him. Couldn't Ethel be satisfied with Aubrey and Gertrude? or he dared say she might have Mary too, if she was insatiable. If Dr. May was so unnatural as to forbid him to hang about the house, why, he would take rooms at the Swan. In fact, as Dr. May observed, he treated him to a modern red-haired Scotch version of 'Make me a willow cabin at your gate;' and as he heartily loved Hector and entirely trusted him, and Blanche's pretty head was a wise and prudent one, what was the use of keeping the poor lad unsettled? So Mrs. Rivers, the eldest sister and the member's wife, had come to arrange matters and help Ethel, and a very brilliant wedding it had been. Blanche was too entirely at home with Hector for flutterings or agitations, and was too peacefully happy for grief at the separation, which completed the destiny that she had always seen before her. She was a picture of a bride; and when she and Hector hung round the Doctor, insisting that Edinburgh should be the first place they should visit, and calling forth minute directions for their pilgrimage to the scenes of his youth, promising to come home and tell him all, no wonder he felt himself rather gaining a child than losing one. He was very bright and happy; and no one but Ethel understood how all the time there was a sensation that the present was but a strange dreamy parody of that marriage which had been the theme of earlier hopes. The wedding had taken place shortly after Easter; and immediately after, the Rivers family had departed for London, and Tom May had returned to Cambridge, leaving the home party at the minimum of four, since, Cocksmoor Parsonage being complete, Richard had become only a daily visitor instead of a constant inhabitant. There he sat, occupying his never idle hands with a net that he kept for such moments, whilst Ethel sat behind her urn, now giving out its last sighs, profiting by the leisure to read the county newspaper, while she continually filled up her cup with tea or milk as occasion served, indifferent to the increasing pallor of the liquid. Mary, a 'fine young woman,' as George Rivers called her, of blooming face and sweet open expression, had begun, at Gertrude's entreaty, a game of French billiards. Gertrude had still her childish sunny face and bright hair, and even at the trying age of twelve was pleasing, chiefly owing to the caressing freedom of manner belonging to an unspoilable pet. Her request to Aubrey to join the sport had been answered with a half petulant shake of the head, and he flung himself into his father's chair, his long legs hanging over one arm--an attitude that those who had ever been under Mrs. May's discipline thought impossible in the drawing-room; but Aubrey was a rival pet, and with the family characteristics of aquiline features, dark gray eyes, and beautiful teeth, had an air of fragility and easy languor that showed his exercise of the immunities of ill-health. He had been Ethel's pupil till Tom's last year at Eton, when he was sent thither, and had taken a good place; but his brother's vigilant and tender care could not save him from an attack on the chest, that settled his public-school education for ever, to his severe mortification, just when Tom's shower of honours was displaying to him the sweets of emulation and success. Ethel regained her pupil, and put forth her utmost powers for his benefit, causing Tom to examine him at each vacation, with adjurations to let her know the instant he discovered that her task of tuition was getting beyond her. In truth, Tom fraternally held her cheap, and would have enjoyed a triumph over her scholarship; but to this he had not attained, and in spite of his desire to keep his brother in a salutary state of humiliation, candour wrung from him the admission that, even in verses, Aubrey did as well as other fellows of his standing. Conceit was not Aubrey's fault. His father was more guarded than in the case of his elder sons, and the home atmosphere was not such as to give the boy a sense of superiority, especially when diligently kept down by his brother. Even the half year at Eton had not produced superciliousness, though it had given Eton polish to the home-bred manners; it had made sisters valuable, and awakened a desire for masculine companionship. He did not rebel against his sister's rule; she was nearly a mother to him, and had always been the most active president of his studies and pursuits; and he was perfectly obedient and dutiful to her, only asserting his equality, in imitation of Harry and Tom, by a little of the good-humoured raillery and teasing that treated Ethel as the family butt, while she was really the family authority. 'All gone, Ethel,' he said, with a lazy smile, as Ethel mechanically, with her eyes on the newspaper, tried all her vessels round, and found cream-jug, milk-jug, tea-pot, and urn exhausted; 'will you have in the river next?' 'What a shame!' said Ethel, awakening and laughing. 'Those are the tea-maker's snares.' 'Do send it away then,' said Aubrey, 'the urn oppresses the atmosphere.' 'Very well, I'll make a fresh brew when papa comes home, and perhaps you'll have some then. You did not half finish to-night.' Aubrey yawned; and after some speculation about their father's absence, Gertrude went to bed; and Aubrey, calling himself tired, stood up, stretched every limb portentously, and said he should go off too. Ethel looked at him anxiously, felt his hand, and asked if he were sure he had not a cold coming on. 'You are always thinking of colds,' was all the satisfaction she received. 'What has he been doing?' said Richard. 'That is what I was thinking. He was about all yesterday afternoon with Leonard Ward, and perhaps may have done something imprudent in the damp. I never know what to do. I can't bear him to be a coddle; yet he is always catching cold if I let him alone. The question is, whether it is worse for him to run risks, or to be thinking of himself.' 'He need not be doing that,' said Richard; 'he may be thinking of your wishes and papa's.' 'Very pretty of him and you, Ritchie; but he is not three parts of a boy or man who thinks of his womankind's wishes when there is anything spirited before him.' 'Well, I suppose one may do one's duty without being three parts of a boy,' said Richard, gravely. 'I know it is true that some of the most saintly characters have been the more spiritual because their animal frame was less vigorous; but still it does not content me.' 'No, the higher the power, the better, of course, should the service be. I was only putting you in mind that there is compensation. But I must be off. I am sorry I cannot wait for papa. Let me know what is the matter to-morrow, and how Aubrey is.' Richard went; and the sisters took up their employments--Ethel writing to the New Zealand sister-in-law her history of the wedding, Mary copying parts of a New Zealand letter for her brother, the lieutenant in command of a gun-boat on the Chinese coast. Those letters, whether from Norman May or his wife, were very delightful, they were so full of a cheerful tone of trustful exertion and resolution, though there had been perhaps more than the natural amount of disappointments. Norman's powers were not thought of the description calculated for regular mission work, and some of the chief aspirations of the young couple had had to be relinquished at the voice of authority without a trial. They had received the charge of persons as much in need of them as unreclaimed savages, but to whom there was less apparent glory in ministering. A widespread district of very colonial colonists, and the charge of a college for their uncultivated sons, was quite as troublesome as the most ardent self-devotion could desire; and the hardships and disagreeables, though severe, made no figure in history--nay, it required ingenuity to gather their existence from Meta's bright letters, although, from Mrs. Arnott's accounts, it was clear that the wife took a quadruple share. Mrs. Rivers had been heard to say that Norman need not have gone so far, and sacrificed so much, to obtain an under-bred English congregation; and even the Doctor had sighed once or twice at having relinquished his favourite son to what was dull and distasteful; but Ethel could trust that this unmurmuring acceptance of the less striking career, might be another step in the discipline of her brother's ardent and ambitious nature. It is a great thing to sacrifice, but a greater to consent not to sacrifice in one's own way. Ethel sat up for her father, and Mary would not go to bed and leave her, so the two sisters waited till they heard the latch-key. Ethel ran out, but her father was already on the stairs, and waved her back. 'Here is some tea. Are you not coming, papa?--it is all here.' 'Thank you, I'll just go and take off this coat;' and he passed on to his room. 'I don't like that,' said Ethel, returning to the drawing-room, where Mary was boiling up the kettle, and kneeling down to make some toast. 'Why, what's the matter?' 'I have never known him go and change his coat but when some infectious thing has been about. Besides, he did not wait to let me help him off with it.' In a few seconds the Doctor came down in his dressing-gown, and let himself be put into his easy-chair; his two daughters waiting on him with fond assiduity, their eyes questioning his fagged weary face, but reading there fatigue and concern that made them--rather awe-struck--bide their time till it should suit him to speak. Mary was afraid he would wait till she was gone; dear old Mary, who at twenty-two never dreamt of regarding herself as on the same footing with her three years' senior, and had her toast been browner, would have relieved them of her presence at once. However, her father spoke after his first long draught of tea. 'Well! How true it is that judgments are upon us while we are marrying and giving in marriage!' 'What is it, papa? Not the scarlatina?' 'Scarlatina, indeed!' he said contemptuously. 'Scarlet fever in the most aggravated form. Two deaths in one house, and I am much mistaken if there will not be another before morning.' 'Who, papa?' asked Mary. 'Those wretched Martins, in Lower Pond Buildings, are the worst. No wonder, living in voluntary filth; but it is all over the street--will be all over the town unless there's some special mercy on the place.' 'But how has it grown so bad,' said Ethel, 'without our having even heard of it!' 'Why--partly I take shame to myself--this business of Hector and Blanche kept Spencer and me away last dispensary day; and partly it was that young coxcomb, Henry Ward, thought it not worth while to trouble me about a simple epidemic. Simple epidemic indeed!' repeated Dr. May, changing his tone from ironical mimicry to hot indignation. 'I hope he will be gratified with its simplicity! I wonder how long he would have gone on if it had not laid hold on him.' 'You don't mean that he has it?' 'I do. It will give him a practical lesson in simple epidemics.' 'And Henry Ward has it!' repeated Mary, looking so much dismayed that her father laughed, saying-- 'What, Mary thinks when it comes to fevers being so audacious as to lay hold of the doctors, it is time that they should be put a stop to.' 'He seems to have petted it and made much of it,' said Ethel; 'so no wonder! What could have possessed him?' 'Just this, Ethel; and it is only human nature after all. This young lad comes down, as Master Tom will do some day, full of his lectures and his hospitals, and is nettled and displeased to find his father content to have Spencer or me called in the instant anything serious is the matter.' 'But you are a physician, papa,' said Mary. 'No matter for that, to Mr. Henry I'm an old fogie, and depend upon it, if it were only the giving a dose of salts, he would like to have the case to himself. These poor creatures were parish patients, and I don't mean that his treatment was amiss. Spencer is right, it was an atmosphere where there was no saving anyone, but if he had not been so delighted with his own way, and I had known what was going on, I'd have got the Guardians and the Town Council and routed out the place. Seventeen cases, and most of them the worst form!' 'But what was Mr. Ward about? '"Says I to myself, here's a lesson for me; This man's but a picture of what I shall be," 'when Master Tom gets the upper hand of me,' returned Dr. May. 'Poor Ward, who has run to me in all his difficulties these thirty years, didn't like it at all; but Mr. Henry was so confident with his simple epidemic, and had got him in such order, that he durst not speak.' 'And what brought it to light at last?' 'Everything at once. First the clerics go to see about the family where the infant died, and report to Spencer; he comes after me, and we start to reconnoitre. Then I am called in to see Shearman's daughter--a very ugly case that--and coming out I meet poor Ward himself, wanting me to see Henry, and there's the other boy sickening too. Then I went down and saw all those cases in the Lower Ponds, and have been running about the town ever since to try what can be done, hunting up nurses, whom I can't get, stirring dishes of skim milk, trying to get the funerals over to-morrow morning by daybreak. I declare I have hardly a leg to stand on.' 'Where was Dr. Spencer?' 'I've nearly quarrelled with Spencer. Oh! he is in high feather! he will have it that the fever rose up bodily, like Kuhleborn, out of that unhappy drain he is always worrying about, when it is a regular case of scarlet fever, brought in by a girl at home from service; but he will have it that his theory is proved. Then I meant him to keep clear of it. He has always been liable to malaria and all that sort of thing, and has not strength for an illness. I told him to mind the ordinary practice for me; and what do I find him doing the next thing, but operating upon one of the worst throats he could find! I told him he was as bad as young Ward; I hate his irregular practice. I'll tell you what,' he said, vindictively, as if gratified to have what must obey him, 'you shall all go off to Cocksmoor to-morrow morning at seven o'clock.' 'You forget that we two have had it,' said Mary. 'Which of you?' 'All down to Blanche.' 'Never mind for that. I shall have enough to do without a sick house at home. You can perform quarantine with Richard, and then go to Flora, if she will have you. Well, what are you dawdling about? Go and pack up.' 'Papa,' said Ethel, who had been abstracted through all the latter part of the conversation, 'if you please, we had better not settle my going till to-morrow morning.' 'Come, Ethel, you have too much sense for panics. Don't take nonsense into your head. The children can't have been in the way of it.' 'Stay, papa,' said Ethel, her serious face arresting the momentary impatience of fatigue and anxiety, 'I am afraid Aubrey was a good while choosing fishing-tackle at Shearman's yesterday with Leonard Ward; and it may be nothing, but he did seem heavy and out of order to-night; I wish you would look at him as you go up.' Dr. May stood still for a few moments, then gave one long gasp, made a few inquiries, and went up to Aubrey's room. The boy was fast asleep; but there was that about him which softened the weary sharpness of his father's manner, and caused him to desire Ethel to look from the window whence she could see whether the lights were out in Dr. Spencer's house. Yes, they were. 'Never mind. It will make no real odds, and he has had enough on his hands to-day. The boy will sleep quietly enough to-night, so let us all go to bed.' 'I think I can get a mattress into his room without waking him, if you will help me, Mary,' said Ethel. 'Nonsense,' said her father, decidedly. 'Mary is not to go near him before she takes Gertrude to Cocksmoor; and you, go to your own bed and get a night's rest while you can.' 'You won't stay up, papa.' 'I--why, it is all I can do not to fall asleep on my feet. Good night, children.' 'He does not trust himself to think or to fear,' said Ethel. 'Too much depends on him to let himself be unstrung.' 'But, Ethel, you will not leave, dear Aubrey.' 'I shall keep his door open and mine; but papa is right, and it will not do to waste one's strength. In case I should not see you before you go--' 'Oh, but, Ethel, I shall come back! Don't, pray don't tell me to stay away. Richard will have to keep away for Daisy's sake, and you can't do all alone--nurse Aubrey and attend to papa. Say that I may come back.' Well, Mary, I think you might,' said Ethel, after a moment's thought. 'If it were only Aubrey, I could manage for him; but I am more anxious about papa.' 'You don't think he is going to have it?' 'Oh no, no,' said Ethel, 'he is what he calls himself, a seasoned vessel; but he will be terribly overworked, and unhappy, and he must not come home and find no one to talk to or to look cheerful. So, Mary, unless he gives any fresh orders, or Richard thinks it will only make things worse, I shall be very glad of you.' Mary had never clung to her so gratefully, nor felt so much honoured. 'Do you think he will have it badly?' she asked timidly. 'I don't think at all about it,' said Ethel, something in her father's manner. 'If we are to get through all this, Mary, it must not be by riding out on perhapses. Now let us put Daisy's things together, for she must have as little communication with home as possible.' Ethel silently and rapidly moved about, dreading to give an interval for tremblings of heart. Five years of family prosperity had passed, and there had been that insensible feeling of peace and immunity from care which is strange to look back upon when one hour has drifted from smooth water to turbid currents. There was a sort of awe in seeing the mysterious gates of sorrow again unclosed; yet, darling of her own as Aubrey was, Ethel's first thoughts and fears were primarily for her father. Grief and alarm seemed chiefly to touch her through him, and she found herself praying above all that he might be shielded from suffering, and might be spared a renewal of the pangs that had before wrung his heart. By early morning every one was astir; and Gertrude, bewildered and distressed, yet rather enjoying the fun of staying with Richard, was walking off with Mary. Soon after, Dr. Spencer was standing by the bedside of his old patient, Aubrey, who had been always left to his management. 'Ah, I see,' he said, with a certain tone of satisfaction, 'for once there will be a case properly treated. Now, Ethel, you and I will show what intelligent nursing can do.' 'I believe you are delighted,' growled Aubrey. 'So should you be, at the valuable precedent you will afford.' 'I've no notion of being experimented on to prove your theory,' said Aubrey, still ready for lazy mischief. For be it known that the roving-tempered Dr. Spencer had been on fire to volunteer to the Crimean hospitals, and had unwillingly sacrificed the project, not to Dr. May's conviction that it would be fatal in his present state of health, but to Ethel's private entreaty that he would not add to her father's distress in the freshness of Margaret's death, and the parting with Norman. He had never ceased to mourn over the lost opportunity, and to cast up to his friend the discoveries he might have made; while Dr. May declared that if by any strange chance he had come back at all, he would have been so rabid on improved nursing and sanatory measures, that there would have been no living with him. It must be owned that Dr. May was not very sensible to what his friend called Stoneborough stinks. The place was fairly healthy, and his 'town councillor's conservatism,' and hatred of change, as well as the amusement of skirmishing, had always made him the champion of things as they were; and in the present emergency the battle whether the enemy had travelled by infection, or was the product of the Pond Buildings' miasma, was the favourite enlivenment of the disagreeing doctors, in their brief intervals of repose in the stern conflict which they were waging with the fever--a conflict in which they had soon to strive by themselves, for the disease not only seized on young Ward, but on his father; and till medical assistance was sent from London, they had the whole town on their hands, and for nearly a week lived without a night's rest. The care of the sick was a still greater difficulty. Though Aubrey was never in danger, and Dr. Spencer's promise of the effects of 'intelligent nursing' was fully realized, Ethel and Mary were so occupied by him, that it was a fearful thing to guess how it must fare with those households where the greater number were laid low, and in want of all the comforts that could do little. The clergy worked to the utmost; and a letter of Mr. Wilmot's obtained the assistance of two ladies from a nursing sisterhood, who not only worked incredible wonders with their own hands among the poor, but made efficient nurses of rough girls and stupid old women. Dr. May, who had at first, in his distrust of innovation, been averse to the importation--as likely to have no effect but putting nonsense into girls' heads, and worrying the sick poor--was so entirely conquered, that he took off his hat to them across the street, importuned them to drink tea with his daughters, and never came home without dilating on their merits for the few minutes that intervened between his satisfying himself about Aubrey and dropping asleep in his chair. The only counter demonstration he reserved to himself was that he always called them 'Miss What-d'ye-call-her,' and 'Those gems of women,' instead of Sister Katherine and Sister Frances. CHAPTER II Good words are silver, but good deeds are gold.--Cecil and Mary 'It has been a very good day, papa; he has enjoyed all his meals, indeed was quite ravenous. He is asleep now, and looks as comfortable as possible,' said Ethel, five weeks after Aubrey's illness had begun. 'Thank God for that, and all His mercy to us, Ethel;' and the long sigh, the kiss, and dewy eyes, would have told her that there had been more to exhaust him than his twelve hours' toil, even had she not partly known what weighed him down. 'Poor things!' she said. 'Both gone, Ethel, both! both!' and as he entered the drawing-room, he threw himself back in his chair, and gasped with the long-restrained feeling. 'Both!' she exclaimed. 'You don't mean that Leonard--' 'No, Ethel, his mother! Poor children, poor children!' 'Mrs. Ward! I thought she had only been taken ill yesterday evening.' 'She only then gave way--but she never had any constitution--she was done up with nursing--nothing to fall back on--sudden collapse and prostration--and that poor girl, called every way at once, fancied her asleep, and took no alarm till I came in this morning and found her pulse all but gone. We have been pouring down stimulants all day, but there was no rousing her, and she was gone the first.' 'And Mr. Ward--did he know it?' 'I thought so from the way he looked at me; but speech had long been lost, and that throat was dreadful suffering. Well, "In their death they were not divided."' He shaded his eyes with his hand; and Ethel, leaning against his chair, could not hinder herself from a shudder at the longing those words seemed to convey. He felt her movement, and put his arm round her, saying, 'No, Ethel, do not think I envy them. I might have done so once--I had not then learnt the meaning of the discipline of being without her--no, nor what you could do for me, my child, my children.' Ethel's thrill of bliss was so intense, that it gave her a sense of selfishness in indulging personal joy at such a moment; and indeed it was true that her father had over-lived the first pangs of change and separation, had formed new and congenial habits, saw the future hope before him; and since poor Margaret had been at rest, had been without present anxiety, or the sight of decay and disappointment. Her only answer was a mute smoothing of his bowed shoulders, as she said, 'If I could be of any use or comfort to poor Averil Ward, I could go to-night. Mary is enough for Aubrey.' 'Not now, my dear. She can't stir from the boy, they are giving him champagne every ten minutes; she has the nurse, and Spencer is backwards and forwards; I think they will pull him through, but it is a near, a very near touch. Good, patient, unselfish boy he is too.' 'He always was a very nice boy,' said Ethel; 'I do hope he will get well. It would be a terrible grief to Aubrey.' 'Yes, I got Leonard to open his lips to-day by telling him that Aubrey had sent him the grapes. I think he will get through. I hope he will. He is a good friend for Aubrey. So touching it was this morning to hear him trying to ask pardon for all his faults, poor fellow--fits of temper, and the like.' 'That is his fault, I believe,' said Ethel, 'and I always think it a wholesome one, because it is so visible and unjustifiable, that people strive against it. And the rest? Was Henry able to see his father or mother?' 'No, he can scarcely sit up in bed. It was piteous to see him lying with his door open, listening. He is full of warm sound feeling, poor fellow. You would like to have heard the fervour with which he begged me to tell his father to have no fears for the younger ones, for it should be the most precious task of his life to do a parent's part by them.' 'Let me see, he is just of Harry's age,' said Ethel, thoughtfully, as if she had not the strongest faith in Harry's power of supplying a parent's place. 'Well,' said her father, 'remember, a medical student is an older man than a lieutenant in the navy. One sees as much of the interior as the other does of the surface. We must take this young Ward by the hand, and mind he does not lose his father's practice. Burdon, that young prig that Spencer got down from London, met me at Gavin's, when I looked in there on my way home, and came the length of Minster Street with me, asking what I thought of an opening for a medical man--partnership with young Ward, &c. I snubbed him so short, that I fancy I left him thinking whether his nose was on or off his face.' 'He was rather premature.' 'I've settled him any way. I shall do my best to keep the town clear for that lad; there's not much more for him, as things are now, and it will be only looking close after him for a few years, which Spencer and I can very well manage.' 'If he will let you.' 'There! that's the spitefulness of women! Must you be casting up that little natural spirit of independence against him after the lesson he has had? I tell you, he has been promising me to look on me as a father! Poor old Ward! he was a good friend and fellow-worker. I owe a great deal to him.' Ethel wondered if he forgot how much of the unserviceableness of his maimed arm had once been attributed to Mr. Ward's dulness, or how many times he had come home boiling with annoyance at having been called in too late to remedy the respectable apothecary's half measures. She believed that the son had been much better educated than the father, and after the fearful lesson he had received, thought he might realize Dr. May's hopes, and appreciate his kindness. They discussed the relations. 'Ward came as assistant to old Axworthy, and married his daughter; he had no relations that his son knows of, except the old aunt who left Averil her £2000.' 'There are some Axworthys still,' said Ethel, 'but not very creditable people.' 'You may say that,' said Dr. May emphatically. 'There was a scapegrace brother that ran away, and was heard of no more till he turned up, a wealthy man, ten or fifteen years ago, and bought what they call the Vintry Mill, some way on this side of Whitford. He has a business on a large scale; but Ward had as little intercourse with him as possible. A terrible old heathen.' 'And the boy that was expelled for bullying Tom is in the business.' 'I hate the thought of that,' said the Doctor. 'If he had stayed on, who knows but he might have turned out as well as Ned Anderson.' 'Has not he?' 'I'm sure I have no right to say he has not, but he is a flashy slang style of youth, and I hope the young Wards will keep out of his way.' 'What will become of them? Is there likely to be any provision for them?' 'Not much, I should guess. Poor Ward did as we are all tempted to do when money goes through our hands, and spent more freely than I was ever allowed to do. Costly house, garden, greenhouses--he'd better have stuck to old Axworthy's place in Minster Street--daughter at that grand school, where she cost more than the whole half-dozen of you put together.' 'She was more worth it,' said Ethel; 'her music and drawing are first-rate. Harry was frantic about her singing last time he was at home--one evening when Mrs. Anderson abused his good-nature and got him to a tea-party--I began to be afraid of the consequences.' 'Pish!' said the Doctor. 'And really they kept her there to enable her to educate her sisters,' said Ethel. 'The last time I called on poor Mrs. Ward, she told me all about it, apologizing in the pretty way mothers do, saying she was looking forward to Averil's coming home, but that while she profited so much, they felt it due to her to give her every advantage; and did not I think--with my experience--that it was all so much for the little ones' benefit? I assured her, from my personal experience, that ignorance is a terrible thing in governessing one's sisters. Poor thing! And Averil had only come home this very Easter.' 'And with everything to learn, in such a scene as that! The first day, when only the boys were ill, there sat the girl, dabbling with her water-colours, and her petticoats reaching half across the room, looking like a milliner's doll, and neither she nor her poor mother dreaming of her doing a useful matter.' 'Who is spiteful now, papa? That's all envy at not having such an accomplished daughter. When she came out in time of need so grandly, and showed all a woman's instinct--' 'Woman's nonsense! Instinct is for irrational brutes, and the more you cultivate a woman, the less she has of it, unless you work up her practical common sense too.' 'Some one said she made a wonderful nurse.' 'Wonderful? Perhaps so, considering her opportunities, and she does better with Spencer than with me; I may have called her to order impatiently, for she is nervous with me, loses her head, and knocks everything down with her petticoats. Then--not a word to any one, Ethel--but imagine her perfect blindness to her poor mother's state all yesterday, and last night, not even calling Burdon to look at her; why, those ten hours may have made all the difference!' 'Poor thing, how is she getting on now?' 'Concentrated upon Leonard, too much stunned to admit another idea--no tears--hardly full comprehension. One can't take her away, and she can't bear not to do everything, and yet one can't trust her any more than a child.' 'As she is,' said Ethel, 'but as she won't be any longer. And the two little ones?' 'It breaks one's heart to see them, just able to sit by their nursery fire, murmuring in that weary, resigned, sick child's voice, 'I wish nurse would come.' 'I wish sister would come.' 'I wish mamma would come.' I went up to them the last thing, and told them how it was, and let them cry themselves to sleep. That was the worst business of all. Ethel, are they too big for Mary to dress some dolls for them?' 'I will try to find out their tastes the first thing to-morrow,' said Ethel; 'at any rate we can help them, if not poor Averil.' Ethel, however, was detained at home to await Dr. Spencer's visit, and Mary, whose dreams had all night been haunted by the thought of the two little nursery prisoners, entreated to go with her father, and see what could be done for them. Off they set together, Mary with a basket in her hand, which was replenished at the toy-shop in Minster Street with two china-faced dolls, and, a little farther on, parted with a couple of rolls, interspersed with strata of cold beef and butter, to a household of convalescents in the stage for kitchen physic. Passing the school, still taking its enforced holiday, the father and daughter traversed the bridge and entered the growing suburb known as Bankside, where wretched cottages belonging to needy, grasping proprietors, formed an uncomfortable contrast to the villa residences interspersed among them. One of these, with a well-kept lawn, daintily adorned with the newest pines and ornamental shrubs, and with sheets of glass glaring in the sun from the gardens at the back, was the house that poor Mr. and Mrs. Ward had bought and beautified; 'because it was so much better for the children to be out of the town.' The tears sprang into Mary's eyes at the veiled windows, and the unfeeling contrast of the spring glow of flowering thorn, lilac, laburnum, and, above all, the hard, flashing brightness of the glass; but tears were so unlike Ethel that Mary always was ashamed of them, and disposed of them quietly. They rang, but in vain. Two of the servants were ill, and all in confusion; and after waiting a few moments among the azaleas in the glass porch, Dr. May admitted himself, and led the way up-stairs with silent footfalls, Mary following with breath held back. A voice from an open door called, 'Is that Dr. May?' and he paused to look in and say, 'I'll be with you in one minute, Henry; how is Leonard?' 'No worse, they tell me; I say, Dr. May--' 'One moment;' and turning back to Mary, he pointed along a dark passage. 'Up there, first door to the right. You can't mistake;' then disappeared, drawing the door after him. Much discomfited, Mary nevertheless plunged bravely on, concluding 'there' to be up a narrow, uncarpeted stair, with a nursery wicket at the top, in undoing which, she was relieved of all doubts and scruples by a melancholy little duet from within. 'Mary, Mary, we want our breakfast! We want to get up! Mary, Mary, do come! please come!' She was instantly in what might ordinarily have been a light, cheerful room, but which was in all the dreariness of gray cinders, exhausted night-light, curtained windows, and fragments of the last meal. In each of two cane cribs was sitting up a forlorn child, with loose locks of dishevelled hair, pale thin cheeks glazed with tears, staring eyes, and mouths rounded with amaze at the apparition. One dropped down and hid under the bed-clothes; the other remained transfixed, as her visitor advanced, saying, 'Well, my dear, you called Mary, and here I am.' 'Not our own Mary,' said the child, distrustfully. 'See if I can't be your own Mary.' 'You can't. You can't give us our breakfast.' 'Oh, I am so hungry!' from the other crib; and both burst into the feeble sobs of exhaustion. Recovering from fever, and still fasting at half-past nine! Mary was aghast, and promised an instant supply. 'Don't go;' and a bird-like little hand seized her on either side. 'Mary never came to bed, and nobody has been here all the morning, and we can't bear to be alone.' 'I was only looking for the bell.' 'It is of no use; Minna did jump out and ring, but nobody will come.' Mary made an ineffectual experiment, and then persuaded the children to let her go by assurances of a speedy return. She sped down, brimming over with pity and indignation, to communicate to her father this cruel neglect, and as she passed Henry Ward's door, and heard several voices, she ventured on a timid summons of 'papa,' but, finding it unheard, she perceived that she must act for herself. Going down-stairs, she tried the sitting-room doors, hoping that breakfast might be laid out there, but all were locked; and at last she found her way to the lower regions, guided by voices in eager tones of subdued gossip. There, in the glow of the huge red fire, stood a well-covered table, surrounded by cook, charwoman, and their cavaliers, discussing a pile of hot-buttered toast, to which the little kitchen-maid was contributing large rounds, toasted at the fire. Mary's eyes absolutely flashed, as she said, 'The children have had no breakfast.' 'I beg your pardon, ma'am,' and the cook rose, 'but it is the nurse-maid that takes up the young ladies' meals.' Mary did not listen to the rest; she was desperate, and pouncing on the bread with one hand, and the butter with the other, ran away with them to the nursery, set them down, and rushed off for another raid. She found that the commotion she had excited was resulting in the preparation of a tray. 'I am sure, ma'am, I am very sorry,' said the cook, insisting on carrying the kettle, 'but we are in such confusion; and the nurse-maid, whose place it is, has been up most of the night with Mr. Leonard, and must have just dropped asleep somewhere, and I was just giving their breakfast to the undertaker's young men, but I'll call her directly, ma'am.' 'Oh, no, on no account. I am sure she ought to sleep,' said Mary. 'It was only because I found the little girls quite starving that I came down. I will take care of them now. Don't wake her, pray. Only I hope,' and Mary looked beseechingly, 'that they will have something good for their dinner, poor little things.' Cook was entirely pacified, and talked about roast chicken, and presently the little sisters were sitting up in their beds, each in her wrapper, being fed by turns with delicately-buttered slices, Mary standing between like a mother-bird feeding her young, and pleased to find the eyes grow brighter and less hollow, the cheeks less wan, the voices less thin and pipy, and a little laugh breaking out when she mistook Minna for Ella. While tidying the room, she was assailed with entreaties to call their Mary, and let them get up, they were so tired of bed. She undertook to be still their Mary, and made them direct her to the house-maid's stores, went down on her knees at the embers, and so dealt with matches, chips, and coal, that to her own surprise and pride a fire was evoked. 'But,' said Ella, 'I thought you were a Miss May.' 'So I am, my dear.' 'But ladies don't light fires,' said Minna, in open-eyed perplexity. 'Oh,' exclaimed the younger sister, 'you know Henry said he did not think any of the Miss Mays were first-rate, and that our Ave beat them all to nothing.' The elder, Minna, began hushing; and it must be confessed that honest Mary was not superior to a certain crimson flush of indignation, as she held her head into the grate, and thought of Ethel, Flora, and Blanche, criticized by Mr. Henry Ward. Little ungrateful chit! No, it was not a matter of laughing, but of forgiveness; and the assertion of the dignity of usefulness was speedily forgotten in the toilette of the small light skin-and-bone frames, in the course of which she received sundry compliments--'her hands were so nice and soft,' 'she did not pull their hair like their own Mary,' 'they wished she always dressed them.' The trying moment was when they asked if they might kneel at her lap for their prayers. To Mary, the twelve years seemed as nothing since her first prayers after the day of terror and bereavement, and her eyes swam with tears as the younger girl unthinkingly rehearsed her wonted formula, and the elder, clinging to her, whispered gravely, 'Please, what shall I say?' With full heart, and voice almost unmanageable, Mary prompted the few simple words that had come to her in that hour of sorrow. She looked up, from stooping to the child's ear, to see her father at the door, gazing at them with face greatly moved. The children greeted him fondly, and he sat down with one on each knee, and caressed them as he looked them well over, drawing out their narration of the wonderful things 'she' had done, the fingers pointing to designate who she was. His look at her over his spectacles made Mary's heart bound and feel compensated for whatever Mr. Henry Ward might say of her. When the children had finished their story, he beckoned her out of the room, promising them that he would not keep her long. 'Well done, Molly,' he said smiling, 'it is well to have daughters good for something. You had better stay with them till that poor maid has had her sleep out, and can come to them.' 'I should like to stay with them all day, only that Ethel must want me.' 'You had better go home by dinner-time, that Ethel may get some air. Perhaps I shall want one of you in the evening to be with them at the time of the funeral.' 'So soon!' 'Yes, it must be. Better for all, and Henry is glad it should be so. He is out on the sofa to-day, but he is terribly cut up.' 'And Leonard?' 'I see some improvement--Burdon does not--but I think with Heaven's good mercy we may drag him through; the pulse is rather better. Now I must go. You'll not wait dinner for me.' Mary spent the next hour in amusing the children by the fabrication of the dolls' wardrobe, and had made them exceedingly fond of her, so that there was a very poor welcome when their own Mary at length appeared, much shocked at the duration of her own slumbers, and greatly obliged to Miss May. The little girls would scarcely let Mary go, though she pacified them by an assurance that she or her sister would come in the evening. 'Don't let it be your sister. You come, and finish our dolls' frocks!' and they hung about her, kissing her, and trying to extract a promise. After sharing the burthen of depression, it was strange to return home to so different a tone of spirits when she found Aubrey installed in Ethel's room as his parlour, very white and weak, but overflowing with languid fun. There was grief and sympathy for the poor Wards, and anxious inquiries for Leonard; but it was not sorrow brought visibly before him, and after the decorous space of commiseration, the smiles were bright again, and Mary heard how her father had popped in to boast of his daughter being 'as good as a house-maid, or as Miss What's-her-name;' and her foray in the kitchen was more diverting to Aubrey than she was as yet prepared to understand. 'Running away with the buttered toast from under the nose of a charwoman! let Harry never talk of taking a Chinese battery after that!' her incapacity of perceiving that the deed was either valiant or ludicrous, entertaining him particularly. 'It had evidently hit the medium between the sublime and ridiculous.' When evening came, Mary thought it Ethel's privilege to go, as the most efficient friend and comforter; but Ethel saw that her sister's soul was with the Wards, and insisted that she should go on as she had begun. 'O, Ethel, that was only with the little ones. Now you would be of use to poor Averil.' 'And why should not you? and of more use?' 'You know I am only good for small children; but if you tell me--' 'You provoking girl,' said Ethel. 'All I tell you is, that you are twenty-three years old, and I won't tell you anything, nor assist your unwholesome desire to be second fiddle.' 'I don't know what you mean, Ethel; of course you always tell me what to do, and how to do it.' Ethel quite laughed now, but gave up the contest, only saying, as she fondly smoothed back a little refractory lock on Mary's smooth open brow, 'Very well then, go and do whatever comes to hand at Bankside, my dear. I do really want to stay at home, both on Aubrey's account, and because papa says Dr. Spencer is done up, and that I must catch him and keep him quiet this evening.' Mary was satisfied in her obedience, and set off with her father. Just as they reached Bankside, a gig drove up containing the fattest old man she had ever beheld; her father whispered that it was old Mr. Axworthy, and sent her at once to the nursery, where she was welcomed with a little shriek of delight, each child bounding in her small arm-chair, and pulling her down between them on the floor for convenience of double hugging, after which she was required to go on with the doll-dressing. Mary could not bear to do this while the knell was vibrating on her ear, and the two coffins being borne across the threshold; so she gathered the orphans within her embrace as she sat on the floor, and endeavoured to find out how much they understood of what was passing, and whether they had any of the right thoughts. It was rather disappointing. The little sisters had evidently been well and religiously taught, but they were too childish to dwell on thoughts of awe or grief, and the small minds were chiefly fixed upon the dolls, as the one bright spot in the dreary day. Mary yielded, and worked and answered their chatter till twilight came on, and the rival Mary came up to put them to bed, an operation in which she gave her assistance, almost questioning if she were not forgotten, but she learnt that her father was still in the house, the nurse believed looking at papers in Mr. Henry's room with the other gentlemen. 'And you will sit by us while we go to sleep. Oh! don't go away!' The nurse was thankful to her for so doing, and a somewhat graver mood had come over Minna as she laid her head on her pillow, for she asked the difficult question, 'Can mamma see us now?' which Mary could only answer with a tender 'Perhaps,' and an attempt to direct the child to the thought of the Heavenly Father; and then Minna asked, 'Who will take care of us now?' 'Oh, will you?' cried Ella, sitting up; and both little maids, holding out their arms, made a proffer of themselves to be her little children. They would be so good if she would let them be-- Mary could only fondle and smile it off, and put them in mind that they belonged to their brother and sister; but the answer was, 'Ave is not so nice as you. Oh, do let us--' 'But I can't, my dears. I am Dr. May's child, you know. What could I say to him?' 'Oh! but Dr. May wouldn't mind! I know he wouldn't mind! Mamma says there was never any one so fond of little children, and he is such a dear good old gentleman.' Mary had not recognized him as an old gentleman at fifty-eight, and did not like it at all. She argued on the impracticability of taking them from their natural protectors, and again tried to lead them upwards, finally betaking herself to the repetition of hymns, which put them to sleep. She had spent some time in sitting between them in the summer darkness, when there was a low tap, and opening the door, she saw her father. Indicating that they slept, she followed him out, and a whispered conference took place as he stood below her on the stairs, their heads on a level. 'Tired, Mary? I have only just got rid of old Axworthy.' 'The nurse said you were busy with papers in Henry's room.' 'Ay--the Will. Henry behaves very well; and is full of right feeling, poor fellow!' 'What becomes of those dear little girls? They want to make themselves a present to me, and say they know you would like it.' 'So I should, the darlings! Well, as things are left, it all goes to Henry, except the £10,000 Ward had insured his life for, which divides between the five. He undertakes, most properly, to make them a home--whether in this house or not is another thing; he and Averil will look after them; and he made a most right answer when Mr. Axworthy offered to take Leonard into his office,' proceeded the communicative Doctor, unable to help pouring himself out, in spite of time and place, as soon as he had a daughter to himself. 'Settle nothing now--education not finished; but privately he tells me he believes his mother would as soon have sent Leonard to the hulks as to that old rascal, and the scamp, his grand-nephew.' Mary's answer to this, as his tones became incautiously emphatic, was a glance round all the attic doors, lest they should have ears. 'Now then, do you want to get home?' said the Doctor, a little rebuked. 'Oh no, not if there is anything I can do.' 'I want to get this girl away from Leonard. He is just come to the state when it all turns on getting him off to sleep quietly, and not disturbing him, and she is too excited and restless to do anything with her; she has startled him twice already, and then gets upset--tired out, poor thing! and will end in being hysterical if she does not get fed and rested, and then we shall be done for! Now I want you to take charge of her. See, here's her room, and I have ordered up some tea for her. You must get her quieted down, make her have a tolerable meal, and when she has worked off her excitement, put her to bed--undressed, mind--and you might lie down by her. If you can't manage her, call me. That's Leonard's door, and I shall be there all night; but don't if you can help it. Can you do this, or must I get Miss "What-d'ye-call-her" the elder one, if she can leave the Greens in Randall's Alley? Well was it that Mary's heart was stout as well as tender; and instead of mentally magnifying the task, and diminishing her own capabilities, she simply felt that she had received a command, and merely asked that Ethel should be informed. 'I am going to send up to her.' 'And shall I give Averil anything to take?' 'Mutton-chops, if you can.' 'I meant sal-volatile, or anything to put her to sleep.' 'Nonsense! I hate healthy girls drugging themselves. You don't do that at home, Mary!' Mary showed her white teeth in a silent laugh at the improbability, there being nothing Ethel more detested than what she rather rudely called nervous quackeries. Her father gave her a kiss of grateful approbation, and was gone. There was a light on the table, and preparations for tea; and Mary looked round the pretty room, where the ornamental paper, the flowery chintz furniture, the shining brass of the bedstead, the frilled muslin toilet, and et ceteras, were more luxurious than what she ever saw, except when visiting with Flora, and so new as to tell a tale of the mother's fond preparation for the return of the daughter from school. In a few moments she heard her father saying, in a voice as if speaking to a sick child, 'Yes, I promise you, my dear. Be good, be reasonable, and you shall come back in the morning. No, you can't go there. Henry is going to bed. Here is a friend for you. Now, Mary, don't let me see her till she has slept.' Mary took the other hand, and between them they placed her in an arm-chair, whose shining fresh white ground and gay rose-pattern contrasted with her heated, rumpled, over-watched appearance, as she sank her head on her hand, not noticing either Mary's presence or the Doctor's departure. Mary stood doubtful for a few seconds, full of pity and embarrassment, trying to take in the needs of the case. Averil Ward was naturally a plump, well-looking girl of eighteen, with clearly-cut features, healthy highly-coloured complexion, and large bright hazel eyes, much darker than her profuse and glossy hair, which was always dressed in the newest and most stylish fashion, which, as well as the whole air of her dress and person, was, though perfectly lady like, always regarded by the Stoneborough world as something on the borders of presumption on the part of the entire Ward family. To Mary's surprise, the five weeks' terrible visitation, and these last fearful five days of sleepless exertion and bereavement, had not faded the bright red of the cheek, nor were there signs of tears, though the eyes looked bloodshot. Indeed, there was a purple tint about the eyelids and lips, a dried-up appearance, and a heated oppressed air, as if the faculties were deadened and burnt up, though her hand was cold and trembling. Her hair, still in its elaborate arrangement, hung loose, untidy, untouched; her collar and sleeves were soiled and tumbled; her dress, with its inconvenient machinery of inflation, looked wretched from its incongruity, and the stains on the huge hanging sleeves. Not a moment could have been given to the care of her own person, since the sole burthen of nursing had so grievously and suddenly descended on her. Mary's first instinct was to pour out some warm water, and bringing it with a sponge, to say, 'Would not this refresh you?' Averil moved petulantly; but the soft warm stream was so grateful to her burning brow, that she could not resist; she put her head back, and submitted like a child to have her face bathed, saying, 'Thank you.' Mary then begged to remove her tight heavy dress, and make her comfortable in her dressing-gown. 'Oh, I can't! Then I could not go back.' 'Yes, you could; this is quite a dress; besides, one can move so much more quietly without crinoline.' 'I didn't think of that;' and she stood up, and unfastened her hooks. 'Perhaps Dr. May would let me go back now!' as a mountain of mohair and scarlet petticoat remained on the floor, upborne by an over-grown steel mouse-trap. 'Perhaps he will by and by; but he said you must sleep first.' 'Sleep--I can't sleep. There's no one but me. I couldn't sleep.' 'Then at least let me try to freshen you up. There. You don't know what good it used to do my sister Blanche, for me to brush her hair. I like it.' And Mary obtained a dreamy soothed submission, so that she almost thought she was brushing her victim to sleep in her chair, before the maid came up with the viands that Dr. May had ordered. 'I can't eat that,' said Averil, with almost disgust. 'Take it away.' 'Please don't,' said Mary. 'Is that the way you use me, Miss Ward, when I come to drink tea with you?' 'Oh, I beg your pardon,' was the mechanical answer. Mary having made the long hair glossy once more, into a huge braid, and knotted it up, came forth, and insisted that they were to be comfortable over their grilled chickens' legs. She was obliged to make her own welcome, and entertain her hostess; and strenuously she worked, letting the dry lips imbibe a cup of tea, before she attempted the solids; then coaxing and commanding, she gained her point, and succeeded in causing a fair amount of provisions to be swallowed; after which Averil seemed more inclined to linger in enjoyment of the liquids, as though the feverish restlessness were giving place to a sense of fatigue and need of repose. 'This is all wrong,' said she, with a faint bewildered smile, as Mary filled up her cup for her. 'I ought to be treating you as guest, Miss May.' 'Oh, don't call me Miss May! Call me Mary. Think me a sister. You know I have known something of like trouble, only I was younger, and I had my sisters.' 'I do not seem to have felt anything yet,' said Averil, passing her hands over her face. 'I seem to be made of stone.' 'You have done: and that is better than feeling.' 'Done! and how miserably! Oh, the difference it might have made, if I had been a better nurse!' 'Papa and Dr. Spencer both say you have been a wonderful nurse, considering--' the last word came out before Mary was aware. 'Oh, Dr. May has been so kind and so patient with me, I shall never forget it. Even when I scalded his fingers with bringing him that boiling water--but I always do wrong when he is there--and now he won't let me go back to Leonard.' 'But, Averil, the best nurse in the world can't hold out for ever. People must sleep, and make themselves fit to go on.' 'Not when there is only one:' and she gasped. 'All the more reason, when there is but one. Perhaps it is because you are tired out that you get nervous and agitated. You will be quite different after a rest.' 'Are you sure?' whispered Averil, with her eyes rounded, 'are you sure that is all the reason?' 'What do you mean?' said Mary. Averil drew in her breath, and squeezed both hands tight on her chest, as she spoke very low: 'They sent me away from mamma--they told me papa wanted me: then they sent me from him; they said I was better with Leonard; and--and I said to myself, nothing should make me leave Leonard.' 'It was not papa--my father--that sent you without telling you,' said Mary, confidently. 'No,' said Averil. 'No; I have heard him say that he would take all risks, rather than deceive anybody,' said Mary, eagerly. 'I have heard him and Dr. Spencer argue about what they called pious frauds, and he always said they were want of faith. You may trust him. He told me Leonard was in the state when calm sleep was chiefly wanted. I know he would think it cruel not to call you if there were need; and I do not believe there will be need.' Something like this was reiterated in different forms; and though Averil never regularly yielded, yet as they sat on, there came pauses in the conversation, when Mary saw her nodding, and after one or two vibrations in her chair, she looked up with lustreless glassy eyes. Mary took one of these semi-wakened moments, and in the tone of caressing authority that had been already found effectual, said she must sleep in bed; took no notice of the murmur of refusal, but completed the undressing, and fairly deposited her in her bed. Mary's scrupulous conscience was distressed at having thus led to the omission of all evening orisons; but if her own simple-hearted loving supplications at the orphan's bedside could compensate for their absence, she did her utmost. Then, as both the room-door and that of the sick-chamber had been left open, she stole into the passage, where she could see her father, seated at the table, and telegraphed to him a sign of her success. He durst not move, but he smiled and nodded satisfaction; and Mary, after tidying the room, and considering with herself, took off her more cumbrous garments, wrapped herself in a cloak, and lay down beside Averil, not expecting to sleep, but passing to thoughts of Harry, and of that 23rd Psalm, which they had agreed to say at the same hour every night. By how many hours was Harry beforehand with her? That was a calculation that to Mary was always like the beads of the chaplain of Norham Castle. Certain it is, that after she had seen Harry lighting a fire to broil chickens' legs in a Chinese temple, under the willow-pattern cannon-ball tree, and heard Henry Ward saying it was not like a lieutenant in the navy, she found herself replying, 'Use before gentility;' and in the enunciation of this--her first moral sentiment--discovered that it was broad daylight. What o'clock it was she could not guess. Averil was sound asleep, breathing deeply and regularly, so that it was; a pleasure to listen to her; and Mary did not fear wakening her by a shoeless voyage of discovery to the place whence Dr. May was visible. He turned at once, and with his noiseless tread came to her. 'Asleep still? So is he. All right. Here, waken me the moment he stirs.' And rather by sign than word, he took Mary into the sickroom, indicated a chair, and laid himself on a sofa, where he was instantaneously sound asleep, before his startled daughter had quite taken everything in; but she had only to glance at his haggard wearied face, to be glad to be there, so as to afford him even a few moments of vigorous slumber with all his might. In some awe, she looked round, not venturing to stir hand or foot. Her chair was in the full draught of the dewy morning breeze, so chilly, that she drew her shawl tightly about her; but she knew that this had been an instance of her father's care, and if she wished to make the slightest move, it was only to secure a fuller view of the patient, from whom she was half cut off by a curtain at the foot of the bed. A sort of dread, however, made Mary gaze at everything around her before she brought her eyes upon him--her father's watch on the table, indicating ten minutes to four, the Minster Tower in the rising sunlight--nay, the very furniture of the room, and Dr. May's position, before she durst familiarize herself with Leonard's appearance--he whom she had last seen as a sturdy, ruddy, healthful boy, looking able to outweigh two of his friend Aubrey. The original disease had long since passed into typhus, and the scarlet eruption was gone, so that she only saw a yellow whiteness, that, marked by the blue veins of the bared temples, was to her mind death-like. Mary had not been sheltered from taking part in scenes of suffering; she had seen sickness and death in cottages, as well as in her own home, and she had none of the fanciful alarms, either of novelty or imagination, to startle her in the strange watch that had so suddenly been thrust on her but what did fill her with a certain apprehension, was the new and lofty beauty of expression that sat on that sleeping countenance. 'A nice boy,' 'rather a handsome lad,' 'a boy of ingenuous face,' they had always called Leonard Ward, when animated with health and spirits; and the friendship between him and Aubrey had been encouraged, but without thinking of him as more than an ordinary lad of good style. Now, however, to Mary's mind, the broad brow and wasted features in their rest had assumed a calm nobility that was like those of Ethel's favourite champions--those who conquered by 'suffering and being strong.' She looked and listened for the low regular breath, almost doubting at one moment whether it still were drawn, then only reassured by its freedom and absence from effort, that it was not soon to pass away. There was something in that look as if death must set his seal on it, rather than as if it could return to the flush of health, and the struggle and strife of school-boy life and of manhood. More than an hour had passed, and all within the house was as still as ever; and through the window there only came such sounds as seem like audible silence--the twittering of birds, the humming of bees, the calls of boys in distant fields, the far-away sound of waggon-wheels--when there was a slight move, and Mary, in the tension of all her faculties, had well-nigh started, but restrained herself; and as she saw the half-closed fingers stretch, and the head turn, she leant forward, and touched her father's hand. Dr. May was on his feet even before those brown eyes of Leonard's had had time to unclose; and as Mary was silently moving to the door, he made a sign to her to wait. She stood behind the curtain. 'You are better for your sleep.' 'Yes, thank you--much better.' The Doctor signed towards a tray, which stood by a spirit-lamp, on a table in the further corner. Mary silently brought it, and as quietly obeyed the finger that directed her to cordial and spoon--well knowing the need--since that unserviceable right arm always made these operations troublesome to her father. 'Have you been here all night, Dr. May?' 'Yes; and very glad to see you sleeping so well.' 'Thank you.' And there was something that made Mary's eyes dazzle with tears in the tone of that 'Thank you.' The Doctor held out his hand for the spoon she had prepared, and there was another 'Thank you;' then, 'Is Ave there?' 'No, I made her go to bed. She is quite well; but she wanted sleep sorely.' 'Thank you,' again said the boy; then with a moment's pause, 'Dr. May, tell me now.' Mary would have fled as breaking treacherously in upon such tidings; but a constraining gesture of her father obliged her to remain, and keep the cordial ready for immediate administration. 'My dear, I believe you know,' said Dr. May, bending over him--and Mary well knew what the face must be saying. 'Both?' the faint tones asked. 'Recollect the sorrow that they have been spared,' said Dr. May in his lowest, tenderest tones, putting his hand out behind him, and signing to Mary for the cordial. 'She could not have borne it;' and the feebleness of those words made Mary eager to put the spoon once more into her father's hands. 'That is right, my boy. Think of their being together;' and Mary heard tears in her father's voice. 'Thank you,' again showed that the cordial was swallowed; then a pause, and in a quiet, sad, low tone, 'Poor Ave!' 'Your mending is the best thing for her.' Then came a long sigh; and then, after a pause, the Doctor knelt down, and said the Lord's Prayer--the orphan's prayer, as so many have felt it in the hour of bereavement. All was quite still, and both he and Mary knelt on for some short space; then he arose in guarded stillness, hastily wiped away the tears that were streaming over his face, and holding back the curtain, showed Mary the boy, again sunk into that sweet refreshing sleep. 'That is well over,' he said, with a deep sigh of relief, when they had moved to a safe distance. 'Poor fellow! he had better become used to the idea while he is too weak to think.' 'He is better?' asked Mary, repressing her agitation with difficulty. 'I believe the danger is over; and you may tell his sister so when she wakes.' CHAPTER III And a heart at leisure from itself To soothe and sympathize.--Miss Waring Recovery had fairly set in, and 'better' was the universal bulletin, eating and drinking the prevailing remedy. Henry Ward had quickly thrown off his illness. The sense that all depended on him, acted as a stimulus to his energies; he was anxious to be up and doing, and in a few days was down-stairs, looking over his father's papers, and making arrangements. He was eager and confident, declaring that his sisters should never want a home while he lived; and, when he first entered his brother's room, his effusion of affection overwhelmed Leonard in his exceeding weakness, and the thought of which during the rest of the day often brought tears to his eyes. Very grateful to Dr. May, Henry declared himself anxious to abide by his advice; and discussed with him all his plans. There had been no will, but the house and land of course were Henry's. The other property gave about £2000 to each of the family; and Averil had about as much again from the old aunt, from whom she had taken her peculiar name. The home of all should, of course, still be their present one; Averil would teach her sisters, and superintend the house, and Leonard continue at the school, where he had a fair chance of obtaining the Randall scholarship in the course of a year or two. 'And if not,' said Henry, 'he may still not lose his University education. My father was proud of Leonard; and if he would have sent him there, why should not I?' And when Dr. May thought how his own elder sons had insisted on greater advantages of education for their juniors than they had themselves enjoyed, he felt especially fatherly towards the young surgeon. On only one point was he dissatisfied, and that he could not press. He thought the establishment at Bankside too expensive, and counselled Henry to remove into the town, and let the house; but this was rejected on the argument of the uncertainty of finding a tenant, and the inexpediency of appearing less prosperous; and considering that Mr. and Mrs. Ward had themselves made the place, Dr. May thought his proposal hard-hearted. He went about impressing every one with his confidence in Henry Ward, and fought successfully at the Board of Guardians to have him considered as a continuation of his father, instead of appointing a new union doctor; and he watched with paternal solicitude that the young man's first return to his practice should be neither too soon for his own health or his patients' fears; giving him no exhortation more earnest, nor more thankfully accepted, than that he was to let no scruple prevent his applying to himself in the slightest difficulty; calling him in to pauper patients, and privately consulting in cases which could not be visited gratis. The patronage of Henry Ward was one of the hobbies that Dr. May specially loved, and he cantered off upon it with vehemence such as he had hardly displayed for years. Aubrey recovered with the tardiness of a weakly constitution, and was long in even arriving at a drive in the brougham; for Dr. May had set up a brougham. As long as Hector Ernescliffe's home was at Stoneborough, driving the Doctor had been his privilege, and the old gig had been held together by diligent repairs; but when Maplewood claimed him, and Adams was laid aside by rheumatism, Flora would no longer be silenced, and preached respectability and necessity. Dr. May did not admit the plea, unless Adams were to sit inside and drive out of window; but then he was told of the impropriety of his daughters going out to dinner in gigs, and the expense of flies. When Flora talked of propriety in that voice, the family might protest and grumble, but were always reduced to obedience; and thus Blanche's wedding had been the occasion of Ethel being put into a hoop, and the Doctor into a brougham. He was better off under the tyranny than she was, in spite of the solitude he had bewailed. Young Adams was not the companion his father had been, and was no loss; and he owned that he now got through a great deal of reading, and at times a great deal of sleep; and mourned for nothing but his moon and stars--so romantic a regret, that Dr. Spencer advised him not to mention it. After Aubrey's first drives, Dr. Spencer declared that the best way of invigorating him would be to send him for a month to the sea-side, while the house could be thoroughly purified before Gertrude's return. Dr. Spencer and Mary would take care of Dr. May; and Ethel had begun to look forward to a tete-a-tete with Aubrey by the sea, which they had neither of them ever seen, when her anticipations were somewhat dashed by her father's exclaiming, that it would be the best thing for Leonard Ward to go with them. She said something about his not being well enough to travel so soon. 'Oh, yes, he will,' said Dr. May; 'he only wants stimulus to get on fast enough. I declare I'll ask Henry about it; I'm just going to meet him at the hospital.' And before another word could be said, he let himself out at the back door of the garden, in which they had been meeting Richard, who was now allowed to come thus far, though both for Daisy's sake and his flock's, he had hitherto submitted to a rigorous quarantine; and the entire immunity of Cocksmoor from the malady was constantly adduced by each doctor as a convincing proof of his own theory. 'Well, I do hope that will go off!' exclaimed Ethel, as soon as her father was out of hearing. 'It will be a terrible upset to all one's peace and comfort with Aubrey!' 'Indeed--what harm will the poor boy do?' asked Richard. 'Make Aubrey into the mere shame-faced, sister-hating, commonplace creature that the collective boy thinks it due to himself to be in society,' said Ethel, 'and me from an enjoying sister, into an elderly, care-taking, despised spinster--a burden to myself and the boys.' 'But why, Ethel, can't you enjoy yourself!' 'My dear Richard, just imagine turning loose a lot of boys and girls, with no keeper, to enjoy themselves in some wild sea place! No, no: the only way to give the arrangement any shade of propriety, will be to be elderly, infuse as much vinegar as possible into my countenance, wear my spectacles, and walk at a staid pace up and down the parade, while my two sons disport themselves on the rocks.' 'If you really think it would not be proper,' said Richard, rather alarmed, 'I could run after my father.' 'Stuff, Richard; papa must have his way; and if it is to do the boy good, I can sacrifice a crab--I mean myself--not a crustacean. I am not going to be such a selfish wretch as to make objections.' 'But if it would not be the correct thing? Or could not you get some one to stay with you?' 'I can make it the correct thing. It is only to abstain from the fun I had hoped for. I meant to have been a girl, and now I must be a woman, that's all; and I dare say Aubrey will be the happier for it--boys always are.' 'If you don't like it, I wish you would let me speak to papa.' 'Richard, have you these five years been the safety-valve for my murmurs without knowing what they amount to?' 'I thought no one complained unless to get a thing remedied.' 'Exactly so. That is man! And experience never shows man that woman's growls relieve her soul, and that she dreads nothing more than their being acted on! All I wish is, that this scheme may die a natural death; but I should be miserable, and deserved to be so, if I raised a finger to hinder it. What, must you go? Rule Daisy's lines if she writes to Meta, please.' 'I did so. I have been trying to make her write straighter.' 'Of course you have. I expect I shall find her organ of order grown to a huge bump when she comes home. Oh! when will our poor remnants be once more a united family? and when shall I get into Cocksmoor school again?' When Dr. May came home, his plan was in full bloom. Henry had gratefully accepted it, and answered for his brother being able to travel by the next Monday; and Dr. May wanted Ethel to walk with him to Bankside, and propose it there--talking it over with the sister, and making it her own invitation. Ethel saw her fate, and complied, her father talking eagerly all the way. 'You see, Ethel, it is quite as much for his spirits as his health that I wish it. He is just the age that our Norman was.' That was the key to a great deal. Ethel knew that her father had never admitted any of the many excuses for the neglect of Norman's suffering for the three months after his mother's death; but though it thrilled her all over, she was not prepared to believe that any one, far less any Ward, could be of the same sensitive materials as Norman. To avoid answering, she went more than half-way, by saying, 'Don't you think I might ask those poor girls to come with him?' 'By no manner of means,' said the Doctor, stopping short. 'It is just what I want, to get him away from his sister. She minds nothing else; and if it were not for Mary, I don't know what the little ones would do; and as to Henry, he is very good and patient; but it is the way to prevent him from forming domestic tastes to have no mistress to his house. He will get into mischief, or marry, if she does not mind what she is about.' 'That must come to an end when Leonard is well, and goes back to school.' 'And that won't be till after the holidays. No, some break there must be. When he is gone, Mary can put her into the way of doing things; she is anxious to do right; and we shall see them do very well. But this poor boy--you know he has been always living at home, while the others were away; he was very fond of his mother, and the first coming out of his room was more than he could bear. I must have him taken from home till he is well again, and able to turn to other things.' And before Ethel's eyes came a vision of poor Mrs. Ward leaning on her son's arm, on Saturday afternoon walks, each looking fond and proud of the other. She felt her own hardness of heart, and warmed to the desire of giving comfort. Bankside was basking in summer sunshine, with small patches of shade round its young shrubs and trees, and a baking heat on the little porch. The maid believed Miss Ward was in the garden. Mr. Leonard had been taken out to-day; and the Doctor moving on, they found themselves in the cool pretty drawing-room, rather overcrowded with furniture and decoration, fresh and tasteful, but too much of it, and a contrast to the Mays' mixture of the shabby and the curious, in the room that was so decidedly for use, and not for show. What arrested the attention was, however, the very sweetest singing Ethel had ever heard. The song was low and sad, but so intensely sweet, that Dr. May held up his hand to silence all sound, and stood with restrained breath and moistened eyes. Ethel, far less sensitive to music, was nevertheless touched as she had never before been by sound; and the more, as she looked through the window and saw in the shade of a walnut-tree, a sofa, at the foot of which sat Averil Ward in her deep mourning, her back to the window, so that only her young figure and the braids of her fair hair were to be seen; and beyond, something prostrate, covered with wrappers. The sweet notes ended, Dr. May drew a deep sigh, wiped his spectacles, and went on; Ethel hung back, not to startle the invalid by the sight of a stranger; but as Averil rose, she saw him raising himself, with a brightening smile on his pale face, to hold out his hand to the Doctor. In another minute Averil had come to her, shaken hands, and seated herself where she could best command a view of her brother. 'I am glad to see him out of doors,' said Ethel. 'Henry was bent on it; but I think the air and the glare of everything is too much for him; he is so tired and oppressed.' 'I am sure he must like your singing,' said Ethel. 'It is almost the only thing that answers,' said Averil, her eyes wistfully turning to the sofa; 'he can't read, and doesn't like being read to.' 'It is very difficult to manage a boy's recovery,' said Ethel. 'They don't know how to be ill.' 'It is not that,' replied the sister, as if she fancied censure implied, 'but his spirits. Every new room he goes into seems to beat him down; and he lies and broods. If he could only talk!' 'I know that so well!' said Ethel. But to Averil the May troubles were of old date, involved in the mists of childhood. And Ethel seeing that her words were not taken as sympathy, continued, 'Do not the little girls amuse him?' 'Oh no! they are too much for him; and I am obliged to keep them in the nursery. Poor little things! I don't know what we should do if your sister Mary were not so kind.' 'Mary is very glad,' began Ethel, confusedly. Then rushing into her subject: 'Next week, I am to take Aubrey to the seaside; and we thought if Leonard would join us, the change might be good for him.' 'Thank you,' Averil answered, playing with her heavy jet watch-guard. 'You are very good; but I am sure he could not move so soon.' 'Ave,' called Leonard at that moment; and Ethel, perceiving that she likewise was to advance, came forth in time to hear, 'O, Ave! I am to go to the sea next week, with Aubrey May and his sister. Won't it--' Then becoming aware of the visitor, he stopped short, threw his feet off the sofa, and stood up to receive her. 'I can't let you come if you do like that,' she said, shaking his long thin hand; and he let himself down again, not, however, resuming his recumbent posture, and giving a slight but effective frown to silence his sister's entreaties that he would do so. He sat, leaning back as though exceedingly feeble, scarcely speaking, but his eyes eloquent with eagerness. And very fine eyes they were! Ethel remembered her own weariness, some twelve or fourteen years back, of the raptures of her baby-loving sisters about those eyes; and now in the absence of the florid colouring of health, she was the more struck by the beauty of the deep liquid brown, of the blue tinge of the white, and of the lustrous light that resided in them, but far more by their power of expression, sometimes so soft and melancholy, at other moments earnest, pleading, and almost flashing with eagerness. It was a good mouth too, perhaps a little inclined to sternness of mould about the jaw and chin; but that might have been partly from the absence of all softening roundness, aging the countenance for the time, just as illness had shrunk the usually sturdy figure. 'Has Ethel told you of our plan?' asked Dr. May of the sister. 'Yes,' she hesitated, in evident confusion and distress. 'You are all very kind, but we must see what Henry says.' 'I have spoken to Henry! He answers for our patching Leonard up for next week; and I have great faith in Dr. Neptune.' Leonard's looks were as bright as Averil's were disturbed. 'Thank you, thank you very much! but can he possibly be well enough for the journey?' Leonard's eyes said 'I shall.' 'A week will do great things,' said Dr. May, 'and it is a very easy journey--only four hours' railway, and a ten miles' drive.' Averil's face was full of consternation; and Leonard leant forward with hope dancing in his eyes. 'You know the place,' continued Dr. May, 'Coombe Hole. Quite fresh, and unhackneyed. It is just where Devon and Dorset meet. I am not sure in which county; but there's a fine beach, and beautiful country. The Riverses found it out, and have been there every autumn; besides sending their poor little girl and her governess down when London gets too hot. Flora has written to the woman of the lodgings she always has, and will lend them the maid she sends with little Margaret; so they will be in clover.' 'Is it not a very long way!' said Averil, thinking how long those ten yards of lawn had seemed. 'Not as things go,' said Dr. May. 'You want Dr. Spencer to reproach you with being a Stoneborough fungus. There are places in Wales nearer by the map, but without railway privilege; and as to a great gay place, they would all be sick of it.' 'Do you feel equal to it? as if you should like it, Leonard?' asked his sister, in a trembling would-be grateful voice. 'Of all things,' was the answer. Ethel thought the poor girl had suffered constraint enough, and that it was time to release the boy from his polite durance, so she rose to take leave, and again Leonard pulled himself upright to shake hands. 'Indeed,' said Ethel, when Averil had followed them into the drawing-room, 'I am sorry for you. It would go very hard with me to make Aubrey over to any one! but if you do trust him with me, I must come and hear all you wish me to do for him.' 'I cannot think that he will be able or glad to go when it comes to the point,' said Averil, with a shaken tone. Dr. May was nearer than she thought, and spoke peremptorily. 'Take care what you are about! You are not to worry him with discussions. If he can go, he will; if not, he will stay at home; but pros and cons are prohibited. Do you hear, Averil!' 'Yes; very well.' 'Papa you really are very cruel to that poor girl,' were Ethel's first words outside. 'Am I? I wouldn't be for worlds, Ethel. But somehow she always puts me in a rage. I wish I knew she was not worrying her brother at this moment!' No, Averil was on the staircase, struggling, choking with the first tears she had shed. All this fortnight of unceasing vigilance and exertion, her eyes had been dry, for want of time to realize, for want of time to weep, and now she was ashamed that hurt feeling rather than grief had opened the fountain. She could not believe that it was not a cruel act of kindness, to carry one so weak as Leonard away from home to the care of a stranger. She apprehended all manner of ill consequences; and then nursing him, and regarding his progress as her own work, had been the sedative to her grief, which would come on her 'like an armed man,' in the dreariness of his absence. Above all, she felt herself ill requited by his manifest eagerness to leave her who had nursed him so devotedly--her, his own sister--for the stiff, plain Miss May whom he hardly knew. The blow from the favourite companion brother, so passionately watched and tended, seemed to knock her down; and Dr. May, with medical harshness, forbidding her the one last hope of persuading him out of the wild fancy, filled up the measure. Oh, those tears! How they would swell up at each throb of the wounded heart, at each dismal foreboding of the desponding spirit. But she had no time for them! Leonard must not be left alone, with no one to cover him up with his wrappers. The tears were strangled, the eyes indignantly dried. She ran out at the garden door. The sofa was empty! Had Henry come home and helped him in? She hurried on to the window; Leonard was alone in the drawing-room, resting breathlessly on an ottoman within the window. 'Dear Leonard! Why didn't you wait for me!' 'I thought I'd try what I could do. You see I am much stronger than we thought.' And he smiled cheerfully, as he helped himself by the furniture to another sofa. 'I say, Ave, do just give me the map--the one in Bradshaw will do. I want to find this place.' 'I don't think there is a Bradshaw,' said Averil, reluctantly. 'Oh yes, there is--behind the candlestick, on the study chimney-piece.' 'Very well--' There were more tears to be gulped down--and perhaps they kept her from finding the book. 'Where's the Bradshaw?' 'I didn't see it.' 'I tell you I know it was there. The left-hand candlestick, close to the letter-weight. I'll get it myself.' He was heaving himself up, when Averil prevented him by hastening to a more real search, which speedily produced the book. Eagerly Leonard unfolded the map, making her steady it for his shaking hand, and tracing the black toothed lines. 'There's Bridport--ten miles from there. Can you see the name, Ave?' 'No, it is not marked.' 'Never mind. I see where it is; and I can see it is a capital place; just in that little jag, with famous bathing. I wonder if they will stay long enough for me to learn to swim?' 'You are a good way from that as yet,' said poor Averil, her heart sinking lower and lower. 'Oh, I shall be well at once when I get away from here!' 'I hope so.' 'Why, Ave!' he cried, now first struck with her tone, 'don't you know I shall?' 'I don't know,' she said, from the soreness of her heart; 'but I can't tell how to trust you with strangers.' 'Strangers! You ungrateful child!' exclaimed Leonard, indignantly. 'Why, what have they been doing for you all this time?' 'I am sure Miss May, at least, never came near us till to-day.' 'I'm very glad of it! I'm sick of everything and everybody I have seen!' Everybody! That was the climax! Averil just held her tongue; but she rushed to her own room, and wept bitterly and angrily. Sick of her after all her devotion! Leonard, the being she loved best in the world! And Leonard, distressed and hurt at the reception of his natural expression of the weariness of seven weeks' sickness and sorrow, felt above all the want of his mother's ever-ready sympathy and soothing, and as if the whole world, here, there, and everywhere, would be an equally dreary waste. His moment of bright anticipation passed into heavy despondency, and turning his head from the light, he dropped asleep with a tear on his cheek. When he awoke it was at the sound of movements in the room, slow and cautious, out of regard to his slumbers--and voices, likewise low--at least one was low, the other that whisper of the inaudibility of which Averil could not be disabused. He lay looking for a few moments through his eyelashes, before exerting himself to move. Averil, her face still showing signs of recent tears, sat in a low chair, a book in her lap, talking to her brother Henry. Henry was of less robust frame than Leonard promised to be, and though on a smaller scale, was more symmetrically made, and had more regular features than either his brother or sister, but his eyes were merely quick lively black beads, without anything of the clear depths possessed by the others. His hair too was jet black, whereas theirs was a pale nut brown; and his whiskers, long and curling, so nearly met under his chin, as to betray a strong desire that the hirsute movement should extend to the medical profession. Always point-device in apparel, the dust on his boot did not prevent its perfect make from being apparent; and the entire sit of his black suit would have enabled a cursory glance to decide that it never came out of the same shop as Dr. May's. 'O, Henry!' were the words that he first heard distinctly. 'It will be much better for every one--himself and you included.' 'Yes, if--' 'If--nonsense. I tell you he will be quite well enough. See how well I am now, how fast I got on as soon as I took to tonics.--Ha, Leonard, old fellow! what, awake? What do you say to this plan of old May's?' 'It is very kind of him; and I should be very glad if I am well enough; but next week is very soon,' said Leonard, waking in the depression in which he had gone to sleep. 'Oh, next week! That is as good as next year in a matter like this, as May agreed with me, here, let us have your pulse. You have let him get low, Averil. A basin of good soup will put more heart into you, and you will feel ready for anything.' 'I have got on to-day, said Leonard, briskly raising himself, as though the cheerful voice had been cordial in itself. 'Of course you have, now that you have something to look forward to; and you will be in excellent hands; the very thing I wanted for you, though I could not see how to manage it. I am going to dress. I shall tell them to send in dinner; and if I am not down, I shall be in the nursery. You won't come in to dinner, Leonard?' 'No, said Leonard, with a shudder. 'I shall send you in some gravy soup, that you may thank me for. Ave never would order anything but boiled chickens for you, and forgets that other people ever want to eat. There will be a chance of making a housekeeper of her now.' How selfish, thought Averil, to want to get rid of poor Leonard, that I may attend to his dinners. Yet Henry had spoken in perfect good-humour. Henry came down with a little sister in each hand. They were his especial darlings; and with a touch of fatherly fondness, he tried to compensate to them for their sequestration from the drawing-room, the consequence of Averil not having established her authority enough to keep their spirits from growing too riotous for Leonard's weakness. Indeed, their chatter was Henry's sole enlivenment, for Averil was constantly making excursions to ask what her patient would eat, and watch its success; and but for his pleasure in the little girls popping about him, he would have had a meal as dull as it was unsettled. As soon as the strawberries were eaten, he walked out through the window with them clinging to him, and Averil returned to her post. 'Some music, Ave,' said Leonard, with an instinctive dread of her conversation. She knew her voice was past singing, and began one of her most renowned instrumental pieces, which she could play as mechanically as a musical-box. 'Not that jingling airified thing!' cried Leonard, 'I want something quiet and refreshing. There's an evening hymn that the Mays have.' 'The Mays know nothing of music,' said Averil. 'Stay, this is it:' and he whistled a few bars. 'That old thing! Of course I know that. We had it every Sunday at Brighton.' She began it, but her eyes were full of tears, partly because she hated herself for the irritation she had betrayed. She was a sound, good, honest-hearted girl; but among all the good things she had learned at Brighton, had not been numbered the art of ruling her own spirit. CHAPTER IV Griefs hidden in the mind like treasures, Will turn with time to solemn pleasures. On the Monday morning, the two convalescents shook hands in the waiting-room at the station, surveying each other rather curiously; while Ethel, trying to conquer her trepidation, gave manifold promises to Averil of care and correspondence. Dr. Spencer acted escort, being far more serviceable on the railway than his untravelled friend, whose lame arm, heedless head, and aptitude for missing trains and mistaking luggage, made him a charge rather than an assistant. He was always happiest among his patients at home; and the world was still ill enough to employ him so fully, that Ethel hoped to be less missed than usual. Indeed, she believed that her absence would be good in teaching him Mary's full-grown worth, and Mary would be in the full glory of notability in the purification of the house. The change was likewise for Dr. Spencer's good. He had almost broken down in the height of the labour, and still looked older and thinner for it; and after one night at Coombe, he was going to refresh himself by one of his discursive tours. He was in high spirits, and the pink of courtesy; extremely flattered by the charge of Ethel, and making her the ostensible object of his attention, to the relief of the boys, who were glad to be spared the sense of prominent invalidism. The change was delightful to them. Aubrey was full of life and talk, and sat gazing from the window, as if the line from Stoneborough to Whitford presented a succession of novelties. 'What's that old place on the river there, with crow-stepped gables and steep roofs, like a Flemish picture?' 'Don't you know?' said Leonard, 'it is the Vintry mill, where my relative lives, that wants to make a dusty miller of me.' 'No fear of that, old fellow,' said Aubrey, regarding him in some dismay, 'you've got better things to grind at.' 'Ay, even if I don't get the Randall next time, I shall be sure of it another.' 'You'll have it next.' 'I don't know; here is a quarter clean gone, and the other fellows will have got before me.' 'Oh, but most of them have had a spell of fever!' 'Yes, but they have not had it so thoroughly,' said Leonard. 'My memory is not properly come back yet; and your father says I must not try it too soon.' 'That's always his way,' said Aubrey. 'He would not let Ethel so much as pack up my little Homer.' Leonard's quick, furtive glance at Ethel was as if he suspected her of having been barely prevented from torturing him. 'Oh, it was not her doing,' said Aubrey, 'it was I! I thought Tom would find me gone back; and, you know, we must keep up together, Leonard, and be entered at St. John's at the same time.' For Aubrey devoutly believed in Tom's college at Cambridge, which had recovered all Dr. May's allegiance. The extra brightness was not of long duration. It was a very hot day, such as exactly suited the salamander nature of Dr. Spencer; but the carriage became like an oven. Aubrey curled himself up in a corner and went to sleep, but Leonard's look of oppressed resignation grieved Ethel, and the blue blinds made him look so livid, that she was always fancying him fainting, and then his shyness was dreadful--it was impossible to elicit from him anything but 'No, thank you.' He did nearly faint when they left the train; and while Aubrey was eagerly devouring the produce of the refreshment room, had to lie on a bench under Dr. Spencer's charge, for Ethel's approach only brought on a dangerous spasm of politeness. How she should get on with him for a month, passed her imagination. There was a fresher breeze when they drove out of the station, up a Dorset ridge of hill, steep, high, terraced and bleak; but it was slow climbing up, and every one was baked and wearied before the summit was gained, and the descent commenced. Even then, Ethel, sitting backwards, could only see height develop above height, all green, and scattered with sheep, or here and there an unfenced turnip-field, the road stretching behind like a long white ribbon, and now and then descending between steep chalk cuttings in slopes, down which the carriage slowly scrooped on its drag, leaving a broad blue-flecked trail. Dr. Spencer was asleep, hat off, and the wind lifting his snowy locks, and she wished the others were; but Aubrey lamented on the heat and the length, and Leonard leant back in his corner, past lamentation. Down, down! The cuttings were becoming precipitous cliffs, the drag made dismal groans; Aubrey, after a great slip forward, looking injured, anchored himself, with his feet against the seat, by Ethel; and Dr. Spencer was effectually wakened by an involuntary forward plunge of his opposite neighbour. 'Can this be safe?' quoth Ethel; 'should not some of us get out?' 'Much you know of hills, you level landers!' was the answer; and just then they were met and passed by four horses dragging up a stage coach, after the fashion of a fly on a window-pane--a stage coach! delightful to the old-world eyes of Dr. Spencer, recalling a faint memory to Ethel, and presenting a perfect novelty to Aubrey. Then came a sudden turn upon flat ground, and a short cry of wonder broke from Aubrey. Ethel was sensible of a strange salt weedy smell, new to her nostrils, but only saw the white-plastered, gray-roofed houses through which they were driving; but, with another turn, the buildings were only on one side--on the other there was a wondrous sense of openness, vastness, freshness--something level, gray, but dazzling; and before she could look again, the horses stopped, and close to her, under the beetling, weather-stained white cliff, was a low fence, and within it a verandah and a door, where stood Flora's maid, Barbara, in all her respectability. Much wit had been expended by Aubrey on being left to the tender mercy of cruel Barbara Allen, in whom Ethel herself anticipated a tyrant; but at the moment she was invaluable. Every room was ready and inviting, and nothing but the low staircase between Leonard and the white bed, which was the only place fit for him; while for the rest, the table was speedily covered with tea and chickens; Abbotstoke eggs, inscribed with yesterday's date; and red mail-clad prawns, to prove to touch and taste that this was truly sea-side. The other senses knew it well: the open window let in the indescribable salt, fresh odour, and the entire view from it was shore and sea, there seemed nothing to hinder the tide from coming up the ridge of shingle, and rushing straight into the cottage; and the ear was constantly struck by the regular roll and dash of the waves. Aubrey, though with the appetite of recovery and sea-air combined, could not help pausing to listen, and, when his meal was over, leant back in his chair, listened again, and gave a sigh of content. 'It is one constant hush, hushaby,' he said; 'it would make one sleep pleasantly.' His companions combined their advice to him so to use it; and in less than half an hour Ethel went to bid him good night, in the whitest of beds and cleanest of tiny chambers, where he looked the picture of sleepy satisfaction, when she opened his window, and admitted the swell and dash that fascinated his weary senses. 'My child is all right,' said Ethel, returning to Dr. Spencer; 'can you say the same of yours?' 'He must rest himself into the power of sleeping. I must say it was a bold experiment; but it will do very well, when he has got over the journey. He was doing no good at home.' 'I hope he will here.' 'Depend on it he will. And now what are you intending?' 'I am thirsting to see those waves near. Would it be against the manners and customs of sea-places for me to run down to them so late?' 'Sea-places have no manners and customs.' Ethel tossed on her hat with a feeling of delight and freedom. 'Oh, are you coming, Dr. Spencer? I did not mean to drag you out. You had rather rest, and smoke.' 'This is rest,' he answered. The next moment, the ridge of the shingle was passed, and Ethel's feet were sinking in the depth of pebbles, her cheeks freshened by the breeze, her lips salted by the spray tossed in by the wind from the wave crests. At the edge of the water she stood--as all others stand there--watching the heaving from far away come nearer, nearer, curl over in its pride of green glassy beauty, fall into foam, and draw back, making the pebbles crash their accompanying 'frsch.' The repetition, the peaceful majesty, the blue expanse, the straight horizon, so impressed her spirit as to rivet her eyes and chain her lips; and she receded step by step before the tide, unheeding anything else, not even perceiving her companion's eyes fixed on her, half curiously, half sadly. 'Well, Ethel,' at last he said. 'I never guessed it!' she said, with a gasp. 'No wonder Harry cannot bear to be away from it. Must we leave it?' as he moved back. 'Only to smooth ground,' said Dr. Spencer; 'it is too dark to stay here among the stones and crab-pots.' The summer twilight was closing in; lights shining in the village under the cliffs, and looking mysterious on distant points of the coast; stars were shining forth in the pale blue sky, and the young moon shedding a silver rippled beam on the water. 'If papa were but here!' said Ethel, wakening from another gaze, and recollecting that she was not making herself agreeable. 'So you like the expedition?' 'The fit answer to that would be, "It is very pretty," as the Cockney said to Coleridge at Lodore.' 'So I have converted a Stoneborough fungus!' 'What! to say the sea is glorious? A grand conversion!' 'To find anything superior to Minster Street.' 'Ah, you are but half reclaimed! You are a living instance that there is no content unless one has begun life as a fungus.' She was startled by his change of tone. 'True, Ethel. Content might have been won, if there had been resolution to begin without it.' 'I beg your pardon,' she faltered, 'I ought not to have said it. I forgot there was such a cause.' 'Cause--you know nothing about it.' She was silent, distressed, dismayed, fearing that she had spoken wrongly, and had either mistaken or been misunderstood. 'Tell me, Ethel,' he presently said, 'what can you know of what made me a wanderer?' 'Only what papa told me.' 'He--he was the last person to know.' 'He told me,' said Ethel, hurrying it out in a fright, 'that you went away--out of generosity--not to interfere with his happiness.' Then she felt as if she had done a shocking thing, and waited anxiously, while Dr. Spencer deliberately made a deep hole in the shingle with his stick. 'Well,' at last he said, 'I thought that matter was unknown to all men--above all to Dick!' 'It was only after you were gone, that he put things together and made it out.' 'Did--she--know?' said Dr. Spencer, with a long breath. 'I cannot tell,' said Ethel. 'And how or why did he tell you?' (rather hurt.) 'It was when first you came. I am sure no one else knows it. But he told me because he could not help it; he was so sorry for you.' They walked the whole length of the parade, and had turned before Dr. Spencer spoke again; and then he said, 'It is strange! My one vision was of walking on the sea-shore with her; and that just doing so with you should have brought up the whole as fresh as five-and-thirty years ago!' 'I wish I was more like her,' said Ethel. No more was wanting to make him launch into the descriptions, dear to a daughter's heart, of her mother in her sweet serious bloom of young womanhood, giving new embellishments to the character already so closely enshrined in his hearer's heart, the more valuable that the stream of treasured recollection flowed on in partial oblivion of the person to whom it was addressed, or, at least, that she was the child of his rival; for, from the portrait of the quiet bright maiden, he passed to the sufferings that his own reserved nature had undergone from his friend's outspoken enthusiasm. The professor's visible preference for the youth of secure prospects, had not so much discouraged as stung him; and in a moment of irritation at the professor's treatment, and the exulting hopes of his unconscious friend, he had sworn to himself, that the first involuntary token of regard from the young lady towards one or the other, should decide him whether to win name and position for her sake, or to carry his slighted passion to the utmost parts of the earth, and never again see her face. 'Ethel,' he said, stopping short, 'never threaten Providence--above all, never keep the threat.' Ethel scarcely durst speak, in her anxiety to know what cast the die, though with all Dr. Spencer's charms, she could not but pity the delusion that could have made him hope to be preferred to her father--above all, by her mother. Nor could she clearly understand from him what had dispelled his hopes. Something it was that took place at the picnic on Arthur's Seat, of which she had previously heard as a period of untold bliss. That something, still left in vague mystery, had sealed the fate of the two friends. 'And so,' said Dr. Spencer, 'I took the first foreign appointment that offered. And my poor father, who had spent his utmost on me, and had been disappointed in all his sons, was most of all disappointed in me. I held myself bound to abide by my rash vow; loathed tame English life without her, and I left him to neglect in his age.' 'You could not have known or expected!' exclaimed Ethel. 'What right had I to expect anything else? It was only myself that I thought of. I pacified him by talk of travelling, and extending my experience, and silenced my conscience by intending to return when ordinary life should have become tolerable to me--a time that never has come. At last, in the height of that pestilential season in India, came a letter, warning me that my brother's widow had got the mastery over my poor father, and was cruelly abusing it, so that only my return could deliver him. It was when hundreds were perishing, and I the only medical man near; when to have left my post would have been both disgraceful and murderous. Then I was laid low myself; and while I was conquering the effects of cholera, came tidings that made it nothing to me whether they or I conquered. This,' and he touched one of his white curling locks, 'was not done by mere bodily exertion or ailment.' 'You would have been too late any way,' said Ethel. 'No, not if I had gone immediately. I might have got him out of that woman's hands, and made his life happy for years. There was the sting, but the crime had been long before. You know the rest. I had no health to remain, no heart to come home; and then came vagrancy indeed. I drifted wherever restlessness or impulse took me, till all my working years were over, and till the day when the sight of your father's wedding-ring showed me that I should not break my mad word by accepting the only welcome that any creature gave me.' 'And, oh! surely you have been comforted by him?' 'Comforted! Cut to the heart would be truer. One moment, I could only look at him as having borne off my treasure to destroy it; but then there rose on me his loving, patient, heartbroken humility and cheerfulness; and I saw such a character, such a course, as showed me how much better he had deserved her, and filled me with shame at having ever less esteemed him. And through all, there was the same dear Dick May, that never, since the day we first met at the pump in the school court, had I been able to help loving with all my heart--the only being that was glad to see me again. When he begged me to stay and watch over your sister, what could I do but remain while she lived?' 'So he bound you down! Oh, you know how we thank you! no, you can't, nor what you have been to him, and to all of us, through the worst of our sad days. And though it was a sacrifice, I do not think it was bad for you.' 'No, Ethel. When you implored me to give up my Crimean notion, to spare your father pain, I did feel for once that you at least thought me of value to some one.' 'I cannot bear you to speak so,' cried Ethel. 'You to talk of having been of no use!' 'No honest man of principle and education can be utterly useless; but when, three days ago, I recollected that it was my sixtieth birthday, I looked back, and saw nothing but desultory broken efforts, and restless changes. Your father told me, when I thought him unaware of the meaning of his words, that if I had missed many joys, I had missed many sorrows; but I had taken the way to make my one sorrow a greater burden than his many.' 'But you do not grieve for my mother still?' said Ethel, anxiously. 'Even his grief is a grave joy to him now; and one is always told that such things, as it was with you, are but a very small part of a man's life.' 'I am not one of the five hundred men, whom any one of five hundred women might have equally pleased,' said Dr. Spencer; 'but it is so far true, that the positive pain and envy wore out, and would not have interfered with my after life, but for my own folly. No, Ethel; it was not the loss of her that embittered and threw away my existence; it was my own rash vow, and its headstrong fulfilment, which has left me no right to your father's peaceful spirit.' 'How little we guessed!' said Ethel. 'So cheerful and ready as you always are.' 'I never trouble others, he said abruptly. 'Neither man nor woman ever heard a word of all this; and you would not have heard it now, but for that sea; and you have got your mother's voice, and some of her ways, since you have grown older and more sedate.' 'Oh, I am so glad!' said Ethel, who had been led to view her likeness to her father as natural, that to her mother as acquired. Those were the last words of the conversation; but Ethel, leaning from her window to listen to the plash of the waves, suspected that the slowly moving meteor she beheld, denoted that a cigar was soothing the emotions excited by their dialogue. She mused long over that revelation of the motives of the life that had always been noble and generous in the midst of much that was eccentric and wayward, and constantly the beat of the waves repeated to her the half-comprehended words, 'Never threaten Providence.' After superintending Aubrey's first bath, and duly installing the vice-M. D. and her charges, Dr. Spencer departed; and Ethel was launched on an unknown ocean, as pilot to an untried crew. She had been told to regard Leonard's bashfulness as a rare grace; but it was very inconvenient to have the boy wretchedly drooping, and owning nothing amiss, apparently unacquainted with any English words, except 'Thank you' and 'No, thank you.' Indeed, she doubted whether the shyness were genuine, for stories were afloat of behaviour at Stoneborough parties which savoured of audacity, and she vainly consulted Aubrey whether the cause of his discomfiture were her age or her youth, her tutorship or her plain face. Even Aubrey could not elicit any like or dislike, wish or complaint; and shrugging up his shoulders, decided that it was of no use to bother about it; Leonard would come to his senses in time. He was passive when taken out walking, submissive when planted on a three-cornered camp-stool that expanded from a gouty walking-stick, but seemed so inadequately perched, and made so forlorn a spectacle, that they were forced to put him indoors out of the glare of sea and sky, and hoping that he would condescend to the sofa when Ethel was out of sight. Punctilio broke down the next morning; and in the midst of breakfast, he was forced to lie down, and allow Ethel to bathe his face with vinegar and water; while she repented of the 'make-the-best-of-it' letter of the yesterday, and sent Aubrey out on a secret commission of inquiry about medical men, in case of need. Aubrey was perfectly well, and in such a state of desultory enjoyment and sea-side active idleness, that he was quite off her mind, only enlivening her morning of nursing by his exits and entrances, to tell of fresh discoveries, or incidents wonderful to the inland mind. After dinner, which had driven Leonard to lie on his bed, Aubrey persuaded his sister to come to see his greatest prize; a quaint old local naturalist, a seafaring man, with a cottage crammed with pans of live wonders of the deep in water, and shelves of extinct ones, 'done up in stane pies,' not a creature, by sea or land, that had haunted Coombe for a few million of ages, seemed to have escaped him. Such sea-side sojourns as the present, are the prime moments for coquetries with the lighter branches of natural science, and the brother and sister had agreed to avail themselves of the geological facilities of their position, the fascinations of Hugh Miller's autobiography having entirely gained them during Aubrey's convalescence. Ethel tore herself away from the discussion of localities with the old man, who was guide as well as philosopher, boatman as well as naturalist, and returned to her patient, whom she found less feverish, though sadly low and languid. 'I wish I knew what to do for you,' she said, sitting down by him. 'What would your sister do for you?' 'Nothing,' he wearily said, 'I mean, a great deal too much.' The tone so recalled Norman's dejected hopelessness, that she could not help tenderly laying her cold hands on the hot brow, and saying, 'Yes, I know how little one can do as a sister--and the mockery it is to think that one place can ever be taken!' The brown eyes looked at her with moist earnestness that she could hardly bear, but closed with a look of relief and soothing, as she held her hand on his forehead. Presently, however, he said, 'Don't let me keep you in.' 'I have been out, thank you. I am so glad to try to do anything for you.' 'Thank you. What o'clock is it, please? Ah, then I ought to take that draught! I forgot it in the morning.' He permitted her to fetch it and pour it out, but as she recognized a powerful tonic, she exclaimed, 'Is this what you are taking? May it not make you feverish?' 'No doubt it does,' he said, lying down again; 'it was only Henry--' 'What! did not my father know of it?' 'Of course he does not, as it seems to be poison.' 'Not exactly that,' said Ethel; 'but I was surprised, for it was talked of for Aubrey; but they said it wanted watching.' 'Just like Henry,' observed Leonard. 'Well,' said Ethel, repressing her indignation, 'I am glad, at least, to find a possible cause for your bad night. We shall see you refreshed to-morrow, and not wishing yourself at home.' 'Don't think that I wish that. Home is gone for ever.' 'Home may be gone higher--up to the real Home,' said Ethel, blushing with the effort at the hint, and coming down to earthlier consolations, 'but even the fragments will grow into home again here, and you will feel very differently.' Leonard did not answer; but after a pause said, 'Miss May, is not it a horrid pity girls should go to school?' 'I am no judge, Leonard.' 'You see,' said the boy, 'after the little girls were born, my mother had no time for Ave, and sent her to Brighton, and there she begged to stay on one half after another, learning all sorts of things; but only coming home for short holidays, like company, for us to wonder at her and show her about, thinking herself ever so much in advance of my poor mother, and now she knows just nothing at all of her!' 'You cannot tell, Leonard, and I am sure she has been devoted to you.' 'If she had stayed at home like you, she might have known how to let one alone. Oh, you can't think what peace it was yesterday!' 'Was it peace? I feared it was desertion.' 'It is much better to be by oneself, than always worried. To have them always at me to get up my spirits when the house is miserable--' 'Ah,' said Ethel, 'I remember your mother rejoicing that she had not to send you from home, and saying you were always so kind and gentle to her.' 'Did she!' cried the boy, eagerly. 'Oh, but she forgot--' and he hid his face, the features working with anguish. 'So pleased and proud she used to look, walking with you on Saturday afternoons.' 'Those Saturdays! They were the only walks she ever would take; but she would always come with me.' More followed in the same strain, and Ethel began to gather more distinct impressions of the Ward family. She saw that her present charge was warm and sound-hearted, and that the strength of his affections had been chiefly absorbed by the homely housewifely mother, comparatively little esteemed by the modernized brother and sister. Of the loss of his father he seemed to think less; it seemed, indeed, rather to reconcile him to that of his mother, by the grief it spared her; and it confirmed Ethel's notion, that Mr. Ward, a busy and dull man, paid no great attention to his children between the plaything period and that of full development. The mother was the home; and Averil, though Leonard showed both love for and pride in her, had hitherto been a poor substitute, while as to Henry, there was something in each mention of him which gave Ethel an undefined dread of the future of the young household, and a doubt of the result of her father's kind schemes of patronage. At any rate, this conversation had the happy effect of banishing constraint, and satisfying Ethel that the let-alone system was kindness, not neglect. She was at ease in discussing fossils, though he contributed no word, and she let him sleep or wake as he best liked; whilst Aubrey read to her the 'Cruise of the Betsey.' Henry's prescription was sent to invigorate the fishes, when its cessation was found to be followed by the recovery of sleep and appetite, and in the cool of the evening, by a disposition to stroll on the beach, and lie under the lee of a rock upon a railway rug, which Ethel had substituted for the 'three-legged delusion.' There he was left, while his companions went fossil-hunting, and stayed so long as to excite their compunction, and quicken their steps when they at length detached themselves from the enticing blue lias. 'What has he got there?' cried Aubrey. 'Hillo, old fellow! have you fallen a prey to a black cat?' 'Cat!' returned Leonard, indignantly; 'don't you see it is the jolliest little dog in the world?' 'You call that a dog?' said the other boy with redoubled contempt; 'it is just big enough for little Margaret's Noah's Ark!' 'It really is a beauty!' said Ethel. 'I have known one of Flora's guests bring a bigger one in her muff.' 'It is the most sensible little brute,' added Leonard. 'See; beg, my man, beg!' And the beauteous little black-coated King Charles erected itself on its hind legs, displaying its rich ruddy tan waistcoat and sleeves, and beseeching with its black diamond eyes for the biscuit, dropped and caught in mid-air. It was the first time Leonard had looked bright. 'So you expect us to sanction your private dog stealing?' said Aubrey. 'I have been watching for his mistress to come back,' said Leonard; 'but she must have passed an hour ago, and she does not deserve to have him, for she never looked back for him; and he had run up to me, frisking and making much of me, as if he had found an old friend.' 'Perhaps it will run home when we move.' No such thing; it trotted close at Leonard's heels, and entered the house with them. Barbara was consulted, and on Leonard's deposition that the dog's mistress was in deep mourning, opined that she could be no other than the widow of an officer, who during his lingering illness had been often laid upon the beach, and had there played with his little dogs. This one, evidently very young, had probably, in the confusion of its puppy memory, taken the invalid for its lost master. 'Stupid little thing,' said Aubrey; 'just like an undersized lady's toy.' 'It knows its friends. These little things have twice the sense of overgrown dogs as big and as stupid as jackasses.' A retort from Leonard was welcome in Ethel's ears, and she quite developed his conversational powers, in an argument on the sagacity of all canine varieties. It was too late to send the little animal home; and he fondled and played with it till bed-time, when he lodged it in his own room; and the attachment was so strong, that it was with a deep sigh, that at breakfast he accepted Aubrey's offer of conveying it home. 'There she is! he exclaimed in the midst, gazing from the window. 'And see the perfection of the animal!' added Aubrey, pointing to a broad-backed waddling caricature of the little black fairy. 'Restitution must be made, little as she deserves you, you little jewel,' said Leonard, picking up the object of his admiration. 'I'll take you out.' 'No, no; I am not so infectious,' said Ethel, tying on her hat; 'I had better do it.' And after Leonard's parting embrace to his favourite, she received it; and quickly overtaking the pensive steps of the lady, arrested her progress with, 'I beg your pardon, but I think this is your dog.' 'Poor little Mab! as the dog struggled to get to her, and danced gladly round her. 'I missed her last night, and was coming to look for her.' 'She joined one of our party,' said Ethel; 'and he was not strong enough to follow you. Indeed, he has had scarlet fever, so perhaps it was better not. But he has taken great care of the little dog, and hopes it is not the worse.' 'Thank you. I wish poor Mab may always meet such kind friends,' said the lady, sadly. 'She secured her welcome,' said Ethel. 'We were very grateful to her, for it was the first thing that has seemed to interest him since his illness; and he has just lost both his parents.' 'Ah! Thank you.' Ethel wondered at herself for having been so communicative; but the sweet sad face and look of interest had drawn her words out; and on her return she made such a touching history of the adventure, that Leonard listened earnestly, and Aubrey looked subdued. When they went out Leonard refused to spread his rug in that only bed of pulverized shingle; and Ethel respected his avoidance of it as delicacy to her whose husband had no doubt often occupied that spot. 'He is a thorough gentleman,' said she, as she walked away with Aubrey. 'He might be an Eton fellow,' was the significant reply. 'I wonder what made him so!' said Ethel, musingly. 'Looking at Tom,' returned Aubrey, not in jest. 'Even with that advantage, I don't quite see where he learnt that refined consideration.' 'Pshaw, Ethel! The light of nature would show that to any one but a stupex.' Ethel was not sorry that such were Aubrey's views of courtesy, but all thought of that subject was soon lost in the pursuit of ammonites. 'I wonder what Leonard will have picked up now?' they speculated, as they turned homewards with their weighty baskets, but what was their amazement, when Leonard waved his hand, pointing to the little black dog again at his feet! 'She is mine!' he exclaimed, 'my own! Mrs. Gisborne has given her to me; and she is to be the happiest little mite going!' 'Given!' 'Yes. She came as soon as you were gone, and sat by me, and talked for an hour, but she goes to-morrow to live with an old hag of an aunt.' 'Really, you seem to have been on confidential terms.' 'I mean that she must be a nuisance, because she doesn't like dogs; so that Mrs. Gisborne can only take the old one, which she could never part with. So she wanted to give Mab to some one who would be kind to her; and she has come to the right shop; hasn't she, my little queen?' 'I thought she almost wished it this morning,' said Ethel, 'when she heard how you and Mab had taken to each other: but it is a very choice present; the creature looks to me to be of a very fine sort.' 'Now, Miss May, how could you know that?' 'Why, by her own deportment! Don't you know the aristocratic look that all high-bred animals have--even bantams?' Leonard looked as if this were the most convincing proof of Ethel's wisdom, and proceeded. 'Well, she is descended from a real King Charles, that Charles II. brought from France, and gave to Mrs. Jane Lane; and they have kept up the breed ever since.' 'So that Mab will have the longest pedigree in Stoneborough; and we must all respect her!' said Ethel, stroking the black head. 'I am only surprised at Leonard's forgetting his place,' said Aubrey. 'Walking before her majesty, indeed!' 'Oh, attendants do come first sometimes.' 'Then it should be backwards! I have a mind to try lying on the beach to-morrow, looking interesting, to see what will descend upon me!' 'A great yellow mongrel,' said Ethel, 'as always befalls imitators in the path of the hero.' 'What? You mean that it was all the work of Leonard's beaux yeux?' Leonard gave a sort of growl, intimating that Aubrey was exciting his displeasure; and Ethel was glad to be at home, and break off the conversation; but in a few minutes Aubrey knocked at her door, and edging himself in, mysteriously said, 'Such fun! So it was your beaux yeux, not Leonard's, that made the conquest!' 'I suppose she was touched with what I said of poor Leonard's circumstances, and the pleasure the creature gave him.' 'That is as prosy as Mary, Ethel. At any rate, the woman told Leonard yours was the most irresistibly attractive countenance she ever saw, short of beauty; and that's not the best of it, for he is absolutely angry. 'No wonder,' laughed Ethel. 'No, but it's about the beauty! He can't conceive a face more beautiful than yours.' 'Except the gargoyle on the church tower,' said Ethel, gaping into as complete a model of that worthy as flesh and blood could perpetrate. 'But he means it,' persisted Aubrey, fixing his eyes critically on his sister's features, but disturbed by the contortions into which she threw them. 'Now don't, don't. I never saw any fellow with a hundredth part of your gift for making faces,' he added, between the unwilling paroxysms of mirth at each fresh grimace; but I want to judge of you; and--oh! that solemn one is worse than all; it is like Julius Caesar, if he had ever been photographed!--but really, when one comes to think about it, you are not so very ugly after all; and are much better looking than Flora, whom we were taught to believe in.' 'Poor Flora! You were no judge in her blooming days, before wear and tear came.' 'And made her like our Scotch grandfather.' 'But Blanche! your own Blanche, Aubrey? She might have extended Leonard's ideas of beauty.' 'Blanche has a pretty little visage of her own; but it's not so well worth looking at as yours,' said Aubrey. 'One has seen to the end of it at once; and it won't light up. Hers is just the May blossom; and yours the--the--I know--the orchis! I have read of a woman with an orchidaceous face!' Teeth, tongue, lips, eyes, and nose were at once made to serve in hitting off an indescribable likeness to an orchis blossom, which was rapturously applauded, till Ethel, relaxing the strain and permitting herself to laugh triumphantly at her own achievement, said, 'There! I do pride myself on being of a high order of the grotesque.' 'It is not the grotesque that he means.' said Aubrey, 'he is very cracked indeed. He declares that when you came and sat by him the day before yesterday, you were perfectly lovely.' 'Oh, then I understand, and it is no matter,' said Ethel. CHAPTER V They stwons, they stwons, they stwons, they stwons. --Scouring of the White Horse 'So' (wrote Ethel in her daily letter to her father) 'mine is at present a maternal mission to Leonard, and it is highly gratifying. I subscribe to all your praise of him, and repent of my ungracious murmurs at his society. You had the virtue, and I have the reward (the usual course of this world), for his revival is a very fresh and pleasant spectacle, burning hot with enthusiasm. Whatever we do, he overdoes, till I recollect how Wilkes said he had never been a Wilkite. Three days ago, a portentous-looking ammonite attracted his attention; and whereas he started from the notion that earth was dirt, and stones were stones, the same all over the world, he has since so far outstripped his instructors, that as I write this he is drawing a plan of the strata, with the inhabitants dramatically arranged, Aubrey suggesting tragic scenes and uncomplimentary likenesses. His talent for drawing shows that Averil's was worth culture. If our geology alarm Richard, tell him that I think it safer to get it over young, and to face apparent discrepancies with revelation, rather than leave them to be discovered afterwards as if they had been timidly kept out of sight. And whether Hugh Miller's theory be right or wrong, his grand fervid language leaves the conviction that undoubting confidence in revelation consists with the clearest and most scientific mind.' * * * * * 'June 30th.--I consider my boys as returned to their normal relations. I descended on them as they were sparring like lion-cubs at play, Leonard desisted in confusion at my beholding such savage doings, but cool and easy, not having turned a hair; Aubrey, panting, done up, railing at him as first cousin to Hercules, all as a delicate boast to me of his friend's recovered strength. Aubrey's forte is certainly veneration. His first class of human beings is a large one, though quizzing is his ordinary form of adoration. For instance, he teases Mab and her devoted slave some degrees more than the victim can bear, and then relieves his feelings in my room by asseverations that the friendship with Leonard will be on the May and Spencer pattern. The sea is the elixir of life to both; Leonard looks quite himself again, "only more so," and Aubrey has a glow never seen since his full moon visage waned, and not all tan, though we are on the high road to be coffee-berries. Aubrey daily entertains me with heroic tales of diving and floating, till I tell them they will become enamoured of some "lady of honour who lives in the sea," grow fishes' tails, and come home no more. And really, as the time wanes, I feel that such a coast is Elysium--above all, the boating. The lazy charm, the fresh purity of air, the sights and sounds, the soft summer wave when one holds one's hand over the tide, the excitement of sea-weed catching, and the nonsense we all talk, are so delicious and such new sensations, (except the nonsense, which loses by your absence, O learned doctor!) that I fully perceive how pleasures untried cannot even be conceived. But ere the lotos food has entirely depraved my memory, I give you warning to come and fetch us home, now that the boys are in full repair. Come yourself, and be feasted on shrimps and mackerel, and take one sail to the mouth of the bay. I won't say who shall bring you; it would be fun to have Daisy, and Mary ought to have a holiday, but then Richard would take better care of you, and Tom would keep you in the best order. Could you not all come? only if you don't yourself, I won't promise not to take up with a merman.' * * * * * 'July 4th.--Very well. If this is to make a strong man of Aubrey, tant mieux, and even home and Cocksmoor yearnings concern me little in this Castle of Indolence, so don't flatter yourself that I shall grumble at having had to take our house on again. Let us keep Leonard; we should both miss him extremely, and Aubrey would lose half the good without some one to swim, scramble, and fight with. Indeed, for the poor fellow's own sake, he should stay, for though he is physically as strong as a young megalosaur, and in the water or on the rocks all day, I don't think his head is come to application, nor his health to bearing depression; and I see he dreads the return, so that he had better stay away till school begins again.' * * * * * 'July 7th.--Oh! you weak-minded folks! Now I know why you wanted to keep me away--that you might yield yourselves a prey to Flora. Paper and chintz forsooth! All I have to say is this, Miss Mary--as to my room, touch it if you dare! I leave papa to protect his own study, but for the rest, think, Mary, what your feelings would be if Harry were to come home, and not know what room he was in! If I am to choose between the patterns of chintz, I prefer the sea-weed variety, as in character with things in general, and with the present occasion; and as to the carpet, I hope that Flora, touched with our submission, will not send us anything distressing.' * * * * * 'July 17th.--Can you send me any more of the New Zealand letters? I have copied out the whole provision I brought with me for the blank book, and by the way have inoculated Leonard with such a missionary fever as frightens me. To be sure, he is cut out for such work. He is intended for a clergyman (on grounds of gentility, I fear), and is too full of physical energy and enterprise to take readily to sober parochial life. His ardour is a gallant thing, and his home ties not binding; but it is not fair to take advantage of his present inflammable state of enthusiasm, and the little we have said has been taken up so fervently, that I have resolved on caution for the future. It is foolish to make so much of a boy's eagerness, especially when circumstances have brought him into an unnatural dreamy mood; and probably these aspirations will pass away with the sound of the waves, but they are pretty and endearing while they last in their force and sincerity. '"Just at the age 'twixt boy and youth, When thought is speech, and speech is truth;" 'and one's heart beats at the thought of what is possible to creatures of that age.' * * * * * 'July 21st.--You, who taught us to love our Walter Scott next to our "Christian Year," and who gave us half-crowns for rehearsing him when other children were learning the Robin's Petition, what think you of this poor boy Leonard knowing few of the novels and none of the poems? No wonder the taste of the day is grovelling lower and lower, when people do not begin with the pure high air of his world! To take up one of his works after any of our present school of fiction is like getting up a mountain side after a feverish drawing-room or an offensive street. If it were possible to know the right moment for a book to be really tasted--not thrust aside because crammed down--no, it would not be desirable, as I was going to say, we should only do double mischief. We are not sent into the world to mould people, but to let them mould themselves; and the internal elasticity will soon unmake all the shapes that just now seem to form under my fingers like clay. 'At any rate, the introduction of such a congenial spirit to Sir Walter was a real treat; Leonard has the very nature to be fired by him, and Aubrey being excessively scandalized at his ignorance, routed a cheap "Marmion" out of the little bookshop, and we beguiled a wet afternoon with it; Aubrey snatching it from me at all the critical passages, for fear I should not do them justice, and thundering out the battle, which stirred the other boy like a trumpet sound. Indeed, Leonard got Mab into a corner, and had a very bad cold in the head when De Wilton was re-knighted; and when "the hand of Douglas was his own," he jumped up and shouted out, "Well done, old fellow!" Then he took it to himself and read it all over again, introductions and all, and has raved ever since. I wish you could see Aubrey singing out some profane couplet of "midnight and not a nose," or some more horrible original parody, and then dodging apparently in the extremity of terror, just as Leonard furiously charges him. 'But you would have been struck with their discussions over it. Last night, at tea, they began upon the woeful result of the Wager of Battle, which seemed to oppress them as if it had really happened. Did I believe in it? Was I of the Lady Abbess's opinion, that '"Perchance some form was unobserved, Perchance in prayer or faith he swerved"? 'This from Aubrey, while Leonard rejoined that even if De Wilton had so done, it was still injustice that he should be so cruelly ruined, and Marmion's baseness succeed. It would be like a king wilfully giving wrong judgment because the right side failed in some respectful observance. He was sure such a thing could never be. Did I ever know of a real case where Heaven did not show the right? It was confusing and alarming, for both those boys sat staring at me as if I could answer them; and those wonderful searching eyes of Leonard's were fixed, as if his whole acquiescence in the dealings of Providence were going to depend on the reply, that could but be unsatisfactory. I could only try plunging deep. I said it was Job's difficulty, and it was a new light to Leonard that Job was about anything but patience. He has been reading the Book all this Sunday evening; and is not De Wilton a curious introduction to it? But Aubrey knew that I meant the bewilderment of having yet to discover that Divine Justice is longer-sighted than human justice, and he cited the perplexities of high-minded heathen. Thence we came to the Christian certainty that "to do well and suffer for it is thankworthy;" and that though no mortal man can be so innocent as to feel any infliction wholly unmerited and disproportioned, yet human injustice at its worst may be working for the sufferer an exceeding weight of glory, or preparing him for some high commission below. Was not Ralph de Wilton far nobler and purer as the poor palmer, than as Henry the Eighth's courtier! And if you could but have heard our sequel, arranging his orthodoxy, his Scripture reading, and his guardianship of distressed monks and nuns, you would have thought he had travelled to some purpose, only he would certainly have been burnt by one party, and beheaded by the other. On the whole, I think Leonard was a little comforted, and I cannot help hoping that the first apparently cruel wrong that comes before him may be the less terrible shock to his faith from his having been set to think out the question by "but half a robber and but half a knight."' * * * * * 'August 1st.--Yesterday afternoon we three were in our private geological treasury, Leonard making a spread-eagle of himself in an impossible place on the cliff side, trying to disinter what hope, springing eternal in the human breast, pronounced to be the paddle of a saurian; Aubrey, climbing as high as he durst, directing operations and making discoveries; I, upon a ledge half-way up, guarding Mab and poking in the debris, when one of the bridal pairs, with whom the place is infested, was seen questing about as if disposed to invade our premises. Aubrey, reconnoitring in high dudgeon, sarcastically observed that all red-haired men are so much alike, that he should have said yonder was Hec--. The rest ended in a view halloo from above and below, and three bounds to the beach, whereon I levelled my glass, and perceived that in very deed it was Mr. and Mrs. Ernescliffe who were hopping over the shingle. Descending, I was swung off the last rock in a huge embrace, and Hector's fiery moustache was scrubbing both my cheeks before my feet touched the ground, and Blanche with both arms round my waist. They were ready to devour us alive in their famine for a Stoneborough face; and as Flora and Mary are keeping home uninhabitable, found themselves obliged to rush away from Maplewood in the middle of their county welcomes for a little snatch of us, and to join us in vituperating the new furniture. If Mary could only hear Hector talk of a new sofa that he can't put his boots upon--he says it is bad enough at Maplewood, but that he did hope to be still comfortable at home. They have to get back to dine out to-morrow, but meantime the fun is more fast and furious than ever, and as soon as the tide serves, we are to fulfil our long-cherished desire of boating round to Lyme. I won't answer for the quantity of discretion added to our freight, but at least there is six feet more of valour, and Mrs. Blanche for my chaperon. Bonnie Blanche is little changed by her four months' matrimony, and only looks prettier and more stylish, but she is painfully meek and younger-sisterish, asking my leave instead of her husband's, and distressed at her smartness in her pretty shady hat and undyed silk, because I was in trim for lias-grubbing. Her appearance ought to be an example to all the brides in the place with skirts in the water, and nothing on to keep off eyes, sun, or wind from their faces. I give Flora infinite credit for it. Blanche and Aubrey walk arm in arm in unceasing talk, and that good fellow, Hector, has included Leonard in the general fraternity. They are highly complimentary, saying they should have taken Aubrey for Harry, he is so much stouter and rosier, and that Leonard is hugely grown. Here come these three boys shouting that the boat is ready; I really think Hector is more boyish and noisy than ever. "Five precious souls, and all agog To dash through thick or thin." I'll take the best care of them in my power. Good-bye.' * * * * * 'August 2nd.--Safe back, without adventure, only a great deal of enjoyment, for which I am doubly thankful, as I almost fancied we were fey, one of the many presentiments that come to nothing, but perhaps do us rather good than harm for all that. I hope I did not show it in my letter, and communicate it to you. Even when safe landed, I could not but think of the Cobb and Louisa Musgrove, as I suppose every one does. We slept at the inn; drove with the Ernescliffes to the station this morning, and came back to this place an hour ago, after having been steeped in pleasure. I shall send the description of Lyme to Daisy to-morrow, having no time for it now, as I want an answer from you about our going to Maplewood. The "married babies" are bent upon it, and Hector tries to demonstrate that it is the shortest way home, to which I can't agree; but as it may save another journey, and it will be nice to see them in their glory, I told them that if you could spare us, we would go from the 29th to the 4th of September. This will bring Leonard home four days before the end of the holidays, for he has been most warmly invited, Hector adopting him into the brotherhood of papa's pets. I am glad he is not left out; and Mary had better prove to Averil that he will be much happier for having no time at home before the half year begins. He still shrinks from the very name being brought before him. Let me know, if you please, whether this arrangement will suit, as I am to write to Blanche. Dear little woman, I hope Hector won't make a spoilt child of her, they are so very young, and their means seem so unlimited to them both, Hector wanting to make her and us presents of whatever we admired, and when she civilly praised Mab, vehemently declaring that she should have just such another if money could purchase, or if not, he would find a way. "Thank you, Hector dear, I had rather not," placidly responds Blanche, making his vehemence fall so flat, and Leonard's almost exulting alarm glide into such semi-mortification, that I could have laughed, though I remain in hopes that her "rather not" may always be as prudent, for I believe it is the only limit to Hector's gifts.' * * * * * '29th, 8 A. M.--Farewell to the Coombe of Coombes. I write while waiting for the fly, and shall post this at Weymouth, where we are to be met. We have been so happy here, that I could be sentimental, if Leonard were not tete-a-tete with me, and on the verge of that predicament. "Never so happy in his life," quoth he, "and never will be again--wonders when he shall gee this white cliff again." But, happily, in tumbles Aubrey with the big claw of a crab, which he insists on Leonard's wearing next his heart as a souvenir of Mrs. Gisborne; he is requited with an attempt to pinch his nose therewith, And-- 2.30. P. M. Weymouth.--The result was the upset of my ink, whereof you see the remains; and our last moments were spent in reparations and apologies. My two squires are in different plight from what they were ten weeks ago, racing up hills that it then half killed them to come down, and lingering wistfully on the top for last glimpses of our bay. I am overwhelmed with their courtesies, and though each is lugging about twenty pounds weight of stones, and Mab besides in Leonard's pocket, I am seldom allowed to carry my own travelling bag. Hector has been walking us about while his horses are resting after their twenty miles, but we think the parade and pier soon seen, and are tantalized by having no time for Portland Island, only contenting ourselves with an inspection of shop fossils, which in company with Hector is a sort of land of the "Three Wishes," or worse; for on my chancing to praise a beautiful lump of Purbeck stone, stuck as full of paludinae as a pudding with plums, but as big as my head and much heavier, he brought out his purse at once; and when I told him he must either enchant it on to my nose, or give me a negro slave as a means of transport, Leonard so earnestly volunteered to be the bearer, that I was thankful for my old rule against collecting curiosities that I do not find and carry myself. 'August 30th. Maplewood.--I wonder whether these good children can be happier, unless it may be when they receive you! How much they do make of us! and what a goodly sight at their own table they are! They are capable in themselves of making any place charming, though the man must have been enterprising who sat down five-and-twenty years ago to reclaim this park from irreclaimable down. I asked where were the maples? and where was the wood? and was shown five stunted ones in a cage to defend them from the sheep, the only things that thrive here, except little white snails, with purple lines round their shells. "There now, isn't it awfully bleak?" says Hector, with a certain comical exultation. "How was a man ever to live here without her?" And the best of it is, that Blanche thinks it beautiful--delicious free air, open space, view over five counties, &c. Inside, one traces Flora's presiding genius, Hector would never have made the concern so perfect without her help; and Blanche is no child in her own house, but is older and more at home than Hector, so that one would take her for the heiress, making him welcome and at ease. Not that it is like the Grange, Blanche is furious if I remark any little unconscious imitation or similarity--"As if we could be like Flora and George indeed!" Nor will they. If Blanche rules, it will be unawares to herself. And where Hector is, there will always be a genial house, overflowing with good-humour and good-nature. He has actually kept the 1st of September clear of shooting parties that he may take these two boys out, and give them a thorough day's sport in his turnip-fields. "License? Nonsense, he thought of that before, and now Aubrey may get some shooting out of George Rivers." After such good-nature my mouth is shut, though, ay di me, all the world and his wife are coming here on Monday evening, and unless I borrow of Blanche, Mrs. Ernescliffe's sister will "look like ane scrub."' * * * * * 'September 2nd.--Train at Stoneborough, 6.30. That's the best news I have to give. Oh, it has been a weary while to be out of sight of you all, though it has been pleasant enough, and the finale is perfectly brilliant. Blanche, as lady of the house, is a sight to make a sister proud; she looks as if she were born to nothing else, and is a model of prettiness and elegance. Hector kept coming up to me at every opportunity to admire her. "Now, old Ethel, look at her? Doesn't she look like a picture? I chose that gown, you know;" then again after dinner, "Well, old Ethel, didn't it go off well? Did you ever see anything like her? There, just watch her among the old ladies. I can't think where she learnt it all, can you?" And it certainly was too perfect to have been learnt. It was not the oppression that poor dear Flora gives one by doing everything so well, as if she had perfectly balanced what was due to herself and everybody else; it was just Blanche, simple and ready, pleasing herself by doing what people liked, and seeing what they did like. It was particularly pretty to see how careful both she and Hector were not to put Leonard aside--indeed, they make more of him than of Aubrey, who is quite able to find his own level. Even his tender feelings as to Mab are respected, and Blanche always takes care to invite her to a safe seat on a fat scarlet cushion on the sofa (Mrs. Ledwich's wedding present), when the footmen with the tea might be in danger of demolishing her. Leonard, and his fine eyes, and his dog, were rather in fashion yesterday evening. Blanche put out his Coombe sketches for a company trap, and people talked to him about them, and he was set to sing with Blanche, and then with some of the young ladies. He seemed to enjoy it, and his nice, modest, gentlemanlike manner told. The party was not at all amiss in itself. I had a very nice clerical neighbour, and it is a very different thing to see and hear Hector at the bottom of the table from having poor dear George there. But oh! only one dinner more before we see our own table again, and Tom at the bottom of it. Hurrah! I trust this is the last letter you will have for many a day, from 'Your loving and dutiful daughter, 'ETHELDRED MAY.' CHAPTER VI The XII statute remember to observe For all the paine thou hast for love and wo All is too lite her mercie to deserve Thou musten then thinke wher er thou ride or go And mortale wounds suffre thou also All for her sake, and thinke it well besette Upon thy love, for it maie not be bette. --Chaucer's 'Court of Love' 'Good-bye, Leonard,' said Ethel, as the two families, after mustering strong at the station, parted at the head of Minster Street; and as she felt the quivering lingering pressure of his hand, she added with a smile, 'Remember, any Saturday afternoon. And you will come for the books.' Glad as she was to be anchored on her father's arm, and clustered round with rejoicing brothers and sisters, she could not be devoid of a shade of regret for the cessation of the intimate intercourse of the last nine weeks, and a certain desire for the continuance of the confidential terms that had arisen. The moment's pang was lost in the eager interchange of tidings too minute for correspondence, and in approval of the renovation of the drawing-room, which was so skilful that her first glance would have detected no alteration in the subdued tones of paper, carpet, and chintz, so complete was their loyalty to the spirit of perpetuity. Flora told no one of the pains that, among her many cares, she had spent upon those tints, not so much to gratify Ethel, as because her own wearied spirit craved the repose of home sameness, nor how she had finally sent to Paris for the paper that looked so quiet, but was so exquisitely finished, that the whole room had a new air of refinement. The most notable novelty was a water-coloured sketch, a labour of love from the busy hands in New Zealand, which had stolen a few hours from their many tasks to send Dr. May the presentment of his namesake grandson. Little Dickie stood before them, a true son of the humming-bird sprite, delicately limbed and featured, and with elastic springiness, visible even in the pencilled outline. The dancing dark eyes were all Meta's, though the sturdy clasp of the hands, and the curl that hung over the brow, brought back the reflection of Harry's baby days. It would have been a charming picture, even if it had not been by Meta's pencil, and of Norman's child, and it chained Ethel for more than one interval of longing loving study. Tom interrupted her in one of these contemplations. 'Poor Flora,' he said, with more feeling than he usually allowed to affect his voice, 'that picture is a hard trial to her. I caught her looking at it for full ten minutes, and at last she turned away with her eyes full of tears.' 'I do not wonder,' said Ethel. 'There is a certain likeness to that poor little Leonora, and I think Flora misses her more every year.' 'Such a child as Margaret is just the thing to cause the other to be missed.' 'What do you think of Margaret this time?' said Ethel, for Tom alone ever durst seriously touch on the undefined impression that all entertained of Flora's only child. 'If Flora were only silly about her,' said Tom, 'one might have some hope; but unluckily she is as judicious there as in everything else, and the child gets more deplorable every year. She has got the look of deformity, and yet she is not deformed; and the queer sullen ways of deficiency, but she has more wit than her father already, and more cunning.' 'As long as there is a mind to work on, one hopes' said Ethel. 'I could stand her better if she were foolish!' exclaimed Tom, 'but I can't endure to see her come into the room to be courted by every one, and be as cross as she dares before her mother. Behind Flora's back, I don't know which she uses worst, her father or her grandfather. I came down upon little Miss at last for her treatment of the Doctor, and neither he nor Rivers have forgiven me.' 'Poor child! I don't believe she has ever known a moment's thorough health or comfort! I always hope that with Flora's patience and management she may improve.' 'Pshaw, Ethel! she will always be a misfortune to herself and everybody else.' 'I have faith in good coming out of misfortunes.' 'Illustrated, I suppose, by ravings about your young Ward. Mary is crazy about his sister, and the Doctor lunatic as to the brother, who will soon kick at him for his pains.' 'I own to thinking Leonard capable of great things.' Tom made a grimace equal to what Ethel could do in that way, thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and philosophically observed, 'Behold the effects of patronage! Blind Cupid is nothing to him.' Ethel let it pass, caring too much for Leonard to set him up as a mark for Tom's satire, which was as different from Aubrey's as quinine from orange-peel, though properly used, it was a bracing tonic, such as she often found wholesome. A cynical younger brother is a most valuable possession to a woman who has taken a certain position in her own world. Tom was a sterling character, highly and deeply principled, though not demonstrative, and showing his Scots descent. None of the brothers had been extravagant, but Tom, with the income of his lately achieved fellowship, performed feats of economy, such as attaining to the purchase of an ultra perfect microscope, and he was consistently industrious, so exactly measuring his own powers that to undertake was with him to succeed, and no one suffered anxiety on his account. As Dr. Spencer said, he was as sure to fall on his legs as a sandy cat, and so nobody cared for him. At home he was sufficient to himself, properly behaved to his father, civil to Richard, unmerciful in ridicule, but merciful in dominion over the rest, except Ethel, whom he treated as an equal, able to retort in kind, reserving for her his most highly-flavoured sallies, and his few and distant approaches to such confidence as showed her how little she knew him. His father esteemed but did not 'get on with' him, and his chief and devoted adherent was Aubrey, to whom he was always kind and helpful. In person Tom was tall and well-made, of intelligent face, of which his spectacles seemed a natural feature, well-moulded fine-grained hand, and dress the perfection of correctness, though the precision, and dandyism had been pruned away. Ethel would have preferred that Leonard and Averil should not have walked in on the Saturday after her return, just when Tom had spread his microscope apparatus over the table, and claimed Mary's assistance in setting up objects; and she avoided his eye when Mary and Averil did what he poetically called rushing into each other's arms, whilst she bestowed her greetings on Leonard and Mab. 'Then she may come in?' said Leonard. 'Henry has banished her from the drawing-room, and we had much ado to get her allowed even in the schoolroom.' 'It is so tiresome,' said his sister, 'just one of Henry's fancies.' Ethel, thinking this disloyal, remarked that those who disliked dogs in the house could not bear them, and did not wonder that Tom muttered 'Original.' 'But such a little darling as this!' cried Averil, 'and after Mrs. Ernescliffe had been so kind. Mary, you must see how clever she is. Leonard is teaching her to play on the piano.' 'I congratulate you,' quietly said Tom; and somehow Ethel felt that those three words were a satire on her 'capable of great things;' while Leonard drew up, and Averil coloured, deferring the exhibition of Mab's accomplishments till 'another time,' evidently meaning out of Tom's presence. 'Aubrey is gone to the Grange with papa,' Ethel said, glad to lead away from Mab. 'He told me he was going,' said Leonard, 'but he said you would be at home.' Ethel knew that the intonation of that 'you' had curled Tom's lip with mischief, and dreading that Leonard should discover and resent his mood, she said, 'We think one of your sea eggs has got among ours; will you come to the schoolroom and see?' And leaving Tom to tease and be bored by the young ladies, she led the way to the schoolroom, where Aubrey's fossils, each in its private twist of paper, lay in confusion on the floor, whence they were in course of being transferred to the shelf of a cupboard. Leonard looked at the disorder with astonished admiration. 'Yes,' said Ethel, 'it is a great mess, but they are to have a regular cabinet, when Richard has time, or Aubrey has money, two equally unlikely chances.' 'How much does a cabinet cost?' 'Jones would make a plain deal one for about five-and-twenty shillings.' 'I can't unpack mine properly,' said Leonard, disconsolately. 'Ave is going to make a place for them, but Henry votes them rubbish.' 'They are dreadful rubbish,' said Ethel. 'It goes against my conscience to guard them from the house-maid, and if my sister Flora came in here, I should be annihilated.' 'Of course one expects that in women.' 'Oh, Richard would be as much distracted! It is a provision of Nature that there should be some tidy ones, or what would the world come to?' 'It would be a great deal less of a bore.' 'Not at all; we should stifle ourselves at last if we had our own way. Never mind, Leonard, we make them go through quite as much as they make us.' 'I am sure I hope so.' 'No, no, Leonard,' she said, becoming less playful, 'we must not do it on purpose. Even unconsciously, we plague the spirits of order quite enough, and they have the right on their side after all.' 'I think a lady is the person to say what one may do or not in the drawing-room; don't you?' said Leonard. 'That depends.' 'And you let your brother spread his things all over yours!' 'So I do; but I would not if papa minded it, or even if this were Richard's house, and he did not like it. Don't begin with worries about trifles, pray, Leonard.' 'It is not I that care about trifles,' returned the boy. 'How was one to reckon on a man setting up a monomania about dogs' paws in the hall?' 'I have feared we were rather foolish; I ought to have reminded you to ask whether Mab would be welcome.' 'I was not going to ask leave, I have no one whose leave to ask,' said Leonard, in tones at first proud, then sad. 'That's a bad beginning,' returned Ethel. 'As master of the house, your brother has a right to your compliance, and if you do not all give way to each other, you will have nothing but dissension and misery.' 'All to each other; yes, that is fair.' 'He must have given way to you in letting you keep the dog at all in the house' said Ethel. 'It is a real instance of kindness, and you are bound to let her be as little in his way as possible.' 'He does mean well, I suppose,' said Leonard; 'but he is an awful bother, and poor Ave gets the worst of it. One has no patience with finikin ways in a man.' 'There's no telling how much I owe to my finikin brother Richard,' said Ethel; 'and if you teach Ave to be loyal to the head of your family, you will do her as much good as you will do harm by chafing against his ordinances.' 'Don't you hate such nonsense, Miss May?' 'I can't love order as much as I honour it. Set tastes aside. The point is, that if you are to hold together, Leonard, it must be by bearing and forbearing, and above all, to your elder brother.' 'Well, it is a blessing that I shall be in school on Monday.' 'So it is,' said Ethel; 'but, barring these fidgets, Leonard, tell me,' and she looked kindly at him, 'how is it at home? Better than you expected, I hope.' 'Blank enough' said Leonard; 'I didn't think I should have minded the sound of the surgery door so much.' 'You will have Sunday to help you.' 'Yes, Ave and I have been down to the churchyard; Ave does care, poor girl. She knows better what it is now, and she was glad to have me to talk to again, though Miss Mary has been so kind to her.' 'Oh, nobody can be so much to her as you.' 'Poor Ave!' said Leonard, tenderly. 'And look here, this is my father's watch, and she made me this chain of my mother's hair. And they have given me a photograph of my mother's picture; Henry had it done long ago, but thought it would upset me to give it before I went away. If he could but have guessed how I lay and wished for one!' 'Those are the things one never can guess, even when one would give worlds to do so.' 'You--O, Miss May, you always know the thing that is comfortable.' 'Well,' said Ethel, 'what will be comfortable now is that you should be the man above being affronted by other people's nonsense--the only way to show we did not all spoil each other at Coombe. Now, here is Woodstock for you, and tell me if this be not your Cidaris. Oh, and we have found out the name of your funny spiked shell.' Ten minutes of palaeontology ensued; and she was leading the way back to the drawing-room, when he exclaimed, 'Have you heard about the match, Miss May?' 'Match? Oh, the cricket match?' 'Stoneborough against All England, on St. Matthew's Day, so I shall have got my hand in.' 'All England meaning every one that can be scraped up that is not Stoneborough,' returned Ethel. 'George Larkins has been over here canvassing Tom and Aubrey. But you can't be going to play, Leonard; papa does not half like it for Aubrey.' 'Perhaps not for Aubrey,' said Leonard; 'but I am as well as ever, and luckily they can't make up a decent eleven without me. You will come and see us, Miss May? I'll find you the jolliest place between the old lime and the cloister door.' 'As if I had not known the meads ages before your time!' said Ethel. 'I thought you never came to the matches?' 'Ah! you don't remember my brothers' Stoneborough days, when Norman was cricket mad, and Harry after him, and my father was the best cricketer in Stoneborough till his accident. 'Yes, Dr. May always comes to see the matches,' said Leonard. 'You will, won't you now, Miss May? I didn't think you knew anything about cricket, but it will be all the better now.' Ethel laughed, and half promised. Cocksmoor existed without Ethel on that holiday; and indeed she was self-reproachful, though pleased, at finding her presence so great a treat to her father. Leonard might do the honours of the lime-tree nook, but she spent but little time there, for Dr. May made her walk about with him as he exchanged greetings with each and all, while Gertrude led Richard about at her will, and Mary consorted with the Ward girls. With no one on her mind, Ethel could give free attention to the smoothly-shaven battle-field, where, within the gray walls shaded by the overhanging elms, the young champions were throwing all the ardour and even the chivalry of their nature into the contest. The annual game had been delayed by the illness in the spring, and the school had lost several good players at the end of the half year; but, on the other hand, the holidays being over, George Larkins had been unable to collect an eleven either in full practice or with public school training; and the veteran spectators were mourning the decay of cricket, and talking of past triumphs. The school had the first innings, which resulted in the discomfiture of Fielder, one of their crack champions, and with no great honour to any one except Folliot, the Dux, and Leonard Ward, who both acquitted themselves so creditably, that it was allowed that if others had done as well, Stoneborough might have had a chance. But when 'All England' went in, the game seemed to be more equally balanced. Aubrey May, in spite of devoted practice under Tom's instructions, was, from nervous eagerness, out almost as soon as in, and in his misery of shame and despair felt like the betrayer of his cause. But in due time, with the sun declining, and the score still low, Tom May came forward, as the last hope of 'All England,' lissom, active, and skilled, walking up to his wicket with the easy confidence of one not greatly caring, but willing to show the natives what play might be. And his play was admirable; the fortunes of the day began to tremble in the balance; every one, spectators and all, were in a state of eager excitement; and Aubrey, out of tone and unable to watch for the crisis, fairly fled from the sight, rushed through the cloister door, and threw himself with his face down upon the grass, shivering with suspense. There he lay till a sudden burst of voices and cheers showed that the battle was over. The result? He could not believe eyes or ears as he opened the door, to behold the triumphant gestures of Stoneborough, and the crestfallen air of his own side, and heard the words, 'Folliot missed two chances of long-leg--Ward--tremendous rush--caught him out--with only one run to tie.' Dr. May was shaking hands with Leonard in congratulation, not solely generous, for let his sons be where they would, Stoneborough triumphs were always the Doctor's, and he was not devoid of gratitude to any one who would defeat Tom. Noting, however, the flitting colour, fluttering breath, and trembling limbs, that showed the effect of the day's fatigue and of the final exertion, he signed back the boys, and thrust Leonard within the cloister door, bidding Aubrey fetch his coat, and Ethel keep guard over him, and when he was rested and cooled, to take him home to the High Street, where his sisters would meet him. 'But--sir--the--supper!' gasped Leonard, leaning against the door-post, unable to stand alone. 'I dare say. Keep him safe, Ethel.' And the Doctor shut the door, and offered himself to appease the lads who were clamouring for the hero of their cause; while Leonard sank back on the bench, past words or looks for some moments. 'You have redeemed your pennon with your last gasp,' said Ethel, half reproachfully. 'I was determined,' panted the boy. 'I don't know how I did it. I couldn't fail with you looking on. You did it by coming.' Reply was spared by Aubrey's return, with the coat in one hand, and a glass of ale in the other. 'You are to go home with Ethel at once,' he pronounced with the utmost zest, 'that is, as soon as you are rested. My father says you must not think of the supper, unless you particularly wish to be in bed for a week; but we'll all drink your health, and I'll return thanks--the worst player for the best.' This was the first time Aubrey had been considered in condition for such festivities, and the gratification of being superior to somebody might account for his glee in invaliding his friend. Cricket suppers were no novelties to Leonard; and either this or his exhaustion must have made him resign himself to his fate, and walk back with Ethel as happily as at Coombe. The sisters soon followed, and were detained to drink tea. The cricketers' mirth must have been fast and furious if it exceeded that at home, for the Doctor thought himself bound to make up for the loss to Leonard, put forth all his powers of entertainment, and was comically confidential about 'these Etonians that think so much of themselves.' Averil was lively and at ease, showing herself the pleasant well-informed girl whom Ethel had hitherto only taken on trust, and acting in a pretty motherly way towards the little sisters. She was more visibly triumphant than was Leonard, and had been much gratified by a request from the Bankside curate that she would entirely undertake the harmonium at the chapel. She had been playing on it during the absence of the schoolmaster, and with so much better effect than he could produce, that it had been agreed that he would be best in his place among the boys. 'Ah!' said the Doctor, 'two things in one are apt to be like Aubrey's compromise between walking-stick and camp-stool--a little of neither.' 'I don't mean it to be a little of neither with me, Dr. May,' said Averil. 'I shall have nothing to do with my choir on week-days, till I have sent these pupils of mine to bed.' 'Are you going to train the choir too?' asked Leonard. 'I must practise with them, or we shall not understand one another; besides, they have such a horrid set of tunes, Mr. Scudamour gave me leave to change them. He is going to have hymnals, and get rid of Tate and Brady at once.' 'Ah! poor Nahum!' sighed the Doctor with such a genuine sigh, that Averil turned round on him in amazement. 'Yes,' said Ethel, 'I'm the only one conservative enough to sympathize with you, papa.' 'But does any one approve of the New Version?' cried Averil, recovering from her speechless wonder. 'Don't come down on me,' said the Doctor, holding up his hands. 'I know it all; but the singing psalms are the singing psalms to me--and I can't help my bad taste--I'm too old to change.' 'Oh! but, papa, you do like those beautiful hymns that we have now?' cried Gertrude. 'Oh! yes, yes, Gertrude, I acquiesce. They are a great improvement; but then, wasn't it a treat when I got over to Woodside Church the other day, and found them singing, "No change of times shall ever shock"!' and he began to hum it. 'That is the Sicilian Mariners' hymn,' said Averil. 'I can sing you that whenever you please.' 'Thank you; on condition you sing the old Tate and Brady, not your "O Sanctissma, O Purissima,"' said the Doctor, a little mischievously. 'Which is eldest, I wonder?' said Ave, smiling, pleased to comply with any whim of his; though too young to understand the associations that entwine closely around all that has assisted or embodied devotion. The music went from the sacred to the secular; and Ethel owned that the perfectly pronounced words and admirable taste made her singing very different from that which adorned most dinner-parties. Dr. May intensely enjoyed, and was between tears and bravos at the charge of the Six Hundred, when the two brothers entered, and stood silently listening. That return brought a change. Aubrey was indeed open and bright, bursting out with eager communications the moment the song ceased, then turning round with winning apologies, and hopes that he was not interrupting; but Tom looked so stiff and polite as to chill every one, and Averil began to talk of the children's bed-time. The Doctor and Aubrey pressed for another song so earnestly that she consented; but the spirit and animation were gone, and she had no sooner finished than she made a decided move to depart, and Dr. May accompanied the party home. 'Is my father going to put that fellow to bed?' said Tom, yawning, as if injured by the delay of bed-time thus occasioned. 'Your courtesy does not equal his,' said Ethel. 'Nor ever will,' said Tom. 'Never,' said Ethel, so emphatically that she nettled him into adding, 'He is a standing warning against spoiling one's patients. I wouldn't have them and their whole tag-rag and bobtail about my house for something!' 'O, Tom, for shame!' cried Mary, bursting out in the wrath he had intended to excite. 'Ask him which is tag, which rag, and which bobtail,' suggested Ethel. 'Mab, I suppose,' said Gertrude, happily closing the discussion, but it was re-animated by her father's arrival. 'That's a nice girl,' he said, 'very nice; but we must not have her too often in the evening, Mary, without Henry. It is not fair to break up people's home party.' 'Bobber than bobtail,' murmured Tom, with a gesture only meant for Ethel. 'Ave said he would be out till quite late, papa,' said Mary, in self-defence. 'She ought to have been back before him,' said Dr. May. 'He didn't seem best pleased to have found her away, and let me tell you, young woman, it is hard on a man who has been at work all day to come home and find a dark house and nobody to speak to.' Mary looked melancholy at this approach to reproof, and Tom observed in an undertone, 'Never mind, Mary, it is only to give papa the opportunity of improving his pupil, while you exchange confidence with your bosom friend. I shall be gone in another month, and there will be nothing to prevent the perfect fusion of families.' No one was sorry that the evening here came to an end. 'I hope,' said Dr. May at the Sunday's dinner, 'that the cricket match has not done for that boy; I did not see him among the boys.' 'No,' said Mary, 'but he has met with some accident, and has the most terrible bruised face. Ave can't make out how he did it. Do you know, Aubrey?' The Doctor and his two sons burst out laughing. 'I thought,' said Ethel, rather grieved, 'that those things had gone out of fashion.' 'So Ethel's protege, or prodigy, which is it?' said Tom, 'is turning out a muscular Christian on her hands.' 'Is a muscular Christian one who has muscles, or one who trusts in muscles?' asked Ethel. 'Or a better cricketer than an Etonian?' added the Doctor. Tom and Aubrey returned demonstrations that Eton's glory was untarnished, and the defeat solely owing to 'such a set of sticks.' 'Aubrey,' said Ethel, in their first private moment, 'was this a fight in a good cause? for if so, I will come down with you and see him.' Aubrey made a face of dissuasion, ending in a whistle. 'Do at least tell me it is nothing I should be sorry for,' she said anxiously. He screwed his face into an intended likeness of Ethel's imitation of an orchis, winked one eye, and looked comical. 'I see it can't be really bad,' said Ethel, 'so I will rest on your assurance, and ask no indiscreet questions.' 'You didn't see, then?' said Aubrey, aggrieved at the failure of his imitation. 'You don't remember the beauty he met at Coombe?' 'Beauty! None but Mab.' 'Well, they found it out and chaffed him. Fielder said he would cut out as good a face out of an old knob of apple wood, and the doctor in petticoats came up again; he got into one of his rages, and they had no end of a shindy, better than any, they say, since Lake and Benson fifteen years ago; but Ward was in too great a passion, or he would have done for Fielder long before old Hoxton was seen mooning that way. So you see, if any of the fellows should be about, it would never do for you to be seen going to bind up his wounds, but I can tell him you are much obliged, and all that.' 'Obliged, indeed!' said Ethel. 'What, for making me the laughing-stock of the school?' 'No, indeed,' cried Aubrey, distressed. 'He said not a word--they only found it out--because he found that seat for you, and papa sent him away with you. They only meant to poke fun, and it was his caring that made it come home to him. I wonder you don't like to find that such a fellow stood up for you.' 'I don't like to be made ridiculous.' 'Tom does not know it, and shall not,' eagerly interposed Aubrey. 'Thank you,' said she, with all her heart. 'Then don't be savage. You know he can't help it if he does think you so handsome, and it is very hard that you should be affronted with him, just when he can't see out of one of his eyes.' 'For that matter,' said Ethel, her voice trembling, 'one likes generosity in any sort of a cause; but as to this, the only way is to laugh at it.' Aubrey thought this 'only way' hardly taken by the cachinnation with which she left him, for he was sure that her eyes were full of tears; and after mature consideration he decided that he should only get into a fresh scrape by letting Leonard know that she was aware of the combat and its motive. 'If I were ten years younger, this might be serious,' meditated Ethel. 'Happily, it is only a droll adventure for me in my old age, and I have heard say that a little raving for a grown-up woman is a wholesome sort of delusion, at his time of life. So I need not worry about it, and it is pretty and touching while it lasts, good fellow!' Ethel had, in fact, little occasion to worry herself; for all special manifestations of Leonard's devotion ceased. Whether it were that Tom with his grave satirical manner contrived to render the house disagreeable to both brother and sister, or whether Leonard's boyish bashfulness had taken alarm, and his admiration expended itself in the battle for her charms, there was no knowing. All that was certain was, that the Wards seldom appeared at Dr. May's, although elsewhere Mary and Aubrey saw a great deal of their respective friends, and through both, Ethel heard from time to time of Leonard, chiefly as working hard at school, but finding that his illness had cost him not only the last half year's learning, but some memory and power of application. He was merging into the ordinary schoolboy--a very good thing for him no doubt, though less beautiful than those Coombe fancies. And what were they worth? CHAPTER VII Little specks of daily trouble-- Petty grievance, petty strife-- Filling up with drops incessant To the brim the cup of life. Deeper import have these trifles Than we think or care to know: In the air a feather floating, Tells from whence the breezes blow.--REV. G. MONSELL The first brightening of the orphaned house of Bankside had been in Leonard's return. The weeks of his absence had been very sore ones to Averil, while she commenced the round of duties that were a heavy burthen for one so young, and became, instead of the petted favourite, the responsible head of the house. She was willing and glad to accept the care of her little sisters--docile bright children--who were pleased to return to the orderly habits so long interrupted, and were so intelligent, that her task of teaching was a pleasant one; and almost motherly love towards them grew up as she felt their dependence on her, and enjoyed their caresses. With Henry she had less in common. He expected of her what she had not learnt, and was not willing to acquire. A man interfering in the woman's province meets little toleration; and Henry was extremely precise in his requirements of exact order, punctuality, and excellence, in all the arrangements of his house. While breaking her in to housekeeping, he made himself appear almost in the light of a task-master--and what was worse, of a despised task-master. Averil thought she could not respect a brother whose displeasure was manifested by petulance, not sternness, and who cared not only about his dinner, but about the tidy appearance of the drawing-room--nay, who called that tasty which she thought vulgar, made things stiff where she meant them to be easy and elegant, and prepared the place to be the butt of Tom May's satire. Henry was not a companion to her. His intellect was lower, his education had not been of the same order, and he had not the manly force of character that makes up for everything in a woman's eyes. Where she had talents, he had pretensions--just enough to make his judgments both conceited and irritating; and where her deeper thoughts and higher aspirations were concerned, she met either a blank or a growing jealousy of the influence of the clergy and of the May family. Yet Henry Ward was really a good brother, sacrificing much to his orphan sisters, and living a moral and religious life--such as gained for him much credit, and made Mrs. Ledwich congratulate Averil on the great excellence and kindness of her incomparable brother. Averil assented, and felt it a dreary thing to have an incomparable brother. But when Leonard came home, the face of the house was changed. Now she had something to look forward to. Now there was something to hear that stirred her deeper feelings--some one who would understand and respond--some one to make common cause with. Little as she saw of the schoolboy, there was life in her day, for sympathy and comprehension had come home with him. After all, there were recesses in Leonard's confidence to which Ave did not penetrate; but there was quite enough to be very happy upon, especially those visions that had been built on the Melanesian letters. They were not near enough to terrify her with the thought of separation, and she was sufficiently imbued with Mary May's sentiments to regard mission-work as the highest ambition. Leonard's strong will and manly disposition would have obtained her homage and affection, even without the lofty sentiments and the lesser graces that made the brother and sister thoroughly suited to one another; and the bond of union was unfortunately cemented by equal annoyance at Henry's peculiarities. It certainly was rather hard on a young head of a family to have a younger brother his superior in every respect, and with an inseparable sister. That Henry had not found out Leonard's superiority was no reason that it should not gall him; and his self-assertions were apt to be extremely irritating. Even in the first flush of welcome, he had made it plain that he meant to be felt as master of the house, and to enforce those petty regulations of exact order that might be easily borne from a mother, or played with in a sister--would be obeyed grudgingly from a father, but could be intolerable in a brother. The reception of Mab and the ammonites was but an earnest of similar ungracious acts on the one hand, and aggressions on the other, often unintentional. Averil did, indeed, smooth matters, but she shared Leonard's resentment, and outward submission was compensated by murmur and mockery in private. Still the household worked on fairly; and Mrs. Ledwich was heard to declare, with tears in her eyes, that it was beautiful to see such a happy family of love as those dear young Wards! 'The happy family--in Trafalgar Square!' muttered Dr. Spencer. The confidence of the happy family was on this wise. When Leonard came home with his unpresentable face, he baffled all Ave's anxious questions, and she was only enlightened by Henry's lamentations, in his absence, over the hopelessness of a brother who was so low and vulgar as to box! Her defence being met by a sneer, she flew to tell Leonard of the calumny, and was laughed at for her innocence, but extorted that he had fought with a fellow that talked impudently of some of the Mays--cause fully sufficient in her eyes; nor did Henry utter any open reproof, though he contrived to exasperate his brother into fierce retort and angry gesture by an unnecessary injunction not to show that ungentlemanly face. Full consciousness of the difficulties presented by the characters of the two brothers would have been far too oppressive; and perhaps it was better for Averil that she had it not, but had her own engrossing interests and employments drawing off her attention and enlivening her spirits. Her church music was her object in life--the dedication of the talent that had been cultivated at so much time and cost, and the greatest honour and enjoyment she could imagine, and she had full participation from Leonard, who had a hearty love for sacred music, readily threw himself into her plans, and offered voice and taste to assist her experiments. Nor had her elder brother any objection to her being thus brought forward: he was proud of her performance, and gratified with the compliments it elicited; and all went well till the new hymnals arrived, and books upon books, full of new tunes, anthems, and chants, were accumulating on the music-stand. 'What are you about there all the evening, not opening your lips?' 'Leonard is writing out his verses, and I am copying music.' 'I wonder you neither of you will remember that that table was never meant to be littered over with all sorts of rubbish!' 'I thought tables were to put things on,' returned Leonard coolly. 'Drawing-room tables were not made to be inked! That cover will be ruined in a day or two!' 'Very well--then we'll pay for it!' said Leonard, in the same aggravating tone. 'Here are newspapers spread between it and the ink,' said Averil, displaying them with an air of injured innocence that made Henry subside; but he presently exclaimed: 'Is that copying to go on all night? Can't you speak, nor play anything, to send one off to sleep?' With a martyr look, yet a satirical glance, Averil opened the piano; and Henry settled himself in the master's arm-chair, as one about to enjoy well-earned rest and entertainment after a hard day's work. 'I say, what doleful drone have you there!' 'I am trying a new chant for the "Nunc Dimittis".' 'Nothing but that day and night! Give us something worth hearing.' 'I thought you only wanted to go to sleep.' 'I don't want to dream myself into church, listening to Scudamour's proses: I've quite enough of that on Sunday.' Ave began to play one of her school waltzes; and the touch of her fingers on the keys had so sharp-edged and petulant a tone, that Leonard smiled to himself as he ran his fingers through his hair over his books. Nor was it soothing to Henry, who, instead of going to sleep, began to survey the room, and get food for annoyance. 'I say,' said he, looking across at a little brass-barred bookcase of ornamental volumes on the opposite chiffonniere, 'what book is out there?' 'Scott's "Lay",' said Leonard; 'it is up in my room.' 'I told you, Ave, not to let the drawing-room books be carried about the house to be spoilt!' said Henry, who seldom reproved his brother direct, but generally through Ave. 'You'd better get some made of wood then,' said Leonard. 'Remember then, Ave, I say I will not have my books taken out, and left about over the house.' Leonard dashed out of the room passionately, and presently came thundering down again, every step audible the whole way, and threw the book on the table, bringing in a whirlwind, and a flaring sloping candle dropping upon the precious cloth. Henry started up and pointed. 'I'm glad of it!' exclaimed Leonard; 'it will be a little amusement for you. Good night, Ave! I'm going to finish up-stairs, since one can't read, write, or touch a book without your being rowed!' He was gone, and Averil, though rather frightened, gave him infinite credit for keeping his temper; and perhaps he deserved it, considering the annoyance and the nature of the provocation; but she did not reflect how much might have been prevented by more forethought and less pre-occupation. She said not a word, but quietly returned to her copying; and when Henry came with paper and poker to remove the damage, she only shoved back her chair, and sat waiting, pen in hand, resigned and ironical. 'I declare,' grumbled Henry, as he examined the remaining amount of damage, 'these day-schools are a great inconvenience; there's no keeping a place fit to be seen with a great uncivilized lad always hanging about!' 'Leonard is considered particularly gentlemanlike,' said Ave, with lips compressed, to keep back something about old bachelors. 'Now, I should have thought a lady would have some regard to her own drawing-room, and object to slovenliness--elbows on table, feet everywhere!' 'Nothing is in worse taste than constraint,' said Ave from the corners of her mouth--'at least for those that can trust their manners without it.' 'I tell you, Ave, you are spoiling the boy. He is more conceited than ever since the Mays noticed him.' 'Leonard conceited!' 'Yes; he is getting as stuck up as Tom May himself--your model I believe!' 'I thought he was yours!' 'Mine?' 'Yes; you always seem to aim at a poor imitation of him.' There was a blushing angry stammer in reply; and she suppressed her smile, but felt triumphant in having hit the mark. Unready at retort, he gathered himself up, and said: 'Well, Ave, I have only this to say, that if you choose to support that boy in his impertinences, there will be no bearing it; and I shall see what I shall do.' Seeing what shall be done is a threat stimulating to some, but appalling to others; and Averil was of the latter class, with no desire for such a spectacle, be it what it might. She did not apologize for the trifle--possible ink, a spot of wax, a borrowed book, were far beneath an apology; but she made up her mind to humour Henry's follies magnanimously, and avoid collisions, like an admirable peace-maker. As soon as bed-time came, she repaired to Leonard's room; and Henry, as he went along the passage, heard the two young voices ringing with laughter! Her retort had been particularly delightful to Leonard. 'That's right, Ave! I'm glad you set him down, for I thought afterwards whether I ought not to have stood by you, only his way of pitching into me through you puts me into such a rage: I shall do something desperate some day!' 'Never mind it, Leonard; it does not hurt me; and if it did, I should like to bear a great deal for you.' 'That's all the wrong way,' said Leonard, smiling affectionately. 'No; men do and women suffer.' 'That's trite!' said Leonard, patting her fondly. 'I like you to do--as you call it--Miss May does, and every one that is worth anything. I say, Ave, when I go out to the islands, you are coming too?' 'Oh yes! I know I could do a great deal. If nothing else, I could sing; and they have a great aptitude for singing, Mary was telling me. But that reminds me I must finish copying the hymn for next Sunday; Henry hindered me, and I have six copies more to do.' 'I'll do some of them,' said Leonard. 'Let us go down now the coast is clear, if the fire is not out.' They went down softly, Mab and all, nursed up the fire that Henry had raked out; and if Saturnalia could be held over the writing out of a hymn tune, they did it! At any rate, it had the charm of an assertion of independence; and to Averil it was something like a midnight meeting of persecuted Christians--to Leonard it was 'great fun.' That evening was not a solitary specimen. Averil and Leonard intended to obviate causes of offence; but they were young and heedless, and did not feel bound to obedience. A very little temptation made them forget or defy Henry's fancies; and Leonard was easily lashed into answers really unbecoming and violent, for which he could not bring himself to be sorry, when he thought over the petty interference and annoyance that had caused them. These small tyrannies and frets made Averil the more devoted to the music, which was her rest, her delight, and not only exalted her above cares, but sanctioned her oblivion of them. The occupation grew upon her, never ending, still beginning, with fresh occasions for practice and new lessons, but though Bankside boys were willing to be taught, yet it was chiefly in hope of preferment as choristers at the Minster; and she soon found that a scholar no sooner proved his voice good for anything, than he went off to be trained for the choir on the foundation, which fed, clothed, and apprenticed its young singers. She found she must betake herself to an elder race if she wanted a reliable staff of voices; and some young men and women showing themselves willing, a practice, with Mr. Scudamour to keep order, was organized for late evenings, twice in the week. This was rather much! Henry opposed at first, on the ground that the evening would be broken up; to which she answered that for such a purpose they ought to be willing to sacrifice a little domestic comfort; and when he muttered a petulant 'Pshaw,' looked at him in reproof for sacrilege. She was not going to be one of the womankind sitting up in a row till their lords and masters should be pleased to want them! Next, he insisted that he would not have her going about the place after dark, but she was fortified by the curate's promise to escort her safely, and reduced him to a semi-imprecation which she again viewed as extremely wicked. The existence of that meek little helpless Mrs. Scudamour, always shut up in a warm room with her delicate baby, cut off Henry from any other possible objection, and he was obliged to submit. Leonard would gladly have been his sister's companion on her expeditions, but he must remain at home and prepare for the morrow's school-work, and endure the first hour of dreariness unenlivened by her smile and greeting, and, what was worse, without the scanty infusion of peace produced by her presence. Her rapid departure after dinner always discomposed Henry; and the usual vent for his ill-humour was either a murmur against the clergy and all their measures, or the discovery of some of Leonard's transgressions of his code. Fretted and irritable at the destruction of evening comfort, he in his turn teased the fiery temper of his brother. If there were nothing worse, his grumbling remarks interrupted, and too often they were that sort of censure that is expressively called nagging. Leonard would reply angrily, and the flashes of his passion generally produced silence. Neither brother spoke to Averil of these evening interludes, which were becoming almost habitual, but they kept Leonard in a constant sore sense of injury, yet of uneasy conscience. He looked to the Randall scholarship as his best hope of leaving home and its torments, but his illness had thrown him back: he had not only lost the last quarter, but the acquirements of the one before it were obscured; and the vexations themselves so harassed and interrupted his evening studies, that he knew it was unreasonable to hope for it at the next examination, which, from various causes, was to come after the Christmas holidays; and it would be well if he could even succeed in the summer. Innocent as the Mays were of the harmonium business, Henry included them in the annoyance it gave. It was the work of the curate--and was not Dr. May one in everything with the clergy? had he not been instrumental in building the chapel? was it not the Mays and the clergy who had made Ave inconveniently religious and opinionative, to say nothing of Leonard? The whole town was priest--led and bigoted; and Dr. May was the despot to whom all bowed down. This was an opinion Henry would hardly have originated: it was the shaft of an abler man than he--no other than Harvey Anderson, who had lately become known to the world by a book proving King John to have been the most enlightened and patriotic of English sovereigns, enduring the Interdict on a pure principle of national independence, and devising Magna Charta from his own generous brain--in fact, presenting a magnificent and misunderstood anticipation of the most advanced theories of the nineteenth century. The book had made so much noise in the world, that the author had been induced to quit his college tutorship, and become editor of a popular magazine. He lived in London, but often came down to spend Sunday with his mother, and had begun to be looked on as rather the lion of the place. Henry took in his magazine, and courted his notice, often bringing him into Averil's way that she might hear her heroes treated with irony more effectual than home-made satire; but Ave was staunch. She hated the sight of Mr. Anderson; never cut the leaves of his magazine; and if driven to sing to him, took as little pains as her musical nature would let her do. But the very strength of her dislike gave it an air of prejudice, and it was set down less to principle than to party spirit and May influence. There was another cause for Henry's being soured. He was not of the nature to be filial with Dr. May; and therefore gratitude oppressed, and patronage embittered him. The first months of warm feeling at an end, the old spirit of independence revived, and he avoided consulting the physician as much as possible. More than once his management of a case was not approved by Dr. May; and the strong and hasty language, and the sharp reproofs that ensued, were not taken as the signs of the warm heart and friendly interest, but as the greatest offences--sullenly, but not the less bitterly endured. Moreover, one of the Whitford surgeons had been called in by a few of the out-lying families who had hitherto been patients of the Wards; and worse than all, Mrs. Rivers took her child up to London for three days in November, and it became known--through a chain of tongues--that it was for the enlargement of tonsils, on which Mr. Ward had operated a year before. 'Old May was playing him false!' was Henry's cry. 'His professions were humbug. He would endure no one who did not submit to his dictation; and he would bring in a stranger to ruin them all!' Little did Henry know of Dr. May's near approach to untruth in denying that he had a house to let to the opposition surgeon--of his attestations to his daughter that young Ward was a skilful operator--or of his vexation when she professed herself ready to undergo anything for his pleasure, but said that little Margaret's health was another thing. Yet even this might have been forgiven, but for that worst rub of all--Tom May's manners. His politeness was intense--most punctilious and condescending in form--and yet provoking beyond measure to persons who, like Henry and Averil, had not playfulness enough to detect with certainty whether they were being made game of or not, nor whether his smoothly-uttered compliments were not innuendoes. Henry was certain of being despised, and naturally chafed against the prospect of the future connection between the two medical men of the town; and though Tom was gone back to Cambridge, it was the rankling remembrance of his supercilious looks that, more than any present offence or independence of spirit, made the young surgeon kick against direction from the physician. Here, too, Averil was of the same mind. She had heard Tom May observe that his sister Gertrude would play quite well enough for a lady; for the mission of a lady's music was to put one to sleep at home, and cover conversation at a party; as to the rest--unprofessionals were a mistake! After that, the civil speeches with which Tom would approach the piano only added insult to injury. CHAPTER VIII Ne'er readier at alarm-bell's call, Thy burghers rose to man thy wall, Than now in danger shall be thine, Thy dauntless voluntary line.--Marmion 'Drive fast, Will,' said Dr. May, hastily stepping into his carriage in the early darkness of a December evening. 'Five already, and he is to be there by 5.25.' 'He' was no other than Harry May, and 'there' was the station. With the tidings of the terrible fight of Peiho had come a letter from a messmate of Harry's with an account of his serious wound in the chest, describing it as just short of immediately dangerous. Another letter had notified his amendment, and that he was invalided home, a few cheery words from Harry himself scrawled at the end showing that his power was far less than his good-will: and after two months' waiting and suspense, a telegram had come from Plymouth, with the words, 'Stoneborough, 5.25.' In ignorance as to the state of the traveller, and expecting to find him in a condition requiring great care and watching, Dr. May had laid his injunctions on the eager family not to rush up to the station en masse to excite and overwhelm, but to leave the meeting there entirely to himself and his brougham. He had, therefore, been exceedingly annoyed that one of Henry Ward's pieces of self-assertion had delayed him unnecessarily at a consultation; and when at last he had escaped, he spent most of his journey with his body half out of the window, hurrying Will Adams, and making noises of encouragement to the horse; or else in a strange tumult of sensation between hope and fear, pain and pleasure, suspense and thankfulness, the predominant feeling being vexation at not having provided against this contingency by sending Richard to the station. After all the best efforts of the stout old chestnut, he and the train were simultaneously at the station, and the passengers were getting out on the opposite platform. The Doctor made a dash to cross in the rear of the train, but was caught and held fast by a porter with the angry exclamation, 'She's backing, sir;' and there he stood in an agony, feeling all Harry's blank disappointment, and the guilt of it besides, and straining his eyes through the narrow gaps between the blocks of carriages. The train rushed on, and he was across the line the same instant, but the blank was his. Up and down the gas-lighted platform he looked in vain among the crowd, only his eye suddenly lit on a black case close to his feet, with the three letters MAY, and the next moment a huge chest appeared out of the darkness, bearing the same letters, and lifted on a truck by the joint strength of a green porter, and a pair of broad blue shoulders. Too ill to come on--telegraph, mail train--rushed through the poor Doctor's brain as he stepped forward as if to interrogate the chest. The blue shoulders turned, a ruddy sun-burnt face lighted up, and the inarticulate exclamation on either side was of the most intense relief and satisfaction. 'Where are the rest?' said Harry, holding his father's hand in no sick man's grasp. 'At home, I told them not to come up; I thought--' 'Well, we'll walk down together! I've got you all to myself. I thought you had missed my telegram. Hollo, Will, how d'ye do? what, this thing to drive down in?' 'I thought you were an invalid, Harry,' said Dr. May, with a laughing yet tearful ring in his agitated tone, as he packed himself and his son in. 'Ay! I wished I could have let you know sooner how well I had got over it,' said Harry, in the deep full voice of strong healthy manhood. 'I am afraid you have been very anxious.' 'We are used to it, my boy,' said the Doctor huskily, stroking the great firm fingers that were lying lovingly on his knee, 'and if it always ends in this way, it ought to do us more good than harm.' 'It has not done harm, I hope,' said Harry, catching him up quick. 'Not to old Mary?' 'No, Mary works things off, good girl. I flatter myself you will find us all in high preservation.' 'All--all at home! That's right.' 'Yes, those infants from Maplewood and all. You are sure you are all right, Harry?' 'As sure as my own feelings can make me, and the surgeon of the Dexter to back them,' said Harry. 'I don't believe my lungs were touched after all, but you shall all sit upon me when you like--Tom and all. It was a greater escape than I looked for,' he added, in a lower voice. 'I did not think to have had another Christmas here.' The silence lasted for the few moments till the carriage drew up behind the limes; the doors were thrown open, and the Doctor shouted to the timid anxious figure that alone was allowed to appear in the hall, 'Come and lift him out, Mary.' The drawing-room was a goodly sight that evening; and the Doctor, as he sat leaning back in weary happiness, might be well satisfied with the bright garland that still clustered round his hearth, though the age of almost all forbade their old title of Daisies. The only one who still asserted her right to that name was perched on the sailor's knee, insisting on establishing that there was as much room for her there as there had been three years ago; though, as he had seated himself on a low foot-stool, her feet were sometimes on the ground, and moreover her throne was subject to sudden earthquakes, which made her, nothing loth, cling to his neck, draw his arm closer round her, and lean on his broad breast, proud that universal consent declared her his likeness in the family; and the two presenting a pleasant contrasting similarity--the open honest features, blue eyes, and smile, expressive of hearty good-will and simple happiness, were so entirely of the same mould in the plump, white-skinned, rosy-cheeked, golden-haired girl, and in the large, powerful, bronzed, ruddy sailor, with the thick mass of curls, at which Tom looked with hostility as fixed, though less declared, than that of his Eton days. Those were the idle members upon the hearth-rug. On the sofa, with a small table to herself, and a tall embroidery frame before her, nearly hiding her slight person, sat Mrs. Ernescliffe, her pretty head occasionally looking out over the top of her work to smile an answer, and her artistically arranged hair and the crispness of her white dress and broad blue ribbons marking that there was a step in life between her and her sisters; her husband sat beside her on the sofa, with a red volume in his hand, with 'Orders,' the only word visible above the fingers, one of which was keeping his place. Hector looked very happy and spirited, though his visage was not greatly ornamented by a moustache, sandier even than his hair, giving effect to every freckle on his honest face. A little behind was Mary, winding one of Blanche's silks over the back of a chair, and so often looking up to revel in the contemplation of Harry's face, that her skein was in a wild tangle, which she studiously concealed lest the sight should compel Richard to come and unravel it with those wonderful fingers of his. Richard and Ethel were arranging the 'sick albums' which they had constructed--one of cheap religious prints, with texts and hymns, to be lent in cases of lingering illness; the other, commonly called the 'profane,' of such scraps as might please a sick child, pictures from worn-out books or advertisements, which Ethel was colouring--Aubrey volunteering aid that was received rather distrustfully, as his love of effect caused him to array the model school-children in colours gaudy enough, as Gertrude complained, 'to corrupt a saint.' Nor was his dilettante help more appreciated at a small stand, well provided with tiny drawers, and holding a shaded lamp, according to Gertrude, 'burning something horrible ending in gen, that would kill anybody but Tom, who managed it,' but which threw a beautiful light upon the various glass dishes, tubes, and slides, and the tall brass microscope that Tom was said to love better than all his kith and kin, and which afforded him occupation for his leisure moments. 'I say, Harry,' he asked, 'did you get my letter?' 'Your letter--of what date? I got none since Mary's of the second of May, when every one was down in the fever. Poor old Ward, I never was more shocked; what is become of the young ones?' 'Oh! you must ask Mary, Miss Ward is a bosom friend of hers.' 'What! the girl that sang like the lark? I must hear her again. But she won't be in tune for singing now, poor thing! What are they doing? Henry Ward taken to the practice? He used to be the dirtiest little sneak going, but I hope he is mended now.' 'Ask my father,' said mischievous Tom; and Dr. May answered not, nor revealed his day's annoyance with Henry. 'He is doing his best to make a home for his brother and sisters,' said Richard. 'My letter,' said Tom, 'was written in Whitsun week; I wish you had had it.' 'Ay, it would have been precious from its rarity,' said Harry. 'What commission did it contain, may I ask?' 'You have not by good luck brought me home a Chinese flea?' 'He has all the fleas in creation,' said Daisy confidentially, 'cats' and dogs', and hedgehogs', and human; and you would have been twice as welcome if you had brought one.' 'I've brought no present to nobody. I'd got my eye on a splendid ivory junk, for Blanche's wedding present, at Canton, but I couldn't even speak to send any one after it. You have uncommon bad luck for a sailor's relatives.' 'As long as you bring yourself home we don't care,' said Blanche, treating the loss of the junk with far more resignation than did Tom that of the flea. 'If you only had a morsel of river mud sticking anywhere,' added Tom, 'you don't know the value the infusoria might be.' 'I had a good deal more than a morsel sticking to me once,' said Harry; 'it was owing to my boat's crew that I am not ever so many feet deep in it now, like many better men. They never lost sight of me, and somehow hauled me out.' Gertrude gave him a hug, and Mary's eyes got so misty, that her skein fell into worse entanglements than ever. 'Were you conscious?' asked Ethel. 'I can't say. I'm clear of nothing but choking and gasping then, and a good while after. It was a treacherous, unlucky affair, and I'm afraid I shall miss the licking of rascally John Chinaman. If all I heard at Plymouth is true, we may have work handy to home.' 'At home you may say,' said his father, 'Dulce et, &c. is our motto. Didn't you know what a nest of heroes we have here to receive you? Let me introduce you to Captain Ernescliffe, of the Dorset Volunteer Rifle Corps; Private Thomas May, of the Cambridge University Corps; and Mr. Aubrey Spencer May, for whom I have found a rifle, and am expected to find a uniform as soon as the wise heads have settled what colour will be most becoming.' 'Becoming! No, papa!' indignantly shouted Aubrey: 'it is the colour that will be most invisible in skirmishing.' 'Gray, faced with scarlet,' said Hector, decidedly. 'Yes, that is the colour of the invincible Dorsets,' said Dr. May. 'There you see our great authority with his military instructions in his hand.' 'No, sir,' replied Hector, 'it's not military instructions, it is Crauford's General Orders.' 'And,' added the Doctor, 'there's his bride working the colours, and Mary wanting to emulate her.' 'I don't think George will ever permit us to have colours,' said Ethel; 'he says that Rifles have no business with them, for that they are of no use to skirmishers.' 'The matter has been taken out of George's hands,' said Aubrey; 'there would not have been a volunteer in the country if he had his way.' 'Yes,' explained Ethel, 'the real soldier can't believe in volunteers, nor cavalry in infantry; but he is thoroughly in for it now.' 'Owing to his Roman matron' quoth Tom. 'It was a wonderful opening for public spirit when Lady Walkinghame insisted on Sir Henry refusing the use of the park for practice, for fear we should make targets of the children. So the Spartan mother at Abbotstoke, gallantly setting Margaret aside, sent for the committee at once to choose the very best place in the park.' 'Papa is chairman of the committee,' added Aubrey, 'he is mayor this year, so we must encourage it.' 'And Aubrey hit four times at a hundred yards,' triumphantly declared Gertrude, 'when Edward Anderson and Henry Ward only got a ball in by accident.' 'Henry Ward ought to be shot at himself,' was Aubrey's sentiment, 'for not letting Leonard be in the corps.' 'The fellow that you brought to Maplewood?' asked Hector. 'I thought he was at school.' 'Didn't you know that old Hoxton has given leave to any of the sixth form to drill and practise? and that trumpery fellow, Henry, says he can't afford the outfit, though his sister would have given the uniform.' 'Let me tell you, young folks,' said the Doctor, 'that you are not to suppose it always hails crack rifles on all sorts of improved systems, as it does when Captain Hector is in the house.' 'They are only on trial, sir,' apologized Hector. 'Very odd then that they all have an eagle and H. E. on them,' observed the Doctor dryly. 'Oh! they'll take them again, or I shall find a use for them,' said Hector. 'Well, if Henry can't afford two,' said Aubrey, holding to his point, 'he ought to give up to his brother; he knows no more how to handle a rifle--' 'That's the very reason,' muttered Tom. 'And Flora is going to give a great party,' proceeded Gertrude, 'as soon as the uniform is settled, and they are enrolled. Blanche and Hector are to stay for it, and you'll have to wear your lieutenant's uniform, Harry.' 'I can't be going to balls till I've been up to report myself fit for service,' said Harry. 'It is not to be a ball,' said Blanche's soft, serious voice over her green silk banner; 'it is to be a breakfast and concert, ending in a dance, such as we had at Maplewood.' 'Hollo!' said Harry, starting, 'now I begin to believe in Mrs. Ernescliffe, when I hear her drawing down herself as an example to Flora.' 'Only a precedent,' said Blanche, blushing a little, but still grave. 'We have had some experience, you know. Our corps was one of the earliest enrolled, and Hector managed it almost entirely. It was the reason we have not been able to come here sooner, but we thought it right to be foremost, as the enemy are sure to attempt our coast first.' 'I believe the enemy are expected on every coast at first,' was Ethel's aside, but it was not heard; for Harry was declaring, 'Your coast! they will never get the length of that. I was talking to an old messmate of mine in the train, who was telling me how we could burn their whole fleet before it could get out of Cherbourg.' 'If they should slip by,' began Hector. 'Slip by!' and Harry had well-nigh dislodged Daisy by his vehemence in demonstrating that they were welcome to volunteer, but that the Channel Fleet would prevent the rifles from being seriously put to the proof--a declaration highly satisfactory to the ladies, and heartily backed up by the Doctor, though Blanche looked rather discomfited, and Hector argued loud for the probability of active service. 'I say, Aubrey,' said Tom, rather tired of the land and sea debate, 'do just reach me a card, to take up some of this sand upon.' Aubrey obeyed, and reading the black-edged card as he handed it, said, 'Mrs. Pug. What? Pug ought to have been calling upon Mab.' 'Maybe she will, in good earnest,' observed Tom again in Ethel's ear; while the whole room rang with the laughter that always befalls the unlucky wight guilty of a blunder in a name. 'You don't mean that you don't know who she is, Aubrey!' was the cry. 'I--how should I?' 'What, not Mrs. Pugh?' exclaimed Daisy. 'Pew or Pug--I know nothing of either. Is this edge as mourning for all the old pews that have been demolished in the church?' 'For shame, Aubrey,' said Mary seriously. 'You must know it is for her husband.' Aubrey set up his eyebrows in utter ignorance. 'How true it is that one half the world knows nothing of the other!' exclaimed Ethel. 'Do you really mean you have never found out the great Mrs. Pugh, Mrs. Ledwich's dear suffering Matilda?' 'I've seen a black lady sitting with Mrs. Ledwich in church.' 'Such is life,' said Ethel. 'How little she thought herself living in such an unimpressible world!' 'She is a pretty woman enough,' observed Tom. 'And very desirous of being useful,' added Richard. 'She and Mrs. Ledwich came over to Cocksmoor this morning, and offered any kind of assistance.' 'At Cocksmoor!' cried Ethel, much as if it had been the French. 'Every district is filled up here, you know,' said Richard, 'and Mrs. Ledwich begged me as a personal favour to give her some occupation that would interest her and cheer her spirits, so I asked her to look after those new cottages at Gould's End, quite out of your beat, Ethel, and she seemed to be going about energetically.' Tom looked unutterable things at Ethel, who replied with a glance between diversion and dismay. 'Who is the lady?' said Blanche. 'She assaulted me in the street with inquiries and congratulations about Harry, declaring she had known me as a child, a thing I particularly dislike:' and Mrs. Ernescliffe looked like a ruffled goldfinch. 'Forgetting her has not been easy to the payers of duty calls,' said Ethel. 'She was the daughter of Mrs. Ledwich's brother, the Colonel of Marines, and used in old times to be with her aunt; there used to be urgent invitations to Flora and me to drink tea there because she was of our age. She married quite young, something very prosperous and rather aged, and the glories of dear Matilda's villa at Bristol have been our staple subject, but Mr. Pugh died in the spring, leaving his lady five hundred a year absolutely her own, and she is come to stay with her aunt, and look for a house.' 'Et cetera,' added Tom. 'What, in the buxom widow line?' asked Harry. 'No, no!' said Richard, rather indignantly. 'No, in the pathetic line,' said Ethel; 'but that requires some self-denial.' 'Our tongues don't lose their venom, you see, Harry,' put in the Doctor. 'No indeed, papa,' said Ethel, really anxious to guard her brothers. 'I was very sorry for her at first, and perhaps I pity her more now than even then. I was taken with her pale face and dark eyes, and I believe she was a good wife, and really concerned for her husband; but I can't help seeing that she knows her grief is an attraction.' 'To simple parsons,' muttered Tom along the tube of his microscope. 'The sound of her voice showed her to be full of pretension,' said Blanche. 'Besides, Mrs. Ledwich's trumpeting would fix my opinion in a moment.' 'Just so,' observed the Doctor. 'No, papa,' said Ethel, 'I was really pleased and touched in spite of Mrs. Ledwich's devotion to her, till I found out a certain manoeuvring to put herself in the foreground, and not let her sorrow hinder her from any enjoyment or display.' 'She can't bear any one to do what she does not.' 'What! Mary's mouth open against her too?' cried Dr. May. 'Well, papa,' insisted Mary, 'nobody wanted her to insist on taking the harmonium at Bankside last Sunday, just because Averil had a cold in her head; and she played so fast, that every one was put out, and then said she would come to the practice that they might understand one another. She is not even in the Bankside district, so it is no business of hers.' 'There, Richard, her favours are equally distributed,' said Aubrey, 'but if she would take that harmonium altogether, one would not mind--it makes Henry Ward as sulky as a bear to have his sister going out all the evening, and he visits it on Leonard. I dare say if she stayed at home he would not have been such a brute about the rifle.' 'I should not wonder,' said Dr. May. 'I sometimes doubt if home is sweetened to my friend Henry.' 'O, papa!' cried Mary, bristling up, 'Ave is very hard worked, and she gives up everything in the world but her church music, and that is her great duty and delight.' 'Miss Ward's music must be a sore trial to the Pug,' said Tom, 'will it be at this affair at Abbotstoke?' 'That's the question,' said Ethel. 'It never goes out, yet is to be met everywhere, just over-persuaded at the last moment. Now Flora, you will see, will think it absolutely improper to ask her; and she will be greatly disappointed not to have the chance of refusing, and then yielding at the last minute.' 'Flora must have her,' said Harry. 'I trust not,' said Blanche, shrinking. 'Flora will not ask her,' said Tom, 'but she will be there.' 'And will dance with me,' said Harry. 'No, with Richard,' said Tom. 'What!' said Richard, looking up at the sound of his name. All laughed, but were ashamed to explain, and were relieved that their father rang the bell. 'At that unhappy skein still, Mary?' said Mrs. Ernescliffe, as the good nights were passing. 'What a horrid state it is in!' 'I shall do it in time,' said Mary, 'when there is nothing to distract my attention. I only hope I shall not hurt it for you.' 'Chuck it into the fire at once; it is not worth the trouble,' said Hector. Each had a word of advice, but Mary held her purpose, and persevered till all had left the room except Richard, who quietly took the crimson tangle on his wrists, turned and twisted, opened passages for the winder, and by the magic of his dexterous hands, had found the clue to the maze, so that all was proceeding well, though slowly, when the study door opened, and Harry's voice was heard in a last good night to his father. Mary's eyes looked wistful, and one misdirection of her winder tightened an obdurate loop once more. 'Run after Harry,' said Richard, taking possession of the ivory. 'Good night; I can always do these things best alone. I had rather--yes, really--good night:' and his kiss had the elder brother's authority of dismissal. His Maimouna was too glad and grateful for more than a summary 'Thank you,' and flew up-stairs in time to find Harry turning, baffled, from her empty room. 'What, only just done that interminable yarn?' he said. 'Richard is doing it. I could not help letting him, this first evening of you.' 'Good old Richard! he is not a bit altered since I first went to sea, when I was so proud of that,' said Harry, taking up his midshipman's dirk, which formed a trophy on Mary's mantelshelf. 'Are we altered since you went last?' said Mary. 'The younger ones, of course. I was in hopes that Aubrey would have been more like old June, but he'll never be so much of a fellow.' 'He is a very dear good boy,' said Mary, warmly. 'Of course he is,' said Harry, 'but, somehow, he will always have a woman-bred way about him. Can't be helped, of course; but what a pair of swells Tom and Blanche are come out!' and he laughed good-naturedly. 'Is not Blanche a beautiful dear darling?' cried Mary, eagerly. 'It is so nice to have her. They could not come at first because of the infection, and then because of the rifle corps, and now it is delicious to have all at home.' 'Well, Molly, I'm glad it wasn't you that have married. Mind, you mustn't marry till I do.' And Harry was really glad that Mary's laugh was perfectly 'fancy free,' as she answered, 'I'm sure I hope not, but I won't promise, because that might be unreasonable, you know.' 'Oh, you prudent, provident Polly! But,' added Harry, recalled to a sense of time by a clock striking eleven, 'I came to bring you something, Mary. You shall have it, if you will give me another.' Mary recognized, with some difficulty, a Prayer-Book with limp covers that Margaret had given him after his first voyage. Not only was it worn by seven years' use, but it was soiled and stained with dark brownish red, and a straight round hole perforated it from cover to cover. 'Is it too bad to keep?' said Harry. 'Let me just cut out my name in Margaret's hand, and the verse of the 107th Psalm; luckily the ball missed that.' 'The ball?' said Mary, beginning to understand. 'Yes. Every one of those circles that you see cut out there, was in here,' said Harry, laying his hand over his chest, 'before the ball, which I have given to my father.' 'O, Harry!' was all Mary could say, pointing to her own name in a pencil scrawl on the fly-leaf. 'Yes, I set that down because I could not speak to tell what was to be done with it, when we didn't know that that book had really been the saving of my life. That hair's-breadth deviation of the bullet made all the difference.' Mary was kissing the blood-stained book, and sobbing. 'Why, Mary, what is there to cry for? It is all over now, I tell you. I am as well as man would wish, and there's no more about it but to thank God, and try to deserve His goodness.' 'Yes, yes, I know, Harry; but to think how little we knew, or thought, or felt--going on in our own way when you were in such danger and suffering!' 'Wasn't I very glad you were going on in your own way!' said Harry. 'Why, Mary, it was that which did it--it has been always that thought of you at the Minster every day, that kept me to reading the Psalms, and so having the book about me. And did not it do one good to lie and think of the snug room, and my father's spectacles, and all as usual? When they used to lay me on the deck of the Dexter at night, because I could not breathe below, I used to watch old Orion, who was my great friend in the Loyalty Isles, and wish the heathen name had not stuck to the old fellow, he always seemed so like the Christian warrior, climbing up with his shield before him and his. A home like this is a shield to a man in more ways than one, Mary. Hollo, was that the street door?' 'Yes; Ritchie going home. Fancy his being at the silk all this time! I am so sorry!' Maugre her sorrow, there were few happier maidens in England than Mary May, even though her service was distracted by the claims of three slave-owners at once, bound as she was, to Ethel, by habitual fidelity, to Harry, by eager adoration, to Blanche, by willing submission. Luckily, their requisitions (for the most part unconscious) seldom clashed, or, if they did, the two elders gave way, and the bride asserted her supremacy in the plenitude of her youthful importance and prosperity. Thus she carried off Mary in her barouche to support her in the return of bridal calls, while the others were organizing a walk to visit Flora and the rifle target. Gertrude's enthusiasm was not equal to walking with a weapon that might be loaded, nor to being ordered out to admire the practice, so she accompanied the sisters; Tom was reading hard; and Ethel found herself, Aubrey, and the sailor, the only ones ready to start. This was a decided treat, for Aubrey and she were so nearly one, that it was almost a tete-a-tete with Harry, though it was not his way to enter by daylight, and without strong impulse, on what regarded himself, and there were no such confidences as those to Mary on the previous night; but in talking over home details, it was easier to speak without Tom's ironical ears and caustic tongue. Among other details, the story of the summer that Ethel and Aubrey had spent at Coombe was narrated, and Aubrey indulged himself by describing what he called Ethel's conquest. 'It is more a conquest of Norman's, and of Melanesia,' said Ethel. 'If it were not nonsense to build upon people's generous visions at seventeen, I should sometimes hope a spark had been lit that would shine some day in your islands, Harry.' Going up that hill was not the place for Etheldred May to talk of the futility of youthful aspirations, but it did not so strike either of the brothers, to whom Cocksmoor had long been a familiar fact. Harry laughed to hear the old Ethel so like herself; and Aubrey said, 'By the bye, what did you do, the day you walked him to Cocksmoor? he was fuller of those islands than ever after it.' 'I did not mean it,' said Ethel; 'but the first day of the holidays I came on him disconsolate in the street, with nothing to do, and very sore about Henry's refusal to let him volunteer; he walked on with me till we found ourselves close to Cocksmoor, and I found he had never seen the church, and would like to stay for evening service, so I put him into the parsonage while I was busy, and told him to take a book.' 'I know,' said Aubrey; 'the liveliest literature you can get in Richard's parlour are the Missionary Reports.' 'Exactly so; and he got quite saturated with them; and when we walked home, I was so thankful that the rifle grievance should be a little displaced, that I led him on to talk and build castles rather more than according to my resolutions.' 'Hollo, Ethel!' said Harry. 'Yes, I think spontaneous castles are admirable, but I mistrust all timber from other people's woods.' 'But isn't this a horrid shame of Henry?' said Aubrey. 'Such a little prig as he is, to take the place of such a fellow as Leonard, a capital shot already.' 'I wish Henry had been magnanimous,' said Ethel. 'I'd as soon talk of a magnanimous weasel, from what I recollect,' said Harry. 'And he is worse now, Harry,' continued Aubrey. 'So spruce and silky out of doors, and such a regular old tyrannical bachelor indoors. He is jealous of Leonard, any one can see, and that's the reason he won't give him his due.' 'You observe,' said Ethel, 'that this boy thinks the youngest brother's due is always to come first.' 'So it is, in this family,' said Harry. 'No one comes so last as old Ritchie.' 'But of course,' said Aubrey, rather taken aback, 'if I were not youngest, I should have to knock under to some one.' Ethel and Harry both laughed heartily; one congratulating him on not having carried the principle into the cockpit, the other adding, 'Don't indoctrinate Leonard with it; there is enough already to breed bitterness between those brothers! Leonard ought to be kept in mind that Henry has so much to harass him, that his temper should be borne patiently with.' 'He!' 'I don't think papa's best endeavours have kept all his father's practice for him, and I am sure their rate of living must make him feel pinched this Christmas.' 'Whew! He will be in a sweeter humour than ever!' 'I have been trying to show Leonard that there's room for magnanimity on his side at least; and don't you go and upset it all by common-place abuse of tutors and governors.' 'I upset it!' cried Aubrey: 'I might as well try to upset the Minster as a word from you to Leonard.' 'Nonsense! What's that?' For they were hailed from behind, and looking round saw two tall figures, weapon in hand, in pursuit. They proved to be Hector Ernescliffe and Leonard Ward, each bearing one of what Dr. May called the H. E. rifles; but Leonard looked half shy, half grim, and so decidedly growled off all Aubrey's attempts at inquiry or congratulation, that Ethel hazarded none, and Aubrey looked discomfited, wearing an expression which Harry took to mean that the weight of his rifle fatigued him, and insisted on carrying it for him, in, spite of his rather insulted protests and declarations that the sailor was an invalid; Ethel had walked forwards, and found Leonard at her side, with a darkening brow as he glanced back at the friendly contest. 'Harry spoils Aubrey as much as all the others do,' said Ethel lightly, deeming it best to draw out the sting of the rankling thought. 'Ay! None of them would leave him to be pitied and offered favours by some chance person,' said Leonard. 'You don't call my brother Hector a chance person?' 'Did you say anything to him, Miss May?' said Leonard, turning on her a flushed face, as if he could almost have been angered with her. 'I said not one word.' 'Nor Aubrey?' 'The volunteer politics were discussed last night, and Henry got abused among us; but papa defended him, and said it did not rain rifles. That's all--whatever Hector may have done was without a word to either of us--very likely on the moment's impulse. Did he go to Bankside after you?' 'No. I was looking in at Shearman's window,' said Leonard, rather sheepishly, 'at the locks of the new lot he has got in, and he came and asked if I were going to choose one, for he had got a couple down from London, and the man had stupidly put his cipher on both, so he would be glad if I would take one off his hands. I didn't accept--I made that clear--but then he begged, as if it was to oblige him, that I would come out to Abbotstoke and help him try the two, for he didn't know which he should keep.' 'Very ingenious of him,' said Ethel laughing. 'Now, Miss May, do tell me what I ought to do. It is such a beauty, better than any Shearman ever dreamt of; just look: at the finish of the lock.' 'By the time you have shot with it--' 'Now don't, pray,' said Leonard, 'I haven't any one to trust for advice but you.' 'Indeed, Leonard, I can see no objection. It is a great boon to you, and no loss to Hector, and he is quite enough my father's son for you to look on him as a friend. I can't but be very glad, for the removal of this vexation ought to make you get on all the better with your brother.' 'Ave would be delighted,' said Leonard; 'but somehow--' 'Somehow' was silenced by a coalescing of the party at a gate; and Hector and Harry were found deep in an argument in which the lieutenant's Indian reminiscences of the Naval Brigade were at issue with the captain's Southdown practice, and the experiences of the one meeting the technicalities of the other were so diverting, that Leonard forgot his scruples till at the entrance of the park he turned off towards the target with Hector and Aubrey, while the other two walked up to the house. The Grange atmosphere always had a strange weight of tedium in it, such as was specially perceptible after the joyous ease of the house in the High Street. No one was in the drawing-room, and Harry gazed round at the stiff, almost petrified, aspect of the correct and tasteful arrangement of the tables and furniture, put his hands in his pockets, and yawned twice, asking Ethel why she did not go in search of Flora. Ethel shook her head; and in another moment Flora appeared in eager welcome; she had been dressing for a drive to Stoneborough to see her brother, little expecting him to be in a state for walking to her. With her came her little girl, a child whose aspect was always a shock to those who connected her with the two Margarets whose name she bore. She had inherited her father's heavy mould of feature and dark complexion, and the black eyes had neither sparkle in themselves nor relief from the colour of the sallow cheek; the pouting lips were fretful, the whole appearance unhealthy, and the dark bullet-shaped head seemed too large for the thin bony little figure. Worn, fagged, and aged as Flora looked, she had still so much beauty, and far more of refinement and elegance, as to be a painful foil and contrast to the child that clung to her, waywardly refusing all response to her uncle's advances. Flora made a sign to him to discontinue them, and talked of her husband, who was hunting, and heard the history of Harry's return and recovery. In the midst, little Margaret took heart of grace, crossed the room, and stood by the sailor, and holding up a great India-rubber ball as large as her own head, asked, 'Uncle Harry, were you shot with a cannon-ball as big as this?' Thereupon she was on his knee, and as he had all his father's fascination for children, he absolutely beguiled her into ten minutes of genuine childish mirth, a sight so rare and precious to her mother, that she could not keep up her feint of talking to Ethel. The elderly dame, part nurse, part nursery governess, presently came to take Miss Rivers out, but Miss Rivers, with a whine in her voice, insisted on going nowhere but to see the shooting, and Uncle Harry must come with her; and come he did, the little bony fingers clasping tight hold of one of his large ones. 'Dear Harry!' said Flora, 'he wins every one! It is like a cool refreshing wind from the sea when he comes in.' In Flora's whole air, voice, and manner, there was apparent a relaxation and absence of constraint such as she never allowed herself except when alone with Ethel. Then only did she relieve the constant strain, then only did the veritable woman show herself, and the effort, the toil, the weariness, the heart-ache of her life become visible; but close together as the sisters lived, such tete-a-tetes were rare, and perhaps were rather shunned than sought, as perilous and doubtful indulgences. Even now, Flora at once fixed a limit by ordering the carriage to meet her in a quarter of an hour at the nearest point to the rifle-ground, saying she would walk there, and then take home Ethel and any brother who might be tired. 'And see that Margaret does not come to harm,' said Ethel. 'I am not afraid of that,' said Flora, something in her eye belying her; 'but she might be troublesome to Harry, and I had rather he did not see one of her fights with Miss Morton.' 'How has she been? I thought her looking clearer and better to-day,' said Ethel, kindly. 'Yes, she is pretty well just now,' said Flora, allowing herself in one of her long deep sighs, before descending into the particulars of the child's anxiously-watched health. If she had been describing them to her father, there would have been the same minuteness, but the tone would have implied cheerful hope; whereas to Ethel she took no pains to mask her dejection. One of the points of anxiety was whether one shoulder were not outgrowing the other, but it was not easy to discover whether the appearance were not merely owing to the child's feeble and ungainly carriage. 'I cannot torment her about that,' said Flora. 'There are enough miseries for her already without making more, and as long as it does not affect her health, it matters little.' 'No, certainly not,' said Ethel, who had hardly expected this from Flora. Perhaps her sister guessed her thought, for she said, 'Things are best as they are, Ethel; I am not fit to have a beautiful admired daughter. All the past would too easily come over again, and my poor Margaret's troubles may be the best balance for her.' 'Yes,' said Ethel, 'it is bad enough to be an heiress, but a beautiful heiress is in a worse predicament.' 'Health would improve her looks,' began the maternal instinct of defence, but then breaking off. 'We met Lord H---- yesterday, and the uniform is to be like the northern division. Papa will hear it officially to-morrow.' 'The northern has gray, and green facings.' 'You are more up in it than I. All we begged for was, that it might be inexpensive, for the sake of the townspeople.' 'I hear of little else,' said Ethel, laughing; 'Dr. Spencer is as hot on it as all the boys. Now, I suppose, your party is to come off!' 'Yes, it ought,' said Flora, languidly, 'I waited to see how Harry was, he is a great element towards making it go off well. I will talk it over with Blanche, it will give somebody pleasure if she thinks she manages it.' 'Will it give George no pleasure?' 'I don't know; he calls it a great nuisance, but he would not like not to come forward, and it is quite right that he should.' 'Quite right,' said Ethel; 'it is every one's duty to try to keep it up.' With these words the sisters came within sight of the targets, and found Margaret under Harry's charge, much interested, and considerably in the way. The tidings of the colour of the uniform were highly appreciated; Aubrey observed that it would choke off the snobs who only wanted to be like the rifle brigade, and Leonard treated its inexpensiveness as a personal matter, having apparently cast off his doubts, under Hector's complimentary tuition. Indeed, before it grew too dark for taking aim, he and the weapon were so thoroughly united, that no further difficulty remained but of getting out his thanks to Mr. Ernescliffe. Averil was sitting alone over the fire in the twilight, in a somewhat forlorn mood, when the door was pushed ajar, and the muzzle of a gun entered, causing her to start up in alarm, scarcely diminished by the sight of an exultant visage, though the words were, 'Your money or your life.' 'Leonard, don't play with it, pray!' 'It's not loaded.' 'Oh! but one never can tell:' then, half ashamed of her terror, 'Pray put it back, or we shall have an uproar with Henry.' 'This is none of Henry's. He will never own such a beauty as this.' 'Whose is it? Not yours? Is it really a rifle! H. E.? What's that?' 'Hector Ernescliffe! Didn't I tell you he was a princely fellow?' 'Given it to you? Leonard, dear, I am so happy! Now I don't care for anything! What a gallant volunteer you will make!' and she kissed him fondly. We will order the uniform as soon as ever it is settled, and I hope it will be a very handsome one.' 'It will be a cheap one, which is more to the purpose. I could get part myself, only there's the tax for Mab, and the subscription to the cricket club.' 'I would not have you get any of it! You are my volunteer, and I'll not give up my right to any one, except that Minna and Ella want to give your belt.' 'Where are those children?' he asked. 'Henry has taken them to Laburnum Grove, where I am afraid they are being crammed with cake and all sorts of nonsense.' 'What could have made him take them there?' 'Oh! some wish of Mrs. Pugh's to see the poor little dears,' said Averil, the cloud returning that had been for a moment dispelled. 'What's the row?' asked Leonard, kindly. 'Has he been bothering you?' 'He wants me to sound Mary May about an invitation for Mrs. Pugh to Mrs. Rivers's volunteer entertainment. I am glad I did not say no one in mourning ought to go, for I must go now you are a volunteer.' 'But you didn't consent to mention her?' 'No, indeed! I knew very well you would say it was a most improper use to make of the Mays' kindness, and I can't see what business she has there! Then he said, no, she was certain not to go, but the attention would be gratifying and proper.' 'That is Mrs. Rivers's look-out.' 'So I said, but Henry never will hear reason. I did not tell you of our scene yesterday over the accounts; he says that we must contract our expenses, or he shall be ruined; so I told him I was ready to give up the hot-house, or the footman, or the other horse, or anything he would specify; but he would not hear of it--he says it would be fatal to alter our style of living, and that it is all my fault for not being economical! O, Leonard, it is very hard to give up all one cared for to this housekeeping, and then never to please!' Leonard felt his brother a tyrant. 'Never mind, Ave dear,' said he, 'go on doing right, and then you need not care for his unreasonableness. You are a dear good girl, and I can't think how he can have the heart to vex you.' 'I don't care while I have you, Leonard,' she said, clinging to him. At that moment the others were heard returning, and an ironical look passed between the brother and sister at certain injunctions that were heard passing about the little India-rubber goloshes; but Henry had returned in high good-humour, was pleased to hear of his brother's good fortune, pronounced it very handsome in Mr. Ernescliffe, and even offered to provide the rest of the equipment; but this was proudly rejected by Averil, with some of the manifestations of exclusive partiality that naturally wounded the elder brother. He then announced an engagement that he had made with Mrs. Ledwich for a musical evening the next week. Averil had her harmonium at her tongue's end, but the evening was a free one, chosen on purpose to accommodate her; she had no excuse, and must submit. 'And practise some of your best pieces, Ave,' said Henry. 'Mrs. Pugh was kind enough to offer to come and get up some duets with yon.' 'I am greatly obliged,' said Averil, dryly, 'but I do not play duets.' 'You would do wisely to accept her kindness, argued Henry. 'It would be a great advantage to you to be intimate with a lady of her opportunities.' 'I do not like patronage,' said Averil. 'Ave! Ave!' cried the children, who had been trying to attract her attention, 'if you will let us go to Laburnum Grove by twelve o'clock to-morrow, Mis. Pugh will show us her book of the pretty devices of letters, and teach us to make one.' 'You will have not finished lessons by twelve.' 'But if we have?' 'No, certainly not, I can't have you bothering every one about that nonsensical fashion.' 'You shall go, my dears,' said Henry. 'I can't think why your sister should be so ill-natured.' Averil felt that this was the way to destroy her authority, and though she kept silence, the tears were in her eyes, and her champion broke forth, 'How can you be such a brute, Henry?' 'Come away, my dears,' said Averil, rising, and holding out her hands to her sisters, as she recollected how bad the scene was for them, but it was only Minna who obeyed the call, Ella hung about Henry, declaring that Leonard was naughty, and Ave was cross. 'Well,' shouted Leonard, 'I shan't stay to see that child set against her sister! I wonder what you mean her to come to, Henry!' It was no wonder that Minna and Ella squabbled together as to which was cross, Henry or Averil, and the spirit of party took up its fatal abode in the house of Bankside. CHAPTER IX Too oft my anxious eye has spied That secret grief thou fain wouldst hide-- The passing pang of humbled pride.--SCOTT The winter was gay, between musical evenings, children's parties, clerical feastings of district visitors, soirees for Sunday-school teachers, and Christmas-trees for their scholars. Such a universal favourite as Harry, with so keen a relish for amusement, was sure to fall an easy prey to invitations; but the rest of the family stood amazed to see him accompanied everywhere by Tom, to whom the secular and the religious dissipations of Stoneborough had always hitherto been equally distasteful. Yet be submitted to a Christmas course of music, carpet-dances, and jeux de societe on the one hand, and on the other conferred inestimable obligations on the ecclesiastical staff by exhibitions of his microscope and of some of the ornamental sports of chemistry. 'The truth is,' was the explanation privately dropped out to Ethel, 'that some one really must see that those two don't make fools of themselves.' Ethel stared; then, coming to the perception who 'those two' meant, burst out laughing, and said, 'My dear Tom, I beg your pardon, but, on the whole, I think that is more likely to befall some one else.' Tom held his head loftily, and would not condescend to understand anything so foolish. He considered Bankside as the most dangerous quarter, for Harry was enraptured with Miss Ward's music, extolled her dark eyes, and openly avowed her attraction; but there were far more subtle perils at Laburnum Grove. The fair widow was really pretty, almost elegant, her weeds becoming; and her disposition so good, so religious, so charitable, that, with her activity, intelligence, and curate-worship, she was a dangerous snare to such of mankind as were not sensible of her touch of pretension. As to womankind, it needed a great deal of submissiveness to endure her at all; and this was not Averil Ward's leading characteristic. In fact, the ubiquity of Mrs. Pugh was a sore trial to that young lady, just so superior herself as to detect the flimsiness of the widow's attainments. It was vexatious to find that by means of age, assumption, and position, these shallow accomplishments made a prodigious show in the world, while her own were entirely overlooked. She thought she despised the admiration of the second-rate world of Stoneborough, but it nettled her to see it thus misplaced; and there was something provoking in the species of semi-homage paid in that quarter by the youths of the May family. As to the sailor, Averil frankly liked him very much; he was the pleasantest young man, of the most open and agreeable manners, who had ever fallen in her way. He was worthy to be Mary's brother, for he was friendly to Leonard, and to herself had a truthfully flattering way that was delightful. Without any sentiment in the case, she always felt disappointed and defrauded if she were prevented from having a conversation with him; and when this happened, it was generally either from his being seized upon by Mrs. Pugh, or from her being baited by his brother Tom. Averil was hard to please, for she was as much annoyed by seeing Tom May sitting courteous and deferential by the side of Mrs. Pugh, as by his attentions to herself. She knew that he was playing the widow off, and that, when most smooth and bland in look and tone, he was inwardly chuckling; and to find the identical politeness transferred to herself, made her feel not only affronted but insulted by being placed on the same level. Thus, when, at a 'reunion' at Laburnum Grove, she had been looking on with intense disgust while Tom was admiring Mrs. Pugh's famous book of devices from letters, translating the mottoes, and promising contributions, the offence was greatly increased by his coming up to her (and that too just as Harry was released by the button-holding Mr. Grey) and saying, 'Of course you are a collector too, Miss Ward; I can secure some duplicates for you.' She hoard such fooleries? She have Mrs. Pugh's duplicates? No wonder she coldly answered, 'My little sister has been slightly infected, thank you, but I do not care for such things.' 'Indeed! Well, I always preserve as many as I can, as passports to a lady's favour.' 'That depends on how much sense the lady has,' said Averil, trusting that this was a spirited set down. 'You do not consider. Philosophically treated, they become a perfect school in historical heraldry, nay, in languages, in mathematical drawing, in illumination, said Tom, looking across to the album in which Mrs. Pugh's collection was enshrined, each device appropriately framed in bright colours. His gravity was intolerable. Was this mockery or not? However, as answer she must, she said, 'A very poor purpose for which to learn such things, and a poor way of learning them.' 'True,' said Tom, 'one pastime is as good as another; and the less it pretends to, the better. On the whole, it may be a beneficial outlet for the revival of illumination.' Did this intolerable person know that there was an 'illuminator's guide' at home, and a great deal of red, blue, and gold paint, with grand designs for the ornamentation of Bankside chapel? Whether he knew it or not, she could not help answering, 'Illumination is desecrated by being used on such subjects.' 'And is not that better than the subjects being desecrated by illumination?' Mrs. Pugh came to insist on that 'sweet thing of Mendelssohn's' from her dear Miss Ward; and Averil obeyed, not so glad to escape as inflamed by vexation at being prevented from fighting it out, and learning what he really meant; though she was so far used to the slippery nature of his arguments as to know that it was highly improbable that she should get at anything in earnest. 'If his sisters were silly, I should not mind,' said she to Leonard; 'then he might hold all women cheap from knowing no better; but when they like sensible things, why is every one else to be treated like an ape?' 'Never mind,' said Leonard, 'he sneers at everybody all alike! I can't think how Dr. May came to have such a son, or how Aubrey can run after him so.' 'I should like to know whether they really think it irreverent to do illuminations.' 'Nonsense, Ave; why should you trouble yourself about what he says to tease you? bad luck to him!' Nevertheless, Averil was not at ease till she had asked Mary's opinion of illumination, and Mary had referred to Ethel, and brought back word that all depended on the spirit of the work; that it was a dangerous thing, for mere fashion, to make playthings of texts of Scripture; but that no one could tell the blessing there might be in dwelling on them with loving decoration, or having them placed where the eye and thought might be won by them. In fact, Ethel always hated fashion, but feared prejudice. The crown of the whole carnival was to be the Abbotstoke entertainment on the enrolment of the volunteers. Preparations went on with great spirit, and the drill sergeant had unremitting work, the target little peace, and Aubrey and Leonard were justly accused of making fetishes of their rifles. The town was frantic, no clothes but uniforms could be had, and the tradesmen forgot their customers in the excitement of electing officers. Averil thought it very officious of Mrs. Pugh to collect a romantic party of banner-working young ladies before the member's wife or the mayor's family had authorized it; and she refused to join, both on the plea of want of time, and because she heard that Mr. Elvers, a real dragoon, declared colours to be inappropriate to riflemen. And so he did; but his wife said the point was not martial correctness, but popular feeling; so Mary gratified the party by bringing her needle, Dr. Spencer took care the blazonry of the arms of the old abbey was correct, and Flora asked the great lady of the county to present the banner, and gave the invitation to Mrs. Pugh, who sighed, shook her head, dried her eyes, and said something about goodness and spirits; and Mrs. Rivers professed to understand, and hope Mrs. Pugh would do exactly as best suited her. Was this manoeuvring, or only living in the present? Mary accompanied Harry for a long day of shopping in London when he went to report himself, starting and returning in the clouds of night, and transacting a prodigious amount of business with intense delight and no fatigue; and she was considered to have fitted out the mayor's daughters suitably with his municipal dignity, of which Ethel piqued herself on being proud. The entertainment was not easy to arrange at such a season, and Blanche's 'experience,' being of early autumn, was at fault; but Flora sent for all that could embellish her conservatories, and by one of the charities by which she loved to kill two birds with one stone, imported a young lady who gained her livelihood by singing at private concerts, and with her for a star, supported by the Minster and Cathedral choirs, hoped to get up sufficient music to occupy people till it should be late enough to dance. She still had some diplomacy to exercise, for Mrs. Ledwich suggested asking dear Ave Ward to sing, her own dearest Matilda would not object on such an occasion to assist the sweet girl; and Mrs. Rivers, after her usual prudent fashion, giving neither denial nor assent, Mrs. Ledwich trotted off, and put Averil into an agony that raised a needless storm in the Bankside house; Leonard declaring the request an insult, and Henry insisting that Ave ought to have no scruples in doing anything Mrs. Pugh thought proper to be done. And finally, when Ave rushed with her despair to Mary May, it was to be relieved at finding that Mrs. Rivers had never dreamt of exposing her to such an ordeal. Though it was the year 1860, the sun shone on the great day, and there were exhilarating tokens of spring, singing birds, opening buds, sparkling drops, and a general sense of festivity; as the gray and green began to flit about the streets, and while Mr. Mayor repaired to the Town Hall to administer the oaths to the corps, his unmartial sons and his daughters started for the Grange to assist Flora in the reception of her guests. The Lord Lieutenant's wife and daughters, as well as the Ernescliffes, had slept there, and Ethel found them all with Flora in the great hall, which looked like a winter garden, interspersed with tables covered with plate and glass, where eating and drinking might go on all day long. But Ethel's heart sank within her at the sight of Flora's haggard face and sunken eyes. 'What is the matter?' she asked Blanche, an image of contented beauty. 'Matter? Oh, they have been stupid in marking the ground, and Hector is gone to see about it. That's all. He is not at all tired.' 'I never supposed he was,' said Ethel, 'but what makes Flora look so ill?' 'Oh, that tiresome child has got another cold, and fretted half the night. It is all their fault for giving way to her; and she has done nothing but whine this whole morning because she is not well enough to go out and see the practice! I am sure it is no misfortune that she is not to come down and be looked at.' Ethel crossed over to Flora, and asked whether she should go up and see little Margaret. 'I should be so thankful,' said poor Flora; 'but don't excite her. She is not at all well, and has had very little sleep.' Ethel ran up-stairs, and found herself in the midst of a fight between the governess and Margaret, who wanted to go to the draughty passage window, which she fancied had a better view than that of her nursery. Luckily, Aunt Ethel was almost the only person whom Margaret did not like to see her naughty; and she subsided into a much less objectionable lamentation after Uncle Harry and his anchor buttons. Ethel promised to try whether he could be found, and confident in his good-nature, ran down, and boldly captured him as he was setting out to see Hector's operations. He came with a ready smile, and the child was happy throughout his stay. Flora presently stole a moment's visit, intending her sister's release as well as his; but Ethel, in pity to governess as well as pupil, declared the nursery window to be a prime post of observation, and begged to be there left. Margaret began to believe that they were very snug there, and by the time the bugles were heard, had forgotten her troubles in watching the arrivals. Up came the gray files, and Ethel's heart throbbed and her eye glistened at their regular tread and military bearing. Quickly Margaret made out papa; but he was too real a soldier to evince consciousness of being at his own door, before the eyes of his wife and daughter; and Aubrey's young face was made up in imitation of his impassiveness. Other eyes were less under control, and of these were a brown pair that wandered restlessly, till they were raised to the nursery window, and there found satisfaction. The aunt and niece were too immediately above the terrace to see what passed upon it, nor could they hear the words; so they only beheld the approach of the Ensign, and after a brief interval, his return with the tall green silk colours, with the arms of the old abbey embroidered in the corner, and heard the enthusiastic cheer that rang out from all the corps. Then the colours led the way to the ground for practice, for manoeuvres were as yet not ready for exhibition. Almost all the gentlemen followed; and such ladies as did not object to gunpowder or damp grass, thither betook themselves, guided by the ardent Mrs. Ernescliffe. Having disposed of the others in the drawing-rooms and gardens, Flora and her father came to the nursery, and Ethel was set at liberty to witness the prowess of her young champions, being assured by Flora that she would be of more use there in keeping the youthful population out of danger than in entertaining the more timid in the house. She slipped out and hurried down a narrow path towards the scene of action, presently becoming aware of four figures before her, which her glass resolved into Harry and Tom, a lady in black, and a child. Evidently the devoted Tom was keeping guard over one of the enchantresses, for the figure was that of Averil Ward, though, as Ethel said, shaking hands, she was hardly to be known with only one sister. 'We have been delayed,' said Averil; 'poor little Ella was in an agony about the firing, and we could not leave her till your brother'--indicating Harry--'was so kind as to take her to Gertrude.' 'True to the Englishwoman's boast of never having seen the smoke of an engagement,' said Tom. 'A practising is not an engagement,' said Ethel. 'There may be quite as many casualties,' quoth Tom, indulging in some of the current ready-made wit on the dangers of volunteering, for the pure purpose of teasing; but he was vigorously fallen upon by Harry and Ethel, and Averil brightened as she heard him put to the rout. The shots were already heard, when two more black figures were seen in the distance, going towards the gate. 'Is that Richard?' exclaimed Tom. 'Ay, and I do believe, the widow!' rejoined Harry. 'Oh, yes,' said Averil. 'I heard her talking about Abbotstoke Church, and saying how much she wished to see it. She must have got Mr. May to show it to her.' Ethel, who had no real fears for Richard herself, looked on amused to watch how the guardian spirit was going to act. He exclaimed, 'By the bye, Miss Ward, would you not like to see it? They have a very nice brass to old Mr. Rivers, and have been doing up the chancel.' 'Thank you, said Ave, 'I should prefer going to see how Leonard is getting on.' 'Right, Miss Ward,' said Harry; 'the church won't run away.' 'Well, then,' said Tom, after a moment's hesitation, 'I think I shall just run down, as the church is open, and see what sort of work they have made of the chancel.' Ethel had the strongest fancy to try what he would do if she were to be seized with a desire to inspect the chancel; but she did not wish to let Harry and Averil appear on the ground under no escort but Minna's, and so permitted Tom to leave them to her keeping, and watched him hasten to break up the tete-a-tete. Coming among the spectators, who, chiefly drawn up on the carriage drive, were watching from a safe distance the gray figures in turn take aim and emit from their rifles the flash and cotton-wool-like tuft of smoke, Ethel's interest was somewhat diminished by hearing that all the other marksmen had been distanced by the head keepers of Abbotstoke and Drydale, between whom the contest really lay. 'The rest is a study of character,' said Dr. Spencer, taking a turn up and down the road with her. 'I have been watching the various pairs of brothers; and I doubt if any stand the test as well as the house of May.' 'There's only one in the field to-day.' 'Yes, but I've seen them together before now, and I will say for even Tom that he has no black looks when his junior shoots better than he does.' 'Oh, yes! But then it is Aubrey.' Dr. Spencer laughed. 'Lucky household where that "it is" accounts for all favours to the youngest, instead of for the countenance falling at his successes.' 'I am afraid I know whom you mean. But he has no generosity in him.' 'And his sister helps to make him jealous.' 'I am afraid she does; but though it is very sad, one can't wonder at her preference of the great to the small.' 'Poor girl, I wonder how she will get on when there is a new inmate in the happy family.' 'Ha! you shocking old gossip, what have you found out now?' 'Negotiation for the introduction of a Pug dog from the best circles--eh?' 'Well, if he were alone in the world, it would be a capital match.' 'So she thinks, I fancy; but £600 a year might do better than purchase so many incumbrances. Depend upon it, the late lamented will remain in the ascendant till there are no breakers ahead.' In process of time, ladies, volunteers, and all, were assembled in the great music-room for the concert; and Ethel, having worked hard in the service of the company, thought her present duty lay with the sick child, and quietly crept away, taking, however, one full view of the entire scene, partly for her own satisfaction, partly in case Margaret should be inclined to question her on what every one was doing. There was the orchestra, whose erection Richard had superintended; there was the conductor in his station, and the broad back of the Cathedral organist at the piano, the jolly red visages of the singing men in their ranks, the fresh faces of the choristers full of elation, the star from London, looking quiet and ladylike, courteously led to her place by George Rivers himself. But, for all his civility, how bored and sullen he looked! and how weary were poor Flora's smiles, though her manner was so engaging, and her universal attention so unremitting! What a contrast to the serene, self-enfolded look of happiness and prosperity on the pretty youthful face of Blanche, her rich delicate silk spreading far beyond the sofa where she sat among the great ladies; and her tall yellow-haired husband leaning against the wall behind her, in wondering contemplation of his Blanche taking her place in her own county. Farther back, among the more ordinary herd, Ethel perceived Mrs. Pugh, bridling demurely, with Tom on guard over her on one side, and Henry Ward looking sulky on the other, with his youngest sister in his charge. The other was looking very happy upon Leonard's knee, close to Averil and Mary, who were evidently highly satisfied to have coalesced. Averil was looking strikingly pretty--the light fell favourably on her profuse glossy hair, straight features, and brilliant colouring; her dark eyes were full of animation, and her lips were apart with a smile as she listened to Leonard's eager narration; and Ethel glanced towards Harry to see whether he were admiring. No; Harry was bringing in a hall arm-chair in the background, for a vary large, heavy, vulgar-looking old man, who seemed too ponderous and infirm for a place on the benches. Richard made one of a black mass of clergy, and Aubrey and Gertrude had asserted their independence by perching themselves on a window-seat, as far as possible from all relations, whence they nodded a merry saucy greeting to Ethel, and she smiled back again, thinking her tall boy in his gray tunic and black belt, and her plump girl in white with green ribbons, were as goodly a pair as the room contained. But where was the Doctor? Ethel had a shrewd suspicion where she should find him; and in the nursery he was, playing at spillekens with his left hand. It was not easy to persuade him that the music would be wasted on her, and that he ought to go down that it might receive justice; but Margaret settled the question. 'You may go, grandpapa. Aunt Ethel is best to play at spillekens, for she has not got a left hand.' 'There's honour for me, who used to have two!' and therewith Ethel turned him out in time for the overture. Margaret respected her aunt sufficiently not to be extra wayward with her, and between the spillekens, and a long story about Cousin Dickie in New Zealand, all went well till bed-time. There was something in the child's nervous temperament that made the first hours of the night peculiarly painful to her, and the sounds of the distant festivity added to her excitability. She fretted and tossed, moaned and wailed, sat up in bed and cried, snapped off attempts at hymns, would not listen to stories, and received Ethel's attempts at calm grave commands with bursts of crying, and calls for mamma and papa. The music had ceased, tuning of violins was heard, and Ethel dreaded the cries being heard down-stairs. She was at her wits' end, and was thinking who would most avail, and could be fetched with least sensation, when there was a soft knock at the door, and Harry's voice said, 'Hollo, what's the matter here?' In he came with his white glove half on, and perceiving the state of the case said, 'Can't go to sleep?' 'Oh, Uncle Harry, take me;' and the arms were stretched out, and the tear-stained face raised up. 'We'll put you to sleep as sound as if you were in a hammock just off middle watch,' said Harry; and the next moment he had her rolled up in her little blue dressing-gown, nestling on his broad shoulder, while he walked up and down the room, crooning out a nautical song, not in first-rate style, but the effect was perfect; the struggles and sobs were over, and when at the end of a quarter of an hour Harry paused and looked at the little thin sharp face, it was softened by peaceful sleep. Ethel pointed to the door. There stood Flora, her eyes full of tears. Harry laid the little sleeper on her bed, and covered her up. Flora laid her arm on his shoulder and gave him such a kiss as she had not given even when he had come back as from the dead. Then she signed to them to come, but sped away before them, not trusting herself to speak. Ethel tarried with Harry, who was in difficulties with gloves too small for his broad hand, and was pshawing at himself at having let Tom get them for him at Whitford. 'O, Harry,' said Ethel, 'you are the most really like papa of us all! How did you come to think of it!' 'I'd have given a good deal if any one would have walked quarter-deck with me some nights last summer,' said Harry, still intent on the glove. 'What is to be done, Ethel! that rogue Tom always snaps up all the beauty. I dare say he has engaged Miss Ward and the widow both.' It was no time for sentiment; so Ethel suggested getting half into one glove, and carrying the other. 'You'll be quite irresistible enough, Harry! And if all the beauty is engaged, I'll dance with you myself.' 'Will you?' cried the lieutenant, with sparkling eyes, 'then you are a jolly old Ethel! Come along, then;' and he took her on his arm, ran down-stairs with her, and before she well knew where she was, or what was going on, she found herself in his great grasp passive as a doll, dragged off into the midst of a vehement polka that took her breath away. She trusted to him, and remained in a passive, half-frightened state, glad he was so happy; but in the first pause heartily wishing he would let her go, instead of which she only heard, 'Well done, old Ethel, you'll be a prime dancer yet! you're as light as a feather;' and before she had recovered her breath, off he led her with 'Go it again!' When at length, panting and bewildered, she was safely placed on a seat, with 'You've had enough, have you? mind, I shan't let you off another time,' she found that her aberration had excited a good deal of sensation in her own family. Blanche and Gertrude could not repress their amusement; and Dr. May, with merry eyes, declared that she was coming out in a new light. She had only time to confide to him the reason that she had let Harry do what he pleased with her, before two volunteers were at her side. 'Miss May, I did not think you ever danced!' 'Nor I,' said Ethel; 'but you see what sailors can do with one.' 'Now, Ethel' said the other over his shoulder, 'now you have danced with Harry, you must have this waltz with me.' 'A dangerous precedent, Ethel,' said the Doctor, laughing. 'I couldn't waltz to save my life, Aubrey,' said Ethel; 'but if you can bear me through a polka as well as Harry did, you may try the next.' 'And won't you--will you--for once dance with me? said his companion imploringly. 'Very well, Leonard, if I can get through a quadrille;' and therewith Ethel was seized upon by both boys to hear the story of every hit and miss, and of each of the difficulties that their unpractised corps had encountered in getting round the corners between Stoneborough and the Grange. Then came Leonard's quadrille, which it might be hoped was gratifying to him; but which he executed with as much solemn deference as if he had been treading a minuet with a princess, plainly regarding it as the great event of the day. In due time, he resigned her to Aubrey; but poor Aubrey had been deluded by the facility with which the strong and practised sailor had swept his victim along; and Ethel grew terrified at the danger of collisions, and released herself and pulled him aside by force, just in time to avoid being borne down by the ponderous weight of Miss Boulder and her partner. 'You did not come to grief with Harry!' muttered the discomfited boy. 'No more did the lamb damage the eagle; but remember the fate of the jackdaw, Mr. Gray-coat! I deserve some ice for my exertions, so come into the hall and get some, and tell me if you have had better luck elsewhere.' 'I have had no partner but Minna Ward, and she trips as if one was a dancing-master.' 'And how has Tom been managing?' 'Stunningly civil! He began with Ave Ward, in the Lancers, and it was such fun--he chaffed her in his solemn way, about music I believe it was, and her harmonium. I could not quite hear, but I could see she was in a tremendous taking, and she won't recover it all the evening.' 'What a shame it is of Tom!' 'Oh! but it is such fun! And since that he has been parading with Pug.' 'She has not danced!' 'Oh no! She got an audience into Meta's little sitting-room--Henry Ward, Harvey Anderson, and some of the curates; they shut the door, and had some music on their own hook.' 'Was Richard there!' 'At first; but either he could not bear to see Meta's piano profaned, or he thought it too strong when they got to the sacred line, for he bolted, and is gone home.' 'There's Harry dancing with Fanny Anderson. He has not got Miss Ward all this time.' 'Nor will,' said Aubrey. 'Tom had put her in such a rage that she did not choose to dance with that cousin of hers, Sam Axworthy, so she was obliged to refuse every one else; and I had to put up with that child!' 'Sam Axworthy! He does not belong to our corps. How does he come here?' 'Oh! the old man has some houses in the borough, and an omnium gatherum like this was a good time to do the civil thing to him. There he is; peep into the card-room, and you'll see his great porpoise back, the same old man that Harry in his benevolence assisted to a chair. He shook hands with Leonard, and told him there was a snug desk at the Vintry Mill for him.' 'I dare say!' 'And when Leonard thanked him, and said he hoped to get off to Cambridge, he laughed that horrid fat laugh, and told him learning would never put him in good case. Where shall I find you a place to sit down? Pug and her tail have taken up all the room,' whispered Aubrey, as by the chief of the glittering tables in the hall, he saw Mrs. Pugh, drinking tea, surrounded by her attendant gentlemen, and with her aunt and Ella Ward, like satellites, a little way from her. 'Here is a coign of vantage,' said Ethel, seating herself on a step a little way up the staircase. 'How those people have taken possession of that child all day!' 'I fancy Leonard is come to reclaim her,' said Aubrey, 'don't you see him trying to work through and get at her! and Miss Ward told me she was going home early, to put the children to bed. Ha! what's the row? There's Leonard flaring up in a regular rage! Only look at his eyes--and Henry just like Gertrude's Java sparrow in a taking--' 'It must not be,' cried Ethel, starting up to attempt she knew not what, as she heard Leonard's words, 'Say it was a mistake, Henry! You cannot be so base as to persist!' There it became evident that Ethel and Aubrey were seen over the balusters; Leonard's colour deepened, but his eye did not flinch; though Henry quailed and backed, and the widow gave a disconcerted laugh; then Leonard pounced on his little sister and carried her off to the cloak-room. 'What treason could it have been?' muttered Aubrey; 'we shall get it all from Ward;' but when Leonard re-appeared it was with his sister cloaked and bonneted on his arm, each leading a little one; he took them to the entrance and was seen no more. Nor was the true history of that explosion ever revealed in the May family, though it had grave consequences at Bankside. Rumour had long declared at Stoneborough that the member's little daughter was carefully secluded on account of some deformity, and Mrs. Pugh had been one of many ladies who had hoped to satisfy their curiosity on this head upon the present occasion. She had asked Henry Ward whether it were so, and he had replied with pique that he had no means of judging, he had never been called in at the Grange. By way of salve to his feelings, the sympathizing lady had suggested that the preference for London advice might be from the desire of secrecy, and improbable as he knew this to be, his vanity had forbidden him to argue against it. When no little Miss Rivers appeared, the notion of her affliction gained ground, and Leonard, whose gray back was undistinguishable from other gray backs, heard Mrs. Pugh citing his brother as an authority for the misfortune which Mr. and Mrs. Rivers so carefully concealed as to employ no surgeon from their own neighbourhood. Falsehood, slander, cruelty, ingratitude, breach of hospitality, were the imputations that fired the hot brain of Leonard, and writhed his lips, as he started round, confronted the lady, and assured her it was a--a--a gross mistake. His father had always attended the child, and she must have misunderstood his brother. Then, seeing Henry at a little distance, Leonard summoned him to contradict the allegation; but at that moment the sudden appearance of the two Mays put the whole conclave to silence. Not aware that Mrs. Pugh had confounded together his intelligence and her surmise, and made him responsible for both, Henry was shocked and grieved at his brother's insulting and violent demeanour, and exhausted himself in apologies and denunciations; while the kind-hearted lady interceded, for the boy, declaring that she doted on his generous spirit, but not confessing the piece of female embroidery which had embroiled the matter; probably not even aware of it, though sincerely and kindly desirous to avert the brother's anger. Her amiability, therefore, only strengthened Henry's sense of his brothers outrage, and his resolve to call him to account. It was impossible that night, for Leonard had gone home with the sisters, and was in bed long before his brother returned. But at breakfast Henry found the forces drawn up against him, and his first attempt to remonstrate was retorted by the demand what he could mean by spreading such an abominable report--cruel--unfounded--ungrateful--spiteful-- Averil indeed divined that it was Mrs. Pugh's invention; but Henry was not inclined to give up Mrs. Pugh, and continued in the belief that Leonard's fiery imagination had fabricated the sentence, and then most improperly charged it on the lady, and on himself. Had it been as Leonard stated, said Henry, his conduct was shameful and required an apology, whereupon Leonard burst out in passion at being disbelieved, and Averil was no less indignant. The storm raged till the business of the day interrupted it; and in Henry's absence, Averil and her brother worked up their wrath again, at the atrocity of the assertion regarding the child of their entertainers, the granddaughter of their truest, kindest friend. Averil would have rushed to Mary with the whole story, but for Leonard's solemn asseveration that if ever it came to the ears of any one of the Mays, he should send back his rifle to Mr. Ernescliffe, and work his way out to one of the colonies rather than again look any of the family in the face. Henry divided his opponents next time, asking Leonard, in his sister's absence, whether he had come to his senses and would apologize? Leonard hoped Henry had come to his! On the whole, the dispute had lost some asperity by the absence of Averil, and though Leonard held his ground, and maintained that he had every right to deny the statement, and that it was Henry's duty to make Mrs. Pugh contradict it everywhere, yet the two approached nearer together, and there was less misunderstanding, fewer personalities. But Averil could not forget or forgive. She persisted in manifesting her displeasure, and recurred to the subject till her pertinacity wore out Leonard himself. 'Nonsense, Ave,' he said at last, 'it was a foolish woman's gossip that Henry ought to have quashed; but that is no reason you should treat them like toads.' 'Would you have me sanction vile slander?' 'As if you were sanctioning slander by being decently civil! Is not it an intolerable thing that we three should never sit down to a meal in peace together?' 'O, Leonard, don't you think I feel the misery?' Put an end to it then, and don't pit those poor children one against the other. Just fancy Minna's saying to me, "I love you and sister, but Ella loves Mrs. Pugh and Henry."' 'Yes, they have set Ella against me. She always appeals to Henry, and I can do nothing with her.' Leonard looked out of the window and whistled, then said, as if he had made a discovery, 'I'll tell you what, Ave, something must be done to set things to rights between us, and I believe the best thing will be to call on Mrs. Pugh.' 'Not to apologize! O, Leonard!' 'Stuff and nonsense! Only to show we don't bear malice. Henry had been at you to call ever so long before this, had he not?' 'I can't see any reason for intimacy.' 'I declare, Ave, you are too bad! I only want you just to keep the peace with your own brother. You have led him the life of a dog these three days, and now when I want you to be a little obliging, you talk of intimacy!' 'Only because I know how it will be. If I give that woman an inch, she will take an ell.' 'Let her then. It would be much better than always living at daggers-drawn with one's brother.' Then, after waiting for her to say something, he added, 'If you won't go with me, I shall go alone.' Averil rose, subdued but not convinced, reverencing her brother, but afraid of his concessions. However, the call turned out well. Mrs. Pugh had a talent for making herself agreeable, and probably had liked the boy for his outburst. She would not let Mab be excluded, loaded her with admiration, and was extremely interested in the volunteer practice, so that both the young people were subjugated for the time by her pleasant manners, and went away ashamed of their own rancour against one so friendly and good-natured, and considerably relieved of their burden of animosity. Their greeting to their brother was so cordial that he perceived their good-will, and was sorry that the dread of an evening of warfare had induced him to accept an invitation to dine at the Swan with Sam Axworthy and a party of his friends. CHAPTER X This night is my departing night, For here nae longer must I stay; There's neither friend nor foe of mine But wishes me away. What I have done through lack of wit, I never, never can recall: I hope ye're all my friends as yet. Good night, and joy be with you all. Armstrong's Good Night The storm had blown over, but heavy flakes of cloud still cumbered the air, and gusts of wind portended that it might gather again. Henry Ward took this opportunity of giving his first dinner party. He said it was a necessary return for the civilities they had received; and to Averil's representation that it transgressed the system of rigid economy that so much tormented her, he replied by referring her to Mrs. Pugh for lessons in the combination of style and inexpensiveness. Averil had almost refused, but the lady herself proffered her instructions, and reluctance was of no avail; nothing but demonstrations from which her conscience shrank, could have served to defend her from the officious interference so eagerly and thankfully encouraged by the master of the house. Vainly did she protest against pretension, and quote the example of the Grange; she found herself compelled to sacrifice the children's lessons to learn of Mrs. Pugh to make the paper flowers that, with bonbons and sweetmeats, were to save the expense of good food on the dinner-table, and which she feared would be despised by Miss May, nay, perhaps laughed over with 'Mr. Tom!' She hated the whole concern, even the invitation to Dr. and Miss May, knowing that it was sent in formal vanity, accepted in pure good-nature, would bring them into society they did not like, and expose her brother's bad taste. Only one thing could have added to her dislike, namely--that which all Stoneborough perceived excepting herself and Leonard--that this dinner was intended as a step in Henry's courtship, and possibly as an encouragement of Harvey Anderson's liking for herself. Averil held her head so high, and was so little popular, that no one of less assurance than Mrs. Ledwich herself would have dared approach her with personal gossip; and even Mrs. Ledwich was silent here; so that Averil, too young and innocent to connect second marriages with recent widowhood, drew no conclusions from Henry's restless eagerness that his household should present the most imposing appearance. While the bill of fare was worrying Averil, Leonard was told by Aubrey, that his father had brought home a fossil Tower of Babel, dug up with some earth out of a new well, three miles off, with tidings of other unheard-of treasures, and a walk was projected in quest of them, in which Leonard was invited to join. He gladly came to the early dinner, where he met reduced numbers--the Ernescliffes being at Maplewood, Tom at Cambridge, and Harry in the Channel fleet; and as usual, he felt the difference between the perfect understanding and friendship in the one home, and the dread of dangerous subjects in the other. The expedition had all the charms of the Coombe times; and the geological discoveries were so numerous and precious, that the load became sufficient to break down the finders, and Ethel engaged a market-woman to bring the baskets in her cart the next morning. That morning a note from Richard begged Ethel to come early to Cocksmoor to see Granny Hall, who was dying. Thus left to their own devices, Aubrey and Gertrude conscientiously went through some of their studies; then proceeded to unpack their treasury of fossils, and endeavour to sort out Leonard's share, as to which doubts arose. Daisy proposed to carry the specimens at once to Bankside, where she wanted to see Leonard's prime echinus; and Aubrey readily agreed, neither of the young heads having learnt the undesirableness of a morning visit in a house preparing for a dinner-party too big for it. However, Leonard made them extremely welcome. It was too foggy a day for rifle practice, and all the best plate and china were in the school-room, his only place of refuge; Ave was fluttering about in hopes of getting everything done before Mrs. Pugh could take it out of her hands, and the energies of the household were spent on laying out the dining-table. It was clearly impossible to take Gertrude anywhere but into the drawing-room, which was in demi-toilette state, the lustres released from their veils, the gayer cushions taken out of their hiding-places, and the brown holland covers half off. This was the only tranquil spot, and so poor little Mab thought, forbidden ground though it was. Even in her own home, the school-room, a strange man had twice trod upon her toes; so no wonder, when she saw her own master and his friends in the drawing-room, that she ventured in, and leaping on a velvet cushion she had never seen before, and had never been ordered off, she there curled herself up and went to sleep, unseen by Leonard, who was in eager controversy upon the specimens, which Gertrude, as she unpacked, set down on floor, chair, or ottoman, unaware of the offence she was committing. So, unmolested, the young geologists talked, named, and sorted the specimens, till the clock striking the half-hour, warned the Mays that they must return; and Leonard let them out at the window, and crossed the lawn to the side gate with them to save the distance. He had just returned, and was kneeling on the floor hastily collecting the fossils, when the door opened, and Henry Ward, coming home to inspect the preparations, beheld the drawing-room bestrewn with the rough stones that he had proscribed, and Mab, not only in the room, but reposing in the centre of the most magnificent cushion in the house! His first movement of indignation was to seize the dog with no gentle hand. She whined loudly; and Leonard, whom he had not seen, shouted angrily, 'Let her alone;' then, at another cry from her, finding his advance to her rescue impeded by a barricade of the crowded and disarranged furniture, he grew mad with passion, and launched the stone in his hand, a long sharp-pointed belemnite. It did not strike Henry, but a sound proclaimed the mischief, as it fell back from the surface of the mirror, making a huge star of cracks, unmarked by Leonard, who, pushing sofa and ottoman to the right and left, thundered up to his brother, and with uplifted hand demanded what he meant by his cruelty. 'Is--is this defiance?' stammered Henry, pointing to the disordered room. 'Look here, Averil,' as she appeared at the sounds, 'do you defend this boy now he has very nearly killed me?' 'Killed you!' and Leonard laughed angrily; but when Henry held up the elf-bolt, and he saw its sharp point, he was shocked, and he saw horror in Averil's face. 'I see,' he said gravely. 'It was a mercy I did not!' and he paused. 'I did not know what I was about when you were misusing my dog, Henry. Shake hands; I am sorry for it.' But Henry had been very much frightened as well as angered, and thought, perhaps, it was a moment to pursue his advantage. 'You treat things lightly,' he said, not accepting the hand. 'See what you have done.' 'I am glad it was not your head,' said Leonard. 'What does it cost? I'll pay.' 'More than your keep for a year,' moaned Henry, as he sighed over the long limbs of the starfish-like fracture. 'Well, I will give up anything you like, if you will only not be sulky about it, Henry. It was unlucky, and I'm sorry for it; I can't say more!' 'But I can,' said Henry with angry dignity, re-inforced by the sight of the seamed reflection of his visage in the shivered glass. 'I tell you, Leonard, there's no having you in the house; you defy my authority, you insult my friends, you waste and destroy more than you are worth, and you are absolutely dangerous. I would as soon have a wild beast about the place. If you don't get the Randall next week, and get off to the University, to old Axworthy's office you go at once.' 'Very well, I will,' said Leonard, turning to collect the fossils, as if he had done with the subject. 'Henry, Henry, what are you saying?' cried the sister. 'Not a word, Ave,' said Leonard. 'I had rather break stones on the road than live where my keep is grudged, and there's not spirit enough to get over a moment's fright.' 'It is not any one individual thing,' began Henry, in a tone of annoyance, 'but your whole course--' There he paused, perceiving that Leonard paid no attention to his words, continuing quietly to replace the furniture and collect the fossils, as it no one else were in the room, after which he carried the basket up-stairs. Averil hurried after him. 'Leonard! oh, why don't you explain? Why don't you tell him how the stones came there?' Leonard shook his head sternly. 'Don't you mean to do anything?' 'Nothing.' 'But you wanted another year before trying for the scholarship.' 'Yes; I have no chance there.' 'He will not do it! He cannot mean it!' 'I do then. I will get my own living, and not be a burthen, where my brother cannot forgive a broken glass or a moment's fright,' said Leonard; and she felt that his calm resentment was worse than his violence. 'He will be cooler, and then--' 'I will have no more said to him. It is plain that we cannot live together, and there's an end of it. Don't cry, or you won't be fit to be seen.' 'I won't come down to dinner.' 'Yes, you will. Let us have no more about it. Some one wants you.' 'Please, ma'am, the fish is come.' 'Sister, sister, come and see how I have done up the macaroons in green leaves.' 'Sister, sister, do come and reach me down some calycanthus out of the greenhouse!' 'I will,' said Leonard, descending; and for the rest of the day he was an efficient assistant in the decorations, and the past adventure was only apparent in the shattered glass, and the stern ceremonious courtesy of the younger brother towards the elder. Averil hurried about, devoid of all her former interest in so doing things for herself as to save interference; and when Mrs. Ledwich and Mrs. Pugh walked in, overflowing with suggestions, she let them have their way, and toiled under them with the sensation of being like 'dumb driven cattle.' If Leonard were to be an exile, what mattered it to her who ruled, or what appearance things made? Only when she went to her own room to dress, had she a moment to realize the catastrophe, its consequences, and the means of averting them. So appalled was she, that she sat with her hair on her shoulders as if spell-bound, till the first ring at the door aroused her to speed and consternation, perhaps a little lessened by one of her sisters rushing in to say that it was Mrs. Ledwich and Mrs. Pugh, and that Henry was still in the cellar, decanting the wine. Long before the hosts were ready, Dr. May and Ethel had likewise arrived, and became cognizant of the fracture of the mirror, for, though the nucleus was concealed by a large photograph stuck into the frame, one long crack extended even to the opposite corner. The two ladies were not slow to relate all that they knew; and while the aunt dismayed Ethel by her story, the niece, with much anxiety, asked Dr. May how it was that these dear, nice, superior young people should have such unfortunate tempers--was it from any error in management? So earnest was her manner, so inquiring her look, that Dr. May suspected that she was feeling for his opinion on personal grounds, and tried to avert the danger by talking of the excellence of the parents, but he was recalled from his eulogium on poor Mrs. Ward. 'Oh yes! one felt for them so very much, and they are so religious, so well principled, and all that one could wish; but family dissension is so dreadful. I am very little used to young men or boys, and I never knew anything like this.' 'The lads are too nearly of an age,' said the Doctor. 'And would such things be likely to happen among any brothers?' 'I should trust not!' said the Doctor emphatically. 'I should so like to know in confidence which you think likely to be most to blame.' Never was the Doctor more glad that Averil made her appearance! He carefully avoided getting near Mrs. Pugh for the rest of the evening, but he could not help observing that she was less gracious than usual to the master of the house; while she summoned Leonard to her side to ask about the volunteer proceedings, and formed her immediate court of Harvey Anderson and Mr. Scudamour. The dinner went on fairly, though heavily. Averil, in her one great trouble, lost the sense of the minor offences that would have distressed her pride and her taste had she been able to attend to them, and forgot the dulness of the scene in her anxiety to seek sympathy and counsel in the only quarter where she cared for it. She went mechanically through her duties as lady of the house, talking commonplace subjects dreamily to Dr. May, and scarcely even giving herself the trouble to be brief with Mr. Anderson, who was on her other side at dinner. In the drawing-room, she left the other ladies to their own devices in her eagerness to secure a few minutes with Ethel May, and disabuse her of whatever Mrs. Ledwich or Mrs. Pugh might have said. Ethel had been more hopeful before she heard the true version; she had hitherto allowed much for Mrs. Ledwich's embellishments; and she was shocked and took shame to her own guiltless head for Gertrude's thoughtlessness. 'Oh no!' said Averil, 'there was nothing that any one need have minded, if Henry had waited for explanation! And now, will you get Dr. May to speak to him? If he only knew how people would think of his treating Leonard so, I am sure he would not do it.' 'He cannot!' said Ethel. 'Don't you know what he thinks of it himself? He said to papa last year that your father would as soon have sent Leonard to the hulks as to the Vintry Mill.' 'Oh, I am so glad some one heard him. He would care about having that cast up against him, if he cared for nothing else.' 'It must have been a mere threat. Leonard surely has only to ask his pardon.' 'No, indeed, not again, Miss May!' said Averil. 'Leonard asked once, and was refused, and cannot ask again. No, the only difficulty is whether he ought not to keep to his word, and go to the mill if he does not get the Randall.' 'Did he say he would?' 'Of course he did, when Henry threatened him with it, and talked of the burden of his maintenance! He said, "Very well, I will," and he means it!' 'He will not mean it when the spirit of repentance has had time to waken.' 'He will take nothing that is grudged him,' said Averil. 'Oh! is it not hard that I cannot get at my own money, and send him at once to Cambridge, and never ask Henry for another farthing?' 'Nay, Averil; I think you can do a better part by trying to make them forgive one another.' Averil had no notion of Leonard's again abasing himself, and though she might try to bring Henry to reason by reproaches, she would not persuade. She wished her guest had been the sympathizing Mary rather than Miss May, who was sure to take the part of the elder and the authority. Repentance! Forgiveness! If Miss May should work on Leonard to sue for pardon and toleration, and Mrs. Pugh should intercede with Henry to take him into favour, she had rather he were at the Vintry Mill at once in his dignity, and Henry be left to his disgrace. Ethel thought of Dr. Spencer's words on the beach at Coombe, 'Never threaten Providence!' She longed to repeat them to Leonard, as she watched his stern determined face, and the elaborately quiet motions that spoke of a fixed resentful purpose; but to her disappointment and misgiving, he gave her no opportunity, and for the first time since their sea-side intercourse, held aloof from her. Nor did she see him again during the week that intervened before the decision of the scholarship, though three days of it were holidays. Aubrey, whom she desired to bring him in after the rifle drill, reported that he pronounced himself sorry to refuse, but too busy to come in, and he seemed to be cramming with fiery vehemence for the mere chance of success. The chance was small. The only hope lay in the possibility of some hindrance preventing the return of either Forder or Folliot; and in the meantime the Mays anxiously thought over Leonard's prospects. His remaining at home was evidently too great a trial for both brothers, and without a scholarship he could not go to the University. The evils of the alternative offered by his brother were duly weighed by the Doctor and Ethel with an attempt to be impartial. Mr. Axworthy, though the mill was the centre of his business, was in fact a corn merchant of considerable wealth, and with opportunities of extending his connection much farther. Had his personal character been otherwise, Dr. May thought a young man could not have a better opening than a seat in his office, and the future power of taking shares in his trade; there need be no loss of position, and there was great likelihood both of prosperity and the means of extensive usefulness. Ethel sighed at the thought of the higher aspirations that she had fostered till her own mind was set on them. 'Nay,' said the Doctor, 'depend upon it, the desk is admirable training for good soldiers of the Church. See the fearful evil that befalls great schemes intrusted to people who cannot deal with money matters; and see, on the other hand, what our merchants and men of business have done for the Church, and do not scorn "the receipt of custom."' 'But the man, papa!' 'Yes, there lies the hitch! If Leonard fails, I can lay things before Henry, such as perhaps he may be too young to know, and which must change his purpose.' Mr. Axworthy's career during his youth and early manhood was guessed at rather than known, but even since his return and occupation of the Vintry Mill, his vicious habits had scandalized the neighbourhood, and though the more flagrant of these had been discontinued as he advanced in age, there was no reason to hope that he had so much 'left off his sins, as that his sins had left him off.' His great-nephew, who lived with him and assisted in his business, was a dashing sporting young man of no good character, known to be often intoxicated, and concerned in much low dissipation, and as dangerous an associate as could be conceived for a high-spirited lad like Leonard. Dr. May could not believe that any provocation of temper, any motive of economy, any desire to be rid of encumbrances to his courtship, could induce a man with so much good in him, as there certainly was in Henry Ward, to expose his orphan brother to such temptations; and he only reserved his remonstrance in the trust that it would not be needed, and the desire to offer some better alternative of present relief. One of the examiners was Norman's old school and college friend, Charles Cheviot, now a clergyman and an under-master at one of the great schools recently opened for the middle classes, where he was meeting with great success, and was considered a capital judge of boys' characters. He was the guest of the Mays during the examination; and though his shy formal manner, and convulsive efforts at young lady talk, greatly affronted Gertrude, the brothers liked him. He was in consternation at the decline of Stoneborough school since Mr. Wilmot had ceased to be an under-master; the whole tone of the school had degenerated, and it was no wonder that the Government inquiries were ominously directed in that quarter. Scholarship was at a low ebb, Dr. Hoxton seemed to have lost what power of teaching he had ever possessed, and as Dr. May observed, the poor old school was going to the dogs. But even in the present state of things, Leonard had no chance of excelling his competitors. His study, like theirs, had been mere task-work, and though he showed more native power than the rest, yet perhaps this had made the mere learning by rote even more difficult to an active mind full of inquiry. He was a whole year younger than any other who touched the foremost ranks, two years younger than several; and though he now and then showed a feverish spark of genius, reminding Mr. Cheviot of Norman in his famous examination, it was not sustained--there were will and force, but not scholarship--and besides, there was a wide blurred spot in his memory, as though all the brain-work of the quarter before his illness had been confused, and had not yet become clear. There was every likelihood that a few years would make him superior to the chosen Randall scholar, but at present his utmost efforts did not even place him among the seven whose names appeared honourably in the newspaper. It was a failure; but Mr. Cheviot had become much interested in the boy for his own sake, as well as from what he heard from the Mays, and he strongly advised that Leonard should at Easter obtain employment for a couple of years at the school in which he himself was concerned. He would thus be maintaining himself, and pursuing his own studies under good direction, so as to have every probability of success in getting an open scholarship at one of the Universities. Nothing could be better, and there was a perfect jubilee among the Mays at the proposal. Aubrey was despatched as soon as breakfast was over to bring Leonard to talk it over, and Dr. May undertook to propound it to Henry on meeting him at the hospital; but Aubrey came back looking very blank--Leonard had started of his own accord that morning to announce to his uncle his acceptance of a clerk's desk at the Vintry Mill! Averil followed upon Aubrey's footsteps, and arrived while the schoolroom was ringing with notes of vexation and consternation. She was all upon the defensive. She said that not a word had passed on the subject since the dinner-party, and there had not been a shadow of a dispute between the brothers; in fact, she evidently was delighted with Leonard's dignified position and strength of determination, and thought this expedition to the Vintry Mill a signal victory. When she heard what the Mays had to propose, she was enchanted, she had no doubt of Henry's willing consent, and felt that Leonard's triumph and independence were secured without the sacrifice of prospects, which she had begun to regard as a considerable price for his dignity. But Dr. May was not so successful with Henry Ward. He did not want to disoblige his uncle, who had taken a fancy to Leonard, and might do much for the family; he thought his father would have changed his views of the uncle and nephew had he known them better, he would not accept the opinion of a stranger against people of his own family, and he had always understood the position of an usher to be most wretched, nor would he perceive the vast difference between the staff of the middle school and of the private commercial academy. He evidently was pleased to stand upon his rights, to disappoint Dr. May, and perhaps to gratify his jealousy by denying his brother a superior education. Yet in spite of this ebullition, which had greatly exasperated Dr. May, there was every probability that Henry's consent might be wrung out or dispensed with, and plans of attack were being arranged at the tea-table, when a new obstacle in the shape of a note from Leonard himself. 'My Dear Aubrey, 'I am very much obliged to Dr. May and Mr. Cheviot for their kind intentions; but I have quite settled with Mr. Axworthy, and I enter on my new duties next week. I am sorry to leave our corps, but it is too far off, and I must enter the Whitford one. 'Yours, 'L. A. Ward.' 'The boy is mad with pride and temper,' said the Doctor. 'And his sister has made him so,' added Ethel. 'Shall I run down to Bankside and tell him it is all bosh?' said Aubrey, jumping up. 'I don't think that is quite possible under Henry's very nose,' said Ethel. 'Perhaps they will all be tamer by to-morrow, now they have blown their trumpets; but I am very much vexed.' 'And really,' added Mr. Cheviot, 'if he is so wrong-headed, I begin to doubt if I could recommend him.' 'You do not know how he has been galled and irritated,' said the general voice. 'I wonder what Mrs. Pugh thinks of it,' presently observed the Doctor. 'Ah!' said Ethel, 'Mrs. Pugh is reading "John of Anjou".' 'Indeed!' said the Doctor; 'I suspected the wind was getting into that quarter. Master Henry does not know his own interest: she was sure to take part with a handsome lad.' 'Why have you never got Mrs. Pugh to speak for him?' said Mary. 'I am sure she would.' 'O, Mary! simple Mary, you to be Ave's friend, and not know that her interposition is the only thing wanting to complete the frenzy of the other two!' Ethel said little more that evening, she was too much grieved and too anxious. She was extremely disappointed in Leonard, and almost hopeless as to his future. She saw but one chance of preventing his seeking this place of temptation, and that was in the exertion of her personal influence. His avoidance of her showed that he dreaded it, but one attempt must be made. All night was spent in broken dreams of just failing to meet him, or of being unable to utter what was on her tongue; and in her waking moments she almost reproached herself for the discovery how near her heart he was, and how much pleasure his devotion had given her. Nothing but resolution on her own part could bring about a meeting, and she was resolute. She stormed the castle in person, and told Averil she must speak to Leonard. Ave was on her side now, and answered with tears in her eyes that she should be most grateful to have Leonard persuaded out of this dreadful plan, and put in the way of excelling as he ought to do; she never thought it would come to this. 'No,' thought Ethel; 'people blow sparks without thinking they may burn a house down.' Ave conducted her to the summer-house, where Leonard was packing up his fossils. He met them with a face resolutely bent on brightness. 'I am to take all my household gods,' he said, as he shook hands with Ethel. 'I see,' said Ethel, gravely; and as Averil was already falling out of hearing, she added, 'I thought you were entirely breaking with your old life.' 'No, indeed,' said Leonard, turning to walk with her in the paths; 'I am leaving the place where it is most impossible to live in.' 'This has been a place of great, over-great trial, I know,' said Ethel, 'but I do not ask you to stay in it.' 'My word is my word,' said Leonard, snapping little boughs off the laurels as he walked. 'A hasty word ought not to be kept.' His face looked rigid, and he answered not. 'Leonard,' she said, 'I have been very unhappy about you, for I see you doing wilfully wrong, and entering a place of temptation in a dangerous spirit.' 'I have given my word,' repeated Leonard. 'O, Leonard, it is pride that is speaking, not the love of truth and constancy.' 'I never defend myself,' said Leonard. Ethel felt deeply the obduracy and pride of these answers; her eyes filled with tears, and her hopes failed. Perhaps Leonard saw the pain he was giving, for he softened, and said, 'Miss May, I have thought it over, and I cannot go back. I know I was carried away by passion at the first moment, and I was willing to make amends. I was rejected, as you know. Was it fit that we should go on living together?' 'I do not ask you to live together.' 'When he reproached me with the cost of my maintenance, and threatened me with the mill if I lost the scholarship, which he knew I could not get, I said I would abide by those words. I do abide by them.' 'There is no reason that you should. Why should you give up all your best and highest hopes, because you cannot forgive your brother?' 'Miss May, if I lived with you and the Doctor, I could have such aims. Henry has taken care to make them sacrilege for me. I shall never be fit now, and there's an end of it.' 'You might--' 'No, no, no! A school, indeed! I should be dismissed for licking the boys before a week was out! Besides, I want the readiest way to get on in the world; I must take care of my sisters; I don't trust one moment to Henry's affection for any of them. This is no home for me, and it soon may be no home for them!' and the boy's eyes were full of tears, though his voice struggled for firmness and indifference. 'I am very sorry for you, Leonard,' said Ethel, much more affectionately, as she felt herself nearer her friend of Coombe. 'I am glad you have some better motives, but I do not see how you will be more able to help them in this way.' 'I shall be near them,' said Leonard; 'I can watch over them. And if--if--it is true what they say about Henry and Mrs. Pugh--then they could have a cottage near the mill, and I could live with them. Don't you see, Miss May?' 'Yes; but I question whether, on further acquaintance, you will wish for your sisters to be with their relations there. The other course would put you in the way of a better atmosphere for them.' 'But not for six years,' said Leonard. 'No, Miss May; to show you it is not what you think in me, I will tell you that I had resolved the last thing to ask Henry's pardon for my share in this unhappy half-year; but this is the only resource for me or my sisters, and my mind is made up.' 'O, Leonard, are you not deceiving yourself? Are the grapes ever so sour, or the nightshade below so sweet, as when the fox has leapt too short, and is too proud to climb?' 'Nightshade! Why, pray?' 'My father would tell you; I know he thinks your cousin no safe companion.' 'I know that already, but I can keep out of his way.' 'Then this is the end of it,' said Ethel, feeling only half justified in going so far, 'the end of all we thought and talked of at Coombe!' There was a struggle in the boy's face, and she did not know whether she had touched or angered him. 'I can't help it,' he said, as if he would have recalled his former hardness; but then softening, 'No, Miss May, why should it be? A man can do his duty in any state of life.' 'In any state of life where God has placed him; but how when it is his own self-will?' 'There are times when one must judge for one's self.' 'Very well, then, I have done, Leonard. If you can conscientiously feel that you are acting for the best, and not to gratify your pride, then I can only say I hope you will be helped through the course you have chosen. Good-bye.' 'But--Miss May--though I cannot take your advice--' he hesitated, 'this is not giving me up?' 'Never, while you let me esteem you.' 'Thank you,' he said, brightening, 'that is something to keep my head above water, even if this place were all you think it.' 'My father thinks,' said Ethel. 'I am engaged now; I cannot go back,' said Leonard. 'Thank you. Miss May.' 'Thank you for listening patiently,' said Ethel. 'Good-bye.' 'And--and,' he added earnestly, following her back to the house, 'you do not think the Coombe days cancelled?' 'If you mean my hopes of you,' said Ethel, with a swelling heart, 'as long as you do your duty--for--for the highest reason, they will only take another course, and I will try to think it the right one.' Ethel had mentally made this interview the test of her regard for Leonard. She had failed, and so had her test; her influence had not succeeded, but it had not snapped; the boy, in all his wilfulness, had been too much for her, and she could no longer condemn and throw him off! Oh! why will not the rights and wrongs of this world be more clearly divided! CHAPTER XI The stream was deeper than I thought When first I ventured here, I stood upon its sloping edge Without a rising fear.--H. BONAR It was a comfort to find that the brothers parted on good terms. The elder was beholden to the younger for the acquiescence that removed the odium of tyranny from the expulsion, and when the one great disturbance had silenced the ephemeral dissensions that had kept both minds in a constant state of irritation, Henry wanted, by kindness and consideration, to prove to himself and the world that Leonard's real interests were his sole object; and Leonard rejoiced in being at peace, so long as his pride and resolution were not sacrificed. He went off as though his employment had been the unanimous choice of the family, carrying with him his dog, his rifle, his fishing-rod, his fossils, and all his other possessions, but with the understanding that his Sundays were to be passed at home, by way of safeguard to his religion and morals, bespeaking the care and consideration of his senior, as Henry assured himself and Mrs. Pugh, and tried to persuade his sister and Dr. May. But Dr. May was more implacable than all the rest. He called Henry's action the deed of Joseph's brethren, and viewed the matter as the responsible head of a family; he had a more vivid contemporaneous knowledge of the Axworthy antecedents, and he had been a witness to Henry's original indignant repudiation of such a destiny for his brother. He was in the mood of a man whose charity had endured long, and refused to condemn, but whose condemnation, when forced from him, was therefore doubly strong. The displeasure of a loving charitable man is indeed a grave misfortune. Never had he known a more selfish and unprincipled measure, deliberately flying in the face of his parents' known wishes before they had been a year in their graves, exposing his brother to ruinous temptation with his eyes open. The lad was destroyed body and soul, as much as if he had been set down in Satan's own clutches; and if they did not mind what they were about, he would drag Aubrey after him! As sure as his name was Dick May, he would sooner have cut his hand off than have sent the boys to Coombe together, could he have guessed that this was to be the result. Such discourses did not tend to make Ethel comfortable. If she had been silly enough to indulge in a dream of her influence availing to strengthen Leonard against temptation, she must still have refrained from exerting it through her wonted medium, since it was her father's express desire that Aubrey, for his own sake, should be detached from his friend as much as possible. Aubrey was the greatest present difficulty. Long before their illness the boys had been the resource of each other's leisure, and Coombe had made their intimacy a friendship of the warmest nature. Aubrey was at an age peculiarly dependent on equal companionship, and in the absence of his brothers, the loss of his daily intercourse with Leonard took away all the zest of life. Even the volunteer practice lost its charm without the rival with whom he chiefly contended, yet whose success against others was hotter to him than his own; his other occupations all wanted partnership, and for the first time in his life he showed weariness and contempt of his sisters' society and pursuits. He rushed off on Sunday evenings for a walk with Leonard; and though Dr. May did not interfere, the daughters saw that the abstinence was an effort of prudence, and were proportionately disturbed when one day at dinner, in his father's absence, Aubrey, who had been overlooking his fishing-flies with some reviving interest, refused all his sisters' proposals for the afternoon, and when they represented that it was not a good fishing-day, owned that it was not, but that he was going over to consult Leonard Ward about some gray hackles. 'But you mustn't, Aubrey,' cried Gertrude, aghast. Aubrey made her a low mocking bow. 'I am sure papa would be very much vexed,' added she, conclusively. 'I believe it was luckless Hal that the mill-wheel tore in your nursery rhymes, eh, Daisy,' said Aubrey. 'Nursery rhymes, indeed!' returned the offended young lady; 'you know it is a very wicked place, and papa would be very angry at your going there.' She looked at Ethel, extremely shocked at her not having interfered, and disregarding all signs to keep silence. 'Axworthy--worthy of the axe,' said Aubrey, well pleased to retort a little teasing by the way; 'young Axworthy baiting the trap, and old Axworthy sitting up in his den to grind the unwary limb from limb!' 'Ethel, why don't you tell him not?' exclaimed Gertrude. 'Because he knows papa's wishes as well as I do,' said Ethel; 'and it is to them that he must attend, not to you or me.' Aubrey muttered something about his father having said nothing to him; and Ethel succeeded in preventing Daisy from resenting this answer. She herself hoped to catch him in private, but he easily contrived to baffle this attempt, and was soon marching out of Stoneborough in a state of rampant independence, manhood, and resolute friendship, which nevertheless chose the way where he was least likely to encounter a little brown brougham. Otherwise he might have reckoned three and a half miles of ploughed field, soppy lane, and water meadow, as more than equivalent to five miles of good turnpike road. Be that as it might, he was extremely glad when, after forcing his way through a sticky clayey path through a hazel copse, his eye fell on a wide reach of meadow land, the railroad making a hard line across it at one end, and in the midst, about half a mile off, the river meandering like a blue ribbon lying loosely across the green flat, the handsome buildings of the Vintry Mill lying in its embrace. Aubrey knew the outward aspect of the place, for the foreman at the mill was a frequent patient of his father's, and he had often waited in the old gig at the cottage door at no great distance; but he looked with more critical eyes at the home of his friend. It was a place with much capacity, built, like the Grange, by the monks of the convent, which had been the germ of the cathedral, and showing the grand old monastic style in the solidity of its stone barns and storehouses, all arranged around a court, whereof the dwelling-house occupied one side, the lawn behind it with fine old trees, and sloping down to the water, which was full of bright ripples after its agitation around the great mill-wheel. The house was of more recent date, having been built by a wealthy yeoman of Queen Anne's time, and had long ranges of square-headed sash windows, surmounted by a pediment, carved with emblems of Ceres and Bacchus, and a very tall front door, also with a pediment, and with stone stops leading up to it. Of the same era appeared to be the great gateway, and the turret above it, containing a clock, the hands of which pointed to 3.40. Aubrey had rather it had been four, at which time the office closed. He looked round the court, which seemed very dean and rather empty--stables, barns, buildings, and dwelling-house not showing much sign of life, excepting the ceaseless hum and clack of the mill, and the dash of the water which propelled it. The windows nearest to him were so large and low, that he could look in and see that the first two or three belonged to living rooms, and the next two showed him business fittings, and a back that he took to be Leonard's; but he paused in doubt how to present himself, and whether this were a welcome moment, and he was very glad to see in a doorway of the upper story of the mill buildings, the honest floury face of his father's old patient--the foreman. Greeting him in the open cordial way common to all Dr. May's children, Aubrey was at once recognized, and the old man came down a step-ladder in the interior to welcome him, and answer his question where he should find Mr. Ward. 'He is in the office, sir, there, to the left hand as you go in at the front door, but--' and he looked up at the clock, 'maybe, you would not mind waiting a bit till it strikes four. I don't know whether master might be best pleased at young gentlemen coming to see him in office hours.' 'Thank you,' said Aubrey. 'I did not mean to be too soon, Hardy, but I did not know how long the walk would be.' Perhaps it would have been more true had he said that he had wanted to elude his sisters, but he was glad to accept a seat on a bundle of sacks tremulous with the motion of the mill, and to enter into a conversation with the old foreman, one of those good old peasants whose integrity and skill render them privileged persons, worth their weight in gold long after their bodily strength has given way. 'Well, Hardy, do you mean to make a thorough good miller of Mr. Ward?' 'Bless you, Master May, he'll never stay here long enough.' 'Why not?' 'No, nor his friends didn't ought to let him stay!' added Hardy. 'Why?' said Aubrey. 'Do you think so badly of your own trade, Hardy?' But he could not get an answer from the oracle on this head. Hardy continued, 'He's a nice young gentleman, but he'll never put up with it.' 'Put up with what?' asked Aubrey, anxiously; but at that instant a carter appeared at the door with a question for Master Hardy, and Aubrey was left to his own devices, and the hum and clatter of the mill, till the clock had struck four; and beginning to think that Hardy had forgotten him, he was about to set out and reconnoitre, when to his great joy Leonard himself came hurrying up, and heartily shook him by the hand. 'Hardy told me you were here,' he said. 'Well done, old fellow, I didn't think they would have let you come and see me.' 'The girls did make a great row about it,' said Aubrey, triumphantly, 'but I was not going to stand any nonsense.' Leonard looked a little doubtful; then said, 'Well, will you see the place, or come and sit in my room? There is the parlour, but we shall not be so quiet there.' Aubrey decided for Leonard's room, and was taken through the front door into a vestibule paved with white stone, with black lozenges at the intersections. 'There,' said Leonard, 'the office is here, you see, and my uncle's rooms beyond, all on the ground floor, he is too infirm to go up-stairs. This way is the dining-room, and Sam has got a sitting-room beyond, then there are the servants' rooms. It is a great place, and horridly empty.' Aubrey thought so, as his footsteps echoed up the handsome but ill-kept stone staircase, with its fanciful balusters half choked with dust, and followed Leonard along a corridor, with deep windows overlooking the garden and river, and great panelled doors opposite, neither looking as if they were often either cleaned or opened, and the passage smelling very fusty. 'Pah!' said Aubrey; 'it puts me in mind of the wings of houses in books that get shut up because somebody has been murdered! Are you sure it is not haunted, Leonard?' 'Only by the rats,' he answered, laughing; 'they make such an intolerable row, that poor little Mab is frightened out of her wits, and I don't know whether they would not eat her up if she did not creep up close to me. I'm tired of going at them with the poker, and would poison every man Jack of them if it were not for the fear of her getting the dose by mistake.' 'Is that what Hardy says you will never put up with?' asked Aubrey; but instead of answering, Leonard turned to one of the great windows, saying, 'There now, would not this be a charming place if it were properly kept?' and Aubrey looked out at the great cedar, spreading out its straight limbs and flakes of dark foliage over the sloping lawn, one branch so near the window as to invite adventurous exits, and a little boat lying moored in the dancing water below. 'Perfect!' said Aubrey. 'What fish there must lie in the mill tail!' 'Ay, I mean to have a try at them some of these days, I should like you to come and help, but perhaps--Ha, little Mab, do you wonder what I'm after so long? Here's a friend for you: as the little dog danced delighted round him, and paid Aubrey her affectionate respects. Her delicate drawing-room beauty did not match with the spacious but neglected-looking room whence she issued. It had three great uncurtained windows looking into the court, with deep window-seats, olive-coloured painted walls, the worse for damp and wear, a small amount of old-fashioned solid furniture, and all Leonard's individual goods, chiefly disposed of in a cupboard in the wall, but Averil's beautiful water-coloured drawings hung over the chimney. To Aubrey's petted home-bred notions it was very bare and dreary, and he could not help exclaiming, 'Well, they don't lodge you sumptuously!' 'I don't fancy many clerks in her Majesty's dominions have so big and airy an apartment to boast of,' said Leonard. 'Let's see these flies of yours.' Their mysteries occupied the boys for some space; but Aubrey returned to the charge. 'What is it that Hardy says you'll never put up with, Leonard?' 'What did the old fellow say?' asked Leonard, laughing; and as Aubrey repeated the conversation, ending with the oracular prediction, he laughed again, but said proudly, 'He'll see himself wrong then. I'll put up with whatever I've undertaken.' 'But what does he mean?' 'Serving one's apprenticeship, I suppose,' said Leonard; 'they all think me a fine gentleman, and above the work, I know, though I've never stuck at anything yet. If I take to the business, I suppose it is capable of being raised up to me--it need not pull me down to it, eh?' 'There need be no down in the case,' said Aubrey. 'My father always says there is no down except in meanness and wrong. But,' as if that mention brought a recollection to his mind, 'what o'clock is it? I must not stay much longer.' 'I'll walk a bit of the way home with you,' said Leonard, 'but I must be back by five for dinner. I go to rifle practice two days in the week, and I don't like to miss the others, for Sam's often out, and the poor old man does not like being left alone at meals.' The two boys were at the room door, when Aubrey heard a step, felt the fustiness enlivened by the odour of a cigar, and saw a figure at the top of the stairs. 'I say, Ward,' observed Mr. Sam, in a rude domineering voice, 'Spelman's account must be all looked over to-night; he says that there is a blunder. D'ye hear?' 'Very well.' 'Who have you got there?' 'It is Aubrey May.' 'Oh! good morning to you,' making a kind of salutation; 'have you been looking at the water? We've got some fine fish there, if you like to throw a line any day.--Well, that account must be done to-night, and if you can't find the error, you'll only have to do it over again.' Leonard's colour had risen a good deal, but he said nothing, and his cousin ran down-stairs and drove off in his dog-cart. 'Is it much of a business?' said Aubrey, feeling extremely indignant. 'Look here,' said Leonard, leading the way down-stairs and into the office, where he pointed to two huge account books. 'Every page in that one must I turn over this blessed night; and if he had only told me three hours ago, I could have done the chief of it, instead of kicking my heels all the afternoon.' 'Has he any right to order you about, out of office hours, and without a civil word either? Why do you stand it?' 'Because I can stand anything better than being returned on Henry's hands,' said Leonard, 'and he has spite enough for that. The thing must be done, and if he won't do it, I must, that's all. Come along.' As they went out the unwieldy figure of the elder Mr. Axworthy was seen, leaning out of his open window, smoking a clay pipe. He spoke in a much more friendly tone, as he said, 'Going out, eh? Mind the dinner-time.' 'Yes, sir,' said Leonard, coming nearer, 'I'm not going far.' 'Who have you got there?' was again asked. 'One of the young Mays, sir. I was going to walk part of the way back.' Aubrey thought the grunt not very civil; and as the boys and Mab passed under the gateway, Leonard continued, 'There's not much love lost between him and your father; he hates the very name.' 'I should expect he would,' said Aubrey, as if his hatred were an honour. 'I fancy there's some old grievance,' said Leonard, 'where he was wrong of course. Not that that need hinder your coming over, Aubrey; I've a right to my own friends, but--' 'And so have I to mine,' said Aubrey eagerly. 'But you see,' added Leonard, 'I wouldn't have you do it--if--if it vexes your sister. I can see you every Sunday, you know, and we can have some fun together on Saturdays when the evenings get longer.' Aubrey's face fell; he had a strong inclination for Leonard's company, and likewise for the trout in the mill tail, and he did not like his independence to be unappreciated. 'You see,' said Leonard, laying his hand kindly on his shoulder, 'it is very jolly of you, but I know they would hate it in the High Street if you were often here, and it is not worth that. Besides, Aubrey, to tell the plain truth, Sam's not fit company for any decent fellow.' 'I can't think how he came to ask me to fish.' 'Just to show he is master, because he knew the poor old man would not like it! It is one reason he is so savage with me, because his uncle took me without his consent.' 'But, Leonard, it must be worse than the living at home ever was.' Leonard laughed. 'It's different being jawed in the way of business and at one's own home. I'd go through a good deal more than I do here in the week to have home what it is now on Sunday. Why, Henry really seems glad to see me, and we have not had the shadow of a row since I came over here. Don't you tell Ave all this, mind, and you may just as well not talk about it at home, you know, or they will think I'm going to cry off.' Aubrey was going to ask what he looked to; but Leonard saw, or thought he saw, a weasel in the hedge, and the consequent charge and pursuit finished the dialogue, the boys parted, and Aubrey walked home, his satisfaction in his expedition oozing away at every step, though his resolve to assert his liberty grew in proportion. Of course it had not been possible to conceal from Dr. May where Aubrey was gone, and his annoyance had burst out vehemently, the whole round of objurgations against the Wards, the Vintry Mill, and his own folly in fostering the friendship, were gone through, and Ethel had come in for more than she could easily bear, for not having prevented the escapade. Gertrude had hardly ever seen her father so angry, and sat quaking for her brother; and Ethel meekly avoided answering again, with the happy trustfulness of experienced love. At last, as the tea was nearly over, Aubrey walked in, quite ready for self-defence. Nobody spoke for a little while, except to supply him with food; but presently Dr. May said, not at all in the tone in which he had talked of his son's journey, 'You might as well have told me of your intentions, Aubrey.' 'I didn't think they mattered to anybody,' said Aubrey; 'we generally go our own way in the afternoon.' 'Oh!' said Dr. May. 'Interference with the liberty of the subject?' Aubrey coloured, and felt he had not quite spoken truth. 'I could not give him up, father,' he said, less defiantly. 'No, certainly not; but I had rather you only saw him at home. It will be more for our peace of mind.' 'Well, father,' said Aubrey, 'I am not going there any more. He told me not himself:' and then with laughing eyes he added, 'He said you would not like it, Ethel.' 'Poor boy!' said Ethel, greatly touched. 'Very right of him,' said Dr. May, well pleased. 'He is a fine lad, and full of proper feeling. What sort of a berth has the old rogue given him, Aubrey?' Much relieved that matters had taken this course, Aubrey tried to tell only as much as his friend would approve, but the medium was not easily found, and pretty nearly the whole came out. Dr. May was really delighted to hear how Sam treated him. 'If that fellow takes the oppressive line, there may be some hope,' he said. 'His friendship is the worse danger than his enmity.' When the sisters had bidden good night, the Doctor detained Aubrey to say very kindly, 'My boy, I do not like to hear of your running counter to your sister. 'I'm not going there again,' said Aubrey, willing to escape. 'Wait a minute, Aubrey,' said Dr. May; 'I want to tell you that I feel for you in this matter more than my way of talking may have made it seem to you. I have a great regard for your friend Leonard, and think he has been scandalously used, and I don't want to lessen your attachment to him. Far be it from me to think lightly of a friendship, especially of one formed at your age. Your very name, my boy, shows that I am not likely to do that!' Aubrey smiled frankly, his offended self-assertion entirely melted. 'I know it is very hard on you, but you can understand that the very reasons that made me so averse to Leonard's taking this situation, would make me anxious to keep you away from his relations there, not necessarily from him. As long as he is what he is now, I would not lift a finger to keep you from him. Have I ever done so, Aubrey?' 'No, papa.' 'Nor will I, as long as he is what I see him now. After this, Aubrey, is it too much to ask of you to keep out of the way of the persons with whom he is thrown?' 'I will do so, papa. He wishes it himself.' Then with an effort, he added, 'I am sorry I went to-day; I ought not, but--' and he looked a little foolish. 'You did not like taking orders from the girls? No wonder, Aubrey; I have been very thankful to you for bearing it as you have done. It is the worst of home education that these spirits of manliness generally have no vent but mischief. But you are old enough now to be thankful for such a friend and adviser as Ethel, and I don't imagine that she orders you.' 'No,' said Aubrey, smiling and mumbling; 'but Daisy--' 'Oh, I can quite understand the aggravation of Daisy happening to be right; but you must really be man enough to mind your own conscience, even if Daisy is imprudent enough to enforce it.' 'It was not only that,' said Aubrey, 'but I could not have Ward thinking I turned up my nose at his having got into business.' 'No, Aubrey, he need never fancy it is the business that I object to, but the men. Make that clear to him, and ask him to this house as much as you please. The more "thorough" he is in his business, the more I shall respect him.' Aubrey smiled, and thanked his father with a cleared brow, wondering at himself for having gone without consulting him. 'Good night, my boy. May this friendship of yours be a lifelong stay and blessing to you both, even though it may cost you some pain and self-command, as all good things must, Aubrey.' That evening Ethel had been writing to Cambridge. Tom had passed his examination with great credit, and taken an excellent degree, after which he projected a tour in Germany, for which he had for some time been economizing, as a well-earned holiday before commencing his course of hospitals and lectures. Tom was no great correspondent, and had drilled his sisters into putting nothing but the essential into their letters, instead, as he said, of concealing it in flummery. This is a specimen of the way Tom liked to be written to. 'Stoneborough, Feb. 20th. 'My Dear Tom, 'Dr. Spencer says nothing answers so well as a knapsack. Get one at ----. The price is L. s. d. Order extra fittings as required, including a knife and fork. Letters from N. Z. of the 1st of November, all well. I wish Aubrey was going with you; he misses Leonard Ward so sorely, as to be tempted to follow him to the Vintry Mill. I suspect your words are coming true, and the days of petticoat government ending. However, even if he would not be in your way, he could not afford to lose six months' study before going into residence. 'Your affectionate sister, 'Etheldred May.' Tom wrote that he should spend a night in London and come home. When he came, the family exclaimed that his microscope, whose handsome case he carried in his hand, was much grown. 'And improved too, I hope' said Tom, proceeding to show off various new acquisitions and exchanges in the way of eye-pieces, lenses, and other appliances of the most expensive order, till his father exclaimed, 'Really, Tom, I wish I had the secret of your purse.' 'The fact is,' said Tom, 'that I thought more would be gained by staying at home, so I turned my travels into a binocular tube,' &C. Aubrey and Gertrude shouted that Tom certainly did love the microscope better than any earthly thing; and he coolly accepted the inference. Somewhat later, he announced that he had decided that he should be better able to profit by the London lectures and hospitals, if he first studied for half a year at the one at Stoneborough, under the direction of his father and Dr. Spencer. Dr. May was extremely gratified, and really esteemed this one of the greatest compliments his science had ever received; Dr. Spencer could not help observing, 'I did not think it was in him to do such a wise thing. I never can fathom the rogue. I hope he was not bitten during his benevolent exertions last winter.' Meantime, Tom had observed that he had time to see that Aubrey was decently prepared for Cambridge, and further promoted the boy to be his out-of-door companion, removing all the tedium and perplexity of the last few weeks, though apparently merely indulging his own inclinations. Ethel recognized the fruit of her letter, and could well forgive the extra care in housekeeping required for Tom's critical tastes, nay, the cool expulsion of herself and Gertrude from her twenty years' home, the schoolroom, and her final severance from Aubrey's studies, though at the cost of a pang that reminded her of her girlhood's sorrow at letting Norman shoot ahead of her. She gave no hint; she knew that implicit reserve was the condition of his strange silent confidence in her, and that it would be utterly forfeited unless she allowed his fraternal sacrifice to pass for mere long-headed prudence. Aubrey's Saturday and Sunday meetings with his friend were not yielded, even to Tom, who endeavoured to interfere with them, and would fain have cut the connection with the entire family, treating Miss Ward with the most distant and supercilious bows on the unpleasantly numerous occasions of meeting her in the street, and contriving to be markedly scornful in his punctilious civility to Henry Ward when they met at the hospital. His very look appeared a sarcasm, to the fancy of the Wards; and he had a fashion of kindly inquiring after Leonard, that seemed to both a deliberate reproach and insult. Disputes had become less frequent at Bankside since Leonard's departure, and few occasions of actual dissension arose; but the spirit of party was not extinguished, and the brother and sister had adopted lines that perhaps clashed less because they diverged more. Averil had, in reply to the constant exhortations to economize, resolved to decline all invitations, and this kept her constantly at home, or with her harmonium, whereas Henry made such constant engagements, that their dining together was the exception, not the rule. After conscientiously teaching her sisters in the morning, she devoted the rest of her day to their walk, and to usefulness in the parish. She liked her tasks, and would have been very happy in them, but for the constant anxiety that hung over her lest her home should soon cease to be her home. Henry's devotion to Mrs. Pugh could no longer be mistaken. The conviction of his intentions grew upon his sister, first from a mere absurd notion, banished from her mind with derision, then from a misgiving angrily silenced, to a fixed expectation, confirmed by the evident opinion of all around her, and calling for decision and self-command on her own part. Perhaps her feelings were unnecessarily strong, and in some degree unjust to Mrs. Pugh; but she had the misfortune to be naturally proud and sensitive, as well as by breeding too refined in tone for most of those who surrounded her. She had taken a personal dislike to Mrs. Pugh from the first; she regarded pretension as insincerity, and officiousness as deliberate insult, and she took the recoil of her taste for the judgment of principle. To see such a woman ruling in her mother's, her own, home would be bad enough; but to be ruled by her, and resign to her the management of the children, would be intolerable beyond measure. Too unhappy to speak of her anticipations even to Leonard or to Mary May, she merely endeavoured to throw them off from day to day, till one evening, when the days had grown so long that she could linger in the twilight in the garden before her singing practice, she was joined by Henry, with the long apprehended 'I want to speak to you, Ave.' Was it coming? Her heart beat so fast, that she could hardly hear his kind commencement about her excellent endeavours, and the house's unhappy want of a mistress, the children's advantage, and so on. She knew it could only tend to one point, and longed to have it reached and passed. Of course she would be prepared to hear who was the object of his choice, and she could not but murmur 'Yes,' and 'Well.' 'And, Ave, you will, I hope, be gratified to hear that I am not entirely rejected. The fact is, that I spoke too soon.' Averil could have jumped for joy, and was glad it was too dusk for her face to be seen. 'I do not believe that her late husband could have had any strong hold on her affections; but she has not recovered the shock of his loss, and entreated, as a favour granted to her sentiments of respect for his memory, not to hear the subject mentioned for at least another year. I am permitted to visit at the house as usual, and no difference is to be made in the terms on which we stand. Now, Ave, will you--may I ask of you, to do what you can to remove any impression that she might not be welcome in the family?' 'I never meant--' faltered Averil, checked by sincerity. 'You have always been--so--so cold and backward in cultivating her acquaintance, that I cannot wonder if she should think it disagreeable to you; but, Ave, when you consider my happiness, and the immense advantage to all of you, I am sure you will do what is in your power in my behalf.' He spoke more affectionately and earnestly than he had done for months; and Averil was touched, and felt that to hang back would be unkind. 'I will try,' she said. 'I do hope it may turn out for your happiness, Henry.' 'For all our happiness,' said Henry, walking down to the gate and along the road with her, proving all the way that he was acting solely for the good of the others, and that Averil and the children would find their home infinitely happier. A whole year--a year's reprieve--was the one thought in Averil's head, that made her listen so graciously, and answer so amiably, that Henry parted with her full of kind, warm feeling. As the sage said, who was to be beheaded if he could not in a year teach the king's ass to speak--what might not happen in a year; the king might die, the ass might die, or he might die--any way there was so much gained: and Averil, for the time, felt as light-hearted as if Mrs. Pugh had vanished into empty air. To be sure, her own life had, of late, been far from happy; but this extension of it was bailed with suppressed ecstasy--almost as an answer to her prayers. Ah, Ave, little did you know what you wished in hoping for anything to prevent the marriage! She did obey her brother so far as to call upon Mrs. Pugh, whom she found in ordinary mourning, and capless--a sign that dismayed her; but, on the other hand, the lady, though very good-natured and patronizing, entertained her with the praises of King John, and showed her a copy of Magna Charta in process of illumination. Also, during her call, Tom May walked in with a little book on drops of water; and Averil found the lady had become inspired with a microscopic furore, and was thinking of setting up a lens, and preparing objects for herself, under good tuition. Though Averil was very desirous that Mrs. Pugh should refuse her brother, yet this was the last service she wished the May family to render her. She was sure Tom May must dislike and despise the widow as much as she did; and since the whole town was unluckily aware of Henry's intentions, any interference with them was base and malicious, if in the way of mere amusement and flirtation. She was resolved to see what the game was, but only did see that her presence greatly disconcerted 'Mr. Thomas May.' Henry was wretched and irritable in the velvet paws of the widow, who encouraged him enough to give him hope, and then held him aloof, or was equally amiable to some one else. Perhaps the real interpretation was, that she loved attention. She was in all sincerity resolved to observe a proper period of widowhood, and not determined whether, when, or how, it should terminate: courtship amused her, and though attracted by Henry and his good house, the evidences of temper and harshness had made her unwilling to commit herself; besides that, she was afraid of Averil, and she was more flattered by the civilities of a lioncel like Harvey Anderson; or if she could be sure of what Mr. Thomas May's intentions were, she would have preferred an embryo physician to a full-grown surgeon--at any rate, it was right by her poor dear Mr. Pugh to wait. She need not have feared having Averil as an inmate. Averil talked it over with Leonard, and determined that no power on earth should make her live with Mrs. Pugh. If that were necessary to forward his suit, she would make it plain that she was ready to depart. 'Oh, Leonard, if my uncle were but a nice sort of person, how pleasant it would be for me and the children to live there, and keep his house; and I could make him so comfortable, and nurse him!' 'Never, Ave!' cried Leonard; 'don't let the thing be talked of.' 'Oh no, I know it would not do with Samuel there; but should we be too young for your old scheme of having a cottage together near?' 'I did not know what the Axworthys were like,' returned Leonard. 'But need we see them much?' 'I'll tell you what, Ave, I've heard them both--yes, the old man the worst of the two--say things about women that made my blood boil.' Leonard was quite red as he spoke. 'My father never let my mother see any of the concern, and now I know why. I'll never let you do so.' 'Then there is only one other thing to be done,' said Averil; 'and that is for me to go back to school as a parlour boarder, and take the children with me. It would be very good for them, and dear Mrs. Wood would be very glad to have me.' 'Yes,' said Leonard, 'that is the only right thing, Ave; and the Mays will say so, too. Have you talked it over with them!' 'No. I hate talking of this thing.' 'Well, you had better get their advice. It is the best thing going!' said Leonard, with a sigh that sounded as if he wished he had taken it. But it was not to Averil that he said so. To her he spoke brightly of serving the time for which he was bound to his uncle; then of making a fresh engagement, that would open a home to her; or, better still, suppose Sam did not wish to go on with the business, he might take it, and make the mill the lovely place it might be. It was to Aubrey May that the boy's real feelings came out, as, on the Sunday evening, they slowly wandered along the bank of the river. Aubrey had seen a specimen of his life at the mill, and had been kept up to the knowledge of its events, and he well knew that Leonard was heartily sick of it. That the occupation was uncongenial and tedious in the extreme to a boy of good ability and superior education--nay, that the drudgery was made unnecessarily oppressive, was not the point he complained of, though it was more trying than he had expected, that was the bed that he had made, and that he must lie upon. It was the suspicion of frauds and tricks of the trade, and, still worse, the company that he lived in. Sam Axworthy hated and tyrannized over him too much to make dissipation alluring; and he was only disgusted by the foul language, coarse manners, and the remains of intemperance worked on in violent temper. The old man, though helpless and past active vice, was even more coarse in mind and conversation than his nephew; and yet his feebleness, and Sam's almost savage treatment of him, enlisted Leonard's pity on his side. In general, the old man was kind to Leonard, but would abuse him roundly when the evidences of his better principles and training, or his allegiance to Dr. May, came forward, and Leonard, though greatly compassionating him, could not always bear his reproaches with patience, and was held back from more attention to him than common humanity required, by an unlucky suggestion that he was currying favour in the hope of supplanting Sam. 'Old Hardy is the only honest man in the place, I do believe,' said Leonard. 'I'll tell you what, Aubrey, I have made up my mind, there is one thing I will not do. If ever they want to make me a party to any of their cheatings, I'll be off. That window and the cedar-tree stand very handy. I've been out there to bathe in the early summer mornings, plenty of times already, so never you be surprised if some fine day you hear--non est inventus.' 'And where would you go?' 'Get up to London, and see if my quarter's salary would take me out in the steerage to some diggings or other. What would your brother say to me if I turned up at the Grange--New Zealand?' 'Say! Mention Ethel, and see what he would not say.' And the two boys proceeded to arrange the details of the evasion in such vivid colouring, that they had nearly forgotten all present troubles, above all when Leonard proceeded to declare that New Zealand was too tame and too settled for him, he should certainly find something to do in the Feejee Isles, where the high spirit of the natives, their painted visages, and marvellous head-dresses, as depicted in Captain Erskine's voyage, had greatly fired his fancy, and they even settled how the gold fields should rebuild the Market Cross. 'And when I'm gone, Aubrey, mind you see to Mab,' he said, laughing. 'Oh! I thought Mab was to act Whittington's cat.' 'I'm afraid they would eat her up; besides, there's the voyage. No, you must keep her till I come home, even if she is to end like Argus. Would you die of joy at seeing me, eh, little black neb?' CHAPTER XII Let us meet, And question this most bloody piece of work, To know it farther. Macbeth 'If you please, sir, Master Hardy from the Vintry Mill wants to see you, said a voice at Dr. May's door early in the morning; and the Doctor completed his dressing in haste, muttering to himself exclamations of concern that the old man's malady should have returned. On entering the study, Hardy's appearance, whiter than even the proverbial hue of his trade, his agitation of feature, confused eye, and trembling lip, inspired fears that the case was more alarming than had been apprehended; but to cheer him, the Doctor began, 'Frightened about yourself, Master Hardy, eh! You've come out without breakfast, and that's enough to put any man out of heart.' 'No, sir,' said the old man, 'it is nothing about myself; I wish it were no worse; but I've not got the heart to go to tell the poor young gentleman, and I thought--' 'What--what has happened to the boy?' exclaimed Dr. May, sharply, standing as if ready to receive the rifle shot which he already believed had destroyed Leonard. 'That's what we can't say, sir,' returned Hardy; 'but he is gone, no one knows where. And, sir, my poor master was found at five o'clock this morning, in his chair in his sitting-room, stone dead from a blow on the head.' 'Mind what you are saying!' shouted the Doctor passionately. 'You old scoundrel, you don't mean to tell me that you are accusing the lad!' 'I accuse nobody, sir,' said the old man, standing his ground, and speaking steadily, but respectfully, 'I wouldn't say nothing to bring any one into trouble if I could help it, and I came to ask you what was to be done.' 'Yes, yes; I beg your pardon, Hardy, but it sounded enough to overset one. Your poor master murdered, you say!' Hardy nodded assent. 'And young Ward missing? Why, the burglars must have hurt the poor fellow in defending his uncle. Have you searched the place?' 'I never thought of that, sir,' said Hardy, his countenance much relieved; 'it would be more like such a young gentleman as Mr. Ward.' 'Then we'll get over to the mill as fast as we can, and see what can be done,' said Dr. May, snatching up his hat and gloves. 'You come and walk with me to Bankside, and tell me by the way about this terrible business. Good heavens! they'll have thrown the boy into the river!' And calling out that his carriage should follow to Bankside, the Doctor dashed up-stairs, and knocked at Ethel's door. 'My dear,' he said, 'there has been a robbery or something at the Vintry Mill. I must go and see Henry Ward about it. Poor old Axworthy is murdered, and I'm terribly afraid Leonard has met with some foul play. You or Mary had better go and see about Ave presently, but don't believe a word of anything till you see me again.' And shutting the door, while Ethel felt as if the room were reeling round with her, Dr. May was in a few seconds more hastening along by Hardy's side, extracting from him the little he had to tell. The old man had been unlocking the door of the mill at five o'clock, when he was summoned by loud shrieks from the window of Mr. Axworthy's sitting-room, and found that the little maid had been appalled by the sight of her master sunk forward from his gouty chair upon the table, his hair covered with blood. Hardy had been the first to touch him, and to perceive that he had long been dead. The housekeeper, the only other servant who slept in the house, had rushed in half-dressed; but neither nephew appeared. Young Axworthy had gone the previous day to the county races, leaving the time of his return doubtful, and Leonard Ward did not answer when called. It was then found that his room was empty, his bed untouched, and the passage window outside his door left open. The terrified servants held confused consultation, and while the groom had hurried off to give the alarm at Whitford, and ride on in search of Sam Axworthy, Hardy had taken another horse and started to inform Henry Ward, but his heart failing him, he had come to beg the Doctor to break the intelligence to the family. Dr. May had few doubts that the robbers must have entered by the passage window, and meeting resistance from Leonard, must have dragged him out, and perhaps thrown him from it, then having gone on to their murderous work in the old man's sitting-room. In that great rambling house, where the maids slept afar off, and the rats held nightly gambols, strange noises were not likely to be observed; and the thought of Leonard lying stunned and insensible on the grass, made the Doctor's pace almost a run, as if he were hastening to the rescue. When Mr. Ward sent down word that he was not up, Dr. May replied that he must see him in bed, and followed upon the very heels of the messenger, encountering no amiable face, for Henry had armed himself for defence against any possible reproaches for his treatment of any patient. Even when Dr. May began, 'Henry, my poor fellow, I have frightful news for you,' his month was opening to reply, 'I knew we should lose that case,' let the patient be who he might, when the few simple words put to flight all petulant jealousy, and restored Henry Ward to what he had been when in his hour of sickness and affliction he had leant in full confidence on Dr. May's unfailing kindness. He was dressed by the time the brougham was at the door, and would have hurried off without telling his sister of the alarm; but Dr. May, knowing that the town must soon be ringing with the news, was sending him to Averil's room, when both rejoiced to see Mary enter the house. Charging her to keep Averil quiet, and believe nothing but what came from themselves, they thrust on her the terrible commission and hastened away, dwelling on the hope that every moment might be important. Old Hardy had already mounted his cart-horse, and for him farm roads so shortened the distance, that he received them at the entrance of the courtyard, which was crowded with excited gazers and important policemen. 'Found him?' was the instantaneous question of both; but Hardy shook his head so sadly, that the Doctor hastily exclaimed, 'What then?' 'Sir,' said Hardy very low, and with a deprecating look, 'he did go up by the mail train to London last night--got in at Blewer station at 12.15. They have telegraphed up, sir.' 'I'll lay my life it is all a mistake,' said Dr. May, grasping Henry's arm as if to give him support, and looking him in the face as though resolved that neither should be cast down. 'That's not all, sir,' added Hardy, still addressing himself to the elder gentleman. 'There's his rifle, sir.' 'Why, he was not shot!' sharply cried Dr. May. 'You told me so yourself.' 'No, sir; but--You'll see for yourself presently! There's the blood and gray hairs on the stock, sir.' 'Never fear, Henry; we shall see,' said Dr. May, pressing on, and adding as soon as they were out of hearing, 'Nothing those folks, even the best of them, like so well as laying on horrors thick enough.' A policeman stood at the house door to keep off idlers; but Dr. May's character and profession, as well as his municipal rank, caused way to be instantly made for them. They found a superintendent within, and he at once began, 'Most unfortunate business, Mr. Mayor--very mysterious;' then, as a sign from the Doctor made him aware of Henry Ward's near concern, he added, 'Shall I inform young Mr. Axworthy that you are here?' 'Is he come?' 'Yes, sir. He had only slept at the Three Goblets, not half a mile across the fields, you know, Mr. Mayor--came home too late to disturb the house here, slept there, and was on the spot at the first intelligence--before I was myself,' added the superintendent a little jealously. 'Where is he?' 'In his room, sir. He was extremely overcome, and retired to his room as soon as the necessary steps had been taken. Would you wish to see the room, sir? We are keeping it locked till the inquest takes place; but--' Henry asked, 'When?' his first word since his arrival, and almost inarticulate. He was answered that it would probably be at two that afternoon; the Whitford coroner had intimated that he was ready, and the down train would be in by one. A telegram had just arrived, reporting that the electric message had anticipated the mail train, and that young Mr. Ward would be brought down in time. 'Never mind, never heed, Henry,' persisted Dr. May, pressing the young man's arm as they proceeded to the door of the sitting-room; 'he must be intensely shocked, but he will explain the whole. Nay, I've no doubt we shall clear him. His rifle, indeed! I could swear to his rifle anywhere.' The superintendent had by this time opened the door of the sitting-room, communicating on one side with the office, on the other with the old man's bed-room. Except that the body had been carried to the bed in the inner chamber, all remained as it had been found. There were no signs of robbery--not even of a struggle. The cushions of the easy-chair still bore the impress of the sitter's weight; the footstool was hardly pushed aside; the massive library table was undisturbed; the silver spoons and sugar-tongs beside the tumbler and plate on the supper tray; the yellow light of the lamp still burnt; not a paper was ruffled, not a drawer pulled out. Only a rifle stood leaning against the window shutter, and towards it both friend and brother went at once, hoping and trusting that it would be a stranger to their eyes. Alas! alas! only too familiar were the rich brown mottlings of the stock, the steel mountings, the eagle crest, and twisted H. E. cipher! and in sickness of heart the Doctor could not hide from himself the dark clot of gore and the few white hairs adhering to the wood, and answering to the stain that dyed the leather of the desk. Henry could not repress an agonized groan, and averted his face; but his companion undaunted met the superintendent's eye and query, 'You know it, sir!' 'I do. It was my son-in-law's present to him. I wonder where he kept it, for the ruffians to get hold of it.' The superintendent remained civil and impassive, and no one spoke to break the deathly hush of the silent room, filled with the appliances of ordinary business life, but tainted with the awful unexplained mark that there had been the foot of the shedder of blood in silence and at unawares. The man in authority at length continued his piteous exhibition. Dr. Rankin of Whitford had arrived on the first alarm; but would not the gentlemen see the body? And he led them on, Dr. May's eyes on the alert to seize on anything exculpatory, but detecting nothing, seeing only the unwieldy helpless form and aged feeble countenance of the deceased, and receiving fresh impressions of the brutality and cowardice of the hand that could have struck the blow. He looked, examined, defined the injury, and explained that it must have caused instant death, thus hoping to divert attention from his pale horror-stricken companion, whose too apparent despondency almost provoked him. At the Doctor's request they were taken up the staircase into the corridor, and shown the window, which had been found nearly closed but not fastened, as though it had been partially shut down from the outside. The cedar bough almost brushed the glass, and the slope of turf came so high up the wall, that an active youth could easily swing himself down to it; and the superintendent significantly remarked that the punt was on the farther side of the stream, whereas the evening before it had been on the nearer. Dr. May leant out over the window-sill, still in the lingering hope of seeing--he knew not what, but he only became oppressed by the bright still summer beauty of the trees and grass and sparkling water, insensible of the horror that brooded over all. He drew back his head; and as the door hard by was opened, Leonard's little dog sprang from her basket kennel, wagging her tail in hopes of her master, but in her disappointment greeting one whom dogs always hailed as a friend, 'Poor little doggie! good little Mab! If only you could tell us!' and the creature fondly responded to his gentle hand, though keeping aloof from Henry, in mindfulness of past passages between them, while Henry could evidently not bear to look at her. They gazed round the room, but it conveyed no elucidation of the mystery. There were Leonard's books in their range on the drawers, his fossils in his cupboard, his mother's photograph on his mantel-piece, his sister's drawings on the wall. His gray uniform lay on the bed as if recently taken off, his ordinary office coat was folded on a chair, and he seemed to have dressed and gone in his best clothes. While anxiously seeking some note of explanation, they heard a step, and Sam Axworthy entered, speaking fast and low in apology for not having sooner appeared, but he had been thoroughly upset; as indeed he looked, his whole appearance betraying the disorder of the evening's dissipation, followed by the morning's shock. Most unfortunate, he said, that he had not returned earlier. His friend Black--Tom Black, of Edsall Green--had driven him home in his dog-cart, set him down at the turn to cross the fields--moon as light as day--no notion, of the lateness till he got in sight of the great clock, and saw it was half-past twelve; so knowing the early habits of the place, he had thought it best to turn back, and get a bed at the Three Goblets. If he had only come home, he might have prevented mischief! There ensued a few commonplace words on the old man's infirm state, yet his independent habits, and reluctance to let any servant assist him, or even sleep near him. Sam spoke as if in a dream, and was evidently so unwell, that Dr. May thought it charitable to follow the dictates of his own disgust at breaking bread in that house of horrors, and refuse offers of breakfast. He said he must go home, but would return for the inquest, and asked whether Henry would remain to meet his brother. 'No, no, thank you,' said Henry huskily, as with the driest of throats, and a perceptible shudder, he turned to go away; the Doctor pausing to caress little Mab, and say, 'I had better take home this poor little thing. She may come to harm here, and may be a comfort to the sister.' No objection came from Sam, but Mab herself ran back to her house, and even snarled at the attempt to detach her from it. 'You are a faithful little beast,' he said, 'and your master will soon be here to set all straight, so I will leave you for the present;' and therewith he signed farewell, and breathed more freely as he gained the outer air. 'I'll tell you what, Henry,' he said, as they drove out of the courtyard, 'we'll bring out Bramshaw to watch the case. He will see through this horrible mystery, and throw the suspicion in the right quarter, whatever that may be, depend upon it.' Henry had thrown himself back in the carriage with averted face, and only answered by a groan. 'Come, don't be so downcast,' said Dr. May; 'it is a frightful affair, no doubt, and Leonard has chosen a most unlucky moment for this escapade; but he will have a thorough warning against frolics.' 'Frolics indeed!' said Henry, bitterly. 'Well, I'll be bound that's all he has attempted, and it has got him into a horrid scrape; and ten to one but the police have got the real ruffians in their hands by this time.' 'I have no hope,' said Henry. 'More shame for you not to feel a certain confidence that He who sees all will show the right.' 'If!' said Henry, breaking off with a sound and look of such intense misery as almost to stagger the Doctor himself, by reminding him of Leonard's violent temper, and the cause Henry had to remember his promptness of hand; but that Ethel's pupil, Aubrey's friend, the boy of ingenuous face, could under any provocation strike helpless old age, or, having struck, could abscond without calling aid, actuated by terror, not by pity or repentance, was more than Dr. May could believe, and after brief musing, he broke out in indignant refutation. 'I should have thought so. I wish I still could believe so' sighed Henry; 'but--' and there they lapsed into silence, till, as they came near the town, Dr. May offered to set him down at Bankside. 'No! no, thank you,' he cried in entreaty. 'I cannot see her--Ave.' 'Then come home with me. You shall see no one, and you will look up when you are not faint and fasting. You young men don't stand up against these things like us old stagers.' As the carriage stopped, several anxious faces were seen on the watch, but the Doctor signed them back till he had deposited Henry in his study, and then came among them. Gertrude was the first to speak. 'O, papa, papa, what is it! Mrs. Pugh has been here to ask, and Ethel won't let me hear, though Tom and Aubrey know.' 'I took refuge in your order to believe nothing till you came,' said Ethel, with hands tightly clasped together. 'It is true, then?' asked Tom. 'True that it looks as bad as bad can be,' said the Doctor, sighing heavily, and proceeding to state the aspect of the case. 'It is a trick--a plot,' cried Aubrey passionately; 'I know it is! He always said he would run away if they tried to teach him dishonesty; and now they have done this and driven him away, and laid the blame on him. Ethel, why don't you say you are sure of it?' 'Leonard would be changed indeed if this were so,' said Ethel, trembling as she stood, and hardly able to speak articulately. Aubrey broke out with a furious 'If,' very different from Henry Ward's. 'It would not be the Leonard we knew at Coombe,' said Ethel. 'He might be blind with rage, but he would never be cowardly. No. Unless he own it, nothing shall ever make me believe it.' 'Own it! For shame, Ethel,' cried Aubrey. And even the Doctor exclaimed, 'You are as bad as poor Henry himself, who has not got soul enough to be capable of trusting his brother.' 'I do trust,' said Ethel, looking up. 'I shall trust his own word,' and she sat down without speaking, and knitted fast, but her needles clattered. 'And how about that poor girl at Bankside?' said the Doctor. 'I went down there,' said Tom, 'just to caution the servants against bringing in stories. She found out I was there, and I had to go in and make the best of it.' 'And what sort of a best?' said the Doctor. 'Why, she knew he used to get out in the morning to bathe, and was persuaded he had been drowned; so I told her I knew he was alive and well, and she would hear all about it when you came back. I brought the youngest child away with me, and Gertrude has got her up-stairs; the other would not come. Poor thing! Mary says she is very good and patient; and I must say she was wonderfully reasonable when I talked to her.' 'Thank you, Tom,' said his father with warmth, 'it was very kind of you. I wonder if Ave knew anything of this runaway business; it might be the saving of him!' 'I did,' said Aubrey eagerly; 'at least, I know he said he would not stay if they wanted to put him up to their dishonest tricks; and he talked of that very window!' 'Yes, you imprudent fellow; and you were telling Mrs. Pugh so, if I hadn't stopped you,' said Tom. 'You'll be taken up for an accomplice next, if you don't hold your tongue.' 'What did he say?' asked the Doctor, impatiently; and then declared that he must instantly go to Bankside, as soon as both he and Henry had taken some food; 'for,' he added, 'we are both too much shaken to deal rationally with her.' Ethel started up in shame and dismay at having neglected to order anything. The Doctor was served in the study alone with Henry, and after the briefest meal, was on his way to Bankside. He found Averil with the crimson cheek and beseeching eye that he knew so well, as she laid her trembling hand on his, and mutely looked up like a dumb creature awaiting a blow. 'Yes, my dear,' he said, tenderly, 'your brother needs prayer such as when we watched him last year, he is in peril of grave suspicion.' And as she stood waiting and watching for further explanation, he continued, 'My dear, he told you everything. You do not know of any notion of his of going away, or going out without leave?' 'Why is Leonard to be always suspected of such things?' cried Averil. 'He never did them!' 'Do you know?' persisted Dr. May. 'But you are mayor!' cried Averil, indignantly, withdrawing her hand. 'You want me to accuse him!' 'My dear, if I were ten times mayor, it would make no difference. My jurisdiction does not even cross the river here; and if it did, this is a graver case than I deal with. I am come, as his friend, to beg you to help me to account for his unhappy absence in any harmless way. Were it ever so foolish or wrong, it would be the best news that ever I heard.' 'But--but I can't,' said Averil. 'I never knew he was going out! I know he used to get out at the passage window to bathe and fish before the house was astir--and--you know he is safe, Dr. May?' Dr. May would almost sooner have known that he was at the bottom of the deepest pool in the river, than where he was. 'He is safe, my poor child. He is well, and I trust he will be able to prove his innocence; but he must so account for his absence as to clear himself. Averil, there is a charge against him--of being concerned in your uncle's death.' Averil's eyes dilated, and she breathed short and fast, standing like a statue. Little Minna, whom the Doctor had scarcely perceived, standing in a dark corner, sprang forward, exclaiming, 'O, Ave, don't be afraid! Nobody can hurt him for what he did not do!' The words roused Averil, and starting forward, she cried, 'Dr. May, Dr. May, you will save him! He is fatherless and motherless, and his brother has always been harsh to him; but you will not forsake him; you said you would be a father to us! Oh, save Leonard!' 'My dear, as I would try to save my own son, I will do my utmost for him; but little or nothing depends on me or on any man. By truth and justice he must stand or fall; and you must depend on the Father of the fatherless, who seeth the truth! as this dear child tells you,' with his hand on Minna's head, 'he cannot be really injured while he is innocent.' Awed into calm, Averil let him seat her beside him, and put her in possession of the main facts of the case, Minna standing by him, her hand in his, evidently understanding and feeling all that passed. Neither could throw light on anything. Leonard had been less communicative to them than to Aubrey, and had kept his resolution of uncomplainingly drinking the brewst he had brewed for himself. All Averil could tell was, that her uncle had once spoken to Henry in commendation of his steadiness and trustworthiness, though at the same time abusing him for airs and puppyism. 'Henry would tell you. Where is Henry?' she added. 'In my study. He could not bear to bring you these tidings. You must be ready to comfort him, Ave.' 'Don't let him come,' she cried. 'He never was kind to Leonard. He drove him there. I shall always feel that it was his doing.' 'Averil,' said Dr. May gravely, 'do you forget how much that increases his suffering? Nothing but mutual charity can help you through this fiery trial. Do not let anger and recrimination take from you the last shreds of comfort, and poison your prayers. Promise me to be kind to Henry, for indeed he needs it.' 'O, Dr. May,' said Minna, looking up with her eyes full of tears, 'indeed I will. I was cross to Henry because he was cross to Leonard, but I won't be so any more.' Ave drooped her head, as if it were almost impossible to her to speak. Dr. May patted Minna's dark head caressingly, and said to the elder sister, 'I will not urge you more. Perhaps you may have Leonard back, and then joy will open your hearts; or if not, my poor Ave, the sight of Henry will do more than my words.' Mary looked greatly grieved, but said nothing, only following her father to take his last words and directions. 'Keep her as quiet as you can. Do not worry her, but get out this root of bitterness if you can. Poor, poor things!' 'That little Minna is a dear child!' said Mary. 'She is grown so much older than Ella, or than she was last year. She seems to understand and feel like a grown-up person. I do think she may soften poor Ave more than I can; but, papa, there is excuse. Mr. Ward must have made them more miserable than we guessed.' 'The more reason she must forgive him. O, Mary, I fear a grievous lesson is coming to them; but I must do all I can. Good-bye, my dear; do the best you can for them;' and he set forth again with a bleeding heart. At the attorney's office, he found the principal from home, but the partner, Edward Anderson, on the qui vive for a summons to attend on behalf of his fellow-townsman, and confident that however bad were the present aspect of affairs, his professional eye would instantly find a clue. Aubrey was in an agony of excitement, but unable to endure the notion of approaching the scene of action; and his half-choked surly 'Don't' was sufficient to deter his brother Thomas, who had never shown himself so kind, considerate, and free from sneer or assumption. In 'hours of ease' he might seem selfish and exacting, but a crisis evoked the latent good in him, and drew him out of himself. Nor would Henry return to Bankside. After many vacillations, the moment for starting found him in a fit of despair about the family disgrace, only able to beg that 'the unhappy boy' should be assured that no expense should be spared in his defence; or else, that if he were cleared and returned home, his welcome should be most joyful. But there Henry broke off, groaned, said they should never look up again, and must leave the place. Except for Averil's own sake, Dr. May would almost have regretted his exhortations in favour of her eldest brother. In due time the Doctor arrived at the mill, where the inquest was to take place, as the public-house was small, and inconveniently distant; and there was ample accommodation in the large rambling building. So crowded was the court-yard, that the Doctor did not easily make his way to the steps of the hall door; but there, after one brief question to the policeman in charge, he waited, though several times invited in. Before long, all eyes turned one way, as a closed fly, with a policeman on the box, drove in at the gateway, stopped, and between the two men on guard appeared a tall young figure. The Doctor's first glance showed him a flushed and weary set of features, shocked and appalled; but the eyes, looking straight up in their anxiety, encountered his with an earnest grateful appeal for sympathy, answered at once by a step forward with outstretched hand. The grip of the fingers was heated, agitated, convulsive, but not tremulous; and there was feeling, not fear, in the low husky voice that said, 'Thank you. Is Henry here?' 'No, he is too--too much overcome; but he hopes to see you at home to-night; and here is Edward Anderson, whom he has sent to watch the proceedings for you.' 'Thank you,' said Leonard, acknowledging Edward's greeting. 'As far as I am concerned, I can explain all in a minute; but my poor uncle--I little thought--' There was no opportunity for further speech in private, for the coroner had already arrived, and the inquiry had been only deferred until Leonard should have come. The jury had been viewing the body, and the proceedings were to take place in the large low dining-room, where the southern windows poured in a flood of light on the faces of the persons crowded together, and the reflections from the rippling water danced on the ceiling. Dr. May had a chair given him near the coroner, and keenly watched the two nephews--one seated next to him, the other at some distance, nearly opposite. Both young men looked haggard, shocked, and oppressed: the eye of Axworthy was unceasingly fixed on an inkstand upon the table, and never lifted, his expression never varied; and Leonard's glance flashed inquiringly from one speaker to another, and his countenance altered with every phase of the evidence. The first witness was Anne Ellis, the young maid-servant, who told of her coming down at ten minutes after five that morning, the 6th of July, and on going in to clean the rooms, finding her master sunk forward on the table. Supposing him to have had a fit, she had run to the window and screamed for help, when Master Hardy, the foreman, and Mrs. Giles, the housekeeper, had come in. James Hardy deposed to having heard the girl's cry while he was unlocking the mill door. Coming in by the low sash-window, which stood open, he had gone up to his master, and had seen the wound on the head, and found the body quite cold, Mrs. Giles coming in, they had carried it to the bed in the next room; and he had gone to call the young gentlemen, but neither was in his room. He knew that it had been left uncertain whether Mr. Samuel would return to sleep at home between the two days of the county races, but he did not expect Mr. Ward to be out; and had then observed that his bed had not been slept in, and that the passage window outside his room was partly open. He had then thought it best to go into Stoneborough to inform the family. Rebecca Giles, the housekeeper, an elderly woman, crying violently, repeated the evidence as to the discovery of the body. The last time she had seen her master alive, was when she had carried in his supper at nine o'clock, when he had desired her to send Mr. Ward to him; and had seemed much vexed to hear that the young man had not returned from rifle practice, little thinking, poor old gentleman!--but here the housekeeper was recalled to her subject. The window was then open, as it was a sultry night, but the blind down. Her master was a good deal crippled by gout, and could not at that time move actively nor write, but could dress himself, and close a window. He disliked being assisted; and the servants were not in the habit of seeing him from the time his supper was brought in till breakfast next morning. She had seen Mr. Ward come home at twenty minutes or half after nine, in uniform, carrying his rifle; she had given the message, and he had gone into the sitting-room without putting down the rifle. She believed it to be the one on the table, but could not say so on oath; he never let any one touch it; and she never looked at such horrid murderous things. And some remarks highly adverse to the volunteer movement were cut short. William Andrews, groom, had been called by Anne Ellis, had seen the wound, and the blood on the desk, and had gone to fetch a surgeon and the police from Whitford. On his return, saw the rifle leaning against the shutter; believed it to be Mr. Ward's rifle. Charles Rankin, surgeon, had been called in to see Mr. Axworthy, and arrived at seven o'clock A. M. Found him dead, from a fracture of the skull over the left temple, he should imagine, from a blow from a heavy blunt instrument, such as the stock of a gun. Death must have been instantaneous, and had probably taken place seven or eight hours before he was called in. The marks upon the rifle before him were probably blood; but he could not say so upon oath, till he had subjected them to microscopic examination. The hair was human, and corresponded with that of the deceased. Samuel Axworthy had slept at the Three Goblets, in consequence of finding himself too late for admission at home. He had been wakened at half-past five, and found all as had been stated by the previous witnesses; and he corroborated the housekeeper's account of his uncle's habits. The rifle he believed to belong to his cousin, Leonard Ward. He could not account for Leonard Ward's absence on that morning. No permission, as far as he was aware, had been given him to leave home; and he had never known his uncle give him any commission at that hour. The different policemen gave their narrations of the state of things--the open window, the position of the boat, &c. And the ticket-clerk at the small Blewer Station stated that at about 12.15 at night, Mr. Ward had walked in without baggage, and asked for a second-class ticket to London. Leonard here interposed an inquiry whether he had not said a day ticket, and the clerk recollected that he had done so, and had spoken of returning by four o'clock; but the train, being reckoned as belonging to the previous day, no return tickets were issued for it, and he had therefore taken an ordinary one, and started by the mail train. The London policeman, who had come down with Leonard, stated that, in consequence of a telegraphic message, he had been at the Paddington Station at 6.30 that morning; had seen a young gentleman answering to the description sent to him, asked if his name were Leonard Ward, and receiving a reply in the affirmative, had informed him of the charge, and taken him into custody. The bag that he placed on the table he had found on the young man's person. Every one was startled at this unexpected corroboration of the suspicion. It was a heavy-looking bag, of reddish canvas, marked with a black circle, containing the letters F. A. Gold; the neck tied with a string; the contents were sovereigns, and a note or two. Dr. May looked piteously, despairingly, at Leonard; but the brow was still open and unclouded, the eye glanced back reassurance and confidence. The policeman added that he had cautioned the young man to take care what he said, but that he had declared at once that his uncle had sent him to lodge the sum in Drummond's Bank, and that he would show a receipt for it on his return. The coroner then proceeded to examine Leonard, but still as a witness. Edward Anderson spoke to him in an undertone, advising him to be cautious, and not commit himself, but Leonard, rather impatiently thanking him, shook him off, and spoke with freedom and openness. 'I have nothing to keep back,' he said. 'Of course I know nothing of this frightful murder, nor what villain could have got hold of the rifle, which, I am sorry to say, is really mine. Last evening I used it at drill and practice on Blewer Heath, and came home when it grew dusk, getting in at about half-past nine. I was then told by Mrs. Giles that my uncle wished to speak to me, and was displeased at my staying out so late. I went into his room as I was, and put my rifle down in a corner by the window, when he desired me to sit down and listen to him. He then told me that he wished to send me to town by the mail train, to take some cash to Drummond's Bank, and to return by to-day's four o'clock train. He said he had reasons for wishing no one to be aware of his opening an account there, and he undertook to explain my absence. He took the sum from the private drawer of his desk, and made me count it before him, £124 12s. in sovereigns and bank-notes. The odd money he gave me for my expenses, the rest I put in the bag that I fetched out of the office. He could not hold a pen, and could therefore give me no letter to Messrs. Drummond, but he made me write a receipt for the amount in his memorandum book. I wished him good night, and left him still sitting in his easy-chair, with the window open and the blind down. I found that I had forgotten my rifle, but I did not go back for it, because he disliked the disturbance of opening and shutting doors. While I was changing my dress, I saw from the window that some one was still about in the court, and knowing that my uncle wished me to avoid notice, I thought it best to let myself out by the passage window, as I had sometimes done in early mornings to bathe or fish, and go across the fields to Blewer Station. I got down into the garden, crossed in the punt, and went slowly by Barnard's hatch; I believe I stopped a good many times, as it was too soon, and a beautiful moonlight night, but I came to Blewer soon after twelve, and took my ticket. At Paddington I met this terrible news.' As the boy spoke, his bright eyes turned from one listener to another, as though expecting to read satisfaction on their faces; but as doubt and disbelief clouded all, his looks became almost constantly directed to Dr. May, and his voice unconsciously passed from a sound of justification to one of pleading. When he ceased, he glanced round as if feeling his innocence established. 'You gave a receipt, Mr. Ward,' said the coroner. 'Will you tell us where it is likely to be?' 'It must be either on or in my uncle's desk, or in his pocket. Will some one look for it? I wrote it in his memorandum book--a curious old black shagreen book, with a silver clasp. I left it open on the desk to dry.' A policeman went to search for it; and the coroner asked what the entry had been. 'July 5th, 1860. Received, £120. L. A. Ward,'--was the answer. 'You will find it about the middle of the book, or rather past it.' 'At what time did this take place?' 'It must have been towards ten. I cannot tell exactly, but it was later than half-past nine when I came in, and he was a good while bringing out the money.' The policeman returned, saying he could not find the book; and Leonard begging to show where he had left it, the coroner and jury accompanied him to the room. At the sight of the red stain on the desk, a shuddering came over the boy, and a whiteness on his heated brow, nor could he at once recover himself so as to proceed with the search, which was still in vain; though with a voice lowered by the sickness of horror, he pointed out the place where he had laid it, and the pen he had used; and desk, table, drawer, and the dead man's dress were carefully examined. 'You must know it, Sam,' said Leonard. 'Don't you remember his putting in the cheque--old Bilson's cheque for his year's rent--twenty-five pounds? I brought it in, and he put it away one day last week. You were sitting there.' Sam stammered something of 'Yes, he did recollect something of it.' Inquiries were made of the other persons concerned with Mr. Axworthy. Hardy thought his master used such a book, but had never seen it near; Mrs. Giles altogether disbelieved its existence; and Sam could not be positive--his uncle never allowed any one to touch his private memorandums. As, with deepened anxiety, Dr. May returned to the dining-room, he caught a glimpse of Henry Ward's desponding face, but received a sign not to disclose his presence. Edward Anderson wrote, and considered; and the coroner, looking at his notes again, recurred to Leonard's statement that he had seen some one in the yard. 'I thought it was one of the men waiting to take my cousin Axworthy's horse. I did not know whether he had ridden or gone by train; and I supposed that some one would be looking out for him.' Questions were asked whether any of the servants had been in the yard, but it was denied by all; and on a more particular description of the person being demanded, Leonard replied that the figure had been in the dark shade of the stables, and that he only knew that it was a young man--whether a stranger or not he did not know; he supposed now that it must have been the--the murderer, but at the time he had thought it one of the stable-men; and as his uncle had particularly wished that his journey should be a secret, the sight had only made him hasten to put out his light, and depart unseen. It was most unfortunate that he had done so. Others ironically whispered, 'Most unfortunate.' The coroner asked Mr. Anderson whether he had anything to ask or observe, and on his reply in the negative, proceeded to sum up the evidence for the consideration of the jury. It seemed as if it were only here that Leonard perceived the real gist of the evidence. His brow grew hotter, his eyes indignant, his hands clenched, as if he with difficulty restrained himself from breaking in on the coroner's speech; and when at length the question was put to the jury, he stood, the colour fading from his cheek, his eyes set and glassy, his lip fallen, the dew breaking out on his brow, every limb as it were petrified by the shock of what was thus first fully revealed to him. So he stood, while the jury deliberated in low gruff sorrowful murmurs, and after a few minutes, turned round to announce with much sadness that they could do no otherwise than return a verdict of wilful murder against Leonard Ward. 'Mr. Leonard Ward,' said the coroner, a gentleman who had well known his father, and who spoke with scarcely concealed emotion, 'it becomes my painful duty to commit you to Whitford Gaol for trial at the next assizes.' Dr. May eagerly offered bail, rather as the readiest form of kindness than in the hope of its acceptance, and it was of course refused; but he made his way to the prisoner, and wrung his chill hand with all his might. The pressure seemed to waken the poor lad from his frozen rigidity; the warmth came flowing back into his fingers as his friend held them; he raised his head, shut and re-opened his eyes, and pushed back his hair, as though trying to shake himself loose from a too horrible dream. His face softened and quivered as he met the Doctor's kind eyes; but bracing himself again, he looked up, answered the coroner's question--that his Christian name was Leonard Axworthy, his age within a few weeks of eighteen; and asked permission to fetch what he should want from his room. The policeman, in whose charge he was, consented both to this, and to Dr. May being there alone with him for a short time. Then it was that the boy relaxed the strain on his features, and said in a low and strangled voice, 'O, Dr. May, if you had only let me die with them last year!' 'It was not I who saved you. He who sent that ordeal, will bring you through--this,' said Dr. May, with a great sob in his throat that belied his words of cheer. 'I thank Him at least for having taken her,' said Leonard, resting his head on the mantel-shelf beneath his mother's picture, while his little dog sat at his foot, looking up at him, cowed and wistful. Dr. May strove for words of comfort, but broke utterly down; and could only cover his face with his hands, and struggle with his emotion, unable to utter a word. Yet perhaps none would have been so comforting as his genuine sympathy, although it was in a voice of extreme distress that Leonard exclaimed, 'Dr. May, Dr. May, pray don't! you ought not to grieve for me!' 'I'm a fool,' said Dr. May, after some space, fighting hard with himself. 'Nonsense! we shall see you out of this! We have only to keep up a good heart, and we shall see it explained.' 'I don't know; I can't understand,' said Leonard, passing his hand over his weary forehead. 'Why could they not believe when I told them just how it was?' At that moment the policeman opened the door, saying, 'Here, sir;' and Henry hurried in, pale and breathless, not looking in his brother's face, as he spoke fast and low. 'Ned Anderson says there's nothing at all to be made of this defence of yours; it is of no use to try it. The only thing is to own that he found fault with you, and in one of your rages--you know--' 'You too, Henry!' said Leonard, in dejected reproach. 'Why--why, it is impossible it could have been otherwise--open window, absconding, and all. We all know you never meant it; but your story won't stand; and the only chance, Anderson says, is to go in for manslaughter. If you could only tell anything that would give him a clue to pick up evidence while the people are on the spot.' Leonard's face was convulsed for a moment while his brother was speaking; but he recovered calmness of voice, as he mournfully answered, 'I have no right to wonder at your suspicion of me.' Henry for the first time really looked at him, and instinctively faltered, 'I beg your pardon.' 'Indeed,' said Leonard, with the same subdued manner, 'I cannot believe that any provocation could make me strike a person like that old man; and here there was none at all. Except that he was vexed at first at my being late, he had never been so near kindness.' 'Then is this extraordinary story the truth?' 'Why should I not tell the truth?' was the answer, too mournful for indignation. Henry again cast down his eyes, Leonard moved about making preparations, Dr. May leant against the wall--all too much oppressed for speech; till, as Leonard stooped, poor little Mab, thrusting her black head into his hand, drew from him the words, 'My doggie, what is to become of you?' A sort of hoarse explosion of 'Ave' from Henry was simultaneous with the Doctor's 'I tried to get her home with me in the morning, but she waited your orders.' 'Miss May would not have her now. After all, prussic acid would be the truest mercy' said Leonard, holding the little creature up to his face, and laying his cheek against her silken coat with almost passionate affection. 'Not while there are those who trust your word, Leonard; as Ethel said this morning.' He raised the face which he had hidden against the dog, and looked earnestly at the Doctor as if hardly venturing to understand him; then a ray of real gladness and comfort darted into his eyes, which so enlivened Dr. May, that he was able to say cheerfully, 'We will take good care of her till you come for her.' 'Then, Henry,' said Leonard, 'it is not unkindness, nor that I remember things, but indeed I think it will be better for you all, since Dr. May is so--so--' The word kind was so inadequate, that it stuck in his throat. 'Take this to Ave,' putting his mother's likeness in his hand, 'and tell her I will write,' 'Poor Ave!' Leonard imploringly shook his head; the mention of his sister shook him more than he could bear; and he asked the time. 'Nearly six.' 'Only six! What an endless day! There, I am ready. There is no use in delaying. I suppose I must show what I am taking with me.' 'Wait,' said his brother. 'Cannot you say anything to put us on the track of the man in the yard?' 'I did not see him plain.' 'You've no notion?' said Henry, with a movement of annoyance. 'No. I only looked for a moment; for I was much more anxious to get off quietly, than to make any one out. If I had only waited ten minutes, it might have been the saving of his life, but my commission was so like fun, and so important too, that I thought of nothing else. Can it be not twenty-four hours ago?' 'And why don't you explain why he sent you?' 'I cannot say it so certainly as to be of the slightest use,' said Leonard. 'He never expressed it either; and I have no right to talk of my suspicions.' 'Eh! was it to put it out of Sam's way?' 'So I suppose. Sam used to get all he chose out of the poor old man; and I believe he thought this the only chance of keeping anything for himself, but he never told me so. Stay! Bilson's cheque might be tracked. I took it myself, and gave the receipt; you will find it entered in the books--paid on either the twenty-third or fourth.' 'Then there's something to do, at any rate,' cried Henry, invigorated. 'Anderson shall hunt out the balance and Sam's draughts on it. I'll spare no expense, Leonard, if it is to my last farthing; and you shall have the best counsel that can be retained.' Leonard signed thanks with some heartiness, and was going to the door, when Henry detained him. 'Tell me, Leonard, have you no suspicion?' 'It must have been the person I saw in the court, and, like a fool, did not watch. The window was open, and he could have easily got in and come out. Can't they see that if it had been me, I should have made off at once that way?' 'If you could only tell what the fellow was like!' 'I told you he was in the dark,' said Leonard, and without giving time for more, he called in the man outside, showed the clothes and, books he had selected, put them into his bag, and declared himself ready, giving his hand to the Doctor, who drew him near and kissed his brow, as if he had been Harry setting forth on a voyage. 'Good-bye, my dear fellow; God bless you; I'll soon come to see you.' 'And I,' said Henry, 'will bring Bramshaw to see what is to be done.' Leonard wrung his brother's hand, murmuring something of love to his sisters; then put Mab into Dr. May's arms, with injunctions that the little creature understood and obeyed, for though trembling and whining under her breath, she was not resisting. It might be to shorten her distress as well as his own that Leonard passed quickly down-stairs, and entered the carriage that was to take him to the county gaol. CHAPTER XIII Tears are not always fruitful; their hot drops Sometimes but scorch the cheek and dim the eye; Despairing murmurs over blackened hopes, Not the meek spirit's calm and chastened cry. Oh, better not to weep, than weep amiss! For hard it is to learn to weep aright; To weep wise tears, the tears that heal and bless, The tears which their own bitterness requite.--H. BONAR To one of the most tender-hearted of human beings had the office of conveying ill tidings been most often committed, and again Dr. May found himself compelled to precede Henry Ward into the sister's presence, and to break to her the result of the inquest. He was no believer in the efficacy of broken news, but he could not refuse when Henry in his wretchedness entreated not to be the first in the infliction of such agony; so he left the carriage outside, and walked up to the door; and there stood Averil, with Ethel a few steps behind her. His presence was enough revelation. Had things gone well, he would not have been the forerunner; and Averil, meaning perhaps to speak, gave a hoarse hysterical shriek, so frightful as to drive away other anxieties, and summon Henry in from his watch outside. All day the poor girl had kept up an unnatural strain on her powers, vehemently talking of other things, and, with burning cheeks and shining eyes, moving incessantly from one employment to another; now her needle, now her pencil--roaming round the garden gathering flowers, or playing rattling polkas that half stunned Ethel in her intense listening for tidings. Ethel, who had relieved guard and sent Mary home in the afternoon, had vainly striven to make Ave rest or take food; the attempt had brought on such choking, that she could only desist, and wait for the crisis. The attack was worse than any ordinary hysterics, almost amounting to convulsions; and all that could be done was to prevent her from hurting herself, and try to believe Dr. May's assurance that there was no real cause for alarm, and that the paroxysms would exhaust themselves. In time they were spent, and Ave lay on her bed half torpid, feebly moaning, but with an instinctive dread of being disturbed. Henry anxiously watched over her, and Dr. May thought it best to leave the brother and sister to one another. Absolute quiet was best for her, and he had skill and tenderness enough to deal with her, and was evidently somewhat relieved by the necessity of waiting on her. It was the best means, perhaps, of uniting them, that they should be thus left together; and Dr. May would have taken home little pale frightened Minna, who had been very helpful all the time. 'Oh, please not, Dr. May,' she said, earnestly. 'Indeed I will not be troublesome, and I can give Henry his tea, and carry Ave's cup. Please, Henry, don't send me:' and she took hold of his hand, and laid it against her cheek. He bent down over her, and fondled her; and there were tears that he could not hide as he tried both to thank Dr. May, and tell her that she need not leave him. 'No,' said Dr. May; 'it would be cruel to both of you.--Good-bye, little Minna; I never wanted to carry away a little comforter.' 'I believe you are right, papa,' said Ethel, as she went out with him to the carriage; 'but I long to stay, it is like doing something for that boy.' 'The best you did for him, poor dear boy! was the saying you trusted his word. The moment I told him that, he took comfort and energy.' Ethel's lips moved into a strange half smile, and she took Mab on her lap, and fondled her. 'Yes,' she said, 'I believe I stand for a good deal in his imagination. I was afraid he would have been wrecked upon that horrid place; but, after all, this may be the saving of him.' 'Ah! if that story of his would only be more vraisemblable.' There was only time briefly to narrate it before coming home, where the first person they met was Aubrey, exceeding pale, and in great distress. 'Papa, I must tell you,' he said, drawing him into the study. 'I have done terrible harm, I am afraid.' And he explained, that in the morning, when Mrs. Pugh had come down full of inquiries and conjectures, and had spoken of the possibility of Leonard's having been drowned while bathing, he had unguardedly answered that it could be no such thing; Leonard had always meant to run away, and by that very window, if the Axworthys grew too bad. Prudent Tom had silenced him at the time, but had since found that it had got abroad that the evasion had long been meditated with Aubrey's privity, and had been asked by one of the constabulary force if his brother would not be an important witness. Tom had replied that he knew nothing about it; but Aubrey was in great misery, furious with Mrs. Pugh, and only wanting his father to set off at once to assure them it was all nonsense. 'No, Aubrey, they neither would, nor ought to, take my word.' 'Just hear, papa, and you would know the chaff it was.' 'I cannot hear, Aubrey. If we were to discuss it, we might give it an unconscious colouring. You must calm your mind, and exactly recall what passed; but do not talk about it to me or to any one else. You must do nothing to impair the power of perfect truth and accuracy, which is a thing to be prayed for. If any one--even the lawyer who may have to get up the case against him--asks you about it, you must refuse to answer till the trial; and then--why, the issue is in the hands of Him that judgeth righteously.' 'I shall never remember nor speak with his eyes on me, seeing me betray him!' 'You will be no worse off than I, my boy, for I see I am in for identifying Hector's rifle; the Mill people can't swear to it, and my doing it will save his brother something.' 'No, it is not like me. O! I wish I had stayed at Eton, even if I had died of it! Tom says it all comes of living with women that I can't keep my mouth shut; and Leonard will be so hurt that I--' 'Nay, any tolerable counsel will make a capital defence out of the mere fact of his rodomontading. What, is that no comfort to you?' 'What! to be the means of making a fool of him before all the court--seeing him hear our talk by the river-side sifted by those horrid lawyers?' The Doctor looked even graver, and his eye fixed as on a thought far away, as the boy's grief brought to his mind the Great Assize, when all that is spoken in the ear shall indeed be proclaimed on the house-tops. There was something almost childish in this despair of Aubrey, for he had not become alarmed for the result of the trial. His misery was chiefly shame at his supposed treason to friendship, and failure in manly reserve; and he could not hold up his head all the evening, but silently devoted himself to Mab, endeavouring to make her at home, and meeting with tolerable success. Tom was no less devoted to Ella Ward. It was he who had brought her home, and he considered her therefore as his charge. It was curious to see the difference that a year had made between her and Minna. They had the last summer been like one child, and had taken the stroke that had orphaned them in the same childish manner; but whether the year from eight to nine had been of especial growth to Minna, or whether there had been a stimulus in her constant association with Averil, the present sorrow fell on her as on one able to enter into it, think and feel, and assume her sweet mission of comfort; whilst Ella, though neither hard nor insensible, was still child enough to close her mind to what she dreaded, and flee willingly from the pain and tedium of affliction. She had willingly accepted 'Mr. Tom's' invitation, and as willingly responded to his attentions. Gertrude did not like people in the 'little girl' stage, and the elder sisters had their hands and hearts full, and could only care for her in essentials; but Tom undertook her amusement, treated her to an exhibition of his microscope, and played at French billiards with her the rest of the evening, till she was carried off to bed in Mary's room, when he pronounced her a very intelligent child. 'I think her a very unfeeling little thing,' said Gertrude. 'Very unbecoming behaviour under the circumstances.' 'What would you think becoming behaviour?' asked Tom. 'I won't encourage it,' returned Daisy, with dignified decision, that gave her father his first approach to a laugh on that day; but nobody was in spirits to desire Miss Daisy to define from what her important sanction was withdrawn. Mary gave up her Sunday-school class to see how Averil was, and found Henry much perturbed. He had seen her fast asleep at night, and in the morning Minna had carried up her breakfast, and he was about to follow it, as soon as his own was finished, when he found that she had slipped out of the house, leaving a message that she was gone to practise on the harmonium. He was of the mind that none of the family could or ought to be seen at church; and though Mary could not agree with him, she willingly consented to go to the chapel and try what she could do with his sister. She met Mrs. Ledwich on the way, coming to inquire and see whether she or dear Matilda could do anything for the 'sweet sufferer.' Even Mary could not help thinking that this was not the epithet most befitting poor Ave; and perhaps Mrs. Ledwich's companionship made her the less regret that Ave had locked herself in, so that there was no making her hear, though the solemn chants, played with great fervour, reached them as they waited in the porch. They had their own seats in the Minster, and therefore could not wait till the sexton should come to open the church. There was no time for another visit till after the second service, and then Dr. May and Mary, going to Bankside, found that instead of returning home, Ave had again locked herself up between the services, and that Minna, who had ventured on a mission of recall, had come home crying heartily both at the dreary disappointment of knocking in vain, and at the grand mournful sounds of funeral marches that had fallen on her ear. Every one who had been at the chapel that day was speaking of the wonderful music, the force and the melody of the voluntary at the dismissal of the congregation; no one had believed that such power resided in the harmonium. Mr. Scudamour had spoken to Miss Ward most kindly both before and after evening service, but his attempt to take her home had been unavailing; she had answered that she was going presently, and he was obliged to leave her. Evening was coming on, and she had not come, so the other keys were fetched from the sexton's, and Dr. May and his daughter set off to storm her fortress. Like Minna, the Doctor was almost overpowered by the wonderful plaintive sweetness of the notes that were floating through the atmosphere, like a wailing voice of supplication. They had almost unnerved him, as he waited while Mary unlocked the door. The sound of its opening hushed the music; Averil turned her head, and recognizing them, came to them, very pale, and with sunken eyes. 'You are coming home, dear Ave,' said Mary; and she made no resistance or objection, only saying, 'Yes. It has been so nice here!' 'You must come now, though,' said the Doctor. 'Your brother is very much grieved at your leaving him.' 'I did not mean to be unkind to him,' said Averil, in a low subdued voice; 'he was very good to me last night. Only--this is peace--this,' pointing to her instrument, 'is such a soothing friend. And surely this is the place to wait in!' 'The place to wait in indeed, my poor child, if you are not increasing the distress of others by staying here. Besides, you must not exhaust yourself, or how are you to go and cheer Leonard!' 'Oh! there is no fear but that I shall go to-morrow,' said Averil; 'I mean to do it!' the last words being spoken in a resolute tone, unlike the weariness of her former replies. And with this purpose before her, she consented to be taken back by Mary to rest on the sofa, and even to try to eat and drink. Her brother and sister hung over her, and waited on her with a tender assiduous attention that showed how they had missed her all day; and she received their kindness gratefully, as far as her broken wearied state permitted. Several inquiries had come throughout the day from the neighbours; and while Mary was still with Ave, a message was brought in to ask whether Miss Ward would like to see Mrs. Pugh. 'Oh no, no, thank her, but indeed I cannot,' said Averil, shivering uncontrollably as she lay. Mary felt herself blushing, in the wonder what would be kindest to do, and her dread of seeing Henry's face. She was sure that he too shrank, and she ventured to ask, 'Shall I go and speak to her?' 'Oh, do, do,' said Averil, shuddering with eagerness. 'Thank you, Miss Mary,' said Henry slowly. 'She is most kind--but--under the circumstances--' Mary went, finding that he only hesitated. She had little opportunity for saying anything; Mrs. Pugh was full of interest and eagerness, and poured out her sympathy and perfect understanding of dear Averil's feelings; and in the midst Henry came out of the room, with a stronger version of their gratitude, but in terrible confusion. Mary would fain have retreated, but could not, and was witness to the lady's urgent entreaties to take Minna home, and Henry's thankfulness; but he feared--and retreated to ask the opinion of his sisters, while Mrs. Pugh told Mary that it was so very bad for the poor child to remain, and begged to have Ella if she were a moment's inconvenience to the May family. Henry came back with repeated thanks, but Minna could not bear to leave home; and in fact, he owned, with a half smile that gave sweetness to his face, she was too great a comfort to be parted with. So Mrs. Pugh departed, with doubled and trebled offers of service, and entreaties to be sent for at any hour of the day or night when she could be of use to Averil. Mary could not but be pleased with her, officious as she was. It looked as if she had more genuine feeling for Henry than had been suspected, and the kindness was certain, though some of it might be the busy activity of a not very delicate nature, eager for the importance conferred by intimacy with the subjects of a great calamity. Probably she would have been gratified by the eclat of being the beloved of the brother of the youth whose name was in every mouth, and her real goodness and benevolent heart would have committed her affections and interest beyond recall to the Ward family, had Averil leant upon her, or had Henry exerted himself to take advantage of her advances. But Henry's attachment had probably not been love, for it seemed utterly crushed out of him by his shame and despair. Everything connected with his past life was hateful to him; he declared that he could never show his face at Stoneborough again, let the result be what it might--that he could never visit another patient, and that he should change his name and leave the country, beginning on that very Sunday afternoon to write a letter to his principal rival to negotiate the sale of his practice. In fact, his first impression had returned on him, and though he never disclaimed belief in Leonard's statement, the entire failure of all confirmation convinced him that the blow had been struck by his brother in sudden anger, and that, defend him as he might and would, the stain was on his house, and the guilt would be brought home. Resolved, however, to do his utmost, he went with Mr. Bramshaw for a consultation with Leonard on the Monday. Averil could not go. She rose and dressed, and remained resolute till nearly the last minute, when her feverish faint giddiness overpowered her, and she was forced to submit to lie on the sofa, under Minna's care; and there she lay, restless and wretched, till wise little Minna sent a message up to the High Street, which brought down Mary and Dr. Spencer. They found her in a state of nervous fever, that sentenced her to her bed, where Mary deposited her and watched over her, till her brother's return, more desponding than ever. Dr. May, with all Henry's patients on his hands as well as his own, had been forced to devote this entire day to his profession; but on the next, leaving Henry to watch over Averil, who continued very feeble and feverish, he went to Whitford, almost infected by Henry's forebodings and Mr. Bramshaw's misgivings. 'It is a bad case,' the attorney had said to him, confidentially. 'But that there is always a great reluctance to convict upon circumstantial evidence, I should have very little hope, that story of his is so utterly impracticable; and yet he looks so innocent and earnest all the time, and sticks to it so consistently, that I don't know what to make of it. I can't do anything with him, nor can his brother either; but perhaps you might make him understand that we could bring him clear off for manslaughter--youth, and character and all. I should not doubt of a verdict for a moment! It is awkward about the money, but the alarm would be considered in the sentence.' 'You don't attend to his account of the person he saw in the court-yard?' 'The less said about that the better,' returned Mr. Bramshaw. 'It would only go for an awkward attempt to shift off the suspicion, unless he would give any description; and that he can't, or won't do. Or even if he did, the case would be all the stronger against his story--setting off, and leaving a stranger to maraud about the place. No, Dr. May; the only thing for it is to persuade the lad to own to having struck the old man in a passion; every one knows old Axworthy could be intolerably abusive, and the boy always was passionate. Don't you remember his flying out at Mr. Rivers's, the night of the party, and that affair which was the means of his going to the mill at all? I don't mind saying so to you in confidence, because I know you won't repeat it, and I see his brother thinks so too; but nothing is likely to turn out so well for him as that line of defence; as things stand now, the present one is good for nothing.' Dr. May was almost as much grieved at the notion of the youth's persistence in denying such a crime, as at the danger in which it involved him, and felt that if he were to be brought to confession, it should be from repentance, not expediency. In this mood he drove to Whitford Gaol, made application at the gates, and was conducted up the stairs to the cell. The three days of nearly entire solitude and of awful expectation had told like double the number of years; and there was a stamp of grave earnest collectedness on the young brow, and a calm resolution of aspect and movement, free from all excitement or embarrassment, as Leonard Ward stood up with a warm grateful greeting, so full of ingenuous reliance, that every doubt vanished at the same moment. His first question was for Averil; and Dr. May made the best of her state. 'She slept a little more last night, and her pulse is lower this morning; but we keep her in bed, half to hinder her from trying to come here before she is fit. I believe this ailment is the best thing for her and Henry both,' added the Doctor, seeing how much pain his words were giving. 'Henry is a very good nurse; it occupies him, and it is good for her to feel his kindness! Then Minna has come out in the prettiest way: she never fails in some sweet little tender word or caress just when it is wanted.' Leonard tried to smile, but only succeeded in keeping back a sob; and the Doctor discharged his memory of the messages of love of which he had been the depositary. Leonard recovered his composure during these, and was able to return a smile on hearing of Ella's conquest of Tom, of their Bible prints on Sunday, and their unwearied French billiards in the week. Then he asked after little Mab. 'She is all a dog should be,' said Dr. May. 'Aubrey is her chief friend, except when she is lying at her ease on Ethel's dress.' The old test of dog-love perhaps occurred to Leonard, for his lips trembled, and his eyes were dewy, even while they beamed with gladness. 'She is a great comfort to Aubrey,' the Doctor added. 'I must beg you to send that poor fellow your forgiveness, for he is exceedingly unhappy about something he repeated in the first unguarded moment.' 'Mr. Bramshaw told me,' said Leonard, with brow contracted. 'I cannot believe,' said Dr. May, 'that it can do you any real harm. I do not think the prosecution ought to take notice of it; but if they do, it will be easy to sift it, and make it tell rather in your favour.' 'Maybe so,' said Leonard, still coldly. 'Then you will cheer him with some kind message?' 'To be sure. It is the time for me to be forgiving every one,' he answered, with a long tightly-drawn breath. Much distressed, the Doctor paused, in uncertainty whether Leonard were actuated by dread of the disclosure or resentment at the breach of confidence; but ere he spoke, the struggle had been fought out, and a sweet sad face was turned round to him, with the words, 'Poor old Aubrey! Tell him not to mind. There will be worse to be told out than our romancings together, and he will feel it more than I shall! Don't let him vex himself.' 'Thank you,' said the father, warmly. 'I call that pardon.' 'Not that there is anything to forgive,' said Leonard, 'only it is odd that one cares for it more than--No, no, don't tell him that, but that I know it does not signify. It must not come between us, if this is to be the end; and it will make no difference. Nothing can do that but the finding my receipt. I see that book night and day before my eyes, with the very blot that I made in the top of my L.' 'You know they are searching the garden and fields, and advertising a reward, in case of its having been thrown away when rifled, or found to contain no valuables.' 'Yes!' and he rested on the word as though much lay behind. 'Do you think it contained anything worth keeping?' 'Only by one person.' 'Ha!' said the Doctor, with a start. Instead of answering, Leonard leant down on the narrow bed on which he was seated, and shut in his face between his hands. The Doctor waited, guessed, and grew impatient. 'You don't mean that fellow, Sam? Do you think he has it? I should like to throttle him, as sure as my name's Dick May!' (this in soliloquy between his teeth). 'Speak up, Leonard, if you have any suspicion.' The lad lifted himself with grave resolution that gave him dignity. 'Dr. May,' he said, 'I know that what I say is safe with you, and it seems disrespectful to ask your word and honour beforehand, but I think it will be better for us both if you will give them not to make use of what I tell you. It weighs on me so, that I shall be saying it to the wrong person, unless I have it out with you. You promise me?' 'To make no use of it without your consent,' repeated the Doctor, with rising hope, 'but this is no case for scruples--too much is at stake.' 'You need not tell me that,' Leonard replied, with a shudder; 'but I have no proof. I have thought again and again and again, but can find no possible witness. He was always cautious, and drink made him savage, but not noisy.' 'Then you believe--' The silence told the rest. 'If I did not see how easy people find it to believe the same of me on the mere evidence of circumstances, I should have no doubt,' said Leonard, deliberately. 'Then it was he that you saw in the yard?' 'Remember, all I saw was that a man was there. I concluded it was Andrews, waiting to take the horse; and as he is a great hanger-on of Sam, I wished to avoid him, and not keep my candle alight to attract his attention. That was the whole reason of my getting out of window, and starting so soon; as unlucky a thing as I could have done.' 'You are sure it was not Andrews?' 'Now I am. You see, Sam had sent home his horse from the station, though I did not know it; and, if you remember, Andrews was shown to have been at his father's long before. If he had been the man, he could speak to the time my light was put out.' 'The putting out of your light must have been the signal for the deed to be done.' 'My poor uncle! Well might he stare round as if he thought the walls would betray him, and start at every chinking of that unhappy gold in his helpless hands! If we had only known who was near--perhaps behind the blinds--' and Leonard gasped. 'But this secrecy, Leonard, I cannot understand it. Do you mean that the poor old man durst not do what he would with his own?' 'Just so. Whenever Sam knew that he had a sum of money, he laid hands on it. Nothing was safe from him that Mr. Axworthy had in the Whitford Bank.' 'That can be proved from the accounts?' 'You recollect the little parlour between the office and my uncle's sitting-room? There I used to sit in the evening, and to feel, rather than hear, the way Sam used to bully the poor old man. Once--a fortnight ago, just after that talk with Aubrey--I knew he had been drinking, and watched, and came in upon them when there was no bearing it any longer. I was sworn at for my pains, and almost kicked out again; but after that Mr. Axworthy made me sit in the room, as if I were a protection; and I made up my mind to bear it as long as he lived.' 'Surely the servants would bear witness to this state of things?' 'I think not. Their rooms are too far off for overhearing, and my uncle saw as little of them as possible. Mrs. Giles was Sam's nurse, and cares for him more than any other creature; she would not say a word against him even if she knew anything; and my uncle would never have complained. He was fond of Sam to the last, proud of his steeple-chases and his cleverness, and desperately afraid of him; in a sort of bondage, entirely past daring to speak.' 'I know,' said Dr. May, remembering how his own Tom had been fettered and tongue-tied by that same tyrant in boyhood. 'But he spoke to you?' 'No,' said Leonard. 'After that scene much was implied between us, but nothing mentioned. I cannot even tell whether he trusted me, or only made me serve as a protector. I believe that row was about this money, which he had got together in secret, and that Sam suspected, and wanted to extort; but it was exactly as I said at the inquest, he gave no reason for sending me up to town with it. He knew that I knew why, and so said no more than that it was to be private. It was pitiful to see that man, so fierce and bold as they say he once was, trembling as if doing something by stealth, and the great hard knotty hands so crumpled and shaky, that he had to leave all to me. And that they should fancy I could go and hurt him!' said Leonard, stretching his broad chest and shoulders in conscious strength. 'Yes, considering who it was, I do not wonder that you feel the passion-theory as insulting as the accusation.' 'I ought not,' said Leonard, reddening. 'Every one knows what my temper can do. I do not think that a poor old feeble man like that could have provoked me to be so cowardly, but I see it is no wonder they think so. Only they might suppose I would not have been a robber, and go on lying now, when they take good care to tell me that it is ruinous!' 'It is an intolerable shame that they can look you in the face and imagine it for a moment,' said the Doctor, with all his native warmth. 'After all,' said Leonard, recalled by his sympathy, 'it is my own fault from beginning to end that I am in this case. I see now that it was only God's mercy that prevented my brother's blood being on me, and it was my unrepenting obstinacy that brought me to the mill; so there will be no real injustice in my dying, and I expect nothing else.' 'Hush, Leonard, depend upon it, while there is Justice in Heaven, the true criminal cannot go free,' cried the Doctor, much agitated. Leonard shook his head. 'Boyish hastiness is not murder,' added the Doctor. 'So I thought. But it might have been, and I never repented. I brought all this on myself; and while I cannot feel guiltless in God's sight, I cannot expect it to turn out well.' 'Turn out well,' repeated the Doctor. 'We want Ethel to tell us that this very repentance and owning of the sin, is turning out well--better than going on in it.' 'I can see that,' said Leonard. 'I do hope that if--if I can take this patiently, it may show I am sorry for the real thing--and I may be forgiven. Oh! I am glad prisoners are not cut off from church.' Dr. May pressed his hand in much emotion: and there was a silence before another question--whether there were nothing that could be of service. 'One chance there is, that Sam might relent enough to put that receipt where it could be found without implicating him. He must know what it would do for me.' 'You are convinced that he has it?' 'There must be papers in the book valuable to him; perhaps some that he had rather were not seen. Most likely he secured it in the morning. You remember he was there before the police.' 'Ay! ay! ay! the scoundrel! But, Leonard, what possessed you not to speak out at the inquest, when we might have searched every soul on the premises?' 'I did not see it then. I was stunned by the horror of the thing--the room where I had been so lately, and that blood on my own rifle too. It was all I could do at one time not to faint, and I had no notion they would not take my explanation; then, when I found it rejected, and everything closing in on me, I was in a complete maze. It was not till yesterday, when I was alone again, after having gone over my defence with Mr. Bramshaw, and shown what I could prove, that I saw exactly how it must have been, as clear as a somnambulist. I sometimes could fancy I had seen Sam listening at the window, and have to struggle not to think I knew him under the stable wall.' 'And you are not such a--such a--so absurd as to sacrifice yourself to any scruple, and let the earth be cumbered with a rascal who, if he be withholding the receipt, is committing a second murder! It is not generosity, it is suicide.' 'It is not generosity,' said the boy, 'for if there were any hope, that would not stop me; but no one heard nor saw but myself, and I neither recognized him--no, I did not--nor heard anything definite from my uncle. Even if I had, no one--no one but you, believes a word I speak; nay, even my own case shows what probabilities are worth, and that I may be doing him the same wrong that I am suffering. I should only bring on myself the shame and disgrace of accusing another.' The steady low voice and unboyish language showed him to be speaking from reflection, not impulse. The only tremulous moment was when he spoke of the one friend who trusted him, and whom his words were filling with a tumult of hope and alarm, admiration, indignation, and perplexity. 'Well, well,' the Doctor said, almost stammering, 'I am glad you have been open with me. It may be a clue. Can there be any excuse for overhauling his papers? Or can't we pick a hole in that alibi of his? Now I recollect, he had it very pat, and unnecessarily prominent. I'll find some way of going to work without compromising you. Yes, you may trust me! I'll watch, but say not a word without your leave.' 'Thank you,' said Leonard. 'I am glad it is you--you who would never think a vague hope of saving me better than disgrace and dishonour.' 'We will save you,' said the Doctor, becoming eager to escape to that favourite counsellor, the lining of his brougham, which had inspired him with the right theory of many a perplexing symptom, and he trusted would show him how to defend without betraying Leonard. 'I must go and see about it. Is there anything I can do for you--books, or anything?' No, thank you--except--I suppose there would be no objection to my having a few finer steel pens. 'And to explain his wants, he took up his Prayer-Book, which his sister had decorated with several small devotional prints. Copying these minutely line by line in pen and ink, was the solace of his prison hours; and though the work was hardly after drawing-masters' rules, the hand was not untaught, and there was talent and soul enough in the work to strike the Doctor. 'It suits me best,' said Leonard. 'I should go distracted with nothing to do; and I can't read much--at least, not common books. And my sisters may like to have them. Will you let me do one for you?' The speaking expression of those hazel eyes almost overcame the Doctor, and his answer was by bending head and grasping hand. Leonard turned to the Collects, and mutely opened at the print of the Son of Consolation, which he had already outlined, looked up at his friend, and turned away, only saying, 'Two or three of the sort with elastic nibs; they have them at the post-office.' 'Yes, I'll take care,' said Dr. May, afraid to trust his self-command any longer. 'Good-bye, Leonard. Tom says I adopt every one who gets through a bad enough fever, so what will you be to me after this second attack?' The result of the Doctor's consultation with his brougham was his stopping it at Mr. Bramshaw's door, to ascertain whether the search for the receipt had extended to young Axworthy's papers; but he found that they had been thoroughly examined, every facility having been given by their owner, who was his uncle's executor, and residuary legatee, by a will dated five years back, leaving a thousand pounds to the late Mrs. Ward, and a few other legacies, but the mass of the property to the nephew. Sam's 'facilities' not satisfying the Doctor, it was further explained that every endeavour was being made to discover what other documents were likely to have been kept in the missing memorandum-book, so as to lead to the detection of any person who might present any such at a bank; and it was made evident that everything was being done, short of the impracticability of searching an unaccused man, but he could not but perceive that Mr. Bramshaw's 'ifs' indicated great doubt of the existence of receipt and of pocket-book. Throwing out a hint that the time of Sam's return should be investigated, he learnt that this had been Edward Anderson's first measure, and that it was clear, from the independent testimony of the ostler at Whitford, the friend who had driven Sam, and the landlord of the Three Goblets, that there was not more than time for the return exactly as described at the inquest; and though the horse was swift and powerful, and might probably have been driven at drunken speed, this was too entirely conjectural for anything to be founded on it. Nor had the cheque by Bilson on the Whitford Bank come in. 'Something must assuredly happen to exonerate the guiltless, it would be profane to doubt,' said Dr. May continually to himself and to the Wards; but Leonard's secret was a painful burthen that he could scarcely have borne without sharing it with that daughter who was his other self, and well proved to be a safe repository. 'That's my Leonard,' said Ethel. 'I know him much better now than any time since the elf-bolt affair! They have not managed to ruin him among them.' 'What do you call this?' said Dr. May, understanding her, indeed, but willing to hear her thought expressed. 'Thankworthy,' she answered, with a twitching of the corners of her mouth. 'You will suffer for this exaltation,' he said, sadly; 'you know you have a tender heart, for all your flights.' 'And you know you have a soul as well as a heart,' said Ethel, as well as the swelling in her throat would allow. 'To be sure, this world would be a poor place to live in, if admiration did not make pity bearable,' said the Doctor; 'but--but don't ask me, Ethel: you have not had that fine fellow in his manly patience before your eyes. Talk of your knowing him! You knew a boy! I tell you, this has made him a man, and one of a thousand--so high-minded and so simple, so clearheaded and well-balanced, so entirely resigned and free from bitterness! What could he not be? It would be grievous to see him cut off by a direct dispensation--sickness, accident, battle; but for him to come to such an end, for the sake of a double murderer--Ethel--it would almost stagger one's faith!' 'Almost!' repeated Ethel, with the smile of a conqueror. 'I know, I know,' said the Doctor. 'If it be so, it will be right; one will try to believe it good for him. Nay, there's proof enough in what it has done for him already. If you could only see him!' 'I mean to see him, if it should go against him,' said Ethel, 'if you will let me. I would go to him as I would if he were in a decline, and with more reverence.' 'Don't talk of it,' cried her father. 'For truth's sake, for justice's sake, for the country's sake, I can not, will not, believe it will go wrong. There is a Providence, after all, Ethel!' And the Doctor went away, afraid alike of hope and despondency, and Ethel thought of the bright young face, of De Wilton, of Job, and of the martyrs; and when she was not encouraging Aubrey, or soothing Averil, her heart would sink, and the tears that would not come would have been very comfortable. It was well for all that the assizes were so near that the suspense was not long protracted; for it told upon all concerned. Leonard, when the Doctor saw him again, was of the same way of thinking, but his manner was more agitated; he could not sleep, or if he slept, the anticipations chased away in the day-time revenged themselves in his dreams; and he was very unhappy, also, about his sister, whose illness continued day after day. She was not acutely ill, but in a constant state of low fever, every faculty in the most painful state of tension, convinced that she was quite able to get up and go to Leonard, and that her detention was mere cruelty; and then, on trying to rise, refused by fainting. Her searching questions and ardent eyes made it impossible to keep any feature in the case from her knowledge. Sleep was impossible to her; and once when Henry tried the effect of an anodyne, it produced a semi-delirium, which made him heartily repent of his independent measure. At all times she was talking--nothing but the being left with a very stolid maid-servant ever closed her lips, and she so greatly resented being thus treated, that the measure was seldom possible. Henry seldom left her. He was convinced that Leonard's sentence would be hers likewise, and he watched over her with the utmost tenderness and patience with her fretfulness and waywardness, never quitting her except on their brother's behalf, when Ethel or Mary would take his place. Little Minna was always to be found on her small chair by the bed-side, or moving about like a mouse, sometimes whispering her one note, 'They can't hurt him, if he has not done it,' and still quietly working at the pair of slippers that had been begun for his birthday present. Mary used to bring Ella, and take them out walking in the least-frequented path; but though the little sisters kissed eagerly, and went fondly hand in hand, they never were sorry to part: Ella's spirits oppressed Minna, and Minna's depression vexed the more volatile sister; moreover, Minna always dreaded Mary's desire to carry her away--as, poor child, she looked paler, and her eyes heavier and darker, every day. No one else, except, of course, Dr. May, was admitted. Henry would not let his sister see Mr. Scudamour or Mr. Wilmot, lest she should be excited; and Averil's 'No one' was vehement as a defence against Mrs. Pugh or Mrs. Ledwich, whom she suspected of wanting to see her, though she never heard of more than their daily inquiries. Mrs. Pugh was, in spite of her exclusion, the great authority with the neighbourhood for all the tidings of 'the poor Wards,' of whom she talked with the warmest commiseration, relating every touching detail of their previous and present history, and continually enduring the great shock of meeting people in shops or in the streets, whom she knew to be reporters or photographers. In fact, the catastrophe had taken a strong hold on the public mind; and 'Murder of an Uncle by his Nephew,' 'The Blewer Tragedy,' figured everywhere in the largest type; newsboys on the railway shouted, 'To-day's paper-account of inquest;' and the illustrated press sent down artists, whose three-legged cameras stared in all directions, from the Vintry Mill to Bankside, and who aimed at the school, the Minster, the volunteers, and Dr. Hoxton himself. Tom advised Ethel to guard Mab carefully from appearing stuffed in the chamber of horrors at Madame Tussaud's; and the furniture at the mill would have commanded any price. Nay, Mrs. Pugh was almost certain she had seen one of the 'horrid men' bargaining with the local photographer for her own portrait, in her weeds, and was resolved the interesting injury should never be forgiven! She really had the 'trying scenes' of two interviews with both Mr. Bramshaw and the attorney from Whitford who was getting up the prosecution, each having been told that she was in possession of important intelligence. Mr. Bramshaw was not sanguine as to what he might obtain from her, but flattered her with the attempt, and ended by assuring her, like his opponent, that there was no need to expose her to the unpleasantness of appearing in court. Aubrey was not to have the same relief, but was, like his father, subpoenaed as a witness for the prosecution. He had followed his father's advice, and took care not to disclose his evidence to the enemy, as he regarded the Whitford lawyer. He was very miserable, and it was as much for his sake as that of the immediate family, that Ethel rejoiced that the suspense was to be short. Counsel of high reputation had been retained; but as the day came nearer, without bringing any of the disclosures on which the Doctor had so securely reckoned, more and more stress was laid on the dislike to convict on circumstantial evidence, and on the saying that the English law had rather acquit ten criminals than condemn one innocent man. CHAPTER XIV Ah! I mind me now of thronging faces, Mocking eyed, and eager, as for sport; Hundreds looking up, and in high places Men arrayed for judgment and a court. And I heard, or seemed to hear, one seeking Answer back from one he doomed to die, Pitifully, sadly, sternly speaking Unto one--and oh! that one, twas I.--Rev. G. E. Monsell The 'Blewer Murder' was the case of the Assize week; and the court was so crowded that, but for the favour of the sheriff, Mr. and Mrs. Rivers, with Tom and Gertrude, could hardly have obtained seats. No others of the family could endure to behold the scene, except from necessity; and indeed Ethel and Mary had taken charge of the sisters at home, for Henry could not remain at a distance from his brother, though unable to bear the sight of the proceedings; he remained in a house at hand. Nearly the whole population of Stoneborough, Whitford, and Blewer was striving to press into court, but before the day's work began, Edward Anderson had piloted Mrs. Pugh to a commodious place, under the escort of his brother Harvey, who was collecting materials for an article on criminal jurisprudence. Some of those who, like the widow and little Gertrude, had been wild to be present, felt their hearts fail them when the last previous case had been disposed of; and there was a brief pause of grave and solemn suspense and silent breathless expectation within the court, unbroken, except by increased sounds of crowding in all the avenues without. Every one, except the mere loungers, who craved nothing but excitement, looked awed and anxious; and the impression was deepened by the perception that the same feeling, though restrained, affected the judge himself, and was visible in the anxious attention with which he looked at the papers before him, and the stern sadness that had come over the features naturally full of kindness and benevolence. The prisoner appeared in the dock. He had become paler, and perhaps thinner, for his square determined jaw, and the resolute mould of his lips, were more than usually remarkable, and were noted in the physiognomical brain of Harvey Anderson; as well as the keen light of his full dark hazel eye, the breadth of his brow, with his shining light brown hair brushed back from it; the strong build of his frame, and the determined force, apparent even in the perfect quiescence of his attitude. Leonard Axworthy Ward was arraigned for the wilful murder of Francis Axworthy, and asked whether he pleaded Guilty or Not Guilty. His voice was earnest, distinct, and firm, and his eyes were raised upwards, as though he were making the plea of 'Not Guilty' not to man alone, but to the Judge of all the earth. The officer of the court informed him of his right to challenge any of the jury, as they were called over by name; and as each came to be sworn, he looked full and steadily at each face, more than one of which was known to him by sight, as if he were committing his cause into their hands. He declined to challenge; and then crossing his arms on his breast, cast down his eyes, and thus retained them through the greater part of the trial. The jurymen were then sworn in, and charged with the issue; and the counsel for the prosecution opened the case, speaking more as if in pity than indignation, as he sketched the history, which it was his painful duty to establish. He described how Mr. Axworthy, having spent the more active years of his life in foreign trade, had finally returned to pass his old age among his relatives; and had taken to assist him in his business a great-nephew, and latterly another youth in the same degree of relation, the son of his late niece--the prisoner, who on leaving school had been taken into his uncle's office, lodged in the house, and became one of the family. It would, however, be shown by witnesses that the situation had been extremely irksome to the young man; and that he had not been in it many months before he had expressed his intention of absconding, provided he could obtain the means of making his way in one of the colonies. Then followed a summary of the deductions resulting from the evidence about to be adduced, and which carried upon its face the inference that the absence of the cousin, the remoteness of the room, the sight of a large sum of money, and the helplessness of the old man, had proved temptations too strong for a fiery and impatient youth, long fretted by the restraints of his situation, and had conducted him to violence, robbery, and flight. It was a case that could not be regarded without great regret and compassion; but the gentlemen of the jury must bear in mind in their investigation, that pity must not be permitted to distort the facts, which he feared were only too obvious. The speech was infinitely more telling from its fair and commiserating tone towards the prisoner; and the impression that it carried, not that he was to be persecuted by having the crime fastened on him, but that truth must be sought out at all hazards. 'Even he is sorry for Leonard! I don't hate him as I thought I should,' whispered Gertrude May, to her elder sister. The first witness was, as before, the young maid-servant, Anne Ellis, who described her first discovery of the body; and on farther interrogation, the situation of the room, distant from those of the servants, and out of hearing--also her master's ordinary condition of feebleness. She had observed nothing in the room, or on the table, but knew the window was open, since she had run to it, and screamed for help, upon which Master Hardy had come to her aid. Leonard's counsel then elicited from her how low the window was, and how easily it could be entered from without. James Hardy corroborated all this, giving a more minute account of the state of the room; and telling of his going to call the young gentlemen, and finding the open passage window and empty bed-room. The passage window would naturally be closed at night; and there was no reason to suppose that Mr. Ward would be absent. The bag shown to him was one that had originally been made for the keeping of cash, but latterly had been used for samples of grain, and he had last seen it in the office. The counsel for the prisoner inquired what had been on the table at Hardy's first entrance; but to this the witness could not swear, except that the lamp was burning, and that there were no signs of disorder, nor was the dress of the deceased disarranged. He had seen his master put receipts, and make memorandums, in a large, black, silver-clasped pocket-book, but had never handled it, and could not swear to it; he had seen nothing like it since his master's death. He was further asked how long the prisoner had been at the mill, his duties there, and the amount of trust reposed in him; to which last the answer was, that about a month since, Mr. Axworthy had exclaimed that if ever he wanted a thing to be done, he must set Ward about it. Saving this speech, made in irritation at some omission on Sam's part, nothing was adduced to show that Leonard was likely to have been employed without his cousin's knowledge; though Hardy volunteered the addition that Mr. Ward was always respectful and attentive, and that his uncle had lately thought much more of him than at first. Rebekah Giles gave her account of the scene in the sitting-room. She had been in the service of the deceased for the last four years, and before in that of his sister-in-law, Mr. Samuel's mother. She had herself closed the passage window at seven o'clock in the evening, as usual. She had several times previously found it partly open in the morning, after having thus shut it over-night; but never before, Mr. Ward's bed unslept in. Her last interview with Mr. Axworthy was then narrated, with his words--an imprecation against rifle practice, as an excuse for idle young rascals to be always out of the way. Then followed her communication to the prisoner at half-past nine, when she saw him go into the parlour, in his volunteer uniform, rifle in hand, heard him turn the lock of the sitting-room door, and then herself retired to bed. Cross-examination did not do much with her, only showing that, when she brought in the supper, one window had been open, and the blinds, common calico ones, drawn down, thus rendering it possible for a person to lurk unseen in the court, and enter by the window. Her master had assigned no reason for sending for Mr. Ward. She did not know whether Mr. Axworthy had any memorandum-book; she had seen none on the table, nor found any when she undressed the body, though his purse, watch, and seals were on his person. Mr. Rankin's medical evidence came next, both as to the cause of death, the probable instrument, and the nature of the stains on the desk and rifle. When cross-examined, he declared that he had looked at the volunteer uniform without finding any mark of blood, but from the nature of the injury it was not likely that there would be any. He had attended Mr. Axworthy for several years, and had been visiting him professionally during a fit of the gout in the last fortnight of June, when he had observed that the prisoner was very attentive to his uncle. Mr. Axworthy was always unwilling to be waited on, but was unusually tolerant of this nephew's exertions on his behalf, and had seemed of late to place much reliance on him. Doctor Richard May was the next witness called. The sound of that name caused the first visible change in the prisoner's demeanour, if that could be called change, which was only a slight relaxation of the firm closing of the lips, and one sparkle of the dark eyes, ere they were again bent down as before, though not without a quiver of the lids. Dr. May had brought tone, look, and manner to the grave impartiality which even the most sensitive man is drilled into assuming in public; but he durst not cast one glance in the direction of the prisoner. In answer to the counsel for the prosecution, he stated that he was at the Vintry Mill at seven o'clock on the morning of the 6th of July, not professionally, but as taking interest in the Ward family. He had seen the body of the deceased, and considered death to have been occasioned by fracture of the skull, from a blow with a blunt heavy instrument. The superintendent had shown him a rifle, which he considered, from the marks on it, as well as from the appearance of the body, to have produced the injury. The rifle was the one shown to him; it was the property of Leonard Ward. He recognized it by the crest and cipher H. E. It had belonged to his son-in-law, Hector Ernescliffe, by whom it had been given to Leonard Ward. Poor Doctor! That was a cruel piece of evidence; and his son and daughters opposite wondered how he could utter it in that steady matter-of-fact way; but they knew him to be sustained by hopes of the cross-examination; and he soon had the opportunity of declaring that he had known Leonard Ward from infancy, without being aware of any imputation against him; but had always seen him highly principled and trustworthy, truthful and honourable, kind-hearted and humane--the last person to injure the infirm or aged. Perhaps the good Doctor, less afraid of the sound of his own voice, and not so much in awe as some of the other witnesses, here in his eagerness overstepped the bounds of prudence. His words indeed brought a tremulous flicker of grateful emotion over the prisoner's face; but by carrying the inquiry into the region of character and opinion, he opened the door to a dangerous re-examination by the Crown lawyer, who required the exact meaning of his unqualified commendation, especially in the matter of humanity, demanding whether he had never known of any act of violence on the prisoner's part. The colour flushed suddenly into Leonard's face, though he moved neither eye nor lip; but his counsel appealed to the judge, and the pursuit of this branch of the subject was quashed as irrelevant; but the Doctor went down in very low spirits, feeling that his evidence had been damaging, and his hopes of any ray of light becoming fainter. After this, the village policeman repeated the former statements, as to the state of the various rooms, the desk, locked and untouched, the rifle, boat, &c., further explaining that the distance from the mill to Blewer Station, by the road was an hour and half's walk, by the fields, not more than half an hour's. The station-master proved the prisoner's arrival at midnight, his demand of a day-ticket, his being without luggage, and in a black suit; and the London policeman proved the finding of the money on his person, and repeated his own explanation of it. The money was all in sovereigns, except one five and one ten-pound note, and Edward Hazlitt, the clerk of the Whitford Bank, was called to prove the having given the latter in change to Mr. Axworthy for a fifty-pound cheque, on the 10th of May last. This same clerk had been at the volunteer drill on the evening of the 5th of July, had there seen the prisoner, had parted with him at dusk, towards nine o'clock, making an engagement with him to meet on Blewer Heath for some private practice at seven o'clock on Monday evening. Thought Mr. Axworthy did sometimes employ young Ward on his commissions; Mr. Axworthy had once sent him into Whitford to pay in a large sum, and another time with an order to be cashed. The dates of these transactions were shown in the books; and Hazlitt added, on further interrogation, that Samuel Axworthy could not have been aware of the sum being sent to the bank, since he had shortly after come and desired to see the account, which had been laid before him as confidential manager, when he had shown surprise and annoyance at the recent deposit, asking through whom it had been made. Not ten days subsequently, an order for nearly the entire amount had been cashed, signed by the deceased, but filled up in Samuel's handwriting. This had taken place in April; and another witness, a baker, proved the having paid the five-pound note to old Mr. Axworthy himself on the 2nd of May. Samuel Axworthy himself was next called. His florid face wore something of the puffed, stupefied look it had had at the inquest, but his words were ready, and always to the point. He identified the bag in which the money had been found, giving an account of it similar to Hardy's, and adding that he had last seen it lying by his cousin's desk. His uncle had no account with any London bank, all transactions had of late passed through his own hands, and he had never known the prisoner employed in any business of importance--he could not have been kept in ignorance of it if it had previously been the case. The deceased had a black shagreen pocket-book, with a silver clasp, which he occasionally used, but the witness had never known him give it out of his own hand, nor take a receipt in it. Had not seen it on the morning of the 6th, nor subsequently. Could not account for the sum found on the person of the prisoner, whose salary was £50 per annum, and who had no private resources, except the interest of £2000, which, he being a minor, was not in his own hands. Deceased was fond of amassing sovereigns, and would often keep them for a longtime in the drawer of his desk, as much as from £50 to £100. There was none there when the desk was opened on the 6th of July, though there had certainly been gold there two days previously. It was kept locked. It had a small Bramah key, which his uncle wore on his watch-chain, in his waistcoat pocket. The drawer was locked when he saw it on the morning of the 6th. The Doctor, who had joined his children, gave a deep respiration, and relaxed the clenching of his hand, as this witness went down. Then it came to the turn of Aubrey Spencer May. The long waiting, after his nerves had been wound up, had been a severe ordeal, and his delicacy of constitution and home breeding had rendered him peculiarly susceptible. With his resemblance to his father in form and expression, it was like seeing the Doctor denuded of that shell of endurance with which he had contrived to conceal his feelings. The boy was indeed braced to resolution, bat the resolution was equally visible with the agitation in the awe-stricken brow, varying colour, tightened breath, and involuntary shiver, as he took the oath. Again Leonard looked up with one of his clear bright glances, and perhaps a shade of anxiety; but Aubrey, for his own comfort, was too short-sighted for meeting of eyes from that distance. Seeing his agitation, and reckoning on his evidence, the counsel gave him time, by minutely asking if his double Christian name were correctly given, his age, and if he were not the son of Dr. May. 'You were the prisoner's school-fellow, I believe?' 'No,' faltered Aubrey. 'But you live near him?' 'We are friends,' said Aubrey, with sudden firmness and precision; and from the utterance of that emphatic _are_, his spirit returned. 'Did you often see him?' 'On most Sundays, after church.' 'Did you ever hear him say he had any thoughts of the means of leaving the mill privately?' 'Something like it,' said Aubrey, turning very red. 'Can you tell me the words?' 'He said if things went on, that I was not to be surprised if I heard non est inventus,' said Aubrey, speaking as if rapidity would conceal the meaning of the words, but taken aback by being made to repeat and translate them to the jury. 'And did he mention any way of escaping?' 'He said the window and cedar-tree were made for it, and that he often went out that way to bathe,' said Aubrey. 'When did this conversation take place?' 'On Sunday, the 22nd of June,' said Aubrey, in despair, as the Crown lawyer thanked him, and sat down. He felt himself betrayed into having made their talk wear the air of deliberate purpose, and having said not one word of what Mr. Bramshaw had hailed as hopeful. However, the defending barrister rose up to ask him what he meant by having answered 'Something like it.' 'Because,' said Aubrey, promptly, 'though we did make the scheme, we were neither of us in earnest.' 'How do you know the prisoner was not in earnest?' 'We often made plans of what we should like to do.' 'And had you any reason for thinking this one of such plans!' 'Yes,' said Aubrey; 'for he talked of getting gold enough to build up the market-cross, or else of going to see the Feejee Islands. 'Then you understood the prisoner not to express a deliberate purpose, so much as a vague design.' 'Just so,' said Aubrey. 'A design that depended on how things went on at the mill.' And being desired to explain his words, he added, that Leonard had said he could not bear the sight of Sam Axworthy's tyranny over the old man, and was resolved not to stay, if he were made a party to any of the dishonest tricks of the trade. 'In that case, did he say where he would have gone?' 'First to New Zealand, to my brother, the Reverend Norman May.' Leonard's counsel was satisfied with the colour the conversation had now assumed; but the perils of re-examination were not over yet, for the adverse lawyer requested to know whence the funds were to have come for this adventurous voyage. 'We laughed a little about that, and he said he should have to try how far his quarter's salary would go towards a passage in the steerage.' 'If your friend expressed so strong a distaste to his employers and their business, what induced him to enter it?' Leonard's counsel again objected to this inquiry, and it was not permitted. Aubrey was dismissed, and, flushed and giddy, was met by his brother Tom, who almost took him in his arms as he emerged from the passage. 'O, Tom! what have I done?' 'Famously, provided there's no miller in the jury. Come,' as he felt the weight on his arm, 'Flora says I am to take you down and make you take something.' 'No, no, no, I can't! I must go back.' 'I tell you there's nothing going on. Every one is breathing and baiting.' And he got him safe to a pastrycook's, and administered brandy cherries, which Aubrey bolted whole like pills, only entreating to return, and wanting to know how he thought the case going. 'Excellently. Hazlitt's evidence and yours ought to carry him through. And Anderson says they have made so much out of the witnesses for the prosecution, that they need call none for the defence; and so the enemy will be balked of their reply, and we shall have the last word. I vow I have missed my vocation. I know I was born for a barrister!' 'Now may we come back?' said the boy, overwhelmed by his brother's cheeriness; and they squeezed into court again, Tom inserting Aubrey into his own former seat, and standing behind him on half a foot at the angle of the passage. They were in time for the opening of the defence, and to hear Leonard described as a youth of spirit and promise, of a disposition that had won him general affection and esteem, and recommended to universal sympathy by the bereavement which was recent in the memory of his fellow-townsmen; and there was a glance at the mourning which the boy still wore. 'They had heard indeed that he was quick-tempered and impulsive; but the gentlemen of the jury were some of them fathers, and he put it to them whether a ready and generous spirit of indignation in a lad were compatible with cowardly designs against helpless old age; whether one whose recreations were natural science and manly exercise, showed tokens of vicious tendencies; above all, whether a youth, whose friendship they had seen so touchingly claimed by a son of one of the most highly respected gentlemen in the county, were evincing the propensities that lead to the perpetration of deeds of darkness.' Tom patted Aubrey on the shoulder; and Aubrey, though muttering 'humbug,' was by some degrees less wretched. 'Men did not change their nature on a sudden,' the counsel continued; 'and where was the probability that a youth of character entirely unblemished, and of a disposition particularly humane and generous, should at once rush into a crime of the deep and deadly description, to which a long course of dissipation, leading to perplexity, distress, and despair, would be the only inducement?' He then went on to speak of Leonard's position at the mill, as junior clerk. He had been there for six months, without a flaw being detected, either in his integrity, his diligence, or his regularity; indeed, it was evident that he had been gradually acquiring a greater degree of esteem and confidence than he had at first enjoyed, and had been latterly more employed by his uncle. That a young man of superior education should find the daily drudgery tedious and distasteful, and that one of sensitive honour should be startled at the ordinary, he might almost say proverbial, customs of the miller's trade, was surprising to no one; and that he should unbosom himself to a friend of his own age, and indulge together with him in romantic visions of adventure, was, to all who remembered their own boyhood, an illustration of the freshness and ingenuousness of the character that thus unfolded itself. Where there were day-dreams, there was no room for plots of crime. Then ensued a species of apology for the necessity of entering into particulars that did not redound to the credit of a gentleman, who had appeared before the court under such distressing circumstances as Mr. Samuel Axworthy; but it was needful that the condition of the family should be well understood, in order to comprehend the unhappy train of events which had conducted the prisoner into his present situation. He then went through what had been traceable through the evidence--that Samuel Axworthy was a man of expensive habits, and accustomed to drain his uncle's resources to supply his own needs; showing how the sum, which had been intrusted to the prisoner, to be paid into the local bank, had been drawn out by the elder nephew as soon as he became aware of the deposit; and how, shortly after, the prisoner had expressed to Aubrey May his indignation at the tyranny exercised on his uncle. 'By and by, another sum is amassed,' continued Leonard's advocate. 'How dispose of it? The local bank is evidently no security from the rapacity of the elder nephew. Once aware of its existence, he knows how to use means for compelling its surrender; and the feeble old man can no longer call his hard-earned gains his own except on sufferance. The only means of guarding it is to lodge it secretly in a distant bank, without the suspicion of his nephew Samuel; but the invalid is too infirm to leave his apartment; his fingers, crippled by gout, refuse even to guide the pen. He can only watch for an opportunity, and this is at length afforded by the absence of the elder nephew for two days at the county races. This will afford time for a trustworthy and intelligent messenger to convey the sum to town, deposit it in Messrs, Drummond's bank, and return unobserved. When, therefore, supper is brought in, Mr. Axworthy sends for the lad on whom he has learnt to depend, and shows much disappointment at his absence. Where is he? Is he engaged with low companions in the haunts of vice, that are the declivity towards crime? Is he gaming, or betting, or drinking? No. He has obeyed the summons of his country; he is a zealous volunteer, and is eagerly using a weapon presented to him by a highly respected gentleman of large fortune in a neighbouring county; nay, so far is he from any sinister purpose, that he is making an appointment with a fellow-rifleman for the ensuing Monday. On his return at dark, he receives a pressing summons to his uncle's room, and hastens to obey it without pausing to lay aside his rifle. The commission is explained, and well understanding the painfulness of the cause, he discreetly asks no questions, but prepares to execute it. The sum of £124 12s. is taken from the drawer of the desk, the odd money assigned to travelling expenses, the £120 placed in a bag brought in from the office for the purpose, bearing the initials of the owner, and a receipt in a private pocket-book was signed by him for the amount, and left open on the table for the ink to dry. 'Who that has ever been young, can doubt the zest and elevation of receiving for the first time a confidential mission? Who can doubt that even the favourite weapon would be forgotten where it stood, and that it would only be accordant to accredited rules that the window should be preferable to the door? Had it not already figured in the visions of adventure in the Sunday evening's walk? was it not a favourite mode of exit in the mornings, when bathing and fishing were more attractive than the pillow! Moreover, the moonlight disclosed what appeared like a figure in the court-yard, and there was reason at the time to suppose it a person likely to observe and report upon the expedition. The opening of the front door might likewise attract notice; and if the cousin should, as was possible, return that night, the direct road was the way to meet him. The hour was too early for the train which was to be met, but a lighted candle would reveal the vigil, and moonlight on the meadows was attractive at eighteen. Gentlemen of soberer and maturer years might be incredulous, but surely it was not so strange or unusual for a lad, who indulged in visions of adventure, to find a moonlight walk by the river-side more inviting than a bed-room. 'Shortly after, perhaps as soon as the light was extinguished, the murder must have been committed. The very presence of that light had been guardianship to the helpless old man below. When it was quenched, nothing remained astir, the way from without was open, the weapon stood only too ready to hand, the memorandum-book gave promise of booty and was secured, though nothing else was apparently touched. It was this very book that contained the signature that would have exonerated the prisoner, and to which he fearlessly appealed upon his arrest at the Paddington Station, before, for his additional misfortune, he had time to discharge himself of his commission, and establish his innocence by the deposit of the money at the bank. He has thus for a while become the victim of a web of suspicious circumstances. But look at these very circumstances more closely, and they will be found perfectly consistent with the prisoner's statement, never varying, be it remembered, from the explanation given to the policeman in first surprise and horror of the tidings of the crime. 'It might have been perhaps thought that there was another alternative between entire innocence and a deliberate purpose of robbery and murder-namely, that reproof from the old man had provoked a blow, and that the means of flight had been hastily seized upon in the moment of confusion and alarm. This might have been a plausible line of defence, and secure of a favourable hearing; but I beg to state that the prisoner has distinctly refused any such defence, and my instructions are to contend for his perfect innocence. A nature such as we have already traced is, as we cannot but perceive, revolted by the bare idea of violence to the aged and infirm, and recoils as strongly from the one accusation as from the other. 'The prisoner made his statement at the first moment, and has adhered to it in every detail, without confusion or self-contradiction. It does not attempt to explain all the circumstances, but they all tally exactly with his story; he is unable to show by whom the crime could have been committed, nor is he bound in law or justice so to do; nay, his own story shows the absolute impossibility of his being able to explain what took place in his absence. But mark how completely the established facts corroborate his narrative. Observe first the position in which the body was found, the head on the desk, the stain of blood corresponding with the wound, the dress undisturbed, all manifestly untouched since the fatal stroke was dealt. Could this have been the case, had the key of the drawer of gold been taken from the waistcoat pocket, the chain from about the neck of the deceased, and both replaced after the removal of the money and relocking the drawer! Can any one doubt that the drawer was opened, the money taken out, and the lock secured, while Mr. Axworthy was alive and consenting? Again, what robber would convey away the spoil in a bag bearing the initials of the owner, and that not caught up in haste, but fetched in for the purpose from the office? Or would so tell-tale a weapon as the rifle have been left conspicuously close at hand? There was no guilty precipitation, for the uniform had been taken off and folded up, and with a whole night before him, it would have been easy to reach a more distant station, where his person would not have been recognized. Why, too, if this were the beginning of a flight and exile, should no preparation have been made for passing a single night from home? why should a day-ticket have been asked for? No, the prisoner's own straightforward, unvarnished statement is the only consistent interpretation of the facts, otherwise conflicting and incomprehensible. 'That a murder has been committed is unhappily too certain. I make no attempt to unravel the mystery. I confine myself to the far more grateful task of demonstrating, that to fasten the imputation on the accused, would be to overlook a complication of inconsistencies, all explained by his own account of himself, but utterly inexplicable on the hypothesis of his guilt. 'Circumstantial evidence is universally acknowledged to be perilous ground for a conviction; and I never saw a case in which it was more manifestly delusive than in the present, bearing at first an imposing and formidable aspect, but on examination, confuted in every detail. Most assuredly,' continued the counsel, his voice becoming doubly earnest, 'while there is even the possibility of innocence, it becomes incumbent on you, gentlemen of the jury, to consider well the fearful consequences of a decision in a matter of life or death--a decision for which there can be no reversal. The facts that have come to light are manifestly incomplete. Another link in the chain has yet to be added; and when it shall come forth, how will it be if it should establish the guiltlessness of the prisoner too late? Too late, when a young life of high promise, and linked by close family ties, and by bonds of ardent friendship with so many, has been quenched in shame and disgrace, for a crime to which he may be an utter stranger. 'The extinction of the light in that upper window was the sign for darkness and horror to descend on the mill! Here is the light of life still burning, but a breath of yours can extinguish it in utter gloom, and then who may rekindle it! Nay, the revelation of events that would make the transactions of that fatal night clear as the noonday, would never avail to rekindle the lamp, that may yet, I trust, shine forth to the world--the clearer, it may be, from the unmerited imputations, which it has been my part to combat, and of which his entire life is a confutation.' Mrs. Pugh was sobbing under her veil; Gertrude felt the cause won. Tom noiselessly clapped the orator behind his brother's back, and nodded his approval to his father. Even Leonard lifted up his face, and shot across a look, as if he felt deliverance near after the weary day, that seemed to have been a lifetime already, though the sunbeams were only beginning to fall high and yellow on the ceiling, through the heated stifling atmosphere, heavy with anxiety and suspense. Doctor May was thinking of the meeting after the acquittal, of the telegram to Stoneborough, of the sister's revival, and of Ethel's greeting. Still the judge had to sum up; and all eyes turned on him, knowing that the fate of the accused would probably depend on the colouring that the facts adduced would assume in his hands. Flora, who met him in society, was struck by the grave and melancholy bracing, as it were, of the countenance, that she had seen as kindly and bright as her father's; and the deep, full voice, sad rather than stern, the very tone of which conveyed to every mind how heavy was the responsibility of justice and impartiality. In effect, the very force of the persuasions made for the defence, unanswered by the prosecution, rendered it needful for him to give full weight to the evidence for the other side; namely, the prisoner's evident impatience of his position, and premeditated flight, the coincidence of the times, the being the last person seen to enter the room, and with the very weapon that had been the instrument of the crime; the probability that the deceased had himself opened the drawer, the open window, the flight, and the missing sum being found on his person, the allegation that the receipt would be found in the pocket-book, unsupported by any testimony as to the practice of the deceased; the strangeness of leaving the premises so much too early for the train, and, by his own account, leaving a person prowling in the court, close to his uncle's window. No opinion was given; but there was something that gave a sense that the judge felt it a crushing weight of evidence. Yet so minutely was every point examined, so carefully was every indication weighed which could tend to establish the prisoner's innocence, that to those among his audience who believed that innocence indubitable, it seemed as if his arguments proved it, even more triumphantly than the pleading of the counsel, as, vibrating between hope and fear, anxiety and gratitude, they followed him from point to point of the unhappy incident, hanging upon every word, as though each were decisive. When at length he ceased, and the jury retired, the breathless stillness continued. With some, indeed, there was the relaxation of long-strained attention, eyes unbent, and heads turned, but Flora had to pass her arm round her little sister, to steady the child's nervous trembling; Aubrey sat rigid and upright, the throbs of his heart well-nigh audible; and Dr. May leant forward, and covered his eyes with his hand; Tom, who alone dared glance to the dock, saw that Leonard too had retired. Those were the most terrible minutes they had ever spent in their lives; but they were minutes of hope--of hope of relief from a burthen, becoming more intolerable with every second's delay ere the rebound. Long as it seemed to them, it was not in reality more than a quarter of an hour before the jury returned, and with slow grave movements, and serious countenances, resumed their places. Leonard was already in his; his cheek paler, his fingers locked together, and his eyes scanning each as they came forward, and one by one their names were called over. His head was erect, and his bearing had something undaunted, though intensely anxious. The question was put by the clerk of the court, 'How find you? Guilty or Not guilty?' Firmly, though sadly, the foreman rose, and his answer was, 'We find the prisoner guilty; but we earnestly recommend him to mercy.' Whether Tom felt or not that Aubrey was in a dead faint, and rested against him as a senseless weight, he paid no visible attention to aught but one face, on which his eyes were riveted as though nothing would ever detach them--and that face was not the prisoner's. Others saw Leonard's face raised upwards, and a deep red flush spread over brow and cheek, though neither lip nor eye wavered. Then came the question whether the prisoner had anything to say, wherefore judgment should not be passed upon him. Leonard made a step forward, and his clear steady tone did not shake for a moment as he spoke. 'No. I see that appearances are so much against me, that man can hardly decide otherwise. I have known from the first that nothing could show my innocence but the finding of the receipt. In the absence of that one testimony, I feel that I have had a fair trial, and that all has been done for me that could be done; and I thank you for it, my Lord, and you, Gentlemen,' as he bent his head; then added, 'I should like to say one thing more. My Lord, you would not let the question be asked, how I brought all this upon myself. I wish to say it myself, for it is that which makes my sentence just in the sight of God. It is true that, though I never lifted my hand against my poor uncle, I did in a moment of passion fling a stone at my brother, which, but for God's mercy, might indeed have made me a murderer. It was for this, and other like outbreaks, that I was sent to the mill; and it may be just that for it I should die--though indeed I never hurt my uncle.' Perhaps there was something in the tone of that one word, indeed, which, by recalling his extreme youth, touched all hearts more than even the manly tone of his answer, and his confession. There was a universal weeping and sobbing throughout the court; Mrs. Pugh was on the verge of hysterics, and obliged to be supported away; and Gertrude was choking between the agony of contagious feeling and dread of Flora's displeasure; and all the time Leonard stood calm, with his brave head and lofty bearing, wound up for the awful moment of the sentence. The weeping was hushed, when the crier of the court made proclamation, commanding all persons on pain of imprisonment to be silent. Then the judge placed on his head the black cap, and it was with trembling hands that he did so; the blood had entirely left his face, and his lips were purple with the struggle to contend with and suppress his emotion. He paused, as though he were girding himself up to the most terrible of duties, and when he spoke his voice was hollow, as he began: 'Leonard Axworthy Ward, you have been found guilty of a crime that would have appeared impossible in one removed from temptation by birth and education such as yours have been. What the steps may have been that led to such guilt, must lie between your own conscience and that God whose justice you have acknowledged. To Him you have evidently been taught to look; and may you use the short time that still remains to you, in seeking His forgiveness by sincere repentance. I will forward the recommendation to mercy, but it is my duty to warn you that there are no such palliating circumstances in the evidence, as to warrant any expectation of a remission of the sentence. And therewith followed the customary form of sentence, ending with the solemn 'And may God Almighty have mercy on your soul!' Full and open, and never quailing, had the dark eyes been fixed upon the judge all the time; and at those last words, the head bent low, and the lips moved for 'Amen.' Then Tom, relieved to find instant occupation for his father, drew his attention to Aubrey's state; and the boy between Tom and George Rivers was, as best they could, carried through the narrow outlets, and laid down in a room, opened to them by the sheriff, where his father and Flora attended him, while Tom flew for remedies; and Gertrude sobbed and wept as she had never done in her life. It was some time before the swoon yielded, or Dr. May could leave his son, and then he was bent on at once going to the prisoner; but he was so shaken and tremulous, that Tom insisted on giving him his arm, and held an umbrella over him in the driving rain. 'Father,' he said, as soon as they were in the street, 'I can swear who did it.' Dr. May just hindered himself from uttering the name, but Tom answered as if it had been spoken. 'Yes. I saw the face of fiendish barbarity that once was over me, when I was a miserable little school-boy! He did it; and he has the receipt.' Dr. May squeezed his arm. 'I have not betrayed the secret, have I!' 'You knew that he knew it!' 'Not knew--suspected--generosity.' 'I saw him! I saw him cast those imploring earnest eyes of his on the scoundrel as he spoke of the receipt--and the villain try to make himself of stone. Well, if I have one wish in life, it is to see that fellow come to the fate he deserves. I'll never lose sight of him; I'll dog him like a bloodhound!' And what good will that do, when--Tom, Tom, we must move Heaven and earth for petitions. I'll take them up myself, and get George Rivers to take me to the Home Secretary. Never fear, while there's justice in Heaven.' 'Here's Henry!' exclaimed Tom, withholding his father, who had almost ran against the brother, as they encountered round a corner. He was pale and bewildered, and hardly seemed to hear the Doctor's hasty asseverations that he would get a reprieve. 'He sent me to meet you,' said Henry. 'He wants you to go home--to Ave I mean. He says that is what he wants most--for you to go to her now, and to come to him to-morrow, or when you can; and he wants to hear how Aubrey is,' continued Henry, as if dreamily repeating a lesson. 'He saw then--?' 'Yes, and that seems to trouble him most.' Dr. May was past speaking, and Tom was obliged to answer for him--that Aubrey was pretty well again, and had desired his dearest, dearest love; then asked how Leonard was. 'Calm and firm as ever,' said Henry, half choked. 'Nothing seems to upset him, but speaking of--of you and Aubrey, Dr. May--and poor Ave. But--but they'll be together before long.' 'No such thing,' said Dr. May. 'You will see that certainty cures, when suspense kills; and for him, I'll never believe but that all will be right yet. Are you going home?' 'I shall try to be with--with the dear unhappy boy as long as I can, and then I'll come home.' Dr. May grasped Henry's hand, gave a promise of coming, and a message of love to the prisoner, tried to say something more, but broke down, and let Tom lead him away. CHAPTER XV Under the shroud Of His thunder-cloud Lie we still when His voice is loud, And our hearts shall feel The love notes steal, As a bird sings after the thunder peal--C. F. A. Not till dusk could Dr. May get back to Stoneborough, and then, in an evening gleam of that stormy day, he was met at the gate of Bankside by Richard and Ethel. 'You need not come in, papa,' said Ethel. 'She is asleep. She knows.' Dr. May sighed with unspeakable relief. 'Mr. Bramshaw telegraphed, and his clerk came down. It was not so very bad! She saw it in our faces, and she was so worn out with talking and watching, that--that the very turning her face to the wall with hope over, became sleep almost directly.' 'That is well,' murmured the Doctor. 'And can you be spared, my dear? If you could come I should be glad, for poor Aubrey is quite done up.' 'I can come. Mary is with her, and Richard will stay to meet Henry, if he is coming home, or to send up if they want you; but I think she will not wake for many hours; and then--oh! what can any one do!' So Richard turned back to the sorrowful house; and Dr. May, tenderly drawing Ethel's arm into his own, told her, as they walked back, the few incidents that she most wanted to hear, as best he could narrate them. 'You have had a heart-rending day, my dear,' he said; 'you and Mary, as well as the rest of us.' 'There was one comfort!' said Ethel, 'and that was his own notes. Ave has all that he has written to her from Whitford under her pillow, and she kept spreading them out, and making us read them, and--oh! their braveness and cheeriness--they did quite seem to hold one up! And then poor little Minna's constant little robin-chirp of faith, "God will not let them hurt him." One could not bear to tell the child, that though indeed they cannot hurt him, it may not be in her sense! Look here! These are her slippers. She has worked on all day to finish them, that they might be done and out of sight when he came home this evening. The last stitch was done as Richard came in; and now I thought I could only take them out of every one's sight.' 'Poor things! poor things! And how was it with the child when she heard?' 'The old sweet note,' said Ethel, less steadily than she had yet spoken, '"nothing could hurt him for what he had not done." I don't know whether she knows what--what is in store. At least she is not shaken yet, dear child.' 'And Ave--how did you manage with her through all the day?' 'Oh! we did as we could. We tried reading the things Mr. Wilmot had marked, but she was too restless; her hands would wander off to the letters, caressing them, and she would go back to talk of him--all his ways from a baby upwards. I hope there was no harm in letting her do it, for if there is anything to do one good, it is his noble spirit.' 'If you had only seen his face to-day,' exclaimed the Doctor, half angrily, 'you would not feel much comfort in the cutting off such a fellow. No, no, it won't be. We'll petition--petition--petition--and save him, we will! Minna will be right yet! They shall not hurt him!' 'Is there really hope in that way?' said Ethel, and a quiver of relief agitated her whole frame. 'Every hope! Every one I have seen, or Tom either, says so. We have only to draw up a strong enough representation of the facts, his character, and all that; and there's his whole conduct before and since to speak for itself. Why, when it was all over, George heard every one saying, either he was a consummate hypocrite, or he must be innocent. Harvey Anderson declares the press will take it up. We shall certainly get him off.' 'You don't mean pardoned!' 'Commutation of the penalty. Come on,' said the Doctor, hurrying at his headlong pace, 'there's no time to be lost in getting it drawn up.' Ethel was dragged on so fast, that she could not speak; but it was with willing haste, for this was the sort of suspense in which motion and purpose were a great relief after the day's weary waiting. Gertrude, quite spent with excitement and tears, had wisely betaken herself to bed; and it would have been well had Aubrey followed her example, instead of wandering up and down the room in his misery, flushed though wan, impetuously talking treason against trial by jury, and abusing dignitaries. They let him have it out, in all its fury and violence, till he had tired out his first vehemence, and could be persuaded to lie on the sofa while the rough draught of the petition was drawn up, Tom writing, and every one suggesting or discussing, till the Doctor, getting thorough mastery over the subject, dictated so fluently and admirably, that even Tom had not a word to gainsay, but observed to Ethel, when his father had gone up to bed, and carried Aubrey off, 'What an exceedingly able man my father is!' 'Is this the first time you have found that out?' said Ethel. 'Why, you know it is not his nature to make the most of himself! But studying under him brings it out more; and there's a readiness about him that I wish was catching. But I say, Ethel, what's this? I no more doubt who did the deed, than I do who killed Abel; but I had once seen Cain's face, and I knew it again. Is it true that the boy was aware, and told my father?' 'Did he tell you so?' 'Only asked if he had betrayed the secret. If they both know it--why, if it be Leonard's taste, I suppose I must say nothing to the contrary, but he might as well consider his sister.' 'What do you know, Tom?' said she, perplexed. 'Only that there's some secret; and if it be as I am given to understand, then it is a frenzy that no lucid person should permit.' 'No, Tom,' said Ethel, feeling that the whole must be told, 'it is no certainty--only unsupported suspicion, which he could not help telling papa after binding him on honour to make no use of it. Putting things together, he was sure who the man in the yard was; but it was not recognition, and he could not have proved it.' 'What Quixotry moved my father not to put the lawyers on the scent?' Ethel explained; and for her pains Tom fell upon her for her folly in not having told him all, when he could have gone to Blewer and gathered information as no professional person could do; then lamented that he had let Aubrey keep him from the inquest, when the fellow's hang-dog look would have been sure to suggest to him to set Anderson to get him searched. Even now he would go to the mill, and try to hunt up something. 'Tom, remember papa's promise!' 'Do you think a man can do nothing without committing himself, like poor Aubrey? No, Ethel, the Doctor may be clever, but that's no use if a man is soft, and he is uncommonly soft; and you should not encourage him in it.' Ethel was prevented from expressing useless indignation by the arrival of Mary, asking where papa was. 'Gone to bed. He said he must go off at six to-morrow, there are so many patients to see. Ave does not want him, I hope?' No, she is still asleep; I was only waiting for Richard, and he had dreadful work with that poor Henry.' 'What kind of work?' 'Oh, I believe it has all come on him now that it was his fault--driving Leonard to that place; and he was in such misery, that Richard could not leave him.' 'I am glad he has the grace to feel it at last,' said Tom. 'It must be very terrible!' said Mary. 'He says he cannot stay in that house, for every room reproaches him; and he groaned as if he was in tremendous bodily pain.' 'What, you assisted at this scene?' said Tom, looking at her rather sharply. 'No; but Richard told me; and I heard the groans as I sat on the stairs.' 'Sat on the stairs?' 'Yes. I could not go back to Ave's room for fear of waking her.' 'And how long?' 'Towards an hour, I believe. I did all that piece,' said Mary, displaying a couple of inches of a stocking leg, 'and I think it was pretty well in the dark.' 'Sitting on the stairs for an hour in the dark,' said Tom, as he gave Mary the candle he had been lighting for her. 'That may be called unappreciated devotion.' 'I never can tell what Tom means,' said Mary, as she went up-stairs with Ethel. 'It was a very comfortable rest. I wish you had had the same, dear Ethel, you look so tired and worn out. Let me stay and help you. It has been such a sad long day; and oh! how terrible this is! And you know him better than any of us, except Aubrey.' Mary stopped almost in dismay, for her sister, usually so firm, broke down entirely, and sitting down on a low chair, threw an arm round her, and resting her weary brow against her, gave way to long tearless sobs, or rather catches of breath. 'Oh! Mary! Mary!' she said, between her gasps, 'to think of last year--and Coombe--and the two bright boys--and the visions--and the light in those glorious eyes--and that this should be the end!' 'Dear, dear Ethel,' said Mary, with fast-flowing tears and tender caresses, 'you have kept us all up; you have always shown us it was for the best.' 'It is! it is!' cried Ethel. 'I do, I _will_ believe it! If I had only seen his face as papa tells of it, I could keep hold of the glory of it and the martyr spirit. Now I only see his earnest, shy, confiding look--and--and I don't know how to bear it.' And Ethel's grasp of Mary in both arms was tightened, as if to support herself under her deep labouring sobs of anguish. Ah! he was very fond of you.' 'There never was any one beyond our own selves that loved me so well. I always knew it would not last--that it ought not; but oh! it was endearing; and I did think to have seen him a shining light!' 'And don't you tell us he is a shining light now?' said Mary, among the tears that really almost seemed to be a relief, as if her sister herself had shed them; and as she knelt down, Ethel laid her head on her shoulder, and spoke more calmly. 'He is,' she said, 'and I ought to be thankful for it! I think I am generally--but now--it makes it the more piteous--the hopes--the spirit--the determination--all to be quenched, and so quenched--and to have nothing--nothing to do for him. 'But, Ethel, papa says your messages do him more good than anything; and papa will let you go and see him, and that will comfort him.' Ethel's lips gave a strange sort of smile; she thought it was at simple Mary's trust in her power, but it would hardly have been there but for the species of hope thus excited, and the sense of sympathy. Mary was not one to place any misconstruction on what had passed; she well knew that Leonard had almost taken a brother's place in Ethel's heart, and she prized him at the rate of her sister's esteem. Perhaps her prominent thought was how cruel were those who fancied that Ethel's lofty faith was unfeeling, and how very good Leonard must be to be thus mourned. At any rate, she was an excellent comforter, in the sympathy that was neither too acute nor too obtuse; and purely to oblige her, Ethel for the first time submitted to her favourite panacea of hair brushing, and found that in very truth those soft and steady manipulations were almost mesmeric in soothing away the hard oppressive excitement, and bringing on a gentle and slumberous resignation. The sisters were early astir next morning, to inflict on their father a cup of cocoa, which he rebelled against, but swallowed, and to receive his last orders, chiefly consisting of messages to Tom about taking the petition to be approved of by Dr. Spencer and others, and then having it properly drawn out. Mary asked if women might sign it, and was answered with an impatient 'Pshaw!' 'But ladies do have petitions of their own,' said Mary, with some diffidence. 'Could not we have one?' His lips were compressed for another 'Pshaw,' when he bethought himself. 'Well, I don't know--the more the better. Only it won't do for you to set it going. Flora must be the woman for that.' 'Oh, then,' cried Mary, eagerly, 'might not I walk over to breakfast at the Grange, and talk to Flora? Ethel, you would not mind going to Ave instead? Or will you go to Flora?' 'You had better,' said Ethel. 'I must stay on Aubrey's account; and this is your doing, Mary,' she added, looking at her warmly. 'Then put on your hat, Mary, and take a biscuit,' said the Doctor, 'and you shall have a lift as far as the cross roads.' Thus the morning began with action and with hope. Mary found herself very welcome at the Grange, where there was much anxiety to hear of Aubrey, as well as the more immediate sufferers. The Riverses had dined at Drydale, and had met the judges, as well as a good many of the county gentlemen who had been on the grand jury and attended on the trial. They had found every one most deeply touched by the conduct of the prisoner. The judge had talked to Flora about her young brother, and the friendship so bravely avouched; had asked the particulars of the action to which Leonard had alluded, and shown himself much interested in all that she related. She said that the universal impression was that the evidence was dead against Leonard, and taken apart, led to such conviction of his guilt, that no one could wonder at the verdict; but that his appearance and manner were such, that it was almost impossible, under their influence, not to credit his innocence. She had reason to believe that petitions were already in hand both from the county and the assize town, and she eagerly caught at Mary's proposal of one from the ladies of Stoneborough. 'I'll drive in at once before luncheon, and take you home, Mary,' she said. 'And, first of all, we will begin with the two widows, and half the battle will be won.' Nay, more than half the battle proved to be already gained in that quarter. The writing-table was covered with sheets of foolscap, and Mrs. Pugh was hard at work copying the petition which Mr. Harvey Anderson had kindly assisted in composing, and which the aunt and niece had intended to have brought to the Grange for Mrs. Rivers's approval that very day. Harvey Anderson had spent the evening at Mrs. Ledwich's in drawing it up, and giving his advice; and Flora, going over it word for word with Mrs. Pugh, felt that it could hardly have been better worded. 'He is a very clever, a very rising young man, and so feeling, said Mrs. Ledwich to Mary while this was going on. 'In fact, he is a perfect knight-errant on this subject. He is gone to London this morning to see what can be done by means of the press. I tell Matilda it is quite a romance of modern life; and indeed, the sweet girl is very romantic still--very young, even after all she has gone through.' Not understanding this, Mary let it pass in calculations on the number of possible signatures, which the two ladies undertook to collect. 'That is well,' said Flora, as they went away. 'It could not be in better hands. It will thrive the better for our doing nothing but writing our names.' They met Tom on the like errand, but not very sanguine, for he said there had of late been an outcry against the number of reprieves granted, and the public had begun to think itself not sufficiently protected. He thought the best chance was the discovery of some additional fact that might tell in favour of Leonard, and confident in his own sagacity, was going to make perquisitions at the mill. Every one had been visiting of late, and now that he knew more, if he and his microscope could detect one drop of human blood in an unexpected place, they would do better service to the prisoner than all the petitions that could be signed. Averil was somewhat better; the feverishness had been removed by her long sleep of despair, and her energy revived under the bodily relief, and the fixed purpose of recovering in time to see her brother again; but the improvement was not yet trusted by Henry, who feared her doing too much unless he was himself watching over her, and therefore only paid Leonard a short visit in the forenoon, going and returning by early trains. He reported that Leonard was very pale, and owned to want of sleep, adding, however, 'It does not matter. Why should I wish to lose any time?' Calm and brave as ever, he had conversed as cheerfully as Henry's misery would permit, inquiring into the plans of the family, which he knew were to depend on his fate, and acquiescing in his brother's intention of quitting the country; nay, even suggesting that it might be better for his sisters to be taken away before all was over, though he, as well as Henry, knew that to this Averil would never have consented. He had always been a great reader of travels, and he became absolutely eager in planning their life in the wild, as if where they were he must be, till the casual mention of the word 'rifle' brought him to sudden silence, and the consciousness of the condemned cell; but even then it was only to be urgent in consoling his brother, and crowding message on message for his sisters; begging Henry not to stay, not to consider him for a moment, but only whatever might be best for Ave. In this frame Henry had left him, and late in the afternoon, Dr. May had contrived to despatch his work and make his way to the jail, where, as he entered, he encountered the chaplain, Mr. Reeve, a very worthy, but not a very acute man. Pausing to inquire for the prisoner, he was met by a look of oppression and perplexity. The chaplain had been with young Ward yesterday evening, and was only just leaving him; but then, instead of the admiring words the Doctor expected, there only came a complaint of the difficulty of dealing with him; so well instructed, so respectful in manner, and yet there was a coldness, a hardness about him, amounting to sullenness, rejecting all attempts to gain his confidence, or bring him to confession. Dr. May had almost been angry, but he bethought himself in time that the chaplain was bound to believe the verdict of the court; and besides, the good man looked so grieved and pitiful, that it was impossible to be displeased with him, especially when he began to hope that the poor youth might be less reserved with a person who knew him better, and to consult Dr. May which of the Stoneborough clergy had better be written to as likely to be influential with him. Dr. May recommended Mr. Wilmot, as having visited the boy in his illness, as well as prepared him for Confirmation; and then, with a heavier load of sadness on his heart, followed the turnkey on his melancholy way. When the door was opened, he saw Leonard sitting listlessly on the side of his bed, resting his head on his hand, entirely unoccupied; but at the first perception who his visitor was, he sprang to his feet, and coming within the arms held out to him, rested his head on the kind shoulder. 'My dear boy--my brave fellow,' said Dr. May, 'you got through yesterday nobly.' There was none either of the calmness or the reserve of which Dr. May had been told, in the hot hands that were wringing his own, nor in the choking struggling voice that tried to make the words clear--'Thank you for what you said--And dear Aubrey--how is he?' 'I came away at six, before he was awake,' said the Doctor; 'but he will not be the worse for it, never fear! I hope his evidence was less trying than you and he expected.' Leonard half smiled. 'I had forgotten that,' he said, 'it was so long ago! No, indeed--the dear fellow was--like a bright spot in that day--only--only it brought back all we were--all that is gone for ever.' The tenderness of one whom he did not feel bound to uphold like his brother had produced the outbreak that could not fail to come to so warm, open, and sensitive a nature, and at such an age. He was bold and full of fortitude in the front of the ordeal, and solitude pent up his feelings, but the fatherly sympathy and perfect confidence drew forth expression, and a vent once opened, the rush of emotion and anguish long repressed was utterly overpowering. His youthful manhood struggled hard, but the strangled sobs only shook his frame the more convulsively, and the tears burnt like drops of fire, as they fell among the fingers that he spread over his face in the agony of weeping for his young vigorous life, his blasted hopes, the wretchedness he caused, the disgrace of his name. 'Don't, don't fight against it,' said Dr. May, affectionately drawing him to his seat on the bed, as, indeed, the violence of the paroxysm made him scarcely able to stand. 'Let it have its way; you will be all the better for it. It ought to be so--it must.' And in tears himself, the Doctor turned his back, and went as far away as the cell would permit, turning towards the books that lay on a narrow ledge that served for a table. 'How long, O Lord, how long?' were the words that caught his eye in the open Psalms; and, startled as if at unauthorized prying, he looked up at the dull screened and spiked window above his head, till he knew by the sounds that the worst of the uncontrollable passion had spent itself, and then he came back with the towel dipped in water, and cooled the flushed heated face as a sister might have done. 'Oh--thank you--I am ashamed,' gasped the still sobbing boy. 'Ashamed! No; I like you the better for it,' said the Doctor, earnestly. 'There is no need that we should not grieve together in this great affliction, and say out all that is in our hearts.' 'All!' exclaimed Leonard. 'No--no words can say that! Oh! was it for such as this that my poor mother made so much of me--and I got through the fever--and I hoped--and I strove--Why--why should I be cut off--for a disgrace and a misery to all! and again came the heart-broken sobs, though less violently. 'Not to those who look within, and honour you, Leonard.' 'Within! Why, how bad I have been, since _this_ is the reckoning! I deserve it, I know--but--' and his voice again sank in tears. 'Ethel says that your so feeling comforts her the most; to know that you have not the terrible struggle of faith disturbed by injustice.' 'If--I have not,' said Leonard, 'it is her doing. In those happy days when we read Marmion, and could not believe that God would not always show the right, she showed me how we only see bits and scraps of His Justice here, and it works round in the end! Nay, if I had not done that thing to Henry, I should not be here now! It is right! It is right!' he exclaimed between the heaving sobs that still recurred. 'I do try to keep before me what she said about Job--when it comes burning before me, why should that man be at large, and I here? or when I think how his serpent-eye fell under mine when I tried that one word about the receipt, that would save my life. Oh! that receipt!' 'Better to be here than in his place, after all!' 'I'd rather be a street-sweeper!' bitterly began Leonard.--'Oh, Dr. May, do let me have that!' he cried, suddenly changing his tone, and holding out his hand, as he perceived in the Doctor's button-hole a dove-pink, presented at a cottage door by a grateful patient. For a space he was entirely occupied with gazing into its crimson depths, inhaling the fragrance, and caressingly spreading the cool damask petals against his hot cheeks and eyelids. 'It is so long since I saw anything but walls!' he said. 'Three weeks,' sadly replied the Doctor. 'There was a gleam of sunshine when I got out of the van yesterday. I never knew before what sunshine was. I hope it will be a sunny day when I go out for the last time!' 'My dear boy, I have good hopes of saving you. There's not a creature in Stoneborough, or round it, that is not going to petition for you--and at your age--' Leonard shook his head in dejection. 'It has all gone against me,' he said. 'They all say there's no chance. The chaplain says it is of no use unsettling my mind.' 'The chaplain is an old--' began Dr. May, catching himself up only just in time, and asking, 'How do you get on with him!' 'I can hear him read,' said Leonard, with the look that had been thought sullen. 'But you cannot talk to him?' 'Not while he thinks me guilty.' Then, at a sound of warm sympathy from his friend, he added, 'I suppose it is his duty; but I wish he would keep away. I can't stand his aiming at making me confess, and I don't want to be disrespectful.' 'I see, I see. It cannot be otherwise. But how would it be if Wilmot came to you?' 'Would Mr. May?' said Leonard, with a beseeching look. 'Richard? He would with all his heart; but I think you would find more support and comfort in a man of Mr. Wilmot's age and experience, and that Mr. Reeve would have more trust in him; but it shall be exactly as will be most comforting to you.' 'If Mr. Wilmot would be so good, then' said Leonard, meekly. 'Indeed, I want help to bear it patiently! I don't know how to die; and yet it seemed not near so hard a year ago, when they thought I did not notice, and I heard Ave go away crying, and my mother murmuring, again and again, "Thy will be done!"--the last time I heard her voice. Oh, well that she has not to say it now!' 'Well that her son can say it!' 'I want to be able to say it,' said the boy, fervently; 'but this seems so hard--life is so sweet.' Then, after a minute's thought: 'Dr. May, that morning, when I awoke, and asked you for them--papa and mamma--you knelt down and said the Lord's Prayer. Won't you now?' And when those words had been said, and they both stood up again, Leonard added: 'It always seems to mean more and more! But oh, Dr. May! that forgiving--I can't ask any one but you if--' and he paused. 'If you forgive, my poor boy! Nay, are not your very silence and forbearance signs of practical forgiveness? Besides, I have always observed that you have never used one of the epithets that I can't think of him without.' 'Some feelings are too strong for common words of abuse,' said Leonard, almost smiling; 'but I hope I may be helped to put away what is wrong.--Oh, must you go?' 'I fear I must, my dear; I have a patient to see again, on my way back, and one that will be the worse for waiting.' 'Henry has not been able to practise. I want to ask one thing, Dr. May, before you go. Could not you persuade them, since home is poisoned to them, at any rate to go at once? It would be better for my sisters than being here--when--and they would only remember that last Sunday at home.' 'Do you shrink from another meeting with Averil?' His face was forced into calmness. 'I will do without it, if it would hurt her.' 'It may for the time, but to be withheld would give her a worse heart-ache through life.' 'Oh, thank you!' cried Leonard, his face lighting up; 'it is something still to hope for.' 'Nay, I've not given you up yet,' said the Doctor, trying for a cheerful smile. 'I've got a prescription that will bring you through yet--London advice, you know. I've great faith in the consulting surgeon at the Home Office.' By the help of that smile and augury, the Doctor got away, terribly beaten down, but living on his fragment of hope; though obliged to perceive that every one who merely saw the newspaper report in black and white, without coming into personal contact with the prisoner, could not understand how the slightest question of the justice of the verdict could arise. Even Mr. Wilmot was so convinced by the papers, that the Doctor almost repented of the mission to which he had invited him, and would, if he could, have revoked what had been said. But the vicar of Stoneborough, painful as was the duty, felt his post to be by the side of his unhappy young parishioner, equally whether the gaol chaplain or Dr. May were right, and if he had to bring him to confession, or to strengthen him to 'endure grief, suffering wrongfully.' And after the first interview, no more doubts on that score were expressed; but the vicar's tone of pitying reverence in speaking of the prisoner was like that of his friends in the High Street. Tom May spared neither time nor pains in beating up for signatures for the petition, but he had a more defined hope, namely, that of detecting something that might throw the suspicion into the right quarter. The least contradiction of the evidence might raise a doubt that would save Leonard's life, and bring the true criminal in peril of the fate he so richly deserved. The Vintry Mill was the lion of the neighbourhood, and the crowds of visitors had been a reason for its new master's vacating it, and going into lodgings in Whitford; so that Tom, when he found it convenient to forget his contempt of the gazers and curiosity hunters who thronged there, and to march off on a secret expedition of investigation, found no obstacle in his way, and at the cost of a fee to Mrs. Giles, who was making a fortune, was free to roam and search wherever he pleased. Even his careful examination of the cotton blind, and his scraping of the window-sill with a knife, were not remarked; for had not the great chair been hacked into fragmentary relics, and the loose paper of the walls of Leonard's room been made mincemeat of, as memorials of 'the murderer, Ward'? One long white hair picked out of a mat below the window, and these scrapings of the window-sill, Tom carried off, and also the scrapings of the top bar of a stile between the mill and the Three Goblets. That evening, all were submitted to the microscope. Dr. May was waked from a doze by a very deferential 'I beg your pardon, sir,' and a sudden tweak, which abstracted a silver thread from his head; and Mab showed somewhat greater displeasure at a similar act of plunder upon her white chemisette. But the spying was followed by a sigh; and, in dumb show, Ethel was made to perceive that the Vintry hair had more affinity with the canine than the human. As to the scrapings of the window, nothing but vegetable fibre could there be detected; but on the stile, there was undoubtedly a mark containing human blood-disks; Tom proved that both by comparison with his books, and by pricking his own finger, and kept Ethel to see it after every one else was gone up to bed. But as one person's blood was like another's, who could tell whether some one with a cut finger had not been through the stile? Tom shook his head, there was not yet enough on which to commit himself. 'But I'll have him!--I'll have him yet!' said he. 'I'll never rest while that villain walks the earth unpunished!' Meantime, Harvey Anderson did yeoman's service by a really powerful article in a leading paper, written from the very heart of an able man, who had been strongly affected himself, and was well practised in feeling in pen and ink. Every word rang home to the soul, and all the more because there was no defence nor declamation against the justice of the verdict, which was acknowledged to be unavoidable; it was merely a pathetic delineation of a terrible mystery, with a little meditative philosophy upon it, the moral of which was, that nothing is more delusive than fact, more untrue than truth. However, it was copied everywhere, and had the great effect of making it the cue of more than half the press to mourn over, rather than condemn, 'the unfortunate young gentleman.' Mrs. Pugh showed every one the article, and confided to most that she had absolutely ventured to suggest two or three of the sentences. But a great deal might be borne from Mrs. Pugh, in consideration of her indefatigable exertions with the ladies' petition, and it was a decided success. The last census had rated Market Stoneborough at 7561 inhabitants, and Mrs. Pugh's petition bore no less than 3024 female names, in which she fairly beat that of the mayor; but then she had been less scrupulous as to the age at which people should be asked to sign; as long as the name could be written at all, she was not particular whose it was. Dr. May made his patients agree to accept as his substitute Dr. Spencer or Mr. Wright, to whom Henry Ward intended to resign practice and house. He himself was to go to London for a couple of nights with George Rivers, who was exceedingly gratified at having the charge of him all to himself, and considered that the united influence of member and mayor must prevail. Dr. Spencer, on the contrary, probably by way of warning, represented Mr. Mayor as ruining everything by his headlong way of setting about it, declaring that he would abuse everybody all round, and assure the Home Secretary, that, as sure as his name was Dick May, it was quite impossible the boy could have hurt a fly; though a strict sense of truth would lead him to add the next moment, that he was terribly passionate, and had nearly demolished his brother. Dr. May talked of his caution and good behaviour, which, maybe, were somewhat increased by this caricature, but he ended by very hearty wishes that these were the times of Jeanie Deans; if the pardon depended on our own good Queen, he should not doubt of it a moment. Why, was not the boy just the age of her own son? And verily there was no one in the whole world whom poor Averil envied like Jeanie Deans. So member and mayor went to London together, and intense were the prayers that speeded them and followed them. The case was laid before the Home Secretary, the petitions presented, and Dr. May said all that man might say on ground where he felt as if over-partisanship might be perilous. The matter was to have due consideration: nothing more definite or hopeful could be obtained; but there could be no doubt that this meant a real and calm re-weighing of the evidence, with a consideration of all the circumstances. It was something for the Doctor that a second dispassionate study should be given to the case, but his heart sank as he thought of that cold, hard statement of evidence, without the counter testimony of the honest, tearless eyes and simple good faith of the voice and tone. And when he entered the railway carriage on his road home, the newspaper that George Rivers attentively pressed upon him bore the information that Wednesday, the 21st, would be the day, according to usage, for the execution of the condemned criminal, Leonard Axworthy Ward. If it had been for the execution of Richard May, the Doctor could hardly have given a deeper groan. He left the train at the county town. He had so arranged, that he might see the prisoner on his way home; but he had hardly the heart to go, except that he knew he was expected, and no disappointment that he could help must add to the pangs of these last days. Leonard was alone, but was not, as before, sitting unemployed; he carefully laid down his etching work ere he came forward to meet his friend; and there was not the bowed and broken look about him, but a fixed calmness and resolution, as he claimed the fatherly embrace and blessing with which the Doctor now always met him. 'I bring you no certainty, Leonard. It is under consideration.' 'Thank you. You have done everything,' returned Leonard, quietly; 'and--' then pausing, he added, 'I know the day now--the day after my birthday.' 'Let us--let us hope,' said the Doctor, greatly agitated. 'Thank you,' again said Leonard; and there was a pause, during which Dr. May anxiously studied the face, which had become as pale and almost as thin as when the lad had been sent off to Coombe, and infinitely older in the calm steadfastness of every feature. 'You do not look well, Leonard.' 'No; I am not quite well; but it matters very little,' he said, with a smile. 'I am well enough to make it hard to believe how soon all sense and motion will be gone out of these fingers!' and he held up his hand, and studied the minutiae of its movements with a strange grave sort of curiosity. 'Don't--don't, Leonard!' exclaimed the Doctor. 'You may be able to bear it, but I cannot.' 'I thought you would not mind, you have so often watched death.' 'Yes; but--' and he covered his face with his hands. 'I wish it did not pain you all so much,' said Leonard, quietly. 'But for that, I can feel it to be better than if I had gone in the fever, when I had no sense to think or repent; or if I had--I hardly knew my own faults.' 'You seem much happier now, my boy.' 'Yes,' said Leonard. 'I am more used to the notion, and Mr. Wilmot has been so kind. Then I am to see Ave to-morrow, if she is well enough. Henry has promised to bring her, and leave her alone with me; and I do hope--that I shall be able to convince her that it is not so very bad for me--and then she may be able to take comfort. You know she would, if she were nursing me now in my bed at Bankside; so why should she not when she sees that I don't think this any worse, but rather better?' The Doctor was in no mood to think any comfort possible in thus losing one like Leonard, and he did not commit himself to an untruth. There was a silence again, and Leonard opened his book, and took out his etchings, one which he had already promised the Doctor, another for Aubrey, and at the third the Doctor exclaimed inarticulately with surprise and admiration. It was a copy of the well-known Cross-bearing Form in the Magdalen College Chapel Altar-piece, drawn in pen and ink on a half-sheet of thick note-paper; but somehow, into the entire Face and Figure there was infused such an expression as now and then comes direct from the soul of the draughtsman--an inspiration entirely independent of manual dexterity, and that copies, however exact, fail to render, nay, which the artist himself fails to renew. The beauty, the meekness, the hidden Majesty of the Countenance, were conveyed in a marvellous manner, and were such as would bring a tear to the eye of the gazer, even had the drawing been there alone to speak for itself. 'This is your doing, Leonard?' 'I have just finished it. It has been one of my greatest comforts--' 'Ah!' 'Doing those lines;' and he pointed to the thorny Crown, 'I seem to get ashamed of thinking this hardness. Only think, Dr. May, from the very first moment the policeman took me in charge, nobody has said a rough word to me. I have never felt otherwise than that they meant justice to have its way as far as they knew, but they were all consideration for me. To think of that, and then go over the scoffs and scourgings!'--there was a bright glistening tear in Leonard's eye now--'it seems like child's play to go through such a trial as mine.' 'Yes! you have found the secret of willingness.' 'And,' added the boy, hesitating between the words, but feeling that he must speak them, as the best balm for the sorrow he was causing, 'even my little touch of the shame and scorn of this does make me know better what it must have been, and yet--so thankful when I remember why it was--that I think I could gladly bear a great deal more than this is likely to be.' 'Oh! my boy, I have no fears for you now.' 'Yes, yes--have fears,' cried Leonard, hastily. 'Pray for me! You don't know what it is to wake up at night, and know something is coming nearer and nearer--and then this--before one can remember all that blesses it--or the Night of that Agony--and that He knows what it is--' 'Do we not pray for you?' said Dr. May, fervently, 'in church and at home? and is not this an answer? Am I to take this drawing, Leonard, that speaks so much?' 'If--if you think Miss May--would let me send it to her? Thank you, it will be very kind of her. And please tell her, if it had not been for that time at Coombe, I don't know how I could ever have felt the ground under my feet. If I have one wish that never can be--' 'What wish, my dear, dear boy? Don't be afraid to say. Is it to see her?' 'It was,' said Leonard, 'but I did not mean to say it. I know it cannot be.' 'But, Leonard, she has said that if you wished it, she would come as if you were lying on your bed at home, and with more reverence.' Large tears of gratitude were swelling in Leonard's eyes, and he pressed the Doctor's hand, but still said, almost inarticulately, 'Ought she?' 'I will bring her, my boy. It will do her good to see how--how her pupil, as they have always called you in joke, Leonard, can be willing to bear the Cross after his Master. She has never let go for a moment the trust that it was well with you.' 'Oh! Dr. May, it was the one thing--and when I had gone against all her wishes. It is so good of her! It is the one thing--' and there was no doubt from his face that he was indeed happy. And Dr. May went home that day softened and almost cheered, well-nigh as though he had had a promise of Leonard's life, and convinced that in the region to which the spirits of Ethel and her pupil could mount, resignation would silence the wailings of grief and sorrow; the things invisible were more than a remedy for the things visible. That Ethel should see Leonard before the last, he was quite resolved; and Ethel, finding that so it was, left the _when_ in his hands, knowing the concession to be so great, that it must be met by grateful patience on her own side, treasuring the drawing meanwhile with feelings beyond speech. Dr. May did not wish the meeting to take place till he was really sure that all hope was at an end; he knew it would be a strong measure, and though he did not greatly care for the world in general, he did not want to offend Flora unnecessarily; in matters of propriety she was a little bit of a conscience to him, and though he would brave her or any one else when a thing was right, especially if it were to give one last moment of joy to Leonard, she was not to be set at naught till the utmost extremity. And for one day, the sight of Averil would be enough. She had struggled into something sufficiently like recovery to be able to maintain her fitness for the exertion; and Henry had recognized that the unsatisfied pining was so preying on her as to hurt her more than the meeting and parting could do, since, little as he could understand how it was, he perceived that Leonard could be depended on for support and comfort. With him, indeed, Leonard had ever shown himself cheerful and resolute, speaking of anything rather than of himself and never grieving him with the sight of those failings of flesh and heart that would break forth where there was more congenial sympathy, yet where they were not a reproach. So Averil, with many a promise to be 'good,' and strongly impressed with warnings that the chance of another meeting depended on the effects of this one, was laid back in the carriage, leaving poor little Minna to Mary's consolation. Minna was longing to go too, but Henry had forbidden it, and not even an appeal to Dr. May had prevailed; so she was taken home by Mary, and with a child's touching patience, was helped through the weary hours, giving wandering though gentle attention to Ella's eager display of the curiosities of the place, and explanations of the curious games and puzzles taught by 'Mr. Tom.' Ethel, watching the sweet wistful face, and hearing the subdued voice, felt a reverence towards the child, as though somewhat of the shadow of her brother's cross had fallen on her. The elder brother and sister meanwhile arrived at the building now only too familiar to one of them, and, under her thick veil, unconscious of the pitying looks of the officials, Averil was led, leaning on Henry's arm, along the whitewashed passages, with their slate floors, and up the iron stairs, the clear, hard, light coldness chilling her heart with a sense of the stern, relentless, inevitable grasp in which the victim was held. The narrow iron door flew open at the touch of the turnkey; a hand was on her arm, but all swam round with her, and she only knew it was the well-known voice; she did not follow the words between her brothers and the turnkey about the time she was to be left there, but she gave a start and shudder when the door sprung fast again behind her, and at the same instant she felt herself upheld by an arm round her waist. 'Take off your bonnet, Ave; let me see you,' he said, himself undoing the strings, and removing it, then bending his face to hers for a long, almost insatiable kiss, as they stood strained in one intense embrace, all in perfect silence on the sister's part. 'I have been making ready for you,' he said at length, partly releasing her; 'you are to sit here;' and he deposited her, still perfectly passive in his hands, upon his bed, her back against the wall. 'Put up your feet! There!' And having settled her to his satisfaction, he knelt down on the floor, one arm round her waist, one hand in hers, looking earnestly up into her face, with his soul in his eyes, her other hand resting on his shoulder. 'How are the little ones, Ave?' 'Very well. Minna so longed to come.' 'Better not,' said Leonard; 'she is so little, and these white walls might distress her fancy. They will remember our singing on the last Sunday evening instead. Do you remember, Ave, how they begged to stay on and on till it grew so dark that we could not see a word or a note, and went on from memory?' and he very softly hummed the restful cadence, dying away into 'Till in the ocean of Thy love We lose ourselves in Heaven above.' 'How can you bear to think of those dear happy days!' 'Because you will be glad of them by and by, said Leonard; 'and I am very glad of them now, though they might have been so much better, if only we had known.' 'They were the only happy days of all my life!' 'I hope not--I trust not, dearest. You may and ought to have much better and happier days to come.' She shook her head, with a look of inexpressible anguish, almost of reproach. 'Indeed I mean it, Ave,' he said; 'I have thought it over many times, and I see that the discomfort and evil of our home was in the spirit of pride and rebellion that I helped you to nurse. It was like a wedge, driving us farther and farther apart; and now that it is gone, and you will close up again, when you are kind and yielding to Henry--what a happy peaceful home you may make out in the prairie land!' 'As if we could ever--' 'Nay, Averil, could not you recover it if I were dying now of sickness? I know you would, though you might not think so at the time. Believe me, then, when I say that I am quite willing to have it as it is--to be my own man to the last--to meet with such precious inestimable kindness from so many. Of course I should like to live longer, and do something worth doing; but if I am to die young, there is so much blessing even in this way, that nothing really grieves me but the thought of you and Henry; and if it makes you one together, even that is made up.' Awe-struck, and as if dreaming, she did not answer, only smoothing caressingly the long waves of bright brown hair on his forehead. She was surprised by his next question. 'Ave! how has Mrs. Pugh behaved?' 'Oh! the woman! I have hardly thought of her! She has been very active about the petition, somebody said; but I don't believe Henry can bear to hear of her any more than I can. What made you think of her?' 'Because I wanted to know how it was with Henry, and I could not ask him. Poor fellow! Well, Ave, you see he will depend on you entirely for comfort, and you must promise me that shall be your great business and care.' 'How you do think of Henry!' she said, half jealously. 'Of course, Ave. You and I have no past to grieve over together, but poor Henry will never feel free of having left me to my self-willed obstinacy, and let me go to that place. Besides, the disgrace in the sight of the world touches him more, and you can tread that down more easily than he.' Then, in answer to a wondering look, 'Yes, you can, when you recollect that it is crime, not the appearance of it, that is shame. I do not mean that I do not deserve all this--but--but--' and his eye glistened, 'Ave, dear, if I could only bring out the words to tell you how much peace and joy there is in knowing that--with that vast difference--it is like in some degree what was borne to save us, I really don't think you could go on grieving over me any more; at least not more than for the loss,' he added, tenderly; 'and you'll not miss me so much in a new country, you know, with Henry and the children to take care of. Only promise me to be kind to Henry.' And having drawn forth a faint promise, that he knew would have more force by and by, Leonard went on, in his low quiet voice, into reminiscences that sounded like random, of the happy days of childhood and early youth, sometimes almost laughing over them, sometimes linking his memory as it were to tune or flower, sport or study, but always for joy, and never for pain; and thus passed the time, with long intervals of silent thought and recollection on his part, and of a sort of dreamy stupor on his sister's, during which the strange peaceful hush seemed to have taken away her power of recalling the bitter complaints of cruel injustice, and the broken-hearted lamentations she had imagined herself pouring out in sympathy with her victim brother. Instead of being wrung with anguish, her heart was lulled and quelled by wondering reverence; and she seemed to herself scarcely awake, and only dimly conscious of the pale-cheeked bright-eyed face upturned to her, so calm and undaunted, yet so full of awe and love, the low steady tender voice, and the warm upholding arm. A great clock struck, and Leonard said, 'There! they were to come at four, and then the chaplain is coming. He is grown so very kind now! Ave, if they would let you be with me at my last Communion! Will you? Could you bear it? I think then you would know all the peace of it!' 'Oh, yes! make them let me come.' 'Then it is not good-bye,' he said, as he fetched her bonnet and cloak, and put them on with tender hands, as if she were a child, in readiness as steps approached, and her escort reappeared. 'Here she is, Henry,' he said, with a smile. 'She has been very good; she may come again.' And then, holding her in his arms once more, he resigned her to Henry, saying, 'Not good-bye, Ave; we will keep my birthday together.' CHAPTER XVI The captives went To their own places, to their separate glooms, Uncheered by glance, or hand, or hope, to brood On those impossible glories of the past, When they might touch the grass, and see the sky, And do the works of men. But manly work Is sometimes in a prison.--S. M. Queen Isabel 'Commutation of punishment, to penal servitude for life.' Such were the tidings that ran through Stoneborough on Sunday morning, making all feel as if a heavy oppression had been taken from the air. In gratitude to the merciful authorities, and thankfulness for the exemption from death, the first impressions were that Justice was at last speaking, that innocence could not suffer, and that right was reasserting itself. Even when the more sober and sad remembered that leniency was not pardon, nor life liberty, they were hastily answered that life was everything--life was hope, life was time, and time would show truth. Averil's first tears dropped freely, as she laid her head on Mary's shoulder, and with her hand in Dr. May's, essayed to utter the words, 'It is your doing--you have twice saved him for me,' and Minna stood calmly glad, but without surprise. 'I knew they could not hurt him; God would not let them.' The joy and relief were so great as to absorb all thought or realization of what this mercy was to the prisoner himself, until Dr. May was able to pay him a visit on Monday afternoon. It was at a moment when the first effects of the tidings of life had subsided, and there had been time to look forth on the future with a spirit more steadfast than buoyant. The strain of the previous weeks was reacting on the bodily frame, and indisposition unhinged the spirits; so that, when Dr. May entered, beaming with congratulations, he was met with the same patient glance of endurance, endeavouring at resignation, that he knew so well, but without the victorious peace that had of late gained the ascendant expression. There was instead an almost painful endeavour to manifest gratitude by cheerfulness, and the smile was far less natural than those of the last interview, as fervently returning the pressure of the hand, he said, 'You were right, Dr. May, you have brought me past the crisis.' 'A sure sign of ultimate recovery, my boy. Remember, dum spiro spero.' Leonard attempted a responsive smile, but it was a hopeless business. From the moment when at the inquest he found himself entangled in the meshes of circumstance, his mind had braced itself to endure rather than hope, and his present depressed state, both mental and bodily, rendered even that endurance almost beyond his powers. He could only say, 'You have been very good to me.' 'My dear fellow, you are sadly knocked down; I wish--' and the Doctor looked at him anxiously. 'I wish you had been here yesterday,' said Leonard; 'then you would not have found me so. No, not thankless, indeed!' 'No, indeed; but--yes, I see it was folly--nay, harshness, to expect you to be glad of what lies before you, my poor boy.' 'I am--am thankful,' said Leonard, struggling to make the words truth. 'Wednesday is off my mind--yes, it is more than I deserve--I knew I was not fit to die, and those at home are spared. But I am as much cut off from them--perhaps more--than by death. And it is the same disgrace to them, the same exile. I suppose Henry still goes--' 'Yes, he does.' 'Ah! then one thing, Dr. May--if you had a knife or scissors--I do not know how soon they may cut my hair, and I want to secure a bit for poor Ave.' Dr. May was too handless to have implements of the first order, but a knife he had, and was rather dismayed at Leonard's reckless hacking at his bright shining wavy hair, pulling out more than he cut, with perfect indifference to the pain. The Doctor stroked the chestnut head as tenderly as if it had been Gertrude's sunny curls, but Leonard started aside, and dashing away the tears that were overflowing his eyes under the influence of the gentle action, asked vigorously, 'Have you heard what they will do with me?' 'I do not know thoroughly. A year or six months maybe at one of the great model establishments, then probably you will be sent to some of the public works,' said the Doctor, sadly. 'Yes, it is a small boon to give you life, and take away all that makes life happy.' 'If it were only transportation!' 'Yes. In a new world you could live it down, and begin afresh. And even here, Leonard, I look to finding you like Joseph in his prison.' 'The iron entering into his soul!' said Leonard, with a mournful smile. 'No; in the trustworthiness that made him honoured and blessed even there. Leonard, Leonard, conduct _will_ tell. Even there, you can live this down, and will!' 'Eighteen to-morrow,' replied the boy. 'Fifty years of it, perhaps! I know God can help me through with it, but it is a long time to be patient!' By way of answer, the Doctor launched into brilliant auguries of the impression the prisoner's conduct would produce, uttering assurances, highly extravagant in his Worship the Mayor, of the charms of the modern system of prison discipline, but they fell flat; there could be no disguising that penal servitude for life was penal servitude for life, and might well be bitterer than death itself. Sympathy might indeed be balm to the captive, but the good Doctor pierced his own breast to afford it, so that his heart sank even more than when he had left the young man under sentence of death. His least unavailing consolations were his own promises of frequent visits, and Aubrey's of correspondence, but they produced more of dejected gratitude than of exhilaration. Yet it was not in the way of murmur or repining, but rather of 'suffering and being strong,' and only to this one friend was the suffering permitted to be apparent. To all the officials he was simply submissive and gravely resolute; impassive if he encountered sharpness or sternness, but alert and grateful towards kindliness, of which he met more and more as the difference between dealing with him and the ordinary prisoners made itself felt. To Dr. May alone was the depth of pain betrayed; but another comforter proved more efficient in cheering the prisoner, namely, Mr. Wilmot, who, learning from the Doctor the depression of their young friend, hastened to endeavour at imparting a new spring of life on this melancholy birthday. Physically, the boy was better, and perhaps the new day had worn off somewhat of the burthen of anticipation, for Mr. Wilmot found him already less downcast, and open to consolation. It might be, too, that the sense that the present was to have been his last day upon earth, had made him more conscious of the relief from the immediate shadow of death, for he expressed his thankfulness far more freely and without the effort of the previous day. 'And, depend on it,' said Mr. Wilmot, 'you are spared because there is something for you to do.' 'To bear,' said Leonard. 'No, to do. Perhaps not immediately; but try to look on whatever you have to bear, not only as carrying the cross, as I think you already feel it--' 'Or there would be no standing it at all.' 'True,' said Mr. Wilmot; 'and your so feeling it convinces me the more that whatever may follow is likewise to be looked upon as discipline to train you for something beyond. Who knows what work may be in store, for which this fiery trial may be meant to prepare you?' The head was raised, and the eyes brightened with something like hope in their fixed interrogative glance. 'Even as things are now, who knows what good may be done by the presence of a man educated, religious, unstained by crime, yet in the same case as those around him? I do not mean by quitting your natural place, but by merely living as you must live. You were willing to have followed your Master in His death. You now have to follow Him by living as one under punishment; and be sure it is for some purpose for others as well as yourself.' 'If there is any work to be done for Him, it is all right,' said Leonard, cheerily; and as Mr. Wilmot paused, he added, 'It would be like working for a friend--if I may dare say so--after the hours when this place has been made happy to me. I should not mind anything if I might only feel it working for Him.' 'Feel it. Be certain of it. As you have realized the support of that Friend in a way that is hardly granted, save in great troubles, so now realize that every task is for Him. Do not look on the labour as hardship inflicted by mistaken authority--' 'Oh, I only want to get to that! I have been so long with nothing to do!' 'And your hearty doing of it, be it what it may, as unto the Lord, can be as acceptable as Dr. May's labours of love among the poor--as entirely a note in the great concord in Heaven and earth as the work of the ministry itself--as completely in unison. Nay, further, such obedient and hearty work will form you for whatever may yet be awaiting you, and what that may be will show itself in good time, when you are ready for it. 'The right chord was touched, the spirit of energy was roused, and Leonard was content to be a prisoner of hope, not the restless hope of liberation, but the restful hope that he might yet render faithful service even in his present circumstances. Not much passed his lips in this interview, but its effect was apparent when Dr. May again saw him, and this time in company with Aubrey. Most urgent had been the boy's entreaties to be taken to see his friend, and Dr. May had only hesitated because Leonard's depression had made himself so unhappy that he feared its effect on his susceptible son; whose health had already suffered from the long course of grief and suspense. But it was plain that if Aubrey were to go at all, it must be at once, since the day was fixed for the prisoner's removal, and the still nearer and dearer claims must not clash with those of the friend. Flora shook her head, and reminded her father that Leonard would not be out of reach in future, and that the meeting now might seriously damage Aubrey's already uncertain health. 'I cannot help it, Flora,' said the Doctor; 'it may do him some temporary harm, but I had rather see him knocked down for a day or two, than breed him up to be such a poor creature as to sacrifice his friendship to his health.' And Mrs. Rivers, who knew what the neighbourhood thought of the good Doctor's infatuation, felt that there was not much use in suggesting how shocked the world would be at his encouragement of the intimacy between the convict and his young son. People did look surprised when the Doctor asked admission to the cell for his son as well as himself; and truly Aubrey, who in silence had worked himself into an agony of nervous agitation, looked far from fit for anything trying. Dr. May saw that he must not ask to leave the young friends alone together, but in his reverence for the rights of their friendship, he withdrew himself as far as the limits of the cell would allow, turned his back, and endeavoured to read the Thirty-nine Articles in Leonard's Prayer-Book; but in spite of all his abstraction, he could not avoid a complete consciousness that the two lads sat on the bed, clinging with arms round one another like young children, and that it was Leonard's that was the upright sustaining figure, his own Aubrey's the prone and leaning one. And of the low whispering murmurs that reached his would-be deafened ear, the gasping almost sobbing tones were Aubrey's. The first distinct words that he could not help hearing were, 'No such thing! There can't be slavery where one works with a will!' and again, in reply to something unheard, 'Yes, one can! Why, how did one do one's Greek?'--'Very different!'--'How?'--'Oh!'--'Yes; but you are a clever chap, and had her to teach you, but I only liked it because I'd got it to do. Just the same with the desk-work down at the mill; so it may be the same now.' Then came fragments of what poor Aubrey had expressed more than once at home--that his interest in life, in study, in sport, was all gone with his friend. 'Come, Aubrey, that's stuff. You'd have had to go to Cambridge, you know, without me, after I doggedly put myself at that place. There's just as much for you to do as ever there was.' 'How you keep on with your _do_!' cried Ethel's spoilt child, with a touch of petulance. 'Why, what are we come here for--into this world, I mean--but to _do_!' returned Leonard; 'and I take it, if we do it right, it does not much matter what or where it is.' 'I shan't have any heart for it!' sighed Aubrey. 'Nonsense! Not with all your people at home? and though the voice fell again, the Doctor's ears distinguished the murmur, 'Why, just the little things she let drop are the greatest help to me here, and you always have her--' Then ensued much that was quite inaudible, and at last Leonard said, 'No, old fellow; as long as you don't get ashamed of me, thinking about you, and knowing what you are about, will be one of the best pleasures I shall have. And look here, Aubrey, if we only consider it right, you and I will be just as really working together, when you are at your books, and I am making mats, as if we were both at Cambridge side by side! It is quite true, is it not, Dr. May?' he added, since the Doctor, finding it time to depart, had turned round to close the interview. 'Quite true, my boy,' said the Doctor; 'and I hope Aubrey will try to take comfort and spirit from it.' 'As if I could!' said Aubrey, impatiently, 'when it only makes me more mad to see what a fellow they have shut up in here!' 'Not mad, I hope,' said Dr. May; 'but I'll tell you what it should do for both of us, Aubrey. It should make us very careful to be worthy to remain his friends.' 'O, Dr. May!' broke in Leonard, distressed. 'Yes,' returned Dr. May, 'I mean what I say, however you break in, Master Leonard. As long as this boy of mine is doing his best for the right motives, he will care for you as he does now--not quite in the same despairing way, of course, for holes in one's daily life do close themselves up with time--but if he slacks off in his respect or affection for you, then I shall begin to have fears of him. Now come away, Aubrey, and remember for your comfort it is not the good-bye it might have been,' he added, as he watched the mute intensity of the boys' farewell clasp of the hands; but even then had some difficulty in getting Aubrey away from the friend so much stronger as the consoler than as the consoled, and unconsciously showing how in the last twenty-four hours his mind had acted on the topics presented to him by Mr. Wilmot. Changed as he was from the impetuous boyish lad of a few weeks since, a change even more noticeable when with his contemporary than in intercourse with elder men, yet the nature was the same. Obstinacy had softened into constancy, pride into resolution, generosity made pardon less difficult, and elevation of temper bore him through many a humiliation that, through him, bitterly galled his brother. Whatever he might feel, prison regulations were accepted by him as matters of course, not worth being treated as separate grievances. He never showed any shrinking from the assumption of the convict dress, whilst Henry was fretting and wincing over the very notion of his wearing it, and trying to arrange that the farewell interview should precede its adoption. CHAPTER XVII Scorn of me recoils on you. E. B. BROWNING After the first relief, the relaxation of his brother's sentence had by no means mitigated Henry Ward's sense of disgrace, but had rather deepened it by keeping poor Leonard a living, not a dead, sorrow. He was determined to leave England as soon as possible, that his sisters might never feel that they were the relative of a convict; and bringing Ella home, he promulgated a decree that Leonard was never to be mentioned; hoping that his existence might be forgotten by the little ones. To hurry from old scenes, and sever former connections, was his sole thought, as if he could thus break the tie of brotherhood. There was a half-formed link that had more easily snapped. His courtship had been one of prudence and convenience, and in the overwhelming period of horror and suspense had been almost forgotten. The lady's attempts at sympathy had been rejected by Averil without obstruction from him, for he had no such love as could have prevented her good offices from becoming oppressive to his wounded spirit, and he had not sufficient energy or inclination to rouse himself to a response. And when the grant of life enabled him to raise his head and look around him, he felt the failure of his plans an aggravation of his calamity, though he did not perceive that his impatience to rid himself of an encumbrance, and clear the way for his marriage, had been the real origin of the misfortune. Still he was glad that matters had gone no further, and that there was no involvement beyond what could be handsomely disposed of by a letter, resigning his pretensions, and rejoicing that innate delicacy and prudence had prevented what might have involved the lady's feelings more deeply in the misfortune of his family: representing himself in all good faith as having retreated from her proffered sympathy out of devoted consideration for her, and closing with elaborate thanks for her exertions on behalf of 'his unhappy brother.' The letter had the honour of being infinitely lauded by Mrs. Ledwich, who dwelt on its nobleness and tenderness in many a tete-a-tete, and declared her surprise and thankfulness at the immunity of her dear Matilda's heart. In strict confidence, too, Dr. Spencer (among others) learnt that--though it was not to be breathed till the year was out, above all till the poor Wards were gone--the dear romantic girl had made her hand the guerdon for obtaining Leonard's life. 'So there's your fate, Dick,' concluded his friend. 'You forget the influence of the press,' returned Dr. May. 'People don't propose such guerdons without knowing who is to earn them.' 'Yes, she has long believed in King John,' said Ethel. Meantime Averil Ward was acquiescing in all Henry's projects with calm desperate passiveness. She told Mary that she had resolved that she would never again contend with Henry, but would let him do what he would with herself and her sisters. Nor had his tenderness during her illness been in vain; it had inspired reliance and affection, such as to give her the instinct of adherence to him as the one stay left to her. With Leonard shut up, all places were the same to her, except that she was in haste to escape from the scenes connected with her lost brother; and she looked forward with dull despairing acquiescence to the new life with which Henry hoped to shake off the past. A colony was not change enough for Henry's wishes; even there he made sure of being recognized as the convict's brother, and was resolved to seek his new home in the wide field of America, disguising his very name, as Warden, and keeping up no communication with the prisoner except under cover to Dr. May. To this unfailing friend was committed the charge of the brother. He undertook to watch over the boy, visit him from time to time, take care of his health, and obtain for him any alleviations permitted by the prison rules; and as Henry reiterated to Averil, it was absolutely certain that everything possible from external kindness was thus secured. What more could they themselves have done, but show him their faces at the permitted intervals? which would be mere wear and tear of feeling, very bad for both parties. Averil drooped, and disputed not--guessing, though not yet understanding, the heart hunger she should feel even for such a dreary glimpse. Every hour seemed to be another turn of the wheel that hurried on the departure. The successor wished to take house and furniture as they stood, and to enter into possession as soon as possible, as he already had taken the practice. This coincided with Henry's burning impatience to be quit of everything, and to try to drown the sense of his own identity in the crowds of London. He was his sisters' only guardian, their property was entirely in his hands, and no one had the power of offering any obstacle, so that no delay could be interposed; and the vague design passed with startling suddenness to a fixed decision, to be carried into execution immediately. It came in one burst upon the May household that Averil and her sisters were coming to spend a last evening before their absolute packing to go on the Saturday to London, where they would provide their outfit, and start in a month for America. The tidings were brought by Mary, who had, as usual, been spending part of the morning with Averil. No one seemed to be so much taken by surprise as Tom, whose first movement was to fall on his sisters for not having made him aware of such a preposterous scheme. They thought he knew. He knew that all the five quarters of the world had been talked of in a wild sort of a way; but how could he suppose that any man could be crazed enough to prefer to be an American citizen, when he might remain a British subject? Repugnance to America was naturally strong in Tom, and had of late been enhanced by conversations with an Eton friend, who, while quartered in Canada, had made excursions into the States, and acquired such impressions as high-bred young officers were apt to bring home from a superficial view of them. Thus fortified, he demanded whether any reasonable person had tried to bring Henry Ward to his senses. Ethel believed that papa had advised otherwise. 'Advised! It should have been enforced! If he is fool enough to alter his name, and throw up all his certificates what is to become of him? He will get no practice in any civilized place, and will have to betake himself to some pestilential swamp, will slave his sisters to death, spend their money, and destroy them with ague. How can you sit still and look on, Ethel?' 'But what could I do?' 'Stir up my father to interfere.' 'I thought you always warned us against interfering with Henry Ward.' He treated this speech as maliciously designed to enrage him. 'Ethel!' he stammered, 'in a case like this--where the welfare--the very life--of one--of your dearest friend--of Mary's, I mean--I did think you would have been above--' 'But, Tom, I would do my utmost, and so would papa, if it were possible to do anything; but it is quite in vain. Henry is resolved against remaining under British rule, and America seems to be the only field for him.' 'Much you know or care!' cried Tom. 'Well, if no one else will, I must!' With which words he departed, leaving his sister surprised at his solicitude, and dubious of the efficacy of his remonstrance, though she knew by experience that Tom was very different in a great matter from what he was in a small one. Tom betook himself to Bankside, and the first person he encountered there was his little friend Ella, who ran up to him at once. 'Oh, Mr. Tom, we are going to America! Shall you be sorry?' 'Very sorry,' said Tom, as the little hand was confidingly thrust into his. 'I should not mind it, if you were coming too, Mr. Tom!' 'What, to play at French billiards?' 'No, indeed! To find objects for the microscope. I shall save all the objects I meet, and send them home in a letter.' 'An alligator or two, or a branch of the Mississippi,' said Tom, in a young man's absent way of half-answering a pet child; but the reply so struck Ella's fancy, that, springing through the open French window, she cried, 'Oh, Ave, Ave, here is Mr. Tom saying I am to send him a branch of the Mississippi in a letter, as an object for his microscope!' 'I beg your pardon,' said Tom, shocked at Averil's nervous start, and still more shocked at her appearance. She looked like one shattered by long and severe illness; her eyes were restless and distressed, her hair thrust back as if it oppressed her temples, her manner startled and over-wrought, her hand hot and unsteady--her whole air that of one totally unequal to the task before her. He apologized for having taken her by surprise, and asked for her brother. She answered, that he was busy at Mr. Bramshaw's, and she did not know when he would come in. But still Tom lingered; he could not bear to leave her to exertions beyond her strength. 'You are tiring yourself,' he said; 'can I do nothing to help you?' 'No, no, thank you; I am only looking over things. Minna is helping me, and I am making an inventory.' 'Then you must let me be of use to you. You must be as quiet as possible. You need rest.' 'I can't rest; I'm better busy!' she said hastily, with quick, aimless, bustling movements. But Tom had his father's tone, as he gently arrested the trembling hand that was pulling open a drawer, and with his father's sweet, convincing smile, said, 'What's that for?' then drew up a large arm-chair, placed her in it, and, taking pen and list, began to write--sometimes at her suggestion, sometimes at his own--giving business-like and efficient aid. The work was so grave and regular, that Ella soon found the room tedious, and crept out, calling Minna to aid in some of their own personal matters. Slowly enumerating the articles they came to the piano. Averil went up to it, leant fondly against it, and softly touched the keys. 'My own,' she said, 'bought for a surprise to me when I came home from school! And oh, how he loved it!' 'Every one had reason to love it,' said Tom, in a low voice; but she did not heed or hear. 'I cannot--cannot part with it! When I sit here, I can almost feel him leaning over me! You must go--I will pay your expenses myself! I wonder if we should have such rough roads as would hurt you,' she added, caressingly toying with the notes, and bringing soft replies from them, as if she were conversing with a living thing. 'Ah!' said Tom, coming nearer, 'you will, I hope, take care to what your brother's impetuosity might expose either this, or yourself.' 'We shall all fare alike,' she said, carelessly. 'But how?' said Tom. 'Henry will take care of that.' 'Do you know, Miss Ward, I came down here with the purpose of setting some matters before your brother that might dissuade him from making the United States his home. You have justly more influence than I. Will you object to hear them from me?' Ave could not imagine why Tom May, of all people in the world, should thrust himself into the discussion of her plans; but she could only submit to listen, or more truly to lean back with wandering thoughts and mechanical signs of assent, as he urged his numerous objections. Finally, she uttered a meek 'Thank you,' in the trust that it was over. 'And will you try to make your brother consider these things?' Poor Ave could not have stood an examination on 'these things,' and feeling inadequate to undertake the subject, merely said something of 'very kind, but she feared it would be of no use.' 'I assure you, if you would persuade him to talk it over with me, that I could show him that he would involve you all in what would be most distasteful.' 'Thank you, but his mind is made up. No other course is open.' 'Could he not, at least, go and see what he thinks of it, before taking you and your sisters?' 'Impossible!' said Averil. 'We must all keep together; we have no one else.' 'No, indeed, you must not say that,' cried Tom, with a fire that startled Averil in the midst of her languid, dreary indifference. 'I did not mean,' she said, 'to be ungrateful for the kindness of your family--the Doctor and dear Mary, above all; but you must know-' 'I know,' he interrupted, 'that I cannot see you exiling yourself with your brother, because you think you have no one else to turn to--you, who are so infinitely dear--' 'This is no time for satire,' she said, drawing aside with offence, but still wearily, and as if she had not given attention enough to understand him. 'You mistake me,' he exclaimed; 'I mean that no words can tell how strong the feeling is that--that--No, I never knew its force till now; but, Averil, I cannot part with you--you who are all the world to me.' Lifting her heavy eyelids for a moment, she looked bewildered, and then, moving towards the door, said, 'I don't know whether this is jest or earnest--any way, it is equally unsuitable.' 'What do you see in me,' cried Tom, throwing himself before her, 'that you should suppose me capable of jesting on such a subject, at such a moment?' 'I never saw anything but supercilious irony,' she answered, in the same dreamy, indifferent way, as if hardly aware what she was saying, and still moving on. 'I cannot let you go thus. You must hear me,' he cried, and he wheeled round an easy-chair, with a gesture of entreaty; which she obeyed, partly because she was hardly alive to understand his drift, partly because she could scarcely stand; and there she sat, in the same drowsy resignation with which she had listened to his former expostulation. Calm collected Tom was almost beside himself. 'Averil! Averil!' he cried, as he sat down opposite and bent as close to her as possible, 'if I could only make you listen or believe me! What shall I say? It is only the honest truth that you are the dearest thing in the whole world to me! The very things that have given you most offence arose from my struggles with my own feelings. I tried to crush what would have its way in spite of me, and now you see its force.' He saw greater life and comprehension in her eye as he spoke, but the look was not encouraging; and he continued: 'How can I make you understand! Oh! if I had but more time!--but--but it was only the misery of those moments that showed me why it was that I was always irresistibly drawn to you, and yet made instinctive efforts to break the spell; and now you will not understand.' 'I do understand,' said Averil, at length entirely roused, but chiefly by resentment. 'I understand how much a country surgeon's daughter is beneath an M. D.'s attention, and how needful it was to preserve the distance by marks of contempt. As a convict's sister, the distance is so much widened, that it is well for both that we shall never meet again.' Therewith she had risen, and moved to the door. 'Nay, nay,' he cried; 'it is for that very reason that all my past absurdity is trampled on! I should glory in a connection with such as Leonard! Yes, Averil,' as he fancied he saw her touched, 'you have never known me yet; but trust yourself and him to me, and you will give him a true brother, proud of his nobleness. You shall see him constantly--you shall keep your sisters with you. Only put yourself in my hands, and you shall know what devotion is.' He would have said more, but Averil recalled herself, and said: 'This is mere folly; you would be very sorry, were I to take you at your word. It would be unworthy in me towards your father, towards Henry, towards you, for me to listen to you, even if I liked you, and that you have taken good care to prevent me from doing.' And she opened the door, and made her way into the hall. 'But, Averil!--Miss Ward!' he continued, pursuing her, 'if, as I swear I will, I track out the real offender, bring him to justice, proclaim Leonard's innocence? Then--' She was half-way up the stairs. He had no alternative but to take his hat and stride off in a tumult of dismay, first of all at the rejection, and next at his own betrayal of himself. Had he guessed what it would come to, would he ever have trusted himself in that drawing-room? This was the meaning of it all, was it? He, the sensible man of the family, not only to be such an egregious ass, but to have made such a fool of himself! For he was as furious at having committed himself to himself, as he was at his avowal to Averil--he, who had always been certain of loving so wisely and so well, choosing an example of the true feminine balance of excellence, well born, but not too grand for the May pretensions; soundly religious, but not philanthropically pious; of good sense and ability enough for his comfort, but not of overgrown genius for his discomfort; of good looks enough for satisfaction, but not for dangerous admiration; of useful, but not overwhelming wealth; of creditable and not troublesome kindred--that he should find himself plunged headlong into love by those brown eyes and straight features, by the musical genius, talents anything but domestic, ill-regulated enthusiasm, nay, dislike to himself, in the very girl whose station and family he contemned at the best, and at the very time when her brother was a convict, and her sisters dependent! Was he crazed? Was he transformed? What frenzy had come over him to endear her the more for being the reverse of his ideal? And, through all, his very heart was bursting at the thought of the wounds he had given her in his struggles against the net of fascination. He had never imagined the extent of the provocation he gave; and in truth, his habitual manner was such, that it was hard to distinguish between irony and genuine interest. And now it was too late! What should he be henceforth to her? What would Stoneborough and his future be to him? He would, he believed, have taught himself to acquiesce, had he seen any chance of happiness before her; but the picture he drew of her prospects justified his misery, at being only able to goad her on, instead of drawing her back. He was absolutely amazed at himself. He had spoken only the literal truth, when he said that he had been unconscious of the true nature of the feelings that always drew him towards her, though only to assert his independence, and make experiments by teasing in his ironically courteous way. Not until the desolate indifference of her tone had incited him to show her that Henry was not all that remained to her, had he arrived at the perception that, in the late weeks of anxiety, she had grown into his heart, and that it was of no use to argue the point with himself, or think what he would do, the fact was accomplished--his first love was a direct contradiction to his fixed opinions, he had offended her irrevocably and made a fool of himself, and she was going away to dreariness! At first he had rushed off into the melancholy meadows, among the sodden hay-cocks still standing among the green growth of grass; but a shower, increasing the damp forlornness of the ungenial day, made him turn homewards. When, late in the afternoon, Ethel came into the schoolroom for some Cocksmoor stores, she found him leaning over his books on the table. This was his usual place for study; and she did not at once perceive that the attitude was only assumed on her entrance, so kneeling in front of her cupboard, she asked, 'What success?' 'I have not seen him.' 'Oh! I thought I saw you going--' 'Never mind! I mean,' he added with some confusion, 'I wish for a little peace. I have a horrid headache.' 'You!' exclaimed Ethel; and turning round, she saw him leaning back in his chair, a defenceless animal without his spectacles, his eyes small and purpled ringed, his hair tossed about, his spruceness gone. 'I am sure you are not well,' she said. 'Quite well. Nonsense, I only want quiet.' 'Let me give you some of Aubrey's camphor liniment.' 'Thank you,' submitting to a burning application to his brow; but as she lingered in anxiety, 'I really want nothing but quiet.' How like Norman he looks! thought Ethel, as she cast her last glance and departed. Can he be going to be ill? If he would only tell when anything is the matter! I know papa says that some of us feel with our bodies, and some with our minds; but then I never knew Tom much affected any way, and what is all this to him? And a sigh betrayed the suppressed heartache that underlaid all her sensations. I am afraid it must be illness; but any way, he will neither tell nor bear to have it noticed, so I can only watch. Enter the two little Wards, with a message that Ave was sorry, but that she was too much tired to come that evening; and when Mary regretted not having been able to come and help her, Ella answered that 'Mr. Tom had come and helped her for a long time.' 'Yes,' said Minna; 'but I think he must have done it all wrong, for, do you know, I found the list he had made torn up into little bits. Ethel almost visibly started, almost audibly exclaimed. At tea-time Tom appeared, his trimness restored, but not his usual colouring; and Ella hailed him with reproaches for having gone away without telling her. The soft attention of which the child had a monopoly did not fail, though he bent down, trying to keep her to himself, and prevent their colloquy from attracting notice; but they were so close behind Ethel's chair, that she could not help hearing: 'We were only gone to dig up the violets that you are to have, and if you had only stayed you would have seen Henry, for he came in by the little gate, and when I went to tell you, you were gone.' Ethel wondered whether the blushes she felt burning all over her face and neck would be remarked by those before her, or would reveal to Tom, behind her, that the child was giving her the key to his mystery. Marvelling at the exemplary gentleness and patience of his replies to his little coquettish tormentor, she next set herself to relieve him by a summons to Ella to tea and cherries. Fortunately the fruit suggested Dr. May's reminiscences of old raids on cherry orchards now a mere name, and he thus engrossed all the younger audience not entirely preoccupied. He set himself to make the little guests forget all their sorrows, as if he could not help warming them for the last time in the magic of his own sunshine; but Ethel heard and saw little but one figure in the quietest corner of the room, a figure at which she scarcely dared to look. 'And there you are!' so went her thoughts. 'It is true then! Fairly caught! Your lofty crest vailed at last--and at such a time! O, Tom, generous and true-hearted, in spite of all your nonsense! How could she help being touched? In the net and against his will! Oh, triumph of womanhood! I am so glad! No, I'm not, it is best this way, for what an awkward mess it would have been! She is dear Leonard's sister, to be sure, and there is stuff in her, but papa does not take to her, and I don't know whether she would fit in with Tom himself! But oh! the fun it would have been to see Flora's horror at finding her one prudent brother no better than the rest of us! Dear old Tom! The May heart has been too strong for the old Professor nature! What a retribution for his high mightiness! Harry and Richard to be guarded from making fools of themselves! What a nice cloak for jealousy! But it is no laughing matter! How miserable, how thoroughly upset, he is! Poor dear Tom! If I could only go and kiss you, and tell you that I never loved you half so well; but you would rather die than let out one word, I know! Why, any one of the others would have had it all out long ago! And I don't know whether it is quite safe to screen the lamp from those aching eyes that are bearing it like a martyr! There! Well, maybe he will just stand the knowing that I know, provided I don't say a word; but I wish people would not be so "self-contained!"' Self-contained Tom still continued in the morning, though looking sallow and wan; but, in a political argument with his father, he was snappish and overbearing, and in the course of the day gave another indication of being thrown off his balance, which was even harder for Ethel to endure. Throughout the suspense on Leonard's account, Aubrey had been a source of anxiety to all, especially to Tom. The boy's sensitive frame had been so much affected, that tender dealings with him were needful, and all compulsion had been avoided. His father had caused him to be put on the sick-list of the volunteers; and as for his studies, though the books were daily brought out, it was only to prevent the vacuum of idleness; and Tom had made it his business to nurse his brother's powers, avoid all strain on the attention, and occupy without exciting, bearing with his fitful moods of despondence or of hope, whether they took the form of talking or of dreaming. But now that all was over, every one knew that it was time to turn over a new leaf; and Tom, with his sore heart, did it with a vengeance, and on the first instance of carelessness, fell on the poor family pet, as a younger brother and legitimate souffre douleur, with vehemence proportioned to his own annoyance. It was a fierce lecture upon general listlessness, want of manliness, spirit, and perseverance, indifference to duties he had assumed. Nonsense about feelings--a fellow was not worth the snap of a finger who could not subdue his feelings--trash. The sisters heard the storm from the drawing-room, and Gertrude grew hotly indignant, and wanted Ethel to rush in to the rescue; but Ethel, though greatly moved, knew that female interposition only aggravated such matters, and restrained herself and her sister till she heard Tom stride off. Then creeping in on tiptoe, she found the boy sitting stunned and confounded by the novelty of the thing. 'What can it be all about, Ethel? I never had such a slanging in my life?' 'I don't think Tom is quite well. He had a bad headache last night.' Then I hope--I mean, I think--he must have made it worse! I know mine aches, as if I had been next door to the great bell;' and he leant against his sister. 'I am afraid you really were inattentive.' 'No worse than since the heart has gone out of everything. But that was not all! Ethel, can it really be a disgrace, and desertion, and all that, if I don't go on with those volunteers, when it makes me sick to think of touching my rifle?' and his eyes filled with tears. 'It would be a great effort, I know,' said Ethel, smoothing his hair; 'but after all, you volunteered not for pleasure, but because your country wanted defence.' 'The country? I don't care for it, since it condemned him, when he was serving it.' 'He would not say that, Aubrey! He would only be vexed to hear that you gave in, and were fickle to your undertaking. Indeed, if I were the volunteer, I should think it due to him, not to shrink as if I were ashamed of what he was connected with.' Aubrey tried to answer her sweet high-spirited smile, but he had been greatly hurt and distressed, and the late reproach to his manhood embittered his tears without making it easier to repress them; and pushing away his chair, he darted up-stairs. 'Poor dear fellow! I've been very hard on him, and only blamed instead of comforting,' thought Ethel sadly, as she slowly entered the passage, 'what shall I think of, to make a break for both of those two?' 'So you have been cockering your infant,' said Tom, meeting her. 'You mean to keep him a baby all his life.' 'Tom, I want to talk to you,' said she. In expectation of her displeasure, he met it half way, setting his back against the passage wall, and dogmatically declaring, 'You'll be the ruin of him if you go on in this way! How is he ever to go through the world if you are to be always wiping his tears with an embroidered pocket-handkerchief, and cossetting him up like a blessed little sucking lamb?' 'Of course he must rough it,' said Ethel, setting her back against the opposite wall; 'I only want him to be hardened; but after a shock like this, one cannot go on as if one was a stock or stake. Even a machine would have its wheels out of order--' 'Well, well, but it is time that should be over.' 'So it is;' and as the sudden thought flashed on her, 'Tom, I want you to reconsider your journey, that you gave up in the spring, and take him--' 'I don't want to go anywhere,' he wearily said. 'Only it would be so good for him,' said Ethel earnestly; 'he really ought to see something taller than the Minster tower, and you are the only right person to take him, you are so kind to him.' 'For instance?' he said, smiling. 'Accidents will happen in the best regulated families; besides, he did want shaking up. I dare say he will be the better for it. There's the dinner-bell.' To her surprise, she found his arm round her waist, and a kiss on her brow. 'I thought I should have caught it,' he said; 'you are not half a fool of a sister after all.' Aubrey was not in the dining-room; and after having carved, Tom, in some compunction, was going to look for him, when he made his appearance in his uniform. 'Oho!' said the Doctor, surprised. 'There's to be a grand parade with the Whitford division,' he answered; and no more was said. Not till the eight o'clock twilight of the dripping August evening did the family reassemble. Ethel had been preparing for a journey that Mary and Gertrude were to make to Maplewood; and she did not come down till her father had returned, when following him into the drawing-room, she heard his exclamation, 'Winter again!' For the fire was burning, Tom was sitting crumpled over it, with his feet on the fender, and his elbows on his knees, and Aubrey in his father's arm-chair, his feet over the side, so fast asleep that neither entrance nor exclamation roused him; the room was pervaded with an odour of nutmeg and port wine, and a kettle, a decanter, and empty tumblers told tales. Now the Doctor was a hardy and abstemious man, of a water-drinking generation; and his wife's influence had further tended to make him--indulgent as he was--scornful of whatever savoured of effeminacy or dissipation, so his look and tone were sharp, and disregardful of Aubrey's slumbers. 'We got wet through,' said Tom; 'he was done up, had a shivering fit, and I tried to prevent mischief.' 'Hm! said the Doctor, not mollified. 'Cold is always the excuse. But another time don't teach your brother to make this place like a fast man's rooms.' Ethel was amazed at Tom's bearing this so well. With the slightest possible wrinkle of the skin of his forehead, he took up the decanter and carried it off to the cellaret. 'How that boy sleeps!' said his father, looking at him. 'He has had such bad nights!' said Ethel. 'Don't be hard on Tom, he is very good about such things, and would not have done it without need. He is so careful of Aubrey!' 'Too careful by half,' said the Doctor, smiling placably as his son returned. 'You are all in a league to spoil that youngster. He would be better if you would not try your hand on his ailments, but would knock him about.' 'I never do that without repenting it,' said Tom; then, after a pause, 'It is not spirit that is wanting, but you would have been frightened yourself at his state of exhaustion.' 'Of collapse, don't you mean?' said the Doctor, with a little lurking smile. 'However, it is vexatious enough; he had been gaining ground all the year, and now he is regularly beaten down again.' 'Suppose I was to take him for a run on the Continent?' 'What, tired of the hospital?' 'A run now and then is duty, not pleasure,' replied Tom, quietly; while Ethel burnt to avert from him these consequences of his peculiar preference for appearing selfish. 'So much for railway days! That will be a new doctrine at Stoneborough. Well, where do you want to go?' 'I don't want to go anywhere.' Ethel would not have wondered to see him more sullen than he looked at that moment. It was lamentable that those two never could understand each other, and that either from Tom's childish faults, his resemblance to his grandfather, or his habitual reserve, Dr. May was never free from a certain suspicion of ulterior motives on his part. She was relieved at the influx of the rest of the party, including Richard; and Aubrey wakening, was hailed with congratulations on the soundness of his sleep, whilst she looked at Tom with a meaning smile as she saw her father quietly feel the boy's hand and brow. The whole family were always nursing the lad, and scolding one another for it. Tom had put himself beside Ethel, under the shade of her urn, and she perceived that he was ill at ease, probably uncertain whether any confidences had been bestowed on her or Mary from the other side. There was no hope that the topic would be avoided, for Richard began with inquiries for Averil. 'She is working herself to death,' said Mary, sadly; 'but she says it suits her.' 'And it does,' said the Doctor; 'she is stronger every day. There is nothing really the matter with her.' 'Contrary blasts keep a ship upright,' said Gertrude, 'and she has them in abundance. We found her in the midst of six people, all giving diametrically opposite advice.' 'Dr. Spencer was really helping, and Mr. Wright was there about his own affairs,' said Ethel, in a tone of repression. 'And Mrs. Ledwich wanted her to settle on the Ohio to assist the runaway slaves,' continued Gertrude. 'It does not tease her as if she heard it,' said Mary. 'No,' said the Doctor, 'she moves about like one in a dream, and has no instinct but to obey her brother.' 'Well, I am glad to be going,' said Daisy; 'it will be flat when all the excitement is over, and we have not the fun of seeing Tom getting rises out of Ave Ward.' This time Tom could not repress a sudden jerk, and Ethel silenced her sister by a hint that such references were not nice when people were in trouble. 'By the bye,' said Aubrey, 'speaking of going away, what were you saying while I was asleep? or was it a dream that I was looking through Tom's microscope at a rifle bullet in the Tyrol?' 'An inspiration from Tom's brew,' said the Doctor. 'Weren't you saying anything?' said Aubrey, eagerly. 'I'm sure there was something about duty and pleasure. Were you really talking of it?' 'Tom was, and if it is to put some substance into those long useless legs, I don't care if you do start off.' Aubrey flashed into a fresh being. He had just been reading a book about the Tyrol, and Tom not caring at all where they were to go, this gave the direction. Aubrey rushed to borrow a continental Bradshaw from Dr. Spencer, and the plan rapidly took form; with eager suggestions thrown in by every one, ending with the determination to start on the next Monday morning. 'That's settled,' said Tom, wearily, when he and Ethel, as often happened, had lingered behind the rest; 'only, Ethel, there's one thing. You must keep your eye on the Vintry Mill, and fire off a letter to me if the fellow shows any disposition to bolt.' 'If I can possibly find out--' 'Keep your eyes open; and then Hazlitt has promised to let me know if that cheque of Bilson's is cashed. If I am away, telegraph, and meantime set my father on the scent. It may not hang that dog himself, but it may save Leonard.' 'Oh, if it would come!' 'And meantime--silence, you know--' 'Very well;' then lingering, 'Tom, I am sure you did the right thing by Aubrey, and so was papa afterwards.' His brow darkened for a moment, but shaking it off he said, 'I'll do my best for your cosset lamb, and bring him back in condition.' 'Thank you; I had rather trust him with you than any one.' 'And how is it that no one proposes a lark for you, old Ethel?' said Tom, holding her so as to study her face. 'You look awfully elderly and ragged.' 'Oh, I'm going to be left alone with the Doctor, and that will be the greatest holiday I ever had.' 'I suppose it is to you,' said Tom, with a deep heavy sigh, perhaps glad to have some ostensible cause for sighing. 'Dear Tom, when you are living here, and working with him--' 'Ah--h!' he said almost with disgust, 'don't talk of slavery to me before my time. How I hate it, and everything else! Good night!' 'Poor Tom!' thought Ethel. 'I wish papa knew him better and would not goad him. Will Averil ever wake to see what she has done, and feel for him? Though I don't know why I should wish two people to be unhappy instead of one, and there is weight enough already. O, Leonard, I wonder if your one bitter affliction will shield you from the others that may be as trying, and more tempting!' CHAPTER XVIII All bright hopes and hues of day Have faded into twilight gray.--Christian Year 'No fear of Aubrey's failing,' said Tom; 'he has a better foundation than nine-tenths of the lads that go up, and he is working like a man.' 'He always did work heartily,' said Ethel, 'and with pleasure in his work.' 'Ay, like a woman.' 'Like a scholar.' 'A scholar is a kind of woman. A man, when he's a boy, only works because he can't help it, and afterwards for what he can get by it.' 'For what he can do with it would have a worthier sound.' 'Sound or sense, it is all the same.' 'Scaffolding granted, what is the building?' Tom apparently thought it would be working like a woman to give himself the trouble of answering; and Ethel went on in her own mind, 'For the work's own sake--for what can be got by it--for what can be done with it--because it can't be helped--are--these all the springs of labour here? Then how is work done in that solitary cell? Is it because it can't be helped, or is it 'as the Lord's freeman'? And when he can hear of Aubrey's change, will he take it as out of his love, or grieve for having been the cause?' For the change had been working in Aubrey ever since Leonard had altered his career. The boy was at a sentimental age, and had the susceptibility inseparable from home breeding; his desire to become a clergyman had been closely connected with the bright visions of the happy days at Coombe, and had begun to wane with the first thwarting of Leonard's plans; and when the terrible catastrophe of the one friend's life occurred, the other became alienated from all that they had hoped to share together. Nor could even Dr. May's household be so wholly exempt from the spirit of the age, that Aubrey was not aware of the strivings and trials of faith at the University. He saw what Harvey Anderson was, and knew what was passing in the world; and while free from all doubts, shrank boyishly from the investigations that he fancied might excite them. Or perhaps these fears of possible scruples were merely his self-justification for gratifying his reluctance. At any rate, he came home from his two months' tour, brown, robust, with revived spirits, but bent on standing an examination for the academy at Woolwich. He had written about it several times before his return, and his letters were, as his father said, 'so appallingly sensible that perhaps he would change his mind.' But it was not changed when he came home; and Ethel, though sorely disappointed, was convinced by her own sense as well as by Richard's prudence, that interference was dangerous. No one in Israel was to go forth to the wars of the Lord save those who 'willingly offered themselves;' and though grieved that her own young knight should be one of the many champions unwilling to come forth in the Church's cause, she remembered the ordeal to Norman's faith, and felt that the exertion of her influence was too great a responsibility. 'You don't like this,' said Tom, after a pause. 'It is not my doing, you know.' 'No, I did not suppose it was,' said Ethel. 'You would not withhold any one in these days of exceeding want of able clergymen.' 'I told him it would be a grief at home,' added Tom, 'but when a lad gets into that desperate mood, he always may be a worse grief if you thwart him; and I give you credit, Ethel, you have not pulled the curb.' 'Richard told me not.' 'Richard represents the common sense of the family when I am not at home.' Tom was going the next day to his course of study at the London hospitals, and this--the late afternoon--was the first time that he and his sister had been alone together. He had been for some little time having these short jerks of conversation, beginning and breaking off rather absently. At last he said, 'Do those people ever write?' 'Prisoners, do you mean? Not for three months.' 'No--exiles.' 'Mary has heard twice.' He held out Mary's little leathern writing-case to her. 'O, Tom!' 'It is only Mary.' Ethel accepted the plea, aware that there could be no treason between herself and Mary, and moreover that the letters had been read by all the family. She turned the key, looked them out, and standing by the window to catch the light, began to read-- 'You need not be afraid, kind Mary,' wrote Averil, on the first days of her voyage; 'I am quite well, as well as a thing can be whose heart is dried up. I am hardened past all feeling, and seem to be made of India-rubber. Even my colour has returned--how I hate to see it, and to hear people say my roses will surprise the delicate Americans. Fancy, in a shop in London I met an old school-fellow, who was delighted to see me, talked like old times, and insisted on knowing where we were staying. I used to be very fond of her, but it was as if I had been dead and was afraid she would find out I was a ghost, yet I talked quite indifferently, and never faltered in my excuses. When we embarked, it was no use to know it was the last of England, where _he_ and you and home and life were left. How I envied the poor girl, who was crying as if her heart would break!' On those very words, broke the announcement of Mr. Cheviot. Tom coolly held out his hand for the letters, so much as a matter of course, that Ethel complied with his gesture, and he composedly pocketed them, while she felt desperately guilty. Mary's own entrance would have excited no compunction, Ethel would have said that Tom wanted to hear of the voyage; but in the present case, she could only blush, conscious that the guest recognized her sister's property, and was wondering what business she had with it, and she was unwilling to explain, not only on Tom's account, but because she knew that Mr. Cheviot greatly disapproved of petitioning against the remission of capital sentences, and thought her father under a delusion. After Tom's departure the next day, she found the letters in her work-basket, and restored them to Mary, laughing over Mr. Cheviot's evident resentment at the detection of her doings. 'I think it looked rather funny,' said Mary. 'I beg your pardon,' said Ethel, much astonished; 'but I thought, as every one else had seen them--' 'Tom always laughed at poor Ave.' 'He is very different now; but indeed, Mary, I am sorry, since you did not like it.' 'Oh!' cried Mary, discomfited by Ethel's apology, 'indeed I did not mean that, I wish I had not said anything. You know you are welcome to do what you please with all I have. Only,' she recurred, 'you can't wonder that Mr. Cheviot thought it funny.' 'If he had any call to think at all,' said Ethel, who was one of those who thought that Charles Cheviot had put a liberal interpretation on Dr. May's welcome to Stoneborough. He had arrived after the summer holidays as second master of the school, and at Christmas was to succeed Dr. Hoxton, who had been absolutely frightened from his chair by the commissions of inquiry that had beset the Whichcote foundation; and in compensation was at present perched on the highest niche sacred to conservative martyrdom in Dr. May's loyal heart. Charles Cheviot was a very superior man, who had great influence with young boys, and was admirably fitted to bring about the much required reformation in the school. He came frequently to discuss his intentions with Dr. May, and his conversation was well worth being listened to; but even the Doctor found three evenings in a week a large allowance for good sense and good behaviour--the evenings treated as inviolable even by old friends like Dr. Spencer and Mr. Wilmot, the fast waning evenings of Aubrey's home life. The rest were reduced to silence, chess, books, and mischief, except when a treat of facetious small talk was got up for their benefit. Any attempt of the ladies to join in the conversation was replied to with a condescending levity that reduced Ethel to her girlhood's awkward sense of forwardness and presumption; Mary was less disconcerted, because her remarks were never so aspiring, and Harry's wristbands sufficed her; but the never-daunted Daisy rebelled openly, related the day's events to her papa, fearless of any presence, and when she had grown tired of the guest's regular formula of expecting to meet Richard, she told him that the adult school always kept Richard away in the winter evenings; 'But if you want to see him, he is always to be found at Cocksmoor, and he would be very glad of help.' 'Did he express any such wish?' said Mr. Cheviot, looking rather puzzled. 'Oh dear, no; only I thought you had so much time on your hands.' 'Oh no--oh no!' exclaimed Mary, in great confusion, 'Gertrude did not mean--I am sure I don't know what she was thinking of.' And at the first opportunity, Mary, for once in her life, administered to Gertrude a richly-deserved reproof for sauciness and contempt of improving conversation; but the consequence was a fancy of the idle younglings to make Mary accountable for the 'infesting of their evenings,' and as she was always ready to afford sport to the household, they thus obtained a happy outlet for their drollery and discontent, and the imputation was the more comical from his apparent indifference and her serene composure; until one evening when, as the bell rung, and mutterings passed between Aubrey and Gertrude, of 'Day set,' and 'Cheviot's mountains lone,' the head of the family, for the first time, showed cognizance of the joke, and wearily taking down his slippered feet from their repose, said, 'Lone! yes, there's the rub! I shall have to fix days of reception if Mary will insist on being so attractive.' Mary, with an instinct that she was blamed, began to be very sorry, but broke off amid peals of merriment, and blushes that were less easily extinguished; and which caused Ethel to tell each of the young ones privately, that their sport was becoming boy and frog work, and she would have no more of it. The Daisy was inclined to be restive; but Ethel told her that many people thought this kind of fun could never be safe or delicate. 'I have always said that it might be quite harmless, if people knew where to stop--now show me that I am right.' And to Aubrey she put the question, whether he would like to encourage Daisy in being a nineteenth-century young lady without reticence? However, as Mary heard no more of their mischievous wit, Ethel was quite willing to let them impute to herself a delusion that the schoolmaster was smitten with Mary, and to laugh with them in private over all the ridiculous things they chose to say. At last Flora insisted on Ethel's coming with her to make a distant call, and, as soon as they were in the carriage, said, 'It was not only for the sake of Mrs. Copeland, though it is highly necessary you should go, but it is the only way of ever speaking to you, and I want to know what all this is about Mary?' 'The children have not been talking their nonsense to you!' 'No one ever talks nonsense to me--intentionally, I mean--not even you, Ethel; I wish you did. But I hear it is all over the town. George has been congratulated, and so have I, and one does not like contradicting only to eat it up again.' 'You always did hear everything before it was true, Flora.' 'Then is it going to be true?' 'O, Flora, can it be possible?' said Ethel, with a startled, astonished look. 'Possible! Highly obvious and proper, as it seems to me. The only doubt in my mind was whether it were not too obvious to happen.' 'He is always coming in,' said Ethel, 'but I never thought it was really for that mischief! The children only laugh about it as the most preposterous thing they can think of, for he never speaks to a woman if he can help it.' 'That may not prevent him from wanting a good wife.' 'Wanting a wife--ay, as he would want a housekeeper, just because he has got to the proper position for it; but is he to go and get our bonny Mary in that way, just for an appendage to the mastership?' 'Well done, old Ethel! I'm glad to see you so like yourself. I remember when we thought Mrs. Hoxton's position very sublime.' 'I never thought of positions!' 'Never! I know that very well; and I am not thinking of it now, except as an adjunct to a very worthy man, whom Mary will admire to the depths of her honest heart, and who will make her very happy.' 'Yes, I suppose if she once begins to like him, that he will,' said Ethel, slowly; 'but I can't bring myself to swallow it yet. She has never given in to his being a bore, but I thought that was her universal benevolence; and he says less to her than to any one.' 'Depend upon it, he thinks he is proceeding selon les regles.' 'Then he ought to be flogged! Has he any business to think of my Mary, without falling red-hot in love with her? Why, Hector was regularly crazy that last half-year; and dear old Polly is worth ever so much more than Blanche.' 'I must say you have fulfilled my desire of hearing you talk nonsense, Ethel. Mary would never think of those transports.' 'She deserves them all the more.' 'Well, she is the party most concerned, though she will be a cruel loss to all of us.' 'She will not go far, if--' 'Yes, but she will be the worse loss. You simple Ethel, you don't think that Charles Cheviot will let her be the dear family fag we have always made of her?' 'Oh no--that always was wrong.' 'And living close by, she will not come on a visit, all festal, to resume home habits. No, you must make up your mind, Ethel--_if,_ as you say, _if_--he will be a man for monopolies, and he will resent anything that he thinks management from you. I suspect it is a real sign of the love that you deny, that he has ventured on the sister of a clever woman, living close by, and a good deal looked up to.' 'Flora, Flora, you should not make one wicked. If she is to be happy, why can't you let me rejoice freely, and only have her drawn off from me bit by bit, in the right way of nature?' 'I did not tell you to make you dislike it--of course not. Only I thought that a little tact, a little dexterity, might prevent Charles Cheviot from being so much afraid of you, as if he saw at once how really the head of the family you are.' 'Nonsense, Flora, I am no such thing. If I am domineering, the sooner any one sees it and takes me down the better. If this does come, I will try to behave as I ought, and not to mind so Mary is happy; but I can't act, except just as the moment leads me. I hope it will soon be over, now you have made me begin to believe in it. I am afraid it will spoil Harry's pleasure at home! Poor dear Harry, what will he do?' 'When does he come?' 'Any day now; he could not quite tell when he could get away. When they came back, and Dr. May ran out to say, 'Can you come in. Flora? we want you,' the sisters doubted whether his excitement were due to the crisis, or to the arrival. He hurried them into the study, and shut the door, exulting and perplexed. 'You girls leave one no rest,' he said. 'Here I have had this young Cheviot telling me that the object of his attentions has been apparent. I'm sure I did not know if it were Mab or one of you. I thought he avoided all alike; and poor Mary was so taken by surprise that she will do nothing but cry, and say, "No, never;" and when I tell her she shall do as she pleases, she cries the more; or if I ask her if I am to say Yes, she goes into ecstasies of crying! I wish one of you would go up, and see if you can do anything with her.' 'Is he about the house?' asked Flora, preparing to obey. 'No--I was obliged to tell him that she must have time, and he is gone home. I am glad he should have a little suspense--he seemed to make so certain of her. Did he think he was making love all the time he was boring me with his gas in the dormitories? I hope she will serve him out!' 'He will not be the worse for not being a lady's man,' said Flora, at the door. But in ten minutes, Flora returned with the same report of nothing but tears; and she was obliged to leave the party to their perplexity, and drive home; while Ethel went in her turn to use all manner of pleas to her sister to cheer up, know her own mind, and be sure that they only wished to guess what would make her happiest. To console or to scold were equally unsuccessful, and after attempting all varieties of treatment, bracing or tender, Ethel found that the only approach to calm was produced by the promise that she should be teased no more that evening, but be left quite alone to recover, and cool her burning eyes and aching head. So, lighting her fire, shaking up a much-neglected easy-chair, bathing her eves, desiring her not to come down to tea, and engaging both that Gertrude should not behold her, and that papa would not be angry, provided that she tried to know what she really wished, and be wiser on the morrow, Ethel left her. The present concern was absolutely more to persuade her to give an answer of some sort, than what that answer should be. Ethel would not wish; Dr. May had very little doubt; and Gertrude, from whom there was no concealing the state of affairs, observed, 'If she cries so much the first time she has to know her own mind, it shows she can't do without some one to do it for her.' The evening passed in expeditions of Ethel's to look after her patient, and in desultory talk on all that was probable and improbable between Dr. May and the younger ones, until just as Ethel was coming down at nine o'clock with the report that she had persuaded Mary to go to bed, she was startled by the street door being opened as far as the chain would allow, and a voice calling, 'I say, is any one there to let me in?' 'Harry! O, Harry! I'm coming;' and she had scarcely had time to shut the door previous to taking down the chain, before the three others were in the hall, the tumult of greetings breaking forth. 'But where's Polly?' he asked, as soon as he was free to look round them all. 'Going to bed with a bad headache,' was the answer, with which Daisy had sense enough not to interfere; and the sailor had been brought into the drawing-room, examined on his journey, and offered supper, before he returned to the charge. 'Nothing really the matter with Mary, I hope?' 'Oh! no--nothing.' 'Can't I go up and see her?' 'Not just at present,' said Ethel. 'I will see how she is when she is in bed, but if she is going to sleep, we had better not disturb her.' 'Harry thinks she must sleep better for the sight of him,' said the Doctor; 'but it is a melancholy business.--Harry, your nose is out of joint.' 'Who is it?' said Harry, gravely. 'Ah! you have chosen a bad time to come home. We shall know no comfort till it is over.' 'Who?' cried Harry; 'no nonsense, Gertrude, I can't stand guessing.' This was directed to Gertrude, who was only offending by pursed lips and twinkling eyes, because he could not fall foul of his father. Dr. May took pity, and answered at once. 'Cheviot!' cried Harry. 'Excellent! He always did know how to get the best of everything. Polly turning into a Mrs. Hoxton. Ha! ha! Well, that is a relief to my mind.' 'You did look rather dismayed, certainly. What were you afraid of?' 'Why, when that poor young Leonard Ward's business was in the papers, a messmate of mine was asked if we were not all very much interested, because of some attachment between some of us. I thought he must mean me or Tom, for I was tremendously smitten with that sweet pretty girl, and I used to be awfully jealous of Tom, but when I heard of Mary going to bed with a headache, and that style of thing, I began to doubt, and I couldn't stand her taking up with such a dirty little nigger as Henry Ward was at school.' 'I think you might have known Mary better!' exclaimed Gertrude. 'And it's not Tom either?' he asked. 'Exactly the reverse,' laughed his father. 'Well, Tom is a sly fellow, and he had a knack of turning up whenever one wanted to do a civil thing by that poor girl. Where is she now?' 'At New York.' 'They'd better take care how they send me to watch the Yankees, then.' 'Your passion does not alarm me greatly,' laughed the Doctor. 'I don't think it ever equalled that for the reigning ship. I hope there's a vacancy in that department for the present, and that we may have you at home a little.' 'Indeed, sir, I'm afraid not,' said Harry. 'I saw Captain Gordon at Portsmouth this morning, and he tells me he is to go out in the Clio to the Pacific station, and would apply for me as his first lieutenant, if I liked to look up the islands again. So, if you have any commissions for Norman, I'm your man. 'And how soon?' 'Uncertain--but Cheviot and Mary must settle their affairs in good time; I've missed all the weddings in the family hitherto, and won't be balked of Polly's. I say, Ethel, you can't mean me not to go and wish her joy.' 'We are by no means come to joy yet,' said Ethel; 'poor Mary is overset by the suddenness of the thing.' 'Why, I thought it was all fixed.' 'Nothing less so,' said the Doctor. 'One would think it was a naiad that had had an offer from the mountains next, for she has been shedding a perfect river of tears ever since; and all that the united discernment of the family has yet gathered is, that she cries rather more when we tell her she is right to say No than when we tell her she is right to say Yes.' 'I declare, Ethel, you must let me go up to her.' 'But, Harry, I promised she should hear no more about it to-night. You must say nothing unless she begins.' And thinking a quiet night's rest, free from further excitement, the best chance of a rational day, Ethel was glad that her mission resulted in the report, 'Far too nearly asleep to be disturbed;' but on the way up to bed, soft as Harry's foot-falls always were, a voice came down the stairs, 'That's Harry! Oh, come!' and with a face of triumph turned back to meet Ethel's glance of discomfited warning, he bounded up, to be met by Mary in her dressing-gown. 'O, Harry, why didn't you come?' as she threw her arms round his neck. 'They wouldn't let me.' 'I did think I heard you; but when no one came I thought it was only Richard, till I heard the dear old step, and then I knew. O, Harry!' and still she gasped, with her head on his shoulder. 'They said you must be quiet.' 'O Harry! did you hear?' 'Yes, indeed,' holding her closer, 'and heartily glad I am; I know him as well as if I had sailed with him, and I could not wish you in better hands.' 'But--O, Harry dear--' and there was a struggle with a sob between each word, 'indeed--I won't--mind if you had rather not.' 'Do you mean that you don't like him?' 'I should see him, you know, and perhaps he would not mind--he could always come and talk to papa in the evenings.' 'And is that what you want to put a poor man off with, Mary?' 'Only--only--if you don't want me to--' 'I not want you to--? Why, Mary, isn't it the very best thing I could want for you? What are you thinking about?' 'Don't you remember, when you came home after your wound, you said I--I mustn't--' and she fell into such a paroxysm of crying that he had quite to hold her up in his arms, and though his voice was merry, there was a moisture on his eyelashes. 'Oh, you Polly! You're a caution against deluding the infant mind! Was that all? Was that what made you distract them all? Why not have said so?' 'Oh, never! They would have said you were foolish.' 'As I was for not knowing that you wouldn't understand that I only meant you were to wait till the right one turned up. Why, if I had been at Auckland, would you have cried till I came home?' 'Oh, I'm sorry I was silly! But I'm glad you didn't mean it, dear Harry!' squeezing him convulsively. 'There! And now you'll sleep sound, and meet them as fresh as a fair wind to-morrow. Eh?' 'Only please tell papa I'm sorry I worried him.' 'And how about somebody else, Mary, whom you've kept on tenter-hooks ever so long? Are you sure he is not walking up and down under the limes on the brink of despair?' 'Oh, do you think--? But he would not be so foolish!' 'There now, go to sleep. I'll settle it all for you, and I shan't let any one say you are a goose but myself. Only sleep, and get those horrid red spots away from under your eyes, or perhaps he'll repent his bargain, said Harry, kissing each red spot. 'Promise you'll go to bed the instant I'm gone.' 'Well,' said Dr. May, looking out of his room, 'I augur that the spirit of the flood has something to say to the spirit of the fell.' 'I should think so! Genuine article--no mistake.' 'Then what was all this about?' 'All my fault. Some rhodomontade of mine about not letting her marry had cast anchor in her dear little ridiculous heart, and it is well I turned up before she had quite dissolved herself away.' 'Is that really all?' 'The sum total of the whole, as sure as--' said Harry, pausing for an asseveration, and ending with 'as sure as your name is Dick May;' whereat they both fell a-laughing, though they were hardly drops of laughter that Harry brushed from the weather-marked pucker in the comer of his eyes; and Dr. May gave a sigh of relief, and said, 'Well, that's right!' 'Where's the latch-key? I must run down and put Cheviot out of his misery.' 'It is eleven o'clock, he'll be gone to bed.' 'Then I would forbid the banns. Where does he hang out? Has he got into old Hoxton's?' 'No, it is being revivified. He is at Davis's lodgings. But I advise you not, a little suspense will do him good.' 'One would think you had never been in love,' said Harry, indignantly. 'At least, I can't sleep till I've shaken hands with the old fellow. Good night, father. I'll not be long.' He kept his word, and the same voice greeted him out of the dressing-room: 'How was the spirit of the fell? Sleep'st thou, brother?' 'Brother, nay,' answered Harry, 'he was only looking over Latin verses! He always was a cool hand.' 'The spirit of the Fell--Dr. Fell, with a vengeance,' said Dr. May. 'I say, Harry, is this going to be a mere business transaction on his part? Young folks have not a bit of romance in these days, and one does not know where to have them; but if I thought--' 'You may be sure of him, sir,' said Harry, speaking the more eagerly because he suspected the impression his own manner had made; 'he is thoroughly worthy, and feels Mary's merits pretty nearly as much as I do. More, perhaps, I ought to say. There's more warmth in him than shows. I don't know that Norman ever could have gone through that terrible time after the accident, but for the care he took of him. And that little brother of his that sailed with me in the Eurydice, and died at Singapore--I know how he looked to his brother Charles, and I do assure you, father, you could not put the dear Mary into safer, sounder hands, or where she could be more prized or happier. He is coming up to-morrow morning, and you'll see he is in earnest in spite of all his set speeches. Good night, father; I am glad to be in time for the last of my Polly.' This was almost the only moment at which Harry betrayed a consciousness that his Polly was less completely his own. And yet it seemed as if it must have been borne in on him again and again, for Mary awoke the next morning as thoroughly, foolishly, deeply in love as woman could be, and went about comporting herself in the most comically commonplace style, forgetting and neglecting everything, not hearing nor seeing, making absurd mistakes, restless whenever Mr. Cheviot was not present, and then perfectly content if he came to sit by her, as he always did; for his courtship--now it had fairly begun--was equally exclusive and determined. Every day they walked or rode together, almost every evening he came and sat by her, and on each holiday they engrossed the drawing-room, Mary looking prettier than she had ever been seen before; Aubrey and Gertrude both bored and critical; Harry treating the whole as a pantomime got up for his special delectation, and never betokening any sense that Mary was neglecting him. It was the greatest help to Ethel in keeping up the like spirit, under the same innocent unconscious neglect from the hitherto devoted Mary, who was only helpful in an occasional revival of mechanical instinct in lucid intervals, and then could not be depended on. To laugh good-naturedly and not bitterly, to think the love-making pretty and not foolish, to repress Gertrude's saucy scorn, instead of encouraging it, would have been far harder without the bright face of the brother who generously surrendered instead of repining. She never told herself that there was no proportion between the trials, not only because her spirits still suffered from the ever-present load of pity at her heart, nor because the loss would be hourly to her, but also because Charles Cheviot drew Harry towards him, but kept her at a distance, or more truly laughed her down. She was used to be laughed at; her ways had always been a matter of amusement to her brothers, and perhaps it was the natural assumption of brotherhood to reply to any suggestion or remark of hers with something intended for drollery, and followed with a laugh, which, instead of as usual stirring her up to good-humoured repartee, suppressed her, and made her feel foolish and awkward. As to Flora's advice, to behave with tact, she could not if she would, she would not if she could; in principle she tried to acquiesce in a man's desire to show that he meant to have his wife to himself, and in practice she accepted his extinguisher because she could not help it. Mr. Cheviot was uneasy about the chances of Aubrey's success in the examination at Woolwich, and offered assistance in the final preparation; but though Aubrey willingly accepted the proposal, two or three violent headaches from over-study and anxiety made Dr. May insist on his old regimen of entire holiday and absence of work for the last week; to secure which repose, Aubrey was sent to London with Harry for a week's idleness and the society of Tom, who professed to be too busy to come home even for Christmas. Mr. Cheviot's opinion transpired through Mary, that it was throwing away Aubrey's only chance. In due time came the tidings that Aubrey had the second largest number of marks, and had been highly commended for the thoroughness of his knowledge, so different from what had been only crammed for the occasion. He had been asked who had been his tutor, and had answered, 'His brother,' fully meaning to spare Ethel publicity; and she was genuinely thankful for having been shielded under Tom's six months of teaching. She heartily wished the same shield would have availed at home, when Charles Cheviot gave that horrible laugh, and asked her if she meant to stand for a professor's chair. She faltered something about Tom and mathematics. 'Ay, ay,' said Charles; 'and these military examinations are in nothing but foreign languages and trash;' and again he laughed his laugh, and Mary followed his example. Ethel would fain have seen the fun. 'Eh, Cheviot, what two of a trade never agree?' asked Dr. May, in high glory and glee. 'Not my trade, papa,' said Ethel, restored by his face and voice, 'only the peculiarity of examiners, so long ago remarked by Norman, of only setting questions that one can answer.' 'Not your trade, but your amateur work!' said Mr. Cheviot, again exploding, and leaving Ethel to feel demolished. Why, she wondered presently, had she not held up her knitting, and merrily owned it for her trade--why, but because those laughs took away all merriment, all presence of mind, all but the endeavour not to be as cross as she felt. Was this systematic, or was it only bad taste? The wedding was fixed for Whitsuntide; the repairs and drainage necessitating early and long holidays; and the arrangements gave full occupation. Mary was the first daughter who had needed a portion, since Mr. Cheviot was one of a large family, and had little of his own. Dr. May had inherited a fair private competence, chiefly in land in and about the town, and his professional gains, under his wife's prudent management, had been for the most part invested in the like property. The chief of his accumulation of ready money had been made over to establish Richard at Cocksmoor; and though living in an inexpensive style, such as that none of the family knew what it was to find means lacking for aught that was right or reasonable, there was no large amount of capital available. The May custom had always been that the physician should inherit the landed estate; and though this was disproportionately increased by the Doctor's own acquisitions, yet the hold it gave over the town was so important, that he was unwilling it should be broken up at his death, and wished to provide for his other children by charges on the rents, instead of by sale and division. All this he caused Richard to write to Tom, for though there was no absolute need of the young man's concurrence in arranging Mary's settlements, it was a good opportunity for distinctly stating his prospects, and a compliment to consult him. Feeling that Tom had thus been handsomely dealt with, his letter to his father was the greater shock, when, after saying that he doubted whether he could come home for the wedding, he expressed gratitude for the opening held out to him, but begged that precedents applicable to very different circumstances might not be regarded as binding. He was distressed at supplanting Richard, and would greatly prefer the property taking its natural course. It would be so many years, he trusted, before there would be room for his services, even as an assistant, at Stoneborough, that he thought it would be far more advisable to seek some other field; and his own desire would be at once to receive a younger son's share, if it were but a few hundreds, and be free to cut out his own line. 'What is he driving at, Ethel?' asked the Doctor, much vexed. 'I offer him what any lad should jump at; and he only says, "Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me." What does that mean?' 'Not prodigality,' said Ethel. 'Remember what Sir Matthew Fleet said to Dr. Spencer--"Dick's ability and common sense besides."' 'Exactly what makes me suspicious of his coming the disinterested over me. There's something behind! He is running into debt and destruction among that precious crew about the hospitals.' 'Harry saw nothing wrong, and thought his friends in good style.' 'Every one is in good style with Harry, happy fellow! He is no more a judge than a child of six years old--carries too much sunshine to see shades.' 'A lieutenant in the navy can hardly be the capital officer that our Harry is without some knowledge of men and discipline.' 'I grant you, on his own element; but on shore he goes about in his holiday spectacles, and sees a bird of paradise in every cock-sparrow.' 'Isn't _there_ a glass house that can sometimes make a swan?' said Ethel, slyly touching her father's spectacles; 'but with you both, there's always a something to attract the embellishing process; and between Harry and Aubrey, Dr. Spencer and Sir Matthew, we could hardly fail to have heard of anything amiss.' 'I don't like it.' 'Then it is hard,' said Ethel, with spirit. 'So steady as he has always been, he ought to have the benefit of a little trust.' 'He was never like the others; I don't know what to be at with him! I should not have minded but for that palaver about elder brothers.' Defend as Ethel might, it was still with a misgiving lest disappointment should have taken a wrong course. It was hard to trust where correspondence was the merest business scrap, and neither Christmas nor the sister's marriage availed to call Tom home; and though she had few fears as to dissipation, she did dread hardening and ambition, all the more since she had learnt that Sir Matthew Fleet was affording to him a patronage unprecedented from that quarter. No year of Etheldred May's life had been so trying as this last. It seemed like her first step away from the aspirations of youth, into the graver fears of womanhood. With all the self-restraint that she had striven to exercise at Coombe, it had been a time of glorious dreams over the two young spirits who seemed to be growing up by her side to be faithful workers, destined to carry out her highest visions; and the boyish devotion of the one, the fraternal reverence of the other, had made her very happy. And now? The first disappointment in Leonard had led--not indeed to less esteem for him, but to that pitying veneration that could only be yielded by a sharing in spirit of the like martyrdom; a continued thankfulness and admiration, but a continual wringing of the heart. And her own child and pupil, Aubrey, had turned aside from the highest path; and in the unavowed consciousness that he was failing in the course he had so often traced out with her, and that all her aid and ready participation in his present interests were but from her outward not her inward heart, he had never argued the point with her, never consulted her on his destination. He had talked only to his father of his alteration of purpose, and had at least paid her the compliment of not trying to make her profess that she was gratified by the change. In minor matters, he depended on her as much as ever; but Harry was naturally his chief companion, and the prime of his full and perfect confidence had departed, partly in the step from boy to man, but more from the sense that he was not fulfilling the soldiership he had dreamt of with her, and that he had once led her to think his talents otherwise dedicated. She had few fears for his steadiness, but she had some for his health, and he was something taken away from her--a brightness had faded from his image. And this marriage--with every effort at rejoicing and certainty of Mary's present bliss and probability of future happiness, it was the loss of a sister, and not the gain of a brother, and Mr. Cheviot did his utmost to render the absence of repining a great effort of unselfishness. And even with her father, her possession of Tom's half-revealed secret seemed an impairing of absolute confidence; she could not but hope that her father did her brother injustice, and in her tenderness towards them both this was a new and painful sensation. Her manner was bright and quaint as ever, her sayings perhaps less edged than usual, because the pain at her heart made her guard her tongue; but she had begun to feel middle-aged, and strangely lonely. Richard, though always a comfort, would not have entered into her troubles; Harry, in his atmosphere of sailor on shore, had nothing of the confidant, and engrossed his father; Mary and Aubrey were both gone from her, and Gertrude was still a child. She had never so longed after Margaret or Norman. But at least her corner in the Minster, her table at home with her Bible and Prayer-Book, were still the same, and witnessed many an outpouring of her anxiety, many a confession of the words or gestures that she had felt to have been petulant, whether others had so viewed them or not. CHAPTER XIX Long among them was seen a maiden, who waited and wondered, Lowly and meek in spirit, and patiently suffering all things; Fair was she, and young, but alas! before her extended, Dreary and vast and silent, the desert of life.--Evangeline. LONGFELLOW 'Sister, sister! who is it? Going to be married! Oh, do tell us!' cried Ella Warden--as she now was called--capering round her elder sister, who stood beneath a gas-burner, in a well-furnished bed-room, reading a letter, its enclosure clasped within a very trembling hand. 'Mary May, dear Mary,' answered Averil, still half absently. 'And who?' 'Mr. Cheviot,' said Averil, thoroughly rousing herself, and, with a quick movement, concealing the enclosure in her bosom. 'I remember him; he was very good, when--' And there she paused; while Ella chattered on: 'Oh, sister, if you were but at home, you would be a bridesmaid now, and perhaps we should. Little Miss Rivers was Mrs. Ernescliffe's bridesmaid. Don't you remember, Minna, how we saw her in her little cashmere cloak?' 'Oh, don't, Ella!' escaped from Minna, like a cry of pain, as she leant back in a rocking-chair, and recollected who had held her up in his arms to watch Blanche May's wedding procession. 'And how soon will she be married, sister, and where will she live?' asked the much-excited Ella. 'She will be married in Whitsun week, and as he is headmaster, they will live in Dr. Hoxton's house. Dear, good Mary, how glad I am that she is so full of happiness--her letter quite brims over with it! I wonder if I may work anything to send her.' 'I should like to send her some very beautiful thing indeed,' cried Ella, with emphasis, and eyes dilating at some visionary magnificence. 'Ah, I have nothing to send her but my love! And I may send _her_ that still,' said Minna, looking up wistfully at Averil, who bent down and kissed her. 'And Ave won't let me send mine to Mr. Tom, though I'm sure I do love him the best of them all,' said Ella. 'That wasn't--' half whispered Minna, but turned her head away, with a sigh of oppression and look of resignation, sad in so young a child, though, indeed, the infantine form was fast shooting into tall, lank girlhood. Ella went on: 'I shall send him the objects for his microscope, when I get into the country; for I promised, so sister can't prevent me.' 'Oh, the country!--when shall we go there?' sighed Minna. 'Your head aches to-night, my dear,' said Averil, looking anxiously at her listless attitude, half-opened eyes, and the deep hollows above her collar-bones. 'It always does after the gas is lighted,' said the child, patiently, 'it is always so hot here.' 'It is just like being always in the conservatory at the Grange,' added Ella. 'I do hate this boarding-house. It is very unkind of Henry to keep us here--fifteen weeks now.' 'Oh, Ella,' remonstrated Minna, 'you mustn't say that!' 'But I shall say it,' retorted Ella. 'Rosa Willis says what she pleases, and so shall I. I don't see the sense of being made a baby of, when every one else of our age eats all they like, and is consulted about arrangements, and attends classes. And sister owns she does not know half so much as Cora!' This regular declaration of American independence confounded the two sisters, and made Averil recall the thoughts that had been wandering: 'No, Ella, in some things I have not learnt so much as Cora; but I believe I know enough to teach you, and it has been a comfort to me to keep my two little sisters with me, and not send them to be mixed up among strange girls. Besides, I have constantly hoped that our present way of life would soon be over, and that we should have a home of our own again.' 'And why can't we!' asked Ella, in a much more humble and subdued voice. 'Because Henry cannot hear of anything to do. He thought he should soon find an opening in this new country; but there seem to be so many medical men everywhere that no one will employ or take into partnership a man that nothing is known about; and he cannot produce any of his testimonials, because they are all made out in his old name, except one letter that Dr. May gave him. It is worse for Henry than for us, Ella, and all we can do for him is not to vex him with our grievances. Poor Averil! her dejected, patient voice, sad soft eyes, and gentle persuasive manner, were greatly changed from those of the handsome, accomplished girl, who had come home to be the family pride and pet; still more, perhaps, from the wilful mistress of the house and the wayward sufferer of last summer. 'And shan't we go to live in the dear beautiful forest, as Cora Muller wishes?' There was a tap at the door, and the children's faces brightened, though a shade passed over Averil's face, as if everything at that moment were oppressive; but she recovered a smile of greeting for the pretty creature who flew up to her with a fervent embrace--a girl a few years her junior, with a fair, delicate face and figure, in a hot-house rose style of beauty. 'Father's come!' she cried. 'How glad you must be!' 'And now,' whispered the children, 'we shall know about going to Indiana.' 'He says Mordaunt is as tall as he is, and that the house is quite fixed for me; but I told him I must have one more term, and then I will take you with me. Ah! I am glad to see the children in white. If you would only change that plain black silk, you would receive so much more consideration.' 'I don't want it, Cora, thank you,' said Averil, indifferently; and, indeed, the simple mourning she still wore was a contrast to her friend's delicate, expensive silk. 'But I want it for you,' pleaded Cora. 'I don't want to hear my Averil censured for English hauteur, and offend my country's feelings, so that she keeps herself from seeing the best side.' 'I see a very good, very dear side of one,' said Averil, pressing the eager hand that was held out to her, 'and that is enough for me. I was not a favourite in my own town, and I have not spirits to make friends here.' 'Ah! you will have spirits in our woods,' she said. 'You shall show me how you go gipsying in England.' 'The dear, dear woods! Oh, we must go!' cried the little girls. 'But it is going to be a town,' said Minna, gravely. Cora laughed. 'Ah, there will be plenty of bush this many a day, Minna! No lack of butternuts and hickories, I promise you, nor of maples to paint the woods gloriously.' 'You have never been there?' said Averil, anxiously. 'No; I have been boarding here these two years, since father and brothers located there, but we had such a good time when we lived at my grandfather's farm, in Ohio, while father was off on the railway business.' A gong resounded through the house, and Averil, suppressing a disappointed sigh, allowed Cora to take possession of her arm, and, followed by the two children, became parts of a cataract of people who descended the great staircase, and flowed into a saloon, where the dinner was prepared. Henry, with a tall, thin, wiry-looking gentleman, was entering at the same time, and Averil found herself shaking hands with her brother's companion, and hearing him say, 'Good evening, Miss Warden; I'm glad to meet my daughter's friend. I hope you feel at home in our great country.' It was so exactly the ordinary second-rate American style, that Averil, who had expected something more in accordance with the refinement of everything about Cora, except a few of her tones, was a little disappointed, and responded with difficulty; then, while Mr. Muller greeted her sisters, she hastily laid her hand on Henry's arm, and said, under her breath, 'I've a letter from him.' 'Hush!' Henry looked about with a startled eye and repressing gesture. Averil drew back, and, one hand on her bosom, pressing the letter, and almost holding down a sob, she took her accustomed seat at the meal. Minna, too languid for the rapidity of the movements, hardly made the exertion of tasting food. Ella, alert and brisk, took care of herself as effectually as did Rosa Willis, on the opposite side of the table. Averil, all one throb of agitation, with the unread letter lying at her heart, directed all her efforts to look, eat, and drink, as usual; happily, talking was the last thing that was needed. Averil had been greatly indebted to Miss Muller, who had taken pity on the helpless strangers--interested, partly by her own romance about England, partly by their mourning dresses, dark melancholy eyes, and retiring, bewildered manner. A beautiful motherless girl, under seventeen--left, to all intents and purposes, alone in New York--attending a great educational establishment, far more independent and irresponsible than a young man at an English University, yet perfectly trustworthy--never subject to the bevues of the 'unprotected female,' but self-reliant, modest, and graceful, in the heterogeneous society of the boarding-house--she was a constant marvel to Averil, and a warm friendship soon sprang up. The advances were, indeed, all on one side; for Ave was too sad, and oppressed with too heavy a secret, to be readily accessible; but there was an attraction to the younger, fresher, freer nature, even in the mystery of her mournful reserve; and the two drew nearer together from gratitude, and many congenial feelings, that rendered Cora the one element of comfort in the boarding-house life; while Henry in vain sought for occupation. Cora had been left under the charge of the lady of the boarding-house, a distant connection, while her father, who had been engaged in more various professions than Averil could ever conceive of or remember, had been founding a new city in Indiana, at once as farmer and land-agent, and he had stolen a little time, in the dead season, to hurry up to New York, partly on business, and partly to see his daughter, who had communicated to him her earnest desire that her new friends might be induced to settle near their future abode. American meals were too serious affairs for conversation; but such as there was, was political, in all the fervid heat of the first commencements of disunion and threatenings of civil war. After the ladies had repaired to their saloon, with its grand ottomans, sofas, rocking-chairs, and piano, the discussion continued among them; Cora talking with the utmost eagerness of the tariff and of slavery, and the other topics of the day, intensely interesting, and of terrible moment, to her country; but that country Averil had not yet learnt to feel her own, and to her all was one dreary whirl of words, in which she longed to escape to her room, and read her letter. Ella had joined Rosa Willis, and the other children; but Minna, as usual, kept under her sister's wing, and Averil could not bear to shake herself free of the gentle child. The ladies of the boarding-house--some resident in order to avoid the arduous duties of housekeeping, others temporarily brought thither in an interregnum of servants, others spending a winter in the city--had grown tired of asking questions that met with the scantiest response, took melancholy for disdain, and were all neglectful, some uncivil, to the grave, silent English girl, and she was sitting alone, with Minna's hand in hers, as she had sat for many a weary evening, when her brother and Mr. Muller came up together, and, sitting down on either side of her, began to talk of the rising city of Massissauga--admirably situated--excellent water privilege, communicating with Lake Michigan--glorious primeval forest--healthy situation--fertile land--where a colossal fortune might be realized in maize, eighties, sections, speculations. It was all addressed to her, and it was a hard task to give attention, so as to return a rational answer, while her soul would fain have been clairvoyante, to read the letter in her breast. She did perceive, at last, though not till long after the children had gone to bed, that the project was, that the family should become the purchasers of shares, which would give them a right to a portion of the soil, excellent at present for growing corn, and certain hereafter to be multiplied in value for building; that Henry might, in the meantime, find an opening for practice, but might speedily be independent of it. It sounded promising, and it was escape--escape from forced inaction, from an uncongenial life, from injury to the children, and it would be with Cora, her one friend. What was the demur, and why were they consulting her, who, as Henry knew, was ready to follow him wherever he chose to carry her? At last came a gleam of understanding: 'Then, Doctor, you will talk it over with your sister, and give me your ultimatum;' and therewith Mr. Muller walked away to mingle in other conversation, and Henry coming closer to his sister, she again eagerly said, 'I have it here; you shall see it to-morrow, when I have read it.' 'It--' 'The letter.' 'How can you be so unguarded? You have not let the children know? Take care then, I will not have the subject revived with them.' 'But Minna--' 'It is this heated stove atmosphere. She will soon forget if you don't keep it up, and she will be herself when we leave this place, and it depends on you when we do that, Ave.' 'On me!' she said, with bewildered face. And Henry, marvelling at her slowness of comprehension, made her understand that the advance of money, for the purchase at Massissauga, must come from her means. His own had been heavily drained by the removal, the long period of inaction, and moreover what remained had been embarked in shares in a company, absolutely certain to succeed, but where they were not at once available for sale. Averil was now of age, her property was in her own power, and could not, her brother assured her, be better invested, than on ground certain to increase in value. She looked at him, confused and distressed, aware that it was too important a step to be taken without consideration, yet unable to compose her thoughts, or recollect objections. 'Must I answer to-night?' she said. 'No, there is no need for that. But we must close to-morrow with Muller, for it is not a chance that will long go begging.' 'Then let me go, please, Henry,' she said, imploringly. 'I will tell you to-morrow, but I can't now. I don't seem to understand anything.' It was late, and he released her, with a kind good night, though still with a sign of caution. Cora, however, hastened to join her, and walk up the stairs with her, eagerly inquiring into the success of the negotiation, and detailing what she had gathered from her father as to the improvements he had been making. She would fain have made Averil come into her bedroom to build castles there; but this was more than could be borne, and breaking from her at last, Averil reached her own room, not to think of Mr. Muller's project, but to cast an anxious glance at each of the little beds, to judge whether the moment had come when that famishing hunger might be appeased by the crumb which for these mortal hours had lain upon her craving heart--the very first since the one on the arrival at Milbank. Each brown head was shrouded in the coverings, the long dark fringes rested safely on the cheeks, and Averil at length drew out the treasure, and laid it on her hand to dwell on its very sight. The address needed to be looked at with lingering earnestness, as if it had indeed been a missive from another world; she looked, and was tardy to unfold it, as though, now the moment was come, the sense of being in communication with her brother must be tasted to the utmost, ere entering on the utterances that must give pain; and when she did open the envelope, perhaps the first sensation was disappointment--the lines were not near enough together, the writing not small enough, to satisfy even the first glance of the yearning eye. It was cheerful, it spoke of good health, and full occupation, with the use of books, daily exercise, the chaplain's visits, schooling and attendance at chapel, and of the great pleasure of having heard from her. 'And that good Dr. May inclosed your letter in one written to me with his own hand, a kindness I never dared to think of as possible, but which he promises to repeat. Your letter and his are the continual food of my thoughts, and are valued beyond all power of words. I only hope you knew that I have not been allowed to write sooner, and have not expected letters.' Then came a few brief comments on her last inquiries, and entreaties that she would give him full information of all details of their present life: 'It will carry me along with you, and I shall live with you, both as I read, and as I dwell on it afterwards. Do not indulge in a moment's uneasiness about me, for I am well, and busy; every one is as kind to me as duty permits, and Dr. May is always ready to do all in his power for me.' There were a few affectionate words for Henry, and 'I long to send a message to the children, but I know it is better for them to let me drop from their minds, only you must tell me all about them; I want to know that the dear little Minna is bright and happy again.' No confidences, only generalities; not even any reference to the one unbroken bond of union, the one support, except in the three scanty final words, the simplest of blessings. It was not satisfying; but Averil recalled, with a start, that no wonder the letter was meagre, since it was necessarily subject to inspection; and how could the inner soul be expressed when all must pass under strangers' eyes, who would think such feelings plausible hypocrisy in a convicted felon. Again she took it up, to suck to the utmost all that might be conveyed in the short commonplace sentences, and to gaze at them as if intensity of study could reveal whether the cheerfulness were real or only assumed. Be they what they might, the words had only three weeks back been formed by Leonard's hand, and she pressed her lips upon them in a fervent agony of affection. When she roused herself and turned her head, she perceived on Minna's pillow two eyes above the bed-clothes, intently fixed on her. Should she see, or should she not see? She believed that the loving heart was suffering a cruel wrong, she yearned to share all with the child, but she was chained by the command of one brother, and by that acquiescence of the other which to her was more than a command. She would not see, she turned away, and made her preparations for the night without betraying that she knew that the little one was awake, resuming the tedious guard on the expression of her face. But when her long kneeling had ended, and with it that which was scarcely so much conscious intercession as the resting an intolerable load on One who alone knew its weight, just as she darkened the room for the night, the low voice whispered, 'Ave, is it?'-- And Averil crept up to the little bed: 'Yes, Minna; he is well! He hopes you are bright and happy, but he says it is best you should forget him.' The brow was cold and clammy, the little frame chill and trembling, the arms clasped her neck convulsively. She lifted the child into her own bed, pressed tight to her own bosom, and though no other word passed between the sisters, that contact seemed to soothe away the worst bitterness; and Averil slept from the stillness enforced on her by the heed of not disturbing Minna's sleep. Little that night had she recked of the plan needing so much deliberation! When she awoke it was to the consciousness that besides the arrival of Leonard's letter, something had happened--there was some perplexity--what was it? And when it came back she was bewildered. Her own fortune had always appeared to her something to fall back on in case of want of success, and to expend it thus was binding the whole family down at a perilous moment, to judge by the rumours of battle and resistance. And all she had ever heard at home, much that she daily heard at New York, inclined her to distrust and dislike of American speculations. It was Cora's father! Her heart smote her for including him in English prejudice, when Henry liked and trusted him! And she had disobeyed and struggled against Henry too long. She had promised to be submissive and yielding. But was this the time? And the boarding-house life--proverbially the worst for children--was fast Americanizing Ella, while Minna drooped like a snowdrop in a hot-house, and idleness might be mischievous to Henry. Oh, for some one to consult! for some one to tell her whether the risk was a foolish venture, or if the terms were safe! But not a creature did she know well enough to seek advice from! Even the clergyman, whose church she attended, was personally unknown to her; Cora Muller was her sole intimate; there was a mutual repulsion between her and the other ladies, and still more with the gentlemen. A boarding-house was not the scene in which to find such as would inspire confidence, and they had no introductions. There was no one to turn to; and in the dreary indifference that had grown over her, she did not even feel capable of exerting her own judgment to the utmost, even if she had been able to gather certain facts, or to know prudent caution from blind prejudice--often woman's grievous difficulty. What could a helpless girl of one-and-twenty, in a land of strangers, do, but try to think that by laying aside the use of her own judgment she was trusting all to Providence, and that by leaving all to her brother she was proving her repentance for her former conduct. There, too, were her sisters, clamorous with hopes of the forest life; and there was Cora, urging the scheme with all the fervour of girlish friendship, and in herself no small element in its favour, engaging for everything, adducing precedents for every kind of comfort and success, and making Ave's consent a test of her love. One question Averil asked of her--whether they should be utterly out of reach of their Church? Cora herself had been bred up to liberal religious ways, and was ready to attend whatever denomination of public worship came first to hand, though that which had descended from the Pilgrim Fathers came most naturally. She had been at various Sunday schools, and was a good conscientious girl, but had never gone through the process of conversion, so that Rosa Willis had horrified Ella by pronouncing her 'not a Christian.' She had no objection to show her English friends the way to the favourite Episcopal Church, especially as it was esteemed fashionable; and her passion for Averil had retained her there, with growing interest, drawn on by Averil's greater precision of religious knowledge, and the beauty of the Church system, displayed to her as the one joy and relief left to one evidently crushed with suffering. The use of Averil's books, conversations with her, and the teaching she heard, disposed her more and more to profess herself a member of the Episcopal Church, and she was unable to enter into Averil's scruples at leading her to so decided a step without her father's sanction. 'Father would be satisfied whatever profession she made. Did people in England try to force their children's consciences?' Cora, at Averil's desire, ascertained that Massissauga had as yet no place of worship of its own; but there was a choice of chapels within a circuit of five miles, and an Episcopal Church seven miles off, at the chief town of the county. Moreover, her father declared that the city of Massissauga would soon be considerable enough to invite every variety of minister to please every denomination of inhabitant. Averil felt that the seven miles off church was all she could reasonably hope for, and her mind was clear on that score, when Henry came to take her out walking for the sake of being able to talk more freely. No longer afraid of being overheard, he gave kind attention to Leonard's letter; and though he turned away from the subject sooner than she wished, she was not exacting. Again he laid before her the advantages of their migration, and assured her that if there were the slightest risk he would be the last to make the proposal. She asked if it were safe to invest money in a country apparently on the eve of civil war? He laughed the idea to scorn. How could the rebel states make war, with a population of negroes sure to rise against their masters? Where should their forces come from? Faction would soon be put down, and the union be stronger than ever. It was what Averil had been hearing morning, noon, and night, so no wonder she believed it, and was ashamed of a futile girlish fear. And was Henry sure it was a healthy place? Had she not heard of feverish swamps in Indiana? Oh yes, in new unsettled places; but there had hardly been an ailment in the Muller family since they had settled at Massissauga. And Averil's last murmur was--Could he find out anything about other people's opinion of the speculation? did they know enough about Mr. Muller to trust themselves entirely in his hands? Henry was almost angry--Could not his sister trust him to take all reasonable precaution? It was the old story of prejudice against whatever he took up. Poor Averil was disarmed directly. The combats of will and their consequences rose up before her, and with them Leonard's charges to devote herself to Henry. She could but avow herself willing to do whatever he pleased. She only hoped he would be careful. All thenceforth was pleasant anticipation and hope. Averil's property had to be transferred to America, and invested in shares of the land at Massissauga; but this was to cause no delay in arranging for the removal, they were only to wait until the winter had broken up, and the roads become passable after the melting of the snows; and meantime Mr. Muller was to have their house prepared. Cora would remain and accompany them, and in the intervening time promised to assist Averil with her judgment in making the necessary purchases for 'stepping westward.' When Averil wrote their plans to her English friends, she felt the difficulty of pleading for them. She was sensible that at Stoneborough the risking of her property would be regarded as folly on her part, and something worse on that of her brother; and she therefore wrote with every effort to make the whole appear her own voluntary act--though the very effort made her doubly conscious that the sole cause for her passive acquiescence was, that her past self-will in trifles had left her no power to contend for her own opinion in greater matters--the common retribution on an opinionative woman of principle. Moreover, it was always with an effort that she wrote to Mary May. A rejected offer from a brother is a rock in a correspondence with a sister, and Averil had begun to feel greatly ashamed of the manner of her own response. Acceptance would have been impossible; but irritating as had been Tom May's behaviour, insulting as had been his explanation, and provoking, his pertinacity, she had begun to feel that the impulse had been too generous and disinterested to deserve such treatment, and that bitterness and ill-temper had made her lose all softness and dignity, so that he must think that his pitying affection had been bestowed on an ungrateful vixen, and be as much disgusted with the interview as she was herself. She did not wish him to love her; but she regretted the form of the antidote, above all, since he was of the few who appreciated Leonard; and the more she heard of Ella's narrations of his kindness, the more ashamed she grew. Every letter to or from Mary renewed the uncomfortable sense, and she would have dropped the correspondence had it not been her sole medium of communication with her imprisoned brother, since Henry would not permit letters to be posted with the Milbank address. CHAPTER XX A little hint to solace woe, A hint, a whisper breathing low, 'I may not speak of what I know.'--TENNYSON At the pace at which rapid people walk alone, when they wish to devour both the way and their own sensations, Ethel May was mounting the hill out of the town in the premature heat assumed by May in compliment to Whitsun week, when a prolonged shout made her turn. At first she thought it was her father, but her glass showed her that it was the brother so like him in figure that the London-made coat, and the hair partaking of the sand instead of the salt, were often said to be the chief distinction. Moreover, the dainty steps over the puddles were little like the strides of the Doctor, and left no doubt that it was the one wedding guest who had been despaired of. 'O, Tom, I am glad you are come!' 'What a rate you were running away at! I thought you had done with your hurricane pace.' 'Hurricane because of desperate hurry. I'm afraid I can't turn back with you.' 'Where is all the world?' 'Blanche is helping Mary arrange the Hoxton--I mean her own drawing-room. Hector has brought a dog-cart to drive papa about in; Daisy is gone with Harry and Aubrey to the Grange for some camellias.' 'And Ethel rushing to Cocksmoor!' 'I can't help it, Tom,' she said, humbly; 'I wish I could.' 'What's this immense pannier you are carrying?' 'It is quite light. It is twelve of the hats for the children tomorrow. Mary was bent on trimming them all as usual, and I was deluded enough to believe she would, till last evening I found just one and a half done! I did as many as I could at night, till papa heard me rustling about and thumped. Those went early this morning; and these are the rest, which I have just finished.' 'Was there no one to send?' 'My dear Tom, is your experience of weddings so slight as to suppose there is an available being in the family the day before?' 'I'm sure I don't desire such experience. Why could not they be content without ferreting me down?' 'I am very glad you have come. It would have been a great mortification if you had stayed away. I never quite believed you would.' 'I had much rather see the operation I shall miss to-morrow morning. I shall go back by the two o'clock train.' 'To study their happiness all the way up to town?' 'Then by the mail--' 'I won't torment you to stay; but I think papa will want a talk with you.' 'The very thing I don't want. Why can't he dispose of his property like other people, and give Richard his rights?' 'You know Richard would only be encumbered.' 'No such thing; Richard is a reasonable being--he will marry some of these days--get the living after Wilmot, and--' 'But you know how papa would be grieved to separate the practice from the house.' 'Because he and his fathers were content to bury themselves in a hole, he expects me to do the same. Why, what should I do? The place is over-doctored already. Every third person is a pet patient sending for him for a gnat-bite, gratis, taking the bread out of Wright's mouth. No wonder Henry Ward kicked! If I came here, I must practise on the lap-dogs! Here's my father, stronger than any of us, with fifteen good years' work in him at the least! He would be wretched at giving up to me a tenth part of his lambs, and that tenth would keep us always in hot water. His old-world practice would not go down with me, and he would think everything murder that was fresher than the year 1830.' 'I thought he was remarkable for having gone on with the world,' said Ethel, repressing some indignation. 'So he has in a way, but always against the grain. He has a tough lot of prejudices; and you may depend upon it, they would be more obstinate against me than any one else, and I should be looked on as an undutiful dog for questioning them, besides getting the whole credit of every case that went wrong.' 'I think you are unjust,' said Ethel, flushing with displeasure. 'I wish I were not, Ethel; but when there is one son in a family who can do nothing that is not taken amiss, it is hard that he should be the one picked out to be pinned down, and, maybe, goaded into doing something to be really sorry for.' There was truth enough in this to seal Ethel's lips from replying that it was Tom's own fault, since his whole nature and constitution were far more the cause than his conduct, and she answered, 'You might get some appointment for the present, till he really wants you.' 'To be ordered home just as I am making something of it, and see as many cases in ten years as I could in a month in town. Things are altered since his time, if he could only see it. What was the use of giving me a first-rate education, if he meant to stick me down here?' 'At least I hope you will think long before you inflict the cruel disappointment of knowing that not one of his five sons will succeed to the old practice.' 'The throne, you mean, Ethel. Pish!' The 'Pish' was as injurious to her hereditary love for 'the old practice,' and for the old town, as to her reverence for her father. One angry 'Tom!' burst from her lips, and only the experience that scolding made him worse, restrained her from desiring him to turn back if this was the best he had to say. Indeed she wondered to find him still by her side, holding the gate of the plantation open for her. He peered under her hat as she went through-- 'How hot you look!' he said, laying hold of the handles of the basket. 'Thank you; but it is more cumbrous than heavy,' she said, not letting go; 'it is not _that_--' An elision which answered better than words, to show that his speech, rather than hill or load, had made her cheeks flame; but he only drew the great basket more decisively from her hand, put his stick into the handle, and threw it over his shoulder; and no doubt it was a much greater act of good-nature from him than it would have been from Richard or Harry. 'This path always reminds me of this very matter,' he said; 'I talked it over with Meta here, on the way to lay the foundation-stone at Cocksmoor, till Norman overtook us and monopolized her for good, poor little thing. She was all in the high romantic strain, making a sort of knight hospitaller of my father. I wonder what she is like by this time, and how much of _that_ she has left.' 'Of the high romantic strain? I should think it was as much as ever the salt of life to her. Her last letter described her contrivances to make a knapsack for Norman on his visitation tour. Oh, fancy old June a venerable archdeacon!' 'You don't think a colonial archdeacon is like one of your great portly swells in a shovel hat.' 'It must be something remarkable that made Norman portly. But as for the shovel hat, Mrs. Meta has insisted on having it sent out. I was going to tell you that she says, "I do like such a good tough bit of stitchery, to fit my knight out for the cause."' 'Marriage and distance have not frozen up her effusions.' 'No; when people carry souls in their pens, they are worth a great deal more, if they are to go to a distance.' Ah! by the bye, I suppose Cheviot has put a fresh lock on Mary's writing-case.' 'I suspect some of Mary's correspondence will devolve on me. Harry has asked me already.' 'I wished you had mentioned more about the letters of late. Leonard wanted to know more than I could tell him.' 'You don't mean that you have seen him? O, Tom, how kind of you! Papa has been trying hard to get a day now that these first six months are up; but there are two or three cases that wanted so much watching that he has not been able to stir.' 'I know how he lets himself be made a prisoner, and that it was a chance whether any one saw the poor fellow at all.' 'I am so glad'--and Ethel turned on him a face still flushed, but now with gratitude. 'How was he looking?' 'The costume is not becoming, and he has lost colour and grown hollow-eyed; but I saw no reason for being uneasy about him; he looked clear and in health, and has not got to slouch yet. It is shocking to see such a grand face and head behind a grating.' 'Could he talk'? 'Why, the presence of a warder is against conversation, and six months of shoe-making in a cell does not give much range of ideas. There was nothing to be done but to talk on right ahead and judge by his eyes if he liked it.' 'I suppose you could find out nothing about himself?' 'He said he got on very well; but one does not know that means. I asked if he got books; and he said there was a very good library, and he could get what gave him something to think of; and he says they give interesting lectures in school.' 'You could not gather what is thought of him?' 'No; I saw but a couple of officers of the place, and could only get out of them "good health and good conduct." I do not expect even his conduct makes much impression as to his innocence, for I saw it stated the other day that the worst prisoners are those that are always getting convicted for petty offences; those that have committed one great crime are not so depraved, and are much more amenable. However, he has only three months more at Pentonville, and then he will go to Portland, Chatham, or Gibraltar.' 'Oh, I hope it will not be Gibraltar! But at least that terrible solitude will be over.' 'At any rate, his spirit is not broken. I could see his eye light up after I had talked a little while, and he fell into his natural tone again. He would not try to put out his hand to me when he came down; but when I went away, he put it through and we had a good hearty shake. Somehow it made one feel quite small.' Ethel could have pledged herself for the soundness of Tom's nature after those words; but all she did was in an unwonted tone to utter the unwonted exclamation--'Dear Tom.' 'If my father does not come up, I shall see him once more before he leaves Pentonville,' added Tom; 'and so you must mind and let me know all about his people in America. I found he had no notion of the row that is beginning there, so I said not a word of it. But what is all this about going to Indiana?' 'They are going at the end of April to settle in a place called Massissauga, where Henry is to farm till practice comes to him. It is towards the north of the State, in the county of Pulaski.' 'Ay, in one of the pestilential swamps that run up out of Lake Michigan. All the fertile ground there breeds as many fevers and agues as it does stalks of corn.' 'Indeed! how did you hear that?' 'I looked up the place after Leonard told me of it. It is as unlucky a location as the ill luck of that fellow Henry could have pitched on. Some friend Leonard spoke of--a Yankee, I suppose, meaning to make a prey of them.' 'The father of their young lady friend at the boarding-house.' 'Oh! a Yankee edition of Mrs. Pugh!' 'And the worst of it is that this is to be done with poor Averil's fortune. She has written to Mr. Bramshaw to sell out for her, and send her the amount, and he is terribly vexed; but she is of age, and there are no trustees nor any one to stop it.' 'All of a piece,' muttered Tom; then presently he swung the basket round on the ground with a vehement exclamation--'If any man on this earth deserved to be among the robbers and murderers, I know who it is.' Then he shouldered his load again, and walked on in silence by his sister's side to the school door. Richard had been obliged to go to a benefit club entertainment; and Ethel, knowing the limited literary resources of the parsonage, was surprised to find Tom still waiting for her, when the distribution and fitting of the blue-ribboned hats was over, and matters arranged for the march of the children to see the wedding, and to dine afterwards at the Grammar-school hall. 'O, Tom, I did not expect to find you here.' 'It is not fit for you to be walking about alone on a Whit Monday.' 'I am very glad to have you, but I am past that.' 'Don't talk nonsense; girls are girls till long past your age,' said Tom. 'It is not so much age, as living past things,' said Ethel. 'It was not only that, added Tom; 'but I've more to say to you, while one can be sure of a quiet moment. Have you heard anything about that place?' and he pointed in the direction of the Vintry Mill. 'I heard something of an intention to part with it, and have been watching for an advertisement; but I can see none in the Courant, or on the walls.' 'Mind he does not slip off unawares.' 'I don't know what to do now that old Hardy is cut off from us. I tried to stir up Dr. Spencer to go and investigate, but I could not tell him why, and he has not the same interest in going questing about as he used to have. People never will do the one thing one wants particularly!' Tom's look and gesture made her ask if he knew of anything wrong with their old friend; and in return, she was told that Dr. Spencer's recent visit to London had been to consult Sir Matthew Fleet. The foundations of mortal disease had been laid in India, and though it might long remain in abeyance, there were from time to time symptoms of activity; and tedious lingering infirmity was likely to commence long before the end. 'And what do you think the strange old fellow charged me as we walked away from dining at Fleet's?' 'Secrecy, of course,' returned the much-shocked Ethel. 'One does keep a secret by telling you. It was to have my eye on some lodging with a decent landlady, where, when it is coming to that, he can go up to be alone, out of the way of troubling Dick, and of all of you.' 'Tom, how dreadful!' 'I fancy it is something of the animal instinct of creeping away alone, and partly his law to himself not to trouble Dick.' 'An odd idea of what would trouble Dick!' 'So I told him; but he said, after seeing what it cost my father to watch dear Margaret's long decay, he would never entail the like on him. It is queer, and it is beautiful, the tender way he has about my father, treating him like a pet to be shielded and guarded--a man that has five times the force and vigour of body and mind that he has now, whatever they may have been.' 'Very beautiful, and I cannot help telling you how beautiful,' said Ethel, greatly moved; 'only remember, it is not to be mentioned.' 'Ha! did he ever make you an offer? I have sometimes suspected it.' 'No indeed! It was much--much more beautiful than that!' 'Our mother then? I had thought of that too, and it accounts for his having always taken to you the most of us.' 'Why, I'm the least like her of us all!' 'So they say, I know, and I can't recollect enough to judge, except that'--and Tom's voice was less clear for a moment--'there was something in being with her that I've never found again, except now and then with you, Ethel. Well, he never got over it, I suppose.' And Ethel briefly told of the rash resolution, the unsettled life, the neglect of the father's wishes, the grievous remorse, the broken health, and restless aimless wanderings, ending at last in loving tendance of the bereaved rival. It had been a life never wanting in generosity or benevolence, yet falling far short of what it might have been--a gallant voyage made by a wreck--and yet the injury had been less from the disappointment than from the manner of bearing it. Suddenly it struck her that Tom might suspect her of intending a personal application of the history, and she faltered; but he kept her to it by his warm interest and many questions. 'And oh, Tom, he must not be allowed to go away in this manner! Nothing would so cut papa to the heart!' 'I don't believe he ever will, Ethel. He may go on for years as he is; and he said in the midst that he meant to live to carry out the drainage. Besides, if it comes gradually on him, he may feel dependent and lose the energy to move.' 'Oh! what a sorrow for papa! But I know that not to watch over him would make it all the worse.' They walked on gravely till, on the top of the hill, Tom exclaimed, 'They've mounted the flag on the Minster steeple already.' 'It went up yesterday for Harvey Anderson and Mrs. Pugh. There was a proposal to join forces, and have a double wedding--so interesting, the two school-fellows and two young friends. The Cheviot girls much regretted it was not to be.' 'Cheviot girls! Heavens and earth! At home?' 'Not sleeping; but we shall have them all day to-morrow, for they cannot get home the same day by setting off after the wedding. There will be no one else, for even our own people are going, for Harry is to go to Maplewood with Blanche, and Aubrey has to be at Woolwich; but we shall all be at home to-night.' 'Last time was in the volunteer days, two or three centuries ago.' It was strange how, with this naturally least congenial of all the family, Ethel had a certain understanding and fellow-feeling that gave her a sense of rest and relief in his company, only impaired by the dread of rubs between him and his father. None, however, happened; Dr. May had been too much hurt to press the question of the inheritance, and took little notice of Tom, being much occupied with the final business about the wedding, and engrossed by Hector and Harry, who always absorbed him in their short intervals of his company. Tom went to see Dr. Spencer, and brought him in, so cheerful and full of life, that what Ethel had been hearing seemed like a dream, excepting when she recognized Tom's unobtrusive gentleness and attention towards him. She was surprised and touched through all the harass and hurry of that evening and morning, to find the 'must be dones' that had of late devolved on her alone, now lightened and aided by Tom, who appeared to have come for the sole purpose of being always ready to give a helping hand where she wanted it, with all Richard's manual dexterity, and more resource and quickness. The refreshment of spirits was the more valuable as this was a very unexciting wedding. Even Gertrude, not yet fourteen, had been surfeited with weddings, and replied to Harry's old wit of 'three times a bridesmaid and never a bride,' that she hoped so, her experience of married life was extremely flat; and a glance at Blanche's monotonous dignity, and Flora's worn face, showed what that experience was. Harry was the only one to whom there was the freshness of novelty, and he was the great element of animation; but as the time came near, honest Harry had been seized with a mortal dread of the tears he imagined an indispensable adjunct of the ceremony, and went about privately consulting every one how much weeping was inevitable. Flora told him she saw no reason for any tears, and Ethel that when people felt very much they couldn't cry; but on the other hand, Blanche said she felt extremely nervous, and knew she should be overcome; Gertrude assured him that on all former occasions Mary did all the crying herself; and Aubrey told him that each bridesmaid carried six handkerchiefs, half for herself and half for the bride. The result was, that the last speech made by Harry to his favourite sister in her maiden days was thus:--'Well, Mary, you do look uncommonly nice and pretty; but now'--most persuasively--'you'll be a good girl and not cry, will you?' and as Mary fluttered, tried to smile, and looked out through very moist eyes, he continued, 'I feel horribly soft-hearted to-day, and if you howl I must, you know; so mind, if I see you beginning, I shall come out with my father's old story of the spirit of the flood and the spirit of the fell, and that will stop it, if anything can.' The comicality of Harry's alarm was nearly enough to 'stop it,' coupled with the great desire of Daisy that he should be betrayed into tears; and Mary did behave extremely well, and looked all that a bride should look. Admirable daughter and sister, she would be still more in her place as wife; hers was the truly feminine nature that, happily for mankind, is the most commonplace, and that she was a thoroughly generic bride is perhaps a testimony to her perfection in the part, as in all others where quiet unselfish womanhood was the essential. Never had she been so sweet in every tone, word, and caress; never had Ethel so fully felt how much she loved her, or how entirely they had been one, from a time almost too far back for memory. There had not been intellectual equality; but perhaps it was better, fuller affection, than if there had been; for Mary had filled up a part that had been in some measure wanting in Ethel. She had been a sort of wife to her sister, and thus was the better prepared for her new life, but was all the sorer loss at home. The bridegroom! How many times had Ethel to remind herself of her esteem, and security of Mary's happiness, besides frowning down Gertrude's saucy comments, and trying to laugh away Tom's low growl that good things always fell to the share of poor hearts and narrow minds. Mr. Cheviot did in fact cut a worse figure than George Rivers of old, having a great fund of natural bashfulness and self-consciousness, which did not much damage his dignity, but made his attempts at gaiety and ease extremely awkward, not to say sheepish. Perhaps the most trying moment was the last, when hearing a few words between Ethel and Mary about posting a mere scrap, if only an empty envelope, from the first resting-place, he turned round, with his laugh, to object to rash promises, and remind his dear sister Ethel that post-offices were not always near at hand! After that, when Mary in her bright tenderness hung round her sister, it was as if that was the last fond grasp from the substance--as if only the shadow would come back and live in Minster Street. Perhaps it was because Ethel had tried to rule it otherwise, Mr. Cheviot had insisted that the Cocksmoor children's share in the festivity should be a dinner in the Whichcote hall, early in the day, after which they had to be sent home, since no one chose to have the responsibility of turning them loose to play in the Grammar-school precincts, even in the absence of the boys. Richard was much afraid of their getting into mischief, and was off immediately after church to superintend the dinner, and marshal them home; and the rest of the world lost the resource that entertaining them generally afforded the survivors after a marriage, and which was specially needed with the two Cheviot sisters to be disposed of. By the time the Riverses were gone home, and the Ernescliffes and Harry off by the train, there were still four mortal hours of daylight, and oh! for Mary's power of making every one happy! Caroline and Annie Cheviot were ladylike, nice-looking girls; but when they found no croquet mallets in the garden, they seemed at a loss what life had to offer at Stoneborough! Gertrude pronounced that 'she played at it sometimes at Maplewood, where she had nothing better to do,' and then retreated to her own devices. Ethel's heart sank both with dread of the afternoon, and with self-reproach at her spoilt child's discourtesy, whence she knew there would be no rousing her without an incapacitating discussion; and on she wandered in the garden with the guests, receiving instruction where the hoops might be planted, and hearing how nice it would be for her sister to have such an object, such a pleasant opportunity of meeting one's friends--an interest for every day. 'No wonder they think I want an object in life,' thought Ethel; 'how awfully tiresome I must be! Poor things, what can I say to make it pleasanter?--Do you know this Dielytra? I think it is the prettiest of modern flowers, but I wish we might call it Japan fumitory, or by some English name.' 'I used to garden once, but we have no flower-beds now, they spoilt the lawn for croquet.' 'And here comes Tom,' thought Ethel; 'poor Tom, he will certainly be off to London this evening.' Tom, however, joined the listless promenade; and the first time croquet was again mentioned, observed that he had seen the Andersons knocking about the balls in the new gardens by the river; and proposed to go down and try to get up a match. There was an instant brightening, and Tom stepped into the drawing-room, and told Daisy to come with them. 'To play at croquet with the Andersons in the tea-gardens!' she exclaimed. 'No, I thank you, Thomas!' He laid his hand on her shoulder--'Gertrude,' he said, 'it is time to have done being a spoilt baby. If you let Ethel fag herself ill, you will rue it all your life.' Frightened, but without clear comprehension, she turned two scared eyes on him, and replaced the hat that she had thrown on the table, just as Ethel and the others came in. 'Not you, Ethel,' said Tom; 'you don't know the game.' 'I can learn,' said Ethel, desperately bent on her duty. 'We would teach you,' volunteered the Cheviots. 'You would not undertake it if you knew better,' said Tom, smiling. 'Ethel's hands are not her strong point.' 'Ethel would just have to be croqued all through by her partner,' said Gertrude. 'Besides, my father will be coming in and wanting you,' added Tom; 'he is only at the hospital or somewhere about the town. I'll look after this child.' And the two sisters, delighted that poor little Gertrude should have such a holiday treat as croquet in the public gardens, away from her governess elder sister, walked off glorious; while Ethel, breathing forth a heavy sigh, let herself sink into a chair, feeling as if the silence were in itself invaluable, and as if Tom could not be enough thanked for having gained it for her. She was first roused by the inquiry, 'Shall I take in this letter, ma'am? it is charged four shillings over-weight. And it is for Mr. Thomas, ma'am,' impressively concluded the parlour-maid, as one penetrated by Mr. Thomas's regard to small economies. Ethel beheld a letter bloated beyond the capacities of the two bewigged Washingtons that kept guard in its corner, and addressed in a cramped hand unknown to her; but while she hesitated, her eye fell on another American letter directed to Miss Mary May, in Averil Ward's well-known writing, and turning both round, she found they had the same post-mark, and thereupon paid the extra charge, and placed the letter where Tom was most likely to light naturally on it without public comment. The other letter renewed the pang at common property being at an end. 'No, Mab,' she said, taking the little dog into her lap, 'we shall none of us hear a bit of it! But at least it is a comfort that this business is over! You needn't creep under sofas now, there's nobody to tread upon your dainty little paws. What is to be done, Mab, to get out of a savage humour--except thinking how good-natured poor Tom is!' There was not much sign of savage humour in the face that was lifted up as Dr. May came in from the hospital, and sitting down by his daughter, put his arm round her. 'So there's another bird flown,' he said. 'We shall soon have the old nest to ourselves, Ethel.' 'The Daisy is not going just yet,' said Ethel, stroking back the thin flying flakes over his temples. 'If we may believe her, never!' 'Ah! she will be off before we can look round,' said the Doctor; 'when once the trick of marrying gets among one's girls, there's no end to it, as long as they last out.' 'Nor to one's boys going out into the world,' said Ethel: both of them talking as if she had been his wife, rather than one of these fly-away younglings herself. 'Ah! well,' he said, 'it's very pretty while it lasts, and one keeps the creatures; but after all, one doesn't rear them for one's own pleasure. That only comes by the way of their chance good-will to one.' 'For shame, Doctor!' said Ethel, pretending to shake him by the collar. 'I was thinking,' he added, 'that we must not require too much. People must have their day, and in their own fashion; and I wish you would tell Tom--I've no patience to do it myself--that I don't mean to hamper him. As long as it is a right line, he may take whichever he pleases, and I'll do my best to set him forward in it; but it is a pity--' 'Perhaps a few years of travelling, or of a professorship, might give him time to think differently,' said Ethel. 'Not he,' said the Doctor; 'the more a man lives in the world, the more he depends on it. Where is the boy? is he gone without vouchsafing a good-bye?' 'Oh no, he has taken pity on Annie and Caroline Cheviot's famine of croquet, and gone with them to the gardens.' 'A spice of flirtation never comes amiss to him.' 'There, that's the way!' said Ethel, half-saucily, half-caressingly; 'that poor fellow never can do right! Isn't it the very thing to keep him away from home, that we all may steal a horse, and he can't look over the wall, no, not with a telescope?' 'I can't help it, Ethel. It may be very wrong and unkind of me--Heaven forgive me if it is, and prevent me from doing the boy any harm! but I never can rid myself of a feeling of there being something behind when he seems the most straightforward. If he had only not got his grandfather's mouth and nose! And,' smiling after all--'I don't know what I said to be so scolded; all lads flirt, and you can't deny that Master Tom divided his attentions pretty freely last year between Mrs. Pugh and poor Ave Ward.' 'This time, I believe, it was out of pure kindness to me,' said Ethel, 'so I am bound to his defence. He dragged off poor Daisy to chaperon them, that I might have a little peace.' 'Ah! he came down on us this morning,' said the Doctor, 'on Richard and Flora and me, and gave us a lecture on letting you grow old, Ethel--said you were getting over-tasked, and no one heeding it; and looking--let's look'--and he took off his spectacles, put his hand on her shoulder, and studied her face. 'Old enough to be a respectable lady of the house, I hope,' said Ethel. 'Wiry enough for most things,' said the Doctor, patting her shoulder, reassured; 'but we must take care, Ethel; if you don't fatten yourself up, we shall have Flora coming and carrying you off to London for a change, and for Tom to practise on. 'That is a threat! I expected he had been prescribing for me already, never to go near Cocksmoor, for that's what people always begin by--' 'Nothing worse than pale ale.' At which Ethel made one of her faces. 'And to make a Mary of that chit of a Daisy. Well, you may do as you please--only take care, or Flora will be down upon us.' 'Tom has been very helpful and kind to me,' said Ethel. 'And, papa, he has seen Leonard, and he says he looked so noble that to shake hands with him made him feel quite small.' 'I never heard anything so much to Tom's credit! Well, and what did he say of the dear lad?' The next step was to mention Averil's letter to Mary, which could not be sent on till tidings had been permitted by Mr. Cheviot. 'Let us see it,' said the Doctor. 'Do you think Charles Cheviot would like it?' 'Cheviot is a man of sense,' said the open-hearted Doctor, 'and there may be something to authorize preventing this unlucky transfer of her fortune.' Nothing could be further from it; but it was a long and interesting letter, written in evidently exhilarated spirits, and with a hopeful description of the new scenes. Ethel read it to her father, and he told every one about it when they came in. Tom manifested no particular interest; but he did not go by the mail train that night, and was not visible all the morning. He caught Ethel alone however at noon, and said, 'Ethel, I owe you this,' offering the amount she had paid for the letter. 'Thank you,' she said, wondering if this was to be all she should hear about it. 'I am going by the afternoon train,' he added; 'I have been over to Blewer. It is true, Ethel, the fellow can't stand it! he has sent down a manager, and is always in London! Most likely to dispose of it by private contract there, they say.' 'And what has become of old Hardy?' 'Poor old fellow, he has struck work, looks terribly shaky. He took me for my father at first sight, and began to apologize most plaintively--said no one else had ever done him any good. I advised him to come in and see my father, though he is too far gone to do much for him.' 'Poor old man, can he afford to come in now?' 'Why, I helped him with the cart hire. It is no use any way, he knows no more than we do, and his case is confirmed; but he thinks he has offended my father, and he'll die more in peace for having had him again. Look here, what a place they have got to.' And without further explanation of the 'they,' Tom placed a letter in Ethel's hands. 'My Dear Mr. Thomas, 'I send you the objects I promised for your microscope; I could not get any before because we were in the city; but if you like these I can get plenty more at Massissauga, where we are now. We came here last week, and the journey was very nice, only we went bump bump so often, and once we stuck in a marsh, and were splashed all over. We are staying with Mr. Muller and Cora till our own house is quite ready; it was only begun a fortnight ago, and we are to get in next week. I thought this would have been a town, it looked so big and so square in the plan; but it is all trees still, and there are only thirteen houses built yet. Ours is all by itself in River Street, and all the trees near it have been killed, and stand up all dead and white, because nobody has time to cut them down. It looks very dismal, but Ave says it will be very nice by and by, and, Rufus Muller says it has mammoth privileges. I send you a bit of rattlesnake skin. They found fifteen of them asleep under a stone, just where our house is built, and sometimes they come into the kitchen. I do not know the names of the other things I send; and I could not ask Ave, for she said you would not want to be bothered with a little girl's letter, and I was not to ask for an answer. Rosa Willis says no young lady of my age would ask her sister's permission, and not even her mother's, unless her mamma was very intellectual and highly educated, and always saw the justice of her arguments; but Minna and I do not mean to be like that. I would tell Ave if you did write to me, but she need not read it unless she liked. 'I am, your affectionate little friend, 'ELLA.' 'Well!' said Tom, holding out his hand for more when she had restored this epistle. 'You have heard all there was in it, except--' 'Except what I want to see.' And Ethel, as she had more or less intended all along, let him have Averil's letter, since the exception was merely a few tender words of congratulation to Mary. The worst had been done already by her father; and it may here be mentioned that though nothing was said in answer to her explanation of the opening of the letter, the head-master never recovered the fact, and always attributed it to his dear sister Ethel. 'For the future,' said Tom, as he gave back the thin sheets, 'they will all be for the Cheviots' private delectation.' 'I shall begin on my own score,' said Ethel. 'You know if you answer this letter, you must not mention that visit of yours, or you will be prohibited, and one would not wish to excite a domestic secession.' 'It would serve the unnatural scoundrel right,' said Tom. 'Well, I must go and put up my things. You'll keep me up to what goes on at home, and if there's anything out there to tell Leonard--' 'Wait a moment, Tom!'--and she told him what the Doctor had said about his plans. 'Highly educated and intellectual,' was all the answer that Tom vouchsafed; and whether he were touched or not she could not gather. Yet her spirit felt less weary and burdened, and more full of hope than it had been for a long time past. Averil's letter showed the exhilaration of the change, and of increasing confidence and comfort in her friend Cora Muller. Cora's Confirmation had brought the girls into contact with the New York clergy, and had procured them an introduction to the clergyman of Winiamac, the nearest church, so that there was much less sense of loneliness, moreover, the fuller and more systematic doctrine, and the development of the beauty and daily guidance of the Church, had softened the bright American girl, so as to render her infinitely dearer to her English friend, and they were as much united as they could be, where the great leading event of the life of one remained a mystery to the other. Yet perhaps it helped to begin a fresh life, that the intimate companion of that new course should be entirely disconnected with the past. Averil threw herself into the present with as resolute a will as she could muster. With much spirit she described the arrival at the Winiamac station, and the unconcealed contempt with which the mass of luggage was regarded by the Western world, who 'reckoned it would be fittest to make kindlings with.' Heavy country wagons were to bring the furniture; the party themselves were provided for by a light wagon and a large cart, driven by Cora's brother, Mordaunt, and by the farming-man, Philetus, a gentleman who took every occasion of asserting his equality, if not his superiority to the new-comers; demanded all the Christian names, and used them without prefix; and when Henry impressively mentioned his eldest sister as Miss Warden, stared and said, 'Why, Doctor, I thought she was not your old woman!'--the Western epithet of a wife. But as Cora was quite content to leave Miss behind her in civilized society, and as they were assured that to stand upon ceremony would leave them without domestic assistance, the sisters had implored Henry to waive all preference for a polite address. The loveliness of the way was enchanting--the roads running straight as an arrow through glorious forest lands of pine, beech, maple, and oak, in the full glory of spring, and the perspective before and behind making a long narrowing green bower of meeting branches; the whole of the borders of the road covered with lovely flowers--May-wings, a butterfly-like milkwort, pitcher-plant, convolvulus; new insects danced in the shade--golden orioles, blue birds, the great American robin, the field officer, with his orange epaulettes, glanced before them. Cora was in ecstasy at the return to forest scenery, the Wards at its novelty, and the escape from town. Too happy were they at first to care for the shaking and bumping of the road, and the first mud-hole into which they plunged was almost a joke, under Mordaunt Muller's assurances that it was easy fording, though the splashes flew far and wide. Then there was what Philetus called 'a mash with a real handsome bridge over it,' i. e. a succession of tree trunks laid side by side for about a quarter of a mile. Here the female passengers insisted on walking--even Cora, though her brother and Philetus both laughed her to scorn; and more especially for her foot-gear, delicate kid boots, without which no city damsel stirred. Averil and her sisters, in the English boots scorned at New York, had their share in the laugh, while picking their way from log to log, hand in hand, and exciting Philetus's further disdain by their rapture with the glorious flowers of the bog. But where was Massissauga? Several settlements had been passed, the houses looking clean and white in forest openings, with fields where the lovely spring green of young maize charmed the eye. At last the road grew desolate. There were a few patches of corn, a few squalid-looking log or frame houses, a tract of horrible dreary blackness; and still more horrible, beyond it was a region of spectres--trees white and stripped bare, lifting their dead arms like things blasted. Averil cried out in indignant horror, 'Who has done this?' 'We have,' answered Mordaunt. 'This is Maclellan Square, Miss Warden, and there's River Street,' pointing down an avenue of skeletons. 'If you could go to sleep for a couple of years, you would wake up to find yourself in a city such as I would not fear to compare with any in Europe. Your exhausted civilization is not as energetic as ours, I calculate.' The energetic young colonist turned his horse's head up a slight rising ground, where something rather more like habitation appeared; a great brick-built hotel, and some log houses, with windows displaying the wares needed for daily consumption, and a few farm buildings. It was backed by corn-fields; and this was the great Maclellan Street, the chief ornament of Massissauga. Not one house had the semblance of a garden; the wilderness came up to the very door, except where cattle rendered some sort of enclosure necessary. Cora exclaimed, 'Oh, Mordaunt, I thought you would have had a garden for me!' 'I can fix it any time you like,' said he; 'but you'll be the laughing-stock of the place, and never keep a flower.' The Mullers' abode was a sound substantial log house, neatly whitened, and with green shutters, bearing a festal appearance, full of welcome, as Mr. Muller, his tall bearded son Rufus, and a thin but motherly-looking elderly woman, came forth to meet the travellers; and in the front, full stare, stood a trollopy-looking girl, every bar of her enormous hoop plainly visible through her washed-out flimsy muslin. This was Miss Ianthe, who condescended to favour the family with her assistance till she should have made up dollars enough to buy a new dress! The elder woman, who went by the name of Cousin Deborah, would have been a housekeeper in England--here she was one of the family--welcomed Cora with an exchange of kisses, and received the strangers with very substantial hospitality, though with pity at their unfitness for their new home, and utter incredulity as to their success. Here the Wards had been since their arrival. Their frame-house, near the verdant bank of the river, was being finished for them; and a great brass plate, with Henry's new name and his profession, had already adorned the door. The furniture was coming; Cousin Deborah had hunted up a Cleopatra Betsy, who might perhaps stay with them if she were treated on terms of equality, a field was to be brought into cultivation as soon as any labour could be had. Minna was looking infinitely better already, and Averil and Cora were full of designs for rival housewifery, Averil taking lessons meantime in ironing, dusting, and the arts of the kitchen, and trusting that in the two years' time, the skeletons would have given place--if not indeed to houses, to well-kept fields. Such was her account. How much was reserved for fear of causing anxiety? Who could guess? CHAPTER XXI Quanto si fende La rocca per dar via a chi va suso N'andai 'nfino ove'l cerchiar si prende Com'io nel quinto giro fui dischiuso Vidi gente per esso che piangea Glacendo a terra tutta volta in giuso Adhaesit pavimento anima mia Sentia dir loro con si alti sospiri Che la parola appena s'intendea. 'O eletti di Deo, i cui soffriri E giustizia e speranza fan men duri--' DANTE. Purgatorio Ah, sir, we have learnt the way to get your company,' said Hector Ernescliffe, as he welcomed his father-in-law at Maplewood; 'we have only to get under sentence.' 'Sick or sorry, Hector; that's the attraction to an old doctor.' 'And,' added Hector, with the importance of his youthful magisterial dignity, 'I hope I have arranged matters for you to see him. I wrote about it; but I am afraid you will not be able to see him alone.' Great was the satisfaction with which Hector took the conduct of the expedition to Portland Island; though he was inclined to encumber it with more lionizing than the good Doctor's full heart was ready for. Few words could he obtain, as in the bright August sunshine they steamed out from the pier at Weymouth, and beheld the gray sides of the island, scarred with stone quarries, stretching its lengthening breakwater out on one side, and on the other connected with the land by the pale dim outline of the Chesill Bank. The water was dancing in golden light; white-sailed or red-sailed craft plied across it; a ship of the line lay under the lee of the island, practising gunnery, the three bounds of her balls marked by white columns of spray each time of touching the water, pleasure parties crowded the steamer; but to Dr. May the cheerfulness of the scene made a depressing contrast to the purpose of his visit, as he fixed his eyes on the squared outline of the crest of the island, and the precipitous slope from thence to the breakwater, where trains of loaded trucks rushed forth to the end, discharged themselves, and hurried back. Landing at the quay, in the midst of confusion, Hector smiled at the Doctor's innocent proposal of walking, and bestowed him in a little carriage, with a horse whose hard-worked patience was soon called out, as up and up they went, through the narrow, but lively street, past the old-fashioned inn, made memorable by a dinner of George III.; past the fossil tree, clamped against a house like a vine; past heaps of slabs ready for transport, a church perched up high on the slope, and a parsonage in a place that looked only accessible to goats. Lines of fortification began to reveal themselves, and the Doctor thought himself arrived, but he was to wind further on, and be more struck with the dreariness and inhospitality of the rugged rock, almost bare of vegetation, the very trees of stone, and older than our creation; the melancholy late ripening harvest within stone walls, the whole surface furrowed by stern rents and crevices riven by nature, or cut into greater harshness by the quarries hewn by man. The grave strangeness of the region almost marked it out for a place of expiation, like the mountain rising desolate from the sea, where Dante placed his prisoners of hope. The walls of a vast enclosure became visible; and over them might be seen the tops of great cranes, looking like the denuded ribs of umbrellas. Buildings rose beyond, with deep arched gateways; and a small town was to be seen further off. Mr. Ernescliffe sent in his card at the governor's house, and found that the facilities he had asked for had been granted. They were told that the prisoner they wished to see was at work at some distance; and while he was summoned, they were to see the buildings. Dr. May had little heart for making a sight of them, except so far as to judge of Leonard's situation; and he was passively conducted across a gravelled court, turfed in the centre, and containing a few flower-beds, fenced in by Portland's most natural productions, zamias and ammonites, together with a few stone coffins, which had once inclosed corpses of soldiers of the Roman garrison. Large piles of building inclosed the quadrangle; and passing into the first of these, the Doctor began to realize something of Leonard's present existence. There lay before him the broad airy passage, and either side the empty cells of this strange hive, as closely packed, and as chary of space, as the compartments of the workers of the honeycomb. 'Just twice as wide as a coffin,' said Hector, doing the honours of one, where there was exactly width to stand up between the bed and the wall of corrugated iron; 'though, happily, there is more liberality of height.' There was a ground glass window opposite to the door, and a shelf, holding a Bible, Prayer and hymn book, and two others, one religious, and one secular, from the library. A rust-coloured jacket, with a black patch marked with white numbers, and a tarpaulin hat, crossed with two lines of red paint on the crown, hung on the wall. The Doctor asked for Leonard's cell, but it was in a distant gallery, and he was told that when he had seen one, he had seen all. He asked if these were like those that Leonard had previously inhabited at Milbank and Pentonville, and hearing that they were on the same model, he almost gasped at the thought of the young enterprising spirit thus caged for nine weary months, and to whom this bare confined space was still the only resting-place. He could not look by any means delighted with the excellence of the arrangements, grant it though he might; and he was hurried on to the vast kitchens, their ranges of coppers full of savoury steaming contents, and their racks of loaves looking all that was substantial and wholesome; but his eyes were wandering after the figures engaged in cooking, to whom he was told such work was a reward; he was trying to judge how far they could still enjoy life; but he turned from their stolid low stamp of face with a sigh, thinking how little their condition could tell him of that of a cultivated nature. He was shown the chapel, unfortunately serving likewise for a schoolroom; the centre space fitted for the officials and their families, the rest with plain wooden benches. But it was not an hour for schooling, and he went restlessly on to the library, to gather all the consolation he could from seeing that the privation did not extend to that of sound and interesting literature. He had yet to see the court, where the prisoners were mustered at half-past five in the morning, thence to be marched off in their various companies to work. He stood on the terrace from which the officials marshalled them, and he was called on to look at the wide and magnificent view of sea and land; but all he would observe to Hector was, 'That boy's throat has always been tender since the fever.' He was next conducted to the great court, the quarry of the stones of the present St. Paul's, and where the depression of the surface since work began there, was marked by the present height of what had become a steep conical edifice, surmounted by a sort of watch-tower. There he grew quite restive, and hearing a proposal of taking him to the Verne Hill works half a mile off, he declared that Hector was welcome to go; he should wait for his boy. Just then the guide pointed out at some distance a convict approaching under charge of a warder; and in a few seconds more, the Doctor had stepped back to a small room, where, by special favour, he was allowed to be with the prisoner, instead of seeing him through a grating, but only in the presence of a warder, who was within hearing, though not obtrusively so. Looking, to recognize, not to examine, he drew the young man into his fatherly embrace. 'You have hurt your hands,' was his first word, at the touch of the bruised fingers and broken skin. 'They are getting hardened,' was the answer, in an alert tone, that gave the Doctor courage to look up and meet an unquenched glance; though there was the hollow look round the eyes that Tom had noticed, the face had grown older, the expression more concentrated, the shoulders had rounded; the coarse blue shirt and heavy boots were dusty with the morning's toil, and the heat and labour of the day had left their tokens, but the brow was as open, the mouth as ingenuous as ever, the complexion had regained a hue of health, and the air of alacrity and exhilaration surprised as much as it gratified the visitor. 'What is your work?' he asked. 'Filling barrows with stones, and wheeling them to the trucks for the breakwater,' answered Leonard, in a tone like satisfaction. 'But pray, if you are so kind, tell me,' he continued, with anxiety that he could not suppress, 'what is this about war in America?' 'Not near Indiana; no fear of that, I trust. But how did you know, Leonard?' 'I saw, for one moment at a time, in great letters on a placard of the contents of newspapers, at the stations as we came down here, the words, 'Civil War in America;' and it has seemed to be in the air here ever since. But Averil has said nothing in her letters. Will it affect them?' The Doctor gave a brief sketch of what was passing, up to the battle of Bull Run; and his words were listened to with such exceeding avidity, that he was obliged to spend more minutes than he desired on the chances of the war, and the Massissauga tidings, which he wished to make sound more favourable than he could in conscience feel that they were; but when at last he had detailed all he knew from Averil's letters, and it had been drunk in with glistening eyes, and manner growing constantly less constrained, he led back to Leonard himself: 'Ethel will write at once to your sister when I get home; and I think I may tell her the work agrees with you.' 'Yes; and this is man's work; and it is for the defences,' he added, with a sparkle of the eye. 'Very hard and rough,' returned the Doctor, looking again at the wounded hands and hard-worked air. 'Oh, but to put out one's strength again, and have room!' cried the boy, eagerly. 'Was it not rather a trying change at first?' 'To be sure I was stiff, and didn't know how to move in the morning, but that went off fast enough; and I fill as many barrows a day as any one in our gang.' 'Then I may tell your sister you rejoice in the change?' 'Why, it's work one does not get deadly sick of, as if there was no making one's self do it,' said Leonard, eagerly; 'it is work! and besides, here is sunshine and sea. I can get a sight of that every day; and now and then I can get a look into the bay, and Weymouth--looking like the old time.' That was his first sorrowful intonation; but the next had the freshness of his age, 'And there are thistles!' 'Thistles?' 'I thought you cared for thistles; for Miss May showed me one at Coombe; but it was not like what they are here--the spikes pointing out and pointing in along the edges of the leaves, and the scales lapping over so wonderfully in the bud.' 'Picciola!' said the Doctor to himself; and aloud, 'Then you have time to enjoy them?' 'When we are at work at a distance, dinner is brought out, and there is an hour and a half of rest; and on Sunday we may walk about the yards. You should have seen one of our gang, when I got him to look at the chevaux de frise round a bud, how he owned it was a regular patent invention; it just answered to Paley's illustration.' 'What, the watch?' said the Doctor, seeing that the argument had been far from trite to his young friend. 'So you read Paley?' 'I read all such books as I could get up there,' he answered; 'they gave one something to think about.' 'Have you no time for reading here?' 'Oh, no! I am too sleepy to read except on school days and Sundays,' he said, as if this were a great achievement. 'And your acquaintance--is he a reader of Paley too?' 'I believe the chaplain set him on it. He is a clerk, like me, and not much older. He is a regular Londoner, and can hardly stand the work; but he won't give in if he can help it, or we might not be together.' Much the Doctor longed to ask what sort of a friend this might be, but the warder's presence forbade him; and he could only ask what they saw of each other. 'We were near one another in school at Pentonville, and knew each other's faces quite well, so that we were right glad to be put into the same gang. We may walk about the yard together on Sunday evening too.' The Doctor had other questions on his lips that he again restrained, and only asked whether the Sundays were comfortable days. 'Oh, yes,' said Leonard, eagerly; but then he too recollected the official, and merely said something commonplace about excellent sermons, adding, 'And the singing is admirable. Poor Averil would envy such a choir as we have! We sing so many of the old Bankside hymns.' 'To make your resemblance to Dante's hill of penitence complete, as Ethel says,' returned the Doctor. 'I should like it to be a hill of purification!' said Leonard, understanding him better than he had expected. 'It will, I think,' said the Doctor, 'to one at least. I am comforted to see you so brave. I longed to come sooner, but--' 'I am glad you did not.' 'How?' But he did not pursue the question, catching from look and gesture, that Leonard could hardly have then met him with self-possession; and as the first bulletin of recovery is often the first disclosure of the severity of an illness, so the Doctor was more impressed by the prisoner's evident satisfaction in his change of circumstances, than he would have been by mere patient resignation; and he let the conversation be led away to Aubrey's prospects, in which Leonard took full and eager interest. 'Tell Aubrey I am working at fortifications too,' he said, smiling. 'He could not go to Cambridge without you.' 'I don't like to believe that,' said Leonard, gravely; 'it is carrying the damage I have done further: but it can't be. He always was fond of mathematics, and of soldiering. How is it at the old mill?' he added, suddenly. 'It is sold.' 'Sold?' and his eyes were intently fixed on the Doctor. 'Yes, he is said to have been much in debt long before; but it was managed quietly--not advertised in the county papers. He went to London, and arranged it all. I saw great renovations going on at the mill, when I went to see old Hardy.' 'Good old Hardy! how is he?' 'Much broken. He never got over the shock; and as long as that fellow stayed at the mill, he would not let me attend him.' 'Ha!' exclaimed Leonard, but caught himself up. A message came that Mr. Ernescliffe feared to miss the boat; and the Doctor could only give one tender grasp and murmured blessing, and hurry away, so much agitated that he could hardly join in Hector's civilities to the officials, and all the evening seemed quite struck down and overwhelmed by the sight of the bright brave boy, and his patience in his dreary lot. After this, at all the three months' intervals at which Leonard might be seen, a visit was contrived to him, either by Dr. May or Mr. Wilmot; and Aubrey devoted his first leave of absence to staying at Maplewood, that Hector might take him to his friend; but he came home expatiating so much on the red hair of the infant hope of Maplewood, and the fuss that Blanche made about this new possession, that Ethel detected an unavowed shade of disappointment. Light and whitewash, abundant fare, garments sufficient, but eminently unbecoming, were less impressive than dungeons, rags, and bread and water; when, moreover, the prisoner claimed no pity, but rather congratulation on his badge of merit, improved Sunday dinner, and promotion to the carpenter's shop, so as absolutely to excite a sense of wasted commiseration and uninteresting prosperity. Conversation constrained both by the grating and the presence of the warder, and Aubrey, more tenderly sensitive than his brother, and devoid of his father's experienced tact, was too much embarrassed to take the initiative, was afraid of giving pain by dwelling on his present occupations and future hopes, and confused Leonard by his embarrassment. Hector Ernescliffe discoursed about Charleston Harbour and New Orleans; and Aubrey stood with downcast eyes, afraid to seem to be scanning the convict garb, and thus rendering Leonard unusually conscious of wearing it. Then when in parting, Aubrey, a little less embarrassed, began eagerly and in much emotion to beg Leonard to say if there was anything he could get for him, anything he could do for him, anything he would like to have sent him, and began to promise a photograph of his father, Leonard checked him, by answering that it would be an irregularity--nothing of personal property was allowed to be retained by a prisoner. Aubrey forgot all but the hardship, and began an outburst about the tyranny. 'It is quite right,' said Leonard, gravely; 'there is nothing that might not be used for mischief if one chose.' And the warder here interfered, and said he was quite right, and it always turned out best in the end for a prisoner to conform himself, and his friends did him no good by any other attempt, as Mr. Ernescliffe could tell the young gentleman. The man's tone, though neither insolent nor tyrannical, but rather commendatory of his charge, contrasting with his natural deference to the two gentlemen, irritated poor Aubrey beyond measure, so that Hector was really glad to have him safe away, without his having said anything treasonable to the authorities. The meeting, so constrained and uncomfortable, had but made the friends more vividly conscious of the interval between the cadet and the convict, and, moreover, tended to remove the aureole of romance with which the unseen captive had been invested by youthful fancy. To make the best of a prolonged misfortune does absolutely lessen sympathy, by diminishing the interest of the situation; and even the good Doctor himself was the less concerned at any hindrance to his visits to Portland, as he uniformly found his prisoner cheerful, approved by officials, and always making some small advance in the scale of his own world, and not, as his friends without expected of him, showing that he felt himself injured instead of elated by such rewards as improved diet, or increased gratuities to be set to his account against the time when, after eight years, he might hope for exportation with a ticket of leave to Western Australia. The halo of approaching death no longer lighted him up, and after the effusion of the first meeting, his inner self had closed up, he was more ready to talk of American news than of his own feelings, and seemed to look little beyond the petty encouragements devised to suit the animal natures of ordinary prisoners, and his visitors sometimes feared lest his character were not resisting the deadening, hardening influence of the unvaried round of manual labour among such associates. He had been soon advanced from the quarry to the carpenter's shop, and was in favour there from his activity and skill; but his very promotions were sad--and it was more sad, as some thought, for him to be gratified by them. But, as Dr. May always ended, what did they know about him? CHAPTER XXII Oh, Bessie Bell and Mary Grey, They were twa bonnie lasses; They bigged a bower on yon burn side, And theekt it over wi' rashes. The early glory of autumn was painting the woods of Indiana--crimson, orange, purple, as though a rainbow of intensified tints had been broken into fragments, and then scattered broadcast upon the forest. But though ripe nuts hung on many a bough, the gipsyings had not yet taken place, except at home--when Minna, in her desperate attempts at making the best of things, observed, 'Now we have to make the fire ourselves, let us think it is all play, and such fun.' But 'such fun' was hard when one or other of the inmates of the house was lying on the bed shaking with ague, and the others creeping wearily about, even on their intermediate days. They had been deluded into imprudent exposure in the lovely evenings of summer, and had never shaken off the results. 'Come, Ella,' said Minna, one afternoon, as she descended the bare rickety stairs, 'Ave is getting better; and if we can get the fire up, and make some coffee and boil some eggs, it will be comfortable for her when she comes down and Henry comes in.' Ella, with a book in her hand, was curled up in a corner of a sofa standing awry among various other articles of furniture that seemed to have tumbled together by chance within the barn-like room. Minna began moving first one and then the other, daintily wiping off the dust, and restoring an air of comfort. 'Oh dear!' said Ella, unfolding herself; 'I am so tired. Where's Hetta Mary?' 'Oh, don't you know, Hetta Mary went home this morning because Henry asked her where his boots were, and she thought he wanted her to clean them.' 'Can't Mrs. Shillabeer come in!' 'Mrs. Shillabeer said she would never come in again, because Averil asked her not to hold the ham by the bone and cut it with her own knife when Henry was there! Come, Ella it is of no use. We had better do things ourselves, like Cora and Ave, and then we shall not hear people say disagreeable things.' The once soft, round, kitten-like Minna, whom Leonard used to roll about on the floor, had become a lank, sallow girl, much too tall for her ten years, and with a care-stricken, thoughtful expression on her face, even more in advance of her age than was her height. She moved into the kitchen, a room with an iron stove, a rough table, and a few shelves, looking very desolate. The hands of both little girls had become expert in filling the stove with wood, and they had not far to seek before both it and the hearth in the sitting-room were replenished, and the flame beginning to glow. 'Where's the coffee-mill?' said Minna, presently, looking round in blank despair. 'Oh dear!' said Ella, 'I remember now; that dirty little Polly Mason came to borrow it this morning. I said we wanted it every day: but she guessed we could do without it, for they had got a tea-party, and her little brother had put in a stone and spoilt Cora Muller's; and she snatched it up and carried it off.' 'He will serve ours the same, I suppose,' said Minna. 'It is too far off to go for it; let us make some tea.' 'There's no tea,' said Ella; 'a week ago or more that great Irene Brown walked in and reckoned we could lend her 'ma some tea and sugar, 'cause we had plenty. And we have used up our own since; and if we did ask her to return the loan, hers is such nasty stuff that nobody could drink it. What shall we do, Minna?' and she began to cry. 'We must take some coffee up to the hotel,' said Minna, after a moment's reflection; 'Black Joe is very good-natured, and he'll grind it.' 'But I don't like to go ail by myself,' said Ella; 'into the kitchen too, and hear them say things about Britishers.' 'I'll go, dear,' said Minna, gently, 'if you will just keep the fire up, and boil the eggs, and make the toast, and listen if Ave calls.' Poor Minna, her sensitive little heart trembled within her at the rough contemptuous words that the exclusive, refined tone of the family always provoked, and bodily languor and weariness made the walk trying; but she was thinking of Ave's need, and resolutely took down her cloak and hat. But at that moment the latch was raised, and the bright graceful figure of Cora stood among them, her feathered hat and delicate muslin looking as fresh as at New York. 'What, all alone!' she said; 'I know it is poor Ave's sick day. Is she better?' 'Yes, going to get up and come down; but--' and all the troubles were poured out. 'True enough, the little wretch did spoil our mill, but Rufus mended it; and as I thought Polly had been marauding on you, I brought some down.' 'Ah! I thought I smelt it most deliciously as you came in, but I was afraid I only fancied it because I was thinking about it. Dear Cora, how good you are!' 'And have you anything for her to eat?' 'I was going to make some toast.' 'Of that dry stuff! Come, we'll manage something better:' and off came the dainty embroidered cambric sleeves, up went the coloured ones, a white apron came out of a pocket, and the pretty hands were busy among the flour; the children assisting, learning, laughing a childlike laugh. 'Ah!' cried Cora, turning round, and making a comic threatening gesture with her floury fingers; 'you ought not to have come till we were fixed. Go and sit in your chair by the fire.' 'Dear Cora!' But Cora ran at her, and the wan trembling creature put on a smile, and was very glad to comply; being totally unequal to resist or even to stand long enough to own her dread of Henry's finding all desolate and nothing to eat. Presently Cora tripped in, all besleeved and smartened, to set cushions behind the tired back and head, and caress the long thin fingers. 'I've left Minna, like King Alfred, to watch the cakes,' she said; 'and Ella is getting the cups. So your fifth girl is gone.' 'The fifth in five months! And we let her sit at table, and poor dear Minna has almost worn out her life in trying to hinder her from getting affronted.' 'I've thought what to do for you, Ave. There's the Irish woman, Katty Blake--her husband has been killed. She is rough enough, but tender in her way; and she must do something for herself and her child.' 'Her husband killed!' 'Yes, at Summerville. I thought you had heard it. Mordaunt wrote to me to tell her; and I shall never forget her wailing at his dying away from his country. It was not lamentation for herself, but that he should have died far away from his own people.' 'She is not long from the old country; I should like to have her if--if we can afford it. For if the dividends don't come soon from that building company, Cora, I don't know where to turn--' 'Oh, they must come. Father has been writing to Rufus about the arrangements. Besides, those Irish expect less, and understand old country manners better, if you can put up with their breakages.' 'I could put up with anything to please Henry, and save Minna's little hard-worked bones.' 'I will send her to-morrow. Is it not Minna's day of ague?' 'Yes, poor dear. That is always the day we get into trouble.' 'I never saw a child with such an instinct for preventing variance, or so full of tact and pretty ways; yet I have seen her tremble under her coaxing smile, that even Mis' Shillabeer can't resist.' 'See, see!' cried Ella, hurrying in, 'surely our contingent is not coming home!' 'No,' said Cora, hastening to the door, 'these must be a reinforcement marching to take the train at Winiamac.' 'Marching?' said Ella, looking up archly at her. 'We didn't let our volunteers march in that way.' They were sturdy bearded backwoodsmen, rifle on shoulder, and with grave earnest faces; but walking rather than marching, irregularly keeping together, or straggling, as they chose. 'Your volunteers!' cried Cora, her eyes flashing; 'theirs was toy work! These are bound for real patriotic war!' and she clasped her hands together, then waved her handkerchief. 'It is sad,' said Averil, who had moved to the window, 'to see so many elderly faces--men who must be the prop of their families.' 'It is because ours is a fight of men, not of children; not one of your European wars of paltry ambition, but a war of principle!' cried Cora, with that intensity of enthusiasm that has shed so much blood in the break-up of the Great Republic. 'They do look as Cromwell's Ironsides may have done,' said Averil; 'as full of stern purpose.' And verily Averil noted the difference. Had a number of European soldiers been passing so near in an equally undisciplined manner, young women could not have stood forth as Cora was doing, unprotected, yet perfectly safe from rudeness or remark; making ready answer to the inquiry for the nearest inn--nay, only wishing she were in her own house, to evince her patriotism by setting refreshment before the defenders of her cause. Her ardour had dragged Averil up with her a little way, so as to feel personally every vicissitude that befell the North, and to be utterly unaware of any argument in favour of the Confederates; but still Averil was, in Cora's words, 'too English;' she could not, for the life of her, feel as she did when equipping her brother against possible French invasions, and when Mordaunt Muller had been enrolled in the Federal army, she had almost offended the exultant sister by condolence instead of congratulation. Five months had elapsed since the arrival of Averil in Massissauga--months of anxiety and disappointment, which had sickened Henry of plans of farming, and lessened his hopes of practice. The same causes that affected him at New York told in Indiana; and even if he had been employed, the fees would have been too small to support the expense of horses. As to farming, labour was scarce, and could only be obtained at the cost of a considerable outlay, and, moreover, of enduring rude self-assertions that were more intolerable to Henry than even to his sisters. The chief hope of the family lay in the speculation in which Averil's means had been embarked, which gave them a right to their present domicile, and to a part of the uncleared waste around them; and would, when Massissauga should begin to flourish, place them in affluence. The interest of the portions of the two younger girls was all that was secure, since these were fortunately still invested at home. Inhabitants did not come, lots of land were not taken; and the Mullers evidently profited more by the magnificent harvest produced by their land than by the adventure of city founding. Still, plenty and comfort reigned in their house, and Cora had imported a good deal of refinement and elegance, which she could make respected where Averil's attempts were only sneered down. Nor had sickness tried her household. Owing partly to situation--considerably above the level of River Street--partly to the freer, more cleared and cultivated surroundings--partly likewise to experience, and Cousin Deborah's motherly watchfulness--the summer had passed without a visitation of ague, though it seemed to be regarded as an adjunct of spring, as inevitable as winter frost. Averil trembled at the thought, but there was no escape; there were absolutely no means of leaving the spot, or of finding maintenance elsewhere. Indeed, Cora's constant kindness and sympathy were too precious to be parted with, even had it been possible to move. After the boarding-house, Massissauga was a kind of home; and the more spirits and energy failed, the more she clung to it. Mr. Muller had lately left home to arrange for the sale of his corn, and had announced that he might perhaps pay a visit to his son Mordaunt in the camp at Lexington. Cora was expecting a letter from him, and the hope that 'Dr. Warden' might bring one from the post-office at Winiamac had been one cause of her visit on this afternoon; for the mammoth privileges of Massissauga did not include a post-office, nor the sight of letters more than once a week. The table had just been covered with preparations for a meal, and the glow of the fire was beginning to brighten the twilight, when the sound of a horse's feet came near, and Henry rode past the window, but did not appear for a considerable space, having of late been reduced to become his own groom. But even in the noise of the hoofs, even in the wave of the hand, the girls had detected gratified excitement. 'Charleston has surrendered! The rebels have submitted!' cried Cora. And Averil's heart throbbed with its one desperate hope. No! _That_ would have brought him in at once. After all, both were in a state to feel it a little flat when he came in presenting a letter to Miss Muller, and announcing, 'I have had a proposal, ladies; what would you say to seeing me a surgeon to the Federal forces?--Do you bid me go, Miss Muller?' 'I bid every one go who can be useful to my country,' said Cora. 'Don't look alarmed, Averil,' said Henry, affectionately, as he met her startled eyes; 'there is no danger. A surgeon need never expose himself.' 'But how--what has made you think of it?' asked Averil, faintly. 'A letter from Mr. Muller--a very kind letter. He tells me that medical men are much wanted, and that an examination by a Board is all that is required, the remuneration is good, and it will be an introduction that will avail me after the termination of the war, which will end with the winter at latest.' 'And father has accepted an office in the commissariat department!' exclaimed Cora, from her letter. 'Yes,' answered Henry; 'he tells me that, pending more progression here, it is wiser for us both to launch into the current of public events, and be floated upwards by the stream.' 'Does he want you to come to him, Cora?' was all that Averil contrived to say. 'Oh no, he will be in constant locomotion,' said Cora. 'I shall stay to keep house for Rufus. And here are some directions for him that I must carry home. Don't come, Dr. Warden; I shall never cure you of thinking we cannot stir without an escort. You will want to put a little public spirit into this dear Ave. That's her one defect; and when you are one of us, she will be forced to give us her heart.' And away ran the bright girl, giving her caresses to each sister as she went. The little ones broke out, 'O, Henry, Henry, you must not go away to the wars!' and Averil's pleading eyes spoke the same. Then Henry sat down and betook himself to argument. It would be folly to lose the first opening to employment that had presented itself. He grieved indeed to leave his sisters in this desolate, unhealthy place; but they were as essentially safe as at Stoneborough; their living alone for a few weeks, or at most months, would be far less remarkable here than there; and he would be likely to be able to improve or to alter their present situation, whereas they were now sinking deeper and more hopelessly into poverty every day. Then, too, he read aloud piteous accounts of the want of medical attendance, showing that it was absolutely a cruelty to detain such assistance from the sick and wounded. This argument was the one most appreciated by Averil and Minna. The rest were but questions of prudence; this touched their hearts. Men lying in close tents, or in crowded holds of ships, with festering wounds and fevered lips, without a hand to help them--some, too, whom they had seen at New York, and whose exulting departure they had witnessed--sufferers among whom their own Cora's favourite brother might at any moment be numbered--the thought brought a glow of indignation against themselves for having wished to withhold him. 'Yes, go, Henry; it is right, and you shall hear not another word of objection,' said Averil. 'You can write or telegraph the instant you want me. And it will be for a short time,' said Henry, half repenting when the opposition had given way. 'Oh, we shall get on very well,' said Minna, cheerfully; 'better, perhaps for you know we don't mind Far West manners; and I'll have learnt to do all sorts of things as well as Cora when you come home!' And Henry, after a year's famine of practice, was in better spirits than since that fatal summer morning. Averil felt how different a man is in his vocation, and deprived of it. 'Oh yes,' she said to herself, 'if I had let ourselves be a drag on him when he is so much needed, I could never have had the face to write to our dear sufferer at home in his noble patience. It is better that we should be desolate than that he should be a wreck, or than that mass of sickness should be left untended! And the more desolate, the more sure of One Protector.' There was true heroism in the spirit in which this young girl braced herself to uncomplaining acceptance of desertion in this unwholesome swamp, with her two little ailing sisters, beside the sluggish stream, amid the skeleton trees--heroism the greater because there was no enthusiastic patriotism to uphold her--it was only the land of her captivity, whence she looked towards home like Judah to Jerusalem. CHAPTER XXIII Prisoner of hope thou art; look up and sing, In hope of promised spring. Christian Year In the summer of 1862, Tom May was to go up for his examination at the College of Physicians, but only a day or two before it he made his appearance at home, in as much excitement as it was in him to betray. Hazlitt, the banker's clerk at Whitford, had written to him tidings of the presentation of the missing cheque for £25, which Bilson had paid to old Axworthy shortly before the murder, and which Leonard had mentioned as in the pocket-book containing his receipt for the sum that had been found upon him. Tom had made a halt at Whitford, and seen the cheque, which had been backed by the word Axworthy, with an initial that, like all such signatures of the nephew, might stand either for S. or F., and the stiff office hand of both the elder and younger Axworthy was so much alike, that no one could feel certain whose writing it was. The long concealment, after the prisoner's pointed reference to it, was, however, so remarkable, that the home conclave regarded the cause as won; and the father and son hastened triumphantly to the attorneys' office. Messrs. Bramshaw and Anderson were greatly struck, and owned that their own minds were satisfied as to the truth of their client's assertion; but they demurred as to the possibility of further steps. An action for forgery, Tom's first hope, he saw to be clearly impossible; Samuel Axworthy appeared to have signed the cheque in his own name, and he had every right to it as his uncle's heir; and though the long withholding of it, as well as his own departure, were both suspicious circumstances, they were not evidence. Where was there any certainty that the cheque had ever been in the pocket-book or even if it had, how did it prove the existence of young Ward's acknowledgment? Might it not have been in some receptacle of papers hitherto not opened? There was no sufficient case to carry to the police, after a conviction like Leonard's, to set them on tracing the cheque either to an unknown robber, or to Sam Axworthy, its rightful owner. Mr. Bramshaw likewise dissuaded Dr. May from laying the case before the Secretary of State, as importunity without due grounds would only tell against him if any really important discovery should be made: and the Doctor walked away, with blood boiling at people's coolness to other folk's tribulations, and greatly annoyed with Tom for having acceded to the representations of the men of law, and declining all co-operation in drawing up a representation for the Home Office, on the plea that he had no time to lose in preparing for his own examination, and must return to town by the next train, which he did without a syllable of real converse with any one at home. The Doctor set to work with his home helpers, assisted by Dr. Spencer; but the work of composition seemed to make the ground give way under their feet, and a few adroit remarks from Dr. Spencer finally showed him and Ethel that they had not yet attained the prop for the lever that was to move the world. He gave it up, but still he did not quite forgive Tom for having been so easily convinced, and ready to be dismissed to his own affairs. However, Dr. May was gratified by the great credit with which his son passed his examination, and took his degree; and Sir Matthew Fleet himself wrote in high terms of his talent, diligence, and steadiness, volunteering hopes of being able to put him forward in town in his own line, for which Tom had always had a preference; and adding, that it was in concurrence with his own recommendation that the young man wished to pursue his studies at Paris--he had given him introductions that would enable him to do so to the greatest advantage, and he hoped his father would consent. The letter was followed up by one from Tom himself, as usual too reasonable and authoritative to be gainsaid, with the same representation of advantages to be derived from a course of the Parisian hospitals. 'Ah, well! he is after old Fleet's own heart,' said Dr. May, between pride and mortification. 'I should not grudge poor Fleet some one to take interest in his old age, and I did not look to see him so warm about anything. He has not forgotten Calton Hill! But the boy must have done very well! I say, shall we see him Sir Thomas some of these days, Ethel, and laugh at ourselves for having wanted, to make him go round in a mill after our old fashion?' 'You were contented to run round in your mill,' said Ethel, fondly, 'and maybe he will too.' 'No, no, Ethel, I'll not have him persuaded. Easy-going folk, too lazy for ambition, have no right to prescribe for others. Ambition turned sour is a very dangerous dose! Much better let it fly off! I mean to look out of my mill yet, and see Sir Thomas win the stakes. Only I wish he would come and see us; tell him he shall not hear a word to bother him about the old practice. People have lived and died at Stoneborough without a May to help them, and so they will again, I suppose.' Ethel was very glad to see how her father had made up his mind to what was perhaps the most real disappointment of his life, but she was grieved that Tom did not respond to the invitation, and next wrote from Paris. It was one of his hurried notes, great contrasts to such elaborate performances as his recent letter. 'Thanks, many thanks to my father,' he said; 'I knew you would make him see reason, and he always yields generously. I was too much hurried to come home; could not afford to miss the trail. I had not time to say before that the Bank that sent the cheque to Whitford had it from a lodging-house in town. Landlord had a writ served on S. A.; as he was embarking at Folkestone, he took out the draft and paid. He knew its import, if Bramshaw did not. I hope my father was not vexed at my not staying. There are things I cannot stand, namely, discussions and Gertrude.' Gertrude was one of the chief cares upon Ethel's mind. She spent many thoughts upon the child, and even talked her over with Flora. 'What is it, Flora? is it my bad management? She is a good girl, and a dear girl; but there is such a want of softness about her.' 'There is a want of softness about all the young ladies of the day,' returned Flora. 'I have heard you say so, but--' 'We have made girls sensible and clear-headed, till they have grown hard. They have been taught to despise little fears and illusions, and it is certainly not becoming.' 'We had not fears, we were taught to be sensible.' 'Yes, but it is in the influence of the time! It all tends to make girls independent.' 'That's very well for the fine folks you meet in your visits, but it does not account for my Daisy--always at home, under papa's eye--having turned nineteenth century--What is it, Flora? She is reverent in great things, but not respectful except to papa, and that would not have been respect in one of us--only he likes her sauciness.' 'That is it, partly.' 'No, I won't have that said,' exclaimed Ethel. 'Papa is the only softening influence in the house--the only one that is tender. You see it is unlucky that Gertrude has so few that she really does love, with anything either reverend or softening about them. She is always at war with Charles Cheviot, and he has not fun enough, is too lumbering altogether, to understand her, or set her down in the right way; and she domineers over Hector like the rest of us. I did hope the babies might have found out her heart, but, unluckily, she does not take to them. She is only bored by the fuss that Mary and Blanche make about them. 'You know we are all jealous of both Charles Cheviots, elder and younger.' 'I often question whether I should not have taken her down and made her ashamed of all the quizzing and teasing at the time of Mary's marriage. But one cannot be always spoiling bright merry mischief, and I am only elder sister after all. It is a wonder she is as good to me as she is.' 'She never remembered our mother, poor dear.' 'Ah! that is the real mischief,' said Ethel. 'Mamma would have given the atmosphere of gentleness and discretion, and so would Margaret. How often I have been made, by the merest pained look, to know when what I said was saucy or in bad taste, and I--I can only look forbidding, or else blurt out a reproof that _will_ not come softly.' 'The youngest _must_ be spoilt,' said Flora, 'that's an ordinance of nature. It ends when a boy goes to school, and when a girl--' 'When?' 'When she marries--or when she finds out what trouble is,' said Flora. 'Is that all you can hold out to my poor Daisy?' 'Well, it is the way of the world. There is just now a reaction from sentiment, and it is the less feminine variety. The softness will come when there is a call for it. Never mind when the foundation is safe.' 'If I could only see that child heartily admiring and looking up! I don't mean love--there used to be a higher, nobler reverence!' 'Such as you and Norman used to bestow on Shakespeare and Scott, and--the vision of Cocksmoor.' 'Not only _used_,' said Ethel. 'Yes, it is your soft side,' said Flora; 'it is what answers the purpose of sentiment in people like you. It is what I should have thought living with you would have put into any girl; but Gertrude has a satirical side, and she follows the age.' 'I wish you would tell her so--it is what she especially wants not to do! But the spirit of opposition is not the thing to cause tenderness.' 'No, you must wait for something to bring it out. She is very kind to my poor little Margaret, and I won't ask how she talks _of_ her.' 'Tenderly; oh yes, that she always would do.' 'There, then, Ethel, if she can talk tenderly of Margaret, there can't be much amiss at the root.' 'No; and you don't overwhelm the naughty girl with baby talk.' 'Like our happy, proud young mothers,' sighed Flora; and then letting herself out--'but indeed, Ethel, Margaret is very much improved. She has really begun to wish to be good. I think she is struggling with herself.' 'Something to love tenderly, something to reverence highly.' So meditated Ethel, as she watched her sunny-haired, open-faced Daisy, so unconquerably gay and joyous that she gave the impression of sunshine without shade. There are stages of youth that are in themselves unpleasing, and yet that are nobody's fault, nay, which may have within them seeds of strength. Tom's satire had fostered Daisy's too congenial spirit, and he reaped the consequence in the want of repose and sympathy that were driving him from home, and shutting him up within himself. Would he ever forgive that flippant saying, which Ethel had recollected with shame ever since--shame more for herself than for the child, who probably had forgotten, long ago, her 'shaft at random sent'? Then Ethel would wonder whether, after all, her discontent with Gertrude's speeches was only from feeling older and graver, and perhaps from a certain resentment at finding how the course of time was wearing down the sharp edge of compassion towards Leonard. A little more about Leonard was gathered when the time came of release for his friend the clerk Brown. This young man had an uncle at Paris, engaged in one of the many departments connected with steam that carry Englishmen all over the world, and Leonard obtained permission to write to Dr. Thomas May, begging him to call upon the uncle, and try if he could be induced to employ the penitent and reformed nephew under his own eye. It had been wise in Leonard to write direct, for if the request had been made through any one at home, Tom would have considered it as impossible; but he could not resist the entreaty, and his mission was successful. The uncle was ready to be merciful, and undertook all the necessary arrangements for, and even the responsibility of, bringing the ticket-of-leave man to Paris, where he found him a desk in his office. One of Tom's few detailed epistles was sent to Ethel after this arrival, when the uncle had told him how the nephew had spoken of his fellow-prisoner. It was to Leonard Ward that the young man had owed the inclination to open his heart to religious instruction, hitherto merely endured as a portion of the general infliction of the penalty, a supposed engine for dealing with the superstitious, but entirely beneath his attention. The sight of the educated face had at first attracted him, but when he observed the reverential manner in chapel, he thought it mere acting the ''umble prisoner,' till he observed how unobtrusive, unconscious, and retiring was every token of devotion, and watched the eyes, brightened or softened in praise or in prayer, till he owned the genuineness and guessed the depth of both, then perceived in school how far removed his unknown comrade was from the mere superstitious boor. This was the beginning. The rest had been worked out by the instruction and discipline of the place, enforced by the example, and latterly by the conversation, of his fellow-prisoner, until he had come forth sincerely repenting, and with the better hope for the future that his sins had not been against full light. He declared himself convinced that Ward far better merited to be at large than he did, and told of the regard that uniform good conduct was obtaining at last, though not till after considerable persecution, almost amounting to personal danger from the worse sort of convicts, who regarded him as a spy, because he would not connive at the introduction of forbidden indulgences, and always stood by the authorities. Once his fearless interposition had saved the life of a warder, and this had procured him trust, and promotion to a class where his companions were better conducted, and more susceptible to good influences, and among them Brown was sure that his ready submission and constant resolution to do his work were producing an effect. As to his spirits, Brown had never known him break down but once, and that was when he had come upon a curious fossil in the stone. Otherwise he was grave and contented, but never laughed or joked as even some gentlemen prisoners of more rank and age had been known to do. The music in the chapel was his greatest pleasure, and he had come to be regarded as an important element in the singing. Very grateful was Dr. May to Tom for having learnt, and still more for having transmitted, all these details, and Ethel was not the less touched, because she knew they were to travel beyond Minster Street. Those words of Mr. Wilmot's seemed to be working out their accomplishment; and she thought so the more, when in early spring one of Leonard's severe throat attacks led to his being sent after his recovery to assist the schoolmaster, instead of returning to the carpenter's shed; and he was found so valuable in the school that the master begged to retain his services. That spring was a grievous one in Indiana. The war, which eighteen months previously was to have come to an immediate end, was still raging, and the successes that had once buoyed up the Northern States with hope had long since been chequered by terrible reverses. On, on, still fought either side, as though nothing could close the strife but exhaustion or extinction; and still ardent, still constant, through bereavement and privation, were either party to their blood-stained flag. Mordaunt Muller had fallen in one of the terrible battles on the Rappahannock; and Cora, while, sobbing in Averil's arms, had still confessed herself thankful that it had been a glorious death for his country's cause! And even in her fresh grief, she had not endeavoured to withhold her other brother, when, at the urgent summons of Government, he too had gone forth to join the army. Cora was advised to return to her friends at New York, but she declared her intention of remaining to keep house with Cousin Deborah. Unless Averil would come with her, nothing should induce her to leave Massissauga, certainly not while Ella and Averil were alternately laid low by the spring intermittent fever. Perhaps the fact was that, besides her strong affection for Averil, she felt that in her ignorance she had assisted her father in unscrupulously involving them in a hazardous and unsuccessful speculation, and that she was the more bound, in justice as well as in love and pity, to do her best for their assistance. At any rate, Rufus had no sooner left home, than she insisted on the three sisters coming to relieve her loneliness--in other words, in removing them from the thin ill-built frame house, gaping in every seam with the effects of weather, and with damp oozing up between every board of the floor, the pestiferous river-fog, the close air of the forest, and the view of the phantom trees, now decaying and falling one against another. Cousin Deborah, who had learnt to love and pity the forlorn English girls, heartily concurred; and Averil consented, knowing that the dry house and pure air were the best hope of restoring Ella's health. Averil and Ella quickly improved, grew stronger in the intervals, and suffered less during the attacks; but Minna, who in their own house had been less ill, had waited on both, and supplied the endless deficiencies of the kindly and faithful, but two-fisted Katty; Minna, whose wise and simple little head had never failed in sensible counsels, or tender comfort; Minna, whom the rudest and most self-important far-wester never disobliged, Minna, the peace-maker, the comfort and blessing--was laid low by fever, and fever that, as the experienced eyes of Cousin Deborah at once perceived, 'meant mischief.' Then it was that the real kindliness of heart of the rough people of the West showed itself. The five wild young ladies, whose successive domestic services had been such trouble, and whose answer to a summons from the parlour had been, 'Did yer holler, Avy? I thort I heerd a scritch,' each, from Cleopatra Betsy to Hetta Mary, were constantly rushing in to inquire, or to present questionable dainties and nostrums from their respective 'Mas'; the charwomen, whom Minna had coaxed in her blandest manner to save trouble to Averil and disgust to Henry, were officious in volunteers of nursing and sitting up, the black cook at the hotel sent choice fabrics of jelly and fragrant ice; and even Henry's rival, who had been so strong against the insolence of a practitioner showing no testimonials, no sooner came under the influence of the yearning, entreating, but ever-patient eyes, than his attendance became assiduous, his interest in the case ardent. Henry himself was in the camp, before Vicksburg, with his hands too full of piteous cases of wounds and fever to attempt the most hurried visit. 'Sister, dear,' said the soft slow voice, one day when Averil had been hoping her patient was asleep, 'are you writing to Henry?' 'Yes, my darling. Do you want to say anything?' 'Oh yes! so much;' and the eyes grew bright, and the breath gasping; 'please beg Henry--tell Henry--that I must--I can't bear it any longer if I don't--' 'You must what, dear child? Henry would let you do anything he could.' 'Oh, then, would he let me speak about dear Leonard?' and the child grew deadly white when the words were spoken; but her eyes still sought Averil's face, and grew terrified at the sight of the gush of tears. 'O, Ave, Ave, tell me only--he is not dead!' and as Averil could only make a sign, 'I do have such dreadful fancies about him, and I think I could sleep if I only knew what was really true.' 'You shall, dear child, you shall, without waiting to hear from Henry; I know he would let you.' And only then did Averil know the full misery that Henry's decision had inflicted on the gentle little heart, in childish ignorance, imagining fetters and dungeons, even in her sober waking moods, and a prey to untold horrors in every dream, exaggerated by feverishness and ailment--horrors that, for aught she knew, might be veritable, and made more awful by the treatment of his name as that of one dead. To hear of him as enjoying the open air and light of day, going to church, singing their own favourite hymn tunes, and often visited by Dr. May, was to her almost as great a joy as if she had heard of him at liberty. And Averil had a more than usually cheerful letter to read to her, one written in the infirmary during his recovery. His letters to her were always cheerful, but this one was particularly so, having been written while exhilarated by the relaxations permitted to convalescents, and by enjoying an unwonted amount of conversation with the chaplain and the doctor. 'So glad, so glad,' Minna was heard murmuring to herself again and again; her rest was calmer than it had been for weeks, and the doctor found her so much better that he trusted that a favourable change had begun. But it was only a gleam of hope. The weary fever held its prey, and many as were the fluctuations, they always resulted in greater weakness; and the wandering mind was not always able to keep fast hold of the new comfort. Sometimes she would piteously clasp her sister's hand, and entreat, 'Tell me again;' and sometimes the haunting delirious fancies of chains and bars would drop forth from the tongue that had lost its self-control; yet even at the worst came the dear old recurring note, 'God will not let them hurt him, for he has not done it!' Sometimes, more trying to Averil than all, she would live over again the happy games with him, or sing their favourite hymns and chants, or she would be heard pleading, 'O, Henry, don't be cross to Leonard.' Cora could not fail to remark the new name that mingled in the unconscious talk; but she had learnt to respect Averil's reserve, and she forbore from all questioning, trying even to warn Cousin Deborah, who, with the experience of an elderly woman, remarked, 'That she had too much to do to mind what a sick child rambled about. When Cora had lived to her age, she would know how unaccountably they talked.' But Averil felt the more impelled to an outpouring by this delicate forbearance, and the next time she and Cora were sent out together to breathe the air, while Cousin Deborah watched the patient, she told the history, and to a sympathizing listener, without a moment's doubt of Leonard's innocence, nor that American law would have managed matters better. 'And now, Cora, you know why I told you there were bitterer sorrows than yours.' 'Ah! Averil, I could have believed you once; but to know that he never can come again! Now you always have hope.' 'My hope has all but gone,' said Averil. 'There is only one thing left to look to. If I only can live till he is sent out to a colony, then nothing shall keep me back from him!' 'And what would I give for even such a hope?' 'We have a better hope, both of us,' murmured Averil. 'It won't seem so long when it is over.' Well was it for Averil that this fresh link of sympathy was riveted, for day by day she saw the little patient wasting more hopelessly away, and the fever only burning lower for want of strength to feed on. Utterly exhausted and half torpid, there was not life or power enough left in the child for them to know whether she was aware of her condition. When they read Prayers, her lips always moved for the Lord's Prayer and Doxology; and when the clergyman came out from Winiamac, prayed by her and blessed her, she opened her eyes with a look of comprehension; and if, according to the custom from the beginning of her illness, the Psalms and Lessons were not read in her room, she was uneasy, though she could hardly listen. So came Easter Eve; and towards evening she was a little revived, and asked Averil what day it was, then answered, 'I thought it would have been nice to have died yesterday,'--it was the first time she mentioned death. Averil told her she was better, but half repented, as the child sank into torpor again; and Averil, no longer the bewildered girl who had been so easily led from the death scene, knew the fitful breath and fluttering pulse, and felt the blank dread stealing over her heart. Again, however, the child looked up, and murmured, 'You have not read to-day.' Cora, who had the Bible on her knee, gently obeyed, and read on, where she was, the morning First Lesson, the same in the American Church as in our own. Averil, dull with watching and suffering, sat on dreamily, with the scent of primroses wafted to her, as it were, by the association of the words, though her power to attend to them was gone. Before the chapter was over, the doze had overshadowed the little girl again; and yet, more than once, as the night drew on, they heard her muttering what seemed like the echo of one of its verses, 'Turn you, turn you--' At last, after hours of watching, and more than one vain endeavour of good Cousin Deborah to lead away the worn but absorbed nurses, the dread messenger came. Minna turned suddenly in her sister's arms, with more strength than Averil had thought was left in her, and eagerly stretched out her arms, while the words so long trembling on her lips found utterance. 'Turn you to the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope! O, Leonard dear! it does not hurt!' But that last word was almost lost in the gasp--the last gasp. What 'did not hurt' was death without his sting. 'O, Cora! Was he with her? Is he gone too?' was Averil's cry at the first moment, as she strained the form of her little comforter for the last time in her arms. 'And if he is, they are in joy together,' said Cousin Deborah, tenderly but firmly unloosing Averil's arms, though with the tears running down her cheeks. 'Take her away, Cora, and both of you sleep. This dear lamb is in better keeping than yours.' Heavy, grievous, was the loss, crushing the grief; but it was such as to be at its softest and sweetest at Easter, amid the Resurrection joys, and the budding flowers, though Ella's bitterest fit of weeping was excited by there being no primroses--the primroses that Minna loved so much; and her first pleasurable thought was to sit down and write to her dear 'Mr. Tom' to send her some primrose seed, for Minna's grave. Minna's grave! Alas! Massissauga had but an untidy desolate-looking region, with a rude snake fence, all unconsecrated! Cora wanted to choose a shaded corner in her father's ground, where they might daily tend the child's earthly resting-place; but Averil shrank from this with horror; and finally, on one of the Easter holidays, the little wasted form in its coffin was reverently driven by Philetus to Winiamac, while the sisters and Cora slowly followed, thinking--the one of the nameless blood-stained graves of a battle-field; the other whether an equally nameless grave-yard, but one looked on with a shudder unmixed with exultation, had opened for the other being she loved best. 'The Resurrection and the Life.--Yes, had not He made His grave with the wicked, and been numbered with the transgressors!' Somehow, the present sorrow was more abundant in such comforts as these than all the pangs which her heart, grown old in sorrow, had yet endured. Yet if her soul had bowed itself to meet sorrow more patiently and peacefully, it was at the expense of the bodily frame. Already weakened by the intermittent fever, the long strain of nursing had told on her; and that hysteric affection that had been so distressing at the time of her brother's trial recurred, and grew on her with every occasion for self-restraint. The suspense in which she lived--with one brother in the camp, in daily peril from battle and disease, the other in his convict prison--wore her down, and made every passing effect of climate or fatigue seize on her frame like a serious disorder; and the more she resigned her spirit, the more her body gave way. Yet she was infinitely happier. The repentance and submission were bearing fruit, and the ceasing to struggle had brought a strange calm and acceptance of all that might be sent; nay, her own decay was perhaps the sweetest solace and healing of the wearied spirit; and as to Ella, she would trust, and she did trust, that in some way or other all would be well. She felt as if even Leonard's death could be accepted thankfully as the captive's release. But that sorrow was spared her. The account of Leonard came from Mr. Wilmot, who had carried him the tidings. The prisoner had calmly met him with the words, 'I know what you are come to tell me;' and he heard all in perfect calmness and resignation, saying little, but accepting all that the clergyman said, exactly as could most be desired. From the chaplain, likewise, Mr. Wilmot learnt that Leonard, though still only in the second stage of his penalty, stood morally in a very different position, and was relied on as a valuable assistant in all that was good, more effective among his fellow-prisoners than was possible to any one not in the same situation with themselves, and fully accepting that position when in contact either with convicts or officials. 'He has never referred to what brought him here,' said the chaplain, 'nor would I press him to do so; but his whole tone is of repentance, and acceptance of the penalty, without, like most of them, regarding it as expiation. It is this that renders his example so valuable among the men.' After such a report as this, it was disappointing, on Dr. May's next visit to Portland, at two months' end, to find Leonard drooping and downcast. The Doctor was dismayed at his pale, dejected, stooping appearance, and the silence and indifference with which he met their ordinary topics of conversation, till the Doctor began anxiously-- 'You are not well?' 'Quite well, thank you.' 'You are looking out of condition. Do you sleep?' 'Some part of the night.' 'You want more exercise. You should apply to go back to the carpenter's shop--or shall I speak to the governor?' 'No, thank you. I believe they want me in school.' 'And you prefer school work?' 'I don't know, but it helps the master.' 'Do you think you make any progress with the men? We heard you were very effective with them.' 'I don't see that much can be done any way, certainly not by me.' Then the Doctor tried to talk of Henry and the sisters; but soon saw that Leonard had no power to dwell upon them. The brief answers were given with a stern compression and contraction of face; as if the manhood that had grown on him in these three years was no longer capable of the softening effusion of grief; and Dr. May, with all his tenderness, felt that it must be respected, and turned the conversation. 'I have been calling at the Castle,' he said, 'with Ernescliffe, and the governor showed me a curious thing, a volume of Archbishop Usher, which had been the Duke of Lauderdale's study after he was taken at Worcester. He has made a note in the fly-leaf, "I began this book at Windsor, and finished it during my imprisonment here;" and below are mottoes in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. I can't construe the Hebrew. The Greek is oisteon kai elpisteon (one must bear and hope), the Latin is durate. Will you accept your predecessor's legacy?' 'I think I read about him in an account of the island,' said Leonard, with a moment's awakened intelligence; 'was he not the L. of the Cabal, the persecutor in "Old Mortality?"' 'I am afraid you are right. Prosperity must have been worse for him than adversity.' 'Endure' repeated Leonard, gravely. 'I will think of that, and what he would mean by hope now.' The Doctor came home much distressed; he had been unable to penetrate the dreary, resolute self-command that covered so much anguish; he had failed in probing or in healing, and feared that the apathy he had witnessed was a sign that the sustaining spring of vigour was failing in the monotonous life. The strong endurance had been a strain that the additional grief was rendering beyond his power; and the crushed resignation, and air of extinguished hope, together with the indications of failing health, filled the Doctor with misgivings. 'It will not last much longer,' he said. 'I do not mean that he is ill; but to hold up in this way takes it out of a man, especially at his age. The first thing that lays hold of him, he will have no strength nor will to resist, and then--Well, I did hope to live to see God show the right.' CHAPTER XXIV We twa hae wandered o'er the braes, And pu'ed the gowans fine; I've wandered many a weary foot Sin auld lang syne. These years had passed quietly at Stoneborough, with little change since Mary's marriage. She was the happy excellent wife that she was made to be; and perhaps it was better for Ethel that the first severance had been so decisive that Mary's attentions to her old home were received as favours, instead of as the mere scanty relics of her former attachment. Mr. Cheviot, as the family shook down together, became less afraid of Ethel, and did not think it so needful to snub her either by his dignity or jocularity; though she still knew that she was only on terms of sufferance, and had been, more than once, made to repent of unguarded observations. He was admirable; and the school was so rapidly improving that Norman had put his father into ecstasies by proposing to send home little Dickie to begin his education there. Moreover, the one element wanting, to accomplish the town improvements, had been supplied by a head-master on the side of progress, and Dr. Spencer's victory had been won at last. There was a chance that Stoneborough might yet be clean, thanks to his reiteration of plans for purification, apropos to everything. Baths and wash-houses were adroitly carried as a monument to Prince Albert; and on the Prince of Wales's marriage, his perseverance actually induced the committee to finish up the drains with all the contributions that were neither eaten up nor fired away! Never had he been more happy and triumphant; and Dr. May used to accuse him of perambulating the lower streets snuffing the deodorized air. One autumn evening, contrary to his wont, he allowed himself to be drawn into the May drawing-room, and there fell into one of the bright bantering talks in which the two old friends delighted, quizzing each other, and bringing up stories of their life; while Ethel and Gertrude listened to and laughed at the traditions of a sunnier, gayer, and more reckless age than their own; and Ethel thought how insufficient are those pictures of life that close with the fever-dream of youthful passion, and leave untold those years of the real burthen of manhood, and still more the tranquil brightness when toil has been overlived, and the setting sun gilds the clouds that are drifting away. Ethel's first knowledge of outer life the next morning was the sound of voices in her father's adjoining room, which made her call out, 'Are you sent for, papa?' 'Yes,' he answered, and in an agitated tone, 'Spencer; I'll send word.' Should she mention what she had two years ago heard from Tom? There was no time, for the next moment she heard him hurrying down-stairs, she saw him speeding up the garden. There was nothing for her to do but to dress as fast as possible, and as she was finishing she heard his tread slowly mounting, the very footfall warning her what to expect. She opened the door and met him. 'Thank God,' he said, as he took her hand into his own, 'it has been very merciful.' 'Is it--?' 'Yes. It must have been soon after he lay down at night. As calm as sleep. The heart. I am very thankful. I had thought he would have had much to suffer.' And then it appeared that his own observations had made him sure of what Ethel had learnt from Tom; but as long as it was unavowed by his friend, he had thought himself bound to ignore it, and had so dreaded the protracted suffering, that the actual stroke was accepted as a loving dispensation. Still, as the close of a life-long friendship, the end of a daily refreshing and sustaining intimacy, the loss was very great, and would be increasingly felt after the first stimulus was over. It would make Tom's defection a daily grievance, since much detail of hospital care, and, above all, town work, his chief fatigue, would now again fall upon him. But this was not his present thought. His first care was, that his friend's remains should rest with those with whom his lot in life had been cast, in the cloister of the old Grammar-school; but here Mr. Cheviot looked concerned, and with reluctance, but decision, declared it to be his duty not to consent, cited the funeral of one of his scholars at the cemetery, and referred to recent sanatory measures. Dr. May quickly exclaimed that he had looked into the matter, and that the cloister did not come under the Act. 'Not technically, sir,' said Mr. Cheviot; 'but I am equally convinced of my duty, however much I may regret it.' And then, with a few words about Mary's presently coming up, he departed; while 'That is too bad,' was the general indignant outburst, even from Richard; from all but Dr. May himself. 'He is quite right,' he said. 'Dear Spencer would be the first to say so. Richard, your church is his best monument, and you'll not shut him out of your churchyard nor me either.' 'Cheviot could not have meant--' began Richard. 'Yes, he did, I understood him, and I am glad you should have had it out now,' said Dr. May, though not without a quivering lip. 'Your mother has _one_ by her side, and we'll find each other out just as well as if we were in the cloister. I'll walk over to Cocksmoor with you, Ritchie, and mark the place.' Thus sweetly did he put aside what might have been so severe a shock; and he took extra pains to show his son-in-law his complete acquiescence both for the present and the future. Charles Cheviot expressed to Richard his great satisfaction in finding sentiment thus surmounted by sense, not perceiving that it was faith and love surmounting both. Dr. Spencer's only surviving relation was a brother's son, who, on his arrival, proved to be an underbred, shrewd-looking man, evidently with strong prepossessions against the May family, whose hospitality he did not accept, consorting chiefly with 'Bramshaw and Anderson.' His disposition to reverse the arrangement for burying his uncle in 'an obscure village churchyard,' occasioned a reference to the will, drawn up two years previously. The executors were Thomas and Etheldred May, and it was marked on the outside that they were to have the sole direction of the funeral. Ethel, greatly astonished, but as much bewildered as touched, was infinitely relieved that this same day had brought a hurried note from Paris, announcing Tom's intention of coming to attend the funeral. He would be able to talk to the angry and suspicious nephew, without, like his father, betraying either indignation or disgust. Another person was extremely anxious for Tom's arrival, namely, Sir Matthew Fleet, who, not a little to Dr. May's gratification, came to show his respect to his old fellow-student; and arriving the evening before Tom, was urgent to know the probabilities of his appearance. An appointment in London was about to be vacant, so desirable in itself, and so valuable an introduction, that there was sure to be a great competition; but Sir Matthew was persuaded that with his own support, and an early canvass, Tom might be certain of success. Dr. May could not help being grateful and gratified, declaring that the boy deserved it, and that dear Spencer would have been very much pleased; and then he told Ethel that it was wonderful to see the blessing upon Maggie's children; and went back, as usual, to his dear old Tate and Brady, with-- 'His house the seat of wealth shall be, An inexhausted treasury; His justice, free from all decay, Shall blessings to his heirs convey.' And Ethel, within herself, hoped it was no disrespect to smile at his having so unconsciously turned away the blessing from the father's to the mother's side. It was his great pride and pleasure that so many of Maggie's children were round him to do honour to her old friend's burial--three sons, and four daughters, and three sons-in-law. They all stood round the grave, as near as might be to the stone that Gertrude, as a child, had laid under his care, when his silver hair had mingled with her golden locks; and with them was a concourse that evidently impressed the nephew with a new idea of the estimation in which his uncle had been held. Tom had travelled all night, and had arrived only just in time. Nobody was able to say a word to him before setting off; and almost immediately after the return, Sir Matthew Fleet seized upon him to walk up to the station with him, and, to the infinite disgust of the nephew, the reading of the will was thus delayed until the executor came back, extremely grave and thoughtful. After all, Mr. Spencer had no available grievance. His uncle's property was very little altogether, amounting scarcely to a thousand pounds, but the bulk was bequeathed to the nephew; to Aubrey May was left his watch, and a piece of plate presented to him on his leaving India; to Dr. May a few books; to Tom the chief of his library, his papers, notes, and instruments, and the manuscript of a work upon diseases connected with climate, on which he had been engaged for many years, but had never succeeded in polishing to his own fastidious satisfaction, or in coming to the end of new discoveries. To Etheldred, his only legacy was his writing-desk, with all its contents. And Mr. Spencer looked so suspicious of those contents, that Tom made her open it before him, and show that they were nothing but letters. It had been a morning of the mixture of feelings and restless bustle, so apt to take place where the affection is not explained by relationship; and when the strangers were gone, and the family were once again alone, there was a drawing of freer breath, and the Doctor threw himself back in his chair, and indulged in a long, heavy sigh, with a weary sound in it. 'Can I go anywhere for you, father?' said Tom, turning to him with a kind and respectful manner. 'Oh no--no, thank you,' he said, rousing himself, and laying his hand on the bell, 'I must go over to Overfield; but I shall be glad of the drive. Well, Dr. Tom, what did you say to Fleet's proposal?' 'I said I would come up to town and settle about it when I had got through this executor business.' 'You always were a lucky fellow, Tom,' said Dr. May, trying to be interested and sympathetic. 'You would not wish for anything better.' 'I don't know, I have not had time to think about it yet,' said Tom, pulling off his spectacles and pushing back his hair, with an action of sadness and fatigue. 'Ah! it was not the best of times to choose for the communication; but it was kindly meant. I never expected to see Fleet take so much trouble for any one. But you are done up, Tom, with your night journey.' 'Not at all,' he answered, briskly, 'if I can do anything for you. Could not I go down to the hospital?' 'Why, if I were not to be back till five,' began Dr. May, considering, and calling him into the hall to receive directions, from which he came back, saying, 'There! now then, Ethel, we had better look over things, and get them in train.' 'You are so tired, Tom.' 'Not too much for that,' he said. But it was a vain boast; he was too much fatigued to turn his mind to business requiring thought, though capable of slow, languid reading and sorting of papers. Aubrey's legacy was discovered with much difficulty. In fact, it had never been heard of, nor seen the light, since its presentation, and was at last found in a lumber closet, in a strong box, in Indian packing. It was a compromise between an epergne and a candelabrum, growing out of the howdah of an unfortunate elephant, pinning one tiger to the ground, and with another hanging on behind, in the midst of a jungle of palm-trees and cobras; and beneath was an elaborate inscription, so laudatory of Aubrey Spencer, M. D., that nobody wondered he had never unpacked it, and that it was yellow with tarnish--the only marvel was, that he had never disposed of it; but that it was likely to wait for the days when Aubrey might be a general and own a side-board. The other bequests were far more appreciated. Tom had known of the book in hand, was certain of its value to the faculty, and was much gratified by the charge of it, both as a matter of feeling and of interest. But while he looked over and sorted the mass of curious notes, his attention was far more set on the desk, that reverently, almost timidly, Ethel examined, well knowing why she had been selected as the depositary of these relics. There they were, some embrowned by a burn in the corner, as though there had been an attempt to destroy them, in which there had been no heart to persevere. It was but little, after all, two formal notes in which Professor Norman Mackenzie asked the honour of Mr. Spencer's company to dinner, but in handwriting that was none of the professor's--writing better known to Ethel than to Tom--and a series of their father's letters, from their first separation till the traveller's own silence had caused their correspondence to drop. Charming letters they were, such as people wrote before the penny-post had spoilt the epistolary art--long, minute, and overflowing with brilliant happiness. Several of them were urgent invitations to Stoneborough, and one of these was finished in that other hand--the delicate, well-rounded writing that would not be inherited--entreating Dr. Spencer to give a few days to Stoneborough, 'it would be such a pleasure to Richard to show him the children.' Ethel did not feel sure whether to see these would give pain or pleasure to her father. He would certainly be grieved to see how much suffering he must have inflicted in the innocence of his heart, and in the glory of his happiness; and Tom, with a sort of shudder, advised her to keep them to herself, he was sure they would give nothing but pain. She had no choice just then, for it was a time of unusual occupation, and the difference made by their loss told immediately--the more, perhaps, because it was the beginning of November, and there was much municipal business to be attended to. However it might be for the future, during the ensuing week Dr. May never came in for a meal with the rest of the family; was too much fagged for anything but sleep when he came home at night; and on the Sunday morning, when they all had reckoned on going to Cocksmoor together, he was obliged to give it up, and only come into the Minster at the end of the prayers. Every one knew that he was not a good manager of his time, and this made things worse; and he declared that he should make arrangements for being less taken up; but it was sad to see him overburthened, and Tom, as only a casual visitor, could do little to lessen his toil, though that little was done readily and attentively. There were no rubs between the two, and scarcely any conversation. Tom would not discuss his prospects; and it was not clear whether he meant to avail himself of Sir Matthew's patronage; he committed himself to nothing but his wish that it were possible to stay in Paris; and he avoided even talking to his sister. Not till a week after he had left home for London came a letter 'Dear Ethel, 'I have told Fleet that I am convinced of my only right course. I could never get the book finished properly if I got into his line, and I must have peaceable evenings for it at home. I suppose my father would not like to let Dr. Spencer's house. If I might have it, and keep my own hours and habits, I think it would conduce to our working better together. I am afraid I kept you in needless distress about him, but I wanted to judge for myself of the necessity, and to think over the resignation of that quest. I must commit it to Brown. I hope it is not too great a risk; but it can't be helped. It is a matter of course that I should come home now the helper is gone; I always knew it would come to that. Manage it as quietly as you can. I must go to Paris for a fortnight, to bring home my things, and by that time my father had better get me appointed to the hospital. 'Yours ever, 'TH. MAY.' Ethel was not so much surprised as her father, who thought she must have been working upon Tom's feelings; but this she disavowed, except that it had been impossible not to growl at patients sending at unreasonable hours. Then he hoped that Fleet had not been disappointing the lad; but this notion was nullified by a remonstrance from the knight, on the impolicy of burying such talents for the sake of present help; and even proposing to send a promising young man in Tom's stead. 'Not too good for poor Stoneborough,' said Dr. May, smiling. 'No, no, I'm not so decrepit as that, whatever he and Tom may have thought me; I fancy I could tire out both of them. I can't have the poor boy giving up all his prospects for my sake, Ethel. I never looked for it, and I shall write and tell him so! Mind, Ethel, I shall write, not you! I know you would only stroke him down, and bring him home to regret it. No, no, I won't always be treated like Karl, in "Debit and Credit", who the old giant thought could neither write nor be written to, because his finger was off.' And Dr. May's letter was the first which this son had ever had from him. 'My Dear Tom, 'I feel your kind intentions to the heart; it is like all the rest of your dear mother's children; but the young ought not to be sacrificed to the old, and I won't have it done. The whole tone of practice has altered since my time, and I do not want to bind you down to the routine. I had left off thinking of it since I knew of your distaste. I have some years of work in me yet, that will see out most of my old patients; and for the rest, Wright is a great advance on poor Ward, and I will leave more to him as I grow older. I mean to see you a great man yet, and I think you will be the greater and happier for the sacrifice you have been willing to make. His blessing on you. 'Your loving father, 'R. M.' What was Tom's answer, but one of his cool 'good letters,' a demonstration that he was actuated by the calmest motives of convenience and self-interest, in preferring the certainties of Stoneborough to the contingencies of London, and that he only wanted time for study and the completion of Dr. Spencer's book, enforcing his request for the house. His resolution was, as usual, too evident to be combated, and it was also plain that he chose to keep on the mask of prudent selfishness, which he wore so naturally that it was hard to give him credit for any other features; but this time Dr. May was not deceived. He fully estimated the sacrifice, and would have prevented it if he could; but he never questioned the sincerity of the motive, as it was not upon the surface; and the token of dutiful affection, as coming from the least likely quarter of his family, touched and comforted him. He dwelt on it with increasing satisfaction, and answered all hurries and worries with, 'I shall have time when Tome is come;' re-opened old schemes that had died away when he feared to have no successor, and now and then showed a certain comical dread of being drilled into conformity with Tom's orderly habits. There was less danger of their clashing, as the son had outgrown the presumptions of early youth, and a change had passed over his nature which Ethel had felt, rather than seen, during his fleeting visits at home, more marked by negatives than positives, and untraced by confidences. The bitterness and self-assertion had ceased to tinge his words, the uncomfortable doubt that they were underlaid by satire had passed away, and methodical and self-possessed as he always was, the atmosphere of 'number one' was no longer apparent round all his doings. He could be out of spirits and reserved without being either ill-tempered or ironical; and Ethel, with this as the upshot of her week's observations, was reassured as to the hopes of the father and son working together without collisions. As soon as the die was cast, and there was no danger of undue persuasion in 'stroking him down,' she indulged herself by a warmly-grateful letter, and after she had sent it, was tormented by the fear that it would be a great offence. The answer was much longer than she had dared to expect, and alarmed her lest it should be one of his careful ways of making the worst of himself; but there was a large 'Private,' scored in almost menacing letters on the top of the first sheet, and so much blotted in the folding, that it was plain that he had taken alarm at the unreserve of his own letter. 'My Dear Ethel, 'I have been to Portland. Really my father ought to make a stir and get Ward's health attended to; he looks very much altered, but will not own to anything being amiss. They say he has been depressed ever since he heard of Minna's death. I should say he ought to be doing out-of-doors work--perhaps at Gibraltar, but then he would be out of our reach. I could not get much from him, but that patient, contented look is almost more than one can bear. It laid hold of me when I saw him the first time, and has haunted me ever since. Verily I believe it is what is bringing me home! You need not thank me, for it is sober calculation that convinces me that no success on earth would compensate for the perpetual sense that my father was wearing himself out, and you pining over the sight. Except just at first, I always meant to come and see how the land lay before pledging myself to anything; and nothing can be clearer than that, in the state of things my father has allowed to spring up, he must have help. I am glad you have got me the old house, for I can be at peace there till I have learnt to stand his unmethodical ways. Don't let him expect too much of me, as I see he is going to do. It is not in me to be like Norman or Harry, and he must not look for it, least of all now. If you did not understand, and know when to hold your tongue, I do not think I could come home at all; as it is, you are all the comfort I look for. I cross to Paris to-morrow. That is a page I am very sorry to close. I had a confidence that I should have hunted down that fellow, and the sight of Portland and the accounts from Massissauga alike make one long to have one's hands on his throat; but that hope is ended now, and to loiter about Paris in search of him, when it it a plain duty to come away, would be one of the presumptuous acts that come to no good. Let them discuss what they will, there's nothing so hard to believe in as Divine Justice! And yet that uncomplaining face accepts it! You need say nothing about this letter. I will talk about Leonard with my father when I get home. 'Ever yours, 'Thomas May.' CHAPTER XXV But soon as once the genial plain Has drunk the life-blood of the slain, Indelible the spots remain; And aye for vengeance call, Till racking pangs of piercing pain Upon the guilty fall. AEschylus. (Translated by Professor Anstice.) If Tom May's arrival at home was eagerly anticipated there, it was with a heavy heart that he prepared for what he had never ceased to look on as a treadmill life. He had enjoyed Paris, both from the society and the abstract study, since he still retained that taste for theory rather than practice, which made him prefer diseases to sick people, and all sick people to those of Stoneborough. The student life, in the freedom of a foreign capital, was, even while devoid of license and irregularity, much pleasanter than what he foresaw at home, even though he had obtained a separate establishment. His residence at Paris, with the vague hope it afforded, cost him more in the resignation than his prospects in London. It was the week when he would have been canvassing for the appointment, and he was glad to linger abroad out of reach of Sir Matthew's remonstrances, and his father's compunction, while he was engaged in arranging for a French translation of Dr. Spencer's book, and likewise in watching an interesting case, esteemed a great medical curiosity, at the Hotel Dieu. He was waiting in the lecture-room, when one of the house surgeons came in, saying, 'Ah! I am glad to see you here. A compatriot of yours has been brought in, mortally injured in a gambling fray. You may perhaps assist in getting him identified.' Tom followed him to the accident ward, and beheld a senseless figure, with bloated and discoloured features, distorted by the effects of the injury, a blow upon the temple, which had caused a fall backwards on the sharp edge of a stove, occasioning fatal injury to the spine. Albeit well accustomed to gaze critically upon the tokens of mortal agony, Tom felt an unusual shudder of horror and repugnance as he glanced on the countenance, so disfigured and contorted that there was no chance of recognition, and turned his attention to the clothes, which lay in a heap on the floor. The contents of the pockets had been taken out, and consisted only of some pawnbroker's duplicates, a cigar-case, and a memorandum-book, which last he took in his hand, and began to unfasten, without looking at it, while he took part in the conversation of the surgeons on the technical nature of the injuries. Thus he stood for some seconds, before, on the house surgeon asking if he had found any address, he cast his eyes on the pages which lay open in his hand. 'Ha! What have you found?--He does not hear! Is it the portrait of the beloved object? Is it a brother--an enemy--or a debt? But he is truly transfixed! It is an effect of the Gorgon's head!' 'July 15th, 1860. Received £120. 'L. A. WARD.' There stood Tom May, like one petrified, deaf to the words around, his dazzled eyes fixed on the letters, his faculties concentrated in the endeavour to ascertain whether they were sight or imagination. Yes, there they were, the very words in the well-known writing, the school-boy's forming into the clerk's, there was the blot in the top of the L! Tom's heart gave one wild bound, then all sensation, except the sight of the writing, ceased, the exclamations of those around him came surging gradually on his ear, as if from a distance, and he did not yet hear them distinctly when he replied alertly, almost lightly, 'Here is a name that surprises me. Let me look at the patient again.' 'No dear friend?' asked his chief intimate, in a tone ready to become gaiety or sympathy. 'No, indeed,' said Tom, shuddering as he stood over the insensible wretch, and perceived what it had been which had thrilled him with such unwonted horror, for, fixed by the paralyzing convulsion of the fatal blow, he saw the scowl and grin of deadly malevolence that had been the terror of his childhood, and that had fascinated his eyes at the moment of Leonard's sentence. Changed by debauchery, defaced by violence, contorted by the injured brain, the features would scarcely have been recalled to him but for the frightful expression stamped on his memory by the miseries of his timid boyhood. 'Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.' The awful thought, answering his own struggle for faith in Divine Justice, crossed him, as he heard the injury on the head defined, in almost the same scientific terms that had so often rung on his ears as the causes of Francis Axworthy's death; but this was no society where he could give vent to his feelings, and mastering himself with difficulty he answered, 'I know Him. He is from my own town.' 'Has he friends or relations?' 'Relations, yes,' said Tom, hardly able to restrain a trembling of the lip, half horror, half irony. 'None here, none near. They shall know.' 'And means?' 'Once he had. Probably none now.' To Tom's great relief, a new case drew off general attention. There only remained the surgeon who had called him at first, and with whom he was particularly intimate. 'Gaspard,' he said, 'shall you have charge of this case?' 'Brief charge it will be, apparently! I will volunteer to watch it, if it is your desire! Is it friendship, or enmity, or simple humanity?' 'All!' said Tom, hastily. 'It is the clearing up of a horrible mystery--freedom for an innocent prisoner--I must tell you the rest at leisure. There is much to be done now in case of his reviving.' This was remotely possible, but very doubtful; and Tom impressed on both Gaspard and the nursing sister the most stringent entreaties to summon him on the first symptom. He then gave the name of the unhappy man, and, though unwilling to separate himself from that invaluable pocket-book, perceived the necessity of leaving it as a deposit with the authorities of the hospital, after he had fully examined it, recognizing Leonard's description in each particular, the cipher F. A. on the tarnished silver clasp, the shagreen cover, and the receipt on a page a little past the middle. On the other half of the leaf was the entry of some sums due to the house; and it contained other papers which the guilty wretch had been evidently eager to secure, yet afraid to employ, and that, no doubt, were the cause that, like so many other murderers on record, he had preserved that which was the most fatal proof against himself. Or could it be with some notion of future relenting, that he had refrained from its destruction? With brain still seeming to reel at the discovery, and limbs actually trembling with the shock, Tom managed to preserve sufficient coolness and discretion to bring back to mind the measures he had so often planned for any such contingency. Calling a cabriolet, he repaired to the police-station nearest to the scene of the contest, and there learnt that Axworthy had long been watched as a dangerous subject, full of turbulence, and with no visible means of maintenance. The officials had taken charge of the few personal effects in his miserable lodgings, and were endeavouring to secure the person who had struck the fatal blow. His next measure was to go to the British Embassy, where, through his sister Flora's introductions, and his own Eton connections, he was already well known; and telling his story there, without any attempt to conceal his breathless agitation, he had no difficulty in bringing with him a companion who would authenticate the discovery of the receipt, and certify to any confession that might be obtained. A confession! That was the one matter of the most intense interest. Tom considered whether to secure the presence of a clergyman, but suspected that this would put Axworthy on his guard rather than soften him, and therefore only wrote to the chaplain, begging him to hold himself in readiness for a summons to the Hotel Dieu, whither he drove rapidly back with his diplomatic friend, whom he wrought up well-nigh to his own pitch of expectation. He had already decided on his own first address--pitying, but manifesting that nothing, not even vengeance, could be gained by concealment; and then, according to the effect, would he try either softening or threatening to extort the truth. Gaspard was eagerly awaiting them. 'I had already sent for you,' he said. 'The agony is commencing; he has spoken, but he has not his full consciousness.' Tom hurried on, drawing after him the young diplomate, who would have hung back, questioning if there were any use in his witnessing the dying struggles of a delirious man. 'Come, come,' peremptorily repeated Tom, 'there must be some last words. Every moment is of importance.' Yet his trust was shaken by the perception of the progress that death had made in the miserable frame during his absence. The fixed expression of malignity had been forced to yield to exhaustion and anguish, the lips moved, but the murmurs between the moans were scarcely articulate. 'He is almost past it,' said Tom, 'but there is the one chance that he may be roused by my voice.' And having placed his friend conveniently, both for listening and making notes, he came close to the bed, and spoke in a tone of compassion. 'Axworthy, I say, Axworthy, is there anything I can do for you?' There was a motion of the lid of the fast-glazing eye; but the terrible face of hatred came back, with the audible words, 'I tell you, you old fool, none of the Mays are to come prying about my place.' Appalled by the deadly malice of the imprecation and the look that accompanied this partial recognition of his voice, Tom was nerving himself to speak again, when the dying man, as if roused by the echo of his own thought, burst out, 'Who? What is it? I say Dr. May shall not be called in! He never attended the old man! Let him mind his own business! I was all night at the Three Goblets. Yes, I was! The new darling will catch it--going off with the money upon him--' and the laugh made their blood run cold. 'I've got the receipt;' and he made an attempt at thrusting his hand under the pillow, but failing, swore, shouted, howled with his last strength, that he had been robbed--the pocket-book--it would hang him! and with one of the most fearful shrieks of despair that had perhaps ever rung through that asylum of pain, woe, and death, the wretched spirit departed. Tom May turned aside, made a few steps, and, to the infinite surprise of every one, fell helplessly down in a swoon. A nature of deep and real sensibility, though repressed by external reserve and prudence, could not with entire impunity undergo such a scene. The sudden discovery, the vehement excitement forced down, the intense strain of expectation, and finally, the closing horror of such a death, betraying the crime without repenting of it, passing to the other world with imprecations on the lips, and hatred in the glare of the eye, all the frightfulness enhanced by the familiarity of the allusions, and the ghastly association of the tones that had tempted and tyrannized over his childhood, altogether crushed and annihilated his faculties, mental and bodily. Oh, when our very hearts burn for justice, how little do we know how intolerable would be the sight of it! Tom's caution and readiness returned as soon as--after a somewhat long interval--he began to distinguish the voices round him, and perceive the amazement he had created. Before he was able to sit up on the couch, where he had been laid out of sight of the scene which had affected him so strongly, he was urging his friend to set down all that had been spoken, and on Gaspard's writing a separate deposition. The pocket-book, and other effects, were readily ceded to the British authority, and were carried away with them. How Tom got through the remaining hours of the day and the night he never recollected, though he knew it must have been in the bustle of preparation, and that he had imparted the tidings to Leonard's friend Brown, for when he and his friend had attended that which answered to an inquest on the body, and had obtained a report of the proceedings, he was ready to start by the night train, bearing with him the attestations of the death-bed scene at the Hotel Dieu, and the long-lost memorandum-book, and was assured that the next mail would carry an official letter to the Home Office, detailing the circumstances of Samuel Axworthy's decease. Brown came to bid him farewell, full of gladness and warm congratulation, which he longed to send to his friend, but which Tom only received with hasty, half-comprehending assents. Late in the afternoon he reached Stoneborough, found no one come in, and sat down in the fire-light, where, for all his impatience, fatigue had made him drop asleep, when he was roused by Gertrude's voice, exclaiming, 'Here really is Tom come, as you said he would, without writing. Here are all his goods in the hall.' 'Is it you, Tom!' cried Ethel. 'Notice or no notice, we are glad of you. But what is the matter?' 'Where's my father?' 'Coming. Charles Cheviot took him down to look at one of the boys. Is there anything the matter?' she added, after a pause. 'No, nothing.' 'You look very odd,' added Gertrude. He gave a nervous laugh. 'You would look odd, if you had travelled all night.' They commented, and began to tell home news; but Ethel noted that he neither spoke nor heard, only listened for his father. Gertrude grew tired of inattentive answers, and said she should go and dress. Ethel was turning to follow, when he caught hold of her cloak, and drew her close to him. 'Ethel,' he said, in a husky, stifled voice, 'do you know this?' On her knees, by the red fire-light, she saw the 'L. A. Ward,' and looked up. 'Is it?' she said. He bowed his head. And then Ethel put her arm round his neck, as he knelt down by her; and he found that her tears, her rare tears, were streaming down, silent but irrepressible. She had not spoken, had asked no question, made no remark, when Dr. Mays entrance was heard, and she loosed her hold on her brother, out without rising from the floor, looked up from under the shade of her hat, and said, 'O, papa! it is found, and he has done it! Look there!' Her choked voice, and tokens of emotion, startled the Doctor; but Tom, in a matter-of-fact tone, took up the word: 'How are you, father?--Yes. I have only met with this little memorandum.' Dr. May recognized it with a burst of incoherent inquiry and exclamation, wringing Tom's hand, and giving no time for an answer; and, indeed, his son attempted none--till, calming himself, the Doctor subsided into his arm-chair, and with a deep sigh, exclaimed, 'Now then, Tom, let us hear. Where does this come from?' 'From the casualty ward at the Hotel Dieu.' 'And from--' 'He is dead,' said Tom, answering the unspoken question. 'You will find it all here. Ethel, do I sleep here to-night? My old room?' As he spoke, he bent to light a spill at the fire, and then the two candles on the side-table; but his hand shook nervously, and though he turned away his face, his father and sister saw the paleness of his cheek, and knew that he must have received a great shock. Neither spoke, while he put one candle conveniently for his father, took up the other, and went away with it. With one inquisitive glance at each other, they turned to the papers, and with eager eyes devoured the written narratives of Tom himself and of the attache, then, with no less avidity, the French reports accompanying them. Hardly a word was spoken while Ethel leant against her father's knee, and he almost singed his hair in the candle, as they helped one another out in the difficulties of the crooked foreign writing. 'Will it be enough?' asked Ethel, at last, holding her breath for the answer. 'If there is justice in England!' said Dr. May. 'Heaven forgive me, Ethel, this business has tried my trust more than anything that ever befell me; but it will all be right now, and righter than right, if that boy comes out what I think him.' 'And oh, how soon?' 'Not a moment longer than can be helped. I'd go up by the mail train this very night if it would do any good.' Tom, who reappeared as soon as he had spared himself the necessity of the narration, was willing and eager to set out; but Dr. May, who by this time had gathered some idea of what he had gone through, and saw that he was restless, nervous, and unhinged, began to reconsider the expedience of another night journey, and was, for once in his life, the person cool enough to see that it would be wisest to call Bramshaw into their counsels, and only that night to send up a note mentioning that they would do themselves the honour of calling at the Home Office the next day, on matters connected with the intelligence received that morning from the British Embassy at Paris. Tom was disappointed; he was in no mood for sitting still, and far less for talking. As a matter of business, he would elucidate any question, but conversation on what he had witnessed was impossible to him; and when Gertrude, with a girl's lightness, lamented over being balked of a confession and explanation, he gravely answered, that she did not know what she was talking of; and his father led away from the subject. Indeed, Dr. May was full of kindness and consideration, being evidently not only grateful for the discovery, but touched by his entire absence of exulting triumph, and his strong sense of awe in the retribution. That changed and awe-struck manner impressed both the sisters, so that all the evening Ethel felt subdued as by a strange shock, and even through the night and morning could hardly realize that it was intense relief--joy, not sorrow--that made her feel so unlike herself, and that the burthen was taken away from her heart. Even then, there was a trembling of anxiety. The prisoner might be set free; but who could give back to him the sister who had pined away in exile, or the three years of his youthful brightness? There might be better things in store; but she knew she must not look again for the boy of ingenuous countenance, whose chivalrous devotion to herself had had such a charm, even while she tried to prize it at its lightest worth. It was foolish to recollect it with a pang, but there was no helping it. In the great tragedy, she had forgotten that the pretty comedy was over, but she regretted it, rather as she did the pleasant baby-days of Aubrey and Gertrude. Indeed, during the day of suspense, while the two physicians were gone to London, taking with them the papers, and a minute detail of the evidence at the trial, Gertrude's high spirits, triumph over Charles Cheviot, and desire to trumpet forth the good news, were oppressive. How many times that day was Mab stroked, and assured that her master would come back! And how often did the two sisters endeavour to persuade themselves that she was not grown broader in the back! Mary was, of course, told early in the day, but Gertrude got less sympathy from her than answered to that damsel's extortionate expectations, for, according to her wicked account, Mary's little Charlie had sneezed three times, and his mamma must regret what sent all the medical science of Stoneborough away by the early train. However, Tom came home at night. The interview had been satisfactory. The letters received in the morning had prepared the way, and revived the recollection of the unsatisfactory case of Leonard Axworthy Ward, and of the representations of the then Mayor of Market Stoneborough. After all the new lights upon the matter had been looked into, the father and son had been assured that, as soon as possible, a free pardon should be issued, so drawn up as to imply a declaration of innocence--the nearest possible approach to a reversal of the sentence; and they further were told of a mention of his exemplary conduct in a late report from Portland, containing a request that he might be promoted to a post of greater influence and trust before the ordinary time of probation had passed. Dr. May was eager to be at Portland at the same time as the pardon, so to give Leonard the first intelligence, and to bring him home; and he had warmly closed with Tom's offer to look after the work, while he himself waited till the necessary forms had been complied with. He had absolutely begged Tom's pardon for going in his stead. 'It is your right,' he said; 'but, somehow, I think, as I have been more with him, I might do better.' To which Tom had assented with all his heart, and had added that he would not go if he were paid for it. He had further taken care that the Doctor should take with him a suit of clothes for Leonard to come home in, and had himself made the selection; then came back with the tidings that filled the house with the certainty of joy, and the uncertainty of expectation. Nobody was, however, in such a fever as Tom himself. He was marvellously restless all the morning. Gertrude asserted it was because he was miserable at not venturing to set his father's study to rights; and to be sure he was seen looking round at the litter with a face of great disgust, and declaring that he was ashamed to see a patient in a room in such a mess. But this did not fully account for his being in and out, backwards and forwards, all the morning, looking wistfully at Ethel, and then asking some trivial question about messages left for his father, or matters respecting his own new abode, where he kept on Dr. Spencer's old housekeeper, and was about to turn in paperers and painters. He had actually brought a drawing-room paper from Paris, a most delicate and graceful affair, much too lady-like for the old house, as Daisy told him, when she pursued him and her sister down to a consultation. Late in the afternoon, as the sisters were coming up the High Street, they met him setting out in Hector's dog-cart. 'Oh, I say, Ethel,' he said, drawing up, 'do you like a drive out to Chilford? Here's a note come to ask my father to see the old lady there, and I want some one to give me courage to be looked at, like the curate in the pulpit instead of the crack preacher.' It was an offer not to be despised, though Ethel knew what a waiting there would be, and what a dark drive home. Up she jumped, and Tom showed his usual thoughtfulness by ordering Gertrude to run home and fetch her muff and an additional cloak, tucking her up himself with the carriage rug. That affection of Tom's had been slow in coming, but always gave her a sense of gratitude and enjoyment. They drove all the seven miles to Chilford without twenty words passing between them; and when there, she sat in the road, and watched one constellation after another fill up its complement of stars as well as the moon permitted, wondering whether Tom's near-sighted driving would be safe in the dark; but her heart was so light, so glad, that she could not be afraid, she did not care how long she waited, it was only sitting still to recollect that deliverance had come to the captive--Leonard was free--'free as heart can think or eye can see,' as would keep ringing in her ears like a joy-bell; and some better things, too. 'Until the time came that his cause was known, the Word of the Lord tried him.' Whether she were really too happy to note time, or that gossipry was deducted from the visit, Tom certainly returned sooner than her experience had led her to expect, made an exclamation of dismay at finding the machine was innocent of lamps, and remounted to his seat, prepared to be extremely careful. 'I could not get them to take me for my father in a new wig,' he said; 'but it was a very easy-going rheumatic case, and I think I satisfied her.' Then on he drove for a mile, till he was out of the bad cross-country road, and at last he said, 'Ethel, I have made up my mind. There's no press of work just now, and I find it is advisable I should go to America before I get into harness here.' 'To America!' 'Yes, about this book of dear old Spencer's. It is a thing that must be complete, and I find he was in correspondence with some men of science there. I could satisfy my mind on a few points, which would make it infinitely more valuable, you see--and get it published there too. I know my father would wish every justice to be done to it.' 'I know he would; and,' continued Ethel, as innocently as she could, 'shall you see the Wards?' 'Why,' said Tom, in his deliberate voice, 'that is just one thing; I want particularly to see Henry. I had a talk with Wright this morning, and he tells me that young Baines, at Whitford, is going to the dogs, and the practice coming in to him. He thinks of having a partner, and I put out a feeler in case Henry Ward should choose to come back, and found it might do very well. But the proposal must come from him, and there's no time to be lost, so I thought of setting out as soon as I hear my father is on his way back.' 'Not waiting to see Leonard?' 'I did see him not a month ago. Besides--' and his voice came to a sudden end. 'Yes, the first news,' said Ethel. 'Indeed it is due to you, Tom.' Ten minutes more of silence. 'Ethel, did she ever tell you?' 'Never,' said Ethel, her heart beating. 'Then how did you know all about it?' 'I didn't know. I only saw--' 'Saw what?' 'That you were very much distressed.' 'And very kind and rational you were about it,' said Tom, warmly; 'I never thought any woman could have guessed so much, without making mischief. But you must not put any misconstruction on my present intention. All I mean to do as yet is to induce Henry to remove them out of that dismal swamp, and bring them home to comfort and civilization. Then it may be time to--' He became silent; and Ethel longed ardently to ask further, but still she durst not, and he presently began again. 'Ethel, was I very intolerable that winter of the volunteers, when Harry was at home?' 'You are very much improved since,' she answered. 'That's just like Flora. Answer like yourself.' 'Well, you were! You were terribly rampant in Eton refinement, and very anxious to hinder all the others from making fools of themselves.' 'I remember! I thought you had all got into intimacies that were for nobody's good, and I still think it was foolish. I know it has done for me! Well,' hastily catching up this last admission, as if it had dropped out at unawares, 'you think I made myself disagreeable?' 'On principle.' 'Ah! then you would not wonder at what she said--that she had never seen anything in me but contemptuous irony.' 'I think, sometimes feeling that you were satirical, she took all your courtesy for irony--whatever you meant. I have heard other people say the same. But when--was this on the day--the day you went to remonstrate?' 'Yes. I declare to you, Ethel, that I had no conception of what I was going to do! I never dreamt that I was in for it. I knew she was--was attractive--and that made me hate to see Harry with her, and I could not bear her being carried off to this horrible place--but as to myself, I never thought of it till I saw her--white and broken--' and then came that old action Ethel knew so well in her father, of clearing the dew from the glasses, and his voice was half sob, 'and with no creature but that selfish brother to take care of her. I couldn't help it, Ethel--no one could--and this--this was her answer. I don't wonder. I had been a supercilious prig, and I ought to have known better than to think I could comfort her.' 'I think the remembrance must have comforted her since.' 'What--what, has she said anything?' 'Oh no, she could not, you know. But I am sure, if it did anger her at the moment, there must have been comfort in recollecting that even such a terrible trouble had not alienated you. And now--' 'Now that's just what I don't want! I don't want to stalk in and say here's the hero of romance that has saved your brother! I want to get her home, and show her that I can be civil without being satirical, and then, perhaps, she would forgive me.' 'Forgive you--' 'I mean forgiveness won, not purchased. And after all, you know it was mere accident--Providence if you please--that brought me to that poor wretch; all my plans of tracking him had come to an end; any one else could have done what I did.' 'She will not feel that,' said Ethel; 'but indeed, Tom, I see what you mean, and like it. It is yourself, and not the conferrer of the benefit, that you want her to care for.' 'Exactly,' said Tom. 'And, Ethel, I must have seen her and judged of my chance before I can be good for anything. I tried to forget it--own it as a lucky escape--a mere passing matter, like Harry's affairs--but I could not do it. Perhaps I could if things had gone well; but that dear face of misery, that I only stung by my attempts to comfort, would stick fast with me, and to go and see Leonard only brought it more home. It is a horrid bad speculation, and Flora and Cheviot and Blanche will scout it; but, Ethel, you'll help me through, and my father will not mind, I know.' 'Papa will feel as I do, Tom--that it has been your great blessing, turn out as it may.' 'H'm! has it? A blessing on the wrong side of one's mouth--to go about with a barb one knew one was a fool for, and yet couldn't forget! Well, I know what you mean, and I believe it was. I would not have had it annihilated, when the first mood was over.' 'It was that which made it so hard to you to come home, was it not?' 'Yes; but it was odd enough, however hard it was to think of coming, you always sent me away more at peace, Ethel. I can't think how you did it, knowing nothing.' 'I think you came at the right time.' 'You see, I did think that while Spencer lived, I might follow up the track, and see a little of the world--try if that would put out that face and voice. But it won't do. If this hadn't happened, I would have tied myself down, and done my best to get comfort out of you, and the hospital, and these 'Diseases of Climate'--I suppose one might in time, if things went well with her; but, as it is, I can't rest till I have seen if they can be got home again. So, Ethel, don't mind if I go before my father comes home. I can't stand explanations with him, and I had rather you did not proclaim this. You see the book, and getting Henry home, are really the reasons, and I shan't molest her again--no--not till she has learnt to know what is irony.' 'I think if you did talk it over with papa, you would feel the comfort, and know him better.' 'Well, well, I dare say, but I can't do it, Ethel. Either he shuts me up at first, with some joke, or--' and Tom stopped; but Ethel knew what he meant. There was on her father's side an involuntary absence of perfect trust in this son, and on Tom's there was a character so sensitive that her father's playfulness grated, and so reserved that his demonstrative feelings were a still greater trial to one who could not endure outward emotion. 'Besides,' added Tom, 'there is really nothing--nothing to tell. I'm not going to commit myself. I don't know whether I ever shall. I was mad that day, and I want to satisfy my mind whether I think the same now I am sane, and if I do, I shall have enough to do to make her forget the winter when I made myself such an ass. When I have done that, it may be time to speak to my father. I really am going out about the book. When did you hear last?' 'That is what makes me anxious. I have not heard for two months, and that is longer than she ever was before without writing, except when Minna was ill.' 'We shall know if Leonard has heard.' 'No, she always writes under cover to us.' The course that the conversation then took did not look much like Tom's doubt whether his own views would be the same. All the long-repressed discussion of Averil's merits, her beautiful eyes, her sweet voice, her refinement, her real worth, the wonder that she and Leonard should be so superior to the rest of the family, were freely indulged at last, and Ethel could give far heartier sympathy than if this had come to her three years ago. Averil had been for two years her correspondent, and the patient sweetness and cheerfulness of those letters had given a far higher estimate of her nature than the passing intercourse of the town life had left. The terrible discipline of these years of exile and sorrow had, Ethel could well believe, worked out something very different from the well-intentioned wilful girl whose spirit of partisanship had been so fatal an element of discord. Distance had, in truth, made them acquainted, and won their love to one another. Tom's last words, as he drew up under the lime-trees before the door, were, 'Mind, I am only going about the 'Diseases of Climate'.' CHAPTER XXVI And Bishop Gawain as he rose, Said, 'Wilton, grieve not for thy woes, Disgrace and trouble; For He who honour best bestows, Can give thee double.'--Marmion Dr. May had written to Portland, entreating that no communication might be made to Leonard Ward before his arrival; and the good physician's affection for the prisoner had been so much observed, that no one would have felt it fair to anticipate him. Indeed, he presented himself at the prison gates only two hours after the arrival of the documents, when no one but the governor was aware of their contents. Leonard was as usual at his business in the schoolmaster's department; and thither a summons was sent for him, while Dr. May and the governor alone awaited his arrival. Tom's visit was still very recent; and Leonard entered with anxious eyes, brow drawn together, and compressed lips, as though braced to meet another blow; and the unusual room, the presence of the governor instead of the warder, and Dr. May's irrepressible emotion, so confirmed the impression, that his face at once assumed a resolute look of painful expectation. 'My boy,' said Dr. May, clasping both his hands in his own, 'you have borne much of ill. Can you bear to hear good news?' 'Am I to be sent out to Australia already?' said Leonard--for a shortening of the eight years before his ticket-of-leave was the sole hope that had presented itself. 'Sent out, yes; out to go wherever you please, Leonard. The right is come round. The truth is out. You are a free man! Do you know what that is? It is a pardon. Your pardon. All that can be done to right you, my boy--but it is as good as a reversal of the sentence.' The Doctor had spoken this with pauses; going on, as Leonard, instead of answering, stood like one in a dream, and at last said with difficulty, 'Who did it then?' 'It was as you always believed.' 'Has he told?' said Leonard, drawing his brows together with the effort to understand. 'No, Leonard. The vengeance he had brought on himself did not give space for repentance; but the pocket-book, with your receipt, was upon him, and your innocence is established.' 'And let me congratulate you,' added the governor, shaking hands with him; 'and add, that all I have known of you has been as complete an exculpation as any discovery can be.' Leonard's hand was passive, his cheek had become white, his forehead still knit. 'Axworthy!' he said, still as in a trance. 'Yes. Hurt in a brawl at Paris. He was brought to the Hotel Dieu; and my son Tom was called to see him.' 'Sam Axworthy! repeated Leonard, putting his hand over his eyes, as if one sensation overpowered everything else; and thus he stood for some seconds, to the perplexity of both. They showed him the papers: he gazed, but without comprehension; and then putting the bag, provided by Tom, into his hand, they sent him, moving in a sort of mechanical obedience, into the room of one of the officials to change his dress. Dr. May poured out to the governor and chaplain, who by this time had joined them, the history of Leonard's generous behaviour at the time of the trial, and listened in return to their account of the growing impression he had created--a belief, almost reluctant, that instead of being their prime specimen, he could only be in their hands by mistake. He was too sincere not to have confessed had he been really guilty; and in the long run, such behaviour as his would have been impossible in one unrepentant. He had been the more believed from the absence of complaint, demonstration, or assertion; and the constant endeavour to avoid notice, coupled with the quiet thorough execution of whatever was set before him with all his might. This was a theme to occupy the Doctor for a long time; but at last he grew eager for Leonard's return, and went to hasten him. He started up, still in the convict garb, the bag untouched. 'I beg your pardon,' he said, when his friend's exclamation had reminded him of what had been desired of him; and in a few minutes he reappeared in the ordinary dress of a gentleman, but the change did not seem to have made him realize his freedom--there was the same submissive manner, the same conventional gesture of respect in reply to the chaplain's warm congratulation. 'Come, Leonard, I am always missing the boat, but I don't want to do so now. We must get home to-night. Have you anything to take with you?' 'My Bible and Prayer-Book. They are my own, sir;' as he turned to the governor. 'May I go to my cell for them?' Again they tarried long for him, and became afraid that he had fallen into another reverie; but going to fetch him, found that the delay was caused by the farewells of all who had come in his way. The tidings of his full justification had spread, and each official was eager to wish him good speed, and thank him for the aid of his example and support. The schoolmaster, who had of late treated him as a friend, kept close to him, rejoicing in his liberation, but expecting to miss him sorely; and such of the convicts as were within reach, were not without their share in the general exultation. He had never galled them by his superiority; and though Brown, the clerk, had been his only friend, he had done many an act of kindness; and when writing letters for the unlearned, had spoken many a wholesome simple word that had gone home to the heart. His hand was as ready for a parting grasp from a fellow-prisoner as from a warder; and his thought and voice were recalled to leave messages for men out of reach; his eyes moistened at the kindly felicitations; but when he was past the oft-trodden precincts of the inner court and long galleries, the passiveness returned, and he received the last good-byes of the governor and superior officers, as if only half alive to their import. And thus, silent, calm, and grave, his composure like that of a man walking in his sleep, did Leonard Ward pass the arched gateway, enter on the outer world, and end his three and a half years of penal servitude. 'I'm less like an angel than he is like St. Peter,' thought Dr. May, as he watched the fixed dreamy gaze, 'but this is like "yet wist he not that it was true, but thought he saw a vision." When will he realize liberty, and enjoy it? I shall do him a greater kindness by leaving him to himself.' And in spite of his impatience, Dr. May refrained from disturbing that open-eyed trance all the way down the long hill, trusting to the crowd in the steamer for rousing him to perceive that he was no longer among russet coats and blue shirts; but he stood motionless, gazing, or at least his face turned, towards the Dorset coast, uttering no word, making no movement, save when summoned by his guide--then obeying as implicitly as though it were his jailor. So they came to the pier; and so they walked the length of Weymouth, paced the platform, and took their places in the train. Just as they had shot beyond the town, and come into the little wooded valleys beyond, Leonard turned round, and with the first sparkle in his eye, exclaimed, 'Trees! Oh, noble trees and hedges!' then turned again to look in enchantment at the passing groups--far from noble, though bright with autumn tints--that alternated with the chalk downs. Dr. May was pleased at this revival, and entertained at the start and glance of inquiring alarm from an old gentleman in the other corner. Presently, in the darkness of a cutting, again Leonard spoke: 'Where are you taking me, Dr. May?' 'Home, of course.' Whatever the word might imply to the poor lad, he was satisfied, and again became absorbed in the sight of fields, trees, and hedgerows; while Dr. May watched the tokens of secret dismay in their fellow-traveller, who had no doubt understood 'home' to mean his private asylum. Indeed, though the steady full dark eyes showed no aberration, there was a strange deep cave between the lid and the eyebrow, which gave a haggard look; the spare, worn, grave features had an expression--not indeed weak, nor wandering, but half bewildered, half absorbed, moreover, in spite of Tom's minute selection of apparel, it had been too hasty a toilette for the garments to look perfectly natural; and the cropped head was so suspicious, that it was no wonder that at the first station, the old gentleman gathered up his umbrella, with intense courtesy squeezed gingerly to the door, carefully avoiding any stumble over perilous toes, and made his escape--entering another carriage, whence he no doubt signed cautions against the lunatic and his keeper, since no one again invaded their privacy. Perhaps this incident most fully revealed to the Doctor, how unlike other people his charge was, how much changed from the handsome spirited lad on whom the trouble had fallen; and he looked again and again at the profile turned to the window, as fixed and set as though it had been carved. 'Ah, patience is an exhausting virtue!' said he to himself. 'Verily it is bearing--bearing up under the full weight; and the long bent spring is the slower in rebounding in proportion to its inherent strength. Poor lad, what protracted endurance it has been! There is health and force in his face; no line of sin, nor sickness, nor worldly care, such as it makes one's heart ache to see aging young faces; yet how utterly unlike the face of one and-twenty! I had rather see it sadder than so strangely settled and sedate! Shall I speak to him again? Not yet: those green hill-sides, those fields and cattle, must refresh him better than my clavers, after his grim stony mount of purgatory. I wish it were a brighter day to greet him, instead of this gray damp fog.' The said fog prevented any semblance of sunset; but through the gray moonlit haze, Leonard kept his face to the window, pertinaciously clearing openings in the bedewed glass, as though the varying outline of the horizon had a fascination for him. At last, after ten minutes of glaring gas at a junction had by contrast rendered the mist impenetrable, and reduced the view to brightened clouds of steam, and to white telegraphic posts, erecting themselves every moment, with their wires changing their perspective in incessant monotony, he ceased his gaze, and sat upright in his place, with the same strange rigid somnambulist air. Dr. May resolved to rouse him. 'Well, Leonard,' he said, 'this has been a very long fever; but we are well through it at last--with the young doctor from Paris to our aid.' Probably Leonard only heard the voice, not the words, for he passed his hand over his face, and looked up to the Doctor, saying dreamily, 'Let me see! Is it all true?' and then, with a grave wistful look, 'It was not I who did that thing, then?' 'My dear!' exclaimed the Doctor, starting forward, and catching hold of his hand, 'have they brought you to this?' 'I always meant to ask you, if I ever saw you alone again,' said Leonard. 'But you don't mean that you have imagined it!' 'Not constantly--not when any one was with me,' said Leonard, roused by Dr. May's evident dismay; and drawn on by his face of anxious inquiry. 'At Milbank, I generally thought I remembered it just as they described it in court, and that it was some miserable ruinous delusion that hindered my confessing; but the odd thing was, that the moment any one opened my door, I forgot all about it, resolutions and all, and was myself again.' 'Then surely--surely you left that horror with the solitude?' 'Yes, till lately; but when it did come back, I could not be sure what was recollection of fact, and what of my own fancy;' and he drew his brows together in painful effort. 'Did I know who did it, or did I only guess?' 'You came to a right conclusion, and would not let me act on it.' 'And I really did write the receipt, and not dream it?' 'That receipt has been in my hand. It was what has brought you here.' And now to hearing ears, Dr. May went over the narrative; and Leonard stood up under the little lamp in the roof of the carriage to read the papers. 'I recollect--I understand,' he said, presently, and sat down, grave and meditative--no longer dreamy, but going over events, which had at last acquired assurance to his memory from external circumstances. Presently his fingers were clasped together over his face, his head bent, and then he looked up, and said, 'Do they know it--my sister and brother?' 'No. We would not write till you were free. You must date the first letter from Stoneborough.' The thought had brought a bitter pang. 'One half year sooner--' and he leant back in his seat, with fingers tightly pressed together, and trembling with emotion. 'Nay, Leonard; may not the dear child be the first to rejoice in the fulfilment of her own sweet note of comfort? They could not harm the innocent.' 'Not innocent,' he said, 'not innocent of causing all the discord that has ended in their exile, and the dear child's death.' 'Then this is what has preyed on you, and changed you so much more of late,' said Dr. May. 'When I knew that I was indeed guilty of _her_ death,' said Leonard, in a calm full conviction of too long standing to be accompanied with agitation, though permanently bowing him down. 'And you never spoke of this: not to the chaplain?' 'I never could. It would have implied all the rest that he could not believe. And it would not have changed the fact.' 'The aspect of it may change, Leonard. You know yourself how many immediate causes combined, of which you cannot accuse yourself--your brother's wrongheadedness, and all the rest. And,' added the Doctor, recovering himself, 'you do see it in other aspects, I know. Think of the spirit set free to be near you--free from the world that has gone so hard with you!' 'I can't keep that thought long; I'm not worthy of it.' Again he was silent; but presently said, as with a sudden thought, 'You would have told me if there were any news of Ave.' 'No, there has been no letter since her last inclosure for you,' and then Dr. May gave the details from the papers on the doings of Henry's division of the army. 'Will Henry let me be with them?' said Leonard, musingly. 'They will come home, depend upon it. You must wait till you hear.' Leonard thought a little while, then said, 'Where did you say I was to go, Dr. May?' 'Where, indeed? Home, Leonard--home. Ethel is waiting for us. To the High Street.' Leonard looked up again with his bewildered face, then said, 'I know what you do with me will be right, but--' 'Had you rather not?' said the Doctor, startled. 'Rather!' and the Doctor, to his exceeding joy, saw the fingers over his eyes moist with the tears they tried to hide; 'I only meant--' he added, with an effort, 'you must think and judge--I can't think--whether I ought.' 'If you ask me that,' said Dr. May, earnestly, 'all I have to say is, that I don't know what palace is worthy of you.' There was not much said after that; and the Doctor fell asleep, waking only at the halts at stations to ask where he was. At last came 'Blewer!' and as the light shone on the clock, Leonard said, 'A quarter past twelve! It is the very train I went by! Is it a dream?' Ten minutes more, and 'Stoneborough' was the cry. Hastily springing out, shuffling the tickets into the porter's hand, and grappling Leonard's arm as if he feared an escape, Dr. May hurried him into the empty streets, and strode on in silence. The pull at the door-bell was answered instantly by Ethel herself. She held out her hand, and grasped that which Leonard had almost withheld, shrinking as from too sudden a vision; and then she ardently exchanged kisses with her father. 'Where's Tom? Gone to bed?' said Dr. May, stepping into the bright drawing-room. 'No,' said Ethel, demurely; 'he is gone--he is gone to America.' The Doctor gave a prodigious start, and looked at her again. 'He went this afternoon.' she said. 'There is some matter about the 'Diseases of Climate' that he must settle before the book is published; and he thought he could best be spared now. He has left messages that I will give you by and by; but you must both be famished.' Her looks indicated that all was right, and both turned to welcome the guest, who stood where the first impulse had left him, in the hall, not moving forward, till he was invited in to the fire, and the meal already spread. He then obeyed, and took the place pointed out; while the Doctor nervously expatiated on the cold, damp, and changes of train; and Ethel, in the active bashfulness of hidden agitation, made tea, cut bread, carved chicken, and waited on them with double assiduity, as Leonard, though eating as a man who had fasted since early morning, was passive as a little child, merely accepting what was offered to him, and not even passing his cup till she held out her hand for it. She did not even dare to look at him; she could not bear that he should see her do so; it was enough to know that he was free--that he was there--that it was over. She did not want to see how it had changed him; and, half to set him at ease, half to work off her own excitement, she talked to her father, and told him of the little events of his absence till the meal was over; and, at half-past one, good nights were exchanged with Leonard, and the Doctor saw him to his room, then returned to his daughter on her own threshold. 'That's a thing to have lived for,' he said. Ethel locked her hands together, and looked up. 'And now, how about this other denouement? I might have guessed that the wind sat in that quarter.' 'But you're not to guess it, papa. It is really and truly about the 'Diseases of Climate'.' 'Swamp fevers, eh! and agues!' The 'if you can help it,' was a great comfort now; Ethel could venture on saying, 'Of course that has something to do with it; but he really does make the book his object; and please--please don't give any hint that you suspect anything else.' 'I suppose you are in his confidence; and I must ask no questions.' 'I hated not telling you, and letting you tease him; but he trusted me just enough not to make me dare to say a word; though I never was sure there was a word to say. Now do just once own, papa, that Tom is the romantic one after all, to have done as he did in the height of the trouble.' 'Well in his place so should I,' said the Doctor, with the perverseness of not satisfying expectations of amazement. '_You_ would,' said Ethel; 'but Tom! would you have thought it of Tom?' 'Tom has more in him than shows through his spectacles,' answered Dr. May. 'So! That's the key to his restless fit. Poor fellow! How did it go with him? They have not been carrying it on all this time, surely!' 'Oh, no, no, papa! She cut him to the heart, poor boy! thought he was laughing at her--told him it had all been irony. He has no notion whether she will ever forgive him.' 'A very good lesson, Master Doctor Thomas,' said Dr. May, with a twinkle in his eye; 'and turn out as it will, it has done him good--tided him over a dangerous time of life. Well, you must tell me all about it to-morrow; I'm too sleepy to know what I'm talking of.' The sleepiness that always finished off the Doctor's senses at the right moment, was a great preservative of his freshness and vigour; but Ethel was far from sharing it, and was very glad when the clock sounded a legitimate hour for getting up, and dressing by candle-light, briefly answering Gertrude's eager questions on the arrival. It was a pouring wet morning, and she forbade Daisy to go to church--indeed, it would have been too bad for herself on any morning but this--any but this, as she repeated, smiling at her own spring of thankfulness, as she fortified herself with a weight of waterproof, and came forth in the darkness of 7.45, on a grim November day. A few steps before her, pacing on, umbrellaless, was a figure which made her hurry to overtake him. 'O, Leonard! after your journey, and in this rain!' He made a gesture of courtesy, but moved as if to follow, not join her. Did he not know whether he were within the pale of humanity? 'Here is half an umbrella. Won't you hold it for me?' she said; and as he followed his instinct of obedience, she put it into his hand, and took his arm, thinking that this familiarity would best restore him to a sense of his regained position; and, moreover, feeling glad and triumphant to be thus leaning, and to have that strong arm to contend with the driving blast that came howling round the corner of Minster Street, and fighting for their shelter. They were both out of breath when they paused to recover in the deep porch of the Minster. 'Is Dr. May come home?' 'Yes--and--' Ethel signed, and Mr. Wilmot held out an earnest hand, with, 'This is well. I am glad to see you.' 'Thank you, sir,' said Leonard, heartily; 'and for all--' 'This is your new beginning of life, Leonard. God bless you in it.' As Mr. Wilmot passed on, Ethel for the first time ventured to look up into the eyes--and saw their hollow setting, their loss of sparkle, but their added steadfastness and resolution. She could not help repeating the long-treasured lines: 'And, Leonard, "--grieve not for thy woes, Disgrace and trouble; For He who honour best bestows, Shall give thee double."' 'I've never ceased to be glad you read Marmion with me,' he hastily said, as they turned into church on hearing a clattering of choristers behind them. Clara might have had such sensations when she bound the spurs on her knight's heels, yet even she could hardly have had so pure, unselfish, and exquisite a joy as Ethel's, in receiving the pupil who had been in a far different school from hers. The gray dawn through the gloom, the depths of shadow in the twilight church, softening and rendering all more solemn and mysterious, were more in accordance than bright and beamy sunshine with her subdued grave thankfulness; and there was something suitable in the fewness of the congregation that had gathered in the Lady Chapel--so few, that there was no room for shyness, either in, or for, him who was again taking his place there, with steady composed demeanour, its stillness concealing so much. Ethel had reckoned on the verse--'That He might hear the mournings of such as are in captivity, and deliver the children appointed unto death.' But she had not reckoned on its falling on her ears in the deep full-toned melodious bass, that came in, giving body to the young notes of the choristers--a voice so altered and mellowed since she last had heard it, that it made her look across in doubt, and recognize in the uplifted face, that here indeed the freed captive was at home, and lifted above himself. When the clause, in the Litany, for all prisoners and captives brought to her the thrill that she had only to look up to see the fulfilment of many and many a prayer for one captive, for once she did not hear the response, only saw the bent head, as though there were thoughts went too deep to find voice. And again, there was the special thanksgiving that Mr. Wilmot could not refrain from introducing for one to whom a great mercy had been vouchsafed. If Ethel had had to swim home, she would not but have been there! Charles Cheviot addressed them as they came out of church: 'Good morning--Mr. Ward, I hope to do myself the honour of calling on you--I shall see you again, Ethel. And off he went over the glazy stones to his own house, Ethel knowing that this cordial salutation and intended call were meant to be honourable amends for his suspicions; but Leonard, unconscious of the import, and scarcely knowing indeed that he was addressed, made his mechanical gesture of respect, and looked up, down, and round, absorbed in the scene. 'How exactly the same it all looks,' he said; 'the cloister gate, and the Swan, and the postman in the very same waterproof cape.' 'Do you not feel like being just awake?' 'No; it is more like being a ghost, or somebody else.' Then the wind drove them on too fast for speech, till as they crossed the High Street, Ethel pointed through the plane-trees to two round black eyes, and a shining black nose, at the dining-room window. 'My Mab, my poor little Mab!--You have kept her all this time! I was afraid to ask for her. I could not hope it.' 'I could not get my spoilt child, Gertrude, to bed without taking Mab, that she might see the meeting.' Perhaps it served Daisy right that the meeting did not answer her expectations. Mab and her master had both grown older; she smelt round him long before she was sure of him, and then their content in one another was less shown by fervent rapture, than by the quiet hand smoothing her silken coat; and, in return, by her wistful eye, nestling gesture, gently waving tail. And Leonard! How was it with him? It was not easy to tell in his absolute passiveness. He seemed to have neither will nor impulse to speak, move, or act, though whatever was desired of him, he did with the implicit obedience that no one could bear to see. They put books near him, but he did not voluntarily touch one: they asked if he would write to his sister, and he took the pen in his hand, but did not accomplish a commencement. Ethel asked him if he were tired, or had a headache. 'Thank you, no,' he said; 'I'll write,' and made a dip in the ink. 'I did not mean to tease you,' she said; 'the mail is not going just yet, and there is no need for haste. I was only afraid something was wrong.' 'Thank you,' he said, submissively; 'I will--when I can think; but it is all too strange. I have not seen a lady, nor a room like this, since July three years.' After that Ethel let him alone, satisfied that peace was the best means of recovering the exhaustion of his long-suffering. The difficulty was that this was no house for quiet, especially the day after the master's return: the door-bell kept on ringing, and each time he looked startled and nervous, though assured that it was only patients. But at twelve o'clock in rushed Mr. Cheviot's little brother, with a note from Mary, lamenting that it was too wet for herself, but saying that Charles was coming in the afternoon, and that he intended to have a dinner-party of old Stoneborough scholars to welcome Leonard back. Meanwhile, Martin Cheviot, wanting to see, and not to stare, and to unite cordiality and unconsciousness, made an awkward mixture of all, and did not know how to get away; and before he had accomplished it, Mr. Edward Anderson was announced. He heartily shook hands with Leonard, eagerly welcomed him, and talked volubly, and his last communication was, 'If it clears, you will see Matilda this afternoon.' 'I did not know she was here.' 'Yes; she and Harvey are come to Mrs. Ledwich's, to stay over Sunday;' and there was a laugh in the corner of his eye, that convinced Ethel that the torrents of rain would be no protection. 'Papa,' said she, darting out to meet her father in the hall, 'you must take Leonard out in your brougham this afternoon, if you don't want him driven distracted. If he is in the house, ropes won't hold Mrs. Harvey Anderson from him!' So Dr. May invited his guest to share his drive; and the excitement began to seem unreal when the Doctor returned alone. 'I dropped him at Cocksmoor,' he said. 'It was Richard's notion that he would be quieter there--able to get out, and go to church, without being stared at.' 'Did he like it?' asked Gertrude, disappointed. 'If one told him to chop off his finger, he would do it, and never show whether he liked it. Richard asked him, and he said, "Thank you." I never could get an opening to show him that we did not want to suppress him; I never saw spirit so quenched.' Charles Cheviot thought it was a mistake to do what gave the appearance of suppression--he said that it was due to Leonard to welcome him as heartily as possible, and not to encourage false shame, where there was no disgrace; so he set his wife to fill up her cards for his dinner-party, and included in it Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Anderson, for the sake of their warm interest in the liberated prisoner. 'However, Leonard was out of the scrape,' as the Doctor expressed it, for he had one of his severe sore throats, and was laid up at Cocksmoor. Richard was dismayed by his passive obedience--a novelty to the gentle eldest, who had all his life been submitting, and now was puzzled by his guest's unfailing acquiescence without a token of preference or independence: and comically amazed at the implicit fulfilment of his recommendation to keep the throat in bed--a wise suggestion, but one that the whole house of May, in their own persons, would have scouted. Nothing short of the highest authority ever kept them there. The semblance of illness was perhaps a good starting-point for a return to the ways of the world; and on the day week of his going to Cocksmoor, Ethel found him by the fire, beginning his letters to his brother and sister, and looking brighter and more cheery, but so devoid of voice, that speech could not be expected of him. She had just looked in again after some parish visiting, when a quick soldierly step was heard, and in walked Aubrey. 'No; I'm not come to you, Ethel; I'm only come to this fellow;' and he ardently grasped his hand. 'I've got leave till Monday, and I shall stay here and see nobody else.--What, a sore throat? Couldn't you get wrapped up enough between the two doctors?' Leonard's eyes lighted as he muttered his hoarse 'Thank you,' and Ethel lingered for a little desultory talk to her brother, contrasting the changes that the three years had made in the two friends. Aubrey, drilled out of his home scholarly dreaminess by military and practical discipline, had exchanged his native languor for prompt upright alertness of bearing and speech; his eye had grown more steady, his mouth had lost its vague pensive expression, and was rendered sterner by the dark moustache; definite thought, purpose, and action, had moulded his whole countenance and person into hopeful manhood, instead of visionary boyhood. The other face, naturally the most full of fire and resolution, looked strangely different in its serious unsmiling gravity, the deeply worn stamp of patient endurance and utter isolation. There was much of rest and calm, and even of content--but withal a quenched look, as if the lustre of youth and hope had been extinguished, and the soul had been so driven in upon itself, that there was no opening to receive external sympathy--a settled expression, all the stranger on a face with the clear smoothness of early youth. One thing at least was unchanged--the firm friendship and affection--that kept the two constantly casting glances over one another, to assure themselves of the presence before them. Ethel left them together; and her father, who made out that he should save time by going to Cocksmoor Church on Sunday morning, reported that the boys seemed very happy together in their own way; but that Richard reported himself to have been at the sole expense of conversation in the evening--the only time such an event could ever have occurred! Aubrey returned home late on the Sunday evening; and Leonard set off to walk part of the way with him in the dusk, but ended by coming the whole distance, for the twilight opened their lips in this renewal of old habits. 'It is all right to be walking together again,' said Aubrey, warmly; 'though it is not like those spring days.' 'I've thought of them every Sunday.' 'And what are you going to do now, old fellow?' 'I don't know.' 'I hear Bramshaw is going to offer you to come into his office. Now, don't do that, Leonard, whatever you do!' 'I don't know.' 'You are to have all your property back, you know, and you could do much better for yourself than that.' 'I can't tell till I have heard from my brother.' 'But, Leonard, promise me now--you'll not go out and make a Yankee of yourself.' 'I can't tell; I shall do what he wishes.' Aubrey presently found that Leonard seemed to have no capacity to think or speak of the future or the past. He set Aubrey off on his own concerns, and listened with interest, asking questions that showed him perfectly alive to what regarded his friend, but the passive inaction of will and spirits still continued, and made him almost a disappointment. On Monday morning there was a squabble between the young engineer and the Daisy, who was a profound believer in the scientific object of Tom's journey, and greatly resented the far too obvious construction thereof. 'You must read lots of bad novels at Chatham, Aubrey; it is like the fag end of the most trumpery of them all!' 'You haven't gone far enough in your mathematics, you see, Daisy. You think one and one--' 'Make two. So I say.' 'I've gone into the higher branches.' 'I didn't think you were so simple and commonplace. It would be so stupid to think he must--just because he could not help making this discovery.' 'All for want of the higher branches of mathematics! One plus one--equals one.' 'One minus common sense, plus folly, plus romance, minus anything to do. Your equation is worthy of Mrs. Harvey Anderson. I gave her a good dose of the 'Diseases of Climate!'' Aubrey was looking at Ethel all the time Gertrude was triumphing; and finally he said, 'I've no absolute faith in disinterested philanthropy to a younger brother--whatever I had before I went to the Tyrol.' 'What has that to do with it?' asked Gertrude. 'Everybody was cut up, and wanted a change--and you more than all. I do believe the possibility of a love affair absolutely drives people mad: and now they must needs saddle it upon poor Tom--just the one of the family who is not so stupid, but has plenty of other things to think about.' 'So you think it a stupid pastime?' 'Of course it is. Why, just look. Hasn't everybody in the family turned stupid, and of no use, as soon at they went and fell in love! Only good old Ethel here has too much sense, and that's what makes her such a dear old gurgoyle. And Harry--he is twice the fun after he comes home, before he gets his fit of love. And all the story books that begin pleasantly, the instant that love gets in, they are just alike--so stupid! And now, if you haven't done it yourself, you want to lug poor innocent Tom in for it.' 'When your time comes, may I be there to see!' He retreated from her evident designs of clapper-clawing him; and she turned round to Ethel with, 'Now, isn't it stupid, Ethel!' 'Very stupid to think all the zest of life resides in one particular feeling,' said Ethel; 'but more stupid to talk of what you know nothing about.' Aubrey put in his head for a hurried farewell, and, 'Telegraph to me when Mrs. Thomas May comes home.' 'If Mrs. Thomas May comes home, I'll--' 'Give her that chair cover,' said Ethel; and her idle needlewoman, having been eight months working one corner of it, went off into fits of laughter, regarding its completion as an equally monstrous feat with an act of cannibalism on the impossible Mrs. Thomas May. How different were these young things, with their rhodomontade and exuberant animation and spirits, from him in whom all the sparkle and aspiration of life seemed extinguished! CHAPTER XXVII A cup was at my lips: it pass'd As passes the wild desert blast! ***** I woke--around me was a gloom And silence of the tomb; But in that awful solitude That little spirit by me stood-- But oh, how changed! --Thoughts in Past Years Under Richard's kind let-alone system, Leonard was slowly recovering tone. First he took to ruling lines in the Cocksmoor account-books, then he helped in their audit; and with occupation came the sense of the power of voluntary exertion. He went and came freely, and began to take long rambles in the loneliest parts of the heath and plantations, while Richard left him scrupulously to his own devices, and rejoiced to see them more defined and vigorous every day. The next stop was to assist in the night-school where Richard had hitherto toiled single-handed among very rough subjects. The technical training and experience derived from Leonard's work under the schoolmaster at Portland were invaluable; and though taking the lead was the last thing he would have thought of, he no sooner entered the school than attention and authority were there, and Richard found that what had to him been a vain and patient struggle was becoming both effective and agreeable. Interest in his work was making Leonard cheerful and alert, though still grave, and shrinking from notice--avoiding the town by daylight, and only coming to Dr. May's in the dark evenings. On the last Sunday in Advent, Richard was engaged to preach at his original curacy, and that the days before and after it should likewise be spent away from home was insisted on after the manner of the friends of hard-working clergy. He had the less dislike to going that he could leave his school-work to Leonard, who was to be housed at his father's, and there was soon perceived to have become a much more ordinary member of society than on his first arrival. One evening, there was a loud peal at the door-bell, and the maid--one of Ethel's experiments of training--came in. 'Please, sir, a gentleman has brought a cockatoo and a letter and a little boy from the archdeacon.' 'Archdeacon!' cried Dr. May, catching sight of the handwriting on the letter and starting up. 'Archdeacon Norman--' 'One of Norman's stray missionaries and a Maori newly caught; oh, what fun!' cried Daisy, in ecstasy. At that moment, through the still open door, walking as if he had lived there all his life, there entered the prettiest little boy that ever was seen--a little knickerbocker boy, with floating rich dark ringlets, like a miniature cavalier coming forth from a picture, with a white cockatoo on his wrist. Not in the least confused, he went straight towards Dr. May and said, 'Good-morning, grandpapa.' 'Ha! And who may you be, my elfin prince?' said the Doctor. 'I'm Dickie--Richard Rivers May--I'm not an elfin prince,' said the boy, with a moment's hurt feeling. 'Papa sent me.' By that time the boy was fast in his grandfather's embrace, and was only enough released to give him space to answer the eager question, 'Papa--papa here?' 'Oh no; I came with Mr. Seaford.' The Doctor hastily turned Dickie over to the two aunts, and hastened forth to the stranger, whose name he well knew as a colonist's son, a favourite and devoted clerical pupil of Norman's. 'Aunt Ethel,' said little Richard, with instant recognition; 'mamma said you would be like her, but I don't think you will.' 'Nor I, Dickie, but we'll try. And who's that!' 'Yes, what am I to be like?' asked Gertrude. 'You're not Aunt Daisy--Aunt Daisy is a little girl.' Gertrude made him the lowest of curtseys; for not to be taken for a little girl was the compliment she esteemed above all others. Dickie's next speech was, 'And is that Uncle Aubrey?' 'No, that's Leonard.' Dickie shook hands with him very prettily; but then returning upon Ethel, observed, 'I thought it was Uncle Aubrey, because soldiers always cut their hair so close.' The other guest was so thoroughly a colonist, and had so little idea of anything but primitive hospitality, that he had had no notion of writing beforehand to announce his coming, and accident had delayed the letters by which Norman and Meta had announced their decision of sending home their eldest boy under his care. 'Papa had no time to teach me alone,' said Dickie, who seemed to have been taken into the family councils; 'and mamma is always busy, and I wasn't getting any good with some of the boys that come to school to papa.' 'Indeed, Mr. Dickie!' said the Doctor, full of suppressed laughter. 'It is quite true,' said Mr. Seaford; 'there are some boys that the archdeacon feels bound to educate, but who are not desirable companions for his son.' 'It is a great sacrifice,' remarked the young gentleman. 'Oh, Dickie, Dickie,' cried Gertrude, in fits, 'don't you be a prig--' 'Mamma said it,' defiantly answered Dickie. 'Only a parrot,' said Ethel, behind her handkerchief; but Dickie, who heard whatever he was not meant to hear, answered-- 'It is not a parrot, it is a white cockatoo, that the chief of (something unutterable) brought down on his wrist like a hawk to the mission-ship; and that mamma sent as a present to Uncle George.' 'I prefer the parrot that has fallen to my share,' observed the Doctor. It was by this time perched beside him, looking perfectly at ease and thoroughly at home. There was something very amusing in the aspect of the little man; he so completely recalled his mother's humming-bird title by the perfect look of finished porcelain perfection that even a journey from the Antipodes with only gentleman nursemaids had not destroyed. The ringleted rich brown hair shone like glossy silk, the cheeks were like painting, the trim well-made legs and small hands and feet looked dainty and fairy-like, yet not at all effeminate; hands and face were a healthy brown, and contrasted with the little white collar, the set of which made Ethel exclaim, 'Just look, Daisy, that's what I always told you about Meta's doings. Only I can't understand it.--Dickie, have the fairies kept you in repair ever since mamma dressed you last?' 'We haven't any fairies in New Zealand,' he replied; 'and mamma never dressed me since I was a baby!' 'And what are you now?' said the Doctor. 'I am eight years old,' said this piece of independence, perfectly well mannered, and au fait in all the customs of the tea-table; and when the meal was over, he confidentially said to his aunt, 'Shall I come and help you wash up? I never break anything.' Ethel declined this kind offer; but he hung on her hand and asked if he might go and see the schoolroom, where papa and Uncle Harry used to blow soap-bubbles. She lighted a candle, and the little gentleman showed himself minutely acquainted with the whole geography of the house, knew all the rooms and the pictures, and where everything had happened, even to adventures that Ethel had forgotten. 'It is of no use to say there are no fairies in New Zealand,' said Dr. May, taking him on his knee, and looking into the blue depths of Norman's eyes. 'You have been head-waiter to Queen Mab, and perpetually here when she made you put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes.' 'Papa read that to the boys, and they said it was stupid and no use,' said Dickie; 'but papa said that the electric telegraph would do it.' The little cavalier appeared not to know what it was to be at a loss for an answer, and the joint letter from his parents explained that his precocious quickness was one of their causes for sending him home. He was so deft and useful as to be important in the household, and necessarily always living with his father and mother, he took constant part in their conversation, and was far more learned in things than in books. In the place where they were settled, trustworthy boy society was unattainable, and they had felt their little son, in danger of being spoilt and made forward from his very goodness and brightness--wrote Meta, 'If you find him a forward imp, recollect it is my fault for having depended so much on him.' His escort was a specimen of the work Norman had done, not actual mission-work, but preparation and inspiriting of those who went forth on the actual task. He was a simple-minded, single-hearted man, one of the first pupils in Norman's college, and the one who had most fully imbibed his spirit. He had been for some years a clergyman, and latterly had each winter joined the mission voyage among the Melanesian Isles, returning to their homes the lads brought for the summer for education to the mission college in New Zealand, and spending some time at a station upon one or other of the islands. He had come back from the last voyage much out of health, and had been for weeks nursed by Meta, until a long rest having been declared necessary, he had been sent to England as the only place where he would not be tempted to work, and was to visit his only remaining relation, a sister, who had married an officer and was in Ireland. He was burning to go back again, and eagerly explained--sagely corroborated by the testimony of the tiny archdeacon--that his illness was to be laid to the blame of his own imprudence, not to the climate; and he dwelt upon the delights of the yearly voyage among the lovely islands, beautiful beyond imagination, fenced in by coral breakwaters, within which the limpid water displayed exquisite sea-flowers, shells, and fishes of magical gorgeousness of hue; of the brilliant white beach, fringing the glorious vegetation, cocoa-nut, bread-fruit, banana, and banyan, growing on the sloping sides of volcanic rocks; of mysterious red-glowing volcano lights seen far out at sea at night, of glades opening to show high-roofed huts covered with mats: of canoes decorated with the shining white shells resembling a poached egg; of natives clustering round, eager and excited, seldom otherwise than friendly; though in hitherto unvisited places, or in those where the wanton outrages of sandal-wood traders had excited distrust, caution was necessary, and there was peril enough to give the voyage a full character of heroism and adventure. Bows and poisoned arrows were sometimes brought down--and Dickie insisted that they had been used--but in general the mission was recognized, and an eager welcome given; presents of fish-hooks, or of braid and handkerchiefs, established a friendly feeling; and readiness--in which the Hand of the Maker must be recognized--was manifested to intrust lads to the mission for the summer's training at the college in New Zealand--wild lads, innocent of all clothing, except marvellous adornments of their woolly locks, wigged out sometimes into huge cauliflowers whitened with coral lime, or arranged quarterly red and white, and their noses decorated with rings, which were their nearest approach to a pocket, as they served for the suspension of fish-hooks, or any small article. A radiate arrangement of skewers from the nose, in unwitting imitation of a cat's whiskers, had even been known. A few days taught dressing and eating in a civilized fashion; and time, example, and the wonderful influence of the head of the mission, trained these naturally intelligent boys into much that was hopeful. Dickie, who had been often at the college, had much to tell of familiarity with the light canoes that some cut out and launched; of the teaching them English games, of their orderly ways in school and in hall; of the prayers in their many tongues, and of the baptism of some, after full probation, and at least one winter's return to their own isles, as a test of their sincerity and constancy. Much as the May family had already heard of this wonderful work, it came all the closer and nearer now. The isle of Alan Ernescliffe's burial-place had now many Christians in it. Harry's friend, the young chief David, was dead; but his people were some of them already teachers and examples, and the whole region was full to overflowing of the harvest, calling out for labourers to gather it in. Silent as usual, Leonard nevertheless was listening with all his heart, and with parted lips and kindling eyes that gave back somewhat of his former countenance. Suddenly his face struck Mr. Seaford, and turning on him with a smile, he said, 'You should be with us yourself, you look cut out for mission work.' Leonard murmured something, blushed up to the ears, and subsided, but the simple, single-hearted Mr. Seaford, his soul all on one object, his experience only in one groove, by no means laid aside the thought, and the moment he was out of Leonard's presence, eagerly asked who that young man was. 'Leonard Ward? he is--he is the son of an old friend,' replied Dr. May, a little perplexed to explain his connection. 'What is he doing? I never saw any one looking more suited for our work.' 'Tell him so again,' said Dr. May; 'I know no one that would be fitter.' They were all taken up with the small grandson the next day. He was ready in his fairy-page trimness to go to the early service at the Minster; but he was full of the colonial nil admirari principle, and was quite above being struck by the grand old building, or allowing its superiority--either to papa's own church or Auckland Cathedral. They took him to present to Mary on their way back from church, when he was the occasion of a great commotion by carrying the precious Master Charlie all across the hall to his mamma, and quietly observing in resentment at the outcry, that of course he always carried little Ethel about when mamma and nurse were busy. After breakfast, when he had finished his investigations of all Dr. May's domains, and much entertained Gertrude by his knowledge of them, Ethel set him down to write a letter to his father, and her own to Meta being engrossing, she did not look much more after him till Dr. May came in, and said, 'I want you to sketch off a portrait of her dicky-bird for Meta;' and he put before her a natural history with a figure of that tiny humming-bird which is endowed with swansdown knickerbockers. 'By the bye, where is the sprite?' He was not to be found; and when dinner-time, and much calling and searching, failed to produce him, his grandfather declared that he was gone back to Elf-land; but Leonard recollected certain particular inquiries about the situation of the Grange and of Cocksmoor, and it was concluded that he had anticipated the Doctor's intentions of taking him and Mr. Seaford there in the afternoon. The notion was confirmed by the cockatoo having likewise disappeared; but there was no great anxiety, since the little New Zealander appeared as capable of taking care of himself as any gentleman in Her Majesty's dominions; and a note had already been sent to his aunt informing her of his arrival. Still, a summons to the Doctor in an opposite direction was inopportune, the more so as the guest was to remain at Stoneborough only this one day, and had letters and messages for Mr. and Mrs. Rivers, while it was also desirable to see whether the boy had gone to Cocksmoor. Leonard proposed to become Mr. Seaford's guide to the Grange, learn whether Dickie were there, and meet the two ladies at Cocksmoor with the tidings, leaving Mr. Seaford and the boy to be picked up by the Doctor on his return. It was his first voluntary offer to go anywhere, though he had more than once been vainly invited to the Grange with Richard. Much conversation on the mission took place during the walk, and resulted in Mr. Seaford's asking Leonard if his profession were settled. 'No,' he said; and not at all aware that his companion did not know what every other person round him knew, he added, 'I have been thrown out of everything--I am waiting to hear from my brother.' 'Then you are not at a University?' 'Oh no, I was a clerk.' 'Then if nothing is decided, is it impossible that you should turn your eyes to our work?' 'Stay,' said Leonard, standing still; 'I must ask whether you know all about me. Would it be possible to admit to such work as yours one who, by a terrible mistake, has been under sentence of death and in confinement for three years?' 'I must think! Let us talk of this another time. Is that the Grange?' hastily exclaimed the missionary, rather breathlessly. Leonard with perfect composure replied that it was, pointed out the different matters of interest, and, though a little more silent, showed no other change of manner. He was asking the servant at the door if Master May were there, when Mr. Rivers came out and conducted both into the drawing room, where little Dickie was, sure enough. It appeared that, cockatoo on wrist, he had put his pretty face up to the glass of Mrs Rivers's morning-room, and had asked her, 'Is this mamma's room, Aunt Flora? Where's Margaret?' Uncle, aunt, and cousin had all been captivated by him, and he was at present looking at the display of all Margaret's treasures, keenly appreciating the useful and ingenious, but condemning the merely ornamental as only fit for his baby sister. Margaret was wonderfully gracious and child-like; but perhaps she rather oppressed him; for when Leonard explained that he must go on to meet Miss May at Cocksmoor, the little fellow sprang up, declaring that he wanted to go thither; and though told that his grandfather was coming for him, and that the walk was long, he insisted that he was not tired; and Mr. Seaford, finding him not to be dissuaded, broke off his conversation in the midst, and insisted on accompanying him, leaving Mr. and Mrs. Rivers rather amazed at colonial breeding. The first time Mr. Seaford could accomplish being alone with Dr. May, he mysteriously shut the door, and began, 'I am afraid Mrs. Rivers thought me very rude; but though no doubt he is quite harmless, I could not let the child or the ladies be alone with him.' 'With whom?' 'With your patient.' 'What patient of mine have you been seeing to-day?' asked Dr. May, much puzzled. 'Oh, then you consider him as convalescent, and certainly he does seem rational on every other point; but is this one altogether an hallucination?' 'I have not made out either the hallucination or the convalescent. I beg your pardon,' said the courteous Doctor; 'but I cannot understand whom you have seen.' 'Then is not that young Ward a patient of yours? He gave me to understand to-day that he has been under confinement for three years--' 'My poor Leonard!' exclaimed the Doctor; 'I wish his hair would grow! This is the second time! And did you really never hear of the Blewer murder, and of Leonard Ward?' Mr. Seaford had some compound edifice of various murders in his mind, and required full enlightenment. Having heard the whole, he was ardent to repair his mistake, both for Leonard's own sake, and that of his cause. The young man was indeed looking ill and haggard; but there was something in the steady eyes, hollow though they still were, and in the determined cast of features, that strangely impressed the missionary with a sense of his being moulded for the work; and on the first opportunity a simple straightforward explanation of the error was laid before Leonard, with an entreaty that if he had no duties to bind him at home, he would consider the need of labourers in the great harvest of the Southern Seas. Leonard made no answer save 'Thank you' and that he would think. The grave set features did not light up as they had done unconsciously when listening without personal thought; he only looked considering, and accepted Mr. Seaford's address in Ireland, promising to write after hearing from his brother. Next morning, Dr. May gave notice that an old patient was coming to see him, and must be asked to luncheon. Leonard soon after told Ethel that he should not be at home till the evening, and she thought he was going to Cocksmoor, by way of avoiding the stranger. In the twilight, however, Dr. May, going up to the station to see his patient off, was astonished to see Leonard emerge from a second-class carriage. 'You here! the last person I expected.' 'I have only been to W---- about my teeth.' 'What, have you been having tooth-ache?' 'At times, but I have had two out, so I hope there is an end of it.' 'And you never mentioned it, you Stoic!' 'It was only at night.' 'And how long has this been?' 'Since I had that cold; but it was no matter.' 'No matter, except that it kept you looking like Count Ugolino, and me always wondering what was the matter with you. And'--detaining him for a moment under the lights of the station--'this extraction must have been a pretty business, to judge by your looks! What did the dentist do to you?' 'It is not so much that' said Leonard, low and sadly; 'but I began to have a hope, and I see it won't do.' 'What do you mean, my dear boy? what have you been doing?' 'I have been into my old cell again,' said he, under his breath; and Dr. May, leaning on his arm, felt his nervous tremor. 'Prisoner of the Bastille, eh, Leonard!' 'I had long been thinking that I ought to go and call on Mr. Reeve and thank him.' 'But he does not receive calls there.' 'No,' said Leonard, as if the old impulse to confidence had returned; 'but I have never been so happy since, as I was in that cell, and I wanted to see it again. Not only for that reason,' he added, 'but something that Mr. Seaford said brought back a remembrance of what Mr. Wilmot told me when my life was granted--something about the whole being preparation for future work--something that made me feel ready for anything. It had all gone from me--all but the remembrance of the sense of a blessed Presence and support in that condemned cell, and I thought perhaps ten minutes in the same place would bring it back to me.' 'And did they?' 'No, indeed. As soon as the door was locked, it all went back to July 1860, and worse. Things that were mercifully kept from me then, mere abject terror of death, and of that kind of death--the disgrace--the crowds--all came on me, and with them, the misery all in one of those nine months; the loathing of those eternal narrow waved white walls, the sense of their closing in, the sickening of their sameness, the longing for a voice, the other horror of thinking myself guilty. The warder said it was ten minutes--I thought it hours! I was quite done for, and could hardly get down-stairs. I knew the spirit was being crushed out of me by the solitary period, and it is plain that I must think of nothing that needs nerve or presence of mind!' he added, in a tone of quiet dejection. 'You are hardly in a state to judge of your nerve, after sleepless nights and the loss of your teeth. Besides, there is a difference between the real and imaginary, as you have found; you who, in the terrible time of real anticipation, were a marvel in that very point of physical resolution.' 'I could keep thoughts out _then_,' he said; 'I was master of myself.' 'You mean that the solitude unhinged you? Yet I always found you brave and cheerful.' 'The sight of you made me so. Nay, the very sight or sound of any human being made a difference! And now you all treat me as if I had borne it well, but I did not. It was all that was left me to do, but indeed I did not.' 'What do you mean by bearing it well?' said the Doctor, in the tone in which he would have questioned a patient. 'Living--as--as I thought I should when I made up my mind to life instead of death,' said Leonard; 'but all that went away. I let it slip, and instead came everything possible of cowardice, and hatred, and bitterness. I lost my hold of certainty what I had done or what I had not, and the horror, the malice, the rebellion that used to come on me in that frightful light white silent place, were unutterable! I wish you would not have me among you all, when I know there can hardly be a wicked thought that did not surge over me.' 'To be conquered.' 'To conquer me,' he said, in utter lassitude. 'Stay. Did they ever make you offend wilfully?' 'There was nothing I could offend in.' 'Your tasks of work, for instance.' 'I often had a savage frantic abhorrence of it, but I always brought myself to do it, and it did me good; it would have done more if it had been less mechanical. But it often was only the instinct of not degrading myself like the lowest prisoners.' 'Well, there was your conduct to the officials.' 'Oh! one could not help being amenable to them, they were so kind. Besides, these demons never came over me except when I was alone.' 'And one thing more, Leonard; did these demons, as you well call them, invade your devotions?' 'Never,' he answered readily; then recalling himself--'not at the set times I mean, though they often made me think the comfort I had there mere hypocrisy and delusion, and be nearly ready to give over what depended on myself. Chapel was always joy; it brought change and the presence of others, if nothing else; and that would in itself have been enough to banish the hauntings.' 'And they did not interfere with your own readings?' said the Doctor, preferring this to the word that he meant. 'I could not let them,' said Leonard. 'There was always refreshment; it was only before and after that all would seem mockery, profanation, or worse still, delusion and superstition--as if my very condition proved that there was none to hear.' 'The hobgoblin had all but struck the book out of Christian's hand,' said Dr. May, pressing his grasp on Leonard's shuddering arm. 'You are only telling me that you have been in the valley of the shadow of death; you have not told me that you lost the rod and staff.' 'No, I must have been helped, or I should not have my senses now.' And perhaps it was the repressed tremor of voice and frame rather than the actual words that induced the Doctor to reply--'That is the very point, Leonard. It is the temptation to us doctors to ascribe too much to the physical and too little to the moral; and perhaps you would be more convinced by Mr. Wilmot than by me; but I do verily believe that all the anguish you describe could and would have been insanity if grace had not been given you to conquer it. It was a tottering of the mind upon its balance; and, humanly speaking, it was the self-control that enabled you to force yourself to your duties, and find relief in them, which saved you. I should just as soon call David conquered because the "deep waters had come in over his soul."' 'You can never know how true those verses are,' said Leonard, with another shiver. 'At least I know to what kind of verses they all lead,' said the Doctor; 'and I am sure they led you, and that you had more and brighter hours than you now remember.' 'Yes, it was not all darkness. I believe there were more spaces than I can think of now, when I was very fairly happy, even at Pentonville; and at Portland all did well with me, till last spring, and then the news from Massissauga brought back all the sense of blood-guiltiness, and it was worse than ever.' 'And that sense was just as morbid as your other horrible doubt, about which you asked me when we were coming home.' 'I see it was now, but that was the worst time of all--the monotony of school, and the sense of hypocrisy and delusion in teaching--the craving to confess, if only for the sake of the excitement, and the absolute inability to certify myself whether there was any crime to confess--I can't talk about it. And even chapel was not the same refreshment, when one was always teaching a class in it, as coming in fresh only for the service. Even that was failing me, or I thought it was! No, I do not know how I could have borne it much longer.' 'No, Leonard, you could not; Tom and I both saw that in your looks, and quite expected to hear of your being ill; but, you see, we are never tried above what we can bear!' 'No,' said Leonard, very low, as if he had been much struck; and then he added, after an interval, 'It is over now, and there's no need to recollect it except in the way of thanks. The question is what it has left me fit for. You know, Dr. May,' and his voice trembled, 'my first and best design in the happy time of Coombe, the very crown of my life, was this very thing--to be a missionary. But for myself, I might be in training now. If I had only conquered my temper, and accepted that kind offer of Mr. Cheviot's, all this would never have been, and I should have had my youth, my strength, and spirit, my best, to devote. I turned aside because of my obstinacy, against warning, and now how can I offer?--one who has stood at the bar, lived among felons, thought such thoughts--the released convict with a disgraced name! It would just be an insult to the ministry! No, I know how prisoners feel. I can deal with them. Let me go back to what I am trained for. My nerve and spirit have been crushed out; I am fit for nothing else. The worst thing that has remained with me is this nervousness--cowardice is its right name--starting at the sound of a door, or at a fresh face--a pretty notion that I should land among savages!' Dr. May had begun an answer about the remains of the terrible ordeal that might in itself have been part of Leonard's training, when they reached the house door. These nerves, or whatever they were, did indeed seem disposed to have no mercy on their owner; for no sooner had he sat down in the warm drawing-room, than such severe pain attacked his face as surpassed even his powers of concealment. Dr. May declared it was all retribution for his unfriendliness in never seeking sympathy or advice, which might have proved the evil to be neuralgia and saved the teeth, instead of aggravating the evil by their extraction. 'I suspect he has been living on nothing,' said Dr. May, when, in a lull of the pain, Leonard had gone to bed. 'Papa!' exclaimed Gertrude, 'don't you know what Richard's housekeeping is? Don't you recollect his taking that widow for a cook because she was such a good woman?' 'I don't think it was greatly Richard's fault,' said Ethel. 'I can hardly get Leonard to make a sparrow's meal here, and most likely his mouth has been too uncomfortable.' 'Ay, that never seeking sympathy is to me one of the saddest parts of all. He has been so long shut within himself, that he can hardly feel that any one cares for him.' 'He does so more than at first,' said Ethel. 'Much more. I have heard things from him to-night that are a revelation to me. Well, he has come through, and I believe he is recovering it; but the three threads of our being have all had a terrible wrench, and if body and mind come out unscathed, it is the soundness of the spirit that has brought them through.' A sleepless night and morning of violent pain ensued; but, at least thus much had been gained--that there was no refusal of sympathy, but a grateful acceptance of kindness, so that it almost seemed a recurrence to the Coombe days; and as the pain lessened, the enjoyment of Ethel's attendance seemed to grow upon Leonard in the gentle languor of relief; and when, as she was going out for the afternoon, she came back to see if he was comfortable in his easy-chair by the drawing-room fire, and put a screen before his face, he looked up and thanked her with a smile--the first she had seen. When she returned, the winter twilight had closed in, and he was leaning back in the same attitude, but started up, so that she asked if he had been asleep. 'I don't know--I have seen her again.' 'Seen whom?' 'Minna, my dear little Minna!' 'Dreamt of her?' 'I cannot tell,' he said; 'I only know she was there; and then rising and standing beside Ethel, he continued--'Miss May, you remember the night of her death?' 'Easter Eve?' 'Well,' continued he, 'that night I saw her.' 'I remember,' said Ethel, 'that Mr. Wilmot told us you knew at once what he was come to tell you.' 'It was soon after I was in bed, the lights were out, and I do not think I was asleep, when she was by me--not the plump rosy thing she used to be, but tall and white, her hair short and waving back, her eyes--oh! so sad and wistful, but glad too--and her hands held out--and she said, "Turn you to the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope. O Leonard, dear, it does not hurt."' 'It was the last thing she did say.' 'Yes, so Ave's letter said. And observe, one o'clock in Indiana is half-past nine with us. Then her hair--I wrote to ask, for you know it used to be in long curls, but it had been cut short, like what I saw. Surely, surely, it was the dear loving spirit allowed to show itself to me before going quite away to her home!' 'And you have seen her again?' 'Just now'--his voice was even lower than before--'since it grew dark, as I sat there. I had left off reading, and had been thinking, when there she was, all white but not wistful now; "Leonard, dear," she said, "it has not hurt;" and then, "He brought me forth, He brought me forth even to a place of liberty, because He had a favour unto me."' 'O, Leonard, it must have made you very happy.' 'I am very thankful for it,' he said. Then after a pause, 'You will not speak of it--you will not tell me to think it the action of my own mind upon itself.' 'I can only believe it a great blessing come to comfort you and cheer you,' said Ethel: 'cheer you as with the robin-note, as papa called it, that sung all through the worst of times! Leonard, I am afraid you will think it unkind of me to have withheld it so long, but papa told me you could not yet bear to hear of Minna. I have her last present for you in charge--the slippers she was working for that eighteenth birthday of yours. She would go on, and we never knew whether she fully understood your danger; it was always "they could not hurt you," and at last, when they were finished, and I had to make her understand that you could not have them, she only looked up to me and said, "Please keep them, and give them to him when he comes home." She never doubted, first or last.' Ethel, who had daily been watching for the moment, took out the parcel from the drawer, with the address in the childish writing, the date in her own. Large tears came dropping from Leonard's eyes, as he undid the paper, and looked at the work, then said, 'Last time I saw that pattern, my mother was working it! Dear child! Yes, Miss May, I am glad you did not give them to me before. I always felt as if my blow had glanced aside and fallen on Minna; but somehow I feel more fully how happy she is!' 'She was the messenger of comfort throughout to Ave and to Ella,' said Ethel, 'and well she may be to you still.' 'I have dreaded to ask,' said Leonard; 'but there was a line in one letter I was shown that made me believe that climate was not the whole cause.' 'No,' said Ethel; 'at least the force to resist it had been lost, as far as we can see. It was a grievous error of your brother's to think her a child who could forget. She pined to hear of you, and that one constant effort of faith and love was too much, and wasted away the little tender body. But oh, Leonard, how truly she can say that her captivity is over, and that it has not hurt!' 'It has not hurt,' musingly repeated Leonard. 'No, she is beyond the reach of distracting temptations and sorrows; it has only made her brighter to have suffered what it breaks one's heart to think of. It has not hurt.' 'Nothing from without does hurt!' said Ethel, 'unless one lets it.' 'Hurt what?' he asked. 'The soul,' returned Ethel. 'Mind and body may be hurt, and it is not possible to know one's mind from one's soul while one is alive, but as long as the will and faith are right, to think the soul can be hurt seems to me like doubting our Protector.' 'But if the will have been astray?' 'Then while we repent, we must not doubt our Redeemer.' Dickie ran in at the moment, calling for Aunt Ethel. She had dropped her muff. Leonard picked it up, and as she took it, he wrung her hand with an earnestness that showed his gratitude. CHAPTER XXVIII Tender as woman; manliness and meekness In him were so allied, That those who judged him by his strength or weakness, Knew but a single side.--J. WHITTIER It promised to be a brilliant Christmas at Stoneborough, though little Dickie regarded the feast coming in winter as a perverse English innovation, and was grand on the superiority of supple jack above holly. Decorations had been gradually making their way into the Minster, and had advanced from being just tolerated to being absolutely delighted in; but Dr. Spencer, with his knack of doing everything, was sorely missed as a head, and Mr. Wilmot insisted that the May forces should come down and work the Minster, on the 23rd, leaving the Eve for the adornment of Cocksmoor, after the return of its incumbent. Mary, always highly efficient in that line, joined them; and Leonard's handiness and dexterity in the arts relating to carpentry were as quietly useful as little Dickie's bright readiness in always handing whatever was wanting. The work was pretty well over, when Aubrey, who had just arrived with leave for a week, came down, and made it desultory. Dickie, whose imagination had been a good deal occupied by his soldier uncle, wanted to study him, and Gertrude was never steady when Aubrey was near. Presently it was discovered that the door to the tower stair was open. The ascent of the tower was a feat performed two or three times in a lifetime at Stoneborough. Harry had once beguiled Ethel and Mary up, but Gertrude had never gone, and was crazy to go, as was likewise Dickie. Moreover, Aubrey and Gertrude insisted that it was only proper that Ethel should pay her respects to her prototype the gurgoyle, they wanted to compare her with him, and ordered her up; in fact their spirits were too high for them to be at ease within the church, and Ethel, maugre her thirty years, partook of the exhilaration enough to delight in an extraordinary enterprise, and as nothing remained but a little sweeping up, they left this to the superintendence of Mary and Mr. Wilmot, and embarked upon the narrow crumbling steps of the spiral stair, that led up within an unnatural thickening of one of the great piers that supported the tower, at the intersection of nave and transepts. After a long period of dust and darkness, and the monotony of always going with the same leg foremost, came a narrow door, leading to the ringers' region, with all their ropes hanging down. Ethel was thankful when she had got her youngsters past without an essay on them; she doubted if she should have succeeded, but for Leonard's being an element of soberness. Other little doors ensued, leading out to the various elevations of roof, which were at all sorts of different heights, the chancel lower than the nave, and one transept than the other; besides that the nave had both triforium and clerestory. It was a sort of labyrinth, and they wondered whether any one, except perhaps the plumber's foreman knew his way among all the doors. Then there was one leading inwards to the eight bells--from whose fascinations Ethel thought Dickie never would be taken away--and still more charming, to the clock, which clanged a tremendous three, as they were in the act of looking at it, causing Leonard to make a great start, and then colour painfully. It was hard to believe, as Daisy said, that the old tower, that looked so short and squat below, could be so very high when you came to go up it; but the glimpses of the country, through the little loop-hole windows, were most inviting. At last, Aubrey, who was foremost, pushed up the trap-door, and emerged; but, as Dickie followed him, exclaimed, 'Here we are; but you ladies in crinolines will never follow! You'll stick fast for ever, and Leonard can't pass, so there you'll all have to stay.' 'Aunt Daisy will sail away like a balloon,' added Dickie, roguishly, looking back at her, and holding on his cap. But Gertrude vigorously compressed her hoop, and squeezed through, followed by Ethel and Leonard. There was a considerable space, square, leaded and protected by the battlemented parapet, with a deep moulding round, and a gutter resulting in the pipe smoked by Ethel's likeness, the gurgoyle. Of course the first thing Dickie and Aubrey did was to look for the letters that commemorated the ascent of H. M., E. M., M. M., in 1852; and it was equally needful that R. R. M., if nobody else, should likewise leave a record on the leads. There was an R. M. of 1820, that made it impossible to gainsay him. The view was not grand in itself, but there was a considerable charm in looking down on the rooks in their leafless trees, cawing over their old nests, and in seeing the roofs of the town; far away, too, the gray Welsh hills, and between, the country lying like a map, with rivers traced in light instead of black. Leonard stood still, his face turned towards the greenest of the meadows, and the river where it dashed over the wheel of a mill. 'Have you seen it again?' asked Ethel, as she stood by him, and watched his eye. 'No. I am rather glad to see it first from so far off,' he answered, 'I mean to walk over some day.' 'Ethel,' called Gertrude, 'is this your gurgoyle? His profile, as seen from above, isn't flattering.' 'O, Daisy, don't lean over so far.' 'Quite safe;' but at that instant a gust of wind caught her hat, she grasped at it, but only saved it from whirling away, and made it fall short. 'There, Ethel, your image has put on my hat; and henceforth will appear to the wondering city in a black hat and feather!' 'I'll get it,' exclaimed the ever ready Dickie; and in another moment he had mounted the parapet and was reaching for it. Whether it were Gertrude's shriek, or the natural recoil away from the grasping hand, or that his hold on the side of the adjoining pinnacle was insecure, he lost his balance, and with a sudden cry, vanished from their eyes. The frightful consternation of that moment none of those four could ever bear to recall; the next, they remembered that he could only fall as far as the roof, but it was Ethel and Leonard alone who durst press to the parapet, and at the same moment a cry came up-- 'Oh, come! I'm holding on, but it cuts! Oh, come!' Ethel saw, some five-and-twenty feet below, the little boy upon the transept roof, a smooth slope of lead, only broken by a skylight, a bit of churchwarden's architecture still remaining. The child had gone crashing against the window, and now lay back clinging to its iron frame. Behind him was the entire height within to the church floor, before him a rapid slope, ended by a course of stone, wide enough indeed to walk on, but too narrow to check the impetus from slipping down the inclination above. Ethel's brain swam; she just perceived that both Aubrey and Leonard had disappeared, and then had barely power to support Gertrude, who reeled against her, giddy with horror. 'Oh look, look, Ethel,' she cried; 'I can't. Where is he?' 'There! Yes, hold on, Dickie, they are coming. Look up--not down--hold on!' A door opened, and out dashed Aubrey! Alas! it was on the nave clerestory; he might as well have been a hundred, miles off. Another door, and Leonard appeared, and on the right level, but with a giddy unguarded ridge on which to pass round the angle of the tower. She saw his head pass safely round, but, even then, the horror was not over. Could he steady himself sufficiently to reach the child, or might not Dickie lose hold too soon? It was too close below for sight, the moulding and gurgoyle impeded her agonized view, but she saw the child's look of joyful relief, she heard the steady voice, 'Wait, don't let go yet. There,' and after a few more sounds, came up a shout, 'all right!' Infinitely relieved, she had to give her whole attention to poor Gertrude, who, overset by the accident, giddy with the attempt to look over, horrified by the danger, confused and distressed by the hair that came wildly flapping about her head and face, and by the puffs of wind at her hoop, had sunk down in the centre of the little leaden square, clinging with all her might to the staff of the weathercock, and feeling as if the whole tower were rocking with her, absolutely seeing the battlements dance. How was she ever to be safely got down the rickety ladder leading to the crumbling stone stair? Ethel knelt by her, twisted up the fluttering hair, bade her shut her eyes and compose her thoughts, and then called over the battlements to Aubrey, who, confused by the shock, continued to emerge at wrong doors and lose himself on the roofs, and was like one in a bad dream, nearly as much dizzied as his sister, to whose help he came the more readily, as the way up was the only one plain before him. The detention would have been more dreadful to Ethel had she known all that was passing below, and that when the little boy, at Leonard's sign, lowered himself towards the out-reaching arms of the young man, who was steadying himself against the wall of the tower, it was with a look of great pain, and leaving a trail of blood behind him. When, at length, he stood at the angle, Leonard calmly said, 'Now go before me, round that corner, in at the door. Hold by the wall, I'll hold your shoulder.' The boy implicitly obeyed, the notion of giddiness never seemed to occur to him, and both safely came to the little door, on the threshold of which Leonard sat down, and lifting him on his knee, asked where he was hurt? 'My leg,' said Dickie, 'the glass was running in all the time, and I could not move; but it does not hurt so much now.' Perhaps not; but a large piece of glass had broken into the slender little calf, and Leonard steadied himself to withdraw it, as, happily, the fragment was large enough to give a hold for his hand. The sensible little fellow, without a word, held up the limb across Leonard's knee, and threw an arm round his neck, to hold himself still, just saying, 'Thank you,' when it was over. 'Did it hurt much, Dickie?' 'Not very much,' he answered; 'but how it bleeds! Where's Aunt Ethel?' 'On the tower. She will come in a moment,' said Leonard, startled by the exceeding flow of blood, and binding the gash round with his handkerchief. 'Now, I'll carry you down.' The boy did not speak all the weary winding way down the dark stairs; but Leonard heard gasps of oppression, and felt the head lean on his shoulder; moreover, a touch convinced him that the handkerchief was soaking, nay dripping, and when he issued at length into the free air of the church, the face was deadly white. No one was near, and Leonard laid him on a bench. He was still conscious, and looked up with languid eyes. 'Mayn't I go home?' he said, faintly; 'Aunt Ethel!' 'Let me try to stop this bleeding first,' said Leonard. 'My dear little man, if you will only be quiet, I think I can.' Leonard took the handkerchief from his throat, and wound it to its tightest just above the hurt, Dickie remonstrating for a moment with, 'That's not the place. It is too tight.' 'It will cut off the blood from coming,' said Leonard; and in the same understanding way, the child submitted, feebly asking, 'Shall I bleed to death? Mamma will be so sorry!' 'I trust--I hope not,' said Leonard; he durst utter no encouragement, for the life-blood continued to pour forth unchecked, and the next murmur was, 'I'm so sick. I can't say my prayers. Papa! Mamma!' Already, however, Leonard had torn down a holly bough, and twisted off (he would have given worlds for a knife) a short stout stick, which he thrust into one of the folds of the ligature, and pulled it much tighter, so that his answer was, 'Thank God, Dickie, that will do! the bleeding has stopped. You must not mind if it hurts for a little while.' An ejaculation of 'Poor little dear,' here made him aware of the presence of the sexton's wife; but in reply to her offer to carry him in to Mrs. Cheviot's, Dickie faintly answered, 'Please let me go home;' and Leonard, 'Yes, I will take him home. Tell Miss May it is a cut from the glass, I am taking him to have it dressed, and will bring him home. Now, my dear little patient fellow, can you put your arms round my neck?' Sensible, according to both meanings of the word, Dickie clasped his friend's neck, and laid his head on his shoulder, not speaking again till he found Leonard was not turning towards the High Street, when he said, 'That is not the way home.' 'No, Dickie, but we must get your leg bound up directly, and the hospital is the only place where we can be sure of finding any one to do it. I will take you home directly afterwards.' 'Thank you,' said the courteous little gentleman; and in a few minutes more Leonard had rung the bell, and begged the house surgeon would come at once to Dr. May's grandson. A few drops of stimulant much revived Dickie, and he showed perfect trust and composure, only holding Leonard's hands, and now and then begging to know what they were doing, while he was turned over on his face for the dressing of the wound, bearing all without a sound, except an occasional sobbing gasp, accompanied by a squeeze of Leonard's finger. Just as this business had been completed, the surgeon exclaimed, 'There's Dr. May's step,' and Dickie at once sat up, as his grandfather hurried in, nearly as pale as the boy himself. 'O, grandpapa, never mind, it is almost well now; and has Aunt Daisy got her hat?' 'What is it, my dear? what have you been doing?' said the Doctor, looking in amazement from the boy to Leonard, who was covered with blood. 'They told me you had fallen off the Minster tower!' 'Yes I did,' said Dickie; 'I reached after Aunt Daisy's hat, but I fell on the roof, and I was sliding, sliding down to the wall, but there was a window, and the glass broke and cut me, but I got my feet against the bottom of it, and held on by the iron bar, till Leonard came and took me down;' and he lay back on the pillow, quiet and exhausted, but bright-eyed and attentive as ever, listening to Leonard's equally brief version of the adventure. 'Didn't he save my life, grandpapa?' said the boy, at the close. 'Twice over, you may say,' added the surgeon, and his words as to the nature of the injury manifested that all had depended on the immediate stoppage of the haemorrhage. With so young a child, delay from indecision or want of resource would probably have been fatal. 'There would have been no doing anything, if this little man had not been so good and sensible,' said Leonard, leaning over him. 'And I did not cry. You will tell papa I did not cry,' said Dickie, eagerly, but only half gratified by such girlish treatment as that agitated kiss of his grandfather, after being a little bit of a hero; but then Dickie's wondering eyes really beheld such another kiss bestowed over his head upon Leonard, and quite thought there were tears on grandpapa's cheeks. Perhaps old gentlemen could do what was childish in little boys. Dickie was to be transported home. He wished to be carried by Leonard, but the brougham was at the door, and he had to content himself with being laid on the seat, with his friend to watch over him, the Doctor pointing out that Leonard was a savage spectacle for the eyes of Stoneborough, and hurrying home by the short cut. Ethel met him in extreme alarm. Gertrude's half-restored senses had been totally scattered by the sight of the crimson traces on the spot of Leonard's operations, and she had been left to Mary's care; while Ethel and Aubrey had hastened home, and not finding any one there, the latter had dashed off to Bankside, whilst Ethel waited, arranging the little fellow's bed, and trying to trust to Leonard's message, and not let her mind go back to that fearful day of like waiting, sixteen years ago, nor on to what she might have to write to Norman and Meta of the charge they had sent to her. Her father's cheerful face at first was a pang, and then came the rebound of gladness at the words. 'He is coming. No fear for him, gallant little man--thanks for God's mercy, and to that noble fellow, Leonard.' At the same moment Aubrey burst in--'No one at Wright's--won't be in no one knows how long! What is to become of us?' And he sank down on a chair. 'Ay, what would become of any of us, if no one had a better pate than yours, sir?' said Dr. May. 'You have one single perfection, and you had better make the most of it--that of knowing how to choose your friends. There's the carriage.' After a moment's delay, the cushion was lifted out with the little wounded cavalier, still like a picture; for, true to his humming-bird nature, a few scarcely-conscious movements of his hands had done away with looks of disarray--the rich glossy curls were scarcely disordered, and no stains of blood had adhered to the upper part of his small person, whereas Leonard was a ghastly spectacle from head to foot. 'So, Master Dicky-bird,' said Dr. May, as they rested him a moment on the hall-table, 'give me that claw of yours. Yes, you'll do very well, only you must go to bed now; and, mind, whatever you did when you were in Fairy-land, we don't fly here in Stoneborough--and it does not answer.' 'I am not to go to bed for being naughty, am I?' said Dickie, his brave white lip for the first time quivering; 'indeed, I did not know it was wrong.' The poor little man's spirits were so exhausted, that the reassurance on this head absolutely brought the much-dreaded tears into his eyes; and he could only be carried up gently to his bed, and left to be undressed by his aunt, so great an aggravation to the troubles of this small fragment of independence, that it had almost overset his courtesy and self-command. There was no contenting him till he had had all traces of the disaster washed from face and hands, and the other foot; and then, over his tea, though his little clear chirrup was weak, he must needs give a lucid description of Leonard's bandaging, in the midst of which came a knock at the door, and a gasping voice--'I'll be quite quiet--indeed I will! Only just let me come in and kiss him, and see that he is safe.' 'O, Auntie Daisy, have you got your hat?' Wan, tear-stained, dishevelled, Gertrude bit her lip to save an outburst, gave the stipulated kiss, and retreated to Mary, who stood in the doorway like a dragon. 'Auntie Daisy has been crying,' said Dickie, turning his eyes back to Ethel. 'Please tell her I shall be well very soon, and then I'll go up again and try to get her hat, if I may have a hook and line--I'll tell you how.' 'My dear Dickie, you had better lie down, and settle it as you go to sleep,' said Ethel, her flesh creeping at the notion of his going up again. 'But if I go to sleep now, I shall not know when to say my prayers.' 'Had you not better do so now, Dickie?' Next came the child's scruple about not kneeling; but at last he was satisfied, if Aunt Ethel would give him his little book out of the drawer--that little delicately-illuminated book with the pointed writing and the twisted cipher, Meta's hand in every touch. Presently he looked up, and said: 'Aunt Ethel, isn't there a verse somewhere about giving the angels charge? I want you to find it for me, for I think they helped me to hold on, and helped Leonard upon the narrow place. You know they are sure to be flying about the church.' Ethel read the ninety-first Psalm to him. He listened all through, and thanked her; but in a few minutes more he was fast asleep. As she left the room she met Leonard coming down and held out her hands to him with a mute intensity of thanks, telling him, in a low voice, what Dickie had said of the angels' care. 'I am sure it was true,' said Leonard. 'What else could have saved the brave child from dizziness?' Down-stairs Leonard's reception from Dr. May was, 'Pretty well for a nervous man!' 'Anybody can do what comes to hand.' 'I beg your pardon. Some bodies lose their wits, like your friend Aubrey, who tells me, if he had stood still, he would have fainted away. As long as nerves can do what comes to hand, they need not be blamed, even if they play troublesome tricks at other times, as I suspect they are doing now.' 'Yes; my face is aching a little.' 'Not to say a great deal,' said the Doctor. 'Well, I am not going to pity you; for I think you can feel to-day that most of us would be glad to be in your place!' 'I am very glad,' said Leonard. 'You remember that child's parents? No, you have grown so old, that I am always forgetting what a boy you ought to be; but if you had ever seen the tenderness of his father, and that sunbeam of a Meta, you would know all the more how we bless you for what you have spared them. Leonard, if anything had been needed to do so, you have won to yourself such a brother in Norman as you have in Aubrey!' Meantime Ethel was soothing Gertrude, to whom the shock had been in proportion to the triumphal heights of her careless gaiety. Charles Cheviot had come in while his wife was restoring her; and he had plainly said what no one else would have intimated to the spoilt darling--that the whole accident had been owing to her recklessness, and that he had always expected some fatal consequences to give her a lesson! Gertrude had been fairly cowed by such unwonted treatment; and when he would only take her home on condition of composure and self-command, her trembling limbs obliged her to accept his arm, and he subdued her into meek silence, and repression of all agitation, till she was safe in her room, when she took a little bit of revenge upon Mary by crying her heart out, and declaring it was very cruel of Charles, when she did not mean it. And Mary, on her side, varied between assurances that Charles did not mean it, and that he was quite right--the sister now predominating in her, and now the wife. 'Mean what?' said Ethel, sitting down among them before they were aware. 'That--that it was all my fault!' burst out Gertrude. 'If it was, I don't see what concern it is of his!' 'But, Daisy dear, he is your brother!' 'I've got plenty of brothers of my own! I don't count those people-in-law--' 'She's past reasoning with, Mary,' said Ethel. 'Leave her to me; she will come to her senses by and by!' 'But indeed, Ethel, you won't be hard on her? I am sure dear Charles never thought what he said would have been taken in this way.' 'Why did he say it then?' cried Gertrude, firing up. 'My dear Mary, do please go down, before we get into the pitiable last-word condition!' That condition was reached already; but in Ethel's own bed-room Mary's implicit obedience revived, and away she went, carrying off with her most of what was naughtiness in Gertrude. 'Ethel--Ethel dear!' cried she at once, 'I know you are coming down on me. I deserve it all, only Charles had no business to say it. And wasn't it very cruel and unkind when he saw the state I was in?' 'I suppose Charles thought it was the only chance of giving a lesson, and therefore true kindness. Come, Daisy, is this terrible fit of pride a proper return for such a mercy as we have had to-day?' 'If I didn't say so to myself a dozen times on the way home!--only Mary came and made me so intolerably angry, by expecting me to take it as if it had come from you or papa.' 'Ah, Daisy, that is the evil! If I had done my duty by you all, this would not have been!' 'Now, Ethel, when you want to be worse, and more cutting than anything, you go and tell me my faults are yours! For pity's sake, don't come to that!' 'But I must, Daisy, for it is true. Oh, if you had only been a naughty little girl!' 'What--and had it out then?' said Daisy, who was lying across the bed, and put her golden head caressingly on Ethel's knee. 'If I had plagued you then, you would have broken me in out of self-defence.' 'Something like it,' said Ethel. 'But you know, Daisy, the little last treasure that mamma left did always seem something we could not make enough of, and it didn't make you fractious or tiresome--at least not to us--till we thought you could not be spoilt. And then I didn't see the little faults so soon as I ought; and I'm only an elder sister, after all, without any authority.' 'No, you're not to say that, Ethel, I mind your authority, and always will. You are never a bother.' 'Ah, that's it, Daisy! If I had only been a bother, you might never have got ahead of yourself.' 'Then you really think, like Charles Cheviot, that it was my doing, Ethel?' 'What do you think yourself?' Great tears gathered in the corners of the blue eyes. Was it weak in Ethel not to bear the sight? 'My poor Daisy,' she said, 'yours is not all the burden! I ought not to have taken up such a giddy company, or else I should have kept the boy under my hand. But he is so discreet and independent, that it is more like having a gentleman staying in the house, than a child under one's charge; and one forgets how little he is; and I was as much off my balance with spirits as you. It was the flightiness of us all; and we have only to be thankful, and to be sobered for another time. I am afraid the pride about being reproved is really the worse fault.' 'And what do you want me to do?--to go and tell papa all about it? I mean to do that, of course; it is the only way to get comforted.' 'Of course it is; but--' 'You horrid creature, Ethel! I'll never say you aren't a bother again. You really do want me to go and tell Charles Cheviot that he was quite right, and Mary that I'm ready to be trampled on by all my brothers-in-law in a row! Well, there won't be any more. You'll never give me one--that's one comfort!' said Gertrude, wriggling herself up, and flinging an arm round Ethel's neck. 'As long as you don't do that, I'll do anything for you.' 'Not for me.' 'Well, you know that, you old thing! only you might take it as a personal compliment. I really will do it; for, of course, one could not keep one's Christmas otherwise!' It was rather too business-like; but elders are often surprised to find what was a hard achievement in their time a matter of course to their pupils--almost lightly passed over. Dickie slept till morning, when he was found very pale, but lively and good-humoured as ever. Mr. Wright, coming up to see him, found the hurt going on well, and told Ethel, that if she could keep him in bed and undisturbed for the day, it would be better and safer; but that if he became restless and fretful, there would be no great risk in taking him to a sofa. Restless and fretful! Mr. Wright little knew the discretion, or the happy power of accommodation to circumstances, that had descended to Meta's firstborn. He was quite resigned as soon as the explanation had been made--perhaps, indeed, there was an instinctive sense, that to be dressed and moved would be fatiguing; but he had plenty of smiles and animation for his visitors, and, when propped up in bed, was full of devices for occupation. Moreover he acquired a slave; he made a regular appropriation of Leonard, whom he quickly perceived to be the most likely person to assist in his great design of constructing a model of the clock in the Minster tower, for the edification of his little brother Harry. Leonard worked away at the table by the bed-side with interest nearly equal to the child's; and when wire and cardboard were wanting, he put aside all his dislike to facing the Stoneborough streets and tradesmen in open day, and, at Dickie's request, sallied forth in quest of the materials. And when the bookseller made inquiries after the boy, Leonard, in the fulness of his heart, replied freely and in detail--nay, he was so happy in the little man's well-doing, that he was by no means disconcerted even by a full encounter of Mrs. Harvey Anderson in the street, but answered all her inquiries, in entire oblivion of all but the general rejoicing in little Dickie's wonderful escape. 'Well,' said Aubrey to his sisters, after a visit to his nephew's room, 'Dickie has the best right to him, certainly, to-day. It is an absolute appropriation! They were talking away with all their might when I came up, but came to a stop when I went in, and Master Dick sent me to the right-about.' The truth was, that Dickie, who, with eyes and ears all alive, had gathered up some fragments of Leonard's history, had taken this opportunity of catechizing him upon it in a manner that it was impossible to elude, and which the child's pretty tact carried off, as it did many things which would not have been tolerated if done rudely and abruptly. Step by step, in the way of question and remark, he led Leonard to tell him all that had happened; and when once fairly embarked in the reminiscence, there was in it a kind of peace and pleasure. The fresh, loving, wondering sympathy of the little boy was unspeakably comforting; and besides, the bringing the facts in their simple form to the grasp of the childish mind, restored their proportion, which their terrible consequences had a good deal disturbed. They seemed to pass from the present to the historical, and to assume the balance that they took in the child's mind, coming newly upon them. It was like bathing in a clear limpid stream, that washed away the remains of morbid oppression. 'I wish mamma was here,' said the little friend, at last. 'Do you want her? Are you missing her, my dear?' 'I miss her always,' said Dickie. 'But it was not that--only mamma always makes everybody so happy; and she would be so fond of you, because you have had so much trouble.' 'But, Dickie, don't you think I am happy to be with your grandfather and aunt, and hoping to see my own sisters very soon--your aunt, who taught me what bore me through it all?' 'Aunt Ethel?' cried Dickie, considering. 'I like Aunt Ethel very much; but then she is not like mamma!' There could be no doubt that Leonard was much better and happier after this adventure. Reluctantly, Dickie let him go back to Cocksmoor, where his services in church-decking and in singing had been too much depended on to be dispensed with; but he was to come back with Richard for the family assembly on Christmas evening. Moreover, Gertrude, who was quite herself again, having made her peace with the Cheviots, and endured the reception of her apologies, seized on him to lay plots for a Christmas-tree, for the delectation of Dickie on his sofa, and likewise of Margaret Rivers, and of the elite of the Cocksmoor schools. He gave in to it heartily, and on the appointed day worked with great spirit at the arrangements in the dining-room, where Gertrude, favoured by the captive state of the little boy, conducted her preparations, relegating the family meals to the schoolroom. This tree was made the occasion for furnishing Leonard with all the little appliances of personal property that had been swept away from him; and, after all, he was the most delighted of the party. The small Charlie Cheviot had to be carried off shrieking; Margaret Rivers was critical; even Cocksmoor was experienced in Christmas-trees; and Dickie, when placed in the best situation, and asked if such trees grew in New Zealand, made answer that he helped mamma to make one every year for the Maori children. It was very kind in Aunt Daisy, he added, with unfailing courtesy; but he was too zealous for his colony to be dazzled--too utilitarian to be much gratified by any of his gifts, excepting a knife of perilous excellence, which Aubrey, in contempt of Stoneborough productions, had sacrificed from his own pocket at the last moment. Leonard and Dickie together were in a state of great delight at the little packets handed to the former; studs, purse, pencil-case, writing materials; from Hector Ernescliffe, a watch, with the entreaty that his gifts might not be regarded as unlucky; from Ethel, a photographic book, with the cartes of his own family, whose old negatives had been hunted up for the purpose; also a recent one of Dr. May with his grandson on his knee, the duplicate of which was gone to New Zealand, with the Doctor's inscription, 'The modern Cyropaedia, Astyages confounded.' There was Richard, very good, young and pretty; there was Ethel, exactly like the Doctor, 'only more so;' there was Gertrude, like nobody, not even herself, and her brothers much in the same predicament, there was the latest of Mr. Rivers's many likenesses, with the cockatoo on his wrist, and there was the least truculent and witchlike of the numerous attempts on Flora; there was Mrs. Cheviot, broad-faced and smiling over her son, and Mr. and Mrs. Ernescliffe, pinioning the limbs of their offspring, as in preparation for a family holocaust; there was Dickie's mamma, unspoilable in her loveliness even by photography, and his papa grown very bald and archidiaconal; there was Ethel's great achievement of influence, Dr. Spencer, beautiful in his white hair; there were the vicar and the late and present head-masters. The pleasure excited by all these gifts far exceeded the anticipations of their donors, it seemed as if they had fallen on the very moment when they would convey a sense of home, welcome, and restoration. He did not say much, but looked up with liquid lustrous eyes, and earnest 'thank you's,' and caressingly handled and examined the treasures over and over again, as they lay round him on Dickie's couch. 'I suppose,' said the child to him, 'it is like Job, when all his friends came to see him, and every one gave him a piece of money.' 'He could hardly have enjoyed it more,' murmured Leonard, feeling the restful capacity of happiness in the new possession of the child's ardent love, and of the kind looks of all around, above all, of the one presence that still gave him his chief sense of sunshine. The boyish and romantic touch of passion had, as Ethel had long seen, been burnt and seared away, and yet there was something left, something that, as on this evening she felt, made his voice softer, his eye more deferential, to her than to any one else. Perhaps she had once been his guiding star; and if in the wild tempests of the night he had learnt instead to direct his course by the "Brightest and best of the sons of the morning," still the star would be prized and distinguished, as the first and most honoured among inferior constellations. CHAPTER XXIX Till now the dark was worn, and overhead The lights of sunset and of sunrise mixed.--TENNYSON At New York, Tom wrote a short letter to announce his safe arrival, and then pushed on by railway into Indiana. Winter had completely set in; and when he at length arrived at Winiamac, he found that a sleigh was a far readier mode of conveyance to Massissauga than the wagons used in summer. His drive, through the white cathedral-like arcades of forest, hung with transparent icicles, and with the deep blue sky above, becoming orange towards the west, was enjoyable; and even Massissauga itself, when its skeleton trees were like their neighbours, embellished by the pure snowy covering, looked less forlorn than when their death contrasted with the exuberant life around. He stopped at the hotel, left his baggage there, and after undergoing a catechism on his personal affairs, was directed to Mr. Muller's house, and made his way up its hard-trodden path of snow, towards the green door, at which he knocked two or three times before it was opened by a woman, whose hair and freckled skin were tinted nowhere but in Ireland. He made a step forward out of the cutting blast into the narrow entry, and began to ask, 'Is Miss Ward here? I mean, can I see Miss Warden?' when, as if at the sound of his voice, there rang from within the door close by a shriek--one of the hoarse hysterical cries he had heard upon the day of the inquest. Without a moment's hesitation, he pushed open the door, and beheld a young lady in speechless terror hanging over the stiffened figure on the couch--the eyes wide open, the limbs straight and rigid. He sprang forward, and lifted her into a more favourable posture, hastily asking for simple remedies likely to be at hand, and producing a certain amount of revival for a few moments, though the stiffness was not passing--nor was there evidence of consciousness. 'Are you Leonard?' said Cora Muller, under her breath, in this brief interval, gazing into his face with frightened puzzled eyes. 'No; but I am come to tell her that he is free!' But the words were cut short by another terrible access, of that most distressing kind that stimulates convulsion; and again the terrified women instinctively rendered obedience to the stranger in the measures he rapidly took, and his words, 'hysteria--a form of hysteria,' were forced from him by the necessity of lessening Cora's intense alarm, so as to enable her to be effective. 'We must send for Dr. Laidlaw,' she began in the first breathing moment, and again he looked up and said, 'I am a physician!' 'Mr. Tom?' she asked with the faintest shadow of a smile; he bent his head, and that was their introduction, broken again by another frightful attack; and when quiescence, if not consciousness, was regained, Tom knelt by the sofa, gazing with a sense of heart-rending despair at the wasted features and thin hands, the waxen whiteness of the cheek, and the tokens in which he clearly read long and consuming illness as well as the overthrow of the sudden shock. 'What is this?' he asked, looking up to Cora's beautiful anxious face. 'Oh, she has been very sick, very sick,' she answered; 'it was an attack of pleurisy; but she is getting better at last, though she will not think so, and this news will make all well. Does she hear? Say it again!' Tom shook his head, afraid of the sound of the name as yet, and scarcely durst even utter the word 'Ella' above his breath. 'She is gone out with Cousin Deborah to an apple bee,' was the reassuring answer. 'She wanted change, poor child! Is she getting better?' Averil was roused by a cough, the sound which tore Tom's heart by its import, but he drew back out of her sight, and let Cora raise her, and give her drink, in a soothing tender manner, that was evident restoration. 'Cora dear, is it you?' she said, faintly; 'didn't I hear some one else's voice? Didn't they say--?' and the shiver that crept over her was almost a return of the hysteric fit. 'We said he was free,' said Cora, holding her in her arms. 'Free--yes, I know what that means--free among the dead,' said Averil, calmly, smoothing Cora's hair, and looking in her face. 'Don't be afraid to let me hear. I shall be there with him and Minna soon. Didn't somebody come to tell me? Please let him in, I'll be quiet now.' And as she made gestures of arranging her hair and dress, Tom guardedly presented himself, saying in a voice that trembled with his endeavour to render it calm, 'Did you think I should have come if I had nothing better to tell you?' and as she put out her hand in greeting, he took it in both his own, and met her eyes looking at him wide open, in the first dawning of the hope of an impossible gladness. 'Yes,' he said, 'the truth is come out--he is cleared--he is at home--at Stoneborongh!' The hot fingers closed convulsively on his own, then she raised herself, pressed her hands together, and gasped and struggled fearfully for breath. The joy and effort for self-command were more than the enfeebled frame could support, and there was a terrible and prolonged renewal of those agonizing paroxysms, driving away every thought from the other two except of the immediate needs. At last, when the violence of the attack had subsided, and left what was either fainting or stupor, they judged it best to carry her to her bed, and trust that, reviving without the associations of the other room, the agitation would be less likely to return, and that she might sleep under the influence of an anodyne. Poor Tom! it was not the reception he had figured to himself, and after he had laid her down, and left her to Cora and to Katty to be undressed, he returned to the parlour, and stood over the sinking wood-fire in dejection and dreariness of heart--wrung by the sufferings he had witnessed, with the bitter words (too late) echoing in his brain, and with the still more cruel thought--had it been his father or one of his brothers--any one to whose kindness she could trust, the shock had not been so great, and there would have been more sense of soothing and comfort! And then he tried to collect his impressions of her condition, and judge what would serve for her relief, but all his senses seemed to be scattered; dismay, compassion, and sympathy, had driven away all power of forming a conclusion--he was no longer the doctor--he was only the anxious listener for the faintest sound from the room above, but none reached him save the creaking of the floor under Katty's heavy tread. The gay tinkle of sleigh-bells was the next noise he heard, and presently the door was opened, and two muffled hooded figures looked into the room, now only lighted by the red embers of the fire. 'Where's Cora? where's Ave?' said the bright tone of the lesser. 'It is all dark!' and she was raising her voice to call, when Tom instinctively uttered a 'Hush,' and moved forward; 'hush, Ella, your sister has been ill.' The little muffled figure started at the first sound of his voice, but as he stepped nearer recoiled for a second, then with a low cry, almost a sob of recognition, exclaimed, 'Mr. Tom! Oh, Mr. Tom! I knew you would come! Cousin Deborah, it's Mr. Tom!' and she flew into his arms, and clung with an ecstasy of joy, unknowing the why or how, but with a sense that light had shone, and that her troubles were over. She asked no questions, she only leant against him with, 'Mr. Tom! Mr. Tom!' under her breath. 'But what is it, stranger? Do tell! Where are the girls? What's this about Avy's being sick? Do you know the stranger, Ella?' 'It's Mr. Tom,' she cried, holding his arm round her neck, looking up in a rapturous restfulness. 'I brought Miss Ward-en some good news that I fear has been too much for her,' said he; 'I am--only waiting to--hear how she is.' By way of answer, Deborah opened another door which threw more light on the scene from the cooking stove in the kitchen, and at the same moment Cora with a candle came down the stairs. 'O, Dr. May,' she said, 'you have been too long left alone in the dark. I think she is asleep now. You will stay. We will have tea directly.' Tom faltered something about the hotel, and began to look at Cousin Deborah, and to consider the proprieties of life; but Cousin Deborah, Cora, and Ella began declaring with one voice that he must remain for the evening meal, and a bustle of cheerful preparation commenced, while Ella still hung on his hand. 'But, Ella, you've never asked my good news.' 'Oh dear! I was too glad! Are we going home then?' 'Yes, I trust so, I hope so, my dear; for Leonard's innocence has come to light, and he is free.' 'Then Henry won't mind--and we may be called by our proper name again--and Ave will be well,' cried the child, as the ideas came more fully on her comprehension. 'O, Cora! O, Cousin Deborah, do you hear? Does Ave know? May I run up and tell Ave?' This of course was checked, but next Ella impetuously tore off her wraps for the convenience of spinning up and down wildly about the kitchen and parlour. Leonard himself did not seem to have great part in her joy; Henry's policy had really nearly rooted out the thought of him personally, and there was a veil of confusion over the painful period of his trial, which at the time she had only partially comprehended. But she did understand that his liberation would be the term of exile; and though his name was to her connected with a mysterious shudder that made her shrink from uttering or hearing details, she had a security that Mr. Tom would set all right, and she loved him so heartily, that his presence was sunshine enough for her. A little discomfited at the trouble he was causing, Tom was obliged to wait while not only Cousin Deborah, but Cora busied herself in the kitchen, and Ella in her restless joy came backwards and forwards to report their preparations, and at times to tarry a short space by his side, and tell of the recent troubles. Ave had been very ill, she said, very ill indeed about a month ago, and Henry had come home to see her, but had been obliged to go away to the siege of Charleston when she was better. They had all been ill ever since they came there, but now Mr. Tom was come, should not they all go home to dear Stoneborough, away from this miserable place? If they could only take Cora with them! It was still a childish tongue; but Ella had outgrown all her plump roundness, and was so tall and pale that Tom would hardly have known her. Her welcome was relief and comfort, and she almost inspired her own belief that now all would be well. His English ideas were rather set at rest by finding that Mrs. Deborah was to preside at the tea-table, and that he was not to be almost tete-a-tete with Miss Muller. Deborah having concluded her hospitable cares, catechized him to her full content, and satisfied herself on the mystery of the Wardens' life. And now what brought himself out? She guessed he could not find an opening in the old country. Tom smiled, explained his opening at home, and mentioned his charge of his late friend's book. 'So you are come out about the book, and just come a few hundred miles out of the way to bring this bit of news, that you could have telegraphed,' said the Yankee dame, looking at him with her keen eyes. 'Well, if you were coming, it was a pity you were not sooner. She has pined away ever since she came here; and to such a worn-down condition as hers, poor child, I doubt joy's kinder more upsetting than trouble, when one is used to it. There; I'll fix the things, and go up and sit with Avy. She'll be less likely to work herself into a flight again if she sees me than one of you.' So Tom--less embarrassed now--found himself sitting by the fire, with Ella roasting her favourite nuts for him, and Miss Muller opposite. He was taken by surprise by her beautiful face, elegant figure, and lady-like manner, and far more by her evidently earnest affection for Averil. She told him that ever since the fatal turn of little Minna's illness, Averil had been subject to distressing attacks of gasping and rigidity, often passing into faintness; and though at the moment of emotion she often showed composure and self-command, yet that nature always thus revenged herself. Suspense--letters from home or from Henry--even verses, or times connected with the past, would almost certainly bring on the affection; and the heat of the summer had relaxed her frame, so as to render it even more unable to resist. There had been hope in the bracing of winter, but the first frosts had brought a chill, and a terrible attack of pleurisy, so dangerous that her brother had been summoned; she had struggled through, however, and recovered to a certain point, but there had stopped short, often suffering pain in the side, and never without panting breath and recurring cough. This had been a slightly better day, and she had been lying on the sofa, counting the days to Leonard's next letter, when the well-known voice fell on her ears, and the one strong effort to control herself had resulted in the frightful spasms, which had been worse than any Cora had yet witnessed. 'But she will get well, and we shall go home,' said Ella, looking up wistfully into Tom's mournful face. 'And I shall lose you,' said Cora; 'but indeed I have long seen it was the only thing. If I had only known, she never should have come here.' 'No, indeed, I feel that you would have led her to nothing that was not for her good and comfort.' 'Ah! but I did not know,' said Cora; 'I had not been here--and I only thought of my own pleasure in having her. But if there is any way of freeing her from this unfortunate speculation without a dead loss, I will make father tell me.' This--from Cora's pretty mouth--though only honest and prudent, rather jarred upon Tom in the midst of his present fears; and he began to prepare for his departure to the inn, after having sent up Ella to ask for her sister, and hearing that she still slept soundly under the influence of the opiate. When Averil awoke it was already morning, and Cora was standing by her bed, with her eyes smiling with congratulation, like veronicas on a sunny day. 'Cora, is it true?' she said, looking up. Cora bent down and kissed her, and whispered, 'I wish you joy, my dear.' 'Then it is,' she said; 'it is not all a dream?' 'No dream, dearest.' 'Who said it?' she asked. 'O, Cora, that could not be true!' and the colour rose in her cheek. 'That! yes, Averil, if you mean that we had a visitor last evening. I took him for Leonard, do you know! Only I thought his eyes and hair did not quite answer the description.' 'He is a very gentleman-like person. Did you not think so?' said Averil. 'Ah! Ave, I've heard a great deal. Don't you think you had better tell me some more?' 'No, no!' exclaimed Averil; 'you are not to think of folly,' as coughing cut her short. 'I'll not think of any more than I can help, except what you tell me.' 'Never think at all, Cora. Oh! what has brought him here? I don't know how I can dare to see him again; and yet he is not gone, is he?' 'Oh no, he is only at the inn. He is coming back again.' 'I must be up. Let me get up,' said Averil, raising herself, but pausing from weakness and breathlessness. And when they had forced some food upon her, she carried out her resolution, though twice absolutely fainting in the course of dressing; and at length crept softly, leaning on Cora's arm, into the parlour. Though Tom was waiting there, he neither spoke nor came forward till she was safely placed upon the sofa, and then gathering breath, she sought him with her eager eyes, shining, large, lustrous, and wistful, as they looked out of the white thin face, where the once glowing colour had dwindled to two burning carnation spots. It was so piteous a change that as he took her hand he was silent, from sheer inability to speak calmly. 'You have come to tell me,' she said. 'I am afraid I could not thank you last night.' How different that soft pleading languid voice from the old half defiant tone! 'I did not know you had been so unwell,' he forced himself to say, 'or I would not have come so suddenly.' 'I am grown so silly' she said, trying to smile. 'I hardly even understood last night;' and the voice died away in the intense desire to hear. 'I--I was coming on business, and I thought you would not turn from the good tidings, though I was the bearer,' he said, in a broken, agitated, apologetic way. 'Only let me hear it again,' she said. 'Did you say he was free?' 'Yes, free as you are, or I. At home. My father was gone to fetch him.' She put her hands over her face, and looked up with the sweetest smile he had ever seen, and whispered, 'Now I can sing my Nunc dimittis.' He could not at once speak; and before he had done more than make one deprecatory gesture, she asked, 'You have seen him?' 'Not since this--not since September.' 'I know. You have been very good; and he is at home--ah! not home--but Dr. May's. Was he well? Was he very glad?' 'I have not seen him; I have not heard; you will hear soon. I came at once with the tidings.' 'Thank you;' and she clasped her hands together. 'Have you seen Henry? does he know?' 'Could I? Had not you the first right?' 'Leonard! Oh, dear Leonard!' She lay back for a few moments, panting under the gust of exceeding joy; while he was silent, and tried not to seem to observe her with his anxious eyes. Then she recovered a little and said, 'The truth come out! Did you say so? What was the truth?' 'He paused a moment, afraid of the shock, and remembering that the suspicion had been all unknown to her. She recalled probabilities, and said, 'Was it from a confession? Is it known who--who was the real unhappy person?' 'Yes. Had you no suspicion?' 'No--none,' said Averil, shuddering, 'unless it was some robber. Who was it?' 'You had never thought of the other nephew?' 'You don't mean Samuel Axworthy! Oh! no. Why the last thing Leonard bade me, was always to pray for him.' 'Ah!' said Tom, with bent head, and colouring cheeks; 'but who are those for whom such as Leonard would feel bound to pray?' There was a moment's silence, and then she said, 'His enemy! Is that what you mean? But then he would have known it was he.' 'He was entirely convinced that so it must have been, but there was no proof, and an unsupported accusation would only have made his own case worse.' 'And has he confessed? has he been touched and cleared Leonard at last?' 'No; he had no space granted him. It was the receipt in your brother's writing that was found upon him.' 'The receipt? Yes, Leonard always said the receipt would clear him! But oh, how dreadful! He must have had it all the time. How could he be so cruel! Oh! I never felt before that such wickedness could be;' and she lay, looking appalled and overpowered. 'Think of your brother knowing it all, and bidding--and giving you that injunction--' said Tom, feeling the necessity of overcoming evil with good. 'Oh! if I had known it, I could not--I could not have been like Leonard! And where--what has become of him?' she asked, breathlessly. 'You speak as if he was dead.' 'Yes. He was killed in a fray at a gaming-house!' There was a long silence, first of awe, then of thankfulness plainly beaming in her upraised eyes and transparent countenance, which Tom watched, filled with sensations, mournful but not wholly wretched. Shattered as she was, sinking away from her new-found happiness, it was a precious privilege to be holding to her the longed--for draught of joy. 'Tell me about it, please,' she presently said. 'Where--how did the receipt come to light? Were the police told to watch for it? I want to know whom I have to thank.' His heart beat high, but there was a spirit within him that could not brook any attempt to recall the promise he had pursued her with, the promise that he would not rest till he had proved her brother's innocence. He dreaded her even guessing any allusion to it, or fancying he had brought the proffered price in his hand; and when he began with, 'Can you bear to hear of the most shocking scene I ever witnessed?' he gave no hint of his true motive in residing at Paris, of the clue that Bilson's draft had given him in thither pursuing Axworthy, nor of his severe struggle in relinquishing the quest. He threw over all the completest accidental air, and scarcely made it evident that it was he who had recognized the writing, and all that turned on it. Averil listened to the narration, was silent for some space, then having gone over it in her own mind, looked up and said-- 'Then all this came of your being at that hospital;' and a burning blush spread over the pale cheek, and made Tom shrink, start, and feel guilty of having touched the chord of obligation, connected with that obtrusive pledge of his. Above all, however, to repress emotion was his prime object; and he calmly answered, 'It was a good Providence that brought any one there who knew the circumstances.' She was silent; and he was about to rise and relieve her from the sense of his presuming on her gratitude, when a cough, accompanied with a pressure of her hand on her side, betrayed an access of suffering, that drew him on to his other purpose of endeavouring to learn her condition, and to do what he could for her relief. His manner, curiously like his father's, and all the home associations connected with it, easily drew from her what he wanted to ascertain, and she perfectly understood its purport, and was calm and even bright. 'I was glad to be better when Henry went away,' she said; 'he had so much to do, and we thought I was getting well then. You must not frighten him and hurry him here, if you please,' she said, earnestly, 'for he must not be wasting his time here, and you think it will last a month or two, don't you?' 'I want to persuade Henry to bring you all home, and enter into partnership with Mr. Wright,' said Tom. 'The voyage would--might--it would be the best thing for you.' 'Could I ever be well enough again? Oh, don't tell me to think about it! The one thing I asked for before I die has been given me, and now I know he is free, I will--will not set my mind on anything else.' There was a look so near heaven on her face, as she spoke, that Tom durst not say any more of home, or earthly schemes; but, quiet, grave, and awe-stricken, left her to the repose she needed, and betook himself to the other room, where Ella, of course, flew on him, having been hardly detained by Cora from breaking in before. His object was to go to see the medical man who had been attending Averil; and Cora assuring him the horse had nothing to do in the frost, and telling him the times of the day when he would be most likely to find Dr. Laidlaw, he set forth. Averil meantime lay on her sofa calmly happy, and thankful, the worn and wearied spirit full of rest and gladness unspeakable, in the fulness of gratitude for the answered prayer that she might know her brother free before her death. If she had ever doubted of her own state, she had read full confirmation in her physician's saddened eyes, and the absence of all hopeful auguries, except the single hint that she might survive a voyage to England; and that she wished unsaid. Life, for the last five years, had been mournful work; there had been one year of blind self-will, discord, and bitterness, then a crushing stroke, and the rest exhausted submission and hopeless bending to sorrow after sorrow, with self-reproach running through all. Wearied out, she was glad to lay down the burthen, and accept the evening gleam as sunset radiance, without energy to believe it as the dawn of a brighter day. She shrank from being made even to wish to see Leonard. If once she began to think it possible, it would be a hard sacrifice to give it up; and on one point her resolution was fixed, that she would not be made a cause for bringing him to share their wretchedness in America. Life and things of life were over with her, and she would only be thankful for the softening blessings that came at its close, without stirring up vain longings for more. That kindness of Tom May, for instance, how soothing it was after her long self-reproach for her petulant and cutting unjust reply to his generous affection--generous above all at such a moment! And after all, it was he--it was he and no other who had cleared Leonard--he had fulfilled the pledge he had given when he did not know what he was talking of. How she hated the blush that the sudden remembrance had called up on her face! It was quite plain that he had been disgusted by her unkind, undignified, improper tone of rejection; and though out of humanity he had brought her the tidings, he would not let her approach to thanking him, she was ashamed that he should have traced an allusion, the most distant, to the scene he had, doubtless, loathed in remembrance. He would, no doubt, go away to-day or to-morrow, and then these foolish thoughts would subside, and she should be left alone with Cora and her thankfulness, to think again of the great change before her! But Tom was not gone. Indeed Averil was much more ill before the next morning, partly from hysteria, the reaction of the morning's excitement, and partly from an aggravation of the more serious pulmonary affection. It was a temporary matter, and one that made his remaining the merest act of common humanity, since he had found Dr. Laidlaw a very third-rate specimen, and her brother was too far off to have arrived in time to be of use. The fresh science and skill of the young physician were indeed of the highest value, and under his care Averil rallied after a few days of prostration and suffering, during which she had watched and observed a good deal, and especially the good understanding between her doctor and Cora Muller. When Cousin Deborah was sitting with her, they always seemed to be talking in the drawing-room; nay, there were reports of his joining in the fabrication of some of the delicacies that were triumphantly brought to her room; and Ella was in a state of impatient pique at being slighted by 'Mr. Tom,' who, she complained, was always fighting with Cora about their politics; and Cora herself used to bring what Dr. May had said, as the choicest entertainment to her sick friend; while to herself he was merely the physician, kind and gentle to the utmost degree; but keeping his distance so scrupulously, that the pang awoke that he absolutely disliked her, and only attended her from common compassion; and, it might be, found consolation in being thus brought in contact with Cora. Oh, if it were only possible to own her wrongs, and ask his pardon without a compromise of maidenliness! Perhaps--perhaps she might, when she was still nearer death, and when she was supposed to know how it was between him and Cora. Dear Cora, it would be a beautiful reward for them both, and they would take care of Ella. Cora would be happier than ever yet among the Mays--and--Oh! why, why was there so much unkind selfish jealousy left, that instead of being glad, the notion left her so very miserable? Why did the prospect of such happiness for her self-devoted friend and nurse make her feel full of bitterness, and hardly able to bear it patiently, when she heard her speak the name of Dr. May? Averil had again left her bed, and resumed her place on the sofa before letters arrived. There was Leonard's from Cocksmoor Parsonage, the first real letter she had had from him since his term of servitude had begun. It was a grave and thankful letter, very short, doing little more than mention every one's kindness, and express a hope of soon meeting her and Ella, however and wherever Henry should think best. Brief as it was, it made her more thoroughly realize his liberty, and feel that the yearning towards him in her heart was growing more and more ardent, in spite of her strivings not to let it awaken. The same post brought Henry's answer to Tom May's representation. It was decisive. He had broken off his whole connection with England, and did not wish to return to a neighbourhood so full of painful recollections. He was making his way rapidly upwards in his present position, and it would be folly to give up the advantages it offered; moreover, he had no fears of the future well-doing of the Massissauga Company. As soon as the weather permitted it, he hoped to remove his sister to a healthier locality for change of air, but she could not be fit for a journey in the winter. There were plenty of acknowledgments to the Mays for their kindness to Leonard, from whom Henry said he had heard, as well as from Dr. May, and others at Stoneborough. He should advise Leonard by all means to close with Mr. Bramshaw's offer, for he saw no opening for him in the United States at present, although the ultimate triumph over rebellion, &c. &c. &c.--in the most inflated style of Henry's truly adopted country. No one who had not known the whole affair would ever enter into Leonard's entire innocence, the stigma of conviction would cleave to him, and create an impression against him and his family among strangers, and it was highly desirable that he should remain among friends. In fact, it was plain that Henry was still ashamed of him, and wished to be free of a dangerous appendage. Tom was so savagely angry at this letter that he could only work off his wrath by a wild expedition in the snow, in the course of which he lost his way, wandered till the adventure began to grow perilous, came at last upon a squatter, with great difficulty induced him to indicate the track sufficiently for his English density, and arrived at Massissauga at nine o'clock at night. Averil was still on her sofa, quite calm and quiet, all but her two red spots; but afterwards, in her own room, she had one of her worst fits of spasms. However, she was up and dressed by the middle of the next day, and, contrary to her wont since the first time, she sent Ella out of the room when her doctor came to see her. 'I wanted to speak to you,' she said, 'I have a great favour to ask of you. You will soon be going home. Would you, could you take Ella with you? I know it is a great, a too great thing to ask. But I would not have her in any one's way. I am going to write to Mrs. Wills, at the school where I was, and Ella's means are quite enough to keep her there, holidays and all, till Leonard can give her a home. It will be much better for her, and a relief to Henry; and it will be giving back one--one to Leonard! It will be one thing more that I shall be happy about.' Tom had let her go on with her short gentle sentences, because he knew not how to answer; but at last she said, 'Forgive me, and do not think of it, if I have asked what I ought not, or would be troublesome.' Troublesome! no, indeed! I was only thinking--if it might not be better managed,' he answered, rather by way of giving himself time to debate whether the utterance of the one thought in his heart would lead to his being driven away. 'Pray do not propose Leonard's coming for her! He must come to this feverish place in spring. And if he came, and I were not here, and Henry not wanting him! Oh no, no; do not let me think of his coming!' 'Averil,' he said, kneeling on one knee so as to be nearer, and to be able to speak lower, 'you are so unearthly in your unselfishness, that I dare the less to put before you the one way in which I could take Ella home to him. It is if you would overlook the past, and give me a brother's right in them both.' She turned in amazement to see if she had heard aright. He had removed his glasses, and the deep blue expressive eyes so seldom plainly visible were wistfully, pleadingly, fixed on her, brimming over with the dew of earnestness. Her face of inquiry gave him courage to go on, 'If you would only let me, I think I could bring you home to see him; and if you would believe it and try, I believe I could make you happier,' and with an uncontrollable shake in his voice he ceased--and only looked. She sat upright, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes shut, trying to collect her thoughts; and the silence lasted for several seconds. At last she said, opening her eyes, but gazing straight before her, not at him, 'I do not think I ought. Do you really know what you are saying? You know I cannot get well.' 'I know,' he said. 'All I ask is, to tend and watch over you while I may, to bring you home to Leonard, and to be Ella's brother.' His voice was still and low, and he laid his hand on her folded ones with reverent solemnity; but though it did not tremble, its touch was cold as marble, and conveyed to Averil an instant sense of the force of his repressed emotion. She started under it, and exclaimed with the first agitation she had shown, 'No, no; it would cost you too much. You, young, beginning life--you must not take a sorrow upon you.' 'Is it not there already?' he said, almost inaudibly. 'Would it lessen it to be kept away from you?' 'Oh, do not go on, do not tempt me,' she cried. 'Think of your father.' 'Nay, think what he is yourself. Or rather look here,' and he took out a part of a letter from Ethel, and laid it before her. 'As to papa not guessing your object,' she said, 'that was a vain delusion if you ever entertained it, so you must not mind my having explained. He said if he had been you, it was just what he should have done himself, and he is quite ready to throw his heart into it if you will only trust to his kindness. I do so want you really to try what that is.' 'And you came for this,' faltered Averil, leaning back, almost overcome. 'I did not come meaning to hurry the subject on you. I hoped to have induced Henry to have brought you all home, and then, when I had done my best to efface the recollection of that unpardonable behaviour, to have tried whether you could look on me differently.' 'I don't like you to say that,' said Averil, simply but earnestly; 'I have felt over and over again how wrong I was--how ungrateful--to have utterly missed all the nobleness and generosity of your behaviour, and answered in that unjust, ill-tempered way.' 'Nothing was ever more deserved,' he answered; 'I have hated myself ever since, and I hope I am not as obnoxious now.' 'It was I!' she said; 'I have lived every bit of the winter over again, and seen that I was always ready to be offended, and somehow I could not help caring so much for what you said, that lesser things from you hurt and cut as other people's did not.' 'Do you know what that proves?' said Tom, with an arch subsmile lighting on his eyes and mouth; and as a glow awoke on her pale cheek, he added, 'and won't you believe, too, that my propensity to "contemptuous irony" was all from my instinctive fear of what you could do to me!' 'Oh, don't repeat that! I have been so bitterly ashamed of it!' 'I am sure I have.' 'And I have longed so to ask your pardon. I thought I would leave a letter or message with Ella that you would understand.' 'You can do better than that now. You can forgive me.' 'Oh!' said Averil, her hands suddenly joined over her face, 'this is one joy more! I cannot think why it is all growing so bright just at last--at last. It is all come now! How good it is!' He saw that she could bear no more. He pressed no more for a decisive answer; he did not return to the subject; but from that time he treated her as what belonged to him, as if it was his business to think, act, and judge for her, and to watch over her; and her acquiescence was absolute. There was not much speaking between them; there were chiefly skirmishes between him and Cora, to which she listened in smiling passive amusement; and even when alone together they said little--actually nothing at all about the future. He had written to Ethel on his first arrival, and on the reply, as well as on Averil's state, all must depend. Meanwhile such a look of satisfied repose and peace shone upon Averil's face as was most sweet to look upon; and though extremely feeble, and not essentially better, she was less suffering, and could in great languor, but in calm enjoyment, pass through day by day of the precious present that had come to crown her long trial. CHAPTER XXX Oh, when its flower seems fain to die, The full heart grudges smile or sigh To aught beside, though fair and dear; Like a bruised leaf, at touch of fear, Its hidden fragrance love gives out.--Lyra Innocentum 'The letters at last! One to Ethel, and three to Leonard! Now for it, Ethel!' Ethel opened--read--ran out of the room without a word, and sought her father in his study, where she laid before him Tom's letter, written from Massissauga the day after his arrival. 'Dear Ethel, 'I have found my darling, but too late to arrest the disease--the work of her brother's perverseness and wrong-headedness. I have no hope of saving her; though it will probably be a matter of several months--that is, with care, and removal from this vile spot. 'I am writing to Henry, but I imagine that he is too much charmed with his present prospects to give them up; and in her angelic self-sacrifice she insists on Leonard's not coming out. Indeed, there would be no use in his doing so unless she leaves this place; but should no unforeseen complication supervene, it is my full persuasion that she could be removed, safely make the voyage, and even be spared for this summer among us. Surely my father will not object! It will be but a short time; and she has suffered so much, so piteously needs love and cherishing, that it is not in him to refuse. He, who consented to Margaret's engagement, cannot but feel for us. I would work for him all my life! I would never cast a thought beyond home, if only once hallowed by this dear presence for ever so short a time. Only let the answers be so cordial as to remove all doubts or scruples; and when they are sent prepare for her. I would bring her as quickly as her health permits. No time must be lost in taking her from hence; and I wait only for the letters to obtain her consent to an immediate marriage. Furnish the house at once; I will repay you on my return. There is £200 for the first floor, sitting, and bedrooms; for the rest the old will do. Only regard the making these perfect; colouring pink--all as cheerful and pleasant as money can accomplish. If Flora will bear with me, get her to help you; or else Mary, if Cheviot forgives me. Only don't spare cost. I will make it up some way, if you find more wanted. I saw an invalid sofa, an improvement on Margaret's, which I will write to Gaspard to send from Paris. If you could only see the desolateness of the house where she has wasted away these three years, you would long to make a bower of bliss for her. I trust to you. I find I must trust everything to you. I cannot write to my father; I have made nine beginnings, and must leave it to you. He has comforted her, he knows her sorrows; he could not see her and bid me leave her. Only there must be no hesitation. That, or even remonstrance, would prevent her from consenting; and as to the objections, I cannot know them better than I do. Indeed, all this may be in vain; she is so near Heaven, that I dare not talk to her of this; but I have written to Leonard, dwelling chiefly on the chance of bringing her to him. Her desire to keep him from attempting to come out will I trust be an inducement; but if you could only see her, you would know how irreverent it seems to persecute one so nearly an angel with such matters. If I may only tend her to the last! I trust to you. This is for my father. 'Ever yours, 'THOMAS MAY.' The last sentence referred to a brief medical summary of her symptoms, on a separate paper. 'Can this be Tom?' was the Doctor's exclamation. 'Poor boy! it is going very hard with him!' 'This would soften it more than anything else could,' said Ethel. 'Oh yes! You write. Yes, and I'll write, and tell him he is free to take his own way. Poor child! she would have been a good girl if she had known how. Well, of all my eleven children that Tom should be the one to go on in this way!' 'Poor dear Tom! What do you think of his statement of her case? Is she so very ill?' Dr. May screwed up his face. 'A sad variety of mischief,' he said; 'if all be as he thinks, I doubt his getting her home; but he is young, and has his heart in it. I have seen her mother in a state like this--only without the diseased lungs. You can't remember it; but poor Ward never thought he could be grateful enough after she was pulled through. However, this is an aggravated case, and looks bad--very bad! It is a mournful ending for that poor boy's patience--it will sink very deep, and he will be a sadder man all his days, but I would not hinder his laying up a treasure that will brighten as he grows older.' 'Thank you, papa. I shall tell him what you say.' 'I shall write--to her I think. I owe him something for not proving that it is all as a study of pneumonia. I say, Ethel, what is become of the "Diseases of Climate?"' he added, with a twinkle in his eye. 'In the nine beginnings.' 'And how about the Massissauga Company?' 'You heartless old worldly-minded father!' said Ethel. 'When you take to prudence for Tom, what is the world coming to?' 'Into order,' said the Doctor, shaking himself into the coat she held for him. 'Tom surrendered to a pet patient of mine. Now for poor Leonard! Good-bye, young people! I am off to Cocksmoor!' 'Please take me, grandpapa,' cried Dickie, hopping into the hall. 'You, you one-legged manikin! I'm going over all the world; and how are you to get home?' 'On Leonard's back,' said the undaunted Dickie. 'Not so, master: poor Leonard has news here that will take the taste of nonsense out of his mouth.' 'I am his friend,' said Dickie, with dignity. 'Then your friendship must not disturb him over his letters. And can you sit in the carriage and twirl your thumbs while I am at Fordham?' 'I shall not twirl my thumbs. I shall make out a problem on my ship chess-board.' 'That's the boy who was sent from the Antipodes, that he might not be spoilt!' quoth Aubrey, as the Doctor followed the child into the carriage. 'Granting reasonable wishes is not spoiling,' said Ethel. 'May the system succeed as well with Dickie as with--' and Aubrey in one flourish indicated Gertrude and himself. 'Ay, we shall judge by the reception of Ethel's tidings!' cried Gertrude. 'Now for it, Ethel. Read us Tom's letter, confute the engineer, hoist with his own petard.' 'Now, Ethel, confute the Daisy, the green field daisy--the simple innocent daisy, deluded by "Diseases of Climate."' 'Ethel looks as concerned as if it were fatal truth,' added Gertrude. 'What is it?' asked Aubrey. 'If Henry Ward has gone down in a monitor at Charleston, I'll forgive him.' 'Not that,' said Ethel; 'but we little thought how ill poor Ave is.' 'Dangerously?' said Aubrey, gravely. 'Not perhaps immediately so; but Tom means to marry at once, that he may have a chance of bringing her home to see Leonard.' 'Another shock for Leonard,' said Aubrey, quite subdued, 'why can't he have a little respite?' 'May they at least meet once more!' said Ethel; 'there will be some comfort in looking to that!' 'And what a fellow Tom is to have thought of it,' added Aubrey. 'Nobody will ever dare to say again that he is not the best of the kit of us! I must be off now to the meet: but if you are writing, Ethel, I wish you would give her my love, or whatever he would like, and tell him he is a credit to the family. I say, may I tell George Rivers?' 'Oh yes; it will soon be in the air; and Charles Cheviot will be down on us!' Away went Aubrey to mount the hunter that George Rivers placed at his service. Gertrude, who had been struck dumb, looked up to ask, 'Then it is really so?' 'Indeed it is.' 'Then,' cried Gertrude, vehemently, 'you and he have been deceiving us all this time!' 'No, Gertrude, there was nothing to tell. I did not really know, and I could not gossip about him.' 'You might have hinted.' 'I tried, but I was clumsy.' 'I hate hints!' exclaimed the impetuous young lady; 'one can't understand them, and gets the credit of neglecting them. If people have a secret attachment, they ought to let all their family know!' 'Perhaps they do in Ireland.' 'You don't feel one grain for me, Ethel,' said Gertrude, with tears in her eyes. 'Only think how Tom led me on to say horrid things about the Wards; and now to recollect them, when she is so ill too--and he--' She burst into sobs. 'My poor Daisy! I dare say it was half my fault.' Gertrude gave an impatient leap. 'There you go again! calling it your fault is worse than Charles's improving the circumstance. It was my fault, and it shall be my fault, and nobody else's fault, except Tom's, and he will hate me, and never let me come near her to show that I am not a nasty spiteful thing!' 'I think that if you are quiet and kind, and not flighty, he will forget all that, and be glad to let you be a sister to her.' 'A sister to Ave Ward! Pretty preferment!' muttered Gertrude. 'Poor Ave! After the way she has borne her troubles, we shall feel it an honour to be sisters to her.' 'And that chair!' broke out Gertrude. 'O, Ethel, you did out of malice prepense make me vow it should be for Mrs. Thomas May.' 'Well, Daisy, if you won't suspect me of improving the circumstance, I should say that finishing it for her would be capital discipline.' 'Horrid mockery, I should say,' returned Gertrude, sadly; 'a gaudy rose-coloured chair, all over white fox-gloves, for a person in that state--' 'Poor Tom's great wish is to have her drawing-room made as charming as possible; and it would be a real welcome to her.' 'Luckily,' said Gertrude, breaking into laughter again, 'they don't know when it began; how in a weak moment I admired the pattern, and Blanche inflicted it and all its appurtenances on me, hoping to convert me to a fancy-work-woman! Dear me, pride has a fall! I loved to answer "Three stitches," when Mrs. Blanche asked after my progress.' 'Ah, Daisy, if you did but respect any one!' 'If they would not all be tiresome! Seriously, I know I must finish the thing, because of my word.' 'Yes, and I believe keeping a light word that has turned out heavy, is the best help in bridling the tongue.' 'And, Ethel, I will really try to be seen and not heard while I am about the work,' said Gertrude, with an earnestness which proved that she was more sorry than her manner conveyed. Her resolution stood the trying test of a visit from the elder married sisters; for, as Ethel said, the scent of the tidings attracted both Flora and the Cheviots; and the head-master endeavoured to institute a kind of family committee, to represent to the Doctor how undesirable the match would be, entailing inconveniences that would not end with the poor bride's life, and bringing at once upon Tom a crushing anxiety and sorrow. Ethel's opinion was of course set aside by Mr. Cheviot, but he did expect concurrence from Mrs. Rivers and from Richard, and Flora assented to all his objections, but she was not to be induced to say she would remonstrate with her father or with Tom; and she intimated the uselessness thereof so plainly, that she almost hoped that Charles Cheviot would be less eager to assail the Doctor with his arguments. 'No hope of that,' said Ethel, when he had taken leave. 'He will disburthen his conscience; but then papa is well able to take care of himself! Flora, I am so thankful you don't object.' 'No indeed,' said Flora. 'We all know it is a pity; but it would be a far greater pity to break it off now--and do Tom an infinity of harm. Now tell me all.' And she threw herself into the subject in the homelike manner that had grown on her, almost in proportion to Mary's guest-like ways and absorption in her own affairs. Six weeks from that time, another hasty note announced that Dr. and Mrs. Thomas May and Ella were at Liverpool; adding that Averil had been exceedingly ill throughout the voyage, though on being carried ashore, she had so far revived, that Tom hoped to bring her home the next day; but emotion was so dangerous, that he begged not to be met at the station, and above all, that Leonard would not show himself till summoned. Dr. May being unavoidably absent, Ethel alone repaired to the newly-furnished house for this strange sad bridal welcome. The first person to appear when the carriage door was opened was a young girl, pale, tall, thin, only to be recognized by her black eyes. With a rapid kiss and greeting, Ethel handed her on to the further door, where she might satisfy the eager embrace of the brother who there awaited her; while Tom almost lifted out the veiled muffled figure of his bride, and led her up-stairs to the sitting-room, where, divesting her of hat, cloak, muff, and respirator, he laid her on the sofa, and looked anxiously for her reassuring smile before he even seemed to perceive his sister or left room for her greeting. The squarely-made, high-complexioned, handsome Averil Ward was entirely gone. In Averil May, Ethel saw delicately refined and sharpened features, dark beautiful eyes, enlarged, softened, and beaming with perilous lustre, a transparently white blue-veined skin, with a lovely roseate tint, deepening or fading with every word, look, or movement, and a smile painfully sweet and touching, as first of the three, the invalid found voice for thanks and inquiries for all. 'Quite well,' said Ethel. 'But papa has been most unluckily sent for to Whitford, and can't get home till the last train.' 'It may be as well,' said Tom: 'we must have perfect quiet till after the night's rest.' 'May I see one else to-night?' she wistfully asked. 'Let us see how you are when you have had some coffee and are rested.' 'Very well,' she said, with a gentle submission, that was as new a sight as Tom's tenderness; 'but indeed I am not tired; and it is so pretty and pleasant. Is this really Dr. Spencer's old house? Can there be such a charming room in it?' 'I did not think so,' said Tom, looking in amazement at the effect produced by the bright modern grate with its cheerful fire, the warm delicate tints of the furniture, the appliances for comfort and ornament already giving a home look. 'I know this is in the main your doing, Ethel; but who was the hand?' 'All of us were hands,' said Ethel; 'but Flora was the moving spring. She went to London for a week about it.' 'Mrs. Rivers! Oh, how good!' said Averil, flushing with surprise; then raising herself, as her coffee was brought in a dainty little service, she exclaimed, 'And oh, if it were possible, I should say that was my dear old piano!' 'Yes,' said Ethel, 'we thought you would like it; and Hector Ernescliffe gave Mrs. Wright a new one for it.' This was almost too much. Averil's lip trembled, but she looked up into her husband's face, and made an answer, which would have been odd had she not been speaking to his thought. 'Never mind! It is only happiness and the kindness.' And she drank the coffee with an effort, and smiled at him again, as she asked, 'Where is Ella?' 'At our house,' said Ethel; 'we mean her to be there for the present.' Knowing with whom Ella must be, and fearing to show discontent with the mandate of patience, Averil again began to admire. 'What a beautiful chair! Look, Tom! is it not exquisite? Whose work is it?' 'Gertrude's.' 'That is the most fabulous thing of all,' said Tom, walking round it. 'Daisy! Her present, not her work?' 'Her work, every stitch. It has been a race with time.' The gratification of Averil's flush and smile was laid up by Ethel for Gertrude's reward; but it was plain that Tom wanted complete rest for his wife, and Ethel only waited to install her in the adjoining bed-room, which was as delightfully fitted up as the first apartment. Averil clung to her for the instant they were alone together, and whispered, 'Oh, it is all so sweet! Don't think I don't feel it! But you see it is all I can do for him to be as quiet as I can! Say so, please!' Ethel felt the throb of the heart, and knew to whom she was to say so; but Tom's restless approaching step made Averil detach herself, and sink into an arm-chair. Ethel left her, feeling that the short clasp of their arms had sealed their sisterhood here and for ever. 'It is too sad, too beautiful to be talked about,' she said to Gertrude, who was anxiously on the watch for tidings. Obedient as Averil was, she had not understood her husband's desire that she should seek her pillow at once. She was feeling brisk and fresh, and by no means ready for captivity, and she presently came forth again with her soft, feeble, noiseless step; but she had nearly retreated again, feeling herself mistaken and bewildered, for in the drawing-room stood neither Tom nor his sisters, but a stranger--a dark, grave, thoughtful man of a singularly resolute and settled cast of countenance. The rustle of her dress made him look up as she turned. 'Ave!' he exclaimed; and as their eyes met, the light in those brown depths restored the whole past. She durst not trust herself to speak, as her head rested on his shoulder, his arms were round her; only as her husband came on the scene with a gesture of surprise, she said, 'Indeed, I did not mean it! I did not know he was here.' 'I might have known you could not be kept apart if I once let Leonard in,' he said, as he arranged her on the sofa, and satisfied himself that there were no tokens of the repressed agitation that left such dangerous effects. 'Will you both be very good if I leave you to be happy together?' he presently added, after a few indifferent words had passed. Averil looked wistfully after him, as if he were wanted to complete full felicity even in Leonard's presence. How little would they once have thought that her first words to her brother would be, 'Oh, was there ever any one like him?' 'We owe it all to him,' said Leonard. 'So kind,' added Averil, 'not to be vexed, though he dreaded our meeting so much; and you see I could not grieve him by making a fuss. But this is nice!' she added, with a sigh going far beyond the effect of the homely word. 'You are better. Ella said so.' 'I am feeling well to-night. Come, let me look at you, and learn your face.' He knelt down beside her, and she stroked back the hair, which had fulfilled his wish that she should find it as long, though much darker than of old. Posture and action recalled that meeting, when her couch had been his prison bed, and the cold white prison walls had frowned on them; yet even in the rosy light of the cheerful room there was on them the solemnity of an approaching doom. 'Where is the old face?' Averil said. 'You look as you did in the fever. Your smile brings back something of yourself. But, oh, those hollow eyes!' 'Count Ugolino is Dr. May's name for me: but, indeed, Ave, I have tried to fatten for your inspection.' 'It is not thinness,' she said, 'but I had carried about with me the bright daring open face of my own boy. I shall learn to like this better now.' 'Nay, it is you and Ella that are changed. O, Ave, you never let me know what a place you were in.' 'There were many things better than you fancy,' she answered; 'and it is over--it is all gladness now.' 'I see that in your face,' he said, gazing his fill. 'You do look ill indeed; but, Ave, I never saw you so content.' 'I can't help it,' she said, smiling. 'Every moment comes some fresh kindness from him. The more trouble I give him the kinder he is. Is it not as if the tempest was over, and we had been driven into the smoothest little sunshiny bay?' 'To rest and refit,' he said, thoughtfully. 'For me, "the last long wave;" and a most gentle smooth one it is,' said Averil; 'for you to refit for a fresh voyage. Dear Leonard, I have often guessed what you would do.' 'What have you guessed?' 'Only what we used to plan, in the old times after you had been at Coombe, Leonard.' 'Dear sister! And you would let me go!' 'Our parting is near, any way,' she said, her eye turning to the print from Ary Scheffer's St. Augustine and Monica. 'Whoever gave us that, divined how we ought to feel in these last days together.' 'It was Richard May's gift,' said Leonard. 'Ave, there was nothing wanting but your liking this.' 'Then so it is?' she asked. 'Unless the past disqualifies me,' he said. 'I have spoken to no one yet, except little Dickie. When I thought I ought to find some present employment, and wanted to take a clerkship at Bramshaw's, Dr. May made me promise to wait till I had seen you before I fixed on anything; but my mind is made up, and I shall speak now--with your blessing on it, Ave.' 'I knew it!' she said. He saw it was safer to quit this subject, and asked for Henry. 'He sent his love. He met us at New York. He is grown so soldierly, with such a black beard, that he is more grown out of knowledge than any of us, but I scarcely saw him, for he was quite overset at my appearance, and Tom thought it did me harm. I wish our new sister would have come to see me. 'Sister!' 'Oh, did you not know? I thought Tom had written! She is a Virginian lady, whose first husband was a doctor, who died of camp-fever early in the war. A Federal, of course. And they are to be married as soon as Charleston has fallen.' Leonard smiled. And Averil expressed her certainty that it had fallen by that time. 'And he is quite Americanized?' asked Leonard. 'Does he return to our own name! No? Then I do not wonder he did not wish for me. Perhaps he may yet bear to meet me, some day when we are grown old.' 'At least we can pray to be altogether, where one is gone already' said Averil. 'That was the one comfort in parting with the dear Cora--my blessing through all the worst! Leonard, she would not go to live in the fine house her father has taken at New York, but she is gone to be one of the nurses in the midst of all the hospital miseries. And, oh, what comfort she will carry with her!' Here Tom returned, but made no objection to her brother's stay, perceiving that his aspect and voice were like fulness to the hungry heart that had pined so long--but keeping all the others away; and they meanwhile were much entertained by Ella, who was in joyous spirits; a little subdued, indeed, by the unknown brother, but in his absence very communicative. Gertrude was greatly amused with her account of the marriage, in the sitting-room at Massissauga, and of Tom's being so unprepared for the brevity of the American form, that he never knew where he was in the Service, and completed it with a puzzled 'Is that all?' Averil had, according to Ella, been infinitely more calm and composed. 'She does nothing but watch his eyes,' said Ella; 'and ever since we parted from Cora, I have had no one to speak to! In the cabin he never stirred from sitting by her; and if she could speak at all, it was so low that I could not hear. School will be quite lively.' 'Are you going to school?' 'Oh yes! where Ave was. That is quite fixed; and I have had enough of playing third person,' said Ella, with her precocious Western manner. 'You know I have all my own property, so I shall be on no one's hands! Oh, and Cora made her father buy all Ave's Massissauga shares--at a dead loss to us of course.' 'Well,' said Gertrude, 'I am sorry Tom is not an American share-holder. It was such fun!' 'He wanted to have made them all over to Henry; but Cora was determined; and her father is making heaps of money as a commissary, so I am sure he could afford it. Some day, when the rebellion is subdued, I mean to go and see Cora and Henry and his wife,' added Ella, whose tinge of Americanism formed an amusing contrast with Dickie's colonial ease--especially when she began to detail the discomforts of Massissauga, and he made practical suggestions for the remedies of each--describing how mamma and he himself managed. The younger ones had all gone to bed, Richard had returned home, and Ethel was waiting to let her father in, when Leonard came back with the new arrivals. 'I did not think you would be allowed to stay so late,' said Ethel. 'We did not talk much. I was playing chants most of the time; and after she went to bed, I stayed with Tom.' 'What do you think of her?' 'I cannot think. I can only feel a sort of awe. End as it may, it will have been a blessed thing to have had her among us like this.' 'Yes, it ought to do us all good. And I think she is full of enjoyment.' 'Perfect enjoyment!' repeated Leonard. 'Thank God for that!' After some pause, during which he turned over his pocket-book, as if seeking for something, he came to her, and said, 'Miss May, Averil has assented to a purpose that has long been growing up within me--and that I had rather consult you about than any one, because you first inspired it.' 'I think I know the purpose you mean,' said Ethel, her heart beating high. 'The first best purpose of my boyhood,' he said. 'If only it may be given back to me! Will you be kind enough to look over this rough copy?' It was the draught of a letter to the Missionary Bishop, Mr. Seaford's diocesan, briefly setting forth Leonard's early history, his conviction, and his pardon, referring to Archdeacon May as a witness to the truth of his narrative. 'After this statement,' he proceeded, 'it appears to me little short of effrontery to offer myself for any share of the sacred labour in which your Lordship is engaged; and though it had been the wish of the best days of my youth, I should not have ventured on the thought but for the encouragement I received from Mr. Seaford, your Lordship's chaplain. I have a small income of my own, so that I should not be a burthen on the mission, and understanding that mechanical arts are found useful, I will mention that I learnt shoemaking at Milbank, and carpentry at Portland, and I would gladly undertake any manual occupation needed in a mission. Latterly I was employed in the schoolmaster's department; and I have some knowledge of music. My education is of course, imperfect, but I am endeavouring to improve myself. My age is twenty-one; I have good health, and I believe I can bring power of endurance and willingness to be employed in any manner that may be serviceable, whether as artisan or catechist.' 'I don't think they will make a shoemaker of you,' said Ethel, with her heart full. 'Will they have me at all? There will always be a sort of ticket-of-leave flavour about me,' said Leonard, speaking simply, straight-forwardly, but without dejection; 'and I might be doubtful material for a mission.' 'Your brother put that in your head.' 'He implied that my case half known would be a discredit to him, and I am prepared for others thinking so. If so, I can get a situation at Portland, and I know I can be useful there; but when such a hope as this was opened to me again, I could not help making an attempt. Do you think I may show that letter to Dr. May?' 'O, Leonard, this is one of the best days of one's life!' 'But what,' he asked, as she looked over the letter, 'what shall I alter?' 'I do not know, only you are so business-like; you do not seem to care enough.' 'If I let myself out, it would look like unbecoming pressing of myself, considering what I am; but if you think I ought, I will say more. I have become so much used to writing letters under constraint, that I know I am very dry.' 'Let papa see it first,' said Ethel. 'After all, earnestness is best out of sight.' 'Mr. Wilmot and he shall decide whether I may send it,' he said; 'and in the meantime I would go to St. Augustine's, if they will have me.' 'I see you have thought it all over.' 'Yes. I only waited to have spoken with my sister, and she--dear, dear Ave--had separately thought of such a destination for me. It was more than acquiescence, more than I dared to hope!' 'Her spirit will be with you, wherever she is! And,' with a sudden smile, 'Leonard, was not this the secret between you and Dickie?' 'Yes,' said Leonard, smiling too; 'the dear little fellow is so fresh and loving, as well as so wise and discreet, that he draws out all that is in one's heart. It has been a new life to me ever since he took to me! Do you know, I believe he has been writing a letter of recommendation of me on his own account to the Bishop; I told him he must enclose it to his father if he presumed to send it, though he claims the Bishop as his intimate friend.' 'Ah,' said Ethel, 'papa is always telling him that they can't get on in New Zealand for want of the small archdeacon, and that, I really think, abashes him more than anything else.' 'He is not forward, he is only sensible,' said Leonard, on whose heart Dickie had far too fast a hold for even this slight disparagement not to be rebutted. 'I had forgotten what a child could be till I was with him; I felt like a stock or a stone among you all.' Ethel smiled. 'I was nearly giving you "Marmion", in remembrance of old times, on the night of the Christmas-tree,' she said; 'but I did not then feel as if the "giving double" for all your care and trouble had begun.' 'The heart to feel it so was not come,' said Leonard; 'now since I have grasped this hope of making known to others the way to that Grace that held me up,'--he paused with excess of feeling--'all has been joy, even in the recollection of the darkest days. Mr. Wilmot's words come back now, that it may all have been training for my Master's work. Even the manual labour may have been my preparation!' His eyes brightened, and he was indeed more like the eager, hopeful youth she remembered than she had ever hoped to see him; but this brightness was the flash of steel, tried, strengthened, and refined in the fire--a brightness that might well be trusted. 'One knew it must be so,' was all she could say. 'Yes, yes,' he said, eagerly. 'You sent me words of greeting that held up my faith; and, above all, when we read those books at Coombe, you put the key of comfort in my hand, and I never quite lost it. Miss May,' he added, as Dr. May's latch-key was heard in the front door, 'if ever I come to any good, I owe it to you!' And that was the result of the boy's romance. The first tidings of the travellers next morning were brought near the end of breakfast by Tom, who came in looking thin, worn, and anxious, saying that Averil had called herself too happy to sleep till morning, when a short doze had only rendered her feeble, exhausted, and depressed. 'I shall go and see her,' said Dr. May; 'I like my patients best in that mood.' Nor would the Doctor let his restless, anxious son do more than make the introduction, but despatched him to the Hospital; whence returning to find himself still excluded, he could endure nothing but pacing up and down the lawn in sight of his father's head in the window, and seeking as usual Ethel's sympathy. There was some truth in what Charles Cheviot had said. Wedlock did enhance the grief and loss, and Tom found the privilege of these months of tendance more heart-wringing than he had anticipated, though of course more precious and inestimable. Moreover, Averil's depression had been a phase of her illness which had not before revealed itself in such a degree. 'Generally,' he said, 'she has talked as if what she looks to were all such pure hope and joy, that though it broke one's heart to hear it, one saw it made her happy, and could stand it. Fancy, Ethel, not an hour after we were married, I found her trying the ring on this finger, and saying I should be able to wear it like my father! It seemed as if she would regret nothing but my sorrow, and that my keeping it out of sight was all that was needful to her happiness. But to-day she has been blaming herself for--for grieving to leave all so soon, just as her happiness might have been beginning! Think, Ethel! Reproaching herself for unthankfulness even to tears! It might have been more for her peace to have remained with her where she had no revival of these associations, if they are only pain to her.' 'Oh no, no, Tom. It only proves the pleasure they do give her. You know, better than I do, that there must be ups and downs, failures of spirits from fatigue when the will is peaceful and resigned.' 'I know it. I know it with my understanding, Ethel, but as to reasoning about her as if she was anybody else, the thing is mere mockery. What can my father be about?' he added, for the twentieth time. 'Talking to her in the morning always knocks her up. If he had only let me warn him; but he hurried me off in his inconsiderate way.' At last, however, the head disappeared, and Tom rushed indoors. 'So, Tom, you have made shorter work of twenty-five patients than I of one.' 'I'll go again,' said poor Tom, in the desperation of resolute meekness, 'only let me see how she is.' 'Let Ethel go up now. She is very cheery except for a little headache.' While Ethel obeyed, Dr. May began a minute interrogation of his son, so lengthened that Tom could hardly restrain sharp impatient replies to such apparent trifling with his agony to learn how long his father thought he could keep his treasure, and how much suffering might be spared to her. At last Dr. May said, 'I may be wrong. Your science is fresher than mine; but to me there seem indications that the organic disease is in the way of being arrested. Good health of course she cannot have; but if she weathers another winter, I think you may look for as many years of happiness with her as in an ordinary case.' It was the first accent of hope since the hysteric scream that had been his greeting, and all his reserve and dread of emotion: could not prevent his covering his face with his hands, and sobbing aloud. 'Father, father,' he said, 'you cannot tell what this is to me!' 'I can in part, my boy,' said the Doctor, sadly. 'And,' he started up and walked about the room, 'you shall have the whole treatment. I will only follow your measures. No one at New York saw the slightest hope of checking it.' 'They had your account, and you hardly allowed enough for the hysterical affection. I do not say it is certainty--far less, health.' 'Any way, any way, if I may only have her to lie and look at me, it is happiness unlooked for! You don't think I could have treated her otherwise?' 'No. Under His blessing you saved her yourself. You would have perceived the change if she had been an indifferent person.' Tom made another turn to the door, and came back still half wild, and laid his face on his arms upon the table. 'You tell her,' he said, 'I shall never be able--' Knocking at Averil's door, Dr. May was answered by a call of 'Tom.' 'Not this time, my dear. He is coming, but we have been talking you over. Ave, you have a very young doctor, and rather too much interested.' 'Indeed!' she said, indignantly; 'he has made me much better.' 'Exactly so, my dear; so much better that he agrees with me that he expressed a strong opinion prematurely.' 'They thought the same at New York,' she said, still resolved on his defence. 'My dear, unless you are bent on growing worse in order to justify his first opinion, I think you will prove that which he now holds. And, Ave, it was, under Providence, skill that we may be proud of by which he has subdued the really fatal disorder. You may have much to undergo, and must submit to a sofa life and much nursing, but I think you will not leave him so soon.' There was a long pause; at last she said, 'O, Dr. May, I beg your pardon. If I had known, I would never--' 'Never what, my dear?' 'Never have consented! It is such a grievous thing for a professional man to have a sick wife.' 'It is exactly what he wanted, my dear, if you will not fly at me for saying so. Nothing else could teach him that patients are not cases but persons; and here he comes to tell you what he thinks of the trouble of a sick wife.' 'Well,' said Dr. May, as he and Ethel walked away together, 'poor young things, they have a chequered time before them. Pretty well for the doctor who hated sick people, Wards, and Stoneborough; but, after all, I have liked none of our weddings better. I like people to rub one another brighter.' 'And I am proud when the least unselfish nature has from first to last done the most unselfish things. No one of us has ever given up so much as Tom, and I am sure he will be happy in it.' More can hardly be said without straying into the realms of prediction; yet such of our readers as are bent on carrying on their knowledge of the Daisies beyond the last sentence, may be told that, to the best of our belief, Leonard's shoemaking is not his foremost office in the mission, where he finds that fulness of hopeful gladness which experience shows is literally often vouchsafed to those who have given up home, land, and friends, for the Gospel's sake. His letters are the delight of more than one at Stoneborough; and his sister, upon her sofa, is that home member of a mission without whom nothing can be done--the copier of letters, the depot of gifts, the purveyor of commissions, the maker of clothes, the collector of books, the keeper of accounts--so that the house still merits the name of the S. P. G. office, as it used to be called in the Spenserian era. But Mrs. Thomas May is a good deal more than this. Her sofa is almost a renewal of the family centre that once Margaret's was; the region where all tidings are brought fresh for discussion, all joys and sorrows poured out, the external influence that above all has tended to soften Gertrude into the bright grace of womanhood. Mary Cheviot and Blanche Ernescliffe cannot be cured of a pitying 'poor Tom'--as they speak of 'the Professor'--in which title the awkward sound of Dr. Tom has been merged since an appointment subsequent to the appearance of the "Diseases of Climate". But every one else holds that not his honours as a scientific physician, his discoveries, and ably-written papers--not even his father's full and loving confidence and gratitude, give Professor May as much happiness as that bright-eyed delicate wife, with whom all his thoughts seem to begin and end. 
36854	----	Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: http://www.archive.org/details/chiefjusticenove00franiala 2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe]. Heinemann's International Library. EDITOR'S NOTE. There is nothing in which the Anglo-Saxon world differs more from the world of the Continent of Europe than in its fiction. English readers are accustomed to satisfy their curiosity with English novels, and it is rarely indeed that we turn aside to learn something of the interior life of those other countries the exterior scenery of which is often so familiar to us. We climb the Alps, but are content to know nothing of the pastoral romances of Switzerland. We steam in and out of the picturesque fjords of Norway, but never guess what deep speculation into life and morals is made by the novelists of that sparsely peopled but richly endowed nation. We stroll across the courts of the Alhambra, we are listlessly rowed upon Venetian canals and Lombard lakes, we hasten by night through the roaring factories of Belgium; but we never pause to inquire whether there is now flourishing a Spanish, an Italian, a Flemish school of fiction. Of Russian novels we have lately been taught to become partly aware, but we do not ask ourselves whether Poland may not possess a Dostoieffsky and Portugal a Tolstoi. Yet, as a matter of fact, there is no European country that has not, within the last half-century, felt the dew of revival on the threshing-floor of its worn-out schools of romance. Everywhere there has been shown by young men, endowed with a talent for narrative, a vigorous determination to devote themselves to a vivid and sympathetic interpretation of nature and of man. In almost every language, too, this movement has tended to display itself more and more in the direction of what is reported and less of what is created. Fancy has seemed to these young novelists a poorer thing than observation; the world of dreams fainter than the world of men. They have not been occupied mainly with what might be or what should be, but with what is, and, in spite of all their shortcomings, they have combined to produce a series of pictures of existing society in each of their several countries such as cannot fail to form an archive of documents invaluable to futurity. But to us they should be still more valuable. To travel in a foreign country is but to touch its surface. Under the guidance of a novelist of genius we penetrate to the secrets of a nation, and talk the very language of its citizens. We may go to Normandy summer after summer and know less of the manner of life that proceeds under those gnarled orchards of apple-blossom than we learn from one tale of Guy de Maupassant's. The present series is intended to be a guide to the inner geography of Europe. It presents to our readers a series of spiritual Baedekers and Murrays. It will endeavour to keep pace with every truly characteristic and vigorous expression of the novelist's art in each of the principal European countries, presenting what is quite new if it is also good, side by side with what is old, if it has not hitherto been presented to our public. That will be selected which gives with most freshness and variety the different aspects of continental feeling, the only limits of selection being that a book shall be, on the one hand, amusing, and, on the other, wholesome. One difficulty which must be frankly faced is that of subject. Life is now treated in fiction by every race but our own with singular candour. The novelists of the Lutheran North are not more fully emancipated from prejudice in this respect than the novelists of the Catholic South. Everywhere in Europe a novel is looked upon now as an impersonal work, from which the writer, as a mere observer, stands aloof, neither blaming nor applauding. Continental fiction has learned to exclude, in the main, from among the subjects of its attention, all but those facts which are of common experience, and thus the novelists have determined to disdain nothing and to repudiate nothing which is common to humanity; much is freely discussed, even in the novels of Holland and of Denmark, which our race is apt to treat with a much more gingerly discretion. It is not difficult, however, we believe--it is certainly not impossible--to discard all which may justly give offence, and yet to offer to an English public as many of the masterpieces of European fiction as we can ever hope to see included in this library. It will be the endeavour of the editor to search on all hands and in all languages for such books as combine the greatest literary value with the most curious and amusing qualities of manner and matter. EDMUND GOSSE. THE CHIEF JUSTICE THE Chief Justice A NOVEL BY EMIL FRANZOS TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY MILES CORBET LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN 1890 [_All rights reserved_] INTRODUCTION. The remote Austrian province of Galicia has, in our generation, produced two of the most original of modern novelists, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Karl Emil Franzos. The latter, who is the author of the volume here presented to English readers, was born on the 25th of October 1848, just over the frontier, in a ranger's house in the midst of one of the vast forests of Russian Podolia. His father, a Polish Jew, was the district doctor of the town of Czorskow, in Galicia, where the boy received his first lessons in literature from his German mother. In 1858 Franzos was sent, on the death of his father, to the German College at Czernowitz; at the age of fourteen, according to the published accounts of his life, he was left entirely to his own resources, and gained a precarious livelihood by teaching. After various attempts at making a path for himself in science and in law, and finding that his being a Jew stood in the way of a professional career, he turned, as so many German Israelites have done before and since, to journalism, first in Vienna, then at Pesth, then in Vienna again, where he still continues to reside. In 1876 Franzos published his first book, two volumes entitled _Aus Halb-Asia_ ("From Semi-Asia"), a series of ethnological studies on the peoples of Galicia, Bukowina, South Russia, and Roumania, whom he described as in a twilight of semi-barbaric darkness, not wholly in the sunshine of Europe. This was followed in 1878 by _Vom Don zur Donau_ ("From the Don to the Danube"), a similar series of studies in ethnography. Meanwhile, in _Die Juden von Barnow_ ("The Jews of Barnow"), 1877, he had published his first collection of tales drawn from his early experience. He followed it in 1879 by _Junge Liebe_ ("Young Love"), two short stories, "Brown Rosa" and "Brandenegg's Cousins," extremely romantic in character, and written in an elaborate and somewhat extravagant style. These volumes achieved a great and instant success. The succeeding novels of Franzos have been numerous, and unequal in value. _Moschko von Parma_, 1880, was a pathetic study of the vicissitudes of a young Jewish soldier in the wars. In the same year Franzos published _Die Hexe_ ("The Witch"). The best known of his writings in this country is _Ein Kampf um's Recht_ ("A Battle for the Right"), 1882, which was published in English, with an Introduction by Mr. George MacDonald, and attracted the favourable, and even enthusiastic, notice of Mr. Gladstone. _Der Präsident_, which is here translated, appeared in Germany in 1884. EDMUND GOSSE. THE CHIEF JUSTICE. CHAPTER I. In the Higher Court of Bolosch, an important Germano-Slavonic town of northern Austria, there sat as Chief Justice some thirty years ago, one of the bravest and best of those men on whom true justice might hopefully rely in that sorely tried land. Charles Victor, Baron von Sendlingen, as he may be called in this record of his fate, was the last descendant of a very ancient and meritorious race which could trace its origin to a collateral branch of the Franconian Emperors, and which had once upon a time possessed rich lands and mines on the shores of the Wörther See: now indeed by reason of an adverse fate and the love of splendour of some of its scions, there had gradually come to be nothing left of all this save a series of high sounding titles. But the decline of fame and influence had not kept pace with the loss of lands and wealth; the Sendlingens had entered the service of the Hapsburgs and in the last two hundred years had given the Austrian Hereditary Dominions not only several brave generals, but an almost unbroken line of administrators and guardians of Justice. And so, although they were entirely dependent on their slender official salaries, they were reckoned with good reason among the first families of the Empire, and a Sendlingen might from his cradle count upon the office of Chief Justice of one of the Higher Courts. Even unkind envy, to say nothing of honest report, was obliged to admit that these hereditary patricians of Justice had always shown themselves worthy of their sacred office, and just as they regularly inherited certain physical characteristics--great stature, bright eyes and coal-black curly hair--so also gifted intellects, iron industry and a sense of duty which often enough bordered on self-denial, were always theirs. "The majesty of the Law is the most sacred majesty on earth." Thus spake the first of this family who had entered the service of the Imperial Courts of Justice, the Baron Victor Amadeus, Chief Judge of the Vienna Senate, in answer to an irregular demand of Ferdinand the Catholic, and his descendants held fast to the maxim in good days and evil, even in those worst days when Themis threatened, in this country also, to sink to the level of the venal mistress of Princes. The greatest of the Hapsburgs, Joseph II., knew how to value this at its right worth, and although he much disliked hereditary offices, he on this account appointed the Baron Charles Victor, in spite of his youth, as his father's successor in one of the most important offices of the State. This was the grandfather of that Sendlingen whose story is to be told here, a powerful man of unusual strength of will who had again raised the reputation of the family to a most flourishing condition. But although everything went so well with him, the dearest wish of his heart was not to be realized: he was not to transmit office and reputation to his son. This son, Franz Victor, our hero's father, had to pass his life wretchedly in an insignificant position, the only one among the Sendlingens who went to his grave in mature years, unrenowned and indeed despised. This fate had not overtaken him through lack of ability or industry. He too proved himself a true son of this admirable race; gifted, persevering, thorough, devoted heart and soul to his studies and his official duties. But a youthful escapade had embroiled him in the beginning of his career with father and relations: a girl of the lower orders, the daughter of the concierge at the Courts where his father presided, had become dear to him and in a moment of passion he had betrayed her. When the girl could no longer conceal the consequences of her fault, she went and threw herself at the feet of the Chief Justice imploring him to protect her from her parent's wrath. The old man could hardly contain his agony of indignation, but he summoned his son and having heard from his lips the truth of the accusation, he resolved the matter by saying: "The wedding will take place next Sunday. A Sendlingen may be thoughtless, he must never be a scoundrel." They were married without show and in complete secresy, and at once started for a little spot in the Tyrolean mountains whither Baron von Sendlingen had caused his son and heir to be transferred. This event made a tremendous sensation. For the first time a Sendlingen had married out of his rank, the daughter of a menial too, and constrained to it by his father! People hardly knew how to decide which of the two, father or son, had sinned most against the dignity of the family; similar affairs were usually settled by the nobles of the land in all secresy and without leaving a stain on their genealogical tree. Even Kaiser Franz, although his opinions about morality were so rigid, once signified something of the kind to the honourable old judge, but he received the same answer as was given to his son. The embittered old man was indeed equally steadfast in maintaining a complete severance of the bonds between him and his only son; the letters which every mail from the Tyrol brought, were left unopened, and even in his last illness he would not suffer the outcast to be recalled. After the death of the Judge, his son came to be completely forgotten: only occasionally his aristocratic relations used to recount with a shrug of the shoulders, that they had again been obliged to return a letter of this insolent fellow to the place where it came from. Nevertheless they learnt the contents of these letters from a good-natured old aunt: they told of the death of his first child, then of the birth of a boy whom he had called after his grandfather, and while he obstinately kept silence about the happiness or unhappiness of his marriage, he more and more urgently begged for deliverance from the God-forsaken corner of the globe in which he languished and for promotion to a worthier post. Although the only person who read these letters was, with all her pity, unable to help him, he never grew weary of writing. The tone of his letters became year by year more bitter and despairing, and whereas he had at first asked for special favours, he now fiercely demanded the cessation of these hostile intrigues. Perhaps the embittered man was unjust to his relations in making this reproach,--they seemed in no way to concern themselves about him whether to his interest or his injury--, but he really was badly treated, and leaving out the influence of his name, he was not even able to obtain what he might have expected according to the regulations of the service. An excellent judge of exemplary industry, he was forced to continue for years in this Tyrolean wilderness until at length, one day, he was promoted to a judgeship on the Klagenfurth Circuit. But he was not long able to enjoy his improved position: bitter repentance and the struggle with wretchedness had prematurely undermined his strength. He died, soon after his wife, and his last concern on earth was an imploring prayer to his relations to adopt his boy. This prayer would perhaps not have been necessary to secure the orphan that sympathy which his much-to-be-pitied father had in vain sought to obtain for himself. Charles Victor, now fourteen years of age, was carried off in a sort of triumph and brought to Vienna: even the Emperor gratefully remembered the faithful services which this noble house had for centuries rendered to his throne, and he caused its last surviving male to be educated at his expense in the Academy of Maria Theresa. The beautiful, slender boy won the sympathies of his natural guardians by his mere appearance, the serious expression peculiar to his family and his surprising resemblance to his grandfather; excellent gifts, a quiet, steady love of work and a self-contained, manly sweetness of disposition, made him dear to both his masters and his comrades. He was the best scholar at the Academy, and he justified the hopes which he had aroused by the brilliant success of his legal studies. But his eagerness to obtain a knowledge of the world and to see foreign countries was equally great, and the modest fortune left him by his grandfather made the fulfilment of these desires possible. When, being of age, he returned to Austria and entered on his legal duties, it needed no particular insight to prophesy a rapid advancement in his career. In fact after a brief term of office as judge-advocate in the Eastern provinces, he was transferred to Bohemia, and shortly afterwards married a beautiful, proud girl who had been much sought after, a daughter of one of the most important Counts of the Empire. Nobody was surprised that the lucky man had also this good luck, but the marriage remained childless. This only served to unite the stately pair more closely to one another, and this wedded love and the judge's triumphs on the Bench and in the world of letters, sufficed to fully occupy his life. His treatises on criminal law were among the best of the kind, and the practical nature of his judgments obtained for him the reputation of one of the most thorough and sagacious judges of Austria. And so it was more owing to his services than to the influence attached to the name and associations of this remarkable man, that he succeeded in scaling by leaps and bounds that ladder of advancement on the lowest rung of which, his unfortunate father had remained in life-long torture. As early as in his fortieth year he had obtained the important and honourable position of Chief Justice of Bolosch. The stormy times in which he lived served as a good test of his character and abilities. The fierce flames of 1848 had been extinguished and from the ruins rose the exhalation of countless political trials. Those were sad days, making the strongest demands on the independence of a Judge, and many an honest but weak man became the compliant servant of the Authorities. The Chief Justice von Sendlingen, a member of the oldest nobility, bound to the Imperial House by ties of personal gratitude, related by marriage to the leaders of the reaction, was nevertheless not one of the weak and cowardly judges; just as in that stormy year he had boldly confessed his loyalty to the Emperor, so now he showed that Justice was not to be abased to an instrument of political revenge. This boldness was indeed not without danger; his brother-in-law stormed, his wife was in tears; first warnings, then threats, rained in upon him, but he kept his course unmoved, acting as his sense of justice bade him. If those in authority did not actually interfere with him, he owed this entirely to his past services, which had made him almost indispensable. The methods of administering justice were constantly changed, juries were empanelled and then dismissed, the regulations of the Courts were repeatedly altered: everywhere there were cases in arrear, and confusion and uncertainty. The Bolosch Circuit was one of the few exceptions. The Chief Justice remained unmolested by the ministry, and the citizens honoured him as the embodiment of Justice, and lawyers as the ornament of their profession. Respected throughout the whole Empire, he was in his immediate circle the object of almost idolatrous love. And certainly the personal characteristics of this stately and serious man with his almost youthful beauty, were enough to justify this feeling. He was gentle but determined; dignified but affectionate: faithful in the extreme to duty, and yet no stickler for forms. When his wife died suddenly in 1850, the sympathetic love and veneration of all were manifested in the most touching manner. He felt the loss keenly, but only his best friend, Dr. George Berger, learnt how deep was the wound. This Dr. Berger was one of the most respected barristers of the town, and in spite of the difference of their political convictions--Berger was a Radical--he enjoyed an almost fraternal intimacy with Sendlingen. This faithful friend did what he could for the lonely Judge; and his best helper in the work of sympathy was his sense of duty which forbade a weak surrender to sorrow. He gradually became quiet and composed again, and some premature grey hairs at the temples alone showed how exceedingly he had suffered. In the midst of the regular work of his profession--it was in May, 1850--he was surprised by a laconic command from the Minister of Justice ordering him forthwith to surrender the conduct of his Court to the Judge next him in position, von Werner, and to be in Vienna within three days. This news caused general amazement; the reactionary party was growing stronger, and it was thought that this sudden call might mean the commencement of an inquiry into the conduct of this true but independent Judge. He himself was prepared for the worst, but his friend Berger took a more hopeful view; rudeness, he said, had become the fashion again in Vienna, and perhaps something good was in store for him. This supposition proved correct; the Minister wished the assistance of the learned specialist in drawing up a new Statute for the administration of Justice. The Commission of Inquiry, originally called for two months, continued its deliberations till the autumn. It was not till the beginning of November that Sendlingen started for home, having received as a mark of the Minister's gratitude the nomination as Chief Justice of the Higher Court at Pfalicz, a post which he was to enter upon in four months. This was a brilliant and unexampled appointment for one of his years, but the thought of leaving the much-loved circle of his labours made him sorrowful. And this feeling was increased when the citizens testified by a public reception at the station, how greatly they were rejoiced at his return. His lonely dwelling too had been decorated by a friendly hand, as also the Courts of Justice. He found it difficult to announce his departure in answer to the speech of welcome delivered by his Deputy. And indeed his announcement was received with exclamations of regret and amazement, and it was only by degrees that his auditors sufficiently recovered themselves to congratulate their beloved chief. Only one of them did so with a really happy heart, his Deputy, von Werner, an old, industrious if not very gifted official, who now likewise saw a certain hope of promotion. With a pleased smile, the little weazened man followed Sendlingen into his chambers in order to give him an account of the judicial proceedings of the last six months. Herr von Werner was a sworn enemy of all oral reports, and had therefore not only prepared two beautifully drawn-up lists of the civil and criminal trials, but had written a memorial which he now read out by way of introduction. Sendlingen listened patiently to this lengthy document. But when Werner was going to take up the lists with the same intention, the Chief Justice with a pleasant smile anticipated him. "We will look through them together," he said, and began with the criminal list. It contained the name, age and calling of the accused, the date of their gaol-delivery, their crime, as well as the present position of the trial. "There are more arrears than I expected," he said with some surprise. "But the number of crimes has unfortunately greatly increased," objected Herr von Werner, zealously. "Especially the cases of child-murder." "You are right." Sendlingen glanced through the columns specifying the crimes and then remained plunged in deep thought. "The number is nearly double," he resumed. "And it is not only here, but in the whole Empire, that this horrible phenomenon is evident! The Minister of Justice complained of it to me with much concern." "But what else could one expect?" cried old Werner. "This accursed Revolution has undermined all discipline, morals and religion! And then the leniency with which these inhuman women are treated--why it is years since the death-sentence has been carried out in a case of child-murder." "That will unfortunately soon be changed," answered Sendlingen in a troubled tone. "The Minister of Justice thinks as you do, and would like an immediate example to be made. It is unfortunate, I repeat, and not only because, from principle, I am an opponent of the theory of deterring by fear. Of all social evils this can least of all be cured by the hangman. And if it is so rank nowadays, I do not think the reason is to be found where you and His Excellency seek it, but in the sudden impoverishment, the uncertainty of circumstances and the brutality which, everywhere and always, follow upon a great war. The true physicians are the political economist, the priest and the schoolmaster!... Or have you ever perhaps known of a case among educated people?" "Oh certainly!" answered Herr von Werner importantly. "I have, as it happens, to preside to-morrow,--that is to say unless you will take the case--at the conclusion of a trial against a criminal of that class; at least she must be well-educated as she was governess in the house of a Countess. See here--Case No. 19 on the list." He pointed with his finger to the place. Then a dreadful thing happened. Hardly had Sendlingen glanced at the name which Werner indicated, than he uttered a hollow choking cry, a cry of deadly anguish. His face was livid, his features were distorted by an expression of unutterable terror, his eyes started out of their sockets and stared in a sort of fascination at the list before him. "Great Heavens!" cried Werner, himself much alarmed, as he seized his chief's hand. "What is the matter with you? Do you know this girl?" Sendlingen made no reply. He closed his eyes, rested both arms on the table and tried to rise. But his limbs refused to support him, and he sank down in his chair like one in a faint. "Water! Help!" cried Werner, making for the bell. A movement of Sendlingen's stopped him. "It is nothing," he gasped with white lips and parched throat. "An attack of my heart disease. It has lately--become--much worse." "Oh!" cried Werner with genuine sympathy. "I never even suspected this before. Everybody thought you were in the best of health. What do the doctors say?" Again there was no answer. Breathing with difficulty, livid, his head sunk on his breast, his eyes closed, Sendlingen lay back in his chair. And when he raised his eyelids Werner met such a hopeless, despairing look, that the old gentleman involuntarily started back. "May I," he began timidly, "call a doctor----" "No!" Sendlingen's refusal was almost angry. Again he attempted to rise and this time he succeeded. "Thank you," he said feebly. "I must have frightened you. I am better now and shall soon be quite well." "But you are going home?" "Why should I? I will rest in this comfortable chair for half an hour and then, my dear colleague, I shall be quite at your service again." The old gentleman departed but not without hesitation: even he was really attached to Sendlingen. The other officials also received the news of this attack with genuine regret, especially as Werner several times repeated in his important manner: "Any external cause is quite out of the question, gentlemen, quite out of the question. We were just quietly talking about judicial matters. Ah, heart disease is treacherous, gentlemen, very treacherous." Hardly had the door closed, when Sendlingen sank down in his chair, drew the lists towards him and again stared at that particular spot with a look on his face as if his sentence of death was written there. The entry read thus: "Victorine Lippert. Born 25th January 1834 at Radautz in the Bukowina. Governess. Child-murder. Transferred here from the District Court at Gölotz on the 17th June 1852. Confessed. Trial to be concluded 8th November 1852." The column headed "sentence" was still empty. "Death!" he muttered. "Death!" he repeated, loud and shrill, and a shudder ran through his every fibre. He sank back and hid his face which had suddenly become wasted. "O my God!" he groaned. "I dare not let her die--her blood would cry out against me, against me only." And he drew the paper towards him again and stared at the entry, piteously and beseechingly, as though he expected a miracle from Heaven, as though the letters must change beneath the intensity of his gaze. The mid-day bells of the neighbouring cathedral aroused him from his gloomy brooding. He rose, smoothed his disarranged hair, forced on his accustomed look of quiet, and betook himself to Werner's room. "You see," he said. "I have kept my word and am all right again. Are there any pressing matters to be rid of?" "Only one," answered Werner. "The Committee of Discipline has waited your return, as it did not wish to decide an important case without you." "Good, summon the Committee for five o'clock today." He now went the round of the other offices, answered the anxious inquiries with the assurance that he was quite well again, and then went down a long corridor to his own quarters which were in another wing of the large building. His step was still elastic, his face pale but almost cheerful. Not until he had given his servant orders to admit nobody, not even his friend Berger, and until he had bolted his study-door, did he sink down and then give himself up, without restraint, to the fury of a wild, despairing agony. CHAPTER II. For an hour or more the unhappy man lay groaning, and writhing like a worm under the intensity of his wretchedness. Then he rose and with unsteady gait went to his secretaire, and began to rummage in the secret drawers of the old-fashioned piece of furniture. "I no longer remember where it is," he muttered to himself. "It is long since I thought of the old story--but God has not forgotten it." At length he discovered what he was looking for: a small packet of letters grown yellow with time. As he unloosed the string which tied them, a small watercolour portrait in a narrow silver frame fell out: it depicted the gentle, sweet features of a young, fair, grey-eyed girl. His eyes grew moist as he looked at it, and bitter tears suddenly coursed down his cheeks. He then unfolded the papers and began to read: they were long letters, except the last but one which filled no more than two small sheets. This he read with the greatest attention of all, read and re-read it with ever-increasing emotion. "And I could resist such words!" he murmured. "Oh wretched man that I am." Then he opened the last of the letters. "You evidently did not yourself expect that I would take your gift," he read out in an undertone. And then: "I do not curse you; on the contrary, I ardently hope that you may at least not have given me up in vain." He folded the letters and tied them up. Then he undid them again and buried himself once more in their melancholy contents. A knock at the door interrupted him: his housekeeper announced that dinner was ready. This housekeeper was an honest, elderly spinster, Fräulein Brigitta, whom he usually treated with the greatest consideration. To-day he only answered her with a curt, impatient, "Presently!" and he vouchsafed no lengthier reply to her question how he was. But then he remembered some one else. "I must not fall ill," he said. "I must keep up my strength. I shall need it all!" And after he had locked up the letters, he went to the dining-room. He forced himself to take two or three spoonfuls of soup, and hastily emptied a glass of old Rhine-wine. His man-servant, Franz, likewise a faithful old soul, replenished it, but hesitatingly and with averted countenance. "Where is Fräulein Brigitta?" asked Sendlingen. "Crying!" growled the old man. "Hasn't got used to the new state of things! Nor have I! Nice conduct, my lord! We arrive in the morning ill, we say nothing to an old and faithful servant, we go straight into the Courts. There we fall down several times; we send for no doctor, but writhe alone in pain like a wounded stag." The faithful old fellow's eyes were wet. "I am quite well again, Franz," said Sendlingen re-assuringly. "We were groaning!" said the old man in a tone of the bitterest reproach. "And since when have we declined to admit Herr Berger?" "Has he been here?" "Yes, on most important business, and would not believe that we ourselves had ordered him to be turned away.... And now we are eating nothing," he continued vehemently, as Sendlingen pushed his plate from him and rose. "My Lord, what does this mean! We look as if we had seen a ghost!" "No, only an old grumbler!" He intended this for an airy pleasantry but its success was poor. "Do not be too angry with me." Then he returned to his chambers. "The old fellow is right," he thought. "It was a ghost, a very ancient ghost, and its name is Nemesis!" His eyes fell on the large calendar on the door: "7th November 1852" he read aloud. "A day like every other--and yet ..." Then he passed his hand over his brow as if trying to recall who he was, and rang the bell. "Get me," he said to the clerk who entered, "the documents relating to the next three criminal trials." He stepped to the window and awaited the clerk's return with apparent calm. He had not long to wait; the clerk entered and laid two goodly bundles of papers on the table. "I have to inform you, my lord," said the clerk standing at attention (he had been a soldier), "that only the papers relating to the trials of the 9th and 10th November are in the Court-house. Those for tomorrow's trial of Victorine Lippert for child-murder are still in the hands of Counsel for the accused, Dr. George Berger." Sendlingen started. "Did the accused choose her Counsel?" "No, my lord, she refused any defence because she is, so to speak, a poor despairing creature who would prefer to die. Herr von Werner therefore, ex-officio, allotted her Dr. Kraushoffer as Counsel, and, when he became ill, Dr. Berger. Dr. Kraushoffer was only taken ill the day before yesterday and therefore Dr. Berger has been allowed to keep the papers till tomorrow morning early. Does your Lordship desire that I should ask him for them?" "No. That will do." He went back to the niche by the window. "A poor creature who would prefer to die!" he said slowly and gloomily. Frightful images thronged into his mind, but the poor worn brain could no longer grasp any clear idea. He began to pace up and down his room rapidly, almost staggering as he went. "Night! night!" he groaned: he felt as if he were wandering aimlessly in pitchy darkness, while every pulsation of lost time might involve the sacrifice of a human life. Then his face brightened again, it seemed a good omen that Berger was defending the girl: he knew his friend to be the most conscientious barrister on the circuit. "And if I were to tell him fully what she is to me--" But he left the sentence unfinished and shook his head. "I could not get the words out," he murmured looking round quite scared, "not even to him!" "And why should I?" he then thought. "Berger will in any case, from his own love of justice, do all that is in his power." But what result was to be expected? The old judges, unaccustomed to speeches, regarded the concluding proceedings rather as a formality, and decided on their verdict from the documents, whatever Counsel might say. It depended entirely on their opinion and what Werner thought of the crime he had explained a few hours ago! And even if before that he had been of another opinion, now that he knew the opinion of the Minister of Justice.... "Fool that I am," said Sendlingen between his teeth, "it was I who told him!" Again he looked half-maddened by his anguish and wandered about the room wringing his hands. Suddenly he stopped. His face grew more livid, his brows contracted in a dark frown, his lips were tightly pressed together. A new idea had apparently occurred to him, a dark uncanny inspiration, against which he was struggling but which returned again and again, and took possession of him. "That would be salvation," he muttered. "If to-morrow's sentence is only for a short term of imprisonment, the higher Court would never increase it to a sentence of death!" He paced slowly to the window, his head bowed as if the weight of that thought lay upon his neck like a material burden, and stared out into the street. The early shades of the autumn evening were falling; on the other side of a window in a building opposite, a young woman entered with a lamp for her husband. She placed it on his work-table, and lightly touched his hair with her lips. Sendlingen saw it plainly, he could distinguish every piece of furniture in the room and also the features of the couple, and as he knew them, he involuntarily whispered their names. But his brain unceasingly continued to spin that dark web, and at times his thoughts escaped him in a low whisper. "What is there to prevent me? Nobody knows my relationship to her and she herself has no suspicion. I am entitled to it, and it would arouse no suspicion. Certainly it would be difficult, it would be a horrible time, but how much depends on me!" "Wretch!" he suddenly cried, in a hard, hoarse voice. "The world does not know your relationship, but you know it! What you intend is a crime, it is against justice and law!" "Oh my God!" he groaned: "Help me! Enlighten my poor brain! Would it not be the lesser crime if I were to save her by dishonourable means, than if I were to stand by with folded arms and see her delivered to the hangman! Can this be against Thy will, Thou who art a God of love and mercy? Can my honour be more sacred than her life?" He sank back and buried his face in his hands. "But it does not concern my honour alone," he said. "It would be a crime against Justice, against the most sacred thing on earth! O my God, have mercy upon me!" While he lay there in the dark irresolute, his body a prey to fever, his soul torn by worse paroxysms, he heard first of all a gentle, then a louder knocking at the door. At length it was opened. "My Lord!" said a loud voice: it was Herr von Werner. "Here I am," quickly answered Sendlingen rising. "In the dark?" asked old Werner with astonishment. "I thought perhaps you had forgotten the appointment--it is five o'clock and the members of the Committee of Discipline are waiting for us. Has your indisposition perhaps returned?" "No! I was merely sitting in deep thought and forgot to light the candles. Come, I am quite ready." "Will you allow me a question?" asked Werner, stepping forward as far as the light which streamed in from the corridor. "In fact it is a request. The clerk told me that you had been asking to see the documents relating to to-morrow's trial. Would you perhaps like to preside at it?" Sendlingen did not answer at once. "I am not posted up in the matter," he at length said with uncertain voice. "The case is very simple and a glance at the deed of accusation would sufficiently inform you. In fact I took the liberty of asking this question in order to have the documents fetched at once from Herr Berger. I myself--hm, my daughter, the wife of the finance counsellor, is in fact expecting, as I just learn, tomorrow for the first time--hm,--a happy event. It is natural that I should none the less be at the disposal of the Court, but--hm,--trusting to your official goodnature----" Sendlingen had supported himself firmly against the back of the chair. His pulses leapt and his voice trembled as he answered: "I will take the case." Then both the men started for the Court. When they came out into the full light of the corridor, Werner looked anxiously at his chief. "But indeed you are still very white!" he cried. "And your face has quite a strange expression. You appear to be seriously unwell, and I have just asked you----" "It is nothing!" interrupted Sendlingen impatiently. "Whom does our present transaction relate to?" "You will be sorry to hear of it," was the answer, "I know that you too had the best opinion of the young man. It relates to Herbich, an assistant at the Board of Trade office: he has unfortunately been guilty of a gross misuse of his official position." "Oh--in what way?" "Money matters," answered Werner cursorily, and he beckoned to a messenger and sent him to Berger's. They then entered the Court where the three eldest Judges were already waiting for them. The Chief Justice opened the sitting and called for a report of the case to be read. It was different from what one would have expected from Werner's intimation: Herbich had not become a criminal through greed of gain. His mother, an old widow, had, on his advice, lent her slender fortune which was to have served as her only daughter's dowry, to a friend of his, a young merchant of excellent reputation. Without any one suspecting it, this honourable man had through necessity gradually become bankrupt, and when Herbich one morning entered his office at the Board of Trade, he found the manager of a factory there who, to his alarm, demanded a decree summoning a meeting of his friend's creditors. Instead of fulfilling this in accordance with the duties of his office, he hurried to the merchant and induced him by piteous prayers to return the loan on the spot. Not till then did he go back to the office and draw up the necessary document. By the inquiries of other creditors whose fractional share had been diminished by this, the matter came to light. Herbich was suspended, though left at liberty. There was no permanent loss to the creditors, as the sister had in the meantime returned the whole of the amount to the administrator of the estate. The report recommended that the full severity of the law should take effect, and that the young man should not only be deprived of his position, but should forthwith be handed over to justice. Sendlingen had listened to the lengthy report motionless. Only once had he risen, to arrange the lampshade so that his face remained in complete shadow. Then he asked whether the committee would examine the accused. It was in no way bound to do so, though entitled to, and therefore Herbich had been instructed to hold himself in waiting at the Court at the hour of the inquiry. The conductor of the inquiry was opposed to any examination. Not so Baron Dernegg, one of the Judges, a comfortable looking man with a broad, kindly face. It seemed to him, he explained, that the examination was a necessity, as in this way alone could the motives of the act be brought fully to light. The Committee was equally divided on the subject: the casting vote therefore lay with Sendlingen. He hesitated a long while, but at length said with a choking voice: "It seems to me, too, that it would be humane and just to hear the unfortunate man." Herbich entered. His white, grief-worn face flushed crimson as he saw the Judges, and his gait was so unsteady that Baron Dernegg compassionately motioned him to sit down. The trembling wretch supported himself on the back of a chair as he began laboriously, and almost stutteringly, to reply to the Chief Justice's question as to what he had to say in his defence. He told of his intimate friendship with the merchant and how it was entirely his own doing that the loan had been made. When he came to speak of his offence his voice failed him until at length he blurted out almost sobbing: "No words can express how I felt then!... My sister had recently been betrothed to an officer. The money was to have served as the guarantee required by the war-office; if it was lost the wedding could not take place and the life's happiness of the poor girl would have been destroyed. I did not think of the criminality of what I was doing. I only followed the voice of my heart which cried out: 'Your sister must not be made unhappy through your fault!' My friend's resistance first made me conscious of what I had begun to do! I sought to reassure him and myself by sophisms, pointing out how insignificant the sum was compared with his other debts, and that any other creditor would have taken advantage of making the discovery at the last moment. I seemed to have convinced him, but, as for myself, I went away with the consciousness of being a criminal." He stopped, but as he continued his voice grew stronger and more composed. "A criminal certainly! But my conscience tells me that of two crimes I chose the lesser. But to no purpose: the thing came out; my sister sacrificed her money and her happiness. I look upon my act now as I did then. Happy is the man who is spared a conflict between two duties, whose heart is not rent, whose honour destroyed, as mine has been; but if he were visited as I was, he would act as I acted if he were a man at all! And now I await your verdict, for what I have left to say, namely what I once was, you know as well as I do!" A deep silence followed these words. It was for Sendlingen to break it either by another question or by dismissing the accused. He, however, was staring silently into space like one lost to his surroundings. At length he murmured: "You may go." The discussion among the Judges then began and was hotly carried on, as two opposite views were sharply outlined. Baron Dernegg and the fourth Judge were in favour of simple dismissal without any further punishment, while the promoter, supported by Werner, was in favour of his original proposition. The matter had become generally known, he contended, and therefore the dignity of Justice demanded a conspicuous satisfaction for the outraged law. The decision again rested with Sendlingen, but it seemed difficult for him to pronounce it. "It is desirable, gentlemen," he said, "that your verdict should be unanimous. Perhaps you will agree more easily in an informal discussion. I raise the formal sitting for a few minutes." But he himself took no part in their discussion, but stepped to the window. He pressed his burning forehead against the cool glass: his face again wore that expression of torturing uncertainty. But gradually his features grew composed and assumed a look of quiet resolve. When Werner approached and informed him that both parties still adhered obstinately to their own opinion, he stepped back to the table and said in a loud, calm voice: "I cast my vote for the opinion of Baron Dernegg. The dignity of Justice does not, in my opinion, require to be vindicated only by excessive severity; dismissal from office and ruin for life are surely sufficient punishment for a fatal _error_." Werner in spite of his boundless respect for superiors, could not suppress a movement of surprise. Sendlingen noticed it. "An error!" he repeated emphatically. "Whoever can put himself in the place of this unfortunate man, whoever can comprehend the struggles of his soul, must see that, according to his own ideas, he had indeed to choose between two crimes. His error was to consider that the lesser crime which in reality was the greater. I have never been a blind partisan of the maxim: 'Fiat justitia et pereat mundus,'--but I certainly do consider it a sacred matter that every Judge should act according to law and duty, even if he should break his heart in doing so! However, I repeat, it was an error, and therefore it seems to me that the milder of the two opinions enforces sufficient atonement." Then he went up to Werner. "Forgive me," he said, "if I withdraw my promise in regard to tomorrow's trial. I am really not well enough to preside." "Oh! please--hm!--well if it must be so." "It must be so," said Sendlingen, kindly but resolutely. "Good evening, gentlemen." CHAPTER III. Sendlingen went to his own quarters; his old manservant let him in and followed him with anxious looks into his study. "You may go, Franz!" he said shortly and sharply. "I am not at home to anybody." "And should Dr. Berger?" "Berger?" He shook his head decidedly. Then he seemed to remember some one else. "I will see him," he said, drawing a deep breath. The old man went out hesitatingly: Sendlingen was alone. But after a few minutes the voice of his friend was audible in the lobby, and Berger entered with a formidable bundle of documents under his arm. "Well, how goes it now?" cried the portly man, still standing in the doorway. "Better, certainly, as you are going to preside to-morrow. Here are the papers." He laid the bundle on the table and grasped Sendlingen's outstretched hand. "A mill-stone was rolled from my neck when the messenger came. In the first place, I knew you were better again, and secondly the chief object of my visit at noon to-day was attained without my own intervention." "Did you come on that account?" "Yes, Victor,--and not merely to greet you." The advocate's broad, open face grew very serious. "I wanted to draw your attention to to-morrow's trial, not only from motives of pity for the unfortunate girl, but also in the interests of Justice. Old Werner, who gets more and more impressed with the idea that he is combating the Revolution in every case of child-murder, is not the right Judge for this girl. 'There are cases,' once wrote an authority on criminal law, 'where a sentence of death accords with the letter of the law, but almost amounts to judicial murder.' I hope you will let this authority weigh with you, though you yourself are he. Now then, if Werner is put in a position to-morrow to carry out the practice to which he has accustomed himself in the last few weeks, we shall have one of these frightful cases." Sendlingen made no reply. His limbs seemed to grow rigid and the beating of his heart threatened to stop. "How--how does the case stand?" he at length blurted out hoarsely and with great effort. "Your voice is hoarse," remarked Berger innocently. "You must have caught cold on the journey. Well, as to the case." He settled himself comfortably in his chair. "It is only one of the usual, sad stories, but it moved me profoundly after I had seen and spoken to the poor wretch. Victorine Lippert is herself an illegitimate child and has never found out who her father was; even after her mother's death no hint of it was found among her possessions. As she was born in Radautz, a small town in the Bukowina, and as her mother was governess in the house of a Boyar, it is probable that she was seduced by one of these half-savages or perhaps even a victim to violence. I incline to the latter belief, because Hermine Lippert's subsequent mode of life and touching care for her child, are against the surmise that she was of thoughtless disposition. She settled in a small town in Styria and made a scanty living by music lessons. Forced by necessity, she hazarded the pious fraud of passing as a widow,--otherwise she and her child must have starved. After eight years a mere chance disclosed the deception and put an end to her life in the town. She was obliged to leave, but obtained a situation as companion to a kind-hearted lady in Buda-Pesth, and being now no longer able to keep her little daughter with her, she had her brought up at a school in Gratz. Mother and child saw one another only once a year, but kept up a most affectionate correspondence. Victorine was diligent in her studies, grave and accomplished beyond her years, and justified the hope that she would one day earn a livelihood by her abilities. This sad necessity came soon enough. She lost her mother when she was barely fifteen: the Hungarian lady paid her school fees for a short time, and then the orphan had to help herself. Her excellent testimonials procured her the post of governess in the family of the widowed Countess Riesner-Graskowitz at Graskowitz near Golotz. She had the charge of two small nieces of the Countess and was patient in her duties, in spite of the hardness of a harsh and utterly avaricious woman. In June of last year, her only son, Count Henry, came home for a lengthy visit." Sendlingen sighed deeply and raised his hand. "You divine the rest?" asked Berger. "And indeed it is not difficult to do so! The young man had just concluded his initiation into the diplomatic service at our Embassy in Paris, and was to have gone on to Munich in September as attaché. Naturally he felt bored in the lonely castle, and just as naturally he sought to banish his boredom by trying to seduce the wondrously beautiful, girlish governess. He heaped upon her letters full of glowing protestations--I mean to read some specimens to-morrow, and amongst them a valid promise of marriage--and the girl of seventeen was easily fooled. She liked the handsome, well-dressed fellow, believed in his love as a divine revelation and trusted in his oaths. You will spare me details, I fancy; this sort of thing has often happened." "Often happened!" repeated Sendlingen mechanically, passing his hand over his eyes and forehead. "Well to be brief! When the noble Count Henry saw that the girl was going to become a mother before she herself had any suspicion of it, he determined to entirely avoid any unpleasantness with his formidable mother, and had himself sent to St. Petersburg. Meantime a good-natured servant girl had explained her condition to the poor wretch and had faithfully comforted her in her boundless anguish of mind, and helped her to avoid discovery. Her piteous prayers to her lover remained unanswered. At length there came a letter--and this, too, I shall read to-morrow--in which the scoundrel forbade any further molestation and even threatened the law. And now picture the girl's despair when, almost at the same time, the countess discovered her secret,--whether by chance or by a letter of the brave count, is still uncertain. Certainly less from moral indignation than from fear of the expense, this noble lady was now guilty of the shocking brutality of having the poor creature driven out into the night by the men-servants of the house! It was a dark, cold, wet night in April: shaken with fever and weary to death, the poor wretch dragged herself towards the nearest village. She did not reach it; halfway, in a wood, some peasants from Graskowitz found her the next morning, unconscious. Beside her lay her dead, her murdered child." Sendlingen groaned and buried his face in his hands. "Her fate moves you?" asked Berger. "It is certainly piteous enough! The men brought her to the village and informed the police at Golotz. The preliminary examination took place the next day. It could only establish that the child had been strangled; it was impossible to take the depositions of the murderess: she was in the wildest delirium, and the prison-doctor expected her to die. But Fate," Berger rose and his voice trembled--"Fate was not so merciful. She recovered, and was sent first to Golotz and then brought here. She admitted that in the solitude of that dreadful night, overcome by her pains, forsaken of God and man, she formed the resolve to kill herself and the child--when and how she did the deed she could not say. I am persuaded that this is no lie, and I believe her affirmation that it was only unconsciousness that prevented her suicide. Doesn't that appear probable to you too?" Sendlingen did not answer. "Probable," he at length muttered, "highly probable!" Berger nodded. "Thus much," he continued, "is recorded in the judicial documents, and as all this is certainly enough to arouse sympathy, I went to see her as soon as the defence was allotted to me. Since that I have learnt more. I have learnt that a true and noble nature has been wrecked by the baseness of man. She must have been not only fascinatingly beautiful, but a character of unusual depth and purity. One can still see it, just as fragments of china enable us to guess the former beauty of a work of art. For this vessel is broken in pieces, and her one prayer to me was: not to hinder the sentence of death!... But I cannot grant this prayer," he concluded. "She must not die, were it only for Justice's sake! And a load is taken off my heart to think that a human being is to preside at the trial to-morrow, and not a rhetoric machine!" He had spoken with increasing warmth, and with a conviction of spirit which this quiet, and indeed temperate man, seldom evinced. His own emotion prevented him from noticing how peculiar was his friend's demeanour. Sendlingen sat there for a while motionless, his face still covered with his hands, and when he at length let them fall, he bowed his head so low that his forehead rested on the edge of the writing-table. In this position he at last blurted forth: "I cannot preside to-morrow." "Why not?" asked Berger in astonishment. "Are you really ill?" And as he gently raised his friend's head and looked into his worn face he cried out anxiously: "Why of course--you are in a fever." Sendlingen shook his head. "I am quite well, George! But even if it cost me my life, I would not hand over this girl to the tender mercies of others, if only I dared. But I dare not!" "You _dare_ not!" "The law forbids it!" "The law? You are raving!" "No! no!" cried the unhappy man springing up. "I would that I were either mad or dead, but such is not my good fortune! The law forbids it, for a father----" "Victor!" "Everything tallies, everything! The mother's name--the place--the year of birth--and her name is Victorine." "Oh my God! She is your----" "My daughter," cried the unfortunate wretch in piercing tones and then quite broke down. Berger stood still for an instant as if paralysed by pity and amazement! Then he hurried to his friend, raised him and placed him in his arm-chair. "Keep calm!" he murmured. "Oh! it is frightful!... Take courage!... The poor child!" He was himself as if crushed by the weight of this terrible discovery. Breathing heavily, Sendlingen lay there, his breast heaving convulsively; then he began to sob gently; far more piteously than words or tears, did these despairing, painfully subdued groans betray how exceedingly he suffered. Berger stood before him helplessly; he could think of no fitting words of comfort, and he knew that whatever he could say would be said in vain. The door was suddenly opened loudly and noisily; old Franz had heard the bitter lamenting and could no longer rest in the lobby. "My Lord!" he screamed, darting to the sufferer. "My dear good master." "Begone!" Sendlingen raised himself hastily. "Go, Franz--I beg!" he repeated, more gently. But Franz did not budge. "We are in pain," he muttered, "and Fräulein Brigitta may not come in and I am sent away! What else is Franz in the world for?" He did not go until Berger by entreaties and gentle force pushed him out of the door. Sendlingen nodded gratefully to his friend. "Sit here," he said, pointing to a chair near his own. "Closer still--so! You must know all, if only for her sake! You shall have no shred of doubt as to whom you are defending to-morrow, and perhaps you may discover the expedient for which I have racked my brain in vain. And indeed I desire it on my own account. Since the moment I discovered it I feel as if I had lost everything. Everything--even myself! You are one of the most upright men I know; you shall judge me, George, and in the same way that you will defend this poor girl, with your noble heart and clear head. Perhaps you will decide that some other course is opened to me beside----" He stopped and cast a timid glance at a small neat case that lay on his writing-table. Berger knew that it contained a revolver. "Victor!" he cried angrily and almost revolted. "Oh, if you knew what I suffer! But you are right, it would be contemptible. I dare not think of myself. I dare not slink out of the world. I have a duty to my child. I have neglected it long enough,--I must hold on now and pay my debt. Ah! how I felt only this morning, and now everything lies around me shivered to atoms. Forgive me, my poor brain can still form no clear thought! But--I will--I must. Listen, I will tell you, as if you were the Eternal Judge Himself, how everything came about." CHAPTER IV. After a pause he began: "I must first of all speak of myself and what I was like in those days. You have only known me for ten years: of my parents, of my childhood, you know scarcely anything. Mine was a frightful childhood, more full of venom and misery than a man can often have been condemned to endure. My parents' marriage--it was hell upon earth, George! In our profession we get to know many fearful things, but I have hardly since come across anything like it. How they came to be married, you know,--all the world knows. I am convinced that they never loved one another; her beauty pleased his senses, and his condescension may have flattered her. No matter! from the moment that they were indissolubly bound, they hated one another. It is difficult to decide with whom the fault began; perhaps it lay first of all at my father's door. Perhaps the common, low-born woman would have been grateful to him for having made her a Baroness and raised her to a higher rank in life, if only he had vouchsafed her a little patience and love. But he could not do that, he hated her as the cause of his misfortune, and she repaid him ten-fold in insult and abuse, and in holding him up, humbled enough already, to the derision and gossip of the little town. "Betwixt these two people I grew up. I should have soon got to know the terms they were on even if they had striven anxiously to conceal them, but that they did not do. Or rather: he attempted to do so, and that was quite sufficient reason for her to drag me designedly into their quarrels, for she knew that this was a weapon wherewith to wound him deeply. And when she saw that he idolized me as any poor wretch does the last hope and joy that fate has left him, she hated me. On that account and on that account alone, she knew that every scolding, every blow, she gave me, cut him to the quick. No wonder that I hated and feared her, as much as I loved and honoured my father. "What he had done I already accurately knew by the time I was a boy of six: he had married out of his rank and a Sendlingen might not do that! For doing so his father had disowned him, for doing so he had to go through life in trouble and misery, in a paltry hole and corner where the people mocked at his misfortune. My mother was our curse!--Oh, how I hated her for this, how by every fresh ill-usage at her hands, my heart was more and more filled with bitter rancour. "You shudder, George?" he said stopping in his story. "This glimpse into a child's soul makes you tremble? Well--it is the truth, and you shall hear everything that happened. "If I did not become wicked, I have to thank my father for it. I was diligent because it gave him pleasure. I was kind and attentive to people because he commanded it. He was often ill; what would have become of me if I had lost him then and grown up under my mother's scourge, I dare not think. I was spared this greatest evil: his protecting hand continued to be stretched out over me, and when we moved to Klagenfurth he began to live again. The intercourse with educated people revived him and he was once more full of hope and endeavour. My mother now began to be ill and a few months after our arrival she died. We neither of us rejoiced at her death, but what we felt as we stood by her open coffin was a sort of silent horror. "And now came more happy days, but they did not last long. Mental torture had destroyed my father's vitality, and the rough mountain-climate had injured his lungs. The mild air of the plain seemed to restore him for a time, but then the treacherous disease broke out in all its virulence. He did not deceive himself about his condition, but he tried to confirm me in hope and succeeded in doing so. When, after a melancholy winter, in the first days of spring, his cough was easier and his cheeks took colour, I, like a thoughtless boy, shouted for joy,--he however knew that it was the bloom of death. "And he acted accordingly. One May morning--I had just completed my fourteenth year--he came to my bed-side very early and told me to dress myself with all speed. 'We are going for an excursion,' he said. There was a carriage at the door. We drove through the slumbering town and towards the Wörther-see. It was a lovely morning, and my father was so affectionate--it seemed to me the happiest hour I had ever had! When we got to Maria Wörth, the carriage turned off from the lake-side and we proceeded towards the Tauer Mountains through a rocky valley, until we stopped at the foot of a hill crowned with a ruin. Slowly we climbed up the weed-grown path; every step cost the poor invalid effort and pain, but when I tried to dissuade him he only shook his head. 'It must be so!' he said, with a peculiarly earnest look. At length we reached the top. Of the old building, little remained standing except the outer walls and an arched gateway. 'Look up yonder,' he said, solemnly. 'Do you recognize that coat of arms?' It consisted of two swords and a St. Andrew's cross with stars in the field." "Your arms?" asked Berger. Sendlingen nodded. "They were the ruins of Sendlingen Castle, once our chief possession on Austrian soil. My father told me this, and began to recount old stories, how our ancestor was a cousin of Kaiser Conrad and had been a potentate of the Empire, holding lands in Franconia and Suabia, and how his grandson, a friend of one of the Hapsburgs, had come to Carinthia and there won fresh glory for the old arms. It was a beautiful and affecting moment,--at our feet the wild, lonely landscape, dreamily beautiful in the blue atmosphere of a spring day, no sound around us save the gentle murmur of the wind in the wild elder-trees, and with all this the tones of his earnest, enthusiastic voice. My father had never before spoken as he did then, and while he spoke, there rose before my eyes with palpable clearness the long line of honourable nobles who had all gloriously borne first the sword and then the ermine, and the more familiar their age and their names became, the higher beat my heart, the prouder were my thoughts and every thought was a vow to follow in their footsteps. "My father may have guessed what was passing in my heart, he drew me tenderly to him, and as he told me of his own father, the first judge and nobleman of the land, tears started from his eyes. 'He was the last Sendlingen worthy of the name,' he concluded, 'the last!' "'Father,' I sobbed, 'whatever I can and may do will be done, but you too will now have a better fate.' "'I!' he broke in, 'I have lived miserably and shall die miserably! But I will not complain of my fate, if it serves as a warning to you. Listen to me, Victor, my life may be reckoned by weeks, perhaps by days, but if I know my cousins aright, they will not let you stand alone after my death. They will not forget that you are a Sendlingen, so long as you don't forget it yourself. And in order that you may continue mindful of it, I have brought you hither before I die! Unhappy children mature early; you have been in spite of all my love, a very unhappy child, Victor, and you have long since known exactly why my life went to pieces. Swear to me to keep this in mind and that you will be strict and honourable in your conduct, as a Sendlingen is in duty bound to be.' "'I swear it!' I exclaimed amid my tears. "'One thing more!' he continued, 'I must tell you, although you are still a boy, but I have short time to stay and better now than not at all! It is with regard to women. You will resist my temptations, I am sure. But if you meet a woman who is noble and good but yet not of your own rank, and if your heart is drawn to her, imperiously, irresistibly, so that it seems as if it would burst and break within your breast unless you win her, then fly from her, for no blessing can come of it but only curses for you both. Curses and remorse, Victor--believe your father who knows the world as it is.... Swear to me that you will never marry out of your rank!' "'I swear it!' I repeated. "'Well and good,' he said solemnly. 'Now I have fulfilled my duty and am ready ... let us go, Victor.' "He was going to rise, but he had taxed his wasted lungs beyond their strength: he sank back and a stream of blood gushed from his lips. It was a frightful moment. There I stood, paralysed with fear, helpless, senseless, beside the bleeding man--and when I called for help, there was not a soul to hear me in that deep solitude. I had to look on while the blood gushed forth until my father utterly broke down. I thought he was dead but he had only fainted. A shepherd heard the cry with which I threw myself down beside him, he fetched the driver, they got us into the carriage and then to Klagenfurth. Two days later my poor father died." He stopped and closed his eyes, then drew a deep breath and continued: "You know what became of me afterwards. My dying father was not deceived in his confidence: the innocent boy, the last of the Sendlingens, was suddenly overwhelmed with favours and kindness. It was strange how this affected me, neither moving me, nor exalting, nor humbling me. Whatever kindness was done me, I received as my just due; it was not done to me, but to my race in requital for their services, and I had to make a return by showing myself worthy of that race. All my actions were rooted in this pride of family: seldom surely has a descendant of princes been more mightily possessed of it. If I strove with almost superhuman effort to fulfil all the hopes that were set on me at school, if I pitilessly suppressed every evil or low stirring of the heart, I owe it to this pride in my family: the Sendlingen had always been strong in knowledge, strict to themselves, just and good to others,--_must_ I not be the same? And if duty at times seemed too hard, my father's bitter fate rose before me like a terrifying spectre, and his white face of suffering was there as a pathetic admonition--both spurring me onward. But the same instinct too preserved me from all exultation now that praise and honour were flowing in upon me; it might be a merit for ordinary men to distinguish themselves, with a Sendlingen it was a duty! "And so I continued all those years, first at school, then at the University, moderate, but a good companion, serious but not averse to innocent pleasures. I had a liking for the arts, I was foremost in the ball-room and in the Students' Réunions,--in one thing only I kept out of the run of pleasure: I had never had a love-affair. My father's warning terrified me, and so did that old saying: 'A Sendlingen can never be a scoundrel!' And however much travelling changed my views in the next few years, in this one thing I continued true to myself. Certainly this cost me no great struggle. Many a girl whom I had met in the society I frequented appeared lovable enough, but I had not fallen in love with any, much less with a girl not of my own rank, of whom I hardly knew even one. "So I passed in this respect as an exemplary young man, too exemplary, some thought, and perhaps not without reason. But whoever had taken me at the time I entered upon my legal career, for an unfeeling calculator with a list of the competitors to be outstripped at all costs, in the place where other people carry a palpitating heart, would have done me a great injustice. I was ambitious, I strove for special promotion, not by shifts and wiles, but by special merit. And as to my heart,--oh! George, how soon I was to know what heart-ache was, and bliss and intoxication, and love and damnation!" He rose, opened his writing-table, and felt for the secret drawer. But he did not open it; he shook his head and withdrew his hand. "It would be of no use," he murmured, and remained for awhile silently brooding. "That was in the beginning of your career?" said Berger, to recall him. "Yes," he answered. "It was more than twenty years ago, in the winter of 1832. I had just finished my year of probation at Lemburg under the eyes of the nearest and most affectionate of my relations, Count Warnberg, who was second in position among the judges there. He was an uncle, husband of my father's only sister. He had evinced the most cruel hardness to his brother-in-law, to me he became a second father. At his suggestion and in accordance with my own wish, I was promoted to be criminal Judge in the district of Suczawa. The post was considered one of the worst in the circuit, both my uncle and I thought it the best thing for me, because it was possible here within a very short time, to give conclusive proof of my ability. Such opportunities, however, were more abundant than the most zealous could desire: in those days there prevailed in the southern border-lands of the Bukowina, such a state of things as now exists only in the Balkan Provinces or in Albania. It was perhaps the most wretched post in the whole Empire, and in all other respects exceptionally difficult. The ancient town, once the capital of the Moldavian Princes, was at that time a mere confusion of crumbling ruins and poverty-stricken mud-cabins crowded with dirty, half-brutalized Roumanians, Jews and Armenians. Moreover my only colleague in the place was the civil judge, a ruined man, whom I had never seen sober. My only alternative therefore was either to live like an anchorite, or to go about among the aristocracy of the neighborhood. "When I got to know these noble Boyars, the most educated of them ten times more ignorant, the most refined ten times more coarse, the most civilized ten times more unbridled than the most ignorant, the coarsest and the most unbridled squireen of the West, I had no difficulty in choosing: I buried myself in my books and papers. But man is a gregarious animal--and I was so young and spoiled, and so much in need of distraction from the comfortless impressions of the day, that I grew weary after a few weeks and began to accept invitations. The entertainments were always the same: first there was inordinate eating, then inordinate drinking, and then they played hazard till all hours. As I remained sober and never touched a card, I was soon voted a wearisome, insupportable bore. Even the ladies were of this opinion, for I neither made pretty speeches, nor would I understand the looks with which they sometimes favoured me. That I none the less received daily invitations was not to be wondered at; a real live Baron of the Empire was, whatever he might be, a rare ornament for their 'salons,' and to many of these worthy noblemen it seemed desirable in any case to be on a good footing with the Criminal Judge. "One of them had particular reason for this, Alexander von Mirescul, a Roumanianised Greek; his property lay close to the Moldavian frontier and passed for the head-quarters of the trade in tobacco smuggling. He was not to be found out, and when I saw him for the first time, I realized that that would be a difficult business; the little man with his yellow, unctuous face seemed as if he consisted not of flesh and bone, but of condensed oil. It was in his voice and manner. He was manifestly much better educated and better mannered than the rest, as he was also much more cunning and contemptible. I did not get rid of this first impression for a long while, but at length he managed to get me into his house; I gradually became more favourable to him as he was, in one respect at least, an agreeable exception; he was a tolerably educated man, his daughters were being brought up by a German governess and he had a library of German books which he really read. I had such a longing for the atmosphere of an educated household that one evening I went to see him. "This evening influenced years of my life, or rather, as I have learnt to-day, my whole life. I am no liar, George, and no fanciful dreamer, it is the literal truth: I loved this girl from the first instant that I beheld her." Berger looked up in astonishment. "From the first instant," Sendlingen repeated, and he struggled with all speed through his next words. "I entered, Mirescul welcomed me: my eye swept over black and grey heads, over well-known, sharp-featured, olive-faces. Only one was unknown to me: the face of an exquisitely beautiful girl encircled by heavy, silver-blond, plaited hair. Her slender, supple figure was turned away from me, I could only see her profile; it was not quite regular, the forehead was too high, the chin too peculiarly prominent; I saw all that, and yet I seemed as if I had never seen a girl more beautiful and my heart began to beat passionately. I had to tear my looks away, and talk to the lady of the house, but then I stared again, as if possessed, at the beautiful, white unknown who stood shyly in a corner gazing out into the night. 'Our governess, Fräulein Lippert,' said Frau von Mirescul, quietly smiling as she followed the direction of my looks. "'I know,' I answered nervously, almost impatiently; I had guessed that at once. Frau von Mirescul looked at me with astonishment, but I had risen and hurried over to the lonely girl: one of the most insolent of the company, the little bald Popowicz, had approached her. I was, afraid that he might wound her by some insulting speech. How should this poor, pale, timorous child defend herself alone against such a man? He had leant over her and was whispering something with his insolent smile, but the next instant he started back as if hurled against the wall by an invisible hand, and yet it was only a look of those gentle, veiled, grey eyes, now fixed in such a cold, hard stare that I trembled as they rested on me. But they remained fixed upon me and suddenly became again so pathetically anxious and helpless. "At length I was beside her: I no longer required to defend her from the elderly scamp, he had disappeared. I could only offer her my hand and ask: 'Did that brute insult you?' But she took my hand and held it tight as if she must otherwise have fallen, her eyelids closed in an effort to keep back her tears. 'Thank you,' she stammered. 'You are a German, are you not Baron Sendlingen? I guessed as much when you came in! Oh if you knew!' "But I do know all, I know what she suffers in this 'salon,' and now we begin to talk of our life among these people and our conversation flows on as if it had been interrupted yesterday. We hardly need words: I understand every sigh that comes from those small lips at other times so tightly closed, she, every glance that I cast upon the assembly. But my glances are only fugitive for I prefer looking straight into that beautiful face so sweetly and gently attractive, although the mouth and chin speak of such firm determination. She often changes colour, but it is more wonderful that I am at times suddenly crippled by the same embarrassment, while at the next moment I feel as if my heart has at length reached home after years and years,--perhaps a life-time's sojourn in a chill strange land. "An hour or more passed thus. We did not notice it; we did not suspect how much our demeanour surprised the others until Mirescul approached and asked me to take his wife in to supper. We went in; Hermine was not there. 'Fräulein Hermine usually retires even earlier,' remarked Frau von Mirescul with the same smile as before. I understood her, and with difficulty suppressed a bitter reply: naturally this girl of inferior rank, whose father had only been a schoolmaster, was unworthy of the society of cattle-merchants, horse-dealers and slave-drivers whose fathers had been ennobled by Kaiser Franz! "After supper I took my leave. Mirescul hoped to see me soon again and I eagerly promised: 'As soon as possible.' And while I drove home through the snow-lit winter's night, I kept repeating these words, for how was I henceforth to live without seeing her?" "After the first evening?" said Berger, shaking his head. "That was like a disease!" "It was like a fatality!" cried Sendlingen. "And how is it to be explained? I do not know! I wanted at first to show you her likeness, but I have not done so, for however beautiful she may have been, her beauty does not unsolve the riddle. I had met girls equally beautiful, equally full of character before, without taking fire. Was it because I met her in surroundings which threw into sharpest relief all that was most charming in her, because I was lonelier than I had ever been before, because I at once knew that she shared my feelings? Then besides, I had not as a young fellow lived at high pressure. I had not squandered my heart's power of loving; the later the passion of love entered my life, the stronger, the deeper would be its hold upon me. "Reasons like these may perhaps satisfy you; me they do not. He who has himself not experienced a miracle, but learns of it on the report of another, will gladly enough accept a natural explanation; but to him whose senses it has blinded, whose heart it has convulsed, to him it remains a miracle, because it is the only possible conception of the strange, overmastering feelings of such a moment. When I think of those days and how she and I felt--no words can tell, no subtlest speculation explain it. Look at it as you may, I will content myself by simply narrating the facts. "And it is a fact that from that evening I was completely metamorphosed. For two days I forced myself to do my regular duties, on the third I went to Oronesti, to Mirescul's. The fellow was too cunning to betray his astonishment, he brimmed over with pleasure and suggested a drive in sleighs, and as the big sleigh was broken we had to go in couples in small ones, I with Hermine. This arrangement was evident enough, but how could I show surprise at what made me so blessed? Even Hermine was only startled for a moment and then, like me, gave herself up unreservedly to her feelings. "And so it was in all our intercourse in the next two weeks. We talked a great deal and between whiles there were long silences; perhaps these blissful moments of speechlessness were precisely the most beautiful. During those days I scarcely touched her hand: we did not kiss one another, we did not speak of our hearts: the simple consciousness of our love was enough. It was not the presence of others that kept us within these bounds; we were much alone; Mirescul took care of that." "And did that never occur to you?" asked Berger. "Yes, at times, but in a way that may be highly significant of the spell under which my soul and senses laboured at the time. A man in a mesmeric trance distinctly feels the prick of a needle in his arm; he knows that he is being hurt; but he has lost his sense of pain. In some such way I looked upon Mirescul's friendliness as an insult and a danger, but my whole being was so filled with fantastic, feverish bliss that no sensation of pain could have penetrated my consciousness." "And did you never think what would come of this?" "No, I could swear to it, never! I speculated as little about my love, as the first man about his life: he was on the earth to breathe and to be happy; of death he knew nothing. And she was just the same; I know it from her letters later, at that time we did not write. And so we lived on, in a dream, in exaltation, without a thought of the morrow." "It must have been a cruel awakening," said Berger. "Frightful, it was frightful!" He spoke with difficulty, and his looks were veiled. "Immediately, in the twinkling of an eye, happiness was succeeded by misery, the most intoxicating happiness by the most lamentable, hideous misery.... One stormy night in March I had had to stay at Mirescul's because my horses were taken ill, very likely through the food which Mirescul had given them.... I was given a room next to Hermine's. "On the next day but one--I was in my office at the time--the customs superintendent of the neighbouring border district entered the room. He was a sturdy, honourable greybeard, who had once been a Captain in the army. 'We have caught the rascal at last,' he announced. 'He has suddenly forgotten his usual caution. We took him to-night in the act of unloading 100 bales of tobacco at his warehouses. Here he is!' "Mirescul entered, ushered in by two of the frontier guards. "'My dear friend!' he cried. 'I have come to complain of an unheard-of act of violence!' "I stared at him, speechless; had he not the right to call me his friend,--how often had I not called him friend in the last few weeks. "'Send these men away.' I was dumb. The superintendent looked at me in amazement. I nodded silently, he shrugged his shoulders and left the room with his officials. 'The long and the short of it is,' said Mirescul, 'that my arrest was a misunderstanding: the officials can be let off with a caution!' "'The matter must first be inquired into,' I answered at length. "'Among friends one's word is enough.' "'Duty comes before friendship.' "'Then you take a different view of it from what I do,' he answered coming still closer to me. 'It would have been my duty to protect the honour of a respectable girl living in my house as a member of the family. It would now be my duty to drive your mistress in disgrace and dishonour from my doors. I sacrifice this duty to my friendship!' "Ah, how the words cut me! I can feel it yet, but I cannot yet describe it. He went, and I was alone with my wild remorse and helpless misery." Sendlingen rose and walked up and down excitedly. Then he stood still in front of his friend. "That was the heaviest hour of my life, George--excepting the present. A man may perhaps feel as helpless who is suddenly struck blind. The worst torture of all was doubt in my beloved; the hideous suspicion that she might have been a conscious tool in the hands of this villain. And even when I stifled this thought, what abominations there were besides! I should act disgracefully if for her sake I neglected my duty, disgracefully if I heartlessly abandoned her to the vengeance of this man! She had a claim upon me--could I make her my wife? My oath to my dying father bound me, and still more, even though I did not like to admit it, my ambition, my whole existence as it had been until I knew her. My father's fate--my future ruined--may a man fight against himself in this way? Still--'A Sendlingen can never be a scoundrel'--and how altogether differently this saying affected me compared to my father! He had only an offence to expiate, I had a sacred duty to fulfil: he perhaps had only to reproach himself with thoughtlessness--but I with dishonour. "And did I really love her? It is incomprehensible to me now how I could ever have questioned it, how I could ever have had those hideous doubts: perhaps my nature was unconsciously revenging herself for the strange, overpowering compulsion laid on her in the last few weeks, perhaps since everything, even the ugliest things, had appeared beautiful and harmonious in my dream, perhaps it was natural, now that my heart had been so rudely shaken, that even the most beautiful things should appear ugly. Perhaps--for who knows himself and his own heart? "Enough! this is how I felt on that day and on the night of that day. Oh! how I writhed and suffered! But when at last the faint red light of early morning peeped in at my window, I was resolved. I would do my duty as a judge and a man of honour: I would have Mirescul imprisoned, I would make Hermine my wife. I no longer had doubts about her or my love, but even if it had not been so, my conscience compelled me to act thus and not otherwise, without regard to the hopes of my life. "I went to my chambers almost before it was day, had the clerk roused from bed and dictated the record of the superintendent's information and a citation to the latter. Then I wrote a few lines to Hermine, begging her to leave Mirescul's house at once and to come to me. 'Trust in God and me,' I concluded. This letter I sent with my carriage to Oronesti; two hours later I myself intended to set out to the place with gendarmes to search the house and arrest Mirescul. But a few minutes after my coachman had left the court, the Jewish waiter from the hotel of the little town brought me a letter from my dear one. 'I have been here since midnight and am expecting you.' The lady looked very unwell, added the messenger compassionately, and was no doubt ill. "I hastened to her. When she came towards me in the little room with tottering steps, my heart stood still from pity and fear; shame, remorse and despair--what ravages in her fresh beauty had they not caused in this short space? I opened my arms and with a cry she sank on my breast. 'God is merciful,' she sobbed. 'You do not despise me because I have loved you more than myself: so I will not complain.' "Then she told me how Mirescul--she had kept her room for the two last days for it seemed to her as if she could never look anyone in the face again--had compelled her to grant him an interview yesterday evening. He requested her to write begging me to take no steps against him, otherwise he would expose and ruin us both. 'Oh, how hateful it was!' she cried out, with a shudder. 'It seemed to me as if I should never survive the ignominy of that hour. But I composed myself; whatever was to become of me, you should not break your oath as Judge. I told him that I would not write the letter, that I would leave his house at once, and when he showed signs of detaining me by force, I threatened to kill myself that night. Then he let me go,--and now do you decide my fate: is it to be life or death!' "'You shall live, my wife,' I swore, 'you shall live for me.' "'I believe you,' said she, 'but it is difficult. Oh! can perfect happiness ever come from what has been so hideously disfigured!' "I comforted her as well as I could, for my heart gave utterance to the same piteous question. "Then we took counsel about the future; she could not remain in Suczawa: we could see what vulgar gossip there would be even without this. So we resolved that she should go to the nearest large town, to Czernowitz, and wait there till our speedy marriage. With that we parted: it was to have been a separation for weeks and it proved to be for a lifetime: I never saw the unhappy girl again. "How did it come about that I broke my oath? There is no justification for it, at best but an explanation. I do not want to defend myself before you any more than I have done: I am only confessing to you as I would to a priest if I were a believer in the Church. "A stroke of fate struck me in that hour of my growth, I might have overcome it but now came its pricks and stabs. When I left Hermine to return to my chambers, I met the customs superintendent. I greeted him. 'Have you received my citation?' I asked. He looked at me contemptuously and passed on without answering. 'What does this mean?' cried I angrily, catching hold of his arm. "'It means,' he replied, shaking himself loose, 'that in future I shall only speak to you, even on official matters, when my duty obliges me. That, for a time, is no longer necessary. You released Mirescul yesterday, you did not record my depositions. Both were contrary to your duty: I have advised my superiors in the matter and await their commands.' "He passed on; I remained rooted to the spot a long while like one struck down; the honourable man was quite right! "But I roused myself; now at least I would neglect my duty no longer. Scarcely, however, had I got back to my chambers, when my colleague, the Civil-Judge entered; he was as usual not quite sober, but it was early in the day and he had sufficient control of his tongue to insult me roundly. 'So you are really going to Oronesti,' he began. 'I should advise you not, the man[oe]uvre is too patent. After twenty-four hours nothing will be found, as we set about searching the house just to show our good intentions--eh?' "'I don't require to be taught by you,' I cried flaring up. "'Oh, but, perhaps you do, though!' he replied. 'I might for instance teach you something about the danger of little German blondes. But--as you like--I wish you every success!' "Smarting under these sensations, I drove to Oronesti. Mirescul met me in the most brazen-faced way; he protested against such inroads undertaken from motives of personal revenge. And he added this further protest to his formal deposition; he would submit to examination at the hands of any Judge but me who had yesterday testified that the accusation was a mistake and promised to punish the customs officials, and to-day suddenly appeared on the scene with gendarmes. Between yesterday and to-day nothing had happened except that he had turned my mistress out of his house, and surely this act of domestic propriety could not establish his guilt as a smuggler. You know, George, that I was obliged to take down his protest--but with what sensations! "The search brought to light nothing suspicious; the servants, carters, and peasants whom I examined had all been evidently well-drilled beforehand. I had to have Mirescul arrested: were there not the bales of tobacco which the superintendent had seized? Not having the ordinary means of transit at night, he had had them temporarily stored in one of the parish buildings at Oronesti under the care of two officials. I now had them brought at once to the town. "When I got back to my chambers in the evening and thought over the events of this accursed day, and read over the depositions in which my honour and my bride's honour were dragged in the mire, I had not a single consolation left except perhaps this solitary one, that my neglect would not hinder the course of justice, for the smuggled wares would clearly prove the wretch's guilt. "But even this comfort was to be denied me. The next morning Mirescul's solicitor called on me and demanded an immediate examination of the bales: his client, he said, maintained that they did not contain smuggled tobacco from Moldavia, but leaf tobacco of the country grown by himself and other planters, and which he was about to prepare for the state factories. The request was quite legitimate; I at once summoned the customs superintendent as being an expert; the old man appeared, gruffly made over the documents to my keeping and accompanied us to the cellars of the Court house where the confiscated goods had been stored. When his eye fell on them he started back indignantly, pale with anger: 'Scandalous!' he cried, 'unheard of! These bales are much smaller--they have been changed!' "'How is it possible?' "'You know that better than I do,' he answered grimly. "The bales were opened; they really contained tobacco in the leaf. My brain whirled. After I had with difficulty composed myself, I examined the two officials who had watched the goods at Oronesti; the exchange could only have been effected there; the men protested their innocence; they had done their duty to the best of their ability; certainly this was the third night which they had kept watch although the Superintendent, before hurrying to the town, had promised to release them within a few hours. This too I had to take down; the proof namely that my hesitation in doing my duty had not been without harm. And now my conscience forbade me to arrest Mirescul, although by not doing so, I only made my case worse. "So things stood when two days later an official from Czernowitz circuit arrived in Suczawa to inquire into the case. You know him George; he was a relation of yours, Matthias Berger, an honest, conscientious man. 'Grave accusations have been made against you,' he explained, 'by Mirescul's solicitor, by the Civil Judge and by the Customs Superintendent, But they contradict each other: I still firmly believe in your innocence: tell me the whole truth.' "But that I could not do: I could not be the means of dragging my bride's name into legal documents, even if I were otherwise to be utterly ruined. So in answer to the questions why I had delayed twenty-four hours, I could only answer that an overwhelming private matter had deprived me of the physical strength to attend to my duties. With regard to Hermine, I refused to answer any questions. Berger shook his head sadly; he was sorry for me, but he could not help me. He must suspend me from my functions while the inquiry lasted and appoint a substitute from Czernowitz: moreover he exacted an oath from me not to leave the place without permission of the Court. Mirescul was let out on bail. "A fortnight went by. It clings to my memory like an eternity of grief and misery. I have told you what I strove for and hoped for, you will be able to judge how I suffered. Four weeks before I was one of the most rising officers of the State: now I was a prisoner on parole, oppressed by the scorn and spite of men, held up to the ignominy of all eyes. I dared hope nothing from my relations, least of all from my uncle, Count Warnberg: I knew that he would not save me so that I might marry a governess about whom--Mirescul and his friends took care of that--there were the ugliest reports in circulation. And you will consider it human, conceivable, that every letter of Hermine's was a stab in my heart. "She wrote daily. When she spoke of her feelings during our brief span of joy, it seemed to me as if she depicted my own innermost experiences. This at least gave me the consolation of knowing that I was not tied to an unworthy woman: but the bonds were none the less galling and cut into the heart of my life. Only rarely, very gently, and therefore with a twofold pathos, did she complain of her fate; but her grief on my account was wild and passionate; she had heard of my plight but not through me. I sought to comfort her as well as I might; but ah me! there was no word of release or deliverance: how could I have broached it, how have claimed it from her? "One day there came her usual letter; it was written with a visibly trembling hand. My uncle had been to see her; he was hurrying from Lemberg in great anxiety to see me, and had stopped at Czernowitz to treat with her of the price for which she would release me. In every line there was the deepest pathos; she had shown him the door. "'He will implore you to leave me,' she concluded; 'act as your conscience bids you. And I will tell you something that I refused to tell Count Warnberg; he asked me whether I had another, a more sacred claim upon you. I don't know, Victor, but as I understand our bond in which I live and suffer, that does not affect it; if you will not make me your wife for my own sake, neither could regard for the mother of your child be binding on you!' "Two hours after I received this letter, my uncle arrived. I was terrified at the sight of him, his face was so dark, and hard, and strange. My father had once said to me shortly before his death: 'Take care never to turn that iron hand against you; it would crush you as it has crushed me.' I had never before understood these words, indeed I had completely forgotten them, but now they came back to me and I understood them before my uncle opened his mouth. "'Tell your story,' he began, and his voice sounded to me as if I had never heard it before. 'Tell the whole truth. This at least I expect of you. You surely don't wish to sink lower than--than another member of your family. A Sendlingen has at all events never lied! Now tell your story.' "I obeyed: he was told what you have just been told, though no doubt it sounded different; confused, passionate and scarcely intelligible. But he understood it; he had no single question to ask after I had finished. "'The same story as before,' he said, 'but uglier, much uglier. The father only sullied his coat of arms, the son his judge's honour as well.' "I fired up. I tried to defend myself, he would not allow it. 'Tirades serve no good purpose,' he said, coldly. 'You wish to convince me that you were not in criminal collusion with Mirescul? I have never thought so. That he is really guilty and can be convicted in spite of your neglect of duty? I have been through the papers and have just cross-examined the customs superintendent. The police are already on the way to re-arrest him; he will be put in prison. But your fault will be none the less in consequence; if there is no lasting stigma on the administration of justice, there is upon your honour. Your conduct in this man's house, your hesitation,--it would be bad for you if you had to suffer what you have merited! According to justice and the laws, your fate is sealed; it is only a question whether you will prove yourself worthy of pardon and pity!' "'In anything that you may ask,' I answered, 'except only in one thing: Hermine is to be my wife. A Sendlingen can never be a scoundrel.' "He drew himself up to his full height and stepped close up to me. 'Now listen to me, Victor, I will be brief and explicit. Whether you stain your honour by marrying this girl, or whether you do so by not marrying her, the all-just God above us knows. We, His creatures, can only judge according to our knowledge and conscience, and in my judgment, the girl is unworthy of you. In this matter there is your conviction against my conviction. But what I do know better than you is, that this marriage would load you with ignominy before the whole world! You will perhaps answer: better the contempt of others than self-contempt, but that is not the question. If you marry this girl, I am as sure as I am of my existence, that you will soon be ashamed of it, not only before others but in your own heart. For pure happiness could not come of such a beginning--it is impossible. The gossip of the world, the ruin of your hopes, would poison your mind and hers,--you would be wretched yourself and make her wretched, and would at length become bad and miserable. The man who forgets his duty to himself and to the world for a matter of weeks and then recovers himself, is worthy of commiseration and help; but he who is guilty of a moral suicide deserves no pity. And therefore listen to me and choose. If you marry this girl your subsequent fate is indifferent to me; you will very likely be stripped of your office; or in the most favourable event, transferred, by way of punishment, to some out of the way place where your father's fate may be repeated in you. If you give her up you may still be saved, for yourself, for our family and for the State: then I will do for you, what my conscience would allow me to do for any subordinate of whose sincere repentance I was convinced, and I will intercede for the Emperor's pardon as if you were my own son. To-morrow I return to Lemberg, whether alone or with you--you must decide by to-morrow.' He went." Sendlingen paused. "How I struggled with myself," he began again, but his voice failed him, until at length he gasped forth with hollow voice and trembling lips: "Oh! what a night it was! The next morning I wrote a farewell letter to Hermine, and started with Count Warnberg to Lemberg." Then there followed a long silence. At length Berger asked: "You did not know that she bore your child in her bosom?" "No, I know it to-day for the first time. In that last letter of mine I had offered her a maintenance: she declined it at once. Then I left that part of the country. A few months later I inquired after her; I could only learn that she had disappeared without leaving a trace. And then I forgot her, I considered that all was blotted out and washed away like writing from a slate, and rarely, very rarely, in the dusk, or in a sleepless night, did the strange reminiscence recur to me. But Fate keeps a good reckoning--O George! I would I were dead!" "No, no!" said Berger with gentle reproof. He was deeply moved, his eyes glistened with tears, but he constrained himself to be composed. "Thank God, you are alive and willing, and I trust able to pay your debt. How great this debt may be--or how slight--I will not determine. Only one thing I do know: you are, in spite of all, worthy of the love and esteem of men, even of the best men, of better men than I am. When I think of it all; your life up to that event and what it has been since, what you have made of your life for yourself and others, then indeed it overcomes me and I feel as if I had never known a fate among the children of men more worthy of the purest pity. This is no mere sad fate, it is a tragic one. Against the burden of such a fate, no parade of sophistry, no petty concealments or prevarications will be of avail. You say it is against your feelings to preside at to-morrow's trial?" "Yes," replied Sendlingen. "It seems to me both cowardly and dishonourable; cowardly, to sacrifice the law instead of myself, dishonourable to break my Judge's oath! But I shrink from doing so for another reason; an offence should not be expiated by an injustice; I dread the all-just Fates." "I cannot gainsay you," said Berger rising. "But in this one thing we are agreed. Let us wait for the verdict, and then we will consider what your duty is. It is long past midnight, the trial will begin in seven hours. I will try and get some sleep. I shall need all my strength to-morrow. Follow my example, Victor, perhaps sleep may be merciful to you." He seized his friend's hands and held them affectionately in his; his feelings again threatened to overcome him and he hastily left the room with a choking farewell on his lips. Sendlingen was alone. After brooding awhile, he again went to the secret drawer of his writing-table. At this moment the old servant entered. "We will go to bed now," he said. "We will do it out of pity for ourselves, and Fräulein Brigitta, and me!" His look and tone were so beseeching that Sendlingen could not refuse him. He suffered himself to be undressed, put out the lamp, and closed his eyes. But sleep refused to visit his burning lids. CHAPTER V. When the grey morning appeared, he could no longer endure to lie quietly in his bed while his soul was tormented with unrest, he got up, dressed himself, left his room and went out of doors. It was a damp, cold, horrid autumn morning: the fog clung to the houses and to the uneven pavement of the old town: a heavy, yellow vapor, the smoke of a factory chimney kept sinking down lower and lower. The lonely wanderer met few people, those who recognized him greeted him respectfully, he did not often acknowledge the greeting and when he did, it was unconsciously. Most of them looked after him in utter astonishment; what could have brought the Chief Justice so early out of doors? It seemed at times as if he were looking for something he had lost; he would walk along slowly for a stretch with his looks fixed on the ground, then he would stop and go back the same way. And how broken down, how weary he looked today!--as if he had suddenly become an old man, the people thought. Freezing with cold, while his pulses beat at fever-speed, he thus wandered for a long while aimlessly through the desolate streets, first this way, then that, until the morning bells of the Cathedral sounded in his ears. He stood still and listened as if he had never heard their mighty sound before; they appeared to vibrate in his heart; his features changed and grew gentler as he listened; a ray of tender longing gleamed in his white face, and, as if drawn by invisible cords, he hurried faster and faster towards the Cathedral. But when he stood before its open door and looked into the dark space, lit only by a dim light, the sanctuary lamp before the high-altar, he hesitated; he shook his head and sighed deeply, and his features again resumed their gloomy, painful look. He looked up at the Cathedral clock, the hands were pointing to seven. "An hour more," he murmured and went over towards the Court-House. It was a huge, straggling, rectangular building, standing on its own ground. In front were the Chief Justice's residence and the offices; at the back the criminal prison. He turned towards his own quarters. He had just set his foot on the steps, when a new idea seemed to occur to him. He hesitated. "I must," he hissed between his teeth and he clenched his hands till the nails ran painfully into the flesh; "I must, if only for a minute." He stepped back into the street, went around the building and up to the door at the back. It was locked; there was a sentinel in front of it. He rang the bell, a warder opened the door and seeing the Chief Justice respectfully pulled off his hat. "Fetch the Governor," muttered Sendlingen, so indistinctly that the man hardly understood him. But he hurried away and the Governor of the prison appeared. He was visibly much astonished. "Does your Lordship wish to make an inspection?" he asked. "No, only in one or two particular cases." "Which are they, my lord?" But the unhappy man felt that his strength was leaving him. "Later on," he muttered, groping for the handle of the door so as to support himself. "Another time." The Governor hastened towards him. "Your Lordship is ill again--just as you were yesterday--we are all much concerned! May I accompany you back to your residence? The nearest way is through the prison-yard, if you choose." He opened a door and they stepped out into the prison-yard; it was separated by a wall from the front building; the only means of communication was an unostentatious little door in the bare, high, slippery wall. It seemed to be seldom used; the Governor was a long time finding the key on his bunch and when at length it opened, the lock and hinges creaked loudly. "Thank you," said Sendlingen. "I have never observed this means of communication before." "Your predecessor had it made," answered the Governor, "so that he might inspect the prison without being announced. The key must be in your possession." "Very likely," answered Sendlingen, and he went back to his residence. Franz placed his breakfast before him. "There'll be a nice ending to this," he growled. "We are dangerously ill and yet we trapse about the streets in all weathers. Dr. Berger, too, is surprised at our new ways." "Has he been here already?" "He was here a few minutes ago, but will be back at eight.... But now we have got to drink our tea." He did not budge till the cup had been emptied. With growing impatience Sendlingen looked at the clock. "He can have nothing fresh to say," he thought. "He must guess my intention and want to hinder me. He will not succeed." But he did succeed. As he entered, Sendlingen had just taken up his hat and stick. "You are going to the trial?" began his faithful friend almost roughly, "You must not, Victor, I implore you. I forbid you. What will the judges think if you are too ill to preside, and yet well enough to be present with no apparent object. But the main thing is not to torment yourself, it is unmanly. Do not lessen your strength, you may require it." He wrested his hat from him and forced him into an armchair. "My restlessness will kill me if I stay here," muttered Sendlingen. "You would not be better in there, but worse. I shall come back to you at once; I think, I fear, it will not last long. Don't buoy yourself up with any hopes, Victor. Before a jury, I could get her acquitted, with other judges, at a different time, we might have expected a short term of imprisonment ... but now----" "Death!" Like a shriek the words escaped from his stifled breast. "But she may not, she will not die!" continued Berger. "I will set my face against it as long as there is breath in my body, nay, I would have done so even if she had not been your daughter. God bless you, Victor." Berger gathered up his bundle of papers and proceeded along the corridor and up some stairs, until he found himself outside the court where the trial was to take place. Even here a hum of noise reached him, for the court was densely crowded with spectators. As far as he could see by the glimmer of grey morning light that broke its difficult way in by the round windows, it was a well-dressed audience in which ladies preponderated. "Naturally," he muttered contemptuously. For a few seconds eye-glasses and opera-glasses were directed upon him, to be then again immediately turned on the accused. But her face could not be seen; she was cowering in a state of collapse on her wooden seat, her forehead resting on the ledge of the dock; her left arm was spread out in front of her, her right hung listlessly by her side. Public curiosity had nothing to sate itself on but the shudders that at times convulsed her poor body; one of the long plaits of her coal-black, wavy hair had escaped from beneath the kerchief on her head and hung down low, almost to the ground, touching the muddy boots of the soldier who did duty as sentinel close beside her. Berger stepped to his place behind her; she did not notice him until he gently touched her icy cold hand. "Be brave, my poor child," he whispered. She started up in terror. "Ah!" went from every mouth in Court: now at length they could see her face. Berger drew himself up to his full height; his eyes blazed with anger as he stepped between her and the crowd. "Oh, what crowds of people!" murmured the poor girl. Her cheeks and forehead glowed in a fever-heat of shame: but the colour soon went and her grief-worn face was white again; the look of her eyes was weary and faint. "To think that one should have to suffer so much before dying." "You will not die!" He spoke slowly, distinctly, as one speaks to a deaf person. "You will live, and after you have satisfied the justice of men, you will begin life over again. And when you do friendship and love will not be wanting to you." While he was saying this, and at the same time looking her full in the face, her resemblance to his friend almost overpowered him. She was like her father in the colour of her hair and eyes, in her mouth and her forehead. "Love and care are waiting for you!" he continued with growing warmth. "This I can swear. Do you hear? I swear that it is so! As regards the trial, I can only give you this advice: tell, as you have hitherto done, the whole truth. Bear up as well as you can; oppose every lie, every unjust accusation." She had heard him without stirring, without a sign of agreement or dissent. It was doubtful whether she had understood him. But he had not time to repeat his admonition; the Crown-advocate and the five Judges had entered with Werner at their head. If Berger had hitherto cherished any hope, it must have vanished now; two of the other Judges were among the sternest on the bench; the fourth never listened and then always chimed in with the majority; it was but a slender consolation to Berger when he finally saw the wise and humane Baron Dernegg take his place beside the judges. Werner opened the proceedings and the deed of accusation was then read out by the Secretary of the Court. Its compiler--a young, fashionably dressed junior Crown-advocate of an old aristocratic family, who had only been in the profession a short time,--listened to the recital of his composition with visible satisfaction. And indeed his representation of the matter was very effective. According to him the Countess Riesner-Graskowitz was one of the noblest women who ever lived, the Accused one of the most abandoned. A helpless orphan, called by unexampled generosity to fill a post which neither her years nor abilities had fitted her for, she had requited this kindness by entangling the young Count Henry in her wiles in order to force him into a marriage. After he had disentangled himself from these unworthy bonds, and after Victorine Lippert knew her condition, instead of repentantly confiding in her noble protectress, she had exhausted all the arts of crafty dissembling in order not to be found out. And when at length she was, as a most just punishment, suddenly dismissed from the castle, she in cold blood murdered her child so as to be free from the consequences of her fault. In his opinion, the Accused's pretended unconsciousness was a manifest fable, and the crime a premeditated one, as her conduct at the castle sufficiently proved. Her character was not against the assumption, she was plainly corrupted at an early age, being the daughter of a woman of loose character. "It is a lie! a scandalous lie!" Like a cry from the deepest recesses of the heart, these words suddenly vibrated through the Court with piercing clearness. It was the Accused who had spoken. She had listened to the greatest part of the document without a sound, without the slightest change of countenance, as if she were deaf. Only once at the place where it spoke of "manifest fable" she had gently and imperceptibly shaken her head; it was the first intimation Berger had that she was listening and understood the accusation. But now, hardly had the libel on her dead mother been read, when she rose to her feet and uttered those words so suddenly that Berger was not less motionless and dumfounded than the rest. And then broke forth the hubbub; such an interruption, and in such language, had never before occurred in Court. The spectators had risen and were talking excitedly; the crown-advocate stood there helplessly; even Herr von Werner had to clear his throat repeatedly before he could ejaculate "Silence!" But the command was superfluous for hardly had the poor girl uttered the words, when she fell back upon her seat, from thence to the ground, and was now lying in a faint on the boards. She was carried out; it was noticed by many and caused much scandal, that the counsel for the Accused lifted the lifeless body and helped carry it, instead of leaving this to the warders. The proceedings had to be interrupted. It was another half hour before the Accused appeared in Court again, leaning on Berger's arm, her features set like those of an animated corpse. There was a satirical murmur in the crowd, and Werner, too, reflected whether he should not, there and then, reprove the Counsel for unseemly behaviour. And this determined him to be all the severer in the reprimand which he addressed to the Accused on account of her unheard of impertinence. She should not escape her just punishment, the nature and extent of which he would determine by the opinion of the prison-doctor. Then the reading of the deed of accusation was finished; the examination began. There was a murmur of eager expectation among the spectators; their curiosity was briefly but abundantly satisfied. To the question whether she pleaded guilty, Victorine Lippert answered quietly but with a steadier voice than one would have supposed her capable of: "Yes!... What I know about my deed, I have already told in evidence. I deserve death, I wish to die. It is a matter of indifference to one about to die what men may think of her; God knows the truth. He knows that much, yes most, of what has just been read here, is incorrect. I do not contest it, but one thing I swear in the face of death, and may God have no mercy on me in my last hour if I lie; my mother was noble and good; no mother can ever have been better and no wife more pure. She trusted an unworthy wretch, and he must have been worse than ever any man was, if he could forsake her--but she was good. I implore you, read her testimonials, her letters to me--I beseech you, I conjure you, just a few of these letters.-For myself I have nothing to ask--" Her voice broke, her strength again seemed to forsake her and she sank down on her seat. There was a deep silence after she had ended: in her words, in her voice, there must have been something that the hearts of those present could not shut out; even the crown-advocate looked embarrassed. Herr von Werner alone was so resolutely armed to meet the Hydra of the social Revolution, which he was bent on combating in this forlorn creature, as to be above all pity. He would certainly have begun a wearisome examination and have spared the poor creature no single detail, but his daughter was expecting a happy event to-day, and Baron Sendlingen had, notwithstanding, not had sufficient professional consideration to take over the conduct of this trial, and the half hour's faint of the Accused had already unduly prolonged the proceedings--so he determined to cut the matter as short as was compatible with his position. The accused had just again unreservedly repeated her confession; further questions, he explained, would be superfluous. The examination of the witnesses could be proceeded with at once. This also was quickly got through. There were the peasants, who had found Victorine and her lifeless child on the morrow of the deed, and the prison doctor, none of whom could advance any fresh or material fact. The only witness of importance to the Accused was the servant-girl who had helped her in her last few months at the castle. The girl had been shortly after dismissed from the Countess' service, and in the preliminary inquiry, she had confirmed all Victorine's statements; if she to-day remained firm to her previous declarations, the accusation of premeditated murder would be severely shaken. To Berger's alarm she now evasively answered that her memory was weak,--she had in the meantime gone into service at Graskowitz again. In spite of this and of the protest of the defence, she was sworn: Berger announced his intention of appealing for a nullification of the trial. Then the depositions of the Countess and her son were read; the Court had declined to subp[oe]na them. The Countess had not spared time or trouble in depicting the murderess in all her abandonment; but the depositions which Count Henry had made at his embassy, were brief enough: as far as he recollected he had made the girl no promise of marriage, and indeed there was no reason for doing so. Berger demanded, as proof to the contrary, that the letters which had been taken from the Accused and put with the other papers, should he read aloud; this the Court also declined because they did not affect the question of her guilt. Then followed the speeches for and against. The Crown-Advocate was brief enough: the trial, he contended, had established the correctness of the charge. If ever at all, then in the present case, should the full rigour of the law be enforced. By her protestation that she had received a most careful bringing up from a most excellent mother, she had herself cut from under her feet the only ground for mitigation. All the more energetically and fully did Berger plead for the utmost possible leniency; his knowledge of law, his intellect and his oratorical gifts had perhaps never before been so brilliantly displayed. When he had finished, the people in Court broke out into tumultuous applause. The Judges retired to consider their verdict. They were not long absent; in twenty minutes they again appeared in Court. Werner pronounced sentence: death by hanging. The qualification of "unanimous" was wanting. Baron Dernegg had been opposed to it. There was much excitement among the spectators. Berger, although not unprepared for the sentence, could with difficulty calm himself sufficiently to announce that every form of appeal would be resorted to. The Accused had closed her eyes for a moment and her limbs trembled like aspen-leaves, but she was able to rise by herself to follow the warders. "Thank you," she said pressing Berger's hands. "But the appeal----" "Will be lodged by me," he said hastily interrupting her. "I shall come and see you about it to-day." He hurried away down the stairs. But when he got into the long corridor that led to Sendlingen's quarters, he relaxed his pace and at length stood still. "This is a difficult business," he murmured and he stepped to a window, opened it and eagerly drank in the cool autumn air as if to strengthen himself. When a few minutes after he found himself in Sendlingen's lobby, he met Baron Dernegg coming out of his friend's study. "Too late!" he thought with alarm. "And he has had to hear it from some one else." The usually comfortable-looking Judge was much excited. "You are no doubt coming on the same errand, Dr. Berger," he began. "I felt myself in duty bound to let the Chief Justice know about this sentence without delay. The way in which he received it showed me once more what a splendid man he is, the pattern of a Judge, the embodiment of Justice! I assure you, he almost fainted, this--hm!--questionable sentence affected him like a personal misfortune. Please do not excite him any more about it and talk of something else first." "Certainly," muttered Berger as he walked into the study. Sendlingen lay back in his arm-chair, both hands pressed to his face. His friend approached him without a word; it was a long, sad silence. "Victor," he said at last, gently touching his shoulder, "we knew it would be so!" Sendlingen let his hands fall. "And does that comfort me?" he cried wildly. And then he bowed his head still lower. "Tell me all!" he murmured. Berger then began to narrate everything. One thing only he omitted: how Victorine had spoken of her mother's betrayer. "This very day," he concluded, "I shall lodge a nullity appeal with the Supreme Court. Perhaps it will consider the reasons weighty enough to order a new trial; in any case when it examines the question, it will alter the sentence." "In any case?" cried Sendlingen bitterly. "We cannot but expect as much from the sense of justice of our highest Judges. Perhaps the chief witness's suspicious weakness of memory may prove a lucky thing for us. If she had stuck by her former depositions, or if the Court had not put her on her oath, then a simple appeal to the Supreme Court would alone have been possible. Now, the case is more striking and more sensational." "And therefore all the worse!" interrupted Sendlingen. "Woe to him for whom in these days the voice of the people makes itself heard; to the gentry in Vienna it is worse than the voice of the devil. Besides, just now, according to the opinion of the Minister of Justice, the world is to be rid of child-murder by the offices of the hangman! And this is the first case in educated circles, a much talked of case,--what a magnificent opportunity of striking terror!" "You take too black a view of the matter, Victor." "Perhaps!--and therefore an unjust view! But how can a man in my position be just and reasonable. Oh, George, I am so desolate and perplexed! What shall I do; merciful Heaven, what shall I do?" "First of all--wait!" answered Berger. "The decision of the Supreme Court will be known in a comparatively short time, at latest in two months!" "Wait--only two months!" Sendlingen wrung his hands. "Though what do I care for myself! But she--two months in the fear of death! To sit thus in a lonely cell without light or air, or consolation,--behind her unutterable misery, before her death----. Oh, she must either go mad or die!" "I shall often be with her, and Father Rohn, too, I hope. And then, too," he added, half-heartedly, "one or other of the ladies of the Women's Society for Befriending Female Criminals. Certainly these comforters are not worth much." "They are worth nothing," cried Sendlingen vehemently. "Oh, how they will torture the poor girl with their unctuous virtue and self-satisfied piety! I have to tolerate these tormentors, the Minister of Justice insists on it, but at least they shall not enter this cell, I will not allow it--or at least, only the single one among them who is any good, my old Brigitta----" "Your housekeeper?" asked Berger, in perplexity and consternation. "That must not be! She might guess the truth. The girl!" he hesitated again--"is like you, very like you Victor--and anyone who sees you so often and knows you so well as Brigitta----" "What does that matter?" Sendlingen rose. "She is discreet, and if she were not--what does it matter, I repeat. Do you suppose that I never mean to enter that cell?" "You! Impossible!" "I shall and I must! I will humour you in everything except in this one thing!" "But under what pretext? Have you ever visited and repeatedly visited other condemned criminals?" "What does that matter to me? A father must stand by his child!" "And will you tell other people so?" "Not until I am obliged; but then without a moment's hesitation. She, however, must be told at once, in fact this very day." "You must not do that, Victor. Spare the poor girl this sudden revelation." "Then prepare her beforehand! But to-morrow it must be!" Berger was helpless; he knew what Victorine would say to her father if she suddenly encountered him. "Give her a little more time!" he begged, "Out of pity for her shattered nerves and agitated mind, which will not bear any immediate shock." This was a request that Sendlingen could not refuse. "Very well, I will wait," he promised. "But you will not wish to prevent me from seeing her to-morrow. I have in any case to inspect the prison. But I promise you: I will not betray myself and the governor of the jail shall accompany me." CHAPTER VI. Weighed down by sorrow, Berger proceeded homewards. To the solitary bachelor Sendlingen was more than a friend, he was a dearly loved brother. He was struck to the heart, as by a personal affliction, with compassion for this fate, this terrible fate, so suddenly and destructively breaking in upon a beneficent life, like a desolating flood. Would this flood ever subside again and the soil bring forth flowers and fruit? The strong man's looks darkened as he thought of the future: worse than the evil itself seemed to him the manner in which it affected his friend. Alas! how changed and desolated was this splendid soul, how hopeless and helpless this brave heart! And it was just their last interview, that sudden flight from the most melancholy helplessness to the heights of an almost heroic resolve, that gave Berger the greatest uneasiness. "And it will not last!" he reflected with much concern. "Most certainly it will not! Perhaps even now, five minutes after, he is again lying back in his arm chair, broken down, without another thought, another feeling, save that of his misery! And could anything else be expected? That was not the energetic resolve of a clear, courageous soul, but the diseased, visionary effort of feverishly excited nerves! Again he does not know whether he will see her or what he ought to do.... And do I know, would any one know in the presence of such a fate?" Had he deserved this fate? "No!" cried Berger to himself. "No!" he passionately repeated as he paced up and down his study, trying to frame the wording of the appeal. Clumsy and uncouth, blind and cruel, seemed to him the power that had ordered things as they had come about. It seemed no better than some rude elemental force. "He can no more help it," he muttered, "than the fields can help a flood breaking in upon them." But he could not long maintain this view, comforting as it was to him, much as he strove to harbour it. "He has done wrong," he thought, "and retribution is only the severer because delayed." Other cases in his experience occurred to him: long concealed wrongs and sins that had afterwards come into the light of day, doubly frightful. "And such offences increase by the interest accruing until they are paid," he was obliged to think. From the moment that he heard his friend's story, all the facts it brought to light seemed to him like the diabolical sport of chance; but now he no longer thought it chance but in everything saw necessity, and he was overcome by the same idea to which he had given voice at the conclusion of his friend's narration, namely that this was no mere sad fate, but a tragic one. It was a singular idea, compounded of fear and reverence. When Berger reflected how one act dovetailed into another, how link fitted into link in the chain of cause and effect, how all these people could not have acted otherwise than they were obliged to act, how guilt had of necessity supervened, and now retribution, the strong man shuddered from head to foot: he had to bow his head before that pitiless, all-just power for which he knew no name ... But was it really all-just? If all these people, if Sendlingen and Victorine had not acted otherwise than their nature and circumstances commanded, why had they to suffer for it so frightfully? And why was there no end to this suffering, a great, a liberating, a redeeming end? "No!" cried an inward voice of his deeply agitated soul, "there must be such a glorious solution. It cannot be our destiny to be dragged into sin by blind powers which we cannot in any way control, like puppets by the cords in a showman's hands, and then again, when it pleases those powers, into still greater sins, or into an atonement a thousand times greater than the sin itself, and so, on and on, until death snaps the cords. No! that cannot be our destiny, and if it were, then we should be greater than this Fate, greater, juster, more reasonable! There must be in Sendlingen's case also, a solution bringing freedom, there _must_--and in his case precisely most of all! It would have been an extraordinary fate, no matter whom it had overtaken, but had it befallen a commonplace man, it would never have grown to such a crushing tragedy. A scoundrel would have lied to himself: 'She is not my daughter, her mother was a woman of loose character,' and he would have repeated this so often that he would have come to believe it. And if remorse had eventually supervened, he would have buried it in the confessional or in the bottle. "Another man, no scoundrel,--on the contrary! a man of honour of the sort whose name is Legion,--would not have hesitated for a moment to preside in Court in order to obtain by his authority as Chief Justice, the mildest possible sentence. Then he would have been assiduous in ameliorating the lot of the prisoner by special privileges, and after she had been set at liberty, he would have bought her, somewhere at a distance, a little millinery business or a husband, and every time he thought of the matter, he would have said with emotion: 'What a good fellow you are!' This has only become a tragic fate because it has struck one of the most upright, most sensitive and noble of men, and because this is so, there must come from that most noble and upright heart a solution, an act of liberation bursting these iron bonds! There must be a means of escape by which he and his poor child and Justice herself will have their due! There _must_ be--simply because he is what he is!" There was a gleam of light in Berger's usually placid, contented face, the reflection of the thought that filled his soul and raised him above the misery of the moment. Notwithstanding, his looks became serious and gloomy again. "But what is this solution?" he asked, continuing his over-wrought reflections. "And how shall this broken-down, sick man, weary with his tortures, find it? And I--I know of none, perhaps no one save himself can find it. 'Against the burden of such a fate, no parade of sophistry will be of any avail,' I said to him yesterday. But can small expedients be of any use? Will it be a solution if I succeed with my appeal, if the sentence of death is commuted to penal servitude for life or for twenty years? Can this lessen the burden of the fate?--for her, for him?" "What to do?" he suddenly exclaimed aloud. He wrung his hands and stared before him. Suddenly there was a curious twitching about his mouth, and his eyes gleamed with an almost weird light. "No, no!" he muttered vehemently, "how can such a thought even occur to me. I feel it, I am myself becoming ill and unstrung!" He bounded up with a heavy stamp and hastily passed his hand over his forehead, as though the thought which had just passed through his brain stood written there and must be swiftly wiped away. But that thought returned again and again and would not be scared away, that enticing but fearful thought; how she might be forcibly liberated from prison and carried off to new life and happiness in a distant country? "Madness!" he muttered and added in thought: "He would rather die and let her die, than give his consent to this or set his hand to such a deed! He whose conscience would not allow him to preside at the trial! And if in his perplexity and despair he were to go so far, I should have to bar the way and stop him even if it cost me my life.... What was it he said yesterday: 'An offence should not be expiated by an injustice!' and will he attempt it by another offence. 'Cowardly and dishonourable!' yes, that it would be, and not that great deed of which I dream; greater and more just than Fate itself." He seized the notes which he had made from the papers connected with the trial, and forced himself to read them through deliberately, to weigh them again point by point. This expedient helped him: that horrible thought did not return, but a new thought rose, bringing comfort in its train and took shape: "When a great act cannot be achieved, we should not on that account omit even the smallest thing that can possibly be done. I will set my energies against the sentence of death, because it is the most frightful thing that could happen!" And now he recovered courage and eagerness for work. He sat at his writing table hour after hour, marshalling his reasons and objections into a solid phalanx which in the fervour of the moment seemed to him as if they must sweep away every obstacle, even prejudice, even ill-will. He had bolted himself in, nobody was to disturb him, he only interrupted himself for a few minutes to snatch a hasty meal. Then he worked away until the last sentence stood on the paper. For the first time he now looked at the clock; it was pointing to ten. It was too late to visit the poor prisoner, and he was grieved that he had not kept his promise. If she was perhaps secretly nourishing the hope of being saved, she would now be doubly despairing. But it could not now be helped and he resolved to make good his remissness early the next morning. Sendlingen, however, he would go and see. "Perhaps he is in want of me," he thought. "I should be much surprised if he were not now more helpless than ever." He made his way through the wet, cold, foggy autumn night; things he had never dreamt of were in store for him. When he pulled the bell, the door was at once opened: Fräulein Brigitta stood before him. The candlestick in her hand trembled: the plump, well-nourished face of the worthy lady was so full of anguish that Berger started. "What has happened?" he cried. "Nothing!" she answered. "Nothing at all! It is only that I am so silly." But her hand was trembling so much that she had to put down her candle and the tears streamed down her cheeks as she continued with an effort: "He went out--and has not come back--and so I thought--but I am so silly." "So it seems," Berger roughly exclaimed, trying to encourage both her and himself, but a sudden anguish so choked his utterance that what he next said sounded almost unintelligible. "May he not pay a visit to a friend and stay to supper there? Is he so much under your thumb that he must give you previous notice of his intention? He is at Baron Dernegg's I suppose." "No," she sobbed. "He is not there, and Franz has already looked for him in vain in all the places where he might be. He was twice at your house, but your servant would not admit him. And now the old man is scouring the streets. He will not find him!" she suddenly screamed, burying her face in her hands. "Nonsense!" cried Berger almost angrily. He forced the trembling woman into a chair, sat down beside her and took her hand. "Let us talk like reasonable beings," he said, "like men, Fräulein Brigitta. When did he go out?" "Seven hours ago, just after his dinner, which he hardly touched; it must have been about four o'clock. And how he has been behaving ... and especially since mid-day yesterday.... Dr. Berger," she cried imploringly, clasping her hands, "what happened yesterday in Chambers? When he came back from Vienna he was still calm and cheerful. It must be here and yesterday that some misfortune struck him. I thought at first that it was illness, but I know better now: it is a misfortune, a great misfortune! Dr. Berger, for Christ's sake, tell me what it is!" She would have sunk down at his feet, if he had not hastily prevented her. "Be reasonable!" he urged, "It is an illness, Fräulein Brigitta,--the heart, the nerves." She shook her head vigorously. "I guess what it is." She pointed in the direction of the jail. "Something has happened in the prison over there that is a matter of life and death to him." He started. "Why do you suppose that?" "Because he behaved so strangely--just listen to this." But she had first the difficult task of calming herself before she could proceed. "Well, when I went into his room to-day to tell him dinner was ready, he was standing in front of his writing-table rummaging in all the drawers. 'What are you looking for, my Lord?' I asked. 'Nothing,' he muttered and he sent me away, saying he was just coming. Twenty minutes later I ventured to go back again; he was still searching. 'Have you ever,' he now himself asked, 'heard of any keys that my predecessor is said to have handed over?' 'Yes,' I replied, 'the keys of the residence.' 'No, others, and among them the key of the door which----' He checked himself suddenly and turned away as though he had already said too much. 'What door?' I asked in utter astonishment. He muttered something unintelligible and then roughly told me the soup could wait. It cuts me to the heart. Dear Heaven, how wretched he looks, and I am not accustomed to be spoken to by him in that way; but what does that matter? I went and spoke to Franz. 'Perhaps,' he said, 'he means the keys that are in the top drawer of his business table.' So we went and looked and there, sure enough, was a bunch of keys--quite rusty, Dr. Berger." "Go on, to the point," said Berger impatiently. "Well, I took them to him; as I said, a whole bunch with a written label on each. He looked through them with trembling hands. Dr. Berger, and at last his face lit up. 'That's the one!' he muttered and took the key off the bunch and put it in his breast pocket. Then he turned round and when he saw me--great Heaven! what eyes he had--wicked, frightened eyes. 'Are you still here?' he said flaring up into a rage. 'What do you want playing the spy here?' Yes, Dr. Berger, he said 'playing the spy'--and he has known me for fifteen years." "He is ill you see!" said Berger soothingly. "But go on!" "Then he sat down to dinner and there he behaved very strangely. God forgive me ... Usually he only drinks one glass of Rhine-wine--you know the sort--to-day he gulped down three glasses one after another, took a few spoonfuls of soup and then went back to his room. And then I said: Franz, I said--but you won't want to hear that. Dr. Berger. But what follows you must hear; it's very strange--God help us! only too strange." "Well?" "After about ten minutes or so, I heard his step in the lobby; the door slammed; well, he had gone out. 'By all that's sacred!' thinks I in great trouble of mind. Then Franz came in quite upset. 'Fräulein!' he whispered, 'he's going up and down in the court outside!' 'Impossible!' said I, 'what does he want there?' We went to the bedroom window that looks down into the court and there, sure enough, is his Lordship! He was going--or rather he was creeping along by the wall that separates our court from the prison yard. It was drizzling at the time and it was no longer quite light, but I could see his face plainly: it was the face of a man who doesn't know what to do--ah me! worse still--the face of a man who doesn't know what he's doing. And he behaved like it, Dr. Berger! He stopped in front of the little door in the wall, looked anxiously up at the windows to see if anyone was watching him--but the clerks and officials had all gone, we were the only people who saw him--he pulled out that key from his breast pocket and tried to unlock the door. For a long time he couldn't succeed, but at last the door opened. However, he only shut it again quickly and locked it. Then he began anxiously to pace up and down again. It was just as if he had only wanted to try whether the key would open the door. What do you think of that?" "The door through which one can get from here into the prison?" Berger spoke slowly, in a muffled tone, as if he were speaking to himself. Then he continued in the same tone: "Oh, how frightful that would be! This soul in the mire, this splendid soul!--Go on!" he then muttered as he saw that the housekeeper was looking at him in amazement. "Well, then he went quickly back through the hall into the street and on towards the square. Franz crept after him at a distance. He seemed at first as if he wanted to go to your house, then he came back here, but to the other door, on the prison side. There he stood, close up to it, for a long time, a quarter of an hour Franz says, and then went to the left down Cross Street and then--what do you think, Dr. Berger?" "Back the same way," said Berger slowly, "and again stood for a long time in front of the prison." "How can you know that?" asked the old lady in astonishment. Berger's answer was a strange one. "I can see it!" he said. And indeed, with the eyes of his soul, Berger could see his unhappy friend wandering about in the misty darkness, dragged hither and thither, by whirling, conflicting thoughts. "Perhaps he is at this moment standing there again!" He had not meant to say this, but the thought had involuntarily given itself voice. "What now!" Fräulein Brigitta crossed herself. "We will go and see at once! Come! Oh, that would be a good thing! I will just go and fetch my shawl. But you see I was right. This trouble is connected with the prison; some injustice has been done, and he feels it nearly because he is such a just judge." "Because he is such a just judge," repeated Berger, mechanically, without thinking of what he was saying, for while he spoke those words he was saying to himself: "He has gone mad!" Then, however, he shook off the spell of this horror that threatened to cripple both soul and body. "You stay at home," he said in a tone of command. "I will find him and bring him back, you may rely upon that. One thing more, where did Franz leave him?" "Ah, he was too simple! When his Lordship came into the square for the third time, Franz went up to him and begged him to come home. Upon that he became very angry and sent Franz off with the strongest language. But he called after him that he was going to Baron Dernegg's, only as I said, he has not been there, and----" "Keep up your spirits, Fräulein Brigitta! I shall be back soon." He went down the steps, "Keep up your spirits!" he called back to her once more; she was standing at the top of the steps holding the candle at arm's length before her. Berger stepped into the street and walked swiftly round the building to the prison door. He himself was in need of the exhortation he had given: he felt as if in the next moment he might see something frightful. But there was nothing to be seen when he at length reached the place and approached the door, nothing save the muddy slippery ground, the trickling, mouldy walls, the iron-work of the door shining in the wet--nothing else, so far as the red, smoky light of the two lanterns above the door could show through the fog and rain. And there was nothing to be heard save the low pattering of the rain-drops on the soft earth or, when a sudden gust of the east-wind blew, the creaking of some loosened rafter and a whirring, long-drawn, complaining sound that came from the bare trees on the ramparts when they writhed and bent beneath its icy breath. "Victor!" There was a movement in the sentry box by the door; the poor, frozen Venetian soldier of the Dom Miguel regiment who had sheltered himself inside as well as he could from the rain and cold, poked out his heavy sleepy head so that the shine of his wet leather shako was visible for an instant. He muttered an oath and wrapped himself the closer in his damp overcoat. Berger sighed deeply. A minute before he was sure he had seen the poor madman standing motionless in the desolate night, his eyes rigidly fixed upon the door that separated him from his daughter, and now that he was spared the sight, he could take no comfort, for a far worse foreboding convulsed his brain. Hesitatingly he returned to the front part of the building and, increasing his pace, he went down the street towards the market-place, aimlessly, but always swifter, as if he had to go where chance led him, so as to arrive in time to stop some frightful deed. The streets were deserted, nothing but the wind roamed through the drenching solitude, nothing but the voices of the night greeted his ear; that ceaseless murmur and rustle and stir, which, drowned by the noise of the day, moves in the dark stillness, as though dead and dumb things had now first found a voice to reach the sense of men. He often had to stop; it seemed to him as if he heard the piteous groaning of a sick man, or the half stifled cry for help of one wounded. But it was nothing; the wind had shaken some rotting roof, or somewhere in the far distance a watch-dog had given a short, sharp bark. The lonely wanderer held his breath in order to hear better, looked also perhaps into some dark corner and then hurried on. He reached the market place. Here he came upon human beings again, the sentries before the principal guard-house, and as he passed the column commemorative of the cholera in the middle of the square, there was the night-watchman who had pitched upon a dry sleeping place in one of the niches of the irregular monument. Berger stopped irresolutely; should he wake him up and question him? Another form at this moment emerged from a neighbouring street; a man who with bowed head and halting pace glided along by the houses: was this not Franz? Berger could not yet, by the light of the meagre lamps, accurately distinguish him in the all-pervading fog. But the man came nearer and nearer; he was behaving peculiarly; he was looking into every door-way, and when he came to the "Sign of the Arbour," a very ancient shop full of recesses, he went into each of these recesses, so that a spectator saw him alternately appearing and disappearing. When he at length reappeared just under a lamp Berger recognised him; it was really the old servant. "Like a faithful dog seeking his master," he said to himself as he hurried towards him. Franz rushed to meet him. "You know nothing of him?" "Be quiet, man. We will look for him together." "No, separately!" He seized Berger's arm and grasped it convulsively. "You by the river-side and I up here. There is not a moment to lose." Berger asked no more questions but hurried down the broad, inclined street that led to the river. Here, in Cross Street, where most of the pleasure-resorts were, there were still signs of life; he had repeatedly to get out of the way of drunken men who passed along bawling; poor forlorn looking girls brushed past him. In one of the quieter streets he noticed a moving light coming nearer and nearer: it was a large lantern in the hand of a servant who was carefully lighting the gentleman who followed him. Berger recognised the features of the little, wizened creature who, in spite of the awful weather was contentedly tripping along, with satisfaction in every lineament, under the shelter of a mighty umbrella; it was the Deputy Chief-Justice, Herr von Werner. He would have passed by without a word, but Werner recognised him and called to him. "Eh! eh! it's Dr. Berger!" he snickered. "Out so late! Hee, hee! I seem to be meeting all the important people! First--hee! hee! the Lord Chief Justice and now----" "Have you seen him?" "Why yes. You are surprised? So was I! Just as I stepped out of my son-in-law's house, he passed by. I called after him because I wanted to tell him the news. For you may congratulate me, Dr. Berger. Certainly, you annoyed me this morning, you annoyed me very much I but in my joy I will forgive you! My first grandson, a splendid boy, and how he can cry!" "Where did you see him? When?" "Eh! goodness me, what is the matter with you? It was scarcely five minutes ago, he was going--only fancy--towards Wurst Street. You seem upset! And he wouldn't listen to me! Why, what is the matter?" Berger made no reply. Without a word of farewell, he rushed precipitately down the street out of which Werner had come and turned to the right into a narrow, dirty slum which led by a steep incline to the river. This was Wurst Street, the poorest district of the town, the haunt of porters, boatmen and raftsmen; alongside the narrow quay in which the street ended, lay their craft; the corner building next the river was the public house which they frequented. A light still glimmered behind its small window-panes and, as Berger hurried by, the sound of rough song and laughter greeted his ears. He did not stop till he came right up to the river's edge. Its waters were swollen by the autumn rains; swift and tumultuous they coursed along its broad bed, perceptible to the ear only, not to the eye, so fearfully dark was the night. Berger could not even distinguish the wooden foot-bridge that here crossed the river, until he was close up to it. Hesitatingly he stepped upon the shaky structure. The bridge was scarcely two foot broad, its balustrade was rotten and the footway slippery. Over on the other side a solitary light, a lantern, was struggling against wind and fog; its reflection swayed uncertainly on the soaking bridge; when it suddenly flared up in the wind, its flickering, red light revealed for a moment the angry, swollen flood. Berger stood still irresolutely; the place was so desolate, so uncanny; should he stay any longer? Then suddenly a low cry escaped him and he darted forward a step. The lantern opposite had just flared up and by its reflection he had seen a man approach the bridge and step upon it. It seemed to Berger as if this were Sendlingen, but he did not know for certain, as the lantern was again giving only the faintest glimmer. The man approached nearer, slowly, and with uncertain step, groping for the balustrade as he came. Once more the lantern flared up--there was the long Inverness, the gray hat--Berger doubted no longer. "Victor!" He would have shouted at the top of his voice, but the word passed over his lips huskily, almost inaudibly: he would have darted forward ... but could only take one solitary step more, so greatly had the weirdness of the situation overpowered him. Sendlingen did not perceive him: he stopped scarcely ten paces from his friend and bent over the balustrade. Resting on both arms, there he stood, staring at the wild and turbulent water. Thus passed a few seconds. Again the lantern flickered up, for a moment only it gave a clear light. Sendlingen had suddenly raised himself and Berger saw, or thought he saw, that the unfortunate man was now only resting with one hand on the railing, that his body was lifted up.... "Victor!" In two bounds, in two seconds, he was beside him, had seized him, clasped him in his arms. "George!" Awful, thrilling was the cry--a cry for help?--or a cry of baffled rage? Then Berger felt this convulsive body suddenly grow stiff and heavy--he was holding an unconscious burden in his arms. CHAPTER VII. Shortly after there was such vigorous knocking at the windows of the little river-side inn that the panes were broken. The landlord and his customers rushed out into the street, cursing. But they ceased when they saw the scared looking figure with its singular burden; silently they helped to bring the prostrate form into the house. The landlord had recognized the features; he whispered the news to the others, and so great was the love and reverence that attached to this name, that the rough, half-drunken fellows stood about in the bare inn-parlor, as orderly and reverent as if they were in Church. The body lay motionless on the bench which they had fetched; a feather, held to the lips, scarcely moved, so feebly did the breath come and go. The one remedy in the poor place, the brandy with which his breast and pulses were moistened, proved useless; not till the parish doctor, whom a raftsman hurriedly fetched, had applied his essences, did the unconscious man begin to breathe more deeply and at length open his eyes. But his look was fixed and weird; the white lips muttered confused words. Then the deep red eyelids closed again; they showed, as did the tear-stains on his cheeks, how bitterly the poor wretch had been weeping in his aimless wanderings. "We must get him home at once," said the Doctor. "There is brain fever coming on." Berger sent to the hospital for a litter; it was soon on the spot; the sick man was carefully laid on it. The bearers stepped away rapidly; the doctor and Berger walked alongside. When they reached the market-place they came across Franz. "Dead?" he screamed; but when he heard the contrary, he said not another word, but hurried on ahead. In this way Fräulein Brigitta was informed; she behaved more calmly than Berger could have believed. The bed was all ready; the Doctor attached to the Courts was soon on the spot. He was of the same opinion as his colleague. "A mortal sickness," he told Berger, "the fever is increasing, his consciousness is entirely clouded. Perhaps it is owing to overwork at the Inquiry in Vienna?" he added. "He may have caught a severe cold on the top of it." The parish doctor departed, Franz was obliged to go to the chemist's; Berger and the resident doctor remained alone with the invalid. The barrister had a severe struggle with himself; should he tell the doctor the whole truth? To any unsuspecting person, Sendlingen's demeanor must have seemed like the paroxysm of a fever, but he knew better! Certainly the sufferer was physically ailing, but it was not under the weight of empty fancies that he was gently sobbing, or burying his anguish-stricken face in the pillow; the excess of his suffering, the terror of his lonely wanderings had completely broken down his strength; all mastery of self had vanished; he showed himself as he was; in a torment of helplessness. And that which seemed to the doctor the most convincing proof of a mind unhinged Berger understood only too well; as for instance when Sendlingen beckoned to him, and beseechingly whispered, as if filled with the deepest shame: "Go, George, can't you understand that I can no longer bear your looks?" After this Berger went out and sank into a chair in the lobby, and the gruesome scene rose before him again; the lonely bridge lit by the flickering lantern; the roaring current beneath him ... "Oh, what misery!" he groaned, and for the first time for many years, for the first time perhaps, since his boyhood, he broke out into sobs, even though his eyes remained dry. A rapid footstep disturbed him. It was Franz returning with the medicine. Berger told him to send the doctor to him at once. "Doctor," he said, "you shall know the truth as far as I am at liberty to tell it." A misfortune, he told him, had befallen Sendlingen, a misfortune great enough to crush the strongest man. "Your art," he concluded, "cannot heal the soul, I know. But you can give my poor friend what he most of all needs; sleep! Otherwise his torture will wear out both body and soul." The doctor asked no questions; for a long while he looked silently on the ground. Then he said, briefly: "Good! Fortunately I have the necessary means with me." He went back to the sick-room. Ten minutes later, he opened the door and made Berger come in. Sendlingen was in a deep sleep; and it must have been dreamless, for his features had smoothed themselves again. "How long will this sleep last?" asked Berger. "Perhaps till mid-day to-morrow," replied the doctor, "perhaps longer, since the body is so exhausted. At least, we shall know to-morrow whether there is a serious illness in store. But even if there is not, if it is only the torture of the mind that returns, it will be bad enough. Very bad, in fact. Do you know no remedy for it?" "None!" answered the honest lawyer, feebly. They parted without a word in the deepest distress. By earliest dawn, when the bells of the Cathedral rang forth for the first time, Berger was back again in his friend's lobby. "Thank God, he is still sleeping," whispered Fräulein Brigitta. "The worse has past, hasn't it?" "We will hope so," he replied, constrainedly. For a long time he stood at the window and stared out into the court-yard; involuntarily his gaze fixed itself on the little door in the wall which was so small and low that he had never noticed it before; now he observed it for the first time. Then he roused himself and went to the other part of the building to see his unfortunate client. "How is Victorine Lippert?" he asked of the Governor who happened to be at the door. "Poor thing!" he said, with a shrug of the shoulders. "It will soon be all over with her, and that will be the best thing for her." "Has she been suddenly taken ill?" "No, Dr. Berger, she is just the same as before, but the doctor does not think she will last much longer. 'Snuffed out like a candle,' he says. If she had any sort of hope to which her poor soul might cling; but as it is ... Herr von Werner had sent him to her to see what punishment she could bear for yesterday's scene in Court, but the doctor said to him afterward: 'It would be sheer barbarity! Let her die in peace!' But Herr von Werner was of opinion that he could not pass over the offence without some punishment, and that she would survive one day of the dark cell; he only relented when Father Rohn interceded for her. The priest was with her yesterday at two o'clock, and has made her peace with God. Do you still intend to appeal? Well, as you think best. But it will be labor in vain, Dr. Berger! She will die before you receive the decision." "God forbid!" cried Berger. The Governor shook his head. "She would be free in that case," he said. "Why should you wish her to live? What do you hope to attain? Commutation to penal servitude for life, or imprisonment for twenty years! Does that strike you as being better? I don't think so; in my profession it is impossible to believe it, Dr. Berger. Well, as you think best! If you want to speak to Victorine Lippert, the warder shall take you round." The Governor departed; Berger stood looking after him a long while. Then he stepped out into the prison yard and paced up and down; he felt the need of quieting himself before going into her cell. "That would be frightful," he thought. "And yet, perhaps, the man is right, perhaps it would really be best for her--and for him!" He tried to shake off the thought, but it returned. "And it would mean the end of this fearful complication, a sad, a pitiable end--but still an end!" But then he checked himself. "No, it would be no end, because it would be no solution. In misery he would drag out his whole existence; in remorse; in despair! No, on the contrary, her death might be the worst blow that could befal him! But what is to be done to prevent it? It would be possible to get her ordered better food, a lighter cell, and more exercise in the open. But all that would be no use if she is really as bad as the doctor thinks! She will die--O God! she will die before the decision of the Supreme Court arrives." More perplexed and despairing than before, he now repaired to her cell. The warder unlocked it and he entered. Victorine was reclining on her couch, her head pressed against the wall. At his entrance, she tried to rise, but he prevented her. "How are you?" he asked. "Better, I hope?" "Yes," she answered softly, "and all will soon be well with me." He knew what she meant and alas! it was only too plainly visible that this hope at least was not fallacious. Paler than she had latterly been it was almost impossible that she should become, but more haggard Berger certainly thought her; her whole bearing was more broken down and feeble. "She is right," he thought, but he forced himself and made every endeavour to appear more confident than he really was. "I am glad of that!" He tried to say it in the most unconstrained manner in the world, but could only blurt it out in a suppressed tone of voice. "I hope----" She looked at him, and, in the face of this look of immeasurable grief, of longing for death, the like of which he had never seen in any human eyes, the words died on his lips. It seemed to him unworthy any longer to keep up the pretence of not understanding her. "My poor child," he murmured, taking her hand, "I know. I know. But you are still young, why will you cease to hope? I have drawn up the appeal, I shall lodge it to-day--I am sure you will be pardoned." "That would be frightful!" she said in a low tone. "I begged you so earnestly to leave it alone. But I am not angry with you. You have done it because your pity constrained you, perhaps, too, your conscience and sense of justice--and to me it is all one! My life at all events, is only a matter of weeks: I shall never leave this cell alive! Thank Heaven! since yesterday afternoon this has become a certainty!" "The doctor told you? Oh, that was not right of him." "Do not blame him!" she begged. "It was an act of humanity. If he had only told me to relieve me of the fear of the hangman, he should be commended, not reproved. But it happened differently; at first he did not want to tell me the truth, it was evident from what he was saying, and when the truth had once slipped out, he could no longer deny it. He was exhorting me to hope, to cling to life, he spoke to me as you do, 'for otherwise' he said, 'you are lost! My medicines cannot give you vital energy!' His pity moved him to dwell on this more and more pointedly and decidedly. 'If you do not rouse yourself,' he said at last, 'you will be your own executioner.' He was frightened at what he had said almost before he had finished, and still more when I thanked him as for the greatest kindness he could have done me. He only left me to send Father Rohn. He came too, but----" She sighed deeply and stopped. "He surely didn't torture you with bigoted speeches?" asked Berger. "I know him. Father Rohn is a worthy man who knows life; he is a human being ..." "Of course! But just because he is no hypocrite he could say nothing that would really comfort me for this life. At most for that other life, which perhaps--no certainly!" she said hurriedly. "So many people believe in it, good earnest men who have seen and suffered much misfortune, how should a simple girl dare to doubt it? Certainly, Dr. Berger, when I think of my own life and my mother's life, it is not easy to believe in an all-just, all-merciful God. But I do believe in Him--yes! though so good a man as Father Rohn could only say: amends will be made up there. Only the way he said it fully convinced me! But, after all, he could only give me hope in death, not hope for life." "Certainly against his will," cried Berger. "You did not want to understand him." "Yes, Dr. Berger, I did want to understand him and understood him--in everything--excepting only one thing," she added hesitatingly. "But that was not in my power--I could not! And whatever trouble he took it was in vain." "And what was this one thing?" "He asked me if there was no one I was attached to, who loved me, to whom my life or death mattered? No, I answered, nobody--and then he asked--but why touch upon the hateful subject! let us leave it alone, Dr. Berger." "No," cried Berger, white with emotion, "I implore you, let us talk about it. He asked you whether you did not know your father." She nodded; a faint red overspread her pale cheeks. "And you answered?" "What I have told you: that I did not know him, that if he were living I should not love and reverence him as my father, but hate and despise him as the wretch who ruined my mother!" She had half raised herself, and had spoken with a strength and energy that Berger had not believed possible. Now she sank back on her couch. He sighed deeply. "And you adhered to that," he began again, "whatever Father Rohn might say? He told you that on the threshold of--that in your situation one should not hate, but forgive, that whoever hopes for God's mercy must not himself condemn unmercifully!" "Yes," she replied, "he said so, if perhaps in gentler words. For he seemed to feel that I did not require to depend on God's mercy, but only on His justice." "Forgive me!" muttered Berger. "For I know your fate and know you. But just because I know your affectionate nature and your need of affection----" He stopped. "Gently," he thought, "I must be cautious." "Don't consider me unfeeling," he then continued, "if I dwell upon this matter, however painful it may be to you. Just this one thing: does it follow that this man must be a wretch? Were there not perhaps fatal circumstances that bound him against his will and prevented him doing his duty to your poor mother?" "No," she answered. "I know there were not!" "You know there were not?" murmured Berger in the greatest consternation. "But do you know him?" "Yes. I know his heart, his character, and that is enough. What does it matter to me what his name is, or his station? Whether he is living or dead? To me he has never lived! I know him from my mother's judgment, and that she, the gentlest of women, could not judge otherwise, proves his unworthiness. Only one single time did she speak to me of him, when I was old enough to ask and to be told why people sometimes spoke of us with a shrug of the shoulders. 'If he had been thoughtless and weak,' she said to me, 'I could have forgiven him. But I have never known a man who viewed life more earnestly and intelligently: none who was so strong and brave and resolute as he. It was only from boundless selfishness, after mature, cold-blooded calculation that he delivered me to dishonor, because I was an obstacle in his career.' You see he was more pitiless than the man whom I trusted." "No," cried Berger in the greatest excitement. "You do him injustice!" "Injustice! How do you know that? Do you know him?" He turned away and was silent. "No," he then murmured, "how should I know him?" "Then why do you dissent from me with such conviction? Oh, I understand," she went on bitterly, "you, even you, don't think my mother's words trustworthy, and simply because she allowed herself to be deluded by a wretch!" "No, indeed!" returned Berger, trying to compose himself, "for I know how noble, how true and good your mother was, I know it from her letters. The remark escaped me unawares. But you are right. Let us drop this subject." Then he asked her if she would like to have some books. She answered in the negative and he left the cell. "Sendlingen must never see her!" he thought when he was back in the street. "If he were to enter her cell he would betray himself and then learn what she thinks of him! It would utterly crush him. That, at least, he shall be spared." But the next few minutes were to show him that he had been planning impossibilities. As he passed the Chief Justice's residence, an upstairs window opened; he heard his name called loud and anxiously. It was Fräulein Brigitta. "Quickly," cried she, beckoning him to come up. He hurried up the stairs, she rushed to meet him. "Heaven has sent you to us," she cried, weeping and wringing her hands. "How fortunate that I accidentally saw you passing. We were at our wits' end? He insists on going out. Franz is to dress him. We do not know what has excited him so. Father Rohn has been to see him, but he talked so quietly with him that we breathed again indeed. It is manifestly a sudden attack of fever, but we cannot use force to him." Berger hurried to the bedroom. Sendlingen was reclining in an arm-chair, Franz was attending to him. At his friend's entrance he coloured, and held up his hand deprecatingly. "They have fetched you," he cried impatiently. "It is useless! I am not going to be prevented!" Berger signed to Franz to leave the room. Not until the door was closed behind him did he approach the sick man, and take his hand, and look searchingly into his face. It reassured him to see that, though his eyes were dim, they no longer looked wild and restless as they did a few hours ago. "You are going to her?" he asked. "That must not be." "I must!" cried Sendlingen despairingly. "It is the one thought to which I cling to avoid madness. When I awoke--I was so perplexed and desolate, I felt my misery returning--then I heard Rohn's voice in the next room. They were going to send him away: I was still asleep, they said,--but I made him come in, because I wanted to hear some other voice than that of my conscience, and because I was afraid of myself. I did not dream that he was bringing me a staff by which I could raise myself again." "You asked him about her?" "No, by the merest chance he began to tell me of his talk with her yesterday, and how she was wasting away because there was no one on earth for whose sake she could or would rouse herself. Oh, what I felt! Despair shook my heart more deeply than ever, and yet I could have thanked him on my knees for these good tidings. Now my life has an object again, and I know why Fate has allowed me to survive this day." Berger was silent--should he, dared he, tell the truth? "Think it over a while," he begged. "If you were to betray yourself to the officials----" "I shall not do so. And if I did, how could that trouble me? Don't you see that a man in my situation cannot think of himself or any such secondary consideration?" "That would be no secondary consideration. And could you save her by such a step? The situation remains as it was!" "Are you cruel enough to remind me of that?" cried Sendlingen. "But, thank God! I am clear enough to give you the right answer instead of allowing myself to be oppressed by misery. Now listen; I shall do what I can! From the hangman, from the prison, I may not be able to save my child, but perhaps I can save her from despair, from wasting away. I shall say to her: live for your father, as your father lives for you! Perhaps this thought will affect her as it has affected me; it has saved me from the worst. Another night like last night, George!" He stopped and a shudder ran through his body. "Such a night shall not come again! I do not know what is to be done later on, but my immediate duty is clear. I have been fighting against the instinct that drew me to her, as against a suggestion of madness; I now see that it was leading me aright." He laid his hand on the bell to summon Franz. Berger prevented him, "Wait another hour," he implored. "I will not try to hinder you any more; I see that it would be useless, perhaps unjust. But let me speak to her first. Humour me in this one thing only. You agreed to do so yesterday." "So be it!" said Sendlingen. "But you must promise not to keep me waiting a minute longer than is absolutely necessary." Berger promised and took his leave. He was not a religious man in the popular sense of the word, and yet as he again rang the prison bell, he felt as if he must pray that his words would be of effect as a man only can pray for a favour for himself. The warder was astonished when he again asked admission to the cell, and Victorine looked at him with surprise. He went up to her. "Listen to me," he begged. "I have hitherto wished to conceal the truth from you, with the best intentions, but still it was not right. For falsehood kills and truth saves, always and everywhere--I ought to have remembered that. Well then; I know your father; he is my best friend, a man so noble and good, so upright and full of heart, as are few men on this poor earth." She rose. "If that were so my mother would have lied," she cried. "Can I believe you rather than my mother? Can you expect that of me?" "No," he replied. "Your mother judged him quite correctly. He did not betray her through thoughtlessness, nor forsake her through weakness. But much less still from cold-blooded calculation. No external constraint weighed upon him but an internal,--the constraint of education, of his convictions, of his views of the world and men, in short, of his whole being, so that he could hardly have acted differently. With all this there was such a fatal, peculiar concatenation of external circumstances, that it would have needed a giant soul not to have succumbed. We are all of us but men. I would not trust anyone I know, not even myself, to have been stronger than he was! Not one, Victorine! Will you believe me?" "My mother judged otherwise!" she replied. "And will you perhaps also attempt to justify the fact that he never concerned himself about his child?" "He knew nothing of you," cried Berger. "He did not dream that he had a child in the world! And one thing I can assure you: if he had accidentally heard that you were alive, he would not have rested until he had drawn you to his heart, he would have sheltered you in his arms, in his house, from the battle with misery and the wickedness of men. Not only his heart would have dictated this, but the absence of children by his marriage, and his sense of justice: so as to make good through you what he could no longer make good to your poor mother. If you could only imagine how he suffers!--You must surely be able to feel for him: a noble man, who suddenly learns that his offence is ten times greater than he had thought or dreamt; that he has a child in the world against whom also he has transgressed, and who learns all this at a moment when he can make no reparation--in such a moment--can you grasp this, Victorine?" Her face remained unmoved. "What shall I say?" she exclaimed gloomily. "If he really suffers, the punishment is only just. What did my mother not suffer on his account! And I!" "But can we ascribe all the blame to him?" he cried. "All, Victorine?" "Perhaps," she answered. "But if not all, then the most, so much that I will certainly believe you in one thing; if he is a human being at all, then he should now be suffering all the tortures of remorse. Still, as great as my sorrow, his cannot be! And is my guilt greater than his? And has he, too, to expiate it with honour and life?" "Quite possibly!" he cried. "Perhaps with his life, seeing that he cannot, situated as he now is, expiate it with his honour. Oh, if you knew all! If you knew what an unprecedented combination of circumstances has heightened the sense of his guilt, has increased his sorrow to infinite proportions. And you shall know all." "I will not hear it," she cried with a swift movement of repulsion, "I do not care, I may not care about it. I will not be robbed of my feelings against this man. I will not! His punishment is just--let us drop the subject." "Just! still this talk about just! You are young but you have experienced enough of life, you have suffered enough, to know how far this justice will bring us. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth--shall this pitiless web of guilt and expiation continue to spin itself everlastingly from generation to generation? Can't you understand that this life would be unendurable if a high-minded deed, a noble victory over self, did not at times rend the web? You should understand this, poor child, you more than anyone. Do such a deed, forgive this unhappy man!" "Did he send you to me on this mission?" "No. I will be truthful in the smallest detail: I myself wrested from him permission to prepare you for his coming. I wished to spare you and him the emotions of a melancholy contest. For he does not even suspect what you think of him." "He does not suspect it?" she cried. "He thinks that the balance is struck, if he graces a fallen, a condemned creature with a visit! Oh, and this man is noble and sensitive!" "You are unjust to him in that, too," protested Berger. "And in that most of all. That he who can usually read the hearts of men like a book, has not thought of this most obvious and natural thing, shows best of all how greatly his misery has distracted and desolated him. He only wants one thing: to come to you, to console you, to console himself in you." "I will not see him, you must prevent it." "I cannot. I have tried in vain. He will come; his reason, perhaps his life, depend upon the way you may receive him." "Do not burden me with such responsibilities," she sobbed despairingly. "I cannot forgive him. But I desire nobody's death, I do not wish him to die. Tell him what you like, even that I forgive him, but keep him away, I implore you." She would have thrown herself at his feet but he prevented her. "No, not that," he murmured. "I will not urge any more. As God wills." A few minutes later he was again with Sendlingen. "She knows all," he told him, "except your name and station. She does not desire your visit--she--dreads the excitement." He stopped short and looked anxiously at his friend; he feared another sudden outburst of despair. But it did not come. Sendlingen certainly started as in pain, but then he drew himself up to his full height. "You are concealing the truth from me," he said. "She does not wish to see her mother's betrayer. I did not think of it before, but I read it at once in your looks of alarm. That is bad, very bad--but stop me, it cannot. Where the stranger has tried in vain the father will succeed. My heart tells me so." He called for his hat and stick and leaning on Berger's arm, went down the steps. In the street he loosed his hold: the energy of his soul had given his body new strength. With a firm step he walked to the prison door, and the quiver in his voice was scarcely perceptible as he gave the warder the order to open Victorine Lippert's cell. The official obeyed. The prisoner hardly looked up when she heard the bolts rattle yet another time. The warder felt himself in duty bound to call her attention to the importance of the visit she was about to receive. "His Lordship, the Chief Justice, Baron Sendlingen!" he whispered to her. "Inspection of the Cells. Stand up." He stepped back respectfully to admit Sendlingen and locked the door after him. The two were alone. Victorine had risen as she had been told: once only did she cast a transient and nonchalant look at the tall figure before her, then she remained standing with bowed head. Similar inspections had frequently taken place before; in each case the functionary had briefly asked whether the prisoner wished anything or had any complaint to make. This question she was waiting for now in order to reply as briefly in the negative; she wanted nothing more. But he was silent, and as she looked up surprised--"Merciful God!" she cried, and reeled back on to her couch, covering her face with her trembling hands. She knew who this man was at once, at the first glance. How she had recognised him with such lightning speed, she could not determine, even later when she thought the matter over. It was half dark in the cell, she had not properly seen his features and expression. Perhaps it was his attitude which betrayed him. With bowed head, his hands listlessly hanging by his sides, he stood there like a criminal before his judge. At her exclamation, he looked up and came nearer. "Victorine," he murmured. She did not understand him, so low was his stifled articulation. "My child!" he then cried aloud and darted towards her. She rose to her feet and stretched out her hands as if to repel him, gazing at him all the while with widely opened eyes. And again she did not know what it was that suddenly penetrated and moved her heart. Was it because his face seemed familiar to her, mysteriously familiar, as if she had seen it ever since she could think?... Yes, it was so! For what unknown to herself, had overpowered her, was the likeness to her own face. Or was it perhaps the silent misery of his face, the beseeching look of his eyes? She felt the bitter animosity to which she had despairingly clung, the one feeling of which she would not be robbed, suddenly melt away. "I cannot," she still faltered, but in the same breath she lifted up her arms. "Father!" she cried and threw herself on his breast. He caught her in his arms and covered her head and face with tears and kisses. Then he drew her upon his knees and laid her head on his breast. Thus they sat and neither spoke a word; only their tears flowed on and on. CHAPTER VIII. Half an hour might have passed since Sendlingen entered his daughter's cell: to Berger, who was pacing up and down outside as sentry, it seemed an eternity. The warder, too, was struck by the proceeding. This zealous, but very loquacious official, whom Berger had known for many years, approached him with a confidential smile. "There must--naturally enough--be something strange going on in there," he said as he pointed with a smirk towards the cell. "Something very strange." Berger at first stared at the man as much disconcerted as if he had said that he knew the secret. "What do you mean by that," he then said roughly. "Your opinions are not wanted." The warder looked at him amazed. "Well, such as we--naturally enough--are at least entitled to our thoughts," he replied. "There has been a run upon this cell since yesterday as if it contained a princess! First the doctor. Father Rohn and you, Herr Berger--and now his Lordship the Chief Justice, and all in little more than an hour's time. That doesn't occur every day, and I know the reason for it." Berger forced himself to smile. "Of course you do, because you're such a smart fellow, Höbinger! What is the reason of it?" "Well with you, Dr. Berger, I can--naturally enough--talk about the matter," replied the warder flattered, "although you are the prisoner's counsel and a friend of the Chief Justice. But in 1848 you made great speeches and were always on the side of the people; you will not betray me, Dr. Berger. Well--naturally enough--it is the old story: there is no such thing as equality in this world! If she, in there, were a servant-girl who had been led astray by a servant-man, not a soul would trouble their heads about her! But she is an educated person, and what is the principal thing--her seducer is a Count--that alters matters. Of course she had to be condemned--naturally enough--because the law requires it, but afterwards every care is taken of her, and if she were to get off with a slight punishment I, for one, shouldn't be surprised. Of course the Governor says that that's nonsense; if it were a case of favouritism he says, Herr von Werner would have behaved differently to her; the Vice Chief Justice, he says, has a very keen scent for favouritism; you, Höbinger, he says--naturally enough--are an ass! But I know what I know, and since his Lordship has taken the trouble to come, not in a general inspection, but on a special visit that is lasting longer than anything that has ever been heard or dreamt of, I am quite convinced that it is not I, but on the contrary, the Governor...." But the crafty fellow did not allow this disrespect to his superior to pass his lips, but contented himself by triumphantly concluding: "Naturally enough--is it not, Dr. Berger?" Berger thought it best to give no definite answer. If this chatter-box were to confide his suspicions to the other prison officials, it would at least be the most harmless interpretation and therefore he only said: "You think too much, Höbinger. That has often proved dangerous to many men." Another half hour had gone by and Berger's anxiety and impatience reached the highest pitch. He was uncertain whether to put a favourable or an unfavourable interpretation upon this long stay of Sendlingen's, and even if he had succeeded in touching his child's heart, yet any further talk in this place and under these conditions was a danger. How great a danger, Berger was soon to see plainly enough. The artful Höbinger was slinking about near the cell more and more restlessly. Only Berger's presence kept him from listening at the key-hole, or from opening the little peep-hole at the door, through which, unobserved by the prisoner, he could see the inside of every cell. The desire was getting stronger and stronger; his fingers itched to press the spring that would open it. At last, just as Berger had turned his back, he succumbed to his curiosity; the little wooden door flew open noiselessly--he was going to fix his eyes in the opening.... At that moment Berger happened to turn round. "What are you doing there?" he cried in such a way that the man started and stepped back. In a second Berger was beside him, had seized his arms and flung him aside. "What impertinence!" he cried. The warder was trembling in every limb. "For God's sake," he begged, "don't ruin me. I only wanted to see whether--whether his Lordship was all right." "That's a lie!" cried Berger with intentional loudness. "You have dared----" He did not require to finish the sentence; his object was attained: Sendlingen opened the door and came out of the cell. His face bore once more its wonted expression of kindly repose; he seemed to have recovered complete mastery of himself. "You can lock up again," he said to the warder. He seemed to understand what had just passed for he asked no questions. Still Höbinger thought it necessary to excuse himself. "My Lord," he stammered, "I only wanted to do my duty. It sometimes happens that--that criminals become infuriated and attack the visitors." "Does that poor creature in here strike you as being dangerous?" asked Sendlingen. It seemed to Berger almost unnatural that he could put forth the effort to say this, nay more, that he could at the same time force a smile. "My Lord----" "Never mind, Höbinger! You were perhaps a little inquisitive, but that shall be overlooked in consideration of your former good conduct. Besides, prisoners are allowed no secrets, at all events after their sentence." Turning to Berger he continued: "She must be taken to the Infirmary this afternoon, it is a necessity. Have you anything else to do here? No? Well, come back with me." It all sounded so calm, so business-like--Berger could hardly contain his astonishment. He would never have believed his friend capable of such strength and especially after such a night--after such an interview! "I admire your strength of nerve," cried he when they got out into the street. "That was a fearful moment." "Indeed it was!" agreed Sendlingen, his voice trembling for the first time. "If the fellow had cast one single look through the peep-hole, we should have both been lost! Fancy Höbinger, the warder, seeing the Chief Justice with a criminal in his arms!" "Ah then, it came to that?" "Should I otherwise be so calm? I am calm because I have now an object again, because I see a way of doing my duty. Oh, George, how right you were: happy indeed am I that I live and can pay my debt." "What do you think of doing?" "First of all the most important thing: to preserve her life, to prepare her for life. As I just said, she shall be allotted a cell in the Infirmary and have a patient's diet. I may do this without dereliction of duty: I should have to take such measures with anyone else if I knew the circumstances as accurately as I do in this case." "But you will not be able to visit her too often in the Infirmary," objected Berger. "Certainly not," replied Sendlingen. "I see that the danger is too great, and I told her so. Yes, you were right in that too: it is no secondary consideration whether our relationship remains undiscovered or not. I cannot understand how it was that I did not see this before: why, as I now see, _everything_ depends upon that. And I see things clearly now; this interview has worked a miracle in me, George--it has rent the veil before my eyes, it has dispelled the mist in my brain. I know I can see Victorine but seldom. On the other hand Brigitta will be with her daily: for she is a member of the 'Women's Society,' and it will strike nobody if she specially devotes herself to my poor child." "It will not strike others, but will she not herself guess the truth?" "Why, she shall know all! I will tell her this very day. She is entirely devoted to me, brave and sterling, the best of women. Besides I have no choice. Intercourse with a good, sensible woman is of the most urgent necessity to my poor dear. But I have not resolved on this step simply for that reason. I shall need this faithful soul later on as well." "I understand--after the term of imprisonment is at an end." Sendlingen stood still and looked at his friend; it was the old look full of wretchedness and despair. "Yes!" he said unsteadily. "Certainly, I had hardly thought of that. I do not indulge any extravagant hopes: I am prepared for anything, even for the worst. And just in this event Brigitta's help would be more than ever indispensable to me." "If the worst were to happen?" asked Bergen "How am I to understand that?" Sendlingen made no reply. Not until Berger repeated the question did he say, slowly and feebly: "Such things should not be talked about, not with anyone, not even with a best friend, not even with one's self. Such a thing is not even dwelt upon in thought; it is done when it has to be done." His look was fixed as he spoke, like a man gazing into a far distance or down into a deep abyss. Then his face became calm and resolved again. "One thing more," he said. "You have finished drawing up the appeal? May I read it? Forgive me, of course I have every confidence in you. But see! so much depends upon it for me, perhaps something might occur to me that would be of importance!" "What need of asking?" interrupted Berger. "It would be doing me a service. We will go through the document together this very day." When he called on his friend in the evening with this object, Fräulein Brigitta came out to see him. The old lady's eyes were red with crying, but her face was, as it were, lit up with a strong and noble emotion. "I have already visited her," she whispered to Berger. "Oh believe me, she is an angel, a thousand times purer than are many who plume themselves or their virtue. I bade her be of good cheer, and then I told her much about his Lordship--who knows better how, who knows him better? She listened to me peacefully, crying quietly all the time and I had to cry too--. But all will come right; I am quite sure of it. If the God above us were to let these two creatures perish, _these_ two----" Her voice broke with deep emotion. Berger silently pressed her hand and entered the study. He found his friend calm and collected. Sendlingen no longer complained; no word, no look, betrayed the burden that oppressed his soul. He dispatched his business with Berger conscientiously and thoroughly, and as dispassionately as if it were a Law examination paper. More than that--when he came to a place where Berger, in the exaltation of the moment, had chosen too strong an expression, he always stopped him: "That won't do: we must find calmer and more temperate words!" And usually it was he too who found these calmer and more temperate words. Down to the last word he maintained this clearness, this almost unnatural calm. Not until Berger had folded his paper and was putting it in his pocket did the consciousness of his misery seem to return. Involuntarily he stretched forth his hand towards the paper. "You want to refer to something again?" asked Berger. "No!" His hand dropped listlessly. "Besides it is all labour in vain. My lot is cast." "Your lot?" cried Berger. "However much you may be bound up with the fate of your child, you must not say that!" "_My_ lot, _only_ my lot!" Berger observed the same peculiar look and tone he had before noticed when Sendlingen said that such things should not be spoken of even to one's self.... But this time Berger wanted to force him to an explanation. "You talk in riddles," he began; but he got no further, for, with a decision that made any further questions impossible, Sendlingen interrupted him: "May I be spared the hour when you learn to know this riddle! Even you can have no better wish than this for me! Why vainly sound the lowest depths? Good night, George, and thanks a thousand, thousand times!" CHAPTER IX. Six weeks had elapsed since the dispatch of the appeal: Christmas was at the door. The days had come and gone quickly without bringing any fresh storm, any fresh danger, but certainly without dispelling even one of the clouds that hung threateningly over the heads of these two much-to-be-commiserated beings. Berger was with Sendlingen daily, and daily his questioning look received the same answer; a mute shake of the head--the decision had not yet arrived. The Supreme Court had had the papers connected with the trial brought under its notice; beyond the announcement of this self-evident fact, not a line had come from Vienna. This silence was certainly no good sign, but it did not necessarily follow that it was a bad one. To be sure the lawyer examining the case, unless, from the first, he attributed no importance whatever to Berger's statements, should have demanded more detailed information from the Court at Bolosch, and all the more because Baron Dernegg's dissentient vote was recorded in the papers. Still, perhaps this silence was simply to be explained by the fact that he had not had an opportunity of going into the case. Berger held fast to this consoling explanation, or at least pretended to do so, when the subject came up in conversation, which was seldom enough; he did not like to begin it, and Sendlingen equally avoided it. It almost seemed to Berger as if his unhappy friend welcomed the delay in the decision, as if he gladly dragged on in a torture of uncertainty from day to day--anything so as not to look the dread horror in the face. And indeed Sendlingen every morning sighed with relief, when the moment of horrid suspense had gone by, when he had looked through the Vienna mail and found nothing. But this did not arise from the motive which Berger supposed, but from a better feeling. Sendlingen rejoiced in every hour of respite that gave his poor child more time to gather strength of soul and body. The shattered health of Victorine mended visibly, day by day. The deathly pallor disappeared, her weakness lessened, the look of her eyes was clearer and steadier. The doctor observed it with glad astonishment and no little pride; he ascribed the improvement to his remedies, to the better nourishment and care which on his representations had been allotted her. When he boasted of it to his friend, Father Rohn, the good priest met him with as bantering a smile as his kind heart would allow; he knew better. If this poor child was blossoming again, the merit was entirely his. Had not the doctor himself said that she could only be saved by a change in her frame of mind? And had not this change really set in even more visibly than her physical improvement? A new spirit had entered into Victorine. She no longer sat gazing in melancholy brooding, she no longer yearned for death, and when the priest sought to nourish in her the hope of pardon--in the sincerest conviction, for he looked upon the confirmation of the death-sentence as an impossibility--she nodded to him, touched and grateful. She seemed, now, to understand him when he told her that the repentance of a sinner and his after life of good works, were more pleasing to the good God above than his death. And when he once more led the conversation to the man who, in spite of everything, was her father and perhaps at this moment was suffering the bitterest anguish on her account, when he begged her not to harden her heart against the unknown, he had the happiness of hearing her say with fervour in her looks and voice: "I have forgiven him from the bottom of my heart. The thought of him has completely restored me! Perhaps God will grant me to be a good daughter to him some day!" So the words of comfort and the exhortations of the good priest had really not been in vain. The true state of the case nobody even suspected; the secret was stringently kept. No doubt it struck many people and gave occasion to a variety of gossip, that Fräulein Brigitta visited the condemned prisoner almost daily, and the Chief Justice almost weekly, but a sufficient explanation was sought and found. Good-natured and inoffensive people thought that Victorine Lippert was a creature so much to be pitied, that these two noble characters were only following their natural instincts in according her a special pity; the malevolent adopted the crafty Höbinger's view, and talked of "favouritism"; the aristocratic betrayer and his mother the Countess, they said, had after all an uneasy conscience as to whether they had not behaved too harshly to the poor creature, and the representations they had made to their fellow-aristocrat, Baron von Sendlingen, had not been in vain. Certainly this report could only be maintained in uninitiated circles; anyone who was intimately acquainted with the aristocratic society of the province knew well enough, that the Countess Riesner-Graskowitz was assuredly the last person in the world to experience a single movement of pity for the condemned girl. Be that as it might, Sendlingen behaved in this case as he had all his life behaved in any professional matter: humanely and kindly, but strictly according to the law and without over-stepping his duty by a hair's breadth. The better attention, the separate cell in the Infirmary, would certainly have been allotted to any one else about whom the doctor had made the same representations. When Father Rohn, moved by his sense of compassion, sought to obtain some insignificant favour that went beyond these lines--it had reference to some absolutely trifling regulation of the house--the Governor of the gaol was ready to grant it, but the Chief Justice rigidly set his face against the demand. When Berger heard of this trivial incident, a heavy burden which he had been silently carrying for weeks, without daring to seek for certainty in a conversation on the subject, was rolled from his heart. He had put an interpretation on the mysterious words that Sendlingen had uttered the day after the trial, which had filled him with the profoundest sorrow,--more than that with terror. Now he saw his mistake: a man who so strictly obeyed his conscience in small matters where there was no fear of discovery, would assuredly in any greater conflict between inclination and duty, hold fast unrelentingly to justice and honour. He was soon to be strengthened in this view. It was three days before Christmas-day when he once more entered his friend's chambers. He found him buried in the perusal of letters which, however, he now pushed from him. "The mail from Vienna is not in yet," he said, "the train must have got blocked in the snow. But I have letters from Pfalicz. The Chief Justice of the Higher Court there, to whose position I am to succeed, asks whether it would not be possible for me to release him soon after the New Year, instead of at the end of February, as the Minister of Justice arranged. He is unwell, and ought to go South as soon as possible." "Great Heavens!" cried Berger. "Why, we have forgotten all about that." And indeed those stormy days and the succeeding weeks of silent, anxious suffering had hardly allowed him to think of Sendlingen's impending promotion and departure. "I have not," replied Sendlingen, gloomily. "The thought that I had to go, has often enough weighed me down more heavily than all my other burdens. How gladly I would stay here now, even if they degraded me to--to the post of Governor of the prison! But I have now no option. I have definitely accepted the position at Pfalicz and I must enter upon it." "And do you really think of departing at the New Year?" "No, that would be beyond my duty. I should be glad to oblige the invalid, but as you know, I cannot. I shall stay till the end of February; the decision must have come by that time." He again bent over a document that lay before him. Berger too, was silent, he went to the window and stared out into the grey dusk; it seemed as if the snow-storm would never cease. There was a knock at the door; a clerk of the Court of Record entered. "From the Supreme Court," he announced, laying a packet with a large seal on the table. "It has just arrived. Personally addressed to your lordship." The clerk departed; Berger approached the table. When he saw how excited Sendlingen was, how long he remained gazing at the letter, he shook his head. "That cannot be the decision," he said. "It would not be addressed to you. It is some indifferent matter, a question of discipline, a pension." Sendlingen nodded and broke the seal. But at the first glance a deathly pallor overspread his face, and the paper in his hands trembled so violently that he had to lay it on the table in order to read it to the end. "Read for yourself," he then muttered. Berger glanced through the paper; he too felt his heart beat impetuously as he did so. It was certainly not the decision, only a brief charge, but its contents were almost equivalent to it. The lawyers examining the appeal had, as Berger hoped, been struck by Baron Dernegg's dissentient vote and the motives for this. Dernegg was not of the opinion of his brother judges that this was a case of premeditated murder, maliciously planned months beforehand, but a deed done suddenly, in a paroxysm of despair, nay, most probably in a moment when the girl was not accountable for her actions. Against this more clement view, there certainly were the depositions of the Countess, and Victorine's attempts to conceal her condition. But on the other hand, her only _confidante_, the servant-girl, had deposed at the preliminary inquiry that Victorine had only made these attempts by her advice and with her help, and, moreover, with the sole object of staying in the house until the young Count should come to her aid. This testimony, however, she had withdrawn at the trial. Berger had chiefly based his appeal to nullify the trial, on the fact that the witness, in spite of this contradiction, had been put on her oath, and to the examining lawyer, also, this seemed a point of decisive importance. The Chief Justice was, therefore, commissioned to completely elucidate it by a fresh examination of the witness. Probably the charge had been directed to him personally because, as it stated, neither Herr von Werner nor any of the other judges who had been in favour of putting her on oath, could very well be entrusted with the inquiry. But if Sendlingen were actually too busy with other matters to conduct the examination, he might hand it over to the third Judge, Herr von Hoche. "What will you do?" asked Berger. "The matter is of the gravest importance. That the girl gave false evidence at the trial, that this was her return for being taken back into the Countess' service, we know for a certainty. The only question is whether we can convict her of it. An energetic Judge could without doubt do so, but will old Hoche, now over seventy, succeed? He is a good man, but his years weigh heavily upon him, he is dragging himself through his duties till the date of his retirement--four weeks hence--I fancy as best he can. And therefore once again--what will you do, Victor?" "I don't know," he murmured. "Leave me alone. I must think it out by myself. Forgive me! my conscience alone can decide in such a matter. Good-bye till this evening, George." Berger departed; his heart was as heavy as ever it had been. In the first ebullition of feeling, moved by his pity for these two beings, he had wished to compel his friend to undertake the inquiry, but now he had scruples. Was not the position the same as on the day of the trial? And if he then approved of his friend's resolution not to preside, could he now urge him to undertake a similar task? Certainly the conflict was now more acute, more painfully accentuated, but was Sendlingen's duty as a Judge any the less on that account? Again the thought rose in Berger's mind which a few weeks ago had comforted him and lifted him above the misery of the moment: that there was a solution of these complications, a great, a liberating solution--there must be, just because this man was what he was! But even now he did not know how to find this solution; one thing only was clear to him: if Sendlingen undertook the inquiry and thus saved his child, it would be an act for which there would be all manner of excuses but it would assuredly not be that great, saving act of which he dreamt! And yet if Hoche in his weakness ruined the case and did not bring the truth to light, if she perhaps had to die now that she had begun to hope again, now that she had waked to a new life ... Berger closed his eyes as if to shut out the terrible picture that obtruded itself upon him, and yet it rose again and again. At dusk, just as he was starting to his friend's, Fräulein Brigitta called to see him. "I am to tell you," she began, "that his Lordship wants you to postpone your visit until to-morrow. But it is not on that account that I have come, but because I am oppressed with anxiety. Has the decision arrived? He is as much upset again as he was on the day of the trial." Berger comforted her as well as he could. "It is only a momentary excitement," he assured her, "and will soon pass." "I only thought so because he is behaving just as he did then. It is a singular thing; he has been rummaging for those keys again. You know,--the one that opens the little door in the court-yard wall. I came in just in the nick of time to see him take it out of his writing-table drawer. And just as before, it seemed to annoy him to be surprised in the act.--Isn't that strange?" "Very strange!" he replied. But he added hastily: "It must have been a mere chance." "Certainly, it can only have been a coincidence," he thought after Brigitta had gone, "it would be madness to impute such a thing to him, to him who was horrified at the idea of conducting the trial and equally at the thought of conducting this examination. And yet when he first seized upon that key, the idea must certainly have taken a momentary possession of him, and that it should have returned to him to-day, to-day of all days." As he was the next day walking along the corridor that led to Sendlingen's chambers, he met Mr. Justice Hoche. The hoary old man, supporting himself with difficulty by the aid of a stick, was looking very testy. "Only think," he grumbled, "what an odious task the Chief Justice has just laid upon me. It will interest you, you were Counsel for the defence in the case." And he told him of the charge at great length. "Well, what do you say to that? Isn't it odious?" "It is a very serious undertaking!" said Berger. "The matter is one of the greatest importance." "Yes, and just for that reason," grumbled the old man, almost whimpering. "I do not want to undertake any such responsibility, now, when merely thinking gives me a head-ache. I suffer a great deal from head-aches, Dr. Berger. And it is such a ticklish undertaking! For you see either the maid-servant told the truth at the trial, in which case this fresh examination is superfluous, or she lied and _ergo_ was guilty of perjury and _ergo_ is a very tricky female! And how am I ever to get to the bottom of a tricky female, Dr. Berger?" "Did you tell the Chief Justice this?" asked Berger. "Oh, of course! For half an hour I was telling him about my condition and how I always get a head-ache now if I have to think. But he stuck to his point, 'you will have to undertake the matter: you must exert yourself!' Good Heavens! what power of exertion has one left at seventy years of age! Well, good morning, dear Dr. Berger! But it's odious--most odious!" Berger looked after the old man as he painfully hobbled along: "And in such hands," he thought, "rests the fate of my two friends." Under the weight of this thought, he had not the courage to face Sendlingen. He turned and went home in a melancholy mood. When the next day towards noon, he was turning homewards after a trial at which he had been the defending barrister, he again met Mr. Justice Hoche, who was just leaving the building, in the portico of the Courts. The old gentleman was manifestly in a high state of contentment. "Well," asked Berger, "is the witness here already? Have you begun the examination?" "Begun? I have ended it!" chuckled the old man. "And _re bene gesta_ one is entitled to rest. I shall let the law take care of itself to-day and go home. I haven't even got a head-ache over it; certainly it didn't require any great effort of thought--I soon got at the truth." "Indeed?--and what is the truth?" "H'm! I don't suppose it will be particularly agreeable to you," laughed the old Judge, leaning confidentially on Berger's arm. "Though for the matter of that you may be quite indifferent about it: you have done your duty, your appeal was certainly splendidly drawn up, but what further interest can you have in this person? For she is a thoroughly good-for-nothing person, and that's why she is dying so young! What stories that servant-girl has told me about her, stories, my dear doctor, that an old barrack-wall would have blushed to hear. She was hardly seventeen years old when she came to the Countess', but already had a dozen intrigues on her record, and what things she told her _confidante_ about them, and which were repeated to me to-day--why, it is a regular Decameron, my dear doctor, or more properly speaking: Boccaccio in comparison is a chaste Carthusian." Berger violently drew his arm out of the old man's. "That's a lie!" he said between his teeth. "A scandalous calumny!" The old Judge looked at him, quite put out of countenance. "Why, what an idea," he cried. "If it were not so, this servant-girl would be a tricky female." "So she is." "She is not! Oh, I know human nature. On the contrary, she is good-natured and stupid. No one could tell lies with such assurance, after having just been solemnly admonished to speak the truth. It is all incontestably true; all her adventures: and how from the first she had hatched a regular plot to corrupt the young Count. The crafty young person calculated in this way: if our _liaison_ has consequences, I shall perhaps inveigle the young man into a marriage, and if I don't succeed I shall kill the child and look out for another place!" "But just consider this one fact," cried Berger. "If this had actually been Victorine Lippert's plan she would certainly have reflected: if I can't force a marriage, I shall at least get a handsome maintenance! and in that case she would not have killed her child, but carefully have preserved its life." The old Judge meditatively laid his finger on his nose. "Look here, Dr. Berger," he said importantly, "that is a very reasonable objection. But it has been adduced already, not by me, to tell the truth, but by my assistant, a very wise young man. But the witness was able to give a perfectly satisfactory explanation on the subject. To be sure, she only did so after repeated questions and in a hesitating and uncertain manner--the good, kind-hearted girl could with difficulty bring herself to add still more to the criminal's load, but at length she had to speak out. Thus we almost accidentally extracted a very important detail that proved to be of great importance in determining the case. It is a truly frightful story. Only fancy, this mere girl, this Victorine Lippert, has always had a sort of thirst for the murder of little children. She repeatedly said to the girl long before the deed, before the young Count came to the Castle at all: 'Strange! but whenever I see a little child, I always feel my hands twitching to strangle it.' Frightful--isn't it. Dr. Berger?" "Frightful indeed!" cried Berger, "if you have believed this poorly-contrived story of the wretched, perjured woman--poorly-contrived, and invented in the necessity of the moment so as to meet the objection of your assistant, so as not to be caught in her net of lies, so as to render the Countess another considerable service." "Really, you will not listen to reason," said the old man, now seriously annoyed. "I feel my head-ache coming on again. Do you mean to say that you accuse the Countess of conniving at perjury! A lady of the highest aristocracy! Excuse me, Dr. Berger--that is going too far! You are a liberal, a radical, I know, but that doesn't make every Countess a criminal. But if this is really your opinion of the witness, take out a summons for perjury at once!" "It may come to that," replied Berger. The old man shook his head. "Spare yourself the trouble," he said good-naturedly, "it will prove ineffectual, but you may certainly get yourself into great difficulties. Why expose yourself, for the sake of such an abandoned creature, to an action for libel on the part of the Countess and her servant? How abandoned she is, you have no suspicion! I have, thank Heaven, concealed the worst of all from you, and you shall not learn it at my hands. You may read for yourself in the minutes. I do not wish to make a scene in the street. I was so enjoying this fine afternoon, and you have quite spoilt my good humour. Well, good-bye. Dr. Berger, I will forgive you. You have allowed yourself to be carried away by your pity, but you are bestowing it upon an unworthy creature! The witness gave me the impression of being absolutely trustworthy, and I have stated so in the minutes! I considered myself bound in conscience to do so." "Then you have a human life on your conscience!" Berger blurted out. He had not meant to say anything so harsh, but the words escaped him involuntarily. The old man started and clasped his hands. His face twitched, and bright tears stood in his eyes. "What have I done to you?" he moaned. "Why do you say such a horrible thing? Why do you upset me? I have always considered you a good man, and now you behave like this to me!" Berger stepped up to him and offered his hand. "Forgive me," he said, "your intention is good and pure, I know. And just for that reason I implore you to reflect well before you let the minutes go out of your hands." "That is already done. I have just handed them to the Chief Justice." "And what did he say?" "Nothing, what should he say? Certainly he too seemed to be put out about something, for when I was about to enter on a brief discourse, he dismissed me a little abruptly." "But it is open to you to demand the minutes back, and examine the witness again. Keep a sterner eye upon her, and the contradictions in which she gets involved will certainly become evident to you. At her first examination she could only say the best things of Victorine Lippert, at the trial she had lost her memory, and now of a sudden nothing is too bad." "Oh, you barristers!" cried the Judge. "How you twist everything! The kind-hearted creature wanted to save Victorine Lippert and pity moved her to lie at first: she has just openly and repentantly confessed that she did. But at the trial, before the Crucifix, before the Judges, her courage left her. She was silent, because like a good and chaste girl, she could not bring herself to speak before a crowd of people of all those repulsive details. You see, everything is explained. You are talking in vain." "In vain!" Berger sighed profoundly. "Good-bye," he said turning to go. But after he had gone a few steps, Hoche called after him. The old man's eyes were full of tears. "You are angry with me?" he said. "No." "Well, you have no reason to be angry, though I have--but I forgive you. By what you said you might easily have made me unhappy if the case had not been so clear. Certainly I am upset now. To-morrow is Christmas Eve; my children and grand-children will come and bring me presents, and I shall give them presents, and I shall think all the time: Hoche, what a frightful thing if you were a murderer! You will take back your words, won't you? I am no murderer, am I?" Berger looked at the childish old man. "O tragicomedy of life!" he thought, but added aloud: "No, Herr Hoche, you are no murderer." In the evening he went to see Sendlingen and look over the minutes which he too had the right of disputing. He would have been disconsolate enough if he had not already known their contents; as it was the extraordinary tone of the document cheered him a little. The 'wise young man' was perhaps himself an author, or at least had certainly read a great many cheap novels; the style in which he had reproduced the servant girl's imaginations was, in the worst sense of the word "fine!" How this lessened the danger of the contents was shown especially, by that worst fact of all which Hoche could not bring himself to pronounce, and which was of such monstrous baseness that the faith of even the most vapid of judges must have been shaken in all the rest. "That is quite harmless," said Berger. "More than that, these monstrous lies are just the one bit of luck in all our misfortunes." "Certainly!" Sendlingen agreed. "But we must not count too much upon them. The examining judge may not believe everything, but he will certainly not discredit everything. It could not be expected after Hoche's enthusiastic advocacy of the witness' credibility." "And yet these minutes must be sent off. Would it not be possible to hand over the inquiry to some one else?" "Impossible, or I would have done so yesterday. Either I or Hoche--the charge of the Supreme Court is clear enough! And _I_ could not do it! It seemed to me mean and cowardly, treacherous and paltry, to break my Judge's oath, trusting to the silence of the three people who beside me know the secret, trusting moreover never to have to undergo punishment for my offence. To this consideration it seemed to me that every other must give way." Berger was silent. "Would it not be possible to take out a summons for perjury?" he resumed. "No," cried Sendlingen, "it would be an utterly useless delay! Success in the present position of things is not to be hoped for." Berger bowed his head. "Then Justice will suffer once again," he said in deep distress. "I will not reproach you. When I put myself in your place--I cannot trust myself to say that I should have done the same. I only presume I should, but this one thing I do know, that in accordance with your whole nature you have acted rightly. Still, ever since the moment that I spoke to Hoche, I cannot silence a tormenting question. Ought fidelity to the Law be stronger than fidelity to Justice? You would not undertake the inquiry because a father may not take part in an examination conducted against his child, but were you justified in handing it over to a man who was no longer in a condition to find out the truth, to fulfil his duty? Has not justice suffered at your hands by your respect for the law, that justice, I mean, which speaks aloud in the heart of every man?" Sendlingen was staring gloomily at the floor. Then he raised his eyes and looked his friend full in the face. The expression of his countenance, the tone of his voice became almost solemn. "I have fought out for myself an answer to this question. I may not tell you what it is; but one thing I can solemnly swear: this outraged justice to which you refer will receive the expiation which is its due." CHAPTER X. Christmas was past, New Year had come, the year 1853, one of the most melancholy that the Austrian Empire had ever known. The atmosphere was more charged than ever, coercion more and more severe, the confederacy between the authorities of Church and State closer and closer. Melancholy reports alarmed the minds of peaceful citizens: the Italian Provinces were in a state of ferment, a conspiracy was discovered in Hungary, and a secret league of the Slavs at Prague. How strong or how weak these occult endeavours against the authority and peace of the state might be, no one knew. One thing only was manifest: the severity with which they were treated; and perhaps in this severity lay the greatest danger of all. It was the old sad story that so often repeats itself in the life of nations, and was then appearing in a new shape; tyranny had called forth a counter-tyranny and this, in its turn, a fresh tyranny. The police had much to do everywhere, and in some districts the Courts of Justice too. One of the greatest of the political investigations had, since Christmas 1852, devolved upon the Court at Bolosch. The middle classes of this manufacturing town were exclusively Germans, the working-classes principally Slavs. It was among these latter that the police believed they had discovered the traces of a highly treasonable movement. About thirty workmen were arrested and handed over to Justice. Sendlingen, assisted by Dernegg, personally conducted the investigation. He had made the same selection in all the political arrangements of the last few years, although he knew that any other would have been more acceptable to the authorities. Certainly neither he nor Dernegg were Liberals--much less Radicals--who sympathised with Revolution and Revolutionaries. On the contrary both these aristocrats had thoroughly conservative inclinations, at all events in that good sense of the word which was then and is now so little understood in Austria, and is so seldom given practical effect. They were, moreover, entirely honourable and independent judges. But there was a prejudice in those days against men of unyielding character, especially in the case of political trials. There was an opinion that "pedantry" was out of place where the interests of the state were at stake. Sendlingen, on the other hand, was convinced that a political investigation should not be conducted differently from any other, and it was precisely in this inquisition into the conduct of the workmen that he manifested the greatest zeal, but at the same time the most complete impartiality. Divers reasons had determined him to devote all his energy to the case. The diversion of his thoughts from his own misery did him good: the ceaseless work deadened the painful suspense in which he was awaiting the decision from Vienna. Moreover his knowledge of men and things had predisposed him to believe that these poor rough fellows had not so much deserved punishment as pity, and after a few days he was convinced of the justice of this supposition. These raftsmen and weavers and smiths who were all utterly ignorant, who had never been inside a school, who scarcely knew a prayer save the Lord's Prayer, who dragged on existence in cheerless wretchedness, were perhaps more justified in their mute impeachment of the body politic, than deserving of the accusations brought against them. They did not go to confession, they often sang songs that had stuck in their minds since 1848, and some of them had, in public houses and factories, delivered speeches on the injustice of the economy of the world and state as it was reflected in their unhappy brains. This was all; and this did not make them enemies of the State or of the Emperor. On the contrary, the record of their examination nearly always testified the opinion: "the only misfortune was that the young Emperor knew nothing of their condition, otherwise he would help them." Sendlingen's noble heart was contracted with pity, whenever he heard such utterances. And these men he was to convict of high treason! No! not an instant longer than was absolutely necessary should they remain away from their families and trades. On the Feast of the Epiphany Sendlingen was sitting in his Chambers examining a raftsman, an elderly man of herculean build with a heavy, sullen face, covered with long straggling, iron-grey hair; Johannes Novyrok was his name. The police had indicated him as particularly dangerous, but he did not prove to be worse than the rest. "Why don't you go to confession?" asked Sendlingen finally when all the other grounds of suspicion had been discussed. "Excuse me, my Lord," respectfully answered the man in Czech. "But do you go?" Sendlingen looked embarrassed and was about to sharply reprove him for his impertinent question, but a look at the man's face disarmed him. There was neither impertinence nor insolence written there, but rather a painful look of anxiety and yearning that strangely affected Sendlingen. "Why?" he asked. "Because I might be able to regulate my conduct by yours," replied the raftsman. "You see, my Lord, I differ from my brethren. People such as we, they think, have no time to sin, much less to confess. The God there used to be, must surely be dead, they say, otherwise there would be more justice in the world; and if he is still alive, he knows well enough that anyhow we have got hell on this earth and will not suffer us to be racked and roasted by devils in the next world. But I have never agreed with such sentiments; they strike me as being silly and when my mates say: rich people have a good time of it, let them go to confession,--why, its arrant nonsense. For I don't believe that any one on earth has a good time of it, not even the rich, but that everybody has their trouble and torment. And therefore I should very much like to hear what a wise and good man, who must understand these things much better than I do, has to say to it all. It might meet my case. And I happen to have particular confidence in you. In the first place because you're better and wiser than most men, so at least says every one in the town, and this can't be either hypocrisy or flattery, because they say so behind your back. But I further want to hear your opinion, because I know for certain that you have an aching heart and plenty of trouble." "How do you know that?" Novyrok glanced at the short-hand clerk sitting near Sendlingen and who was manifestly highly tickled at the simplicity of this ignorant workman. "I could only tell you," he said shyly, "if you were to send that young man out of the room. It is no secret, but such fledglings don't understand life yet." The young clerk was much astonished when Sendlingen actually made a sign to him to withdraw. "Thank you," said the raftsman after the door was shut "Well, how I know of your trouble? In the first place one can read it in your face, and secondly I saw you one stormy night--it may be eight weeks ago--wandering about the streets by yourself. You went down to the river; I was watchman on a raft at the time and I saw you plainly. There were tears running down your cheeks, but even if your eyes had been dry--well no one goes roaming alone and at random on such a night, unless he is in great trouble." Sendlingen bowed his head lower over the papers before him. Novyrok continued: "An hour later, your friend brought you into our inn whither I had come in the meanwhile after my mate had relieved me of the watch. You were unconscious. I helped to carry you and take you home.... I don't tell you this in the hope that you may punish me less than I deserve, but just that I may say to you: you too, my Lord, know what suffering is--do you find the thought of God comforting, and what do you think of confession?" Sendlingen made no reply; the recollection of that most fatal night of his existence and the solemn question of the poor fellow, had deeply moved him. "You must have experienced something, Novyrok," he said at length, "that has shaken your Faith." "Something, my Lord? Alas, everything!--Alas, my whole life! I don't believe there are many people to whom the world is a happy place, but such men as I should never have been born at all. I have never known father or mother, I came into the world in a foundling hospital on a Sylvester's Eve some fifty years ago--the exact date I don't know--and that's why they called me 'Novyrok' (New-Year). I had to suffer a great deal because of my birth; it is beyond all belief how I was knocked about as a boy and youth among strangers--even a dog knows its mother but I did not. And therefore one thing very soon became clear to me: many disgraceful things happen on this earth, but the most disgraceful thing of all is to bring children into the world in this way. Don't you think so, my Lord?" Sendlingen did not answer. "And I acted accordingly," continued Novyrok, "and had no love-affair, though I had to put great restraint upon myself. I don't know whether virtue is easy to rich people; to the poor it is very bitter. It was not until I became steersman of a raft and was earning four gulden a week that I married an honest girl, a laundress, and she bore me a daughter. That was a bright time, my Lord, but it didn't last long. My wife began to get sickly and couldn't any longer earn any thing; we got into want, although I honestly did my utmost and often, after the raft was brought to, I chopped wood or stacked coal all night through when I got the chance. Well, however poorly we had to live, we did manage to live; things didn't get really bad till she died. My mates advised me then to give the care of my child to other people--and go as a raftsman to foreign parts, on a big river, the Elbe or the Danube: 'Wages,' they said, 'are twice as much there and you, as an able raftsman, can't help getting on.' But I hadn't got it in my heart to leave my little daughter. Besides I was anxious about her; to be sure she was only just thirteen, and a good, honest child, but she promised to be very nice-looking. If you go away, I said to myself, you may perhaps stay away for many years, and there are plenty of men in this world without a conscience, and temptation is great! So I stayed, and so as not to be separated from her even for a week, I gave up being a raftsman and became a workman at a foundry. But I was awkward at the work, the wages were pitiful, and though my daughter, poor darling, stitched her eyes out of her head, we were more often hungry than full. I frequently complained, not to her, but to others, and cursed my wretched existence--I was a fool! for I was happy in those days; I did my duty to my child." Novyrok paused. Sendlingen sighed deeply. "And then?" he asked. "Then, my Lord," continued the raftsman, "then came the dark hour, when I yielded to my folly and selfishness. Maybe I am too hard on myself in saying this, for I thought more of my child's welfare than my own, and many people thought what I did reasonable. But otherwise I must accuse Him above, and before I do that I would rather accuse myself. But I will tell you what happened in a few words. A former mate of mine who was working at the salt shipping trade on the Traun, persuaded me to go with him, just for one summer, and the high wages tempted me. My girl was sixteen at that time; she was like a rose, my Lord, to look at. But before I went I told her my story, where I was born and who my mother very likely was, and I said to her: 'Live honestly, my girl, or when I come back in the autumn I will strike you dead, and then jump into the deepest part of the river.' She cried and swore to me she'd be good. But when I came back in the autumn----" He sobbed. It was some time before he added in a hollow voice: "Hanka was my daughter's name. Perhaps you remember the case, my Lord. It took place in this house. Certainly it's a long while ago; it will be seven years next spring." "Hanka Novyrok," Sendlingen laid his hand on his forehead. "I remember!" he then said. "That was the name of the girl who--who died in her cell during her imprisonment upon trial." "She hanged herself," said Novyrok, sepulchrally. "It happened in the night; the next morning she was to have come before the Judges. She had murdered her child." There was a very long silence after this. Novyrok then resumed: "You didn't examine me about the case, you would have understood me. The other Judge before whom I was taken didn't understand me when I said: 'This is a controversy between me and Him up above, for either He is at fault or I am.' The Judge at first thought that grief had turned my head, but when he understood what I said, he abused me roundly and called me a blasphemer. But I am not that. I believe in Him. I do not blaspheme Him, only I want to know how I stand with Him. It would be the greatest kindness to me, my Lord, if you could decide for me." "Poor fellow," said Sendlingen, "don't torment yourself any more about it; such things nobody can decide." Novyrok shook his head with a sigh. "A man like you ought to be able to make it out," he said, "although I can see that it is not easy. For look here--how does the case stand? A wretched blackguard, a linendraper for whom she used to sew, seduced her in my absence. If I had stayed here, it would not have happened. When I came back I learnt nothing about it, she hid it from me out of fear of what I had said to her at parting, and that was the reason why she killed her child, yes, and herself too in the end. For I am convinced that it was not the fear of punishment that drove her to death, but the fear of seeing me again, and no doubt, she also wished to spare me the disgrace of that hour. Now, my Lord, all this----" They were interrupted. A messenger brought in a letter which had just arrived. Sendlingen recognised the writing of the count, his brother-in-law, who was a Judge of the Supreme Court. He laid the letter unopened on the table; very likely belated New-year's wishes, he thought. "Go on!" he said to the Accused. "Well, my Lord, all this seems to tell against me, but it might be turned against Him too. I might say to Him: 'Wasn't I obliged to try and keep her from sin by using the strongest words? And why didst Thou not watch over her when I was far away; Hanka was Thy child too, and not only mine! And if Thou wouldst not do this, why didst Thou suffer us two to be born? Thou wilt make reparation, sayst Thou, in Thy Heaven? Well, no doubt it is very beautiful, but perhaps it is not so beautiful that we shall think ourselves sufficiently compensated.' You see, my Lord, I might talk like this--But if I were to begin. He too would not be silent, and with a single question He could crush me. 'Why did you go away?' He might ask me. 'Why did you not do your duty to your child? I, O fool, have untold children; you had only this one to whom you were nearest. You say in your defence that you did not act altogether selfishly, that you wanted to better her condition as well. May be, but you did think of _your own_ condition, _of yourself_ as well, and that a father may not do! I warned you by your own life, and by causing your conscience and presentiments to speak to you--why did you not obey Me? Besides you would not have starved here?' You see, my Lord, He might talk to me in this way and He would be right, for a father may not think of himself for one instant where his child's welfare is concerned. Isn't that so? "Yes, that is so!" answered Sendlingen solemnly. "Well, that is why I sometimes think: you should certainly go to confession! What do you advise, my Lord?" This time, too, Sendlingen could find no relevant answer, much as he tried to seek the right words of consolation for this troubled heart. He strove to lessen his sense of guilt, that sensitive feeling which had so deeply moved him, and finally assured him also of a speedy release. But Novyrok's face remained clouded; the one thing which he had wished to hear, a decision of his singular "controversy" with "Him," he had to do without, and when Sendlingen rang for the turnkey to remove the prisoner, the latter expressed his gratitude for "his Lordship's friendliness" but not for any comfort received. Not until he had departed did Sendlingen take up his brother-in-law's letter, which he meant hastily to run through. But after a few lines he grew more attentive and his looks became overcast. "And this too," he muttered, after he had read to the end, and his head sank heavily on his breast. The Count informed him, after a few introductory lines, of the purport of a conversation he had just had with the Minister of Justice. "You know his opinion," said the letter, "he honestly desires your welfare, and a better proof of this than your appointment to Pfalicz he could not have given you. All the more pained, nay angered, is he at your obstinate disregard of his wishes. He told you in plain language that he did not desire you and Dernegg to take part in any political investigations. You have none the less observed the same arrangement in the present investigation against the workmen. I warn you, Victor, not for the first time, but for the last. You are trifling with your future; far more important people than Chief Judges, however able, are now being sent to the right-about in Austria. The anger of the minister is all the greater, because your defiance this time is notorious. Scarcely a fortnight ago, the Supreme Court instructed you to undertake the brief examination of a witness; you handed the matter over to Hoche and excused yourself on the plea of the pressure of your regular work; and yet this work now suddenly allows you personally to conduct a complicated inquiry against some three dozen workmen." The letter continued in this strain at great length and concluded thus: "I implore you to assign the inquiry to Werner and to telegraph me to this effect to-day. If this is not done, you will tomorrow receive a telegram from the Minister commanding you to do so. And if you don't obey then, the consequences will be at once fatal to you. You know that I am no lover of the melodramatic, and you will therefore weigh well what I have said." His brother-in-law--and Sendlingen knew it--certainly never affected a melodramatic tone, and often as he had warned him, he had never before written in such a key. What should he do? It was against his conscience to submit and leave these poor fellows to their fate; but might he concern himself more about men who were strangers to him, than about the wellbeing of his own child? If he did not yield, would he not perhaps be suddenly removed from his office, and just at the moment when his unhappy daughter most of all required his help? He went to his residence in a state of grievous interior conflict, impotently drawn from one resolve to another. He sighed with relief when Berger entered; his shrewd, discreet friend could not have come at a more opportune moment. But he, too, found it difficult to hit upon the right counsel, or at least, to put it into words. "Don't let us confuse ourselves, Victor," he said at length. "First of all, you know as well as I do, that the Minister has no right to put such a command upon you. You are responsible to him that every trial in your Court shall be conducted with the proper formalities; the power to arrange for this is in your hands. And therefore they dare not seriously punish your insistence on your manifest right. Dismissal on such a pretext is improbable and almost inconceivable, especially when it is a question of a man of your name and services." "But it is possible." "Anything is possible in these days," Berger was obliged to admit. "But ought this remote possibility to mislead you? You would certainly not hesitate a moment, if consideration for your child did not fetter you. Should this consideration be more authoritative than every other? In my opinion, no!" "Because you cannot understand my feelings!" Sendlingen vehemently interposed. "A father may not think of himself when his child's welfare is concerned. The voice of nature speaks thus in the breast of every man, even the roughest, and should it be silent in me?" "My poor friend," said Berger, "in your heart, too, it has surely spoken loud enough. And yet, so far, you have not hesitated for a moment to fulfil your duty as a judge when it came into conflict with your inclination. You would not preside at the trial, you would not conduct the examination. The struggle is entering on a new phase, you cannot act differently now." "I must! I cannot help these poor people--besides Werner himself will hardly be able to find them guilty. And the cases are not parallel; I should have broken my oath if I had presided at the trial: I do not break it if I obey the Minister's command." "That is true," retorted Berger. "But I can only say: Seek some other consolation, Victor,--this is unworthy of you! For you have always been, like me, of the opinion that it is every man's duty to protect the right, and prevent wrong, so long as there is breath in his body! If I admonish you, it is not from any fanatical love of Justice, but from friendship for you, and because I know you as well as one man can ever know another. Your mind could endure anything, even the most grievous suffering, anything save one thing: the consciousness of having done an injustice however slight. If you submit, and if these men are condemned even to a few years' imprisonment, their fate would prey upon your mind as murder would on any one else. This I know, and I would warn you against it as strongly as I can.... Let us look at the worst that could happen, the scarcely conceivable prospect of your dismissal. What serious effect could this have upon the fate of your child? You perhaps cling to the hope of yourself imparting to her the result of the appeal; that is no light matter, but it is not so grave as the quiet of your conscience. It can have no other effect. If the purport of the decision is a brief imprisonment, you could have no further influence upon her destiny, whether you were in office or not; she would be taken to some criminal prison, and you would have to wait till her term of imprisonment was over before you could care for her. If the terms of the decision are imprisonment for life, or death (you see, I will not be so cowardly as not to face the worst), the only course left open to you is, to discover all to the Emperor and implore his pardon for your child. Is there anything else to be done?" Sendlingen was silent. "There is no other means of escape. And if it comes to this, if you have to sue for her pardon, it will assuredly be granted you, whether you are in office or not. It will be granted you on the score of humanity, of your services and of your family. It is inconceivable that this act of grace should be affected by the fact that you had just previously had a dispute with the Minister of Justice. It is against reason, still more against sentiment. The young Prince is of a chivalrous disposition." "That he is!" replied Sendlingen. "And it is not this consideration that makes me hesitate, I had hardly thought of it. It was quite another idea.... Thank you, George," he added. "Let us decide tomorrow, let us sleep upon it." He said this with such a bitter, despairing smile, that his friend was cut to the heart. The next morning when Berger was sitting in his Chambers engaged upon some pressing work, the door was suddenly flung open and Sendlingen's servant Franz entered. Berger started to his feet and could scarcely bring himself to ask whether any calamity had occurred. "Very likely it is a calamity," replied the old man, continuing in his peculiar fashion of speech which had become so much a habit with him, that he could never get out of it. "We were taken ill again in Chambers, very likely we fell down several times as before, we came home deadly pale but did not send in for the Doctor, but for you, sir." Berger started at once, Franz following behind him. As they went along, Berger fancied he heard a sob. He looked round: there were tears in the old servant's eyes. When they got into the residence, Berger turned to him and said: "Be a man, Franz." Then the old fellow could contain himself no longer; bright tears coursed down his cheeks. "Dr. Berger," he stammered. He had bent over his hand and kissed it before Berger could prevent him. "Have pity on me! Tell me what has been going on the last two months! We often speak to Brigitta about it--I am told nothing! Why? We know that this silence is killing me. I could long ago have learned it by listening and spying, but Franz doesn't do that sort of thing. If you cannot tell me, at least put in a word for me. Surely we do not want to kill me!" Berger laid his hand on his shoulder. "Be calm, Franz, we have all heavy burdens to bear." He then went into Sendlingen's room. "The minister's telegram?" he asked. "Worse!" "The decision? What is the result?" The question was superfluous; the result was plainly enough written in Sendlingen's livid, distorted features. Berger, trembling in every limb, seized the fatal paper that lay on the table. "Horrible!" he groaned--it was a sentence of death. He forced himself to read the motives given; they were briefly enough put. The Supreme Court had rejected the appeal to nullify the trial, although the credibility of the servant-girl had appeared doubtful enough to it, too. At the same time, the decision continued, there was no reason for ordering a new trial, as the guilt of the accused was manifest without any of the evidence of this witness. The Supreme Court had gone through this without noticing either her recent statement incriminating the Accused, nor her first favorable evidence. The Countess' depositions alone, therefore, must determine Victorine's conduct before the deed, and her motives for the deed. These seemed sufficient to the Supreme Court, not to alter the sentence of death. For a long time Berger held the paper in his hands as if stunned; at length he went over to his unhappy friend, laid his arms around his neck and gently lifted his face up towards him. But when he looked into that face, the courage to say a word of consolation left him. He stepped to the window and stood there for, perhaps, half an hour. Then he said softly, "I will come back this evening," and left the room. Towards evening he received a few lines from his friend. Sendlingen asked him not to come till to-morrow; by that time he hoped to have recovered sufficient composure to discuss quietly the next steps to be taken. He was of opinion that Berger should address a petition for pardon to the Emperor, and asked him to draw up a sketch of it. Berger read of this request with astonishment. He would certainly have lodged a petition for pardon, even if Victorine Lippert had been simply his client and not Sendlingen's daughter. But he would have done it more from a sense of duty than in the hope of success. That this hope was slight, he well knew. The petition would have to take its course through the Supreme Court, and it was in the nature of the case that the recommendation of the highest tribunal would be authoritative with the Emperor; exceptions had occurred, but their number was assuredly not sufficient to justify any confident hopes. All this Sendlingen must know as well as himself. Why, therefore, did he wish that the attempt should be made? In this desperate state of things, there was but one course that promised salvation; a personal audience with the Emperor. Why did Sendlingen hesitate to choose this course? Berger made up his mind to lay all this strongly before him, and when on the next day he rang the bell of the residence, he was determined not to leave him until he had induced him to take this step. "We are still in Chambers," announced Franz. "We want you to wait here a little. We have been examining workmen again since this morning early, and have hardly allowed ourselves ten minutes for food." "So he has none the less resolved to go on with that?" said Berger. Perhaps, he thought to himself, the telegram has not arrived yet. "None the less resolved?" cried Franz. "We have perhaps seldom worked away with such resolution and Baron Dernegg, too, was dictating to-day--I say it with all respect--like one possessed." Berger turned to go. It occurred to him that he had not seen Victorine for a week, and he thought he would use the interval by visiting her. "I shall be back in an hour," he said to Franz. "In the meanwhile I have something to do in the prison." "In the prison?" The old man's face twitched, he seized Berger's arm and drew him back into the lobby, shutting the door. "Forgive me, Dr. Berger. My heart is so full.... You are going to her--are you not? To our poor young lady, to Victorine?" "What? Since when?" ... "Do I know it?" interrupted Franz. "Since yesterday evening!" And with a strange mixture of pride and despair he went on: "We told me everything!... Oh, it is terrible. But we know what I am worth! My poor master! ah! I couldn't sleep all night for sorrow.... But we shall see that we are not deceived in me.... I have a favour to ask, Dr. Berger. Brigitta has the privilege naturally, because she is a woman and a member of the 'Women's Society.' But I, what can I appeal to? Certainly I have in a way, been in the law for twenty-five years, and understand more of these things than many a young fledgling who struts about in legal toggery, but--a lawyer I certainly am not--so, I suppose, Dr. Berger, it is unfortunately impossible?" "What? That you should pay her a visit? Certainly it is impossible, and if you play any pranks of that kind----" "Oh! Dr. Berger," said the old man imploringly. "I did but ask your advice because my heart is literally bursting. Well, if this is impossible, I have another favour, and this you will do me! Greet our poor young lady from me! Thus, with these words: 'Old Franz sends Fräulein Victorine his best wishes from all his heart--and begs her not to despair.... and--and wants to remind her that the God above is still living.'" Berger could scarcely understand his last words for the tears that choked, the old man's voice. He himself was moved; as yesterday, so to-day, Franz's tears strongly affected him, for the old servant was not particularly soft by nature. "Yes, yes, Franz," he promised, and then betook himself to the prison. He resolved to continue to be quite candid with Victorine, but not to mention the result of the appeal by a single word. But when he entered her cell, she came joyfully to meet him, her eyes glistening with tears. "How shall I thank you?" she cried much moved trying to take his hand. He fell back a step. "Thank me?--What for?" "Oh, I know," she said softly with a look at the door as if an eavesdropper might have been there. "My father told me that it was not official yet. He hurried to me this morning as soon as he had received the news, but it is still only private information, and for the present I must tell nobody! Whom else have I to thank but you?" "What?" he asked. And he added with an unsteady voice: "I have not seen him for the last few days. Has he had news from Vienna?" "To be sure! The Supreme Court has pardoned me. My imprisonment during trial is to be considered as punishment. In a few weeks I shall be quite free." Berger felt all the blood rush to his heart. "Quite free!" he repeated faintly. "In a few weeks!" And at the same time he was tortured by the importunate question: "Great God! he has surely gone mad? How could he do this? What is his object?" "Merciful Heaven!" she cried. "How pale you have turned. How sombre you look! Merciful Heaven! you have not received other news? He has surely not been deceived? Oh, if I had to die after all!--now--now----" She staggered. Berger took her hand and made her sink down on to the nearest chair. "I have no other news," he said as firmly as possible. "It came upon me with such a shock! I am surprised that he has not yet told me anything. But then, of course, he did not hear of it till to-day. If he has told you, you can, of course, look upon it as certain." "May I not?" She sighed with relief. "I need not tremble any more? Oh, how you frightened me!" "Forgive me--calm yourself!" He took up his hat again. "Are you going already? And I have not yet half thanked you!" "Don't mention it!" he said curtly, parrying her remark. "Au revoir," he added with more friendliness, and leaving the cell, hurried to Sendlingen's residence. He had just come in; Berger approached him in great excitement. "I have just been to see Victorine," he began. "How could you tell this untruth? How _could_ you?" Sendlingen cast down his eyes. "I had to do it. I was afraid that otherwise the news of her condemnation might reach her." "No," cried Berger. "Forgive my vehemence," he then continued. "I have reason for it. Such empty pretexts are unworthy of you and me. You yourself see to the regulation of the Courts and the prison. The Accused never hear their sentence until they are officially informed." "You do me an injustice," replied Sendlingen, his voice still trembling, and it was not till he went on that he recovered himself: "I have no particular reasons that I ought or want to hide from you. I told her in an ebullition of feeling that I can hardly account for to myself. When I saw her to-day she was much sadder, much more hopeless, than has been usual with her lately. She certainly had a presentiment--and I, in my flurry at this, feared that some report might already have reached her. Such a thing, in spite of all regulations, is not inconceivable; chance often plays strange pranks. In my eager desire to comfort her, those words escaped me. The exultation with which she received them, robbed me of the courage to lessen their favourable import afterwards! That is all!" Berger looked down silently for a while. "I will not reproach you," he then resumed. "How fatal this imprudence may prove, you can see as well as I. She was prepared for the worst and therefore anything not so bad, might perhaps have seemed like a favour of Heaven. Now she is expecting the best, and whatever may be obtained for her by way of grace, it will certainly dishearten and dispirit her. But there is no help for it now! Let us talk of what we can help! You want me to lodge a petition for pardon? It would be labour in vain!" "Well," said Sendlingen hesitatingly, "in some cases the Emperor has revoked the sentence of death in spite of the decision of the Supreme Court." "Yes, but we dared not build on this hope if we had no other. Fortunately this is the case. You must go to Vienna; only on your personal intercession is the pardon a _certainty_. And my petition could at best only get the sentence commuted to imprisonment for life, whereas your prayer would obtain a shorter imprisonment and, after a few years, remission of the remainder. You must go to-morrow, Victor--there is no time to lose." Sendlingen turned away without a word. "How am I to understand this?" cried Berger, anxiously approaching him. "You _will_ not?" The poor wretch groaned aloud, "I will----" he exclaimed. "But later on--later on----. As soon as your petition has been dispatched." "But why?" cried Berger. "I have hitherto appreciated and sympathised with your every sentiment and act, but this delay strikes me as being unreasonable, unpardonable. I would spare you if less depended on the cast, but as it is, I will speak out. It is unmanly, it is----" He paused. "Spare me having to say this to you, to you who were always so brave and resolute. There is no time to lose, I repeat. Who will vouch that it may not then be too late? If my petition is rejected, the Court will at the same time order the sentence to be carried out. Do you know so certainly that you will still be here then, that you will still have time then to hurry to Vienna? Think! Think!" Berger had been talking excitedly and paused out of breath. But he was resolved not to yield and was about to begin again when Sendlingen said: "You have convinced me; I will go to Vienna sooner, even before the dispatch of your petition." "Then you still insist that I shall proceed with it?" "Please; it can do no harm; it may do good. And at least we shall gain time by it. I cannot undertake the journey to Vienna until the inquiry against the working men is ended. In this, too, there is not a day to be lost; neither Dernegg nor I know whether there is not an order on the road that may in some way make us harmless. I trust we shall by that time have succeeded in proving that no punishable offence has been committed. I have received the Minister's telegram to-day, and at once replied that the inquiry was so complicated, and had already proceeded so far, that a change in the examining Judges would be impracticable." "I am glad that you have followed my advice," said Berger. "And in spite of these aggravated conditions! You hesitated as long as the decision was not known to you, as long as you simply feared it, and when your fears were confirmed, you were brave again and did not hesitate for an instant in doing your duty as an honourable man! Victor, few people would have done the like!" He reached out his hand to say good-bye. "You have now taken old Franz into your confidence?" he asked, "another participator in the secret--it would have been well to consider it first! But I will not begin to scold again. Adieu!" CHAPTER XI. More than two weeks had passed since this last interview. January of 1853 was drawing to a close and still there seemed no likelihood of an end to the investigations against the workmen. Berger observed this with great anxiety. He had long since presented the petition for pardon: the time was drawing near when it would be laid before the Emperor, and yet, whenever the subject of the journey to Vienna arose, Sendlingen had some reason or motive for urging that he could not leave and that there was still time. When he made such a remark Berger looked at him searchingly, as if he were trying to read his inmost soul and then departed sadly, shaking his head. Every day Sendlingen's conduct seemed to him more enigmatical and unnatural. For this was the one means of saving Victorine's life! If he still hesitated it could only proceed from fear of the agony of the moment, from cowardice! But as often as Berger might and did say this to himself, he did not succeed in convincing himself. For did not Sendlingen at the same time evince in another matter and where the welfare and sufferings of strangers to him were concerned, a moral courage rarely found in this country and under this government. The conflict between Sendlingen and the Minister of Justice had gradually assumed a very singular character; it had become a "thoroughly Austrian business," as Berger sometimes thought with the bitter smile of a patriot. To Sendlingen's respectful but decided answer, the Minister had replied as rudely and laconically as possible, commanding him to hand over the investigation forthwith to Werner. No one could now doubt any longer that a further refusal would prove dangerous, and Sendlingen sent his rejoinder,--a brief dignified protest against this unjustifiable encroachment--with the feeling that he had at the same time undersigned his own dismissal. And indeed in any other country a violent solution would have been the only one conceivable; but here it was different. Certainly a severe censure from the Minister followed and he talked of "further steps" to be taken, but the lightning that one might have expected after this thunder, did not follow. The same result, was, however, sought by circuitous means, attempts were made to weary the two Judges and to put them out of conceit with the case. When they proposed to the Court that the case against one of the Accused might be discontinued, the Crown-Advocate promptly opposed it and called the Supreme Court to his assistance. With all that, the police were feverishly busy and overwhelmed the two Judges by repeatedly bringing forward new grounds of suspicion against the prisoners, and these had to be gone through however evidently worthless they might be at the first glance. There was not a single person attached to the Law-Courts with all their diversity of character, who did not follow the struggle of Sendlingen for the independence of the Judge's position, with sympathy, and the townspeople were unanimous in their enthusiastic admiration. This courageous steadfastness was all the more highly reckoned as it was visibly undermining his strength. His hair grew gray, his bearing less erect, and his face now almost always bore an expression of melancholy disquiet. People were not surprised at this; it must naturally deeply afflict this man who was so manifestly designed to attain the highest places in his profession, perhaps even to become the Chief Judge of the Empire--to be daily and hourly threatened with dismissal. Only the three participators in the secret, and Berger in particular, knew that the unhappy man could scarcely endure any longer the torture of uncertainty about his child's fate. All the more energetic, therefore, were Berger's attempts to put an end at least to this unnecessary torment but again and again he spoke in vain. This occurred too on the last day in January. Sendlingen stood by his answer: "There is still time, the petition has not yet come into the Emperor's hands," and Berger was sorrowfully about to leave his Chambers, when the door was suddenly flung open and Herr von Werner rushed in. "My Lord," cried the old gentleman almost beside himself with joy and waving a large open letter in his hand like a flag, "I have just received this; this has just been handed to me. It means that I am appointed your successor, it is the decree." Sendlingen turned pale. "I congratulate you," he said with difficulty. "When are you to take over the conduct of the Courts?" "On the 22nd February," was the answer. "Oh, how happy I am! And you I am sure will excuse me! Why should the news distress you? You will in any case be leaving here at the end of February to----" he, stopped in embarrassment. "To go to Pfalicz as Chief Justice of the Higher Court there," he continued hastily. "We will continue to believe so, to suppose the contrary would be nonsensical. You have annoyed the Minister and he is taking a slight revenge--that is all! Good-bye, gentlemen, I must hurry to my wife!" The old gentleman tripped away smiling contentedly. "That is plain enough," said Sendlingen, after a pause, turning to his friend. "My successor is appointed without my being consulted: the decree is sent direct to him and not through me; more than that, I am not even informed at the same time, when I am to hand over the conduct of the Courts to him. To the minister I am already a dead man! But what can it matter to me in my position? Werner's communication only frightened me for a moment, while I feared that I had to surrender to him forthwith. But the 22nd February--that is three weeks hence. By that time _everything_ will be decided." Two days later, on Candlemas Day, on which in some parts of Catholic Austria people still observe the custom of paying one another little attentions, Sendlingen also received a present from the minister. The letter read thus: "You are to surrender the conduct of the Courts on the 22nd February to the newly appointed Chief Justice, Herr von Werner. Further instructions regarding yourself will be forwarded you in due course." The tone of this letter spoke plainly enough. For "further instructions" were unnecessary if the previous arrangement--his appointment to Pfalicz--was adhered to. His dismissal was manifestly decreed. All the functionaries of the Courts fell into the greatest state of excitement: who was safe if Sendlingen fell? And wherever the news penetrated, it aroused sorrow and indignation. On the evening of the same day the most prominent men of the town met so as to arrange a fête to their Chief Justice before his departure. It was determined to present him with an address and to have a farewell banquet. Berger, who had been at the meeting, left as soon as the resolution was arrived at, and hurried to Sendlingen for he knew that his friend would need his consolation to-day most of all. But Sendlingen was so calm that it struck Berger as almost peculiar. "I have had time to get accustomed to these thoughts," he said. "How do you think of living now?" asked Berger. "I shall move to Gratz," replied Sendlingen quickly; he had manifestly given utterance to a long-cherished resolve. "Won't you be too lonely there?" objected Berger. "Why won't you go to Vienna? By the inheritance from your wife, you are a rich man who does not require to select the Pensionopolis on the Mur on account of its cheapness. In Vienna you have many friends, there you will have the greatest incitement to literary work, besides you may not altogether disappear from the surface. Your career is only forcibly interrupted but not nearly ended. A change of system, or even a change in the members of the Ministry, would bring you back into the service of the State, and, perhaps, to a higher position than the one you are now losing." "My mind is made up. Brigitta is going to Gratz in a few days to take a house and make all arrangements." They talked about other things, about the fête that had been arranged to-day. "I will accept the address," Sendlingen explained, "but not the banquet. I have not the heart for it." Berger vehemently opposed this resolution; he must force himself to put in an appearance at least for an hour; the fête had reference not only to himself personally, but to a sacred cause, the independence of Judges. All this he unfolded with such warmth, that Sendlingen at length promised that he would consider it. The next morning the Vienna papers published the news of the measures taken with regard to Sendlingen, which they had learnt by private telegrams. A severe censorship hampered the Austrian press in those days; the papers had been obliged to accustom the public to read more between the lines than the lines themselves: and this time, too, they hit upon a safe method of criticism. As if by a preconcerted agreement, all the papers pronounced the news highly incredible; and that it was, moreover, wicked to attribute such conduct to the strict but just government which Austria enjoyed. A severer condemnation than this defence of the government against "manifestly malicious reports" could not easily be imagined, and the public understood it as it was intended. In a moment, Sendlingen's name was in every mouth, and the investigation against the workmen the talk of the day, first in the capital, soon throughout the whole country. A flood of telegrams and letters, inquiries and enthusiastic commendations, suddenly burst upon Sendlingen. Had there been room in his poor heart, in his weary tormented brain, for any lucid thought or feeling, he would now have been able, in the days of his disgrace, to have held up his head more proudly than ever. It was not saying too much when Berger told him that a whole nation was now showing how highly it valued him. But he scarcely noticed it and continued, dark and hopeless, to do his duty and to drag on the Sisyphus-task of his investigation in combat with both the police and the Crown lawyers. Suddenly those hindrances ceased. When Sendlingen one morning entered his Chambers soon after the news of his deposal had appeared in the papers, he for the first time, for weeks, found no information of the police on the table. That might be an accident, but when there was none the second day, he breathed again. The Superintendent of Police at Bolosch was, the zealous servant of his masters; if he in twice twenty-four hours did not discover the slightest trace of high treason, there must be good reason for it. In the same way nothing more was heard from the Crown-Advocate. "They have almost lost courage in the face of the general indignation!" cried Berger triumphantly. "Franz has just told me that Brigitta is to start the day after to-morrow for Gratz. Let her wait a few days, and so spare the old lady having to make the journey to Pfalicz by the very round about way of Gratz." "You cannot seriously hope that," said Sendlingen turning away, and so Berger went into Brigitta's room later on to bid her good-bye. The old lady was eagerly reading a book which she hastily put on one side as he entered. "I am disturbing you," he said. "What are you studying so diligently?" "Oh, a novel," she replied quickly. Her eyes were red and she must have been crying a great deal lately. "I thought perhaps it was a description of Gratz," said he jokingly. "It seems to me that you have a genuine fear of this weird city where life surges and swells so mightily!" And he attempted to remove her fears by telling her much of the quiet, narrow life of the town on the Mur. While he was speaking, the book, which she had laid on her workbox, slid to the ground and he picked it up before she had time to bend down for it. It was a French grammar. "Great heavens!" he cried in astonishment. "You are taking up the studies of your youth again, Fräulein Brigitta?" The old lady stood there speechless, her face crimson, as if she had been caught in a crime. "I have been told," she stammered, "that--that one can hardly get along there with only German." "In Gratz?" Berger could not help laughing heartily. "Who has been playing this joke upon you? Reassure yourself. You will get along with the French in Gratz without any grammar." Still laughing, he said good-bye and promised to visit her in Gratz. Meanwhile the excitement into which the press and the public were thrown by the "Sendlingen incident" grew daily. In Bolosch new proposals were constantly being made, to have the fête on a magnificent and uncommon scale. It did not satisfy the popular enthusiasm that the address to be presented was covered with thousands of signatures. A proposal was made in the town-council to call the principal street after Sendlingen: some of the prominent men of the town wanted to collect subscriptions for a "Sendlingen Fund" whose revenue should be devoted to such officers of the State as, like Sendlingen, had become the victims of their faithfulness to conviction; the gymnastic societies resolved upon a torch-light procession. The chairman of the Committee arranging the festivities--he was the head of the first Banking house of the town--was in genuine perplexity; he still did not know which acts of homage Sendlingen would accept and he sought Berger's interposition. "Save me," implored the active banker. "People are pressing me and the Chief Justice is dumb. Yesterday I hoped to get a definite answer from him but he broke off and talked of our business." "Business? What business?" asked Berger. "I am just doing a rather complicated piece of business for him," answered the Banker. "I thought that you, his best friend, would have known about it. He is converting the Austrian Stock in which his property was hitherto invested, into French, English and Dutch stock, and a small portion of it into ready money." "Why?" asked Berger in surprise. "He is going to stay in Austria?" "So I asked," replied the Banker, "and received an answer which I had, willy nilly, to take as pertinent. For he is hardly to be blamed, if after his experiences, his belief in the credit of the State has become a little shaky." Berger could not help agreeing with this, and therefore did not refer to it in his talk with Sendlingen. With regard to the fête he received a satisfactory answer. Sendlingen without any further hesitation, accepted the banquet and even the torch-light procession. Both were to take place on the 21st February, the last day of his term of office. All this was telegraphed to Vienna and was bravely used by the papers. Even in Bolosch, they said, these melancholy reports, so humiliating to every Austrian, were not seriously believed; how long would the government hesitate to contradict them? The demand was so universal, the excitement so great, that an official notice of a reassuring character was actually issued. The government, announced an official organ, had in no way interfered with the investigation; that this was evident, the present position of the inquiry, now without doubt near a close, sufficiently proved. With regard, however, to Sendlingen's dismissal there was some "misunderstanding" in question. As so often before, in the case of the like oracular utterances from a similar source, everybody was now asking what this really meant. Berger thought he had hit the mark and exultingly said to his friend: "Hurrah! they have now entirely lost their courage! They are only temporising so as not to have to admit that public opinion has made an impression upon them." Sendlingen shrugged his shoulders. "It is all one to me, George," he said. "Now--that I can understand," replied Berger warmly. "In a few months you will speak differently! When do you go to Vienna?" Sendlingen reflected. "On the seventeenth I should say," he at length replied hesitatingly. "That is to say if Dernegg and I can really dismiss the workmen on the sixteenth as we hope to do." This hope was realised; on the 16th February 1852, the workmen were released from prison. Their first step related to Sendlingen: in the name of all, Johannes Novyrok made a speech of thanks of which this was the peroration: "We know well what we ought to wish you in return for all you have done for us: good-luck and happiness for you and for all whom you love! But mere good wishes won't help you, and we can do nothing for you, although every man of us would willingly shed his blood for your sake, and as to praying, my Lord, it is much the same thing--you may remember, perhaps, what I have already said to you on the subject. And so we can only say: think of us when you are in affliction of mind and you will certainly be cheered! You can say to yourself: 'I have lifted these people out of their misfortune and lessened their burden as much as I could,'--and you will breathe again. For I believe this is the best consolation that any man can have on this poor earth. God bless you! for you are noble and good, and what you do is well done, and sin and evil are far from you. A thousand thanks, my Lord. Farewell!" "Farewell!" murmured Sendlingen, his voice choking as he turned away. ... On the next day, the 17th February, Sendlingen should have started by the morning train to Vienna; he had solemnly promised Berger to do so the evening before. The latter, therefore, was much alarmed when he accidentally heard, in the course of the afternoon, that Sendlingen was still in Chambers. He hastened to him. "Why have you again put off going?" he asked impetuously. Sendlingen had turned pale. "I have not been able to bring myself to it," he answered softly. "And you know what is at stake!" cried Berger in great excitement, wiping the cold sweat from his forehead. "Victor, this is cowardice!" "It is not," he replied as gently as before, but with the greatest determination. "If I had been a coward, I would long since have had the audience." Berger looked at him in astonishment. "I do not understand you," he said. "It may be a sophism by which you are trying to lull your conscience, but it is my duty to rouse you. O Victor!" he continued with passionate grief, "you can yourself imagine what it costs me to speak to you in this way. But I have no option." Sendlingen was silent. "I will talk about it later," he said. "Let me first tell you a piece of news that will interest you. I have received a letter from the Minister this morning.... You were right about their 'courage.'" He handed the letter to his friend. "The Minister reminds me that it is my duty, in consequence of the appointment made last November, to be in Pfalicz on the morning of the 1st March to take over the conduct of the Higher Court there." "After all!" cried Berger. "And how polite! Do you see now that we liberals and our newspapers are some good? The Minister has no other motive for beating a retreat." "Perhaps this letter, which came at the same time, may throw some light on it," observed Sendlingen taking up a letter as yet unopened. "It is from my brother-in-law. Count Karolberg!" He opened it and glanced at the first few lines. "True!" he exclaimed. "Just listen." "You do not deserve your good fortune," he read, "and I myself was fully persuaded that you were lost. But it seems that the Minister talked to us more sharply than he thought, and that from the first he meant nothing serious. That he kept you rather long in suspense, proved to be only a slight revenge which was perhaps permissible. He meant no harm; I feel myself in duty bound to say this to his credit." "And your brother-in-law is a clever man," cried Berger, "and himself a Judge! Does he not understand that this very explanation tells most of all against the Minister? Oh, I always said that it was another thoroughly Austrian----" A cry of pain interrupted him. "What is this?" cried Sendlingen horror-struck and gazing in deadly pallor at the letter. Berger took the letter out of his trembling hands, in the next instant he too changed colour. His eyes had lit upon the following passage. "When do you leave Bolosch? I hope that the last duty that you have to do in your office, will not affect your soft heart too much. Certainly it is always painful to order the execution of a woman, and especially such a young one, and perhaps you can leave the arrangements for the execution to your successor who fortunately is made of sterner stuff." The letter fell from Berger's hands. "O Victor----" he murmured. "Don't say a word," Sendlingen groaned; his voice sounded like a drowning man's. "No reproaches!--Do you want to drive me mad." Then he made a great effort over himself. "The warrant must have come already," he said, and he rang for the clerk and told him to bring all the papers that had arrived that day. The fatal document was really among them; it was a brief information to the Court at Bolosch stating that the Emperor had rejected the petition for pardon lodged by Counsel for the defence, and that he had confirmed the sentence of death. The execution, according to the custom then prevailing, was to be carried out in eight days. "I will not reproach you," said Berger after he had glanced through the few lines. "But now you must act. You must telegraph at once to the Imperial Chancellery and ask for an audience for the day after tomorrow, the nineteenth, and to-morrow you must start for Vienna!" "I will do so," said Sendlingen softly. "You _must_ do it!" cried Berger, "and I will see that you do. I will be back in the evening." When Berger returned at nightfall, Franz said to him in the lobby: "Thank God, we are going to Vienna after all!" and Sendlingen himself corroborated this. "I have already received an answer; the audience is granted for the nineteenth. I have struggled severely with myself," he then added, and continued half aloud, in an unsteady voice, as if he were talking to himself; "I am a greater coward than I thought. However fixed my resolve was, my courage failed me--and so I must go to Vienna." Berger asked no further questions, he was content with the promise. CHAPTER XII. The 18th February 1853, was a clear, sunny day. At midday the snow melted, the air was mild; there seemed a breath of spring on the country through which the train sped along, bearing the unhappy man to Vienna. But there was night in his heart, night before his eyes; he sat in the corner of his carriage with closed lids, and only when the train stopped, did he start up as from sleep, look out at the name of the station, and deeply sighing, fall back again into his melancholy brooding. Was the train too slow for him? There were moments when he wished for the wings of a storm to carry him to his destination, and that the time which separated him from the decisive moment might have the speed of a storm. And in the next breath, he again dreaded this moment, so that every second of the day which separated him from it, seemed like a refreshing gift of grace. Alas! he hardly knew himself what he should desire, what he should entreat, and one feeling only remained in his change of mood, despair remained and spread her dark shadow over his heart and brain. The train stopped again, this time at a larger station. There were many people on the platform, something extraordinary must have happened; they were crowding round the station-master who held a paper in his hand and appeared to be talking in the greatest excitement. The crowd only dispersed slowly as the train came in; lingeringly and in eager talk, the travellers approached the carriages. Sendlingen looked out; the guard went up to the station-master who offered him the paper; it must have been a telegram. The man read it, fell back a step turning pale and cried out: "Impossible!" upon which those standing around shrugged their shoulders. Sendlingen saw and heard all this; but it did not penetrate his consciousness. "Heldenberg," he said, murmuring the name of the station. "Two hours more." The train steamed off, up a hilly country and therefore with diminished speed. But to the unhappy man it was again going too swiftly--for each turn of the wheels was dragging him further away from his child, for a sight of whose white face of suffering, he was suddenly seized with a feverish longing, his poor child, that now needed him most of all. "Frightful!" he groaned aloud. His over-wrought imagination pictured how she had perhaps just received the news that she was to fall into the hangman's hands! It was possible that the sentence had passed through the Court of Records and been added to the rolls; some of the lawyers attached to the Courts might have read it, or some of the clerks--if one of them should tell the Governor, or the warders, if Victorine should accidentally hear or it! "Back!" he hissed, springing up. "I must go back." Fortunately he was alone, otherwise his fellow travellers would have thought him mad. And there was something of madness in his eyes as he seized his portmanteau from the rack, and grasped the handle of the door as if to open it and spring from the train. The guard was just going along the foot-board of the carriages, the engine whistled, the train slackened, and in the distance the roofs of a station were visible. The guard looked in astonishment at the livid, distorted features of the traveller; this look restored Sendlingen to his senses, and he sank back into his seat. "It is useless," he reflected. "I must go on to Vienna." The train pulled up, "Reichendorf! One minute's wait!" cried the guard. It was a small station, no one either got in or out; only an official in his red cap stood before the building. Nevertheless, the wait extended somewhat beyond the allotted time. The guards were engaged in eager conversation with the official. Sendlingen could at first hear every word. "There is no doubt about it!" said the official. "I arranged my apparatus so that I could hear it being telegraphed to Pfalicz and Bolosch. What a catastrophe." "And is the wound serious?" asked one of the guards. He was evidently a retired soldier, the old man's voice trembled as he put the question. "The accounts differ about that," was the answer. "Great Heavens! who would have thought such a thing possible in Austria!" "Oh! it can only have been an Italian!" cried the old soldier. "I was ten years there and know the treacherous brood!" Thus much Sendlingen heard, but without rightly understanding, without asking himself what it might mean. More than that, the sound of the voices was painful to him as it disturbed his train of thought; he drew up the window so as to hear no more. And now another picture presented itself to him as the train sped on, but it was no brighter or more consoling. He was standing before his Prince who had said to him: "It is frightful, I pity you, poor father, but I cannot help you! It is my duty to protect Justice without respect of persons; I confirmed the sentence of death not because I knew nothing of her father, and supposed him a man of poor origin, but because she was guilty, by her own confession and the Judges' verdict. Shall I pardon her now because she is the daughter of an influential man of rank, because she is your daughter? Is her guilt any the less for this, will this bring her child to life again? Can you expect this of me, you, who are yourself a Judge, bound by oath to judge both high and low with the same measure?" Thus had the Emperor spoken, and he had found no word to say against it--alas! no syllable of a word--and had gone home again. And it was a dark night--dark enough to conceal thieving and robbery or the blackest crime ever done by man--and he was creeping across the Court-yard at home; creeping towards the little door that opened into the prison. "Oh!" he groaned stretching out his hands as if to repel this vision, "not that!--not that!--And I am too cowardly to do it. I know--too cowardly! too cowardly!" Once more the train stopped, this time at a larger station. Sendlingen did not look out, otherwise he must have noticed that this was some extraordinary news that was flying through the land and filling all who heard it with horror. Pale and excited the crowd was thronging in the greatest confusion; all seemed to look upon what had happened as a common misfortune. Some were shouting, others staring as if paralyzed by fear, others again, the majority, were impatiently asking one another for fresh details. "It was a shot!" screamed an old gray-headed man in a trembling voice, above the rest, before he got into the train. "So the telegram to the prefect says." "A shot!" the word passed from mouth to mouth and some wept aloud.' "No!" cried another, "it was a stab from a dagger, the General himself told me so." Confused and unintelligible, the cries reached Sendlingen's ears till they were drowned by the rush of the wheels, and again nothing was to be heard save the noise of the rolling train. And again his over-wrought imagination presented another picture. The Emperor had heard his prayer and said: "I grant her her life, I will commute the punishment to imprisonment for life, for twenty years. More than this I dare not do; she would have died had she not been your daughter, but I dare not remit the punishment altogether, nor so far lessen it that she, a murderess, should suffer the same punishment as the daughter of a common man had she committed a serious theft." And to this too he had known of no answer, and had come home and had to tell his poor daughter that he had deceived her by lies. She had broken down under the blow, and had been taken with death in her heart to a criminal prison, and a few months later as he sat in his office and dignity at Pfalicz, the news was brought him that she had died. "Would this be justice?" cried a voice in his tortured breast. "Can I suffer this? No, no! it would be my most grievous crime, more grievous than any other." The train had reached the last station before Vienna, a suburb of the capital. Here the throng was so dense, the turmoil so great, that Sendlingen, in spite of his depression, started up and looked out. "Some great misfortune or other must have happened," he thought, as he saw the pale faces and excited gestures around him. But so great was the constraining force of the spell in which his own misery held his thoughts, that it never penetrated his consciousness so as to ask what had happened. He leant back in his corner, and of the Babel of voices outside only isolated, unintelligible sounds reached his ears. Here the people were no longer disputing with what weapon that deed had been done which filled them with such deep horror. "It was a stab from a dagger," they all said, "driven with full force into the neck." Their only dispute was as to the nationality of the malefactor. "It was a Hungarian!" cried some. "A Count. He did it out of revenge because his cousin was hanged." "That is a lie!" cried a man in Hungarian costume. "A Hungarian wouldn't do it--the Hungarians are brave--the Austrians are cowards--the blackguard was an Austrian, a Viennese!" "Oho!" cried the excited crowd, and in the same instant twenty fists were clenched at the speaker so that he began to retire. "A Lie! It was no Viennese! on the contrary, a Viennese came to the rescue!" "Yes, a Vienna citizen!" shouted others, "a butcher!" "Was not the assassin an Italian?" asked the guard of the train, and this was enough for ten others to yell: "It was a Milanese--naturally!--they are the worst of the lot!" while from another corner of the platform there was a general cry: "It was a Pole! a student! He belonged to a secret society and was chosen by lot!" Two Poles protested, the Hungarian and an Italian joined them; bad language flew all over the place; fists and sticks were raised; the police in vain tried to keep the peace. Then a smart little shoemaker's apprentice hit upon the magic word that quieted all. "It was a Bohemian!" he screeched, "a journeyman tailor from Pardubitz!" In a moment a hundred voices were re-echoing this. This cry alone penetrated the gloomy reflections in which Sendlingen was enshrouded, but he only thought for an instant: "Probably some particularly atrocious murder," and then continued the dark train of his thoughts.--Now he tried to rouse himself, to cheer himself by new hopes, and he strove hard to think the solution of which Berger had spoken, credible. He clung to it, he pictured the whole scene--it was the one comfort left to his unhappy mind. He chose the words by which he would move his Prince's heart, and as the unutterable misery of the last few months, the immeasurable torment of his present position once more rose before him, he was seized with pity for himself and his eyes moistened--assuredly! the Emperor, too, could not fail to be touched, he would hear him and grant him the life of his child. Not altogether, he could not possibly do that, but perhaps he would believe living words rather than dead documentary evidence and would see that the poor creature was deserving of a milder punishment. And when her term of punishment was over--oh! how gladly he would cast from him all the pomp and dignity of the world and journey with her into a foreign land where her past was not known--how he would sacrifice everything to establish her in a new life, in new happiness.... A consoling picture rose before him: a quiet, country seat, apart from the stream of the world, far, far away, in France or in Holland. Shady trees clustered around a small house and on the veranda there sat a young woman, still pale and with an expression of deep seriousness in her face, but her eyes were brighter already, and there was a look about her mouth as if it could learn to smile again. "Vienna." The train stopped; on the platform there was the same swaying, surging crowd as at the suburb, but it was much quieter for the police prevented all shouting and forming into groups. Sendlingen did not notice how very strongly the station was guarded. The consoling picture he had conjured up was still before his mind; like a somnambulist he pushed through the crowd and got into a cab. "To the Savage," he called to the driver; he gave the order mechanically, from force of habit, for he always stayed at this hotel. The shadows of the dusk had fallen upon the streets as the cab drove out of the station, the lamps' red glimmer was visible through the damp evening mist that had followed upon the sunny day. Sendlingen leant back in the cushions and closed his eyes to continue his dream; he did not notice what an unusual stir there was in the streets. It was as if the whole population was making its way to the heart of the city; the vehicles moved in long rows, the pedestrians streamed along in dense masses. There was no shouting, no loud word, but the murmur of the thousands, excitedly tramping along, was joined to a strange hollow buzz that floated unceasingly in the air, and grew stronger and stronger as the carriage neared the centre of the town. More and more police were visible, and at the Glacis there was even a battalion at attention, ready for attack at a moment's notice. Even this Sendlingen did not notice, it hardly entered his mind that the cab was driving much more slowly than usual. That picture of his brain was still before him and hope had visited his heart again. "Courage!" he whispered to himself. "One night more of this torment--and then she is saved! He is the only human being who can help us, and he will help us." His cab had at length made way through the crowd that poured in an ever denser throng across the Stefansplatz and up the Graben towards the Imperial Palace--and it was able to turn into the Kärtnerstrasse. It drew up before the hotel. The hall-porters darted out and helped Sendlingen to alight, the proprietor himself hurried forward and bowed low when he recognised him. "His Lordship, the Chief Justice!" he cried. "Rooms 7 and 8. What does your Lordship say to this calamity? It has quite dazed me!" "What has happened?" asked Sendlingen. "Your Lordship does not know?" cried the landlord in amazement. "That is almost impossible! A journey-man tailor from Hungary, Johann Libényi, attempted His Majesty's life to-day at the Glacis. The dagger of the miscreant struck the Emperor in the neck. His Majesty is severely wounded, if it had not been for the presence of mind of the butcher, Ettenreich----" He stopped abruptly, "What is the matter?" he cried darting towards Sendlingen. Sendlingen tottered, and but for his help would have fallen to the ground. CHAPTER XIII. On the evening of the next day Count Karolberg, Sendlingen's brother-in-law, entered his room at the hotel. "Well, here you are at last!" he cried, still in the door-way. "Is this the way to go on after a bad attack of the heart on the evening before? Three times to-day have I tried to get hold of you, the first time at nine in the morning and you had already gone out." "Thank you very much!" replied Sendlingen. "My anxiety for authentic news about the Emperor's condition, drove me out of doors betimes, and so I went to the Imperial Chancellery as early as was seemly. But I only learnt what is in all the papers: that there was no danger of his life, but that he would need quite three weeks of absolute rest to bring about his complete recovery. Meanwhile the Cabinet is to see to all current affairs: the sovereign authority of the Emperor is suspended, and none of the princes of the blood are to act as Regent during the illness." "But you surely did not inquire about that?" cried Count Karolberg in astonishment. "That goes without saying." "Goes without saying!" muttered Sendlingen, and for a moment his self-command left him and his features became so listless and gloomy that his brother-in-law looked at him much concerned. "Victor!" he said, "you are really ill! You must see Oppolzer to-morrow." "I cannot. I must go back to Bolosch to-night. I require two days at least, to arrange the surrender of matters to my successor. But then I shall come back here at once." "Good! You are going to spend the week before entering on your new position here; the Minister of Justice has just told me. It was very prudent of you to visit him at once." "It was only fitting that I should," said Sendlingen. Alas! not from any motives of fitness or prudence had he gone to the Minister of Justice; it was despair that drove him there after the information he got at the Chancellery, a remnant of a hope that by his help, he might at least attain the postponement of the execution till the Emperor was better again. Not until he was in the Minister's ante-room, and had already been announced, did he recover his senses and recognise that the Minister could as little command a postponement as he himself, and so he kept silence. "He was very friendly to me!" he added aloud. "He is completely reconciled to you," Count Karolberg eagerly corroborated. "He spoke to me of your ill-health with the sincerest sympathy, and told me that you had hinted at not accepting the post at Pfalicz but contemplated retiring. I hope that is far from being your resolve! If you require a lengthy cure somewhere in the South, leave of absence would be sufficient. How could you have the heart to renounce a career that smiles upon you as yours does?" "Of, course," replied Sendlingen, "I shall consider the subject thoroughly." He then asked to be excused for a minute in order to write a telegram to Bolosch. He sat down at the writing-table. He found the few words needed hard to choose. He crossed them out and altered them again and again--it was the first lie that that hand had ever set down. At length he had finished. The telegram read as follows: "George Berger, Bolosch. End desired as good as attained. Have procured postponement till recovery of decisive arbiter. Return to-morrow comforted. Victor." He then drove with Count Karolberg to his house and spent the evening there in the circle of his relations. He was quiet and cheerful at he used to be, and when he took his leave of the lady of the house to go to the station, he jokingly invited himself to dinner on the 22d of February. The weather had completely changed, since the morning heavy snow had fallen: the Bolosch train had to wait a long time at the next station till the snow-ploughs had cleared the line, and it was not till late next morning that it reached its destination. Sendlingen was deeply moved that, notwithstanding, the first face he saw on getting out of the train, was that of his faithful friend. And at the same time it frightened him: for how could he look him in the face? But in his impetuous joy, Berger did not observe how Sendlingen shrank at his gaze. "At last!" he cried, embracing him, and with moistened eyes, he pressed his hand, incapable of uttering a word. "Thank you!" said Sendlingen in an uncertain voice. "It--it came upon you as a surprise?" "You may imagine that!" cried Berger. "Soon after your departure, I heard the news of the attempt on the Emperor's life. I thought all was lost and was about to hurry to you when your telegram came. And then, picture my delight! I sent for Franz--the old man was mad with joy!" They had come out to the front of the station and had got into Berger's sleigh. "To my house!" he called to the driver! "What are you thinking of?" asked Sendlingen. "You forget that you have no longer a habitable home!" cried Berger. "There is such a veritable hurly-burly at the residence, that even Franz hardly knows his way about--where do you mean to stay?" "At the Hofmann Hotel," replied Sendlingen. "I have already commissioned Franz to take rooms there. It is impossible for me to stay with you, George. Please do not press me. I cannot do it." Berger looked at him astonished. "But why not? And how tragically it affects you? To the Hofmann Hotel!" he now ordered the driver. "But now tell me everything," he begged, when the sleigh had altered its direction. "Who granted you the postponement?" "The Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian," replied Sendlingen quickly, "the Emperor's eldest brother. I had an interview with him yesterday. The order to Werner to postpone the execution, should be here by the day after to-morrow. For my own part, I shall stay in Vienna until the Emperor has recovered. The Archduke himself could not give a final decision." "Once more my heartiest congratulations!" cried Berger. "I will faithfully watch over Victorine till you return. And now as to other things. Do you know whom this concerns?" He pointed to some bundles of fir-branches that were being unloaded at several houses. Here and there, too, some black and yellow, or black, red and yellow flags were being hung out. "You, Victor. The whole of Bolosch is preparing itself for to-morrow, it will be such a fête as the town has not seen for a long time. The Committee has done nothing either about the decorations or the illuminations. Both are spontaneous, and done without any preconcerted arrangement." "This must not take place!" cried Sendlingen impatiently. "I cannot allow it! It would rend my heart!" "I understand you," said Berger. "But in for a penny etc. Besides your heart may be easier now, than at the time you agreed to accept the torch-light procession and the banquet. Do not spoil these good people's pleasure, they have honorably earned your countenance. Every third man in Bolosch is inconsolable to-day because there are no more tickets left for the banquet, although we have hired the biggest room in the place, the one in the town-hall. The only compensation that we could offer them, was the modest pleasure of carrying a torch in your honour and at the same time burning a few holes in their Sunday clothes. Notwithstanding, torches have since yesterday become the subject of some very swindling jobbery." In this manner he gossiped away cheerfully until the sleigh drew up at the hotel. Herr Hofmann, the landlord, was almost speechless with pleasure. "What an honour," stammered the fat man, his broad features colouring a sort of purple-red. "Your Lordship is going to receive the procession on my balcony?" "Yes indeed," sighed Berger, "and it is I who got you this honour!" He drove away, promising to send Franz who was waiting at his house. After a short interval Franz appeared at the hotel; his face beamed as he entered his master's room, and a few minutes later, when he came out again, it was pale and distorted and his eyes seemed blinded; the old man was reeling like a drunkard as he went back to Berger's house to fetch the trunks to the hotel. Without making good his lost night's rest, Sendlingen betook himself to his Chambers. Herr von Werner was already waiting for him; they at once went to their task and began with the business of the Civil Court. It was not difficult work, but it consumed much time, especially as Werner in accordance with his usual custom would not dispatch the most insignificant thing by word of mouth. Seldom can any mortal have written his signature with the same pleasure as he to-day signed: "von Werner, Chief Justice." Sendlingen held out patiently, without a sign of discomposure, "like a lamb for the sacrifice" thought Baron Dernegg who was assisting with the transfer. They only interrupted their work to take a scanty meal in Chambers; twice, moreover, Franz sent for his master to make a brief communication. At length, about ten at night, the work was done. For the next day, when the affairs of the Criminal Court were to be disposed of, Werner promised to be more brief. "You had better, if you value your life," cried Dernegg laughing. "The Citizens of Bolosch won't be made fools of. Woe to you if you don't release the hero of to-morrow's fête in good time!" Sendlingen went to Berger who had now been waiting for him several hours with increasing impatience. "I shall never forgive Herr von Werner this!" he swore as they sat down to their belated meal. "And it is the last evening in which I shall have you to myself! Franz told me that you were going to Vienna by the express at four in the morning, Why will you not take a proper rest after the excitement of the fête? You had better go the day after to-morrow by the midday train." "I cannot," replied Sendlingen. "The Minister of Justice has asked me to attend an important conference the day after to-morrow, and therefore I am even thinking of going by the mail-train to-morrow. It starts shortly after midnight and----" "That is quite impossible!" interrupted Berger. "Just consider, the procession takes place between eight and nine, the banquet begins at ten, it will be eleven before the first speeches are made--then you are to reply in all speed, rush out, hurry to the hotel, change your clothes, fly to the station----Why, it is quite impossible, and the people would be justly offended if you fled from the feast in an hour's time as if it were a torment!" "And so it is!" cried Sendlingen. "When you consider what my feelings are likely to be at leaving Bolosch, then you will certainly not try to stop me, but will rather help me, so that the torment be not too long drawn out." Berger shrugged his shoulders. "You always get your own way!" he said. "But it is not right to offend the people and then victimise yourself all night in a train that stops at even the smallest stations." Then they talked of the political bearings, of the consequences, which the crime of the 18th February, the act of a half-witted creature, might have on the freedom of Austria. Victorine's name was not mentioned by either of them this time. Sendlingen never closed his eyes all that night, although Herr Hofmann had personally selected for him the best pillows in the hotel. It was a dark, wild night; the snow alone gave a faint glimmer. An icy northeast wind whistled its wild song through the streets, fit accompaniment to the thoughts of the sleepless man. Towards eight in the morning--it had just become daylight--he heard the sound of military music; the band was playing a buoyant march. At the same time there was a knock at his door and Franz entered. The old man was completely broken down. "We must dress," he said. "The band of the Jägers and the choral society are about to serenade. Besides I suppose we have not slept!" "Nor you either, Franz?" "What does that matter! But we will not survive it!" he groaned. "Oh! that this day, that this night, were already past." "It must be, Franz." "Yes, it must be!" The band came nearer and nearer. At the same time the footsteps, the laughter and shouts of a large crowd were audible. The old man listened. "That's the Radetzky March!" he said. "Ah! how merrily they are piping to our sorrow." The procession had reached the hotel. "Three cheers for Sendlingen!" cried a stentorian voice. The band struck up a flourish and from hundreds and hundreds of throats came the resounding shout: "Hip, hip, Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!" Then the band played a short overture and the fingers followed with a chorus. Meanwhile Sendlingen had finished dressing; he went into the adjoining room, and, after the song was finished and the cheering had begun again, he opened a window and bowed his thanks. At his appearance the shouts were louder and louder; like the voice of a storm they rose again and again: "Hurrah for Sendlingen! Hurrah! Hurrah!" and mingling with them was the cry of the Czech workmen: "Slava--Na zdar!" All the windows in the street were open; the women waved their handkerchiefs, the men their hats; as far as the eye could see, bright flags were floating before the snow-covered houses, and decorations of fir were conspicuous in all the windows and balconies. The unhappy man stared in stupefaction at the scene beneath him, then a burning crimson flushed his pale face and he raised his hand as if to expostulate. The crowd put another interpretation on the sign and thought that he wanted to make a speech. "Silence," shouted a hundred voices together and there was a general hush. But Sendlingen quickly withdrew, while the cheering broke forth afresh. "My hat!" he cried to Franz. He wanted to escape to the Courts by the back door of the hotel. But it was too late; the door of the room opened, and the Committee entered and presented the address of the inhabitants of Bolosch. Then the mayor and town-council appeared bringing the greatest distinction that had ever been conferred on a citizen of Bolosch--not only the freedom of the city, but the resolution of the town-council to change the name of Cross Street forthwith into Sendlingen Street. Various other deputations followed: the last was that of the workmen. Their leader was Johannes Novyrok; he presented as a gift, according to a Slavonic custom, a loaf of bread and a plated salt-cellar, adding: "Look at that salt-cellar, my Lord! If you imagine that it is silver you will be much mistaken, it is only very thinly plated and cost no more than four gulden, forty kreutzer, and I must candidly say that the dealer has very likely swindled us out of a few groschen in the transaction; for what do we understand of such baubles? Well, four gulden and forty kreutzer, besides fifteen kreutzer for the bread and five kreutzer for the salt, make altogether five gulden of the realm. Now you will perhaps think to yourself, my Lord: Are these men mad that they dare offer _me_ such a trifling gift--but to that I answer: Five gulden are three hundred kreutzer of the realm, and these three hundred kreutzer were collected in this way: three hundred workmen of this town after receiving their wages last Saturday, each subscribed one kreutzer to give you a bit of pleasure. And now that you know this, you will certainly honour their trifling gift. We beg you to keep this salt-cellar on your table, so that your heart may be always rejoiced by the gift of poor men whose benefactor you have been." In the Law Courts, too, a solemn ovation was awaiting him. Two Judges received him at the entrance and conducted him to the hall of the Senate, where all the members of the Court were gathered. Werner handed him their parting-gift: a water-colour painting of the Courts of Justice, and an album with the photographs of all connected with them. "To the model of every judicial virtue," was stamped on it in gold letters. Then Dernegg stepped forward. A number of the Court officials had clubbed together to adorn the walls with Sendlingen's portrait. Dernegg made a sign and the curtain was withdrawn from the picture. "Not only to honour you," he continued turning to Sendlingen, "have we placed this picture here, but because we desire that your portrait should look down upon us to admonish and encourage us, whenever we are assembled here in solemn deliberation. It was here that four months ago you gave utterance to a sentiment that, to me, will always be more significant of your character than anything I ever heard you say. We were discussing the condemnation of an unfortunate government clerk. 'I have never been,' you said on that occasion, 'a blind adherent of the maxim Fiat justitia et pereat mundum--but at least it must so far be considered sacred, as binding each of us Judges to act according to law and duty, even if our hearts should break in doing so.' Such things are easily said, but hard to do. Fate, however, had decreed that you were, since then, to give a proof that this conviction had indeed been the loadstar of your life. Who should know that better than I, your colleague in those sorrowful days. You never hesitated, even when all that the heart of man may cling to, was at stake in your life." He had intended to go into this at greater length, but he came to a speedy conclusion when he saw how pale Sendlingen had turned. "Very likely his heart is troubling him again," he thought. But the attack seemed to pass quickly. Certainly Sendlingen only replied in a very few words, but he went to work again with Werner zealously. The three men--Dernegg was assisting to-day as well--betook themselves to the prison. In the Governor's office, the register of prisoners was gone through. Werner started when he saw the list of the sick. "So many?" he cried. "Our doctor would be more suited to a philanthropic institute than here. Here, for instance, I read: 'Victorine Lippert. Since the 9th November, 1852.' Why that must be the child-murderess, that impertinent person who made such a scene at the trial. And here it says further: 'Convalescent since the middle of December, but must remain in the infirmary till her complete recovery on account of grave general debility.' This person has been well for two months, and is still treated as if she were ill! Isn't that unjustifiable?" Sendlingen made no reply; he was holding one of the lists close to his eyes, so that his face was not visible. Dernegg, however, answered: "Perhaps the contrary would be unjustifiable. The doctor knows the case, we don't. He is a conscientious man." "Certainly," agreed Werner, "of course he is--but much too soft-hearted. Let us keep to this particular case. Well, this person has been tended as an invalid for more than two months. That adds an increase of more than twenty kreutzer daily to the public expenditure, altogether, since the middle of December, fourteen gulden of the realm. We should calculate, gentlemen, calculate. And is such a person worth so much money? Well, we can soon see for ourselves whether she is ill!" They began to go the rounds of the prison. That was soon done with, but in the first room of the Infirmary, Werner began a formal examination of the patients. Sendlingen went up to him. "Finish that tomorrow," he said sharply, in an undertone. "You are my successor, not my supervisor." Werner almost doubled up. "Excuse me--" he muttered in the greatest embarrassment. "You are right,--but I did not dream of offending you--you whom I honour so highly. Let us go." They went through the remainder of the rooms without stopping, until they came to the separate cells for female patients. Here, only two female warders kept guard. Werner looked through the list of the patients' names. "Why, Victorine Lippert is here," he said. "Actually in a separate cell. My Lord Chief Justice," he continued in an almost beseeching tone of voice, turning to Sendlingen, "this one case I should like at once to--I beg--it really consumes me with indignation--otherwise I must come over this afternoon." Sendlingen had turned away. "As you wish," he then muttered, and they entered her cell. Victorine had just sat down at her table and was reading the Bible. She looked up, a crimson flush overspread her face, trembling with a glad excitement she rose--the pardon must at length have arrived from Vienna, and the Judges were coming to announce it. The danger increased Sendlingen's strength. He had not been able to endure Dernegg's words of praise, but now that the questioning look of his child rested on him, now that his heart threatened to stand still from compassion and from terror of what the next moment might bring forth, not a muscle of his face moved. Perhaps it decisively affected his and Victorine's fate, that this unspeakable torture only lasted a few moments. "There we are!" Werner broke forth. "Rosy and healthy and out of bed. A nice sort of illness. But this shall be put a stop to to-day." With a low cry, her face turning white, Victorine staggered back. Werner did not hear her, he had already left the cell, the other two followed him. "It was on account of your request that I was so brief," said Werner in the corridor turning to Sendlingen. "Besides one glance is sufficient! Tell me yourself, my Lord, does she look as if she were ill?" "You must take the Doctor's opinion about that," said Dernegg. "That would be superfluous," said Sendlingen, his voice scarcely trembling. "The sentence of death is confirmed; she must be executed in a few days; the 25th February at the latest, as the sentence reached here on the seventeenth. I can only share your view," he continued turning to Werner, "she really looks healthy enough to be removed into the common prison. But what would be the good? We have not got any special 'black hole' in which condemned criminals spend the day before their execution, and one of these cells in the Infirmary is always used for the purpose." "You are right as usual," Werner warmly agreed. "She can remain in the cell for the two days: that will be the most practical thing to do. On the twenty-third, I will announce the sentence, on the twenty-fourth, the execution can take place." Sendlingen gave a deep sigh. "We have finished with the prisons now," he said, "let us go back to Chambers. Allow me to show you the nearest way." He beckoned to the Governor of the Prison to follow them. The cells of the Infirmary were in a short corridor that opened into the prison-yard. The Governor opened the door and they stepped out into the yard. "I have a key to this door," said Sendlingen to Werner, "as well as to that over there." He pointed to the little door in the wall which separated the prison-yard from the front part of the building. "I will hand both these keys over to you presently. My predecessor had this door made, so as to convince himself, from time to time, that the prison officials were doing their duty. But he forgot to tell me about this, and so the keys have been rusting unused in my official writing-table. I first heard of this accidentally a few months ago." "Certainly this means of access requires some consideration," observed Dernegg. "An attempt at escape would meet with very slight obstacles here. Anyone once in the Infirmary Corridor, would only need to break through two weak doors, the one in the yard and this one in the wall, and then get away scot free by the principal entrance which leads to the offices and private residence of the Chief Justice!" "What an idea!" laughed Werner. "In the first place: how would the fellow get out of the sick-room or out of his cell into the corridor of the female patients? He would first have to break through two or three doors. And if he should succeed in getting out into the yard, he would perhaps never notice the door, it is so hidden away; and if, groping about in the dark, he were to find it, he would not know where it led to, or whether there might not be a sentry on the other side with a loaded rifle. No, no, I think this arrangement is very ingenious, very ingenious, gentlemen, and I purpose often to make use of it." Sendlingen took no part in this talk; he had altogether become very taciturn and remained so, as they set to work again in Chambers. But the evening had long set in, the illumination of the town had begun, and the lights were burning in the windows of the room where they were working, before they had completed all the formalities. When all was finished, Sendlingen handed his successor the keys of which he had spoken. Franz was waiting outside with a carriage from the hotel. It was a nasty night; an icy wind was driving the snow-flakes before it. Notwithstanding Sendlingen wanted to proceed on foot. "My forehead burns," he complained. But Franz urged: "I have brought it on account of the crowds of people about. If we are recognised, we should never get along or escape from the cheering." So Sendlingen got in. This precaution proved to be well-founded. In spite of the stormy weather, the streets were densely packed with people slowly streaming hither and thither, and admiring the unwonted spectacle of the illuminations. The carriage could only proceed at a walking pace: Sendlingen buried himself deeper in its cushions so as not to be recognised. "The good people!" said old Franz who was sitting opposite him. "I have always known who it was I was serving, but how much we are loved and honoured in this town, was not manifest till to-night. But we are not looking at the illuminations, they are very beautiful." "And who is it they are there for!" cried Sendlingen burying his face in his hands. The carriage which had been going slower and slower, was now obliged to stop; it had come to the beginning of Cross Street which since the morning bore the superscription: "Sendlingen Street!" The inhabitants of this street in order to show themselves worthy of the honour, had illuminated more lavishly than anyone else, and as the Hofmann Hotel was situated here, the crowd had formed into such a dense mass at this point, that a passage through it was not to be thought of. Sendlingen had to quit the carriage and, half deafened with the cheers, he hurried through the ranks and breathed again when he reached the shelter of the hotel. There Berger, who had been impatiently awaiting him, met him. "Now quick into your dress clothes," he cried, "in ten minutes the procession will be here." Sendlingen had hardly finished dressing, when the sound of music and the shouts of the crowd, announced the approach of the procession. He was obliged to yield to his friend's pressure and go out on the balcony. There was a red glimmer from the direction of the river, and like a giant fire-serpent, the procession wound its way through the crowd. It stopped before the hotel, the torch-bearers formed themselves in line in the broad street. Unceasingly, endlessly, like the roar of wild waves, resounded the cheers. Berger's eyes sparkled. "This is a moment which few men live to see," he said. "Know this, and be glad of it! He who has won such love is, in spite of anything that could happen, one of the favoured of this earth!" Then they drove to the banquet at the town-hall. The large room was full to overflowing, and all agreed that this was the most brilliant assembly that had ever been gathered together within its walls, "But he deserves it," all said. "What has this man not suffered in the last few weeks through his fidelity to conviction! One can see it in his face--this agitation has broken his strength for years!" People therefore did not take it ill that his replies to the two toasts, "Our last honorary citizen" proposed by the Mayor, and the "Rock of Justice" proposed by the chairman of the committee, were very briefly put. He thanked them for the unmerited honour that had been done him, assured them that he would never forget their kindness, and, to be brief, made only the most commonplace remarks, without fulfilling either by his style or his thoughts, the expectation with which this speech had been looked forward to. Nevertheless, after he had finished, he was greeted with wild cheering, and the same thundering applause followed him as he left the hall towards eleven o'clock. Berger and Dernegg accompanied him to the hotel, then to the station. The first bell had already rung when they got there; so their farewell had to be brief. Silently, with moistened eyes, Sendlingen embraced his friend before he got into the train; Franz took his place in a second-class compartment of the same carriage. Both waved from the windows after the train had moved off and was gliding away, swifter and swifter, into the stormy night. * * * * * Next morning about nine o'clock, when Berger had just sat down at his writing-table, there was a violent knock at his door and a clerk of the Law Courts rushed in. "Dr. Berger!" he cried, breathlessly, "Herr von Werner urgently begs you to go to him at once. Victorine Lippert has escaped from the prison in the night." Berger turned deadly pale. "Escaped?" "Or been taken out!" continued the clerk. "Herr von Werner hopes you may be able to give some hint as to who could have interested themselves in the person." "Very well," muttered Berger. "I know little enough about the matter, but I will come at once." The clerk departed; Berger sat at his table a long time, staring before him, his head heavily sunk on his breast. "Unhappy wretch!" he thought. "Now I understand all!" Now he understood all: why Sendlingen had hesitated so long in taking the journey to Vienna, why he had taken Franz and Brigitta into his confidence, why he had spent the last two days at the hotel where he and his servant could make all preparations undisturbed, and why he had chosen the mail train which stopped at every station. The next station to Bolosch was not distant more than half an hour's drive by sleigh. "They must both have left the train there," he thought, "and hurried back in a sleigh that was waiting for them, then released Victorine and hastened away with her, perhaps to the first station where the express stops, perhaps in the opposite direction towards Pfalicz. At this moment, very likely, she is journeying under Franz's protection to some foreign country where Brigitta awaits her, somewhere in France, or England, or Italy, while he is hurrying to Vienna, so as not to miss his appointment with the Minister of Justice!" "Monstrous!" he groaned. And surely, the world had never before seen such a thing: such a crime committed by such a man, and on the very day when his fellow-citizens had done honour to him as the "Rock of Justice!" And such he would be for all time, in the eyes of all the world; it was not to be supposed that the very faintest suspicion would turn against him: he would go to Pfalicz and there continue to judge the crimes of others. The honest lawyer boiled over, he could no longer sit still but began to pace up and down excitedly. Bitter, grievous indignation filled his heart; the most sacred thing on earth had been sullied, Justice, and by a man whom of all men he had loved and honoured. And then this same love stirred in his heart again. He thought of last night, of the moment when he had stood by his friend, while the thousands surged below making the air ring with their cheers. Pity incontinently possessed his soul again. "What the poor wretch must have suffered at this moment!" he thought. "It is a marvel that he did not go mad. And what he must have suffered on his journey to Vienna, and long weeks before, when the resolve first took shape in him!" He bowed his head. "Judge not, that ye be not judged," cried a voice of admonition within him. His bitterness disappeared, and deep sorrow alone filled his heart: sin had bred other sins, crime, another crime and fresh remorse and despair. How to judge this deed, what was there to be said in condemnation, what in vindication of it: that deed of which he had once dreamed, it certainly was not; it was no great, liberating solution of these complications, but only an end of them, a hideous end! Certainly Victorine might have now suffered enough to have been granted freedom, and the opportunity of new life, and no less certainly would Sendlingen, honourable and loving justice in the extreme, carry in his conscience through life, the punishment for his crime--but Justice had been outraged, and this sacred thing would never receive the expiation that was its due. "A wrong should not be expiated by a crime!" Sendlingen had once said to him--but now he had done it himself. "Re-assure yourself," he had once exclaimed at a later date, "outraged Justice shall receive the expiation that is its due!" This would not, could not be--never--never! Berger roused himself and went forth on his bitter errand. When he reached the Courts of Justice, old Hoche, who had entered on his retirement some weeks ago, was just coming out. Berger was going to pass him with a brief salutation, but the old gentleman button-holed him. "What do you say to this?" he cried. "Monstrous, isn't it? I am heartily glad that the misfortune has not befallen Sendlingen! But do not imagine that I wish it to Herr von Werner. On the contrary, I have just given him a piece of advice--ha! ha! ha!--that should relieve him of his perplexity. You cross-examine Dr. Berger sharply, I said to him; that is the safest way of getting to know the secret of who took her out. For the way Dr. Berger interested himself in this person, is not to be described. Me, a Judge, he called a murderer for her sake, upon my word, a murderer. Ha! ha! ha! there you have it." Berger had turned pale. "This is not a subject of jest," he said, angrily. "Oh, my dear Dr. Berger!" replied the old man soothingly, "I have only advised Herr von Werner--and naturally without the slightest suspicion against you--to formally examine you on oath as a witness. For anyone connected with the prisoner is likely to know best. And besides: a record of evidence can never do any harm--_ut aliquid fecisse videatur_, you know. They will see in Vienna that Werner has taken a lot of trouble. Well, good-bye, my dear doctor, good-bye." He went. Berger strode up the steps. His face was troubled and a sudden terror shook his limbs. He had never thought of that. Supposing he should now be examined on oath? Could he then say: 'I have no suspicion who could have helped her?' Could he be guilty of perjury to save them both? "May God help them then," he hissed, "for I cannot." He entered the corridor that led to the Chief Justice's Chambers. The examination of the prison officials had just been concluded, but a few warders were standing about and attentively listening to the crafty Höbinger's explanation of this extraordinary case. "Favouritism!" Berger heard him say as he went by, "her lover, the young Count, has got her out." The two female warders of the Infirmary cells were there too, sobbing. Berger entered the Chief Justice's Chambers. Baron Dernegg and the Governor of the prison were with Werner. At a side-table sat a clerk; a crucifix and two unlighted candles were beside him. "At last!" cried Werner. "I begged you so particularly to come at once. There is not a moment to be lost. Light the candles!" he called to the clerk. "But that may be quite useless," cried Dernegg. "Do you know anything about the matter?" he then asked Berger. "No!" The sound came hoarsely, almost unintelligibly, from his stifled breast. Werner stood irresolute. "But Dr. Berger was her Counsel," he said, "and the authorities in Vienna----" "Must see that you have taken trouble," supplemented Dernegg. "They will hardly see this from documents with nothing in them. We have more important things to do now: the escape was discovered three hours ago, and the description of her appearance has not yet been drawn up and telegraphed to Vienna and the frontier stations." Werner still looked irresolutely at the lighted candles for a few seconds: to Berger they seemed an eternity of bitter anguish such as his conscience had never endured before. "Put out the candles! Come, the description of her appearance!" He seized the papers relating to the trial. "Please help me!" he said turning to Dernegg. "My head is swimming! O God! that I should have lived to see this day!" While the clerks were writing at the dictation of the two judges, Berger turned to the Governor and asked him how the escape had been effected. "It is like magic!" he replied. "When one of the female warders was taking her breakfast to her this morning, she found the door merely latched and the cell empty. The lock must have been opened from the inside. Her course can be plainly traced: she escaped through the yard; the locks of all the doors have been forced from inside by a file used by someone with great strength. This is the first riddle. Such a thing could hardly be done by the hand of the strongest man; it is quite impossible that Victorine Lippert had sufficient strength! The doctor vouches for it, and for the matter of that you knew her yourself, Dr. Berger." Berger shrugged his shoulders and the Governor continued: "You see the theory of external assistance forces itself imperatively upon us, and yet it is not tenable. The help cannot have come from outside, as all the locks were forced on the inside. And in the prison she can likewise have received no assistance. There is not one of the warders capable of such a crime, besides there is only one door between the general prison and the corridor of the female patients, and that was locked and remained locked. Since any external help is not to be thought of, we are obliged, difficult as it is, to credit Victorine Lippert with sufficient strength. But there we are confronted with the second riddle: how did she come by the file? And in the face of such incomprehensibilities, it is a small thing that she should also have been aware of an exit that is known to few!" "Mysterious in every way!" said Berger. "Most extraordinary!" To him the rationale of the thing was plain enough: Master and servant had by means of the official keys or of duplicates which they had had made, penetrated the prison, and on their return had filed the locks. By this ruse, all suspicion of external help would be removed, and at the same time, as far as Sendlingen could do so, it would be averted from the prison officials. Meanwhile the two Judges had drawn up the description of the fugitive's appearance, and Dernegg renewed his advice to telegraph it abroad at once. Werner objected that this was "a new method" that he would not agree to. "Everything according to rule!" he said. "We will publish the description in the official paper, distribute it among the police, and send a copy to Vienna. It is inconceivable that the person has got out of the country; where would she get the money from? We will therefore not telegraph, and that is enough!" But after the old man had roused himself to this judgment of Solomon, his self-control deserted him altogether. "What a calamity!" he moaned. "What a beginning to my life as Chief Justice! But I am innocent! Alas! I shall, none the less, receive a reprimand from the Minister which I shall carry about me all my life, unless Sendlingen saves me. But my friend Sendlingen, that best of colleagues, will speak for me and save me. Excuse me, gentlemen--but I shall have no peace, until I have written and asked for his help!" He sat down to his writing-table, the others took their leave. The next morning Berger received a letter from Vienna, the handwriting of the address was known to him and, with trembling hands, he opened the envelope. This was the letter. "I know that you cannot forgive me and I do not ask you to do so. One favour only do I implore: do not give up hope that the time will one day come when I shall again be worthy of your regard. The first step to this I took yesterday: I have left the service of the State for ever, and I do not doubt that I shall have courage to take the second step, the step that will resolve all; when God will grant me the grace to do this, I know not. Pray with me that I may not have too long to wait. "Farewell, George, farewell for ever! "Victor." Berger stared for a long while at these lines, his lips trembled--he was very sore at heart. Then he drew a candle towards him, lit it, and held the letter in its flame until it had turned to ashes. "Farewell, thou best and purest of men," he whispered to himself, and a sudden tear ran down his cheek. CHAPTER XIV. Three years had passed, it was the summer of 1856. Bright and hot, the June sun shone upon the Valley of the Rhine ripening the vineyards that hung upon its rocky declivities. The boat steaming down the Valley from Mayence to the holy city of Cologne, had its sheltering awning carefully stretched over the deck, and all went merrily on board, merrily as ever. More beautiful landscapes there may be in the world, but none that make the heart more glad. And so thought two grave-looking men who had come aboard at Mayence that morning. They had come from Austria, and were going to London; they did not want to miss the opportunity of seeing the beautiful river, but at the beginning of the journey they made but a poor use of the favourable day. They sat there oppressed and scarcely looking up, consulting together about the weighty business that lay on their shoulders. But an hour later, when they got into Nassau, they yielded to the charm of the scenery, and as they glided by Rüdesheim, they began to consider whether, after all, the Rhine was not the proper place to drink Rhine-wine, and when they passed the Castle called the Pfalz at Caub, they first saw this venerable building through their spectacles, and then through the green-gold light of the brimming glasses they were holding to their eyes. These two men were Dr. George Berger of Bolosch and a fellow barrister from Vienna. They had a difficult task to perform in London. One of the largest iron-foundries in Austria, that at Bolosch, had got into difficulties, and an attempt to stave off bankruptcy had failed, less from the action of the creditors, than from the miserable red-tapism of the Chief Justice of Bolosch, Herr von Werner. The foundry, which employed thousands of men, would be utterly ruined if it did not succeed in obtaining foreign capital. With this object, these two representatives of the firm were making their way to England. On the Rhine, everybody forgets their cares and this was their good-fortune too. And so greatly had the lovely river, which both now saw for the first time, taken possession of their hearts, that they could not part company with it even at Cologne, where most people went ashore. They resolved to continue the journey by the river as far as Arnhem, and they paced up and down the now empty deck cheerfully talking in the cool of the evening. No mountains, no castles, were any longer reflected in the stream, but the look of its shores was still pleasant, and when they saw the light of dying day spread its rosy net over the broad and swiftly flowing waters, they did not repent their resolve, and extolled the day that had ended as beautiful as it had begun. The shades of evening fell, the banks of the river grew more and more flat and bare, factories became more and more plentiful, and behind Dusseldorf, they saw the red glare of countless blast-furnaces, brightly glowing in the dark. This sight reminded them of their task. "Who knows," sighed Berger's friend Dr. Moldenhauer, "how soon these fires at home may not be extinguished! And why? Because of the narrow-mindedness of one single man. Nothing in my life ever roused my indignation more than our dealings with your Chief Justice! What pedantry! what shortsightedness! Now his predecessor, Baron Sendlingen, was a different sort of man!" Berger sighed deeply. "That he was!" he replied. "The Werners stay, the Sendlingens go," continued Dr. Moldenhauer. "And they are allowed to go cheerfully, nay, even forced to go! At least it was generally said that, when Baron Sendlingen suddenly retired a few years ago, it was not on account of heart-disease, as officially reported, but because he had had a difference with the Minister of Justice. The regret at this was so great that His Excellency had to hear many a reproach." "Perhaps unjustly for once," said Berger, heavy at heart. "I don't think so," cried Moldenhauer. "Sendlingen certainly went away in deep dudgeon, otherwise he would not have renounced his pension and then left Austria for ever. Even his brother-in-law, Count Karolberg, does not know where he has gone. You were very intimate with him, do you know?" "No!" "Count Karolberg thinks he may have died suddenly in some of his travels abroad." "That too is possible," answered Berger shortly; he was anxious to drop the subject. But Moldenhauer stuck to his theme. "What a thousand pities it is!" he continued. "How great a lawyer he was, his last work, 'On Responsibility and Punishment in Child-murder,' which appeared anonymously some three years ago, most clearly shows--You know the book of course." "Yes," said Berger, "but I doubt whether it is by Sendlingen." This was an untruth, he had never doubted it. "It is attributed to other writers as well," replied Dr. Moldenhauer, "but his brother-in-law is convinced that it is by him. He says he recognised the style and also some of the thoughts, which Sendlingen explained to him in conversation. Whoever the author may be, he need not have concealed his identity. The work is the finest ever written on this subject and has made a great sensation. It is chiefly owing to its influence, that our new penal code so definitely emphasizes the question of unsoundness of mind in such crimes, and has so materially lessened the punishment for them." He talked for a long time of the excellencies of the work, but Berger hardly heard him, and was silent and absent-minded for the rest of the evening. When Moldenhauer retired to his cabin for the night, Berger still remained on deck; he was fascinated, he said, by this wondrous spectacle of the night. And indeed the aspect of the scene was strange enough and not without its charm. The moon-light lay in a faint glimmer on the stream that here, having almost poured forth its endless waters, was slowly flowing with a gentle murmur towards its grave, the vast sandy plain of the sea. On the level shores, the dim light showed the distant, dusky outlines of solitary high houses and windmills, and then again came blast-furnaces, smoking and flaming, denser and denser was the forest of them the further the boat glided on, and, here and there, where one stood close to the shore, it threw its blood-red reflex far on to the waters reaching almost to the boat, so that its lurid light and the faint lustre of the celestial luminary, seemed to be struggling for the mastery of it. The lonely passenger on the deck kept his eyes riveted on the scene, but his thoughts were far away. His recent conversation had powerfully stirred up the memory of his unhappy friend. Since that last letter he had received no line, no sign or token of any sort from him. Why? he asked himself. From mistrust? Impossible. From caution? That would be exaggerated; the writing on the envelope would not betray to any meddlesome person in what corner of the earth he had buried himself with his child. Besides he had no need to be apprehensive of any inquiry; no one knew of his child, Victorine Lippert's escape from prison had never been cleared up, the investigation had soon after been discontinued without result. The Governor of the Prison had been reprimanded for want of care in searching the cell, the little door in the wall had been bricked up, so that Herr von Werner had never been able to make use of the arrangement which he had thought so "ingenious"--those were the only consequences. Among the prison officials as among the lower classes, the opinion was sometimes expressed that it was Count Riesner-Graskowitz who had liberated his sweetheart, but this was not believed in higher circles; against Sendlingen, however, there was never the slightest breath of suspicion. Sendlingen himself must know this well enough, otherwise he would not have dared to let his book appear, that curious work in which every reader might perceive beneath the stiff, solid legal terminology, the beatings of a deeply-moved heart. He had not put his name to it, but he must have known that his name would rise to the lips of anyone who had carefully read his earlier writings. If he had not feared this, he might well have ventured upon a letter. If he was none the less silent, it must be because he preferred to be silent. Had he, perhaps, thought Berger, not had the courage to take that second step, had he perhaps renounced the intention and was now ashamed to confess it? That would be superfluous anxiety indeed. Is there a man in the wide world, who would have the heart to blame him for this? Or was he silent because he could speak no more? The thought had never entered his head before; now in this lonely hour of night it overmastered him. Of course, his brother-in-law was right, he had died a sudden death and now slept his last sleep somewhere in a strange land and under a strange name. And if that were so, would it be cause for complaint? Would not Death have been a deliverer here? Softly murmuring, the waters of the river glided on, not a sound came from its banks; in deep and solemn stillness, night lay upon the land and waters. The solitary figure on deck alone could find no rest, and the early dawn was trembling in the East over the distant hills of Guelderland, ere he at length went in search of sleep. He had scarcely rested a couple of hours when the steward knocked at his cabin-door--the passengers were to come on deck, the boat was approaching Lobith, on the Dutch frontier, where the luggage had to be examined. The two travellers answered to the call. The steamer was already nearing the shore by the landing stage of the village of which the custom-house seemed the only inhabitable building. The Dutch Customs officers in their curious uniforms came on deck. The were speedily finished with the luggage of the two lawyers, as also with that of the few other passengers. On the other hand four mighty trunks, which the Captain had with him, gave them much trouble. They were full throughout of things liable to duty: new clothes, linen, lace and articles of luxury. They required troublesome measuring, weighing and calculation. Half an hour had passed, and scarcely the half had been gone through. "We shall miss the train at Arnhem," said Berger turning impatiently to the Captain. "We must be in London to-morrow, you are responsible for the delay." "I shall make up the time by putting on steam," he reassuringly said in his broad Cologne dialect. "Excuse me, Sir, but I did not imagine that women's finery would take up so much time." "You are getting a trousseau for a daughter, I suppose." "God forbid! Thank Heaven, I am unmarried. I have, out of pure goodnature, brought these things for someone else from Cologne and undertaken to pay the duty for him. It is the most convenient thing to him, though certainly not to me. But what would one not do for a compatriot. He is a Herr von Tessenau." "Tessenau?" The name seemed familiar to Berger, but he could not remember where he had heard or read it. "Yes, that is his name," said the captain. "He comes from Bavaria, and is said to have been in the diplomatic service. He is now living with his daughter at Oosterdaal House near Huissen, the station before Arnhem. I know both of them well, they sometimes use my boat for the journey to Arnhem, and as they are such nice people, I could not refuse them this service. The wedding, which is to take place the day after to-morrow, would otherwise have had to be postponed--ask women and lovers." "So Fräulein von Tessenau is the happy bride?" "The daughter of the old gentleman, yes--but she is a 'Frau,' a young widow. Her name is von Tessenau, because she was married to a cousin. It seems that she lost her husband after a brief married life, for she is still very young, scarcely twenty-two. A beautiful, gentle lady and still looks quite girlish. But I must hurry up these easy-going Mynheers." He turned to the Customs officers and paid them the required duty. They left the steamer which now began to proceed at a much greater speed. Notwithstanding this, Moldenhauer was pacing up and down excitedly, now and then consulting timetables and pulling out his watch every five minutes. It was another cause that robbed Berger of calm. "If it should be they?" The thought returned to him however often he might say: "Nonsense! an old father and a young daughter--the conjunction is common enough--and I know nothing else about them. That I must often have heard the name Tessenau tells rather against the supposition--for Sendlingen would hardly have chosen the name of some Austrian family for his pseudonym!" Still his indefinite presentiment gave him no rest, and he at length went up to the captain! "I once," he began, "knew a family of von Tessenau, and would be very pleased if I were perhaps unexpectedly to come across them here. The old gentleman, you say, comes from Bavaria?" "Yes, you must certainly be a countryman of his?" "No. I am an Austrian." "Then the two dialects must be very much alike for you speak just like him. That he comes from Bavaria I know for certain. Herr Willem van der Weyden told me so quite recently, and he must surely know, as he is to become his son-in-law." "Who is the bridegroom?" "A capital fellow," replied the captain. "A man of magnificent build--no longer young, somewhere in the forties I should say, but stately, brave and capable--all who know him, praise him. He holds a high position in Batavia, he is manager of the Java Mines. Some ten months ago he came back to Europe, after a long absence, on a year's furlough: to find a wife, people say. None seemed to please him however. Then he came to Arnhem where his brother is settled, and in an excursion in the country about, he accidentally got to know the young Frau von Tessenau at Oosterdaal House, and fell in love with her. There seemed at first to be great obstacles in the way; at all events he was always very melancholy when he rode on my boat from Arnhem to Huissen. Well one day he was very happy, the betrothal was solemnized, and now the wedding is to come off. Yes," added the Captain pleasantly, "when one is everlastingly taking the same journey, one gets to know people by degrees and kills time by sharing their joys and sorrows." "And is Herr van der Weyden going back to Java again?" "Yes, in a month from now, when his furlough will be up. He is naturally going to take his young wife with him, and the old gentleman is going to join them too. He has no other relations. The father and daughter lived hitherto in great retirement with an old house-keeper and an equally old man-servant. But if you are interested in the family, come and look over when we get to Huissen. The old man-servant at least, will be at the landing-stage to receive the trunks, and perhaps Herr von Tessenau himself." "Do you know what the man-servant is called?" Berger's voice trembled at this question. "Franz is his name." The captain did not notice how pale Berger had become, how hastily he turned away. "No more room for doubt," he thought. But the doubt did rise again. That some details agreed, might only be a coincidence, and the name of the man-servant--such a common name--was not sufficient proof. Besides how much was against the supposition! It was inconceivable that Sendlingen should have deceived his future son-in-law and passed off Victorine as a widow! "It would be outrageous to impute such a thing to him!" he thought. With growing impatience, he looked out for the landing-stage, the steamboat had long since left the river and was steaming along the narrow Pannerden Canal. The monotonous, fruitful, thoroughly Dutch landscape extended far and wide; rich meadows on which cattle were pasturing; narrow canals, on which heavily laden boats drawn by horses on the banks, slowly made their way; on the horizon a few windmills lazily turned by their large sails. At length a few large, villa-like buildings came in sight. "That is Huissen," said the Captain. "We will see who is at the landing-stage." He produced a telescope. "Right, there is the man-servant," he said, handing Berger the telescope. "See if you know the man." Berger only held the glass to his eye for a second and then handed it back to the Captain. "No," he said, "I don't know him, it must be another family of von Tessenau." He went down to the cabin and stayed there, till the boat had got well beyond the landing-stage. It had been Franz. Berger had to stay in London a week before his task was done. He left the completion of the agreement to his colleague, and began his journey home. At first he intended to go by Dover and Calais. But at the station in London he was overcome by his feelings; he could not let his friend depart forever without seeing him again. He went back by Holland, and the next day was in Arnhem. Not until he was in the carriage which he had hired to take him to Oosterdaal, was he visited by scruples, the same sort of feeling which a week before had kept him from remaining on the deck of the steamer. Was it not indelicate and selfish to gratify his own longing at the price of deeply and painfully stirring up his friend's heart? Sendlingen did not wish to see him again, otherwise he would have written and told him of his whereabouts. And what would he not feel if he was so suddenly reminded of the fatality of his life, if his wounds were suddenly torn open again just as they were beginning to heal? And when Berger thought of Victorine, he altogether lost courage to continue the journey. Unfriendly,--nay it would be cruel, inhuman, to remind the newly-married girl of the misery of the past, and to plunge her in fatal embarrassment. The roof of the house was already visible in the distance above the tops of the trees, when these reflections overmastered Berger. "Stop, back to Arnhem!" he ordered the driver. But that could not be done at once; the horses would have to be fed first, explained the driver. The carriage proceeded still nearer the house, and stopped at a little friendly-looking inn opposite the entrance to the avenue of poplars which led up to the door. While the driver drove into the yard, the landlady suggested to Berger to take the refreshment he had ordered in front of the house. This, however, he declined and entered the inn-parlour. His remorse increased every minute, and he feared to be seen, if by chance one of the occupants of the house went by. Sighing deeply, he looked out of the window at the driver leisurely unharnessing his horses. The landlady, a young, plump, little woman, tried to console him by telling him he would not have to wait more than an hour. She spoke in broken German; she had been maid to the young German lady up at the house, she said, and had learnt the language there. They were kind, good people at Oosterdaal, the driver had told her that the gentleman was going to have driven there, why had he given up the idea? They would certainly be very glad to see a countryman again, even if he were only a slight acquaintance. No German had ever come to see them, not even at the wedding. The festivities had altogether been very quiet, but very nice. Had the gentry no relations in Germany then? "How can I tell you," replied Berger impatiently. "I don't know them." "Indeed?" she asked astonished. "Then I suppose you have come to buy the house?" Several people had been with that intention, she added, but Herr von Tessenau had already made it over to his son-in-law, and he to his brother, Herr Jan van der Weyden. In a fortnight they were all going to Batavia. The Housekeeper, Fräulein Brigitta, too, and the old German man-servant. "But won't you go up to the house after all?" she asked again. Before he could answer, however, she cried out: "There they come!" and flew to the window. A carriage went by at a leisurely trot. "Do come here," cried the landlady. Berger had retired deeper into the room, but he could still plainly see his friend. Sendlingen was looking fresher and stronger than when he saw him last; but his hair had the silver-white hue of old age, although he could hardly have reached the middle of the fifties. But in the young, blooming, happy woman at his side, Berger would scarcely have recognized his once unfortunate client, if he had met her under other circumstances. She was just laughingly bending forward and straightening the tie of her husband opposite her. The stately, fair-haired man smilingly submitted to the operation. "How happy they are!" cried the landlady. "But they deserve it. Why the carriage is stopping," she cried, bending out of the window. "What an honour, they are going to come in." Berger turned pale. But in the next instant he breathed again: the carriage drove on. "Oh, no!" cried the landlady, "only Franz has got down! Good day!" she cried to the old man as he went by. "A glass of wine!" "No," answered Franz. "I am only to tell you to come up to the house. But for the matter of that as I _am_ here----" Then Berger heard his footsteps approaching on the floor outside; the door was opened. "Well, a glass of----" he began, but the words died on his lips. Pale as death, he started back and stared at Berger as if he had seen a ghost. "It is I, Franz," said Berger, himself very pale. "Don't be afraid--I only want----" "You have come to warn us?" he exclaimed, trembling all over as he approached Berger. "It is all discovered, is it not?" "No!" replied Berger. "Why, what is there to discover?" He made a sign to draw Franz's attention to the landlady, who was inquisitively drinking in the scene. "I am glad to see you," he said meaningly. "I am going to continue my journey at once." "Excuse me, Marie," said Franz, turning to her, "but I have something to say to this gentleman. He is an old acquaintance." "After all!" she cried, and left the room shaking her head. "She will listen," whispered Berger. "Come here, Franz, and sit beside me." "Oh, how terrified I am," he replied in the same whisper. "So people suspect nothing? It would have been frightful if misfortune had come now, now, when everything is going so well. Certainly my fears were foolish; how should it be found out? We had arranged everything with such care: even the duplicate keys were not made at Bolosch, but at Dresden, where Brigitta was waiting for us." "Enough!" said Berger, checking him. "I don't wish to know anything about it. How has Baron Sendlingen been since?" "Bad enough at first!" replied Franz. "We did not eat, nor sleep, and we fell into a worse decline than at Bolosch--but it was perhaps less from the fear of discovery than from remorse. And yet we had only done, what had to be done--isn't that so, Dr. Berger?" Berger looked on the ground and was silent. Old Franz sighed deeply. "If even you--" he began, but he interrupted himself and continued his story. "Gradually we became calmer again. Fear vanished though remorse remained, but for this too there was a salve in seeing how the poor child blossomed again. Then we began to write a book. It deals with the punishment of--h'm. Dr. Berger----" "I know the work," said Berger. "Indeed? We did not put our name to it. Well, while we were working at the book, we forgot our own sorrow, and later on, after the work had appeared and all the newspapers were saying that it would have great influence, there were moments when we seemed happy again. Then came this business with the Dutchman, and we got as sad and despairing as ever. But we took courage and told the man everything; our real name, and that we were only called von Tessenau here----" "How did he come by this name?" asked Berger. "It sounds so familiar to me." "Probably because it is one of the many titles of the family. Tessenau was the name of an estate in Carinthia, which once belonged to the family. We were obliged to choose this name, because on settling here it was necessary to prove our identity to the police. Well, we confessed this to Herr Willem and also what the young lady's plight was----" Berger gave a sigh of relief. "We said to him: she is not called von Tessenau because she was married to a cousin, but because we adopted the name here with the proper formalities. She was never married, she was betrayed by a scoundrel. That we said no more, nothing of the deed that brought her to prison, nothing of the way she was released--that, Dr. Berger, is surely excusable." "Of course!" assented Berger. "And Herr van der Weyden?" "Acted bravely and magnanimously, because he is a brave and magnanimous man, God bless him! He made her happy, her and himself. And now at length we got peace of heart once more. We are going to Batavia. May it continue as heretofore!" "Amen!" said Berger deeply moved. "Farewell, Franz." "You are not going up to the house?" "No. Don't tell him of my visit till you are on the sea. And say to him that I will always think of him with love and respect. With _respect_, Franz, do not forget that!" He shook hands with the old servant, got into his carriage, and drove back to Arnhem. CHAPTER XV. Three weeks later, on a glowing hot August day, the Austrian Minister of Justice sat in his office, conferring with one of his subordinates, when an attendant brought him a card; the gentleman, he said, was waiting in the ante-room and would not be denied admittance. "Sendlingen!" read the Minister. "This is a surprise; it has not been known for years whether he was alive or dead. Excuse me," he said to his companion, "but I cannot very well keep him waiting." The official departed, Sendlingen was shown in. He was very pale; the expression of his features was gloomy, but resolved. The Minister rose and offered his hand with the friendliest smile. "Welcome to Vienna," he cried. "I hope that you are completely recovered, and are coming to me to offer your services to the State once more." "No, your Excellency," replied Sendlingen. "Forgive me, if I cannot take your hand. I will spare you having to regret it in the next instant. For I do not come to offer you my services as Judge, but to deliver myself into the hands of Justice. I am a criminal and desire to undergo the punishment due to me." The Minister turned pale and drew back: "The man is mad," he thought. The thought must have been legible in his face, for Sendlingen continued: "Do not be afraid, I am in my senses. I have indeed abused my office in a fashion so monstrous, that perhaps nothing like it has ever happened before. I released from prison, by means of official keys, a condemned woman, who was to have been executed the next day, and suggested, furthered, and carried out her flight to a foreign country. Her name was Victorine Lippert: the crime was done on the night of 21-22 February, 1853." "I remember the case," muttered the Minister. "She escaped in the most mysterious way. But you! Why should you have done this?" "A father saved his child: Victorine is my natural daughter." The Minister wiped the sweat from his forehead. "This is a frightful business." He once more searchingly looked at his uncomfortable visitor. "He certainly seems to be in his senses," he thought. "Allow me to tell you how every thing came about?" The Minister nodded and pointed to a chair. Sendlingen remained standing. He began to narrate. Clearly and quietly, in a hollow, monotonous voice, he told of his relations with Herminie Lippert, then how he had made the discovery in the lists of the Criminal Court, and of his struggles whether he should preside at the trial or not. "I had the strength to refuse," he continued. "My sense of duty conquered. Sentence of death was pronounced. It was--and perhaps you will believe me although you hear it at such a moment, from such a man--it was a judicial murder, such as could have been decreed by a Court of Justice alone. And therefore my first thought was: against this wrong, wrong alone can help. I sought out the prison keys, and for some hours was firmly resolved to release my daughter. But then my sense of duty--perhaps more strictly speaking my egoism--conquered. For I said to myself that I, constituted as I was, could not commit this crime without some day making atonement for it. I knew quite well even then, that an hour would come in my life, like the present, and I could not find it in my heart to end as a criminal. But my conscience cried: 'Then your child will die!' and so suicide seemed to me the only thing left. I was resolved to kill myself; whether I could not bring myself to it at the last moment, whether a chance saved me--I do not know: there is a veil cast over that hour that I have never since been able to pierce. I survived, I saw my daughter, and recovered my clearness of mind; the voice of nature had conquered. I now knew that it was highly probable that there was no means that could save us both, that the question was whether I should perish, or she, and I no longer doubted that it must be I. I was resolved to liberate her, and then to expiate my crime; but until extreme necessity compelled, I wanted to act according to law and justice. That I did so, my conduct proves when the Supreme Court ordered a fresh examination of the chief witness. Everything depended upon that; I made over this inquiry also to another--who assuredly did not bring the truth to light. The Supreme Court confirmed the sentence of death; it was pronounced upon me, not upon my child; that extreme necessity had now arrived, I now knew that I must become a criminal, and only waited for the result of the Counsel's petition for pardon, because the preparations for the act required time, and because I first wanted to save some men unjustly accused of political offences." "I remember, the workmen," said the Minister. He still seemed dazed, it cost him an effort to follow the unhappy man's train of thought. "One thing only I do not understand," he slowly said, passing his hand over his forehead. "Why did you not discover yourself to me, or why did you not appeal to the Emperor for pardon?" "For two reasons," replied Sendlingen. "I have all my life striven to execute Justice without respect of persons. It was ever a tormenting thought to me that the Aristocrat, the Plutocrat, often receives where the law alone should decide, favours that would never fall to the lot of the poor and humble. And therefore it was painful to me to lay claim to such a favour for myself." "You are indeed a man of rare sense of justice," cried the Minister. "And that such a fate should have, befallen you....." He paused. "Is tragic indeed," supplemented Sendlingen, his lips trembling. "Certainly it is---- But I will not make, myself out better than I am; there was another reason why I hesitated to appeal to the Emperor. What would have been the result, your Excellency? Commutation to penal servitude for life, or for twenty years. The mere announcement of this punishment would have so profoundly affected this weakly, broken-down girl, that she would scarcely have survived it, and if she had--a complete pardon could not have been attained for ten, for eight, in the most favourable case for five years, and she would not have lived to see it. I was persuaded of that, quite firmly persuaded, still," his voice became lower, "I too was only a human being. When I received the confirmation of the death-sentence by the Emperor, cowardice and selfishness got the better of me, I journeyed to Vienna--it was the 18th February." "The date of the attempt!" cried the Minister. "What a frightful coincidence! Thus does fate sport with the children of men." "So I thought at first!" replied Sendlingen. "But then I saw that that coincidence had not decided my fate: it was sealed from the first. By my whole character and by all that had happened. In this sense there is a Fate, in this sense what happens in the world _must_ happen, and my fate is only a proof of what takes place in millions of cases. I returned to Bolosch and liberated my daughter. How I succeeded, I am prepared to tell my Judges so far as my own share in the act is concerned. I had no accomplice among the prison officials. Your Excellency will believe me, although I can only call to witness my own word, the word of honour of a criminal!" "I believe you," said the Minister. "You took the girl abroad?" "Yes, and sought to make good my neglect. Fate was gracious to me, my daughter is cared for. And I may now do that which I was from the first resolved to do, although I did not know when the day would be vouchsafed me to dare it--I may present myself to you, the supreme guardian of Justice in this land, and say: 'Deliver me to my Judges!'" Sendlingen was silent; the Minister, too, at first could find no words. White as a ghost, he paced up and down the room. "But there can be no question of such a thing!" he cried at length. "For thousands of reasons! We are not barbarians!" "It can be and must be! I claim my right!" "But just consider!" cried the Minister, wringing his hands. "It would be the most fearful blow that the dignity of Justice could receive. A former Chief-Justice as a criminal in the dock! A man like you! Besides you deserve no punishment! When I consider what you have suffered, how all this has come about--good God, I should be a monster if I were not moved, if I did not say: if this man were perhaps really a criminal, he has already atoned for it a thousand times over." "Then you refuse me justice?" "It would be injustice! Go in peace, my Lord, and return to your daughter." "I cannot. I could not endure the pangs of my conscience! If you refuse to punish me, I shall openly accuse myself!" "Great Heavens! this only was wanting!" The Minister drew nearer to him. "I beseech you, let these things rest in peace! Do not bring upon that office of which you were so long an ornament, the worst blemish that could befal it. And your act would have still worse consequences: it would undermine the authority of the State. Consider the times in which we live--the Revolution is smouldering under its ashes." "I cannot help it, your Excellency. Do your duty voluntarily, and do not oblige me to compel you to it." The Minister looked at him: in his face there was the quiet of immovable resolve. "A fanatic," he thought, "what shall I do with him?" He walked about the room in a state of irresolution. "My Lord," he then began, "you would oblige the State to take defensive measures. Accuse yourself openly by a pamphlet published abroad, and I would give out that you were mad. I should be believed, you need not doubt." "I do doubt it," replied Sendlingen. "I should take care that there was no room left for any question as to my sanity. Once more, and for the last time, I ask your Excellency, to what Court am I to surrender myself?" Again the Minister for a long while paced helplessly up and down. At length a saving thought seemed to occur to him. "Be it so," he said. "Do what you cannot help doing; we, on the other hand, will do what our duty commands. You naturally want to conceal where your daughter is now living?" Sendlingen turned still paler and made no reply. "But we shall endeavor to find out, even if it should cost thousands, and if we should have to employ all the police in the world. We shall find your daughter and demand her extradition. There is no state that would refuse to deliver a legally condemned murderess! You must decide, my Lord, whether this is to happen." Sendlingen's face had grown deadly pale--a fit of shuddering shook his limbs. There was a long silence in the room, it endured perhaps five minutes. At length Sendlingen muttered: "I submit to your Excellency's will. May God forgive you what you have just done to me." The Minister gave a sigh of relief. "I will take that on my conscience," he said. "I restore the father to his child. Farewell, my Lord." Sendlingen did not take the proffered hand, he bowed silently and departed. * * * * * Two days later Dr. George Berger received a letter of Sendlingen's, dated from Trieste. It briefly informed his friend of the purport of his interview with the Minister of Justice, and concluded as follows: "It is denied me to expiate my crime: it is impossible to me, a criminal, to go unpunished through life; so I am going to meet death. When you read this, all will be over. Break the news to my daughter, who has already set out on her journey, as gently as possible; hide the truth from her, I shall help you by the manner in which I am doing the deed. And do not forget Franz, he is waiting for me at Cologne; I was only able to get quit of him under a pretext. "Farewell, thou good and faithful friend, and do not condemn me. You once said to me: there must be a solution of these complications, a liberating solution. I do not know if there was any other, any better than that which has come to pass. For see, my child has received her just due, and so too has Justice: with a higher price than that of his life, nobody can atone for a crime. And I--I have seen my child's happiness, I have honourably paid all my debts, and now I shall find peace forever--I too have received my due!... And now I may hope for your respect again! "Farewell! and thanks a thousand times! "Victor." Berger, deeply moved, had just finished reading this letter, when his clerk entered with the morning paper in his hand. "Have you read this, Sir?" he asked. "Baron Sendlingen----" He laid the paper before his chief and this was what was in it: "A telegram from Vienna brings us the sad news that Baron von Sendlingen, the retired Chief Justice and one of the most highly esteemed men in Austria, fell overboard while proceeding by the Lloyd steamer last night from Trieste to Venice. He was on deck late in the evening and has not been seen since; very likely, while leaning too far over the bulwarks, a sudden giddiness may have seized him so that he fell into the sea and disappeared. The idea of suicide cannot for personal reasons be entertained for a moment; the last person he spoke to, the captain of the steamer, testifies to the cheerful demeanour of the deceased. He leaves no family, but everyone who knew him will mourn him. "All honour to his memory!" "All honour to his memory!" muttered Berger, burying his face in his hands. THE END. 
38238	----	Transcriber's Note: Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal signs=. EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS POETRY AND THE DRAMA THE OLD YELLOW BOOK BEING A SUPPLEMENTARY VOLUME TO "THE RING AND THE BOOK" TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY CHARLES W. HODELL THIS IS NO. 503 OF _EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY_. THE PUBLISHERS WILL BE PLEASED TO SEND FREELY TO ALL APPLICANTS A LIST OF THE PUBLISHED AND PROJECTED VOLUMES, ARRANGED UNDER THE FOLLOWING SECTIONS: TRAVEL * SCIENCE * FICTION THEOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY HISTORY * CLASSICAL FOR YOUNG PEOPLE ESSAYS * ORATORY POETRY & DRAMA BIOGRAPHY REFERENCE ROMANCE IN FOUR STYLES OF BINDING: CLOTH, FLAT BACK, COLOURED TOP; LEATHER, ROUND CORNERS, GILT TOP; LIBRARY BINDING IN CLOTH, & QUARTER PIGSKIN LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. POETS ARE THE TRUMPETS WHICH SING TO BATTLE ... POETS ARE THE UNACKNOWLEDGED LEGISLATORS OF THE WORLD SHELLEY THE OLD YELLOW BOOK: Source of Robert Browning's THE RING & THE BOOK London & Toronto J. M. DENT & SONS LTD. NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & CO FIRST ISSUE OF THIS EDITION 1911 REPRINTED 1917 PUBLISHERS' NOTE Some years before his death Browning promised to leave the _Old Yellow Book_, together with other books and manuscripts, to Balliol College, Oxford, and his son carried out the promise soon after the poet's decease. The Carnegie Institution of Washington, D. C., has reproduced the entire book in photo-facsimile, with translation and editing by Charles W. Hodell. The Publishers gratefully acknowledge the kindness and generosity of the Institution in allowing the translation of the _Yellow Book_ to be reproduced in the present volume. They have also to acknowledge their indebtedness to Professor Hodell for the courtesy he has shown, and the great help he has given in editing these volumes. Hitherto the work has been practically inaccessible to British readers, and in its new dress it is hoped it will be found invaluable in interpreting the greatest work of Robert Browning. INTRODUCTION The _Old Yellow Book_ is a soiled and bloody page from the criminal annals of Rome two centuries ago, saved apparently by mere chance for the one great artist of modern literature who could best use it, and who has raised this record of a forgotten crime to a permanent place in that ideal world of man's creation where Caponsacchi and Pompilia have joined the company of Paolo and Francesca, of the Red Cross Knight, of Imogen, of Marguerite and Faust, and of Don Quixote. One June day of 1860, Robert Browning passed from the Casa Guidi home to enjoy the busy life of Florence. There, "pushed by the hand ever above my shoulder," he entered the Piazza of San Lorenzo: crammed with booths, Buzzing and blaze, noontide and market-time. He had brought home from such wanderings many a rare old tapestry, or picture, or carving from the long artistic past of the city. This day his eye caught the soiled, vellum-covered volume, crowded between its insignificant neighbours. "One glance at the lettered back," declares the poet, "and Stall! a lira made it mine." All the way home and all day long, he pored over these pages, until by nightfall he had so mastered the facts of the case that the whole tragedy lay plain before his mind's eye. The book led him, and leads us, back to the morning of January 3, 1698, when all Rome was astir with the sensation of a brutal assassination. The aged Comparini, cut to pieces in their own home in the very heart of Rome on the evening before by a band of assassins, were now exposed to the view of an excited mob of the curious and idle. Pompilia, desperately wounded, lay a-dying. A police captain and posse were in pursuit of the criminals, one of whom was a nobleman who had held office in the household of one of the great cardinals. Toward night the criminals were brought back to the city, and were followed through the streets to the prison doors by a great throng. Just seven weeks later and again Rome was throbbing with excitement. Unwonted crowds were pressing into the Piazza del Popolo, where gallows and scaffold had been prepared. At last, up the Corso filed the Brotherhood of Death with their black gowns and great cross, and behind them, in separate carts, the five criminals. In the midst of a sea of upturned faces Guido and his fellows met their end, and the curtain fell. The _Old Yellow Book_ is the record of the court procedure of those seven intervening weeks, and shows us the whole legal battle fought to save Guido, while Rome looked on with the fascinated interest which has always attended the great murder trials. It includes the lawyers' arguments for and against the accused, together with a part of the evidence brought into court, and some additional miscellaneous data on the case. All this had evidently been assembled by the Florentine lawyer, Cencini, to whom certain letters included are addressed. He seems to have been interested in the case as a precedent on an important and much disputed point of law, "whether and when a husband may kill an adulterous wife." Cencini may also have had some professional relation with the Franceschini family at Arezzo. At any rate, he set the material in order, provided title-page and index, and a transcript of the record in a criminal case against Pompilia in the Tuscan courts (pp. 5-7), and bound it securely in the vellum cover which conveyed it to the poet's hands more than a century and a half later. Whatever meaning this volume may have as a legal precedent, it had for Browning, and has for the lay reader, a deep human interest as the incomplete record of a sordid series of intrigues for certain properties, ending at last in a fearful crime. Guido Franceschini, scion of a noble but impoverished Tuscan family, had sought his fortunes in Rome, and had attained a secretaryship in the household of Cardinal Lauria. His brother, the Abate Paolo, a shrewd and effective man, rose much higher, at last attaining important office among the Knights of St. John. Guido, less astute and less ingratiating, reached middle life with but scant success, and at last was left unprovided. With the assistance of Abate Paolo, he planned to recoup his fortunes by a bourgeois marriage. Though past forty years of age and of unattractive appearance, he won, by his noble name and subtle intrigue and falsification, the thirteen-year-old daughter of the Comparini, of the well-to-do middle class of Rome. After the marriage in December 1693, Pompilia and her parents accompanied Guido back to Arezzo, where, in the ruinous Franceschini _palazzo_, the Comparini had ample opportunity to repent their folly. Bitter contentions soon arose, and at last the Comparini fled from the brutalities of their son-in-law, and returned to Rome. There they published broadcast the sordid poverty and the ignoble brutality of their persecutors, probably printing and circulating the affidavit of the servant (pp. 49-53). Guido seems to have retorted by circulating the forged letter from Pompilia (pp. 56, 57). But they struck a more deadly blow at the pride of the Franceschini when they revealed that Pompilia was not their own child, but was of ignominious parentage. And in the spring of 1694 they brought suit before Judge Tomati for the recovery of the dowry monies paid to Franceschini--a bitter humiliation to the greedy poverty of the Franceschini. It must have been a scandalous suit, bringing dishonour to both parties as their domestic difficulties were exposed to the throngs of the curious. In this trial were adduced the letters of the governor (pp. 89, 90) and of the Bishop of Arezzo (p. 99). The Comparini lost their suit, but appealed to the Rota, and their case was pending for several years, during which time they may have baited the Franceschini with spiteful scandals. In the meantime, the child-wife, Pompilia, was left in desperate plight--despised and hated by her husband's family. Her situation grew intolerable. Guido had evidently determined to rid himself of her without relaxing his grip on her property. His brutalities were systematic and cunning. At last she was driven to flee for her life, and on April 29, 1697, made her escape under the protection of Caponsacchi, a gallant young priest. It was a desperate step, gravely reprehensible in the eyes of the world. The fugitives pressed toward Rome, but Guido overtook them at Castelnuovo, fifteen miles short of their destination, and had them arrested. At Rome, criminal charges of flight and adultery were brought against them. This Process of Flight, as it is repeatedly called in the _Yellow Book_, continued all through the summer. It was for their defence in this case that Pompilia and Caponsacchi made their affidavits (pp. 90 and 95), giving their motives for the flight. At the same time Guido urged the evidence of the love-letters (pp. 99-106), which he claimed to have found at the time of the arrest of the fugitives. In September, judgment was rendered against Caponsacchi--relegation for three years to Civita Vecchia--a punishment commensurate with indiscretion rather than with crime. Pompilia was unsentenced, but was retained for a month in safekeeping in the nunnery delle Scalette, and was then permitted to return to the home of her foster-parents, the Comparini, though still technically a prisoner in this home (p. 159). Here on December 18 a boy was born. On Christmas Eve, Guido reached Rome with four young rustics, whom he had hired to assist him in the assassination. For a week he lurked in the villa of his brother, Abate Paolo, who had left Rome. Then, on the evening of January 2, he won entrance to the home of the Comparini by using the name of Caponsacchi. The parents were instantly stabbed to death, and Pompilia was cut to pieces with twenty-two wounds. Leaving her for dead, Guido and his cut-throats fled, as the outcries of the victims had given the alarm. That night they travelled afoot nearly twenty miles, but were pursued by the police, and were arrested with the bloody arms still in their possession. Such was the crime, and the _Old Yellow Book_ is the record of the legal battle over the assassins, which was fought through the criminal courts of Rome, presided over by Vice-governor Venturini. The prosecution and defence alike were conducted by officers of the court, two lawyers on each side, the Procurator and Advocate of the Poor for the defendants, and the Procurator and Advocate of the Fisc against them. As the fact of the crime was definitely ascertained, the legal battle turned entirely on the justification or condemnation of the motive of the crime. The defence maintained that the assassination had been for honour's sake, and the unwritten law, to which appeal is made in generation after generation, was urged at every point. That Guido had suffered unspeakable ignominy cannot be denied; that his wife had been untrue to him even in the perilous flight with Caponsacchi is unproved, as the courts had evidently held in the Process of Flight. The prosecution, on the other hand, reiterated in every argument their reading of Guido's motive--greed. Greed had led him to marry Pompilia. Greed had occasioned his disgraceful wranglings with the Comparini. Defeated greed had made him torture his wife into scandalous flight, and calculating greed had led him to commit the murder at a time and in a manner to save the whole property to himself. Still further, said the prosecution, not only was his motive bad, but the crime was committed in a way which involved him in half a dozen accessory crimes, each of them capital. Such is the drift of the argument, which is fortified at every point by citation of precedent from the legal procedure of all ages. Altogether it is a highly skilled legal battle according to the technical limitations of the game, while the simple appeals to equity and to common human feeling hardly enter at all. The trial proceeded in two stages. The earlier one, during the latter half of January, was opened by Arcangeli (pamphlet 1), supported by Advocate Spreti (pamphlet 2). The prosecution is opened by Procurator Gambi (pamphlet 5), supported by Advocate Bottini (pamphlet 6). Arcangeli and Bottini make further argument in pamphlets 3 and 14. Two pamphlets of evidence were assembled and printed--for the defence, pamphlet 7; and for the prosecution, pamphlet 4. The latter part of this stage of the case is much occupied with arguing whether Guido and his companions may be tortured to get a fuller statement from them. In spite of the efforts of Guido's attorneys, the torture was evidently decreed, and fuller evidence was forced from the defendants, though one of them bore the torture till he fainted twice. The trial then enters on its second stage, in which, after some preliminary skirmishing about the legality of the torture and the status of the evidence given under this torture, the lawyers settle to their most masterly work. Arcangeli and Spreti develop an elaborate and skilled defence (pamphlets 8 and 9), and are answered by Bottini's masterpiece for the prosecution (pamphlet 13). Spreti closes the defence in pamphlet 16. Pamphlet 11 presents some additional matters of evidence. All these arguments and summaries of evidence were printed by the official papal press (see the imprint _Typis Rev. Cam. Apost._), probably overnight, between the sessions of the court, as typewritten briefs would be prepared to-day. Few copies were printed, and these were solely for the judges and attorneys in the case. There would be no popular circulation of them in Rome at large. The particular copies included in the _Old Yellow Book_ were probably gathered by one of these attorneys, and sent to Signor Cencini in Florence (letter iii. p. 238). We need but look to our own age to rest assured that outside of the court room all Rome was athrill with interest in this murder case, and was speculating on the fate of the accused. The attorneys for the defence, in the midst of the trial, made a sudden appeal to this public interest and sought the support of public sentiment by means of an anonymous pamphlet (pamphlet 10) written in Italian and printed without an imprint or signature, but evidently addressed to the bar of public opinion. It seems to have been written by Guido's lawyers, or their lackeys, for it repeats the various points already made in the arguments. Whether it was distributed free or was sold for a small price, it must have been seized and devoured by all Rome as are the journalistic reports of notorious criminal trials to-day. We can imagine the alarm of the prosecution when they perceived this flank movement against them. With all possible haste they prepared their reply, also in Italian and without signature or imprint, and probably within a day or two had issued this response (pamphlet 15), which meets the other pamphlet at every point, and bitterly arraigns the greed of Guido. These two pamphlets evidently suggested to Browning his "Half-Rome" and "Other Half-Rome." There must have been other popular exploitations of this crime. Two manuscript Italian narratives of it have been discovered. The first of these (pp. 259-266) was found in London and sent to Browning, who used it extensively in writing his poem. The second (pp. 269-281) was discovered a few years ago in Rome. Other accounts may yet come to light. The trial of Guido and his companions was carried forward to a prompt judgment, and on February 18 they were pronounced guilty and were condemned to death. A technical staying of sentence for four days was granted by reason of Guido's _clerical privilege_, but execution followed on February 22. The _Old Yellow Book_ includes three original letters (pp. 237-8) written from Rome immediately after the execution to Signor Cencini at Florence. Yet the case was not quite at an end. A number of civil suits were promptly instituted by various claimants for the property of the Comparini. The Franceschini still pushed their claim in spite of the infamy they had suffered for that property. Pompilia's executor, Tighetti, claimed all in trust for the child, Gaetano. Then the refuge of the Convertites, under their legal right to the property of all women of evil life who died in Rome, accused the memory of Pompilia and claimed her property. The case seemed to be entering on one of those interminable struggles in court. The Procurator Lamparelli (pamphlet 17) goes back to analyse again the motives in the whole case and to justify Pompilia's innocence. The remainder of this trial is lost to us save for the final _Definitive Sentence_ of the courts (pamphlet 18), issued in September 1698, which clears the memory of Pompilia entirely and for ever in the eyes of the law. This was the record which fell into Browning's hands. The poet tells of his immediate interest in the tragedy, partly due to that common human interest in great crimes, partly to the casuistic presentation of motive throughout the _Book_, partly to his championing the rights of Pompilia, dishonoured and slain not merely by a brutally selfish husband, but by a corrupt social condition around her. After some delay, Browning saw his way to embody in art the story which had interested him so deeply. The plan came to him, according to W. M. Rossetti, one day while he was walking at Biarritz, and from 1862 till the publication in 1868-9, he was working continuously on _The Ring and the Book_. He had mastered every detail of the _Yellow Book_ by continuous re-readings, and in his art he was scrupulously, but never laboriously, accurate to the facts before him. In the poem he names thirty-three persons exactly as he found them in his original. Place names are adopted with the same accuracy. The specific dates recorded in the _Book_ are followed at all points, save in the significant change of the date of Caponsacchi's rescue of Pompilia from April 29 to 23, St. George's Day. The incidents of the tragedy, even when compromising to Pompilia, whose cause he championed, are used without repression or falsification. And perhaps most remarkable of all, the poet had mastered all the technical paraphernalia and phraseology of the lawyers, and uses these with minute care, not entirely devoid of misunderstanding and error. In the _Book_ he found all the points of law, all the precedents and authorities, and almost all of the Latin phrases and sentences found in the monologues of the lawyers of the poem. A remarkable instance of this is seen in his word for word adaptation of the long peroration of Arcangeli (pamphlet 8) in the close of the monologue of the Arcangeli of the poem. And the actual letter of Arcangeli (p. 237) is reproduced verbatim in the poem, book xii. ll. 239-88. Altogether the poet affords one of the most remarkable illustrations of literal and detailed accuracy in the use of the raw material of art. Yet here, as in all cases of true art, the greatness of the final product lies not so much in the material that fell to the artist as in the personal resource and power within himself which was able to use the material. Browning found suggestion for a suffering saint in Fra Celestino's report of Pompilia's death-bed (pp. 57, 58), but the Pompilia of the poem embodies the poet's deepest insight into womanhood with all its spiritual relationships, in the love of man, the passion of maternity, and devotion to God. Browning ascertained in the _Book_ that Caponsacchi was a resolute man, who had involved himself in many perils for the sake of Pompilia, but from his own personal resource of manly devotion, of chivalrous daring, of passionate indignation at wrong, of spiritual tenderness and reverence, he created a Caponsacchi. In the _Book_ he found every turn of the cunning, of the greed, of the brutality of Guido and his family, but from his own deep realisation of the power of evil in the world, and of the black depravity of the lowest forms of humanity, he created his Franceschini. Thus at every point, founding himself on the fact of the _Book_, he is able to set forth this tragedy to the world as it grew in his own imagination while searching his own heart and the hearts of others through many years. And the chance-found _Old Yellow Book_ at last occasioned the most profound utterance Robert Browning was to give to the world in all that concerns the human heart and its motives as they play the drama of the world before the eye of the Almighty. CHARLES W. HODELL. "Do you see this square old yellow book ... pure, crude fact. Give it me back! The thing's restorative I' the touch and sight." A Setting-forth of the entire Criminal Cause against GUIDO FRANCESCHINI, Nobleman of Arezzo, and his Bravoes, who were put to death in Rome, February 22, 1698. The first by beheading, the other four by the gallows. ROMAN MURDER-CASE. In which it is disputed whether and when a Husband may kill his Adulterous Wife without incurring the ordinary penalty. CONTENTS PAGE Sentence of the Criminal Court of Florence in the criminal case against Gregorio Guillichini, Francesca Pompilia Comparini, wife of Guido Franceschini, etc. December 1697 5 Argument in defence of the said Franceschini of the Honourable Signor Giacinto Arcangeli, Procurator of the Poor in Rome, made before the congregation of Monsignor the Governor 9 Argument of the Honourable Signor Advocate Desiderio Spreti, Advocate of the Poor, in defence of said Franceschini and his associates 25 Argument of the abovesaid Signor Arcangeli in defence of Biagio Agostinelli and his companions in crime 39 Summary of fact made in behalf of the Fisc 47 Argument of Signor Francesco Gambi, Procurator of the Fisc and of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber, against the abovesaid Franceschini and his companions in crime 63 Argument of Signor Giovanni Battista Bottini, Advocate of the Fisc and of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber, against the abovesaid 73 Summary of fact in behalf of Franceschini and his associates in crime 87 Another Argument of the abovesaid Signor Arcangeli in favour and defence of the abovesaid 107 Another Argument of Signor Advocate Spreti in favour of the above 131 An Account of the facts and grounds, made and given by an Anonymous Author 145 Another Summary made on behalf of the Fisc 157 Argument of Signor Gambi, Procurator of the Fisc, against the abovesaid Franceschini and his companions 163 Another Argument of the Signor Giovanni Battista Bottini, Advocate of the Fisc 169 Another Argument of the abovesaid against the said Defendants 197 A Response of the abovesaid account of fact as given by the Anonymous Author 209 Argument of Signor Advocate Spreti in favour of Franceschini, etc. 227 Letter written by the Honourable Signor Giacinto Arcangeli, Procurator of the Poor, to Monsignore Francesco Cencini in Florence, in which he tells him that the sentence of death had been executed in Rome against the guilty on February 22, 1698--that is, that Franceschini had been beheaded, and the other four hanged 235 Two other Letters, one written by Signor Gaspero del Torto and the other by Signor Carlo Antonio Ugolinucci to the aforesaid Monsignore Francesco Cencini 237 Argument of Signor Antonio Lamparelli, Procurator of the Poor in the said case 239 The Sentence of Signor Marco Antonio Venturini, Judge in Criminal causes, which declares that the said adultery was not proved, and which restores to her original fame the memory of Francesca Pompilia Comparini, wife of Guido Franceschini 253 THE SECONDARY SOURCE OF "THE RING AND THE BOOK" 257 TRIAL AND DEATH OF FRANCESCHINI AND HIS COMPANIONS 267 NOTES AND COMMENT 283 [Illustration: _But for me the Muse in her strength prepares her mightiest arrow._] [Illustration: _Facsimile Page from the Original "Old Yellow Book."_] SENTENCE OF THE CRIMINAL COURT OF FLORENCE _February 15, 1697 A.D._ Attestation by me undersigned how, in the order of the affairs of the Governors, which are set before His Serene Highness, in the Chancery of the Illustrious Signori Auditori of the Criminal Court of Florence, there appears among other affairs of business, under decision 3549, the following of tenor as written below, that is Arezzo against 1. Gregorio, son of Francesco Guillichini, not described. 2. Francesca Pompilia Comparini, wife of Guido Franceschini, and 3. Francesco, son of Giovanni Borsi called Venerino, servant of Agosto, Host at the "Canale," because the second Accused, against her honour and conjugal faith, had given herself up to dishonest amours with the Canon Giuseppe Caponsacchi and with the first Accused, who instructed her, as you may well believe, to part from the aforesaid City of Arezzo, the evening of April 28, 1697. And, that they might not be discovered and hindered, the second Accused put a sleeping-potion and opium in her husband's wine at dinner. At about one o'clock the same night, the said Canon Caponsacchi and the first Accused conducted the aforesaid second Accused away from the home of her husband. As the gates of the city were closed, they climbed the wall on the hill of the Torrione; and having reached the "Horse" Inn, outside of the gate San Clemente, they were there awaited by the third Accused with a two-horse carriage. When Canon Caponsacchi and the second Accused had entered into the said carriage, the word was given by him, the aforesaid first Accused, and they set out then upon the way toward Perugia, the said third Accused driving the carriage as far as Camoscia. And while they were travelling along the road they kissed one another before the very face of the third Accused. Still further, the second Accused, along with the first Accused and Canon Caponsacchi, carried away furtively from the house of the said Guido, her husband, from a chest locked with a key, which she took from her husband's trousers [the following articles]: About 200 scudi in gold and silver coin; an oriental pearl necklace worth about 200 scudi; a pair of diamond pendants worth 84 scudi; a solitaire diamond ring worth 40 scudi; two pearls with their pins, to be used as pendants, 6 scudi; a gold ring with turquoise setting worth 2 scudi; a gold ring set with ruby worth 36 scudi; an amber necklace worth 5 scudi; a necklace of garnets alternated with little beads of fine brass worth 6 scudi; a pair of earrings in the shape of a little ship of gold with a pearl worth 16 scudi; two necklaces of various common stones worth 4 scudi; a coronet of carnelians with five settings and with a cameo in silver filigree worth 12 scudi; a damask suit with its mantle, and a petticoat of a poppy colour, embroidered with various flowers, worth 40 scudi; a light-blue petticoat, flowered with white, worth 8 scudi; two vests to place under the mantle worth 2 scudi; a pair of sleeves of point lace worth 20 scudi; another pair of sleeves fringed with lace worth 5 scudi; a collar worth 4 scudi; a scarf of black taffeta for the shoulder with a bow of ribbon worth 8 scudi; an embroidered silk cuff worth 14 scudi; two aprons of key-bit pattern with their lace worth 12 scudi; a pair of scarlet silk boots worth 14 scudi; a pair of woollen stockings, a pair of white linen hose, and a pair of light-blue hose, worth 5 scudi; a snuff-coloured worsted bodice with petticoat, ornamented with white and red pawns, worth 3 scudi; a blue and white coat of yarn and linen, adorned with scarlet and other coloured ornaments, worth 10 scudi; a worsted petticoat of light-blue and orange colour, striped lengthwise, with yellow lines and with various colours at the feet, worth 14 scudi; an embroidered petticoat worth 9 scudi; a silk cuff worth 5 scudi; four linen smocks for women worth 14 scudi; a pair of shoes with silver buckles worth 8 scudi; many tassels and tapes of various sorts worth 14 scudi; six fine napkins worth 7 scudi; a collar of crumpled silk worth 7 scudi; two pairs of gloves of a value of 4 scudi; four handkerchiefs worth 5 scudi; a little silver snuff-box with the arms of the Franceschini house upon it worth 16 scudi; a coat of her husband Guido, rubbed and rent by the lock of a chest where he kept part of the aforesaid clothing. And they had converted the whole to their own uses against the will of the same, the first Accused and Canon Caponsacchi having scaled the walls of the city in company with the second Accused, as soon as she had committed adultery with them. And the said third Accused had given opportunity for flight to the said second Accused along with the Canon, in the manner told. Therefore the Commissioner of Arezzo was of opinion to condemn arbitrarily the first Accused to five years' confinement at Portoferrio with the penalty of the galleys for the same length of time, not counting the reservation of 15 days to appear and clear himself; to condemn the second Accused to the penalty of the Stinche for life and to the restitution of what was taken away, with the abovesaid reservation; and that the third Accused be not prosecuted further and be liberated from prison. But the Criminal Court was of opinion that the first Accused should be condemned to the galleys during the pleasure of His Serene Highness, with the said reservation. As to the second Accused, who was imprisoned here in Rome, in a sacred place, it suspended the execution. And for the third, who had done no voluntary evil, it gave up further inquiry. Again proposed in the said business before His Serene and Blessed Highness with the signature of December 24, 1697. The opinion of the Court stands approved. In sign of which, I, JOSEPH VESINIUS, J. V. D., an official in the Criminal Court of Florence, etc., in faith whereto, etc. [File-title of Pamphlet 1.] _By the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Governor in Criminal Cases_: _ROMAN MURDER-CASE_ _On Behalf of Count Guido Franceschini, Prisoner, against the Fisc._ _Memorial of fact and law._ _At Rome, in the type of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber, 1698._ ROMANA HOMICIDIORUM [PAMPHLET 1.] Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Governor: Count Guido Franceschini, born of a noble race, had married, under ill omen, Francesca Pompilia, whom Pietro and Violante had asserted (even to one occupying a very high office) to be their own daughter. After a little while, she was taken to Arezzo, the country of her husband, along with her foster-parents, and was restrained from leading her life with utter freedom. Yet she has made pretence that she was hated on the pretext of sterility, as is clearly shown in her deposition during her prosecution for flight from her husband's home. Both she and her parents took it ill that they were denied their old free life, and they urged their daughter to make complaint before the Most Reverend Bishop, saying that she had been offered poison by her brother-in-law. At the departure of this couple, when they were about to return to the City, they most basely instigated her--yes, and even commanded her by her duty to obey them--that she should kill her husband, poison her brother-in-law and mother-in-law, and burn the house; and then with the aid of a lover to be chosen thereafter, she should put into effect her long-planned flight back to the City. (But all this should be done after their departure, lest they might seem to have given her evil counsel.) [Such facts] may be clearly deduced from one of the letters presented as evidence in the same prosecution. When these pseudo-parents had returned home, they declared that Francesca was not born of themselves, but had been conceived of an unknown father by a vile strumpet. They then entered suit before Judge Tomati for the nullification of the dowry contract. Day by day the love of Pompilia for her husband kept decreasing, while her affection for a certain priest was on the increase. This affair went so far that on an appointed night, while her husband was oppressed with sleep (and I wish I could say that she had no hand in this, and had not procured drugs from outside), she began her flight from her husband's house toward Rome, nor was this flight without theft of money and the company of her lover. Her most wretched husband pursued them, and she was imprisoned not far from the City. Then, when after a short time they were brought to trial, the lover was banished to Civita Vecchia for adultery, and she herself was placed in safe keeping. But owing to her pregnancy she returned to the home of Pietro and Violante, where she gave birth to a child (and I wish I could say that it had not been conceived in adultery). This increased the shame and indignation of the husband, and the wrath, which had long been stirred, grew strong, because his honour among upright men was lost and he was pointed out with the finger of scorn, especially in his own country, where a good reputation is much cherished by men who are well-born. Therefore his anger so impelled the luckless man to fury, and his indignation so drove him to desperation, that he preferred to die rather than to live ignominiously among honourable men. With gloomy mind, he rushed headlong to the City, accompanied by four companions. On the second night of the current month of January, under the show of giving a letter from the banished lover, he pretended to approach the home of the Comparini. When at the name of Caponsacchi the door was opened, he cut the throats of Violante and Pietro, and stabbed Francesca with so many wounds that she died after a few days. While this desperation continued, his dull and unforeseeing mind suggested no way to find a place of safety. But accompanied by the same men, he set out for his own country along the public highway by the shortest route. Then, while he was resting upon a pallet in a certain tavern, he was arrested, together with his companions, by the pursuing officers. Great indeed is this crime, but very greatly to be pitied also, and most worthy of excuse. Even the most severe laws give indulgence and are very mild towards husbands who wipe out the stain of their infamy with the blood of their adulterous wives. [Citation of _Lex Julia de Adulteriis, Lex Cornelia de Sicariis_ and the Gracchian law. Cf. _Ring and Book_, I. 2268.] This indeed was sanctioned in the laws of the Athenians and of Solon (that is, of the wisest of legislators), and what is more, even in the rude age of Romulus, law 15, where we read: "A man and his relatives may kill as they wish a wife convicted of adultery." [Citations; and likewise in the Laws of the Twelve Tables, see Aulus Gellius, etc.] I hold, to begin with, that there can be no doubt of the adultery of the wife [for several reasons]. [First], her flight together with her lover during a long-continued journey. [Citations.] [Second], the love letters sent by each party; these cannot be read in the prosecution for flight without nausea. [Citations.] [Third], the clandestine entry of the lover into her home at a suspicious time. [Citations.] [Fourth], the kisses given during the flight (p. 100) according to the following sentiment: "Sight, conversation, touch, afterwards kisses, and then the deed [adultery]." [Citations.] [Fifth], their sleeping in the same room at the inn. [Citations.] [Sixth], the sentence of the judge, who condemned the lover for his criminal knowledge of her, which made this adultery notorious. [Citations.] Furthermore, we are not here arguing to prove adultery for the purpose of demanding punishment [upon the adulteress], but to excuse her slayer, and for his defence; in this case, even lighter proofs would be abundant, as Matthæus advises. [Citations.] These matters being held as proved, the opinion of certain authorities who assert that a husband is not excusable from the ordinary penalty, who kills his adulterous wife after an interval, does not stand in our way. For the aforesaid laws speak of the wife who had been found in her guilt and has been killed incontinently. Hence such indulgence ought not to be extended to wife-murder committed after an interval, because the reins should not be relaxed for men to sin and to declare the law for themselves. [Citations.] Furthermore, Farinacci does not affirm this conclusion, but shows that he is very much in doubt, where he says: "The matter is very doubtful with me, because injured honour and just anger--both of which always oppress the heart--are very strong grounds for the mitigation of the penalty." Matthæus well weighs these words on our very point. And both Farinacci and Rainaldi conclude that the penalty can be moderated at the judgment of the Prince. I humbly pray that this be noted. The aforesaid laws, which seem to require discovery in the very act of sin, as some have thought, do not decide in that way merely for the purpose of excusing a husband moved to slaughter by a sudden impulse of wrath and by unadvised heat. But they so decide lest on any suspicion of adultery whatsoever, oftentimes entirely without foundation, men should rush upon and kill their wives, who are frequently innocent. Hence the "discovery in the very act of crime," which is required by law, is not to be interpreted, nor to be understood, as discovery in the very act of licence, but is to be referred to the proof of the adultery, lest on trifling suspicion a wife should be given over to death. But when the adultery is not at all doubtful, there is no distinction between one killing immediately and killing after an interval, so far as the matter of escaping extreme punishment is concerned. [Citations.] For whenever a wife is convicted of adultery, or is a manifest adulteress, she is always said to be "taken in crime." [Citations.] And in very truth the reasons adduced by those holding the contrary opinion are entirely too weak. For murder committed for honour's sake is always said to be done immediately, whensoever it may be committed. Because injury to the honour always remains fixed before one's eyes, and by goading one with busy and incessant stings it urges and impels him to its reparation. [Citations.] Such relaxation of the reins to husbands, for taking into their own hands the law, would indeed be too great if the law of divorce were still valid. For in that case husbands would not be permitted to make such reparation of their honour. For another way would be satisfactorily provided for them, namely, in their right to dismiss and repudiate the polluted wife. In this way they could put far from themselves the cause of their disgrace, yes, and the very ignominy itself. But when by the divine favour our Gentile blindness was removed, and matrimony was acknowledged to be perpetual and indissoluble, those were indeed most worthy of pity who, when all other way of recovering their honour was closed to them, washed away their stains in the blood of their adulterous wives. Petrus Erodus [Citation], after he has discussed a matter of this kind according to the usual practice of Roman Law, adds in the end: "For as all hope of a second marriage is gone so long as the adulteress still lives, we judge that such very just anger is allayed with more difficulty, unless it be by the flight of time;" and therefore such a case, when not terminated by divorce, is usually terminated by murder. For as Augustine says, "what is not permitted, becomes as if it were permitted; that is, let the adulteress be killed, that the husband may be released." I acknowledge that it is laudable to restrain the audacity of husbands, lest they declare the law for themselves in their own cause; since they may be mistaken. But it would be more laudable indeed to restrain the lust of wives; for if they would act modestly and would live honourably they would not force their husbands to this kind of crime, which I may almost call necessary. Nor can we deny that by the ignominy brought upon them by the adultery they are exasperated and are driven insane, and a most just sense of anger is excited in their hearts. For this grievance surpasses all others beyond comparison, and hence is worthy of the greater pity, according to the words of the satirist [_Juv._ X. 314]: "This wrath exacts more than any law concedes to wrath." Papinianus also well acknowledges this [Citation], where we read: "Since it is very difficult to restrain just anger." For these reasons, authorities hold that a just grievance should render the penalty more lenient even in premediated crimes; because the sense of "just grievance does not easily quiet down, or lose its strength with the flight of time, but the heart is continually pierced by infamy, and the longer the insult endures, the longer endures the infamy, yea, and it is increased." [Citations.] And this drives one on the more intensely, because with greater impunity, as I may say, wives pollute their own matrimony and destroy the honour of their entire household. In ancient times, while the _Lex Julia_ was in force, wives who polluted their marriage-bed underwent the death penalty. [Citations.] Likewise it was so ordained in the Holy Scriptures; for adulterous wives were stoned to death, Gen. 38; Lev. 20, 10; Deut. 23, 22; Ez. 16. The solace drawn from the public vengeance quieted the anger and destroyed the infamy. Then the husband, who was restored to his original freedom, could take a new and honest wife and raise his sons in honour. But now, in our evil days, there is a deplorable frequency of crime everywhere, as the rigour of the Sacred Law has become obsolete. And since wives who live basely are dealt with very mildly, the husband's condition would indeed be most unfortunate if either he must live perpetually in infamy, or must expiate her destruction, when she is slain, by the death penalty, as Matthæus well considers. [Citation.] Therefore, when it is claimed that the husband shall escape entirely unpunished, it is necessary that the wife be killed in the very act of discovered sin. But when the question is as to whether or not a husband may be punished more mildly than usual when driven to wife-murder for honour's sake, it makes no difference whether he kill her immediately or after an interval. [Citation.] Nor does this opinion lack foundation in the very Civil Law of the Romans, for Martian [Citation] asserts that a father who had killed his son while out hunting, because he had polluted his stepmother with adultery, was exiled. Nor had the father found him in the very act of crime, but slew him while out hunting, that is with a pretence of friendliness and by dissimulating his injury. Accordingly he was punished, but not with the usual penalty; for he had killed his son, not in his right as a father, but in the manner of a robber. Hence we can infer that not the killing, but the method of killing was punishable, as we may deduce from Bartolo. [Citations.] Still further, it is well worthy of consideration that one may kill an adversary with impunity, for the sake of his personal safety, but he must do so immediately and in the very act of aggression, and not after an interval. For the life of one slain may not be recovered by the slaying of the murderer. Accordingly, whatever violence may follow upon the first murder becomes vengeance, which is hateful and odious to the law; for the jurisdiction of the judge is insulted by depriving him of the power of publicly avenging murder. But if by the death of the slayer the one slain could be called back to life, I think there is no doubt that any one could kill the said slayer; for then such an act would not be revenge, but due defence, leading toward the recovery of the life that had been lost. But even when we are dealing with an offence and injury which does not affect the person of the one injured, it is likewise permitted that one who has been robbed may, even after an interval, kill the thief for the recovery of the stolen goods, provided every other way to recover them is precluded. Likewise, one offended in his reputation should be permitted at all times to kill the one injuring him; for such an act may be termed, not the avenging of an injury, but the re-establishing of wounded honour, which could be healed in no other way. [Citations.] Furthermore, as I have said, when one is discussing the subject of self-defence, he is dealing with an instantaneous act; hence the anger conceived therefrom ought to quiet down after a while, according to the warning of St. Paul, Eph. 4: "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath." But when we are dealing with an offence that injures the honour, this is not merely a momentary matter, but is protracted, and indeed with the lapse of time becomes the greater, as the injured one is vilified the more. Therefore, whensoever the murder follows it is always said to have been committed immediately. [Citation.] Relying upon these and other reasons, most authorities affirm that a husband killing his adulterous wife after an interval, but not found in licentiousness, is to be punished indeed, but more mildly and with a penalty out of the ordinary. [Citations.] Caball testifies that this has been the practice in many of the world's tribunals. Calvinus gives other cases so decided. [Citation.] And Cyriacus, who speaks in worse circumstances, adduces numerous other cases, and the authorities recently cited offer many more. This lenient opinion is the more readily to be accepted because, as I claim, the deed about which we are arguing does not also carry with it (as the Fisc holds) attendant circumstances demanding such a rigorous penalty. [First] the taking of helpers to be present at the murders [is not such a circumstance]; because he could lawfully use the help of companions to provide more safely for his own honour by the death of his wife. [Citations.] [Secondly] the crime is not raised to a higher class because he led with him helpers at a price agreed upon; for what is more, and is far more to be wondered at, a husband can lawfully demand of others the murder of an adulterous wife, even by means of money, as the following indisputably affirm. [Citations.] Likewise it does not at all disturb [our line of argument] that Count Guido might have killed his wife and the adulterer when they were caught in the very act of flight at the tavern of Castelnuovo, but that he preferred rather to have them imprisoned, seeking their punishment by law, and not with his own hand. We deny that he could have safely killed both of them, inasmuch as he was alone, nor could he attack them, except at the risk of his own life. Because the lover was of powerful strength, not at all timid, and all too prompt for resisting, since, in the word of one of the witnesses in the prosecution for flight, he was called _Scapezzacollo_ [cut-throat]. Nor is it credible that, unless he had been fearless and full of spirit, he would have ventured upon so great a crime, and would have dared to participate in her flight, and to accompany the fugitive wife from the home of her husband. And this fact is more clearly deducible from one of his letters, in which, after urging Francesca to mingle an opiate in the wine-flasks for the purpose of putting her husband and the servants to sleep, he adds that if they find it out she should open the door; for he would either suffer death with her or would snatch her from their hands. These things indicate both courage and audacity. And though the wife is a woman, that is a timid and unwarlike creature, nevertheless Francesca was all too impudent and audacious, whether because of her hatred for her husband or on account of her anger at the imprisonment of her lover. For she drew a sword upon her husband in the very presence of the officers who were about to arrest her. And to prevent her from going further, one of the bystanders had to snatch it from her hands. Therefore, before their imprisonment, Guido could not put into effect what he had had in mind and what he could lawfully do, because he was alone and his strength was not sufficient. Then when she had been taken to prison, and afterwards was placed in safe keeping, it was impossible for him to vindicate his honour. But when at last she had left the monastery and had gone back to the home of Pietro and Violante, he took vengeance as soon as he could. Therefore we hold that he killed her in the very act, as it were, and immediately. In Sanfelicius [Citation], we read of a case where a husband, though he could have killed his wife immediately, did not do so, but craftily redeemed himself from his disgrace by slaying his wife as soon as possible. And Giurba also speaks of a case where the argument is concerning an injury that was not personal, but real, as was said above. Guido saw to her capture, and insisted that she be punished, lest she continue her adultery and viciousness, being powerless to do anything else, because his confusion of mind, his helpless fury, and his sense of shame led him unwisely into not taking the law into his own hands and recovering his lost honour. He indeed lodged complaint, but it was because he could not kill her. Nor would his ignominy have been wiped out nor his infamy have been destroyed by her imprisonment and punishment. But when, indeed, after her imprisonment he was still more shut out from noble company, his injury ever became the more acute, and it stimulated him the more strongly to regain his own reputation. But his bitterness of mind was increased especially at hearing that she had gone back to the home of Pietro and Violante, who had declared that she was not their daughter, but the child of a dishonest woman; hence his injury was increased by her staying in a home which he suspected, as is said a little further on. Accordingly the same cause kept urging him after her departure from the monastery, as had done so before her imprisonment and the appeals made by Count Guido. It makes very little difference that Francesca was staying in the home of Violante, which had been assigned to her as a safe prison with the consent of Guido's brother. For what would it amount to even if with the consent of Guido himself she had been taken from the monastery (yet we have no word of this matter in the trial). For Guido could make that pretence to gain the opportunity of killing her for the restoration of his honour. Nor would such dissimulation increase the crime, especially to the degree of the ordinary penalty, since it is certain that the husband may kill a wife stained with adultery without incurring such penalty. Yet a heavier or lighter penalty is inflicted, just as more or less treachery accompanies the murder, as Matthæus testifies it was practised in the Senate of Matrinumsis. [Citation.] Nor is the attendant circumstance of the place assigned as a prison worthy of consideration, as if the custody of the Prince had been insulted; for one is not said to be in custody when he is merely detained in a place under security that he will not leave it. [Citation.] Furthermore, this objection falls utterly to the ground, because the circumstance of such a place does not increase the crime, whenever it is committed by one having provocation or for the repelling of an injury. And [the following authorities] hold thus in the more serious case of a crime committed in prison. [Citations.] Furthermore we do not believe, from what is said above, that the penalty can be increased because of the murder of Pietro and Violante, since the same injured honour, which impelled Count Guido to kill his wife, forced him to kill the said parents. And now may the ashes of the dead spare me if what I have urged above, and what I am about to say, may seem to disturb their peace! Neither the flame of hatred nor the impulse of anger (which are far from me) have suggested these charges; but the demands of the defence, which I have assumed without a penny of compensation, compel me to employ every means leading to the desired end. I have said, and I think not without due reason, that the Accused sprang forward to the death of both of them, moved simply by an immediate injury to his own reputation. For a few months after the marriage contracted with Francesca, whom they had professed to be their daughter, they had not blushed to declare that she was not such. Hence there is an inevitable dilemma. Either [_first_] she was in deed and truth their daughter, and then we must acknowledge that in afterward denying her parentage they had inflicted the greatest injury upon the honour and reputation of the Accused; for they had conceived strong hatred and malice against him. Hence they did not hesitate to disgrace their own daughter, in order that they might bring upon him the infamy of having married the daughter of a vile and dishonest woman. This is indeed a fact, that whoever knows Count Guido supposes he has married a girl, not merely of rank unequal to his own, but even of the basest condition, and this greatly injures the reputation of his entire household. Or else [_second_] Francesca was indeed conceived of an unknown father and born of a dishonest harlot. And it cannot be denied, that in that case he suffered even greater injury, which branded him with a mark of infamy; both because of her birth and from the fact that daughters are usually not unlike their mothers. Cephalus [Citations], where we read: "From such mingling with harlots it is to be supposed that the people become degenerate, ignoble, and burning with lust." And would that experience had not taught us this fact! The unfortunate man believed he was marrying the daughter of Pietro and Violante, born legitimately, and yet by the contrivance and trickery of this couple he married a girl of basest stock, conceived illegitimately by a dishonourable mother. From this fact alone the quality of those parents can be inferred, who, for the sake of deceiving those lawfully entitled to the trust-moneys, had made most vile pretence of the birth of a child, entirely unmindful that they laid themselves liable to capital punishment. [Citations.] It will not, therefore, be difficult to believe what Francesca reveals in her letter to her brother-in-law, that the abovesaid couple, in spite of the fact that she was well treated, kept instigating her daily to poison her husband, her brother-in-law, and her mother-in-law, and to burn the home. And though these crimes are very base, they gave her still worse counsel, even by her obligation to obey them; namely, that after their departure from Arezzo, she should allure a lover, and leaving her husband's home in his company, should return to the City. In her obedience to their commands, this daughter seemed indeed all too prompt. Who then will deny that such reckless daring, wherefrom a notorious disgrace was inflicted upon the entire household of the Accused, ought to be attributed to the base persuasion of the said couple? Nor was it difficult to persuade that girl to do what she was prone to by inborn instinct and by the example of her mother. It is not my duty to divine why that couple so anxiously desired the return of Francesca to their home. But I cannot persuade myself that they were moved by mere charity, namely, that she might escape ill-treatment. For Francesca, in the said letter, acknowledges that she is leading a quiet life, and that her husband and the servants are treating her very well, and that what she had laid before the Bishop had been the falsehood of the said couple. I know furthermore that if a husband have knowledge of the adultery of his wife and keep her in his home, he cannot escape the mark and penalty of a pimp. [Citations.] If, therefore, as the said couple declare, Francesca was not their daughter, why did they receive her so tenderly into their home after her adultery was plainly manifest? Why did they, as I may say, cherish her in their breasts, not merely up till the birth of her child, but even till death? And I wish I could say that her love affairs with the banished [priest] were not continued there! For at his mere name, after the knocking at the door, as soon as they heard that some one was about to give them a letter from the one in banishment, immediately the door was opened and Guido was given an entry for recovering his honour. If, indeed, the said couple had been displeased with the adultery of Francesca, they would, without doubt, have shuddered at the name of the adulterer, and would have cut off every way for mutual correspondence. Therefore it is most clearly evident that the cause of wounded honour in the Accused had continued, and indeed new causes of the same kind had arisen, all of which tended toward blackening his reputation. Nor does it make any difference that the Accused may have had in mind several causes of hatred toward both Francesca and the Comparini. For if these are well weighed, they all coincide with, and are reduced to, the original cause, namely, that of wounded honour. However that may be, when causes are compatible with one another, the act that follows should always be attributed to the stronger and more urgent and more acute. [Citations.] And on the point that when several causes concur, murder is to be referred and attributed to injured honour, and not to the others: [Citations.] Therefore I think that any wise man ought to acknowledge that Guido had most just cause for killing the said couple, and that very just anger had been excited against them. This was increased day by day by the perfectly human consideration that he would not have married her unless he had been deceived by that very tricky couple. And to what is said above we may add that either the child born [of Pompilia] was conceived in adultery, as the Accused could well believe, since he was ignorant of the fact that his wife was pregnant during her flight; and then we cannot deny that new offence was given to his honour, or the old one was renewed, by the said birth; or the child was born of his legitimate father; and who will deny that by the hiding of the child, Guido ought to be angered anew over the loss of his son? And the great indignation conceived from either cause (the force of which is very powerful) is so deserving of excuse that very many atrocious crimes committed upon the impulse of just anger have gone entirely unpunished. [Citations.] The following text [Citation] agrees with this, "Nevertheless, because night and just anger ameliorate his deed, he can be sent into exile." [Citations.] And not infrequently, in the contingency of such a deed, men have escaped entirely unpunished, who, when moved by just anger, have laid hands even upon the innocent. For a certain Smyrnean woman had killed her husband and her son conceived of him, because her husband had slain her own son by her first marriage. When she was accused before Dolabella, as Proconsul, he was unwilling either to liberate one who was stained with two murders, or to condemn her, as she had been moved by just anger. He therefore sent her to the Areopagus, that assembly of very wise judges. There, when the cause had been made known, response was given that she and her accuser should come back after a hundred years. And so the defendant in a double murder, although she had also killed one who was innocent, escaped entirely unpunished. [Citation.] Likewise, a wife who had given command for the murder of her husband because of just anger from his denial of her matrimonial dues was punished with a fine, and a temporary residence in a monastery, as Cyriacus testifies. [Citation.] Such pleas might indeed hold good whenever the accused had confessed the crime, or had been lawfully convicted, neither of which can be affirmed [in our case]. But much more are they to be admitted, since he confesses only that he gave order for striking his wife's face, or for mutilating it; and if those he commanded exceeded his order, he should not be held responsible for their excess. [Citations.] His fellows and companions give his name, and claim that he had a hand in the murders. And in spite of the fact that the Fisc claims they have hidden the truth in many respects, equity will not allow that certain matters be separated from their depositions and that these be accepted only in part; for if they are false in one matter, such are they to be considered in all. It would be more than enough to take away from those depositions all credence that, under torture in his presence, they did not purge that stain. [Citations.] It has very justly been permitted that in defence of this noble man, I should deduce these matters, as they say, with galloping pen. The scantiness of the time has not suffered me to bring together other grounds for my case; these could be gathered with little labour, and possibly not without utility. Yet I believe that all objections, which can be raised on the part of the Fisc, have been abundantly satisfied. GIACINTO ARCANGELI, _Procurator of the Poor_. [File-title of Pamphlet 2.] _By the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Governor in Criminal Cases_: _ROMAN MURDER-CASE_ _On Behalf of Count Guido Franceschini and his Associates, Prisoners, against the Court and the Fisc._ _Memorial of law by the Honourable Advocate of the Poor._ _At Rome, in the type of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber, 1698._ ROMANA HOMICIDIORUM [PAMPHLET 2.] Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Governor: From the "prosecution [for flight]," which was brought in this very tribunal, and by his honour, Lord Venturini, Judge in this present case, there is more than satisfactory proof of adultery committed by Francesca Pompilia, wife of Count Guido Franceschini, a nobleman of Arezzo, with the Canon Caponsacchi. With Caponsacchi the parents of this same Francesca Pompilia entered into conspiracy, although they were living here in the City. And after she had given an opiate to Count Guido and his entire household, she fled that same night from the City of Arezzo toward Rome. Consequently, the Canon, as may be remembered, was banished to Civita Vecchia, with a statement of his criminal knowledge of that woman in the said decree of condemnation. This adultery is also evident from other matters of evidence deduced by the Procurator of the Poor. There remains, accordingly, no room to doubt it, but rather their adultery may be said to be notorious here in the City, in the country of Count Guido, and throughout all Etruria. Since this is established, we can safely assert that even if Guido had confessed that he slew his wife with the complicity and help of Blasio Agostinelli of the town of Popolo, Domenico Gambassini of Florence, Francesco Pasquini of the castle of Monte Acuto, and Alessandro Baldeschi of Tiferno, he should not therefore be punished with the ordinary death penalty, but more mildly. This is in accord with the decision of Emperor Pius as related by Ulpian [Citation] and by Martian. [Citation.] For in both of them it is said that a man of low birth is sent into perpetual exile, but that a noble is banished only for a limited time, but the crime of a husband who is moved by just anger is overlooked, as this same Ulpian confirms [Citation], since it is most difficult to restrain such anger. [Citation.] Yet we should not consider it necessary that the adultery of the wife be conclusively proved (as it really is) in order that there be room for mitigating the said penalty. For it would be enough, if we were dealing with a case of mere suspicion: Glossa, etc. "A man who had killed his son because he believed the young man had lain with his stepmother, as was true, was deported to an island." [Citations.] Dondeus also speaks of a man who had boasted that he wished to ruin the sister of the one who killed him, which is said to have aroused just suspicion and fear for the loss of honour sufficient to free the slayer from the ordinary penalty of murder. [Citations.] Nor is it true, as some authorities affirm, that the husband must take the wife in very adultery, and kill her immediately; in which case, they say the abovesaid laws hold good, but that it is otherwise if the murder is done after an interval. [Citations.] For the contrary opinion is the truer, the more usual, and the one to be observed in practice, as Marsilius well advises, where he speaks in defence of a certain nobleman who had killed another person after an interval. The man slain had betrothed his sister by promise and had kept her for three months, and had then rejected her. Because of this, a great injury and much infamy were inflicted upon his family and the entire kin. Marsilius then adduces the abovesaid laws, which pronounce concerning a husband who kills his adulterous wife; and Bertazzolus offers the case of one who had killed his adulterous wife and had afterward, in his own defence, proved the adultery by the double confession of the same wife. Claudius Jr. testifies that the murderer was banished for a time by the praetor of Mirandola, and after the lapse of several months he was recalled by the Duke of Mirandola. [Citations.] Afflitto cites the decree of the Kingdom, beginning _Si Maritus_, which concedes impunity to a husband who kills his wife and the adulterer both, in the very act of adultery, and without any delay. He then says that if both of these requisites are not present, the husband is excused in part, but not entirely; and so is punished more mildly. And in No. 2 he gives the reason; because whenever one commits a crime, under impulse of just anger, the penalty should be somewhat moderated, according to the aforesaid text. [Citations.] Matthæus [Citation] adduces the excellent words of Theodoric as quoted by Cassiodorus [Citation], where we read: "For who can bear to drag into court a man who has attempted to violate his matrimonial rights? It is deep-seated even in beasts that they should defend their mating even with deadly conflict, since what is condemned by natural law is hateful to all living creatures. We see bulls defending their cows by strife of horns, rams fighting with their heads for their wethers, horses vindicating by kicks and bites their females; so even these, who are moved by no sense of shame, lay down their lives for their mates. How then may a man endure to leave adultery unavenged, which is known to have been committed to his eternal disgrace? And so if you have made very little false statements in the petition you offer, and if you have indeed only washed away the stain to your marriage-bed by the blood of the adulterer, taken in the act, and if you are looking back from your exile, which was evidently inflicted not by reason of a bloodthirsty mind, but because of your sense of shame, we bid you return from your exile; since for a husband to use the sword for the love of his sense of honour is not to overthrow the laws, but to establish them." Dondeus says this interpretation is clearly proved by the authority of a glossa in the chapter: _Ex litterarum_. [Citation.] For in the text, when these words are used: "your wife taken in adultery," a glossa explains the word "taken" as equal to "convicted." Marta says this opinion is much more just and equitable, and is commonly held. And Muta (_dec. Siciliæ 61_) in the end offers a decision of the supreme court of the kingdom, by which a husband was condemned to the galleys for seven years. This was on account of the accompanying circumstances; for he had had his wife summoned outside of the city walls by his son, and there had killed her; and afterward her body was found to have been devoured by dogs. Dexartus testifies that it was thus decided in Sacred Royal Court, in condemning a husband only to exile. Sanfelix also tells us that certain noble young men, who had killed their wives, after an interval, because of strong suspicion of adultery, were absolved by the Royal Council of Naples, in view of the quality of the persons concerned. In their favour, authorities of the highest rank had written, whose allegations this same author places under the said decision. And although some of these young men were condemned to the oars, he said that this punishment had been imposed because of the mutilation of the privates which followed; because those who do such things are considered enemies to nature. (_Panimoll. dec. 86._) And Caldero, although in the preceding numbers he inclined toward an opinion contrary to ours, came over to our side when he saw that Matthæus held that opinion. And the reason is very evident, for whenever such an injury is suffered by fine natures, especially among the noble class, it is ever present with them, and continually oppresses the heart, and urges it on to vengeance for the recovery of lost honour, as Giurba well notes. [Citations.] For this reason, it has always and everywhere been held in case of murder committed for honour's sake that there is no place for the ordinary death penalty, which should be mitigated at the discretion of the judge. And this rule has been followed, when the murder was committed after an interval, and even after a long interval. For the abovesaid reason, both Grammaticus and Gizzarellus affirm and hand down this opinion. The latter says that it has always been so adjudged by the Sacred Council of Naples, and that this opinion has always been accepted by our ancestors. [Citations.] It was so judged by the high court of the Vicar, although it was dealing with a murder committed after two years, and by craft, by two brothers upon the adulteress in the presence of her sister's cousin. Cyriacus also speaks of the murder of a husband by his wife, because he was keeping a mistress and was contriving against her honour; and there he said that since just anger has a long continuance, because of its extreme bitterness, vengeance should always be said to follow immediately. [Citation.] Another reason also is at hand, which is considered by the authorities, namely, that an injury, whereby the honour is hurt, is not personal, but real, and therefore can be resented at any time whatsoever, even after the lapse of a very long time, as Giurba holds in our circumstances. [Citations.] We have therefore a great many standard authorities who affirm, for most vital reasons, that murder committed, even after an interval, upon the person of the wife or of any one else, for honour's sake, ought not to be punished with the ordinary death penalty, but more mildly. Furthermore, these authorities bear witness that the matter has been so judged in the tribunals with which they are acquainted. No attention therefore should be paid to the opposite opinion held by Farinacci [Citation]; for we plainly see that he speaks contrary to the common and usually accepted opinion in tribunals. [Citation.] Still further it should be noted that the same author in _cons. 66, num. 5_, holds the very opposite, basing his opinion especially upon a text in the law of Emperor Hadrian [Citation], where a father had killed his son, who was not found in the act with his stepmother, but while out hunting and in the woods, that is, after an interval. And he was punished not with the death penalty, but by deportation. Several of the above-cited authorities offer the decision of this text likewise in corroboration of this opinion of ours. Our point is also proved by the fact that this same author in _quaest. 121_ is rather doubtful; and there he acknowledges that for this opinion of ours the reason given above is very strong, namely, that "injured honour" and "just anger" always oppress the heart. And so he says in such a case one should note the sense of the text in the law _Non puto_ [Citation], where Modestinus, Doctor of Law, says that he thinks that one would not make a mistake who in doubtful cases should readily give this response against the Fisc; and Farinacci cites him so speaking. But one should be on his guard against what this same Farinacci asserts: namely, that this opinion of his, so far as he could see, was the one more approved by the Sacred Court. For since this point of doubt, as he himself confesses, had not then been advanced, he could not judge what would be the outcome if it had been proposed. And indeed the wisest of the said high authorities do not give their assent to his opinion, but rather hold the contrary, which is favourable to ourselves, as is seen in the decisions they have given from time to time. For it was so held on March 25, 1672, in the case of Carolo Falerno, who was condemned to an unusual penalty for the murder of Francesco Domenici; for he had found him coming out of a church, to which he had warned him not to go, as he was suspicious that the one slain was following his wife. In like manner with Carolo Matarazzi, August 15, 1673, who killed his wife on the foolish grounds that he suspected her of illegitimate conception because of the absence of her menses; but this suspicion did not indeed correspond with the truth. And in law a matter may be even more mistaken and less observed by human intellect. [Citations.] Likewise in a murder committed treacherously with an arquebus upon the person of Tomaso Bovini by Francesco Mattucio of Monte San Giovanni, a person of the very lowest class, merely because of the attempted dishonour of his sister. The attempt of the one killed was proved by two witnesses on hearsay of the one slain. On September 4, 1692, the penalty of life sentence to the galleys, to which the said Mattucio had been convicted on strongest proofs on the preceding July 12, was moderated by the sacred court, before the Right Reverend Father Ratta, of blessed memory. With good right, therefore, this same Farinacci is expressly confuted and overthrown by Matthæus. [Citations.] This opinion of ours is to be accepted the more readily when we consider that the husband is more stirred by the adultery of his wife than by the murder of his son. [Citations.] Yes, and even more than by the defilement of his daughter. [Citation.] So that if a husband does not complain of the adultery of his wife, he is considered a pimp, as Paschal holds, where we read recently: "Adultery of the wife gives offence not merely to the husband, but blackens and stains the entire kin." [Citations.] That this happened in the present case is plainly evident; for Abate Paolo, brother of Guido, was compelled not only to leave the City, in which he had lived for many years with highest praise, but even to pass out of Italy, because he was pursued undoubtedly by the greatest disgrace on account of this adultery. While he was carrying on Guido's cause in the courts, he moved the laughter and sneers of almost all sensible and wise men, not to say of the very judges themselves, as usually happens in these circumstances. [Citations.] Nor would it stand in the way of what we have said above, if without prejudice to the truth, we should admit (as the Fisc claims) that Count Guido killed his wife with the complicity and aid of the said Blasio, Domenico, Francesco, and Alessandro, assembled for that purpose; for he could do that in order to take vengeance upon her more easily and more safely. [Citations.] [Nor would it stand in our way if we admitted] that he had assembled the said men by means of money. [Citations.] Nor does this plea of injured honour cease with regard to the murders of the said father-in-law and mother-in-law; for since their conspiracy in the adultery of their daughter is established, they themselves were among the causes of the injury and ignominy which resulted therefrom to the prejudice of the honour and reputation of Count Guido, their son-in-law, and her husband respectively. Therefore, these murders likewise ought to be punished with the same penalty as the principal, according to texts in the law _Qui domum_. [Citations.] And so they gave cause enough to Count Guido to take vengeance on them. It is to be added, furthermore (as will be proved indeed, and as Count Guido himself has asserted in his testimony), that they themselves did another injury to his reputation by means of the civil suit which they brought on the grounds of the pretended birth of Francesca Pompilia; and not merely here in the City, but also in his own country, they distributed the most bitter libels, which were added to this same lawsuit. Hence it cannot be denied that Count Guido for this reason had conceived a just anger and provocation, and that he had just cause for taking vengeance. This is according to the text [Citation], where Alexander the Third wrote to the Bishop of Tournay that a certain woman who had killed her child should be placed in a monastery, because she was reproached by her husband with the accusation that it had been conceived in adultery. For in crimes where anger does not entirely excuse, still the delinquent who kills in anger conceived from just grievance is somewhat excused. [Citation.] And this is true in spite of the fact that the Fisc may claim that the penalty given in the Constitution of Alexander has been incurred. For in the present case the crime cannot be said to have been committed on account of hatred aroused by the lawsuit; for in that suit Count Guido had gained a favourable sentence from Judge Tomati, which was sanctioned by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice. But the crime was committed indeed because of his just indignation. And this arose, first, from the ignominy growing out of the said pretence as to her birth; second, from the provocation given by the Comparini (now slain) in issuing and distributing the said papers; and, third, from their conspiracy in the flight of his wife. For indeed this Constitution of Alexander does not apply where no guile is present and where some provocation has been given by the one hurt. Farinacci very fully affirms this throughout _cons. 67_, where in the end he places the complete decision of the Sacred Court. In any case, since with Count Guido two causes for committing crime concurred: one the aforesaid matter of the lawsuit, another wounded honour because of the lawsuit brought and the flight in which they conspired, wherefrom the adultery had followed, the cause of honour should be given attention, as it is the graver and consequently the more proportionate to the crime. [Citations.] Likewise the penalty should not be increased in view of the place of the crime, because the defence of one's honour is so justifiable, and the anger and commotion of mind arising therefrom is so just, that reason for it cannot be demanded, as Merlin Pignatelli [Citation] holds, because Giovanni Francesco de Carrillo [Citation] speaks of an insult offered in prison. And No. 29 approves the decision for the reason that greater reverence is due to churches and other places consecrated to God, and in which the King of Kings and Lord of Lords dwells in essence; and yet one who commits crime in them from just anger and grievance is excused; for he asserts that all Canonists and other authorities there alleged by him unanimously acknowledge this. More readily, therefore, should this conclusion follow in our case, since the said Francesca was not staying in a formal prison, but was merely keeping her home as a prison, under security of 300 scudi, that she would not depart therefrom; because one who has given bond and has sworn not to leave a place is neither in chains nor in custody. [Citations.] Lucano holds that there are differences between being kept in chains and being committed under bond, etc. And Farinacci holds that the word "custody" should be more strictly interpreted than the word "chains." [Citations.] Even if, therefore, Count Guido had confessed that he killed his own wife, his father-in-law, and his mother-in-law, with the complicity and aid of the above-named helpers, he should not be punished with the ordinary penalty, for reasons given above. And much more readily should we follow this opinion since we can see that he confessed only that he gave commands for mutilating his said wife (_ad sfrisiandum_), if I may use the word of the authorities. In this case he is not to be held responsible for the subsequent death of his wife and of the others. Decian, _cons. 622, no. 4_, in this very condition, holds that one giving orders can be punished only for the manner of committing the crime for which bodily punishment cannot be inflicted. Thus far the Fisc has been unwilling to rest satisfied with such a qualified confession. Yet since he claims the right to torture the accused for proving some further pretended truth, the torture shall be simple; nor can the torment of the vigil be inflicted; because the Constitution given out by Pope Paul Fifth, of sacred memory, for the reformation of the courts of the City, stands in the way of that. This is included among his Constitutions as the 71st. By this it was decreed that such torment could not be inflicted unless these two features jointly concur: namely, that the crime be very atrocious and that the accused be burdened with the strongest proofs. [Citations.] But a crime is said to be "very atrocious" provided it is one for which a penalty more severe than mere death should be inflicted, such as useless mutilation, burning, and the like. _Farinaccius qu. 18, num. 68_, etc. And such a death, as ignominious and infamous, has no place with the persons of nobles. [Citations.] Hence it is much less so here, because we are not arguing about the death penalty even, which does not enter into the present case for reasons given above. And Gabriellus speaks to this effect on the point that such a crime may not be said to be qualified. What has been said in favour of Guido, the principal, also stands in favour of the aforesaid Blasio, Domenico, Francesco, and Alessandro; because they cannot be punished with the ordinary penalty, but only with the same penalty as the principal. [Citation.] Baldo cites a case under the statute which shows that one under bann for a certain crime cannot be killed save by the enemy who had him put under bann; and he says that if the enemy has him assassinated, the assassin is not punished. And he gives this reason, that what is permissible in the person of the one giving the order should be held as permissible in the one to whom orders are given; and he says it had been so held in a case under that law. Castro [Citation] holds that when one is permitted under the statute to take vengeance upon a person who has given him offence, he is also permitted to assemble his friends, to afford him aid, and that they shall go unpunished, just as the principal does. He also asserts that Jacobus Butrigarus [Citation], held thus, in _cons. 277_, where he speaks of the case of a husband who had assembled men to beat one who had wished to shame the modesty of his wife, he ordered his wife to pretend to give ear, and when the intriguer had come, murder was committed. And he says that men brought together in this way should be spared, because such an assembly was permissible for the husband, who was principal. [Citation.] Jason holds that in any vengeance permitted by law, one cannot demand it of another; yet he to whom it is permitted may take fellows and accomplices with him for the same act, and if they kill in company with him they shall not be held to account for the murder nor for the aid they have given; and he says that this opinion should be much kept in mind. Cæpollinus also illustrates this in several cases, especially in that of certain men who had killed one keeping the company of the sister of the man who had assembled them; and he says that they should not be punished, just as the principal was not, and he gained his point so that it was thus adjudged. [Citations.] Soccini also holds it should be thus adjudged, unless one wishes to say that they should be punished with a slighter penalty than the principal, as often happens in the case of auxiliaries. And he speaks in our very circumstances of men assembled by a husband for the sake of killing one who had polluted his wife. In these same circumstances, see also Parisius. [Citation.] Carera [Citation] speaks of a father who had his daughter (who had been keeping bad company) killed by an assassin; and he says that neither the father nor the murderer are to be held to account. [Citation.] Marsilius also, after placing in the very beginning this principle that when one matter is conceded all seem to be conceded which lead thereto, draws inference therefrom for the present case and many reasons for it are adduced. Cassanis also [Citation] holds that men assembled in this way are not held responsible either for the murder or for the aid furnished, if they do the killing in the company of the principal. And in these same circumstances Garzonus speaks, decision 71, throughout. Nor does it stand in the way of our reasoning that one of the aforesaid defendants had inflicted wounds with his own hands, or had killed one of the victims; as Francesco has confessed that he inflicted four or five wounds in the back of Francesca Pompilia. Even in these circumstances the rule holds good that auxiliaries shall not be punished with greater penalty than the principal. And so affirm individually the following authorities among those recently cited. [Citations.] And Garzoni testifies that it was so adjudged in the said decision 71, where we read: "Or he may have with himself associates for this act," and if they kill the adulterers in company of the principal they are held to very slight account, either for the murder or for the aid given, and it was so adjudged. And even in the more extreme case of one killing by assassination, and consequently in the absence of the principal, this is the opinion of Baldo [Citation], where we read: "And now it is inquired whether an assassin is ever punished, and I say he is not; because what is permitted in the person giving command is also permitted in the person commanded." Castro [Citation] also says: "Because what I can do of myself I can have done through my helpers who are necessary for that purpose." And Afflitto [Citation] says: "Either with one's own hands, or by help of another, even with the influence of money, and thus by an assassin; for Baldo says on this same point: 'What is permitted in the person giving command is also permitted in the person commanded'; and he witnesses that it was so adjudged." [Citations.] Marta [speaks as follows]: "Much more so because authorities affirm that a husband, who on account of fear cannot kill the adulteress, may even by the help of money demand of another that he kill her, and neither of them is then to be punished." But whatever Caballus [Citation] may say to the contrary, he bases his opinion upon Castro and Rollandus. Castro, however, favours our opinion, as is to be seen in No. 3. Rollandus should not be given heed; for when he offers this very same opinion about the statute which permits any one to take vengeance; and says that since this kind of permission is personal, it cannot be passed on from one to another, this opinion of his is expressly contrary to the teaching of Baldo, Castro, Jason, and others, whom we have alleged above in paragraph _quae dicta sunt_. And since this opinion of ours is milder and more equitable, it should hold good, as Jason decides on this point. [Citation.] Nor can the punishment be increased because of the alleged carrying of prohibited arms; because the latter offence is included then with the real crime. [Citations.] In Guazzin we read that this is so, even if for the carrying of the arms a greater penalty would be inflicted [than for the principal offence]. And so, whenever it is evident that the crime has been committed for honour's sake and for a just grievance, as in the present case, the carrying of the arms may go unpunished, or at least it should not be punished with a more severe penalty than should be imposed for the principal crime itself. Thus Policardus [Citation] well affirms when speaking of arms which are considered treacherous by the Banns. These claims should hold good more readily as regards Domenico and Francesco, who are foreigners, and are therefore not included in any of the Apostolic Constitutions or Banns, which prohibit the bearing of arms under very heavy penalties. [Citations.] Especially since they are minors, as is made clear in the course of the trial, pp. 35 and 304; in which case they are likewise not bound by these Constitutions and Banns, which give judgment upon the crime of a minor. For the power to make and establish such regulations was lacking in the Prince or public official concerned. [Citations.] Such are the matters which, in view of the excessive scantiness of time, I have been able to collect in discharge of my duty for the defence of these poor prisoners. Nor do I at all distrust that my Lords Judges, when they see that too little has been said, will wish to supply and offer what is lacking out of the high rectitude for which they are distinguished. For this would be quite in accord with the decree of Emperors Diocletian and Maximian, as related. [Citation.] And they will follow the advice of Hippolitus Marsilius, famous in criminal proceedings, who says that a judge is obliged by his office to seek out grounds of defence for the accused. [Citations.] DESIDERIO SPRETI, _Advocate for the Poor_. [File-title of Pamphlet 3.] _By the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Governor in Criminal Cases_: _ROMAN MURDER-CASE._ _In behalf of Blasio Agostinelli and his Associates, Prisoners, against the Fisc._ _Memorial of fact and law._ _At Rome, in the type of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber, 1698._ ROMANA HOMICIDIORUM [PAMPHLET 3.] Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord: The plea of injured honour which redeems Count Guido from the rigorous penalty that should follow for the commission of murders, likewise urges mitigation of the ordinary penalty for Blasio and the associates who had hand in the murder, even though it may be pretended that they were paid thereto. For it is taken for granted that we are dealing with a case far removed from assassination, because of the presence of a person who had real cause for vengeance, as the following authorities think in common. [Citation.] There has been the strongest controversy among authorities as to whether a father or husband may demand of any one except his son the murder of his daughter or of his adulterous wife. And divided on the two sides of the question, they have contended strongly. [Citation.] Yet the majority are in favour of the affirmative and of the milder sentence; and often, in the event of such a murder, it has evidently been so adjudged. [Citation.] But since this question lies outside of our line of argument, it would be vain and quite useless labour to take it up, nor is time to be wasted when we are so hard pressed for it. For we are evidently dealing with auxiliaries, assembled for committing homicide, according to the thought of the Fisc. Hence the conditions of a mere "mandatory" are not applicable; because of the immediate presence of the principal in the crime; for when he also lays hand to the crime, those who do likewise are not called mandatories, but auxiliaries and helpers. [Citations.] Furthermore, just as Guido himself is freed from the death penalty because of the said plea of injured honour, so likewise are his allies and auxiliaries freed, as the following authorities unanimously assert. [Citations.] Those who are cited in support of the opposite view do not pronounce opinion in our peculiar circumstances, but speak of a husband demanding of another the murder of his adulterous wife, and not of auxiliaries who do the killing in company with the husband, as in our case. [Citations.] In such contingency, auxiliaries who give aid to a husband while killing his adulterous wife have always enjoyed the same indulgence as the principal himself; that is, they always escape the capital penalty, and indeed go entirely unpunished. [Citations.] Nor does the distinction of Caballus make any difference, where he holds that auxiliaries may indeed assist with impunity a husband or a father killing a wife or daughter respectively, in order that these may kill the more safely; but that they cannot lend a hand and actually kill; for in the latter case they are to be held accountable for the murder. Because, for foundation in making such a distinction, he plants his feet upon Paolo de Castro. [Citation.] But this is so far from proving his purpose that it rather turns back on him remarkably to his own injury. For after the latter sets before himself this kind of a difficulty, under No. 2, he adds: "But I hold entirely the contrary: that neither the one who did the killing nor he who made the assembly (as it may be called) are to be held for the murder for the purpose of inflicting the capital penalty." This is also true in the council of Rollandus a Valle. [Citations.] May that learned authority pardon me; for even if he does attempt to confute Paolo de Castro in the said 154th council, which is in our favour, under the pretext that he speaks contrary to the common opinion, this claim does not suffice in view of the above-cited authorities. And if there were time, I would demonstrate this more clearly. Furthermore, Rollandus alleges Parisius, _cons. 154, lib. 4_. But he could well omit that, because No. 22 proves expressly contrary to him on its very face, where it says: "Under our very conditions was given that excellent decision of Paolo de Castro in the before-cited council. In stronger circumstances (which also include the present case) he concludes that those who knew of, or were present, or were associated with a husband in the act of the said murder, and who furnished him aid, ought not to be punished with a greater penalty than the principal, according to the rule concerning auxiliaries, beside the accurate authority of Marsilius." And he concludes that at the very worst, when the utmost rigour of it is considered, they should not be punished with more than a temporary banishment. Furthermore, Rollandus in the said council is expressly confuted by Facchinus. [Citation.] Nor is this without vital reason. For just as a qualification that modifies a crime in the principal delinquent increases it also for the auxiliaries, whenever they are aware of it, so all sense of equity demands that a qualification that diminishes the penalty for the principal, even though it be unknown to the auxiliaries, shall act in favour of them also. [Citations.] Hence Caballus remains without a stable foundation, and is opposed to the opinion of the many doctors here alleged, who make no distinction between those who simply assist and those taking a hand in the murder; and indeed all of them speak of auxiliaries. Furthermore, it is found that this has often been the judgment, even in the more extreme circumstances of one commanded to a murder, as was said above. And so strong is the plea of injured honour that not only does it extend its protection to mere mandatories, but even to mandatories whose case is modified by the circumstance of assassination. And it causes them to be absolved, as we find that it was so decided. [Citations.] Hence if both mandatories and assassins are redeemed from the ordinary death penalty, whenever they kill an adulteress at the command of the husband, it necessarily follows that the distinction of Caballus is not a true one, nor is it accepted in practice. For if they are mandatories, we cannot deny that they may kill with their own hands; and nevertheless, not to speak of the other decisions cited above, Clar. [Citation] testifies such a decision favourable to the accused was handed down, contrary to the opinion of Caballus. If, therefore, Blasio and his fellows are not to be punished with the death penalty for affording aid in the murders, vain is the question whether they can be subjected to the torment of the vigil for the purpose of having the very truth from their own mouths. For this procedure demands two requisites: one that the most urgent proofs stand against the accused, and the other that the crime be very atrocious, according to the prescript of the Bull. [Citations.] And although the powers of this Tribunal are very great for the dispensing with one of the said requisites, yet I have never seen the said torment of the vigil inflicted unless when there was no doubt that the crime, for which the Fisc was trying to draw confession from the accused, deserved the capital penalty. We cannot believe that the prosecution expects to make a case to this end because of the pretended conventicle; since those who are assembled are not to be held under the penalty for conventicle, but only the one who assembled them is so held, as Baldo well asserts. [Citations.] Nor in this case can the penalty for the asserted conventicle be made good against Count Guido himself, since the cause for which he assembled the men aids him in evading the penalty; inasmuch as one may assemble his friends and associates for the purpose of regaining his reputation. [Citations.] For this has been well proved, that whenever any one for just grievance assembles men to avenge his injury, he has not incurred the crime and penalty of conventicle. And although Farinacci, _quaest 113, n. 55_, declares that this holds good provided the vengeance be immediate, but that it is otherwise if the vengeance be after an interval, yet I pray that it be noted that in either case, if it concern vengeance for a personal injury (in which conditions he himself speaks), and therefore when for an injury which wounds the honour, such vengeance is at all times said to be taken immediately. For such an injury always urges and presses, because it should be termed the restoration and reparation of honour (which the one injured in his reputation could not otherwise accomplish), rather than vindication and vengeance, as we believe was satisfactorily proved in our other plea in behalf of Count Guido. But all further difficulty ceases with this consideration: prosecution can be brought for conventicle, if the men were assembled for an evil end and no other crime followed therefrom; but when, according to the sense of the Fisc, they have been called together for committing murders, and these are really committed, no further action can be taken as regards the prohibited conventicle, but rather for the murders themselves; for the assembling of the men tended to this same effect. [Citations.] And it is for this reason more particularly; because when the beginning and the end of an act are alike illegal, the end is given attention, and not the beginning, as Bartolo teaches us. [Citations.] It is to be added still further, that the assembling of men is not illegal in itself; indeed it is possible for it at some times to be both permissible and worthy of approval, as in the cases related by Farinacci. But it is illegal because of its evil consequences and the base end for which it is usually made. Hence, as the assembling of men is prohibited, not in itself, but because of something else, the end ought to be considered rather than what precedes the end. Nor should the rigorous penalty of death be inflicted at all upon Domenico Gambassini and Francesco Pasquini for the pretended carrying of arms of illegitimate measure; because they are foreigners and had not stayed long enough in the Ecclesiastical State so that their knowledge of this law could be taken for granted. Nor ought it to be inflicted upon the others; for even if the death penalty is threatened by the Constitutions and Banns for the bearing or retention of them; yet since the carrying of this kind of arms is not prohibited for reasons in itself, but because of the pernicious end which follows it, or can follow it; and because this bearing of arms was looking towards the said murders; and because these, although they are not entirely permissible, are not utterly without excuse, the crime of carrying such arms should be included with the end for which they were carried; because the one is implied in the other, nor may the means seem worse than the end. And although, according to the opinion of some persons, the penalty for carrying arms is not to be confused with the crime committed with them, whenever the latter is the graver, yet this seems to be so understood when a crime is committed with them which is entirely illegal and without excuse. But this is not so when the crime is deceased and extenuated, and indeed excused in part, because of the reason for which it was committed. In any case, the bearing of arms, according to common law, is but a slight crime. [Citations.] Although by special Constitutions and Banns the penalty has been increased almost to the highest possible point, yet this kind of increase does not change the nature of the crime. And just as in the eyes of the common law, torture is not inflicted for getting the truth from those indicted for the said carrying of arms, in view of the insignificance of the crime, in like manner it cannot be inflicted by the force of Constitutions and Statutes which have increased the penalty. [Citations.] And this is especially true in the case of the torment of the vigil, which cannot be inflicted for a crime that is not in its very nature most atrocious, but that is held as such, so far as the penalty is concerned, merely by the strength of a decree. This holds good unless indeed the nature of that crime is changed according to the method of proceeding in it. [Citation.] And we see in the Banns of our Illustrious Lord Governor that he expressly declared this, when he wished to proceed with the torment of the vigil in cases in which he could not proceed legally; that of a certainty he would not do so. Nor would he indeed have done this, if he could have inflicted such tortures in the case of crimes which are not capital by common law, but are to be expiated with the death penalty by the rigour of the Banns. GIACINTO ARCANGELI, _Procurator of the Poor_. [File-title of Pamphlet 4.] _By the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Governor in Criminal Cases_: _ROMAN MURDER-CASE with qualifying circumstance._ _For the Fisc._ _Summary._ _At Rome, in the type of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber, 1698._ SUMMARY [PAMPHLET 4.] _No. 1._--_The sworn testimony of a witness as to the poverty of said Count Guido Franceschini and the miseries suffered by the Signori Comparini while they stayed in his home in the city of Arezzo._ _June 24, 1694._ Angelica, the daughter of the deceased Pietro and Johanna Battista of Castelluccio, in the Diocese of Arezzo, about 35 years of age, was examined by me on behalf of Pietro Comparini, against any one whomsoever, and put on permanent record; as to which testimony, she took oath to speak the truth, as is seen below. I tell you in all truth, sir, that while I was staying in Arezzo last January in the home of Signora Maddalena Baldi Albergotti, the chance was offered me to go and serve Signora Beatrice Franceschini and her sons, etc. I decided to do so, and when I had gone to the home of the Signori Franceschini I spoke with the said Signora Beatrice. She drew me aside into a little room and told me that she would take me as a servant, but that I should never have any private dealings with the two old people who were in the house; one of them was Signor Pietro Comparini and the other Signora Violante, his wife. She charged me still further that if either of the two old people chanced to call me into their chamber, I should not go without first asking her permission. On these terms I accepted the service. After I had entered thereupon, I noticed that Signora Violante stayed in her room most of the time, weeping, and though the Comparini were stiff with cold, the room was without fire. Hence I took pity on her, and without the knowledge of Signora Beatrice, I took the coals from my own brazier and carried them to her. But no sooner did I offer them to her than Signora Violante ordered me out of the room, lest Signora Beatrice might take offence that I had done this act of charity. Also, once among the many times, when Signora Beatrice found it out she made me leave the coals in the fireplace and snatched the shovel from my hands, and threatened me, saying that if she had wished it she herself would have come to bring it; because she did not want me to do any service whatsoever for the said Signori Comparini. And the Comparini could not even speak among themselves, because Signor Guido Franceschini, the Canon Girolamo his brother, and Signora Beatrice, their mother, would stand at one door or another of the apartment and listen to what the said Signori Comparini were saying to one another. This occurred every evening and morning until the said Signor Pietro left the room and the house. And when he returned at night they were unwilling for me to make a light for him on the stairway. And once when Signor Pietro came back home about half-past six in the evening, and I heard him scrape his feet, I took up the lamp to go and meet him. But Signor Guido noticing that, snatched the lamp from my hands, telling me that I had better keep still, and that I had better not approach unless I wished to be pitched out of the window. And this seemed all the worse to me, because when I first entered upon the service of the said Franceschini I had heard it said around the house that one evening, as Signor Pietro was coming back home, he had fallen, while ascending the same steps without a light, and that he had made a very ugly bruise, because of which he had had to keep his bed for many days. At the same time, while I was in the said service, it chanced one morning at breakfast that the Franceschini gave some offence to Signora Violante, because of which a mishap befell her. For no sooner had she reached her own room than she threw herself into a straw-chair and swooned away. When Signora Francesca Pompilia, wife of the said Signor Guido, found it out, she began to weep and to cry out with a loud voice, saying, "My mother is dying." Whereupon I ran to Signora Violante and began to unlace her, and turned to bring her a little vinegar and fire. But because there was no fire I took some wood and put it in the fireplace to kindle it. When Signora Beatrice saw this she snatched the wood from the fire, in great anger, and told me to take the ashes, which were quite enough to warm her feet. So I took the ashes that were in the fireplace, but because of the intensely cold weather they were cool when I reached the room where the Signora Violante was half dead. Accordingly, the Signora Pompilia and I, both of us weeping, unclothed Signora Violante and put her in the bed, which was as cold as ice. And because I was crying when I returned to the kitchen, after having put Signora Violante to bed, Signora Beatrice said to me: "Do you want me to take a little hemp and wipe your eyes?" Signora Francesca Pompilia also heard this, and she made some complaint to Signora Beatrice who did not want me to return to the room again nor to make a little gruel, as Signora Violante had ordered. It happened a few days later, during the month of February following, that while the Signori Franceschini, Francesca Pompilia, Signor Pietro, and Signora Violante were at the table, they began talking of their purpose of sending me away, as the Franceschini had already dismissed me from service. When Signora Francesca Pompilia, who was at the table with the others as I have said above, heard this, she remarked to Signor Pietro and Signora Violante: "Do you know why they wish to send her away? They believe she wished to censure me because Signora Beatrice said some days ago that she would take hemp and wipe the tears from her eyes, when she was weeping over the accident that happened to you, mother." Then Signor Pietro spoke up and asked the Signori Franceschini to keep me in their good graces for eight or ten days more, for if he wished to return to Rome with Signora Violante he would take me with them. And he said he could expect this favour at their hands, as it was the first he had ever asked of them. To this, none of the Franceschini replied; but Signor Guido rose from the table and, approaching me, gave me two very good licks. The others then came up. While he was doing this, the Canon, his brother, also gave me some kicks, and his mother struck me and told me to leave at once. As soon as Signora Violante saw and heard this she took pity on me and exclaimed to the said Signori: "Where do you wish the poor thing to go now?" And all the Franceschini with one accord said to Signora Violante: "You get out with her, too." And they called her "slut," and other insulting names, so that Signora Violante went to her room to put on her wraps. The Canon drew a sword and ran after her into the room and shut the door. I, fearing that he would inflict some wounds upon Signora Violante, ran to enter the room and found that the Canon had locked himself within. So myself and Signor Pietro and Francesca Pompilia began to weep and to cry out for help, thinking that the Canon would kill Signora Violante there inside. And after some little time, I left the house, while the said couple and Signora Francesca Pompilia were still making outcry to the Signori Franceschini. During all the time I remained in the service of the said Signori Franceschini at Arezzo, as I have said above, I can say of a truth that every morning and evening at the table I served the said Signori Franceschini, Signora Francesca Pompilia, Signor Pietro, and Signora Violante Comparini. For the food of all this tableful, the Franceschini bought on Saturday a sucking lamb, on which they spent, at most, twelve or fourteen _gratie_. Then Signora Beatrice cooked it and divided it out for the entire week. And the head of the lamb she divided up for a relish three times, and for the relish at other times she served separately the lights and intestines. During the days of the week when they ate there was no other sort of meat on the table to satisfy the needs of all the tableful. When he did not buy the lamb on Saturday, as I have said, Signor Guido gave money to Joseph, the houseboy, to buy two pounds of beef. Signora Beatrice herself put this to cook every morning, nor was she willing for the rest to meddle with it, and they ate therefrom at the table and carved for the evening meal. And because this meat was so tough that Signor Pietro could not eat it (as they had not cooked it enough), Signor Pietro did without eating meat, for the most part, and ate only a little bread, toasted and in bad condition, and a morsel of cheese. Thus Signor Pietro passed the days when they bought beef. On fasting days he ate vegetable soup with a little salted pike, and sometimes a few boiled chestnuts. But always, whether on fasting days or not, the bread was as black as ink, and heavy, and ill-seasoned. Then the wine which served for the table was but a single flask; and as soon as the wine was poured into this, Signora Beatrice made me put in as much more of water. And so I made out to fill the wine flask, half of it being water, and very often there was more water than wine. This flask she put on the table, and ordinarily it sufficed for all those eating, although at most the flask did not hold more than 3½ _foghliette_ [half-pints] according to Roman measure. Furthermore, I say that, not many days after I had left this service, it was public talk throughout Arezzo that Signor Pietro had gone home about half-past six in the evening and had found the street door shut so that he could not open it, and he was obliged to knock. When Signora Violante saw that no one about the house was going to open the door, she herself went downstairs to do so, but the door was locked with a key. And although she called Signor Guido and others who were in the house, yet no one stirred to go and open it. Therefore Signor Pietro went to sleep at the inn, and in the morning returned to see Signora Violante and Signora Francesca Pompilia. It was likewise said throughout Arezzo that when Signor Pietro complained at having been locked out of the house by the Canon, and when both Signor Pietro and Signora Violante reproached them bitterly about it, a new quarrel arose among them, and because of it both the Signori Comparini were driven out of the house. Signora Violante was received at the home of Signor Doctor Borri, where she dined that evening and spent the night. And Signor Pietro went to the inn to dine and sleep. When I heard that, I went to the house of Signor Borri to see Signora Violante, but was not admitted. And the wife of Signor Borri told me to go and tend to my own affairs. For she did not wish the Franceschini, who lived opposite, to perceive that I had gone there to see Signora Violante, as some disturbance might arise therefrom. Then the next morning I went to the inn, where I had been told Signora Violante had gone to find Signor Pietro, but I did not find either of them, and was told by the host that they had gone out. So, not knowing where to find them, I returned to the home of Signora Maddelena Albergotti, where I was staying. And I heard afterwards that both Signor Pietro and Signora Violante had returned to the Inn, where they had breakfasted. Then by the interposition of the Governor of Arezzo they were reconciled with the Franceschini, and they returned indeed to the house of the latter. I heard also that the Franceschini continued to maltreat and insult the said couple, as they had continually done while I was in their service. Therefore they were finally obliged to leave Arezzo and go back to Rome. All the abovesaid matters I know from having seen and heard the ill-treatment, which the Franceschini inflicted upon the Comparini and the insults which they offered them and Signora Francesca Pompilia; and likewise from having heard them talked about publicly throughout Arezzo, where it is known to every one and is notorious, and where there is public talk and rumour about it. _No. 2._--_Various attestations as to Francesca's recourse to the Bishop and Governor because of the cruelty of her husband and relatives._ _June 17, 1697._ To whomsoever it may concern: We, the undersigned, attest as true: That Signora Francesca Pompilia Comparini, wife of Signor Guido Franceschini, has many and many a time fled from home and hastened now to Monsignor the Bishop, and again to the Governor, and also to the neighbours, because of the continual scolding and ill-treatment which she has suffered at the hands of Count Guido her husband, Signora Beatrice her mother-in-law, and the Signor Canon Girolamo her brother-in-law. We know this from having met her when she was fleeing as above, and from the public talk and notoriety of it throughout the city of Arezzo. In pledge of which, have we signed the present attestation with our own hands this abovesaid day and year, etc. I, CANON ALESSANDRO TORTELLI, affirm the truth to be as abovesaid, and in pledge thereto have signed with my own hand. I, MARCO ROMANO, affirm the truth to be as abovesaid, and in pledge, etc., with my own hand. I, ANTONIO FRANCESCO ARCANGELI, affirm the truth to be as is contained above, with my own hand. I, CAMMILLO LOMBARDI, affirm as is contained above, with my own hand. I, FRANCESCO JACOPO CONTI of Bissignano, affirm as is contained above, and in pledge, etc., with my own hand. I, URBANO ANTONIO ROMANO, a priest of Arezzo, and at present Curate of the parish church of San Adriano, affirm the truth to be as is contained above, and in pledge thereto have subscribed with my own hand. Then follows the identification of the handwriting in due form, etc. _Extract from a letter written by D. Tommaso Romani, uncle of Guido Franceschini, to Pietro Comparini in Rome._ Most Illustrious Sir, my most Honoured Master: I can not do less, etc., departure, she has been little like the Signora Francesca, etc.; she fled from home, and went into San Antonio. And thither ran also Signor Guido, the Canon, and Beatrice, etc., in order that she might come back, and in that belief the Signora Francesca returned home, etc. Yesterday, Signora Francesca and my sister were in the Duomo at sermon. At its close, while she was going away and was near the gate of Monsignore, Francesca fled into the Palace, which is very near by. This was about seven o'clock in the evening, and there was a fine row in the Palace, etc. _Extract from another letter written by Bartholomeo Albergotti, a gentleman, to Pietro Comparini._ Most Illustrious Signor and most Cherished Master: At my return, etc., the Signora, his wife, has been melancholy, and two evenings after your departure, she made a big disturbance, because she did not wish to go and sleep with Signor Guido her husband, etc. The day before Palm Sunday, the Signora went, etc., to preaching, etc., and in leaving there, she rushed into the Palace of the Bishop, etc. She took her station at the head of the stairs and stayed there until half past six in the evening; and neither Signora Beatrice nor Signor Guido were able to make her return home. Yet the Bishop did not give her an audience, but his secretary hastened thither and urged Signor Guido and Signora Beatrice not to scold the Signora his wife, etc. And after quite enough of such disputes, they took her back home, etc. _No._ 3.--_Deposition of Francesca as to the letters asserted to have been written by her to Abate Franceschini, and previously outlined by her husband; recorded in the prosecution brought for her pretended flight._ _March_ 21, 1697 [for May.] Francesca Comparini, when under oath, etc., when questioned whether she had ever sent any letter to Abate Franceschini here in the City, while she lived in Arezzo, replied: While I was in Arezzo I wrote at the instance of my husband, to my brother-in-law Abate Franceschini here in Rome; but as I did not know how to write, my husband formed the letters with a pencil and then he made me trace it with a pen and ink it with my own hand. And he told me that his brother had taken pleasure in receiving such a letter of mine, written by myself. This happened two or three times. When questioned whether, if she should see one of the letters written as is told above, and sent to the City to the same Abate Franceschini, she would recognise it, etc. She replied: If your Honour would cause me to see one of the letters written by me, as above, and sent to Abate Franceschini, I should recognise it very well. And when at my command the letter was shown to her, about which there was discussion in the prosecution, and which begins _Carissimo Cognato sono con questa_, and ends, etc., _Arezzo_ 14 _Giugnio_ 1694, _affetionatissima Serva, e Cognata Francesca Comparini ne Franceschini_. She responded: I have seen and have examined carefully this letter shown me by the order of your Honour, which begins _Carissimo Signor Cognato sono con questa_, etc., and ends _Francesca Comparini, ne Franceschini_, and having looked at it, I think, but cannot swear to it as the truth, that this is one of the letters written by me to my brother-in-law, Abate Franceschini, in conformity [to my husband's wishes] as is said above. _No_. 4.--_The tenor of the letter written as above to Abate Franceschini._ Dearest Brother-in-law: I wish by this letter to pay my respects to you, and to thank you for your efforts in placing me in this home, where, far removed from my parents, I live now a tranquil life and enjoy perfect safety, not having them around me. For they grieved me night and day with their perverse commands, which were against the law, both human and divine: that I should not love Signor Guido, my husband, and that I should flee by night from his couch. At the same time they made me tell him that I had no congeniality with him and that he was not my husband because I have no children by him. They also caused me to run away often to the Bishop without any reason whatever, and made me tell the Bishop that I wished to be divorced from Signor Guido. And for the purpose of stirring up great discord in the home, my mother told the Bishop, and Signor Guido, and then the entire town, that the Canon my brother-in-law had solicited me dishonourably, a thing that had never been thought of by him. They urged me to continue these evil counsels, which were far from right and far from the submission due to my husband. And they left me at their departure their express command, by my obligation to obey them, that I should kill my husband, give poison to my brothers-in-law and my mother-in-law, burn the house and break the vases and other things, in order that in the eyes of the world it might not appear after their departure that it was they who had counselled me to commit so many crimes. And finally at their departure, they left me, as a parting command, that I should choose for myself a young man to my taste, and with him should run away to Rome, and many other matters, which I omit for blushing. Now that I have not her at hand who stirred up my mind, I enjoy the quiet of Paradise, and know that my parents were thus directing me to a precipice, because of their own rage. Therefore, now that I see in their true light these deeds proposed by the command of my parents, I pray for pardon from God, from yourself, and from all the world. For I wish to be a good Christian and a good wife to Signor Guido, who has many times chidden me in a loving manner, saying that some day I would thank him for the reproofs he gave me. And these evil counsels which my parents have given, I have now made known, and I acknowledge myself Your most affectionate servant and sister, FRANCESCA COMPARINI _ne_ FRANCESCHINI. AREZZO, _June 14, 1694_. Outside directed to Abate Paolo Franceschini, Rome. [The deposition of Pompilia is translated pp. 90-95 in its completer form as given in the Summary for the Defence. The only additional fact in this version is the date of the affidavit, Monday, May 13, 1697. She had been arrested at Castelnuovo, May 1.] _No. 6_.--_Attestation of priests and other persons, worthy to be accepted in all respects; who gave Francesca, assistance even till her death; they speak of her honesty, and her declaration that she had never violated her conjugal faith_. I, the undersigned, barefooted Augustinian priest, pledge my faith that inasmuch as I was present, helping Signora Francesca Comparini from the first instant of her pitiable case, even to the very end of her life, I say and attest on my priestly oath, in the presence of the God who must judge me, that to my own confusion I have discovered and marvelled at an innocent and saintly conscience in that ever-blessed child. During the four days she survived, when exhorted by me to pardon her husband, she replied with tears in her eyes and with a placid and compassionate voice: "May Jesus pardon him, as I have already done with all my heart." But what is more to be wondered at is that, although she suffered great pain, I never heard her speak an offensive or impatient word, nor show the slightest outward vexation either toward God or those near by. But ever submissive to the Divine Will, she said: "May God have pity on me," in such a way, indeed, as would have been incompatible with a soul that was not at one with God. To such an union one does not attain in a moment, but rather by the habit of years. I say further that I have always seen her self-restrained, and especially during medical treatment. On these occasions, if her habit of life had not been good, she would not have minded certain details around her with a modesty well-noted and marvelled at by me; nor otherwise could a young girl have been in the presence of so many men with such modesty and calm as that in which the blessed child remained while dying. And you may well believe what the Holy Spirit speaks by the mouth of the Evangelist, in the words of St. Matthew, chapter 7: "An evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit." Note that he says "cannot," and not "does not"; that is, making it impossible to infer the ability to do perfect deeds when oneself is imperfect and tainted with vice. You should therefore say that this girl was all goodness and modesty, since with all ease and all gladness she performed virtuous and modest deeds even at the very end of her life. Moreover she has died with strong love for God, with great composure, with all the sacred sacraments of the Church, and with the admiration of all bystanders, who blessed her as a saint. I do not say more lest I be taxed with partiality. I know very well that God alone is the searcher of hearts, but I also know that from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks; and that my great St. Augustine says: "As the life, so its end." Therefore, having noted in that ever blessed child saintly words, virtuous deeds, most modest acts, and the death of a soul in great fear of God, for the relief of my conscience I am compelled to say, and cannot do otherwise, that necessarily she has ever been a good, modest, and honourable girl, etc. This tenth of January, 1698, I, Fra CELESTINO ANGELO of St. Anna, barefooted Augustinian, affirm as I have said above, with my own hand. _Another attestation as above._ We, the undersigned, being interrogated for the truth, have made full and unquestioned statement on our oath, that we were present and assisted at the last illness from which Francesca Pompilia, wife of Guido Franceschini, died. She was often asked by her confessors and other persons whether she had committed any offence against the said Guido, her husband, whereby she might have given him occasion to maltreat her in such a manner as to cause her death. And she always responded that she had never committed any offence against him, but had always lived with all chastity and modesty. And this we know from having been present during the said suffering, and from having heard all these questions and responses while we were giving her medical treatment, or otherwise assisting, and from hearing her respond to these questions, as above, during the four days while she was suffering from her wounds, as we have seen and heard her; and we have witnessed her dying the death of a saint. In pledge thereto we have signed this present attestation with our own hands here in Rome this tenth of January, 1698. I, NICOLO CONSTANTIO, etc., who assisted at the treatment of the said Francesca Pompilia during four days, attest as above, etc. I, Fra CELESTINO ANGELO of St. Anna, barefooted Augustinian, say that I was present from the first instant of the case, even to the end of her life, and was always ministering to her. She ever said, "May God pardon him in heaven as I pardon him on earth; but as for the matter they charge me with, and for which they have slain me, I am utterly innocent." In proof whereof she said that God should not pardon her that sin, because she had never committed it. She died as an innocent martyr in the presence of another priest, to the edification of all the bystanders, as I have affirmed above with my own hand. I, PLACIDO SARDI, a priest, affirm with my own hand as the abovesaid Father, Fra Celestino, has declared, having been present as above. I, the MARQUIS NICOLO GREGORIO, affirm as above with my own hand. I, the undersigned, affirm what is contained in the abovewritten statement, as well as in the attestation of the reverend Father Celestino of Jesu and Maria. I assisted the abovesaid Signora Francesca Pompilia from the first, having picked her up from the earth where she lay in utter weakness because of her wounds. She had her head upon the legs of Signor Pietro Comparini, who was already dead. She made confession in my arms to the Principal of the Greek College, because she could neither rise up nor lie down. And from that hour I never left her, but always ministered to her even unto her death. She was the most exemplary and edifying Christian I have ever seen. For I saw her resigned to the divine will, and she always relied upon her own innocence, etc. I, GIUSEPPE D'ANDILLO, with my own hand. I, the undersigned, attest and affirm what is contained in all the said affidavits, from having assisted the said Francesca Pompilia, etc. DIONYSIO GODYN, with my own hand. I, LUCA CORSI, affirm with my own hand as is contained in all the said attestations, from having assisted day and night as long as the malady of the former Francesca Pompilia continued, and from having heard as above. I, GIOVANNI BATTISTA GUITENS, apothecary, who have assisted at the treatment and care of the said Francesca Pompilia, affirm with my own hand as is contained in all the above affidavits and attestations, from having assisted continually throughout a night and a day at the malady of the same. I, GIOVANNI BATTISTA MUCHA, the boy of the said Giovanni Battista Guitens, apothecary, affirm with my own hand as is contained above in the said attestation, from having assisted with the former Francesca Pompilia. Full and unquestionable statement is given by me the here undersigned, Abate Liberato Barberito, Doctor of Theology, that, as I was summoned to assist at the death of the said Signora Francesca Comparini, I often noticed, and especially during an entire night, that the above-named defendant suffered the pains of her wounds with Christian resignation, and condoned with superhuman generosity the offences of the one who had caused her innocent death with so many wounds. I also observed during the night the tenderness of the conscience of the above-named. For she passed it in showing the unwavering feelings of an heroic and Christian perfection. And this so much so that I can attest that during the experience I have had, having been four years Vicar in the Cure of Monsignor, the Bishop of Monopoli, of blessed memory, I have never observed the dying with like sentiments. And this is all the more so in an evil, caused so violently by another. Therefore in pledge, etc. Rome, this tenth day of January 1698. I, ABATE DI LIBERATO BARBERITO, affirm as above, etc. [File-title of Pamphlet 5.] _By the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Governor of the City in Criminal Cases:_ _ROMAN MURDER-CASE._ _In behalf of the Fisc, against_ Count Guido Franceschini and his Associates_. _Memorial of fact and law of the Lord Procurator General of the Fisc._. _At Rome, in the type of the Reverend Apostolic Church, 1698._ ROMANA EXCIDII [PAMPHLET 5.] Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord: The deplorable slaughter of the entire Comparini family, which occurred in this dear city of ours on the second night of the current month of January, and the shedding of their blood, cries out from earth to God for vengeance upon the criminals. And in order that we may fulfil the obligations of the office we are occupying, we have paid down the price of toil to narrate here with faithful pen the series of events. From this, my Lords Judges may readily see what laws may be applicable for a decision as to this cause and for the punishment of the delinquents for the same deed, etc., and so Barbosa says in his axioms in jurisprudence, axiom 93, No. 1: "Just as from the deed the law takes its rise, so from the deed the law dies." The series of facts, therefore, is as follows: Guido Franceschini of the city of Arezzo, married Francesca Comparini, for whom, by Pietro and Violante Comparini, there were promised as dowry, among other matters, certain properties subject to a reversionary interest. For they had brought this same Francesca up in their home as their own daughter, and as such they married her. Then, as the aforesaid Pietro and Violante had no other children, they left their home in the City to go and live in the home of Franceschini at Arezzo. There, for some time, they continued to live together in peace; but, as often happens among friends and relatives, contentions and quarrellings arose. On account of these, the aforesaid Pietro and Violante left that home and the city of Arezzo, and went back to Rome. In the meantime, as the flame of this enkindled hatred increased, a lawsuit was instituted as to the dowry once promised, but now denied by Pietro, on the pretext that Francesca was not indeed the daughter of the same Pietro and Violante, but that, after a pretence of her birth had been made, she had been received and brought up by them. And for this reason the said Guido and Francesca could not hope for the inheritance of the properties under the reversionary interest. But although Franceschini gained a favourable judgment on this point, yet when appeal had been made on behalf of Pietro Comparini, Francesca declared that she was ill-treated in the home of her husband by himself, and therefore desired to leave that home. Accordingly with the aid and companionship of Canon Caponsacchi, a relative of the said Franceschini, as is supposed, she ran away. But Franceschini had notice of his wife's flight and, following her up, he overtook her at the tavern of Castelnuovo. There he went to the governor of that place and saw to effecting the capture of his wife and the Canon, as indeed followed. Then the quarrel was continued. A criminal suit was brought in this Tribunal of the Governor of the City; the process of action was arranged, and the counsel on both sides was often heard, both by word of mouth and in writing. At last it was decided that owing to lack of proof of adultery the said Canon should be banished to Civita Vecchia and Francesca should be held in safekeeping. But because the Comparini claimed that the furnishing of food in the safekeeping was the duty of Franceschini, and the latter declared it lay with Comparini, the most Illustrious Lord Governor, having first secured the consent of Abate Paolo, the brother of Guido and his representative in the case, assigned the home of the Comparini to Francesca as a safe and secure prison under security. While these contests were still pending, both in the civil and criminal cases, as well as in that for divorce brought by Francesca, the wife, this same Franceschini schemed to take vengeance upon the abovesaid. For the execution of this criminal purpose he brought together Domenico Gambassini of Florence, Alessandro Baldeschi of the region of Castello, Francesco Pasquini Antonii of the Marquisate of Monte Acuto, and Blasio Agostinelli of the town of Popolo, and dwelling at the Villa Quarata. He provided them with swords and dagger, prohibited by the Bull of Alexander VIII., and entered the City in company with the aforesaid men. Approaching the home of the Comparini, at the first hour of the night, he secured the opening of the door to himself under the pretence of bringing a letter, sent to Violante by the said Canon Caponsacchi, then staying at Civita Vecchia. As soon as the door of the home was opened by the said Violante, the aforesaid Guido and his companions immediately set upon her. She was cut to pieces with their swords and immediately fell dead. Pietro likewise was cut down and died. Francesca, however, tried to hide under a bed, but was found and wounded in many places. Then, as if God granted her the favour, she was not left utterly dead, though after a few days she also passed away; and thus she could reveal this monstrous crime. As soon as my Lord Governor had notice of this, with most vigilant attention, he saw that the malefactors were pursued beyond the City. Accordingly that same night, they were discovered in the tavern at Merluccia with firearms and illegal swords, still bloody, and were taken back to prison. Then, when a case had been made against them, they were examined as to the crime. Some of them indeed confessed it, and although the others made denial of the management and knowledge of the killing of the entire family, yet against them there are most urgent presumptions of the knowledge and management abovesaid. Furthermore, from the same prosecution the gravest proofs have resulted, such as can be but slightly attacked and controverted by the Defence. Hence, when this cause may be presented to receive judgment, we believe that no foundation can afford defence for the criminals to escape the capital penalty, so far as they have confessed their crime, or can release those who have denied it from the rigorous torture of the vigil. For what if the Defence do strongly argue the question as to whether a husband who kills an adulterous wife, not immediately and when found in adultery, but after an interval, ought to be excused from the ordinary penalty of the _Lex Cornelia de Sicariis_? Some authorities indeed give an affirmative opinion for the excuse of the husband, as is to be seen in Giurba. [Citations.] Yet all of these authorities for mitigating the penalty upon a husband who kills his wife after an interval are moved by this reason: That since the sense of injured honour always oppresses the heart, it is difficult to restrain just resentment; for this reason the defence of the honour is said to be immediate when done as quickly as possible. But there are indeed many other authorities who stand by the negative, asserting that a husband who kills his wife, otherwise than when taken in adultery and in acts of passion, should be punished with the ordinary penalty. [Citations.] Rainaldi [Citation] says this opinion is the truer and the more advantageous to the state, nor should one depart from it in giving judgment. Sanzio says that it was often adjudged in this Senate that a husband was not excused by adultery legitimately proved, if he killed his wife after an interval; and for this reason, because formerly, according to the law of Romulus, a husband could kill his wife, but the _Lex Julia_ permitted him to kill only the vile adulterer, as Matthæus proves. [Citation.] But in this our present show of fact we believe we are dealing with a matter outside of the difficulty of this proposed question. For the authorities cited above for the contrary opinion hold good, and should be understood to do so, whenever the contention is about a husband who has killed his wife without excess of law and with no concurring circumstances and aggravating qualities, and when moved only by just grievance. But it is otherwise when, as in our case, excess and contempt of law is present and aggravating circumstances and qualities concur. Laurentius Matthæus [Citation] testifies that, according to common practice, such a distinction has been followed out. And after he had affirmed that a husband should be excused from the ordinary penalty and be punished more mildly, he adds: "For these reasons, it is the common practice to weigh the effect of the grievance and to punish only the excess; so that if the suspicion of guile in the manner of killing is present (as he considers any circumstance which tends toward treachery) the penalty is aggravated." The aggravating circumstances which concur in our case are indeed many, and they are so grave that any one of them is enough reason for imposing the death penalty or for qualifying the crime. The first of these is the assembling of armed men; for according to decrees of the Governor of this City, the penalty of death and of the confiscation of goods is inflicted upon the one assembling the men; and this is true even if those assembled are but four, as is read in chapter 82 of the same Banns. This circumstance and quality cannot be evaded on the authority of certain jurists who assert that it is permissible for a husband to kill his wife, even by means of men thus brought together. For the said authorities speak, and should be understood, in a case in which a husband may kill with impunity an adulterer and his own wife in the very act of adultery, or in the home of the husband. But it is otherwise if she is killed after an interval, or outside of the home of her husband; according to what is given. [Citation.] Or these matters might hold good if in no other way he could kill the adulterer and his wife. So think all authorities who can be adduced in favour of the husband. This cannot be said in our case since Franceschini, while following his wife with firearms, could have taken vengeance at the inn of Castelnuovo. But he had recourse to the judge, and chose the legal way of punishing his wife and the Canon with whom she fled. Or these claims would hold good if he had assembled a smaller number of men, whereby the crime of conventicle would not have been established. And this is the more strongly to be held because we are not concerned with a deed that is unpunishable, and permissible by law, as I have said. Nor do we believe that the Defence can make a claim that the husband may kill an adulterous wife after an interval with impunity; for all the authorities who can be adduced in favour of the husband free him indeed from the ordinary penalty, but not from an extraordinary penalty, as those adduced by us above in § _Hinc cum Causa_ can be seen to hold. If therefore, in our case, the husband committed a crime punishable in itself, how could he assemble a number of men forming a conventicle prohibited by the Banns, without incurring the penalty threatened by them? The second quality and circumstance is the carrying of arms contrary to the specification of the Constitution of Alexander VIII., which is extended to the whole Ecclesiastical State. Still less can the authority of jurists be alleged in excuse from this threatened penalty, if the husband kill an adulterer and the wife with prohibited arms. For aside from the response given by us in the explanation of the first circumstance of assembling and of conventicle (namely that these authorities hold good and should be understood to apply only in cases permitted by law, and therefore unpunishable), we say still further that they have very little application as regards the arms we are discussing; since the said Constitution prohibits not merely the carrying of such arms, but even their retention, manufacture, or introduction into the City and the Ecclesiastical State, under the penalty of rebellion and criminal insult to the majesty of the law. And so far as we are acquainted with such cases as are permitted by law, the authority of these jurists should be understood to hold good concerning arms, the carrying of which is indeed prohibited, but not the retention and introduction under any pretext whatsoever, even the pretext of justice; as is included in this same Constitution § 1, where we read: "Or to carry them on any pretext whatever, whether of military service or of the execution of justice, and still less to keep them in one's home or elsewhere." And in § _Ad haec_ it prohibits even the introduction of them: "the retention of them at home, in storehouses, and elsewhere, their introduction into the Ecclesiastical State, and their manufacture." If therefore the retention and introduction of such arms is prohibited, even when on the pretext of executing justice, ridiculous indeed would be Franceschini's pretence that he could approach the City and the home of his wife with such arms to vindicate after an interval this pretended offence of honour. This is the more certain as the crime concerning such arms is grave and of itself is punished with the capital penalty, as we have proved. In this case, when the crime actually follows, if the penalty for carrying the arms is greater than for the crime itself, the penalty for the graver offence is held to apply, and includes the lighter. [Citations.] The third circumstance is that Franceschini and the aforesaid men committed the murders in the very home and dwelling-place of the Comparini; because homicide is always said to be qualified when it is committed in the home of the one slain; since the home should be a safe refuge for its master, etc. Then also Franceschini entered with changed garb; in which case the murder is said to be committed _ex insidiis_. [Citations.] The fourth quality and circumstance is that the said Francesca was under the power of the judge, since the home, as we have said in our narrative of fact, was assigned to her under bond to keep it as a safe and secure prison. And hence she was under the protection of the court. [Citations.] And this is especially true when arguing in favour of the one who is under protection of the court, whatever may be said when arguing to his prejudice. And therefore the law holds that one under the protection of the court cannot be killed under less penalty than the death [of the assassin]. [Citations.] But all debate seems to cease since it is proven in the process that the said Franceschini approached the said home with his company of men with the thought and intent to kill not merely Francesca, his wife, but also Pietro and Violante. These, as he himself acknowledges, he hated with a deadly hatred, because of the suit they had brought and because they had urged Francesca to poison her husband and her brother-in-law, and had kept his wife in their home so that still further, in the continuation of the adultery, his honour was offended. But aside from this, as we have said above, Francesca was placed in the said home by the authority of the judge with the consent of the brother of this same husband, and so the question does not enter as to whether a husband may lawfully kill the relatives, friends, and servants of his adulterous wife, even if he does suspect them of affording their leave or assent to the wife committing adultery; since the special rights and privileges conceded to the husband should not be multiplied against the wife, and be given greater scope, but rather should be strictly interpreted. [Citation.] This holds good not merely when one is arguing about the prejudice of a third party, but concerning one's sole prejudice. [Citation.] In our very circumstances we read that the permission cannot be passed from person to person. [Citation.] Yet we can more truly declare that such an assertion of adultery on the part of Franceschini is calumniously false; for, in the very face of death, Francesca protested, to the very damnation of her soul, that she had given no offence to her husband's honour. This protestation is the more to be believed since those about to die are not presumed to be unmindful of their eternal salvation. [Citation.] The other causes adduced by Franceschini himself, so far as they are true, can indeed prove hatred and enmity existing between himself and the couple, which would tend in that direction and so would serve to prove in him a cause for their premeditated murder. But this is not sufficient to excuse him from the ordinary penalty of death, which premeditated homicide altogether demands. [Citations.] And it is for this reason, because the laws prohibit private vengeance (that is, vengeance which those without public office usurp to themselves because of their hatred, by killing or otherwise injuring men). [Citations.] Raynaldus affirms that in premeditated murder the ordinary penalty is inflicted not merely upon the slayer himself, but also upon all others who aid and give help, or concur in committing the murder by their help or council. [Citations.] FRANCESCO GAMBI, _Procurator General of the Fisc and of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber_. [File-title of Pamphlet 6.] _By the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Governor in Criminal Cases: ROMAN MURDER-CASE, with qualifying circumstance._ _For the Fisc, against Count Guido Franceschini and his Associates._ _Memorial of the law in the case by the Advocate of the Fisc._ _At Rome, in the type of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber_, 1698. ROMANA HOMICIDII CUM QUALITATE [PAMPHLET 6.] Most Illustrious and most Reverend Lord Governor: Since the chief defence of Count Franceschini, the Accused, as we have heard, consists in the pretended plea of injured honour, by which he was moved to crime, it is the office of the Fisc to disclose the lack of foundation for this plea, in order that this atrocious and enormous crime may be punished with the due penalty. Therefore I assume that we ought to examine the foundations on which the asserted plea of injured honour may rest; namely the flight of the unfortunate wife from the home of her husband in company with Canon Caponsacchi, with whom she was taken at the inn of Castelnuovo, and the pretended love-letters which were put forward in the prosecution of Pompilia for the said flight and departure. The pretended dishonesty of the wife is drawn from these two; but along with them other proofs were brought together in the said prosecution; the latter, however, are either altogether stupid or equivocal, or else unproven. This may be inferred from the dismission of the said Francesca, his wife, merely with the precaution of keeping her home as a prison and of the Canon with a three years' banishment to Civita Vecchia. Such action shows that in this same prosecution there was found by the Fisc no legitimate proof of dishonesty and of the pretended violation of conjugal faith, which the husband had charged against her. And indeed, from the defences then made and even from the trial itself, a very just cause has clearly appeared, which forced the luckless girl to flee from the home of her husband and to go back to her own home, there to live safely and quietly with her parents. Notorious indeed are the altercations which, on account of the parsimony of the Franceschini home, straightway arose between the parents of the wretched girl on the one hand, and the Accused, his mother, and his brothers on the other hand. The former in vain bewailed the fact that they had been deceived by the show of no small opulence, on account of the false statement of an annual income of 1700 scudi, which was afterward shown to have no existence. Indeed, while they stayed in the home of the accused husband in Arezzo, they were so badly treated by himself and his relatives that after a few months they were obliged to leave it and return to the City. During the whole time they lived there, contentions and reproaches throve continually among them. The Comparini were indeed excited with just indignation by the deception they had suffered. This is evident from the letters of Abate Paolo Franceschini, which presuppose these troubles and which were considered for the Defence by the Procurator of the Poor. These prove that hostility of mind had even then been conceived against the unfortunate parents, especially the one written March 6, where we read: "I write again to you that I do not wish to imitate him in his manner of writing, not being of his mind to sow broadcast in letters such words as would merit response by deeds and not by words. And these are so offensive that I have kept them for his reproof and mortification." And further on he says: "So that if you give us trouble, which I will never believe, you yourself will not be exempt therefrom." But sufficient proof results from the letters, as the following advise. [Citations.] And although these letters do not make clear the nature of their altercations, yet some of them more than prove the reproaches had so increased that their bitterness grew into hatred as is evident from the letter of February 12, 1694, where we read: "But hearing from the one side or other that the bitterness between them, not to say the hatred, is increasing." It would be all too easy for the Accused and the Abate, his brother, to prove, by showing letters written to him, that the reproaches were unjust and were occasioned by the Comparini themselves. This is apparent from the tenor of the said letter, where we read: "Because I feel that the enemy of God has put strife among them, it is improper that I should fulfil my duty toward you of a reply." But since the Franceschini did not show such letters, the presumptive truth of these same complaints and of this cause of complaint and altercation is strongly against the ones thus concealing them. In such circumstances the Roman court thus affirmed. [Citations.] But the truth of the charge of ill-treatment toward the parents, whom he was obliged by the dowry contract to provide with food, is also to be drawn from the deposition of a servant, as given in the Summary, No. 1. And since this would excite the pity of any who read, it becomes all the clearer that, by such very ill-treatment of her parents, the mind of the wretched wife was greatly exasperated; for she kept grieving in vain at seeing them thus troubled; yes, and she was even prohibited from grieving. And any one may know that the return of her parents to the City would indeed disturb with a considerable and very just grief this wretched child who was not more than fifteen years old. For she was destitute of all aid, and was left exposed to her husband's severity, because of which she daily feared that she was in peril of her life. In vain did she have recourse to the Reverend Bishop and to the Governor, Summary, No. 2. In vain was the interposition of certain noblemen tried; which had proved utterly useless, as is evident from the letter of March 6, where we read: "But what remedy can I give you, when so many gentlemen friendly to both parties have interfered to settle the troubles and it has not turned out well?" She might indeed think that no other remedy was left her than to flee from the abode of her husband and to seek again her father's home. As therefore she fled to escape deadly peril, her flight can afford no proof of dishonesty nor of the violation of conjugal faith; for it is attributable to a lawful rather than to a criminal cause. [Citations.] But there was another urgent cause for her eagerly desiring to seek her father's hearth, namely the ill-health of her father. She speaks of this in the letter which mentioned that she cannot look for the company of Gregorio Guillichini, and that this task had to be remitted to the Canon [Caponsacchi]. Hence we can well infer that she was arranging for the flight for legitimate reasons. No reliance whatever can be placed in the letter written by this same wife to Abate Franceschini. In that she thanks him for having joined her in marriage with the Accused, his brother. And she also acknowledges therein that, since the departure of her parents, she was living a life of utter tranquillity; because their evil persuasion, which was alienating her from her husband, had ceased. She also reveals a very base plan that had been proposed to her, namely, to destroy the entire household. Now the wife in her sworn statement frankly confesses that she wrote this letter to appease her husband, and that he had marked the characters, which she had afterwards traced with a pen. This statement is found in an extract from her sworn testimony as given in our Summary, No. 3. And a mere reading of the said letter so thrills one with horror that it is incredible that the luckless girl could have written such matters to the injury and detraction of her own parents, unless she had been compelled thereto by fear of her husband. For this reason the same letter is given in our Summary, No. 4. But even just ground of fear, because of which the luckless girl was moved to flee, has come to light, namely, the lawsuit brought by her father against the Accused for the nullification of the dowry contract. This contract had been made on false grounds; for Pietro had believed that he was promising the dowry to his own daughter, but then, from a confession made by the mother, he had found out that she was none such and that Violante had made pretence of giving birth to the child for the purpose of deceiving her husband and barring his creditors. Since Pietro had assigned all his property as dowry (and indeed it was of considerable value when we consider the quality of the persons concerned) he soon raised a dispute about it. And we may well fear that very grave and even deadly hatred arose therefrom. Thereby the conjugal peace, which had been disturbed by long-continued altercation, was utterly destroyed by recrudescent hatred. For a lawsuit as to a considerable amount of money, much more as to an entire property, would produce this effect, as daily experience well teaches us and as Grammaticus and others assert. [Citations.] Such just fear should be well considered by a prudent judge, who will take into account the circumstance of the persons and of the time. [Citation.] In our case it may be absolutely affirmed that these matters should be so considered, inasmuch as not merely a girl of tender age (as was the unfortunate wife, who was destitute of all aid and exposed to the severity of the husband, who had sought her life with a pistol and had threatened her with death on trivial suspicions), but even a woman of greatest fortitude would be unable to bear being exposed to such constant risk of her life and would see the necessity of taking care of herself. And whatever the cause, even if it were merely supposititious, it would be enough to excuse her according to the text. [Citations.] And Canon Rainaldi holds, that it is enough if one see the signs or acts of manifest desire, or preparations thereto. How much more excusable and how worthy of pity should Francesca be considered, since she had such an urgent and such a well-verified cause for fleeing? Mogolon holds that the mere sight of arms, even though the one having them does not use them nor unsheathe them, is just cause for fear. Nor can presumption of dishonour and of violated conjugal faith arise from the company of Canon Caponsacchi, with whom she fled, and for which flight he was condemned to three years' banishment in Civita Vecchia. For the luckless girl was destitute of all aid, and the demands of her age, of her sex, and of her station in life, did not admit of her undertaking so perilous a journey either alone, or in company with any baseborn woman. For then, in escaping dangers at home, she might incautiously expose herself to even graver perils; as might have happened if while alone she had been overtaken by her husband in the journey. Nor could she find any safer companion than this very Canon, who was bound by friendship to the Canon Conti. And the latter, who was a familiar friend and blood-relative of the Accused, although he had great pity upon her condition, judged it safer for her to flee with Caponsacchi, whom he believed to be apt and far-seeing to bring about the desired end. Otherwise she would have undertaken this flight with even greater risk. Therefore this necessary and prudent choice of the lesser evil excludes all suspicion of pretended dishonour. [Citations.] This suspicion is also excluded by the manner in which the flight was put into effect, namely in hurrying to the City by the direct route and with the greatest possible speed. For if the unfortunate girl had fled for the purpose of satisfying her lust with the same lover, the Canon Caponsacchi (as was charged elsewhere and as is repeated now even more bitterly to prove the plea of injured honour), she would either have delayed somewhere out of the public highways, where she could not be seized by the Accused, or she would not have approached the City with such great speed. She would have done neither of these, unless she were making the journey for the purpose of seeking again her father's hearth, where she hoped to find security for her life and her honour. It would be far too imprudent a plan for a lover to take a wife from the home of her husband to some other place where he could not possibly satisfy his lust. This improbability alone would be enough to prove the truth of the cause given by the wife in her affidavit--namely, that she had fled to avoid the deadly peril in which she feared she was placed, and that she might return to her father's hearth. The Canon also gave her his aid and companionship out of mere pity, and her honour was kept entirely untouched. The probabilities are always to be very much observed in arguing about a crime, or in excluding it, as the following hold. [Citations.] Still less firmly established is the other ground for the asserted plea of injured honour, which has been offered elsewhere by the Accused on the basis of the asserted love-letters. These letters, it was pretended, had been written in part by that most wretched girl to the Canon, and in part by the Canon himself. All these, it was claimed, had been found in the privy of the inn at Castelnuovo, where they were said to have been cast for the purpose of hiding them. Response was indeed then given by the Procurator of the Poor that the identity of the handwriting was unproved and uncertain; for the letters did not show to whom they were directed. And these responses were indeed admitted, since no punishment was inflicted upon Francesca, and she was simply dismissed with the precaution of keeping her home as a prison. And even though these letters, when we investigate their hearing, seem to give proof of excessive goodwill, yet Francesca could have made pretence of this for the purpose of winning over the Canon, who was reluctant (as she herself acknowledges in her affidavit), to afford her aid by giving her his company back to the City in the execution of her premeditated flight. It is indeed quite evident that the letters were prepared for this purpose. (Summary, No. 5.) And therefore this wretched girl, who was destitute of all aid and was placed in imminent risk of her life, should be judged worthy of all pity, if with gentle and even with loving words she tried to entice the Canon, whom she believed was well suited to afford her aid. Nor can stronger proof of violated modesty be drawn from these letters written for the purpose of the flight than from the flight itself. Nor is it a new thing for the most chaste of women to use similar arts sometimes for quite permissible ends. In the sacred Scriptures we read that Judith did so to deceive Holofernes, for the purpose of freeing her country. This luckless girl could therefore do so without any mark of dishonour, for the purpose of escaping deadly peril. We may speak still further of her confidence in her own continence as well as in the integrity of the Canon. Concerning this, a certain witness, examined by the Fisc in the said prosecution at the instance of Count Guido, who was then present, testifies to hearing from Gregorio Guillichini (likewise a relative of the Accused) as follows: "Signor Gregorio then added that the Signor Canon was going there for a good reason, and that therefore Signora Francesca had desired to go to Rome. And he told me also that no ill could arise from it, because there was not the slightest sin between them." The deposition of this witness, which is directly contrary to the party who had brought her into court, fully proves our point as the following hold. [Citations.] And therefore, since the luckless girl can be suspected of no evil from her association with Canon Caponsacchi, and since she had no other help more suitable for carrying out her plan, her dealings with him by letter ought to be excused as ordered to this end, even though we may read certain loving expressions in them. The latter, indeed, should be considered rather as courtesies adapted to winning his goodwill, and they should always be interpreted according to the thought of the one proffering them. [Citations.] Still further, there is added the participation of the Canon Conti, a nobleman and a relative of the Accused, who forwarded the attempt. It is incredible that he would have been willing to plot against the honour of Guido, but he would merely wish to snatch that wretched girl from imminent death because of his pity of her. And such participation is made clearly evident from the very letters which it is pretended were written by Caponsacchi. Of lighter weight still are the other proofs of pretended dishonesty; [first] the approach of the Canon to the home of the Accused at night time, for the purpose of speaking with the wife who was slain; [secondly] the kissing on the journey to Rome, concerning which Francesco Giovanni Rossi, driver of the carriage (commonly called calesse) bears witness; and [third] the pretended sleeping together in the same bed at the inn of Castelnuovo. As regards the first of these three, there is defect of proof; for it rests upon the word of a single witness only, Maria Margherita Contenti, and she endures the most relevant exception of being a public harlot, and so she alone can prove nothing. [Citations.] And since such approaching of the house was ordered to the permissible end of removing the wretched girl from the imminent peril of death, by taking her back to her father's house, it cannot be brought as a proof of illicit commerce. For the mere possibility that it was done for this purpose is enough to oblige us to take it in good part, according to the text. [Citations.] This is especially so since the very witness who swears to this approach of the home states, by hearsay from the said Gregorio Guillichini, that it was to a good end, and that no sin was taking place between the Canon and the wife who is now slain. And, as Guillichini was better informed, and was indeed a friend and, as I understand, a relative of the Accused, this excludes all suspicion to the contrary. With this testimony another deposition seems to agree, namely, that of the Canon Franceschini, brother of the Accused, who when questioned as to whether he knew if any intimacy had existed between Canon Caponsacchi and Francesca, replied: "This we never knew of beforehand; but after the criminal flight the whole town said that there must surely have passed some correspondence between them." His ignorance quite excludes and renders improbable any furtive and illicit approach to the home by the Canon Caponsacchi. For if the Accused had indeed threatened to kill his wife on account of unjust suspicion of Caponsacchi, we may well believe that Guido himself, his brother, and all the household would have kept guard for her safe keeping with all their might. And so, the said approach to the home, if it had been frequent (as is alleged), or if it had been for an ill end, would have been observed by them. [Secondly] under this same defect of proof lies the pretended kissing of each other on the journey. As to this matter only a single witness testifies, whose excessive animus is shown by his assertion, for he asserts that he saw this at night; nor does he give any reason for his seeing it, such as that the moon was shining, or that he could see because some artificial light was dispelling the gloom. As no such reason is given, he deserves no credence, as the following observe. [Citations.] Another very great improbability is added thereto--namely, that while he was driving the carriage with such velocity that it rather seemed to fly than advance swiftly, he could not have looked back to see such mutual kissing. This improbability likewise takes away from him all right to belief, according to what the following hold. [Citations.] But the assertion of that most wretched girl herself is also well suited to exclude all suspicion of her pretended unchastity. This was made by her after she had suffered many severe wounds in the very face of death itself, at the demand of the priests and other persons ministering to her. For, according to their attestation, she asserted that she had never sinned against her conjugal faith and had always conducted herself with all chastity and shame: "We were present and assisted at the last illness from which Francesca Pompilia, wife of Guido Franceschini, died. She was often asked by her confessors and other persons whether she had committed any offence against the said Guido, her husband, whereby she might have given him occasion to maltreat her in such a manner as to cause her death. And she always responded that she had never committed any offence, but had always lived with all chastity and modesty." And Fra Celestino Angelo of St. Anna, of the order of barefooted Augustinians, in his testimony, bears even more exact witness to this constant assertion of her innocence, where he writes: "She always said, 'May God pardon him in heaven, as I pardon him on earth, but as for the sin for which they have slain me, I am utterly innocent': in proof whereof she said that God should not pardon her that sin, because she had never committed it." An assertion like this, indeed, given in the very face of death, deserves all credence, since no one is believed to lie at such a time, as the following assert. [Citations.] Menocchius speaks in these very circumstances of one suspected of heresy, saying that such suspicion is removed if in the hour of death the accused say and protest that he had lived and wished to die and to trust according to what is pleasing to the Sacred Roman Church, etc. [Citation.] And Decianus cites the opinion of Albericus, who declares that by means of an assertion of this kind, made before the Cardinals, the memory of Pope Boniface had been defended, and that this very Albericus had in this way defended Gian Galeazzo Visconti of Milan. And this is more especially true since all the said witnesses agree that this most wretched girl died with the highest edification of the bystanders, and that she had always shown the deeds of Christian perfection, as we find in the said attestations, where we read: "And from having seen her die the death of a saint." And there is another statement of the said Father Celestino Angelo, which infers the innocence of her past life from her conduct just before death. All these matters are given in our Summary, No. 6. But, however rightly the Accused might draw some suspicion of his wife's dishonesty from her flight and from these letters, the tenor of which seems to prove them love-letters (which suspicion could excite due anger), yet this would not make excusable such truculent vengeance, taken after so great an interval. For this vengeance was taken, not merely upon his most wretched wife, but also upon her parents, who were entirely off their guard and quite undeserving of such a fate. And these murders were attended with such grave circumstances, aggravating the crime, that he would have to be punished with death even if he had not confessed the murders. For although just anger because of violated conjugal faith usually moderates the penalty for a husband killing his adulterous wife, yet one can no longer argue for total impunity after an opportunity to take vengeance on the adulterer and adulteress has been thrown away. [Citations.] But an especial and indispensable requisite is that the wife be taken in adultery, according to the text. [Citation.] "For thus it wishes this power to lie with the father, if he take his daughter in her very sin." Labeo also approves this, and Pomponius writes that she may be killed when taken in very licentiousness, and this is what Solon and Draco say. [Citations.] Much more does this hold good in the case of a husband, whose wrath may be kindled much more easily against a wife by sinister and unjust suspicion conceived about her. For the husband is not always accustomed to take good counsel for the wife, which the law presumes that the father does by natural instinct, etc.; and it excuses the father only when he kills his daughter along with her defiler, or inflicts wounds unhesitatingly upon her. And this is so true that it is not enough if the wife be found only in acts that are remote from, or merely preparatory to adultery, as authorities commonly affirm. [Citations.] John Teitops holds thus, and I think it well to quote his words, since the Judges may not have him at hand, and he thus explains the words of the said text: "Therefore they argue that acts preparatory to adultery do not suffice, but the obscene commingling of limbs is required." And after citing his authorities, he adds: "And this is more clearly evident from the words of Solon as given by Lucian, the Eunuch," where we read: "Unless they lie who say that he was taken in adultery." And then he criticises the opinion of Accursius, who asserts that acts preparatory for adultery are enough. And in the second paragraph after this decision is given he asserts that his opinion should be understood to be concerning immediate preparations, and he so explains his decision, where he says: "From the taking of the adulterer alone and naked with her alone and naked, and lying in the same bed, violent and certain suspicion of adultery arises, wherefrom the sentence of divorce may be granted." But the laws adduced (at letters I & J) show that strong suspicion does not indeed suffice. For this sort of discovery is the true taking in the act of adultery. And from a civil case under the said letter, one argues weakly for proof in a criminal cause. For no one can be condemned, much less killed, on suspicions alone in the absence of law. And violent suspicion is not indubitable ground for proof, such as is required in criminal cases. But indeed such suspicion is fallacious, because persons might be found to act thus for the purpose of committing adultery, and yet not actually to have committed the adultery, as Gravetta and others say. The Accused might indeed have contended merely for the tempering of the penalty if he had killed his fugitive wife in the act of taking her at the inn of Castelnuovo in company with Canon Caponsacchi. But when he neglected to take vengeance with his own hand and preferred to take it by law, he could not then kill her after an interval. This is according to the text [Citation], which affirms that one can put off the vengeance from day to day. [Citations.] Farinacci asserts that it was so held in practice, lest men should be given the opportunity of avenging their own wrongs. And he confutes Bertazzolus, who places on the same footing a case of taking in adultery, and says that the wife may be convicted of it provided that there be no doubt of it. Nor may the suspicion of the husband, which gave a strong ground for the difference, be unjust or too ready. Because just grievance, exciting a wrath which usually disturbs the mind of the husband, is verified by the actual taking of the wife in adultery, or in acts very near to it and not after an interval, although his suspicion may be very strong. And so the laws which excuse a husband because of just and sudden anger cannot be extended to cover vengeance taken after an interval. For in the latter case neither the impetuosity nor the suddenness of the anger is proved, but the murder is said to be committed in cold blood. But if for the purpose of restraining the impetus of raging anger, lest the husband take vengeance on his own authority, he is not excused from the penalty of the _Lex Cornelia de Sicariis_, provided he kill his wife after an interval, how much less excusable will he be if, after choosing the way of public vengeance by imprisoning his wife and her pretended lover, he shall, after a long intervening time, slaughter her and her parents so brutally? It should be added, for increasing his penalty, that as regards the unfortunate parents there was no just cause for killing them unless he wishes to consider as such the lawsuit which they brought for the nullification of the dowry contract because of the detection of her pretended birth. But this cause rather increases the offence to the most atrocious crime of _læsa majestas_, because of the utter security which the Pontifical Majesty wishes to afford to all litigants in the City. This point is found in the well-known decree of Alexander VI. where we read: "The inhumanity and savagery which thirsts for the death of others is horrible and detestable," and in the end we read: "In offence of the jurisdiction of his Divine Majesty, and to the injury of the Apostolic Authority." And, "They incur _ipso facto_ the sentence of the crime of _læsa majestas_." And a little later: "And they may always be distrusted in all their good deeds by every one, and may be held as banditti and as infamous and unfit." Very worthy of consideration, also, is that other aggravation of this inhuman slaughter, namely, that it was committed in their own home, which ought to be for each person the safest of refuges, according to the text. [Citations.] And Cicero elegantly says: "What is more sacred, what is more guarded by all religious feeling, than the home of each of our Citizens! Here are our altars, here are our hearths, here are our household gods, and here the sacred ceremonies of our religion are contained. This refuge is so sacred to all that it would be base for any one to be snatched hence." Much more is this true as regards the wretched wife, who was held in that place as a prison, with the approval also of the Abate Franceschini. And hence the public safekeeping may be said to be violated thereby, and the majesty of the Prince wounded, since the same reasoning is observed as regards a true and formal prison, and a prison assigned by the Prince, as the following assert. [Citations.] Finally, we should also consider the aggravation of "prohibited arms," with which the crime was committed. This of itself demands the death penalty, even though the principal crime should otherwise be punished more mildly, as Sanfelicius advises, stating that it was so adjudged. [Citation.] GIOVANNI BATTISTA BOTTINI, _Advocate of the Fisc and of the Apostolic Chamber._ [File-title of Pamphlet 7.] _By the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Governor of the City in Criminal Cases_: _ROMAN MURDER-CASE._ _For Count Guido Franceschini and his Associates, Prisoners._ _Summary._ _At Rome, in the type of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber_, 1698. SUMMARY [PAMPHLET 7.] _No._ 1.--_Letter of the Honourable Marzi-Medici, Governor of Arezzo._ My most Illustrious and Dearly Beloved Master: Your favoured letter of the twenty-fourth of last month has reached me, and I am exceedingly sorry for the uneasiness in which you hint you are placed by the maledictions which Signor Pietro Comparini and his wife have disseminated throughout Rome, concerning the ill-treatment they say they suffered in your home while staying in Arezzo. As your letter questions me for true information, I answer with all frankness, that both among the noble connection and in Count Guido's home they were treated with all respect and decorum. The cause of the first disturbance which sprang up between them and your mother and brothers was that Signora Violante, a few days after her arrival, presumed to domineer over the house and to keep the keys of everything, and in fact to turn out of house and home Signora Beatrice, your mother. With good reason, neither of the brothers was willing to consent thereto, and this gave occasion for the first insults and domestic broils. These afterwards increased when they saw that Signor Pietro had given over the company and conversation of the best people of the city, and had struck up acquaintance with the most vulgar. And with them he began to frequent daily all the taverns here. This cast discredit upon him, and was little for the good name of the Franceschini. Of much greater scandal were the many flights and petitions made by Guido's wife, their daughter, to Monsignor the Bishop. These were made for no other reason than that neither she nor her parents wished to stay any longer in Arezzo, but desired to return to Rome. When she had been rebuked by that most prudent Prelate, he always sent her home in his carriage. It is true that ever since the Comparini left this City until the present time the Signora has conducted herself with much modesty and prudence. From this fact every one infers that the poor child was led to such excesses by her parents, as she herself declares to everybody. Now she detests even the memory of them. Therefore, she is getting back into the good opinion of every one, and especially of those ladies of the city who had ceased having anything to do with her. Finally, these same Comparini had taken away all her jewellery from the Signora, which I forced them to restore. Altogether, such and so great are the scandals to which they have given rise before the whole city in the lapse of the few months they have stayed here, that I write you only a few of them. I assure you that with them your brothers have had the patience of martyrs. Accordingly when I saw that they had become incorrigible, and were the talk of the town, and that they might force your brothers to commit some excess against them, for the maintenance of good discipline, I availed myself of the authority vested in me by His Serene Highness, and threatened them with prison and punishment unless they behaved themselves. After these threats, which they evidently merited and which might have overtaken them, they decided to go to Rome, as they did a little later, leaving behind them in this city a very bad reputation. As for the rest, there is now in your home an utter quietude, and the Signora lives with exemplary prudence, detesting the ill example she had shown the ladies of this city, and she confesses freely that it was so commanded by her parents. In my judgment, it is the hand of God that has freed your family from such turbid heads. This is all I can here put down, out of much else there is to say about it. Therefore rest at ease, and believe me that the discredit has been entirely their own. I need only sign myself, with all my heart, to your most illustrious self, Your most devoted and obliged servant, VINCENZO MARZI-MEDICI. AREZZO, _August 2, 1694_. To Signor Abate Paolo Franceschini, Rome. No. 2.--_Deposition of Francesca._ I will tell your Excellency why I have fled from the home of my husband. Here in Rome, three years ago, I was married by my father and mother to the said Franceschini, and after I was engaged to him he stayed here in Rome for two months without consummating the marriage. Then with my father and my mother I was taken by my husband to Arezzo, because in the marriage contract it was agreed that my father and mother should go and live in Arezzo, as they did. After they had remained there four months, they departed and returned to Rome, because of the ill-treatment they suffered, at the hands not only of my husband, but of the others in his house. I was left behind in Arezzo, and when about a year had passed after the consummation of the marriage, as I did not become pregnant my husband and my mother-in-law Beatrice began to turn against me, because I had no children. He said that because of me their house would die out and that he could not hope for an heir by me after a while; for by chance he had heard my father say, that during a girlhood sickness certain seeds had been given to me as medicine, which possibly hindered me from having children. For that reason I came to be continually mistreated by my husband and mother-in-law, though I answered that I was not to blame for that. Yet they continued always to threaten my life, and, without any real occasion, they sought every pretext to maltreat me. Then my husband began to be jealous of me, and forbade me to show my face at the window. And to remove that occasion of jealousy I never showed my face save when it was absolutely necessary. So one day, while we were on the loggia, he said to me that I was staying up there to make love, without telling me with whom. I replied that these were mere pretexts, and that from that place one could see only the street, without looking into the windows of the houses; for the loggia was entirely on the roof. [Sidenote: A. She tells of her husband's threats because of her ardour for her lover.] And then because the Canon Caponsacchi, with other young men of the place, used to pass before our house and stop to talk with certain hussies, who were standing there in front, my husband began to fume with anger at me because the said Canon kept passing there as above, although I was not at all to blame. His suspicion increased all the more because, while we were in a great crowd at the play one evening, Canon Conti, the brother of the husband of my sister-in-law, threw me some confetti. My husband, who was near me, took offence at it--not against Conti, but against Caponsacchi, who was sitting by the side of the said Conti. Then because Conti frequented our house, as a relative, my husband took offence at him likewise; and this so much so that I, being aware of it, retired to my room whenever he came to our house, that I might not have to take even more trouble; but my husband was not thereby appeased, but said that I did this as a trick, and that his suspicions of me were not removed. He began anew to torment me so, on account of Caponsacchi, that I was reduced to desperation and did not know what to say. Then to remove that occasion for his ill-treatment, I spoke to the said Caponsacchi one day as he was passing our house and begged him not to pass that way, that he might relieve me from all the distresses I suffered at the hands of my husband on that account. He replied that he did not know whence my husband had drawn such a suspicion, as he used to pass along there on other affairs, and that, in short, Guido could not stop his passing along the street. And although he promised me not to pass along there, he continued to do so. But I did not show my face at the window. Yet with all this my husband was not appeased, but continued to maltreat me and to threaten my life, and he said that he wished to kill me. At the time of the affair of the play told above, as soon as we had returned home, he pointed a pistol at my breast saying: "Oh, Christ! What hinders me from laying you out here? Let Caponsacchi look to it well, if you do not wish me to do so, and to kill you." [Sidenote: B. She died asserting that she did not know how to write.] Furthermore at the beginning of these troubles, I went twice to Monsignor the Bishop, because he might have remedied it in some way; but this did no good, because of his relation with the house of my husband. And so as I was a stranger in that city and did not know how to free myself from these perils and abuses, and as I feared that if Guido did not slay me with weapons he might poison me, I planned to run away and go back to Rome to my father and mother. But as I did not know how to accomplish this, I went about a month later to confession to an Augustinian Father, whom they call Romano. I told him all my distresses, imploring him to write to my father in my name, as I do not know how to write, and to tell him that I was desperate, and must part from my husband and go to him in Rome. But I had no response. [Sidenote: C. She confesses the strength and audacity of her lover.] [Sidenote: D. She confesses a conversation with her lover.] [Sidenote: E. She confesses a new conversation with her lover.] Therefore, not knowing to whom I might turn to accomplish my desire, and thinking that no one in the place would assist me, because of their relationship or friendship to my husband, I finally resolved to speak of it to the said Caponsacchi, because I had heard said that he was a resolute man. Accordingly, as he was passing one day before our house, at a time when my husband was out of the city, I called him and spoke to him from the stairs. I told him of the peril in which I found myself on his account, and begged him to bring me here to Rome, to my father and mother. He replied, however, that he did not wish to meddle at all in such an affair, as it would be thought ill of by the whole city, and all the more so as he was a friend of the house of my husband. But I implored him so much and told him it was the duty of a Christian to free from death a poor foreign woman. At last I induced him to promise me that he would accompany me as above. Then he told me he would secure the carriage, and when that had been arranged he would give me a signal by letting his handkerchief fall in passing before our house, as he had done before. But the next day went by, and although I stood at the blinds, he did not give the signal. When the day following had also passed, I spoke to him again as above, and complained to him that he had broken the word he had given me. And he excused himself, saying that he had not found a carriage in Arezzo. I answered him that, at any rate, he should have procured one from outside, as he had promised to do. Then the last Sunday of the past month, he went by our house again and made the signal with the handkerchief, as he had promised. And so I went to bed with my husband that evening, and when I had assured myself that he was asleep I arose from bed and clothed myself. I took some little things of my own, a little box with many trifles inside, and some money, I know not how much there was, from the strong-box. These were, moreover, my own, as is evident from the list of things and moneys made by the treasurer of Castelnuovo. Then I went downstairs at dawn, where I found Caponsacchi, and we went together to the Porta San Spirito. Outside of it stood a carriage with two horses and a driver, and when we had both entered the carriage we journeyed toward Rome, travelling night and day without stopping until we reached Castelnuovo, except for them to take refreshment and to change the horses. We arrived at dawn, and were there overtaken by my husband as I have told heretofore to your Honour. The said Caponsacchi is not related in any degree to my husband, but was certainly a friend. [Sidenote: F. The lie about the arrival at Castelnuovo.] [Sidenote: G. The lover is not a relative of her husband.] The said Caponsacchi, before the said affair, did not send me any letter, because I do not know how to read manuscript, and do not know how to write. [Sidenote: H. New lies, that she did not receive letters from her lover, and that she does not know how to write.] Before the said affair, I did not at all send a letter of any sort to the said Caponsacchi. [Sidenote: I. Another lie, that she did not send letters to her lover.] [Sidenote: K. She does not know how to write, and her husband had traced the letter.] When again put under oath, she responded: While I was in Arezzo, I wrote at the instance of my husband to Abate Franceschini, my brother-in-law here in Rome. But as I did not know how to write, my husband wrote the letter with a pencil and then made me trace it with a pen and ink it. And he told me that his brother had much pleasure in receiving such a letter of mine, which had been written with my own hand. And he did this two or three times. If your Honour should cause me to see one of the letters written by me as above, and sent to Abate Franceschini, I should clearly recognise it. And when it was shown, etc., she responded: "I have seen and carefully examined the letter shown me by the order of your Honour, which begins--_Carissimo Sig. Cognato, sono con questa_--and ends _Francesca Comparini ne Franceschini_, and having examined it, it seems to me, but I cannot swear to it as the truth, that it is one of the letters written by me to Abate Franceschini, my brother-in-law, in conformity to my husband's wishes, etc." And after a few intervening matters, etc., when questioned, etc., she replied: "I have never sent letters of any sort by the said Maria to any one." [Sidenote: L. Another lie about the arrival at the tavern of Castelnuovo.] In all truth, I arrived at Castelnuovo at the blush of dawn. We shut ourselves in there at the tavern of Castelnuovo for the space of more than an hour. During that time we stayed in a room upstairs. [Sidenote: M. New lies that she did not lie down to sleep at the Inn of Castelnuovo.] And after a few other matters, when questioned, she replied: "I did not go to sleep, nor lie down to rest in the tavern at Castelnuovo during the time I stopped there, as above." I know that your Honour tells me that the authorities pretend further that I slept all night in the abovesaid tavern of Castelnuovo in an upstairs room, in which Canon Caponsacchi also slept. And I say and respond that no one can truly say so, because I did not rest at all in the said tavern, and stopped there only for the time stated above. [The letter of Pompilia to Abate Franceschini occurs both here and in the summary of the Defence. It is translated on pp. 56, 57.] No. 4.--_A letter of Francesca written to Abate Franceschini._ Outside: To Abate Paolo Franceschini, Rome; but inside: My very dear Sir and Brother: I have received the fan which you sent, which has been most welcome to me. I accept it with pleasure and thank you for it. It displeases me that, without reason, my parents wound the honour of our house. I for my part am well and am happy in not having them now to stir me to evil. I wish well to all our house, in the sacred fear of God. In fact you may well laugh at the maledictions of my parents. Command me, who reverence you from the bottom of my heart. Your deeply obliged servant and sister-in-law, FRANCESCA COMPARINI FRANCESCHINI. AREZZO, _July 19, 1694_. No. 5.--_The examination of Canon Caponsacchi._ I had to go to Rome on my own business, and as I told my secret to Giovanni Battista Conti, a relative of Franceschini, who frequented the home of the latter, Francesca might have learned about it from the same Canon, although there was talk about town of my coming to Rome, which was to follow soon. Hence a letter, sent to me by the said Francesca, was brought one day by a certain Maria, then a servant of the Franceschini. In it she told me that she had heard of my going to Rome, and that, as her husband wished to kill her, she had resolved to go to Rome to her father; and not knowing with whom she might intrust herself, she asked me to do her the service of accompanying her as above. I answered her that I was unwilling to do anything of that kind, or to expose myself to such a risk; and I sent her a reply by the same servant. I do not remember the precise time that she sent me the above letter. Thereafter, when I passed the house, she continued making the same request to me, by flinging from time to time from the window a note that repeated the request. And I replied to her, sending the response by the same servant, and telling her that I did not care to involve myself in such affairs. And therefore she finally cast me another note from the window, which, as I learned, was seen by a working-woman living across the street, whose name I do not know, and she carried it to the husband. The same servant was then commissioned to tell me that there had been a great commotion in the house because of it, and that the sister of Guido, who had been married into the house of Conti, had declared furthermore that that servant had carried the letter to me. She also told me that Guido said he was going to kill his wife in some way after a little while, and that he would also be avenged on me. Accordingly, with this purpose, to free myself from every difficulty and danger, and also to save from death the said Francesca, I resolved to leave for Rome and to accompany her thither, conducting her to her father. And so one evening--I do not remember the exact time--as I was passing their house I gave her a letter, which she drew up to the window with a string. In it I told her that to free her from death I would accompany her as above. Another evening she threw to me from the window a letter in which she renewed the above insistence, declaring to me that her husband was always threatening to kill her; she would therefore have to receive the favour of my company as above, of which I had spoken. And finally, the last Sunday of the past month of April, while I was going by their house and she was standing at the window, I told her that I had secured the carriage for early the following morning, and that I would have it await her at the gate of San Clemente. Accordingly, at about one o'clock in the morning, she came alone to the said gate. We entered the carriage and turned along outside of the city wall to go to the gate of San Spirito, which is in the direction of Perugia. This carriage belonged to Agostino, tavern-keeper in Arezzo, and a driver, surnamed Venarino, the servant of the said Agostino, drove it. I had had him leave the city Sunday evening at the Ave Maria. Then we pursued our journey without stopping to spend the night anywhere, and we paused only as it was necessary for refreshing ourselves and changing horses, until we reached Castelnuovo on Tuesday evening, the last day of the said month of April. Then because Francesca said that she was suffering some pain, and that she did not have the fortitude to pursue the journey further without rest, she cast herself, still clothed, upon a bed in a chamber there, and I, likewise clothed, placed myself on another bed in the same chamber. I told the host to call us after three or four hours, for resuming our journey. But he did not call us, and the husband of the said Francesca arrived in the meantime, and had both of us arrested by the authorities, and from there we were taken to Rome. I have not spoken in Arezzo to Francesca at other times than those I have recounted above to yourselves. [Sidenote: E. The lover is not related to Count Guido.] The husband of the said Francesca is not related to me in any degree whatsoever. I have no profession at all, but am a Canon of the Pieve, of Santa Maria of Arezzo, and am merely a subdeacon. When I was imprisoned at Castelnuovo certain moneys, rings, and other matters were found, of which a memorandum was made by the authorities. I have never written any letter to the said Francesca, except as stated by me above. The letters sent to me as above by the said Francesca were burned by me in Arezzo. Although in the prison of Castelnuovo, where I was placed, a diligent search was made by the authorities and also by the husband of the said Francesca, nothing at all was found there. The said Francesca when leaving Arezzo carried with her a bundle of her own clothing and a box, in which she said there were some trinkets, but I did not see them. And she had it in a handkerchief with certain coins, which were then described at Castelnuovo by the Treasurer. I do not know precisely by whom the letters sent to me by the said Francesca were written, but I suppose that they may have been written by her, but I do not know whether she knows how to write. In the chamber of the inn at Castelnuovo where we stopped, as I said in my other examination, there were two beds. Only one of these was provided with sheets by the servant of the tavern, that it might serve for Signora Francesca. I did not have sheets placed on the other, because I did not care to undress myself. Nor did she undress herself, as I said in my other examination. If I should see one of the letters written by me to Signora Francesca, I would know it very well. I have seen and I do see very carefully these two letters which have been offered as evidence in this suit and have been shown to me by the order of your Honour. One of them begins _Adorata mia Signora, vorrei sapere_, etc., and ends _mi ha detto il Conti_. Having well considered this letter, I declare that it was not written by me, though the handwriting of the same has some resemblance to my own. I have also seen the other letter, which begins _Amatissima mia, Signora, Ricevo_, etc., and ends _questa mia_, and having well examined it I say that the same was not at all written by me, and is not in my handwriting. Furthermore, it has not the slightest resemblance to my handwriting. I have never spoken in Arezzo to Signora Francesca, except when I spoke to her at the window, as I said in my other examination. I have never received other letters from the said Signora Francesca concerning other matters than her flight to Rome, as I have said in my other examinations. I marvel that the Fisc pretends that, before the flight, several other love-letters had been sent to me by the said Signora Francesca; for she was a modest young woman and such actions would be out of keeping with her station and her birth. And therefore I declare that the abovesaid pretence is false and without foundation. I turn back to say to your Honour that in the prison of Castelnuovo there was not found by the authorities anything whatsoever. And if your honour tells me that certain love-letters were found, which the Fisc pretends are those sent me by Signora Francesca, I say and respond that it is not at all true. No. 6.--_Letter of the Most Reverend Bishop of Arezzo._ Outside: To the Most Illustrious and Most Respected Signor Paolo Franceschini, Rome. And inside: My Most Illustrious and Respected Signor: I understand why you desire to tell me about the quarrels which have arisen between Signor Guido, your brother, and Signor Comparini. And I cannot but pity you for the trouble you have had in a case so rare, and indeed so unprecedented. The Signora, your sister-in-law, had some recourse to me, but her great excitement, taken along with the excessive passion of her mother, revealed to me that the daughter had taken this step entirely by instigation. So I tried to make peace between them, thinking that when the instigations of the parents were removed she might be brought to right reason. I believed this the more readily, as she was of tender age. And the more she spoke, and the more she made outcry, that much the more had she been urged thereto by the instigation of her mother. And that she might not be excited even more, I had her taken home in my carriage twice. I have some knowledge of this because Signor Senator Marzi-Medici, who presides over the laic government of this town for our Most Serene Grand Duke, has told me all. And I need only add that I reaffirm what I have written with entire sincerity. Wishing for new chances to serve you, I affirm myself to you, Sir, Your Most Obedient Servant, THE RIGHT REVEREND BISHOP OF AREZZO. AREZZO, _September 15, 1694_. No. 7.--_Reciprocal love-letters._ My dear Sir: I do not multiply my assertions for the purpose of proving my love to you, because my resolution and your desert is enough proof of it. My affection no longer has any rein, etc. May grace be to him who gives grace. My own Signor: I tell you, do not be surprised if my mother was at the window, because she was looking at the one who was setting the sofa in order. And therefore you can pass here without fear. When more at my leisure, I will write you some fine matters, etc. When they tell me anything, I will advise you of it. My Adored Mirtillo, My own Life: I pray you pardon me that I did not look at you yesterday when I was at the Cappucchini, because I saw that the two were watching to see if I would look at you. Therefore I suffered much pain in not being able to look at my Sun. But I saw mine own with my heart, in which I have you engraved. I remain as I am and shall be Your devoted servant and faithful sweetheart, AMARILLIS. My well-beloved: I have received your letter, which has given me much pain, etc., that the Jealous One might have seen the letters. And he did see them, but did not open them, because they were tied up together, and he supposed that they were other letters, and did not take them into his hand. This fellow is telling it because he would like you to get angry with me, etc. You ask me if I am of the same thought, and I tell you yes. If you have not changed, I am ready to do what I have told you, etc. Then soon, if they continue to drink red wine, I will tell you so. Whether you are of the same mind still, or have repented of it, I am content to do what you wish, etc. I remain as I have been YOUR FAITHFUL SWEETHEART. Most beloved Signor: I do not know why you did not pass here yesterday evening; for I took my stand at the window and saw no one. I forsook the window because the Canon, my brother, was there. I left there to go to the other windows lest he might see me, etc. But you turned toward the door of your sweetheart, because there is the one adored by you. Conti has asked me for those octaves, which you gave me, etc. Therefore tell me if I must give them to him or still keep the precious verses for myself. And I remain as I am and shall be Your faithful, yes, your most faithful Sweetheart, AMARILLIS. I forgot to tell you that the Signora my mother no longer has the fever, and is drinking wine, but by herself. Her wine, however, is red like ours. Therefore tell me what to do, that I may do it. I close with sending you a million kisses. But I know that in this way they are not so dear as a few would be if you would give them to me. But those of the Signora are very dear to you, though I tell you that they are poisoned, etc. Be the scrupulous one with others that you have been with me. For you have reason for this with others, but you have no occasion for it with me, etc. Most Cherished Narcissus: This evening I received your letter, and it gives me great comfort to know that you are not angry, etc. I do not know when he will give it to me, but if he gives it to me I will give it to you. The Jealous One is away, but I shall still be here, and all the rest; but because my mother has not found a servant, etc., they have said that they will stay here a while. Therefore you will not pass [?] out of my mind because of my not seeing you for a while. But whoever loves from so good a heart as I do, will keep one in mind. I pray you pardon me if I make myself tedious by writing too often. Acknowledging myself as I am, I remain YOUR DEVOTED SERVANT AND MOST FAITHFUL SWEETHEART. Most beloved Signor: If you could imagine with what haste I have written to you these two verses, etc. I met Signor Doctor, as usual. He asked me where I was going, and along the street, he asked me why I had written scornfully to him. I told him that he deserved even worse, because he had given evil deeds and good words; for he had said he was fond of me and that he wished him and the rest of them in Sovara, etc. He replied it did not come from this one, but on account of another gentleman whom I used to like, who was more gallant than he. I answered him that if that one was not more gallant than himself, he was at least more faithful, etc. Professing myself, as I have ever been faithful, etc. My Adored and Revered Signor: I wish by this letter of mine to excuse myself from my error in sealing the letter which I sent to Rome, etc. I tell you that they have not found any letter at all of mine, because I do not let them lie around the house, but give them to the flames. And while I keep them, I place them in my bosom. This is not an excuse, why you should surmise [it to be] one of my letters; for I tell you that I give it place in my bosom, etc. Inasmuch as one of the family may be behind the curtain, as I believe, do not make any signal when you are under the windows. I shall be at the window this evening, or else at the blinds, and when I shall see you I will show myself at the window. But it is necessary to be prudent, that he may not see me. Because he has told me that if he sees me he will wish to do such things as not even �neas, the Trojan, did. To avoid arousing his suspicion I will not stay there. But I pledge myself YOUR MOST DEVOTED SERVANT. My Longed-for Blessing: If your saying that I do not love you, because you do not know me, is not an error, it is at least displeasing to me. Hear me, my dear: I am offended with you, because either you consider me blind or you do not consider me amiable. You cannot say of a truth that I do not love you, nor can you say truly that any one does love as much as I love you. Look into my eyes, and you will be astonished; for when bright with my tears they will be faithful mirrors to reveal to you that your face is copied there (in which an outline of it is made in the Sun), that your whiteness is snow in comparison with the Milky Way, that the Graces have directed your movements by their own hand, that Venus in fashioning you took the measure of your limbs with her own girdle. Ah yes, I love you so much that in one respect I would wish alone to love you in the world, because it seems to me that I could love you all in central Latium. I should like that all might love you, because you would see that all of them put together cannot love you as much as I alone do. My breast is envied by every other part of me, because it alone is able to love you. These are matters one cannot know by mere hearing; they are matters to render one excusable to any one else who does not believe it. But you are a cruel beauty; for if you see a face composed by the miracles of angels you should not consider it a lie if a heart is found fashioned by the miracles of love, etc. I leave you a thousand thousand kisses. My well-beloved: I pass by compliments, because I cannot match your very gallant verses, which are so far different from what I merit. You tell me that you wish to know what has happened in our house. I tell you that nothing has happened, so far as I can see, because none of them have said anything to me--none of them. But Signor Guido seems rather well disposed toward me than otherwise, and therefore I cannot find out whether they are angry with me. Let my brother-in-law lock the door; he does it often, etc. If you do not wish to pass by here any more, I leave that to your own judgment, and I will suffer quietly the pains which are pleasing to you. Therefore I tell you that you may do as you wish. For as gold is refined in the fire, so love is refined by suffering. I can well say that I shall suffer pain at not seeing you as I have been accustomed, etc. With a loving kiss, I remain as I have ever been, your most sincere sweetheart and your most faithful slave. I had quite forgotten to tell you that I stay in the same room as at first, and that Thursday evening I went to bed at eight o'clock, and so you did not hear me enter the room. I told the servant that she should make the signals agreed upon, etc. Signor Guido returns Saturday morning and you may pass this evening at ten o'clock or sooner, when you shall see the light in the room, etc. My well-beloved: I received your letter, which was most pleasing to me, as are all the rest you have sent me, etc. I see that you like the Pastor Fido. But I would wish you to imitate him, and I will imitate another Vienna. I hear from her that you will want to come to see me at the Villa, etc. If I could only bring it about, I would more willingly be your wife than your servant. You tell me that Conti is unwilling to bring any more letters for you. But let me inform you that I am wheedling him, and I have the wits to bring it about that he will carry them to you; because I say two kind words to him and he is charmed and will do what I wish. You tell me that I shall let a cord down through the lattice, but you do not tell me what evening, etc. But I tell you that the Jealous One had gone to Sovara, if I might speak to you. But the Confessor is utterly unwilling, and for that reason I do not have you come here, because now the street door is no longer opened, but you might be able to open the back door, etc. But that Fate does not wish it, and you do not. I thank you for the kisses you send me, but if you yourself could give them to me, I would hold them dear. And I give you others in reply, as many millions as you have given to me. YOUR MOST FAITHFUL SWEETHEART. I do not know what name to give myself, whether Vienna, or Amarillis, or Dorinda, or Lilla, but I wish to call myself Ariadne, for I believe I have had to be such. I wish to call myself such, only so you are not a Theseus, but a chaste Joseph, or a dear Narcissus, or an Ilago, or a Fedone. Adonis indeed took pity on Venus, but I am none such, but even a Medusa. Therefore I deserve, etc. If you have read Tasso, you will know who this was, etc. My Beloved Idol: I know of the affairs which have happened to you. I do not take it in bad part when you tell me that it is not possible to make my mother sleep, while she is ill and drinks no wine, and therefore cannot sleep. It may be in the next few days that she will get well. Then I will inform you of it, etc. Your faithful Sweetheart, AMARILLIS. My Adored, Beloved, and Revered Heart: I am confused at such praise, etc. You write to me oftener than you might about the Doctor. You offend me by saying that I will love him again. I tell you as sure as the Sun shall rise upon this world, I have not the heart for another such blow. But he who does ill, thinks ill, etc. As to what you wish to know about the wine, I tell you that it is red now, but I do not know how much longer it will be so, but I will let you know about it. Sending you a thousand and a thousand, and a million of kisses, I remain, etc. Come this evening at seven o'clock, because I wish to speak to you, and cough when you are under the window. AMARILLIS. She is bursting because she cannot say, as you tell me here, that she is white as milk, and that you are darker than I. If I had been you, I might have called you ivory, as I do call you. Watch this evening lest it be the Jealous One, and not myself. Therefore I will cough, and if you do not hear me cough, do not move. I let you know that Signor Guido is going out of the city, and will be gone several days. Therefore I pray you come this evening about seven o'clock. And when you are under the window cough and wait a little while, that I may not make a mistake. He goes away Monday morning, etc. My dearest and Most Deserving Well-beloved: I give the infinite thanks of Rosalinda, etc. I wish you to know that he makes me signals along the Via del Poggio, etc., and not because I wish to make proof of your love, which I know very well. You are as constant as myself, and therefore I do not wish to make these proofs, etc. So that you cannot say that I no longer love you, because all my good wishes for Signor Guido are turned to you, who deserve it. AMARILLIS. _Letter of the Lover._ My adored Signora: I wish to know whether you can leave Sunday evening, that is, to-morrow evening, for if you do not go away to-morrow evening, God knows when you shall be able to do so, because of the scarcity of carriages, owing to the fact that on Wednesday the Bishop departs with three carriages. Therefore, if you can go, as soon as you have read this letter of mine, return to the window and throw it to me as a sign that I may reserve a carriage beforehand, which may be secured from some one or other. If I secure the carriage to-morrow, in passing along there I will let fall my handkerchief one time only. Then for the rest, to-morrow evening I will wait from eight o'clock in the evening on as long as necessary. And as soon as you see that they are sound asleep, open the door for me, that I may help you make up your bundles and collect the money. Above all, try to put some into all their cups, and do not yourself drink it. And if by ill luck they shall find it out, and shall threaten you with death, open indeed the door, that I may die with you or free you from their hands. And praying God that he will make this design of ours turn out well, I declare myself as ever. Your Most Faithful Servant and Lover, MIRTILLO. It is a very bad sign that the Jealous One seems pacified, and that he has said you were at the window. Because he will wish to find out in that way what you are doing at the window, and for what purpose you are there. For Conti has told me that now he is more jealous than at first, and that if he find out about anything, he will wish to avenge himself by putting us to death. He wishes to do the same to me, and that is what will happen. Here then has come at last the breaking of the chord. Most Beloved Signora: I have received your note full of those expressions (and then loving words follow). Be pleased to receive me into your bosom, in which I rest all my affections, etc. Consign to the ashes this note of mine. _Another letter of Francesca._ My Revered Signor: Driven by the affection which I feel for you, I am forced to contradict what I sent you yesterday evening in that letter when I said I did not wish to tell you to come here. If you did not tell me then, I tell you now that I would wish you to come here this evening at the same hour as day before yesterday evening. I have indeed thought that towers are not moved by such light blows. But if you do [not?] wish to come here (that there may be no occasion for you to break your promise to some beloved lady or even though it may not be convenient), I do not wish to be the cause. Therefore if you wish to come here, pass along as soon as you have read this, etc. No. 8.--_Decree of banishment of the lover._ _Tuesday, September 24, 1697._ Joseph Maria Caponsacchi, of Arezzo, for complicity in flight and running away of Francesca Comparini, and for carnal knowledge of the same, has been banished for three years to Civita Vecchia. [File-title of Pamphlet 8.] _By the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Governor of the City in Criminal Cases:_ _ROMAN MURDER-CASE._ _For Count Guido Franceschini and his Associates, Prisoners, against the Fisc._ _New Memorial of the fact and law, together with a summary, by the Honourable Procurator of the Poor._ _At Rome, in the type of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber, 1698._ ROMANA HOMICIDIORUM [PAMPHLET 8.] Most Illustrious and most Reverend Lord Governor: The confession of Count Guido and his fellows as to the murder of Francesca, his wife, and of Pietro and Violante Comparini, his father-in-law and mother-in-law, falls far short of supporting the Fisc in demanding the ordinary death penalty. But, rather, it is remarkably in our favour in excluding that penalty. For there is no longer any doubt as to the cause of the murders, namely _causa honoris_. This at first was denied by the Fisc because of the presence of other causes, though these either were insufficient or were indirectly hurtful to the sense of honour. We will go over them hereafter, not "with unwashed hands." For a confession indeed should be received along with all its details, and is not to be divided according to a preconceived purpose. [Citations.] This cause alone would be ground enough for demanding that he and his fellows be dealt with more mildly, if we bear in mind that _causa honoris_ is quite sufficient for the moderating of this penalty. For we have proved in our other argument that a husband may kill his adulterous wife, even after an interval, without incurring the death penalty, wherever the adultery is really proved, as the Advocate of the Fisc concedes in his response. § _Solamque suspicionem_. And in very truth, we have in our other plea adduced a great many decisions of the highest courts, wherefrom it is evident that the penalty has been diminished for husbands who have had their wives killed even by means of an assassin; and, on the contrary, no decision favourable to the Fisc is cited. Such an opinion is therefore to be accepted more readily, inasmuch as it is sanctioned by the greater number of authorities. And even although Farinacci and Rainaldi seem to take the other side, yet Farinacci, in his _Questions_, shows himself very much in doubt, as I have shown in my other plea; and in _cons. 141_, he shows that he is very changeable, since in _cons. 66, No. 5_, he has proved the contrary. Therefore, when his attention was called to this changeableness, in excusing himself, he asserted, in the said _cons. 141_, under _No. 16_, that Beatrice, in behalf of whom he had written in _cons. 66_, had been beheaded; as if this kind of rigorous sentence should be followed in practice. And may this distinguished authority pardon me, but he responds inconsistently, having forgotten what he had written in the end of _cons. 66_: that is, that Beatrice was put to death not because she, after an interval, had commanded that one be put to death who was plotting against her honour, but because she did not prove her right to this latter exception, where he says: "So also there was strong hope for the sister Beatrice, if she had proved the excuse she offered, as she did not prove it." But the Honourable Rainaldi, whose words and writings I venerate, in his _Observationes Criminales_ (_cap. 2_, § 4, _No. 156_), after he asserts that some remission from the ordinary penalty may be hoped through the benignity of the Prince, does not decide the point by citing Gizzarellus and Giurba, who affirm that in justice the penalty should be decreased. But he goes back to what he had written (_cap. 7 in Rubrica sub No. 60_), where, however, he does not openly examine the point as to murder permitted for honour's sake. Otherwise he would go contrary to the general opinion of authorities, and to many decisions of the highest magistrates, that is to the common practice of the courts. [Citation.] "And this opinion is followed in practice, as I find in the event of such a fact the Neapolitan court has so decided." And concerning this same practice, Matthæus likewise bears witness. [Citation.] Yet, as I have said, it would be enough to clear Guido of conviction if only his confession be taken in its entirety without subdivision. For greater completeness, however, we offer full proofs of the adultery, as brought out in the prosecution for the flight from home. The Fisc has attempted to attack these proofs lest he might have to lay down his arms; and the Achilles of his pretence is solely a preposterous cross-examination, which was not admitted into the suit for permanent record. It gives the word of a certain baseborn woman, formerly a servant in the home of the Accused, who was severely maltreated by Guido, by the Canon his brother, and by their mother. All too eagerly she narrates the ill-treatment suffered by Pietro and Violante, and by Francesca their daughter, and his wife, respectively, especially in the matter of their food, on account of which Pietro and Violante preferred to return to Rome. Yet Guido by a written agreement had bound himself to furnish food to the abovesaid couple. And furthermore it is claimed that the flight of Pompilia also was necessary, because she was being threatened with death; in order that her own base desire of violating her matrimonial fidelity may not be deduced therefrom. If, however, we have any regard for the truth, the domestic affairs of the Accused were not so pinched, because they were more than enough, not merely for frugal, but even for lavish living. The theft of the moneys committed by Francesca in the act of flight demonstrates this. (See the prosecution for flight, pages 5, 63, and 92.) The real and true cause which moved Pietro and his wife to go back to Rome was undoubtedly that the mother of Count Guido could not bear that the aforesaid Comparini should regulate family matters and should at their own pleasure dispose of everything looking toward the government of the home; this with greatest flagrancy and with none the less boldness they desired to do. Furthermore, Pietro took it ill that he was rebuked for leaving the company of the noble class and associating in taverns with the commonest persons in town, to the scandal of well-born men. And still more because he was compelled by the Governor of the City, under fear of imprisonment, to restore certain trinkets and gems of his daughter, which he had taken away, as Count Guido testified in his examination (pp. 96 and 97). And this is admirably proved by a letter of the same Governor recently presented by ourselves, which we give in Summary, No. 1. With these statements the cross-examination of the same Francesca, when arrested in her flight, agrees; in it we nowhere read that she was maltreated, nor that she ever complained of that home of decent poverty. And yet it is very probable that, to put a good face upon her flight, she would have alleged the domestic want and home miseries, if she had ever suffered them. We do not deny that disputes immediately arose between Francesca and her husband, and possibly he threatened her with death. But this was for another reason, namely that she should quit the illicit amours she had begun at the suggestion of her parents, and that she should live with evident chastity as is to be read expressly in her deposition (our Summary, No. 2, letter A). It is verified from the fact that Francesca herself, in a letter written to Abate Franceschini, ingenuously confesses (Summary of the Fisc, No. 4, and our Summary, No. 3) that her parents indeed were sowing strife between the couple, and were urging her to have recourse to the Bishop under the false pretence of ill-treatment; and day and night they kept instigating her to poison her husband, her brother, and mother-in-law, to burn the house, and what is still more awful, to win a lover and return to Rome in his company. Nor did she fail to obey them in several of these matters. And in another letter written to the same Abate, and shown by us, and given in our Summary, No. 4, we read: "Not now having those here who urge me to evil." Of no counter-effect is the response that the single characters of the said first letter had been previously marked out by Guido, and were afterward traced with a pen by herself, as she asserts in our Summary, No. 2, letter K. For proof of this statement she can bring no other evidence than that she does not know how to write. Summary, No. 2, letters B, H, and K. In this, furthermore, she stands most clearly convicted of falsehood by her signature, which was recognised by herself at the command of the court while she was in prison, as we find in the prosecution for flight (p. 39). She also stands convicted of falsehood by the signature of her marriage agreement, concerning the truth of which it would be ill to doubt, both because there is along with it the signature of one of the Lord Cardinals, and because her handwriting was recognised by herself who had written it, at the demand of the notary, as is to be seen in the copy filed in the prosecution for flight, p. 132. And, furthermore, she is convicted by the priest with whom she fled, who asserts that more than once at night he has received letters which were either thrown out of the window by her or were sent by a servant; we give his deposition in our Summary, No. 5, letters A, B, C, and D. This is verified by the Fiscal witness (p. 108), where we read: "And she threw down a note, as I saw very clearly, and the Canon picked it up, and went away." There are, besides, the letters and sheets of paper filled with mutual love, found in the prison at Castelnuovo, where they themselves were overtaken. But it is utterly impossible that the characters of these were also marked by her husband, nor is it told by whom they were written; accordingly it is to be presumed that they were devised by herself, lest she might betray their forbidden love-intrigues, which they would have to hide with the greatest care. And I pray that the abovesaid letter be submitted to our eyes, and it will be clearly seen whether the characters were formed by one not knowing how to write, but forming them in ink in imitation of certain signs, or rather by the expert hand of the woman herself. In the first place, the truth of the said letter of which we are speaking, we may gather from the letter of the Governor of Arezzo, in our Summary, No. 1, where we find: "Of much greater scandal were the flights and petitions made by the said wife, their daughter, to Monsignor the Bishop. These were made for no other reason than that neither she nor her parents wished to stay any longer in Arezzo, but desired to return to Rome. When she had been rebuked by that most prudent Prelate, he always sent her home in his carriage." And this is likewise expressly deducible from another letter of the most reverend Bishop, which is given in the Summary, No. 6, where we read: "The more she made outcry, that much the more she had been urged thereto by the instigation of her mother." And after a few words: "I have some knowledge of this, because Senator Marzi-Medici, who presides over the secular government of this city for our Most Serene Grand Duke, has told me all." It is verified still further by another letter of Signor Bartolommeo Albergotti, produced by the other side, which is given in the Summary of that side, No. 2, at the end. But the letter is not given in its entirety, for, where it speaks of the Secretary of the Bishop urging Count Guido and his mother, we should read there: "Not to maltreat the Signora for the affront offered him. After disputes enough of this kind, he took the Signora back home. And she declared that she was absolutely unwilling to live with Signora Beatrice and with the Canon Girolamo, her brother-in-law." And after a few other matters: "I pray yourself and Signora Violante to be willing to offer a remedy by instilling the wife with a tranquil peace, which will be for the quiet of all" (as we read in page 190). This is also proved by the letter of the Abate produced on the other side (p. 182), where we read: "By Signor Guido, my brother, several offers have been made to him, but have not been accepted; and they insist that we force our mother and the Signor Canon to leave the house. But this shall never be, even if there do not follow both love and concord. I will never advise that." And from the letter of Signor Romano, 188, later, where we read (cf. p. liv.): "I have known why she fled to Monsignor, and it was because she did not wish to live with the Canon and Beatrice," etc. (which words are not noted in the Summary of the Fisc, No. 2). See for yourselves, therefore, that Francesca was not maltreated, although she so deserved because of her eager and indecent recourse without cause to the most reverend Bishop. Hence it is evident whether the Comparini left Arezzo and Francesca fled from home because of ill-treatment. It remains now that we see--even granting this ill-treatment--what cause of fleeing from the home of her husband Francesca might have, or rather if her flight were not scandalous. This will not be difficult to make clear, if we will dwell for a little while upon the deposition of the same Francesca and upon the letters found in the said prison of Castelnuovo. These latter were produced by the Fisc in the prosecution for flight, though they were not given recognition. The lack of this acceptance cannot stand in our way, nor do I think it can be denied that they are of the same handwriting, if they are compared with the assured writing of the command of the court. Furthermore, as they contain love affairs, and the name of Guido himself, no sensible person will think that they were not written by them. From her own deposition, it is evident that she was often abused for her sterility, and was terrified by threats of death on account of her love affairs with the said priest (as we see in the said Summary, No. 2, letter A). Nor was the cautious husband deceived, since her love increased day by day, while her conjugal affection indeed decreased just as her feeling for her lover increased. In the said letters (which are given in Summary, No. 7), that priest is called: Beloved, Adored, Mirtillus, My Soul, Most Dearly Beloved, Narcissus, My Eagerly Craved Blessing, Dearest Idol; and she signs herself "Thy faithful Sweetheart," and "Amarillis." And conversely, she is called by her lover "My Adored Signora." And in the details of those letters is expressed her intense love and the ardour with which that unfortunate one was burning for her lover, as is evident. Nor may I without shame refer to the very tender expressions of her love. But one of them, and possibly a second, I may not omit, that "from the claw, you may recognise the lion." Thus in letter 17, we read: "So that you cannot say that I no longer love you; because all my good wishes for Signor Guido are turning toward you, who deserve it." And this possibly is the reason why she refused to lie with her husband, as the said letter of Signor Albergotti points out, where he says: "The Signora has been melancholy, and two evenings after your departure she made a big disturbance, because she did not wish to go and sleep with Signor Guido, her husband, which displeases me very much." In the first letter [we read]: "My affection no longer has any rein"; in the fourth: "I am ready to do what I have told you"; in the tenth: "I will suffer quietly the pains which are pleasing to you." And it would be a long task and a disgusting one, to tell them over singly. For she was unwilling to conform herself to the chaste manners of Arezzo, accustomed as she was to living a freer life. This may be read in the letter of Abate Franceschini produced by the other side (page 179), and following, where we read: "These occasions for bitterness, which have arisen between yourselves and Signor Guido, I do not wish to examine. I know enough to say that this has arisen from your wishing to turn the wife from what, according to the custom of the country, her husband both may and ought to do. Because over the wife God has given him authority, and likewise it is the general usage and the custom of the country. If yourself and Signor Pietro should stand in the way of this, you would do wrong, and it would be the duty of the husband to admonish his wife." And in another letter, p. 124, we read: "I cannot persuade myself that my mother and brothers would conduct themselves in such a way as to force her to have such recourse." And after a few words we read: "And know well that what I have endeavoured by my words to urge upon Signora Francesca, Signor Pietro, and yourself is only out of pure zeal for the honour of your house and of yourselves." On the other hand, the same thing is to be drawn from the letter of the said priest (as we read in letter 20): "I have received your notes, full of those expressions [of love], etc. Be pleased to receive me into your bosom, in which I rest all my affections." And the letters which have reference to the flight give clear proof of the mutual exchange of affection, as is well proved by the effect that followed. Thus, in letter 18, we read: "I wish to know whether you can leave Sunday evening, that is to-morrow evening; for if you do not go away to-morrow evening, God knows when you will go, because of the scarcity of carriages." And after a few intervening words: "As soon as you see that they are sound asleep, open the door for me, so that I may help you make up your bundles and collect the money." And after a few more words: "Praying God that he will make this design of ours turn out well." And letter 19 of the same lover, in which proofs of love are given by no means obscurely, also shows us of what quality those loves were, where we read: "That the Jealous One seems pacified, and that he has said you were at the window, is a very bad sign; because he will wish to find out in that way what you do at the window, and for what purpose you are there. For [Conti] has told me that now he is more jealous than at first, and that if he find out anything he will wish to avenge himself by putting you to death and will wish to find means to do the same to me." It is proved still further that the wretched Accused complained bitterly that she was not content merely with a single lover at Arezzo, but that she has been defiled by many suitors, so that she multiplied the disgraces to his house (page 98), and following. We also read clearly in the seventh letter: "I met Signor Doctor, as usual. He asked me where I was going, and along the street he asked me why I had written scornfully to him. I told him that he deserved even worse, because he had given evil deeds and good words; for he had said he was fond of me, that he wished him and the rest of them 'in Sovara.'" And in the thirteenth: "As to the Doctor, you offend me by saying that I will love him again. I tell you, as sure as the Sun shall rise, I have not the heart for another such blow." It is therefore quite evident whether Francesca had an honest cause for leaving the home of her husband, or whether she was not rather impelled by the more urgent spurs of love. It may be said now that these letters were sent for a good purpose, that the priest might be induced to accompany her so that she might shun the danger of death, since she found herself therein without any just cause. And it may be said that she could have kept her modesty uninjured in the company of her lover. But since without doubt the amorous expressions used in the letters do not show chastity of mind and a modest disposition, and as just cause for flight is lacking, the veil wherewith her viciousness tried to hide itself is destroyed. I acknowledge that Judith, who was an entirely chaste widow, of decorous appearance and fine looking in many ways, made advances toward a very licentious enemy; but this was for the purpose of accomplishing a pious work, namely, to liberate her own native land. She was provided not with lascivious letters, but with earnest words, the unimpaired modesty of which it were evil to doubt, since she was moved by the breath of the Holy Spirit. But to-day, how very few Judiths are found; yet the daughters of Lot are multiplied, who when they could not preserve their sense of shame even in their father's company made him drunken with wine, lest he, when sober, would deny them because they were sinning weakly, so that, when out of his own mind, he was involuntarily polluted with nefarious incest. (Genesis, chapter 29.) Do we believe that a girl who was dying for love, and who burned most ardently for the company of the loving Cupid and her lover, would keep safe her modesty during a long journey? Which modesty I only wish she had preserved in the home of her husband! And even if Guido had imposed upon her, without due reason, a just fear of death, she should not therefore have increased his suspicion of base and lustful acquaintanceship by choosing as her companion in flight that priest whom her husband had suspected; for Caponsacchi was not at all related to herself or her husband, as each of them confesses in our Summary, No. 2, letter G, and No. 5, letter E. Thus she would prove her dishonour. But while still guarding carefully her matronly shame, she might either have entered some monastery with the help of some church official, if she had used truth and not falsehoods; or she might have had recourse to the civil governor, who, after examining all things, would have afforded her a safe return to the City in company with honest men and women; or he might have placed her in the home of some honest matron, with due safeguards. But even if she had no faith in either of these, and was determined to go back to Rome, she might at least have entered upon the journey with one of the servants. Likewise, the other excuse for putting an honest face on the illicit amour falls to the ground--namely, that concerning the aforesaid flight another priest, the brother-in-law of the sister-in-law of the said Francesca, was informed. For if the abovesaid letters are read through carefully, the suspicion of illicit correspondence with his connivance is very greatly increased. We read in letter 11: "You tell me that [Conti] is unwilling to bring letters for you. But let me inform you that I am wheedling him; and I have the wits to bring it about that he will carry them for you. Because I say two kind words to him, and he is charmed and will do what I wish." And in letter 19 of the lover: "For he has told me that now he is more jealous than at first, and that if he finds out about anything, he will wish to avenge himself." But who would judge that we can deduce from the said words that their mutual love was chaste, because another priest was aware of it. I know that for Francesca to show herself at the window at the hiss of her lover in company with the other priest does not savour well. Of this a witness for the Fisc, in the prosecution for flight, gives oath (pp. 107-8). Therefore, not without cause did Count Guido have suspicion also of the other priest, as Francesca herself asserted in her deposition in our Summary, No. 2, before letter A. These [two] things are taken as proved therefore: [first] that it is not established that Francesca was threatened with death without just and legitimate cause, and [second] that a most suspicious correspondence with her lover is established. It will follow that the threats were offered by her husband to preserve his honour, and so it was in the power of Francesca to free herself from these threats without scandal, without flight, and without shame, by living chastely. She, however, was too prone to the tickling of the flesh, and had deferred all things to the fulfilling of her vicious desire, without respect to her violation of conjugal faith. It is all too foolish to doubt her utter recklessness, since it is manifestly evident from matters brought forward in the prosecution for flight, and especially from the reciprocal love between the lovers, etc. It is also clear from the letters containing such very tender expressions. [Citations.] As to the entry and egress of the said priest from the home of Francesca at a suspicious time, a witness for the prosecution testifies (p. 107): "At the sound of the Ave Maria, while I was at the same window, I saw the door of the said Signori Franceschini open very softly, and from it passed the said Signor, etc. He pulled the door to as he went out, but did not in fact close it, and therefrom, after a little while, I saw the said Signora Francesca Pompilia, with a light in her hand, who closed the said door." It is also proved from letter 11, where we read: "For that reason, I do not have you come here because now the street-door is no longer opened, but you might be able to open the back-door," etc. This of itself is enough to prove adultery, even when trial is being made to demand punishment therefore. [Citations.] Her leaning from the window at a hiss, day and night, and their mutual nods, concerning which a witness testifies, p. 108, are quite enough to prove carnal communication. [Citations.] Then there is the manner in which they prepared for the flight, which includes, as I may say, a show of treachery, as is to be understood from the letter of the priest, No. 18, where [we read]: "Above all, try to put some into all their cups, but do not yourself drink it." For in seeking an opportunity to mingle an opiate for them, he was inquiring what coloured wine they were drinking in the home, lest, as I suppose, the colour of it when altered by the drug mixed therewith might betray their plots. So in letter 4, where we read: "Then, further, if they continue to drink the red wine I will tell you so." In No. 12: "When you tell me that it is not possible to make my mother sleep, while she is ill, and drinks no wine." And in letter 13: "As to what you wish to know about the wine, I tell you that it is red now, but I do not know how much longer it will be so; but I will let you know about it." Still further this most wretched wife was moved with a burning ardour for the said priest, as is noted in letters 5 and 21; this is usually conceived by lovers only. Therefore, since it is undeniable that the carnal love was reciprocal between them, I think it can not be doubted that her departure from the home of her husband and their association through a long journey, prove their adultery. [Citations.] In the progress of the journey kisses were given on both sides; of this the witness for the prosecution testifies; but I do not find in the evidence that he saw these at night, as is supposed by the other side; for page 100 asserts "I only saw that at times they kissed each other." And these kisses Francesca so strongly desired to give and to receive likewise, that in letter 11 [we read]: "I thank you for the kisses you send me; but if yourself could give them to me, I would hold them dear. I give you as many million more." And in letter 10: "And giving you an amorous kiss." And in 5: "I say good-bye with a million kisses." And here and there in the other letters. These render the adultery not at all doubtful, so much so that there are not wanting authorities who assert that when the kiss is proved the adultery may be said to be proved. [Citations.] Therefore, unless I am very much mistaken, no one who knew what we have recounted could be found so senseless and so weak-minded as not to believe strongly that when they were found in the inn her matronly shame had been tampered with, either during the journey or at night while they were taking their rest, or more probably in the morning while they were enjoying each other's society. But passing over the fact that the priest was clothed in laic garb (pp. 4 and 100), which affords no small weight for the proof of the adultery, all further doubts are removed, since they arrived together at the tavern of Castelnuovo at half-past seven at night, as three witnesses for the prosecution agree in swearing (pp. 44, 47, 49). And although two beds were in the chamber, only one indeed did the said priest wish to have made ready, and all night long, behind closed doors, he rested alone with her (if lovers can rest); from this the adultery is proved without doubt. [Citations.] This proof indeed becomes all the stronger from the lie of Francesca, who asserts that they arrived at the said tavern at dawn (Summary, No. 2, letters F and L). For if no evil had been done she would not have attempted to hide the truth. [Citation.] Finally, the sentence or decree of this Tribunal, which is given in Summary, No. 8, where the said priest is condemned for carnal knowledge of Francesca, removes all doubt; because the adultery is thereby rendered infamous, as was proved in our other argument. And though it is asserted that it was in the minds of the Lords Judges to modify this sentence and to add "for pretended carnal knowledge," yet it never was thus modified. And yet such modification would not have stood in the way after it had reached the ears of the luckless husband that the adultery of his wife had been made manifest and notorious and had been confirmed by the Judges' decree. But certainly, even if we are cut off from this proof, their carnal communication remains more than sufficiently proved for our purpose; for we are arguing not for the infliction of the penalty of adultery, but we have deduced the adultery for exclusion of a penalty. [Citations.] For it is quite customary that, for a civil purpose, such as divorce or loss of dowry, adultery is abundantly proved by circumstantial evidence. [Citations]. Nor is it of consequence that some of the stronger proofs are proved by single witnesses; for we are arguing to establish dishonesty and adultery in kind; not for the purpose of condemning the adulteress, but for the defence of the accused. And the reason is very evident, because to excuse a husband from the murder of his adulterous wife after an interval, an exact proof of the adultery is not required, but strong suspicion of adultery is quite abundant, as Sanfelicius testifies it was decided (_dec. 337, num. 13_). But we are upon firmer grounds, because we not only have strong suspicions drawn from single witnesses, but other finely proved grounds, yes, the clearest of proofs, deduced by the Prosecution. Very little does it stand in the way of this proof of her guilt that Francesca, when near to death, tried to exculpate herself and her lover by asserting that there had been no sin between them; for this kind of exculpation, which is all too much a matter of pretence, might help her companion just as theretofore she had brought blame upon him; and by no other proof might his inculpation have been removed. This would indeed aid her fellow, but not herself. But since she stands convicted by the abovesaid proofs of having broken her matrimonial faith, it would be absurd that an exculpation made that she might seem to die an honest woman, should be of such efficiency as to destroy the proofs of her baseness. [Citations.] And what is more horrible, that from the said exculpation, her murderer might be the more severely punished. I have faith, and this helps me to hope, that her soul rests in eternal safety, by divine aid, since she had time to hate her previous life. But no man of sense could praise her testamentary disposition, in which she appointed as her sole heir her son, who, as I hear, was but just born and hence innocent, and who had been hidden away from his father, and which appointed as residuary legatee a stranger joined by no bond of relationship. From these considerations, therefore, it is plain that the adultery of Francesca is fully proved. Hence according to the opinion of the Fisc, her murder, even if committed after an interval, is not to be expiated by the death penalty; not only because of the justly conceived grievance, but because the injury to the honour always keeps its strength, according to the sentiment of Virgil in the _�neid_, Book I: "Keeping an eternal wound within the breast." It is of no force in response to this that he did not kill his wife and the adulterer, whom he had overtaken at the inn of Castelnuovo, but that he merely saw to their imprisonment; as if that, after his recourse to the judge, he could not with his own hand avenge his honour. For we deny in the face of all heaven that he could have killed either of them, because he was worn out by the rapid journey, and was so perturbed by the agitation of his mind, that he was seized by a fever. And furthermore he had heard that the said priest was armed with firearms, as he asserted in the prosecution for flight, at a time when his word cannot be suspected, because the murders had not yet been committed (pp. 76 and 77). It is also true that the priest was a terrible fellow, according to the witness for the prosecution (p. 167), and as Francesca herself confesses. Elsewhere, the Accused speaks of the taking away of an arquebus pointed at the officers, as he himself asserts (p. 71). And, furthermore, Caponsacchi was all too prompt and too much disposed to resisting, as we read in letter 18. There, in speaking of the opiate to be given to the domestics, he adds: "If by ill luck they shall find it out and shall threaten you with death, open the door, that I may die with you, or free you from their hands." And the wife, indeed, was unterrified, full of threatening, angered, and even furious, as the outcome proved; since when captured by the posse of the Ecclesiastical Court, she dared in the very presence of the officers and other witnesses to rush upon her husband with drawn sword. And she would easily have killed him, if she had not been hindered (p. 50). He, indeed, weak, as he is, and of insufficient strength, could not have taken vengeance by killing both, or either of them, provided as he was with only a traveller's sword. Hence, as he was not able to kill them, he saw to their imprisonment in the confusion of his mind, in order that he might prevent the continuation of his disgrace, and thus might hinder their future adultery. But, indeed, even if he could have killed them, and did not do so, he would be praiseworthy; for up to that time the adultery had not been made notorious by the sentence of the judge, and only strong suspicions of it were urging him on. But as for the recourse to the judge, whereby it can be claimed that he renounced the right to kill his adulterous wife, which we deny, I pray you note that the Tribunal acted prudently in placing Francesca in the Monastery, that she might be kept more decently than in a prison. Then when it received the attestation of the physician as to her condition, lest she might be kept there destitute of necessary aids, and so might undergo punishment in the very course of events (which is everywhere avoided), after obtaining the consent of Abate Franceschini, brother of the Accused, the court permitted her to be placed in the home of her parents with the warning to keep that home as a prison. But I cannot commend any one, whoever he may be, who tried to get Francesca from the Monastery under the false pretence of ill health, since he could legitimately and with more decency have succeeded in his intent by laying bare the truth, namely her pregnancy. But this was done for no other reasons than these: either that the son might be hidden away from Count Guido, since the law presumes that he was born of his legitimate father, although his wife had shown herself incontinent; or else Francesca, believing that the child was conceived of some one else, possibly was trying to hide from her husband the fact of her pregnancy. And now in the meantime, let it please my Most Illustrious Lord to turn his eyes toward Arezzo and for a little while to think of Count Guido stained with infamy, when the decree of condemnation for adultery reached his ears. The adulteress was still unpunished, and he was ignorant of the fact that she could not be punished, owing to her supposed ill health, and that during her pregnancy, which she had so carefully hidden from him, she was unsuited to the vengeance of the sword. Furthermore, when he saw that Francesca had gone back to that very suspicious home of Pietro and Violante, who had instilled Francesca with dishonesty, had repudiated her, and had professed that she was the daughter of a harlot, he lost all patience, as is evident from the deposition of Blasio (p. 318), where we read: "But still further, she had been received back into the home, after she ran away from Guido, although the latter had put her in a Monastery." This change drove to desperation her luckless husband, who was at least an honourable man. Therefore his recourse to the judge ought not to increase the penalty for him. We do not deny that Abate Franceschini had given consent to the removal of Francesca to the home of Pietro and Violante (in order that we may yield to our respect for my Lord Advocate of the Fisc), but only on verbal representation, for I have not been able to see it in writing. But, for our proposition, this does not affect Count Guido, since it is not made clear that he was informed of such consent, and thus far the Fisc merely presumes that he had been informed by Abate Franceschini, his brother, of this consent. [Citation.] We are compelled to affirm that this knowledge is not to be presumed as is shown below, or at the very worst there is present only presumptive knowledge. And I do not think that on this kind of merely presumptive knowledge the death penalty can be demanded, nor can Count Guido be condemned, since he has neither confessed nor been convicted of such knowledge: chapter _nos in quemquam_, where we read: "We cannot inflict sentence upon any one unless he is either convicted or has confessed of his own accord." Indeed, what if Count Guido had acknowledged that he had written the consent furnished by the Abate, his brother, since it had no special authorisation for that particular matter; nor a general authorisation to conduct litigation, but only to receive moneys taken from himself by Francesca, as is to be seen (p. 136). By exceeding the limit of his power, Abate Paolo would have exasperated the mind of Guido; for the luckless man was already burning so with rage at the temerity of Francesca, Pietro, and Violante, that he was almost driven, I might say, to taking vengeance. He had put this off as long as he had any hope that he might have the marriage annulled because of mistake concerning the person married. For he was ignorant of the point of Canon Law that error as to the nature of the person contracted does not render a marriage null, but only an error as to the individual. [Citation.] Nor does it amount to anything that Francesca, at the time she was killed, was under surety to keep the home as a prison, as if she were resting in the custody of the Prince. For, however that may be, even if the Accused had killed Francesca to the offence of the Prince, yet since he wished to recover his honour and to remove with her blood the unjust stains upon his reputation, for this particular reason the aforesaid custody is not to be given attention, nor does it increase the crime; as in the more extreme case of one injuring a person having safe-conduct from the Prince, Farinacci affirms in making a distinction [Citation] where knowledge thereof is not to be presumed. Furthermore, when we speak of custody we should understand it to apply to public custody and not to a private home as was proved in our other argument. Nor is the response enough that this would hold good in the one under custody, but not concerning the custodian, Violante; for I do not know any probable distinction between the two, since both cases may suffice for escaping the penalty; nor is any stronger reason to be found for the one than for the other. And indeed a third case would be more worthy of excuse, of one who broke this kind of custody, when knowledge thereof was not proved. Because such an offence might arise under such custody, just as one who had killed a person under bann, but ignorant of that bann, excused himself. [Citations.] If therefore Count Guido is not to be punished for murder of his wife, for the same reason he cannot be punished for the murder of Pietro and Violante, because these murders were committed for the same cause, _causa honoris_. For at their instigation, Francesca found her lover, and still more, in order that they might disgrace Guido, they did not blush to declare that Francesca had been conceived illegitimately, and had been born of a harlot. This greatly blackens the honour of an entire house, as Gratian observes [Citation]; for the daughters of such are usually like their mothers. Then also, as I have said above, the Accused burned with anger when he had notice of the return of Francesca to their home (p. 318), and the following. And Alexander proves this in his confession where he says (p. 646): "So that he had to kill his wife, his mother-in-law, and his father-in-law: because the said mother-in-law and father-in-law had a hand in making their daughter do evil, and had acted as ruffians to him." This following fact makes it all the clearer, because on the fatal evening when they were slain, at the knock on the door, and as soon as Violante heard the much beloved name of the lover, straightway she opened it. And thus she showed, unless I am mistaken, what removes all doubt that Pietro and Violante were not at all offended with the love affairs of their daughter and her lover. It is all one, because we are compelled to acknowledge either [first] that the Comparini had done new injury to his honour by receiving her into their home after they had declared that she was not their daughter, and after her adultery was clearly manifest, and hence there should be departure from the ordinary penalty. [Citation.] For just indignation, when once conceived, always oppresses the heart and urges one to take vengeance. [Citation.] Or else [secondly] we must acknowledge a cause of just anger continued, and indeed was increased, which is quite enough foundation for asserting that the murders were committed incontinently. [Citations.] Since, then, from the confession of Count Guido as well as from that of his associates, and since from so very many proofs brought forward in the trial, it is evident that Guido was moved to kill them by his sense of injured honour, in vain does the Fisc pretend that for some other remote reason he committed the crimes. For, to tell the truth, I find no other cause which does not touch and wound the honour, if we only bear in mind what Guido has said in the trial (pp. 96 and 97): namely, that the Comparini had arranged the flight of Francesca and had plotted against his life. This alone would be enough to free him from the ordinary penalty. Bertazzolus and Grammaticus [Citation], testify that a man was punished more mildly who had had one who threatened him killed, though the threats were not clearly proved. [Citations.] "And the death which he had threatened fell upon himself, and what he planned he incurred," and also: "There is no doubt that one who had gone with the intention of inflicting death seems to have been slain justly." Another cause of the murder alleged by the Fisc is the lawsuit brought to annul the promise of dowry. Upon this point a complete and a very skilful examination was made by the other side, and because of this it was pretended that he had incurred the penalties of the Alexandrian Constitution and of the Banns. But this pretence in fact soon vanishes. For if we look into it well we shall find, without difficulty, that a cause of this kind is no less offensive to the sense of honour. For the ground on which Pietro had attempted to free himself from the obligation to furnish the promised dowry was this solely: that Francesca was not his own daughter, but the child of an unknown father and of a harlot. Every man, however, well knows whether this kind of a declaration would wound the reputation of a nobleman. Whether or not a pretence of this kind could have found a place for itself before we had the confessions of Count Guido and his companions, as I have said above (for then the Fisc might have been in doubt how Guido could be moved to kill her), yet thereafter it was clear from the confessions of them all that the sense of injured honour had given him the impulse, and had even compelled him to the killing, as Count Guido asserts (p. 678) where we read: "To inflict wounds upon them, inasmuch as they had injured my honour, which is the chief thing." Vain is it to inquire whether he had killed them for some other reason, because, as it was clearly for honour's sake, the Fisc never could prove that they were killed on account of the lawsuit, and not on account of honour, as is required for the incurring of the penalty of the aforesaid Bull. [Citation.] These statements are apt also as regards the murder of Francesca, who had sought a divorce. For if she had made pretence of being separated from him for any other reason, and if her dishonour were not perfectly clear, then indeed there might be room for the Alexandrian Constitution. But since wounded honour gave occasion for the murder, we are far beyond the conditions of the Alexandrian Constitution. Otherwise a very fine way would be found for wives to act the prostitute with impunity. For if it were possible, after adultery was admitted, to bring suit for divorce, they would find a safe refuge to escape the hands of justly angered husbands, and would be rendered safe by the protection of the said Bull even though the divorce was not obtained and though the husbands had been offended because of their dishonour. But still less can such capital punishment be inflicted upon Guido on the pretext that he assembled armed men, contrary to the rule of the Apostolic Constitutions and Banns. For whenever the question is whether a husband may assemble men to kill his adulterous wife, we are still beyond the conditions of the Constitutions; for they have place whenever men are assembled for an indeterminate crime, and crime does not follow; then indeed the provisions of the Bull are applicable. But whenever men are joined together to commit crimes, and these actually follow, attention is directed to the end for which the men had been assembled, and the punishment for that is pronounced, nor is there any further inquiry concerning the beginning (that is, the assembling), as I have proved in my other argument. And I now add another citation [Citations], where after the question was disputed, he asserts: "But certainly, notwithstanding what has been said above, in the current case, I do not believe there should be any departure from the decision of so many men, whom we may well believe have considered and written the entire matter with maturity and prudence for Our Most Sacred Lord Clement VIII." And at the end of this addition, it is testified that the Apostolic Chamber had so decided it at the order of the said Pope. [Citation.] This is also proved by the Banns of my Most Illustrious Lord Governor, chapter 82, where they impose a penalty for assembling men for an evil end, if the evil end may not have followed. But they decide nothing when the crime for which the men had been assembled had been put into execution, because in this case the penalties for assembling cease and only the penalty for the crime committed is inflicted, as was said above. And that the assembling of men for the purpose of recovering one's reputation does not fall under the penalties of the Apostolic Constitutions (see _Farinaccius_, _cons. 65_, _No. 66_). Finally, the matter of carrying prohibited arms is still left for consideration. Even if some authorities have asserted that this is not to be confounded with the principal crime, yet the contrary opinion is held by the majority; for the purpose is to be considered, which the delinquent chiefly had in mind. So Bartolo holds in our very circumstances. [Citations.] And on the point that one killing for honour's sake, with prohibited arms, is still to be punished more mildly, Matthæus testifies that it has been so judged. [Citation.] This also holds good in the more extreme case of several crimes, which can easily be committed separately and which tend toward different ends; yet, if they are committed at the same time and for the same end, the punishment only for the crime which was chiefly in mind is imposed. Thus, if one wishing to commit theft climb over the walls of the city, even though he could commit that deed without the crime of crossing the wall (which is a very grave crime, according to Farinaccius, _quaest. 20_, _No. 146_), even then only a single penalty, namely that for theft, is inflicted, as the one chiefly in mind; and this is a little harsher than that for crossing the walls of the city, but is not of utmost severity. [Citations.] Nor does it escape my notice that the Banns of our Most Illustrious Lord Governor, chapter 8, seem to settle the question by deciding that the punishment for carrying arms ought not to be confounded with punishment for the crime committed therewith. Nor do I fail to see, still further, that these Banns do not include one of the companions, who was a foreigner and not of that district. But since by common law these Banns receive a passive interpretation whenever arms are not borne for an ill end, and then some crime is committed with them (because the delinquent did not have in mind the crime which he committed), he is punished for both crimes, because at divers times he committed different crimes. But when any one bears prohibited arms with the purpose of murder, and then commits the murder, the chief crime of homicide, in view of which he bore the arms, is considered and the penalty for murder is inflicted, but not that for carrying the arms. [Citations.] I beg you note that this crime in question is made important from the fact that those three who had no fear of ill, but who ought by all means to have feared, were slain, and not because of the kind of arms with which they were slain. The number of the victims, and not the instrument of their death, excited astonishment, and it would have been the very same if they had been slain with the longest of swords, or with sticks, or with stones. Therefore it would indeed be a very hard matter that the Fisc should be aflame over these murders, and not being able to demand the death penalty for them, should demand it for the carrying of arms. But beside this, Count Guido denies expressly that he owned, carried, or kept arms of unlawful measure. And although it is asserted by the four associates that at the time of the murders Guido had in his hands a short knife, and had given the same kind of arms to his companions, yet these could not doom him to the ordinary penalty. Thus Farinaccius and others affirm after this matter has been well discussed and the contrary opinion confuted. [Citations.] Nor does he deny that he had on his person a dagger which was entirely lawful. But he did not have it with him at the murder, nor did he carry it for the murder, but only to defend himself if he should find in the aforesaid home outsiders ready to use force against him. And that was permissible to him; for there is ample right to bear arms of this kind throughout the Ecclesiastical State, and (I may boldly add) even in the very City. Because no mention is made of the City, although some places are excepted; according to that very true axiom: "The exception proves the rule in what is not excepted." [Citations.] And he could the more readily believe that it was permissible for him to do so, because he had enemies in the city who threatened him there and made plots against him, as Guido himself says; and therefore the bearing of arms of this kind was more necessary here than elsewhere. Nor is it to the point that, because it is claimed he had killed with forethought, the privilege of bearing this kind of arms should not be granted him. For aside from what is said above and in the other argument establishing the fact that the aforesaid crimes were "for honour's sake," they cannot be said to be committed "after an interval." The objection might hold good if he had used the arms in the murder, but as this is not established, it does not seem possible to deny him the right to carry the arms. In any case, although strictly speaking he could be said to have done the killing when armed with the said arms, yet he should not be punished with the extreme penalty of death. In _Caballus_, _case 90_, _No. 7_: "Yet in fact in these cases, I have never seen the death penalty follow, but by grace it is commuted to a milder penalty." Finally, he cannot be said to have incurred the penalty for prohibited arms from the fact that he was present at the murders committed by his associates with such arms; because the penalty of this kind which is due to one furnishing the said arms does not extend to the helpers and assistants. [Citations.] I do not speak of Domenico and Francesco, because these last two, as foreigners, are not bound by our Banns. But all matters fight for all of them, and every single ground for the diminution of the punishment, which favours Count Guido, also favours them all; since accessories are not to be judged on different grounds from the principal, as I have shown in my other argument. There I cited, not the authority of one or another doctor singly, but the decisions of the highest magistrates. Clar also testifies that this opinion has been observed in actual practice. (§ _Homicidium_, _sub No. 51_). But I earnestly beg that my Most Illustrious Lord will be pleased to consider with kindly countenance and untroubled vision that Count Guido did the killing that his honour, which had been buried in infamy, might rise again. He killed his wife, who had been his shame, and her parents, who had set aside all truthfulness and had repudiated their daughter. Nor had they blushed to declare that she was born of a harlot, in order that he might be disgraced. They also perverted her mind, and not merely solicited, but even by the strength of her filial obligation compelled her to illicit amours. He killed her lest he might live longer in disgrace, loathed by his relatives, pointed out by the noble, abandoned by his friends, and laughed at by all. He killed her, indeed, in that City which in olden days had seen a noble matron wash away the stains of shame with her own blood--stains which against her will the son of a king had imposed upon her. And thus she expiated the violent fault of another by her own death. (See Valerius Maximus and Titus Livius.) This city also saw a father go entirely unpunished, and even receive praise, who had stained his hands with the murder of his daughter, lest she might be dragged away to shame. [Citations.] So much did the fear of losing his honour weigh upon his heart, that he preferred to be deprived of his daughter rather than that she should continue to live in dishonour, even against her own wish. Count Guido did the killing in their own home, that the adulteress and her parents, who were aware of her crime, might find out that no place nor refuge whatsoever was safe from and impenetrable by one whose honour had been wounded. He killed them lest deeds of shame might be continued there, and that the home which had been witness of these disgraces might also be witness of their punishment. He killed them because in no other way could his reputation, which had been so enormously wounded, find healing. He killed them that he might afford wives an example that the sacred laws of marriage should be religiously kept. He killed them, finally, that either he might live honourably among men, or at least might fall the pitied victim of his own offended honour. GIACINTO ARCANGELI, _Procurator of the Poor_. [File-title of Pamphlet 9.] _By the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Governor of the City in Criminal Cases_: _ROMAN MURDER-CASE._ _For Count Guido Franceschini and his Associates, Prisoners, against the Fisc._ _New Memorial of law, by the Advocate of the Poor._ _At Rome, in the type of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber, 1698._ ROMANA HOMICIDIORUM [PAMPHLET 9.] Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord: The confessions of Count Guido Franceschini, and of Domenico Gambassini, Francesco Pasquini and Alessandro Baldeschi, his companions, are null; and therefore they should be given no consideration, as they issued under fear of the rigorous torment of the vigil, unjustly decreed against them. [Citations.] And this is true even though they still persevere in the same confessions. [Citations.] For as we have said in our past argument (which may be reassumed here by favour), the Constitution of Paul V., of sacred memory, issued for the reformation of the tribunals of the City [Citation], commands that this torture be not inflicted except under two concurrent circumstances. One of these is that the accused be under the strongest of proofs, and the other that the crime be very atrocious. And the authorities alleged in my argument, § _Quatenus_, etc., testify that it has been so practised. Nor indeed can the asserted [discretionary] powers of this tribunal give support; because, whatever they may be, they have no place unless the crimes are punishable by death. Raynaldus [Citation] gives this reason: Whenever the defendant should not be condemned to death, he also should not, for the purpose of getting confession from him, be exposed to torture which might cause death, as it almost caused the death of Alessandro, who fainted dead away under two turns at the same torture. But the crime, which has been imputed to Count Guido and his helpers, and which they themselves have confessed, is murder neither of the first nor of the second degree, as was fully proved in my past argument. And indeed since Count Guido was moved to kill or to have killed both Francesca Pompilia, his wife, and Pietro and Violante, his parents-in-law, because of his sense of honour; namely, on account of the adultery which Francesca Pompilia committed with their conspiracy and aid, this fact relieves from the penalty of death, not merely himself (according to the texts and authorities alleged in my said argument) [Citations], but also his helpers (according to the authorities likewise alleged in said argument). [Citations.] Gabriel states: "And much less ought those to be punished with death, because if we will only examine the common opinion of wise men, just anger may excuse from a graver penalty than this; for according to the Gracchian law, Code concerning Adultery, even those who are called and led to the crime should likewise be excused." Aside from what may be claimed in this present state of the case, that the plea of injured honour is not established, the decree in condemnation of the Canon Caponsacchi for the said adultery issued in this tribunal, September 24, last past, and given in full in our Summary, No. 8, makes the matter clear and manifest. [Citations.] For it is there said: "Joseph Maria Caponsacchi, of Arezzo, for complicity in the flight and running away of Francesca Comparini, and for carnal knowledge of the same, has been banished for three years to Civita Vecchia." Nor can these words be said to be merely the title of the case, which does not make any one guilty, as my Lord Advocate of the Fisc supposes; but the very decree and the title of the case, as seen by me in the original Process, was that which follows: _Aretii in Etruria fugæ a viro_. But, in brief, the said Canon was condemned merely to the said punishment because he was a foreigner and had committed his crime outside of this State; in such case he should be dismissed merely with exile. [Citation.] Nor is it true that the Court receded from the said decree and still less that a modification of it was demanded. For we have no other fact than that for the purpose of giving some little indulgence to the still asserted honour of the wife and to the decorum of the said Canon, for which the Procurator of the Poor, their defender, kept sharply and incessantly urging, in the command for imprisonment, instead of the words of the said decree, these other words were applied: _Pro causa de qua in actis_. These words do not imply the correction of the preceding words, but indeed the virtual insertion of all the acts, and consequently of this same decree also. [Citations.] And this is all the more true because the said decree could not be changed unless both sides were heard; which, as I remember, was the response given to the said Procurator when he insisted upon the said modification. [Citations.] But why should I now insist on former matters when there is such conclusive proof of the adultery and further dishonour of the said wife from the many strong reasons deduced in the present stage of the case, and well weighed by my honourable colleague, the Procurator of the Poor, in his customary excellent manner? (I do not here repeat them, that I may avoid useless superfluity.) Hence there is left no room for doubt as to the outraged honour, which indeed impelled Count Guido to the commission of crime. For it would be quite enough that a cause of this kind be verified, even after one has committed the crime, as Bertazzolus advises on this point. [Citations.] Still further, there is no need now to insist on past matters because Count Guido has stated the plea of injured honour not merely against his wife, but against his parents-in-law in his confession (especially page 98): "Thereupon followed her flight, which was so disgraceful, not merely to my house, which is noble, and would have been so to any house whatsoever, even if of low estate. She made this escape by night with Canon Caponsacchi and his companions. In the progress of her flight along with the driver of the carriage, she was seen by the said driver, kissing and embracing the abovesaid Canon. Still further, I have found out that they slept together at Foligno in the posthouse and then again at Castelnuovo. By such proof, she stands convicted as an adulteress, not merely for this, but for other like excesses, which I have since heard that she committed in Arezzo with other persons." And page 672, where we read: "And when the said Santi was asked whether he would give ear to offering an affront to the Comparini, because of my honour and the plots they had made against my life, Alessandro responded that he would do it, and if some one else were necessary he would find him. Accordingly, after a few days, I received in my home Biagio, who has been twice named above, in company with the abovesaid Santi, and he said that he also would give ear to it, as being specially a question of my honour and the contrivance against my life." And at page 678: "And while we were staying in the same vineyard, that is in the house within it, we spoke of various matters and particularly of what was to be done, namely of the affronts to be offered to the Comparini (that is to Pietro, Violante, and Francesca, my wife) and of wounding them because they had taken away my honour, which is the chief thing, and had also plotted against my life." And at page 683, near the bottom, we read: "And I would have so much to say that one might write from now till to-morrow morning, if I wished to tell all the trouble and expense I have suffered from the said Comparini. But all this would amount to nothing, if they had not touched my honour and plotted against my life." And page 684: "The Santi above-named was a labourer of mine at my villa of Vittiano, and consequently was informed of all these troubles I had suffered at the hands of the said Comparini. He also knew of the very indecent flight made by my wife in the manner elsewhere told. The abovesaid Alessandro then began of his own accord to seek me out and did find me, so that he might give ear, in the event that I should wish to avenge my honour and the plots which they had made against my life." And page 699: "And she together with Canon Caponsacchi was overtaken by myself at Castelnuovo, where they were arrested by the officers and conducted to these prisons. In the Court, many a time I laid stress on the crime of her supposed conception in order that they might be punished. I never having seen what would be considered expedient in an affair of such importance to my honour, have been obliged to take some resolution for recovering it, because the Comparini, with greatest infamy, had transferred to me their own ignominy." And page 722: "And what I said to Alessandro, Biagio, and Domenico, I also said to Francesco once when he, knowing the offences against my honour which I had suffered, asked me if I were ready to give a beating to my said wife. And I then replied to him that she deserved not merely a beating, but death." Such a confession should be accepted with its own qualifications, for the Fisc cannot divide and detach this from it (according to the usual theory). [Citations.] This is undoubtedly true, when, as in the present case, one is arguing for the infliction of the ordinary penalty, whatever may be said, according to some authorities, for the infliction of an extraordinary penalty. [Citations.] Ludovicus extends this conclusion to all qualified confessions in any kind of crime. This is true especially when the qualification is not merely propped up in some way, but is conclusively proved. [Citations.] For beside the said decree, and the other considerations above, we have his fellows in crime especially swearing that their services were required by Count Guido for committing crime in his very company for the abovesaid reason. Especially is this the case with Blasio Agostinelli, page 316: "Signor Guido told me that his wife had fled from him in company of an Abate, and had carried away some money and jewellery. He led me into the very room where she had robbed him of the said jewellery and money, and told me that he wished to go to Rome to kill his wife, and that he wished that I and the said Alessandro would go with him," etc. And page 317: "At the above time the said Guido told me that his wife, for the purpose of fleeing securely with the said Abate, and that he might not perceive it, had mixed an opiate in the wine for dinner to put himself and all the rest of them to sleep. He also said that he was in litigation with his father-in-law, who had not merely sworn that the said wife was not his own daughter, but still further had received her back into his home, after she had run away from her husband, although he would have put her in a monastery after he overtook her at Castelnuovo during the flight." And Alessandro Baldeschi (page 623): "The said Guido in the presence of myself, as well as that of Biagio, Francesco, and Domenico, told me that he ought to kill the lady, that is, his wife, who was here in Rome, to recover his own honour; and also to kill the father and mother of the said wife because they had lent her a hand in the insult she had offered to his honour." And page 645: "He told us also, in the presence of the keeper of the vineyard, that he was obliged to kill his wife, his father-in-law, and his mother-in-law, because the latter had lent a hand to their daughter in her ill-doing, and had acted the ruffians too, and because the said Guido also declared that these same people, whom he had to kill, had wished to have himself, that is Guido, killed." Nor can the plea of injured honour be excluded by the attestations of those who afforded assistance to Francesca Pompilia even up to the time of her death: for they attest that she made declaration that she had never violated her conjugal faith. These assertions are merely testimony given outside of a trial, and do not demand belief. [Citations.] And more especially as they were extorted and begged (while the suit was pending and the other side was not summoned), by the heir of the same Francesca Pompilia, for avoiding the prosecution by the Monastery of the Convertites, which was laying claim to the succession to her property on account of her dishonesty. Such shame would cause all of her hereditary property to be sequestered and judicially assigned to the said Monastery by law. [Citations.] And this objection to their testimony is especially true because some of the witnesses who swear as above are beneficiaries of the same Francesca Pompilia, so that they might be swearing for their own advantage. For if her dishonour were substantiated, her property would devolve upon the said Monastery, and consequently they would be shut out of their legacies. [Citations.] And however far these attestations may occasion belief, a declaration of this kind serves to no purpose, because no one is presumed to be willing to reveal his own baseness. [Citations.] So likewise Francesca Pompilia should not be believed, especially when testifying outside of a court and without oath. [Citations.] Much less are the aforesaid witnesses to be believed, lest more credence be given to hearsay evidence than to its original. [Citations.] Nor can it be said that no one is presumed to be unmindful of his eternal safety; for all are not presumed to be Saint John the Baptist. [Citation.] Especially when the argument is concerning the prejudice of the third. [Citation.] And still more so when the argument is for punishing more gravely the enemy of the declarant. [Citations.] And therefore, as the plea of injured honour is substantiated, it makes no further difference that the said murders were committed after an interval, according to what we have very fully affirmed in our last argument, § _nec verum est_, even down to § _prædictis nullatenus_. There it was shown that this is the general opinion of authorities, and in accordance therewith judgment has been given from time to time not only in the Sacred Courts, but also in all the other tribunals of the world, as Matthæus well observes, etc. [Citation.] Nor can there be any departure from this opinion in the present case on the ground that Count Guido did not kill his wife in the act of seizing her in her flight with her lover, but was indeed content to carry her before the judge as an adulteress. For it would not have been safe for him to kill her then; because he was alone and she was in company of the said lover, a daring young fellow, strong, and well armed, and accustomed to sinning. And what is more, this lover was prompt and well prepared to make resistance, lest his beloved Amarillis should be snatched from him. Likewise she was prompt and ready to hinder her husband even with a sword she had seized and drawn, lest her beloved Mirtillo might be offended. Guido should not therefore be considered to have spared her nor to have remitted his injury. But lest she might escape into more distant parts where he could have no hope of the due vengeance, his just and sudden anger then counselled him to have her arrested by officers, so that he might kill her as soon as possible; and when afterward a suitable occasion arose, if he killed her, it should be considered as if he had slain her immediately. [Citations.] And, generally, whatever is done after an interval may be said to be done incontinently, if done as soon as a chance for doing it was given. [Citations.] But so far is the Law from believing that this kind of injury is remitted by a husband that it rather believes that the spirit of vengeance always continues in him. Therefore it comes about that a wife may be held responsible for looking out for herself; so much so, indeed, that her death which follows thereupon may never be said to be treacherous. [Citations.] Muta speaks of the case of a husband who had his wife summoned outside of the city walls by his son, in order that he might kill her safely, and yet the husband was condemned only to the oars for seven years. This also makes some difference in the case, that certain authorities hold that a husband may indeed hide his wife's baseness for the purpose of taking vengeance upon her safely later on. [Citations.] Likewise he may have his wife hide his disgrace for the purpose of taking vengeance securely upon the one who wishes to offend her modesty, according to the very famous council of _Castro_ 277, _lib._ 2. And this is all the more to the point because Count Guido was censured by the Procurator of the Poor himself, the defender of Francesca and Canon Caponsacchi, for this appeal to the judge. [Citations.] We have alleged many of these authorities in our past argument, § _et hæc nostra_: for they unanimously assert that husbands are considered vile and horned, if they do not take vengeance with their own hands, but wait for that to be done by the judges, who themselves ridicule and laugh at them. Therefore it is no wonder if the luckless husband, after he had made the said recourse to the judge, as the foolish heat of his wrath suggested to him, wished to avenge himself for his lost honour. For he sinned that he might shun the censure of the vulgar and learned alike, and that he might not add this infamy also to his lost honour. Nor is it at all to the point that the said Count Guido, in his confession in one place, beside speaking of his injured honour, also mentions the plots aimed at his life; because the force of honour was far the stronger in his mind, as he himself asserts (page 678): "In consideration of the fact that they had taken away my honour, which is the principal thing." Nor ought any consideration be given the other cause; because, as it is so much weaker, it should be made to give way to the aforesaid reason, as was proved in our former argument, § _Et in omnem Casum_, where for another purpose we have adduced Matthæus [Citation], who is speaking in these very terms. And so far as we desire to give attention to this other cause, it likewise is sufficient for escaping the ordinary penalty. [Citations.] The Fisc acknowledges the relevance of the abovesaid matters; he therefore has recourse to the circumstances attending the crime, namely, the assembling of armed men, the lawsuit going on between Count Guido and the Comparini, the prohibited arms, and finally the place where the crime was committed. For Francesca Pompilia was detained in the home where she was killed, as a prison. But a response is easy because such circumstances can indeed somewhat increase the penalty of the principal in the crime, but not so much as to raise it to the highest degree, in such a way that Count Guido and his associates should come to be punished with death. For we find it decided in these circumstances as quoted by Muta [Citation]: "A decision was therefore made in view of the case in general, March, 1617, before his Excellency, wherefrom the ill manner of killing her was evident; for he had her summoned by her son, and afterward her body was discovered, which the dogs had eaten outside of the walls. Leonardus was therefore condemned to the royal galleys for seven years." And Sanfelici [Citation] says: "And although some of them were condemned to banishment, it was because of their mutilation of the privates, a crime for which the Fisc claimed they ought to be punished by the penalty of the _Lex Cornelia de Sicariis_." And Matthæus [Citation] says: "When the matter had been more carefully considered in the Council, it was decided that the husband had proceeded too treacherously in pretending absence, in taking his brother with him, and in killing with prohibited arms; because merely by the use of firearms a crime is rendered insidious with us, etc. And it was accordingly decided that, because of this excess, he should be condemned to the penalty of exile for four years and to the payment of 2000 ducats." And this at the stage of appeal was confirmed [Citation] where we read: "And thus it was decided in the face of the facts proposed in condemning Francesco Palomi to the penalty of the galleys for ten years, etc., from the aggravating qualification of firearms. To the same penalty, Antonio Alvarez was condemned, who had deliberately killed his wife because she was playing him false, etc. The penalty was increased because he was judged to have omitted this earlier, since he did not complain of mere adultery, but of her living as a strumpet. And she could not do this without the indifference and connivance of the husband." And our reasoning is manifest, because it cannot be denied that Count Guido and his associates committed all the aforesaid crimes on the same ground of injured honour. Because just as this excuse should be considered sufficient for escaping the ordinary penalty for murder, so likewise it should be considered sufficient for avoiding the other punishments whatsoever, appointed in the Apostolic Constitutions against those committing other crimes expressed in the same; as the principal purpose of the delinquent is always to be attended. [Citation.] So it was declared on this point for the purpose of avoiding the penalty inflicted in the 75th Constitution of Sixtus V. [Citation], against those who assembled armed men, whenever these men were evidently assembled for the purpose of committing some other crime, such as breaking prison and freeing those detained therein. And three very celebrated judges of the Sacred Court, namely Coccini, Blanchetti, and Orani so decided. Their decision is included among others gathered by Farinacci [Citation], and he testifies that it was so decided in the full chamber, in which the case was proposed and examined at the order of Clement VIII. of sacred memory. Nor does what he wrote later on to the contrary in aid of the Fisc, of which he was then Advocate, stand in refutation; Spada. [Citation.] For this opinion of his was refuted clearly and rejected on the most substantial of reasons and arguments, [Citations.] And in such conditions, for the purpose of avoiding the penalty of the Banns or Apostolic Constitutions prohibiting the carrying of arms, I have alleged many authorities in my past argument, § _neque plures_ [neque vero], and above the rest, Policardus, etc. [Citation], who fully examines the matter. My honourable Procurator of the Poor gathers together others in his present argument, § _remanet tandem_. To these I add, Caballus [Citations], where it says that preparatory acts are to be included with what was prepared, and he testifies that it was so decided by the Sacred Council of Naples. Likewise, for the purpose of avoiding the penalty set for those killing one detained in prison, and so remaining in the custody of the Prince, I have cited many authorities in my past argument, § _similiter nec aggravari_. To these I now add. [Citations.] Nor does it make any difference that Policardus, in the place cited, and some of the other authorities recently alleged speak of homicide committed in a quarrel or for self-defence. For the attendant circumstance of a quarrel relieves one committing crime from the ordinary penalty of the crime only in so far as it overlooks the crime in one who, when provoked, wished to be avenged (as Ulpian says), and insomuch as one swept away by a just indignation is not in the fullness of his intellect. [Citation.] But both of these reasons without doubt stand in favour of the husband or of any one else committing murder for honour's sake [Citation], even if they do so after an interval. [Citations.] And in these very conditions, one killing an adulterous wife after an interval is excused because of just anger, which causes him not to be in the fullness of his intellect, etc. [Citations.] Ulpian [Citation] also says: "He ought to be angered with a wife who has violated his marriage with her, and his wrath should spring from indignation for contumely when received, and his nature should arise so that he would drive her from himself in whatever manner he could." "For it is more difficult to restrain one's anger than to perform miracles," as St. Gregory says. [Citation.] The other authorities, indeed, who speak of persons committing murder in self-defence with prohibited arms or in prisons should likewise be in our favour. For the defence of honour in the case of men of good birth, especially of nobles, is to be likened to the defence of life itself. [Citations.] And indeed it surpasses life, according to the words of the Apostle in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 9: "Better were it for me to die than that any one should deprive me of my glory." And St. Ambrose: "For who does not consider an injury to the body, or the loss of patrimony, less than injury to the spirit or the loss of reputation?" And the third Philippic of Cicero: "We are born to honour and liberty; either let us keep them, or die with honour." [Citations.] So that he who spurns his own honour, and does not see to regaining it by vengeance, differs naught from the beasts. [Citations.] Indeed he should be considered even more irrational than the very beasts, according to the golden words of Theodoric. as quoted by Cassiodorus, which we have cited in our past argument, § _Nec verum est_. [Citations.] Then as to the lawsuit going on between Count Guido and the Comparini as regards the fraud about the birth, beside what was said recently, I pray that it again be noticed that the Constitution of Alexander does not enter where some provocation has arisen from the one injured, as Farinacci well affirms [Citation] in following a decision of the Rota, which he places at the end of his counsel. And we have weighed this heretofore in our past argument, § _absque eo quod_. Such provocation in the present case resulted from the injury which the said Comparini inflicted upon this same Count Guido while the lawsuit was pending, because of their complicity in the said flight and adultery committed by their daughter on that occasion. The other lawsuit which Francesca Pompilia made pretence of bringing against Count Guido, for divorce, might be omitted. For beside the considerations offered by my honoured Procurator of the Poor in his present argument, § _quæ etiam aptantur_, this suit was brought illegally, because the warning of it, as I suppose, had reached only Abate Paolo, the brother of Count Guido, who had no authority in this matter. And this is true especially because it is not proved that the same Guido had any knowledge of that suit brought, as is now pretended. As to Blasio Agostinelli enough has been written in the former argument, since he has not been examined anew, and in his former examination he confessed only that he was present at the said murders, but that he had no hand in them. So the more rigorous opinion of Caballus cannot apply to him, who said that such helpers are not immune from the penalty of murder whenever they kill any one with their own hands. For the opinion of this author was proved by us to be erroneous, in our past argument, § _quidquid in contrarium_. I might wish to add something to what has been said in the past argument as to the alienage and minority of Domenico and Francesco; but it is not yet very clear under what law the Fisc pretends that they miss these. Therefore I will rest satisfied with this response, believing certainly that it will not chance that my Lord Advocate of the Fisc may fashion his own allegations and also respond to ours without communicating them to me, as happened in the past argument very greatly to the astonishment of myself and of others. For he and I both ought to seek the truth and to be advocates of that, as both of us are officers of the Prince according to the considerations of Rainaldi. [Citation.] Who indeed desires that anything else than justice be administered, and especially when dealing with poor imprisoned wretches? In their cause, piety should triumph, because they are the treasure of Christ. [Citation.] DESIDERIO SPRETI, _Advocate of the Poor_. AN ACCOUNT OF THE FACTS AND GROUNDS OF THE FRANCESCHINI CASE [PAMPHLET 10.] The property of Pietro Comparini did not amount to more than the sum of 10,000 or 12,000 scudi, subject to a reversionary interest, coupled likewise with the obligation to compound a good percentage of the income. He, therefore, had to live sparingly to avoid being reduced to a state of destitution, there being a bar against his use of the capital and of a part of the income. He was also too indulgent to his stomach and was given to laziness, and furthermore had taken a wife with a very small dowry. Then lawsuits came upon him, the income of his bonds was reduced, and other misfortunes befell him, so that he was brought down to a state poor and miserable enough. So much so that he was several times arrested for debt and, after making a statement of his property, received from the Papal Palace secret alms each month. When he found himself in such straits, he decided to marry off Francesca Pompilia, his daughter, to some person who would undertake the burden of supporting him together with his wife, Violante Peruzzi, who was a very shrewd woman and of great loquacity. It was with her advice that he had undertaken the affair, and the marriage with Count Guido Franceschini was considered suitable. For when the latter had conducted his new wife and her parents back to Arezzo, his own country, he might be able to find some opportune remedy for their necessities, by the assistance in Rome of Abate Paolo Franceschini his brother, an active and diligent man; thereby putting in order the patrimony of Pietro which had been sequestered and tied up by his creditors. Therefore, when the dowry had been set at twenty-six bonds, with added hope of future succession to the rest of his property by virtue of the reversionary interest to which the wife was entitled, the bargain was accepted. This bargain was advantageous to Pietro and his wife in freeing them from the straits in which they found themselves. And it was likewise advantageous to the Franceschini, as the diligence of the Abate, and some temporary expenditure by their house well attests. For they might well believe that they would gain in time the aforesaid property either entire, or little decreased. Such from the beginning were the mutual purposes of that unhappy marriage. From this fact one may see how slight a pretext there is for saying that Count Guido, while making the arrangements, had tricked Pietro and his wife by giving an inventory of property with an annual income of 1700 scudi, which income was later proved to be much less, because the primary end for which the marriage was concluded might very well have been obtained by showing a much smaller income. For it is known that when this inventory was shown by Violante to Pietro Comparini, he said on seeing it: "Ho, ho, it would have been enough for me if it had been only half as much." And indeed it would have been the greatest stupidity in Pietro to have given his daughter a husband, upon the simple inventory of a foreigner and without finding out if this were true, so that the real impelling cause of the marriage had been the resources represented in the said inventory. Not even on the mere grounds of propriety and civility may Guido be reproved; because when the said inventory was produced by Pietro in the trial, the Abate Paolo Franceschini was very much surprised at it, so that he took his brother to task about it by letter, and Guido replied that he had done it at the instigation of Violante. For she desired the completion of the marriage, and, seeing Pietro irresolute, she induced Guido to give the abovesaid inventory, with some modifications, for the purpose of stimulating her husband thereto. The marriage was finally effected, and they all went back together to the city of Arezzo. Nor were the Comparini mistreated there, as they tried to prove by the unauthoritative deposition of a servant, who had left the house in anger. One mere reading of this deposition is enough to assure one that she did this with a bad motive and at the instigation of others, as she herself has declared to various persons. This deposition shows sickeningly the distasteful prejudice with which it was conceived, and especially where she says that a little sucking lamb was made to serve as food for seven or eight persons throughout an entire week. And there are other matters alike unfit for belief. [The Comparini] were indeed treated with all consideration and decorum, as Monsignor the Bishop and the Governor of the city attest; and they are persons much better qualified to judge and much more worthy of belief than a malign and suborned servant. But you may also have the attestation of one who was serving in that household for thirteen months, during the time when the abovesaid Pietro and Violante were there, and he is able to tell many particulars of the good treatment which they received at the hands of the Franceschini. It is quite true that disturbances of considerable importance arose in that household; but they were occasioned by the bitter tongue of Pietro and the haughtiness of Violante, his wife. For they laughed at all the proceedings of the Franceschini, and thrusting themselves forward, with pretence of superiority, they brought upon the mother of the Franceschini, and upon the rest of the family, bitter vexations, which were hidden at the time, to avoid violating the laws of hospitality. And notwithstanding all this, when Pietro and his wife decided to return to Rome, as soon as they expressed their wish, they were provided with money for the journey, and in Rome with furniture to put in order the house they had left. As soon as Pietro and Violante arrived in Rome, a judicial notice was dispatched at the instance of Pietro, in which he declared that Francesca Pompilia was not really his daughter, and that therefore he was not bound to discharge his promise of dowry. To prove this fact, he brought the attestation of his wife Violante. In substance, she declared that for the purpose of keeping her husband's creditors from their rights, by virtue of the reversionary interest, and also for the purpose of enjoying the income of the bonds, she had feigned that she was pregnant, and then, with the aid of a midwife, that she had brought forth a daughter. This was Francesca Pompilia, who had come of a most vile parentage. From this blameworthy act made public so suddenly throughout the entire Court, there necessarily arose in the Franceschini an intense hatred toward the authors of it. But they were able to restrain themselves from the due resentment in the hope that if Francesca Pompilia were not indeed the daughter of Pietro and Violante, as was supposed at the time of the espousal, the marriage might be annulled and they might thus purge themselves of such a blot on their reputation. Witnesses of this feeling of theirs are found in the many authorities and experts who were requested by the Franceschini to give thought to that point and to express their opinion of it. But as these did not agree, the Franceschini were unwilling then to commit themselves to so doubtful an undertaking, in the prosecution of which they would necessarily be obliged to presuppose and confess that she was not the child of the Comparini. But by such a confession they would be prejudiced in their interest in the dowry. And therefore they thought well then to pass the matter by that they might avoid exposing themselves to the danger both of losing the dowry and of being unable to nullify the marriage. Nevertheless they opposed the notice, and obtained for Francesca Pompilia the continuance in quasi-possession of her daughtership and a decree for the transfer of the dowry bonds. But Pietro appealed from the decree, and the case was continued in the _Segnatura di Giustizia_. This was followed by the copious distribution of pamphlets throughout Rome, which had been printed by Pietro to the very grave injury of the honour of the Franceschini, not to say to their infamy. But the latter were able to restrain the just resentment of their irritated minds by cherishing the hope of making the court acknowledge (as did follow), no less the falsehood of their adversaries than their own truth. Supported by this hope, they subsequently bore with all patience the many insults planned against them by various cliques, and the twists and turns for hindering the transfer of the dowry bonds, the Comparini having trumped up various creditors, whether real or pretended. On account of this opposition, the Franceschini were made to feel the inconvenience and expense of that transfer. Nor have they had any benefit of the income; of which they have been able to obtain not even a two months' payment. To such a pitch had the affairs of the two parties come, when Guido, waking up one morning, found that his wife was not in bed. As soon as he arose, he found that his jewel-box had been rifled and his wife had fled. Nor was the suspicion lacking that she had given an opiate to Guido and the entire household the preceding evening; and it was thought that this had happened at the suggestion of Pietro and Violante, as he had more than once heard threats of it. He travelled quickly along the way to Rome, and after a headlong journey he overtook his fugitive wife, in company with Canon Caponsacchi of Arezzo, at the inn of Castelnuovo. And as he was alone and unarmed, and they were armed and resolute, he saw that he was unequal to avenging that excess. He therefore thought it well to have them arrested by applying to the authorities of the said place. The court had both of the fugitives captured by the police. They were consigned to the jurisdiction of Monsignor the Governor of Rome, and were then conducted to the New Prisons. The Fisc, indeed, makes much out of the particular that Franceschini should have avenged his insults in the act of overtaking them; but, as an adequate response, one should think of the impossibility of his carrying out his revenge because of their precaution in the matter of arms, for Franceschini had heard along the way that the fugitives were travelling armed. In proof of this, also, when his wife saw her husband she had the hardihood to thrust at his life with bare sword. For this reason it was prudent moderation to check their flight then by arresting them. And this was all the more true because the adultery of his wife had not then been proved, and possibly he had a repugnance against imbuing his hands with the blood of her whom he had often held in his arms, as long as any hope was left alive of regaining his reputation in any other way than by her murder. But afterward there were found the mutual love-letters of the same fugitives, barefaced and immodest and preparatory to flight. And from the cross-examination of the driver it became evident that during their journey in the carriage they had done nothing else than kiss each other impurely. And from the deposition of the host at Castelnuovo, Guido found out that both of them had slept in the same chamber. Finally, from the sentence or decree of the court in condemnation of the Canon Caponsacchi to banishment to Civita Vecchia for three years, for "having carnally known Francesca," the notoriety and publicity of this adultery followed. Let any one who has the sense of honour consider in what straits and perturbations of mind poor Guido found himself, since even the very reasonless animals detest and abominate the contamination of their conjugal tie, with all the ferocity that natural instinct can suggest. They not only avenge the immodesty of their companions by the death of the adulterer, but they also avenge the outrages and injuries done to the reputation of their masters. For Elian in his Natural History tells of an elephant which avenged adultery for its master by the death of the wife and the adulterer found together in the act of adultery. And there are other examples also, as Tiraquelli cites. [Citation.] But returning to the series of events, it must be stated that, after the imprisonment of the fugitives, Guido also came on to Rome and was deeply affected and, as it were, delirious because of the excesses of his wife. He was comforted by his good friends with the hope that this attempt at flight, taken along with the lack of decent parentage of Francesca (under supposition of which he had contracted the marriage) would facilitate the dissolution of that marriage, and in that way all the blots upon his reputation would be cancelled. Hence, with this hope he returned to his own country, leaving the management of the affair to the Abate, his brother. The Secretary of Sacred Assembly of the Council may be a witness of this; for Abate Paolo presented the matter to him and entreated him to propose, in that sacred assembly, this point of law as to the validity of the marriage then--that is, after a criminal sentence in the Tribunal of Monsignor the Governor, had been obtained. In the meanwhile the same Abate attended to the plan of petitioning the conclusion of the said criminal cause. When Pompilia, to avoid conviction by the love-letters, had recourse to the falsehood that she did not know how to write, it was easy for the Abate to convict her of that lie by showing the marriage agreement signed with her own hand, as well as by a Cardinal now dead, by means of the recognition of the handwriting. But in spite of this, when the merits of the case had been made known everywhere, the same Abate perceived that instead of his being pitied, little by little every one began to laugh at him and to deride him, as he has told several persons. Perchance the attempt was being made to introduce into Rome the power of sinning against the laws of God with impunity, along with the doctrine of Molinos and philosophic sin, which has been checked by the authority of the Holy Office. So many persons would desire to blot out from the minds of men their esteem of honour and of reputation in order that they might sin with impunity against the laws of men and might give opportunity to adulterers without any check from disgrace or shame. And it is certain that the Abate, seeing the cause unduly protracted, had just grounds for placing it at the feet of our Lord [the Pope], with a memorial in which he declared that he could no longer endure such important and such various litigation and vexation arising from that luckless marriage, and he prayed that a special sitting be appointed for all the cases--that is the ones concerning her daughtership, her flight, her adultery, the dowry, and others growing out of the marriage as well as the one concerning its annulling. But he had no other reply than: "The matter rests with the Judges." So, with devout resignation to His Holiness, he awaited the outcome of the said criminal trial, from which he hoped to regain, at least in part, the reputation of his house. In the meantime, Pietro Comparini was supplied with plenty of money by the generosity of some unknown person, possibly a lover of the young girl. He vaunted his triumph boldly in the throngs and the shops, places of his accustomed resort, and he praised the resolution and spirit of his daughter for having known how to trick the Franceschini with a disgraceful flight and with the thievery of such precious things, and for having found an expedient to give to the judge in the trial such good replies with all details thereof. He also boasted that in a little while she would return to his home despite the Franceschini. For he would bring so many lawsuits and scandals upon them that they would be forced to be silent and to let matters run on. For these statements we can have the attestations of many persons, in case they are needed. Therefore, because of such stinging boasts and such irritations, the mind of Guido was ever more embittered in spite of all the power he could master for restraining the impetus of his anger which had been provoked by such injuries. Francesca Pompilia had been previously transferred from the prisons into the Refuge called _della Scalette_, where she stayed for some months. Then it was discovered that she was pregnant, and many attempts were made to secure an abortion. For this purpose, powders and other drugs were given several times by the mother. As this proved useless, she was remanded to the home of Pietro and Violante on the pretext of an obstruction and the necessity of relieving herself. There, at the approach of the physicians, her pregnancy was discovered. The truth is, that when her womb began to grow, the nuns did not wish for her confinement to take place within their walls, and therefore a pretext was found for removing her on the grounds of the said obstruction and the necessity of removing it. Now at this point the Abate found it necessary to break the bonds of his forbearance: for although it was indirectly that he was offended, that is, in the person and honour of his brother, nevertheless it seemed to him that every man's face had become a looking-glass, in which was mirrored the image of the ridicule of his house. Therefore, being humiliated, though he was strong and constant in other matters, he often burst into bitterest tears, until he felt very much inclined to throw himself into the river, as he indeed declared to all his friends. And to free himself from such imminent danger, he decided to abandon Rome, the Court, his hopes and possessions, his affectionate and powerful patrons, and whatever property he had accumulated during thirty years in the same City. Any one may imagine with what pain he parted from these and went to a strange and unknown clime, where he would not meet the fierceness of his scorners, who had been merited neither by himself nor his household. But the injury of Guido, arising from a sharper and severer wound, within his very vitals as a husband, had the power to arouse his anger even to the extreme. Nor did he consider it sufficient redress to punish himself with voluntary exile for the crimes of others; for such a resolution might be considered by the world as a plain proof of his weakness and cowardice. He soon had sure information that, during the month of December, Pompilia had given birth to a boy in the home of the Comparini, which child had been intrusted secretly to a nurse. He also heard that the infamy of the friendship with the said Canon had been continued, inasmuch as he was received as a guest into the said home (as was said). For like a vulture, Caponsacchi wheeled round and round those walls, that he might put beak and talons into the desired flesh for the increase of Guido's disgrace. Guido accordingly felt the wildest commotion in his blood, which urged him to find refuge for himself even in the most desperate of determinations. In the meantime he turned over again and again, as in delirium, his sinister thoughts, reflecting that he was abhorred by his friends, avoided by his relatives, and pointed at with the finger of scorn by every one in his own country. And the word went abroad that in Rome they were selling his reputation at an infamous market. (This matter has moved the treasurer of the Convertites, since the death of Pompilia, to begin proceedings and to take possession of her property.) Added to the above were the continual rebukes which he received because of his lost honour, so that he became utterly drunk with fury. He left Arezzo with desperate thoughts, and when he had reached Rome he went to that home which was the asylum of his disgraces. Nor could he have any doubt how much the very name of the adulterer was respected; for when Guido made pretence of delivering a letter of his sending, the doors were immediately thrown open; and so, scarcely had he set his foot upon the threshold, before he saw his dishonour proving itself before his very face; of which dishonour he had heretofore had only a distant impression in his imagination. Then bold and triumphant, he no longer feared to upbraid her with unmasked face for all the insults which had been inflicted upon his honour in that household; and as he looked all around at those walls incrusted with his heaviest insults, and with his infamy, the dams of his reason gave way and he fell headlong into that miserable ruin of plunging himself with deadly catastrophe into the blood of the oppressors of his reputation. There is no doubt that Franceschini has committed the crime of a desperate man, and that his mind, when it was so furious, was totally destitute of reason. As he had lost his property, his wife, and his honour, there was nothing else for him to lose unless it were his miserable life. For, as Paolo Zacchia, the learned philosopher and jurist, says in speaking of anger in man: "Such and so great is its force that it does not differ at all from insanity and fury." Galenus very clearly affirms this, adding that when in law it is known that crimes are committed in such a state, they are punished with a smaller penalty, even though it has to do with the very atrocious crime of parricide. Calder [Citation] also gives many other matters on our point in No. 27 and the following numbers. And these theoretic propositions are verified in actual practice in Guido; for he was so utterly mad and void of reason that he entered upon so great an undertaking even at an hour of the night when many people were around. And after that he took no precaution, such as any other person of sound mind would have taken in governing his actions. He set out by the high road on his journey of about seventy miles from the outskirts of the city without providing any vehicles, as if he were merely a traveller leaving Rome. These circumstances are plain evidences of an offended and delirious mind. [Citations.] St. Jerome writes in his letters: "Where honour is absent, there is contempt; and where contempt is, there is recurring insult; and where insult, there indignation; and where indignation, there is no quiet; and where quiet is wanting, there the mind is often thrown from its balance." Nor in this case does the legal distinction enter as to whether the one driven by anger committed the crime in the first impulse of anger, or after an interval of time. For this distinction might have a place when the anger arose from an insult in some transitory deed, and one that was not permanent. But in the case we are treating, the insult provocative of anger consisted of frequent and reiterated acts; that is, not so much in the passing of the wife from the nunnery to the home of Pietro under an empty and ridiculous pretence, but still more from her staying in the said home with the aggravating circumstance of his own infamy (as has been said above). Accordingly, as the injury is permanent because of the continual affronts which the injured one received, so the vengeance is understood to be taken immediately and without any interval. This the defenders of the cause have sufficiently proved in their no less erudite than learned writings with their very strong arguments and their unsurpassable learning. Nor does it amount to anything for one to say that the crime was aggravated, first, by the kind of arms used; for Virgil [A. I. 150] says: _Furor arma ministrat_; nor, secondly, by the company of four, or let us say the conventicle; nor, thirdly, by the place, the excess, or the other circumstances considered by the Fisc. For in a madman, everything is excusable, as it is axiomatic and a very sure principle that nature then arises in such a way that it drives a man from himself, in whatever manner is possible, etc. In conformity therewith, Fracosto speaks as follows: "And in truth an ingenuous mind, and one that knows the value of its own honour and reputation, is very painfully offended in a part so sensitive and so delicate; and at such a time reaches the limit of madness and of desperation; for it has lost the light of reason, and in delirium and frenzy cannot be satisfied even if it succeed in turning upside down, if that were possible, the very hinges of the Universe, for the purpose of annihilating not merely the authors but the places and the memory of its insults and shames." For "the rage and fury of a man does not spare in the day of vengeance, nor does it grant the prayers of any, nor does it accept in requital many gifts," as the Holy Spirit speaks on this point, through the mouth of Solomon, in the sixth chapter of Proverbs, at the end. With this very well agrees what St. Bernard has very learnedly written in his letter to his nephew Robert at the beginning: "Anger indeed does not deliberate very much, nor has it a sense of shame, nor does it follow reason, nor fear the loss of dignity, nor obey the law, nor acquiesce in its judgment, and ignores all method and order." There is no doubt that Samson reached this pitch when he fell into the power of his enemies. He suffered with an intrepid mind the loss of his eyes and other grievous disasters, but when he saw that he was destined to serve as a pastime in public places, and when he there heard the jeers and derision of the people, the anger in his breast was inflamed, so that, all madness and fury, he cried out: "Let me die along with the Philistines." And giving a shake to the columns which sustained the palace he reduced it to ruin: "And he killed many more in his death than he had killed while alive," as the Holy Scripture testifies. And Christ himself, although he was very mild, and had the greatest patience while receiving opprobrium and insults without ever complaining, yet answered, when he knew that his honour was touched, "My honour I will give to no one." And it is certain that any one who cares for honour and reputation would rather die an honoured man beneath _mannaia_ than live for many ages in the face of the world with shame and dishonour. This argument, strong as it is, has succeeded in weakening one wise and earnest adherent of the Fisc. And this is why the very learned pen of Monsignor of the Fisc has uttered the following period, which says: "But because the Comparini claimed that the furnishing of food to Francesca while in prison was the duty of Franceschini, and the latter declared that it belonged to the Comparini, the Most Illustrious and Reverend Lord Governor, after having the consent of Abate Paolo, own brother of Guido, and his representative in the case, assigned the home of the same Comparini to Francesca as a safe and secure prison under security." But this fact can be clearly explained so that it will not form an objection. When Francesca Pompilia was about to be taken from the prison to the nunnery, Abate Franceschini was asked to provide the food, with the statement that if he refused there would appear a third and unknown person who would assume the burden of it to their dishonour. Therefore the Abate wished once for all to put an end to any chance of receiving new insults; and to avoid every charge of preserving even the slightest sign of relation with this disgraceful sister-in-law, accepted a middle way proposed to him, namely, that Lamparelli, as Procurator of Charity, should make provision for it by the disbursement of his own funds and should pay it back again by what reasonably belonged to the Franceschini; for he reimbursed himself for it with the money which had been found upon the fugitives, and which had been stolen from the husband; at her capture, this money was placed on deposit in the office, where there remained so much of it still that, after all was over, the balance of it was consigned to the same Abate. And as when the said Francesca was transferred from the nunnery to the home of Violante, all the preceding and succeeding circumstances made it very improbable that the Abate gave his consent, and as this consent is not found registered among those acts, it seems very clear that it was not given at all. Nor could he legally give it, for he was not the representative of his brother in that matter; for his authorisation confined him solely to the power of receiving back the money and other things which were deposited in the office. This is proved by his acts and by the story which the Abate then gave to his friends and relatives; and it utterly destroys the assertion of the Fisc, since Abate Paolo says that he was indeed notified that the young woman was obliged to find relief in an indisposition, certified by a physician, and that she was obliged to leave the nunnery and to go back to her father's home. To this, as it seemed a mere pretence, he replied that he could easily undertake to purge the wife in the nunnery without exposing her to such evident danger of greater shame. He also said that he wondered very much that the affection of a father had so suddenly returned in Pietro Comparini for Pompilia, whom he and his wife had so often denied as their daughter. He wondered how they could both be, and not be, the parents of the said woman, according to their own desires to the injury of the house of Franceschini. And if the solicitor, for the purpose of giving colour to the honour of the said lady, has falsely urged many justifications, it is to be noted that in substance all that he says on that point is founded on what with her own mouth she has said in her own favour and what she has proffered to free herself from the blame of her sins, both at this juncture and in the flight, as well as in the trial which may be referred to; in fact, quite the contrary is evident; and from the external tests which the Convertites intended to make, but from which they abstained when they heard the news of the birth of the son. And would that it had pleased God that she had observed the laws of holy modesty! for in that case so great a misfortune would not have resulted from her whims. We should notice, further, that the declaration made by the wife in the face of death may be doubtful in itself, in the sense that after confession and absolution one's sin is cancelled as if it had never been committed, so that in a court of justice she would no longer have any need of pardon. Therefore, from the above-cited circumstances and very strong reasons, there is no room to doubt that Franceschini deserves the indulgence which the laws give to excesses that find origin from the stings of honour. And, if we were within the circumstances under which the case ought to be adjudged according to expediency, without any hesitation, Franceschini should be punished mildly to diminish the force of immodesty and impudence. For the woman is not without adherents, who triumph throughout all Rome in a coterie of treachery, both in public and in private. This is for the oppression and derision against husbands who have regard for their reputation. And they give the title of pedantry to that circumspection which one ought to practise for the preservation of his own honour. [File-title of Pamphlet 11.] _By the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Governor of the City in Criminal Cases:_ _ROMAN MURDER-CASE with qualifying circumstance._ _For the Fisc, against Count Guido Franceschini and his Associates._ _Summary._ _At Rome, in the type of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber, 1698._ SUMMARY [PAMPHLET 11.] No. 1.--_Bond given by Francesca Pompilia to keep her home as a prison._ October 12, 1697. Before me, etc., Francesca Pompilia, wife of Guido Franceschini of Arezzo, was placed at liberty, etc., and promised, etc., to keep to this home of Pietro (son of the former Francesco Comparini), etc., situated in Via Paolina, as a safe and secure prison, and not to leave it, either by day or by night, nor to show herself at the doors or open windows, under any pretext whatsoever, etc., with the thought of having to return again to prison, etc. And after she has recovered her health to present herself at any time whatsoever, etc., at every command of the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Governor of the City; for the cause concerning which there was argument in the trial, etc., from proofs that may arise, whether new or not new; under the penalty of 300 scudi, laid by the Reverend Apostolic Chamber in the case, etc. This is followed by the surety in due form, NOTARY FOR THE POOR. No. 2.--_Certificate of the Baptism of Francesca Pompilia._ I, the undersigned, certify, etc., as is found in the baptismal record, page 152, the particulars given below, namely: July 23, 1680. I, Bartolomeo Mini, curate, have baptised the infant daughter born on the 17th of this month to Pietro Comparini and Violante Peruzzi, who live in this parish. To her the following name was given: Francesca Camilla Vittoria Angela Pompilia, etc. In pledge of which, etc. Rome this 9th day of February, 1698. Thus it is, Pietro Ottoboni, Curate of San Lorenzo in Lucina. No. 3.--_Letter of Francesca, Pompilia, written in the prison of Castelnuovo to her parents._ My dear Father and Mother: I wish to inform you that I am imprisoned here in Castelnuovo for having fled from home with a gentleman with whom you are not acquainted. But he is a relative of the Guillichini, who was at Rome, and who was to have accompanied me to Rome. As Guillichini was sick, and could not come with me, the other gentleman came, and I came with him for this reason, because my life was not worth an hour's purchase. For Guido my husband wished to kill me, because he had certain suspicions, which were not true, and on account of these he wished to murder me. I sent you word of them on purpose, but you did not believe the letters sent you were in my own hand. But I declare that I finished learning how to write in Arezzo. Let me tell you that the one who carries this was moved by pity and provided me with the paper and what I needed. So as soon as you have read this letter of mine come here to Castelnuovo to give me some aid, because my husband is doing all he can against me. Therefore if you wish your daughter well, come quickly. I stop because I have no more time. May 3. Directed to Signor Pietro Comparini, my father, Via Vittoria, Rome. No. 4.--_Another letter of the same person, in which she calls the Canon to task for dishonourable advances._ I give you infinite thanks for the octaves which you have sent me. All of these are the very contrary of the Rosalinda, which was as honourable as these are immodest. And I am surprised that you who are so chaste have composed and copied matters so immodest. I do not want you to do in everything as you have done in these books, the first of which was so very nice; while these octaves are quite the contrary. I cannot believe that you, who were so modest, would become so bold, etc. No. 5.--_Portions of the will of Pietro Comparini._ As to each and all of my properties, etc., I appoint, as my usufructuary heir, my wife Signora Violante Peruzzi, etc. And when she dies I appoint in her stead, in the said usufruct of my entire estate, Francesca Pompilia, wife of Signor Guido Franceschini of Arezzo. And I do so because of her good character and because for a long time, yes, for many years, I looked upon her in good faith as my daughter, and thought that Signora Violante, my wife and myself were her parents. Then I found out that both she and I were tricked in that belief, thanks to the vanity of the schemes, unfortunately conceived by my said wife, to make me believe in the birth of the same daughter. And because of a scruple of conscience after the marriage of Francesca Pompilia, this fact was revealed to me by Signora Violante my wife. And this pretence of birth was found by me to be a fact because of the information of it from persons worthy of credit. All this I grant, therefore, on the condition that the said Francesca Pompilia seek again her own city and stay here in Rome, etc., in which city I hope she will live chastely and honestly, and will lead the life of a good Christian. But if she do not come back to this city, or if when she has come back she live with shameless impurity (and may God forbid that), I wish that she be deprived of the said usufruct of my estate and that opportunity be given for a substitution in favour of the heir mentioned below, as proprietor, etc. Because thus, etc., and not otherwise, etc. And because the chance might arise that she be left a widow, or that her marriage be dissolved, since a lawsuit is going on, which was brought before Monsignor Tomati by the Olivieri as to her relation as child, and if the said Francesca wish to marry again, or become a nun, I am willing that she separate from my estate as much as 1000 scudi for the purpose of remarrying or becoming a nun, if she shall so please. And I advise her not to marry again, lest she subject herself a second time to other deceptions. Still further, I give her the power to leave by will 200 scudi more of my estate. And in the event that Signor Guido die first, whereby there would come about the restitution to the said Francesca Pompilia, etc., of the money received by Signor Guido, to the sum of about 700 scudi, etc. (which I think would be at least very difficult, if not impossible, because Signor Guido is wretchedly poor and his family is very poor), I wish that these moneys be not counted against the said Francesca Pompilia in said 1000 scudi, much less in her power of making a will, because then, etc. No. 6.--_Authorisation for the management of his affairs made by Guido Franceschini to the person of Abate Paolo, his brother._ _October 7, 1694._ Guido, son of the former Tomaso di Franceschini of Arezzo, of his own will, etc., made and appointed, etc., to be his true, etc., representative, etc., special and general, etc., Abate Paolo Franceschini, his own brother, now living in Rome, etc., for the purpose of carrying on and defending, in the name of the said Constituent, all lawsuits and causes, civil or mixed, already brought or to be brought for any reason whatsoever, and against any persons whatsoever, anywhere, and especially in Rome, whether as plaintiff or defendant before any judge, either ecclesiastical or secular, whether before the Congregation or Tribunal, and before one or both, to give or receive charges, or to contest lawsuits, to take oath as regards the calumny, and to furnish whatever other testimony is lawful, etc., and to carry on and obtain each and all other necessary matters, in the same manner and form as the Constituent could, if he were present, and as seems well pleasing to the said Procurator, etc., promising, etc., and demanding, etc. I, Joseph, etc., de Ricii, Notary Public, etc., of Arezzo was asked, etc., in pledge whereto, etc. [File-title of Pamphlet 12.] _By the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Governor of the City in Criminal Cases:_ _For the Fisc, against Count Guido Franceschini and his Associates, Prisoners._ _Response of The Procurator General of the Fisc._ _At Rome, in the type of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber, 1698._ ROMANA EXCIDII [PAMPHLET 12.] Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord: Why should we waste time in disputing the point whether adultery committed by Francesca Comparini with Canon Caponsacchi, as is claimed by the other side, is sufficiently proved? For in our first information [Pamphlet 5] as to the law and fact in the case, we have already declared that judgment was given in the _Congregation_ only for the penalty of banishment to Civita Vecchia against the abovesaid Canon, and of retention in the nunnery against Francesca, because of the very lack of proof of the said adultery. And this is quite right in law, because neither the Canon himself nor the said Francesca have confessed, much less been convicted of it; and because the suppositions brought on the other side are trivial and equivocal. But, even if these latter had been weighty and very urgent, they would not have been enough to establish conclusive proof, but at the most could only lead the mind of the judge to place some minor punishment upon them arbitrarily, as Farinacci testifies. [Citation.] Therefore there should be strict insistence on behalf of the Fisc upon the point that Guido Franceschini had not the right to kill, after an interval, his wife, whom he had not taken in adultery nor in base conduct, without incurring the ordinary penalty of the _Lex Cornelia de Sicariis_. For in our former writings, § _Alii vero_, we have proved by the strength of many distinguished authorities that a husband who kills his wife after an interval is not excused from the said penalty. Now that this fundamental assertion [in their argument] is overthrown, we declare that the rights of the Fisc cannot at all be controverted in the case with which we are dealing, since the authorities alleged by the Defence, who excuse a husband from the ordinary penalty, speak in the case of simple murder; and they ought not, accordingly, to be extended to a case made still graver by qualifying attendant circumstances. And for this reason, because the penalty cannot possibly be the same, when the crime is greater in the one case than in the other. [Citations.] Nor for the purpose of overthrowing this fundamental idea of the Fisc can the objection be made that all the qualifying and attendant circumstances, which have been brought together in behalf of the Fisc, should have no consideration, because they tend toward and are preordained for the end had in mind; for the end and intention of Count Guido was directed toward the murder of his wife and the vindication of his honour. But one can well understand how fallacious this argument really is, from what I have already written in § _Prima enim_ together with the one following, and § _secunda qualitas_ and _si ergo_. There we have proved that the learned authorities who can be adduced by the other side speak and should be so understood when the end is licit and not prohibited by law, or else when some qualifying circumstance, through the force of particular Constitutions or Banns, does not establish some further capital crime, distinct and separate. And this is true whether the preordained end in the mind of the delinquent follow or do not follow. But in our case, from what has been conceded by the lawyers for the Defence, the husband is not permitted by law to kill with impunity his wife, after an interval, for adultery. But he is permitted by law to slay the vile adulterer and his adulterous wife only when taken in adultery. How then can these authorities be applied to our case? For they hold good and find a place for themselves only in a case permitted by law. In these circumstances speaks Laurentius Matthæus [Citation], who is cited by the other side, where in his setting forth a case we may read: "The adulterer and adulteress were slain in the home of the husband, although in that case the husband did not escape unpunished, because he had used firearms." Nor does it hold good in law and practice that the bearing of arms is included along with the crime committed. Not in law, as we have affirmed in our other argument § _si ergo_; nor in practice, because in all the tribunals of the entire Ecclesiastical State, it is held that even when murder in a rage has been committed, if it has been committed with the arms which are prohibited under the capital penalty, especially if these arms come into the possession of the Court, a more severe penalty is inflicted. And murders which should suffer a lighter penalty because they were done in anger are condemned under the ordinary penalty because of the carrying of such arms. Farinacci and Guazzini testify that this has been the practice in the Ecclesiastical State while this Decree has held good. [Citations.] Still less applicable are the other authorities, who were adduced to escape the order of the Constitution of Alexander. For although it is true that for this crime the penalty threatened by the same decree does not enter, unless these three matters are concurrently present, namely craft, the occasion of a lawsuit, and the fact that no provocation has arisen (as Farinacci holds [Citation]), yet in our case, all of the abovesaid concur. As to the craft, there can be little doubt, since by the very confession of the Defendants we have knowledge of the preceding discussion and deliberation for committing the murders. And Decian and others affirm the charge of craft may arise from such a discussion. [Citations.] The presence of a lawsuit is likewise undoubted; because, on the representation of Pietro Comparini, suit was not only brought before Judge Tomati as to the dowry promised and the goods subject to entail, for the exclusion of the said Guido Franceschini and Francesca his wife, but also a sentence favourable to the said Franceschini has been handed down by the same judge. But still further we may gather, from the confession of Franceschini himself, that the provocation whereby he was moved to kill his wife arose because of the pretended adultery; on this point the counsel for the defence have principally insisted. Nor can they deny that this same cause was introduced in the criminal prosecution in the presence of the judge by the same Franceschini. It is quite necessary, then, to acknowledge that this ought to justify the application of the penalty of the Alexandrian Bull; for this decree speaks in civil as well as criminal cases, as is evident in the fourth paragraph of the same Bull, where we read: "That successively in future times forever, each and all persons, ecclesiastical and secular, of whatever quality, dignity, state and grade of rank and prominence, in their own causes under benefit of clergy or secular, also in criminal and mixed cases, whether now before this Court or pending for the time, their adversaries, or those following or helping them, or the Advocates or Counsel of them." And also in the place where we read: "If mutilation of limb, or death (which God avert) follow, they incur _ipso facto_ beside the loss of their right and case, the sentence for the outraged majesty of the Law." We believe we have sufficiently canvassed these matters with galloping pen (there being but a brief three hours) to prove clearly that the foundations of the Fisc affirmed in our former writings still stand fast, in spite of what has been recently deduced by the opposition so fully and so learnedly, but without legitimate proof. F. GAMBI, _Procurator General of the Fisc and of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber_. [File-title of Pamphlet 13.] _By the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Governor of the City in Criminal Cases_: _ROMAN MURDER-CASE with qualifying circumstance_. _For the Fisc, against Count Guido Franceschini and his Associates._ _A reply in matters of law, by the Lord Advocate of the Fisc._ _At Rome, in the type of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber, 1698._ ROMANA HOMICIDIORUM [PAMPHLET 13.] Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord: In the beginning of his recent information, my Lord Advocate of the Poor has criticised as unjust the decree of this Supreme Tribunal, which inflicted the torture of the vigil upon Count Guido Franceschini and his associates, for the purpose of getting confession of that most horrible crime committed by them. Hence he claims that those confessions, given under the fear of it and ratified after it was over (as is the custom), cannot do the Accused any harm. He attempts, indeed, to deny the justice of the said decree, not merely because of the absence of the quality of special atrocity (as required by the decree of Paul V. of sacred memory for the reformation of the tribunals of the City), but also from the fact that the death penalty cannot be demanded for the crime under discussion. And this he claims is so (in spite of the unusual powers for ordering the torture of the vigil granted to this Tribunal) lest there may be greater harshness in the course of the trial than in the penalty itself. [Citation.] In the end of this said recent information, he also criticises me because, to the very great wonder of himself and others, I have failed in my duty of seeking the truth in that I have made certain allegations in the defence of the rights of the Fisc, which I have not communicated to him. I thought he had complained quite enough about that orally, so that he might have spared us his new complaint. But it was not my duty to tell them to him, just as his informations, which he made for the Defence (very learned indeed in their way), have never been made known to me by him. But I assert only this, that I have paid the price of much labour, lest I may seem to have failed in my office and in the reverence with which I attend upon my Lord. Passing over, therefore, my own personal apology, I go on to vindicate the decree of this Tribunal from the injustice charged against it. I also omit proof of the quality of the crime as to whether it may be considered very atrocious, for I have abundantly argued this point in my past response, § _Sed quatenus etiam_, with the one following. For I showed that this quality could be sustained because of the attendant circumstances which exasperated and raised the crime to the outraging of the majesty of the law, according to the provisions of the Apostolic Constitutions and the General Banns. I think it is quite enough in my present argument to show that for this offence the death penalty should be demanded. I hope to accomplish this with little difficulty, since from the very kind of severe torture decreed, by judges of such integrity, the applicability of this said penalty is pre-supposed. And so since nothing new, whether in fact or in law, can be brought, which has not been already examined in relation to the cause for decreeing the torture, now that the confession of the Accused has followed it, it is the duty of the Judges to pronounce the execution of the well-deserved penalty, which has been long expected by every one. I have said that nothing new is brought by the defence, since their special attempt consists in repeating the plea of injured honour because of the pretended adultery committed by the wife of Guido, with the help and conspiracy of her parents, who were barbarously slaughtered along with her. This plea is offered for the purpose of exciting the pity of my Most Illustrious Lord, and the Lords Judges, in order that Guido and his associates may be punished more mildly, according to the authorities adduced on that point in their first information, § _hoc stante_, together with the one following, and § _Prædictis nullatenus_, likewise with the one following; and in the present information, § _Verum et socios_. But the same response recurs, that for the Accused this exception on the plea of pretended injury to honour can afford no refuge, because this plea has no foundation in fact and is irrelevant in law. For what difference does it make even if the mere strong suspicion of adultery is enough to excuse vengeance taken immediately by a husband against his wife or her lover? If she were found either in lustful acts, or in those preparatory thereto; then because of such a sudden grievance excited thereby, which provokes a man to anger, the penalty should very often be tempered according to the nature of the case and the persons. But it is quite certain that to escape the ordinary penalty of the _Lex Cornelia de Sicariis_ for the murder of a wife committed after an interval, the mere suspicion of adultery, however strong, is not enough; but the clearest proof of it is required, either from the confession of the wife herself or from a condemnatory sentence following. [Citations.] But such proof is entirely lacking in our case. For the luckless wife constantly denied the adultery even till the last breath of her life, as is evident from the sworn attestations of priests and others who gladly ministered to her after she had been wounded. For they unanimously assert that she always affirmed that she had never violated her conjugal faith. Nor did she ask that such sin be forgiven her by the Divine Clemency; this assertion indeed should have much weight, since no one is presumed to die unmindful of his eternal safety. [Citations.] Nor are the responses given by the Defence at all relevant; namely, that such proof in denial of the adultery is drawn entirely from testimony taken out of court, and extorted by the heir while a lawsuit was pending, to remove the annoyances brought by the Monastery of the Convertites, and that some of the undersigned were legatees. They also respond that since such an assertion as hers served to cover her own baseness, it should not be believed, especially as it was not sworn. And further, that although no one is presumed to be unmindful of his eternal safety, yet all are not supposed to be immune from sin, like Saint John the Baptist, which is especially true when the argument is about the prejudice of a third party and about the more severe punishment of an enemy of the one making declaration. Now that all these claims are destroyed with so little trouble, the irregularity of the proof could stand in our way, if the Fisc were obliged to assume proof and perfect it. But the burden of proof rests upon the Accused, according to the authorities cited above for avoiding the death penalty, whenever a man kills his wife after an interval. The above attestations are brought merely to damage the proof of pretended adultery, offered by Guido. In this case, certainly, such attestations are not to be spurned, especially when we consider the quality of the persons attesting, since they are priests of well-known probity, and it is incredible that they would be willing to lie. [Citations.] The further objection that these attestations were extorted by the heir, while a lawsuit was pending, for the purpose of escaping the trouble brought upon him by the Monastery of the Convertites, is also removed by the same reply; because when one is arguing for the proof of an assertion given in the last days of life and in the very face of death, proof cannot be established, unless this hold good. And the heir is praiseworthy, because he is obliged to avenge the murder of the one slain, lest he be considered unworthy according to the text. [Citation.] "Heirs who are proved to let the murder of the testator go unavenged are compelled to give back the entire property," etc. He procured these attestations that he might guard the good fame of the testatrix; and this was rather because of his zeal for her good repute than to prevent the annoyances unjustly brought, and the quashing of these latter could be turned back for the exclusion of the pretended proof of the dishonesty of the unfortunate wife. Still less can it stand in our way that some of the signers are legatees, since their interest is not large enough to prevent their giving testimony. [Citations.] And this is especially true when one is arguing to prove a matter which happened within the walls of a home, and the proof of which, on that account, is considered difficult. [Citations.] And such an exception to their testimony, so far as it has any foundation, is utterly removed by the number of the witnesses subscribed to the said attestations. [Citations.] But [last of all], as to the objection that the assertion of one dying is not to be attended, when directed toward the exoneration of one's self, because no one is compelled to reveal his own baseness. This might indeed hold good if the adultery had been proved, and if it were not evident that, though wounded, she had died with strongest manifestation of Christian penitence, which would exclude all suspicion of a lie. In this case such an objection does not hold good, but another very valid supposition takes its place, namely, that no one is believed to be willing to die unmindful of his eternal safety. [Citations.] For Mascardus [Citation.] says that a confession given in the hour of death holds good, and he adds that this approaches nearer the truth, and cites in proof of it Marsilius. [Citation.] The latter affirms that if any one assert that a person making oath in the hour of death is lying, he says what is improbable. And Mascardus concludes that this opinion is more just, and more in accord with reason and with natural law. And though he offers some limitations, none of these are applicable to our case; and the question about which he was arguing was concerning the assertion of one wounded, as to whether such assertion constituted proof against the one charged; and this differs by the whole heaven from our dispute, if we only note that the burden of proof does not rest with the Fisc. Nor does the assertion of Pompilia when dying tend principally toward vengeance, since it is quite evident from those making attestations that she shrank with horror from that; as she always professed that she most freely pardoned her husband. These matters we have noted beforehand rather in super-abundance than because we were obliged to assert the justice of the decree of this Tribunal. It will now be easy to escape the proof of pretended adultery, brought by the counsel for the Defence. For so far as this proof is drawn from the other decree of this same Tribunal, condemning Canon Caponsacchi for flight and carnal knowledge with Francesca Pompilia, the response which has already been given holds good: namely, that a title should be given no attention, but merely the proof resulting from the trial, and the penalty imposed by the sentence. And what if in that decree, along with the "title" of "complicity in the flight and escape of Francesca Pompilia," there was also added the title "for criminal knowledge of the same"? Yet since in the trial itself no proof in verification of this was found, and since the penalty of three years' banishment does not correspond therewith, the mere title should not be given attention, according to the authorities adduced in my past response, § _non relevante_. And on account of the following reason, still less can such clear proof of the pretended adultery be established as is required to escape the ordinary penalty for taking vengeance after an interval. For at the instance of the Procurator of the Poor a correction was decreed by the Judges, with the approval of my Most Illustrious Lord, which substituted a general title relative to that suit, namely _Pro causa de qua in actis_; and although this correction is not to be read in the record (commonly called the _Vachetta_) in which decisions are usually noted, yet it was made in the order for the dispatching of Caponsacchi to his exile and in the decree assigning to Pompilia the home as a prison. (Summary, No. 1.) And since the latter was made with the consent of Abate Paolo Franceschini, we may assert that the said change of title became known to him because of his notorious solicitude in conducting the case; and so it would be very improbable that he had not carefully examined such a decree and the obligation made by Pietro to furnish her food, without hope of repayment, and the bond given for her to keep the home as a prison. For these reasons his knowledge of that change should be considered as sufficiently proved. [Citations.] And therefore the response falls to the ground that the decree could not be changed unless both sides were given a hearing. For while Francesca Pompilia, whose defence had not yet been finished, was unheard, much less could the title of criminal knowledge be included in the condemnation of the Canon. For this would be injurious to her, not merely as regards her reputation, but also for the loss of her dowry, for which her husband was especially greedy. For in this way would an undefended woman suffer condemnation, and what is worse, as the event shows, would be exposed to the fury of her husband. And hence with justice was this correction requested and made. And even if this had not happened, a sentence given against the Canon could not injure her, as it was a matter done with regard to other parties. [Citations.] But it is quite gratuitous to assert that a change as regards the matter of the trial does also impart the same change as to the expression of the title of carnal knowledge. For since several titles were originally expressed in the decree of condemnation (such as complicity in flight, running away, and carnal knowledge upon which the suit was based) the statement of the cause contained therein is no more probable as regards one than as regards another, and certainly it is not probable as regards them all. For if they had wished to include all those in the modified decree, they would have said: _Pro causis de quibus in Processu_, for the singular number does not agree with several causes. [Citations.] But in the prosecution the charge of "criminal knowledge" was not proved and the Canon could not be condemned for that while Francesca Pompilia was unheard and undefended. This is on account of the indivisibility of the crime of adultery, which does not permit the division of the case for the purpose of condemning the one, while the case is pending as regards the other. And this is especially true when all parties are present and are held in prison. [Citations.] The expression, therefore, _Causæ, de qua in Processu_, should be understood to apply only to the complicity in flight and running away (for this could be issued without the condemnation of Francesca Pompilia), and not to apply to "carnal knowledge." For the statement made should be considered applicable only to those matters with which the judgment relative thereto agrees. [Citations.] And this claim of ours is rendered manifest by the mildness of the penalty to which the Canon was condemned, namely, that of three years' banishment. This certainly does not correspond with the offences of running away with a married woman from her husband's home, bringing her to the City, and carnal knowledge of her. For inasmuch as the attendant circumstance of rape, spoken about, is punishable by the capital penalty, unless a priest is being dealt with, a far severer penalty would have to be inflicted for the adultery alone, if proof thereof had resulted from the trial. [Citations.] My Lord Advocate of the Poor acknowledges that the penalty was too light to expiate harshly such a crime, and especially in accordance with the Constitution of Sixtus, revived by Innocent XI. of sacred memory. And therefore to avoid acknowledging the lack of proof, which might very well be inferred from the lightness of the penalty, he attempts to respond that the said Canon was dealt with more mildly because he was a foreigner and because the crime under consideration had been committed outside of the Ecclesiastical State. In this case one should be dismissed merely with exile. But this response is proved to be without foundation for many reasons. First, because on account of the well-known privilege of the City of Rome, which is the country of all men, even those may be punished here who have committed crime outside of the Ecclesiastical State, which is subject to the secular authority of the Pope. And this is true, not merely for the handling of criminals, which is permitted to any Prince, but for the trial of the crimes. [Citations.] Cyrill testifies that he himself had so held in 1540, in the Capitolian Court, and Farinacci testifies that it was so held in this same Court in the year 1580, in the case of Gregorio Corso, who had been condemned to the galleys, because he had committed murder in Florence and had come here to Rome, after seizing the horse of the one he had slain. And this was notwithstanding the fact that the cause was very sharply defended for the accused. [Citations.] Second, because this authority holds good whenever there is argument for punishing crimes committed by churchmen, who are subject to the jurisdiction of the Supreme Pontiff, and in the City can be punished for their crimes with the ordinary penalty, even though the crimes were committed outside of the temporal authority of the Pope. [Citations.] "Rome is a common country and, therefore, in the Roman courts any cleric or layman may be brought to trial, even though he did not commit his crime there." [Citation.] Third, because inasmuch as it was claimed that the approach to the City and the carrying away of the wife to the same were done because of lust, and to secure greater liberty for knowing her carnally, by taking her from the home of her husband, so the Canon, on account of this purpose, would have subjected himself to penalties such as could really expiate the crime, and which also might be inflicted here in the City; for one is punishable with the same penalty who continues in a crime here, although he put it into effect outside of the State. [Citations.] Caballus [Citation] holds that, for deciding the jurisdiction of a judge over crimes that have been committed, the person offending, rather than the offence, should be considered. [Citation.] Fourth, because the pretended carnal knowledge, so far as it can be said to be proved in the prosecution (and it can be verified that the decree was changed with relation to that), happened in the Ecclesiastical State; for the strongest proof of that crime was drawn from the asserted sleeping together in the same bedroom at the inn of Castelnuovo. [Citation.] And therefore the Canon could and should have been punished with condign punishment, not merely for his undertaking, but for the adultery, if that had been proved. And since this was not imposed, it may well be asserted that the Canon was not at all condemned for "criminal knowledge," unless one wishes to criticise as unjust that decree, which imposed a mild penalty and one suitable merely to simple running away and complicity in flight, and which was much tempered because of the excuse brought by the Procurator of the Poor. Therefore it may be asserted that the Canon was not condemned for the pretended criminal knowledge, since the nature of the penalty well proves the nature of the crime, with which it should be commensurate, according to Deuteronomy 25: "According to the measure of one's sin shall be the manner of his stripes." [Citations.] And therefore, since the pretended condemnation of Canon Caponsacchi for criminal knowledge of Francesca Pompilia is excluded, the pretended notoriousness of the adultery resulting therefrom also falls to the ground. Neither can this notoriousness be alleged against her undefended. And just as public vengeance, which is to be decreed by a judge, cannot be based lawfully upon it, so much less should private vengeance be considered excusable, when taken by the husband in murdering her after an interval. He is immune from the ordinary penalty for murder even according to the more merciful opinion only when the adultery is established by the very clearest proofs displayed in confession by the accused, or by a sentence given thereupon. Likewise it would be superfluous to avoid the presumptions adduced by the Defence, especially by the Procurator of the Poor, to destroy the proof of adultery drawn therefrom; for this single response would be enough, namely, that these proofs were all gathered together in the prosecution for Pompilia's flight, made at the instance of Count Guido, he pressing hard to gain the dowry because of her adultery. And this was insisted on by the counsel for the Fisc, who wrote acutely upon these matters at that time. And yet, in the report of the cause these presumptions were not considered by the judges because of their irrelevance. This is evident from the lightness of the penalty decreed against the Canon. And so the examination of these cannot be renewed after the Fisc has yielded and quietly acquiesced in the sentence, from which it could appeal if it considered itself wronged. Nor could Guido legitimately have recourse to such awful vengeance by his own hand. But lest some feature of the case may be left untouched, and that the justice of the decree may be more clearly asserted, I have taken the pains to confute these briefly. And since, in the first place, the cause of flight is considered by the Defence in order that they may prove that the said flight was entirely illicit and was planned for easier criminal knowledge, the proofs brought for this purpose should be examined. The chief of these was drawn from the asserted letter of Francesca Pompilia, written to Abate Franceschini. This makes pretence that her parents urged her to poison her husband, her brother, and her mother-in-law, to burn the home, and to return to the City with her lover. But one cannot have a better refutation of this than the very tenor of that letter, including matters that are so improbable, yes and indeed incredible, that it was rightly rejected by the judges. For who can be found so destitute and ignorant of filial love and duty as to make himself believe that a mere child, not more than fourteen years old [Citation], married away from her father's home, grieving bitterly for the departure of her parents, and wretchedly kept in the home of her husband, so that she was obliged to have recourse to ecclesiastic and laic authorities, could have written to her husband's brother (who was so unfeeling toward them), with a calm mind, of such base counsels and commands given by them, unless, as she ingenuously confesses, she was compelled by her husband to write it? Nor could she, without great peril, refuse her husband, who was demanding this. Such an improbability alone is enough to thrill with horror those reading it, and well shows that she had written this not of her own accord, but under compulsion. [Citations.] And, therefore, there is no need to examine whether the qualification added to her confession is probable, namely, that her husband had first marked the letters of the said epistle, which she had afterward inked by tracing them with a pen; because she did not know how to write. For possibly she shuddered to confess that she had written such matters, even under compulsion of fear, to the injury of her father and mother. Such fear is quite presumable in a wretched wife of tender age, destitute of all help, away from her father's hearth and in her husband's home. [Citations.] Mogolon says that from the absence of relatives, the presumption of such fear may arise. [Citation.] And this is especially true after she had had recourse in vain to the authorities. Nor is a sufficient proof to the contrary deducible from Francesca's signature to the matrimonial contract, and from the letters that were said to have been written and sent by her in succession to the Canon, or else thrown from the window. [Citation.] For the very brief signature made in the marriage agreement does not show such skill in writing that with the same ease she could have written so long a letter, inasmuch as daily experience teaches that many are found who can scarcely write their own names. Still less can the ability to write be said to be proved by the asserted love-letters; for these were constantly denied by Pompilia. Nor can these letters be said to be sufficiently verified by the assertion of the said witness for the Fisc, namely, that she threw from the window a note, which the Canon picked up and then departed. For aside from the fact that the witness stands alone and is of the basest condition, namely a dishonest harlot, and so unsuited for proving a matter [Citations], she neither affirms, nor can affirm that the said letter was written by Francesca Pompilia. Likewise the letters found in the prison of Castelnuovo might have been written by some stranger's hand. And even though they had been written by her, inasmuch as they are of a later date, they do not prove her skill in writing at some past time; for she could have acquired this skill afterward because of desperation which sharpened her wits, for the purpose of inducing the Canon to undertake the flight with her, so that she might escape the peril of imminent death. For in such matters at these, which are variable and can be changed, one cannot well argue from the present to the past. [Citations.] And that in fact she did learn to write in Arezzo after the departure of her parents is evident from her letter written in the prison of Castelnuovo, and found among her private papers after her death. This is given in the present Summary, No. 3. The proofs of the abovesaid letter [to Abate Franceschini] drawn from the letters of the Governor of Arezzo, of the Reverend Bishop, and of Bartolommeo Albergotti, are so far from excluding the legitimate reason for flight given by herself and the Canon, during the prosecution, that they rather favour it. For although they criticised her for having such ill-advised recourse to them, they possibly did this to free themselves from censure for having thoughtlessly turned her away. Therefore it is more probable that by them the minds of her cruel husband and of her mother-in-law, who was pitiless and implacable, as experience teaches us, were exasperated all the more. Any one may well know that Guido's mind was much more embittered after the lawsuit brought concerning the pretence of birth and the rescinding of the dowry contract, and after the publication of pamphlets about the domestic scantiness and the base treatment which they had suffered in the home of the couple in Arezzo. His anger was also stirred by his jealous suspicion of the Canon (although Pompilia's love of the latter was merely pretended for the purpose of winning him) and by his exasperation, that increases the deadly hatred, which arises from a lawsuit about a considerable amount, and much more about an entire property. [Citations.] Such should the controversy about the pretence of birth be considered. Nor can the just fear of the luckless wife as to her deadly peril be denied. And driven to desperation in avoiding this, she might well have fled; for if it is permissible because of blows beyond mere legitimate correction [Citations] how much more permissible should it be considered, when the wife was continually afraid that he would kill her either with the sword or by means of poison. And, to avoid this, it was but prudent counsel for her to leave her husband and go back to her father's hearth. It would indeed have been better if she had won her security by having recourse to the Right Reverend Bishop, in order that he might place her in some nunnery or with some honest matron; or to the Lord Governor, who would have considered her safety and the honour of her husband's family; or if she had fled in the company of some one connected with the household. But the fear of imminent peril does not permit one to take better counsel, and especially a wretched wife of tender age, destitute of all aid and exposed to the fury of her husband and her mother-in-law. And still further, she might well fear that new recourse to them would be in vain, since she had found the former so useless. Nor could she find any better way of fleeing safely, wherein she thought lay the sole help for herself, than by using the help and company of the Canon, who had been proposed to her for this purpose by the Canon Conti and by Signor Gregorio Guillichini, relatives of her husband. It is incredible that they would have conspired against Guido's honour without the strongest and most urgent reason and without confidence in Caponsacchi's honesty and modesty. For one of them, namely Gregorio, had offered himself as a companion for the journey and would have carried out his offer if his infirmity had permitted; as we read in the said letter of Francesca Pompilia found since her death and shown in our present Summary, No. 3, which refers to the same causes, of the infirmity of Gregorio and the imminent peril, which did not permit her to await his convalescence. And therefore she is worthy of excuse since she fled for dire necessity in company of the Canon, a man of modesty well known by her (as is likewise evident from another letter in the Summary of our opponents, No. 7, letter 12, in which she calls him the chaste Joseph, and from the other letter, in which she commends him for his sense of shame). For if she chose this remedy under dire necessity, she should be excused according to the common axiom, "necessity knows no law." [Citations.] Nor is an illegitimate cause of flight to be inferred because of the dishonest love with which Francesca Pompilia pursued the Canon in some of these letters. For although they seem amatory, yet they were ordained to the purpose of alluring this same Canon, in order that he might flee with her; since, without him, she knew that she could neither carry that out, nor even attempt it. Hence the letters can afford no proof of subsequent adultery. For although proof may result from love-letters, according to the authorities adduced by the Defence in § _His praehibitis_, yet this is avoided, if the letters are directed to a permissible end, such as flight to escape deadly peril. For then, inasmuch as the end is permissible, the means are likewise so considered, even though these are not without suspicion; for they are not considered in themselves, but because of their end. [Citations.] Nor is the proof of adultery hitherto drawn from love-letters so very strong unless they include the implicit confession of subsequent fornication. [Citations.] The following consideration is especially urgent in leading to the belief that the luckless girl thought the Canon would conduct himself modestly during the journey. For in one of her letters she does not fail to take him to task (who had elsewhere been commended for honesty and modesty) because he had sent her questionable verses (present Summary, No. 4): "I am surprised that you, who are so chaste, have composed and copied matters so immodest." And further on: "I do not want you to do in everything as you have done in these books; the first of them was so very nice, but these other octaves are quite the contrary. I cannot believe that you, who were so honourable, would become so bold." From this sincere rebuke it is quite evident in what spirit these letters were written, even though they are filled with blandishments and proofs of love; for she shrank even from the dishonourable verses sent to her. Hence the letters should be understood according to the intention of the one writing them, just as one's words are. [Citations.] And should not the supposition that the unfortunate wife had destroyed her matronly shame in the journey be therefore considered trivial and improbable? For she had quite enough to do to provide for her own safety by headlong flight. Nor is it probable that she was tempted by the Canon, since the love between them is proved merely by the said letters which were preparing for the flight. And these letters show her solicitude for his modesty and continence, since for the mere sending of them she had made such complaint. For she feared lest he might become too bold, as is evident from details of the letter cited above. Nor are examples lacking of continence observed during a longer and easier journey, which had been undertaken and completed by lovers, even though they might lawfully have indulged their love. Hence it is not improbable that the wretched girl kept herself scrupulously within bounds; for she was in deadly peril, which she hoped to avoid by precipitate flight. The other proofs of this pretended adultery are far weaker, and were rightly ignored in the report of the case, both as regards the flight and as regards the decreeing of torment; for mutual love between her and the Canon cannot be said to be sufficiently proved by the abovesaid letters; for they were preparatory to this prearranged flight. The entry and egress to and from the home of Francesca by night is proved by a single base witness. Nor should even such entry be considered to be for a bad end, since it was in preparation for the flight. For when we have a permissible cause given, to which a matter may be referred, it should not be attributed to one that is illegitimate and criminal. [Citation.] To this reason also should be referred her readiness in showing herself at the window by day and night at the hiss which gave signal that her pretended lover was passing. For since her love might be a mere matter of pretence for the purpose of winning him to give her help in the flight by affording her his company in the journey, these marks of love can be of no further import than the pretended love itself. The unfortunate wife employed it as a stratagem, indeed, that she might provide for her own safety. And so this response recurs: "If the end is lawful, the means ordered toward carrying it out cannot be condemned." The pretended insidious manner of preparing for the flight and putting it into execution by means of an opiate administered to her husband and the servants (so far as it is proved, and it was by no means proved in the Prosecution) affords indeed a proof of her flight, but not of adultery; for it was prearranged, not for that purpose, but to escape deadly peril, to which the wife would have exposed herself, all too foolishly, unless she had made sure that her husband, who was lying in bed with her, was sound asleep, or unless she had contrived some such easy way. The ardour shown in some of the letters is indeed a sign of love, according to the word of the poet: "Love is a thing full of solicitous fear." [Ovid, _Heroides_, I. 12.] But since love was pretended for a legitimate end (as was said) she could also make a show of ardour for feigning love, since it tended toward the same end of winning his goodwill, so that possessed of his true service she might escape. Therefore, from this pretended love and these feigned signs of love, one cannot argue that their departure together from the home of the husband and their association during a long journey gives proof of the pretended adultery; because even in true and mutual love continence has been observed, which is certainly more difficult. Nor are the authorities adduced by the Defence, in § _Accedit quod_, applicable; because that text has regard to a woman spending the night outside of her husband's home and against his will, without just and probable cause, as is evident from the words of the same. This decision is not applicable to our case, since the wretched Pompilia left her husband's home and went to her father's hearth that she might escape the deadly peril which she feared was threatening her. And so, since she did it for just and probable reason, the condemnation of the aforesaid text is turned away. And Farinacci so explains the assertion. [Citations.] "But it is otherwise if done for reason, because the mere spending of the night together does not of itself prove vice; for a case can be given where a wife spent the night with men, and yet did not break her marriage vow." [Citation.] Since this possibility is verified in our own case also, the proof of subsequent adultery cannot be inferred from her flight and association with him in the journey, for the purpose of providing for her own safety. Their mutual kissing on the journey, so far as it is proved, affords no light presumption of violated shame; but the proof of it is too uncertain; for it rests upon the word of a single base witness, who swears to matters that are quite improbable, namely that, while he was driving their carriage very rapidly, he saw Francesca Pompilia and the Canon kissing one another. How full of animus this deposition really may be is evident from this fact--that during the night he saw a momentary and fleeting deed, without giving any reason for his knowledge, such as that the moon was shining or that some artificial light afforded him the opportunity to see it. [Citations.] The improbability, or rather incredibility, is increased because, while the witness was intent on driving the carriage with such great speed as to seem like flying (as another witness testifies), how could he look backward and see their mutual kissing? Such an improbability would take belief away not merely from a single witness, but from many of them. [Citation.] Furthermore, there is the possibility to be considered that the jostling together of those sitting in the carriage might have happened from the high speed; and from this fact an over-curious witness might believe that they were kissing each other, although, in fact, the nearness of their heads and faces to one another might indeed be by mere chance, and not for the purpose of shameful and lustful kisses. Because whenever an act may be presumed to be for either a good or a bad end, the presumption of the evil end is always excluded. [Citations.] And so in the said report of the prosecution for flight, this presumption was justly passed over because of lack of proof; nor would it have been rejected otherwise. Nor can this improbable and prejudiced deposition of the said witness receive any support from the pretended letters, in which Francesca thanks him for the kisses sent, which she says would be dearer to her if they had been given by the Canon himself, and sends him back ten hundred thousand times as many. For it cannot be thence inferred that if the opportunity were given their mutual kissing would follow, since these words were offered as serviceable and alluring for the purpose of winning him over; nor do they involve an obligation. [Citations.] And therefore they do not lead one to infer that they were carried out, especially since Francesca many and many a time warned the Canon to observe due modesty. And when she found that he had transgressed its limits by sending her dishonourable verses she abjured him not to become bold in urging his passion. This is far removed from impure desire to receive his kisses, which is formally stated in the said letter, as it is without any thought of injuring her matronly honour. The use also of laic garb, in which the Canon was found clothed, can afford no proof, because, as he is no priest, he cannot be said to be forbidden to do so on a journey. And this was probably arranged in good faith to conceal himself and to avert scandal, which might be conceived at seeing a priest with a woman in the flower of her age and, as I have heard, of no small reputation for beauty, journeying without the company of another woman or servant. [Citation.] And so the authority of Matthæus Sanzio, etc., is not applicable, because in his case there was no concurrent cause on account of which the priest might approach with improper clothes and girded with arms; and he was found by the husband, either in the very act or in preparation thereto, and was killed on the spot. In such a case the proofs of adultery may well be admitted for the purpose of diminishing the penalty, and they were gathered by the same author to that end. Their sleeping together on the same bed, or at least in the same bedroom, at the inn of Castelnuovo, was not given consideration in the report of the prosecution for flight, because of defect of proof. This charge was indeed denied by Francesca Pompilia, and the Canon frankly confessed merely that he had rested for a little while on another bed in the same room. Nor ought a brief stay in that room be magnified to a crime, since it should be attributed to his guardianship of the said Francesca, whom he was accompanying on the journey, and hence was under obligation to guard her lest some evil might befall her. Whenever an act may be said to be done for a good purpose all suspicion of evil ceases. In these very circumstances, Gravetta [Citation] says that the interpretation should tend toward lenience, even though the harsher interpretation seems the more probable. Nor does it suffice as a full proof of adultery (if one is arguing a criminal case) that a young man be seen alone and naked with her, and that he be found locked in the bedroom with the wife, even though he have his shoes and clothing off; because these matters may be merely preparatory. And much less can proof of adultery arise from his brief stay in the same bedroom for the purpose of protecting her. Nor can proof of their having slept together be drawn from the deposition of the servant of the same inn who asserted that he had been ordered to prepare only a single bed. For it does not follow from this that both of them slept in it; but this was done because only Pompilia wished to rest a little while to refresh her strength, which had been exhausted by the swiftness of the journey they had made. The Canon was keeping guard over her and preparing for the continuance of the journey; and so, when the husband arrived, he was attending to this by ordering that the carriage be made ready. Hence no proof of their having slept together can result from this deposition, and it was justly rejected by the judges, so that it needs no further refutation. And although Francesca Pompilia, in her cross-examination, tried to conceal a longer stay at the said inn by asserting that they had arrived there at dawn, yet no proof of adultery may be drawn from the said lie, for she made that assertion to avoid the suspicion of violated modesty, which might be conceived from a longer delay and more convenient opportunity. And so, inasmuch as her confession would have done her no harm, even if she had acknowledged it with circumstances leading to belief in the preservation of her sense of honour, neither can this lie injure her. [Citations.] Since, for these reasons, the proof of the pretended adultery is excluded and almost utterly destroyed, no attention should be paid to the fact that Count Guido, in his confession, claims the mitigating circumstance of injured honour, as regards both his wife and his parents-in-law; and that this confession cannot be divided for the purpose of inflicting the ordinary penalty. For authorities of great name are not lacking who affirm that a qualification to this end added to a confession, ought to be rejected; and above the others, is Bartolo [Citation], who proves this conclusion by many reasons, and responds to those given contrary [Citation], where it is said that a judge should not admit such qualified confession. [Citations.] Nor is such a plea of injured honour always in one's favour in avoiding the capital penalty, but only when vengeance is taken immediately; or after an interval, according to more lenient opinion, when the adultery is proved by condemnatory sentence or by confession. But the reins of private vengeance would be relaxed far too much to the detriment of the state if, when proof of adultery were lacking, a stand could be made for the purpose of diminishing the penalty upon some qualification added by the defendant to his confession. Because in this way a witness might make a way of escape in his own cause, which is not permitted to any one. [Citations.] And nothing more absurd can be thought of than that the burden of proof incumbent upon him for escaping the ordinary penalty might be discharged by the mere assertion of the defendant. Nor should we admit the opinion that, even when the adultery is proved, a husband may kill, after an interval, an adulterous wife without incurring the capital penalty, since the weightiest authorities deny that. [Citations.] Bartolo, in distinguishing between real and personal injury, affirms that when injury is personal, it should be resented immediately; but if it be real it may be resented after an interval. [Citations.] And Gomez declares: "I hold the contrary opinion, indeed, that a husband may be punished with the ordinary penalty of such a crime as murder; and for this reason he may not by any means be excused, because murder cannot be committed to compensate for a crime or for its past essence, unless one kill in the act of flagrant crime," etc. And in subsequent numbers he responds to reasons given to the contrary. [Citation.] Gaillard, after he says that murder committed for honour's sake is permissible, states that this exception should be understood to hold good if the injury be resented immediately, but that it is otherwise if done after an interval. In this case the retort is more like vengeance than the defence of honour, and the offender is held to account for the injuries. [Citation.] Much less can it be claimed that the vengeance was taken immediately because the husband executed it as soon as possible, according to the authorities adduced by my Lord Advocate of the Poor [Citation], where he tries to show that since Guido was unarmed, or insufficiently armed (that is, he was girded only with a traveller's sword), he could not attack the wife accompanied by the Canon; for Caponsacchi, as he claims, is strong and bold, and accustomed to sin in that way, and was carrying firearms. And the wife showed herself ready to die in the defence of her lover; for it is said still further that the wife rushed upon Guido with drawn sword, and was about to kill him, if she had not been checked by the police officers. But the opportunity to kill an adulteress is not to be so taken that a violent death may be visited upon her with all security and without any risk. For every legal opinion giving excuse for diminishing the penalty shrinks from this. For such diminution of the capital penalty follows because of the violence of sudden anger, which compels the husband to neglect the risk to his own life, that he may avenge the injury done him by the adultery. And so this first opportunity, as spoken of by the authorities, in order that murder may be said to be committed immediately, should be understood to be whenever an occasion first offers itself, in excusing the delay in taking vengeance either because of absence or for some other just reason. Such is the fact in the case about which Matthæus Sanfelix writes, _contr._ 12. For in that case, the adultery was committed in the absence of the husband, and the wife had run away, so that he could not have avenged himself earlier, as is evident from the narrative of fact, given in No. 1, and No. 28 established this conclusion: "So they are excused if they take vengeance as soon as possible, since it then seems that they killed incontinently." But who can say in our case that the husband took the first chance, since when he found his wife in the very act of flight, at the tavern of Castelnuovo, he abstained from vengeance with his own hand, and turned to legal vengeance, to which he had always clung. And indeed he charges himself with the worst baseness when he asserts that he was unequal to the task of taking vengeance because of the fierce nature of the Canon; since, when the latter had been arrested, Guido could have rushed upon his wife. Nor ought the kind of arms they carried to have alarmed him, because, according to the description made in the prosecution, it is apparent that the Canon was wearing only a sword. And so they were provided with like arms. He would not have taken such care of his own safety if he had been driven to taking vengeance by the stings of his honour that needed reparation, even at some risk to himself. For just anger knows no moderation. And he should lay the blame on himself if, alone and insufficiently armed, he had followed up his wife, who was fleeing, as he might fear, with a strong and better-armed lover. His very manner of following her proves the more strongly that his mind had turned toward legal vengeance, for the purpose of winning the coveted dowry, rather than to vengeance with his own hand for recovering his honour. For facts well show that such was his thought. [Citations.] Likewise the delay of the vengeance after the return of the wife to her father's home excludes the pretended qualification that the vengeance was taken "immediately," because he could not put it into execution sooner. For the return home took place on October 12 of last year, and the murder was not committed till the second of January of this year. And we should rather assert that he was waiting for her confinement, which took place on December 18, in order that he might make safe the succession to the property, for which he was eagerly gaping; because he immediately put into effect his depraved plan by destroying his wife and her parents with an awful murder. Hence, from a comparison of these dates it will be easy to see this, and it is evident with what purpose he committed the murders, and whether this vengeance for the asserted reparation of his injured honour may be said to have been undertaken "immediately," that is, as soon as opportunity was given, according to the authorities adduced on the other side. Then when he had chosen legal vengeance by the imprisonment of the wife and of the pretended lover, and by the prosecution of the criminal cause, it was not permissible for him to go back to vengeance with his own hand; and in taking that he cannot be said to have taken vengeance immediately. He also violated public justice and the majesty of the Prince himself. This single circumstance greatly exasperates the penalty and increases the crime. [Citations.] [But the above is true] in spite of the fact that the conclusions adduced by the Advocate of the Poor, in § _Et tantum abest_, may be applicable, and likewise the authorities approving those conclusions, on the ground that it is not presumable that the husband has remitted the injury, but rather that his desire to avenge himself has continued; and that this excludes the charge of treachery, even though the husband use trickery in taking vengeance. Because in the present case the question is not as to the nature of the murder, from which it might be claimed to have been treacherous. The husband indeed did not conceal his injury, but rather laid it bare by turning to legal vengeance. Although this is possibly less honourable, yet since it was pleasing to him, for the purpose of gaining the dowry, he could not when frustrated in this hope, because the adultery was unproved, take up again the vengeance with his own hand. And this is true even though he pretends as an excuse for his delay that he could not accomplish it sooner. For since the delay and hindrance arose from his own act he could not take therefrom the protection of an excuse. [Citations.] But, however he might find excuse for the barbarous slaughter of his wife while under the authority of the judge at the instance and delivery of her husband, certainly the murder of Pietro and Violante should be considered utterly inexcusable. In his confession he has tried to apply to them also his plea of injured honour, because of their pretended complicity in urging the flight of his wife and in her asserted dishonour. Yet no proof of this qualification can be brought, nor did the slightest shadow of it result from the prosecution for flight. And this is proved to be improbable, and utterly incredible, from merely considering the fact that Abate Franceschini, brother of the accused and confessed defendant, would not have consented that she be committed to their custody if he had had even the slightest suspicion of their complicity, since he so keenly desired the reparation of their honour. This fact, which was plainly confessed in an instrument prepared in the statement of fact in the Italian language [Pamphlet 10] and very stoutly denied by the Procurator of the Poor, was admitted by his own wonderful ingenuity in denying merely that notice had reached the husband, or in claiming that the Fisc could pretend to no more than mere presumptive knowledge in Guido. But, still further, such knowledge is quite probable and is drawn from strong proof. For it is very probable that Guido was informed by his brother of his wife's departure from the Monastery, of her establishment in the said home, of the obligation assumed by her parents to provide her with food, and especially of her detected pregnancy. [Citation.] But we are not now arguing to prove the husband's knowledge thereof, but to draw from that consent of Abate Paolo a proof which would exclude the pretended complicity of Pietro and Violante in the dishonour of the wife, which latter is by no means proved. So far is such complicity from being proved as regards Pietro, that the very contrary is quite evident from his will, made in 1695, after litigation had been instituted about Pompilia's pretended birth. In this will, notwithstanding the litigation, in the first place he leaves as his usufructuary heir Violante his wife, and after her death Francesca Pompilia, laying upon her the obligation to dwell in the City and to live honourably. This is evident from the details of the said will given in our present Summary, No. 5. In this he also asserts that she had thus far conducted herself honourably, and he claimed to leave the annuity to her because of her good manner of life. And so it becomes still further incredible that he, while alive, was willing to conspire in her dishonour, from which he shrank even when dead. For the income was to be taken from her if she should live a dishonest life, and he urged her in case her marriage were dissolved to assume a religious dress, and he left her a fat legacy to that end. Nor can it afford any proof of this pretended complicity that when Guido had made pretence of delivering a letter sent to them from the Canon, the doors were immediately opened by Violante to the assassins. The attorneys for the Defence try to argue from this ready credulity that the name of the lover was not hateful to Violante, and that hence his intimacy with Francesca was not displeasing. But since the Canon was the author of her liberation from deadly peril by bringing her from her husband's home to her father's hearth at the neglect of his own risk, it should not seem wonderful that Violante should give proof of a grateful mind for the help given her daughter and should open the door. Nor can one infer therefrom consent in unchastity, from which their past acquaintance had been entirely free. Much more is this so at a time when he himself was absent and in banishment at Civita Vecchia. Therefore the true cause, on account of which the Comparini also were murdered, could be no other than the hatred with which the husband had been aflame; [and this first of all was] because of the lawsuit concerning the supposed birth, which they had brought, and which had deceived him in his hope of gaining a fat dowry and inheritance; [and second] his desire for vengeance because of the pamphlets distributed at the time of the said lawsuit, and which had exposed the meagreness of the home comforts and the wretched treatment they had received in the home of the husband. These two do not excuse Guido from the penalty for premeditated murder, and indeed increase it, even raising it to the crime of _læsa majestas_, according to the well-known order of the Constitution of Alexander, as was proved in our past information, § _Accedit ad exasperandam_. To escape the penalty assigned thereto by the disposition of this decree, in vain does he turn to an excuse drawn from supervening provocation. [Citation.] But so far as it is claimed that this crime resulted from the counsel they gave toward her flight, and their complicity in the same, the proof of such complicity is entirely drawn from the asserted letter, written by Francesca Pompilia to Abate Franceschini. But this letter has been completely rejected, and even spurned by Guido himself, since in the prosecution for flight we find no insistence was made that action should be entered against Pietro and Violante for their pretended instigation. Pietro, moreover, had long ago broken off the lawsuit brought as regards the pretended birth and the revocation of the dowry contract, and so this complicity cannot be made to seem the sole provoking cause, which would exclude _causa litis_. For such a cause should be true and not pretended, and should be in accord with the crime committed. [Citations.] These excuses, indeed, which are claimed to be drawn from complicity in the asserted dishonour, are still further excluded by lack of proof, both of the impurity and of their connivance therein; and so the provocation implied therefrom is shown to be entirely irrelevant, and possibly fraudulent. The other suit for divorce, brought in the name of Francesca Pompilia, it is vainly claimed is made void because of the asserted invalidity of the summons; for this summons was executed against Abate Franceschini, who lacked the authority of a proxy. Yet his authorisation was quite full enough for a lawsuit, as is evident from its tenor as given in our present Summary, No. 6, and accordingly when a suit was brought it was ample for receiving a summons. [Citation.] We are also dealing with the conditions of the Constitution of Alexander and of the order of the Banns given against those who commit offence on account of lawsuits. Hence the reply is not relevant, which is given by the Procurator of the Poor in § _Quae etiam aptantur_, that when the dishonesty of the wife is established her impunity from the wrath of her husband, who would take vengeance, should not be permitted by the introduction of a divorce suit. Nor can such murder be said to be committed for the reparation of honour when committed in anger at a lawsuit. For he takes for granted as proved, what is in question, namely, the dishonour of the wife, the proof of which is quite lacking. And Guido might have proceeded to such an extreme if, as soon as the adultery was committed, his wife brought a suit for divorce; but it is otherwise since he tried that revenge after the way of legal vengeance had been chosen by bringing criminal charge for the pretended adultery and for the purpose of winning the dowry. For after he was frustrated in this hope (since no proofs of adultery resulted from the prosecution), and after her husband's mind had been exasperated, she ought to be permitted to provide for her own safety by begging for the remedy of divorce. And while such judgment is pending any murder inflicted upon her ought surely to be expiated by the penalties inflicted under the sanction of the Alexandrian Constitution and of the Banns. For the provision of this decree is applicable, since the murder was committed while the criminal cause, brought against her for pretended adultery by her husband, was still pending. And this decree includes both civil and criminal suits, as is evident from reading it. Likewise the assembling of armed men, and their introduction into the City for accomplishing more safely the murder of the entire family, increases the crime to _læsa majestas_, and also necessitates the increasing of the punishment, as was affirmed in our former information. Nor is this avoided by the replies given, or rather repeated, by the Defence, and especially by the response that since the principal offence was committed for honour's sake (and hence the ordinary penalty of the _Lex Cornelia de Sicariis_ has no application for that reason), so likewise the penalty for assembling men, imposed by the Apostolic Constitutions and the general Banns, cannot be inflicted; for the latter is included with the penalty for the principal offence, which alone is to be attended, since the spirit and purpose make differences in crimes. [Citations.] Because the order of the said Constitution and Banns would prove utterly vain if the penalty for assemblage should cease, whenever the assembly were made for the purpose of committing some crime that is punishable with a milder penalty. [Citation.] This Bull indeed is applicable even when men are called to arms in a permissible cause and for a good end; because by it the Supreme Pontiff wished to provide for the public security and to restrain the audacity of those laying down the law for themselves. Hence all the more shall it have place when the assembly may be made for an evil end, namely for committing crime, even though the crime may not deserve the ordinary death penalty, and when the crime actually follows. [Citation.] Spada gives this reason, that the Pontiff in establishing this Constitution considered only the uproar and other ills which are accustomed to arise from the assembling of armed men to the injury of the public peace. And although his opinion was rejected by the authorities adduced by his Honour, the Advocate of the Poor, in § _non refragante_, this refutation does not apply to the assembling of armed men to an evil end (even though this end is not so criminal that the death penalty may be inflicted), but to their assemblage for a permitted cause of regaining possession immediately, by meeting force with force. Even in this latter case Spada holds that there is place for the order of the Bull. Hence the refutation given above does not prevent the application of the provision of the abovesaid Constitution to our case, since the assembling was prearranged for the murder of an entire family, which was put into execution with reckless daring. Nor may the opinions of the said judges of the Sacred Rota, requiring that the assemblage be directed against the Prince or the State, and not to commit some other crime, stand in the way; because if this qualification were accepted as true the decree would be vain which had raised the act to the crime of _læsa majestas_ and rebellion; for this crime would result plainly enough from the deed itself, and from the intent to disturb the peace of the Prince and the State. And so far as the opinion affirmed by these authorities does have foundation, it can be applied when we investigate the order of the Constitution, and not of the Banns issued later. For this decree would prove vain and useless if the capital penalty, imposed thereby against those assembling armed men, could be applied only when the crime for which the assembly was made was punishable with the same penalty. And even if this necessity be admitted, the application of the Constitution cannot be avoided, because no plea of injured honour can be alleged in excuse for the murder of Pietro and Violante, and it had not at all been proved as regards Francesca Pompilia. Likewise the preparation and use of prohibited arms is also punishable with the capital penalty, if we investigate the order of the Banns and Constitutions of Alexander VIII., of sacred memory. Nor is this sufficiently avoided by the response given by the Defence that it is included in the main offence; so that no greater penalty can be inflicted for it than the main crime itself deserves. For what we have said above as regards "an assembling" is opposed to such a confusing of the punishment of the Banns, and the authorities adduced in our past response, § _nec delationis_, affirm the contrary. And those authorities cited for the contrary opinion should be understood to apply only when one is dealing with an insult, or with murder committed in a quarrel, or in self-defence, or for the sake of immediate reparation of honour. [Citation.] The difficulty is at an end in our case, because of the clear disposition of the Banns, which expressly declare and command that the penalty for the carrying of arms is not to be confounded with the penalty of the crime committed therewith. Nor does the response given by the Procurator of the Poor seem strong enough to avoid this; namely that when, under the common law, the Banns receive only a passive interpretation, merely the crime of preparing and bearing arms for committing murder is considered; but that it is otherwise if the arms are borne, for no ill end, and then a crime is committed with them. Because it would be too harsh for one bearing arms for no ill end and then sinning with them, to suffer a greater penalty than one preparing arms to commit crime, and carrying his purpose into effect. Hence these Banns never can receive such an interpretation. For since by them the carrying of arms is forbidden as pernicious and as affording occasion to commit crime, much more should the bearing of them when purposed for committing crime be considered prohibited and punishable with a rigorous penalty. This is especially true when we consider the declaration that the crimes are not to be confounded with one another. There is left, finally, one other qualification, which greatly aggravates the crime, namely the violating of the home assigned as a prison with the consent of Abate Franceschini. And this is so in spite of what can be alleged as to Guido's ignorance of this circumstance. Because in the said writing prepared in Italian for giving true notice of the fact [Pamphlet 10], it is asserted that the entire management of the cause was left and committed to this same brother, since Guido had left the City. Hence it is quite incredible that Guido was not informed by him of so important a matter. And as concerning the distinction between violating a public prison and mere custody in a home under bond, and as to offence permitted therein for honour's sake, we have given sufficient response in our past argument, § _Quibus accedit_ and those following. For the same reasoning is applicable in both cases, since in both the person detained is under the protection of the Prince whose majesty is accordingly insulted. And the excuse would hold good if we were arguing about the resenting of an injury offered in prison. Under these very circumstances do those authorities adduced by the Defence speak, as is evident from their recognition of them. Therefore, in the present case many grave qualifications are present, which increase the crime, and on account of these his Honour, the Advocate of the Poor, admits in § _Agnoscit Fiscus_ that the penalty should be increased. Nor can such increase of penalty be made good except by death. For even if the adultery were proved, as it is not proved in our case, the mere murder of the wife, when committed after an interval, could demand only a diminution of penalty, according to the more lenient opinion. Hence the justice of the decree for the torment of the vigil should be said to be sufficiently asserted and vindicated against opposing reasons. And now that confession has followed, there remains only that condign punishment be inflicted in expiation of this awful crime. GIOVANNI BATTISTA BOTTINI, _Advocate of the Fisc, and of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber_. [File-title of Pamphlet 14.] _By the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Governor in Criminal Cases:_ _ROMAN MURDER-CASE with qualifying circumstance._ _For the Fisc, against Count Guido Franceschini and the others._ _Response of the Lord Advocate of the Fisc._ _At Rome, in the type of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber, 1698._ ROMANA HOMICIDIORUM CUM QUALITATE [PAMPHLET 14.] Most Illustrious Lord: The matters deduced by his Honour, the Advocate of the Poor, for the defence of Guido Franceschini, who is accused of three murders with very grave qualifications which magnify the same, are of no real force in proving [first] that he should not be punished with the ordinary penalty of the _Lex Cornelia de Sicariis_, inasmuch as he had confessed these crimes, and [secondly] that simple torture only should be demanded for gaining the truth as to these, and that the torment of the vigil should be omitted. I will attempt to show this, in responding to these points singly, so far as the excessive scantiness of time admits, and will keep my eyes on the rights of the Fisc, as the duty of my office and the dire atrocity and inhumanity of the crime demand. The chief ground taken by my Lord consists in placing on an equality [first] a case of vengeance taken immediately by the husband with the death of the adulteress found in her sin, and [second] that of one slain after an interval when the wife is plainly convicted of adultery (as he claims is proven in our case). But this falls to the ground both in fact and in law; and hence the inference for the moderation of the penalty drawn from this same parity is likewise shown to be without foundation. In fact, the proof of the pretended adultery is quite deficient according to what I deduced fully in my other information. In that, I have confuted singly his proofs, or rather suspicions, resulting from the prosecution, to which his Honour attaches himself. I have shown that the wife's flight in company with Canon Caponsacchi, the pretended lover, was for a legitimate reason (namely the imminent and deadly peril, which she feared), and not from the illicit impulse of lust. The participation and complicity of the Canon Conti and Signor Gregorio Guillichini, relatives of the Accused, in forwarding the same, ought to prove this. For they would not have furnished aid if she were running away for the evil purpose of violating her conjugal faith, even to their own dishonour. But they well knew the necessity of the remedy, and that it was to free her from peril. And a witness for the prosecution in the same trial for flight swore to having heard this from Signor Gregorio. And they gave their aid in carrying this out. Nor is it at all relevant that, in the decree in condemnation of the same Canon to banishment in Civita Vecchia, the title of "carnal cognition" was written down; because, as was formerly responded, the alteration of that was demanded, and likewise the substitution of a general title relative to the trial. And since no proofs of it resulted either from the prosecution or from the defences which the unfortunate wife (who was dismissed with the mere precaution of keeping her home as a prison) could have made, if she had not been so horribly murdered, and since the said decree, issued without her having been summoned or heard, would be void, the inscription made by the judge in the records as a title could not convict her of that crime; but only the truth of the fact resulting from the proofs should be considered. [Citations.] I acknowledge that the Accused should have been considered worthy of some excuse if he had slain his wife in the act of taking her in flight with the pretended lover; since for this purpose, not merely the absolute proof, but the mere suspicion of adultery committed, would be enough. [Citation.] But when, after neglecting the pretended right of private vengeance, he sought out with entreaty public vengeance, by having her arrested, he could not thereafter, while she was under the public authority of the judge, take private vengeance by butchering her who had no fear of such a thing. The suspicion of a just grievance, which is difficult to restrain when aroused, excuses the husband in part, if not entirely, whenever he takes vengeance immediately under the headlong impetus of anger. But when the vengeance is after an interval, and while the cause is in the hands of the judge, and the victim is imprisoned at his own instance, this does not hold good, as will be proved further on, by showing the irrelevance of the principle assumed. Nor does the glossa in the alleged text, in the law of Emperor Hadrian, stand in the way; because it speaks of a son taken by his father in flagrant adultery with his step-mother, and killed by the father immediately. [Citation.] And there is a wide difference between a father and a husband killing after an interval; because, as Farinacci adds, a father has the greatest authority over his son, and by ancient law could even kill him. And certainly the husband does not have this. The law also more readily excuses a father, because he is always supposed to take good counsel for his child, from the mere instinct of paternal love. But one does not have this same confidence as regards a husband, who is accustomed to conceive unjust suspicion of his wife more readily. Hence it is not permitted that he kill her on mere suspicion after an interval. Nor is he in any way to be excused on this account, according to the text. [Citation.] "The devotion of a father's love usually takes good counsel for his own children, but the hot precipitancy of a furious husband should readily be restrained." [Citation.] This is so far true that a father is not excused unless he kill, or at least severely wound, his daughter along with the adulterer; so that it should be attributed to fate, rather than to paternal indulgence, that she escape death. And this has been passed by law-makers for no other reason than that such a grievance, provoking to rash anger, is required for excusing a father, so that he may not spare his own daughter. But since this statute is not to be found among the laws about husbands, the manifest difference between the two, because of the husband's excessive readiness to seize a suspicion and fly into a rage against his wife, is plainly revealed. Nor is mere suspicion a sufficient ground to diminish the penalty for a husband who kills his wife after an interval. This is evident from the very authorities excusing him in such a case, whenever the adultery is proved either by the confession of the wife or by other proofs, so that she can be said to be convicted of it. [Citations.] Bertazzolus says: "I have seen the matter so regarded in the contingency of such a fact, and the husband has been excused who had killed an adulterous wife, not found in the very act, but whose adultery was really and truly existent and was quite plainly proved." Hence it is plain, from those very authorities adduced by his Honour, that the husband who kills his wife after an interval is not excused because of mere suspicion, or because of an adultery case which is still pending judgment, and which he himself had brought. In law, also, is his assumption proved to be without foundation, which places on an equality [first] vengeance taken immediately, that is, in the very act of taking the wife in adultery, or in acts immediately preparatory, which lead him to such a legitimate belief; and [secondly] vengeance taken after an interval, even when the adultery is evident from such proofs as render it perfectly clear. There are many authorities who urge the diminution of the penalty for the following reason which they give--that the sense of injured honour always keeps urging and provoking to vengeance, and that a wife may be well enough said to be taken in adultery, when she has either confessed it or been convicted of it. And these authorities have been collected with a full hand by his Honour, and I myself recently pointed out one of them. But the contrary opinion is the true one, and is accepted in practice. To this fact the most distinguished and most skilful practitioners of our time in criminal law bear witness. These are [first] Farinacci, where, after he has first learnedly answered the reasons and authorities adduced to the contrary, he concludes that he undoubtedly believes so as to the law in the case, and counsels that it be so held, unless we wish to err; and [second] Canon Rainaldi, who also filled the office of Procurator of the Poor with the highest praise, and so it may well be believed that he was very strongly inclined toward mercy and commiseration, and that he therefore adhered to this opinion in the mere zeal for the truth. And he declared it to be the truer and the more advantageous to the State, and said that one should not depart from it in giving judgment. [Citations.] But even if the conflict of authorities might in some manner favour the diminishing of the penalty for the Accused, if there had been excess merely in the matter of time; yet he is still to be considered as inexcusable, so that he cannot escape the ordinary penalty, since so many qualifying circumstances are present which increase the crime; and any one of these is punishable with death. To this end we should first consider the assembling of armed men, which is so very injurious to the public peace, and constitutes the crime of "conventicle." In the Banns, chapter 82, this is punishable with the death of its author. It is also declared that it is enough to establish this crime if four armed men are assembled. This had been formerly prohibited under the same penalty by the seventy-fifth Constitution of Sixtus V. of blessed memory, which had raised it to the crime of rebellion, for whatever reason it might be done. Spada proves this fully, asserting that it should generally be so understood in all cases in which the assembling of men has been prohibited. To escape or evade this capital penalty, it is not a relevant excuse that a husband may kill an adulterous wife by armed men brought together. For, however it may be when a husband wishes to kill his wife taken in adultery, and is afraid that the armed adulterer can resist him, and that he may have servants for his aid (in which case he himself cannot take vengeance otherwise than by calling together helpers, as Caballus advises), yet in the case of vengeance taken after an interval, and while the wife is under the power of the judge, and on the mere suspicion of adultery, such convocation of armed men cannot be said to be at all permissible. For the seventy-fifth Constitution of Sixtus V. of blessed memory, prohibits such assembling even on lawful occasion, as a disturbance of the public peace. [Citation.] And so it is much more to be prohibited and much the rather to be expiated with the ordinary penalty both of the Constitution and of the Banns, since it was made for an illegal and damnable end, namely to kill his wife, and his father-in-law and mother-in-law along with her. This is rendered plain by the assertion of the very authorities who excuse from the ordinary penalty a husband who takes vengeance after an interval. And indeed the path of private vengeance, which is hateful to the law, would be strewn all too broadly if, after the husband had chosen legal vengeance and had neglected to avenge his pretended injury in the act of seizing his wife in flight with the pretended lover, he should be excusable in taking vengeance after an interval with all security, by means of armed men, and in killing her while entirely off her guard, and under the power of the judge, without the slightest risk to himself. This is true in spite of the response which might favour him, that he neglected to take private vengeance because he was unarmed, and the wife was found in the company of the Canon, who was a bold, sturdy man. The husband should impute it to himself if alone and unarmed he was pursuing his wife, fleeing with the lover. For then he could take associates with better right, and fully armed could pursue her; and in such a case his assembling of men would be somewhat excusable. But this is not so when he takes such awful vengeance after an interval. For if we consider the reason why a husband killing an adulterer or his wife is punished with a milder penalty according to the quality of the persons, if the vengeance follow in the very act--namely, rash anger, which cannot be restrained--the assembling of armed men to do that after an interval is plainly revealed to be illegal. For rash anger would cause him to expose himself to the risk of resistance by the adulterer, who is not accustomed to approach unarmed. Because of this risk the penalty is diminished, since it shows that the husband carelessly exposed himself thereto, because of the violence of the anger which blinded him. This is [not] the case in vengeance taken after an interval, taken with all forethought and by means of armed men, so that the husband cannot be afraid that any evil will befall himself in carrying it out. Such preparation is quite repugnant to rash anger, which cannot be restrained, and from which excuse is drawn. [Citation.] The second qualification that increases the crime results from the kind of arms with which the murder was committed, for these were prohibited by the well-known decree of Alexander VIII. of sacred memory. This was not merely for the carrying, but even for the keeping, introduction, or manufacture of them for any cause whatever, even under the pretext of military service or the execution of justice. Hence they would be all the more prohibited [when carried] for the purpose of taking such impious and awful vengeance by the destruction of an entire family. Nor is the carrying of arms in such a case to be confused with the main crime of murder; because when a greater penalty might be imposed for the former, as when excuse for the killing is drawn from injured honour, the carrying of the prohibited arms comes to be punished with the ordinary penalty. [Citations.] Nor are the authorities adduced to the contrary worthy of attention, for they hold good in the circumstance of murder done in self-defence or because of provocation in a quarrel. [Citation.] Still further, these are not applicable because they do not speak within the bounds of the Constitution, which so distinctly prohibits such arms. For Policardus speaks of the _Regula Pragmatica_ which takes for granted the qualifying circumstance of the crime of treachery from the kind of arms, and he asserts that this order ceases in murder for self-defence, or on provocation in a quarrel, when committed with the said arms. But this judgment differs by the whole heaven from the sanction of our Constitution; because the latter was issued for the very purpose of entirely exterminating so pernicious a kind of arms. The third qualification likewise increasing the crime is murder committed because of a lawsuit; for by the well-known decree of Alexander VII. of blessed memory, this was increased to the crime of rebellion and _læsa majestas_, punishable with death and the confiscation of goods. This qualifying circumstance as regards the slaughter of Pietro and Violante cannot be denied; because the Accused had won a victory in the lawsuit. And hence the offence should [not] be said to have been committed because of just anger for injury inflicted upon him; [first] by the pretence of birth, which was revealed after the marriage had been celebrated, in order that they might break the marriage contract; [second] by the publication of pamphlets greatly to his injury; and [third] by their conspiracy in the flight of his wife to the injury of the honour of the Accused and of his entire family. They claim that since this cause for avenging the injury is graver than that arising from the lawsuit, the murder should be attributed to it, as more proportionate thereto. But the victory he obtained had regard only to the actual possession of the property while the lawsuit was under appeal. And the parents were still pursuing this suit, so that that cause continued and could not be said to be extinct. The injury, indeed, from whatever different causes it may be claimed to have arisen, really came from this same lawsuit. And this had regard both to the pretence of birth revealed, and to the insults contained in those pamphlets concerning the meagreness of the family affairs (which was quite the contrary of the boasted riches, in the hope of which the marriage had been made), and concerning the ill-treatment which the parents of the wife had suffered in the home of the Accused. For by this marriage agreement food was to be furnished them. Still further, as to any conspiracy in her flight, much less as to any complicity in her pretended adultery, we have no proof at all. And so the cause of hatred conceived because of the lawsuit kept always urging him, and it does not redeem the criminal from the penalty inflicted by the decree of Alexander, because the suit might have been injurious to the Accused, either in his substance or in the manner. For this indeed presents such a cause as is always required in premeditated murders. Nor does it exclude the qualifying circumstance of the lawsuit, and indeed confirms it; since it is explicitly presupposed that injustice had been committed. Otherwise an opportunity to take private vengeance would be permitted, which in all law is forbidden, especially when a lawsuit is going on; because then the majesty of the Prince is insulted, as was proved in my other information, § _Accedit ad exasperandum_. The fourth and, indeed, a very grave qualifying circumstance is drawn from the place in which the crime was committed, namely in the home of those slain. It was also in an insidious manner, by pretending the delivery of a letter sent by Canon Caponsacchi. For one's home should be the safest of refuges to himself, as was proved in our other information, § _plurimum quoque_. The manner indeed savours of treachery, as is proved not merely by committing murder under the show of friendship, but also at a time when the power and obligation of special caution in the one slain had ceased. [Citation.] And this is far from doubtful in our case, for the wretched parents could have had no such apprehension from the Accused, who was staying in his own country. To these is added a fifth very grave qualifying circumstance, drawn from the place with respect to the very wretched wife. For she had been imprisoned at the instance of the Accused, and was detained in the home of her parents as a prison with the consent of the Abate, his brother; and hence she was under public safekeeping, which it were wrong for the Accused to violate without incurring the penalty of _læsa majestas_. [Citation.] This very grave qualifying circumstance, which increases the crime, cannot be avoided by the dual response given by his Honour; first, that we are dealing with no prison properly speaking; second, that one giving offence, or killing in prison, is excused on a just plea of injured honour. Neither of these excludes this qualifying crime; for the unsuitability of a prison would be considerable if we could defend a violation of it made by one in prison and so to avoid his own injury, but if it were otherwise when we were arguing in his favour for avenging an injury to himself in a home assigned as a prison. The plea of injured honour can help one only if the offence in prison follow in self-defence under the very impulse of rash anger. In such circumstances the authorities adduced by his honour would hold good. But this is not so in excusing vengeance taken after an interval upon one imprisoned even at the instance of the slayer. For then the qualifying circumstance of the place greatly aggravates the crime, as it is indeed injurious to the public safekeeping and involves treachery, etc. It is therefore very evident that the murders committed by the Accused have many qualifications mingled with them, which greatly magnify them. And however far the opinion has weight, which urges the diminution of punishment for one killing an adulteress after an interval, and however much the pretended adultery may be declared to have been proved in the manner required to gain such diminution, even by all those in favour of the milder judgment, still this penalty, because of these qualifications, would have to be increased and the ordinary penalty of the _Lex Cornelia de Sicariis_ in its entirety would have to be demanded. And therefore it seems superfluous to argue about the kind of torture, since in view of these very urgent proofs, of which I understand there is no doubt, and in view of the well-known powers granted to the Most Illustrious Governor, it is quite within limits that the crime should be punished with the ordinary penalty, even if the qualifying circumstance of special atrocity were not present, so that the penalty should not be increased on that account. But such a qualifying circumstance is not wanting here, as it results indeed from the treacherous manner and from the charge of _læsa majestas_, which is provable in our case on three grounds; namely offence committed during a lawsuit, the assembling of armed men, and the violation of public safekeeping, because of the home assigned as a prison. For according to the Apostolic Constitutions, the crime would be raised to that degree upon the basis of the first and the second; and there should be no doubt as to the power of the Prince to do so. [Citation.] Spada asserts that in such a case, so far as all the effects of law are concerned, it should not be considered a matter of controversy that the qualification of special atrocity, which is in agreement with such a crime, is to be revoked. And in our very circumstances Spada gives this opinion in demanding the torment of the vigil. Nor can that qualifying circumstance of the person concerned, so far as it is proved, stand in the way of such infliction of the torment of the vigil, which does not allow the death penalty upon a nobleman to be made worse, as is accustomed to happen in very atrocious crimes (because noble blood should not be degraded by such increase of penalty which adds infamy). But for this purpose merely the nature of the crime is considered, and not the quality of the person, which would hinder the execution of a penalty carrying with it such infamy. Otherwise the torture of the vigil never could be inflicted upon noblemen, priests, and men in religious office upon whom an infamous penalty cannot be inflicted. But nobility affords no privilege in the manner of torment, especially in very atrocious crimes [Citation], etc. GIOVANNI BATTISTA BOTTINI, _Advocate of the Fisc and of the Apostolic Chamber_. RESPONSE _To the Account of the Fact, and Grounds in the Franceschini Case._ [PAMPHLET 15.] The splendid statue of Nebuchadnezzar fell because it was not firm on its feet. So fall to ground those imagined and forced suppositions concerning the origin of the present execrable murder, which the Anonymous Writer in his printed pages [Pamphlet 10] has tried to insinuate into the dull heads of the crowd. This murder was committed here in Rome upon three wretched and innocent persons, by Guido Franceschini, assisted by four men who were armed with prohibited arms, who were brought together for that purpose by the influence of money, and who were kept insidiously for many days at his expense. [These pages claim that] the crime arose from justly conceived anger: [first] because eight months earlier Guido had discovered Francesca Pompilia, his wife, sinning against him in his own house at Arezzo, and [then] because she had fled in company with Canon Caponsacchi of the same city back to Rome to place herself again under the protection of Pietro and Violante Comparini, who had raised her as their daughter; and [thirdly] that the suspicion had also grown upon Guido that in her precipitate journey she might have broken with the Canon her marriage obligations, since certain love-letters were found upon her, from which he unreasonably deduced her adultery, and he supposed that the said Caponsacchi was condemned as an adulterer to a three years' banishment at Civita Vecchia. And these pages try, under the pretence of injured honour, to render Guido's crime less grave and to excite compassion, no less in foolish persons than in the hearts of our most religious judges, for the purpose of disposing them toward a milder penalty and one out of keeping, according to the laws, with the quality, form, and circumstances of this crime. And this in substance is all that is claimed by the author of the pamphlet entitled _Notizie di fatto, e di ragione nella Causa Franceschini_. But they are indeed very much at fault in their account of that tragic history, which had a different beginning and an occasion independent of the imagined ground of honour. In that pamphlet it was presupposed all too bitterly, that Guido's honour had been injured by his wife; whereas she always preserved her sense of shame and had well observed the laws of conjugal honour, as is plainly shown in this present article. That this sad catastrophe, this slaughter of an entire family, did not proceed (as the Anonymous Author claims in his pages) from the pretended sense of injured honour, but from damnable greed, one can very clearly see by considering the fact that for this very object the unfortunate marriage with Francesca Pompilia was entered into by Franceschini. For it was taken for granted that after the death of her supposed parents she would surely fall heir to a considerable property. All the more ought we believe that the crime was committed because of hatred arising from the three lawsuits then pending; that is, two in the civil courts and a third in the criminal courts. One of these was as to the legitimacy of the parentage of Francesca Pompilia, the wife, and the nullification of the dowry-agreement, and was brought by Pietro in the Tribunal of the Sacred Rota. The second suit was for divorce, and was brought by the said Francesca Pompilia before the Vice-Governor. The third is a criminal suit, as to the pretended adultery, which is still pending in the Tribunal of his Excellency the Governor; this latter was brought under the very impulse of greed, to gain the entire dowry. Since this fact was conclusively evident in the case introduced by the said Franceschini, he was deceived in this hope of gain by the failure of the proofs, which the defence caused to vanish utterly, as they could do by means of the wife. Hence he broke into an excess so tragic and so deplorable as to reveal clearly the tricks and frauds practised for the purpose of bringing about that marriage. Here then are the plain proofs that this is the truth. Guido Franceschini was staying at Rome in idleness, out of the service of a certain Cardinal, without a soldo, by which service he had provided for himself up to that time. His usual loafing-place was in the shop of certain women-hairdressers, where he often announced his intention of setting up his house with some good dowry. He also boasted of the grandeur of his country, his birth, and his property. By his promises he induced this woman to find him a chance for such a marriage, and she informed him of the opportunity in the said Francesca Pompilia. The latter was then esteemed to be the true and legitimate daughter of Pietro and Violante Comparini. He set about this enterprise with the aid of his brother, Abate Paolo, using the astute prudence with which the malign serpent advanced his designs in Paradise to subvert Adam into disobeying God's precept and into eating the forbidden fruit; for [Satan] considered the matter in this way: "If I wish to assault the man directly, who is so strong and so resolute, he will turn and give me a sure repulse. It is therefore better that I first tempt the woman, who is of a fickle nature and soft-hearted." And he made his first attack upon Eve; because when he had gained his point that he might have her, by her means it would be easier for him to win over Adam. "For he first attacked the mind of the weaker sex," are the ingenious words of St. Hilary. And so for this purpose did the said Guido devise the marriage with the knowledge of his brother, Abate Paolo, and likewise to this point he succeeded in it. For he avoided talking with Signor Pietro about the marriage, by whom it would probably have been refused, and wished first to tempt Violante, his wife. Because by gaining her he would the more easily overpersuade her husband to give his consent. Nor was it difficult for him to astound the woman, because he knew how to impress her very well with the thought of the grandeur of his country, of the first-rate nobility of his birth, and of the great income from his patrimony, amounting to 1700 scudi. And he gave her an itemised account of it written with his own hand. She was enchanted thereby and, without getting any further information about the matter, she was able to persuade her husband and to extract from him his consent to it. This proves what we read written in Proverbs: "A wife takes captive the soul of her husband." He speaks this of Mordecai who availed himself of Esther, when he wished to placate the anger of Ahasuerus against his people; of Joab, who used the services of the woman of Tekoah when he wished to soften the anger of David against his son; and of the Philistines of Timnath, when they wished to gain from Samson the secret of the riddle proposed to them at the marriage feast. The credulous but deceived woman so cajoled her husband that she at last induced him to sign the marriage agreement providing for a dowry of 26 bonds and, at the death of the said Comparini, for all their possession, amounting, as the Anonymous Writer acknowledges, to the sum of 12,000 scudi. And, for the purpose of making the said Franceschini guardians of the said property even during the life of the Comparini, they had to give up even the income of it. This property consisted of numbers of profitable and well-situated houses, and of bonds. The Franceschini also assumed the obligation to take the said Comparini to the city of Arezzo, and there to feed, clothe, and provide them such service as they would need. This promise was made not without the hope that on account of the insults and sufferings which they would have to bear their death would be hastened. And thus Guido would become the absolute master of their property. After having signed the said agreement Pietro absolutely refused to go on with the effectuation of the marriage of the said Francesca Pompilia, with the abovesaid Guido, of whom he had had few good reports; and these were far different from the pretended riches and vaunted nobility. Hence one may well say of him what Persius concludes in his fourth Satire: "See what has no real existence; let the rabble carry off their presents elsewhere. Dwell with yourself, and you will know how meagre your furnishing may be." At any rate, the said Guido joined the said Violante, whom he had imbued with his flatteries and endearments, spurning any further consent of Pietro by keeping him in ignorance of it. And without the knowledge of the latter, Guido contracted the marriage with the said Francesca Pompilia in the face of the Church. And he evermore discloses by this act, which shows so little reverence to the promiser of the dowry, his own greed, not merely for the amount which had been assigned to him in the marriage agreement, but also for the rest of Pietro's property. For he felt sure that after Pietro's death the property, by the entail of the ancestors, would necessarily fall to the said Francesca Pompilia, who was already his wife. When, after a few days, Pietro found out that the marriage had taken place, though he reproved the deed vigorously, yet because what is done cannot be undone, and by means of the cajoleries of Violante his wife, and the interposition of another Cardinal, whom the Abate, Guido's brother, served, the poor old fellow was constrained to drink the cup of his bitterness. And he came, as it were by force, after many months to the stipulations of the dowry agreement. He quickly began to feel the effects of Franceschini's trick, since Guido had scarcely a single soldo of his own to pay the first expenses of that marriage agreement. Hence, to supply these, he was obliged, against the wish of Pietro, to free from entail five of the bonds, or more, by the authority of the Auditor of the Most Illustrious Governor, and to sell them for meeting these expenses. Hence one may see clearly that the primary object of Franceschini in this proceeding was to trick Pietro, and Violante his wife, and their poor child, to enrich himself with the property of others. He can no longer deny the fraudulent pretence of vaunted riches of the Franceschini in the note written in his own hand and given to the Comparini. And indeed the Anonymous Writer confesses it openly. For, in order to free Abate Paolo from complicity in that trick, the latter pretended that he took Guido his brother to task roundly for the alteration of the said note. The said Comparini very quickly found this out. For as soon as they had gone to Arezzo they learned that the property of the Franceschini family was very slight. And such were the miseries and abuses that the Comparini had to suffer in victuals and in harsh treatment that they were obliged to return to Rome after a few months; for they were locked out of the home and had to go to the tavern to lodge; and these abuses were for the purpose of shortening their lives, either by their sufferings, or the fury caused thereby. And this fact is very evidently proved by the rent-rolls taken from the public records of the city of Arezzo. From these it is shown that the said Guido did not possess a single dollar's worth of the settled property mentioned in the said note. It is also untrue that he and his family enjoyed the highest rank of nobility in the city, because, from other extracts drawn from the public records of the city, it is evident that his family is of only secondary rank. The abovesaid crafty and fraudulent methods of dealing, which came to light long before the murder had followed, and which became known in this Court and in Arezzo, can well show that greed was the origin of this premeditated slaughter (which was put in execution in such a horrible manner, as is notorious) and not the pretended ground of injured honour. For, according to common opinion, Abate Paolo, no less than Guido his brother, had worked the tricks exposed as above. And by men they were suspected of subterfuge and craft, so that this made them more sensible of injury than anything else. Hence they could no longer boast the grandeur of their nobility and the affluence of their riches, which they had spread abroad on the lips of the crowd. And every one avoided having anything to do with them, as persons of bad faith and as usurping a glory to which they had no real right. The greediness of this self-interest became greatly inflamed; so that in these Franceschini brethren one may see the common axiom verified: "Craft is deluded by craft." That is to say, Violante was urged on by remorse of conscience and by the abuses and injuries received in their house, and was constrained by her confessor at the time of the Jubilee to reveal to Pietro, her husband, that the said Francesca Pompilia was not their daughter, but was of a false birth. And this seems very probable in view of the age of 48, which Violante had reached, when she pretended to be pregnant with her; because in the fourteen years, during which she had lived in lawful matrimony with Pietro, she had never had children. Also, by witnesses then living, she could afford conclusive proof of the pretence of the birth. And when notice of that had been given to Abate Paolo, that he might come to some compromise over the annulling of the dowry contract for the entire patrimonial property, he spurned the kind offers made to him through the meditation of friendly persons and refused every means of peace. Then a warning (as to the falsity of the said birth and the illegality of the dowry contract) was served on him by Pietro before Monsignor Tomati. And conclusive proof of the birth was given by six witnesses, who were examined before the judge with questions offered in behalf of the said Franceschini. Yet the same judge saw best to forward the case during the mere immediate possession, by continuing to the said Francesca Pompilia the quasi-possession of her parenthood. Nevertheless, an appeal was taken from his sentence, and it was committed to the Sacred Rota, before Monsignor Molines, where it still hangs undecided as to the principal point of the pretended parentage and the nullity of the dowry contract. For righteous judgment in such a tribunal the judge doubtless awaited for conclusive proofs of the said pretence of birth. The nullity of the dowry contract would none the less be decided, because it had made declaration that the said Francesca Pompilia was their daughter. And with this falsehood the advantage which the Franceschini had obtained for their own selfish gain by such tricks would cease. All this is proved by the reflection that the trick of Franceschini was made public, not merely in Rome, but in Arezzo, and that he also was deluded by a similar artifice because of the proofs already made, while judgment was pending, that the said Francesca Pompilia was not the real and legitimate daughter of the said Comparini. On the ground of these far-fetched suspicions Guido made pretence of a reason for maltreating her with insults and blows, and more than once he provided himself with a sword and fire-arms to take her life. He did this to take vengeance upon her for his own trick, by which he had been deluded. Therefore it was quite right for the poor wife, who was of the tender age of sixteen years and a stranger in the place, to avoid the rage of her husband at different times by fleeing for protection to Monsignor the Bishop, and to the Governor, or Commissioner of the City, that they might put some check upon the cruelties she was suffering. And although these persons by their interest in the matter succeeded for the time in putting a stop to the threats, yet the poor intimidated wife always passed her days shut in a room. And her fear was greatly increased because she saw that the said Guido had made a mixture of poison, with which he threatened he would take her life without the uproar attendant on the use of arms; and thus he would be the surer of his crime going unpunished. Now if, even at a time when no shadow of suspicion of dishonour had fallen, the husband was contriving the death of his wife, the Anonymous Writer might well abstain from soiling his pages for the purpose of proving that the slaughter of those murdered had had its origin in the impulse to repair offended honour. For his pages would have had much better foundation if he had consulted the truth, namely that these crimes had arisen from deluded self-interest. The poor wife in her agitation over these difficulties that we have told, had nothing else to do but think of finding refuge from the death she feared. And when her mind was somewhat sharpened by its vexations, she intrusted herself to the Canon Conti, who is closely related to the Franceschini, and declared to him her miseries, her perils, and her just fears (although they were not unknown to him), in order that he might try to give her consolation by placing her life in safety. He was touched with living compassion and was moved to free her therefrom by pity for the grievous state in which she was. And he well knew that there was no other escape than flight from the home of her husband, according to the saying of the poet [Virg. A. III. 44]: "Alas, flee the cruel earth, flee the greedy shore." But not being able to give her aid in this affair, he suggested to her that for putting the matter into execution, there was no better person to the purpose than Canon Giuseppe Caponsacchi, his friend and intimate, whose spirit had stood every test. And when Conti had spoken of it to him, although Caponsacchi saw difficulty in aiding the desire of the young woman, because he did not wish to incur the anger of the Franceschini, yet at last the impulse of charity and pity prevailed upon him to free this innocent woman from death. And when his readiness for the attempt was reported to her by Conti, she did not fail to inflame him with more messages and letters, even containing alluring endearments, for the effecting of her escape. Yet she also kept during all this time her constant desire of not violating her marriage-vow, since in some of these letters she praises the Canon for his chastity, and in others reproves him for having sent her some rather improper octaves. She also warned him against degenerating from the good behaviour, on which she had congratulated herself and had planned with him the flight. While her husband and the whole household were asleep, both of them, with the assistance of the Canon Conti, set out upon a headlong journey by post, without losing a moment's time, except for changing horses; and they arrived by night at Castelnuovo. And although the host had prepared a bed for rest, nevertheless they did not avail themselves of it. For Caponsacchi was always solicitously watching to see that the driver prepared other horses, to continue the journey to its end. Nor did the host of that tavern, when cross-examined in the prosecution for flight, ever dream of bearing witness that the wife and Caponsacchi had slept together in the bed that was prepared, even though Franceschini, to his own dishonour, had published the contrary, that he might, by the pretence of injured honour, throw a false light upon the true grounds of the murders committed by him. In the meantime her husband arrived. When his wife saw him, did she, timid as she was, shrink back? Did she acknowledge herself guilty of any sin, or of any wrong done to him in guarding her purity and modesty? No! But all on fire, though she was at the tender age of sixteen years, as I have already said, the constancy of her own honour rebuked him for the tricks and abuses which he had employed, and for the threats and blows he had very often given her, and for the poisonous drugs he had prepared to take her life. And [she declared] that she had been obliged to do as she had done, to find an escape by flight from graver peril, and to return to the parental love of the Comparini, who had raised her as their daughter; and that she had always been careful to keep her wifely honour intact. The same rebuke was made by Caponsacchi, who during the flight had religiously observed the limits of due modesty. What did Franceschini answer? What did he try to do, although he was armed with a sword against his defenceless wife and against Caponsacchi, who had with him only a little dagger? Nothing, indeed! according to what the witnesses who were present deposed; because he stood convicted by the just remonstrances of his wife. But what did he do? He gave up all vengeance, which by right of natural law, or much more by civil law, he might have taken for that; and, as the Anonymous Writer goes on to boast in justifying him for this execrable crime, he implored the arm of the Law and had his wife and Caponsacchi arrested by the authorities of the place. And at his own instance they were conducted as prisoners to the prisons of the Most Illustrious Governor of Rome, before whom Guido charged them with flight. Then, not content with this, he brought forward that other charge of supposed adultery committed with the said Caponsacchi. He also outdid himself greatly by making noisy petition to the Supreme Pontiff for their punishment, and the latter sent back his entreaties to Monsignor the Governor. He was brazen enough to demand, with a new complaint, that his wife should be declared an adulteress and that to him, according to law, should pass all the gain of the dowry. This in substance clearly proves that he did not insist on vengeance for the reparation of his honour, which he himself had passed by, but he did all this for the sole object of gain, that is to win the dowry. What efforts, what exclamations, what diligence did Franceschini and Abate Paolo, his brother, not use to have the wife declared an adulteress and to gain the desired lucre? Monsignor the Most Illustrious Governor knows it, who endured with all forbearance their passionate pressure upon him. Signor Venturini, judge in the case, knows it. And all the other judges and notaries of the Court, who were nauseated by their importunity, know this very well. Then since judgment could not in any event fall according to the designs of the Franceschini, as there was no proof in the trial of any offence, either in the wife or in the said Caponsacchi, the most Religious Judges, who in prudence were judging rigorously (for the purpose of giving some satisfaction to the Franceschini brothers in their strong insistence, rather than because of the obligations of justice), banished the said Caponsacchi to Civita Vecchia for three years. Caponsacchi straightway obeyed this sentence, and has never left the place assigned him. The case was left undecided as regards the wife, who was placed in the Nunnery of the Scalette as a prison. Then when there was some question as to her pregnancy, with equal prudence, she was removed from the nunnery by the order of the Most Illustrious Governor; for it was not decorous that she should give birth to a child there. And with the consent of the said Abate Paolo she was placed in the home of the said Comparini under security of 300 scudi to keep it as a secure prison. On this point the Anonymous Writer disputes too bitterly what was written learnedly by the Fisc, and claims that the consent of the said Abate Paolo had not been given. But the great and incorruptible integrity of the Fisc is known to every one; because of which he would be unwilling to give his word in writing for what was not evident on the surest proof. Yet the fact of Abate Paolo's consent is plainly proved, since he in person so agreed with Monsignor the Most Illustrious Governor and with Signor Venturini, the judge, jointly. And he exacted from Pietro Comparini the obligation to supply her with food without any hope of recompense. And this was so carried out, although the quality of the Comparini did not deserve so indecent a rebuke on account of having been too indulgent with them. With like bitterness it is denied that the said Abate Paolo had power of attorney from Guido, his brother, enough to give such consent; because, in making such a provision, Monsignor the Governor had no need of the consent of the parties. And, even if he had wished to show Abate Paolo such courtesy and urbanity, the Author should not reply thereto with such incivility, in criticising the judge for having done wrong because of the lack of that power of attorney. For by such procedure [Abate Paolo] proves that he wished to trick also Monsignor the Governor into consenting to a thing beyond his power. And he rests convicted of this, because the said Abate Paolo was the manipulator of all they did, nor was a straw moved without his assistance. And he was well provided with abundant power of attorney by his brother, wherefrom he had the fullest authority to do as if he were the very person of his brother, with a proviso of after confirmation, the efficacy of which every one knows. And this is confessed even by the Anonymous Author, since he asserts that Guido at his departure left the entire conduct of his case to the Abate, his brother. But one may well see with what object he denies the said consent, that is, in order that he may more bitterly make pretence of the complicity of the Comparini in the pretended dishonesty of Francesca, who had been guarded by them as a daughter. This would seem very improbable if he should once admit the consent of the Abate. No less rancorous is the assertion made by the Anonymous Writer that Lamparelli laid out the money to provide Pompilia with food while she was in safekeeping. Nor was Lamparelli reimbursed by the deposit in the Office, which had come from the money found on her and on Caponsacchi, when they were arrested at Castelnuovo, which was supposed to have been stolen from the husband. But the 48 scudi, which the wife confessed to have taken away from him, were fully restored to the said Abate Paolo, as is proved by his receipt, made during the trial. The rest of the money was conclusively proved to belong to Caponsacchi. And as soon as Abate Paolo received the money, for which he continually clamoured, he left Rome to take part in the planning of that notorious murder, which followed a little while later. But there had previously been given notice, at the instance of Francesca Pompilia before Monsignor the Vice-Governor, of a suit for divorce and for the recovery of the dowry, which had been spent. This was very bitter to the Franceschini, because in that lawsuit conclusive proof would be made of their subterfuges, their cruelties, their threats of poisonous drugs that had been prepared; of which the Canon Conti, who was the mediator in that flight, had not been ignorant. And it is public talk and report throughout Arezzo that he died about a month ago under similar suspicious circumstances. Hereby ceased all hope, which the Franceschini had had from the beginning, of gaining the entire property of the Comparini. And from this, every sane mind may see and know what is the true root of such rash and pitiable murders; whether it is injured honour, or scandalous and detestable greed and cupidity. From this arose the hatred in the lawsuits brought and still undecided, which drew even greater dishonour upon the said Franceschini, and when decided would be for their ruin. In vain therefore this Anonymous Writer and his other defenders wear themselves out in exaggerating the plea of injured honour. For then that which had no true existence would have been taken from Guido by his wife. This was fully proved in the arguments made for the Fisc, in answering those letters, from which Guido drew his strongest proof. On the contrary, Franceschini has by his own deed renounced all right to repair his honour, since he did not avenge it at the time of overtaking her in the said inn of Castelnuovo. Nor does his excuse really help him--that he was unarmed, because he had with him indeed a sword, and possibly other concealed arms. For it is not probable that he would have been willing to go on following his wife accompanied by Caponsacchi, without being provided with arms. And this all the more because the fugitives also were unarmed and were provided merely with a little dagger. But Guido preferred to choose the judicial road and had them arrested by the police, and he demanded that the charge against them be pushed through to their punishment, even imploring the rescript of the Supreme Pontiff. He also laid his entreaties again before the judges in the case (this very well discloses his purpose, which was the unconquerable motive of all his acts) and made special insistence before them for the payment of the price of the honour, which he pretended had been taken from him. And would he not even have had his wife declared an adulteress for the sake of gaining the dowry? If then he has, as one may say, demanded the price of his honour in the Courts, how can he be permitted to commit such awful murders for honour's sake? For whenever a husband is permitted by reason of natural law, or even by the civil law, to kill his wife for honour's sake, this power and faculty ceases whenever the husband has renounced it by imploring, as above, the arm of the law. And these complaints that he made, and his recourse to the Pope, show the price he put upon his honour. And with these judicial proceedings he lost, without doubt, his right of private vengeance for his injured honour, which he might have carried out. And by this one tacit renunciation, this right is extinct. [Citation.] For the writer cannot claim that the judicial action brought by Franceschini would not effect the renunciation of private vengeance for his honour, but that he could still employ the one or the other, and avail himself of whichever might seem better to him. For this is contrary to the text [Citation] which is stated as follows by the celebrated Canonist, Giovanni Andrea: "A choice cannot gain both alternatives in seeking confirmation therefrom; even if the one is claimed to include that by which the man can attain the end of his intention. Therefore a man must choose one, and when it is chosen he cannot turn to the other." And still clearer are the following words of the same authority: "The right to return to a second alternative shall not at all be allowed, when one seems to have renounced to choose the first and to profess that his rights cannot arise therefrom." But although this exception from every miscarried law might be judged permissible, every foundation of it would be destroyed by the utter lack of proof of an offence received in his honour; for there was no proof of it in the prosecution for flight. The Anonymous Writer strives to deduce that from the pretended love-letters written to Caponsacchi, which were denied by Francesca and were not proved to be her handwriting, either by her own acknowledgment or by her signature. One cannot claim that she was convicted of it, nor that any legitimate proof of it resulted, as all judicial practice shows. And even if without reason we were obliged to acknowledge that they were written by her, would it not be too bitter and too unreasonable an inference that from them arose the husband's motive for killing her because she had written them? No one of sound mind will be persuaded to pity the husband who has gone on to kill his wife for the sole reason that she had written love-letters. For conjugal honour is offended neither by note, nor by pen, but only by acts of impure dishonour; and of this, in our case, every shadow of proof is lacking. This is all the more true because the mere suspicion of dishonour ceases with a thought of the true motive, for which the letters were written; namely, by pretended demonstration of affection to allure this Caponsacchi to rescue her from imminent peril of death. Nor from this could she find any other escape than by flight; for she was always terrorised by the anger and hatred conceived by her husband for feigned reasons. And therefore, as the love-letters arose from that occasion they ought to be referred to it, and not to a dishonourable wish to smirch her conjugal faith to her husband. To the same cause, likewise, should certain conversations be referred, which she had had from the window with the said Caponsacchi in order to arrange the manner of saving her life, and not to give offence, nor to hazard her own modesty, nor the honour of her husband. Even the most chaste of women have used like artifices. We find in the Sacred Scriptures that Judith entrapped Holofernes in the same way, for the purpose of winning the liberty of her native land. And so it may be no less permissible for this poor woman, who was solely intent upon the security of her life, to allure Caponsacchi by amatory letters to be a safe companion for her in her flight, and this without any stigma of immodesty. Much less can an offence of his honour be inferred from the flight; because, as I noted above, this flight resulted from the cause declared. And one may see clearly that it was not for doing any injury to her husband. For the fugitives did not turn aside into unknown places, but they journeyed precipitately along the consular road by post, without spending the night anywhere. And their journey was toward Rome, where the poor wife hoped that the Comparini, who had raised her as their daughter, would continue toward her those acts of love with which they had brought her up, even till the said marriage was contracted with Franceschini. And all that is being reported that a driver testifies he had seen them kissing along the road has no legal foundation. For it rests merely on the word of a single witness of the lowest class, and he swears to matters that are quite improbable, because he had to drive the carriage with such rapidity as that with which the fugitives were following their journey. Hence it was almost impossible for him to look backward, or to see what they were doing inside of that covered carriage. And this is all the more so because his deposition is vague, nor does it specify whether the kisses were given at night or by day. But his deposition is rendered much more doubtful and improbable because, in such a swift journey as the carriage was making, it might chance during the jolting of it that the accident of their faces meeting casually would arise, and to him this might seem the act of kissing. This happens very commonly, even when one is making no such journey, according to the quality of the road and the rough ways which one finds. This makes his testimony insufficient and doubtful enough or, even further, it is audacious and incredible. Then as to the other point which the Anonymous Writer asserts too bitterly, namely, that when they arrived at Castelnuovo the innkeeper was ordered to make up only one bed for the repose of the fugitives, and that they slept together. The host however did not have the hardihood to swear, in his cross-examination, that they had slept together in it. This circumstance is excluded by the deposition of the wife as well as by that of Caponsacchi. Because their affidavits constantly affirm that neither of them went to bed for rest, but that merely the wife, who was worn out by the discomfort and suffering of so precipitate a journey, rested for a few hours seated in a chair; and that the bed was left arranged as the host had adjusted it; and it would have been found mussed, if they had slept in it. It is also proved that when Franceschini arrived at the said place he found Caponsacchi urging that the horses be harnessed for continuing the journey, and no proof is given to the contrary. Nor can one justly pity Franceschini for his injured honour, which had been kept intact by the fugitives. Likewise the title, to which the same Writer appeals--that the decree of condemnation for Caponsacchi's banishment had been inflicted because of criminal knowledge, to the injury of Guido's honour--has no real foundation; because this title was corrected as untrue, and not in accord with the proofs. Of this fact we may have as legitimate witnesses the very Governor himself, and all the judges and notaries of the tribunal who have any part in the criminal court. And if one will only give it due thought, the title of that case was placed there, just as a wine bush hangs outside the door of an inn, which very well shows that they sell wine there, but does not prove whether what they sell is good, and saleable, and agreeable. Oh! by no means. For one may find the wine there to be sharp, and muddy, and of other inferior qualities. If therefore we read the documents and the proofs registered during the prosecution, by which the crime is proved, and not by the erroneous title, which cannot offer a shadow of proof for the pretended criminal commerce, there is even less suspicion of immodesty. And one can well understand that all proof was lacking during the prosecution from the mildness of the penalty inflicted, which does not at all correspond with the gravity of the crime charged. One can also see the impropriety of condemning Caponsacchi as an adulterer while the cause against the wife was still pending; because she could not be condemned while undefended. But to remove every suspicion of this pretended adultery, I beg any dispassionate reader to reflect that the adultery could not have been committed in Arezzo, because to the guardianship of her husband was added that of the brothers, of their common mother, of the servant, of the relatives, and of the neighbours; yea, the voluntary imprisonment of the unfortunate child, who was always shut in a small room to guard her honour. Much less could adultery have been committed during the journey, as has been proved to be utterly unlikely, improbable, unproved, and far from the truth. Nor could it have been committed at Rome; for it is well known that Pompilia was taken from Castelnuovo to prison, and from there was removed to the Nunnery of the Scalette, and then because of her pregnancy was consigned to the said Comparini, under the form of keeping their house as a prison with security of 300 scudi. Caponsacchi also was staying then at his place of banishment in Civita Vecchia. In this fact all suspicion ceases, since the consent of Abate Franceschini, who is so zealous for his brother's honour, as well as his own, concurred therein. Nor can one restrain himself without strong exertion when he hears such exaggeration from the Anonymous Writer as that Caponsacchi left his prison to go in banishment to Civita Vecchia at a time when the wife was staying in the house of the said couple, as a prison, and that he lodged in their house. But he cannot speak a more barefaced lie than that, because Caponsacchi has never been their guest, and as soon as he left the prison he went to the place of his exile; and he has faithfully observed his banishment without ever returning to Rome. Nor did the wife leave the nunnery before it was proved to Monsignor the Governor that Caponsacchi was staying in Civita Vecchia, as was established by the authentic testimony of the Chancellor of that district. The said Writer, however, gives me even more room to blame his excessive boldness in stigmatising the honour of Franceschini as sullied by his wife, by saying that as soon as Guido had ascended the stairs in company with his fellows, armed to commit this execrable murder, he looked about upon those walls, which were all full of his insults, as if the said silent stones had known how to make contrivances of foolish thoughts to foment his inhumanity for so horrible a murder. Because for this he can give no other proof than that he was writing fancifully without any foundation. For Guido was indeed willingly dishonoured; because to his other dishonours he added these disgraces also, even by his own wrongdoing. For it is made very clear above that the cause for which he committed the crime was not to repair his honour, which had been injured by his wife. But it was his unmasked tricks, the hoped-for lucre, which had vanished, and the lawsuits still pending. And why can he not bring some other no less convincing proof, if honour urged Franceschini thereto? And was not that honour sufficiently avenged by the death of his wife? Why imbrue himself straightway with the blood of Violante and Pietro, who were not accomplices in the pretended dishonour? And why should he lay such plots through many days to procure the death of that kindly benefactor, because the latter had been moved by pity and had ministered to their aid in the said lawsuits? Upon that one there has never fallen a suspicion prejudicial to Guido's honour. For while the wife was in Arezzo he was staying at Rome. And when she was first married she was not fully thirteen years old, and after her flight, when she had returned to Rome, we know that she continued under guard in prison, or in the nunnery, and then in the home of her parents, and at this time she was very near her confinement. Hence one can conclude truly that the motive of this murder was other than that of honour, and that it was his greed, as was said, and the lawsuits, as Franceschini himself confesses in his cross-examination. Nor ought the declaration made by the said wife in the face of death be despised, since in the presence of many priests and persons who are quite trustworthy, even while she was constantly suffering from such severe wounds, she maintained and professed with greatest frankness that she had always lived chaste and faithful to her husband. And with a heart in fullest resignation to the Divine Mercy, she prayed pardon for every mistake she had committed to the disgrace of her husband. Nor in such a matter is it to be presumed that the one dying lies, at the risk of the eternal safety of her soul. A person should also reflect that in this deed there occurs a special favour from the hand of the very Omnipotent, who caused the wife to survive for a few days, in order that she might make clear her own innocence and throw light upon the murderers; for without this the crimes would have gone unpunished. For during the same crime Franceschini had repeatedly commanded his companions to see if she were quite dead. And when they had taken her by the tresses and had lifted her from the ground where she lay, they believed she was dead; because the poor wife, by natural instinct, knew how to feign it by her relaxation, as the delinquents confessed. And this mark of divine favour all the more verifies the declaration of the wife, which has been proved by the confession of those guilty of the crime. I have left it for the last to discuss and refute what the said Writer pretends concerning Abate Paolo. But if he had to speak the truth, he might reasonably affirm that the Abate had been the whole foundation of this scandal. For he had urged Guido on to the murders, and he had woven the whole plot, inasmuch as it was he who, from the beginning, wished to attain, by dint of industry and trickiness, the marriage of the said Francesca Pompilia. It was he who had sustained the suits, both civil and criminal, and he who, under the name of a grandee, and by boasting of their word of honour, had tried to extort a judgment by means of fine insinuations, by subterfuge, and by trickery; which was not right. It was he, who was very sensible of having been proved to be the man of guile, who had been deluded by his own trick. Therefore this Writer had good reason to say that the faces of others served the Abate as mirrors by which to read his own evil courses, and not the lost honour of his brother. I forbear to respond to what the Anonymous Writer has tried to have believed to the praise of Abate Paolo Franceschini, to excite greatly our pity; since the intention of the author of the present response is no other than to make clear the falsity of the suppositions against the honour of the poor wife and against the Comparini, and to serve the cause of justice. And he leaves the judgment of it to those who have full knowledge of it. From the same consideration I pass over responding to many another impropriety, which has been advanced uselessly and without any point by the said Writer. And I close my response with the example of Samson, alleged by him. When he saw himself exposed to the public scoffs of the people, he gave a shove to the pillars of the palace, causing it to fall that he might die with the rest under its ruins, and might cease to be longer the scorn of that people. So lest the said Franceschini may be ridiculed for his tricks, it is fitting that he and his companions pay the penalty merited by their crime. For these are pernicious to the State and to that peace and security which litigants in the Courts of Rome ought to enjoy, if we would maintain what the vigilance of the Supreme Pontiff Alexander VII., and his successors, has provided. For they have published a Constitution as to that, and with it Banns, successively promulgated. The sacred order of such laws should be observed all the more willingly, inasmuch as Guido had chosen the judicial way to vengeance, and the appeals made to the Supreme Pontiff, who is most eager to do what is just, were sent back to his judges. Nor could Guido grieve for this without some pretended injury, as is evident; hence the Anonymous Writer wished to ascribe it to the aggravation by which the anger of Franceschini had been exasperated. This clearly shows with what intent he had broken into such detestable excesses. [File-title of Pamphlet 16.] _By the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Governor of the City in Criminal Cases_: _ROMAN MURDER-CASE._ _For Count Guido Franceschini and his Associates, Prisoners, against the Fisc._ _Reply as to law, by the Honourable Advocate of the Poor._ _At Rome, in the type of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber, 1698._ ROMANA HOMICIDIORUM [PAMPHLET 16.] Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord: I omit further discussion with my Lord Advocate of the Fisc about the communication of his allegations, because the time is brief, and I have professed great reverence for him since my youth. Let me also pass over the claim that when one is arguing about death inflicted by a husband upon his wife, not in the act of taking her in adultery, but after an interval, mere suspicion, however strong, is not sufficient to redeem him from the ordinary penalty of the Cornelian law, but that the clearest proof of the adultery is required, as is claimed by our opponents. Yet we have proved the contrary in our former argument, § _quamquam ad hoc_. And Dondeus, Sanfelicius, and Muta, who were not cited there, hold that it is quite enough if the couple be found alone in some retreat; and No. 3 says especially if the wife be beautiful. [Citation.] See the word of Ovid: "Great is the strife of modesty with beauty, And man keeps eagerly craving it." [_Heroides_, Paris to Helen.] So in the present case, according to the same author: "By this young and passionate man is she supposed to have been returned still a virgin?" [_Heroides_, 5, 109.] At present, we are dealing with a case not merely of clearest proof, but also of notorious fact; because we have a decree of this very Tribunal by which such adultery was declared. Although the words of this decree have been given in the present information, § _Absque eo quod_, yet I wish to repeat them here, because they are so clear: "Giuseppe Maria Caponsacchi, of Arezzo, for complicity in the flight of Francesca Comparini, and for criminal knowledge of the same, is banished for three years to Civita Vecchia." But I cannot pass over what is still claimed--that this decree was revoked--because, as I have said in my information, the truth is quite the contrary; for we have only the fact that in the mandate for imprisoning the sinning Canon the repetition of the whole decree, as given above, was omitted, and it was said: "For the cause, concerning which in the suit." These words are so far from showing a revocation that they rather offer confirmation of the said decree, as we have affirmed in our information, § _Nec verum est_. The same should be said of the like words furnished by the notary in the bond which Francesca Pompilia executed to keep the home of her father as a prison. This was when she was brought there from the nunnery, where she had been staying securely, on the grounds of her supposed infirmity, but I may say more truly that it was because of her pregnancy, which she wished to hide by some evil deed. [Our claim is all the more true] because this pretended revocation of the decree could not be made when the other side had not been heard, as I have said in my information, § _Eoque magis_. Likewise I cannot pass over what is said as to the Canon having been condemned only to the penalty of banishment because of defect of proof of adultery. For if such proof had not existed, how could my Lords Judges express in the decree that they condemned him for criminal knowledge of the same Francesca Pompilia? It is the truth that the judges held that the said adultery was most conclusively proved, and that the said Canon was convicted of the same, since in the prosecution nothing is wanting but the taking of them in the foul act; and this is not necessary to prove adultery. [Citations.] The penalty to which the said Canon was condemned did not indeed correspond with the said crime. As to this many replies may be made, but, because this has no connection with Count Guido let it also pass by. For however that may be, who can deny that Count Guido, on reading the said decree, which needed no comment, ought justly to be angered for the conjugal faith violated toward himself? And who can deny that he ought to be somewhat excused, if afterwards he took vengeance for such a violation? [Citations.] And this is true, although he took such vengeance after an interval, as was plainly demonstrated in my said past information, § _Nec verum est_. For there are few authorities who hold the contrary, and therefore it would be almost heretical to doubt the truth of such an opinion. [Citation.] Especially since this has been accepted in almost all the tribunals in the world, particularly in that of the Sacred Council, which establishes the precedent for all the other tribunals of the City and of the entire Ecclesiastical State. Hence Concioli affirms that it is almost like sacrilege to depart from this opinion. [Citation.] And is it not a fine pretence to wish to exclude the plainest proofs of adultery by the word of the very wife convicted of it, and then retained in the nunnery by reason of it, as my honourable Lord Procurator General of the Fisc has ingenuously acknowledged? For a person is not obliged to disclose his own baseness in the face of death, as we have proved in the said present information, § _Et quatenus_, and the § following. And since she had lived badly, not to say in utter baseness, to the injury of the honour and reputation of her husband, we inflict no injury on her by wishing to presume that even in death she did not come to her right mind, according to the saying: "He who lives badly dies badly." And no one, even in death, is presumed to be a Saint John the Baptist, as in my information, § _Nec valet dici_. As therefore it remains firmly established that Count Guido had just cause for killing, or causing to be killed, Francesca Pompilia, his wife, the same must be said as to the murder of Pietro and Violante, the father-in-law and mother-in-law. For in the prosecution of the said Francesca Pompilia for flight from her husband, proof also came to light that they had conspired in that same crime, and consequently were among the causes of the injured honour and reputation of Count Guido. And this injury to his honour had also resulted from what they had pretended and had exposed before every one--that his wife was not their daughter, nor legitimately born, but was the daughter of a harlot. And afterward they had received her into their home when she had been declared an adulteress. For either she was their daughter, and they ought not to deny it in Court, or else she was not their daughter, and they should not receive her into their home after she had been convicted of adultery. For in doing so they had, by that very act, declared that they had been and wished to be her panderers. [Citations.] The confession of Count Guido cannot be divided from its qualification, that he had demanded the murders for honour's sake. But it ought to be accepted by the Fisc along with the said qualification, as we have proved in our information, § _Huiusmodi enim confessio_. The authorities alleged to the contrary by my Lord Advocate of the Fisc hold good in a qualification, extraneous to the confession itself and which is not therefore proved otherwise, and when there is argument for some extraordinary penalty, and we have admitted this in our information, § _Præsertim_. But just as the plea of injured honour relieves Count Guido from the ordinary penalty for murder, so should he be excused from certain other ordinary penalties, laid in the Banns and Apostolic Constitutions against those bearing prohibited arms or committing other crimes. For I have said, and I repeat, that the just anger which excuses him from the one crime should also excuse him from the others, since this reason is everywhere and always in his favour, that he was not of sound mind, according to what was affirmed in our information from § _Agnoscit Fiscus_, down to § _quo vero ad litem_. And just as this cause is enough to gain for Count Guido a diminution of the penalty, so should it be considered to be sufficient likewise to gain that favour for his fellows, who as auxiliaries cannot be punished with a greater penalty than the principal himself, according to almost innumerable authorities, and they of great name, who were alleged in my past argument, § _quæ dicta sunt_, with the following, and in my present argument, § _Verum et Sociis_. To this, no response has been given by the other side. This is all the easier as regards Blasio Agostinelli, who has not at all confessed that he killed or wounded any one, but only that he was present, as we have formerly considered the matter in our information, § _Quoad Blasium_. And as to Domenico and Francesco, beside what has been deduced in favour of the others, they are foreigners, and are therefore not bound by the Banns of the Governor (for by these, men who live outside of the District are not bound) nor by the Apostolic Constitutions prohibiting the bearing of arms, as we have said in our past argument, § _Quae eo facilius_. This is all the more so since Domenico still asserts that he is a minor, and for this purpose he was so described in the prosecution (page 304). And as regards Francesco, beside the abovesaid description in the same prosecution (page 35), we have the baptismal register, which conclusively proves his age. [Citations.] For he was born the 14th day of February, 1674, from which it is evident that at the time of the commission of the crime, which is to be had in regard for punishment [Citations], he had not completed the twenty-fourth year of his age. And to one less than twenty-five years old the penalty should be diminished, etc. [Citations.] And this indeed is of necessity, and not at the discretion of the judge, because such diminution of penalty arises by advantage of law that has been passed and from intrinsic reason, diminishing the penalty. [Citations.] Although there are not lacking some authorities who think the contrary, namely that it all depends upon the discretion of the judge, yet our opinion is the truer and the more generally accepted in criminal causes which are not very atrocious. [Citations.] And when the crime is merely savage, or more savage, the judge is obliged by the very necessity of his duty to diminish the penalty, according to those authorities recently alleged. [Citations.] This opinion also has a place in the crime of murder, notwithstanding the order of the text. [Citations.] "If any one should make you a defendant under the Cornelian Law, it is suitable that your innocence shall defend and purge itself by your minority." For the order of this text should be interpreted thus, namely, that a delinquent who is a minor is not to be excused entirely, but is only to be punished more mildly, according to the old authorities who are cited with abundant hand by Farinacci. [Citations.] This is especially so when, as in the present case, the delinquent minor does not sin alone, but in company with others; for then he is presumed to be seduced by them, and therefore the ordinary penalty comes to be diminished the more readily for him. [Citations.] We do not know whither the Fisc pretends to turn for the destruction of these foundations in law, because my Honourable Lords, the counsellors of the Fisc, have claimed nothing as to this matter, either in their past argument or the present one. For when they claim to escape our exception by the Florentine Statute [Citation], that a minor of sixteen years is punished criminally, other responses are at hand: First, that the provision of this statute does not extend to crimes committed outside of the territory of the said State, but that the place of the crime and its statutes should be attended. Then these indeed cease, as they do in the present case, because the Banns of the Governor have no place when there is argument for the punishment of a foreigner. This fact arises from defect of power in the Prince or official establishing them, according to what was alleged in the past argument, § _Quae eo facilius_, and the one following. For then the criminal should be punished according to common law. [Citations.] The second response is that the statute says nothing else than that a minor of sixteen years cannot be punished with the ordinary penalty of the crime. Consequently it ought to hold good in our case, since we are indeed arguing about a minor exceeding sixteen years, but of one less than twenty-five years old. Such a rule should be drawn from Common Law, in view of which the said statute in such a case receives a passive interpretation. [Citations.] Caballus testifies that he saw it so practised in diminishing the penalty to one less than twenty-five years, that is to one who was eighteen years old. [Citations.] Finally the third response, and the one that lays the axe to the root of the tree, is that the Accused is not of the city of Florence, nor of its territory, but of the territory of Arezzo. But the city of Arezzo and its dependencies are not bound by the statutes of Florence; first because they are not called subjects, but vassals, of the said city of Florence; and, second, because the city of Arezzo has its own statutes. [Citations.] For reference is had to the ruling state, when other subject states have not their own statutes; but it is otherwise, if they have them. [Citations.] And so they are contrary, or incompatible. [Citations.] Soccinius [Citation] bears witness of what manner these statutes of Arezzo are, as compared with those of the city of Florence, etc., and this is plain from the Rubric, etc., where it is commanded that those under twenty-five years cannot be rendered liable, without certain ceremonies, as Paolo di Castro counsels. [Citation.] For from this statute it is sufficiently evident that in the said city and its environs a less age is the rule according to common law. So far as the Fisc may have foundations, which in our feeble judgment we have been unable to guess, I pray that these be kindly communicated to me, lest the poor accused minor may remain undefended. Finally, as regards Count Guido, I pray that notice be taken of the unfortunate condition of himself and of his noble family. For all of his family and connection have had enough to lament even to the last breath of their lives, when they look upon the ignominy brought upon them by this woman and her parents. And because of this, there has been doubt up to the very present moment whether one nearly related would go mad. And the excellent piety of our most clement Prince and Most Illustrious Lord has declared this, to whom the Accused himself with his whole heart commends himself in the Arguments made in his defence, not to speak of what they may learn about it from the Anonymous Author [Pamphlet 10]. [Citation.] DESIDERIO SPRETI, _Advocate of the Poor_. LETTER WRITTEN BY THE HONOURABLE SIGNOR GIACINTO ARCANGELI, PROCURATOR OF THE POOR, TO MONSIGNORE FRANCESCO CENCINI, IN FLORENCE, IN WHICH HE TELLS HIM THAT THE SENTENCE OF DEATH HAD BEEN EXECUTED IN ROME AGAINST THE GUILTY ON FEBRUARY 22, 1698--THAT IS, THAT FRANCESCHINI HAD BEEN BEHEADED, AND THE OTHER FOUR HANGED. [LETTER I.] To the illustrious Signor, my most worshipful Signor and Patron: Too late have arrived those proofs, which were sent to me by your Honour, on behalf of Signor Guido Franceschini of blessed memory. For when the Congregation of Monsignor the Governor had determined, in spite of the reasons given in his favour, that Signor Guido was guilty under the death penalty, I obtained, with much trouble to myself, some delay for proving his clergyship alleged by me. To this end a messenger was dispatched to Arezzo. But since the Sanctity of Our Lord [the Pope] did not deem it wise to postpone the execution of the sentence already decreed, he has seen best by special writ to make denial of any clerical privilege, which might have been claimed [in Guido's favour], and also as regards the minority of Francesco di Pasquini, one of the accomplices. Hence sentence against all five has been executed to-day, with distinction only in the manner of their death, as Guido's life was ended by decapitation. This consolation survives for his relatives and friends, that he has been pitied by all men of honour and by all good men. Confessing my own shortcomings, I cannot deny feeling infinite regret, as I attribute the whole outcome to my inability in offering the valid grounds. May God reward his house and all his friends with abundant blessedness for this tragic accident. Desiring your further commands, I reaffirm myself, as ever, Your Excellency's most obedient servant, GIACINTO ARCANGELI. ROME, _February 22, 1698_. To the illustrious Signor, my most worshipful Signor and Patron, Signor Advocate Francesco Cencini, Florence. LETTERS WRITTEN BY SIGNOR GASPERO DEL TORTO AND SIGNOR CARLO ANTONIO UGOLINUCCI TO THE AFORESAID MONSIGNORE FRANCESCO CENCINI. [Letter II.] The proofs you send did not arrive in time, because to-day finally, after so many disputes, the execution of poor Signor Guido has taken place, he having been beheaded, while the four cut-throats have been hanged. The case was decided Tuesday, but because it was a churchman who had sinned, and because it was claimed that the death-sentence was not in keeping therewith, a messenger was dispatched to Arezzo later on to get proofs of it. But the Pope yesterday set his hand thereto, and has decided the case, so that to-day it has so followed completely. Now that the will of God has been fulfilled that he should suffer such a punishment, it has at least been brought about, in view of the arguments made in his defence, that he died the death of a gallant man. For aside from the fact that he has died with exemplary courage, he has also been pitied by all gallant men, and his house has lost nothing in the matter of reputation. All Rome was there, as you may well believe. And [the mistake] cannot be made good with such speed as this may be written, because there have not been lacking admonitions of greatest consequence, since the Ambassador of the Emperor spoke of that point on Tuesday, as he himself told me day before yesterday; and than the matter was settled precipitately. I have finished the argument before the Congregation of the Council, and at any time that Monsignor Secretary wishes to take it, I think we shall be ready. I pray you favour me with those copies of the proof as soon as possible. And if Canon Philippo does not give us the opportunity, he should be good enough to acknowledge it to me that I may think of other measures, wishing once for all to get out of this imbroglio if it shall be possible. And finally, I remain with all reverence, my most illustrious and most excellent Signor, Your humble and obedient Servant, GASPERO DEL TORTO. ROME, _February 22, 1698_. To the most illustrious and most excellent Signor, my dear Signor, Signor Francesco Cencini, Florence. [Letter III.] My most illustrious and excellent Signor, my most worshipful Patron: Tuesday this most unfortunate case was brought up and the Congregation of the Governor decided--Delay and according to instructions. The instructions were that they would await the proofs of the well-known clericate. At this favourable decision the defence took heart and Guido's good friends began to breathe again. Then last evening at eight o'clock Monsignor signed of his own accord the warrant, in denial of the clergyship which might be alleged and of the minority of one of the accomplices. No sooner had he signed the warrant than the news of it sped throughout the City, and with it the assurance of the sentence, which has been executed to-day since dinner against the five; that is, the loss of his head in the case of Signor Guido, and the gallows for the other four accomplices. I will not tell your Excellency my own grief, because you yourself will be able to be a true witness of it. These proofs would have been of the greatest relevancy, but not in this case, because Monsignor wished it so. I enclose the Fisc's argument, except a single response, which I will send to you as soon as I can lay hands on it, that your Excellency may have the entire case. Now that Signor Advocate del Corto has abandoned his own interests I may serve your Excellency in the matrimonial case and in the other of Gomez. Therefore I set myself to all that in order that I may serve your Excellency, praying evermore your continual commands, that I may ever be your Excellency's obedient servant, CARLO ANTONIO UGOLINUCCI. ROME, _February 22, 1698_. [File-title of Pamphlet 17.] _By the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Governor in Criminal Cases, or by the Most Excellent Lord Venturini._ _ROMAN LAWSUIT._ _For the Heir-beneficiary of the former Francesca Pompilia, formerly wife of the former Guido Franceschini, against the Fisc and Associates in the Lawsuit._ _Memorial of Fact by the Honourable Procurator of the Poor._ _At Rome, in the type of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber_, 1698. ROMANA [PAMPHLET 17.] Most Illustrious and most Reverend Lord: In the contention most sharply and most learnedly carried on between the Defenders of the Poor and the Fisc in the case of the murders committed by persons led by Count Guido Franceschini against the person of Francesca Pompilia his wife, and Pietro and Violante Comparini, I refuse to descend into the arena, lest I may seem to fail in the office which I discharge in common with the said Defenders. My silent pity has delayed and let time slip by; because I believed it would be to the prejudice of Guido and his fellows imprisoned for that offence (in whose excuse the plea of injured honour is especially strong) if I should wish to push the defence (which was committed to me long ago) of the shame and honour of the same Francesca Pompilia; for her tender mind has been stained by no infamy arising from impure lust, and against her the suspicious husband could have made no objection, unless wife-murder had followed, as if from this he wished to prove the adultery merely because he could then kill his wife, and he killed her that she might be believed to be an adulteress. But now since the case has been most sadly terminated as regards all of those imprisoned (for thus these things terminated which should not have been begun) I begin anew the dispute over that most unfortunate question, and assert most safely (both for the reasons fully given in my argument for exclusion of the asserted rape, which is reassumed gratuitously, and for those more fully gathered by his Honour, My Lord Advocate of the Fisc, in his very learned allegations distributed in both presentations of the case), first that the memory of the aforesaid Francesca Pompilia should be utterly absolved from the crime of adultery, which was unjustly and all too bitterly charged upon her by her husband, and second that declaration should be made by a definitive sentence that she has never violated her marriage vow. And this is in spite of the fact that such insistence may seem incongruous. For although all crimes cease with the death of the criminal [Citations], nevertheless when a crime is atrocious, and of such a nature that it involves in itself a brand of infamy, its memory ever endures. And therefore it is worth while for the principal to vindicate the fame of the authoress from the asserted crime of adultery, etc. Pellegrini speaks as follows: "The thirteenth case is when the heirs of one dead, for the purpose of purging him from the infamy which works against him publicly on account of crime, wish that [the court] take knowledge of the crime itself, for the purpose of establishing his innocence, for this is conceded by law." And Bossius asserts: "Note that even if death does utterly remove any further penalty, yet the heirs of one who is dead may make a stand for his fame and honour, in order that a declaration may be made about that crime." And Caballus: "For although with the death of the delinquent, a crime may be said to be extinct so far as his own person is concerned, yet the heirs of the accused, in their own interest and to wipe out the infamy of the one who is dead, may petition that the court go on to give an opinion, and that it be declared that the dead one had not committed crime." And he affirms the same under the following number. And indeed this is not without manifest reason. For just as the Fisc may go further in the investigation of a crime that had been perpetrated during the lifetime of the one now dead, even for the purpose of damning his memory [Citations], likewise it cannot be denied by the principal himself, as the beneficiary heir and successor of the same Pompilia and Pietro Comparini, that inasmuch as her innocence is evident he may insist upon carrying away a sentence of absolution; for in other cases any one at all may have a chance to defend one who is dead. [Citations.] And to delay such a judgment it is not right that the flight again be alleged, which the said Pompilia made in the company of Canon Caponsacchi, with whom she was arrested at the inn of Castelnuovo. For to remove that charge it is quite enough for one to allege the judgment of this Most Illustrious Congregation, given under the date of February 18, last past, against Guido Franceschini, because of which he was publicly put to death on the twenty-second day following, notwithstanding the fact that, to avoid the penalty of wife-murder, he insisted solely upon the asserted adultery, which he claimed had resulted from the aforesaid flight from home. All suspicion whatsoever of her dishonesty ceases because of the defences then made and because, in the very prosecution, there was apparent a very just reason, on account of which the wretched wife attempted to flee thus from the home of her husband. Nor was it for the purpose of satisfying lust with the asserted lover, but that she might go back to her own hearth, and there, with her parents, might live a safe and honest life. This cause is very plainly proved by the notorious quarrels which arose on account of the poverty of the domestic establishment immediately after her arrival at the City of Arezzo along with Pietro and Violante Comparini in execution of the agreement included in the marriage-contract. And on account of this poverty the Comparini were obliged, after a few months, to go back to the City, with no small bitterness on account of the deception which they had detected. This is evident from the letters of Abate Paolo Franceschini, which presuppose these complaints that resulted from the said deception, and especially from the letter written March 6, 1694: "I write again to you that I do not wish to imitate him in his manner of writing, not being of his mind to sow broadcast in my letters such words as would well merit response by deeds, and not by words. And these are so offensive that I have kept them for his reproof and mortification." And further on: "So that if you give trouble, which I will never believe, you yourself will not be exempt therefrom." It is also evident from the letters given in my past information, and especially in § _Videns igitur_, with the one following. And although this does not show the nature of the altercation, yet, since Abate Paolo has not shown the letters written to himself, the presumption presses upon him very strongly that the complaints were just and that the cause of their quarrels and altercations was well founded. [Citations.] It is also true that a very bitter lawsuit was brought by Pietro Comparini for the nullification of the dowry contract and for the proof of the pretence of birth, which had been made by Violante, the mother, both to deceive her husband and to bar his creditors, who were pressing him hard at the time. And since the dowry included all the property and the entire patrimony of Comparini, which was of no small value when we consider the rank of the persons concerned, controversy had indeed been raised for a considerable amount by the father-in-law. And this, as experience teaches from time to time, is accustomed to bring forth implacable hatred and deadly enmity. [Citations.] It produced indeed such an effect for this unfortunate wife, so that the love of her husband, which had long been disturbed by the preceding altercations, was finally quite extinct. And this was so to such an extent that she often found herself exposed to deadly peril because of the severity of her husband, who at times pursued her with abuse, and again even with a pistol. And it cannot be questioned that such perils are quite suited to strike fear even into any hardy man. [Citations.] Hence it can be much more affirmed of Francesca Pompilia, a girl of tender age, who was destitute of all aid, and away from her own home and her parents. [Citations.] And Mogolon [Citation] declares that the mere sight of arms, even if the one who has them does not use them nor unsheath them, is just cause for fear; and in § 7, _No._ 15, he considers the absence of relatives as a ground for fear. And D. Rainaldi [Citation] says that it is enough if one sees signs or acts of manifest desire, or such as are preparatory. Therefore, since so many very relevant circumstances concur, on account of which Pompilia was moved to desert her husband's bed by flight, all suspicion whatsoever of dishonesty and of violated conjugal faith is utterly removed. For whenever we have two causes, one of which is lawful and permissible, while the other is iniquitous and abominable, the former is to be fully received, and thereby the charge of crime is quite excluded. [Citations.] [And this is true] in spite of the fact that this lawful cause may seem to be excluded [first] by the letter written by Francesca Pompilia to Abate Paolo. For in the letter, after she had thanked Abate Paolo because he had joined her in marriage with his brother, pretence is made that her parents gave her the depraved counsel to destroy the entire home and to go back to the City with her lover; [it also makes pretence] that since their departure she was enjoying a quiet and tranquil life. [Second] from the company of the Canon Giuseppe Caponsacchi, with whom she had fled; because of which he was banished to Civita Vecchia for three years. For however it may be with the asserted letter, whether it is substantiated or not, and whether or not the qualification should be considered probable, which is added in her sworn testimony by the same Pompilia, namely that her husband had marked the characters and she had blackened them with ink by tracing them with a pen, because she herself did not know how to write; yet it is certain that if the letter be read attentively it will be absolutely impossible to assert that she had written it with a calm mind. For who can be found so unmindful of filial love and duty toward parents as to persuade himself that this tender girl could have laid upon her parents such detestable crimes? Because at the time she was not more than fourteen years old, according to the certificate of baptism given in the Summary of the Fisc, in the second setting forth of the cause, No. 2. And she was away from her own home and still grieving for the very recent departure of her parents, and was badly treated in the home of her husband, as is clearly shown by the continual complaints and recourse made not merely to the most reverend Bishop, but also to the Lord-Commissioner of the city. Nor is it probable that she would have informed her brother-in-law, who was so very unsympathetic toward her, of these matters unless, as she has frankly confessed in her sworn examination, she was compelled thereto by her husband. Nor without very evident peril of death could she show any reluctance to him because of his excessive severity, which she had very often felt before. And as this improbability is well suited to strike horror into those who read it, so likewise it very well shows that the letter was not written voluntarily, but under compulsion. [Citations.] Caballus asserts that what no sane mind would approve is inadmissible. [Citation.] And indeed such excessive cunning in extorting the said letter from the wife plainly proves Guido's craft, and the fact that the letter was obtained by false pretence, in order that he might quiet the mind of the same Abate, his brother. For the latter had been harassed by continual complaints on account of ill treatment of the wife, and had not ceased to criticise Guido daily for them. [Citation.] As to her association with Canon Caponsacchi, this likewise does not seem enough to establish the blot of dishonour. For the most wretched wife was utterly destitute of all earthly aid and had vainly entreated the authority of the most reverend Bishop, and of the Lord-Comissioner, to free her from deadly peril; and on account of her age and sex it was not suitable that she should flee alone or in the company of some low-born serving-woman, for in that way she would carelessly expose herself to graver peril, as might have happened to her if she had been overtaken while alone on the journey. For then it could be said of her: "She fell upon Scylla while trying to avoid Charybdis." Therefore we should not be surprised if she took the aforesaid Canon as a companion. For he had been proposed to her by both Canon Conti and Gregorio Guillichini, who were related to Pompilia's husband. And it is utterly incredible that they would have consented to such a flight if they had not known it was quite necessary to evade the peril of death, which they very well knew was threatening the luckless wife, and if they had not had strong faith in the honesty and integrity of her companion. Therefore, as such a necessity was pressing so hard upon her, her prudent choice of the lesser evil eliminates any shadow whatsoever of her pretended dishonesty. [Citations.] [This is especially true when we] consider the manner in which the flight was executed, by taking the most direct road to the City with the utmost possible speed. And it very well shows that the sole motive was to save her life, and not to debase herself by licentious delights. For if this latter had indeed been the principal cause, she would not have gone to Rome by the shortest road, where she might immediately be taken by her brother-in-law and her parents, but would have gone to some more distant regions, or else she would not have gone with such swiftness, but would have delayed out of the public highway, and in a place where her husband could not find her, and where she could fulfil to satiety her lust. This utter improbability therefore very well shows the truth of the cause for flight adduced by the wife in her sworn testimony--namely that she had gone swiftly to the City in order that she might there place her life and honour in safety in the home of her parents. For just as the strongest sentence of blame may arise from mere probability, so likewise no less presumption of innocence should arise from this improbability. [Citations.] And this is strongly urged by the frank protestation made in the very act of arrest at the inn of Castelnuovo to the husband himself by the Canon, who rebuked him concerning this flight: "I am a gallant man, and what I have done, I have done to free your wife from the peril of death." So testifies Jacopo, son of the former Simon, a witness for the Fisc, in the prosecution for flight (page 50). And an example was offered by me in my allegation as regards that flight, namely that of Scipio Africanus. For when the beautiful young wife of Aleucius, the chief of the Celtiberi, had been captured by Scipio's soldiers, he said in restoring her to her husband: "Your wife has been with me as she would be with her own parents. Her virtue has been preserved for you so that she can be given back to you again, a gift unviolated and worthy of me and you." Titus Livius bears witness to this in his _Histories_, book 26, and page 493 in my volume. And although it may be very difficult for a beautiful woman to preserve the decorum of her honour while journeying in the company of a young lover, yet it is not utterly impossible, as the examples seem to show, which were related in my allegation, § _Quidqud dicat_. And to these I add that of Penelope, of whom Ovid sings in book 3 of his elegies [_Amores_, III., 4, 23]: "Although she lacked a guard, Penelope continued chaste among so many suitors." And this is especially true since neither the journey nor the company of the Canon were voluntary, but were merely for the purpose of avoiding the peril of death. And since such necessity was present, the presumption drawn from Ovid's _Ars Amandi_ is rendered still further inapplicable, namely that "From a passionate young man, can she be believed to have returned a virgin?" [_Heroides_, 5, 129.] Nor do the letters which were found in the closet of the inn at Castelnuovo seem to stand in the way and hinder the sentence petitioned, and impose a blot of infamy upon Francesca Pompilia. It is claimed that these were written by her to the Canon on account of the very devoted love with which she was pursuing him. But the exceptions and responses made in the past informations hold good. The first is that they were not acknowledged by her, nor was the identity of the handwriting proved; and some uncertainty is still present, since it is not evident to whom they were directed; nor would it be improbable that they might have been framed by the husband. For he was present at the capture and search, and hoped, indeed, that therefrom might result more readily the fixing of the crime of adultery. And he insisted very strongly upon this, in order that he might gain the desired dowry and lucre. This mere possibility to the contrary is enough to avoid the proof, which it is claimed may be drawn from them. [Citations.] The second response is that, even though such exceptions as the above might not hold good, yet no proof of violated conjugal faith and of dishonour can be drawn from these letters. For even though proof of adultery may result from love-letters, it is utterly excluded in our case when we see that they were directed to a licit end, namely toward soliciting the Canon that he might afford her aid in her flight and that she might avoid deadly peril. For then, just as the end is permissible, so should the means also be considered lawful and permissible, even though suspicion is not lacking; for these should be considered, not in themselves, but on account of their end. [Citations.] But indeed, unless from the love-letters themselves there result an implicit confession of fornication, proof of adultery cannot be drawn from them. [Citations.] It should be specially noted that she had very strong confidence in her own continence and in the integrity of the Canon. And she trusted him much, and hoped that he would conduct himself modestly during the journey, since it is evident from these same letters that she had found fault with him for his freedom once: "And I marvel, that you who have been so chaste, have composed and copied matters that are so dishonourable." And further on: "But I would not have you do in any case as you have done in these books. The first of them is honourable, but the other octaves are quite the contrary. I cannot believe that you, who have been of such honour, have become so bold." For such sincere objurgation and the very tenor of the letters in which no dishonesty is read, clearly show and declare the spirit of Pompilia, who wrote them. For just as words are to be understood according to the thought of the one proffering them, so likewise should letters be interpreted according to the intention of the one writing them. [Citations.] Since therefore the honour and modesty of Pompilia is vindicated from the flight and the letters, of still lighter weight are the other proofs of pretended dishonour. These are deduced from the approach of the Canon to her home for the purpose of speaking to her; from the insidious manner in which the flight was prepared and put into execution, by means of an opiate administered to her husband and the servants; from their mutual kisses on the journey; and from their sleeping together at the inn of Castelnuovo. For beside the general response that no conclusive proof is offered for all these, such as would be necessary to establish Pompilia as guilty of adultery, there is a separate response for each of them. The entry and egress at night time into the home of Francesca rests merely upon the deposition of a single witness, Maria Margherita Contenti, who is under two very relevant exceptions: namely those of singleness and of harlotry. Her word therefore can impose no blot of infamy. [Citations.] And since such approach would tend toward the single end of arranging for the flight and rescue of the unfortunate wife from the very imminent peril of death, it should not be presumed to be for an evil end. For when an express cause is plainly present, to which a matter may be referred, and this cause is entirely lawful, the matter should not be attributed to a cause that is illicit and criminal. [Citation.] The insidious manner, also, whereby Francesca Pompilia put into execution the flight, by preparing an opiate for her husband and all the household (aside from the fact that it is not proved), would afford proof of sagacity rather than of dishonour, even if it were proved. For the wife would have been very foolish if she had attempted flight without such a precaution. Under the same lack of proof labours the asserted mutual kissing during the journey; for that proof is entirely too slight, which is pretended to result from the deposition of a single witness of the lowest class. Especially since his word is shown to be too much prejudiced; for he swears that, while he was driving the carriage swiftly at night time, he saw Francesca Pompilia and the Canon kissing each other. Nor does he give any reason, as that the moon was shining, or that some artificial light was present to dispel the darkness. Inasmuch as such a detail is necessary in a witness who is testifying about a deed at night time, its omission takes away all confidence in him. [Citations.] For there is to be added another very strong improbability, namely that, while he was driving the carriage with such velocity that it seemed to fly rather than to run, he could see their mutual kissing by looking backward. Still more is this improbability increased by the very word of this same witness, since he swears that he had driven Pompilia without knowing that it was she, until afterward returning to Arezzo, he had met Guido Franceschini, her husband, following her. Because if he had seen her kiss, he would have recognised her straightway, since he had often seen her before and she was well known to him. And therefore it should be absolutely declared that, either influenced by the tedium of his secret prison, he had been compelled to swear so, or, as is more probable, since on account of the very great speed of the carriage the bumping together of those seated therein might chance, he had believed that this chance jostling of their heads and faces was for the base purpose of kissing. Hence the proof arising from his deposition was justly held in contempt in the prosecution for flight. And it would have been considered if it had had any probability. Finally the proof of dishonour drawn from the asserted sleeping together in the same tavern at Castelnuovo is far weaker, since it was constantly denied by both Pompilia and Caponsacchi in their testimony. And only a single witness, the house-man of the same tavern, swears to it; and this also not from certain knowledge, but presumptively, because they had asked him for a room with a single bed. Canon Caponsacchi frankly confesses why he had ordered that only a single bed should be prepared--namely that Francesca Pompilia, who was worn out because of ill-health and the discomfort of their precipitate journey, might rest a little, while he himself kept guard. Such an act should not be assigned to an illicit cause, as Cravetta [Citation] advises in such circumstances. And in No. 15, he says that interpretation should always incline to the humaner side, even when the rigorous side may seem the more likely. And the same author continues thus in _Nos._ 20 _and_ 21. For it would not suffice as a full proof of adultery that any one be found alone and naked with her alone and naked, and that a young man be found unclothed and with shoes off in a closed chamber with a woman. Much less can such proof arise from a very brief delay in the same chamber for the purpose of keeping watch. Very slightly does it stand in the way that Francesca Pompilia, in her cross-examination, concealed this delay by asserting that she had arrived at the tavern at dawn. For she was very well aware of the credulousness of her husband, and possibly asserted this to avert further suspicion of violated honour, which certainly might have arisen if she had confessed that she had spent a longer time in the tavern. As even if she had not denied such a stay, the confession under circumstances that still argue for the preservation of her modesty would not have been to her prejudice, so likewise the lie can do no injury. [Citations.] But all suspicion of pretended dishonour is quite eliminated by the assertion of the most unfortunate woman, which was made in the very face of death, after many severe wounds had been inflicted upon her by her husband. [For she declared that] she had never sinned against her marriage vow, as is very evident from the numerous depositions of religious men, who ministered to her in death. They assert that they heard her continually praying that she might be given no forgiveness by the Divine Clemency for such a sin. This assertion made in the very face of death, deserves all faith, since no one placed in that condition is presumed to be so unmindful of eternal safety as to be willing to lie. [Citations.] Finally, no foundation for accusing the memory of Francesca Pompilia of dishonesty can be established upon the asserted decree of this most Illustrious Congregation, by whom Canon Caponsacchi was condemned to three years' banishment in Civita Vecchia, with a statement made of his running away and criminal knowledge of Francesca Pompilia. For, as the Fisc himself admits, there was demanded by me, though not _in extenso_, the modification of that title by the honourable Judges, with the approval of his Excellency the Governor. And therefore, in the order for imprisonment, these words were suppressed and others were put in their place: _Pro causa de qua in actis_. All further difficulty is removed from the mere consideration that such a decree had been issued, while no defences had been made for Francesca Pompilia, and while she was still utterly without a hearing. For she had not the slightest knowledge of it, since she had not been notified. But in the decree for the assignment of the home as a prison, only a cause relative to the trial was expressed. Hence it could not injure her, since it was issued against a third party while she herself had not been cited. [Citations.] And in the circumstances that a sentence given against an adulterer can do no injury to the adulteress when she has not been cited is the text. [Citations.] "If he is condemned, the wife is not condemned thereby, but shall carry on her own case." [Citation.] This is especially true since we are not now contending to free the husband from wife-murder, and to infer a just cause apart from belief in the dishonour of the wife resulting from the said decree, and which would excuse him from the penalty of the Cornelian law. In this case, the changing of the said decree might possibly serve for an escape. But we are contending about the damning of the memory of a woman now dead, and about rescuing her and her family from infamy. And in the latter case just as such a harsh decree could not injure her during her lifetime, so likewise it cannot do her injury after her death. ANTONIO LAMPARELLI, _Procurator of Charity_. [in old writing.] And according to the letter of Carolo Antonio Ugolinucci, May 17, 1698, I understand that the Criminal Court after two votes, decided on absolution. INSTRUMENT OF FINAL JUDGMENT [PAMPHLET 18.] Given for the restoration of the good name and reputation of Francesca Pompilia, now dead; formerly the wife of Guido Franceschini of Arezzo, now dead; for acquittal in favour of Domenico Tighetti, as an heir beneficiary of the same Francesca Pompilia, from all disquietude, all molestations, vexations, and perturbations, brought or threatened to be brought by the Venerable Monastery of Saint Mary Magdalene of the Convertites in the Corso; together with the citations lawfully executed in observation of the four terms to instruct themselves as to the appeal and its legal prosecution, in order that the same sentence might pass on, as it has passed on, to judgment, because no appeal has been interposed. In the name of God, Amen. September 9, 1698, under the sixth declaration in the eighth year of the Pontificate of the Most Sacred Father in Christ, etc., Innocent XII., Pope by Divine Providence. This is a copy, or transcript, of the citations made by my own act, and written below, and of the sentence rendered respectively of the following tenor, namely: The Most Reverend and Most Illustrious Governor in criminal matters: Let the undernamed principals on the other side be cited, etc., to appear in the Criminal Court to-morrow, which will be the nineteenth day of the current month, at the accustomed hour of convening court, lest it seem good that each and all the terms be repeated as ill founded, and that they therefore are to be held and observed as null and void in their force for any powers whatsoever, and lest the one so insisting be freed from censures, so far as, etc., it be concluded, or seem best to be concluded in the case, and that the final sentence be heard in due form according to the aforesaid insistence by Domenico Tighetti, heir-beneficiary of the former Francesca Pompilia, the wife of the former Guido Franceschini, as principal, or, etc. NOTARY FOR THE POOR. The Most Illustrious Francesco de Gambi, Procurator General of the Fisc, and of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber. The Honourable Giovanni Maria Serbucci, Procurator and Manager of the lawsuit brought by the former Guido Franceschini. The Honourable Francesco Paracciani, Procurator of the Venerable Monastery Santa Maria Magdalena of the Convertites in the Corso. Against the Procurator General of the Fisc, etc. He says that no sentence can be given, unless in favour of the Fisc, and so far as, etc., insists that he be granted delay for the purpose, and in the meantime they cannot go on to any expediting of the cause, except for reason given in full court, and by the vote of the Lords thereof, and by testimony of the opposition in prison, and without citing all who have interest, etc., this 18th day of August, 1698. FRANCESCO GAMBI, _Procurator General of the Fisc_. I have made the above citation against the Fisc personally this day, and against the others by copy, which was sent to their homes, this August 18, 1698. BALATRESIUS. ALOYSIUS PICHIUS, _Substitute for the Fiscal General_. _August 19, 1698._ When he had made statement of fact, Antonio Lamparelli, Procurator, presented his case and petitioned as above. Thereupon the Most Illustrious and Most Excellent Lord, Marcus Antonius Venturinus, J.V.D., who holds the judicial bench, for the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Governor of our dear City in criminal cases, gave sentence, as in this schedule, which he has taken in his own hands, has seen, read, and subscribed, and given and consigned to me as a notary for publication of the following tenor, etc., in the presence of Antonio Bernardino Piceno and Antonio Toparino of Caprarola, witnesses, etc. In favour of Domenico Tighetti, in the name, etc., against the Fisc and those consorting with him in the suit. In the name of Christ, whom we have invoked, we who sit for this Tribunal, and who have only God before our eyes, give this as our definitive sentence, which we offer in these writings by the advice of those skilled in law, in the cause or causes which have been tried before ourselves in the first place, or in the second, and which are now being considered, between Domenico Tighetti, as heir-beneficiary of the former Francesca Pompilia, wife of the former Guido Franceschini of Arezzo, on the one part; and the Fisc and Giovanni Maria Serbucci as Procurator and Manager of the lawsuit of the former Guido Franceschini, and Francesco Paracciani, Procurator of the Monastery of Santa Maria Magdalena of the Convertites in the Corso, for all their rights and parts in that interest, on the other part; concerning and upon the pretended adultery committed by the said former Francesca Pompilia with Canon Giuseppe Maria Caponsacchi, and as regards other matters in the conduct of the cause or causes of this kind, more fully deduced, etc. By authority of the decree for the remission of the case, which was made by the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Auditor S.S., by the acts of Pascasius, concerning which in the conduct, etc., and for cause given in the Court, and by vote of the same, we say, pronounce, declare, and finally adjudge from what has been newly deduced, that _proof is not established as regards the pretended adultery_, and therefore the memory of the same Francesca Pompilia should be and is _entirely_ restored to her pristine good name and reputation; and that the same Domenico Tighetti, in whose name the above was deduced, should be and is absolved and liberated from each and all disquietudes, molestations, vexations, and perturbations brought, or threatened to be brought, by occasion of these as on account of the statement of these we have restored, absolved, and freed him, as above. And for this restitution and absolution and freedom, we wish and command that it be held as law that the suit or suits, of whatever nature, which have been brought thereupon be abolished, as we abolish them. And we charge that perpetual silence be imposed upon the Fisc and his consorts in the suit. And we have thus spoken, pronounced, declared, and finally given sentence, not only, etc. I, Marcus Antonius Venturinus, who hold the judicial bench have so pronounced. Given on this 19th day of August, in the presence of Antonio Bernardino Piceno, and Antonio Toparino of Caprarola, Witnesses, etc. By the Most Illustrious Governor of the City in criminal cases, or the Most Excellent Lord Venturini. Let the undernamed be cited for learning the appeal, and its lawful prosecution for the first time, at the aforesaid instance of Domenico Tighetti, as principal heir-beneficiary of the aforesaid Francesca Pompilia, formerly wife of Guido Franceschini: CHARITAS. The Honourable Giovanni Maria Serbucci, as Procurator and Manager of the legal proceedings of the said former Guido Franceschini, as principal on the other side. The Honourable Francesco Paracciani, the Procurator of the Venerable Monastery and Convent of St. Mary Magdalene of the Convertites in the Corso for all, etc. I have made the said citation at his home, August 31, 1698. MOLINELLUS. _September 1, 1698._ When we had made statement of fact, R. D. Alexander Cassar, Substitute Procurator of Charity, appeared, petitioned, and was granted, as above. By the Most Illustrious Governor of the City in criminal causes, or by the Most Excellent Lord Venturini. Let those named below be cited for learning of the appeal and its legitimate prosecution this second time, at the aforesaid instance of Domenico Tighetti, heir-beneficiary of the former Francesca Pompilia, formerly wife of the former Guido Franceschini, principal, or, etc. CHARITAS. D. Giovanni Maria Serbucci, as Procurator and Manager of the lawsuit brought by the former Guido Franceschini, as the principal on the other side. D. Francesco Paracciani, Procurator on the other side for the Venerable Monastery and Convent of St. Mary Magdalene of the Convertites in the Corso, for all, etc. September 1, 1698, I have made this. MOLINELLUS. By the Most Illustrious Governor in criminal causes, or by the Most Excellent Lord Venturini. September 3. When he had made statement of fact, R. D. Alexander Cassar, Substitute Procurator of the Poor, appeared, petitioned, and was granted, as above. Let those named below, be cited for learning of the appeal and its lawful prosecution, this third time, at the aforesaid instance of Domenico Tighetti, heir-beneficiary of the former Francesca Pompilia, wife of the former Guido Franceschini, as principal, or, etc. CHARITAS. D. Giovanni Maria Serbucci, as Procurator and Manager of the lawsuit brought by the former Guido Franceschini, as principal on the other side. D. Francesco Paracciani, Procurator of the other side for the Venerable Monastery and Convent of Santa Maria Magdalena of the Convertites in the Corso, for all, etc. I made this September 3, 1698. MOLINELLUS. SEPTEMBER 4, 1698. When he had made statement of fact, R. D. Alexander Cassar, Substitute Procurator of the Poor, appeared, petitioned, and was granted as above. By the Governor in criminal causes, or the Most Excellent Lord Venturini. Let those named below be cited for learning of the appeal and its lawful prosecution, this fourth time, and of the final presentation, and the decree, etc., at the aforesaid instance of Domenico Tighetti, heir-beneficiary of the former Francesca Pompilia, formerly wife of the former Guido Franceschini, as principal, or, etc. CHARITAS. D. Giovanni Maria Serbucci, as Procurator and Manager of the lawsuit brought by the former Guido Franceschini as principal on the other side. D. Francesco Paracciani, as Procurator of the Venerable Monastery and Convent of Santa Maria Magdalena in the Corso, for all, etc. I have done this, September 4, 1698 BALATRESIUS. _September 5, 1698._ When he had made statement of fact, R. D. Alexander Cassar, Substitute Procurator of the Poor, appeared, petitioned, and was granted, as above. I, Domenico Barlocci, Notary of the Court of Criminal Causes of the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Governor of the City, as Notary for the Poor, have found this copy correct by collating it, although it was extracted from the original documents by one who is trustworthy in my eyes, etc. In pledge of the above, I have subscribed and have published it, as I am required to do. [The seal of the said Notary.] THE SECONDARY SOURCE OF THE RING AND THE BOOK A CONTEMPORARY MANUSCRIPT PAMPHLET "The following pages contain a MS. contemporaneous account of the execution of the principal actors in the tragedy which has been immortalised in the poem of the _Ring and the Book_. "I am enabled by the kindness of my friend, Mr. Browning, to give it a place in these Miscellanies of the Philobiblion Society." JOHN SIMEON. (I shall not attempt to say with what a feeling I correct proof-sheets received on the day subsequent to that which brought the intelligence of the death of this great-hearted and noble-minded man, characteristically good and gracious to the very last.) R. B., May 24, 1870. The above words are the introduction by Sir John Simeon and the comment by the poet (Philobiblion Society Miscellanies, xii. 1868-9), on the reprint of the subsequent pamphlet in the original Italian. It was found in London by one of Browning's acquaintances, who, knowing the poet's interest in the subject, sent it to him. Internal evidence indicates that it was probably written (but not published) some few years after the crime, and it is more popular in style than any part of _The Book_. The writer during the first half of his pamphlet follows closely the affidavit of Pompilia and the second anonymous pamphlet [No. 15] of _The Book_. He then adds much interesting information as to the murder and the pursuit, arrest, trial, and execution of the criminals. Browning uses almost every scrap of additional information it affords. He accepts its fact with the same fidelity he shows in using _The Book_, and uses it extensively and without discounting its value as compared with the official record. It is therefore treated as an essential portion of the present source-study. Its new matter will be indicated by italics in the following translation. Mrs. Orr has published somewhat less than half of the pamphlet in her _Handbook_ in translation, which has been reprinted in the Camberwell Browning, and in the _Browning Guide Book_ by G. W. Cook. The present version is made directly from the Italian text of the Philobiblion Society reprint. THE DEATH OF THE WIFE-MURDERER GUIDO FRANCESCHINI, BY BEHEADING Guido Franceschini, a nobleman of Arezzo, in Tuscany, had stayed for some time here in Rome in the service of a person of some eminence. He decided to take a wife with dowry enough to be of advantage to his own house. When he had revealed this desire to a certain hairdresser _near the Piazza Colonna_, she proposed to him the Signora Francesca Pompilia, thirteen years of age, the daughter of a certain Pietro Comparini and Violante Peruzzi. For beside the promised dowry, she was heir to the reversionary interest in bonds and other properties worth about 12,000 scudi. When he had heard of this advantageous dowry, which seemed to him to be quite to his point, he lost no time in revealing it to his brother Abate Paolo, who had dwelt here in Rome for many years in the service of a Cardinal. He went along with Guido to the mother of the young woman, as they flattered themselves that they would succeed better in this way than by demanding her of the father, who was somewhat hard to approach. When they had made it appear that their income was of considerable amount, they succeeded in their intent; although it was then found out that their entire capital did not amount to the total of their income as given in that note. It was easy for Franceschini to win over this woman, as _she was driven by the ambition of establishing her daughter in the home of persons of good birth_. She gave her own consent, and so worked upon her husband as to induce him to sign the marriage bond. Then when Comparini had been informed by a person who knew the resources of Franceschini, that they were quite different from what they had been represented to him, he changed his mind, nor did he wish under any consideration to carry out the marriage. _He gave as a pretext the very tender age of his daughter_, along with other reasons. The mother of Francesca, however, not seeing any chance to give her daughter to Franceschini, had her secretly _married during December_, 1693, _in San Lorenzo in Lucina_. When this marriage reached the ears of Comparini, he was much angered at Violante. But she had such a gift of gab that Comparini not only agreed to it, but beside the dowry of 2,600 scudi, _on which he had already paid 700 scudi, he also made gift of his entire possessions to the couple_. After several days, Franceschini decided to conduct his wife and her parents back to Arezzo, _and this took place in the same December_. When they had arrived there, the parents of the wife could see that the state of their son-in-law was much worse than they had imagined it. Therefore they were all the more embittered at the penuriousness they showed in the food, and many other matters. _One morning while they were at the table they heard their daughter_ [Violante according to _The Book_] _denied fire for warming her bed_, and saw the Franceschini practise many other cruelties toward her. They were much troubled at it, and _all the more so when they saw a Canon of the Franceschini household, a brother of the husband, rush upon their daughter_ [Violante according to _The Book_]. _He struck Francesca with a dagger in his hand, who had to make her escape by running into a room and shutting the door. Then one evening her father went to visit a friend, and when he had come back home he found the door shut. Therefore his daughter, who was still awake, was obliged to go downstairs to open it for him, but not without first having called her husband, who never even opened an eye. Then when she had gone down to open the door and had gone outside a few steps to meet her father, all of a sudden she found herself shut outside the house along with her father. For that reason they were both of them obliged to sleep outside of the house that night, her father at the inn and the daughter at one of the neighbours._ Therefore, more and more, as the days passed, the Comparini decided to return to Rome. But as they were without money they were obliged to beg it of Franceschini, who _scarcely gave them the necessary expenses of the journey_. When the old Comparini had departed, Franceschini thought to hide what had happened. He constrained his wife to write to Rome to the Abate, his brother, to tell him that she cherished in her heart his memory. This letter was dictated by the husband himself. The ignorant girl did as Guido wished, whose purpose was to have it believed that his parents-in-law were the fomentors of the dissension which prevailed between the couple and the relatives of Franceschini. When the Comparini had reached Rome, ill-contented as they were with the house of their son-in-law, for whom they now saw they had sacrificed their daughter, they did not know how to hold their peace about that matter, of which they themselves had been the cause. All the more so when they were harassed for the remainder of the dowry, beside the fact that they saw the rest of their property in danger. While affairs were in this state a Jubilee was announced; under these circumstances Violante Comparini revealed in confession that Francesca Pompilia, who was married to Franceschini, was not their daughter, but that the birth had been pretended. She had in fact been born of a _poor widow, a foreigner_, and had then been adopted to bring it about that the reversionary interest would fall to their house, and hence to make good the many debts of her husband. _When the confessor heard this, he charged her to reveal all the affair to her husband himself. Violante obeyed, and Comparini was greatly surprised at it, and rebuked his wife sharply._ He then submitted the matter to judgment before Monsignor Tomati; the following was spoken in sentence: It should be maintained that Francesca Pompilia shall be and is in quasi-possession of her relationship as daughter. Therefore appeal was taken by Comparini to the Tribunal of the Sacred Rota, but the suit still remains undecided. In the meantime the Franceschini, seeing that they had been deluded by this circumstance, since they could not get possession of the residue of the dowry, redoubled their cruelties to the poor Pompilia even to the point of threatening her with death. Hence she was very often obliged to save herself by fleeing into some other house, or before the authorities, or even into the presence of the Bishop, _whom she finally begged to save her by putting her in some monastery_. But this prelate thought it better to send her back to her husband's home, urging him not to mistreat her. When the unfortunate woman saw that the admonitions of this Bishop had been useless, and that this way of softening the heart of her husband and his relatives had proved vain, and when they reproved her for sterility and for coquetry, and for other faults of their own imagining, she betook herself to an Augustinian, Romano, that he might write to his Superiors or to her parents to find some provision for her. But although the Father promised to do as she desired, his letters never reached their destination. The wretched woman was therefore desperate and determined to get to Rome in some manner or other. She told the whole matter to Canon Conti, a relative of the Franceschini, to whom she made a most pathetic picture of her situation. He was moved thereby, and answered that he would aid her, as he did, by offering to have her taken to Rome by Canon Caponsacchi, his friend, since he himself ought not and could not do it. When the circumstances had been told to Caponsacchi, he was opposed to it, for fear of incurring the anger of the Franceschini; but when he had been urged both by Conti and the woman, he consented thereto. And on the last Monday of April the wife arose from bed as soon as day dawned, without her husband knowing about it. She took some things of her own, some jewels, and money, left the house, and at the gate of the city found Caponsacchi, who was awaiting her with a carriage. They mounted together and set out on the road toward Rome. When Franceschini awoke and discovered the flight of his wife, as he already suspected that she had started for Rome, he began to pursue her, and on the following Tuesday [should be Wednesday] overtook her at Castelnuovo in the post-house, where she was in company with Caponsacchi. The young woman was not at all terrified at the sight of her husband, but on the contrary she mustered her courage and reproved him for all the cruelties practised upon her, because of which she had been forced to this step. Then Franceschini was thunderstruck, and did not know how or what to respond. Hence he thought it best to have recourse to the authorities. The fugitives were arrested by the Governor of the place, and both of them were taken to Rome and placed in the New Prisons, and were charged with adultery because they had run away together. He tried to prove the charge by certain love-letters which had been found, and by the deposition of the driver. But as the adultery was not proved, the Canon was condemned for three years to Civita Vecchia, and the wife was shut into the monastery of the Scalette on the Lungara. When the husband therefore saw that this had not helped him in gaining the dowry, he decided to go back to his own country, leaving the care of his case in the hands of his brother, the Abate, who was in the service of a Cardinal. But although the Abate tried by many a turn to succeed in his intent before the tribunals, he could not achieve it. Hence he also decided to leave Rome. And he was spurred all the more by its becoming known that his sister Pompilia was with child. For this reason, the Governor of Rome had constrained him to consent that she should keep her own home as a prison, under security of 300 scudi to present herself at every demand of the Tribunal. The Abate indeed was unwilling to give his consent unless Pietro Comparini should first assume obligation, by an official document, to furnish her with food. _And then, when he had obtained the permission of his Cardinal, he sold his furniture and books_, and when he had made them pay over the 47 scudi which had been found upon Pompilia at Castelnuovo, he left Rome. After that Pompilia bore a son, _whom she named Gaetano, after the saint to whom she made her vows_. Franceschini, who was now overwhelmed with manifold troubles, and was urged on now by honour and again by self-interest to take vengeance, at last yielded to his base thoughts and planned to kill his sixteen-year-old wife and her parents. When four other criminals had been admitted to the scheme, he left Arezzo, _and on Christmas eve reached Rome. He stopped at Ponte Milvio, where there was a villa of his brother. There he remained in hiding with his followers until a time opportune for the execution of his designs should come._ They spied out all the ways of the Comparini family, and on January 2, _which was Thursday_, at about seven o'clock in the evening, he approached the Comparini home with his companions. He left on guard at the street door Biagio Agostinelli and Domenico Gambassini, and knocked at the door. When he had said that he brought a letter of Canon Caponsacchi from Civita Vecchia the door was opened to him. Immediately this cut-throat Franceschini, assisted by the other two criminals, leaped upon Violante who had opened it and struck her dead to the ground. Pompilia in this crisis extinguished the light, hoping thus to escape the assassins, _and ran to the neighbouring door of a locksmith crying out for help. But when she saw that Franceschini was provided with a lantern she went to hide under the bed_; but she was dragged from there, and was barbarously slain _with 22 wounds_ by the hand of her husband. Not content with that, he dragged her to the feet of Comparini, who was likewise wounded by one of the other assassins, _and was crying out_ "_confession_." _When the uproar of this horrible slaughter was heard abroad, people ran thither, but the criminals succeeded in escaping. But in their haste one of them left his cloak, and Franceschini his cap, which betrayed him afterward._ The unfortunate Francesca Pompilia, under the burden of such wounds as those with which she had been cut to pieces, _implored the Holy Virgin for the favour of confession, and obtained her prayer_. Hence she survived some little while, and _was able to tell about this horrible crime. She told that after the deed was done her husband had asked of one of the cut-throats who had done the murder with him, if she were indeed dead. When that one had assured him, he replied: "Let us lose no time, but return to the vineyard."_ And so they made their escape. _In the meantime the police had been summoned, and came with a captain. A confessor was quickly called and also a surgeon who gave his attention to the luckless girl._ When the Governor had been informed of the outcome, he _immediately despatched Captain Patrizi_ to arrest the criminals. _When the posse arrived at the vineyard, he found that these were no longer there, but that about an hour ago they had left in the direction of the highway. Then Patrizi followed without interrupting his journey, and when he had reached the inn he learned from the host that Franceschini had demanded horses with threat of violence, but they had been denied him, because he lacked the necessary order._ Hence he had travelled afoot with his companions toward Baccano. _Patrizi continued his march, and, after taking the necessary precautions_, arrived at the tavern of Merluzza. There he found the assassins, who were straightway arrested. On them were found, still stained with blood, those daggers with which they had done the murders, and _upon Franceschini were found 150 scudi in money. This arrest indeed cost the life of Patrizi, because having been overheated and wounded with a slight scratch he died in a few days._ _Franceschini's dagger was of a Genoese pattern, triangular, and with certain hooks made in such a way that in wounding they could not be drawn from the wound without such laceration as to render the wound incurable._ _When the criminals were known to be at Ponte Milvio, in that very inn they were heard on their preliminary examinations by notaries and judges sent there expressly, and satisfactory confession was had._ _When the capture of the delinquents was known in Rome, a countless throng of people rushed thither to see them, while all the criminals were tied to their horses and conducted to Rome. It is told that Franceschini, while making the journey, asked one of the officers how in the world the crime had ever been discovered. And when he was answered that his wife, whom they had found still living, had revealed it, he was so astounded that he was, as it were, deprived of his senses. About five o'clock in the evening they reached the prisons. A certain Francesco Pasquini, of the town of Castello, and Alessandro Baldeschi of the same town, both of them 22 years old, along with Guido Franceschini had been the slayers of the Comparini. And Gambassini and Agostinelli were those who had stood guard at the street door._ _In the meantime there were exposed in San Lorenzo, in Lucina the bodies of the assassinated Comparini, who were so disfigured, and especially the wife of Franceschini, by wounds in the face that they were no longer recognisable._ The unfortunate Francesca, when she had taken sacrament and had pardoned her murderers, and had made her own will, died, not yet having completed her seventeenth year. This was on the 6th, which was the day of the Epiphany. She was able to justify herself against all the calumnies inflicted by her husband. _The surprise of the people at seeing the said bodies was great, because of the atrocity of the deed, which truly made them shudder_, seeing that two old septuagenarians and a young girl of 17 years had so wretchedly perished. As the trial of the criminals advanced, there were many arguments made on the matter, laying stress on all the more aggravating circumstances which accompanied this horrible massacre. Others also were made in the defence with much erudition, especially by the Advocate of the Poor, who was a certain Monsignor Spreti. He succeeded in delaying the sentence, because Baldeschi made denial, even though "the cord" was administered to him twice, under which he swooned. Finally he confessed, and the others did likewise. _They also revealed that they had planned to kill Franceschini himself, and to rob him of his money, because he had not kept his word to pay them as soon as they left Rome._ On February 22 was seen _in the Piazza del Popolo a great platform with mannaia, and two great gallows, which had been built for the execution of the criminals. Many stands were constructed for the accommodation of those curious to see such a terrible execution, and so great was the concourse of people that some windows brought as much as six dollars each. At the eighth hour [2 a.m.] Franceschini and his companions were informed of their death and were placed in the Consorteria. There they were assisted by Abate Panciatichi and Cardinal Acciajoli, nor did they delay in preparing themselves to die well. At the 20th hour [2 p.m.] the Company of Death and of Pity arrived at the Prisons. The condemned were made to go downstairs, and were placed upon separate carts to be drawn to the place of execution._ _The first to mount the cart was Agostinelli, the second Gambassini, the third Pasquini, the fourth Baldeschi, and the fifth Franceschini, who showed more intrepidity and composure than the others, to the wonder of all._ _They left the Prison and followed the Pilgrims Street, the Street_ _of the Governor, of Pasquini, Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, Piazza Colonna, and the Corso._ _The first who was executed was Agostinelli, the second Gambassini, the third Pasquini, the fourth Baldeschi, and the last Franceschini. When the last-named had mounted the platform, he asked pardon for his sins, and begged them to pray for his soul, adding that they should say a Pater, an Ave, and Salve Regina for him. When he had made the confessor announce that he was reconciled, he adjusted his neck upon mannaia and, with the name of Jesus on his lips, he was beheaded. The head was then shown to the people by the executioner._ _Franceschini was low of stature, thin and pallid, with prominent nose, black hair and a heavy beard, and was_ fifty years of age. _He wore the same garb as when he committed the crime--that is a coat of brown cloth, black shirt, a vest of goatshair, a white hat and cotton cap; clothed presumably as he had been when he had set out from Arezzo._ The execution took place during the _Pontificate of Innocent XII._, in 1698. TRIAL AND DEATH OF FRANCESCHINI AND HIS COMPANIONS FOR THE MURDER OF COMPARINI, HIS WIFE, AND DAUGHTER WHICH HAPPENED DURING THE TIME OF INNOCENT XII. EDITORIAL NOTE The following additional account of the Franceschini murder case was discovered a few years ago in the Royal Casanatense Library, Rome (Misc. MS. 2037), in a volume entitled _Varii successi curiosi e degni di esser considerate_, containing thirteen pamphlets by various authors, most of them concerning famous criminal trials, from Rome of the seventeenth century. The volume is in a hand of the early eighteenth century, and contains an endorsement to the effect that a copy was made from it in 1746. The Franceschini murder is the subject of the tenth narrative of the volume. Internal evidences indicate that it was written somewhat later than the secondary source pamphlet, by one who has considerable knowledge of the crime and whose attitude of mind shows him to have been a priest. It presents a better story and a fuller account of the motives of the actors, especially those of Abate Paolo and Violante, together with a number of additional matters of fact not contained in _The Book_. It never fell in Browning's way, and hence has no immediate source-relation to the poem, but it does prove in some cases the accuracy of Browning's conjectures of unknown facts when definite data failed him. The pamphlet was printed in translation by W. Hall Griffin in the _Monthly Review_, November 1900. The present version has been made by the editor from a transcript of the original Italian executed by a friend in Rome.--C.W.H. TRIAL AND DEATH OF FRANCESCHINI AND HIS COMPANIONS FOR THE MURDER OF COMPARINI, HIS WIFE, AND DAUGHTER WHICH HAPPENED DURING THE TIME OF INNOCENT XII. The Abate Franceschini, born in Arezzo, Tuscany, of a family which was noble, but poor of estate, having the cleverness to advance his own fortunes, proceeded to the city of Rome, and was admitted by Cardinal Lauria into his household as Secretary of the Embassy. His inherent mental aptness won for him the favour of the Cardinal, who was held in great esteem in the Sacred College by reason of his learning, and who stood so high that he might well have aspired to the Papal Chair. In this lucky juncture, Abate Paolo, wishing to take advantage of his good fortune, thought to provide a wife for his brother Guido and to recoup his family fortunes by a rich dowry. Guido had served Cardinal Nerli in the same capacity, as Secretary of the Embassy; but either because he had not the good luck or the ability of his brother he left that service. Although Paolo knew that the idle state of his brother would be hurtful to his claims of dowry, he did not cease aspiring to a very advantageous one, flattering himself that his own distinction might make up for the shortcomings of his brother. Now Guido had reached full maturity, was of weak temperament, ordinary in appearance, of a disposition more gloomy than pleasant, and, moreover, was of scant means. Hence, unless Abate Paolo should use his own influence, he could have little expectation for Guido. After having attempted several alliances of high rank, Paolo fixed his thought on Francesca Pompilia, the daughter of Pietro and Violante Comparini. As she was their only child, and as her parents were too far advanced in years to have other offspring, she would fall heir to a reversionary interest of 12,000 scudi; and he hoped that he could easily make the match, as the Comparini were rather inferior to him in birth. A certain hairdresser frequented the home of the Comparini with the familiarity admitted by those women who desire to make themselves appear more beautiful to their husbands' eyes than they are and which some husbands tolerate who rely too much upon the fidelity of their wives. Paolo considered this woman to be the best means for aiding his designs for the marriage of Guido, and the latter often went to her shop with the purpose of winning her confidence by odd jobs. When he had often turned the talk to the subject of taking a wife, she told him one day he might readily apply for the daughter of the Comparini, for she had a suitable dowry, besides being heiress to a reversionary interest, and was of a small family connection, which were his very requirements. When through her efforts he had succeeded in achieving the marriage, it was understood he should reward her with 200 scudi. The hairdresser lost no time in broaching the matter to Violante, who, anxious for the advancement of her daughter and for the establishment of her own interests, agreed to speak of it to her husband, and, if the matter were as stated, to persuade him to effect it. Violante spoke to her husband about it and he did not reject the proposal, provided that the vaunted riches of the Franceschini were verified, but he said this would have to be given in a written statement attested by well-known and reliable persons. When the hairdresser had carried back this word to the Franceschini, they sent a statement of their real estate in Arezzo, with an income amounting to 1700 scudi, attested by persons well known to the Comparini, and who confirmed it to them orally. Abate Paolo, fearing lest this fortune might escape him, gave them no time to change their minds, and in order to make the matter surer he desired to secure it by the hand of Cardinal Lauria, his patron, by whom he had the marriage agreement drawn up; for his Eminence was pleased to show kindness to the advantage of a man whom he regarded with some favour. Meanwhile Comparini had become better informed of the rank and property of the Franceschini and found them far different from the preceding account, both in rank and in property. Therefore he had a warm dispute with his wife, who persisted in the marriage, and declared that he had been advised by persons envious of the good fortune of one or the other house, and who wished to hinder it, and that she was not shaken in her original desire; for she was very sure, from other truthful witnesses, that the Franceschini were of the first rank of nobility of Arezzo, and not of the second, as those had said, and that the property given in the list had been untampered with. But the more she warmed to the matter, the cooler became Pietro; for being very diplomatic, if he could not gain, at least he wished not to lose by the marriage of his daughter. But what does not a man lose when he allows his wife to rule him? He loved her so tenderly that from the first day of their marriage he had constituted her the arbitress of his wishes. Violante, nevertheless, fearing lest Pietro, in a case of such importance, might be more influenced by reason than by flattery, could suffer no delay in making secure the reversionary interest which another house could claim if the Comparini were without an heir; she therefore resolved to have the marriage performed without the knowledge of Pietro. When she had secured the consent of the daughter, who was always obedient to her commands, and had made an appointment with Guido, she conducted her, suitably clothed, one morning to San Lorenzo, in Lucina, and espoused the two. Pietro felt the blow keenly, but being unable to find any remedy for it, he cloaked his anger with the show of being displeased at not having been present, and this displeasure would cease in him with the joy of the nuptial feast, which should be in their house. He assigned to his daughter as dowry twenty-six bonds, with future succession to the remainder. On the very same day, after talking of the advantages which would result to both houses from the union of their interests, they decided upon the removal of the Comparini to Arezzo, which followed in a few days, and with it the absolute administration of the property by Guido. When they had reached Arezzo the Comparini were received by the mother and relatives of Franceschini with all that show of love which is customary on such occasions. But very soon, from constant association, disturbances arose, and thence they passed to hostilities. The mother of Guido, a proud, avaricious woman, who governed the household despotically, took to stinting it even in the necessary food. This moved the Comparini to complaints, to which the Franceschini first responded with insults and then with threats. This was a thing Violante could not tolerate, for, being a woman, she had her own share of natural arrogance. So she began tormenting Pietro, cursing the day when he had decided to move to Arezzo, laying the blame on him for all that of which she had been the cause. And Pietro, who was one of those men who let themselves be overcome by a couple of crocodile tears of their wives, instead of reproving her for the undertaking (although she had concluded the marriage against his wish and without his knowledge), entreated her affectionately to bear with patience the abuses, which would possibly cease when the Franceschini saw them defended by their daughter. At that time [November 30, 1693] passed from this life to Heaven Cardinal Lauria, a churchman of merit beyond all praise. Then Abate Paolo was elected Secretary in Rome of the Religious Order of Malta. At this the haughtiness of the Franceschini increased so much that they considered it grand good fortune for the Comparini to be considered their friends, not to say their relatives. Violante being no longer able to live under the proud command of another woman, since she had been in the habit of domineering, as her husband had been subject to her wishes, so tormented him that she induced him to take up his residence in Rome again. For this purpose the Franceschini gave them a sum of money sufficient for the journey and for the most necessary furniture in the home. Scarcely had they reached Rome when, to the surprise of everybody, it was reported that Pietro had dispatched a judicial warning, in which he set forth that Francesca Pompilia was not really his own daughter and that therefore he was not obliged to pay the dowry. He brought the attestation of Violante his wife, who had declared that to check her husband's creditors in the matter of the trust fund and to enjoy the income of the bonds she had feigned to be pregnant and, that her husband might not discover the trick, she agreed with him that when she became pregnant they should abstain from association until after the birth of their child. And so, on the very day of this pretence, they took separate bedrooms; still further, by well-arranged clothes, she feigned the swelling of the womb, and by suitable drugs made pretence of nausea until her time was come. She then took advantage of a day when Pietro was occupied in his lawsuits, to bring forth the pretended birth, which was well carried out by the sagacity of a midwife in the secret, who provided whatever was necessary. And that the house servant might not detect the trick, they sent him to the apothecary to secure certain medicines. At the same time the midwife went to get a little creature whom she had received the day before from a neighbour, who was already in the secret. When she had returned to the house she summoned a familiar friend of the Comparini from a window. Matters were so well arranged that when the woman arrived, there was nothing more to do than to make her believe what was not really so. And to trick more surely the thought of this neighbour, they feigned that when Violante wished to pass from the bed to a chair, she fainted into the arms of the woman by reason of her pains, since the midwife could not run up in time. This unexpected act of Pietro, which became known in Rome immediately, was heard with less wonder than scorn. The just anger of the Franceschini would have undertaken due vengeance if it had not been mitigated by the hope that, since Pompilia was not the true and legitimate daughter of Pietro and Violante, the marriage would be annulled and Guido's wounded reputation would be healed. But when he had taken counsel with several authorities and found they were of different opinions, he was unwilling to risk so doubtful an affair, in the promotion of which they would necessarily confess and presuppose that she was not the daughter of the Comparini, and by this confession they would be prejudiced in their claims to the dowry. They opposed the judicial notice, and obtained for Pompilia the continuance of her quasi-relation as daughter, together with a decree for the transfer of the dowry bonds. But Pietro appealed to the Signature of Justice so trickily that the Franceschini had the expense of the transfer, but not the enjoyment of the income, since they obtained from it not even a two months' payment. The unfortunate Pompilia was the victim of the hatred of these two houses; for she was left alone in Arezzo at the will of her husband, her mother-in-law, and her relatives, who were mortally offended at her parents, and she was hourly threatened with death. In so deplorable a state the courage even of a more mature woman would have failed, not to speak of that of a girl only sixteen years old. For she was innocent of the wiles of her mother and of the duplicity of her father and by her own good qualities she was worthy of tenderness rather than cruelty. The unhappy one suffered as best she could these tyrannies which were ever increasing, but despairing of all hope of peace, she often had recourse to the Governor of the City, that he might interpose his authority with the Franceschini. As this was of no avail, she threw herself at the feet of the Bishop, who had Guido come into his presence and who tried to reconcile him. But Guido's anger increased all the more because of this public recourse, and he threatened Pompilia with certain death if she should ever try it again. When the poor child saw every way to peace closed against her she appealed to Canon Conti, a relative of the Franceschini, who was very well informed of her wretchedness because he visited the house, and she begged him to save her life, which was in continual peril. He was moved to pity, for he knew that she had no other remedy than flight. As he could not personally assist in this, lest he would have to bear the hatred of the entire family connection, he suggested to her that the very person for such an enterprise was the Canon Caponsacchi, his intimate friend and somewhat related to him by blood, whose courage was no less ready to meet danger than to overcome it. Pompilia accepted the counsel of Conti, who lost no time in opening the affair with Caponsacchi. He at first showed some unwillingness, as he hesitated to carry away a wife from her husband, even with the sole purpose of conducting her to her own parents. But when he had been fully informed of the insufferable abuses of Guido and his relatives his pity prevailed over all other considerations and he accepted the undertaking. Pompilia, who was eager for this, tried to win him by letters and amorous verses, yet always keeping herself true to her marriage vows, as one may read in her letters. In some of these she praises the modesty of Caponsacchi, in others she reproves him for having sent some octaves which were slightly reprehensible, and she urged him to keep unstained that nobility of which he boasted. On the day appointed for flight, with the assistance of Canon Conti, the two took their places in a carriage and travelled as fast as they could, without resting save when it was necessary to change horses. They arrived the second morning at dawn at Castelnuovo, and, in spite of the fact that the host had assigned them a bed for repose, Pompilia seated herself in a chair and Caponsacchi went down to the stable to urge on the driver. When Guido awoke after the flight of Pompilia and perceived that she was not in bed, he arose in a fury, and, seeing the jewel-box open and minus the jewels and money, which it had contained, he surmised what had happened to him. Accordingly, on a good horse, he sped along the Roman road and overtook the fugitives at the abovesaid inn of Castelnuovo an hour after their arrival. When Pompilia saw him, with that courage which desperation may arouse even in the weakest spirits, she seized Caponsacchi's sword which lay upon the table, unsheathed it, and thrust at his life, calling him betrayer and tyrant. Guido, fearing lest her spirit no less than the valour of Caponsacchi might bring his death rather than revenge, turned his horse and rushed to the authorities. He had the fugitives arrested and conveyed to the New Prisons, where he entered charge of flight and adultery against them. The Abate Paolo who, as has been said, was the Secretary of the Religious Order of Malta in Rome, made noisy recourse for his honour to the Pope, and he put a petition before Monsignor Pallavicino, the Governor, demanding that he declare Caponsacchi the seducer of his sister-in-law, and both of them guilty of adultery, and that his brother for that reason was entitled to gain the entire dowry. Legal proceedings were instituted against them according to the most rigorous forms of law, but no proof of guilt was found against Caponsacchi and Pompilia except the love-letters written at the time of the arranging of the flight, the undertaking of the flight itself, and the deposition of the driver. For the latter declared that he had sometimes seen, when he had turned back during the journey, that they were joined face to face, that is cheek to cheek, a matter which did not make full proof of fault, since the rough roads and the headlong speed of the journey jostling them about might have been the cause of it. Wherefore the Court deemed it prudent and just to sentence Caponsacchi to three years' relegation in Civita Vecchia for his rashness in running away with a wife from her husband, even though the motive was pity. While the case of the Franceschini against Pompilia was on trial, Pompilia was transported with their consent, as their prisoner, into the Monastery of the Scalette on the Lungara, with the obligation that Guido, her husband, should provide her food. There, after a little while, it was discovered that she was pregnant, and as it no longer comported with the reverence of that place that she should remain there, with the consent of Abate Paolo, who had power of attorney for his brother, Monsignor the Governor ordered that she should pass into the home of the Comparini, her parents, under security of 300 scudi to keep it as a secure prison; and he declared that Guido's obligation for her food should cease the very day she left the monastery. This cause, in which the Franceschini were not obliged to have hand for mere honour's sake, was seen to have its chief motive in selfishness. Therefore there was not a company where the conduct of one or the other party was not censured. For this reason the Religious Order of Malta gave secret intimation to Abate Paolo that he should resign his office. At the loss of this honourable post, rein was given to the evil tongues of his adversaries. This put Abate Paolo in such straits that, ashamed to meet his dearest friends, he decided to leave Rome and to pass to a clime where information of the dishonour that so afflicted him would never come. When Guido was informed of the departure of his brother and of the obligation resting on him of repairing the honour of his house, he thought that to go into voluntary exile, as his brother had done, would only prove the baseness of his own mind. For he had been justly charged with this, since at the time he had overtaken his wife with her abductor he had failed in that very place to take the vengeance which was demanded at his hands. In due time Pompilia had given birth to a son, who was sent out of the house by the Comparini to nurse. Thereupon every one believed, and especially Violante, that the ties of blood would move Guido to a reconciliation with his wife. For in spite of their declaration that Pompilia was not their daughter, the minds of the Comparini might still be disposed to some reconciliation. But Guido's thought was quite different, for he was continually stirred, even in the absence of Abate Paolo, to plot the removal from this world of the entire memory of his dishonour by the death of Pompilia, Pietro, and Violante, and possibly of still others. Guido had in his employ, in the country, a daring and wicked labourer [Alessandro Baldeschi] to whom he often exaggerated the shame which his wife and the Comparini had brought upon his house. To him Guido revealed that with his assistance he wished to purge with their blood the stain to his honour. The cut-throat straightway accepted and declared that, if there were need of other company, he had three or four friends for whom he would vouch. Guido replied that he should take three bold and trusty ones to make sure against any possible resistance, and should use all care to secure them at the lowest possible price. When all had been agreed upon, and arms suitable for the affair had been prepared, Guido, with his four companions in disguise, secretly took the road to Rome. Reaching the home of the Comparini at eight o'clock in the evening, one of them knocked at the door, and when Pietro responded, the murderer told him that he had a letter to give him which had been sent from Civita Vecchia by Caponsacchi. When the women heard this they told Pietro to have him come back again next morning, urging him not to open the door. But he was curious about the news from Caponsacchi, and when the murderer replied that he could not come back in the morning, as he was obliged to leave that night, he opened the fatal door and thereby admitted his own death and that of Violante and Pompilia. Guido in a transport of rage leaped in with two companions, leaving the others on guard. They first dealt the poor old man many blows, and deprived him of life before he could lift his voice. Scarcely had the unfortunate women seen this when, transfixed with like wounds, they suffered the same fate. Upon the unfortunate Pompilia fell the blows of her husband, accompanied with countless insults, and after he had trampled her several times under foot and wounded her anew, not trusting his own fury, he told his companions to see if she were really dead. One of them lifted her by the hair and let her fall again, and assured Guido that she was no longer alive. When this barbarous murder had been concluded and the money agreed upon had been paid to the cut-throats, Guido wished to leave them, but they would not allow him to desert them for fear that one might kill another, as frequently happens for hiding such misdeeds. Or else the murderers, while united with their leader, had agreed to kill Guido as they thought he might have a large sum of money. Hence they did not consent to his leaving them and they took the road toward Arezzo together, which they agreed to make on foot, as they could not secure posthorses. From these repeated wounds Pietro and Violante were quite dead, but not Pompilia, though her wounds were more numerous. For because of her innocence she was especially helped by the divine mercy, and she knew so well how to feign death that she deceived the murderers. When she saw that they were gone, with her dying breath she mustered sufficient strength of voice to make the neighbours hear her cries for help. They found her in the last extremities, and eagerly ministered first to her soul and then to her body. Her wounds were so numerous and of such a nature that although they did not immediately kill her, they made her death certain. This occurred a few days later, to the sorrow of all those who assisted her and who had knowledge of this pitiable case. The fortitude with which she suffered the pains of her treatment caused as much wonder as her resignation to the Divine Will caused love. She not only did not blame the cruelty of her husband, but with fervent prayers she besought God to pardon him. The compassion of her assistants both for her soul and for her body I attest by the following sworn statement concerning not only her innocence, but the happy passage of her pure soul to heaven. [Then follow the affidavits of Fra Celestino and others given in _The Book_]. Divine justice, which would not suffer so atrocious a deed to go unpunished, caused the criminals to be overtaken by the authorities at the break of dawn at an inn a few miles from Rome. For when they had eaten a little, they went to sleep by the fire, fatigued by the journey and overcome with drowsiness. The police rushed violently in upon them and, pointing carbines at their breasts, assailed and bound them at once. They were straightway taken to the New Prisons, and the Governor apprised the Pope of this barbarous murder and of the arrest of the guilty. He gave commands that, without delay and with all rigour, trial should be brought, this being a case which, by reason of the consequences which might arise from it, should be examined into with very special attention. Far less torment than would seem to be necessary had to be applied to get the confession of the murderers and of Guido, who more than the rest had stood by his denial. But at the sight of torment he had not the heart to resist longer and confessed fully, saying indeed that the crime had had no other motive than the reparation of his honour which had been so publicly offended. This was a matter which any common man would have undertaken, not to speak of himself, who was a gentleman; and if on his first examination he denied the truth of this, he had done so lest he might injure his companions, who had aided him in a deed worthy of all sympathy, because he had honour as his sole end. With the confession of Guido and its ratification by the rest, the process was finished, and they were sentenced, the cut-throats to the gallows and Guido to mannaia, a means of death conceded rather out of respect for his being in clerical orders than for any other reason. The Advocate and Procurator of the Poor had written so ably in their defence on the point of honour that there is no memory of more learned arguments. But the features of the crime were so many (and all of them punishable with death) that they were overcome no less by their nature than by their number. Among such features was the bearing of arms prohibited under capital penalty, the death of Pietro and Violante who were not accomplices in the flight of Pompilia, the murder while a lawsuit was pending, and in their own home, which place the authorities had with the consent of Guido assigned to Pompilia as a secure prison. The many other weighty charges which displayed the great learning of the defenders were the just cause of the death of the accused. Yet with the usual hope of all those who make confession of capital crime, Guido flattered himself that he could save his life by reason of his honour. At the unexpected announcement he did not give up to such a frenzy as frequently follows in those who experience so terrible a disaster, but, as if stupefied, after a few minutes he heaved a deep sigh, accompanied by a few tears, which by their extraordinary size showed dying symptoms. He said: "I well feared a heavy sentence, but not that of death. My crime is great, but love of honour has never suffered me to perceive what it was until now that sentence has been passed, which I hold in such reverence that I wish to appeal only to God, to whom alone I turn for the only mercy. Without His will I should never have reached this awful pass, which may be a comfort to me and not a source of bitterness, that I may gain by entire resignation to His will the merit of His pardon." And then he threw himself into the arms of the compassionate Frati and showed such signs of true contrition that their prayers were accompanied by tears rather than by exhortations. His four accomplices did not submit themselves with the same readiness, for as they were of lower birth so were they less swayed by reason, which would render them impressible to the punishment they had merited. The oldest [Baldeschi] and youngest [Agostinelli] were the most obstinate, the one from having a heart hardened by so many years of evil life, and the other being all too sensitive to so harsh a punishment for a single crime, in the very flower of his youth, without ever having spilled a drop of blood, and with the sole fault of having been induced to stand as guard at a door through which Guido had had to pass, to purge himself of the stains to his honour by the blood of his foes. As the hour of execution drew nearer, the stubbornness of these wretches so increased that the Frati despaired of their repentance. At last the Divine Mercy, which works miracles when we least expect it, entered their hearts and gloriously demonstrated His omnipotence. They finally trusted in God, and the memory of those faults which had made them obstinate, and which were now illuminated by the Divine Grace that disposed them to penitence, fitted them for pardon. When these souls had been secured for God after such a hard contest, the execution passed from the New Prisons at Tor di Nonna to the scaffold raised in the Piazza del Popolo in view of the gate and of the Corso. In the midst was the block on a lofty scaffold, larger than usual and with steps made with particular care; on the two sides the gallows were placed at equal distances. In spite of the vastness of the Piazza, not a single foot was left which had not been occupied by stands, which were covered with tapestry and other ornaments forming a theatre for festal celebrations rather than for a solemn tragedy. His four companions preceded Guido, each of them in a separate cart, assisted by the devotion of the accustomed Frati [The Brotherhood of Death], and followed by a countless concourse of people praying for a blessed departure, which in view of their contrite resignation seemed not at all doubtful and even a certain hope. Rarely did Guido Franceschini turn his eyes from the crucifix, except when nature, overwearied by the steadfastness of his gaze, made him turn away his head but not his heart, which had been wholly given to his Creator so that none was left for himself. When he had reached the Piazza di Pasquino, and the cart had stopped before the church of Agonizzanti, where on days of public execution it is customary to offer the Sacrament to the delinquents condemned to death and therewith to bless them, Guido knelt and began to recite, in a voice quite audible to bystanders, certain verses of the _Miserere_, and among them this, "Hide thy face from my sins and blot out all mine iniquities." He accompanied this with such signs of sorrow and penitence that the people by their tears showed no less grief than the one condemned. With equal devotion his companions received the same blessing, but the behaviour of the youngest [Agostinelli] was remarkable beyond belief, who beside himself with his love of Heaven and of God, by his expressions which exceeded his own capacity, confounded the wisdom of his pious assistants. Thence by the most densely populated streets they continued the journey to the Piazza del Popolo, where they all died, Guido last, with those acts of contrition which their preparation had shown. As the youngest had displayed most blessed signs during life, so it pleased God that he met his death likewise, for at the moment the executioner did his work, he clasped between his breast and his hands the image of that crucifix whereby they had become certain of Divine Pardon. This assured the people of his salvation as his untimely death had aroused their pity. Rome has never seen an execution with a greater concourse of people, nor does it remember a case on which there was such general talk as on this. Some defended the Comparini, because they had suffered abuse, others the Franceschini as it was a matter of honour. But, on looking at the matter dispassionately, they were adjudged to be equally guilty, except that Pompilia, who was entirely ignorant of the truth, was without blame; for she had consented to the marriage at the command of her mother without the knowledge of her father, and had fled from her husband for fear of death with which he had often unjustly threatened her. From trickery arose the union of these two houses, from the Franceschini in frauds regarding property they did not possess, from the Comparini by the pretended birth, or by this very pretence if the birth were real. The trick arose from greed of gain in Pietro to secure the trust moneys for himself, and in the Franceschini to minister to their own ease; so all was done contrary to laws both human and divine. Hence a bad beginning was followed with a wretched ending, as has been told above. NOTES AND COMMENT 1. _Title-page_ (p. 1). The manuscript title-page of the _Book_ is closely paraphrased by Browning, _R.B._ 1. 122-31, the word "position" being used as the equivalent of Italian _posizione_. 2. _The Index_ (p. 3) (Italian, _indice_) is a manuscript table of contents, evidently supplied by the original collector. 3. _A Transcript of the sentence against Pompilia_ (pp. 5-7) in the Criminal Courts of Arezzo, dated February 15, 1697 (for 1698). Parallel with the Process of Flight (_see_ Note 18) in Rome, the Franceschini family evidently instituted criminal proceedings in Arezzo against the fugitive Pompilia, charging her with theft and adultery. Signor Guillichini and the driver Borsi were included in the action as accessory to the crime. The Franceschini were able to secure the condemnation here which was not obtainable in Rome. Under security of this sentence, granted in December 1697, Guido could safely go on with the assassination of his wife, so far as Tuscan law was concerned. The transcript in the _Book_ is dated February 15, while the murder trial was at a crisis, and was probably sent to Rome by Signor Cencini to assist Guido in his peril. It is noteworthy that Guido did not include Caponsacchi in his accusation in Arezzo. 4. _Romana Homicidiorum._ The frequently repeated designation of the case--_Romana causa homicidiorum_--Roman trial for murders. 5. _Hyacinthus de Archangelis_ (Italian, _Giacinto Arcangeli_), _Procurator Pauperum_, was Guido's chief defender, not an attorney employed privately by the defendant, but an official States' attorney for the defence. The Roman court procedure in all cases assumed the right and obligation of the State to conduct both sides of a criminal case. 6. _Desiderius Spretus, Advocatus Pauperum_, was the co-defender of the accused. Humphrey's _Urbs et Orbis_, p. 428, makes plain the respective functions of the two attorneys: "The advocate is a man skilled in civil and canon law, who defends causes in writing or by word of mouth, on the point of law, setting before the judges that which is true in law, or best founded in law, or the principles of law which ought to be applied in a particular case. His is the scientific part of the cause, and he speaks only to the point of law. Matters of fact are to be established by the procurators, and it is upon these established facts that the advocate develops his judicial conclusions." 7. _Joannes Baptista Bottinius, Fisci et Cam. Apost. Advoc._ (Advocate of the Fisc, or Treasury, and of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber), the chief prosecutor of the criminals, with functions equivalent to those of the prosecuting or States Attorney in the Common Law. Browning continually used the clipt form, Fisc. 8. _Franciscus de Gambis, Procurator Fisci_, was the coadjutor in the prosecution, opening the case in Pamphlet 5, but thereafter playing little part in the case. 9. _Antonius Lamparellus, Procurator Charitatis_, the attorney who, in Pamphlet 17, defended the memory of the dead Pompilia for her heir and against both the Franceschini family and the Nunnery of Convertites (_see_ Note 10), both of whom were accusing her memory to gain her estate. This trial in the criminal court of the Governor, took place between the death of Guido, February 22, and May 17, 1698. The decision "for absolution" was made _definitive_ by the decree of court, September 9, 1698 (Pamphlet 18). 10. _The Nunnery of the Convertites._ Within a month after the death of Pompilia the Nunnery of _Sta. Maria Maddalena delle Convertite al Corso_ (founded 1520 _pro mulieribus ab inhonesta vita ad honestam se convertentibus_) laid claim to the whole of Pompilia's property on the ground of their privilege of receiving the property of women of evil life who died in Rome. 11. _Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Governor._ All the arguments and the summaries of evidence in the murder case are addressed to the Governor of Rome, but the Vice-Governor, Judge Venturini, seems to have presided in his stead. 12. The title and imprint on the right half of the final page of each of these official pamphlets was evidently for convenience in filing the documents when folded into bundles. The imprint _Typis Rev. Cam. Apost._ (Type of the Reverend Apostolic Chamber), is the official imprint of the Papal press. 13. _The Deposition of Angelica_ (pp. 49-53). Angelica, a domestic in the Franceschini home during January 1697, while the Comparini were living in Arezzo with their son-in-law, was probably carried back to Rome by the Comparini on their return to Rome that she might serve as a witness to the poverty and parsimony of Guido. She makes her affidavit at Rome, June 24, 1694, evidently for use in the suit brought by Comparini to recover the dowry paid with Pompilia. How far it is true and how far it is the prejudiced and bitter word of a resentful servant who had been kicked out of doors, we cannot say. But its publication through court procedure must have been bitterly humiliating to the Franceschini. What was worse, the Comparini probably used this as a part of the slanderous stories they took pains to print and circulate in Rome (p. 181). 14. _Diverse Attestations_ (p. 53). These attestations, made June 17, 1697, nearly seven weeks after the arrest of Pompilia at Castelnuovo, were evidently secured by her lawyers for her defence in the Process of Flight (Note 18). 15. _The letters of Signori Romani and Albergotti_ are undated, but were probably written soon after the departure of the Comparini from Arezzo in 1694. 16. _Pompilia's Letter to Abate Paolo_ (pp. 56-7). The much discussed letter of Pompilia to Abate Paolo, dated June 14, 1694, full of calumniation of her parents, who had left Arezzo only three months before, could not have been written by the fourteen-year-old girl voluntarily. Guido must have composed it as a counter attack on the Comparini, who were bringing suit against him at Rome, and were loading him with shame. 17. _The Attestations of Fra Celestino and Others_ (pp. 57-60), dated January 10, only four days after the death of Pompilia, was given at the instance of Pompilia's executor, Tighetti. It is a most important piece of evidence, and is cited repeatedly during the trial. Its genuineness and sincerity are beyond question, and Browning gained from it most of his faith in the innocence and saintly patience of Pompilia. 18. _Process of Flight._ After the arrest of Pompilia and Caponsacchi at Castelnuovo they were taken to Rome and lodged in prison. They were soon brought to trial on the criminal charge of adulterous elopement. The case seems to have been in the same court which tried Guido for murder eight months later, and probably continued in a desultory fashion all summer. In this case both of the accused made the deposition later included in the _Book_. In this trial also, Guido tried to introduce the testimony of the harlot-servant, Maria Margherita, and the love-letters. The case was never decided so far as Pompilia was concerned. 19. _The Deposition of Pompilia_ (pp. 90-5), dated May 13, 1697, two weeks after her arrest at Castelnuovo, giving the causes of her flight from her husband's home, was made by Pompilia for her own defence in the Process of Flight. The marginal comments, adverse to her, are, of course, the prejudiced comments of Guido's lawyers. 20. _The Deposition of Caponsacchi_ (pp. 95-8), made about the same time and under the same circumstances for the Process of Flight, was reintroduced as evidence in the murder case, but there is no reason to think that Caponsacchi was brought into the latter case in any other way. 21. _The Love-Letters_ (pp. 99-106). These letters are one of the most elaborately discussed pieces of evidence in the _Book_. Guido claimed to have found them at the inn of Castelnuovo after the arrest of the fugitives, and he offered them in court during the Process of Flight, as a proof of adultery in his wife, but they were thrown out by the court. Their conventional fine-letter-writing, their studied innuendo and finesse, were quite beyond the capacity of an illiterate girl like Pompilia. They were probably composed by Guido, and if so, they prove that he was basely scheming to drive his wife into dishonourable flight that he might disgrace her and cast her off. The eighteenth letter was specifically denied by Caponsacchi in his cross-examination. 22. _The Sentence of Relegation_ (p. 106) for three years in Civita Vecchia was decreed against Caponsacchi at the close of the Process of Flight in September, 1697. It is commensurate with priestly indiscretion rather than with crime. 23. _The Account of Fact_ (Pamphlet 10). This anonymous Italian pamphlet is not at all a part of the official record of the murder case. It has no imprint and is in entirely different face of type, and must have been printed privately for circulation outside the courts. While much less technical and formal than the arguments of the lawyers, and much more studious of popular effects, it slips back repeatedly into the thought and the language of Arcangeli, the defender of Guido. It probably suggested Half-Rome in _The Ring and the Book_. 24. _The Response_ (Pamphlet 15) is a highly rhetorical, but effective, retort to the anonymous writer. It was written during the later stage of the murder trial, and was probably the work of Signor Bottini. It likewise is without imprint and signature, but may have been broadly scattered throughout Rome. 25. "_To keep to this home of Pietro ... as a prison_," _Domus pro Carcere_ (p. 159). For a month after the sentence against Caponsacchi, Pompilia was kept prisoner in the refuge called the _Scalette_--a provision for her safekeeping, not a punishment. On October 12, she was permitted to give bond to keep the home of her foster parents, the Comparini, as a prison, _Domus pro carcere_, sentence against her being suspended. 26. _The Scalette._ The _Conservatorio di S. Croce della Penitenza alla Lungara_ was an institution for penitent women, founded 1615, and popularly called _Scalette_, because of the two adjoining stairways. Browning confuses this institution with the Convertites (Note 10). 27. _Baptismal Record of Pompilia_ (p. 159). This note, taken from the parish record of San Lorenzo, in Lucina, enables Browning to make the exact statement of Pompilia's age and her full name, as given in the opening lines of her monologue. 28. _Pompilia's Letter_ (p. 160) to her foster parents, written from prison at Castelnuovo only two days after her arrest, is her plea to them for assistance. It was probably cited as evidence in the Process of Flight. 29. _The Will of Pietro Comparini_ (pp. 160-1), evidently drawn up after he had learned Pompilia was not his own daughter, and before her return to Rome, aimed to prevent her being disinherited for that reason. Its personal tone is good, and it is almost the only first-hand evidence of the character of Pietro to be found in the _Book_. 30. _Power of Attorney_ (p. 162). Under date of October 7, 1694, Guido grants full power of attorney to Abate Paolo, who was representing him in the lawsuits in Rome and in other matters of business. 31. _Arcangeli's Manuscript Letter_ (pp. 235-6). On February 22, 1698, only a few hours after the execution of Guido, Signor Arcangeli, his legal defender, announces the end of the case to Signor Cencini, the Florentine lawyer who collected the _Book_, and who seems to have been professionally related to the Franceschini family, as he had sent certain "proofs" to assist the cause of Guido, probably including the report of the criminal condemnation of Pompilia in the Tuscan courts. (_See_ Note 3). This letter is reproduced by Browning, _R. B._ XII. 239-98. 32. _The Other Letters_ (pp. 237-8), written on the same day and to Signor Cencini, give a few additional details. The writers seem to have been professionally associated with the Franceschini family. 33. _Francesca Pompilia_, foster daughter of the Comparini, _b._ July 17, 1680; was married to Guido Franceschini, December 1693; fled from her husband's home in Arezzo, April 29, 1697; arrested at Castelnuovo, May 1; wrote to her foster parents from her prison at Castelnuovo, May 3; made deposition in Rome concerning her flight, May 13; was on trial for flight and adultery during the summer of 1697; was placed in the convent of the _Scalette_, September 1697; removed to the home of the Comparini as prison, October 12, 1697; gave birth to a son, Gaetano, December 18, 1697; was assassinated January 2, 1698; died January 6. 34. _Giuseppe Maria Caponsacchi_, _b._ May 26, 1673, was invested Canon of the Church of Santa Maria della Pieve, November 26, 1693, and resigned "of his own accord," May 15, 1702. He is referred to in the _Book_ as a man of courage, and his words as he faced Guido at Castelnuovo are significant: "I am a man, and have done what I have that I might save your wife from death." His affidavit is convincingly straightforward, in spite of certain discrepancies with Pompilia's statements, and there is evident moral indignation in his replies under cross-examination. His participation in the dangerous flight in mere amorous intrigue seems unbelievably foolish, and could hardly have been carried through save on the motive he assigns, courageous "Christian compassion." In September 1697 he went to Civita Vecchia under sentence of three years' relegation. 35. _Canon Conti_, called the "mediator in the flight," was brother of Count Aldobrandini, who had married Guido's sister, and Conti is accordingly spoken of as a "relative and frequenter of the Franceschini home." He had been invested Canon of the Pieve, August 14, 1692. He must have been fully informed of Pompilia's sufferings, and to him she turned at last for help. Deeming it improper for himself to afford her relief, he urged his friend Caponsacchi to accompany her. No criminal procedure was instituted against him in Arezzo when Pompilia and Guillichini were accused. He died January 1698, and the Second Anonymous Pamphleteer hints that this was due to foul play. 36. _Guido Franceschini_, _b._ January 24, 1658, the youngest son of an impoverished, second-rate, noble family of Arezzo, had sought his fortunes in Rome, where he became secretary of Cardinal Nerli. He dropped out of this service in middle life, with hardly a dollar in his pocket, and planned to recoup his fortunes by marriage with Pompilia, the heiress of the well-to-do Comparini. After the marriage in December 1693, the Comparini accompanied him back to Arezzo. He seems to have been unattractive and saturnine, and later on proved himself both crafty and brutal. 37. _Abate Paolo Franceschini_, _b._ October 28, 1650, the older, shrewder, and more able brother of Guido, was more successful in seeking his fortunes in the official world of Rome. He became secretary of the powerful Cardinal Lauria, and on the death of the latter, November 30, 1693, obtained the lucrative office of Secretary of the Order of St. John of Malta. He assisted Guido in effecting the marriage with Pompilia, and was his active agent in Rome during the lawsuits which followed. In 1697 he lost his secretaryship because of the ignominy which had come upon him in Guido's shameful troubles, and left Rome, possibly, as he is accused by the Second Anonymous Pamphleteer, to assist in planning the murder of the Comparini. 38. _Honoris Causa._ As the fact of the murders by Guido and his cut-throats was subject to no dispute, the whole law case turns on the question whether these murders had been _for the sake of honour_, the ever repeated plea of the unwritten law for the right of the husband to slay a wife sinning against her wifehood. The lawyer's devote themselves to ascertaining the limitations and privileges of this plea. 39. _Incontinenti, Ex Intervallo._ There is much argument on the justification for honour's sake in murder done _immediately_ after the insult, or _after an interval_ of time has elapsed. In the latter case, the murder becomes premeditated, and is not justifiable on the ground of excusable heat of passion at an insult. 40. _The Aggravating Circumstances._ The prosecution makes much of the attendant criminal circumstances which surrounded the main crime of murder. These are first, the assembling of a band of armed men, constituting the crime of rebellion; second, the murder of a prisoner while under the care of the courts, Pompilia being technically a prisoner detained in the Process of Flight; third, the assault upon opponents in a pending lawsuit, the Comparini then being at law with Guido; fourth, the violent breaking into a private home; fifth, the commission of crime under cover of disguise; sixth, the use of certain types of barbarous weapon, the very possession of which was a capital offence. The first three of these were _laesa majestas_, criminal insult to the majesty of the law. 41. _San Lorenzo in Lucina._ This church in the heart of Rome just off the Corso, and not very far from the home of the Comparini at the corner of Via Vittoria, and Strada Paolina, was evidently the parish church of the Comparini, as both the birth and death of Pompilia are entered in its register. 42. _Castelnuovo._ A village of but a few houses, fifteen miles north of Rome. The inn and posthouse where Pompilia and Caponsacchi were overtaken by Guido thus became one of the most important scenes in the tragedy. 43. _Torture of the Vigil._ Guido and his companions were tortured thus, to get fuller testimony from them. This torture consisted originally in merely keeping the victim awake until he told his crime. Later on his confession was accelerated by auxiliary devices for intensifying the suffering of the subject. 44. Browning has taken the peroration used in the first lawyer's monologue, _R. B._ VIII. 1637-1736, directly from the peroration of Arcangeli in Pamphlet 8, p. 130. 45. The description of the execution as given in _R. B._ XII. 113 _et seq._, is taken from the additional Italian pamphlet, pp. 265-6. 46. In like manner _R. B._ VIII. 587-683, is closely drawn from the _Book_, pp. 153-4, with an interpolation in lines 640-57 from page 226. More than fifty of such word to word borrowings from the _Book_ are made in this monologue. MINUTE OF THE DEFINITE ORDER OF EVENTS IN THE CASE July 17, 1680. Pompilia born. (Note 27). December (?) 1693. Pompilia married to Guido Franceschini. December 1693. The Comparini accompany the bride to Arezzo. Four months residence together in Arezzo. Domestic broils in Arezzo, January and February, 1694. March 1694. The Comparini return to Rome. April or May 1694. Violante reveals base parentage of Pompilia. June 14, 1694. Pompilia's letter to Abate Paolo. (Note 16). June 24, 1694. Affidavit of Angelica. (Note 13). Summer of 1694. Pietro Comparini prosecutes suit to recover dowry. August 2, 1694. Letter of the Governor to Abate Paolo. September 15, 1694. Letter of the Bishop of Arezzo to Abate Paolo. March 1697. Pompilia seeks aid of Confessor Romano. April, 1697. Seeks aid of Guillichini, Conti, and Caponsacchi. April 29 (1 a.m.). Pompilia flees. April 30 (in the evening). Fugitives arrive at Castelnuovo. May 1 (early in the morning). Guido overtakes fugitives and has them arrested. May 3. Pompilia writes from the prison of Castelnuovo. May 13. Pompilia makes her deposition. (Note 19). May 21. Pompilia is further cross-examined. June 17, 1697. Certain persons in Arezzo make affidavit in Pompilia's behalf. (Note 14). Summer of 1697. The Process of Flight. (Note 18). September 24, 1697. Caponsacchi sentenced to relegation. (Note 22). October 12. Pompilia permitted to return home under bond. (Note 25). Fall of 1697. Pompilia institutes suit for divorce. Fall of 1697. The Franceschini push a criminal suit against Pompilia in the criminal courts of Arezzo. (Note 3). Fall of 1697. Abate Paolo loses his secretaryship of the Order of St. John. December 18, 1697. Pompilia gives birth to a son. December 24, 1697. Guido and his cut-throats arrive in Rome. January 2, 1698. Guido murders his wife and the Comparini. January 3. Guido and his associates arrested and imprisoned. January 6. Pompilia dies. January 19. Fra Celestino makes affidavit. (Note 17). January 1698. The murder trial begins. January 1698. Conti dies in Arezzo. January 1698. Sta. Maria Maddalena delle Convertite institutes suit to gain Pompilia's estate. (Note 10). End of January. The torture of the Vigil. (Note 43). February 1698. The second stage of the murder trial. February 9. Certificate of the baptismal record of Pompilia obtained. (Note 27). February 15. Certificate of the Tuscan criminal prosecution of Pompilia obtained. (Note 3). February 18. Guido declared guilty, but a stay of sentence granted. February 21. Execution set for following day. The Pope overrules delay. February 22, 1698. The murderers are executed. Spring of 1698. The Franceschini bring suit to recover Pompilia's property. May 17. The criminal court decides in favour of Pompilia's executor. September 1-9, 1698. Final decree of court, utterly clearing Pompilia's reputation. Browning uses all the above chronology with scrupulous accuracy, save when, for good artistic reasons, he changes the flight from April 29 to the 23rd, St. George's day. MINUTE OF THE PERSONAL NAMES FOUND IN THE BOOK AND PAMPHLET AND USED BY BROWNING IN HIS POEM Franceschini, Signor Guido. (Note 36). Franceschini, Abate Paolo. (Note 37). Franceschini, Canon Girolamo, _b._ August 5, 1654, brother of Guido. Franceschini, Donna Beatrice, 1631-1701, mother of Guido. Franceschini, Count Tommaso, father of Guido. Comparini, Signor Pietro, father of Pompilia. Comparini, Violante, mother of Pompilia. Comparini, Pompilia. (Note 33). Canon Conti. (Note 35). Canon Giuseppe Caponsacchi. (Note 34). Signor Guillichini, helper in the flight. Borsi, the driver. Signor Marzi-Medici, Governor of Arezzo. Bishop of Arezzo, Giovanni Matteo Marchetti, 1691-1704. The Confessor Romano. Maria Margherita Contenti, servant in the Franceschini home. Monna Baldi (Albergotti). Cardinal Panciatichi } Cardinal Acciajuoli } Guido's confessors on the eve of execution. Signor Tighetti, trustee of Pompilia's estate. The babe, Gaetano. Fra Celestino, confessor of the dying Pompilia. Signor Giacinto Arcangeli. (Note 5). Signor Bottini. (Note 7). Signor Spreti. (Note 6). Signor Cencini, a Florentine lawyer interested in the murder trials. Alessandro Baldeschi } Domenico Gambassini } The assassins. Francesco Pasquini } Biagio Agostinelli } Curate Ottoboni, Curate at San Lorenzo, in Lucina. Judge Tommati, Auditor Curiae. Judge Molines, of the Ruota. Marco Antonio Venturini, Vice-Governor, presiding in the murder case. 
2153	----	and revised by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D. Editorial note: _Mary Barton_, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell's first novel, was published (anonymously) in 1848 by Chapman and Hall. MARY BARTON A Tale of Manchester Life by ELIZABETH GASKELL "'How knowest thou,' may the distressed Novel-wright exclaim, 'that I, here where I sit, am the Foolishest of existing mortals; that this my Long-ear of a fictitious Biography shall not find one and the other, into whose still longer ears it may be the means, under Providence, of instilling somewhat?' We answer, 'None knows, none can certainly know: therefore, write on, worthy Brother, even as thou canst, even as it is given thee.'" CARLYLE. CONTENTS PREFACE. I. A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE. II. A MANCHESTER TEA-PARTY. III. JOHN BARTON'S GREAT TROUBLE. IV. OLD ALICE'S HISTORY. V. THE MILL ON FIRE--JEM WILSON TO THE RESCUE. VI. POVERTY AND DEATH. VII. JEM WILSON'S REPULSE. VIII. MARGARET'S DEBUT AS A PUBLIC SINGER. IX. BARTON'S LONDON EXPERIENCES. X. RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL. XI. MR. CARSON'S INTENTIONS REVEALED. XII. OLD ALICE'S BAIRN. XIII. A TRAVELLER'S TALES. XIV. JEM'S INTERVIEW WITH POOR ESTHER. XV. A VIOLENT MEETING BETWEEN THE RIVALS. XVI. MEETING BETWEEN MASTERS AND WORKMEN. XVII. BARTON'S NIGHT-ERRAND. XVIII. MURDER. XIX. JEM WILSON ARRESTED ON SUSPICION. XX. MARY'S DREAM--AND THE AWAKENING. XXI. ESTHER'S MOTIVE IN SEEKING MARY. XXII. MARY'S EFFORTS TO PROVE AN ALIBI. XXIII. THE SUB-POENA. XXIV. WITH THE DYING. XXV. MRS. WILSON'S DETERMINATION. XXVI. THE JOURNEY TO LIVERPOOL. XXVII. IN THE LIVERPOOL DOCKS. XXVIII. "JOHN CROPPER, AHOY!" XXIX. A TRUE BILL AGAINST JEM. XXX. JOB LEGH'S DECEPTION. XXXI. HOW MARY PASSED THE NIGHT. XXXII. THE TRIAL AND VERDICT--"NOT GUILTY." XXXIII. REQUIESCAT IN PACE. XXXIV. THE RETURN HOME. XXXV. "FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES." XXXVI. JEM'S INTERVIEW WITH MR. DUNCOMBE. XXXVII. DETAILS CONNECTED WITH THE MURDER. XXXVIII. CONCLUSION. PREFACE. Three years ago I became anxious (from circumstances that need not be more fully alluded to) to employ myself in writing a work of fiction. Living in Manchester, but with a deep relish and fond admiration for the country, my first thought was to find a frame-work for my story in some rural scene; and I had already made a little progress in a tale, the period of which was more than a century ago, and the place on the borders of Yorkshire, when I bethought me how deep might be the romance in the lives of some of those who elbowed me daily in the busy streets of the town in which I resided. I had always felt a deep sympathy with the care-worn men, who looked as if doomed to struggle through their lives in strange alternations between work and want; tossed to and fro by circumstances, apparently in even a greater degree than other men. A little manifestation of this sympathy, and a little attention to the expression of feelings on the part of some of the work-people with whom I was acquainted, had laid open to me the hearts of one or two of the more thoughtful among them; I saw that they were sore and irritable against the rich, the even tenor of whose seemingly happy lives appeared to increase the anguish caused by the lottery-like nature of their own. Whether the bitter complaints made by them, of the neglect which they experienced from the prosperous--especially from the masters whose fortunes they had helped to build up--were well-founded or no, it is not for me to judge. It is enough to say, that this belief of the injustice and unkindness which they endure from their fellow-creatures, taints what might be resignation to God's will, and turns it to revenge in too many of the poor uneducated factory-workers of Manchester. The more I reflected on this unhappy state of things between those so bound to each other by common interests, as the employers and the employed must ever be, the more anxious I became to give some utterance to the agony which, from time to time, convulses this dumb people; the agony of suffering without the sympathy of the happy, or of erroneously believing that such is the case. If it be an error, that the woes, which come with ever-returning tide-like flood to overwhelm the workmen in our manufacturing towns, pass unregarded by all but the sufferers, it is at any rate an error so bitter in its consequences to all parties, that whatever public effort can do in the way of legislation, or private effort in the way of merciful deeds, or helpless love in the way of "widow's mites," should be done, and that speedily, to disabuse the work-people of so miserable a misapprehension. At present they seem to me to be left in a state, wherein lamentations and tears are thrown aside as useless, but in which the lips are compressed for curses, and the hands clenched and ready to smite. I know nothing of Political Economy, or the theories of trade. I have tried to write truthfully; and if my accounts agree or clash with any system, the agreement or disagreement is unintentional. To myself the idea which I have formed of the state of feeling among too many of the factory-people in Manchester, and which I endeavoured to represent in this tale (completed above a year ago), has received some confirmation from the events which have so recently occurred among a similar class on the Continent. OCTOBER, 1848. CHAPTER I. A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE. Oh! 'tis hard, 'tis hard to be working The whole of the live-long day, When all the neighbours about one Are off to their jaunts and play. There's Richard he carries his baby, And Mary takes little Jane, And lovingly they'll be wandering Through field and briery lane. MANCHESTER SONG. There are some fields near Manchester, well known to the inhabitants as "Green Heys Fields," through which runs a public footpath to a little village about two miles distant. In spite of these fields being flat and low, nay, in spite of the want of wood (the great and usual recommendation of level tracts of land), there is a charm about them which strikes even the inhabitant of a mountainous district, who sees and feels the effect of contrast in these common-place but thoroughly rural fields, with the busy, bustling manufacturing town he left but half-an-hour ago. Here and there an old black and white farm-house, with its rambling outbuildings, speaks of other times and other occupations than those which now absorb the population of the neighbourhood. Here in their seasons may be seen the country business of hay-making, ploughing, &c., which are such pleasant mysteries for townspeople to watch; and here the artisan, deafened with noise of tongues and engines, may come to listen awhile to the delicious sounds of rural life: the lowing of cattle, the milk-maids' call, the clatter and cackle of poultry in the old farm-yards. You cannot wonder, then, that these fields are popular places of resort at every holiday time; and you would not wonder, if you could see, or I properly describe, the charm of one particular stile, that it should be, on such occasions, a crowded halting-place. Close by it is a deep, clear pond, reflecting in its dark green depths the shadowy trees that bend over it to exclude the sun. The only place where its banks are shelving is on the side next to a rambling farm-yard, belonging to one of those old-world, gabled, black and white houses I named above, overlooking the field through which the public footpath leads. The porch of this farm-house is covered by a rose-tree; and the little garden surrounding it is crowded with a medley of old-fashioned herbs and flowers, planted long ago, when the garden was the only druggist's shop within reach, and allowed to grow in scrambling and wild luxuriance--roses, lavender, sage, balm (for tea), rosemary, pinks and wallflowers, onions and jessamine, in most republican and indiscriminate order. This farm-house and garden are within a hundred yards of the stile of which I spoke, leading from the large pasture field into a smaller one, divided by a hedge of hawthorn and black-thorn; and near this stile, on the further side, there runs a tale that primroses may often be found, and occasionally the blue sweet violet on the grassy hedge bank. I do not know whether it was on a holiday granted by the masters, or a holiday seized in right of Nature and her beautiful spring time by the workmen, but one afternoon (now ten or a dozen years ago) these fields were much thronged. It was an early May evening--the April of the poets; for heavy showers had fallen all the morning, and the round, soft, white clouds which were blown by a west wind over the dark blue sky, were sometimes varied by one blacker and more threatening. The softness of the day tempted forth the young green leaves, which almost visibly fluttered into life; and the willows, which that morning had had only a brown reflection in the water below, were now of that tender gray-green which blends so delicately with the spring harmony of colours. Groups of merry and somewhat loud-talking girls, whose ages might range from twelve to twenty, came by with a buoyant step. They were most of them factory girls, and wore the usual out-of-doors dress of that particular class of maidens; namely, a shawl, which at mid-day or in fine weather was allowed to be merely a shawl, but towards evening, or if the day were chilly, became a sort of Spanish mantilla or Scotch plaid, and was brought over the head and hung loosely down, or was pinned under the chin in no unpicturesque fashion. Their faces were not remarkable for beauty; indeed, they were below the average, with one or two exceptions; they had dark hair, neatly and classically arranged, dark eyes, but sallow complexions and irregular features. The only thing to strike a passer-by was an acuteness and intelligence of countenance, which has often been noticed in a manufacturing population. There were also numbers of boys, or rather young men, rambling among these fields, ready to bandy jokes with any one, and particularly ready to enter into conversation with the girls, who, however, held themselves aloof, not in a shy, but rather in an independent way, assuming an indifferent manner to the noisy wit or obstreperous compliments of the lads. Here and there came a sober quiet couple, either whispering lovers, or husband and wife, as the case might be; and if the latter, they were seldom unencumbered by an infant, carried for the most part by the father, while occasionally even three or four little toddlers had been carried or dragged thus far, in order that the whole family might enjoy the delicious May afternoon together. Sometime in the course of that afternoon, two working men met with friendly greeting at the stile so often named. One was a thorough specimen of a Manchester man; born of factory workers, and himself bred up in youth, and living in manhood, among the mills. He was below the middle size and slightly made; there was almost a stunted look about him; and his wan, colourless face gave you the idea, that in his childhood he had suffered from the scanty living consequent upon bad times and improvident habits. His features were strongly marked, though not irregular, and their expression was extreme earnestness; resolute either for good or evil; a sort of latent, stern enthusiasm. At the time of which I write, the good predominated over the bad in the countenance, and he was one from whom a stranger would have asked a favour with tolerable faith that it would be granted. He was accompanied by his wife, who might, without exaggeration, have been called a lovely woman, although now her face was swollen with crying, and often hidden behind her apron. She had the fresh beauty of the agricultural districts; and somewhat of the deficiency of sense in her countenance, which is likewise characteristic of the rural inhabitants in comparison with the natives of the manufacturing towns. She was far advanced in pregnancy, which perhaps occasioned the overpowering and hysterical nature of her grief. The friend whom they met was more handsome and less sensible-looking than the man I have just described; he seemed hearty and hopeful, and although his age was greater, yet there was far more of youth's buoyancy in his appearance. He was tenderly carrying a baby in arms, while his wife, a delicate, fragile-looking woman, limping in her gait, bore another of the same age; little, feeble twins, inheriting the frail appearance of their mother. The last-mentioned man was the first to speak, while a sudden look of sympathy dimmed his gladsome face. "Well, John, how goes it with you?" and, in a lower voice, he added, "Any news of Esther, yet?" Meanwhile the wives greeted each other like old friends, the soft and plaintive voice of the mother of the twins seeming to call forth only fresh sobs from Mrs. Barton. "Come, women," said John Barton, "you've both walked far enough. My Mary expects to have her bed in three weeks; and as for you, Mrs. Wilson, you know you're but a cranky sort of a body at the best of times." This was said so kindly, that no offence could be taken. "Sit you down here; the grass is well nigh dry by this time; and you're neither of you nesh [1] folk about taking cold. Stay," he added, with some tenderness, "here's my pocket-handkerchief to spread under you, to save the gowns women always think so much of; and now, Mrs. Wilson, give me the baby, I may as well carry him, while you talk and comfort my wife; poor thing, she takes on sadly about Esther." [Footnote 1: "Nesh;" Anglo-Saxon, nesc, tender.] These arrangements were soon completed: the two women sat down on the blue cotton handkerchiefs of their husbands, and the latter, each carrying a baby, set off for a further walk; but as soon as Barton had turned his back upon his wife, his countenance fell back into an expression of gloom. "Then you've heard nothing of Esther, poor lass?" asked Wilson. "No, nor shan't, as I take it. My mind is, she's gone off with somebody. My wife frets, and thinks she's drowned herself, but I tell her, folks don't care to put on their best clothes to drown themselves; and Mrs. Bradshaw (where she lodged, you know) says the last time she set eyes on her was last Tuesday, when she came down stairs, dressed in her Sunday gown, and with a new ribbon in her bonnet, and gloves on her hands, like the lady she was so fond of thinking herself." "She was as pretty a creature as ever the sun shone on." "Ay, she was a farrantly [2] lass; more's the pity now," added Barton, with a sigh. "You see them Buckinghamshire people as comes to work in Manchester, has quite a different look with them to us Manchester folk. You'll not see among the Manchester wenches such fresh rosy cheeks, or such black lashes to gray eyes (making them look like black), as my wife and Esther had. I never seed two such pretty women for sisters; never. Not but what beauty is a sad snare. Here was Esther so puffed up, that there was no holding her in. Her spirit was always up, if I spoke ever so little in the way of advice to her; my wife spoiled her, it is true, for you see she was so much older than Esther she was more like a mother to her, doing every thing for her." [Footnote 2: "Farrantly," comely, pleasant-looking.] "I wonder she ever left you," observed his friend. "That's the worst of factory work, for girls. They can earn so much when work is plenty, that they can maintain themselves any how. My Mary shall never work in a factory, that I'm determined on. You see Esther spent her money in dress, thinking to set off her pretty face; and got to come home so late at night, that at last I told her my mind: my missis thinks I spoke crossly, but I meant right, for I loved Esther, if it was only for Mary's sake. Says I, 'Esther, I see what you'll end at with your artificials, and your fly-away veils, and stopping out when honest women are in their beds; you'll be a street-walker, Esther, and then, don't you go to think I'll have you darken my door, though my wife is your sister.' So says she, 'Don't trouble yourself, John. I'll pack up and be off now, for I'll never stay to hear myself called as you call me.' She flushed up like a turkey-cock, and I thought fire would come out of her eyes; but when she saw Mary cry (for Mary can't abide words in a house), she went and kissed her, and said she was not so bad as I thought her. So we talked more friendly, for, as I said, I liked the lass well enough, and her pretty looks, and her cheery ways. But she said (and at the time I thought there was sense in what she said) we should be much better friends if she went into lodgings, and only came to see us now and then." "Then you still were friendly. Folks said you'd cast her off, and said you'd never speak to her again." "Folks always make one a deal worse than one is," said John Barton, testily. "She came many a time to our house after she left off living with us. Last Sunday se'nnight--no! it was this very last Sunday, she came to drink a cup of tea with Mary; and that was the last time we set eyes on her." "Was she any ways different in her manner?" asked Wilson. "Well, I don't know. I have thought several times since, that she was a bit quieter, and more womanly-like; more gentle, and more blushing, and not so riotous and noisy. She comes in, toward four o'clock, when afternoon church was loosing, and she goes and hangs her bonnet up on the old nail we used to call hers, while she lived with us. I remember thinking what a pretty lass she was, as she sat on a low stool by Mary, who was rocking herself, and in rather a poor way. She laughed and cried by turns, but all so softly and gently, like a child, that I couldn't find in my heart to scold her, especially as Mary was fretting already. One thing I do remember I did say, and pretty sharply too. She took our little Mary by the waist, and--" "Thou must leave off calling her 'little' Mary, she's growing up into as fine a lass as one can see on a summer's day; more of her mother's stock than thine," interrupted Wilson. "Well, well, I call her 'little,' because her mother's name is Mary. But, as I was saying, she takes Mary in a coaxing sort of way, and, 'Mary,' says she, 'what should you think if I sent for you some day and made a lady of you?' So I could not stand such talk as that to my girl, and I said, 'Thou'd best not put that nonsense i' the girl's head I can tell thee; I'd rather see her earning her bread by the sweat of her brow, as the Bible tells her she should do, ay, though she never got butter to her bread, than be like a do-nothing lady, worrying shopmen all morning, and screeching at her pianny all afternoon, and going to bed without having done a good turn to any one of God's creatures but herself.'" "Thou never could abide the gentlefolk," said Wilson, half amused at his friend's vehemence. "And what good have they ever done me that I should like them?" asked Barton, the latent fire lighting up his eye: and bursting forth, he continued, "If I am sick, do they come and nurse me? If my child lies dying (as poor Tom lay, with his white wan lips quivering, for want of better food than I could give him), does the rich man bring the wine or broth that might save his life? If I am out of work for weeks in the bad times, and winter comes, with black frost, and keen east wind, and there is no coal for the grate, and no clothes for the bed, and the thin bones are seen through the ragged clothes, does the rich man share his plenty with me, as he ought to do, if his religion wasn't a humbug? When I lie on my death-bed, and Mary (bless her) stands fretting, as I know she will fret," and here his voice faltered a little, "will a rich lady come and take her to her own home if need be, till she can look round, and see what best to do? No, I tell you, it's the poor, and the poor only, as does such things for the poor. Don't think to come over me with th' old tale, that the rich know nothing of the trials of the poor. I say, if they don't know, they ought to know. We're their slaves as long as we can work; we pile up their fortunes with the sweat of our brows; and yet we are to live as separate as if we were in two worlds; ay, as separate as Dives and Lazarus, with a great gulf betwixt us: but I know who was best off then," and he wound up his speech with a low chuckle that had no mirth in it. "Well, neighbour," said Wilson, "all that may be very true, but what I want to know now is about Esther--when did you last hear of her?" "Why, she took leave of us that Sunday night in a very loving way, kissing both wife Mary, and daughter Mary (if I must not call her little), and shaking hands with me; but all in a cheerful sort of manner, so we thought nothing about her kisses and shakes. But on Wednesday night comes Mrs. Bradshaw's son with Esther's box, and presently Mrs. Bradshaw follows with the key; and when we began to talk, we found Esther told her she was coming back to live with us, and would pay her week's money for not giving notice; and on Tuesday night she carried off a little bundle (her best clothes were on her back, as I said before), and told Mrs. Bradshaw not to hurry herself about the big box, but bring it when she had time. So of course she thought she should find Esther with us; and when she told her story, my missis set up such a screech, and fell down in a dead swoon. Mary ran up with water for her mother, and I thought so much about my wife, I did not seem to care at all for Esther. But the next day I asked all the neighbours (both our own and Bradshaw's), and they'd none of 'em heard or seen nothing of her. I even went to a policeman, a good enough sort of man, but a fellow I'd never spoke to before because of his livery, and I asks him if his 'cuteness could find any thing out for us. So I believe he asks other policemen; and one on 'em had seen a wench, like our Esther, walking very quickly, with a bundle under her arm, on Tuesday night, toward eight o'clock, and get into a hackney coach, near Hulme Church, and we don't know th' number, and can't trace it no further. I'm sorry enough for the girl, for bad's come over her, one way or another, but I'm sorrier for my wife. She loved her next to me and Mary, and she's never been the same body since poor Tom's death. However, let's go back to them; your old woman may have done her good." As they walked homewards with a brisker pace, Wilson expressed a wish that they still were the near neighbours they once had been. "Still our Alice lives in the cellar under No. 14, in Barber Street, and if you'd only speak the word she'd be with you in five minutes, to keep your wife company when she's lonesome. Though I'm Alice's brother, and perhaps ought not to say it, I will say there's none more ready to help with heart or hand than she is. Though she may have done a hard day's wash, there's not a child ill within the street but Alice goes to offer to sit up, and does sit up too, though may be she's to be at her work by six next morning." "She's a poor woman, and can feel for the poor, Wilson," was Barton's reply; and then he added, "Thank you kindly for your offer, and mayhap I may trouble her to be a bit with my wife, for while I'm at work, and Mary's at school, I know she frets above a bit. See, there's Mary!" and the father's eye brightened, as in the distance, among a group of girls, he spied his only daughter, a bonny lassie of thirteen or so, who came bounding along to meet and to greet her father, in a manner which showed that the stern-looking man had a tender nature within. The two men had crossed the last stile while Mary loitered behind to gather some buds of the coming hawthorn, when an over-grown lad came past her, and snatched a kiss, exclaiming, "For old acquaintance sake, Mary." "Take that for old acquaintance sake, then," said the girl, blushing rosy red, more with anger than shame, as she slapped his face. The tones of her voice called back her father and his friend, and the aggressor proved to be the eldest son of the latter, the senior by eighteen years of his little brothers. "Here, children, instead o' kissing and quarrelling, do ye each take a baby, for if Wilson's arms be like mine they are heartily tired." Mary sprang forward to take her father's charge, with a girl's fondness for infants, and with some little foresight of the event soon to happen at home; while young Wilson seemed to lose his rough, cubbish nature as he crowed and cooed to his little brother. "Twins is a great trial to a poor man, bless 'em," said the half-proud, half-weary father, as he bestowed a smacking kiss on the babe ere he parted with it. CHAPTER II. A MANCHESTER TEA-PARTY. Polly, put the kettle on, And let's have tea! Polly, put the kettle on, And we'll all have tea. "Here we are, wife; didst thou think thou'd lost us?" quoth hearty-voiced Wilson, as the two women rose and shook themselves in preparation for their homeward walk. Mrs. Barton was evidently soothed, if not cheered, by the unburdening of her fears and thoughts to her friend; and her approving look went far to second her husband's invitation that the whole party should adjourn from Green Heys Fields to tea, at the Bartons' house. The only faint opposition was raised by Mrs. Wilson, on account of the lateness of the hour at which they would probably return, which she feared on her babies' account. "Now, hold your tongue, missis, will you," said her husband, good-temperedly. "Don't you know them brats never goes to sleep till long past ten? and haven't you a shawl, under which you can tuck one lad's head, as safe as a bird's under its wing? And as for t'other one, I'll put it in my pocket rather than not stay, now we are this far away from Ancoats." "Or I can lend you another shawl," suggested Mrs. Barton. "Ay, any thing rather than not stay." The matter being decided, the party proceeded home, through many half-finished streets, all so like one another that you might have easily been bewildered and lost your way. Not a step, however, did our friends lose; down this entry, cutting off that corner, until they turned out of one of these innumerable streets into a little paved court, having the backs of houses at the end opposite to the opening, and a gutter running through the middle to carry off household slops, washing suds, &c. The women who lived in the court were busy taking in strings of caps, frocks, and various articles of linen, which hung from side to side, dangling so low, that if our friends had been a few minutes sooner, they would have had to stoop very much, or else the half-wet clothes would have flapped in their faces; but although the evening seemed yet early when they were in the open fields--among the pent-up houses, night, with its mists, and its darkness, had already begun to fall. Many greetings were given and exchanged between the Wilsons and these women, for not long ago they had also dwelt in this court. Two rude lads, standing at a disorderly looking house-door, exclaimed, as Mary Barton (the daughter) passed, "Eh, look! Polly Barton's gotten a sweetheart." Of course this referred to young Wilson, who stole a look to see how Mary took the idea. He saw her assume the air of a young fury, and to his next speech she answered not a word. Mrs. Barton produced the key of the door from her pocket; and on entering the house-place it seemed as if they were in total darkness, except one bright spot, which might be a cat's eye, or might be, what it was, a red-hot fire, smouldering under a large piece of coal, which John Barton immediately applied himself to break up, and the effect instantly produced was warm and glowing light in every corner of the room. To add to this (although the coarse yellow glare seemed lost in the ruddy glow from the fire), Mrs. Barton lighted a dip by sticking it in the fire, and having placed it satisfactorily in a tin candlestick, began to look further about her, on hospitable thoughts intent. The room was tolerably large, and possessed many conveniences. On the right of the door, as you entered, was a longish window, with a broad ledge. On each side of this, hung blue-and-white check curtains, which were now drawn, to shut in the friends met to enjoy themselves. Two geraniums, unpruned and leafy, which stood on the sill, formed a further defence from out-door pryers. In the corner between the window and the fire-side was a cupboard, apparently full of plates and dishes, cups and saucers, and some more nondescript articles, for which one would have fancied their possessors could find no use--such as triangular pieces of glass to save carving knives and forks from dirtying table-cloths. However, it was evident Mrs. Barton was proud of her crockery and glass, for she left her cupboard door open, with a glance round of satisfaction and pleasure. On the opposite side to the door and window was the staircase, and two doors; one of which (the nearest to the fire) led into a sort of little back kitchen, where dirty work, such as washing up dishes, might be done, and whose shelves served as larder, and pantry, and storeroom, and all. The other door, which was considerably lower, opened into the coal-hole--the slanting closet under the stairs; from which, to the fire-place, there was a gay-coloured piece of oil-cloth laid. The place seemed almost crammed with furniture (sure sign of good times among the mills). Beneath the window was a dresser with three deep drawers. Opposite the fire-place was a table, which I should call a Pembroke, only that it was made of deal, and I cannot tell how far such a name may be applied to such humble material. On it, resting against the wall, was a bright green japanned tea-tray, having a couple of scarlet lovers embracing in the middle. The fire-light danced merrily on this, and really (setting all taste but that of a child's aside) it gave a richness of colouring to that side of the room. It was in some measure propped up by a crimson tea-caddy, also of japan ware. A round table on one branching leg really for use, stood in the corresponding corner to the cupboard; and, if you can picture all this with a washy, but clean stencilled pattern on the walls, you can form some idea of John Barton's home. The tray was soon hoisted down, and before the merry chatter of cups and saucers began, the women disburdened themselves of their out-of-door things, and sent Mary up stairs with them. Then came a long whispering, and chinking of money, to which Mr. and Mrs. Wilson were too polite to attend; knowing, as they did full well, that it all related to the preparations for hospitality; hospitality that, in their turn, they should have such pleasure in offering. So they tried to be busily occupied with the children, and not to hear Mrs. Barton's directions to Mary. "Run, Mary dear, just round the corner, and get some fresh eggs at Tipping's (you may get one a-piece, that will be five-pence), and see if he has any nice ham cut, that he would let us have a pound of." "Say two pounds, missis, and don't be stingy," chimed in the husband. "Well, a pound and a half, Mary. And get it Cumberland ham, for Wilson comes from there-away, and it will have a sort of relish of home with it he'll like,--and Mary" (seeing the lassie fain to be off), "you must get a pennyworth of milk and a loaf of bread--mind you get it fresh and new--and, and--that's all, Mary." "No, it's not all," said her husband. "Thou must get sixpennyworth of rum, to warm the tea; thou'll get it at the 'Grapes.' And thou just go to Alice Wilson; he says she lives just right round the corner, under 14, Barber Street" (this was addressed to his wife), "and tell her to come and take her tea with us; she'll like to see her brother, I'll be bound, let alone Jane and the twins." "If she comes she must bring a tea-cup and saucer, for we have but half-a-dozen, and here's six of us," said Mrs. Barton. "Pooh! pooh! Jem and Mary can drink out of one, surely." But Mary secretly determined to take care that Alice brought her tea-cup and saucer, if the alternative was to be her sharing any thing with Jem. Alice Wilson had but just come in. She had been out all day in the fields, gathering wild herbs for drinks and medicine, for in addition to her invaluable qualities as a sick nurse and her worldly occupation as a washerwoman, she added a considerable knowledge of hedge and field simples; and on fine days, when no more profitable occupation offered itself, she used to ramble off into the lanes and meadows as far as her legs could carry her. This evening she had returned loaded with nettles, and her first object was to light a candle and see to hang them up in bunches in every available place in her cellar room. It was the perfection of cleanliness: in one corner stood the modest-looking bed, with a check curtain at the head, the whitewashed wall filling up the place where the corresponding one should have been. The floor was bricked, and scrupulously clean, although so damp that it seemed as if the last washing would never dry up. As the cellar window looked into an area in the street, down which boys might throw stones, it was protected by an outside shelter, and was oddly festooned with all manner of hedge-row, ditch, and field plants, which we are accustomed to call valueless, but which have a powerful effect either for good or for evil, and are consequently much used among the poor. The room was strewed, hung, and darkened with these bunches, which emitted no very fragrant odour in their process of drying. In one corner was a sort of broad hanging shelf, made of old planks, where some old hoards of Alice's were kept. Her little bit of crockery ware was ranged on the mantelpiece, where also stood her candlestick and box of matches. A small cupboard contained at the bottom coals, and at the top her bread and basin of oatmeal, her frying pan, tea-pot, and a small tin saucepan, which served as a kettle, as well as for cooking the delicate little messes of broth which Alice sometimes was able to manufacture for a sick neighbour. After her walk she felt chilly and weary, and was busy trying to light her fire with the damp coals, and half green sticks, when Mary knocked. "Come in," said Alice, remembering, however, that she had barred the door for the night, and hastening to make it possible for any one to come in. "Is that you, Mary Barton?" exclaimed she, as the light from her candle streamed on the girl's face. "How you are grown since I used to see you at my brother's! Come in, lass, come in." "Please," said Mary, almost breathless, "mother says you're to come to tea, and bring your cup and saucer, for George and Jane Wilson is with us, and the twins, and Jem. And you're to make haste, please." "I'm sure it's very neighbourly and kind in your mother, and I'll come, with many thanks. Stay, Mary, has your mother got any nettles for spring drink? If she hasn't I'll take her some." "No, I don't think she has." Mary ran off like a hare to fulfil what, to a girl of thirteen, fond of power, was the more interesting part of her errand--the money-spending part. And well and ably did she perform her business, returning home with a little bottle of rum, and the eggs in one hand, while her other was filled with some excellent red-and-white smoke-flavoured Cumberland ham, wrapped up in paper. She was at home, and frying ham, before Alice had chosen her nettles, put out her candle, locked her door, and walked in a very foot-sore manner as far as John Barton's. What an aspect of comfort did his houseplace present, after her humble cellar. She did not think of comparing; but for all that she felt the delicious glow of the fire, the bright light that revelled in every corner of the room, the savoury smells, the comfortable sounds of a boiling kettle, and the hissing, frizzling ham. With a little old-fashioned curtsey she shut the door, and replied with a loving heart to the boisterous and surprised greeting of her brother. And now all preparations being made, the party sat down; Mrs. Wilson in the post of honour, the rocking chair on the right hand side of the fire, nursing her baby, while its father, in an opposite arm-chair, tried vainly to quieten the other with bread soaked in milk. Mrs. Barton knew manners too well to do any thing but sit at the tea-table and make tea, though in her heart she longed to be able to superintend the frying of the ham, and cast many an anxious look at Mary as she broke the eggs and turned the ham, with a very comfortable portion of confidence in her own culinary powers. Jem stood awkwardly leaning against the dresser, replying rather gruffly to his aunt's speeches, which gave him, he thought, the air of being a little boy; whereas he considered himself as a young man, and not so very young neither, as in two months he would be eighteen. Barton vibrated between the fire and the tea-table, his only drawback being a fancy that every now and then his wife's face flushed and contracted as if in pain. At length the business actually began. Knives and forks, cups and saucers made a noise, but human voices were still, for human beings were hungry, and had no time to speak. Alice first broke silence; holding her tea-cup with the manner of one proposing a toast, she said, "Here's to absent friends. Friends may meet, but mountains never." It was an unlucky toast or sentiment, as she instantly felt. Every one thought of Esther, the absent Esther; and Mrs. Barton put down her food, and could not hide the fast dropping tears. Alice could have bitten her tongue out. It was a wet blanket to the evening; for though all had been said and suggested in the fields that could be said or suggested, every one had a wish to say something in the way of comfort to poor Mrs. Barton, and a dislike to talk about any thing else while her tears fell fast and scalding. So George Wilson, his wife and children, set off early home, not before (in spite of _mal-à-propos_ speeches) they had expressed a wish that such meetings might often take place, and not before John Barton had given his hearty consent; and declared that as soon as ever his wife was well again they would have just such another evening. "I will take care not to come and spoil it," thought poor Alice; and going up to Mrs. Barton she took her hand almost humbly, and said, "You don't know how sorry I am I said it." To her surprise, a surprise that brought tears of joy into her eyes, Mary Barton put her arms round her neck, and kissed the self-reproaching Alice. "You didn't mean any harm, and it was me as was so foolish; only this work about Esther, and not knowing where she is, lies so heavy on my heart. Good night, and never think no more about it. God bless you, Alice." Many and many a time, as Alice reviewed that evening in her after life, did she bless Mary Barton for these kind and thoughtful words. But just then all she could say was, "Good night, Mary, and may God bless _you_." CHAPTER III. JOHN BARTON'S GREAT TROUBLE. But when the morn came dim and sad, And chill with early showers, Her quiet eyelids closed--she had Another morn than ours! HOOD. In the middle of that same night a neighbour of the Bartons was roused from her sound, well-earned sleep, by a knocking, which had at first made part of her dream; but starting up, as soon as she became convinced of its reality, she opened the window, and asked who was there? "Me, John Barton," answered he, in a voice tremulous with agitation. "My missis is in labour, and, for the love of God, step in while I run for th' doctor, for she's fearful bad." While the woman hastily dressed herself, leaving the window still open, she heard cries of agony, which resounded in the little court in the stillness of the night. In less than five minutes she was standing by Mrs. Barton's bed-side, relieving the terrified Mary, who went about, where she was told, like an automaton; her eyes tearless, her face calm, though deadly pale, and uttering no sound, except when her teeth chattered for very nervousness. The cries grew worse. The doctor was very long in hearing the repeated rings at his night-bell, and still longer in understanding who it was that made this sudden call upon his services; and then he begged Barton just to wait while he dressed himself, in order that no time might be lost in finding the court and house. Barton absolutely stamped with impatience, outside the doctor's door, before he came down; and walked so fast homewards, that the medical man several times asked him to go slower. "Is she so very bad?" asked he. "Worse, much worser than ever I saw her before," replied John. No! she was not--she was at peace. The cries were still for ever. John had no time for listening. He opened the latched door, stayed not to light a candle for the mere ceremony of showing his companion up the stairs, so well known to himself; but, in two minutes was in the room, where lay the dead wife, whom he had loved with all the power of his strong heart. The doctor stumbled up stairs by the fire-light, and met the awe-struck look of the neighbour, which at once told him the state of things. The room was still, as he, with habitual tip-toe step, approached the poor frail body, whom nothing now could more disturb. Her daughter knelt by the bed-side, her face buried in the clothes, which were almost crammed into her mouth, to keep down the choking sobs. The husband stood like one stupified. The doctor questioned the neighbour in whispers, and then approaching Barton, said, "You must go down stairs. This is a great shock, but bear it like a man. Go down." He went mechanically and sat down on the first chair. He had no hope. The look of death was too clear upon her face. Still, when he heard one or two unusual noises, the thought burst on him that it might only be a trance, a fit, a--he did not well know what,--but not death! Oh, not death! And he was starting up to go up stairs again, when the doctor's heavy cautious creaking footstep was heard on the stairs. Then he knew what it really was in the chamber above. "Nothing could have saved her--there has been some shock to the system--" and so he went on; but, to unheeding ears, which yet retained his words to ponder on; words not for immediate use in conveying sense, but to be laid by, in the store-house of memory, for a more convenient season. The doctor seeing the state of the case, grieved for the man; and, very sleepy, thought it best to go, and accordingly wished him good-night--but there was no answer, so he let himself out; and Barton sat on, like a stock or a stone, so rigid, so still. He heard the sounds above too, and knew what they meant. He heard the stiff, unseasoned drawer, in which his wife kept her clothes, pulled open. He saw the neighbour come down, and blunder about in search of soap and water. He knew well what she wanted, and _why_ she wanted them, but he did not speak, nor offer to help. At last she went, with some kindly-meant words (a text of comfort, which fell upon a deafened ear), and something about "Mary," but which Mary, in his bewildered state, he could not tell. He tried to realise it, to think it possible. And then his mind wandered off to other days, to far different times. He thought of their courtship; of his first seeing her, an awkward, beautiful rustic, far too shiftless for the delicate factory work to which she was apprenticed; of his first gift to her, a bead necklace, which had long ago been put by, in one of the deep drawers of the dresser, to be kept for Mary. He wondered if it was there yet, and with a strange curiosity he got up to feel for it; for the fire by this time was well-nigh out, and candle he had none. His groping hand fell on the piled-up tea things, which at his desire she had left unwashed till morning--they were all so tired. He was reminded of one of the daily little actions, which acquire such power when they have been performed for the last time, by one we love. He began to think over his wife's daily round of duties; and something in the remembrance that these would never more be done by her, touched the source of tears, and he cried aloud. Poor Mary, meanwhile, had mechanically helped the neighbour in all the last attentions to the dead; and when she was kissed, and spoken to soothingly, tears stole quietly down her cheeks: but she reserved the luxury of a full burst of grief till she should be alone. She shut the chamber-door softly, after the neighbour had gone, and then shook the bed by which she knelt, with her agony of sorrow. She repeated, over and over again, the same words; the same vain, unanswered address to her who was no more. "Oh, mother! mother, are you really dead! Oh, mother, mother!" At last she stopped, because it flashed across her mind that her violence of grief might disturb her father. All was still below. She looked on the face so changed, and yet so strangely like. She bent down to kiss it. The cold, unyielding flesh struck a shudder to her heart, and, hastily obeying her impulse, she grasped the candle, and opened the door. Then she heard the sobs of her father's grief; and quickly, quietly, stealing down the steps, she knelt by him, and kissed his hand. He took no notice at first, for his burst of grief would not be controlled. But when her shriller sobs, her terrified cries (which she could not repress), rose upon his ear, he checked himself. "Child, we must be all to one another, now _she_ is gone," whispered he. "Oh, father, what can I do for you? Do tell me! I'll do any thing." "I know thou wilt. Thou must not fret thyself ill, that's the first thing I ask. Thou must leave me, and go to bed now, like a good girl as thou art." "Leave you, father! oh, don't say so." "Ay, but thou must! thou must go to bed, and try and sleep; thou'lt have enough to do and to bear, poor wench, to-morrow." Mary got up, kissed her father, and sadly went up stairs to the little closet, where she slept. She thought it was of no use undressing, for that she could never, never sleep, so threw herself on her bed in her clothes, and before ten minutes had passed away, the passionate grief of youth had subsided into sleep. Barton had been roused by his daughter's entrance, both from his stupor and from his uncontrollable sorrow. He could think on what was to be done, could plan for the funeral, could calculate the necessity of soon returning to his work, as the extravagance of the past night would leave them short of money, if he long remained away from the mill. He was in a club, so that money was provided for the burial. These things settled in his own mind, he recalled the doctor's words, and bitterly thought of the shock his poor wife had so recently had, in the mysterious disappearance of her cherished sister. His feelings towards Esther almost amounted to curses. It was she who had brought on all this sorrow. Her giddiness, her lightness of conduct, had wrought this woe. His previous thoughts about her had been tinged with wonder and pity, but now he hardened his heart against her for ever. One of the good influences over John Barton's life had departed that night. One of the ties which bound him down to the gentle humanities of earth was loosened, and henceforward the neighbours all remarked he was a changed man. His gloom and his sternness became habitual instead of occasional. He was more obstinate. But never to Mary. Between the father and the daughter there existed in full force that mysterious bond which unites those who have been loved by one who is now dead and gone. While he was harsh and silent to others, he humoured Mary with tender love; she had more of her own way than is common in any rank with girls of her age. Part of this was the necessity of the case; for, of course, all the money went through her hands, and the household arrangements were guided by her will and pleasure. But part was her father's indulgence, for he left her, with full trust in her unusual sense and spirit, to choose her own associates, and her own times for seeing them. With all this, Mary had not her father's confidence in the matters which now began to occupy him, heart and soul; she was aware that he had joined clubs, and become an active member of a trades' union, but it was hardly likely that a girl of Mary's age (even when two or three years had elapsed since her mother's death) should care much for the differences between the employers and the employed,--an eternal subject for agitation in the manufacturing districts, which, however it may be lulled for a time, is sure to break forth again with fresh violence at any depression of trade, showing that in its apparent quiet, the ashes had still smouldered in the breasts of a few. Among these few was John Barton. At all times it is a bewildering thing to the poor weaver to see his employer removing from house to house, each one grander than the last, till he ends in building one more magnificent than all, or withdraws his money from the concern, or sells his mill to buy an estate in the country, while all the time the weaver, who thinks he and his fellows are the real makers of this wealth, is struggling on for bread for their children, through the vicissitudes of lowered wages, short hours, fewer hands employed, &c. And when he knows trade is bad, and could understand (at least partially) that there are not buyers enough in the market to purchase the goods already made, and consequently that there is no demand for more; when he would bear and endure much without complaining, could he also see that his employers were bearing their share; he is, I say, bewildered and (to use his own word) "aggravated" to see that all goes on just as usual with the mill-owners. Large houses are still occupied, while spinners' and weavers' cottages stand empty, because the families that once occupied them are obliged to live in rooms or cellars. Carriages still roll along the streets, concerts are still crowded by subscribers, the shops for expensive luxuries still find daily customers, while the workman loiters away his unemployed time in watching these things, and thinking of the pale, uncomplaining wife at home, and the wailing children asking in vain for enough of food, of the sinking health, of the dying life of those near and dear to him. The contrast is too great. Why should he alone suffer from bad times? I know that this is not really the case; and I know what is the truth in such matters: but what I wish to impress is what the workman feels and thinks. True, that with child-like improvidence, good times will often dissipate his grumbling, and make him forget all prudence and foresight. But there are earnest men among these people, men who have endured wrongs without complaining, but without ever forgetting or forgiving those whom (they believe) have caused all this woe. Among these was John Barton. His parents had suffered, his mother had died from absolute want of the necessaries of life. He himself was a good, steady workman, and, as such, pretty certain of steady employment. But he spent all he got with the confidence (you may also call it improvidence) of one who was willing, and believed himself able, to supply all his wants by his own exertions. And when his master suddenly failed, and all hands in that mill were turned back, one Tuesday morning, with the news that Mr. Hunter had stopped, Barton had only a few shillings to rely on; but he had good heart of being employed at some other mill, and accordingly, before returning home, he spent some hours in going from factory to factory, asking for work. But at every mill was some sign of depression of trade; some were working short hours, some were turning off hands, and for weeks Barton was out of work, living on credit. It was during this time his little son, the apple of his eye, the cynosure of all his strong power of love, fell ill of the scarlet fever. They dragged him through the crisis, but his life hung on a gossamer thread. Every thing, the doctor said, depended on good nourishment, on generous living, to keep up the little fellow's strength, in the prostration in which the fever had left him. Mocking words! when the commonest food in the house would not furnish one little meal. Barton tried credit; but it was worn out at the little provision shops, which were now suffering in their turn. He thought it would be no sin to steal, and would have stolen; but he could not get the opportunity in the few days the child lingered. Hungry himself, almost to an animal pitch of ravenousness, but with the bodily pain swallowed up in anxiety for his little sinking lad, he stood at one of the shop windows where all edible luxuries are displayed; haunches of venison, Stilton cheeses, moulds of jelly--all appetising sights to the common passer by. And out of this shop came Mrs. Hunter! She crossed to her carriage, followed by the shopman loaded with purchases for a party. The door was quickly slammed to, and she drove away; and Barton returned home with a bitter spirit of wrath in his heart, to see his only boy a corpse! You can fancy, now, the hoards of vengeance in his heart against the employers. For there are never wanting those who, either in speech or in print, find it their interest to cherish such feelings in the working classes; who know how and when to rouse the dangerous power at their command; and who use their knowledge with unrelenting purpose to either party. So while Mary took her own way, growing more spirited every day, and growing in her beauty too, her father was chairman at many a trades' union meeting; a friend of delegates, and ambitious of being a delegate himself; a Chartist, and ready to do any thing for his order. But now times were good; and all these feelings were theoretical, not practical. His most practical thought was getting Mary apprenticed to a dressmaker; for he had never left off disliking a factory life for a girl, on more accounts than one. Mary must do something. The factories being, as I said, out of the question, there were two things open--going out to service, and the dressmaking business; and against the first of these, Mary set herself with all the force of her strong will. What that will might have been able to achieve had her father been against her, I cannot tell; but he disliked the idea of parting with her, who was the light of his hearth, the voice of his otherwise silent home. Besides, with his ideas and feelings towards the higher classes, he considered domestic servitude as a species of slavery; a pampering of artificial wants on the one side, a giving-up of every right of leisure by day and quiet rest by night on the other. How far his strong exaggerated feelings had any foundation in truth, it is for you to judge. I am afraid that Mary's determination not to go to service arose from far less sensible thoughts on the subject than her father's. Three years of independence of action (since her mother's death such a time had now elapsed) had little inclined her to submit to rules as to hours and associates, to regulate her dress by a mistress's ideas of propriety, to lose the dear feminine privileges of gossiping with a merry neighbour, and working night and day to help one who was sorrowful. Besides all this, the sayings of her absent, her mysterious aunt, Esther, had an unacknowledged influence over Mary. She knew she was very pretty; the factory people as they poured from the mills, and in their freedom told the truth (whatever it might be) to every passer-by, had early let Mary into the secret of her beauty. If their remarks had fallen on an unheeding ear, there were always young men enough, in a different rank from her own, who were willing to compliment the pretty weaver's daughter as they met her in the streets. Besides, trust a girl of sixteen for knowing well if she is pretty; concerning her plainness she may be ignorant. So with this consciousness she had early determined that her beauty should make her a lady; the rank she coveted the more for her father's abuse; the rank to which she firmly believed her lost aunt Esther had arrived. Now, while a servant must often drudge and be dirty, must be known as a servant by all who visited at her master's house, a dressmaker's apprentice must (or so Mary thought) be always dressed with a certain regard to appearance; must never soil her hands, and need never redden or dirty her face with hard labour. Before my telling you so truly what folly Mary felt or thought, injures her without redemption in your opinion, think what are the silly fancies of sixteen years of age in every class, and under all circumstances. The end of all the thoughts of father and daughter was, as I said before, Mary was to be a dressmaker; and her ambition prompted her unwilling father to apply at all the first establishments, to know on what terms of painstaking and zeal his daughter might be admitted into ever so humble a workwoman's situation. But high premiums were asked at all; poor man! he might have known that without giving up a day's work to ascertain the fact. He would have been indignant, indeed, had he known that if Mary had accompanied him, the case might have been rather different, as her beauty would have made her desirable as a show-woman. Then he tried second-rate places; at all the payment of a sum of money was necessary, and money he had none. Disheartened and angry he went home at night, declaring it was time lost; that dressmaking was at all events a toilsome business, and not worth learning. Mary saw that the grapes were sour, and the next day set out herself, as her father could not afford to lose another day's work; and before night (as yesterday's experience had considerably lowered her ideas) she had engaged herself as apprentice (so called, though there were no deeds or indentures to the bond) to a certain Miss Simmonds, milliner and dressmaker, in a respectable little street leading off Ardwick Green, where her business was duly announced in gold letters on a black ground, enclosed in a bird's-eye maple frame, and stuck in the front parlour window; where the workwomen were called "her young ladies;" and where Mary was to work for two years without any remuneration, on consideration of being taught the business; and where afterwards she was to dine and have tea, with a small quarterly salary (paid quarterly, because so much more genteel than by the week), a _very_ small one, divisible into a minute weekly pittance. In summer she was to be there by six, bringing her day's meals during the first two years; in winter she was not to come till after breakfast. Her time for returning home at night must always depend upon the quantity of work Miss Simmonds had to do. And Mary was satisfied; and seeing this, her father was contented too, although his words were grumbling and morose; but Mary knew his ways, and coaxed and planned for the future so cheerily, that both went to bed with easy if not happy hearts. CHAPTER IV. OLD ALICE'S HISTORY. To envy nought beneath the ample sky; To mourn no evil deed, no hour mis-spent; And, like a living violet, silently Return in sweets to Heaven what goodness lent, Then bend beneath the chastening shower content. ELLIOTT. Another year passed on. The waves of time seemed long since to have swept away all trace of poor Mary Barton. But her husband still thought of her, although with a calm and quiet grief, in the silent watches of the night: and Mary would start from her hard-earned sleep, and think in her half-dreamy, half-awakened state, she saw her mother stand by her bed-side, as she used to do "in the days of long-ago;" with a shaded candle and an expression of ineffable tenderness, while she looked on her sleeping child. But Mary rubbed her eyes and sank back on her pillow, awake, and knowing it was a dream; and still, in all her troubles and perplexities, her heart called on her mother for aid, and she thought, "If mother had but lived, she would have helped me." Forgetting that the woman's sorrows are far more difficult to mitigate than a child's, even by the mighty power of a mother's love; and unconscious of the fact, that she was far superior in sense and spirit to the mother she mourned. Aunt Esther was still mysteriously absent, and people had grown weary of wondering and began to forget. Barton still attended his club, and was an active member of a trades' union; indeed, more frequently than ever, since the time of Mary's return in the evening was so uncertain; and, as she occasionally, in very busy times, remained all night. His chiefest friend was still George Wilson, although he had no great sympathy on the questions that agitated Barton's mind. Still their hearts were bound by old ties to one another, and the remembrance of former times gave an unspoken charm to their meetings. Our old friend, the cub-like lad, Jem Wilson, had shot up into the powerful, well-made young man, with a sensible face enough; nay, a face that might have been handsome, had it not been here and there marked by the small-pox. He worked with one of the great firms of engineers, who send from out their towns of workshops engines and machinery to the dominions of the Czar and the Sultan. His father and mother were never weary of praising Jem, at all which commendation pretty Mary Barton would toss her head, seeing clearly enough that they wished her to understand what a good husband he would make, and to favour his love, about which he never dared to speak, whatever eyes and looks revealed. One day, in the early winter time, when people were provided with warm substantial gowns, not likely soon to wear out, and when, accordingly, business was rather slack at Miss Simmonds', Mary met Alice Wilson, coming home from her half-day's work at some tradesman's house. Mary and Alice had always liked each other; indeed, Alice looked with particular interest on the motherless girl, the daughter of her whose forgiving kiss had so comforted her in many sleepless hours. So there was a warm greeting between the tidy old woman and the blooming young work-girl; and then Alice ventured to ask if she would come in and take her tea with her that very evening. "You'll think it dull enough to come just to sit with an old woman like me, but there's a tidy young lass as lives in the floor above, who does plain work, and now and then a bit in your own line, Mary; she's grand-daughter to old Job Legh, a spinner, and a good girl she is. Do come, Mary! I've a terrible wish to make you known to each other. She's a genteel-looking lass, too." At the beginning of this speech Mary had feared the intended visitor was to be no other than Alice's nephew; but Alice was too delicate-minded to plan a meeting, even for her dear Jem, when one would have been an unwilling party; and Mary, relieved from her apprehension by the conclusion, gladly agreed to come. How busy Alice felt! it was not often she had any one to tea; and now her sense of the duties of a hostess were almost too much for her. She made haste home, and lighted the unwilling fire, borrowing a pair of bellows to make it burn the faster. For herself she was always patient; she let the coals take their time. Then she put on her pattens, and went to fill her kettle at the pump in the next court, and on the way she borrowed a cup; of odd saucers she had plenty, serving as plates when occasion required. Half an ounce of tea and a quarter of a pound of butter went far to absorb her morning's wages; but this was an unusual occasion. In general, she used herb-tea for herself, when at home, unless some thoughtful mistress made her a present of tea-leaves from her more abundant household. The two chairs drawn out for visitors, and duly swept and dusted; an old board arranged with some skill upon two old candle-boxes set on end (rather ricketty to be sure, but she knew the seat of old, and when to sit lightly; indeed the whole affair was more for apparent dignity of position than for any real ease); a little, very little round table put just before the fire, which by this time was blazing merrily; her unlackered, ancient, third-hand tea-tray arranged with a black tea-pot, two cups with a red and white pattern, and one with the old friendly willow pattern, and saucers, not to match (on one of the extra supply, the lump of butter flourished away); all these preparations complete, Alice began to look about her with satisfaction, and a sort of wonder what more could be done to add to the comfort of the evening. She took one of the chairs away from its appropriate place by the table, and putting it close to the broad large hanging shelf I told you about when I first described her cellar-dwelling, and mounting on it, she pulled towards her an old deal box, and took thence a quantity of the oat bread of the north, the clap-bread of Cumberland and Westmoreland, and descending carefully with the thin cakes threatening to break to pieces in her hand, she placed them on the bare table, with the belief that her visitors would have an unusual treat in eating the bread of her childhood. She brought out a good piece of a four-pound loaf of common household bread as well, and then sat down to rest, really to rest, and not to pretend, on one of the rush-bottomed chairs. The candle was ready to be lighted, the kettle boiled, the tea was awaiting its doom in its paper parcel; all was ready. A knock at the door! It was Margaret, the young workwoman who lived in the rooms above, who having heard the bustle, and the subsequent quiet, began to think it was time to pay her visit below. She was a sallow, unhealthy, sweet-looking young woman, with a careworn look; her dress was humble and very simple, consisting of some kind of dark stuff gown, her neck being covered by a drab shawl or large handkerchief, pinned down behind and at the sides in front. The old woman gave her a hearty greeting, and made her sit down on the chair she had just left, while she balanced herself on the board seat, in order that Margaret might think it was quite her free and independent choice to sit there. "I cannot think what keeps Mary Barton. She's quite grand with her late hours," said Alice, as Mary still delayed. The truth was, Mary was dressing herself; yes, to come to poor old Alice's--she thought it worth while to consider what gown she should put on. It was not for Alice, however, you may be pretty sure; no, they knew each other too well. But Mary liked making an impression, and in this it must be owned she was pretty often gratified--and there was this strange girl to consider just now. So she put on her pretty new blue merino, made tight to her throat, her little linen collar and linen cuffs, and sallied forth to impress poor gentle Margaret. She certainly succeeded. Alice, who never thought much about beauty, had never told Margaret how pretty Mary was; and, as she came in half-blushing at her own self-consciousness, Margaret could hardly take her eyes off her, and Mary put down her long black lashes with a sort of dislike of the very observation she had taken such pains to secure. Can you fancy the bustle of Alice to make the tea, to pour it out, and sweeten it to their liking, to help and help again to clap-bread and bread-and-butter? Can you fancy the delight with which she watched her piled-up clap-bread disappear before the hungry girls, and listened to the praises of her home-remembered dainty? "My mother used to send me some clap-bread by any north-country person--bless her! She knew how good such things taste when far away from home. Not but what every one likes it. When I was in service my fellow-servants were always glad to share with me. Eh, it's a long time ago, yon." "Do tell us about it, Alice," said Margaret. "Why, lass, there's nothing to tell. There was more mouths at home than could be fed. Tom, that's Will's father (you don't know Will, but he's a sailor to foreign parts), had come to Manchester, and sent word what terrible lots of work was to be had, both for lads and lasses. So father sent George first (you know George, well enough, Mary), and then work was scarce out toward Burton, where we lived, and father said I maun try and get a place. And George wrote as how wages were far higher in Manchester than Milnthorpe or Lancaster; and, lasses, I was young and thoughtless, and thought it was a fine thing to go so far from home. So, one day, th' butcher he brings us a letter fra George, to say he'd heard on a place--and I was all agog to go, and father was pleased, like; but mother said little, and that little was very quiet. I've often thought she was a bit hurt to see me so ready to go--God forgive me! But she packed up my clothes, and some o' the better end of her own as would fit me, in yon little paper box up there--it's good for nought now, but I would liefer live without fire than break it up to be burnt; and yet it's going on for eighty years old, for she had it when she was a girl, and brought all her clothes in it to father's, when they were married. But, as I was saying, she did not cry, though the tears was often in her eyes; and I seen her looking after me down the lane as long as I were in sight, with her hand shading her eyes--and that were the last look I ever had on her." Alice knew that before long she should go to that mother; and, besides, the griefs and bitter woes of youth have worn themselves out before we grow old; but she looked so sorrowful that the girls caught her sadness, and mourned for the poor woman who had been dead and gone so many years ago. "Did you never see her again, Alice? Did you never go home while she was alive?" asked Mary. "No, nor since. Many a time and oft have I planned to go. I plan it yet, and hope to go home again before it please God to take me. I used to try and save money enough to go for a week when I was in service; but first one thing came, and then another. First, missis's children fell ill of the measles, just when th' week I'd ask'd for came, and I couldn't leave them, for one and all cried for me to nurse them. Then missis herself fell sick, and I could go less than ever. For, you see, they kept a little shop, and he drank, and missis and me was all there was to mind children, and shop, and all, and cook and wash besides." Mary was glad she had not gone into service, and said so. "Eh, lass! thou little knows the pleasure o' helping others; I was as happy there as could be; almost as happy as I was at home. Well, but next year I thought I could go at a leisure time, and missis telled me I should have a fortnight then, and I used to sit up all that winter working hard at patchwork, to have a quilt of my own making to take to my mother. But master died, and missis went away fra Manchester, and I'd to look out for a place again." "Well, but," interrupted Mary, "I should have thought that was the best time to go home." "No, I thought not. You see it was a different thing going home for a week on a visit, may be with money in my pocket to give father a lift, to going home to be a burden to him. Besides, how could I hear o' a place there? Anyways I thought it best to stay, though perhaps it might have been better to ha' gone, for then I should ha' seen mother again;" and the poor old woman looked puzzled. "I'm sure you did what you thought right," said Margaret, gently. "Ay, lass, that's it," said Alice, raising her head and speaking more cheerfully. "That's the thing, and then let the Lord send what He sees fit; not but that I grieved sore, oh, sore and sad, when toward spring next year, when my quilt were all done to th' lining, George came in one evening to tell me mother was dead. I cried many a night at after; [3] I'd no time for crying by day, for that missis was terrible strict; she would not hearken to my going to th' funeral; and indeed I would have been too late, for George set off that very night by th' coach, and th' letter had been kept or summut (posts were not like th' posts now-a-days), and he found the burial all over, and father talking o' flitting; for he couldn't abide the cottage after mother was gone." [Footnote 3: A common Lancashire phrase. "Come to me, Tyrrel, soon, _at after_ supper." SHAKSPEARE, Richard III.] "Was it a pretty place?" asked Mary. "Pretty, lass! I never seed such a bonny bit anywhere. You see there are hills there as seem to go up into th' skies, not near may be, but that makes them all the bonnier. I used to think they were the golden hills of heaven, about which my mother sang when I was a child, 'Yon are the golden hills o' heaven, Where ye sall never win.' Something about a ship and a lover that should hae been na lover, the ballad was. Well, and near our cottage were rocks. Eh, lasses! ye don't know what rocks are in Manchester! Gray pieces o' stone as large as a house, all covered over wi' moss of different colours, some yellow, some brown; and the ground beneath them knee-deep in purple heather, smelling sae sweet and fragrant, and the low music of the humming-bee for ever sounding among it. Mother used to send Sally and me out to gather ling and heather for besoms, and it was such pleasant work! We used to come home of an evening loaded so as you could not see us, for all that it was so light to carry. And then mother would make us sit down under the old hawthorn tree (where we used to make our house among the great roots as stood above th' ground), to pick and tie up the heather. It seems all like yesterday, and yet it's a long long time agone. Poor sister Sally has been in her grave this forty year and more. But I often wonder if the hawthorn is standing yet, and if the lasses still go to gather heather, as we did many and many a year past and gone. I sicken at heart to see the old spot once again. May be next summer I may set off, if God spares me to see next summer." "Why have you never been in all these many years?" asked Mary. "Why, lass! first one wanted me and then another; and I couldn't go without money either, and I got very poor at times. Tom was a scapegrace, poor fellow, and always wanted help of one kind or another; and his wife (for I think scapegraces are always married long before steady folk) was but a helpless kind of body. She were always ailing, and he were always in trouble; so I had enough to do with my hands and my money too, for that matter. They died within twelvemonth of each other, leaving one lad (they had had seven, but the Lord had taken six to Himself), Will, as I was telling you on; and I took him myself, and left service to make a bit on a home-place for him, and a fine lad he was, the very spit of his father as to looks, only steadier. For he was steady, although nought would serve him but going to sea. I tried all I could to set him again a sailor's life. Says I, 'Folks is as sick as dogs all the time they're at sea. Your own mother telled me (for she came from foreign parts, being a Manx woman) that she'd ha thanked any one for throwing her into the water.' Nay, I sent him a' the way to Runcorn by th' Duke's canal, that he might know what th' sea were; and I looked to see him come back as white as a sheet wi' vomiting. But the lad went on to Liverpool and saw real ships, and came back more set than ever on being a sailor, and he said as how he had never been sick at all, and thought he could stand the sea pretty well. So I telled him he mun do as he liked; and he thanked me and kissed me, for all I was very frabbit [4] with him; and now he's gone to South America, at t'other side of the sun, they tell me." [Footnote 4: "Frabbit," peevish.] Mary stole a glance at Margaret to see what she thought of Alice's geography; but Margaret looked so quiet and demure, that Mary was in doubt if she were not really ignorant. Not that Mary's knowledge was very profound, but she had seen a terrestrial globe, and knew where to find France and the continents on a map. After this long talking Alice seemed lost for a time in reverie; and the girls, respecting her thoughts, which they suspected had wandered to the home and scenes of her childhood, were silent. All at once she recalled her duties as hostess, and by an effort brought back her mind to the present time. "Margaret, thou must let Mary hear thee sing. I don't know about fine music myself, but folks say Margaret is a rare singer, and I know she can make me cry at any time by singing 'Th' Owdham Weaver.' Do sing that, Margaret, there's a good lass." With a faint smile, as if amused at Alice's choice of a song, Margaret began. Do you know "The Oldham Weaver?" Not unless you are Lancashire born and bred, for it is a complete Lancashire ditty. I will copy it for you. THE OLDHAM WEAVER. I. Oi'm a poor cotton-weyver, as mony a one knoowas, Oi've nowt for t' yeat, an' oi've woorn eawt my clooas, Yo'ad hardly gi' tuppence for aw as oi've on, My clogs are boath brosten, an' stuckins oi've none, Yo'd think it wur hard, To be browt into th' warld, To be--clemmed, [5] an' do th' best as yo con. II. Owd Dicky o' Billy's kept telling me lung, Wee s'd ha' better toimes if I'd but howd my tung, Oi've howden my tung, till oi've near stopped my breath, Oi think i' my heeart oi'se soon clem to deeath, Owd Dicky's weel crammed, He never wur clemmed, An' he ne'er picked ower i' his loife. [6] III. We tow'rt on six week--thinking aitch day wur th' last, We shifted, an' shifted, till neaw we're quoite fast; We lived upo' nettles, whoile nettles wur good, An' Waterloo porridge the best o' eawr food, Oi'm tellin' yo' true, Oi can find folk enow, As wur livin' na better nor me. IV. Owd Billy o' Dans sent th' baileys one day, Fur a shop deebt oi eawd him, as oi could na pay, But he wur too lat, fur owd Billy o' th' Bent, Had sowd th' tit an' cart, an' ta'en goods fur th' rent, We'd neawt left bo' th' owd stoo', That wur seeats fur two, An' on it ceawred Marget an' me. V. Then t' baileys leuked reawnd as sloy as a meawse, When they seed as aw t' goods were ta'en eawt o' t' heawse, Says one chap to th' tother, "Aws gone, theaw may see;" Says oi, "Ne'er freet, mon, yeaur welcome ta' me." They made no moor ado But whopped up th' eawd stoo', An' we booath leet, whack--upo' t' flags! VI. Then oi said to eawr Marget, as we lay upo' t' floor, "We's never be lower i' this warld, oi'm sure, If ever things awtern, oi'm sure they mun mend, For oi think i' my heart we're booath at t' far eend; For meeat we ha' none; Nor looms t' weyve on,-- Edad! they're as good lost as fund." VII. Eawr Marget declares had hoo cloo'as to put on, Hoo'd goo up to Lunnon an' talk to th' greet mon; An' if things were na awtered when there hoo had been, Hoo's fully resolved t' sew up meawth an' eend; Hoo's neawt to say again t' king, But hoo loikes a fair thing, An' hoo says hoo can tell when hoo's hurt. [Footnote 5: "Clem," to starve with hunger. "Hard is the choice, when the valiant must eat their arms or _clem_."--_Ben Jonson._] [Footnote 6: To "pick ower," means to throw the shuttle in hand-loom weaving.] The air to which this is sung is a kind of droning recitative, depending much on expression and feeling. To read it, it may, perhaps, seem humorous; but it is that humour which is near akin to pathos, and to those who have seen the distress it describes, it is a powerfully pathetic song. Margaret had both witnessed the destitution, and had the heart to feel it; and withal, her voice was of that rich and rare order, which does not require any great compass of notes to make itself appreciated. Alice had her quiet enjoyment of tears. But Margaret, with fixed eye, and earnest, dreamy look, seemed to become more and more absorbed in realising to herself the woe she had been describing, and which she felt might at that very moment be suffering and hopeless within a short distance of their comparative comfort. Suddenly she burst forth with all the power of her magnificent voice, as if a prayer from her very heart for all who were in distress, in the grand supplication, "Lord, remember David." Mary held her breath, unwilling to lose a note, it was so clear, so perfect, so imploring. A far more correct musician than Mary might have paused with equal admiration of the really scientific knowledge, with which the poor depressed-looking young needle-woman used her superb and flexile voice. Deborah Travers herself (once an Oldham factory girl, and afterwards the darling of fashionable crowds as Mrs. Knyvett) might have owned a sister in her art. She stopped; and with tears of holy sympathy in her eyes, Alice thanked the songstress, who resumed her calm, demure manner, much to Mary's wonder, for she looked at her unweariedly, as if surprised that the hidden power should not be perceived in the outward appearance. When Alice's little speech of thanks was over, there was quiet enough to hear a fine, though rather quavering, male voice, going over again one or two strains of Margaret's song. "That's grandfather!" exclaimed she. "I must be going, for he said he should not be at home till past nine." "Well, I'll not say nay, for I've to be up by four for a very heavy wash at Mrs. Simpson's; but I shall be terrible glad to see you again at any time, lasses; and I hope you'll take to one another." As the girls ran up the cellar steps together, Margaret said: "Just step in and see grandfather. I should like him to see you." And Mary consented. CHAPTER V. THE MILL ON FIRE--JEM WILSON TO THE RESCUE. Learned he was; nor bird, nor insect flew, But he its leafy home and history knew; Nor wild-flower decked the rock, nor moss the well, But he its name and qualities could tell. ELLIOTT. There is a class of men in Manchester, unknown even to many of the inhabitants, and whose existence will probably be doubted by many, who yet may claim kindred with all the noble names that science recognises. I said "in Manchester," but they are scattered all over the manufacturing districts of Lancashire. In the neighbourhood of Oldham there are weavers, common hand-loom weavers, who throw the shuttle with unceasing sound, though Newton's "Principia" lie open on the loom, to be snatched at in work hours, but revelled over in meal times, or at night. Mathematical problems are received with interest, and studied with absorbing attention by many a broad-spoken, common-looking, factory-hand. It is perhaps less astonishing that the more popularly interesting branches of natural history have their warm and devoted followers among this class. There are botanists among them, equally familiar with either the Linnæan or the Natural system, who know the name and habitat of every plant within a day's walk from their dwellings; who steal the holiday of a day or two when any particular plant should be in flower, and tying up their simple food in their pocket-handkerchiefs, set off with single purpose to fetch home the humble-looking weed. There are entomologists, who may be seen with a rude-looking net, ready to catch any winged insect, or a kind of dredge, with which they rake the green and slimy pools; practical, shrewd, hard-working men, who pore over every new specimen with real scientific delight. Nor is it the common and more obvious divisions of Entomology and Botany that alone attract these earnest seekers after knowledge. Perhaps it may be owing to the great annual town-holiday of Whitsun-week so often falling in May or June that the two great, beautiful families of Ephemeridæ and Phryganidæ have been so much and so closely studied by Manchester workmen, while they have in a great measure escaped general observation. If you will refer to the preface to Sir J. E. Smith's Life (I have it not by me, or I would copy you the exact passage), you will find that he names a little circumstance corroborative of what I have said. Sir J. E. Smith, being on a visit to Roscoe, of Liverpool, made some inquiries from him as to the habitat of a very rare plant, said to be found in certain places in Lancashire. Mr. Roscoe knew nothing of the plant; but stated, that if any one could give him the desired information, it would be a hand-loom weaver in Manchester, whom he named. Sir J. E. Smith proceeded by coach to Manchester, and on arriving at that town, he inquired of the porter who was carrying his luggage if he could direct him to So and So. "Oh, yes," replied the man. "He does a bit in my way;" and, on further investigation, it turned out, that both the porter, and his friend the weaver, were skilful botanists, and able to give Sir J. E. Smith the very information which he wanted. Such are the tastes and pursuits of some of the thoughtful, little understood, working men of Manchester. And Margaret's grandfather was one of these. He was a little wiry-looking old man, who moved with a jerking motion, as if his limbs were worked by a string like a child's toy, with dun coloured hair lying thin and soft at the back and sides of his head; his forehead was so large it seemed to overbalance the rest of his face, which had indeed lost its natural contour by the absence of all the teeth. The eyes absolutely gleamed with intelligence; so keen, so observant, you felt as if they were almost wizard-like. Indeed, the whole room looked not unlike a wizard's dwelling. Instead of pictures were hung rude wooden frames of impaled insects; the little table was covered with cabalistic books; and a case of mysterious instruments lay beside, one of which Job Legh was using when his grand-daughter entered. On her appearance he pushed his spectacles up so as to rest midway on his forehead, and gave Mary a short, kind welcome. But Margaret he caressed as a mother caresses her first-born; stroking her with tenderness, and almost altering his voice as he spoke to her. Mary looked round on the odd, strange things she had never seen at home, and which seemed to her to have a very uncanny look. "Is your grandfather a fortune-teller?" whispered she to her new friend. "No," replied Margaret, in the same voice; "but you're not the first as has taken him for such. He is only fond of such things as most folks know nothing about." "And do you know aught about them, too?" "I know a bit about some of the things grandfather is fond on; just because he's fond on 'em I tried to learn about them." "What things are these?" said Mary, struck with the weird looking creatures that sprawled around the room in their roughly-made glass cases. But she was not prepared for the technical names which Job Legh pattered down on her ear, on which they fell like hail on a skylight; and the strange language only bewildered her more than ever. Margaret saw the state of the case, and came to the rescue. "Look, Mary, at this horrid scorpion. He gave me such a fright: I'm all of a twitter yet when I think of it. Grandfather went to Liverpool one Whitsun-week to go strolling about the docks and pick up what he could from the sailors, who often bring some queer thing or another from the hot countries they go to; and so he sees a chap with a bottle in his hand, like a druggist's physic-bottle; and says grandfather, 'What have ye gotten there?' So the sailor holds it up, and grandfather knew it was a rare kind o' scorpion, not common even in the East Indies where the man came from; and says he, 'How did ye catch this fine fellow, for he wouldn't be taken for nothing I'm thinking?' And the man said as how when they were unloading the ship he'd found him lying behind a bag of rice, and he thought the cold had killed him, for he was not squashed nor injured a bit. He did not like to part with any of the spirit out of his grog to put the scorpion in, but slipped him into the bottle, knowing there were folks enow who would give him something for him. So grandfather gives him a shilling." "Two shilling," interrupted Job Legh, "and a good bargain it was." "Well! grandfather came home as proud as Punch, and pulled the bottle out of his pocket. But you see th' scorpion were doubled up, and grandfather thought I couldn't fairly see how big he was. So he shakes him out right before the fire; and a good warm one it was, for I was ironing, I remember. I left off ironing, and stooped down over him, to look at him better, and grandfather got a book, and began to read how this very kind were the most poisonous and vicious species, how their bite were often fatal, and then went on to read how people who were bitten got swelled, and screamed with pain. I was listening hard, but as it fell out, I never took my eyes off the creature, though I could not ha' told I was watching it. Suddenly it seemed to give a jerk, and before I could speak, it gave another, and in a minute it was as wild as could be, running at me just like a mad dog." "What did you do?" asked Mary. "Me! why, I jumped first on a chair, and then on all the things I'd been ironing on the dresser, and I screamed for grandfather to come up by me, but he did not hearken to me." "Why, if I'd come up by thee, who'd ha' caught the creature, I should like to know?" "Well, I begged grandfather to crush it, and I had the iron right over it once, ready to drop, but grandfather begged me not to hurt it in that way. So I couldn't think what he'd have, for he hopped round the room as if he were sore afraid, for all he begged me not to injure it. At last he goes to th' kettle, and lifts up the lid, and peeps in. What on earth is he doing that for, thinks I; he'll never drink his tea with a scorpion running free and easy about the room. Then he takes the tongs, and he settles his spectacles on his nose, and in a minute he had lifted the creature up by th' leg, and dropped him into the boiling water." "And did that kill him?" said Mary. "Ay, sure enough; he boiled for longer time than grandfather liked though. But I was so afeard of his coming round again. I ran to the public-house for some gin, and grandfather filled the bottle, and then we poured off the water, and picked him out of the kettle, and dropped him into the bottle, and he were there above a twelvemonth." "What brought him to life at first?" asked Mary. "Why, you see, he were never really dead, only torpid--that is, dead asleep with the cold, and our good fire brought him round." "I'm glad father does not care for such things," said Mary. "Are you! Well, I'm often downright glad grandfather is so fond of his books, and his creatures, and his plants. It does my heart good to see him so happy, sorting them all at home, and so ready to go in search of more, whenever he's a spare day. Look at him now! he's gone back to his books, and he'll be as happy as a king, working away till I make him go to bed. It keeps him silent, to be sure; but so long as I see him earnest, and pleased, and eager, what does that matter? Then, when he has his talking bouts, you can't think how much he has to say. Dear grandfather! you don't know how happy we are!" Mary wondered if the dear grandfather heard all this, for Margaret did not speak in an under tone; but no! he was far too deep and eager in solving a problem. He did not even notice Mary's leave-taking, and she went home with the feeling that she had that night made the acquaintance of two of the strangest people she ever saw in her life. Margaret, so quiet, so common place, until her singing powers were called forth; so silent from home, so cheerful and agreeable at home; and her grandfather so very different to any one Mary had ever seen. Margaret had said he was not a fortune-teller, but she did not know whether to believe her. To resolve her doubts, she told the history of the evening to her father, who was interested by her account, and curious to see and judge for himself. Opportunities are not often wanting where inclination goes before, and ere the end of that winter Mary looked upon Margaret almost as an old friend. The latter would bring her work when Mary was likely to be at home in the evenings and sit with her; and Job Legh would put a book and his pipe in his pocket and just step round the corner to fetch his grand-child, ready for a talk if he found Barton in; ready to pull out pipe and book if the girls wanted him to wait, and John was still at his club. In short, ready to do whatever would give pleasure to his darling Margaret. I do not know what points of resemblance (or dissimilitude, for the one joins people as often as the other) attracted the two girls to each other. Margaret had the great charm of possessing good strong common sense, and do you not perceive how involuntarily this is valued? It is so pleasant to have a friend who possesses the power of setting a difficult question in a clear light; whose judgment can tell what is best to be done; and who is so convinced of what is "wisest, best," that in consideration of the end, all difficulties in the way diminish. People admire talent, and talk about their admiration. But they value common sense without talking about it, and often without knowing it. So Mary and Margaret grew in love one toward the other; and Mary told many of her feelings in a way she had never done before to any one. Most of her foibles also were made known to Margaret, but not all. There was one cherished weakness still concealed from every one. It concerned a lover, not beloved, but favoured by fancy. A gallant, handsome young man; but--not beloved. Yet Mary hoped to meet him every day in her walks, blushed when she heard his name, and tried to think of him as her future husband, and above all, tried to think of herself as his future wife. Alas! poor Mary! Bitter woe did thy weakness work thee. She had other lovers. One or two would gladly have kept her company, but she held herself too high, they said. Jem Wilson said nothing, but loved on and on, ever more fondly; he hoped against hope; he would not give up, for it seemed like giving up life to give up thought of Mary. He did not dare to look to any end of all this; the present, so that he saw her, touched the hem of her garment, was enough. Surely, in time, such deep love would beget love. He would not relinquish hope, and yet her coldness of manner was enough to daunt any man; and it made Jem more despairing than he would acknowledge for a long time even to himself. But one evening he came round by Barton's house, a willing messenger for his father, and opening the door saw Margaret sitting asleep before the fire. She had come in to speak to Mary; and worn out by a long working, watching night, she fell asleep in the genial warmth. An old-fashioned saying about a pair of gloves came into Jem's mind, and stepping gently up he kissed Margaret with a friendly kiss. She awoke, and perfectly understanding the thing, she said, "For shame of yourself, Jem! What would Mary say?" Lightly said, lightly answered. "She'd nobbut say, practice makes perfect." And they both laughed. But the words Margaret had said rankled in Jem's mind. Would Mary care? Would she care in the very least? They seemed to call for an answer by night, and by day; and Jem felt that his heart told him Mary was quite indifferent to any action of his. Still he loved on, and on, ever more fondly. Mary's father was well aware of the nature of Jem Wilson's feelings for his daughter, but he took no notice of them to any one, thinking Mary full young yet for the cares of married life, and unwilling, too, to entertain the idea of parting with her at any time, however distant. But he welcomed Jem at his house, as he would have done his father's son, whatever were his motives for coming; and now and then admitted the thought, that Mary might do worse when her time came, than marry Jem Wilson, a steady workman at a good trade, a good son to his parents, and a fine manly spirited chap--at least when Mary was not by: for when she was present he watched her too closely, and too anxiously, to have much of what John Barton called "spunk" in him. It was towards the end of February, in that year, and a bitter black frost had lasted for many weeks. The keen east wind had long since swept the streets clean, though on a gusty day the dust would rise like pounded ice, and make people's faces quite smart with the cold force with which it blew against them. Houses, sky, people, and every thing looked as if a gigantic brush had washed them all over with a dark shade of Indian ink. There was some reason for this grimy appearance on human beings, whatever there might be for the dun looks of the landscape; for soft water had become an article not even to be purchased; and the poor washerwomen might be seen vainly trying to procure a little by breaking the thick gray ice that coated the ditches and ponds in the neighbourhood. People prophesied a long continuance to this already lengthened frost; said the spring would be very late; no spring fashions required; no summer clothing purchased for a short uncertain summer. Indeed there was no end to the evil prophesied during the continuance of that bleak east wind. Mary hurried home one evening, just as daylight was fading, from Miss Simmonds', with her shawl held up to her mouth, and her head bent as if in deprecation of the meeting wind. So she did not perceive Margaret till, she was close upon her at the very turning into the court. "Bless me, Margaret! is that you? Where are you bound to?" "To nowhere but your own house (that is, if you'll take me in). I've a job of work to finish to-night; mourning, as must be in time for the funeral to-morrow; and grandfather has been out moss-hunting, and will not be home till late." "Oh, how charming it will be. I'll help you if you're backward. Have you much to do?" "Yes, I only got the order yesterday at noon; and there's three girls beside the mother; and what with trying on and matching the stuff (for there was not enough in the piece they chose first), I'm above a bit behindhand. I've the skirts all to make. I kept that work till candlelight; and the sleeves, to say nothing of little bits to the bodies; for the missis is very particular, and I could scarce keep from smiling while they were crying so, really taking on sadly I'm sure, to hear first one and then t'other clear up to notice the sit of her gown. They weren't to be misfits I promise you, though they were in such trouble." "Well, Margaret, you're right welcome as you know, and I'll sit down and help you with pleasure, though I was tired enough of sewing to-night at Miss Simmonds'." By this time Mary had broken up the raking coal, and lighted her candle; and Margaret settled herself to her work on one side of the table, while her friend hurried over her tea at the other. The things were then lifted _en masse_ to the dresser; and dusting her side of the table with the apron she always wore at home, Mary took up some breadths and began to run them together. "Who's it all for, for if you told me I've forgotten?" "Why for Mrs. Ogden as keeps the greengrocer's shop in Oxford Road. Her husband drank himself to death, and though she cried over him and his ways all the time he was alive, she's fretted sadly for him now he's dead." "Has he left her much to go upon?" asked Mary, examining the texture of the dress. "This is beautifully fine soft bombazine." "No, I'm much afeared there's but little, and there's several young children, besides the three Miss Ogdens." "I should have thought girls like them would ha' made their own gowns," observed Mary. "So I dare say they do, many a one, but now they seem all so busy getting ready for the funeral; for it's to be quite a grand affair, well-nigh twenty people to breakfast, as one of the little ones told me; the little thing seemed to like the fuss, and I do believe it comforted poor Mrs. Ogden to make all the piece o' work. Such a smell of ham boiling and fowls roasting while I waited in the kitchen; it seemed more like a wedding nor [7] a funeral. They said she'd spend a matter o' sixty pound on th' burial." [Footnote 7: "Nor," generally used in Lancashire for "than." "They had lever sleep _nor_ be in laundery."--_Dunbar_.] "I thought you said she was but badly off," said Mary. "Ay, I know she's asked for credit at several places, saying her husband laid hands on every farthing he could get for drink. But th' undertakers urge her on you see, and tell her this thing's usual, and that thing's only a common mark of respect, and that every body has t'other thing, till the poor woman has no will o' her own. I dare say, too, her heart strikes her (it always does when a person's gone) for many a word and many a slighting deed to him, who's stiff and cold; and she thinks to make up matters, as it were, by a grand funeral, though she and all her children, too, may have to pinch many a year to pay the expenses, if ever they pay them at all." "This mourning, too, will cost a pretty penny," said Mary. "I often wonder why folks wear mourning; it's not pretty or becoming; and it costs a deal of money just when people can spare it least; and if what the Bible tells us be true, we ought not to be sorry when a friend, who's been good, goes to his rest; and as for a bad man, one's glad enough to get shut [8] on him. I cannot see what good comes out o' wearing mourning." [Footnote 8: "Shut," quit.] "I'll tell you what I think th' fancy was sent for (Old Alice calls every thing 'sent for,' and I believe she's right). It does do good, though not as much as it costs, that I do believe, in setting people (as is cast down by sorrow and feels themselves unable to settle to any thing but crying) something to do. Why now I told you how they were grieving; for, perhaps, he was a kind husband and father, in his thoughtless way, when he wasn't in liquor. But they cheered up wonderful while I was there, and I asked 'em for more directions than usual, that they might have something to talk over and fix about; and I left 'em my fashion-book (though it were two months old) just a purpose." "I don't think every one would grieve a that way. Old Alice wouldn't." "Old Alice is one in a thousand. I doubt, too, if she would fret much, however sorry she might be. She would say it were sent, and fall to trying to find out what good it were to do. Every sorrow in her mind is sent for good. Did I ever tell you, Mary, what she said one day when she found me taking on about something?" "No; do tell me. What were you fretting about, first place?" "I can't tell you just now; perhaps I may sometime." "When?" "Perhaps this very evening, if it rises in my heart; perhaps never. It's a fear that sometimes I can't abide to think about, and sometimes I don't like to think on any thing else. Well, I was fretting about this fear, and Alice comes in for something, and finds me crying. I would not tell her no more than I would you, Mary; so she says, 'Well, dear, you must mind this, when you're going to fret and be low about any thing, "An anxious mind is never a holy mind."' Oh, Mary, I have so often checked my grumbling sin' [9] she said that." [Footnote 9: "Sin'," since. "_Sin_ that his lord was twenty yere of age." _Prologue to Canterbury Tales._] The weary sound of stitching was the only sound heard for a little while, till Mary inquired, "Do you expect to get paid for this mourning?" "Why I do not much think I shall. I've thought it over once or twice, and I mean to bring myself to think I shan't, and to like to do it as my bit towards comforting them. I don't think they can pay, and yet they're just the sort of folk to have their minds easier for wearing mourning. There's only one thing I dislike making black for, it does so hurt the eyes." Margaret put down her work with a sigh, and shaded her eyes. Then she assumed a cheerful tone, and said, "You'll not have to wait long, Mary, for my secret's on the tip of my tongue. Mary! do you know I sometimes think I'm growing a little blind, and then what would become of grandfather and me? Oh, God help me, Lord help me!" She fell into an agony of tears, while Mary knelt by her, striving to soothe and to comfort her; but, like an inexperienced person, striving rather to deny the correctness of Margaret's fear, than helping her to meet and overcome the evil. "No," said Margaret, quietly fixing her tearful eyes on Mary; "I know I'm not mistaken. I have felt one going some time, long before I ever thought what it would lead to; and last autumn I went to a doctor; and he did not mince the matter, but said unless I sat in a darkened room, with my hands before me, my sight would not last me many years longer. But how could I do that, Mary? For one thing, grandfather would have known there was somewhat the matter; and, oh! it will grieve him sore whenever he's told, so the later the better; and besides, Mary, we've sometimes little enough to go upon, and what I earn is a great help. For grandfather takes a day here, and a day there, for botanising or going after insects, and he'll think little enough of four or five shillings for a specimen; dear grandfather! and I'm so loath to think he should be stinted of what gives him such pleasure. So I went to another doctor to try and get him to say something different, and he said, 'Oh, it was only weakness,' and gived me a bottle of lotion; but I've used three bottles (and each of 'em cost two shillings), and my eye is so much worse, not hurting so much, but I can't see a bit with it. There now, Mary," continued she, shutting one eye, "now you only look like a great black shadow, with the edges dancing and sparkling." "And can you see pretty well with th' other?" "Yes, pretty near as well as ever. Th' only difference is, that if I sew a long time together, a bright spot like th' sun comes right where I'm looking; all the rest is quite clear but just where I want to see. I've been to both doctors again, and now they're both o' the same story; and I suppose I'm going dark as fast as may be. Plain work pays so bad, and mourning has been so plentiful this winter, I were tempted to take in any black work I could; and now I'm suffering from it." "And yet, Margaret, you're going on taking it in; that's what you'd call foolish in another." "It is, Mary! and yet what can I do? Folk mun live; and I think I should go blind any way, and I darn't tell grandfather, else I would leave it off, but he will so fret." Margaret rocked herself backward and forward to still her emotion. "Oh Mary!" she said, "I try to get his face off by heart, and I stare at him so when he's not looking, and then shut my eyes to see if I can remember his dear face. There's one thing, Mary, that serves a bit to comfort me. You'll have heard of old Jacob Butterworth, the singing weaver? Well, I know'd him a bit, so I went to him, and said how I wished he'd teach me the right way o' singing; and he says I've a rare fine voice, and I go once a week, and take a lesson fra' him. He's been a grand singer in his day. He's led th' chorusses at the Festivals, and got thanked many a time by London folk; and one foreign singer, Madame Catalani, turned round and shook him by th' hand before the Oud Church [10] full o' people. He says I may gain ever so much money by singing; but I don't know. Any rate it's sad work, being blind." [Footnote 10: "Old Church;" now the Cathedral of Manchester.] She took up her sewing, saying her eyes were rested now, and for some time they sewed on in silence. Suddenly there were steps heard in the little paved court; person after person ran past the curtained window. "Something's up," said Mary. She went to the door and stopping the first person she saw, inquired the cause of the commotion. "Eh, wench! donna ye see the fire-light? Carsons' mill is blazing away like fun;" and away her informant ran. "Come, Margaret, on wi' your bonnet, and let's go to see Carsons' mill; it's afire, and they say a burning mill is such a grand sight. I never saw one." "Well, I think it's a fearful sight. Besides I've all this work to do." But Mary coaxed in her sweet manner, and with her gentle caresses, promising to help with the gowns all night long if necessary, nay, saying she should quite enjoy it. The truth was, Margaret's secret weighed heavily and painfully on her mind, and she felt her inability to comfort; besides, she wanted to change the current of Margaret's thoughts; and in addition to these unselfish feelings, came the desire she had honestly expressed, of seeing a factory on fire. So in two minutes they were ready. At the threshold of the house they met John Barton, to whom they told their errand. "Carsons' mill! Ay, there is a mill on fire somewhere, sure enough, by the light, and it will be a rare blaze, for there's not a drop o' water to be got. And much Carsons will care, for they're well insured, and the machines are a' th' oud-fashioned kind. See if they don't think it a fine thing for themselves. They'll not thank them as tries to put it out." He gave way for the impatient girls to pass. Guided by the ruddy light more than by any exact knowledge of the streets that led to the mill, they scampered along with bent heads, facing the terrible east wind as best they might. Carsons' mill ran lengthways from east to west. Along it went one of the oldest thoroughfares in Manchester. Indeed all that part of the town was comparatively old; it was there that the first cotton mills were built, and the crowded alleys and back streets of the neighbourhood made a fire there particularly to be dreaded. The staircase of the mill ascended from the entrance at the western end, which faced into a wide dingy-looking street, consisting principally of public-houses, pawn-brokers' shops, rag and bone warehouses, and dirty provision shops. The other, the east end of the factory, fronted into a very narrow back street, not twenty feet wide, and miserably lighted and paved. Right against this end of the factory were the gable ends of the last house in the principal street--a house which from its size, its handsome stone facings, and the attempt at ornament in the front, had probably been once a gentleman's house; but now the light which streamed from its enlarged front windows made clear the interior of the splendidly fitted up room, with its painted walls, its pillared recesses, its gilded and gorgeous fittings up, its miserable, squalid inmates. It was a gin palace. Mary almost wished herself away, so fearful (as Margaret had said) was the sight when they joined the crowd assembled to witness the fire. There was a murmur of many voices whenever the roaring of the flames ceased for an instant. It was easy to perceive the mass were deeply interested. "What do they say?" asked Margaret, of a neighbour in the crowd, as she caught a few words, clear and distinct, from the general murmur. "There never is anyone in the mill, surely!" exclaimed Mary, as the sea of upward-turned faces moved with one accord to the eastern end, looking into Dunham Street, the narrow back lane already mentioned. The western end of the mill, whither the raging flames were driven by the wind, was crowned and turreted with triumphant fire. It sent forth its infernal tongues from every window hole, licking the black walls with amorous fierceness; it was swayed or fell before the mighty gale, only to rise higher and yet higher, to ravage and roar yet more wildly. This part of the roof fell in with an astounding crash, while the crowd struggled more and more to press into Dunham Street, for what were magnificent terrible flames, what were falling timbers or tottering walls, in comparison with human life? There, where the devouring flames had been repelled by the yet more powerful wind, but where yet black smoke gushed out from every aperture, there, at one of the windows on the fourth story, or rather a doorway where a crane was fixed to hoist up goods, might occasionally be seen, when the thick gusts of smoke cleared partially away for an instant, the imploring figures of two men. They had remained after the rest of the workmen for some reason or other, and, owing to the wind having driven the fire in the opposite direction, had perceived no sight or sound of alarm, till long after (if any thing could be called long in that throng of terrors which passed by in less time than half an hour) the fire had consumed the old wooden staircase at the other end of the building. I am not sure whether it was not the first sound of the rushing crowd below that made them fully aware of their awful position. "Where are the engines?" asked Margaret of her neighbour. "They're coming, no doubt; but, bless you, I think it's bare ten minutes since we first found out th' fire; it rages so wi' this wind, and all so dry-like." "Is no one gone for a ladder?" gasped Mary, as the men were perceptibly, though not audibly, praying the great multitude below for help. "Ay, Wilson's son and another man were off like a shot, well nigh five minute agone. But th' masons, and slaters, and such like, have left their work, and locked up the yards." Wilson! then, was that man whose figure loomed out against the ever increasing dull hot light behind, whenever the smoke was clear,--was that George Wilson? Mary sickened with terror. She knew he worked for Carsons; but at first she had had no idea any lives were in danger; and since she had become aware of this, the heated air, the roaring flames, the dizzy light, and the agitated and murmuring crowd, had bewildered her thoughts. "Oh! let us go home, Margaret; I cannot stay." "We cannot go! See how we are wedged in by folks. Poor Mary! ye won't hanker after a fire again. Hark! listen!" For through the hushed crowd, pressing round the angle of the mill, and filling up Dunham Street, might be heard the rattle of the engine, the heavy, quick tread of loaded horses. "Thank God!" said Margaret's neighbour, "the engine's come." Another pause; the plugs were stiff, and water could not be got. Then there was a pressure through the crowd, the front rows bearing back on those behind, till the girls were sick with the close ramming confinement. Then a relaxation, and a breathing freely once more. "'Twas young Wilson and a fireman wi' a ladder," said Margaret's neighbour, a tall man who could overlook the crowd. "Oh, tell us what you see?" begged Mary. "They've gotten it fixed again the gin-shop wall. One o' the men i' th' factory has fell back; dazed wi' the smoke, I'll warrant. The floor's not given way there. God!" said he, bringing his eye lower down, "th' ladder's too short! It's a' over wi' them, poor chaps. Th' fire's coming slow and sure to that end, and afore they've either gotten water, or another ladder, they'll be dead out and out. Lord have mercy on them!" A sob, as if of excited women, was heard in the hush of the crowd. Another pressure like the former! Mary clung to Margaret's arm with a pinching grasp, and longed to faint, and be insensible, to escape from the oppressing misery of her sensations. A minute or two. "They've taken th' ladder into th' Temple of Apollor. Can't press back with it to the yard it came from." A mighty shout arose; a sound to wake the dead. Up on high, quivering in the air, was seen the end of the ladder, protruding out of a garret window, in the gable end of the gin palace, nearly opposite to the doorway where the men had been seen. Those in the crowd nearest the factory, and consequently best able to see up to the garret window, said that several men were holding one end, and guiding by their weight its passage to the door-way. The garret window-frame had been taken out before the crowd below were aware of the attempt. At length--for it seemed long, measured by beating hearts, though scarce two minutes had elapsed--the ladder was fixed, an aerial bridge at a dizzy height, across the narrow street. Every eye was fixed in unwinking anxiety, and people's very breathing seemed stilled in suspense. The men were nowhere to be seen, but the wind appeared, for the moment, higher than ever, and drove back the invading flames to the other end. Mary and Margaret could see now; right above them danced the ladder in the wind. The crowd pressed back from under; firemen's helmets appeared at the window, holding the ladder firm, when a man, with quick, steady tread, and unmoving head, passed from one side to the other. The multitude did not even whisper while he crossed the perilous bridge, which quivered under him; but when he was across, safe comparatively in the factory, a cheer arose for an instant, checked, however, almost immediately, by the uncertainty of the result, and the desire not in any way to shake the nerves of the brave fellow who had cast his life on such a die. "There he is again!" sprung to the lips of many, as they saw him at the doorway, standing as if for an instant to breathe a mouthful of the fresher air, before he trusted himself to cross. On his shoulders he bore an insensible body. "It's Jem Wilson and his father," whispered Margaret; but Mary knew it before. The people were sick with anxious terror. He could no longer balance himself with his arms; every thing must depend on nerve and eye. They saw the latter was fixed, by the position of the head, which never wavered; the ladder shook under the double weight; but still he never moved his head--he dared not look below. It seemed an age before the crossing was accomplished. At last the window was gained; the bearer relieved from his burden; both had disappeared. Then the multitude might shout; and above the roaring flames, louder than the blowing of the mighty wind, arose that tremendous burst of applause at the success of the daring enterprise. Then a shrill cry was heard, asking "Is the oud man alive, and likely to do?" "Ay," answered one of the firemen to the hushed crowd below. "He's coming round finely, now he's had a dash of cowd water." He drew back his head; and the eager inquiries, the shouts, the sea-like murmurs of the moving rolling mass began again to be heard--but for an instant though. In far less time than even that in which I have endeavoured briefly to describe the pause of events, the same bold hero stepped again upon the ladder, with evident purpose to rescue the man yet remaining in the burning mill. He went across in the same quick steady manner as before, and the people below, made less acutely anxious by his previous success, were talking to each other, shouting out intelligence of the progress of the fire at the other end of the factory, telling of the endeavours of the firemen at that part to obtain water, while the closely packed body of men heaved and rolled from side to side. It was different from the former silent breathless hush. I do not know if it were from this cause, or from the recollection of peril past, or that he looked below, in the breathing moment before returning with the remaining person (a slight little man) slung across his shoulders, but Jem Wilson's step was less steady, his tread more uncertain; he seemed to feel with his foot for the next round of the ladder, to waver, and finally to stop half-way. By this time the crowd was still enough; in the awful instant that intervened no one durst speak, even to encourage. Many turned sick with terror, and shut their eyes to avoid seeing the catastrophe they dreaded. It came. The brave man swayed from side to side, at first as slightly as if only balancing himself; but he was evidently losing nerve, and even sense: it was only wonderful how the animal instinct of self-preservation did not overcome every generous feeling, and impel him at once to drop the helpless, inanimate body he carried; perhaps the same instinct told him, that the sudden loss of so heavy a weight would of itself be a great and imminent danger. "Help me! she's fainted," cried Margaret. But no one heeded. All eyes were directed upwards. At this point of time a rope, with a running noose, was dexterously thrown by one of the firemen, after the manner of a lasso, over the head and round the bodies of the two men. True, it was with rude and slight adjustment: but, slight as it was, it served as a steadying guide; it encouraged the sinking heart, the dizzy head. Once more Jem stepped onwards. He was not hurried by any jerk or pull. Slowly and gradually the rope was hauled in, slowly and gradually did he make the four or five paces between him and safety. The window was gained, and all were saved. The multitude in the street absolutely danced with triumph, and huzzaed and yelled till you would have fancied their very throats would crack; and then with all the fickleness of interest characteristic of a large body of people, pressed and stumbled, and cursed and swore in the hurry to get out of Dunham Street, and back to the immediate scene of the fire, the mighty diapason of whose roaring flames formed an awful accompaniment to the screams, and yells, and imprecations, of the struggling crowd. As they pressed away, Margaret was left, pale and almost sinking under the weight of Mary's body, which she had preserved in an upright position by keeping her arms tight round Mary's waist, dreading, with reason, the trampling of unheeding feet. Now, however, she gently let her down on the cold clean pavement; and the change of posture, and the difference in temperature, now that the people had withdrawn from their close neighbourhood, speedily restored her to consciousness. Her first glance was bewildered and uncertain. She had forgotten where she was. Her cold, hard bed felt strange; the murky glare in the sky affrighted her. She shut her eyes to think, to recollect. Her next look was upwards. The fearful bridge had been withdrawn; the window was unoccupied. "They are safe," said Margaret. "All? Are all safe, Margaret?" asked Mary. "Ask yon fireman, and he'll tell you more about it than I can. But I know they're all safe." The fireman hastily corroborated Margaret's words. "Why did you let Jem Wilson go twice?" asked Margaret. "Let!--why we could not hinder him. As soon as ever he'd heard his father speak (which he was na long a doing), Jem were off like a shot; only saying he knowed better nor us where to find t'other man. We'd all ha' gone, if he had na been in such a hurry, for no one can say as Manchester firemen is ever backward when there's danger." So saying, he ran off; and the two girls, without remark or discussion, turned homewards. They were overtaken by the elder Wilson, pale, grimy, and blear-eyed, but apparently as strong and well as ever. He loitered a minute or two alongside of them, giving an account of his detention in the mill; he then hastily wished good-night, saying he must go home and tell his missis he was all safe and well: but after he had gone a few steps, he turned back, came on Mary's side of the pavement, and in an earnest whisper, which Margaret could not avoid hearing, he said, "Mary, if my boy comes across you to-night, give him a kind word or two for my sake. Do! bless you, there's a good wench." Mary hung her head and answered not a word, and in an instant he was gone. When they arrived at home, they found John Barton smoking his pipe, unwilling to question, yet very willing to hear all the details they could give him. Margaret went over the whole story, and it was amusing to watch his gradually increasing interest and excitement. First, the regular puffing abated, then ceased. Then the pipe was fairly taken out of his mouth, and held suspended. Then he rose, and at every further point he came a step nearer to the narrator. When it was ended, he swore (an unusual thing for him) that if Jem Wilson wanted Mary he should have her to-morrow, if he had not a penny to keep her. Margaret laughed, but Mary, who was now recovered from her agitation, pouted, and looked angry. The work which they had left was resumed: but with full hearts, fingers never go very quickly; and I am sorry to say, that owing to the fire, the two younger Miss Ogdens were in such grief for the loss of their excellent father, that they were unable to appear before the little circle of sympathising friends gathered together to comfort the widow, and see the funeral set off. CHAPTER VI. POVERTY AND DEATH. "How little can the rich man know Of what the poor man feels, When Want, like some dark dæmon foe, Nearer and nearer steals! _He_ never tramp'd the weary round, A stroke of work to gain, And sicken'd at the dreaded sound Telling him 'twas in vain. Foot-sore, heart-sore, _he_ never came Back through the winter's wind, To a dark cellar, there no flame, No light, no food, to find. _He_ never saw his darlings lie Shivering, the flags their bed; _He_ never heard that maddening cry, 'Daddy, a bit of bread!'" MANCHESTER SONG. John Barton was not far wrong in his idea that the Messrs. Carson would not be over much grieved for the consequences of the fire in their mill. They were well insured; the machinery lacked the improvements of late years, and worked but poorly in comparison with that which might now be procured. Above all, trade was very slack; cottons could find no market, and goods lay packed and piled in many a warehouse. The mills were merely worked to keep the machinery, human and metal, in some kind of order and readiness for better times. So this was an excellent opportunity, Messrs. Carson thought, for refitting their factory with first-rate improvements, for which the insurance money would amply pay. They were in no hurry about the business, however. The weekly drain of wages given for labour, useless in the present state of the market, was stopped. The partners had more leisure than they had known for years; and promised wives and daughters all manner of pleasant excursions, as soon as the weather should become more genial. It was a pleasant thing to be able to lounge over breakfast with a review or newspaper in hand; to have time for becoming acquainted with agreeable and accomplished daughters, on whose education no money had been spared, but whose fathers, shut up during a long day with calicoes and accounts, had so seldom had leisure to enjoy their daughters' talents. There were happy family evenings, now that the men of business had time for domestic enjoyments. There is another side to the picture. There were homes over which Carsons' fire threw a deep, terrible gloom; the homes of those who would fain work, and no man gave unto them--the homes of those to whom leisure was a curse. There, the family music was hungry wails, when week after week passed by, and there was no work to be had, and consequently no wages to pay for the bread the children cried aloud for in their young impatience of suffering. There was no breakfast to lounge over; their lounge was taken in bed, to try and keep warmth in them that bitter March weather, and, by being quiet, to deaden the gnawing wolf within. Many a penny that would have gone little way enough in oatmeal or potatoes, bought opium to still the hungry little ones, and make them forget their uneasiness in heavy troubled sleep. It was mother's mercy. The evil and the good of our nature came out strongly then. There were desperate fathers; there were bitter-tongued mothers (O God! what wonder!); there were reckless children; the very closest bonds of nature were snapt in that time of trial and distress. There was Faith such as the rich can never imagine on earth; there was "Love strong as death;" and self-denial, among rude, coarse men, akin to that of Sir Philip Sidney's most glorious deed. The vices of the poor sometimes astound us _here_; but when the secrets of all hearts shall be made known, their virtues will astound us in far greater degree. Of this I am certain. As the cold bleak spring came on (spring, in name alone), and consequently as trade continued dead, other mills shortened hours, turned off hands, and finally stopped work altogether. Barton worked short hours; Wilson, of course, being a hand in Carsons' factory, had no work at all. But his son, working at an engineer's, and a steady man, obtained wages enough to maintain all the family in a careful way. Still it preyed on Wilson's mind to be so long indebted to his son. He was out of spirits and depressed. Barton was morose, and soured towards mankind as a body, and the rich in particular. One evening, when the clear light at six o'clock contrasted strangely with the Christmas cold, and when the bitter wind piped down every entry, and through every cranny, Barton sat brooding over his stinted fire, and listening for Mary's step, in unacknowledged trust that her presence would cheer him. The door was opened, and Wilson came breathless in. "You've not got a bit o' money by you, Barton?" asked he. "Not I; who has now, I'd like to know. Whatten you want it for?" "I donnot [11] want it for mysel, tho' we've none to spare. But don ye know Ben Davenport as worked at Carsons'? He's down wi' the fever, and ne'er a stick o' fire, nor a cowd [12] potato in the house." [Footnote 11: "Don" is constantly used in Lancashire for "do;" as it was by our older writers. "And that may non Hors _don_."--_Sir J. Mondeville._ "But for th' entent to _don_ this sinne."--_Chaucer._] [Footnote 12: "Cowd," cold. Teut., _kaud_. Dutch, _koud_.] "I han got no money, I tell ye," said Barton. Wilson looked disappointed. Barton tried not to be interested, but he could not help it in spite of his gruffness. He rose, and went to the cupboard (his wife's pride long ago). There lay the remains of his dinner, hastily put by ready for supper. Bread, and a slice of cold fat boiled bacon. He wrapped them in his handkerchief, put them in the crown of his hat, and said--"Come, let's be going." "Going--art thou going to work this time o' day?" "No, stupid, to be sure not. Going to see the fellow thou spoke on." So they put on their hats and set out. On the way Wilson said Davenport was a good fellow, though too much of the Methodee; that his children were too young to work, but not too young to be cold and hungry; that they had sunk lower and lower, and pawned thing after thing, and that now they lived in a cellar in Berry Street, off Store Street. Barton growled inarticulate words of no benevolent import to a large class of mankind, and so they went along till they arrived in Berry Street. It was unpaved; and down the middle a gutter forced its way, every now and then forming pools in the holes with which the street abounded. Never was the Old Edinburgh cry of "Gardez l'eau" more necessary than in this street. As they passed, women from their doors tossed household slops of _every_ description into the gutter; they ran into the next pool, which overflowed and stagnated. Heaps of ashes were the stepping-stones, on which the passer-by, who cared in the least for cleanliness, took care not to put his foot. Our friends were not dainty, but even they picked their way till they got to some steps leading down into a small area, where a person standing would have his head about one foot below the level of the street, and might at the same time, without the least motion of his body, touch the window of the cellar and the damp muddy wall right opposite. You went down one step even from the foul area into the cellar in which a family of human beings lived. It was very dark inside. The window-panes were, many of them, broken and stuffed with rags, which was reason enough for the dusky light that pervaded the place even at mid-day. After the account I have given of the state of the street, no one can be surprised that on going into the cellar inhabited by Davenport, the smell was so foetid as almost to knock the two men down. Quickly recovering themselves, as those inured to such things do, they began to penetrate the thick darkness of the place, and to see three or four little children rolling on the damp, nay wet, brick floor, through which the stagnant, filthy moisture of the street oozed up; the fire-place was empty and black; the wife sat on her husband's lair, and cried in the dank loneliness. "See, missis, I'm back again.--Hold your noise, children, and don't mither [13] your mammy for bread; here's a chap as has got some for you." [Footnote 13: "Mither," to trouble and perplex. "I'm welly mithered"--I'm well nigh crazed.] In that dim light, which was darkness to strangers, they clustered round Barton, and tore from him the food he had brought with him. It was a large hunch of bread, but it vanished in an instant. "We mun do summut for 'em," said he to Wilson. "Yo stop here, and I'll be back in half-an-hour." So he strode, and ran, and hurried home. He emptied into the ever-useful pocket-handkerchief the little meal remaining in the mug. Mary would have her tea at Miss Simmonds'; her food for the day was safe. Then he went up-stairs for his better coat, and his one, gay, red-and-yellow silk pocket-handkerchief--his jewels, his plate, his valuables, these were. He went to the pawn-shop; he pawned them for five shillings; he stopped not, nor stayed, till he was once more in London Road, within five minutes' walk of Berry Street--then he loitered in his gait, in order to discover the shops he wanted. He bought meat, and a loaf of bread, candles, chips, and from a little retail yard he purchased a couple of hundredweights of coals. Some money yet remained--all destined for them, but he did not yet know how best to spend it. Food, light, and warmth, he had instantly seen were necessary; for luxuries he would wait. Wilson's eyes filled with tears when he saw Barton enter with his purchases. He understood it all, and longed to be once more in work, that he might help in some of these material ways, without feeling that he was using his son's money. But though "silver and gold he had none," he gave heart-service and love works of far more value. Nor was John Barton behind in these. "The fever" was (as it usually is in Manchester) of a low, putrid, typhoid kind; brought on by miserable living, filthy neighbourhood, and great depression of mind and body. It is virulent, malignant, and highly infectious. But the poor are fatalists with regard to infection; and well for them it is so, for in their crowded dwellings no invalid can be isolated. Wilson asked Barton if he thought he should catch it, and was laughed at for his idea. The two men, rough, tender nurses as they were, lighted the fire, which smoked and puffed into the room as if it did not know the way up the damp, unused chimney. The very smoke seemed purifying and healthy in the thick clammy air. The children clamoured again for bread; but this time Barton took a piece first to the poor, helpless, hopeless woman, who still sat by the side of her husband, listening to his anxious miserable mutterings. She took the bread, when it was put into her hand, and broke a bit, but could not eat. She was past hunger. She fell down on the floor with a heavy unresisting bang. The men looked puzzled. "She's well-nigh clemmed," said Barton. "Folk do say one mustn't give clemmed people much to eat; but, bless us, she'll eat nought." "I'll tell yo what I'll do," said Wilson. "I'll take these two big lads, as does nought but fight, home to my missis's for to-night, and I'll get a jug o' tea. Them women always does best with tea and such-like slop." So Barton was now left alone with a little child, crying (when it had done eating) for mammy; with a fainting, dead-like woman; and with the sick man, whose mutterings were rising up to screams and shrieks of agonised anxiety. He carried the woman to the fire, and chafed her hands. He looked around for something to raise her head. There was literally nothing but some loose bricks. However, those he got; and taking off his coat he covered them with it as well as he could. He pulled her feet to the fire, which now began to emit some faint heat. He looked round for water, but the poor woman had been too weak to drag herself out to the distant pump, and water there was none. He snatched the child, and ran up the area-steps to the room above, and borrowed their only saucepan with some water in it. Then he began, with the useful skill of a working-man, to make some gruel; and when it was hastily made he seized a battered iron table-spoon (kept when many other little things had been sold in a lot), in order to feed baby, and with it he forced one or two drops between her clenched teeth. The mouth opened mechanically to receive more, and gradually she revived. She sat up and looked round; and recollecting all, fell down again in weak and passive despair. Her little child crawled to her, and wiped with its fingers the thick-coming tears which she now had strength to weep. It was now high time to attend to the man. He lay on straw, so damp and mouldy no dog would have chosen it in preference to flags; over it was a piece of sacking, coming next to his worn skeleton of a body; above him was mustered every article of clothing that could be spared by mother or children this bitter weather; and in addition to his own, these might have given as much warmth as one blanket, could they have been kept on him; but as he restlessly tossed to and fro, they fell off and left him shivering in spite of the burning heat of his skin. Every now and then he started up in his naked madness, looking like the prophet of woe in the fearful plague-picture; but he soon fell again in exhaustion, and Barton found he must be closely watched, lest in these falls he should injure himself against the hard brick floor. He was thankful when Wilson re-appeared, carrying in both hands a jug of steaming tea, intended for the poor wife; but when the delirious husband saw drink, he snatched at it with animal instinct, with a selfishness he had never shown in health. Then the two men consulted together. It seemed decided, without a word being spoken on the subject, that both should spend the night with the forlorn couple; that was settled. But could no doctor be had? In all probability, no; the next day an infirmary order might be begged, but meanwhile the only medical advice they could have must be from a druggist's. So Barton (being the moneyed man) set out to find a shop in London Road. It is a pretty sight to walk through a street with lighted shops; the gas is so brilliant, the display of goods so much more vividly shown than by day, and of all shops a druggist's looks the most like the tales of our childhood, from Aladdin's garden of enchanted fruits to the charming Rosamond with her purple jar. No such associations had Barton; yet he felt the contrast between the well-filled, well-lighted shops and the dim gloomy cellar, and it made him moody that such contrasts should exist. They are the mysterious problem of life to more than him. He wondered if any in all the hurrying crowd had come from such a house of mourning. He thought they all looked joyous, and he was angry with them. But he could not, you cannot, read the lot of those who daily pass you by in the street. How do you know the wild romances of their lives; the trials, the temptations they are even now enduring, resisting, sinking under? You may be elbowed one instant by the girl desperate in her abandonment, laughing in mad merriment with her outward gesture, while her soul is longing for the rest of the dead, and bringing itself to think of the cold-flowing river as the only mercy of God remaining to her here. You may pass the criminal, meditating crimes at which you will to-morrow shudder with horror as you read them. You may push against one, humble and unnoticed, the last upon earth, who in Heaven will for ever be in the immediate light of God's countenance. Errands of mercy--errands of sin--did you ever think where all the thousands of people you daily meet are bound? Barton's was an errand of mercy; but the thoughts of his heart were touched by sin, by bitter hatred of the happy, whom he, for the time, confounded with the selfish. He reached a druggist's shop, and entered. The druggist (whose smooth manners seemed to have been salved over with his own spermaceti) listened attentively to Barton's description of Davenport's illness; concluded it was typhus fever, very prevalent in that neighbourhood; and proceeded to make up a bottle of medicine, sweet spirits of nitre, or some such innocent potion, very good for slight colds, but utterly powerless to stop, for an instant, the raging fever of the poor man it was intended to relieve. He recommended the same course they had previously determined to adopt, applying the next morning for an infirmary order; and Barton left the shop with comfortable faith in the physic given him; for men of his class, if they believe in physic at all, believe that every description is equally efficacious. Meanwhile, Wilson had done what he could at Davenport's home. He had soothed, and covered the man many a time; he had fed and hushed the little child, and spoken tenderly to the woman, who lay still in her weakness and her weariness. He had opened a door, but only for an instant; it led into a back cellar, with a grating instead of a window, down which dropped the moisture from pigsties, and worse abominations. It was not paved; the floor was one mass of bad smelling mud. It had never been used, for there was not an article of furniture in it; nor could a human being, much less a pig, have lived there many days. Yet the "back apartment" made a difference in the rent. The Davenports paid threepence more for having two rooms. When he turned round again, he saw the woman suckling the child from her dry, withered breast. "Surely the lad is weaned!" exclaimed he, in surprise. "Why, how old is he?" "Going on two year," she faintly answered. "But, oh! it keeps him quiet when I've nought else to gi' him, and he'll get a bit of sleep lying there, if he's getten [14] nought beside. We han done our best to gi' the childer [15] food, howe'er we pinched ourselves." [Footnote 14: "For he had _geten_ him yet no benefice."--_Prologue to Canterbury Tales._] [Footnote 15: Wicklife uses "_childre_" in his Apology, page 26.] "Han [16] ye had no money fra th' town?" [Footnote 16: "What concord _han_ light and dark."--_Spenser._] "No; my master is Buckinghamshire born; and he's feared the town would send him back to his parish, if he went to th' board; so we've just borne on in hope o' better times. But I think they'll never come in my day;" and the poor woman began her weak high-pitched cry again. "Here, sup [17] this drop o' gruel, and then try and get a bit o' sleep. John and I'll watch by your master to-night." [Footnote 17: "And thay _soupe_ the brothe thereof."--_Sir J. Mandeville._] "God's blessing be on you!" She finished the gruel, and fell into a deep sleep. Wilson covered her with his coat as well as he could, and tried to move lightly for fear of disturbing her; but there need have been no such dread, for her sleep was profound and heavy with exhaustion. Once only she roused to pull the coat round her little child. And now all Wilson's care, and Barton's to boot, was wanted to restrain the wild mad agony of the fevered man. He started up, he yelled, he seemed infuriated by overwhelming anxiety. He cursed and swore, which surprised Wilson, who knew his piety in health, and who did not know the unbridled tongue of delirium. At length he seemed exhausted, and fell asleep; and Barton and Wilson drew near the fire, and talked together in whispers. They sat on the floor, for chairs there were none; the sole table was an old tub turned upside-down. They put out the candle and conversed by the flickering fire-light. "Han yo known this chap long?" asked Barton. "Better nor three year. He's worked wi' Carsons that long, and were alway a steady, civil-spoken fellow, though, as I said afore, somewhat of a Methodee. I wish I'd gotten a letter he sent his missis, a week or two agone, when he were on tramp for work. It did my heart good to read it; for, yo see, I were a bit grumbling mysel; it seemed hard to be spunging on Jem, and taking a' his flesh-meat money to buy bread for me and them as I ought to be keeping. But, yo know, though I can earn nought, I mun eat summut. Well, as I telled ye, I were grumbling, when she (indicating the sleeping woman by a nod) brought me Ben's letter, for she could na read hersel. It were as good as Bible-words; ne'er a word o' repining; a' about God being our Father, and that we mun bear patiently whate'er He sends." "Don ye think He's th' masters' Father, too? I'd be loath to have 'em for brothers." "Eh, John! donna talk so; sure there's many and many a master as good or better nor us." "If you think so, tell me this. How comes it they're rich, and we're poor? I'd like to know that. Han they done as they'd be done by for us?" But Wilson was no arguer; no speechifier as he would have called it. So Barton, seeing he was likely to have it his own way, went on. "You'll say (at least many a one does), they'n [18] getten capital an' we'n getten none. I say, our labour's our capital and we ought to draw interest on that. They get interest on their capital somehow a' this time, while ourn is lying idle, else how could they all live as they do? Besides, there's many on 'em as had nought to begin wi'; there's Carsons, and Duncombes, and Mengies, and many another, as comed into Manchester with clothes to their back, and that were all, and now they're worth their tens of thousands, a' getten out of our labour; why the very land as fetched but sixty pound twenty year agone is now worth six hundred, and that, too, is owing to our labour: but look at yo, and see me, and poor Davenport yonder; whatten better are we? They'n screwed us down to th' lowest peg, in order to make their great big fortunes, and build their great big houses, and we, why we're just clemming, many and many of us. Can you say there's nought wrong in this?" [Footnote 18: "They'n," contraction of "they han," they have.] "Well, Barton, I'll not gainsay ye. But Mr. Carson spoke to me after th' fire, and says he, 'I shall ha' to retrench, and be very careful in my expenditure during these bad times, I assure ye;' so yo see th' masters suffer too." "Han they ever seen a child o' their'n die for want o' food?" asked Barton, in a low, deep voice. "I donnot mean," continued he, "to say as I'm so badly off. I'd scorn to speak for mysel; but when I see such men as Davenport there dying away, for very clemming, I cannot stand it. I've but gotten Mary, and she keeps hersel pretty much. I think we'll ha' to give up house-keeping; but that I donnot mind." And in this kind of talk the night, the long heavy night of watching, wore away. As far as they could judge, Davenport continued in the same state, although the symptoms varied occasionally. The wife slept on, only roused by a cry of her child now and then, which seemed to have power over her, when far louder noises failed to disturb her. The watchers agreed, that as soon as it was likely Mr. Carson would be up and visible, Wilson should go to his house, and beg for an Infirmary order. At length the gray dawn penetrated even into the dark cellar. Davenport slept, and Barton was to remain there until Wilson's return; so stepping out into the fresh air, brisk and reviving, even in that street of abominations, Wilson took his way to Mr. Carson's. Wilson had about two miles to walk before he reached Mr. Carson's house, which was almost in the country. The streets were not yet bustling and busy. The shopmen were lazily taking down the shutters, although it was near eight o'clock; for the day was long enough for the purchases people made in that quarter of the town, while trade was so flat. One or two miserable-looking women were setting off on their day's begging expedition. But there were few people abroad. Mr. Carson's was a good house, and furnished with disregard to expense. But in addition to lavish expenditure, there was much taste shown, and many articles chosen for their beauty and elegance adorned his rooms. As Wilson passed a window which a housemaid had thrown open, he saw pictures and gilding, at which he was tempted to stop and look; but then he thought it would not be respectful. So he hastened on to the kitchen door. The servants seemed very busy with preparations for breakfast; but good-naturedly, though hastily, told him to step in, and they could soon let Mr. Carson know he was there. So he was ushered into a kitchen hung round with glittering tins, where a roaring fire burnt merrily, and where numbers of utensils hung round, at whose nature and use Wilson amused himself by guessing. Meanwhile, the servants bustled to and fro; an out-door man-servant came in for orders, and sat down near Wilson; the cook broiled steaks, and the kitchen-maid toasted bread, and boiled eggs. The coffee steamed upon the fire, and altogether the odours were so mixed and appetising, that Wilson began to yearn for food to break his fast, which had lasted since dinner the day before. If the servants had known this, they would have willingly given him meat and bread in abundance; but they were like the rest of us, and not feeling hunger themselves, forgot it was possible another might. So Wilson's craving turned to sickness, while they chattered on, making the kitchen's free and keen remarks upon the parlour. "How late you were last night, Thomas!" "Yes, I was right weary of waiting; they told me to be at the rooms by twelve; and there I was. But it was two o'clock before they called me." "And did you wait all that time in the street?" asked the housemaid, who had done her work for the present, and come into the kitchen for a bit of gossip. "My eye as like! you don't think I'm such a fool as to catch my death of cold, and let the horses catch their death too, as we should ha' done if we'd stopped there. No! I put th' horses up in th' stables at th' Spread Eagle, and went mysel, and got a glass or two by th' fire. They're driving a good custom, them, wi' coachmen. There were five on us, and we'd many a quart o' ale, and gin wi' it, to keep out cold." "Mercy on us, Thomas; you'll get a drunkard at last!" "If I do, I know whose blame it will be. It will be missis's, and not mine. Flesh and blood can't sit to be starved to death on a coach-box, waiting for folks as don't know their own mind." A servant, semi-upper-housemaid, semi-lady's-maid, now came down with orders from her mistress. "Thomas, you must ride to the fishmonger's, and say missis can't give above half-a-crown a pound for salmon for Tuesday; she's grumbling because trade's so bad. And she'll want the carriage at three to go to the lecture, Thomas; at the Royal Execution, you know." "Ay, ay, I know." "And you'd better all of you mind your P's and Q's, for she's very black this morning. She's got a bad headache." "It's a pity Miss Jenkins is not here to match her. Lord! how she and missis did quarrel which had got the worst headaches; it was that Miss Jenkins left for; she would not give up having bad headaches, and missis could not abide any one to have 'em but herself." "Missis will have her breakfast up-stairs, cook, and the cold partridge as was left yesterday, and put plenty of cream in her coffee, and she thinks there's a roll left, and she would like it well buttered." So saying, the maid left the kitchen to be ready to attend to the young ladies' bell when they chose to ring, after their late assembly the night before. In the luxurious library, at the well-spread breakfast-table, sat the two Mr. Carsons, father and son. Both were reading; the father a newspaper, the son a review, while they lazily enjoyed their nicely prepared food. The father was a prepossessing-looking old man; perhaps self-indulgent you might guess. The son was strikingly handsome, and knew it. His dress was neat and well appointed, and his manners far more gentlemanly than his father's. He was the only son, and his sisters were proud of him; his father and mother were proud of him: he could not set up his judgment against theirs; he was proud of himself. The door opened and in bounded Amy, the sweet youngest daughter of the house, a lovely girl of sixteen, fresh and glowing, and bright as a rosebud. She was too young to go to assemblies, at which her father rejoiced, for he had little Amy with her pretty jokes, and her bird-like songs, and her playful caresses all the evening to amuse him in his loneliness; and she was not too much tired, like Sophy and Helen, to give him her sweet company at breakfast the next morning. He submitted willingly while she blinded him with her hands, and kissed his rough red face all over. She took his newspaper away after a little pretended resistance, and would not allow her brother Harry to go on with his review. "I'm the only lady this morning, papa, so you know you must make a great deal of me." "My darling, I think you have your own way always, whether you're the only lady or not." "Yes, papa, you're pretty good and obedient, I must say that; but I'm sorry to say Harry is very naughty, and does not do what I tell him; do you, Harry?" "I'm sure I don't know what you mean to accuse me of, Amy; I expected praise and not blame; for did not I get you that eau de Portugal from town, that you could not meet with at Hughes', you little ungrateful puss?" "Did you! Oh, sweet Harry; you're as sweet as eau de Portugal yourself; you're almost as good as papa; but still you know you did go and forget to ask Bigland for that rose, that new rose they say he has got." "No, Amy, I did not forget. I asked him, and he has got the Rose, _sans reproche_; but do you know, little Miss Extravagance, a very small one is half-a-guinea?" "Oh, I don't mind. Papa will give it me, won't you, dear father? He knows his little daughter can't live without flowers and scents." Mr. Carson tried to refuse his darling, but she coaxed him into acquiescence, saying she must have it, it was one of her necessaries. Life was not worth having without flowers. "Then, Amy," said her brother, "try and be content with peonies and dandelions." "Oh, you wretch! I don't call them flowers. Besides, you're every bit as extravagant. Who gave half-a-crown for a bunch of lilies of the valley at Yates', a month ago, and then would not let his poor little sister have them, though she went on her knees to beg them? Answer me that, Master Hal." "Not on compulsion," replied her brother, smiling with his mouth, while his eyes had an irritated expression, and he went first red, then pale, with vexed embarrassment. "If you please, sir," said a servant, entering the room, "here's one of the mill people wanting to see you; his name is Wilson, he says." "I'll come to him directly; stay, tell him to come in here." Amy danced off into the conservatory which opened out of the room, before the gaunt, pale, unwashed, unshaven weaver was ushered in. There he stood at the door, sleeking his hair with old country habit, and every now and then stealing a glance round at the splendour of the apartment. "Well, Wilson, and what do you want to-day, man?" "Please, sir, Davenport's ill of the fever, and I'm come to know if you've got an Infirmary order for him?" "Davenport--Davenport; who is the fellow? I don't know the name." "He's worked in your factory better nor three year, sir." "Very likely; I don't pretend to know the names of the men I employ; that I leave to the overlooker. So he's ill, eh?" "Ay, sir, he's very bad; we want to get him in at the fever wards. "I doubt if I have an in-patient's order to spare; they're always wanted for accidents, you know. But I'll give you an out-patient's, and welcome." So saying, he rose up, unlocked a drawer, pondered a minute, and then gave Wilson an out-patient's order to be presented the following Monday. Monday! How many days there were before Monday! Meanwhile, the younger Mr. Carson had ended his review, and began to listen to what was going on. He finished his breakfast, got up, and pulled five shillings out of his pocket, which he gave to Wilson as he passed him, for the "poor fellow." He went past quickly, and calling for his horse, mounted gaily, and rode away. He was anxious to be in time to have a look and a smile from lovely Mary Barton, as she went to Miss Simmonds'. But to-day he was to be disappointed. Wilson left the house, not knowing whether to be pleased or grieved. It was long to Monday, but they had all spoken kindly to him, and who could tell if they might not remember this, and do something before Monday. Besides, the cook, who, when she had had time to think, after breakfast was sent in, had noticed his paleness, had had meat and bread ready to put in his hand when he came out of the parlour; and a full stomach makes every one of us more hopeful. When he reached Berry Street, he had persuaded himself he bore good news, and felt almost elated in his heart. But it fell when he opened the cellar-door, and saw Barton and the wife both bending over the sick man's couch with awe-struck, saddened look. "Come here," said Barton. "There's a change comed over him sin' yo left, is there not?" Wilson looked. The flesh was sunk, the features prominent, bony, and rigid. The fearful clay-colour of death was over all. But the eyes were open and sensible, though the films of the grave were settling upon them. "He wakened fra his sleep, as yo left him in, and began to mutter and moan; but he soon went off again, and we never knew he were awake till he called his wife, but now she's here he's gotten nought to say to her." Most probably, as they all felt, he could not speak, for his strength was fast ebbing. They stood round him still and silent; even the wife checked her sobs, though her heart was like to break. She held her child to her breast, to try and keep him quiet. Their eyes were all fixed on the yet living one, whose moments of life were passing so rapidly away. At length he brought (with jerking, convulsive effort) his two hands into the attitude of prayer. They saw his lips move, and bent to catch the words, which came in gasps, and not in tones. "Oh Lord God! I thank thee, that the hard struggle of living is over." "Oh, Ben! Ben!" wailed forth his wife, "have you no thought for me? Oh, Ben! Ben! do say one word to help me through life." He could not speak again. The trump of the archangel would set his tongue free; but not a word more would it utter till then. Yet he heard, he understood, and though sight failed, he moved his hand gropingly over the covering. They knew what he meant, and guided it to her head, bowed and hidden in her hands, when she had sunk in her woe. It rested there, with a feeble pressure of endearment. The face grew beautiful, as the soul neared God. A peace beyond understanding came over it. The hand was a heavy, stiff weight on the wife's head. No more grief or sorrow for him. They reverently laid out the corpse--Wilson fetching his only spare shirt to array it in. The wife still lay hidden in the clothes, in a stupor of agony. There was a knock at the door, and Barton went to open it. It was Mary, who had received a message from her father, through a neighbour, telling her where he was; and she had set out early to come and have a word with him before her day's work; but some errands she had to do for Miss Simmonds had detained her until now. "Come in, wench!" said her father. "Try if thou canst comfort yon poor, poor woman, kneeling down there. God help her." Mary did not know what to say, or how to comfort; but she knelt down by her, and put her arm round her neck, and in a little while fell to crying herself so bitterly, that the source of tears was opened by sympathy in the widow, and her full heart was, for a time, relieved. And Mary forgot all purposed meeting with her gay lover, Harry Carson; forgot Miss Simmonds' errands, and her anger, in the anxious desire to comfort the poor lone woman. Never had her sweet face looked more angelic, never had her gentle voice seemed so musical as when she murmured her broken sentences of comfort. "Oh, don't cry so, dear Mrs. Davenport, pray don't take on so. Sure he's gone where he'll never know care again. Yes, I know how lonesome you must feel; but think of your children. Oh! we'll all help to earn food for 'em. Think how sorry _he'd_ be, if he sees you fretting so. Don't cry so, please don't." And she ended by crying herself, as passionately as the poor widow. It was agreed that the town must bury him; he had paid to a burial club as long as he could; but by a few weeks' omission, he had forfeited his claim to a sum of money now. Would Mrs. Davenport and the little child go home with Mary? The latter brightened up as she urged this plan; but no! where the poor, fondly loved remains were, there would the mourner be; and all that they could do was to make her as comfortable as their funds would allow, and to beg a neighbour to look in and say a word at times. So she was left alone with her dead, and they went to work that had work, and he who had none, took upon him the arrangements for the funeral. Mary had many a scolding from Miss Simmonds that day for her absence of mind. To be sure Miss Simmonds was much put out by Mary's non-appearance in the morning with certain bits of muslin, and shades of silk which were wanted to complete a dress to be worn that night; but it was true enough that Mary did not mind what she was about; she was too busy planning how her old black gown (her best when her mother died) might be spunged, and turned, and lengthened into something like decent mourning for the widow. And when she went home at night (though it was very late, as a sort of retribution for her morning's negligence), she set to work at once, and was so busy, and so glad over her task, that she had, every now and then, to check herself in singing merry ditties, that she felt little accorded with the sewing on which she was engaged. So when the funeral day came, Mrs. Davenport was neatly arrayed in black, a satisfaction to her poor heart in the midst of her sorrow. Barton and Wilson both accompanied her, as she led her two elder boys, and followed the coffin. It was a simple walking funeral, with nothing to grate on the feelings of any; far more in accordance with its purpose, to my mind, than the gorgeous hearses, and nodding plumes, which form the grotesque funeral pomp of respectable people. There was no "rattling the bones over the stones," of the pauper's funeral. Decently and quietly was he followed to the grave by one determined to endure her woe meekly for his sake. The only mark of pauperism attendant on the burial concerned the living and joyous, far more than the dead, or the sorrowful. When they arrived in the churchyard, they halted before a raised and handsome tombstone; in reality a wooden mockery of stone respectabilities which adorned the burial-ground. It was easily raised in a very few minutes, and below was the grave in which pauper bodies were piled until within a foot or two of the surface; when the soil was shovelled over, and stamped down, and the wooden cover went to do temporary duty over another hole. [19] But little they recked of this who now gave up their dead. [Footnote 19: The case, to my certain knowledge, in one churchyard in Manchester. There may be more.] CHAPTER VII. JEM WILSON'S REPULSE. "How infinite the wealth of love and hope Garnered in these same tiny treasure-houses! And oh! what bankrupts in the world we feel, When Death, like some remorseless creditor, Seizes on all we fondly thought our own!" "THE TWINS." The ghoul-like fever was not to be braved with impunity, and baulked of its prey. The widow had reclaimed her children; her neighbours, in the good Samaritan sense of the word, had paid her little arrears of rent, and made her a few shillings beforehand with the world. She determined to flit from that cellar to another less full of painful associations, less haunted by mournful memories. The board, not so formidable as she had imagined, had inquired into her case; and, instead of sending her to Stoke Claypole, her husband's Buckinghamshire parish, as she had dreaded, had agreed to pay her rent. So food for four mouths was all she was now required to find; only for three she would have said; for herself and the unweaned child were but reckoned as one in her calculation. She had a strong heart, now her bodily strength had been recruited by a week or two of food, and she would not despair. So she took in some little children to nurse, who brought their daily food with them, which she cooked for them, without wronging their helplessness of a crumb; and when she had restored them to their mothers at night, she set to work at plain sewing, "seam, and gusset, and band," and sat thinking how she might best cheat the factory inspector, and persuade him that her strong, big, hungry Ben was above thirteen. Her plan of living was so far arranged, when she heard, with keen sorrow, that Wilson's twin lads were ill of the fever. They had never been strong. They were like many a pair of twins, and seemed to have but one life divided between them. One life, one strength, and in this instance, I might almost say, one brain; for they were helpless, gentle, silly children, but not the less dear to their parents and to their strong, active, manly, elder brother. They were late on their feet, late in talking, late every way; had to be nursed and cared for when other lads of their age were tumbling about in the street, and losing themselves, and being taken to the police-office miles away from home. Still want had never yet come in at the door to make love for these innocents fly out at the window. Nor was this the case even now, when Jem Wilson's earnings, and his mother's occasional charrings were barely sufficient to give all the family their fill of food. But when the twins, after ailing many days, and caring little for their meat, fell sick on the same afternoon, with the same heavy stupor of suffering, the three hearts that loved them so, each felt, though none acknowledged to the other, that they had little chance for life. It was nearly a week before the tale of their illness spread as far as the court where the Wilsons had once dwelt, and the Bartons yet lived. Alice had heard of the illness of her little nephews several days before, and had locked her cellar door, and gone off straight to her brother's house, in Ancoats; but she was often absent for days, sent for, as her neighbours knew, to help in some sudden emergency of illness or distress, so that occasioned no surprise. Margaret met Jem Wilson several days after his brothers were seriously ill, and heard from him the state of things at his home. She told Mary of it as she entered the court late that evening; and Mary listened with saddened heart to the strange contrast which such woeful tidings presented to the gay and loving words she had been hearing on her walk home. She blamed herself for being so much taken up with visions of the golden future, that she had lately gone but seldom on Sunday afternoons, or other leisure time, to see Mrs. Wilson, her mother's friend; and with hasty purpose of amendment she only stayed to leave a message for her father with the next-door neighbour, and then went off at a brisk pace on her way to the house of mourning. She stopped with her hand on the latch of the Wilsons' door, to still her beating heart, and listened to the hushed quiet within. She opened the door softly: there sat Mrs. Wilson in the old rocking-chair, with one sick, death-like boy lying on her knee, crying without let or pause, but softly, gently, as fearing to disturb the troubled, gasping child; while behind her, old Alice let her fast-dropping tears fall down on the dead body of the other twin, which she was laying out on a board, placed on a sort of sofa-settee in a corner of the room. Over the child, which yet breathed, the father bent, watching anxiously for some ground of hope, where hope there was none. Mary stepped slowly and lightly across to Alice. "Ay, poor lad! God has taken him early, Mary." Mary could not speak; she did not know what to say; it was so much worse than she expected. At last she ventured to whisper, "Is there any chance for the other one, think you?" Alice shook her head, and told with a look that she believed there was none. She next endeavoured to lift the little body, and carry it to its old accustomed bed in its parents' room. But earnest as the father was in watching the yet-living, he had eyes and ears for all that concerned the dead, and sprang gently up, and took his dead son on his hard couch in his arms with tender strength, and carried him upstairs as if afraid of wakening him. The other child gasped longer, louder, with more of effort. "We mun get him away from his mother. He cannot die while she's wishing him." "Wishing him?" said Mary, in a tone of inquiry. "Ay; donno ye know what wishing means? There's none can die in the arms of those who are wishing them sore to stay on earth. The soul o' them as holds them won't let the dying soul go free; so it has a hard struggle for the quiet of death. We mun get him away fra' his mother, or he'll have a hard death, poor lile [20] fellow." [Footnote 20: "Lile," a north-country word for "little." "Wit _leil_ labour to live."--_Piers Ploughman._] So without circumlocution she went and offered to take the sinking child. But the mother would not let him go, and looking in Alice's face with brimming and imploring eyes, declared in earnest whispers, that she was not wishing him, that she would fain have him released from his suffering. Alice and Mary stood by with eyes fixed on the poor child, whose struggles seemed to increase, till at last his mother said with a choking voice, "May happen [21] yo'd better take him, Alice; I believe my heart's wishing him a' this while, for I cannot, no, I cannot bring mysel to let my two childer go in one day; I cannot help longing to keep him, and yet he sha'not suffer longer for me." [Footnote 21: "May happen," perhaps.] She bent down, and fondly, oh! with what passionate fondness, kissed her child, and then gave him up to Alice, who took him with tender care. Nature's struggles were soon exhausted, and he breathed his little life away in peace. Then the mother lifted up her voice and wept. Her cries brought her husband down to try with his aching heart to comfort hers. Again Alice laid out the dead, Mary helping with reverent fear. The father and mother carried him up-stairs to the bed, where his little brother lay in calm repose. Mary and Alice drew near the fire, and stood in quiet sorrow for some time. Then Alice broke the silence by saying, "It will be bad news for Jem, poor fellow, when he comes home." "Where is he?" asked Mary. "Working over-hours at th' shop. They'n getten a large order fra' forrin parts; and yo' know, Jem mun work, though his heart's well-nigh breaking for these poor laddies." Again they were silent in thought, and again Alice spoke first. "I sometimes think the Lord is against planning. Whene'er I plan over-much, He is sure to send and mar all my plans, as if He would ha' me put the future into His hands. Afore Christmas-time I was as full as full could be, of going home for good and all; yo' han heard how I've wished it this terrible long time. And a young lass from behind Burton came into place in Manchester last Martinmas; so after awhile, she had a Sunday out, and she comes to me, and tells me some cousins o' mine bid her find me out, and say how glad they should be to ha' me to bide wi' 'em, and look after th' childer, for they'n getten a big farm, and she's a deal to do among th' cows. So many a winter's night did I lie awake and think, that please God, come summer, I'd bid George and his wife good bye, and go home at last. Little did I think how God Almighty would baulk me, for not leaving my days in His hands, who had led me through the wilderness hitherto. Here's George out o' work, and more cast down than ever I seed him; wanting every chip o' comfort he can get, e'en afore this last heavy stroke; and now I'm thinking the Lord's finger points very clear to my fit abiding place; and I'm sure if George and Jane can say 'His will be done,' it's no more than what I'm beholden to do." So saying, she fell to tidying the room, removing as much as she could every vestige of sickness; making up the fire, and setting on the kettle for a cup of tea for her sister-in-law, whose low moans and sobs were occasionally heard in the room below. Mary helped her in all these little offices. They were busy in this way when the door was softly opened, and Jem came in, all grimed and dirty from his night-work, his soiled apron wrapped round his middle, in guise and apparel in which he would have been sorry at another time to have been seen by Mary. But just now he hardly saw her; he went straight up to Alice, and asked how the little chaps were. They had been a shade better at dinner-time, and he had been working away through the long afternoon, and far into the night, in the belief that they had taken the turn. He had stolen out during the half-hour allowed at the works for tea, to buy them an orange or two, which now puffed out his jacket-pocket. He would make his aunt speak; he would not understand her shakes of the head and fast coursing tears. "They're both gone," said she. "Dead!" "Ay! poor fellows. They took worse about two o'clock. Joe went first, as easy as a lamb, and Will died harder like." "Both!" "Ay, lad! both. The Lord has ta'en them from some evil to come, or He would na ha' made choice o' them. Ye may rest sure o' that." Jem went to the cupboard, and quietly extricated from his pocket the oranges he had bought. But he stayed long there, and at last his sturdy frame shook with his strong agony. The two women were frightened, as women always are, on witnessing a man's overpowering grief. They cried afresh in company. Mary's heart melted within her as she witnessed Jem's sorrow, and she stepped gently up to the corner where he stood, with his back turned to them, and putting her hand softly on his arm, said, "Oh, Jem, don't give way so; I cannot bear to see you." Jem felt a strange leap of joy in his heart, and knew the power she had of comforting him. He did not speak, as though fearing to destroy by sound or motion the happiness of that moment, when her soft hand's touch thrilled through his frame, and her silvery voice was whispering tenderness in his ear. Yes! it might be very wrong; he could almost hate himself for it; with death and woe so surrounding him, it yet was happiness, was bliss, to be so spoken to by Mary. "Don't, Jem, please don't," whispered she again, believing that his silence was only another form of grief. He could not contain himself. He took her hand in his firm yet trembling grasp, and said, in tones that instantly produced a revulsion in her mood, "Mary, I almost loathe myself when I feel I would not give up this minute, when my brothers lie dead, and father and mother are in such trouble, for all my life that's past and gone. And, Mary (as she tried to release her hand), you know what makes me feel so blessed." She did know--he was right there. But as he turned to catch a look at her sweet face, he saw that it expressed unfeigned distress, almost amounting to vexation; a dread of him, that he thought was almost repugnance. He let her hand go, and she quickly went away to Alice's side. "Fool that I was--nay, wretch that I was--to let myself take this time of trouble to tell her how I loved her; no wonder that she turns away from such a selfish beast." Partly to relieve her from his presence, and partly from natural desire, and partly, perhaps, from a penitent wish to share to the utmost his parents' sorrow, he soon went up-stairs to the chamber of death. Mary mechanically helped Alice in all the duties she performed through the remainder of that long night, but she did not see Jem again. He remained up-stairs until after the early dawn showed Mary that she need have no fear of going home through the deserted and quiet streets, to try and get a little sleep before work hour. So leaving kind messages to George and Jane Wilson, and hesitating whether she might dare to send a few kind words to Jem, and deciding that she had better not, she stepped out into the bright morning light, so fresh a contrast to the darkened room where death had been. "They had Another morn than ours." Mary lay down on her bed in her clothes; and whether it was this, or the broad daylight that poured in through the sky-window, or whether it was over-excitement, it was long before she could catch a wink of sleep. Her thoughts ran on Jem's manner and words; not but what she had known the tale they told for many a day; but still she wished he had not put it so plainly. "Oh dear," said she to herself, "I wish he would not mistake me so; I never dare to speak a common word o' kindness, but his eye brightens and his cheek flushes. It's very hard on me; for father and George Wilson are old friends; and Jem and I ha' known each other since we were quite children. I cannot think what possesses me, that I must always be wanting to comfort him when he's downcast, and that I must go meddling wi' him to-night, when sure enough it was his aunt's place to speak to him. I don't care for him, and yet, unless I'm always watching myself, I'm speaking to him in a loving voice. I think I cannot go right, for I either check myself till I'm downright cross to him, or else I speak just natural, and that's too kind and tender by half. And I'm as good as engaged to be married to another; and another far handsomer than Jem; only I think I like Jem's face best for all that; liking's liking, and there's no help for it. Well, when I'm Mrs. Harry Carson, may happen I can put some good fortune in Jem's way. But will he thank me for it? He's rather savage at times, that I can see, and perhaps kindness from me, when I'm another's, will only go against the grain. I'll not plague myself wi' thinking any more about him, that I won't." So she turned on her pillow, and fell asleep, and dreamt of what was often in her waking thoughts; of the day when she should ride from church in her carriage, with wedding-bells ringing, and take up her astonished father, and drive away from the old dim work-a-day court for ever, to live in a grand house, where her father should have newspapers, and pamphlets, and pipes, and meat dinners every day,--and all day long if he liked. Such thoughts mingled in her predilection for the handsome young Mr. Carson, who, unfettered by work-hours, let scarcely a day pass without contriving a meeting with the beautiful little milliner he had first seen while lounging in a shop where his sisters were making some purchases, and afterwards never rested till he had freely, though respectfully, made her acquaintance in her daily walks. He was, to use his own expression to himself, quite infatuated by her, and was restless each day till the time came when he had a chance, and, of late, more than a chance of meeting her. There was something of keen practical shrewdness about her, which contrasted very bewitchingly with the simple, foolish, unworldly ideas she had picked up from the romances which Miss Simmonds' young ladies were in the habit of recommending to each other. Yes! Mary was ambitious, and did not favour Mr. Carson the less because he was rich and a gentleman. The old leaven, infused years ago by her aunt Esther, fermented in her little bosom, and perhaps all the more, for her father's aversion to the rich and the gentle. Such is the contrariness of the human heart, from Eve downwards, that we all, in our old-Adam state, fancy things forbidden sweetest. So Mary dwelt upon and enjoyed the idea of some day becoming a lady, and doing all the elegant nothings appertaining to ladyhood. It was a comfort to her, when scolded by Miss Simmonds, to think of the day when she would drive up to the door in her own carriage, to order her gowns from the hasty tempered yet kind dressmaker. It was a pleasure to her to hear the general admiration of the two elder Miss Carsons, acknowledged beauties in ball-room and street, on horseback and on foot, and to think of the time when she should ride and walk with them in loving sisterhood. But the best of her plans, the holiest, that which in some measure redeemed the vanity of the rest, were those relating to her father; her dear father, now oppressed with care, and always a disheartened, gloomy person. How she would surround him with every comfort she could devise (of course, he was to live with them), till he should acknowledge riches to be very pleasant things, and bless his lady-daughter! Every one who had shown her kindness in her low estate should then be repaid a hundred-fold. Such were the castles in air, the Alnaschar-visions in which Mary indulged, and which she was doomed in after days to expiate with many tears. Meanwhile, her words--or, even more, her tones--would maintain their hold on Jem Wilson's memory. A thrill would yet come over him when he remembered how her hand had rested on his arm. The thought of her mingled with all his grief, and it was profound, for the loss of his brothers. CHAPTER VIII. MARGARET'S DEBUT AS A PUBLIC SINGER. "Deal gently with them, they have much endured. Scoff not at their fond hopes and earnest plans, Though they may seem to thee wild dreams and fancies. Perchance, in the rough school of stern experience, They've something learned which Theory does not teach; Or if they greatly err, deal gently still, And let their error but the stronger plead 'Give us the light and guidance that we need!'" LOVE THOUGHTS. One Sunday afternoon, about three weeks after that mournful night, Jem Wilson set out with the ostensible purpose of calling on John Barton. He was dressed in his best, his Sunday suit of course; while his face glittered with the scrubbing he had bestowed on it. His dark black hair had been arranged and re-arranged before the household looking-glass, and in his button-hole he stuck a narcissus (a sweet Nancy is its pretty Lancashire name), hoping it would attract Mary's notice, so that he might have the delight of giving it her. It was a bad beginning of his visit of happiness that Mary saw him some minutes before he came into her father's house. She was sitting at the end of the dresser, with the little window-blind drawn on one side, in order that she might see the passers-by, in the intervals of reading her Bible, which lay open before her. So she watched all the greeting a friend gave Jem; she saw the face of condolence, the sympathetic shake of the hand, and had time to arrange her own face and manner before Jem came in, which he did, as if he had eyes for no one but her father, who sat smoking his pipe by the fire, while he read an old "Northern Star," borrowed from a neighbouring public-house. Then he turned to Mary, who, he felt by the sure instinct of love, by which almost his body thought, was present. Her hands were busy adjusting her dress; a forced and unnecessary movement Jem could not help thinking. Her accost was quiet and friendly, if grave; she felt that she reddened like a rose, and wished she could prevent it, while Jem wondered if her blushes arose from fear, or anger, or love. She was very cunning, I am afraid. She pretended to read diligently, and not to listen to a word that was said, while, in fact, she heard all sounds, even to Jem's long, deep sighs, which wrung her heart. At last she took up her Bible, and as if their conversation disturbed her, went up-stairs to her little room. And she had scarcely spoken a word to Jem; scarcely looked at him; never noticed his beautiful sweet Nancy, which only awaited her least word of praise to be hers! He did not know--that pang was spared--that in her little dingy bed-room, stood a white jug, filled with a luxuriant bunch of early spring roses, making the whole room fragrant and bright. They were the gift of her richer lover. So Jem had to go on sitting with John Barton, fairly caught in his own trap, and had to listen to his talk, and answer him as best he might. "There's the right stuff in this here 'Star,' and no mistake. Such a right-down piece for short hours." "At the same rate of wages as now?" asked Jem. "Ay, ay! else where's the use? It's only taking out o' the masters' pocket what they can well afford. Did I ever tell yo what th' Infirmary chap let me into, many a year agone?" "No," said Jem, listlessly. "Well! yo must know I were in th' Infirmary for a fever, and times were rare and bad; and there be good chaps there to a man, while he's wick, [22] whate'er they may be about cutting him up at after. [23] So when I were better o' th' fever, but weak as water, they says to me, says they, 'If yo can write, yo may stay in a week longer, and help our surgeon wi' sorting his papers; and we'll take care yo've your belly full o' meat and drink. Yo'll be twice as strong in a week.' So there wanted but one word to that bargain. So I were set to writing and copying; th' writing I could do well enough, but they'd such queer ways o' spelling that I'd ne'er been used to, that I'd to look first at th' copy and then at my letters, for all the world like a cock picking up grains o' corn. But one thing startled me e'en then, and I thought I'd make bold to ask the surgeon the meaning o't. I've gotten no head for numbers, but this I know, that by _far th' greater part o' th' accidents as comed in, happened in th' last two hours o' work_, when folk getten tired and careless. Th' surgeon said it were all true, and that he were going to bring that fact to light." [Footnote 22: "Wick," alive. Anglo-Saxon, cwic. "The _quick_ and the dead."--_Book of Common Prayer._] [Footnote 23: "At after." "_At after souper goth this noble king._" _Chaucer; The Squire's Tale._] Jem was pondering Mary's conduct; but the pause made him aware he ought to utter some civil listening noise; so he said "Very true." "Ay, it's true enough, my lad, that we're sadly over-borne, and worse will come of it afore long. Block-printers is going to strike; they'n getten a bang-up union, as won't let 'em be put upon. But there's many a thing will happen afore long, as folk don't expect. Yo may take my word for that, Jem." Jem was very willing to take it, but did not express the curiosity he should have done. So John Barton thought he'd try another hint or two. "Working folk won't be ground to the dust much longer. We'n a' had as much to bear as human nature can bear. So, if th' masters can't do us no good, and they say they can't, we mun try higher folk." Still Jem was not curious. He gave up hope of seeing Mary again by her own good free will; and the next best thing would be, to be alone to think of her. So, muttering something which he meant to serve as an excuse for his sudden departure, he hastily wished John good afternoon, and left him to resume his pipe and his politics. For three years past, trade had been getting worse and worse, and the price of provisions higher and higher. This disparity between the amount of the earnings of the working classes and the price of their food, occasioned, in more cases than could well be imagined, disease and death. Whole families went through a gradual starvation. They only wanted a Dante to record their sufferings. And yet even his words would fall short of the awful truth; they could only present an outline of the tremendous facts of the destitution that surrounded thousands upon thousands in the terrible years 1839, 1840, and 1841. Even philanthropists who had studied the subject, were forced to own themselves perplexed in their endeavour to ascertain the real causes of the misery; the whole matter was of so complicated a nature, that it became next to impossible to understand it thoroughly. It need excite no surprise then to learn that a bad feeling between working-men and the upper classes became very strong in this season of privation. The indigence and sufferings of the operatives induced a suspicion in the minds of many of them, that their legislators, their magistrates, their employers, and even the ministers of religion, were, in general, their oppressors and enemies; and were in league for their prostration and enthralment. The most deplorable and enduring evil that arose out of the period of commercial depression to which I refer, was this feeling of alienation between the different classes of society. It is so impossible to describe, or even faintly to picture, the state of distress which prevailed in the town at that time, that I will not attempt it; and yet I think again that surely, in a Christian land, it was not known even so feebly as words could tell it, or the more happy and fortunate would have thronged with their sympathy and their aid. In many instances the sufferers wept first, and then they cursed. Their vindictive feelings exhibited themselves in rabid politics. And when I hear, as I have heard, of the sufferings and privations of the poor, of provision shops where ha'porths of tea, sugar, butter, and even flour, were sold to accommodate the indigent,--of parents sitting in their clothes by the fire-side during the whole night for seven weeks together, in order that their only bed and bedding might be reserved for the use of their large family,--of others sleeping upon the cold hearth-stone for weeks in succession, without adequate means of providing themselves with food or fuel (and this in the depth of winter),--of others being compelled to fast for days together, uncheered by any hope of better fortune, living, moreover, or rather starving, in a crowded garret, or damp cellar, and gradually sinking under the pressure of want and despair into a premature grave; and when this has been confirmed by the evidence of their care-worn looks, their excited feelings, and their desolate homes,--can I wonder that many of them, in such times of misery and destitution, spoke and acted with ferocious precipitation? An idea was now springing up among the operatives, that originated with the Chartists, but which came at last to be cherished as a darling child by many and many a one. They could not believe that government knew of their misery; they rather chose to think it possible that men could voluntarily assume the office of legislators for a nation, ignorant of its real state; as who should make domestic rules for the pretty behaviour of children, without caring to know that those children had been kept for days without food. Besides, the starving multitudes had heard, that the very existence of their distress had been denied in Parliament; and though they felt this strange and inexplicable, yet the idea that their misery had still to be revealed in all its depths, and that then some remedy would be found, soothed their aching hearts, and kept down their rising fury. So a petition was framed, and signed by thousands in the bright spring days of 1839, imploring Parliament to hear witnesses who could testify to the unparalleled destitution of the manufacturing districts. Nottingham, Sheffield, Glasgow, Manchester, and many other towns, were busy appointing delegates to convey this petition, who might speak, not merely of what they had seen, and had heard, but from what they had borne and suffered. Life-worn, gaunt, anxious, hunger-stamped men, were those delegates. One of them was John Barton. He would have been ashamed to own the flutter of spirits his appointment gave him. There was the childish delight of seeing London--that went a little way, and but a little way. There was the vain idea of speaking out his notions before so many grand folk--that went a little further; and last, there was the really pure gladness of heart, arising from the idea that he was one of those chosen to be instruments in making known the distresses of the people, and consequently in procuring them some grand relief, by means of which they should never suffer want or care any more. He hoped largely, but vaguely, of the results of his expedition. An argosy of the precious hopes of many otherwise despairing creatures, was that petition to be heard concerning their sufferings. The night before the morning on which the Manchester delegates were to leave for London, Barton might be said to hold a levée, so many neighbours came dropping in. Job Legh had early established himself and his pipe by John Barton's fire, not saying much, but puffing away, and imagining himself of use in adjusting the smoothing-irons that hung before the fire, ready for Mary when she should want them. As for Mary, her employment was the same as that of Beau Tibbs' wife, "just washing her father's two shirts," in the pantry back-kitchen; for she was anxious about his appearance in London. (The coat had been redeemed, though the silk handkerchief was forfeited.) The door stood open, as usual, between the houseplace and back-kitchen, so she gave her greeting to their friends as they entered. "So, John, yo're bound for London, are yo?" said one. "Ay, I suppose I mun go," answered John, yielding to necessity as it were. "Well, there's many a thing I'd like yo to speak on to the Parliament people. Thou'lt not spare 'em, John, I hope. Tell 'em our minds; how we're thinking we've been clemmed long enough, and we donnot see whatten good they'n been doing, if they can't give us what we're all crying for sin' the day we were born." "Ay, ay! I'll tell 'em that, and much more to it, when it gets to my turn; but thou knows there's many will have their word afore me." "Well, thou'lt speak at last. Bless thee, lad, do ask 'em to make th' masters break th' machines. There's never been good times sin' spinning-jennies came up." "Machines is th' ruin of poor folk," chimed in several voices. "For my part," said a shivering, half-clad man, who crept near the fire, as if ague-stricken, "I would like thee to tell 'em to pass th' Short-hours Bill. Flesh and blood gets wearied wi' so much work; why should factory hands work so much longer nor other trades? Just ask 'em that, Barton, will ye?" Barton was saved the necessity of answering, by the entrance of Mrs. Davenport, the poor widow he had been so kind to; she looked half-fed, and eager, but was decently clad. In her hand she brought a little newspaper parcel, which she took to Mary, who opened it, and then called out, dangling a shirt collar from her soapy fingers: "See, father, what a dandy you'll be in London! Mrs. Davenport has brought you this; made new cut, all after the fashion.--Thank you for thinking on him." "Eh, Mary!" said Mrs. Davenport, in a low voice. "Whatten's all I can do, to what he's done for me and mine? But, Mary, sure I can help ye, for you'll be busy wi' this journey." "Just help me wring these out, and then I'll take 'em to th' mangle." So Mrs. Davenport became a listener to the conversation; and after a while joined in. "I'm sure, John Barton, if yo are taking messages to the Parliament folk, yo'll not object to telling 'em what a sore trial it is, this law o' theirs, keeping childer fra' factory work, whether they be weakly or strong. There's our Ben; why, porridge seems to go no way wi' him, he eats so much; and I han gotten no money to send him t' school, as I would like; and there he is, rampaging about th' streets a' day, getting hungrier and hungrier, and picking up a' manner o' bad ways; and th' inspector won't let him in to work in th' factory, because he's not right age; though he's twice as strong as Sankey's little ritling [24] of a lad, as works till he cries for his legs aching so, though he is right age, and better." [Footnote 24: "Ritling," probably a corruption of "ricketling," a child that suffers from the rickets--a weakling.] "I've one plan I wish to tell John Barton," said a pompous, careful-speaking man, "and I should like him for to lay it afore the Honourable House. My mother comed out o' Oxfordshire, and were under-laundry-maid in Sir Francis Dashwood's family; and when we were little ones, she'd tell us stories of their grandeur; and one thing she named were, that Sir Francis wore two shirts a day. Now he were all as one as a Parliament man; and many on 'em, I han no doubt, are like extravagant. Just tell 'em, John, do, that they'd be doing th' Lancashire weavers a great kindness, if they'd ha' their shirts a' made o' calico; 'twould make trade brisk, that would, wi' the power o' shirts they wear." Job Legh now put in his word. Taking the pipe out of his mouth, and addressing the last speaker, he said: "I'll tell ye what, Bill, and no offence, mind ye; there's but hundreds of them Parliament folk as wear so many shirts to their back; but there's thousands and thousands o' poor weavers as han only gotten one shirt i' th' world; ay, and don't know where t' get another when that rag's done, though they're turning out miles o' calico every day; and many a mile o't is lying in warehouses, stopping up trade for want o' purchasers. Yo take my advice, John Barton, and ask Parliament to set trade free, so as workmen can earn a decent wage, and buy their two, ay and three, shirts a-year; that would make weaving brisk." He put his pipe in his mouth again, and redoubled his puffing to make up for lost time. "I'm afeard, neighbours," said John Barton, "I've not much chance o' telling 'em all yo say; what I think on, is just speaking out about the distress that they say is nought. When they hear o' children born on wet flags, without a rag t' cover 'em, or a bit o' food for th' mother; when they hear of folk lying down to die i' th' streets, or hiding their want i' some hole o' a cellar till death come to set 'em free; and when they hear o' all this plague, pestilence, and famine, they'll surely do somewhat wiser for us than we can guess at now. Howe'er, I han no objection, if so be there's an opening, to speak up for what yo say; anyhow, I'll do my best, and yo see now, if better times don't come after Parliament knows all." Some shook their heads, but more looked cheery; and then one by one dropped off, leaving John and his daughter alone. "Didst thou mark how poorly Jane Wilson looked?" asked he, as they wound up their hard day's work by a supper eaten over the fire, which glowed and glimmered through the room, and formed their only light. "No, I can't say as I did. But she's never rightly held up her head since the twins died; and all along she has never been a strong woman." "Never sin' her accident. Afore that I mind her looking as fresh and likely a girl as e'er a one in Manchester." "What accident, father?" "She cotched [25] her side again a wheel. It were afore wheels were boxed up. It were just when she were to have been married, and many a one thought George would ha' been off his bargain; but I knew he wern't the chap for that trick. Pretty near the first place she went to when she were able to go about again, was th' Oud Church; poor wench, all pale and limping she went up the aisle, George holding her up as tender as a mother, and walking as slow as e'er he could, not to hurry her, though there were plenty enow of rude lads to cast their jests at him and her. Her face were white like a sheet when she came in church, but afore she got to th' altar she were all one flush. But for a' that it's been a happy marriage, and George has stuck by me through life like a brother. He'll never hold up his head again if he loses Jane. I didn't like her looks to-night." [Footnote 25: "Cotched," caught.] And so he went to bed, the fear of forthcoming sorrow to his friend mingling with his thoughts of to-morrow, and his hopes for the future. Mary watched him set off, with her hands over her eyes to shade them from the bright slanting rays of the morning sun, and then she turned into the house to arrange its disorder before going to her work. She wondered if she should like or dislike the evening and morning solitude; for several hours when the clock struck she thought of her father, and wondered where he was; she made good resolutions according to her lights; and by-and-bye came the distractions and events of the broad full day to occupy her with the present, and to deaden the memory of the absent. One of Mary's resolutions was, that she would not be persuaded or induced to see Mr. Harry Carson during her father's absence. There was something crooked in her conscience after all; for this very resolution seemed an acknowledgment that it was wrong to meet him at any time; and yet she had brought herself to think her conduct quite innocent and proper, for although unknown to her father, and certain, even did he know it, to fail of obtaining his sanction, she esteemed her love-meetings with Mr. Carson as sure to end in her father's good and happiness. But now that he was away, she would do nothing that he would disapprove of; no, not even though it was for his own good in the end. Now, amongst Miss Simmonds' young ladies was one who had been from the beginning a confidant in Mary's love affair, made so by Mr. Carson himself. He had felt the necessity of some third person to carry letters and messages, and to plead his cause when he was absent. In a girl named Sally Leadbitter he had found a willing advocate. She would have been willing to have embarked in a love-affair herself (especially a clandestine one), for the mere excitement of the thing; but her willingness was strengthened by sundry half-sovereigns, which from time to time Mr. Carson bestowed upon her. Sally Leadbitter was vulgar-minded to the last degree; never easy unless her talk was of love and lovers; in her eyes it was an honour to have had a long list of wooers. So constituted, it was a pity that Sally herself was but a plain, red-haired, freckled girl; never likely, one would have thought, to become a heroine on her own account. But what she lacked in beauty she tried to make up for by a kind of witty boldness, which gave her what her betters would have called piquancy. Considerations of modesty or propriety never checked her utterance of a good thing. She had just talent enough to corrupt others. Her very good-nature was an evil influence. They could not hate one who was so kind; they could not avoid one who was so willing to shield them from scrapes by any exertion of her own; whose ready fingers would at any time make up for their deficiencies, and whose still more convenient tongue would at any time invent for them. The Jews, or Mohammedans (I forget which), believe that there is one little bone of our body, one of the vertebræ, if I remember rightly, which will never decay and turn to dust, but will lie incorrupt and indestructible in the ground until the Last Day: this is the Seed of the Soul. The most depraved have also their Seed of the Holiness that shall one day overcome their evil, their one good quality, lurking hidden, but safe, among all the corrupt and bad. Sally's seed of the future soul was her love for her mother, an aged bedridden woman. For her she had self-denial; for her, her good-nature rose into tenderness; to cheer her lonely bed, her spirits, in the evenings when her body was often woefully tired, never flagged, but were ready to recount the events of the day, to turn them into ridicule, and to mimic, with admirable fidelity, any person gifted with an absurdity who had fallen under her keen eye. But the mother was lightly principled like Sally herself; nor was there need to conceal from her the reason why Mr. Carson gave her so much money. She chuckled with pleasure, and only hoped that the wooing would be long a-doing. Still neither she, nor her daughter, nor Harry Carson liked this resolution of Mary, not to see him during her father's absence. One evening (and the early summer evenings were long and bright now), Sally met Mr. Carson by appointment, to be charged with a letter for Mary, imploring her to see him, which Sally was to back with all her powers of persuasion. After parting from him she determined, as it was not so very late, to go at once to Mary's, and deliver the message and letter. She found Mary in great sorrow. She had just heard of George Wilson's sudden death: her old friend, her father's friend, Jem's father--all his claims came rushing upon her. Though not guarded from unnecessary sight or sound of death, as the children of the rich are, yet it had so often been brought home to her this last three or four months. It was so terrible thus to see friend after friend depart. Her father, too, who had dreaded Jane Wilson's death the evening before he set off. And she, the weakly, was left behind while the strong man was taken. At any rate the sorrow her father had so feared for him was spared. Such were the thoughts which came over her. She could not go to comfort the bereaved, even if comfort were in her power to give; for she had resolved to avoid Jem; and she felt that this of all others was not the occasion on which she could keep up a studiously cold manner. And in this shock of grief, Sally Leadbitter was the last person she wished to see. However, she rose to welcome her, betraying her tear-swollen face. "Well, I shall tell Mr. Carson to-morrow how you're fretting for him; it's no more nor he's doing for you, I can tell you." "For him, indeed!" said Mary, with a toss of her pretty head. "Ay, miss, for him! You've been sighing as if your heart would break now for several days, over your work; now arn't you a little goose not to go and see one who I am sure loves you as his life, and whom you love; 'How much, Mary?' 'This much,' as the children say" (opening her arms very wide). "Nonsense," said Mary, pouting; "I often think I don't love him at all." "And I'm to tell him that, am I, next time I see him?" asked Sally. "If you like," replied Mary. "I'm sure I don't care for that or any thing else now;" weeping afresh. But Sally did not like to be the bearer of any such news. She saw she had gone on the wrong tack, and that Mary's heart was too full to value either message or letter as she ought. So she wisely paused in their delivery, and said in a more sympathetic tone than she had heretofore used, "Do tell me, Mary, what's fretting you so? You know I never could abide to see you cry." "George Wilson's dropped down dead this afternoon," said Mary, fixing her eyes for one minute on Sally, and the next hiding her face in her apron as she sobbed anew. "Dear, dear! All flesh is grass; here to-day and gone to-morrow, as the Bible says. Still he was an old man, and not good for much; there's better folk than him left behind. Is th' canting old maid as was his sister alive yet?" "I don't know who you mean," said Mary, sharply; for she did know, and did not like to have her dear, simple Alice so spoken of. "Come, Mary, don't be so innocent. Is Miss Alice Wilson alive, then; will that please you? I haven't seen her hereabouts lately." "No, she's left living here. When the twins died she thought she could, may be, be of use to her sister, who was sadly cast down, and Alice thought she could cheer her up; at any rate she could listen to her when her heart grew overburdened; so she gave up her cellar and went to live with them." "Well, good go with her. I'd no fancy for her, and I'd no fancy for her making my pretty Mary into a Methodee." "She wasn't a Methodee, she was Church o' England." "Well, well, Mary, you're very particular. You know what I meant. Look, who is this letter from?" holding up Henry Carson's letter. "I don't know, and don't care," said Mary, turning very red. "My eye! as if I didn't know you did know and did care." "Well, give it me," said Mary, impatiently, and anxious in her present mood for her visitor's departure. Sally relinquished it unwillingly. She had, however, the pleasure of seeing Mary dimple and blush as she read the letter, which seemed to say the writer was not indifferent to her. "You must tell him I can't come," said Mary, raising her eyes at last. "I have said I won't meet him while father is away, and I won't." "But, Mary, he does so look for you. You'd be quite sorry for him, he's so put out about not seeing you. Besides you go when your father's at home, without letting on [26] to him, and what harm would there be in going now?" [Footnote 26: "Letting on," informing. In Anglo-Saxon, one meaning of "lætan" was "to admit;" and we say, to _let_ out a secret.] "Well, Sally! you know my answer, I won't; and I won't." "I'll tell him to come and see you himself some evening, instead o' sending me; he'd may be find you not so hard to deal with." Mary flashed up. "If he dares to come here while father's away, I'll call the neighbours in to turn him out, so don't be putting him up to that." "Mercy on us! one would think you were the first girl that ever had a lover; have you never heard what other girls do and think no shame of?" "Hush, Sally! that's Margaret Jennings at the door." And in an instant Margaret was in the room. Mary had begged Job Legh to let her come and sleep with her. In the uncertain fire-light you could not help noticing that she had the groping walk of a blind person. "Well, I must go, Mary," said Sally. "And that's your last word?" "Yes, yes; good-night." She shut the door gladly on her unwelcome visitor--unwelcome at that time at least. "Oh Margaret, have ye heard this sad news about George Wilson?" "Yes, that I have. Poor creatures, they've been sore tried lately. Not that I think sudden death so bad a thing; it's easy, and there's no terrors for him as dies. For them as survives it's very hard. Poor George! he were such a hearty looking man." "Margaret," said Mary, who had been closely observing her friend, "thou'rt very blind to-night, arn't thou? Is it wi' crying? Your eyes are so swollen and red." "Yes, dear! but not crying for sorrow. Han ye heard where I was last night?" "No; where?" "Look here." She held up a bright golden sovereign. Mary opened her large gray eyes with astonishment. "I'll tell you all how and about it. You see there's a gentleman lecturing on music at th' Mechanics', and he wants folk to sing his songs. Well, last night th' counter got a sore throat and couldn't make a note. So they sent for me. Jacob Butterworth had said a good word for me, and they asked me would I sing? You may think I was frightened, but I thought now or never, and said I'd do my best. So I tried o'er the songs wi' th' lecturer, and then th' managers told me I were to make myself decent and be there by seven." "And what did you put on?" asked Mary. "Oh, why didn't you come in for my pretty pink gingham?" "I did think on't; but you had na come home then. No! I put on my merino, as was turned last winter, and my white shawl, and did my hair pretty tidy; it did well enough. Well, but as I was saying, I went at seven. I couldn't see to read my music, but I took th' paper in wi' me, to ha' somewhat to do wi' my fingers. Th' folks' heads danced, as I stood as right afore 'em all as if I'd been going to play at ball wi' 'em. You may guess I felt squeamish, but mine weren't the first song, and th' music sounded like a friend's voice, telling me to take courage. So to make a long story short, when it were all o'er th' lecturer thanked me, and th' managers said as how there never was a new singer so applauded (for they'd clapped and stamped after I'd done, till I began to wonder how many pair o' shoes they'd get through a week at that rate, let alone their hands). So I'm to sing again o' Thursday; and I got a sovereign last night, and am to have half-a-sovereign every night th' lecturer is at th' Mechanics'." "Well, Margaret, I'm right glad to hear it." "And I don't think you've heard the best bit yet. Now that a way seemed opened to me, of not being a burden to any one, though it did please God to make me blind, I thought I'd tell grandfather. I only telled him about the singing and the sovereign last night, for I thought I'd not send him to bed wi' a heavy heart; but this morning I telled him all." "And how did he take it?" "He's not a man of many words; and it took him by surprise like." "I wonder at that; I've noticed it in your ways ever since you telled me." "Ay, that's it! If I'd not telled you, and you'd seen me every day, you'd not ha' noticed the little mite o' difference fra' day to day." "Well, but what did your grandfather say?" "Why, Mary," said Margaret, half smiling, "I'm a bit loath to tell yo, for unless yo knew grandfather's ways like me, yo'd think it strange. He were taken by surprise, and he said: 'Damn yo!' Then he began looking at his book as it were, and were very quiet, while I telled him all about it; how I'd feared, and how downcast I'd been; and how I were now reconciled to it, if it were th' Lord's will; and how I hoped to earn money by singing; and while I were talking, I saw great big tears come dropping on th' book; but in course I never let on that I saw 'em. Dear grandfather! and all day long he's been quietly moving things out o' my way, as he thought might trip me up, and putting things in my way, as he thought I might want; never knowing I saw and felt what he were doing; for, yo see, he thinks I'm out and out blind, I guess--as I shall be soon." Margaret sighed, in spite of her cheerful and relieved tone. Though Mary caught the sigh, she felt it was better to let it pass without notice, and began, with the tact which true sympathy rarely fails to supply, to ask a variety of questions respecting her friend's musical debut, which tended to bring out more distinctly how successful it had been. "Why, Margaret," at length she exclaimed, "thou'lt become as famous, may be, as that grand lady fra' London, as we seed one night driving up to th' concert room door in her carriage." "It looks very like it," said Margaret, with a smile. "And be sure, Mary, I'll not forget to give thee a lift now an' then when that comes about. Nay, who knows, if thou'rt a good girl, but mayhappen I may make thee my lady's maid! Wouldn't that be nice? So I'll e'en sing to mysel' th' beginning o' one o' my songs, 'An' ye shall walk in silk attire, An' siller hae to spare.'" "Nay, don't stop; or else give me something a bit more new, for somehow I never quite liked that part about thinking o' Donald mair." "Well, though I'm a bit tir'd, I don't care if I do. Before I come, I were practising well nigh upon two hours this one which I'm to sing o' Thursday. Th' lecturer said he were sure it would just suit me, and I should do justice to it; and I should be right sorry to disappoint him, he were so nice and encouraging like to me. Eh! Mary, what a pity there isn't more o' that way, and less scolding and rating i' th' world! It would go a vast deal further. Beside, some o' th' singers said they were a'most certain it were a song o' his own, because he were so fidgetty and particular about it, and so anxious I should give it th' proper expression. And that makes me care still more. Th' first verse, he said, were to be sung 'tenderly, but joyously!' I'm afraid I don't quite hit that, but I'll try. 'What a single word can do! Thrilling all the heart-strings through, Calling forth fond memories, Raining round hope's melodies, Steeping all in one bright hue-- What a single word can do!' Now it falls into th' minor key, and must be very sad like. I feel as if I could do that better than t'other. 'What a single word can do! Making life seem all untrue, Driving joy and hope away, Leaving not one cheering ray Blighting every flower that grew-- What a single word can do!'" Margaret certainly made the most of this little song. As a factory worker, listening outside, observed, "She spun it reet [27] fine!" And if she only sang it at the Mechanics' with half the feeling she put into it that night, the lecturer must have been hard to please, if he did not admit that his expectations were more than fulfilled. [Footnote 27: "Reet," right; often used for "very."] When it was ended, Mary's looks told more than words could have done what she thought of it; and partly to keep in a tear which would fain have rolled out, she brightened into a laugh, and said, "For certain, th' carriage is coming. So let us go and dream on it." CHAPTER IX. BARTON'S LONDON EXPERIENCES. "A life of self-indulgence is for us, A life of self-denial is for them; For us the streets, broad-built and populous, For them unhealthy corners, garrets dim, And cellars where the water-rat may swim! For us green paths refreshed by frequent rain, For them dark alleys where the dust lies grim! Not doomed by us to this appointed pain-- God made us rich and poor--of what do these complain?" MRS. NORTON'S "CHILD OF THE ISLANDS." The next evening it was a warm, pattering, incessant rain, just the rain to waken up the flowers. But in Manchester, where, alas! there are no flowers, the rain had only a disheartening and gloomy effect; the streets were wet and dirty, the drippings from the houses were wet and dirty, and the people were wet and dirty. Indeed, most kept within-doors; and there was an unusual silence of footsteps in the little paved courts. Mary had to change her clothes after her walk home; and had hardly settled herself before she heard some one fumbling at the door. The noise continued long enough to allow her to get up, and go and open it. There stood--could it be? yes it was, her father! Drenched and way-worn, there he stood! He came in with no word to Mary in return for her cheery and astonished greeting. He sat down by the fire in his wet things, unheeding. But Mary would not let him so rest. She ran up and brought down his working-day clothes, and went into the pantry to rummage up their little bit of provision while he changed by the fire, talking all the while as gaily as she could, though her father's depression hung like lead on her heart. For Mary, in her seclusion at Miss Simmonds',--where the chief talk was of fashions, and dress, and parties to be given, for which such and such gowns would be wanted, varied with a slight whispered interlude occasionally about love and lovers,--had not heard the political news of the day: that Parliament had refused to listen to the working-men, when they petitioned with all the force of their rough, untutored words to be heard concerning the distress which was riding, like the Conqueror on his Pale Horse, among the people; which was crushing their lives out of them, and stamping woe-marks over the land. When he had eaten and was refreshed, they sat in silence for some time; for Mary wished him to tell her what oppressed him so, yet durst not ask. In this she was wise; for when we are heavy laden in our hearts, it falls in better with our humour to reveal our case in our own way, and our own time. Mary sat on a stool at her father's feet in old childish guise, and stole her hand into his, while his sadness infected her, and she "caught the trick of grief, and sighed," she knew not why. "Mary, we mun speak to our God to hear us, for man will not hearken; no, not now, when we weep tears o' blood." In an instant Mary understood the fact, if not the details, that so weighed down her father's heart. She pressed his hand with silent sympathy. She did not know what to say, and was so afraid of speaking wrongly, that she was silent. But when his attitude had remained unchanged for more than half-an-hour, his eyes gazing vacantly and fixedly at the fire, no sound but now and then a deep drawn sigh to break the weary ticking of the clock, and the drip-drop from the roof without, Mary could bear it no longer. Any thing to rouse her father. Even bad news. "Father, do you know George Wilson's dead?" (Her hand was suddenly and almost violently compressed.) "He dropped down dead in Oxford Road yester morning. It's very sad, isn't it, father?" Her tears were ready to flow as she looked up in her father's face for sympathy. Still the same fixed look of despair, not varied by grief for the dead. "Best for him to die," he said, in a low voice. This was unbearable. Mary got up under pretence of going to tell Margaret that she need not come to sleep with her to-night, but really to ask Job Legh to come and cheer her father. She stopped outside their door. Margaret was practising her singing, and through the still night air her voice rang out like that of an angel. "Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God." The old Hebrew prophetic words fell like dew on Mary's heart. She could not interrupt. She stood listening and "comforted," till the little buzz of conversation again began, and then entered and told her errand. Both grandfather and grand-daughter rose instantly to fulfil her request. "He's just tired out, Mary," said old Job. "He'll be a different man to-morrow." There is no describing the looks and tones that have power over an aching, heavy laden heart; but in an hour or so John Barton was talking away as freely as ever, though all his talk ran, as was natural, on the disappointment of his fond hope, of the forlorn hope of many. "Ay, London's a fine place," said he, "and finer folk live in it than I ever thought on, or ever heerd tell on except in th' story-books. They are having their good things now, that afterwards they may be tormented." Still at the old parable of Dives and Lazarus! Does it haunt the minds of the rich as it does those of the poor? "Do tell us all about London, dear father," asked Mary, who was sitting at her old post by her father's knee. "How can I tell yo a' about it, when I never seed one-tenth of it. It's as big as six Manchesters, they telled me. One-sixth may be made up o' grand palaces, and three-sixths o' middling kind, and th' rest o' holes o' iniquity and filth, such as Manchester knows nought on, I'm glad to say." "Well, father, but did you see th' Queen?" "I believe I didn't, though one day I thought I'd seen her many a time. You see," said he, turning to Job Legh, "there were a day appointed for us to go to Parliament House. We were most on us biding at a public-house in Holborn, where they did very well for us. Th' morning of taking our petition we'd such a spread for breakfast as th' Queen hersel might ha' sitten down to. I suppose they thought we wanted putting in heart. There were mutton kidneys, and sausages, and broiled ham, and fried beef and onions; more like a dinner nor a breakfast. Many on our chaps though, I could see, could eat but little. Th' food stuck in their throats when they thought o' them at home, wives and little ones, as had, may be at that very time, nought to eat. Well, after breakfast, we were all set to walk in procession, and a time it took to put us in order, two and two, and the petition as was yards long, carried by th' foremost pairs. The men looked grave enough, yo may be sure; and such a set of thin, wan, wretched-looking chaps as they were!" "Yourself is none to boast on." "Ay, but I were fat and rosy to many a one. Well, we walked on and on through many a street, much the same as Deansgate. We had to walk slowly, slowly, for th' carriages an' cabs as thronged th' streets. I thought by-and-bye we should may be get clear on 'em, but as th' streets grew wider they grew worse, and at last we were fairly blocked up at Oxford Street. We getten across at last though, and my eyes! the grand streets we were in then! They're sadly puzzled how to build houses though in London; there'd be an opening for a good steady master-builder there, as know'd his business. For yo see the houses are many on 'em built without any proper shape for a body to live in; some on 'em they've after thought would fall down, so they've stuck great ugly pillars out before 'em. And some on 'em (we thought they must be th' tailor's sign) had getten stone men and women as wanted clothes stuck on 'em. I were like a child, I forgot a' my errand in looking about me. By this it were dinner-time, or better, as we could tell by th' sun, right above our heads, and we were dusty and tired, going a step now and a step then. Well, at last we getten into a street grander nor all, leading to th' Queen's palace, and there it were I thought I saw th' Queen. Yo've seen th' hearses wi' white plumes, Job?" Job assented. "Well, them undertaker folk are driving a pretty trade in London. Wellnigh every lady we saw in a carriage had hired one o' them plumes for the day, and had it niddle noddling on her head. It were th' Queen's Drawing-room, they said, and th' carriages went bowling along toward her house, some wi' dressed up gentlemen like circus folk in 'em, and rucks [28] o' ladies in others. Carriages themselves were great shakes too. Some o' th' gentlemen as couldn't get inside hung on behind, wi' nosegays to smell at, and sticks to keep off folk as might splash their silk stockings. I wondered why they didn't hire a cab rather than hang on like a whip-behind boy; but I suppose they wished to keep wi' their wives, Darby and Joan like. Coachmen were little squat men, wi' wigs like th' oud fashioned parsons. Well, we could na get on for these carriages, though we waited and waited. Th' horses were too fat to move quick; they'n never known want o' food, one might tell by their sleek coats; and police pushed us back when we tried to cross. One or two on 'em struck wi' their sticks, and coachmen laughed, and some officers as stood nigh put their spy-glasses in their eye, and left 'em sticking there like mountebanks. One o' th' police struck me. 'Whatten business have yo to do that?' said I. [Footnote 28: "Rucks," a great quantity.] "'You're frightening them horses,' says he, in his mincing way (for Londoners are mostly all tongue-tied, and can't say their a's and i's properly), 'and it's our business to keep you from molesting the ladies and gentlemen going to her Majesty's Drawing-room.' "'And why are we to be molested?' asked I, 'going decently about our business, which is life and death to us, and many a little one clemming at home in Lancashire? Which business is of most consequence i' the sight o' God, think yo, our'n or them gran ladies and gentlemen as yo think so much on?' "But I might as well ha' held my peace, for he only laughed." John ceased. After waiting a little to see if he would go on of himself, Job said, "Well, but that's not a' your story, man. Tell us what happened when yo got to th' Parliament House." After a little pause John answered, "If yo please, neighbour, I'd rather say nought about that. It's not to be forgotten or forgiven either by me or many another; but I canna tell of our down-casting just as a piece of London news. As long as I live, our rejection that day will bide in my heart; and as long as I live I shall curse them as so cruelly refused to hear us; but I'll not speak of it no [29] more." [Footnote 29: A similar use of a double negative is not unfrequent in Chaucer; as in the "Miller's Tale": "That of no wife toke he non offering For curtesie, he sayd, he n'old non."] So, daunted in their inquiries, they sat silent for a few minutes. Old Job, however, felt that some one must speak, else all the good they had done in dispelling John Barton's gloom was lost. So after awhile he thought of a subject, neither sufficiently dissonant from the last to jar on the full heart, nor too much the same to cherish the continuance of the gloomy train of thought. "Did you ever hear tell," said he to Mary, "that I were in London once?" "No!" said she, with surprise, and looking at Job with increased respect. "Ay, but I were though, and Peg there too, though she minds nought about it, poor wench! You must know I had but one child, and she were Margaret's mother. I loved her above a bit, and one day when she came (standing behind me for that I should not see her blushes, and stroking my cheeks in her own coaxing way), and told me she and Frank Jennings (as was a joiner lodging near us) should be so happy if they were married, I could not find in my heart t' say her nay, though I went sick at the thought of losing her away from my home. Howe'er, she were my only child, and I never said nought of what I felt, for fear o' grieving her young heart. But I tried to think o' the time when I'd been young mysel, and had loved her blessed mother, and how we'd left father and mother and gone out into th' world together, and I'm now right thankful I held my peace, and didna fret her wi' telling her how sore I was at parting wi' her that were the light o' my eyes." "But," said Mary, "you said the young man were a neighbour." "Ay, so he were; and his father afore him. But work were rather slack in Manchester, and Frank's uncle sent him word o' London work and London wages, so he were to go there; and it were there Margaret was to follow him. Well, my heart aches yet at thought of those days. She so happy, and he so happy; only the poor father as fretted sadly behind their backs. They were married, and stayed some days wi' me afore setting off; and I've often thought sin' Margaret's heart failed her many a time those few days, and she would fain ha' spoken; but I knew fra' mysel it were better to keep it pent up, and I never let on what I were feeling. I knew what she meant when she came kissing, and holding my hand, and all her old childish ways o' loving me. Well, they went at last. You know them two letters, Margaret?" "Yes, sure," replied his grand-daughter. "Well, them two were the only letters I ever had fra' her, poor lass. She said in them she were very happy, and I believe she were. And Frank's family heard he were in good work. In one o' her letters, poor thing, she ends wi' saying, 'Farewell, Grandad!' wi' a line drawn under grandad, and fra' that an' other hints I knew she were in th' family way; and I said nought, but I screwed up a little money, thinking come Whitsuntide I'd take a holiday and go and see her an' th' little one. But one day towards Whitsuntide comed Jennings wi' a grave face, and says he, 'I hear our Frank and your Margaret's both getten the fever.' You might ha' knocked me down wi' a straw, for it seemed as if God told me what th' upshot would be. Old Jennings had gotten a letter, yo see, fra' the landlady they lodged wi'; a well-penned letter, asking if they'd no friends to come and nurse them. She'd caught it first, and Frank, who was as tender o' her as her own mother could ha' been, had nursed her till he'd caught it himsel; and she expecting her down-lying [30] every day. Well, t' make a long story short, Old Jennings and I went up by that night's coach. So you see, Mary, that was the way I got to London." [Footnote 30: "Down-lying," lying-in.] "But how was your daughter when you got there?" asked Mary, anxiously. "She were at rest, poor wench, and so were Frank. I guessed as much when I see'd th' landlady's face, all swelled wi' crying, when she opened th' door to us. We said, 'Where are they?' and I knew they were dead, fra' her look; but Jennings didn't, as I take it; for when she showed us into a room wi' a white sheet on th' bed, and underneath it, plain to be seen, two still figures, he screeched out as if he'd been a woman. "Yet he'd other childer and I'd none. There lay my darling, my only one. She were dead, and there were no one to love me, no, not one. I disremember [31] rightly what I did; but I know I were very quiet, while my heart were crushed within me. [Footnote 31: "Disremember," forget.] "Jennings could na' stand being in th' room at all, so th' landlady took him down, and I were glad to be alone. It grew dark while I sat there; and at last th' landlady come up again, and said, 'Come here.' So I got up and walked into th' light, but I had to hold by th' stair-rails, I were so weak and dizzy. She led me into a room, where Jennings lay on a sofa fast asleep, wi' his pocket handkercher over his head for a night-cap. She said he'd cried himself fairly off to sleep. There were tea on th' table all ready; for she were a kind-hearted body. But she still said, 'Come here,' and took hold o' my arm. So I went round the table, and there were a clothes-basket by th' fire, wi' a shawl put o'er it. 'Lift that up,' says she, and I did; and there lay a little wee babby fast asleep. My heart gave a leap, and th' tears comed rushing into my eyes first time that day. 'Is it hers?' said I, though I knew it were. 'Yes,' said she. 'She were getting a bit better o' the fever, and th' babby were born; and then the poor young man took worse and died, and she were not many hours behind.' "Little mite of a thing! and yet it seemed her angel come back to comfort me. I were quite jealous o' Jennings whenever he went near the babby. I thought it were more my flesh and blood than his'n, and yet I were afeared he would claim it. However, that were far enough fra' his thoughts; he'd plenty other childer, and as I found out at after he'd all along been wishing me to take it. Well, we buried Margaret and her husband in a big, crowded, lonely churchyard in London. I were loath to leave them there, as I thought, when they rose again, they'd feel so strange at first away fra Manchester, and all old friends; but it couldna be helped. Well, God watches o'er their grave there as well as here. That funeral cost a mint o' money, but Jennings and I wished to do th' thing decent. Then we'd the stout little babby to bring home. We'd not overmuch money left; but it were fine weather, and we thought we'd take th' coach to Brummagem, and walk on. It were a bright May morning when last I saw London town, looking back from a big hill a mile or two off. And in that big mass o' a place I were leaving my blessed child asleep--in her last sleep. Well, God's will be done! She's gotten to heaven afore me; but I shall get there at last, please God, though it's a long while first. "The babby had been fed afore we set out, and th' coach moving kept it asleep, bless its little heart. But when th' coach stopped for dinner it were awake, and crying for its pobbies. [32] So we asked for some bread and milk, and Jennings took it first for to feed it; but it made its mouth like a square, and let it run out at each o' th' four corners. 'Shake it, Jennings,' says I; 'that's the way they make water run through a funnel, when it's o'er full; and a child's mouth is broad end o' th' funnel, and th' gullet the narrow one.' So he shook it, but it only cried th' more. 'Let me have it,' says I, thinking he were an awkward oud chap. But it were just as bad wi' me. By shaking th' babby we got better nor a gill into its mouth, but more nor that came up again, wetting a' th' nice dry clothes landlady had put on. Well, just as we'd gotten to th' dinner-table, and helped oursels, and eaten two mouthful, came in th' guard, and a fine chap wi' a sample o' calico flourishing in his hand. 'Coach is ready!' says one; 'Half-a-crown your dinner!' says th' other. Well, we thought it a deal for both our dinners, when we'd hardly tasted 'em; but, bless your life, it were half-a-crown apiece, and a shilling for th' bread and milk as were possetted all over babby's clothes. We spoke up again [33] it; but every body said it were the rule, so what could two poor oud chaps like us do again it? Well, poor babby cried without stopping to take breath, fra' that time till we got to Brummagem for the night. My heart ached for th' little thing. It caught wi' its wee mouth at our coat sleeves and at our mouths, when we tried t' comfort it by talking to it. Poor little wench! It wanted its mammy, as were lying cold in th' grave. 'Well,' says I, 'it'll be clemmed to death, if it lets out its supper as it did its dinner. Let's get some woman to feed it; it comes natural to women to do for babbies.' So we asked th' chamber-maid at the inn, and she took quite kindly to it; and we got a good supper, and grew rare and sleepy, what wi' th' warmth, and wi' our long ride i' th' open air. Th' chamber-maid said she would like t' have it t' sleep wi' her, only missis would scold so; but it looked so quiet and smiling like, as it lay in her arms, that we thought 'twould be no trouble to have it wi' us. I says: 'See, Jennings, how women-folk do quieten babbies; it's just as I said.' He looked grave; he were always thoughtful-looking, though I never heard him say any thing very deep. At last says he-- [Footnote 32: "Pobbies," or "pobs," child's porridge.] [Footnote 33: "Again," for against. "He that is not with me, he is ageyn me."--_Wickliffe's Version._] "'Young woman! have you gotten a spare night-cap?' "'Missis always keeps night-caps for gentlemen as does not like to unpack,' says she, rather quick. "'Ay, but young woman, it's one of your night-caps I want. Th' babby seems to have taken a mind to yo; and may be in th' dark it might take me for yo if I'd getten your night-cap on.' "The chambermaid smirked and went for a cap, but I laughed outright at th' oud bearded chap thinking he'd make hissel like a woman just by putting on a woman's cap. Howe'er he'd not be laughed out on't, so I held th' babby till he were in bed. Such a night as we had on it! Babby began to scream o' th' oud fashion, and we took it turn and turn about to sit up and rock it. My heart were very sore for th' little one, as it groped about wi' its mouth; but for a' that I could scarce keep fra' smiling at th' thought o' us two oud chaps, th' one wi' a woman's night-cap on, sitting on our hinder ends for half th' night, hushabying a babby as wouldn't be hushabied. Toward morning, poor little wench! it fell asleep, fairly tired out wi' crying, but even in its sleep it gave such pitiful sobs, quivering up fra' the very bottom of its little heart, that once or twice I almost wished it lay on its mother's breast, at peace for ever. Jennings fell asleep too; but I began for to reckon up our money. It were little enough we had left, our dinner the day afore had ta'en so much. I didn't know what our reckoning would be for that night lodging, and supper, and breakfast. Doing a sum alway sent me asleep ever sin' I were a lad; so I fell sound in a short time, and were only wakened by chambermaid tapping at th' door, to say she'd dress the babby afore her missis were up if we liked. But bless yo', we'd never thought o' undressing it th' night afore, and now it were sleeping so sound, and we were so glad o' the peace and quietness, that we thought it were no good to waken it up to screech again. "Well! (there's Mary asleep for a good listener!) I suppose you're getting weary of my tale, so I'll not be long over ending it. Th' reckoning left us very bare, and we thought we'd best walk home, for it were only sixty mile, they telled us, and not stop again for nought, save victuals. So we left Brummagem, (which is as black a place as Manchester, without looking so like home), and walked a' that day, carrying babby turn and turn about. It were well fed by chambermaid afore we left, and th' day were fine, and folk began to have some knowledge o' th' proper way o' speaking, and we were more cheery at thoughts o' home (though mine, God knows, were lonesome enough). We stopped none for dinner, but at baggin-time [34] we getten a good meal at a public-house, an' fed th' babby as well as we could, but that were but poorly. We got a crust too, for it to suck--chambermaid put us up to that. That night, whether we were tired or whatten, I don't know, but it were dree [35] work, and poor wench had slept out her sleep, and began th' cry as wore my heart out again. Says Jennings, says he, [Footnote 34: "Baggin-time," time of the evening meal.] [Footnote 35: "Dree," long and tedious. Anglo-Saxon, "dreogan," to suffer, to endure.] "'We should na ha' set out so like gentlefolk a top o' the coach yesterday.' "'Nay, lad! We should ha' had more to walk, if we had na ridden, and I'm sure both you and I'se [36] weary o' tramping.' [Footnote 36: "I have not been, nor _is_, nor never schal."--_Wickliffe's "Apology," p. 1._] "So he were quiet a bit. But he were one o' them as were sure to find out somewhat had been done amiss, when there were no going back to undo it. So presently he coughs, as if he were going to speak, and I says to mysel, 'At it again, my lad.' Says he, "'I ax pardon, neighbour, but it strikes me it would ha' been better for my son if he had never begun to keep company wi' your daughter.' "Well! that put me up, and my heart got very full, and but that I were carrying _her_ babby, I think I should ha' struck him. At last I could hold in no longer, and says I, "'Better say at once it would ha' been better for God never to ha' made th' world, for then we'd never ha' been in it, to have had th' heavy hearts we have now.' "Well! he said that were rank blasphemy; but I thought his way of casting up again th' events God had pleased to send, were worse blasphemy. Howe'er, I said nought more angry, for th' little babby's sake, as were th' child o' his dead son, as well as o' my dead daughter. "Th' longest lane will have a turning, and that night came to an end at last; and we were foot-sore and tired enough, and to my mind th' babby were getting weaker and weaker, and it wrung my heart to hear its little wail; I'd ha' given my right hand for one of yesterday's hearty cries. We were wanting our breakfasts, and so were it too, motherless babby! We could see no public-house, so about six o'clock (only we thought it were later) we stopped at a cottage where a woman were moving about near th' open door. Says I, 'Good woman, may we rest us a bit?' 'Come in,' says she, wiping a chair, as looked bright enough afore, wi' her apron. It were a cheery, clean room; and we were glad to sit down again, though I thought my legs would never bend at th' knees. In a minute she fell a noticing th' babby, and took it in her arms, and kissed it again and again. 'Missis,' says I, 'we're not without money, and if yo'd give us somewhat for breakfast, we'd pay yo honest, and if yo would wash and dress that poor babby, and get some pobbies down its throat, for it's well-nigh clemmed, I'd pray for yo' till my dying day.' So she said nought, but gived me th' babby back, and afore yo' could say Jack Robinson, she'd a pan on th' fire, and bread and cheese on th' table. When she turned round, her face looked red, and her lips were tight pressed together. Well! we were right down glad on our breakfast, and God bless and reward that woman for her kindness that day; she fed th' poor babby as gently and softly, and spoke to it as tenderly as its own poor mother could ha' done. It seemed as if that stranger and it had known each other afore, maybe in Heaven, where folk's spirits come from they say; th' babby looked up so lovingly in her eyes, and made little noises more like a dove than aught else. Then she undressed it (poor darling! it were time), touching it so softly; and washed it from head to foot, and as many on its things were dirty; and what bits o' things its mother had gotten ready for it had been sent by th' carrier fra London, she put 'em aside; and wrapping little naked babby in her apron, she pulled out a key, as were fastened to a black ribbon, and hung down her breast, and unlocked a drawer in th' dresser. I were sorry to be prying, but I could na' help seeing in that drawer some little child's clothes, all strewed wi' lavendar, and lying by 'em a little whip an' a broken rattle. I began to have an insight into that woman's heart then. She took out a thing or two; and locked the drawer, and went on dressing babby. Just about then come her husband down, a great big fellow as didn't look half awake, though it were getting late; but he'd heard all as had been said down-stairs, as were plain to be seen; but he were a gruff chap. We'd finished our breakfast, and Jennings were looking hard at th' woman as she were getting the babby to sleep wi' a sort of rocking way. At length says he, 'I ha learnt th' way now; it's two jiggits and a shake, two jiggits and a shake. I can get that babby asleep now mysel.' "The man had nodded cross enough to us, and had gone to th' door, and stood there whistling wi' his hands in his breeches-pockets, looking abroad. But at last he turns and says, quite sharp, "'I say, missis, I'm to have no breakfast to-day, I s'pose.' "So wi' that she kissed th' child, a long, soft kiss; and looking in my face to see if I could take her meaning, gave me th' babby without a word. I were loath to stir, but I saw it were better to go. So giving Jennings a sharp nudge (for he'd fallen asleep), I says, 'Missis, what's to pay?' pulling out my money wi' a jingle that she might na guess we were at all bare o' cash. So she looks at her husband, who said ne'er a word, but were listening wi' all his ears nevertheless; and when she saw he would na say, she said, hesitating, as if pulled two ways, by her fear o' him, 'Should you think sixpence over much?' It were so different to public-house reckoning, for we'd eaten a main deal afore the chap came down. So says I, 'And, missis, what should we gie you for the babby's bread and milk?' (I had it once in my mind to say 'and for a' your trouble with it,' but my heart would na let me say it, for I could read in her ways how it had been a work o' love.) So says she, quite quick, and stealing a look at her husband's back, as looked all ear, if ever a back did, 'Oh, we could take nought for the little babby's food, if it had eaten twice as much, bless it.' Wi' that he looked at her; such a scowling look! She knew what he meant, and stepped softly across the floor to him, and put her hand on his arm. He seem'd as though he'd shake it off by a jerk on his elbow, but she said quite low, 'For poor little Johnnie's sake, Richard.' He did not move or speak again, and after looking in his face for a minute, she turned away, swallowing deep in her throat. She kissed th' sleeping babby as she passed, when I paid her. To quieten th' gruff husband, and stop him if he rated her, I could na help slipping another sixpence under th' loaf, and then we set off again. Last look I had o' that woman she were quietly wiping her eyes wi' the corner of her apron, as she went about her husband's breakfast. But I shall know her in heaven." He stopped to think of that long-ago May morning, when he had carried his grand-daughter under the distant hedge-rows and beneath the flowering sycamores. "There's nought more to say, wench," said he to Margaret, as she begged him to go on. "That night we reached Manchester, and I'd found out that Jennings would be glad enough to give up babby to me, so I took her home at once, and a blessing she's been to me." They were all silent for a few minutes; each following out the current of their thoughts. Then, almost simultaneously, their attention fell upon Mary. Sitting on her little stool, her head resting on her father's knee, and sleeping as soundly as any infant, her breath (still like an infant's) came and went as softly as a bird steals to her leafy nest. Her half-open mouth was as scarlet as the winter-berries, and contrasted finely with the clear paleness of her complexion, where the eloquent blood flushed carnation at each motion. Her black eye-lashes lay on the delicate cheek, which was still more shaded by the masses of her golden hair, that seemed to form a nest-like pillow for her as she lay. Her father in fond pride straightened one glossy curl, for an instant, as if to display its length and silkiness. The little action awoke her, and, like nine out of ten people in similar circumstances, she exclaimed, opening her eyes to their fullest extent, "I'm not asleep. I've been awake all the time." Even her father could not keep from smiling, and Job Legh and Margaret laughed outright. "Come, wench," said Job, "don't look so gloppened [37] because thou'st fallen asleep while an oud chap like me was talking on oud times. It were like enough to send thee to sleep. Try if thou canst keep thine eyes open while I read thy father a bit on a poem as is written by a weaver like oursel. A rare chap I'll be bound is he who could weave verse like this." [Footnote 37: "Gloppened," amazed, frightened.] So adjusting his spectacles on nose, cocking his chin, crossing his legs, and coughing to clear his voice, he read aloud a little poem of Samuel Bamford's [38] he had picked up somewhere. [Footnote 38: The fine-spirited author of "Passages in the Life of a Radical"--a man who illustrates his order, and shows what nobility may be in a cottage.] God help the poor, who, on this wintry morn, Come forth from alleys dim and courts obscure. God help yon poor pale girl, who droops forlorn, And meekly her affliction doth endure; God help her, outcast lamb; she trembling stands, All wan her lips, and frozen red her hands; Her sunken eyes are modestly down-cast, Her night-black hair streams on the fitful blast; Her bosom, passing fair, is half revealed, And oh! so cold, the snow lies there congealed; Her feet benumbed, her shoes all rent and worn, God help thee, outcast lamb, who standst forlorn! God help the poor! God help the poor! An infant's feeble wail Comes from yon narrow gateway, and behold! A female crouching there, so deathly pale, Huddling her child, to screen it from the cold; Her vesture scant, her bonnet crushed and torn; A thin shawl doth her baby dear enfold: And so she 'bides the ruthless gale of morn, Which almost to her heart hath sent its cold. And now she, sudden, darts a ravening look, As one, with new hot bread, goes past the nook; And, as the tempting load is onward borne, She weeps. God help thee, helpless one, forlorn! God help the poor! God help the poor! Behold yon famished lad, No shoes, nor hose, his wounded feet protect; With limping gait, and looks so dreamy sad, He wanders onward, stopping to inspect Each window, stored with articles of food. He yearns but to enjoy one cheering meal; Oh! to the hungry palate, viands rude, Would yield a zest the famished only feel! He now devours a crust of mouldy bread; With teeth and hands the precious boon is torn; Unmindful of the storm that round his head Impetuous sweeps. God help thee, child forlorn! God help the poor! God help the poor! Another have I found-- A bowed and venerable man is he; His slouched hat with faded crape is bound; His coat is gray, and threadbare too, I see. "The rude winds" seem "to mock his hoary hair;" His shirtless bosom to the blast is bare. Anon he turns and casts a wistful eye, And with scant napkin wipes the blinding spray; And looks around, as if he fain would spy Friends he had feasted in his better day: Ah! some are dead; and some have long forborne To know the poor; and he is left forlorn! God help the poor! God help the poor, who in lone valleys dwell, Or by far hills, where whin and heather grow; Theirs is a story sad indeed to tell, Yet little cares the world, and less 't would know About the toil and want men undergo. The wearying loom doth call them up at morn, They work till worn-out nature sinks to sleep, They taste, but are not fed. The snow drifts deep Around the fireless cot, and blocks the door; The night-storm howls a dirge across the moor; And shall they perish thus--oppressed and lorn? Shall toil and famine, hopeless, still be borne? No! God will yet arise, and help the poor. "Amen!" said Barton, solemnly, and sorrowfully. "Mary! wench, couldst thou copy me them lines, dost think?--that's to say, if Job there has no objection." "Not I. More they're heard and read and the better, say I." So Mary took the paper. And the next day, on the blank half sheet of a valentine, all bordered with hearts and darts--a valentine she had once suspected to come from Jem Wilson--she copied Bamford's beautiful little poem. CHAPTER X. RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL. "My heart, once soft as woman's tear, is gnarled With gloating on the ills I cannot cure." ELLIOTT. "Then guard and shield her innocence, Let her not fall like me; 'Twere better, Oh! a thousand times, She in her grave should be." "THE OUTCAST." Despair settled down like a heavy cloud; and now and then, through the dead calm of sufferings, came pipings of stormy winds, foretelling the end of these dark prognostics. In times of sorrowful or fierce endurance, we are often soothed by the mere repetition of old proverbs which tell the experience of our forefathers; but now, "it's a long lane that has no turning," "the weariest day draws to an end," &c., seemed false and vain sayings, so long and so weary was the pressure of the terrible times. Deeper and deeper still sank the poor; it showed how much lingering suffering it takes to kill men, that so few (in comparison) died during those times. But remember! we only miss those who do men's work in their humble sphere; the aged, the feeble, the children, when they die, are hardly noted by the world; and yet to many hearts, their deaths make a blank which long years will never fill up. Remember, too, that though it may take much suffering to kill the able-bodied and effective members of society, it does _not_ take much to reduce them to worn, listless, diseased creatures, who thenceforward crawl through life with moody hearts and pain-stricken bodies. The people had thought the poverty of the preceding years hard to bear, and had found its yoke heavy; but this year added sorely to its weight. Former times had chastised them with whips, but this chastised them with scorpions. Of course, Barton had his share of mere bodily sufferings. Before he had gone up to London on his vain errand, he had been working short time. But in the hopes of speedy redress by means of the interference of Parliament, he had thrown up his place; and now, when he asked leave to resume work, he was told they were diminishing their number of hands every week, and he was made aware by the remarks of fellow workmen, that a Chartist delegate, and a leading member of a Trades' Union, was not likely to be favoured in his search after employment. Still he tried to keep up a brave heart concerning himself. He knew he could bear hunger; for that power of endurance had been called forth when he was a little child, and had seen his mother hide her daily morsel to share it among her children, and when he, being the eldest, had told the noble lie, that "he was not hungry, could not eat a bit more," in order to imitate his mother's bravery, and still the sharp wail of the younger infants. Mary, too, was secure of two meals a day at Miss Simmonds'; though, by the way, the dress-maker, too, feeling the effect of bad times, had left off giving tea to her apprentices, setting them the example of long abstinence by putting off her own meal until work was done for the night, however late that might be. But the rent! It was half-a-crown a week--nearly all Mary's earnings--and much less room might do for them, only two.--(Now came the time to be thankful that the early dead were saved from the evil to come.)--The agricultural labourer generally has strong local attachments; but they are far less common, almost obliterated, among the inhabitants of a town. Still there are exceptions, and Barton formed one. He had removed to his present house just after the last bad times, when little Tom had sickened and died. He had then thought the bustle of a removal would give his poor stunned wife something to do, and he had taken more interest in the details of the proceeding than he otherwise would have done, in the hope of calling her forth to action again. So he seemed to know every brass-headed nail driven up for her convenience. One only had been displaced. It was Esther's bonnet nail, which, in his deep revengeful anger against her, after his wife's death, he had torn out of the wall, and cast into the street. It would be hard work to leave that house, which yet seemed hallowed by his wife's presence in the happy days of old. But he was a law unto himself, though sometimes a bad, fierce law; and he resolved to give the rent-collector notice, and look out for a cheaper abode, and tell Mary they must flit. Poor Mary! she loved the house, too. It was wrenching up her natural feelings of home, for it would be long before the fibres of her heart would gather themselves about another place. This trial was spared. The collector (of himself), on the very Monday when Barton planned to give him notice of his intention to leave, lowered the rent threepence a week, just enough to make Barton compromise and agree to stay on a little longer. But by degrees the house was stripped of its little ornaments. Some were broken; and the odd twopences and threepences wanted to pay for their repairs, were required for the far sterner necessity of food. And by-and-bye Mary began to part with other superfluities at the pawn-shop. The smart tea-tray and tea-caddy, long and carefully kept, went for bread for her father. He did not ask for it, or complain, but she saw hunger in his shrunk, fierce, animal look. Then the blankets went, for it was summer time, and they could spare them; and their sale made a fund, which Mary fancied would last till better times came. But it was soon all gone; and then she looked around the room to crib it of its few remaining ornaments. To all these proceedings her father said never a word. If he fasted, or feasted (after the sale of some article), on an unusual meal of bread and cheese, he took all with a sullen indifference, which depressed Mary's heart. She often wished he would apply for relief from the Guardian's relieving office; often wondered the Trades' Union did nothing for him. Once when she asked him as he sat, grimed, unshaven, and gaunt, after a day's fasting over the fire, why he did not get relief from the town, he turned round, with grim wrath, and said, "I don't want money, child! D----n their charity and their money! I want work, and it is my right. I want work." He would bear it all, he said to himself. And he did bear it, but not meekly; that was too much to expect. Real meekness of character is called out by experience of kindness. And few had been kind to him. Yet through it all, with stern determination he refused the assistance his Trades' Union would have given him. It had not much to give, but with worldly wisdom, thought it better to propitiate an active, useful member, than to help those who were unenergetic, though they had large families to provide for. Not so thought John Barton. With him need was right. "Give it to Tom Darbyshire," he said. "He's more claim on it than me, for he's more need of it, with his seven children." Now Tom Darbyshire was, in his listless, grumbling way, a backbiting enemy of John Barton's. And he knew it; but he was not to be influenced by that in a matter like this. Mary went early to her work; but her cheery laugh over it was now missed by the other girls. Her mind wandered over the present distress, and then settled, as she stitched, on the visions of the future, where yet her thoughts dwelt more on the circumstances of ease, and the pomps and vanities awaiting her, than on the lover with whom she was to share them. Still she was not insensible to the pride of having attracted one so far above herself in station; not insensible to the secret pleasure of knowing that he, whom so many admired, had often said he would give any thing for one of her sweet smiles. Her love for him was a bubble, blown out of vanity; but it looked very real and very bright. Sally Leadbitter, meanwhile, keenly observed the signs of the times; she found out that Mary had begun to affix a stern value to money as the "Purchaser of Life," and many girls had been dazzled and lured by gold, even without the betraying love which she believed to exist in Mary's heart. So she urged young Mr. Carson, by representations of the want she was sure surrounded Mary, to bring matters more to a point. But he had a kind of instinctive dread of hurting Mary's pride of spirit, and durst not hint his knowledge in any way of the distress that many must be enduring. He felt that for the present he must still be content with stolen meetings and summer evening strolls, and the delight of pouring sweet honeyed words into her ear, while she listened with a blush and a smile that made her look radiant with beauty. No, he would be cautious in order to be certain; for Mary, one way or another, he must make his. He had no doubt of the effect of his own personal charms in the long run; for he knew he was handsome, and believed himself fascinating. If he had known what Mary's home was, he would not have been so much convinced of his increasing influence over her, by her being more and more ready to linger with him in the sweet summer air. For when she returned for the night her father was often out, and the house wanted the cheerful look it had had in the days when money was never wanted to purchase soap and brushes, black-lead and pipe-clay. It was dingy and comfortless; for, of course, there was not even the dumb familiar home-friend, a fire. And Margaret, too, was now so often from home, singing at some of those grand places. And Alice; oh, Mary wished she had never left her cellar to go and live at Ancoats with her sister-in-law. For in that matter Mary felt very guilty; she had put off and put off going to see the widow after George Wilson's death from dread of meeting Jem, or giving him reason to think she wished to be as intimate with him as formerly; and now she was so much ashamed of her delay that she was likely never to go at all. If her father was at home it was no better; indeed it was worse. He seldom spoke, less than ever; and often when he did speak they were sharp angry words, such as he had never given her formerly. Her temper was high, too, and her answers not over-mild; and once in his passion he had even beaten her. If Sally Leadbitter or Mr. Carson had been at hand at that moment, Mary would have been ready to leave home for ever. She sat alone, after her father had flung out of the house, bitterly thinking on the days that were gone; angry with her own hastiness, and believing that her father did not love her; striving to heap up one painful thought on another. Who cared for her? Mr. Carson might, but in this grief that seemed no comfort. Mother dead! Father so often angry, so lately cruel (for it was a hard blow, and blistered and reddened Mary's soft white skin with pain): and then her heart turned round, and she remembered with self-reproach how provokingly she had looked and spoken, and how much her father had to bear; and oh, what a kind and loving parent he had been, till these days of trial. The remembrance of one little instance of his fatherly love thronged after another into her mind, and she began to wonder how she could have behaved to him as she had done. Then he came home; and but for very shame she would have confessed her penitence in words. But she looked sullen, from her effort to keep down emotion; and for some time her father did not know how to begin to speak. At length he gulped down pride, and said: "Mary, I'm not above saying I'm very sorry I beat thee. Thou wert a bit aggravating, and I'm not the man I was. But it were wrong, and I'll try never to lay hands on thee again." So he held out his arms, and in many tears she told him her repentance for her fault. He never struck her again. Still, he often was angry. But that was almost better than being silent. Then he sat near the fire-place (from habit), smoking, or chewing opium. Oh, how Mary loathed that smell! And in the dusk, just before it merged into the short summer night, she had learned to look with dread towards the window, which now her father would have kept uncurtained; for there were not seldom seen sights which haunted her in her dreams. Strange faces of pale men, with dark glaring eyes, peered into the inner darkness, and seemed desirous to ascertain if her father were at home. Or a hand and arm (the body hidden) was put within the door, and beckoned him away. He always went. And once or twice, when Mary was in bed, she heard men's voices below, in earnest, whispered talk. They were all desperate members of Trades' Unions, ready for any thing; made ready by want. While all this change for gloom yet struck fresh and heavy on Mary's heart, her father startled her out of a reverie one evening, by asking her when she had been to see Jane Wilson. From his manner of speaking, she was made aware that he had been; but at the time of his visit he had never mentioned any thing about it. Now, however, he gruffly told her to go next day without fail, and added some abuse of her for not having been before. The little outward impulse of her father's speech gave Mary the push which she, in this instance, required; and, accordingly, timing her visit so as to avoid Jem's hours at home, she went the following afternoon to Ancoats. The outside of the well-known house struck her as different; for the door was closed, instead of open, as it once had always stood. The window-plants, George Wilson's pride and especial care, looked withering and drooping. They had been without water for a long time, and now, when the widow had reproached herself severely for neglect, in her ignorant anxiety, she gave them too much. On opening the door, Alice was seen, not stirring about in her habitual way, but knitting by the fire-side. The room felt hot, although the fire burnt gray and dim, under the bright rays of the afternoon sun. Mrs. Wilson was "siding" [39] the dinner things, and talking all the time, in a kind of whining, shouting voice, which Mary did not at first understand. She understood at once, however, that her absence had been noted, and talked over; she saw a constrained look on Mrs. Wilson's sorrow-stricken face, which told her a scolding was to come. [Footnote 39: To "side," to put aside, or in order.] "Dear Mary, is that you?" she began. "Why, who would ha' dreamt of seeing you! We thought you'd clean forgotten us; and Jem has often wondered if he should know you, if he met you in the street." Now, poor Jane Wilson had been sorely tried; and at present her trials had had no outward effect, but that of increased acerbity of temper. She wished to show Mary how much she was offended, and meant to strengthen her cause, by putting some of her own sharp speeches into Jem's mouth. Mary felt guilty, and had no good reason to give as an apology; so for a minute she stood silent, looking very much ashamed, and then turned to speak to aunt Alice, who, in her surprised, hearty greeting to Mary, had dropped her ball of worsted, and was busy trying to set the thread to rights, before the kitten had entangled it past redemption, once round every chair, and twice round the table. "You mun speak louder than that, if you mean her to hear; she become as deaf as a post this last few weeks. I'd ha' told you, if I'd remembered how long it were sin' you'd seen her." "Yes, my dear, I'm getting very hard o' hearing of late," said Alice, catching the state of the case, with her quick-glancing eyes. "I suppose it's the beginning of th' end." "Don't talk o' that way," screamed her sister-in-law. "We've had enow of ends and deaths without forecasting more." She covered her face with her apron, and sat down to cry. "He was such a good husband," said she, in a less excited tone, to Mary, as she looked up with tear-streaming eyes from behind her apron. "No one can tell what I've lost in him, for no one knew his worth like me." Mary's listening sympathy softened her, and she went on to unburden her heavy laden heart. "Eh, dear, dear! No one knows what I've lost. When my poor boys went, I thought th' Almighty had crushed me to th' ground, but I never thought o' losing George; I did na think I could ha' borne to ha' lived without him. And yet I'm here, and he's--" A fresh burst of crying interrupted her speech. "Mary,"--beginning to speak again,--"did you ever hear what a poor creature I were when he married me? And he such a handsome fellow! Jem's nothing to what his father were at his age." Yes! Mary had heard, and so she said. But the poor woman's thoughts had gone back to those days, and her little recollections came out, with many interruptions of sighs, and tears, and shakes of the head. "There were nought about me for him to choose me. I were just well enough afore that accident, but at after I were downright plain. And there was Bessy Witter as would ha' given her eyes for him; she as is Mrs. Carson now, for she were a handsome lass, although I never could see her beauty then; and Carson warn't so much above her, as they're both above us all now." Mary went very red, and wished she could help doing so, and wished also that Mrs. Wilson would tell her more about the father and mother of her lover; but she durst not ask, and Mrs. Wilson's thoughts soon returned to her husband, and their early married days. "If you'll believe me, Mary, there never was such a born goose at house-keeping as I were; and yet he married me! I had been in a factory sin' five years old a'most, and I knew nought about cleaning, or cooking, let alone washing and such-like work. The day after we were married he goes to his work at after breakfast, and says he, 'Jenny, we'll ha' th' cold beef, and potatoes, and that's a dinner fit for a prince.' I were anxious to make him comfortable, God knows how anxious. And yet I'd no notion how to cook a potato. I know'd they were boiled, and I know'd their skins were taken off, and that were all. So I tidyed my house in a rough kind o' way, and then I looked at that very clock up yonder," pointing at one that hung against the wall, "and I seed it were nine o'clock, so, thinks I, th' potatoes shall be well boiled at any rate, and I gets 'em on th' fire in a jiffy (that's to say, as soon as I could peel 'em, which were a tough job at first), and then I fell to unpacking my boxes! and at twenty minutes past twelve he comes home, and I had th' beef ready on th' table, and I went to take the potatoes out o' th' pot; but oh! Mary, th' water had boiled away, and they were all a nasty brown mass, as smelt through all the house. He said nought, and were very gentle; but, oh, Mary, I cried so that afternoon. I shall ne'er forget it; no, never. I made many a blunder at after, but none that fretted me like that." "Father does not like girls to work in factories," said Mary. "No, I know he doesn't; and reason good. They oughtn't to go at after they're married, that I'm very clear about. I could reckon up" (counting with her fingers) "ay, nine men I know, as has been driven to th' public-house by having wives as worked in factories; good folk, too, as thought there was no harm in putting their little ones out at nurse, and letting their house go all dirty, and their fires all out; and that was a place as was tempting for a husband to stay in, was it? He soon finds out gin-shops, where all is clean and bright, and where th' fire blazes cheerily, and gives a man a welcome as it were." Alice, who was standing near for the convenience of hearing, had caught much of this speech, and it was evident the subject had previously been discussed by the women, for she chimed in. "I wish our Jem could speak a word to th' Queen about factory work for married women. Eh! but he comes it strong, when once yo get him to speak about it. Wife o' his'n will never work away fra' home." "I say it's Prince Albert as ought to be asked how he'd like his missis to be from home when he comes in, tired and worn, and wanting some one to cheer him; and may be, her to come in by-and-bye, just as tired and down in th' mouth; and how he'd like for her never to be at home to see to th' cleaning of his house, or to keep a bright fire in his grate. Let alone his meals being all hugger-mugger and comfortless. I'd be bound, prince as he is, if his missis served him so, he'd be off to a gin-palace, or summut o' that kind. So why can't he make a law again poor folks' wives working in factories?" Mary ventured to say that she thought the Queen and Prince Albert could not make laws, but the answer was, "Pooh! don't tell me it's not the Queen as makes laws; and isn't she bound to obey Prince Albert? And if he said they mustn't, why she'd say they mustn't, and then all folk would say, oh no, we never shall do any such thing no more." "Jem's getten on rarely," said Alice, who had not heard her sister's last burst of eloquence, and whose thoughts were still running on her nephew, and his various talents. "He's found out summut about a crank or a tank, I forget rightly which it is, but th' master's made him foreman, and he all the while turning off hands; but he said he could na part wi' Jem, nohow. He's good wage now: I tell him he'll be thinking of marrying soon, and he deserves a right down good wife, that he does." Mary went very red, and looked annoyed, although there was a secret spring of joy deep down in her heart, at hearing Jem so spoken of. But his mother only saw the annoyed look, and was piqued accordingly. She was not over and above desirous that her son should marry. His presence in the house seemed a relic of happier times, and she had some little jealousy of his future wife, whoever she might be. Still she could not bear any one not to feel gratified and flattered by Jem's preference, and full well she knew how above all others he preferred Mary. Now she had never thought Mary good enough for Jem, and her late neglect in coming to see her still rankled a little in her breast. So she determined to invent a little, in order to do away with any idea Mary might have that Jem would choose her for "his right down good wife," as aunt Alice called it. "Ay, he'll be for taking a wife soon," and then, in a lower voice, as if confidentially, but really to prevent any contradiction or explanation from her simple sister-in-law, she added, "It'll not be long afore Molly Gibson (that's her at th' provision-shop round the corner) will hear a secret as will not displease her, I'm thinking. She's been casting sheep's eyes at our Jem this many a day, but he thought her father would not give her to a common working man; but now he's as good as her, every bit. I thought once he'd a fancy for thee, Mary, but I donnot think yo'd ever ha' suited, so it's best as it is." By an effort Mary managed to keep down her vexation, and to say, "She hoped he'd be happy with Molly Gibson. She was very handsome, for certain." "Ay, and a notable body, too. I'll just step up stairs and show you the patchwork quilt she gave me but last Saturday." Mary was glad she was going out of the room. Her words irritated her; perhaps not the less because she did not fully believe them. Besides she wanted to speak to Alice, and Mrs. Wilson seemed to think that she, as the widow, ought to absorb all the attention. "Dear Alice," began Mary, "I'm so grieved to find you so deaf; it must have come on very rapid." "Yes, dear, it's a trial; I'll not deny it. Pray God give me strength to find out its teaching. I felt it sore one fine day when I thought I'd go gather some meadow-sweet to make tea for Jane's cough; and the fields seemed so dree and still, and at first I could na make out what was wanting; and then it struck me it were th' song o' the birds, and that I never should hear their sweet music no more, and I could na help crying a bit. But I've much to be thankful for. I think I'm a comfort to Jane, if I'm only some one to scold now and then; poor body! It takes off her thoughts from her sore losses when she can scold a bit. If my eyes are left I can do well enough; I can guess at what folk are saying." The splendid red and yellow patch quilt now made its appearance, and Jane Wilson would not be satisfied unless Mary praised it all over, border, centre, and ground-work, right side and wrong; and Mary did her duty, saying all the more, because she could not work herself up to any very hearty admiration of her rival's present. She made haste, however, with her commendations, in order to avoid encountering Jem. As soon as she was fairly away from the house and street, she slackened her pace, and began to think. Did Jem really care for Molly Gibson? Well, if he did, let him. People seemed all to think he was much too good for her (Mary's own self). Perhaps some one else, far more handsome, and far more grand, would show him one day that she was good enough to be Mrs. Henry Carson. So temper, or what Mary called "spirit," led her to encourage Mr. Carson more than ever she had done before. Some weeks after this, there was a meeting of the Trades' Union to which John Barton belonged. The morning of the day on which it was to take place he had lain late in bed, for what was the use of getting up? He had hesitated between the purchase of meal or opium, and had chosen the latter, for its use had become a necessity with him. He wanted it to relieve him from the terrible depression its absence occasioned. A large lump seemed only to bring him into a natural state, or what had been his natural state formerly. Eight o'clock was the hour fixed for the meeting; and at it were read letters, filled with details of woe, from all parts of the country. Fierce, heavy gloom brooded over the assembly; and fiercely and heavily did the men separate, towards eleven o'clock, some irritated by the opposition of others to their desperate plans. It was not a night to cheer them, as they quitted the glare of the gas-lighted room, and came out into the street. Unceasing, soaking rain was falling; the very lamps seemed obscured by the damp upon the glass, and their light reached but to a little distance from the posts. The streets were cleared of passers-by; not a creature seemed stirring, except here and there a drenched policeman in his oil-skin cape. Barton wished the others good night, and set off home. He had gone through a street or two, when he heard a step behind him; but he did not care to look and see who it was. A little further, and the person quickened step, and touched his arm very lightly. He turned, and saw, even by the darkness visible of that badly-lighted street, that the woman who stood by him was of no doubtful profession. It was told by her faded finery, all unfit to meet the pelting of that pitiless storm; the gauze bonnet, once pink, now dirty white; the muslin gown, all draggled, and soaking wet up to the very knees; the gay-coloured barège shawl, closely wrapped round the form, which yet shivered and shook, as the woman whispered: "I want to speak to you." He swore an oath, and bade her begone. "I really do. Don't send me away. I'm so out of breath, I cannot say what I would all at once." She put her hand to her side, and caught her breath with evident pain. "I tell thee I'm not the man for thee," adding an opprobrious name. "Stay," said he, as a thought suggested by her voice flashed across him. He gripped her arm--the arm he had just before shaken off, and dragged her, faintly resisting, to the nearest lamp-post. He pushed her bonnet back, and roughly held the face she would fain have averted, to the light, and in her large, unnaturally bright gray eyes, her lovely mouth, half open, as if imploring the forbearance she could not ask for in words, he saw at once the long-lost Esther; she who had caused his wife's death. Much was like the gay creature of former years; but the glaring paint, the sharp features, the changed expression of the whole! But most of all, he loathed the dress; and yet the poor thing, out of her little choice of attire, had put on the plainest she had, to come on that night's errand. "So it's thee, is it! It's thee!" exclaimed John, as he ground his teeth, and shook her with passion. "I've looked for thee long at corners o' streets, and such like places. I knew I should find thee at last. Thee'll may be bethink thee o' some words I spoke, which put thee up at th' time; summut about street-walkers; but oh no! thou art none o' them naughts; no one thinks thou art, who sees thy fine draggle-tailed dress, and thy pretty pink cheeks!" stopping for very want of breath. "Oh, mercy! John, mercy! listen to me for Mary's sake!" She meant his daughter, but the name only fell on his ear as belonging to his wife; and it was adding fuel to the fire. In vain did her face grow deadly pale round the vivid circle of paint, in vain did she gasp for mercy,--he burst forth again. "And thou names that name to me! and thou thinks the thought of her will bring thee mercy! Dost thou know it was thee who killed her, as sure as ever Cain killed Abel. She'd loved thee as her own, and she trusted thee as her own, and when thou wert gone she never held up head again, but died in less than a three week; and at the judgment day she'll rise, and point to thee as her murderer; or if she don't, I will." He flung her, trembling, sickening, fainting, from him, and strode away. She fell with a feeble scream against the lamp-post, and lay there in her weakness, unable to rise. A policeman came up in time to see the close of these occurrences, and concluding from Esther's unsteady, reeling fall, that she was tipsy, he took her in her half-unconscious state to the lock-ups for the night. The superintendent of that abode of vice and misery was roused from his dozing watch through the dark hours, by half-delirious wails and moanings, which he reported as arising from intoxication. If he had listened, he would have heard these words, repeated in various forms, but always in the same anxious, muttering way. "He would not listen to me; what can I do? He would not listen to me, and I wanted to warn him! Oh, what shall I do to save Mary's child? What shall I do? How can I keep her from being such a one as I am; such a wretched, loathsome creature! She was listening just as I listened, and loving just as I loved, and the end will be just like my end. How shall I save her? She won't hearken to warning, or heed it more than I did; and who loves her well enough to watch over her as she should be watched? God keep her from harm! And yet I won't pray for her; sinner that I am! Can my prayers be heard? No! they'll only do harm. How shall I save her? He would not listen to me." So the night wore away. The next morning she was taken up to the New Bailey. It was a clear case of disorderly vagrancy, and she was committed to prison for a month. How much might happen in that time! CHAPTER XI. MR. CARSON'S INTENTIONS REVEALED. "O Mary, canst thou wreck his peace, Wha for thy sake wad gladly die? Or canst thou break that heart of his, Whase only faut is loving thee?" BURNS. "I can like of the wealth, I must confess, Yet more I prize the man, though moneyless; I am not of their humour yet that can For title or estate affect a man; Or of myself one body deign to make With him I loathe, for his possessions' sake." WITHER'S "FIDELIA." Barton returned home after his encounter with Esther, uneasy and dissatisfied. He had said no more than he had been planning to say for years, in case she was ever thrown in his way, in the character in which he felt certain he should meet her. He believed she deserved it all, and yet he now wished he had not said it. Her look, as she asked for mercy, haunted him through his broken and disordered sleep; her form, as he last saw her, lying prostrate in helplessness, would not be banished from his dreams. He sat up in bed to try and dispel the vision. Now, too late, his conscience smote him for his harshness. It would have been all very well, he thought, to have said what he did, if he had added some kind words, at last. He wondered if his dead wife was conscious of that night's occurrence; and he hoped not, for with her love for Esther he believed it would embitter Heaven to have seen her so degraded and repulsed. For he now recalled her humility, her tacit acknowledgment of her lost character; and he began to marvel if there was power in the religion he had often heard of, to turn her from her ways. He felt that no earthly power that he knew of could do it, but there glimmered on his darkness the idea that religion might save her. Still, where to find her again? In the wilderness of a large town, where to meet with an individual of so little value or note to any? And evening after evening he paced those streets in which he had heard her footsteps following him, peering under every fantastic, discreditable bonnet, in the hopes of once more meeting Esther, and addressing her in a far different manner from what he had done before. But he returned, night after night, disappointed in his search, and at last gave it up in despair, and tried to recall his angry feelings towards her, in order to find relief from his present self-reproach. He often looked at Mary, and wished she were not so like her aunt, for the very bodily likeness seemed to suggest the possibility of a similar likeness in their fate; and then this idea enraged his irritable mind, and he became suspicious and anxious about Mary's conduct. Now hitherto she had been so remarkably free from all control, and almost from all inquiry concerning her actions, that she did not brook this change in her father's behaviour very well. Just when she was yielding more than ever to Mr. Carson's desire of frequent meetings, it was hard to be so questioned concerning her hours of leaving off work, whether she had come straight home, &c. She could not tell lies; though she could conceal much if she were not questioned. So she took refuge in obstinate silence, alleging as a reason for it her indignation at being so cross-examined. This did not add to the good feeling between father and daughter, and yet they dearly loved each other; and in the minds of each, one principal reason for maintaining such behaviour as displeased the other, was the believing that this conduct would insure that person's happiness. Her father now began to wish Mary were married. Then this terrible superstitious fear suggested by her likeness to Esther would be done away with. He felt that he could not resume the reins he had once slackened. But with a husband it would be different. If Jem Wilson would but marry her! With his character for steadiness and talent! But he was afraid Mary had slighted him, he came so seldom now to the house. He would ask her. "Mary, what's come o'er thee and Jem Wilson? Yo were great friends at one time." "Oh, folk say he's going to be married to Molly Gibson, and of course courting takes up a deal o' time," answered Mary, as indifferently as she could. "Thou'st played thy cards badly, then," replied her father, in a surly tone. "At one time he were desperate fond o' thee, or I'm much mistaken. Much fonder of thee than thou deservedst." "That's as people think," said Mary, pertly, for she remembered that the very morning before she had met Mr. Carson, who had sighed, and swore, and protested all manner of tender vows that she was the loveliest, sweetest, best, &c. And when she had seen him afterwards riding with one of his beautiful sisters, had he not evidently pointed her out as in some way or other an object worthy of attention and interest, and then lingered behind his sister's horse for a moment to kiss his hand repeatedly. So, as for Jem Wilson, she could whistle him down the wind. But her father was not in the mood to put up with pertness, and he upbraided her with the loss of Jem Wilson till she had to bite her lips till the blood came, in order to keep down the angry words that would rise in her heart. At last her father left the house, and then she might give way to her passionate tears. It so happened that Jem, after much anxious thought, had determined that day to "put his fate to the touch, to win or lose it all." He was in a condition to maintain a wife in comfort. It was true his mother and aunt must form part of the household; but such is not an uncommon case among the poor, and if there were the advantage of previous friendship between the parties, it was not, he thought, an obstacle to matrimony. Both mother and aunt he believed would welcome Mary. And oh! what a certainty of happiness the idea of that welcome implied. He had been absent and abstracted all day long with the thought of the coming event of the evening. He almost smiled at himself for his care in washing and dressing in preparation for his visit to Mary. As if one waistcoat or another could decide his fate in so passionately momentous a thing. He believed he only delayed before his little looking-glass for cowardice, for absolute fear of a girl. He would try not to think so much about the affair, and he thought the more. Poor Jem! it is not an auspicious moment for thee! "Come in," said Mary, as some one knocked at the door, while she sat sadly at her sewing, trying to earn a few pence by working over hours at some mourning. Jem entered, looking more awkward and abashed than he had ever done before. Yet here was Mary all alone, just as he had hoped to find her. She did not ask him to take a chair, but after standing a minute or two he sat down near her. "Is your father at home, Mary?" said he, by way of making an opening, for she seemed determined to keep silence, and went on stitching away. "No, he's gone to his Union, I suppose." Another silence. It was no use waiting, thought Jem. The subject would never be led to by any talk he could think of in his anxious fluttered state. He had better begin at once. "Mary!" said he, and the unusual tone of his voice made her look up for an instant, but in that time she understood from his countenance what was coming, and her heart beat so suddenly and violently she could hardly sit still. Yet one thing she was sure of; nothing he could say should make her have him. She would show them all _who_ would be glad to have her. She was not yet calm after her father's irritating speeches. Yet her eyes fell veiled before that passionate look fixed upon her. "Dear Mary! (for how dear you are, I cannot rightly tell you in words). It's no new story I'm going to speak about. You must ha' seen and known it long; for since we were boy and girl, I ha' loved you above father and mother and all; and all I've thought on by day and dreamt on by night, has been something in which you've had a share. I'd no way of keeping you for long, and I scorned to try and tie you down; and I lived in terror lest some one else should take you to himself. But now, Mary, I'm foreman in th' works, and, dear Mary! listen," as she, in her unbearable agitation, stood up and turned away from him. He rose, too, and came nearer, trying to take hold of her hand; but this she would not allow. She was bracing herself up to refuse him, for once and for all. "And now, Mary, I've a home to offer you, and a heart as true as ever man had to love you and cherish you; we shall never be rich folk, I dare say; but if a loving heart and a strong right arm can shield you from sorrow, or from want, mine shall do it. I cannot speak as I would like; my love won't let itself be put in words. But oh! darling, say you believe me, and that you'll be mine." She could not speak at once; her words would not come. "Mary, they say silence gives consent; is it so?" he whispered. Now or never the effort must be made. "No! it does not with me." Her voice was calm, although she trembled from head to foot. "I will always be your friend, Jem, but I can never be your wife." "Not my wife!" said he, mournfully. "Oh Mary, think awhile! you cannot be my friend if you will not be my wife. At least I can never be content to be only your friend. Do think awhile! If you say No you will make me hopeless, desperate. It's no love of yesterday. It has made the very groundwork of all that people call good in me. I don't know what I shall be if you won't have me. And, Mary! think how glad your father would be! it may sound vain, but he's told me more than once how much he should like to see us two married!" Jem intended this for a powerful argument, but in Mary's present mood it told against him more than any thing; for it suggested the false and foolish idea, that her father, in his evident anxiety to promote her marriage with Jem, had been speaking to him on the subject with some degree of solicitation. "I tell you, Jem, it cannot be. Once for all, I will never marry you." "And is this the end of all my hopes and fears? the end of my life, I may say, for it is the end of all worth living for!" His agitation rose and carried him into passion. "Mary! you'll hear, may be, of me as a drunkard, and may be as a thief, and may be as a murderer. Remember! when all are speaking ill of me, you will have no right to blame me, for it's your cruelty that will have made me what I feel I shall become. You won't even say you'll try and like me; will you, Mary?" said he, suddenly changing his tone from threatening despair to fond passionate entreaty, as he took her hand and held it forcibly between both of his, while he tried to catch a glimpse of her averted face. She was silent, but it was from deep and violent emotion. He could not bear to wait; he would not hope, to be dashed away again; he rather in his bitterness of heart chose the certainty of despair, and before she could resolve what to answer, he flung away her hand and rushed out of the house. "Jem! Jem!" cried she, with faint and choking voice. It was too late; he left street after street behind him with his almost winged speed, as he sought the fields, where he might give way unobserved to all the deep despair he felt. It was scarcely ten minutes since he had entered the house, and found Mary at comparative peace, and now she lay half across the dresser, her head hidden in her hands, and every part of her body shaking with the violence of her sobs. She could not have told at first (if you had asked her, and she could have commanded voice enough to answer) why she was in such agonised grief. It was too sudden for her to analyse, or think upon it. She only felt that by her own doing her life would be hereafter dreary and blank. By-and-bye her sorrow exhausted her body by its power, and she seemed to have no strength left for crying. She sat down; and now thoughts crowded on her mind. One little hour ago, and all was still unsaid, and she had her fate in her own power. And yet, how long ago had she determined to say pretty much what she did, if the occasion ever offered. It was as if two people were arguing the matter; that mournful, desponding communion between her former self and her present self. Herself, a day, an hour ago; and herself now. For we have every one of us felt how a very few minutes of the months and years called life, will sometimes suffice to place all time past and future in an entirely new light; will make us see the vanity or the criminality of the bye-gone, and so change the aspect of the coming time, that we look with loathing on the very thing we have most desired. A few moments may change our character for life, by giving a totally different direction to our aims and energies. To return to Mary. Her plan had been, as we well know, to marry Mr. Carson, and the occurrence an hour ago was only a preliminary step. True; but it had unveiled her heart to her; it had convinced her she loved Jem above all persons or things. But Jem was a poor mechanic, with a mother and aunt to keep; a mother, too, who had shown her pretty clearly she did not desire her for a daughter-in-law: while Mr. Carson was rich, and prosperous, and gay, and (she believed) would place her in all circumstances of ease and luxury, where want could never come. What were these hollow vanities to her, now she had discovered the passionate secret of her soul? She felt as if she almost hated Mr. Carson, who had decoyed her with his baubles. She now saw how vain, how nothing to her, would be all gaieties and pomps, all joys and pleasures, unless she might share them with Jem; yes, with him she harshly rejected so short a time ago. If he were poor, she loved him all the better. If his mother did think her unworthy of him, what was it but the truth, as she now owned with bitter penitence. She had hitherto been walking in grope-light towards a precipice; but in the clear revelation of that past hour, she saw her danger, and turned away resolutely and for ever. That was some comfort: I mean her clear perception of what she ought not to do; of what no luring temptation should ever again induce her to hearken to. How she could best undo the wrong she had done to Jem and herself by refusing his love, was another anxious question. She wearied herself with proposing plans, and rejecting them. She was roused to a consciousness of time by hearing the neighbouring church clock strike twelve. Her father she knew might be expected home any minute, and she was in no mood for a meeting with him. So she hastily gathered up her work, and went to her own little bed-room, leaving him to let himself in. She put out her candle, that her father might not see its light under the door; and sat down on her bed to think. But after turning things over in her mind again and again, she could only determine at once to put an end to all further communication with Mr. Carson, in the most decided way she could. Maidenly modesty (and true love is ever modest) seemed to oppose every plan she could think of, for showing Jem how much she repented her decision against him, and how dearly she had now discovered that she loved him. She came to the unusual wisdom of resolving to do nothing, but try and be patient, and improve circumstances as they might turn up. Surely, if Jem knew of her remaining unmarried, he would try his fortune again. He would never be content with one rejection; she believed she could not in his place. She had been very wrong, but now she would try and do right, and have womanly patience, until he saw her changed and repentant mind in her natural actions. Even if she had to wait for years, it was no more than now it was easy to look forward to, as a penance for her giddy flirting on the one hand, and her cruel mistake concerning her feelings on the other. So anticipating a happy ending to the course of her love, however distant it might be, she fell asleep just as the earliest factory bells were ringing. She had sunk down in her clothes, and her sleep was unrefreshing. She wakened up shivery and chill in body, and sorrow-stricken in mind, though she could not at first rightly tell the cause of her depression. She recalled the events of the night before, and still resolved to adhere to those determinations she had then formed. But patience seemed a far more difficult virtue this morning. She hastened down-stairs, and in her earnest sad desire to do right, now took much pains to secure a comfortable though scanty breakfast for her father; and when he dawdled into the room, in an evidently irritable temper, she bore all with the gentleness of penitence, till at last her mild answers turned away wrath. She loathed the idea of meeting Sally Leadbitter at her daily work; yet it must be done, and she tried to nerve herself for the encounter, and to make it at once understood, that having determined to give up having any thing further to do with Mr. Carson, she considered the bond of intimacy broken between them. But Sally was not the person to let these resolutions be carried into effect too easily. She soon became aware of the present state of Mary's feelings, but she thought they merely arose from the changeableness of girlhood, and that the time would come when Mary would thank her for almost forcing her to keep up her meetings and communications with her rich lover. So, when two days had passed over in rather too marked avoidance of Sally on Mary's part, and when the former was made aware by Mr. Carson's complaints that Mary was not keeping her appointments with him, and that unless he detained her by force, he had no chance of obtaining a word as she passed him in the street on her rapid walk home, she resolved to compel Mary to what she called her own good. She took no notice during the third day of Mary's avoidance as they sat at work; she rather seemed to acquiesce in the coolness of their intercourse. She put away her sewing early, and went home to her mother, who, she said, was more ailing than usual. The other girls soon followed her example, and Mary, casting a rapid glance up and down the street, as she stood last on Miss Simmonds' door-step, darted homewards, in hopes of avoiding the person whom she was fast learning to dread. That night she was safe from any encounter on her road, and she arrived at home, which she found as she expected, empty; for she knew it was a club night, which her father would not miss. She sat down to recover breath, and to still her heart, which panted more from nervousness than from over-exertion, although she had walked so quickly. Then she rose, and taking off her bonnet, her eye caught the form of Sally Leadbitter passing the window with a lingering step, and looking into the darkness with all her might, as if to ascertain if Mary were returned. In an instant she re-passed and knocked at the house-door, but without awaiting an answer, she entered. "Well, Mary, dear" (knowing well how little "dear" Mary considered her just then); "i's so difficult to get any comfortable talk at Miss Simmonds', I thought I'd just step up and see you at home." "I understood from what you said your mother was ailing, and that you wanted to be with her," replied Mary, in no welcoming tone. "Ay, but mother's better now," said the unabashed Sally. "Your father's out I suppose?" looking round as well as she could; for Mary made no haste to perform the hospitable offices of striking a match, and lighting a candle. "Yes, he's out," said Mary, shortly, and busying herself at last about the candle, without ever asking her visitor to sit down. "So much the better," answered Sally, "for to tell you the truth, Mary, I've a friend at th' end of the street, as is anxious to come and see you at home, since you're grown so particular as not to like to speak to him in the street. He'll be here directly." "Oh, Sally, don't let him," said Mary, speaking at last heartily; and running to the door she would have fastened it, but Sally held her hands, laughing meanwhile at her distress. "Oh, please, Sally," struggling, "dear Sally! don't let him come here, the neighbours will so talk, and father'll go mad if he hears; he'll kill me, Sally, he will. Besides, I don't love him--I never did. Oh, let me go," as footsteps approached; and then, as they passed the house, and seemed to give her a respite, she continued, "Do, Sally, dear Sally, go and tell him I don't love him, and that I don't want to have any thing more to do with him. It was very wrong, I dare say, keeping company with him at all, but I'm very sorry, if I've led him to think too much of me; and I don't want him to think any more. Will you tell him this, Sally? and I'll do any thing for you if you will." "I'll tell you what I'll do," said Sally, in a more relenting mood, "I'll go back with you to where he's waiting for us; or rather, I should say, where I told him to wait for a quarter of an hour, till I seed if your father was at home; and if I didn't come back in that time, he said he'd come here, and break the door open but he'd see you." "Oh, let us go, let us go," said Mary, feeling that the interview must be, and had better be anywhere than at home, where her father might return at any minute. She snatched up her bonnet, and was at the end of the court in an instant; but then, not knowing whether to turn to the right or to the left, she was obliged to wait for Sally, who came leisurely up, and put her arm through Mary's, with a kind of decided hold, intended to prevent the possibility of her changing her mind, and turning back. But this, under the circumstances, was quite different to Mary's plan. She had wondered more than once if she must not have another interview with Mr. Carson; and had then determined, while she expressed her resolution that it should be the final one, to tell him how sorry she was if she had thoughtlessly given him false hopes. For be it remembered, she had the innocence, or the ignorance, to believe his intentions honourable; and he, feeling that at any price he must have her, only that he would obtain her as cheaply as he could, had never undeceived her; while Sally Leadbitter laughed in her sleeve at them both, and wondered how it would all end,--whether Mary would gain her point of marriage, with her sly affectation of believing such to be Mr. Carson's intention in courting her. Not very far from the end of the street, into which the court where Mary lived opened, they met Mr. Carson, his hat a good deal slouched over his face as if afraid of being recognised. He turned when he saw them coming, and led the way without uttering a word (although they were close behind) to a street of half-finished houses. The length of the walk gave Mary time to recoil from the interview which was to follow; but even if her own resolve to go through with it had failed, there was the steady grasp of Sally Leadbitter, which she could not evade without an absolute struggle. At last he stopped in the shelter and concealment of a wooden fence, put up to keep the building rubbish from intruding on the foot-pavement. Inside this fence, a minute afterwards, the girls were standing by him; Mary now returning Sally's detaining grasp with interest, for she had determined on the way to make her a witness, willing or unwilling, to the ensuing conversation. But Sally's curiosity led her to be a very passive prisoner in Mary's hold. With more freedom than he had ever used before, Mr. Carson put his arm firmly round Mary's waist, in spite of her indignant resistance. "Nay, nay! you little witch! Now I have caught you, I shall keep you prisoner. Tell me now what has made you run away from me so fast these few days--tell me, you sweet little coquette!" Mary ceased struggling, but turned so as to be almost opposite to him, while she spoke out calmly and boldly, "Mr. Carson! I want to speak to you for once and for all. Since I met you last Monday evening, I have made up my mind to have nothing more to do with you. I know I've been wrong in leading you to think I liked you; but I believe I didn't rightly know my own mind; and I humbly beg your pardon, sir, if I've led you to think too much of me." For an instant he was surprised; the next, vanity came to his aid, and convinced him that she could only be joking. He, young, agreeable, rich, handsome! No! she was only showing a little womanly fondness for coquetting. "You're a darling little rascal to go on in this way! 'Humbly begging my pardon if you've made me think too much of you.' As if you didn't know I think of you from morning to night. But you want to be told it again and again, do you?" "No, indeed, sir, I don't. I would far liefer [40] that you should say you will never think of me again, than that you should speak of me in this way. For indeed, sir, I never was more in earnest than I am, when I say to-night is the last night I will ever speak to you." [Footnote 40: "Liefer," rather. "Yet had I _levre_ unwist for sorrow die." _Chaucer; "Troilus and Creseide."_] "Last night, you sweet little equivocator, but not last day. Ha, Mary! I've caught you, have I?" as she, puzzled by his perseverance in thinking her joking, hesitated in what form she could now put her meaning. "I mean, sir," she said, sharply, "that I will never speak to you again at any time, after to-night." "And what's made this change, Mary?" said he, seriously enough now. "Have I done any thing to offend you?" added he, earnestly. "No, sir," she answered gently, but yet firmly. "I cannot tell you exactly why I've changed my mind; but I shall not alter it again; and as I said before, I beg your pardon if I've done wrong by you. And now, sir, if you please, good night." "But I do not please. You shall not go. What have I done, Mary? Tell me. You must not go without telling me how I have vexed you. What would you have me do?" "Nothing, sir! but (in an agitated tone) oh! let me go! You cannot change my mind; it's quite made up. Oh, sir! why do you hold me so tight? If you _will_ know why I won't have any thing more to do with you, it is that I cannot love you. I have tried, and I really cannot." This naive and candid avowal served her but little. He could not understand how it could be true. Some reason lurked behind. He was passionately in love. What should he do to tempt her? A thought struck him. "Listen! Mary. Nay, I cannot let you go till you have heard me. I do love you dearly; and I won't believe but what you love me a very little, just a very little. Well, if you don't like to own it, never mind! I only want now to tell you how much I love you, by what I am ready to give up for you. You know (or perhaps you are not fully aware) how little my father and mother would like me to marry you. So angry would they be, and so much ridicule should I have to brave, that of course I have never thought of it till now. I thought we could be happy enough without marriage." (Deep sank those words into Mary's heart.) "But now, if you like, I'll get a licence to-morrow morning--nay, to-night, and I'll marry you in defiance of all the world, rather than give you up. In a year or two my father will forgive me, and meanwhile you shall have every luxury money can purchase, and every charm that love can devise to make your life happy. After all, my mother was but a factory girl." (This was said half to himself, as if to reconcile himself to this bold step.) "Now, Mary, you see how willing I am to--to sacrifice a good deal for you; I even offer you marriage, to satisfy your little ambitious heart; so, now, won't you say you can love me a little, little bit?" He pulled her towards him. To his surprise, she still resisted. Yes! though all she had pictured to herself for so many months in being the wife of Mr. Carson was now within her grasp, she resisted. His speech had given her but one feeling, that of exceeding great relief. For she had dreaded, now she knew what true love was, to think of the attachment she might have created; the deep feeling her flirting conduct might have called out. She had loaded herself with reproaches for the misery she might have caused. It was a relief to gather that the attachment was of that low, despicable kind, which can plan to seduce the object of its affection; that the feeling she had caused was shallow enough, for it only pretended to embrace self, at the expense of the misery, the ruin, of one falsely termed beloved. She need not be penitent to such a plotter! That was the relief. "I am obliged to you, sir, for telling me what you have. You may think I am a fool; but I did think you meant to marry me all along; and yet, thinking so, I felt I could not love you. Still I felt sorry I had gone so far in keeping company with you. Now, sir, I tell you, if I had loved you before, I don't think I should have loved you now you have told me you meant to ruin me; for that's the plain English of not meaning to marry me till just this minute. I said I was sorry, and humbly begged your pardon; that was before I knew what you were. Now I scorn you, sir, for plotting to ruin a poor girl. Good night." And with a wrench, for which she had reserved all her strength, she was off like a bolt. They heard her flying footsteps echo down the quiet street. The next sound was Sally's laugh, which grated on Mr. Carson's ears, and keenly irritated him. "And what do you find so amusing, Sally?" asked he. "Oh, sir, I beg your pardon. I humbly beg your pardon, as Mary says, but I can't help laughing, to think how she's outwitted us." (She was going to have said, "outwitted you," but changed the pronoun.) "Why, Sally, had you any idea she was going to fly out in this style?" "No, I hadn't, to be sure. But if you did think of marrying her, why (if I may be so bold as to ask) did you go and tell her you had no thought of doing otherwise by her? That was what put her up at last!" "Why I had repeatedly before led her to infer that marriage was not my object. I never dreamed she could have been so foolish as to have mistaken me, little provoking romancer though she be! So I naturally wished her to know what a sacrifice of prejudice, of--of myself, in short, I was willing to make for her sake; yet I don't think she was aware of it after all. I believe I might have any lady in Manchester if I liked, and yet I was willing and ready to marry a poor dress-maker. Don't you understand me now? and don't you see what a sacrifice I was making to humour her? and all to no avail." Sally was silent, so he went on: "My father would have forgiven any temporary connexion, far sooner than my marrying one so far beneath me in rank." "I thought you said, sir, your mother was a factory girl," reminded Sally, rather maliciously. "Yes, yes!--but then my father was in much such a station; at any rate, there was not the disparity there is between Mary and me." Another pause. "Then you mean to give her up, sir? She made no bones of saying she gave you up." "No, I do not mean to give her up, whatever you and she may please to think. I am more in love with her than ever; even for this charming capricious ebullition of hers. She'll come round, you may depend upon it. Women always do. They always have second thoughts, and find out that they are best in casting off a lover. Mind! I don't say I shall offer her the same terms again." With a few more words of no importance, the allies parted. CHAPTER XII. OLD ALICE'S BAIRN. "I lov'd him not; and yet, now he is gone, I feel I am alone. I check'd him while he spoke; yet, could he speak, Alas! I would not check. For reasons not to love him once I sought, And wearied all my thought." W. S. LANDOR. And now Mary had, as she thought, dismissed both her lovers. But they looked on their dismissals with very different eyes. He who loved her with all his heart and with all his soul, considered his rejection final. He did not comfort himself with the idea, which would have proved so well founded in his case, that women have second thoughts about casting off their lovers. He had too much respect for his own heartiness of love to believe himself unworthy of Mary; that mock humble conceit did not enter his head. He thought he did not "hit Mary's fancy;" and though that may sound a trivial every-day expression, yet the reality of it cut him to the heart. Wild visions of enlistment, of drinking himself into forgetfulness, of becoming desperate in some way or another, entered his mind; but then the thought of his mother stood like an angel with a drawn sword in the way to sin. For, you know, "he was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow;" dependent on him for daily bread. So he could not squander away health and time, which were to him money wherewith to support her failing years. He went to his work, accordingly, to all outward semblance just as usual; but with a heavy, heavy heart within. Mr. Carson, as we have seen, persevered in considering Mary's rejection of him as merely a "charming caprice." If she were at work, Sally Leadbitter was sure to slip a passionately loving note into her hand, and then so skilfully move away from her side, that Mary could not all at once return it, without making some sensation among the work-women. She was even forced to take several home with her. But after reading one, she determined on her plan. She made no great resistance to receiving them from Sally, but kept them unopened, and occasionally returned them in a blank half-sheet of paper. But far worse than this, was the being so constantly waylaid as she went home by her persevering lover; who had been so long acquainted with all her habits, that she found it difficult to evade him. Late or early, she was never certain of being free from him. Go this way or that, he might come up some cross street when she had just congratulated herself on evading him for that day. He could not have taken a surer mode of making himself odious to her. And all this time Jem Wilson never came! Not to see her--that she did not expect--but to see her father; to--she did not know what, but she had hoped he would have come on some excuse, just to see if she hadn't changed her mind. He never came. Then she grew weary and impatient, and her spirits sank. The persecution of the one lover, and the neglect of the other, oppressed her sorely. She could not now sit quietly through the evening at her work; or, if she kept, by a strong effort, from pacing up and down the room, she felt as if she must sing to keep off thought while she sewed. And her songs were the maddest, merriest, she could think of. "Barbara Allen," and such sorrowful ditties, did well enough for happy times; but now she required all the aid that could be derived from external excitement to keep down the impulse of grief. And her father, too--he was a great anxiety to her, he looked so changed and so ill. Yet he would not acknowledge to any ailment. She knew, that be it as late as it would, she never left off work until (if the poor servants paid her pretty regularly for the odd jobs of mending she did for them) she had earned a few pence, enough for one good meal for her father on the next day. But very frequently all she could do in the morning, after her late sitting up at night, was to run with the work home, and receive the money from the person for whom it was done. She could not stay often to make purchases of food, but gave up the money at once to her father's eager clutch; sometimes prompted by savage hunger it is true, but more frequently by a craving for opium. On the whole he was not so hungry as his daughter. For it was a long fast from the one o'clock dinner-hour at Miss Simmonds' to the close of Mary's vigil, which was often extended to midnight. She was young, and had not yet learned to bear "clemming." One evening, as she sang a merry song over her work, stopping occasionally to sigh, the blind Margaret came groping in. It had been one of Mary's additional sorrows that her friend had been absent from home, accompanying the lecturer on music in his round among the manufacturing towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire. Her grandfather, too, had seen this a good time for going his expeditions in search of specimens; so that the house had been shut up for several weeks. "Oh! Margaret, Margaret! how glad I am to see you. Take care. There, now, you're all right, that's father's chair. Sit down."--She kissed her over and over again. "It seems like the beginning o' brighter times, to see you again, Margaret. Bless you! And how well you look!" "Doctors always send ailing folk for change of air! and you know I've had plenty o' that same lately." "You've been quite a traveller for sure! Tell us all about it, do, Margaret. Where have you been to, first place?" "Eh, lass, that would take a long time to tell. Half o'er the world I sometimes think. Bolton, and Bury, and Owdham, and Halifax, and--but Mary, guess who I saw there! May be you know though, so it's not fair guessing." "No, I donnot. Tell me, Margaret, for I cannot abide waiting and guessing." "Well, one night as I were going fra' my lodgings wi' the help on a lad as belonged to th' landlady, to find the room where I were to sing, I heard a cough before me, walking along. Thinks I, that's Jem Wilson's cough, or I'm much mistaken. Next time came a sneeze and a cough, and then I were certain. First I hesitated whether I should speak, thinking if it were a stranger he'd may be think me forrard. [41] But I knew blind folks must not be nesh about using their tongues, so says I, 'Jem Wilson, is that you?' And sure enough it was, and nobody else. Did you know he were in Halifax, Mary?" [Footnote 41: "Forrard," forward.] "No;" she answered, faintly and sadly; for Halifax was all the same to her heart as the Antipodes; equally inaccessible by humble penitent looks and maidenly tokens of love. "Well, he's there, however; he's putting up an engine for some folks there, for his master. He's doing well, for he's getten four or five men under him; we'd two or three meetings, and he telled me all about his invention for doing away wi' the crank, or somewhat. His master's bought it from him, and ta'en out a patent, and Jem's a gentleman for life wi' the money his master gied him. But you'll ha' heard all this, Mary?" No! she had not. "Well, I thought it all happened afore he left Manchester, and then in course you'd ha' known. But may be it were all settled after he got to Halifax; however, he's gotten two or three hunder pounds for his invention. But what's up with you, Mary? you're sadly out o' sorts. You've never been quarrelling wi' Jem, surely?" Now Mary cried outright; she was weak in body, and unhappy in mind, and the time was come when she might have the relief of telling her grief. She could not bring herself to confess how much of her sorrow was caused by her having been vain and foolish; she hoped that need never be known, and she could not bear to think of it. "Oh, Margaret; do you know Jem came here one night when I were put out, and cross. Oh, dear! dear! I could bite my tongue out when I think on it. And he told me how he loved me, and I thought I did not love him, and I told him I didn't; and, Margaret,--he believed me, and went away so sad, and so angry; and now I'd do any thing,--I would, indeed," her sobs choked the end of her sentence. Margaret looked at her with sorrow, but with hope; for she had no doubt in her own mind, that it was only a temporary estrangement. "Tell me, Margaret," said Mary, taking her apron down from her eyes, and looking at Margaret with eager anxiety, "what can I do to bring him back to me? Should I write to him?" "No," replied her friend, "that would not do. Men are so queer, they like to have a' the courting to themselves." "But I did not mean to write him a courting letter," said Mary, somewhat indignantly. "If you wrote at all, it would be to give him a hint you'd taken the rue, and would be very glad to have him now. I believe now he'd rather find that out himself." "But he won't try," said Mary, sighing. "How can he find it out when he's at Halifax?" "If he's a will he's a way, depend upon it. And you would not have him if he's not a will to you, Mary! No, dear!" changing her tone from the somewhat hard way in which sensible people too often speak, to the soft accents of tenderness which come with such peculiar grace from them; "you must just wait and be patient. You may depend upon it, all will end well, and better than if you meddled in it now." "But it's so hard to be patient," pleaded Mary. "Ay, dear; being patient is the hardest work we, any on us, have to do through life, I take it. Waiting is far more difficult than doing. I've known that about my sight, and many a one has known it in watching the sick; but it's one of God's lessons we all must learn, one way or another." After a pause. "Have ye been to see his mother of late?" "No; not for some weeks. When last I went she was so frabbit [42] with me, that I really thought she wished I'd keep away." [Footnote 42: "Frabbit," ill-tempered.] "Well! if I were you I'd go. Jem will hear on't, and it will do you far more good in his mind than writing a letter, which, after all, you would find a tough piece of work when you came to settle to it. 'Twould be hard to say neither too much nor too little. But I must be going, grandfather is at home, and it's our first night together, and he must not be sitting wanting me any longer." She rose up from her seat, but still delayed going. "Mary! I've somewhat else I want to say to you, and I don't rightly know how to begin. You see, grandfather and I know what bad times is, and we know your father is out o' work, and I'm getting more money than I can well manage; and, dear, would you just take this bit o' gold, and pay me back in good times?" The tears stood in Margaret's eyes as she spoke. "Dear Margaret, we're not so bad pressed as that." (The thought of her father, and his ill looks, and his one meal a day, rushed upon Mary.) "And yet, dear, if it would not put you out o' your way,--I would work hard to make it up to you;--but would not your grandfather be vexed?" "Not he, wench! It were more his thought than mine, and we have gotten ever so many more at home, so don't hurry yoursel about paying. It's hard to be blind, to be sure, else money comes in so easily now to what it used to do; and it's downright pleasure to earn it, for I do so like singing." "I wish I could sing," said Mary, looking at the sovereign. "Some has one kind o' gifts, and some another. Many's the time when I could see, that I longed for your beauty, Mary! We're like childer, ever wanting what we han not got. But now I must say just one more word. Remember, if you're sore pressed for money, we shall take it very unkind if you donnot let us know. Good bye to ye." In spite of her blindness she hurried away, anxious to rejoin her grandfather, and desirous also to escape from Mary's expressions of gratitude. Her visit had done Mary good in many ways. It had strengthened her patience and her hope. It had given her confidence in Margaret's sympathy; and last, and really least in comforting power (of so little value are silver and gold in comparison to love, that gift in every one's power to bestow), came the consciousness of the money-value of the sovereign she held in her hand. The many things it might purchase! First of all came the thought of a comfortable supper for her father that very night; and acting instantly upon the idea, she set off in hopes that all the provision-shops might not yet be closed, although it was so late. That night the cottage shone with unusual light, and fire-gleam; and the father and daughter sat down to a meal they thought almost extravagant. It was so long since they had had enough to eat. "Food gives heart," say the Lancashire people; and the next day Mary made time to go and call on Mrs. Wilson, according to Margaret's advice. She found her quite alone, and more gracious than she had been the last time Mary had visited her. Alice was gone out, she said. "She would just step to the post-office, all for no earthly use. For it were to ask if they hadn't a letter lying there for her from her foster-son Will Wilson, the sailor-lad." "What made her think there were a letter?" asked Mary. "Why, yo see, a neighbour as has been in Liverpool, telled us Will's ship were come in. Now he said last time he were in Liverpool he'd ha' come to ha' seen Alice, but his ship had but a week holiday, and hard work for the men in that time too. So Alice makes sure he'll come this, and has had her hand behind her ear at every noise in th' street, thinking it were him. And to-day she were neither to have nor to hold, but off she would go to th' post, and see if he had na sent her a line to th' old house near yo. I tried to get her to give up going, for let alone her deafness she's getten so dark, she cannot see five yards afore her; but no, she would go, poor old body." "I did not know her sight had failed her; she used to have good eyes enough when she lived near us." "Ay, but it's gone lately a good deal. But you never ask after Jem--" anxious to get in a word on the subject nearest her heart. "No," replied Mary, blushing scarlet. "How is he?" "I cannot justly say how he is, seeing he's at Halifax; but he were very well when he wrote last Tuesday. Han ye heard o' his good luck?" Rather to her disappointment, Mary owned she had heard of the sum his master had paid him for his invention. "Well! and did not Margaret tell yo what he'd done wi' it? It's just like him though, ne'er to say a word about it. Why, when it were paid what does he do, but get his master to help him to buy an income for me and Alice. He had her name put down for her life; but, poor thing, she'll not be long to the fore, I'm thinking. She's sadly failed of late. And so, Mary, yo see, we're two ladies o' property. It's a matter o' twenty pound a year they tell me. I wish the twins had lived, bless 'em," said she, dropping a few tears. "They should ha' had the best o' schooling, and their belly-fulls o' food. I suppose they're better off in heaven, only I should so like to see 'em." Mary's heart filled with love at this new proof of Jem's goodness; but she could not talk about it. She took Jane Wilson's hand, and pressed it with affection; and then turned the subject to Will, her sailor nephew. Jane was a little bit sorry, but her prosperity had made her gentler, and she did not resent what she felt as Mary's indifference to Jem and his merits. "He's been in Africa and that neighbourhood, I believe. He's a fine chap, but he's not gotten Jem's hair. His has too much o' the red in it. He sent Alice (but, maybe, she telled you) a matter o' five pound when he were over before; but that were nought to an income, yo know." "It's not every one that can get a hundred or two at a time," said Mary. "No! no! that's true enough. There's not many a one like Jem. That's Alice's step," said she, hastening to open the door to her sister-in-law. Alice looked weary, and sad, and dusty. The weariness and the dust would not have been noticed either by her, or the others, if it had not been for the sadness. "No letters!" said Mrs. Wilson. "No, none! I must just wait another day to hear fra my lad. It's very dree work, waiting!" said Alice. Margaret's words came into Mary's mind. Every one has their time and kind of waiting. "If I but knew he were safe, and not drowned!" spoke Alice. "If I but knew he _were_ drowned, I would ask grace to say, Thy will be done. It's the waiting." "It's hard work to be patient to all of us," said Mary; "I know I find it so, but I did not know one so good as you did, Alice; I shall not think so badly of myself for being a bit impatient, now I've heard you say you find it difficult." The idea of reproach to Alice was the last in Mary's mind; and Alice knew it was. Nevertheless, she said, "Then, my dear, I ask your pardon, and God's pardon, too, if I've weakened your faith, by showing you how feeble mine was. Half our life's spent in waiting, and it ill becomes one like me, wi' so many mercies, to grumble. I'll try and put a bridle o'er my tongue, and my thoughts too." She spoke in a humble and gentle voice, like one asking forgiveness. "Come, Alice," interposed Mrs. Wilson, "don't fret yoursel for e'er a trifle wrong said here or there. See! I've put th' kettle on, and you and Mary shall ha' a dish o' tea in no time." So she bustled about, and brought out a comfortable-looking substantial loaf, and set Mary to cut bread and butter, while she rattled out the tea-cups--always a cheerful sound. Just as they were sitting down, there was a knock heard at the door, and without waiting for it to be opened from the inside, some one lifted the latch, and in a man's voice asked, if one George Wilson lived there? Mrs. Wilson was entering on a long and sorrowful explanation of his having once lived there, but of his having dropped down dead; when Alice, with the instinct of love (for in all usual and common instances, sight and hearing failed to convey impressions to her until long after other people had received them), arose, and tottered to the door. "My bairn!--my own dear bairn!" she exclaimed, falling on Will Wilson's neck. You may fancy the hospitable and welcoming commotion that ensued; how Mrs. Wilson laughed, and talked, and cried, altogether, if such a thing can be done; and how Mary gazed with wondering pleasure at her old playmate; now a dashing, bronzed-looking, ringletted sailor, frank, and hearty, and affectionate. But it was something different from common to see Alice's joy at once more having her foster-child with her. She did not speak, for she really could not; but the tears came coursing down her old withered cheeks, and dimmed the horn spectacles she had put on, in order to pry lovingly into his face. So what with her failing sight, and her tear-blinded eyes, she gave up the attempt of learning his face by heart through the medium of that sense, and tried another. She passed her sodden, shrivelled hands, all trembling with eagerness, over his manly face, bent meekly down in order that she might more easily make her strange inspection. At last, her soul was satisfied. After tea, Mary, feeling sure there was much to be said on both sides, at which it would be better no one should be present, not even an intimate friend like herself, got up to go away. This seemed to arouse Alice from her dreamy consciousness of exceeding happiness, and she hastily followed Mary to the door. There, standing outside, with the latch in her hand, she took hold of Mary's arm, and spoke nearly the first words she had uttered since her nephew's return. "My dear! I shall never forgive mysel, if my wicked words to-night are any stumbling-block in your path. See how the Lord has put coals of fire on my head! Oh! Mary, don't let my being an unbelieving Thomas weaken your faith. Wait patiently on the Lord, whatever your trouble may be." CHAPTER XIII. A TRAVELLER'S TALES. "The mermaid sat upon the rocks All day long, Admiring her beauty and combing her locks, And singing a mermaid song. "And hear the mermaid's song you may, As sure as sure can be, If you will but follow the sun all day, And souse with him into the sea." W. S. LANDOR. It was perhaps four or five days after the events mentioned in the last chapter, that one evening, as Mary stood lost in reverie at the window, she saw Will Wilson enter the court, and come quickly up to her door. She was glad to see him, for he had always been a friend of hers, perhaps too much like her in character ever to become any thing nearer or dearer. She opened the door in readiness to receive his frank greeting, which she as frankly returned. "Come, Mary! on with bonnet and shawl, or whatever rigging you women require before leaving the house. I'm sent to fetch you, and I can't lose time when I'm under orders." "Where am I to go to?" asked Mary, as her heart leaped up at the thought of who might be waiting for her. "Not very far," replied he. "Only to old Job Legh's round the corner here. Aunt would have me come and see these new friends of hers, and then we meant to ha' come on here to see you and your father, but the old gentleman seems inclined to make a night of it, and have you all there. Where's your father? I want to see him. He must come too." "He's out, but I'll leave word next door for him to follow me; that's to say, if he comes home afore long." She added, hesitatingly, "Is any one else at Job's?" "No! My aunt Jane would not come for some maggot or other; and as for Jem! I don't know what you've all been doing to him, but he's as down-hearted a chap as I'd wish to see. He's had his sorrows sure enough, poor lad! But it's time for him to be shaking off his dull looks, and not go moping like a girl." "Then he's come fra Halifax, is he?" asked Mary. "Yes! his body's come, but I think he's left his heart behind him. His tongue I'm sure he has, as we used to say to childer, when they would not speak. I try to rouse him up a bit, and I think he likes having me with him, but still he's as gloomy and as dull as can be. 'Twas only yesterday he took me to the works, and you'd ha' thought us two Quakers as the spirit hadn't moved, all the way down we were so mum. It's a place to craze a man, certainly; such a noisy black hole! There were one or two things worth looking at, the bellows for instance, or the gale they called a bellows. I could ha' stood near it a whole day; and if I'd a berth in that place, I should like to be bellows-man, if there is such a one. But Jem weren't diverted even with that; he stood as grave as a judge while it blew my hat out o' my hand. He's lost all relish for his food, too, which frets my aunt sadly. Come! Mary, ar'n't you ready?" She had not been able to gather if she were to see Jem at Job Legh's; but when the door was opened, she at once saw and felt he was not there. The evening then would be a blank; at least so she thought for the first five minutes; but she soon forgot her disappointment in the cheerful meeting of old friends, all, except herself, with some cause for rejoicing at that very time. Margaret, who could not be idle, was knitting away, with her face looking full into the room, away from her work. Alice sat meek and patient with her dimmed eyes and gentle look, trying to see and to hear, but never complaining; indeed, in her inner self she was blessing God for her happiness; for the joy of having her nephew, her child, near her, was far more present to her mind, than her deprivations of sight and hearing. Job was in the full glory of host and hostess too, for by a tacit agreement he had roused himself from his habitual abstraction, and had assumed many of Margaret's little household duties. While he moved about he was deep in conversation with the young sailor, trying to extract from him any circumstances connected with the natural history of the different countries he had visited. "Oh! if you are fond of grubs, and flies, and beetles, there's no place for 'em like Sierra Leone. I wish you'd had some of ours; we had rather too much of a good thing; we drank them with our drink, and could scarcely keep from eating them with our food. I never thought any folk could care for such fat green beasts as those, or I would ha' brought you them by the thousand. A plate full o' peas-soup would ha' been full enough for you, I dare say; it were often too full for us." "I would ha' given a good deal for some on 'em," said Job. "Well, I knew folk at home liked some o' the queer things one meets with abroad; but I never thought they'd care for them nasty slimy things. I were always on the look-out for a mermaid, for that I knew were a curiosity." "You might ha' looked long enough," said Job, in an under-tone of contempt, which, however, the quick ears of the sailor caught. "Not so long, master, in some latitudes, as you think. It stands to reason th' sea hereabouts is too cold for mermaids; for women here don't go half-naked on account o' climate. But I've been in lands where muslin were too hot to wear on land, and where the sea were more than milk-warm; and though I'd never the good luck to see a mermaid in that latitude, I know them that has." "Do tell us about it," cried Mary. "Pooh, pooh!" said Job the naturalist. Both speeches determined Will to go on with his story. What could a fellow who had never been many miles from home know about the wonders of the deep, that he should put him down in that way? "Well, it were Jack Harris, our third mate last voyage, as many and many a time telled us all about it. You see he were becalmed off Chatham Island (that's in the Great Pacific, and a warm enough latitude for mermaids, and sharks, and such like perils). So some of the men took the long boat, and pulled for the island to see what it were like; and when they got near, they heard a puffing, like a creature come up to take breath; you've never heard a diver? No! Well! you've heard folks in th' asthma, and it were for all the world like that. So they looked around, and what should they see but a mermaid, sitting on a rock, and sunning herself. The water is always warmer when it's rough, you know, so I suppose in the calm she felt it rather chilly, and had come up to warm herself." "What was she like?" asked Mary, breathlessly. Job took his pipe off the chimney-piece and began to smoke with very audible puffs, as if the story were not worth listening to. "Oh! Jack used to say she was for all the world as beautiful as any of the wax ladies in the barbers' shops; only, Mary, there were one little difference: her hair was bright grass green." "I should not think that was pretty," said Mary, hesitatingly; as if not liking to doubt the perfection of any thing belonging to such an acknowledged beauty. "Oh! but it is when you're used to it. I always think when first we get sight of land, there's no colour so lovely as grass green. However, she had green hair sure enough; and were proud enough of it, too; for she were combing it out full-length when first they saw her. They all thought she were a fair prize, and may be as good as a whale in ready money (they were whale-fishers you know). For some folk think a deal of mermaids, whatever other folk do." This was a hit at Job, who retaliated in a series of sonorous spittings and puffs. "So, as I were saying, they pulled towards her, thinking to catch her. She were all the while combing her beautiful hair, and beckoning to them, while with the other hand she held a looking-glass." "How many hands had she?" asked Job. "Two, to be sure, just like any other woman," answered Will, indignantly. "Oh! I thought you said she beckoned with one hand, and combed her hair with another, and held a looking-glass with a third," said Job, with provoking quietness. "No! I didn't! at least if I did, I meant she did one thing after another, as any one but" (here he mumbled a word or two) "could understand. Well, Mary," turning very decidedly towards her, "when she saw them coming near, whether it were she grew frightened at their fowling-pieces, as they had on board, for a bit o' shooting on the island, or whether it were she were just a fickle jade as did not rightly know her own mind (which, seeing one half of her was woman, I think myself was most probable), but when they were only about two oars' length from the rock where she sat, down she plopped into the water, leaving nothing but her hinder end of a fish tail sticking up for a minute, and then that disappeared too." "And did they never see her again?" asked Mary. "Never so plain; the man who had the second watch one night declared he saw her swimming round the ship, and holding up her glass for him to look in; and then he saw the little cottage near Aber in Wales (where his wife lived) as plain as ever he saw it in life, and his wife standing outside, shading her eyes as if she were looking for him. But Jack Harris gave him no credit, for he said he were always a bit of a romancer, and beside that, were a home-sick, down-hearted chap." "I wish they had caught her," said Mary, musing. "They got one thing as belonged to her," replied Will, "and that I've often seen with my own eyes, and I reckon it's a sure proof of the truth of their story; for them that wants proof." "What was it?" asked Margaret, almost anxious her grandfather should be convinced. "Why, in her hurry she left her comb on the rock, and one o' the men spied it; so they thought that were better than nothing, and they rowed there and took it, and Jack Harris had it on board the _John Cropper_, and I saw him comb his hair with it every Sunday morning." "What was it like?" asked Mary, eagerly; her imagination running on coral combs, studded with pearls. "Why, if it had not had such a strange yarn belonging to it, you'd never ha' noticed it from any other small-tooth comb." "I should rather think not," sneered Job Legh. The sailor bit his lips to keep down his anger against an old man. Margaret felt very uneasy, knowing her grandfather so well, and not daring to guess what caustic remark might come next to irritate the young sailor guest. Mary, however, was too much interested by the wonders of the deep to perceive the incredulity with which Job Legh received Wilson's account of the mermaid; and when he left off, half offended, and very much inclined not to open his lips again through the evening, she eagerly said, "Oh do tell us something more of what you hear and see on board ship. Do, Will!" "What's the use, Mary, if folk won't believe one. There are things I saw with my own eyes, that some people would pish and pshaw at, as if I were a baby to be put down by cross noises. But I'll tell you, Mary," with an emphasis on _you_, "some more of the wonders of the sea, sin' you're not too wise to believe me. I have seen a fish fly." This did stagger Mary. She had heard of mermaids as signs of inns, and as sea-wonders, but never of flying fish. Not so Job. He put down his pipe, and nodding his head as a token of approbation, he said "Ay, ay! young man. Now you're speaking truth." "Well now! you'll swallow that, old gentleman. You'll credit me when I say I've seen a crittur half fish, half bird, and you won't credit me when I say there be such beasts as mermaids, half fish, half woman. To me, one's just as strange as t'other." "You never saw the mermaid yoursel," interposed Margaret, gently. But "love me, love my dog," was Will Wilson's motto, only his version was "believe me, believe Jack Harris;" and the remark was not so soothing to him as it was intended to have been. "It's the Exocetus; one of the Malacopterygii Abdominales," said Job, much interested. "Ay, there you go! You're one o' them folks as never knows beasts unless they're called out o' their names. Put 'em in Sunday clothes and you know 'em, but in their work-a-day English you never know nought about 'em. I've met wi' many o' your kidney; and if I'd ha' known it, I'd ha' christened poor Jack's mermaid wi' some grand gibberish of a name. Mermaidicus Jack Harrisensis; that's just like their new-fangled words. D'ye believe there's such a thing as the Mermaidicus, master?" asked Will, enjoying his own joke uncommonly, as most people do. "Not I! Tell me about the--" "Well!" said Will, pleased at having excited the old gentleman's faith and credit at last. "It were on this last voyage, about a day's sail from Madeira, that one of our men--" "Not Jack Harris, I hope," murmured Job. "Called me," continued Will, not noticing the interruption, "to see the what d'ye call it--flying fish I say it is. It were twenty feet out o' water, and it flew near on to a hundred yards. But I say, old gentleman, I ha' gotten one dried, and if you'll take it, why, I'll give it you; only," he added, in a lower tone, "I wish you'd just gie me credit for the Mermaidicus." I really believe if the assuming faith in the story of the mermaid had been made the condition of receiving the flying fish, Job Legh, sincere man as he was, would have pretended belief; he was so much delighted at the idea of possessing this specimen. He won the sailor's heart by getting up to shake both his hands in his vehement gratitude, puzzling poor old Alice, who yet smiled through her wonder; for she understood the action to indicate some kindly feeling towards her nephew. Job wanted to prove his gratitude, and was puzzled how to do it. He feared the young man would not appreciate any of his duplicate Araneides; not even the great American Mygale, one of his most precious treasures; or else he would gladly have bestowed any duplicate on the donor of a real dried Exocetus. What could he do for him? He could ask Margaret to sing. Other folks beside her old doating grandfather thought a deal of her songs. So Margaret began some of her noble old-fashioned songs. She knew no modern music (for which her auditors might have been thankful), but she poured her rich voice out in some of the old canzonets she had lately learnt while accompanying the musical lecturer on his tour. Mary was amused to see how the young sailor sat entranced; mouth, eyes, all open, in order to catch every breath of sound. His very lids refused to wink, as if afraid in that brief proverbial interval to lose a particle of the rich music that floated through the room. For the first time the idea crossed Mary's mind that it was possible the plain little sensible Margaret, so prim and demure, might have power over the heart of the handsome, dashing, spirited Will Wilson. Job, too, was rapidly changing his opinion of his new guest. The flying fish went a great way, and his undisguised admiration for Margaret's singing carried him still further. It was amusing enough to see these two, within the hour so barely civil to each other, endeavouring now to be ultra-agreeable. Will, as soon as he had taken breath (a long, deep gasp of admiration) after Margaret's song, sidled up to Job, and asked him in a sort of doubting tone, "You wouldn't like a live Manx cat, would ye, master?" "A what?" exclaimed Job. "I don't know its best name," said Will, humbly. "But we call 'em just Manx cats. They're cats without tails." Now Job, in all his natural history, had never heard of such animals; so Will continued, "Because I'm going, afore joining my ship, to see mother's friends in the island, and would gladly bring you one, if so be you'd like to have it. They look as queer and out o' nature as flying fish, or"--he gulped the words down that should have followed. "Especially when you see 'em walking a roof-top, right again the sky, when a cat, as is a proper cat, is sure to stick her tail stiff out behind, like a slack-rope dancer a-balancing; but these cats having no tail, cannot stick it out, which captivates some people uncommonly. If yo'll allow me, I'll bring one for Miss there," jerking his head at Margaret. Job assented with grateful curiosity, wishing much to see the tail-less phenomenon. "When are you going to sail?" asked Mary. "I cannot justly say; our ship's bound for America next voyage, they tell me. A mess-mate will let me know when her sailing-day is fixed; but I've got to go to th' Isle o' Man first. I promised uncle last time I were in England to go this next time. I may have to hoist the blue Peter any day; so, make much of me while you have me, Mary." Job asked him if he had ever been in America. "Haven't I? North and South both! This time we're bound to North. Yankee-Land, as we call it, where Uncle Sam lives." "Uncle who?" said Mary. "Oh, it's a way sailors have of speaking. I only mean I'm going to Boston, U. S., that's Uncle Sam." Mary did not understand, so she left him and went to sit by Alice, who could not hear conversation unless expressly addressed to her. She had sat patiently silent the greater part of the night, and now greeted Mary with a quiet smile. "Where's yo'r father?" asked she. "I guess he's at his Union; he's there most evenings." Alice shook her head; but whether it were that she did not hear, or that she did not quite approve of what she heard, Mary could not make out. She sat silently watching Alice, and regretting over her dimmed and veiled eyes, formerly so bright and speaking; as if Alice understood by some other sense what was passing in Mary's mind, she turned suddenly round, and answered Mary's thought. "Yo're mourning for me, my dear; and there's no need, Mary. I'm as happy as a child. I sometimes think I am a child, whom the Lord is hushabying to my long sleep. For when I were a nurse-girl, my missis alway telled me to speak very soft and low, and to darken the room that her little one might go to sleep; and now all noises are hushed and still to me, and the bonny earth seems dim and dark, and I know it's my Father lulling me away to my long sleep. I'm very well content, and yo mustn't fret for me. I've had well nigh every blessing in life I could desire." Mary thought of Alice's long-cherished, fond wish to revisit the home of her childhood, so often and often deferred, and now probably never to take place. Or if it did, how changed from the fond anticipation of what it was to have been! It would be a mockery to the blind and deaf Alice. The evening came quickly to an end. There was the humble cheerful meal, and then the bustling merry farewell, and Mary was once more in the quietness and solitude of her own dingy, dreary-looking home; her father still out, the fire extinguished, and her evening's task of work lying all undone upon the dresser. But it had been a pleasant little interlude to think upon. It had distracted her attention for a few hours from the pressure of many uneasy thoughts, of the dark, heavy, oppressive times, when sorrow and want seemed to surround her on every side; of her father, his changed and altered looks, telling so plainly of broken health, and an embittered heart; of the morrow, and the morrow beyond that, to be spent in that close monotonous work-room, with Sally Leadbitter's odious whispers hissing in her ear; and of the hunted look, so full of dread, from Miss Simmonds' door-step up and down the street, lest her persecuting lover should be near: for he lay in wait for her with wonderful perseverance, and of late had made himself almost hateful, by the unmanly force which he had used to detain her to listen to him, and the indifference with which he exposed her to the remarks of the passers-by, any one of whom might circulate reports which it would be terrible for her father to hear--and worse than death should they reach Jem Wilson. And all this she had drawn upon herself by her giddy flirting. Oh! how she loathed the recollection of the hot summer evening, when, worn out by stitching and sewing, she had loitered homewards with weary languor, and first listened to the voice of the tempter. And Jem Wilson! Oh, Jem, Jem, why did you not come to receive some of the modest looks and words of love which Mary longed to give you, to try and make up for the hasty rejection which you as hastily took to be final, though both mourned over it with many tears. But day after day passed away, and patience seemed of no avail; and Mary's cry was ever the old moan of the Moated Grange, "Why comes he not," she said, "I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead." CHAPTER XIV. JEM'S INTERVIEW WITH POOR ESTHER. "Know the temptation ere you judge the crime! Look on this tree--'twas green, and fair, and graceful; Yet now, save these few shoots, how dry and rotten! Thou canst not tell the cause. Not long ago, A neighbour oak, with which its roots were twined, In falling wrenched them with such cruel force, That though we covered them again with care, Its beauty withered, and it pined away. So, could we look into the human breast, How oft the fatal blight that meets our view, Should we trace down to the torn, bleeding fibres Of a too trusting heart--where it were shame, For pitying tears, to give contempt or blame." "STREET WALKS." The month was over;--the honeymoon to the newly-married; the exquisite convalescence to the "living mother of a living child;" the "first dark days of nothingness" to the widow and the child bereaved; the term of penance, of hard labour, and solitary confinement, to the shrinking, shivering, hopeless prisoner. "Sick, and in prison, and ye visited me." Shall you, or I, receive such blessing? I know one who will. An overseer of a foundry, an aged man, with hoary hair, has spent his Sabbaths, for many years, in visiting the prisoners and the afflicted in Manchester New Bailey; not merely advising and comforting, but putting means into their power of regaining the virtue and the peace they had lost; becoming himself their guarantee in obtaining employment, and never deserting those who have once asked help from him. [43] [Footnote 43: Vide _Manchester Guardian_, of Wednesday, March 18, 1846; and also the Reports of Captain Williams, prison inspector.] Esther's term of imprisonment was ended. She received a good character in the governor's books; she had picked her daily quantity of oakum, had never deserved the extra punishment of the tread-mill, and had been civil and decorous in her language. And once more she was out of prison. The door closed behind her with a ponderous clang, and in her desolation she felt as if shut out of home--from the only shelter she could meet with, houseless and pennyless as she was, on that dreary day. But it was but for an instant that she stood there doubting. One thought had haunted her both by night and by day, with monomaniacal incessancy; and that thought was how to save Mary (her dead sister's only child, her own little pet in the days of her innocence) from following in the same downward path to vice. To whom could she speak and ask for aid? She shrank from the idea of addressing John Barton again; her heart sank within her, at the remembrance of his fierce repulsing action, and far fiercer words. It seemed worse than death to reveal her condition to Mary, else she sometimes thought that this course would be the most terrible, the most efficient warning. She must speak; to that she was soul-compelled; but to whom? She dreaded addressing any of her former female acquaintance, even supposing they had sense, or spirit, or interest enough to undertake her mission. To whom shall the outcast prostitute tell her tale? Who will give her help in her day of need? Hers is the leper-sin, and all stand aloof dreading to be counted unclean. In her wild night wanderings, she had noted the haunts and habits of many a one who little thought of a watcher in the poor forsaken woman. You may easily imagine that a double interest was attached by her to the ways and companionships of those with whom she had been acquainted in the days which, when present, she had considered hardly-worked and monotonous, but which now in retrospection seemed so happy and unclouded. Accordingly, she had, as we have seen, known where to meet with John Barton on that unfortunate night, which had only produced irritation in him, and a month's imprisonment to her. She had also observed that he was still intimate with the Wilsons. She had seen him walking and talking with both father and son; her old friends too; and she had shed unregarded, unvalued tears, when some one had casually told her of George Wilson's sudden death. It now flashed across her mind, that to the son, to Mary's play-fellow, her elder brother in the days of childhood, her tale might be told, and listened to with interest, and some mode of action suggested by him by which Mary might be guarded and saved. All these thoughts had passed through her mind while yet she was in prison; so when she was turned out, her purpose was clear, and she did not feel her desolation of freedom as she would otherwise have done. That night she stationed herself early near the foundry where she knew Jem worked; he stayed later than usual, being detained by some arrangements for the morrow. She grew tired and impatient; many workmen had come out of the door in the long, dead, brick wall, and eagerly had she peered into their faces, deaf to all insult or curse. He must have gone home early; one more turn in the street, and she would go. During that turn he came out, and in the quiet of that street of workshops and warehouses, she directly heard his steps. Now her heart failed her for an instant; but still she was not daunted from her purpose, painful as its fulfilment was sure to be. She laid her hand on his arm. As she expected, after a momentary glance at the person who thus endeavoured to detain him, he made an effort to shake it off, and pass on. But trembling as she was, she had provided against this by a firm and unusual grasp. "You must listen to me, Jem Wilson," she said, with almost an accent of command. "Go away, missis; I've nought to do with you, either in hearkening, or talking." He made another struggle. "You must listen," she said again, authoritatively, "for Mary Barton's sake." The spell of her name was as potent as that of the mariner's glittering eye. "He listened like a three-year child." "I know you care enough for her to wish to save her from harm." He interrupted his earnest gaze into her face, with the exclamation-- "And who can yo be to know Mary Barton, or to know that she's ought to me?" There was a little strife in Esther's mind for an instant, between the shame of acknowledging herself, and the additional weight to her revelation which such acknowledgment would give. Then she spoke. "Do you remember Esther, the sister of John Barton's wife? the aunt to Mary? And the Valentine I sent you last February ten years?" "Yes, I mind her well! But yo are not Esther, are you?" He looked again into her face, and seeing that indeed it was his boyhood's friend, he took her hand, and shook it with a cordiality that forgot the present in the past. "Why, Esther! Where han ye been this many a year? Where han ye been wandering that we none of us could find you out?" The question was asked thoughtlessly, but answered with fierce earnestness. "Where have I been? What have I been doing? Why do you torment me with questions like these? Can you not guess? But the story of my life is wanted to give force to my speech, afterwards I will tell it you. Nay! don't change your fickle mind now, and say you don't want to hear it. You must hear it, and I must tell it; and then see after Mary, and take care she does not become like me. As she is loving now, so did I love once; one above me far." She remarked not, in her own absorption, the change in Jem's breathing, the sudden clutch at the wall which told the fearfully vivid interest he took in what she said. "He was so handsome, so kind! Well, the regiment was ordered to Chester (did I tell you he was an officer?), and he could not bear to part from me, nor I from him, so he took me with him. I never thought poor Mary would have taken it so to heart! I always meant to send for her to pay me a visit when I was married; for, mark you! he promised me marriage. They all do. Then came three years of happiness. I suppose I ought not to have been happy, but I was. I had a little girl, too. Oh! the sweetest darling that ever was seen! But I must not think of her," putting her hand wildly up to her forehead, "or I shall go mad; I shall." "Don't tell me any more about yoursel," said Jem, soothingly. "What! you're tired already, are you? but I'll tell you; as you've asked for it, you shall hear it. I won't recall the agony of the past for nothing. I will have the relief of telling it. Oh, how happy I was!"--sinking her voice into a plaintive child-like manner. "It came like a shot on me when one day he came to me and told me he was ordered to Ireland, and must leave me behind; at Bristol we then were." Jem muttered some words; she caught their meaning, and in a pleading voice continued, "Oh, don't abuse him; don't speak a word against him! You don't know how I love him yet; yet, when I am sunk so low. You don't guess how kind he was. He gave me fifty pound before we parted, and I knew he could ill spare it. Don't, Jem, please," as his muttered indignation rose again. For her sake he ceased. "I might have done better with the money; I see now. But I did not know the value of money. Formerly I had earned it easily enough at the factory, and as I had no more sensible wants, I spent it on dress and on eating. While I lived with him, I had it for asking; and fifty pounds would, I thought, go a long way. So I went back to Chester, where I'd been so happy, and set up a small-ware shop, and hired a room near. We should have done well, but alas! alas! my little girl fell ill, and I could not mind my shop and her too; and things grew worse and worse. I sold my goods any how to get money to buy her food and medicine; I wrote over and over again to her father for help, but he must have changed his quarters, for I never got an answer. The landlord seized the few bobbins and tapes I had left, for shop-rent; and the person to whom the mean little room, to which we had been forced to remove, belonged, threatened to turn us out unless his rent was paid; it had run on many weeks, and it was winter, cold bleak winter; and my child was so ill, so ill, and I was starving. And I could not bear to see her suffer, and forgot how much better it would be for us to die together;--oh her moans, her moans, which money would give me the means of relieving! So I went out into the street, one January night--Do you think God will punish me for that?" she asked with wild vehemence, almost amounting to insanity, and shaking Jem's arm in order to force an answer from him. But before he could shape his heart's sympathy into words, her voice had lost its wildness, and she spoke with the quiet of despair. "But it's no matter! I've done that since, which separates us as far asunder as heaven and hell can be." Her voice rose again to the sharp pitch of agony. "My darling! my darling! even after death I may not see thee, my own sweet one! She was so good--like a little angel. What is that text, I don't remember,--that text mother used to teach me when I sat on her knee long ago; it begins, 'Blessed are the pure'"-- "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." "Ay, that's it! It would break mother's heart if she knew what I am now--it did break Mary's heart, you see. And now I recollect it was about her child I wanted so to see you, Jem. You know Mary Barton, don't you?" said she, trying to collect her thoughts. Yes, Jem knew her. How well, his beating heart could testify! "Well, there's something to do for her; I forget what; wait a minute! She is so like my little girl;" said she, raising her eyes, glistening with unshed tears, in search of the sympathy of Jem's countenance. He deeply pitied her; but oh! how he longed to recall her mind to the subject of Mary, and the lover above her in rank, and the service to be done for her sake. But he controlled himself to silence. After awhile, she spoke again, and in a calmer voice. "When I came to Manchester (for I could not stay in Chester after her death), I found you all out very soon. And yet I never thought my poor sister was dead. I suppose I would not think so. I used to watch about the court where John lived, for many and many a night, and gather all I could about them from the neighbours' talk; for I never asked a question. I put this and that together, and followed one, and listened to the other; many's the time I've watched the policeman off his beat, and peeped through the chink of the window-shutter to see the old room, and sometimes Mary or her father sitting up late for some reason or another. I found out Mary went to learn dress-making, and I began to be frightened for her; for it's a bad life for a girl to be out late at night in the streets, and after many an hour of weary work, they're ready to follow after any novelty that makes a little change. But I made up my mind, that bad as I was, I could watch over Mary and perhaps keep her from harm. So I used to wait for her at nights, and follow her home, often when she little knew any one was near her. There was one of her companions I never could abide, and I'm sure that girl is at the bottom of some mischief. By-and-bye, Mary's walks homewards were not alone. She was joined soon after she came out, by a man; a gentleman. I began to fear for her, for I saw she was light-hearted, and pleased with his attentions; and I thought worse of him for having such long talks with that bold girl I told you of. But I was laid up for a long time with spitting of blood; and could do nothing. I'm sure it made me worse, thinking about what might be happening to Mary. And when I came out, all was going on as before, only she seemed fonder of him than ever; and oh Jem! her father won't listen to me, and it's you must save Mary! You're like a brother to her, and maybe could give her advice and watch over her, and at any rate John will hearken to you; only he's so stern and so cruel." She began to cry a little at the remembrance of his harsh words; but Jem cut her short by his hoarse, stern inquiry, "Who is this spark that Mary loves? Tell me his name!" "It's young Carson, old Carson's son, that your father worked for." There was a pause. She broke the silence. "Oh! Jem, I charge you with the care of her! I suppose it would be murder to kill her, but it would be better for her to die than to live to lead such a life as I do. Do you hear me, Jem?" "Yes! I hear you. It would be better. Better we were all dead." This was said as if thinking aloud; but he immediately changed his tone, and continued, "Esther, you may trust to my doing all I can for Mary. That I have determined on. And now listen to me! you loathe the life you lead, else you would not speak of it as you do. Come home with me. Come to my mother. She and my aunt Alice live together. I will see that they give you a welcome. And to-morrow I will see if some honest way of living cannot be found for you. Come home with me." She was silent for a minute, and he hoped he had gained his point. Then she said, "God bless you, Jem, for the words you have just spoken. Some years ago you might have saved me, as I hope and trust you will yet save Mary. But it is too late now;--too late," she added, with accents of deep despair. Still he did not relax his hold. "Come home," he said. "I tell you, I cannot. I could not lead a virtuous life if I would. I should only disgrace you. If you will know all," said she, as he still seemed inclined to urge her, "I must have drink. Such as live like me could not bear life if they did not drink. It's the only thing to keep us from suicide. If we did not drink, we could not stand the memory of what we have been, and the thought of what we are, for a day. If I go without food, and without shelter, I must have my dram. Oh! you don't know the awful nights I have had in prison for want of it!" said she, shuddering, and glaring round with terrified eyes, as if dreading to see some spiritual creature, with dim form, near her. "It is so frightful to see them," whispering in tones of wildness, although so low spoken. "There they go round and round my bed the whole night through. My mother, carrying little Annie (I wonder how they got together) and Mary--and all looking at me with their sad, stony eyes; oh Jem! it is so terrible! They don't turn back either, but pass behind the head of the bed, and I feel their eyes on me everywhere. If I creep under the clothes I still see them; and what is worse," hissing out her words with fright, "they see me. Don't speak to me of leading a better life--I must have drink. I cannot pass to-night without a dram; I dare not." Jem was silent from deep sympathy. Oh! could he, then, do nothing for her! She spoke again, but in a less excited tone, although it was thrillingly earnest. "You are grieved for me! I know it better than if you told me in words. But you can do nothing for me. I am past hope. You can yet save Mary. You must. She is innocent, except for the great error of loving one above her in station. Jem! you _will_ save her?" With heart and soul, though in few words, Jem promised that if aught earthly could keep her from falling, he would do it. Then she blessed him, and bade him good-night. "Stay a minute," said he, as she was on the point of departure. "I may want to speak to you again. I mun know where to find you--where do you live?" She laughed strangely. "And do you think one sunk so low as I am has a home? Decent, good people have homes. We have none. No, if you want me, come at night, and look at the corners of the streets about here. The colder, the bleaker, the more stormy the night, the more certain you will be to find me. For then," she added, with a plaintive fall in her voice, "it is so cold sleeping in entries, and on door-steps, and I want a dram more than ever." Again she rapidly turned off, and Jem also went on his way. But before he reached the end of the street, even in the midst of the jealous anguish that filled his heart, his conscience smote him. He had not done enough to save her. One more effort, and she might have come. Nay, twenty efforts would have been well rewarded by her yielding. He turned back, but she was gone. In the tumult of his other feelings, his self-reproach was deadened for the time. But many and many a day afterwards he bitterly regretted his omission of duty; his weariness of well-doing. Now, the great thing was to reach home, and solitude. Mary loved another! Oh! how should he bear it? He had thought her rejection of him a hard trial, but that was nothing now. He only remembered it, to be thankful he had not yielded to the temptation of trying his fate again, not in actual words, but in a meeting, where her manner should tell far more than words, that her sweeter smiles, her dainty movements, her pretty household ways, were all to be reserved to gladden another's eyes and heart. And he must live on; that seemed the strangest. That a long life (and he knew men did live long, even with deep, biting sorrow corroding at their hearts) must be spent without Mary; nay, with the consciousness she was another's! That hell of thought he would reserve for the quiet of his own room, the dead stillness of night. He was on the threshold of home now. He entered. There were the usual faces, the usual sights. He loathed them, and then he cursed himself because he loathed them. His mother's love had taken a cross turn, because he had kept the tempting supper she had prepared for him waiting until it was nearly spoilt. Alice, her dulled senses deadening day by day, sat mutely near the fire; her happiness, bounded by the circle of the consciousness of the presence of her foster child, knowing that his voice repeated what was passing to her deafened ear, that his arm removed each little obstacle to her tottering steps. And Will, out of the very kindness of his heart, talked more and more merrily than ever. He saw Jem was downcast, and fancied his rattling might cheer him; at any rate, it drowned his aunt's muttered grumblings, and in some measure concealed the blank of the evening. At last, bed-time came; and Will withdrew to his neighbouring lodging; and Jane and Alice Wilson had raked the fire, and fastened doors and shutters, and pattered up stairs, with their tottering foot-steps, and shrill voices. Jem, too, went to the closet termed his bed-room. There was no bolt to the door; but by one strong effort of his right arm, a heavy chest was moved against it, and he could sit down on the side of his bed, and think. Mary loved another! That idea would rise uppermost in his mind, and had to be combated in all its forms of pain. It was, perhaps, no great wonder that she should prefer one so much above Jem in the external things of life. But the gentleman; why did he, with his range of choice among the ladies of the land, why did he stoop down to carry off the poor man's darling? With all the glories of the garden at his hand, why did he prefer to cull the wild-rose,--Jem's own fragrant wild-rose? His _own!_ Oh! never now his own!--Gone for evermore! Then uprose the guilty longing for blood!--The frenzy of jealousy!--Some one should die. He would rather Mary were dead, cold in her grave, than that she were another's. A vision of her pale, sweet face, with her bright hair all bedabbled with gore, seemed to float constantly before his aching eyes. But hers were ever open, and contained, in their soft, deathly look, such mute reproach! What had she done to deserve such cruel treatment from him? She had been wooed by one whom Jem knew to be handsome, gay, and bright, and she had given him her love. That was all! It was the wooer who should die. Yes, die, knowing the cause of his death. Jem pictured him (and gloated on the picture), lying smitten, yet conscious; and listening to the upbraiding accusation of his murderer. How he had left his own rank, and dared to love a maiden of low degree; and--oh! stinging agony of all--how she, in return, had loved him! Then the other nature spoke up, and bade him remember the anguish he should so prepare for Mary! At first he refused to listen to that better voice; or listened only to pervert. He would glory in her wailing grief! he would take pleasure in her desolation of heart! No! he could not, said the still small voice. It would be worse, far worse, to have caused such woe, than it was now to bear his present heavy burden. But it was too heavy, too grievous to be borne, and live. He would slay himself, and the lovers should love on, and the sun shine bright, and he with his burning, woeful heart would be at rest. "Rest that is reserved for the people of God." Had he not promised with such earnest purpose of soul, as makes words more solemn than oaths, to save Mary from becoming such as Esther? Should he shrink from the duties of life, into the cowardliness of death? Who would then guard Mary, with her love and her innocence? Would it not be a goodly thing to serve her, although she loved him not; to be her preserving angel, through the perils of life; and she, unconscious all the while? He braced up his soul, and said to himself, that with God's help he would be that earthly keeper. And now the mists and the storms seemed clearing away from his path, though it still was full of stinging thorns. Having done the duty nearest to him (of reducing the tumult of his own heart to something like order), the second became more plain before him. Poor Esther's experience had led her, perhaps, too hastily to the conclusion, that Mr. Carson's intentions were evil towards Mary; at least she had given no just ground for the fears she entertained that such was the case. It was possible, nay, to Jem's heart, very probable, that he might only be too happy to marry her. She was a lady by right of nature, Jem thought; in movement, grace, and spirit. what was birth to a Manchester manufacturer, many of whom glory, and justly too, in being the architects of their own fortunes? And, as far as wealth was concerned, judging another by himself, Jem could only imagine it a great privilege to lay it at the feet of the loved one. Harry Carson's mother had been a factory girl; so, after all, what was the great reason for doubting his intentions towards Mary? There might probably be some little awkwardness about the affair at first: Mary's father having such strong prejudices on the one hand; and something of the same kind being likely to exist on the part of Mr. Carson's family. But Jem knew he had power over John Barton's mind; and it would be something to exert that power in promoting Mary's happiness, and to relinquish all thought of self in so doing. Oh! why had Esther chosen him for this office? It was beyond his strength to act rightly! Why had she singled him out? The answer came when he was calm enough to listen for it. Because Mary had no other friend capable of the duty required of him; the duty of a brother, as Esther imagined him to be in feeling, from his long friendship. He would be unto her as a brother. As such, he ought to ascertain Harry Carson's intentions towards her in winning her affections. He would ask him, straightforwardly, as became man speaking to man, not concealing, if need were, the interest he felt in Mary. Then, with the resolve to do his duty to the best of his power, peace came into his soul; he had left the windy storm and tempest behind. Two hours before day-dawn he fell asleep. CHAPTER XV. A VIOLENT MEETING BETWEEN THE RIVALS. "What thoughtful heart can look into this gulf That darkly yawns 'twixt rich and poor, And not find food for saddest meditation! Can see, without a pang of keenest grief, Them fiercely battling (like some natural foes) Whom God had made, with help and sympathy, To stand as brothers, side by side, united! Where is the wisdom that shall bridge this gulf, And bind them once again in trust and love?" "LOVE-TRUTHS." We must return to John Barton. Poor John! He never got over his disappointing journey to London. The deep mortification he then experienced (with, perhaps, as little selfishness for its cause as mortification ever had) was of no temporary nature; indeed, few of his feelings were. Then came a long period of bodily privation; of daily hunger after food; and though he tried to persuade himself he could bear want himself with stoical indifference, and did care about it as little as most men, yet the body took its revenge for its uneasy feelings. The mind became soured and morose, and lost much of its equipoise. It was no longer elastic, as in the days of youth, or in times of comparative happiness; it ceased to hope. And it is hard to live on when one can no longer hope. The same state of feeling which John Barton entertained, if belonging to one who had had leisure to think of such things, and physicians to give names to them, would have been called monomania; so haunting, so incessant, were the thoughts that pressed upon him. I have somewhere read a forcibly described punishment among the Italians, worthy of a Borgia. The supposed or real criminal was shut up in a room, supplied with every convenience and luxury; and at first mourned little over his imprisonment. But day by day he became aware that the space between the walls of his apartment was narrowing, and then he understood the end. Those painted walls would come into hideous nearness, and at last crush the life out of him. And so day by day, nearer and nearer, came the diseased thoughts of John Barton. They excluded the light of heaven, the cheering sounds of earth. They were preparing his death. It is true, much of their morbid power might be ascribed to the use of opium. But before you blame too harshly this use, or rather abuse, try a hopeless life, with daily cravings of the body for food. Try, not alone being without hope yourself, but seeing all around you reduced to the same despair, arising from the same circumstances; all around you telling (though they use no words or language), by their looks and feeble actions, that they are suffering and sinking under the pressure of want. Would you not be glad to forget life, and its burdens? And opium gives forgetfulness for a time. It is true they who thus purchase it pay dearly for their oblivion; but can you expect the uneducated to count the cost of their whistle? Poor wretches! They pay a heavy price. Days of oppressive weariness and languor, whose realities have the feeble sickliness of dreams; nights, whose dreams are fierce realities of agony; sinking health, tottering frames, incipient madness, and worse, the _consciousness_ of incipient madness; this is the price of their whistle. But have you taught them the science of consequences? John Barton's overpowering thought, which was to work out his fate on earth, was rich and poor; why are they so separate, so distinct, when God has made them all? It is not His will, that their interests are so far apart. Whose doing is it? And so on into the problems and mysteries of life, until, bewildered and lost, unhappy and suffering, the only feeling that remained clear and undisturbed in the tumult of his heart, was hatred to the one class and keen sympathy with the other. But what availed his sympathy? No education had given him wisdom; and without wisdom, even love, with all its effects, too often works but harm. He acted to the best of his judgment, but it was a widely-erring judgment. The actions of the uneducated seem to me typified in those of Frankenstein, that monster of many human qualities, ungifted with a soul, a knowledge of the difference between good and evil. The people rise up to life; they irritate us, they terrify us, and we become their enemies. Then, in the sorrowful moment of our triumphant power, their eyes gaze on us with a mute reproach. Why have we made them what they are; a powerful monster, yet without the inner means for peace and happiness? John Barton became a Chartist, a Communist, all that is commonly called wild and visionary. Ay! but being visionary is something. It shows a soul, a being not altogether sensual; a creature who looks forward for others, if not for himself. And with all his weakness he had a sort of practical power, which made him useful to the bodies of men to whom he belonged. He had a ready kind of rough Lancashire eloquence, arising out of the fulness of his heart, which was very stirring to men similarly circumstanced, who liked to hear their feelings put into words. He had a pretty clear head at times, for method and arrangement; a necessary talent to large combinations of men. And what perhaps more than all made him relied upon and valued, was the consciousness which every one who came in contact with him felt, that he was actuated by no selfish motives; that his class, his order, was what he stood by, not the rights of his own paltry self. For even in great and noble men, as soon as self comes into prominent existence, it becomes a mean and paltry thing. A little time before this, there had come one of those occasions for deliberation among the employed, which deeply interested John Barton; and the discussions concerning which had caused his frequent absence from home of late. I am not sure if I can express myself in the technical terms of either masters or workmen, but I will try simply to state the case on which the latter deliberated. An order for coarse goods came in from a new foreign market. It was a large order, giving employment to all the mills engaged in that species of manufacture: but it was necessary to execute it speedily, and at as low prices as possible, as the masters had reason to believe a duplicate order had been sent to one of the continental manufacturing towns, where there were no restrictions on food, no taxes on building or machinery, and where consequently they dreaded that the goods could be made at a much lower price than they could afford them for; and that, by so acting and charging, the rival manufacturers would obtain undivided possession of the market. It was clearly their interest to buy cotton as cheaply, and to beat down wages as low as possible. And in the long run the interests of the workmen would have been thereby benefited. Distrust each other as they may, the employers and the employed must rise or fall together. There may be some difference as to chronology, none as to fact. But the masters did not choose to make all these facts known. They stood upon being the masters, and that they had a right to order work at their own prices, and they believed that in the present depression of trade, and unemployment of hands, there would be no great difficulty in getting it done. Now let us turn to the workmen's view of the question. The masters (of the tottering foundation of whose prosperity they were ignorant) seemed doing well, and like gentlemen, "lived at home in ease," while they were starving, gasping on from day to day; and there was a foreign order to be executed, the extent of which, large as it was, was greatly exaggerated; and it was to be done speedily. Why were the masters offering such low wages under these circumstances? Shame upon them! It was taking advantage of their work-people being almost starved; but they would starve entirely rather than come into such terms. It was bad enough to be poor, while by the labour of their thin hands, the sweat of their brows, the masters were made rich; but they would not be utterly ground down to dust. No! they would fold their hands, and sit idle, and smile at the masters, whom even in death they could baffle. With Spartan endurance they determined to let the employers know their power, by refusing to work. So class distrusted class, and their want of mutual confidence wrought sorrow to both. The masters would not be bullied, and compelled to reveal why they felt it wisest and best to offer only such low wages; they would not be made to tell that they were even sacrificing capital to obtain a decisive victory over the continental manufacturers. And the workmen sat silent and stern with folded hands, refusing to work for such pay. There was a strike in Manchester. Of course it was succeeded by the usual consequences. Many other Trades' Unions, connected with different branches of business, supported with money, countenance, and encouragement of every kind, the stand which the Manchester power-loom weavers were making against their masters. Delegates from Glasgow, from Nottingham, and other towns, were sent to Manchester, to keep up the spirit of resistance; a committee was formed, and all the requisite officers elected; chairman, treasurer, honorary secretary:--among them was John Barton. The masters, meanwhile, took their measures. They placarded the walls with advertisements for power-loom weavers. The workmen replied by a placard in still larger letters, stating their grievances. The masters met daily in town, to mourn over the time (so fast slipping away) for the fulfilment of the foreign orders; and to strengthen each other in their resolution not to yield. If they gave up now, they might give up always. It would never do. And amongst the most energetic of the masters, the Carsons, father and son, took their places. It is well known, that there is no religionist so zealous as a convert; no masters so stern, and regardless of the interests of their work-people, as those who have risen from such a station themselves. This would account for the elder Mr. Carson's determination not to be bullied into yielding; not even to be bullied into giving reasons for acting as the masters did. It was the employer's will, and that should be enough for the employed. Harry Carson did not trouble himself much about the grounds for his conduct. He liked the excitement of the affair. He liked the attitude of resistance. He was brave, and he liked the idea of personal danger, with which some of the more cautious tried to intimidate the violent among the masters. Meanwhile, the power-loom weavers living in the more remote parts of Lancashire, and the neighbouring counties, heard of the masters' advertisements for workmen; and in their solitary dwellings grew weary of starvation, and resolved to come to Manchester. Foot-sore, way-worn, half-starved looking men they were, as they tried to steal into town in the early dawn, before people were astir, or late in the dusk of evening. And now began the real wrong-doing of the Trades' Unions. As to their decision to work, or not, at such a particular rate of wages, that was either wise or unwise; all error of judgment at the worst. But they had no right to tyrannise over others, and tie them down to their own procrustean bed. Abhorring what they considered oppression in the masters, why did they oppress others? Because, when men get excited, they know not what they do. Judge, then, with something of the mercy of the Holy One, whom we all love. In spite of policemen set to watch over the safety of the poor country weavers,--in spite of magistrates, and prisons, and severe punishments,--the poor depressed men tramping in from Burnley, Padiham, and other places, to work at the condemned "Starvation Prices," were waylaid, and beaten, and left almost for dead by the road-side. The police broke up every lounging knot of men:--they separated quietly, to reunite half-a-mile further out of town. Of course the feeling between the masters and workmen did not improve under these circumstances. Combination is an awful power. It is like the equally mighty agency of steam; capable of almost unlimited good or evil. But to obtain a blessing on its labours, it must work under the direction of a high and intelligent will; incapable of being misled by passion, or excitement. The will of the operatives had not been guided to the calmness of wisdom. So much for generalities. Let us now return to individuals. A note, respectfully worded, although its tone of determination was strong, had been sent from the power-loom weavers, requesting that a "deputation" of them might have a meeting with the masters, to state the conditions they must have fulfilled before they would end the turn-out. They thought they had attained a sufficiently commanding position to dictate. John Barton was appointed one of the deputation. The masters agreed to this meeting, being anxious to end the strife, although undetermined among themselves how far they should yield, or whether they should yield at all. Some of the old, whose experience had taught them sympathy, were for concession. Others, white-headed men too, had only learnt hardness and obstinacy from the days of the years of their lives, and sneered at the more gentle and yielding. The younger men were one and all for an unflinching resistance to claims urged with so much violence. Of this party Harry Carson was the leader. But like all energetic people, the more he had to do the more time he seemed to find. With all his letter-writing, his calling, his being present at the New Bailey, when investigations of any case of violence against knob-sticks [44] were going on, he beset Mary more than ever. She was weary of her life for him. From blandishments he had even gone to threats--threats that whether she would or not she should be his; he showed an indifference that was almost insulting to every thing that might attract attention and injure her character. [Footnote 44: "Knob-sticks," those who consent to work at lower wages.] And still she never saw Jem. She knew he had returned home. She heard of him occasionally through his cousin, who roved gaily from house to house, finding and making friends everywhere. But she never saw him. What was she to think? Had he given her up? Were a few hasty words, spoken in a moment of irritation, to stamp her lot through life? At times she thought that she could bear this meekly, happy in her own constant power of loving. For of change or of forgetfulness she did not dream. Then at other times her state of impatience was such, that it required all her self-restraint to prevent her from going and seeking him out, and (as man would do to man, or woman to woman) begging him to forgive her hasty words, and allow her to retract them, and bidding him accept of the love that was filling her whole heart. She wished Margaret had not advised her against such a manner of proceeding; she believed it was her friend's words that seemed to make such a simple action impossible, in spite of all the internal urgings. But a friend's advice is only thus powerful, when it puts into language the secret oracle of our souls. It was the whisperings of her womanly nature that caused her to shrink from any unmaidenly action, not Margaret's counsel. All this time, this ten days or so, of Will's visit to Manchester, there was something going on which interested Mary even now, and which, in former times, would have exceedingly amused and excited her. She saw as clearly as if told in words, that the merry, random, boisterous sailor had fallen deeply in love with the quiet, prim, somewhat plain Margaret: she doubted if Margaret was aware of it, and yet, as she watched more closely, she began to think some instinct made the blind girl feel whose eyes were so often fixed upon her pale face; that some inner feeling made the delicate and becoming rose-flush steal over her countenance. She did not speak so decidedly as before; there was a hesitation in her manner, that seemed to make her very attractive; as if something softer, more loveable than excellent sense, were coming in as a motive for speech; her eyes had always been soft, and were in no ways disfigured by her blindness, and now seemed to have a new charm, as they quivered under their white down-cast lids. She must be conscious, thought Mary,--heart answering heart. Will's love had no blushings, no downcast eyes, no weighing of words; it was as open and undisguised as his nature; yet he seemed afraid of the answer its acknowledgment might meet with. It was Margaret's angelic voice that had entranced him, and which made him think of her as a being of some other sphere, that he feared to woo. So he tried to propitiate Job in all manner of ways. He went over to Liverpool to rummage in his great sea-chest for the flying-fish (no very odorous present by the way). He hesitated over a child's caul for some time, which was, in his eyes, a far greater treasure than any Exocetus. What use could it be of to a landsman? Then Margaret's voice rang in his ears; and he determined to sacrifice it, his most precious possession, to one whom she loved, as she did her grandfather. It was rather a relief to him, when, having put it and the flying-fish together in a brown paper parcel, and sat upon them for security all the way in the railroad, he found that Job was so indifferent to the precious caul, that he might easily claim it again. He hung about Margaret, till he had received many warnings and reproaches from his conscience in behalf of his dear aunt Alice's claims upon his time. He went away, and then he bethought him of some other little word with Job. And he turned back, and stood talking once more in Margaret's presence, door in hand, only waiting for some little speech of encouragement to come in and sit down again. But as the invitation was not given, he was forced to leave at last, and go and do his duty. Four days had Jem Wilson watched for Mr. Harry Carson without success; his hours of going and returning to his home were so irregular, owing to the meetings and consultations among the masters, which were rendered necessary by the turn-out. On the fifth, without any purpose on Jem's part, they met. It was the workmen's dinner-hour, the interval between twelve and one; when the streets of Manchester are comparatively quiet, for a few shopping ladies and lounging gentlemen count for nothing in that busy, bustling, living place. Jem had been on an errand for his master, instead of returning to his dinner; and in passing along a lane, a road (called, in compliment to the intentions of some future builder, a street), he encountered Harry Carson, the only person, as far as he saw beside himself, treading the unfrequented path. Along one side ran a high broad fence, blackened over by coal-tar, and spiked and stuck with pointed nails at the top, to prevent any one from climbing over into the garden beyond. By this fence was the foot-path. The carriage road was such as no carriage, no, not even a cart, could possibly have passed along, without Hercules to assist in lifting it out of the deep clay ruts. On the other side of the way was a dead brick wall; and a field after that, where there was a sawpit, and joiner's shed. Jem's heart beat violently when he saw the gay, handsome young man approaching, with a light, buoyant step. This, then, was he whom Mary loved. It was, perhaps, no wonder; for he seemed to the poor smith so elegant, so well-appointed, that he felt his superiority in externals, strangely and painfully, for an instant. Then something uprose within him, and told him, that "a man's a man for a' that, for a' that, and twice as much as a' that." And he no longer felt troubled by the outward appearance of his rival. Harry Carson came on, lightly bounding over the dirty places with almost a lad's buoyancy. To his surprise the dark, sturdy-looking artisan stopped him by saying respectfully, "May I speak a word wi' you, sir?" "Certainly, my good man," looking his astonishment; then finding that the promised speech did not come very quickly, he added, "But make haste, for I'm in a hurry." Jem had cast about for some less abrupt way of broaching the subject uppermost in his mind than he now found himself obliged to use. With a husky voice that trembled as he spoke, he said, "I think, sir, yo're keeping company wi' a young woman called Mary Barton?" A light broke in upon Harry Carson's mind, and he paused before he gave the answer for which the other waited. Could this man be a lover of Mary's? And (strange, stinging thought) could he be beloved by her, and so have caused her obstinate rejection of himself? He looked at Jem from head to foot, a black, grimy mechanic, in dirty fustian clothes, strongly built, and awkward (according to the dancing-master); then he glanced at himself, and recalled the reflection he had so lately quitted in his bed-room. It was impossible. No woman with eyes could choose the one when the other wooed. It was Hyperion to a Satyr. That quotation came aptly; he forgot "That a man's a man for a' that." And yet here was a clue, which he had often wanted, to her changed conduct towards him. If she loved this man. If-- he hated the fellow, and longed to strike him. He would know all. "Mary Barton! let me see. Ay, that is the name of the girl. An arrant flirt, the little hussy is; but very pretty. Ay, Mary Barton is her name." Jem bit his lips. Was it then so; that Mary was a flirt, the giddy creature of whom he spoke? He would not believe it, and yet how he wished the suggestive words unspoken. That thought must keep now, though. Even if she were, the more reason for there being some one to protect her; poor, faulty darling. "She's a good girl, sir, though may be a bit set up with her beauty; but she's her father's only child, sir, and--" he stopped; he did not like to express suspicion, and yet he was determined he would be certain there was ground for none. What should he say? "Well, my fine fellow, and what have I to do with that? It's but loss of my time, and yours, too, if you've only stopped me to tell me Mary Barton is very pretty; I know that well enough." He seemed as though he would have gone on, but Jem put his black, working, right hand upon his arm to detain him. The haughty young man shook it off, and with his glove pretended to brush away the sooty contamination that might be left upon his light great-coat sleeve. The little action aroused Jem. "I will tell you in plain words what I have got to say to you, young man. It's been telled me by one as knows, and has seen, that you walk with this same Mary Barton, and are known to be courting her; and her as spoke to me about it, thinks as how Mary loves you. That may be, or may not. But I'm an old friend of hers, and her father's; and I just wished to know if you mean to marry the girl. Spite of what you said of her lightness, I ha' known her long enough to be sure she'll make a noble wife for any one, let him be what he may; and I mean to stand by her like a brother; and if you mean rightly, you'll not think the worse on me for what I've now said; and if--but no, I'll not say what I'll do to the man who wrongs a hair of her head. He shall rue it the longest day he lives, that's all. Now, sir, what I ask of you is this. If you mean fair and honourable by her, well and good; but if not, for your own sake as well as hers, leave her alone, and never speak to her more." Jem's voice quivered with the earnestness with which he spoke, and he eagerly waited for some answer. Harry Carson, meanwhile, instead of attending very particularly to the purpose the man had in addressing him, was trying to gather from his speech what was the real state of the case. He succeeded so far as to comprehend that Jem inclined to believe that Mary loved his rival; and consequently, that if the speaker were attached to her himself, he was not a favoured admirer. The idea came into Mr. Carson's mind, that perhaps, after all, Mary loved him in spite of her frequent and obstinate rejections; and that she had employed this person (whoever he was) to bully him into marrying her. He resolved to try and ascertain more correctly the man's relation to her. Either he was a lover, and if so, not a favoured one (in which case Mr. Carson could not at all understand the man's motives for interesting himself in securing her marriage); or he was a friend, an accomplice, whom she had employed to bully him. So little faith in goodness have the mean and selfish! "Before I make you into my confidant, my good man," said Mr. Carson, in a contemptuous tone, "I think it might be as well to inquire your right to meddle with our affairs. Neither Mary nor I, as I conceive, called you in as a mediator." He paused; he wanted a distinct answer to this last supposition. None came; so he began to imagine he was to be threatened into some engagement, and his angry spirit rose. "And so, my fine fellow, you will have the kindness to leave us to ourselves, and not meddle with what does not concern you. If you were a brother, or father of hers, the case might have been different. As it is, I can only consider you an impertinent meddler." Again he would have passed on, but Jem stood in a determined way before him, saying, "You say if I had been her brother, or her father, you'd have answered me what I ask. Now, neither father nor brother could love her as I have loved her, ay, and as I love her still; if love gives a right to satisfaction, it's next to impossible any one breathing can come up to my right. Now, sir, tell me! do you mean fair by Mary or not? I've proved my claim to know, and, by G----, I will know." "Come, come, no impudence," replied Mr. Carson, who, having discovered what he wanted to know (namely, that Jem was a lover of Mary's, and that she was not encouraging his suit), wished to pass on. "Father, brother, or rejected lover" (with an emphasis on the word rejected), "no one has a right to interfere between my little girl and me. No one shall. Confound you, man! get out of my way, or I'll make you," as Jem still obstructed his path with dogged determination. "I won't, then, till you've given me your word about Mary," replied the mechanic, grinding his words out between his teeth, and the livid paleness of the anger he could no longer keep down covering his face till he looked ghastly. "Won't you?" (with a taunting laugh), "then I'll make you." The young man raised his slight cane, and smote the artisan across the face with a stinging stroke. An instant afterwards he lay stretched in the muddy road, Jem standing over him, panting with rage. What he would have done next in his moment of ungovernable passion, no one knows; but a policeman from the main street, into which this road led, had been sauntering about for some time, unobserved by either of the parties, and expecting some kind of conclusion like the present to the violent discussion going on between the two young men. In a minute he had pinioned Jem, who sullenly yielded to the surprise. Mr. Carson was on his feet directly, his face glowing with rage or shame. "Shall I take him to the lock-ups for assault, sir?" said the policeman. "No, no," exclaimed Mr. Carson; "I struck him first. It was no assault on his side; though," he continued, hissing out his words to Jem, who even hated freedom procured for him, however justly, at the intervention of his rival, "I will never forgive or forget your insult. Trust me," he gasped the words in excess of passion, "Mary shall fare no better for your insolent interference." He laughed, as if with the consciousness of power. Jem replied with equal excitement--"And if you dare to injure her in the least, I will await you where no policeman can step in between. And God shall judge between us two." The policeman now interfered with persuasions and warnings. He locked his arm in Jem's to lead him away in an opposite direction to that in which he saw Mr. Carson was going. Jem submitted gloomily, for a few steps, then wrenched himself free. The policeman shouted after him, "Take care, my man! there's no girl on earth worth what you'll be bringing on yourself if you don't mind." But Jem was out of hearing. CHAPTER XVI. MEETING BETWEEN MASTERS AND WORKMEN. "Not for a moment take the scorner's chair; While seated there, thou know'st not how a word, A tone, a look, may gall thy brother's heart, And make him turn in bitterness against thee." "LOVE-TRUTHS." The day arrived on which the masters were to have an interview with a deputation of the work-people. The meeting was to take place in a public room, at an hotel; and there, about eleven o'clock, the mill-owners, who had received the foreign orders, began to collect. Of course, the first subject, however full their minds might be of another, was the weather. Having done their duty by all the showers and sunshine which had occurred during the past week, they fell to talking about the business which brought them together. There might be about twenty gentlemen in the room, including some by courtesy, who were not immediately concerned in the settlement of the present question; but who, nevertheless, were sufficiently interested to attend. These were divided into little groups, who did not seem unanimous by any means. Some were for a slight concession, just a sugar-plum to quieten the naughty child, a sacrifice to peace and quietness. Some were steadily and vehemently opposed to the dangerous precedent of yielding one jot or one tittle to the outward force of a turn-out. It was teaching the work-people how to become masters, said they. Did they want the wildest thing heareafter, they would know that the way to obtain their wishes would be to strike work. Besides, one or two of those present had only just returned from the New Bailey, where one of the turn-outs had been tried for a cruel assault on a poor north-country weaver, who had attempted to work at the low price. They were indignant, and justly so, at the merciless manner in which the poor fellow had been treated; and their indignation at wrong, took (as it so often does) the extreme form of revenge. They felt as if, rather than yield to the body of men who were resorting to such cruel measures towards their fellow-workmen, they, the masters, would sooner relinquish all the benefits to be derived from the fulfilment of the commission, in order that the workmen might suffer keenly. They forgot that the strike was in this instance the consequence of want and need, suffered unjustly, as the endurers believed; for, however insane, and without ground of reason, such was their belief, and such was the cause of their violence. It is a great truth, that you cannot extinguish violence by violence. You may put it down for a time; but while you are crowing over your imaginary success, see if it does not return with seven devils worse than its former self! No one thought of treating the workmen as brethren and friends, and openly, clearly, as appealing to reasonable men, stating the exact and full circumstances which led the masters to think it was the wise policy of the time to make sacrifices themselves, and to hope for them from the operatives. In going from group to group in the room, you caught such a medley of sentences as the following: "Poor devils! they're near enough to starving, I'm afraid. Mrs. Aldred makes two cows' heads into soup every week, and people come several miles to fetch it; and if these times last we must try and do more. But we must not be bullied into any thing!" "A rise of a shilling or so won't make much difference, and they will go away thinking they've gained their point." "That's the very thing I object to. They'll think so, and whenever they've a point to gain, no matter how unreasonable, they'll strike work." "It really injures them more than us." "I don't see how our interests can be separated." "The d----d brute had thrown vitriol on the poor fellow's ankles, and you know what a bad part that is to heal. He had to stand still with the pain, and that left him at the mercy of the cruel wretch, who beat him about the head till you'd hardly have known he was a man. They doubt if he'll live." "If it were only for that, I'll stand out against them, even if it were the cause of my ruin." "Ay, I for one won't yield one farthing to the cruel brutes; they're more like wild beasts than human beings." (Well! who might have made them different?) "I say, Carson, just go and tell Duncombe of this fresh instance of their abominable conduct. He's wavering, but I think this will decide him." The door was now opened, and a waiter announced that the men were below, and asked if it were the pleasure of the gentlemen that they should be shown up. They assented, and rapidly took their places round the official table; looking, as like as they could, to the Roman senators who awaited the irruption of Brennus and his Gauls. Tramp, tramp, came the heavy clogged feet up the stairs; and in a minute five wild, earnest-looking men stood in the room. John Barton, from some mistake as to time, was not among them. Had they been larger boned men, you would have called them gaunt; as it was, they were little of stature, and their fustian clothes hung loosely upon their shrunk limbs. In choosing their delegates, too, the operatives had had more regard to their brains, and power of speech, than to their wardrobes; they might have read the opinions of that worthy Professor Teufelsdruch, in Sartor Resartus, to judge from the dilapidated coats and trousers, which yet clothed men of parts and of power. It was long since many of them had known the luxury of a new article of dress; and air-gaps were to be seen in their garments. Some of the masters were rather affronted at such a ragged detachment coming between the wind and their nobility; but what cared they? At the request of a gentleman hastily chosen to officiate as chairman, the leader of the delegates read, in a high-pitched, psalm-singing voice, a paper, containing the operatives' statement of the case at issue, their complaints, and their demands, which last were not remarkable for moderation. He was then desired to withdraw for a few minutes, with his fellow delegates, to another room, while the masters considered what should be their definitive answer. When the men had left the room, a whispered earnest consultation took place, every one re-urging his former arguments. The conceders carried the day, but only by a majority of one. The minority haughtily and audibly expressed their dissent from the measures to be adopted, even after the delegates re-entered the room; their words and looks did not pass unheeded by the quick-eyed operatives; their names were registered in bitter hearts. The masters could not consent to the advance demanded by the workmen. They would agree to give one shilling per week more than they had previously offered. Were the delegates empowered to accept such offer? They were empowered to accept or decline any offer made that day by the masters. Then it might be as well for them to consult among themselves as to what should be their decision. They again withdrew. It was not for long. They came back, and positively declined any compromise of their demands. Then up sprang Mr. Henry Carson, the head and voice of the violent party among the masters, and addressing the chairman, even before the scowling operatives, he proposed some resolutions, which he, and those who agreed with him, had been concocting during this last absence of the deputation. They were, firstly, withdrawing the proposal just made, and declaring all communication between the masters and that particular Trades' Union at an end; secondly, declaring that no master would employ any workman in future, unless he signed a declaration that he did not belong to any Trades' Union, and pledged himself not to assist or subscribe to any society, having for its object interference with the masters' powers; and, thirdly, that the masters should pledge themselves to protect and encourage all workmen willing to accept employment on those conditions, and at the rate of wages first offered. Considering that the men who now stood listening with lowering brows of defiance were all of them leading members of the Union, such resolutions were in themselves sufficiently provocative of animosity: but not content with simply stating them, Harry Carson went on to characterise the conduct of the workmen in no measured terms; every word he spoke rendering their looks more livid, their glaring eyes more fierce. One among them would have spoken, but checked himself in obedience to the stern glance and pressure on his arm, received from the leader. Mr. Carson sat down, and a friend instantly got up to second the motion. It was carried, but far from unanimously. The chairman announced it to the delegates (who had been once more turned out of the room for a division). They received it with deep brooding silence, but spake never a word, and left the room without even a bow. Now there had been some by-play at this meeting, not recorded in the Manchester newspapers, which gave an account of the more regular part of the transaction. While the men had stood grouped near the door, on their first entrance, Mr. Harry Carson had taken out his silver pencil, and had drawn an admirable caricature of them--lank, ragged, dispirited, and famine-stricken. Underneath he wrote a hasty quotation from the fat knight's well-known speech in Henry IV. He passed it to one of his neighbours, who acknowledged the likeness instantly, and by him it was sent round to others, who all smiled and nodded their heads. When it came back to its owner he tore the back of the letter on which it was drawn, in two; twisted them up, and flung them into the fire-place; but, careless whether they reached their aim or not, he did not look to see that they fell just short of any consuming cinders. This proceeding was closely observed by one of the men. He watched the masters as they left the hotel (laughing, some of them were, at passing jokes), and when all had gone, he re-entered. He went to the waiter, who recognised him. "There's a bit on a picture up yonder, as one o' the gentlemen threw away; I've a little lad at home as dearly loves a picture; by your leave I'll go up for it." The waiter, good-natured and sympathetic, accompanied him up-stairs; saw the paper picked up and untwisted, and then being convinced, by a hasty glance at its contents, that it was only what the man had called it, "a bit of a picture," he allowed him to bear away his prize. Towards seven o'clock that evening many operatives began to assemble in a room in the Weavers' Arms public-house, a room appropriated for "festive occasions," as the landlord, in his circular, on opening the premises, had described it. But, alas! it was on no festive occasion that they met there on this night. Starved, irritated, despairing men, they were assembling to hear the answer that morning given by the masters to their delegates; after which, as was stated in the notice, a gentleman from London would have the honour of addressing the meeting on the present state of affairs between the employers and the employed, or (as he chose to term them) the idle and the industrious classes. The room was not large, but its bareness of furniture made it appear so. Unshaded gas flared down upon the lean and unwashed artisans as they entered, their eyes blinking at the excess of light. They took their seats on benches, and awaited the deputation. The latter, gloomily and ferociously, delivered the masters' ultimatum, adding thereunto not one word of their own; and it sank all the deeper into the sore hearts of the listeners for their forbearance. Then the "gentleman from London" (who had been previously informed of the masters' decision) entered. You would have been puzzled to define his exact position, or what was the state of his mind as regarded education. He looked so self-conscious, so far from earnest, among the group of eager, fierce, absorbed men, among whom he now stood. He might have been a disgraced medical student of the Bob Sawyer class, or an unsuccessful actor, or a flashy shopman. The impression he would have given you would have been unfavourable, and yet there was much about him that could only be characterised as doubtful. He smirked in acknowledgment of their uncouth greetings, and sat down; then glancing round, he inquired whether it would not be agreeable to the gentlemen present to have pipes and liquor handed round; adding, that he would stand treat. As the man who has had his taste educated to love reading, falls devouringly upon books after a long abstinence, so these poor fellows, whose tastes had been left to educate themselves into a liking for tobacco, beer, and similar gratifications, gleamed up at the proposal of the London delegate. Tobacco and drink deaden the pangs of hunger, and make one forget the miserable home, the desolate future. They were now ready to listen to him with approbation. He felt it; and rising like a great orator, with his right arm outstretched, his left in the breast of his waistcoat, he began to declaim, with a forced theatrical voice. After a burst of eloquence, in which he blended the deeds of the elder and the younger Brutus, and magnified the resistless might of the "millions of Manchester," the Londoner descended to matter-of-fact business, and in his capacity this way he did not belie the good judgment of those who had sent him as delegate. Masses of people, when left to their own free choice, seem to have discretion in distinguishing men of natural talent; it is a pity they so little regard temper and principles. He rapidly dictated resolutions, and suggested measures. He wrote out a stirring placard for the walls. He proposed sending delegates to entreat the assistance of other Trades' Unions in other towns. He headed the list of subscribing Unions, by a liberal donation from that with which he was especially connected in London; and what was more, and more uncommon, he paid down the money in real, clinking, blinking, golden sovereigns! The money, alas, was cravingly required; but before alleviating any private necessities on the morrow, small sums were handed to each of the delegates, who were in a day or two to set out on their expeditions to Glasgow, Newcastle, Nottingham, &c. These men were most of them members of the deputation who had that morning waited upon the masters. After he had drawn up some letters, and spoken a few more stirring words, the gentleman from London withdrew, previously shaking hands all round; and many speedily followed him out of the room, and out of the house. The newly-appointed delegates, and one or two others, remained behind to talk over their respective missions, and to give and exchange opinions in more homely and natural language than they dared to use before the London orator. "He's a rare chap, yon," began one, indicating the departed delegate by a jerk of his thumb towards the door. "He's gotten the gift of the gab, anyhow!" "Ay! ay! he knows what he's about. See how he poured it into us about that there Brutus. He were pretty hard, too, to kill his own son!" "I could kill mine if he took part wi' the masters; to be sure, he's but a step-son, but that makes no odds," said another. But now tongues were hushed, and all eyes were directed towards the member of the deputation who had that morning returned to the hotel to obtain possession of Harry Carson's clever caricature of the operatives. The heads clustered together, to gaze at and detect the likenesses. "That's John Slater! I'd ha' known him anywhere, by his big nose. Lord! how like; that's me, by G----, it's the very way I'm obligated to pin my waistcoat up, to hide that I've gotten no shirt. That _is_ a shame, and I'll not stand it." "Well!" said John Slater, after having acknowledged his nose and his likeness; "I could laugh at a jest as well as e'er the best on 'em, though it did tell again mysel, if I were not clemming" (his eyes filled with tears; he was a poor, pinched, sharp-featured man, with a gentle and melancholy expression of countenance), "and if I could keep from thinking of them at home, as is clemming; but with their cries for food ringing in my ears, and making me afeard of going home, and wonder if I should hear 'em wailing out, if I lay cold and drowned at th' bottom o' th' canal, there,--why, man, I cannot laugh at ought. It seems to make me sad that there is any as can make game on what they've never knowed; as can make such laughable pictures on men, whose very hearts within 'em are so raw and sore as ours were and are, God help us." John Barton began to speak; they turned to him with great attention. "It makes me more than sad, it makes my heart burn within me, to see that folk can make a jest of earnest men; of chaps who comed to ask for a bit o' fire for th' old granny, as shivers in th' cold; for a bit o' bedding, and some warm clothing to the poor wife as lies in labour on th' damp flags; and for victuals for the childer, whose little voices are getting too faint and weak to cry aloud wi' hunger. For, brothers, is not them the things we ask for when we ask for more wage? We donnot want dainties, we want bellyfuls; we donnot want gimcrack coats and waistcoats, we want warm clothes, and so that we get 'em we'd not quarrel wi' what they're made on. We donnot want their grand houses, we want a roof to cover us from the rain, and the snow, and the storm; ay, and not alone to cover us, but the helpless ones that cling to us in the keen wind, and ask us with their eyes why we brought 'em into th' world to suffer?" He lowered his deep voice almost to a whisper. "I've seen a father who had killed his child rather than let it clem before his eyes; and he were a tender-hearted man." He began again in his usual tone. "We come to th' masters wi' full hearts, to ask for them things I named afore. We know that they've gotten money, as we've earned for 'em; we know trade is mending, and that they've large orders, for which they'll be well paid; we ask for our share o' th' payment; for, say we, if th' masters get our share of payment it will only go to keep servants and horses, to more dress and pomp. Well and good, if yo choose to be fools we'll not hinder you, so long as you're just; but our share we must and will have; we'll not be cheated. _We_ want it for daily bread, for life itself; and not for our own lives neither (for there's many a one here, I know by mysel, as would be glad and thankful to lie down and die out o' this weary world), but for the lives of them little ones, who don't yet know what life is, and are afeard of death. Well, we come before th' masters to state what we want, and what we must have, afore we'll set shoulder to their work; and they say, 'No.' One would think that would be enough of hard-heartedness, but it isn't. They go and make jesting pictures of us! I could laugh at mysel, as well as poor John Slater there; but then I must be easy in my mind to laugh. Now I only know that I would give the last drop o' my blood to avenge us on yon chap, who had so little feeling in him as to make game on earnest, suffering men!" A low angry murmur was heard among the men, but it did not yet take form or words. John continued-- "You'll wonder, chaps, how I came to miss the time this morning; I'll just tell you what I was a-doing. Th' chaplain at the New Bailey sent and gived me an order to see Jonas Higginbotham; him as was taken up last week for throwing vitriol in a knob-stick's face. Well, I couldn't help but go; and I didn't reckon it would ha' kept me so late. Jonas were like one crazy when I got to him; he said he could na get rest night or day for th' face of the poor fellow he had damaged; then he thought on his weak, clemmed look, as he tramped, foot-sore, into town; and Jonas thought, may be, he had left them at home as would look for news, and hope and get none, but, haply, tidings of his death. Well, Jonas had thought on these things till he could not rest, but walked up and down continually like a wild beast in his cage. At last he bethought him on a way to help a bit, and he got th' chaplain to send for me; and he telled me this; and that th' man were lying in th' Infirmary, and he bade me go (to-day's the day as folk may be admitted into th' Infirmary) and get his silver watch, as was his mother's, and sell it as well as I could, and take the money, and bid the poor knob-stick send it to his friends beyond Burnley; and I were to take him Jonas's kind regards, and he humbly axed him to forgive him. So I did what Jonas wished. But bless your life, none on us would ever throw vitriol again (at least at a knob-stick) if they could see the sight I saw to-day. The man lay, his face all wrapped in cloths, so I didn't see _that_; but not a limb, nor a bit of a limb, could keep from quivering with pain. He would ha' bitten his hand to keep down his moans, but couldn't, his face hurt him so if he moved it e'er so little. He could scarce mind me when I telled him about Jonas; he did squeeze my hand when I jingled the money, but when I axed his wife's name he shrieked out, 'Mary, Mary, shall I never see you again? Mary, my darling, they've made me blind because I wanted to work for you and our own baby; oh, Mary, Mary!' Then the nurse came, and said he were raving, and that I had made him worse. And I'm afeard it was true; yet I were loth to go without knowing where to send the money. . . . So that kept me beyond my time, chaps." "Did yo hear where the wife lived at last?" asked many anxious voices. "No! he went on talking to her, till his words cut my heart like a knife. I axed th' nurse to find out who she was, and where she lived. But what I'm more especial naming it now for is this,--for one thing I wanted yo all to know why I weren't at my post this morning; for another, I wish to say, that I, for one, ha' seen enough of what comes of attacking knob-sticks, and I'll ha nought to do with it no more." There were some expressions of disapprobation, but John did not mind them. "Nay! I'm no coward," he replied, "and I'm true to th' backbone. What I would like, and what I would do, would be to fight the masters. There's one among yo called me a coward. Well! every man has a right to his opinion; but since I've thought on th' matter to-day, I've thought we han all on us been more like cowards in attacking the poor like ourselves; them as has none to help, but mun choose between vitriol and starvation. I say we're more cowardly in doing that than in leaving them alone. No! what I would do is this. Have at the masters!" Again he shouted, "Have at the masters!" He spoke lower; all listened with hushed breath. "It's the masters as has wrought this woe; it's the masters as should pay for it. Him as called me coward just now, may try if I am one or not. Set me to serve out the masters, and see if there's ought I'll stick at." "It would give th' masters a bit on a fright if one on them were beaten within an inch of his life," said one. "Ay! or beaten till no life were left in him," growled another. And so with words, or looks that told more than words, they built up a deadly plan. Deeper and darker grew the import of their speeches, as they stood hoarsely muttering their meaning out, and glaring, with eyes that told the terror their own thoughts were to them, upon their neighbours. Their clenched fists, their set teeth, their livid looks, all told the suffering their minds were voluntarily undergoing in the contemplation of crime, and in familiarising themselves with its details. Then came one of those fierce terrible oaths which bind members of Trades' Unions to any given purpose. Then, under the flaring gaslight, they met together to consult further. With the distrust of guilt, each was suspicious of his neighbour; each dreaded the treachery of another. A number of pieces of paper (the identical letter on which the caricature had been drawn that very morning) were torn up, and _one was marked_. Then all were folded up again, looking exactly alike. They were shuffled together in a hat. The gas was extinguished; each drew out a paper. The gas was re-lighted. Then each went as far as he could from his fellows, and examined the paper he had drawn without saying a word, and with a countenance as stony and immovable as he could make it. Then, still rigidly silent, they each took up their hats and went every one his own way. He who had drawn the marked paper had drawn the lot of the assassin! and he had sworn to act according to his drawing! But no one save God and his own conscience knew who was the appointed murderer! CHAPTER XVII. BARTON'S NIGHT-ERRAND. "Mournful is't to say Farewell, Though for few brief hours we part; In that absence, who can tell What may come to wring the heart!" ANONYMOUS. The events recorded in the last chapter took place on a Tuesday. On Thursday afternoon Mary was surprised, in the midst of some little bustle in which she was engaged, by the entrance of Will Wilson. He looked strange, at least it was strange to see any different expression on his face to his usual joyous beaming appearance. He had a paper parcel in his hand. He came in, and sat down, more quietly than usual. "Why, Will! what's the matter with you? You seem quite cut up about something!" "And I am, Mary! I'm come to say good-bye; and few folk like to say good-bye to them they love." "Good-bye! Bless me, Will, that's sudden, isn't it?" Mary left off ironing, and came and stood near the fire-place. She had always liked Will; but now it seemed as if a sudden spring of sisterly love had gushed up in her heart, so sorry did she feel to hear of his approaching departure. "It's very sudden, isn't it?" said she, repeating her question. "Yes! it's very sudden," said he, dreamily. "No, it isn't;" rousing himself, to think of what he was saying. "The captain told me in a fortnight he would be ready to sail again; but it comes very sudden on me, I had got so fond of you all." Mary understood the particular fondness that was thus generalised. She spoke again. "But it's not a fortnight since you came. Not a fortnight since you knocked at Jane Wilson's door, and I was there, you remember. Nothing like a fortnight!" "No; I know it's not. But, you see, I got a letter this afternoon from Jack Harris, to tell me our ship sails on Tuesday next; and it's long since I promised my uncle (my mother's brother, him that lives at Kirk-Christ, beyond Ramsay, in the Isle of Man) that I'd go and see him and his, this time of coming ashore. I must go. I'm sorry enough; but I mustn't slight poor mother's friends. I must go. Don't try to keep me," said he, evidently fearing the strength of his own resolution, if hard pressed by entreaty. "I'm not a-going, Will. I dare say you're right; only I can't help feeling sorry you're going away. It seems so flat to be left behind. When do you go?" "To-night. I shan't see you again." "To-night! and you go to Liverpool! May be you and father will go together. He's going to Glasgow, by way of Liverpool." "No! I'm walking; and I don't think your father will be up to walking." "Well! and why on earth are you walking? You can get by railway for three-and-sixpence." "Ay, but Mary! (thou mustn't let out what I'm going to tell thee) I haven't got three shillings, no, nor even a sixpence left, at least not here; before I came here I gave my landlady enough to carry me to the island and back, and may be a trifle for presents, and I brought all the rest here; and it's all gone but this," jingling a few coppers in his hand. "Nay, never fret over my walking a matter of thirty mile," added he, as he saw she looked grave and sorry. "It's a fine clear night, and I shall set off betimes, and get in afore the Manx packet sails. Where's your father going? To Glasgow, did you say? Perhaps he and I may have a bit of a trip together then, for, if the Manx boat has sailed when I get into Liverpool, I shall go by a Scotch packet. What's he going to do in Glasgow?--Seek for work? Trade is as bad there as here, folk say." "No; he knows that," answered Mary, sadly. "I sometimes think he'll never get work again, and that trade will never mend. It's very hard to keep up one's heart. I wish I were a boy, I'd go to sea with you. It would be getting away from bad news at any rate; and now, there's hardly a creature that crosses the door-step, but has something sad and unhappy to tell one. Father is going as a delegate from his Union, to ask help from the Glasgow folk. He's starting this evening." Mary sighed, for the feeling again came over her that it was very flat to be left alone. "You say no one crosses the threshold but has something sad to say; you don't mean that Margaret Jennings has any trouble?" asked the young sailor, anxiously. "No!" replied Mary, smiling a little, "she's the only one I know, I believe, who seems free from care. Her blindness almost appears a blessing sometimes; she was so downhearted when she dreaded it, and now she seems so calm and happy when it's downright come. No! Margaret's happy, I do think." "I could almost wish it had been otherwise," said Will, thoughtfully. "I could have been so glad to comfort her, and cherish her, if she had been in trouble." "And why can't you cherish her, even though she is happy?" asked Mary. "Oh! I don't know. She seems so much better than I am! And her voice! When I hear it, and think of the wishes that are in my heart, it seems as much out of place to ask her to be my wife, as it would be to ask an angel from heaven." Mary could not help laughing outright, in spite of her depression, at the idea of Margaret as an angel; it was so difficult (even to her dress-making imagination) to fancy where, and how, the wings would be fastened to the brown stuff gown, or the blue and yellow print. Will laughed, too, a little, out of sympathy with Mary's pretty merry laugh. Then he said-- "Ay, you may laugh, Mary; it only shows you've never been in love." In an instant Mary was carnation colour, and the tears sprang to her soft gray eyes; she was suffering so much from the doubts arising from love! It was unkind of him. He did not notice her change of look and of complexion. He only noticed that she was silent, so he continued: "I thought--I think, that when I come back from this voyage, I will speak. It's my fourth voyage in the same ship, and with the same captain, and he's promised he'll make me second mate after this trip; then I shall have something to offer Margaret; and her grandfather, and aunt Alice, shall live with her, to keep her from being lonesome while I'm at sea. I'm speaking as if she cared for me, and would marry me; d'ye think she does care at all for me, Mary?" asked he, anxiously. Mary had a very decided opinion of her own on the subject, but she did not feel as if she had any right to give it. So she said-- "You must ask Margaret, not me, Will; she's never named your name to me." His countenance fell. "But I should say that was a good sign from a girl like her. I've no right to say what I think; but, if I was you, I would not leave her now without speaking." "No! I cannot speak! I have tried. I've been in to wish them good-bye, and my voice stuck in my throat. I could say nought of what I'd planned to say; and I never thought of being so bold as to offer her marriage till I'd been my next trip, and been made mate. I could not even offer her this box," said he, undoing his paper parcel and displaying a gaudily ornamented accordion; "I longed to buy her something, and I thought, if it were something in the music line, she would may-be fancy it more. So, will you give it to her, Mary, when I'm gone? and, if you can slip in something tender,--something, you know, of what I feel,--may-be she would listen to you, Mary." Mary promised that she would do all that he asked. "I shall be thinking on her many and many a night, when I'm keeping my watch in mid-sea; I wonder if she will ever think on me when the wind is whistling, and the gale rising. You'll often speak of me to her, Mary? And if I should meet with any mischance, tell her how dear, how very dear, she was to me, and bid her, for the sake of one who loved her well, try and comfort my poor aunt Alice. Dear old aunt! you and Margaret will often go and see her, won't you? She's sadly failed since I was last ashore. And so good as she has been! When I lived with her, a little wee chap, I used to be wakened by the neighbours knocking her up; this one was ill, or that body's child was restless; and, for as tired as ever she might be, she would be up and dressed in a twinkling, never thinking of the hard day's wash afore her next morning. Them were happy times! How pleased I used to be when she would take me into the fields with her to gather herbs! I've tasted tea in China since then, but it wasn't half so good as the herb tea she used to make for me o' Sunday nights. And she knew such a deal about plants and birds, and their ways! She used to tell me long stories about her childhood, and we used to plan how we would go sometime, please God (that was always her word), and live near her old home beyond Lancaster; in the very cottage where she was born if we could get it. Dear! and how different it is! Here is she still in a back street o' Manchester, never likely to see her own home again; and I, a sailor, off for America next week. I wish she had been able to go to Burton once afore she died." "She would may be have found all sadly changed," said Mary, though her heart echoed Will's feeling. "Ay! ay! I dare say it's best. One thing I do wish though, and I have often wished it when out alone on the deep sea, when even the most thoughtless can't choose but think on th' past and th' future; and that is, that I'd never grieved her. Oh Mary! many a hasty word comes sorely back on the heart, when one thinks one shall never see the person whom one has grieved again!" They both stood thinking. Suddenly Mary started. "That's father's step. And his shirt's not ready!" She hurried to her irons, and tried to make up for lost time. John Barton came in. Such a haggard and wildly anxious looking man, Will thought he had never seen. He looked at Will, but spoke no word of greeting or welcome. "I'm come to bid you good bye," said the sailor, and would in his sociable friendly humour have gone on speaking. But John answered abruptly, "Good bye to ye, then." There was that in his manner which left no doubt of his desire to get rid of the visitor, and Will accordingly shook hands with Mary, and looked at John, as if doubting how far to offer to shake hands with him. But he met with no answering glance or gesture, so he went his way, stopping for an instant at the door to say, "You'll think on me on Tuesday, Mary. That's the day we shall hoist our blue Peter, Jack Harris says." Mary was heartily sorry when the door closed; it seemed like shutting out a friendly sunbeam. And her father! what could be the matter with him? He was so restless; not speaking (she wished he would), but starting up and then sitting down, and meddling with her irons; he seemed so fierce, too, to judge from his face. She wondered if he disliked Will being there; or if he were vexed to find that she had not got further on with her work. At last she could bear his nervous way no longer, it made her equally nervous and fidgetty. She would speak. "When are you going, father? I don't know the time o' the trains." "And why shouldst thou know?" replied he, gruffly. "Meddle with thy ironing, but donnot be asking questions about what doesn't concern thee." "I wanted to get you something to eat first," answered she, gently. "Thou dost not know that I'm larning to do without food," said he. Mary looked at him to see if he spoke jestingly. No! he looked savagely grave. She finished her bit of ironing, and began preparing the food she was sure her father needed; for by this time her experience in the degrees of hunger had taught her that his present irritability was increased, if not caused, by want of food. He had had a sovereign given him to pay his expenses as delegate to Glasgow, and out of this he had given Mary a few shillings in the morning; so she had been able to buy a sufficient meal, and now her care was to cook it so as most to tempt him. "If thou'rt doing that for me, Mary, thou may'st spare thy labour. I telled thee I were not for eating." "Just a little bit, father, before starting," coaxed Mary, perseveringly. At that instant, who should come in but Job Legh. It was not often he came, but when he did pay visits, Mary knew from past experience they were any thing but short. Her father's countenance fell back into the deep gloom from which it was but just emerging at the sound of Mary's sweet voice, and pretty pleading. He became again restless and fidgetty, scarcely giving Job Legh the greeting necessary for a host in his own house. Job, however, did not stand upon ceremony. He had come to pay a visit, and was not to be daunted from his purpose. He was interested in John Barton's mission to Glasgow, and wanted to hear all about it; so he sat down, and made himself comfortable, in a manner that Mary saw was meant to be stationary. "So thou'rt off to Glasgow, art thou?" he began his catechism. "Ay." "When art starting?" "To-night." "That I knowed. But by what train?" That was just what Mary wanted to know; but what apparently her father was in no mood to tell. He got up without speaking, and went up-stairs. Mary knew from his step, and his way, how much he was put out, and feared Job would see it, too. But no! Job seemed imperturbable. So much the better, and perhaps she could cover her father's rudeness by her own civility to so kind a friend. So half listening to her father's movements up-stairs, (passionate, violent, restless motions they were) and half attending to Job Legh, she tried to pay him all due regard. "When does thy father start, Mary?" That plaguing question again. "Oh! very soon. I'm just getting him a bit of supper. Is Margaret very well?" "Yes, she's well enough. She's meaning to go and keep Alice Wilson company for an hour or so this evening; as soon as she thinks her nephew will have started for Liverpool; for she fancies the old woman will feel a bit lonesome. Th' Union is paying for your father, I suppose?" "Yes, they've given him a sovereign. You're one of th' Union, Job?" "Ay! I'm one, sure enough; but I'm but a sleeping partner in the concern. I were obliged to become a member for peace, else I don't go along with 'em. Yo see they think themselves wise, and me silly, for differing with them; well! there's no harm in that. But then they won't let me be silly in peace and quietness, but will force me to be as wise as they are; now that's not British liberty, I say. I'm forced to be wise according to their notions, else they parsecute me, and sarve me out." What could her father be doing up-stairs? Tramping and banging about. Why did he not come down? Or why did not Job go? The supper would be spoilt. But Job had no notion of going. "You see my folly is this, Mary. I would take what I could get; I think half a loaf is better than no bread. I would work for low wages rather than sit idle and starve. But, comes the Trades' Union, and says, 'Well, if you take the half-loaf, we'll worry you out of your life. Will you be clemmed, or will you be worried?' Now clemming is a quiet death, and worrying isn't, so I choose clemming, and come into th' Union. But I wish they'd leave me free, if I am a fool." Creak, creak, went the stairs. Her father was coming down at last. Yes, he came down, but more doggedly fierce than before, and made up for his journey, too; with his little bundle on his arm. He went up to Job, and, more civilly than Mary expected, wished him good-bye. He then turned to her, and in a short cold manner, bade her farewell. "Oh! father, don't go yet. Your supper is all ready. Stay one moment!" But he pushed her away, and was gone. She followed him to the door, her eyes blinded by sudden tears; she stood there looking after him. He was so strange, so cold, so hard. Suddenly, at the end of the court, he turned, and saw her standing there; he came back quickly, and took her in his arms. "God bless thee, Mary!--God in heaven bless thee, poor child!" She threw her arms round his neck. "Don't go yet, father; I can't bear you to go yet. Come in, and eat some supper; you look so ghastly; dear father, do!" "No," he said, faintly and mournfully. "It's best as it is. I couldn't eat, and it's best to be off. I cannot be still at home. I must be moving." So saying, he unlaced her soft twining arms, and kissing her once more, set off on his fierce errand. And he was out of sight! She did not know why, but she had never before felt so depressed, so desolate. She turned in to Job, who sat there still. Her father, as soon as he was out of sight, slackened his pace, and fell into that heavy listless step, which told as well as words could do, of hopelessness and weakness. It was getting dark, but he loitered on, returning no greeting to any one. A child's cry caught his ear. His thoughts were running on little Tom; on the dead and buried child of happier years. He followed the sound of the wail, that might have been _his_, and found a poor little mortal, who had lost his way, and whose grief had choked up his thoughts to the single want, "Mammy, mammy." With tender address, John Barton soothed the little laddie, and with beautiful patience he gathered fragments of meaning from the half spoken words which came mingled with sobs from the terrified little heart. So, aided by inquiries here and there from a passer-by, he led and carried the little fellow home, where his mother had been too busy to miss him, but now received him with thankfulness, and with an eloquent Irish blessing. When John heard the words of blessing, he shook his head mournfully, and turned away to retrace his steps. Let us leave him. Mary took her sewing after he had gone, and sat on, and sat on, trying to listen to Job, who was more inclined to talk than usual. She had conquered her feeling of impatience towards him so far as to be able to offer him her father's rejected supper; and she even tried to eat herself. But her heart failed her. A leaden weight seemed to hang over her; a sort of presentiment of evil, or perhaps only an excess of low-spirited feeling in consequence of the two departures which had taken place that afternoon. She wondered how long Job Legh would sit. She did not like putting down her work, and crying before him, and yet she had never in her life longed so much to be alone in order to indulge in a good hearty burst of tears. "Well, Mary," she suddenly caught him saying, "I thought you'd be a bit lonely to-night; and as Margaret were going to cheer th' old woman, I said I'd go and keep th' young un company; and a very pleasant, chatty evening we've had; very. Only I wonder as Margaret is not come back." "But perhaps she is," suggested Mary. "No, no, I took care o' that. Look ye here!" and he pulled out the great house-key. "She'll have to stand waiting i' th' street, and that I'm sure she wouldn't do, when she knew where to find me." "Will she come back by hersel?" asked Mary. "Ay. At first I were afraid o' trusting her, and I used to follow her a bit behind; never letting on, of course. But, bless you! she goes along as steadily as can be; rather slow, to be sure, and her head a bit on one side as if she were listening. And it's real beautiful to see her cross the road. She'll wait above a bit to hear that all is still; not that she's so dark as not to see a coach or a cart like a big black thing, but she can't rightly judge how far off it is by sight, so she listens. Hark! that's her!" Yes; in she came with her usually calm face all tear-stained and sorrow-marked. "What's the matter, my wench?" said Job, hastily. "Oh! grandfather! Alice Wilson's so bad!" She could say no more, for her breathless agitation. The afternoon, and the parting with Will, had weakened her nerves for any after-shock. "What is it? Do tell us, Margaret!" said Mary, placing her in a chair, and loosening her bonnet-strings. "I think it's a stroke o' the palsy. Any rate she has lost the use of one side." "Was it afore Will had set off?" asked Mary. "No; he were gone before I got there," said Margaret; "and she were much about as well as she has been this many a day. She spoke a bit, but not much; but that were only natural, for Mrs. Wilson likes to have the talk to hersel, you know. She got up to go across the room, and then I heard a drag wi' her leg, and presently a fall, and Mrs. Wilson came running, and set up such a cry! I stopped wi' Alice, while she fetched a doctor; but she could not speak, to answer me, though she tried, I think." "Where was Jem? Why didn't he go for the doctor?" "He were out when I got there, and he never came home while I stopped." "Thou'st never left Mrs. Wilson alone wi' poor Alice?" asked Job, hastily. "No, no," said Margaret. "But, oh! grandfather; it's now I feel how hard it is to have lost my sight. I should have so loved to nurse her; and I did try, until I found I did more harm than good. Oh! grandfather; if I could but see!" She sobbed a little; and they let her give that ease to her heart. Then she went on-- "No! I went round by Mrs. Davenport's, and she were hard at work; but, the minute I told my errand, she were ready and willing to go to Jane Wilson, and stop up all night with Alice." "And what does the doctor say?" asked Mary. "Oh! much what all doctors say: he puts a fence on this side, and a fence on that, for fear he should be caught tripping in his judgment. One moment he does not think there's much hope--but while there is life there is hope; th' next he says he should think she might recover partial, but her age is again her. He's ordered her leeches to her head." Margaret, having told her tale, leant back with weariness, both of body and mind. Mary hastened to make her a cup of tea; while Job, lately so talkative, sat quiet and mournfully silent. "I'll go first thing to-morrow morning, and learn how she is; and I'll bring word back before I go to work," said Mary. "It's a bad job Will's gone," said Job. "Jane does not think she knows any one," replied Margaret. "It's perhaps as well he shouldn't see her now, for they say her face is sadly drawn. He'll remember her with her own face better, if he does not see her again." With a few more sorrowful remarks they separated for the night, and Mary was left alone in her house, to meditate on the heavy day that had passed over her head. Everything seemed going wrong. Will gone; her father gone--and so strangely too! And to a place so mysteriously distant as Glasgow seemed to be to her! She had felt his presence as a protection against Harry Carson and his threats; and now she dreaded lest he should learn she was alone. Her heart began to despair, too, about Jem. She feared he had ceased to love her; and she--she only loved him more and more for his seeming neglect. And, as if all this aggregate of sorrowful thoughts was not enough, here was this new woe, of poor Alice's paralytic stroke. CHAPTER XVIII. MURDER. "But in his pulse there was no throb, Nor on his lips one dying sob; Sigh, nor word, nor struggling breath Heralded his way to death." SIEGE OF CORINTH. "My brain runs this way and that way; 'twill not fix On aught but vengeance." DUKE OF GUISE. I must now go back to an hour or two before Mary and her friends parted for the night. It might be about eight o'clock that evening, and the three Miss Carsons were sitting in their father's drawing-room. He was asleep in the dining-room, in his own comfortable chair. Mrs. Carson was (as was usual with her, when no particular excitement was going on) very poorly, and sitting up-stairs in her dressing-room, indulging in the luxury of a head-ache. She was not well, certainly. "Wind in the head," the servants called it. But it was but the natural consequence of the state of mental and bodily idleness in which she was placed. Without education enough to value the resources of wealth and leisure, she was so circumstanced as to command both. It would have done her more good than all the æther and sal-volatile she was daily in the habit of swallowing, if she might have taken the work of one of her own housemaids for a week; made beds, rubbed tables, shaken carpets, and gone out into the fresh morning air, without all the paraphernalia of shawl, cloak, boa, fur boots, bonnet, and veil, in which she was equipped before setting out for an "airing," in the closely shut-up carriage. So the three girls were by themselves in the comfortable, elegant, well-lighted drawing-room; and, like many similarly-situated young ladies, they did not exactly know what to do to while away the time until the tea-hour. The elder two had been at a dancing-party the night before, and were listless and sleepy in consequence. One tried to read "Emerson's Essays," and fell asleep in the attempt; the other was turning over a parcel of new music, in order to select what she liked. Amy, the youngest, was copying some manuscript music. The air was heavy with the fragrance of strongly-scented flowers, which sent out their night odours from an adjoining conservatory. The clock on the chimney-piece chimed eight. Sophy (the sleeping sister) started up at the sound. "What o'clock is that?" she asked. "Eight," said Amy. "Oh dear! how tired I am! Is Harry come in? Tea would rouse one up a little. Are not you worn out, Helen?" "Yes; I am tired enough. One is good for nothing the day after a dance. Yet I don't feel weary at the time; I suppose it is the lateness of the hours." "And yet, how could it be managed otherwise? So many don't dine till five or six, that one cannot begin before eight or nine; and then it takes a long time to get into the spirit of the evening. It is always more pleasant after supper than before." "Well, I'm too tired to-night to reform the world in the matter of dances or balls. What are you copying, Amy?" "Only that little Spanish air you sing--'Quien quiera.'" "What are you copying it for?" asked Helen. "Harry asked me to do it for him this morning at breakfast-time,--for Miss Richardson, he said." "For Jane Richardson!" said Sophy, as if a new idea were receiving strength in her mind. "Do you think Harry means any thing by his attention to her?" asked Helen. "Nay, I do not know any thing more than you do; I can only observe and conjecture. What do you think, Helen?" "Harry always likes to be of consequence to the belle of the room. If one girl is more admired than another, he likes to flutter about her, and seem to be on intimate terms with her. That is his way, and I have not noticed any thing beyond that in his manner to Jane Richardson." "But I don't think she knows it's only his way. Just watch her the next time we meet her when Harry is there, and see how she crimsons, and looks another way when she feels he is coming up to her. I think he sees it, too, and I think he is pleased with it." "I dare say Harry would like well enough to turn the head of such a lovely girl as Jane Richardson. But I'm not convinced that he is in love, whatever she may be." "Well, then!" said Sophy, indignantly, "though it is our own brother, I do think he is behaving very wrongly. The more I think of it the more sure I am that she thinks he means something, and that he intends her to think so. And then, when he leaves off paying her attention--" "Which will be as soon as a prettier girl makes her appearance," interrupted Helen. "As soon as he leaves off paying her attention," resumed Sophy, "she will have many and many a heart-ache, and then she will harden herself into being a flirt, a feminine flirt, as he is a masculine flirt. Poor girl!" "I don't like to hear you speak so of Harry," said Amy, looking up at Sophy. "And I don't like to have to speak so, Amy, for I love him dearly. He is a good, kind brother, but I do think him vain, and I think he hardly knows the misery, the crimes, to which indulged vanity may lead him." Helen yawned. "Oh! do you think we may ring for tea? Sleeping after dinner always makes me so feverish." "Yes, surely. Why should not we?" said the more energetic Sophy, pulling the bell with some determination. "Tea directly, Parker," said she, authoritatively, as the man entered the room. She was too little in the habit of reading expressions on the faces of others to notice Parker's countenance. Yet it was striking. It was blanched to a dead whiteness; the lips compressed as if to keep within some tale of horror; the eyes distended and unnatural. It was a terror-stricken face. The girls began to put away their music and books, in preparation for tea. The door slowly opened again, and this time it was the nurse who entered. I call her nurse, for such had been her office in by-gone days, though now she held rather an anomalous situation in the family. Seamstress, attendant on the young ladies, keeper of the stores; only "Nurse" was still her name. She had lived longer with them than any other servant, and to her their manner was far less haughty than to the other domestics. She occasionally came into the drawing-room to look for things belonging to their father or mother, so it did not excite any surprise when she advanced into the room. They went on arranging their various articles of employment. She wanted them to look up. She wanted them to read something in her face--her face so full of woe, of horror. But they went on without taking any notice. She coughed; not a natural cough; but one of those coughs which ask so plainly for remark. "Dear nurse, what is the matter?" asked Amy. "Are not you well?" "Is mamma ill?" asked Sophy, quickly. "Speak, speak, nurse!" said they all, as they saw her efforts to articulate, choked by the convulsive rising in her throat. They clustered round her with eager faces, catching a glimpse of some terrible truth to be revealed. "My dear young ladies! my dear girls," she gasped out at length, and then she burst into tears. "Oh! do tell us what it is, nurse," said one. "Any thing is better than this. Speak!" "My children! I don't know how to break it to you. My dears, poor Mr. Harry is brought home--" "Brought home--_brought_ home--how?" Instinctively they sank their voices to a whisper; but a fearful whisper it was. In the same low tone, as if afraid lest the walls, the furniture, the inanimate things which told of preparation for life and comfort, should hear, she answered, "Dead!" Amy clutched her nurse's arm, and fixed her eyes on her as if to know if such a tale could be true; and when she read its confirmation in those sad, mournful, unflinching eyes, she sank, without word or sound, down in a faint upon the floor. One sister sat down on an ottoman, and covered her face, to try and realise it. That was Sophy. Helen threw herself on the sofa, and burying her head in the pillows, tried to stifle the screams and moans which shook her frame. The nurse stood silent. She had not told _all_. "Tell me," said Sophy, looking up, and speaking in a hoarse voice, which told of the inward pain, "tell me, nurse! Is he _dead_, did you say? Have you sent for a doctor? Oh! send for one, send for one," continued she, her voice rising to shrillness, and starting to her feet. Helen lifted herself up, and looked, with breathless waiting, towards nurse. "My dears, he is dead! But I have sent for a doctor. I have done all I could." "When did he--when did they bring him home?" asked Sophy. "Perhaps ten minutes ago. Before you rang for Parker." "How did he die? Where did they find him? He looked so well. He always seemed so strong. Oh! are you sure he is dead?" She went towards the door. Nurse laid her hand on her arm. "Miss Sophy, I have not told you all. Can you bear to hear it? Remember, master is in the next room, and he knows nothing yet. Come, you must help me to tell him. Now be quiet, dear! It was no common death he died!" She looked in her face as if trying to convey her meaning by her eyes. Sophy's lips moved, but nurse could hear no sound. "He has been shot as he was coming home along Turner Street, to-night." Sophy went on with the motion of her lips, twitching them almost convulsively. "My dear, you must rouse yourself, and remember your father and mother have yet to be told. Speak! Miss Sophy!" But she could not; her whole face worked involuntarily. The nurse left the room, and almost immediately brought back some sal-volatile and water. Sophy drank it eagerly, and gave one or two deep gasps. Then she spoke in a calm unnatural voice. "What do you want me to do, nurse? Go to Helen and poor Amy. See, they want help." "Poor creatures! we must let them alone for a bit. You must go to master; that's what I want you to do, Miss Sophy. You must break it to him, poor old gentleman. Come, he's asleep in the dining-room, and the men are waiting to speak to him." Sophy went mechanically to the dining-room door. "Oh! I cannot go in. I cannot tell him. What must I say?" "I'll come with you, Miss Sophy. Break it to him by degrees." "I can't, nurse. My head throbs so, I shall be sure to say the wrong thing." However, she opened the door. There sat her father, the shaded light of the candle-lamp falling upon, and softening his marked features, while his snowy hair contrasted well with the deep crimson morocco of the chair. The newspaper he had been reading had dropped on the carpet by his side. He breathed regularly and deeply. At that instant the words of Mrs. Hemans's song came full into Sophy's mind. "Ye know not what ye do, That call the slumberer back From the realms unseen by you, To life's dim, weary track." But this life's track would be to the bereaved father something more than dim and weary, hereafter. "Papa," said she, softly. He did not stir. "Papa!" she exclaimed, somewhat louder. He started up, half awake. "Tea is ready, is it?" and he yawned. "No! papa, but something very dreadful--very sad, has happened!" He was gaping so loud that he did not catch the words she uttered, and did not see the expression of her face. "Master Henry is not come back," said nurse. Her voice, heard in unusual speech to him, arrested his attention, and rubbing his eyes, he looked at the servant. "Harry! oh no! he had to attend a meeting of the masters about these cursed turn-outs. I don't expect him yet. What are you looking at me so strangely for, Sophy?" "Oh, papa, Harry is come back," said she, bursting into tears. "What do you mean?" said he, startled into an impatient consciousness that something was wrong. "One of you says he is not come home, and the other says he is. Now that's nonsense! Tell me at once what's the matter. Did he go on horseback to town? Is he thrown? Speak, child, can't you?" "No! he's not been thrown, papa," said Sophy, sadly. "But he's badly hurt," put in the nurse, desirous to be drawing his anxiety to a point. "Hurt? Where? How? Have you sent for a doctor?" said he, hastily rising, as if to leave the room. "Yes, papa, we've sent for a doctor--but I'm afraid--I believe it's of no use." He looked at her for a moment, and in her face he read the truth. His son, his only son, was dead. He sank back in his chair, and hid his face in his hands, and bowed his head upon the table. The strong mahogany dining-table shook and rattled under his agony. Sophy went and put her arms round his bowed neck. "Go! you are not Harry," said he; but the action roused him. "Where is he? where is the--" said he, with his strong face set into the lines of anguish, by two minutes of such intense woe. "In the servants' hall," said nurse. "Two policemen and another man brought him home. They would be glad to speak to you when you are able, sir." "I am able now," replied he. At first when he stood up, he tottered. But steadying himself, he walked, as firmly as a soldier on drill, to the door. Then he turned back and poured out a glass of wine from the decanter which yet remained on the table. His eye caught the wine-glass which Harry had used but two or three hours before. He sighed a long quivering sigh. And then mastering himself again, he left the room. "You had better go back to your sisters, Miss Sophy," said nurse. Miss Carson went. She could not face death yet. The nurse followed Mr. Carson to the servants' hall. There, on their dinner-table, lay the poor dead body. The men who had brought it were sitting near the fire, while several of the servants stood round the table, gazing at the remains. _The remains!_ One or two were crying; one or two were whispering; awed into a strange stillness of voice and action by the presence of the dead. When Mr. Carson came in they all drew back and looked at him with the reverence due to sorrow. He went forward and gazed long and fondly on the calm, dead face; then he bent down and kissed the lips yet crimson with life. The policemen had advanced and stood ready to be questioned. But at first the old man's mind could only take in the idea of death; slowly, slowly came the conception of violence, of murder. "How did he die?" he groaned forth. The policemen looked at each other. Then one began, and stated that having heard the report of a gun in Turner Street, he had turned down that way (a lonely, unfrequented way Mr. Carson knew, but a short cut to his garden-door, of which Harry had a key); that as he (the policeman) came nearer, he had heard footsteps as of a man running away; but the evening was so dark (the moon not having yet risen) that he could see no one twenty yards off. That he had even been startled when close to the body by seeing it lying across the path at his feet. That he had sprung his rattle; and when another policeman came up, by the light of the lantern they had discovered who it was that had been killed. That they believed him to be dead when they first took him up, as he had never moved, spoken, or breathed. That intelligence of the murder had been sent to the superintendent, who would probably soon be here. That two or three policemen were still about the place where the murder was committed, seeking out for some trace of the murderer. Having said this, they stopped speaking. Mr. Carson had listened attentively, never taking his eyes off the dead body. When they had ended, he said, "Where was he shot?" They lifted up some of the thick chestnut curls, and showed a blue spot (you could hardly call it a hole, the flesh had closed so much over it) in the left temple. A deadly aim! And yet it was so dark a night! "He must have been close upon him," said one policeman. "And have had him between him and the sky," added the other. There was a little commotion at the door of the room, and there stood poor Mrs. Carson, the mother. She had heard unusual noises in the house, and had sent down her maid (much more a companion to her than her highly-educated daughters) to discover what was going on. But the maid either forgot, or dreaded, to return; and with nervous impatience Mrs. Carson came down herself, and had traced the hum and buzz of voices to the servants' hall. Mr. Carson turned round. But he could not leave the dead for any one living. "Take her away, nurse. It is no sight for her. Tell Miss Sophy to go to her mother." His eyes were again fixed on the dead face of his son. Presently Mrs. Carson's hysterical cries were heard all over the house. Her husband shuddered at the outward expression of the agony which was rending his heart. Then the police superintendent came, and after him the doctor. The latter went through all the forms of ascertaining death, without uttering a word, and when at the conclusion of the operation of opening a vein, from which no blood flowed, he shook his head, all present understood the confirmation of their previous belief. The superintendent asked to speak to Mr. Carson in private. "It was just what I was going to request of you," answered he; so he led the way into the dining-room, with the wine-glass still on the table. The door was carefully shut, and both sat down, each apparently waiting for the other to begin. At last Mr. Carson spoke. "You probably have heard that I am a rich man." The superintendent bowed in assent. "Well, sir, half--nay, if necessary, the whole of my fortune I will give to have the murderer brought to the gallows." "Every exertion, you may be sure, sir, shall be used on our part; but probably offering a handsome reward might accelerate the discovery of the murderer. But what I wanted particularly to tell you, sir, is that one of my men has already got some clue, and that another (who accompanied me here) has within this quarter of an hour found a gun in the field which the murderer crossed, and which he probably threw away when pursued, as encumbering his flight. I have not the smallest doubt of discovering the murderer." "What do you call a handsome reward?" said Mr. Carson. "Well, sir, three, or five hundred pounds is a munificent reward: more than will probably be required as a temptation to any accomplice." "Make it a thousand," said Mr. Carson, decisively. "It's the doing of those damned turn-outs." "I imagine not," said the superintendent. "Some days ago the man I was naming to you before, reported to the inspector when he came on his beat, that he had had to separate your son from a young man, who by his dress he believed to be employed in a foundry; that the man had thrown Mr. Carson down, and seemed inclined to proceed to more violence, when the policeman came up and interfered. Indeed, my man wished to give him in charge for an assault, but Mr. Carson would not allow that to be done." "Just like him!--noble fellow!" murmured the father. "But after your son had left, the man made use of some pretty strong threats. And it's rather a curious coincidence that this scuffle took place in the very same spot where the murder was committed; in Turner Street." There was some one knocking at the door of the room. It was Sophy, who beckoned her father out, and then asked him, in an awe-struck whisper, to come up-stairs and speak to her mother. "She will not leave Harry, and talks so strangely. Indeed--indeed--papa, I think she has lost her senses." And the poor girl sobbed bitterly. "Where is she?" asked Mr. Carson. "In his room." They went up stairs rapidly and silently. It was a large, comfortable bedroom; too large to be well lighted by the flaring, flickering kitchen-candle which had been hastily snatched up, and now stood on the dressing-table. On the bed, surrounded by its heavy, pall-like green curtains, lay the dead son. They had carried him up, and laid him down, as tenderly as though they feared to waken him; and, indeed, it looked more like sleep than death, so very calm and full of repose was the face. You saw, too, the chiselled beauty of the features much more perfectly than when the brilliant colouring of life had distracted your attention. There was a peace about him which told that death had come too instantaneously to give any previous pain. In a chair, at the head of the bed, sat the mother,--smiling. She held one of the hands (rapidly stiffening, even in her warm grasp), and gently stroked the back of it, with the endearing caress she had used to all her children when young. "I am glad you are come," said she, looking up at her husband, and still smiling. "Harry is so full of fun, he always has something new to amuse us with; and now he pretends he is asleep, and that we can't waken him. Look! he is smiling now; he hears I have found him out. Look!" And, in truth, the lips, in the rest of death, did look as though they wore a smile, and the waving light of the unsnuffed candle almost made them seem to move. "Look, Amy," said she to her youngest child, who knelt at her feet, trying to soothe her, by kissing her garments. "Oh, he was always a rogue! You remember, don't you, love? how full of play he was as a baby; hiding his face under my arm, when you wanted to play with him. Always a rogue, Harry!" "We must get her away, sir," said nurse; "you know there is much to be done before--" "I understand, nurse," said the father, hastily interrupting her in dread of the distinct words which would tell of the changes of mortality. "Come, love," said he to his wife. "I want you to come with me. I want to speak to you down-stairs." "I'm coming," said she, rising; "perhaps, after all, nurse, he's really tired, and would be glad to sleep. Don't let him get cold, though,--he feels rather chilly," continued she, after she had bent down, and kissed the pale lips. Her husband put his arm round her waist, and they left the room. Then the three sisters burst into unrestrained wailings. They were startled into the reality of life and death. And yet, in the midst of shrieks and moans, of shivering, and chattering of teeth, Sophy's eye caught the calm beauty of the dead; so calm amidst such violence, and she hushed her emotion. "Come," said she to her sisters, "nurse wants us to go; and besides, we ought to be with mamma. Papa told the man he was talking to, when I went for him, to wait, and she must not be left." Meanwhile, the superintendent had taken a candle, and was examining the engravings that hung round the dining-room. It was so common to him to be acquainted with crime, that he was far from feeling all his interest absorbed in the present case of violence, although he could not help having much anxiety to detect the murderer. He was busy looking at the only oil-painting in the room (a youth of eighteen or so, in a fancy dress), and conjecturing its identity with the young man so mysteriously dead, when the door opened, and Mr. Carson returned. Stern as he had looked before leaving the room, he looked far sterner now. His face was hardened into deep-purposed wrath. "I beg your pardon, sir, for leaving you." The superintendent bowed. They sat down, and spoke long together. One by one the policemen were called in, and questioned. All through the night there was bustle and commotion in the house. Nobody thought of going to bed. It seemed strange to Sophy to hear nurse summoned from her mother's side to supper, in the middle of the night, and still stranger that she could go. The necessity of eating and drinking seemed out of place in the house of death. When night was passing into morning, the dining-room door opened, and two persons' steps were heard along the hall. The superintendent was leaving at last. Mr. Carson stood on the front door-step, feeling the refreshment of the cooler morning air, and seeing the starlight fade away into dawn. "You will not forget," said he. "I trust to you." The policeman bowed. "Spare no money. The only purpose for which I now value wealth is to have the murderer arrested, and brought to justice. My hope in life now is to see him sentenced to death. Offer any rewards. Name a thousand pounds in the placards. Come to me at any hour, night or day, if that be required. All I ask of you is, to get the murderer hanged. Next week, if possible--to-day is Friday. Surely, with the clues you already possess, you can muster up evidence sufficient to have him tried next week." "He may easily request an adjournment of his trial, on the ground of the shortness of the notice," said the superintendent. "Oppose it, if possible. I will see that the first lawyers are employed. I shall know no rest while he lives." "Every thing shall be done, sir." "You will arrange with the coroner. Ten o'clock, if convenient." The superintendent took leave. Mr. Carson stood on the step, dreading to shut out the light and air, and return into the haunted, gloomy house. "My son! my son!" he said, at last. "But you shall be avenged, my poor murdered boy." Ay! to avenge his wrongs the murderer had singled out his victim, and with one fell action had taken away the life that God had given. To avenge his child's death, the old man lived on; with the single purpose in his heart of vengeance on the murderer. True, his vengeance was sanctioned by law, but was it the less revenge? Are we worshippers of Christ? or of Alecto? Oh! Orestes! you would have made a very tolerable Christian of the nineteenth century! CHAPTER XIX. JEM WILSON ARRESTED ON SUSPICION. "Deeds to be hid which were not hid, Which, all confused, I could not know, Whether I suffered or I did, For all seemed guilt, remorse, or woe." COLERIDGE. I left Mary, on that same Thursday night which left its burden of woe at Mr. Carson's threshold, haunted with depressing thoughts. All through the night she tossed restlessly about, trying to get quit of the ideas that harassed her, and longing for the light when she could rise, and find some employment. But just as dawn began to appear, she became more quiet, and fell into a sound heavy sleep, which lasted till she was sure it was late in the morning by the full light that shone in. She dressed hastily, and heard the neighbouring church-clock strike eight. It was far too late to do as she had planned (after inquiring how Alice was, to return and tell Margaret), and she accordingly went in to inform the latter of her change of purpose, and the cause of it; but on entering the house she found Job sitting alone, looking sad enough. She told him what she came for. "Margaret, wench! why she's been gone to Wilson's these two hours. Ay! sure, you did say last night you would go; but she could na rest in her bed, so was off betimes this morning." Mary could do nothing but feel guilty of her long morning nap, and hasten to follow Margaret's steps; for late as it was, she felt she could not settle well to her work, unless she learnt how kind good Alice Wilson was going on. So, eating her crust-of-bread breakfast, she passed rapidly along the streets. She remembered afterwards the little groups of people she had seen, eagerly hearing, and imparting news; but at the time her only care was to hasten on her way, in dread of a reprimand from Miss Simmonds. She went into the house at Jane Wilson's, her heart at the instant giving a strange knock, and sending the rosy flush into her face, at the thought that Jem might possibly be inside the door. But I do assure you, she had not thought of it before. Impatient and loving as she was, her solicitude about Alice on that hurried morning had not been mingled with any thought of him. Her heart need not have leaped, her colour need not have rushed so painfully to her cheeks, for he was not there. There was the round table, with a cup and saucer, which had evidently been used, and there was Jane Wilson sitting on the other side, crying quietly, while she ate her breakfast with a sort of unconscious appetite. And there was Mrs. Davenport washing away at a night-cap or so, which, by their simple, old-world make, Mary knew at a glance were Alice's. But nothing--no one else. Alice was much the same, or rather better of the two, they told her; at any rate she could speak, though it was sad rambling talk. Would Mary like to see her? Of course she would. Many are interested by seeing their friends under the new aspect of illness; and among the poor there is no wholesome fear of injury or excitement to restrain this wish. So Mary went up-stairs, accompanied by Mrs. Davenport, wringing the suds off her hands, and speaking in a loud whisper far more audible than her usual voice. "I mun be hastening home, but I'll come again to-night, time enough to iron her cap; 'twould be a sin and a shame if we let her go dirty now she's ill, when she's been so rare and clean all her life-long. But she's sadly forsaken, poor thing! She'll not know you, Mary; she knows none on us." The room up-stairs held two beds, one superior in the grandeur of four posts and checked curtains to the other, which had been occupied by the twins in their brief life-time. The smaller had been Alice's bed since she had lived there; but with the natural reverence to one "stricken of God and afflicted," she had been installed since her paralytic stroke the evening before in the larger and grander bed, while Jane Wilson had taken her short broken rest on the little pallet. Margaret came forwards to meet her friend, whom she half expected, and whose step she knew. Mrs. Davenport returned to her washing. The two girls did not speak; the presence of Alice awed them into silence. There she lay with the rosy colour, absent from her face since the days of childhood, flushed once more into it by her sickness nigh unto death. She lay on the affected side, and with her other arm she was constantly sawing the air, not exactly in a restless manner, but in a monotonous, incessant way, very trying to a watcher. She was talking away, too, almost as constantly, in a low, indistinct tone. But her face, her profiled countenance, looked calm and smiling, even interested by the ideas that were passing through her clouded mind. "Listen!" said Margaret, as she stooped her head down to catch the muttered words more distinctly. "What will mother say? The bees are turning homeward for th' last time, and we've a terrible long bit to go yet. See! here's a linnet's nest in this gorse-bush. Th' hen-bird is on it. Look at her bright eyes, she won't stir! Ay! we mun hurry home. Won't mother be pleased with the bonny lot of heather we've got! Make haste, Sally, may be we shall have cockles for supper. I saw th' cockle-man's donkey turn up our way fra' Arnside." Margaret touched Mary's hand, and the pressure in return told her that they understood each other; that they knew how in this illness to the old, world-weary woman, God had sent her a veiled blessing: she was once more in the scenes of her childhood, unchanged and bright as in those long departed days; once more with the sister of her youth, the playmate of fifty years ago, who had for nearly as many years slept in a grassy grave in the little church-yard beyond Burton. Alice's face changed; she looked sorrowful, almost penitent. "Oh, Sally! I wish we'd told her. She thinks we were in church all morning, and we've gone on deceiving her. If we'd told her at first how it was--how sweet th' hawthorn smelt through the open church-door, and how we were on th' last bench in the aisle, and how it were the first butterfly we'd seen this spring, and how it flew into th' very church itself; oh! mother is so gentle, I wish we'd told her. I'll go to her next time she comes in sight, and say, 'Mother, we were naughty last Sabbath.'" She stopped, and a few tears came stealing down the old withered cheek, at the thought of the temptation and deceit of her childhood. Surely, many sins could not have darkened that innocent child-like spirit since. Mary found a red-spotted pocket-handkerchief, and put it into the hand which sought about for something to wipe away the trickling tears. She took it with a gentle murmur. "Thank you, mother." Mary pulled Margaret away from the bed. "Don't you think she's happy, Margaret?" "Ay! that I do, bless her. She feels no pain, and knows nought of her present state. Oh! that I could see, Mary! I try and be patient with her afore me, but I'd give aught I have to see her, and see what she wants. I am so useless! I mean to stay here as long as Jane Wilson is alone; and I would fain be here all to-night, but--" "I'll come," said Mary, decidedly. "Mrs. Davenport said she'd come again, but she's hard-worked all day--" "I'll come," repeated Mary. "Do!" said Margaret, "and I'll be here till you come. May be, Jem and you could take th' night between you, and Jane Wilson might get a bit of sound sleep in his bed; for she were up and down the better part of last night, and just when she were in a sound sleep this morning, between two and three, Jem came home, and th' sound o' his voice roused her in a minute." "Where had he been till that time o' night?" asked Mary. "Nay! it were none of my business; and, indeed, I never saw him till he came in here to see Alice. He were in again this morning, and seemed sadly downcast. But you'll, may be, manage to comfort him to-night, Mary," said Margaret, smiling, while a ray of hope glimmered in Mary's heart, and she almost felt glad, for an instant, of the occasion which would at last bring them together. Oh! happy night! when would it come? Many hours had yet to pass. Then she saw Alice, and repented, with a bitter self-reproach. But she could not help having gladness in the depths of her heart, blame herself as she would. So she tried not to think, as she hurried along to Miss Simmonds', with a dancing step of lightness. She was late--that she knew she should be. Miss Simmonds was vexed and cross. That also she had anticipated, but she had intended to smooth her raven down by extraordinary diligence and attention. But there was something about the girls she did not understand--had not anticipated. They stopped talking when she came in; or rather, I should say, stopped listening, for Sally Leadbitter was the talker to whom they were hearkening with intense attention. At first they eyed Mary, as if she had acquired some new interest to them, since the day before. Then they began to whisper; and, absorbed as Mary had been in her own thoughts, she could not help becoming aware that it was of her they spoke. At last Sally Leadbitter asked Mary if she had heard the news? "No! What news?" answered she. The girls looked at each other with gloomy mystery. Sally went on. "Have you not heard that young Mr. Carson was murdered last night?" Mary's lips could not utter a negative, but no one who looked at her pale and terror-stricken face could have doubted that she had not heard before of the fearful occurrence. Oh, it is terrible, that sudden information, that one you have known has met with a bloody death! You seem to shrink from the world where such deeds can be committed, and to grow sick with the idea of the violent and wicked men of earth. Much as Mary had learned to dread him lately, now he was dead (and dead in such a manner) her feeling was that of oppressive sorrow for him. The room went round and round, and she felt as though she should faint; but Miss Simmonds came in, bringing a waft of fresher air as she opened the door, to refresh the body, and the certainty of a scolding for inattention to brace the sinking mind. She, too, was full of the morning's news. "Have you heard any more of this horrid affair, Miss Barton?" asked she, as she settled to her work. Mary tried to speak; at first she could not, and when she succeeded in uttering a sentence, it seemed as though it were not her own voice that spoke. "No, ma'am, I never heard of it till this minute." "Dear! that's strange, for every one is up about it. I hope the murderer will be found out, that I do. Such a handsome young man to be killed as he was. I hope the wretch that did it may be hanged as high as Haman." One of the girls reminded them that the assizes came on next week. "Ay," replied Miss Simmonds, "and the milk-man told me they will catch the wretch, and have him tried and hung in less than a week. Serve him right, whoever he is. Such a handsome young man as he was." Then each began to communicate to Miss Simmonds the various reports they had heard. Suddenly she burst out-- "Miss Barton! as I live, dropping tears on that new silk gown of Mrs. Hawkes'! Don't you know they will stain, and make it shabby for ever? Crying like a baby, because a handsome young man meets with an untimely end. For shame of yourself, miss. Mind your character and your work if you please. Or, if you must cry" (seeing her scolding rather increased the flow of Mary's tears, than otherwise), "take this print to cry over. That won't be marked like this beautiful silk," rubbing it, as if she loved it, with a clean pocket-handkerchief, in order to soften the edges of the hard round drops. Mary took the print, and naturally enough, having had leave given her to cry over it, rather checked the inclination to weep. Every body was full of the one subject. The girl sent out to match silk, came back with the account gathered at the shop, of the coroner's inquest then sitting; the ladies who called to speak about gowns first began about the murder, and mingled details of that, with directions for their dresses. Mary felt as though the haunting horror were a nightmare, a fearful dream, from which awakening would relieve her. The picture of the murdered body, far more ghastly than the reality, seemed to swim in the air before her eyes. Sally Leadbitter looked and spoke of her, almost accusingly, and made no secret now of Mary's conduct, more blameable to her fellow-workwomen for its latter changeableness, than for its former giddy flirting. "Poor young gentleman," said one, as Sally recounted Mary's last interview with Mr. Carson. "What a shame!" exclaimed another, looking indignantly at Mary. "That's what I call regular jilting," said a third. "And he lying cold and bloody in his coffin now!" Mary was more thankful than she could express, when Miss Simmonds returned, to put a stop to Sally's communications, and to check the remarks of the girls. She longed for the peace of Alice's sick room. No more thinking with infinite delight of her anticipated meeting with Jem, she felt too much shocked for that now; but longing for peace and kindness, for the images of rest and beauty, and sinless times long ago, which the poor old woman's rambling presented, she wished to be as near death as Alice; and to have struggled through this world, whose sufferings she had early learnt, and whose crimes now seemed pressing close upon her. Old texts from the Bible that her mother used to read (or rather spell out) aloud, in the days of childhood, came up to her memory. "Where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." "The tears shall be wiped away from all eyes," &c. And it was to that world Alice was hastening! Oh! that she were Alice! I must return to the Wilsons' house, which was far from being the abode of peace that Mary was picturing it to herself. You remember the reward Mr. Carson offered for the apprehension of the murderer of his son? It was in itself a temptation, and to aid its efficacy came the natural sympathy for the aged parents mourning for their child, for the young man cut off in the flower of his days; and besides this, there is always a pleasure in unravelling a mystery, in catching at the gossamer clue which will guide to certainty. This feeling, I am sure, gives much impetus to the police. Their senses are ever and always on the qui-vive, and they enjoy the collecting and collating evidence, and the life of adventure they experience: a continual unwinding of Jack Sheppard romances, always interesting to the vulgar and uneducated mind, to which the outward signs and tokens of crime are ever exciting. There was no lack of clue or evidence at the coroner's inquest that morning. The shot, the finding of the body, the subsequent discovery of the gun, were rapidly deposed to; and then the policeman who had interrupted the quarrel between Jem Wilson and the murdered young man was brought forward, and gave his evidence, clear, simple, and straightforward. The coroner had no hesitation, the jury had none, but the verdict was cautiously worded. "Wilful murder against some person unknown." This very cautiousness, when he deemed the thing so sure as to require no caution, irritated Mr. Carson. It did not soothe him that the superintendent called the verdict a mere form,--exhibited a warrant empowering him to seize the body of Jem Wilson, committed on suspicion,--declared his intention of employing a well-known officer in the Detective Service to ascertain the ownership of the gun, and to collect other evidence, especially as regarded the young woman, about whom the policeman deposed that the quarrel had taken place: Mr. Carson was still excited and irritable; restless in body and mind. He made every preparation for the accusation of Jem the following morning before the magistrates: he engaged attorneys skilled in criminal practice to watch the case and prepare briefs; he wrote to celebrated barristers coming the Northern Circuit, to bespeak their services. A speedy conviction, a speedy execution, seemed to be the only things that would satisfy his craving thirst for blood. He would have fain been policeman, magistrate, accusing speaker, all; but most of all, the judge, rising with full sentence of death on his lips. That afternoon, as Jane Wilson had begun to feel the effect of a night's disturbed rest, evinced in frequent droppings off to sleep while she sat by her sister-in-law's bed-side, lulled by the incessant crooning of the invalid's feeble voice, she was startled by a man speaking in the house-place below, who, wearied of knocking at the door, without obtaining any answer, had entered and was calling lustily for "Missis! missis!" When Mrs. Wilson caught a glimpse of the intruder through the stair-rails, she at once saw he was a stranger, a working-man, it might be a fellow-labourer with her son, for his dress was grimy enough for the supposition. He held a gun in his hand. "May I make bold to ask if this gun belongs to your son?" She first looked at the man, and then, weary and half asleep, not seeing any reason for refusing to answer the inquiry, she moved forward to examine it, talking while she looked for certain old-fashioned ornaments on the stock. "It looks like his; ay, it's his, sure enough. I could speak to it anywhere by these marks. You see it were his grandfather's, as were gamekeeper to some one up in th' north; and they don't make guns so smart now-a-days. But, how comed you by it? He sets great store on it. Is he bound for th' shooting gallery? He is not, for sure, now his aunt is so ill, and me left all alone;" and the immediate cause for her anxiety being thus recalled to her mind, she entered on a long story of Alice's illness, interspersed with recollections of her husband's and her children's deaths. The disguised policeman listened for a minute or two, to glean any further information he could; and then, saying he was in a hurry, he turned to go away. She followed him to the door, still telling him her troubles, and was never struck, until it was too late to ask the reason, with the unaccountableness of his conduct, in carrying the gun away with him. Then, as she heavily climbed the stairs, she put away the wonder and the thought about his conduct, by determining to believe he was some workman with whom her son had made some arrangement about shooting at the gallery; or mending the old weapon; or something or other. She had enough to fret her, without moidering herself about old guns. Jem had given it him to bring to her; so it was safe enough; or, if it was not, why she should be glad never to set eyes on it again, for she could not abide fire-arms, they were so apt to shoot people. So, comforting herself for her want of thought in not making further inquiry, she fell off into another doze, feverish, dream-haunted, and unrefreshing. Meanwhile, the policeman walked off with his prize, with an odd mixture of feelings; a little contempt, a little disappointment, and a good deal of pity. The contempt and the disappointment were caused by the widow's easy admission of the gun being her son's property, and her manner of identifying it by the ornaments. He liked an attempt to baffle him; he was accustomed to it; it gave some exercise to his wits and his shrewdness. There would be no fun in fox-hunting, if Reynard yielded himself up without any effort to escape. Then, again, his mother's milk was yet in him, policeman, officer of the Detective Service though he was; and he felt sorry for the old woman, whose "softness" had given such material assistance in identifying her son as the murderer. However, he conveyed the gun, and the intelligence he had gained, to the superintendent; and the result was, that, in a short time afterwards, three policemen went to the works at which Jem was foreman, and announced their errand to the astonished overseer, who directed them to the part of the foundry where Jem was then superintending a casting. Dark, black were the walls, the ground, the faces around them, as they crossed the yard. But, in the furnace-house a deep and lurid red glared over all; the furnace roared with mighty flame. The men, like demons, in their fire-and-soot colouring, stood swart around, awaiting the moment when the tons of solid iron should have melted down into fiery liquid, fit to be poured, with still, heavy sound, into the delicate moulding of fine black sand, prepared to receive it. The heat was intense, and the red glare grew every instant more fierce; the policemen stood awed with the novel sight. Then, black figures, holding strange-shaped bucket shovels, came athwart the deep-red furnace light, and clear and brilliant flowed forth the iron into the appropriate mould. The buzz of voices rose again; there was time to speak, and gasp, and wipe the brows; and then, one by one, the men dispersed to some other branch of their employment. No. B. 72 pointed out Jem as the man he had seen engaged in a scuffle with Mr. Carson, and then the other two stepped forward and arrested him, stating of what he was accused, and the grounds of the accusation. He offered no resistance, though he seemed surprised; but calling a fellow-workman to him, he briefly requested him to tell his mother he had got into trouble, and could not return home at present. He did not wish her to hear more at first. So Mrs. Wilson's sleep was next interrupted in almost an exactly similar way to the last, like a recurring nightmare. "Missis! missis!" some one called out from below. Again it was a workman, but this time a blacker-looking one than before. "What don ye want?" said she, peevishly. "Only nothing but--" stammered the man, a kind-hearted matter-of-fact person, with no invention, but a great deal of sympathy. "Well! speak out, can't ye, and ha' done with it?" "Jem's in trouble," said he, repeating Jem's very words, as he could think of no others. "Trouble!" said the mother, in a high-pitched voice of distress. "Trouble! God help me, trouble will never end, I think. What d'ye mean by trouble? Speak out, man, can't ye? Is he ill? My boy! tell me, is he ill?" in a hurried voice of terror. "Na, na, that's not it. He's well enough. All he bade me say was, 'Tell mother I'm in trouble, and can't come home to-night.'" "Not come home to-night! And what am I to do with Alice? I can't go on, wearing my life out wi' watching. He might come and help me." "I tell you he can't," said the man. "Can't; and he is well, you say? Stuff! It's just that he's getten like other young men, and wants to go a-larking. But I'll give it him when he comes back." The man turned to go; he durst not trust himself to speak in Jem's justification. But she would not let him off. She stood between him and the door, as she said, "Yo shall not go, till yo've told me what he's after. I can see plain enough you know, and I'll know too, before I've done." "You'll know soon enough, missis!" "I'll know now, I tell ye. What's up that he can't come home and help me nurse? Me, as never got a wink o' sleep last night wi' watching." "Well, if you will have it out," said the poor badgered man, "the police have got hold on him." "On my Jem!" said the enraged mother. "You're a downright liar, and that's what you are. My Jem, as never did harm to any one in his life. You're a liar, that's what you are." "He's done harm enough now," said the man, angry in his turn, "for there's good evidence he murdered young Carson, as was shot last night." She staggered forward to strike the man for telling the terrible truth; but the weakness of old age, of motherly agony, overcame her, and she sank down on a chair, and covered her face. He could not leave her. When next she spoke, it was in an imploring, feeble, child-like voice. "Oh, master, say you're only joking. I ax your pardon if I have vexed ye, but please say you're only joking. You don't know what Jem is to me." She looked humbly, anxiously up at him. "I wish I were only joking, missis; but it's true as I say. They've taken him up on charge o' murder. It were his gun as were found near th' place; and one o' the police heard him quarrelling with Mr. Carson a few days back, about a girl." "About a girl!" broke in the mother, once more indignant, though too feeble to show it as before. "My Jem was as steady as--" she hesitated for a comparison wherewith to finish, and then repeated, "as steady as Lucifer, and he were an angel, you know. My Jem was not one to quarrel about a girl." "Ay, but it was that, though. They'd got her name quite pat. The man had heard all they said. Mary Barton was her name, whoever she may be." "Mary Barton! the dirty hussey! to bring my Jem into trouble of this kind. I'll give it her well when I see her: that I will. Oh! my poor Jem!" rocking herself to and fro. "And what about the gun? What did ye say about that?" "His gun were found on th' spot where the murder were done." "That's a lie for one, then. A man has got the gun now, safe and sound; I saw it not an hour ago." The man shook his head. "Yes, he has indeed. A friend o' Jem's, as he'd lent it to." "Did you know the chap?" asked the man, who was really anxious for Jem's exculpation, and caught a gleam of hope from her last speech. "No! I can't say as I did. But he were put on as a workman." "It's may be only one of them policemen, disguised." "Nay; they'd never go for to do that, and trick me into telling on my own son. It would be like seething a kid in its mother's milk; and that th' Bible forbids." "I don't know," replied the man. Soon afterwards he went away, feeling unable to comfort, yet distressed at the sight of sorrow; she would fain have detained him, but go he would. And she was alone. She never for an instant believed Jem guilty; she would have doubted if the sun were fire, first: but sorrow, desolation, and, at times, anger took possession of her mind. She told the unconscious Alice, hoping to rouse her to sympathy; and then was disappointed, because, still smiling and calm, she murmured of her mother, and the happy days of infancy. CHAPTER XX. MARY'S DREAM--AND THE AWAKENING. "I saw where stark and cold he lay, Beneath the gallows-tree, And every one did point and say, ''Twas there he died for thee!' * * * * * * "Oh! weeping heart! Oh, bleeding heart! What boots thy pity now? Bid from his eyes that shade depart, That death-damp from his brow!" "THE BIRTLE TRAGEDY." So there was no more peace in the house of sickness, except to Alice, the dying Alice. But Mary knew nothing of the afternoon's occurrences; and gladly did she breathe in the fresh air, as she left Miss Simmonds' house, to hasten to the Wilsons'. The very change, from the in-door to the out-door atmosphere, seemed to alter the current of her thoughts. She thought less of the dreadful subject which had so haunted her all day; she cared less for the upbraiding speeches of her fellow work-women; the old association of comfort and sympathy received from Alice gave her the idea that, even now, her bodily presence would soothe and compose those who were in trouble, changed, unconscious, and absent though her spirit might be. Then, again, she reproached herself a little for the feeling of pleasure she experienced, in thinking that he whom she dreaded could never more beset her path; in the security with which she could pass each street corner--each shop, where he used to lie in ambush. Oh! beating heart! was there no other little thought of joy lurking within, to gladden the very air without? Was she not going to meet, to see, to hear Jem; and could they fail at last to understand each other's loving hearts! She softly lifted the latch, with the privilege of friendship. _He_ was not there, but his mother was standing by the fire, stirring some little mess or other. Never mind! he would come soon: and with an unmixed desire to do her grateful duty to all belonging to him, she stepped lightly forwards, unheard by the old lady, who was partly occupied by the simmering, bubbling sound of her bit of cookery; but more with her own sad thoughts, and wailing, half-uttered murmurings. Mary took off bonnet and shawl with speed, and advancing, made Mrs. Wilson conscious of her presence, by saying, "Let me do that for you. I'm sure you mun be tired." Mrs. Wilson slowly turned round, and her eyes gleamed like those of a pent-up wild beast, as she recognised her visitor. "And is it thee that dares set foot in this house, after what has come to pass? Is it not enough to have robbed me of my boy with thy arts and thy profligacy, but thou must come here to crow over me--me--his mother? Dost thou know where he is, thou bad hussy, with thy great blue eyes and yellow hair, to lead men on to ruin? Out upon thee, with thy angel's face, thou whited sepulchre! Dost thou know where Jem is, all through thee?" "No!" quivered out poor Mary, scarcely conscious that she spoke, so daunted, so terrified was she by the indignant mother's greeting. "He's lying in th' New Bailey," slowly and distinctly spoke the mother, watching the effect of her words, as if believing in their infinite power to pain. "There he lies, waiting to take his trial for murdering young Mr. Carson." There was no answer; but such a blanched face, such wild, distended eyes, such trembling limbs, instinctively seeking support! "Did you know Mr. Carson as now lies dead?" continued the merciless woman. "Folk say you did, and knew him but too well. And that for the sake of such as you, my precious child shot yon chap. But he did not. I know he did not. They may hang him, but his mother will speak to his innocence with her last dying breath." She stopped more from exhaustion than want of words. Mary spoke, but in so changed and choked a voice that the old woman almost started. It seemed as if some third person must be in the room, the voice was so hoarse and strange. "Please, say it again. I don't quite understand you. What has Jem done? Please to tell me." "I never said he had done it. I said, and I'll swear that he never did do it. I don't care who heard 'em quarrel, or if it is his gun as were found near the body. It's not my own Jem as would go for to kill any man, choose how a girl had jilted him. My own good Jem, as was a blessing sent upon the house where he was born." Tears came into the mother's burning eyes as her heart recurred to the days when she had rocked the cradle of her "first-born;" and then, rapidly passing over events, till the full consciousness of his present situation came upon her, and perhaps annoyed at having shown any softness of character in the presence of the Dalilah who had lured him to his danger, she spoke again, and in a sharper tone. "I told him, and told him to leave off thinking on thee; but he wouldn't be led by me. Thee! wench! thou were not good enough to wipe the dust off his feet. A vile, flirting quean as thou art. It's well thy mother does not know (poor body) what a good-for-nothing thou art." "Mother! oh mother!" said Mary, as if appealing to the merciful dead. "But I was not good enough for him! I know I was not," added she, in a voice of touching humility. For through her heart went tolling the ominous, prophetic words he had used when he had last spoken to her-- "Mary! you'll may be hear of me as a drunkard, and may be as a thief, and may be as a murderer. Remember! when all are speaking ill of me, yo will have no right to blame me, for it's your cruelty that will have made me what I feel I shall become." And she did not blame him, though she doubted not his guilt; she felt how madly she might act if once jealous of him, and how much cause had she not given him for jealousy, miserable guilty wretch that she was! Speak on, desolate mother! Abuse her as you will. Her broken spirit feels to have merited all. But her last humble, self-abased words had touched Mrs. Wilson's heart, sore as it was; and she looked at the snow-pale girl with those piteous eyes, so hopeless of comfort, and she relented in spite of herself. "Thou seest what comes of light conduct, Mary! It's thy doing that suspicion has lighted on him, who is as innocent as the babe unborn. Thou'lt have much to answer for if he's hung. Thou'lt have my death too at thy door!" Harsh as these words seem, she spoke them in a milder tone of voice than she had yet used. But the idea of Jem on the gallows, Jem dead, took possession of Mary, and she covered her eyes with her wan hands, as if indeed to shut out the fearful sight. She murmured some words, which, though spoken low, as if choked up from the depths of agony, Jane Wilson caught. "My heart is breaking," said she, feebly. "My heart is breaking." "Nonsense!" said Mrs. Wilson. "Don't talk in that silly way. My heart has a better right to break than yours, and yet I hold up, you see. But, oh dear! oh dear!" with a sudden revulsion of feeling, as the reality of the danger in which her son was placed pressed upon her. "What am I saying? How could I hold up if thou wert gone, Jem? Though I'm as sure as I stand here of thy innocence, if they hang thee, my lad, I will lie down and die!" She sobbed aloud with bitter consciousness of the fearful chance awaiting her child. She cried more passionately still. Mary roused herself up. "Oh, let me stay with you, at any rate, till we know the end. Dearest Mrs. Wilson, mayn't I stay?" The more obstinately and upbraidingly Mrs. Wilson refused, the more Mary pleaded, with ever the same soft, entreating cry, "Let me stay with you." Her stunned soul seemed to bound its wishes, for the hour at least, to remaining with one who loved and sorrowed for the same human being that she did. But no. Mrs. Wilson was inflexible. "I've may be been a bit hard on you, Mary, I'll own that. But I cannot abide you yet with me. I cannot but remember it's your giddiness as has wrought this woe. I'll stay wi' Alice, and perhaps Mrs. Davenport may come help a bit. I cannot put up with you about me. Good-night. To-morrow I may look on you different, may be. Good-night." And Mary turned out of the house, which had been _his_ home, where _he_ was loved, and mourned for, into the busy, desolate, crowded street, where they were crying halfpenny broadsides, giving an account of the bloody murder, the coroner's inquest, and a raw-head-and-bloody-bones picture of the suspected murderer, James Wilson. But Mary heard not, she heeded not. She staggered on like one in a dream. With hung head and tottering steps, she instinctively chose the shortest cut to that home, which was to her, in her present state of mind, only the hiding place of four walls, where she might vent her agony, unseen and unnoticed by the keen, unkind world without, but where no welcome, no love, no sympathising tears awaited her. As she neared that home, within two minutes' walk of it, her impetuous course was arrested by a light touch on her arm, and turning hastily, she saw a little Italian boy with his humble show-box,--a white mouse, or some such thing. The setting sun cast its red glow on his face, otherwise the olive complexion would have been very pale; and the glittering tear-drops hung on the long curled eye-lashes. With his soft voice and pleading looks, he uttered, in his pretty broken English, the words "Hungry! so hungry." And, as if to aid by gesture the effect of the solitary word, he pointed to his mouth, with its white quivering lips. Mary answered him impatiently, "Oh, lad, hunger is nothing--nothing!" And she rapidly passed on. But her heart upbraided her the next minute with her unrelenting speech, and she hastily entered her door and seized the scanty remnant of food which the cupboard contained, and retraced her steps to the place where the little hopeless stranger had sunk down by his mute companion in loneliness and starvation, and was raining down tears as he spoke in some foreign tongue, with low cries for the far distant "Mamma mia!" With the elasticity of heart belonging to childhood he sprang up as he saw the food the girl brought; she whose face, lovely in its woe, had tempted him first to address her; and, with the graceful courtesy of his country, he looked up and smiled while he kissed her hand, and then poured forth his thanks, and shared her bounty with his little pet companion. She stood an instant, diverted from the thought of her own grief by the sight of his infantine gladness; and then bending down and kissing his smooth forehead, she left him, and sought to be alone with her agony once more. She re-entered the house, locked the door, and tore off her bonnet, as if greedy of every moment which took her from the full indulgence of painful, despairing thought. Then she threw herself on the ground, yes, on the hard flags she threw her soft limbs down; and the comb fell out of her hair, and those bright tresses swept the dusty floor, while she pillowed and hid her face on her arms, and burst forth into hard, suffocating sobs. Oh, earth! thou didst seem but a dreary dwelling-place for thy poor child that night. None to comfort, none to pity! And self-reproach gnawing at her heart. Oh, why did she ever listen to the tempter? Why did she ever give ear to her own suggestions, and cravings after wealth and grandeur? Why had she thought it a fine thing to have a rich lover? She--she had deserved it all; but he was the victim,--he, the beloved. She could not conjecture, she could not even pause to think who had revealed, or how he had discovered her acquaintance with Harry Carson. It was but too clear, some way or another, he had learnt all; and what would he think of her? No hope of his love,--oh, that she would give up, and be content; it was his life, his precious life, that was threatened. Then she tried to recall the particulars, which, when Mrs. Wilson had given them, had fallen but upon a deafened ear,--something about a gun, a quarrel, which she could not remember clearly. Oh, how terrible to think of his crime, his blood-guiltiness; he who had hitherto been so good, so noble, and now an assassin! And then she shrank from him in thought; and then, with bitter remorse, clung more closely to his image with passionate self-upbraiding. Was it not she who had led him to the pit into which he had fallen? Was she to blame him? She to judge him? Who could tell how maddened he might have been by jealousy; how one moment's uncontrollable passion might have led him to become a murderer? And she had blamed him in her heart after his last deprecating, imploring, prophetic speech! Then she burst out crying afresh; and when weary of crying, fell to thinking again. The gallows! The gallows! Black it stood against the burning light which dazzled her shut eyes, press on them as she would. Oh! she was going mad; and for awhile she lay outwardly still, but with the pulses careering through her head with wild vehemence. And then came a strange forgetfulness of the present, in thought of the long-past times;--of those days when she hid her face on her mother's pitying, loving bosom, and heard tender words of comfort, be her grief or her error what it might;--of those days when she had felt as if her mother's love was too mighty not to last for ever;--of those days when hunger had been to her (as to the little stranger she had that evening relieved) something to be thought about, and mourned over;--when Jem and she had played together; he, with the condescension of an older child, and she, with unconscious earnestness, believing that he was as much gratified with important trifles as she was;--when her father was a cheery-hearted man, rich in the love of his wife, and the companionship of his friend;--when (for it still worked round to that), when mother was alive, and _he_ was not a murderer. And then Heaven blessed her unaware, and she sank from remembering, to wandering, unconnected thought, and thence to sleep. Yes! it was sleep, though in that strange posture, on that hard cold bed; and she dreamt of the happy times of long ago, and her mother came to her, and kissed her as she lay, and once more the dead were alive again in that happy world of dreams. All was restored to the gladness of childhood, even to the little kitten which had been her playmate and bosom friend then, and which had been long forgotten in her waking hours. All the loved ones were there! She suddenly wakened! Clear and wide awake! Some noise had startled her from sleep. She sat up, and put her hair (still wet with tears) back from her flushed cheeks, and listened. At first she could only hear her beating heart. All was still without, for it was after midnight, such hours of agony had passed away; but the moon shone clearly in at the unshuttered window, making the room almost as light as day, in its cold ghastly radiance. There was a low knock at the door! A strange feeling crept over Mary's heart, as if something spiritual were near; as if the dead, so lately present in her dreams, were yet gliding and hovering round her, with their dim, dread forms. And yet, why dread? Had they not loved her?--and who loved her now? Was she not lonely enough to welcome the spirits of the dead, who had loved her while here? If her mother had conscious being, her love for her child endured. So she quieted her fears, and listened--listened still. "Mary! Mary! open the door!" as a little movement on her part seemed to tell the being outside of her wakeful, watchful state. They were the accents of her mother's voice; the very south-country pronunciation, that Mary so well remembered; and which she had sometimes tried to imitate when alone, with the fond mimicry of affection. So, without fear, without hesitation, she rose and unbarred the door. There, against the moonlight, stood a form, so closely resembling her dead mother, that Mary never doubted the identity, but exclaiming (as if she were a terrified child, secure of safety when near the protecting care of its parent)-- "Oh! mother! mother! You are come at last!" She threw herself, or rather fell, into the trembling arms of her long-lost, unrecognised aunt Esther. CHAPTER XXI. ESTHER'S MOTIVE IN SEEKING MARY. "My rest is gone, My heart is sore, Peace find I never, And never more." MARGARET'S SONG IN "FAUST." I must go back a little to explain the motives which caused Esther to seek an interview with her niece. The murder had been committed early on Thursday night, and between then and the dawn of the following day there was ample time for the news to spread far and wide among all those whose duty, or whose want, or whose errors, caused them to be abroad in the streets of Manchester. Among those who listened to the tale of violence was Esther. A craving desire to know more took possession of her mind. Far away as she was from Turner Street, she immediately set off to the scene of the murder, which was faintly lighted by the gray dawn as she reached the spot. It was so quiet and still that she could hardly believe it to be the place. The only vestige of any scuffle or violence was a trail on the dust, as if somebody had been lying there, and then been raised by extraneous force. The little birds were beginning to hop and twitter in the leafless hedge, making the only sound that was near and distinct. She crossed into the field where she guessed the murderer to have stood; it was easy of access, for the worn, stunted hawthorn-hedge had many gaps in it. The night-smell of bruised grass came up from under her feet, as she went towards the saw-pit and carpenter's shed, which, as I have said before, were in a corner of the field near the road, and where one of her informants had told her it was supposed by the police that the murderer had lurked while waiting for his victim. There was no sign, however, that any one had been about the place. If the grass had been bruised or bent where he had trod, it had had enough of the elasticity of life to raise itself under the dewy influences of night. She hushed her breath with involuntary awe, but nothing else told of the violent deed by which a fellow-creature had passed away. She stood still for a minute, imagining to herself the position of the parties, guided by the only circumstance which afforded any evidence, the trailing mark on the dust in the road. Suddenly (it was before the sun had risen above the horizon) she became aware of something white in the hedge. All other colours wore the same murky hue, though the forms of objects were perfectly distinct. What was it? It could not be a flower;--that, the time of year made clear. A frozen lump of snow, lingering late in one of the gnarled tufts of the hedge? She stepped forward to examine. It proved to be a little piece of stiff writing-paper compressed into a round shape. She understood it instantly; it was the paper that had served as wadding for the murderer's gun. Then she had been standing just where the murderer must have been but a few hours before; probably (as the rumour had spread through the town, reaching her ears) one of the poor maddened turn-outs, who hung about everywhere, with black, fierce looks, as if contemplating some deed of violence. Her sympathy was all with them, for she had known what they suffered; and besides this there was her own individual dislike of Mr. Carson, and dread of him for Mary's sake. Yet, poor Mary! Death was a terrible, though sure, remedy for the evil Esther had dreaded for her; and how would she stand the shock, loving as her aunt believed her to do? Poor Mary! who would comfort her? Esther's thoughts began to picture her sorrow, her despair, when the news of her lover's death should reach her; and she longed to tell her there might have been a keener grief yet had he lived. Bright, beautiful came the slanting rays of the morning sun. It was time for such as she to hide themselves, with the other obscene things of night, from the glorious light of day, which was only for the happy. So she turned her steps towards town, still holding the paper. But in getting over the hedge it encumbered her to hold it in her clasped hand, and she threw it down. She passed on a few steps, her thoughts still of Mary, till the idea crossed her mind, could it (blank as it appeared to be) give any clue to the murderer? As I said before, her sympathies were all on that side, so she turned back and picked it up; and then feeling as if in some measure an accessory, she hid it unexamined in her hand, and hastily passed out of the street at the opposite end to that by which she had entered it. And what do you think she felt, when, having walked some distance from the spot, she dared to open the crushed paper, and saw written on it Mary Barton's name, and not only that, but the street in which she lived! True, a letter or two was torn off, but, nevertheless, there was the name clear to be recognised. And oh! what terrible thought flashed into her mind; or was it only fancy? But it looked very like the writing which she had once known well--the writing of Jem Wilson, who, when she lived at her brother-in-law's, and he was a near neighbour, had often been employed by her to write her letters to people, to whom she was ashamed of sending her own misspelt scrawl. She remembered the wonderful flourishes she had so much admired in those days, while she sat by dictating, and Jem, in all the pride of newly-acquired penmanship, used to dazzle her eyes by extraordinary graces and twirls. If it were his! Oh! perhaps it was merely that her head was running so on Mary, that she was associating every trifle with her. As if only one person wrote in that flourishing, meandering style! It was enough to fill her mind to think from what she might have saved Mary by securing the paper. She would look at it just once more, and see if some very dense and stupid policeman could have mistaken the name, or if Mary would certainly have been dragged into notice in the affair. No! no one could have mistaken the "ry Barton," and it _was_ Jem's handwriting! Oh! if it was so, she understood it all, and she had been the cause! With her violent and unregulated nature, rendered morbid by the course of life she led, and her consciousness of her degradation, she cursed herself for the interference which she believed had led to this; for the information and the warning she had given to Jem, which had roused him to this murderous action. How could she, the abandoned and polluted outcast, ever have dared to hope for a blessing, even on her efforts to do good? The black curse of Heaven rested on all her doings, were they for good or for evil. Poor, diseased mind! and there were none to minister to thee! So she wandered about, too restless to take her usual heavy morning's sleep, up and down the streets, greedily listening to every word of the passers by, and loitering near each group of talkers, anxious to scrape together every morsel of information, or conjecture, or suspicion, though without possessing any definite purpose in all this. And ever and always she clenched the scrap of paper which might betray so much, until her nails had deeply indented the palm of her hand; so fearful was she in her nervous dread, lest unawares she should let it drop. Towards the middle of the day she could no longer evade the body's craving want of rest and refreshment; but the rest was taken in a spirit vault, and the refreshment was a glass of gin. Then she started up from the stupor she had taken for repose; and suddenly driven before the gusty impulses of her mind, she pushed her way to the place where at that very time the police were bringing the information they had gathered with regard to the all-engrossing murder. She listened with painful acuteness of comprehension to dropped words and unconnected sentences, the meaning of which became clearer, and yet more clear to her. Jem was suspected. Jem was ascertained to be the murderer. She saw him (although he, absorbed in deep sad thought, saw her not), she saw him brought hand-cuffed and guarded out of the coach. She saw him enter the station,--she gasped for breath till he came out, still hand-cuffed, and still guarded, to be conveyed to the New Bailey. He was the only one who had spoken to her with hope, that she might yet win her way back to virtue. His words had lingered in her heart with a sort of call to Heaven, like distant Sabbath bells, although in her despair she had turned away from his voice. He was the only one who had spoken to her kindly. The murder, shocking though it was, was an absent, abstract thing, on which her thoughts could not, and would not dwell; all that was present in her mind was Jem's danger, and his kindness. Then Mary came to remembrance. Esther wondered till she was sick of wondering, in what way she was taking the affair. In some manner it would be a terrible blow for the poor, motherless girl; with her dreadful father, too, who was to Esther a sort of accusing angel. She set off towards the court where Mary lived, to pick up what she could there of information. But she was ashamed to enter in where once she had been innocent, and hung about the neighbouring streets, not daring to question, so she learnt but little; nothing in fact but the knowledge of John Barton's absence from home. She went up a dark entry to rest her weary limbs on a door-step and think. Her elbows on her knees, her face hidden in her hands, she tried to gather together and arrange her thoughts. But still every now and then she opened her hand to see if the paper were yet there. She got up at last. She had formed a plan, and had a course of action to look forward to that would satisfy one craving desire at least. The time was long gone by when there was much wisdom or consistency in her projects. It was getting late, and that was so much the better. She went to a pawn-shop, and took off her finery in a back room. She was known by the people, and had a character for honesty, so she had no very great difficulty in inducing them to let her have a suit of outer clothes, befitting the wife of a working-man, a black silk bonnet, a printed gown, a plaid shawl, dirty and rather worn to be sure, but which had a sort of sanctity to the eyes of the street-walker as being the appropriate garb of that happy class to which she could never, never more belong. She looked at herself in the little glass which hung against the wall, and sadly shaking her head, thought how easy were the duties of that Eden of innocence from which she was shut out; how she would work, and toil, and starve, and die, if necessary, for a husband, a home,--for children,--but that thought she could not bear; a little form rose up, stern in its innocence, from the witches' cauldron of her imagination, and she rushed into action again. You know now how she came to stand by the threshold of Mary's door, waiting, trembling, until the latch was lifted, and her niece, with words that spoke of such desolation among the living, fell into her arms. She had felt as if some holy spell would prevent her (even as the unholy Lady Geraldine was prevented, in the abode of Christabel) from crossing the threshold of that home of her early innocence; and she had meant to wait for an invitation. But Mary's helpless action did away with all reluctant feeling, and she bore or dragged her to a seat, and looked on her bewildered eyes, as, puzzled with the likeness, which was not identity, she gazed on her aunt's features. In pursuance of her plan, Esther meant to assume the manners and character, as she had done the dress, of a mechanic's wife; but then, to account for her long absence, and her long silence towards all that ought to have been dear to her, it was necessary that she should put on an indifference far distant from her heart, which was loving and yearning, in spite of all its faults. And, perhaps, she overacted her part, for certainly Mary felt a kind of repugnance to the changed and altered aunt, who so suddenly re-appeared on the scene; and it would have cut Esther to the very core, could she have known how her little darling of former days was feeling towards her. "You don't remember me I see, Mary!" she began. "It's a long while since I left you all, to be sure; and I, many a time, thought of coming to see you, and--and your father. But I live so far off, and am always so busy, I cannot do just what I wish. You recollect aunt Esther, don't you, Mary?" "Are you aunt Hetty?" asked Mary, faintly, still looking at the face which was so different from the old recollections of her aunt's fresh dazzling beauty. "Yes! I am aunt Hetty. Oh! it's so long since I heard that name," sighing forth the thoughts it suggested; then recovering herself, and striving after the hard character she wished to assume, she continued: "And to-day I heard a friend of yours, and of mine too, long ago, was in trouble, and I guessed you would be in sorrow, so I thought I would just step this far and see you." Mary's tears flowed afresh, but she had no desire to open her heart to her strangely-found aunt, who had, by her own confession, kept aloof from and neglected them for so many years. Yet she tried to feel grateful for kindness (however late) from any one, and wished to be civil. Moreover, she had a strong disinclination to speak on the terrible subject uppermost in her mind. So, after a pause she said, "Thank you. I dare say you mean very kind. Have you had a long walk? I'm so sorry," said she, rising, with a sudden thought, which was as suddenly checked by recollection, "but I've nothing to eat in the house, and I'm sure you must be hungry, after your walk." For Mary concluded that certainly her aunt's residence must be far away on the other side of the town, out of sight or hearing. But, after all, she did not think much about her; her heart was so aching-full of other things, that all besides seemed like a dream. She received feelings and impressions from her conversation with her aunt, but did not, could not, put them together, or think or argue about them. And Esther! How scanty had been her food for days and weeks, her thinly-covered bones and pale lips might tell, but her words should never reveal! So, with a little unreal laugh, she replied, "Oh! Mary, my dear! don't talk about eating. We've the best of every thing, and plenty of it, for my husband is in good work. I'd such a supper before I came out. I couldn't touch a morsel if you had it." Her words shot a strange pang through Mary's heart. She had always remembered her aunt's loving and unselfish disposition; how was it changed, if, living in plenty, she had never thought it worth while to ask after her relations, who were all but starving! She shut up her heart instinctively against her aunt. And all the time poor Esther was swallowing her sobs, and over-acting her part, and controlling herself more than she had done for many a long day, in order that her niece might not be shocked and revolted, by the knowledge of what her aunt had become:--a prostitute; an outcast. For she longed to open her wretched, wretched heart, so hopeless, so abandoned by all living things, to one who had loved her once; and yet she refrained, from dread of the averted eye, the altered voice, the internal loathing, which she feared such disclosure might create. She would go straight to the subject of the day. She could not tarry long, for she felt unable to support the character she had assumed for any length of time. They sat by the little round table, facing each other. The candle was placed right between them, and Esther moved it in order to have a clearer view of Mary's face, so that she might read her emotions, and ascertain her interests. Then she began: "It's a bad business, I'm afraid, this of Mr. Carson's murder." Mary winced a little. "I hear Jem Wilson is taken up for it." Mary covered her eyes with her hands, as if to shade them from the light, and Esther herself, less accustomed to self-command, was getting too much agitated for calm observation of another. "I was taking a walk near Turner Street, and I went to see the spot," continued Esther, "and, as luck would have it, I spied this bit of paper in the hedge," producing the precious piece still folded in her hand. "It has been used as wadding for the gun, I reckon; indeed, that's clear enough, from the shape it's crammed into. I was sorry for the murderer, whoever he might be (I didn't then know of Jem's being suspected), and I thought I would never leave a thing about as might help, if ever so little, to convict him; the police are so 'cute about straws. So I carried it a little way, and then I opened it and saw your name, Mary." Mary took her hands away from her eyes, and looked with surprise at her aunt's face, as she uttered these words. She _was_ kind after all, for was she not saving her from being summoned, and from being questioned and examined; a thing to be dreaded above all others: as she felt sure that her unwilling answers, frame them how she might, would add to the suspicions against Jem; her aunt was indeed kind, to think of what would spare her this. Esther went on, without noticing Mary's look. The very action of speaking was so painful to her, and so much interrupted by the hard, raking little cough, which had been her constant annoyance for months, that she was too much engrossed by the physical difficulty of utterance, to be a very close observer. "There could be no mistake if they had found it. Look at your name, together with the very name of this court! And in Jem's hand-writing too, or I'm much mistaken. Look, Mary!" And now she did watch her. Mary took the paper and flattened it; then suddenly stood stiff up, with irrepressible movement, as if petrified by some horror abruptly disclosed; her face, strung and rigid; her lips compressed tight, to keep down some rising exclamation. She dropped on her seat, as suddenly as if the braced muscles had in an instant given way. But she spoke no word. "It is his hand-writing--isn't it?" asked Esther, though Mary's manner was almost confirmation enough. "You will not tell. You never will tell," demanded Mary, in a tone so sternly earnest, as almost to be threatening. "Nay, Mary," said Esther, rather reproachfully, "I am not so bad as that. Oh! Mary, you cannot think I would do that, whatever I may be." The tears sprang to her eyes at the idea that she was suspected of being one who would help to inform against an old friend. Mary caught her sad and upbraiding look. "No! I know you would not tell, aunt. I don't know what I say, I am so shocked. But say you will not tell. Do." "No, indeed I will not tell, come what may." Mary sat still, looking at the writing, and turning the paper round with careful examination, trying to hope, but her very fears belying her hopes. "I thought you cared for the young man that's murdered," observed Esther, half aloud; but feeling that she could not mistake this strange interest in the suspected murderer, implied by Mary's eagerness to screen him from any thing which might strengthen suspicion against him. She had come, desirous to know the extent of Mary's grief for Mr. Carson, and glad of the excuse afforded her by the important scrap of paper. Her remark about its being Jem's hand-writing, she had, with this view of ascertaining Mary's state of feeling, felt to be most imprudent the instant after she uttered it; but Mary's anxiety that she should not tell was too great, and too decided, to leave a doubt as to her interest for Jem. She grew more and more bewildered, and her dizzy head refused to reason. Mary never spoke. She held the bit of paper firmly, determined to retain possession of it, come what might; and anxious, and impatient, for her aunt to go. As she sat, her face bore a likeness to Esther's dead child. "You are so like my little girl, Mary!" said Esther, weary of the one subject on which she could get no satisfaction, and recurring, with full heart, to the thought of the dead. Mary looked up. Her aunt had children, then. That was all the idea she received. No faint imagination of the love and the woe of that poor creature crossed her mind, or she would have taken her, all guilty and erring, to her bosom, and tried to bind up the broken heart. No! it was not to be. Her aunt had children, then; and she was on the point of putting some question about them, but before it could be spoken another thought turned it aside, and she went back to her task of unravelling the mystery of the paper, and the hand-writing. Oh! how she wished her aunt would go. As if, according to the believers in mesmerism, the intenseness of her wish gave her power over another, although the wish was unexpressed, Esther felt herself unwelcome, and that her absence was desired. She felt this some time before she could summon up resolution to go. She was so much disappointed in this longed-for, dreaded interview with Mary; she had wished to impose upon her with her tale of married respectability, and yet she had yearned and craved for sympathy in her real lot. And she had imposed upon her well. She should perhaps be glad of it afterwards; but her desolation of hope seemed for the time redoubled. And she must leave the old dwelling-place, whose very walls, and flags, dingy and sordid as they were, had a charm for her. Must leave the abode of poverty, for the more terrible abodes of vice. She must--she would go. "Well, good-night, Mary. That bit of paper is safe enough with you, I see. But you made me promise I would not tell about it, and you must promise me to destroy it before you sleep." "I promise," said Mary, hoarsely, but firmly. "Then you are going?" "Yes. Not if you wish me to stay. Not if I could be of any comfort to you, Mary;" catching at some glimmering hope. "Oh, no," said Mary, anxious to be alone. "Your husband will be wondering where you are. Some day you must tell me all about yourself. I forget what your name is?" "Fergusson," said Esther, sadly. "Mrs. Fergusson," repeated Mary, half unconsciously. "And where did you say you lived?" "I never did say," muttered Esther; then aloud, "In Angel's Meadow, 145, Nicholas Street." "145, Nicholas Street, Angel Meadow. I shall remember." As Esther drew her shawl around her, and prepared to depart, a thought crossed Mary's mind that she had been cold and hard in her manner towards one, who had certainly meant to act kindly in bringing her the paper (that dread, terrible piece of paper) and thus saving her from--she could not rightly think how much, or how little she was spared. So, desirous of making up for her previous indifferent manner, she advanced to kiss her aunt before her departure. But, to her surprise, her aunt pushed her off with a frantic kind of gesture, and saying the words, "Not me. You must never kiss me. You!" She rushed into the outer darkness of the street, and there wept long and bitterly. CHAPTER XXII. MARY'S EFFORTS TO PROVE AN ALIBI. "There was a listening fear in her regard, As if calamity had but begun; As if the vanward clouds of evil days Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear Was, with its stored thunder, labouring up." KEATS' "HYPERION." No sooner was Mary alone than she fastened the door, and put the shutters up against the window, which had all this time remained shaded only by the curtains hastily drawn together on Esther's entrance, and the lighting of the candle. She did all this with the same compressed lips, and the same stony look that her face had assumed on the first examination of the paper. Then she sat down for an instant to think; and rising directly, went, with a step rendered firm by inward resolution of purpose, up the stairs;--passed her own door, two steps, into her father's room. What did she want there? I must tell you; I must put into words the dreadful secret which she believed that bit of paper had revealed to her. Her father was the murderer! That corner of stiff, shining, thick writing-paper, she recognised as part of the sheet on which she had copied Samuel Bamford's beautiful lines so many months ago--copied (as you perhaps remember) on the blank part of a valentine sent to her by Jem Wilson, in those days when she did not treasure and hoard up every thing he had touched, as she would do now. That copy had been given to her father, for whom it was made, and she had occasionally seen him reading it over, not a fortnight ago she was sure. But she resolved to ascertain if the other part still remained in his possession. He might, it was just possible he _might_, have given it away to some friend; and if so, that person was the guilty one, for she could swear to the paper anywhere. First of all she pulled out every article from the little old chest of drawers. Amongst them were some things which had belonged to her mother, but she had no time now to examine and try and remember them. All the reverence she could pay them was to carry them and lay them on the bed carefully, while the other things were tossed impatiently out upon the floor. The copy of Bamford's lines was not there. Oh! perhaps he might have given it away; but then must it not have been to Jem? It was his gun. And she set to with redoubled vigour to examine the deal-box which served as chair, and which had once contained her father's Sunday clothes, in the days when he could afford to have Sunday clothes. He had redeemed his better coat from the pawn-shop before he left, that she had noticed. Here was his old one. What rustled under her hand in the pocket? The paper! "Oh! Father!" Yes, it fitted; jagged end to jagged end, letter to letter; and even the part which Esther had considered blank had its tallying mark with the larger piece, its tails of _y_s and _g_s. And then, as if that were not damning evidence enough, she felt again, and found some bullets or shot (I don't know which you would call them) in that same pocket, along with a small paper parcel of gunpowder. As she was going to replace the jacket, having abstracted the paper, and bullets, &c., she saw a woollen gun-case made of that sort of striped horse-cloth you must have seen a thousand times appropriated to such a purpose. The sight of it made her examine still further, but there was nothing else that could afford any evidence, so she locked the box, and sat down on the floor to contemplate the articles; now with a sickening despair, now with a kind of wondering curiosity, how her father had managed to evade observation. After all it was easy enough. He had evidently got possession of some gun (was it really Jem's; was he an accomplice? No! she did not believe it; he never, never would deliberately plan a murder with another, however he might be wrought up to it by passionate feeling at the time. Least of all would he accuse her to her father, without previously warning her; it was out of his nature). Then having obtained possession of the gun, her father had loaded it at home, and might have carried it away with him some time when the neighbours were not noticing, and she was out, or asleep; and then he might have hidden it somewhere to be in readiness when he should want it. She was sure he had no such thing with him when he went away the last time. She felt it was of no use to conjecture his motives. His actions had become so wild and irregular of late, that she could not reason upon them. Besides, was it not enough to know that he was guilty of this terrible offence? Her love for her father seemed to return with painful force, mixed up as it was with horror at his crime. That dear father, who was once so kind, so warm-hearted, so ready to help either man or beast in distress, to murder! But, in the desert of misery with which these thoughts surrounded her, the arid depths of whose gloom she dared not venture to contemplate, a little spring of comfort was gushing up at her feet, unnoticed at first, but soon to give her strength and hope. And _that_ was the necessity for exertion on her part which this discovery enforced. Oh! I do think that the necessity for exertion, for some kind of action (bodily or mental) in time of distress, is a most infinite blessing, although the first efforts at such seasons are painful. Something to be done implies that there is yet hope of some good thing to be accomplished, or some additional evil that may be avoided; and by degrees the hope absorbs much of the sorrow. It is the woes that cannot in any earthly way be escaped that admit least earthly comforting. Of all trite, worn-out, hollow mockeries of comfort that were ever uttered by people who will not take the trouble of sympathising with others, the one I dislike the most is the exhortation not to grieve over an event, "for it cannot be helped." Do you think if I could help it, I would sit still with folded hands, content to mourn? Do you not believe that as long as hope remained I would be up and doing? I mourn because what has occurred cannot be helped. The reason you give me for not grieving, is the very and sole reason of my grief. Give me nobler and higher reasons for enduring meekly what my Father sees fit to send, and I will try earnestly and faithfully to be patient; but mock me not, or any other mourner, with the speech, "Do not grieve, for it cannot be helped. It is past remedy." But some remedy to Mary's sorrow came with thinking. If her father was guilty, Jem was innocent. If innocent, there was a possibility of saving him. He must be saved. And she must do it; for was not she the sole depository of the terrible secret? Her father was not suspected; and never should be, if by any foresight or any exertions of her own she could prevent it. She did not yet know how Jem was to be saved, while her father was also to be considered innocent. It would require much thought and much prudence. But with the call upon her exertions, and her various qualities of judgment and discretion, came the answering consciousness of innate power to meet the emergency. Every step now, nay, the employment of every minute, was of consequence; for you must remember she had learnt at Miss Simmonds' the probability that the murderer would be brought to trial the next week. And you must remember, too, that never was so young a girl so friendless, or so penniless, as Mary was at this time. But the lion accompanied Una through the wilderness and the danger; and so will a high, resolved purpose of right-doing ever guard and accompany the helpless. It struck two; deep, mirk, night. It was of no use bewildering herself with plans this weary, endless night. Nothing could be done before morning: and, at first in her impatience, she began to long for day; but then she felt in how unfit a state her body was for any plan of exertion, and she resolutely made up her mind to husband her physical strength. First of all she must burn the tell-tale paper. The powder, bullets, and gun-case, she tied into a bundle, and hid in the sacking of the bed for the present, although there was no likelihood of their affording evidence against any one. Then she carried the paper down stairs, and burnt it on the hearth, powdering the very ashes with her fingers, and dispersing the fragments of fluttering black films among the cinders of the grate. Then she breathed again. Her head ached with dizzying violence; she must get quit of the pain or it would incapacitate her for thinking and planning. She looked for food, but there was nothing but a little raw oatmeal in the house: still, although it almost choked her, she ate some of this, knowing from experience, how often headaches were caused by long fasting. Then she sought for some water to bathe her throbbing temples, and quench her feverish thirst. There was none in the house, so she took the jug and went out to the pump at the other end of the court, whose echoes resounded her light footsteps in the quiet stillness of the night. The hard, square outlines of the houses cut sharply against the cold bright sky, from which myriads of stars were shining down in eternal repose. There was little sympathy in the outward scene, with the internal trouble. All was so still, so motionless, so hard! Very different to this lovely night in the country in which I am now writing, where the distant horizon is soft and undulating in the moonlight, and the nearer trees sway gently to and fro in the night-wind with something of almost human motion; and the rustling air makes music among their branches, as if speaking soothingly to the weary ones who lie awake in heaviness of heart. The sights and sounds of such a night lull pain and grief to rest. But Mary re-entered her home after she had filled her pitcher, with a still stronger sense of anxiety, and a still clearer conviction of how much rested upon her unassisted and friendless self, alone with her terrible knowledge, in the hard, cold, populous world. She bathed her forehead, and quenched her thirst, and then, with wise deliberation of purpose, went upstairs, and undressed herself, as if for a long night's slumber, although so few hours intervened before day-dawn. She believed she never could sleep, but she lay down, and shut her eyes; and before many minutes she was in as deep and sound a slumber as if there was no sin nor sorrow in the world. She awakened, as it was natural, much refreshed in body; but with a consciousness of some great impending calamity. She sat up in bed to recollect, and when she did remember, she sank down again with all the helplessness of despair. But it was only the weakness of an instant; for were not the very minutes precious, for deliberation if not for action? Before she had finished the necessary morning business of dressing, and setting her house in some kind of order, she had disentangled her ravelled ideas, and arranged some kind of a plan for action. If Jem was innocent (and now, of his guilt, even his slightest participation in, or knowledge of, the murder, she acquitted him with all her heart and soul), he must have been somewhere else when the crime was committed; probably with some others, who might bear witness to the fact, if she only knew where to find them. Every thing rested on her. She had heard of an alibi, and believed it might mean the deliverance she wished to accomplish; but she was not quite sure, and determined to apply to Job, as one of the few among her acquaintance gifted with the knowledge of hard words, for to her, all terms of law, or natural history, were alike many-syllabled mysteries. No time was to be lost. She went straight to Job Legh's house, and found the old man and his grand-daughter sitting at breakfast; as she opened the door she heard their voices speaking in a grave, hushed, subdued tone, as if something grieved their hearts. They stopped talking on her entrance, and then she knew they had been conversing about the murder; about Jem's probable guilt; and (it flashed upon her for the first time) on the new light they would have obtained regarding herself: for until now they had never heard of her giddy flirting with Mr. Carson; not in all her confidential talk with Margaret had she ever spoken of him. And now Margaret would hear her conduct talked of by all, as that of a bold, bad girl; and even if she did not believe every thing that was said, she could hardly help feeling wounded, and disappointed in Mary. So it was in a timid voice that Mary wished her usual good-morrow, and her heart sank within her a little, when Job, with a form of civility, bade her welcome in that dwelling, where, until now, she had been too well assured to require to be asked to sit down. She took a chair. Margaret continued silent. "I'm come to speak to you about this--about Jem Wilson." "It's a bad business, I'm afeared," replied Job, sadly. "Ay, it's bad enough anyhow. But Jem's innocent. Indeed he is; I'm as sure as sure can be." "How can you know, wench? Facts bear strong again him, poor fellow, though he'd a deal to put him up, and aggravate him, they say. Ay, poor lad, he's done for himself, I'm afeared." "Job!" said Mary, rising from her chair in her eagerness, "you must not say he did it. He didn't; I'm sure and certain he didn't. Oh! why do you shake your head? Who is to believe me,--who is to think him innocent, if you, who know'd him so well, stick to it he's guilty?" "I'm loth enough to do it, lass," replied Job; "but I think he's been ill used, and--jilted (that's plain truth, Mary, hard as it may seem), and his blood has been up--many a man has done the like afore, from like causes." "Oh, God! Then you won't help me, Job, to prove him innocent? Oh! Job, Job; believe me, Jem never did harm to no one." "Not afore;--and mind, wench! I don't over-blame him for this." Job relapsed into silence. Mary thought a moment. "Well, Job, you'll not refuse me this, I know. I won't mind what you think, if you'll help me as if he was innocent. Now suppose I know--I knew he was innocent,--it's only supposing, Job,--what must I do to prove it? Tell me, Job! Isn't it called an _alibi_, the getting folk to swear to where he really was at the time?" "Best way, if you know'd him innocent, would be to find out the real murderer. Some one did it, that's clear enough. If it wasn't Jem, who was it?" "How can I tell?" answered Mary, in an agony of terror, lest Job's question was prompted by any suspicion of the truth. But he was far enough from any such thought. Indeed, he had no doubt in his own mind that Jem had, in some passionate moment, urged on by slighted love and jealousy, been the murderer. And he was strongly inclined to believe, that Mary was aware of this, only that, too late repentant of her light conduct which had led to such fatal consequences, she was now most anxious to save her old play-fellow, her early friend, from the doom awaiting the shedder of blood. "If Jem's not done it, I don't see as any on us can tell who did. We might find out something if we'd time; but they say he's to be tried on Tuesday. It's no use hiding it, Mary; things looks strong against him." "I know they do! I know they do! But, oh! Job! isn't an _alibi_ a proving where he really was at th' time of the murder; and how must I set about an _alibi_?" "An _alibi_ is that, sure enough." He thought a little. "You mun ask his mother his doings, and his whereabouts that night; the knowledge of that will guide you a bit." For he was anxious that on another should fall the task of enlightening Mary on the hopelessness of the case, and he felt that her own sense would be more convinced by inquiry and examination than any mere assertion of his. Margaret had sat silent and grave all this time. To tell the truth, she was surprised and disappointed by the disclosure of Mary's conduct, with regard to Mr. Henry Carson. Gentle, reserved, and prudent herself, never exposed to the trial of being admired for her personal appearance, and unsusceptible enough to be in doubt even yet, whether the fluttering, tender, infinitely-joyous feeling she was for the first time experiencing, at sight, or sound, or thought of Will Wilson, was love or not,--Margaret had no sympathy with the temptations to which loveliness, vanity, ambition, or the desire of being admired, exposes so many; no sympathy with flirting girls, in short. Then, she had no idea of the strength of the conflict between will and principle in some who were differently constituted from herself. With her, to be convinced that an action was wrong, was tantamount to a determination not to do so again; and she had little or no difficulty in carrying out her determination. So she could not understand how it was that Mary had acted wrongly, and had felt too much ashamed, in spite of all internal sophistry, to speak of her actions. Margaret considered herself deceived; felt aggrieved; and, at the time of which I am now telling you, was strongly inclined to give Mary up altogether, as a girl devoid of the modest proprieties of her sex, and capable of gross duplicity, in speaking of one lover as she had done of Jem, while she was encouraging another in attentions, at best of a very doubtful character. But now Margaret was drawn into the conversation. Suddenly it flashed across Mary's mind, that the night of the murder was the very night, or rather the same early morning, that Margaret had been with Alice. She turned sharp round, with-- "Oh! Margaret, you can tell me; you were there when he came back that night; were you not? No! you were not; but you were there not many hours after. Did not you hear where he'd been? He was away the night before, too, when Alice was first taken; when you were there for your tea. Oh! where was he, Margaret?" "I don't know," she answered. "Stay! I do remember something about his keeping Will company, in his walk to Liverpool. I can't justly say what it was, so much happened that night." "I'll go to his mother's," said Mary, resolutely. They neither of them spoke, either to advise or dissuade. Mary felt she had no sympathy from them, and braced up her soul to act without such loving aid of friendship. She knew that their advice would be willingly given at her demand, and that was all she really required for Jem's sake. Still her courage failed a little as she walked to Jane Wilson's, alone in the world with her secret. Jane Wilson's eyes were swelled with crying; and it was sad to see the ravages which intense anxiety and sorrow had made on her appearance in four-and-twenty hours. All night long she and Mrs. Davenport had crooned over their sorrows, always recurring, like the burden of an old song, to the dreadest sorrow of all, which was now impending over Mrs. Wilson. She had grown--I hardly know what word to use--but, something like proud of her martyrdom; she had grown to hug her grief; to feel an excitement in her agony of anxiety about her boy. "So, Mary, you're here! Oh! Mary, lass! He's to be tried on Tuesday." She fell to sobbing, in the convulsive breath-catching manner which tells so of much previous weeping. "Oh! Mrs. Wilson, don't take on so! We'll get him off, you'll see. Don't fret; they can't prove him guilty!" "But I tell thee they will," interrupted Mrs. Wilson, half-irritated at the light way, as she considered it, in which Mary spoke; and a little displeased that another could hope when she had almost brought herself to find pleasure in despair. "It may suit thee well," continued she, "to make light o' the misery thou hast caused; but I shall lay his death at thy door, as long as I live, and die I know he will; and all for what he never did--no, he never did; my own blessed boy!" She was too weak to be angry long; her wrath sank away to feeble sobbing and worn-out moans. Mary was most anxious to soothe her from any violence of either grief or anger; she did so want her to be clear in her recollection; and, besides, her tenderness was great towards Jem's mother. So she spoke in a low gentle tone the loving sentences, which sound so broken and powerless in repetition, and which yet have so much power when accompanied with caressing looks and actions, fresh from the heart; and the old woman insensibly gave herself up to the influence of those sweet, loving blue eyes, those tears of sympathy, those words of love and hope, and was lulled into a less morbid state of mind. "And now, dear Mrs. Wilson, can you remember where he said he was going on Thursday night? He was out when Alice was taken ill; and he did not come home till early in the morning, or, to speak true, in the night: did he?" "Ay! he went out near upon five; he went out with Will; he said he were going to set [45] him a part of the way, for Will were hot upon walking to Liverpool, and wouldn't hearken to Jem's offer of lending him five shilling for his fare. So the two lads set off together. I mind it all now; but, thou seest, Alice's illness, and this business of poor Jem's, drove it out of my head; they went off together, to walk to Liverpool; that's to say, Jem were to go a part o' th' way. But, who knows" (falling back into the old desponding tone) "if he really went? He might be led off on the road. Oh! Mary, wench! they'll hang him for what he's never done." [Footnote 45: "To set," to accompany.] "No, they won't--they shan't! I see my way a bit now. We mun get Will to help; there'll be time. He can swear that Jem were with him. Where is Jem?" "Folk said he were taken to Kirkdale, i' th' prison-van, this morning; without my seeing him, poor chap! Oh! wench! but they've hurried on the business at a cruel rate." "Ay! they've not let grass grow under their feet, in hunting out the man that did it," said Mary, sorrowfully and bitterly. "But keep up your heart. They got on the wrong scent when they took to suspecting Jem. Don't be afeard. You'll see it will end right for Jem." "I should mind it less if I could do aught," said Jane Wilson; "but I'm such a poor weak old body, and my head's so gone, and I'm so dazed-like, what with Alice and all, that I think and think, and can do nought to help my child. I might ha' gone and seen him last night, they tell me now, and then I missed it. Oh! Mary, I missed it; and I may never see the lad again." She looked so piteously in Mary's face with her miserable eyes, that Mary felt her heart giving way, and, dreading the weakening of her powers, which the burst of crying she longed for would occasion, hastily changed the subject to Alice; and Jane, in her heart, feeling that there was no sorrow like a mother's sorrow, replied, "She keeps on much the same, thank you. She's happy, for she knows nought of what's going on; but th' doctor says she grows weaker and weaker. Thou'lt may be like to see her?" Mary went up-stairs: partly because it is the etiquette in humble life to offer to friends a last opportunity of seeing the dying or the dead, while the same etiquette forbids a refusal of the invitation; and partly because she longed to breathe, for an instant, the atmosphere of holy calm, which seemed ever to surround the pious good old woman. Alice lay, as before, without pain, or at least any outward expression of it; but totally unconscious of all present circumstances, and absorbed in recollections of the days of her girlhood, which were vivid enough to take the place of realities to her. Still she talked of green fields, and still she spoke to the long-dead mother and sister, low-lying in their graves this many a year, as if they were with her and about her, in the pleasant places where her youth had passed. But the voice was fainter, the motions were more languid; she was evidently passing away; but _how_ happily! Mary stood for a time in silence, watching and listening. Then she bent down and reverently kissed Alice's cheek; and drawing Jane Wilson away from the bed, as if the spirit of her who lay there were yet cognisant of present realities, she whispered a few words of hope to the poor mother, and kissing her over and over again in a warm, loving manner, she bade her good-bye, went a few steps, and then once more came back to bid her keep up her heart. And when she had fairly left the house, Jane Wilson felt as if a sun-beam had ceased shining into the room. Yet oh! how sorely Mary's heart ached; for more and more the fell certainty came on her that her father was the murderer! She struggled hard not to dwell on this conviction; to think alone on the means of proving Jem's innocence; that was her first duty, and that should be done. CHAPTER XXIII. THE SUB-POENA. "And must it then depend on this poor eye And this unsteady hand, whether the bark, That bears my all of treasured hope and love, Shall find a passage through these frowning rocks To some fair port where peace and safety smile,-- Or whether it shall blindly dash against them, And miserably sink? Heaven be my help; And clear my eye, and nerve my trembling hand!" "THE CONSTANT WOMAN." Her heart beating, her head full of ideas, which required time and solitude to be reduced into order, Mary hurried home. She was like one who finds a jewel of which he cannot all at once ascertain the value, but who hides his treasure until some quiet hour when he may ponder over the capabilities its possession unfolds. She was like one who discovers the silken clue which guides to some bower of bliss, and secure of the power within his grasp, has to wait for a time before he may tread the labyrinth. But no jewel, no bower of bliss was ever so precious to miser or lover as was the belief which now pervaded Mary's mind, that Jem's innocence might be proved, without involving any suspicion of that other--that dear one, so dear, although so criminal--on whose part in this cruel business she dared not dwell even in thought. For if she did, there arose the awful question,--if all went against Jem the innocent, if judge and jury gave the verdict forth which had the looming gallows in the rear, what ought she to do, possessed of her terrible knowledge? Surely not to inculpate her father--and yet--and yet--she almost prayed for the blessed unconsciousness of death or madness, rather than that awful question should have to be answered by her. But now a way seemed opening, opening yet more clear. She was thankful she had thought of the _alibi_, and yet more thankful to have so easily obtained the clue to Jem's whereabouts that miserable night. The bright light that her new hope threw over all seemed also to make her thankful for the early time appointed for the trial. It would be easy to catch Will Wilson on his return from the Isle of Man, which he had planned should be on the Monday; and on the Tuesday all would be made clear--all that she dared to wish to be made clear. She had still to collect her thoughts and freshen her memory enough to arrange how to meet with Will--for to the chances of a letter she would not trust; to find out his lodgings when in Liverpool; to try and remember the name of the ship in which he was to sail: and the more she considered these points the more difficulty she found there would be in ascertaining these minor but important facts. For you are aware that Alice, whose memory was clear and strong on all points in which her heart was interested, was lying in a manner senseless: that Jane Wilson was (to use her own word, so expressive to a Lancashire ear) "dazed," that is to say, bewildered, lost in the confusion of terrifying and distressing thoughts; incapable of concentrating her mind; and at the best of times Will's proceedings were a matter of little importance to her (or so she pretended), she was so jealous of aught which distracted attention from her pearl of price, her only son Jem. So Mary felt hopeless of obtaining any intelligence of the sailor's arrangements from her. Then, should she apply to Jem himself? No! she knew him too well. She felt how thoroughly he must ere now have had it in his power to exculpate himself at another's expense. And his tacit refusal so to do had assured her of what she had never doubted, that the murderer was safe from any impeachment of his. But then neither would he consent, she feared, to any steps which might tend to prove himself innocent. At any rate, she could not consult him. He was removed to Kirkdale, and time pressed. Already it was Saturday at noon. And even if she could have gone to him, I believe she would not. She longed to do all herself; to be his liberator, his deliverer; to win him life, though she might never regain his lost love, by her own exertions. And oh! how could she see him to discuss a subject in which both knew who was the blood-stained man; and yet whose name might not be breathed by either, so dearly with all his faults, his sins, was he loved by both. All at once, when she had ceased to try and remember, the name of Will's ship flashed across her mind. The _John Cropper_. He had named it, she had been sure, all along. He had named it in his conversation with her that last, that fatal Thursday evening. She repeated it over and over again, through a nervous dread of again forgetting it. The _John Cropper_. And then, as if she were rousing herself out of some strange stupor, she bethought her of Margaret. Who so likely as Margaret to treasure every little particular respecting Will, now Alice was dead to all the stirring purposes of life? She had gone thus far in her process of thought, when a neighbour stepped in; she with whom they had usually deposited the house-key, when both Mary and her father were absent from home, and who consequently took upon herself to answer all inquiries, and receive all messages which any friends might make, or leave, on finding the house shut up. "Here's somewhat for you, Mary! A policeman left it." A bit of parchment. Many people have a dread of those mysterious pieces of parchment. I am one. Mary was another. Her heart misgave her as she took it, and looked at the unusual appearance of the writing, which, though legible enough, conveyed no idea to her, or rather her mind shut itself up against receiving any idea, which after all was rather a proof she had some suspicion of the meaning that awaited her. "What is it?" asked she, in a voice from which all the pith and marrow of strength seemed extracted. "Nay! how should I know? Policeman said he'd call again towards evening, and see if you'd getten it. He were loth to leave it, though I telled him who I was, and all about my keeping th' key, and taking messages." "What is it about?" asked Mary again, in the same hoarse, feeble voice, and turning it over in her fingers, as if she dreaded to inform herself of its meaning. "Well! yo can read word of writing and I cannot, so it's queer I should have to tell you. But my master says it's a summons for yo to bear witness again Jem Wilson, at th' trial at Liverpool Assize." "God pity me!" said Mary, faintly, as white as a sheet. "Nay, wench, never take on so. What yo can say will go little way either to help or to hinder, for folk say he's certain to be hung; and sure enough it was t'other one as was your sweetheart." But Mary was beyond any pang this speech would have given at another time. Her thoughts were all busy picturing to herself the terrible occasion of their next meeting--not as lovers meet should they meet! "Well!" said the neighbour, seeing no use in remaining with one who noticed her words or her presence so little; "thou'lt tell policeman thou'st getten his precious bit of paper. He seemed to think I should be keeping it for mysel; he's th' first as has ever misdoubted me about giving messages, or notes. Good day." She left the house, but Mary did not know it. She sat still with the parchment in her hand. All at once she started up. She would take it to Job Legh and ask him to tell her the true meaning, for it could not be _that_. So she went, and choked out her words of inquiry. "It's a sub-poena," he replied, turning the parchment over with the air of a connoisseur; for Job loved hard words, and lawyer-like forms, and even esteemed himself slightly qualified for a lawyer, from the smattering of knowledge he had picked up from an odd volume of Blackstone that he had once purchased at a book-stall. "A sub-poena--what is that?" gasped Mary, still in suspense. Job was struck with her voice, her changed, miserable voice, and peered at her countenance from over his spectacles. "A sub-poena is neither more nor less than this, my dear. It's a summonsing you to attend, and answer such questions as may be asked of you regarding the trial of James Wilson, for the murder of Henry Carson; that's the long and short of it, only more elegantly put, for the benefit of them who knows how to value the gift of language. I've been a witness before-time myself; there's nothing much to be afeared on; if they are impudent, why, just you be impudent, and give 'em tit for tat." "Nothing much to be afeared on!" echoed Mary, but in such a different tone. "Ay, poor wench, I see how it is. It'll go hard with thee a bit, I dare say; but keep up thy heart. Yo cannot have much to tell 'em, that can go either one way or th' other. Nay! may be thou may do him a bit o' good, for when they set eyes on thee, they'll see fast enough how he came to be so led away by jealousy; for thou'rt a pretty creature, Mary, and one look at thy face will let 'em into th' secret of a young man's madness, and make 'em more ready to pass it over." "Oh! Job, and won't you ever believe me when I tell you he's innocent? Indeed, and indeed I can prove it; he was with Will all that night; he was, indeed, Job!" "My wench! whose word hast thou for that?" said Job, pityingly. "Why! his mother told me, and I'll get Will to bear witness to it. But, oh! Job" (bursting into tears), "it is hard if you won't believe me. How shall I clear him to strangers, when those who know him, and ought to love him, are so set against his being innocent?" "God knows, I'm not against his being innocent," said Job, solemnly. "I'd give half my remaining days on earth,--I'd give them all, Mary (and but for the love I bear to my poor blind girl, they'd be no great gift), if I could save him. You've thought me hard, Mary, but I'm not hard at bottom, and I'll help you if I can; that I will, right or wrong," he added; but in a low voice, and coughed the uncertain words away the moment afterwards. "Oh, Job! if you will help me," exclaimed Mary, brightening up (though it was but a wintry gleam after all), "tell me what to say, when they question me; I shall be so gloppened, [46] I shan't know what to answer." [Footnote 46: "Gloppened," terrified.] "Thou canst do nought better than tell the truth. Truth's best at all times, they say; and for sure it is when folk have to do with lawyers; for they're 'cute and cunning enough to get it out sooner or later, and it makes folk look like Tom Noddies, when truth follows falsehood, against their will." "But I don't know the truth; I mean--I can't say rightly what I mean; but I'm sure, if I were pent up, and stared at by hundreds of folk, and asked ever so simple a question, I should be for answering it wrong; if they asked me if I had seen you on a Saturday, or a Tuesday, or any day, I should have clean forgotten all about it, and say the very thing I should not." "Well, well, don't go for to get such notions into your head; they're what they call 'narvous,' and talking on 'em does no good. Here's Margaret! bless the wench! Look, Mary, how well she guides hersel." Job fell to watching his grand-daughter, as with balancing, measured steps, timed almost as if to music, she made her way across the street. Mary shrank as if from a cold blast--shrank from Margaret! The blind girl, with her reserve, her silence, seemed to be a severe judge; she, listening, would be such a check to the trusting earnestness of confidence, which was beginning to unlock the sympathy of Job. Mary knew herself to blame; felt her errors in every fibre of her heart; but yet she would rather have had them spoken about, even in terms of severest censure, than have been treated in the icy manner in which Margaret had received her that morning. "Here's Mary," said Job, almost as if he wished to propitiate his grand-daughter, "come to take a bit of dinner with us, for I'll warrant she's never thought of cooking any for herself to-day; and she looks as wan and pale as a ghost." It was calling out the feeling of hospitality, so strong and warm in most of those who have little to offer, but whose heart goes eagerly and kindly with that little. Margaret came towards Mary with a welcoming gesture, and a kinder manner by far than she had used in the morning. "Nay, Mary, thou know'st thou'st getten nought at home," urged Job. And Mary, faint and weary, and with a heart too aching-full of other matters to be pertinacious in this, withdrew her refusal. They ate their dinner quietly; for to all it was an effort to speak, and after one or two attempts they had subsided into silence. When the meal was ended Job began again on the subject they all had at heart. "Yon poor lad at Kirkdale will want a lawyer to see they don't put on him, but do him justice. Hast thought of that?" Mary had not, and felt sure his mother had not. Margaret confirmed this last supposition. "I've but just been there, and poor Jane is like one dateless; so many griefs come on her at once. One time she seems to make sure he'll be hung; and if I took her in that way, she flew out (poor body!) and said, that in spite of what folk said, there were them as could, and would prove him guiltless. So I never knew where to have her. The only thing she was constant in, was declaring him innocent." "Mother-like!" said Job. "She meant Will, when she spoke of them that could prove him innocent. He was with Will on Thursday night, walking a part of the way with him to Liverpool; now the thing is to lay hold on Will and get him to prove this." So spoke Mary, calm, from the earnestness of her purpose. "Don't build too much on it, my dear," said Job. "I do build on it," replied Mary, "because I know it's the truth, and I mean to try and prove it, come what may. Nothing you can say will daunt me, Job, so don't you go and try. You may help, but you cannot hinder me doing what I'm resolved on." They respected her firmness of determination, and Job almost gave in to her belief, when he saw how steadfastly she was acting upon it. Oh! surest way of conversion to our faith, whatever it may be,--regarding either small things, or great,--when it is beheld as the actuating principle, from which we never swerve! When it is seen that, instead of over-much profession, it is worked into the life, and moves every action! Mary gained courage as she instinctively felt she had made way with one at least of her companions. "Now I'm clear about this much," she continued, "he was with Will when the--shot was fired (she could not bring herself to say, when the murder was committed, when she remembered _who_ it was that, she had every reason to believe, was the taker-away of life). Will can prove this. I must find Will. He wasn't to sail till Tuesday. There's time enough. He was to come back from his uncle's, in the Isle of Man, on Monday. I must meet him in Liverpool, on that day, and tell him what has happened, and how poor Jem is in trouble, and that he must prove an _alibi_, come Tuesday. All this I can and will do, though perhaps I don't clearly know how, just at present. But surely God will help me. When I know I'm doing right, I will have no fear, but put my trust in Him; for I'm acting for the innocent and good, and not for my own self, who have done so wrong. I have no fear when I think of Jem, who is so good." She stopped, oppressed with the fulness of her heart. Margaret began to love her again; to see in her the same sweet, faulty, impulsive, lovable creature she had known in the former Mary Barton, but with more of dignity, self-reliance, and purpose. Mary spoke again. "Now I know the name of Will's vessel--the _John Cropper_; and I know that she is bound to America. That is something to know. But I forget, if I ever heard, where he lodges in Liverpool. He spoke of his landlady, as a good, trustworthy woman; but if he named her name, it has slipped my memory. Can you help me, Margaret?" She appealed to her friend calmly and openly, as if perfectly aware of, and recognising the unspoken tie which bound her and Will together; she asked her in the same manner in which she would have asked a wife where her husband dwelt. And Margaret replied in the like calm tone, two spots of crimson on her cheeks alone bearing witness to any internal agitation. "He lodges at a Mrs. Jones's, Milk-House Yard, out of Nicholas Street. He has lodged there ever since he began to go to sea; she is a very decent kind of woman, I believe." "Well, Mary! I'll give you my prayers," said Job. "It's not often I pray regular, though I often speak a word to God, when I'm either very happy or very sorry; I've catched myself thanking Him at odd hours when I've found a rare insect, or had a fine day for an out; but I cannot help it, no more than I can talking to a friend. But this time I'll pray regular for Jem, and for you. And so will Margaret, I'll be bound. Still, wench! what think yo of a lawyer? I know one, Mr. Cheshire, who's rather given to th' insect line--and a good kind o' chap. He and I have swopped specimens many's the time, when either of us had a duplicate. He'll do me a kind turn, I'm sure. I'll just take my hat, and pay him a visit." No sooner said, than done. Margaret and Mary were left alone. And this seemed to bring back the feeling of awkwardness, not to say estrangement. But Mary, excited to an unusual pitch of courage, was the first to break silence. "Oh, Margaret!" said she, "I see--I feel how wrong you think I have acted; you cannot think me worse than I think myself, now my eyes are opened." Here her sobs came choking up her voice. "Nay," Margaret began, "I have no right to--" "Yes, Margaret, you have a right to judge; you cannot help it; only in your judgment remember mercy, as the Bible says. You, who have been always good, cannot tell how easy it is at first to go a little wrong, and then how hard it is to go back. Oh! I little thought when I was first pleased with Mr. Carson's speeches, how it would all end; perhaps in the death of him I love better than life." She burst into a passion of tears. The feelings pent up through the day would have vent. But checking herself with a strong effort, and looking up at Margaret as piteously as if those calm, stony eyes could see her imploring face, she added, "I must not cry; I must not give way; there will be time enough for that hereafter, if--I only wanted you to speak kindly to me, Margaret, for I am very, very wretched; more wretched than any one can ever know; more wretched, I sometimes fancy, than I have deserved,--but that's wrong, isn't it, Margaret? Oh! I have done wrong, and I am punished; you cannot tell how much." Who could resist her voice, her tones of misery, of humility? Who would refuse the kindness for which she begged so penitently? Not Margaret. The old friendly manner came back. With it, may be, more of tenderness. "Oh! Margaret, do you think he can be saved; do you think they can find him guilty if Will comes forward as a witness? Won't that be a good _alibi_?" Margaret did not answer for a moment. "Oh, speak! Margaret," said Mary, with anxious impatience. "I know nought about law, or _alibis_," replied Margaret, meekly; "but, Mary, as grandfather says, aren't you building too much on what Jane Wilson has told you about his going with Will? Poor soul, she's gone dateless, I think, with care, and watching, and over-much trouble; and who can wonder? Or Jem may have told her he was going, by way of a blind." "You don't know Jem," said Mary, starting from her seat in a hurried manner, "or you would not say so." "I hope I may be wrong; but think, Mary, how much there is against him. The shot was fired with his gun; he it was as threatened Mr. Carson not many days before; he was absent from home at that very time, as we know, and, as I'm much afeared, some one will be called on to prove; and there's no one else to share suspicion with him." Mary heaved a deep sigh. "But, Margaret, he did not do it," Mary again asserted. Margaret looked unconvinced. "I can do no good, I see, by saying so, for none on you believe me, and I won't say so again till I can prove it. Monday morning I'll go to Liverpool. I shall be at hand for the trial. Oh dear! dear! And I will find Will; and then, Margaret, I think you'll be sorry for being so stubborn about Jem." "Don't fly off, dear Mary; I'd give a deal to be wrong. And now I'm going to be plain spoken. You'll want money. Them lawyers is no better than a spunge for sucking up money; let alone your hunting out Will, and your keep in Liverpool, and what not. You must take some of the mint I've got laid by in the old tea-pot. You have no right to refuse, for I offer it to Jem, not to you; it's for his purposes you're to use it." "I know--I see. Thank you, Margaret; you're a kind one, at any rate. I take it for Jem; and I'll do my very best with it for him. Not all, though; don't think I'll take all. They'll pay me for my keep. I'll take this," accepting a sovereign from the hoard which Margaret produced out of its accustomed place in the cupboard. "Your grandfather will pay the lawyer. I'll have nought to do with him," shuddering as she remembered Job's words, about lawyers' skill in always discovering the truth, sooner or later; and knowing what was the secret she had to hide. "Bless you! don't make such ado about it," said Margaret, cutting short Mary's thanks. "I sometimes think there's two sides to the commandment; and that we may say, 'Let others do unto you, as you would do unto them,' for pride often prevents our giving others a great deal of pleasure, in not letting them be kind, when their hearts are longing to help; and when we ourselves should wish to do just the same, if we were in their place. Oh! how often I've been hurt, by being coldly told by persons not to trouble myself about their care, or sorrow, when I saw them in great grief, and wanted to be of comfort. Our Lord Jesus was not above letting folk minister to Him, for He knew how happy it makes one to do aught for another. It's the happiest work on earth." Mary had been too much engrossed by watching what was passing in the street to attend very closely to that which Margaret was saying. From her seat she could see out of the window pretty plainly, and she caught sight of a gentleman walking alongside of Job, evidently in earnest conversation with him, and looking keen and penetrating enough to be a lawyer. Job was laying down something to be attended to she could see, by his up-lifted fore-finger, and his whole gesture; then he pointed and nodded across the street to his own house, as if inducing his companion to come in. Mary dreaded lest he should, and she be subjected to a closer cross-examination than she had hitherto undergone, as to why she was so certain that Jem was innocent. She feared he was coming; he stepped a little towards the spot. No! it was only to make way for a child, tottering along, whom Mary had overlooked. Now Job took him by the button, so earnestly familiar had he grown. The gentleman looked "fidging fain" to be gone, but submitted in a manner that made Mary like him in spite of his profession. Then came a volley of last words, answered by briefest nods, and monosyllables; and then the stranger went off with redoubled quickness of pace, and Job crossed the street with a little satisfied air of importance on his kindly face. "Well! Mary," said he on entering, "I've seen the lawyer, not Mr. Cheshire though; trials for murder, it seems, are not his line o' business. But he gived me a note to another 'torney; a fine fellow enough, only too much of a talker; I could hardly get a word in, he cut me so short. However, I've just been going over the principal points again to him; may be you saw us? I wanted him just to come over and speak to you himsel, Mary, but he was pressed for time; and he said your evidence would not be much either here or there. He's going to the 'sizes first train on Monday morning, and will see Jem, and hear the ins and outs from him, and he's gived me his address, Mary, and you and Will are to call on him (Will 'special) on Monday at two o'clock. Thou'rt taking it in, Mary; thou'rt to call on him in Liverpool at two, Monday afternoon?" Job had reason to doubt if she fully understood him; for all this minuteness of detail, these satisfactory arrangements, as he considered them, only seemed to bring the circumstances in which she was placed more vividly home to Mary. They convinced her that it was real, and not all a dream, as she had sunk into fancying it for a few minutes, while sitting in the old accustomed place, her body enjoying the rest, and her frame sustained by food, and listening to Margaret's calm voice. The gentleman she had just beheld would see and question Jem in a few hours, and what would be the result? Monday: that was the day after to-morrow, and on Tuesday, life and death would be tremendous realities to her lover; or else death would be an awful certainty to her father. No wonder Job went over his main points again:-- "Monday; at two o'clock, mind; and here's his card. 'Mr. Bridgenorth, 41, Renshaw Street, Liverpool.' He'll be lodging there." Job ceased talking, and the silence roused Mary up to thank him. "You're very kind, Job; very. You and Margaret won't desert me, come what will." "Pooh! pooh! wench; don't lose heart, just as I'm beginning to get it. He seems to think a deal on Will's evidence. You're sure, girls, you're under no mistake about Will?" "I'm sure," said Mary, "he went straight from here, purposing to go see his uncle at the Isle of Man, and be back Sunday night, ready for the ship sailing on Tuesday." "So am I," said Margaret. "And the ship's name was the _John Cropper_, and he lodged where I told Mary before. Have you got it down, Mary?" Mary wrote it on the back of Mr. Bridgenorth's card. "He was not over-willing to go," said she, as she wrote, "for he knew little about his uncle, and said he didn't care if he never knowed more. But he said kinsfolk was kinsfolk, and promises was promises, so he'd go for a day or so, and then it would be over." Margaret had to go and practise some singing in town; so, though loth to depart and be alone, Mary bade her friends good-bye. CHAPTER XXIV. WITH THE DYING. "O sad and solemn is the trembling watch Of those who sit and count the heavy hours, Beside the fevered sleep of one they love! O awful is it in the hushed mid night, While gazing on the pallid, moveless form, To start and ask, 'Is it now sleep--or death?'" ANONYMOUS. Mary could not be patient in her loneliness; so much painful thought weighed on her mind; the very house was haunted with memories and foreshadowings. Having performed all duties to Jem, as far as her weak powers, yet loving heart could act; and a black veil being drawn over her father's past, present, and future life, beyond which she could not penetrate to judge of any filial service she ought to render; her mind unconsciously sought after some course of action in which she might engage. Any thing, any thing, rather than leisure for reflection. And then came up the old feeling which first bound Ruth to Naomi; the love they both held towards one object; and Mary felt that her cares would be most lightened by being of use, or of comfort to his mother. So she once more locked up the house, and set off towards Ancoats; rushing along with down-cast head, for fear lest any one should recognise her and arrest her progress. Jane Wilson sat quietly in her chair as Mary entered; so quietly, as to strike one by the contrast it presented to her usual bustling and nervous manner. She looked very pale and wan; but the quietness was the thing that struck Mary most. She did not rise as Mary came in, but sat still and said something in so gentle, so feeble a voice, that Mary did not catch it. Mrs. Davenport, who was there, plucked Mary by the gown, and whispered, "Never heed her; she's worn out, and best let alone. I'll tell you all about it, up-stairs." But Mary, touched by the anxious look with which Mrs. Wilson gazed at her, as if awaiting the answer to some question, went forward to listen to the speech she was again repeating. "What is this? will you tell me?" Then Mary looked and saw another ominous slip of parchment in the mother's hand, which she was rolling up and down in a tremulous manner between her fingers. Mary's heart sickened within her, and she could not speak. "What is it?" she repeated. "Will you tell me?" She still looked at Mary, with the same child-like gaze of wonder and patient entreaty. What could she answer? "I telled ye not to heed her," said Mrs. Davenport, a little angrily. "She knows well enough what it is,--too well, belike. I was not in when they sarved it; but Mrs. Heming (her as lives next door) was, and she spelled out the meaning, and made it all clear to Mrs. Wilson. It's a summons to be a witness on Jem's trial--Mrs. Heming thinks, to swear to the gun; for, yo see, there's nobbut [47] her as can testify to its being his, and she let on so easily to the policeman that it was his, that there's no getting off her word now. Poor body; she takes it very hard, I dare say!" [Footnote 47: "Nobbut," none-but. "No man sigh evere God _no but_ the oon bigetun sone."--_Wiclif's Version._] Mrs. Wilson had waited patiently while this whispered speech was being uttered, imagining, perhaps, that it would end in some explanation addressed to her. But when both were silent, though their eyes, without speech or language, told their hearts' pity, she spoke again in the same unaltered gentle voice (so different from the irritable impatience she had been ever apt to show to every one except her husband,--he who had wedded her, broken-down and injured)--in a voice so different, I say, from the old, hasty manner, she spoke now the same anxious words, "What is this? Will you tell me?" "Yo'd better give it me at once, Mrs. Wilson, and let me put it out of your sight.--Speak to her, Mary, wench, and ask for a sight on it; I've tried, and better-tried to get it from her, and she takes no heed of words, and I'm loth to pull it by force out of her hands." Mary drew the little "cricket" [48] out from under the dresser, and sat down at Mrs. Wilson's knee, and, coaxing one of her tremulous, ever-moving hands into hers, began to rub it soothingly; there was a little resistance--a very little, but that was all; and presently, in the nervous movement of the imprisoned hand, the parchment fell to the ground. [Footnote 48 "Cricket," a stool.] Mary calmly and openly picked it up without any attempt at concealment, and quietly placing it in sight of the anxious eyes that followed it with a kind of spell-bound dread, went on with her soothing caresses. "She has had no sleep for many nights," said the girl to Mrs. Davenport, "and all this woe and sorrow,--it's no wonder." "No, indeed!" Mrs. Davenport answered. "We must get her fairly to bed; we must get her undressed, and all; and trust to God, in His mercy, to send her to sleep, or else,--" For, you see, they spoke before her as if she were not there; her heart was so far away. Accordingly they almost lifted her from the chair in which she sat motionless, and taking her up as gently as a mother carries her sleeping baby, they undressed her poor, worn form, and laid her in the little bed up-stairs. They had once thought of placing her in Jem's bed, to be out of sight or sound of any disturbance of Alice's, but then again they remembered the shock she might receive in awakening in so unusual a place, and also that Mary, who intended to keep vigil that night in the house of mourning, would find it difficult to divide her attention in the possible cases that might ensue. So they laid her, as I said before, on that little pallet-bed; and, as they were slowly withdrawing from the bed-side, hoping and praying that she might sleep, and forget for a time her heavy burden, she looked wistfully after Mary, and whispered, "You haven't told me what it is. What is it?" And gazing in her face for the expected answer, her eye-lids slowly closed, and she fell into a deep, heavy sleep, almost as profound a rest as death. Mrs. Davenport went her way, and Mary was alone,--for I cannot call those who sleep allies against the agony of thought which solitude sometimes brings up. She dreaded the night before her. Alice might die; the doctor had that day declared her case hopeless, and not far from death; and at times the terror, so natural to the young, not of death, but of the remains of the dead, came over Mary; and she bent and listened anxiously for the long-drawn, pausing breath of the sleeping Alice. Or Mrs. Wilson might awake in a state which Mary dreaded to anticipate, and anticipated while she dreaded;--in a state of complete delirium. Already her senses had been severely stunned by the full explanation of what was required of her,--of what she had to prove against her son, her Jem, her only child,--which Mary could not doubt the officious Mrs. Heming had given; and what if in dreams (that land into which no sympathy or love can penetrate with another, either to share its bliss or its agony,--that land whose scenes are unspeakable terrors, are hidden mysteries, are priceless treasures to one alone,--that land where alone I may see, while yet I tarry here, the sweet looks of my dead child),--what if, in the horrors of her dreams, her brain should go still more astray, and she should waken crazy with her visions, and the terrible reality that begot them? How much worse is anticipation sometimes than reality! How Mary dreaded that night, and how calmly it passed by! Even more so than if Mary had not had such claims upon her care! Anxiety about them deadened her own peculiar anxieties. She thought of the sleepers whom she was watching, till overpowered herself by the want of rest, she fell off into short slumbers in which the night wore imperceptibly away. To be sure Alice spoke, and sang, during her waking moments, like the child she deemed herself; but so happily with the dearly-loved ones around her, with the scent of the heather, and the song of the wild bird hovering about her in imagination--with old scraps of ballads, or old snatches of primitive versions of the Psalms (such as are sung in country churches half draperied over with ivy, and where the running brook, or the murmuring wind among the trees makes fit accompaniment to the chorus of human voices uttering praise and thanksgiving to their God)--that the speech and the song gave comfort and good cheer to the listener's heart, and the gray dawn began to dim the light of the rush-candle, before Mary thought it possible that day was already trembling on the horizon. Then she got up from the chair where she had been dozing, and went, half-asleep, to the window to assure herself that morning was at hand. The streets were unusually quiet with a Sabbath stillness. No factory bells that morning; no early workmen going to their labours; no slip-shod girls cleaning the windows of the little shops which broke the monotony of the street; instead, you might see here and there some operative sallying forth for a breath of country air, or some father leading out his wee toddling bairns for the unwonted pleasure of a walk with "Daddy," in the clear frosty morning. Men with more leisure on week-days would perhaps have walked quicker than they did through the fresh sharp air of this Sunday morning; but to them there was a pleasure, an absolute refreshment in the dawdling gait they, one and all of them, had. To be sure, there were one or two passengers on that morning whose objects were less innocent and less praiseworthy than those of the people I have already mentioned, and whose animal state of mind and body clashed jarringly on the peacefulness of the day; but upon them I will not dwell: as you and I, and almost every one, I think, may send up our individual cry of self-reproach that we have not done all that we could for the stray and wandering ones of our brethren. When Mary turned from the window, she went to the bed of each sleeper, to look and listen. Alice looked perfectly quiet and happy in her slumber, and her face seemed to have become much more youthful during her painless approach to death. Mrs. Wilson's countenance was stamped with the anxiety of the last few days, although she, too, appeared sleeping soundly; but as Mary gazed on her, trying to trace a likeness to her son in her face, she awoke and looked up into Mary's eyes, while the expression of consciousness came back into her own. Both were silent for a minute or two. Mary's eyes had fallen beneath that penetrating gaze, in which the agony of memory seemed every moment to find fuller vent. "Is it a dream?" the mother asked at last in a low voice. "No!" replied Mary, in the same tone. Mrs. Wilson hid her face in the pillow. She was fully conscious of every thing this morning; it was evident that the stunning effect of the subpoena, which had affected her so much last night in her weak, worn-out state, had passed away. Mary offered no opposition when she indicated by languid gesture and action that she wished to rise. A sleepless bed is a haunted place. When she was dressed with Mary's help, she stood by Alice for a minute or two, looking at the slumberer. "How happy she is!" said she, quietly and sadly. All the time that Mary was getting breakfast ready, and performing every other little domestic office she could think of, to add to the comfort of Jem's mother, Mrs. Wilson sat still in the arm-chair, watching her silently. Her old irritation of temper and manner seemed to have suddenly disappeared, or perhaps she was too depressed in body and mind to show it. Mary told her all that had been done with regard to Mr. Bridgenorth; all her own plans for seeking out Will; all her hopes; and concealed as well as she could all the doubts and fears that would arise unbidden. To this Mrs. Wilson listened without much remark, but with deep interest and perfect comprehension. When Mary ceased she sighed and said, "Oh wench! I am his mother, and yet I do so little, I can do so little! That's what frets me! I seem like a child as sees its mammy ill, and moans and cries its little heart out, yet does nought to help. I think my sense has left me all at once, and I can't even find strength to cry like the little child." Hereupon she broke into a feeble wail of self-reproach, that her outward show of misery was not greater; as if any cries, or tears, or loud-spoken words could have told of such pangs at the heart as that look, and that thin, piping, altered voice! But think of Mary and what she was enduring! Picture to yourself (for I cannot tell you) the armies of thoughts that met and clashed in her brain; and then imagine the effort it cost her to be calm, and quiet, and even, in a faint way, cheerful and smiling at times. After a while she began to stir about in her own mind for some means of sparing the poor mother the trial of appearing as a witness in the matter of the gun. She had made no allusion to her summons this morning, and Mary almost thought she must have forgotten it; and surely some means might be found to prevent that additional sorrow. She must see Job about it; nay, if necessary, she must see Mr. Bridgenorth, with all his truth-compelling powers; for, indeed, she had so struggled and triumphed (though a sadly-bleeding victor at heart) over herself these two last days, had so concealed agony, and hidden her inward woe and bewilderment, that she began to take confidence, and to have faith in her own powers of meeting any one with a passably fair show, whatever might be rending her life beneath the cloak of her deception. Accordingly, as soon as Mrs. Davenport came in after morning church, to ask after the two lone women, and she had heard the report Mary had to give (so much better as regarded Mrs. Wilson than what they had feared the night before it would have been)--as soon as this kind-hearted, grateful woman came in, Mary, telling her her purpose, went off to fetch the doctor who attended Alice. He was shaking himself after his morning's round, and happy in the anticipation of his Sunday's dinner; but he was a good-tempered man, who found it difficult to keep down his jovial easiness even by the bed of sickness or death. He had mischosen his profession; for it was his delight to see every one around him in full enjoyment of life. However, he subdued his face to the proper expression of sympathy, befitting a doctor listening to a patient, or a patient's friend (and Mary's sad, pale, anxious face might be taken for either the one or the other). "Well, my girl! and what brings you here?" said he, as he entered his surgery. "Not on your own account, I hope." "I wanted you to come and see Alice Wilson,--and then I thought you would may be take a look at Mrs. Wilson." He bustled on his hat and coat, and followed Mary instantly. After shaking his head over Alice (as if it was a mournful thing for one so pure and good, so true, although so humble a Christian, to be nearing her desired haven), and muttering the accustomed words intended to destroy hope, and prepare anticipation, he went in compliance with Mary's look to ask the usual questions of Mrs. Wilson, who sat passively in her arm-chair. She answered his questions, and submitted to his examination. "How do you think her?" asked Mary, eagerly. "Why--a," began he, perceiving that he was desired to take one side in his answer, and unable to find out whether his listener was anxious for a favourable verdict or otherwise; but thinking it most probable that she would desire the former, he continued, "She is weak, certainly; the natural result of such a shock as the arrest of her son would be,--for I understand this James Wilson, who murdered Mr. Carson, was her son. Sad thing to have such a reprobate in the family." "You say '_who murdered_,' sir!" said Mary, indignantly. "He is only taken up on suspicion, and many have no doubt of his innocence--those who know him, sir." "Ah, well, well! doctors have seldom time to read newspapers, and I dare say I'm not very correct in my story. I dare say he's innocent; I'm sure I had no right to say otherwise,--only words slip out.--No! indeed, young woman, I see no cause for apprehension about this poor creature in the next room;--weak--certainly; but a day or two's good nursing will set her up, and I'm sure you're a good nurse, my dear, from your pretty, kind-hearted face,--I'll send a couple of pills and a draught, but don't alarm yourself,--there's no occasion, I assure you." "But you don't think her fit to go to Liverpool?" asked Mary, still in the anxious tone of one who wishes earnestly for some particular decision. "To Liverpool--yes," replied he. "A short journey like that could not fatigue, and might distract her thoughts. Let her go by all means,--it would be the very thing for her." "Oh, sir!" burst out Mary, almost sobbing; "I did so hope you would say she was too ill to go." "Whew--" said he, with a prolonged whistle, trying to understand the case, but being, as he said, no reader of newspapers, utterly unaware of the peculiar reasons there might be for so apparently unfeeling a wish,--"Why did you not tell me so sooner? It might certainly do her harm in her weak state; there is always some risk attending journeys--draughts, and what not. To her, they might prove very injurious,--very. I disapprove of journeys, or excitement, in all cases where the patient is in the low, fluttered state in which Mrs. Wilson is. If you take _my_ advice, you will certainly put a stop to all thoughts of going to Liverpool." He really had completely changed his opinion, though quite unconsciously; so desirous was he to comply with the wishes of others. "Oh, sir, thank you! And will you give me a certificate of her being unable to go, if the lawyer says we must have one? The lawyer, you know," continued she, seeing him look puzzled, "who is to defend Jem,--it was as a witness against him--" "My dear girl!" said he, almost angrily, "why did you not state the case fully at first? one minute would have done it,--and my dinner waiting all this time. To be sure she can't go,--it would be madness to think of it; if her evidence could have done good, it would have been a different thing. Come to me for the certificate any time; that is to say, if the lawyer advises you. I second the lawyer; take counsel with both the learned professions--ha, ha, ha,--" And laughing at his own joke, he departed, leaving Mary accusing herself of stupidity in having imagined that every one was as well acquainted with the facts concerning the trial as she was herself; for indeed she had never doubted that the doctor would have been aware of the purpose of poor Mrs. Wilson's journey to Liverpool. Presently she went to Job (the ever-ready Mrs. Davenport keeping watch over the two old women), and told him her fears, her plans, and her proceedings. To her surprise he shook his head doubtfully. "It may have an awkward look, if we keep her back. Lawyers is up to tricks." "But it's no trick," said Mary. "She is so poorly, she was last night, at least; and to-day she's so faded and weak." "Poor soul! I dare say. I only mean for Jem's sake; as so much is known, it won't do now to hang back. But I'll ask Mr. Bridgenorth. I'll e'en take your doctor's advice. Yo tarry at home, and I'll come to yo in an hour's time. Go thy ways, wench." CHAPTER XXV. MRS. WILSON'S DETERMINATION. "Something there was, what, none presumed to say, Clouds lightly passing on a smiling day,-- Whispers and hints which went from ear to ear, And mixed reports no judge on earth could clear." CRABBE. "Curious conjectures he may always make, And either side of dubious questions take." IB. Mary went home. Oh! how her head did ache, and how dizzy her brain was growing! But there would be time enough she felt for giving way, hereafter. So she sat quiet and still by an effort; sitting near the window, and looking out of it, but seeing nothing, when all at once she caught sight of something which roused her up, and made her draw back. But it was too late. She had been seen. Sally Leadbitter flaunted into the little dingy room, making it gaudy with the Sunday excess of colouring in her dress. She was really curious to see Mary; her connexion with a murderer seemed to have made her into a sort of _lusus naturæ_, and was almost, by some, expected to have made a change in her personal appearance, so earnestly did they stare at her. But Mary had been too much absorbed this last day or two to notice this. Now Sally had a grand view, and looked her over and over (a very different thing from looking her through and through), and almost learnt her off by heart;--"her every-day gown (Hoyle's print you know, that lilac thing with the high body) she was so fond of; a little black silk handkerchief just knotted round her neck, like a boy; her hair all taken back from her face, as if she wanted to keep her head cool--she would always keep that hair of hers so long; and her hands twitching continually about." Such particulars would make Sally into a Gazette Extraordinary the next morning at the work-room, and were worth coming for, even if little else could be extracted from Mary. "Why, Mary!" she began. "Where have you hidden yourself? You never showed your face all yesterday at Miss Simmonds'. You don't fancy we think any the worse of you for what's come and gone. Some on us, indeed, were a bit sorry for the poor young man, as lies stiff and cold for your sake, Mary; but we shall ne'er cast it up against you. Miss Simmonds, too, will be mighty put out if you don't come, for there's a deal of mourning, agait." "I can't," Mary said, in a low voice. "I don't mean ever to come again." "Why, Mary!" said Sally, in unfeigned surprise. "To be sure you'll have to be in Liverpool, Tuesday, and may be Wednesday; but after that you'll surely come, and tell us all about it. Miss Simmonds knows you'll have to be off those two days. But between you and me, she's a bit of a gossip, and will like hearing all how and about the trial, well enough to let you off very easy for your being absent a day or two. Besides, Betsy Morgan was saying yesterday, she shouldn't wonder but you'd prove quite an attraction to customers. Many a one would come and have their gowns made by Miss Simmonds just to catch a glimpse at you, at after the trial's over. Really, Mary, you'll turn out quite a heroine." The little fingers twitched worse than ever; the large soft eyes looked up pleadingly into Sally's face; but she went on in the same strain, not from any unkind or cruel feeling towards Mary, but solely because she was incapable of comprehending her suffering. She had been shocked, of course, at Mr. Carson's death, though at the same time the excitement was rather pleasant than otherwise; and dearly now would she have enjoyed the conspicuous notice which Mary was sure to receive. "How shall you like being cross-examined, Mary?" "Not at all," answered Mary, when she found she must answer. "La! what impudent fellows those lawyers are! And their clerks, too, not a bit better. I shouldn't wonder" (in a comforting tone, and really believing she was giving comfort) "if you picked up a new sweetheart in Liverpool. What gown are you going in, Mary?" "Oh, I don't know and don't care," exclaimed Mary, sick and weary of her visitor. "Well, then! take my advice, and go in that blue merino. It's old to be sure, and a bit worn at elbows, but folk won't notice that, and th' colour suits you. Now mind, Mary. And I'll lend you my black watered scarf," added she, really good-naturedly, according to her sense of things, and withal, a little bit pleased at the idea of her pet article of dress figuring away on the person of a witness at a trial for murder. "I'll bring it to-morrow before you start." "No, don't!" said Mary; "thank you, but I don't want it." "Why, what can you wear? I know all your clothes as well as I do my own, and what is there you can wear? Not your old plaid shawl, I do hope? You would not fancy this I have on, more nor the scarf, would you?" said she, brightening up at the thought, and willing to lend it, or any thing else. "Oh Sally! don't go on talking a-that-ns; how can I think on dress at such a time? When it's a matter of life and death to Jem?" "Bless the girl! It's Jem, is it? Well now, I thought there was some sweetheart in the back-ground, when you flew off so with Mr. Carson. Then what in the name of goodness made him shoot Mr. Harry? After you had given up going with him, I mean? Was he afraid you'd be on again?" "How dare you say he shot Mr. Harry?" asked Mary, firing up from the state of languid indifference into which she had sunk while Sally had been settling about her dress. "But it's no matter what you think as did not know him. What grieves me is, that people should go on thinking him guilty as did know him," she said, sinking back into her former depressed tone and manner. "And don't you think he did it?" asked Sally. Mary paused; she was going on too fast with one so curious and so unscrupulous. Besides she remembered how even she herself had, at first, believed him guilty; and she felt it was not for her to cast stones at those who, on similar evidence, inclined to the same belief. None had given him much benefit of a doubt. None had faith in his innocence. None but his mother; and there the heart loved more than the head reasoned, and her yearning affection had never for an instant entertained the idea that her Jem was a murderer. But Mary disliked the whole conversation; the subject, the manner in which it was treated, were all painful, and she had a repugnance to the person with whom she spoke. She was thankful, therefore, when Job Legh's voice was heard at the door, as he stood with the latch in his hand, talking to a neighbour, and when Sally jumped up in vexation and said, "There's that old fogey coming in here, as I'm alive! Did your father set him to look after you while he was away? or what brings the old chap here? However, I'm off; I never could abide either him or his prim grand-daughter. Goodbye, Mary." So far in a whisper, then louder, "If you think better of my offer about the scarf, Mary, just step in to-morrow before nine, and you're quite welcome to it." She and Job passed each other at the door, with mutual looks of dislike, which neither took any pains to conceal. "Yon's a bold, bad girl," said Job to Mary. "She's very good-natured," replied Mary, too honourable to abuse a visitor who had only that instant crossed her threshold, and gladly dwelling on the good quality most apparent in Sally's character. "Ay, ay! good-natured, generous, jolly, full of fun; there are a number of other names for the good qualities the devil leaves his childer, as baits to catch gudgeons with. D'ye think folk could be led astray by one who was every way bad? Howe'er, that's not what I came to talk about. I've seen Mr. Bridgenorth, and he is in a manner of the same mind as me; he thinks it would have an awkward look, and might tell against the poor lad on his trial; still if she's ill she's ill, and it can't be helped." "I don't know if she's so bad as all that," said Mary, who began to dread her part in doing any thing which might tell against her poor lover. "Will you come and see her, Job? The doctor seemed to say as I liked, not as he thought." "That's because he had no great thought on the subject, either one way or t'other," replied Job, whose contempt for medical men pretty nearly equalled his respect for lawyers. "But I'll go and welcome. I han not seen th' oud ladies since their sorrows, and it's but manners to go and ax after them. Come along." The room at Mrs. Wilson's had that still, changeless look you must have often observed in the house of sickness or mourning. No particular employment going on; people watching and waiting rather than acting, unless in the more sudden and violent attacks; what little movement is going on, so noiseless and hushed; the furniture all arranged and stationary, with a view to the comfort of the afflicted; the window-blinds drawn down to keep out the disturbing variety of a sun-beam; the same saddened, serious look on the faces of the in-dwellers; you fall back into the same train of thought with all these associations, and forget the street, the outer world, in the contemplation of the one stationary, absorbing interest within. Mrs. Wilson sat quietly in her chair, with just the same look Mary had left on her face; Mrs. Davenport went about with creaking shoes, which made all the more noise from her careful and lengthened tread, annoying the ears of those who were well, in this instance, far more than the dulled senses of the sick and the sorrowful. Alice's voice still was going on cheerfully in the upper room with incessant talking and little laughs to herself, or perhaps in sympathy with her unseen companions; "unseen," I say, in preference to "fancied," for who knows whether God does not permit the forms of those who were dearest when living, to hover round the bed of the dying? Job spoke, and Mrs. Wilson answered. So quietly, that it was unnatural under the circumstances. It made a deeper impression on the old man than any token of mere bodily illness could have done. If she had raved in delirium, or moaned in fever, he could have spoken after his wont, and given his opinion, his advice, and his consolation; now he was awed into silence. At length he pulled Mary aside into a corner of the house-place where Mrs. Wilson was sitting, and began to talk to her. "Yo're right, Mary! She's no ways fit to go to Liverpool, poor soul. Now I've seen her, I only wonder the doctor could ha' been unsettled in his mind at th' first. Choose how it goes wi' poor Jem, she cannot go. One way or another it will soon be over, and best to leave her in the state she is till then." "I was sure you would think so," said Mary. But they were reckoning without their host. They esteemed her senses gone, while, in fact, they were only inert, and could not convey impressions rapidly to the over-burdened, troubled brain. They had not noticed that her eyes had followed them (mechanically it seemed at first) as they had moved away to the corner of the room; that her face, hitherto so changeless, had begun to work with one or two of the old symptoms of impatience. But when they were silent she stood up, and startled them almost as if a dead person had spoken, by saying clearly and decidedly--"I go to Liverpool. I hear you and your plans; and I tell you I shall go to Liverpool. If my words are to kill my son, they have already gone forth out of my mouth, and nought can bring them back. But I will have faith. Alice (up above) has often telled me I wanted faith, and now I will have it. They cannot--they will not kill my child, my only child. I will not be afeared. Yet, oh! I am so sick with terror. But if he is to die, think ye not that I will see him again; ay! see him at his trial? When all are hating him, he shall have his poor mother near him, to give him all the comfort, eyes, and looks, and tears, and a heart that is dead to all but him, can give; his poor old mother, who knows how free he is from sin--in the sight of man at least. They'll let me go to him, maybe, the very minute it's over; and I know many Scripture texts (though you would not think it), that may keep up his heart. I missed seeing him ere he went to yon prison, but nought shall keep me away again one minute when I can see his face; for maybe the minutes are numbered, and the count but small. I know I can be a comfort to him, poor lad. You would not think it, now, but he'd alway speak as kind and soft to me as if he were courting me, like. He loved me above a bit; and am I to leave him now to dree all the cruel slander they'll put upon him? I can pray for him at each hard word they say against him, if I can do nought else; and he'll know what his mother is doing for him, poor lad, by the look on my face." Still they made some look, or gesture of opposition to her wishes. She turned sharp round on Mary, the old object of her pettish attacks, and said, "Now, wench! once for all! I tell yo this. _He_ could never guide me; and he'd sense enough not to try. What he could na do, don't you try. I shall go to Liverpool to-morrow, and find my lad, and stay with him through thick and thin; and if he dies, why, perhaps, God of His mercy will take me too. The grave is a sure cure for an aching heart." She sank back in her chair, quite exhausted by the sudden effort she had made; but if they even offered to speak, she cut them short (whatever the subject might be), with the repetition of the same words, "I shall go to Liverpool." No more could be said, the doctor's opinion had been so undecided; Mr. Bridgenorth had given his legal voice in favour of her going, and Mary was obliged to relinquish the idea of persuading her to remain at home, if indeed under all the circumstances it could be thought desirable. "Best way will be," said Job, "for me to hunt out Will, early to-morrow morning, and yo, Mary, come at after with Jane Wilson. I know a decent woman where yo two can have a bed, and where we may meet together when I've found Will, afore going to Mr. Bridgenorth's at two o'clock; for, I can tell him, I'll not trust none of his clerks for hunting up Will, if Jem's life is to depend on it." Now Mary disliked this plan inexpressibly; her dislike was partly grounded on reason, and partly on feeling. She could not bear the idea of deputing to any one the active measures necessary to be taken in order to save Jem. She felt as if they were her duty, her right. She durst not trust to any one the completion of her plan; they might not have energy, or perseverance, or desperation enough to follow out the slightest chance; and her love would endow her with all these qualities, independently of the terrible alternative which awaited her in case all failed and Jem was condemned. No one could have her motives; and consequently no one could have her sharpened brain, her despairing determination. Besides (only that was purely selfish), she could not endure the suspense of remaining quiet, and only knowing the result when all was accomplished. So with vehemence and impatience she rebutted every reason Job adduced for his plan; and of course, thus opposed, by what appeared to him wilfulness, he became more resolute, and angry words were exchanged, and a feeling of estrangement rose up between them, for a time, as they walked homewards. But then came in Margaret with her gentleness, like an angel of peace, so calm and reasonable, that both felt ashamed of their irritation, and tacitly left the decision to her (only, by the way, I think Mary could never have submitted if it had gone against her, penitent and tearful as was her manner now to Job, the good old man who was helping her to work for Jem, although they differed as to the manner). "Mary had better go," said Margaret to her grandfather, in a low tone, "I know what she's feeling, and it will be a comfort to her soon, may be, to think she did all she could herself. She would perhaps fancy it might have been different; do, grandfather, let her." Margaret had still, you see, little or no belief in Jem's innocence; and besides, she thought if Mary saw Will, and heard herself from him that Jem had not been with him that Thursday night, it would in a measure break the force of the blow which was impending. "Let me lock up house, grandfather, for a couple of days, and go and stay with Alice. It's but little one like me can do, I know" (she added softly); "but, by the blessing o' God, I'll do it and welcome; and here comes one kindly use o' money, I can hire them as will do for her what I cannot. Mrs. Davenport is a willing body, and one who knows sorrow and sickness, and I can pay her for her time, and keep her there pretty near altogether. So let that be settled. And you take Mrs. Wilson, dear grandad, and let Mary go find Will, and you can all meet together at after, and I'm sure I wish you luck." Job consented with only a few dissenting grunts; but on the whole, with a very good grace for an old man who had been so positive only a few minutes before. Mary was thankful for Margaret's interference. She did not speak, but threw her arms round Margaret's neck, and put up her rosy-red mouth to be kissed; and even Job was attracted by the pretty, child-like gesture; and when she drew near him, afterwards, like a little creature sidling up to some person whom it feels to have offended, he bent down and blessed her, as if she had been a child of his own. To Mary the old man's blessing came like words of power. CHAPTER XXVI. THE JOURNEY TO LIVERPOOL. "Like a bark upon the sea, Life is floating over death; Above, below, encircling thee, Danger lurks in every breath. Parted art thou from the grave Only by a plank most frail; Tossed upon the restless wave, Sport of every fickle gale. Let the skies be e'er so clear, And so calm and still the sea, Shipwreck yet has he to fear, Who life's voyager will be." R�CKERT. The early trains for Liverpool, on Monday morning, were crowded by attorneys, attorneys' clerks, plaintiffs, defendants, and witnesses, all going to the Assizes. They were a motley assembly, each with some cause for anxiety stirring at his heart; though, after all, that is saying little or nothing, for we are all of us in the same predicament through life; each with a fear and a hope from childhood to death. Among the passengers there was Mary Barton, dressed in the blue gown and obnoxious plaid shawl. Common as railroads are now in all places as a means of transit, and especially in Manchester, Mary had never been on one before; and she felt bewildered by the hurry, the noise of people, and bells, and horns; the whiz and the scream of the arriving trains. The very journey itself seemed to her a matter of wonder. She had a back seat, and looked towards the factory-chimneys, and the cloud of smoke which hovers over Manchester, with a feeling akin to the "Heimweh." She was losing sight of the familiar objects of her childhood for the first time; and unpleasant as those objects are to most, she yearned after them with some of the same sentiment which gives pathos to the thoughts of the emigrant. The cloud-shadows which give beauty to Chat-Moss, the picturesque old houses of Newton, what were they to Mary, whose heart was full of many things? Yet she seemed to look at them earnestly as they glided past; but she neither saw nor heard. She neither saw nor heard till some well-known names fell upon her ear. Two lawyers' clerks were discussing the cases to come on that Assizes; of course, "the murder-case," as it had come to be termed, held a conspicuous place in their conversation. They had no doubt of the result. "Juries are always very unwilling to convict on circumstantial evidence, it is true," said one, "but here there can hardly be any doubt." "If it had not been so clear a case," replied the other, "I should have said they were injudicious in hurrying on the trial so much. Still, more evidence might have been collected." "They tell me," said the first speaker,--"the people in Gardener's office I mean,--that it was really feared the old gentleman would have gone out of his mind, if the trial had been delayed. He was with Mr. Gardener as many as seven times on Saturday, and called him up at night to suggest that some letter should be written, or something done to secure the verdict." "Poor old man," answered his companion, "who can wonder?--an only son,--such a death,--the disagreeable circumstances attending it; I had not time to read the _Guardian_ on Saturday, but I understand it was some dispute about a factory girl." "Yes, some such person. Of course she'll be examined, and Williams will do it in style. I shall slip out from our court to hear him if I can hit the nick of time." "And if you can get a place, you mean, for depend upon it the court will be crowded." "Ay, ay, the ladies (sweet souls) will come in shoals to hear a trial for murder, and see the murderer, and watch the judge put on his black cap." "And then go home and groan over the Spanish ladies who take delight in bull-fights--'such unfeminine creatures!'" Then they went on to other subjects. It was but another drop to Mary's cup; but she was nearly in that state which Crabbe describes, "For when so full the cup of sorrows flows Add but a drop, it instantly o'erflows." And now they were in the tunnel!--and now they were in Liverpool; and she must rouse herself from the torpor of mind and body which was creeping over her; the result of much anxiety and fatigue, and several sleepless nights. She asked a policeman the way to Milk House Yard, and following his directions with the _savoir faire_ of a town-bred girl, she reached a little court leading out of a busy, thronged street, not far from the Docks. When she entered the quiet little yard she stopped to regain her breath, and to gather strength, for her limbs trembled, and her heart beat violently. All the unfavourable contingencies she had, until now, forbidden herself to dwell upon, came forward to her mind. The possibility, the bare possibility, of Jem being an accomplice in the murder; the still greater possibility that he had not fulfilled his intention of going part of the way with Will, but had been led off by some little accidental occurrence from his original intention; and that he had spent the evening with those, whom it was now too late to bring forward as witnesses. But sooner or later she must know the truth; so taking courage she knocked at the door of a house. "Is this Mrs. Jones's?" she inquired. "Next door but one," was the curt answer. And even this extra minute was a reprieve. Mrs. Jones was busy washing, and would have spoken angrily to the person who knocked so gently at the door, if anger had been in her nature; but she was a soft, helpless kind of woman, and only sighed over the many interruptions she had had to her business that unlucky Monday morning. But the feeling which would have been anger in a more impatient temper, took the form of prejudice against the disturber, whoever he or she might be. Mary's fluttered and excited appearance strengthened this prejudice in Mrs. Jones's mind, as she stood, stripping the soap-suds off her arms, while she eyed her visitor, and waited to be told what her business was. But no words would come. Mary's voice seemed choked up in her throat. "Pray what do you want, young woman?" coldly asked Mrs. Jones at last. "I want--Oh! is Will Wilson here?" "No, he is not," replied Mrs. Jones, inclining to shut the door in her face. "Is he not come back from the Isle of Man?" asked Mary, sickening. "He never went; he stayed in Manchester too long; as perhaps you know, already." And again the door seemed closing. But Mary bent forwards with suppliant action (as some young tree bends, when blown by the rough, autumnal wind), and gasped out, "Tell me--tell me--where is he?" Mrs. Jones suspected some love affair, and, perhaps, one of not the most creditable kind; but the distress of the pale young creature before her was so obvious and so pitiable, that were she ever so sinful, Mrs. Jones could no longer uphold her short, reserved manner. "He's gone this very morning, my poor girl. Step in, and I'll tell you about it." "Gone!" cried Mary. "How gone? I must see him,--it's a matter of life and death: he can save the innocent from being hanged,--he cannot be gone,--how gone?" "Sailed, my dear! sailed in the _John Cropper_ this very blessed morning." "Sailed!" CHAPTER XXVII. IN THE LIVERPOOL DOCKS. "Yon is our quay! Hark to the clamour in that miry road, Bounded and narrowed by yon vessel's load; The lumbering wealth she empties round the place, Package and parcel, hogshead, chest and case: While the loud seaman and the angry hind, Mingling in business, bellow to the wind." CRABBE. Mary staggered into the house. Mrs. Jones placed her tenderly in a chair, and there stood bewildered by her side. "Oh, father! father!" muttered she, "what have you done?--What must I do? must the innocent die?--or he--whom I fear--I fear--oh! what am I saying?" said she, looking round affrighted, and seemingly reassured by Mrs. Jones's countenance, "I am so helpless, so weak,--but a poor girl after all. How can I tell what is right? Father! you have always been so kind to me,--and you to be--never mind--never mind, all will come right in the grave." "Save us, and bless us!" exclaimed Mrs. Jones, "if I don't think she's gone out of her wits!" "No, I'm not!" said Mary, catching at the words, and with a strong effort controlling the mind she felt to be wandering, while the red blood flushed to scarlet the heretofore white cheek, "I'm not out of my senses; there is so much to be done--so much--and no one but me to do it, you know,--though I can't rightly tell what it is," looking up with bewilderment into Mrs. Jones's face. "I must not go mad whatever comes--at least not yet. No!" (bracing herself up) "something may yet be done, and I must do it. Sailed! did you say? The _John Cropper_? Sailed?" "Ay! she went out of dock last night, to be ready for the morning's tide." "I thought she was not to sail till to-morrow," murmured Mary. "So did Will (he's lodged here long, so we all call him 'Will')," replied Mrs. Jones. "The mate had told him so, I believe, and he never knew different till he got to Liverpool on Friday morning; but as soon as he heard, he gave up going to the Isle o' Man, and just ran over to Rhyl with the mate, one John Harris, as has friends a bit beyond Abergele; you may have heard him speak on him, for they are great chums, though I've my own opinion of Harris." "And he's sailed?" repeated Mary, trying by repetition to realise the fact to herself. "Ay, he went on board last night to be ready for the morning's tide, as I said afore, and my boy went to see the ship go down the river, and came back all agog with the sight. Here, Charley, Charley!" She called out loudly for her son: but Charley was one of those boys who are never "far to seek," as the Lancashire people say, when any thing is going on; a mysterious conversation, an unusual event, a fire, or a riot, any thing, in short; such boys are the little omnipresent people of this world. Charley had, in fact, been spectator and auditor all this time; though for a little while he had been engaged in "dollying" and a few other mischievous feats in the washing line, which had prevented his attention from being fully given to his mother's conversation with the strange girl who had entered. "Oh, Charley! there you are! Did you not see the _John Cropper_ sail down the river this morning? Tell the young woman about it, for I think she hardly credits me." "I saw her tugged down the river by a steam-boat, which comes to same thing," replied he. "Oh! if I had but come last night!" moaned Mary. "But I never thought of it. I never thought but what he knew right when he said he would be back from the Isle of Man on Monday morning, and not afore--and now some one must die for my negligence!" "Die!" exclaimed the lad. "How?" "Oh! Will would have proved an _alibi_,--but he's gone,--and what am I to do?" "Don't give it up yet," cried the energetic boy, interested at once in the case; "let's have a try for him. We are but where we were if we fail." Mary roused herself. The sympathetic "we" gave her heart and hope. "But what can be done? You say he's sailed; what can be done?" But she spoke louder, and in a more life-like tone. "No! I did not say he'd sailed; mother said that, and women know nought about such matters. You see" (proud of his office of instructor, and insensibly influenced, as all about her were, by Mary's sweet, earnest, lovely countenance) "there's sand-banks at the mouth of the river, and ships can't get over them but at high-water; especially ships of heavy burden, like the _John Cropper_. Now, she was tugged down the river at low water, or pretty near, and will have to lie some time before the water will be high enough to float her over the banks. So hold up your head,--you've a chance yet, though may be but a poor one." "But what must I do?" asked Mary, to whom all this explanation had been a vague mystery. "Do!" said the boy, impatiently, "why, have not I told you? Only women (begging your pardon) are so stupid at understanding about any thing belonging to the sea;--you must get a boat, and make all haste, and sail after him,--after the _John Cropper_. You may overtake her, or you may not. It's just a chance; but she's heavy laden, and that's in your favour. She'll draw many feet of water." Mary had humbly and eagerly (oh, how eagerly!) listened to this young Sir Oracle's speech; but try as she would, she could only understand that she must make haste, and sail--somewhere-- "I beg your pardon," (and her little acknowledgment of inferiority in this speech pleased the lad, and made him her still more zealous friend). "I beg your pardon," said she, "but I don't know where to get a boat. Are there boat-stands?" The lad laughed outright. "You're not long in Liverpool, I guess. Boat-stands! No; go down to the pier,--any pier will do, and hire a boat,--you'll be at no loss when once you are there. Only make haste." "Oh, you need not tell me that, if I but knew how," said Mary, trembling with eagerness. "But you say right,--I never was here before, and I don't know my way to the place you speak on; only tell me, and I'll not lose a minute." "Mother!" said the wilful lad, "I'm going to show her the way to the pier; I'll be back in an hour,--or so,--" he added in a lower tone. And before the gentle Mrs. Jones could collect her scattered wits sufficiently to understand half of the hastily formed plan, her son was scudding down the street, closely followed by Mary's half-running steps. Presently he slackened his pace sufficiently to enable him to enter into conversation with Mary, for once escaped from the reach of his mother's recalling voice, he thought he might venture to indulge his curiosity. "Ahem!--What's your name? It's so awkward to be calling you young woman." "My name is Mary,--Mary Barton," answered she, anxious to propitiate one who seemed so willing to exert himself in her behalf, or else she grudged every word which caused the slightest relaxation in her speed, although her chest seemed tightened, and her head throbbing, from the rate at which they were walking. "And you want Will Wilson to prove an _alibi_--is that it?" "Yes--oh, yes--can we not cross now?" "No, wait a minute; it's the teagle hoisting above your head I'm afraid of;--and who is it that's to be tried?" "Jem; oh, lad! can't we get past?" They rushed under the great bales quivering in the air above their heads and pressed onwards for a few minutes, till Master Charley again saw fit to walk a little slower, and ask a few more questions. "Mary, is Jem your brother, or your sweetheart, that you're so set upon saving him?" "No--no," replied she, but with something of hesitation, that made the shrewd boy yet more anxious to clear up the mystery. "Perhaps he's your cousin, then? Many a girl has a cousin who has not a sweetheart." "No, he's neither kith nor kin to me. What's the matter? What are you stopping for?" said she, with nervous terror, as Charley turned back a few steps, and peered up a side street. "Oh, nothing to flurry you so, Mary. I heard you say to mother you had never been in Liverpool before, and if you'll only look up this street you may see the back windows of our Exchange. Such a building as yon is! with 'natomy hiding under a blanket, and Lord Admiral Nelson, and a few more people in the middle of the court! No! come here," as Mary, in her eagerness, was looking at any window that caught her eye first, to satisfy the boy. "Here, then, now you can see it. You can say, now, you've seen Liverpool Exchange." "Yes, to be sure--it's a beautiful window, I'm sure. But are we near the boats? I'll stop as I come back, you know; only I think we'd better get on now." "Oh! if the wind's in your favour, you'll be down the river in no time, and catch Will, I'll be bound; and if it's not, why, you know, the minute it took you to look at the Exchange will be neither here nor there." Another rush onwards, till one of the long crossings near the docks caused a stoppage, and gave Mary time for breathing, and Charley leisure to ask another question. "You've never said where you come from?" "Manchester," replied she. "Eh, then! you've a power of things to see. Liverpool beats Manchester hollow, they say. A nasty, smoky hole, bean't it? Are you bound to live there?" "Oh, yes! it's my home." "Well, I don't think I could abide a home in the middle of smoke. Look there! now you see the river! That's something now you'd give a deal for in Manchester. Look!" And Mary did look, and saw down an opening made in the forest of masts belonging to the vessels in dock, the glorious river, along which white-sailed ships were gliding with the ensigns of all nations, not "braving the battle," but telling of the distant lands, spicy or frozen, that sent to that mighty mart for their comforts or their luxuries; she saw small boats passing to and fro on that glittering highway, but she also saw such puffs and clouds of smoke from the countless steamers, that she wondered at Charley's intolerance of the smoke of Manchester. Across the swing-bridge, along the pier,--and they stood breathless by a magnificent dock, where hundreds of ships lay motionless during the process of loading and unloading. The cries of the sailors, the variety of languages used by the passers-by, and the entire novelty of the sight compared with any thing which Mary had ever seen, made her feel most helpless and forlorn; and she clung to her young guide as to one who alone by his superior knowledge could interpret between her and the new race of men by whom she was surrounded,--for a new race sailors might reasonably be considered, to a girl who had hitherto seen none but inland dwellers, and those for the greater part factory people. In that new world of sight and sound, she still bore one prevailing thought, and though her eye glanced over the ships and the wide-spreading river, her mind was full of the thought of reaching Will. "Why are we here?" asked she of Charley. "There are no little boats about, and I thought I was to go in a little boat; those ships are never meant for short distances, are they?" "To be sure not," replied he, rather contemptuously. "But the _John Cropper_ lay in this dock, and I know many of the sailors; and if I could see one I knew, I'd ask him to run up the mast, and see if he could catch a sight of her in the offing. If she's weighed her anchor no use for your going, you know." Mary assented quietly to this speech, as if she were as careless as Charley seemed now to be about her overtaking Will; but in truth her heart was sinking within her, and she no longer felt the energy which had hitherto upheld her. Her bodily strength was giving way, and she stood cold and shivering, although the noon-day sun beat down with considerable power on the shadeless spot where she was standing. "Here's Tom Bourne!" said Charley; and altering his manner from the patronising key in which he had spoken to Mary, he addressed a weather-beaten old sailor who came rolling along the pathway where they stood, his hands in his pockets, and his quid in his mouth, with very much the air of one who had nothing to do but look about him, and spit right and left; addressing this old tar, Charley made known to him his wish in slang, which to Mary was almost inaudible, and quite unintelligible, and which I am too much of a land-lubber to repeat correctly. Mary watched looks and actions with a renovated keenness of perception. She saw the old man listen attentively to Charley; she saw him eye her over from head to foot, and wind up his inspection with a little nod of approbation (for her very shabbiness and poverty of dress were creditable signs to the experienced old sailor); and then she watched him leisurely swing himself on to a ship in the basin, and, borrowing a glass, run up the mast with the speed of a monkey. "He'll fall!" said she, in affright, clutching at Charley's arm, and judging the sailor, from his storm-marked face and unsteady walk on land, to be much older than he really was. "Not he!" said Charley. "He's at the mast-head now. See! he's looking through his glass, and using his arms as steady as if he were on dry land. Why, I've been up the mast, many and many a time; only don't tell mother. She thinks I'm to be a shoemaker, but I've made up my mind to be a sailor; only there's no good arguing with a woman. You'll not tell her, Mary?" "Oh, see!" exclaimed she (his secret was very safe with her, for, in fact, she had not heard it). "See! he's coming down; he's down. Speak to him, Charley." But unable to wait another instant she called out herself, "Can you see the _John Cropper_? Is she there yet?" "Ay, ay," he answered, and coming quickly up to them, he hurried them away to seek for a boat, saying the bar was already covered, and in an hour the ship would hoist her sails and be off. "You've the wind right against you, and must use oars. No time to lose." They ran to some steps leading down to the water. They beckoned to some watermen, who, suspecting the real state of the case, appeared in no hurry for a fare, but leisurely brought their boat alongside the stairs, as if it were a matter of indifference to them whether they were engaged or not, while they conversed together in few words, and in an under-tone, respecting the charge they should make. "Oh, pray make haste," called Mary. "I want you to take me to the _John Cropper_. Where is she, Charley? Tell them--I don't rightly know the words,--only make haste!" "In the offing she is, sure enough, miss," answered one of the men, shoving Charley on one side, regarding him as too young to be a principal in the bargain. "I don't think we can go, Dick," said he, with a wink to his companion; "there's the gentleman over at New Brighton as wants us." "But, mayhap, the young woman will pay us handsome for giving her a last look at her sweetheart," interposed the other. "Oh, how much do you want? Only make haste--I've enough to pay you, but every moment is precious," said Mary. "Ay, that it is. Less than an hour won't take us to the mouth of the river, and she'll be off by two o'clock!" Poor Mary's ideas of "plenty of money," however, were different to those entertained by the boatmen. Only fourteen or fifteen shillings remained out of the sovereign Margaret had lent her, and the boatmen, imagining "plenty" to mean no less than several pounds, insisted upon receiving a sovereign (an exorbitant fare, by the bye, although reduced from their first demand of thirty shillings). While Charley, with a boy's impatience of delay, and disregard of money, kept urging, "Give it 'em, Mary; they'll none of them take you for less. It's your only chance. There's St. Nicholas ringing one!" "I've only got fourteen and ninepence," cried she, in despair, after counting over her money; "but I'll give you my shawl, and you can sell it for four or five shillings,--oh! won't that much do?" asked she, in such a tone of voice, that they must indeed have had hard hearts who could refuse such agonised entreaty. They took her on board. And in less than five minutes she was rocking and tossing in a boat for the first time in her life, alone with two rough, hard-looking men. CHAPTER XXVIII. "JOHN CROPPER, AHOY!" "A wet sheet and a flowing sea, A wind that follows fast And fills the white and rustling sail, And bends the gallant mast! And bends the gallant mast, my boys, While, like the eagle free, Away the good ship flies, and leaves Old England on the lee." ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. Mary had not understood that Charley was not coming with her. In fact, she had not thought about it, till she perceived his absence, as they pushed off from the landing-place, and remembered that she had never thanked him for all his kind interest in her behalf; and now his absence made her feel most lonely--even his, the little mushroom friend of an hour's growth. The boat threaded her way through the maze of larger vessels which surrounded the shore, bumping against one, kept off by the oars from going right against another, overshadowed by a third, until at length they were fairly out on the broad river, away from either shore; the sights and sounds of land being lost in the distance. And then came a sort of pause. Both wind and tide were against the two men, and labour as they would they made but little way. Once Mary in her impatience had risen up to obtain a better view of the progress they had made, but the men had roughly told her to sit down immediately, and she had dropped on her seat like a chidden child, although the impatience was still at her heart. But now she grew sure they were turning off from the straight course which they had hitherto kept on the Cheshire side of the river, whither they had gone to avoid the force of the current, and after a short time she could not help naming her conviction, as a kind of nightmare dread and belief came over her, that every thing animate and inanimate was in league against her one sole aim and object of overtaking Will. They answered gruffly. They saw a boatman whom they knew, and were desirous of obtaining his services as steersman, so that both might row with greater effect. They knew what they were about. So she sat silent with clenched hands while the parley went on, the explanation was given, the favour asked and granted. But she was sickening all the time with nervous fear. They had been rowing a long, long time--half a day it seemed, at least--yet Liverpool appeared still close at hand, and Mary began almost to wonder that the men were not as much disheartened as she was, when the wind, which had been hitherto against them, dropped, and thin clouds began to gather over the sky, shutting out the sun, and casting a chilly gloom over every thing. There was not a breath of air, and yet it was colder than when the soft violence of the westerly wind had been felt. The men renewed their efforts. The boat gave a bound forwards at every pull of the oars. The water was glassy and motionless, reflecting tint by tint of the Indian-ink sky above. Mary shivered, and her heart sank within her. Still now they evidently were making progress. Then the steersman pointed to a rippling line in the river only a little way off, and the men disturbed Mary, who was watching the ships that lay in what appeared to her the open sea, to get at their sails. She gave a little start, and rose. Her patience, her grief, and perhaps her silence, had begun to win upon the men. "Yon second to the norrard is the _John Cropper_. Wind's right now, and sails will soon carry us alongside of her." He had forgotten (or perhaps he did not like to remind Mary) that the same wind which now bore their little craft along with easy, rapid motion, would also be favourable to the _John Cropper_. But as they looked with straining eyes, as if to measure the decreasing distance that separated them from her, they saw her sails unfurled and flap in the breeze, till, catching the right point, they bellied forth into white roundness, and the ship began to plunge and heave, as if she were a living creature, impatient to be off. "They're heaving anchor!" said one of the boatmen to the others, as the faint musical cry of the sailors came floating over the waters that still separated them. Full of the spirit of the chase, though as yet ignorant of Mary's motives, the men sprang to hoist another sail. It was fully as much as the boat could bear, in the keen, gusty east wind which was now blowing, and she bent, and laboured, and ploughed, and creaked upbraidingly as if tasked beyond her strength; but she sped along with a gallant swiftness. They drew nearer, and they heard the distant "ahoy" more clearly. It ceased. The anchor was up, and the ship was away. Mary stood up, steadying herself by the mast, and stretched out her arms, imploring the flying vessel to stay its course by that mute action, while the tears streamed down her cheeks. The men caught up their oars and hoisted them in the air, and shouted to arrest attention. They were seen by the men aboard the larger craft; but they were too busy with all the confusion prevalent in an outward-bound vessel to pay much attention. There were coils of ropes and seamen's chests to be stumbled over at every turn; there were animals, not properly secured, roaming bewildered about the deck, adding their pitiful lowings and bleatings to the aggregate of noises. There were carcases not cut up, looking like corpses of sheep and pigs rather than like mutton and pork; there were sailors running here and there and everywhere, having had no time to fall into method, and with their minds divided between thoughts of the land and the people they had left, and the present duties on board ship; while the captain strove hard to procure some kind of order by hasty commands given in a loud, impatient voice, to right and left, starboard and larboard, cabin and steerage. As he paced the deck with a chafed step, vexed at one or two little mistakes on the part of the mate, and suffering himself from the pain of separation from wife and children, but showing his suffering only by his outward irritation, he heard a hail from the shabby little river-boat that was striving to overtake his winged ship. For the men fearing that, as the ship was now fairly over the bar, they should only increase the distance between them, and being now within shouting range, had asked of Mary her more particular desire. Her throat was dry; all musical sound had gone out of her voice; but in a loud harsh whisper she told the men her errand of life and death, and they hailed the ship. "We're come for one William Wilson, who is wanted to prove an _alibi_ in Liverpool Assize Courts to-morrow. James Wilson is to be tried for a murder, done on Thursday night, when he was with William Wilson. Any thing more, missis?" asked the boat-man of Mary, in a lower voice, and taking his hands down from his mouth. "Say I'm Mary Barton. Oh, the ship is going on! Oh, for the love of Heaven, ask them to stop." The boatman was angry at the little regard paid to his summons, and called out again; repeating the message with the name of the young woman who sent it, and interlarding it with sailors' oaths. The ship flew along--away,--the boat struggled after. They could see the captain take his speaking-trumpet. And oh! and alas! they heard his words. He swore a dreadful oath; he called Mary a disgraceful name; and he said he would not stop his ship for any one, nor could he part with a single hand, whoever swung for it. The words came in unpitying clearness with their trumpet-sound. Mary sat down, looking like one who prays in the death-agony. For her eyes were turned up to that Heaven, where mercy dwelleth, while her blue lips quivered, though no sound came. Then she bowed her head and hid it in her hands. "Hark! yon sailor hails us." She looked up. And her heart stopped its beating to listen. William Wilson stood as near the stern of the vessel as he could get; and unable to obtain the trumpet from the angry captain, made a tube of his own hands. "So help me God, Mary Barton, I'll come back in the pilot-boat, time enough to save the life of the innocent." "What does he say?" asked Mary wildly, as the voice died away in the increasing distance, while the boatmen cheered, in their kindled sympathy with their passenger. "What does he say?" repeated she. "Tell me. I could not hear." She had heard with her ears, but her brain refused to recognise the sense. They repeated his speech, all three speaking at once, with many comments; while Mary looked at them and then at the vessel now far away. "I don't rightly know about it," said she, sorrowfully. "What is the pilot-boat?" They told her, and she gathered the meaning out of the sailors' slang which enveloped it. There was a hope still, although so slight and faint. "How far does the pilot go with the ship?" To different distances they said. Some pilots would go as far as Holyhead for the chance of the homeward-bound vessels; others only took the ships over the Banks. Some captains were more cautious than others, and the pilots had different ways. The wind was against the homeward bound vessels, so perhaps the pilot aboard the _John Cropper_ would not care to go far out. "How soon would he come back?" There were three boatmen, and three opinions, varying from twelve hours to two days. Nay, the man who gave his vote for the longest time, on having his judgment disputed, grew stubborn, and doubled the time, and thought it might be the end of the week before the pilot-boat came home. They began disputing, and urging reasons; and Mary tried to understand them; but independently of their nautical language, a veil seemed drawn over her mind, and she had no clear perception of any thing that passed. Her very words seemed not her own, and beyond her power of control, for she found herself speaking quite differently to what she meant. One by one her hopes had fallen away, and left her desolate; and though a chance yet remained, she could no longer hope. She felt certain it, too, would fade and vanish. She sank into a kind of stupor. All outward objects harmonised with her despair. The gloomy leaden sky,--the deep, dark waters below, of a still heavier shade of colour,--the cold, flat yellow shore in the distance, which no ray lightened up,--the nipping, cutting wind. She shivered with her depression of mind and body. The sails were taken down, of course, on the return to Liverpool, and the progress they made, rowing and tacking, was very slow. The men talked together, disputing about the pilots at first, and then about matters of local importance, in which Mary would have taken no interest at any time, and she gradually became drowsy; irrepressibly so, indeed, for in spite of her jerking efforts to keep awake she sank away to the bottom of the boat, and there lay couched on a rough heap of sails, rope, and tackle of various kinds. The measured beat of the waters against the sides of the boat, and the musical boom of the more distant waves, were more lulling than silence, and she slept sound. Once she opened her eyes heavily, and dimly saw the old gray, rough boatman (who had stood out the most obstinately for the full fare) covering her with his thick pea-jacket. He had taken it off on purpose, and was doing it tenderly in his way, but before she could rouse herself up to thank him she had dropped off to sleep again. At last, in the dusk of evening, they arrived at the landing-place from which they had started some hours before. The men spoke to Mary, but though she mechanically replied, she did not stir; so, at length, they were obliged to shake her. She stood up, shivering and puzzled as to her whereabouts. "Now tell me where you are bound to, missis," said the gray old man, "and maybe I can put you in the way." She slowly comprehended what he said, and went through the process of recollection; but very dimly, and with much labour. She put her hand into her pocket and pulled out her purse, and shook its contents into the man's hand; and then began meekly to unpin her shawl, although they had turned away without asking for it. "No, no!" said the older man, who lingered on the step before springing into the boat, and to whom she mutely offered the shawl. "Keep it! we donnot want it. It were only for to try you,--some folks say they've no more blunt, when all the while they've getten a mint." "Thank you," said she, in a dull, low tone. "Where are you bound to? I axed that question afore," said the gruff old fellow. "I don't know. I'm a stranger," replied she, quietly, with a strange absence of anxiety under the circumstances. "But you mun find out then," said he, sharply, "pier-head's no place for a young woman to be standing on, gape-saying." "I've a card somewhere as will tell me," she answered, and the man, partly relieved, jumped into the boat, which was now pushing off to make way for the arrivals from some steamer. Mary felt in her pocket for the card, on which was written the name of the street where she was to have met Mr. Bridgenorth at two o'clock; where Job and Mrs. Wilson were to have been, and where she was to have learnt from the former the particulars of some respectable lodging. It was not to be found. She tried to brighten her perceptions, and felt again, and took out the little articles her pocket contained, her empty purse, her pocket-handkerchief, and such little things, but it was not there. In fact she had dropped it when, so eager to embark, she had pulled out her purse to reckon up her money. She did not know this, of course. She only knew it was gone. It added but little to the despair that was creeping over her. But she tried a little more to help herself, though every minute her mind became more cloudy. She strove to remember where Will had lodged, but she could not; name, street, every thing had passed away, and it did not signify; better she were lost than found. She sat down quietly on the top step of the landing, and gazed down into the dark, dank water below. Once or twice a spectral thought loomed among the shadows of her brain; a wonder whether beneath that cold dismal surface there would not be rest from the troubles of earth. But she could not hold an idea before her for two consecutive moments; and she forgot what she thought about before she could act upon it. So she continued sitting motionless, without looking up, or regarding in any way the insults to which she was subjected. Through the darkening light the old boatman had watched her: interested in her in spite of himself, and his scoldings of himself. When the landing-place was once more comparatively clear, he made his way towards it, across boats, and along planks, swearing at himself while he did so, for an old fool. He shook Mary's shoulder violently. "D---- you, I ask you again where you're bound to? Don't sit there, stupid. Where are you going to?" "I don't know," sighed Mary. "Come, come; avast with that story. You said a bit ago you'd a card, which was to tell you where to go." "I had, but I've lost it. Never mind." She looked again down upon the black mirror below. He stood by her, striving to put down his better self; but he could not. He shook her again. She looked up, as if she had forgotten him. "What do you want?" asked she, wearily. "Come with me, and be d----d to you!" replied he, clutching her arm to pull her up. She arose and followed him, with the unquestioning docility of a little child. CHAPTER XXIX. A TRUE BILL AGAINST JEM. "There are who, living by the legal pen, Are held in honour--honourable men." CRABBE. At five minutes before two, Job Legh stood upon the door-step of the house where Mr. Bridgenorth lodged at Assize time. He had left Mrs. Wilson at the dwelling of a friend of his, who had offered him a room for the old woman and Mary: a room which had frequently been his, on his occasional visits to Liverpool, but which he was thankful now to have obtained for them, as his own sleeping-place was a matter of indifference to him, and the town appeared crowded and disorderly on the eve of the Assizes. He was shown in to Mr. Bridgenorth, who was writing. Mary and Will Wilson had not yet arrived, being, as you know, far away on the broad sea; but of this Job of course knew nothing, and he did not as yet feel much anxiety about their non-appearance; he was more curious to know the result of Mr. Bridgenorth's interview that morning with Jem. "Why, yes," said Mr. Bridgenorth, putting down his pen, "I have seen him, but to little purpose, I'm afraid. He's very impracticable--very. I told him, of course, that he must be perfectly open with me, or else I could not be prepared for the weak points. I named your name with the view of unlocking his confidence, but--" "What did he say?" asked Job, breathlessly. "Why, very little. He barely answered me. Indeed, he refused to answer some questions--positively refused. I don't know what I can do for him." "Then you think him guilty, sir?" said Job, despondingly. "No, I don't," replied Mr. Bridgenorth, quickly and decisively. "Much less than I did before I saw him. The impression (mind, 'tis only impression; I rely upon your caution, not to take it for fact)--the impression," with an emphasis on the word, "he gave me is, that he knows something about the affair, but what, he will not say; and so the chances are, if he persists in his obstinacy, he'll be hung. That's all." He began to write again, for he had no time to lose. "But he must not be hung," said Job, with vehemence. Mr. Bridgenorth looked up, smiled a little, but shook his head. "What did he say, sir, if I may be so bold as to ask?" continued Job. "His words were few enough, and he was so reserved and short, that as I said before, I can only give you the impression they conveyed to me. I told him of course who I was, and for what I was sent. He looked pleased, I thought,--at least his face (sad enough when I went in, I assure ye) brightened a little; but he said he had nothing to say, no defence to make. I asked him if he was guilty, then; and by way of opening his heart I said I understood he had had provocation enough, inasmuch as I heard that the girl was very lovely, and had jilted him to fall desperately in love with that handsome young Carson (poor fellow!). But James Wilson did not speak one way or another. I then went to particulars. I asked him if the gun was his, as his mother had declared. He had not heard of her admission it was evident, from his quick way of looking up, and the glance of his eye; but when he saw I was observing him, he hung down his head again, and merely said she was right; it was his gun." "Well!" said Job, impatiently, as Mr. Bridgenorth paused. "Nay! I have little more to tell you," continued that gentleman. "I asked him to inform me in all confidence, how it came to be found there. He was silent for a time, and then refused. Not only refused to answer that question, but candidly told me he would not say another word on the subject, and, thanking me for my trouble and interest in his behalf, he all but dismissed me. Ungracious enough on the whole, was it not, Mr. Legh? And yet, I assure ye, I am twenty times more inclined to think him innocent than before I had the interview." "I wish Mary Barton would come," said Job, anxiously. "She and Will are a long time about it." "Ay, that's our only chance, I believe," answered Mr. Bridgenorth, who was writing again. "I sent Johnson off before twelve to serve him with his sub-poena, and to say I wanted to speak with him; he'll be here soon, I've no doubt." There was a pause. Mr. Bridgenorth looked up again, and spoke. "Mr. Duncombe promised to be here to speak to his character. I sent him a subpoena on Saturday night. Though after all, juries go very little by such general and vague testimony as that to character. It is very right that they should not often; but in this instance unfortunate for us, as we must rest our case on the _alibi_." The pen went again, scratch, scratch over the paper. Job grew very fidgetty. He sat on the edge of his chair, the more readily to start up when Will and Mary should appear. He listened intently to every noise and every step on the stair. Once he heard a man's footstep, and his old heart gave a leap of delight. But it was only Mr. Bridgenorth's clerk, bringing him a list of those cases in which the grand jury had found true bills. He glanced it over and pushed it to Job, merely saying, "Of course we expected this," and went on with his writing. There was a true bill against James Wilson. Of course. And yet Job felt now doubly anxious and sad. It seemed the beginning of the end. He had got, by imperceptible degrees, to think Jem innocent. Little by little this persuasion had come upon him. Mary (tossing about in the little boat on the broad river) did not come, nor did Will. Job grew very restless. He longed to go and watch for them out of the window, but feared to interrupt Mr. Bridgenorth. At length his desire to look out was irresistible, and he got up and walked carefully and gently across the room, his boots creaking at every cautious step. The gloom which had overspread the sky, and the influence of which had been felt by Mary on the open water, was yet more perceptible in the dark, dull street. Job grew more and more fidgetty. He was obliged to walk about the room, for he could not keep still; and he did so, regardless of Mr. Bridgenorth's impatient little motions and noises, as the slow, stealthy, creaking movements were heard, backwards and forwards, behind his chair. He really liked Job, and was interested for Jem, else his nervousness would have overcome his sympathy long before it did. But he could hold out no longer against the monotonous, grating sound; so at last he threw down his pen, locked his portfolio, and taking up his hat and gloves, he told Job he must go to the courts. "But Will Wilson is not come," said Job, in dismay. "Just wait while I run to his lodgings. I would have done it before, but I thought they'd be here every minute, and I were afraid of missing them. I'll be back in no time." "No, my good fellow, I really must go. Besides, I begin to think Johnson must have made a mistake, and have fixed with this William Wilson to meet me at the courts. If you like to wait for him here, pray make use of my room; but I've a notion I shall find him there: in which case, I'll send him to your lodgings; shall I? You know where to find me. I shall be here again by eight o'clock, and with the evidence of this witness that's to prove the _alibi_, I'll have the brief drawn out, and in the hands of counsel to-night." So saying he shook hands with Job, and went his way. The old man considered for a minute as he lingered at the door, and then bent his steps towards Mrs. Jones's, where he knew (from reference to queer, odd, heterogeneous memoranda, in an ancient black-leather pocket-book) that Will lodged, and where he doubted not he should hear both of him and of Mary. He went there, and gathered what intelligence he could out of Mrs. Jones's slow replies. He asked if a young woman had been there that morning, and if she had seen Will Wilson. "No!" "Why not?" "Why, bless you, 'cause he had sailed some hours before she came asking for him." There was a dead silence, broken only by the even, heavy sound of Mrs. Jones's ironing. "Where is the young woman now?" asked Job. "Somewhere down at the docks," she thought. "Charley would know, if he was in, but he wasn't. He was in mischief, somewhere or other, she had no doubt. Boys always were. He would break his neck some day, she knew;" so saying, she quietly spat upon her fresh iron, to test its heat, and then went on with her business. Job could have boxed her, he was in such a state of irritation. But he did not, and he had his reward. Charley came in, whistling with an air of indifference, assumed to carry off his knowledge of the lateness of the hour to which he had lingered about the docks. "Here's an old man come to know where the young woman is who went out with thee this morning," said his mother, after she had bestowed on him a little motherly scolding. "Where she is now, I don't know. I saw her last sailing down the river after the _John Cropper_. I'm afeared she won't reach her; wind changed and she would be under weigh, and over the bar in no time. She should have been back by now." It took Job some little time to understand this, from the confused use of the feminine pronoun. Then he inquired how he could best find Mary. "I'll run down again to the pier," said the boy; "I'll warrant I'll find her." "Thou shalt do no such a thing," said his mother, setting her back against the door. The lad made a comical face at Job, which met with no responsive look from the old man, whose sympathies were naturally in favour of the parent; although he would thankfully have availed himself of Charley's offer, for he was weary, and anxious to return to poor Mrs. Wilson, who would be wondering what had become of him. "How can I best find her? Who did she go with, lad?" But Charley was sullen at his mother's exercise of authority before a stranger, and at that stranger's grave looks when he meant to have made him laugh. "They were river boatmen;--that's all I know," said he. "But what was the name of their boat?" persevered Job. "I never took no notice;--the Anne, or William,--or some of them common names, I'll be bound." "What pier did she start from?" asked Job, despairingly. "Oh, as for that matter, it were the stairs on the Prince's Pier she started from; but she'll not come back to the same, for the American steamer came up with the tide, and anchored close to it, blocking up the way for all the smaller craft. It's a rough evening too, to be out on," he maliciously added. "Well, God's will be done! I did hope we could have saved the lad," said Job, sorrowfully; "but I'm getten very doubtful again. I'm uneasy about Mary, too,--very. She's a stranger in Liverpool." "So she told me," said Charley. "There's traps about for young women at every corner. It's a pity she's no one to meet her when she lands." "As for that," replied Job, "I don't see how any one could meet her when we can't tell where she would come to. I must trust to her coming right. She's getten spirit and sense. She'll most likely be for coming here again. Indeed, I don't know what else she can do, for she knows no other place in Liverpool. Missus, if she comes, will you give your son leave to bring her to No. 8, Back Garden Court, where there's friends waiting for her? I'll give him sixpence for his trouble." Mrs. Jones, pleased with the reference to her, gladly promised. And even Charley, indignant as he was at first at the idea of his motions being under the control of his mother, was mollified at the prospect of the sixpence, and at the probability of getting nearer to the heart of the mystery. But Mary never came. CHAPTER XXX. JOB LEGH'S DECEPTION. "Poor Susan moans, poor Susan groans; The clock gives warning for eleven; 'Tis on the stroke--'He must be near,' Quoth Betty, 'and will soon be here, As sure as there's a moon in heaven.' The clock is on the stroke of twelve, And Johnny is not yet in sight, --The moon's in heaven, as Betty sees, But Betty is not quite at ease; And Susan has a dreadful night." WORDSWORTH. Job found Mrs. Wilson pacing about in a restless way; not speaking to the woman at whose house she was staying, but occasionally heaving such deep oppressive sighs as quite startled those around her. "Well!" said she, turning sharp round in her tottering walk up and down, as Job came in. "Well, speak!" repeated she, before he could make up his mind what to say; for, to tell the truth, he was studying for some kind-hearted lie which might soothe her for a time. But now the real state of the case came blurting forth in answer to her impatient questioning. "Will's not to the fore. But he'll may be turn up yet, time enough." She looked at him steadily for a minute, as if almost doubting if such despair could be in store for her as his words seemed to imply. Then she slowly shook her head, and said, more quietly than might have been expected from her previous excited manner, "Don't go for to say that! Thou dost not think it. Thou'rt well-nigh hopeless, like me. I seed all along my lad would be hung for what he never did. And better he were, and were shut [49] of this weary world, where there's neither justice nor mercy left." [Footnote 49: "Shut," quit.] She looked up with tranced eyes as if praying to that throne where mercy ever abideth, and then sat down. "Nay, now thou'rt off at a gallop," said Job. "Will has sailed this morning for sure, but that brave wench, Mary Barton, is after him, and will bring him back, I'll be bound, if she can but get speech on him. She's not back yet. Come, come, hold up thy head. It will all end right." "It will all end right," echoed she; "but not as thou tak'st it. Jem will be hung, and will go to his father and the little lads, where the Lord God wipes away all tears, and where the Lord Jesus speaks kindly to the little ones, who look about for the mothers they left upon earth. Eh, Job, yon's a blessed land, and I long to go to it, and yet I fret because Jem is hastening there. I would not fret if he and I could lie down to-night to sleep our last sleep; not a bit would I fret if folk would but know him to be innocent--as I do." "They'll know it sooner or later, and repent sore if they've hanged him for what he never did," replied Job. "Ay, that they will. Poor souls! May God have mercy on them when they find out their mistake." Presently Job grew tired of sitting waiting, and got up, and hung about the door and window, like some animal wanting to go out. It was pitch dark, for the moon had not yet risen. "You just go to bed," said he to the widow. "You'll want your strength for to-morrow. Jem will be sadly off, if he sees you so cut up as you look to-night. I'll step down again and find Mary. She'll be back by this time. I'll come and tell you every thing, never fear. But, now, you go to bed." "Thou'rt a kind friend, Job Legh, and I'll go, as thou wishest me. But, oh! mind thou com'st straight off to me, and bring Mary as soon as thou'st lit on her." She spoke low, but very calmly. "Ay, ay!" replied Job, slipping out of the house. He went first to Mr. Bridgenorth's, where it had struck him that Will and Mary might be all this time waiting for him. They were not there, however. Mr. Bridgenorth had just come in, and Job went breathlessly up-stairs to consult with him as to the state of the case. "It's a bad job," said the lawyer, looking very grave, while he arranged his papers. "Johnson told me how it was; the woman that Wilson lodged with told him. I doubt it's but a wild-goose chase of the girl Barton. Our case must rest on the uncertainty of circumstantial evidence, and the goodness of the prisoner's previous character. A very vague and weak defence. However, I've engaged Mr. Clinton as counsel, and he'll make the best of it. And now, my good fellow, I must wish you good-night, and turn you out of doors. As it is, I shall have to sit up into the small hours. Did you see my clerk as you came up-stairs? You did! Then may I trouble you to ask him to step up immediately?" After this Job could not stay, and, making his humble bow, he left the room. Then he went to Mrs. Jones's. She was in, but Charley had slipped off again. There was no holding that boy. Nothing kept him but lock and key, and they did not always; for once she had him locked up in the garret, and he had got off through the skylight. Perhaps now he was gone to see after the young woman down at the docks. He never wanted an excuse to be there. Unasked, Job took a chair, resolved to await Charley's re-appearance. Mrs. Jones ironed and folded her clothes, talking all the time of Charley and her husband, who was a sailor in some ship bound for India, and who, in leaving her their boy, had evidently left her rather more than she could manage. She moaned and croaked over sailors, and sea-port towns, and stormy weather, and sleepless nights, and trousers all over tar and pitch, long after Job had left off attending to her, and was only trying to hearken to every step and every voice in the street. At last Charley came in, but he came alone. "Yon Mary Barton has getten into some scrape or another," said he, addressing himself to Job. "She's not to be heard of at any of the piers; and Bourne says it were a boat from the Cheshire side as she went aboard of. So there's no hearing of her till to-morrow morning." "To-morrow morning she'll have to be in court at nine o'clock, to bear witness on a trial," said Job, sorrowfully. "So she said; at least somewhat of the kind," said Charley, looking desirous to hear more. But Job was silent. He could not think of any thing further that could be done; so he rose up, and, thanking Mrs. Jones for the shelter she had given him, he went out into the street; and there he stood still, to ponder over probabilities and chances. After some little time he slowly turned towards the lodging where he had left Mrs. Wilson. There was nothing else to be done; but he loitered on the way, fervently hoping that her weariness and her woes might have sent her to sleep before his return, that he might be spared her questionings. He went very gently into the house-place where the sleepy landlady awaited his coming and his bringing the girl, who, she had been told, was to share the old woman's bed. But in her sleepy blindness she knocked things so about in lighting the candle (she could see to have a nap by fire-light, she said), that the voice of Mrs. Wilson was heard from the little back-room, where she was to pass the night. "Who's there?" Job gave no answer, and kept down his breath, that she might think herself mistaken. The landlady, having no such care, dropped the snuffers with a sharp metallic sound, and then, by her endless apologies, convinced the listening woman that Job had returned. "Job! Job Legh!" she cried out, nervously. "Eh, dear!" said Job to himself, going reluctantly to her bed-room door. "I wonder if one little lie would be a sin as things stand? It would happen give her sleep, and she won't have sleep for many and many a night (not to call sleep), if things goes wrong to-morrow. I'll chance it, any way." "Job! art thou there?" asked she again with a trembling impatience that told in every tone of her voice. "Ay! sure! I thought thou'd ha' been asleep by this time." "Asleep! How could I sleep till I knowed if Will were found?" "Now for it," muttered Job to himself. Then in a louder voice, "Never fear! he's found, and safe, ready for to-morrow." "And he'll prove that thing for my poor lad, will he? He'll bear witness that Jem were with him? Oh, Job, speak! tell me all!" "In for a penny, in for a pound," thought Job. "Happen one prayer will do for the sum total. Any rate, I must go on now.--Ay, ay," shouted he, through the door. "He can prove all; and Jem will come off as clear as a new-born babe." He could hear Mrs. Wilson's rustling movements, and in an instant guessed she was on her knees, for he heard her trembling voice uplifted in thanksgiving and praise to God, stopped at times by sobs of gladness and relief. And when he heard this, his heart misgave him; for he thought of the awful enlightening, the terrible revulsion of feeling that awaited her in the morning. He saw the short-sightedness of falsehood; but what could he do now? While he listened, she ended her grateful prayers. "And Mary? Thou'st found her at Mrs. Jones's, Job?" said she, continuing her inquiries. He gave a great sigh. "Yes, she was there, safe enough, second time of going.--God forgive me!" muttered he, "who'd ha' thought of my turning out such an arrant liar in my old days?" "Bless the wench! Is she here? Why does she not come to bed? I'm sure she's need." Job coughed away his remains of conscience, and made answer, "She was a bit weary, and o'er done with her sail; and Mrs. Jones axed her to stay there all night. It was nigh at hand to the courts, where she will have to be in the morning." "It comes easy enough after a while," groaned out Job. "The father of lies helps one, I suppose, for now my speech comes as natural as truth. She's done questioning now, that's one good thing. I'll be off before Satan and she are at me again." He went to the house-place, where the landlady stood wearily waiting. Her husband was in bed, and asleep long ago. But Job had not yet made up his mind what to do. He could not go to sleep, with all his anxieties, if he were put into the best bed in Liverpool. "Thou'lt let me sit up in this arm-chair," said he at length to the woman, who stood, expecting his departure. He was an old friend, so she let him do as he wished. But, indeed, she was too sleepy to have opposed him. She was too glad to be released and go to bed. CHAPTER XXXI. HOW MARY PASSED THE NIGHT. "To think That all this long interminable night, Which I have passed in thinking on two words-- 'Guilty'--'Not Guilty!'--like one happy moment O'er many a head hath flown unheeded by; O'er happy sleepers dreaming in their bliss Of bright to-morrows--or far happier still, With deep breath buried in forgetfulness. O all the dismallest images of death Did swim before my eyes!" WILSON. And now, where was Mary? How Job's heart would have been relieved of one of its cares if he could have seen her: for he was in a miserable state of anxiety about her; and many and many a time through that long night he scolded her and himself; her for her obstinacy, and himself for his weakness in yielding to her obstinacy, when she insisted on being the one to follow and find out Will. She did not pass that night in bed any more than Job; but she was under a respectable roof, and among kind, though rough people. She had offered no resistance to the old boatman, when he had clutched her arm, in order to insure her following him, as he threaded the crowded dock-ways, and dived up strange bye-streets. She came on meekly after him, scarcely thinking in her stupor where she was going, and glad (in a dead, heavy way) that some one was deciding things for her. He led her to an old-fashioned house, almost as small as house could be, which had been built long ago, before all the other part of the street, and had a country-town look about it in the middle of that bustling back street. He pulled her into the house-place; and relieved to a certain degree of his fear of losing her on the way, he exclaimed, "There!" giving a great slap of one hand on her back. The room was light and bright, and roused Mary (perhaps the slap on her back might help a little, too), and she felt the awkwardness of accounting for her presence to a little bustling old woman who had been moving about the fire-place on her entrance. The boatman took it very quietly, never deigning to give any explanation, but sitting down in his own particular chair, and chewing tobacco, while he looked at Mary with the most satisfied air imaginable, half triumphantly, as if she were the captive of his bow and spear, and half defyingly, as if daring her to escape. The old woman, his wife, stood still, poker in hand, waiting to be told who it was that her husband had brought home so unceremoniously; but, as she looked in amazement the girl's cheek flushed, and then blanched to a dead whiteness; a film came over her eyes, and catching at the dresser for support in that hot whirling room, she fell in a heap on the floor. Both man and wife came quickly to her assistance. They raised her up, still insensible, and he supported her on one knee, while his wife pattered away for some cold fresh water. She threw it straight over Mary; but though it caused a great sob, the eyes still remained closed, and the face as pale as ashes. "Who is she, Ben?" asked the woman, as she rubbed her unresisting, powerless hands. "How should I know?" answered her husband gruffly. "Well-a-well!" (in a soothing tone, such as you use to irritated children), and as if half to herself, "I only thought you might, you know, as you brought her home. Poor thing! we must not ask aught about her, but that she needs help. I wish I'd my salts at home, but I lent 'em to Mrs. Burton, last Sunday in church, for she could not keep awake through the sermon. Dear-a-me, how white she is!" "Here! you hold her up a bit," said her husband. She did as he desired, still crooning to herself, not caring for his short, sharp interruptions as she went on; and, indeed, to her old, loving heart, his crossest words fell like pearls and diamonds, for he had been the husband of her youth; and even he, rough and crabbed as he was, was secretly soothed by the sound of her voice, although not for worlds, if he could have helped it, would he have shown any of the love that was hidden beneath his rough outside. "What's the old fellow after?" said she, bending over Mary, so as to accommodate the drooping head. "Taking my pen, as I've had better nor five year. Bless us, and save us! he's burning it! Ay, I see now, he's his wits about him; burnt feathers is always good for a faint. But they don't bring her round, poor wench! Now what's he after next? Well! he is a bright one, my old man! That I never thought of that, to be sure!" exclaimed she, as he produced a square bottle of smuggled spirits, labelled "Golden Wasser," from a corner cupboard in their little room. "That'll do!" said she, as the dose he poured into Mary's open mouth made her start and cough. "Bless the man! It's just like him to be so tender and thoughtful!" "Not a bit!" snarled he, as he was relieved by Mary's returning colour, and opened eyes, and wondering, sensible gaze; "not a bit! I never was such a fool afore." His wife helped Mary to rise, and placed her in a chair. "All's right now, young woman?" asked the boatman, anxiously. "Yes, sir, and thank you. I'm sure, sir, I don't know rightly how to thank you," faltered Mary, softly forth. "Be hanged to you and your thanks." And he shook himself, took his pipe, and went out without deigning another word; leaving his wife sorely puzzled as to the character and history of the stranger within her doors. Mary watched the boatman leave the house, and then, turning her sorrowful eyes to the face of her hostess, she attempted feebly to rise, with the intention of going away,--where she knew not. "Nay! nay! who e'er thou be'st, thou'rt not fit to go out into the street. Perhaps" (sinking her voice a little) "thou'rt a bad one; I almost misdoubt thee, thou'rt so pretty. Well-a-well! it's the bad ones as have the broken hearts, sure enough; good folk never get utterly cast down, they've always getten hope in the Lord: it's the sinful as bear the bitter, bitter grief in their crushed hearts, poor souls; it's them we ought, most of all, to pity and to help. She shanna leave the house to-night, choose who she is,--worst woman in Liverpool, she shanna. I wished I knew where th' old man picked her up, that I do." Mary had listened feebly to this soliloquy, and now tried to satisfy her hostess in weak, broken sentences. "I'm not a bad one, missis, indeed. Your master took me out to sea after a ship as had sailed. There was a man in it as might save a life at the trial to-morrow. The captain would not let him come, but he says he'll come back in the pilot-boat." She fell to sobbing at the thought of her waning hopes, and the old woman tried to comfort her, beginning with her accustomed, "Well-a-well! and he'll come back, I'm sure. I know he will; so keep up your heart. Don't fret about it. He's sure to be back." "Oh! I'm afraid! I'm sore afraid he won't," cried Mary, consoled, nevertheless, by the woman's assertions, all groundless as she knew them to be. Still talking half to herself and half to Mary, the old woman prepared tea, and urged her visitor to eat and refresh herself. But Mary shook her head at the proffered food, and only drank a cup of tea with thirsty eagerness. For the spirits had thrown her into a burning heat, and rendered each impression received through her senses of the most painful distinctness and intensity, while her head ached in a terrible manner. She disliked speaking, her power over her words seemed so utterly gone. She used quite different expressions to those she intended. So she kept silent, while Mrs. Sturgis (for that was the name of her hostess) talked away, and put her tea-things by, and moved about incessantly, in a manner that increased the dizziness in Mary's head. She felt as if she ought to take leave for the night and go. But where? Presently the old man came back, crosser and gruffer than when he went away. He kicked aside the dry shoes his wife had prepared for him, and snarled at all she said. Mary attributed this to his finding her still there, and gathered up her strength for an effort to leave the house. But she was mistaken. By-and-bye, he said (looking right into the fire, as if addressing it), "Wind's right against them!" "Ay, ay, and is it so?" said his wife, who, knowing him well, knew that his surliness proceeded from some repressed sympathy. "Well-a-well, wind changes often at night. Time enough before morning. I'd bet a penny it has changed sin' thou looked." She looked out of their little window at a weather-cock, near, glittering in the moonlight; and as she was a sailor's wife, she instantly recognised the unfavourable point at which the indicator seemed stationary, and giving a heavy sigh, turned into the room, and began to beat about in her own mind for some other mode of comfort. "There's no one else who can prove what you want at the trial to-morrow, is there?" asked she. "No one!" answered Mary. "And you've no clue to the one as is really guilty, if t'other is not?" Mary did not answer, but trembled all over. Sturgis saw it. "Don't bother her with thy questions," said he to his wife. "She mun go to bed, for she's all in a shiver with the sea air. I'll see after the wind, hang it, and the weather-cock, too. Tide will help 'em when it turns." Mary went up-stairs murmuring thanks and blessings on those who took the stranger in. Mrs. Sturgis led her into a little room redolent of the sea and foreign lands. There was a small bed for one son, bound for China; and a hammock slung above for another, who was now tossing in the Baltic. The sheets looked made out of sail-cloth, but were fresh and clean in spite of their brownness. Against the wall were wafered two rough drawings of vessels with their names written underneath, on which the mother's eyes caught, and gazed until they filled with tears. But she brushed the drops away with the back of her hand, and in a cheerful tone went on to assure Mary the bed was well aired. "I cannot sleep, thank you. I will sit here, if you please," said Mary, sinking down on the window-seat. "Come, now," said Mrs. Sturgis, "my master told me to see you to bed, and I mun. What's the use of watching? A watched pot never boils, and I see you are after watching that weather-cock. Why now, I try never to look at it, else I could do nought else. My heart many a time goes sick when the wind rises, but I turn away and work away, and try never to think on the wind, but on what I ha' getten to do." "Let me stay up a little," pleaded Mary, as her hostess seemed so resolute about seeing her to bed. Her looks won her suit. "Well, I suppose I mun. I shall catch it down stairs, I know. He'll be in a fidget till you're getten to bed, I know; so you mun be quiet if you are so bent upon staying up." And quietly, noiselessly, Mary watched the unchanging weather-cock through the night. She sat on the little window-seat, her hand holding back the curtain which shaded the room from the bright moonlight without; her head resting its weariness against the corner of the window-frame; her eyes burning and stiff with the intensity of her gaze. The ruddy morning stole up the horizon, casting a crimson glow into the watcher's room. It was the morning of the day of trial! CHAPTER XXXII. THE TRIAL AND VERDICT--"NOT GUILTY." "Thou stand'st here arraign'd, That, with presumption impious and accursed, Thou hast usurp'd God's high prerogative, Making thy fellow mortal's life and death Wait on thy moody and diseased passions; That with a violent and untimely steel Hast set abroach the blood that should have ebbed In calm and natural current: to sum all In one wild name--a name the pale air freezes at, And every cheek of man sinks in with horror-- Thou art a cold and midnight murderer." MILMAN'S "FAZIO." Of all the restless people who found that night's hours agonising from excess of anxiety, the poor father of the murdered man was perhaps the most restless. He had slept but little since the blow had fallen; his waking hours had been too full of agitated thought, which seemed to haunt and pursue him through his unquiet slumbers. And this night of all others was the most sleepless. He turned over and over again in his mind the wonder if every thing had been done that could be done, to insure the conviction of Jem Wilson. He almost regretted the haste with which he had urged forward the proceedings, and yet until he had obtained vengeance, he felt as if there was no peace on earth for him (I don't know that he exactly used the term vengeance in his thoughts; he spoke of justice, and probably thought of his desired end as such); no peace either bodily or mental, for he moved up and down his bedroom with the restless incessant tramp of a wild beast in a cage, and if he compelled his aching limbs to cease for an instant, the twitchings which ensued almost amounted to convulsions, and he re-commenced his walk as the lesser evil, and the more bearable fatigue. With daylight increased power of action came; and he drove off to arouse his attorney, and worry him with further directions and inquiries; and when that was ended, he sat, watch in hand, until the courts should be opened, and the trial begin. What were all the living,--wife or daughters,--what were they in comparison with the dead,--the murdered son who lay unburied still, in compliance with his father's earnest wish, and almost vowed purpose of having the slayer of his child sentenced to death, before he committed the body to the rest of the grave? At nine o'clock they all met at their awful place of _rendezvous_. The judge, the jury, the avenger of blood, the prisoner, the witnesses--all were gathered together within one building. And besides these were many others, personally interested in some part of the proceedings, in which, however, they took no part; Job Legh, Ben Sturgis, and several others were there, amongst whom was Charley Jones. Job Legh had carefully avoided any questioning from Mrs. Wilson that morning. Indeed he had not been much in her company, for he had risen up early to go out once more to make inquiry for Mary; and when he could hear nothing of her, he had desperately resolved not to undeceive Mrs. Wilson, as sorrow never came too late; and if the blow were inevitable, it would be better to leave her in ignorance of the impending evil as long as possible. She took her place in the witness-room, worn and dispirited, but not anxious. As Job struggled through the crowd into the body of the court, Mr. Bridgenorth's clerk beckoned to him. "Here's a letter for you from our client!" Job sickened as he took it. He did not know why, but he dreaded a confession of guilt, which would be an overthrow of all hope. The letter ran as follows. DEAR FRIEND,--I thank you heartily for your goodness in finding me a lawyer, but lawyers can do no good to me, whatever they may do to other people. But I am not the less obliged to you, dear friend. I foresee things will go against me--and no wonder. If I was a jury-man, I should say the man was guilty as had as much evidence brought against him as may be brought against me to-morrow. So it's no blame to them if they do. But, Job Legh, I think I need not tell you I am as guiltless in this matter as the babe unborn, although it is not in my power to prove it. If I did not believe that you thought me innocent, I could not write as I do now to tell you my wishes. You'll not forget they are the wishes of a man shortly to die. Dear friend, you must take care of my mother. Not in the money way, for she will have enough for her and Aunt Alice; but you must let her talk to you of me; and show her that (whatever others may do) you think I died innocent. I don't reckon she will stay long behind when we are all gone. Be tender with her, Job, for my sake; and if she is a bit fractious at times, remember what she has gone through. I know mother will never doubt me, God bless her. There is one other whom I fear I have loved too dearly; and yet, the loving her has made the happiness of my life. She will think I have murdered her lover; she will think I have caused the grief she must be feeling. And she must go on thinking so. It is hard upon me to say this; but she _must_. It will be best for her, and that's all I ought to think on. But, dear Job, you are a hearty fellow for your time of life, and may live a many years to come; and perhaps you could tell her, when you felt sure you were drawing near your end, that I solemnly told you (as I do now) that I was innocent of this thing. You must not tell her for many years to come; but I cannot well bear to think on her living through a long life, and hating the thought of me as the murderer of him she loved, and dying with that hatred to me in her heart. It would hurt me sore in the other world to see the look of it in her face, as it would be, till she was told. I must not let myself think on how she must be viewing me now. So God bless you, Job Legh; and no more from Yours to command, JAMES WILSON. Job turned the letter over and over when he had read it; sighed deeply; and then wrapping it carefully up in a bit of newspaper he had about him, he put it in his waistcoat pocket, and went off to the door of the witness-room to ask if Mary Barton were there. As the door opened he saw her sitting within, against a table on which her folded arms were resting, and her head was hidden within them. It was an attitude of hopelessness, and would have served to strike Job dumb in sickness of heart, even without the sound of Mrs. Wilson's voice in passionate sobbing, and sore lamentations, which told him as well as words could do (for she was not within view of the door, and he did not care to go in), that she was at any rate partially undeceived as to the hopes he had given her last night. Sorrowfully did Job return into the body of the court; neither Mrs. Wilson nor Mary having seen him as he had stood at the witness-room door. As soon as he could bring his distracted thoughts to bear upon the present scene, he perceived that the trial of James Wilson for the murder of Henry Carson was just commencing. The clerk was gabbling over the indictment, and in a minute or two there was the accustomed question, "How say you, Guilty, or Not Guilty?" Although but one answer was expected,--was customary in all cases,--there was a pause of dead silence, an interval of solemnity even in this hackneyed part of the proceeding; while the prisoner at the bar stood with compressed lips, looking at the judge with his outward eyes, but with far other and different scenes presented to his mental vision;--a sort of rapid recapitulation of his life,--remembrances of his childhood,--his father (so proud of him, his first-born child),--his sweet little playfellow, Mary,--his hopes, his love,--his despair, yet still, yet ever and ever, his love,--the blank, wide world it had been without her love,--his mother,--his childless mother,--but not long to be so,--not long to be away from all she loved,--nor during that time to be oppressed with doubt as to his innocence, sure and secure of her darling's heart;--he started from his instant's pause, and said in a low firm voice, "Not guilty, my lord." The circumstances of the murder, the discovery of the body, the causes of suspicion against Jem, were as well known to most of the audience as they are to you, so there was some little buzz of conversation going on among the people while the leading counsel for the prosecution made his very effective speech. "That's Mr. Carson, the father, sitting behind Serjeant Wilkinson!" "What a noble-looking old man he is! so stern and inflexible, with such classical features! Does he not remind you of some of the busts of Jupiter?" "I am more interested by watching the prisoner. Criminals always interest me. I try to trace in the features common to humanity some expression of the crimes by which they have distinguished themselves from their kind. I have seen a good number of murderers in my day, but I have seldom seen one with such marks of Cain on his countenance as the man at the bar." "Well, I am no physiognomist, but I don't think his face strikes me as bad. It certainly is gloomy and depressed, and not unnaturally so, considering his situation." "Only look at his low, resolute brow, his downcast eye, his white compressed lips. He never looks up,--just watch him." "His forehead is not so low if he had that mass of black hair removed, and is very square, which some people say is a good sign. If others are to be influenced by such trifles as you are, it would have been much better if the prison barber had cut his hair a little previous to the trial; and as for down-cast eye, and compressed lip, it is all part and parcel of his inward agitation just now; nothing to do with character, my good fellow." Poor Jem! His raven hair (his mother's pride, and so often fondly caressed by her fingers), was that too to have its influence against him? The witnesses were called. At first they consisted principally of policemen; who, being much accustomed to giving evidence, knew what were the material points they were called on to prove, and did not lose the time of the court in listening to any thing unnecessary. "Clear as day against the prisoner," whispered one attorney's clerk to another. "Black as night, you mean," replied his friend; and they both smiled. "Jane Wilson! who's she? some relation, I suppose, from the name." "The mother,--she that is to prove the gun part of the case." "Oh, ay--I remember! Rather hard on her, too, I think." Then both were silent, as one of the officers of the court ushered Mrs. Wilson into the witness-box. I have often called her "the old woman," and "an old woman," because, in truth, her appearance was so much beyond her years, which might not be many above fifty. But partly owing to her accident in early life, which left a stamp of pain upon her face, partly owing to her anxious temper, partly to her sorrows, and partly to her limping gait, she always gave me the idea of age. But now she might have seemed more than seventy; her lines were so set and deep, her features so sharpened, and her walk so feeble. She was trying to check her sobs into composure, and (unconsciously) was striving to behave as she thought would best please her poor boy, whom she knew she had often grieved by her uncontrolled impatience. He had buried his face in his arms, which rested on the front of the dock (an attitude he retained during the greater part of his trial, and which prejudiced many against him). The counsel began the examination. "Your name is Jane Wilson, I believe." "Yes, sir." "The mother of the prisoner at the bar?" "Yes, sir;" with quivering voice, ready to break out into weeping, but earning respect by the strong effort at self-control, prompted, as I have said before, by her earnest wish to please her son by her behaviour. The barrister now proceeded to the important part of the examination, tending to prove that the gun found on the scene of the murder was the prisoner's. She had committed herself so fully to the policeman, that she could not well retract; so without much delay in bringing the question round to the desired point, the gun was produced in court, and the inquiry made-- "That gun belongs to your son, does it not?" She clenched the sides of the witness-box in her efforts to make her parched tongue utter words. At last she moaned forth, "Oh! Jem, Jem! what mun I say?" Every one bent forward to hear the prisoner's answer; although, in fact, it was of little importance to the issue of the trial. He lifted up his head; and with a face brimming full of pity for his mother, yet resolved into endurance, said, "Tell the truth, mother!" And so she did, with the fidelity of a little child. Every one felt that she did; and the little colloquy between mother and son did them some slight service in the opinion of the audience. But the awful judge sat unmoved; and the jurymen changed not a muscle of their countenances; while the counsel for the prosecution went triumphantly through this part of the case, including the fact of Jem's absence from home on the night of the murder, and bringing every admission to bear right against the prisoner. It was over. She was told to go down. But she could no longer compel her mother's heart to keep silence, and suddenly turning towards the judge (with whom she imagined the verdict to rest), she thus addressed him with her choking voice. "And now, sir, I've telled you the truth, and the whole truth, as _he_ bid me; but don't ye let what I have said go for to hang him; oh, my lord judge, take my word for it, he's as innocent as the child as has yet to be born. For sure, I, who am his mother, and have nursed him on my knee, and been gladdened by the sight of him every day since, ought to know him better than yon pack of fellows" (indicating the jury, while she strove against her heart to render her words distinct and clear for her dear son's sake) "who, I'll go bail, never saw him before this morning in all their born days. My lord judge, he's so good I often wondered what harm there was in him; many is the time when I've been fretted (for I'm frabbit enough at times), when I've scold't myself, and said, 'You ungrateful thing, the Lord God has given you Jem, and isn't that blessing enough for you?' But He has seen fit to punish me. If Jem is--if Jem is--taken from me, I shall be a childless woman; and very poor, having nought left to love on earth, and I cannot say 'His will be done.' I cannot, my lord judge, oh, I cannot." While sobbing out these words she was led away by the officers of the court, but tenderly, and reverently, with the respect which great sorrow commands. The stream of evidence went on and on, gathering fresh force from every witness who was examined, and threatening to overwhelm poor Jem. Already they had proved that the gun was his, that he had been heard not many days before the commission of the deed to threaten the deceased; indeed, that the police had, at that time, been obliged to interfere to prevent some probable act of violence. It only remained to bring forward a sufficient motive for the threat and the murder. The clue to this had been furnished by the policeman, who had overheard Jem's angry language to Mr. Carson; and his report in the first instance had occasioned the subpoena to Mary. And now she was to be called on to bear witness. The court was by this time almost as full as it could hold; but fresh attempts were being made to squeeze in at all the entrances, for many were anxious to see and hear this part of the trial. Old Mr. Carson felt an additional beat at his heart at the thought of seeing the fatal Helen, the cause of all--a kind of interest and yet repugnance, for was not she beloved by the dead; nay, perhaps in her way, loving and mourning for the same being that he himself was so bitterly grieving over? And yet he felt as if he abhorred her and her rumoured loveliness, as if she were the curse against him; and he grew jealous of the love with which she had inspired his son, and would fain have deprived her of even her natural right of sorrowing over her lover's untimely end: for you see it was a fixed idea in the minds of all, that the handsome, bright, gay, rich young gentleman must have been beloved in preference to the serious, almost stern-looking smith, who had to toil for his daily bread. Hitherto the effect of the trial had equalled Mr. Carson's most sanguine hopes, and a severe look of satisfaction came over the face of the avenger,--over that countenance whence the smile had departed, never more to return. All eyes were directed to the door through which the witnesses entered. Even Jem looked up to catch one glimpse before he hid his face from her look of aversion. The officer had gone to fetch her. She was in exactly the same attitude as when Job Legh had seen her two hours before through the half-open door. Not a finger had moved. The officer summoned her, but she did not stir. She was so still he thought she had fallen asleep, and he stepped forward and touched her. She started up in an instant, and followed him with a kind of rushing rapid motion into the court, into the witness-box. And amid all that sea of faces, misty and swimming before her eyes, she saw but two clear bright spots, distinct and fixed: the judge, who might have to condemn; and the prisoner, who might have to die. The mellow sunlight streamed down that high window on her head, and fell on the rich treasure of her golden hair, stuffed away in masses under her little bonnet-cap; and in those warm beams the motes kept dancing up and down. The wind had changed--had changed almost as soon as she had given up her watching; the wind had changed, and she heeded it not. Many who were looking for mere flesh and blood beauty, mere colouring, were disappointed; for her face was deadly white, and almost set in its expression, while a mournful bewildered soul looked out of the depths of those soft, deep, gray eyes. But others recognised a higher and stranger kind of beauty; one that would keep its hold on the memory for many after years. I was not there myself; but one who was, told me that her look, and indeed her whole face, was more like the well-known engraving from Guido's picture of "Beatrice Cenci" than any thing else he could give me an idea of. He added, that her countenance haunted him, like the remembrance of some wild sad melody, heard in childhood; that it would perpetually recur with its mute imploring agony. With all the court reeling before her (always save and except those awful two), she heard a voice speak, and answered the simple inquiry (something about her name) mechanically, as if in a dream. So she went on for two or three more questions, with a strange wonder in her brain, as to the reality of the terrible circumstances in which she was placed. Suddenly she was roused, she knew not how or by what. She was conscious that all was real, that hundreds were looking at her, that true-sounding words were being extracted from her; that that figure, so bowed down, with the face concealed by both hands, was really Jem. Her face flushed scarlet, and then paler than before. But in her dread of herself, with the tremendous secret imprisoned within her, she exerted every power she had to keep in the full understanding of what was going on, of what she was asked, and of what she answered. With all her faculties preternaturally alive and sensitive, she heard the next question from the pert young barrister, who was delighted to have the examination of this witness. "And pray, may I ask, which was the favoured lover? You say you knew both these young men. Which was the favoured lover? Which did you prefer?" And who was he, the questioner, that he should dare so lightly to ask of her heart's secrets? That he should dare to ask her to tell, before that multitude assembled there, what woman usually whispers with blushes and tears, and many hesitations, to one ear alone? So, for an instant, a look of indignation contracted Mary's brow, as she steadily met the eyes of the impertinent counsellor. But, in that instant, she saw the hands removed from a face beyond, behind; and a countenance revealed of such intense love and woe,--such a deprecating dread of her answer; and suddenly her resolution was taken. The present was everything; the future, that vast shroud, it was maddening to think upon; but _now_ she might own her fault, but _now_ she might even own her love. Now, when the beloved stood thus, abhorred of men, there would be no feminine shame to stand between her and her avowal. So she also turned towards the judge, partly to mark that her answer was not given to the monkeyfied man who questioned her, and likewise that her face might be averted from, and her eyes not gaze upon, the form that contracted with the dread of the words he anticipated. "He asks me which of them two I liked the best. Perhaps I liked Mr. Harry Carson once--I don't know--I've forgotten; but I loved James Wilson, that's now on trial, above what tongue can tell--above all else on earth put together; and I love him now better than ever, though he has never known a word of it till this minute. For you see, sir, mother died before I was thirteen, before I could know right from wrong about some things; and I was giddy and vain, and ready to listen to any praise of my good looks; and this poor young Mr. Carson fell in with me, and told me he loved me; and I was foolish enough to think he meant me marriage: a mother is a pitiful loss to a girl, sir; and so I used to fancy I could like to be a lady, and rich, and never know want any more. I never found out how dearly I loved another till one day, when James Wilson asked me to marry him, and I was very hard and sharp in my answer (for indeed, sir, I'd a deal to bear just then), and he took me at my word and left me; and from that day to this I've never spoken a word to him, or set eyes on him; though I'd fain have done so, to try and show him we had both been too hasty; for he'd not been gone out of my sight above a minute before I knew I loved--far above my life," said she, dropping her voice as she came to this second confession of the strength of her attachment. "But, if the gentleman asks me which I loved the best, I make answer, I was flattered by Mr. Carson, and pleased with his flattery; but James Wilson I--" She covered her face with her hands, to hide the burning scarlet blushes, which even dyed her fingers. There was a little pause; still, though her speech might inspire pity for the prisoner, it only strengthened the supposition of his guilt. Presently the counsellor went on with his examination. "But you have seen young Mr. Carson since your rejection of the prisoner?" "Yes, often." "You have spoken to him, I conclude, at these times." "Only once to call speaking." "And what was the substance of your conversation? Did you tell him you found you preferred his rival?" "No, sir. I don't think as I've done wrong in saying, now as things stand, what my feelings are; but I never would be so bold as to tell one young man I cared for another. I never named Jem's name to Mr. Carson. Never." "Then what did you say when you had this final conversation with Mr. Carson? You can give me the substance of it, if you don't remember the words." "I'll try, sir; but I'm not very clear. I told him I could not love him, and wished to have nothing more to do with him. He did his best to over-persuade me, but I kept steady, and at last I ran off." "And you never spoke to him again?" "Never!" "Now, young woman, remember you are upon your oath. Did you ever tell the prisoner at the bar of Mr. Henry Carson's attentions to you? of your acquaintance, in short? Did you ever try to excite his jealousy by boasting of a lover so far above you in station?" "Never. I never did," said she, in so firm and distinct a manner as to leave no doubt. "Were you aware that he knew of Mr. Henry Carson's regard for you? Remember you are on your oath!" "Never, sir. I was not aware until I heard of the quarrel between them, and what Jem had said to the policeman, and that was after the murder. To this day I can't make out who told Jem. Oh, sir, may not I go down?" For she felt the sense, the composure, the very bodily strength which she had compelled to her aid for a time, suddenly giving way, and was conscious that she was losing all command over herself. There was no occasion to detain her longer; she had done her part. She might go down. The evidence was still stronger against the prisoner; but now he stood erect and firm, with self-respect in his attitude, and a look of determination on his face, which almost made it appear noble. Yet he seemed lost in thought. Job Legh had all this time been trying to soothe and comfort Mrs. Wilson, who would first be in the court, in order to see her darling, and then, when her sobs became irrepressible, had to be led out into the open air, and sat there weeping, on the steps of the court-house. Who would have taken charge of Mary on her release from the witness-box I do not know, if Mrs. Sturgis, the boatman's wife, had not been there, brought by her interest in Mary, towards whom she now pressed, in order to urge her to leave the scene of the trial. "No! no!" said Mary, to this proposition. "I must be here, I must watch that they don't hang him, you know I must." "Oh! they'll not hang him! never fear! Besides the wind has changed, and that's in his favour. Come away. You're so hot, and first white and then red; I'm sure you're ill. Just come away." "Oh! I don't know about any thing but that I must stay," replied Mary, in a strange hurried manner, catching hold of some rails as if she feared some bodily force would be employed to remove her. So Mrs. Sturgis just waited patiently by her, every now and then peeping among the congregation of heads in the body of the court, to see if her husband were still there. And there he always was to be seen, looking and listening with all his might. His wife felt easy that he would not be wanting her at home until the trial was ended. Mary never let go her clutched hold on the rails. She wanted them to steady her, in that heaving, whirling court. She thought the feeling of something hard compressed within her hand would help her to listen, for it was such pain, such weary pain in her head, to strive to attend to what was being said. They were all at sea, sailing away on billowy waves, and every one speaking at once, and no one heeding her father, who was calling on them to be silent, and listen to him. Then again, for a brief second, the court stood still, and she could see the judge, sitting up there like an idol, with his trappings, so rigid and stiff; and Jem, opposite, looking at her, as if to say, Am I to die for what you know your ----. Then she checked herself, and by a great struggle brought herself round to an instant's sanity. But the round of thought never stood still; and off she went again; and every time her power of struggling against the growing delirium grew fainter and fainter. She muttered low to herself, but no one heard her except her neighbour, Mrs. Sturgis; all were too closely attending to the case for the prosecution, which was now being wound up. The counsel for the prisoner had avoided much cross-examination, reserving to himself the right of calling the witnesses forward again; for he had received so little, and such vague instructions, and understood that so much depended on the evidence of one who was not forthcoming, that in fact he had little hope of establishing any thing like a show of a defence, and contented himself with watching the case, and lying in wait for any legal objections that might offer themselves. He lay back on the seat, occasionally taking a pinch of snuff in a manner intended to be contemptuous; now and then elevating his eyebrows, and sometimes exchanging a little note with Mr. Bridgenorth behind him. The attorney had far more interest in the case than the barrister, to which he was perhaps excited by his poor old friend Job Legh; who had edged and wedged himself through the crowd close to Mr. Bridgenorth's elbow, sent thither by Ben Sturgis, to whom he had been "introduced" by Charley Jones, and who had accounted for Mary's disappearance on the preceding day, and spoken of their chase, their fears, their hopes. All this was told in a few words to Mr. Bridgenorth--so few, that they gave him but a confused idea, that time was of value; and this he named to his counsel, who now rose to speak for the defence. Job Legh looked about for Mary, now he had gained, and given, some idea of the position of things. At last he saw her, standing by a decent-looking woman, looking flushed and anxious, and moving her lips incessantly, as if eagerly talking; her eyes never resting on any object, but wandering about as if in search of something. Job thought it was for him she was seeking, and he struggled to get round to her. When he had succeeded, she took no notice of him, although he spoke to her, but still kept looking round and round in the same wild, restless manner. He tried to hear the low quick mutterings of her voice, as he caught the repetition of the same words over and over again. "I must not go mad. I must not, indeed. They say people tell the truth when they're mad; but I don't. I was always a liar. I was, indeed; but I'm not mad. I must not go mad. I must not, indeed." Suddenly she seemed to become aware how earnestly Job was listening (with mournful attention) to her words, and turning sharp round upon him, with upbraiding for his eaves-dropping on her lips, she caught sight of something,--or some one,--who, even in that state, had power to arrest her attention, and throwing up her arms with wild energy, she shrieked aloud, "Oh, Jem! Jem! you're saved; and I _am_ mad--" and was instantly seized with convulsions. With much commiseration she was taken out of court, while the attention of many was diverted from her, by the fierce energy with which a sailor forced his way over rails and seats, against turnkeys and policemen. The officers of the court opposed this forcible manner of entrance, but they could hardly induce the offender to adopt any quieter way of attaining his object, and telling his tale in the witness-box, the legitimate place. For Will had dwelt so impatiently on the danger in which his absence would place his cousin, that even yet he seemed to fear that he might see the prisoner carried off, and hung, before he could pour out the narrative which would exculpate him. As for Job Legh, his feelings were all but uncontrollable; as you may judge by the indifference with which he saw Mary borne, stiff and convulsed, out of the court, in the charge of the kind Mrs. Sturgis, who, you will remember, was an utter stranger to him. "She'll keep! I'll not trouble myself about her," said he to himself, as he wrote with trembling hands a little note of information to Mr. Bridgenorth, who had conjectured, when Will had first disturbed the awful tranquillity of the life-and-death court, that the witness had arrived (better late than never) on whose evidence rested all the slight chance yet remaining to Jem Wilson of escaping death. During the commotion in the court, among all the cries and commands, the dismay and the directions, consequent upon Will's entrance, and poor Mary's fearful attack of illness, Mr. Bridgenorth had kept his lawyer-like presence of mind; and long before Job Legh's almost illegible note was poked at him, he had recapitulated the facts on which Will had to give evidence, and the manner in which he had been pursued, after his ship had taken her leave of the land. The barrister who defended Jem took new heart when he was put in possession of these striking points to be adduced, not so much out of earnestness to save the prisoner, of whose innocence he was still doubtful, as because he saw the opportunities for the display of forensic eloquence which were presented by the facts; "a gallant tar brought back from the pathless ocean by a girl's noble daring," "the dangers of too hastily judging from circumstantial evidence," &c., &c.; while the counsellor for the prosecution prepared himself by folding his arms, elevating his eyebrows, and putting his lips in the form in which they might best whistle down the wind such evidence as might be produced by a suborned witness, who dared to perjure himself. For, of course, it is etiquette to suppose that such evidence as may be given against the opinion which lawyers are paid to uphold, is any thing but based on truth; and "perjury," "conspiracy," and "peril of your immortal soul," are light expressions to throw at the heads of those who may prove (not the speaker, there would then be some excuse for the hasty words of personal anger, but) the hirer of the speaker to be wrong, or mistaken. But when once Will had attained his end, and felt that his tale, or part of a tale, would be heard by judge and jury; when once he saw Jem standing safe and well before him (even though he saw him pale and care-worn at the felon's bar); his courage took the shape of presence of mind, and he awaited the examination with a calm, unflinching intelligence, which dictated the clearest and most pertinent answers. He told the story you know so well: how his leave of absence being nearly expired, he had resolved to fulfil his promise, and go to see an uncle residing in the Isle of Man; how his money (sailor-like) was all expended in Manchester, and how, consequently, it had been necessary for him to walk to Liverpool, which he had accordingly done on the very night of the murder, accompanied as far as Hollins Greeb by his friend and cousin, the prisoner at the bar. He was clear and distinct in every corroborative circumstance, and gave a short account of the singular way in which he had been recalled from his outward-bound voyage, and the terrible anxiety he had felt, as the pilot-boat had struggled home against the wind. The jury felt that their opinion (so nearly decided half an hour ago) was shaken and disturbed in a very uncomfortable and perplexing way, and were almost grateful to the counsel for the prosecution, when he got up, with a brow of thunder, to demolish the evidence, which was so bewildering when taken in connexion with every thing previously adduced. But if such, without looking to the consequences, was the first impulsive feeling of some among the jury, how shall I describe the vehemence of passion which possessed the mind of poor Mr. Carson, as he saw the effect of the young sailor's statement? It never shook his belief in Jem's guilt in the least, that attempt at an alibi; his hatred, his longing for vengeance, having once defined an object to itself, could no more bear to be frustrated and disappointed than the beast of prey can submit to have his victim taken from his hungry jaws. No more likeness to the calm stern power of Jupiter was there in that white eager face, almost distorted by its fell anxiety of expression. The counsel to whom etiquette assigned the cross-examination of Will, caught the look on Mr. Carson's face, and in his desire to further the intense wish there manifested, he over-shot his mark even in his first insulting question: "And now, my man, you've told the court a very good and very convincing story; no reasonable man ought to doubt the unstained innocence of your relation at the bar. Still there is one circumstance you have forgotten to name; and I feel that without it your evidence is rather incomplete. Will you have the kindness to inform the gentlemen of the jury what has been your charge for repeating this very plausible story? How much good coin of Her Majesty's realm have you received, or are you to receive, for walking up from the docks, or some less creditable place, and uttering the tale you have just now repeated,--very much to the credit of your instructor, I must say? Remember, sir, you are upon oath." It took Will a minute to extract the meaning from the garb of unaccustomed words in which it was invested, and during this time he looked a little confused. But the instant the truth flashed upon him, he fixed his bright clear eyes, flaming with indignation, upon the counsellor, whose look fell at last before that stern unflinching gaze. Then, and not till then, Will made answer. "Will you tell the judge and jury how much money you've been paid for your impudence towards one who has told God's blessed truth, and who would scorn to tell a lie, or blackguard any one, for the biggest fee as ever lawyer got for doing dirty work? Will you tell, sir?-- But I'm ready, my lord judge, to take my oath as many times as your lordship or the jury would like, to testify to things having happened just as I said. There's O'Brien, the pilot, in court now. Would somebody with a wig on please to ask him how much he can say for me?" It was a good idea, and caught at by the counsel for the defence. O'Brien gave just such testimony as was required to clear Will from all suspicion. He had witnessed the pursuit, he had heard the conversation which took place between the boat and the ship; he had given Will a homeward passage in his boat. And the character of an accredited pilot, appointed by Trinity House, was known to be above suspicion. Mr. Carson sank back on his seat in sickening despair. He knew enough of courts to be aware of the extreme unwillingness of juries to convict, even where the evidence is most clear, when the penalty of such conviction is death. At the period of the trial most condemnatory to the prisoner, he had repeated this fact to himself in order to damp his too certain expectation of a conviction. Now it needed not repetition, for it forced itself upon his consciousness, and he seemed to _know_, even before the jury retired to consult, that by some trick, some negligence, some miserable hocus-pocus, the murderer of his child, his darling, his Absalom, who had never rebelled,--the slayer of his unburied boy would slip through the fangs of justice, and walk free and unscathed over that earth where his son would never more be seen. It was even so. The prisoner hid his face once more to shield the expression of an emotion he could not control, from the notice of the over-curious; Job Legh ceased his eager talking to Mr. Bridgenorth; Charley looked grave and earnest; for the jury filed one by one back into their box, and the question was asked to which such an awful answer might be given. The verdict they had come to was unsatisfactory to themselves at last; neither being convinced of his innocence, nor yet quite willing to believe him guilty in the teeth of the alibi. But the punishment that awaited him, if guilty, was so terrible, and so unnatural a sentence for man to pronounce on man, that the knowledge of it had weighed down the scale on the side of innocence, and "Not Guilty" was the verdict that thrilled through the breathless court. One moment of silence, and then the murmurs rose, as the verdict was discussed by all with lowered voice. Jem stood motionless, his head bowed; poor fellow, he was stunned with the rapid career of events during the last few hours. He had assumed his place at the bar with little or no expectation of an acquittal; and with scarcely any desire for life, in the complication of occurrences tending to strengthen the idea of Mary's more than indifference to him; she had loved another, and in her mind Jem believed that he himself must be regarded as the murderer of him she loved. And suddenly, athwart this gloom which made life seem such a blank expanse of desolation, there flashed the exquisite delight of hearing Mary's avowal of love, making the future all glorious, if a future in this world he might hope to have. He could not dwell on any thing but her words, telling of her passionate love; all else was indistinct, nor could he strive to make it otherwise. She loved him. And Life, now full of tender images, suddenly bright with all exquisite promises, hung on a breath, the slenderest gossamer chance. He tried to think that the knowledge of her love would soothe him even in his dying hours; but the phantoms of what life with her might be, would obtrude, and made him almost gasp and reel under the uncertainty he was enduring. Will's appearance had only added to the intensity of this suspense. The full meaning of the verdict could not at once penetrate his brain. He stood dizzy and motionless. Some one pulled his coat. He turned, and saw Job Legh, the tears stealing down his brown furrowed cheeks, while he tried in vain to command voice enough to speak. He kept shaking Jem by the hand as the best and necessary expression of his feeling. "Here! make yourself scarce! I should think you'd be glad to get out of that!" exclaimed the gaoler, as he brought up another livid prisoner, from out whose eyes came the anxiety which he would not allow any other feature to display. Job Legh pressed out of court, and Jem followed unreasoningly. The crowd made way, and kept their garments tight about them, as Jem passed, for about him there still hung the taint of the murderer. He was in the open air, and free once more! Although many looked on him with suspicion, faithful friends closed round him; his arm was unresistingly pumped up and down by his cousin and Job; when one was tired, the other took up the wholesome exercise, while Ben Sturgis was working off his interest in the scene by scolding Charley for walking on his head round and round Mary's sweetheart, for a sweetheart he was now satisfactorily ascertained to be, in spite of her assertion to the contrary. And all this time Jem himself felt bewildered and dazzled; he would have given any thing for an hour's uninterrupted thought on the occurrences of the past week, and the new visions raised up during the morning; aye, even though that tranquil hour were to be passed in the hermitage of his quiet prison cell. The first question sobbed out by his choking voice, oppressed with emotion, was, "Where is she?" They led him to the room where his mother sat. They had told her of her son's acquittal, and now she was laughing, and crying, and talking, and giving way to all those feelings which she had restrained with such effort during the last few days. They brought her son to her, and she threw herself upon his neck, weeping there. He returned her embrace, but looked around, beyond. Excepting his mother there was no one in the room but the friends who had entered with him. "Eh, lad!" said she, when she found voice to speak. "See what it is to have behaved thysel! I could put in a good word for thee, and the jury could na go and hang thee in the face of th' character I gave thee. Was na it a good thing they did na keep me from Liverpool? But I would come; I knew I could do thee good, bless thee, my lad. But thou'rt very white, and all of a tremble." He kissed her again and again, but looking round as if searching for some one he could not find, the first words he uttered were still, "Where is she?" CHAPTER XXXIII. REQUIESCAT IN PACE. "Fear no more the heat o' th' sun, Nor the furious winter's rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone and ta'en thy wages." CYMBELINE. "While day and night can bring delight, Or nature aught of pleasure give; While joys above my mind can move For thee, and thee alone I live: "When that grim foe of joy below Comes in between to make us part, The iron hand that breaks our band, It breaks my bliss--it breaks my heart." BURNS. She was where no words of peace, no soothing hopeful tidings could reach her; in the ghastly spectral world of delirium. Hour after hour, day after day, she started up with passionate cries on her father to save Jem; or rose wildly, imploring the winds and waves, the pitiless winds and waves, to have mercy; and over and over again she exhausted her feverish fitful strength in these agonised entreaties, and fell back powerless, uttering only the wailing moans of despair. They told her Jem was safe, they brought him before her eyes; but sight and hearing were no longer channels of information to that poor distracted brain, nor could human voice penetrate to her understanding. Jem alone gathered the full meaning of some of her strange sentences, and perceived that by some means or other she, like himself, had divined the truth of her father being the murderer. Long ago (reckoning time by events and thoughts, and not by clock or dial-plate), Jem had felt certain that Mary's father was Harry Carson's murderer; and although the motive was in some measure a mystery, yet a whole train of circumstances (the principal of which was that John Barton had borrowed the fatal gun only two days before) had left no doubt in Jem's mind. Sometimes he thought that John had discovered, and thus bloodily resented, the attentions which Mr. Carson had paid to his daughter; at others, he believed the motive to exist in the bitter feuds between the masters and their work-people, in which Barton was known to take so keen an interest. But if he had felt himself pledged to preserve this secret, even when his own life was the probable penalty, and he believed he should fall, execrated by Mary as the guilty destroyer of her lover, how much more was he bound now to labour to prevent any word of hers from inculpating her father, now that she was his own; now that she had braved so much to rescue him; and now that her poor brain had lost all guiding and controlling power over her words. All that night long Jem wandered up and down the narrow precincts of Ben Sturgis's house. In the little bed-room where Mrs. Sturgis alternately tended Mary, and wept over the violence of her illness, he listened to her ravings; each sentence of which had its own peculiar meaning and reference, intelligible to his mind, till her words rose to the wild pitch of agony, that no one could alleviate, and he could bear it no longer, and stole, sick and miserable down stairs, where Ben Sturgis thought it his duty to snore away in an arm-chair instead of his bed, under the idea that he should thus be more ready for active service, such as fetching the doctor to revisit his patient. Before it was fairly light, Jem (wide-awake, and listening with an earnest attention he could not deaden, however painful its results proved) heard a gentle subdued knock at the house door; it was no business of his, to be sure, to open it, but as Ben slept on, he thought he would see who the early visitor might be, and ascertain if there was any occasion for disturbing either host or hostess. It was Job Legh who stood there, distinct against the outer light of the street. "How is she? Eh! poor soul! is that her! no need to ask! How strange her voice sounds! Screech! screech! and she so low, sweet-spoken, when she's well! Thou must keep up heart, old boy, and not look so dismal, thysel." "I can't help it, Job; it's past a man's bearing to hear such a one as she is, going on as she is doing; even if I did not care for her, it would cut me sore to see one so young, and--I can't speak of it, Job, as a man should do," said Jem, his sobs choking him. "Let me in, will you?" said Job, pushing past him, for all this time Jem had stood holding the door, unwilling to admit Job where he might hear so much that would be suggestive to one acquainted with the parties that Mary named. "I'd more than one reason for coming betimes. I wanted to hear how yon poor wench was;--that stood first. Late last night I got a letter from Margaret, very anxious-like. The doctor says the old lady yonder can't last many days longer, and it seems so lonesome for her to die with no one but Margaret and Mrs. Davenport about her. So I thought I'd just come and stay with Mary Barton, and see as she's well done to, and you and your mother and Will go and take leave of old Alice." Jem's countenance, sad at best just now, fell lower and lower. But Job went on with his speech. "She still wanders, Margaret says, and thinks she's with her mother at home; but for all that, she should have some kith and kin near her to close her eyes, to my thinking." "Could not you and Will take mother home? I'd follow when--" Jem faltered out thus far, when Job interrupted, "Lad! if thou knew what thy mother has suffered for thee, thou'd not speak of leaving her just when she's got thee from the grave as it were. Why, this very night she roused me up, and 'Job,' says she, 'I ask your pardon for wakening you, but tell me, am I awake or dreaming? Is Jem proved innocent? Oh, Job Legh! God send I've not been only dreaming it!' For thou see'st she can't rightly understand why thou'rt with Mary, and not with her. Ay, ay! I know why; but a mother only gives up her son's heart inch by inch to his wife, and then she gives it up with a grudge. No, Jem! thou must go with thy mother just now, if ever thou hopest for God's blessing. She's a widow, and has none but thee. Never fear for Mary! She's young and will struggle through. They are decent people, these folk she is with, and I'll watch o'er her as though she was my own poor girl, that lies cold enough in London-town. I grant ye, it's hard enough for her to be left among strangers. To my mind John Barton would be more in the way of his duty, looking after his daughter, than delegating it up and down the country, looking after every one's business but his own." A new idea and a new fear came into Jem's mind. What if Mary should implicate her father? "She raves terribly," said he. "All night long she's been speaking of her father, and mixing up thoughts of him with the trial she saw yesterday. I should not wonder if she'll speak of him as being in court next thing." "I should na wonder, either," answered Job. "Folk in her way say many and many a strange thing; and th' best way is never to mind them. Now you take your mother home, Jem, and stay by her till old Alice is gone, and trust me for seeing after Mary." Jem felt how right Job was, and could not resist what he knew to be his duty, but I cannot tell you how heavy and sick at heart he was as he stood at the door to take a last fond, lingering look at Mary. He saw her sitting up in bed, her golden hair, dimmed with her one day's illness, floating behind her, her head bound round with wetted cloths, her features all agitated, even to distortion, with the pangs of her anxiety. Her lover's eyes filled with tears. He could not hope. The elasticity of his heart had been crushed out of him by early sorrows; and now, especially, the dark side of every thing seemed to be presented to him. What if she died, just when he knew the treasure, the untold treasure he possessed in her love! What if (worse than death) she remained a poor gibbering maniac all her life long (and mad people do live to be old sometimes, even under all the pressure of their burden), terror-distracted as she was now, and no one able to comfort her! "Jem!" said Job, partly guessing the other's feelings by his own. "Jem!" repeated he, arresting his attention before he spoke. Jem turned round, the little motion causing the tears to overflow and trickle down his cheeks. "Thou must trust in God, and leave her in His hands." He spoke hushed, and low; but the words sank all the more into Jem's heart, and gave him strength to tear himself away. He found his mother (notwithstanding that she had but just regained her child through Mary's instrumentality) half inclined to resent his having passed the night in anxious devotion to the poor invalid. She dwelt on the duties of children to their parents (above all others), till Jem could hardly believe the relative positions they had held only yesterday, when she was struggling with and controlling every instinct of her nature, only because _he_ wished it. However, the recollection of that yesterday, with its hair's breadth between him and a felon's death, and the love that had lightened the dark shadow, made him bear with the meekness and patience of a true-hearted man all the worrying little acerbities of to-day; and he had no small merit in so doing; for in him, as in his mother, the re-action after intense excitement had produced its usual effect in increased irritability of the nervous system. They found Alice alive, and without pain. And that was all. A child of a few weeks old would have had more bodily strength; a child of a very few months old, more consciousness of what was passing before her. But even in this state she diffused an atmosphere of peace around her. True, Will, at first, wept passionate tears at the sight of her, who had been as a mother to him, so standing on the confines of life. But even now, as always, loud passionate feeling could not long endure in the calm of her presence. The firm faith which her mind had no longer power to grasp, had left its trail of glory; for by no other word can I call the bright happy look which illumined the old earth-worn face. Her talk, it is true, bore no more that constant earnest reference to God and His holy Word which it had done in health, and there were no death-bed words of exhortation from the lips of one so habitually pious. For still she imagined herself once again in the happy, happy realms of childhood; and again dwelling in the lovely northern haunts where she had so often longed to be. Though earthly sight was gone away, she beheld again the scenes she had loved from long years ago! she saw them without a change to dim the old radiant hues. The long dead were with her, fresh and blooming as in those bygone days. And death came to her as a welcome blessing, like as evening comes to the weary child. Her work here was finished, and faithfully done. What better sentence can an emperor wish to have said over his bier? In second childhood (that blessing clouded by a name), she said her "Nunc Dimittis,"--the sweetest canticle to the holy. "Mother, good night! Dear mother! bless me once more! I'm very tired, and would fain go to sleep." She never spoke again on this side Heaven. She died the day after their return from Liverpool. From that time, Jem became aware that his mother was jealously watching for some word or sign which should betoken his wish to return to Mary. And yet go to Liverpool he must and would, as soon as the funeral was over, if but for a single glimpse of his darling. For Job had never written; indeed, any necessity for his so doing had never entered his head. If Mary died, he would announce it personally; if she recovered, he meant to bring her home with him. Writing was to him little more than an auxiliary to natural history; a way of ticketing specimens, not of expressing thoughts. The consequence of this want of intelligence as to Mary's state was, that Jem was constantly anticipating that every person and every scrap of paper was to convey to him the news of her death. He could not endure this state long; but he resolved not to disturb the house by announcing to his mother his purposed intention of returning to Liverpool, until the dead had been carried forth. On Sunday afternoon they laid her low with many tears. Will wept as one who would not be comforted. The old childish feeling came over him, the feeling of loneliness at being left among strangers. By and bye, Margaret timidly stole near him, as if waiting to console; and soon his passion sank down to grief, and grief gave way to melancholy, and though he felt as if he never could be joyful again, he was all the while unconsciously approaching nearer to the full happiness of calling Margaret his own, and a golden thread was interwoven even now with the darkness of his sorrow. Yet it was on his arm that Jane Wilson leant on her return homewards. Jem took charge of Margaret. "Margaret, I'm bound for Liverpool by the first train to-morrow; I must set your grandfather at liberty." "I'm sure he likes nothing better than watching over poor Mary; he loves her nearly as well as me. But let me go! I have been so full of poor Alice, I've never thought of it before; I can't do so much as many a one, but Mary will like to have a woman about her that she knows. I'm sorry I waited to be reminded, Jem." replied Margaret, with some little self-reproach. But Margaret's proposition did not at all agree with her companion's wishes. He found he had better speak out, and put his intention at once to the right motive; the subterfuge about setting Job Legh at liberty had done him harm instead of good. "To tell truth, Margaret, it's I that must go, and that for my own sake, not your grandfather's. I can rest neither by night nor day for thinking on Mary. Whether she lives or dies I look on her as my wife before God, as surely and solemnly as if we were married. So being, I have the greatest right to look after her, and I cannot yield it even to--" "Her father," said Margaret, finishing his interrupted sentence. "It seems strange that a girl like her should be thrown on the bare world to struggle through so bad an illness. No one seems to know where John Barton is, else I thought of getting Morris to write him a letter telling him about Mary. I wish he was home, that I do!" Jem could not echo this wish. "Mary's not bad off for friends where she is," said he. "I call them friends, though a week ago we none of us knew there were such folks in the world. But being anxious and sorrowful about the same thing makes people friends quicker than any thing, I think. She's like a mother to Mary in her ways; and he bears a good character, as far as I could learn just in that hurry. We're drawing near home, and I've not said my say, Margaret. I want you to look after mother a bit. She'll not like my going, and I've got to break it to her yet. If she takes it very badly, I'll come back to-morrow night; but if she's not against it very much, I mean to stay till it's settled about Mary, one way or the other. Will, you know, will be there, Margaret, to help a bit in doing for mother." Will's being there made the only objection Margaret saw to this plan. She disliked the idea of seeming to throw herself in his way; and yet she did not like to say any thing of this feeling to Jem, who had all along seemed perfectly unconscious of any love-affair, besides his own, in progress. So Margaret gave a reluctant consent. "If you can just step up to our house to-night, Jem, I'll put up a few things as may be useful to Mary, and then you can say when you'll likely be back. If you come home to-morrow night, and Will's there, perhaps I need not step up?" "Yes, Margaret, do! I shan't leave easy unless you go some time in the day to see mother. I'll come to-night, though; and now good-bye. Stay! do you think you could just coax poor Will to walk a bit home with you, that I might speak to mother by myself?" No! that Margaret could not do. That was expecting too great a sacrifice of bashful feeling. But the object was accomplished by Will's going up-stairs immediately on their return to the house, to indulge his mournful thoughts alone. As soon as Jem and his mother were left by themselves, he began on the subject uppermost in his mind. "Mother!" She put her handkerchief from her eyes, and turned quickly round so as to face him where he stood, thinking what best to say. The little action annoyed him, and he rushed at once into the subject. "Mother! I am going back to Liverpool to-morrow morning to see how Mary Barton is." "And what's Mary Barton to thee, that thou shouldst be running after her in that-a-way?" "If she lives, she shall be my wedded wife. If she dies--mother, I can't speak of what I shall feel if she dies." His voice was choked in his throat. For an instant his mother was interested by his words; and then came back the old jealousy of being supplanted in the affections of that son, who had been, as it were, newly born to her, by the escape he had so lately experienced from danger. So she hardened her heart against entertaining any feeling of sympathy; and turned away from the face, which recalled the earnest look of his childhood, when he had come to her in some trouble, sure of help and comfort. And coldly she spoke, in those tones which Jem knew and dreaded, even before the meaning they expressed was fully shaped. "Thou'rt old enough to please thysel. Old mothers are cast aside, and what they've borne forgotten, as soon as a pretty face comes across. I might have thought of that last Tuesday, when I felt as if thou wert all my own, and the judge were some wild animal trying to rend thee from me. I spoke up for thee then; but it's all forgotten now, I suppose." "Mother! you know all this while, _you know_ I can never forget any kindness you've ever done for me; and they've been many. Why should you think I've only room for one love in my heart? I can love you as dearly as ever, and Mary too, as much as man ever loved woman." He awaited a reply. None was vouchsafed. "Mother, answer me!" said he, at last. "What mun I answer? You asked me no question." "Well! I ask you this now. To-morrow morning I go to Liverpool to see her, who is as my wife. Dear mother! will you bless me on my errand? If it please God she recovers, will you take her to you as you would a daughter?" She could neither refuse nor assent. "Why need you go?" said she querulously, at length. "You'll be getting in some mischief or another again. Can't you stop at home quiet with me?" Jem got up, and walked about the room in despairing impatience. She would not understand his feelings. At last he stopped right before the place where she was sitting, with an air of injured meekness on her face. "Mother! I often think what a good man father was! I've often heard you tell of your courting days; and of the accident that befell you, and how ill you were. How long is it ago?" "Near upon five-and-twenty years," said she, with a sigh. "You little thought when you were so ill you should live to have such a fine strapping son as I am, did you now?" She smiled a little, and looked up at him, which was just what he wanted. "Thou'rt not so fine a man as thy father was, by a deal!" said she, looking at him with much fondness, notwithstanding her depreciatory words. He took another turn or two up and down the room. He wanted to bend the subject round to his own case. "Those were happy days when father was alive!" "You may say so, lad! Such days as will never come again to me, at any rate." She sighed sorrowfully. "Mother!" said he at last, stopping short, and taking her hand in his with tender affection, "you'd like me to be as happy a man as my father was before me, would not you? You'd like me to have some one to make me as happy as you made father? Now, would you not, dear mother?" "I did not make him as happy as I might ha' done," murmured she, in a low, sad voice of self-reproach. "Th' accident gave a jar to my temper it's never got the better of; and now he's gone where he can never know how I grieve for having frabbed him as I did." "Nay, mother, we don't know that!" said Jem, with gentle soothing. "Any how, you and father got along with as few rubs as most people. But for _his_ sake, dear mother, don't say me nay, now that I come to you to ask your blessing before setting out to see her, who is to be my wife, if ever woman is; for _his_ sake, if not for mine, love her who I shall bring home to be to me all you were to him: and mother! I do not ask for a truer or a tenderer heart than yours is, in the long run." The hard look left her face; though her eyes were still averted from Jem's gaze, it was more because they were brimming over with tears, called forth by his words, than because any angry feeling yet remained. And when his manly voice died away in low pleadings, she lifted up her hands, and bent down her son's head below the level of her own; and then she solemnly uttered a blessing. "God bless thee, Jem, my own dear lad. And may He bless Mary Barton for thy sake." Jem's heart leaped up, and from this time hope took the place of fear in his anticipations with regard to Mary. "Mother! you show your own true self to Mary, and she'll love you as dearly as I do." So with some few smiles, and some few tears, and much earnest talking, the evening wore away. "I must be off to see Margaret. Why, it's near ten o'clock! Could you have thought it? Now don't you stop up for me, mother. You and Will go to bed, for you've both need of it. I shall be home in an hour." Margaret had felt the evening long and lonely; and was all but giving up the thoughts of Jem's coming that night, when she heard his step at the door. He told her of his progress with his mother; he told her his hopes, and was silent on the subject of his fears. "To think how sorrow and joy are mixed up together. You'll date your start in life as Mary's acknowledged lover from poor Alice Wilson's burial day. Well! the dead are soon forgotten!" "Dear Margaret!--But you're worn out with your long evening waiting for me. I don't wonder. But never you, nor any one else, think because God sees fit to call up new interests, perhaps right out of the grave, that therefore the dead are forgotten. Margaret, you yourself can remember our looks, and fancy what we're like." "Yes! but what has that to do with remembering Alice?" "Why, just this. You're not always trying to think on our faces, and making a labour of remembering; but often, I'll be bound, when you're sinking off to sleep, or when you're very quiet and still, the faces you knew so well when you could see, come smiling before you with loving looks. Or you remember them, without striving after it, and without thinking it's your duty to keep recalling them. And so it is with them that are hidden from our sight. If they've been worthy to be heartily loved while alive, they'll not be forgotten when dead; it's against nature. And we need no more be upbraiding ourselves for letting in God's rays of light upon our sorrow, and no more be fearful of forgetting them, because their memory is not always haunting and taking up our minds, than you need to trouble yourself about remembering your grandfather's face, or what the stars were like,--you can't forget if you would, what it's such a pleasure to think about. Don't fear my forgetting Aunt Alice." "I'm not, Jem; not now, at least; only you seemed so full about Mary." "I've kept it down so long, remember. How glad Aunt Alice would have been to know that I might hope to have her for my wife! that's to say, if God spares her!" "She would not have known it, even if you could have told her this last fortnight,--ever since you went away she's been thinking always that she was a little child at her mother's apron-string. She must have been a happy little thing; it was such a pleasure to her to think about those early days, when she lay old and gray on her death-bed." "I never knew any one seem more happy all her life long." "Ay! and how gentle and easy her death was! She thought her mother was near her." They fell into calm thought about those last peaceful happy hours. It struck eleven. Jem started up. "I should have been gone long ago. Give me the bundle. You'll not forget my mother. Good night, Margaret." She let him out and bolted the door behind him. He stood on the steps to adjust some fastening about the bundle. The court, the street, was deeply still. Long ago had all retired to rest on that quiet Sabbath evening. The stars shone down on the silent deserted streets, and the soft clear moonlight fell in bright masses, leaving the steps on which Jem stood in shadow. A foot-fall was heard along the pavement; slow and heavy was the sound. Before Jem had ended his little piece of business, a form had glided into sight; a wan, feeble figure, bearing, with evident and painful labour, a jug of water from the neighbouring pump. It went before Jem, turned up the court at the corner of which he was standing, passed into the broad, calm light; and there, with bowed head, sinking and shrunk body, Jem recognised John Barton. No haunting ghost could have had less of the energy of life in its involuntary motions than he, who, nevertheless, went on with the same measured clock-work tread until the door of his own house was reached. And then he disappeared, and the latch fell feebly to, and made a faint and wavering sound, breaking the solemn silence of the night. Then all again was still. For a minute or two Jem stood motionless, stunned by the thoughts which the sight of Mary's father had called up. Margaret did not know he was at home: had he stolen like a thief by dead of night into his own dwelling? Depressed as Jem had often and long seen him, this night there was something different about him still; beaten down by some inward storm, he seemed to grovel along, all self-respect lost and gone. Must he be told of Mary's state? Jem felt he must not; and this for many reasons. He could not be informed of her illness without many other particulars being communicated at the same time, of which it were better he should be kept in ignorance; indeed, of which Mary herself could alone give the full explanation. No suspicion that he was the criminal seemed hitherto to have been excited in the mind of any one. Added to these reasons was Jem's extreme unwillingness to face him, with the belief in his breast that he, and none other, had done the fearful deed. It was true that he was Mary's father, and as such had every right to be told of all concerning her; but supposing he were, and that he followed the impulse so natural to a father, and wished to go to her, what might be the consequences? Among the mingled feelings she had revealed in her delirium, ay, mingled even with the most tender expressions of love for her father, was a sort of horror of him; a dread of him as a blood-shedder, which seemed to separate him into two persons,--one, the father who had dandled her on his knee, and loved her all her life long; the other, the assassin, the cause of all her trouble and woe. If he presented himself before her while this idea of his character was uppermost, who might tell the consequence? Jem could not, and would not, expose her to any such fearful chance: and to tell the truth, I believe he looked upon her as more his own, to guard from all shadow of injury with most loving care, than as belonging to any one else in this world, though girt with the reverend name of Father, and guiltless of aught that might have lessened such reverence. If you think this account of mine confused, of the half-feelings, half-reasons, which passed through Jem's mind, as he stood gazing at the empty space, where that crushed form had so lately been seen,--if you are perplexed to disentangle the real motives, I do assure you it was from just such an involved set of thoughts that Jem drew the resolution to act as if he had not seen that phantom likeness of John Barton; himself, yet not himself. CHAPTER XXXIV. THE RETURN HOME. "_Dixwell._ Forgiveness! Oh, forgiveness, and a grave! _Mary._ God knows thy heart, my father! and I shudder To think what thou perchance hast acted. _Dixwell._ Oh! _Mary._ No common load of woe is thine, my father." ELLIOTT'S "KERHONAH." Mary still hovered between life and death when Jem arrived at the house where she lay; and the doctors were as yet unwilling to compromise their wisdom by allowing too much hope to be entertained. But the state of things, if not less anxious, was less distressing than when Jem had quitted her. She lay now in a stupor, which was partly disease, and partly exhaustion after the previous excitement. And now Jem found the difficulty which every one who has watched by a sick bed knows full well; and which is perhaps more insurmountable to men than it is to women,--the difficulty of being patient, and trying not to expect any visible change for long, long hours of sad monotony. But after awhile the reward came. The laboured breathing became lower and softer, the heavy look of oppressive pain melted away from the face, and a languor that was almost peace took the place of suffering. She slept a natural sleep; and they stole about on tip-toe, and spoke low, and softly, and hardly dared to breathe, however much they longed to sigh out their thankful relief. She opened her eyes. Her mind was in the tender state of a lately-born infant's. She was pleased with the gay but not dazzling colours of the paper; soothed by the subdued light; and quite sufficiently amused by looking at all the objects in the room,--the drawing of the ships, the festoons of the curtain, the bright flowers on the painted backs of the chairs,--to care for any stronger excitement. She wondered at the ball of glass, containing various coloured sands from the Isle of Wight, or some such place, which hung suspended from the middle of the little valance over the window. But she did not care to exert herself to ask any questions, although she saw Mrs. Sturgis standing at the bed-side with some tea, ready to drop it into her mouth by spoonfuls. She did not see the face of honest joy, of earnest thankfulness,--the clasped hands,--the beaming eyes,--the trembling eagerness of gesture, of one who had long awaited her awakening, and who now stood behind the curtains watching through some little chink her every faint motion; or if she had caught a glimpse of that loving, peeping face, she was in too exhausted a state to have taken much notice, or have long retained the impression that he she loved so well was hanging about her, and blessing God for every conscious look which stole over her countenance. She fell softly into slumber, without a word having been spoken by any one during that half hour of inexpressible joy. And again the stillness was enforced by sign and whispered word, but with eyes that beamed out their bright thoughts of hope. Jem sat by the side of the bed, holding back the little curtain, and gazing as if he could never gaze his fill at the pale, wasted face, so marbled and so chiselled in its wan outline. She wakened once more; her soft eyes opened, and met his over-bending look. She smiled gently, as a baby does when it sees its mother tending its little cot; and continued her innocent, infantine gaze into his face, as if the sight gave her much unconscious pleasure. But by-and-by a different expression came into her sweet eyes; a look of memory and intelligence; her white face flushed the brightest rosy red, and with feeble motion she tried to hide her head in the pillow. It required all Jem's self-control to do what he knew and felt to be necessary, to call Mrs. Sturgis, who was quietly dozing by the fireside; and that done, he felt almost obliged to leave the room to keep down the happy agitation which would gush out in every feature, every gesture, and every tone. From that time forward Mary's progress towards health was rapid. There was every reason, but one, in favour of her speedy removal home. All Jem's duties lay in Manchester. It was his mother's dwelling-place, and there his plans for life had been to be worked out; plans, which the suspicion and imprisonment he had fallen into, had thrown for a time into a chaos, which his presence was required to arrange into form. For he might find, in spite of a jury's verdict, that too strong a taint was on his character for him ever to labour in Manchester again. He remembered the manner in which some one suspected of having been a convict was shunned by masters and men, when he had accidentally met with work in their foundry; the recollection smote him now, how he himself had thought that it did not become an honest upright man to associate with one who had been a prisoner. He could not choose but think on that poor humble being, with his downcast conscious look; hunted out of the work-shop, where he had sought to earn an honest livelihood, by the looks, and half-spoken words, and the black silence of repugnance (worse than words to bear), that met him on all sides. Jem felt that his own character had been attainted; and that to many it might still appear suspicious. He knew that he could convince the world, by a future as blameless as his past had been, that he was innocent. But at the same time he saw that he must have patience, and nerve himself for some trials; and the sooner these were undergone, the sooner he was aware of the place he held in men's estimation, the better. He longed to have presented himself once more at the foundry; and then the reality would drive away the pictures that would (unbidden) come of a shunned man, eyed askance by all, and driven forth to shape out some new career. I said every reason "but one" inclined Jem to hasten Mary's return as soon as she was sufficiently convalescent. That one was the meeting which awaited her at home. Turn it over as Jem would, he could not decide what was the best course to pursue. He could compel himself to any line of conduct that his reason and his sense of right told him to be desirable; but they did not tell him it was desirable to speak to Mary, in her tender state of mind and body, of her father. How much would be implied by the mere mention of his name! Speak it as calmly, and as indifferently as he might, he could not avoid expressing some consciousness of the terrible knowledge she possessed. She, for her part, was softer and gentler than she had ever been in her gentlest mood; since her illness, her motions, her glances, her voice were all tender in their languor. It seemed almost a trouble to her to break the silence with the low sounds of her own sweet voice, and her words fell sparingly on Jem's greedy, listening ear. Her face was, however, so full of love and confidence, that Jem felt no uneasiness at the state of silent abstraction into which she often fell. If she did but love him, all would yet go right; and it was better not to press for confidence on that one subject which must be painful to both. There came a fine, bright, balmy day. And Mary tottered once more out into the open air, leaning on Jem's arm, and close to his beating heart. And Mrs. Sturgis watched them from her door, with a blessing on her lips, as they went slowly up the street. They came in sight of the river. Mary shuddered. "Oh, Jem! take me home. Yon river seems all made of glittering, heaving, dazzling metal, just as it did when I began to be ill." Jem led her homewards. She dropped her head as searching for something on the ground. "Jem!" He was all attention. She paused for an instant. "When may I go home? To Manchester, I mean. I am so weary of this place; and I would fain be at home." She spoke in a feeble voice; not at all impatiently, as the words themselves would seem to intimate, but in a mournful way, as if anticipating sorrow even in the very fulfilment of her wishes. "Darling! we will go whenever you wish; whenever you feel strong enough. I asked Job to tell Margaret to get all in readiness for you to go there at first. She'll tend you and nurse you. You must not go home. Job proffered for you to go there." "Ah! but I must go home, Jem. I'll try and not fail now in what's right. There are things we must not speak on" (lowering her voice), "but you'll be really kind if you'll not speak against my going home. Let us say no more about it, dear Jem. I must go home, and I must go alone." "Not alone, Mary!" "Yes, alone! I cannot tell you why I ask it. And if you guess, I know you well enough to be sure you'll understand why I ask you never to speak on that again to me, till I begin. Promise, dear Jem, promise!" He promised; to gratify that beseeching face he promised. And then he repented, and felt as if he had done ill. Then again he felt as if she were the best judge, and knowing all (perhaps more than even he did) might be forming plans which his interference would mar. One thing was certain! it was a miserable thing to have this awful forbidden ground of discourse; to guess at each other's thoughts, when eyes were averted, and cheeks blanched, and words stood still, arrested in their flow by some casual allusion. At last a day, fine enough for Mary to travel on, arrived. She had wished to go, but now her courage failed her. How could she have said she was weary of that quiet house, where even Ben Sturgis' grumblings only made a kind of harmonious bass in the concord between him and his wife, so thoroughly did they know each other with the knowledge of many years! How could she have longed to quit that little peaceful room where she had experienced such loving tendence! Even the very check bed-curtains became dear to her under the idea of seeing them no more. If it was so with inanimate objects, if they had such power of exciting regret, what were her feelings with regard to the kind old couple, who had taken the stranger in, and cared for her, and nursed her, as though she had been a daughter? Each wilful sentence spoken in the half unconscious irritation of feebleness came now with avenging self-reproach to her memory, as she hung about Mrs. Sturgis, with many tears, which served instead of words to express her gratitude and love. Ben bustled about with the square bottle of Goldenwasser in one of his hands, and a small tumbler in the other; he went to Mary, Jem, and his wife in succession, pouring out a glass for each and bidding them drink it to keep their spirits up: but as each severally refused, he drank it himself; and passed on to offer the same hospitality to another with the like refusal, and the like result. When he had swallowed the last of the three draughts, he condescended to give his reasons for having done so. "I cannot abide waste. What's poured out mun be drunk. That's my maxim." So saying, he replaced the bottle in the cupboard. It was he who in a firm commanding voice at last told Jem and Mary to be off, or they would be too late. Mrs. Sturgis had kept up till then; but as they left her house, she could no longer restrain her tears, and cried aloud in spite of her husband's upbraiding. "Perhaps they'll be too late for th' train!" exclaimed she, with a degree of hope, as the clock struck two. "What! and come back again! No! no! that would never do. We've done our part, and cried our cry; it's no use going o'er the same ground again. I should ha' to give 'em more out of yon bottle when next parting time came, and them three glasses they had made a hole in the stuff, I can tell you. Time Jack was back from Hamburg with some more." When they reached Manchester, Mary looked very white, and the expression on her face was almost stern. She was in fact summoning up her resolution to meet her father if he were at home. Jem had never named his midnight glimpse of John Barton to human being; but Mary had a sort of presentiment that wander where he would, he would seek his home at last. But in what mood she dreaded to think. For the knowledge of her father's capability of guilt seemed to have opened a dark gulf in his character, into the depths of which she trembled to look. At one moment she would fain have claimed protection against the life she must lead, for some time at least, alone with a murderer! She thought of his gloom, before his mind was haunted by the memory of so terrible a crime; his moody, irritable ways. She imagined the evenings as of old: she, toiling at some work, long after houses were shut, and folks abed; he, more savage than he had ever been before with the inward gnawing of his remorse. At such times she could have cried aloud with terror, at the scenes her fancy conjured up. But her filial duty, nay, her love and gratitude for many deeds of kindness done to her as a little child, conquered all fear. She would endure all imaginable terrors, although of daily occurrence. And she would patiently bear all wayward violence of temper; more than patiently would she bear it--pitifully, as one who knew of some awful curse awaiting the blood-shedder. She would watch over him tenderly, as the Innocent should watch over the Guilty; awaiting the gracious seasons, wherein to pour oil and balm into the bitter wounds. With the untroubled peace which the resolve to endure to the end gives, she approached the house that from habit she still called home, but which possessed the holiness of home no longer. "Jem!" said she, as they stood at the entrance to the court, close by Job Legh's door, "you must go in there and wait half-an-hour. Not less. If in that time I don't come back, you go your ways to your mother. Give her my dear love. I will send by Margaret when I want to see you." She sighed heavily. "Mary! Mary! I cannot leave you. You speak as coldly as if we were to be nought to each other. And my heart's bound up in you. I know why you bid me keep away, but--" She put her hand on his arm, as he spoke in a loud agitated tone; she looked into his face with upbraiding love in her eyes, and then she said, while her lips quivered, and he felt her whole frame trembling: "Dear Jem! I often could have told you more of love, if I had not once spoken out so free. Remember that time, Jem, if ever you think me cold. Then, the love that's in my heart would out in words; but now, though I'm silent on the pain I'm feeling in quitting you, the love is in my heart all the same. But this is not the time to speak on such things. If I do not do what I feel to be right now, I may blame myself all my life long! Jem, you promised--" And so saying she left him. She went quicker than she would otherwise have passed over those few yards of ground, for fear he should still try to accompany her. Her hand was on the latch, and in a breath the door was opened. There sat her father, still and motionless--not even turning his head to see who had entered; but perhaps he recognised the foot-step,--the trick of action. He sat by the fire; the grate I should say, for fire there was none. Some dull, gray ashes, negligently left, long days ago, coldly choked up the bars. He had taken the accustomed seat from mere force of habit, which ruled his automaton-body. For all energy, both physical and mental, seemed to have retreated inwards to some of the great citadels of life, there to do battle against the Destroyer, Conscience. His hands were crossed, his fingers interlaced; usually a position implying some degree of resolution, or strength; but in him it was so faintly maintained, that it appeared more the result of chance; an attitude requiring some application of outward force to alter,--and a blow with a straw seemed as though it would be sufficient. And as for his face, it was sunk and worn,--like a skull, with yet a suffering expression that skulls have not! Your heart would have ached to have seen the man, however hardly you might have judged his crime. But crime and all was forgotten by his daughter, as she saw his abashed look, his smitten helplessness. All along she had felt it difficult (as I may have said before) to reconcile the two ideas, of her father and a blood-shedder. But now it was impossible. He was her father! her own dear father! and in his sufferings, whatever their cause, more dearly loved than ever before. His crime was a thing apart, never more to be considered by her. And tenderly did she treat him, and fondly did she serve him in every way that heart could devise, or hand execute. She had some money about her, the price of her strange services as a witness; and when the lingering dusk drew on, she stole out to effect some purchases necessary for her father's comfort. For how body and soul had been kept together, even as much as they were, during the days he had dwelt alone, no one can say. The house was bare as when Mary had left it, of coal, or of candle, of food, or of blessing in any shape. She came quickly home; but as she passed Job Legh's door, she stopped. Doubtless Jem had long since gone; and doubtless, too, he had given Margaret some good reason for not intruding upon her friend for this night at least, otherwise Mary would have seen her before now. But to-morrow,--would she not come in to-morrow? And who so quick as blind Margaret in noticing tones, and sighs, and even silence? She did not give herself time for further thought, her desire to be once more with her father was too pressing; but she opened the door, before she well knew what to say. "It's Mary Barton! I know her by her breathing! Grandfather, it's Mary Barton!" Margaret's joy at meeting her, the open demonstration of her love, affected Mary much; she could not keep from crying, and sat down weak and agitated on the first chair she could find. "Ay, ay, Mary! thou'rt looking a bit different to when I saw thee last. Thou'lt give Jem and me good characters for sick nurses, I trust. If all trades fail, I'll turn to that. Jem's place is for life, I reckon. Nay, never redden so, lass. You and he know each other's minds by this time!" Margaret held her hand, and gently smiled into her face. Job Legh took the candle up, and began a leisurely inspection. "Thou hast getten a bit of pink in thy cheeks,--not much; but when last I saw thee, thy lips were as white as a sheet. Thy nose is sharpish at th' end; thou'rt more like thy father than ever thou wert before. Lord! child, what's the matter? Art thou going to faint?" For Mary had sickened at the mention of that name; yet she felt that now or never was the time to speak. "Father's come home!" she said, "but he's very poorly; I never saw him as he is now, before. I asked Jem not to come near him for fear it might fidget him." She spoke hastily, and (to her own idea) in an unnatural manner. But they did not seem to notice it, nor to take the hint she had thrown out of company being unacceptable; for Job Legh directly put down some insect, which he was impaling on a corking-pin, and exclaimed, "Thy father come home! Why, Jem never said a word of it! And ailing too! I'll go in, and cheer him with a bit of talk. I ne'er knew any good come of delegating it." "Oh, Job! father cannot stand--father is too ill. Don't come; not but that you're very kind and good; but to-night--indeed," said she at last, in despair, seeing Job still persevere in putting away his things; "you must not come till I send or come for you. Father's in that strange way, I can't answer for it if he sees strangers. Please don't come. I'll come and tell you every day how he goes on. I must be off now to see after him. Dear Job! kind Job! don't be angry with me. If you knew all you'd pity me." For Job was muttering away in high dudgeon, and even Margaret's tone was altered as she wished Mary good night. Just then she could ill brook coldness from any one, and least of all bear the idea of being considered ungrateful by so kind and zealous a friend as Job had been; so she turned round suddenly, even when her hand was on the latch of the door, and ran back, and threw her arms about his neck, and kissed him first, and then Margaret. And then, the tears fast-falling down her cheeks, but no word spoken, she hastily left the house, and went back to her home. There was no change in her father's position, or in his spectral look. He had answered her questions (but few in number, for so many subjects were unapproachable) by monosyllables, and in a weak, high, childish voice; but he had not lifted his eyes; he could not meet his daughter's look. And she, when she spoke, or as she moved about, avoided letting her eyes rest upon him. She wished to be her usual self; but while every thing was done with a consciousness of purpose, she felt it was impossible. In this manner things went on for some days. At night he feebly clambered up stairs to bed; and during those long dark hours Mary heard those groans of agony which never escaped his lips by day, when they were compressed in silence over his inward woe. Many a time she sat up listening, and wondering if it would ease his miserable heart if she went to him, and told him she knew all, and loved and pitied him more than words could tell. By day the monotonous hours wore on in the same heavy, hushed manner as on that first dreary afternoon. He ate,--but without relish; and food seemed no longer to nourish him, for each morning his face had caught more of the ghastly fore-shadowing of Death. The neighbours kept strangely aloof. Of late years John Barton had had a repellent power about him, felt by all, except to the few who had either known him in his better and happier days, or those to whom he had given his sympathy and his confidence. People did not care to enter the doors of one whose very depth of thoughtfulness rendered him moody and stern. And now they contented themselves with a kind inquiry when they saw Mary in her goings-out or in her comings-in. With her oppressing knowledge, she imagined their reserved conduct stranger than it was in reality. She missed Job and Margaret too; who, in all former times of sorrow or anxiety since their acquaintance first began, had been ready with their sympathy. But most of all she missed the delicious luxury she had lately enjoyed in having Jem's tender love at hand every hour of the day, to ward off every wind of heaven, and every disturbing thought. She knew he was often hovering about the house; though the knowledge seemed to come more by intuition, than by any positive sight or sound for the first day or two. On the third day she met him at Job Legh's. They received her with every effort of cordiality; but still there was a cobweb-veil of separation between them, to which Mary was morbidly acute; while in Jem's voice, and eyes, and manner, there was every evidence of most passionate, most admiring, and most trusting love. The trust was shown by his respectful silence on that one point of reserve on which she had interdicted conversation. He left Job Legh's house when she did. They lingered on the step, he holding her hand between both of his, as loth to let her go; he questioned her as to when he should see her again. "Mother does so want to see you," whispered he. "Can you come to see her to-morrow? or when?" "I cannot tell," replied she, softly. "Not yet. Wait awhile; perhaps only a little while. Dear Jem, I must go to him,--dearest Jem." The next day, the fourth from Mary's return home, as she was sitting near the window, sadly dreaming over some work, she caught a glimpse of the last person she wished to see--of Sally Leadbitter! She was evidently coming to their house; another moment, and she tapped at the door. John Barton gave an anxious, uneasy side-glance. Mary knew that if she delayed answering the knock, Sally would not scruple to enter; so as hastily as if the visit had been desired, she opened the door, and stood there with the latch in her hand, barring up all entrance, and as much as possible obstructing all curious glances into the interior. "Well, Mary Barton! You're home at last! I heard you'd getten home; so I thought I'd just step over and hear the news." She was bent on coming in, and saw Mary's preventive design. So she stood on tip-toe, looking over Mary's shoulders into the room where she suspected a lover to be lurking; but instead, she saw only the figure of the stern, gloomy father she had always been in the habit of avoiding; and she dropped down again, content to carry on the conversation where Mary chose, and as Mary chose, in whispers. "So the old governor is back again, eh? And what does he say to all your fine doings at Liverpool, and before?--you and I know where. You can't hide it now, Mary, for it's all in print." Mary gave a low moan,--and then implored Sally to change the subject; for unpleasant as it always was, it was doubly unpleasant in the manner in which she was treating it. If they had been alone, Mary would have borne it patiently,--or so she thought,--but now she felt almost certain her father was listening; there was a subdued breathing, a slight bracing-up of the listless attitude. But there was no arresting Sally's curiosity to hear all she could respecting the adventures Mary had experienced. She, in common with the rest of Miss Simmonds' young ladies, was almost jealous of the fame that Mary had obtained; to herself, such miserable notoriety. "Nay! there's no use shunning talking it over. Why! it was in the _Guardian_,--and the _Courier_,--and some one told Jane Hodson it was even copied into a London paper. You've set up heroine on your own account, Mary Barton. How did you like standing witness? Ar'n't them lawyers impudent things? staring at one so. I'll be bound you wished you'd taken my offer, and borrowed my black watered scarf! Now didn't you, Mary? Speak truth!" "To tell truth, I never thought about it then, Sally. How could I?" asked she, reproachfully. "Oh--I forgot. You were all for that stupid James Wilson. Well! if I've ever the luck to go witness on a trial, see if I don't pick up a better beau than the prisoner. I'll aim at a lawyer's clerk, but I'll not take less than a turnkey." Cast down as Mary was, she could hardly keep from smiling at the idea, so wildly incongruous with the scene she had really undergone, of looking out for admirers during a trial for murder. "I'd no thought to be looking out for beaux, I can assure you, Sally.--But don't let us talk any more about it; I can't bear to think on it. How is Miss Simmonds? and everybody?" "Oh, very well; and by the way she gave me a bit of a message for you. You may come back to work if you'll behave yourself, she says. I told you she'd be glad to have you back, after all this piece of business, by way of tempting people to come to her shop. They'd come from Salford to have a peep at you, for six months at least." "Don't talk so; I cannot come, I can never face Miss Simmonds again. And even if I could--" she stopped, and blushed. "Ay! I know what you're thinking on. But that will not be this some time, as he's turned off from the foundry,--you'd better think twice afore refusing Miss Simmonds' offer." "Turned off from the foundry! Jem?" cried Mary. "To be sure! didn't you know it? Decent men were not going to work with a--no! I suppose I mustn't say it, seeing you went to such trouble to get up an _alibi_; not that I should think much the worse of a spirited young fellow for falling foul of a rival,--they always do at the theatre." But Mary's thoughts were with Jem. How good he had been never to name his dismissal to her. How much he had had to endure for her sake! "Tell me all about it," she gasped out. "Why, you see, they've always swords quite handy at them plays," began Sally; but Mary, with an impatient shake of her head, interrupted, "About Jem,--about Jem, I want to know." "Oh! I don't pretend to know more than is in every one's mouth: he's turned away from the foundry, because folks don't think you've cleared him outright of the murder; though perhaps the jury were loth to hang him. Old Mr. Carson is savage against judge and jury, and lawyers and all, as I heard." "I must go to him, I must go to him," repeated Mary, in a hurried manner. "He'll tell you all I've said is true, and not a word of lie," replied Sally. "So I'll not give your answer to Miss Simmonds, but leave you to think twice about it. Good afternoon!" Mary shut the door, and turned into the house. Her father sat in the same attitude; the old unchanging attitude. Only his head was more bowed towards the ground. She put on her bonnet to go to Ancoats; for see, and question, and comfort, and worship Jem, she must. As she hung about her father for an instant before leaving him, he spoke--voluntarily spoke for the first time since her return; but his head was drooping so low she could not hear what he said, so she stooped down; and after a moment's pause, he repeated the words, "Tell Jem Wilson to come here at eight o'clock to-night." Could he have overheard her conversation with Sally Leadbitter? They had whispered low, she thought. Pondering on this, and many other things, she reached Ancoats. CHAPTER XXXV. "FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES." "Oh, had he lived, Replied Rusilla, never penitence Had equalled his! full well I know his heart, Vehement in all things. He would on himself Have wreaked such penance as had reached the height Of fleshly suffering,--yea, which being told, With its portentous rigour should have made The memory of his fault, o'erpowered and lost In shuddering pity and astonishment, Fade like a feeble horror." SOUTHEY'S "RODERICK." As Mary was turning into the street where the Wilsons lived, Jem overtook her. He came upon her suddenly, and she started. "You're going to see mother?" he asked tenderly, placing her arm within his, and slackening his pace. "Yes, and you too. Oh, Jem, is it true? tell me." She felt rightly that he would guess the meaning of her only half expressed inquiry. He hesitated a moment before he answered her. "Darling, it is; it's no use hiding it--if you mean that I'm no longer to work at Duncombe's foundry. It's no time (to my mind) to have secrets from each other, though I did not name it yesterday, thinking you might fret. I shall soon get work again, never fear." "But why did they turn you off, when the jury had said you were innocent?" "It was not just to say turned off, though I don't think I could have well stayed on. A good number of the men managed to let out they should not like to work under me again; there were some few who knew me well enough to feel I could not have done it, but more were doubtful; and one spoke to young Mr. Duncombe, hinting at what they thought." "Oh Jem! what a shame!" said Mary, with mournful indignation. "Nay, darling! I'm not for blaming them. Poor fellows like them have nought to stand upon and be proud of but their character, and it's fitting they should take care of that, and keep that free from soil and taint." "But you,--what could they get but good from you? They might have known you by this time." "So some do; the overlooker, I'm sure, would know I'm innocent. Indeed, he said as much to-day; and he said he had had some talk with old Mr. Duncombe, and they thought it might be better if I left Manchester for a bit; they'd recommend me to some other place." But Mary could only shake her head in a mournful way, and repeat her words, "They might have known thee better, Jem." Jem pressed the little hand he held between his own work-hardened ones. After a minute or two, he asked, "Mary, art thou much bound to Manchester? Would it grieve thee sore to quit the old smoke-jack?" "With thee?" she asked, in a quiet, glancing way. "Ay, lass! Trust me, I'll ne'er ask thee to leave Manchester while I'm in it. Because I've heard fine things of Canada; and our overlooker has a cousin in the foundry line there.--Thou knowest where Canada is, Mary?" "Not rightly--not now, at any rate;--but with thee, Jem," her voice sunk to a soft, low whisper, "anywhere--" What was the use of a geographical description? "But father!" said Mary, suddenly breaking that delicious silence with the one sharp discord in her present life. She looked up at her lover's grave face; and then the message her father had sent flashed across her memory. "Oh, Jem, did I tell you?--Father sent word he wished to speak with you. I was to bid you come to him at eight to-night. What can he want, Jem?" "I cannot tell," replied he. "At any rate I'll go. It's no use troubling ourselves to guess," he continued, after a pause of a few minutes, during which they slowly and silently paced up and down the by-street, into which he had led her when their conversation began. "Come and see mother, and then I'll take thee home, Mary. Thou wert all in a tremble when first I came up with thee; thou'rt not fit to be trusted home by thyself," said he, with fond exaggeration of her helplessness. Yet a little more lovers' loitering; a few more words, in themselves nothing--to you nothing, but to those two what tender passionate language can I use to express the feelings which thrilled through that young man and maiden, as they listened to the syllables made dear and lovely through life by that hour's low-whispered talk. It struck the half hour past seven. "Come and speak to mother; she knows you're to be her daughter, Mary, darling." So they went in. Jane Wilson was rather chafed at her son's delay in returning home, for as yet he had managed to keep her in ignorance of his dismissal from the foundry; and it was her way to prepare some little pleasure, some little comfort for those she loved; and if they, unwittingly, did not appear at the proper time to enjoy her preparation, she worked herself up into a state of fretfulness which found vent in upbraidings as soon as ever the objects of her care appeared, thereby marring the peace which should ever be the atmosphere of a home, however humble; and causing a feeling almost amounting to loathing to arise at the sight of the "stalled ox," which, though an effect and proof of careful love, has been the cause of so much disturbance. Mrs. Wilson had first sighed, and then grumbled to herself, over the increasing toughness of the potato-cakes she had made for her son's tea. The door opened, and he came in; his face brightening into proud smiles, Mary Barton hanging on his arm, blushing and dimpling, with eye-lids veiling the happy light of her eyes,--there was around the young couple a radiant atmosphere--a glory of happiness. Could his mother mar it? Could she break into it with her Martha-like cares? Only for one moment did she remember her sense of injury,--her wasted trouble,--and then, her whole woman's heart heaving with motherly love and sympathy, she opened her arms, and received Mary into them, as, shedding tears of agitated joy, she murmured in her ear, "Bless thee, Mary, bless thee! Only make him happy, and God bless thee for ever!" It took some of Jem's self-command to separate those whom he so much loved, and who were beginning, for his sake, to love one another so dearly. But the time for his meeting John Barton drew on: and it was a long way to his house. As they walked briskly thither they hardly spoke; though many thoughts were in their minds. The sun had not long set, but the first faint shade of twilight was over all; and when they opened the door, Jem could hardly perceive the objects within by the waning light of day, and the flickering fire-blaze. But Mary saw all at a glance! Her eye, accustomed to what was usual in the aspect of the room, saw instantly what was unusual,--saw, and understood it all. Her father was standing behind his habitual chair, holding by the back of it as if for support. And opposite to him there stood Mr. Carson; the dark out-line of his stern figure looming large against the light of the fire in that little room. Behind her father sat Job Legh, his head in his hands, and resting his elbows on the little family table,--listening evidently; but as evidently deeply affected by what he heard. There seemed to be some pause in the conversation. Mary and Jem stood at the half-open door, not daring to stir; hardly to breathe. "And have I heard you aright?" began Mr. Carson, with his deep quivering voice. "Man! have I heard you aright? Was it you, then, that killed my boy? my only son?"--(he said these last few words almost as if appealing for pity, and then he changed his tone to one more vehement and fierce). "Don't dare to think that I shall be merciful, and spare you, because you have come forward to accuse yourself. I tell you I will not spare you the least pang the law can inflict,--you, who did not show pity on my boy, shall have none from me." "I did not ask for any," said John Barton, in a low voice. "Ask, or not ask, what care I? You shall be hanged--hanged--man!" said he, advancing his face, and repeating the word with slow, grinding emphasis, as if to infuse some of the bitterness of his soul into it. John Barton gasped, but not with fear. It was only that he felt it terrible to have inspired such hatred, as was concentrated into every word, every gesture of Mr. Carson's. "As for being hanged, sir, I know it's all right and proper. I dare say it's bad enough; but I tell you what, sir," speaking with an out-burst, "if you'd hanged me the day after I'd done the deed, I would have gone down on my knees and blessed you. Death! Lord, what is it to Life? To such a life as I've been leading this fortnight past. Life at best is no great thing; but such a life as I have dragged through since that night," he shuddered at the thought. "Why, sir, I've been on the point of killing myself this many a time to get away from my own thoughts. I didn't! and I'll tell you why. I didn't know but that I should be more haunted than ever with the recollection of my sin. Oh! God above only can tell the agony with which I've repented me of it, and part perhaps because I feared He would think I were impatient of the misery He sent as punishment--far, far worse misery than any hanging, sir." He ceased from excess of emotion. Then he began again. "Sin' that day (it may be very wicked, sir, but it's the truth) I've kept thinking and thinking if I were but in that world where they say God is, He would, may be, teach me right from wrong, even if it were with many stripes. I've been sore puzzled here. I would go through Hell-fire if I could but get free from sin at last, it's such an awful thing. As for hanging, that's just nought at all." His exhaustion compelled him to sit down. Mary rushed to him. It seemed as if till then he had been unaware of her presence. "Ay, ay, wench!" said he feebly, "is it thee? Where's Jem Wilson?" Jem came forward. John Barton spoke again, with many a break and gasping pause, "Lad! thou hast borne a deal for me. It's the meanest thing I ever did to leave thee to bear the brunt. Thou, who wert as innocent of any knowledge of it as the babe unborn. I'll not bless thee for it. Blessing from such as me would not bring thee any good. Thou'lt love Mary, though she is my child." He ceased, and there was a pause of a few seconds. Then Mr. Carson turned to go. When his hand was on the latch of the door, he hesitated for an instant. "You can have no doubt for what purpose I go. Straight to the police-office, to send men to take care of you, wretched man, and your accomplice. To-morrow morning your tale shall be repeated to those who can commit you to gaol, and before long you shall have the opportunity of trying how desirable hanging is." "Oh, sir!" said Mary, springing forward, and catching hold of Mr. Carson's arm, "my father is dying. Look at him, sir. If you want Death for Death, you have it. Don't take him away from me these last hours. He must go alone through Death, but let me be with him as long as I can. Oh, sir! if you have any mercy in you, leave him here to die." John himself stood up, stiff and rigid, and replied, "Mary, wench! I owe him summut. I will go die, where, and as he wishes me. Thou hast said true, I am standing side by side with Death; and it matters little where I spend the bit of time left of Life. That time I must pass in wrestling with my soul for a character to take into the other world. I'll go where you see fit, sir. He's innocent," faintly indicating Jem, as he fell back in his chair. "Never fear! They cannot touch him," said Job Legh, in a low voice. But as Mr. Carson was on the point of leaving the house with no sign of relenting about him, he was again stopped by John Barton, who had risen once more from his chair, and stood supporting himself on Jem, while he spoke. "Sir, one word! My hairs are gray with suffering, and yours with years--" "And have I had no suffering?" asked Mr. Carson, as if appealing for sympathy, even to the murderer of his child. And the murderer of his child answered to the appeal, and groaned in spirit over the anguish he had caused. "Have I had no inward suffering to blanch these hairs? Have not I toiled and struggled even to these years with hopes in my heart that all centered in my boy? I did not speak of them, but were they not there? I seemed hard and cold; and so I might be to others, but not to him!--who shall ever imagine the love I bore to him? Even he never dreamed how my heart leapt up at the sound of his footstep, and how precious he was to his poor old father.--And he is gone--killed--out of the hearing of all loving words--out of my sight for ever. He was my sunshine, and now it is night! Oh, my God! comfort me, comfort me!" cried the old man aloud. The eyes of John Barton grew dim with tears. Rich and poor, masters and men, were then brothers in the deep suffering of the heart; for was not this the very anguish he had felt for little Tom, in years so long gone by that they seemed like another life! The mourner before him was no longer the employer; a being of another race, eternally placed in antagonistic attitude; going through the world glittering like gold, with a stony heart within, which knew no sorrow but through the accidents of Trade; no longer the enemy, the oppressor, but a very poor and desolate old man. The sympathy for suffering, formerly so prevalent a feeling with him, again filled John Barton's heart, and almost impelled him to speak (as best he could) some earnest, tender words to the stern man, shaking in his agony. But who was he, that he should utter sympathy or consolation? The cause of all this woe. Oh blasting thought! Oh miserable remembrance! He had forfeited all right to bind up his brother's wounds. Stunned by the thought, he sank upon the seat, almost crushed with the knowledge of the consequences of his own action; for he had no more imagined to himself the blighted home, and the miserable parents, than does the soldier, who discharges his musket, picture to himself the desolation of the wife, and the pitiful cries of the helpless little ones, who are in an instant to be made widowed and fatherless. To intimidate a class of men, known only to those below them as desirous to obtain the greatest quantity of work for the lowest wages,--at most to remove an overbearing partner from an obnoxious firm, who stood in the way of those who struggled as well as they were able to obtain their rights,--this was the light in which John Barton had viewed his deed; and even so viewing it, after the excitement had passed away, the Avenger, the sure Avenger, had found him out. But now he knew that he had killed a man, and a brother,--now he knew that no good thing could come out of this evil, even to the sufferers whose cause he had so blindly espoused. He lay across the table, broken-hearted. Every fresh quivering sob of Mr. Carson's stabbed him to his soul. He felt execrated by all; and as if he could never lay bare the perverted reasonings which had made the performance of undoubted sin appear a duty. The longing to plead some faint excuse grew stronger and stronger. He feebly raised his head, and looking at Job Legh, he whispered out, "I did not know what I was doing, Job Legh; God knows I didn't! Oh, sir!" said he wildly, almost throwing himself at Mr. Carson's feet, "say you forgive me the anguish I now see I have caused you. I care not for pain, or death, you know I don't; but oh, man! forgive me the trespass I have done!" "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us," said Job, solemnly and low, as if in prayer; as if the words were suggested by those John Barton had used. Mr. Carson took his hands away from his face. I would rather see death than the ghastly gloom which darkened that countenance. "Let my trespasses be unforgiven, so that I may have vengeance for my son's murder." There are blasphemous actions as well as blasphemous words: all unloving, cruel deeds are acted blasphemy. Mr. Carson left the house. And John Barton lay on the ground as one dead. They lifted him up, and almost hoping that that deep trance might be to him the end of all earthly things, they bore him to his bed. For a time they listened with divided attention to his faint breathings; for in each hasty hurried step that echoed in the street outside, they thought they heard the approach of the officers of justice. When Mr. Carson left the house he was dizzy with agitation; the hot blood went careering through his frame. He could not see the deep blue of the night-heavens for the fierce pulses which throbbed in his head. And partly to steady and calm himself, he leaned against a railing, and looked up into those calm majestic depths with all their thousand stars. And by-and-by his own voice returned upon him, as if the last words he had spoken were being uttered through all that infinite space; but in their echoes there was a tone of unutterable sorrow. "Let my trespasses be unforgiven, so that I may have vengeance for my son's murder." He tried to shake off the spiritual impression made by this imagination. He was feverish and ill,--and no wonder. So he turned to go homewards; not, as he had threatened, to the police-office. After all (he told himself), that would do in the morning. No fear of the man's escaping, unless he escaped to the grave. So he tried to banish the phantom voices and shapes which came unbidden to his brain, and to recall his balance of mind by walking calmly and slowly, and noticing every thing which struck his senses. It was a warm soft evening in spring, and there were many persons in the streets. Among others, a nurse with a little girl in her charge, conveying her home from some children's gaiety; a dance most likely, for the lovely little creature was daintily decked out in soft, snowy muslin; and her fairy feet tripped along by her nurse's side as if to the measure of some tune she had lately kept time to. Suddenly up behind her there came a rough, rude errand-boy, nine or ten years of age; a giant he looked by the fairy-child, as she fluttered along. I don't know how it was, but in some awkward way he knocked the poor little girl down upon the hard pavement as he brushed rudely past, not much caring whom he hurt, so that he got along. The child arose sobbing with pain; and not without cause, for blood was dropping down from the face, but a minute before so fair and bright--dropping down on the pretty frock, making those scarlet marks so terrible to little children. The nurse, a powerful woman, had seized the boy, just as Mr. Carson (who had seen the whole transaction) came up. "You naughty little rascal! I'll give you to a policeman, that I will! Do you see how you've hurt the little girl? Do you?" accompanying every sentence with a violent jerk of passionate anger. The lad looked hard and defying; but withal terrified at the threat of the policeman, those ogres of our streets to all unlucky urchins. The nurse saw it, and began to drag him along, with a view of making what she called "a wholesome impression." His terror increased, and with it his irritation; when the little sweet face, choking away its sobs, pulled down nurse's head and said, "Please, dear nurse, I'm not much hurt; it was very silly to cry, you know. He did not mean to do it. _He did not know what he was doing_, did you, little boy? Nurse won't call a policeman, so don't be frightened." And she put up her little mouth to be kissed by her injurer, just as she had been taught to do at home to "make peace." "That lad will mind, and be more gentle for the time to come, I'll be bound, thanks to that little lady," said a passer-by, half to himself, and half to Mr. Carson, whom he had observed to notice the scene. The latter took no apparent heed of the remark, but passed on. But the child's pleading reminded him of the low, broken voice he had so lately heard, penitently and humbly urging the same extenuation of his great guilt. "I did not know what I was doing." He had some association with those words; he had heard, or read of that plea somewhere before. Where was it? Could it be--? He would look when he got home. So when he entered his house he went straight and silently up-stairs to his library, and took down the great large handsome Bible, all grand and golden, with its leaves adhering together from the bookbinder's press, so little had it been used. On the first page (which fell open to Mr. Carson's view) were written the names of his children, and his own. "Henry John, son of the above John and Elizabeth Carson. Born, Sept. 29th, 1815." To make the entry complete, his death should now be added. But the page became hidden by the gathering mist of tears. Thought upon thought, and recollection upon recollection came crowding in, from the remembrance of the proud day when he had purchased the costly book, in order to write down the birth of the little babe of a day old. He laid his head down on the open page, and let the tears fall slowly on the spotless leaves. His son's murderer was discovered; had confessed his guilt; and yet (strange to say) he could not hate him with the vehemence of hatred he had felt, when he had imagined him a young man, full of lusty life, defying all laws, human and divine. In spite of his desire to retain the revengeful feeling he considered as a duty to his dead son, something of pity would steal in for the poor, wasted skeleton of a man, the smitten creature, who had told him of his sin, and implored his pardon that night. In the days of his childhood and youth, Mr. Carson had been accustomed to poverty; but it was honest, decent poverty; not the grinding squalid misery he had remarked in every part of John Barton's house, and which contrasted strangely with the pompous sumptuousness of the room in which he now sat. Unaccustomed wonder filled his mind at the reflection of the different lots of the brethren of mankind. Then he roused himself from his reverie, and turned to the object of his search--the Gospel, where he half expected to find the tender pleading: "They know not what they do." It was murk midnight by this time, and the house was still and quiet. There was nothing to interrupt the old man in his unwonted study. Years ago, the Gospel had been his task-book in learning to read. So many years ago, that he had become familiar with the events before he could comprehend the Spirit that made the Life. He fell to the narrative now afresh, with all the interest of a little child. He began at the beginning, and read on almost greedily, understanding for the first time the full meaning of the story. He came to the end; the awful End. And there were the haunting words of pleading. He shut the book, and thought deeply. All night long, the Archangel combated with the Demon. All night long, others watched by the bed of Death. John Barton had revived to fitful intelligence. He spoke at times with even something of his former energy; and in the racy Lancashire dialect he had always used when speaking freely. "You see I've so often been hankering after the right way; and it's a hard one for a poor man to find. At least it's been so to me. No one learned me, and no one telled me. When I was a little chap they taught me to read, and then they ne'er gave me no books; only I heard say the Bible was a good book. So when I grew thoughtful, and puzzled, I took to it. But you'd never believe black was black, or night was night, when you saw all about you acting as if black was white, and night was day. It's not much I can say for myself in t'other world, God forgive me; but I can say this, I would fain have gone after the Bible rules if I'd seen folk credit it; they all spoke up for it, and went and did clean contrary. In those days I would ha' gone about wi' my Bible, like a little child, my finger in th' place, and asking the meaning of this or that text, and no one told me. Then I took out two or three texts as clear as glass, and I tried to do what they bid me do. But I don't know how it was; masters and men, all alike cared no more for minding those texts, than I did for th' Lord Mayor of London; so I grew to think it must be a sham put upon poor ignorant folk, women, and such-like. "It was not long I tried to live Gospel-wise, but it was liker heaven than any other bit of earth has been. I'd old Alice to strengthen me; but every one else said, 'Stand up for thy rights, or thou'lt never get 'em;' and wife and children never spoke, but their helplessness cried aloud, and I was driven to do as others did,--and then Tom died. You know all about that--I'm getting scant o' breath, and blind-like." Then again he spoke, after some minutes of hushed silence. "All along it came natural to love folk, though now I am what I am. I think one time I could e'en have loved the masters if they'd ha' letten me; that was in my Gospel-days, afore my child died o' hunger. I was tore in two often-times, between my sorrow for poor suffering folk, and my trying to love them as caused their sufferings (to my mind). "At last I gave it up in despair, trying to make folks' actions square wi' th' Bible; and I thought I'd no longer labour at following th' Bible mysel. I've said all this afore, may be. But from that time I've dropped down, down,--down." After that he only spoke in broken sentences. "I did not think he'd been such an old man,--Oh! that he had but forgiven me,"--and then came earnest, passionate, broken words of prayer. Job Legh had gone home like one struck down with the unexpected shock. Mary and Jem together waited the approach of death; but as the final struggle drew on, and morning dawned, Jem suggested some alleviation to the gasping breath, to purchase which he left the house in search of a druggist's shop, which should be open at that early hour. During his absence, Barton grew worse; he had fallen across the bed, and his breathing seemed almost stopped; in vain did Mary strive to raise him, her sorrow and exhaustion had rendered her too weak. So, on hearing some one enter the house-place below, she cried out for Jem to come to her assistance. A step, which was not Jem's, came up the stairs. Mr. Carson stood in the door-way. In one instant he comprehended the case. He raised up the powerless frame; and the departing soul looked out of the eyes with gratitude. He held the dying man propped in his arms. John Barton folded his hands as if in prayer. "Pray for us," said Mary, sinking on her knees, and forgetting in that solemn hour all that had divided her father and Mr. Carson. No other words could suggest themselves than some of those he had read only a few hours before. "God be merciful to us sinners.--Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us." And when the words were said, John Barton lay a corpse in Mr. Carson's arms. So ended the tragedy of a poor man's life. Mary knew nothing more for many minutes. When she recovered consciousness, she found herself supported by Jem on the "settle" in the house-place. Job and Mr. Carson were there, talking together lowly and solemnly. Then Mr. Carson bade farewell and left the house; and Job said aloud, but as if speaking to himself, "God has heard that man's prayer. He has comforted him." CHAPTER XXXVI. JEM'S INTERVIEW WITH MR. DUNCOMBE. "The first dark day of nothingness, The last of danger and distress." BYRON. Although Mary had hardly been conscious of her thoughts, and it had been more like a secret instinct informing her soul, than the result of any process of reasoning, she had felt for some time (ever since her return from Liverpool, in fact), that for her father there was but one thing to be desired and anticipated, and that was death! She had seen that Conscience had given the mortal wound to his earthly frame; she did not dare to question of the infinite mercy of God, what the Future Life would be to him. Though at first desolate and stunned by the blow which had fallen on herself, she was resigned and submissive as soon as she recovered strength enough to ponder and consider a little; and you may be sure that no tenderness or love was wanting on Jem's part, and no consideration and sympathy on that of Job and Margaret, to soothe and comfort the girl who now stood alone in the world as far as blood-relations were concerned. She did not ask or care to know what arrangements they were making in whispered tones with regard to the funeral. She put herself into their hands with the trust of a little child; glad to be undisturbed in the reveries and remembrances which filled her eyes with tears, and caused them to fall quietly down her pale cheeks. It was the longest day she had ever known in her life; every charge and every occupation was taken away from her: but perhaps the length of quiet time thus afforded was really good, although its duration weighed upon her; for by this means she contemplated her situation in every light, and fully understood that the morning's event had left her an orphan; and thus she was spared the pangs caused to us by the occurrence of death in the evening, just before we should naturally, in the usual course of events, lie down to slumber. For in such case, worn out by anxiety, and it may be by much watching, our very excess of grief rocks itself to sleep, before we have had time to realise its cause; and we waken, with a start of agony like a fresh stab, to the consciousness of the one awful vacancy, which shall never, while the world endures, be filled again. The day brought its burden of duty to Mrs. Wilson. She felt bound by regard, as well as by etiquette, to go and see her future daughter-in-law. And by an old association of ideas (perhaps of death with church-yards, and churches with Sunday) she thought it necessary to put on her best, and latterly unused clothes, the airing of which on a little clothes-horse before the fire seemed to give her a not unpleasing occupation. When Jem returned home late in the evening succeeding John Barton's death, weary and oppressed with the occurrences and excitements of the day, he found his mother busy about her mourning, and much inclined to talk. Although he longed for quiet, he could not avoid sitting down and answering her questions. "Well, Jem, he's gone at last, is he?" "Yes. How did you hear, mother?" "Oh, Job came over here and telled me, on his way to the undertaker's. Did he make a fine end?" It struck Jem that she had not heard of the confession which had been made by John Barton on his death-bed; he remembered Job Legh's discretion, and he determined that if it could be avoided his mother should never hear of it. Many of the difficulties to be anticipated in preserving the secret would be obviated, if he could induce his mother to fall into the plan he had named to Mary of emigrating to Canada. The reasons which rendered this secrecy desirable related to the domestic happiness he hoped for. With his mother's irritable temper he could hardly expect that all allusion to the crime of John Barton would be for ever restrained from passing her lips, and he knew the deep trial such references would be to Mary. Accordingly he resolved as soon as possible in the morning to go to Job and beseech his silence; he trusted that secrecy in that quarter, even if the knowledge had been extended to Margaret, might be easily secured. But what would be Mr. Carson's course? Were there any means by which he might be persuaded to spare John Barton's memory? He was roused up from this train of thought by his mother's more irritated tone of voice. "Jem!" she was saying, "thou might'st just as well never be at a death-bed again, if thou cannot bring off more news about it; here have I been by mysel all day (except when oud Job came in), but thinks I, when Jem comes he'll be sure to be good company, seeing he was in the house at the very time of the death; and here thou art, without a word to throw at a dog, much less thy mother: it's no use thy going to a death-bed if thou cannot carry away any of the sayings!" "He did not make any, mother," replied Jem. "Well, to be sure! So fond as he used to be of holding forth, to miss such a fine opportunity that will never come again! Did he die easy?" "He was very restless all night long," said Jem, reluctantly returning to the thoughts of that time. "And in course thou plucked the pillow away? Thou didst not! Well! with thy bringing up, and thy learning, thou might'st have known that were the only help in such a case. There were pigeons' feathers in the pillow, depend on't. To think of two grown-up folk like you and Mary, not knowing death could never come easy to a person lying on a pillow with pigeons' feathers in!" Jem was glad to escape from all this talking to the solitude and quiet of his own room, where he could lie and think uninterruptedly of what had happened and remained to be done. The first thing was to seek an interview with Mr. Duncombe, his former master. Accordingly, early the next morning Jem set off on his walk to the works, where for so many years his days had been spent; where for so long a time his thoughts had been thought, his hopes and fears experienced. It was not a cheering feeling to remember that henceforward he was to be severed from all these familiar places; nor were his spirits enlivened by the evident feelings of the majority of those who had been his fellow-workmen. As he stood in the entrance to the foundry, awaiting Mr. Duncombe's leisure, many of those employed in the works passed him on their return from breakfast; and with one or two exceptions, without any acknowledgment of former acquaintance beyond a distant nod at the utmost. "It is hard," said Jem to himself, with a bitter and indignant feeling rising in his throat, "that let a man's life be what it may, folk are so ready to credit the first word against him. I could live it down if I stayed in England; but then what would not Mary have to bear? Sooner or later the truth would out; and then she would be a show to folk for many a day as John Barton's daughter. Well! God does not judge as hardly as man, that's one comfort for all of us!" Mr. Duncombe did not believe in Jem's guilt, in spite of the silence in which he again this day heard the imputation of it; but he agreed that under the circumstances it was better he should leave the country. "We have been written to by government, as I think I told you before, to recommend an intelligent man, well acquainted with mechanics, as instrument-maker to the Agricultural College they are establishing at Toronto, in Canada. It is a comfortable appointment,--house,--land,--and a good per-centage on the instruments made. I will show you the particulars if I can lay my hand on the letter, which I believe I must have left at home." "Thank you, sir. No need for seeing the letter to say I'll accept it. I must leave Manchester; and I'd as lief quit England at once when I'm about it." "Of course government will give you your passage; indeed, I believe an allowance would be made for a family if you had one; but you are not a married man, I believe?" "No, sir, but--" Jem hung back from a confession with the awkwardness of a girl. "But--" said Mr. Duncombe, smiling, "you would like to be a married man before you go, I suppose; eh, Wilson?" "If you please, sir. And there's my mother, too. I hope she'll go with us. But I can pay her passage; no need to trouble government." "Nay, nay! I'll write to-day and recommend you; and say that you have a family of two. They'll never ask if the family goes upwards or downwards. I shall see you again before you sail, I hope, Wilson; though I believe they'll not allow you long to wait. Come to my house next time; you'll find it pleasanter, I daresay. These men are so wrong-headed. Keep up your heart!" Jem felt that it was a relief to have this point settled; and that he need no longer weigh reasons for and against his emigration. And with his path growing clearer and clearer before him the longer he contemplated it, he went to see Mary, and if he judged it fit, to tell her what he had decided upon. Margaret was sitting with her. "Grandfather wants to see you!" said she to Jem on his entrance. "And I want to see him," replied Jem, suddenly remembering his last night's determination to enjoin secrecy on Job Legh. So he hardly stayed to kiss poor Mary's sweet woe-begone face, but tore himself away from his darling to go to the old man, who awaited him impatiently. "I've getten a note from Mr. Carson," exclaimed Job the moment he saw Jem; "and man-alive, he wants to see thee and me! For sure, there's no more mischief up, is there?" said he, looking at Jem with an expression of wonder. But if any suspicion mingled for an instant with the thoughts that crossed Job's mind, it was immediately dispelled by Jem's honest, fearless, open countenance. "I can't guess what he's wanting, poor old chap," answered he. "May be there's some point he's not yet satisfied on; may be--but it's no use guessing; let's be off." "It wouldn't be better for thee to be scarce a bit, would it, and leave me to go and find out what's up? He has, perhaps, getten some crotchet into his head thou'rt an accomplice, and is laying a trap for thee." "I'm not afeared!" said Jem; "I've done nought wrong, and know nought wrong, about yon poor dead lad; though I'll own I had evil thoughts once on a time. Folk can't mistake long if once they'll search into the truth. I'll go and give the old gentleman all the satisfaction in my power, now it can injure no one. I'd my own reasons for wanting to see him besides, and it all falls in right enough for me." Job was a little reassured by Jem's boldness; but still, if the truth must be told, he wished the young man would follow his advice, and leave him to sound Mr. Carson's intentions. Meanwhile Jane Wilson had donned her Sunday suit of black, and set off on her errand of condolence. She felt nervous and uneasy at the idea of the moral sayings and texts which she fancied were expected from visitors on occasions like the present; and prepared many a good set speech as she walked towards the house of mourning. As she gently opened the door, Mary, sitting idly by the fire, caught a glimpse of her,--of Jem's mother,--of the early friend of her dead parents,--of the kind minister to many a little want in days of childhood,--and rose and came and fell about her neck, with many a sob and moan, saying, "Oh, he's gone--he's dead--all gone--all dead, and I am left alone!" "Poor wench! poor, poor wench!" said Jane Wilson, tenderly kissing her. "Thou'rt not alone, so donnot take on so. I'll say nought of Him who's above, for thou know'st He is ever the orphan's friend; but think on Jem! nay, Mary, dear, think on me! I'm but a frabbit woman at times, but I've a heart within me through all my temper, and thou shalt be as a daughter henceforward,--as mine own ewe-lamb. Jem shall not love thee better in his way, than I will in mine; and thou'lt bear with my turns, Mary, knowing that in my soul God sees the love that shall ever be thine, if thou'lt take me for thy mother, and speak no more of being alone." Mrs. Wilson was weeping herself long before she had ended this speech, which was so different to all she had planned to say, and from all the formal piety she had laid in store for the visit; for this was heart's piety, and needed no garnish of texts to make it true religion, pure and undefiled. They sat together on the same chair, their arms encircling each other; they wept for the same dead; they had the same hope, and trust, and overflowing love in the living. From that time forward, hardly a passing cloud dimmed the happy confidence of their intercourse; even by Jem would his mother's temper sooner be irritated than by Mary; before the latter she repressed her occasional nervous ill-humour till the habit of indulging it was perceptibly decreased. Years afterwards in conversation with Jem, he was startled by a chance expression which dropped from his mother's lips; it implied a knowledge of John Barton's crime. It was many a long day since they had seen any Manchester people who could have revealed the secret (if indeed it was known in Manchester, against which Jem had guarded in every possible way). And he was led to inquire first as to the extent, and then as to the source of her knowledge. It was Mary herself who had told all. For on the morning to which this chapter principally relates, as Mary sat weeping, and as Mrs. Wilson comforted her by every tenderest word and caress, she revealed to the dismayed and astonished Jane, the sting of her deep sorrow; the crime which stained her dead father's memory. She was quite unconscious that Jem had kept it secret from his mother; she had imagined it bruited abroad as the suspicion against her lover had been; so word after word (dropped from her lips in the supposition that Mrs. Wilson knew all) had told the tale and revealed the cause of her deep anguish; deeper than is ever caused by Death alone. On large occasions like the present, Mrs. Wilson's innate generosity came out. Her weak and ailing frame imparted its irritation to her conduct in small things, and daily trifles; but she had deep and noble sympathy with great sorrows, and even at the time that Mary spoke she allowed no expression of surprise or horror to escape her lips. She gave way to no curiosity as to the untold details; she was as secret and trustworthy as her son himself; and if in years to come her anger was occasionally excited against Mary, and she, on rare occasions, yielded to ill-temper against her daughter-in-law, she would upbraid her for extravagance, or stinginess, or over-dressing, or under-dressing, or too much mirth or too much gloom, but never, never in her most uncontrolled moments did she allude to any one of the circumstances relating to Mary's flirtation with Harry Carson, or his murderer; and always when she spoke of John Barton, named him with the respect due to his conduct before the last, miserable, guilty month of his life. Therefore it came like a blow to Jem when, after years had passed away, he gathered his mother's knowledge of the whole affair. From the day when he learnt (not without remorse) what hidden depths of self-restraint she had in her soul, his manner to her, always tender and respectful, became reverential; and it was more than ever a loving strife between him and Mary which should most contribute towards the happiness of the declining years of their mother. But I am speaking of the events which have occurred only lately, while I have yet many things to tell you that happened six or seven years ago. CHAPTER XXXVII. DETAILS CONNECTED WITH THE MURDER. "The rich man dines, while the poor man pines, And eats his heart away; 'They teach us lies,' he sternly cries, 'Would _brothers_ do as they?'" "THE DREAM." Mr. Carson stood at one of the breathing-moments of life. The object of the toils, the fears, and the wishes of his past years, was suddenly hidden from his sight,--vanished into the deep mystery which circumscribes existence. Nay, even the vengeance which he had proposed to himself as an aim for exertion, had been taken away from before his eyes, as by the hand of God. Events like these would have startled the most thoughtless into reflection, much more such a man as Mr. Carson, whose mind, if not enlarged, was energetic; indeed, whose very energy, having been hitherto the cause of the employment of his powers in only one direction, had prevented him from becoming largely and philosophically comprehensive in his views. But now the foundations of his past life were razed to the ground, and the place they had once occupied was sown with salt, to be for ever rebuilt no more. It was like the change from this Life to that other hidden one, when so many of the motives which have actuated all our earthly existence, will have become more fleeting than the shadows of a dream. With a wrench of his soul from the past, so much of which was as nothing, and worse than nothing to him now, Mr. Carson took some hours, after he had witnessed the death of his son's murderer, to consider his situation. But suddenly, while he was deliberating, and searching for motives which should be effective to compel him to exertion and action once more; while he contemplated the desire after riches, social distinction, a name among the merchant-princes amidst whom he moved, and saw these false substances fade away into the shadows they truly are, and one by one disappear into the grave of his son,--suddenly, I say, the thought arose within him that more yet remained to be learned about the circumstances and feelings which had prompted John Barton's crime; and when once this mournful curiosity was excited, it seemed to gather strength in every moment that its gratification was delayed. Accordingly he sent a message to summon Job Legh and Jem Wilson, from whom he promised himself some elucidation of what was as yet unexplained; while he himself set forth to call on Mr. Bridgenorth, whom he knew to have been Jem's attorney, with a glimmering suspicion intruding on his mind, which he strove to repel, that Jem might have had some share in his son's death. He had returned before his summoned visitors arrived; and had time enough to recur to the evening on which John Barton had made his confession. He remembered with mortification how he had forgotten his proud reserve, and his habitual concealment of his feelings, and had laid bare his agony of grief in the presence of these two men who were coming to see him by his desire; and he entrenched himself behind stiff barriers of self-control, through which he hoped no appearance of emotion would force its way in the conversation he anticipated. Nevertheless, when the servant announced that two men were there by appointment to speak to him, and he had desired that they might be shown into the library where he sat, any watcher might have perceived by the trembling hands, and shaking head, not only how much he was aged by the occurrences of the last few weeks, but also how much he was agitated at the thought of the impending interview. But he so far succeeded in commanding himself at first, as to appear to Jem Wilson and Job Legh one of the hardest and most haughty men they had ever spoken to, and to forfeit all the interest which he had previously excited in their minds by his unreserved display of deep and genuine feeling. When he had desired them to be seated, he shaded his face with his hand for an instant before speaking. "I have been calling on Mr. Bridgenorth this morning," said he, at last; "as I expected, he can give me but little satisfaction on some points respecting the occurrence on the 18th of last month which I desire to have cleared up. Perhaps you two can tell me what I want to know. As intimate friends of Barton's you probably know, or can conjecture a good deal. Have no scruple as to speaking the truth. What you say in this room shall never be named again by me. Besides, you are aware that the law allows no one to be tried twice for the same offence." He stopped for a minute, for the mere act of speaking was fatiguing to him after the excitement of the last few weeks. Job Legh took the opportunity of speaking. "I'm not going to be affronted either for myself or Jem at what you've just now been saying about the truth. You don't know us, and there's an end on't; only it's as well for folk to think others good and true until they're proved contrary. Ask what you like, sir, I'll answer for it we'll either tell truth or hold our tongues." "I beg your pardon," said Mr. Carson, slightly bowing his head. "What I wished to know was," referring to a slip of paper he held in his hand, and shaking so much he could hardly adjust his glasses to his eyes, "whether you, Wilson, can explain how Barton came possessed of your gun. I believe you refused this explanation to Mr. Bridgenorth." "I did, sir! If I had said what I knew then, I saw it would criminate Barton, and so I refused telling aught. To you, sir, now I will tell every thing and any thing; only it is but little. The gun was my father's before it was mine, and long ago he and John Barton had a fancy for shooting at the gallery; and they used always to take this gun, and brag that though it was old-fashioned it was sure." Jem saw with self-upbraiding pain how Mr. Carson winced at these last words, but at each irrepressible and involuntary evidence of feeling, the hearts of the two men warmed towards him. Jem went on speaking. "One day in the week--I think it was on the Wednesday,--yes, it was,--it was on St. Patrick's day, I met John just coming out of our house, as I were going to my dinner. Mother was out, and he'd found no one in. He said he'd come to borrow the old gun, and that he'd have made bold, and taken it, but it was not to be seen. Mother was afraid of it, so after father's death (for while he were alive, she seemed to think he could manage it) I had carried it to my own room. I went up and fetched it for John, who stood outside the door all the time." "What did he say he wanted it for?" asked Mr. Carson, hastily. "I don't think he spoke when I gave it him. At first he muttered something about the shooting-gallery, and I never doubted but that it were for practice there, as I knew he had done years before." Mr. Carson had strung up his frame to an attitude of upright attention while Jem was speaking; now the tension relaxed, and he sank back in his chair, weak and powerless. He rose up again, however, as Jem went on, anxious to give every particular which could satisfy the bereaved father. "I never knew for what he wanted the gun till I was taken up,--I do not know yet why he wanted it. No one would have had me get out of the scrape by implicating an old friend,--my father's old friend, and the father of the girl I loved. So I refused to tell Mr. Bridgenorth aught about it, and would not have named it now to any one but you." Jem's face became very red at the allusion he made to Mary, but his honest, fearless eyes had met Mr. Carson's penetrating gaze unflinchingly, and had carried conviction of his innocence and truthfulness. Mr. Carson felt certain that he had heard all that Jem could tell. Accordingly he turned to Job Legh. "You were in the room the whole time while Barton was speaking to me, I think?" "Yes, sir," answered Job. "You'll excuse my asking plain and direct questions; the information I am gaining is really a relief to my mind, I don't know how, but it is,--will you tell me if you had any idea of Barton's guilt in this matter before?" "None whatever, so help me God!" said Job, solemnly. "To tell truth (and axing your forgiveness, Jem), I had never got quite shut of the notion that Jem here had done it. At times I was as clear of his innocence as I was of my own; and whenever I took to reasoning about it, I saw he could not have been the man that did it. Still I never thought of Barton." "And yet by his confession he must have been absent at the time," said Mr. Carson, referring to his slip of paper. "Ay, and for many a day after,--I can't rightly say how long. But still, you see, one's often blind to many a thing that lies right under one's nose, till it's pointed out. And till I heard what John Barton had to say yon night, I could not have seen what reason he had for doing it; while in the case of Jem, any one who looked at Mary Barton might have seen a cause for jealousy, clear enough." "Then you believe that Barton had no knowledge of my son's unfortunate,--" he looked at Jem, "of his attentions to Mary Barton. This young man, Wilson, had heard of them, you see." "The person who told me said clearly she neither had, nor would tell Mary's father," interposed Jem. "I don't believe he'd ever heard of it; he weren't a man to keep still in such a matter, if he had." "Besides," said Job, "the reason he gave on his death-bed, so to speak, was enough; 'specially to those who knew him." "You mean his feelings regarding the treatment of the workmen by the masters; you think he acted from motives of revenge, in consequence of the part my son had taken in putting down the strike?" "Well, sir," replied Job, "it's hard to say: John Barton was not a man to take counsel with people; nor did he make many words about his doings. So I can only judge from his way of thinking and talking in general, never having heard him breathe a syllable concerning this matter in particular. You see he were sadly put about to make great riches and great poverty square with Christ's Gospel"--Job paused, in order to try and express what was clear enough in his own mind, as to the effect produced on John Barton by the great and mocking contrasts presented by the varieties of human condition. Before he could find suitable words to explain his meaning, Mr. Carson spoke. "You mean he was an Owenite; all for equality and community of goods, and that kind of absurdity." "No, no! John Barton was no fool. No need to tell him that were all men equal to-night, some would get the start by rising an hour earlier to-morrow. Nor yet did he care for goods, nor wealth--no man less, so that he could get daily bread for him and his; but what hurt him sore, and rankled in him as long as I knew him (and, sir, it rankles in many a poor man's heart far more than the want of any creature-comforts, and puts a sting into starvation itself), was that those who wore finer clothes, and eat better food, and had more money in their pockets, kept him at arm's length, and cared not whether his heart was sorry or glad; whether he lived or died,--whether he was bound for heaven or hell. It seemed hard to him that a heap of gold should part him and his brother so far asunder. For he was a loving man before he grew mad with seeing such as he was slighted, as if Christ Himself had not been poor. At one time, I've heard him say, he felt kindly towards every man, rich or poor, because he thought they were all men alike. But latterly he grew aggravated with the sorrows and suffering that he saw, and which he thought the masters might help if they would." "That's the notion you've all of you got," said Mr. Carson. "Now, how in the world can we help it? We cannot regulate the demand for labour. No man or set of men can do it. It depends on events which God alone can control. When there is no market for our goods, we suffer just as much as you can do." "Not as much, I'm sure, sir; though I'm not given to Political Economy, I know that much. I'm wanting in learning, I'm aware; but I can use my eyes. I never see the masters getting thin and haggard for want of food; I hardly ever see them making much change in their way of living, though I don't doubt they've got to do it in bad times. But it's in things for show they cut short; while for such as me, it's in things for life we've to stint. For sure, sir, you'll own it's come to a hard pass when a man would give aught in the world for work to keep his children from starving, and can't get a bit, if he's ever so willing to labour. I'm not up to talking as John Barton would have done, but that's clear to me at any rate." "My good man, just listen to me. Two men live in solitude; one produces loaves of bread, the other coats,--or what you will. Now, would it not be hard if the bread-producer were forced to give bread for the coats, whether he wanted them or not, in order to furnish employment to the other? That is the simple form of the case; you've only to multiply the numbers. There will come times of great changes in the occupation of thousands, when improvements in manufactures and machinery are made.--It's all nonsense talking,--it must be so!" Job Legh pondered a few moments. "It's true it was a sore time for the hand-loom weavers when power-looms came in: them new-fangled things make a man's life like a lottery; and yet I'll never misdoubt that power-looms, and railways, and all such-like inventions, are the gifts of God. I have lived long enough, too, to see that it is part of His plan to send suffering to bring out a higher good; but surely it's also part of His plan that as much of the burden of the suffering as can be, should be lightened by those whom it is His pleasure to make happy, and content in their own circumstances. Of course it would take a deal more thought and wisdom than me, or any other man has, to settle out of hand how this should be done. But I'm clear about this, when God gives a blessing to be enjoyed, He gives it with a duty to be done; and the duty of the happy is to help the suffering to bear their woe." "Still, facts have proved and are daily proving how much better it is for every man to be independent of help, and self-reliant," said Mr. Carson, thoughtfully. "You can never work facts as you would fixed quantities, and say, given two facts, and the product is so and so. God has given men feelings and passions which cannot be worked into the problem, because they are for ever changing and uncertain. God has also made some weak; not in any one way, but in all. One is weak in body, another in mind, another in steadiness of purpose, a fourth can't tell right from wrong, and so on; or if he can tell the right, he wants strength to hold by it. Now to my thinking, them that is strong in any of God's gifts is meant to help the weak,--be hanged to the facts! I ask your pardon, sir; I can't rightly explain the meaning that is in me. I'm like a tap as won't run, but keeps letting it out drop by drop, so that you've no notion of the force of what's within." Job looked and felt very sorrowful at the want of power in his words, while the feeling within him was so strong and clear. "What you say is very true, no doubt," replied Mr. Carson; "but how would you bring it to bear upon the masters' conduct,--on my particular case?" added he, gravely. "I'm not learned enough to argue. Thoughts come into my head that I'm sure are as true as Gospel, though may be they don't follow each other like the Q. E. D. of a Proposition. The masters has it on their own conscience,--you have it on yours, sir, to answer for to God whether you've done, and are doing all in your power to lighten the evils that seem always to hang on the trades by which you make your fortunes. It's no business of mine, thank God. John Barton took the question in hand, and his answer to it was NO! Then he grew bitter, and angry, and mad; and in his madness he did a great sin, and wrought a great woe; and repented him with tears as of blood; and will go through his penance humbly and meekly in t'other place, I'll be bound. I never seed such bitter repentance as his that last night." There was a silence of many minutes. Mr. Carson had covered his face, and seemed utterly forgetful of their presence; and yet they did not like to disturb him by rising to leave the room. At last he said, without meeting their sympathetic eyes, "Thank you both for coming,--and for speaking candidly to me. I fear, Legh, neither you nor I have convinced each other, as to the power, or want of power, in the masters to remedy the evils the men complain of." "I'm loth to vex you, sir, just now; but it was not the want of power I was talking on; what we all feel sharpest is the want of inclination to try and help the evils which come like blights at times over the manufacturing places, while we see the masters can stop work and not suffer. If we saw the masters try for our sakes to find a remedy,--even if they were long about it,--even if they could find no help, and at the end of all could only say, 'Poor fellows, our hearts are sore for ye; we've done all we could, and can't find a cure,'--we'd bear up like men through bad times. No one knows till they've tried, what power of bearing lies in them, if once they believe that men are caring for their sorrows and will help if they can. If fellow-creatures can give nought but tears and brave words, we take our trials straight from God, and we know enough of His love to put ourselves blind into His hands. You say our talk has done no good. I say it has. I see the view you take of things from the place where you stand. I can remember that, when the time comes for judging you; I sha'n't think any longer, does he act right on my views of a thing, but does he act right on his own. It has done me good in that way. I'm an old man, and may never see you again; but I'll pray for you, and think on you and your trials, both of your great wealth, and of your son's cruel death, many and many a day to come; and I'll ask God to bless both to you now and for evermore. Amen. Farewell!" Jem had maintained a manly and dignified reserve ever since he had made his open statement of all he knew. Now both the men rose and bowed low, looking at Mr. Carson with the deep human interest they could not fail to take in one who had endured and forgiven a deep injury; and who struggled hard, as it was evident he did, to bear up like a man under his affliction. He bowed low in return to them. Then he suddenly came forward and shook them by the hand; and thus, without a word more, they parted. There are stages in the contemplation and endurance of great sorrow, which endow men with the same earnestness and clearness of thought that in some of old took the form of Prophecy. To those who have large capability of loving and suffering, united with great power of firm endurance, there comes a time in their woe, when they are lifted out of the contemplation of their individual case into a searching inquiry into the nature of their calamity, and the remedy (if remedy there be) which may prevent its recurrence to others as well as to themselves. Hence the beautiful, noble efforts which are from time to time brought to light, as being continuously made by those who have once hung on the cross of agony, in order that others may not suffer as they have done; one of the grandest ends which sorrow can accomplish; the sufferer wrestling with God's messenger until a blessing is left behind, not for one alone but for generations. It took time before the stern nature of Mr. Carson was compelled to the recognition of this secret of comfort, and that same sternness prevented his reaping any benefit in public estimation from the actions he performed; for the character is more easily changed than the habits and manners originally formed by that character, and to his dying day Mr. Carson was considered hard and cold by those who only casually saw him, or superficially knew him. But those who were admitted into his confidence were aware, that the wish which lay nearest to his heart was that none might suffer from the cause from which he had suffered; that a perfect understanding, and complete confidence and love, might exist between masters and men; that the truth might be recognised that the interests of one were the interests of all, and as such, required the consideration and deliberation of all; that hence it was most desirable to have educated workers, capable of judging, not mere machines of ignorant men; and to have them bound to their employers by the ties of respect and affection, not by mere money bargains alone; in short, to acknowledge the Spirit of Christ as the regulating law between both parties. Many of the improvements now in practice in the system of employment in Manchester, owe their origin to short, earnest sentences spoken by Mr. Carson. Many and many yet to be carried into execution, take their birth from that stern, thoughtful mind, which submitted to be taught by suffering. CHAPTER XXXVIII. CONCLUSION. "Touch us gently, gentle Time! We've not proud nor soaring wings, Our ambition, our content, Lies in simple things; Humble voyagers are we O'er life's dim unsounded sea; Touch us gently, gentle Time!" BARRY CORNWALL. Not many days after John Barton's funeral was over, all was arranged respecting Jem's appointment at Toronto; and the time was fixed for his sailing. It was to take place almost immediately: yet much remained to be done; many domestic preparations were to be made; and one great obstacle, anticipated by both Jem and Mary, to be removed. This was the opposition they expected from Mrs. Wilson, to whom the plan had never yet been named. They were most anxious that their home should continue ever to be hers, yet they feared that her dislike to a new country might be an insuperable objection to this. At last Jem took advantage of an evening of unusual placidity, as he sat alone with his mother just before going to bed, to broach the subject; and to his surprise she acceded willingly to his proposition of her accompanying himself and his wife. "To be sure 'Merica is a long way to flit to; beyond London a good bit I reckon; and quite in foreign parts; but I've never had no opinion of England, ever since they could be such fools as take up a quiet chap like thee, and clap thee in prison. Where you go, I'll go. Perhaps in them Indian countries they'll know a well-behaved lad when they see him; ne'er speak a word more, lad, I'll go." Their path became daily more smooth and easy; the present was clear and practicable, the future was hopeful; they had leisure of mind enough to turn to the past. "Jem!" said Mary to him, one evening as they sat in the twilight, talking together in low happy voices till Margaret should come to keep Mary company through the night, "Jem! you've never yet told me how you came to know about my naughty ways with poor young Mr. Carson." She blushed for shame at the remembrance of her folly, and hid her head on his shoulder while he made answer. "Darling, I'm almost loth to tell you; your aunt Esther told me." "Ah, I remember! but how did she know? I was so put about that night I did not think of asking her. Where did you see her? I've forgotten where she lives." Mary said all this in so open and innocent a manner, that Jem felt sure she knew not the truth respecting Esther, and he half hesitated to tell her. At length he replied, "Where did you see Esther lately? When? Tell me, love, for you've never named it before, and I can't make it out." "Oh! it was that horrible night which is like a dream." And she told him of Esther's midnight visit, concluding with, "We must go and see her before we leave, though I don't rightly know where to find her." "Dearest Mary,--" "What, Jem?" exclaimed she, alarmed by his hesitation. "Your poor aunt Esther has no home:--she's one of them miserable creatures that walk the streets." And he in his turn told of his encounter with Esther, with so many details that Mary was forced to be convinced, although her heart rebelled against the belief. "Jem, lad!" said she, vehemently, "we must find her out,--we must hunt her up!" She rose as if she was going on the search there and then. "What could we do, darling?" asked he, fondly restraining her. "Do! Why! what could we _not_ do, if we could but find her? She's none so happy in her ways, think ye, but what she'd turn from them, if any one would lend her a helping hand. Don't hold me, Jem; this is just the time for such as her to be out, and who knows but what I might find her close at hand." "Stay, Mary, for a minute; I'll go out now and search for her if you wish, though it's but a wild chase. You must not go. It would be better to ask the police to-morrow. But if I should find her, how can I make her come with me? Once before she refused, and said she could not break off her drinking ways, come what might?" "You never will persuade her if you fear and doubt," said Mary, in tears. "Hope yourself, and trust to the good that must be in her. Speak to that,--she has it in her yet,--oh, bring her home, and we will love her so, we'll make her good." "Yes!" said Jem, catching Mary's sanguine spirit; "she shall go to America with us; and we'll help her to get rid of her sins. I'll go now, my precious darling, and if I can't find her, it's but trying the police to-morrow. Take care of your own sweet self, Mary," said he, fondly kissing her before he went out. It was not to be. Jem wandered far and wide that night, but never met Esther. The next day he applied to the police; and at last they recognised under his description of her, a woman known to them under the name of the "Butterfly," from the gaiety of her dress a year or two ago. By their help he traced out one of her haunts, a low lodging-house behind Peter Street. He and his companion, a kind-hearted policeman, were admitted, suspiciously enough, by the landlady, who ushered them into a large garret where twenty or thirty people of all ages and both sexes lay and dozed away the day, choosing the evening and night for their trades of beggary, thieving, or prostitution. "I know the Butterfly was here," said she, looking round. "She came in, the night before last, and said she had not a penny to get a place for shelter; and that if she was far away in the country she could steal aside and die in a copse, or a clough, like the wild animals; but here the police would let no one alone in the streets, and she wanted a spot to die in, in peace. It's a queer sort of peace we have here, but that night the room was uncommon empty, and I'm not a hard-hearted woman (I wish I were, I could ha' made a good thing out of it afore this if I were harder), so I sent her up,--but she's not here now, I think." "Was she very bad?" asked Jem. "Ay! nought but skin and bone, with a cough to tear her in two." They made some inquiries, and found that in the restlessness of approaching death, she had longed to be once more in the open air, and had gone forth,--where, no one seemed to be able to tell. Leaving many messages for her, and directions that he was to be sent for if either the policeman or the landlady obtained any clue to her where-abouts, Jem bent his steps towards Mary's house; for he had not seen her all that long day of search. He told her of his proceedings and want of success; and both were saddened at the recital, and sat silent for some time. After a while they began talking over their plans. In a day or two, Mary was to give up house, and go and live for a week or so with Job Legh, until the time of her marriage, which would take place immediately before sailing; they talked themselves back into silence and delicious reverie. Mary sat by Jem, his arm round her waist, her head on his shoulder; and thought over the scenes which had passed in that home she was so soon to leave for ever. Suddenly she felt Jem start, and started too without knowing why; she tried to see his countenance, but the shades of evening had deepened so much she could read no expression there. It was turned to the window; she looked and saw a white face pressed against the panes on the outside, gazing intently into the dusky chamber. While they watched, as if fascinated by the appearance, and unable to think or stir, a film came over the bright, feverish, glittering eyes outside, and the form sank down to the ground without a struggle of instinctive resistance. "It is Esther!" exclaimed they, both at once. They rushed outside; and, fallen into what appeared simply a heap of white or light-coloured clothes, fainting or dead, lay the poor crushed Butterfly--the once innocent Esther. She had come (as a wounded deer drags its heavy limbs once more to the green coolness of the lair in which it was born, there to die) to see the place familiar to her innocence, yet once again before her death. Whether she was indeed alive or dead, they knew not now. Job came in with Margaret, for it was bed-time. He said Esther's pulse beat a little yet. They carried her upstairs and laid her on Mary's bed, not daring to undress her, lest any motion should frighten the trembling life away; but it was all in vain. Towards midnight, she opened wide her eyes and looked around on the once familiar room; Job Legh knelt by the bed praying aloud and fervently for her, but he stopped as he saw her roused look. She sat up in bed with a sudden convulsive motion. "Has it been a dream then?" asked she wildly. Then with a habit, which came like instinct even in that awful dying hour, her hand sought for a locket which hung concealed in her bosom, and, finding that, she knew all was true which had befallen her since last she lay an innocent girl on that bed. She fell back, and spoke word never more. She held the locket containing her child's hair still in her hand, and once or twice she kissed it with a long soft kiss. She cried feebly and sadly as long as she had any strength to cry, and then she died. They laid her in one grave with John Barton. And there they lie without name, or initial, or date. Only this verse is inscribed upon the stone which covers the remains of these two wanderers. Psalm ciii. v. 9.--"For He will not always chide, neither will He keep His anger for ever." I see a long, low, wooden house, with room enough and to spare. The old primeval trees are felled and gone for many a mile around; one alone remains to overshadow the gable-end of the cottage. There is a garden around the dwelling, and far beyond that stretches an orchard. The glory of an Indian summer is over all, making the heart leap at the sight of its gorgeous beauty. At the door of the house, looking towards the town, stands Mary, watching for the return of her husband from his daily work; and while she watches, she listens, smiling; "Clap hands, daddy comes, With his pocket full of plums, And a cake for Johnnie." Then comes a crow of delight from Johnnie. Then his grandmother carries him to the door, and glories in seeing him resist his mother's blandishments to cling to her. "English letters! 'Twas that made me so late!" "Oh, Jem, Jem! don't hold them so tight! What do they say?" "Why, some good news. Come, give a guess what it is." "Oh, tell me! I cannot guess," said Mary. "Then you give it up, do you? What do you say, mother?" Jane Wilson thought a moment. "Will and Margaret are married?" asked she. "Not exactly,--but very near. The old woman has twice the spirit of the young one. Come, Mary, give a guess!" He covered his little boy's eyes with his hands for an instant, significantly, till the baby pushed them down, saying in his imperfect way, "Tan't see." "There now! Johnnie can see. Do you guess, Mary?" "They've done something to Margaret to give her back her sight!" exclaimed she. "They have. She has been couched, and can see as well as ever. She and Will are to be married on the twenty-fifth of this month, and he's bringing her out here next voyage; and Job Legh talks of coming too,--not to see you, Mary,--nor you, mother,--nor you, my little hero" (kissing him), "but to try and pick up a few specimens of Canadian insects, Will says. All the compliment is to the earwigs, you see, mother!" "Dear Job Legh!" said Mary, softly and seriously.